Flashlight (Michael Clifford)
Blurb: On one of your evening mental-health walks, you notice a light moving through a house that has been uninhabited for some time, due to your neighbor's death. When you investigate, there's a suspicious looking man walking around the house, no overhead lights on, just a flashlight in his hand.
Warnings: explicit cannabis usage ; language ; talk of Death of parent/grandparent; grief; smut, inebriated but consensual sex, oral (f receiving), fingering, pleasuredom!Michael, praise kink, subspace, cum eating and chirophilia if you squint.
Note: I fucked myself up with this one. Taking a cold shower and a smoke break before part three.
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You don't smoke often, at least often in the sense of habitually. About once a month you let yourself indulge in a joint , maybe an edible if you were feeling really crazy. So when Michael looks to you in the dim light of the back porch and asks if you want to roll, you can't help but laugh.
"Everything I've smoked has been rolled for me," you say, leaning back into the metal chair. "You're definitely going to be better at it than me."
Michael cracks a grin and places a painted hand on his chest in mock hurt. You like the way the polish contrasts with his skin.
"And what about me says I'd be experienced in such deviant activities? Is it the twenty facial piercings?"
"Something like that," you deadpan, but the mirth drips from your voice nonetheless.
"Have you ever been taught?" he asks, bending over the part of the table you briefly cleared off, as he removes the stems from the bud.
"Yeah," you say, watching the way he works apart the flower with his fingers. His fingers are slender and delicate, even when crumbling weed between the soft tips of them. "It's the one thing I'm not great at."
Michael looks up toward you, his eyes noticeably green in the light.
"Well good thing I'm here to take care of you," he says.
You know the way he says it isn't meant to be sexual, isn't meant to mean anything, but it doesn't stop the way your stomach suddenly feels tight at his words. You try to chalk it up to the fact that it's been quite a while for you, but you know that's not it. You'd be lying if you told yourself you weren't attracted to him, someone who's basically a stranger.
Michael sprinkles the weed in a line on the center of the rolling paper. Not too thin for it to burn so quickly, just the right amount for you to be able to share. Michael's tongue dips to the paper, working along the edge as he goes to seal it. The way he licks swiftly along the seam forces you to avert your eyes.
You know if you have these thoughts before smoking, you're absolutely fucked.
When you look back, the joint is sealed, wrapped into a pretty little thing. Michael manifests a lighter from his pocket and slowly lets the flame consume the end, starting the red-hot cherry. When it catches, the smell of the strain fills the closed-in space. You can tell it's the good stuff from the scent alone, so many years of parties and dating stoners training you to notice quality.
Michael's eyes goes to yours when you speak, but he says nothing, bringing his work to his lips and inhaling. When he exhales, the smoke curls from his mouth and gathers around him in grey tendrils. He passes the joint to you between his fingers and you reach to take it, letting the sensation of your brushing digits pass over you.
You inhale, holding the smoke in your mouth before releasing, the effects instantaneous. You feel the way the perpetual tension in your shoulders relax, how your mind eases into a more present state, the way your throat deliciously burns from the smoke moving into your lungs.
"Feel better?" Michael asks, and you redirect your gaze.
His eyes watch your face. It doesn't make you overthink, this time. You enjoy the way he looks into your irises like he'll find something there.
"Yeah," you say. "But I should be asking you that. You've had a crazy day."
You pass the joint back to him, the rotation beginning.
"You're right. Not everyday you get accused of being a criminal trying to get into your dead grandmother's house."
"Truly, my bad," you say, lightly, letting the early feeling of the marijuana induced levity wrap around you. "When two months had passed and no one came for the house, I gave up on the idea anyone would show."
Michael's lips wrap around the joint and you're drawn back to how pink they are. How pretty, in general he is.
"No one told me," Michael sighs, the cloud moving past the lips you are unable to stop thinking about. "Me and my mates, we have a band back in Australia and we were touring. Well, we had a band." He turns to you, his body loosening the way yours had. "When I came back home, my parents told me. Said they didn't want to ruin my opportunity to pursue music over something that could wait."
