Summary: Pat Riley frequents the BDSM club near his flat; Jim Almonds runs a bakery nearby. In the wee hours when Pat is walking home, he runs into Jim and they hit it off.
"C'mere," Jim says, motioning for Pat to come closer. He scoots back in his chair, knees wide, and Pat - nearly on instinct - gets up and stands between his knees, towering over Jim's seated form. He smiles down at him, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder as Jim hooks a finger through one of Pat's belt loops.
Jim, still languidly leaning in his chair, takes his cigarette from his mouth and holds it up for Pat to lean in and take a drag. Pat does so without prompting, his heart skipping a beat at the indirect kiss. Leaning down slightly, he lets his eyes drift to Jim's face, noticing quickly how wide Jim's pupils have gotten, how pink his cheeks are.
Featuring art and concept by @noeavoiding and fic by @buckyclevens , i'll find my soul as I go home will be revealed on Friday, December 26
The evening was nearly suffocatingly dry, the sand in the air lingering in Reg's nose and throat and making him cough. He'd been meant to meet the others at this club over an hour ago, but the poker game he'd been playing had turned a little threatening, and he hadn't quite felt inclined to leave before he had to. It wasn't that he hadn't believed himself capable of besting the other men at the table, if it came down to it; it was rather that on this particular kind of dusty-hot, golden desert night, Reg would have preferred nothing so much as expending as little exertion as possible.
Well, perhaps there was one form of exertion he might make an exception for, considering they only had five more days of leave and he intended to make the most of it, but by this time of night he knew his chances with the girls in the club were dwindling.
Sure enough, of the six men he'd been meant to meet here, only one remained.
His hair glowed like white gold in the dim light of the gas lamp in front of him, a vivid contrast to the royal blue fabric of his seat, and the bloody scarlet of the flowers in the little bottle on the table. His teeth were blindingly white when he saw Reg come in and grinned at him.
"You're late," he reprimanded, the moment Reg was within earshot.
"Got caught up," said Reg, sliding in to the seat beside him and gesturing to the waitress for a drink. "Where's everyone?"
"Dave met another Liverpool fellow at the last bar," said Johnny. "Got caught up chatting. Almonds and Riley found a girl and headed off to some hotel."
"A girl each?" asked Reg, trying to translate Johnny's strange phrasing, but Johnny's eyes only sparkled in amusement as he kept going.
"Bill and Eoin went to smoke, supposedly," he continued, "but that was twenty minutes ago, so I'm sure they've found some kind of mischief to get up to."
"And what about you?"
"What about me?" asked Johnny, picking something up from the dish beside him and placing it on his tongue. Reg hadn't noticed it at first, but it appeared to be a little plate of chocolates.
"Didn't want to find a girl?"
Johnny let out an amused little snort. "You don't need to bother with all that, Reginald."
"A boy then," said Reg.
"No, I haven't found a boy," said Johnny, picking up another chocolate between two long fingers and holding it up to Reg's lips, "but the night is still young."
When Reg took it on his tongue, it tasted like a promise.
cw: non graphic descriptions of violence, mentions of slavery.
It is an angry red mark right above his shoulder. Tight, ugly, the skin never having been given the chance to properly heal even if though its outline has pearled with age. There are others, of course, scattered over his skin. Stray arrowheads and swords that stroke true enough to wound and mar his pale stomach, his slender arms. None, Finan thinks, can compare. It is not the worst scar Finan has seen by a mile, nor one that he gets the chance to look at often, hidden as it usually is underneath Sihtric’s worn hose and dark armour. Still, it is the one he keeps looking at the most.
“One of my brother’s few gifts,” Sihtric explains one night by the fireside, Uhtred having walked away for a moment—which had stretched into an hour—with the lady Æthelflæd, Osferth placidly asleep by their side.
“Hm?”
“The scar. The one you were looking at before, by the river.”
“I most definitely was not.”
Sihtric stares at him, one of his dark brows quirked up, his uneven sea-glass eyes staring like one would at a lying child.
