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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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@hhaurashaa
about haurasha
I'm a 30-something female coming back to Tumblr as an escape from the nine-to-five grind. Yes, us ancient grandmas exist here.
currently reading
I'm interested in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Fallout, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Horizon Zero Dawn, and paranormal (aka monster) romances.
You can find me on AO3 as Haurasha. Feel free to browse my bookmarks.
Is it odd to say that isolation feels almost good? I feel like I don't know any other way to be now. It might not be healthy, but I don't wish to pretend around others that things are alright.
I deactivated nearly all of my social media accounts a few months ago. Scrolling was truly an addiction to me and the algorithm was fucking with my mental health.
There was a period of multiple months last year and earlier this year in which I had avoided reading smut and avoided consuming any romantic media. Yes, even wholesome vanilla stuff. I just felt too bitter and easily triggered by it. I had no interest in Tumblr or my fandoms. I didn't open AO3 for months.
My relationship with my partner is... I don't even know how to describe what we are or aren't anymore. I feel I have grown numb to the confusion and stagnancy. Perhaps we were both resigned to mutual unhappiness and I suspect we have been for a long while. Is it crazy that I am working towards saving a thousand dollars towards couples counseling without even being sure that he would be open to it?
Speaking of partners, I've stopped actively participating in the local kink community. It feels short-lived, but it was fun while it lasted. I still try to hang out with with friends in public locations for vanilla hangouts. I live vicariously through the stories of others, when I feel emotionally prepared to hear them, that is. I will say that my brief time in the community did contribute to some of the disconnect in my romantic relationship. Boundaries were crossed on my part and I don't know that either of us could ever feel comfortable with me returning. I felt disappointment that my partner never wanted to join me in the community or learn to do certain things with me, but I'm trying to put that era behind me. There were already cracks in our relationship long before this last year and I'm trying to focus on salvaging things if we can.
Another thing I've given up during my hiatus from life is streaming television and movies unless it's viewed during a weekend or at someone else's home. Binge-watching is something I'm trying to reduce, but it does give me some comfort.
I've been reading a lot of books lately. Non-fiction, sci-fi, classics. It's nice.
All this to say, life doesn't hold much of a spark for me anymore, but I'm still here. I hope things get better for us all.
i dont "struggle" with isolation, i'm actually soooooo super fucking good at it
Tumblr is a fate driven website. You can't find posts through the search function, you see them when you're meant to.
SMASH OR PASS: Beast, Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Beast
Smash (and/or date/smooch/etc)
Pass (not my type)
Simulacra
a John Price story by The Californicationist for 141RECON’s Monthly Challenge: March of the Robots with original artwork by the illustrious @auberghyn
🩷 Click here to view! 🩷
TW: explicit sex, men whimpering, cumflation, cyborg!Price
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
>UPDATE bravo-6.374 APPLIED >MEMORY CACHE DOWNLOAD COMPLETE >TACTILE SENSORS ONLINE >INSTALLATION COMPLETE >SYSTEM CALIBRATION COMPLETE >INITIALIZING…
...
The room was clean. That was always the most unsettling part of opening his eyes. The difference was staggering compared to the filth and grime that was smeared across the city and its forlorn residents outside. The oily rain never truly washed away all of the dust. He hadn’t seen a blue sky in months. Outside these walls, all of Earth’s gifts had been washed away in the name of progress and replaced with decay and filth. But, John didn't fret about losing the past. It wasn't something he would ever find again, so he put it from his mind. Eyes front, soldier.
As John looked around the room at the gleaming steel floor, galvanized and polished to a high shine, at the sparkling tiles that lay in little rows along the walls, each one reflecting the harsh overhead lighting in its polished surface, he wondered if he would ever get used to the sterility.
“Bravo-6,” the computer spoke to him, her artificially-crafted voice tinny and weak, “Run update diagnostic.”
“Diagnostic complete,” he replied, his voice a perfect replication of his scruffy Scouse dialect. He hadn’t had lungs in fifty years, but it still sounded like he smoked. When they’d offered to install a modulator, he’d refused. He had asked them to keep his voice just as it was, and they’d let him. There was a sort of comfort in that, he supposed.
Running the diagnostic hadn’t taken any time. He barely controlled systems like that in a conscious way anymore. In the early days, it would have been a chore. And in the beginning, it would have been painful, excruciatingly so. But now, it was nothing.
“Report received,” the computer acknowledged him, taking her data and flitting away like an invisible bird with a fresh worm between her beak, devouring and ever-hungry.
“Good morning, John,” a familiar voice greeted him, carrying through the blank room.
“Dr. Arao,” John purred as he watched the woman emerge from behind her desk.
“You’re always so formal when you wake up,” she grinned.
She was always the best part of his day. The dirty world outside of the lab couldn’t touch an elite scientist like her. Her straight, black hair was cut in a chin-length bob, and she used a shampoo that smelled like toasted coconut and vanilla cream. Expensive. Her teeth were sharp and white, and her bright eyes held two beautiful, pitch-dark pools that rested beneath hooded lids. A round nose sat just above a set of full, pouting lips, and although her smile did not come easy to others, it did for him.
He tried to ignore the other information his body seemed to deliver about her. Pulse rate at seventy-five beats per minute, body temperature holding at exactly thirty-seven degrees centigrade. Beyond the delightful coconut scent, he could smell coffee and mint toothpaste mixing together in a discordant mess in her mouth. He could just pick out the tell-tale synthetic wheat on her breath as she unhooked him from the diagnostic cables. She’d had toast this morning.
“Any pain?” She asked. She always asked, and his answer was always the same:
“No.”
She smiled as she looked down at her datapad,
“Well, perhaps that will change,” then, she shook her head, correcting herself, “No, wait. Sorry, I don’t want you to be in pain. I just meant –”
“It’s alright, love,” John stepped down from the heavy steel frame that had been cradling his body, standing beside her now, dwarfing her with his height and size, “I understand.”
“These new tactile sensors have been very promising in our tests. Temperature, pressure, vibration; it’s all on-boarded with the updated interface. You should be able to feel someone breathe from across the room with how high they’ve cranked these settings.”
“Mm,” John hummed non-commitally. He knew that these updates were not for his benefit, so he was reticent to enjoy them.
The doctor finally looked up from her datapad, compassion flashing through her eyes. She reached out to touch his arm, and for the first time in ages, he could feel the heat in her fingertips as she made contact with his synthetic skin. He looked down at her touch, surprised, and she bit the inside of her lip, watching him experience it,
“Do you want to run some tests?” Her tone was that of an explorer setting out on their maiden voyage, full of excitement and something near to hope.
“Whatever you need, Doct–”
“I told you before,” she interrupted him, waving her hand as if to cleanse the air of his words, “It’s Tala. Please.”
“Tala,” he felt her name fill his mouth, noting how the sound waves vibrated in his throat.
More and more, his body was delivering new sensory feedback from the update. He was beginning to see just how much had changed.
Tala motioned for him to sit in a cushioned, elevated chair, and she used the knobs to lean him back until he was suspended in front of her. His pretty doctor pulled up a chair next to him and attached her datapad to its receiver, watching as the data points began to populate the screen.
“Alright,” she slid up beside his shoulder and straightened her lab coat, “This code takes time to become established. We couldn’t make clear neural connections in our modelling because models don’t have memories. But,” she smiled smugly, “You do. Can you remember a feeling for me?”
John furrowed his brow,
“What sort of feeling?”
Tala sighed, twisting her mouth for a moment, thinking. Then, she shrugged,
“You used to smoke cigars, right? That was in your file. How did they feel?”
John thought for a moment, and he tried to recall the ritual. He could pull up plenty of information about how it should feel. The tobacco leaves should be moistened by his mouth, soft between his lips. The burning embers should feel warm as he pulled smoke across his palate. But, these were theoreticals fed to him by his system’s computer. He wasn’t remembering so much as he was knowing.
He sighed, trying to recall it for her,
“I’m sorry… I can’t –”
“Can you feel this?” Tala reached out to touch his hand, resting her fingers gently in the center of his wrist.
John stared down at her contact, focusing on the inputs he was now receiving in his head. She was touching him as if taking his pulse, or where his pulse would be if he had one anymore.
When he died, John had been stitched back together as a part of a secret program named Knightfall. It was a Lazarus protocol that took unthinkable measures in order to bring soldiers back from the dead, only to load them up with experimental drugs and implants, trying to improve on the original design.
That program had been replaced by four others in the years that passed, but each time, Knightfall kept him around, using him like a prototype, a guinea pig for them to run their tests and see what happened. He’d visited his gravestone, a little concrete pillar in the churchyard of St. Vincent’s. His fingers had traced over his name – Captain John Price, devoted soldier, 1985-2030 – and that had been the end of his human life. He belonged to the government now, blood and bone replaced bit by bit with oil and steel. Then, they had begun replacing that, too.
He should’ve died permanently in that explosion. Instead, they had puzzled him back together like a metal monster, replacing bone with titanium alloy, flesh with synthetic weave, and his ruined left eye had been carved out and updated with a digital interface. When he’d lost the right one on another assignment, he’d insisted that its robotic replacement be the same color. He didn’t want another steel marble rolling around in his synthetic orbital socket. He wanted to see himself when he looked in his reflection. Or at least some version of himself. Whatever that meant.
They’d replaced his limbs with bionic machines, strong enough to crush tank treads without really trying. His organs had begun to fail back in the ‘50s, and slowly, like Thesus’ ship, he’d changed into something else. Parts of his brain were still there, but how much of him was truly left? Did a soul remain trapped inside of him somewhere?
Now, in the long-stretched year of 2089, he was being touched by the only human that mattered to him anymore. Beneath Tala’s lithe fingers, she should feel the pounding of his heartbeat, the warmth of his recycled blood. Yet, none of it was there for her. He was a vampire, cursed like Cain. He could kill; he just couldn’t die.
“Yeah…” He nodded, “Feels warm, I think.”
“Warm?” She asked softly, curious, but not in the way that a scientist should be, “And this? Can you feel the pressure?”
Her small hand wrapped itself around his palm, her thumb pressing into the meat of his hand, and yes, he could feel the tension of it. John wanted to squeeze her back. He wanted to hold her hand in his and pull her into him. Such an impulse hadn’t come over him in so long, he wondered at first if it was violence before realizing that it was lust.
“Yes.” His answer was short, ironically robotic, and he fought to regain some semblance of control.
When Knightfall had first reconstructed him, they had spoken of him in utilitarian terms: Asset. Platform. Unit. They had not spoken of sensation except as it related to combat feedback, the necessary inputs required to execute violence efficiently. To crush. To burn. Tactile sensitivity had once been deemed an inefficiency, a liability. Pain was dulled. Temperature was moderated. Pleasure was irrelevant.
Now, standing in the long shadow of that decision, he wondered if what they had removed from him had been more than nerves. It felt that she had given it back to him.
“And this?” She whispered, no longer curious. Now, she was testing him. But, she didn’t record any data. Tala didn’t even glance over at her screens. No. She was more interested in the quick, darting movement of his eyes, the slight shock that rushed over his brow, the tightness of his mouth.
Her hand brushed John’s cheek, and he couldn’t help but lean into her heat. It had been so many years since someone had touched him in a way that was not painful or medicinal. As he turned his face to meet her touch, he felt her heart rate spike. It beat inside of her like a drum, and he wondered why.
Was it fear?
His hand came up to cup hers, holding it to his cheekbone reverently. Then, he heard her take in a sharp breath through her nose. Nervousness. Uncertainty.
John let her go.
“Yes.” He nodded, watching her hand drop away from his synthetic flesh.
Tala looked at him with that intense sharpness that he’d come to so deeply admire, and her lips curled into a very tentative smirk. She looked like she was breaking a rule, and he was more than happy to aid her in whatever rebellion she had planned. At this point, the outline of her palm against his cheek was throbbing like a burn in his memory, and he forced his onboard computer to enhance the feedback, pumping the memory to stay alive.
“Can you remember your first kiss?”
John heard himself let out a breath and a short laugh, shaking his head,
“I dunno, love. That was ages ago.”
He lied.
Of course he could remember it.
John had been hiding in the gymnasium after class, avoiding the mass exodus of his peers, all bubbling and roiling and ready for summer holiday. He wouldn’t be going off to uni with them. He’d enlisted, and he hadn’t told anyone.
But, Saoirse had found out. John never figured out how, but she’d discovered his secret. She knew where he was hiding, too. Never could keep anything from her. She had turned out to be the only real friend he’d had back then. Both of them from Merseyside. Both of them looking for somewhere to be that wasn’t home. Both of them desperate for a way out.
He thought she would understand that.
“John?” Her voice had echoed in the empty, hollow gym. “I know you’re here, you bloody coward.”
He’d stepped out of the shadows, then, glaring at her.
“Coward? Wha-”
“Thought you’d disappear, didn’t ya?” She shoved him on both of his shoulders, harder than he’d expected, knocking him off-balance, her auburn braid flopping over her shoulder, frizzy from the windy day. “You’d leave without sayin’ goodbye. Mister toy soldier, innit? How dare you!”
