varsity soccer spider bites drummer frat president red solo cups pot brownies extrovert has a full roster campus tutor golden retriever parties wealthy family
﹙ 🍻 ﹚⠀fratboy!sam who is attending stanford on a full-ride for his soccer career, but he’s also studying to become a future lawyer. his dad always told him to aim higher, and to use more than his athleticism to get by. but he was the favorite, the youngest. he knew he’d have borderline millions to fall back on if his dreams didn’t work out.
﹙ 🍻 ﹚⠀fratboy!sam works at an autobody shop owned by one of the frat guys’ uncles. even though he comes from wealth, he still insists on working for his extra pocket money. plus it roots him back to that small-town-boy edge he had growing up. and girls like seeing him all sweaty and covered in grease from working on car parts they know absolutely nothing about.
﹙ 🍻 ﹚⠀fratboy!sam loves going to his family’s beach house every weekend, he’s constantly throwing parties and inviting nearly half the campus every chance he can. him and some of his frat brothers have gone viral multiple times for jumping off of roofs and doing other idiotic things while drunk, which has earned them a lot of sit-downs about their actions and how they should ‘behave correctly’ because they’re ‘role models’ to the underclassmen. they never listen.
﹙ 🍻 ﹚⠀fratboy!sam who brings one of his childhood dogs—a golden retriever named bones—everywhere he goes. he snuck him onto campus one day, and nearly got expelled for it before his parents swooped in and ‘donated’ a large fee to the board, resulting in bones now living in the frat house as a permanent resident. many students have placed bets on sam walking across the stage with his dog trotting not far behind him. and honestly, the odds are looking to be in their favor.
professor!rafe who walks into class with a smile every time. like he’s genuinely happy to be there, setting his worn brown leather briefcase down and immediately asking, “how’s everyone doing today?” and actually having a light conversation before he starts the lesson.
professor!rafe who teaches partial differential equations and complex variables like it’s easier to the average person, breaking things down step by step, writing neatly across the board, turning back to the class and going, “stop me if something doesn’t make sense, i mean it.”
professor!rafe who is super big on participation, always saying, “i don’t want you leaving confused, because then i haven’t done my job properly,” and will literally pause the entire lecture just to re explain something if even one person looks lost.
professor!rafe who does a lot of hands on work during class. like walking between desks, leaning slightly over shoulders to check your work, pointing lightly at your paper with his pen like, “you’re really close here, just adjust this part.” and does it in a way you never feel dumb.
professor!rafe who gets a little dorky when he’s excited about a concept, talking a bit faster, hands moving slightly as he explains, like he forgets he’s supposed to be “professional” for a second.
professor!rafe who makes random comments like “apple is honestly a disgrace to computer science” while opening his lenovo laptop, and the entire class laughs while he just looks up like “what? you all know i’m right.”
professor!rafe who isn’t really on social media. like at all, aside from occasionally updating his linkedin for his phd progress, but will casually mention going to a ballet or a play over the weekend like it’s the most normal thing ever.
professor!rafe who always has his hair slicked back just enough, glasses sitting low on his nose when he’s reading something closely, pushing them back up absentmindedly with his knuckle.
professor!rafe who somehow always has a faint smudge of marker or chalk near his jaw or chin, or even on this shirts from getting too close to the board, completely unaware of it.
professor!rafe who wears those stupidly cute short sleeve button downs, sometimes with tiny embroidered equations on the pocket, paired with slacks like he’s not accidentally distracting you.
professor!rafe who carries that same brown leather briefcase everywhere, filled with neatly organized notes, his laptop, and printed lesson plans, like his entire life depends on it.
professor!rafe who says your name so naturally when calling on you, “ms. yln, what did you get for this?” and it shouldn’t make you feel anything, but you name on his lips, just does.
professor!rafe who notices effort more than anything, giving small nods of approval when you answer correctly, or saying, “that’s a really good way to think about it,” and you’re thinking about that for the rest of the day.
professor!rafe who once leaned slightly closer to your desk to check your work and said, “you’re picking this up really quickly,” and you had to actively focus on not forgetting how to think.
professor!rafe who compliments you in the most innocent, and appropriate ways possible. like “your perfume smells really nice today. i think my sister wears the same one” and you’re smiling while telling yourself, ‘that’s not what i wanted but i’ll take it’.
professor!rafe who started off, completely unaware of the effect he has, just treating you like a dedicated student, while you’re sitting in the front row every day, a little more put together than necessary, just waiting for him to notice it.
professor!rafe who takes his role super seriously. always keeping things respectful and professional, never letting anything blur. but there’s this warmth in the way he speaks to you that feels a little different.
professor!rafe who looks at you like he’s trying to understand how you think, not just what you know, and somehow that feels more intimate than anything else. because he’s picking apart your brain where your ex’s want your body first.
professor!rafe who has no idea you’ve checked his left hand more than once, just in case.
professor!rafe who leaves you wondering what it would actually take for him to look at you as anything more than his student ms. y/l/n, even just for only a second.
professor!rafe who writes out full solutions before class in his notebook, but still works through them again on the board just in case someone needs to see the process twice, muttering softly to himself like “okay, let’s not skip steps here”
professor!rafe who always brings an extra pen or pencil and, without making it a big deal, and will slide it onto your desk if he notices you forgot one. “you can keep it,” like it was already accounted for.
professor!rafe who gets slightly thrown off when the class laughs at something he didn’t mean to be funny, pausing mid sentence like “well that wasn’t intended as humor,” but there’s a small smile tugging at his lips anyway.
professor!rafe who has a habit of tapping the board lightly with his marker when he’s thinking, staring at the equation for a second before going, “okay, there’s a cleaner way to approach this,” and rewriting it completely.
professor!rafe who grades assignments with actual feedback instead of just numbers. putting small notes in the margins like “good approach here” or “i see what you were going for, come see me and we’ll walk through it together.”
professor!rafe who stays a few minutes after class every single time, even when no one asks questions, just in case someone wants to but feels awkward speaking up in front of everyone.
professor!rafe who lowkey gets excited when someone challenges his explanation, not defensive at all, just like, “wait, okay, that’s a good point,” and will literally work through it with them.
professor!rafe who drinks a black coffee he definitely forgot about halfway through class, taking a sip, pausing, then quietly going, “that’s definitely been sitting there for a while,” and setting it back down like nothing happened.
professor!rafe who carries himself very well, but occasionally forgets the smallest things, like leaving the cap off his marker or misplacing his notes for two seconds before finding them exactly where he put them.
professor!rafe who pushes his sleeves up absentmindedly when he’s deep into explaining something, revealing his forearms without even realizing you’ve completely stopped paying attention to anything but his arms.
professor!rafe who softens his tone without realizing it when speaking directly to you, like there’s a slight difference that only you would pick up on, but then doubt yourself because you want it to be different.
professor!rafe who remembers your academic strengths specifically, “you’re usually really good with this type of problem, what part is throwing you off?” and it feels a little too personal in the best way.
professor!rafe who once caught you already looking at him when he turned from the board, and paused for a second. just long enough to clock it, before continuing like nothing happened.
professor!rafe who organizes his entire lecture timeline down to the minute, but will completely abandon it if the class needs more time. “we’ll adjust, understanding this is more important than finishing everything.”
professor!rafe who quietly gets proud when the class starts improving, like you can see it in the way he nods more, or says “yeah, exactly.”
professor!rafe who would be genuinely surprised if he ever found out you had a crush on him, because in his mind, he’s just doing his job.
professor!rafe who then starts noticing you nearly at the end of the semester, gradually. in the way your gaze lingers a second too long when he’s explaining something, how you’re always already looking at him when he turns from the board. at first he tells himself it’s nothing, just attentiveness, but then it keeps happening.
professor!rafe who realizes you stay behind after class more often than anyone else. not asking questions right away, just packing your bag a little slower, glancing up like you’re waiting for him to say something first. and it makes him pause sometimes, hands resting on the desk, debating whether to break the silence.
professor!rafe who catches on that you come to office hours more than necessary. not in a concerning way, because you’re one of his best students, but your questions are weird? things you already understand, just worded differently. and he answers every time, but there’s a voice in the back of his mind like, ‘you don’t actually need help with this?’
professor!rafe who hates that he notices the smaller things now too. like the way you always come in put together, rather the consistency of it. your hair done, your outfits always nice, the faint scent of your perfume when he leans slightly closer to check your work. he doesn’t linger on it but he notices more than he should.
professor!rafe who has to actively redirect himself sometimes when he feels your eyes on him for too long. clearing his throat turning back to the board, having to reminding himself ‘this is not appropriate. she is your student.’ but it’s harder than he expected it to be.
professor!rafe who starts keeping interactions just a touch more structured once he becomes aware. nothing too obvious, just slightly more careful with his tone, or his distance because the last thing he wants is to blur a line he can’t fix later. but you noticed anyway.
professor!rafe who still can’t deny the thought that slips in sometimes. ‘she’s beautiful.’ he’ll tell himself. and he shuts it down immediately every time, because it’s something he keeps not allowing himself to fall into.
professor!rafe who sees you that same night outside campus wit the rain coming down hard. he’s halfway to his car when he spots you at the bus stop, with no umbrella, shoulders slightly hunched, trying to shield your bag from the water. and he stops. because he could keep walking. ‘it’s not appropriate. it’s late. she’ll be fine. someone else will-’ but then you move your bag closer to your chest, trying to keep it dry, and that’s it. decision made.
professor!rafe who mentally curses at himself for jogging back towards you. his umbrella tilted forward to block the rain, slightly out of breath when he reaches you. “hello, ms. y/l/n,” he says, voice a little louder over the hard noise of the rain. you look up, surprised. “oh! hi mr. cameron.” he thinks for a second, like he’s choosing his words carefully. “you can- um, you can call me rafe,” he says, almost hesitant. then quickly, “outside of class, i mean.”
professor!rafe who gestures lightly toward the street, rain still pouring. “can i offer you a ride home?” he asks, and it sounds casual, but there’s a layer of concern under it he doesn’t bother hiding. you blink, trying to keep your voice normal, but you’re more excited than you show. “are you sure? i don’t want to be an inconvenience.” he shakes his head immediately. “no, not at all. i just- i couldn’t leave you out here like this,” he says, glancing at your bag. “especially with your work getting soaked.”
professor!rafe who walks you to his car with the umbrella angled more toward you than himself, shoulder slightly damp because he’s not paying attention to where the rain’s hitting him, more focused on keeping you from getting further wet.
professor!rafe who doesn’t even react when you apologize for getting his seat wet, just shaking his head like it genuinely doesn’t matter. “it’s fine. it’ll dry,” he says simply, already starting the car.
professor!rafe who relaxes a little during the drive, conversation coming easier than it ever has in class. talking about small things, from coffee shops, places near the shore, his phd progress, and it feels so normal, to the point where he questions how comfortable it is.
professor!rafe who notices the way you look at him when he’s focused on the road, and every time he glances over and catches you, you both look away with small, almost embarrassed smiles like you’ve been caught doing something you shouldn’t.
professor!rafe who involuntarily flexes his hand, like he's silently restraining himself.
professor!rafe who realizes, fuck, somewhere between conversation and quiet moments, that, this, this right here is exactly why he kept his distance before. because it would be so easy to let it become something more, and that’s exactly what makes it dangerous, but i don’t think he really cares anymore.
PAIRING : sheriff!rafe x farmer’sdaughter!reader
SUMMARY : “feet don’t fail me now. take me to the finish line. oh, my heart it breaks every step that i take.” — secrets and sex; aka a perfect recipe for disaster. when rafe’s hand is forced to suspend one of his deputies, all is unveiled at a town hall meeting in the name of revenge. now he must make a choice, keep the career he has served for half of his life, or be with you, the only girl who has managed to give life to his once stone cold heart.
WARNINGS : a lotttt of angst, age gap, brief smut in the beginning, unprotected sex, arguing, small time skip, slight manipulation, topper being the worst person ever, physical violence (it’s all justified i swear), fingering, dirty talk, pull out method, blackmail, a lot of slut shaming, mentions of excessive use of force and sexual harassment, public humiliation, mutual pining, lots of crying, mentions of abandonment, both mommy and daddy issues (sorry), use of a firearm
AUTHOR’S NOTE : this took me a lot longer than i expected it to, but i hope you all enjoy reading it as much as i loved writing it. this was greatly inspired by the song ‘born to die’ by lana del rey, and i’m hoping to write more fics inspired by the album in hopes to create a series! also sorry for any mistakes if there’s any <3
WORD COUNT: 10k
“What’s wrong with you?” You turned around, glaring at Rafe who currently looked like a deer caught in headlights. Both of you were in the backseat of his cruiser, his patrol car parked just off the side of the road from city limits.
“Another sheriff just passed by.” He panted, wiping the sweat from his brow. Rolling your eyes, you sat there on all fours, waiting and hoping he’d just continue with his ministrations. “Who cares?” You moved your hips, “clearly whoever it was wasn’t concerned enough to stop.” Rafe groaned upon feeling you slide back down his length, his eyes screwing shut before he shook his head.
“Fuck— I can’t,” He apologized, “I’m sorry but I can’t.” Cursing under your breath, you moved away from him once he pulled out, a mix of frustration and anger swirling around in your chest. “You do this every fucking time.” You spat, reaching for your panties that were long forgotten on the dashboard.
Rafe huffed through his nose, his eyes traveling down your backside before he was buckling his pants. “I told the department that I had this side of town covered, it’s not my fault if someone went against my orders, alright? No one was supposed to be over here except us.” Ignoring him, you hooked your bra from the back. “Whatever you say, asshole.” Your tone had that sarcastic bite that Rafe couldn’t bear hearing.
“I’m on the clock. You shouldn’t even be mad at me for reacting like this.” He rose his voice, in which he immediately regretted as soon as he met your eyes. “You’re acting like this was all my idea!” You shouted, slipping on your dress. “Need I remind you that you’re the one who called me up tonight?” Rafe’s jaw ticked, his fingers working to get his shirt buttoned up.
“You’re the one who rung my phone, drove out to my house to pick me up, and take me allll the way out here to fuck me. ‘Cause God forbid you get caught having a little rendezvous.” You got out of the car, slamming the door shut before crossing your arms over your chest.
“Rendezvous?” Rafe shot back, “Is that what you want to call this?!” You watched as he came around the car, his muscles bulging through his shirt. “Well that’s what it feels like!” You screamed, “We meet up, we have sex, and you act like you don’t know me in public. It feels fucking great!” Rafe pinched the bridge of his nose, his chest rising and falling with each frustrated sigh.
“This isn’t a relationship, Rafe, no matter how much you insist it is. Having shitty steaks and beer at your house isn’t a date. Dropping my hand and leaving me alone in public isn’t boyfriend behavior, either. You act like being seen with me is an abomination or something— you’re the one who makes it like this!” You cried out, shielding your face from him as you felt the tears beginning to prick your eyes.
“I don’t know why I keep letting you in.” Rafe reached for your hands but you were quick to swat them away. “Don’t call me anymore.” You stormed off, your boots crunching into the small gravel as you started walking down the road. “Hey—! I’m not letting you walk home by yourself!” He shouted after you, fixing the collar of his shirt before marching towards you.
“I don’t need your permission—!” You yelped when he swept you off your feet, his strong arms securing you in place as he threw you over his shoulder, taking you back to the car. “Put me down!” You pounded on his back, kicking your feet and squirming until he dumped you into the passenger’s seat and closed the door.
Attempting to open it back up again, you laughed bitterly when the handle didn’t budge. Stupid cop cars and their child-proof locks. “Can we please talk about this—” Cutting him off, you shouted. “No!” your scream was deafening in the stuffy space of his car, “Every time we ‘talk’ about things, you still do what you do. We’re done resolving things, Rafe. Just take me home.” You settled into the leather seat, your cheeks damp with tears as rafe drove back onto the road in defeat.
God, you needed to get out of this fucking town already.
The ride back to your place was silent, except for the occasional apology Rafe tried to spew over and overs again.
“It’s just hard for me to be with someone when everyone watches my every move, okay? I have a reputation around here and if I want to keep my job then I need to keep up with it.” You knew what he was really saying, and that was the fact that your history with getting in trouble and not being a ‘good girl’ clashed with his ‘squeaky clean, nice cop’ persona.
“I’m not a good look for you, I get it.” At this, Rafe gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “You’re the face of the county; Hell, maybe even the whole town. You have to uphold certain values, and being with someone half your age with a record doesn’t fit into that box. Explain no more.”
Rafe absolutely hated this. He hated that you were so aware of what was at stake. “You’re a grown man, Rafe. You’ve never been married, you don’t have any kids, your 401k is fucking loaded, and yet, you still feel the need to prove something to these people. Why?” You felt nothing but pure dread once your house came into view.
“You know what? Don’t even answer that, ‘cause I still won’t understand. You’ve given twenty-two years of your life to this town, and I can’t even get one night out of you,” You laughed, “what a fucking joke.” Rafe hadn’t even put the car in park when you hopped out, not daring to look back as you made your way inside, the screen door slamming shut behind you.
Rafe was pissed at himself for the rest of his shift, your words ringing out in his head for what seemed like hours. Truth is, Rafe could retire right now and give you both a comfortable life. Why wouldn’t he do it though? He doesn’t even know the answer. His job became his life shortly after he started serving, and he didn’t have the time to get into a relationship, let alone have the time to get to know someone enough to tell if he liked them or not, he never thought of a future where he was anywhere but here so that pretty much closed off his horizons, and it wasn’t until you came into the picture that he started feeling like just maybe there was something more to life than work and Sunday night football.
He was already too dedicated, already in too deep to just give it all up. You were still so young, he wasn’t sure if he was capable of making you happy enough to stay. Shit, he wasn’t even making you happy now. What he did know, though, was that what you wanted more than anything was to get out of town to start new somewhere else and that just wasn’t negotiable for him. Even when his job as the town’s sheriff is long gone, he already made his life here— why would he leave?
3 months later . . .
“Can I get a few beers for me and my buddies?” You froze when you heard the familiar voice, your eyes shooting up to meet none other than deputy Topper Thornton.
Averting your gaze to follow the direction he was motioning towards, you felt your stomach flip at the sight of Rafe out of his uniform.
You hadn’t seen him at all since he took you home that one night and you refused to answer any of his calls. You hardly left your house after that incident; which means you weren’t going around making any kind of trouble— especially now since you were so busy with your new bartending job.
Rafe stood tall over everyone else in his group, his broad shoulders filling out his button down quite nicely.
“What kind?” You tilted your head at the man in front of you, that stupid, cocky smirk adorning his lips as he answered. “Three Budweisers and a Corona for your boyfriend over there.” Scoffing at his words, you swallowed down the urge to say ‘He’s not my fucking boyfriend.’ Before you settled for an awkward clearing of your throat.
“That’ll be ten dollars.” You reached back for the cooler that sat on the counter, your skin crawling with unease once you looked back at Topper and saw him eyeing you in your work clothes. Spandex shorts and a cropped baby tee was hardly anything, but for the tips that you went home with every night? You couldn’t bring yourself to care.
Holding out the ten dollar bill, Topper leaned in once you went for the money in his hand.
“Think’ if I make this a hundred, I could get you in the back of my patrol car next?”
It was as if the world slowed down, any and all surrounding chatter falling deaf on your ears.
On cue, you glanced at Rafe only to see that he was already looking at you, a hint of warning fixed in his gaze as he stood there tensely.
Smiling sweetly, you grabbed the bill from Topper with one hand and reached for a half empty bottle of Vodka under the counter with the other before swinging it over his head with a loud crash!
Immediately, everyone ran over to where Topper collided with the cement flooring, his body lying limp as he fell unconscious. “What’s your fuckin’ problem?!” Kelce slammed his hand down on the counter, the sound not even making you flinch as the bar spun into chaos.
You panicked once you realized that what you did could indeed earn you a spot in a holding cell overnight.
So much for having a good streak going..
“Fuck, I gotta go.” You panted, flashing an apologetic look towards your co-worker.
Running to the dressing room, you were quick to grab your purse and take off out the back door, your heart beating in your ears as you held onto the cowboy hat on your head. Your boots kicked up nothing but dirt and rocks as you booked it down the road to your house, the path pitch black as the moon hid behind the trees.
Cursing to yourself, you had to come to a stop once you felt your lungs fighting to get a full intake of air, your muscles burning with tension as you panted.
You weren’t even nearly as ready to run again when you heard a ‘Hey!’ Echoing out in the distance. Narrowing your eyes, you felt your knees buckle when Rafe’s face stared back at you.
Deciding to meet him in the middle, you ran towards him, your palm colliding with his cheek when you reached him.
“What the fuck did you tell them about me?!” You were livid all overs again, your chin wobbling as Rafe adjusted the hat on his head. “What are you talking about?” He said incredulously, his brow arched in irritation. “Topper!” You screamed, “he just said he’d give me a hundred bucks if he could get me in the backseat of his car next— why does he think he could get me to do something with him at all, Rafe? What the fuck are you telling your department?” Rafe shook his head, his nostrils flaring as he looked wildly in the direction of the bar.
“Did you just—” He seethed, “did you just say that Topper offered you money for sex?” You watched as he rolled his sleeves up, his jaw clenching as his nostrils flared.
