The Upsides of Property Damage [Part 4/5]
Authored by @verai-marcel and @shootybangbang
[Ao3 link]
[Pairing]: Arthur Morgan/Reader
[Rating]: Mature
[Content Advisory]: light D/S undertones
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4]
[Author's Note]: Thank you guys so, so much for your patience, and so sorry for the delay! Most of chapter 5 has been completed and should be out soon. If you want to be notified when that comes out, go ahead and leave a comment down below and I'll make a taglist or something.
--------
The maintenance request form states: [Please give a brief description of the problem.]
for the past few days i've been so fixated on fucking the maintenance man that i've been having difficulty accomplishing basic tasks because every time i try to concentrate on anything even remotely meaningful all i can think about is him saying "maybe you just enjoy my company" and if this keeps up i'm fairly certain that i'm going to actually get fired from my job so clearly i need to either get laid or get evicted
This statement makes you look certifiably insane. It’s not even a request– it’s a confession . Sending this would be tantamount to seating yourself beside the grated window of a church booth and asking its captive priest whether he’d prefer you spit or swallow.
More importantly, it also exceeds the text box’s 250 character limit. You rapidly tap the delete key until the entire obscene paragraph disappears. Then you try again.
broken cabinet.
Hmm. Lacks an element of genuine contrition.
broken cabinet. sorry. :’(
[Your service request has been logged. Please allow up to one standard business day for a response.]
You glance at the time displayed on the microwave’s grease-spattered screen. 4:36PM. Morgan’s probably already packed up for the day– and taking normal operating hours into account, the earliest he could possibly show up tomorrow would be 9AM… which gives you at least sixteen hours to emotionally prepare yourself to confront him.
Morosely, you drag yourself out of your kitchen chair to pour yourself a glass of sparkling water. So this is what I’ve sunk to . Using service requests as a means of personal summons for the hot repairman. Pathetic. Shameful. And 100% necessary for the preservation of your sanity.
How many times have you pictured it now? Morgan, cornering you against the wall and wrapping his hand around your jaw… Or maybe , he’d rumble, caressing your lower lip with his thumb. You just enjoy my company . Then he’d fuck you silly, of course, in a series of lurid positions that grow increasingly obscene with each imagining.
And how many times have you pictured its inverse? Morgan, backing away in response to your hypothetical advance, his face contorted with faint disgust as he asks, “You know I was just joking, right?” Following which you’d get written up for sexual harassment by the leasing office and put on… housing probation, or something.
Being humiliated, you can handle. Albeit not very well— but you’re usually able to stay at least semi-functional. The same goes for flirtation. It’s this hopeless vacillation between the two possibilities that drives you out of your mind. Schrodinger’s boner: simultaneously fucked and unfucked. And like that quantum superposition, you’ve been plunged into a private hell of uncertainty until your reality can settle definitively on one or the other.
This has been predictably bad for your job performance. Earlier today, you’d accidentally deleted two entire spreadsheets of data whilst lost in competing visions of fornication and abject rejection, and then constructed a pivot table so incomprehensible that one of your colleagues had personally reached out to ask whether you’d recently experienced head trauma.
God. At this point, you really have no choice but to put the question to him directly. Plain and simple. Just a quick “are you hitting on me” and it’ll all be–
Your thoughts are interrupted by an urgent knock at the door.
Huh. Looks like Defying Your Blue Collar Dom is getting delivered a day early? It’s unusual for Amazon to leave packages at your doorstep instead of in the lobby, but it does happen, so…
…Oh.
It’s Morgan. What the fuck.
“But you were supposed to come tomorrow ,” you blurt, eyes wide with panic.
“That so?” Morgan asks, one eyebrow raised. He glances sidelong to the empty hallway, and shifts his weight uneasily from one leg to the other. With a shrug, he squares up his shoulders and turns back towards the stairwell. “Later, then.”
Shit. This is all going wrong. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just that I– I, uh…I’m… ”
He allows your stammer to run its course into awkward silence. Then the corner of his mouth angles upwards in a sly smile and he asks, “Or d’you need a minute to put away anything else your ‘friend’ mighta left out? I can wait.”
Somewhere in the realm of missed quips, there probably exists a clever response to this. Somewhere that is decidedly not here. “No,” you reply in a small, pained voice. “She, uh– she hasn’t been around, so… y’know…”
The sentence unspools like loose yarn. Jesus Christ, this is stupid.
“You alright?” Morgan asks, frowning down at you from where he stands. “You ain’t normally this incoherent.”