Michael says it so matter-of-fact, so like he's reciting a book he memorized and not speaking of something that hurt him, but you can hear it in the way he talks. He's tiptoeing around the true feelings, watching which words are safe to say without detonating the sadness, the betrayal. And even though you just met him, you know that's what he feels. Betrayed.
"Don't be." He passes the joint back to you, and you watch him as you take it. You notice the way his fingers linger against yours a micro-second longer than before. You blame the weed for his hesitation.
"You deserved to know when it happened," you say, remembering the words of your brother when you had called about your Mom. His exasperated sigh, the way he promised that he'd be making the drive within the hour, how he was grateful Dad wasn't around anymore to see Mom go.
"Yeah," Michael says, his eyes a bit glassy from the spliff. "Thank you. It's okay, though. I've been dealing with it."
You take another hit and immediately feel the high coming over you. The sensation starts moving through your limbs and to your fingers wrapped around the joint. You like the feeling.
"What are you planning to do with the house?" you ask, passing it back.
Michael sits there a second, contemplating. You like the way his face slightly scrunches up when he's thinking, how the ridge between his eyebrows deepens. It's endearing and suddenly it's a fight to not tell him that.
Maybe you should chill on the joint.
"Everyone wants me to get the house looking nice so I can sell it. I could really use the money back home. The way things are, I'm still living with my parents."
"What do you want to do?" you ask, sinking deeper into your seat, letting your body absorb the benefits of the weed. Your stance relaxes, and your knee accidentally rests against Michael's. He doesn't move, so you leave it.
Michael breathes deeply, the joint burning down with the stretch of his inhale. When he speaks again, the haze fans around him.
"I don't know yet. I like the idea of starting over where no one knows me." He cracks a sardonic smile toward you. "Well, I guess one person would kind of know me."
"Sorry I ruined the fantasy," you laugh, letting your head rest against the back of the chair and closing your eyes.
"Can't imagine any fantasy'd be ruined by you," Michael says.
The words rip through you. Even without the inebriation, his insinuation would strike straight to your core.
Your eyes open to his, watching him. His gaze doesn't move from yours, his green remaining on you. A challenge, almost. He's trying to see if you'll bite, and you know it.
"That's presumptuous," you say, trying to keep your voice even-keeled.
Michael still watches. You know he's searching for something, trying to figure you out.
"Is it?" he asks, his voice getting softer.
"Yeah," you say, reaching for the joint and pulling it out of his hands. You know you shouldn't take another hit, but you do. The burnt taste of the almost-consumed roll resting heavy on your tongue. You fight back a cough, clear your throat instead.
"What made you keep your parent's house?" he asks, shifting the conversation.
Necessity had always been your answer before when anyone asked. Your brother, your therapist, your ex-best friend who couldn't handle the way you turned in on yourself after you lost both of your parents within a year and a half. But now, with the weed in your system and the way Michael seems to be weighing everything you say with the feather of Anubis, you don't give the same answer.
"Loyalty," you say. "Maybe fear," you add. Then finally, "I don't fully know."
Your gaze goes to the joint smoldering out in your fingers. You realize you need to pass it back. You hand it to Michael, gesturing for him to finish it.
"I told myself if I didn't have the house then I was letting them down. They lived their whole lives dedicated to this place. How do you just let go of something someone poured so much life into?"
You don't notice Michael finish the joint; you just see the way he sets it down on the glass-top and lets it burn out.
"You won't go into their room," he says. It's not a question. Nor an accusation. It's just a statement. Just the truth. You don't need to ask how he knows; he just noticed. He's observant; that you've ascertained in the few hours of knowing him.
"Yeah," you say again. Not knowing how to say anything but the truth right now but also knowing if you open your mouth, only the truth will come out, the weed seeping into your brain and your rationale. What would hurt telling this man, really? The desire to say it sits heavy on your tongue, the marijuana coaxing you into truth.