She’d hit him, then. Right in the chest. Her little fist had done no real damage to anything but his feelings.
“How dare you, you bastard!”
Her lashes were wet, the lids rimmed red and her green eyes gleamed in the dim light of the room.
“You can’t! You can’t leave me here! You…”
She was angry, but there was something else. Something that, at the time, his sixteen-year-old self couldn’t understand.
“Saoirse…” He begged her, “Please.”
“You, please! You bloody please! I…” Her lip trembled, and all of her words got trapped in her throat. She swallowed and swallowed, trying to speak, but nothing could escape.
And so he had kissed her. He didn’t know why he thought that would work. That it would fix anything. He’d pressed his mouth to hers, unmoving. When his lips touched her lips, he immediately regretted it. Hers were so soft. Too soft. It was as if he was touching the clouds. Like he was the sun, and his lips were the burning rays, and he was punishing her for being in his presence. Touching something that he wasn’t allowed to feel. Taking something he wasn’t allowed to have.
At once, he pulled back. But, almost as quickly, she’d followed him, her lips covering his own, moving against him in a strange, wet dance. He tried to learn the way. He chased her tongue with his own, he touched her body with his hands. She let him. No matter how clumsy he was, she let him be that way.
“You remember,” Tala recognized his expressions, pleased with her new discovery.
John fixed his face, and he shrugged,
“It’s… murky.”
“What was it like?” She asked, stepping closer to his metal throne, approaching him cautiously, as if he might flee from her. As if he had anywhere else he would go.
“Not good,” he gave her the truth with a soft smile. “I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do.”
Then, Tala leaned forward, her straight hair falling against her cheek, brushing his neck. Her nose fit against the side of his, and he could taste her mint toothpaste in his own mouth as she breathed against him. Her hand returned to his cheek, searing itself across the same place he’d felt it before. Finally, with her heart banging in his sensitive ears, she bent her mouth down and kissed him.
That same forbidden softness returned to him in a maddening crash. Tala’s full lips swept across his, fervent and searching. But, this time, he was not an ignorant lad. He moved his jaw against hers with the same desire, the same fire, taking her kiss and giving her his own. He fed her his tongue, taking her own into his mouth and sucking on her soft flesh like she was a dark, ripened fruit. His hands moved to her waist, feeling her body beneath his grasp, mindful of his power as he greedily squeezed her supple curves. The fabric of her blouse gave way against his fingers, and her shirt came untucked so that he could feel the heat of her skin.
She slowed, and he let her retreat, relaxing himself against her like willing prey. Finally, she broke their kiss, and her eyes fluttered open, staring up at him with an expression he was sure he wore on his own visage. Need.
“Was it like that?” She asked in a hushed whisper.
He shook his head, brushing her soft locks behind her ear, touching the soft shell of it with the tips of his fingers as he did,
“No.” He whispered back, “It wasn’t.”
The sound of a door closing came from the hallway, loud enough for them both to hear it. Tala moved back, but her eyes didn’t leave his. She didn’t check the lab portal. She just kept looking at him, full of something nameless.
The footsteps in the hallway disappeared away from the lab, and John tracked it as far as he could, his super-human hearing measuring every sound wave and logging it in his mind. But, it was hard to push himself to care about surveillance when his entire being wanted to track Tala’s every breath, every fierce pulse of her heart inside her breast, the specific dilation of her pupils in those bright eyes of hers.
“John… I’m sorry,” she looked away, turning her face from him suddenly, “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
She stood, but John sat up, turning himself in the elevated seat toward her, grabbing her shoulder. She let him stop her retreat, turning herself towards him so that she fit between his knees.
“Why did you, Tala?” John asked her, his voice low and smoldering.
She placed a shaking hand on his chest, right over where his heart should be. She should feel the gentle flutter of his life beneath her touch, but there was nothing there. Nothing but a cold machine. And yet, her palm awakened something within him. Something he couldn’t quantify.
“Because I wanted to,” she confessed.
Another sound interrupted John’s thoughts. The same footsteps returned to the hall, and as they grew closer, he realized they were coming to the lab. In a soft but decisive shove, John pushed Tala away from him and straightened his back, returning his face to a neutral position. She sucked in a breath, confused, but when the lab door opened, she, too, changed her demeanor. A chill fell over her pretty eyes, and the gleaming life that he’d seen in them just moments before dulled into a grey shadow.
“Arao?” A voice came from the cracked door.
“Mm,” she feigned distraction, tapping on her datapad, “Oh, yes?”
“Are you running the update? Simmons told me it wouldn’t be ready for launch until Thursday night.”
The man let himself into the lab, but he lingered by the door. He was afraid of John. The stench of his anxiety flooded John’s senses, putrid and sickly.
“It’s not the update,” Tala lied, “I’m just patching these old files. What do you need, Monroe?”
John hadn’t met Monroe before, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to remember him even if he had. The man was every bit as forgettable as a range target. His skin was tanned, his eyes a matching color, and his hair was thinning and drab. He was a young man, but he was not well-muscled. A runner, John guessed, by the slowness of his heart beats and by the expensive trainers he was wearing beneath his scrubs.
“Uh, well,” Monroe spoke a little too quietly, holding back some truth. John’s ears perked up, but he stayed stock-still, trying to be every bit the machine that they assumed. The man tried on a smile, “Simmons and Khan are heading down to the pinks to get a pint or two, and we were wondering… well, I was wondering if –”
“I really need to finish this,” Tala shook her pad a bit, communicating her impatience mildly, giving Monroe a half-hearted shrug.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” He asked, stepping a little closer to her, his eyes now fixed on John’s unmoving form. “I can call the night guard down.”
“What? No,” Tala waived him off, “John’s not dangerous.”
Monroe let out a hiss coded with disbelief,
“Yeah, right. That thing’s a war machine. The T-25s still don’t have shit on this prototype. Heard it took out an entire C-block of raiders just three weeks ago.”
It was two C-blocks and a comms tower, but John didn’t open his mouth to correct him.
“He,” Tala chided, “Not it.”
“Mm… He? You spend too much time with the droids, Arao. The man he used to be is long gone,” Monroe kept his eyes on John for a moment longer, but he didn’t dare take a step closer. Instead, he sighed, and he retreated towards the lab door, “You sure about that drink?”
“I’m sure.” Her words were final, and they had a crisp, sharp edge to them. Her patience was wearing thin.
Monroe gave her an awkward sort of smile and closed the lab door behind him, his footsteps disappearing back down the long corridor.
She waited until she couldn’t hear him anymore before she spoke.
“John, I’m so sor–”
He put his hand up,
“Please. It’s alright.”
“It’s not,” Tala stepped closer to him, but her soft familiarity was tucked away, replaced with a professional veneer.
“He’s not wrong,” John tried to press his lips into a smile but he wasn’t sure if it worked.
“He is,” she insisted, “You’re still a man, John.”
“No heart. No bones.” John scoffed, “Barely anything left of this old brain. What else is there?”
A hard, heavy silence settled around them, but Tala didn’t retreat like her coworker had done, and in the air, John couldn’t smell fear. He only breathed in her warm, gourmandic scent, devouring her with every sensory receptor but his mouth. He dared to imagine the joy of that, too.
“Your soul,” Tala said. Her voice was so steady and clear, like she had been stating a fact instead of a fantasy.
He couldn’t help but laugh at that. But, he was quickly silenced when she put her datapad down on the desk and stepped back between his legs, placing her hands on either side of his face, one palm on his synthetic skin and the other on the gleaming titanium of his eye socket. He became mute, as if she was controlling him, rewriting his code with her touch. She looked into his eyes, one blue and one silver, studying him like an unsolved calculation. He could see the glow of the oils on her creamy, olive skin, the shine of the light against her black lashes, that writhing pink tongue as she spoke…
“When I kissed you, you kissed me back.”
“Yeah, I did,” John said, matching her low timbre.
“Why?”
Another beat of silence stretched between them like an elastic band, reaching and reaching and reaching between each second, each thud of her heart in her ribs, until it threatened to pop.
“Because I wanted to,” he repeated her own words back to her.
“Androids do not want,” she ran her thumbs over his eyes, forcing him to flutter his lids closed. Then, she brought both of them down to his jaw, tracing the frame of his robotic skeleton until she found his full mouth, settling both of her fingertips against his bottom lip. “Men do.”
John felt his hand reach for her neck, wrapping itself around her nape, cradling her spine in his palm. He brought her forward and took her mouth against his, and as he did, he realized that he hadn’t wanted anything in a very, very long time.
She kissed him back, but he pulled away, his mind working out the puzzle on his own,
“The patch…” He said, talking to her in a hushed whisper, their noses brushing against each other at their tips.
She was breathing hard, and he could smell her arousal, now. It was like a drug.
“I didn’t…” She shook her head, “I didn’t add the second half of the update. I blocked it. I revoked the sensory inhibitor.”
“Did they –”
“No,” she bit her lip, her eyes glassy, almost to the point of tears, “No, they don’t know.”
“If they find out…” John furrowed his brow, worried about the repercussions she must be facing if she were discovered tampering with Knightfall’s objectives. They might kill her.
She shrugged, smiling, rubbing her hands down his chest and arms reverently,
“You deserve to want things. You deserve a choice.”
She kissed him again, but it was chaste. Her lips sealed themselves against his so briefly, and then, she was gone. John followed her with his eyes as she backed away from him,
“I’ve got to turn in this report.” She retreated another step, almost as if to stop herself from touching him again. She shook her head and looked over at her computer screen, “They won’t find the code. You can, though. It’s a new partition. When you go into combat, you can turn it off. Avoid the pain. But, at least now, you get to decide what you feel.”
“Thank you, Tala,” John said earnestly, wishing she would come closer, wondering why he was so desperate for her touch again.
“You’re welcome, John.”
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
It was two days before he saw her again. He’d been sent on a mission into the F-quadrant of the city. Warehouse district. Smugglers were bringing in illegal bio-upgrades, selling them on the black market to slavers and debt collectors. Neuro-chips that would turn a human being into a mindless husk. Bio-jacking, they called it. Fifty thousand credits for a week “offline” was enough to tempt the city’s most desperate urchins. But, whether they ever came back from their trip was another story.
John was happy to kill such monsters. They weren’t easy prey, though. He’d kept his sensory inhibitor offline, and when the jagged blade of a smuggler’s knife dragged its way across his ribs, he had cried out. It had surprised the greasy criminal to hear it. Robots didn’t scream. The lowlife even took a moment to check his blade for blood before Price reached out and crushed his skull. There was plenty of blood, then.
He could’ve switched off his perception filter, or perhaps reach his mind into Tala’s partition to turn off the pain, but he didn’t. In fact, he burrowed into his gear vest with his opposite hand and pressed on the new wound. His fingers touched wires and metal plating, and the agony he felt was sensational. His mind reeled from it. His musculature tensed up. His silicone flesh was on fire. It was torment. But, he didn’t take his hand away. For a long time, he just stood there, experiencing pain and letting it wash over him like a fever.
He kept the pain online for the rest of his infil, even during combat, experiencing pain like a real soldier for the first time in years.
By the time the mission was done, he made his way back towards the base. But, instead of heading up to the lab for repairs, he took a long detour through the old part of the city. There were still familiar buildings here, and although war had destroyed most of what he could remember, the architecture in this sector gave him a sense of nostalgia that comforted him. He traced his path cautiously, stepping out of the view of the cameras and drone scanners that watched the streets. John had clearance, but he didn’t want to be followed. Not here.
He stopped at a shady little food stall, the smell of vinegar and spices wafting over him, reminding him that he should not arrive to his destination empty-handed. The tiny chef was elderly and hunched, but she was loud enough, asking him for his order without any other greeting.
“Chicken?” She raised an eyebrow at him. It was a test; he knew better.
He shook his head,
“Pork. Two. And a half-pound of the bulaklak.”
There hadn’t been real, breathing chickens in almost a decade, and he wasn’t interested in the lab-grown alternative. Wild pigs, though, were invasive and abundant.
“40 credits,” she smiled, “30 if you pay cash.”
“No cash,” he shook his head, holding out his palm for her to scan his implant.
Her smile twisted into a frown, but as she bagged up his meal, she thanked him before disappearing back into the dark kitchen, flapping the plastic curtain closed behind her.
Eventually, he saw Tala’s apartment. Her light was on. A golden glow framed her curtained window, and although the black, starless sky was spitting rain, he could see her shadow flickering in the lamplight. He scaled the stairs, and when he made it to her floor, he waited in the hall, checking to make sure no one had seen him approach. Then, he found her door.
Apartment 2882.
He knocked.
John could hear her stirring inside of her small abode. She stopped all movements. He couldn’t even hear her breathe. She was scared. So, he called out just loud enough for her to hear him through the thin panel.
“Tala, it’s me.”
Then, movement. Footsteps. Keys rattling into locks. Bolts scraping. The door creaked open,
“John?”