“Don’t act like you’re the mad one now, how else would he know about me and you?” You shoved him, “you draw the line at being seen with me in public but not when it comes to having your way with me, right? God, you’re such a fucking coward.” Rafe couldn’t believe his ears right now. He didn’t know what was crazier; The fact that you thought he told all of his colleagues about your private moments together, or the fact that being intimate with you was all that mattered to him.
“I didn’t say shit to anyone, I swear it.” Not knowing what to believe anymore, you scanned over his features, feeling nothing but pain tug at your heartstrings.
You still missed him after three months of no contact.
“Let me take you home,” He stepped closer, his thumb finding your chin, “I promise you, I’d never speak about you in any kind of sexual manner to anyone, baby. Topper is a dickhead, you know that.” Ignoring the small flutter in your chest at the pet name, you stepped around him despite still wanting to feel his hands on your body.
“Don’t call me that.” Was all you were able to say before you were being tugged back by your elbow. “I don’t want to continue on like this,” Rafe pleaded, “you don’t understand what it felt like seeing you behind that bar counter tonight. I miss you. Please— let me take you home.” He asked you once again, your resolve slowly starting to crumble.
The hold Rafe had on you was just downright awful.
Meeting his eyes, you made your decision as soon as you saw the way he was looking at you; Nothing but need and hot burning desire lighting up behind his irises. It already irritated you that Rafe looked so fucking good tonight— fresh haircut and shave, cowboy hat and neatly pressed dress shirt, jeans that fit him just right with his sheriff buckle glinting underneath the dim light.. everything about him was just straight magnetic and you were drawn to it.
“Why?” You whispered, “So we could sleep together and go back to being strangers?” Rafe shook his head, his hands cupping your face as he guided you to look back up at him. “You have my fucking word that’s not going to happen,” He leaned in, the familiar scent of his aftershave making you dizzy, “i’m going to deal with Topper tomorrow, I promise you he’s not going to get away with what he did.”
And just like that, you two found yourselves stumbling into his place, your hands ravaging his shirt as he groped you over the globes of your ass.
“I hate this outfit,” Rafe said through gritted teeth, “you look too fucking good in it.” He nipped at the sensitive spot on your neck, a sharp gasp sounding from your lips as he pinned you against the living room wall.
Separating your thighs with a knee, Rafe worked quickly to get you out of your clothes, his hands feeling like fire against your skin. You couldn’t help but palm him over his jeans, his bulge making your cunt throb with need.
You were so sure that if Rafe were to feel you through your panties right now he’d go crazy with the mess you already had sitting between your legs.
Leaving you in nothing but your push-up bra and boots, you didn’t have enough time to register what was happening before he spun you around and pulled you by the ends of your hair.
Grounding his hips into your backside, you moaned when the heavy weight of his cock rested between your cheeks, his breath tickling the side of your face as he spoke lowly into your ear. “Three fucking months,” He grunted, “for three fucking months I’ve thought about the next time I’d get to have you again.” Rough palm snaking around your waist, Rafe dipped his fingers below the waistband of your panties, a groan rumbling from his chest once he felt how soaked you were.
“I never stopped thinking of you, missing you,” You mewled when he used his index and middle finger to separate your folds, “..loving you.” Just then, Rafe stroked your clit, your mouth falling open as a cry rang out against the old wood of his living room.
“Fuck—!” You screamed, your eyes screwing shut as he rubbed you dumb. Rafe knew your body like the back of his hand, ‘knew what made your knees grow weak and your head pound in sheer, hot pleasure.
“Oh, I hate you,” You whined, your nails digging into the skin of his arm, “fuck you for making me come back here.” Rafe snickered, the tip of his nose running down the curve of your neck just before he nipped the flesh there, the action making stars appear in your vision.
Continuing his ministrations on your sensitive bundle of nerves, you really lost it when he entered a digit without warning.
Rendering yourself speechless, the only sounds coming out of your mouth were drunken babbles, your body giving up in its entirety as you surrendered to Rafe’s touch.
The slick sounds coming from your cunt turned Rafe on beyond belief— he needed to be inside of you now. If it wasn’t for Rafe holding you securely, you would’ve been on the floor by now, your legs feeling like jelly as he finger fucked you into oblivion.
“Ray—” you choked, the familar burning sensation spreading out through your core, “I’m cumming!” Wrapping a hand around your throat, Rafe squeezed as you convulsed, your orgasm knocking you off your feet with its intensity pulsing through your veins. Rafe didn’t slow down or become more gentler when you began weeping in his arms, your eyes rolling so far back into your head, all you could do was collapse at his complete and utter mercy.
Still trembling in the aftershocks of your orgasm, Rafe picked you up bridal style and started the way towards his room, your boot clad feet dangling off of his arm before he laid you down on the cold sheets of his bed. “Take off my shoes..” You whispered weakly, your bare chest rising and falling with each breath.
“They’re staying on, honey.” Your eyebrows knitted in confusion, all protests vanishing from your tongue once you looked down and saw him shirtless, his cock standing angry against his happy trail. Eyes flickering up to meet his own, you swallowed thickly as the bed dipped from under you, his hands guiding your legs over his shoulders before caging you in between his arms.
The tips of your noses were touching now, his lips ghosting over yours as he lined himself up with your entrance. Knowing what was to come, you waited with a bated breath, your mouth falling open with a squeal when he thrusted, his length filling you to the hilt in one go. You felt delirious already with him sitting hot and heavy inside of you, your lashes wet with tears as they streamed down the sides of your face.
“I’m sorry,” Rafe gasped ever so slightly when you clenched around him, his hips driving out before he slid back in, “you don’t deserve half the shit I put you through.” You hated him for saying words that drove right through your chest when he felt this good. “S-stop talking—” You shuddered, “you’re going to let me down again, I know it.” You couldn’t explain it, but something about this time around just felt final; like this was the end.
Rafe shook his head, connecting your lips in a kiss to shut you up. Wiping at your cheeks, Rafe guided you through both the pleasure and the pain his thrusts delivered, your nails raking down his flesh as he got closer to spilling into you. Filling your ears with everything he knew you loved to hear, you clung to him when his pubic bone began slamming against your clit, your cries echoing in his ears.
“Shit—” Rafe groaned, “I fucking love you.” Your body screamed at you to say it back, those four simple words; ‘I love you, too!’ but to no avail, you buried your face in his chest until you came with a broken sob. Rafe held you in place, ignoring your uncomfortable squirming from overstimulation setting in when his hips stuttered, his muscles growing taut as his high washed over him.
Despite you two being far past the point of using protection or taking any kind of precautions, you still pushed against his lower abdomen, prompting him to pull out and finish on your tummy instead.
Rafe, being far too absorbed in his own self pleasure, didn’t question anything as thick ropes of cum spurted across your skin, his fingers lacing with your own. Cheeks hot and damp, you breathed heavily against his flesh until he collapsed, his hand coming up to tuck away any stray hairs behind your ear.
You gazed up at the ceiling, feeling more disconnected than ever before.
Normally, you’d be the one all over Rafe— smothering him in kisses and wrapping his arms around your waist before laying your head on his chest in order to listen to his heart beat behind his ribs, but now? You couldn’t even spare him a glance as he panted beside you with low lidded eyes, his attention centered on the perfect curve of your lips.
You hoped with the lights off he wouldn’t be able to see the look of regret etched deeply into your features, your brows furrowed in both worry and sadness. You should not be here right now. Not naked, not with him, not here at his place at all.
Flashbacks of you two arguing replayed in your head, his words sticking to your brain like glue. It wasn’t long after your post orgasm bliss cleared away that you became hyper aware of your current position. Feet absolutely aching from keeping those damned boots on, skin slick with sweat, hair messy and tangled, makeup ruined.. it was safe to say you felt like shit.
“Stay here tonight.” The sound of Rafe’s voice brought you out of your trance-like state, your head moving in his direction. “What?” You let him trace a finger underneath your jaw as he spoke. “I want you to stay here with me,” Rafe repeated, “I go to work in the morning but you can leave whenever you want.”
The more you let Rafe have his way, the more you felt like you were getting sucked into something that would only result in you being hurt.
“Actually, I think I should go.” You blinked, propping yourself up on your elbows. If Rafe didn’t notice you feeling conflicted earlier, he was definitely noticing now. “Did I do something?” He turned, “What’s going on?” You sighed, shaking your head before sitting up. “I always end up in the same place with you. Three months of no contact for what? For me to give in to you with little to no effort on your end?” Now it was Rafe’s turn to be irritated. “Hey— don’t be mad at me because you made the decision to come here. It takes two people to do what we just did.”
Scoffing, you cursed under your breath when you looked around and realized your clothes were long forgotten about in the living room. “I don’t have it in me to argue with you right now,” You swallowed the lump in your throat, “I need to get home.” Rafe watched you stand up on shaky legs, the words he wanted to say just sitting on the tip of his tongue.
“Stay.” He said once again, “I want to talk to you about something.” You’d be lying if you said that you weren’t intrigued by what he had to say. Staring at him for a moment, you crossed your arms over your chest. “Shoot.”
“There’s a town hall meeting tomorrow night,” He started, “I’m supposed to give a speech and present some stuff that I received from the director and it’s gonna be a whole thing—” You stopped him before he could start rambling, “So?” Rafe cleared his throat, his hands growing clammy as he took a breath. “I want you to go with me.” He finally spit out, his eyes meeting your own.
Studying him, you watched as Rafe pulled on some briefs. “What do you mean ‘Go with you’? Like you want us to walk in together?” You couldn’t help the confusion that laced your tone. “No— well, yes, but not just that. I want you to be by my side the entire time. Be there with me.”
You stared at him, not completely catching onto what he was implying. “You’re okay with people seeing us together?”
At this, Rafe approached you gently, his thumb sweeping over your bottom lip. “I have to bite the bullet already, sweetheart,” He spoke, “you’re my lady.” You blinked, allowing him to peck your temple. There was a nagging voice in the back of your head telling you not to give in, to let Rafe reap what he sowed three months ago, but still, you let yourself be embraced by him when you nodded in agreement. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up.” Was the last words of his you registered before he got you in the tub.
Waking up the next morning, Rafe admired you while you slept, his fingers tracing along your flesh as you stirred softly under his sheets.
After he was dressed up and ready to go to work, he kissed the tip of your nose, physically having to rip his eyes off of your naked form before heading out to the station. Dreading the events that would surely be unfolding today, Rafe swallowed thickly as he watched Topper and Kelce walk into the office, the inevitable weighing heavy over him. Getting down from his truck, Rafe gripped the coffee tumbler in his hand and figured he’d just get the hard part of his day over with already.
“Mornin’, Cameron.” Kelce nodded towards Rafe, the action drawing Topper’s attention as he turned. Rafe refrained from cursing under his breath upon seeing the bruise that adorned Topper’s face, a dark shade of purple coloring his eye. To say you did a number on him would be an understatement, you absolutely wrecked Topper’s shit.
“Rafe, just the man I wanted to see!” Topper jogged over to the doorway of Rafe’s office, “I wanna press charges on that little bitch from last night.” Rafe cleared his throat, his jaw clenching at the misuse of your name. “Close the door behind you.” Rafe bit out, motioning towards the chair in front of his desk. Doing as he said, Topper plopped down in the seat. “Looks like she got you pretty good.” Rafe remarked, a deep sigh sounding from his lips. Topper snorted. “Yeah, well she’s been a problem for years. ‘Stupid girl thinks she can do whatever the hell she wants.” Nodding in understanding, Rafe clasped his hands together before further explaining himself. “I took a statement from that so called ‘stupid girl’ last night, and she told me you provoked her, ‘said you asked her a really invasive and quite offensive question.” Topper scoffed, his hands coming up defensively. “I didn’t provoke her! She hit me with a fucking glass bottle— look at my face! She’s clearly the one in the wrong here.”
Rafe pinched the bridge of his nose as Topper’s voice grew louder. “Whatever she said I did aside, she still assaulted an officer! That’s a felony and I want her to suffer the consequences.” Now it was Rafe’s turn to laugh, the man in front of him looking at him incredulously.
“Listen, that’s not going to happen. She isn’t the first girl that reported sexual misconduct against you, and for the record, you were off the clock when this took place, so no, she didn’t assault you in your uniform,” Rafe started, “I have a stack of papers that are fucking knee high, filled with reports of you using excessive force, being suggestive towards female inmates, and plently of other shit that I’m sure the director would like to see for himself.”
Topper stared at Rafe, stunned. “Your days of getting away with things are over, Thornton. I’m your boss before I’m your friend, and I’m done with the bullshit.” Topper shook his head, his knee bouncing wildly as anger began boiling to the surface.
“Why now, Rafe? If you knew about all of my reports, why are you barely doing something about it now?” Rafe ignored the uncomfortable feeling in his gut, both him and Topper finally sharing a look. Eyes catching on to the hickey peeking out of Rafe’s collar, everything started to click in Topper’s head. “Holy shit,” He smiled, leaning back in his seat, “you’re fucking her.” Rafe’s fists balled up at his sides as Topper sat in amusement.
“You know what, I’ll give it to you. She’s a pretty little thing, ‘wild one, too,” Topper laughed, “now that I’m thinking about it, it makes so much more sense,” He nodded, leaning forward so his elbows rested on Rafe’s desk, “what’s the appeal? I mean obviously we all know she’s hot, but why go through all this trouble for her? ‘She make you feel young again? Have a sex drive like a—” Rafe slammed his hands down on the hardwood desk, stopping Topper before he could say something that would have him leaving out of the station in an ambulance.
“Watch it, Thornton.” Rafe spoke low. Topper jolted back at the sound, his jaw clenching as Rafe began filling out discharge papers.
“You firing me?” Topper narrowed his eyes, “Over some whore you fuck in the back of your cruiser?” At this, Rafe froze.
“What did you just say?” Topper tongued his cheek, that cocky smirk making its way to his face again. “You heard me. See— at first, I just shrugged it off, ‘figured it wasn’t any of my business, but now? Now that you think this girl loves you or something and you’re trying to prove something to her at my expense, it has everything to do with me.” Rafe’s eyebrows knitted in confusion. “What the fuck are you talking about?” He said through gritted teeth.
“A few months ago we were all on night shift. You took the outskirts of town and the rest of us took our own little sides for patrol watch until a call came through that was meant for you to tend to since it was in your jurisdiction, and well.. you never responded,” Topper explained, “so I took it upon myself to go since I was closest to the area, and I remember I kept calling for you on the radio and you never answered. So naturally, I called Steve and asked him if you were showing up on the network; Only to see if maybe you were dealing with wherever the call was coming from, or if God forbid you were in some kind of trouble and needed backup, but Steve said you were inactive on the radio radar— meaning, you manually turned yours off.” Topper hummed.
“I thought; ‘Hmm, that’s weird, that’s not like Rafe— the head, the captain, to turn off his radio. He knows how serious it could be if something happened on his watch due to negligence’. Anyways, I’m going down the road that leads to out of town, and right before I hit the city limits sign, I passed a patrol car that was parked off the side of the road in some tall grass, and you wanna know what I saw?” Topper got up, now pacing back and forth, “Your girl’s face pressed up against the glass.” Rafe closed his eyes, his hands coming up to hold his head. “So if you wanna talk about sexual misconduct, we could go there, ‘cause unlike me, you were on the clock, motherfucker.”
Rafe let out a string of curses, his face turning red as he stared at nothing, the reality of yours and his situation hitting him like a truck. He could be fired and replaced in the next forty-eight hours for something like this, especially since everything is on record.
The room was silent for what felt like forever, the tension thick enough that both Topper and Rafe could feel it against their skin. Just when Rafe managed to get you back, something comes up where he feels like he has to choose between you and his job.. again. If he lets Topper go, he knows that his termination has legitimate reason behind it, considering he’s been digging his own grave for years now, but the threat of being reported to his higher up worried him.
Rafe sat in thought, his mind turning gears as he tried to think of something to ‘resolve’ all of this. No matter what he did, he was damned anyways. “Don’t think just cause you have that one incident over me that I’m gonna play by your rules, cause you still have consequences of your own that you gotta face, and you’re gonna do exactly that.” Rafe finally spoke up.
“Starting now you’re on administrative leave until further notice. I need your badge with your gun and your holster.” Pursing his lips, Topper cursed, his jaw clenching as he ran his hands down his face. “You can’t be serious,” He leaned down, meeting Rafe at eye level, “I’ll keep my mouth shut, alright? I need my job, Rafe.”
“You’ll still be getting your regular check, ‘Top, you just can’t be on duty until I get you authorized to come back.” Rafe replied, standing up from his chair before opening the door to his office. “I’ll give you a call as soon I find out more details.” Topper watched as Rafe stared at him coldly, one hand on the door and the other resting on the buckle of his belt. “You’re gonna regret this.” Topper bumped his shoulder into Rafe’s on his way out, the entire office watching in silence as Topper left the station. Without a word, Rafe slammed the door shut and released a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
He was so fucked.
Rafe had to talk you out of ditching the town hall meeting an approximate four times before you two were getting off his truck together, a few people already throwing daggers at you as Rafe took your hand in his own. “Just ignore everyone,” He whispered, leaning down to press a kiss to the cown of your head, “we’ll be out of here as soon as it’s over.” Rafe reassured you.
If the hostility from everyone around you wasn’t enough, you felt your cheeks heat upon seeing the disappointed gazes from other sheriffs at Rafe’s department as you two approached.
“Go ahead and take a seat here in the front row, I have to go backstage to meet with the director so we can go over a few things.” You nodded, watching Rafe from your chair as he made his way out of your sight.
Looking around, the small cafeteria slowly started to fill up with each passing minute. You recognized nearly everybody that walked in, including Topper and his wife. You rolled your eyes when he sent a wink your way, a wave of disgust and annoyance washing over you before you turned around in your seat. Thankfully, the meeting started almost immediately, the mayor himself greeting everyone at the podium on stage.
“Good evening citizens and residents of our lovely town, I’ll go ahead and give everyone the chance to take their seats before we start.” He smiled, eyes dancing around the room. “We actually don’t have a lot to go over for this meeting, but I’m appreciative of everyone who made it a priority to be here tonight, nonetheless.” The mayor flipped a page from a packet he was reading from, the cafeteria finally growing silent as he went over all the topics of discussion for today.
“This evening we’ll be revealing some new projects, going over some concerns our parents had involving clubs at our schools, and lastly— presenting tonight, our very own town-elected Sheriff, Rafe Cameron, will be going over a special presentation on behalf of the department’s director.”
You stayed quiet the entire time, your eyelids fluttering in and out of sleep as the meeting dragged on. It wasn’t until you heard the roar and cheers of the crowd clapping as Rafe made his way out from behind the curtain that you sat up straight, your own hands coming together as you joined in on cheering for him. You watched with a small smile on your face as he took the spot behind the podium. You could tell Rafe was fighting the urge to beam in the spotlight, his lips pursed together as he gave everyone a curt nod.
“Thank you for being here tonight, it really is much appreciated, especially now as the department comes to deliver some news regarding patrolling areas and such..” You listened and watched the way he talked and answered questions, took in how he interacted with the crowd and for the first time, you felt like you could slightly understand why he took his job so seriously.
Once he was done with the presentation and started taking questions for concerns other than the ones he was already talking about, a plethora of people rose their hands in response. From noise complaints to people squatting in old barns, you heard just about everything under the sun until Topper’s voice cut in.
“Sorry for interrupting here, and quite frankly, sorry in advance for the lewdness of my question; but how should we go about reporting inappropriate behavior involving sheriffs and citizens while on the clock?”
The entire room grew cold as soon as Topper finished his question, both you and Rafe locking eyes for a split second before he cleared his throat. Your stomach flipped as gasps and hushed whispers began to spread across the crowd. “I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s appropriate at this time—” Rafe started, his voice growing a bit louder as the volume in the room began climbing, “But it’s a serious point of discussion, is it not?” Topper remarked, “What are we fellow sheriffs supposed to do when we have concerns of bigotry going on in our department?” You watched as the gears turned in Rafe’s head, his cheeks flushing ever so slightly as him and Topper stared dead in each other’s eyes.
“Fill out a report and turn it in to me.” Rafe said flatly, his hand gripping the side of the podium. At this, Topper hummed, his gaze moving to where you were sitting in the front row. “As sheriffs, we take oaths, Rafe. We serve justice where it need be, ‘doesn’t matter how petty a crime is; a crime is a crime. What we don’t do is cherry pick cases and let people go just because you’ve been intimate with them one or two times, but hey, who’s counting?” He laughed. The crowd then shot their heads in Rafe’s direction, a series of shouts and yells echoing in the cafeteria.
“Is this true?!” Someone cried, “Do we have sheriffs doing such things in our jurisdiction?”
Just as Rafe attempted to calm the crowd down, Topper spoke once again. “We do! There— sitting in the front row is one of the girls that can attest to this.” Your eyes widened when a multitude of people turned their burning gaze to where you sat, your heart dropping to your stomach once you saw the realization grace their faces.
Your chest rose and fell as it got harder to breathe, your eyes watering as people shouted at you all at once. Rafe was quick to jump down from the stage and wave his hands in the air in order to catch everyone’s attention.
It wasn’t until the director shouted over the microphone that the room fell silent again, your hands trembling as you moved your hair out of your face.
