My yoga pants have never been to yoga class

Em. She/Her. Over 18. A collection of fanfics and content I enjoy when I need a break from life and a reminder it's still beautiful. No minors please.

[heli0s-writes]

Sweet

A/n: You know how sometimes when you’re having a breakdown and nothing is helping but then something completely unrelated and stupid just does it for no reason. This is that. With pot brownies and kissing. Bucky is recovering and reader is an moron with a heart of gold. Angst, hurt/comfort, humor. Reader/Bucky. 3k words Warnings: Marijuana use; conversations about trauma, particularly food-related; language.

-

The path leading away from the cabin is littered with wet patches of morning. Rime colors of miserable winter in sludge grey are starting to be overtaken by sprouts of green, yellow, and brisk dew, springtime optimism come to life.

Pepper’s got the front of her house looking like a farmer’s market flower stand. Pots of tulips and daffodils explode up the steps and tri-color ribbons connecting porch-light to porch-light. The magnolia tree is soon to bud, and she’s hung hummingbird feeders and birdhouses all around.

When the cars start rolling in for the quarter-yearly potluck, you hang out near the garden, rocking back and forth on your feet. You'd shown up early but didn’t know what to do around a toddler, so outside it was.

The familiar Range Rover halts to a stop, Sam’s door opening as he makes his way out, holding ceramic handles of an enormous crockpot.

You call, “Bring your famous chili?”

“Damn right, I did,” he beams, “you bring your appetite?”

You waggle your eyebrows before looking to the SUV he hopped out of, Steve lingering by the back door with a brown paper box tucked beneath his arm, knocking on the heavily tinted windows with a long-suffering sigh. “C’mon, Buck. Up and at ‘em.”

A loud, decisive knock thumps back at him and Steve rolls his big, pitiful, puppy dog eyes in your direction. Beneath the blue of his left orbital is what looks suspiciously like the fading ochre stain of either an almost healed bruise or a newly forming one, which only makes Steve’s silent call for aid more pathetic and urgent.

Damn, okay. Since you’re kind of on thin ice already, this could go one of two ways.

Sliding up, you crack your knuckles.

“Barnes,” you call, “I got something illegal for you. Wanna see?”

“Dead body.” He responds from behind the still shut door, and you’re not sure if that’s a question. Steve glares at you accusatory, as if you’d actually bring a dead body to a potluck, good grief.

“Uh, no.”

“Knife.”

Steve shoots you another look—which is just ridiculous at this point, the both of them.

“Knives aren’t illegal.”

“Depends.”

Steve shifts the box of what looks to be cherry turnovers and mouths phrase day, which means that Barnes decided to stop talking in complete sentences sometime between when he woke up and probably when Steve over-crowded him and is now reducing all communication to two or three words as both a method of punishment for Steve and self-preservation for Barnes.

“It’ll make you feel better,” you urge, “Loads better.”

“Sex.” He rolls down the window just enough for you to get a glimpse of his eyes, narrowed and steely. “Drugs?”

You mouth bingo, outrightly ignoring the fact that it feels like Bucky Barnes nearly solicited you for sex, and Steve puts his hand over his own face, about to quip until he realizes that he’s probably said too much already—which is what got him in this predicament to begin with—and simply drags himself toward the house.

Barnes watches him go wordlessly before he opens the door and steps out, looking down at you, lightly shivering in the cold, and says, still one-worded, “Okay.”

-

He pops three brownies into his mouth and chews, opening just enough to get out a muffled, “too sweet” before returning to grinding down like he’s cracking pecan shells in there.

“I know you have like,” you make panicked motions with your fingers, snapping the red Tupperware lid back down frantically, “hella metabolism, but pump the brakes or you’re going to flip.”

“Flip,” he concludes, determined. He squirrels about two more in before you can do anything about it.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I was going to let you take those home later—oh my god, I’m going to get into so much trouble.”

The two of you are stopped at one of those cutesy stone birdbaths around the perimeter, leaning on the lip as Barnes licks remaining chocolate off his fingers, looking as pleased as punch. As much as he can look, anyway, you think, since you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him smile at anything other than the time Steve stubbed his toe bad enough on Tony’s kitchen island that he doubled over. 

“Did you say sex earlier?” You suddenly remember the flash of silver from the darkness of the SUV. “Wait, actually, I wanna go back even before that—did you really think I’d have a dead body?”

He shrugs.

“Cool,” you reply, “cool, cool, cool, cool. I think I should be more concerned, but you know what, I like it. Feels like a vote of confidence.”

A wide grin stretches across your face and you temporarily forget that Bucky fucking Barnes has eaten about half a pan of brownies with 25 grams of pot baked into them, that in about 15 minutes you’re both expected to sit down like normal people and have a nice dinner without anyone doing… whatever it is that he might do when he’s blazed to high heaven.

You shake the thought of Steve’s disappointment out of your head. Maybe it’d be best to keep acting natural, get him into some kind of headspace.

“So,” you whistle, “what’d you bring to the potluck?”

He gives you a sidelong stare and if there were Olympics for how someone can convey eat shit and die without moving anything but their eyes, he’d win every 8 years for the rest of his unnaturally long life.

“Well, I brought myself,” you curtsy, starting back down the trail again, figuring that you’ve got five minutes walking forward before it’d be time to turn back to the house, “and your present,” to which he gives you a short nod, “and an empty stomach. You excited for Sam’s chili?”

“Spicy.”

“Spicy?” you recoil, suddenly finding the prospect of a man who gave Captain America a black eye last week or possibly this morning—the monster who ate half of your most lethal bake—panting and sweating over a bowl of chili astoundingly inconceivable.

“Oh wait, you live with Rogers. What’s he feeding you at home? Steamed chicken?”

“Baked.”

You sigh, “God, you’re fucked. Nat brought something with Carolina Reaper infused honey glaze. Barnes... we’ll have to do a prayer circle for your ass.”

His face twists into a look of disgust before he starts to notice his lips, pressing them together, pulling them apart. After a few more motions like he’s discovering his body, bit by bit, he turns to you, and announces, “Feeling it.”

You laugh, jealous, because although you had a bite about 30 minutes before he even arrived, the brownie hasn’t hit you yet. “Good,” you say anyway, “that’s good, right?”

He only apathetically regards a sparrow flying past. You suppress a chortle when Barnes repeatedly licks his lips and rubs at the sleeves of his sweater.

“Have you ever been high before?” You correct, “In the fun, recreational, consensual way?”

Another listless shrug before he turns his head. You push yourself off a nearby log and make a show of stomping through haphazard piles of sticks and dead leaves, curling your fingers in a come along motion.

He follows, boots crunching, steps short and patternless, making a racket behind your back. He looks like a kid, fingers tucked up into his long sleeves, bouncy knees as he attempts to splash into every puddle as he possibly can before catching up. He’s almost got a grin when he looks at you, remembering where he is again, and there’s a light brush of color along the tops of his cheeks from the chill.

Around a small bend in the path, you duck under a branch, hop over a stone, and when you land back on both feet, the ground wobbles just enough to notice.

The air smells nice. Your eyelids feel heavy in a good way.

“Steve really piss you off this morning, didn’t he?”

Barnes lands a couple of feet away, his face dropping into an exhausted expression at the question, which you can’t fault him for because Steve’s a lot of things. Simple things, on the surface, but Barnes has known him longer than most anyone else and you imagine all of his noble qualities—his longstanding patience and willpower and belief in the goodness in everything and everyone—you imagine that shit gets old.

Hell, it gets at you on occasion, and you’re not even the brainwashed best friend who’s probably hearing a hundred voices in his head and is too tired to hear one more no matter how well-intentioned it might be.

Sometimes, being inundated by language just breaks it all back into foreign, incomprehensible script. And sometimes, being exceedingly plied with something you can’t make any sense of makes you turn inward, makes you bare your teeth in self-defense.

Which makes you realize you probably should ease up, too, talk less, but then he takes a long step with his ridiculous legs and is by your side, walking as if you two do this all the time.

“He’s a fixer.” Bucky’s brows are scrunched together, hands buried in his pockets. You nod quickly, not wanting him to go into any more detail than that because it’s not news that the entire population is still wary of Bucky Barnes’ re-emergence as a United States citizen when he was, up until very recently, a—uh, Russian one.

This, obviously, puts many things at odds with each other, including Steve, who is Mr. United States himself. The Avengers, too, who are mostly Team United States, considering the location and overwhelming population. But most of all, Bucky, who is still cobbling together bits and pieces of his life each day, is faced with the knowledge that everyone in the world knows more about him than he does.

You rub the back of your neck sympathetically because that shit would kill your heart so fast.

“You know what.” You shake the Tupperware at him, “Have the rest of these. You deserve it. And like, a million hugs.”

He barks a laugh, gladly gulps down the rest, and there’s a dapple of fudge on his chin looking so silly and sweet as he chews.

Ah, shoot. You avert your gaze, feeling very bad ideas break out up your arms and neck, and the shudder that is about to overtake you seems less about Barnes’ sweet face and more about Steve’s disappointed one. Like, he’s going to read your mind and know you’re having ideas about his best friend. And he’s going to do that thing where his eyebrows drop and his lips press together as he attempts to hold back a few choice words. Until later, probably, when he corners you somewhere and unleashes them anyway.

What were you thinking?, he’ll hiss. Are you capable of thinking rationally?

“What?” Barnes prods. “What is it?”

“Nothin’” you take a leap forward, herding the both of you back. The closer you are to the cabin the more you’ll remember that you’re at a family event, with friends, who should all stay in the friend territory.

But you blurt anyway, “You said sex earlier!” Because you’re a whole ass idiot.

He makes a small noise, says, “Yeah,” like that’s any help.

“Are you…” what the fuck, your head is spinning, “like, in… need of some?” Your face feels hot.

“Maybe. My body is…” he frowns, so weirdly open right now, and then he looks at you with half is face in a weary grin, the other half lost and confused. “Responding to stimuli in ways I haven’t— responded to in... Trying to fix it. Steve wants me to be fixed.”

He tilts his face to the sky, glaring at it. “Can’t get it out.”

You’re trying to force your rabbiting heart down to a manageable pace. You’ve never had any in-depth discussions with him about anything, much less his sex drive. The most interaction the two of you get is the occasional mission or get-together where you crack jokes and get shitfaced when the job’s done. You’ve been told you’re sort of a pain and haven’t given a fuck too much to change that.

You’re sort of in trouble right now, having been “irrational” during the last mission, running across the iced lake instead of taking the planned route and falling in. It ended up working out, since you got to the enemy helicopter before the enemies, but then there was the stabbing because you were sort of outnumbered and the pneumonia afterwards because you fell into the fucking lake…

There was a massive chewing out. Steve and his many, disappointed words.

Something about motor-mouths and low-object permanence but sure, good on the inside when it counts.

You hope this is one of those times where it counts.

“Listen,” you start. “Take as long as you need, there’s no rush on recovery and pushing yourself too hard is detrimental to your health. It’s not a straight line.”

“I hit him.”

Your wheeling brain is making a sharp left, trying to figure out where Barnes is driving toward. Oh. The black eye.

“Aw, Steve?” You wave your hand, swatting nothing. “He’s a big boy.”

“I’m hungry. Then I’m not.”

“I mean, that sounds normal—“

“No, a lot. Fast. Cyclical. Endless.”

It must be his metabolism adjusting. The realization of his relationship with food comes fast, almost visceral. Scarce when he was young, then rationed during the war before it was taken from him altogether. He was given the bare minimum with Hydra—protein slurry, tube-fed—then purged—stomach pumped—before being put on ice.

For decades.

Starvation must have truly felt endless.

And now with food being a surplus, with his body readjusting to it, yet his mind still struggling with habits—it must be so confusing. Another seemingly natural function to be confused about.

“Ah,” you manage, a lump in your throat like a blockade.

“I get nightmares.” He’s glaring at his hands, one flesh, one metal, opening and closing his fist like trying to get a grip on himself, and his voice is so small and pained. “These thoughts. All sorts. Can’t sleep.”

You extend your hands, shake off the dry sob that wants to erupt from your chest, and declare with flourish, “On the fourth day, God made Purple Kush, and it was good. So, we can—we can fix that.”

He takes another one of those long looks, through his lashes, lips quirked in quiet humor.

“You’re not really a fixer.”

He shakes the container of crumbs in your face.

You gasp, snatching it back in offense. “I can fix… some things! I replaced the utility light in the kitchen yesterday!“

Your cheeks are hot, face twitching like a broken screen because all you can think about is how handsome he is, out here like this, nose blushing, eyes lazy and crescent shaped, the heavy creases beneath them less pained and more relaxed.

And how he’s teasing you—- and he’s kind of a little shit.

“You fucker,” you say.

He grins—all big and silent, and for a second you count your blessings that he’s not going to say anything else shitty until he quips, “Not unless you’re offering.”

