EVERY. DAMN. TIME.

EVERY. DAMN. TIME.

Goober was definitely giving me “Please don’t leave for work” eyes and it was so hard not to cave

😭

AHHHH!!!! This sweeter side of SWAT!Joel is doing things to me!!!

Lo, I cannot take this sweet asshole of a man!! 🫠🥰 Got me feeling all gooey when I just know he’s gonna be an asshole again 🤣

you all the way down

ao3 ⋆ main masterlist ⋆ series masterlist

pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader rating: Explicit (18+ only!) warnings: vaguely dub-con (power imbalance, reader was paying a debt), masturbation, oral sex (f and m receiving), face sitting, spanking, cum swallowing, no use of y/n. word count: 4.3k summary: You have a rare moment of privacy, a chance to luxuriate in bringing yourself closer and closer to a peak you've been teasing yourself with for hours.... Until a knock at your door snatches it all away.

A/N: I hit a follower milestone this week - thank you all so much for your follows, comments, reblogs, friendship, sneaky trips into my DMs and asks, and for loving the same silly, absurd, and horny things I do.

see you next week 💛

title from I, Carrion (Icarian) by hozier.

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You didn't often do it like this. You didn't often have the time. Or the privacy.

It was a rare luxury to have the apartment to yourself, and so, for the best part of an hour - maybe more - you'd been slowly and steadily teasing yourself. With no plans and no work, you could take your time, turn the slow drag of your hands all over your body into steady smooth movements that dipped between your legs. Fingers that pinched nipples, scratched at your belly, dragged themselves over your thighs found themselves nestled between your legs dipping down and teasing. Down, and up, and around, and back down again. Sweeping through wet folds and swiping over your clit in gloriously slow strokes. You were making your own skin prickle, your own breath catch in your throat, and it was divine.

How long you teased yourself and made yourself smile and sigh in the confines of your own room, you didn't know exactly. It didn't matter. Your dad was at work and you weren't. You were here, alone, finally pushing one slicked up finger inside yourself and making yourself gasp.

Fuck, did you deserve this. You deserved the soft and the slow way you teased yourself, brought yourself close to the edge and then eased off. You deserved the way you made yourself moan, catching yourself with a laugh when you heard yourself through the blood in your ears.

You deserved to come, right here, nestled in all your soft things, thinking glorious thoughts about hands and bodies surrounding yours, overwhelming you until you came, shuddering, in their grasp.

You deserved to come begging and urging yourself on to the emptiness of your room, your own filthy mouth finding flight and soaring, working with the fingers in your cunt and on your clit to bring yourself to an edge you'd let yourself teeter on, almost making yourself cry as you held back, held off, and kept that fierce explosion at bay.

Until a knock at your door snatched it all away.

Your body registers it before your brain does. The fuse you'd ignited sputters out, your fingers still working over your clit that has suddenly gone shy and numb and unfeeling, making you twitch uncomfortably. Then, your door rattles with a heavy handed knock again, and you sit up with a start.

Fuck this asshole.

Tumbling from tangled sheets, you frantically reach for something to cover you. As you hop through your apartment, one leg in your pants, the other out, another knock hammers at the door.

"Okay! I'm coming!" Only you weren't, because that was ruined now, thanks to this heavy handed asshole and their impeccable timing.

Wiping damp fingers on your pants, you huff out a frustrated breath and try to pin a fake smile onto your face before opening the door. It swings inward, just as the start of another impatient knock begins, and in with it comes a man you should be surprised to see.

Joel Miller breezes past you - barely having to push his way in as you stare at him in stunned silence - to stand in your living room, looking curiously around at the small space.

"Nice place," he says, with a look on his face that says differently. You know it's far from a nice place. There wasn't a single apartment in this building that was a nice place. If this were normal times, the whole block would have been condemned years ago, but here you were, stuck at the end of the world in a shitty apartment that was the only place you had to call home.

As you close the door, you take a quick glance down at what you'd thrown on. The pajama pants have seen better days - everything had seen better days - and the shirt you'd grabbed has more holes in the seams than you care to even check for. It was in your pile of things to fix that you hadn't quite got around to yet and now here it was, hanging off your body like you were wearing lace, not flannel.

"What're you here for?" you ask, trying to hide the holes in your with a not-so-subtle movement of your arms.

"Like to check in on my clients from time to time," he says, finally looking you over and noticing your arms tucked tightly over your chest. "Am I disturbin' somethin'?"

Yes. "No."

"You ain't workin'?"

No shit. "Day off."

"Alright," he says, clicking his tongue against his teeth. "What's got your panties in a bunch?"

You aren't wearing any panties. "Nothing."

He's crossing the small space to stand right in front of you, and you know from the second his nostrils flair that he knows. He probably knew from the moment he came in, probably somehow even from the other side of the door. You weren't exactly being quiet, or discreet, and if there's one thing you knew it was that Joel Miller knew you just about better than anybody else.

"Bullshit, sweetheart."

If you weren't already so turned on at your own hand, you know you'd be rapidly getting wetter. Just the smell of him in your home is sending your mind, and your pussy, into overdrive. He's never stepped foot in here before, and you know you shouldn't like it. A man like Joel, a man who has clients to come check on, isn't someone you should be happy to have snooping about in your apartment and your business.

But one look at that cocky smirk on his face, and you know you'd be very happy to have him snooping around your business. In fact, by the way your pussy pulses at the sight of him, you think you'd be happy to have him very deep in your business right here pressed up against your front door.

Instead, in a last ditch effort to retain your dignity, you push the frustration back into your voice and step around him, throwing your hands into the air.

"You just come here, pound at the door, and then bust right in here the second I open it! I was - I'm busy, Joel."

"Busy?" Joel scoffs. You can see the thought as it comes to him, sly smile twitching the corners of his mouth as he fakes disinterest. "Then go right on ahead and get back to what you were doin', don't mind me."

You stare him down, heart pounding in your throat. The distance between you is still small. You could be on him in an instant. You think you could use the element of surprise and tackle him to the ground. His coat would come off easy enough, but beneath that who knows what he's wearing. Probably layers. Fucking Boston. Still, you didn't exactly need all of them off, you only needed access to one thing, and when your eyes flick down to the bulge in his jeans you resolutely set your shoulders and turn around.

"Fine."

A button falls from loose threads as your hands fly down the front of your shirt. In no time at all you're flinging it over your shoulder, hitting Joel square in the face where he stands in your bedroom doorway, watching.

He catches it in one hand, fingering one of the holes. "This what you call, busy?"

The pajama pants you'd tied about your waist drop to your feet and in no time at all you're naked again, climbing onto your bed, the pillows and sheets you were nested in welcoming you back in - still warm. "Like you didn't know, asshole."

"I ain't got a sixth fuckin' sense, sweetheart."

You glare at him from across the room and he shrugs, leaning casually on the doorframe as he watches you lie back. If you didn't know better, you'd think he didn't know where to look. One moment he's looking at the scowl on your face, and the next he's looking down at your breasts, the curve of your ass, taking a peek between your legs as you shuffle down your bed. It's all going so fast, you think for once you may just have the upperhand. Joel Miller, you think, is flustered.

He watches you as you stroke down your body, quicker than the slow, teasing pace you'd set with yourself earlier. Your thighs fall open as your hands reach your hips, and your fingers reach down to spread yourself as he watches on.

"This what you were doin'?"

"Yes, now can you shut up."

You shut your eyes and get back to where you left off. You're still wet and slick, your fingers slipping easily back into the grip of your pussy. If you just try to block him out, standing in the doorway staring between your spread legs, you can get right back where you left off. You can find that edge again, even through the oversensitivity. You know you can, and this time, you're going to throw yourself screaming over it.

Curling your fingers, you reach down and twist your torso until you can reach that delicious spot you found earlier. Then, your other hand begins working back over your clit, spit slicked and swiping eagerly over the sensitive nub. Picking up the pace, you try to ignore the twitches in your legs and the way your thighs already want to clamp shut on your own hands.

You ignore it, that is, until Joel chimes in from the doorway.

"You're gonna rub the fuckin' thing clean off if you keep goin' at it like that."

Hitting the bed in frustration, you growl and sit up again, staring wild eyed at him. "If you're such a fucking expert, then why don't you get over here and help me. I am naked, Joel, and my cunt is right here."

Your mouth snaps shut the moment you gesture down to your spread legs. You snap them shut too. By the way he's silently peeling off his coat, you're certain you've fucked up, though you can't say you're too mad about it. With any luck, he'll fuck you to within an inch of your life in a way so satisfying your ruined orgasm will be all but forgotten.

With his coat discarded, he pulls off a sweater and unbuttons his shirt - flannel and significantly less holey than the one you've just thrown at him. Then, he grabs a pillow you'd discarded earlier and sits at the edge of your bed.

"C'mere," he beckons as he lays back, folding the pillow and shoving it behind his head.

You don't move. You're frozen in place as he shifts and gets himself comfortable. You don't know what this is, what he's planning, but you're certain it's something he's never done before. And it's going to happen right here, in your bedroom, the very place you'd spent night after night dreaming of the many wonderful ways he would fuck you.

"You want my help, or not?" he says in frustration, looking over to you where you're rooted in place. You nod stupidly, and follow the beckon of his fingers until you're kneeling by his side.

His rough hands find your thigh and push you until you're sat up on your knees. Then, he's dragging one of your legs over his clothed chest until you're straddling him, trying to keep the wet mess between your legs from soaking through his shirt.

"Up here," he says. "Want that pussy, and I ain't kneeling for it."

And suddenly it all clicks into place and you are mortified. For everything he'd done to you, for how much you knew he loved to look, you'd never once done something like this to him. You felt awkward even riding him, until his flithy words of encouragement and the drag of his cock inside you knocked every thought out of your brain.

Now, he was wanting you to sit on his face, somehow not suffocating him in the process. So, you laugh, shaking as you hold your weight above his chest.

"Look like I'm jokin' to you?" he says in a tone so stern and serious your eyes force their way down to where his face sits perilously close to the apex of your legs.

Which, of course, is a fucking mistake. He's licking his lips and looking up at you - all over every inch of you - eating you alive with his stare.

He pushes and pulls you then, dragging you up his chest until your knees are settled either side of his face. You can feel the gust of his breath against your thighs just before he hauls you forward a little more until his half face is completely covered by your cunt, only his eyes and the bridge of his nose visible now.

"Fuckin' christ. You're a mess down here. You been goin' at it for a while, huh?" he says, and you can feel every word blow against you even as you hover as far as you can above his face.

"Uh-huh," you say, a kiss sucked to your thigh striking stealing all thought from your mind.

"Get real close?" he says, with another kiss, hands kneading at your thighs and ass as they wrap around you and try to tug you closer.

You nod, hoping he can see you as your eyes slip closed with the feeling of him right here, between your legs, in your room.

"Hm. That's a damn shame, sweetheart. Bet you're achin' for it somethin' fierce right now, ain't you?" he asks from between your legs. You look down and you know in that moment the fucked look on your face says more than you ever could when he hums, spreading your thighs apart with his strong fingers.

"Better sit your ass down then," he mumbles into your thigh, pulling you down. "That's it, bring it here. Ain't strainin' my fuckin' neck for it, give it to me."

So you do. You settle down slowly onto his face, listening as he guides you down until you feel the first broad swipe of his tongue up through your folds.

