teenage coming of age movie where the senior class loser teams up with the most popular girl to throw the biggest rager the school has ever seen. its completely on the loser's dime: money she's saved up for the past four years. throughout the course of the movie, they bond and become close friends, giving insights into both of their lives.
and during the final party, this success, the popular girl looks at her new friend and realizes that she had spent all her money, sold a bunch of her favorite objects, gave away clothing-
"Shit," she says, in the middle of the chaos, in the middle of the flashing lights and bumping beat and friends she's had since middle school. "You're gonna kill yourself."
"Well," the loser says. "Not here. Not now. I just wanted one good night before it's done. One night where I can pretend."
men who make out with your pussy, men who drool all over her, men who lick long stripes over your clit, men who curl their tongue through your folds, men who love how loud she gets, you agree
...promising he'll be gentle and then fucking you hard from the first stroke... when you whine he tells you that he IS being gentle, you're just too sensitive
Summary: You're visiting a childhood friend during her bachelorette party in the drab city of Ever green. She wanted to keep things low-key and chill so she could spend the saved expenses on her honeymoon instead, which all of her girls were fine with. What you hadn't expected out of the "chill" reunion was to be catapulted headfirst into the world of heroes and villains.
Tags: Adrian chase, original characters, reader is from Gotham, no physical description of reader, gender neutral pronouns for reader
Additional tags: Awkwardness, friendly humor, suggestive humor, Adrian is oblivious, dark humor
Evergreen held the same energy as a nursing home. You meant it lovingly, sort of. The streets were a washed out grey and if you walked down one there was a high possibility of coming across the smell of piss and decay. Nothing of note ever happened here unless someone died or a popular superhero was in town. It was a crude comparison, you had to admit, but it was true. You had voiced the thought to your childhood friend Capri, who had told you that you hadn't changed since your highschool days back in Gotham. The mention of your home town brought the next comparison. If Evergreen is like a nursing home, then Gotham is like a sanitorium.
She rolled her eyes at you as her hands shifted over the steering wheel of her old range rover. The yellow street lights that passed in a blur cast her tanned skin in a darker hue. "Y'know that's actually not too bad of a comparison. You're wrong about Evergreen though, it's got a lot more life than you realize." She responds with a smile. "I'm glad I moved out of Gotham before Jenna and I got engaged. The one good thing about living in a 'nursing home' is not being mugged on the walk home."
"Ugh I'm so not gonna miss Gotham's night time charm." You say with a sigh. "This is practically a vacation destination in comparison." You could actually see the stars for once as you looked out of the windshield and into the night sky. Gotham's sky seemed to glow at night, the light pollution and constant clouds drowning out the delicate light of the stars. The fact you could actually see them now gave the city a charming comfortable quality.
"Y'know you could always move to Evergreen. There's plenty of good real estate." She flicks her hand to the left, followed by the ticking of her turn signal. "Plus we'd get to hang in person like every day. I mean there's still some hero and villain bullshit but I've hardly seen them in real life."
Capri starts rambling about the differences between cities as you zone out. You watch the streets pass outside your window, the puddles next to the side walks reflect the blur of motion as Capri's purple range rover zooms down the street. After a good twenty minutes of driving through town while Capri points out her favorite local spots you finally arrive at your destination. It's an old restaurant just out of the center of town called Fennel Fields.
The bright sign above the front window was adorned with related quotes of 'authentic Italian cuisine', and 'made in the usa'. She parks the car next to her fiance Jenna's Subaru Outback and turns to you. "Just think about it." She speaks, twisting one of her dark curls around her finger. "It'd be nice to have you around longer than just for the wedding."
With that final admission she turns away from you and opens her door. You let out a ragged exhale before following her motions and exiting your side of the car.
"No matter how many times you ask me to move you know what the answer will be." You respond once you're standing next to her outside of the restaurant. You bump her shoulder with yours as you continue,"There's just a certain charm Gotham has that this place definitely doesn't."
She lets out a discontent huff as she leaves your side to approach the glass doors at the front of the restaurant. Once you're inside Capri speaks to the hostess as you take in the atmosphere. The whole place smells starchy like dough, and the restaurant itself is dripping in 'italian' patterns from the 80s. There are a few staff moving around the floor, taking orders and cleaning off empty tables. You narrow in on a woman and man sitting in a booth further away. Jenna, and Terrance, Jenna's best man, are chatting together under the yellow lighting of a hanging sconce.
Capri gestures for you to follow her as the hostess takes you to the booth. Jenna and Terrance light up at the interruption of their conversation.
"About time you two got here!" Jenna speaks first as you scoot into the booth next to Terrance. Jenna pecks a kiss to Capris cheek before turning to you. "How was the flight?"
"Cramped and loud." You answer honestly,"There was this couple behind me that would not stop fighting. It was like they complained about something at least once per five minute period."
"That sucks. At least you have a gorgeous guest room to dive into tonight." Terrance says,"The bed is big enough for like three people and it feels like clouds!"
Your brow raises as he speaks and your head swivels to Capri. "I thought you booked me a hotel?"
"Oh yeah I totally forgot! Since Terrance and Joseph both decided they could make it, and you're house-sitting for us while we're on our honeymoon; We thought it'd just be better if you crashed in the guest room and they take the hotel." Capri says with a shrug as Jenna gives her a disapproving look. You assume it was a topic of discussion she was supposed to have with you on your way from the airport instead of in the restaurant.
"If you're ok with that." Jenna finishes as the waitress comes up to the table.
"No problem, as long as I'm sleeping on clouds." You shrug as well, grinning at Terrance as the waitress speaks up.
"This our whole crew for tonight?" She asks before blowing a bubble with the gum in her mouth.
"Yup, this is everyone." Jenna responds with a smile.
"Alright then, can I get you guys started with some drinks and appetizers?"
Everyone at the table goes on to order their choice of drink before Jenna orders appetizers. Capri pulls your menu from your hands as you order, mouthing what she already knows you'll choose. The waitress leaves once everyone's orders are taken, leaving you to talk amongst yourselves.
"So plan for tomorrow is I go and get all of the ingredients for the cakes while Terrance checks the reservations for the bachelorette parties?" You ask for confirmation as you look over the to-do list on your phone.
Both fiances nod before Jenna speaks up. "I still think it's weird for you to get all of the cake stuff a week out, our pantry is gonna be over stuffed." She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, picking at it with worry.
"Well it's better that I do it now rather than when I'm making the cake. If a store doesn't have the right stuff I can order it so it'll be here on time." You explain.
Terrance sides with you right after saying, "Jen, they're literally a professional baker. You have nothing to worry about, they got this." He gives you an encouraging pat on the shoulder, his smile ever confidant. "Not to mention that having the two of us be people of honor is like the ultimate superhero team up. We'll crush this!" He says the last sentence a bit too loudly for the setting, but his voice is drowned out by the idle chatter of the other patrons.
Jenna lets out a harsh sigh as Capri massages her nearest shoulder. "I know, you two are literally the best right hands we could have in this situation." She says with a reassured smile. "I'm glad you two will be by our sides on our wedding day."
Terrance bats a hand at Jenna for her sappy comment as Capri flips the conversation. "So, since you don't have a date yet would you consider letting me set you up?" She speaks directly to you with a mischievous smile. Terrance and Jenna instantly bite at the bait.
"What? You're riding solo for the wedding?" Terrance asks.
"Don't say yes. She wants to set you up with the cousin from metro. The freckled playboy one." Jenna lays out Capris plan
"Hey nothing wrong with a playboy for a wedding date! Maybe you could put their guest bed to work while you house sit." Terrance jokes, but the suggestion makes you roll your eyes.
"Oh absolutely not." Capri instantly backtracks,"I don't want to think about the possibility of her turning my cousin any which way on our guest bed" She puts her hands up in front of her as if to physically block the thought. Jenna laughs at her expense as Terrance gives you another pat on the shoulder.
The waitress comes back for a brief moment to give everyone their drinks and the entrees. Just about as soon as Capri gets her hands on her glass of water, she's knocking it over into the floor. Jenna lets out a gasp as Terrance laughs at her. Capri stares down at the fallen glass, mouth agape, as you too laugh at her clumsiness. You lean down and grab the glass as she puts her palms to her face and presses her forehead to the table.