"Being in there makes it clear that they're gone," you begin, the floodgate opening. "Obviously, I know they're gone. It's been nearly a year and a half since my mom died and three for my dad, but going into that empty room where they used to sleep and fight and have that goddamn TV playing way too loud feels like I'm stepping into a room full of memories and love that I'll never get back."
Your mouth goes dry, but you keep pushing forward.
"And that's what's stupid, right? I didn't even feel really loved by my parents. I knew they loved me in the way they could. But at the end of the day, it was always me. '(Y/N) will take care of it. She's our strong girl,' and they kept doing that until they fucking died. Then it really was just me taking care of it. Over and over and over. Telling my little brother, caring for their parents, everything. So it makes no goddamn sense that I can't go into that room. It makes no sense to compare that to an idealization of love, but I do."
Only now do you notice the tears running down your face. You swipe at them haphazardly, but let yourself finish.
"So I go to every other part of the house. My room stays the room I grew up in and my room will always be that as long as I'm here, and I tell myself I'm okay with that. Because I am okay, because I take care of things. Including myself. Including this fucking house because no one else will."
Your face is hot as the tears cling to your skin. You try to wipe them away, but they only seem to keep coming. Embarrassment floods into your chest. You can't make yourself look at Michael, but you feel the intensity of his eyes resting on you. Then, there's his hand on your knee. The warmth of his skin bleeds into yours, even through the grief swelling in your chest.
Your eyes move from his hand on your leg and follow up to his faded gaze. They're glassy, but present. He's here with you in the moment, and it knocks the air out of you more than the weed or grief could.
"You're allowed to still love them but also acknowledge they fucked up," he says. You feel stupid, because all you can focus on is the pink of his lips when he talks. How his hand on your knee sends your brain reeling even more. How it mixes with the sadness and the high into something exciting, something that you want more than to be talking about this right now.
"You're also allowed to want to not have to handle it all," he continues, his voice dropping low. "You're allowed to want to be taken care of for once in your life."
His mouth, his words, the way his eyes have spent all evening searching yours, it all wraps around your heart. The squeezing of the grief, confusion, the high, and desire taking up the space in the cavern of your chest. You don't know what to do with it besides reacting however is natural right now. You don't think you can stop it if you tried.
"No one's been able to ever handle it," you say, your teary eyes staying on his mouth as you whisper the truth. For a brief second, you're aware that he notices where your gaze rests.
Michael's hand doesn't leave your knee, but with the next words he says, it's like he's touching every part of you, caressing you from your knee to your thigh, up your arm, resting at the soft of your cheek, tracing the hollows of your temple.
"Let me," his voice is dry. Your eyes snap from his mouth back to his irises only then. "Even if it's just for tonight, let me."
"What?" you ask, the cracking of your voice not from the weed this time.
"You know what I'm asking," Michael says, voice desperate, not demeaning.
He moves from his seat, slowly. His eyes never leave yours as he goes to his knees, fixes himself between your thighs. The image of him in this position of petition, the silver of the piercings, how he doesn't touch you despite his expression already reading you, it makes a heat you've not felt from someone else in years pool in your stomach.
"Turn it all off," Michael says, soft and tender. "Let me handle it. I can handle you."
You don't want to have to make the right decisions anymore. You don't want to be thinking of everyone else over yourself. You want to let go, to have no true repercussions of letting go, for once. Despite the ghost of rationale in the back of your mind screaming that you can't do this, you let the way Michael's eyes feel like knowing and your desire thrumming in your chest to push you forward.
"Take it," you breathe. "Please."
Michael's hands cup your face and his warmth sends goosebumps flying over your skin. His eyes momentarily lock with yours, the longing in them irrefutable as he pulls your mouth to his. His kiss is tender like his words, but the metal of his vertical labret and the need bubbling under the surface sends want pulsing through you. Michael's mouth is soft, and despite the fact that you've never kissed someone with a lip piercing before, your lips move together with ease, finding each others, yet always searching for more.