"What'd I say," he says, swallowing the taste of you. "A fuckin' mess."

He kisses around your clit, nudging it with the curved tip of his nose when he finally licks up into you again. And then, he's pulling your flush to his face and feasting.

The noise that leaves you is stupid. Somewhere between a gasp and a moan and a question all at once. His nose is pressed against you, his laughter fanning out across your mound as you try not to squirm and wiggle against him, fearful of crushing his head beneath your weight, or at the very least suffocating him.

His face burrows deeper, his hands holding you firm, squeezing and scraping calloused fingertips against your delicate skin. The scruff on his cheeks feels rough against the places you were so soft with earlier, and you don't care in the slightest.

It works, you think.

Where the soft feel of your own hands felt too much - too familiar - to the parts of you that were now too sensitive to them, the rough, all consuming movements of Joel's mouth on your swollen pussy feels like a welcome relief as he laps at your hole, slick and dripping from your thwarted solo session.

His hands move from anchoring you to his face, locked around your thighs, to pressing against your ass, gripping the globes of them in each of his broad hands.

And then, as if it wasn't all so much already, he begins to stroke up and down your seam, pulling you apart, dipping into your dripping cunt and teasing over your exposed asshole as he laps and suckles away at your clit.

Still, as good as it all is, you can't let go. You can't get back to that place you'd climbed so close to. You feel exposed, sat upright with the frigid October air of your bedroom encasing you. Self-conscious too - all chins and bad angles and slouchy shoulders. And, most of all, you were terrified you were going to hurt him. One wrong twitch or snap shut of your legs and his air supply would be gone, or his neck snapped, and you'd have a dead man in your bed and -

A sharp slap connects with your ass cheek, Joel's strong hands pulling you upwards from his face, cheeks glistening and lips swollen red.

"Lean forward," he says, with a nip to your thigh.

As you go to move, walking forward on your knees, a hand grips your waist, and another slap hits your thigh, rippling your skin where it frames his face.

"Said lean, not fuckin' move off. You're gonna sit right here 'til you come, but you ain't comin' any time soon if you don't fuckin' lean and relax."

A strong hand pushes at your lower back then, making you hinge forward until your elbows collide with the bed. Your ass is in the air, legs spread just wide enough that your bare cunt is tantalizingly close to Joel's mouth, and now you get it. You shift on your knees, soothing the small ache that had built up, and look down at the brown-grey hair between your legs that's sucking hickies into your thighs.

"That's it, sweetheart," he murmurs as he marks you, delivering swift, gentle smacks to your ass as you groan, planting your cheek firmly against your bed.

You drag a blanket toward you, covering yourself a little and tucking your face into the softness of it. Joel's smacks turn to scrapes of his blunt nails over the backs of your thighs and then, when your brain finally switches off and you fall into that mindless, soft place that has you feeling heavy and floaty all at once, you press your hips forward and drag your bare pussy across Joel's waiting tongue.

Joel's groan of approval blends into your own wanton moans. What was a soft drag of his tongue on your clit quickly turns to the sensitive nub being sucked into his eager mouth, your hips winding and grinding now you can finally relax.

"Fingers. Please. Need your fingers."

It doesn't even sound like you. It's breathier and more pathetic than you think you've ever sounded, but you can't bring yourself to care when suddenly Joel is releasing your clit to slurp on two of his own fingers, before plunging them deep into your empty pussy.

"Yes, yes, yes, like that. Fuck. Joel."

Each orbit of his tongue on your clit sends a new throb directly through your core, clenching down on the digits curling into you, and you're right back to teetering on that edge. You figure you could let yourself fall over it now. It'd be more like collpasing over it in an exhausted heap, but you know it'd be a satisfaction you wouldn't otherwise have got today.

Or you could wait. You could hold yourself back and use his face to tease yourself, to bring yourself back from the brink once, twice, before you take the final running jump right over it.

Your hands have made up your mind for you when you card trembling fingers through his hair and pull him back, forcing his head down into the pillow he'd propped under it not long ago, and stopping your orgasm in its tracks.

One.

Then, when he's licking broad stripes up and down your glistening folds, something takes hold of you and you begin to fuck yourself against his fingers, swiping your pussy against the flat of his tongue as you rock gently back and forth. His tongue, then his nose, grind against your clit with each rock of your hips, and soon your shaking legs can't move yourself any more.

Two.

Whatever running jump you'd hoped for isn't in your hands now. It's not in your control from the moment Joel tucks a third finger into your pussy, so slick and dripping you're certain you'd have no issue taking more if he decided to give them to you. Instead, you're being carried by him, limp and panting in his arms as he throws you mercilessly over the edge, and you let him.

You come with a cry, fists balling in sheets. Your hips rock and cant against his face, twitching uncontrollably as you pulse and gush around his fingers. His tongue is relentless on your clit, circling over and over until you're begging a jumbled garble of words, too weak to lift yourself off of him.

Then, in a last ditch effort, you throw yourself forward, still coming as you finally release yourself off of his face.

It takes your brain a second to reconnect with your body. Even after the aftershocks have subsided, you're still panting and groaning. Or he is. Maybe both of you are.

Both of you are.

Still quivering, you turn to him. His eyes catch yours before you can take in the state of him. They're darker than you've ever seen them, his blown pupils turning his irises almost black. Then, you see the glistening wet on his chin, his plush lips turned plumper, red and swollen from kissing and sucking at you. And, even lower still, you see the movement of his arm, his bicep rocking in a steady movement, his forearm flexing with each jerk of his fist, his cock weeping in his hand.

"Get down here," he growls.

You scramble to turn, limbs clumsy, and flop down against his side, knees tucked awkwardly under you. His free hand grips your ass, kneading and spreading you so he can look at the mess he made of you, while he guides his cock to your mouth with the other.

"C'mon now, ain't gonna take much. That's it. Fuck."

He groans when you swallow him down, almost gagging when you take him too deep too quickly. Your fist curls around the base of him, taking up the space you can't quite reach, and you bob your head, swirling your tongue, unable to keep your moans quiet as you taste him.

No sooner have you started, and he's twitching beneath you, the muscles in his groin flexing to hold back, to hold on.

"Want you to swallow it all," he pants. "Don't want - fuck - you to miss a single drop."

His fingers push back into your tender hole then - the inviting warmth of it obviously too much to resist when it's swaying there right in front of him, and you welcome him back in with a sigh.

"Such a fuckin' mess."

You moan in agreement, sucking his cock deeper into your mouth. You can't see him. You don't need to. You know he's close by the way his balls draw tight and his moans get so desperate, his fingers stilling their slow exploration inside you.

And then, he's spurting into the back of your throat - you bet he has his eyes closed - and you swallow over and over, the salty burst of him barely registering on your tasetbuds as you eagerly swallow everything he has to give.

"Get it all. That's it. Swallow it. Fuck, sweetheart."

You suck and lick until his fingers pull out of you and grip your thigh, too sensitive for you to carry on your gentle licks against his head.

With one last gentle suck, you release him with a pop and flop beside him, smiling dozily to yourself as your hands play against your belly.

Joel lays with you for a moment too, his cock going limp against his belly before he tucks it away and sits up.

"Y'always like this after you fuck yourself?" he asks, and you nod, watching the way he stretches his neck and shoulders. You think you are, anyway. Mostly, you fall straight asleep. It's only on these rare occasions you get to fuck yourself with your fingers and take your time that you ended up smiling and satisfied at a job well done.

"Get up here," he says again a moment later, tugging gently at your limp arm. He could manhandle you - he's done it before, he's plenty strong enough - but he doesn't. Instead he waits patiently until you're on your knees in front of him, almost matching his height where he stands and you kneel.

"What'd'ya say?" he asks, pinching your chin. "Tha..."

"Thank you, Joel," you say, with a roll of your eyes. "But, technically, it's your fault I even needed your help in the first place."

With a quick slap to your ass, he pushes your chin away with his thumb, before dragging your face right back to his. "Alright smartass. C'mere."

Then, he kisses you. Full on the mouth, kisses you.

And, when you slip your tongue against his bottom lip, tasting yourself on the fullness of it, he doesn't object. He meets you in the middle instead, tasting himself on your tongue as you taste yourself on his.

"Always go so fuckin' dopey for kisses," he says with a laugh against your mouth, and you moan an agreement as your head falls back. You're exhausted, right down to the bones, and now the mornings events are catching up with you.

"I do. You don't mind tasting your cum."

Honest too, apparently, and Joel shakes his head.

"S'mine, and I fuckin' put it there. Nice knowin' you taste of me, sweetheart. If it ain't one hole, it oughta be another."

He shrugs his jacket on, and pulls his shoes onto his feet, before he sees himself out. He pats you gently on the ass as he leaves, closing your bedroom door behind himself. You listen out for the front door, and when it slams, you let the fuzzy feeling take hold - your eyes catching sight of his flannel shirt on your dresser right before you're dragged under.

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Oh my word! This is absolutely beautiful!!!

I loved the story telling on Pero’s history!

Of Every Kinnë Tre

(Pero Tovar x F!Reader)

CW:  Angst (death); smut (dubious consent, maybe, but I don't know if medieval times cared much for intoxicated sex acts; loss of virginity; oblique talk of sex; fingering, PiV, unprotected), 18+ only.

Word Count: 8370

AN:  This was originally requested by @justreblogginfics!

AN2: The title of this is taken from an anonymous medieval love poem called, in modern English, "Of Every Kind of Tree."

AN3: Tropes is playing fast and loose with historical fact here (and geography, and linguistics, etc. etc).

Pero Tovar never counted marriage as something written into his fate.

Starvation?  Possibly.  Plague?  There was a chance.  Death in war or battle or in a misunderstanding on the road to China and back?

All too certain.

But marriage?  Never.

Until it was foisted on him, quite unexpectedly, as he made his way back to Europa from his trials at the Great Wall.

-----

Tales from Pero Tovar’s time were largely passed down through the oral tradition:  great speakers and orators stood in front of captive audiences, or ordinary men and women sat around fires and told stories to while away the dark hours, the cold hours.  To brighten their lives.

These stories usually began like this:

Lo!  We have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes’ achievements!

Or

Harken, my brethren, while I tell you the tale of Igor, son of Svyatoslav.

Or

Pwyll Prince of Dyved was lord of the seven Cantrevs of Dyved; and once upon a time he was at Narberth his chief palace…

So we will begin our tale the same way, as the people of Pero’s time would have told it:  around the fire, in the deep of winter’s cold—for it is a love story, and love is most appreciated when the days are short and the nights are long.

-----

Gather, friends, as I tell the tale of Pero Tovar, an orphan in want of a heel of bread, who became a sell-sword in want of coin, who became a lord who possessed the greatest treasure of all.

Pero was born in Galicia, and his entry into our world was what harried his dear mother into the next.  Motherless, the babe Pero was given to a cousin to care for him, though she had her own children and gave Pero only the remainder of anything she had.  Pero’s father, a brute of a blacksmith, was dispatched by a horse’s kick to the head when Pero was just a boy, and so he found himself an orphan.

The cousin’s house was meanly built, and the cousin’s husband was a miser who counted every peseta thrice before tucking it away in the pouch he always kept on his person.  Pero was often cold, more often hungry, and when he reached the age of ten, he heard of a boy’s army that was forming to retake the Holy Land for the Christians.