He’s staring at you intently, a curious expression winding its way up his face. His eyes are huge and blue and the most alert, glazed-over, pair of bloodshot, redder-than-the-devil’s-dick eyes you’ve ever seen on anyone stoned halfway to the moon.

His tongue darts out, sweeps a slow, careful line over the width of his bottom lip, practically asking, and you’re just the simple idiot who openly gawks at him.

“Ah,” you nod. “Yeah you’re definitely right. I’m—“ you gulp, “more of a fuck-up.”

Because what’s another fuck up to add onto the long-running list of fuck ups you’ve had recently, anyway? Kissing Barnes might count as a really serious one, sure, but at least it’s not pneumonia.

It’d make him feel better, probably, it’d make him feel something, at least. Steve would appreciate that, if Barnes came to the dinner table verbal, maybe even laughing. No one has to tell Steve that his best pal kissed your face off in the woods.

The idea of your face being kissed off is doing a number on you. The idea of Bucky Barnes, this gorgeous, miserable, godly, tragic contradiction, your at-arm’s-length teammate, your quickly-becoming friend, kissing your face off because he needs to feel something soft in the midst of the rest of the horrible, jagged things he already feels every second of his life—and he can get it from you.

You’re stupid and simple and how could anyone say no to that? So you take one last second to steel your heart, push forward, and lean in.

It’s, frankly, bizarre.

He kisses you gently, fantastically, inconsistently, wavering from assured one second to apprehensive the next, like he remembers how but can’t quite execute.

You meet him where you can, respond to the parting of his lips with your own, adjust to his tension with grace, and when he starts feeling like he’s getting the hang of it, like muscle memory has  finally settled into his body, you let him lead.

One hand finds the base of your skull, the other placing itself on your waist. His kisses grow greedy, like he remembers desire is a thing that occurs to him. He tilts his head down, kisses up like he wants to swallow every sigh between your lips, like he’s hungry for the sounds you make—and you’re making, embarrassingly, a lot of them. He’s good—dominant but kind, mouth wide, lips full, tongue cocoa-sweet and clever as it strokes yours again and again.

When he backs you up into a tree, you barely register it. His hand has moved to cushion your head, and he’s urging his entire body forward into yours, grip tight at your hipbone, moving his mouth to your jaw, then your neck, and you stutter a string of letters that refuse to make words.

Barnes is expertly sucking marks beneath your collar, right beneath the neckline, his breath hot and coming out in a near snarl and when he scrapes his teeth down, sinking them into the soft skin of your chest, you yelp loud enough to send a few birds scattering from the trees.

He jumps off like he’s burned you, eyes frantic, afraid.

“No—” you clear your throat, hands out, “Hold on.”

He’s blinking, head clearing, head trying to assess what he’s done, the situation, the pulled loose neckline, the wet shine of his spit up your throat.

“S-sorry—”

“No, don’t be sorry.” You give him his distance but take a small step forward. “That was hot. But,”

He blinks, confused, and this whole thing could easily go pear-shaped, your well-intentioned explanation might turn into unintelligible speech at any moment, but you have to try or else he’ll tailspin into catastrophe, and you suddenly feel so sorry for Steve, the poor fuck who’s doing this every day, clinging onto the hope that what he’s saying doesn’t set Bucky off, doesn’t push his boulder back downhill.

He's still stuttering sorry, starting to pace.

“Listen,” you say firmly, clipping your own panic, “that was wow, let me tell you. But if you don’t stop, I’m going to like— hotwire a car.”

Somehow this stops him in his tracks, “What?”

“Well, I didn’t drive here. Because you know, I was going to like, get really shitfaced.”

“What?”

“Yeah, and like, take you to a hotel or something.”

He frowns, obviously completely lost. “Why?”

It’s your turn to be lost. Both of you open-mouthed and panting at each other like two dumb dogs chasing each others’ tail in an ouroboros of idiocy.

“Huh? What do you mean why? You just tongue-fucked me, do you think I’m immune to getting on my knees for that?”

Now you can see it happening—the incomprehensible speech like a marquee as it runs across Barnes’ brain. Tongue-fuck, immune to getting on my knees. He doesn’t understand any of that, and god bless any soul who can. What language are you even speaking right now other than hot-brained, hot-skinned, hot-hearted to him, who’s still struggling to defrost?

“Never mind,” you redact, “ignore that.” You put your hands on his shoulders to ground yourself, vaguely thinking that maybe you shouldn’t touch him but the firm slap of your palms seems to break him out of his new trance. “Can we kiss again, later?”

He blinks, staring at you, at your hands on him, at your lips all swollen up.

“Yes.”

You sigh, relieved and thankful that other than you, no one’s freaking out, that your plan to get Bucky Barnes high worked out after all, and that he has agreed to make out later because he’s really, really good at it.

“Wonderful. Let’s go back now? Are you ready?”

He mulls it over and shoves his hands into his jacket pockets. “Sure, but I’m not eating chili.”

“Well, you’re in luck, there’s plenty of chicken.”

He grimaces, cuts a sharp look up to you before a twinkle settles in his blue, blue eyes. “Okay,” he agrees, “guess we should do a prayer circle for my ass.”

You clap your hands together and recite Our Father.

-

“It was sex, wasn’t it?”

Sam’s got one hand over his belly, snickering. Everyone else looks your way, gullible, scandalized, and you can’t blame them since the two of you were gone an awfully long time and came back extremely disheveled.

Bucky had walked in dutifully behind you, wiped off his boots, sat down at the dinner table, and asked for seconds saying please and thank you and he even threw in a that was delicious just to watch Steve’s head explode.

And Bucky, who you’ve come to realize is genuinely a shit— still one-worded and knowing full well the repercussions of his one word— only shrugs and responds, “Yes.”

The room erupts into shouting as you throw a buttered roll at his head. He catches it easily and brings it up to his grinning mouth, shimmer of spit glossy and fantastic on his lips.

[thecornerlot]

This was like opening a care package that hits all the right notes. The kind of writing that makes you smile and feels deeply human and you marvel at beautifully crafted it is.

[saintcastiglione]

LIGHTFALL - Chapter 3/8

Chapter Summary: How does the night end with you bloody and in Frank's bed? Guess he was right about you. Pairing: Frank Castle x Reader Chapter Warnings: 18+ Always. Language. Flirting. Cleaning up a dead body. Angst. Gore. Word Count: 3.5k A/N: Give a note-thirsty-ho like me a reblog and a comment. I'm putting a lot of love into this. a playlist if you'd like to listen to the songs that inspired the story

Chapter 3 - Sanitize Your Work Surface

Thwack.

It’s the erratic whir of the industrial Hobart mixer. The only sound in your kitchen.

Fifty quarts of batter flop against a steel paddle the size of a shovel. It clanks over and over, whacking against the metal bowl that’s rattled on its side and completely off alignment. Spinning helplessly, the paddle tries to put itself back together onto the base of the mixer. 

Thwack.

All you hear. That metallic clash. A violent fight.

Cake batter spits across your counters and Pollocks onto Chloe’s dead body beneath it. Beady splotches of what would’ve been baked into a spiced apple sponge cake spray into red blood. It oozes into the grout.

Thwack.

Matches your heartbeat. Every smack. Nauseating.

Not all of Chloe’s blood is speckled. Some of it is pristine, a shade of red you’d never actually seen before. Not even the McCarthy cake, encrusted in isomalt dyed crimson to mimic rubies. Trickling slowly towards you, blood crawls to your shoes.

Thwack.

Her eyes are open. Once vibrant and green, there’s no spark in them. Not any more. Now they’re a cloudy milky white, like a bad sugar glaze beaten too hard.

A wet slap hits your cheeks. Cake batter. It’s warm and for a second you think it’s Chloe’s blood. The air you didn’t know you’d been holding erupts.

Thwa-

Your scream overpowers the sound of the paddle making its next orbit. It just happens, pulling out of you and ripping through your shop. From the very pit of your stomach, the guttural sound reverberates through WHIPPED for a fleeting second. 

Frank’s calloused palm slaps over your mouth, instant and stifling, bottling your horrors for you to swallow instead. There’s no fighting against him, though you try. His chest slams against your back as his free hand has already coiled around your waist, yanking you upward to keep you from falling to your knees. Your nails dig into those scabs and rough patches on his knuckles, but he’s not moving. 

“Easy,” he whispers, lips hot against your ear. Though his voice is low and jagged, it breaks through the sound of anything else until you feel it ringing in your skull. The strength in your legs gives and he squeezes you. Keeps you anchored to him and upright.  “Breathe and listen to me. That’s all you gotta do.” 

There’s a lifeless corpse of someone you loved staring back at you. Tears spill over your unblinking lids and create a pond against Frank’s fingers that’re still taut on your mouth. 

“You keep a gun in here?” 

The notion of ever needing a gun for your bakery was never conceivable. You shake your head like a foolish girl. 

Frank hauls you backwards, your feet skidding through flour dust and batter, until he shoves you into your cramped storage closet. The room is suffocating, reeking of pine cleanser and chemicals. 

“Scream again, and if someone’s here, they’ll find you.”

He reaches into his waistband and pulls out a black semi-automatic. A gun you never wanted to know the name of, but years of mandatory target practice with your pops, means you recognize it instantly. 

“Know how to use one?”

Ashamed, you nod. 

“Attagirl,” he pushes the weapon into your hands. It’s heavier than you remember. Your fingers tremble as they thread against the cold polymer grip.  

“Safety’s off,” he says, like he’s reading a recipe. Something effortless for him scares the shit out of you. “That door opens and it ain’t me, put ‘em down.”

The smell in here is making it hard for you to find air. You’re heaving. “I can’t.” 

“I’m telling you that you can.”

“The police,” you choke, voice breaking in the dark. “W-we have to-” 

“No.”

“Frank-”

“Call them and you hand yourself over twofold. You’re a target and a suspect. Means the Shop’s closed. Don’t put your life in the trust of a system that we both know doesn’t give a shit about you.” 

He lifts your hands, guiding them as he steadies the aim of the gun. Tilts the muzzle up until it rests directly over his own heart. 

And then he presses. 

You try to recoil, but he’s not letting you. His control tightens, neither cruel nor kind, but anchoring.

“No running,” he says, low enough that it feels smothering in the dark. “Not from this. Not from me.” 

“I’m not running.” 

“Show me.” 

The strength of his hands leave yours and the weapon now belongs to you.

Then Frank leans in.

The barrel digs into him and he accepts it. Makes you feel the contours of his body, the hardness beneath his shirt, and the even beat trapped under metal. You’re tethered as he pushes until the pressure rolls along you in a sharp snap. As your elbows lock to hold the gun. As your feet find the floor. As your body has no choice but to answer his call. 

You give it back. Hard. 

And his breath catches, barely, but everything is so heightened that you hear it. 

“Feel that?” he says, low and steady. 

He offers you his heart at the end of a loaded gun. Your finger rests around the very thing that could end him.

“Yeah.” 

“Good. That’s all it takes,” he says. “Let me go out there, clear the premises, and I’m back in five.”

“Chloe’s dead.”

“That ain’t changing. What matters is that you’re not.” 

He leans in harder, like he’d rather take the bruise of the muzzle than see you lose it all.

“I come back and we figure this out together. No cops. Not Curtis. Just us. Shop stands strong, and you stay safe. That I can promise.”

You snatch in a breath when he pulls off you. “Have a decision made before I get back.”

“What happens if you don’t come back?” 

He gives you a look. Not puzzled. Not even insulted. It’s a grim certainty, like he’s already seen the outcome to this before it happens. 

And since finding Chloe, you finally understand that if anyone is still in the shop, Frank isn’t the one in danger. They are.

 “Five minutes.”

Frank’s gone, leaving you to wade in the black all alone. It’s silent, save for the mixer. 

No.

That stops too. Maybe the motor died. Or maybe Frank turned it off. Maybe someone else did.

The gun presses harder into your palm. 

Everything seems to shrink around you. The storage closet becomes a coffin. Bleach, broken down boxes, a broom with a wonky handle. Snapped right in half when your staff tried doing some ridiculous TikTok challenge. The little things that go overlooked, but keep a business looking effortless and alive. 

WHIPPED is your life. It’s you. 

What a fucked up thought to have at time like this. A selfish, greedy, self-preserving thought. 

Chloe is dead in your kitchen, and you’re thinking about payroll. About rent. Your staff that you pay well above starting rate because you know what it’s like to work hard and still come up short. The holidays are coming and that means everyone needs hours. 

You think about these last nine months. All the smiling, fixing, scraping by, and proving yourself. One dead troubled girl can take everything you’ve built and make it nothing. 

The shop dies with Chloe?

That reality is so hideous you make it nonexistent.

There are bottles of alkaline degreaser and quat sanitizer sitting on the shelves. You don’t know which tackles blood better, so naturally, you grab both. Next come the gloves. Then a bristle brush. Rags and a bucket. It’s hard carrying it all with an M18, but you manage. 