“Hi,” he smiled, “Sorry, love. Is this a bad time?”
Her eyes were wide, and he noticed that she was in a thin silk slip beneath her fluffy pink robe. Her slippers were cats, their little ears folding in on themselves.
“Um,” he watched the blush spread across her nose as she opened the door wider, “No, no. It’s fine. Come in.”
She helped him inside, taking the bags of food and his jacket. It was a chaos of fabric and shuffling in the foyer. Then, she padded into the kitchen, opening the cartons of what he had brought for her.
“Oh, my God. Is this what I think it is?”
“Pork adobo. You like that place on the corner, right?”
“And you got the chicharon?” The next sound out of her mouth was one of decadent yearning, and although she had meant it for the food, John’s mind immediately wanted to hear that moan in a different context.
“Wait,” she seemed to shake herself out of her trance, “What are you doing here? You’re on mission.”
“Finished,” John smiled, but as he went to sit down at her small countertop bar, he winced, the cut on his ribs in desperate need of repair.
“John,” she rushed to his side, pulling up his shirt without any hesitation or pretense of modesty, and when she saw the damage, she gasped, “Fuck. You didn’t… You kept the inhibitor on? Why? Here, let me get my pad. I’ll turn it off for you.” Her face twisted with worry, and he almost felt bad about it. But, he couldn’t bring himself to apologize.
“No,” he reached out and caught her wrist in his enormous hand, “Don’t turn it off.”
“What? Why?” Her eyes were wide with worry, and she was distracted by his admission. So much so that she didn’t notice her robe slipping down her back, revealing wide swaths of bare skin to him. Her entire shoulder and nape were on full display, her skin freshly bathed and moisturized, gleaming like polished bronze.
“I…” John wasn’t sure if it was the whole truth, but he confessed to her anyway, “I want to feel.”
“Pain?”
“Everything.”
She ran her hand through her hair, damp from her bath, slicked back and away from her delicate face. She sighed,
“Let me get my repair kit. One second,” she said, disappearing into the bathroom.
He heard her rummaging around in there, and she came out with a small grey box in her hand. She popped it open, and told him,
“Take off your shirt.”
John chuckled at her commanding tone. She was dressed like a pink teddy, but her tone was that of a drill sergeant.
She turned a deeper shade, the blush barely visible in her tanned cheeks, but it was there all the same, and she laughed at herself with him,
“Sorry. I mean… take off your shirt, please. Sorry.”
“No harm done, love,” John obeyed, tucking his finger just under her chin as he settled back into his seat, “You can order me around whenever you like.”
Her eyes darted up to his, catching his flirting and letting it swirl around her. But, she was back to business when she saw his cut.
“Shit, this is bad. Must’ve hurt like hell…”
“It did.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to turn on the inhibitor? This won’t feel good.” She was concerned for him, but he nodded,
“I know. Get on with it.”
She set to work. It wasn’t quite like stitching, but it was a familiar sort of ache. As she closed his wound, he focused on her breathing, the little soft puffs of air that skated across his chest as she worked. Her heart kept him company, and although her scent was soapy and clean, he could still smell her. Her apartment was soaked in her natural odor, and he wanted to roll himself up in it, like a hound in the fresh cut grass.
“There,” she sighed, putting the finishing touches on his repair, “All set. You got cut all the way down to the titanium plating. What happened?”
“Smugglers. Nasty bunch,” John gave her a half smile.
She stared down at his now-mended side, and she asked him,
“What… What did it feel like? Was it –”
“Awful? Yes,” he nodded, “It was. It was hot and sharp. I could feel the teeth of the blade catch on the frame, just here.” He grabbed her hand in his and touched her fingertips to his ribs, pressing down into them, matching the knife’s path.
When he released her fingers, she didn’t move her hand away. She kept touching him, feeling each rib like she was counting them, making sure they were all in place. She moved up, almost to his broad pec muscle, and then she flattened her hand across his bare chest, burying her fingers in the dense hair that had been put there, mimicking his lost, mammalian form.
There they were, juxtaposed in her yolk-yellow room, both of them washed in that ochre light; him - metal and circuits, her - flesh and terry cloth. Both of them wanting.
“Why did you come here, John?” She whispered, keeping some sort of secret in her own house.
“Because I wanted to,” he purred, sweeping her hair out of her eyes, “I want you, Tala. I want you so fuckin’ much, I can feel it, right here,” John pulled her hand to his sternum, pressing his palm against the back of her hand, sealing her against him. “You… You woke me up from…” He couldn’t find the words, “A dream? From death? But when I’m with you, I’m alive.”
She looked up at him, and at first, he worried that he had taken things too far. He wondered if his new-found sensory overload had made him illogical and odd. Perhaps something was wrong in him, now. Perhaps –
“I want you, too.”
John ached to kiss her again. But, she stepped away from him, just out of his reach. Then, he watched her kick off her ridiculous slippers. At first, he was amused, but when he saw her heavy robe melt down her back and pool on the floor, he became gravely serious. Now, between him and Tala’s fully nude body, there was only a thin, pink slip.
In his mind, her heartbeat was racing. His onboard computer was calculating the rate, but none of that made sense to him, now. Her heat, concentrated at her mouth, under her arms and her breasts, between her legs… Her breaths rushing through her lungs as she was practically panting for him. All of her scents; the heady arousal that she concealed from him, too faint for her to know it was there. But, for him, it was all at the forefront of his brain, ready to be catalogued, studied, consumed.
He stood, and he took a single step towards her. John dwarfed the short woman, standing more than a foot above her in his combat boots. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and expectant. Of what, he couldn’t be sure. But, he wanted to see her naked, and unless she wanted to stop him, that’s what he would have.
John’s hands came up to her shoulders, and he lay them across the straps. Slowly, he dragged them down her arms until her slip was only held up by the soft swell of her breast. And when she exhaled, it fell, encircling her feet like a pale, pink pool.
Then, her deft fingers reached for him, touching his belly, tracing their path down to his canvas trousers and belt, pulling at the buckle. John knew that he was already hard for her. He’d chosen to be. It was all subroutine now. He could turn it on or off, just like any other process. A machine.
They’d given him a new cock after the accident, almost as a joke. He’d been large as a man, but they’d made him bigger, laughing at how frightened the enemy would be if they caught him naked somewhere. Said they’d make him scary from head to toe, prick included.
He could come, too. The technicians had been proud of that little stunt. Even gave him some heavy, round balls to hang between his legs, but they were full of synthetic seed. It wasn’t real. Just silicone lube, cloudy and white, a mockery of nature. John could run the process on his own, but he’d never felt the need to jerk himself off. He hadn’t been able to get aroused. At least… not until now.
Desire had returned, and he no longer wondered how men had flung themselves into ancient, hopeless wars to rescue the woman they loved. Their motivation was clear to him. Crystal. The whole city could burst through her tiny apartment door right now, and John would kill them all without hesitation. She was everything. He didn’t have lungs, but she was his breath. He didn’t have blood, but she was his heart. He wasn’t sure about a soul, but he was sure that she held it within her breast, keeping it safe for him until - one day - he might need it again.
John almost stopped her when she got to his zipper, the shame creeping up his neck and into his face. He didn’t want this to be a farce. Some madman’s invention of what sex should be now that he was all wires and bolts. He wanted her to have the real him, but that wasn’t something he could give her anymore.
He swallowed out of reflex rather than need, fretting over what she would uncover as she peeled down his fly. As he emerged, she gently pulled him out of his pants, and she looked up at him, smiling a bit,
“John...”
“Yeah,” he replied dumbly.
She glanced up at him, and then her eyes fell back to his cock, staring at him with that palpable curiosity that he loved to watch her experience,
“I’ve never seen you hard before.”
“You don’t need to…”
“Can I?” She asked, giving his cock a few exploratory pumps in her hand, sending bursts of sensation through his system, “I want to make you feel good.”
Who was he to deny her? He watched as Tala massaged his rigid length, and every smooth squeeze of her hand was like its own blinding crescendo of tactile sensation. John reached out to steady himself against the counter, and the wood popped under the pressure of his grip. Then, to his surprise, she knelt down in front of him and engulfed his cockhead in her soft mouth.
“Mngh,” he grunted, swaying a bit from the overloaded sensation.
The curve of her tongue, the glassy smoothness of the inside of her lip, the wet, cloying heat of her saliva; all of it was like a drug to him, and he wanted more.
“Were you this big… before?” She asked, licking him underneath his shaft, marveling at his immense prick.
John scoffed, but he smiled, gently petting his hands through her soft hair,
“Not quite, love.”
“I think you were,” she gave him a blazing look through her half-closed eyes, taking him in and out of her mouth, suckling at his tip like she was hungry for him. “And I think you know how to use it.”
“It’s been…” She took him deeper, and he gasped, cutting off his words, feeling the tight clench of her hot throat, “Umngff… Fuck… It’s been a bloody long time.”
She looked up at him with that intoxicating gleam in her eye, the one that told him she was up to something.
“Can you feel this?”
One of her hands held his prick up and out of the way, her fist rubbing tantalizing circles around his glans while her head dipped lower between his legs, that deft tongue curving around his balls, sucking one of them inside her lips.
“Tala…” He whispered her name, choking back a soft whimper.
“Mm?” She didn’t take him out of her mouth, but that questioning hum reverberated through his body like a lustful tremor, making him nearly lose his balance.
“Tala,” he whined, his fingers twisting through her wet hair, “Please…”
Her soft, satisfied giggle taunted him, and all he could think about was how his cock would feel buried between those plump thighs of hers. Bliss.
John grabbed her wrists in each of his hands and hauled her up with ease. She weighed nothing to him. Tala squealed, enjoying being manhandled by her powerful android, knowing she had lit a fuse to his fire and reveling in her power. He lifted her body just a bit further until her feet were off the ground, and he set her on the kitchen stool. She laughed, gleeful, and tried to steady herself on her perch, reaching her arms around his waist, rubbing her hands across the small of his back, daring to sink her fingernails into him just so, bringing him that pain that he had been seeking.
Tala didn’t seem hung up on the fact that parts of him were inhuman. He had silicone panels and titanium plating where his builders hadn’t bothered to put any synthetic flesh. He had symbols and serial numbers left behind from his reconstructions and deconstructions. He wasn’t poorly made, but he wasn’t a thing of beauty. Other than his musculature and his cock, the engineers hadn’t created him for show. But, his pretty little scientist took no pause at his appearance. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen it all before. John knew she had inspected him, even replaced certain bits and pieces from time to time. But, she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t avoid his metallic body. The soft kisses she was planting on his belly and chest skated right over the rips and tears that exposed his cables. Tala knew that he wasn’t going to hurt her. With her, he was finally himself.
He wasn’t Bravo-6 with her. He was John Price, again.
John knelt, bending his head between her thighs, breathing in her scent like an addict. His computer fed him information as if he wanted to know the exact chemical makeup of her gleaming come – and honestly, he did – but that wasn’t his priority now. John needed to touch her. He planted his lips over her soft petals, and the feeling of them touching his synthetic skin made his mind go blank. All the noise and digital read outs were silenced by the feeling of her softest parts against his mouth, and it took him a moment to even move from that initial touch.
When he licked her, she whined in a high-pitch keen. Her cry ended in a delightful sigh, and John knew that he would do anything to hear that exact melody again. He reached up to fondle her tits, marveling at the beauty of her body, shocked by just how responsive she was for him. But, he kept getting distracted by how sensitive his mouth was. He could feel the body of her clit filling with blood, catching a fever as he suckled at its delicate hood, becoming turgid against his top lip as it swelled. His tongue could feel every pulsing heartbeat that came from her smooth clit, and so he let it throb upon the tip of his slick muscle, reveling in each pounding surge from her veins. He could feel the silky texture of her inner labia, sucking at her quim to experience the way it would slip and slide into his mouth, tasting her in clear, unmuddled precision.
“John! Oh, fuck…” She trembled for him, “Fuck… Just like that…”
He repeated the motions with his lips and mouth in the exact way he had just done, watching her with wide, adoring eyes as she lost control of herself above him.
“Don’t! Anghhh… Don’t… Don’t stop…”
He wouldn’t dream of it. In fact, he didn’t need to breathe. If she wanted him to, he could stay down here in the dark heaven between her legs for a hundred years. And fuck, did he want to.
“Mmmnngh…” John moaned.
How strange, he thought. He didn’t choose to make that sound. These automatic noises of desire were the first that he had heard from himself in half a century. Did he even consciously make the sound? Where did it come from? His computer, or from him?
“Yes! John, yes. I’m – Fuck! I’m coming… I’m – nngh,” Tala froze. All of her muscles tightened at once, but that delicious cunt of hers beat against his mouth like a wardrum, harder and harder, drooling with his synthetic saliva and her shining come.
As she tumbled over the crest of her orgasm, her legs began to violently shake. She tried to close them around his head, against her will, he knew. But, it was still enough to drive him mad with desire.