And what if he has been staring? Cannot treat it as something new if Finan’s been doing it for months now, sneaking sideway glances just to see Sihtric smile, risking wee peeks while he is thoroughly rinsing himself off along with Uhtred just to catch a glimpse of milky white skin. This is how he first spotted the ugly scars marring his thighs, up where the skin must have chafed were he to ride after having been wounded, long and horizontal, as if someone had rubbed ash over a caning they did not want a slave to forget. It is how Finan first found it, followed their trace, up, up, up bony hips and a taut spine, where a sharp clavicle started and the scar shone, pink and bright.
“Must have hurt,” Finan adds instead, all plausible deniability lost. Cannot tell a competent spy what you have or have not been doing without making yourself look like a fool.
Sihtric hums, fingers toying with one of his silver rings, modelled after a snake, like the one he has inked over his skull. Makes Finan wonder if he even decided on that mark, or it too was imposed by a father or a brother who saw Sihtric as little more than property. “A sword, training one. Heated by the fire until it could melt skin.” His words are nonchalant, even if his body is tense, every muscle coiled, waiting for release. “Kjartan cut one of his fingers off for it with that same sword. Hacked it off.”
“I take that didn’t make relations better between the two of you?”
“Really made me well acquainted with his dogs, though,” Sihtric says, smile still put, bumping his shoulder against Finan, a brief touch which has him feeling like his arm will be set alight.
“Connal was the one who sold be to Sverri, so I really hope he caught some fucker’s arrow to the neck, go meet your brother in hell.”
No laughter this time. Sihtric’s expression sobers up in an instant, those blue-brown eyes searching for Finan’s over the embers once again. Osferth shifts among his covers, ruffling the leaves on the ground. An owl takes flight, hooting overhead before getting lost to the night.
“Does Uhtred know?”
Finan shrugs. “Should. Probably has forgotten, the mind plays tricks on you at sea.”
Another hum, this one sadder, followed by the hardened tips of cold fingers tracing one of the long scars over Finan’s arm. He does not move, waits patiently for Sihtric to be done with his inspection, his hairs and skin raising at the touch.
“Regular men don’t carry their brother’s contempt etched on their skin, do they?” Sihtric wonders out loud, his eyes clearer than they have been all night, intent, as if some secret had been revealed to him and he was seeing Finan for the first time.
“We are not regular men, are we?” He laughs, then shivers. Looks away to keep himself from doing something foolish. “Jesus, Sihtric, you’re freezing.” A full body tremor runs through him helping to emphasise the point.
Another one of Sihtric’s one armed shrugs. “It’ll get better during the night,” he lies. Cannot trick Finan with words like that, he knows the lad.
With a swift movement Finan picks up the woolen cape he had laid by his seat to sleep on, drapes it over Sihtric’s shoulders like a lady would the cape of her beloved. It’s not very thick, but it will do the job on a summer night like this.
Sihtric not taking it off feels like a small triumph, which soon turns into a bigger one by Sihtric leaning against his shoulder, again, a placid smile on his lips, all that tension gone from his frame.
“Thank you,” he simply says, huddling as close as their bodies will permit. “You will be having to take first watch, though.” A tired giggle, the last words Finan hears before they soon get replaced by even breaths, the same ones that will be accompanying him to sleep.
ohhhh for the wip game what's the armitozer ice!au? 👀
Answering both you and @noeavoiding
Armitozer Ice!AU, also known as my Terror Permawinter!AU, which is a two-part post-apocalyptic AU set in an England that's been trapped in a perpetual winter for the past 3-5 years.
Tozer is a courier travelling through the country delivering goods from shelter to shelter in his van. Armitage a stowaway that popped up in his trunk one day, unannounced hoping to reunite with his mum. You can read the first part and a half of the series here!!
I do plan on continuing the series! The past year and a half has just been absolutely draining both personally and creatively, so as I slowly get back on track with older projects I do intend to, at some point, finish this one too!! (It's very dear to me+the following chapter is halfway done)
Here's a little unpublished snippet!
There’s frozen tarmac against his cheek when he opens his eyes again. He needs to get up. The cows will step on him. Whatever that whisper was will get him. Sol won’t be able to get away. Sol won’t be able to help more people.
Sol.
Strong arms are hauling him up before he can pull himself together, a gust of warmth burning against the scrape on his cheek, a deep inhale of the stale air inside of the van bringing him to his senses. He’s never been more thankful for old pine air freshener and lemon candy in his life.