A swing through the storage closet doors, and you’ve made your decision. 

“Frank?” you whisper.

No answer. 

You tiptoe back to the kitchen and make it halfway before Chloe ruins you all over again. 

Knees hitting the linoleum next to a pile of flour, you’re a heaving mess on the floor. Blood seeps towards you. Into you. Your hands and knees slip in it as you crawl. Beneath a workstation, you see her phone and keys spun loose like they were ripped from her mid-thought.

“Really?” you say to her. “Another mess of yours.”

The cruelty makes your voice break. 

“How am I supposed to fix this, Chloe?” 

She says nothing. And you fucking hate her for it. 

Twenty-two and reckless. Bright and stupid and gone. You told her to lock the shop and she couldn’t even do that and you hate her. If you don’t, your grief will split you open and make you useless. 

So you don’t stare at the corpse. That’s not Chloe anymore. Can’t be if you want to get through the night. Now, it’s just an object in the way of making your shop clean. 

You get to work. Bright yellow gloves smack onto your hands. One scrubs. The other holds the gun.

Bristles scratch deep into the grout. Dirty red bubbles fizz and foam into gummy pink. Suds hiss with chemical burn. The smell is obscene, iron and chlorine, and that sugar gunk from the cake batter. Without permission, more tears fall. Could be sorrow, could be from the fumes. Doesn’t really matter. 

You scrub, you rinse, you wipe, you repeat. They can never know. No one can know. Your shop has to be exactly as it was before to everyone who believes being beautiful means being unblemished. Even if you know the truth, that WHIPPED is permanently disfigured now. 

And that means so are you. 

But hey, some grotesque things still hold beauty, right? Awe, even? Maybe because of the horror, or in spite of it, things… people, shine brighter after surviving something awful. 

Frank barks your name. 

So hard that your spine seizes and you’re jumping to your feet. He’s somewhere in the shop, but his voice punches through the walls. Not enraged. Even worse. Afraid.

He’s saying it again as he barges into the kitchen. When he finds you, you have no time to ask him what’s wrong. 

“You listen to what the fuck I tell you.” He’s on you before he can finish his sentence, shaking you so hard it’s bone rattling. Your scrubber falls to the floor. “I say stay put, you stay put.”

The dig of his fingers hurts. 

“Cargo quilts, Frank,” you bite through the pain. “In the freezer.” 

He’s too busy being full of an emotion you never thought you’d see on him. And it’s even harder to fathom that you’re the cause of it. 

“They could’ve killed you, they could’ve done worse-” 

“Castle,” you match him, a shout louder than his own. The butt of your gun knocking into the side of his head. “I keep the cargo quilts from when my sugar is delivered on pallets. They are in the freezer. Please get them.”

His rage stalls. Now he just takes it in and listens. From the coagulated mess on the floor, to the corpse, then you. 

You can see the moment Frank understands your decision.

His grip slackens. Something shifts in the space between you, in the way he looks at you. Not pity or softness. Just the hideous recognition of watching someone step somewhere you don’t come back from.

And then it’s gone.

“Cargo quilts,” he repeats. “Freezer.”

You nod. He gets to work.

You call out to your security system. “Turn off the security cameras.” 

A jovial voice trying too hard to sound human replies. 

To disable security recordings, please say your four-digit PIN.

You give it. Curtis’ birthday. 

Clean up is spent in silence. Frank’s on corpse duty. He takes those thick insulated quilts from the freezer and rolls Chloe’s body like a roulade. He does it with morbid quickness. Folding and tucking like he’s done this a million times under worse circumstances. 

You don’t inquire. You scrub. 

There’s more blood than you thought a body could ever lose. More than what should fit inside of one person. And it’s sneaky. 

Hides in grout and under prep-table legs. It’s beneath the lip of the refrigerator. A splatter on your cabinets. In the pink afterthoughts of where your brush has already been.

You scrub and scrub and wipe until it burns. Everything. Your muscles and your nose. The delicate patch of skin on your arm where the gloves ended. 

By the time it’s over, you have a dead body hauled in the back of WHIPPED’s delivery truck, and the kitchen looks pristine. Sparkling. The truth coats both you and Frank. Bloody head to toe, you question if clean will ever hold the same meaning for you. Everyone will see perfection, but you’ll know the truth.

“I know a place.” 

Comes from Frank when you ask him what the hell is protocol when you have a dead body to dispose of. 

He drives, navigating the 4am backstreets like the city is built into his synapses. For once, you don’t argue and let him have the reins. Makes you a little jealous that he knows New York better than you do. You sit put in the passenger seat, praying not a damn soul or cop car looks too hard at a speeding bakery truck. 

He takes you to the docks. 

Stupidly, you think he means the river. That this mass murderer’s brilliant idea was to drag Chloe out of the van and sink her into the Hudson. But Frank keeps driving.

Past the junkyard and fences glorified in barbed wire. Further down the stacked cargo containers and engine-broken forklifts, and loading bays with blown out security lights. 

Is this even the same city? At this vantage point, it looks decayed. Utterly uninterested in keeping up appearances. Nothing but rust, concrete, and air that reeks of sulfur.

Frank turns into a row of storage units hiding behind an abandoned shipping warehouse. No sign of humanity, no cameras, not even a weed daring to grow through the cracks in the asphalt. Nothing that would make you think something living frequented the area. And yet Frank knows it with ease. 

“You’ve been here before,” you say with certainty.

“Was here on Tuesday.” 

The truck rolls to a stop right in front of a steel door. You both head out, and Frank opens the double doors to the back of the car. 

There Chloe is, wrapped in those industrial quilts. Behind her, strapped securely on an upper shelf, is the McCarthy cake boxed carefully and untouched. Two very different orders. You want to laugh. 

Frank lifts the corrugated steel doors, and the sound shudders through the docks. Inside is black until he finds a switch. A yellow bulb that needs replacing flickers inside.

It’s not pretty. Stains have sunk so deep that they’ve become a part of the place. The concrete floor has a drain in the center, and you don’t want to know why.

Your friend is going in there. This is her tomb.

“Fuck, I can hear her now,” you say, forgetting that Chloe isn’t supposed to be Chloe at all, but an object. A problem that you’re solving. “Only two people at her funeral? She’ll haunt me for that alone.” 

He grabs her covered body without asking for help. Places her in the center of the room. 

“She’d have a field day with you.”

Frank’s grabbing a red canister that sits outside the unit. “That right?” 

“She has-had a thing for cavemen,” you say. “Told me she liked being the thinker in the relationship.” 

The canister tips. The smell hits instantly. Gasoline.

He’s holding some rolled up newspapers. Takes out a lighter. Its edge catches in a wavering crackle yellow and red. 

“You don’t gotta watch.” 

You sit at the edge of the truck. “Of course, I do.” 

Chloe catches flame. 

It’s wild and engulfing, just like she was. 

Smoke coils and curls in black tendrils, searching for a way out until it navigates to the open door. You’ve smelled many-a thing. Burnt sugar at the bottom of a bowl. Rotten eggs cracked against tile. Rancid water trapped in a broken sink pipe.

This is distinct.

Sour. Gamey. All wrong.

But you don’t cover your nose. Chloe didn’t deserve that. Didn’t deserve this. 

The bright hair, the charm, the unease of taking care of a drifter - she made you feel like you were raising a stray cat way too many times. 

Gone. 

And you’d give it all up now. Every pretty thing you’d ever make. Even WHIPPED. 

You’d give it up if it meant getting her back. 

“I hate this for you,” you say, throat tightening. “I’m sorry.”

Frank hears you, you know he does, but he says nothing. There isn’t an answer for this. Not one that you like, anyway. 

When you’re ready Frank locks the unit. And takes you home. 

His home. Not yours. 

“Easier than driving all the way back,” is what he tells you as he parks the truck. “Safer.”

The starkness in which he lives doesn’t surprise you. Frank is a man of little words and even fewer home decorations. At least he has a rug beneath his bed. A bed of course, with no frame, no boxspring, just laying on the floor. It’s made to the nines, however, guess all that Marine training means he can’t go without making his bed. Newspaper clippings and potential leads have replaced what should be paintings or photos along the walls.

Smells like a man who doesn’t care for ambience here. Gun oil, something burnt in a single pot on the white stove, and musk. Not a Trudon candle in sight.

He’s very clean. Floors are polished. Counters without crumbs. A rack of every gun you ever thought existed shines like sugar wax. 

“You hungry?” he asks. “Ain’t got much, but I can make you something.”

If you weren’t so exhausted that you could feel a sharp jabbing in your spine, you may have smiled. “Nah. Just need a shower, a towel, a washcloth, and a shirt.” 

He follows your orders. Gets you an old, beat up shirt of his. Dingy green with harsh detergent faded letters on the front. USMC. That shirt is home to countless stories and you’ll add to its history. The towel and washcloth you can tell came from a set you’d find at Ross. 

The shower is great. Water pressure is so much better than yours back home, and it hits like a bullet against your skin. It gets to a temperature you’re sure your skin will hate later on when it’s dry and scalding, but right now you want to boil yourself alive. Until the pink water that falls off your body, down the stone flooring, and into the plughole runs clear. 

Frank uses Dove lavender body wash. You’re never going to bring it up, or acknowledge how much you truly love that human detail about him.

When you’re done, you’re grateful the steam has covered the mirror so thickly that you can’t look at yourself.

“Joke’s on my parents,” you say, leaving the bathroom and entering into Frank’s small studio. He’s sitting in a single chair at a table that’s built for one, eating out of a can of whatever-the-fuck. You guess he’s not living a bachelor’s life.  “They wanted a navy brat, and got a Marine instead.” 

He doesn’t watch you too hard in his shirt. Not when it’s all you have on. The respect is appreciated even if you don’t think it’s needed at this point. He stands, walks by you. “Guess that makes me your CO.”

“Fuck you.”

“The bed’s yours.” And he goes to take his shower. 

You fully expect to hate the rigidness that comes with sleeping on a thin mattress with nothing beneath it. But your back breathes a sigh of relief once you pull up his navy flat sheet that he's tucked in expertly and can finally lay down. Never realized how badly the balls of your feet throbbed until they had nothing to step on. You can smell Frank in the pillows. 

When he’s back, he’s carrying the steam with him. Nothing on but a chintzy pair of grey sweats, and the beads of water he missed drying from the shower. 

You offer him the same respect, averting your eyes from the details of skin you never thought you’d see. Or want to see. 

“Lights out.” he calls, flipping the switch. Funnily enough, you can kinda see how the sky outside, between the cracks of the newspaper-covered windows, begins to turn day-break blue. 

Frank takes a pillow and when you don’t feel the weight of him near you, you sit up.

“It’s not that serious,” you say. Eyes closed, trying to get a lick of sleep on the floor next to the bed, Frank doesn’t share the space with you. No blanket, just a pillow, in the middle of winter. 

“Then don’t make it serious,” he says, not bothering to open his eyes. “And go to sleep.” 

You can’t. You toss and turn. Mind keeping you up even if all it wants to switch off. But when you go to close them, all you see is Chloe. Before and after. 

Time means nothing and only when the sky has turned a lighter shade do you realize you still haven’t gone to sleep. 

“Frank?” you whisper so softly that it barely survives in the air. Like a lullaby. Or a prayer you don’t believe in. 

You know he’s asleep. He’s survived countless nights like this that knocking out isn’t a problem.

But his voice calls back. 

“It’ll be okay.” 

It should give you some sort of peace to hear, but it doesn’t. Not because you don’t believe him, but because you don’t think you deserve it. You don’t deserve to be okay when Chloe isn’t. You don’t deserve sleep, or clothes, or Frank’s promise of a future. You deserve nothing at all. 

The thought startles you. Makes you want to scream all over again when you realize it’s the most Frank Castle thought you’ve had tonight. 

“I knew you were a plague.” It comes out of you before you have a chance to stop it. 

There’s silence, until finally, after all these bloodstained hours, Frank confirms your suspicions. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I am.” 

It wrecks you. Pulls the real cry out. Not the one that’s shocked or the scream. It’s not the cry you gave when your body didn’t know what to do with itself. This cry belongs to you. Humiliating and out of control. Cracking from your ribs, and splitting you open down the middle.

What’s left for you to give? Nothing but the space you want to keep for yourself. Those last bits and pieces you thought maybe you could keep clean and untouched. The remnants of who you were yesterday. 

Not even your pride can stop you from moving to him. Lower and lower. Down to the floor. Against Frank. 

You fall into his body and find the crook of his arm. He goes rigid for a fleeting moment, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. But then, he acquiesces exactly enough to fit you. His arm comes around, and it’s not one of those practiced, commanding movements that are ingrained in him. His fingers float for a while, not knowing where to land on your skin he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch. 

It’s not until you push deeper, sobbing into his chest, that he settles against your back. Heavy, but careful. 