"Still such a clutz." You say as you turn the unbroken glass over in your hand. "Remember when you spilled that baked ziti all over your mom's carpet and we had to clean it up in like 30 minutes. But we couldn't get out the stain so we ended up spontaneously rearranging all of her furniture right before your family got there for Thanksgiving."
She lets out a strangled groan before muttering, "Please don't remind me. Her living room is still arranged like that and I feel guilty every time I visit."
Jenna and Terrance laugh again as you stand up from the table. "Let me go ask for a mop or something." You say as you walk towards the hostess table. After a moment of explaining the situation she excuses herself to grab someone to help clean up the mess. She returns after a beat with a man and mop bucket in tow.
"This is Adrian, he'll help clean up the mess if you show him where it is." She says and gestures for him to follow you. You give him a kind smile and turn towards your table. Capri has thankfully recovered from her embarrassment at this point, and is now attempting to mop the mess up with a gorge of napkins from the metal dispensers on the table.
You clear your throat and everyone looks up. "This is Adrian guys, the hostess said he can help with the mess." Capri looks instantly embarrassed again as she removes her foot from atop the soaking pile of napkins. "Sorry about the mess. Capri's just clumsy sometimes." You explain before reaching down to grab the handful of wet napkins. You look up to finally meet the guys eyes only to realize something terrible. He's really hot.
His hair is a squished fluff of wavy brown beneath his uniform hat. His face is clean shaven and the curve of his jaw is complimented by the shape of his wire frame glasses. As he wrings the mop out with the red handle of the bucket you realize he's also well built under the oversized fit of his uniform. You must be staring at him because Capri is tugging the hem of your shirt and giving you an amused look. It's now that you also realize that you're standing in front of this hot guy while holding a fistful of wet napkins and wearing pajama pants and a very tattered tee shirt from your flight.
"Don't worry, accidents happen, as long as you guys didn't leave the mess as a potential tripping hazard I'm not mad." He rambles on for a moment about bad customers leaving messes without saying anything before Capri cuts in.
"I don't think I've seen you before are you new here?" Your face flushes preemptively because you know what she's about to do.
"Oh, no I've been working here for about five years. I'm a busboy so I don't really do the serving." He responds as he mops up the water.
"That's great. Y'know my friend here is from Gotham and they're helping me and my fiance out with our wedding cake. But they don't really know their way around town and we're all super busy tomorrow." She pretends to ponder for a moment so you try to speak up, but she beats you to it. "Hey! Here's an idea. If you aren't too busy tomorrow could you help my friend get around town?"
You give her an 'I'm going to murder you in your sleep look' as Adrian looks over at you. He meets your gaze, bright green eyes observing your features before he speaks. "Well actually I have a party I need to shop for so sure!"
After the mess is cleaned up Capri insistently suggests that the two of you swap numbers, and Adrian is quick to pull out his phone and hand it over. His demeanor seems a bit aloof to Capri's obvious implications of swapping numbers and showing you around town. After an awkward moment of typing your number into the other's phone his boss is calling him from across the restaurant and he's walking off to finish his shift.
You sit back down across from Capri and give her an unmistakable look.
"What? Don't look so mad you totally thought he was hot."
Author note: Thank you guys for all of the support! If you like this and want more feel free to send me some requests for one shots or quick fics! I'm working on the next chapter of this one right now so keep an eye out.
“I was feeling [emotionally, sexually, romantically] neglected in our relationship. 🥺” Has to be one of the worst common justifications for cheating, a complete shifting of blame from the cheater to the other partner. And it’s usually what they use when their wife has been focused on taking care of their small children with no help for months or years. ‘I wasn’t the center of attention and it was hurting my widdle feelings. Instead of discussing this with you, helping to alleviate your other responsibilities so we could spend more time together or even breaking up so I could find someone I was more compatible with, I decided to spend less time with you and start fucking someone else.’ Bitch. Little bitch. Loser behavior. Even a “I had intense chemistry with my affair partner and just really wanted to fuck them. My desire for pleasure was greater than my commitment to the relationship. Sorry.” would have been better than “It’s your fault for not worshiping me like a god.”
This would have had me crucified on tumblr 10 years ago but maybe we are ready for this conversation now:
If you are a socially anxious person, you have to socialize. Your panic/anxiety attacks will only get worse and trigger more frequently if you constantly avoid contact with The Public. Not saying that you need to be a social butterfly- but there is a genuine problem with not being able to order your own meal at a restaurant. And it cannot be solved by always having someone else do it for you.
This is a PSA to about 3/4s of the Portland Youth populace
everyone who reblogs this and is like "I ordered my own tea this week" or "I only barfed once when I had to give a presentation'- you are doing amazing sweetie. Have patience with yourself, you are relearning a skill so difficult that people get 4 year degrees to do it professionally.
𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓻𝓮𝓹𝓸𝓻𝓽 journalist!robertrobertson x fem!reader
૮ ․ ․ ྀིა 4k words — set in LA in 09, journalist!robertrobertson x fem!reader , age gap - ( reader is 21 , Robert is 27 ) porn with plot(?) , disgusting sex , lewd descriptions , long read , multiple parts coming , this is for a mature audience , please read with caution !
he’s trying to remember how you both got here.
There are so many things Robert’s not allowed to tell you. He touches himself, he dreams, being under that jean pleated skirt you always wear—those crisp folds brushing against his skin in his fevered imagination, the fabric whispering secrets as his fingers ache to lift it, to uncover your plump warmth hidden beneath. The office where you both work feels like a pressure cooker of unspoken tension, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like a constant reminder of the boundaries he must respect during the day, but at night, in the dim glow of his apartment just a few blocks away, those rules dissolve into frantic strokes along his hardening cock. He pictures when you’re leaning over your desk, the skirt riding up just enough to tease the curve of your butt, you always match your panties with your shirt color, and his breath hitches as he grips himself tighter, precum slicking his palm while he envisions burying his face between your legs, inhaling your scent, tasting the forbidden heat that makes his pulse thunder. It's not just lust; it's a deep, gnawing yearning that twists in his chest, a desire to connect on a level that shatters the professional facade, to feel your fingers tangle in his hair as you guide him closer, your soft gasps filling the empty spaces of his lonely room.
You notice the way his eyes linger a beat too long when you cross your legs at your desk, the skirt fabric shifting with a soft rustle that sends a shiver through him, though he quickly averts his gaze, pretending to focus on his book.
“He didn’t like me writing about how superheroes don’t give a damn when they fight,” you said, your voice half-laughing, half-exhausted, the kind of tone that only comes after arguing with an editor who thinks ‘realism’ ruins the fantasy. You leaned back in your chair, the old office plastic sighing beneath you, a cheap echo in the late afternoon hum of computers and stale coffee. “Like—if it’s Monday, and I’m already in a shitty mood, and I walk outside just to see a Superman-shaped dent in the hood of my car? I’d lose it. I’d be furious. But they don’t care. They’re up there throwing cars like it’s dodgeball, while I’m down here trying to figure out which insurance policy covers divine intervention.”
Dalia snorted first — that sharp, nasal kind of laugh that always came before something mean but true. She had a pen between her fingers, twirling it like a cigarette, the click-click a metronome to your rant. “You’re not wrong,” she said. “If batman totaled my Toyota, I’d sue his ass. With interest.”
James leaned over from his desk, glasses slipping down his nose, his tie already half-undone. “I mean, think about the property taxes,” he said, in that dry, professor-pretending-to-be-cynical way. “Every time the justice league fight downtown, that’s like… two years of city budget just to rebuild Starbucks.”
You smiled at that — not wide, not loud, just enough to feel it soften the tightness behind your eyes. “Exactly,” you said. “But apparently that’s not a story people want. The human cost, the ordinary people caught in the crossfire. They want hero worship. They want clean lines, good versus evil, capes fluttering in slow motion.”
“What do you think, Robert?” you asked, smiling — the kind of small, teasing smile that isn’t exactly flirtation, but it has the same effect of making the room shrink around someone. The question hung in the air, light and innocuous on the surface, but heavy with implication underneath, like a paperweight balancing on the edge of a table.
Robert looked up over his glasses, the sudden movement making the tiny metal rims catch the fluorescent light and flare. His eyes, usually guarded, flickered for the briefest moment, something sharp, something unsettled , before he managed to refocus on the conversation. He cleared his throat, slow and deliberate, the sound scraping against the edge of civility.
