actually oh my goodness....he kisses so sweet and sloppy i loveeee this man okay so....
here are more of my thoughts and headcanons on that sweet farm-raised man. let me know if ya’ll would like me to elaborate on somethin!
modern!farmer!dunk hcs ୨ৎˎˊ˗
it's not a quaint little hobby farm. it's a serious operation. hundreds of acres of crops and a dedicated pasture for his small herd of beef cattle and horses. he's got a beat-up, mud-splattered 1970 ford f-250. the interior is surprisingly tidy though. his barn is a huge, well-kept structure, and his house is a sturdy, no-nonsense farmhouse that he built you with his own hands. it's clean, comfortable, and perfect for raising 7 muddy barefoot babies…
in town, he's known as "dunk the tank." he's a giant of a man, quiet and reserved, with a work ethic that's borderline legendary. he's underestimated, made to feel simple at times and maybe a little feared for his sheer size.
he's not a man of many words, but he's your good, honest man and he says a lot to you where it counts.
you had moved to the small town to escape the city. you find yourself in the little cottage on the edge of his property by the pre-school. your first meeting is him coming over to introduce himself because it's only neighborly to do so...and he did catch a glimpse of you moving in and it's not his fault his heartbeat rings in his ears every time he sees you tending to your garden!
so he's standing there, all almost 7'0" of him, looking like a brawny maypole in a flannel shirt, and says in a low rumble, "saw you got some trouble with the fence. i can fix that for you."
the talking stage…it's slow. so slow. he'll show up unannounced with a bag of fresh-picked vegetables and eggs or a cord of firewood "for the winter." he'll just lean against his truck, talking about the weather or the price of feed, while you try not to stare at the way his biceps strain against his sleeves.
his way of asking you out is, "the sweetpea diner's got good pie on fridays. i'll be there 'round seven. if you're...around." it's the most casual, non-committal invitation you've ever received, but the hope in his eyes is everything.
the first kiss… it happens on your porch swing after a dinner you had cooked for him as payment for fixing your fence…because he refused any sort of real payment.
you went for a sundown walk with him after dessert. and by the time he walks you back to your door, the silence is thick with unspoken things.
he stops, turns to you, and just looks at you for a long moment. then he leans down, and it's exactly as you imagine, sweet and sloppy. he's a little clumsy, like he's not sure of the angle, and his lips are soft and a little chapped.
he tastes like the cherry pie he had for dessert and black coffee. it's not a practiced, movie-perfect kiss, it's real and a little messy and so incredibly earnest it makes your heart ache. when he pulls back, his face is flushed and he looks so hopeful and nervous you have to pull him back down by his collar for another one.
once he's settled comfortably in the relationship, he's all about it. he's a man who works with his hands, and his love language is touch.
he's always got a hand on you. on the small of your back as you walk through the grocery store. on your thigh when you're sitting on the couch watching tv.
he'll come in from the fields, covered in dirt and sweat, and just wrap his arms around you from behind, burying his face in your neck and breathing you in. "you gotta shower dunk…" you smile and he replies with, "do you maybe want join me then?"
he loves to scoop you up. it's his favorite party trick. you'll be mid-sentence and he'll just hoist you over his shoulder like a sack of feed, laughing at your shrieks.
and in the bedroom…
oh, it's so good. he's all about giving pleasure. he could cum from watching you cum. you are like his own personal playboy centerfold.
he's strong and has insane stamina, but he's also surprisingly gentle. he's fascinated by your body, exploring every inch with his calloused hands.
he loves going down on you, and he's amazing at it, all sloppy and enthusiastic and completely dedicated to making you fall apart.
it takes you both a minute to work up to your pussy taking his cock fully. he's a talker in bed, all low praises and gruff commands. "that's it, take it," "that’s my fucking girl" "look at me pretty thing, look at me when you cum." all while clamping down hard cumming all over his girthy cock!!!
I wrote this under psychosis when the show was airing. I forgot all about this but I want to post stuff even if it’s unfinished from now on. This is a modern AU of sorts, implied to be in the same college idk here
—————————————————————-
One very true statement and very true fact is that Duncan is tall. He’s huge actually. It’s the first thing you notice about him if not the first thing you notice in the room. Through your developing friendship with him you’ve mostly gotten used to such a difference in height between him and you and the rest of the world. But the issue is that his height enhances every aspect of his personality and you can’t take it. An overt feeling of anticipation runs through you. You feel it run through you, up your back and to your hands like a wave of static.
Sitting across him there is still a difference in eye level. Sitting next to him and seeing how small you are compared to him. He’s a polite boy, he scoots over to make room for you and always saves you a spot. But sitting by side by side is enough for you to think about how easy it is for him to place you on his lap. You try to block it out usually because it’s not the appropriate time for such musings.
But his good nature keeps you present. There was a time when the two of you were grabbing lunch at a dining hall. Which in itself was also mildly scandalous, it’s one thing to be seen with your peers around campus another to be seen with the same young man outside consistently. It was busy that day and you and Dunc squeezed yourselves in two seats at a counter. You were trying to scoot closer to him to both get farther from the rowdier strangers next you and to also exploit the opportunity to be near those big blue eyes. Upon seeing you struggle he simply grabbed the base of the chair with one hand and slid you over with ease. A smooth and cocky play if performed by anyone other than your sweet Dunc. He’s shy and sheepish as if just now realizing what he did could be seen as forward. The surprise from his strength is followed by adoration from seeing his sweet little apology for whatever he think he did wrong. It fills you with such warmth you’re grinning when you assure him it’s fine.
You grow so fond of him, you become comfortable around him entirely. You and him are a pair. You meet outside of campus for things other than grabbing a bite. He comes with you for all your errands and little shopping trips. He stands over your shoulder in the narrow busy aisles of the store to see what you’ve written down so he may make your trip quicker by doing his part in retrieving it. You feel him, broad chest and arms as you try to concentrate on your errands. He takes the basket when it starts to get heavy and reaches for what you can’t on the top shelf. He almost feels like a boyfriend.
The more you’re used to him and his consideration the more tense you feel around him at the same time time. It’s not fair he’s so so nice, helping you with what you need. He never oversteps but he’s gotten so used to you as well that it’s second nature to him to use his size out of instinct. Again when it’s busy and when his main focus is to be a good friend his priority becomes protecting you. There’s so much noise and people that his focus turns into making sure you’re safe. Crowded trains are torture to you. Duncan slots himself in between you and the rest of the full carriage. You doubt people who come in can even see you hiding behind him, he’s far too broad. It doesn’t help being face to face, leaving you to mindlessly chit chat to get through the ride. Even that proves fatal, curse him for leaning down toward you to hear you better. Once the train hit a turn too heavy and caused you to lose your balance slightly. You were caught by Duncan placing a large hand on your waist to steady you. Your side burned while he complained of lousy conductors. While he’s focused on getting you home you’re too busy fighting with yourself, because one of these days you’ll give into indulgence. It feels inevitable, to have him under you in all his size.
Hey so heartburn 8 was fucking insane the best smut I have ever read. It's been a day and I haven't stopped thinking about it. Stop putting crack in ur fics I'm getting addicted and going to rehab. I'm not normal about this omg, pls put a support group for us(like dunk I'm done for)
Never stop writing
I don't think I can handle another chapter u might kill me if they do get together andddd then have sex
KISSING YOU ON THE MOUTH! *consensually* Thank you so, so much ♥️What if I tell you they have some freaky, bumpy road ahead of them before getting together properly?
And well, technically I do have a support group. I have a small, friendly discord server, which started off as a Mr Viktor R. Cane commune, but since then evolved and moved through a few fandoms. We have a small AKOTSK section for drooling over Dunk gifs/arts. I probably won't advertise it here much, but if anyone sees it and would like to hop in, grab an invite.
thank you to the lovely anon who sent in a bunch of their reqs into my inbox, i’m so grateful you decided to pass your smutty torch onto me🥹
moans bounced off the walls as daeron thrusted into you, his moves languid yet sharp, jabbing gasps forming on your lips. your legs were wrapped around his waist, pulling both of your pelvises closer together. each movement was euphoric, and you couldn’t help but to tangle your hands in daeron’s hair, giving a sharp tug.
it was like a flick of a switch, the world flipping on its axis. daeron’s spine curled like a cat, his movements halting as your fingers embedded themselves into his hair. a sharp mewl left his lips, leaving your eyebrows to draw together. daeron’s sharp thrusts turned into jerky spurts, your lips parting in a gasp as his movements quickly turned into sporadic bursts.
“baby?” you gasp out, nails scratching daeron’s scalp, leaving him a whimpering and moaning mess. “baby, what’s wrong?”
no response passes daeron’s lips, his face twisted in pure pleasure as your fingers continue to card through his hair. it’s then you feel the warmth of his seed seep inside of you, his body jerking at the aftershocks of his orgasm.
a gasp leaves your lips, sharp and hot, rendering you speechless as daeron continues to sporadically rut his hips into yours. “i’m sorry. so fucking sorry.” daeron mumbles, his seed starting to drip down your thighs. “your hands— my hair, i just couldn’t help myself.”
daeron’s words suddenly has it all clicking in your head; your hands tugging at his hair — his reaction. turns out your solemn and quiet boyfriend likes his hair pulled, and you couldn’t help the smirk that tugs at your lips from the realization.
“aww, baby.” you coo, pulling harder at his hair, daeron moaning louder with each pull. “you like it when i play with your hair?”
you feel daeron’s cock twitch inside of you, his eyes screwed shut as you continued to twist and tug at his long blonde strands. “yea-yeah,” daeron gasps, putting all of his body weight onto you before placing his face in the crook of your neck. “don’t stop, sweet girl. please, don’t stop.”
a smile twitched on your lips, fingers locked in daeron’s hair. it was fascinating to see your normally stoney faced boyfriend fall apart, and you would keep this little tick of daeron’s hidden in your back pocket from now on.
Shoot! I— I wasn’t raised there, so— I WASN'T RAISED THERE. Why am I talking louder? Clark, shut up or else I'll fall deeper in love and admiration for you!
contents (nsfw): Dunk x fem!Reader, Modern AU friends to lovers rom-com with pregnancy. Humour, angst, banter, sexual and romantic tension, mentions of jealousy, horny thoughts, acts of service, pregnant sex (🗣️🗣️🗣️) consisting of: standing sex, cowgirl, coming inside, lots of feels, aftercare.
<- previous chapter
MASTERLIST
next chapter -> (12/06)
synopsis: Universe smashes them together. (Pregnancy status: 14-16 weeks, start of the II trimester).
word count: 14K 🤭
a/n: Banner by me, dividers by @strangergraphics, proofread by @hextoken!
It has not even occurred to Dunk that he could date. Last time he tried, he came out of it with his heart all mangled and a new distrust of women who said they liked simple men while meaning simple to keep. Even if he were ready now, to start he would have to meet certain conditions. He would have to talk to women in a way that suggested interest. To do that, he would have to possess some interest in the first place.
When he leaves your flat after an incredibly awkward supper tacked onto what Dunk had thought was an amazing day, he realises he has none. None spare, at least. Whatever ration of interest a man gets issued in life has gone your way entirely and left the cupboard bare. He walks home with the taste of tomato sauce and embarrassment still in his mouth, thinking of how well the baby shopping had gone and how normal it had felt to stand beside you in aisles full of cots and bottles and things neither of you knew how to judge yet. Then dinner, the papers, the maths teacher, and you telling him he could ask her out as if offering him a lift to someplace he did not want to go.
For months after that heart-mangling incident, the one that brought him together with Raymun, Dunk thought falling in love again was a risk he could not afford. Given his generous nature and his inability to keep boundaries where there ought to be some, it seemed only sensible. He had been told he was smothering and that his tendency for enmeshment was fearsome, so staying alone with all those feelings appeared to be the right order of things.
Then Raymun fell in love. With his love came you, and Dunk found himself cured of all his previous resolutions. He took to liking you quickly, and to interest quicker still, because you were the prettiest thing he had ever seen and his eyes, unfortunately, worked well enough with glasses on to make that everybody’s problem. After that came wanting, and there he stayed. For two years he wanted with the low-grade stamina of someone persisting in rain because the bus must come sooner or later. Only every time he gathered enough courage to make a fool of himself, some boyfriend of yours arrived first and had to be withstood. One had a car too loud for the size of his personality. One wore scarves indoors. One called you babe in a tone that made Dunk’s fingers tighten round pint glasses. He endured them all with the pained dignity of livestock at market, and when it finally came to him and you, it went so well he ought to have known the God was setting a trap.
Now, week or so later, he sits on the courtyard bench with a chocolate the maths teacher left in his locker in one hand and a card saying thank you. coffee later? in the other, wondering why on earth he would date someone else when you are out there carrying his child.
A few nights before, he asked Raymun what he thought of it, and Raymun, being Raymun, answered by asking three questions back over the rim of his pint. D’you want to? D’you like her? D’you think she likes you? To the first two Duncan said no, to the third one, I dunno.
Raymun shrugged, offensively simple about it. “Then don’t do it.”
That might have settled the matter if the two of them had not, ten minutes later, gone from one woman to the other as if comparing sacred field notes. Raymun had Rowan’s whole little catalogue ready: how she slept now with one hand under her cheek and the other under her belly though there was barely anything to hold; how she had become adorable over food in a way that made him half mad; how she had discovered the phrase you make it best and used it to turn Raymun into a full-time kitchen servant without ever lifting her voice.
Dunk listened, smiled where he should, laughed where the story asked for it, and felt a small dull sadness open in him at every detail he could not match. He knows your appointments, your nausea, what tea you tolerate, what colour baby clothes you consider criminal. He knows the shape of your feet in black tights and the sound of your voice when illness drags gravel through it. But there are whole ordinary hours of you he has no access to. How you sleep when nobody sees. What you eat at midnight. Whether you talk to the baby yet, or think that daft, or do it only inside your head. Raymun has a life growing round Rowan, messy and domestic and full of crumbs. Dunk has updates, errands, and a longing he keeps trying to dress as good behaviour. Things improve minutely when he's useful, so that is what he focuses on.
“Are you saving that chocolate for later, or can I have it?”
Dunk looks up. Egg stands in front of him with his bag hanging off one shoulder, eyes already fixed on the bar in Dunk’s hand.
“What?”
“The chocolate,” Egg says. “If you’re not eating it.”
“Why? D’you want it?”
Egg’s face opens into a grin so quick and shameless Dunk has to snort. “Well, if it’s upsetting you.”
“Cheeky little—” Dunk mutters, but gives it over anyway.
Egg takes it, drops onto the bench beside him with all the entitlement of a landlord, and starts working at the wrapper. For a moment there is only the crisp little noise of foil and paper. Then he says, with his mouth already full, “So. Are you engaged yet?”
Dunk shuts his eyes. “Jesus Christ.”
“That means no?”
“That means mind your own business.”
Egg chews, unbothered. “You were the one asking me.”
“I did not ask you any such thing.”
“You did. You asked if she ought to be your wife.”
“I asked a general question.”
Egg gives him a flat look.
Dunk huffs and leans back against the bench. “No. We’re not engaged.” Then, too quickly, he adds, “I didn’t ask.”
Egg studies him.
Dunk frowns. “What?”
“You’re lying.”
“I am not.”
“You are.” Egg’s eyes narrow. His bald head tilts a little, and Dunk gets the dreadful sense of a crystal ball being consulted at close range. “Oh,” Egg says. Blinks once, solemn with discovery. “She said no.”
For one full second Dunk thinks he has never been so humiliated in his life, and that includes falling face-first into a mud pit during a staff sports day while children chanted his name like Romans at an execution.
Then Egg adds, “Well, no wonder if you’re flirting with Miss Darry.”
Dunk turns his head very slowly. “I’m doin’ what?”
“Flirting,” Egg says, with a tired patience more fitting for a teacher than a pupil. “With Miss Darry.”
“I am not flirtin’ with Miss Darry.”
“She gave you chocolate.”
“That’s not flirtin’.”
“And a card.”
“That’s gratitude.”
“And she smiles at you with all her teeth.”
Dunk looks down at the card again, then away, as if the thing may sprout more accusations if watched too closely. “She asked me for coffee because I helped mark first-class maths.”
Egg bites off another square of chocolate. “Adults are so bad at knowing when things are happening to them.”
“Listen here, you wee menace—”
“And if you’re having a baby with one lady, you shouldn’t be collecting chocolates from another.”
“I didn’t collect it. It was in my locker.”
“Worse then. She has access.”
Dunk gives him a look. Egg only chews, pleased with himself for about three seconds before his face goes thoughtful again. “Are you going to ask her again?”
Dunk sighs and rubs both hands over his eyes under the glasses. “I don’t know, Egg. Should I, if she said no once? I don’t think so.”
Egg thinks on that. Then his gaze slides past Dunk’s shoulder, towards the black limo nosing up by the school gate. He stuffs the chocolate into his bag with sudden efficiency. “Well,” he says, hopping down from the bench, “you’ve the ring already. You could try asking Miss Darry.”
Dunk grabs him before he can bolt. Egg yelps and laughs as Dunk tucks him under one arm like he weighs no more than a sack of potatoes.
“You little horror,” Dunk says, carrying him across the yard while Egg wriggles without any true commitment to escape. “I ought to leave you in lost property.”
“You can’t. I’m claimed.”
“Aye, unfortunately.”
By the time they reach the car, Egg is still laughing, flushed in the face and indignant in the pleased way children get when an adult has agreed to be ridiculous for them. Dunk opens the back door with his free hand and the laugh goes out of him cleanly.
Maekar Targaryen sits in the back seat, straight-spined in a dark suit, looking at Dunk as if he has been summoned for assessment and found damp. Egg goes quiet too.
He stands there with the boy still half-pinned under his arm. Then he sets him down a little too carefully. Egg smooths his jumper with injured dignity and climbs in.
“Has my boy been misbehaving?” Maekar asks.
Dunk clears his throat. “N-no. No, sir. Jus’—just tomfoolery, is all. Like kids do.”
Maekar’s eyes move from Dunk to Egg, then back again. He gives one small nod, the kind that seems to dismiss and approve in the same motion. “Good day to you, sir,” he says.
“Good day,” Dunk says, and closes the door.
The limo pulls away a moment later, black and polished and awful against the ordinary schoolyard. Dunk watches it go. In the back window Egg lifts a hand without turning round. And Duncan could swear, right before the glass takes Maekar’s face beyond seeing, that the man is smiling.
It brightens him some. Enough that he texts Miss Darry, tells her he’s too busy, and thanks her for the chocolate. Enough that measuring the spare room at your place today, putting everything into the respectable little corner he has arranged with you, feels a fraction lighter.
When he gets there he knocks twice, then a third time, and as he is about to get sweaty all over from the sort of thoughts that bloom out of inertia, he hears your tired voice on the other side of the wood.
“Yes, I’m coming, for fuck’s sake.”
The door opens to reveal you beyond cross, but the minute you see him your face does something utterly strange. It falls back into what Duncan presumes it was before: your mouth frowns with such compulsion the chin dimples under it, your eyes remoisturise, and he knows to add the prefix simply from the already wet redness of them which makes you look like you are battling conjunctivitis.
He steps into the skin of a watchful caretaker as if coming home. “Hey,” he says, reaching for your shoulders. “What’s happenin’, hm?”
“I—” You make that breathless little catch people make when they have been crying for hours. One hand goes to your forehead. “Fuck,” you whine. “It’s today. I’m so sorry. I completely forgot.” Each word comes out damper than the one before, until forgot hitches on the last syllable and a new tear beads on your lashes.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Dunk sighs.
You are always smaller than him, but today exceptionally. He notices the hunch in your neck and the slant of your knees, and is revolted by both because he knows the stance of defeat from muscle memory. He walks you backwards into your own hallway, kicks the door shut behind him, and gathers you in.
“Lassie, c’mon—” he mutters, setting a palm over the back of your head. It is large enough to shield near all of it.
Then you are crying fully. Mumbling I’m sorry and hiccuping into his shirt, clutching at his waist so hard your fingers bite through the cotton. You wipe your face into him, and Dunk aches clean through with it. He rubs your back, rocks you a little, shushes you under his breath, and prays you cannot hear how fast his heart is beating.
When you calm some, he takes your face in both hands and wipes the streaks from under your eyes with his thumbs. “What happened, girl?”
You stare at him. “N-nothing.”
Dunk huffs through a smile.
Your face crumples again, less dramatically this time, more from the nuisance of being known than from fresh misery. “I just… feel like shit,” you say. “Work’s been awful, I’m tired, my back aches, I hate that pregnancy pillow, I don’t want to eat anything I’ve got at home, my hair is greasy, and—”
You stop, swallowing hard.
“And?” he prompts, gentle.
“And I really want to have a bath,” you say, with the malady of a person confessing fraud, “but I’m afraid I won’t be able to get out of it.”
Dunk looks at you for a second. Your eyes are swollen. Your mouth is all dragged down. There is a crease from the pillow still printed faintly on one cheek, and your hair has been tied up and let down and tied again until it has given up all loyalty to shape. “Right,” he says.
You sniff. “Right?”
“Aye.” His thumbs smooth the tear tracks once more, then he lets his hands drop to your shoulders. “We can sort that,” he says. “Why didn’t ye tell me?”
“What,” you croak, “that I’m disgusting?”
“That ye needed help.”
You stare at him, stumped. His eyes are large behind the lenses, soft and kind and warm despite the blue of them, like cold winter light over the ocean. Because you being useful all the time makes everything worse, you think. “I dunno,” you tell him.
Dunk receives that with the grave patience he has for children coming down from a crying fit. “What’s first,” he asks, “food or bath?”
“Bath,” you say, then hesitate. Your eyes move over his face, suddenly unsure. “Would you?”
“Mhm. Course.”
“Won’t that be weird?”
Dunk’s mouth tugs at one corner. “No.” You give him a look. “I’ve seen ye before,” he adds.
“You were drunk.”
“I can get drunk if ye want.”
A laugh, finally. Still damp-faced and wrecked enough for it to catch in the throat. “Sod off.”
“There she is,” Dunk says. “Go change. I’ll run it.”
In the bathroom he has a mild moment of panic. Then, because he is a practical man when panic gives him something to do, he pours far too much of something foamy under the running tap. The bath clouds over quickly. Good. Grand. A civilised barrier between his eyes and certain death. He keeps the water only a few degrees above lukewarm because the app said so, and stands there with one hand under the stream knowing he is going to get clouted for it. He finds he does not mind much.
You step into the bathroom with every nerve in your body alarmed. There is nothing normal about a friend giving you a bath. There is especially nothing normal about this friend. You're being silly, you could just take a shower. When your back gives one dull throb the thought of getting even one ounce of comfort becomes stronger than reason or the entire history of social boundaries. At this point you might agree if Lyonel were the one proposing it, though you’d have to drown yourself after.
Dunk is knelt behind the back of the bath, one sleeve pushed up, arm wet with water and foam. He lifts his head when you come in. His face is already pink, but his voice stays even. “C’mon,” he says. “I won’t look.”
He spreads one arm out for you. It drips on the tile. You come closer, then stop when it comes to taking the robe off. Dunk shuts his eyes with theatrical force.
You huff. “Oh, fuck that. I’d rather have you looking than me breaking my neck over this.”
The robe loosens and peels. Slides down your back. Dunk keeps his lids low, but begrudgingly, he sees.
First your shoulders, tense and rolled a little towards your chest, with the muscle there pulled like a bowstring. Then your back, with a warm bare line carrying the day in every tight place. Lower, where the spine gives way to the small inward dip above your hips, and those two hollows there nearly finish him for reasons he has no language for and too much body for.
He almost manages to skip to your legs and feet. That would have been sensible despite likely to help very little. Yet, his eyes land on your arse and stay there for one harrowing second.
Familiar. Longed-for. Still heavy in his hands if he lets memory have any say in it. He remembers the spill of it into his fingers, the same backs of thighs bracketing his shoulders and the redolence of their apex, kindly facing his nose. The blush deepens on him brutally, laying siege on his neck, face, and, by the feeling of it, scalp too. He thanks the God for not making him bald, and begins to sweat.
What is worse, the angle makes you look unpregnant enough for Dunk to momentarily misplace a reason behind this circumstance. His mind supplies a string of cause and effect: if there are hands, they ought to be held; if there are thighs, they ought to be squeezed; dimples of Venus revered, neck's nape licked, spine unkinked, skin rubbed and felt, buttocks bitten or kissed or outright eaten because they seem delicious to him. Once he gets, barely, past the first involuntary wave of primal depravity, he thinks he might be able to endure it (also barely).
You turn, and he catches enough of the front for the whole experience to morph into lethal. A glimpse of a side-boob, heavy and round, is gorgeous enough for Dunk's heart to recall all the emotions shadowing tenderfoot boy-virgins. Upon leaning, the breasts pour over your ribs and he becomes highly conscious of the reasons for their swelling. His gaze drops to stomach, still mostly yours, still quiet to the eye, but not silent.
He's never put much thought into whether pregnant women are sexy or not, so to see your body and undergo the all-systems seizure is a surprise to him. It seems as if his cock is connected to the heart, that is connected to the head, that is connected to all his limbs that currently tingle. The cock, the heart, and the head agree on one matter: that he's never seen a thing more beautiful in his life and the thought that he's the one who did this to you fills him with smugness and sickening joy.
The belly disappears behind your thigh as you put one foot into the bath, and Duncan comes back to himself enough to lift both arms, hovering, ready in case you need them.
“This is tepid,” you scoff, balancing on his forearm.
Dunk squeezes his eyes shut. “It’s warm,” he says thickly, and knows when you are sat only by the sound of it. Once the water sloshes he deems everything safe enough to see again and cracks his lids open. Kneels behind you, and with some regret, notices that the only visible things now are your head, shoulders and knees.
You lean back and rest your neck on the edge of the bathtub, next to his palm. “Are you temperature-blind too?”
It’s sweet enough that he smiles. Small and murmured so softly he knows, despite complaining, that the service is working. “Ye gonna be mean to me, lass?” he asks.
A pause. “No,” you say. “Sorry.”
His hand slides to your shoulder. Swipes the hair off it. “Besides,” Duncan says, “it’s safer for the baby. The a—”
“The app said so, is it?”
“Point taken.” He blushes fiercer for it. Lets his fingers idle on the apple of the joint, then slip beneath the sheet of water. “I know ladies like to scald themselves in showers and whatnot, but it can’t be this bad, hm?”
“It’s not,” you say.
The dance is very gentle. Dunk hasn’t planned this far, so he doesn’t know how much he’s allowed or what he’s expected to do. One large worry is you saying thank you, I got this, and making him wait outside. One ardent wish is to wash your hair. He lingers on the precipice, stirring the water next to your arm, hoping his hand will decide for him once the opportunity arises.
You seem to not mind. Only ask him, “And how do you suddenly know what ladies like to do in the showers and whatnot?”
“Well believe it or not," Dunk says, "I’ve met some ladies in my life before you.”
You hum at that, then turn your head a little against the rim. “Speaking of,” you start. “How’s your maths lady?”
Dunk frowns. His hand stills. “She’s not my maths lady.”
Another beat. Then: “You know what I mean.”
He thinks about saying that he has no interest in your stupid idea of him dating, and less interest still in hearing you encourage it from the wrong side of a tub while he is trying very hard to keep himself decent. The whole thought comes up too blunt and hot for speech, so he only huffs and draws his hand from the water. “She’s still a colleague,” he says.
Internally, you go: thank fuck. Thank fuck, because despite the whole thing being engineered by your fear-ridden brain, you still wanted to win this one, and you have. For the most part, at least, because Dunk is not dating the maths teacher. Lovely. A smaller part of it belongs to your body’s new flavour of cruelty, which has led you to some humiliating places.
Hinge is not a pond where pregnant women can swim safely. Your logical mind has told you so, basic human hubris has told you so, and Rowan has told you so, then proceeded to help you construct an alluring profile anyway. If anything has announced your transition from the first to the second trimester, it is the mild hots unravelling into full-blown randiness. It has left you leering perversely at anything that has fallen victim to Lyonel’s oral fixation, rolling your hips against the moon-shaped pillow you always secretly imagine to be Duncan, and cannibalising your own lips at any of his texts that could qualify as mildly romantic. Big part of the shame is that even a simple how you? has been filed under that category as of late.
An even bigger part of the shame is the maths teacher. The unexplainable jealousy of her, and the last two weeks spent wondering less how you are going to survive it if it happens than how to prevent it. Showing up at school under petty pretext, wearing one of the belly-revealing tops did not happen only because the summer is technically still spring, and a fool’s one.
Enough became enough when your hand joined the rutting hips and the mouth left agape against plush like you were a teenage girl practising kissing on a mirror. You tried to be normal and available and modern. The app gave you freaks, cowards, lactation enthusiasts, and one man who opened with respectfully, how pregnant? The thought of each sickened you before it excited anything, while thoughts of Dunk remained persistently intrusive. Yes, of that one night, but more, too. Of his hands on you. On your feet, on your belly. Of the way his head dips so his lips can reach your shoulder every time he hugs you. Of the way he blushes at wrong moments and never backtracks from a promised thing. Of his back bared from bowing over the crib. Of his smile. His freckles. His hair in tufts, his slim nails, his shoes being enormous next to yours in the hallway, and the way he says lass like you are someone special to him.
You slide down until your head dunks under the water, just enough to wet your hair. The bath muffles the room for one blessed second, then you come back up blinking and wiping droplets from your eyes with the heel of your hand. When you reach for the shampoo, it’s not there.
The next thing you hear is a wet cough of liquid being squeezed from the bottle. “Is it all right if I do it for ye?” Dunk asks.
You try very hard not to sound giddy. “You want to wash my hair?”
“Well,” he says, practical as a hammer. “You want your hair clean, don’t ye?”
“Y-yeah.” You sit up a little, drawing your knees in until you can fold around yourself. “Sure. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind, girl.” Then, Dunk lathers the shampoo between his palms and slides his fingers into your hair.
The sound you make is small. Small, but it lands in him so badly. Breathy and sweet and gone before you can catch it back. Your head eases into his hands with the whole damp weight of it, and Duncan loves it so immediately he has to look down at your crown to gather himself. Your hair clings to his fingers, slick and heavy with water, softer once the shampoo works through. It parts for him in darkening ropes. Catches between his knuckles. Holds the heat of your skin.
With strands drawn out of the way he can see the knobs of your spine and the line of bathwater teasing the tits that are flattened against your thighs. Technically, he sees nothing. Unfortunately, his imagination works like a warehouse with every shelf badly labelled and all the doors left open.
So he keeps to the work. Slow, circular movements. Fingers at your temples, careful over the sore-feeling places. Behind your ears. Back to the crown. Then, at the nape of your neck, he grows bolder. His whole palm frames it and squeezes. Not hard, only enough to feel the tension ease and give the muscle somewhere to go.
You gasp. “Oh, yes—”
Duncan smiles like an idiot. “Good?”
“Yeah. Yeah, um—” You swallow, throat clicking softly. “Sorry. Sorry for the state of me.”
“Stop that.” His hands still for a second. “There’s nothin’ wrong with your state. It’s blessed, so it is, and I don’t want to hear any more snarks about it.”
Under the correction you go quiet. Worse, you obey it. Your shoulders sink, first from exhaustion and then from something more treacherous, until your body begins accepting the hands on it as if without them it gets wounded with deficiency. The touch works down past the scalp and takes liberties elsewhere: slackens your jaw, unhooks something under the breastbone, sends a warm pulse through your hips that has no regard for context. The last person who touched you with this sort of care was also Duncan, but then it came with drink, darkness, and several hours missing from the timeline. This is worse for being clear. You know where his fingers are. You know where yours are gripping your own knees. You know the water has gone nearly still around you and your body, faithless little beast, is starting to hope he never stops.
When you’re about to lose it and start begging him, touch me, touch me, keep touching me, he stops. “Pass me the shower head, will ye?” Dunk says.
You do, blindly, while scowling at the very bottom of your soul and mourning your losses. He starts the water, tests it against his wrist first, then shields your forehead with his cupped palm and begins rinsing. Warmth floods you. Warmer than the bath, finally, as if the man has discovered mercy after all.
You tip your head back, throat bared long and vulnerable, and it does something murderous to Duncan’s blood pressure.
He takes the gift of your closed eyes to gape. At your teeth showing between parted lips, at your lashes clumping darker with damp, at the small working of your neck when you swallow. He keeps the water from your face with the seriousness of a surgical task, which means he simply has to keep touching you. His palm smooths over your temple, cheek, the slick line of hair. Then, he guides the spray lower and rinses the last of the soap from your back. Sadly, the moment when your hair gets clean arrives.
Dunk turns the shower head off. “There,” he says, voice only a little ruined. “Now for the dreaded part, hm?”
“Yeah,” you say, then swallow. “Just—please don’t laugh.”
Duncan, offended by the very thought, says, “I won’t.” He stands, and because he is occasionally capable of saintliness when directly supervised, fixes his eyes with great discipline on the far wall, the towel rail, the corner of the ceiling, anywhere that is neither tit nor arse. Then his palms slide under your armpits. “Up,” he says.
You make one small noise of protest, but he lifts, and your body goes with him as if someone has pulled a string through the top of you. For one second you are dangling more than rising, knees straightening, feet finding the bath’s floor, water sliding off you in streams. The minute you’re upright your arms cross over yourself, even though your back is to him.
You hear fabric shift. Then the bathrobe lands over your shoulders, heavy and soft, and Dunk’s hands come next, drawing it round you without fuss. A towel follows, catching the wet ends of your hair before they can drip down your spine. He pats rather than rubs, which should be funny and somehow only makes your throat feel narrow.
“Here ye are,” he says. “All in one piece.”
You clutch the robe closed at your chest. “Thank you. Maybe just help me get out?”
He nods. “Course.”
You are prepared for an arm. A forearm, specifically. Something to balance on while you step over the high side of the tub with as much grace as a pregnant woman can manage. Dunk, however, has other ideas.
He comes round to the side, bends, and starts gathering you up. You jerk a little in surprise. “What're you doing?”
He pauses, genuinely baffled, one arm already behind your back and the other slipping under your knees. “Helping?”
“Duncan.”
“C’mon,” he says. “Don’t be a wuss now.”
You put up a final symbolic fight in the form of a suffering look, and Dunk only waits it out.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” you mutter, and let him have you.
He lifts before your body has fully agreed to be lifted. Arms go from hovering to holding, and then the bathroom drops by a few inches. Your stomach dips with it. Your hands fly to his shoulders and clutch there, and you wish for him to read it as some small fear because it's a closer neighbour to dignity than the truth.
He has the weight of you settle against him with such immediate rightness that Dunk has to set his jaw against it. The way he perceives it, you weigh almost nothing and also the entire room, which is troublesome and confusing both. It is simple enough for muscle, so Dunk could carry you to the end of the street and back without thinking much of the effort. Complicated when it gains density. There is your forehead right next to his chin and he tries to be mindful of not scratching it. Where your hair presses his chest the cotton soaks, warms, and darkens. Water slides down your calf, gathers at the heel, and drops onto the floorboards with hollow taps. He walks carefully, as if the flat has become uneven on purpose.
Once he gets to the bedroom, he asks, “Where am I puttin’ ye?”
You turn your face into his shoulder. “The floor is fine.”
So he lowers you as if the floor is miles away until you come back to standing. You look up. He looks down.
The room goes oddly close around the two of you. Your hair drips because he hasn't done a very good job drying it. One cold bead runs from the end of it and lands on the back of his hand. Dunk watches it break there.
“Right,” he says, though nothing has been made right by saying it.
You still have both hands on his shoulders. Your fingers have gone slack, but persist. “Right,” you echo, softer.
He could step back. There is space behind him. There is a whole bed to put between you, a whole hallway to traverse and make you a cup of tea, a whole street to walk to his own place, whole country to run and a whole world to travel, and none of those would make Dunk feel any better.
“D’you need anything else?” he asks. Your eyes flick over his face, and for one mad second he thinks you might say yes.
Yes.
Robbed of touch, you want it back. His fingers in your hair again, nails on scalp, chest to your side, no, to your chest, and sliding and heavy on you until breathing is something you get to indulge in only if you do your maths correctly and gulp once the weight eases. Touch me, hold me, crush me, anything-me, so you don't have to spend another night on a half-arsed tryst with a pillow masquerading as him.
“Hold me,” you say, because the little in- dividing sanity from its opposite has begun to look less like a prefix and more like a plank over a ravine. You could've just said no. It has two letters as well, which should make it sturdier. But the numbers let the no acquire certain overfamiliarity with the in- which would send you back under the covers to scrape his smell from the bathrobe with your teeth and pretend his mouth is at your neck instead of back at his own flat. Anything braver than hold would kick the plank clean out from under you and make the word into a whole insanity with no seam left to hide in. So you choose the hyphen. The smallest scrap. A thing with enough necessity in it to be genuine and enough restraint in it to still let you lie about what you mean.
Dunk is there before you finish thinking. Arms, whole miles of them, come round you, wrap you, then keep wrapping as if the first pass failed to convince him you are caught. It is less a hug than a gathering. He takes you in by increments and still seems to think there is more of you to collect. His body bows around the shape yours takes until his face finds the junction of your shoulder and neck. The bridge of his glasses nudges you there, cold for a second. His mouth stays open against the robe, breath soaking through.
You have to rise onto your toes from the force of it. Your heels lift. Your whole weight goes strange and borrowed, balanced between his arms and the floor, and because he is Duncan he notices and shifts one foot forward so you can lean properly. His hand spreads between your shoulder blades, then drags down your back through the bathrobe. “Ye feel good,” Dunk mutters into you. He keeps rubbing. Finds your spine and makes it look innocent, and the fact of it having to be made to look so speaks for itself. "Smell nice," he says, breathier.
“Dunk,” you say.
He answers with a sound from the chest. A hum, an almost-purr, thickened by the place his face is pressed. “Mm.”
Then he starts rocking you. Barely. Back and forth in a motion so small it could pass for soothing if your body had less imagination. His hand keeps working at you through cotton. Shoulder to waist, waist to shoulder. Makes your toes curl against the floorboards.
Insanity acquires new shape. It becomes an empty bed and sheets cold on one side and morning that holds only one person. It is having a man who knocked you up kept at an arm's length while his nose is wedged into your neck. And maybe loneliness has you both by throats, but for a second you let yourself believe he might want it too and rule that it would be saner to just… ask him.
“Would you—fuck,” you stammer. “Would you consider, uh—” Dunk moves then. Lifts his head off you and looks, making the whole art of producing speech this much harder. Under the scrutiny you manage only: “Can you stay?”
He frowns, puzzled. "Aye, course. Of course I can."
"No. I mean—" You shake your head. "Can you stay with me. Can you—oh God." Your forehead knocks his chest.
Duncan stills, then says, "Girl." He frowns some more and studies the parting of your hair. "Girl, what d’ye need?" he asks. "What d'ye need, just tell me."
"I need—I need—" you start, but fail there. Wonder if there are some other ways of speaking that Dunk would understand, because it turns out asking outright gains so much ridicule on its way out it withdraws itself from the options. Your hand finds his wrist. You put it on your hip first, which is cowardice. Swallow, and proceed: lower, until your arse fills his palm.
He goes rigid. Lets himself be put in place and nothing more. When you look up his eyes are locked somewhere between you. There's an attempt at a kiss; a poor one. You're out of toes to tip onto and out of mouth to purse so it lands off, on his jaw, and becomes something far sweeter and purer than you've had in mind.
"Ah," he says. Gives himself a moment to kickstart the grey matter of his brain and recognize the bit between the cause and effect. It's still very much improbable, but Dunk risks it. "Yer saying—" he whispers. "Ye—you want me?"
A small nod.
“Now?" he asks. His thumb wedges under your chin. "As in: right now? Ye want to—w-with m-me?”
“Yeah?” You cringe. He's stunned for way too long for this to go smoothly. “Shit, I’m sorry—”
“No,” Dunk says. He finds the side of your neck. “No, no, no, don’t be. Don’t be, please—” A gulp. “I w-would. I—yes—I—yes. God, aye, I want to.” Teeth worry his lower lip. “But uh—is it… safe?”
“Yes,” you laugh, for lack of better reactions. “Yes it is, I checked.” With that Dunk's face muddles back into bewilderment he hides very poorly. The hand on your arse tenses. “What?” you mouth.
“Ye checked?” he asks, pouting. “Why did ye check?”
A cold little fright nips through you. “Cause I’m—” you stammer, then let it out in one breath. “God. Going a bit mad here and I considered checking out Hinge but Rowan said I’d attract only creeps right about now so I read a little before I did anything.”
Duncan blinks. Behind the lenses, his lashes move in two enormous dark fans. “H-hinge? You considered Hinge?”
“Y-yes?" you say. He keeps staring. "Duncan, what is it?”