“Do you hear yourselves?!” Rafe yelled, “Yelling at this young woman over allegations that aren’t true! If she got out of staying in a cell it’s because the crimes against her didn’t warrant her to have to do so. What someone decides to do in their private life isn’t any of your business. My private life doesn’t concern you.” Topper scoffed, his wife trying her best to tug him back down into his seat.
“You were still patrolling when you engaged in sexual acts with the girl! You’re old enough to be her father, you should be ashamed of yourself!” To say you were mortified would be an understatement, you wished God would just strike you down right now and end all of this.
Rafe let out a breath, flickering his attention between Topper and the board who lined up the stage. “Don’t stand there and act all high and mighty, Thornton, you preyed on this girl. You singled her out of a group of people before you first dragged her into the station. She had cuts and bruises on her arms and legs because of you. Don’t forget the lewd comments you made about her to her face, or at the bar where she gave you the hit you were asking for. I’ll admit, I’ve been reckless and did things on the job I wasn’t supposed to, but I’ve never cherry picked cases the way you’re claiming. I serve justice, and I’ve been doing it for the last two decades now, so don’t you ever question my authority or integrity again.” Topper’s wife sat there too stunned to do anything, her hands falling from his arm.
“So the claim is true then? You’ve had an inappropriate relationship with someone while you were on the job?” The director questioned. Rafe looked down at you, his stomach twisting in knots when you glanced up and he saw your face. You didn’t deserve any of this.
“My personal relationships have nothing to do with my job, any and all questions you have pertaining to this situation will only be answered in private—” Before Rafe could get his words across, the director cut him off. “Denounce your relationship with this woman or resign.” You glared at the man standing at the podium, your head growing heavy as more and more time passed without Rafe saying a word.
“This isn’t ethical, nor professional—” Rafe was interrupted once again.
“You see, with the claim that you’ve let this woman walk free after breaking the law because of your relations to her, you’re inclined to let me and the people who have time and time again elected you as their town’s appointed sheriff know that you have not broken your oath and have indeed served fair justice. If it was anyone else without a record, we wouldn’t be here doing this right now, so once again; denounce having relations with this woman or resign.” Rafe held his breath. He could feel you looking at him, silently shaking him to say something. There was no way out of this for him, ‘no way for him to have the only two things he’s ever wanted in his life.
His career, or you. Those were his only options.
“I can’t resign.”
You felt like you could die right now. “You can’t, or you won’t?” You spoke up, standing from your seat. Rafe looked out unto the crowd, his eyes scanning over everyone’s faces before he met your defeated stare.
“I won’t.” He whispered, attempting to reach for you before you backed away and ran out of the room, your heart breaking in two as you sobbed on your way out. If it wasn’t enough for Topper to pretty much expose you in front of the whole town, Rafe essentially said everything that happened between you two was fake.. in front of the whole town. You were embarrassed, hurt, angry, disgusted, all at once you just wanted to disappear.
You ran home and didn’t stop crying until you fell asleep in your bed, your tear stained cheeks pressing against the wet puddle in your pillow.
You stayed like this for days. Wake up, shower, bed rot, cry for hours, repeat. Your job at the bar was long gone and you didn’t dare show your face anywhere after everything that happened, surely people would be gossiping about this last town hall meeting for the next century to come.
Your phone never rang, not that you expected it to anyways. You stared out your window and thought about Rafe. You thought about the way his hands felt against your skin, thought about his eyes when you gazed into them after he put you through his mattress, you thought about his smile, his smell, everything about him.
It was all too painful for you to handle, the sheer betrayal of it all. Your days were measured by the amount of time you and Rafe didn’t have contact with one another. You went on like this until you felt like you were on the brink of cabin fever. Deciding to go downstairs, you froze in the hallway when you didn’t hear the familiar chatter coming from the TV in the living room.
When did that TV even turn off?
Walking over to your father’s room, you knocked lightly, a small ‘Dad? It’s me.’ leaving your lips. No answer. Eyebrows knitting in confusion, you made your way to the kitchen and looked out the window. His truck wasn’t out front either. Finally, you looked at the table and there, in scribbled handwriting, was a letter with your name on it.
By the time you’re reading this I’ll be well on my way up North to reside with my brothers— your uncles, for good. They all share a ranch and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, unlike this hell hole we call home. Anyways, Dave came by and gave me a full rundown of what happened at the town hall meeting and it about ripped me to shreds if you want to believe that or not. I don’t know what to say when it comes to topics such as those discussed at the meeting, but I will start by apologizing to you. Life hasn’t been fair to you and I’ve been the main contributor to that. I should’ve raised you better. I should’ve supported you emotionally when your mother left but I let you fall, and for that I’m sorry. I figured the best thing I could do for you now is equip you with the tools and encourage you to leave, too. I printed out all of the documents you’ll need to sell the house, along with some other papers you may need to auction off the farm equipment for some extra cash in the safe that’s in the back of my closet. My shotgun and some of your mother’s old jewelry is in there too. Keep it. It’s yours. No matter how much I wish I could’ve been the father you needed, I know the damage has already been done. I need you to know that I do love you, and despite things not working out with me and your mom, you were made out of love. You were wanted and I’m deeply sorry if you ever felt otherwise. I’m not sure what you’ll end up doing or where the wind will take you, but come visit your old man sometime when you feel like it, the address where i’ll be at is stuck on the fridge. P.S. — I went down to the sheriff’s office before I left and gave that sorry excuse of a man what he deserved.
You sobbed, sliding down the doorway until your butt met the old, rickety floor. Everything you ever wanted to hear from your father was written in this letter, and while you were grateful for that, he was still an asshole for not being able to face you and tell you.
You wept, thinking of the times where your mother and father were together. You’d do anything to go back there and start over, stop your mom from skipping town and leaving both you and your father. In the end it was no use, though. You had no clue where she was now. Not back then, not ever. She made sure you’d never find her.
Once the tears cleared away, and your anger subsided, you felt a glimmer of hope for the first time in a long time.
Your father had just given you an out, one where you’re set with money and can go down any path you wanted. No limitations, just complete free will. Wiping your face with your shirt, you got up and ran to his safe to get the papers needed to sell the house. You weren’t going to waste anymore time living in this town.
You got ready, grabbed what you needed from your father’s safe and went into town with one job and one job only; sell everything.
By the time you got home from handling what you needed to, you were drained, but when you opened your purse and saw the $500,000.00 check with your name on it, you smiled.
That was only the first check to come though, you still had four more waiting for you once you requested them through a bank from wherever you decided to go— all that money, and it was still excluding the actual house and profits from the estate sale that was supposed to happen three days from now.
It turns out the land your father built his house on was in high demand from the city themselves. Apparently it’s a perfect spot for a truck stop and motel, or so that’s what the bank told you.
You went to sleep feeling bittersweet, whereas Rafe on the other hand, hadn’t been getting much sleep at all. Your face haunted him, your expression before you left forever ingrained in his brain. Work hadn’t been the same since the town hall meeting, the whole office now being on edge.
He was miserable to say the least, but he knew he had no right to feel that way; especially since it was him who hurt you. His pillows still smelt like your shampoo and perfume, but it was fading as more time went on. Rafe spent his days doing everything he did before you came into his life; work, eat, drink, watch the sports channel, and the cycle continued.
There was no laughter, no kisses when he woke up in the morning or before bed, no nothing. He flipped through polaroids of you two. Back then, he hated taking pictures despite you cussing him out and telling him you were gonna take them anyways, and now he couldn’t be more grateful that you did.
On his off day, he stayed in bed, the sun setting as the orange rays filtered through his window, the light illuminating only your side of his bed. He stroked the sheets where you once laid, the image of you smiling sweetly at him with messy hair flashing behind his closed irises. You’ll always be the prettiest thing he ever laid eyes on.
The days came and went, the newspapers outside in his driveway piling up as he didn’t care enough to bring them in— until one evening when one of the covers caught his eye.
ESTATE SALE : FIRST COME FIRST SERVE! Come by the Y/L/N farm to collect items at an unbeatable price. EVERYTHING MUST GO! The home is officially off the market and is set to be demolished where a motel and truck stop will soon reside, DON’T MISS OUT!
Cursing under his breath, Rafe sat in his truck reading the cover over and overs again. You sold the house. You’ll be leaving or gone if he hasn’t missed you already. Looking at the publication date, Rafe punched the steering wheel when he saw it was passed out a few days ago.
He had just got out of work, the sky already black with the night when he sped down to your house. He panicked upon seeing the house sitting eerily quiet by itself, not a single light on inside or outside on the porch. Your father’s truck was gone too, surely the house was empty by now.
Trudging up the wooden steps, Rafe sighed as he opened the screen door, the door knob turning loosely as it wasn’t locked. Stepping inside, he shook his head as he looked around with his flashlight, the place empty with no furniture in sight.
Rafe should’ve known you’d leave, after all, why would you stay when he wasn’t an incentive anymore? What he didn’t know, though, was that you were standing in your bedroom, your father’s shotgun pointed towards the door as the heavy footsteps of a man inched closer and closer to your room.
You were woken out of sleep when you heard the sound of the floor creaking upstairs. Obviously thinking it might be an intruder, you shot out of bed and loaded the gun, your hands shaking as you held up the heavy metal.
Spotting the gleam of a flashlight underneath the crack of your door, you winced, a scream leaving your lips once it opened, your finger pulling the trigger before you could even see the face of whoever it was that stepped foot in your bedroom. “Jesus!” Rafe shouted, his eyes wide as he dropped to the floor, just barely missing the round you fired.
“What the fuck!” You cried, squinting your eyes to see Rafe getting up. “What are you doing here?!” You were still pointing the gun at him when he held his hands up defensively. “It’s just me, sweetheart, please, put the gun down—” You shouted over him, “I’m not your ‘sweetheart’! I could blow your head off of your fucking shoulders right now!” Rafe nodded, swallowing thickly as he kept his hands in sight.
“I’m sorry—! Fuck, I’m sorry.” Rafe apologized, stepping away from you so you could lower the gun. Seeing him triggered you in ways you didn’t even know existed. You wanted to kill him, kiss him, hold him, push him away, you couldn’t decide.
“Why are you here?” You rasped out, your voice sounding weak as you dropped the gun with a thunk! “I saw the article in the paper,” Rafe breathed out, “looks’ like it was a success.” Eyes moving past you, Rafe took note of the open suitcase by your window, your boots standing tall next to your case with the rest of your clothes. “Where are you going?” He asked, the question itself making you clench your jaw. “None of your business.” You bit out, taking a seat at the edge of your bed.
“But how? Your dad isn’t even here—” You snapped upon hearing his concern, “I’m gonna hitch a ride, why the fuck do you care?! You didn’t defend me! You didn’t fight for me! You didn’t even leave me with any dignity! I hate you.” Your voice broke, the sound tearing Rafe apart.
It was obvious that he hurt you beyond repair, your eyes void of any feelings you once had for him. “I can’t build a life here, Rafe. I have no friends— they all bailed on me once it came out I was fucking a cop. I have no family, my dad left, my job at the bar is done for, there’s nothing for me here.”
“That’s not true—”
“It’s very true.” You glared at him. “I’m leaving this place first thing in the morning, and I’m not looking back. There’s nothing that you could say or do to change my mind, either. You’ll always choose your job over me, I should’ve realized that before forgiving you last time. Just go already.” You looked up, noticing the bruise that graced his jaw.
“My’ dad do that?” You pointed at his cheek. Rafe rubbed the greenish blue mark and nodded. “Yeah, he stormed into my office and gave me the punch of my life. I see where you get your mean right hook from.” You refrained from laughing, your fists balling up in your lap. “Good. If he didn’t do it, I was going to.” Rafe believed you wholeheartedly, the corner of his lips lifting in amusement.
“It’s getting late, and I have somewhere to be in the morning.” You cleared your throat. “You need to leave.” Rafe swallowed the lump in his throat, his chest growing tighter by the second. “Y/n—” You stopped him, “Don’t say my name.” Rafe stood there, fighting with himself. He knew this was it.
Both of you sat in silence until he left without a word, your shoulders falling in defeat. Despite feeling a hundred times worse than before, you didn’t have it in you to cry anymore. For the rest of the night, you finished packing and only took things that would fit in your suitcase.
Reaching into your father’s safe, you grabbed your mother’s jewelry and the only pictures you had of her. Inspecting the rings and bracelets and necklaces, you slipped on every single piece and admired her photos— one sticking out to you in particular.
There, sitting in the middle of your father’s strawberry patch, your mom carried her protruding belly, her dress flowing with the wind as her hair blew wildly in her face. She was smiling from ear to ear, her eyes beaming with joy as she looked down at her pregnant stomach. She was happy. Flipping the photo over, the words ‘My two beautiful girls!’ were written messily in sharpie. Your father had written that down.
You placed that one in your suitcase and kept looking through the small stack.
Another photo, this time it was you and your father. You were one, and so so so tiny. Your father carried you tightly against his chest, his birthday cake with the numbers ‘22’ sitting in front of you two as your mother stood off to the side, the look of pure adoration etched onto her pretty features. Your parents were so young when they had you, you couldn’t imagine being their age and having a baby now.
It was morning by the time you had decided to just keep all the pictures, your suitcase weighing heavy in your hand as you began your walk down the dirt road towards outer city limits where the main highway was.
You were scared, unsure and clueless about where you’ll go and what you’ll do, but you knew leaving the only place you’ve ever known was necessary.
Placing your suitcase by your feet, you stuck your thumb out and stood at the side of the highway despite there being not too many people driving around this time. Surely there was enough for at least one person willing to take you somewhere. It all but took five minutes before a beat up truck pulled off to the side, a man with long hair and a goatee getting out of the vehicle.
“Where are you headed off to?” He grabbed your suitcase, tossing it in the backseat. “Anywhere, I don’t care. You?” You shaded your face from the sun to get a good look at the man towering over you.
“North Carolina. My uncle died, ‘passed down his pawn shop to me. It’s on an island, you coming with?” Tapping your boot on the pavement, you nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.” The man smiled, revealing a singular golden tooth before opening the passenger door for you.
Hoisting yourself up into his truck, you looked across the highway to where the gas station sat, your eyes falling on Rafe as he leaned against his car with his arms crossed over his chest. He waved at you, tipping his cowboy hat before getting back into his patrol car.
Waving back, you averted your attention to the man who slid into the driver’s seat. “You sure you wanna do this? I’m not kidnapping you or anythin’?” You laughed, shaking your head. “No, I promise you’re not kidnapping me.”
“Alright, if you say so.”
The radio played in the background as he drove down the highway, your eyes finding the messy ponytail on the back of his head. “Hey, I didn’t get your name.” You relaxed, resting your head on the seat.
cw: insecurities, overthinking, innuendo, brief mentions of erections, prelude of physical intimacy, pet names
synopsis: clark kent is painfully, secretly, one-sidedly in love with his childhood best friend.
wc. 5k
read part one here / return to series masterlist / return to dc masterlist / return to main masterlist
clark is seated at his desk, the soft hum of his old laptop filling the silence usually found in his apartment. the sound is a steady companion to the thoughts that won't leave his mind.
as he stares at the screen, he finds the text blurring, paragraphs weaving into each other as his mind continues circling the memory of your weekend visits almost obsessively. he can't help himself, to be fair. that's because everything you do - your laugh, your presence, the way you touch him and speak to him - linger far longer than normal.
even though you're not here with him right now, he feels your presence within his body like you've carved your way into his skin.
this can't be healthy.
clark leans back in his chair, closing his eyes to try and reset his brain and stop having thoughts about you. his best friend. he taps his pen idly against the notebook in front of him, though he knows he isn't taking notes.
it's been years since you first toddled into his life, clinging to him like some shadow he couldn't shake, and yet somehow, the kid feeling he gets with you never goes away. he feels so warm and full around you that he swears the feeling is deeper than love. maybe you're his soulmate. he may not be yours, but he's almost entirely sure you're his. the only thing that could truly make him happy is to be with you, and he's trying to find peace with the fact that it'll never happen.
he re-opens his eyes with a deep sigh, eyes drifting to the small stack of photos on the corner of his desk, one's you'd taken with your camera last weekend and printed out for him. he studies your expressions and the way you're draped over him in every picture, hugging him, kissing his cheek, getting lifted up by him... you treat him like this while having no real clue how utterly you consume him. even a little glance from you leaves him scrambling to stay composed.
he forces himself to look away, running a hand through his curls with frustration. "keep it together, clark." he says after letting out a deep breath. "keep it together. go on a date. meet a nice girl. just get over her. she's not yours."
he uses his mantra to try and focus on other things. he has deadlines, work to do, papers to write. he has so many things to focus on, and not enough to dwell on you like this. but his mind keeps returning to fixate on everything about you, your little mannerisms and the way you behave, from the way your lips purse when you're thinking, how you leave shiny lipgloss on all his straws since you always end up taking his drinks, how you hang off his arm like his girlfriend when you walk.
it's a cycle clark knows well: he builds walls, puts himself in a safe place, convinces himself he can handle it… and then he sees you and everything he's constructed falls away.
clark is painfully aware that no matter how much he tries to keep you at arm's length, you keep weaving yourself into his mind and occupying every crevice. for now, he allows himself the dangerous luxury of thinking of the next time he'll see you, anticipating the way your energy will fill the room the moment you arrive.
clark closes his eyes briefly, trying to still his racing heart and calm the rush of everything he doesn't let anyone see. he can't tell you yet how much he's always felt for you, how every moment spent with you has been torture for him. he opens his eyes and stares at the empty apartment again, wondering how long he can keep pretending his feelings aren't all consuming. that you're just… his friend.
it's times like this where clark is grateful for the distance between the two of you. he gets to work part time at the daily planet while he finishes up his masters in graduate school, while you're all the way in another city at your own school. he can't imagine what it would be like if things remained the same as they did in high school, where you had all the same classes and electives as him, sat together with him in all of them, walked home together - holding hands of course - the works.
but lately, it's starting to feel cruel. the way those same gestures have carried on into adulthood. you call him your best friend, and sometimes it feels worse than an insult. it's a title that holds such innocence, spoken with so much trust and adoration, yet it draws a boundary that he keeps running into headfirst. you think the bond between you is unshakable. and it is. just not in the way you mean.
he rubs at his eyes, holding the sides of his face in his hands as he blinks hard at the light from his laptop. he can't bring himself to do any work. meanwhile, his phone sits to the side, screen-down, but his attention keeps flicking to it like he's expecting it to come alive any second. he tells himself it's habit. he's just waiting for a work email or a text from perry or one of his professors, but he knows exactly who he's waiting for.
-
you have a bad habit of calling late and at the wrong time. always when he's trying to convince himself that he can go an entire night without hearing your voice. and every time, the moment the ringtone fills the room, he's already giving in before he even answers.
the phone vibrates once. twice.
his heart trips in his chest. the sound seems too loud in the quiet. when he flips it over and sees your name flashing across the screen, his stomach lurches. "oh no," he mutters under his breath, dragging a hand down his face. "what now?"
he watches it ring blankly for a second, eyes fixed on your contact picture smiling at him tauntingly. he takes a deep breath, willing himself not to sound like an eager puppy the second he answers it.
he clears his throat, forces his voice steady, and answers.
"hey."
"clark!"
your voice bursts through the speaker, bright and breathless, already halfway to laughter. it's the kind of tone that instantly rearranges the air in his chest. the kind that makes his ribs ache.
"hey, you." he says again, because it's all he can manage when you sound like that. "what's going on?"
"i'm on my way over right now! i'm in my car, but i parked it just to give you a heads up. i'm not calling and driving 'cause you get fussy when i do that," you chuckle, the whizz of cars passing by you on the busy road echoing through the receiver.
he straightens in his chair, pulse spiking. "...you're what?"
"coming over! i just- oh my gosh, i have to tell you in person. i'll be there in, like, fifteen minutes. don't move!"
the line goes dead before he can say anything else. he stares at his phone, half a laugh caught in his throat, half panic building behind his ribs.
fifteen minutes.
clark's apartment is a mess. he's a mess. he doesn't even know why you're coming, what could possibly warrant this level of excitement, but the sound of it in your voice makes him dizzy.
he gets up so fast his chair rolls back into the wall.