“Alright?” Sol is there. Sol, warm and comforting, practically kneeling on top of his seat to take a good look at him, his whole face scrunched up with worry.
I could have died. I could have died and never seen the sun again, some rusty part of his brain, still high with adrenaline musters, bringing back old notions from a Spanish class he abandoned long before he finished school.
The road is almost clear when Tommy’s sight comes into focus, the herd piled around the gate, their hooves trampling the tracks he had left on the snow, making them disappear. He cannot see the brambles from here. He cannot hear the whispers. But the fear is still there. Dread colder than the snow making him shiver.
“Drive.” It’s barely a whisper.
“What are you—?”
“Drive!” he begs, shrill and desperate, scared for a second that it will be too much, that Sol won’t listen.
18 for armisolving (damn your wife universe if possible) 🥰🥰
Armisolving—(18) broken windows, waist high grasses, and lit matches.
A fat crimson droplet blooms over the pale skin of his thumb where the glass has sunk in. Sol drops it reflexively, hears it fall into the deep grass in a low murmur.
“Ah, fuck,” he tsks in between clenched teeth before he puts the finger into his mouth.
This year spring has caught up to them too. The grass is overgrown in the back of the house, the path that leads from the yard to the forest barely suggesting where one should tread, engulfed by the weeds and wildflowers that John had so carefully put him to trim in the front weeks ago. No wonder a fox can sneak into the henhouse unseen. No wonder they have already lost three of the girls to the red devil.
Sol pities the poor thing, knows that in a day or two the grass will be lower, the undergrowth visible, and that John will have him or Tommy out with a shotgun at dusk the moment they go out for a smoke or a piss. Sol has never been good at not pitying the underdog.
The match he lights sparks dangerously close to the dry grass, the fag he’s holding between his teeth suddenly a stupid sacrifice to make for a scorched backyard. Nothing happens, though. The cigarette ignites. The match dies. John Irving’s grounds remain unscathed.
“Gonna get into trouble if you keep that up.”
Sol treats the lad with a wolf whistle, followed by an appraising look to disguise that he had not heard Tommy coming. He is wearing that long blue dress John had rescued from a half-hidden cupboard in his London estate, a crooked little bow tying his black curls back while keeping some ringlets astray to frame his pale face. Tommy looks nice like this, very nice.
“Going to town? Can’t imagine a lass like you would do herself this pretty jus’ for me.”
The compliment makes Tommy blush, her hands fisting the hem of the skirt as he protests with a low. “Sol… stop that.”
“Just speaking things as they are, no harm in calling my favourite lass pretty, is there?”
“I’m gonna tell him you called me your favourite.”
The threat makes Sol laugh, his hands coming up to encircle Tommy’s waist as if he were cinching her stays, pressing just enough to make the lad gasp.
“Will you now?” Sol can’t imagine John would mind, might even make him pull out that pretty long dress of his instead. “Might need to do something more about it,” Sol exhales a little smoke from the corner of his lips, watches Tommy’s baby blue eyes lock on the cigarette, on his mouth. “Make our mistress truly have something she can complain about.”
McDiarmid/Fraser 28 (exes, candy-wrappers, and a twin bed)
“Put it out.”
At first, Jock thinks he’s imagined the words. Part of a late post-coital bliss and all, their room still hazy with the pink light that precedes dawn. Children are running outside, down in the parking lot of the resort, surely about to leave for the day and not stuck here until a new truck is driven their way, or they get sent money for the bus fare, far lower South than any London fire brigade should venture. It’s stupid that none of them was carrying their wallets with them. Even stupider still that Stirling was able to get them a room, but no news of a drive back home were in the horizon just yet.
Not like Jock is complaining. He takes another drag of the cigarette, ponders for a moment staring at the yellowing ceiling if he’ll be able to go for a run before,they have to make their way back—and immediately gets slapped in the arm about it.
“Put it out!” Fraser snaps, blue eyes wilder than they should be this early in the morning. Not Fraser, Jock corrects himself; Bill. He had asked Jock to call him Bill when they were two kisses into the room and their mingling breaths still reeked of ale and the artificial tasting strawberries of their dinner ice-cream. “You’re a fireman for chrissake, you precisely should bloody know about the dangers of smoking in bed.”