“I—nothing. I mean—nothing.” His eyes drop and grip loosens. The crossness arrives in him by parts, which is how you know it for real: first the stilling of his mouth, then the colour high on his ears, then a hard gulp moving his throat. You have seen him awkward, embarrassed, worried, wounded. This is rarer, and heavier for being held down. “I jus'—”
He sees it with ugly clarity: men with stupid names and blank faces sending you their little texts, all vapid smiles and dead-eyed compliments, asking questions they have no right to ask. Worse, he sees hands attached to them. Mouths. Their shrivelled, hopeful pricks trying to talk their way near the place some ancient, thick part of him has already marked in chalk and blood as his. It horrifies him, the thought itself and how quickly it stands up in him, ready to bite.
“Why do you look unbelievably cross about it, then?” You put your hands on his chest and beneath them his heart is racketing like a drum. It is scary to see him angry. It reminds you how much force lives in him unspent, how much of him is usually lowered on purpose. “Look, I know it’s your baby," you say carefully. "I wouldn't do anything to harm it, alright? I’m just… weird." A sigh. "I fucking hate it here sometimes.”
“W-where?” Dunk asks, hoping you don’t mean his arms.
“In this… body,” you say and Duncan almost blurts out Why? Why, I love this body. I dream of it and think about it often. I want this body to myself.
“It’s strange, and a bit gross, and I sweat a lot and if I’m not sleepy I’m just horny all the time, and I—” you hiccup. “God, I’m sorry, this must be so weird to you. I’m so sorry, please forget I said anything?”
“No,” Dunk says. “No, don’t do that. Don’t do that, I want to—” He catches you back from where you have gone loose in his hold. “I said I’d help you with anything. And I would like that.” He brings his face closer and sets his fingers to your temple. Either the pulse is in you or in him, or both of you have become terrible at keeping quiet under the skin. “What I don’t like is that you considered Hinge before coming to me. And that you say bad things about yourself,” Dunk whispers.
He thinks of courage, then. How it keeps changing shape. He has permission and still there are things lodged in him he cannot ask without sounding small. Do you want me or just anyone? Am I easier than Hinge, or harder, and you are making the effort anyway? Do you remember anything? You come tighter around him, cinching his waist. Your mouths touch and Dunk closes his eyes.
“I like this body,” he says.
His hand slides from your temple to your neck and lower, cautious until cautiousness begins to pain him. He slips his fingers between your skin and the robe near the collar. The other hand finds the knot at your belt and waits. He waits for anything. A twitch, a flinch, a word, some sign that he has gone too far and should be put down for it.
You nod. So Dunk pulls. The belt gives, and the robe loosens round you.
“It’s… hot,” he says, simpleton that he is.
The trouble is, this body has always been hot to him. He has never known how to give it a clean name. Pretty is too innocent for the places his thoughts go after the first look at you. Maddening comes nearer. Now, with you changing in front of him and the change tied back to his own curse of being a man words fail even worse. His hand sneaks beneath the fabric and finds your belly. The backs of his knuckles graze the skin there.
“It’s making a baby for us—” he says, sombre-eyed. “Yer bloody pretty, lass,” Duncan says, because despite wanting to tell you hot, sexy, toothsome, edible, challenging, ripe, built for my grip, spreadable, kissable, gorgeous, dangerous, disastrous, full, an answer to why lads lose their hands and heads, he knows damn well girls always like to be called pretty.
It works wonders. You let him wedge his hands deeper until the collar of the robe slips wide, falls off both shoulders, and by the time it lands round your feet Duncan is so hard he learns a new truth about trousers. None of them are made for him—old jeans, good jeans, jeans chosen by Raymun—all of them turn traitor under enough pressure. He grips your arms without thinking, partly for himself, partly to stop the quick frightened movement you make to cover yourself.
"Dunk—" you whine.
The unfairness of it is clear. "Aye," he says, gone strange. "Aye, sorry. Hold on."
He grabs his T-shirt by the neck and drags it over his head as boys do, glasses nearly going with it. Once his chest is bare your eyes go over him in famished little sweep and Dunk has to lick his own mouth for bracing against it. His hand goes to his belt. What should be simple, since he's undone belts for the larger part of his life without audience, becomes difficult because of the audience precisely. His thumbs are slipping, he's muttering shite twice, and finally gets it open with a jerk too harsh for the poor leather. He shoves everything down so jeans, pants and shame, the whole construction of it, go to mid-thigh before he remembers his feet and has to kick one foot free, then the other, in a small hopping mess that ought to be funny. He cannot spare enough brain to check.
In his trying to match you for nudity so the embarrassment settles in its good bones, Dunk fucks himself over. He's got no idea if he's doing it for you the same way you're doing it for him, but such is a disadvantage of being a man whose dick tells on him: plainness. It would show plain how much he wants you even without it, if only by the heaving of his chest and redness on him. Even without a raging hard-on, which tries to stand proudly but is unable for the weight of it, Duncan's sure you'd recognise the want on him. He can only hope the little kicks of muscle and dew coming from the tip count as honesty rather than greed.
"I'm trying—" he says, quiet, then reaches for you again. "I'm trying to make it even."
Your memory gets jogged instantly, and you seethe at your mind for banking such sight somewhere distant. The pieces you have of him from before arrive anew, with merits of sobriety, of your bedroom's lighting, of him being nervous as sin, somehow managing to make it look as if you are the one doing him a kindness. In the blink between standing freely and being gathered, you catch the hollows under his arms when his biceps flex, the quiver of them kept in their cage of skin, the billow of his stomach with each hard breath and the way his cock gives a small answering throb below it. His body keeps contradicting itself, undecided between muscle and softness, all of it forced into one large being. His knees point a little outward, hips cut into chewable dips, thighs are broad and furred with something too fine for the rest of him. Almost tender-looking, which is mean considering the size of them.
And God above—above. Iliac furrows bracketing his lower belly, lethal enough, sunk deep enough to make him so irrefutably man you gain understanding of why anyone ever got vulgar about those gutters and called them sex lines.
They invite it. They invite thighs to bracket them, tongues to lick down them, mouths to kiss them, fingers to fit inside the grooves, faces to rest there, arses to press back against them until his balls are flattened to buttocks. Before the gathering ends, one demented conclusion gets its claws in you: Duncan is so solid he would remain rideable under any amount of you. He'd last you until the end of this, and then some.
You go where his arms take you. Up, higher, and higher, for in this over-fervour neither of you seems interested in the limit to climbing another person. His neck gets yoked by your grip, hands find your ass, and he uses the pardon lifting grants him to clutch it until the flesh goes hard. Karma for this indulgence is instant: the weep from between your legs drags his cock, makes him groan loud and torn, and since there’s no pity in your face he knows disguising it as effort has failed.
Locked in this full-body shackle, Duncan feels sexy. Holding a woman he’s put a baby into while remaining helpless makes him feel accomplished. You’re carriable, though to say light is to rob you of the resplendent human burden he believes himself created to keep. Belly still small enough to not get crushed, you cling to him, and every press of you on his torso makes Duncan beg the powers that be to not render him a one-pump chump.
“I don’t think we’re ever even,” you say. You seem to trust his muscles despite their tremble, for one of your hands comes to caress his face. He brings himself closer to it.
His beautiful face, lips of which he bites constantly, nose of which rubs next to yours, eyes of which drill into you with their perfect hopeful blue, and you're certain it eludes Duncan what you mean, and instills some idea about you being clever.
None of you are. We're never even because you're behind with your wanting, both of you think at each other violently.
"Aye," he says. Reckons you're telling him he's the fool here, and agrees. "I've got ye though," Duncan says, voice a little ruined because he very much does not got himself. He seeks your mouth anyway. "Can I kiss ye?"
Show, don't tell, your lips go. They flatten to his first. Wet, firm, already enough to make some working part of Duncan’s brain step off the ledge. Then you open and hum into him, and he goes near stupid with it. His breathing turns loud through his nose. The hands under your ass squeeze, then knead, because that is the only remedy for the overwhelming urge to grab your face and take more of your mouth than he’s been given.
Thankfully, you grant it. Deepen the kiss yourself, wedge your tongue inside and bring one hand to his throat to hold him there. The squeeze is light, but brands him anyway. His head swells with all the yearning things, all the I want you, yes, you are wanted like this, yes, your body is safe with me, yes, I can hold it, yes, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, because he loves it when you kiss him. He loves your hands on him. God, Dunk is so fucked already that his mouth breaks from yours only enough to say, “I meant it.”
You just hum back, busy licking at his teeth.
“I do like this body,” he says. “Wasn’t sayin’ it to keep ye sweet. I like it fierce.” Then, he starts rocking you against him. Small at first, and less so when your grip tightens round his neck. His hands spread you, part you at the cheeks until his fingers brush the slick edges of your pussy. You keep kissing him. Keep taking his mouth as if the hand between your thighs is only another thing you have decided to allow.
You’re wet. He goes so mad with it his grip adjusts. The head of his cock finds the slick and slips through it, messy and blunt and enough to make him drag his mouth open under yours. “I want to fuck ye so badly,” he says, leaving himself there for you to take what you need from him. “Want you to fuck me back, girl,” Duncan says, and in the same second, he breaches.
You take. Seize and clench and grab so hard your jaw sets itself, and from the back of your throat crawls a dry click that bounces off Duncan’s uneven enamel. Then “F-fuck,” comes out of you and disintegrates into a grunt once more of him gets inside you. It’s rupturous, rapturous, poetic and honest. Fucking great, is what it is, to have your whining and moping and complaining answered with the ardent keenness of a man who acts like he owes you his life for keeping a baby you want anyway. A private crumb of you finds it in itself to admit that you want it because it’s his.
"You're so—" you say, mouth dry. "Strong."
He smiles, so sweetly. Like you've done him some kindness. You could say pretty. Handsome, lovely, good, but the way he holds you brings strong to your mind first.
"Ye good then?" he asks, grinning. Sinking. There's more of him, and more, and you keep waiting for your buttocks to meet his hips but the meeting is getting postponed by endless inches.
"Yeah," you tell him.
Good is a mild descriptor. The spread burns deliciously. Melts into a deep ache with warmth at its rim your body recognises as something it's owed, and by rights. Feet cold from the strain of thighs cinching his waist, you get struck by the contrast of temperatures. His hips, hot to the bone, twitch once, as if begging for more sense than he has given them, and you encourage that craving with a brush of thumb on his throat. "Keep going," you say. "Just… don't drop me."
Never. He'd rather take a cramp to the calf, a bowie to the ribs, a bat to the kneecap, a deconstruction to the troth, a nail to the head and hail to the thief than rid himself of the holy parsimony raging in his muscles from not driving into you outright. He gets you on the whole of himself slowly, gently, and once he's all safe and sound within your splendid womb, Duncan whispers, "I'd never."
In his head lives a fantasy that converts him from being a last resort into a yearner who's finally wanted after weeks of expressing bravery through adept courtship. He's taken you to a date during which you've let him get the chair for you and call the waiter. Then your hand has brushed his on the menu and the foolhardy Duncan has closed his palm around your fingers, and you let him do that too. You've smiled at him with lips smeared glossy, set his arm round your shoulders on the way home and climbed onto your toes so he could kiss you.
He's kissed you plenty. You've been teasing, flirting and taunting him beyond what's legal. The pinnacle of it happens in your bedroom where, with its lights dimmed, Duncan acquires a skill to his fingers, otherwise absent. He undoes the button of your trousers, wedges flat palms under the fabric and slides all your layers down by the power of thumbs cleverly hooked over the waistbands. Comes back up, groping your thighs and arse, and finds the clasp of your bra that's for once his ally. His hands don't shake. The lace peels off your tits. There are dents in the skin where it has held you against gravity and he learns that when breasts become honest about their weight and lower onto ribcage is one of his favourite sights.
He lifts you to show you how strong he is, how reliable. To see if you'd let him, too. You wrap yourself around him, cinch his belly and neck with your limbs. With his cock exposed to elements he keeps kissing you and rocking you against his hips until the first contact is made. The tip parts your lips and you gasp. Nerve endings hone themselves to receive pleasure only. He quells the resistance, burrows himself fully, and his brain loses capacity of telling fantasy from reality. He's stuck in the former, where he is confident and worthy.
You moan, full-mouthed. Duncan smiles, and coos, "Biiiig stretch." Then, he realises he has said it out loud, and the whole brave idiot in his head drops dead.
"I—" he stammers. Doesn't get to finish because there's a small snort against his lips, then laughter, and your whole irriguous insides start quaking with it, making him clench his jaw. "Luv," he grits, squeezing your arse.
"Since when are you so smug?" you ask. Kiss him for it like he's done something right. "I like it," you tell him. "C'mon Dunk. I can take it."
You like it on him too much. The borrowed shape of nerve and whole posture stolen from a man with better practice sits on Duncan as if it has been waiting for him to grow into it. It straightens something in him and squares him. Gives his mouth a sharper line and makes his arms look less accidental, less apologetic, more like boons he has finally decided to use.
For you. On you. Because you asked.
That thought bubbles foul and honeyed in your head. Your need, somehow, has overthrown his usual inadequacy. It has dragged him upright by the scruff and put him where you have privately wanted him for longer than is reasonable to admit: proud, useful, pleased with himself for pleasing you. A small, dangerous idea puts down a root somewhere tender. That maybe, if the whole thing had not come at you backwards and sideways, you might have made each other better on purpose.
You jerk on him with your hips, impatient and clumsy. Duncan huffs a laugh against your mouth, startled into himself again. “Aye,” he says, abashed. “Aye, I’ve got ye.”
Then, he moves. The first lift makes your thighs seize round him. The first descent makes the breath go blunt in your chest. He does it slowly because he is trying to be good, and because you are wrapped round him in a way that leaves no margin for errors. Hands under your buttocks with fingers sunk deep and heels of them taking the weight where your body spills. He works you on him with the plain problem-solving force of moving something heavy and dear and alive, and every inch down feels discovered twice: once by the body and once by the greedy mind that knows whose body this is.
A body that gets filled. Emptied. Filled again.
His cock muscles in with its girth so ample you can tell which veins of him pulse hardest. It leaves you hollow for a beat, then comes back so surely your belly coils, coaxing tight wheezes of air out of you. Each time he lowers you, your clit slaps against the hair below his navel. The scratch blooms as little bright injury you start anticipating. You know the rhythm by the third time. By the fourth, your hips are trying to meet it and the whole diaphragm of pelvis flexes to keep him. By the fifth, your nails have found his neck.
It is complicated only if you let thought get involved. You are held up by his strength, dependent on it, opened and moved because he can do that to you and because you told him to. Your feet cannot find purchase, your balance belongs to him, and still the power of it sits in your own throat. You could stop him with a word. You could break him with praise. You could make him harder by saying his name the right way, and there is an equality in it you've never managed to find by standing level with anyone. A strange fairness made out of mismatched sizes and opposite hungers.
On another level it is dead simple. Duncan is strong enough to lift you and kind enough to listen. You are wet enough to take him and mean enough, now, to enjoy what it does to his face.
Your hand tightens enough for your thumb to press the bob of his throat when the pleasure finds its proper shape. Between your legs first, then higher, into your chest, under the tongue, behind the eyes. “There,” you tell him. “Right there. Oh, fuck, Duncan—”
His whole expression changes, but he keeps it at there. Holds the found angle with severe compliance, lifting and lowering you through the same strip of bliss until the repetition makes you go doll-like. Fucked so well you’re certain your face drains of every hint that intelligence lives anywhere within it, so you hide it in his. You press your nose into his cheek so hard you can feel the solid outline of his teeth through skin. His glasses prod your forehead. Both mouths just hang open since kissing has become too skilled an activity for either of you. Instead, you breathe loud, ugly breaths into him, like you’re the one doing the lifting.
Duncan watches you from too close. His eyes go blurry behind the lenses. “Good?” he mumbles, raspy.
Silly man, you think. Yes, good, yes, keep going, yes, until rather than speaking your body just shows him how good. Your calves lock themselves at the small of his back so fiercely he has nowhere to go but deeper. The first cramp takes you there, then the next, each one making your cunt grip him in greedy shocks until your breath turns useless against his face.
It is liquid succour poured over bone and bruise, if the bruise were months of being devastatingly unfucked while Duncan keeps being his best self in your orbit. In the tightness your body shapes you can feel him throbbing, worse and better for being held there. His arms close round your waist and keep you, while the orgasm spends its havoc through you. Eyes roll back in your skull. Your head fills with cotton, warm and sodden, and the room dims as if set a few feet underwater. In it, you register him moving.
Duncan’s thighs are on fire. He has no idea how he hasn’t spilled yet (given that he's just witnessed your eyes doing the thing, and at last in the right context), and he worries briefly that something in him has gone broken. He takes three stumbling steps backwards until his calves strike the edge of the bed. So he sits. You quiver on him, and he stays there stunned, holding you through the last of it. When it’s over he falls onto his back with you clutched to his chest, still hard inside you.
For a moment he thinks perhaps that was it. That the body can be fooled by mercy if the wanting is severe enough. Everything in him has pulled tight, gone blind, endured the full sweet punishment of you coming around him, and surely after such a thing a man ought to be empty and softened. Released from service. None of that, though. His occupation is to lie there with his cock still buried and aching, too hard for comfort, lit by some phantom ending that never arrived. When you shift on him the smallest amount, the sting runs from root to tip, raw in its brightness, making his stomach ripple.
“It’s good,” you tell him, voice loose. “God, you’re good.”
Dunk shuts his eyes.
There is praise, and then there is whatever that does to him. It gets deep into bloodstream and starts moving in his veins. Then you start moving too, and Duncan knows for sure he has not come yet.
You push off his chest. Bestraddled, he watches the ascent diligently: your tits hang heavier when you’re bowed and settle once your back straightens. There, they shift slightly outward. The weight of them travels until skin draws fine and taut from sternum to collarbone. The upper slopes lift with your breath, but the undersides lower and stay there. Flesh touches flesh with a softness so plain and human Duncan’s mouth fills with spit.
His hand goes because it must. It reaches and fits under one breast with the strange exactness of a thing made to house him without asking. He wedges the span from thumb to forefinger into the crease. Your tit settles over his knuckles, warm and fuller than memory, and beneath the heel of his palm your heart beats hard enough to rival his.
Light catches you so that he can tell the change. His fingers find your stomach with their backs, just grazing, and the skin there is soft in a way that puts daft images in his head, small impossible creatures made of satin and warm milk and whatever else men with sex-drunk brains invent when faced with a woman.
Then, his whole hand covers your belly, and that is much worse. Worse in the sense of too much lack landing in his grip. He spans an area so vast all sensible parts of his mind get blown out. Under that touch, your hips roll. Duncan sucks in a stinging breath, then grits, "What're ye doing, girl?"
You cover his palm with yours, and bring the other back to his throat. Curled fingers, clever fingers, hold him where pulse does its best to tightrope between excitement and peril. Then, you clench, slow and mean enough for his heart to stop completely for one whole second. “Making you come,” you say, though for Duncan it's more like making you die. “I want to see your face when you do and remember it this time.”
He chokes a little, tries to cover it with a groan and it all comes out mixed and mangled into some shape of your name Dunk's never said out loud. His hips rise because he becomes an overeager boy who loses the battle to greed. "Christ, f-fu—" he says, then bends his knees under you to help you solve a problem that is his cock begging for friction. It gives you something better to use, and God help him, you use it. Rock down, grind forward, take the part of him he has been trying so hard to keep courteous and turn it into a tool for his wreckage.
The deconstruction of Duncan begins at the points of him that carry profound sense for the predicament he's in: the head of his cock, raging with heat; the ridge under it, rubbed raw with your slick; the tight forlorn pull in his balls every time your hips drag back and make his body expect relief, then deny it with a new descent. Duncan crumbles by fractions. First a sound, then a twitch. Then the last of his good posture. His hands fumble, find your waist, lose it, and finally pull.
You fall forward over him and catch yourself with one palm beside his head, saving his throat from the full weight of you, though the loss grieves him instantly. He would have taken it, happily, dumbly, with his windpipe dented and gratitude leaking out his ears. Instead he grips your arse and the broad of your hips where God, in a rare moment of sense, has granted you handles Duncan can delude himself into thinking are there for his enjoyment.
“What do you need?” you ask, breathy and gorgeous above him, cheeks shining, forehead damp, mouth all used-looking from him and still asking.
Dunk looks up at you and has to search himself for speech. Most of him is gone already. What remains has no pride worth naming. “Use me,” he murmurs, and pours all the devotion he has for you into the miserable little shape of it. His fingers dig in. “Use me, girl.” Under your sharpening eyes, he grasps at the fortitude built badly enough it cannot hold one form for long, and adds, smaller, "And kiss me."
You blink. Lower yourself and take his upper lip between yours, suck it softly, then give him a sweet, taunting nibble that has his hips punching up. The flesh pulls, stretches, slips free redder, and you smile against it in a way that makes him want to confess to crimes he has not yet committed.
Your arms wind round his neck. It opens him up under you, throat bared, and you go there with filthy acumen. Lick a long wet path over the pulse and tendon, up where his skin goes tender under the jaw, then to the shell of his ear. Your breath arrives first. Hot, broken, full of effort. “Talk to me,” you whisper. “Tell me how you feel.”
For an answer, Dunk moans. He means to do better, he does. But you are panting now, rutting down on him fast enough that the bedframe remembers the both of you, fingers threaded in his hair, hips working him with that half-desperate rhythm he ought to be ashamed of loving. Your cunt keeps taking him and taking him, and there is no clean thought left in him. Only this. Only breath.
When you lift your head, something in his face changes. "Dunk?" He only blinks too many times. “Do you want to stop?” you ask.
His head shakes. “N-no,” he says, near bitten. Swallows, tries again, hand sliding to your thigh to keep you from reading him wrong. “No, lass. Just—slow. I wanna—” His eyes squeeze shut with some useless heat behind them before he finds something at least adjacent to what should be said. “I wanna feel ye proper," he murmurs. "You’re… you’re so kind on me.”
It quakes you some. He's trying to prolong it, the sweetheart, you think. So your body quiets for him first, then alters. You exchange the speed for depth and give him fat, thorough rolls. Let the planes of his hips take the whole weight of your arse, just as you've wanted. His balls flatten under your buttocks on every downstroke, cock throbs madly in your womb.
“Oh—” he breathes, and sounds scattered enough to make your stomach tighten. “Oh, that’s—aye. Aye, there. Fuck, right here. Like that.”
You bend close and kiss him again, softer, with the same hunger spread over it like a tearing sheet. He kisses back badly. Too open, too wet, too much air-gulping getting in the way. When you sweep his face, Duncan’s lids are glistening, lashes clumped in little dark points behind the crooked glasses, so undone he looks like a weeping saint with a bad eye.
His stomach swells into yours with fast, shallow gasps. One palm leaves your hip and comes to the back of your neck. He holds you there, foreheads touching, mouth close enough that every word is partly yours before it is finished.
“Feels—” He stops, teeth flashing over his lip. “God, ye feel amazin’. So warm. So—ah—so good round me. I can feel ye everywhere. In my back. In my bloody teeth," he says, then catches your cheeks dimpling. "Don’t laugh.”
You do laugh, very softly, and kiss the corner of his mouth for it.
Dunk groans. “Cruel woman.” His hand tightens on your nape, thumb rubbing without rhythm. “No, no, keep—please, keep doin’ that. You’re gonna have me. You’re—ah, Christ—you’re pullin’ it out of me.”
You slow further, vicious with pity, and he near sobs.
“That’s it,” you whisper. “Let me see.”
His eyes open to yours. Blue, glassy, embarrassed beyond measure and unable to hide any of it. He tries to speak again, because you asked him to, because he would try to move a mountain if you took his face in your hands and said please, for me?
“I’m close,” he says. Then shakes his head, helpless with the size of the understatement. “No, I’m—luv, I’m right there. Don’t stop. Don’t—” His mouth opens under yours, breath breaking up. “Please. Please, I’m gonna c-come.”
Heat spreads like conflagration through Duncan’s bones, and all of his muscles go ablaze with it too. He feels the rupture of the tightening coil and breaks into an out-of-tune chant of yes, yes, yes, while you milk him and let his hips stammer.
It starts low, in the drag of his balls drawing up so hard it borders pain, then strikes the root of his cock with a shock that makes his whole frame buck under you. “Ah—fuck, fuck, lass—” he chokes, then loses even that much sense when the first spill leaves him.
His hands clamp down on you. There's no pulling anymore, only holding on while his body empties itself in heavy, helpless pulses. Each one makes him flinch. Each one makes his cock throb so hard inside you he can feel it answer against the grip of your cunt, the seed pushed out and held there, nowhere to go, nowhere he wants it to go. His hips keep trying, little rhythmless, aborted jerks, and he finds only a crude animal wish to stay buried until the last of him is wrung out.
“Good girl,” he hears himself say, or thinks he does. Dug out and cracked, roughening on the way from between his ribs. “Oh, God—my best girl. Take it. Please, take it. I’m—ah—I’m sorry, I—”
He has no idea what he is apologising for. For coming. For wanting. His eyes squeeze shut, then open again because you asked to see him and some part of him remembers even while the rest of him is being dismantled.
The next pulse makes his chest cave around a breath that sounds ugly and comes with its edges wet. He comes again, or keeps coming, he cannot tell. The pleasure has stopped behaving like pleasure and started acting like something with teeth, something that bites deep enough to find the softest parts of him and shake them.
His soul goes with it. That is the stupidest possible way to understand it, and still the only one Duncan has. It leaves him in shudders, in spend, in the long broken noise he makes when you stay there and take all of him without flinching. For one blown-out second he feels loved so plainly his eyes sting, and he cannot tell whether the tears threatening him are from release or from mourning the fleeting fallacy of his malleable boy-heart.
You see it. The exact place where his strength gives up its post. His face goes open underneath you. The blush is everywhere now, ears to throat to the broad rise of his chest. His glasses sit crooked with their lenses misted, and behind them his eyes shine stunned. His mouth, the beautiful foolish thing, keeps parting as if speech might come back if he only makes room for it, but all that gets out is breath and your name in pieces.
Last time you missed this. Or lost it to drink, to darkness, to the mind’s rotten habit of keeping the wrong souvenirs. Stupid, you think, with an ache so sudden it has no time to dress itself up. Stupid, stupid girl. Because Duncan in rapture is worth remembering with pious accuracy. The cut of his jaw slackened by pleasure. The hard male brutality of his size made defenceless by what your body has done to him. The little crease between his brows. The way his face looks too large for innocence and somehow full of it anyway.
And God, the way he comes. Thick, hot throbs, intimate enough to make you tighten again in little aftershocks. His cock kicks and spends, kicks and spends, with deep-gathering warmth that spreads in a slow, private heaviness. You hold still over him and let it happen. Let him put himself there, in you, with the same earnest violence he brings to everything he cannot say properly.
Dunk makes another sound when he feels you clench. Almost a whimper, though he would hate the word if he had enough brain left to object. His hand slides from your neck to the back of your head, looking for a place to rest. His fingers tangle clumsily in your damp hair.
“Lass,” he says, wrecked. Then softer, because the fierce part of it has passed away and left him with only the unbearably tender aftermath. “Jesus. Lass.”
"Duncan," you say, framing his cheeks. They are warm. "Sweetheart, you alright?" You brush the locks darkened with sweat off his forehead and feel a staggering urge to cradle him.
Duncan's very much not alright. He's shattered into a million pieces, but there is a sober part of him that knows he shouldn't cling. He should tell you, or better yet, carry you to the bathroom and let you tend to your business there, because the app said so. "A-aye," he breathes. "You ought to—" A thick swallow. "I'll help you to the—"
“No,” you say. “Stay a moment. C’mere. Sweet boy, come here, let me hold you.”
“But—”
“Nothing will happen if we stay here for two minutes. I’ll go, just—”
You settle over him, careful where the small swell of your stomach rests against his. Duncan lets you because resistance, in that moment, would require bones in places where he has none. He's not crying, maybe, or not enough to call it that, but his eyes look sore. You swipe beneath one with your thumb. Then the other. He looks away.
“Oh, don’t,” you murmur.
His jaw shifts under your palm. The shame of being scrutinised after the body has made a holy spectacle of itself is sitting plain on him, right there in the colour blotching his neck. You coax his face back anyway, gentle under the chin, and make him meet you. “Thank you,” you say.
Duncan blinks. “For what?”
“For that.” Your thumb makes a small pass over his cheek. “For listening.”
He cannot answer. Something in him tries and only finds the raw place where all the words have been burned out. You spare him the effort by lowering your face to his. Cheek to cheek first, then brow against temple, your mouth near enough his ear that your breathing goes into him. Slow. Deep. A little unsteady. He feels the ribs move around it. It wakes him up some.
His hand remembers it's alive and slides down your back. Over the borrowed heat of skin, down the knobs and shallow dips he now knows in one kind of dark and one kind of light. “You feelin’ better?” he asks.
You nod. Then make a small pleased sound, too close to a purr for Duncan’s remaining sanity. “Mm. Much.” His palm stops low and stays there. “Can you stay tonight?” you ask.
How about forever, Duncan thinks, with such dreadful ease his heart will need some proper scolding later. Aye, forever, if you asked it plain and did not laugh after. What he says is, “Aye.”
“Okay.”
Then you lift yourself off him with a small groan, and Duncan begins to loose you. The loss is horrible in its own right. His cock slips free, tired and overused and sad about leaving you, and he feels what follows: too much of himself spilling warm across his lower belly, dragging over skin and hair. He blushes so hard it ought to count as a second fever. He lies there softening, wet and creamed over, betrayed by what has been done and how much of it there is.
You look down only a second before your eyes flick back to his face. Duncan opens his mouth. “Don’t,” you say, faintly amused and too kind about it. “Don’t even start.”
You climb off the bed on unsteady legs. He means to sit up. Means to help. Means to stop lying there like an offering left out by mistake. But then you bend, gather his T-shirt from the floor and pull it over your head, and Duncan dulls.
It drops over you wrong and right. Too broad in the shoulders, too long on the thigh, collar slipping enough to show one side of your neck. His shirt. On you. With your hair messy and your legs bare and his come still leaking between them, no doubt, though he does not let his eyes go there because he has suffered enough for one evening and also possibly has not.
You disappear toward the bathroom. He remains in post-little-death rigor mortis with one hand frozen over his stomach because he has no idea whether touching anything makes the situation better or worse. The ceiling receives the full force of his stare.
When you come back you have a towel, wet wipes, and a glass of water. You kneel beside him, and the mattress wobbles under the new weight. Duncan grunts.
“Hey,” you say. “It’s all right.”
“It’s—” He swallows. “I can do that.”
“You gave me a whole bath. Least I can do.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
He has no answer that doesn’t sound foolish, filthy, or too soft in the middle. You open the packet and pull out a wipe. The first touch is cold below his navel and makes his stomach suck itself in.
“Sorry,” you murmur.
“S’all right.”
You wipe his lower belly first. Your other hand steadies him at the hip, thumb resting in the hollow there as if it has any business knowing him. Duncan watches your face because watching your hand will kill him.
Then your fingers close round his cock to move him aside, and his breathing goes funny.
You pause. “All right?”
“A-aye,” he says.
You give him a look, then continue. Lift him with a care so simple it becomes unbearable, wipe along the softened length, the tender head, and the mess gathered at the base. His cock gives one poor twitch in your hand, more memory than ambition, and Duncan shuts his eyes because surely God has limits and he has found them.
“Dunk,” you say.
“I’m not doin’ anythin’.”
“No, I can see that.”
Your hand moves lower. Wipes his balls. Clinical, it should be clinical. It has the shape of nursing and the heat of being claimed in a way he has no defence against. He lies there, fists balled by his sides, while you clean him up as if his body is allowed to be inconvenient in your presence. As if the mess of him deserves tending.
“What’re ye doing?” he asks, helplessly.
You glance up. “Cleaning you.”
“Aye, I know that.”
“Then why ask?”
Because I don’t know what to do with being looked after, he thinks. Because if you keep touching me after, I’ll begin thinking after belongs to me too.
He says nothing. You spare him again.
Once the wipes are set aside, you pat him dry with the towel. Softer than necessary. He feels the careful press along his belly, the inside of one thigh, the last damp place near his groin. Then you toss the towel away, pass him the glass of water, and wait until he drinks.
“Yer so bossy,” he mutters into the rim.
“Correct.”
That gets a small laugh out of him, almost soundless. He drinks, hands the glass back, and you put it on the floor before lying down beside him. “Hi,” you say.
Dunk turns his head on the pillow. “Hi.”
Your mouth twitches. You look exhausted now that the urgency has left you. Washed-out and pleased and sick still, all mixed together unfairly. The T-shirt has rucked up at your hip. He fixes his eyes on your face.
“I can see you thinking,” you say.
“Aye,” Dunk says. “I’m thinkin’.”
He is thinking so much it has become a crowd. Whether this changes things. Whether you wanted him or only relief with a familiar face. Whether he is allowed to be happy. Whether you will regret it by morning. Whether he should apologise for some part of it and which part first. Whether asking to kiss your stomach now would ruin his life quicker than staying quiet. Whether you know his shirt on you has done damage no compensation can mend.
Before any of it reaches his tongue, you shuffle closer and nuzzle into him. Your nose presses under his jaw. One arm comes over his chest. “We can talk in the morning, hm?”
Duncan looks at the ceiling again. Breathes in. Breathes out. Lets his hand come up and settle over your back, where it has apparently always wanted to live.
Tags: Modern/College AU, Makeout session😚, Dunk being cautious and cute, hand stuff (M and F), oral M receiving, Dunk a butt guy, unprotected PnV, size difference, reader is more experienced than Dunk, established friendship ,Dunk generally being flustered at all times, friends to lovers, there’s a decent amount of fluffy bits to this because Duncan’s in love fr!
Word Count: 5.5 k
Summary: After admitting to Dunk that you had feelings for him a few weeks ago, he visits you at college and you are determined to hurl your relationship out of the friend zone entirely!
A/N: Could be read as a standalone but is part 2 for Crossroads. @niceforcum22 it’s not Truck Sex but I had to ensure they banged at some point! (Mature under the cut)
You felt all floaty, and your eyes were a bit heavy by this time of night, but every time he touched you it was like a warm exciting zing to your system. Dunk was strong, and you were finding out he was also strict. He was constantly reaching for you on this walk. Not that you minded. For one you didn’t want somebody else grabbing at you and two, his touch was heavy enough it cut through the beer haze that had settled over you.
“no…c’mon your this way.”
You giggled when he had to only strech his arm out to tug you back to him so you wouldn’t turn down another sidewalk.
He didn't even need to take a step off his path to reach you that’s how long his arms were.
Fucking hell it made your face feel warm!
You smirked all the way up at him grabbing his hand by the thumb and bring it around you so you were wrapped up in his elbow, both your arms around his midsection.
“so smart…you should be a geographer. There’s a program for that here, by the way.”
He rolled his eyes so deeply that you pressed your face against his ribs knowing he wasn’t going to indulge any more of your peer pressuring. He’d come to visit you, and to take you back home because finals had just finished for the semester.
You were dead set on convincing him that he should sign up for next semester. You wanted him here. So you packed most of your stuff up before he actually arrived so you could show him around campus…let him experience the dinning hall. You were right to assume that he’d enjoy the all you can eat aspect of it. He probably had three plates and two different bowls of cereal!
Then it was a walk around campus, he wanted to see some of the places you had described to him over the phone. It was sweet how much he remembered about the pointless conversations you guys had.
A pregame at your friends off campus apartment, with some game, and then ending the night at a pub. At some point between pre drinks your buzz has hit you, and thank god for it because it made you bold enough to break the touch barrier with him. You’d made it in his truck…for awhile that day when he found you trying to get some to surprise him. The day you born admitted there was something a lot deeper than just friendship happening between you two. But you went back to school two days later and so nothing more had actually kicked off.
Your friends knew how disappointed you were that nothing else had happened and so there was lots of giggling and joking at the pub when Dunk would go get you another drink, when he’d touch your back to alert you to somebody trying to squeeze by, and the snickering even came out of you when a table finally opened up and you were one seat short for the group.
You’d pushed Dunks hand off his lap and sat yourself right in it. Neither of you move again for the rest of the night. Your fluttering lashes kept him firmly seated when even the guys in the group called him over for another beer, and you were way to busy making little comments to him and tracing the lines on his palm to join your girlfriends in the bathroom.
He was staying with you tonight, obviously, and driving you back home to flea bottom in his truck whenever you guys woke up. He refused to imagine you attempting that long of a drive again in your beater of a car. “Would he fuckin wreckless of me not to just drive ya back” you’d blushed so badly when he told you that a few days ago and was bloody greatful it was a phone call and not FaceTime!
“my roommates staying at her boyfriend.” You told him slipping away from his side to get your key in the door.
“she okay there?” He asked, he was to sweet for his own good.
You nodded with a laugh as you got your heels off and the denim jacket you’d worn out. You wanted to be comfortable as soon as possible.
“she’s exactly where she wants to be.” You promise “and it’s sort of a favor to me.” You explained bending down to plug your phone into the charger.
“favor? In what way?” Dunk had grabbed your water bottle off the desk and as holding it down for you to take. He knew you’d probably gotten way more sloshed than this over the course of the semester but this as his first time actually seeing you have more than one drink so he was being a bit overprotective, at the bar and now apparently also with the possible future hangover you might get.
“wanted us to-“ you sigh when you turn and see the water being shoved to you. Being down on your knees infront of him, what you want to swallow down is not exactly water… but you do, because you know he’ll grumble, about how you really should, if you don’t.
“-Have some privacy.” You stood up wobbling a bit and leaning back against the lofted beds support. Taking another long drink of water and handing it back to him while he seems to fish around for a reply.
“you do want to have sex don’t you?”
“yes! Gods, yes. Absolutely I do-“ Dunk exclaimed quickly when his lack of response had made you second guess it you’d read this whole thing wrong.
“great!” You grabbed the water bottle from his hand and tossed it at your bean bag chair pushing yourself against him instantly and grabbing his shoulders. You couldn’t reach his lips, tippy toes or not so he was going to have to help you out a bit and bend down. Or pick you up-you’d be happy with that option too!
He reached a hand up to touch your side, to stabilize you a bit but he didn’t actually bent down to meet your lips, which were currently kissing at the bit of skin that the collar of his shirt didn’t cover.
“You’re lovely,” he was clearly fighting the words as they came out. “But your drunk…”
You pull your arms down a bit taken back by the comment. “So are you!” You gawk slightly looking up at him.
“I don’t want ‘ya waking up and regretting this.” He approached his hesitation from a different angle this time but when you started to strip your skirt off a foot from him his resolve threatened to break.
He had been feeling you arse thought your skirt all night…rubbing slightly at it when you would shift in his lap.
“fuck me-“ he groaned and ran a hand down his face with a low groan.
“yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thing ta do!” You laughed and stood there looking up so sweetly at him when his hand finally stopped shielding his eyes.
Your top was cropped so it wasn’t hiding any of your pratically bare midsection and legs from him. Your skin was so smooth…shinny still from the lotion he’d watch you apply earlier before the pub.
When you realized that he seemed pretty focused on the lace flowers that were patterned onto the front of your thong you reached down, bitting your lip and trailing your hand over the fabric.
“pretty aren’t they?” You spoke softly, clearly trying to be a bit more seductive than your normal voice might allow.
“feel them-“
“Shouldn’t be out wearing that sort of thing doll.” He warned, like scolding you might distract him from the actual desires he was having. He wanted to feel them for himself but he also wanted to pull them off and stuff them on his pocket for later. He had a sick idea that what was between your thighs was softer than your underwear. That was what he wanted to feel, you.
“That’s why I wore them out with you Dunk.” You rolled your eyes a bit. “Don’t think anybody could even attempt to look up my skirt with your big hand grabbing at my backside.”
“big hand-they aren’t-they aren’t that big are they?”
When he held his palms up between you two you almost moaned out loud. He had no blood clue how big they were, or that you’d gotten wet just from feeling how much expansive they were on your figure and he never he touched you.
“they are.” You blinked eyes glued to them and you legitimately licked your lip when seeing one of the veins bulge a bit.
“Sit down.” You push on his chest and he willingly sits down in your bean bag chair. It’s not much more than cushion for a man of his size but it’s better than just being on the floor.
“listen to me Duncan. I’m not that drunk-not by a fucking mile-“ he opened his mouth like he was about to argue with you and you covered his mouth with your hand and sat down in his lap. “-and I don’t think I’m capable of regretting anything that I might do with you.”
“Doll-you…you could regret it! Might not be what you like, or not as good as you expected.”
You’d grabbed his hand now and rubbed at it before leading his palm back to your arse and pushing on his fingers until he grope at the curve of you.