Pero ran away from the cousin’s house, and while he never made it to Levant, he found that he had a talent for survival in the rough company of sell-swords, and it became his life for the next decades.

Unlike his fellow sell-swords, though, Pero had a talent for saving his coin.  His compatriots caroused, whored, drank themselves stupid the moment a coin crossed their palm. 

Pero?  Perhaps he had learned a lesson from the cousin’s miserly husband.  He held his coin, he spent little beyond the care of himself and his horse, and he saved.  He had an idea to leave his life as a sell-sword before he lost it, to retire to some quiet green place and toil in the earth for whatever years remained to him. 

To this end, he kept his coin safe with a certain prior in a certain priory.  For a portion of what Pero earned, the prior tucked away the rest and guarded it, kept it protected in an iron box secured with a cunning lock that only he had the key to.

Pero saw much of God’s earth and beyond:  into the Emirate of Mosul, the Buyid Emirate, where leagues of golden sand stretched beyond one’s vision, and where a lush green paradise could be found over the next rise.  Then Sena, Bagan, the Kingdom of Bali—where he could not fathom the tongues in which they spoke, but where work could be found, as it seemed men across all lands always needed swords for coin.  Then further east where the Song Dynasty ruled, and here Pero faced monsters from Revelation and survived.

With the coin he earned from fighting beasts, Pero calculated that he had enough now to retire from this life.  He could find a patch of land and till it.  He could hitch his warhorse to a plow and plant seeds that would sustain him, and when it was time for him to die, he could lay down in the furrows and pass with the blue firmament over his head.

-----

When Pero returned to the priory to collect his accumulated wealth, however, he found that disaster had struck.

The old prior, a gentle and pious man, had died, and his successor was the son of a bishop, a wastrel and spendthrift whose first order of business had been to set an inventory of the prior’s wealth. This inventory included the iron box where Pero's savings where stored.

The new prior's second order of business was to take that wealth and spend it on sinful pursuits.

Which meant Pero found himself with little beyond the payment from the Song people, a handful of treasures from his journeys, and a stretch of long years in front of him where he’d have to continue selling his sword to survive.

-----

Which was how Pero found himself outside of the Holy Roman Empire, to the east where the people spoke Latin but with a thick tongue, where many kept with the old gods and customs, and where the borders changed every fortnight as men grappled for land, consolidated their holding of scattered tribes and strongholds into what would pass for a kingdom or duchy further west.

Pero took work that winter, guarding the storehouse of a league of merchants who strove to protect their wares from both marauders and quarreling nobles alike.  In this way, Pero came to understand the local tongue and customs, and he learned of the Princeling named Radomil, whose eldest half-brother had just died.

“They say Radomil murdered his kin as he slept,” spat one man in a tavern.  “Just as he slayed his own father, years before.”

Another man lifted his hand, two fingers forked to ward off the Devil.  “There will be hard times ahead, should he gain control.”

In this way, by keeping his head down and his ears open, Pero came to learn of the cowardly murderous Prince Radomil, now King. He came to learn that the people feared what this murderous king may do to his half-sister.

In some way that Pero would never learn, though, King Radomil came to learn of him in turn, and within a score of days, Pero found himself summoned to the squat stone fortress for an audience with the new King.

-----

The proposal was simple, once it was put to Pero in a tongue he could grasp better.

King Radomil wanted to see his half-sister wed.  A kindness, it was said, in light of her recent loss.   She was a widow with a small babe, and King Radomil in his infinite love and benevolence, saw fit to arrange such a match. Pero had been measured and found just such a match.

Pero, always blunt, asked, “why me?”

The King’s advisor talked at length, and though Pero was not especially versed in court intrigue, he knew enough of flattery and lies when he heard it. 

“You are a noble man,” the advisor said, bowing his head at Pero.  “We have it on good authority that you are descended from the family of Alfonso el Monje, King of León.  Ancient blood proves out, despite your meager circumstances now.”

When Pero tried to argue and claim that he was from Galicia, son of a drunkard blacksmith, the advisor waved him away.

“We have priests who have studied your lineage and found it to not be so,” he said.

It was only later that evening that another advisor, an older man with a bald pate but a long beard set Pero straight in hushed tones and darting glances.

“The King cannot kill his sister,” he told Pero.  “She is beloved by the people, and the killing of a woman would unravel his already tenuous hold on the region.”

“Why kill her at all?”  Pero remembered that the sister was a widow, and he imagined an old woman, hunched back, white hair tucked under a veil.  He could not fathom the risk she posed, but then again, he was in unfamiliar lands.

“She is a tool that others would use.  Her father the King was beloved as well, and her mother had an ancient claim to royalty in her own right.  The Princess could be snatched up by a rival for the throne, and her blood could bolster any claim.  But if her brother the King could marry her off to a nobody, no one else could claim her.”

Pero remembered a certain game from his journey to the east, a way for the idle to while away the hours.  It was war in miniature, a board with pieces, and while he watched it played many times, Pero never quite grasped how to win at shatranj.  But he knew enough to recognize it now.

“Marrying her to me would remove her from the field,” Pero replied, understanding at last. 

The old advisor nodded.  “And it would keep her alive.  Consider it seriously, Tovar.  You would save not just her life but the life of her babe, and you would come out of it a wealthy man.  You could claim her inheritance that her mother the Queen left her.”

“What inheritance?”

The old advisor glanced into the shadows, then said, “on her mother’s side, she is nobility.  There is a handsome manor far from here, further north, that belongs to the Princess.  It would be yours, should you marry her.”

In this way, Pero Tovar came to be married.

-----

The marriage took place on a rainy evening, and the ceremonies were doubled:  one performed in the Latin rite by a priest in a grease-stained cassock, the other performed by a wise-man of the local custom.  The latter, it must be said, was more boisterous—it involved winding a cord around the hand of the Princess and Pero’s, linking the two together in the eyes of the local gods.  Then, to seal it, a feast where Pero and the Princess fed each other and gave each other drink.  The drink was a local concoction, dark plum spirits that went down easier with each subsequent sip.

The Princess only took a mouthful when Pero held the cup to her mouth.

Pero took deep swallows and drained the cup when she held it to his.

Then there was dancing, and the dancing led to the great hall spinning, and from the spinning Pero found himself being carried away, up and floating away from the music, borne by the king’s men.  When he turned his head, he saw the Princess - his wife - being borne away beside him, the newlyweds floating, and he did not realize—as she did—that this was the bedding ceremony.

How could Pero know?  He had never laid with a woman before.

*****

You understood your circumstances.

You have always understood your circumstances.

Your mother died when you were young.  Too young to make any memories of her beyond a general impression of loveliness, of gentleness before the fever took her and your unborn sister to the underworld.  Your father remarried soon after, and he had a son with your stepmother, but she was a scheming woman, grasping, and your circumstances were clear forever after.

Your father, at least, lived long enough to marry you off to an ally.  Your first husband had been much older, silver in his beard, but kind.  Extraordinarily kind, in fact, and you wondered sometimes if your father knew he had given you to a man who made you a woman gently, who made you a mother to his daughter just as gently, and who died from an ague only last summer.

It was the only time he hurt you, dying as he did. 

Your second husband?  Well, you understood your circumstances.  You knew it was a farce, a noble lineage hung on the shoulders of a sell-sword.  You knew your brother’s motives when he and his advisors found you and informed you of your impending marriage.  You knew it would keep you safe, being tucked away with some rough peasant, but as you observed this Tovar—his rough looks, his rougher manner—you wondered if death would perhaps be a kinder fate.

-----

Like your first marriage, you did not properly meet your intended until the ceremonies themselves.

Unlike your first marriage, this Tovar did not seem to understand the potency of the rakija.  Unless he was a drunkard as well as a sell-sword.

Like your first marriage, you did not properly exchange a word beyond the ceremonies until you were locked in the chamber for the bedding ceremony.

Unlike your first marriage, this Tovar did not say, as your first husband had, “please trust in me, little princess.  I will do you no harm.”

Instead, this Tovar stared at you, swayed on his feet, and mumbled, “fuck, how did this happen?”

Your first marriage, you left your bedding ceremony with far more pleasure than pain—the former a revelation that your body could produce such sensations, and the latter just a faint ache between your legs.

Your second marriage, you left your bedding ceremony with neither pleasure nor pain.  You left it with confusion, at first, then understanding, then a bemusement that would one day cede to love.

This Tovar understood enough to undress himself.  He shed the embroidered surcoat, the fine-woven shirt, the doe-skin trousers.  The linen smallclothes.  He stood before you unabashed, naked, swaying still on his feet.  His manhood stood to proud attention, and you studied him.  He was not unappealing, you thought, so long as he didn’t spew from the drink.

But he made no further move, and you lifted your hands to undress yourself too.  You lifted away the headdress sewn with seed pearls and small gems.  The outer robe, heavy with brocade.  The inner dress, the woolen slippers, then the shift, and you stood as proudly as you could but felt a shyness overtake you, so you wrapped your arm around yourself and hid what you could.

Perhaps you misunderstood the sell-sword, though.  A man, you thought, would take what was his, but this Tovar only stared at you—his cock twitching—and he made no further move. 

“Perhaps,” you said, tentative.  “We could lie down on the bed?”

He nodded and gestured for you to lead.  You stretched out on the coverlet, but when he joined you, he only laid beside you, like two corpses in the tomb.  The moment grew long, and there was no noise other than each of you breathing and the distant merriment of the wedding feast in the great hall.

“Tovar, we must…you must bed me for it to be legal,” you finally told him.  Quietly, though.  He was drunk, and you knew enough of men to know that drunkenness made them violent.  And at your words, he shook his head and turned to face you, and his expression was dark.

“Pero,” he whispered harshly.  “My given name is Pero.”

“P-Pero.”  You didn’t mean to stammer, but his face was like a thundercloud, like the storm god that men worshiped here—

Saying his name made his expression soften in an instant, though.  The thunderhead passed, and his face was like dawn’s light. 

“My mother named me Pero,” he explained.  “Tovar is what my father gave me.”

“Your mother…is she kind?”

“She is dead.”

“Oh.”  You bit your lip and studied him; the darkness was edging back into his expression, so you added, “mine is dead too.”

“Mine died in my birthing.”

“Mine died when I was young, as she birthed my sister.”  You paused, added, “she died too.”

Pero’s eyes had a glassy quality to them, whether it be the drink or the sorrow of his mother, so you reminded him, just as gently, that the bedding ceremony needed to be complete before your brother the Usurper would let you both leave.  Before he returned your young daughter to you and let the three of you leave for your mother’s homeland.

To aid Pero, you reached out a hand to him, thinking you could lead him to you, but he misunderstood.  He took your hand in his, much like at the wedding ceremony, and he raised it to his mouth.  His mustache tickled against your skin as he pressed wet kisses to the back of it, to your wrist, to the inside of your forearm.

His kisses were sloppy, like a child playing at love.  You thought it was the drink.

Little by little, you led him, or tried to.  An hour passed, you judged from where the tall tapers burned in their pewter holders.  Each moment saw the man get nowhere closer to consummating the thing; he only pressed his mouth to your hands and arms, and when he got breathless, which was often, he gazed over at you.  Sometimes he touched your face with his calloused fingertips, and once he leaned forward and nuzzled his face in your unbound hair, but the time passed, and you felt your daughter—your freedom, your life—slipping away bit by bit.