He moves his right hand from your face and threads it into the hair at the nape of your neck, deepening the kiss. His tongue flits past your teeth the second you open up, a moan ripping from your throat at the sensation of his tongue piercing. You feel the way Michael smiles into the kiss at your reaction. Mind racing, you think of all the other places that piercing could find.
"All I need from you--" Michael speaks against your lips, then moves down the side of your neck, his hot kisses amplified by the marijuana. "--is to tell me if you don't feel good. I've got the rest. Okay?" His mouth goes to the most sensitive hollow at the base of your ear and sucks. You're not embarrassed by the whimper that leaves your mouth.
"I can do that," you pant, letting your fingers thread into the red strands of Michael's hair as he moves from your neck and to the exposed skin of your chest.
"Good," he says, and the praise sounds so sinful from his lips. "Turn that pretty brain off for me, baby. Just feel."
So you do, you turn it all off like you do when you need to disconnect from the pain and get through your day. Stick it into the back corner of your mind as something to go back to later. Not now. Not with this man kissing you like you're something to be protected, to be cherished.
Michael breaks the kiss and you hate the sudden desperation you feel at the loss of his mouth, but it's only momentary as he rises from his knees, pulling you upright with him.
"Inside," he whispers against your mouth before kissing you once more. "I want you to be comfortable."
You nod, letting him open the door and pull you into your room. You let yourself love the way his hands swallow yours.
As soon as the porch door shuts behind you, he's over you again, his mouth on yours, hands searching like his eyes over the curves of your body. His hands find your ass, and you groan as he uses your backside to guide your leg around him.
"I've got you," he says, lifting you up enough to lay you both back on your bed. You shudder under him when his mouth goes to your neck again, his lip ring grazing your skin as he drags his mouth across your chest. Every place his lips touch sets your skin ablaze. You don't know whether to blame the weed or the way your heart has thrummed in your chest since first meeting him.
Regardless, you need more, and your hips unintentionally rise against him when he shifts his weight, eliciting a hiss from your mouth when your clothed heat brushes against Michael's growing erection. You go to apologize but stop when Michael's eyes look to yours, his pupils wide.
"You sound fucking pretty," he groans. "Don't hold it back. I want to know you're being taken care of."
You nod, words never escaping you more than now.
"What did I say before?" Michael asks you, but you're in too much of a haze to recall properly.
"I don't remember," you say. It comes out soft and vulnerable, it almost makes your skin crawl, but the smile that comes to Michael's face is enough to eradicate any of that shame.
"If anything is too much, tell me. I need you to tell me, and I'll stop. But my only concern is to take care of you."
"Good," Michael whispers, and he presses a kiss to your temple as he pulls himself from you, bringing himself to standing at the edge of your bed. He watches you briefly, his eyes raking over you laying there before he eases your leggings off. You lift your hips to help, and love the feeling of his knuckles brushing against the back of your thighs as he removes your pants.
"Cute little panties," Michael says once you are exposed. You feel the wetness in gather in them at his praise. He slips his fingers through the waistband and drags them down your legs, tossing them past the edge of the bed.
He looks over you again, eyes resting on the swell of your pubic mound, his tongue darting out over his lips when his eyes travel south.
"Fuck," he says softly. There's no elaboration as he lowers himself back onto the bed, slotting his body in-between your legs until he's face level with your cunt. He presses a kiss to the inside of your thigh and you can't ignore the twitch of your clit at his touch, the heat growing in your core when he has yet to actually touch you.
Then his mouth is on you. Hot. Wet. The shock of the metal lip ring sending your fingers immediately to the sheets of your bed. Michael presses his tongue flat, swiping it up through your center. The barbell of his tongue piercing catches on your clit and the groan that leaves your mouth is nothing but animalistic.
At the sound, Michael moans into you, pressing his face even deeper, the obscenity of his tongue working into you sending you into a haze no drug could ever induce.
"You taste insane," he mutters as he pulls away momentarily for air.
You look down on him, his eyes blown wide and glassy from you, your slick over his pink lips and chin. He looks up at you with such adoration that your stomach twists. You don't have much time to dwell on his beauty, because he goes back down on you, pulling your thighs over his shoulders as he buries his face into you.