"okay," he mutters to himself, pacing the tight confines of his bedroom. "okay. calm down. it's fine. it's just a visit. she's visited tons of times... it's just her."
right, just you. the person who's been running laps around his heart for years. he can already feel the faint panic stir inside him knowing he'll crumble pitifully the moment he sees you in those fifteen minutes.
clark glances down at himself and immediately regrets it. the grey t-shirt he's wearing is soft from one too many washes, and his sweats have ink smudged on them. he looks like someone who's been hiding from the world for three days straight - which, technically, he has. "great," he mutters. "real impressive, kent."
he runs a hand through his curls, trying to coax them into something that doesn't scream i've been neglecting myself and thinking about you for hours. it doesn't help. his curls just spring back in defiance, framing his face awkwardly.
once he exits his room, he starts to quickly gather stray mugs, stack papers, and tidy up the area in an effort to distract himself from overthinking everything. he realizes his emotions have reflected his environment, because his whole space is one big mess. and now he has to clean it all up, both his mind and his apartment, before you get here.
his stomach twists hard.
he knows he should be happy. you're his best friend, and you're excited about something, and that's supposed to be enough. but his body doesn't seem to care about supposed to. it's already reacting like it always does when you're near: nervous, hopeful, a little bit desperate. leaning against the counter for a moment, he stares at the clock. twelve minutes now.
this isn't the first time you've shown up unannounced. you've done it hundreds of times, flinging the door open like you own the place, collapsing onto his couch, talking too fast, touching everything. it's normal. it's fine. he can handle this.
except lately, every time you're here, clark feels like he's standing on a fault line. everything inside him is so tightly wound that the smallest thing - your hand on his arm, your voice saying his name - could split him open. he presses the heel of his palm to his chest like he's trying to physically hold himself together. this is ridiculous, he thinks.
he's acting like this and you don't even know what you do to him, how easily you unravel all the careful work he puts into pretending to be normal around you. every time you're near, he starts to imagine things he shouldn't. you on his couch, leaning too close; your laughter mixing with his. his hand on your jaw, tilting your face up so he can press his lips to yours... he shakes his head, cutting the thought off before it can go anywhere. "get a grip," he tells himself quietly.
nine minutes left.
clark returns to his desk, sitting down. his gaze flits to his laptop once more, the screen still open on the same blank document, cursor blinking. mocking him. he tries to focus on the words he needs to write. an article, something about city policy, but the letters dissolve into meaningless patterns. his mind drifts back to you like it's tethered.
what are you going to tell him? what could make you sound so excited? maybe it's something about school, or someone new you've met, or maybe a boyfriend. he shakes his head quickly. "no, she doesn't have a boyfriend. she would've told me she was talking to someone. it's not a boyfriend, its not..."
he doesn't want to imagine you telling him about anyone else. he rubs at his temple, frustrated with himself, but it's useless. you fill the empty spaces in his life too easily. you always have.
he wonders if you know how transparent he is. if you ever notice the way his breath catches when you lean too close, or the way he looks at your mouth when you talk. probably not. you've never been self-conscious about affection. you give it so freely it feels unthinking, natural. to you, it's just how you are. to him, it's everything he can't have.
seven minutes.
he glances toward the door, then away again, then back.
he should probably change his shirt. he should definitely do something with his hair. but he knows it won't matter. the moment you walk in, he'll forget every bit of composure he's rehearsed.
clark leans forward and puts his hands on the keyboard of his laptop, trying to will himself to come up with something and to get at least one paragraph done before you arrive. his head keeps reeling back though, fixating on your arrival. there's a part of him that honestly believes this visit might mean something more. that maybe you've realized what's been sitting between you for years. but hope, for clark, is dangerous. it makes his mind wander to dangerous places, which isn't good when it's now only five minutes until you arrive.
he gets up and starts pacing again, stopping in front of the mirror inside the bathroom connected to his room. his reflection looks back at him - curls slightly frizzy, wrinkly shirt, that stupid line of tension around his mouth he always gets when he's trying too hard not to look nervous. he looks like he's been caught doing something wrong. and he has, hasn't he? thinking about you like this. wanting you like this.
he rubs at his jaw, checks the clock inside his room again. two minutes now.
the image of you floods in again, where you always burst in like sunlight. you'll walk in, drop your bag on the couch, kick your shoes off, and immediately gravitate toward him. you always do. his space becomes yours without even trying. clark shouldn't let you, and he's told himself multiple times that the next time he sees you, he'd set boundaries, stop letting you blur every line he's tried to draw. but then you smile, and it all goes. he'd let you take anything from him if it meant you'd stay.
one minute.
clark reckons he could be sick right now. there's no reason to be this nervous. "you've done this a thousand times, just relax," he says to himself - but something about the way you sounded on the phone has him on edge. too happy, too bright. something's coming, and he's the last one to know.
clark stares at the door, his heart hammering. you're going to walk through it. you're going to look at him with those eyes that undo him every single time. you're going to make yourself at home in the space he's been trying to keep sterile, safe, untouched by you. and then you'll laugh, and lean into him, and all that distance will collapse like it always does.
he hates that he's already imagining how you'll smell - sweet and clean, like the perfumes and lotion you use - and how your hair will brush against his shoulder when you hug him. he wonders what you're wearing. if you dressed up. if you thought about him when you picked it out.
the faint creak of the elevator doors sliding open sounds down the hall, snapping him out of his thoughts. he can hear the little rush of footsteps, meaning you're jogging up to see him. his heart gives a loud thud thud thud in his chest the closer you get, until you stop in front of his door and rap at the wood eagerly.
he accidentally opens it too early out of nervousness, and you squeak the second you see him, rushing into his brawny arms to give him a hug. in your excitement, you nearly drop the plastic tin you brought, which covers a stack of cupcakes.
he allows you to smother your face in his chest while you giggle, looking up at him with a mirthful expression. to say you're excited would be an understatement. your body feels like a shaken up soda can, with the way you're buzzing. you squeeze him tighter, relishing in the way his arms wrap around you a little firmer in response.
"hi," he breathes, unable to come up with much else. all of his trepidation has washed away now, and he feels safe and right with you - soft, warm, and alive - in his arms. "what's going on with you, hm?"
your arms wind up around his neck, your weight pushing up onto your toes, cupcakes teetering precariously in one hand. he has that familiar, grounding scent that's always followed him. "i missed you," you blurt, drawing back just far enough to see his face. your eyes are bright, your grin wide, and your fingers are already pushing into his curls, tugging one absentmindedly the way you always do when you're happy.
he feels the softness of your fingers against his scalp, the press of your chest against his, the syrupy sweetness of your perfume.
"i saw you only a little while ago, hon." he manages, slowly lowering himself down to your level so you don't have to hold yourself up on your tiptoes to hug him. he adapts himself to match your needs. you smile appreciatively at the gesture, giving him a squeeze even as he stoops uncomfortably low to be at your level.
"yeah, and it was awful!" you say dramatically, making a displeased face. "do you know how boring my week was without you? i almost started talking to my classmates just to fill the void."
he laughs softly, some of the pressure in his body escaping as the breathy chuckles escape him. he's calm for only a few more seconds until you whisper conspiratorially, reminding him you have a huge secret over his head - a bomb you're about to drop on him that might be too much for him to bear. "guess what? i brought you something."
you pull back enough to thrust the container of cupcakes between you before he can ask, and he steadies it with both hands, blinking down at the swirl of frosting through the plastic lid. "you baked."
he says it as more of a statement than a question. he knows the cupcakes are more than a gift to him, it signifies you have something you want to celebrate with him. you did it when you got your first job, when your cousin got engaged, when you passed your exams. he's seen that look on your face before; the glowing i have a secret expression. it makes him wary and curious simultaneously.
"mhm!" you hum, bouncing a little on your feet. "but you have to sit down before i tell you why. c'mon!"
"wait, baby hold on a sec-"
you disregard his hesitation, wrapping your hand around his thick wrist before tugging him towards his living room. clark barely manages to set the cupcakes down on the coffee table before you push him toward the couch, your hands firm against his chest.
"sit," you command, grinning.
he obliges, mostly because he doesn't trust his knees to hold him up right now, and then you're climbing right onto his lap in a straddling position, just like that. your arms drape around his shoulders, knees bracketing his hips. he goes completely still for a moment, blinking up at you dumbly.
his cheeks warm up, the flush creeping along his face. "w-whoa... hey," he says weakly, hands frozen midair, unsure where to put them.
you tilt your head, feigning innocence. "what?"
"you can't just-"
"yes, I can," you cut in, laughing softly. "you always make me tell my stories from so far away, and this is way better."
his pulse is a roar in his ears and his pupils have dilated so much that the blue has been shrouded by black. you don't seem to notice. your hands have found his curls again, playing absently with them while you talk, your words tumbling out in a rush.
"you're never gonna believe it. i've been keeping this a secret for weeks, and it's been killing me, and i was gonna wait until this weekend but i couldn't. i just had to come tell you."
clark's trying to listen. really, he is. but all he can focus on is the feel of your weight on his thighs, the warmth radiating through the thin fabric of his sweats, and the feeling of your hands carding gently through his curls. he goes quiet and pliant, breathing heavier than he means to, eyes fluttering. his hair's soft, a little overgrown at the nape, and each pass of your fingers earns this quiet, shaky exhale.
you shift a little to get comfortable, one of your hands sliding down from his hair to rest against his shoulder. "did you miss me?"
he swallows. "i t-think you already asked me..."
"no, i told you i missed you. did you miss me?"
you're watching him expectantly with a little smile curling at your mouth, and he knows you're waiting for an answer. he tries to play it cool long enough to answer, and to give you the version of himself that doesn't fall apart just because you're near.
his hands hover uncertainly at your waist, fingers twitching. they're desperate to touch but terrified to move. "of course i missed you," he finally says quietly. "you're...you know i always do."
you're satisfied by his answer, and as a result, you flop forward, wrapping your arms around him in another hug. your face presses into the curve of his neck this time, your breath warm against his skin.
you're still talking, oblivious to what's happening to him right now. "so anyway," you say, pulling back just enough to meet his gaze again, "i'm celebrating! and you're the first person i wanted to tell. you should be honored."
his heart gives a strange, unsteady kick. "tell me what?" he swears for a second that the world narrows down to just that look on your face, the one that always ruins him.
"guess," you whisper, and he knows he's in trouble.
he could guess a thousand things. some that would destroy him, some that would save him, but in this moment, with you in his lap, your fingers still tangled in his hair and your breath brushing against his lips, he can't think at all.
you giggle and rock forward playfully, unintentionally rolling your hips against his. he jolts slightly, eyes widening as his brain kicks back into gear. he needs you to sit still and not do that again, or something very bad will happen to him.
"c'mon, clark," you say, voice sweet and teasing. "guess."
he looks at you helplessly, his muscles locked. "i can't think of anything right now." he says softly. "tell me."
"okay, okay," you say breathlessly, grinning like you're about to burst, "fine, i'll tell you! but you have to promise you won't freak out."
he huffs. "that depends on what it is."
"you'll love it!" you insist, leaning in until your nose nearly bumps his. "you're gonna be so happy."
he's already not breathing properly. "uh-huh."
"okay," you say, practically vibrating now, "so you know how i've been complaining forever about how far away my school is and how i never get to see you anymore?"
"yeah…" he's starting to sweat in anticipation, preparing for the worst. he knows you said your news would make him happy too, but because you're unaware of his feelings for you, you could think telling him you're engaged would be good news. because who wouldn't want to celebrate their best friend's marriage?
"and you know how i always say i wish we could study together like old times?"
"mm... mhm, yeah."
"well… problem solved!"
he blinks. "what?"
you bounce again. he rushes to grab your hips to steady you, his fingers flexing automatically against the curve of your waist. you don't seem to notice, which somehow makes it worse. he tries to will away the inevitable issue your presence on his lap will create in his pants, but he can feel it's already starting.
"i transferred!" you blurt out. "i'm coming here! to your school!"
he freezes.
you laugh, grabbing his face in your hands and squeezing. "isn't that crazy? i got in! i literally just found out an hour ago. i couldn't even wait, i just grabbed my keys and came straight here!"
"you... y-you what?"
"i transferred," you repeat as if he didn't hear you the first time. "i'm starting next semester! we can go to classes together again, and we'll be on the same campus, and... oh, oh, wait, wait there's more-"
"more?" his voice cracks.
you nod eagerly, "yup! i've already been looking at apartments near yours, but then i thought, like, why not just stay with you for a while? just until i find a place. or maybe longer, if it works out! we can share groceries again, and you can wake me up when i oversleep, and i'll cook for you but only if we get takeout on friday and have a movie night. isn't that so fun?"
"wait, wait, wait," he says, trying to catch up, but you're steamrolling right over him.
"and it'll be so perfect, clark! we'll get to hang out all the time again, instead of the weekends. like, every day! all the time, actually, since i'll be living with you."
you lean closer as you talk, your enthusiasm pulling you in even closer to him. "isn't that amazing?"
clark swears the world tilts. you smell so good, he can't stop thinking about how wonderful you smell, and the warmth coming off your body is wrecking his ability to think. he can feel all the subtle movements you make. "yeah," he says, trying to sound normal, his voice an octave lower than usual. "yeah, that's… that's really, really..."
"great, right?" you finish for him, beaming.
he nods unconvincingly. inside, his mind is a frantic blur. you, here, every day, in his apartment, in his space. you'll take up his mornings, his nights, his kitchen, his bathroom. your laughter in the next room. your belongings on his floor. your head on his shoulder when you get sleepy. the smell of your shampoo on his pillow in the days you decide to sleep on his bed.
"clark," you laugh softly, tapping his nose with your fingers, "you look like you just saw a ghost."
he forces a smile. "no, no, i'm... i'm just surprised. it's a lot to take in."
you tilt your head, eyes searching his face. "a good lot?"
he hesitates. one heartbeat, another. he nods again. "yeah. good lot."
"i knew you'd be happy," you say, leaning forward impulsively to hug him again with your arms tight around his neck, your cheek pressing into his jaw. he swallows hard, hands hovering awkwardly in the air before they settle lightly at your back.
you're still talking against his skin, but the words are tumbling out of your mouth breathlessly. you're getting caught up in all of it, in him. "this is gonna be so perfect, clark. i won't have to miss you anymore. we can do everything together again. it'll be just like before."
clark wants to tell you to stop, that this is too much for him. he wants to beg you to slow down, but he can't get his brain to focus on anything. not the movement of you getting comfortable on his lap, or your hands on him, tilting his face toward yours with a careless insistence that causes his pulse to begin jackhammering beneath his flesh.
he closes his eyes, and for a second, he can't tell if the shiver that runs down his spine is from happiness or dread. probably both. "yeah. i'm really pr-proud of you for getting in. i'm happy you're here with me again."
glad he expressed his feelings bout the situation to you, your hands continue to roam freely, tangling in his curls, brushing his jaw, gripping his shoulders. "me too. i'm happy. i'm so happy, clark. i hate being away from you, do you know that? i-i know that it's kind of annoying - how i'm always climbing all over you, but it's because i wanna be close to you all the time. this is where i feel most comfortable. and myself."
his heart aches.
you keep talking. of course you do. it's what you do when you're so happy. words spill out of you like a faucet that doesn't shut off, bright and earnest and overflowing, and clark can't get a word in edgewise because all the words that come out of your mouth are about him. about how much you love being with him. about how happy you are when you're near him. about how safe he makes you feel, how you never get tired of him, how even when you're not with him, he's all you think about.
and you do it all while your lips press against his face.
yes, you've kissed his cheeks and forehead and nose and practically everywhere that still keeps the boundary between the two of you at platonic, but now, especially now, he can't handle it.
and he's trying -god help him - to breathe through it, to stay steady under the weight of your voice and your body and your hands in his hair, but his head is going hot and fuzzy. it's not even just the things you're saying, it's how you're saying them. all soft and unguarded, like you're whispering secrets straight into his skin instead of his ears. your lips trail along his jaw softly.
"hey," he finally manages, his voice cracking under the strain of keeping it quiet. "maybe you should..."
you shake your head, eyes closed now. "you don't even know how much i adore you, clark," and his whole body just locks up. his breath catches so hard it almost hurts. your lips move up to his chin...
he whispers, "baby..." in warning.
you hum absentmindedly before cupping his face between your palms. your thumbs sweep his cheekbones, keeping his head tilted to yours. your eyes are still closed, but you trail your lips along the small space of his chin diagonally upwards to the corner of his mouth, pressing repeated soft, sensual kisses there. so close to his lips. "you're so good to me," you say quietly. "no one makes me feel like you do. i swear, i get near you and i just…feel like myself again," you finish, soft and fond. "like home."
his hands flex uselessly at your waist. "you should... you should stop saying things like that," he breathes, voice rough. he whimpers a little, leaning back in the couch as his hands clutch at your body, unable to do anything else. you're right there, at his mouth, you could just...
just...
...
caught in the apex of your excitement and the pleasure you get from being so close to him again, you move your lips to align them with his fully. unmistakably, a kiss.
grease smudged across his knuckles. sleeves of his flannel rolled to his elbows. forearms warm and strong from years of lifting engines and tires. a thin line of sweat at the back of his neck in the summer heat. smells like motor oil, leather seats, and cheap pine air. the low rumble of the Chevrolet Impala idling outside the garage like a heartbeat. a bottle of beer sweating in his hand. a smudge of grease he absentmindedly wipes on his jeans. flirts with customers over the hood of their car, smile easy and playful.
classic songs drifting from an old radio balanced on a toolbox. sunlight slanting through dusty garage windows. denim jackets thrown over the back of a chair. the clang of wrenches against concrete. the smell of hot metal and rubber after a long day of work. a toothpick between his teeth while he studies an engine. fingers tapping the hood in rhythm with whatever song is playing. drives with one hand on the steering wheel, the other draped loosely over the seat behind you.
mechanic!dean makes a point of checking in with his old life, quietly threading it into his new one. he calls sam once a week, sometimes talks to bobby for hours about junk cars or old hunting stories, and drives down to the salvage yard at least once a month.
mechanic!dean still gets awkward when someone compliments his work; he scratches the back of his neck, gives a crooked grin, and mutters something about just doing my job.
mechanic!dean has a habit of leaning against the hood of the impala when he talks to people, one boot propped on the bumper. he asks you need a hand? or you sure you’re okay? in a way that makes customers and friends feel like they’re being taken care of, even if he’s secretly just making sure the day doesn’t get boring.
mechanic!dean laughs like it’s a full-body thing, shoulders jerking, head thrown back, and the sound fills the garage until even the radio seems to join in.
mechanic!dean flirts with customers, but it’s playful, teasing, never cruel. he’ll joke about the torque on their tires or the smell of their engine while letting a smile linger a second too long. he likes seeing people laugh, watching them lean in just a little closer. his eyes crinkle when someone catches him off guard.
summary talks of a gala. dean tries on suits and looks super pretty!
content gn!reader, quiet, odd!reader. younger dean (nineteen, early twenties). super big crushes and a small town mall, two seconds of a very shirtless dean and many butterflies. use of sweetheart and angel!
odd!reader masterlist .ೃ࿔*:･
Dean being Dean, owns no formal wear. Heaps of worn band tees and a rotation consisting of two pairs of sturdy jeans, one ripped at the knees. He's got metal rings and bracelets and a couple necklaces. The flower crowns you've given him, some fresh and some drying out on his window sill. But no suits and no ties and definitely no loafers.
The mall is his last and only hope.
It's old and wilting. A generational staple in South Dakota, it's been around for seemingly ages and smells like musky, floral perfume all over. Lots of the stores have been closed up for good, but there's a nearly empty Macy's to Dean's benefit, and an ice cream parlor down the way to yours.
He's dragged you along with the claim of needing expert advice, and you're really not sure what about you makes him think you're knowledgeable on varied formal wear. But it had been easy to accept his pleas, easier to climb into Baby, and the easiest to sit and watch him try on all these fancy clothes.
He looks very handsome in them. This particular undershirt is a little too much of a see-through white that hugs at his chest nicely, you think it's the third he's tried on and the tightest yet. You shift in your seat behind him and he stands grumpily before a tall mirror, hands clumsy and working at the collar.
"Looks fuckin' stupid, right?" he huffs.
You shake your head too fast.
"It looks nice, Dean. Why does it have to be perfect?"
"'Cause a gala's like… a super obnoxious prom. I've gotta fit in with the bigwigs."
"Oh. I never went to prom."
He turns around quietly to face you with a soft sigh. But he looks a lot less troubled as his gaze meets yours. A small ache in the pit of his chest as he imagines you all pretty and dancing against him, he wishes he would've taken you.
"That's a good thing. Prom's for losers, anyway," he says, and nods towards your lap. "Hand me one?"
You look down at the array of ties strewn over your thighs, all picked by you. A classy red one stares back and you reach it out to him. His fingers brush yours as he takes it.
"Why're you going to this, again?" you ask.
"Some… haunted vase needs destroying, or something. I've gotta do super cool, like, ninja stuff to get it."
Your lips round in an 'o' and you think of him jumping over lasers. And then of him in the fancy mansion, surrounded by equally fancy people. There'll probably be pretty paintings on the walls, or tapestries, old statues scattered around. Carved fountains that spring up warm water, a big garden full of tall flowers and leaves.
That part sounds very lovely.
"And I can't come?" your question is soft.
He clicks his tongue, distracted in an attempt to knot the tie. "Bobby doesn't want you going, sweetheart."
"Would it not be safe?"
The tie falls loose and he curses under a short breath.
"Well, no, it- it's high security."
You toss the remaining ties onto the arm of the waiting chair and stand with butterflies. Stepping up to Dean, he smells like warm amber and faded, boyish cologne. He blinks at you owlishly when your fingers reach up to fuss at the tie for him, your knuckle grazes his neck.
Sparks and jolts all over.
"Then maybe I could go. I don't need his permission, anyway," you murmur, forcing your gaze to stick. You can feel him staring.
It's daunting. Lovely to know he's looking at you, because it must mean he likes to, but daunting all the same because your cheeks are warm now. There's a buzz in your heart that thrums steady at the feel of his soft breath fanning your forehead.
"You'd really wanna go to this thing?"
"Will there be a garden?"
"Maybe," he supplies, a big hand coming up to your back to give an affectionate few pats. "Sweetheart, it's gonna be busy. Lots of snobby people. You don't like those."
You tip your head up to see his prettiness, hands falling. So professional, you think, in the dark tie and button-up and suit jacket. Still wearing his jeans, because he insists he'll just borrow a pair of Bobby's old slacks.