“For the love of the gods, man,” you finally snapped.  “Finish the thing!”

It made Pero rear back his head from where he nuzzled against you, and his expression was not thunderous so much as baleful.

“It is uncharted waters,” he muttered.

“The terrain from one woman to another is much the same, I imagine,” you retorted, then you reached for him in earnest, took him by his shoulder and urged him to climb onto you, which he did, clumsily.  It felt so much the same, though, the warm touch of another’s body against yours, and the first real flower of desire bloomed in you.

“Perhaps,” you thought, “this may be a successful marriage.”

But Pero seemed confused still, still too addled by the strong plum brandy, and he moved awkwardly, muttered near your ear that he could map the hillocks and dales of this territory, but was unsure of the way home—

“Here,” you breathed into his ear, and your hand found where he strained, hot and heavy and ready to join to you.  You took him by the root and tried to lead him to you, but your touch alone made him groan against your neck, made him mutter some word you didn’t know, and then you felt him go rigid above you.

Your second bedding ceremony, then:  your new husband’s slack weight against you, his spend, hastily given from the mere touch of your palm, cooling against your hip.

Still, it was enough for your brother the Usurper and his flock of advisors in their dusty, moth-eaten robes.  The usual inspection of the bedchamber come morning, the usual sly smiles and off-hand jokes…and then you were away, your daughter restored to your arms and your new husband—and his aching head—off to the lands of your mother.

-----

“What is her name?” Pero asked, startling you out of your thoughts.  When you glanced at him, he nodded at your daughter dozing against your side.

“Vesna,” you replied.  “It means ‘dawn.’”

He stared at you both for a long moment, this woman and her daughter that he got at a bargain. 

“Her father…was he a good man?”

You nodded.  “He was.”

“How did he die?”

You turned away and looked at the landscape from the narrow window of the carriage.  “A fever took him. 

“You cared for him?”

You nodded again.  “I did.”

Pero made a noise at that, a grumble at the back of his throat that you couldn’t discern the meaning of.  “Why did you care for him?”

“Why would you ask?”  It was an impossible question to answer anyway, how you cared for your first husband and why.  Because he was strong and wise, but gentle in equal measure.  That he sat in council with your father, then your elder brother, his face stern and grave, then returned home and played with your daughter, pulled faces and allowed her to ride him as a pony, her small chubby fists tugging at his hair.

Pero must have heard the edge in your voice, because he answered softly, “I only hope to model my behavior on his own.”  He paused.  “I’ve never had a wife.  I should like to do well by you.”

Vesna grumbled in her sleep and turned deeper in your side before she settled.  “Will you do well by her too, Tovar?”

“Pero,” he corrected you gently.  “And I would.  I would be a father to her, and I would have her call me father as I would call her daughter.”

You laughed, the bitterness heavy in your mouth.  “Sweet words, until you have a child of your own.  Once you have your own blood, you’ll seek to cast her away.”

The man scowled but shook his head.  “You have the wrong of it, wife.”

“I’ve yet to meet a person in a second marriage to do otherwise.”

“But you’ve met me,” he snapped.  “And I am not your father’s second wife, nor her treacherous son.”  His face softened, that ebb and flow of darkness that you recognized now from your wedding night.  “I am just a blacksmith’s son, an orphan in my own right.  I would not make an orphan of her, no matter what you think.”

He sounded so injured, stung from your accusation that you nodded at his words, then reached across the carriage and laid a soft hand on his arm. 

“Peace, Pero,” you replied.  “I meant no harm.”

“No one would blame you if you did.  But I will prove you wrong, with both her—” Here, he jerked his chin in the direction of your sleeping daughter.  “And with our own children.  My hands may have slain many men, but I would cradle any child of yours, or any child of ours, as softly as a bird’s egg.”

You could not help the smile.  “You have a gift of language, husband.”

He smiled back, though it looked uncertain, like he was unfamiliar with the motion of lifting his lips into the expression.

“Perhaps you already carry my child,” he said, a bit shyly.  His gaze drifted to your belly under its thick woolen cloak.  “Perhaps I bred you on our wedding night.”

You could not help the laugh this time.  “I think not.”

At that, his smile fled.  “Why not?”

“Because…”  You watched him, uncertain.  Perhaps he had been so drunk he didn’t realize.  “Because you did not…complete the act.”

“I did!”

You shook your head.  “Pero, you drank so much, I trust you must not remember, but you did not.”

“I…”  He hesitated, glanced at Vesna to see that she was still fast asleep.  He dropped his voice to a rough whisper.  “Wife, I spilled my seed.  I remember as much.  The King’s advisors confirmed as much.”

“You did, but outside of me.  Not inside.”

You realized it far too late, but you would be forgiven for never considering it.  How many men had you ever known to enter their marriages as virgins?  Especially a sell-sword who had traveled the world, who had likely been tempted by women of all shades and hues, of all sizes and temperaments.

You realized it when Pero, your husband, looked at you.  Bewildered, he asked, “does not that count, wife?”

-----

“I do not understand how you could not know,” you told him that evening.  You were lodged in a lord’s house, a friend of your late father, and Vesna had been tucked into her cot in an adjoining room.

“I did not.”  Pero sat on the edge of the bed, his arms crossed.  He looked much like a petulant child, not unlike Vesna when she was in a sulk. 

“But you are a grown man, and you’ve kept rough company.”

“I have fought with rough company and traveled with rough company, but I’ve never fucked with rough company.”

You winced at the crude word for it.  “You have never laid with even a woman for coin?  Not once?  Or some sweetheart, back in León?”

“Galicia,” he muttered.  “And no.  I fled home before I could grow hair on my balls, and I held my coin too dear to waste it on pretend love.”

“And you never traveled with a woman, perhaps?  You were never tempted in the rough travel to curl up with a woman—”

“The only women that ever traveled with us were whores and wives.  I would not waste my coin on the first and I would not waste my life on the second.”

You were unsure how to proceed.  True, your marriage was not consummated, but that hardly registered with you.  You did not know this Pero Tovar, in truth, beyond the handful of days you had spent together on the road.  You knew little—just the few conversations, but it was more of his actions that spoke to who he was.

There was a moment early in the journey, just a half day’s ride out, that he had caught Vesna when her little boot caught in the carriage step.  How Pero had swept her up, some fatherly instinct that made it a game for the little girl, a moment to pretend she was flying instead of stumbling.

When you fell asleep and woke to find his cloak tucked around you.

When you entered an unproven tavern for a late meal, how Pero had stood between you and Vesna and the rest of the room, like a loyal cur protecting its flock.

He was rough in his ways, but there was a gentleness to him, and it was as much what he didn’t do—he got drunk on your wedding night and had been as gentle as a lamb.  And now, this line of questioning that frustrated him—he only sat and sulked with his arms crossed, when many men would strike you for being so blunt with his discomfort.

Pero Tovar, you wondered, could perhaps simply be a gentle man who fell into a rough life, and shouldn’t you foster that gentleness, now that he was yours?

“Husband, will you let me show you?” you asked quietly, and when his eyes found yours, you smiled at him.  You held out your hands, and after a moment of hesitation, he took them in his own.  His calloused hands, only recently washed of all the blood they had spilled.

“Please, wife,” he replied.  “Please do.”

-----

The first time that night, it was much like the bedding ceremony:  the moment your hand found Pero’s cock, he groaned, then erupted in your palm.

This time, though, he was sober enough to know what had happened.

“Shit!” he hissed, and he rolled away from you.  You sensed that this was a defining moment in your marriage, the entire enterprise teetering on a knife’s edge.  Fall one way, a life of stilted exchanges, closed-off conversations, miscommunications.  Fall the other way?

“Pero, please.”  You took a cloth from near the bed and wiped your hand, then reached for his deflated manhood.  You wiped him off gently, and you smiled to feel the answering twitch to it, even so soon afterwards.

“The gods did not make us like dogs, rutting in the street, with only one chance in a while,” you whispered to him.  “We can rest and try again, as many times as we like.”

“Did your other husband spill like a boy?” he asked, his voice an angry growl.  You sensed better the way this may fall, how Pero seemed to compare himself to your first husband and found himself wanting.

“My other husband had been married before,” you replied.  You set the soiled cloth aside, and you laid your hand on the side of Pero’s face so you could look him in the eyes.  He avoided your gaze, so you sighed and stroked his hair back from his face, ran your thumb over his bristly cheek.  And Pero, cur that he was, turned into your touch despite his low mood.

“I was not my husband’s first wife,” you explained.  “He and his first wife had many years together, until she died from a wasting disease.  But he was patient with me, and he taught me, just as I will be patient with you.  Just as I will teach you.”

“It is a poor husband who must be taught by his wife.”

You hummed thoughtful at that, then leaned forward to press your lips to his.  You let your breasts brush over his bare arm, and you took in the sharp inhale he made at the touch.

“Such a poor husband,” you chanced to tease.  “Yet such fun in the teaching, hmm?”

“Did I marry a princess or a temptress?” he grumbled back, but there was a teasing tone to his voice. 

“Perhaps you should take her counsel and decide for yourself.”

Pero turned onto his side and faced you, and his eyes finally sought yours.  “I would be a good husband to you,” he said.  “I would be a man who could give you pleasure.”

“Would you be humble enough for your wife to teach you then?”

He nodded, and his eyes grew darker with desire.

“Consider me humble.  Consider me your pupil.”  His voice fell to a lower register, and it sent a frisson of heat through you.

-----

Your lessons, as you came to call them, were strenuously applied and practiced until the pupil became a master in his own right.

You taught him the pleasure of simple touch:  of feather-light strokes and firm grasping, of where to caress and where to lightly pinch, where to soothe and where to worry. 

You taught him how to use his mouth—such a sulking, pouting mouth with such full lips, and with such a wicked tongue.  You taught him how to suckle and lick, how to lap against which parts of you, and you taught him how to kiss with more skill and finesse than that first night together.

You taught him too how to receive the pleasure you could give him beyond the mating.  You used your own hands and mouth in turn, and by the time he strained against you again, his cock ruddy and leaking from its broad tip, Pero was a panting, pleading mess.

“Please, wife,” he cried against your shoulder as you stroked him, then stopped, then stroked him again.  “Please, show me—”

“Here.”  You took his hand and led him to the place between your thighs, let him feel where he should seat himself.  “Just here, husband.”

“It is slippery, your cunt,” he whispered, his voice wracked with awe.  His blunt finger prodded at you, slipped inside, and his groan was a twin to your own.

“It m-makes the joining easier.” 

Pero slid more of his finger inside you, then pulled it out, then sunk it back in.  A preview, you supposed, from your eager pupil.  You moaned again when he added a second finger, and you felt his eyes on you, peering down at you.

“Does that give you pleasure?” he asked without a bit of guile.

You nodded.  It did.

He furrowed his brow.  “I would mount you now, but I may spill too soon.”

“I would not care a whit, Pero.  We have the time to master it together.”

He nodded, then pulled his fingers from you.  He made to climb between your legs, and you parted them for him, spread yourself wide to fit him in the cradle of your hips.  When he lowered himself, you felt his cock brush against you, and he reached down to grasp himself.

It only took him two tries.  Just as you opened your mouth to guide him, he found your entrance, and then he pushed into you, the searing heat of him finally inside you.  Pero groaned to feel you, but he did not spill—he stilled once he was buried in your depths, and he lifted his head to gaze down at you.  The look on his face was somewhere between stupefaction and bliss, and you imagined you looked much the same.

