Zero Fucks About Your Proposal

→ Zero fucks about your proposal

pretend i'm dead.

dialogue prompts from pretend i’m dead by jen beagin.

sorry. i’ve made you uncomfortable with my creepy honesty.

would you care for a bear claw?

if god gives you lemons, find a new god.

i’m going to miss you. i miss you already.

you’re not even here. where are you right now?

do you live in a commune or something?

i wasn’t born like this, you know.

what’s your least favorite word?

i’ve always felt a weird affinity for monotony and repetition.

i make my living as a thief.

you smell like hope.

let’s embrace our lone wolf status.

all i ask is that you try not to judge me.

i don’t think we’re done with each other yet, do you?

could you come over? just for five minutes? i’m freaking out.

that’s why i took so many notes. i knew you’d want to know exactly what happened.

since when do you care about dying?

stay. i’ll read you a story.

i read your diary.

i fully want to make out with you again.

i’m like, totally lost without you.

i apologize for the tragic ending.

loneliness is a presence you can feel in your body.

i don’t have anyone making deals with the devil for me.

there’s something supernatural about you.

i don't like being pushed around by something i can't see.

i'm sorry. i'm just joking around, it's a defense mechanism.

you are what you talk about.

feelings are just stories. they have a beginning and an end.

don't be so sure my family wants to hear from me.

sometimes i think you make this shit up on the fly.

were you hitting on me last night?

you run like you're being chased by a demon.

you've always been good at pretending like nothing happened.

you're not ready yet. but i'll be here when you are.

it wasn't your fault. you know that, right?

what do you say? can we keep each other's secrets for a while?

which secret do you want me to keep?

hearing about myself in the past is like hearing about some other person.

god, you have a mean bone.

why are you lying?

honest to god, does that excuse ever work?

stop stalling and look at me.

when are you going to stop mocking me?

everyone has some psychic ability. you have to learn how to see first, and then you just read what you see.

do you know what it's like to be in love with someone who hates your guts?

i said i majored in ___, i never said i graduated.

i'm getting you out of here.

i've been thinking about whether or not to tell you something.

you know, there's a support group for people like you.

you and i have met for a reason.

you're either an optimist or a masochist.

just me, myself, and i. we bicker constantly.

i'll be your friend.

it was only a week, but it was the longest year of my life.

you ever own your part in anything. you make everyone else wear your shit.

i don't want a relationship. i want retribution.

Back turned isn't unusual. Clear expectations of where to keep her hands--on the desk, until he says otherwise--isn't unusual. Even unspoken and out of practice and with Ed instead of someone else, Anne knows this part of it. His lips press into her neck and she turns to do...something, no telling what, when he starts moving the shirt free.

There's no helping the gooseflesh, the little shivers that run down and over her when he touches her like...like something worth touching. It isn't a boot to the ribs or spittle in her face, it isn't a race to rip off her clothes or anything--it's damned strange far outside of her experience. Not strange. (She isn't dumb. She remembers what a hand can look like holding something that isn't a fist or any other weapon. Know why other people chase this so much.)

Touch-starved. Touch-drunk. Despite her own pride her chases the touch of his fingers, hands obediently on the desk but leaning back, watching not his face but his fingers as she does so. There are scars with stories she's tell and scars with stories she'd sooner abandon; the lash on her back is one of the former, an obscene punishment for a small child. There are other scars, harder to distract from, that she'll need to worry about in due time: for now, she sighed into the sensation of touch, a familiar swell starting in her stomach.

Anne licks her lips and tries to think of how, exactly, to broach this. Is he Ed or...sir? God help her, she'll have to be a lot more gone before her pride will suffer that one.

"View's better from the front, cap'n," she says by way of compromise with herself. Anne's not entirely sure what to do with herself otherwise; she's rarely so passive a participant, and almost certainly never by choice. Maybe she can goad him a bit, figure out what comes next along the way. "Least there's tits up that way."

God, has she always sounded so throaty?

His breath is warm on her neck as she works through her words, his body pressed against her back. She reaches back to trace the studded seam of his pants, and he grabs hold of her wrists, guiding her to brace her hands on the table in front of them.

Edward squeezes her wrists before he lets go of them, kissing the side of her neck as he trails his fingertips back up her forearms.

"Like this," he answers, his voice almost a low growl in his chest. In truth, he would have preferred to take her to his bed, to pull her legs around his hips and feel her holding him in that way. That was something he never afforded himself, as much as he wanted it. He couldn't. It was easier to maintain his secrecy like this.

There were so many of his aspects of his life that were obscured, distorted to the point that even he was sometimes unsure of what was truth and what wasn't -- who he really was. Blackbeard lived in that obscuring, depended on it to stir up fear. It was easier to play the Devil if no one really knew the man. Even the Edward that Jack knew was a performance conducted behind the safety of a mask. Mostly. Sometimes things crept in, regardless.

Edward kissed her neck again. There were other reasons that he chose to take his lovers from behind. It provided some measure of distance, kept them from trying to really kiss him. He'd always found it to be too intimate, too prone to opening the path to forming real attachments. Having a genuine attachment to someone would mean that he'd have to let them see something true in the midst of the stories he wove for the world.