“I think,” he said, though the words came out rougher than he intended, jagged around the edges like broken glass sliding across a hardwood floor, “you should submit the article anyway.” He gripped the edge of his desk, fingers curling so tight the knuckles turned white, as if holding on to something solid could tether him to reality — keep the part of him that was boiling beneath the surface from spilling out like molten metal.
He took a shallow breath, the kind that’s more of a pause than an inhale, like he was trying to talk himself down from a cliff. Then he continued, softer this time, almost conspiratorial, the words slipping out like smoke through the cracks of a window, “… maybe someone needs to remind people what it’s like to be stuck paying for someone else’s chaos. What it feels like to be the one left with dents, bills, headaches… and no cape to save you.”
His voice had changed subtly — the rough edges of irritation softened into something else, something vulnerable, almost intimate. You noticed the slight tremor in his jaw, the way the tips of his fingers dug into the desk and book, white against the faded wood grain, as if he were trying to anchor himself to the moment, to the words, to you.
“See,” you said, your smile soft but deliberate, tilting just enough to let him see the warmth behind your words, the quiet acknowledgment that he gets it, “Robert always understands.”
“Ew, get a room,” Dalia called out, loud enough to cut through the quiet hum of the office, but with that teasing lilt that made it impossible to be truly annoyed. She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, smirking like she was both judge and jury, the kind of smirk that said she’d been watching this little exchange all along and had been waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
James's interruption sliced through the thickening atmosphere like a dull knife through overripe fruit, his bag slung over one shoulder with that effortless nonchalance that screamed he'd long ago abandoned the drudgery of spreadsheets and deadlines for visions of amber-lit bars and the sharp tang of whiskey on ice.
“ anyways, my time here is done. Are we going for drinks later tonight?” he asked, his voice a casual grenade lobbed into the charged silence, detonating the fragile bubble of tension that had been inflating between you and Robert all afternoon, those stolen glances across the cubicle farm now scattered like confetti in the wake of his words.
Dalia, ever the echo to James’s brash cadence, zipped her tote with a sharp, decisive rasp that punctuated the office air. Her hum was low and anticipatory, painting neon-soaked visions of escapades and laughter that could strip away the corporate veneer. She moved with the ease of
someone already halfway free, her fingers lingering on the strap, savoring the texture of freedom woven into the worn leather.
“Uh, maybe..that Halloween thing at Squirrels is happening tonight,” you said, moving your hands carefully as you gathered the scattered papers into your bag. Each fold and tuck felt deliberate.
Robert packed his books into his worn briefcase with tense precision, shoulders taut, fingers brushing the leather in a subtle, almost unconscious tremor. Your voice stayed light, easy, but the pull between you lingered, magnetic and unspoken. Every glance, every pause in motion, carried weight, as if the silence itself was conspiring to stretch this small, ordinary moment into something charged and inevitable.
From the corner of your eye, you saw him in fragments: precise, deliberate, like a surgeon handling a scalpel as he aligned his books, spines perfectly parallel, pens arranged with rigid order. The briefcase clasp clicked shut, sharp and almost accusatory in the emptier office.
Did he notice you watching? That faint quiver at the edge of his lips—was it confession, defiance, or something else entirely? The air around you thrummed softly, carrying the faint hum of fluorescent lights and the lingering scent of coffee and printer ink, a tangible reminder that the ordinary world still existed, even as this small, taut tension between you seemed to stretch and hold the room in suspension.
“You okay?” you asked softly, your voice gentle, carrying the easy warmth of colleagues who somehow teetered on the edge of something more. You bent to pick up a stray folder, the fabric of your skirt brushing lightly against your thighs, an unconscious motion that drew his attention.
He swallowed, slow and deliberate, throat tightening as if struggling against all the unspoken words he carried, the quiet weight of things he hadn’t yet admitted pressing between you.
“Yeah, just… thinking,” he murmured, his voice rougher than usual, scraping against the calm mask he normally wore. His eyes flicked to the hem of your skirt for the briefest moment before snapping back to meet yours, and in that long, silent gaze, a quiet spark ignited between you.
The office around you had grown dim with the fading light, folding you both into a private cocoon of shadow and quiet. The space between propriety and desire felt thin, tempting you to linger in the gray area where restraint and longing brushed against each other.
Meanwhile, James and Dalia’s conversation drifted through the office, a playful current of ideas for Halloween at Squirrels. Costumes were tossed around like confetti, whimsical and half-serious, filling the space with their easy laughter and the faint hum of after-hours energy.
“Oh—Robert,” you called softly, your voice lingering like a gentle touch, careful and deliberate, pulling his attention from the swirl of his thoughts.
He pivoted with sudden urgency, the movement more instinct than thought, his briefcase wobbling precariously in his grasp, that fleeting crack in his composure—a raw, unshielded glimpse—fracturing the rigid armor he wore daily, like a suit pressed to unbearable stiffness.
“Can you… help me fetch more paper for the printer from the storage room? Please?' The plea spilled with a smile that curved your lips in innocence, yet your gaze protracted, an undercurrent of intimacy threading through the request, the dimming light casting your features in soft relief, shadows pooling in the hollows of your collarbone, inviting him to bridge the chasm.
Robert’s eyes widened just slightly, his usual calm cracking to reveal something sharper underneath laced with a fiercer, more visceral yearning, a fire kindled by the proximity of your form. He nodded his head in assent, dropping the briefcase with a muted thump upon the desk's surface, the sound swallowed by the office's vast hush as James and Dalia's voices receded into the corridor, their footfalls a fading cadence toward the elevators, leaving the floor to its spectral quietude.
“Yes… sure,” he said, a small smile tugging at his lips. His voice was steady, but beneath it lingered that rough edge, akin to walking on broken glass . he trailed you to the storage room's threshold at the office's remote corners , The fluorescent lights overhead were dim, casting long shadows that danced around your moving forms. The carpet muffled your footsteps, wrapping the two of you in a quiet, secret rhythm, as if the office itself were keeping your little journey to itself.
You pressed the door's handle, the hinges emitting a protracted groan that resonated with anticipation, ushering yourself into the rooms subdued gloom—a bunch of cardboard boxes and metallic shelving groaning under reams of pristine paper, the atmosphere chillier, laced with the musty exhalation of disuse and ink residue. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing the two of you inside the storage room. Outside, the office sounds dimmed to a soft, distant hum, leaving the space around you charged and quiet. Your hearts beat a little faster, echoing the thrill of being alone together in this small, hidden corner.
“It’s somewhere back here, I think,” you whispered, your voice low and soft, almost a lure. You gestured toward a shelf tucked in the shadows and bent slightly to reach a box. The movement was natural, but the fabric of your skirt stretched just enough to hint at the lace beneath, subtle and unspoken. You could feel him draw closer, the air thickening with the heat of his presence, each step bringing him nearer, each breath heavier in the small, dim space.
His breath hitched, uneven in the small, quiet space, as he lowered to one knee beside you. His leg brushed against your calf, sending a sharp, electric thrill up your leg. His fingers brushed against yours on the edge of the box, the warmth of his hand seeping through the slight barrier between you. His gaze drifted downward, catching the small parting of your blouse, unveiling the lush roundness of your bosom confined by lace, nipples Responding to the electric tension in you, the fabric stretched slightly, tracing the subtle reaction beneath.
“ I got it” He breathed, his voice low and husky, carrying the weight of thoughts and fantasies that seemed to linger in the shadows of this small, secluded space.
You rose smoothly, turning to face him. The narrow space left barely a breath between you, the air thick with his woody cologne mixing with the faint smell of paper and dust. Your pulse thundered in your chest.
“Thank you,” you said softly, your palm brushing against his forearm as you passed the carton. The touch sparked something electric, subtle but undeniable. His gaze locked on yours, dark and intense, flickering with that small, almost imperceptible twitch in his mouth as he swallowed, the movement drawing your attention like a magnet.
For a long, suspended moment, neither of you moved. The small, isolated storage room seemed to shrink around you, the air thick and electric. His breath brushed against yours, shallow and uneven, and the faint tremor in his body betrayed the storm of emotion he was holding back.
You shifted slightly, enough that the air between you seemed to thrum with awareness, but not enough to break the fragile spell. His eyes followed the motion, sharp and unblinking, tracing the line of your shoulder, the curve of your neck, the faint dip where your hair fell across your collarbone. Each small movement felt amplified in the closeness of the room, every breath an unspoken dialogue.