Very handsome. A swath of tan from the sunshine over the curve of his nose and turning to catch himself in the mirror, he smooths down his chest and you hope that nothing you feel is outwardly visible. He's used to your usual awkwardness. Any more and he'll start to wonder if you're alright.
You remember yourself, "But I'll be with you. And I wanna see the garden."
"What if there isn't one?"
"Then there won't be a garden and I'll still be with you."
The silence that stretches as he gazes blankly at his reflection makes you shuffle on your feet beside him. Maybe you've said it too intimately, but you've told him a plethora of sweet things like that. He's being weird, you decide, to avoid overthinking.
But then he's looking at you again, fit with a charmed smile and shining eyes as he displays his new threads, and it's hard to think about him a normal amount.
"Do I look douchey enough?" he asks. His canine glints.
Not at all. You nod. "I think so."
Everything is a hazy, warm flurry as he chucks off the jacket and discards the button-up to reveal bare, smooth chest and abdomen. You smile at the way he messily curls into his faded tee to get it on and wait patient as he goes to pay for the rentals.
He's an award-winning motion picture walking back to you. Silhouetted by flickering, yellowed fluorescents that he manages to suit, being ethereal must come easy. He spins the plastic bag of clothing in his grip and takes place by your side to whisk you away from the Macy's and all of her old smells.
You're happy to fall in step beside him, natural in the way your shoulders bump every few paces. "Can we go get some ice cream now?"
He takes your hand. So many fluttery, swirling things flourish inside of your stomach, you may keel over before you can get your waffle cone.
"Yeah, angel. Come on. I'm craving double chunk fudge."
❤︎
i've fallen ill to the unavoidable weekly writing style crisis i feel as though everything i'm writing sounds so repetitive and lame but i'm hoping i'll recover from this ailment soon so that the next fic sounds nicer!
cw: unrequited feelings, established friendship, pining, no smut warnings for the first chapter, clark is a little broody, suggestiveness, reader is not self aware, use of y/n.
synopsis: clark kent is painfully, secretly, one-sidedly in love with his childhood best friend.
wc. 4.3k
read part two here / return to series masterlist / return to dc masterlist / return to main masterlist
clark didn't say much when you dragged him towards the little cafe you chose for today's lunch date. he had simply allowed you to wrap your hand around his and guide him around like a puppy on a leash. he didn't mind being one - a puppy - for you if it made you happy. he's always been quite receptive to your big personality. you talk, he listens.
you're passionate, he's calming.
you're fire, he's water.
despite your somewhat abrasive attitude, you bring out the best in him. all of the darker parts of his mind shut off and back away when you're near. he puts himself in your hands and allows you to be in control. it feels safe.
the two of you have meetups every weekend now that you've gone on your separate ways. though you'd always been attached at the hip as kids - same elementary, same high school, same town - things are different now.
you go to a different university across the city, while clark's buried in graduate school coursework while working part-time at the Daily Planet.
it's not the same as it used to be. he can't just show up at your locker after last period to walk you home when the streetlights start flickering on. now he has to check his schedule twice, wedge you in between deadlines, and skip lunch breaks to finish his assignments so he doesn't cancel on you last minute. he doesn't mind. you're the highlight of his week.
you don't act like anything's changed. just the same bossy girl you were in third grade, you still tug him around like he belongs to you, grab his hand without asking, tell him everything that happened during your week as if he hasn't already been stalking your updates online. it amazes him sometimes, how easily you carry him along with you, like time never passed. you don't see the widening gap between who you are to each other.
friend.
best friend.
the words don't settle with him anymore. it's too small for the way he feels, too light for the way you weigh on him. but it's not like he can tell you that.
the place you picked today is a tiny one tucked on the corner of a busy block with painted brick, chalkboard menus, and sun streaming through the windows. the seats are close enough that your knees touch under the table. clark knows before he even sits down that it's going to drive him crazy.
your pretty hair's in a ponytail today, tied off with a soft silk bow, and every time you turn your head to talk to him about something, it bounces and he gets hit with that delightful scent of warm vanilla and sugar from your lotion and shampoo. it feels like a punishment.
you're halfway through a story about someone from your guys' old high school being pregnant when he tunes back in. you've picked a booth in the corner and you've sat down across from him, chin in your palm, voice soft and conspiratorial. you're licking a bit of gloss off your bottom lip like it’s an accident. clark hasn't even touched his sandwich because he's too busy staring at you, mouth agape.
"-and like, first of all, who even brings a guy like that on a Carnival cruise to begin with? he's such a loser. she was totally setting herself up to begin with"
he blinks. "hm?"
you pout, a little frustrated that he's just there picking at his food and hardly responding to a thing you just said. "are you even listening to me?"
clark leans back in the booth you're sharing, holding his hands in his lap so he doesn't do anything stupid like grabbing you and making you sit on his lap, or worse. there's this awful fog clouding his brain that makes him feel like his head's being smothered. he hates how stupid he gets around you, weak and vulnerable and desperate.
you frown at him with that ridiculous scrunchy face that makes him want to ruin you. "you're zoning out again! thinking about work, aren't you? how is it? i told you sitting in an office all day would get old real fast," his jaw tightens just slightly, fingers twitching against the table. "it's... not bad. i like it, a lot. it's what i've always wanted to do." he mutters.
you just hum in acceptance of his answer and reach across the table to grab his hand again like it belongs to you, fingers wrapping around his as you start to trace lazy hearts on his knuckles little it's casual and meaningless. like he's not getting hard under the table from smelling you and being so close to you. he gets so fucking sensitive around you like he's a little high schooler all over again. sure, he's had... some relationships while battling his disgustingly massive crush on you, and he can confirm no one gets him buzzing like this but you.
clark breathes out shakily and tries to look away from you, not able to look at your pretty face so full of adoration and all directed towards him. he can't bear to speak right now, because if he does, it'll accidentally be something that reveals the feelings he'd had for the past decade (give or take).
you pop a raspberry into your mouth and just beam up at him cluelessly, hand still locked around his. you're practically nuzzling his bicep, painfully oblivious to the effect it has on him, and then you have the audacity to say; "you look mad,"
"i'm not mad, y/n." he responds so softly because it feels like it hurts to speak. the pet name comes out of his mouth naturally. instinctively. you glance up at him innocently, tilting your head in an attempt to read him. when you fail, you just shake your head and smile, pulling your legs up onto the shared seat so you can slide them over his lap, all warm and sweet as if you don't even realize most of your body is glued to his. "you kinda look mad."
he drags a hand over his face and exhales through his nose, trying to physically force the tension out of his body. he's not mad. he doesn't get mad at you. his mind is just completely taken over by all the feelings he has for you. "i'm not mad," he says again, quieter this time. more honest. "just..."
you blink up at him, still waiting wide-eyed and patient and so soft that he wants to scream. "just?"
his hand twitches again, finally giving in. he brings it up to the hem of your sleeve and toys with it, tugging it gently like he needs to anchor himself to something. "just trying not to do anything stupid."
a sweet smile spreads across your lips. he knows you think you know all about hm and what he's feeling right now, what he means by stupid, but you don't. he doesn't think you'd ever really understand when you laugh at his stupid jokes or call him handsome or your other half.
"what kind of stupid?" you ask sweetly, even though you don't really expect him to answer. you're already going back to your food, resting your cheek on his shoulder.
"the kind that ruins things," he says finally, not pulling away from your touch.
"hm. i'm not sure what that means. but i don't think you could ever ruin anything, clark." you giggle and poke his nose affectionately, not thinking too much of it. one thing clark likes about your airheaded-ness is that you can never focus on a topic long enough to get a proper read on the situation. sure, it can be frustrating when he's trying to figure out if you ate today or did your laundry or finished your homework, but when it's him acting weird and you lose focus in the middle of trying to figure him out, it's a blessing.
you end up going back to talking anyway, fortunately taking your attention away from his strange behavior. "oh my gosh, and do you remember that girl named summer? with the highlights?"
he doesn't respond, blinking at you dumbly through lowered lashes. he can't help that his gaze ends up dropping to your lips. which are soft and a glossy, sticky pink. every word that comes out of them sounds sugary and teasing on purpose, but he knows it's not. you wouldn't know how to tease intentionally.
"remember in school when she used to copy everything I did?" you continue, twisting a silky lock of hair around your finger like you're thinking real hard. "like it was actually crazy. i wore those really cute black boots with bows on the back once and the next day she came to school in the exact same ones! and, i liked that one guy from band and suddenly she was, like, obsessed with him."
your foot brushes against his ankle under the table.
he tenses, and you don't even notice, because you're too busy talking animatedly and dragging your foot back and forth on his leg. he can hardly breathe right now. You couldn't possibly be doing this on purpose, could you? you're likely just restless, just one of those touchy little girls who always wants to hold hands and braid hair and cuddle people like it's meaningless. your cleavage spills just slightly over the neckline of your little white sweater. you're so close that your shampoo invades all his senses; every breath he takes is all you. your foot slides a little further, presses in, then back.
you whine suddenly, tilting your head at him with that baby voice you love to use on him when he's quiet too long. "you're not listening again."
he looks at your hand in his, gripping it tighter, while you don't even flinch. you just smile and wiggle your fingers like you're playing. he closes his eyes. counts to three. he's doing everything in his power, truly, to remind himself you're just friends. all you'll ever see him as is a friend. some guy you've strung along since primary school. he can't think about kissing you or touching you or fucking you when you see him as a friend. or worse, a brother.
you frown and squeeze his hand. "you gonna respond to me?" you question with a curious head tilt, your foot still moving up and down his leg as if you're not slowly killing him with every graze of your foot that climbs higher and higher, closer to his clothed bulge. "sweetie," he grunts, praying he doesn't get hard just from some playful touching. he wills away a boner with his mind, closing his eyes tightly to try and think of something else. "maybe... m-maybe don't do that. people might get the wrong idea."
you blink, "doing what? are you sure you're not mad? you've been so weird all day"
his heart rate spikes at the question yet again. it's really getting to him, the fact that you're able to tell when he's being off, and paired with the way you're caressing him under the table, it's hard to focus. he exhales shakily. "i told you no," he says. "i'm just trying really hard to behave because i don't wanna scare you off."
again, you giggle cluelessly, still having no idea what he means and no questioning it. "okay, weirdo." you lean back and pop another piece of fruit into your mouth, still holding his hand while he stares, wondering how much longer he can take this before he snaps. you reach up to his head with both hands, totally ignoring your own plate, and immediately start fussing with his hair. "hold still," you whine, pushing his fringe back and away from his face, your voice light and coaxing. "you have this little piece sticking up and it's driving me crazy."
he grits his teeth, but lets you touch him despite the flush crawling up his neck, his body tensed up as your fingers push through his hair. it makes his skin crawl. you're too close. you smooth his hair down, frowning a little in concentration, lashes fluttering as you squint. "you have such pretty hair, you know. you always did. like, it's thick but not frizzy, and it's shiny. boys never take care of their hair, but yours always looks so nice."
it takes everything in him not to grab you and tug you closer as your hand rakes gently through his hair. he wants to tell you that you're the reason he wears the conditioner you said you liked three years ago. that he started brushing his hair back neatly instead of chopping it off in the summer because you said once, "you look like a prince when your hair's longer"; and he's been keeping it ever since.
you sit back finally, satisfied with your handiwork, and as a reward, you grab his drink and sip from it, ignoring the one you ordered for yourself, raspberries with lots of ice. he watches the gloss from you lips smear on the rim. "hm," he murmurs suddenly, nodding toward his cup where your lip print lingers. "you always do that." you glance up, mid sip, blinking wide eyed. "do what?"
"steal my stuff." he's watching the gloss smear and faint wetness of your saliva. his eyes, dilated flicker up to meet yours and then right back down again. you shrug and smile prettily. "cause yours is always better."
he stares into your eyes, a strange expression on his face. you think he's just tired. he always looks like that when he hasn't been sleeping well, but you don't know why he wouldn't be. he's only up late or sleeping poorly if he's got editorials due soon or if he's hyper fixating on something, like when you used to date that guy who played in a band two years ago, and he stayed up for nights obsessively learning music theory and bass tabs just to prove to himself he could play better. he never even liked the bass, he just wanted to understand what you saw in that guy and if he could be what you wanted too.
you never knew that, of course. you assumed his hyper fixation was on music at the time, not on trying to win you over. which he failed at. but at least now he can play the guitar for you too. though when he does it, it's just clark being silly. not like when wyatt would play it for you and you would drool all over yourself.
"want me to get you a refill?" you offer sweetly, scooting back a little bit and raising your arms above your head in a stretch, wanting to loosen your body up before you head up to the counter to get him a new drink. the movement causes the soft skin of your tummy to peek out from underneath your sweater, and it drives him crazy. his cheeks heat up and his heart and pulse rate increase frighteningly quick.
his hand shoots out instinctively, firm on your wrist before you can get up. "no," he says lowly, a little too quick. you blink down at him, surprised, your stretch half-finished, your body still turned toward him, a tiny sliver of your stomach exposed. when you move just enough, he can see the waistband of your lacy panties under your pants.
"no just-" he looks at you longingly. he hopes it isn't too obvious. "don't leave," he mutters, but he doesn't let go of your wrist just yet. his thumb moves slowly over the delicate skin there, rubbing absentminded circles as if he forgot he was even touching you.
you blink at him cluelessly. "clark, would you tell me what's going on with you? you're not yourself at all today. is that boss of yours being a piece of shit again?" the soft, honeyed tone in your voice does something to him, and paired with his name falling past your lips, he's dizzy -and you don't even realize what it means to him. he bristles. he hates how you could call him stuff like that while he's already visibly flustered and worked up, acting innocent and confusing him more than you already have. your foot is still pressed to his leg, soft and slow like you don’t even know what it’s doing to him. "y/n- your foot... move it off my leg, please."
"why?"
"why-?" he nearly chokes on his next breath. you couldn't possibly be this unaware, right? if you kept moving your foot along the inside of his leg, he'd probably make a mess of his pants in the middle of the restaurant. you're tormenting him and you're confused why he's telling you to cut it out.
"it's too... it's too intimate."
"but i'm your best-"
"i'm not your friend," he interrupts quietly. the words hang there in the air between you awkwardly. you go still, eyes wide, lips parting slightly in surprise. is he... does he not want to be your friend anymore? his jaw ticks. his hand is still on your wrist.
"what..?"
clark's stomach drops the second he sees your face. it'd come out so quiet, more like a groan than a statement with intention behind it. it hadn't been meant for you, more for himself. he doesn't feel like your friend. just some strange man acting like he is because it's the closest thing he can get to being your boyfriend.
your foot finally stops moving. the little sliver of your stomach disappears under your sweater as you instinctively pull back a bit, your hand still caught under his. he squeezes his eyes shut, wishing he could drag the words back down his throat. he hadn’t planned on saying it ever. because he knew that it would cause you to look at him the way you are right now - shocked, like he just slapped you. letting go of you, he presses his palms flat to his thighs under the table to keep from touching you anymore.
"clark?" you whisper.
he finally forces himself to look at you. you're still turned toward him, having not pulled back completely, but there's a little distance now. inside, he's screaming. tell her you didn't mean it! tell her you love her, tell her anything but nothing.
if only it were that simple.
"dang it... i just...." he groans under his breath, pushing his fingers into his hair until it sticks up where you just fixed it. "forget it. i'm just tired," he mutters, brushing it off. "didn't sleep much last night. said something stupid."
you widen your eyes a little and try to figure out if you can believe him. "oh... are you sure?" you look uncertain, which makes clark feel unpleasant. he doesn't think you've ever not trusted him with anything.
"mmh,” he hums softly, eyes pointedly avoiding yours. "you know i'm your friend. obviously. i'm just... tired and saying... what's that thing you say? talking out of your backside?" he relaxes when your face softens a little. he takes your hands in his, squeezing. "you know how i get when i don't eat." he laughs awkwardly. sounds weird, not like the cute little laugh he does when he's really amused, the one with the scrunched nose and dimples.
you don't answer right away, your head tilted in quiet suspicion. but then you smile and shrug it off like you always do. "well, eat then,” you say gently, passing him a napkin and scooting your drink back toward him. "and stop being so cryptic."
he nods quietly, heart pounding in his chest even as he tries to act normal. "yeah." he murmurs, voice lower now, finally lifting the sandwich like he’s about to take a bite. "i'll cut it out."
-
the waitress comes by with the bill. he takes it before you can even see the amount on the machine, grabbing his wallet out of his back pocket.
"hey," you protest, poking his chest with your forefinger. "i was gonna pay this time."
he hums and taps the buttons on the machine, "with what, hm? a smile and your little charm bracelets? you probably don't even carry money in your purse. i pay for all your things."
you gasp and swat his arm. "i offered to get the next one. you can't make fun of me and then still pay."
"watch me."
you scrunch your nose at him. "you're annoying." you stay like that with him for a little longer, picking at the last bits of fruit from the bowl between you while he finishes the waffles he ordered, neither of you mentioning how your legs are still draped over his. the booth's too small.
"you know, i've always wondered," you murmur after a while, your hands climbing up his body and toying with his sweater.
"what'd you wonder princess?" he questions, hoping you don't feel the way he's warm or slick with sweat with the way you're practically all over him at this point.
"why you never date anyone," you say softly, not looking at him. your fingers are tugging gently at a loose thread on his sleeve, your nails scraping the fabric in tiny circles, and it makes his breath catch. he's not sure if it's the question or the way you're touching him that has his pulse spiking like this. probably both.
"i mean," you continue and lift your head quickly when you notice the tension. "not that i'm saying you should, i just... like... you're cute. and quiet and kind and kind of mysterious. girls like that. i mean, i do at least."
he pauses and looks down at you when you say that, unable to believe that you really said that. do you... like him?
he turns his head to look at you, making sure he heard right. you keep your eyes low, still scraping little patterns into his sleeve, your face shows that you didn't make much of what you'd just said, probably thought of it as nothing but a passing comment you didn't think too hard about.
and then you go and ruin it.
"i just meant in general. not that you should date me or anything. it's not like i'd ever see you like that. a boyfriend."
his heart drops. he doesn't say anything right away, he just keeps looking at you like he's trying to figure out how the fuck you meant that, if maybe it came out wrong, if maybe you're about to laugh and nudge him and go "kidding!" but you don't. you're still playing with his clothes, just thinking out loud, and it hurts. you're not even trying to be cruel, that's the worst part. you're being sweet. being yourself.
you'd never be like that. he knows it. you know it. it’s better to change the topic before the thoughts in his head start to spiral.. he can't fall apart while you're still touching him. he doesn't want to be sad around you. not you. you're the only person he ever feels okay with.
"so. you think i don't date anyone?" he mumbles to you, and your eyes flit up to his. you curl closer to him, nearly on his lap now. God, you don't get what you're doing. "just cause you never talk about anyone. i've never even seen you look at anyone on campus." he looks at you intently.
"that doesn't mean i don't date people. maybe... you just don't know about it." he mumbles. a bold faced lie. you look a little awkward as he says that. it feels like he's withholding information from you, which is odd because you and him had never had secrets, not from each other. but now it seems like he's hiding a whole person from you.
"o-oh," you whisper. "right, sorry. none of my business."
he pauses, noticing the insecurity in your face. he sees the way your fingers stop moving against his sleeve, the way your mouth presses into a soft, uncertain line. you're not smiling anymore, and it kills him. he hates how fast your mood changed, how small your voice went, how you suddenly look like you regret saying anything at all. it's the second time he's said something stupid in the past hour.
he swallows hard, "you'd know if i was with someone."
his intense stare causes you to shift, folding your legs back down and moving to sit properly again, he misses the contact immediately. he'd give anything to hold you forever. "so…" you murmur after a second, voice uncertain. "wanna walk around a bit outside?"
he nods quietly, letting out a breath. "yeah. yeah i do." you brighten and slide out of the booth. he follows close behind, lingering just long enough to watch you fix your hair and fluff your sweater, little movements that shouldn't make his face to heat up the way it does. he should be used to it by now. being this close to you without being able to have you, kiss you, hold you, make love to you. but it never gets easier.
you pause at the door to wait for him, reaching out once more to take his hand. he holds onto yours immediately like its second nature, and just like that, he feels so safe and fuzzy all over again.
summary: Little town in Ohio, multiple bodies have been found; skin eaten and ribs cracked. Sam and Dean expect another monster. A werewolf, a ghoul, a wendigo. But when they get there, nothing is what they have seen before... In the end, the monster is just another human.
cw: +18. 10.2k words. fem!reader. graphic gore (torn flesh, exposed organs, blood). cannibalism. murder and implied past murders. predatory behavior. body horror. blasphemous / distorted religious symbolism and imagery. guilt. self-harm ideation (starvation, biting self to resist urges). psychological distress. shame and self-loathing. fear and panic. implied sexual activity (non-explicit). threat of gun violence. dark themes of faith, God, damnation. reblog is a creator's best-friend, thank you!
The town didn’t have a name that mattered.
It was one of those places folded into the flat spine of rural Ohio, stitched together by cornfields and faith. A single main street with a feed store, a diner that closed at three, and a church that stood taller than anything else, white paint peeling like old sunburned skin. The kind of town where porch lights hum all night and everyone knows when a stranger’s car rolls in.