His comment implies that you’ve been operating thus far on an existing, baseline level of incoherence. Biting back the urge to query exactly what that looks like, you reply with a clipped, terse, “I’m fine.”
As you lead him towards your kitchen, you nearly trip over the half-packed suitcase parked beside the door. At this, Morgan again voices his concern. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you this on edge before. Something botherin’ you?”
Yes , you think to yourself. My libido.
“Or is it some one that’s botherin’ you?”
He says the words with such a darkly implicative undertone that you actually turn around to stare at him, disarmed by the sudden shift. The warmth in his eyes has gone out like a blown candle. “Is it one of the other maintenance men?” he asks, and the whisper of lethality in his countenance surfaces so quickly that it speaks to a kind of practiced efficiency.
A mingled thrill of fear and intrigue runs up your spine, and you swallow hard.
“If one of ‘em’s harassin’ you— if anyone’s harassin’ you…” he says these words with slow deliberation, while curling his free hand into a fist, thumb tucked over his folded fingers in that characteristic manner of boxers and street brawlers alike, and god if he were anyone else you’d likely be shrinking against the wall in terror right now. “Then you come tell me. And I’ll handle it.”
You have a sneaking suspicion that his method of conflict resolution involves grievous bodily injury. “Nobody’s bothering me,” you reply. Then, because he still looks vaguely homicidal, you follow up quickly with, “Just had an off day.”
This placates him somewhat. The tension diminishes like a rope going slack, and you realize with a hot pang of humiliation that your underwear is slick with arousal.
It’s not until he’s crouched in front of your broken cabinet, which stands ajar with its wooden door peaked at a 45 degree angle, that you finally work up the nerve to confront him. “So. Morgan.” You lean against the edge of your kitchen countertop like the faux marble might offer you emotional support. “There’s, uh. Something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
He’s sorting through his tool kit and doesn’t lift his head. Picks through an array of silver chiseled pieces so deftly that you can’t help but wonder what else those hands might be clever at. “Yeah?’ he asks, selecting a screwdriver head. He slips it into the drill chuck, twisting it tight.
“Are you, um…”
Fuck. You can’t say it. Your mouth literally refuses to shape itself to the words. Instead, you hear yourself ask, “Are you thirsty? You want some seltzer?”
Morgan blinks, then turns to you looking predictably baffled. “That’s… what you’ve been wantin’ to ask me? Whether or not I’m thirsty?”
“Yes,” you reply weakly.
For once, it’s him who’s been caught off guard. “I– uh. Sure, I guess.”
He takes his drill and begins to remove the damaged hinge. Taking the door leaf and flipping it this way and that, he examines the damage.
The crack of aluminum when you pull back the can’s metal tab and the responding fizz of compressed air sounds a little like a rebuke. Scathingly, it hisses: what the hell are you doing?
I have no idea , you admit, pouring the can of sparkling water into a clean glass. You pass it over to Morgan after he presses the trigger on the drill twice and sets it on the countertop. He gulps down an absent mouthful, then immediately stands up to spit it in your sink.
Oh. He hates it.
Your voice is thin as a reed. “I guess you’re not a fan of sparkling grapefruit, huh?”
“It’s…” With the duty-bound reluctance of a dog given a loathed order, he takes another, tentative sip, and forces himself to swallow. “It’s fine.”
It is clearly not fine. “Do you, uh. Do you want a beer?”
“What, you encouragin’ me to drink on the job?”
You open the fridge. Good god, you might as well partake too. It’s not like you’re in any state to get any work done, stuck as you are in this miserable limbo . “In any case, I’m gonna have one. And I’m still on the clock.”
“Alright.” He sounds like he’s smiling. “So long as you’re complicit, why not?”
You end up downing half a bottle of 8% oatmeal stout in about three sips, then stand around blankly waiting for the roil of anxiety to abate. You’d attempt the precarious endeavor of small talk were it not for the fact that the only thing you can think of right now is “grapefruit”. Not the concept of grapefruit. Just the word “grapefruit”. This must be how computers feel when they spit out the same, continuous error message.
Mercifully, he intervenes. “You goin’ on vacation somewhere? Saw that suitcase by your door.”
“Catsitting,” you say.
“’…s’cuse me?”
“Catsitting. Like… babysitting. But for a cat,” you explain. “My friend’s going to Vegas the day after tomorrow, and her cat has anxiety.”
“Cats can get anxiety?”
“This cat takes cat Xanax . His name is Sebastian, and he’s the most neurotic animal I’ve ever met.”
Morgan asks, “Yourself included?”
You make a noise that bears no resemblance to any word in the English language.