“Robert…” you whispered, almost questioning, almost daring. The sound carried differently in the storage room — soft, intimate, like it belonged only to him, a thread connecting your awareness to his. He leaned imperceptibly closer, his presence a weight you could feel pressing at the edge of your senses, warm and insistent but careful, as though he were testing the boundary between proximity and permission.
The box between you — the excuse for being this close — became irrelevant. Your hands hovered over it, brushing almost by accident, the contact light but enough to spark a current that threaded along your arms. His breath hitched again, subtle, almost imperceptible, yet your chest tightened in response. You were acutely aware of the space he occupied, of the gravity pulling inward, of how each heartbeat seemed to echo louder in the quiet.
He finally broke the pause, his voice softer now, more private, “I… i’ve been in my head, you’ve been in my head-Gosh are all your skirts that short? ” The words lingered, barely audible but heavy with unspoken promise.
You swallowed, pulse racing, eyes locking with his. For the first time, the silence between you wasn’t just tension — it was expectation, desire, something uncharted and thrilling. And in that small, dimly lit storage room, everything else fell away: the office, the coworkers, even reason. All that remained was the charge of being together, so close it was almost unbearable, and the unspoken understanding that neither of you wanted to let it go just yet.
now he remembered. that’s how you both got here.
This was gross.
He was gross.
But Robert's proximity ignited a storm inside you, a whirlwind of revulsion tangled with an unwelcome spark of heat that made your skin prickle. Your back dug into the rough plaster of the storage room wall, shelves of forgotten files and dusty boxes looming like silent witnesses to this charged standoff. The air hung heavy with the scent of aged paper and his musky cologne, too potent, too invasive, as his body crowded yours—mere inches separating his flushed face from your own, his breath hot and ragged against your cheek. His hand, bold and uninvited, skimmed over the fabric of your jean pleated skirt once, fingers pressing just enough to trace the outline of your clothed slit, sending a jolt through your core that you hated how it made your thighs clench involuntarily. Then again, slower this time, the graze lingering, fabric bunching under his touch as he tested your reaction, your pulse hammering in your ears while disgust warred with the traitorous dampness gathering between your legs.
Your mind screamed to say not here , to bolt from this cramped, dimly lit space where the single bulb overhead flickered like a guilty conscience, but your body betrayed you, rooted in place by the intensity of his gaze—dark eyes boring into yours with a hunger that stripped away pretenses. Emotions crashed over you: anger at his audacity, shame at your own flickering arousal, a twisted curiosity about how far this forbidden edge would push you.
“Let’s go to my car,” he murmured, the words escaping as almost a whimper, his voice cracking with desperate need, lips so close you could feel the vibration against your skin. It wasn't a command; it was a plea, raw and vulnerable, his hand still hovering near your thigh, thumb brushing the hem of your skirt in a silent promise of more.
The storage room felt smaller, suffocating, the distant hum of the office air vents the only sound besides your shared breathing. You swallowed hard, tasting the bitterness of conflict on your tongue, your nipples hardening against your blouse despite the chill—or because of the heat radiating from him. His fingers dipped lower on that second graze, pressing firmer against your pussy through the thin barrier of panties, rubbing in a slow circle that made your hips twitch forward before you could stop it. Gross, yes—his sweaty palm, the way his tie hung crooked like he'd been unraveling all day—but the friction sparked something primal, a low ache building as he leaned in closer, nose brushing your jaw.
“Please,” he whispered, the whimper turning into a groan, his free hand bracing the wall beside your head, caging you in while his touch grew insistent, parting your folds through the fabric with targeted strokes that had you biting your lip to stifle a gasp.
Emotions swirled thicker now—repulsion at his clingy desperation, thrill at the risk of it all unraveling here in this hidden corner of the workplace, a forbidden pull that made your clit throb under his fingers. The pleats of your skirt rustled softly with each movement, a teasing whisper against your skin as he hiked it higher, exposing more of your thighs to the cool air. You could smell your own arousal mixing with his, sharp and undeniable, and part of you wanted to slap his hand away, to call him out for crossing every line, but another part—the one that had fantasized in quiet moments about being taken roughly, without apology—urged you to nod, to let this gross intensity consume you. His eyes searched yours, pleading, his cock visibly straining against his pants as he rubbed harder, the heel of his hand grinding against your mound.
“I need you,” he breathed, the whimper laced with urgency, his lips grazing your earlobe, sending shivers down your spine that pooled hot in your belly.
The door to the storage room stood ajar just enough for shadows to play across the floor, a reminder of how easily someone could interrupt, heightening the illicit thrill. Your back arched slightly off the wall, pressing into his touch despite yourself, emotions fracturing into a messy mosaic of want and recoil. Gross—he was gross, with his unkempt stubble and the way his fingers fumbled like he couldn't believe his luck—but the way he touched you, deliberate now, circling your clit with building pressure, made your pussy clench around nothing, slickness soaking through your panties.
“Your car,”you finally whispered back, voice husky and uncertain, the words tumbling out as your hand gripped his wrist—not to stop him, but to guide him firmer against you. He groaned low, withdrawing his hand only to grab yours, pulling you toward the door with a haste that nearly tripped you both, the skirt swishing against your legs as you followed into the dimly lit hallway, heart racing with the promise of what waited in the shadowed confines of his vehicle.
Outside, the parking lot stretched empty under the sodium glow of streetlamps, his car a nondescript sedan tucked in the far corner, away from prying eyes. He fumbled with the keys, the whimper returning as he unlocked the back door, ushering you inside with a push that was half gentle, half frantic. The leather seats creaked under you as you slid in, the confined space amplifying everything—the rustle of your skirt as you hiked it up yourself this time, emotions boiling over into action. Robert climbed in after, door slamming shut like a seal on your secrets, his body immediately pressing close in the backseat, hands roaming greedily over your thighs and breast.
“Fuck baby, I've wanted this,” he muttered, no longer whimpering but growling softly, his mouth crashing against yours in a kiss that was all teeth and tongue, messy and overwhelming. You kissed back, tasting his desperation, but it fueled the fire, your fingers yanking at his belt as his hand dove straight under your skirt, shoving your panties aside to plunge two fingers into your wet pussy.
He moaned as if he'd just buried his cock inside you, the sound deep and guttural vibrating through his chest into yours, while you whimpered into his lips, the stretch of his digits filling you with a sharp, insistent pressure that made your inner walls flutter. He pumped them in and out, slow at first to savor the slick heat gripping him, then faster, curling to drag against that sensitive ridge that sent sparks racing up your spine. The backseat confined you both, leather sticking to your sweat-dampened skin, the air thick with the scent of arousal and the faint metallic tang of the car interior, every thrust of his fingers echoing wetly in the close space.
“So wet and soft,” he groaned, his voice rough like gravel, eyes locked on yours with that feral intensity that made your stomach twist in a mix of lingering disgust and surging need. You squeezed his shoulders hard, nails digging into the fabric of his shirt as immense pleasure coiled tight in your core, waves of it radiating outward until your thighs trembled against his arm. You could do nothing but moan again, the sound muffled against his mouth as he claimed another bruising kiss, his free hand pinning your hip to keep you steady while he worked you open, juices coating his knuckles with each plunge.
He yanked his fingers out abruptly, the sudden emptiness making you gasp, a string of your slickness trailing from his hand to your throbbing entrance before he sat up slightly, the car shifting under his weight. He pushed your legs toward your chest more, folding you nearly in half on the narrow seat, the pleats of your jean skirt bunching up around your waist like a rumpled frame for the exposure. Your pink panties came into view first, soaked and clinging, and he reached up under the fabric without hesitation—you watched him, heart pounding, as his lips glistened from your kisses, swollen and parted, his eyes burning with a hunger you'd never seen before, raw and unfiltered, like a man starved for this exact moment.
He hooked his fingers into the waistband and pulled your cloth down roughly, peeling the damp material away to reveal your wet plump lips, swollen and parted slightly, glistening under the dim parking lot lights filtering through the fogged windows. He tossed your panties into the front seat with a careless flick, the soft thud barely audible over your ragged breaths, then pushed your legs even wider, knees nearly by your ears, exposing your holes completely—pussy dripping and clenching at the cool rush of air, asshole winking in vulnerability. The position left you utterly open, the thrill of such raw display mixing with the gross intimacy of his gaze devouring every inch, your cheeks flushing hot as emotions churned: shame at how eagerly your body responded, excitement at the forbidden surrender in this stolen space.