He trailed his fingers from her arms down her sides, where he could tug the fabric of her shirt free from her trousers. She was so often hidden away beneath the heavy leather of her coat that there was something thrilling about the simplicity of feeling the warmth of her skin through the fabric. Her skin was its own thrill, something he delighted in feeling beneath the callouses of his fingers as he smoothed his hand up her back, bunching the fabric of her shirt in his other hand.

She was scarred. That was not unusual, with the lives they lead. Fuck, he was covered in scars himself. He traced the longest of them, feeling the difference in her skin texture. He wouldn't ask about it. Scars were often stories that were more painful than whatever caused them. And pain wasn't his purpose here.

He wanted her, of course he did. They wouldn't be here if he didn't. But he wanted to give her something different from how he assumed Jack touched her. He'd made that assumption based on his own scars that went unseen and that he'd never speak of.

He wanted to give her something that didn't hurt.

Maybe he really was soft, beneath everything -- little more than a paper tiger. Maybe he wanted to give her this moment of reprieve from the harshness of the lives they lead because it was something that he craved.

Anne Bonny was not soft. She was not a "good woman", not meek in the way so called "Godly" men wanted their wives to be. She was something made of steel and gunpowder, as capable as any of the men that surrounded her -- if not more so. She could endure. She wouldn't break underneath the pressures that were a part of every day life at sea. If anything, she'd only get harder. More dangerous.

Edward saw something of himself in her. She wove stories around herself in much the same way that he did. He knew because he'd heard them before he'd ever become familiar enough with her to be close. The stories that fell from the lips of drinking men were usually those that had been carefully crafted by their subject.

He saw himself in the guarded way that her eyes darted from man to man around her, too damned aware of everything and on the lookout for things that could become threats. Even now, pushed over a table by his weight against her back, he knew that she wasn't vulnerable. He wouldn't be surprised if she could turn in her own skin like a hellcat to defend herself. Being beneath him now did not mean that she was beneath him.

Edward bunched her shirt in his fist up around her shoulders, dragging his nails down her side.

“You’re cold. Come here.” (from Teach)

𝐒𝐎𝐅𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 ♡

She’d normally complain. Normally bitch and grouse and moan, find any way other than following the order to see it through, but Edward has Anne at one very large disadvantage: he is well. And recognizing that is all the sign Anne needs to show her she is not. She’s quiet when he fusses her into the bed, mumbles a thank you when he wraps her in a blanket. She supposes, distantly, that she really must have been cold to be wrapped and held against him, human furnace that he is, and not overheat immediately.

Her eyes start to droop and she leans her head on Edward’s shoulder—misses it a bit for his chest but lays her cheek there all the same. Surely she just needs a rest. Right? Would he mind her napping on him like some overgrown infant? She ought to ask. She ought to open her mouth and ask. But Anne’s mouth stays mysteriously closed as her blinking starts to get slower and slower.

hi im fucking blackbeard and here's a story about how when i was wrestling with my feelings for charles vane i saw the light hit the water just right, and also a pretty bird, and i took it as a good omen

𝐒𝐎𝐅𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 ♡

“I never noticed your eyes were this [colour].”

“Your heartbeat’s really loud.”

“You asleep?”

“I like this, being so close to you.”

“Your hair keeps falling into your eyes, do you know that? Here, lemme just—”

“You’re so, so, so pretty.”

“I just — I’m breathless, okay? Whenever I’m with you, it happens.”

“You make my heart beat so quick.”

“You always know how to make me smile.”

“You’ll always be safe with me.”

[Kisses the other on the cheek]

“Always.”

“I can’t imagine being anywhere but here with you.”

“All my choices lead me to you.”

“I’ll never give you up.”

“I sleep better if you’re around.”

“You snore in your sleep. But… it’s adorable, okay?”

“I like this. A quiet breakfast with you.”

“There’re billions of people on this planet, and I love you. How incredible is that?”

“I trust you.”

[Holds the other’s hand when they think the other won’t notice]

“You keep staring at me instead of watching the film. What’s up?”

“Let’s push all of these stuff away. I wanna dance here right now with you.”

“Are we really doing this? Are we really slow-dancing?”

“When you laugh like that, it just — you’re so beautiful, you know that?”

“No, sorry, you laughed. I … I never saw it before. It’s — pretty.”

“You haven’t laughed in a long time, and I guess I was staring ‘cause I forgot how that looked like.”

[Puts head on the other’s shoulder]

“I will never let you go.”

“You’re the best thing to have ever happened to me.”

“You wrote me a song?”

“You’ve got a fever. Of course I’m not going anywhere.”

[Suddenly feels around the bed to search for the other’s hand / body when they’re sleeping]

[Extends a hand when they see the other was searching for it while they’re sleeping]

“I just feel calmer. When I’m with you.”

“You’re not in bed. I came looking for you.”

“What are you doing up? Come to bed.”

“It’s weird. I never thought I could feel like this, but you showed up. Now, it’s like I don’t wanna go on knowing I might lose the feeling.”

“I don’t mind sharing the blankets with you.”

“You’re cold. Come here.”

“You always do that. You always warm me up.”

“Stay.”

“It’s getting crowded. Here, hold my hand.”

[Hugs for a very long time]

[Puts feet on the other’s lap]

“I’m so proud of you, you know that?”

“I love you.”