“God, I’m so stupid.” you heave. “I thought I could help you out, Frank. I really fucking did.” 

The touch at the small of your back isn’t enough. Blindly, you drag your fingers behind you until you find his, threading them into your own. You guide him over your waist and make him hold you as if you have any right to be comforted. 

He squeezes your hand and you share the grave he’s digging. 

“I climbed in with you.”

[thecornerlot]

I'm over here hanging on every word, wondering what's going to happen next.

Three chapters in, and reader's world is in total upheaval. The weight of what's happened and the unknown of what's to come are palpable.

Thank you for sharing your writing.

[saintcastiglione]

LIGHTFALL - Chapter 2/8

Chapter Summary: A shared drink makes you question why you hated Frank in the first place. You pull him into the light and fall into his grave. Pairing: Frank Castle x Baker!Reader Chapter Warnings: 18+ Always. Language. Flirting. Philosophy battles. Violence. Gore. It's a murder on the dance floor. Word Count: 3.5k A/N: This is where shit hits the fan and the story actually starts. Hope you enjoy. a playlist if you'd like to listen to the songs that inspired the story

Chapter 2 - Beat Until Stiff

A few blocks over from St. John’s is a place not locally advertised. Cross 83rd, turn left at the Cash 4 Gold, enter in through the metal mesh door that’s plastered with concert flyers and sticker rot, and you’ll find Sleazy’s. An obscure hole-in-the-wall with drinks that’ll get you right. If you hit La Grassa’s Delicatessen, you’ve gone too far.

Sleazy’s has become your go to escape when life starts making little sense. When your import of Madagascar vanilla gets held up in customs. When your overages don’t add up at the end of the month.

They also happen to make the best Boulevardiers you’ve tasted since you apprenticed in France so very long ago. 

You need this, a break from it all. Not a sister, not a baker, not a business owner. You’re nameless. No one knows you, except the bartender, Owen. And all Owen knows is to keep them coming and keep ‘em strong.

Taking a sip of your well crafted drink, heat spreads in your chest on its way down. The effect isn’t from the alcohol, but the gaze you’ve caught in the reflection of the mirrored backsplash behind the bartender. It’s slightly concerning that you’re able to notice him so immediately, he’s only halfway through the entrance before you spot him in that thick black utility jacket. No other patron seems to notice him outright, but the room still acquiesces around Frank. 

Foolishly, you think he won’t spot you. As the thought crosses your mind, his eyes connect with yours through the glass.

Of course, he does.

It’s a hard look and you can’t begin to decipher what it means. Every card he’s dealt, he holds tightly to his chest, and it would take more strength than you have for him to reveal them. 

You’re surprised when he makes a b-line to you, body bracing for his entrance. Round 2. 

He stops at your stool. “Go to hell, huh?”

“And this must be the seventh circle,” you say, “don’t tell me you’re following me.” 

“Coincidence.” His gaze litters across the bar almost like he’s taking surveillance, before it lands back on his target. You. “I like the quiet here. Helps me think.” 

His honesty startles you, clawing against your initial thoughts of him and what you summed him as. You both share the same underground hole-in-a-wall for the exact purpose. Even the Punisher needs an escape sometimes.

He motions to the empty stool at your left. “Care if I sit?”

You lift a shoulder. “I don’t control the seating arrangements." 

Permission granted.

Choosing to stay, the stool groans as Frank pulls it out. He makes room for himself where there already isn’t any. The bulge of his wide shoulder scrapes along your arm as he settles in. Constricting space and limited air, it’s a tight fit for you both and you, just like everyone else in his sights, sink to make room for him. Your elbows notch at your waist and instinctively you curl inward. 

Either Frank doesn’t notice, care, or is testing you. He calls out to Owen. “Shot of whiskey. Ain’t gotta be fancy. ”

“You’re unreal,” you sneer, waving a hand at him dismissively. Even that small movement is a brush of skin against his. “Don’t listen to him. He’ll have what I’m having. And get me another, please.”  

Owen looks from you to Frank. “She the boss?” 

“Yes.” 

Frank’s watching you and all you can see in the pits of his eyes are the lights of the bar bouncing off them. Like a chemlight in Registan. Or a kitchen torch against meringue. “You heard her.” 

Owen gets to work. 

Silence is thick, gluing you both. Not empty. Sweaty. You breathe through it in long, deep, inhales. It lasts until two rock glasses slide in front of you.

“Didn’t take you for a snob.” He eyes the drink, particularly the twisted orange garnish sitting atop the drink’s singular large icecube.

“Then you’re not paying attention, and I overestimated you,” you say, a fingertip pushing his glass closer to him. “If you’re going to drink with me, make it worth it.” 

Frank takes it and tips the edge to you. “Ceasefire?”

That earns him a real smile from you. “Friendly fire.”

Your glasses touch. 

You take your sip, already knowing how it tastes. A little dirty, a gnaw of spice, a bright citrus twinge that cuts through it once it goes down. It’s Frank’s opinion you want to hear.

“Well?” 

“Strong,” he swallows. “How many of these have you had already?”

“Enough where I don’t hate talking to you.”

“Fairplay.” A chuckle is caught in his throat, never making it fully out as he forces it back into its hole. Your eyes avert back to the bar and just like him, stifle the pull forming between your bodies. “You’re wrong about one thing,” he says, setting his drink on the bartop and lowering his head slightly your way. It’s so you can fully hear him, but you can also feel the heat of his skin near your own. And smell the phantom whiskey on his lips.  “I don’t want Curtis dead. Or you, for that matter.” You suck in a breath. “Your actions say otherwise.” “My actions. My war,” he starts,  “I don’t want you anywhere near that.” 

“Just Curtis then?” 

“Him either,” he says, “but he’s touched it. You can’t come back from that.” 

Your fingers dance around the rim of your glass. A delicate strum that matches the classic rock song crooning from hidden speakers. “Sounds bleak.”

“It’s real.” 

“Not to me. Hope still exists in the world.”

“Come on,” he takes another swig a bit haphazardly. A tiny trickle of alcohol streaks his stubble. You itch to wipe it away. Call it your sense of etiquette. “Either you’re buying the bullshit they peddle or you’re willingly playing blind.”

“But not you, though.” You’re teasing him before you can stop it. “Frank Castle knows better. He’s cracked the code.”

“I didn’t crack a damn thing. I’ve lived it,” he says, voice dragging over your skin. “You've got just as much darkness in you as I do.”

You punch him a look immediately. Quick and violent in its own way. Your body follows suit, swinging in your stool. Full stop. Your knees knock against his as you pivot, and he takes it in. Doesn’t move. Only watches you over the rim of his glass. 

“Don’t pretend like you know me.” 

He takes another drink, and doesn’t bother answering you yet. Just stares at the last of his alcohol. 

“Stop lying to yourself. Root to tip. It’s on you. More than Curtis.” He drags his knuckles along the bar. Peeled and scabbed and beaten. Scarred from acts you once believed you wanted to know about.  “Difference is, you still ain't touched it.”

Your stomach tightens when you hear how convinced he is. “I built something for myself."

“Yeah.” He rests his empty glass and chews on your words. “Yeah, you have.” 

For a flicker, it sounds like a compliment. Something akin to admiration even, but it’s snatched away without you even getting to revel in it.  “Guess that’s a privilege and a disservice because you still haven’t learned the truth.” 

“Enlighten me.” 

It’s unfathomable how much closer he can invade your space. A secret is on his lips that he trusts with no one but you. “Hope never did a goddamn thing for anybody." 

You swat his marred hand that’s dangerously close to your own. Swat it so hard that your hand stings from it.  He stays. “What a miserable way to live. No joy. No love. No light. All a defense mechanism. Those walls gotta come down eventually, soldier.” 

“Soldier? You must be drunk.” He takes your glass from you and drinks from it. Right from where your lips once pressed.  “Marine.” 

“Marine.”

“One more time so you don’t forget.”

“Marine.” you sing-song before your tone falls flat. “You’re wrong. There’s a lot of beautiful shit in this world. Either you look for it, or you just gotta be brave enough to make it.” 

“You’re not listening. Playing blind doesn't change the outcome-”

“-Damn. You must really love that grave.” 

“Open your eyes. That grave I’m digging ain’t for me.” 

“You’ll bury yourself alive, Frank. Here. Take my hand. I’ll help you out.” 

Those death splattered hands of his push your knees to the side as he also cranes himself to face you. The space becomes his. 

“Tell that to the sex traffickers and murderers, I’m sure they’ll love to hear it.” 

“I’m not telling it to them,” you say, hand crashing to the shoulder that once overtook you. No longer acquiescing, you fight back for the space to be yours. This time, he budges and gives in slightly to your push. Your body, because of his acceptance, edges even closer to him. You can feel him inhale and see your reflection now in those barlight filled eyes. “I’m- I’m telling it to you.“

That sweaty silence resumes, prickling along your spine, and even more heat radiates. Starts from the bottom up, and just like an oven, it circulates hot air. Between your bodies and your parted lips. Frank feels it too, of that you’re certain. It’s in the way his brow creases. The way he’s waiting for your move rather than commandeering the situation. 

“I shouldn’t be out this late,” you murmur, forcing yourself to look away before the silence turns into something you can’t control. Something worse that you can’t take back. You reach into your purse and pull out a wad of bills. “You don’t strike me as someone who tips well, or at all. This covers both of-” 

Hid expression hardens instantly. “The hell is the matter with you? You’re not paying.” 

“Screw your machismo bullshit.” You set the money on the counter. “We’re not gonna ignore that you were about to order a fourteen dollar shot of jack. Screams you’re rolling in money.” 

You start for your exit. Almost. Frank’s hand pulls on your forearm. Closing in on you and reels you back in. Doesn’t hurt, but it’s firm. Makes you wonder how he determined how much pressure he could use with you because he’s not treating you like you’re soft. 

It’s enough to stop you. 

That heat is back again, climbing so fast against you both that it’s humiliating. You’re acutely away of how you stop yourself from getting swept in his touch. Like an animal fighting against its nature. 

“Come on,” he says, quietly, “don’t be like that.” 

You slip your arm away before your heart starts pounding.

“I hope the next time we see each other, it’s under better circumstances,” you say, stiffly. 

His eyes stay on yours and you try not to think about how he still stays close to you. 

“Don’t get yourself killed before then,” you add.

You take off, feet carrying you quickly out of Sleazy’s and away from whatever that unnameable moment is. Outside, the winds are icy as they whip down the streets and along the buildings. It stings your cheeks and makes you shiver after how burning your skin just was. 

Buildings loom, neon signs bleed together and etch into the pavement. In the distance, further downtown, you hear the wail of a siren like the city’s dying.

You walk a little faster, hoping to put some distance between you and him. As if it would give you some clarity. But even as you trudge New York City at 1am, your mind replays that encounter over and over again on loop, circling back to Frank. None of it made sense. It didn’t feel like the anger you once had for him in the basement of St. Johns. If Frank and Curtis were family, you didn’t share the same kinship.

This wasn’t friendship, and it didn’t feel safe to be anything else.

If baking was chemistry meeting controlled actions, this was chemistry meeting unpredictability. Highly combustible and scary for someone like you. 

You stuff your hands in your pockets to protect yourself from the deepening cold. It’s blistering into a warning of a deep winter. When your fingers touch the bottom of your wool pockets and feel paper, you stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

Passersby push against you as you remain a boulder on the sidewalk when you fish out the money you just tried paying Owen with. 

You squeeze your eyes shut. “He’s such an asshole.”

“Took you long enough. Thought you’d notice sooner.” Frank falls into your step like he’d been there the entire time. Maybe he had.

He walks with you, eyes ahead like none of this is strange. Like trailing you throughout the city at one in the morning was perfectly reasonable behavior. 

“Why baking?”

You side-eye him. When you don’t answer, Frank looks at you and reads your steely stare. “Just headed in the same direction.” 

Sure.  

“I like control.”

“Couldn’t tell” he jabs. “Control doesn’t explain running away to Paris at sixteen.”

“Curtis told you about that?” 

“Can’t get him to shut up about you.” 

Frank knowing or remembering anything about your life is just another piece of information you don’t know what to do with. 

“That’s… surprising,” you say, taking an overwhelming breath and the cold stings. Your breath ghosts in front of you. 

“Since I could remember, my parents pushed the life of joining the navy. Same with Curt. Tradition. Legacy. Indoctrination,” you say, crossing your arms over yourself. “Instead of saying our prayers at night, we said the Sailor’s Creed.”   

You wait for Frank to judge you. 

To call you weak for not honoring your parents. Or selfish for telling no one of your plans to take a backpack and a whim to JFK. Maybe he’d call you ungrateful, Curtis said that a few times plus more when mom got sick. 

Frank does none of it. 

“And then what?” 

The question startles you. It’s earnest and quiet. You glance at him.

He’s serious.  