“I’ll regret not doing this and going home being able to pretend like all we are is friends.” You knew if this didn’t happen that both of you would just fall into normal routine back in flea bottom, that this moment of mutual attention and shared boldness would pass right over you two.
“Now don’t tell me what I want and don’t want, I’m serious Duncan.” You warn him as you grab the bottom of your shirt and pulled it up over your head.
“okay.” He blubbered out, eyes following your tits at the shirt comes off and your tits jiggle because they are only being controlled by some bra cakes.
“If you don’t want to sleep with me then that’s fine…but if all you’re worried about is my sensibilities in the morning then we don’t have anything stopping us!”
Apparently that speech, or the removal of your shirt, was reassuring enough for him because the second you stopped speaking he grabbed your jaw and pulled you to his mouth.
The exasperated attitude you had less than 20 seconds ago was completly melted away as you turned to straddle him and strech your neck to keep reaching as your lips for lost in the constant contact with his.
“For fucks sake…” Duncan had to break the kiss, lips flushed and his nose a bit red. Both of you panting for air unable to wipe the dopey smiles off either of your faces.
“don’t huff about something you like.” You kissed his jaw, warm tongue gently poking out to make the kisses your trailed down his neck warm and wet.
Your eyes glanced up at him when his big fingers gathered your hair and tossed it back behind your shoulder.
“you love kissing me…don’t you?” You drawled out softly, just before sucking a mark onto the underside of his jaw.
“Does taunting me get you off or something?” He quipped and sunk down against the bean bag a bit.
“You could find you-“ you whispered in his ear shaking your hips from side to side a bit as he lounged into a relaxed sitting position. Cutting yourself off when your voice trembled because Duncan had laid his warm hand down on your side, fingers catching the waistband of your thong a bit. You were dripping thinking about him pulling them down and touching you there. Forehead hiding against his shoulder as you anticipated the sensation, wanting to be able to muffle the moans that would start flowing embarrassingly quickly once he gave you the attention you were vying for.
“Come ‘er.” His voice was deeper when both of his hands bypassed the string over your hips and instead latched to your ass. Each cupping a cheek and squeezing.
The lift from his hands did bring you up a bit off his lap, so now were basically laid against his upper body. Dunks hands didn’t move though, even once he was content with your positioning.
You slung a arm up around his head when he groped the meat of your backside and you whined hiding your face from him still because the room was now filled with your join heavy breathing and the wet vulgar noise of your pussy. Each time he moved his hands against your bum the squelching of arousal between your lips was heard.
“So wet for me.” Duncan hummed, like he was hypnotized by the feeling of your skin under his hands and hearing how much you wanted him had only made the enhancement stronger.
“D-Dunk…” you were just whining, no clue what else to say, no thought on what you wanted all you knew was that you need him!
You had gone from overeager and amused to all soft and whimpery. He hoped that wasn’t a bad thing. It didn’t feel like it was a bad thing when your fingers were twirling the hair at the nape of his neck.
“You okay doll?” He tucked his chin down to see you, his hand stopping with his fingers up under the string that went between you cheeks and his grip on your cheek lightened some, he’d feel sick from how his head would spin the morning when you’d tell him you had little sprinklings of bruises all over your arse. He wouldn’t know if he should hit himself for being such an idiot or if he should palm his crotch because of how hard he got seeing you turn around to show him each little mark. His outstretched fingers left.
“mhm…” you blink up at him, looking way more drunk than any pint could make you! “Feels good.” You whisper laying your cheek back down.
“Take em off me.” You begged sweetly and he couldn’t resist doing what you asked so within the minute your panties and little bra pasties were off without you having to move an inch.
Duncan had shifted you up against his chest some more so your face could reach his better and it was his turn to press soft pecks down your neck and jaw. He didn't suck like you had, he didn't want people looking at you for a second time to confirm what mark their minds had seen.
He diddnt want people getting the wrong idea about you, thinking you were flinging yourself at people.
“touch me.” His thought, that were trying very hard to be valiant, faded when you press your hips forward and humped his stomach. “Don’t make me do it myself Duncan.” You groaned and before you could finish talking his hand had reached under your compeltly, forearm laid on your bum and fingers trailing over your warm swollen lips.
You turned your chin up so you could kiss him when he started to push them daringly against you. Easily working his long middle finger into your slit and dragging it right over your clit.
The sensation made you jolt a bit, you knew you’d been pretty worked up but the zinging feeling that his fingers rubbing against your hardened clit caused was so instant that it took you off guard. Normally it took a while for you you start feeling that sensation. Hell, normally the guy was already in you and you’d just started to play with yourself to make it somewhat stimulating for yourself!
But the gentlest touch, the simplest thing had you twitching when it was Dunk doing it.
“That too hard?” He pulled his head back so you could answer him instead of just muttering against his mouth. He wasn’t nearly as experienced as he wished he was right now. He thought those noises sounded good but the other girl he’d been with hadn’t started moaning so quickly…she hadn’t jerked around when he touched her.
Your forehead was pinched together and he couldn’t tell if it was focus or discomfort…until your head dropped back and he saw a happy smile strech over your face. So big that he caught a flash of your teeth as you nodded and your cheeks raised up making your eyes squinty.
“No, not to hard,” your words were flowing together “feels so good-I promise”. Your hand slipped down his back and grabbed a decent amount of fabric before pulling it up and tugging the long sleeve over his head.
Your hands instantly dragging down his broad chest and your tongue jutted out to lick your lips some as your fingers trailed over his stomach.
“can you keep rubbing me like that?” You requested while taking ahold of his forearm and rubbing through the pale hair that covered that bit of him, feeling the occasional little scar.
His face went warm at your insistence that he keep going, he wasn’t going to deny you, but the way you nodded fast, eyes moving from his face to his hand over and over had his pants starting to feel uncomfortable. You were just so bloody pretty and you wanted him to touch you so badly that you were bringing his hand to your soaked cunt?! It made him feel dizzy.
“so soft here.” He observed as his fingers rubbed gently against your damp folds and then began to make circles over your clit.
“and here-god, you’re really soft here.” The unoccupied hand had left your side and cupped one of your breasts. Experimenting with how the flesh pooled into the spaces between his fingers, that your dusky nipple hardened when he flicked at it with his thumb.
You’d taken to gripping at the bloody bean bag chair by this point because his hand between your thighs and the other toying with your nipples had you feeling better than the little vibrating wand you had stuffed in your sock drawer did! In the battle of man versus machine, Duncan was putting up a really good showing for man!
“Ahh! Fuck-hmm Jesus fucking Christ!” You swore eyes sealing shut and your back arched pretty severely as you came. Hips shaking and your legs slammed shut, trapping his wrist so he couldn’t keep stimulating you. “Oh my god…” you finally exhale, chest heaving as you caught your breath and slowly peeled your eyes open looking at him. He’d let go of your boob at some point during all that and had cupped the back of your head.
He just looked amazed and bewildered at the same time. Like he didn’t know women could react as strongly as men did when they had an orgasm.
You turned your head kissing his bicep while slowly opening your knees up so blood flow could return to his hand.
“That was amazing darling.” His voice was husky and deep. Need dripping from it but he wasn’t going to let his hunger have an impact on your enjoyment or in this situation your recovered post climax.
You murmured thank you’s against his arm. Laughing at yourself when his hand finally was allowed by your thighs to move and you almost instantly groaned from the loss of contact.
“I’m done for.” You groaned a bit rubbing your face and taking a deep steadying breath. You’d just had an orgasm that was so full bodied and wonderful that you were legitimately sweating and already you were winging about his hand leaving you?
“your lovely,” he smiled taking your spent image in, you look so pretty, hair all gone astray, cheeks red and eyes heavy. He bent over you a bit to peck your lips that were glued in a pleased little girl. “Look lovely.” He hummed kissing down your neck a bit hand cupping your sides.
“Dunk-“ you knew what he was planning, there was only one reason a man every started kissing down between your breasts and to your stomach. And as much as you did want his head trapped between your thighs you also knew yourself well enough to know that you’d likely he exhausted if you came again so soon, and you wanted to be able to help him get off!
His hands kept lowering down your sides, his big mouth devouring your lower belly in kisses as his fingers held to the sides of your bottom. He was pratically drooling, he wanted to taste you, wanted to make you moan like you had a minute ago with his fingers.
You almost forgot about needing to cool off because he started to kiss your thighs and his nose was dragging against the nook between your thighs and mound.
“wait-let me taste ya” he breathed out piercing blue eyes looking up at you as your pushed his big head back. “Come’on doll.” He wasn’t begging but he did sound like you’d taken the last bite of his plate.
With a shocking amount of agility you swung your leg over his broad back and rolled off the bean bag onto your knees, hands pressed to the floor to stand yourself up. He flopped over onto his back against the squishy ‘chair’ and just smiled, looking at you in all your glory. He hand rested on his chest for a moment, chest rising and falling quickly and when he saw your eyes dart to his jeans he groaned quickly covering the bulge with his palms.
“I don’t need any of that from ya.” He spoke quickly. “I can handle this, just want you to get what you need.”
You smiled slightly and shook your head. “And what if I want to handle it Dunk?” He could fucking cum at the sound of those words falling from your mouth. You got an audible groan from him when you continued. “I wanted your cock in my mouth since you touched my back during pre-drinks.” Promptly turning and going up the ladder to your lofted bunk bed.
“And don’t make me wrestle with those bloody jeans.” You called out, the bed creaking as you laid against it. Smiling to yourself, this was going so well, you couldn’t help but be giddy.
Duncan, to your joy, had taken a single step on the ladder to reach your mattress. He looked around a bit. It was a tight squeeze.
“do these things have a weight limit?” He grumbled while getting himself laid beside you. It was more intimate up here, you basically had to be touching and your eyes didn’t have anything to look at other than the other persons face.
Something about the closeness, his hand heaving over the curve of your hip and his head resting on the same pillow as yours made you nervous.
“I’ve actually hosted quite a party up here before. Orgys and whatnot.” You joke, feeling the need to lighten the intensity you were feeling in your heart.
“You’ve not, Jesus.” He rolled his eyes and you cracked a smile when his hand squeezed your hip. “Just don’t need to destroy your dorm the day before move out.” He muttered, lips brushing yours.
“I don’t know,” you breath in the air he exhales and your nose settles just under his. “That seems like rather convenient timing for me.”
He kiss him his laugh getting stuck in his throat and slowly you shit your knees under you and break the connection of your lips glancing down to see he had indeed gotten rid of the jeans but still had on his tight briefs.
Your hand reached down and grabbed him through the fabric, squeezing until he gave a pleased moan. You wanted to see what kind of grip he liked, all guys were different after all.
He gone red and silent, a hand covering his face as he twitched. You liked how shy he was about it, he wasn’t some prick who was as used to girls going down on him constantly and just expected it to occur. He was all flustered about your face even being level with his crotch and it just made you even more eager to give him a good show!
“you’re suppose to watch.” You hummed, dragging the waistband down his legs.
“Jesus fucking Christ-“ he shot up, head hitting the ceiling when he attempted to sit up to grab you. He was worried you were going to fall off the end of the bed trying to get his underwear off his feet, which were hanging pretty significantly off the end of the bed. “Fuck!” He hissed one hand rubbing the red spot on his forhead and his other hand had grabbed one of your thighs, gripping it quite hard and literally yanking you back.
You sat up eyes wide and cringed as his hand pulled away and you saw the bump on his forhead. “That why you’re suppose to just lay down and let me do this”. You sighed leaning down. Gently pressing a kiss to the injury.
“Just-stay away from the cliff that if the end of this bed, please!” He groaned, hand rubbing over your back as you peppered his lips and jaw with kisses.
“okay…” you started to kiss down his neck over his chest and smiled up at him when you reached the happy trail below his naval. “Can I stop right…here…this isn’t to close to the edge.” You spoke softly as your nose dragged against the sensitive skin leading to the base of his cock.
“Right Dunk?” You look up at him as your tongue came out to wet his shaft. Pupils widening as you as you get a taste of him. “Hm?” Your tongue laves up one side until your reach his tip and cock your brow waiting for a response from him.
“mmm, yeah-yeah that’s grand right there.” He nodded when you stopped moving. “So good there.” He swallowed the lump in his throat while reaching down to push your hair over your shoulder so he could see you better.
You give him a cheeky smirk and sneak a peck to his palm when it brushes your cheek before lowering yourself down properly and starting to lick and suck at him in earnest. You just wanted tk taunt him a bit. Not drive him mad, he didn’t deserve that!
“fuck!” He swore brows coming together as he watched your hand wrapped around him and your mouth strech wide. Your lips were cracked a bit in the corner but that didn’t bother you, actually it spurred you on more. The concept that he was so bloody big that your throat could not even take him fully-that made your thighs squeezed together. “Right there-y-yeah, just like that, oh fuck” he moaned as your cheeks puffed out from him taking up all the space in your mouth nodding down at you as the tip of your little tongue reached beyond your lips to reach even just a bit more of his veiny throbbing dick.
You were mumbling things against him. He had no fucking idea what you were saying because your mouth was very much occupied by him but he appropriate how it made your throat vibrate.
“S-stop- you gotta stop I’m going to finish.” He bit out, his hand leaving its place on your ass. He’d started rubbing over that curve as you knelt over him. You weren’t sure if it was more soothing to him or you!
You couldn’t frown, but you would have because he backed his hips up and pulled you back up the bed, rising his side off the mattress and slipping you under him.
“I’m not going to cum until you do.” He said seriously and you wiped your mouth, knees already rising up instinctively and settling against his sides. Opening yourself up to him. Whimpering your you felt his leaking tip drag against your warm slit. It felt like he was made for you. Cock hung at the perfect angle to slot right in…all he needed to do was part your puffy lips some.
“okay…” you were breathless in anticipation, holding to the back of his neck. “Technically I came already but yeah, okay.” You stroke the back of his head watching his face as his hand moved between you and he circled your clit until your hips lifted to meet his hand. Eyelids fluttering at the sensation and just before you opened your mouth to tell him to stop stalling his cockhead hooked inside your.
“oh-“ your brows raised that the feeling and your mouth hung open. Duncan was using his arms to keep himself up so you weren’t of entirely crushed under him. He was watching you very closely, observing you for discomfort or warnings he should stop. He had to sink in a few inches, mostly because his back was as hitting the ceiling and that wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world…but also because he couldn’t fully resist chasing the silk warm feeling of your core.
“more-“ you basically growl, fingers pulling a bit on his hair trying to urge him down to kiss you but he was way to paranoid about hurting you to get lost against your lips.
Duncan watch your face, watch your neck to look for signs of tensing or cringing as he complied with your demand, slowly rocking more of him into your insanely wet cunt.
“F-fuc-fuck!” You drawl out the groan as he stretches you. Able to feel him so deep that you swore he was moving around things in your stomach. “Fuck-your big.” You turn your face into the pillow whimpering.
“Hey-no, I need you to open your eyes….i gotta see you’re okay.” He said seriously, cheek to your jaw as his hips stutter to a stop.
You whined and turned your head forward against opening your eyes.
“keep going…please.” You wrapped your legs around his back and pushed your heels into him.
“Please”
Duncan kissed you, finally, for the first time since entering you and both of you just melted into one another. His hands always moving, soothing you as his hips began to jolt forward. You were gripping tightly to his hair, devouring his lips with yours and gasping out encouragement.
“Fuck! Oh god-faster!” You bite down on his shoulder hands shaking when his tips reaches a bit deeper and hits a spot in you that nobody has ever reached. It made you eyes go black and your fingers tense.
“Duncan-keep going.” You begged him. Voice breathy but deathly serious. He could feel how you were tensing around him, your walls squeezing hard and it was making his own vision a bit blurry from how good it felt to feel you milk him.
“keep-ugh!” You almost shout and push hard against his chest, not nearly having the strength to move him but he pulled out of you instantly, looking down as his cock legitimately dripped worn your release.
You were clinging to him in the moments after the intense orgasm, hiding your face in his neck and whimpering continuously, he is as kissing your neck stroking his thumb over your cheek. Just smiling like a fool because you look so bloody beautiful and you’d just physically given him everything you had. He was enamored before but now…well now he didn’t even have a word for what he felt!
Belatedly you regained a more normal breathing rhythm and the haze in your eyes cleared. Looking down between you because there was something warm on you. Your exhaled with a smile and bit at your bottom lip when you saw Duncan had came on your stomach at some point in the mist of your orgasm. He was heavy and soft against your hip now and when he realized he’d made such a mess against you he slipped to his side and groaned.
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” He sighed, instantly bearing himself up. He was about to reach for his underwear to wipe you up right away but you were looking down at your soft abdomen with a transfixed look, fingers slowly dancing down them and swirling up the pearly thick liquid.
“Finish in me next time.” You whispered feeling his release between your fingers.
He laughed into your shoulder having to look away from the playing your fingers were doing. Opting instead to look at your face.
“You’re serious?” He blinked and the flush returned to his ears.
“Mhm,” you nodded and turned your head so both of your cheeks were flush to the pillow and guy smiled sweetly at him.
“I think there’s alot of things about me that might shock you Dunk.” You smirk. Blinking softly at him as he leans over to kiss your cheek, just before your hand come up to your mouth and your lick your leash fingers clean. Not breaking eye contact with him for a second.
May I request a little….more about chatterbox reader and Clark Kent? 🫣
chatterbox reader I have missed you!!! tbh I put myself in a box by the way I started this, but was too far in to redo. so I do apologise, this isn't my best work
search 'chatterbox' on my blog to find other posts relating to this one xx
NO SCREENS
clark kent x fem reader, 786 words, fluff
There are hours when your mind is far more active than others, times of the most inconvenience that your brain whirs with thought. It tends to happen at nighttime when you're all tucked up in bed, supposed to be sleeping.
Maybe it's just because it's so quiet that you have no choice but to listen your mind, or that you simply struggle to sleep at a reasonable hour. Whatever the reasoning may be, it had become a regular occurrence that Clark had grown to anticipate. He knew that when your head hit the pillow, you would not yet be ready for sleep like he is.
Clark's not like you in that sense, he can sleep anytime, anywhere. With these five-some minute you've spent together under the covers, Clark was already struggling to stay awake — to keep those big beautiful blue eyes of his open.
You however could not shut your own, they refused to give in and allow you the sleep you so clearly needed.
"Clark?" you whisper, calling his name gently. "Are you awake?"
You're tucked into his side, ear to his chest as you listen to the steady thumping of his heart. It should ease you, the repeated sound one of comfort; though that was not the case.
"Mhm?" he hums.
Barely awake.
With one hand situated above his stomach, you raise it slightly and use it as leverage — carefully pushing off on him so you can twist in to face him. Your head peers in his direction and you meet his fluttering eyes. He was very clearly making an effort so as not to drift off.
"I can't sleep."
He runs a hand down your spine, palm gliding down your tee like it was an attempt of soothing. His touch is heavy and deliberate as he strokes your back, fingers trying their best to offer comfort.
"Why not?" he whispers, tone low.
Clark's hand reaches the spot between your upper shoulder blades and his hold settles around the back of your neck for a moment. His skin to your own as he directs you, guiding you back into the placement where your head was nestled into a few moments ago.
"I don't know."
"What're you thinking about?" he asks, voice tired.
"I don't know, nothing really."
His hand on your head slides up and it's then that he encompasses it, holding you dearly with both his hand and arm. Almost like he's protecting your head. You didn't have to see him to know that he was fighting to stay awake. You just appreciate him wanting to selflessly indulge you.
"I think we should move the room around— I don't like the flow of anything. It doesn't work."
Clark strokes over your hair, fingers skirting across your scalp. "Why's that?" he asks, wording careful.
"It has a name, but I can't remember it… 'fun' something," you um and ah, unsure if it was even the word you were thinking about in the first place. "I'm really blanking on the word. I can't think of the name."
"It's okay," Clark responds, his hold firming atop the side of your head. Almost like it was an instinct to shield it. "Feng shui?"
"That's it, that's the word. I just don't think the layout works, you know. Maybe we just have too much stuff."
"Maybe," Clark utters.
"But I did see this really cute duvet cover ages ago though," you mention, dropping the hint that you wanted to add another set to your already extensive collection of bedding.
"Yeah?" he murmurs.
His breath evens beneath your ear, the repeated sound growing steady in his chest. It was a tell he was nearing sleep.
"I found it on my phone yesterday so I took a screenshot of the screenshot so I'd remember—"
But just as you begin to lift yourself from his chest, Clark's hold firms in it's rested position atop your head, the act an effort to keep you still. To stop you from doing what he knew you to be doing — reaching for your phone.
"Can I just show you? It'll be quick."
"No screens."
Something he often reiterates, 'no screens in bed'. A point he makes extensively about how it messes with your mind in your hours of sleep.
"I'll only—"
Clark cuts you off. "Honey," he hums, the pet name like a coo. "Bedtime."
"But—"
He smooths over your head, stroking it like it was an attempt to calm down the overactive contents inside. "It's late," he mutters, tired voice gentle.
He can keep himself up a short while more for you, he thinks. Rather, hopes. He can force himself to stay up as he knows he can't rest soundly when you're wide awake.
Tags: Targcest, age gap, oral sex male receiving, cheating, Hurt/some comfort???(sorta), Maekar being a shit dad, mention of parental death, swallowing, corruption kink, virgin reader
Summary: Getting send to the Red Keep is the escape you desperately needed after your mother dies and your father can’t stand to look at the child who most closely resembles his late wife. When he eventually calls for your return home you cling to the comfort of your uncle.
Word Count: 3.7k
“I’ve been good…” Baelor groaned at your words, your position knelt beside where he sat making it all the harder to resist you. “Haven’t I?” Your voice cracked.
“you’ve been excellent sweet thing,” his voice was almost always soft, gentle, warm, it wasn’t different with you but there was some strain in it that you didn't notice when he was talking with others.
“Then do not make me go back to Summerhall!”
He’d showed you the raven that arrived this morning, your father wanted you to return home. That was all that was written. It was also the only letter he had sent since your arrival.
“please he’s, Uncle he’s so horrible now. Just yelling at me whenever he can bare to be in the same room as I.” Your jaw was trembling and Baelor could not help but extend his hand to stroke at it. He hated seeing you so worked up, so upset and panicked.
“Your place is there, with your siblings, with your father.” That was the dutiful response to give, but be worried that he did not even sound convinced that this was what should transpire.
Maekar had send his eldest daughter to the Red keep for Jena and he to look after. They hadn’t thought much of it, you were getting older as it was and being in the capital would do you some good. Introduce you to more people, perhaps a marriage of opportunity and connection could be arranged. You’d not find anybody in Summerhall.
The moment your wheelhouse stopped and he had seen your sunken lifeless eyes he knew that you’d been sent away for more than just the normal warding reasons.
Jena has gotten it out of you first and swiftly shared the reality of the situation at Summerhall with her husband.
Your father was not mourning your mother well. His patience was pratically gone, he refused to see Rhae, Daeron could not step up enough in his eyes, and you…you committed the sin of looking like her.
He couldn’t bare to be in your presence…couldn’t support you once while you attempted to come to terms with your mothers passing.
He’d not sent you away to gain new experiences, he’d gotten rid of you so he did not need to be constantly reminded of Dyanna!
You’d always been special to Baelor, the first daughter his youngest brother had and through a well timed visit he’d been there when you were born. Was the third person to hold you because Maekar was sick with some awful cold that the maesters determined would be ghastly for a fresh babe to get. He’d extended his visit to ensure you were getting plenty of attention. Aerion and Daeron had always been quite a handful and if your father could not be the one to hold you while dyanna tended to the needy toddlers than he thought he was the next best choice.
It felt like his sweet little thing, needed him again. Jena agreed instantly, you’d be better helping Baelor than following her around. She hoped he could patch the wound his brother had created.
“Tell him you still require my help.” Both your hands were holding to his leg now, fingers digging in as you drew more desperate. “Please uncle-he doesn’t even love me anymore. Not like you do.”
Baelor tensed in his chair hands unable to push yours away, he did not want you to feel rejected, so he laid his warm palm over your white knuckles, rubbing tenderly.
“Your father loves you dearly, he has just never been good at processing his feelings my love.”
He shouldn’t call you that. He shouldn’t even call you sweet thing because of the way that term made him feel. How he’d feel warm and full when you would grin at the affectionate title.
“but you help me sleep…” your voice was soft and your chin settled atop his knee. “What if I can’t fall asleep anymore without you?”
Baelor’s eyes closed for a long moment. He never should have gotten so close. He indluged for you, provided you to intimate level of attention you needed to stop being a shell of yourself. He had craved it as well, but he worked hard to not be a selfish person, he’d caved for your sake not his own.
“You know the songs, they are prettier coming from your voice than mine, that I am sure of” He attempted to deflect another one of your reason as to why you needed to stay.
Truly you’d thought that remark would have worked, your uncle had been quite shocked to find out from the maester that you had apparently not slept in quite some time. Your maids had attempted to get you to rest, Jena had and even your grandmother the Queen tried her hand. Baelor had been the only one able to accomplish the task.
He’d kept you in his study, helping him seal raven late one evening and the moment he saw your eyes being to blink for longer periods of time he stood from his desk, came to the spot you were sat in and urged your head down to his lap. Humming a song to you that he had heard your mother sing when you were little, it was something dornish and comforting and you he’d been unable to resist the allure of sleep when his voice and hands coaxed your gently into it.
You frowned now, lips in a tight scowled and a line between your brows that made it impossible to forget that you were Maekars daughter!
“Tell me what I can do Uncle, tell me and I will do it so I can stay.” You were a bit more urgent now, worried truly that he would not bend to your wills.
He sighed, hand leaving your clenched fists and stroking your cheek.
“my sweet thing…” he did not want to see you go. Ever.
“I can keep you company-“ you swallowed pale violet eyes blinking up at him as your mind raced faster that your mouth could move.
“You have, you’ve been very helpful-“
“company as a wife should…” you spoke over him. Breathing a bit harder, seeing his eyes flicker to the door of his study. It was shut, he always shut it now that you joined in in here. At first it had been the create a space where you did not need to be viewed, where your emotions could swell without people whispering. More recently he’d kept it closed because he did not want his time with you interrupted or tracked.
“Princess,” he was formal again, suddenly, as if that would reverse all the lines of propriety that he’d already crossed with you.
“I know she does not share your bed-“ you argue as if that makes your suggestion less dizzying for him.
“That is not for you to know. I’ve not asked you to observe the matters of my marriage.” He stood up, much stronger than you and so he had no issue escaping your hold on his leg. Your cheek pressed to the corner of his seat now as you curled in on yourself some. Skirts bunched up in your lap showing him your shins as you protected your head with your knees.
He wanted to kneel down and push them down, not let you close yourself off again. That was the issue, he felt to drawn to you, more concerned about not only your wellbeing but your happiness as well. His concern was more than what a uncle should have.
“Please don’t be cross with me.” You’d never seen him raise his voice like that, his tone, the tightness of it and the exhaustion, that had you feeling more dejected than him refusing to tell your father that you’d remain at the red keep for now.
“You cannot say things like that-“ he warned you eyes moving from the window to where you were sat on the floor. “If somebody heard you… Sweet thing, I don’t want them whispering about you.” The sharpness in his voice had softened and it was back to that warm gentle tone that you had grown so accustomed to hearing.
“I’m sorry…” you were bruising. Your lip from how feverishly you were kneading it between your teeth.
“I know,” he came bask one to his desk, sitting in the seat and letting his hand cup your cheek. “Don’t bite in that.” His thumb trailed over your bottom lip, rescuing it from the pinch and sighing as he looked over your face.
He deserved a whipping for the thoughts he was having…at the very least a clout on the head.
“How do you know what a wife does?” She’d never had a courtship and he imagined there were far less gospping ladies at Summerhall discussing scandalous trysts with stable boys or knights!
“I bled years ago, the septas tell you what that means…what will be expected when I wed.”
Baelor nodded, slowly, his silent gaze had a way of pulling the full truth from you.
You blink and your eyes flicker down the your nervous hands that fiddled with the fabric of your gown.
“My chambers share a wall with Daeron’s.” You admit, warmth spattering rather rapidly up your neck and to your cheeks. “The whores are not quiet” nor was he, but that felt even more shameful to admit.
“I see.” Baelor nodded more fully now, clearly believe that was more the truth than that the septas had told you.
“I do not mean to disparage Lady Jena.” That was the truth. She has been kind to you, offering the outlook of a women than you very much needed after loosing your mother and being stuck in the sea of men that was Summerhall.
Baelor’s hand was not leaving your cheek. He could not will himself to pull it away.
“I know you did not. Jena is a good wife, and a better mother, you can see that.”
You nodded cheek rubbing against his calloused palm.
“She has done her duty to me…to this realm, given me a heir and a spare, that is all I’ve ever asked of her.”
You swallowed mouth feeling rather wet all of a sudden. Not speaking was the right decision…it forced him to reflect on what he was feeling instead of just respond to whatever you would say.
Your lips parted slightly as his mismatched eyes consumed you. They did not waiver one second from you.
“You father likely needs your help-managing your sisters no doubt.” He sighed, thumb trailing under your jaw and lifting your chin just a bit.
“Your mother would not wish for you to be stowed away there like a Nan.” He exhaled, realizing he’d been holding onto his breath for much of this time.
“she’d want you to be content.” You nodded at that. Sitting up slightly. Fighting the urge to exclaim a yes!
“My sweet thing wishes to remain here, for a while long at least?”
It takes you a moment to agree because your were half transfixed by his low tone and half shocked that this was actually going in your favor.
“I wish for nothing more-and I won’t beg again when he next calls for my return! I won’t make you tell him know, I swear uncle.” Your hands left your lap to press against his chest as you got up onto your knees.
His eyes shinned as you jolted up suddenly, assuring him that this was a fine idea and you’d be compliant next time Maekar called for you. Baelor did not fully believe that last bit but your hands were pressing against his lapel and he could not muster enough courage in himself to resist you…or his own desire to keep you here.
He’d keep you right in this study, right on the floor next to his leg if he could. He supposed he could keep you there, who would stop him. Maekar perhaps but he had a feeling his little brother would need more time to sort his own mournful and angry mess of a mind out before he dealt with the perversions of his or your own.
Your breathing was heavy…made louder because Baelors seemed to sink with yours as the silence dragged on longer. You were waiting for him to say it…to tell you to do something. He was looking at you with so much hunger in his eyes that you knew what he wanted, anybody who stumbled upon this scene would know what the honorable Prince Baelor wanted from you in this moment. He could deny it but nobody would believe him that was how blatant the longing was.
“Tell me what you need…” his eyes flickered from you to his lap for a moment. Just long enough for your eyes to follow and find that the fabric of his trousers were stretched. The seam going down the middle pulling.
He could and would deny himself this desire, but not you. Never you.
“I wish to help you uncle.” You blinked up at him hands falling slowly down from the hold you had on his jacket and you lowered your bottom down onto your heels swallowing as your face got level with his lap. He’d opened his knees a bit so you had room to slip in closer and he nodded stiffly stifling a groan as when your fingers found the ties of his pants.
“very well my love, go on.” He granted you permission and then nodded when your fingers got between the laces pulling them apart. There was some relief from just that bit of fabric being opened up. Though his cock was straining even more causing more of ache when he saw your eyes lost in the curled hair that trailed like a forest down from his stomach all the way around his cock.
“I don’t wish to hurt you…” you worried when he groaned and the chair creaked from him leaning back against it. It was so good obvious to him that his sweet thing had not fallen into some guards laps and stroked his cock, not let a visiting lord get you drunk and make promises of marriage.
Baelor knew you’d not seen, let alone touched a man before and that realization had him rapidly swelling to his full length. Hand leaving your cheek to grab your uncertain hand and tucked it into the waist of his breeches guiding you to pull them down.
“doesn’t hurt-“ he bit out eyes slivering slightly at the relief that came from being unconfined. “You are doing so well.” He hummed smiling down at you and taking up the comforting hold of your cheek once more.
You’d pressed your cheek against the warm inside of his thigh when his prick sprung free. From your position you could smell the mix of salt and warm oak. It was quite strong and it made your eyelids hood.
You were practically nuzzling against him like a little kitten and Baelor had half a mind to let you just remain safe in that spot. Warm and looked after and not corrupted any further.
“can I touch it?”
He nodded before thinking and when you curiously brought your hand to the hair that was arranged in a dark nest at the base of his cock he realized that his want to be the one to experience these things with you first was defeating his desire to keep your safe and pure.
For the first time in decades Baelor Targaryen allowed himself the pleasure of selfishness.
“You can squeeze it, wrap your fingers around me and bring them all the way up to the t-top.” His voice jumped when you followed directions promptly and well! Fingers not able to close fully around the base of him but you still squeezed what you could eyes traveling all the way to the red angry swollen tip and stopping your hand right under it because if you kept lifting up more the glistening tip would be covered up by the flesh she was able to shift up and down.
“it’s harder than I imagined.” You murmured against his leg and brought your hand back down to the base squeezing some eyes lighting up when juicy thick veins revealed themselves.
“Aye, because you are a pretty little thing.” Baelor groaned, his hand shamelessly moving from your cheek to the hair behind your ear. Which did bring you in a bit closer to him.
“A sweet pretty thing?” You hummed and your eyes closed inhaling as your nose brushed his heavy stones. You enjoyed everything about him, how he spoke, how he trained, how he raised his cup for more wine during council, how he carried you to bed, gods you even loved how his stones smelt.
“yes. you are my very pretty, sweet thing.” He confirmed brow tense as he looked down at you. At how comfortable your hand was, at how you did not shy from being drawn in closer.
“Lady Jena,” he swallowed. “She would put her mouth here on my tip.” Baelor informed you and nodded as you quickly lifted your head and pressed your lips to his tip. Giving his cock a chaste kiss.
“More open…part your lips and teeth.” He urged and groaned as you did exactly what he said. Eyes blinding close as your warm wet mouth covered his leaking tip.
He should return his brothers letter, tell him to come to kings landing so they could spar! Maybe Maekar would win this time? Maybe he could wound him enough that this guilt would be relieved?
“Gods-Gods, yes that’s very good.” His hand closed around your hair and you whined with him in your mouth. The sound opening your mouth some more and that allowed Baelor to rut more than just his cockhead past your lips.
He could tell you were attempting to get his attention back on you, garbled words of uncle and Baelor coming out and drawing his eyes open and to you right away. Nodding his encouragement as he found the right words.
When you pulled your head back, red face and panting he sat up some and stroked your hair. “You breathe still, just through your nose.” He chuckled with a smile. You nodded chest heaving in your gown as you wiped your mouth and bit at your bottom lip again. He was grinning so widely at you, showing most of his teeth and your eyes settled on the smaller raised up teeth near the front. You wanted to lick them…kiss his lips and feel what his teeth bitting your bottom lip would be like. Baelor saw where your mind was heading and quickly gathered your pretty hair up in his first.
“can you finish this for me? This is what I need you to do my love.” He said it as if it was some gift or service you were doing to the realm, a task of high importance and not that he needed you to help him peak quickly so he did not lose all sense entirely and ruin in you ways that he worried he could not fix.
“of course!” He smiled at the earnestness in your response and he stroked the back do your head as a means of saying thank you.
You love your uncle, wanted to help him, wanted to remain in his good graces. You couldn’t stand the idea of him souring on your like your father had. Likely you’d of done anything the crowned prince asked…it was a blessing that he had more restraint than other men in his position would!
You eagerly opened your mouth and let your tongue hang out to taste the beads of white that leaked out of him. Cleaning that up before moving down so your lips were stretched around the base of him, thin and pale from how large he was.
You made noises, ones Baelor cooed at to continually assure you that you were doing well, that it felt heavenly.
“oh…” he was breathing hard, back tense and hips pushing up towards you. “Oh, seven hells…sweet thing…” your eyes lifted to him watching as his face contorted for a moment and then suddenly there was this odd warmth filling your mouth.
It was Salty and thick the foreign feeling dripping down the back of your throat made your eyes water. You blinked rapidly and attempted to pull back but your uncle had clung to your head. Hand sealed agains the back of your neck keeping you in place as he rutted against your face. Unable to resist as his release poured out of him.
His hands let go when the last bit of his spend had spurted out and you coughed hard falling back on your bottom looking up at him as you regained air to your lungs.
“I’m sorry-“ you started to say while whipping your mouth. He had a strange expression on his face. It wasn’t the beaming smile he had moments ago, it was contentless, his shoulders seemed more relaxed and he had some color to his cheeks that made him look healthy but there was a distinct troubled expression across his brows.
He shook his head insanity and stuffed his softening length into his trousers grabing you up off the floor and brining you into his lap.
“no…no don’t do that. You did so well, so so well.” He praised, hand trailing up and down your back. “It’s just….you did so well I feel quite exhausted now.” That wasn’t a lie. He was spent, he hadn’t spilled his seen anywhere, other than in his own hand, in years.
“Come here,” he kissed the bridge of your nose and tucked your face down into his neck. “You did perfect my sweet thing.” He kissed your temple this time and when you nodded against him he gave you a soft smile. “It’s going to be alright, I promise you, you can stay here with me. I’ll write my brother.”
You peaked up at him, cracking a greatful grin and wrapping your arms around him.
“Uncle,” you closed your eyes. “Can you sing to me now?” You requested, so innocently, that it made Baelor curse himself.
“Yes, yes of course, anything.” He swore.
You just wanted his comfort, did not want to leave what felt warm, loving and safe. And he wouldn’t make you.
Pairing: David!Clark Kent x villain/anti-hero!Reader | wc 450
Summary: Your cat-and-mouse game with Superman comes to a head. Day 2 of June Jukebox Scribbles
Tags: smutty, 18+, MDNI, close proximity, foreplay (m + f receiving), breast play, teasing, brief unprotected p in v
sorry I'm rusty and still recovering! any mistakes? you didn't see them!
event masterlist
You almost ghosted Metropolis with the rare Lunar Tear glinting between your fingers, intending to tuck it into the daring plunge of your catsuit, if only the vault’s failsafe hadn’t slammed home with a bone-deep snap.
That was who-knows-how long ago. Time warped under the crimson strobe.
Each pulse sculpted Superman beside you, etching every plane you’ve memorized on moonlit rooftops and rain-slick alley walls, where breathless pauses and sermons of "reform" always melted into desperate touches that stopped just shy of everything, leaving you both shaking and frustrated.
Months of pursuit taught you Big Blue's cadence: catch, kiss, release, repeat. Tonight, that rhythm fractured.
"I know you could peel this door like foil, baby," you gasped breathlessly, nails clawing into his cape while his thick thigh rides the soak-seam of your suit, sending sparks of pleasure through your clit. "G-get both of us out."
He answered with touch: large fingers capture your wrist with disarming gentleness, his thumb sweeping tenderly along your lifeline until the hefty slipped from your grasp and clinked forgotten between your feet.
Summer blue eyes, dark with storming desire, held your gaze.
"Not until you give it up," he rasped, palm skimming from waist to ass, grinding you harder onto the meat of his thigh.
The other finally drags with your zipper south, exposing the swell of your breasts. Rough fingertips brushed your stiff nipples, pinching lightly and drawing needy whimpers from your throat that ricochet off steel. "No more games, yeah?"
"Try harder, Big Blue," you teased back, arching into his touch with doubled enthusiasm. Your teeth nipped his jaw, tongue soothing the barely-there mark. "Isn’t playing cop to my robber a thrill?"
His groan answered for him, vibrating through your chest. One hand settles on your ass, squeezing, drawing you impossibly flush; fabric sparks against fabric, nipples pebbling as his cock twitches against your stomach. Zippers descended lower, belts clattered, all revealing flashes of tantalizing skin.
You quickly sank to your knees, tongue tracing the sculpted groove of his abs before freeing him with practiced flicks. He’s heavy, jerking when your mouth envelopes the crown. His head thuds back against the door; your name escapes from his throat like prayer while you hollowed your cheeks, stroking the thick length and savoring the shudder rolling down his frame.
"Good God— sweetheart—" The plea broke as you pulled off with a wet pop, licking a slow stripe up the underside.
"P-promise me you’ll behave,” he tried again. "Walk away clean otherwise," he panted hotly against your ear, fingers finally slipping between your slick folds to thrust two thick digits deep inside. "No more thefts."
"No, I can't promise that I won't do that," you moaned, words spilling out shakily as pleasure coiled tighter. "B-but I’ll make it— worth your while if — if you let me keep— playing bad, baby—"
Superman's control snapped once again.
His eager mouth claimed yours in a ruinous kiss, withdrawing his fingers and replacing them with the blunt head of his cock, nudging and pushing into your dripping heat, and finally, finally, filled you.
"Kal—!" You clenched around him, lost in raw surrender.