The sidewalks were cracked like old knuckles, weeds pushing through as if even the earth was trying to escape. Screen doors slapped shut in the evenings while radios murmured gospel through open windows, and the air always carried the faint smell of fertilizer and something metallic beneath it—something that clung to the back of the throat if you breathed too deeply. The cemetery rested on a slight hill behind the church, headstones leaning at tired angles, as though even the dead were weary of standing upright in a place that refused to change.
On Sundays, the congregation filled the pews with stiff collars and bowed heads, singing hymns that echoed too loudly in the hollow space.
The preacher spoke of sin like it was weather; inevitable, seasonal, rolling in whether you invited it or not. People here believed in hell with the same certainty they believed in harvests. They believed evil had claws and horns and glowing eyes. They never imagined it might look like a girl buying coffee at the diner, nodding politely, hands folded as if in prayer.
That’s why you don’t stay long in places like this, and that’s why it surprises you when you do.
They call it animal attacks at first.
Livestock torn apart in the early hours before dawn. Then a drifter found near the railroad tracks, ribcage opened like a hymnal, meat missing with surgical neatness but no knife wounds to explain it. No paw prints, no tire tracks, just blood soaked deep into the dirt and bones shining pale in the moonlight.
The papers say ritualistic, the sheriff says sick individual and the preacher says the devil walks among us.
Two days later, a waitress from the diner disappears on her way home.
After that, the word no one wants to say begins to creep through town like rot under floorboards: cannibal. It isn’t spoken aloud at first—it’s breathed behind cupped hands in grocery aisles, muttered over rotary phones late at night, written off as hysteria the moment it leaves someone’s mouth. But the evidence refuses to soften itself into something easier. The bodies, when they’re found at all, are wrong in a way that no animal could manage; flesh removed with deliberation, organs taken clean, bones left like pale offerings under open sky. Whatever is doing this isn’t wild. It isn’t mindless… It is choosing.
Men begin walking their wives to their cars after late shifts. Porch lights that once flickered lazily now burn until dawn, as if illumination alone could ward off something so intimate. Parents call their children inside before sunset, voices tight and brittle. The town shortens its hours; the diner closes earlier, the feed store installs a lock it hasn’t needed in twenty years. Every stranger becomes suspect. Every quiet neighbor suddenly looks different under scrutiny. The fear is not loud—it is constant, low, thrumming beneath conversations like a second heartbeat.
Sunday sermons swell in volume and urgency. The preacher speaks of Sodom, of wolves in sheep’s clothing, of flesh and consequence. He dabs sweat from his brow while the congregation nods, clutching Bibles like shields. They want it to be something supernatural, something with horns and fire and a name that can be cast out in prayer. What terrifies them more than the gore, more than the empty bedrooms and unanswered calls, is the possibility that the thing devouring their own might kneel beside them in the pews. That it might look like them, speak like them, bleed like them.
That’s when the black car pulls into town.
The engine of the Impala growls low and familiar as it rolls past the church and toward the sheriff’s office. Inside, Dean drums his fingers against the steering wheel, eyes scanning the sleepy storefronts with a predator’s ease.
They hadn’t meant to pick up the case at all. It started as a blip in a police scanner thread, then a local news clipping buried three pages deep online: Rural Authorities Baffled by Livestock Mutilations. Sam had noticed the phrasing first; not attacks, not maulings but mutilations. He’d dug deeper from a library computer in Indiana while Dean refueled the car, pulling archived coroner summaries and sheriff’s statements that didn’t make it into print.
No claw marks, no sulfur, no EMF spikes reported by any curious amateur ghost hunters in the area. Just flesh missing in specific patterns and a rising body count that felt purposeful. By the time Sam called Dean over to the screen, his voice had that edge it only gets when something is wrong in a way he can’t categorize.
“Ohio,” he mutters while driving, eyes on the never ending road. “Why is it always Ohio?” Beside him, Sam flips another page in the thin stack of printed articles of John’s journal on his lap. His brow is furrowed in that deep, thoughtful way that means something isn’t fitting right. “It’s not an animal,” Sam says quietly.
“No kidding.”
“There are no defensive wounds. No tearing. It’s… deliberate.” He swallows slightly. “I’m talking organs removed, muscle tissue consumed but not randomly.”
Dean glances over for a second, almost scoffing. “You saying we’ve got a gourmet werewolf?”
“I’m saying it doesn’t match anything I’ve read.”
Dean smirks. “Great, love when you say that.”
They’d thrown theories at it on the drive east. Wendigo—but there were no signs of prolonged isolation or cannibalistic frenzy, no half-eaten remains dragged into the woods. Ghoul—but ghouls preferred the dead, grave dirt under their nails and carrion on their breath. Werewolf—too surgical, and wrong moon cycle. Demon—no sulfur, no possession symptoms in town reports.
Dean even suggested some backwoods cult, but the lack of ritual markings and the precision of the missing tissue dismantled that fast. Every option ended the same way: a dead end. Which meant either something new had crawled out of the dark or something old had never been given a name.
They don’t know you yet but you’ve been here your whole life.
This town isn’t a stop along the way; it’s the place that raised you, baptized you, watched you grow tall and quiet beneath its steeple shadow. You know every cracked sidewalk and sagging porch, you know which houses keep their lights on past midnight and which fields flood first in spring, you learned to ride a bike on these roads.
Learned your Bible verses in that white church with the leaning cross, learned how to bow your head and pretend you were normal while something inside you stirred.
Your childhood bedroom still faces the cornfields—the wallpaper peeled when you were seventeen, curling at the corners like dried skin, and your father never fixed it. He doesn’t fix much anymore. The house smells like old coffee, of your mom’s perfume, sawdust and the faint copper tang you swear no one else can detect. You still sleep there some nights, staring at the ceiling while the porch light hums outside and trucks groan down the highway in the distance. You tell yourself that staying means you aren’t running, that staying means you’re braver than whatever lives inside your ribs.
The hunger has been worse lately.
Not wild, not rabid, oh no. That would almost be easier. No, it’s steady—reverent. Like a hymn sung too low to interrupt but too constant to ignore. It hums under your skin during Sunday service while the preacher speaks of flesh and sin. It coils tighter when hands join in prayer, when warmth presses shoulder to shoulder in the pew. You feel it most when the congregation says body and blood in unison, when communion wafers dissolve on tongues and the word sacrifice hangs heavy in the air. The irony does not escape you.
Three nights ago, it all became unbearable.
You told yourself you would drive: just drive until the feeling thinned. But you didn’t make it past the railroad tracks and he was already there—a drifter with a backpack and hollow eyes, someone no one in town would claim. The hunger isn’t violent at first; it’s intimate, it moves through you like a prayer answered wrong. When it finally took control, it was not frenzy but inevitability. It was flesh parted beneath your hands, warmth spilled over your skin, the smell of iron filled your lungs like incense. You didn’t stop until the ache quieted and the world fell silent again.
You never enjoy it. There is no thrill, no ecstasy, only relief so profound it feels holy. Like kneeling at an altar and finally being absolved. The gore doesn’t shock you anymore—the slick weight of muscle, the fragile crack of bone, the way the human body opens with terrible simplicity. What devastates you is the aftermath: the knowledge that you have taken something God once breathed into.
Afterward, you went to the creek like you did when you were a teenager, when it first started and you didn’t understand why your hands wouldn’t stop shaking. You knelt in the mud and scrubbed at your skin until it burned, watching pink water swirl downstream, you whispered apologies into the dark—to Him, to your parents sleeping down the road, to the town that taught you about heaven and hell in equal measure. You asked for forgiveness the way other girls asked for love.
You don’t see yourself as a monster, because monsters are loud, obvious, they snarl and bare their teeth.
You are quiet, you bow your head in church, you say ma’am and sir, you hold doors open, you sit in the third pew from the front and sing hymns with a voice that never trembles.
You are not evil, just wrong.
The Winchester brothers roll into town just after noon, the Impala’s black frame cutting through the quiet like a bad omen. The church bell is ringing when they pass it—slow, heavy tolls that seem to press down on the air itself. Dean notices the way curtains shift in windows as they drive by, the way conversations on the sidewalk stall. Small towns always react like that: suspicion first and hospitality second.
By the time they park outside the sheriff’s office, Sam has already read every article twice.
Inside, the office smells like burnt coffee and old paper, a mounted deer head stares blankly from one wall. Sheriff Grady is thick-necked, red-faced, and exhausted in a way that suggests he hasn’t slept properly in days. Dean flashes a badge—federal, polished, convincing—and starts talking livestock patterns and possible animal migration. Sam fills in the blanks, calm and methodical, asking for autopsy photos, timelines, witness statements. The sheriff hesitates before handing over the file.
“You boys ever seen anything like this?” he asks, voice low.
Dean doesn’t miss a beat. “We’ve seen strange.”
The sheriff studies them like he’s weighing how much to believe, then finally mutters, “You’re just in time, we found another one this morning.”
The crime scene sits just beyond the cemetery fence, tall grass bending in the wind like it’s trying to look away. A coroner’s van idles nearby and flies swarm thick and greedy in the humid air. Sam and Dean step under the yellow tape, gloves snapping tight over their hands.
The smell hits immediately: copper-heavy blood baked under the sun, layered with the sweet-sick rot of exposed viscera. It clings to the back of the throat, almost making them gag. Dean exhales through his nose. “Okay, that’s new.”
The body lies on its back, head tilted unnaturally toward the church steeple as if in accusation. The ribcage has been opened with disturbing neatness; not hacked, not torn, but parted. The sternum split clean, flesh stripped from the ribs in long, deliberate sections, muscles missing in symmetrical patterns along the thighs and abdomen. The cavity gapes open, empty where organs should rest and the heart is gone… so are portions of the liver.
No ragged edges, no scattered chunks, but just absence: long and heavy.
Flies crawl along exposed bone, dipping into dark hollows where warmth once lived. Blood has pooled beneath the spine and dried in thick, almost black sheets beneath him. “No sulfur,” Dean notes quietly, scanning with an EMF meter more out of habit than hope. “No claw marks,” Sam replies, crouching lower. He studies the edges of the wounds, fingertips hovering but not touching. “No tearing at connective tissue. It’s clean.”
Dean circles the body, boots flattening grass sticky with blood. “You ever see a wolf do this?” he mutters. “Because I haven’t.”
Sam doesn’t answer immediately but his jaw tightens slightly as he observes the way muscle has been separated from bone—not in frenzy, but with intention. The way joints were dislocated efficiently or the way nothing was wasted in certain areas.
Dean crouches beside him, lowering his voice. “Wendigo?”
Sam shakes his head faintly. “Wendigos tear, they hoard and they drag remains back to a nest. There’s no feeding pattern like that here.” Dean studies the open chest cavity again, grimacing. “Werewolf without the whole moonlight aesthetic?”
“No bite marks, no saliva traces.” Sam swallows, eyes tracing the precision again. “It’s almost… surgical.”
Dean straightens slowly, gaze drifting toward the church looming nearby, white paint glowing harsh against blue sky.
“Almost like it knew exactly what it wanted,” he mutters back at his brother. Sam stands too, staring out at the cornfields stretching endless and silent beyond the cemetery. He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, he doesn’t say the cuts don’t look animal. He doesn’t say the removal patterns resemble something disturbingly deliberate, he doesn’t say that whatever did this wasn’t frenzied—it was controlled.
Instead, murmurs, “Whatever it is… it’s not sloppy.”
Dean studies the body one more time, jaw set hard. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Me too.”
The bell above the diner door jingles sometime after the lunch rush has thinned, and you barely look up at first. The place smells like burnt coffee, fryer grease, and lemon disinfectant; familiar, comforting in a way that almost makes you forget the tension coiled beneath your ribs. You’re tucked into your usual booth by the window, cardigan sleeves pushed over your hands, a plate of untouched pie softening in front of you. You come here more out of habit than hunger, real hunger is something else entirely.
When you finally glance toward the door, you notice them immediately: they don’t fit in.
One of them moves like he owns whatever space he steps into. Broad-shouldered, leather jacket despite the heat, boots that look worn in rather than decorative. The other is taller, quieter, his hair falling into his eyes as he scans the room with something sharper than curiosity. They aren’t dressed like locals, they aren’t passing through on farm business, there’s a weight to them, like they carry more than duffel bags in the trunk of their car.
You think city, you think temporary, you think they won’t stay long.
They slide into a booth near the counter. The older one—the louder one—flashes the waitress an easy grin and orders pie before he’s even fully seated. The taller one asks for coffee and thanks her in a voice low and careful.
You find yourself watching them without meaning to.
It’s not attraction exactly, not yet… It’s curiosity; the same kind you feel when a storm rolls in unexpectedly, something different in the air, something alive.
Your hunger stirs faintly at the edges, confused more than awakened. Not because of them specifically, but because newness has a scent all its own. You press your tongue to the back of your teeth and focus on your coffee instead, breathing slow.
At their booth, Dean leans back and stretches his arms along the vinyl seat, surveying the diner like it’s just another stop on a long, endless road. “Small town charm,” he mutters, glancing at a faded photo of the high school football team from 1998 framed crooked on the wall. “You can practically taste the cholesterol.”
Sam doesn’t smile because he’s already scanning faces subtly; farmers in seed caps, an elderly couple sharing fries, a teenage girl refilling napkin dispensers. He isn’t looking for anyone specific yet but just patterns and tells.
“Let’s eat first,” Dean says, lowering his voice once the waitress walks away. “Then we ask about the drifter. See who gets twitchy.” Sam nods, fingers tapping lightly against his mug. “Sheriff said he used to hang around here, someone might’ve noticed something.”
Dean shrugs. “Or someone’s lying.”
Their food arrives, and for a moment they look like exactly what they’re pretending to be: two road-weary men passing through, arguing lightly over who gets the last fry. Dean makes a show of enjoying the pie and Sam drinks his coffee black and watches the room over the rim of his cup.
His gaze passes over you once; not lingering, not even suspicious, simply cataloging everyone around.
You drop your eyes quickly anyway, heat creeping up your neck for reasons you don’t examine too closely. You’re used to being invisible here, so used to blending into wood-paneled walls and soft country radio playing overhead. But something about them makes the diner feel smaller.
Dean wipes his mouth with a napkin and nods subtly toward the counter. “After this, we’ll ask if anyone’s seen strangers around the railroad tracks.”
Sam hums in agreement. “Keep it casual.”
“Hey! I always do.”
Neither of them are looking at you now: you’re just another quiet girl in a cardigan, nursing cold coffee and staring out at cornfields through streaked glass.
You finish your drink and slide out of the booth, leaving a few crumpled bills beneath the plate. As you walk toward the door, you pass their table close enough to catch the scent of leather and gun oil beneath cheap motel soap. Dean glances up automatically, offering a brief, easy smile—reflexive charm. You give a small nod in return, smile on your face, the kind of acknowledgment small towns are built on.
The bell jingles again as you step back into the afternoon heat. Inside, Sam watches the door swing shut, then looks back down at his coffee. Outside, you stand for a moment on the sidewalk, sunlight pressing warm against your skin. The hunger is quiet for now, just a distant hum, vibrating under your skin and bones.
That night, you dream of teeth.
Not just your own—rows and rows of them, white and endless, lining the pews of the church like a congregation. They chatter softly in place of prayer, clicking together in rhythm with the tolling bell overhead. The sound is deafening. You’re standing barefoot in the aisle, dress hem soaked dark and heavy, and when you look down, blood is spreading from beneath your feet in slow, deliberate rivers. It creeps between the wooden boards, thick and warm, carrying the copper scent of communion turned rancid.
The altar is wrong: the cross above it drips steadily, red tracing the carved ribs of Christ’s body as if they’ve been split open fresh. His painted chest gapes, ribs pried apart like shutters, muscle exposed in glistening strands. You can see the cavity inside Him—empty, simply hollow. The organ meant to rest there gone. The congregation doesn’t scream but they kneel and they bow their heads as if this is expected, as if sacrifice has simply changed shape.
Then the floor shifts beneath you: bones push up through the wood like roots; femurs and vertebrae twisting together into something cathedral-like and obscene. Rot clings to them, sweet and suffocating, clotted pieces of muscle still attached in stringy ribbons. Hands reach up from the blood at your ankles, not to drag you down, but to hold you in place. Their fingers are slick, their palms warm against your skin. The faces attached to them are familiar: the drifter by the tracks, the stranger near the cornfield, shadows of others you never let yourself name. They don’t look angry, they look disappointed.
Church bells keep ringing, louder, louder and louder. Until the sound becomes a heartbeat—your heartbeat—pounding so hard you can taste it. The hunger pulses with it, a living thing inside your chest, pressing outward as if it wants to split you open the same way. You feel your own ribs part in the dream, feel fingers hook beneath bone and pull. Not to kill you but to look inside, to see what’s wrong.
You wake before dawn with the hunger clawing at your ribs.
Your sheets are damp with sweat; the room smells faintly metallic, though you know that’s in your head. Your jaw aches from clenching and for a split second, you swear you can still feel warmth coating your hands, something sticky beneath your nails.
It’s too soon.
You press your palm to your mouth and breathe through it, inhaling slowly, exhaling slower, like the preacher taught during long sermons when panic tried to creep in. The sky outside your window is still ink-dark, the world holding its breath before morning.
Not again, not yet.
Please.
You lie awake staring at the ceiling while the porch light hums outside your bedroom window and the house settles around you in tired creaks. Your parent’s door is closed down the hall. The clock on your nightstand blinks 3:17 a.m. in dull red numbers. The hunger has been building, low and patient, like something sharpening its teeth in the dark.
You try to pray.
You press your hands together, tug on the silver cross at your neck, bow your head, whisper words you’ve known since childhood—deliver us from evil, forgive us our trespasses—but the phrases feel thin tonight. Paper shields against something ancient and gnawing. The hunger doesn’t rage, it doesn’t scream, but God, it beckons.
By 3:43, you are sitting up.
By 3:51, you are pulling on your boots.
You don’t turn on any lights as you move through the house, you don’t look at the family photos lining the hallway, you don’t let yourself hesitate at the door. The screen creaks softly when you push it open, and the night air wraps around you thick and damp, heavy with the smell of soil and corn and distant fertilizer.
The fields are endless in the dark, silvered by moonlight and whispering prayers. You walk toward them like you’ve done this a hundred times before. Because you have.
The gravel crunches beneath your boots, crickets pause and resume their chorus. Somewhere far off, a dog barks once and then falls silent. Your pulse is steady, but your mouth floods with that familiar metallic tang; your gums ache, your fingers flex at your sides as if remembering something they were made to do.
You don’t know how long you walk before you hear him.
A laugh—sloppy, off-balance. Followed by the crunch of someone stumbling through the outer edge of the cornfield. You pause, body going still as prey. He emerges from between the stalks, swaying. Mid-thirties maybe, a shirt half untucked and a bottle dangling loose from his fingers. He smells like cheap beer and sweat and something sour beneath it.
He doesn’t see you at first. When he does, he squints. “Jesus,” he slurs. “You scared the hell outta me.” You say nothing but recognize him as one of the regulars of the diner. The hunger tightens, sharp now and the warmth of him hits you like a wave. Alive… So alive. “You lost?” he asks, taking a step closer. “You shouldn’t be out here alone, it’s late.”
The irony almost makes you laugh.
He steps closer again, close enough that you can see the pulse in his throat, close enough that you can hear his heart under the slur of his breathing. You feel something inside you give way.
You move before you consciously decide to. One second there’s space between you; the next your hands are in his shirt, fingers fisted tight. He yelps in surprise, bottle dropping and shattering at your feet. For half a heartbeat, there’s confusion on his face. Then your teeth sink in. Hot. That’s what you always forget.
How hot blood is when it spills fresh: it floods your mouth in a rush, copper-rich and thick, coating your tongue, sliding down your throat before you can even swallow properly. He screams—a wet, choking sound—and tries to push you away, but you’re stronger now. Stronger than you look, stronger than you ever want to be.
You pull him down into the grass.
The corn stalks sway above you like witnesses turning their backs.
Your hands work without hesitation, without doubt. You know where to press, where to tear: skin parts beneath your fingers with a resistance that gives way in sudden, awful bursts, muscle stretches and snaps in fibrous strands and warmth pours over your wrists, slick and alive. His movements grow weaker quickly—shock, blood loss, the body surrendering to something it cannot understand.
You don’t look at his face. You focus on the hunger because it guides you. It makes you forget about anything else.
Ribs crack beneath your grip with a muffled, splintering sound, the cavity opens under your hands, steam rising faintly in the cool night air, the smell is overwhelming; iron and salt and something almost sweet beneath it. You reach inside and feel the frantic flutter of a heart still trying. For a moment, just one, your hands hesitate.
When it’s over, the field is quiet again. Crickets resume their song and the moon watches without judgment.
You kneel back on your heels, chest heaving, blood soaking into your jeans, sticky and cooling against your skin. Your mouth is stained red, your hands tremble as the hunger recedes, as the roaring in your ears fades to a low hum. But as always, there’s tears running down your cheeks, mixing with the wet blood.
Relief settles over you like a heavy blanket.
You sit there longer than you should, staring at what remains. Pale bone catching moonlight, torn muscle exposed to open air, skin shredded apart. The earth is drinking what it’s been given. Your stomach twists—not with nausea, but with something far worse. Guilt. It crashes in once the silence returns, once the hunger is sated and you are left alone with yourself again.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper into the dark. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.” You don’t know who you’re apologizing to. The man in pieces at your knees? The God hanging in the church down the road? Your parents asleep in his bed, unaware that their daughter has slipped out into the night again?