“Mmmmfff…” A breathy sigh escaped his lips. John kissed her pussy as if he was kissing her gentle mouth, “Good girl.” He kissed her again, slurping up her sweetness and painting her come across his tongue, “Mmm, so good. So fuckin’ good…”
“Nnghh! Ah! Fuck,” Tala screamed for him, “John! Please, please, please…”
John smiled. He couldn’t help it. He was enjoying this beyond measure. Between his legs, he could feel his cock jerk up against his belly, but he couldn’t touch himself. It would be too much. Just the thought of feeling her wicked heat surrounding him made his entire system lag. His fingers pressed against the pliant, soft edge of her cunt, and he reveled in her immediate reaction.
“Hhh! Please…” She gasped.
“You want me to touch you, love?” John teased her, using just the tip of his forefinger to delve his way inside.
“Please! John,” Tala fisted his hair, pulling hard, burning his nerves. He basked in the pain.
“You feel so good on my mouth…” He confessed, slanting his lips over her clit again, working her in the same hypnotic rhythm. At the same time, he pressed his thick finger deeper inside of her, going slowly, trying to be gentle, urging himself to ignore the still-human part of his brain that wanted him to replace his hand with his sex.
He tried to be careful. John still wasn't sure of his strength and the limitation of his power even after all these years. What did he know? It may be boundless. He had crushed steel beams, he'd killed a man just from the squeeze of his titanium fist, breaking his neck like a twig, but he had rarely needed to be delicate. Fury was all he was good for. For love? How could a weapon be useful in love?
So, he steadied his hand. He watched her every move, listening to her body as she throbbed for him, her enchanting movements, those sweet, desperate mewls of bliss. He wanted to make sure she felt safe with him. That he was not dangerous, even though that was a lie.
Tala’s hand snaked through his scalp, no longer tugging at his hair but massaging him, scraping her nails gently along his roots, and he thought he saw stars for a moment. Then, she began to talk to him, speaking through low groans of pleasure as he suckled at her velvet mound.
“Can you… can you feel it? All of it?” She asked, barely able to look at him without her legs trembling with need.
“Mm hm,” John responded, but he didn’t abandon his meal. He didn’t want to let go of the silken prize between his lips.
“Do you think… I jus– oh, God… mmghff… I wanna make you come, John. Is that… Can you?” Her voice was so sweet and full of careful wishing. The innocence of it, her salacious generosity, stuck him like a knife in his belly. He didn’t deserve such kindness.
“I’ve – hh! Anhh,” she stopped, wrenching her eyes shut as if she couldn’t bare to tell him her secrets anymore.
He pulled away, but just barely, to ask her in a low tone,
“What? Tell me.”
She peered down at him, her body gleaming with a delicate sheen of sweat, and she looked away as she spoke, unable to meet his gaze as she gave her confession,
“I’ve wondered about it for a long time…”
“About making me come?” John couldn’t help but let out a deep, resonant chuckle.
He stood up, positioning himself between her thighs, letting his engineered phallus rest in the cleave of her pussy lips, rocking himself slowly back and forth to tease himself and her.
Tala nodded, still unable to look at him. So, he reached out, taking her by the chin, and slowly brought her eyes up to his,
“Is that something you want, love?”
“If I can have it,” she whispered. Slowly, as if she was afraid she might scare him off, Tala reached down between her legs to play with him, holding him around his fat shaft and dragging him across her clit. “Is it… possible… for you?”
She looked so worried about her questioning, as if she might offend him. It was like asking a gun if it would mind firing a bullet. He wasn’t used to being asked for anything rather than being ordered.
“Physically, yes. They thought I would,” Price paused, searching for the way to say it, trying not to be distracted by how incredible it felt for her to use him like a toy, rubbing his cockhead through her lips and over her clit to bring herself pleasure, “...need it, perhaps. Or, to them, rebuilding a man required his prick, even if he’s not a man anymore.”
“Do you want to come inside of me?” She asked, practically doe-eyed, her voice making him feel practically drunk with power.
“Fuck yes,” he thrust his hips forward, rocking her back on her stool, dragging his cock over her mons and onto her belly, making a point to show her just how he might achieve his goal.
“Please, John,” she begged, writhing her plush form beneath him.
Price wanted to laugh. Or to scream. It was ludicrous to think that this gorgeous woman would be pleading with him for something that he was more than ready to give her. She thought she had to ask for his cock? That she might be denied?
It was a ridiculous concept to him. Just the fact that she had allowed him to see her naked flesh, that he’d even been invited to kiss her sweet mouth. It was unbearable. And he was more than willing to do her bidding.
If she wanted to carry his false seed in her womb, to be bred with a simulacra of what she truly deserved, her body warping her mind with potent pleasure until she ached be bred, to be round with his child as her biology so craved, he would fill her until she was sated. No matter that he was sterile. No matter that he may not even be alive anymore. No matter if he could never give her rope after rope of his sticky genes. He would try. God, he would try. After all, he was made to serve.
John peered down between her thighs and took his cock from her hands, missing her touch already. But, the moment that the tip of his swollen prick touched her quim, the entire world disappeared. Nothing else existed, and if it did, it didn’t matter anymore. The feeling of her fire against his aching rod was unbelievable.
Even when he was blood and bone, sex had never felt like this. And he’d barely even begun to experience her. This was but a chaste brush with her blooming entrance. How would he be able to sink himself inside of her soaking, molten core and survive it?
He caught himself, gripping her hip with his free hand hard enough to make her gasp. He let go at once, apologizing through his clenched jaw,
“Fuck. Sorry… You feel way too fuckin’ good.”
“Mnughhh… Holy shit…” Her eyes were locked on where their bodies were joining together, watching his cock stretch out her soft hole, “You are huge.”
“Tell me,” Price gasped, feeling her heartbeat slamming against his glans, beating against him like a dove’s downy wings, “Ahnh! Fff– Tell me if I need… to stop…”
A desperate whimper escaped from his throat, and he tried to keep himself from falling apart in front of her, but it was no use. His hand shook as he tried to press himself further inside. The sensation was too much. He could barely concentrate. His onboard computer seemed at a loss for programming, unable to reconcile the sensory overload.
“Mmnnnn –” John whined, panting hard, his body remembering back to a time where he would have needed that breath, “So soft… I can feel you… All of you… Everything… Mnnhh… mnngh… Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuck…” If he had any shame, he should've felt it by now, crying for her like a spoiled mutt, taking and yet wanting more.
“It's okay… I can take it,” Tala murmured, misunderstanding his struggles. He was not being chivalrous; John was consumed. She sighed from the pressure of him, using her hands to hold onto his hips, dragging him forward, impaling herself with his cock inch by incredible inch.
Price lunged forward, his arms wrapping around her body, knocking over the wooden stool with a loud bang. She gasped, but she didn’t try to escape his grip. He held her against his chest so tight, crushing her to him as if she might fall away like sand though his fingers. John let his face fall to her nape, his eyes and nose surrounded by her sleek black hair, breathing in her scent and ever so carefully easing her body down onto his stiff cock.
But still, she couldn't fit him inside. He felt the tension, and he heard her let out a quiet hiss of pain. She was trying to hide it from him, unwilling to show weakness, but it was no use. He could feel and hear everything. At this point, he was sure he could feel the goddamn earth moving beneath his feet. She couldn't conceal anything from him.
“Shh, shh, shh,” he cooed, trying to comfort her even though he was beside himself, “Don't rush, love. Don't rush. I don't wanna hurt you.”
Tala pulled back so that she could kiss him, her arms looped over his shoulders, her lithe fingers caressing the nape of his neck,
“I want you inside me.” She spoke into his mouth, breaking the kiss, “All of you.”
John returned her kiss, silencing her with his long tongue, stuffing her palate full of his writhing appendage. Then, he carried her over to what he assumed was her bedroom, front-kicking the door with a deafening slam. She held him tighter around his shoulders, deepening their kiss, moving her mouth down to his jaw and neck to suck on his sensitive skin.
He got lucky, and when he saw her mattress, the duvet a plush thickness, the fabric a cool, lilac color, he laid her down, making sure he didn't hurt her further. All of his movements were carefully planned as his conscious seemed to cut in and out, the feeling of his fat prick being smothered in her sultry heat becoming too much to bear.
John placed her back onto the soft bedding before anchoring himself with his arms on either side of her head, holding his weight off of her, trying not to crush her ribs.
“Oh, fuck,” she smiled, “I feel like I'm gonna come just from this. There's,” she canted her hips, sliding him out just a bit before trying to seal him back in, “...so much of you.”
John kissed her again, his mouth dragging over hers, keeping her from saying things like that. Things that would make his body want to take control over his mind, that would make him want to rut into her like a feral boar, pumping his cock inside her with no regard for her gentility.
She let him take her mouth, loosening her lips and jaw for him, basically sucking his tongue like she had done with his cock, allowing him to explore her cheeks and throat with abandon.
“Tala… What have you done to me?” John asked breathlessly.
“Does it feel good, baby?” Tala kissed his cheek, watching as Price put his lips around her tight nipple, sucking at her with his whole mouth, “I just wanted you to feel…”
“I can't… hhhfff-fuck,” Price let out another whimper, louder this time. His noises were getting more reckless, “Bloody hell, I need to move. Don't wanna hurt you…”
“Hurt me,” Tala grabbed him around the jaw, shocking him into opening his eyes and peering down at her.
Her hair had fallen around her head in a dark halo, eclipsing her, making her look like a saint. The Patron Saint of Lost Causes. He would absolve himself in her, he decided, and may she bless him in turn. May she anoint him with the heady oil that covered him from her dripping font. He wished he could remember how to pray.
John rocked his hips forward, bullying his length through her tight muscles, stretching her wide and taut so that he could fit. He crashed his pubic mound against hers, burying himself deep inside, knowing that he had sinned the moment that he could feel the tip of his phallus brush against the cradle of her womb.
He turned to her in a panic, and although her mouth had opened wide in a silent scream, her big brown eyes held a bright expression like she had been baptized in his painful fire. Her muscles seized, she trembled beneath him, and inside of her poor cunt, her come flowed around him, thick and sticky, easing his path.
But, he didn't fuck himself through her pleasure, no matter how badly he wanted to. He let her breathe, giving her time to come down from her high, kissing her perfect tits, nuzzling against her neck, whispering encouragement to her,
“Yes, love. Come for me just like that. Just like that…”
Instead of a high whine, a dark, rumbling groan echoed in her chest, low and gravelly; deeply primal. Her body was trying to flood her core, knowing that she would need help to take him, fortifying itself for the siege that it instinctively knew was on its way.
John tried to focus, but she was twisting around him like a warm, wet fist, stroking him inside of her belly as she came.
He was going to black out.
For a fleeting moment, he thought about opening the partition firewall that she had built for him. He could reach inside and switch it off. He could make it good for her; fuck what he wanted. Fuck his bloody pleasure. She was all that mattered, anyway.
But her little whims, those pleading eyes that told him she just wanted him to feel… He couldn't take that joy from her. Tala had given him his humanity back, and he refused to waste her blessing.
“Are you alright?” He purred, wiping a hand over her brow before he planted his lips there.
“Yeah,” she nodded, breathless and weak beneath him, “Your cock makes me feel so full inside.”
She snaked her hand between their bodies and reached down, splaying her first and middle fingers into a vee before capturing his thick base in between them, cupping her sex as she explored their coupling, discovering the way that he had displaced her flesh just so that he could fit so snugly within her.
“Breathe for me, love,” John began to pull himself out. His retreat was agony. The loss of her tight, devouring heat was terrible. Then, when he couldn't stand being outside of her much more, he pressed himself back inside, and he began to fuck her in long, slow strokes, worried that his titanium and steel and strength would bruise her vulnerable body.
Each time his cock filled her quim, John could feel every part of her inner walls. The entrance was smooth and glassy, tight. As he pressed deeper, he could sense soft ridges, ever so slightly textured. At her end, his cock arched inside of her, and there was her cervical head, within his reach, touching his drooling tip with a barely-there kiss, like the wing of a butterfly fluttering across his glans. All of this was enhanced by her creamy slick. She was so messy for him, dripping her honey all over his prick. And the heat. He felt like he would burn alive inside of her, and nothing would bring him closer to ecstasy than that molten demise. Finally, every time her heart pounded, and every time her muscles clenched around him, her flexing core pulled against him as if to milk him of his prize.
Tala had been moaning for him, but now that he was humping his length deep inside of her, she was screaming. Her tone was deep and lush, animalistic and needy. She bit down on his shoulder, raked her nails across his back, dug her fingers into his enormous arms, holding onto him for dear life. Everything she did for him - her sounds, her touch, her heat, her scent - all of it was being poured into a sensory overload inside of his mind. He thought of nothing else but her repeated pleasure. Physically, he could fuck her for as long as she wanted him to. He could fill her up with his artificial spend as many times as she asked him to. He never wanted this to end, and if she didn’t ask him to stop, he would fuck her until she did.