All the while, the Lunar Tear lies ignored, winking with each crimson flash while you and you and Big Blue burn hotter, brighter than any jewel this vault could ever guard.
mmh thinking loads about clark and his grown-out hair…don't mind me….
tags: implied smut, fluff, domestic bliss, gratuitous mention of his curls (700+ wc)
—
i'd imagine that fhe first time you noticed would've been when you're just in bed with him, lounging after a hearty home-cooked dinner. he's laying on his belly beside you, with an arm tucked under his pillow. he gets like that when he eats too much, usually burning the lethargy off with a nap. quietly, you'd watch the sturdy, broad lines of his back rise and fall, in utter bliss.
"mm. can feel you staring at me. i think." after a long while of you squinting, he'd call you out on it, voice a sleepy, pillow-muffled drawl.
you'd clamber over his stupidly slender waist, combing your fingers through his thick, slightly coarse locks. "your hairs gotten seriously long."
clark remains a drifting cloud beneath you. the only evidence of his presence being the low, content grumbles he makes at the gentle pressure of your nails against his scalp. he lifts his head a fraction. "…has it?"
"mhm." you hum, non-committal. slumping your whole weight into the wide expanse of his broad back. scents of cedar & peppermint coating your senses. your knuckles come to push the curled out edges by the nape of his neck. it springs back up under your nudge. "i've never seen it stick out like this."
you stroke through his curls a little rougher, eliciting a full-bodied shudder from your sleepy boyfriend, "i see. i've had my hands a little full lately." a soft, deep sigh leaves him, and you feel his calloused hands blindly feel for your ankles, snug by his waist. he thumbs at the muscle there, sliding up your calf.
"should i get it cut?" he offers, cheeks pressed against his pillow.
your ministrations stills, "hmm. dunno." you answer honestly, pulling at the curled edges to make them stick out more. "it's sort of…hot. gives you a dishevelled…rugged look." you lower yourself, resting your cheeks onto his traps.
"…"
his arm wraps around your lower back. and with a swift movement, you feel your vision tilt as he plops you beneath him. "ack!" you gasp, steadying a palm by his thick bicep, which he flexes, for your enjoyment.
clark shuffles to cage you in his arms, favouring his weight with his left forearm. one side of his head is visibly styled out in a messy swoop from where you were combing through. though a shorter, unruly strand curls past his forehead.
"i'm not sure if it's good for the hero image. to look unkempt," he ponders seriously, palms pressed against his cheeks as he lays on his side.
you blink up at him. still thrown by the sudden adjustment."…i'm just saying." your knuckles graze past the stray lock, melting into him, with a thigh draped along his ribs. "i like you like this. softer. just f'me." your words trail into murmurs, but he catches them anyway.
the dimples, deep in his cheeks makes themselves known first, and he lets out a huff, sizing you with a dopey smile. "that so?" clark leans on, pressing a kiss to the sensitive spot below your ears. the first peck tickles you, with his messy hair brushing past your ears. "hahah. hey! that tickles." you groan, catching a brief glimpse of his blurred, dark locks," geez…like some…wild beast."
"hmm. make up your mind," he rumbles, trailing teasing kisses past your collarbone, to your sternum. clark lifts his head up, eyes glinting in wanton adoration for you. "am i a beast, or some cool…hip dude?"
you stare at him, in mild disgust. "cool hip dude? nevermind. you can never be rugged."
he nips at your wrist when it comes to rest at the back of his head. "ow!" you yelp, shooting him a displeased look. clark just laughs, replacing the sting with a chaste peck. he guides your hand to the back of his head, as though encouraging you to keep it there.
"got your verdict yet?" the shift in the playfulness is subtle as he makes his way down your midsection. pressing another breathy kiss beneath your breasts to your navel. your eyes don't leave him, and neither does your idle palm, half-vanished in his curls.
before you can think to answer, clark lifts your hips up for a second to slide your sleep shorts down. keeping his gaze locked on yours as he presses his lips to your inner thighs.
you swallow the shudder that threatened to give away your building arousal, hands imperceptibly tightening where it was once lax.
Summary: You were raised to be admired from a distance, never to take up space of your own but when an acceptance letter offered you a future that finally belonged to you, you refused to let go, holding tight to the belief that the only way out was up. Between moving boxes, sleepless nights and last minute gigs of an unexpected career, you find yourself rising toward something extraordinary, reaching heights you once believed only he could touch.
Classification: Romantic dramedy | college "roommate"!Clark, labeled time jumps to the past/non linear narrative, non sexual nudity, sexual innuendos and humor (graphic jokes about genitals, masturbation and sexual performance), alcohol consumption, smoking, family conflict, emotional manipulation and themes of entrapment.
Word count: 23.9k
Divider by me ;)
At eighteen…
“College?!”
Your mother said the word the same way people announced terminal illnesses in old movies. One manicured hand pressed dramatically against her chest while the other gripped her wine glass hard enough to qualify as aggression.
You kept walking toward your bedroom anyway, dragging your heels across the polished hallway floors with all the enthusiasm of a woman marching toward a public execution.
“Your daughter wants to go to college,” she continued loudly to your father in the living room as though you had already disappeared entirely. “I told you we should’ve sent her to Paris like my mother did for me. Exposure to Europe could've fixed this.”
“There will be no college,” your father answered firmly before the ice in his drink even stopped clinking. “And there will be no Paris either. God forbid, that city has done enough damage to good families already. You came back from Paris with cigarettes, opinions and a taste for expensive shoes. I refuse to fund a sequel. She will court the young man we discussed and then she will get married.”
You closed your bedroom door softly before the sentence finished.
You had learned very young that slamming doors in your parents’ house only created longer conversations afterward. So instead you shut it quietly, leaned your back against the wood and closed your eyes while the noise of your life continued on the other side uninterrupted.
Outside your window, the city breathed. Cold air drifted through the curtains from the open fire escape window, carrying distant traffic, laughter from people walking somewhere below and the unbearable scent of freedom. Somewhere out there people were probably doing terrible things like choosing their own futures and eating dinner past seven-thirty without consequence.
You inhaled slowly, then exhaled, then inhaled again because breathing through emotional devastation counted as coping according to every women’s magazine ever printed.
You should’ve known bringing up college would end like this. Actually, you had known. You just kept hoping your parents might surprise you one day and accidentally develop humanity.
“Bad time?”
Clark’s voice floated quietly through the window and you jumped enough to nearly peel yourself off the door despite the fact this had become embarrassingly routine over the years.
Your eyes snapped toward the fire escape instantly.
Clark sat halfway through the open window frame looking unfairly comfortable there, broad shoulders hunched slightly beneath a plaid button up while moonlight caught against the familiar curve of his face and automatically, despite everything, you smiled…which felt medically concerning at this point.
You locked your bedroom door and crossed the room quickly to reach him.
“There’s no such thing as good timing around here,” you replied dryly.
Clark smiled softly and stood tall on the firescape. He then pushed the window open wider before offering you his hand like this was somehow a perfectly normal entrance method between teenagers and not the beginning of several future tabloid headlines.
You took it.
The second you climbed onto the fire escape and actually looked at him properly beneath the moonlight, your brows lifted. “Glasses?”
Clark blinked once before touching them instinctively.
He’d only been away at college for a month but somehow even that small distance had altered him slightly around the edges. You still spoke often on the phone, though never because you called first, Clark always called you. You told yourself it was healthier that way, less clingy and pathetic, easier for him to eventually fully leave if he needed to.
He still looked mostly like himself though, wearing jeans and plaid. A true farm boy-lead tragedy…your very own Romeo.
At this point you were fairly certain prolonged exposure throughout childhood had conditioned you into tolerating flannel psychologically, almost like a disease.
Meanwhile you looked exactly the same too. Matching lounge clothes, carefully styled hair but no dress tonight, just fluffy heeled slippers because even your relaxation footwear carried performance anxiety.
So really, the same people you had always been.
“Yeah.” Clark grinned shyly and slipped the glasses off briefly. “You like them?”
Your brows rose higher. “Are you asking me for fashion advice?”
Clark laughed under his breath. “The day will come but not today.” He glanced down at his shirt. “I don’t think I’m ready to let go of plaid yet.”
“I would never ask that of you,” you assured him solemnly. “Kansas would probably find a way to sue me specifically for it.”
Clark smiled wider and you felt your chest tighten at the sight of it before immediately pretending internally that nothing happened.
“They make you look…” You paused thoughtfully as Clark’s posture straightened imperceptibly. “Different.”
His face twisted with concern. “Good different or bad different?”
“Cute different,” you answered without thinking.
Silence settled between you as Clark looked at you…and you looked at Clark. Both your chests rose simultaneously while his lips parted slightly like he meant to say something dangerous to permanently alter your life at eighteen.
So naturally, you interrupted immediately. “Well,” you rushed onward, “given you didn’t use the front door tonight…or ever, I’m assuming you took the fast route here.”
Clark blinked once, visibly reorganizing his nervous system before nodding.
“Yeah.” The worry returned to his face. “You haven’t really been keeping up with our call schedule and I just…” He motioned vaguely toward your bedroom door. “I heard yelling.”
Clark had spent the last thirty minutes waiting outside on your fire escape hoping you’d eventually come while you suffered through dinner pretending your family dynamic qualified as normal.
Unfortunately for him, you had mentioned his name halfway through the meal and Clark Kent had never once succeeded at minding his own business where you were concerned…
“You’re not going to college, Y/n,” your mother had said while passing you the salad bowl with all the grace of a queen sentencing someone to death publicly. “That was never the plan. We already agreed on this.”
You took the bowl.
“Mama,” you answered carefully, “I was six when we discussed this and my biggest ambition at the time was becoming a princess.” You placed salad onto your plate aggressively. “I think we should maybe revisit the contract.”
“Maybe you need time off,” your mother suggested immediately. “An activity perhaps.”
Your face twisted instantly. “Time off from what?” you asked. “Tea at four? Waking up at nine every damn morning?”
Your mother gasped. That woman reacted to profanity like Victorian women reacted to tuberculosis. “Watch your mouth,” she hissed. “All those etiquette classes–”
“Fuck those etiquette classes.”
“Y/n!” your father barked while your mother looked moments away from fainting directly into the butter dish. If somebody yelled “whore” dramatically nearby, she probably would’ve died on the spot. You were definitely tempted to…no.
“Clearly they were a waste of money,” you muttered.
At that exact moment Zelda, your housekeeper, stepped beside you carrying the mashed potatoes.
You looked up at her. “Zelda, please tell me you didn’t smooth them too much tonight.” You sighed heavily. “I think I’d rather choke on potatoes than my words at this table.”
Your mother gasped again.
Your father dropped his silverware against his plate with a violent clatter while rubbing both hands slowly over his face. Meanwhile Zelda stood there completely expressionless because after so many years employed in your household, the woman had witnessed things far worse than profanity at dinner.
“You’re being dramatic,” your mother snapped.
“No,” you corrected calmly. “I’m being undereducated. Zelda?”
Zelda leaned down toward your ear with the stealth of a woman who had survived two decades employed by rich people and therefore understood the value of discreet alcoholism. “Don’t worry, Miss Y/n,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I have a bottle of something excellent hidden in the kitchen.”
Almost instantly, hope returned to your body.
“But no drinking on an empty stomach,” she added firmly before straightening again.
There it was, the closest thing you had ever experienced to maternal tenderness.
You smiled faintly as she disappeared back toward the kitchen and then turned once more toward your parents across the dining table. The chandelier overhead cast everything in warm gold light, expensive, polished and deeply suffocating.
You inhaled carefully, then exhaled.
“Papa,” you began, forcing steadiness into your voice, “I want to go to college.” Your fingers tightened around your fork. “I don’t want to stay here.”
Your mother turned toward your father as if calling legal counsel. “Tell her–”
“I think it’s a good idea,” your father interrupted calmly.
You and your mother spoke at exactly the same time, eyes wide. “You do?”
Your father nodded once and your mother rose from her chair so abruptly the legs scraped violently across the hardwood floors. Somewhere in the distance a ghost probably clutched its pearls.
“Wonderful! Look what you made me do,” your mother snapped while storming toward the living room. “My mother is rolling in her grave. Years of etiquette lessons wasted because our daughter suddenly wants an education.”
You watched her leave before muttering under your breath, “If grandmama survived two wars and four husbands, I think she’ll survive me reading some books.”
Your father ignored that completely. “What would you study?”
The question stopped you cold. Your father had always known exactly who he was, a mathematical prodigy with a structured mind and straight path. He had probably emerged from the womb already calculating taxes recreationally.
You, unfortunately, had spent most of your life mastering posture and pretending that counted as purpose. Your breath caught slightly as you looked down at your plate.
“French literature maybe,” you answered carefully. “To meet Mama halfway.” You shrugged lightly. “And Russian too, why not? That sounds difficult enough to impress everyone at Christmas dinner.”
“No.”
You blinked as your father continued eating calmly.
“No?” you repeated, completely thrown.
Your mother reappeared in the doorway then, vindication radiating off her like perfume.
“If you’re going to study,” your father continued, “and I’m paying for it, then you’ll study something useful.”
You stared at him in disbelief. “Useful?” you repeated slowly. “You mean unlike me?”
“Y/n.”
“No, because I’m trying to understand.” You laughed once in genuine astonishment. “You want to marry me off to some entitled little parasite descended from generations of worse parasites and I’m the one who suddenly needs practical skills?”
“I’m not paying for university unless you choose a worthwhile field.”
“Oh, fascinating.” You nodded quickly. “So my future husband can waste oxygen professionally but I need to become economically viable. What year is this?!”
“Enough.”
“No, it’s actually not enough. Not even close.” Your voice rose before you could stop it. “Why can’t you be more like the Kents?”
Both your parents frowned immediately.
“He’s in Metropolis right now,” you continued, frustration spilling faster now. “Living his life and making choices. Nobody chained him to his parents’ dreams before he even understood what dreaming was and trust me, he would know.”
Your mother looked genuinely confused. “Who are the Kents?” she asked your father like you had invented them on the spot.
Your father shrugged once and you stared at them with parted lips and narrowed eyes.
“Smallville?” you repeated slowly. “Clark Kent? My best friend?” You pointed between the two of them. “Does that ring any bells?”
Your mother blinked. “I thought he was imaginary.”
You nearly dropped your fork. “You’ve met him multiple times!”
“When?” your father asked plainly.
“Where did you think I went every time I left the house for six hours?”
“For walks.” Your mother answered with a careless shrug.
Your jaw fell open. “In the ass crack of Kansas?” Even Zelda paused in the kitchen doorway at that one. “You genuinely thought I wandered into cornfields for fun?”
“It didn’t matter. You always came back,” your father answered simply and the sentence hit strangely harder than yelling would’ve.
You looked between them in complete disbelief. “Mama, papa…you’ve met him,” you insisted again.
Your mother turned sharply toward the kitchen. “Zelda?”
Zelda appeared instantly because unlike your parents, Zelda actually paid attention to your life. “Yes ma’am?”
“Have we met this…” Your mother motioned vaguely toward you. “Claire Kent?”
“It’s Clark,” you corrected loudly.
Zelda nodded. “He always comes for Miss Y/n’s birthdays,” she supplied helpfully.
Your mother paused. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” you echoed. “Oh.” You leaned back into your chair, suddenly exhausted. “He got accepted into Met U,” you continued more quietly. “He’s gonna become this incredible journalist and actually build something for himself.”
“I wouldn’t care if pigs flew tomorrow wearing little top hats and singing the national anthem,” your father said, voice dripping with disdain. “You are not going to Met U. The answer is no. Final. Humanity did not survive wars, depressions and your mother’s cooking just so you could throw your life away becoming some glorified typewriter girl or…or some ink-stained, idealistic little journalist chasing scandals and heartbreak in that godforsaken concrete jungle!”
The way he said it sounded offensive and something sharp twisted violently in your chest then. Before you realized it, your chair scraped backward and you were already standing but neither of your parents had stopped you.
Their voices faded behind you as you walked away from the dining room, then faded further still somewhere inside your mind where disappointment had started settling into something colder over the years.
Back on the fire escape, you blinked slowly and looked toward Clark again. “Claire’s a pretty name,” you considered lightly. “At least she got some of the letters correct.”
Clark laughed softly despite the concern still written all over his face. “Y/n, I’m so sorry.”
“Stop apologizing for them, Kent.” You waved him off. “I probably could’ve chosen a better moment to bring it up but…” You shrugged. “I’m running out of time.”
His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
You inhaled sharply. “Wait here.” Then you disappeared back into your bedroom before he could question you further.
Clark watched through the open window while you crossed quickly toward your vanity, dropped to your knees and yanked open the bottom drawer beneath piles of scarves and unopened perfume boxes. For a second he just watched you move around your room with that same restless energy you always carried whenever you were trying not to feel something too deeply.
You returned holding an envelope. You handed it toward him through the window but before even looking at it, Clark automatically steadied you by the waist while helping you climb back onto the fire escape safely.
The contact lingered slightly too long. It always did, even then.
Once your feet landed properly, Clark finally lowered his gaze toward the paper. He unfolded it carefully and read silently, then looked up so fast you almost laughed.
“Metropolis University…” he breathed. “Late admission…” His eyes scanned lower before widening completely. “Accepted with full costs covered.” His eyes snapped toward yours. “You got in?”
The excitement in his voice hit before the words fully settled and suddenly Clark had both arms around you, lifting you straight off the fire escape entirely while squeezing hard enough to rearrange several organs. “This is perfect–”
“You could also,” you wheezed, fighting for oxygen, “ease up a little before my eyeballs detach, file for independence and attend orientation without the rest of me.”
Clark dropped you back down instantly. “I’m sorry,” he blurted while checking your face with visible horror, one warm hand cupping your cheek gently like he genuinely expected structural damage. “I got too excited.”
You laughed breathlessly. “You didn’t squeeze that hard,” you admitted. “I’m messing with you.”
Clark still looked unconvinced.
You leaned back against the brick wall behind you and exhaled slowly. “I have two more days to answer them,” you admitted quietly. “After that they give the spot to someone else.” Clark stayed completely still listening to you. “I wanted my parents on board with the concept before telling them about it,” you continued. “But after tonight?” You shrugged lightly. “I’m an adult. They don’t get to decide every single thing for me forever.”
Then you pushed lightly against his shoulder. “You’re not the only one who gets to fly the coop.”
Clark looked at you for a long moment after and you could’ve sworn his eyes actually shined beneath the moonlight as he smiled. It was the kind of smile that had ruined you years ago, it made your stomach flip, your heart stutter and your brain forget every reason you had ever given yourself for keeping your distance. "The only way out is up."
His arms wrapped around you carefully, one around your waist and the other supporting your back as he pulled you flush against him, lifting effortlessly from the fire escape into the night sky.
The moon was bright above you, casting everything in silver and somewhere far below, the city hummed with the life you had temporarily escaped.
The last of the Talon’s customers finally spilled out into the street one stagger at a time, the door swinging shut behind them with tired little squeaks until silence began settling over the club in uneven patches. Without the crowd packed shoulder-to-shoulder inside it, the room suddenly looked smaller, sadder. The cigarette haze still lingered beneath the hanging lights and the entire place smelled like stale beer, sweat and the consequences of free speech.
The room looked wrecked in the aftermath of the night. Half-empty glasses cluttered tables, cocktail napkins stuck wetly to wood surfaces and a chair near the stage had somehow lost one leg entirely and leaned sadly against another table.
Meanwhile you sat at the bar with the tip basket overturned in front of you, bills spread carefully across the scratched counter while you counted them for what had to be the fourth time now because the number felt fake.
Behind you, chairs scraped loudly across the floor while Susie started cleaning up the room herself.
“You know,” she called out while dragging a mop bucket past the stage, “if you actually need money, I’d pay you a pretty penny to rinse out the communal throw-up bucket.”
You didn’t even look up from the stack of bills in your hands.
“I’d rather pay you not to have one.” You flattened a five-dollar bill against the counter. “Why not just let people throw up in the bathrooms like civilized alcoholics?”
Susie snorted somewhere behind you.
“Do you know how hard it is for somebody five drinks deep to hold their puke?” she asked. “They line up for the bathrooms, then they clog the pipes and suddenly the whole place smells like fermented regret.” She pointed toward the back hall. “And the bathrooms are too close to the stage. One bad overflow and I lose half the room.”
You grimaced. “What a lovely establishment you have here.”
“Not lovelier than you,” Susie replied in the exact same monotone voice.
She came around the counter then, wiping her hands on a rag before leaning over the money spread across the bar. Her eyes narrowed slightly at the stack growing beneath your fingers. Truthfully, she had never seen that much money come out of the Talon’s tip basket before…ever.
“How’s the counting going?” she asked suspiciously. “You’ve been staring at those bills for ten damn minutes. Do rich people not learn little numbers?”
You looked up slowly. “That’s hilarious.” You nodded. “You should try comedy sometime.”
“I said the same thing.” Susie deadpanned right back without missing a beat, leaning onto the counter. “What do we have?”
You counted once more just to make sure your rich upbringing hadn’t actually somehow sabotaged basic mathematics, gathered the final stack slowly and exhaled through your nose.
“Five hundred and twenty-one dollars.” You paused. “And some cents but honestly they feel a tad irrelevant right now.”
Even saying it out loud felt absurd and you could tell by the way Susie’s face tightened.
“A-are you sure?” she asked carefully, leaning closer instinctively. “And before you actually get offended, I’m really not trying to insult your intelligence here but–”
“It’s a lot,” you admitted quietly.
“Almost too much,” she agreed without missing a beat.
You nodded slowly. If someone told you three hours ago that complete strangers would hand you over five hundred dollars after hearing about your emotional collapse and humidity issues, you probably would’ve recommended psychiatric evaluation.
Susie stared at the money another second before letting out a disbelieving huff through her nose. “Where the hell have you been all this time?” she demanded suddenly. “You were up there for maybe ten minutes.”
You considered that carefully. “Ten minutes is really long depending on the context.”
“Not when people are screaming for an encore!” Susie pointed at you emphatically. “You hear me? An encore. In this place. Half these people don’t even clap when performers leave, they just ask for another beer.” She shook her head in disbelief. “This is your calling.”
You barked out a laugh.
“My calling?” You stared at her incredulously. “You think my purpose in life is exploiting my psychological decline in a shitty club with visible ceiling damage?” You glanced upward. “No offense.”
Susie waved dismissively toward the back. “It’d be stupid to get offended by that when there’s currently a bucket of vomit fermenting at the back of the room.”
You laughed despite yourself and looked back down at the money. “It was fun,” you admitted carefully. “But not five-hundred-dollars fun.”
“It was to them.” Susie pointed sharply toward the now empty room like the audience still sat there. “You’re the greatest accidental comic…honestly, comic in general that I’ve heard in my entire damn life.” Her eyes widened as she spoke, voice growing more animated the longer she looked at you. “And every drunk idiot in this disgusting room knew it too.”
She leaned both hands against the counter. “You’re gonna go far if you let this happen.”
You stared at her for a second without answering. The idea sounded absurd, impossible even and slightly humiliating and yet your ears still rang faintly with applause every time the room got quiet.
Susie grabbed your abandoned stack of résumés from beside the register and waved them in front of your face dramatically. “You see this? You forgot to write fucking hilarious on these.” She paused. “You reek of it.”
You instinctively lifted your arm discreetly and sniffed yourself. Thankfully you still smelled expensive…mostly. “I think that might just be the air in here.” You looked down and started reorganizing the money just to have something for your hands to do.
“I need you back,” Susie continued, completely ignoring that. “Every week. I want you on that stage.”
Your eyes drifted toward it automatically. You could still picture yourself standing there beneath the lights, sweating through your dress while strangers laughed hard enough to bend over tables. If you concentrated, you could actually still hear them.
“I wouldn’t even know what to talk about,” you admitted quietly. “I don’t know what triggers it.” You looked back at her. “What if my life stops being terrible and I run out of material?”
Susie barked out a laugh. “You seemed pretty damn ready both times.” She shrugged while stacking glasses loudly behind the bar. “The bits sound messy at first but somehow they all flow together. You jump from one thing to another but it still makes sense.” She pointed at you with an empty beer bottle. “So whatever psychotic process you’ve got going on in that head? Keep doing it.”
You shook your head slowly, still unconvinced.
“How do you write your jokes?”
“What jokes?”
She stared at you in frustration. “The Garrett thing,” she clarified, trying to physically reconstruct your set from memory. “The blue cheese smell, the unpaid child support, then the gambling stuff, then you threatening him with football bets while looking like…” She motioned vaguely toward your entire existence. “Like that.”
You looked down at your outfit instinctively. “Well-dressed?”
“Like somebody who should legally not know how to threaten people.”
You opened your mouth to interrupt but she kept going.
Susie continued talking faster now, hands moving wildly while she tried explaining what she’d witnessed. “And the unlady-like shit too. The laptop thing, the heels, the way you talk about all those rich people rules while actively breaking every single one of them in real time.” She shook her head hard. “I don’t fucking know! Everything connected somehow.” Her eyes widened. “And fuck, was I scared at first. I genuinely thought you were about to spiral into incoherent rambling, some rich girl hostage note halfway through.”
“That’s fair.”
“But then you’d pause at the exact right time.” She pointed again. “You let people think for half a second before dragging them somewhere even funnier.” Her voice lowered with genuine awe now. “One minute they’re laughing so hard I’m pretty sure somebody pissed themselves near table four, then suddenly you’ve got the whole room actually thinking about something before they start laughing again. You say all this completely unhinged stuff but there’s rhythm to it.”
You laughed softly at that and rubbed one hand over your face. “Susie…” You exhaled heavily. “That’s just my life.”
You said the word so seriously that it briefly softened her expression. This was your life, not material or a performance, those were years of thoughts finally spilling out somewhere people couldn’t interrupt them.
“I’m not writing jokes.” You shrugged lightly. “I’m impulsive,” Your fingers fiddled with one of the folded dollar bills. “And mouthy…I hold a lot in and eventually it needs somewhere to go before I explode in public or develop a stress-related disease elegant women get in period dramas.”
“Then, do that here,” Susie decided.
She leaned further across the counter as she spoke, elbows planted firmly against the sticky wood like physical proximity might somehow force the idea into your skull through sheer impact. For once there was no sarcasm cushioning her tone, no dry delivery flattening the sincerity out of her words to make them easier to survive, just certainty. Sharp and almost frantic beneath her exhaustion, burning visibly behind eyes still bright from what she had witnessed an hour earlier.
“Do it on a stage.”
You swallowed.
The room suddenly felt quieter. Well, not silent, the Talon would probably never know true silence after years of soaking drunken confessions directly into its walls like nicotine stains but quieter in the particular way places became once possibility entered them. Ironically, the hum of the old refrigerator behind the bar sounded louder now. So did the distant rattling pipes somewhere overhead, even the flickering neon beer signs buzzed with irritating clarity.
“This isn’t permanent,” you assured her quickly, though your voice frayed slightly around the edges anyway as your thoughts began outrunning one another again. “All of this…”
Your hand motioned vaguely around yourself, the club, the pile of money still spread across the counter and the applause lodged stubbornly somewhere inside your chest like a second heartbeat. Your life had simply derailed temporarily but that was all this was, temporary humiliation, temporary instability and temporary emotional collapse in front of strangers.
You would fix it, you had to.
Susie watched your face carefully for a long moment, studying your face carefully like she was trying to figure out whether you genuinely believed what you were saying or merely needed it badly enough to repeat it out loud.
“You really mean there’s no jokes in there?” she asked finally.
You shook your head immediately. “Not one.”
Susie stared another second before asking more quietly, “You’re really gonna be homeless?”
The question landed strangely hard spoken aloud, not because you hadn’t already admitted it to yourself several dozen times throughout the day, but because hearing somebody else say it transformed the thought into something no longer abstract to shove aside between distractions.
At your small nod, Susie’s shoulders dropped.
“Fuck me,” she muttered under her breath, genuine sympathy slipping through. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not permanent, Susie.” You shrugged lightly despite the tightness beginning to spread through your chest again. “This is just…” You paused, searching for wording that sounded less terrifying than the truth. “Something I have to survive.”
Your eyes drifted toward the money again. “And I will.”
Susie lifted her gaze back to you slowly.
“I’m serious,” she said. “This business sucks. It’s exhausting, humiliating and half the people in it are functioning alcoholics with superiority complexes.” She pointed vaguely around the empty club. “Myself included on a deeply spiritual level.”
A faint smile pulled at your mouth.
“But what happened up there?” She shook her head once. “That wasn’t normal.”
You looked toward the stage once more.
“It’s a fucking shame you can’t sit down here and watch yourself from the audience,” Susie continued.
You opened your mouth automatically but she cut you off before the objection even formed.
“And no, before you say anything, it has nothing to do with those ugly-ass lights making everybody sweat like sinners in church.”
A soft laugh escaped you despite yourself.
“You shine up there,” she said plainly. The sincerity of it made you glance away from her. “You could break this business wide open,” Susie continued, voice gaining momentum again now that she’d started. “The second you stepped onstage tonight it felt like an entirely new category appeared and suddenly everybody else looked outdated.”
Your brows furrowed faintly. “That sounds dramatic.”
“It is dramatic!” she barked instantly. “You’re dramatic. That’s part of the appeal.”
You rubbed tiredly at your temple while laughing under your breath.
“You’ve got the looks to pull in one crowd,” Susie continued, counting points aggressively on her fingers now, “and the actual life experience to connect with another one entirely.”
You blinked at her.
“It’s obvious nobody in this room has lived the way you have,” she said. “And you knew it too the second you started talking.”
Your fingers toyed absently with a folded dollar bill.
“I didn’t know who I was talking to,” you admitted quietly after a moment. “I got up there and suddenly everybody looked…” You searched briefly for the word. “Different from me.” You exhaled slowly through your nose. “Take away the alcohol, heartbreak and jealousy and honestly?” You shook your head slowly. “I felt like an outsider.”
Susie pointed at you immediately like she’d been waiting specifically for that sentence. “And that’s exactly why you fit.”
You looked back up at her.
“You walk into a room and make space for yourself,” she continued. “And you do it without apologizing for existing.” She tilted her head slightly. “How many comics have you seen?”
You shrugged slightly. “In person? None…I’ve seen videos online mostly.” You frowned thoughtfully. “People doing crowd work. Sometimes it’s funny.”
“It’s permanent,” Susie corrected immediately. “It might live on somebody’s page for two days but it lives online forever, that’s exactly why it loses its effect.” She pointed toward you again immediately after. “You won’t.”
A soft laugh escaped beneath your breath. “That’s insane.”
“No, listen to me.” Susie leaned even further across the counter now, completely consumed by the idea of you in a way that was beginning to feel mildly dangerous. “You walk around dressed like you’re trying to keep nineteen-fifties fashion alive all by yourself.”
“I do not.”
“With the dresses, the jewelry, the perfectly styled hair and those undergarments women used to wear that cut circulation directly off from the heart–”
“I don’t wear those.”
“Fine,” she snapped instantly. “But your entire vibe screams exclusivity.”
You stared blankly across the counter at her. “Oh, does it?”
“Yes!” She motioned aggressively toward your whole body now like your existence frustrated her. “You look like people should only be allowed to observe you from behind velvet ropes.”
Another tired laugh escaped you, softer this time. The adrenaline was finally beginning to leave your system now and everything around you had started taking on that strange, unreal softness exhaustion brought with it. The empty club, the money spread across the counter and Susie practically vibrating in front of you like a woman who had accidentally struck gold inside a dumpster.
“I am so unbelievably lost right now,” you admitted beneath your breath.
“And so will the audience be,” Susie replied without missing a beat. “That’s the magic.”
You blinked once.
“They’ll look at you and expect one thing,” she continued, “then suddenly you open your mouth and start talking about threatening landlords with heels and showering beside your stove.”
“I did not threaten him.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I merely implied violence,” you corrected calmly. “And it was barely directed at him specifically.” You paused thoughtfully. “I don’t condone what I did but I’m not sorry either.”
“Exactly.” Susie slapped the counter hard enough to startle you slightly. “Nobody sounds and looks like you simultaneously anymore!” The excitement in her voice had become almost feverish now, the kind that infected people once they became convinced they had discovered something first and wanted desperately to be right about it forever. “I’m telling you,” she insisted, pointing sharply toward you again, “I can make you a star.”
You shook your head, smiling awkwardly through the disbelief curling across your face.
“No, seriously.” She refused to let it go. “A real one too, not one of those television personalities everybody forgets about six months later once somebody younger starts screaming louder.”
Something in your chest tightened strangely at that.
“The kind people actually leave their houses for,” Susie continued. “The kind they line up around buildings to see because they can’t just find you sitting on their screens or shoved onto some streaming platform while they fold laundry.”
A warm and deeply frightening feeling curled low in your stomach then.
“You’re gonna become a fucking legend.”
You considered her entire speech for a moment, watching her as she stood behind the bar talking about your future like she had already lived it and came back with notes. The confidence was almost alarming because most people hesitated before making promises but Susie seemed physically incapable of it. She simply decided things were true and then marched toward them until reality either agreed or got out of the way.
You studied her face for another second before deciding you might as well humor her.
“And how exactly are you going to do that?” you asked, smiling despite yourself.
Susie shrugged as if the answer had been obvious from the start and you were the only person still trying to solve the puzzle. “For starters? No phones, just like at the Talon.” She pointed vaguely toward the empty room around you.
“We keep your image ephemeral. People hear about you, people talk about you but nobody gets to take you home in their pocket.” Her hands moved as she spoke. “When we eventually get you on television, the effect will be massive because nobody's seen you fifty times already while scrolling on the toilet.”
You laughed.
She continued anyway. “Your gigs become exclusive…you become exclusive.” She paused as she thought of what came with exclusivity. “No press either.”
“No press?”
“None.” She shook her head firmly. “Not until you're so big they have to beg for it.”
The certainty of it made you chuckle. “Shouldn't I earn that first?”
Susie looked at you like you had completely missed the point. The answer came soon after. “Let people believe you already have.”
You stared at her. Somewhere deep down, beneath the practical part of your brain currently worrying about rent, employment, housing and whether or not canned soup qualified as a sustainable lifestyle, another part couldn't help wondering what would happen if you believed her for a second, just long enough to imagine it.
You glanced down at the money still sitting on the counter. “How do we get there?”
“Easy.” That smile alone should've worried you. “I book you gigs. First here at the Talon…It's your home now.” She pointed toward the stage. “You feel comfortable here and the audience already likes you.”
Already liked you…it still sounded ridiculous.
“Then we move outward…to small shows in other clubs and bars.” She tapped the counter. “You get comfortable outside your little nest before we start throwing you into the deep end.”
You nodded slowly. “And how exactly are you planning to convince these places I'm worth giving a slot to?”
“I won't.” Susie reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette. You watched her slip it between her lips, watched the lighter spark and the end glow red. She inhaled the smoke and then exhaled before pointing the cigarette at you. “Because you will.”
A week later…
It was late by the time you arrived at the jazz club.
The city had taken on that strange nighttime glow where everything looked slightly more expensive than it actually was. Streetlights reflected off wet pavement as taxi horns echoed between buildings and a saxophone drifted faintly through the open door before you even stepped inside.
You had never been to a place like this before. It wasn't quite downtown but it wasn’t Midtown either which suited you perfectly because the odds of running into someone you knew dropped dramatically once you wandered outside the handful of neighborhoods your parents would’ve considered respectable.
You pulled your coat tighter against the evening chill before stepping inside. Warmth immediately wrapped around you as low conversation floated between tables and glasses clinked softly. A stand-up bass hummed somewhere near the stage and the entire room glowed beneath dim amber lights that made everyone look more attractive and significantly more interesting than they probably were.
You slipped between crowded tables, carefully navigating around chairs and half-finished drinks while shrugging your coat from your shoulders.
The room felt different from the Talon, socially smaller. People weren't here to get drunk, they were here to listen which felt infinitely more terrifying.
You spotted Susie almost instantly. She sat at the bar hunched over like a gargoyle guarding bad decisions, cigarette hanging lazily between her lips while she watched the comedian currently on stage.
You approached and leaned closer. “You told me the Talon came first.” The whisper came out halfway between a complaint and an accusation.
Susie barely looked at you as she exhaled smoke, then finally glanced sideways. Her eyes traveled down your outfit and up again, then down once more. “You're wearing gloves.”
You looked down at your hands as though you'd forgotten they were there. The cream-colored satin reached up to your elbows and was perfectly unnecessary. “Thought I'd try something different.” You flexed your fingers experimentally. “Feels excessive though.”
“It's perfect.” Susie pointed toward the empty stool beside her.
You slid onto it, only then did she give your entire outfit a second inspection. The cocktail dress was vintage, naturally, made of soft fabric and had a structured waist. The sort of silhouette that would've made your mother nostalgic for reasons she couldn't properly articulate.
You'd spent twenty minutes deciding whether the gloves were too much but now you were beginning to suspect they weren't enough.
“I have a friend,” Susie said, gesturing vaguely toward the stage as you both glanced toward the performer currently finishing his set. “He does the whole singing thing…He had a slot here tonight but couldn't make it.” Susie pointed at you. “So now it's yours.”
You turned slowly toward the room. The audience looked different from the Talon's crowd, better dressed and more formal. People sat quietly at tables instead of shouting over one another and drinks remained mostly untouched because they were actually paying attention to the person opposite them. It felt concerning.
You turned back toward Susie. “This was incredibly last minute.”
“Yep.”
“I'm exhausted.”
“Yep.”
“And it's late.”
“Yep.”
You narrowed your eyes. “So, it better be worth it.”
Susie shrugged one shoulder. The cigarette bobbed slightly as she spoke. “Well, you're here …which means you want it.”
The irritating part was that she said it with the confidence of somebody who already knew you were going to see this through.
“How’s the pay?” you asked, letting out a tired sigh. Your feet throbbed with every shift of weight, heels already biting into your heels like tiny vengeful demons, while your lower back ached from the cumulative events of the past few days.
Both sets of eyes stayed fixed on the comic currently wrapping up his set on stage. You realized with mild horror that you hadn’t heard a single genuine laugh since you walked in. The room felt like a morgue with a cover charge. “Don’t worry about the money…you have ten minutes. Make ‘em count.”
“You’ll sure win Manager of the Year with that speech,” you muttered dryly under your breath before leaning in closer, your voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I haven’t heard a single laugh in here and I’m seeing phones.” You pointed discreetly at the handful of glowing screens scattered throughout the dimly lit room, their owners half-hidden in the shadows like guilty teenagers.
“Who’s the manager between the both of us? Let me worry about it,” Susie insisted, arms crossed over her chest as sparse, polite clapping trickled through the crowd for the departing comic.
“Up next we have a very funny lady…” the presenter trailed off awkwardly, clearly unsure what to call you.
“Start worrying about how stiff the public looks,” you shot back, already rising from your seat. Half your body angled toward the stage while your face remained inches from Susie’s. “I’m pretty sure post-mortem spasms don’t include laughter.”
“You tell ‘em that.” She jerked her chin toward the stage. “Tits up!” she whisper-yelled as you stormed forward, the flowing skirt of your dress swirling dramatically around your legs with each purposeful step.
You stepped onto the stage with a plastered, megawatt smile that didn’t quite reach your eyes. The audience was worse, much worse. These people weren’t drunk and loose, they were sober, impatient and already mentally checked out, waiting for the live music portion as it was the only reason they hadn’t left yet. Their eyes were glued to their phones, thumbs scrolling mindlessly while the occasional bored glance flicked your way.
Your gaze darted quickly to Susie near the bar. She was already scanning the crowd like a soldier preparing for war, her posture tense and ready.
You stepped closer to the microphone, wrapping your fingers around the stand before smoothly lifting it free. “Well, hello, hello, hello,” you purred, flashing another bright smile. “Who’s ready for some jazz?”
A polite smattering of applause rose, lifting a small sliver of the crushing stage anxiety off your chest. “Too bad you’re still gonna have to wait a short ten minutes,” you continued, pacing slowly across the small stage, hips swaying with the movement. “Well…long for those who are married to men.”
The women in the audience let out a ripple of genuine laughter, sharp and knowing.
“You would think their wives just asked them for a romantic night the way some of them just slumped forward…or to the left…or right,” you added, gesturing lazily at a few defeated-looking husbands in the front rows. “I’m guessing that says something about what keeps your pockets looking full and plump but I can’t quite put my finger on it…” More laughter erupted, warmer this time. “Their political parties! That’s it.” The room cracked open with louder laughter. “What? Did you guys think I got up here to talk about penises? Nobody needs to pay me to do that.”
Susie’s sharp eyes raked through the crowd like a predator. One man near the middle had already opened his camera app, lifting his phone with that smug, entitled expression of someone who thought rules didn’t apply to him. Before he could even frame the shot, Susie moved like lightning, hand shooting out and snatching the phone clean from his grip.