“I had a home ec teacher. Mrs. Davies.” The memory catches you off guard and you fold your arms a little tighter. Eight-year-old you can still see Mrs Davies’ toothy smile and big hair. “I think she saw something in me. Or maybe she just noticed how I was always the last kid to be picked up. She’d stay after school and give me baking lessons. Said that if you could follow a cake recipe you could follow your dreams.”

You smile, faintly. “Very after-school-special.”

Frank almost gives you a huff that feels like amusement. 

“She looked at me and saw something. Something more than a uniform, no offense,” you stab your shoulder into his. 

“Naturally, I saved up my money working every shitty job I could. Bought a plane ticket. Forged some signatures and did some slight fraud and violà, I’m in Paris with a dream no one believed in but me.”

That pulls a sound from him. Something real and hard hitting. Maybe it was the coarse way you said no one believed in you, but Frank could acknowledge it. 

You clear your throat. “Plus, it doesn’t hurt that I’m good with my hands.” 

“I can relate.” 

You look over. “To having a dream no one believed in?”

He shakes his head once. 

“Being good with your hands.” 

The cold should’ve killed the warmth his words elicit from you, but it doesn’t. You keep your eyes straight ahead, and refuse to give Frank a reaction if that’s what he’s looking for. 

“So you don’t think you deserve happiness?” 

“You askin’ the questions now?” 

“You’re the one who wanted to walk me home.” 

“I said I’m-” 

“Headed in the same direction. I know. Could’ve walked on the opposite side of the street.” 

He thinks on your question longer than you anticipated and answers honestly. You appreciate it. 

“My happiness is gone.” 

It hurts you more than you thought to hear his revelation. You knew Frank lived life like he was ready to die, but to hear his truth, makes you wish he chose differently for himself. 

You try not to judge him either, but still have to say your part.  “Well, not that it matters, but I think you do.” 

“They teach you that type of charm in Paris? Buttering people up. Not too long ago you were calling me… what was it… wasn’t an omen, wasn’t a harbinger-” 

“A plague,” you confirm. He may have changed some opinions you have on him, but that one remains. “You still deserve happiness.”

“Don’t waste that hope you’ve got on me.” 

“Better than you wallowing,” you push. “Curtis talks to me about you, too, you know. Not about whatever bullshit you have him entangled in, but real stuff. Human stuff.”

“Like what?” 

“I know all about the Kandahar Christmas Party.” 

“Which year?” 

“You know which year.” 

This time Frank bumps his shoulder into yours. Petty enough to throw you off balance.  “Curtis talks too goddamn much.” 

Feet slowing, you’re approaching your block. Incandescent white neon lights illuminate the street. WHIPPED’s logo washes the sidewalk and neighboring buildings in a glow that’s too hard to hide yourself in. 

Frank instinctively stops just before getting caught in its rays. He drags his eyes along you and your store. You swallow.  “WHIPPED, huh?” 

You motion to it with beaming pride. “This is my baby.” 

He takes it all in. “Thought I was walking you home.” 

“I thought you weren’t,” you quip. “I live above the bakery.” 

“That’s dangerous.” 

“Curtis says the same thing.” You head to the door, taking that same thick current with you. Neither of you invited it, but it’s been following you all night. Despite yourself, your pulse races.

A quick glance over your shoulder and you see Frank lingering at the edge of neon glow. His jaw set. Eyes never having left you. 

Like he feels it too. 

So you give in. Maybe to keep him a little longer in a world that poses no threat. To prove to the both of you that he doesn’t have to stay a ghost.

“What’s even more dangerous is what’s inside. Want a cookie, Frank Castle?” 

Even in the shadows, just at the edge of where the light begins, you see Frank cave and smile. 

“You offering?”

“I am,” you say, “Or is the marine still afraid of sugar? That I remember of you quite well.” 

Frank bites. “Show me your shop.”

You extend a hand to him. “Step into the light.”

Your soft hand meets his hard calloused fingers that are warm even in the cold. They’re rough, steady, and crusted in scars from god knows what. You dare pull him closer and let him enter into your space willingly. Still huge and imposing but this time acutely aware of how his body fits along your back as you guide him. 

Your heart hammers with anticipation as you fumble your keys. Suddenly incapable of doing something you’ve done countless times. Frank’s presence is clouding your judgement and control of your senses. Especially when you feel his breath hit the back of your neck, prickling goosebumps.

“You working today?”

“Closed on Thursdays.”

Frank gives a low grunt of approval. 

“Good.”

Neither of you notice that the deadbolt was already thrown. 

Chloe forgot to lock up again. 

The door swings and a single bell shrieks, cutting into the quiet of the shop. The light of WHIPPED’s logo haunts the inside, casting long engulfing shadows across empty tables and chairs. It’s sticky and frosted heavily. 

Further back, the eerie fluorescent light of the prep kitchen buzzes. A mixing machine whirls violently. 

“Fuck,” you sigh, looking at Frank. Dropping his hand, you resume your role as a business owner. “My pastry chef is still here. She was supposed to leave hours ago.”

Frank doesn’t reply. The man who caved into a smile is also gone now, replaced with something that makes your stomach flip. He tracks the nooks and crannies of your shop. Not in the way you hoped, with interest and wonder, but that same stone look he had when entering Sleazys. Surveillance. He’s scanning for exits. Evidence. Threats. 

By the time his hand reaches for your elbow, you’re already moving, needing to manage your space. You swing through the stainless steel kitchen door. 

“Chloe, did you finish the-”

The sentence is stabbed before it can leave your throat. The words pierce your lips and die a cold, violent death. 

At first you only notice a shoe. A single shoe knocked out of place and scattered in the corner by one of your wholesale bags of flours. When you finally find Chloe, your heart bursts and you plunge into a freezing well of static that numbs you from the scalp down. There’s no more sound, other than the stale thing ring of panic vibrating on your ear.

Chloe is pale on the linoleum floor. Her beautiful hair now matted and haloed by dirty crimson blood. It’s everywhere. Pooled in globs around her, stretching outward slowly like deformed finger lakes. It creeps to the legs of the industrial refrigerator.

And sitting perfectly on the stainless steel prep table, sparkling for all to see, is the McCarthy cake. It’s untouched by the slaughter surrounding it. Red geode sugar crystals reflect the harsh fluorescent overhead, glittering like gems on a grave.

[thecornerlot]

Ooh. The tension is delicious. The writing packs a punch. The atmosphere feels completely immersive. Sharp, biting dialogue evokes classic film noir. Along the way, We get glimpses of vulnerability, sadness and grit, and then...holy cliffhanger!

Your writing is like how you describe the bartender's drinks: Nothing is diluted. Each sentence is precisley crafted and carried out to its fullest expression—nothing more, nothing less.

Fabulous writing.

[saintcastiglione]

LIGHTFALL - Chapter 2/8

Chapter Summary: A shared drink makes you question why you hated Frank in the first place. You pull him into the light and fall into his grave. Pairing: Frank Castle x Baker!Reader Chapter Warnings: 18+ Always. Language. Flirting. Philosophy battles. Violence. Gore. It's a murder on the dance floor. Word Count: 3.5k A/N: This is where shit hits the fan and the story actually starts. Hope you enjoy. a playlist if you'd like to listen to the songs that inspired the story

Chapter 2 - Beat Until Stiff

A few blocks over from St. John’s is a place not locally advertised. Cross 83rd, turn left at the Cash 4 Gold, enter in through the metal mesh door that’s plastered with concert flyers and sticker rot, and you’ll find Sleazy’s. An obscure hole-in-the-wall with drinks that’ll get you right. If you hit La Grassa’s Delicatessen, you’ve gone too far.

Sleazy’s has become your go to escape when life starts making little sense. When your import of Madagascar vanilla gets held up in customs. When your overages don’t add up at the end of the month.

They also happen to make the best Boulevardiers you’ve tasted since you apprenticed in France so very long ago. 

You need this, a break from it all. Not a sister, not a baker, not a business owner. You’re nameless. No one knows you, except the bartender, Owen. And all Owen knows is to keep them coming and keep ‘em strong.

Taking a sip of your well crafted drink, heat spreads in your chest on its way down. The effect isn’t from the alcohol, but the gaze you’ve caught in the reflection of the mirrored backsplash behind the bartender. It’s slightly concerning that you’re able to notice him so immediately, he’s only halfway through the entrance before you spot him in that thick black utility jacket. No other patron seems to notice him outright, but the room still acquiesces around Frank. 

Foolishly, you think he won’t spot you. As the thought crosses your mind, his eyes connect with yours through the glass.

Of course, he does.

It’s a hard look and you can’t begin to decipher what it means. Every card he’s dealt, he holds tightly to his chest, and it would take more strength than you have for him to reveal them. 

You’re surprised when he makes a b-line to you, body bracing for his entrance. Round 2. 

He stops at your stool. “Go to hell, huh?”

“And this must be the seventh circle,” you say, “don’t tell me you’re following me.” 

“Coincidence.” His gaze litters across the bar almost like he’s taking surveillance, before it lands back on his target. You. “I like the quiet here. Helps me think.” 

His honesty startles you, clawing against your initial thoughts of him and what you summed him as. You both share the same underground hole-in-a-wall for the exact purpose. Even the Punisher needs an escape sometimes.

He motions to the empty stool at your left. “Care if I sit?”

You lift a shoulder. “I don’t control the seating arrangements." 

Permission granted.

Choosing to stay, the stool groans as Frank pulls it out. He makes room for himself where there already isn’t any. The bulge of his wide shoulder scrapes along your arm as he settles in. Constricting space and limited air, it’s a tight fit for you both and you, just like everyone else in his sights, sink to make room for him. Your elbows notch at your waist and instinctively you curl inward. 

Either Frank doesn’t notice, care, or is testing you. He calls out to Owen. “Shot of whiskey. Ain’t gotta be fancy. ”

“You’re unreal,” you sneer, waving a hand at him dismissively. Even that small movement is a brush of skin against his. “Don’t listen to him. He’ll have what I’m having. And get me another, please.”  

Owen looks from you to Frank. “She the boss?” 

“Yes.” 

Frank’s watching you and all you can see in the pits of his eyes are the lights of the bar bouncing off them. Like a chemlight in Registan. Or a kitchen torch against meringue. “You heard her.” 

Owen gets to work. 

Silence is thick, gluing you both. Not empty. Sweaty. You breathe through it in long, deep, inhales. It lasts until two rock glasses slide in front of you.

“Didn’t take you for a snob.” He eyes the drink, particularly the twisted orange garnish sitting atop the drink’s singular large icecube.

“Then you’re not paying attention, and I overestimated you,” you say, a fingertip pushing his glass closer to him. “If you’re going to drink with me, make it worth it.” 

Frank takes it and tips the edge to you. “Ceasefire?”

That earns him a real smile from you. “Friendly fire.”

Your glasses touch. 

You take your sip, already knowing how it tastes. A little dirty, a gnaw of spice, a bright citrus twinge that cuts through it once it goes down. It’s Frank’s opinion you want to hear.

“Well?” 

“Strong,” he swallows. “How many of these have you had already?”

“Enough where I don’t hate talking to you.”

“Fairplay.” A chuckle is caught in his throat, never making it fully out as he forces it back into its hole. Your eyes avert back to the bar and just like him, stifle the pull forming between your bodies. “You’re wrong about one thing,” he says, setting his drink on the bartop and lowering his head slightly your way. It’s so you can fully hear him, but you can also feel the heat of his skin near your own. And smell the phantom whiskey on his lips.  “I don’t want Curtis dead. Or you, for that matter.” You suck in a breath. “Your actions say otherwise.” “My actions. My war,” he starts,  “I don’t want you anywhere near that.” 

“Just Curtis then?” 

“Him either,” he says, “but he’s touched it. You can’t come back from that.” 

Your fingers dance around the rim of your glass. A delicate strum that matches the classic rock song crooning from hidden speakers. “Sounds bleak.”

“It’s real.” 

“Not to me. Hope still exists in the world.”

“Come on,” he takes another swig a bit haphazardly. A tiny trickle of alcohol streaks his stubble. You itch to wipe it away. Call it your sense of etiquette. “Either you’re buying the bullshit they peddle or you’re willingly playing blind.”

“But not you, though.” You’re teasing him before you can stop it. “Frank Castle knows better. He’s cracked the code.”

“I didn’t crack a damn thing. I’ve lived it,” he says, voice dragging over your skin. “You've got just as much darkness in you as I do.”

You punch him a look immediately. Quick and violent in its own way. Your body follows suit, swinging in your stool. Full stop. Your knees knock against his as you pivot, and he takes it in. Doesn’t move. Only watches you over the rim of his glass. 

“Don’t pretend like you know me.” 

He takes another drink, and doesn’t bother answering you yet. Just stares at the last of his alcohol. 

“Stop lying to yourself. Root to tip. It’s on you. More than Curtis.” He drags his knuckles along the bar. Peeled and scabbed and beaten. Scarred from acts you once believed you wanted to know about.  “Difference is, you still ain't touched it.”