“Mmnghh… Fuck yes, John… Just like that,” Tala breathed in panting gasps against his chest, her eyes gleaming with pleasure, “You’re gonna… Oh, fuck… Gonna make me come again…”
“Come. Fuck, come on me, love,” John snarled, his jaw tight as he worked his body for her, “Take what you need from me.”
“John, I can’t… Aanhh! I need…” Tala’s thighs wrapped around his thick waist, her hips tilting towards him, reaching for an angle.
Price knew what she needed. He lifted himself out of missionary position to sit back on his knees, holding her by her hips as he continued to pound himself into her. Then, he began to move her entire form along the length of his prick, using her like a toy, like she was his cocksleeve, destined to have his load buried deep inside of her over and over. His mechanical strength allowed him to take control in this way, letting her body curve into a high arch, giving her that new, untouched depth that she craved.
Her screams became desperate, haunting things. John bathed himself in them like it was a concerto, an opus written just for him. Every moaning whine that he let out of his throat contributed to her keening song, and he found himself matching her vocality stroke for stroke.
“Nngh! Ngh! Ahngh!” She began to come on him, fisting his cock with her core muscles, wrapping herself around him like a tendril from a vine. He kept his pace, her spine bowing as John held her aloft from the mattress. He thought he was in the clear, that he would be able to keep his head and remain in charge of these relentless waves of savage need. Until –
“Come in me, John! Please! Mmnghff-fuck! Fuck! I need your come… Please, come in me.”
Ever the faithful soldier, he did as she asked. He let the bliss build up in his mind, using his mounting senses to overload his system. But, this time his tight-laced control slipped free, and he felt his balls tightening between his thighs.
“Tala…” John whimpered, breathing out his words so quietly that she could barely hear them, “Ohhh… Fuck, I’m gonna come. Holy shit.”
For the first time in decades, John felt himself tumble over the edge of a powerful orgasm. His whole body tensed up, and he could see stars bursting in the edges of his gaze, sparking in the darkness as he looked down at his beautiful muse, rolling through her own electric high. And when he finally released his first hot rope of come, the synthetic lubricant filled Tala’s plush quim, surrounding his prick in silken fluidity, allowing him to slip freely as his hips bent to shamelessly hump his length as deep as it would reach. In the back of his mind, he imagined that he could fill her womb with something real, something ancient and true. But, it was just a dream. She would be full besides, and that’s what mattered.
The problem was, he didn’t want to stop. Now that the proverbial flood gates had been opened, the pleasure was blindingly good, and he was a slave to it. The more he came inside of her, the harder she seemed to squeeze him from within, and so he had very little motivation to be conservative.
“Yes! Fuck, yes,” Tala cried out, locking her ankles around his waist, “Fill me up just like that. I want it, I want it… So bad… Oh, my fucking God. Anngh! Ahhhmmm–more. Please-please-please…”
John bent himself over her like a rutting bull, burying his face in her neck so that he could suck and bite at the tender flesh beneath her ear. His cock leaked, pumping bolts of heavy lube deep into her belly. Too much. Way too much.
By the time he realized what he had done, he cut himself off, shutting down his movements entirely, raising himself up to inspect her. Had he gone too far? Did he hurt her? Panic flooded through his veins, fighting to break through the soporific pleasure that had clouded his judgement.
“Goddamnit, love. I’m… Fuck, I’m sorry. I… Did I hurt you?” John asked, looking down at his lover’s swollen quim.
Her lower abdomen was slightly distended, and when he began to remove his fat cock from her, she began to gush all over his prick and balls. It coated her thighs, and it pooled on her soft duvet. She was stuffed full of him, and her plump belly was rounded with his false seed.
She saw him looking at his mistake, and he met her eyes, trying to come up with a way to apologize appropriately for something that he took great pleasure in doing. He tried to regret it, but that felt too much like a lie.
“Oh, my God,” she cooed, her hands touching her mons and cradling her full tummy, “This feels incredible. I feel so full of you.”
“I couldn’t…” No, don’t lie to her, you bastard - John thought, correcting himself, “I didn’t want to bloody stop.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” she grinned, pulling him down into a long, writhing kiss. “Do you think…” She looked a little sheepish, her lips curling into a shy smile, “Would you want to go again? I mean, if you can, that is.”
John chuckled, kissing her cheek, moving his mouth to her breasts to worship her there as he positioned himself back at her used hole,
“Darlin’, I’m an android. I don’t need rest. You’d fuckin’ starve to death before I needed to stop for any possible reason.”
Slowly, but with a defined certainty, John pushed himself back inside of her as he suckled at her nipple, watching her face so that he could revel in her experience, slipping joyfully through his own, very sloppy seconds.
She sighed, smiling, spreading her legs wider for him, opening herself up like a gift,
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
John grinned, kissing her softly on her lips as he sank himself inside of her fully, groaning,
“Mmff-fuck… Yeah, love. I want you. I’ll be wanting you forever.”
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Thanks for reading! Don't forget to check out the rest of the collab, and make sure to share the love to the amazing @auberghyn! <3
The Only One In-Network
A Stardew Valley Fanfic
Characters: F!Human OC, Abigail, Clint, Emily, Sebastian, Shane Content: Everyone in Pelican Town Needs Therapy, Outside POV, Therapist OC, Session Transcripts, Harvey is a great doctor but he is not a therapist, Minor Abigail/Sam/Sebastian Spice Level: Mild Word Count: ~9,700 Notes: Read on AO3
Dr. Samantha Parker, PhD, did not intend to become the primary mental health provider for an entire small coastal town. She just had availability, they had insurance, and ClearPath Wellness's matching algorithm apparently has a sense of humor.
This is the story of five sessions, one therapist, and the particular irony of being very good at seeing other people clearly.
Sam is fine, by the way. She's told several people.
Prologue
Here are the facts, in clinical order, because that is how Sam Parker processes things and she has made her peace with this.
She is thirty-eight years old. She has a PhD in clinical psychology from a university that sends her alumni fundraising emails she deletes with the efficiency of someone who paid enough for that degree already, thank you. She is licensed in three states, which sounds impressive until you learn that one of those states is largely because she took the exam when she was bored. She works for a telehealth platform called ClearPath Wellness, which she joined for the flexibility and stayed with because it turns out that seeing clients in your pajama pants from the waist down is, genuinely, one of the better working conditions she's ever had.
She lives alone in an apartment in Grampleton that has good light in the mornings.
She has been saying this— the good light thing— since September, when she moved in, and she would like the record to show that she is aware it sounds like something a person says when they are working very hard to find something positive to say about their apartment. She would also like the record to show that the light is genuinely good. These two things are not mutually exclusive. She is a therapist. She understands that.
The reading chair is the color of old mustard and it looks slightly wrong in the apartment and she bought it specifically because it was what she would have wanted before she started compromising on chairs, which was, she now understands, not really about chairs. She sits in it every morning and drinks her coffee and reminds herself that she likes it. The chair. The apartment. The good light. The life.
She is working on that last one.
She got into psychology because she was the kid who always wanted to know what people meant. Not what they said — what they meant.
She grew up in a house where her mother said I'm not angry in a tone that could strip paint. Where her father said we'll see about every future thing until the future became a place Sam stopped trying to visit. By the time she was twelve she could tell you exactly what everyone at the dinner table actually wanted and had decided not to say out loud.
Her therapist at the time — yes, she had a therapist at twelve, she grew up in Grampleton, everyone had a therapist, it was practically a municipal service — called this a gift. Her mother called it exhausting. Her father said we'll see.
She does not currently have a therapist. She has a waiting list of her own clients, a colleague named Marcus she can consult with, and a best friend named Renee who is going through something with her sister. Sam is aware that none of these things are the same as having a therapist. She is, as previously noted, working on it.
The marriage.
Okay.
The marriage lasted six years and ended, like most things that end, not all at once but incrementally, the way a plant dies when you forget to water it — not a dramatic wilting, just a slow and then suddenly very obvious decline. Daniel was kind. Daniel was patient. Daniel made elaborate things on weekends and always cleaned up after himself, which Sam had found attractive in her thirties in the way that you find things attractive when you've spent enough time with people who don't clean up after themselves.
He also said, in year five, during what Sam would document in her own file — if she had a file, which she should, which is a separate issue — as termination of primary relationship: I feel like one of your clients.
This is the sentence that lives rent-free in the apartment of Sam's brain. It has been there for eight months. It has not paid a single month's rent. She has thought about evicting it and has not gotten around to it, mostly because she suspects it's right about something she hasn't finished figuring out yet.
She said, at the time: that's not fair.
She has since revised this to: that was probably fair.
She has not yet revised it to: that was fair and here is what I am going to do about it, but she is a work in progress. As she would tell any client who needed to hear it. She would just prefer, if possible, to not be the one who needs to hear it.
She moved out in August. She took the cast iron pan, the good coffee maker, half the books, and one piece of art that had been hers before it was theirs — a small print of a canal that she'd bought years ago because it was ugly in a way she found comforting, which tells you everything you need to know about Sam Parker and nothing she would tell you herself.
She told three people. Renee got the full version. Marcus got the professional version. Her mother got two sentences and a subject change so elegant she's still a little proud of it.
She did not— and she wants to be very clear that she knows this, she is not oblivious— she did not take on four new clients in the following month because she needed to not think about it. She took on four new clients because September is always busy and she had availability and the waiting list does not manage itself.
The waiting list does not manage itself.
She took on four new clients because September is busy.
Moving on.
The telehealth platform works like this: clients in need of mental health support log on, create a profile, get matched with a provider based on specialty and availability and insurance. The platform is clean and functional and the branding is a shade of blue specifically engineered to communicate calm, trustworthy, not a scam. Sam's profile says she specializes in depression, anxiety, life transitions, and relationship difficulties.
She did not write that last one with any awareness of irony.
She would like, for the third time, to make that very clear.
The thing about Pelican Town is that Sam didn't notice it at first. You don't, when you're onboarding clients — you see names, presenting concerns, insurance information, the checkbox answers to intake questions that tell you a little about what someone is willing to say and a lot about what they're not. Location is just a field in a form.
But after a few months she started to notice: Pelican Town, Pelican Town, Pelican Town. A cluster of people in a small coastal community who had, one by one, found their way to ClearPath Wellness and, specifically, to her. She'd looked it up eventually — population somewhere under forty, the kind of town that shows up on one of those hidden gems of the coast travel blogs and then is immediately ruined by people who read hidden gem travel blogs.
She does not know, yet, that her clients there know each other.
She does not know, yet, that they've had conversations about each other that they've also had, separately and confidentially, with her.
She does not know, yet, what it means to hold all of that.
What she knows is this: on Monday mornings she makes coffee in the good machine and sits in the chair that looks slightly wrong and opens her calendar and thinks, okay, let's see who needs what today. It's a reflex as natural as breathing. Taking care of people. Making room for whatever they bring.
She's very good at it.
She is, in fact, considerably better at it for other people than she is for herself, but that's not something she's looking at directly yet.
She's getting there.
Probably.
We'll see.
Session One: Abigail
The thing about working from home is that you have to manufacture transitions.
When Sam had an office — a real one, with a door and a waiting room and a receptionist named Donna who brought her coffee without being asked, bless her — the transitions happened automatically. You drove in. You parked. You walked through the door and became Dr. Parker. You drove home and became yourself again. Clean. Simple. Two separate people who happened to share a body.
Now she walks fifteen feet from her bedroom to her desk and she is expected to simply be Dr. Parker, as if that's something you can do without ceremony, in the same apartment where you ate cereal for dinner last Tuesday and cried a little at a nature documentary about penguins.
She has developed rituals. Coffee in the good machine. The ergonomic desk chair, which has no personality but excellent lumbar support. A real shirt — she maintains strong opinions about the real shirt, regardless of what the bottom half of her is doing. And then she opens her calendar, reads the first name, and reminds herself that she is good at this.
She is good at this.
Monday, 10am: Abigail.
She starts a second coffee.
Abigail found her because she googled therapist who won't be boring, which is not a search term Sam's ClearPath profile was optimized for, and yet. When Sam asked how she'd ended up there specifically, Abigail said her vibe seemed like someone who gets it, which Sam has chosen to accept as a compliment and not examine too closely.
Abigail is twenty-two. She lives with her parents in Pelican Town, works at her father's general store, practices swordsmanship— real swordsmanship, with a real sword, Sam has clarified this twice— and is in a relationship with two people: a childhood best friend also named Sam, which has caused exactly as much confusion as you'd expect, and Sebastian, whom Abigail describes as a man of few words and extremely strong opinions about rain.
On her intake form, under what brings you to therapy, she wrote: vibes. also my mom.
Sam had, privately, looked forward to this one.
ClearPath Wellness — Session Transcript Client: Abigail [last name redacted] Session #: 7 Provider: S. Parker, PhD
Abigail: Okay so I have to tell you what happened.
Sam: Good morning to you too.
Abigail: Right, sorry, good morning, how are you, okay so you know how I told you about the cave?
Sam: The one near town that you've been exploring.
Abigail: With the monsters, yes— don't make that face.