The guy started rising from his seat, complaint written all over his flushed face. “Hey, that was–”
“Sit down,” she bit out between gritted teeth, her voice low and dangerous enough to make several nearby heads turn. She held the phone up like a trophy, glaring at him until he slowly sank back into his chair, muttering under his breath.
You didn’t miss a beat, leaning into the mic with a little grin as the tension in the room shifted. “See that? That’s what we call enforcing the no-phone rule, ladies and gentlemen. My girl Susie over there doesn’t play. She’ll snatch your phones faster than your wives snatch the remote as they suggest couples therapy.” A fresh wave of laughter rolled through, louder now, the audience finally starting to wake up. “I respect it as they are sources of information you’d want to keep secret. I would know, my phone could’ve been in evidence about a week ago, at risk of being fondled by a cop who might’ve just thought it’s cute that I almost named my vibrator after a superhero…Long story.”
You let the laugh settle before continuing, your voice dropping into something sultrier, dirtier. “But seriously, put the phones away. Unless you’re planning on using the flashlight app to find my clit later, because fuck knows some of you need the help.” You winked at a table of women who howled with laughter. “I’m not here to be background noise while you doomscroll through your ex’s new girlfriend’s vacation pics, either. I’m here to trauma-dump for cash and emotional damages. So eyes up here or Susie’s gonna start collecting phones like my father collects reasons I shouldn't be allowed freedom.”
Susie smirked from the sidelines, arms crossed, clearly satisfied as another would-be photographer quickly lowered his device under her death stare.
You twirled the mic cord around your finger, feeding off the growing energy in the room like it was the only thing keeping you upright. “But let me tell you about my manager over there,” you said, gesturing grandly toward Susie with the mic. “She wants to run this place like it’s 1957…classy, elegant, with no phones, just pure, unfiltered entertainment. Of course, without all the casual racism and the part where women had to smile while their husbands treated them like decorative houseplants.”
The crowd chuckled, loosening up.
“You know, back when most of you would’ve been attentive enough to memorize your mistresses’ phone numbers instead of screenshotting the incriminating evidence like amateurs,” you added, your voice dripping with mock disapproval. “I mean, come on, fellas. At least have the decency to write it on your hand like a real degenerate. These days you’re out here leaving digital paper trails longer than your…” You let the pause hang just long enough for the dirty implication to land. “...attention span in bed. C’mon, guys focus!” You finished, earning a burst of loud, scandalized laughter from the women and a few guilty-looking coughs from the men. “Susie’s over here enforcing old performance rules while I’m trying to survive 2026 with a broken heart, a police record and dresses that cost more than my unpaid rent. The duality of a woman.”
You paced the small stage, hips swaying, the navy fabric catching the light with every step. “But I agree with the no-phone policy. My therapist says I overshare…and my arrest record says I overshare with props.” You leaned into the mic with a wicked grin. “Though between us, if I’m flashing anything tonight, it’s only because this dress is so tight I might need a crowbar and divine intervention to get out of it later. Any volunteers? Just promise you’ll tip big…”
The room erupted again, the laughter rolling louder, more genuinely. Susie stood near the bar with her arms crossed, a rare smirk tugging at her lips as she watched you work the crowd like you’d been doing this for years.
Back at the Talon…
You blinked at her words, the new responsibility of this hypothetical career settling on your shoulders.
“Okay, so about the material,” you started, sitting up straighter on the stool. “What happens when my life’s miraculously fixed and nothing’s funny anymore?”
You could almost see her rolling her eyes as she exhaled a slow drag from her cigarette, the smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling. “You just don’t stop being funny,” she said flatly, tapping the ash off with a practiced flick. “You stop seeing the funny in things, so don’t. You’re talking about your present now but it’ll still be your life six months from now. You don’t wanna write jokes? Fine. Document what happens to you and find the funny in that…then exploit it on stage.”
You nodded slowly, letting her words settle in your chest. She had a point, a brutally practical, cigarette-scented point.
“But you have to work what’s around it,” she added, gesturing vaguely with the cigarette between her fingers, her expression somewhere between tough love and mild amusement at your obvious spiral.
Your brows furrowed, the weight of her vague instruction settling somewhere between confusion and irritation. “What’s around it?”
She shrugged, that casual, infuriating shrug of hers. “We have to polish a few things…” She paused, taking another slow drag, the tip of her cigarette glowing bright in the dim light of the empty club. “And you forgot to say your stage name.”
You blinked, genuinely racking your brain, trying to remember what had come out of your mouth during those ten minutes on stage. The set felt like a blur now from adrenaline, panic and that strange floating sensation that came from saying things you’d never admit to a therapist in front of strangers. “I don’t have a stage name.”
She chuckled, low and dry, like gravel under a slow tire. “You do and it has Mrs. in front of it.”
It took you a few seconds to pinpoint it, the memory surfacing like something awful rising from murky water. “No.” You shook your head firmly. “The name Mrs. Kent’s gotta go. If I’m doing this, I can’t keep it.”
“Why?” She asked, almost scandalized, her cigarette paused mid-air like she’d forgotten it was burning. “People loved it! I heard that name land.”
You let out a breathy huff, because in your mind, it was evident, obvious. “Because I’m not Mrs. Kent…and I know the real Mrs. Kent, she’s a very nice lady who makes excellent sweet tea and lives on a farm in Kansas.” The words came out sharper than intended, defensive in a way that surprised even you.
“Are you kidding me?” She stubbed out her cigarette with more force than necessary. “The first night you were here you seemed adamant about deserving that name.”
“Well common sense has a funny way of working when it comes to me…” You felt the weight of the past few days pressing down on your ribs. “It was clearly a joke.”
“You said you don’t do jokes.”
“Then it was a Freudian slip, Susie.” Your voice dropped, the fight draining out as quickly as it had flared. “I can’t keep it. If you make this happen I gotta find something else.” You held her gaze, willing her to understand. “This cannot reach his ears and trust me, it will… it’s just a matter of time but when it does, it can’t have his name attached to it.”
“You’re such a party pooper.” she murmured under her breath, but there was no real heat in it, more like a disappointed kid who’d just been told no cookies before dinner.
You smiled despite yourself, the tension in your shoulders loosening half a notch. “That’s very mature, thank you.”
“Could you please reconsider?” she tried and you caught the faintest hint of something vulnerable beneath her gruff exterior, like she’d already started building something in her head and didn't want to tear it down.
“I’m considering the whole thing, Susie.” You motioned between the both of you, the small distance across the counter feeling suddenly significant. “You seem convinced and that’s great but you barely know me. This currently sounds insane to me and it’s not a priority. I definitely couldn’t do it full time.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” you echoed, incredulous. “Did you forget the part where I’m not a comic? I’m unemployed and about to be homeless. I can’t think about this while sleeping outside. I need to figure out my life and then…I might be delusional enough to want this.”
Susie observed you in that way that made you feel like she was reading the fine print of your soul. “If you want something that’s yours,” she said slowly, each word intentional, “you might wanna jump on this.”
Something in her tone made your voice lower, the question slipping out before you could stop it. “What about you, Susie? Is working at the Talon not enough?”
She scoffed, turning away to get back to cleaning up, her movements brisk and mechanical. “It’s not permanent.” She repeated your own words back at you, throwing them over her shoulder. “I don’t want it to be…Years ago I pushed to have live music and artists on a stage I had to make myself.” She pointed toward the empty platform. “I’m not dying behind this counter with nothing to be proud of.”
“And you want that to be me?”
“Amongst other things.” She shrugged, that same casual motion but her eyes were sharper now, more intent. “You have talent…I grew up on this, on late night show recordings and vinyls of comics. I had an uncle who knew someone who knew someone who managed artists. I know what to look for and it’s flashing signs and lights when I look at you.”
“I know nothing about it.” The admission felt heavy, embarrassing in its honesty. “Not a single thing, Susie. And if it’s anything like I see online–”
“Don’t.” She cut you off, pointing a finger. “Unsee it. I’m telling you, if we're gonna make a place for ourselves in this business, it’ll be in a category where only you fit.” She said it with such certainty, such unwavering conviction, that you almost believed her.
You sighed as you let silence stretch, pulling out your phone from your purse and looking at the time. The screen glowed back at you, too bright, reminding you of the world waiting outside these walls. “It’s late…I should start heading home…given I still have one.”
She nodded, watching as you stood from the stool and gathered your belongings and résumés, her gaze tracking your movements like she was memorizing them. “You’ll think about it?”
“Sure, Susie…I’ll run it by my pillow and see where it stands on show business.” You collected the money from the counter and split it with quick, practiced fingers. “Your fifteen percent,” you said, handing her a portion.
“I told you that wasn't necessary.” She didn’t make a move to take the money from you, just stood there with her arms crossed, stubborn as ever.
Since she didn’t, you set the bills on the counter and tapped them once as a final punctuation. “Well someone needs to keep the lights on if I decide it’s worth coming back.” You smiled. “Night, Susie.”
“Night!” she called back as she watched you leave, feeling her eyes on your back until the door swung shut behind you.
You spent the next few days packing with no place to go.
The boxes piled up in corners you didn't even know your apartment had, cardboard mountains that seemed to multiply overnight no matter how many you taped shut and stacked against the walls. Your clothing racks stayed mostly untouched because you refused to fold anything that might crease, which meant half your wardrobe still hung suspended in judgment while you packed around them, shuffling sideways through your own home like a guest in someone else's disaster.
You tried your luck with your résumés downtown, the same desperate circuit you had walked a week ago, but now the rejection stung differently. Before, you had been exploring, testing the waters of employment like someone dipping a toe into cold water. Now you were drowning and every polite smile, every "we'll keep your resume on file," and every door that closed without an invitation felt like another brick tied to your ankles.
You found yourself unknowingly orbiting the Talon without making a move inside.
You walked past the neon sign twice on Tuesday, once on Wednesday and three times on Thursday. Each time you told yourself you were just passing through, just taking the long way back home, just clearing your head but your feet kept finding the same cracked sidewalk, the same dim hallway visible from the street and the same flickering light above the stairs that led down to Susie's kingdom of cheap drinks and questionable life choices.
You never went in. If you stepped through that door, you would have to talk to Susie and if you talked to Susie, she would ask about the stage and if she asked about the stage, you might say yes, and saying yes felt like admitting that your life had become something you needed to perform instead of something you needed to fix.
So you kept walking.
The week was ending in three days and you had no clear living situation. The boxes in your apartment proved that much, stacked in precarious towers that seemed to mock you every time you squeezed past them to reach the toilet. Your landlord Garrett had stopped returning your calls entirely, which you suspected had less to do with his schedule and more to do with the ten thousand dollar bet you had placed on his behalf.
You still had no job. The résumés had thinned out considerably, some handed directly to managers who smiled too politely, others abandoned on countertops when you realized nobody was actually reading them and at least three had been sacrificed to coffee rings during particularly discouraging interviews.
You had woken up early on Friday, before the sun had fully committed to rising, and dressed carefully in something that looked expensive without being your best. You needed to pay for the dress you had credited, the navy number with the pink details that had cost more than your first shitty car probably would have if you had ever owned one.
The money from that night at the Talon sat in your purse, along with some extra you had found while packing, crumpled bills tucked between the pages of books you hadn't opened in years, loose change rattling in coat pockets and one very crumpled twenty you discovered beneath your bed that you chose not to inspect too closely.
At least your debt was paid. You had handed over the cash to the saleswoman, who had smiled at you with something that looked almost like respect and collected the clothes they had been holding hostage.
Afterward, you forced yourself to walk back home carrying your paper bag, determined not to spend money on cabs you could barely afford.
Your heels clicked against the pavement in a rhythm that had become familiar over the past week. The city moved around you, indifferent, loud and exactly the same as it had been before your life collapsed, which was somehow both comforting and devastating.
You kept walking until your surroundings felt familiar, the buildings shifting from anonymous glass towers to storefronts you recognized, streets you had walked a hundred times before.
You kept your head down as you passed Mrs. Alston's store, the way you had for days now, avoiding the window because you knew if you looked, you would see something you wanted and right now, wanting things was dangerous.
Left foot, right foot, left again…until your feet halted.
You didn't mean to stop. Your body simply decided for you, muscles locking up mid stride as your eyes lifted wide and landed on the sign at the door.
It read "Store closing soon" in block letters that looked too final, too much like an ending you hadn't been prepared for.
You alarmedly pushed inside, the bell above the door jangling with more force than you intended. The smell hit you immediately, that familiar combination of well taken care of vintage clothes and leather heels, dust, perfume and something that might have been cedar. It smelled like every good memory you had of shopping in this city, like the first time you had found a genuine 1950s cocktail dress in your size, like the afternoon Mrs. Alston had taught you how to spot authentic stitching versus reproduction.
"Mrs. Alston?" you called, your voice bouncing off the overflowing racks as you tried to locate her. The store was crowded, always had been, but now there was something desperate about the chaos, as if everything had been shoved aside to make room for goodbyes.
As well as she kept the store as organized as she could, overflowing was the right word. Dresses hung at odd angles, shoes sat in mismatched pairs waiting to be reunited and hats perched on every available surface like tiny spectators watching the slow collapse of an empire.
"Oh! I know that voice!"
Mrs. Alston emerged from the back room, her face lighting up in a way that made your chest ache. She was smaller than you remembered, though you weren't sure if she had actually shrunk or if you had simply been away long enough to forget. Her silver hair was pinned up in that same twist she had worn for years and her glasses sat slightly crooked on her nose, how they always were when she had been cataloguing.
"Dear, I just got in a collection of heels you will love." She grinned, already gesturing toward the back room with enthusiasm that seemed untouched by the sign on her door. "I just have to catalogue them and you will be the first to take a look."
She sold a bit of everything vintage and curated but her specialty was luxury shoes. That was why she was your shoe lady, the only person in Metropolis you trusted to find the perfect pair, the woman who taught you the difference between vintage and merely old. Her collection had expanded over the years to include clothes and accessories but the shoes remained her first love, and yours too.
You groaned, the sound escaping before you could stop it. "Don't tempt me."
She laughed as she walked back to the counter, her steps slower than they used to be and slightly uneven, which made you notice for the first time how much she leaned on the displays for balance. "I haven't seen you around in a while." She settled onto the stool behind the counter with a soft sigh, arranging her skirt around her. "What can I do for you?"
"For starters, how about not closing my favorite store?" you asked, pointing toward the sign out front with more desperation than you intended to show.
She groaned tiredly, shaking her head as she adjusted her glasses. "I didn't want to." The words came out heavy, weighed down by something that sounded like grief. "But age is catching up to me." She spread her hands on the counter, knuckles swollen and veins prominent beneath papery skin. "I can't stay open as long as I used to. My feet hurt and swell if I don't sit. If I am here organizing and cataloguing things, then I am not open and selling. And when I’m open and selling, I cannot keep up with the rest of it." She sighed, the sound rattling slightly in her chest. "My girls don't want to help. They have their own lives, their own families…I cannot blame them for not wanting to inherit a vintage store that barely breaks even. So we decided that I should close if I cannot keep up."
"I’ll help." The words came out before you thought about them, before you considered what you were offering or what it would mean. They simply appeared, fully formed and desperate, because the alternative was watching Mrs. Alston disappear from your life the way everything else seemed to be disappearing.
She blinked at you, her eyebrows rising above her crooked glasses.
"I know my vintage clothing and shoes." You stepped closer to the counter, your voice gaining confidence even as your stomach churned with the audacity of what you were suggesting. "I can be here six days a week or just take over when you need rest. It might be a biased opinion, but this store has potential. The sales aren't bad...I surely help by being your client, but I can help more by being your employee."
You set your purse and the bag with the clothes you had gotten back down on the counter, the paper crinkling softly. Your hands were shaking slightly which you noticed but you kept talking anyway because if you stopped, you might lose your nerve entirely.
"I can open an online store, that can surely help speed up things. When that’s up and running, by the time you decide to close the store and actually want to retire, the online store could keep working for you." You leaned forward, willing her to understand. "I do not currently have any more résumés on me and if you want to see one that badly, I can run up to Midtown and look in the diner's dumpster where I am sure I will find a copy of mine."
She blinked at your speech, her mouth opening slightly, then closing again. For a moment, you were certain you had overstepped, had pushed too hard, had ruined the one good thing you had left in this city. Then she chuckled, the sound warm and surprised and shook her head slowly.
"I didn’t know you were looking for a job."
"I tried to avoid this street for as long as I could so I wouldn’t be tempted to spend more than I have." You admitted, your shoulders dropping slightly with relief. "I kinda cheated on you with another store but the point is you know me, and I know your store. I will not deceive you." You hesitated, your confidence faltering as the practical realities of your situation came crashing back. "I’ll just need you to show me the ropes."
You watched as she opened her mouth to speak and it hurt you to interrupt her so quickly, but there was one more thing she needed to know. One more piece of honesty you could not afford to leave unsaid.
"And I would need to be paid weekly." You added quietly, your voice dropping so low it barely carried across the counter. "At least until I figure out my living situation…which I rather not talk about."
Her smile spread across her face, slow and genuine, the kind of smile that made you feel like you had just been given something precious. "How soon can you start?"
You let out a sigh of relief so deep it felt like you had been holding your breath for days. Your shoulders dropped and the tension you had been carrying loosened its grip as you shrugged off your coat and draped it over the back of a nearby chair, ready to get to work.
It was criminally late when you got home.
The city had shifted into that strange, liminal hour where the streets belonged to nobody in particular. Taxis still ran but they seemed to move slower, their headlights cutting through the dark like weary eyes struggling to stay open. The bars had mostly let out, leaving behind clusters of people arguing about nothing on street corners, their laughter too loud and their balance too unsteady. You stepped around them carefully, body moving on autopilot while your mind drifted somewhere far above the sidewalk.
You were certain it took you thirty minutes to get up to your floor because you refused to take off your heels. The stairs stretched before you like a personal challenge, each flight longer than the last, each landing a small victory you celebrated only in your head. Your feet screamed at you with every step, your calves burned and somewhere around the fourth floor you had started making promises to your body that you knew you would not keep. Better shoes…more practical choices or flats, even though the thought made you wince.
You carried your purse, the bag with your clothes and another bag of something you had put together in the store. Your uniform, you had decided, though that was not entirely true. You had chosen it because it was a very rare vintage dress, the kind of piece that made your heart race when you found it hanging on a rack, with a fabric that whispered secrets about the woman who had worn it first. You told yourself it was practical, that you needed to look the part if you were going to sell vintage clothing to customers who valued authenticity but really, you just wanted to wear it and for the first time in weeks, you had let yourself want something without immediately talking yourself out of it.
You had never worked so much in your life before.
Your fingers were going to fall off, you were certain of it. Between color coding the inventory, recataloguing everything so it was not done by hand but on an actual computer,and learning the quirks of Mrs. Alston's ancient point of sale system, you had barely stopped moving since you got the job. Your back ached from bending over displays, your eyes burned from staring at spreadsheets and your throat was raw from talking to customers who wandered in to browse and left with armfuls of things they had not known they needed.
But you deemed yourself more than lucky.
Mrs. Alston had walked you through her books in the afternoon, showing you the numbers with a pride that made your chest swell. The amount each piece could bring was significant, especially the donations.
Old friends of hers brought in boxes of clothing they no longer wanted, friends of friends dropped off suitcases full of designer pieces they had inherited and did not appreciate, grandchildren cleared out attics and basements and delivered garbage bags full of treasure. Most of them did not know how valuable the pieces they were so excited to get rid of actually were. A 1960s Chanel suit, shoved into a plastic bin alongside holiday decorations, a pair of 1950s Ferragamo heels, scuffed and dusty but structurally perfect, tossed into a donation box because nobody recognized the name.
The pay was good…so good. Better than you had expected, better than you had dared to hope for when you walked through that door with nothing but desperation and a half formed plan and on top of your base salary, you would earn a commission for each sale. Every dress, every pair of shoes, every carefully curated accessory that walked out the door with a customer would put more money in your pocket.
You were the only employee, which meant the commissions were yours alone, no fighting over customers!
You had made the website during your lunch break, hunched over Mrs. Alston's unused desktop computer while eating a sandwich you had picked up from the deli down the street. The template was clunky and the upload speeds were terrible but you had figured it out, piece by piece, typing product descriptions with one hand while checking how the formatting looked on the smaller screen of your phone.
You started taking pictures of the first things that needed to go, pieces that had been sitting in the back room for years, items that were beautiful but not quite rare enough to command top dollar. Decluttering the store was a priority, Mrs. Alston had explained, because you could not sell what people couldn’t see and right now, nobody could see anything through the chaos. So you photographed and listed, fingers moving automatically while your mind catalogued the next dozen items you wanted to feature.
You made social media accounts too. You posted photos of the store's best pieces, wrote captions that tried to capture the magic of finding something perfect in a pile of ordinary and followed every vintage account you could find. You needed to attract another public, Mrs. Alston had said, younger people who shopped online and cared about sustainability and wanted pieces that told a story. You agreed, even though you were not entirely sure how to reach them, when social media felt like a foreign language you were only beginning to learn.
The stairs loomed ahead of you, the familiar climb that had once seemed endless and now felt like the only constant in your life. You reached the bottom of the final flight, the one that would take you to your floor and stopped.
You took a deep breath, leaning against the railing as your chest rose and fell. Your legs trembled slightly beneath you, the muscles weak from exhaustion, the climb and the simple, overwhelming weight of the past several days. You were still so tempted to sit down and just sleep, right there on the cold, cracked stairs, head resting against the wall and bags clutched to your chest like pillows.
The hallways were still crowded, though the chaos had thinned slightly. At least four tenants had already left, their doors standing closed and quiet where there had once been noise, light and the sound of arguments spilling into the corridor but the remaining boxes still stacked against the walls, the furniture still pushed into corners, the lamps, rugs and framed photographs still waiting to be claimed by someone who had somewhere to go.
You were starting to close your eyes, to rest them just for a moment when a voice made you jump so hard you nearly dropped your bags.
"Finally."
Imogene groaned from her spot on the stairs and you lifted your head to find her sitting three steps above where you stood, her legs stretched out in front of her, arms crossed over her chest like she had been waiting for hours. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, the kind she only wore when she was too tired to do anything else and there was a crease on her cheek that suggested she had been resting her face against the railing.
"I have been knocking on your door like a maniac all day." She continued, her voice carrying that particular blend of exhaustion and indignation that only came from being ignored for hours. "Didn't you see my calls?"
You inhaled and exhaled, your body still trembling slightly from the surprise. "I didn’t." You flashed a tired smile, the expression feeling strange on your face after hours of concentrating on spreadsheets and product descriptions. "I’m sorry...but I have a job now." You lifted your bags with a shrug, the weight of them pulling at your shoulders. "I started today."
She descended the stairs rapidly, her own shoes clicking against them as she closed the distance between you. Without asking, she reached for your bags, pulling some of the weight from your arms and helping you up the last flight. Her presence beside you was warm and solid, and you leaned into it slightly, grateful for the support even if you were too tired to say so.
"And thanks to me, you have a place to live." Imogene said, her voice bright despite the hour. "That is, if you say yes."
"What?" The word came out slower than you intended, your brain struggling to process anything beyond the immediate reality of putting one foot in front of the other. You were so tired, the exhaustion made simple sentences feel like complex equations.
Once on your floor, the both of you stopped and faced each other. The hallway was dim, one of the overhead lights flickering somewhere behind you, casting long shadows across the worn carpet. Imogene's face was illuminated in soft, uneven patches, her smile bright enough to cut through the darkness.
She flashed you with that smile, one that had made you trust her the first day you met, the one that said she had good news and she was about to share it whether you were ready or not. "I found a place." She said the words like an announcement she had been waiting all day to deliver. "It has two bedrooms, a full bathroom and a living room where we can fit a couch." She paused, her expression shifting into something more conspiratorial. "Did I tell you about Archie?"
You blinked, your brain rifling through files it was too exhausted to properly access. "Your boyfriend Archie?"
"Yes." She smiled wider, if that was possible, her whole face lighting up at the name. "He is finishing his masters, and he has a job lined up here in Metropolis, so we will be moving in together...in six months." She drew out the words, letting them hang in the air between you, her eyes wide with expectation. "Which means..."
She trailed off, waiting for you to finish the sentence but in all honesty, all you could think about was how you were going to organize the scarves the next morning at the store. By color, certainly, that was the most visually appealing but length made sense too, so customers could easily find what they were looking for. Or fabric, because silk should not be stored next to wool, that was just common sense. What about all three? Was that too complicated? You could color code within length categories and then organize by fabric within those...
Imogene shook you, her hands gripping your shoulders and rattling you gently until your eyes focused back on her face. "You can move in with me!"
"Oh."
The syllable came out flat, insufficient, the kind of response that did not begin to capture the magnitude of what she was offering. Your brain struggled to catch up, to shift from scarves to roommates, from inventory management to the sudden, stunning realization that you might not have to sleep on the street after all.
"The apartment is downtown, which I know is not your style." Imogene continued, her words rushing out now that she had your attention. "Though it’s only three subway stations from Midtown, so I thought I would ask." She shrugged, suddenly self conscious, her confidence wavering for the first time since she had started speaking. "You have been so busy looking for a job that I didn’t know if you had time for the..."
Her voice cut off as you took her into a crushing hug.
You dropped what you’d been still holding to do it, letting them fall to the floor with a thud that echoed through the hallway. Your arms wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her close, holding on tighter than you probably should have, your face pressed into her shoulder. She smelled like lavender and coffee and the particular warmth of someone who had probably spent the day packing up more boxes and cleaning out closets.
"...rest." She finished, her voice muffled against your shoulder.
You both stood there in silence, you hugging her while your limbs felt heavy and your hands shook slightly from exhaustion and relief. The hallway was quiet around you except for the flickering light and the distant sound of a television somewhere below the only noise.
"I’ve never had a roommate." Imogene added, her voice smaller now, almost shy.
You stepped back, letting go of her, your arms falling to your sides. Your eyes were wet, you realized, though you were not sure when that had happened. You wiped at them quickly, hoping she had not noticed.
"I have." You said with a tired smile, the expression softer now, more genuine. "Well, something like it."
You thought of shared meals and borrowed sweatshirts and the particular rhythm of living alongside someone who knew you better than you knew yourself. You thought of mornings spent arguing about breakfast and evenings spent not arguing at all, just existing in the same space, breathing the same air, pretending you didn’t notice the way your heart sped up every time he walked into the room.
"I know it’s only six months." Imogene said, pulling you back to the present. "But you’ve already been packing, and..." She smiled again, softer this time. "It’s going to be great."
"Yes it will." You nodded, the words coming out firmer than you felt. You crouched, picked up your bags and dragged your heels to your door, each step heavier than the last as your bed was already calling to you from behind the worn wooden panels.
"I’ll send you the lease to your email." Imogene called quietly after you. "We can meet tomorrow after work to help you move your stuff." She paused, already planning and organizing. "What time do you get off?"
As you unlocked your door, key turning with a familiar click, you spoke behind your back. "We’re going to need more help than that." The door swung open, revealing the chaos of your apartment, the boxes, clothing racks and the narrow path you had carved through the mess. "I’ll give Ricky a call."
"Ricky?" Imogene's face scrunched up in confusion, nose wrinkling. "Bodega Ricky?"
"Yup." You said, pushing your door open wider and squeezing through the gap. Your hip caught on a stack of boxes, knocking them slightly askew but you didn’t have the energy to fix it. "Night."
The word came out under your breath, barely audible, as you closed the door behind you. The lock clicked into place, a small sound of finality that separated you from the hallway, from Imogene and the world outside.
You dropped your bags and your purse to the floor, before you collapsed on your bed.
The mattress groaned beneath you, springs protesting the sudden weight. Your face pressed into the pillow, arms sprawled out on either side and legs still hanging off the edge because you didn’t have the energy to pull them up.
You did have a roommate once.
The thought drifted through your mind, unbidden and unwelcome, settling into your chest like a stone dropped into still water.
Life was so perfect back then…
At twenty…
You had already mastered the art of treating Clark's apartment like an extension of your own.
You exited your studio apartment with your toothbrush in your mouth, the bristles working against your teeth as you crossed the hallway. The floor was cold, how it always was in the mornings before the building's ancient radiator system remembered it was supposed to produce heat. You didn’t actually mind, you had stopped minding most things about this place, the thin walls, the unreliable hot water and the way the windows whistled when the wind picked up. It was yours for the time being, paid by your school and Clark was right next door, which made everything else tolerable.
You pushed open the door in front of yours, one that swung open without resistance because Clark had stopped locking it sometime during your first semester. He said it was because he forgot but you knew better. He left it open for you, the same way he left his closet open for your overflow of clothes and the same way he left space in his refrigerator for the things your tiny studio fridge could not hold.
You stepped inside his apartment, a bigger place that you knew well by now. You were halfway through your second year of university, which meant you had been doing this for nearly eighteen months, walking into his space like you belonged there, helping yourself to his things and occupying the corners he had cleared out for you without ever being asked.
His bathroom was at the end of the hall and your feet carried you there automatically, toothbrush still moving in slow, practiced circles. Steam curled under the door, warm and damp, carrying the smell of whatever soap he was using this week. Something herbal his mother probably sent him in a care package because Clark never bought things like that for himself.
You didn’t knock as you pushed the door open.
"Y/n." Clark started from behind the shower curtain, voice carrying that particular tone he used when he was pretending to be annoyed but was not quite pulling it off.
"Not looking!" You said the words around your toothbrush. You walked over to his bathroom counter, eyes scanning the organized chaos of his things until you found what you were looking for. His toothpaste sat beside the sink, the tube squeezed from the bottom like you’d taught him. "I’m out of toothpaste."
You put a dollop of it on your toothbrush, the minty paste cold against your tongue and didn’t bother going back to your apartment to finish brushing your teeth. Why would you? His sink was right there and so was his mirror.
Clark pushed the curtain open just enough to meet your eyes in the mirror.
His hair was wet, plastered to his forehead in dark curls and water dripped down his face in steady streams. His look was unsurprised at the sight of you in his space, you were in his apartment more than you were in your own and he had long since stopped questioning it.
"What." You said the word around the foam in your mouth, gesturing toward the door with your free hand as you continued brushing. "Are we still pretending you don’t leave the door open so I can do this?"
He blinked at you, water dripping from his eyelashes. "I’m in the middle of showering."
"And I’m brushing my teeth." You spit out the excess foam into his sink, the toothpaste swirling down the drain in white ribbons. You didn’t bother rinsing yet, head lifting to meet his eyes through the mirror. "What’s your point?"
"I’m naked."
The words hung in the air between you, simple and declarative. He wasn’t being provocative, nor was he trying to make you uncomfortable. He was simply stating a fact, the same way he might mention the weather, the score of a baseball game or the fact that you had left your lights on again.
You turned around to actually face him, your hand still moving your toothbrush in automatic circles. The curtain was pulled back just enough to give you a view of his shoulders, broad, wet and glistening under the harsh bathroom light. Soap bubbles clung to his skin in places, sliding down his biceps in slow motion and trailing over the curve of his chest. Water dripped from his jaw, from his collarbone and from the lines of muscle you had watched develop over the past year, changes so gradual you had almost missed them until suddenly you couldn’t look away.
He gripped the curtain tightly, holding it against his body to cover the rest, his knuckles white against the plastic.
"Right." You said, voice steady despite the way your heart had started beating faster. "I can see that." You tilted your head, considering him the way you might consider a painting in a museum, appreciative but detached. "Should I drop some one dollar bills and wait for the music to come on, or..."
A smile began spreading across your face before you could stop it, the expression breaking through your carefully maintained composure like sunlight through clouds. You could feel the warmth building in your cheeks but you didn’t look away, because looking away would mean admitting something you weren’t ready to admit.
Clark closed the curtain rapidly, the plastic swishing against the rod as he yanked it shut but not before you saw him blush, the color rising on his cheeks and spreading down his neck, disappearing beneath the water still streaming over his shoulders.
You laughed breathily around the foam in your mouth, the sound bright and entirely too pleased with yourself. You turned back to the mirror, catching your own foggy reflection, eyes bright and smile wide despite the toothpaste still coating your teeth.
"You give me a lot of shit about locking my door while you don’t lock yours." You spit again, the foam disappearing down the drain. "Make it make sense."
Behind you, you heard the water turn off, the sudden silence almost louder than the spray had been. You watched in the mirror as Clark's dripping wet arm reached out and grabbed a towel from the hook beside the shower. The fabric disappeared behind the curtain and you heard the rustle of him drying off efficiently.
Seconds later, he stepped out of the shower with the towel wrapped around his hips.
Water still clung to his chest, beading on his skin and trailing down his abdomen in paths that disappeared beneath the blue fabric. His hair was even darker when it was wet and it curled against his forehead in ways that made your fingers itch to push it back. He looked soft and hard at the same time, the contradictions of him somehow making more sense than anything else in your life.
"I think I can handle an intruder." He said, voice steady again now that he was covered. He reached for a smaller towel and started drying his hair, the motion ruffling the curls until they stood in every direction. "But I’m not around all of the time when you’re home."
You leaned down to rinse your mouth, cupping your hand under the faucet and bringing the water to your lips. The mint taste faded, replaced by the faint metallic flavor of the building's ancient pipes, the same taste you had gotten used to months ago. You straightened up and reached for the towel hanging on the rack beside the sink and wiped your mouth with the corner.
"Nope." You agreed, dropping the towel back onto the rack. "But you’re fast enough for me to pretend you are."
You left your toothbrush in the same cup where he kept his, the two of them standing side by side, your pink plastic nestled against his blue one. The sight of them together was so domestic it almost hurt, two toothbrushes in one cup, two lives tangled together in ways neither of you acknowledged yet.
You watched as Clark's eyes went down to the cup and back up at you. "You’re not gonna take that?"
You shrugged, the motion casual. "I’ll be back. I don’t get this month's stamps until next week."
The words landed between you heavily. Your parents had cut you off completely when they found out you enrolled at Metropolis University and the small amount of money you had saved had run out faster than you expected.
You could almost see how hard he was trying not to say it. His jaw tightened and lips pressed together as one hand gripped the towel at his hip while the other hung at his side, fingers curling into a loose fist. He was fighting with himself, you could tell, the same way he fought with every instinct that told him to fix things, to help and to save.
"Let me take you shopping." He said finally, the words careful. "Groceries….necessities. Anything you need."
You shook your head immediately, the refusal was almost reflexive by then. "I don’t need your help, Clark."
"Oh yeah?" His eyebrows lifted and something changed in his expression, the careful concern giving way to something lighter and teasing. "So what’s all the pink in my closet?"
He asked the question knowing the answer, knowing it would make you smile and break the tension that had settled between you. You watched your own smile spread across your face in the mirror, the expression softening the hard lines of your refusal.
You didn’t have enough space for your belongings in your student studio apartment, that much was true. The closet was barely big enough for your winter coats and your dresser had arrived with a missing drawer that you had never bothered to fix. Most of your things lived in Clark's apartment now, spread throughout his closets and drawers, your clothes hung beside his and shoes lined up inside his. Your presence was woven into the fabric of his space so completely that removing it would leave holes.
"Well that’s different." You shrugged. "Who wouldn’t want a big strong man protecting their growing vintage collection?"
Clark huffed something that might have been a laugh, the sound soft and warm in the small bathroom. His skin was still damp and the steam from the shower had fogged the edges of the mirror, blurring your reflection until you were both just shapes, just colors, just two people standing too close in a room that suddenly felt much smaller than it was.
"By the way." You added, remembering suddenly. "I’m getting a package tomorrow while I am taking my exams, so I’ll need you to sign off on it for me." You pointed at him, voice taking on a warning tone. "And be gentle. It’s silk."
His brows furrowed, the expression pulling his features into something between confusion and offense. "I’m not a brute."
"You sure are getting bigger." You pointed out, the words coming out softer than you intended, almost under your breath.
It was true. He had changed over the past year, filling out in ways that seemed almost impossible. His shoulders had broadened, his arms had thickened, and there was something different about the way he moved. It was almost like he was going through a second puberty, his body changing into something new while you watched, helpless to do anything but notice.
Your eyes almost widened at the situation. You were in his bathroom, still in your night dress with a tulle cover up, while he stood half naked, wet and larger than any man had any right to be. The towel around his hips sat low, dangerously so and you could see the line of hair disappearing beneath the fabric, could see the way his stomach tightened when he breathed.
"Physically." You cleared your throat, the sound too loud in the quiet bathroom. You pointed at your own face, then at his, trying to redirect the conversation somewhere safer. "You have some..."
You motioned vaguely at his jaw, where a dark shadow of stubble had appeared overnight. It was new, this facial hair, appearing in patches that made him look more mature. The stubble darkened his jawline, roughened the sharp angles of his face and you found yourself staring longer than you meant to…so it needed to go.
Clark looked in the mirror, touching his jaw with the tips of his fingers. The motion was almost absent, his attention already somewhere else, eyes focusing on something you couldn’t see.
You watched as his eyes glowed red and ducked immediately, body reacting before your brain caught up, dropping into a crouch beside the counter as soft lasers flashed from his eyes.
The beams bounced off the mirror and back onto his skin, burning away the stubble in precise, controlled lines, making the hair disappear in small puffs of smoke.
"What the hell is wrong with you!?" You exclaimed from your crouched position, your heart pounding in your chest. "Next time give me a heads up or something."
The lasers stopped. The bathroom now smelled faintly of burnt hair and something ozone sharp that made your nose wrinkle. Clark looked down at you, his expression calm and unconcerned, as if he had not just nearly blinded you.
"Is it better?" He asked, completely ignoring your outburst.
You rose to your feet slowly, knees cracking from the sudden movement. You stared at his face, at the smooth skin where stubble had been moments before and at the complete lack of any evidence that he had just used his eyes as weapons.
You nodded. "Nice party trick." You smiled, the adrenaline still humming through your veins. "Almost took me out in the process, though."
You reached up before you could think better of it, placing your hands on his face. Your palms cupped his jaw, fingers spread across his cheeks and you turned his head gently from side to side, checking for missed spots, for patches of hair he hadn’t caught. His skin was smooth beneath your hands and you could feel the slight warmth of his jaw where the lasers had done their work.
"Is this why yesterday's bacon was burned?" You asked, thumbs brushing over his cheekbones without meaning to.
"Caramelized." He attempted, the word coming out softer than usual. His hand came up, the one that had been holding the towel and rested gently on your forearm. His touch was firm and warm, holding you there as your eyes traveled all over his face, cataloging the details you had somehow missed before.
"Charred." You corrected.
He chuckled, the sound vibrating through his jaw and into your hands. You gave him shit about burned bacon several times a week, complaining loudly about ruined breakfasts and wasted food but you knew exactly what he’d been doing. Whether it was saving a cat from a tree, preventing a car wreck or any of the other hundred things that occupied his time when he was not with you, you knew him. There were things you didn’t need him to explain.
Your eyes met his as his held yours.
The bathroom fell into silence, the only sound was the drip of water from the showerhead and the distant hum of the building's heating system finally kicking in. You were too aware of your hands on his face, too aware of the warmth of his skin and too aware of the way his thumb was moving in slow circles against your forearm.
You began slowly lowering your hands…as the sound of soft fabric pooling at his feet in a quiet heap broke the tension.
Your eyes widened and his mirrored yours, trapped in a loop of mutual horror as he stood there naked, the towel abandoned on the tile floor between you.
"Keep your eyes up." He advised, voice strained and higher than usual.
"I..." You stuttered, your words catching in your throat. You could feel the heat spreading down your neck, burning in your chest. "They’re up."
"Keep them up." He insisted with what sounded a whole lot like desperation.
You tried very hard not to smile but failed. It tugged at your lips, threatening to break through and you bit the inside of your cheek in futile attempts to hold it back.
"I’ve..." You chuckled, the sound nervous and bright. "Always been interested in male anatomy."
"I’m sure." He nodded, his voice tight. "And I’ll...I don’t think I’m human enough for that."
He was getting redder by the second, the color spreading from his cheeks down his neck and lower where you couldn’t look. His hands hung at his sides, fingers twitching like he wanted to cover himself but couldn’t quite make himself move.
You chuckled again, the sound more confident this time. "Let me be the judge of that."
"You know where the door is."
"Rain check?" You asked, raising your eyebrows.
"Y-Yeah, sure." He nodded, holding your eyes, not looking away even though every instinct in him was probably screaming to do exactly that.
"Though I’m curious if you shave like that elsewhere..." You began, voice trailing off suggestively. Your eyes dropped for just a fraction of a second, then snapped back up when you remembered his warning.
"Y/n." He said firmly, voice dropping an octave. Something stirred lower, something he couldn’t control and the knowledge of it must have shown on his face because his eyes went wider and his jaw clenched.
"Yup. Okay, time to go!" You nodded, smile breaking through completely now. "I’ll see myself out."