He chuckles. “Well, go on, tell me how neurotic he is.”
Thank fucking christ, the alcohol is finally beginning to course its way through your blood. Your tongue loosens enough to tell him how poor Sebastian had spent nearly an entire day curled up under your friend’s bed the first time you’d tried to take care of him, how you’d ended up driving to the grocery on a Sunday morning to scour the shelves for the most pungent can of sardines they had in stock, and how only then , with the room saturated in fish fumes, had the cat finally dragged itself out of the boxspring to nose curiously at your offering.
Morgan laughs. A good sign, you think. “That’s nothin’,” he says, and describes to you his boss’ cat: a purebred white Persian appropriately dubbed “The Count”, so thoroughly spoiled that she won’t eat the same meal twice in a row.
You snort at the image of a prissy little fluff ball turning her nose at a gourmet cat meal.
“Though it’s funny, I never took you for a cat person,” he says.
“No?”
“Figured you’d prefer snails.”
“Look, snails… snails are…” This is a sentence you started with absolutely no knowledge of how it should end. “I like snails,” you say lamely.
“Oh yeah? Think I remember somethin’ else that you like.” He puts his hand around his jaw and pretends to look thoughtful. “What was that book called again? Somethin’ about… bein’ punished by blue collar doms?”
“I’m sure that my friend who left her book on blue collar doms here very much enjoys them, if that’s what you’re referencing.”
He merely chuckles indulgently as he continues to fix the cabinet. You watch his muscles flex under his shirt as he drills new holes into the wood and sets the new hinge in place. As he works the power tool with a soft grunt, you find yourself idly wondering if he’d make the same sound as he drills you —
“Y’know,” he comments, stepping back as he tests the alignment of the door. “I’m actually kind of impressed. This is the most work I’ve ever had to do for a single apartment, barring natural disasters.”
“Wow. Comparing a girl to a natural disaster. Are you this charming with all the tenants, Mr Morgan?”
“You gonna be jealous if I say ‘yes’?”
The alcohol makes you honest. “Extremely.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that.” He grabs the edge of the kitchen counter and hauls himself back to his feet. “If this is the amount of property damage you cause normally, then I’d hate to see you angry.”
He takes another step forward. You take a step back reflexively, but find yourself pressed against the wall. He leans his forearm against the drywall and he’s close enough now that you can smell sweat and machine oil. Your heart beats hard in your chest.
For once you’re lost for words. No quip comes to mind, for your brain is emitting sparks. “I, uh– I’m not–”
“You’re not what, exactly?”
“I don’t know,” you say weakly.
He raises his hand to your jaw, tips your chin up with two fingers. “The answer’s ‘no’, by the way,” he says quietly. “It’s just you.”
Morgan looks like he’s going to kiss you. The expression on his face is softer than you’ve ever seen it, all his gruffness melted away. You tentatively tug at the fabric of his jumpsuit and stand on your toes to–
But he puts his hand on your shoulder and pushes you back down. “Goddamn,” he says, frowning. “You’re really red.”
Huh. What.
“Listen, I ain’t one for takin’ advantage of drunks, even if they got themselves into this mess.” He picks you up as if you weigh nothing at all and sets you down on the couch. “Now, I’m goin’ to get you some water, and yer goin’ to sit here and sober up while I finish this cabinet. Alright?”
“I’m not even that drunk,” you protest loudly.
“Yer about the color of a fire hydrant right now.”
When you press the back of your hand to your cheeks and forehead, your skin feels feverish. Begrudgingly, you sink down into your couch cushions and cross your arms.
“Good girl,” he rumbles, patting your head affectionately.
***
You slouch on your friend’s comfy couch with Sebastian sitting regally in your lap as if you were his loyal subject.
“Hey Sebastian, I think I did something really stupid.”
Sebastian stretches and yawns.
“I hit on the maintenance man.”
He meows. It sounds almost disapproving. Even the cat is judging you.
“It gets worse.” You loll your chin downwards until it touches your chest. “I was sloppy drunk.”
Sebastian tilts his head at you and blinks.
“Okay, one bottle drunk.”
He sniffs haughtily.
“Right? Pathetic, I know.” You move to pick up Sebastian, but he begins to arch his back and you stop, leaning back against the cushions again. He relaxes and maintains his regal position.
“Well, maybe YouTube will keep my mind off him for the next two days…”
***
You return from your friend’s place, having used her cat and your friend’s YouTube Premium as your therapy sessions. You feel better about things now, and life should return to normal. Right?