Sam: I'm not making a face.
Abigail: You're doing the thing where you don't make a face so hard that it becomes a face. Anyway. I was in the cave and I found this geode, and I cracked it open and it had this perfect little cluster of amethysts inside and I just— I sat down on the cave floor. In the monster cave. And looked at it for like ten minutes.
Sam: That sounds like a meaningful moment.
Abigail: It was so… I don't know. It felt like the cave was giving me something. Like I'd put in the time and now it trusted me. Is that insane?
Sam: It doesn't sound insane. It sounds like you experienced a sense of reciprocity with something you've been committed to.
Abigail: See, that's what I mean, you get it. Sebastian said it was parasocial but he's wrong, obviously.
Sam: How is Sebastian?
Abigail: Mysterious. But like, on purpose. You know how some people are mysterious because they're genuinely complicated and some people are mysterious because they've decided that's their thing?
Sam: Which do you think Sebastian is?
Abigail: ...Both. I think he started doing it on purpose and then genuinely became it. Is that possible?
Sam: I think people can grow into the versions of themselves they perform long enough.
Abigail: That's kind of scary.
Sam: It can be, yes.
Abigail: I actually said that to him and Sam last week. We had this whole conversation about it. Sam thinks identity is basically just accumulated habit, which, very Sam of him. Sebastian thinks identity is— [puts on a deeper voice]— a wound you spend your life either touching or avoiding.
Sam: That's quite a perspective.
Abigail: He has them. I told them both they were wrong and that identity is more like a cave system. You think you know the layout and then you find a room you didn't know was there.
Sam: I like that.
Abigail: Thank you, I came up with it at two in the morning. It's my best work. But that's actually what I wanted to talk about — how much of what I think of as me is just choices I made when I was fifteen.
Sam: What's got you thinking about that?
Abigail: So there's a new person in town. A farmer, they took over the old Plum place on the east road?
Sam: I remember you mentioning them.
Abigail: Right. And I've been spending time with them and the thing is — around them I feel like I can just be Abigail. Not Abigail the weird girl, not Abigail who works at her dad's shop, not Abigail who's in that situation with Sam and Sebastian, bless her heart.
Sam: People say that?
Abigail: People in Pelican Town will bless your heart about anything. It's a very active blessing economy. But yes. Around the farmer I just feel like — myself. Whatever that is.
Sam: Do you feel like yourself with Sam and Sebastian?
Abigail: [pause] That's different.
Sam: How so?
Abigail: With them I'm — they know me. Sam has known me since we were eight. Sebastian has seen me cry about things I've never told anyone. So it's not that I'm performing with them, it's more like. They know a version of me that's already been decided. The farmer has no version to be attached to.
Sam: That sounds freeing.
Abigail: It is! But it makes me wonder what I'm doing with the freedom. Like if I can be anyone around them, who am I actually choosing to be?
Sam: What does the answer feel like when you try to find it?
Abigail: [pause] ...Static. Like tuning between stations and there's just. Noise.
[silence, approximately twelve seconds]
Abigail: Okay, new topic, I want to talk about the sword.
Sam: We can do that.
[end transcript excerpt]
The session runs fifty minutes. They also cover: the sword (extensive), a conflict with her mother about dinner plans three weeks ago that has apparently metastasized, a theory about why Abigail prefers night to day that is genuinely interesting, and a goblin video game that Sam follows at roughly forty percent comprehension. She makes a note to look it up later. She will not look it up later.
She does not return to the static.
Sam notes this and lets it go. You can't push someone through a door they're not ready to open — she has believed this since graduate school, has said it to clients more times than she can count, and right now she is using it to justify not writing Abigail, you have two people who love you completely and you still don't know what you look like when no one's watching, and I say this with tremendous professional warmth and also recognition.
She is not going to write that. She writes: rapport strong. return to static metaphor next session.
Renee has texted during the session: call me tonight? saga continues 😭😭😭
Sam texts back: of course. 8pm. Then she opens her email, responds to three things she's been putting off, and looks at the one from her mother, which has now been sitting there for eleven days. Her mother's emails always have subject lines like checking in :) and contain enough subtext to keep a graduate seminar busy for a semester. Sam is aware that she is avoiding it. Sam is aware that a therapist avoiding her mother's emails is, at minimum, a rich irony.
She closes her laptop.
The light in the apartment has shifted — afternoon now, coming through the west window instead of the east one. She didn't notice the morning leave, which seems to be becoming a pattern.
She thinks about Abigail's twelve seconds of silence. The look on her face, there and gone — something unguarded, something young, before she pivoted smoothly to the sword. The performance so automatic she probably didn't feel it happen.
What does the answer feel like when you try to find it?
Sam sits with this for a moment longer than she means to. Then she stands up, goes to the kitchen, and starts the machine for a third coffee.
She is fine.
She is genuinely, totally fine.
She is a little tired, maybe, and the apartment still doesn't feel completely like hers, and she hasn't opened her mother's email, and she's on her third coffee before noon — but these are all separate unrelated things that don't add up to anything, and she has four more clients today, and she is good at this.
She is good at this.
She waits for the coffee and does not think about static.
Session Two: Shane
On Tuesday mornings Sam goes for a walk.
This was Renee's idea, technically. Renee read something about cortisol and morning light and sent her the article with the subject line: for both of us but mostly you, and Sam had filed it in the folder she mentally labels things that are probably correct that I will get to eventually and left it there for two weeks before she finally went on a walk. She has been going every Tuesday since. The route takes her down Keswick Avenue, through the small park that is mostly pigeons this time of year, and back along the canal, which is ugly in a way she finds genuinely comforting. The canal does not try. The canal is just water and concrete and the occasional indignant duck, and Sam respects that.
She nods to the same man with a very old basset hound every week. They spoke once, which is how Sam knows it's a basset hound, and his name is Frederick, but she never asked the man's name. She has privately named him Gerald. Frederick and Gerald are, if she's being honest, the primary social relationship she has cultivated in four months of living in this neighborhood, and she is… she's fine with this. It's a perfectly reasonable way to live. Lots of people live like this. And anyway, she's very busy.
She gets back at 8:15, showers, puts on a real shirt and some comfy leggings, and makes coffee. She reads the first name in her calendar and reminds herself she is good at this.
Tuesday, 11am: Shane.
She makes a second coffee.
Shane came to her through his employer's assistance program, which means she gets a slightly different intake form— more checkboxes, fewer open fields, the kind of form designed by someone who wanted to make it easier to ask for help and mostly succeeded in making it feel like a bureaucratic wellness audit. Under primary concern he checked mood. Under secondary concern he also checked mood, which was either a clerical error or the most accidentally honest thing Sam has seen on an intake form in eleven years of practice.
He is twenty-eight. He works for Jojamart, which Shane describes as it's a job, it pays, whatever. He lives with his aunt Marnie, and his goddaughter Jas in Pelican Town. He has a dog named Charlie. He watches a lot of sports— he used to play gridball and even went to college on a gridball scholarship— and plays a lot of video games, and drinks, by his own accounting, more than I probably should, but it's not like, a thing. It's not a problem. I just like to relax.
In session one he said I don't have a problem with the specific energy of someone who has been thinking about whether they have a problem.
This is session eight, and he's still thinking.
ClearPath Wellness — Session Transcript Client: Shane [last name redacted] Session #: 8 Provider: S. Parker, PhD
Shane: Hey.
Sam: Hey. How was your week?
Shane: Good. Fine. Normal week.
Sam: Tell me about it.
Shane: Work was work. Marnie made this casserole on Saturday — I don't even know what was in it, some kind of cheese situation, it was honestly one of the best things I've ever eaten. I've been thinking about it all week. That's where I'm at emotionally. The casserole.
Sam: Sounds like a good casserole.
Shane: Life-changing. No notes. If I had to pick a last meal, maybe.
Sam: Last session you mentioned you'd had some harder days. How has that been going?
Shane: [short pause] Yeah, I mean — better. Definitely better. I had a couple rough nights but that's just winter, right? Seasonal stuff. Everyone gets like that.
Sam: When you say rough nights, what did that look like?
Shane: Just couldn't sleep. Brain doing the thing where it decides 11pm is a great time to review every bad decision you've ever made. You know how it is.
Sam: What kinds of things were coming up?
Shane: Just. Stuff. Nothing specific. The general greatest hits. Shane's Regrettable Moments, volume whatever.
Sam: Last week you talked about your dad. I wondered if any of that was still sitting with you.
Shane: [longer pause] I mean, not really. I think I was just tired last week. I get kind of dramatic when I'm tired.
Sam: I don't think what you shared was dramatic.
Shane: No it was, I was being— I don't want to make it a whole thing. He's been gone a long time. It doesn't—
Sam: It's allowed to still matter.
Shane: [quietly] Yeah.
Sam: You don't have to decide it doesn't matter in order to be okay.
Shane: I know that.
Sam: Do you?
Shane: [pause] ...You're doing the thing.
Sam: What thing?
Shane: The thing where you ask something and then just. Wait. Like a spider.
Sam: A spider.
Shane: A very patient, non-judgmental spider.
Sam: I'll update my profile. Shane, I want to gently point out that we've been talking for twelve minutes and I know significantly more about the casserole than I know about your week.
Shane: It was a really good casserole.
Sam: I believe you completely. I also notice that last week you came in close to something and this week you've come back and denounced it as dramatic.
Shane: I'm not —
Sam: I know you're not. I'm just naming what I see. You were closer to something last week. This week you're further away.
Shane: [silence]
Sam: That's allowed. That's how this goes sometimes. There's no rule that says you have to stay close to it.
Shane: When I'm in it, it feels real, I guess. And then a week passes and I think about what I said and it's like it was someone else talking.
Sam: What if it was both of you? The one who said those things, and the one who's here calling it dramatic — what if you don't have to pick which one is the real Shane?
[silence, approximately eight seconds]
Shane: Charlie ate a sock last night. A whole sock. We had to do the emergency vet.
Sam: Is he okay?
Shane: Completely fine, very pleased with himself, cost me three hundred dollars. Dogs, man.
Sam: Dogs.
[end transcript excerpt]
The session runs fifty minutes. Charlie accounts for seven of them, which Sam allows, because sometimes the dog is the door back into the room.
They get somewhere real twice. She can feel it each time— the exact shift in the air, the half-second where something true is about to happen— and both times Shane turns away from it with the smooth, practiced ease of someone who has been doing this for years before he had anyone to do it with. He's good at it. She would almost admire it professionally if it weren't also a little heartbreaking.
She tries a different angle: not what's wrong, but what's good. What does he actually like, genuinely, without qualification. Not love— love is too large a word to ask Shane right now. Just like. What makes a regular day better.
He thinks about it, which is itself something — Shane's instinct is usually to answer before he's considered, fill the silence fast, keep things moving. The pause lasts long enough that she doesn't rush it.
Jas, he says finally. When Jas has a good day. And Charlie, obviously, even when he's an idiot. And then, quieter, almost an afterthought: and the chickens.
You have chickens?
Just got them. Marnie talked me into it, I don't know. And his face does something then — opens, briefly, in a way it hasn't all session, something soft and unguarded that sits there for a full three seconds before he seems to notice it and puts it away again: they're kind of great, actually. I went out this morning and one of them just looked at me. Full eye contact. I think she gets me.
Sam writes this down.
She has forty minutes between Shane and her next client. She makes a sandwich she doesn't particularly want and eats it standing at the kitchen counter, looking out the window at the building across the alley, which offers approximately nothing in the way of entertainment and which she stares at anyway.
She is thinking about I think I was just being dramatic.
She is thinking about a Sunday in March, sitting on the bathroom floor of the old apartment. Daniel knocking. Sam, please talk to me. Her saying, through the door, in a perfectly level voice: I'm fine. I just need a minute. Then getting up, washing her face, coming out and saying — brightly, she'd said it brightly — sorry, I think I'm just tired.
She had been tired.
She had also been on the bathroom floor.
Both things were true and she had only offered him one of them.
Here is what Sam knows about avoidance, clinically speaking: it works. That's the problem with it and also the reason people do it. In the short term, not looking at the thing is always more comfortable than looking at the thing. The invoice comes later, and it always comes, but later is later and right now is right now, and the human brain is extraordinarily good at finding reasons why later is soon enough.
She knows this. She has explained this, in various forms, to hundreds of people.
She looks at the building across the alley. Third floor, there's a window with a plant in it — broad-leafed, healthy, thriving in a city window, which requires real commitment to light and water and attention. She has spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about whoever keeps that plant alive. What kind of person tends something that carefully. Whether they do it without thinking or whether it's deliberate, a small daily decision that something deserves to keep growing.
Her mother's email has been in her inbox for twelve days.
This is, she would like to note, a completely separate and unrelated observation.
She finishes the sandwich. She goes back to her desk. She opens the next client's file and begins to read, which is the thing she is good at, the thing she will do now, because she has four more clients and she is, whatever else may be true, very good at this.
The plant is probably fine.