You wipe your hands on the grass, but the blood doesn’t really leave.
By the time you walk back toward the house, dawn is just beginning to bruise the horizon. The porch light is still humming and you step inside quietly, boots left by the door, and move down the hallway like a ghost returning to her grave. In your bedroom, you sit on the edge of the bed and stare at your hands until the shaking stops.
The hunger is quiet now, but just for a little while.
Morning in town arrives pale and merciless.
By seven, the rumor had already outrun the sun: a farmer found him, half-hidden in the corn like something the earth tried to swallow and couldn’t finish. The sheriff calls it in with a voice stretched thin, and word travels fast—faster than it should in a place this small. Another body, worse than the others.
Dean’s phone vibrates while he’s still nursing motel coffee that tastes like burnt pennies. He answers on the second ring, jaw tightening as he listens.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “We’re on our way.”
Sam is already grabbing his jacket.
The field looks different in daylight. Cruel, blood-soaked, poison from the divine.
Yellow tape cuts across the green like a wound that won’t close, police cruisers idle along the dirt road and a small cluster of townspeople gathers at a distance despite orders to stay back—drawn by horror the same way people are drawn to open flame.
The smell carries farther this time. It’s all thick, metallic and sweet in a way that makes the stomach revolt. Dean ducks under the tape first, flashing the same federal badge as before. Sam follows, eyes already scanning the ground, the stalks bent and broken where struggle turned into collapse.
The body lies on its side this time, twisted into the grass.
Or what remains of it does.
The throat is ruined—torn open, not ragged but decisively breached. Dried blood cakes the collar of his clothes in dark, stiff layers. His abdomen has been opened wider than the previous victim, ribs forced apart at unnatural angles, cartilage snapped clean. Portions of muscle are missing from the thighs and shoulders, removed in long, deliberate strips. The cavity of his chest gapes toward the sky, organs absent in select, intentional places.
Flies swarm thick over exposed bone again. Dean swears under his breath. “Jesus.”
Sam crouches slowly, taking it in piece by piece; the soil beneath the body is blackened with blood that soaked deep overnight, there are no animal tracks circling the perimeter, no dragging marks leading away. Just impressions from a struggle that ended quickly. “He was alive when it started,” Sam murmurs, mostly to himself.
Dean glances at him. “Yeah?”
“Defensive abrasions on his forearms, bruises, like he tried to push it off.” Sam swallows slightly, eyes tracing the precision again. Dean straightens, scanning the edge of the field. Behind them, the murmur of townspeople grows louder.
That’s when Sam sees you. You didn’t mean to come, you told yourself you wouldn’t but guilt has a gravity of its own.
You stand at the edge of the crowd, cardigan pulled tight around you despite the rising heat. Your face is pale—more than usual—and your eyes are fixed on the yellow tape as if you can see through it. Gone is the smile, the bright eyes and the politeness everyone knows of you.
You can’t stop picturing it: the way his breath hitched, the sound of ribs giving way, the warmth on your hands. Your stomach twists violently, not with hunger this time but with shame. The relief from last night is gone, replaced by a hollow ache that spreads through your chest like frost.
You don’t notice Sam watching you, not at first.
He remembers you from the diner: the quiet girl with the cardigan and the tired eyes, the one who left without finishing her coffee. You don’t look like someone who belongs at a crime scene. But you’re here. He nudges Dean lightly. “I’ll be back.”
Dean arches a brow but doesn’t argue.
Sam slips back under the tape and makes his way through the onlookers, flashing his badge when necessary. You feel him before you see him, there’s a shift in the air, a presence stepping into your orbit. “Ma’am,” he says gently. You turn to face him. Up close, he looks taller than you remembered, broader and his expression isn’t accusatory— it’s careful. Concerned, almost.
“Agent Elsher,” he starts, offering the fake last name smoothly. “I saw you yesterday at the diner, right? Can I ask what you’re doing out here?” Your throat feels dry, your muscles aching inside your body.
“I live here,” you manage to voice back at him. “Everyone does.”
He nods once. “You know the victim?” You shake your head quickly. Too quickly. “I’ve seen him around.” Your eyes flick past him, toward the field, you can smell it even from here; the blood drying in the heat, the faint sweetness of opened flesh, the rot just beginning to whisper at the edges.
Your pulse stutters and the hunger stirs once more. It shouldn’t—you fed.
But it does, not because of the body, but because of him.
Sam watches the way your pupils shift, the way your breathing changes almost imperceptibly. Something in his gut tightens, not in suspicion yet, but in awareness. “You okay?” he asks quietly and you nod at him. Lie. Being this close to him feels wrong… It feels different. Your hunger has always been drawn to vulnerability—drifters, loners, men already slipping. Sam is none of those things; he is steady and strong.
Your body reacts anyway as heat creeps up your spine, your gums ache faintly. You clench your jaw, forcing your teeth together. You don’t want to look at his throat but God, you do. “Did you hear anything last night?” he continued, voice calm. “Any shouting? Cars?”
You swallow, the memory flashes vivid and brutal—the scream cut short, the crack of bone under your hands. “No, I didn’t hear anything,” you whisper. Sam studies you for a moment longer than is comfortable.
Behind him, Dean calls out something to the sheriff, frustration lacing his tone. Your gaze flickers to the field again. The man’s ribcage is visible even from this distance—pale arcs through broken grass. A smear of darkened blood marks the earth like a signature.
Your stomach churns. “I’m sorry,” you murmur suddenly.
Sam blinks at those words. “For what?” You realize what you’ve said and shake your head quickly. “For… what’s happening. It’s—” Your voice falters. “It’s awful.” He watches you carefully. Up close, he notices the faint tremor in your hands, the exhaustion carved into your features and the way you look not frightened but burdened.
“You don’t have to stay,” he says softly. “You shouldn’t.”
Your eyes meet his and for one dangerous second, the world narrows. The hunger hums louder—not violent, not overwhelming, but curious, intrigued. It presses toward him like a compass needle seeking north. You take a step back instinctively, scared of yourself.
“I should go,” you whisper. Sam nods slowly. “If you remember anything, anything at all, come by the sheriff’s office.” You nod again.
You turn away before the pull becomes unbearable.
Sam watches you retreat through the thinning crowd, cardigan swaying around your waist, shoulders drawn tight as if you’re holding yourself together by force alone. Dean approaches him moments later. “Friend of yours?” Dean asks lightly, joking in his tone. Sam shakes his head, still watching the spot where you disappeared. “No.” But something about the way you stood there—too close, too still—lingers in his mind.
Back in the field, the body lies open to the sky, bones gleaming under harsh morning sun. And somewhere in your house, you press your back against your bedroom door and slide down to the floor, shaking.
The hunger isn’t gone at all.
Two days pass in a blur of church bells and sirens.
The town tries to fold the horror into itself the way it always does; with casseroles and whispered prayers and the steady hum of gossip behind drawn curtains. The body found by the cornfield is spoken about in lowered voices now. No one says what the coroner actually saw: the precision of torn muscle, the absence of certain organs, the way the ribs had been split like a butcher’s offering.
You know what he saw, you know because your teeth still damn ache.
You don’t sleep much or when you do, it’s shallow and fevered. You see bone under moonlight, you feel warm blood running over your wrists again. You wake with the phantom taste of iron coating your tongue and the echo of tearing flesh in your ears, nightmares and dreams mixing together.
And beneath the guilt, the crushing, nauseating guilt, there is still the hunger you know so well. It is quieter now, sated for the moment, but it hums like something coiled.
Waiting.
Sam can’t stop thinking about you.
He doesn’t say it like that, doesn’t even let it sound personal but Dean notices the way his brother circles back to the same detail in conversation. “The coroner said the tissue removal was… deliberate,” Sam mutters from the passenger seat of the Impala, case file open on his lap. “Not random scavenging.”
Dean drums his fingers against the steering wheel. “You think we’re dealing with a ghoul?”
“Maybe.” Sam hesitates. “Or something pretending to be one.”
“And the girl from the diner?” Dean asks lightly, but there’s a thread of curiosity under it. Sam stares out the window at the passing fields. “I don’t know, she was at the scene the next morning. She looked—” He searches for the word. “Not shocked. Just… wrecked.”
“People get wrecked seeing a body split open like that,” Dean says. “Doesn’t make them monsters.”
“I know.”
But Sam doesn’t sound convinced.
You don’t want to go back to the diner, it feels like stepping into a confession booth.
But routine is safety, routine is invisibility. So you pull on your soft cardigan, smooth your long dress, and walk through town like you always do. The bell above the diner door chimes as you step inside. The smell hits you first; it’s grease, coffee, sugar. And underneath it all—salt, sweat, warmth.
You see them immediately.
They’re seated in the same booth as before. The older one—Dean, you overheard the waitress call him—leans back with easy confidence, jacket slung over the vinyl seat. The taller one sits straighter, hands folded loosely around a mug like he’s trying to ground himself. Sam. The hunger reacts before you do, it lifts its head inside your chest like a scenting animal.
Not because they are weak but because they are strong. Because something in them feels different, denser, almost bright. It makes your mouth flood, it makes your pulse stutter. You nearly turn around and run out, trying to escape the feeling inside your chest.
But Dean sees you first, he flashes you that same easy smile. “Hey. Corner booth, right?”
You swallow, smile back at him and try to be as polite as you normally is. “Yeah, that’s me.” Your voice sounds normal, well, you think. Sam’s eyes are on you again, but not accusatory. Dean gestures to the empty seat at their table. “We were just talking about how small towns always have the best pie. You’re local, right? Any recommendations?”
It’s harmless, casual conversation between two people. You sit before you can stop yourself. The vinyl seat sticks faintly to your thighs. You fold your hands in your lap to hide how they tremble. “Cherry,” you say. “They make it from scratch. Might be the best pie I’ve ever tasted in my life.”
“See?” Dean grins at Sam. “Told you.” But Sam doesn’t smile, he studies your face, and it makes something inside you twist. “We didn’t catch your name,” he says gently.
You give it, syllables rolling onto your tongue. He repeats it like he’s testing the shape of it. “You’ve lived here long?” Dean then asks you, hands crossing on the old diner table.
“Yes, all my life.” Is all you can reply to the question, because there’s nothing else to say. “You knew the man who died?” Sam questions you. The words land like a stone dropped into a well. You picture him again—sprawled in the dirt, breath sour with alcohol, pulse fluttering weakly in his throat before your teeth found it. You remember the sound his ribs made when you pulled them apart. The way his blood soaked into the soil.
You keep your face soft. “I’ve seen him around,” you say. “He drank a lot.”
Dean nods. “Sheriff says animal attack. You buy that?” Your hunger shifts under your ribs at the sound of his voice, uneasy. You shrug. “There are coyotes sometimes.” Sam’s gaze sharpens just slightly. “Coyotes don’t usually remove organs that cleanly.”
Your heart slams once, hard enough you think they must hear it. “I wouldn’t know,” you reply. “I’ve never seen something like that before.”
It’s the truth, you’ve never seen yourself from the outside. Never met anyone like you before. Never saw the stain of blood, the color of mud on skin, the hunger in someone else's eyes. Dean leans back, studying you now too. He’s attentive, hazel eyes on your pretty face. “You were at the scene the other morning.”
You freeze. “I—” You lick your lips; they taste like salt and fear. “Everyone was.”
“Yeah,” Dean says easily. “You just looked like it hit you hard.”
Because it did. Because you tore into a human body under the moon like a starving animal and now the memory won’t leave your hands. “I don’t like blood,” you say quietly. The lie sits between you and Sam watches your throat when you swallow.
And then it happens; the hunger flares again. It’s so sudden, making you gasp under your breath. The feeling is violent like a thunderstorm, calling at your name and tearing at your stomach. It looks at Sam first—at the strong line of his neck, the steady pulse beneath the skin. It imagines breaking that skin, it imagines warmth flooding your mouth.
Then it turns to Dean—smaller, louder, confidence like spice on his skin. You imagine sinking your teeth into his shoulder, hearing him gasp in surprise before pain overtakes it. You flinch at the ideas and images.
“Hey,” Sam says softly. “You okay?” You realize you’ve gone pale, probably. “I just—” You push back from the table too quickly. “I need air.”
Dean stands halfway, instinctively. “You want us to—”
“No.” You steady yourself. “I’m fine.” But you’re not. Because for the first time, the hunger doesn’t feel satisfied by memory. It feels curious, it feels interested to those two men. It feels like it wants to know what hunters taste like; though you don’t know that word, don’t know what they are, only that something about them is dangerous and bright and unbearably tempting.
Sam doesn’t reach for you, but he looks like he wants to. And that look, that concern in his eyes, it’s worse than suspicion. As you step out into the afternoon light, heart hammering, you don’t know what frightens you more:
That Sam suspects you or that your hunger is starting to crave them both.
But the guilt has teeth.
It does not sit quietly in you like remorse should; no, it gnaws, it scrapes its way up your spine and settles behind your eyes so that even when you blink, you see red. You try to drown it in routine—washing dishes twice, folding laundry with trembling precision, standing in the shower until the water runs cold and your skin turns pink and raw but the smell never fully leaves you. It’s like iron, soil and something sweetly rotten beneath it.
You kneel at the foot of your bed and press your forehead to your clasped hands that night. “Please,” you whisper to a God you have never felt but have always feared. “Please don’t let me do it again.”
The room is dark except for the sliver of moonlight spilling across the floorboards like pale milk. The house creaks around you, settling. Outside, the town hums in its sleep with porch lights buzzing faintly, a dog barking once and then going quiet, wind moving through the cornfields in a slow, sighing hush. You try to pray properly and you try to imagine forgiveness descending like white light through stained glass. An angel caressing your forehead, promising a room for you to Heaven.
Instead, you imagine Sam.
You see him as clearly as if he’s standing at the edge of your bed, all tall with shoulders slightly hunched as though bracing against a cold no one else feels. You remember the way he said your name at the diner, gentle, careful, like he was afraid of breaking something fragile. You imagine that same mouth parting in shock, you imagine blood there. The thought makes your stomach twist so violently you gag.
“No,” you murmur to yourself, shaking your head. “No, no—”
Then Dean intrudes into your mind, that leather jacket creaking as he leans back in the booth, grin crooked and easy. There is something solid about him, something loud and alive. You imagine your hands fisting in that jacket, dragging him closer, you imagine the resistance in his muscles when you press him down.
The hunger responds to the thoughts like a struck match, it flares bright and hot, licking at the inside of your ribs. You double over on the floor, palms digging into the wood. Your pulse hammers in your ears like church bells ringing the hour. You tell yourself to stay, you try to crawl back into bed. But the hunger has already made its decision.
It rises through you like a tide, pulling your limbs with it. Your body moves before your mind consents. You don’t remember unlocking the door. You only remember the night air hitting your face—cool, damp, carrying the scent of soil and growing things and distant human breath.
You walk barefoot into the dark.
The Impala has been idling half a mile down the road for over an hour. Dean drums his fingers on the steering wheel, jaw tight. “You saw her face, Sammy. That wasn’t normal. She knows something about this.” Sam’s gaze is fixed on your house in the distance, lights out, curtains still. He doesn’t reply for a moment, letting the silence eat everything around. “I know.”
“You think she’s our monster?” Dean asks, turning his head toward his brother, trying to see his expression. There’s something serious about the taller one, right now. Something that looks like concern. “I don’t know what she is,” Sam admits quietly. “But something’s wrong.”
Dean exhales sharply. “So we watch.” Sam simply nods at that.
So they watch, for minutes, for hours, until they see the front door open and they see you step out. Sam straightens immediately. “That’s her.” You move like someone sleepwalking—slow, deliberate, head slightly bowed. You don’t look left or right, you don’t see the car parked down the road with its lights off.
“Where’s she going?” Dean mutters, eyes squinting as he tries to follow the movements of your body. Sam’s voice is low. “Into the fields.”
Dean doesn’t hesitate, pushing the door of the driver seat of Baby. “Let’s go.”
The corn swallows you whole, stalks brush your shoulders and whisper secrets against your ears. The moon hangs low and swollen above you, pale and watchful. Your breath comes in shallow pulls, every sense sharpens until the world feels unbearably loud; the rustle of fabric, the crunch of dirt underfoot, the distant murmur of voices. Voices. You stop in your steps.
There, ahead and deeper in the field, a soft laugh. A girl’s voice, breathless and bright and then, a boy answering her in a low murmur. You close your eyes, you could turn back, you should go home. But the hunger presses forward, relentless, begging to be fed like an animal. So you step toward the sound.
Through a break in the stalks and near the clearing, you see them: a couple tangled together on a blanket, limbs bare in the moonlight. The boy is leaning over her, kissing her neck, she giggles and pushes at his shoulders playfully. They are so alive it hurts through the bones of your ribs. Your mouth floods, your nails dig crescents into your palms. “Don’t,” you whisper to yourself, but you are already moving.
The first scream is cut short; you hit him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs, the girl tumbles sideways, shrieking, scrambling backward through the dirt. “What the hell—?!” the boy gasps, trying to shove you off. Your hands are in his hair and your teeth find his throat too fast for him to do anything about it. It’s over before he can even think about it.
Skin splits with a sickening ease, hot blood surges into your mouth, thick and metallic, and the sound he makes—that choked, bubbling cry—vibrates against your jaw. You press him down harder, knees digging into his ribs as he thrashes. The girl is screaming now, scrambling to her feet. “Get off him! Get off—!” You tear, you rip apart, you shred.
Your fingers hook beneath his shirt, dragging fabric and skin aside. You feel the delicate give of muscle under your nails, the slick slide of it when you pull. There is a crack; sharp and obscene as one of his ribs gives way beneath the pressure of your grip. He is still alive when you bite deeper because you feel the flutter of his pulse weaken against your tongue.
The girl runs away, her scream rips through the cornfield, high and hysterical.
“Dean—” Sam’s voice is tight through the darkness of the night. “Did you hear that?” They are already moving, pushing through the stalks toward the sound. Another scream, it’s closer now, more panicked. Dean draws his gun as they break into a clearing.
The flickering headlights from the road spill faintly through the gaps in the corn, illuminating you in flashes of white. Sam stops dead when he sees you, his brain not understanding the vision he has, for a second. It can’t be true, it can’t be that. “Jesus Christ.” He mutters quietly; you are kneeling over what used to be a boy, his chest is open.
Bones gleams wetly in the moonlight, jagged and wrong. Blood soaks into the earth beneath him, dark and spreading. Your hands are buried inside him, slick to the wrists, with your mouth red, chin dripping, eyes wide and glass-bright in the light. Your white nightdress is soaked with crimson blood, the smell of iron and copper sticking to the fabric. For a moment, you don’t even see them, you are too busy breathing hard, shoulders rising and falling, as if you’ve just surfaced from deep water.
Dean’s voice cuts through the night, sharp and electrifying. “Hey!” You flinch immediately, your head snaps toward the sound like a deer caught in headlights, pupils blown out, . Sam steps forward despite himself. “It’s her,” he breathes, horror and something heartbreakingly like recognition mixing in his tone. You stare at them, blood drips from your fingers back into the ruin of the boy’s chest. Your expression shifts—confusion, then shame, then something feral and starving that makes Dean’s grip tighten on his gun.
“Drop him,” Dean orders, voice rough. You look down at what you’re holding; at the torn flesh in your hands, at the open cavity where a heart used to beat. Your lips part, trembling, voice quiet. “I tried,” you whisper, though you don’t know if you’re speaking to them or to God. “I tried not to.”
Sam’s gaze locks with yours and for one terrible, suspended second, the hunger inside you turns toward him again. It recognizes him, it wants, it longs for the heart beating inside his chest. Dean sees the change in your eyes, the slightest of shifts. “Sam,” he warns softly.
You rise slowly from the body, blood sliding down your arms like dark sleeves and crimson ribbons. The girl’s screams are fading in the distance, forgotten for a moment. The cornfield is suddenly too small to contain what you are and Sam, standing there in the moonlight, realizes with a sickening certainty—they didn’t find the monster but the monster found them.
For a long moment after the screaming stops, the world feels carved out of silence.
You are standing in the middle of it; in the trampled clearing, in the metallic fog of fresh blood, in the wreckage of a boy whose name you never learned. Your breath comes in ragged pulls. The night air is thick and damp, clinging to your skin where it isn’t already lacquered in red, it dries in stiffening streaks along your forearms, dark and almost black under the moon.
Dean’s gun is still pointed at you but it looks small compared to what you’ve done.
Sam steps closer despite it, boots sinking slightly into the churned dirt. His gaze moves over the scene with dawning horror—the torn sternum, the exposed cavity, the slick gleam of organs interrupted and handled and bitten. He swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing, but he doesn’t look away from you for long. “What are you?” he asks again, but this time it’s clear bewilderment.
You don’t know how to answer without sounding insane.
Your teeth chatter once: not from cold, but from the comedown. The hunger that had roared through you minutes ago is quieter now, coiled and sated, licking its chops in the dark recesses of your ribs. It is pleased. It hums low and satisfied, like a choir after the final hymn. “I don’t have an official name for it,” you say, voice hoarse. “I’ve tried to find one, though.”
Dean’s eyes flick to the body and back to you. “You eat people,” he says flatly.