“Look how pretty she is,” he said, voice low and reverent, almost awed, as if speaking to your pussy itself, his words sending a fresh gush of wetness trickling down your crack. You couldn't help but whimper at his praise, the sound needy and broken, your clit pulsing visibly under his stare, begging for touch. He quickly hovered over you, muscles tensing as he pulled his pants and boxers down in one swift motion, freeing his cock—thick and rigid, veins bulging along the shaft, the head flushed dark and leaking precum that smeared against your thigh as he positioned himself.
He took his hand, still slick from your pussy, and grazed over your wet folds once again, fingers tracing from your entrance up to your clit in a teasing sweep that made your hips buck involuntarily, chasing the friction. Then he grabbed his cock, fumbling at your entrance for a heartbeat, the heat of him pressing there before he glided the tip up and down your wetness, coating himself in your arousal, bumping your clit on each pass until you were panting, on the edge of begging. The car smelled of sex now, heavy and heady, the windows a blurry veil against the outside world, heightening the secrecy of it all—anyone could walk by, but that risk only sharpened the ache building inside you.
“Open up for me” he whispered, breath hot against your ear, the command laced with that desperate edge that made your resistance crumble. You obeyed without a thought, relaxing your muscles as best you could in the cramped fold, and he slid in, his thick head breaching you with a pop that made you jump, a sharp sting of stretch blending into pleasure as your walls yielded. He kissed your lips then, swallowing your cry, tongue thrusting in time with his hips before he slid in all the way, bottoming out with a grind that pressed his balls against your ass, filling you so completely that you felt every ridge and pulse of him.
“Fuck!”you yelled, the word tearing from your throat as the fullness overwhelmed you, a burn that bordered on too much but tipped into ecstasy, your pussy clamping down greedily around his length. He kissed your neck in response, teeth grazing the skin before sucking hard enough to leave a mark, his hips pulling back only to snap forward again, starting a rhythm that rocked the car on its shocks. Each thrust drove deeper, his cock dragging along your inner walls, hitting spots that made stars explode behind your eyes, emotions fracturing into pure sensation— the gross clinginess of him forgotten in the haze of need, replaced by the intimate possession of his body claiming yours.
He groaned against your throat, pace quickening as he held your legs pinned, the angle letting him pound straight into your core, your juices squelching with every withdrawal and plunge.
“you’re doing so good,” he rasped, lips trailing wet kisses up to your jaw, one hand sliding down to rub your clit in firm circles that had you arching off the seat, moans spilling freely now. He pounded into you relentlessly, the cars suspension still creaking, his hands gripping your ass again to angle you better, each slap of skin echoing your shared frenzy. Feelings layered thick: the thrill of the forbidden, the intimacy of this ugly, honest surrender, disgust melting into ecstasy as your orgasm built, coiling tight.
“g’na cum~” you whine, while you held him tighter, he moans again.
“Come on my cock,” he urged, voice breaking again into that needy edge, his thrusts erratic as he chased his own release. You shattered first, walls pulsing around him, crying out as waves crashed through you, and he followed with a guttural groan, dumping into your pussy with hot spurts of cum that leaked out as he kept pumping, prolonging the bliss. Panting, spent, he collapsed against you, the gross reality settling back in—the sticky mess between your thighs, his weight heavy—but in that moment, tangled in the backseat, emotions lingered: a strange, sated connection born from the chaos, the pleated skirt crumpled around your waist like a badge of the night's secrets.he’s trying to remember how you both got here.
content/warnings: stalker-ish behavior, from both sides lowkey, artist!reader, pretty heavy profanity, mentions of sex and kink
a/n: based off of this request from an anon— I have a Adrian Chase ask cause I'm obsessed with how u write him. I wanna suggest a fix/drabble about a situation; where reader likes to sit at Fennel Fields to draw people and Adrian becomes 90% of it. Reader accidentally leaves it, and Adrian is the one that finds it while cleaning tables. Please and thank you if u end up doing it :)
i wish this request hadn’t been anon so i could’ve tagged you! but here’s it is ;)
People watching is not a crime.
If it was, it would be a victimless crime. The patrons at Fennel Fields seldom notice you, and when they do, they’re only registering you for a moment, eyes skipping over the scene of the restaurant inattentively to find a girl in the corner booth all alone.
They take pity on you, you guess. The corner booth is usually given to large parties as it can seat five or six people. So you’ve realized you probably look like somebody that’s been stood up by four or five people.
The truth is that the corner is objectively the best view of the whole place, and by extension, the biggest cast of characters to pick from and carve into your sketchbook. And you never had any plans to meet anyone here, anyways.
There's a simple pleasure in sketching someone beautiful. And not conventionally attractive, not necessarily. But someone, a stranger, a lover, an animal. You find yourself falling in love with the way they were made by mother nature. Delicate hands of DNA sculpt hook noses and soft jawlines and stoic, forward brow bones.
Drawing still-lives brings great catharsis for some. Well, you assume. It must. But not you; you like the impermanence of the state of being. The way things can change so drastically so fast. One moment gets swallowed up by the vastness of a twenty-four hour day. But to bring someone to life on a page in that one particular moment of their lives… sometimes you can capture a whole world of emotions to remember for them. Sometimes it’s a moment of nothing, and much less something to be remembered, but you’ve made it something to remember by turning the mundane into intense detail. A mole, a wrinkle, a pair of bloodshot eyes.
What better a place to find the mundane than Fennel Fields?
The staff are familiar with you. You order a meal so you won’t be technically loitering, you keep to yourself, and you tip well. Nobody has any problem with you, and if anything, you’re a much more favorable person to wait on compared to other, more demanding, whiter customers.
The patrons and staff of Fennel Fields don’t know they’ll come home with you in your notebook at the end of the night.
Well…
You’d never intended for any of them to know.
Your favorite subject is named Adrian. A busboy in his little busboy uniform. He’s refilled your water glass a couple times. Other than that, you know nothing about him. You observe, you listen, and you gather what you can about your victims. You overhear conversations about the frivolities in their lives. It only spurs your restless hands on.
Most sections of your notebook have multiple subjects per page. That is, until you reach about halfway through. From then on, it’s Adrian. You don’t even know his last name.
Portraits of the busboy litter the pages. From the neck up, side profiles, various expressions of every ilk, his eyes behind his glasses, his hands… the list goes on. He’s an unusual beauty to watch, running himself into sharp counters and chairs on accident as he runs around Fennel Fields, and then trying to play it off super cool. How incredibly captivating his fluidity is. Everything rolls right off of him, like water off a duck’s back. He appears to be able to find something to think hard about no matter how boring the task at hand is.
You’re extremely content to watch him do just about anything.
Does it make you feel like a creep?
Of fucking course it does.
But alas, you can’t help that he’s so intriguing to you. You’ve thought that maybe you should stop frequenting the restaurant so much. Move on to a new place.
You don’t know it, but as you slough food off into a styrofoam to-go container and seal it shut, your sketchbook slides off the table and onto the leather of the booth seat. It’s no longer visible to you, and you get up to go, confident that it’s in your bag. So confident, in fact, you have no reason to check or pay it any mind.
You leave your treasured corner booth and pay for your meal with a thirty percent tip.
-
This has got to be the best day of Adrian’s life.
For a while now, he’s noticed you in Fennel Fields. Okay, technically, he’s done more than just notice you. The first time he saw you, you’d pulled open the doors of the restaurant and a breeze blew in behind you. You walked past him to follow the hostess to your table, and you left an almost cartoonish trail of perfume and pheromones trailing behind you. It took him a second to recover.
He refills your water cup. You smile up at him from whatever holds your focus and softly utter a Thank you so easily, he can tell it’s a habit. The second or third time you’d made eye contact, Adrian looked up your transaction record in the POS system after you’d left. He knows the last four digits of your debit card, which was not useful— and your first and last name, very useful!
It was a simple act of curiosity, Adrian assured himself. It’s good to know people’s names. Especially if said person is your future friend. Whatever the nature of friendship that may be. He has a few bashful ideas.