Jock slowly blinks as Bill snatches the cigarette out of his fingers, watches the cigarette die a hissing death in the half full coffee cup that’s still lying in their nightstand along with the honey caramel wrappers Jock has seen leave Bill’s pockets many times before. Bill seems to relax a little after this small victory, his long wiry body curling underneath the comforter, preserving the infinitesimally minute gap that he had decided to establish in between their bodies the moment his pale lashes had fluttered awake.
“So…we’re not speaking about it,” Jock says, his decision of breaking the silence becoming an almost immediate regret.
“What’s it?” Bill dignifies the question with one of his looks, one that speaks more of sleep than annoyance.
“This,” Jock insists, waving a finger in between their faces. “Us”
“What’s there to speak about?” Annoyance creeps back in, so does the guarded look that Bill usually carries about himself. Jock needs it to go away, for now, needs to speak to the Bill that melted against him last night, the Bill that almost cried when they managed to get a kitten out of one of the burning bungalows unscathed before their truck broke down.
“Dunno,” Jock shrugs, thinks about his words for a second. This would be easier with a fag, and oh, does the thought make him laugh. “Jus’ wandering if you’d want to give it another go when we’re back home.”
“Ta, but no thanks. Already had enough Jock McDiarmid for a fortnight.”
Jock ponders his possibilities for a moment. Which words will get him kicked out of bed, which ones will give way to a possible future where he’s kissing Bill Fraser against his kitchen counter in a week or two.
“Does this have anything to do with that weird toff that tried talking to you before we left yesterday?”
Bill’s face contorts into something ugly, rage and utter misery flashing across his features before he gets out of bed with a sudden tug at the covers, leaving his pale body bare for Jock to gaze at while his voice breaks and composes in the same sentence. “That’s none of your fucking business.”
Bill slams himself shut inside the bathroom, a quiet pause that lasts for more than five minutes elongating until Jock finally hears Bill turn the shower on. For a moment Jock thinks about lighting himself another fag. For a moment he imagines how Bill must look under the water, wonders if he will be looking for the marks that Jock had left the night prior and regretting them. Or perhaps pressing his fingers to them, like Jock would.
Jock McDiarmid sighs in self-inflicted abject misery, still hearing the shower run. There’s no way he’s leaving the bed with how fucking stiff his prick just got.
right, if no one is gonna ask about BJ post canon I'll do it 😤😤
OKAY, so BJ post canon is a fic for the 2009 mini-series Red Riding that I wrote last year when I thought I wouldn't be able to write again. It's a bit messy and wonky, but it was the fic that kept me writing for the second half of 2024 and I feel indebted to it in more ways than I can describe. The fic is finished, around 20k long, and I suppose that one of these days I will feel compelled to edit it and post it.
Until then!! Here's a snippet!!
“Did John Dawson send you after me?”
BJ shake head, feel curls against neck. “No! Not you!” BJ say, bite tongue as soon as words out. Shouldn’t have added second part.
Now man staring through thick glasses, even under dim wash of red light BJ can tell. “Sends you over to sweeten deals, does he?”
BJ turn, look away, nod regardless because BJ have nothing to lose, money is already in his pocket. BJ doesn’t want to think about things he done for Dawson, things BJ done because other men took BJ’s will away.
A car roars by, someone screams into the night. BJ can feel man breathing against his sweaty collarbone. “You can leave, if you want to,” man says under his breath, hands on BJ, but only over his clothes, as if BJ’s skin could burn, “Won’t tell Dawson I let you.”
“He didn’t send me,” BJ insist because for once in a room like this what BJ say is truth. “BJ don’t work for him, BJ hasn’t seen John Dawson in weeks and he can stay that way as far as BJ know.”
Man smiles, places a kiss on BJ’s breastbone, just where his breath had been. It makes BJ shudder, curl up a little.
“Only blowjobs,” BJ say, making the man look up at BJ again. BJ can’t tell what his eyes try to say, all eyes look black in the dark and BJ can read them all, but not now. “I’m real good, I promise.”
It's a firm pressure against his back what brings him out of his reverie, a smaller body leant against his back, a forehead resting firmly against the nape of his neck.
“Should get back to bed if you can’t stand on your own, love.”
“G’mornin’ to you too,” Pat mumbles, words warming the sensitive skin behind his ear.