“Yes. I am an eater.” There is no point in softening it, no point of denying it anymore. The word lands heavy between you; it feels like kneeling in a confessional and admitting the worst thing you’ve ever done—except there is no absolution waiting behind a screen, only the cold mouth of a gun.
“I don’t hunt during the day,” you continue, because if you stop speaking you might collapse. “I don’t stalk children, I don’t break into houses, I wait until the hunger is so loud I can’t hear my own thoughts. And then I go somewhere empty, somewhere I think no one will notice.”
Dean’s jaw tightens, his eyes darkening. “Someone always notices.”
You nod, tears cutting pale tracks through the blood on your cheeks. “I know.”
The wind moves faintly through the corn again, making the stalks whisper around you. It sounds almost like prayer, like a congregation murmuring in the dark. “I tried to starve it out once,” you say quietly. “Locked myself in my room for five days, I thought if I prayed hard enough, if I didn’t move, if I made myself small enough, God would see me and fix it.”
Sam’s expression changes at that, something in it cracks, like he can understand a point of your story. “What happened?” he asks. You give a broken laugh. “I nearly tore my own arm open.” The confession hangs in the air.
“It’s not a taste,” you try to explain, pressing a shaking hand to your chest. “It’s pressure. It builds here, like something pushing out from the inside and it makes my bones feel hollow, my teeth ache, my skin feels too tight. And when I see someone—when I smell them—it’s like the bell rings.”
“Bell,” Dean repeats.
“Like church bells calling the faithful,” you whisper. “Only I’m not walking toward salvation, I’m walking directly toward slaughter.” Dean lowers the gun an inch without realizing he’s done it.
Sam looks at the dead boy again, at the violence of it; the split ribs like broken cathedral arches, the blood soaking into the roots of the corn. He has seen monsters before, all sorts. Ghouls, vampires, wendigos, spirits or things that delight in carnage. You do not look delighted, no, you look ruined. “You were at the diner,” Sam says slowly. “You felt it then.”
Your breath stutters. “Yes.”
“With us.” You can’t meet his eyes.
“It was louder,” you admit. “Stronger… I don’t know why, but it scared me.”
Dean lets out a humorless huff. “That’s comforting.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” you say quickly, desperate. “That’s why I left. That’s why I went into the fields instead of staying in town.” Instead. The word is a knife. Dean drags a hand down his face. “So what, we’re supposed to give you points for picking random over personal?”
“No,” you whisper. “I’m not asking for points. I’m asking you to understand that I hate this.”
The night presses closer around you, heavy and intimate, blood continues to drip from your fingertips in slow, rhythmic taps. Sam studies you the way he studies lore: searching for pattern, for origin, for some line in some book that might explain you. “You were born like this?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“No bite, no ritual, no deal?”
“No.” You voice back at him, at them. Dean finally lowers the gun fully, though he keeps it in his hand. “Great,” he mutters. “A homegrown nightmare.” You flinch at the word nightmare, because that’s what it feels like; like you’ve been trapped in one since childhood, since the first time you stared too long at the pulse in someone’s throat and felt your mouth fill with saliva.
“Then maybe you should kill me,” you say, and your voice is steadier now than you expect. “Before it happens again.” The hunger reacts instantly, thrashing against the cage of your ribs, furious at the suggestion. Your knees weaken under the force of it and you sway. Sam moves forward without thinking but Dean’s hand shoots out to block him. “Careful.”
“I’m not going to attack him,” you say faintly. “If I was going to, I would have.” Dean doesn’t answer, he looks at the body, at you and finally, at Sam. They’ve made these decisions before in graveyards and barns and abandoned warehouses. Usually it’s clear. Usually the monster lunges, or laughs, or bares its teeth.
You just stand there, shaking, covered in evidence.
“She’s not possessed,” Sam says quietly. “She’s not turned, she’s not feeding for fun.”
“She’s still feeding,” Dean replies.
“And if we shoot her,” Sam continues, “we still don’t know what she is… or if there are more like her.” Dean’s mouth presses into a thin line.
You suddenly feel very small.
The town lies just beyond the fields: houses dark, porch lights humming, unaware that something ancient and wrong has been kneeling in its crops for years. The thought of staying makes your stomach churn.
“I can’t stay here,” you whisper. “The girl ran away… They’ll find this, they’ll start asking questions, and put me in jail. I’m not able to hide anymore.” Dean glances toward the road, toward the faint glint of the Impala through the stalks.
“You’re right about one thing,” he says. “You can’t stay.” You look up at him, startled. Sam’s eyes flick to his brother’s. “Dean.”
“We don’t know what she is, no idea if she’s truly human,” Dean repeats. “Which means we don’t know how to kill her or if we can—and I’m not big on shooting first and Googling later.” Despite everything, a hysterical sound escapes you. Dean meets your gaze fully for the first time since the gun went up; there’s no softness there, but there isn’t cruelty either.
“You’re coming with us,” he says. The words don’t make sense at first. “What?”
“You want to not kill people?” he continues. “Then you don’t get to sit in this town and wait for the next bell to ring. We figure out what you are, we figure out if there’s a cure or a leash.” Sam exhales slowly, tension easing just a fraction. “We can research, cross-reference. There has to be something.”
“And if there isn’t?” you ask, still not realizing that Dean isn’t going to kill you on the spot. Dean’s jaw tightens. “Then we’ll deal with that when we get there.”
It’s a stay of execution.
Your legs finally give out, you sink to your knees in the blood-soaked dirt, not in surrender but in exhaustion. The hunger is quiet now, full and drowsy but the guilt is louder, howling in the hollow space it left behind. It always is after you finish eating. It’s like a loud ringing in your ears.
Sam steps closer again, slower this time, giving you room to flinch away. “You need to clean up,” he says gently. You look down at yourself—at the red coating your skin, at the evidence of what you are.
You nod without replying.
They don’t let you wash in the boy’s bloodied clearing, they guide you back toward the road, keeping distance but not abandoning you. Dean walks slightly behind, watchful and Sam stays to your side, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from him. It makes the hunger stir faintly but you shove it down.
At the edge of the field, Dean shrugs off his leather jacket and tosses it toward you. “Put that on.” It’s absurdly tender, the gesture. You slip your arms into it despite the blood, leather sticking to your skin.
The Impala waits like something patient and black beneath the moon. You hesitate before climbing in and behind you, the town sleeps on—unaware that one of its quiet daughters is leaving in the dead of night, stained red, riding shotgun with two hunters who haven’t decided whether she’s a case study or a future grave. Your parents are sleeping in the house, with the porch light flickering, moths attracted to it like flies to rot.
Sam gets into the back seat with you instead of the front as Dean starts the engine. The headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the road out of town.
As the fields fall away behind you and the small Ohio houses shrink into nothing, you press your forehead to the cool glass and close your eyes. You don’t know if this is salvation, you don’t know if it’s a longer road to the gallows. But for the first time in your life, you are not alone with the bell ringing inside your ribs.
And somewhere between the fading cornfields and the open highway, the hunger goes quiet.
notes: once again... i went a bit insane with this fic #lmfao. but i just wanted to make dean, sam and eater!reader meet. also, this is not canon to eater!reader story with dean and sam, but just something i had in mind! meaning: this probably won't have happened with you request this reader for sam or dean (unless you want to)... if that makes sense? + i feel like this end is too rushed but uh 10.2k words… so yeah, sorry!
your glossy mouth was wrapped around rafe's cock, the salty taste of his pre-cum on your tongue.
he had begrudgingly come to you, begging you to give him a blowjob. you obliged because he sounded pathetic, and you would never pass up the opportunity to humiliate him.
you didn't hesitate to slide your hands around the back of his tanned thighs, nails digging into the muscular flesh, keeping him close to you.
rafe's loud moans bounced off the walls, tensing underneath your hands every time he hit the back of your throat.
"i- uh- fuck, is it supposed to feel like this? i feel dizzy" he gasped breathily, a dazed look on his face.
deciding to let him figure that out on his own, you wrapped your hand around him, working both your mouth and hand over his hard cock.
your panties were damp with your own arousal ─ getting off on making him feel good, his pathetic nature turning you on.
rafe quickly picked up on what to do. moving his hips in time with you, thrusting into your mouth ─ the force of him hitting the back of your throat starting to feel painful.
"please- i need to cum. i don't know how to hold it, please" he begged, tears running down his face from the pleasure.
your hand was running up and down his length while your mouth took the rest of him, trying to oblige and speed up as much as you were able.
he starting pushing at your shoulders, "need to let me go. i'm going to cum, i'm going to cum"
you made a noise of refusal, shaking your head as you gripped the back of his thighs once again, not allowing him to move in the slightest.
you squeezed your eyes shut as warm cum abruptly hit the back of your throat, his release quickly filling your mouth.
pulling back with your mouth full of him, you peered up at rafe. his was head thrown back and he was still vibrating in pleasure, slowly coming down from his first actual high.
his breathing slowly started to even out as he looked down at you where you were still kneeling in front of him.
rafe's cum dripped down your chin and all over your chest, making you feel dirty and sticky. you swallowed what was left and opened your mouth to say something but rafe cut you off as he started to ramble.
"holy shit. that's what i've been missing out on? thank you, thank you, thank you"
his gratefulness was that real and you felt a slight amount of satisfaction, although nowhere near as much as he did.
you were pulled from your thoughts, face scrunched up in confusion as he pushed his cock against your lips, wanting you to open up.
"please just stay there, i really need to feel that again" rafe said confidently, forcing himself into your mouth as any of his remaining innocence went flying out of the window.
midwest girl, ohio raised. sunburnt cornfields. cicadas screaming at dusk. gravel crunching under tired tires. hunger humming low and steady beneath her ribs. metallic taste on her tongue. skin too aware of every brush of warmth. eyes that linger a second too long on pulse points. guilt like a rosary she holds in the dark. lonely men in neon-lit parking lots. soft voice, steady breathing, heart racing anyway. she doesn’t enjoy it—she survives it. quiet as snowfall, dangerous as drought. cries in gas station bathrooms and washes her hands twice.
faded levi's and long dresses. scuffed leather boots. smells like gasoline, ivory soap, and wild honeysuckle. cheap silver cross tucked beneath her shirt. porch-swing posture. drive-in movie glow on her cheekbones. summer night silhouette against endless fields. listens to old country on static radio stations. watches lightning split open the sky and feels understood. flirts soft but leaves fast. never unpacks her bag all the way. barefoot in tall grass. porch lights buzzing. moths hitting the screen door. leaves before the hunger gets loud and never stays long enough to be known.
eater!reader who grew up at the very edge of town, where the cornfields swallowed the road and the house paint peeled in long sunburnt strips. kids at school thought she was just quiet and teachers called her sweet. nobody noticed how she never ate at lunch.
eater!reader who is strangely tender; she listens when people talk, remembers their favorite songs, brushes hair out of their faces like she’s memorizing them.
eater!reader who tried to starve it out at first; skipped meals, chewed ice, bit the inside of her cheek until it bled just to focus on something else. she thought maybe if she denied herself enough, whatever lived inside her would shrink but it never did, it just waited.
eater!reader who looks like the kind of girl you’d see buying peaches at a roadside stand. who smiles shyly when spoken to, who says yes, sir and no, ma’am out of habit. nobody ever expects danger to look like that.
eater!reader whose aesthetic looks soft but feels untouchable: thrifted cardigans, sun-faded denim, long lace dresses, boots worn thin at the heel, hair that smells like wind and gasoline, a silver cross under her collarbone, a silver ring she twists when the hunger starts creeping up.
eater!reader who grew up in church pews and cornfield revivals. who still prays sometimes, even though she doesn’t know who she’s praying to. asks for forgiveness before she even knows for what.
eater!reader who loves deeply but carefully. she memorizes the shape of someone’s hands before she memorizes their face, she pays attention to the way they laugh, the way they sigh when they’re tired. she tries to store those details somewhere safe inside her, separate from the hunger.
eater!reader who grew up in a house where love felt fragile: her mother started double-locking doors after the first incident, and her father turned his eyes away from her. he never called her a monster but he looked at her like he didn’t know how to save her.
eater!reader who doesn’t see herself as evil, just wrong, miswired and built with something missing and something extra that shouldn’t be there. she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, she just doesn’t know how to stop needing.
eater!reader who believes, secretly, that if someone loved her long enough (touched her without fear, held her without trembling) maybe the hunger would quiet on its own.
work for eater!reader . . . coming soon!
request . . . open ﹏ best paired: characters in the tags.
𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐒. reader is topper’s little sister, smoking for the first time, innocence & corruption kink, slightly manipulative behavior, close proximity, vaguely mentions ow involved
smoke curls around him as it escapes his lips, staggeringly illuminated by the iridescence of the pale moonlight. after fleeing from the ceaseless blend of music and laughter, rafe leans against the wall of some nameless kook’s courtyard.
the bass drums against the wall behind him. the first four buttons of his polo are left carelessly unbuttoned, presumably after a lousy make-out session he had earlier when he disappeared for too long with another girl. sweat paints the exposed area of his chest, glistening under the light.
his gaze is distant and intoxicated as he balances the cigarette steadily between two fingers. he takes another drag, oblivious to the company lingering beneath the shadow of the tree a few feet away from him.
your eyes drink him in with childlike wonder as he blows out another cloud of smoke. he looks more placid in this state than you’ve ever seen him before.
“wanna hit or you just gonna keep starin’ all night?”
your eyes widen, mortified like a child who got caught.
ever so slowly, he drags his heavy-lidded gaze to you, as if you’re the one spotlighted directly under the moon. there was no point in hiding anymore. you swallow down the jitteriness and stand up from your crouched position.
when you step away from the tree, a wave of recognition immediately floods his scrutiny.
his eyes narrow at you. “the hell you doing out here?”
“just got a little claustrophobic inside,” you answer timidly, your voice so soft that it can barely be heard.
“s’not what i meant, and you know it.” his entire body shifts, no longer carrying the same passivity as he closes the distance between the two of you. you can smell the tobacco dissolving into the cologne you’ve grown too familiar with around the house.
“top will fucking kill you,” his eyebrows are pinched together while he stares you down.
“i know, i was going to head back right away, okay? but my friends are all wasted, so now there’s no one who can take me home...” you mumble.
persistently avoiding his gaze, which burns into the top of your head, you fidget with the sleeves of your jacket. thank god you even brought one, because if you hadn’t, you know without a doubt that you’d also be getting lectured about your faintly revealing outfit.
thankfully, though, the alcohol in his system seems to dilute his aggression. rafe sighs, leaning back against the wall while his intrusive eyes continue guzzling your expression.
it’s adorable, really. you’re always flinching and shying away from him when he’s at your house. but secretly, his depraved mind can’t help but fixate on your doe-like mannerisms. he thinks it’s cute when you look away or chew your words because you’re frightened.
“s’fine, i’ll take you,” he says like it’s a lazy commitment. his attention returns to the cigarette, the embers growing dim as he flicks the ashy residue onto the cement.
predictably, your eyes light up when you lift your head, lips curling into a shy smile. “really?”
“if you take one hit, then i will.”
you bite your bottom lip absentmindedly. sure, it’s an odd request, but your curiosity overrides your senses before you can even begin to analyze his intentions.
you take a reluctant step toward him, but his impatience grows. rafe’s hand finds your waist, pulling you between his legs in one smooth motion. it’s so fast that you instinctively position your hands against his abdomen to prevent yourself from faceplanting into his chest. again, another unusual thing for him to do, but you force yourself not to pay any mind to the intimate proximity or the heat blooming in your cheeks.
“but i’ve never smoked one before.”
“i know, sweetheart. i’ll teach you.”
your eyes gleam with fascination as he lifts it to his lips, like you watched him do earlier. “just do it slowly, yeah? breathe normally through your mouth, like this.”
he makes an example of it and your gaze watches him intently, his other hand still gripping your waist. when he finishes, he angles his mouth right above your head to release the smoke, heavy-lidded eyes not once leaving yours.
“your turn.”
you gulp, averting your gaze to the cigarette while he holds it out in front of you.
shakily exhaling, you place a hand over his wrist to steady yourself as your lips close around the tip, and rafe’s caught in a daze as he watches the scene unfold.
the awareness that you’re doing it with him for the first time fills him with a lucid sensation—a debauched level of satisfaction. not even the thought of topper beating him dead with a golf club could make him put an end to this moment.
rafe shamelessly gapes at you when your eyes glance up at him, as if seeking his approval.
when you let go, you turn your head away, coughing out the smoke, face twisted in disgust as the flavor of nicotine and menthol spoils your tongue.
“god, that was awful.”
rafe doesn’t even bother to hide his feverish contentment, his hand sliding to your back, patting lightly while you release the rest of the smoke from your system.
he keeps you there in that same closeness when he finishes what’s left and tosses it on the ground.
rafe begs you not to leave. it wasn't unusual for the two of you to get into fights over something stupid. tonight just happened to be the final blow, and the time you decided to give up.
sitting on your aged sofa, you watched the clock attentively, the loud sound of it ticking echoing in your head.
rafe had promised to take you out for dinner tonight to make up for the last time he bailed.
he had terrible habit of finding something else to do without you even knowing, your own plans constantly seeming to slip his mind.
there was a time where you were important to him, and something deep inside of you felt like that chapter was coming to a close.
sighing, you kicked your heels off and poured yourself a glass of wine, pursing your lips as the liquid came close to spilling over the top.
seconds turned into minutes, and minutes turned into hours.
you were starting to fall asleep on the sofa, the soft hum of a tv show in the background, when the front door suddenly slammed.
your eyes flickered open and landed on the spot that rafe was stood, hand running down the length of his face, hiding the guilty look.
"fuck, i'm sorry" rafe groaned when he saw you dressed up on the couch. he strolled to the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of beer from the fridge.
he set it down on the coffee table, and you subconsciously shifted away from him when he sat down next to you.
you could feel his eyes on you, his blazing hot gaze burning a hole in the side of your face.
"so what was it this time? what was more important than me? again" you murmured, attention on the drained wine glass in front of you.
he took a second before answering, "i just forgot, alright? topper wanted to go to the bar that just opened up"
nodding to yourself, you got up, grabbing the heels from the floor as you headed towards your bedroom.
you hear him put the beer bottle down, the thump of his footsteps loud behind you, "are you actually mad, y/n. i'm sorry, okay?"
turning around, there were tears in your eyes that were threatening to spill.
rafe's expression softened and he reached out to you, but you took a step back.
"i can't do this, rafe. i'm not a priority to you anymore and you've made me feel like this too many goddamn times"
sniffling, you wiped your eyes with the back of your hand and closed the bedroom door behind you, twisting the lock.
rafe banged on the door, the handle rattling as you took measured, deep breaths.
"come on, sweetheart. open the fuckin' door" he shouts.
you grabbed the bag that was usually used for travelling and start filling it with . . . stuff, not even paying attention to what you were putting in.
the noises outside of the door finally stopped after a couple of minutes and you slouched onto the floor, leaning back against your bed.
this was the right thing to do ── he didn't care about you. he had proved that more than once. you had been in this situation more times than you could even count on your hand.
pulling open the bedside drawer, you grabbed anything important and slammed it closed.
the bag was now filled to the brim, so you got to your feet on unsteady legs.
taking yet another nervous breath, you flicked the lock and slowly edged the door open.
rafe scrambled up from the floor, having been sat there while he was probably waiting for you to change your mind.
he was staring at the bag in your hand, worry, anger, and sadness prominent in his eyes.
you moved past him without saying a word, grabbing your sneakers from the pile of shoes by the front door.
a little black dress and running shoes is where you were now hilariously at, not wanting to metaphorically run away in heels.
rafe grabbed your hand with as much gentleness as he could muster in the moment, "don't do this. i said i was sorry. you know i'm sorry, don't you?"
you nodded slightly, "i do believe you, rafe. but it's not enough this time"
before you could turn away, rafe fell to his knees in front of you, his hands landing firm against the back of your thighs.
fresh tears were spilling down your cheeks st the sight of him, the kind of vulnerability you had always wanted from him.
"please, baby. i love you. i'll do anything, just please don't leave me" he pleads, voice cracking.
you smiled sadly at him and placed your palm on the side of his face, "now you know what not being enough feels like"
turning away from him, you tried not to crack when you realised your hand was wet from tears of his own.
you tried not crack when you could hear his pleas of desperation from the hallway.
once you were outside, you leaned back against the cold brick, violent sobs building in your throat as you looked down to the bag at your feet.
he wasn't going to come after you because that wasn't the rafe cameron way.
gravel crunched beneath you as you finally built up the courage to hesitantly walk down the length of the driveway, away from the only place you had ever called home.
rafe was already going crazy. the smell of your perfume, the "happy" photographs, your magazines piled high on the coffee table.
how was he ever going to escape the ghost of you.
he should've done better, he realised. he should've been at home instead of getting wasted at the club with topper of all fuckin' people.
grinding his teeth, all rafe could see was red as he threw the picture frame closest to him.
rafe's quickly realised what he had done, his eyes widening when he saw that it was your favorite frame. the one you had been given as a gift years ago.
"no no no" he whispered, falling to his knees once again as he tried to literally pick up the pieces.
rafe's hands were shaking, his jaw tense as he manically tried to fix it somehow, knowing you would never forgive him for this.
"FUCK" he yelled in agitation, throwing it back onto the floor when nothing he tried was working.
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