The email can wait until tonight.
She is the most self-aware person she knows and she would like that to remain unexamined for just a little while longer, thank you.
Session Three: Sebastian
Wednesday is Sam's longest day.
She has, through a scheduling accident she has never corrected, stacked five clients back to back on Wednesdays with breaks only long enough to refill her coffee and eat something standing up over the sink. She did this initially because she wanted Fridays light, which made sense at the time, when Fridays meant something. Fridays no longer mean anything in particular. She has not rearranged her Wednesdays. This is not avoidance; this is just inertia, which is a completely different thing, and she would appreciate it if everyone would stop— she would appreciate it if she would stop.
The point is: Wednesday. Five clients. Coffee as a coping mechanism and also a lifestyle.
She opens her calendar. Wednesday, 2pm: Sebastian.
She looks at this for a moment.
She makes the coffee.
Sebastian's intake form was the most minimal she has ever received, and she once received one from a man who wrote fine in every open field including the one that said describe your support system.
Name: Sebastian. Age: 24. Occupation: freelance programmer. Reason for seeking therapy: my mom thought it would be a good idea. Goals for treatment: I don't know, whatever. Emergency contact: Robin [relation: mom]. Is there anything else you'd like your provider to know before your first session: not really.
She'd read it three times looking for more. There wasn't more.
He lives in Pelican Town, in a basement room below his family's house, which he describes as fine, it's convenient, I work from home anyway. He smokes. He rides a motorcycle. He has two partners — Abigail, who Sam knows, and a musician named Sam, whose name continues to cause problems — and when she'd asked about his relationships on the intake call, he'd said they're good with the finality of someone closing a door.
He is, in Sam's professional assessment, going to be a project.
This is session three.
ClearPath Wellness — Session Transcript Client: Sebastian [last name redacted] Session #: 3 Provider: S. Parker, PhD
Sam: How's your week been?
Sebastian: Fine.
Sam: Anything stand out?
Sebastian: Not really.
Sam: How's work going?
Sebastian: It's going. Got a deadline Friday. It'll be fine.
Sam: Are you feeling okay about it?
Sebastian: Yeah.
Sam: How are things at home?
Sebastian: Fine.
Sam: [pause] Sebastian, I want to check in about something. We've had a couple of sessions now and I notice that —
Sebastian: I know what you're going to say.
Sam: What am I going to say?
Sebastian: That I'm not giving you a lot to work with.
Sam: Are you?
Sebastian: [pause] Probably not.
Sam: Can I ask why?
Sebastian: I don't know. I'm not really a — I don't really do this. The talking thing.
Sam: The talking thing.
Sebastian: You know what I mean.
Sam: I think so. Can you tell me more about what the talking thing is, specifically?
Sebastian: Just. Talking about myself. It feels —
Sam: It feels —?
Sebastian: Unnecessary.
Sam: Unnecessary.
Sebastian: Why do you keep repeating what I say?
Sam: I'm reflecting it back. It's a technique. Does it bother you?
Sebastian: A little, yeah.
Sam: I'll try to do it less. When you say it feels unnecessary — unnecessary compared to what?
Sebastian: I don't know. Just. What's the point? Things are what they are. Talking about them doesn't change them.
Sam: What kinds of things?
Sebastian: [long pause] Just things in general.
Sam: Okay. Can I push back on that a little?
Sebastian: You're going to anyway.
Sam: Fair. Talking doesn't change circumstances, you're right about that. But it can change how much space those circumstances take up. Does that distinction make sense?
Sebastian: [pause] Maybe.
Sam: You said your mom suggested this.
Sebastian: Yeah.
Sam: What did she say, exactly?
Sebastian: She said she thought it might be good for me to have someone to talk to. Someone outside the situation.
Sam: What situation?
Sebastian: Just. Home stuff. Family stuff. It's complicated.
Sam: It usually is. Do you want to tell me about it?
Sebastian: Not particularly.
Sam: Okay.
Sebastian: [pause] My stepdad and I don't really get along. That's the short version.
Sam: What's the long version?
Sebastian: [pause] That's also the long version.
Sam: How long has that been the case?
Sebastian: Since he moved in. I was twelve.
Sam: That's a long time to be in a situation you don't particularly want to be in.
Sebastian: I mean. I have my own space. It's fine.
Sam: You say fine a lot.
Sebastian: Things are generally fine.
Sam: What would not fine look like, for you?
Sebastian: [long pause]
Sam: Take your time.
Sebastian: I don't know. I'd probably know it if I saw it.
Sam: Have you seen it?
Sebastian: [very long pause] ...Not going to answer that one.
Sam: That's okay.
Sebastian: It's not a — I'm not, like. In crisis or whatever. I just. Sometimes things are harder than fine and I don't really have a word for that that isn't dramatic.
Sam: Who taught you that having a word for it would be dramatic?
[silence, approximately fifteen seconds]
Sebastian: That's a weird question.
Sam: Is it?
Sebastian: [quieter] ...Yeah, maybe not.
[end transcript excerpt]
The session runs fifty minutes. Forty-three of them feel like trying to open a window that has been painted shut — not hostile, not unpleasant, just completely, immovably sealed. He answers every question. He answers it in the fewest possible words and then waits, with the patience of someone who has outlasted a lot of people who wanted things from him, to see if she'll move on.
She doesn't move on.
She is also, she will admit, slightly fascinated. She sees avoidance every day in many forms — Shane's deflection, Abigail's pivots, the client who laughs at everything, the one who intellectualizes until the feeling is a concept safely behind glass. Sebastian's version is different. It's not deflection. He's not performing. He is simply, genuinely, constitutionally unwilling to be known, in the way that some people are left-handed or afraid of birds. It has the quality of a long-term arrangement he made with himself so early that he can't remember making it.
The moment she's thinking about, after, is the fifteen seconds of silence. She'd asked who taught him that having words for things would be dramatic, and she'd watched something move across his face — not pain, exactly, but the shape pain leaves when it's been smoothed over enough times. There and gone. And then: that's a weird question.
He knew it wasn't a weird question. That was the thing. He knew and he said it anyway, reflexively, and then he'd heard himself and the yeah, maybe not had come out quiet and a little surprised, like a door opening an inch before a hand came and closed it again.
She writes in her notes: progress. Then she looks at it, and writes: small progress. Then she looks at that, and writes: patience.
She has twelve minutes before her next client. She stands at the window with her coffee— cold, she forgot again— and looks at the building across the alley. The plant is there in its usual window, broad and unbothered.
She is thinking about who taught you that having a word for it would be dramatic.
She is thinking about her mother, specifically, who communicated almost exclusively in implications, who could make you seem tired into a dissertation on personal failure, who said once— Sam was seventeen, home late, some argument about something that no longer matters— you're being very emotional right now, in the tone of someone identifying a character flaw.
Sam had not been emotional. Sam had been correct, and also, separately, emotional, and she had learned that night to keep those things in separate rooms so no one could use one to dismiss the other.
She had been seventeen.
She wonders what Sebastian was when he learned his version of the same lesson. Twelve, maybe. New stepfather in the house, mother busy being happy, not enough room to be anything loud.
The coffee is definitely too cold now. She drinks it anyway.
Her next client is in eight minutes. She opens the file.
She has not made a therapy appointment for herself. She has thought about it, in the vague way she thinks about flossing more and calling her mother and rearranging her Wednesday schedule — it goes on the list that lives behind the other list, the list of things she'll do when she has more time, when work settles down, when she feels more like herself, when she figures out what that means.
Sebastian had said: things are what they are. Talking about them doesn't change them.
She'd pushed back, professionally, with some confidence.
She finishes the cold coffee.
She opens the file.
She will make the appointment, she thinks, sometime soon.
Probably.
Session Four: Clint
Thursday is, in theory, Sam's easier day.
She has three clients Thursday, spread out sensibly, with real breaks in between. Enough time to eat a full meal sitting down, maybe take a short walk, behave like a person with a sustainable work-life balance. She had, when she designed this schedule, genuinely believed she would use Thursday afternoons to do things like go outside, or pursue a hobby, or call people back.
What she actually does is use the extra time to catch up on the administrative backlog from Wednesday, which — she is aware — is a little like treating a hangover by drinking, but here they are.
She opens her calendar. Thursday, 10am: Clint.
She does not make a second coffee for Clint. Clint requires a different kind of preparation. She sits for a moment, rolls her neck, and gives herself a small internal pep talk of the kind she would find deeply concerning in a client.
You are good at this, she tells herself. You have patience. You have trained for exactly this. You will not, under any circumstances, say just ask her out, Clint.
She has been saying this to herself before every session for six weeks.
So far so good.
Clint is a blacksmith. An actual blacksmith, with a forge and an anvil and everything, which Sam had found quietly delightful until she met him and realized the physical enormity of the man made the forge make complete sense. He is thirty-two and has lived in Pelican Town his whole life and knows everyone there, which should make him feel connected and does not, for reasons they are working through.
His intake form was thorough. Thoughtful, even. He'd written full paragraphs in the open fields, which Sam generally takes as a good sign — it usually means someone is ready to do the work. She has since learned that Clint is very ready to do the work of describing and analyzing and contextualizing his feelings, and somewhat less ready to do anything about them.
His presenting concern, officially: difficulty connecting with others, low self-esteem, feeling undervalued. The phrase he used most in session one was it is what it is, which he deployed with the resignation of a man who has made peace with every disappointment he has never once tried to address.
He mentioned Emily in session one. He has mentioned Emily in every session since.
He has not, as far as Sam can tell, mentioned any of this to Emily.
This is session six.
ClearPath Wellness — Session Transcript Client: Clint [last name redacted] Session #: 6 Provider: S. Parker, PhD
Clint: I've been thinking about what you said last week. About patterns.
Sam: What were you thinking?
Clint: I think you're right that there's a pattern. I just think the pattern is more circumstantial than — I think it's more about the circumstances I've been in than some deep-seated thing.
Sam: Tell me more about that.
Clint: Like, take the work stuff. I'm good at my job. I know I'm good at my job. But the town's small, right, there's only so much business, and nobody really — people don't think about the blacksmith until they need something. It's the nature of it. That's not about me.
Sam: I agree that's partly circumstantial. What about the rest of it?
Clint: What rest of it?
Sam: Last week you talked about feeling invisible. At the Stardew Valley Fair, you said — you used the phrase people look through me.
Clint: I mean, that's just — at a fair, there's a lot going on. People are busy. It's not personal.
Sam: It felt personal when you described it.
Clint: [pause] I guess it did in the moment.
Sam: Can I ask you something about your dad?
Clint: [immediately] Sure.
Sam: When you were growing up, what happened when you wanted something?
Clint: What do you mean?
Sam: Just — in your house, when you were a kid, and you wanted something. A thing, an outcome, something from another person. What was that like?
Clint: [long pause] He wasn't— he wasn't mean about it. He just didn't really— he was practical. Like, you want what you want but the world doesn't care what you want, so better to just focus on what you can control and not get too attached to outcomes.
Sam: That sounds like a difficult way to grow up.
Clint: I mean, it's realistic. He wasn't wrong.
Sam: How old were you when you learned that?
Clint: I don't know, I didn't learn it on a specific— it was just the general atmosphere.
Sam: The general atmosphere.
Clint: Yeah.
Sam: And what did that atmosphere do to wanting things? For you, specifically.
Clint: [pause] I mean. I still want things.
Sam: Do you reach for them?
Clint: [longer pause]
Sam: You don't have to answer that right now.
Clint: No I— yeah. I reach for things.
Sam: Can you give me an example?
Clint: [very long pause] ...I've been thinking about updating the forge. New equipment. It would let me take on different kinds of work.
Sam: That's a good example of a practical goal. I'm wondering about something a little less practical. Something you want that you're not sure you'll get.
Clint: [pause] Emily came into the shop on Tuesday.
Sam: How was that?
Clint: Good. Really good, actually. She wanted to know if I could repair this jewelry box — it was her grandmother's, the hinge was broken. She seemed — I don't know, she was happy to see me, I think. She stayed and talked for almost an hour.
Sam: That sounds like a meaningful interaction.
Clint: She's just — she's a remarkable person. Have I talked about her before?
Sam: You have, yes.
Clint: Right. Sorry.
Sam: Don't apologize. What happened after the hour?
Clint: She said she'd come back for the box Thursday. That's today. So.
Sam: So.
Clint: So I'm probably going to see her today.
Sam: How are you feeling about that?
Clint: Good. Nervous. You know.
Sam: What would you like to have happen?
Clint: [pause] I'd like her to— I'd like to talk to her again. Like that. Like Tuesday.
Sam: And beyond that?
Clint: [very long pause] It is what it is.
Sam: That phrase does a lot of work for you.
Clint: [quietly] Yeah. I know.
Sam: What does it protect you from, do you think?
[silence, approximately ten seconds]
Clint: If you don't — if you say you don't expect anything, and then you don't get anything, it's. Easier.
Sam: And if you did expect something? If you let yourself want it?