"Fu-fuck," you groan when you feel his tongue, piercing and all enter you. He strokes upward, the way the metal slides against your walls so unlike anything you've ever experienced before. Michael is unlike anything you've had before. Your hands find his hair, interlacing your fingers into his scalp and tugging, burying his face into you even deeper when there's nowhere else to go.
He licks upward, into the top of your walls and pulling out of you, licking over your clit. You tremble when his mouth fastens to you, sucking around your bundle of nerves, the metal and his mouth and the marijuana threatening to send you over the edge.
"Michael," you breathe, exhaling his name around you. Letting it settle in the air, an effervescent cloud of want.
The call of his name doesn't stop his ministrations, he sucks and laps at you even more. You feel the tight coil in your stomach, the way your orgasm threatens to spill like smoke out of Michael's mouth.
Michael devours you, consumes you, the noises too much but not enough. Then he slips a finger into you, and your body contorts.
"Fuck, Michael," you whine. And you don't care that it sounds pitiful. You are pliant in his hands, his finger curling into you, delicate but long and brushing against your gspot with every touch. You're trembling, your legs almost vibrating with desire, your breathing ragged, the spinning in your head so dizzying. Filling your mind with nothing but Michael, Michael, Michael.
"That's it, baby girl. Just feel it," Michael speaks, and you know he's between your legs, but his voice swells around you, all encompassing. The way he talks and touches, enrapturing you. You cannot think of anything but him, couldn't if you tried.
Then there's a second finger, and he curls up when he enters you. You feel the way your cunt swallows him easily, takes him with greed. More, more, more. You want so much more. You want everything he will give.
But your body can't take more without the price of your orgasm, and it comes crashing over you when he fucks into you with those fingers, his mouth never stopping as a scream rips from your throat, rips from the deepest part of you as you come without warning. You convulse as you reach orgasm, fisting your hands into his hair, body arching off the bed, your vision filled with nothing but bright white and the moans of Michael drinking you down. He doesn't stop, even when you know you're dripping, even when you know you've lost control, he swallows it all.
You lay there trembling, your brain flushed with the warmth of your body. You cannot process anything, just the feeling of the bed beneath you, the wet between your thighs. But then there's a hand on your face and green eyes fill your vision.
The soft touch on your face, a palm pressed to your sternum.
"Breathe, breathe for me."
The green eyes expand into a face, Michael's face as you come back down. You're still trembling, your breath still scattered, but Michael's touch and face pressed against the pillow beside you grounds you. You breathe like he says, watching the way the air leaves his mouth as he guides you.
Michael. Michael. Michael.
You blink slowly, and a smile comes to his lips, his eyes shining.
And suddenly, you're aware of everything. The weight of his body against you, his arm wrapped around you and stroking your face, the way Michael is still fully clothed though looking so fucked out. You realize where he just took you, what he's bringing you out of. You haven't even touched him. You feel guilty.
"You're still dressed," you say, and your voice is weak, wrecked.
He knows what you're saying. Knows that you're the one who takes care of things, even your partners.
"Hey," he coos, thumb brushing along your jawline. "You've done enough."
The rational part of you wants to fight him, wants to tell him that you know this is likely limited for only one night. That if you don't do this now, you'll never get the opportunity to again. But instead, you nod, looking at the beautiful man in your bed.
"Don't stay in the guest room tonight," you say.
Something in Michael's eyes shift, and you catch the glance over your face, the way something lingers there out of reach. Then, an almost imperceptible whisper from Michael.
"Is that what you really want?"
You nod again, unable to voice the words that you want to say.
"Okay, pretty girl. I'll stay," Michael answers, pulling his hand from your face, wrapping his arm around you.
The exhaustion of the day, marijuana, and orgasm floats around you as you lay there in Michael's arms. It lulls you into its tendrils, the sleep settling around you. And for once, your mind doesn't race as you drift off.
No, the only thing resonating in your brain before you fall into that darkness is Michael.
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