Adrian has become a creature of want, buzzing like static whenever you appear in your corner booth, but never self-possessed enough to do anything about it.
And so, when he’s wiping each and every table down to its death at the end of the shift, he finds a notebook with a black cover. And it’s in your booth.
This must be some sort of good karma for killing all those felonious people.
It must be good karma again when he’s able to very easily find your name online registered with an address.
-
It’s not a day later when Adrian next goes on patrol as Vigilante. It’s quite uneventful tonight, crime wise, and he’s trying to distract himself from driving in the direction of your house. He feels it’s too early, maybe, to return the notebook. That he might seem too eager. But he’s got nothing else to do, and no one to kill.
So, as if his car started and steered on its own, he finds himself parked on your street. He hasn’t been in this neighborhood often, so he doesn’t know what he’s looking for besides a certain number on a house.
That is, until he sees someone who looks eerily like you get out of a shitty car and trail up the stairs to a little house. You don’t look up as you take the stairs, eyes trained on your keys, trying to find the specific key you need. You’re absentmindedly unaware of your surroundings. That’s not very safe, Adrian thinks to himself. He makes a mental note to warn you about shrouded, dangerous, figures in the night.
His weight makes the stairs creak beneath him, and you begin to turn around at the sudden noise, as is the human condition to do so. He decides to make himself known before you see him and mistake him for a silent… shrouded, dangerous, figure in the night.
You’re halfway pivoted towards him when he speaks.
‘Hey, there.’
At the sound of the stranger’s voice, your entire body jolts and the keys slip between your fingers.
‘Ho—ly shit.’ He watches you clutch your heart in your hands. You’ve startled back a step and you take in the sight of him, eyes unblinking and fast. You look him up and down, taking in his visage. His tall frame and what seems like a hundred holsters for various weapons.
You can’t live on this planet without being aware of the metahumans and the superheroes and the alien threats and almost-world-endings. You’re actually a Superman fan, generally speaking. But you’ve never come eye to eye with one— a villain or a hero— before, and you’re anxiously unsure of where to place him in your brain.
Vigilante watches you curiously, as usually people don’t get this much time to make something of him before he starts cashing their checks.
‘Have no fear, citizen. Unless you’re a criminal. Are you breaking into this house?’
You kneel down and grab your dropped keys and raise them between you so he can see them clearly with no misconception. They barely perceptively jingle and catch the streetlamp and your porch light.
Shaking your head strongly in the negative, face frightful, the nerves in your bones make it to your voice, ‘…No, S’my place.’
‘Oh. Yep, all good, then.’ Rocking back and forth from heel to toe, the masked stranger seems almost unimposing if only you weren’t all alone in the dark.
‘You scared me.’
‘Gosh, yeah, I’ve been meaning to work on that. So sorry.’
‘You’re that guy.’ You point at him, square at his face, and he uses a flattened, gloved hand atop yours to bat it away in a harmless manner.
‘Do you have a disease where you can only speak in three syllable increments?’
Your lips part and open a bit, very obviously at a loss for words. That’s okay, he’ll fill in the blanks, trust him.
‘‘Cuz if you do, that’s totally fine. Like, maybe you got hit super hard by a baseball when you were a kid? And it knocked a chunk of your brain loose?’
‘You’re Vigilante.’ You clarify. Five syllables.
‘Yes, I am. But I’m not here on killing business. Just running an errand.’
‘That doesn’t make me feel any better.’
‘Um…’ Adrian scratches the top of his head, unsure of how to continue.
‘I’ve heard about you on the news, and you’re wanted for like, fifty grisly murders.’
Well, that’s an oddly bold thing to say to a supposed murderer.
‘Fifty? That’s so fucking embarrassing! It’s way more than that.’ Vigilante watches your face morph into wide-eyed fear, and you step back a little until your back hits your mailbox, eyelids fluttering when you do.
‘Oh… no. No, no. Sorry, don’t worry. I only— look.’ He produces the black sketchbook from behind him, and you can only hope it wasn’t actually in the back of his pants like it seemed.
It was.
‘This is yours, right?’
Adrian gets the chance to be your knight in shining armor, and god, does it feel good. Your whole face lights up, and the wary demeanor he’d given you is gone in an instant.
‘Oh, my god! Yeah!’ He hands the book to you and you accept it as gently as you can, but eager to get it back in your possession.
‘I only kill bad people, by the way. M’like… part of the good guys and stuff. Some would even say hero.’ He says lightly, but it falls on deaf ears as you look over your notebook in your hands.
‘I thought I’d lost this for-fucking-ever!’ You recount, shaking your head in happy disbelief, ‘W—… where’d you find it?’
‘… Nowhere.’
‘Nowhere?’
‘On the sidewalk.’ He blurts, ‘And I was there— right there on the sidewalk busting a crime, so.’
‘Oh. Thank you. That’s… that’s great!’ You huff a laugh at the absurdity and though you try your best to seem appreciative for fear of being knifed down, you do have questions. ‘How’d you know it was mine, though?’
‘Y’know like… I’ve seen you around.’ He puts on an unlikely faux casual energy.
‘Uh- Okay, I don’t one hundred percent believe this web you’re spinning, but however you ended up with this, I’m very grateful.’ He nods, and a second passes quietly. The cicadas chirp around you. You feel you owe him for his good deed. ‘Um… Is there anything I can like… help you with? I know it’s not exactly a part of the whole righter-of-wrongs thing to get something in return, but uh— I don’t know, I have a fifty dollar bill in my purse?’
You shrug softly, knowing there’s not much else you have to offer him.
‘Would it be super uncool to say yes? I kinda need to fill up my gas tank on the way home. Maybe just a twenty, if that’s okay with you.’
‘Please, I love to fund my local watchmen.’
‘Do you really?’
‘Uh… no, first timer.’
Ah, sarcasm. Right. He doubles over in laughter, and it shocks you, jolting you again.
‘You’re funny!’
‘…Thanks.’
While you dig in your purse that hangs off your shoulder, Adrian’s brain reminds him of his current digging curiosity. And before this interaction comes to a polite close, he’s gotta ask. He puts a hand out, stopping you from going any further.
‘Just, before you— Um… sorry, but who is that guy you draw?’ He shuffles forward awkwardly with an outstretched finger pointing.
‘Oh, uh… which one?’
Angling the sketchbook his way, you let him flip through pages until the Adrian-heavy section starts. He points to one closer to the spine of the book, it’s him looking askance, and he isn’t sure what he was doing while you drew this, but he looks annoyed. His chin dimple dips in hard.
‘He’s a busboy at the restaurant I eat at a lot. He’s a good subject.’ You tell him openly, apparently excited slightly by the idea of someone asking about your art. Under the very first drawing, there’s a note scribbled in the same pencil you’d used, strokes wide and unsharpened:
Name tag reads Adrian
‘Why?’
‘Well, I guess he’s interesting to me. I only really draw people that have character. Some sort of distinctness.’
‘Do you… want to see?’ You’re sheepishly smiling now, eyelids fluttering a bit when you bring your eyes back to him, and Adrian thinks to himself that you’ve been sent to enchant him. To seek and destroy. The thought is fleeting but not any less believable to him.
You take notice of his lack of response immediately, and your smile falls behind a newborn embarrassment.
‘Sorry. You probably have, uhm—‘ clearing your throat, you shake your head to attempt restarting your brain, because what the fuck are you thinking? ‘—Vengeance to be seeing to right now.’
‘No!’ Adrian catches a bit of your embarrassment for himself, ‘Yes. I do want to see them, I mean.’ He’s nodding his head so hard it’s creating movement in his body.
Moving to sit on the top step of your stoop, you put your keys back in your pocket and cradle the book in your arms, open and ready to be observed. You look up to find Vigilante standing in the same place as before, seemingly unsure of what to do. You gesture for him to sit next to you. It snaps him out of his stupor with an Oh! and he moves quickly to your side, hands folded politely in his lap.
And so, you start close to the beginning. The first few pages are half-finished, like you’d done them distractedly. You decide to point out something you’re actually somewhat proud of.
The first is a woman with short dark hair looking down at her dog. The background is simple and unloved by your pencil, just a couple lines and necessary features to make it clear she’s on some sort of public transportation. She, herself, is carefully drawn, full of shading and precision and effort. The focal point.