“There,” you told him, brushing your fingertips over the planes of his handsome face.  “Now we are wed, husband.”

*****

In this way, Pero Tovar became a man in love, who was loved in turn by his wife.  Their journey to her mother’s homeland lost much of its earlier speed, and it took them far longer to arrive.  Their servants—the carriage driver, the footman, the guards and lady’s maid, and child’s nurse—could guess the reason for their delay.  After all, Pero and his wife were newlyweds, and they often stayed abed until late in the morning, though no one supposed they slept.

In this way, Pero Tovar came to be a father, the seed planted on that journey quickening in his wife’s belly months later.  The daughter that followed thereafter, and the sons that came after that, and then a final daughter who looked so much like her father that despite the name her parents chose for her, she was forever known as Peročka.

True to his word, Pero never treated little Vesna as anything other than his own child. It had to be said that when the girl was grown and married off to a boy in a nearby city, Pero was the one who openly wept at the loss of her.

In the tales of this time, once the dragon is slain or the kingdom regained or the treasure earned, the tale ends.  And so should ours, except to remind that Pero Tovar had traveled the known world only to end up with a treasure beyond compare in his wife and the family they created together.  He never found the life he sought for himself—that spot of green land, dirt to furrow, plants to coax into life.  Instead, he found a better life with a wife and children, with a community of people who came to value his wisdom…though he did end up with a garden where he tended to a grove of small plum trees and distilled their sweet fruits into a brandy that young men often toasted with on their wedding days.

If there is a lesson to Pero Tovar’s story, then, it’s this:  sometimes the life we desire is not the life we need.

And to add that when his wife died from a wasting disease when only a bit of silver threaded through her hair, Pero spared no expense in building her the finest stone crypt to hold her bones.  He had her dressed in the gown she wore to marry him so long ago.  In her hair, he tucked the small jade and enamel comb that had somehow survived his journey from the Far East when he fought monsters in another life entirely.  As was the custom in his adopted home, his children and grandchildren took hawthorn branches—in full bloom, as his beloved wife died in spring—and laid them in the crypt with her.

And to add too, when Pero himself died from a fever years later, his children and grandchildren dressed him in his finest tunic and opened the crypt so he could be laid beside his beloved.  As was the custom, they took hawthorn branches —laden with red berries, as he died in the autumn—and laid them in the crypt with him.

And to add finally, Vesna, by then a mother in her own right, reached into the crypt and adjusted the two bodies so that their hands were clasped in their eternal rest.  How could she do otherwise?  They had loved each other fiercely in this life, and she prayed to the gods that they would do so in the next life too.  Her mother and her father both, and she did not hide the tears that fell as her brothers and husband slid the heavy stone lid in place, sealing both Pero and his beloved in their shared tomb.

*****

He only has a single evening, and the surfeit of options in D.C. paralyzes him with choice.  The Phillips Collection?  The Renwick Gallery?  Or the National Gallery of Art?

He mentions it to Ruiz, who laughs and says, “c’mon, man.  The National Gallery, obviously.”

“I’d like something a little more off the beaten path,” Marcus replies.

Ruiz studies him, thinks on it.  Finally says, “you know, I know a woman over there.  She’s curating this huge exhibit that’s coming out next year.  You want something unique, why don’t I set you up?”

“The exhibit isn’t even up yet?”

Ruiz waves him off.  “Nah, but it might be fun to see how the sausage is made, right?”

-----

Which is how FBI Agent Marcus Pike comes to meet you.  Ruiz is on your bar trivia team (he’s your ace in the hole on sports trivia), and when he calls with a favor, the call on speaker between Ruiz and Marcus, you happily agree to show him around your budding exhibit.

“It’s called ‘Stronger than Death,’” you tell him after you hold your hand out to shake.  “After the Thomas Mann quote.  ‘It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.’  Which is cheesy, admittedly, but it’s my first big solo exhibit I’m pulling together, and it’s the culmination of years of research and work.”

Marcus smiles.  “I don’t think it’s cheesy at all.”

“Tell Tony that.”

“Eh, Ruiz is just jaded.”  Marcus follows you into the storage area where some crates have already been unloaded and unpacked.  “Tell me about this exhibit.  Ruiz said it already has a lot of buzz.”

If Marcus thought your smile was lovely when you introduced yourself, he finds it utterly beautiful now, because you are passionate about your exhibit.  An intersection of art and architecture and history, across time and distance, focused on the two most human emotions, you explain:  love and grief.

“No matter when or where, it’s the two constants, you know?”  You gesture widely, taking in the breadth of the crates, but even further too:  the breadth of human history across the globe.  “If you’re talking about humans in fourteenth century Iran or Berber tribes in the twelfth century or a Lutheran and Catholic couple during the heart of reformation, the story is the same.  The details change, but the love is the same, and the grief when death comes is the same.”

“So the exhibit is…”  Marcus trails off, and you take a deep breath. You’ve gone breathless in your explanation, a fact that charms him. Then you continue.  Your exhibit is everything that encompasses that central idea of grief when love is ended by death, and how grief is an outpouring of that endless love.  You have everything from big pieces to ephemera.  There’s Victorian memorial photography.  There’s a gravestone from a Catholic cemetery that edged against a Protestant one, the stone bridging the two graves because neither church allowed the couple to be buried together.  There’s a letter found in a grave from the 1500’s in Korea, where the woman pours out her grief and love for her husband who is buried there. 

You show him the artifacts already unpacked and catalogued.  You hand him a pair of cotton gloves and allow him to touch some of the sturdier pieces, and you’ve pulled him into your wavelength because as he touches each piece, he feels weak in the knees, heavy with kinship he feels with strangers separated from him by centuries and thousands of miles.

“Here’s an interesting piece,” you tell him, and you lead him to a smaller crate that’s been opened, its packing material piled in a small snowdrift around the box.  On the table beside it, there’s a smaller box.  You open it and pull out a delicate-looking piece, and Marcus holds out his palm, flat.  You lay it there, and he studies it in the light.

“Jade?”

You hum in agreement.  “And enamel.  It’s consistent with craftsmanship from the Song Dynasty.”

Marcus reaches back through his memory to his eastern histories and civilizations course.  “Is that…. eleven hundred A.D.?”

“In part.  It lasted over three hundred years.”

Marcus peers at it closer.  “It’s amazingly preserved.”

“It was found in a grave in Latvia last year.”

He looks at you in surprise.  “Seriously?  How?”

“Trade wasn’t unheard of then, east from west.  It was far more popular in the Holy Roman Empire, though.  This part of Latvia was rural in that period.  A collection of city-states and loosely-stitched tribes.”

“The comb must have been buried later then.”

You shake your head and take the comb from him, lie it gently back in its box.  “That’s the story.  It was buried around the year one thousand A.D.  Archeologists found the grave five years ago.  A bunch of kids were riding dirt bikes around the countryside in Latvia.  One kid hits something, goes flying.  It turns out it was a stone, but when they look at it, it’s carved.  Too square, right?  Has markings on it.  It turns out, it’s this perfectly preserved medieval town.  The archeologists did all their digging and carbon testing.  They are still digging, honestly.  But it looks like through soil samples, the best theory is that a tributary to the Daugava flooded at some point in twelve-hundred A.D and buried the entire place.”

“I never heard about it.”

You snort.  “Yeah, a rare well-preserved medieval village will never hit the front page when there’s war and political scandals.”

You reach for a large envelope on the table and open it.  You pull out a sheaf of photos, high resolution, and Marcus sees the link between the delicate jade comb and the overall theme of your exhibit.

The photos show the grave, a carved stone tomb that the river mud preserved for nearly a thousand years.  It is simple by today’s standards, but Marcus can guess the care and expense of it.  There are flowers and trees carved into the lid of it, a flat-faced woman who was probably a saint or local goddess to the time.

Then the photos cede to shots inside the opened grave.  Again, the river buried the village and preserved it for Marcus and you to stare at it now:  the pair of skeletons, on their sides and facing each other, their empty eye sockets seeming to stare at each other, the tiny bones of their hands a jumble as they were clearly buried together.

“They died together,” Marcus muses.  “Plague, maybe?”

You shrug.  “Who can say?  But if it’s plague, it was several years apart.  That’s why I’m putting them in the eastern corner of my exhibit.  The archeologists spent a lot of time on this tomb, since it’s such a rare find.  The skeleton on the left was a woman, roughly forty years old when she died.  She was buried with the comb, and the archeologists found hawthorn branches with her.”

You tap the other side of the photo.  “This one was a man, died around his sixties.  Also buried with hawthorn branches.”

“So, how do we know they were buried at different times?”

“That’s the punchline.  Archeologists found flower petals on her branches, but berries on his.  They were buried at different times of the year, at least.  Which means that the tomb was reopened to put the latter one in, and they were turned to face each other.  Their hands were clasped together.  It’s significant, especially when records seem to indicate that many burials of that time and place were cremations.”

Marcus turns to the next photo, a closeup of the hands.  Sure enough, he can see the dusty, dried remnants of blossoms, the wizened berries.  His eyes drift to their hands, the delicate bones a jumble to where he could not tell who’s belonged to which skeleton.

“Can you imagine the love they must have had for each other?  First to build such an elaborate tomb for such a rural area that likely lacked craftsmen of this caliber.  To choose to bury instead of cremating.  And then to reopen the tomb and place the second body in, to turn them towards each other instead of facing up to face heaven or down to face the underworld.  The jade comb is only a device to open the story, but the real story is the most common one across time.  It’s love, and grief when the love is ended by death.”

“It’s beautiful,” he says, his voice low.  “Sad, but beautiful.”

“We’ll never know their names, you know?  We’ll never know what they looked like, or even really what language they spoke.  If they had children or what they did.  But we know…”  You pause, take a breath.  “We know they loved each other, and they died but the proof of that love can be witnessed by us a millennium later.  And here we are with smart phones and airplanes and dating apps, but if you boil us down, we are just the same as them.  Exactly the same.”

What can Marcus say to that?  He agrees with you completely.  When your voice cracks on the word exactly, his own throat grows a lump in it.  He’s always been a romantic anyway, but the scope and scale of this project makes him feel like he could easily be pushed into tearing up too. 

“This exhibit is going to be amazing,” he finally tells you.  “Honestly.  People are going to love it.”

You grin at him, and your eyes are a little glazed with tears, but Marcus wonders what would push you to take such an interest in this topic.  Many curators home in on a much narrower niche, but yours is universal, so broad it could be sloppy or unfocused.  But you seem to be taking a broad cross-section of artifacts, an attentive lens at different times and places and cultures.

“Thanks, Marcus.  I appreciate it.”  You turn and slide the photographs back into their envelope.  “Ruiz didn’t say much about why you wanted to check this out.”

Marcus follows you out of the storeroom.  “I didn’t, really.  I’m only in town for the evening.  I fly out in the morning.”

“Where to?”

“Texas.  I live there.  I’m just in town for an interview.”

You lead him back to your office where his coat is stashed, and you hand it to him.  You grab your own, grab your purse, and lock up.  Together, you walk out of the building and into the evening.  D.C. glitters: it must have rained while you were inside, and the lights sparkle on the wet pavement and buildings.  You walk together for a few blocks, chatting amiably.