You stepped backwards toward the door, eyes locked on his as your heels hit the tile in reverse. You didn’t look down or let your gaze wander. You kept your eyes on his, on the blush spreading across his cheeks and on the desperate hope in his expression that you would just leave already before this got any…harder.
You reached the door and slipped through it, pulling it closed behind you.
The hallway was cold, colder than the bathroom had been and you stood there for a moment with your back against it, heart pounding and hands shaking as your mind replayed every single second of what had just happened. You could still feel the warmth of his skin beneath your palms, could still see the water dripping down his chest and could still hear the way he had said your name.
You pushed off from the door and walked back to your studio apartment as calmly as you could.
Eventually quiet laughter began bubbling out, the sound muffled against your hand, because Clark was still standing naked in his bathroom with a rain check he probably did not know how to cash and you had never been more certain of anything in your life.
What followed was a week full of events.
Between moving out of your old apartment and moving into the new one with Imogene, you barely had time to breathe, let alone process everything that was happening.
Ricky had shown up with his regulars and friends to help you move your things, a small army of bodega loyalists who complained about every box they carried but kept coming back for more. He had grumbled about the stairs and the weight of your clothing racks and the fact that you owned more shoes than anyone he had ever met but deep down, you could tell he was happy.
You weren’t crying about Clark anymore and for Ricky, that was more than enough.
You were also so busy with work that you technically still hadn’t moved in. Your boxes sat in piles around Imogene's new apartment, waiting to be unpacked, while you spent your days at Mrs. Alston's store and your nights everywhere else. You slept on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by a few selected half opened boxes and clothes that needed to be hung and you were too exhausted to care about any of it.
But you hadn’t missed shooting that quick text to Clark with your new address.
You had typed it out during a break at the store, your fingers hovering over the screen longer than necessary while you tried to decide how to sign it. Finally, you had settled on something simple, something that felt like armor and confession all at once.
-A working girl.
You’d been proud of it. The words felt true and honest without being vulnerable, confident without being arrogant. You had a job that paid actual money, a side gig that paid well too and a future that didn’t depend on anyone else's charity.
You were sure somewhere in there, Clark was proud of you too.
Your set at the jazz club had gone well…better than well, if the crowd's reaction was anything to judge by. They had laughed in the right places and stayed quiet in the others and when you finished, the applause had rolled through the room like thunder. It had paid well too, enough for you to send back your bail money to Clark.
Thankfully…he had refused to take it.
You had tried to send it to him twice and both times he had refused with an earnest phone call. You had argued, of course, because arguing with Clark was practically a sport at this point but he hadn’t budged. So the money had sat in your account until you used some of it to pay the fine that came with your court date.
The court date had arrived in the mail three days after you started working at the store, the envelope crisp, official and deeply unwelcome. You had hired a lawyer, a no nonsense woman named Patricia who specialized in petty offenses and seemed entirely unimpressed by your explanation of what had happened that night. Together, you had pleaded guilty to a reduced charge, paid the fine and walked out of the courthouse with a record that would follow you for the next year and a lecture about better decision making.
You had taken the lecture and used the rest of the money to cover the lawyer's fees.
Now you lived closer to the Talon, which should have made things easier but somehow did not.
Your first working days had been so charged, so full of new information and new responsibilities, that you hadn’t had much time to think about your work nights. The stage felt like another life, something that happened to a different version of you, someone braver, more reckless and less concerned with consequences but you thought about that jazz club gig sometimes.
It happened when you were at the store, when customers trailed off describing a piece of clothing that you had already identified after the first three words. You would stand there, nodding along, waiting for them to finish and your mind would drift back to the stage, lights and microphone. To the way the crowd had leaned in when you spoke, hanging on every word like you were telling them something they needed to hear.
Things were going really good.
That was the thought that kept circling back, the one you returned to whenever you started to doubt. The store was picking up, the website was generating interest and Mrs. Alston had started looking at you with what might have been hope. The store’s social media accounts were growing, followers trickling in one by one and people had started messaging about specific pieces they had seen in your photos.
So when Susie called with a slot later that following week, you had eagerly accepted.
You didn’t hesitate or talked yourself out of it. You simply said yes, the word coming out before you could second guess it and hung up the phone with your heart pounding in your chest.
Now you were crossing the street toward the Talon and you absolutely couldn’t believe the noise.
The sound hit you before you even reached the sidewalk, a low thrum of voices and laughter that spilled out of the club's entrance and into the night. Clusters of people stood outside smoking, their faces illuminated by the glow of their phones and the flicker of lighters.
It was unusual and so was the line in the hallway inside.
You stood there for a moment, frozen at the entry, watching as people filed past the tiny window where the same guy always sat. They were paying for entry, handing over bills and fishing coins out of their pockets and you watched as each person also turned in their phone, depositing it into a plastic bin before receiving a bracelet and moving inside.
You opened your purse automatically, already reaching for your wallet and calculating how much cash you had left.
"Y/n." The voice came in a loud whisper, cutting through the noise of the crowd. You looked up, trying to locate the sound. "Y/n!"
You looked around until your eyes met Susie's. She was already at your side, materializing out of the crowd like she had been waiting for you, hand closing around your arm before you could react.
"You picked the right night not to be fashionably late." She said, already pulling you forward, steering you toward the entrance.
You looked down at your dress as she walked you inside, skipping the line entirely. People turned to watch you pass, some curious, some annoyed and others already whispering to each other behind their hands. You ignored them, too busy trying to see yourself the way they must be seeing you.
The dress was deep red, a cocktail number courtesy of Mrs. Alston's store. The fabric was soft and it caught the light when you moved, shifting from crimson to burgundy to something darker. Now that you worked at the store, you could buy what you wanted at a very attractive price and if it was from the donation pile, it could almost be free. You were limited to two items per week, Mrs. Alston's only rule but it was still something, still more than you had ever hoped for.
"Do you not like what I’m wearing?" You asked as the both of you walked inside.
The club was even more packed than the sidewalk had suggested. Bodies pressed together at the bar, at the tables, in the corners where people had given up on finding seats and simply stood with drinks in hand, talking over each other's shoulders. The air was thick with smoke and perfume and the particular energy of a room that knew something important was about to happen.
"What?" Susie glanced back at you, her brow furrowed. "I didn’t say that. I’m saying I’m just glad you’re not late."
She kept pushing through the crowd, her shoulder clearing a path as she moved further inside and to the other side of the bar. People stepped aside for her, some annoyed, some amused, most just grateful to have someone else making the decisions.
"I’m never late." You swatted her hand away from your arm, though you kept following her. "And why are all these people here?"
The two of you finally stopped by a small room, a storage closet, near the back. There was a mirror on the wall, a chair and a table where you could leave your belongings. Susie pushed the door open and gestured for you to step inside.
You could finally see her face in the harsh light of the single bulb hanging overhead. She was grinning, wide eyed and she took you in with a look that was almost hungry.
"They’re here for you." She pointed at you, the gesture emphatic.
Your brows lifted. "For me?"
You watched as Susie nodded, the motion quick and excited, like she had been waiting all week to see your reaction. "I’ve had all week to let customers know you would be here tonight." She paused, her grin widening. "And that gig at the jazz club?" She excitedly hit your arm, harder than necessary.
"Ow!" You whispered, rubbing the spot.
"You did so fucking good." She continued, ignoring your complaint. "I don’t know what entitled prick ran his mouth to his friends since then, but look."
She pointed toward the booths along the far wall. From the distance, you could read reserved signs placed on several tables, marking them as off limits to the general crowd. People in expensive suits sat there, drinks in hand, their postures relaxed but their eyes alert. They looked like the kind of people who didn’t usually find themselves in places like the Talon, the kind of people who belonged in private clubs, rooftop bars and other spaces you had only read about.
"I had to make those myself." Susie added proudly. "I misspelled a few, but I still got the job done."
"Are you serious?" You asked, eyes going back to her.
She nodded, still grinning. Your gaze drifted to the entrance, where people were still filing in, still paying and handing over their phones. "And the people outside?"
"Jackie talked to them." Susie shrugged, as if this whole thing was normal. "They want to stay until the last minute to see if they can make it in."
You looked back at the room, at the bodies pressed together and at the energy crackling through the air like electricity before a storm. It was lively, more than you’d ever seen it and there was something in the atmosphere that made your skin prickle.
"I had to employ three more servers for tonight." Susie added, motioning toward the crowd.
Your brows furrowed as you tried to find the new faces, picking out unfamiliar people carrying trays of drinks, moving through the crowd with professional efficiency. "How are you going to pay for that?" You asked.
You had recently learned that the Talon was not exactly doing insanely well. The books were tight, the margins were thin and Susie had been operating on faith and stubbornness for longer than she probably wanted to admit.
She pointed at you. "Tonight, entry fee is thirty-five dollars."
"Thirty five?!" Your eyes widened, the number landing like a physical blow. "Susie, you’re fucking robbing people blind. I’m not worth that much."
She scoffed, waving away your concern like it was smoke. "Don’t worry. We’re only charging that to the people in suits and expensive coats." She gestured toward the booths, where the well dressed crowd sat. "They will be fine. For the rest, it has gone up to twenty but regulars stay at ten."
You tried to calculate in your head how much money that would make. The math swirled behind your eyes, numbers adding, multiplying and growing into an amount that made your stomach flip. Your official agreement with Susie from that night at the jazz club had remained at fifteen percent of your earnings. You had actually taken advantage of the lawyer you employed for your court date to craft an agreement between the two of you, a sort of contract until you decided if you were actually going to stick with this. It was just a precaution, Patricia had assured you, something to protect both parties while you figured out what you wanted.
The club would keep one hundred percent of the public's consumption, which had gotten five percent more expensive, not quite reaching Midtown bar prices, but a sizeable amount after a week of increased traffic. Susie would keep fifteen percent of entry fees and the rest was for you. For now, you didn’t want her to also pay you for your performance. This was your home, your testing ground and taking a cut of the door felt like enough.
"This place’s fucking bursting at the seams." Susie mused, looking out at the crowd with wonder.
"Please tell me you got rid of the communal bucket." You asked, your voice almost pleading.
She nodded, a smile spreading across her face. "Even called in a plumber to stay around all night, just in case."
You nodded back, the motion automatic, while the anxiety filtered in through the cracks in your composure. The room was full, the crowd was different and somewhere out there, people were paying thirty five dollars just to see you talk for twenty minutes.
"Should I change my set tonight?" You asked, voice quieter now and full of doubt. "Filter something out?"
This was a new cocktail of people, suits, regulars and curious strangers all mixed together. You didn’t know what they wanted, didn’t know what version of you would land best and you didn’t know if the usual jokes would work here.
Susie shook her head, turning to look at you properly. Her eyes traveled over your outfit, taking in the deep red dress that would definitely hold attention the minute you got on stage. You seemed less tired than the night at the jazz club, which showed that you were getting used to your new working life. The shadows under your eyes had faded, the tension in your shoulders had loosened and your posture was steadier with confidence.
"Nothing." She decided. "You get up there and give ‘em what you have." She paused, considering. "Will this be a collection of recycled stories or should I prepare to tackle you off the stage at some point?"
"Depends on how clean these floors are." You joked, then shrugged. "Whatever comes out. I’ve been writing a lot, but I don’t know how it’ll come out."
"Whatever it is, make sure they eat it up and beg for seconds." She nodded, pulling a cigarette pack from her pocket. She pulled one out, placing it between her lips and then lifted the package toward you. "Smoke?"
You shook your head.
"A drink?" She nudged you with her shoulder. "It’s on the house." When you did not immediately respond, she added, "Come on, say something. I don’t want you tense."
"I’m not tense."
"Oh, yes you are. You look like you have a stick up your ass." She lit her cigarette, the flame casting shadows across her face. She blew out smoke, the gray plume curling toward the ceiling. "I told you this would go fast." She paused, eyes drifting to the crowd. "The people in here have a sense of exclusivity. That’s what pays well." She turned to face you, her expression softening slightly. "This is all you."
"I’m good." You nodded, breathing in and out, trying to steady your heart. "Okay, I’ll take one…just to have something to do with my hands."
"Attagirl." She pulled out another cigarette and handed it to you. You took it, holding it between your fingers as you watched her light it. The tip glowed orange, the smoke curling up toward your face and you inhaled.
Once the smoke hit your lungs, you exhaled slowly, watching the gray cloud dissipate in the dim light. "But I am quitting after tonight." You murmured. “We really should've included a death clause in that contract…”
"Whatever rocks your boat." She shrugged, unbothered as she looked down at her watch. “I gotta tell them to start denying entry.”
“...’Cause it really feels like the kind of thing people remember right before dying.” You took another deep breath, the cigarette burning down between your fingers. "Is it just me or is the air getting thinner in here? Whatever you do, don’t tell my parents I loved them."
"Five minutes until you are up…You’re gonna be fine." Susie announced, already stepping away and disappearing back into the crowd. She turned back at the last moment, her eyes finding yours through the haze of smoke and bodies. "Tits up."
Then she fused into the crowd and disappeared, leaving you alone with your cigarette, your thoughts and the distant sound of a room full of people waiting to see what you would do next...
You took another slow drag from your cigarette, the smoke curling lazily around your fingers as you stepped out of the room and watched Jackie step onto the stage. The crowd quieted down almost instantly, the low hum of conversation fading as the spotlight hit him.
“You’ll soon be hearing many people presenting her as a very funny lady,” Jackie announced, his voice carrying through the packed room. “Truth is, you don’t know fun until you hear her and even then, the adjective will fall short. So I’ll let her do the heavy lifting…and when you see her at Carnegie Hall…if you can ever get tickets to that, just remember you saw her here first.” He extended his arm dramatically to the left side of the stage. “Please, give her a very warm welcome.”
The applause swelled, loud and enthusiastic, as he stepped off. You straightened your posture, gave yourself a firm little nod in the shadows and whispered under your breath, “Tits up.” Then you plastered on a bright, dangerous smile and walked onto the stage with purposeful, swaying steps. The applause grew even louder, crashing over you like a wave as you approached the mic.
“Why, thank you, Jackie,” you said animatedly into the microphone, your voice warm and playful. “Believe it or not, that’s the most I’ve heard him talk since this whole ordeal started.” Scattered laughter rippled through the crowd. You turned fully to face the audience, eyes sweeping over the sea of faces, of suits mixed with regulars, all packed shoulder to shoulder. “And look at you all. Now I’m told we’ve passed our occupancy level, so please everyone keep your hands where I can see them. I won’t be responsible for the people you impregnate tonight.”
Laughter erupted, sharper and louder than you expected from the first joke. You took a quick drag from your cigarette, exhaling smoke as the chuckles rolled on.
“Isn’t it funny how that’s how some of our grandparents told us we’d get pregnant?” you continued, pacing slowly. “Or more so your parents, depending on the age range here…I’m trying to be more inclusive.” The crowd chuckled warmly. “Meanwhile, some of them were dating their cousins and blaming TV for fucking us up.” More laughter burst forth, but a stern-looking older man in the very front row looked outright outraged. You pointed your cigarette at him with a grin. “Oh, don’t you worry, sir. I’ll only be up here for around twenty minutes, if I can help it, which is more than some of you last in bed. You’ll be hearing the word fuck a lot, and I see that the way out is as tight as a–” You paused, letting the implication hang as laughter erupted. “See? There’s a very funny joke here that could count as blasphemy, which I won’t say in case there are any nuns in here.”
You took another drag while pacing slowly across the stage, the deep red fabric of your dress catching the light with every movement as laughter built. “I’ve also broadened my horizons to a jazz club closer to Midtown…nothing too fancy, which still allowed me to say the word orgasm about four times.” You grinned as fresh laughter rolled through. “I say this because I’m seeing so many new faces tonight and I’m told you’re all here for me. Now, I’m fairly new to comedy, so the fact that so many of you knew my name and showed up just to see me on stage reminds me of this stalker I had in college…”
You shrugged, taking another pull from the cigarette before continuing with theatrical flair. “Long story short, I’m in love with my childhood best friend and he…well, he’s a man.” The crowd laughed knowingly. “And can’t see past this.” You gestured dramatically at your figure in the red dress. “Though now that I see it from this angle, maybe he’s scared of venturing into the darkness.” Louder laughter followed. “Might need a night light.”
You continued, voice dropping into something sultrier.
“Something amazing happens in the mind of someone who’s never felt the love of a parent when someone else shows some interest,” you said, pointing at the audience. “It’s what happened to me…I met this guy in one of the French classes I took in college…well, he met me. I still don’t know his name. Hell, he might even be here tonight.” People laughed, already looking around for him. “I very often got these cute notes in French…ones that made me feel like a buttered-up croissant.” You shimmed your shoulders playfully, earning wolf whistles and louder laughter. “Of course, in my mind I thought my best friend was writing them…so romantic, right? They went a little something like…Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Your French accent was spot-on. “And something that roughly translated to ‘I’d like to live in your skin until the both of us…rot?’” Your voice trailed off as you shrugged helplessly and the room burst into laughter.
You took a drag, letting the smoke curl as the laughter died down just enough.
“Now part of me believed this farm boy just didn’t know much about flirting, but honestly I should’ve begged someone to hit me in the head with a hard baguette for fooling myself. I should’ve known better given I’ve been around the guy on a farm… all of those ‘Attagirl’…” You dropped your voice into a sultry tone. “Or ‘You’re doing so fucking good’...without the ‘F’ word, of course, he doesn’t curse and ‘What a good girl’ as he fed his cows…I mean, it made me consider veganism for a while.”
The room lost it and you simply waited as they clapped, cigarette between your fingers, smiling as the laughter peaked.
“Anyway, turns out he caught this guy following me home by following him. I can promise you, I’d never seen my best friend so angry. He held the guy by his arms and shook him and I turned around to see what all the screaming was and I was so…” You breathed dramatically, eyes wide. “Enamoured by how big his arms looked. I mean, I should’ve been scared but Oh! Quel homme!!” You almost moaned it, sending the crowd into fresh hysterics. “That’s French for “Oh, what a man!”…you know what else is French? The guillotine.” Laughter exploded again.
“So gentlemen, when you leave here tonight, be conscious of yourselves. Mr. Kent might not be around, but his Mrs. is…I will find you and punch you in the nose.” The laughter grew so loud it shook the room. “Now I’m not strong, but at the very least you’ll be very embarrassed that you got punched in the nose by a not-strong comic. You might get the last laugh…but just know it’ll be your last…ever.”
You took one final drag, stubbing the cigarette out in the ashtray on the stool beside you as the applause and laughter thundered.
You grinned, riding the wave. “I might not have a concealed carry permit, but nobody has ever looked under my skirt…And for context, my favorite toys have always been big, dark and automatic.”
The audience completely lost it. Howls of shocked laughter exploded across the room, while whistles pierced the air, mixed with groans of disbelief and genuine belly laughs that ricocheted off the walls like fireworks. A table of women in the middle nearly collapsed into each other, one of them slapping the table so hard her drink sloshed over the rim. Even some of the suited men in the reserved booths were red-faced, trying and failing to hide their amusement behind newly expensive cocktails.
You lifted one hand in mock surrender, grinning through your own laughter. “I’m kidding,” you assured them, eyes sparkling under the stage lights. “Size isn’t important…” You let the pause stretch just long enough for the room to lean in, then delivered the punch with perfect timing. “But you know what is? Growth.”
The groan that rippled through the crowd was immediate and delicious. You groaned right along with them, dramatic and theatrical, clutching the mic stand like you were embarrassed by your own joke. “Tough luck for show-ers… it just takes away all of the fun.”
The laughter hit a new peak, loud, filthy and unrestrained. Several people were wiping tears from their eyes. A woman in the front row pointed at you with both hands, shouting “Yes, girl!” while her date looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole. You let the wave of applause and laughter wash over you, feeding the adrenaline buzzing in your veins.
You paced a few steps, the deep red dress swirling dramatically around your legs, catching the light like liquid fire. The audience was eating out of your hand now, completely hooked.
After a minute, the laughter finally began to quiet down. You leaned into the mic with a playful smile, giving the crowd a moment to breathe.
“I promise I don’t always talk about penises and sex,” you said, raising a hand in mock innocence again. “I also talk about my parents…and running away from home for love. Now that I think about it, hosting comedy acts probably isn’t the greatest way to hide from them, but that’s a problem for another day!” You paused for the scattered chuckles. “Alright, let me think. Besides my rapidly growing criminal record, what else is new?...I got a new apartment.”
The crowd clapped and cheered enthusiastically. You grinned, nodding along. “Yes, I’ve moved out of Garrett’s building right after hearing him practically drop dead from the bet he lost…ten grand, which I may or may not be responsible for. Any lawyers in the house?” You scanned the room theatrically. “Obviously he called the police on me…who I love,” you added with heavy sarcasm. “Who historically can do no wrong. I mean, it took very little conversation with Garrett for them to decide he’s a gambling addict and that the nice little lady with the vintage dresses had absolutely nothing to do with his upcoming financial ruin.”
The audience laughed heartily, clearly enjoying your chaotic life updates.
“It’s too bad, really,” you continued, “because the best sleep I had all month was in a holding cell.” More laughter rippled through the room. “Also, I have a day job now too at a retail store.” You nodded proudly. “It’s fascinating, the different people you meet and how eager we all are to overshare what’s wrong in our lives. That’s exactly why I’m standing on this stage about to tell you how I eagerly encouraged a woman to divorce her husband of forty-five years…while he was just a few aisles away.”
The crowd groaned in delighted shock.
“Yeah, I know,” you said, wincing theatrically. “So, the store was pretty full and as I’m helping this lady at the counter, I noticed her eyeing one of our regulars…this nice, tall man with a salt-and-pepper beard I’d want to sit on.”
A collective gasp swept the room, followed by scandalized laughter. You quickly corrected yourself with wide eyes. “I mean, her! Or me! Hey, I might be a Mrs. up here, but unlike their marriage, this act won’t last long!”
The laughter swelled again. You rode the wave, pacing slowly across the stage.
“Anyway, she looked starstruck, so I told her, ‘He’s single, no kids…’ Obviously I omitted the part where he lives in Gotham, just in case she was more interested in what’s in his will.” You shrugged innocently as people howled. “I’m trying to keep true love alive! And she’s like, ‘Oh no, I can’t,’ and I’m like, ‘Yes you can!’ And she’s like, ‘No I can’t…’” You paused, eyes widening in realization. “That’s when I remembered she’s one of the ladies who comes in regularly just to talk shit about her husband in hopes of talking me out of an equally terrible marriage.”
Laughter erupted once more.
“So I looked her dead in the eyes and said, ‘Well, that doesn’t mean you can’t run to the end of your leash and bark!’”
The room exploded. People were clapping, laughing and some nearly falling over in their seats.
“Ladies, don’t let your awful husbands keep you from finding a boyfriend,” you declared, pointing across the crowd. “And for those with not-so-terrible husbands…my most sincere condolences.”
More laughter rolled through the room, warm and appreciative.
“I’m serious though, don’t let permanence dictate your life if that thing no longer serves a purpose. I’d be the first one to tell you that you need to experience things in the moment. Like fine wine…or a really expensive divorce.” You almost groaned the last part, earning another big laugh. “And I know this because she comes back every single day to update me on how it’s going. Just this morning she found out he cheated on her earlier in their marriage…on her Egyptian cotton sheets, which she paid for. She picked them out while he was busy ‘networking’ which nowadays is code for ‘ejaculating prematurely while thinking about stock options.’”
The crowd lost it again with a mix of shocked gasps and roaring laughter.
“I realize now that I’m single-handedly keeping lawyers in business while accidentally profiting off this woman’s divorce,” you added with a grin. “Because every time she comes in, she buys something new with their money and I earn commission. But I’m technically supporting the cause because by the time they split their assets, that poor man’s gonna own a recliner, half a toaster and several very expensive regrets while she’ll be draped in enough silk to survive winter without central heating.”
The crowd roared with laughter, several women cheering loudly in solidarity.
You struck a dramatic superhero pose with a hand on your hip and your chest slightly forward. “I’m like Superman…but with better boobs.”
The room absolutely erupted in loud, delighted laughter mixed with whistles and applause. You held the pose for a beat, soaking it all in with a satisfied smirk before dropping it.
You raked your eyes over the room one last time, taking in the energy, the flushed faces and the genuine connection vibrating through the packed club.
“It’s very clear to me that as of this past week, my two new favorite F-words are financial freedom…and the fact that you all paid to be here is only encouraging this behavior.” You flashed a bright, grateful smile as fresh laughter spread. “Well, the laughs help too.”
With a satisfied little smile, you carefully placed the microphone back onto the stand, the motion final.
“You’ve been a wonderful audience, ladies and gentlemen. That’s it for me…I’m Mrs. Kent. Thank you and goodnight!”
The applause was thunderous. Loud, sustained and full of whistles, cheers and stomps. Several people stood up, the reserved booths included, as the entire room erupted in celebration. The sound vibrated through your chest, warm and victorious, as you gave a graceful little bow.
You remained on the stage for a few seconds, soaking in the applause as the sound washed over you in waves. The lights were bright and warm against your skin and somewhere in the back of the room, someone began whistling so loudly you could hear it over the thunder of clapping hands. You let yourself stand there just a moment longer, breathing it in, letting the noise settle into your bones like heat after being out in the cold too long.
Through the crowd, you saw Susie push her way toward the stage, her shoulders working against the press of bodies, her face lit up with something that looked almost like wonder. She reached the edge of the stage just as you began stepping down and people immediately surrounded you, congratulating you eagerly, shaking your hand, patting your shoulder and leaning in to say things you could not quite hear over the noise. A woman with bright red lipstick grabbed your arm and told you she had not laughed that hard in years while a man in a wrinkled suit pressed a business card into your palm and mouthed something about representation. You nodded, smiled and kept moving, kept pushing through, because Jackie had already taken the stage again and started introducing some loud music that made conversation nearly impossible.
"Follow me." Susie's voice cut through the noise and you didn’t argue.
You ducked into the small room where you had left your belongings. Your hands moved automatically, grabbing your purse and your coat, then you followed her out but instead of heading toward the bar, she turned left, pushing past a cluster of people who stepped aside when they saw her coming. A side door appeared in the wall, one you had never noticed before, hidden behind a curtain that looked like it had not been washed since the club opened. Susie pushed it open and stepped through and you followed her into the night.
"Did you see me up there?" The words spilled out of you before you could stop them, your voice high, bright and barely containing the energy thrumming through your veins. "It was better than drugs."
Susie snorted but she didn’t turn around.
"I mean, I haven’t done them in years but it feels like an opportunity." You were talking too fast, you knew that much, but you couldn’t seem to slow down. The adrenaline was still pumping, still buzzing under your skin and every word that came out of your mouth felt like it needed to be said immediately. "Oh, I actually need a drink."
The fresh air hit your face as you stepped fully outside, cold, sharp and sobering in a way that made you blink. The alley behind the Talon was narrow and dark, lit only by a single flickering bulb above the door and the distant glow of the street beyond. Trash bins lined the walls and somewhere nearby, water dripped steadily onto pavement.
"I need a drink so stiff I could blow it." You said and then Susie suddenly halted.
You did the same, stopping mid step, heel scraping against the cracked concrete. You turned to face her, still buzzing and grinning…until you read her face.
She was just staring at you with the most neutral expression you had ever seen, her mouth flat and eyes unblinking. For a moment, you thought she was angry or disappointed or maybe just exhausted from the chaos of the night but then her nose twitched and her eyes began to water, and you watched in growing horror as her composure cracked.
"Susie?" Your voice pitched higher, concern cutting through the last of your adrenaline high. "What the fuck?"
She covered her face with both hands, her shoulders shaking as she attempted not to cry. The sound that came out of her was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, muffled by her palms.
"You’re going to change my life." She sniffled, the words coming out thick and wet.
"Well..." You hesitated, caught off guard by the raw emotion on her face. "I...I sure can try."
It was not just your life you wanted to change, you realized. It was hers too. Susie had been here for years, stuck behind that bar, watching other people perform while she cleaned up after them and now she was standing in an alley with tears in her eyes, talking about your future like it was the only thing that mattered.
"Most comics take years to work up those first ten minutes." She shook her head as she met your eyes, her voice was thick with something that might have been wonder. "Let alone go on for twenty with random things that happened to them while creating a connection with the crowd…You did it in a month."
You shrugged, looking around at the dark alley, the dripping water and the single flickering bulb. The night was darker now than when you had arrived, the sky above the buildings a deep, endless black. "Feels like years to me."
She shook her head firmly. "You’re really good."
"Thank you, Susie." You said sincerely, letting out a sigh of relief that seemed to deflate in your chest. The tension you had been carrying all week, all month, all year, loosened slightly.
"No, Y/n." She stepped closer, her voice getting more emotional, eyes glossed over again. "You’re really fucking good."
Your eyes widened. "And you’re scaring me."
She sniffled again, wiping her tears with the back of her hand and straightening her posture. She rolled her shoulders back, lifted her chin and somehow managed to look almost composed again, despite the redness around her eyes. "It’s just allergies." She said, her voice steadier now. "Thank you for coming tonight…I know you’re busy..and unsure."
You breathed in and nodded, the cold air filling your lungs. "No, I think I needed this." The admission came out quieter than you intended, almost private. "Life’s gotten too serious lately."
Susie nodded, her attention caught by the noise spilling from the club behind her. The music was still playing and somewhere inside, people were still laughing and talking, still living inside the world you had created for them.
"I’ll call you tomorrow when the money’s counted ." She breathed, already starting for the door. "Go home, wash this success off, and...get fucked, I don't fucking know."
You laughed, the sound bright in the dark alley. This was definitely the kind of thing you could have celebrated with sex, the kind of high that begged for something physical to match it but right now, all you wanted was a shower, a pizza and about six hours of sleep until you needed to clock in for work.
"Susie?" You called back quietly.
She turned to face you, her hand on the door, silhouette framed by the dim light spilling out from inside. The two of you stared at each other across the narrow alley but you were not present at all. You were back on stage, hearing people laugh and applaud, feeling the warmth of the lights on your skin, riding the wave of something that felt gloriously close to purpose.
Susie hadn’t forced you to be here tonight. She wasn’t asking you to stay, either or to do it again in the following week…The problem was that you wanted her to.
"Tell me this is going to work." You instructed, your voice steady despite the flutter in your chest.
You had six months.
Six months in Imogene's apartment before Archie finished his master's degree and moved in. Six months before you'd need somewhere else to live. Six months before the carefully assembled life raft you'd been floating on reached the end of its rope and after working with Mrs. Alston for a few weeks, the truth had become impossible to ignore.
Soon there wouldn't be mountains of donated clothing arriving every week. The website was already moving inventory faster than before while social media had people coming in specifically for pieces they'd seen online. The business was improving which meant eventually the racks would thin out.
Mrs. Alston would retire and that chapter would end too.
The store wasn’t a forever thing, so this had to be.
"It has to stick." You finally decided, the words coming out firmer than you felt. "I want it to stick."
For a moment Susie didn't answer, she simply looked at you, at this new version standing in front of her with tired eyes, aching feet and enough hope in her voice to make the whole thing terrifying.
Slowly, she nodded, trying very hard to look professional about it. It was her careful attempt at looking like a manager discussing business opportunities instead of a woman who'd just watched her future walk onto a stage and accidentally change both of their lives but her eyes gave her away. She was trying not to cry and was becoming increasingly aware she was losing the fight.
"Sure." She tried, the word was careful as if trying not to scare you away, trying not to push too hard, ask for too much and make you change your mind.
You shook your head. "No. I need you to be sure of it." Your voice dropped, the words coming out slower now, more deliberate. "That if I fall and there is just a stretch of space below, a void... that you will catch me."
She nodded and this time there was no hesitation. "I will dive right in, no doubts." She said it like a vow, like something she had been waiting to say. "If we go down, then we’ll go down together." She paused, something flickering across her face. "But we’re not all Superman."
You nodded, the word landing somewhere in your chest, settling into the space where your heart was still racing. She pushed the door open and walked back inside, the noise swallowing her up, and you stood there in the alley for a second, alone with the dripping water, the flickering light and the weight of everything you had just decided.
You fumbled to open your purse, fingers clumsy with adrenaline and cold and pulled out your phone. The screen glowed in the darkness and you tapped the one pinned contact without letting yourself think too much about it.
You pressed the device to your ear and listened to it ring…once.
You took in a deep breath, the air cold and sharp in your lungs. You exhaled slowly, watching your breath cloud in front of your face as your lips stretched into a gentle smile.
"Hi." You breathed, your voice softer, warmer. "Is it too late for a walk? I don’t want the night to end yet."
Maybe new beginnings only happened after endings…or maybe they happened the second you finally stopped running long enough to make that call.
A/N: If you enjoyed this story, feel free to explore the archive for more! Liking and reblogging helps others discover my writing and comments always make my day, they’re a huge encouragement for me to keep creating. Thank you so much for reading!
bobby franklin x reader [mdni] — your boyfriend splashes out on a new camcorder and insists on testing it out on you.
“State your name for the record.”
“You know my name, Bobby.”
“The camera doesn’t.”
Said camera has barely left Bobby’s hands since he’d brought it home two days ago, much to your chagrin. It had taken the entirety of those two days—when you weren’t at work, anyway—for him to convince you to be his muse on your day off. You weren’t even sure what you were signing up for.
Now you sit cross-legged on the bed with one of Bobby’s shirts hanging from your frame, sweating in the summer heat. The fan in the corner rattles noisily, doing little to combat the warmth, and the heat of your annoyance at a camcorder being shoved in your face isn’t exactly helping.
You roll your eyes at him, unimpressed. “The camera isn’t a person. I'm not introducing myself.”
“Well—“ He kisses his teeth, ready to argue his case.
“If you’re just using this as an excuse to roleplay, I want no part of it,” you interject, arms folding stubbornly over your chest.
Bobby zooms the camera in on your deadpan face. “Subject displays signs of hostility—“
“Turn that thing off.”
The warning in your voice only seems to amuse him. The viewfinder hides his expression, but you imagine him grinning, which only exasperates you further.
“Hostility increases—“
“Bobby.”
“Fine. Fine,” he relents—not by turning the camera off, obviously, because that would have required him to possess even a shred of self-restraint, and he’s thoroughly enjoying pestering you right now. Instead, he zooms back out and lowers the camera enough for you to see his face. “This image quality is insane.”
Despite yourself, you feel a little endeared by his enthusiasm. “Well, it better be. That thing is worth, like, a month’s rent.”
The number still makes you feel vaguely ill. The conversation where you’d discovered exactly how much his new equipment cost had almost given you a heart attack. Bobby, however, appears completely unbothered. In fact, judging by the distant look in his eyes, he probably hasn’t heard a single word you’ve just said.
He’s more focused on staring at the tiny flip-out screen again, adjusting the focus ring, watching you reluctantly unfold your arms again.
“Though to be fair,” he says, “you make it easy.”
Your frown deepens. “That’s a terrible line.”
“Line?” He replies absently.
“That.” You gesture vaguely towards him. “Whatever that was. You make it easy.”
A smile curls at the corner of his mouth. “It wasn’t a line.”
“It absolutely was.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You called me pretty.”
“I did not,” he denies.
You sit upright. “So now we’re lying?”
Bobby laughs. “I said the image quality was good.”
“Because of me. Therefore you implied I was pretty.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Liar!”
The grin spreading across his face makes your stomach flip unhelpfully. You considered yourself immune to his charms by now, but his boyish grin and the way he’s admiring you through his camcorder makes you want to swoon. Which is exactly why you immediately scowl at him.
“Stop looking so pleased with yourself.”
“I can’t help it,” Bobby says.
You huff an amused breath despite yourself. The sound seems to encourage him, and he adjusts something on the side of the camcorder and squints through the viewfinder.
“Hmm,” he hums thoughtfully to himself.
Naturally, such a sound is immediately enough to warrant suspicion. “What?”
“I need the subject to move around. Test how it picks up motion.”
“So now I’m just ‘the subject?’” You raise a challenging brow at him, and he immediately backtracks.
“I need my hot supermodel girlfriend to move around,” he corrects.
You roll your eyes, but it does make something stir in your chest despite its sheer ridiculousness. Bobby lowers the camera again and you catch the mischievous look on his face.
“Maybe you should model.”
“No,” you deny instantly.
“You’re not even going to think about it?” He says, a whine catching in his voice.
“I don’t need to. I don’t want a video of me stripping, or whatever the hell you want, sitting around our apartment. I babysit my niece here twice a week.”
“Okay, and? It’s not like she knows how to work one of these. She barely knows how to brush her own teeth.”
“It’s— it’s the principle,” you insist, cheeks burning. You wouldn’t consider yourself a shy woman, far from it, but the idea of there being a physical record of you attempting to seduce your boyfriend is offputting. “I’m not a slut.”
He groans and throws his head back. “No, you’re not,” he agrees as patiently as he can. He’s using the same voice he uses to console your aforementioned niece, which isn’t exactly helping his case. “You’re very loyal, in fact. Dedicated, too. It’d be really nice if you could show me that dedication—“
“Gross.” You stick your tongue out. “Don’t make it weirder than it has to be.”
“Fine. Fine.” He raises his free hand in surrender. “I’m not making it weird.”
A silence falls over the both of you, and you worry at your bottom lip in consideration. It just goes to show how much you adore him, because you should be sticking with your gut answer and telling him to fuck off. Alas…
“You promise you won’t show anyone?”
Bobby perks up instantly. “Promise. Scout’s honour.” The boyish salute that follows makes your shoulders ease up a little, and you briefly question why you’d even consider stripping for such a childish individual.
“Fine. But just a little. To… test your motion, or whatever.”
“What?” He blinks stupidly, before realising that’s the excuse he’d used just a moment ago. A sheepish grin tugs at his mouth. “Oh, right. Exactly. Just a little is fine.”
You swallow, shifting slightly on the bed. The frame creaks, and you can’t help but think the moment feels incredibly unsexy. You’re sweating in the sweltering heat, and it’s probably picking up the whirring sound of the fan, and—
Now you’re just psyching yourself out. It’s fine. It’s just Bobby.
“Okay, so… what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t think I’d get this far.”
“Bobby.”
“Just do what feels right.” He waves a vague hand. “Take your shirt off, or something.”
Such a request should make you sputter with indignance, but it’s no surprise coming from the man who seemingly spent upwards of eight hundred dollars on a camcorder just to record his girlfriend in their shitty apartment. You force some more confidence into your posture, shoulders squaring as you look down at your shirt. Slowly, your fingers drift down to the hem, curling around it.
You glance up at him for reassurance, met with an eager nod. Stifling a sigh, you drag it up slowly, revealing inch by inch of warm skin. “Like this?”
“Just like that,” Bobby breathes, voice lower now.
Encouraged by that, you pull it up further, dragging it up past your bra. Bobby wets his lips at the sight—your breasts spilling over the cups, soft and enticing. Up up up it goes until you’re pulling it over your head, letting it fall to the floor in front of you.
You want to shift uncomfortably, clamp your thighs together, cover yourself with your arms. It’s not like he’s never seen it before. It’s just unnerving with the camcorder directed at you. But you force yourself to stare directly at it, spreading your thighs slightly to give him a proper view of your panties.
“Fuck, yeah,” he murmurs. “Touch yourself.”
“What?” You say, alarmed.
“Not—“ He laughs a little, shaking his head. “Not there. Sorry. Just… your tits, or something.”
Your shoulders sag with relief. That’s a little too much for now, but you’re content enough to give him at least some form of show. Your fingers skate back up your stomach, goosebumps prickling beneath them. Then you cup your breasts over your bra, watching his reaction through half-lidded eyes.
“You’re so pretty, babe,” he says, and the approval goes straight between your legs. “Doing so well.”
You reward him by hooking your fingers under one of your bra straps, inching it down. His breath catches audibly—selfishly, you hope the camera caught that reaction—and he shifts a little on his feet. The thought of him getting visibly aroused by your display emboldens you further.
The other strap follows, and you palm at yourself over the cups a little more. “I would have worn a better set if I knew we were doing this.”
“I like this bra,” he says, only half hearing you, zeroed in on the sight of you squeezing at yourself.
You release them and he almost groans in disappointment. Before the sound can escape, you reach behind you, unclasping the bra and letting it fall away. His eyes widen cartoonishly, and you bite your lip to mask a smile, trying to remain as sultry as possible.
“Shit, can I touch you?” Bobby takes a step forward. Your eyes flick down to his jeans. They’re tight, but you think you can make out the forming bulge beneath the denim.
“Can’t touch ‘the subject,’” you quip.
Hands skim along your chest again, and he seems enraptured as you grope yourself. You’re surprised he hasn’t caved already, but his restraint is admirable as he nods sagely in agreement. Still, you hear him groan under his breath when you focus on a nipple. It stiffens under the touch, already sensitive enough to make you bite the inside of your cheek.