Your stomach tightens when you hear how convinced he is. “I built something for myself."

“Yeah.” He rests his empty glass and chews on your words. “Yeah, you have.” 

For a flicker, it sounds like a compliment. Something akin to admiration even, but it’s snatched away without you even getting to revel in it.  “Guess that’s a privilege and a disservice because you still haven’t learned the truth.” 

“Enlighten me.” 

It’s unfathomable how much closer he can invade your space. A secret is on his lips that he trusts with no one but you. “Hope never did a goddamn thing for anybody." 

You swat his marred hand that’s dangerously close to your own. Swat it so hard that your hand stings from it.  He stays. “What a miserable way to live. No joy. No love. No light. All a defense mechanism. Those walls gotta come down eventually, soldier.” 

“Soldier? You must be drunk.” He takes your glass from you and drinks from it. Right from where your lips once pressed.  “Marine.” 

“Marine.”

“One more time so you don’t forget.”

“Marine.” you sing-song before your tone falls flat. “You’re wrong. There’s a lot of beautiful shit in this world. Either you look for it, or you just gotta be brave enough to make it.” 

“You’re not listening. Playing blind doesn't change the outcome-”

“-Damn. You must really love that grave.” 

“Open your eyes. That grave I’m digging ain’t for me.” 

“You’ll bury yourself alive, Frank. Here. Take my hand. I’ll help you out.” 

Those death splattered hands of his push your knees to the side as he also cranes himself to face you. The space becomes his. 

“Tell that to the sex traffickers and murderers, I’m sure they’ll love to hear it.” 

“I’m not telling it to them,” you say, hand crashing to the shoulder that once overtook you. No longer acquiescing, you fight back for the space to be yours. This time, he budges and gives in slightly to your push. Your body, because of his acceptance, edges even closer to him. You can feel him inhale and see your reflection now in those barlight filled eyes. “I’m- I’m telling it to you.“

That sweaty silence resumes, prickling along your spine, and even more heat radiates. Starts from the bottom up, and just like an oven, it circulates hot air. Between your bodies and your parted lips. Frank feels it too, of that you’re certain. It’s in the way his brow creases. The way he’s waiting for your move rather than commandeering the situation. 

“I shouldn’t be out this late,” you murmur, forcing yourself to look away before the silence turns into something you can’t control. Something worse that you can’t take back. You reach into your purse and pull out a wad of bills. “You don’t strike me as someone who tips well, or at all. This covers both of-” 

Hid expression hardens instantly. “The hell is the matter with you? You’re not paying.” 

“Screw your machismo bullshit.” You set the money on the counter. “We’re not gonna ignore that you were about to order a fourteen dollar shot of jack. Screams you’re rolling in money.” 

You start for your exit. Almost. Frank’s hand pulls on your forearm. Closing in on you and reels you back in. Doesn’t hurt, but it’s firm. Makes you wonder how he determined how much pressure he could use with you because he’s not treating you like you’re soft. 

It’s enough to stop you. 

That heat is back again, climbing so fast against you both that it’s humiliating. You’re acutely away of how you stop yourself from getting swept in his touch. Like an animal fighting against its nature. 

“Come on,” he says, quietly, “don’t be like that.” 

You slip your arm away before your heart starts pounding.

“I hope the next time we see each other, it’s under better circumstances,” you say, stiffly. 

His eyes stay on yours and you try not to think about how he still stays close to you. 

“Don’t get yourself killed before then,” you add.

You take off, feet carrying you quickly out of Sleazy’s and away from whatever that unnameable moment is. Outside, the winds are icy as they whip down the streets and along the buildings. It stings your cheeks and makes you shiver after how burning your skin just was. 

Buildings loom, neon signs bleed together and etch into the pavement. In the distance, further downtown, you hear the wail of a siren like the city’s dying.

You walk a little faster, hoping to put some distance between you and him. As if it would give you some clarity. But even as you trudge New York City at 1am, your mind replays that encounter over and over again on loop, circling back to Frank. None of it made sense. It didn’t feel like the anger you once had for him in the basement of St. Johns. If Frank and Curtis were family, you didn’t share the same kinship.

This wasn’t friendship, and it didn’t feel safe to be anything else.

If baking was chemistry meeting controlled actions, this was chemistry meeting unpredictability. Highly combustible and scary for someone like you. 

You stuff your hands in your pockets to protect yourself from the deepening cold. It’s blistering into a warning of a deep winter. When your fingers touch the bottom of your wool pockets and feel paper, you stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

Passersby push against you as you remain a boulder on the sidewalk when you fish out the money you just tried paying Owen with. 

You squeeze your eyes shut. “He’s such an asshole.”

“Took you long enough. Thought you’d notice sooner.” Frank falls into your step like he’d been there the entire time. Maybe he had.

He walks with you, eyes ahead like none of this is strange. Like trailing you throughout the city at one in the morning was perfectly reasonable behavior. 

“Why baking?”

You side-eye him. When you don’t answer, Frank looks at you and reads your steely stare. “Just headed in the same direction.” 

Sure.  

“I like control.”

“Couldn’t tell” he jabs. “Control doesn’t explain running away to Paris at sixteen.”

“Curtis told you about that?” 

“Can’t get him to shut up about you.” 

Frank knowing or remembering anything about your life is just another piece of information you don’t know what to do with. 

“That’s… surprising,” you say, taking an overwhelming breath and the cold stings. Your breath ghosts in front of you. 

“Since I could remember, my parents pushed the life of joining the navy. Same with Curt. Tradition. Legacy. Indoctrination,” you say, crossing your arms over yourself. “Instead of saying our prayers at night, we said the Sailor’s Creed.”   

You wait for Frank to judge you. 

To call you weak for not honoring your parents. Or selfish for telling no one of your plans to take a backpack and a whim to JFK. Maybe he’d call you ungrateful, Curtis said that a few times plus more when mom got sick. 

Frank does none of it. 

“And then what?” 

The question startles you. It’s earnest and quiet. You glance at him.

He’s serious.  

“I had a home ec teacher. Mrs. Davies.” The memory catches you off guard and you fold your arms a little tighter. Eight-year-old you can still see Mrs Davies’ toothy smile and big hair. “I think she saw something in me. Or maybe she just noticed how I was always the last kid to be picked up. She’d stay after school and give me baking lessons. Said that if you could follow a cake recipe you could follow your dreams.”

You smile, faintly. “Very after-school-special.”

Frank almost gives you a huff that feels like amusement. 

“She looked at me and saw something. Something more than a uniform, no offense,” you stab your shoulder into his. 

“Naturally, I saved up my money working every shitty job I could. Bought a plane ticket. Forged some signatures and did some slight fraud and violà, I’m in Paris with a dream no one believed in but me.”

That pulls a sound from him. Something real and hard hitting. Maybe it was the coarse way you said no one believed in you, but Frank could acknowledge it. 

You clear your throat. “Plus, it doesn’t hurt that I’m good with my hands.” 

“I can relate.” 

You look over. “To having a dream no one believed in?”

He shakes his head once. 

“Being good with your hands.” 

The cold should’ve killed the warmth his words elicit from you, but it doesn’t. You keep your eyes straight ahead, and refuse to give Frank a reaction if that’s what he’s looking for. 

“So you don’t think you deserve happiness?” 

“You askin’ the questions now?” 

“You’re the one who wanted to walk me home.” 

“I said I’m-” 

“Headed in the same direction. I know. Could’ve walked on the opposite side of the street.” 

He thinks on your question longer than you anticipated and answers honestly. You appreciate it. 

“My happiness is gone.” 

It hurts you more than you thought to hear his revelation. You knew Frank lived life like he was ready to die, but to hear his truth, makes you wish he chose differently for himself. 

You try not to judge him either, but still have to say your part.  “Well, not that it matters, but I think you do.” 

“They teach you that type of charm in Paris? Buttering people up. Not too long ago you were calling me… what was it… wasn’t an omen, wasn’t a harbinger-” 

“A plague,” you confirm. He may have changed some opinions you have on him, but that one remains. “You still deserve happiness.”

“Don’t waste that hope you’ve got on me.” 

“Better than you wallowing,” you push. “Curtis talks to me about you, too, you know. Not about whatever bullshit you have him entangled in, but real stuff. Human stuff.”

“Like what?” 

“I know all about the Kandahar Christmas Party.” 

“Which year?” 

“You know which year.” 

This time Frank bumps his shoulder into yours. Petty enough to throw you off balance.  “Curtis talks too goddamn much.” 

Feet slowing, you’re approaching your block. Incandescent white neon lights illuminate the street. WHIPPED’s logo washes the sidewalk and neighboring buildings in a glow that’s too hard to hide yourself in. 

Frank instinctively stops just before getting caught in its rays. He drags his eyes along you and your store. You swallow.  “WHIPPED, huh?” 

You motion to it with beaming pride. “This is my baby.” 

He takes it all in. “Thought I was walking you home.” 

“I thought you weren’t,” you quip. “I live above the bakery.” 

“That’s dangerous.” 

“Curtis says the same thing.” You head to the door, taking that same thick current with you. Neither of you invited it, but it’s been following you all night. Despite yourself, your pulse races.

A quick glance over your shoulder and you see Frank lingering at the edge of neon glow. His jaw set. Eyes never having left you. 

Like he feels it too. 

So you give in. Maybe to keep him a little longer in a world that poses no threat. To prove to the both of you that he doesn’t have to stay a ghost.

“What’s even more dangerous is what’s inside. Want a cookie, Frank Castle?” 

Even in the shadows, just at the edge of where the light begins, you see Frank cave and smile. 

“You offering?”

“I am,” you say, “Or is the marine still afraid of sugar? That I remember of you quite well.” 

Frank bites. “Show me your shop.”

You extend a hand to him. “Step into the light.”

Your soft hand meets his hard calloused fingers that are warm even in the cold. They’re rough, steady, and crusted in scars from god knows what. You dare pull him closer and let him enter into your space willingly. Still huge and imposing but this time acutely aware of how his body fits along your back as you guide him. 

Your heart hammers with anticipation as you fumble your keys. Suddenly incapable of doing something you’ve done countless times. Frank’s presence is clouding your judgement and control of your senses. Especially when you feel his breath hit the back of your neck, prickling goosebumps.

“You working today?”

“Closed on Thursdays.”

Frank gives a low grunt of approval. 

“Good.”

Neither of you notice that the deadbolt was already thrown. 

Chloe forgot to lock up again. 

The door swings and a single bell shrieks, cutting into the quiet of the shop. The light of WHIPPED’s logo haunts the inside, casting long engulfing shadows across empty tables and chairs. It’s sticky and frosted heavily. 

Further back, the eerie fluorescent light of the prep kitchen buzzes. A mixing machine whirls violently. 

“Fuck,” you sigh, looking at Frank. Dropping his hand, you resume your role as a business owner. “My pastry chef is still here. She was supposed to leave hours ago.”

Frank doesn’t reply. The man who caved into a smile is also gone now, replaced with something that makes your stomach flip. He tracks the nooks and crannies of your shop. Not in the way you hoped, with interest and wonder, but that same stone look he had when entering Sleazys. Surveillance. He’s scanning for exits. Evidence. Threats. 

By the time his hand reaches for your elbow, you’re already moving, needing to manage your space. You swing through the stainless steel kitchen door. 

“Chloe, did you finish the-”

The sentence is stabbed before it can leave your throat. The words pierce your lips and die a cold, violent death. 

At first you only notice a shoe. A single shoe knocked out of place and scattered in the corner by one of your wholesale bags of flours. When you finally find Chloe, your heart bursts and you plunge into a freezing well of static that numbs you from the scalp down. There’s no more sound, other than the stale thing ring of panic vibrating on your ear.

Chloe is pale on the linoleum floor. Her beautiful hair now matted and haloed by dirty crimson blood. It’s everywhere. Pooled in globs around her, stretching outward slowly like deformed finger lakes. It creeps to the legs of the industrial refrigerator.

And sitting perfectly on the stainless steel prep table, sparkling for all to see, is the McCarthy cake. It’s untouched by the slaughter surrounding it. Red geode sugar crystals reflect the harsh fluorescent overhead, glittering like gems on a grave.

[maureen2musings]

One of the craziest things I’ve ever photographed! Maui, Hawaii

ericrubens

[stargazingfangirl18]

✪ Lists updated 3/27/26

Hello, and welcome to my masterlist! Thank you for being here! 😊

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Keep reading

[saintcastiglione]

LIGHTFALL - Chapter 1/8

Chapter Summary: You bring desserts, Frank brings death. Careful now... there's a heat between you. Pairing: Frank Castle x Baker!Reader Chapter Warnings: 18+ Always. Language. Attraction disguised as hate. Word Count: 2.5k A/N: This chapter has a lot of story set up. Frank doesn't show until 2/3rds of the way through. But after, he and the reader are attached at the hip. a playlist if you'd like to listen to the songs that inspired the story

Chapter 1 - Preheat to 375°

The first Wednesday of every month, from 5:00pm until 5:30pm, is carved in your schedule. Dough prepped, registers counted, you close shop early at your nine-month-old bakery, WHIPPED. 