“Ruiz said you were FBI too?”

“Yeah, I’m in the Art Squad.”

You laugh.  “Art Squad.  I love it.  You armed with an FBI-issued oil pastel?”

When Marcus starts to explain that he investigates stolen art and artifacts, you elbow him gently and cut him off.  “I was teasing.  I know what you do.”

He chuckles, shakes his head.  He can feel his face flush a bit.  “Anyway, there’s an open position here, and I thought it might be a good move, career-wise.”  He pauses.  “We’ll see how it goes.”

“Texas to D.C.  It could be a fun move.”

He agrees, but before he can stop himself, he’s talking about Teresa, how he has fallen in love, how he has a ring picked out and an idea of proposing—and you listen to it, nodding sympathetically, cooing when he sings Teresa’s virtues.  Agreeing when he says his life is finally shaping out the way he always wanted:  career and love, both moving forward in wonderful ways.

“That’s really great,” you reply.  “I’m happy for you.”

He feels slightly asshole-ish, rambling about his life.  He asks, more charitably, “what about you?  Married?”

You laugh, a dry single ‘ha.’  “No.”

“Boyfriend?  Girlfriend?”

“No.”  You glance at him.  “Let’s just say I’m married to my work and leave it at that.”

He lifts his palms in surrender and in apology.  “Fair.  I’m sorry.”

“No need to be.”  You pause.  “But Teresa sounds great, and you’re lovely, so when the two of you come to D.C., look me up and you’ll give you both a private tour, okay?”

Marcus smiles at the thought of him and Teresa together in the capitol, hand in hand at your wonderful exhibit.  “Deal.”

You stop in your tracks and point at the intersection.  “I’m this way.  It was really nice to meet you, Marcus.”

He holds out his hand and you take it.  “Thank you so much.  You have no idea how much I enjoyed it.”

“For one of Ruiz’s buddies?  Anytime.  And for real—you and your girl.  Private tour, on me.”

The private tour, obviously, will never happen with Marcus and Teresa.  Marcus will move to D.C. and Teresa will never follow.  He’ll go through a dark period that he assumes will last the rest of his life, but it hardly lasts at all because by then, the city is plastered with advertisements for your exhibit, which is as big as Marcus predicted.

The private tour will happen with just Marcus, and it will hit different to see it laid out with the lighting, the flow, the signage.

It will hit different considering his recent breakup and recent heartache.

It will hit different when he shakes your hand again, when he takes in your soft, steady voice as you explain every artifact, as you offer him that lovely smile that turns beautiful as you talk about your work.

And it will hit different as you lead him through the history of love and grief, the history of what makes him no different from, say, a man who lived and loved and died a thousand years earlier.  A man, perhaps, who thought his life would venture into one direction but instead went in another:  how the life he desired was not the life he needed, but how it ended in love all the same.

In that way, Marcus and Pero, separated by a millennium are the same.

Yep. Yep. Yep. I wouldn’t be able to resist him

🤯🫠

What red flags?!

jealous possessive javi?

💖

tags: f!reader, smut, javi cheats on you, unprotected p in v sex (this is fiction but be safe irl), fingering, angst, jealous and possessive javi, unbeta'd, if i missed any other tags pls let me know ok thx. ~ 5.1k w/c / gif cred

a/n: toxic!javi stans, this is for us 🙂‍↕️ kat keep your writings short challenge (FAILED) hope you like this my sweet anon 🖤

You’ve been broken up for ten weeks now. Two months and ten agonizing days. Every minute since has felt like a slow burn, as if each breath without him is a reminder of the emptiness he left behind. You thought you’d have been over him by now— Javier Peña wasn’t supposed to have this kind of hold on you, not after everything he did.

Not after you walked into his office that night, a surprise dinner in hand, only to find him fucking his secretary. The image still sears behind your eyes— the slick, desperate way they moved together while you stood frozen in the doorway, a witness to your own heartbreak.

The signs had always been there, even from the first date. The way his eyes lingered a little too long on the waitress or how he’d get that restless look in his eyes when you weren’t around. But damn, he had a way of making you feel like you were the only one.

Like every glance, every touch, was meant for you and you alone. He had a gift for making you feel special, all while hiding his cock’s insatiable appetite behind a charming smile.

Now, you feel raw, like maybe it was your fault. Maybe you weren’t enough to keep him satisfied. Maybe you didn’t do enough in bed, didn’t keep his interest, didn’t hold onto him like you should have. The betrayal made you feel small, made you question every moment, every kiss, every whispered promise. It should’ve made walking away easier, catching him like that. It should’ve been enough to erase him from your mind. But it wasn’t.

And it’s taken this long— two months and ten days— of wallowing, of replaying the betrayal, to finally push you out of your haze. Tonight, something shifts. Your friend set you up with someone from her work, and after much prodding, you said yes.

Tonight, you’ve decided to put yourself back out there. Maybe if you let someone else touch you, if you let someone else in, you’ll finally be able to push Javier out of your mind for good.

It’s been radio silence ever since. After you caught him in his office, the scene unfolded like something out of a bad movie. His face went from shock to panic in a split second, scrambling to pull up his pants, stumbling over excuses. “She meant nothing,” he stammered, running after you with that flustered, desperate look. “It was a mistake!” But you didn’t stop, didn’t even give him a second glance. You barely held back the tears as you hurled the containers of food at him, the dinner you’d lovingly prepared splattering down the hallway, leaving a messy trail as you stormed toward the stairwell. No way in hell were you waiting for the elevator. Six flights of stairs felt like nothing compared to the pit in your stomach, and the thought of giving him even one more second to sweet talk you back into his web made you sick.

You blocked him on everything the minute you got home. Packed a bag with the essentials and bolted to your cousin’s place, where you spent weeks crying yourself to sleep on her couch. Not a single call. Not a text. Not that he could, since you blocked him on every possible avenue. But even then, he didn’t try. Not a knock on the door, not a surprise visit. You realized in those sleepless nights that he’d never really bothered to get close to anyone in your life. Another red flag you had stupidly painted green, thinking he was the man of your dreams.

So when you finally pull yourself together, forcing yourself out of that dark pit of misery and agreeing to this blind date at the bar, you’re in higher spirits. You’re ready to move on— or at least try. But of course, life has a twisted sense of humor. Because the last person you expect to see sitting at the bar, laughing with another woman like nothing happened, is Javier fucking Peña.

You’d recognize that broad, infuriatingly beautiful frame anywhere. He stands out like a sore thumb, even in the dim lighting. Broad shoulders, lean muscles, and the biggest mistake of your life. The shittiest man you’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. And yet, the sight of him still makes your chest tighten, reminding you just how much you let him get away with.

You almost suggest to your date that you should hit up a different bar, something far across town, anywhere but here. But no, you catch yourself. You’re done letting your ex dictate your life, done letting him take up space in your head. You’ve shed too many tears over that man, and tonight isn’t going to be another chapter in the same pathetic story.

At first, he doesn’t even notice you. Of course, his attention is fully on the woman he’s with— some gorgeous thing with legs for days and a face that belongs on a magazine cover. It stings, that familiar twinge of jealousy creeping in. You can’t help it, especially when you know he’s always going to have a pretty girl on his arm.

It’s not until your date excuses himself to use the restroom that Javier’s dark, smoldering eyes finally land on you. And what does he do when your gazes meet? He fucking smirks. That slow, deliberate smirk that used to make your knees weak. He throws in a wink for good measure, casually bringing his short glass up to his lips, taking his time with a sip as if he hasn’t just shattered your evening. His eyes linger on you, tracing every inch of your body, undressing you from across the room without so much as a word.

You shift in your seat, heart pounding in your chest as you quickly turn away, forcing your focus on some random sports game playing on the big screen nearby. But even with your eyes elsewhere, you can feel it— the weight of his stare crawling down your neck, tracing the line of your plunging neckline. Of course he’s looking. Tonight is the night you pulled out the dress— the one kept tucked away for special occasions, the revenge dress.

Every girl has one. The one that hugs in all the right places, the one you save for when you need to remind the world, and yourself, exactly what you’re made of.

And while your date had all but drooled when you stepped out in it, there’s no denying the heat in Javier’s gaze from across the bar. You don’t have to look at him to know what he’s thinking— he’s already imagining that dress crumpled on his bedroom floor.

Your date returns from the restroom, noticeably tipsier and much more handsy than when he left. His touch is bold, his fingers possessive, and you revel in it.

You lean into the attention, letting him pull you closer, putting on a little show for the audience you know is watching. Javier might think he’s the only one who knows how to have fun, but you’re going to make sure he sees just how wrong he is.

Your date’s hands wander over your body— grabbing at your ass, pulling you into him by your hips. He leans in, hot breath against your ear, whispering all the filthy things he’s planning to do to you in the back of his car.

He doesn’t even want to wait until you’re back at your place. He’s desperate, and though you hesitate for a second— things are moving a lot faster than you planned— you can feel Javier’s eyes burning into the back of your skull. His relentless glare pushes you forward, stirring something reckless inside of you.

So, you let it happen. You let this guy press his body into yours, his hands traveling, voice dripping with lust, promising you things he probably won’t even remember tomorrow. But in the heat of the moment, you don’t care. It’s not about him, really. It’s about you. About knowing that Javier’s watching every second of this, hating every second of this, and that’s enough to fuel you.

The next thing you know, you’re outside in the alley behind the bar, lips locked like horny teenagers. His mouth is on your neck, sucking on that sensitive spot that makes your knees weak, and despite yourself, you let out a soft moan.

His fingers slip beneath your panties, fumbling as they rub at your clit, off-rhythm and sloppy. But right now, that doesn’t even matter. What matters is that someone else is touching you. Someone else is making you feel something other than loneliness and anger.

Suddenly, he’s ripped off you, and the cool air rushes in where his body had been pressed against yours. Your eyes snap open, and there he is—Javier, seething with rage, his hand gripping your date by the collar. The force with which he slams him into the brick wall makes your heart lurch.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” you shout, the shock sobering you up fast as you yank down the hem of your dress, covering yourself as best as you can. Anger surges through you, hot and wild. Your hands tremble as you take in the scene— Javier’s knuckles white against your date’s shirt, his face a mask of pure fury.

Javier’s voice is low, dangerous, a growl vibrating from his chest. “Who the fuck do you think you are, touching what’s mine?”

The laugh that bursts out of you is involuntary, bitter, filled with disbelief. His?! Your mind spins. After everything he’s done, after the way he broke you, he still has the audacity to act like you belong to him? Like you’re some possession he can claim when it suits him?

“She didn’t tell me she was seeing anyone,” your date stammers, already backing down, and you want to scream. Men used to go to war. Now, they cower when a bigger man steps in.

You feel an irrational surge of anger, not just at Javier but at this pathetic display of submission.

“Because I’m not,” you spit, stomping over to where Javier has your date pinned against the wall. You shove at Javier’s arm, trying to break his grip, but it’s like trying to move a mountain. You forgot how strong he is, how solid. His presence alone feels suffocating, like a storm rolling in and swallowing all the air around you.

Javier’s eyes flick toward you for a split second before turning back to the man trembling in his grasp. “You come near her again, and I’ll shoot your fucking knees out. You hear me? She doesn’t need a limp dick motherfucker like you putting your filthy fucking hands on her.” His words are a snarl, dripping with venom, and you can see the terror in your date’s eyes, his resolve crumbling as fast as it appeared.