“Is this enough movement?” You ask, rolling your nipple between your fingers while your other hand palms at the flesh of your other breast. You’re hardly moving, so the answer is definitely no, but he indulges you with another one of those enthusiastic nods. You're certain you could sit entirely still with your bra off and he'd tell you it was enough for his little 'motion test.'
“Yeah. Looks, um—“ His gaze moves to the viewfinder, which he realises he hasn’t actually looked through since you took your shirt off. He can only hope the camera was pointed at you properly. “Looks great.”
“The movement, or me?”
“The movement,” he says, laughing at the indignance that crosses your face. “You look more than great. You look perfect.” Heat crawls up your cheeks, but he’s not done. “Which is exactly why I really can’t keep my hands to myself right now, and I don’t think you should waste your day off sitting in bed alone when we could be having sex.”
You bark out a laugh as he switches it off, setting it on the dresser and advancing towards you. “Well, that’s an improvement from your last line.”
He stands between your parted legs, ducking his head to give you a quick kiss. “For the record, it wasn’t a line,” he insists as you reach for his belt.
“Liar,” you mutter against his mouth.
The smile he gives you when he pulls back is so hopelessly smitten that your own laughter softens with something warmer. He ruins it by breaking the silence with:
“Maybe we should invest in a tripod. Then we could really record something sexy—“
toy flesh [explicit 18+] — [part 2] follow up to part 1 which is linked in my masterlist. this is lots of cute fluff, next part will get down to more filth. there are tons of nasty opportunities
. . .
She also thinks it somehow has to be a one off thing. A pricey, fancy one off toy that fakes a few cumshots after the first time she cleans and rides it, flooding this pool inside of her and all over her bedsheets. But there it goes again, and again, and again.
Topping her third round off by falling backwards near the headboard, new toy gripped tight into her palm while she slides it in and out to still feel full but finally give her hips a break. It was worth every penny, as ridiculous as the amount really was for a hole in the wall sex toy shop. A lot of the others looked sparkly and lengthy and quite pretty, but something about the girth and the hefty weight of the last (or the only?) one in stock on the shelf made her rush to grab it before anyone else could have.
After paying the man at the counter she keeps scoping out her surroundings for any prying eyes as she’s trying to sneak her giant new purchase, stuffing the box into her purse as best she can. It would be dishonest to say she didn’t rush to rip it out of the plastic, feel out the raw feel of the skin, the veins, the fat. It felt real. Unlike any other rubber playthings she’s bought in the past, this one was almost responsive to her touch somehow. Did it require batteries to act like that? To pulse when it feels her grip, or leak when she teased herself on the tip?
It would jump every time she spat on the head and rubbed the base up and down in a firm grip. Pre cumming right at the tip when she did her favorite forms of foreplay and fooled around with it like she’s playing pretend. It throbbed, it wiggled around, and most of all it fucking came. Like a man.
In warm, sudden bursts, she felt it oozing out while she was just getting started. As heaven sent as it felt in the moment, afterwards it made her furrow her brows and grab the toy again and even look down at her own pussy to ensure she wasn’t feeling things that weren’t really there. But lo and behold, it dripped down her inner thighs, slathering her blanket and oozing right out of the tip of the dildo.
It felt like magic. Like her new rubber cock was attached to a real living person — a needy, sensitive, girthy person hung like a horse that didn’t take a lot of teasing or effort to draw so much arousal out of. But the idea was silly, so much more nonsensical than the fact that it was probably nothing more than just an impressively built and nevertheless expensive toy with some kind of hidden wiring and technology that was capable of pulling off acting like a real living cock. Right?
She doesn’t bother questioning it after five or six rounds in one night over the Saturday of her last jobless weekend before the start of her new position the following Monday. It had done wonders for the stress in her body, the tense and worried state it was nearly permanently in. She’d gotten better at taking it all up to the hilt, stuffing it inside up to her stomach after taking an edible and throwing on whatever TV show could make decent background noise. She grins with her heavy lidded eyes falling closed while another load pumps inside her. The second one of the hour to be exact. That addicting feeling of her toy cock gradually just losing it, losing all control like her pussy did things that triggered this quick, heavy release.
She’ll hang around her home in nothing but her underwear and her robe, eating cookie dough ice cream straight out of the carton, higher than a dopey teenager stuck in her own element. It doesn’t take long for her to take her favorite toy and rut her clit against it until it got warm like some kind of horny genie lamp. And then like clockwork it fills up for her again like it’s getting hard, twitchy, and ready all just for her pleasure. In the very back of her head she thinks this thing is so real it could have the off chance of somehow getting her pregnant since the cum had the consistency and the warmth of a real breathing person.
When Monday inevitably arrives, she gives up making sure every single hair stays in place and just parts it all to one side, buttoning up her favorite coat as armor against the unpredictable weather. As she strolled along the streets to her new work building, petting the dogs passing by on their owners’ leashes and twirling the cord of her headphones, she imagines what kind of office would hire someone like her. Blunt, casual, some neurological differences that make it difficult to focus if the topic didn’t interest her. Virtually no prior experience in the field she’s been hired in. It didn’t feel real getting the call back to learn she’d been selected, but who the hell was she to call them stupid for picking her of all the candidates?
The hustle and bustle was apparent as soon as she entered the building, asking around with wide eyes where her section was, what floor was she supposed to go to. Everyone looked busy but remained patient and kind, directing her to her floor, telling her to find a tall, shaggy haired man by the name of Clark.
It wasn’t hard to seek him out of everybody else, large frame still evident even with his hunched over posture, diligently typing away on his computer. When he looks up she was struck to find that he was almost dangerously beautiful. Handsome, pretty, dorky, everything that had always baited her into making terrible decisions. Just by talking to him she could tell he had anxiety, stiff movements and facial expressions that had her wondering if he was nervous from the pressure of being in charge of a new hire, or if he was more specifically nervous about being around her in particular.
Clark is attentive and sweet, helpful and patient with her learning new things, getting used to the environment and what was to be the new routine. Picking up the mail, distributing the mail, transferring phone calls, helping Lois with office duties and finding supplies with low stock to re-order. Certain areas felt overwhelming but overall the job itself seemed mundane. The only thing sticking out to her was Clark and his antsy eyes and big arms, anxious ticks and shy smiles. How he bent over backwards to help her with just about every question thrown his way or another way, making himself of use to her in any way she may have needed.
On her smoke break she feels the rain start to pour within seconds of going outside, and although she’s walked through rain and shine plenty it was still a bit of a test to see how far Clark would actually go if she’d asked to take her home. And he was so eager, so easy. If she got to know him well enough and if they became comfortable enough, she could give him the nickname of being her own mister Yes Man. Yeah, of course I’ll take care of that for you. Yes, you don’t have to worry about that, I’ve got it. Yup, no worries. Yeah, I’ll get this going for you. He was so full of yes’s she almost wonders what the limit may be.
Throughout the day he reciprocates just about every glance, every minor, innocent brushing of arms and fingers and touches on each other’s shoulders, upper back, arms. He hands her a pen and she grazes his fingers entirely on purpose and doesn’t hide dragging the moment out. The more she does the more flustered he’s become.
When Jimmy meets her and shakes her hand, he pulls her aside to whisper in her ear that Clark is very, very single and she laughs so hard she snorts. And when Clark comes back from his lunch break wearing different trousers than he was before he left, she doesn’t attempt any subtlety at eyeing his new pants up and down and shrugging with a little knowing nod at what might’ve made him have to change. Clark makes up some half baked lie about spilling hot sauce on his other pair, and she nods enough to try convincing him she believes it.
After her training is done and the paperwork is filed and the day is finally, finally over she gets a nod from Clark across the room, tilting his head in the direction of the elevators with briefcase in hand. He nudged his glasses further up his face and sniffled, waving bye to staff and pressing the button to head down, holding the door open with an extended arm.
“Thanks so much again by the way,” she graciously squeezed the thick muscle of his upper arm as the elevator doors close. Clark’s turned bashfully red almost immediately, chin down at the ground pretending to look at his shoes.
“It’s nothing. I really wouldn’t want you um, getting all soaked out in the rain, that wouldn’t be right. I’m glad you felt safe enough to ask me.”
“Of course I did. You’ve been nothing but a big sweetheart. Seriously, if anyone’s intimidated by the height they could have one conversation with you and it’ll change their mind,” she laughs, meeting his wide eyes framed by his thick glasses. The elevators ding to alert they’ve arrived to their destined floor, Clark taking a second too long to process before shoving his arm back out to stop the doors from closing in on them again. His version of a curse word slips under his breath while he nearly drops his briefcase, clearly still tripping and stumbling his way out to the parking garage.
“Well I guess so. I’m not that tall. Maybe a little over average, but— I hope I’m not intimidating. Um, here, let’s go this way,” Clark awkwardly trails off, pointing to his little beat up blue vehicle parked way over in the corner. When he points it out she wonders how he even fits himself in there.
“Uh, usually I prop the drivers seat back for my legs. A little crammed but I’ve had her since I started driving. My Pa gifted me this, and she’s still been up and running good after all these years so I don’t really see a need for finding anything else.”
She nods her head and smiles, impressed. He doesn’t let her hand go even near the handle, ripping it open and holding it while she slides in and sets her bag down on the floor near her feet. “Wow. You know, that shows a ton of loyalty to keep one of these for years like you have. I like that.”
He sheepishly nods his head with curls moving on his forehead before gently closing the door and jogging over to the other side.
She takes in her surroundings, observing the little details. His hanging dog charm around the rearview mirror. Taking in all the neatness, the warm vanilla scented air fresheners. How the seat is propped back as far as it could possibly go to accommodate for his height. She notes how he kept himself a spare pair of glasses in one of the cupholders, another style than the ones he wore to the office. When he turns the car on, music began to boom through the speakers, jolting him with a twitch as he rushed to turn the volume all the way down, laughing through a string of apologies. She only giggles harder, clearly less upset than he was, more amused if anything.
Each mundane little thing about Clark piled more on to this growing irresistible urge to just make the plunge already, to crawl in his lap, to kiss him so hard his glasses get crooked and eventually fall right off his face. It became more tempting with each passing glance from the side, every accidental brush of her thigh with his hand while he shifted gears, a murmured apology with those signature pink cheeks. He always looked so embarrassed, and it somehow always served to really turn her on.
“Uh, so I’ll turn here right?”
“Yeah. Yeah just, just turn then you’ll go straight for a while. I’ll let you know when we’re approaching.”
Clark follows directions, going about five miles below the speed limit as he keeps his eyes on each house passing by, curiously wondering which one could be her home. Was it the well groomed, modern style with a picket fence, or an old school, overgrown lawn with an artsy mailbox?
He slows down more as the end of the street was coming, pulling off to the side as she pointed out her home. Clark forgets to hide how eager he is to scope it out, the little pink painted one story home with healthy plants branching out from their pots on the porch, the lady bug mat, the absence of any cars parked out front. Figures she must only get around anywhere on foot.
Rain still patters on the windshield as his windshield wipers barely keep up in time from the heavy drops, and puddles outside forming in the potholes of the road. Her plants looked to be the only happy ones to have some rain to quench them.
“This is me right here,” she reluctantly says, a sigh leaving her throat while she peers back over to the man in the driver’s seat. “I had fun, says a lot for a first day at a new job. Those are always pretty stressful but you’re such a great teacher that I know I’ll be in good hands,” she says, rubbing the lipgloss leftover on her lips together while eyeing him up and down, back and forth between his pretty face and his robust chest.
“I… I’m not that good, you just made it easy,” he disputes. “You asked all the right questions, you’re smart. I know you’ll get the hang of it real soon—“
“—You know, when I met Jimmy today he told me you were single,” she interjects before her mind could steer her away from the risky decision. “So was he… was he joking or was he—“
Clark groans loud, making a fist and then nearly slamming his forehead into it to hide his face, mortified that Jimmy set him up like this. To have this awkward interaction with his now co-worker.
“Gosh…. of course he did… that’s— no. I’m sorry he was acting inappropriate—“
“No as in you’re not single.”
Clark pulls his head back up, blinks, utterly confused.
“No, no I’m—“
“No as in yes?”
“N-No, no as in he’s right. I… I am, it’s just I didn’t want him disclosing stuff like that that to you, that information. Like as if you’d even care if a co-worker is single or not is ridiculous. If he makes you uncomfortable again I can talk to him, it doesn’t have to be a whole HR thing but if you want it to be I can absolutely help…”
She chews her bottom lip to prevent another shit eating grin from spreading onto her cheeks, placing a deliberate hand back on his upper arm to nab his attention, soothe any of his sudden woes.
“Listen, stop. Listen to me Clark. I was asking to clarify it with you because I was hoping that he was right,” she admits, a soft laugh not far behind the end of her small confession, trailing off with a rub of his shoulder, making him hold his breath and keen from the contact.
“You um. So you aren’t freaked out, you aren’t uncomfortable in any way? I just can’t imagine what it’s like, being a… a woman. A beautiful woman you know, like you, in a new workplace and having men be obnoxious on top of that—“
Clark stutters and takes a breather, shutting his car off and tilting his head up so his neck is exposed, blankly looking up at the ceiling.
“Clark.”
“Yeah?”
He doesn’t look back down or turn his head, Adam’s apple of his throat bobbing as he swallows more nerves down.
“I’m not uncomfortable. Not freaked out. And if you want me to just get my stuff and go, not mention any of this tomorrow, then I could,” she starts. Clark takes a deep breath in like he wants to interrupt, but she holds a finger up and he obeys, shutting his mouth closed. “Or,” she began. “I could kiss you for being so sweet, and we can act normal tomorrow, but you can give me another ride home if you aren’t busy again. And we can see where this goes.”
The drop of his jaw was nearly out of a cartoon, heartbeat throbbing so fast it might as well be audible in the quiet of the small space of his car. He can’t take his eyes off her, blinking ever so slightly when his eyes start to dry up. It looked like he wanted to pinch himself just to make sure everything was real.
“I… I really like the second option more. A lot.” he finally mutters. Licks his lips while staring down at hers like he had countless times today, this time with layers of restraint stripped away.
“I like the second option more too,” she chuckles at his dumbstruck face, soothing a palm over his thigh and rubbing his flexed muscles through his trousers. “I also noticed you changed your pants after lunch.”
Clark swallows while her face comes closer, nearly nose to nose, sharing and exchanging breath.
“Uh, yeah, yeah I….”
“That story about spilling some hot sauce was bullshit, right?”
Clark nods without a second thought, confirming everything she already knew.
“Did you have a little too much fun? Make too much a mess, had to end up changing before you got back to the office?”
“Yeah, yeah I did,” he bows his head down a bit, licking his lips again. Still close enough to smell her perfume, to stare at the glittery shine of her lipgloss, begging to know what it tastes like.
“I thought so.”
Clark doesn’t get another moment to think or conjure up a response before she’s leaning in and he’s dreamily shutting his eyes, humming into her mouth while she tilts her head to the side. Her nails splay out across his neck while he whimpers in her mouth, trying to keep up and savor the exquisite taste of her while he can. With plenty of hesitation trying to hold him back, he goes for it anyway and takes his own palm to the middle of her back, hugging her close to him while they kept making out like it wasn’t any different than coming home after years of being away.
“You’re really pretty, makes it really hard,” he pants. Pulls away but not too far, lips still brushing hers as he speaks.
She laughs right at him, tucking a curl behind his ear and adjusting his glasses so they’re straight again on his face. “Apt word choice there.”
“No! No I mean, that’s not what I meant….”
“As much as embarrassment looks cute on you, you don’t have to be,” she assures with another giddy laugh, kissing his cheek and leaving a subtle glossy mark on the skin. Then aims for each corner of his lips only to be pulled back in by him to get the heated momentum back up and running.
“You’re unbelievable,” he breathes. “I want to just… I wanna keep going forever.”
Shit, is he talking too much too soon?
“I mean you don’t have to, really, you can head home whenever you like… I only meant I like this a lot.”
She doesn’t let his overthinking become worse, just grabbing him by the collar and kissing him again. Adding tongue swirls into the mix.
“You taste like your Spearmint gum,” she observes. “Really nice.”
“I’m glad you like it,” Clark nods, his meek persona still in full swing even after having her tongue in his mouth. “You’d tell me if my breath was bad, right?”
“Of course I would.”
The pair still kept exploring each other’s kissing techniques, her hands stroking his arms and his chest while Clark’s stayed on the middle of her back in easy circles. It could’ve been ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes passing by while the rain hardly lightens up from pouring out from the gray clouds scattered in the sky. Clark offers to walk her up to the door so she could get home safe and dry, and she couldn’t pass up the offer, even if he kept reassuring her he didn’t mean to allude to any funny business. He takes off his own jacket to hover it over her head as they make the short trip, insisting he does it as to not get her hair wet.
“I like your plants, your place is cute. I can pick you up and take you home tomorrow if you’re up for that.”
She grins and gets up on her tippy toes to kiss him once again, an innocent little smooch he graciously accepts and reciprocates.
“And how about the day after that, and then the day after that, and the next week after that…”
Clark laughs at her and puts his jacket he’d been using to shield her from getting doused by the rain, squeezing her hip with another smile and going back in for yet another because it was too good to pass up.
“Absolutely. Rain or shine, I’ve got you.”
“Great. I’ll see you tomorrow then. Bright and early. Do you have my number? Wait, hold on,” she unzips her purse and shuffles through it before finding her keys, unlocking the door and barging inside. Clark remains respectfully at the doormat, not willing to push any boundary this early, besides a car makeout here and there. He watches her in blissful astonishment as she scribbles on a piece of paper, folds it up then marches back to put it in his front pocket herself.
“For emergencies. And you know, anything else.”
Anything, she says. Anything else. “Right. Yeah. I’ll text you.”
“Please do. And text me when you’re home safe!”
“I will,” he chuckles, leaning his head back down to steal another goodbye kiss before he walks back to his car with a pep in his step that he hasn’t had in a long, long time.
“Bye!”
She waves from her porch before he chastises her to get back to her house so she doesn’t stay in the rain, but she just sticks her tongue out at him then goes back anyway.
It all felt intoxicating. He wondered if he could even drive in such a distracted, head in the clouds state like this.
His gut fluttered with butterflies and his cheeks hurt from smiling so much, back on autopilot as he starts up the car, blasts the volume back up and turns back to the main road. It felt overwhelmingly unreal that he can still taste her lip gloss and how much it’s rubbed off on him. How he can still feel the ghost of her hands touching and caressing parts of him that haven’t been touched and felt like that. He has stars floating above his head like he’d been knocked the fuck out, unconscious.
Just as he’s venturing back to the street towards his place, his dick starts to feel wet against his left thigh. Still trapped by his boxers and his trousers, that same familiar sensation creeping back up on him before he could press the gas after a red light turns green. He clenches his jaw and tries to stay concentrated with tight hands on the wheel. Gasping when his dick starts tingling as he’s teased and rutted on by that same mysterious force, gliding him in between their lips, teasing their opening with his tip.
Clark barely makes it home and sticks his face in the steering wheel, licking his lips, breathing with his mouth stuck open. He feels when it goes inside, how the thrusts are long and filling and slow at first, excruciatingly wonderful as it’s taking him in down to his balls. Drenching him down with wet arousal on every pull out. His full body shivers again, butts his head against the wheel five times before accidentally bumping the horn.
Mortified with horror, he ducks his head down as much as he could and peaked around to catch only a few witnesses of his neighbors taking out their trash bins out on the curb. He awkwardly waves and subtly grabs onto his bulge through his trousers, dampness seeping through the fabric. With a braced huff, he counts to ten to enjoy the warm embrace before he’s exiting his vehicle, slamming the door and not bothering to fix his floppy hair before snatching his briefcase from the backseat, covering his crotch from the world and jogging to his door, soft rain still falling from above.
When he makes it inside he throws his belongings to the ground, rushes his clothes off akin to how he did on his lunch break earlier. As naked as he was born with those glasses still on, he lies back on the couch and clenches his jaw, absently thrusting up into the unknown heat. Feels the heat react with more tight clenches, taking his breath away. He closes his eyes and hugs a pillow to his abdomen while he pictures his new co-worker on top of him again, bouncing just like this wet heat on top of him right now. Wants her lipgloss to stick to his skin, wants to be engulfed in her hair, her perfume, her smile. Her laugh when she’s making fun of him.
Without any warning but the pit in his stomach squeezing and dropping, he cums like a fountain and it ripples out of him so fast it punches him into a straighter posture, all the sudden sitting up. He sees his own cum lathering his dick and his pubes, and he can distinguish the very moment she’s cumming not long later too.
After Clark lays there and chugs an old but full glass of water lying on his coffee table, he caught up to his breath as he tries to get himself together to draft up a text when he finds the energy to get up and pull that crumbled piece of paper out of his pant pocket.
With multiple tired, anxious tries of attempting to find some neutral ground between sounding caring and interested versus sounding desperate or obsessive, he takes a deep breath and presses send before he could talk his mind out of it.
Hey this is Clark. I made it back home safe awhile ago and forgot to let you know. Just wanna say I had fun and I’ll pick you up around 8:30 if that’s cool. Good night :)
Clark thinks of throwing his phone across the room to ignore the insecurities bubbling out of him. What else should I say. Was what I said too much. Will she even want to kiss me again? She said she’d tell me if my breath tasted bad. What if tomorrow things are different—
A text tone buzzed his couch cushion, phone screen lighting up. Surprised but delighted, he rips it back up off the couch and shoves it in his face to read carefully.
I probably had even more fun than you. Glad you’re home safe and I’ll see you tomorrow :) 8:30 sounds perfect Mr. Yes Man. I’ll be waiting out front for you, get good rest! goodnight!
Gobsmacked, he’s left re-reading the same words over and over and over until his eyes grew heavy and he knew time for bed was gonna have to be a little early tonight. He brushes his teeth, wishing he could keep the remnants of her lips on his mouth but knows he just has to wait until tomorrow for more kisses. With a hiss he scrubs his dick of the sloppy mess left thick and slathered on his entire lower half with a warm washcloth.
While he’s in bed he idly wonders what her nights looked like. If she spends them alone like Clark does. If she was more outgoing than him, had people over, went out more. If her life had more color on the pages than his. Dirtier thoughts naturally start to seep in after that, threatening to really take over the narrative he’s built in his mind. Does she touch herself nearly as much as he does? Can she cum multiple times if she’s coaxed? Does she take more charge or does she want him to take over? Or maybe she wanted both. He could do both.
Endless wonders still can’t help flooding his thoughts, so much so that they infiltrate his dream as he slowly drifts off to sleep. Dreaming of her on top of him, of playing with his tie before yanking on it to pull him around as she pleased. She got down further and nuzzled her cheek against his bulge through his office pants and took him out to lick it down like a lollipop was between his legs, even squeezing on him so good it hurt a little bit.
The dream ended with her on top and riding him, backwards cowgirl style, tight hold of his tie still in her fist. When he’s pulled out of his dream and awoken it’s around two in the morning, and somehow his dick had gotten just as wet and used in the night again, this time while he wasn’t even conscious. Clark thought he’d aged out of having any more dirty, raw, cum-in-his-pants type of wet dreams like these. He guessed that now after the day that he had and the girl that he met that everything was about to turn upside down.
. . .
thank you thank you to everyone who commented and reblogged and liked my first part im so happy you guys are enjoying its so fun reading everyone’s reactions :) i like the alternating POVs too for this between her + him
****(only able to fit 50 tags per post, I’ll make another one linked to this post so I can tag the rest!)
(partial) tag list: @7angel7spit7 @imsonotweird @fuhinn77-blog @sunflowers-and-rainy-days @astraea-and-her-novels @brains-2-beauty @theplaid-wearingmoose @navybluelover @kirbyisking99 @ifyouseethisnoyoudont22 @idontexistrightnow @caffeineaddicty @tinythebunni @contaminatedcupcake @klarkcentral @tragicgirl23 @carlandoxlestappen @thecheeseman27 @darker0moon221b @bad-wolf1991 @just-aliyah @iceyyycapsicle @rrosesandtears *rest of tag list will be in separate post linked to this one cause of the tag limit!
contents (sfw): Ser Duncan The Tall x fem!mer!reader, inspired by HCA's The Little Mermaid, switching POVs (indicated with dividers), medieval rom-com, love at first sight, witchcraft, body horror, transformation, romantic and sexual tension, mutual pining, yearning, caretaking, non-sexual nudity, there was only one bed(roll), sword of chastity, protective!Dunk, virgin!Dunk, soft!Dunk.
part two ->
synopsis: A mermaid falls in love with a knight praying on her riverbank. A witch gives her legs and three days to make him love her back.
word count: 13K
a/n: Banner is by me, dividers by @strangergraphics and @honeyluvsw! Thank you lovely humans for giving it a read before publishing (@lateknightbites and @siliceousooze). My last-minute mermay offering :') There will be two parts of this story!
The feeling of driving his sword through someone’s chest is entirely wretched. Duncan remembers the cause and what it carries, but every time he takes a life his jaw locks tight and his breath stops in a naïve surge of compassion.
The man pierced with Dunk’s iron says his mother’s name. It comes out thin and astonished, as though he had expected to die louder. Duncan hears it over the din. He watches the man’s eyes go queer in his face—film creeping over them, the pupils dulling, the whole wet look turning flat, the way dead fish do when they rise in poisoned water and the sun gets at their bellies.
An apology pushes up hard against Duncan’s teeth. He keeps it there. There is something mean in begging pardon of a man you have already run through. It makes him answer for your sorrow besides his own death. When the body sags and quits at last, Duncan braces a hand to the fellow’s shoulder, eases him off the blade, and lowers him onto his back with what care he can manage in a field full of screaming men. Then he pulls his sword free and breathes.
The stream is only a little way off. Sun has had all morning to work on his armour. The plates burn through his surcoat. The mail at his throat rubs raw and holds the heat there. Under it, the blood trapped in the quilted cloth has already begun to turn.
He knows he ought to go back. He knows the work is not done. His knees strike the bank before the thought is finished. He drags off one glove and then the other, drops them in the grass, and thrusts both hands into the current so fast the cold hurts. Water ropes round his fingers and under his nails and takes the blood by threads at first, then by clouds, until the stream runs pink, then weak as watered wine, then clear again as though the thing had never happened anywhere but inside his own skull.
He bows his head over it. His breath goes in rough through the nose and leaves slower. For a moment he can do nothing but look at his hands—broad things, nicked over the knuckles. Then he cups water to his face. The shock of it lifts the worst of the heat. He does it again. Lets it run from his brow and nose and mouth. Somewhere behind him men are still shouting. Steel still rings out, thin with distance now.
Duncan shuts his eyes. He has never been much for prayer, nor for finding the right words for it, but there are not many disbelievers in a foxhole. He opens his mouth.
“Mother, take him. He called your name. Forgive me for it. Mind his mother, too.” Breath shudders out of him. “Warrior, make me brave enough. Keep my hand true.”
Beyond the bank where the water deepens and the weeds grow long as hair, something has gone perfectly still to watch him.
When you see him kill your heart flutters strangely. Clean slice, straight for the heart. Merciful and cold in the same breath.
You know violence as the sharp white turn of a fish’s belly before your teeth close round it. The panic-kick of things that fit in your hands and things that do not, the times your own blood has gone stringing loose in the water because something bigger thought to make a meal of you first. Death below the surface is ugly, but it serves. Something eats. Something lives another day. Here, men spill one another open for reasons that do not end in hunger. The body falls in the grass and feeds no one. The waste of it catches at your mind.
Yet the great one uses his strength well. Joyless, he puts the blade where it must go and gets it done. Warrior, your thoughts supply at once, though he is younger than the word makes him sound.
Then, he stays. Only for a breath long enough to ease the dead man down from his sword and keep him from crumpling into the dirt like a sack split at the seams, but it is enough to draw you closer under the current. Almost as if he cannot bear for the man to go wholly alone. Almost as if being the hand that kills makes him answerable for that last small stretch between breath and none.
You slip nearer the bank, slow as weed-drift, and brace your fingers between the stones. The stream is clear here. It lets you see him drop to his knees. Lets you see him strip off his gloves with hands gone clumsy from heat. Blood clouds into the water when he thrusts his fingers in. He bends and sluices his face.
Your tail gives a hard, involuntary twitch. Until now he has been iron and leather and bright mail and the broad set of shoulders that belong to grown creatures who know their force. Then the water takes the blood and the grime from him and what rises from beneath it stills your breath clean out of you.
A boy. A beautiful boy. Young in the face despite the size of him. Wet lashes spiked dark. Mouth parted. Water running from brow to cheek to jaw, then slipping under the collar at his throat and down his neck. Your nails bite into the stones. Your gills flare wide and fast. You drag in more water through them without meaning to, as if the stream has suddenly thinned and left you short.
He opens his mouth and your eyes shut. The shouting from the field dulls. Stream keeps on at your shoulders. Wind moves somewhere high in the crowns of the trees. All of it goes faint around the shape of his voice. It reaches you blurred by distance, scant and earnest, with none of the grand sound men use when they want the world to think them holy. He asks for the dead man first. For the mother of the dead man. Forgiveness for what his own hand has done. Then he asks for bravery enough to return and do more of other men’s bidding before the sun goes down.
Nothing for himself. No glory. No protection. No rich spoil. Not even life.
Your grip slips and tightens again. Something deep in you, old as tide-pull, gives way. You have seen handsome things before. Fast things. Dangerous things. You have wanted and hunted and fed.
This is worse. This is a hurt that blooms sweet through the middle of you. By the time he lowers his head and the last of his prayer leaves his mouth and goes nowhere you can see, you love him so completely it feels less like being struck and more like sinking.
He rises and leaves, and the place he was at is empty as if it were bitten. The bank looks wrong without him on it. The water goes on over the stones as though nothing has happened. Your heart has no such manners. It follows him at once, crude and greedy, as though wanting were a hand with fingers on it. You part your lips with half a mind to call after him. Men can be called. Men can be coaxed to the water with the right note laid soft over the surface. You know how to turn the voice sweet enough to draw a neck forward, a foot wrong, a whole body into your keeping. The sound gathers under your tongue and dies there. To put a spell on him feels foul. It seems to you that a creature like that ought to come of his own will, or not at all.
You do not know by what rules men choose their maidens. You know only the old shapes from song and tale, the women with hair to their waists and wreaths at their throats, the ones led from halls by the hand, kissed before witnesses, warmed by fires built on dry land. Even the plainest of them has what you have not.
Legs.
By the time the sun tilts lower you are stern in the mind and weak in the heart, which is a poor way to go to a witch and the only way you have.
You gather what seems dear. Round pebbles from the streambed, the ones worn smooth as eggs. A white one with a milk-pale seam through the middle. A twist of yarrow and sage stolen from the bank where the roots drink deep. A handful of hazelnuts, though you have never eaten one and do not know if witches do. Three rowan berries bright as pinpricks of blood. One swan feather gone loose among the rushes.
Childish things, perhaps. Bride-things from the mind of a fool. You keep them all the same, tucked close in the fold of weed and river-grass you knot for carrying. Then you force yourself into one of the narrow runs that leaves the stream and threads the dark places inland. Mud slicks your sides. Roots comb your hair. The water grows warm and still and brown. It narrows to veins and then opens without warning into the bog pool, black at the middle, with a hut crouched on the shore as if it had grown there meanly from the peat.
You wait a long while with only your eyes above the weed. Nothing stirs but a gnat-cloud and the slow shake of sedge in the wind. At last you take one of the little stones from your hoard and throw it. It clicks against the wooden door. The sound is small; it still seems to carry everywhere. You sink lower, heart drumming hard, and hide among the pondweed with the offerings clutched to your breast, as if the right gifts and a brave face might yet make you into something a beautiful boy could love.
The door opens. The woman who steps out is bent nowhere and old everywhere. Her hair hangs in ropes the colour of drowned straw. Her shift is the grey of mushroom flesh. She peers toward the water as if she has smelt you already.
“Well,” she says. “What pretty thing noses at my threshold?”
You rise through the skin of water and push the bundle of gifts towards her. “I brought—”
“Did you.” She stoops and takes it between two fingers, as if it is something small and dead. “Then speak. A wish is no good to me till it has a mouth.”
You blink at her. Try to find the words for something prettier than a blunt girly whim, but they come out as they are. “I want legs.”
The witch looks at you for a moment. Then, she laughs. “That is not what you want.”
Mud stirs under your tail with the force of your annoyance. You dig the tip of it down into the black silt.
“Ah,” she coos, seeing it. “There is no shame in wanting, child. Only folly in pretending. You want a lad to love you.” You remain silent long enough for her eyes narrow with delight. “No. Not a lad.” She leans closer over the bank, and her smile turns terrible with it. “A knight.”
The scales along the back of your tail prickle. “Can you help me?”
“Likely.” She reaches down without warning, crooks one finger beneath your chin, and turns your face first one way, then the other. “You are fair enough for mortal work. Fairer than many that walk on two feet and think well of themselves besides. Why not sing to him? Why not call him into the water? Earth has given you gifts enough. Why do you not use them?”
You pull away from her hand. “I do not wish to lure him.”
Her mouth rounds. “Oh.” The sound is soft, but curdles your stomach all the same. “It is true love, then,” she says. “Pure as springwater. You would not stain your dear knight with a spell.” Her voice thins to a hiss. “What do you think you are doing here, if not spell-work?”
“The spell is not for him,” you say, and hear the weakness in it. “It is for me. I only need legs.”
“A spell is a spell all the same.”
She turns your bundle and lets the things fall. The pebbles, the berries, the herbs, the feather—all of it drops into the bog with a series of small, insulting plops. One hazelnut floats a moment before the water takes it.
“You may keep your trinkets,” she says. “I am not a hedge-wife to be bought with rowan and sage.”
Heat rises through you against the coldness of the bog. “Then why hear me?”
“Because I am curious.” She smiles again. “And because I can give you what you want. Under a condition,” she says.
Of course. Again, you keep still and say nothing. She seems to like that better than if you had begged.
“I will give you legs, and all that comes with them. You will wake with feet to stand on and knees to bend. You will go where he goes if you can keep pace. You will have three nights to win what you came for.”
The reeds whisper in the wind. Somewhere behind her hut a bird cries once and stops.
“If by the third night the knight loves you, the bargain is spent. If not, a soul is owed me.”
Your fingers tighten on the mud-bank. “Mine?”
“If you are dull enough.” The witch reaches into the fold of her garment and brings out a dagger. It is old and grisly, with a hilt of dark wood worn smooth by long handling. The blade is dark as well, but moonlight catches on it in a thin wet line. It looks hungry. “Or his.”
You stare at it.
“He may be given in your stead,” she says mildly. “A thrust under the rib. Upward, if you are weak in the arm. Bring him to me warm and I shall count us square.”
“Why would I do that?”
She lifts one shoulder. “Because hearts turn vicious when they do not get their fill. Because death is easier than longing for some creatures. Because on the third night you may find you love yourself a little more than him. I make room for all outcomes.”
The dagger gleams in her hand. You cannot stop looking at it. At last you whisper, “How shall I know if he loves me?”
The witch’s brows rise. “Were you not certain of it a moment ago?”
A pout blooms on your face unbidden.
She crouches at the bank then, bringing her face close to yours. Her breath smells of peat and old roots.
“When mortal men love their maidens,” she says, almost kindly, “they do not keep their hands to themselves. They part those fine legs you hunger after. They open the flesh between and put themselves there.”
A cold shiver runs the length of you.
Her smile returns, pleased and wicked. “There. That is plain enough even for a love-addled little fish.” She straightens. “Well? Do you accept?”
The word catches in your mouth. You sweep the dagger, the dark bog, the hut with your eyes. Then, her face, which has no mercy in it and no patience either. Because you have already loved him enough to come here, you say, “Yes.”
“Of course you do.” She puts the dagger down on the bank within your reach, then slips her hand somewhere inside her sleeve, deeper than the cloth ought to allow. When she draws it out again there is an egg in her palm, black-speckled and oddly warm.
You frown at it.
“Eat.”
“What is it?”
“An egg,” she says. “Do not go witless on me now.”
You take it from her. The shell is warm indeed, almost hot. “And then?”
“Then you sleep. Then you wake altered. It need not trouble you beyond that.”
It turns in your hand. “Raw?”
The witch gives you a look of withering contempt. “No, child. Put it in a silver cup and take it with honey.” She bares her teeth. “Yes, raw.”
Your eyes lower, ashamed of the question. The shell cracks easily. The inside slides thick and strange over your tongue. You swallow twice to get it down. The witch watches every motion.
When it is done, you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand and say, “How shall I find him?”
At that, something shifts in her face. Too rotten to be kindness, but it is the brief look of someone hearing a tune they know well.
“His blood is in the water,” she says.
Then she steps back, pulls the door open, and goes inside. It shuts between one blink and the next, leaving you in the bog with the dagger on the bank and the taste of the egg still clinging at the back of your throat.
You swim the way you came slowly. Moonlight makes the water mean and every root below look like a hand with the shape of something waiting. Above, the moon itself has thinned to a sickle near fine enough to seem a cut laid across the sky. It tells you that on the night of your judgement it will be gone altogether. You will hear it in the dark. His blood is in the water, the witch had said, and the current takes you at her word, carrying you through the narrow runs and back toward the broader stream where you first saw him kneel.
By the time you reach it, the bank is empty. You keep to the deeper part and let yourself drift there, belly turned uneasy by the egg, heart sore with a want that has already learned absence.
Sleep comes badly. Even so, it comes. The river rocks you. In the first fold of dreaming he leans over the bank again, all shadow and wet lashes, and this time when he opens his mouth it is not prayer that leaves it but your name. He reaches for you with a careful hand and thumb wedging under your chin. He bends and kisses you as though he has been thinking on nothing else.
Then the dream turns. Above you, something vast opens. The eye of god, grey and pale and lidless, hanging in the dark where the moon had been. Its patience is so complete the age of it exceeds the feeling of pity. Below, a pair of shears glints, iron-black and long as oars. The water thickens around you into a fat-like jelly, holds you fiercely, as the blades close with a sound no louder than a crab-shell snapping, and fire races you clean through.
Scale after scale dulls and loosens. Webbing parts. Bone groans as if gripped and wrung by unseen hands. Your tail splits where no living thing ought to split and your flesh draws apart. New joints wrench themselves into being with a wet internal crack that never seems to finish. You open your mouth to scream and swallow black water instead. Heat tears through you from spine to hip to the new-made lengths of you, all the way to ten small, useless ends where your body has never ended before. Hair roots burn. Teeth ache. Even your fingertips feel changed, as though the whole of you has been dragged through too narrow an opening and forced to come out other.
You wake choking while dawn creeps into the sky. Half on the bank, half in the wash of the stream, naked to the chill, with the dagger clutched to your breast. Air rasps into you thinly through mouth and nose, making panic strike at once. You paw at your ribs and find only smooth skin where your gills ought to flare. Sealed. Gone. You drag another breath and another, each one scant enough to frighten. The water at your side offers no help. It laps your hip stupidly, as if it does not know you.
When you look down, you see them. Legs.
Two of them, long and bare and wrong as peeled roots. Knees knuckled sharp. Feet splayed in the mud with their blunt little toes. They belong to you no more than the moon belongs to the bog. The sight turns your stomach. You put a hand to one thigh. The skin there is soft and strange, without scale or sheen or the strength of a tail built to drive through current. When you try to draw the limb in, the knee folds with a hideous ease and the whole thing jerks sideways. It feels loose. Breakable. Made badly.
Still, you have asked for them. You plant both palms in the earth and try to rise and pain bites through your middle. Your legs buckle, each seeming to choose a different direction. One foot slides out from under you. The other catches on nothing and twists. You go down hard on your hands, palms full of mud. For a while you can do nothing but crouch there trembling, hair hanging round your face, breath coming sharp and ugly through a body that no longer knows its own shape.
Morning hones itself as you kneel in it. The scent of his blood has thinned almost to nothing. In its place comes the rest: men everywhere, dead and living both. Sweat gone sour in gambesons. Split guts, horse piss, iron and smoke. The field beyond the trees breathes out ruin by the lungful.
You have three days. Three days to find the knight, make him love you, and keep your soul out of a witch’s hand. You cannot even stand. Water clouds your vision and you laugh bitterly at how it won’t let you go entirely.
On the morrow, Dunk sweeps through the edges of the battlefield after the worst of it, checking for men still breathing whose bodies might be saved or those who need a merciful hand to help them pass. His side aches badly where someone slashed him, one ear hears less than it did before the fight, and one of his sockets throbs with excess blood, but at least he’s not the one gasping his last. He keeps his eyes peeled for movement, yet when he notices a particular creature trembling at the very shore where his inept prayers were heard, he stills.
A girl. Mud-caked, naked, and—Gods—crying.