Tonight, you show up for those who’ve served. Your brother, Curtis, holds group sessions for vets. It’s your job to cut through all that darkness with a bit of sugar. Nothing too pretentious, you know the crowd you’re dealing with. When a 71 year old Army vet with skin like chewed leather mentions he and gluten no longer mix, you work late crafting something just for him.

If he likes it, it’ll become a part of your weekly limited edition rotation. You can already see it, written in black ink on the cream menu behind the register.

Whip It If You Want It: GF Sin-amon Rolls

“Not to be a bitch, but I think you should carry these,” Chloe says. She stacks two white boxes of pastries atop the ones you’re already carrying. “I don’t want to get all sweaty and ruin my cake.”

This isn’t about mini lemon poppyseed cakes you made. What concerns her most is the glowy makeup adorning her face. A nude lip, smoky brown winged liner, bombshell ginger hair that takes hours to perfect…

“When did you have time to do your hair and makeup?” you say, straining beneath the new weight. Chloe avoids your stare, keeping her eyes firmly on the church slowly coming into view.  “I’ll kill you if you didn’t finish the McCarthy order, you know how much we need that done.” 

She fidgets with a loose button on her wool coat. “Sometimes you have to make choices in life. Mine was between frosting a tacky geode cake that’s three years out of style-” 

“Who gives a shit about style? She’s paying. Tips well. That’s what she wanted.” 

“-Orrrr spending that time making sure I looked wifeable. Veterans have great benefits, especially if they have a disability. Plus, we’d have a permanent guard dog for the shop.” 

“We don’t need a guard dog.”

“Yeah, we do,” she says softly. “I swear I hear something in the vents at night. Scared the shit out of me yesterday.” 

“Ten minutes,” you demand. “Help me set up, and then you go back and finish the order.” 

“That’s not fair!”

You hand Chloe a hard glare, one that shuts her twenty two year old lips of any more chatter. “I’m not your babysitter, and I trust you to make the right decisions, you know that.”  

She hangs her head and shoves her hands into her pockets. With all the hours you spend together, you no longer feel like her boss. You know so much about her. Her troubled past. Her needing some direction. Chloe’s mistakes feel like they’re yours. “Yeah, I know.” 

“And when you don’t make the right decisions, I worry what else slipped through the cracks. Did you lock up?” 

“Yes!” 

“You sure?” 

“I screwed up one-” 

“Three.” 

“Three times. I spaced. I know you think I’m a fuck up, I’m trying to do better. I locked the shop. It’s never gonna happen again,” she says, voice trailing off as you approach Saint John's. The Autumn wind has a bite to it, turning dead leaves into a spiral on the sidewalk. This winter will be a harsh one.

Inside the empty church, words become hushed. Past the pews and the stained glass depicting Christ’s final hours, you head through another crickety door. A weight hangs in the silence. It was there before you and Chloe arrived. You walk down a flight of steps that give you away before the group therapy veterans can see you. The wood screeches, they’re here, they’re here, beneath you. 

“Ten minutes,” you remind her. “We really need that order finished. Now stop sulking, and smile.” 

She exhales hard, pulls her shoulders back, and mimics the confectionary smile you carry. Hospitality and light. That’s the name of the job.

Crossing the threshold into Curtis’s space, you share a brief glance. The session carries on. You don’t listen too hard. This is their world, not yours. You had your fill growing up with two parents who served and a brother that followed suit. You sit at a different vantage point than they do and can only relate so much. Bullets and Kevlar got traded for whisks and aprons. 

Twenty or so people sit in foldout chairs, creating a circle. Curtis is mid thought, talking directly to the group, not as a lecturer, but a man trying to help. You look to the table behind him. That’s where you’re setting up shop.

His words break the wall you’ve built to remain an outsider. 

“The goal isn’t to go back to how things were. It can’t be. Life don’t got a rearview mirror and if it did, you’d crash spending too much time looking back at what once was. My pops, served in Nam, had a saying, made us repeat it over and over.” Curtis says. You mouth the saying with him.

“Nunquam retrorsum. Never backwards. Mitchell, help sis with the boxes-”

Your favorite veteran follows the order immediately. Wrinkled hands take the boxes from you, You detect Mitch’s infamous scowl beneath his American Flag hat. You and Chloe head to the metal table, and begin setting up shop. 

“Mitch,” you whisper, hoping the old man’s hearing aids pick up the sound. Opening the tuck-top lid, you reveal a bevy of perfected confections, cinnamon rolls included. You point to one. “I made these for you. No gluten.”

He’s not one for excited gestures, but reaches for the treat.

“You’re not supposed to eat one right-” 

“Watch me. Ain’t a damn person in this room got the balls to tell me otherwise.” He takes a huge bite. No napkins, no etiquette. Cream cheese frosting mixes into his already white ZZ-top beard and you know better than to point it out. He wouldn’t care. He’s already chewing loudly with half a mouth of teeth. “These ain’t fucking around.” 

“Really!” You’re beaming. You had a hunch they were amazing, but to hear it from someone who is the furthest thing from WHIPPED’s typical demographic, means more to you. This sort of honesty isn’t something you hear every day. Not in the gen z crowd, always focused on content creation rather than the art of your skills.

“Keep bringing these, they’re gonna be what kills me.” 

“Alright,” Chloe says. She’s finished setting the table, removing the goods from their boxes and setting everything up to be presentable for the rest of the veterans. “I’m outtie.” 

It’s baked in her tone. She’s not happy to be leaving. A nodule sinks into your stomach. You can’t let her make the trek outside alone. Not on a bad note. You want to make things right within the last three minutes you have together. 

“Look, I don’t mean to be a type A bitch.” You start, crossing yourself when you realize you’ve sworn in a place of worship. “We just really need as much money coming in this month as possible. We’re in the negatives.”

The last part of your sentence, the one revealing how this month you’re on track to lose money, Chloe doesn’t seem to care much about.

“How did you find out Noah called you that? You weren’t even there that day.” 

“Just had a hunch.” You give her a hug, a final way of saying you’re sorry for being a hardass. “You’re over your scheduled hours. Consider today double pay.” 

“You don’t have-”

“Yes, I do. Be safe walking back.”

“Okay, mom,” she teases. “But when you deliver that ugly cake you tell the McCarthy’s I said to stop getting their cheap inspiration from pinterest.” 

With a final goodbye, a sentimental departure reduces to you watching Chloe disappear. She pushes open the hard wooden church door, her muscles straining against their heaviness. Amber light of a New York setting sun engulfs her. She becomes light itself. Blinding. Radiant. And then she’s gone. The door shuts and aside from dust particles and the looming cross behind the pulpit, you’re alone.

Back downstairs, your brother’s session is wrapping up. The deliveries you make are always scheduled just as time is dwindling down so you don't have to wait outside while vets share intimate details of their lives. You refuse to carry that weight. It’s not for you to solve their problems, but you hope that maybe the light you bring with confections helps none the less. 

“This damn leg of mine is kicking my ass.” Curtis says, picking up an aluminum metal chair. He folds it and limps to the far side of the empty room to hang it. “It must be about to rain something bad.” 

“Don’t jinx it,” you say. There are but a few treats leftover for you to clean up. You stuff them in a small container you keep in your tote bag. You’re sure a transient somewhere would enjoy them. “Customers are down twenty percent on the days it rains.”

“You need a hobby. All I ever hear from you is WHIPPED this and WHIPPED that. Don’t let that place whip you out. Start living a little. Life passes by workaholics.” 

A frown almost forms, but you don’t give into it. Curtis understands your world far less than you understand his. When you were younger, you hoped your brother could see your ambitions and validate what they meant for you as a family. Growing up taught you to know better. If he thinks you’re a workaholic, then he simply didn’t get it, and the ache pressing into your spine after standing for fifteen hours today reaffirms you don’t owe him an explanation. 

“Quintessential big brother tactics.” You sweep crumbs into a dust pan. “Giving advice they don’t take.” 

“Call it me passing along years of wisdom,” he says. “You should ponder on it as I take a piss.” 

“I’m not one of your group therapy vets, Curt.” 

“I know.” He edges to the door. “They actually listen to me.” 

“They actually listen to me,” you mock that little sanctimonious tone he’s perfected long before joining the Navy. This was something he’d hard earned growing up as latch key kids. Your household was self-governing, and with Curtis being the eldest, and a man, he assumed he was in charge. 

He was wrong. 

The white glass plates you keep as a mainstay here need to be washed. There’s a serious streak of lemon curd crusting on one curve. Means that last month Chloe didn’t clean them well, of course she didn’t. She hates cleaning. 

Curtis comes back, feet hitting a little harder than before, a bit more rhythmic than the limp he once held. The air is off, feels thick like smoke, and you instantly wonder if your brief exchange has left him more pissy than using the bathroom did. 

“Not like I owe you an explanation,” your turn, plates in hand, to take them to the church’s cramped kitchen. “But I have plenty of ho-” 

Glass sprinkles into confetti shards on the floor, ending your sentence. Your grip on the plates slackened so quickly you hadn’t even realized. Your eyes snap to the stain of a marine standing next to the room’s entrance. 

He’s like a smear of soot against the wooden wall. A stain you can’t scrub away. This looming mass of man you’d be terrified of if you weren’t so engulfed in an acrid anger. 

“Been a long time,” he breaks first, voice still as coarse as you remember. Itchy and gathering beneath your skin. “Curt still around?” 

The sharp pieces of glass lie like minefields between you. If it means getting Frank Castle out of here, you’ll step on every one.  

“Get the fuck out.” 

“I guess that means he is.” 

“He told me you weren’t even in New York anymore. Said you’d finally come to your senses and left town. Goddammit, I knew that was a crock of shit because you don’t have any sense to begin with.” 

“You can still pretend I’m gone, if that gives you peace of mind,” he says. “Go back to cupcakes and cookies.”

“Peace is above your intelligence level, Frank. Don’t assume you know what’s best for me. Instead, I’ll tell you what I want. It starts with you leaving and ends with you never coming back.” 

Frank doesn’t smile, but it’s in his tone as he tells you, “motion denied.” 

When Curtis makes it back, he only gets halfway through the threshold before realizing he’s been caught. He stiffens like a child forced to admit their lie. “Shit.”

“You do this over and over and I don’t know why I fall for it,” you say. “You told me he was gone, Curtis.” 

“He was!” Curtis wrings a hand over the back of his neck. “And… somebody’s gotta fix the sink in the bathroom.” 

You kick some of the glass shards his way as you walk to an empty chair that still hadn’t been hung. “Then have the conversation in front of me. Frank, why are you here, and what did you want to tell him?” 

They exchange looks and what’s said between them can’t be heard. Frank and your brother have a deep history that’s always kept at an arm’s length from you ever knowing about. But some things, you just can’t hide. Like the bruises, the broken bones, or the time Curtis came back missing a leg. That year was a real doozy for you both. 

“Wanna go get some air, Frank? I’m thinking we should take a walk.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.” 

The landmine detonates.

“I’m a fucking stranger in my own family,” you say, “I can’t believe you’re allowing him to do that to us.”

“Don’t be like that, you know Frank’s family, too, after all we’ve-” 

“No. No! He had his family!” You’re out of your seat. Heaving. That smoke Frank brought with him is choking you. “And you let him left-right-left march back into your life over and over. Every time he comes back, he brings hell with him.” 

Neither men speak and you don’t look at Curtis anymore. Whatever hooks Frank has in him have sunken through sinew and hit bone. 

That doesn’t mean you stop trying. You just have to adjust the tactic. Jacket in hand, you step to Frank. Inches from him. So close you can smell the aftershave he likes and see your reflection in his tar colored eyes.

“You want him dead, too, huh?” You almost laugh, but all you can feel is hurt. “Is that it?” 

Frank’s brow furrows and you feel the breath he exhales through his nose. Bullish. Hard headed. It’s the closest to emotion you think you’ll get from him. 

“Why would I want that?” 

“Because you’re a plague, Frank.” Your hand pushes into his chest to shove him. He doesn’t budge. He takes it. An unmoving mass. You’re the one that’s off balance. Mind spinning. No control. Unlike you. “People don’t survive you.” 

You wait for Frank to say something. Deny it. Hell, even Curtis has a chance to rebuke your accusations. Neither do.

“Either you leave or we do,” Frank says. “Dealer’s choice.”

You burn into him just a second longer, as if continuing the argument may change a damn thing.

“Go to hell,” you spit. 

You take what little light you’ve built for yourself. Your jacket. The leftover desserts. And the crumbs of whatever this was supposed to be.