The washer’s inner mechanism gives a promising rattle as it swallows your last six quarters. There’s a low rumble of moving parts, the click of something slotting into place— and then silence. The drum of the machine sits sedately in place. Your dirty clothes sit inside in a quiet, unsoaked heap.
“Son of a bitch,” you mutter under your breath.
You try out a couple different methods: Turn the knobs to various settings without success. Jiggle the handle to try and unlock the washer door. Yell at the machine, call it a worthless piece of shit.
But where discourse fails, violence often prevails. It’s a lesson that has offered a decent measure of success in your dealings with vending machines, keurigs, and lawnmowers. So it’s not merely anger that guides you to kick the washer. No, this is… this is a strategic use of force.
The first kick yields no results. The second kick produces an interesting sputter. Perhaps , you reason, a more precise method is needed here . You raise your fist.
Before you can punch the machine, someone grabs you by the wrist.
“What the hell are you doin’?” Morgan asks, exasperated.
“Laundry,” you answer matter-of-factly.
“What part of laundry involves fightin’ inanimate objects?”
“The part where I get this piece of shit to finally work.” You attempt to give the washer a last parting shot out of pure anti-machine sentiment with your other hand.
Before you can continue to perform percussive maintenance, he grabs your other wrist too.
You tug on both your arms, but he is ridiculously solid; it’s like trying to break free of handcuffs.
Of course my mind goes there.
Looking up at him, he’s realizing at the same time as you of how suggestive this looks. His eyes widen a bit, and you take that as a look of surprise and embarrassment. Yet neither of you moves for a full minute.
“Well,” you say finally. “Are you gonna let me go? Or are you gonna make me submit?”
His eyes narrow for a moment before a smirk slowly grows on his face. “Sounds like that’s what you want.”
He pulls you away from the machine and instead pushes you up against the closest wall. You can feel the heat of his body through the thin linen of your sundress. He traps your wrists against the cold surface and presses his whole body against yours.
“Mr Morgan—”
“It’s Arthur,” he interrupts. “Call me Arthur.”
You whisper his name, beckoning. His expression darkens ever so slightly as his desire for you manifests in a slight twitch of his lips, a crinkling of his brow.
Then he kisses you hard, his tongue lashing against yours before lightly nipping your bottom lip. When he pulls back, his lips are wet and his pupils are blown out with desire.
Letting go of your wrists, he reaches for the hem of your sundress and hikes it up, his calloused hands stroking upwards from your thighs to your hips. He shifts his knee between your legs and nudges them apart before grinding against you. You can feel how hard he is, how big he is, and you moan softly. Burying his head between your neck and shoulder, he begins to suck on the delicate skin there—
The door creaks open. Mrs. Smith, the septuagenarian from down the hall, walks into the doorway with a hamper of laundry in her arms, then pauses when she sees the two of you.
For a second, everyone stands tense and still as participants in a shootout.
“Well,” Mrs. Smith says mildly. She doesn’t look surprised or scandalized. If anything, she looks mildly entertained. “I can see you two are busy. I’ll come back in an hour or so—”
“No! It’s fine,” you say before laughing nervously. You yank your skirt back down. Arthur immediately releases you and begins intensely inspecting the washing machine. “I was actually just leaving. This, uh, this machine’s broken.”
Morgan’s face is red as he makes a noise of confirmation and nods.
“That certainly seemed a novel means of repair,” Mrs. Smith says. The smile on her face is benign, but knowing.
“Anyway!” You pick up your empty laundry basket. “I really must get back. I have a…that is, I… I think I left my oven on.”
You barrel out the door, nearly knocking Mrs. Smith over in your escape. You run down three flights of stairs and into your apartment, slamming the door shut. Marching to your couch, you put a pillow over your face and scream .
***
Watching her leave, Arthur stands in shock at first, then glances over at Mrs. Smith and turns himself towards one of the washing machines, examining it with great focus.
A soft chuckle reaches his ears and he turns his head to look at the old lady, steadily pulling out one piece of laundry at a time from another machine. Under the pretense of examining all the machines, he notes that she also slowly and methodically loads the dryer.
“You should just go after her,” she says quietly, throwing a pair of large pink underpants into the dryer. “She’s a nice one, that girl.”
Arthur can only mutter, “I got work to do.”
“Come now, we both know that’s a lie.”
He sighs. It’s bad enough that John is on his case, but now 705 is giving him grief.
“Do you like her?”
He’s silent. He does not want to be having this conversation.
“Because a girl as pretty as her…”
“I know, I know,” Arthur grumbles. “I’m goin’.”
As he walks past her, Mrs. Smith grins knowingly.