He hauls the reins on Sweetfoot at once, dulling an instinct to charge forward and holding her in a rushed trot instead. “M’lady!” he calls from horseback. “M’lady, be not afraid!”
Your eyes lift, but the rest of you dwindles immediately. Arms come to cover your head and Duncan notices you’re stricken with grime wrists to elbows as if you were trying to make your way uphill on all fours. He dismounts with a small grunt and hunches on instinct. His arms spread wide and gentle, and before he knows it he’s murmuring as he would to a skittish thing. “Easy now,” he whispers. “Easy. I vow this to you—I am no threat. My name is… Ser D-Duncan The Tall. I won't hurt you.”
The title sits oddly in his mouth when he’s half-shrunken and on bent legs. As he comes closer, his cheeks begin hoarding warmth despite him, for the shape of you is visible and evident even at this angle. Breasts plastered to your thighs billow with each frightened breath. Your belly creases in the middle and clay tears and crumbles off your knees when you shudder. He sees nothing else, but in his chest an unbearable instinct to cradle you almost overcomes him.
His head turns to the side, so he watches you only with his eye’s corner. When he’s close enough, he undoes his cape, spreads it gently over your back and lets it fall over you. He has a fleeting thought on what kind of smell it must carry and whether that matters.
Only then does he see the dagger. It is clutched in your fist, half-hidden by mud and the hunch of your body, but iron is iron. His hand stills on the edge of the wool. For a breath he says nothing. A crying maid with a blade is still a maid with a blade, and fear can make a body quicker than training.
“Easy,” he says again, lower. “You needn’t use that on me.”
You stop trembling enough to lift your face. The blade drops. Then all at once you are on him, hands closing round his waist with such force Dunk rocks back on his heels. Something reaches him through wool and shaking breath. Unintelligible mutter. Then—found me. And again, softer, urgent with respite. Knew you would. Knew you’d find me.
For a moment he does nothing but stand there with his own arms half-raised, startled clean through. Then they come round you, shy and boyish. One hand settles between your shoulders. He rubs once, then again, broad and slow, as though you are a frightened colt and his hand might smooth you into sense. “There now,” he says, because it is what comes. “There now.”
Beneath the mud and the cold reek of the stream there is a smell to you he cannot place. Something green. Something sweet. It cuts strangely through blood and horse and churned earth.
He lets you cling till your breathing eases enough to stop catching. When it eases, he gives your shoulders one careful squeeze and tries to look at your face without looking full at your face.
“M’lady,” he says. “Have you been hurt?” You shake your head against him. He swallows. “And your clothes—were you robbed?” There is a pause to that. Then you nod.
“Ah.” Dunk shuts his mouth on all the things that might follow that and does not ask them. “Well. I’ll take you to the village,” he says. “We’ll find something to put on your back, and someone to look you over.”
You do not let go, and he finds he does not much mind that. By now he is holding most of your weight besides. He means to set you back a little then, only enough to walk you to Sweetfoot, but the moment he loosens his hold your legs betray you. They fold queerly with the loose, witless give of limbs that do not know their own business. Dunk catches you fast under the arms before your knees can strike earth.
Some hurt in the low back, he thinks. Or the spine knocked wrong. He has seen men go slack in the limbs from less.
“Easy,” he says again, lower now. “I’ve you.”
Your head comes up. There is mud on your cheek, tears dried in bright tracks through it. Up close the sight of you lands worse on him than it did before. Such beauty in such a place. Such beauty at all. If someone asked him later, he would have no better answer than that.
“May I carry you?” he asks.
You nod.
He gathers the cape tight first, fingers making poor work of it. Then he crouches so you may put your arms round his neck. When you do, your face comes so near he feels the warmth of your breath on his mouth. His own has gone dry. “I will lift you now,” he says, for want of anything wiser.
One arm behind your back, the other under your knees. He brings you up. The pull in his side is vicious enough to whiten his sight for a blink, but he only grunts and holds you the tighter for it. You are light to him. Light should not be so difficult.
Sweetfoot turns her head and blows at the sight of you in Dunk’s arms. “Mind yourself,” Dunk mutters, and means the horse, and himself, and perhaps the day entire.
Getting you into the saddle proves ugly work. There is no good way to manage a naked maid wrapped in a cloak when one hand is wanted for decency, the other for balance, and his side seems set on parting company with him. He stands a moment with his jaw shut hard, then does it the only way such things ever get done—awkwardly.
“M’lady,” he says, hot-faced, “I must set you before me.” You only look at him with those wide, strange eyes and make no complaint.
He gets one boot to stirrup, hauls himself up enough to raise you after, and nearly fumbles you when the cloak slips and his forearm feels the bare warmth of your back through the wool. Heat runs through him so fast it feels wrong. He gets you right the second time by sheer stubbornness, settles you before the saddle-bow, then adjusts behind with a grunt he prays sounds like effort.
It does not improve matters.
There is no room worth speaking of. You sit before him with your hair damp and knees thrown to one side, and Dunk must put an arm round your middle the moment Sweetfoot moves or see you slide clean off. He has no notion what one does with a girl in such a fix. Horses, boys, wounds, armour, hard roads, those he understands. A maiden fair as vision and shaky in the limbs, is another matter. He finds himself hoping there is some widow in the village with a stern face and capable hands who might take one look at you and know everything he does not. Then he may ride on to Riverrun with peace in his mind.
The thought sits well enough till you lean back. A little more weight at each step, whether from weariness or trust he cannot tell. Soon your back is to his chest and your hair keeps straying under his chin. He has to look somewhere, so he looks at your hands on Sweetfoot’s neck.
Mud is dried in the lines of your palms and packed black beneath your nails. The nails themselves are pale in a way he mislikes. A drowned sort of blandness, as though the blood had only lately remembered to leave them. His hand closes harder on the reins.
What befell you? Robbed, you had said—no, nodded. Robbed of clothes and the strength in your legs. Robbed near of your wits, to be found bare and weeping on the skirts of slaughter. His mind offers up answers and every one of them is ugly.
“You are safe enough for now,” he says, because the words come and because he wants them said. “We’ll have you among decent folk directly.”
You say nothing. Perhaps doze. Perhaps you only listen. When Sweetfoot steps through a rut, your head tips back against him for an instant, and Dunk’s arm goes firmer round your waist.
Riverrun can wait an hour. Even a day, if it must. First the village. Clothes. Food. A woman to tend you. Then he will know what ought be done.
He keeps his eyes ahead and rides. When the road begins to thicken with huts and kitchen smoke he turns Sweetfoot toward the first cottage with a swept patch of yard and washing strung on a line. A hen darts from underhoof squawking. Dunk reins in, slides down, and reaches up for you.
The door opens before he can knock. A broad woman with red wrists and a face like a hatchet stands in the threshold, takes in Dunk, the horse, the cloak-wrapped girl in his arms, and narrows her eyes. “I can explain,” Dunk says, which is a poor beginning and sounds like one besides.
“Can you?” she says.
Heat climbs his neck. “I found her by the stream yonder. She’s been robbed, I think. She’s got no clothes, and her legs are none too steady. I thought—” He falters, then tries again. “I thought a woman might better see to her.”
The woman looks past him to your face. Something in hers shifts, not softer exactly, but less sharp. “Well, I am a woman,” she says. “Bring her in, then, you great oaf, and stand there bleeding on my threshold no longer.”
Dunk ducks his head and does as he’s bid. The cottage is low-ceilinged and close with the smell of onions and wool. He sets you down where the woman tells him, though not without trouble, for your legs go queer under you again and your hand catches in his sleeve with sudden force. “You are safe,” he says under his breath.
Your fingers tighten. “Please,” you whisper. “Do not leave.”
That near aches him more than the clinging had. “I’ll be just outside,” he says, for the woman is already flapping a hand at him to get out and because there is no fitting place for him in a room where a maid must be dressed. “Only outside. I vow it.”
A beat. Then, you let go. The door shuts on him. Dunk stands in the yard with a hand pressed to his side. Through the wall come the dim sounds of women’s voices, yours low and strange, the older one brisk and practical. Once there is a clatter. Once a silence long enough to make him straighten from the fence-post he had leaned on. He is thinking whether it would be madness to knock when the woman steps out at last, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Well?” Dunk asks.
“Well, nothing’s broke,” she says. “No fever that I can feel, no wound worth speaking of. She’s frightened half witless and weak in the legs, that’s all. Hungry, too, I’d say. May be she took some knock to the head. May be she was born a little moon-touched. Hard to say.”
Dunk blinks at her. “She knows her own name?” he asks.
The woman gives him a look. “She knows enough.”
That does not answer much, but before he can find a better question the door opens and you come out.
The clothes hang on you as they would on a child dressed from a dead woman’s chest: a coarse shift, a faded gown, sleeves a touch too short, hem uncertain, boots big enough to host toes twice as long as yours. Your hair has been pushed back from your face with damp hands. Your legs still look unsure of themselves. Dunk moves before thinking and takes you by the elbows when you waver on the step. “There now,” he murmurs. “Steady.”
You look up at him with such plain relief that his grip gentles.
The woman snorts softly behind you. “Take her home, then.”
Dunk clears his throat. “Aye. That is—” He looks down at you. “Where is your home, m’lady?”
Your hand comes up and closes over his forearm. “There is nothing for me there,” you say. Your fingers tighten. “Please.”
He opens his mouth, then shuts it. “I am bound for Riverrun,” he says at last. “I’ve business there. I cannot—”
“That is where I am going,” you say quickly. “The last place where I have anything. Please. Take me with you.”
Dunk stares. It may be nonsense. It may be the plain truth. It may be only the talk of a girl too frightened to be left among strangers. He cannot tell. What he can tell is the feel of your hand on his arm, the look of you trying not to sway where you stand, and the knowledge that if he leaves you here, he will think on it all the road to Riverrun and probably every road after.
The woman folds her arms and watches him make a misery of the choice. “Well?” she says.
Dunk lets out a breath. “I can take you as far as Riverrun,” he says, still looking at you. “No farther promised than that.”
Your smile is answer enough. Later, when doubt gets into him, it will be one of the things he reaches back for.
Soon after the village, Duncan finds himself about a number of tasks he had not meant to take on. He accepts the pity bundle of more garments from the woman, all of them light. He lifts you to the saddle, then goes back for Chestnut and Thunder. He loses the mark of his back, gathers his scant belongings, counts them, and thinks of the trouble of one bedroll. Riverrun lies four nights off, and his purse is too light for inns along the way. He shifts the saddle on Chestnut till it will hold you steady enough, then goes through the poor store of cloth he owns to see whether there is anything fit to spare you. At last he finds a blanket little better than rough army issue and ties it round your shoulders with a length of string.
When he is done, he steps back to look at you and nearly laughs for the misery of it. A strange girl with no place to go, less worldly goods than he has, a queer way of speaking, and legs that seem only half-convinced by land—and here he is, setting his road to her pace as though this were a sensible thing. Duncan knows well enough what sort of fool he is. Dunk the Lunk, thick as a castle wall, slow as an aurochs. Still, his mouth pulls into a shy half-smile.
“Ready?” he asks.
The world of men continues to bewilder. They kill each other relentlessly and let the bodies rot out in the fields until crows find them. They speak oddly. They wear clothes. Rough things that scratch the skin round armpits and knees, and make their beasts wear clothes too. They walk on two imbalanced legs that have less sense to them than you would ever think they have, which end with feeble little things that need the most woeful instrument imaginable to stay protected—shoes.
The pain comes on you late. At first everything is so strange that the cuts in your feet barely matter. Then, just as you get the first grasp on how to walk on those fleshy stilts, an old woman gives you a shift, a skirt that wedges itself between your thighs, stockings that roll beneath your knees, and a pair of disgusting animal-skin things that make the wound across your sole press and bleed, press and bleed. You could fit another set of those ugly little toes into them and still they’d knock your ankles raw. Duncan seems to think your wits were rumbled sideways by whatever befell you, and sighs through his nose each time you try a few wobbling steps before giving up and tossing you from one place to another. From doorstep to horseback. From horseback to ground. From ground back to horseback again. Then, the horse takes over the carrying.
None of this matters greatly. None of it rubs you wrong in any way, because your knight has found you and agreed to take you to Riverrun, of which you know only that it is overrun with rivers and mean spirits, and you want nothing to do with either. You want everything to do with him, though, so you let the beast called Chestnut carry you toward it and knock your newly acquired arse against the hard leather of her saddle.
You glance at him often, only to make certain you were right to choose him, but Duncan proves worth every bruise on your buttocks. He is prettier close by. Washed of blood, his face goes almost holy at moments—too open and clean in the look of it—then a shift of shade will catch under the brow and jaw and make a man of him again so suddenly it gives you pause. His arms are strong enough to carry a girl like you. His heart, plainly, is soft enough to help one and trust one within the space of a single hesitant breath.
That softness lives in him in sly places. Not only in the face, though the face does its share. In the stammer that catches him when he is too aware of himself. In the way he asks leave before he touches you, as though a thing may be both necessary and solemn. In how he handles even his own size like it might alarm somebody if set down too hard. You begin to see that the boyishness in him is not only a matter of smooth cheeks and dark lashes and that honest mouth. It lives deeper. Some tender piece of him has made it to his great age uncrushed.
You have no notion what he knows of love. His lips look unkissed, which strikes you at once as improbable and agreeable. Kissable all the same. So are his cheeks, if it comes to that, and the hollows under his eyes look made for the brushing of thumbs in acts of pity or fondness or whatever human girls do when they mean to soothe a man. You think, in the stupid way of girls, that it may be just as well if he knows nothing. You know very little yourself. The males of your kind are greedy, quarrelsome creatures who would bite the shine off a scale if they thought it theirs by right. The tenderest kiss you have ever given in all your life was to a trout, and that was mostly because it was dying.
Still, you know enough to know this: there is something dear in a creature so large keeping such a breakable heart inside him. Duncan feels safe to you in the way deep water once did. Not because he could not drown you if he wished, but because every part of him seems arranged against wishing it.
The road, of course, is another matter. It goes on and on, pale and hard beneath the horses, made by men for reasons men must have found clever. When there is no canopy the sun comes down bare and mean, scorching your face, your scalp, the tender tops of your hands. Dust lifts and settles in your throat. The saddle knocks under you with a steady, sour persistence, and after a while even wonder thins into boredom. You cannot understand why anyone would choose such a path. Roads have no give. They hold the day’s heat. They are full of stones and wheel-ruts and the old droppings of beasts. Water, at least, takes your shape when it carries you.
But then, toward evening, the land alters. Light begins to bleed richer colours over everything. It gathers in the grasses and tips the hedges. It slicks itself along the backs of flies until the air is full of brief, burning specks. The trunks of trees grow black on one side and warm on the other, and the far fields seem to have been brushed by something molten and low. From the height of Chestnut’s back, you see land from its own heart for the first time: furrow, ditch, thorn, moss, little stones shining in the road, the long back of the world lifting itself toward dark.
The dying sun finds Duncan too. It catches in his hair until the auburn of it wakes with red-gold hidden under it, banked fire stirred by a stick. All of him brightens: cheek, ear, the blunt line of his nose, the great slope of shoulder under travel-stained cloth. When the sun begins to go, his colours come alive. It seems unfair that a thing may grow more beautiful just when the light is going, as if it was never meant to be kept.
“M’lady?” His voice pulls you from the sky. You turn your head and find him watching you from Sweetfoot’s back. “Are you tired?”
You consider this. “Tired of what?”
He blinks.
“Sitting on a beast?” you ask.
A sound leaves him then, low and huffed through his nose. “Aye. Riding can weary a body. We should make camp soon. It will be dark before long.”
You look him over for signs of weariness, but he shows none that you can read. He sits tall enough, broad enough, with the reins easy in one hand and the dust on him as if it has been there all his life. “The road is hard,” you allow. “The beast is delightful.”
At that you lean forward and wrap both arms around Chestnut’s neck. Chestnut blows out a pleased breath and dips her head as if she agrees with you entirely.
Duncan stares for a moment. Then his mouth presses itself into a line and he looks back to the road.
“Do people always choose paths this hard?” you ask.
“This?” he says. “This is no hard road. It’s straight, and flat enough, and there’s no great wind to cut at us. There are harder paths than this.”
You frown. “Why would anyone take a harder path?”
“Sometimes they must.”
You consider that gravely. Men do seem fond of arranging misery into rules and then obeying them.
After another little while, Duncan says, “Keep your eyes peeled for a place to camp, if there is one you like.”
Your hand lifts before he has finished speaking. “There.”
He follows the line of your finger. There is only a thick tangle of trees and bramble ahead, with sun lying through the branches. “There?” he says.
“By the water.”
He looks again, slower this time, as if water may show itself out of courtesy. “There ain’t water there, m’lady.”
“There is.”
His gaze comes back to you. It is a look you dislike before you understand it. Careful. Mild. The look given to a creature who has said something foolish and might be frightened if the foolishness is named aloud. Pity sits in it, thinly covered.
Heat pinches under your ribs. “Beyond those trees,” you say. “Where the sun takes aim. There is water.”
Duncan shifts in the saddle. For a moment it seems he means to answer. Instead he only draws a breath and turns Sweetfoot’s head. “All right, then.”
The gentleness of it makes the pinch in you flare hotter. The males of your own kind speak so when they wish to make you small. Little thing, pretty thing, witless thing. They forget how quickly a little thing can open a throat when she has teeth and a mind to use them. How a male may reach for you in the weeds, grinning, and only know himself dead when his fingers will no longer close because all the blood has run out of them.
You say nothing. Chestnut follows Sweetfoot off the road and into the green press, Thunder trots close behind with all of the belongings clinking at his sides.
Branches drag over your shoulders. Leaves brush your face and catch in your hair. The ground grows softer almost immediately, darkening underhoof. You hear it before he does, of course: the low, glassy talk of water over stone, hidden under bird-call and the rasp of insects. A moment later Duncan hears it too. His head lifts. Sweetfoot’s ears prick forward. He urges her on a little faster without looking back.
The trees thin, and beyond them lies a small bed of grass pressed close to a clear stream running lazy under evening light. A willow grows at the bank with its long hair fallen into the water, making a green chamber beneath it. The surface holds the last of the sun in broken pieces and lets them go again.
Duncan reins in. At first, he only looks. “Well,” he says at last, quiet and baffled. “Gods be good.” You sit straighter on Chestnut’s back when he turns to you. “How did you know?”
Your chin lifts, because even though he has no right to know, you are a proud creature. “I am not so witless as you think me, knight.”
At that his face changes. The bafflement stays, but something troubled comes into it too. “I never thought you witless,” he says.
Instead of dignifying that with a response, you begin getting off Chestnut. It seems simple enough. One leg must go somewhere, then the other after it, and the ground waits below with its usual bad intentions. You slide halfway down the saddle and there the business collapses. Your skirt catches, one foot finds nothing. Your hands clutch at leather and mane, and you are left hanging from the side of the beast in a deeply humiliating fashion, breathing hard through your nose.
Duncan is there before you make a fool of yourself entire. His hands span your waist through the shift, large and warm and terribly sure. He lifts you down as if the effort costs him nothing, though you have seen the way his side catches sometimes when he thinks you are looking elsewhere.
“I only meant,” he says, setting you on the grass with more care than the world deserves, “you keep surprising me.”
You say nothing to that. Only look at him from close by, and shamelessly so. He is shy for a lad this big. It pleases and worries you in equal measure. It makes you wonder, briefly and without comfort, whether he will know what to do with you at all. Whether he knows how men put themselves between the legs of women who want them so dearly. Whether, third night from this one, the witch will have the soul she grinned for.
Before you can ask, Duncan looks away. “You may bathe, if you like,” he says. “Under the willow there. I’ll start a fire. See to some food. Water the horses after.” Then he turns from you with the haste of a sailor escaping a sinking ship.
The first thing you lose is the shoes. You wrench them off and drop them in the grass with hatred. The cut across your sole still presses when your foot meets earth, but at least it is no longer trapped against leather, forced to bleed and bleed in its own little prison. The stockings go next, or try to. They roll and cling beneath your knees like pale eels. Then, the blanket. You tug at the ties and laces and strings, cross with their stubbornness, then only angrier. Human clothes are full of tricks and no kindness. At last, with a tired grunt, you pull the shift up over your head.
Behind you, wood clatters. You look round.
Duncan stands a few feet away with firewood scattered at his boots. His mouth has parted. For one suspended moment he simply gapes. Then flush climbs fiercely round his ears, up his neck, into his face, and he drops into a crouch to gather the sticks as if they have become suddenly precious.
“M-m’lady,” he says, strangled. “You oughtn’t—Seven save me—you oughtn’t undress before a man you scarce know.”
You stare at him.
“I thought you meant to go beneath the willow,” he goes on, still looking hard at the twigs. “Out of sight. I thought—what are you doing? Have you never been on the road? Or near men? Or near folk at all?”
An instinct pinches you, strange and unwelcome, to cover your chest. You do, though slowly, and with no clear idea why. He looks as if you have done him some harm. “It is only flesh,” you say. “You have flesh too. What is so wicked about mine that you cannot look?”
He makes a small, suffering sound and bends lower over the firewood. “My flesh is—” He stops. Swallows. Tries again. “It is different.”
You glance down at yourself, then at him. “How?”
His hand closes on a stick so tightly the bark cracks. “M’lady, I beg you.”
“For what?”
“For pity,” he says, so miserably that your brows lift. “It is improper, is all. A maid shouldn’t—And I don’t mean to have you think I’m that sort of man. I am trying to do good by you.”
He sounds so nervous your annoyance falters. Only for a moment.
You pick up the shift and hold it to your chest, then begin toward the bank. Walking still feels like being made to argue with the earth. Each step must be planned, lowered, endured. Too much pressure and the pain flares white-hot. Too little and your knee goes soft. Your feet seem stupidly far away from the rest of you, little traitors sent ahead to ruin your dignity.
You stop beside him. Duncan bows his head even lower, as though your bare ankle might strike him blind.
“Do you dislike women’s bodies?” you ask.
The sound he makes then is very nearly a whine. “Please, m’lady. Spare me. I am only a hedge knight. I am trying—please.”
You huff at him. “Forgive me for tormenting you with some skin.” Then you limp on beneath the willow’s hanging hair.
There, hidden by the long green fall of it, you strip with more temper than grace and lower yourself toward the stream. This is going poorly. Your knight does not seem at all like the men you have watched from the shallows, those shore-men who seize their lovers round the waist and press them down laughing in the dark, bodies gleaming, mouths so sinful your tail once twitched hard enough to stir silt. Duncan behaves as though the sight of you is a trial set by cruel gods.
At least there is water.
The stream receives you kindly, though changed skin and sealed ribs make even kindness strange. You lie back over its cool sheet and drift where it is deep enough to hold you, looking up through the willow leaves as they sieve the last gold from the sky. The current slips beneath your new body, uncertain around the parts it no longer knows, and you let it carry what little of you it still can.
Duncan remains crouched over the scattered firewood long after you limp beneath the tree, ears burning as though someone has boxed them both. The stream talks quietly behind him. The horses crop at the grass.
He has no answer for what has just happened. None he likes, anyway.
You are strange. Stranger than any girl he has known, though known is too large a word for the few girls that ever had cause to look twice at him. Your face is strange too, in how open it is. He has not seen one so plain and easy to read since he was a boy looking down into still puddles and finding his own there. He can tell when you are baffled. When you are tired. When you are pleased. When you are angry.
Now you are angry. Likely under the willow still wearing that fierce little frown, cross with him because he turned his eyes away. That is the oddest part. Most maids, he thinks, would be angry with a man for gaping. You seem wounded that he did not gape longer.
He did gape. Only a heartbeat, maybe, before sense struck him like a thrown stone, but a heartbeat can be a mean long while when a girl stands bare in afternoon light. He saw the lift of your breasts before your arms came up, full where the borrowed shift had hidden them, and prickling with river-cool air. He saw the narrow give of your belly, the line where ribs fell into waist, the dark crease of shadow beneath. Enough. More than enough. Too much for a man meant to be gathering sticks and doing honourable things with his hands.
You asked how your flesh was different from his. The terrible thing is he would only need to stand up to show you.
That thought near makes him groan aloud. He jams another stick into the small pit he has scraped clear with his boot and starts arranging kindling with far more care than kindling deserves. Fire. Food. Horses. Bedroll. Those are proper troubles. Those can be solved with hands and a bit of sense.
The bedroll is the worst of them. Four nights to Riverrun. A purse too light for inns unless he means to arrive there hungry and horseless. He pokes at the kindling and gives himself over to a hard, practical anguish.
When the fire catches, he goes to see to the horses. Sweetfoot accepts his hand with her usual calm. Chestnut, traitor that she is, blows warm air straight into his face and tosses her head toward the willow.
“Oh, have you a new favourite?” Duncan mutters. Chestnut chews at nothing, looking pleased with herself. “Aye. Good. All of you against me, then.”
He returns to the fire with what food he has: one mangy rabbit still fit for roasting, a clutch of withered potatoes that have begun trying to become more potatoes, and bread gone hard enough to argue with a knife. He has had worse meals. Many worse. Still, he finds himself worrying whether it will be enough for a tender-mouthed creature like you, whether you are used to finer things, softer things, things served by hands that have never been black with battlefield mud.
The whole day sits oddly in his skull. Morning had found him still full of war. Blood from the day before. The sour stink of men opened for no good reason. Boys felled in the grass with their eyes gone milky and their mothers’ names drying on their tongues. He had been angry then, in a slow thick way, at killing and lords and banners and all the great heavy wheels that roll over little bodies until no one can tell what shape they had.
Then he found you by the stream, naked, half-wild with fear, concussed or close enough, begging him without quite begging to take you with him. Now you are angry because he would not stand there and leer at your tits.
Duncan understands horses better than people. Dogs too. Even mules, ugly-hearted beasts though they can be. A horse gives warning before it kicks. A dog shows teeth before it bites. People smile, weep, lie, ask strange questions, go hurt in places a man cannot see. You escape even the small customs he has managed to learn.
He lifts his eyes from the rabbit just as the wind moves the willow’s hanging hair aside. Through the green gaps, he sees you.
You are floating on your back where the stream broadens under the tree, arms spread loose on either side, legs moving slowly beneath the skin of the water. The last light scatters over you in pieces. A knee and a hip. The small rise of your belly. Water darkens and brightens as it crosses you, breaking your shape and making it whole again. Your hair fans out around your head. Your eyes are closed, mouth parted, and the stream slips between your lips as though you have invited it.
Duncan ought to look away, but the boy he is, he doesn't.
There is enough of you on display to shame a septa dead in her robes. Breasts, thighs, the place between them blurred and shown by water in turns. Yet your face holds him worst. The peace of it, the ease of it. Stripped of cloth and terror and all the hard rules that seem to trouble you, you look newly made and older than the earth together. Not human, he thinks. Then he feels wicked for it, because you are a girl, and hurt, and under his protection.
Still, you look like one of those goddesses men carved in old stones before the Seven came, the kind Duncan knows nothing about except that a wiser man would kneel or run. You look pleased to have the world off your skin. No wonder you shed clothing like a snare.
The willow falls back into place. Green covers you again. Duncan looks down at the rabbit, jaw tight, and turns it over the flame before it can make it to coal. He scolds himself too, keeps muttering Ser Arlan's little knightly preachings to tear his mind away from what boys think about, and back to what sworn swords should think about.
The stream sloshes and plops with the sound of a body being dragged out of it. There, Dunk wonders what exactly to do, because he knows well enough you are no good at walking yet, but finds himself in the grip of a strange preference. He would rather let the stumble happen and rush to help than prevent it outright, if prevention means enduring another comparison of flesh.
Soon enough, he catches you limping from the corner of his eye to the heart of his vision. You come to sit beside him much too close for his peace. The cold of the river comes off you plainly, running against the heat of his shoulder where yours nearly touches. Damp has darkened your hair and set loose drops along your neck. Before he can shift away without making it an insult, you arrange yourself with great importance and announce, “There. Modest.”
Dunk looks. Stupidly, but he does. He has never known cloth to be a thing worthy of praise. Cloth is only cloth. A courtesy. A barrier. A way for decent folk to go about the world without setting fire to one another’s ears. Yet in his want to tell you that you have done well, he stabs his own foot clean through.
The linen has clung to you everywhere it ought to have had the manners to hang loose. Breast, belly, the small inward draw of your waist—all made plainer by water and the thinness of the shift. The blanket lies in a heap too near the fire, abandoned as though wool has somehow offended you.
He holds the lump in his throat from becoming a sound. Then he reaches for the blanket, shakes the worst of the grass from it, and puts it over your shoulders with as much solemn care as if he were robing a queen. He draws it close beneath your throat and tucks one edge over the other.
“You’ve not dried yourself off,” he says. “Cold, aren’t ye?”
You look at him for a moment. Then, there's a nod, and, thank the Seven, your hands take over the keeping of the blanket at your breastbone. The lump in Dunk's throat loosens.
He busies himself with the food. The rabbit has given what it can to the pot, which is less than a rabbit ought to give and more than nothing. The potatoes have softened. The bread will have to be chewed with conviction. He ladles the thin pottage into one of his wooden bowls and passes it to you.
You take it in both hands and eye it with open suspicion. “What is this?”
“Supper,” he says.
You smell it.
“It ain’t much,” Dunk goes on, because the look on your face begins to trouble him. “Only rabbit and some potatoes, and the bread’s gone hard. Still, you ought to eat. There’s a day on the road ahead, and you’ve had naught in you since—” He stops, because he does not know since when. “A while, I’d wager.”
He expects disappointment, perhaps. Revulsion, if you are some lord’s daughter after all, though what lord’s daughter finds herself naked and half-drowned by a stream is beyond him.
Instead, you look bewildered. “You made this?”
Dunk blinks. “A-aye, m’lady.”
You dip your fingers in before he can offer a spoon. The first bite goes into your mouth carefully, as though supper may have sharp bits within it. Then your face changes.
It is a small thing, merely a lifting of brows and mouth pausing round the taste. Then you take another bit, and another, hotter than is wise, huffing through it and laughing once under your breath as though the whole notion of cooked rabbit has played some clever trick on you. Grease shines at the corner of your mouth. You lick it away with no shame at all.
“This is good,” you say, and sound surprised by your own gladness. “This is very good.”
Dunk is bewildered. It is one kind of cruelty to tease him and huff at him for trying his best at decency and failing, another to make a jest out of him and his hedge-ridden status. He looks down into his own bowl.
“Must you mock me?”
You stop chewing at once. The mouthful is too large to swallow cleanly, but you do it anyway and wince as it goes down. “Mock you?” you ask. “Why would I?”
“It’s only rabbit,” he mutters. “And mangled potatoes. You needn’t make a show of it.”
The hurt that comes into your face lands in him badly.
“I did not mean to hurt you,” you say. “Forgive me. I only meant—I would not be able to make this.” A pause. “Or start a fire, for that matter.”
Dunk lifts his head. “You do not know how to start a fire?”
You look at him a moment too long, then back into the bowl. “I’ve never needed it.”
That answer is another strange stone set on the growing pile of you. He gives a low hum and scrapes at his own supper with the spoon. “Well,” he says after a moment, rough with regret. “I beg your pardon, then. If you truly enjoy it, I am glad.”
Your eyes lift. “I do. Truly.”
Knowing it is true does something worse than the praise did. It catches him off guard and warms him under the breastbone, soft and dangerous. He leans back on one hand, taking you in. Half-smile, bare feet peeking from beneath the blanket, bowl clutched as though it contains some small wonder.
“So,” he says, because his mouth is safer when it is trying to crack an unresolvable riddle, “you’re a lady who cannot cook, cannot start a fire, and despises garments and shoes, but has some queer prescience when it comes to finding a body of water. Hm?”
Silence only, then a wide-eyed glance.
“Peculiar,” Dunk says.
“I do not understand why men wear so much cloth anyway,” you say, picking at the blanket where it sits under your chin. “What is peculiar is to have skin so feeble—”
There, your voice dies. Dunk has gone very still with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Men?” he says.
You blink.
“You are people too,” he says, after a beat.
The words are gentle enough, but they come with a puzzled furrow between his brows, as though he is trying to set you in the proper place and cannot find the shelf. He takes another mouthful and chews it slowly. “Have you worn lighter cloth before, then? Before… all this?”
Before the stream, he means. Before the mud. Before the village woman and the borrowed gown. Before whatever thing he has decided happened to you.
Your fingers tighten round the bowl. “Lighter, yes.”
“How light?”
You give him a careful look.
Dunk seems to understand his mistake before you answer. Red returns to his ears with comic speed. “Never mind. You needn’t— That was no question to ask a maid.”
You consider him. “Do you not often see women naked?”
He chokes. It is only a little choke, but enough to make him turn his face and thump one fist against his chest. “Gods,” he says when he has breath again. “M’lady.”
“I am only asking.”
“Aye, well. Some questions ought to be asked with more care.”
“Why?”
“Because they—” He looks at you, then away, then helplessly down to his lap. “Because they put thoughts in a man’s head.”
“What thoughts?”
His mouth opens. Shuts. You lean closer, interested so plainly Dunk near suffocates on air that suddenly feels chewable in his mouth. “Do women’s bodies trouble all men so badly, or only hedge knights?” you ask.
He makes the suffering sound again. Quieter this time, but telling all the same. “I've seen women,” he says, with the grave misery of a fool walking barefoot over hot coals. “Some. A few. In bathhouses, once or twice by mistake. On the road, folk are not always private as they ought be. And, uh—” He clears his throat so hard it sounds painful. “And in places where women are paid to be looked at.”
You stare. “Paid?”
“Aye.”
“To be looked at?”
“Among other things.”
“What other things?”
Dunk puts his bowl down. You wait. He looks into the fire as if the flames might take pity on him and leap high enough to swallow his face. “Things between men and women.”
“What things?”
“Married things,” he says, too quickly.
“Only married people do them?”
His eyes close briefly. “No.”
“Then why call them married things?”
“Because I am trying to keep this talk decent,” Dunk huffs.
You frown into your supper. “Have you done them?” you ask.
It is such a rude and forthright question it strikes bone in him, though somehow it does not quite offend. His face pulls tight. The flush burns hotter, but something under it draws inward, shy and sore and young.
“N-no,” Duncan says, small.
You lean closer, as if trying to match him in secrecy lest his horses suddenly recognise human tongue. “Never?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He gives a small, helpless shrug. “I’ve had no wife.”
“But you said folk do these things without wives.”
“Aye, some do.” He groans then, low and exasperated, dragging one hand over his mouth. “Gods.”
“But you do not.”
“No.”
“Why?”
His thumb moves over the rim of his bowl. There is dirt under the nail, a split at the knuckle, the hand of a man who knows fire and reins and sword-hilts and very little of where to put himself when a girl asks him plain questions in the dusk.
“Seemed wrong, most times,” he says. “Or costly. Or I was too young. Or too big and stupid and slow to know what was wanted till the chance had gone.”
He goes quiet after that, hoping it is enough of a confession to satisfy you. Another part of him wonders what business he has entertaining the whim at all. A puzzle of a girl you are, that is for certain. Strange in your questions, in your frowns, in the careless tilt of your head when you hear a thing you cannot place.
Then a thought comes on him, tender and stupid enough to shame him: is this another chance he cannot recognise while it is being given? He lifts his face to check yours for some sign of what he imagines a lustful glance might be, though he has no real notion what he expects to find there. Heat? Mischief? Some womanly knowledge he would know when he saw it? Before he can make any proper fool’s study of you, you ask another question.
“Do you like kissing?”
You might as well have picked up a knife by the blade. “I—” His throat works. “I suppose I might.”
“You suppose?”
He breathes heavy. His skin surely can’t get any hotter, so he answers, “I have kissed.”
Your eyes brighten at that, keen enough to make him regret the disclosure at once. “How many times?”
Duncan laughs then, though there is little mirth in it. Nerves, mayhaps. Or the pure severity of you sitting there with rabbit grease on your mouth, asking after his kisses as if counting apples in a basket. He has admitted to being green and now sounds greener still. “Seven save me,” he whines.
“How many?”
“Enough to know a man should not count in front of a lady.”
“Was it good?”
The fire pops. Somewhere behind the pair of you one of the horses tears grass with its teeth. Dunk sits in deepening blushing silence.
You eat another bite. Hum, as if the flavours have managed to marry into something more delicious during the interrogation. “At the shore,” you say then, “men kiss women as if they are hungry.”
Dunk’s gaze snaps to you.
“I have seen it,” you add. “They hold them by the waist and put them down in the grass. Sometimes the women laugh. Sometimes they make sounds as if they are being bitten, but they keep their hands in the men’s hair, so I think they must like it.”
Duncan feels himself go past blushing into something worse. Stricken, feverish, and too aware of the place where his belly has kicked tight under your words. He cannot have you thinking him that sort of knight. Cannot sit here in the dark with you speaking of women pressed into grass and let his mind go where it has already begun to go.
“M’lady,” he says, and hears the plea in it himself. “I think we ought to try and get some sleep.”
“It is barely dark,” you say.
“It will be darker soon.”
“That happens whether we sleep or not.”
“Aye,” he says faintly. “So it does.”
You lick a bit of grease from your thumb. His eyes move there and away so fast he prays you miss it. “Do you want more supper?” he asks.
You smile into your bowl. “You are changing the subject.”
He smiles back, weakly. Hopes there is enough begging in it, though judging by your curiosity about every cursed thing under the moon, falling to his knees would only give you more to ask about. “I am… trying to save my soul.”
Your laugh comes out small and surprised, and it spills warm through his chest in a way that has no business being so pleasant.
“Eat,” he says. “Then sleep. There will be more road on the morrow, and you already hate the road.”
“I hate the shoes more,” you tell him.
“Aye. I had gathered.”
“And the stockings.”
“A terrible foe,” Dunk says, standing up.
“And the laces.”
“Cruel little beasts.”
You glance at him, something sharp and pleased on you. It is very difficult to keep thoughts from his head, foul thoughts, when you look like this. His heart softens a notch while the other parts of him harden, and before he is forced back to sitting, Dunk turns and tells you, “I’ll water the horses and prepare the bedroll for us.”
He does so. You follow him soon after, quiet-footed for once, and stop to eye the splay of oilcloth and old wool on the ground as if it is another human custom laid out for judgment.
Dunk clears his throat. “You should lie down. You’ve had a long day.”
That much, at least, you obey. You lower yourself carefully, one knee bending wrong at first, then righting with a frown that makes him look away before fondness can show too plainly on his face. He waits until you are settled, then pulls the blanket up over you and tucks it in at your shoulder. Only a little. Only enough to keep the night air off. His hand stills there for half a heartbeat before he draws it back.
Then he turns, draws his sword, and lays it down between the two sides of the bedroll.
It makes a good enough line. Honest steel. Cold steel. A better man than he is, perhaps, lying straight-backed where honour ought to be.
You watch him do it, and Dunk pretends not to notice.
Getting himself down beside you is less graceful than he would like. He lowers carefully, trying to favour the slash in his side, but the wound pulls anyway and a wince catches him regardless. He settles on his back at last with a breath through his teeth, one arm tucked behind his head, his body held a proper distance from the blade.
For a while there is only the fire. The horses. The soft working of water under the willow. But, of course, you must ask. “What is the sword for?”
Dunk shuts his eyes and opens them again. “For sleeping.”
You turn your face toward him. He can feel it without looking. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No,” he says quickly. “No, m’lady. It is only—” He searches for the words and finds only poor ones. “It is a boundary, like. For your honour.”
“My honour?”
“Aye.”
“Does it need steel?”
Dunk rubs a hand over his brow. “Mayhaps mine does.”
That comes out wrong enough to make him go still. He tries again before you can catch hold of it.
“I mean, it is proper. A man and a maid should not lie close without vows between them. Or kinship. Or—” He thinks of hedge knights, camp followers, drunk squires, road wives, all the world as it is rather than as septons pretend it to be. “Or some understanding.”
You hum. It is only a small sound, but it slips soft through the dark and goes straight into his groin. Pretty. Gods help him, even that is pretty. Your voice has no need of song to work on a man.
Dunk fixes his eyes on the sky. “I do not wish you to think ill of me,” he says, lower. “That is all.”
Another stretch of quiet. The fire clicks and collapses inward on itself.
“Do husbands and wives sleep like this too?”
Dunk's lids squeeze shut so hard they hurt.
He ought to answer. He knows he ought. It is a simple question, mayhaps, though no question of yours has proved simple yet. But he has no answer fit to give without inviting ten more behind it, each worse than the last. His side aches. His head aches. His body is a foe beside a sword that suddenly seems no wider than a blade of grass.
So Dunk lies very still and does his worst pretending to be asleep. After a moment, you hum again, as if you know perfectly well he is awake and have decided to let him keep the lie.