‘I was on the train with this lady, and she had a tiny chihuahua, and y'know, most people carry them in bags or on a leash, but she had the dog inside her shirt and nestled in her massive cleavage. And he seemed like, totally okay with it.’
Adrian’s eyes move over the page, taking it in, and he notices some more writing below the woman and her dog.
Woman with squished dog. The dog’s name was, in fact, Guy Gardner
‘Do you write notes for all of them?’
‘Yeah. To remember.’ You point to the next sketch, this one of two people with narrowed eyes and furrowed brows, ‘These people were in the doctor’s office waiting room. They were whisper-arguing about the pronunciation of the word apricot for fifteen minutes. It might've been longer, I wasn’t there to see who won.’
Intense couple. Personally, app-ricot
The paper following the quarreling couple showcases a woman with long salt-and-pepper hair, mid-forties. She’s sitting with a plate of indistinct food in front of her, probably one of your Fennel Fields subjects. She looks thoughtfully at her dinner date from across the table. Her eyes glimmer and the corners of her full, round lips tilt up. She’s gorgeous. Astoundingly so.
‘This is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen. I was, like, fully enamored. I had to draw her or the feeling was gonna consume me. That’s what I want it to feel like everytime.’
Completely out of her date’s league. Captivating laugh
You flip to the next page and, lo and behold, there’s a face Adrian’s knows very well. You explain, ‘He came into the restaurant, actually the same restaurant as the busboy, and he had a costume on. He called the waitress sweetcheeks. I think he’s Justicemaker. Peaceman, whatever.’
Justice Gang inductee, one can only assume
‘Peacemaker!’ Vigilante exclaims beside you, leaning over the notebook with you now.
‘Right.’
‘I know him, it’s fuckin’ uncanny!’
‘Wow, really? Thanks.’
Once again, Adrian can’t keep himself from asking.
‘What’s so special about the busboy?’
‘Well…’ Thumbing through the paper quickly, searching, you aim to find a drawing you know you did of just his eyes. You find it, and you’ve successfully drawn the texture of his glasses, the silver glinting.
‘You never see anyone wearing this style of frames anymore. I love vintage stuff, so his glasses caught my attention first.’ He’d already flipped through all the pages of the notebookbook when he’d found it, so Adrian looks at you as you speak about him, not the drawings. ‘He’s… very awkward. In an endearing way. He gets lost in thought a lot, like— okay, for instance, this one time he was refilling a salt shaker but not paying attention, and it overflowed. He didn’t notice for like fifteen seconds. It was so… human.’
You turn another Adrian page, ‘I think the only things worth capturing in art are things desperately alive.’
He’s glad you can’t see an inch of his skin, because at your words, he gulps and reddens. He feels very exposed. He should be made sad, he thinks, to be described as awkward.
Though, you speak of it— his awkwardness— with hushed tones and attentive, reverent favor.
You offer a window into your thought process. And if his awkwardness is what’s gotten your attention, holy fuck, he’ll start tripping over himself to keep it.
‘You- you draw him a lot.’
‘C’monnnn. He’s cute! Something of a muse, in my humble opinion.’ A red string ties itself in his chest as he listens to you go on, weaving in and out of his ribs until it makes a bow. The beginnings of attachment. ‘With these people, you wonder what they think about, what they go home to. What do they notice in other people? Sometimes you can even try to pin a kink on ‘em.’
‘That’s disgusting!’ He laughs, clearly not disgusted, ‘What’s Peacemaker’s kink, do you think?’
He didn’t mean to rhyme. Fuck.
‘Oh, god.’ You laugh through these two words, then you settle back down into your original tone, ‘Probably mass orgies.’
‘Ha!’ He bellows, ‘I want to do one!’
‘Okay, um…’ Your grin is unstoppable. You’re very charmed by his openness. You flit back a couple pages until you reach an old man at a bus stop with an umbrella shielding him from the harsh rain.
‘Him.’ You direct his attention to your pick.
‘Mmmm… choking.’
‘Doing the choking or being choked?’
‘Oh, he’s the chokee. Like getting the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube, but it’s his neck. Old men are freaks like that.’ He nods with total confidence in his conclusion.
Adrian gazes at you as you giggle softly. He feels buried under your temperament. He thought you were beautiful from a far, but now, up close— he’s bearing witness to all the characteristics that make you up, and he sees in you what you see in your subjects.
You continue going through the book, looking for your next shared target. He asks,
‘And the busboy?’
You barely react. And you answer quickly, like you’ve thought about it extensively.
‘Facesitting, definitely.’
‘Wow. That was really fast.’
‘It’s just a guess.’
Not that you would know, but Adrian opens and closes his mouth a couple times before he’s able to get his next question out.
‘Well, I mean, is that desirable? In— in a boyfriend? If he’s cute like you said, would you do that?’
‘What’s hotter than a guy who actually wants to eat you out?’ Adrian feels his face heat up, ‘But I don’t know. I think I’d be too scared of breaking his face and neck by way of vagina.’
You fidget with the edges and binding of your sketchbook, staring off into the street with an upturn to your mouth like you’re really thinking about his question. You seem utterly comfortable.
Adrian scratches the back of his neck timidly. He looks out into the dark with you now, too warm under his mask to keep looking at you.
‘No way. He looks like he has a really strong face. And he probably, definitely knows where the clitoris is. And he probably doesn’t even finish kinda fast sometimes.’ With each sentence, your face drops a little more from the encouraging grin you’d had before, thoroughly enlivened by the conversation. ‘And probably Fennel Fields has shitty fucking salt shakers to begin with. It’s a losing battle, y’know.’
Head snapping back to him, you make eye contact through his red visor.
‘I… never said it was Fennel Fields.’
The both of you stare into each other for a good while. An unusually quiet while. Adrian is dumbfounded by the fact that he’s fucked up so royally. And not that he especially knows what to say anytime he opens his mouth, but he definitely doesn’t know now.
You realize now why he’s asking so much about the busboy.
You stand suddenly, sketchbook snapping closed.
‘You’re him! Holy fuck!’ These are words spoken with all the essence of a child that’s been told Santa isn’t real. You’re embarrassed, too, for all the exposing you’d done on your thoughts about the busboy.
Any mystique the either of you had lays shred to ribbons at your feet.
‘N—… no…!’ Anxiety crawls up into Adrian’s chest.
‘Oh, god.’ You step up on your porch now to put some distance between the two of you.
‘Shh!’ He follows you, waving his hands and whipping his head around to make sure nobody’s come out of their house to see about the calamity.
‘Oh, god!’
Yes, he fears for his secret identity, and heavily. But he also wonders if you, too, felt something snap open inside of you while sitting here with him. He wonders if you’d gotten comfortable, letting it seep into your bones, too. He worries that he’s just ruined it all, starts to panic.
‘Shut up! No, I’m not. I’m who? I don’t even know— Who’re you even talking about? The busboy? I’d never be a busboy.’ His hands come to rest on his hips, and he starts pacing, which isn’t making his argument any more convincing. ‘Not because they aren’t valued workers. Because they very much are! But not me, no way. I work at a different restaurant with better salt shakers. Ones with actual sea salt and— and grinders. So…’
‘Adrian?’ You call to him when his back is to you during his pacing and rambling, just to see if it works— if he reacts to his name out of muscle memory. You’ve never seen it work in real life. You’ve never needed it to work in real life.
He spins around at the sound, frustrated.
‘What?’
A gasp escapes you.
His head drops towards the ground in disappointment. Another dead silent moment passes between the two of you. Your lips curl into themselves and your eyebrows bend into each other, and then it all breaks loose.
‘Oho-ho! You’re really not good at this, dude!’ You bust out in laughter, head thrown back, unable to keep it down at the hilarity of the situation. Though, you suppose you’ve no right to be laughing. You’ve lost something too, even if it is just your dignity.
‘No! Fuck— you tricked me!’ He points and points and points at you accusatorily, index finger wagging up and down. ‘Look—!‘
Adrian places his gloved hands out in front of him in a pacifying manner, like how you’d try to talk someone out of stabbing you. He steps a little closer, prepares to strike a bargain with you, or beg, or perhaps appeal to your humanity, or beg. Yeah, probably begging is the best course of action. But you interrupt him before he’s got the chance.
‘I’m not gonna tell anyone.’
‘No?’