It’s brief, but, you think your date might actually muster the courage to stand his ground. However, Javier’s patience snaps, and before you can react, he drives his knee into the guy’s groin with brutal precision. The man lets out a strangled whimper, doubling over in pain, and Javier finally releases him.

You gasp, hand flying to your mouth, watching in disbelief.

“Understood?” Javier’s voice cuts through the alley like a blade.

Your date nods frantically, both hands clutching his crotch as he stumbles away, all but sprinting out of the alley like a scared animal. The sound of his hurried footsteps fades, leaving you and Javier alone in the dim light.

Your fury boils over, fists clenching at your sides. “You’ve got some fucking nerve, Peña,” you snap, marching up to him and shoving at his chest with every ounce of strength you can summon. But he doesn’t budge. He stands there, unshakable, like the damn tower of arrogance he’s always been.

“Ruining my date, acting like you have some claim over me. I’m not yours anymore!”

Javier’s dark eyes are locked on you, tracing your every movement, burning a path from your heaving chest to your flushed cheeks. He doesn’t say a word, but his gaze alone sends a shiver down your spine.

It’s not just anger in those eyes. It’s something else, something that has always made your pulse quicken. The intensity of it makes your breath hitch, even though you’re trying your hardest to stay mad, to stay strong.

You push him again, but it feels like pushing against stone. “You think you can just show up, intimidate some guy, and suddenly I’m yours again? That’s not how this works you asshole.”

He says nothing, his chest rising and falling as he watches you, eyes dark and unreadable. Then he leans in, his voice low and rough. “So I’m just supposed to hang back and watch you practically fuck that guy in front of everyone?”

His words send a jolt of heat through you, the way his voice drops to that familiar, dangerous rumble that used to make your knees weak. But you force yourself to stand firm, to remind yourself that you’re mad— furious, even.

You won’t let him have this kind of power over you again. You can’t.

“Go to hell, Javier,” you snap, shoving him one last time before stepping back, your heart hammering in your chest.

But even as you say it, you feel the pull, that magnetic force that’s always existed between the two of you. And as much as you want to hate him, you can’t deny that part of you still burns for him, still aches for the way he used to make you feel.

“Chiquita,” he drawls, sending shivers down your spine. “You can’t talk to me all angry like that, looking this fucking good, and expect me not to want to push you up against that wall and fuck you like you need.”

Your jaw drops, your brain scrambling for a response, but nothing comes out. His words hit you like a slap, bold and filthy, and despite yourself, heat shoots straight to your cunt. You curse under your breath, hating how your body betrays you.

“Y-You—” you stammer, but you can’t even string a sentence together. And that’s all it takes for him to smirk, that infuriating, knowing smirk that tells you he still has that effect on you.

“You’ve got that girl in there,” you snap, voice trembling even as you try to hold your ground. “Your secretary, and probably half the goddamn city, waiting to spread their legs for you. Not me. Not anymore.”

But even as you say it, your voice falters. The truth you’re trying to convince yourself of feels thin, weak in the face of his presence. He takes a step closer, and instinctively, you take a step back.

“Still hung up on that?” He shakes his head, almost amused. “C’mon, baby, I told you. She was a mistake. She came onto me.”

Another step forward. Another step back.

You can’t believe he’s really doing this— feeding you the same tired excuses. But then again, you can. This is exactly what men like Javier Peña do.

They lie, they cheat, and they make you feel like you’re the one being unreasonable.

“Bullshit someone else, Peña,” your voice shakes again, betraying you. “I’m done with you.”

But he keeps advancing, every step pushing you back until your spine hits the cold, rough brick of the alley wall. You curse under your breath, ready to slip past him, to get out of here before he does something you can’t walk away from. But he moves faster, caging you in with his hands planted on either side of your head.

“I’m not bullshitting,” he murmurs as he leans in close. You can feel the warmth of his breath against your cheek, and despite every ounce of willpower, your body reacts.

His dark brown eyes burn into you, their intensity pulling you under. “She meant nothing. Pussy wasn’t even half as good as yours. Couldn’t even compare.” His nose brushes the side of your face, and you know he’s inhaling the scent of your perfume— the one he always loved.

“Javier…” you try to protest, but your resolve crumbles with each passing second. His hand finds your waist, slowly trailing up the length of your body, fingertips grazing your skin through the thin fabric of your dress. Your breath hitches, and you hate yourself for it.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers, his voice softer now. His palm comes up to cup your breast, kneading it gently, and your eyes flutter closed, surrendering to the familiar touch that your body still craves, even if your mind is screaming at you to stop.

“You’re a liar,” you breathe, barely managing to get the words out as his fingers tease your hardened nipple through the fabric of your dress.

Before you can react, his other hand moves with lightning speed, wrapping firmly around your throat. He squeezes just enough to tilt your head back, forcing you to meet his gaze. The heat in his eyes is undeniable.

“Don’t say that,” he growls. His grip tightens just slightly, enough to make your pulse quicken under his palm. “Do you know how much it fucking hurt to see another man touching you the way I did? Huh?” He leans in, his lips hovering near your ear as his breath tickles your skin. “You can be so inconsiderate sometimes, cariño.”

Your heart races in your chest, caught between anger and arousal. You should push him away, should scream at him, but the way he’s looking at you— like you’re the only thing that matters in the world— makes it impossible to move.

You open your mouth to speak, but his grip around your throat tightens just enough to rob you of breath, silencing whatever retort you had.

“Letting him put his hands on you like that…” he scoffs, his dark eyes scanning your face as if daring you to deny it. “Touching up on my pretty pussy like he had the fucking right. Like he could handle what’s mine. Even if you had fucked him, we both know he wouldn’t have left you all sore and throbbing the way I do. Wouldn’t have made you wet enough to take his small cock. You’d have to fake it. And for what? To try and make me jealous?”

His words are cutting, sinful, and despite your anger, you feel the way your arousal smears against the fabric of your underwear.

The twisted satisfaction in his voice, the way his grip tightens then loosens just enough for you to breathe— he knows exactly how to break you down, how to remind you that no one has ever made you feel the way he does.

“It seems like it worked,” you manage to gasp out, your voice a rasp as you gulp in air. “You came out here all pissed at the thought that someone else could make me feel better than you ever did.”

That’s what does it. His control snaps.

In an instant, his lips crash against yours in a bruising kiss. It’s rough, possessive, and desperate. His tongue invades your mouth, demanding and unapologetic, as if he’s punishing you for even thinking someone else could replace him.

His hand, the one that had been so firmly on your throat, moves to grope your breast, squeezing you roughly. You moan against his mouth, your body reacting on instinct, traitorous in its desire for him.

“Esos ruidos tan bonitos. Solo para mí.” He murmurs when he pulls back just enough to speak, a string of spit still connecting your mouths. His voice is low, vibrating with dark satisfaction. “Si alguien está mintiendo aquí, eres tú, chiquita.”

His words swirl in your head as you gasp for breath, but before you can form a coherent thought, his hand is already sliding down your body. His fingers trail down your waist, lingering at the hem of your dress before slipping underneath. You let out a sharp gasp, biting down on your lip as his fingers find your soaked panties.

It all happens so fast after that. The hunger between you ignites like a flame catching gasoline. The intensity of the kiss deepens, all teeth and tongues. His possessive touch makes you writhe beneath him, your body yielding even as your mind fights to hold on to some shred of dignity.

“Look at you,” he breathes against your lips, his voice dripping with desire. “Moaning for me. You always do, don’t you?”

“Javier…” You try to protest, but your words are swallowed by another moan as his fingers slip inside your panties, brushing against your throbbing clit.

“Shh, baby. Let me remind you what you’ve been missing,” he whispers, his breath hot against your skin as his fingers begin to stroke you. His movements are deliberate, knowing exactly how to play your body, how to coax those helpless little noises from your throat. “God, you’re so fucking wet. All for me. Always for me.”

You gasp his name, your hands gripping his shoulders as his fingers slide inside you, curling just right. The tension in your body melts, replaced with a rush of heat that pools between your thighs. Your mind blanks, lost in the feel of him— his hand working you over, his mouth pressing hot kisses to your neck.

“You mean everything to me,” he whispers into your ear, his voice ragged as he pumps his fingers in and out of you, the slick sound filling the alley. “This tight little pussy? She was made for me. Feels like heaven around my fingers. Imagine how good she’ll feel wrapped around my cock, huh?”

Your body trembles, your breath coming in short, ragged gasps as the pressure inside you builds with each thrust of his fingers. You know you shouldn’t be here, pinned against a wall, letting this man who shattered your heart pull you apart like this.

But God, his touch is addictive. His possessive words ignite every part of you.

“Say it,” he growls, his fingers curling deeper, hitting that perfect spot that makes you see stars. “Tell me you’re mine.”

“Javier…” Your voice is barely a whisper, your resolve crumbling with each passing second as he drags you closer and closer to the edge.

“Say it baby,” he demands, his breath hot against your skin as his thumb presses against your clit, sending a jolt of pleasure through your body. “Tell me I’m the only one who can fuck you like this.”

“No,” you gasp, using every ounce of willpower to bring your hand down, gripping his wrist, halting the delicious rhythm of his fingers inside you.

His fingers still, his breath heavy against your skin as you lock eyes with him, summoning every shred of confidence through the haze of lust clouding your mind. “You tell me that. Tell me I’m the only one who drives you this crazy.”

The tension crackles between you, thick and electric. Your chest heaves, heart racing as his dark eyes search yours.

He groans, leaning in, his lips brushing yours with a desperate hunger. “You are,” he breathes, but it’s not enough.

You can’t help but smirk, your pussy clenching around his fingers just to tease him, making him hiss through clenched teeth. “Say it like you mean it, Javier,” you demand, fueled by the fire burning between your thighs. “You broke my fucking heart, and if you think you’re going to fuck me tonight, you’re going to admit it. Tell me I did everything right. That you are the one who’s hurting. Tell me how much you miss this pussy. How you crave her on your tongue, how you miss fucking her in your bed.”

His eyes drown in lust at your command. His fingers twitch inside you, but he doesn’t move yet. Instead, he pulls back just enough to meet your gaze head-on, staring straight into your soul, his breath ragged and uneven.

It’s a battle of wills, and for a second, you think you’ve won.

“I’m sorry, pretty girl,” he purrs, and finally, his fingers begin to move again, slow and deliberate, a tantalizing rhythm that sends sparks of pleasure shooting up your spine. “Sorry for hurting you so bad you felt the need to find another dick to hop on.” His thumb presses against your clit, making your hips buck involuntarily as you gasp at the sensation. “I fucked up. You deserve better.”

His words are laced with apology, but his actions? Pure, selfish desire. His fingers curl inside you, hitting that perfect spot that makes your toes curl. Your head falls back against the brick wall, eyes fluttering closed as a ragged moan escapes your lips.

“But I’m too selfish to let you go,” he murmurs against your skin, his voice low and husky. “I need you, baby. Miss how sweet you taste, how tight you feel.”

Javier’s mouth is on your neck then, his tongue darting out to lick at the damp skin, tasting the salt of your sweat as his fingers continue their relentless assault. Each stroke brings you closer to the edge, and it’s intoxicating— how easily he can unravel you, how effortlessly he pulls you apart.