Clint: Then it would be my fault if it didn't happen. Because I wanted it.
Sam: [pause] Where did you learn that?
Clint: [long pause] ...General atmosphere.
[end transcript excerpt]
The session runs fifty minutes. The last twenty minutes are the best twenty minutes they've had — something has loosened slightly in him, the way wood loosens in humidity, and she is careful not to push too hard on it because she can feel how new and uncomfortable this is. He is not used to being in the vicinity of his own wanting without immediately building a structure around it.
She does not say: Clint, Emily is coming to pick up a jewelry box today and you have, in six sessions, never once asked what would happen if you just said something. She does not say this because it is not her job to say it, because the insight has to belong to the person, because she genuinely believes that pushing someone through a door they're not ready for produces nothing except a person who closes doors.
She believes this. She does.
She also spends forty-five seconds staring at the ceiling after the session ends before she writes her notes.
The afternoon break should be a walk. The afternoon break is not a walk. The afternoon break is Sam standing at her kitchen window eating leftover pasta out of the container, looking at the building across the alley, because apparently this is just what she does now.
The plant is there. Still thriving. Somebody watered it recently — the leaves have that particular fullness of something well-tended.
She is thinking about then it would be my fault. Because I wanted it.
She is thinking about a conversation she didn't have. Several conversations, actually, spread across the last year of her marriage, conversations that existed in the space between what she said and what she meant. She'd wanted things — more of him, or maybe a different version of him, or maybe just acknowledgment that something was off, that the careful management she'd built around their life was costing her something. She'd known, she thinks, for longer than she'd let herself know. But knowing has a cost too, and as long as she didn't say it out loud she didn't have to be someone who knew and did nothing.
She had been, in a very real and clinical sense, protecting herself from her own wanting.
She eats the pasta.
The thing about Clint, she thinks — the thing that makes him genuinely hard to sit across from — is that his father wasn't cruel. He wasn't dismissive in any identifiable, nameable way. He was practical. The lesson came not from a wound but from an atmosphere, slow and ambient and total, absorbed before Clint had any framework for questioning it. And now he's thirty-two years old and a woman who clearly likes him is coming to pick up a jewelry box today and he will probably hand it to her very carefully and say let me know if anything else needs fixing and watch her leave.
She pushes the pasta container across the counter.
Her own mother was not cruel either. Her own mother said you're being very emotional and you seem tired and I just worry about you, Samantha— always Samantha to her mother, which Sam has never analyzed except right now, briefly, against her will, while standing at the kitchen window like a person with too much awareness and nowhere useful to put it.
She has not called her mother back. It has been sixteen days.
She is not protecting herself from wanting something from that conversation.
She is just very busy.
She puts the pasta in the fridge. She opens her laptop. She has two more clients today and she is good at this and the afternoon is not going to spend itself standing at a window thinking about a plant.
She opens her next file.
She thinks: she should really call her mother.
She thinks: maybe this weekend.
She opens the file.
Session Five: Emily
Friday is Sam's light day.
This was the whole point of Wednesday. Stack everything terrible on Wednesday so Friday can breathe, so Friday can be the day she catches up on reading and goes to the farmer's market two blocks over and behaves like a person who has made good choices. She has made this argument to herself every week for four months. She has been to the farmer's market once. She bought an extremely expensive bunch of radishes and then left them in the crisper until they became a personal failing.
The point is: Friday should be light. Friday has two clients, an admin hour, and then the rest of the day belongs to her in theory.
She opens her calendar. Friday, 11am: Emily. Session #1 — intake.
New client. She opens the intake form.
Emily. Twenty-eight. Works at the Stardew Valley Saloon — also Pelican Town, of course, always Pelican Town. Under primary concern she has written: nothing specific, I just think everyone should do this. Under goals for treatment: self-understanding, I guess? growth? I want to know myself better. Under is there anything else you'd like your provider to know: I'm very interested in astral projection and I wanted to mention that upfront in case it comes up, which it might.
Sam reads this three times.
She looks at the name again.
Emily.
Pelican Town.
Twenty-eight.
She looks at the ceiling for a moment. Then she looks back at the form. Then she makes a coffee she does not need and sits down at her desk and engages in a very brief and very professional internal conversation about the nature of confidentiality, the ethics of dual awareness, and the fact that Clint has described this woman in such specific, reverent detail across six sessions that Sam already knows she has a grandmother, a jewelry box, and a laugh like — she cannot remember the exact phrase, she will not try to remember the exact phrase, she will simply log on at 11am and conduct a normal intake session with a new client named Emily who is definitely just Emily and not Emily.
She is good at this.
She is so good at this.
ClearPath Wellness — Session Transcript Client: Emily [last name redacted] Session #: 1 Provider: S. Parker, PhD
Sam: Hi Emily, it's great to meet you. I'm Sam.
Emily: Hi! Oh, you have such a warm face. I knew I'd picked the right person.
Sam: Thank you. How are you doing today?
Emily: Really good, actually. I almost rescheduled because it's a beautiful day and I had this impulse to just walk to the beach instead, but I decided that was avoidance, so here I am.
Sam: That's — that's a really nice level of self-awareness to bring into a first session.
Emily: Thank you! I've been thinking about starting therapy for a while. I just think it's important to understand yourself, you know? Like, you wouldn't skip maintenance on a car just because it's running fine.
Sam: That's a great way to put it.
Emily: Also my sister Haley thinks I'm a lot, and I want to figure out if she's right and if so what that means for me.
Sam: I see. Is that — would you say that's the main thing bringing you in, or —
Emily: Oh, no, that's just one thing. I have a list.
Sam: ...A list.
Emily: I made it last night. I'm a very list-oriented person when I'm excited about something. Is that okay?
Sam: Absolutely. What's on the list?
Emily: Okay so — [sound of paper] — I want to understand my relationship with my sister better. I want to know why I feel so strongly about color. I want to explore what home means to me because I've been in Pelican Town my whole life and I don't know if that's a choice or just inertia, which, I read something about inertia recently that really stuck with me. I want to think about love — what I want from it, what I'm giving in it. And I want to figure out the astral projection thing.
Sam: The astral projection thing.
Emily: I mentioned it on my intake form.
Sam: You did, yes.
Emily: It's not as strange as it sounds. I think it's about the desire to expand beyond the physical, which I think has real psychological content, and I'd rather understand it than just. Do it uncritically.
Sam: That's actually a very thoughtful framing.
Emily: Thank you. I've been thinking about it for a while. I think about things for a while before I do them, usually. Except the therapy. I woke up last month and just — signed up. Sometimes you just know.
Sam: What made last month the right time?
Emily: [pause] I don't know, exactly. Something about the season changing. And there's a new person in town — a farmer, they took over the Plum place — and watching someone start something completely new made me want to examine what I'm building. Does that make sense?
Sam: It makes a lot of sense. Can I ask — when you think about what you're building, what comes up?
Emily: [long pause] Good things, mostly. I like my life. I like my work, I like my town, I have people I love. But sometimes I think I'm very good at being present with other people and I wonder if I'm as good at being present with myself.
Sam: That's a really sophisticated distinction.
Emily: Is it? I feel like it should be obvious.
Sam: It's less obvious to most people than you'd think.
Emily: Hmm. [pause] Can I ask you something?
Sam: Of course.
Emily: Do you enjoy this? Your work? You don't have to answer therapeutically, I'm just curious. You seem like someone who really likes what they do.
Sam: I do, yes. Very much.
Emily: That's nice. I think it matters, loving what you do. I think people can tell.
Sam: [pause] ...I think so too. Should we go back to your list?
Emily: Yes! Okay so — the sister thing. Her name is Haley, she and I are very different—
[end transcript excerpt]
The session runs fifty minutes. They cover: the sister (Haley, who still lives in Pelican Town and who Emily describes with the particular careful love of someone who has spent a long time figuring out how to love a person who is very different from them), the color thing (Emily's relationship to color is, genuinely, one of the more interesting things Sam has heard in recent memory — she doesn't just have a favorite, she has a whole internal system, and she articulates it with the confidence of someone who has never once been embarrassed about caring too much about something), and approximately a third of the list.
They do not get to astral projection. Sam is aware that they will.
What Sam does not write in her notes — what she will not write, what she is actively choosing to set down and step away from — is the fact that in fifty minutes Emily asked her three questions about herself. Not probing ones, not inappropriate ones, just warm and curious and genuine, the questions of someone who is actually interested in the person across from her. Sam fielded all three with the professional grace of someone who has been doing this a long time.
She is now sitting at her desk in the silence after the call and feeling, peculiarly, like she has just finished running a race she didn't know she'd entered.
She writes in her notes: Emily. Session 1. Client presents as remarkably self-possessed, high baseline insight, strong relational attunement. Genuinely motivated. No presenting crisis. A pleasure.
She looks at a pleasure.
She leaves it.
The farmer's market is still open. She checked.
She closes her laptop and puts on her coat. This is already unprecedented for a Friday afternoon and she is going to do it before she thinks about it too hard.
She is thinking about I like my life. I like my work, I like my town, I have people I love. The uncomplicated way it came out. No qualifications, no I mean, mostly, it's complicated. Just — yes. This is what I have. I like it.
She is thinking about Emily asking do you enjoy this? and the small, startled pause before Sam answered, the quarter-second where she'd checked — actually checked, like the question required verification — before saying yes, very much.
She does. She does enjoy it. That's not the question.
She locks the apartment. She goes down the stairs.
The canal is doing its usual nothing, gray and unbothered in the November light. Gerald is there with Frederick the basset hound, same bench, same direction, and for one wild moment Sam almost says something. Cold today, isn't it? Or: what's your name? Something opening-shaped.
She nods. Gerald nods. The basset hound regards her with ancient indifference.
She keeps walking.
The farmer's market is small this time of year — mostly root vegetables, a bread stall, a woman who sells very serious candles. Sam buys a loaf of bread she'll actually eat and a small bunch of late-season dahlias in a color she doesn't have a word for, something between rust and pink, and she stands there for a moment in the cold air holding them before she takes them home.
She doesn't know why she bought flowers. She never buys flowers.
She is thinking about Emily's color system. How she'd described it — not as an interest, but as a language. Colors mean things, she'd said, and once you know what they mean you can't not see it. Sam had asked what this particular color meant, gesturing vaguely toward the blue of her own shirt, and Emily had tilted her head and looked, really looked, the way she seemed to look at everything, and said: that one means someone who's trying to be calming. For other people. Interesting choice.
Sam had written that down too.
She gets home. She puts the dahlias in a glass on the kitchen table because she doesn't own a vase, and they look, against all odds, exactly right.
She stands in her apartment in her coat for a moment, keys still in her hand.
I think it matters, Emily had said, loving what you do.
Sam takes off her coat.
She puts the kettle on.
She picks up her phone and opens her contacts and finds the name she has been scrolling past for four months — Dr. Yusra Obi, recommended by Marcus, good with therapists-who-need-therapy which is apparently a specialty — and she looks at the number for a long time.
Then she opens a new text to Renee instead: you free this weekend? want to actually hang out, not just the call. I have bread.
She puts the phone face-down on the counter and watches the kettle.
It is, she thinks, a start.
The dahlias sit in their glass on the table, rust-pink and slightly improbable, and the apartment is quiet, and the light at this hour is not the good morning light, just the ordinary gray of a Friday afternoon in November.
It's enough.
She'll call Dr. Obi on Monday.
Probably.
➽───────❥
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Reblog to let your followers know that despite your current obsession your previous obsessions still exist and are simply lying dormant until they awaken and strike again
i love fics that feel so... grown. fics about adults that were written by adults who have years of life experience under their belts who pour that into their writing. fics where you can tell this is a person who has lived through a marriage or a divorce or a child or children or parent death or any number of Huge Life Events because the way they write with an emphasis on the highs and lows of the human experience rather than an emphasis on tropes (not throwing shade) is just so. oh man, it's just so fucking good. if my blorbos are grown men, grown women, grown people, i love it when they feel like grown people, not just extensions of the (young) author's imagination. (still not throwing shade). you know?
there's something appealing about monsterfucking in that the monster doesn't care about conventional attractiveness. the monster doesn't care if you're pretty or successful or thin or whatever else you may or may not be - it is drawn to you because you are human. because you are other, to it. you are fascinating, you are fragile. you are thrilling to them, with your soft skin and breakable bones and your heart that kicks like a rabbit in your chest when you see the monster for the first time.
❌ Is this ship well supported by canon
❌ Does this ship make any sense whatsoever by any reasonable metric
✅ Does the thought of these characters standing next to each other make you want to chew concrete and then break apart a nearby automobile with your bare hands
one day i just know they will shut the whole place down like this. cut the cord and never put it back on. and we will have to find each other again and send emails. like the 2000s
I dont know what babyshark is but some of you are cooking with it
i mean god when is "big scary burly man who assumes he's married to the cute mousy girl" and "cute mousy girl thinks they're just play flirting" NOT going to hit, yk?
what i do is none of my business
girl, i specifically told you to put your records on