‘Got no reason to. You brought my baby back to me.’ You make your intentions clear, nodding to the sketchbook in your hands, and Adrian has no good reason to not believe you other than the fact that he can mistake sarcasm for candor. Your intonation, if anything, is still friendly. You aren't cruel, or condescending, or taking him for an opportunity to blackmail someone.
‘That’s… okay, yeah. Good. Thanks.’
‘No problem. I’m gonna keep my fifty, though.’
‘Sure, yeah.’
‘Just— did you… I mean,’ You struggle to find the correct words to not embarrass yourself, ‘I’ve never shown anybody my work before. Did you like how I drew you?’
‘They’re so cool, are you kidding? It’s like looking in a mirror, but more handsome and juicy. I want to tape those over every mirror in my house.’ He reverts back to the person you were talking to comfortably five minutes ago, like all strange interaction between the two of you is forgotten, a smile evident in his tone. ‘I’ve never been drawn before. Didn’t think I was a good reference outta the suit.’
‘Well, now you know better.’ You smile at him for what you think is the last time.
Adrian feels the conversation close naturally, and thinks this would probably be the appropriate time to leave. His legs start to walk down the stairs and then away forever, but his foot never touches down on the step, because he’s spinning back around to you almost immediately.
‘Before I go, though… can I ask a teensy favor?’
-
You move a chair from your kitchen to a place with better lighting. Adrian no-last-name, or Vigilante, sits well for his portrait. While you’ve been sketching away, he’s been trying his damn hardest to stay as still as possible. That is, he keeps his body in place, but he talks like he’s running out of time on earth.
Usually one portrait would take you about twenty minutes, but you allow yourself to stretch it to a half hour to make sure it’s adequate for such special circumstances, and because you’re very much enjoying this dynamic. You’ve missed it, all this time; the connection between muse and artist. How bonding it can be.
There are very little pauses between the two of you because he’s got so much on his mind. The conversation flows freely. And when one of his questions is answered graciously by you, another takes it’s place. You keep the wheel spinning, much to his delight, by asking him questions right back. About his suit, his job, his other job, his hobbies— the things that make him happy. Adrian smiles giddy and easily excitable under his mask. His friends rarely ask him honest questions, as he’s already so eager to give too much information. It feels good to be inquired about. You don’t shush him or ask him to do anything differently. Your mistrust of him is all used up and long abandoned the moment he revealed your lost sketchbook.
It’s not a regular sketch, this one. He keeps his suit and mask on. You don’t ask why, and you don’t ask him to take it off. It’s possible he’s just not comfortable enough, and you aim to draw people exactly as they are, not how they should be. You think maybe after already having so many portraits as Adrian, he’d like one as his counterpart.
You put more effort and time into this drawing. You shade the darkest parts of his visage with a deep blue pencil instead of black, and you make his red visor the centerpiece. It’s stylistic, still, but it would be easy for anyone to tell who the drawing represents.
It’s that murderer guy from the news.
You realize you can’t remember the last time you drew someone that asked to be drawn. And in the same vein, someone you’ve honestly connected with. That murderer guy has thrown a wrench in your routine. You open up to it, letting it wash all over you.
You place the finishing touches, clean it up around the edges, and you’re about to slide the drawing into a manila envelope to ensure it won't smudge on the ride home when he bounds over from his chair and points to it.
‘Hey, it’s not done.’
‘Hmm?’
‘You forgot your note. Your caption thing. To remember.’
‘Yeah, bossy? Anything else?’ You raise your eyebrows, giving him a clear opportunity to try his luck at getting your contact information. Or maybe giving his. Something. Anything.
‘You’re doing the hinting thing that girls do.’
‘Mhm.’
‘I’m never good at this. Um… A kiss on the mouth part of my mask?’ He points, as if his words hadn’t been enough to paint an image.
‘I was thinking more like… my phone number.’
‘Oh! Yes, please.’ He pulls his phone from his belt and hands it to you.
It’s time for Adrian to go, though he wishes he could stay for a very, uncomfortably long time. Maybe sleep in the bed with you, too.
You don’t rush him. You let him talk your ear off on the way to the door about every single thing he can conjure up, perhaps trying to stall. Which is completely fine with you— because you wish that you could come up with an appropriate reason for him to linger, too.
‘And— he’s like my best friend. My #1 best friend. We’re birds of a feather. Which, by the way, in case you were wondering, if I were a bird I’d be a Peregrine Falcon. They’re the fastest animal in the whole world. You’d think it’s a cheetah, but I looked it up, like, five times to make sure. What bird would you be?’
‘I guess…’ Shrugging, you say, ‘I’ve always thought of myself as a mourning dove type of person. But I think I want you to pick something more interesting for me. Since you’re the bird guy.’
If there’s a certified way to gather what facial expression someone’s making behind a full disguise, you’ve surely mastered it. The cheeks of the mask fill out more, the eyes are blown wide and laser focused, and that’s how you know he’s smiling big. Along with the obvious bodily excitement.
‘Oh, man! No one ever fucking asks me anything that cool! Okay, well first of all, doves are foragers, so that’s no good.’
‘Do tell.’
‘You’re a hunter. I mean, you’re so specific about the people you draw! You’d be a Great Blue Heron. They eat fish and frogs and shit. Even small human children sometimes.’
‘I don’t think that last part’s true.’
‘They’re solitary creatures most of the time, especially when hunting.’ You open the door for him and you both stand face to face in front of the night that’s ready to receive him again. ‘And they’ve got killer eyesight. And they’re smart and beautiful and majestic, like if dragons were real.’
You blink up at him, taken aback. ‘And… you think that’s like me?’
‘Well, yeah.’ He says it with utmost confidence as he turns to leave, like it’s plain to see that you’re all of those things. You grab his face softly before he’s able to go from you completely, and standing on your tiptoes, you plant a kiss on his shrouded mouth. You let it linger for a second so you can feel him tentatively press back against you through the fabric. And then in a moment, it’s over.
You search under his visor for a reaction, but his eyes are still closed.
‘Wow.’ He speaks, tone dreamy and uncaring about hiding his surprise. He’s uncharacteristically still, nothing having moved an inch except for his lips.
‘You okay?’ You let your hands fall from his face and grasp his biceps comfortingly in concern.
‘You don’t even know how long that’s been a fantasy of mine. Thanks.’
‘You’re very welcome, Vigilante.’ You speak with newfound poise.
‘I um—‘ He clears his throat, ‘I have a boner, so I have to go now.’ Vigilante skips down the steps of your stoop and you lean against the door frame, watching him go fondly. You gather your thoughts in your arms softly; about how weird this whole exchange has been. And how you have a strange feeling it’ll happen again. You just smile at him as he goes. He starts down the sidewalk, and you see him adjust the crotch of his pants.
‘Hey, don’t read it until you get home!’ You call after him, and he doesn’t turn around, but he does speed up his pace drastically into an all out run to where you assume his car is parked.
‘Kay!’ He calls back, feet carrying him swiftly into the night.
-
Surprisingly, he does wait to read it until he gets home. The page calls to him from the passenger seat, and he keeps sneaking glances away from the road to gaze upon the envelope. No one would ever know if he tore it open now, but no matter how serious or unserious your instruction was— it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth to disobey you.
Adrian arrives home and busts through the door to his top secret room like a storm. He sheds the Vigilante mask and wastes no time. He reads it, and he smiles big and wide and toothy and exuberant.
Rereading it a couple more times from start to finish, he touches his bare fingertips to your handwriting. Then, he pins the portrait to the wall above his desk, careful to not crease it in any way as he does so.
He stands back a bit from it and stares as if he’s at a museum. This is a trophy. A testament to how he can be perceived and remembered, even by someone as good as you. He lets his chest fill with hard-won heat.
He replays the highlights in his head.
He remembers you calling him cute.
He remembers you calling him a muse. Your muse.
He remembers, with flushed red cheeks, how he didn’t even have to look you up in the Evergreen Whitepages to find your phone number. You’d willingly given it.
He remembers the kiss. He laughs— howls in celebration. Grinning like an idiot, he bounces on his feet for a second before he breaks into a full body expression. He punches the air and mimes kicking ass until he’s out of breath. Mutters to himself,
‘Fuck, yeah.’
Thus, the caption reads:
Vigilante. Bad liar, exemplary subject, ostensibly into face-sitting
And a little farther down, like it was added postscriptum,