Your body feels weightless, high on him, and with each praise, each filthy promise that falls from his lips, you’re hurtling toward your release. His thumb circles your clit faster now, his fingers curling deeper, and you can’t hold it back any longer.

“Javier!” you cry out, your walls clenching around his fingers as the orgasm crashes through you, making your body tremble. Your moans fill the alleyway, breathless and raw, and as you come undone, his mouth crashes into yours in a sloppy, desperate kiss.

He swallows your moans as he undoes his belt with one hand, his fingers never leaving you until the last possible second. Before you even have time to catch your breath, he’s lifting you off the ground, and instinctively, your legs wrap around his waist.

You barely have time to gasp before he’s thrusting inside you, burying himself to the hilt in one swift, brutal motion.

“Oh fuck!” you exclaim, your arms flying around his neck as he starts to pound into you, his thrusts deep and punishing. The sound of your bodies colliding, skin slapping against skin, echoes in the narrow alley. Every thrust pushes you further up the wall, and you clutch onto him for dear life as he fucks you hard, like a man possessed.

“Feels so good, baby,” he growls into your ear, his hands gripping your hips as he drives into you relentlessly. “Only I can fuck you like this. Only I can make you scream.”

And you do scream, pleasure and frustration mixing together as you meet his punishing thrusts, your body moving on instinct, chasing the high that only Javier can give you.

“You feel that, pretty girl?” His voice is a low rasp in your ear, thick with need, sending a jolt of pleasure straight through your core. “This—this is how I fuck what’s mine. No one else can make you feel like this. Admit it.”

His grip tightens on your hips, fingers digging into your skin as he drives into you, deeper, rougher. It’s brutal how good he feels, how perfectly his cock stretches and fills you, like your body was made for him.

You hate him, hate that he can still make you feel this fucking good, but your body betrays you, responding to his every touch, clenching around him as if to hold him there forever.

“I—” you stutter, breathless, eyes crossing as the sensations drown out your thoughts. His cock is relentless, pushing you toward the edge again, and you can’t hold back the moan that escapes your lips. “I—God, I hate you…”

But it sounds hollow, even to your own ears. The truth is you can’t resist him, never could. He knows exactly how to break you apart, and you despise how much you crave him, how much you need this despite the pain he’s brought you.

Javier chuckles darkly, his breath hot against your neck. “No, you don’t. You love this. You love the way I make you feel.” His lips brush the shell of your ear, biting down on your lobe. “And I love the way you fall apart for me. Just me.”

You bite your lip, trying to stifle the moans that threaten to spill out as he thrusts harder, faster. You can feel the pressure building inside you again, tightening with every stroke, every whispered promise of what he’ll do to you.

It’s almost too much, the way he claims you, body and soul. And the worst part? You’re letting him. You want him to.

“Say it,” he demands, his pace quickening, hips slamming into you so hard you’re sure you’ll feel it for days. His lips find yours again, his kiss angry and claiming. “Say you’re mine.”

You shake your head, gasping, fighting against the overwhelming pleasure threatening to consume you. “Javier—”

“Say it,” he growls, his voice rough and insistent as he reaches between your bodies, fingers finding your clit. He circles it with precision, sending sharp jolts of pleasure through your body, pushing you closer to the brink.

“Fuck!” You cry out, the intensity of his touch stealing the breath from your lungs. Your body is on fire, trembling, and you know you’re about to shatter beneath him. “I—I’m yours…”

The words tumble from your lips in a desperate whisper, and the moment they do, it’s like something snaps inside him. His thrusts become brutal, animalistic, and your world narrows down to the feel of him— his cock, his hands, his lips, all of it overwhelming you, driving you toward that final, devastating release.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, his voice dripping with satisfaction. “Now come for me.”

And with that, you do. The orgasm hits you like a tidal wave, crashing through your body with a force that leaves you breathless. Your walls clench tight around him, your moans loud and unrestrained as you come undone in his arms, shaking and trembling.

Javier groans, his thrusts becoming erratic as he follows you over the edge, spilling himself inside you with a low, primal grunt. His body shudders against yours, his grip on you tightening as he rides out his release.

The world is still. All you can hear is the sound of your ragged breaths and the pounding of your heart as you both come down from the high. You’re pressed against him, his forehead resting against yours, the intensity of the moment hanging in the air between you.

But as the haze of pleasure fades, reality starts creeping back in.

You push him away, your palms flat against his chest, but he doesn’t move, if anything, he tightens his hold on you.

His brown eyes still linger on yours, filled with the same possessiveness that’s always been there.

“I told you,” he murmurs, voice low, as if this moment has proven everything he wanted to. “You’re mine.”

🏷️ : @almostempty . @auteurdelabre . @magneticecstasy . @miss-oranje-disco-dancer . @pepperstories . @bitchesuntitled . @angiewatson .

started a tag list for my works here, so if you're interested— pls check it out 🖤

What a lovely little surprise to see when I get on tumblr and actually pay attention to it for the first time in days 😍

I love them so much!!!!

time away

A seeking what is desirable drabble for anyone who has missed Naomi and Joel ♡

1.2k words, all fluff. Takes place 3ish years after the main story. Enjoy :)

“So,” Joel begins, looking up at Ellie. A clock ticks somewhere in the living room to mark the seconds going by, dragging out the time. “Dina… Dina, Dina, Dina.” Oh, look, he’s managing to stay so cool and keep it together so well, isn’t he? The man of the hour, he holds Luna’s little feet, tucked into socks with red hearts all over them, matching the ones Naomi slid across the hardwood in when she gathered her keys and wallet, running off to get groceries. He jostles them around with the pads of his thumbs on her soles. 

Ellie narrows her eyes, but her smile is impossible to stifle enough for him not to see it.

“Is she your girlfriend?” he asks, and Luna coos at him, giggling as she looks up at her father from where she lays in his lap. Little hands curl around his fingers, little feet kick at his forearms. 

“It’s…” Ellie waves. “It’s just a… A thing.” 

“Right,” Joel says then, “A thing is why you brought her home for a week over the holidays? By that logic, I guess a thing is also why you introduced her to Tommy, Maria, Kevin, my mother—”

“Don’t you have someone else’s business to stick your nose into?” 

He frowns, “Not really,” and groans as he lifts the baby to his chest before he leans back against the couch. His hand covers the entire span of her back, his thumb and pinky finger curving around her, a girl with little blonde curls all over her head and green eyes. None of his genes are anywhere in her blood, it seems. They all went to her big sister instead. “This one doesn’t say all too much, Sarah texts me every day already—” 

“I’ve always been amazed at how popular you are, Joel.”

“Right,” he grumbles, “That’s why I—”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence before the door opens and Aurora storms in, little sneakers flying out in two different directions as she stumbles to take them off, one hitting the wall and the other tumbling into the dining room while she bolts towards him.

“Daddy!” 

Joel quirks an eyebrow at Ellie — he’s never felt so popular in his life. Aurora clings to his legs before climbing up onto the couch, then onto his lap, leaning against the side of his chest not occupied by her little sister. The two of them giggle, and their father’s hands are full once again, while Naomi rolls her eyes from the hallway with bags in her hands. 

“Who let you in here?” she asks, looking at Ellie and tossing her keys on the dresser. 

“I’m here to babysit,” she says with a grin, “Sarah’s coming in an hour.” 

“Babysit?”

Ellie turns toward Joel. “You actually kept it a secret, huh?” she says, and he shrugs, one cocky eyebrow lifting slightly, smug as ever. For months, he has kept it a secret, pulled his gray-faded utility pants on and left at nine every Sunday morning, with Tommy’s truck rumbling in the driveway and Naomi waving from the doorway.

“Thought we could go somewhere tonight,” he says, watching Naomi approach them, her face nothing but a flattered question mark. Their brows scrunch in the same way now, confused by the other and yet eternally amused by them as well. She lifts Luna from him and perches on the broad thigh not occupied by her other daughter, and holds their youngest against her chest while she looks at her husband. 

“Oh?” 

“Remember all those Sundays I had to spend workin’ on that project for Tommy’s client?” he asks. 

Skeptical, she narrows her eyes. “Yes?” 

“Well, I was the client, and I wanna show you how it turned out. Tonight, if you’ll let me.” 

Naomi pulls back, and Joel’s arm shoots out to yank her close to him again, holding her steady with a hand around her hip. 

“Joel—” full of disbelief, on the verge of laughter, she scoffs. 

And it’s a dangerous tone he uses when he says, “It was for you, sweetheart,” sweeping her hair over her shoulders. “Wanted to do something nice for your birthday next week.”  

Long lashes flutter while she looks between his eyes. “But Luna—”

Ellie cuts in, recounting, eyes rolling from left to right while her voice takes on a gravely edge and a familiar accent, Joel’s repeated instructions recited one by one, “Stash is in the freezer, labeled by date, these are Aurora’s pancakes, ya gotta have ‘em ready by seven forty five or she flips. Luna naps at bla, bla, bla, Ellie are you hearin’ what I’m sayin’, et cetera, et cetera. Sarah, now this is real important, okay?” 

And Naomi closes her eyes while she leans into him, presses a kiss to the side of his neck and breathes him in, pushes her forehead against his collar and looks into Aurora’s eyes across from her. Their little girl looks more like Joel than anyone else in the entire world. 

— 

Through the clearing, a black little log cabin becomes visible. Joel only lifts his hand from Naomi’s thigh when he turns the key in the ignition of his truck, and the tips of her fingers slip out from under the collar of his t-shirt to push them through his curls. 

“Joel, you cannot be—”

“Can’t be what?” he asks, turned towards her with his elbow on the console, his head tilted to the side. His eyes trace the cute little scrunch of her brows, the slope of her nose, the pout of her lips when she tries to hide her smile despite how it pushes up into her cheeks. His other hand comes to the side of her face, palm sliding along her jaw to fit his fingers around the back of her neck and his thumb on her pulse. “Huh?” he teases. 

She just shakes her head, and she’s the softest, sweetest thing he’s ever seen. 

“Come on, let me show you.” 

She jumps out with her hand in his and the door shuts behind them as he leads the way, over the gravel path towards the front door. The two floors of the cabin stand tall in front of them, and he tugs at her when she stops in her tracks, her mouth hanging open and her eyes glossing over. 

“You did this for me?” she asks, and she sniffles when she breaks into a smile, softening him, turning him into mush. 

“You and the girls,” he says, sliding his hands under her arms and lifting her up. He wraps her legs around his middle and she smothers him with kisses, smearing her tears over his cheeks and tightening the clutch of her arms around his neck. 

There’s a cabin a few feet away, and yet all she looks at is that man, the one who holds onto her by a hand on the curve of her ass and the other around the back of her neck. He is the only man in the entire world, she thinks, when he turns the key in the door and pushes it open, nods towards the little hallway and walks in with his arms around her waist, looking down at her to watch her reactions to every room, with pride swelling in his chest, about to burst. 

The back porch opens to the sight of the lake behind the cabin. Down the little stairs, there’s a dock with two big chairs and waves cresting underneath, in the golden glow of the sun setting, darkening the rustling trees around when Joel hands Naomi a plate and takes his seat next to her on the wooden swing, big enough for the two of them and their two little ones. 

It’s perfect. 

—

If this is the first time you’ve come across my writing and you enjoyed this drabble, I suggest you read seeking what is desirable in full to read Joel & Naomi’s full story, hehe <3