[thecornerlot]

Sharp dialogue. ✔️

Rich emotional undercurrent. ✔️

The promise of enemies to lovers. ✔️

An atmosphere described in a writing style that feels literary and immersive. ✔️

Thank you for sharing your writing!

[saintcastiglione]

For the Taking

Summary: The closer and closer you become, the more you both begin to wonder. Is this the real deal? 

Pairing: Frank Castle x Reader

Warnings: Language. Smut. Porn with absolutely no plot. None whatsoever. Always 18+

Word Count: 2k

A/N: This is a part of a loosely connected string of one-shots. No need to read those to enjoy this. On my OG deleted blog, this was called "Something Beautiful." It's since been edited.

“Could die like this,” he thinks. 

Trapped between the heat of your thighs, clenching either side of his face. The pressure swallows him and takes Frank under. Pulls him all the way down until shit else matters. 

Ain’t the worst way to go. Better than his time as a recruit on swim week. Arms and legs bound, they tossed Frank in the deep-end and ordered him to figure it out. Despite your efforts to drown him, Frank knows how to swim good. 

In fact, it’s you that’s clinging onto him. Chipped nails pulling at the roots of his hair like you’re the one without oxygen. It’s not like he minds. Pain doesn’t bother him much, plus, he gets to revel at how easily he can break you down. How you want to tether onto him like he’s the only thing in the world that matters. Spine arched, head thrown back, Frank’s arms have locked. Neither of you are going anywhere. 

Funny thing is, this symbiosis… physical, emotional, or whatever the fuck it’s become, it’s scaring the shit out of both of you. And neither of you have the balls to acknowledge it. 

You writhe against the moss colored sheets spilling along your body. Sheets you bought him. His old sheets were thrift-store cheap. Itchy and pilling.  Christ, it pisses you off that he’s embedded enough in your life where you care about his sleep quality. This isn’t like you. If he can go on a murder spree and still have time to make you come, the least he deserves is a good night’s sleep on a decent thread count. 

“I hate you,” you seethe in a pitiful cry. He's doesn’t let up. Not when he’s giving you that half-laugh half-mock that lets you know he gets off on this. On you losing your edge and not knowing how to put the pieces back together. 

The shift in the mattress jolts you hard enough where you would’ve slipped off had it not been for his built-in reflexes. He’s built for control and gets to keep you where he wants you. On his too-small mattress that needs a box spring. Poor bastard likes sleeping on the floor. 

Do not go shopping for box springs with him. 

Thick fingers crusted in callouses, Frank makes sure you're not going anywhere as his tongue pulls the trigger. Seek and destroy is the mission and he's gonna watch you explode into a thousand little pieces. 

The chides dissolve into pleas. They always do, he knows it and when you’re being honest with yourself, you know it, too. It comes out of you broken, breathless, and stripped of the pride you love to latch onto. Begging.  For relief. For release. A moment where nothing gets to exist but the feeling he has the privilege of giving you. The sound of it? That’s what does it for him. It’s what he gets to revel in. 

Because that ego you have ain’t there when you tell him shit like - 

“You're gonna make me come again.” 

Damn right that's what he's gonna do. And it takes you apart in waves. Crashing and unpredictable, until there’s nothing left you can give. Frank holds you through it, he’s got you. There’s a sparkle of shame in how much he knows he’s got you. Makes him realize that you have the upper hand.

You call his name and it's the prettiest sound he's heard in a while. Hasn’t heard it said like that in years. Soft and loving. It breaks his own facade, the one who doesn't mind the loneliness or enjoys stewing in anger, and he feels a semblance of normalcy. 

Again, you sigh his name, and goddammit he looks at you like something between a marine hearing his CO, and an animal hearing its owner beckoning it home. His expression must give it away, because you smile. Fuck,it’s over him. He’s done. Lost in his own war, he thought he knew the blueprints of how to crack you. Those hard to reach pressure points, reactions, and outcomes. Not once did he consider you having your own playbook of him. 

Whatever you ask, he'd do for you. 

“Up here,” you sigh with a nod of your head. 

He listens, edging up the mattress and along the curves of your naked body until he's right there with you. Right there. Nowhere else he'd rather be right now. The world outside these four walls could wait. 

He pushes the hair that's damp with sweat from your face, “thanks for the meal.” 

“Which one?” you laugh. You're only in this position because you texted Frank's burner if he wanted something to eat. Luckily for you, this time he answered. You wound up bringing him his favorite reuben from Izzie's. 

“You know which one,” he says. “Tonight gonna be a sleepover or you got somewhere else to be?” 

“You tell me.” 

“Don't do that. Y'gotta make a decision.” 

“Depends,” you sigh, loftily, “Which side am I sleeping on-” 

“Jesus,” he cuts in. “I'll sleep on this side.”

“Oh would you look at that,” you smile, “Seems as if my calendar is clear. I can stay.” 

“You're spoiled, you know that?”  

“And you're in need of a boxspring.” 

Just can't help yourself, can you? 

You care about him and that's not something you could've proclaimed months ago. How he sleeps, if he's eating, how long he'll be gone for when he has new business to handle, all these things matter to you now. Two Mondays ago you were actually worried about his safety and couldn't sleep. 

“Don’t tell me you hate how I’ve decorated the place.”

“It’s very doomsday prepper,” you say.

“Tell you what, we go to Ikea, maybe grab some paint-”

“Fuck off. Can you imagine? Us. Living a life in domestic bliss? It's not realistic.” 

The words land heavier than you thought, floating between you both. 

Why couldn't it be? 

The notion slips against your bodies. A normal life. Not this edge you tightrope with fear of falling. 

He’s not built for it. And neither are you. Not unless you both plan to break and rebuild.

Frank leans into you anyway. You don’t stop him. It’s a kiss that’s supposed to apologize for a world that can’t happen.

Doesn’t work quite like that. Instead of his lips, the gold wedding band noosed around the chain of his neck scorches your mouth and tongue. Hot metal dragging before you can even realize it. It breaks everything at once.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” 

“It's okay,” you say, too fast. Too vulnerable. You want to scream for not having a remark offhand, or giving him shit. Your heart is in this.

Sticky silence coats the walls and clings to you both. 

“Yours or hers?” you try to keep the sheet of ice from coating your throat. Like talking about it will make things less jagged. 

His jaw tightens and you catch it immediately. 

If you're gonna taste metallic holy matrimony, he should have the balls to answer your question. 

“It was-uh,” he grunts, rubbing a hand over his mouth and jaw. “Hers.” 

It hurts him to say. You can hear what it cost him to reveal. It’s in the way the words were stuck and he had to fight to drag them off.

“Couldn't ever afford a real engagement ring. Wanted to one day surprise her with one.” 

You sit in it with him for a second.

“Once upon a time, I was engaged.” 

His reaction is immediate.

“Bullshit.” 

“Oh what, it's hard to believe someone would wanna put a ring on it?” 

“You don't strike me as someone who wants marriage.” 

You look at each other, summing up the old versions of yourselves you never got to see.

“Well, when I was young and dumb, I thought I did,” you say, “real piece of shit. Ended up pawning the ring.” 

Something about that makes Frank laugh. Like gravel crunching beneath a boot. After noticing your pointed brow and quizzical look, he reveals, “so you're telling me I coulda checked a pawn shop for a ring this entire time?” 

You slap the side of his head. “That's not fucking funny.” 

“Uh-huh,” he says, stealing a kiss from you with viper-like speed. “Sure it ain't.” 

Shifting the once worn ring so it rests against his back, Frank kisses you again. A little deeper this go around. Exactly enough to derail you both. The mirage of Maria's image, like heatwaves in Registan, disperses when he feels you moan against him. 

That first thrust is always the sweetest. You've been aching for this and give a honeyed gasp when he does. He goes slowly, has to. Wants to stay in this space more than anything else. You’re fucking real, and that’s not easy for him to find anymore. It has him choking out an order to keep you in place.

“Spread your legs. Nice and open for me.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

You’re trying to snap clean through his discipline and he almost lets you. This time ain’t like the others. He knows how you like it, how he likes it, but it’s not for tonight. He keeps that same languid pull of his hips deep and slow. 

“Y'feel so good,” he hisses, “shit.” 

The fire that burns your wide spread thighs forewarns you of how sore you'll be in the morning and you love it. You want more of it, slinking one of your legs higher and higher until Frank gets the hint. He wraps his arm around the back of your knee and slinks it up to your ear. 

The way you’re moaning into him and how he’s keeping his eyes on you. You can’t take it. “Fuck.” 

“Uh huh,” he's gasping for breath as though he's winded, but still has enough in him to keep the same momentum. Sounds a lot like war. Seize, retain, exploit the initiative. The objective is clear, you're gonna scream his name.

“Don't give me that shit. You know better.” He pulls your hand from your mouth the moment you try stifling the sounds of his hard work. “Let me hear.” 

You can't help yourself. His name stays against your tongue while you orgasm, quivering, sweat slick, and at his mercy. It's out-of-body, you can't tell how loud you are or if you're even breathing. Your senses are heightened to the point of feeling nothing but hot tingles that spark all the way to your toes. 

What little you can decipher, is Frank's voice splintering away. Raw and shattering. His thrusts are sloppy and reckless. He can’t hold anything back. Can’t pretend like he doesn’t want this just as much as you. 

“So.” he takes the time to gather his breath. There's a glint of something beautiful in what most see as monstrous black eyes. “You still want that box spring?” 

[thecornerlot]

[thecornerlot]

Thank you @minoots I sure could use it!🙏 I wish you positive energies, breakthroughs, and good momentum in all the things that are important to you.💛

[soapsmoviesfootballfan]

[stargazingfangirl18]

Hi Siri. How have you been? The PR for Materialists made me think of you and how movies have inspired so many stories and writers here. Are you going to see it?

Em!!! How are you, lovely?! I miss you! 🥺❤️ I’m doing okay! I recently started a new job and it’s kind of kicking my ass but yay for consistent income I guess lol. How are you?

I would really like to see Materialists in the theater, so here’s hoping. If not, I’ll definitely catch it on streaming. I’m excited for some new CE content and hope it sparks the muse! I think Reverend Drew from Honey Don’t definitely will. You know I have so much fun with dark daddies!!! 😌

[thecornerlot]

Hi there! I hope restful and re-energizing moments found you this holiday weekend.

Life has brought changes and challenges (like it does for everyone 🙃), but I'm doing okay.

I wish you all the best with your new job. Get that consistent bag, girl! May you find balance and inspiration in this new season. Trust your intuition and your own divine timing.

[holacia3-deactivated20260323]

Hi Cia! How have you been doing lately? Were you okay after that episode of The Last of Us? Have you seen Thunderbolts? Your past and recent loves are together in Materialists. How fun is that?

Em! Sweet friend, I smiled so big when I saw you pop in my notifications 💐

I am doing amazing today because it's my first PTO of the year hahaha

Thankfully I was aware of what was going to happen this season so that episode didn't catch me by surprise. Still sad to watch Ellie and Tommy his brother have to handle the aftermath of it all.

Yes!! I did watch Thunderbolts* and despite my reluctance I had an awesome time with those characters - especially cool guy Bucky 🦾 Have you watched it yet???

OMG I know 😂 Still on the fence if I want to go to the movies to watch it orrrr if I'll wait for it to hit Netflix or some other streaming channel. I've never had a proper ex-boyfriend yet this movie makes me feel like I have one LOL but good rom-coms are the best so I'm rooting for this one to be a fun hit 🎉

Eeeee thank you for the PP gif, he's so cute and his hands are distractingly deliciously big 🙃

[thecornerlot]

Hi Cia! I hope your time off was all you needed it to be.

I haven't seen Thunderbolts yet, but it's on my ever growing list of films I have to watch.

Thank you for always sending sweetness and smiles to my inbox.

Let me close this out with your new boyfriend doing things with his hands.

[peepawispunk]

Hi hello can anybody tell me whAT THE FUCK

Source https://x.com/oharaspunk/status/1925284444186784105?s=46

[maryblumesworld]

Ana de Armas and Keanu Reeves at the world premiere of “Ballerina“ in London

[thecornerlot]

I didn't even know this had been filmed and completed!

[a7estrellas]

PEDRO PASCAL, CHRIS EVANS & DAKOTA JOHNSON MATERIALISTS press shoot

[thecornerlot]

What kind of movie does this babe pick for your upcoming movie night - summer blockbuster, rom-com, Oscar bait drama, or thriller?

Hi, Cia! Great question. That murder nugget gravitates towards drama. "What a surprise!"said no one. 😄 I see him picking a thriller. He's not a trendy boy, so he'll go with a Hitchcock classic. And if this means you'll squirm and snuggle in closer, then so be it.

[thecornerlot]

Just wanted to say hello and send you lots of love Em!

Cia, you gorgeous soul! I'm smiling. How have you been doing? Thank you for your thoughtful note. Sending love and all the good vibes your way! ❤️