animadverto

by hisgirlfridays

Summary:

a collection of stories i've written, featuring various cillian murphy characters. read each chapter's summary for content warning.

Notes:

tumblr: pennyserenade

Chapter 1: garden of eden (william killick)

Summary:

one fateful night, you meet william killick down in the tunnels of london. what happens after is something neither of you could've foreseen

Notes:

tags/warnings: smut, talk of bombs, talk of wwii, talk of grief, talk of death, oral (female receiving), pinv, unprotected sex, talk of children (i guess breeding kink if you really squint), yearning the lengths with which only those who have owned a heart-locket and have put a picture of a person they loved in it have known, brief mention of domestic violence, depictions of ptsd, mention of suicide,

i.

Soldiers in England were distinct. She had spent enough time with them - serving them, dancing with them, acting for them, sleeping with them - to know quite well a regular civilian from a soldier. Even without their service dress, they were an unmistakable breed. Everyone was afraid of death, but these men—they wore it like a cloak, sided up to it like an acquaintance. She could clock soldiers from a mile away—even those who packed neatly inside of themselves, compartmentalizing.

William, an unmistakable soldier, offered her a cigarette and she took it. He lit the end with a matchstick, and as the end burned a bright orange, he told her, “You’re American.”

The nicotine filled her lungs and she noticed the walls of the tunnel had begun to drip with condensation. It meant there were too many people in too small a place. She blew the smoke out of the side of her mouth, adding to the stuffy milieu so much of Britain lived under these days.

“That a question?” she asked, the beginnings of a smile growing on her face. He shook his head, smiling back at her.

Flirtation was the easiest thing in the world at times like these. And why shouldn’t it be? When you stood in line, waited for death to steal away from you, why should you not be free with your compliments? With your affections? She didn’t fault any of them for it, but she noticed. In fact, she did it too. William looked so young. A fresh faced thirty, at most.

The whole city, the whole world, as they knew it was crumbling above their heads. His eyes were incredible, the bluest she’d ever seen—in America and England. That’s all she needed, the only observation that mattered. She placed her lips on his, staining them rouge. It didn’t matter that they had met only a few minutes ago. Time worked differently during war. She liked to cram lifetimes into seconds. He placed his hand on her cheek and kissed her back. Their mouths tasted of alcohol and cigarettes, and worked with the quiet desperation of the young and fearful.

He beamed when she pulled back. “That how they do it in America?” he joked. His laughter was light. She wanted to cry because he was so beautiful. Instead, she took a drink of her gin and said, merrily, “No. It’s a brand of promiscuousness I discovered on the boat ride over.”

His fingers pushed back strands of her hair. “The mid-atlantic lady,” he murmured.

“The mid-atlantic lady,” she echoed back. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, and wiped away the lipstick smudges she’d left on his skin. They looked at one another, and found a shared space: William, the unmistakable soldier and she, the comely American with too many and too little occupations, alike in their forgivable, unshakable loneliness. It kept people alive, whatever it was that existed between them. Hope. Desire. An ache to find out.

ii.

The sunlight flitted through the white lace curtains on her window, and specs of dust floated around ethereally inside those rays.

William laid with his back to the mattress, his chest bare, and she straddled him, wearing nothing but a flimsy cotton gown. Through the sheerness of it, he could see her nipples, pebbled from the early morning cold. He wanted to cup one of her breasts, to feel the heaviness of it in his palm, to begin the act of knowing her the way he had every night for the past three weeks—ever since that tunnel, and that cigarette, and that look.

William was a different soldier in this way. Many of them, at least in her experience, seemed to take life by its horns during this time. If they were going to fight for their country, perhaps die for it, they were going to have tasted the yolk of life first. William had a similar, but different approach; he wanted what they did, but asked more of his time. Sex wasn’t enough; William Killick wanted a piece of hope. To love, she supposed, was a bit like planting a seed. His roots had begun to wrap around her life, and she let them.

She told herself it was for the war cause, but she was smarter than that; she let him into her life, into her bed, into her body, knowing of his lofty expectations, because a piece of her wanted them too. Wartime had an effect even on those who did not ask to be a part of it. Time moved more quickly, and people died for no reason at all. It seemed erroneous, then, to not want for the very best of everything you could get. To hear I love you before you die in a heap of rubble or at the end of some stranger’s gun seemed just. They both understood that.

William smelt of soap and clean sweat. She nuzzled herself into his neck, and he wrapped his arms around her. “Any plans for the day?” she asked him softly.

Absentmindedly, his fingers toyed with the strap of her nightgown, pushing it down and then up. “Should I have?” he responded. She shook her head no, and he could not help but smile. “What? You’re not sick of me yet?”

“Not yet, but perhaps tomorrow,” she teased.

“Well, in that case—“

He flipped her onto her back, causing her to yelp. She dissolved into fitful giggles as he pressed his lips to her exposed collarbone, and up her neck. Her fingers ran through his already mussed hair and he smirked against her flesh. “What are you doing?” she asked, smiling widely.

“Spending my time with you wisely,” he murmured, his tongue finding the place between her shoulder and her neck. She pressed her eyes shut as he reached down between their bodies, drawing up her thin nightgown. The morning air felt cool on her exposed flesh.

William began to lower himself down her body. Her legs drew apart, almost instinctively, making space for him. He hummed, delighted, against her inner thigh before pressing soft, delicate kisses onto her skin. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her. “Sing me a song,” he instructed her, a warm lilt in his tone. She opened her eyes, amused. He smiled up at her. “Go on,” he nodded. “One of those songs you’d sing in the tunnels.”

“But why?” she asked.

His fingers rubbed gently against her leg. Slow, erotic motions. “Because,” he answered simply. They watched one another, his eyes bright and convincing in the sunlight like that. He nodded again, encouraging, and finally she conceded.

“Underneath the lantern,” she began softly. William beamed, looking for all the world like a little boy who has just gotten his way. It made it easier to go on with confidence. Without the echo of the tunnel or the sharp whistles of soldiers, her singing felt wrong to her. Too soft. Too off key. But William didn’t seem to mind. “By the barrack gate, darling I remember,” she sang for him.

He kissed the inside of her thigh once more, and then again, and again, his lips aiming higher and higher each time. Her words became dampened with desire, too breathy to be any good, but she continued. He laughed softly against her.

When he finally put his mouth to her cunt, she let out a sharp gasp. The sensation wouldn’t ever become familiar; it was too delightful, too shocking. She hadn’t the faintest idea where he learned to do it, but she was happy he had.

His fingers separated her folds, and he licked her apart slowly, indulging in her. Her fingers fisted the sheets. She knew that it should've made her worry, the attention with which he paid her body, and how he knew exactly what parts to touch, and just how to touch them. She knew that she should ask him how and where and why he figured out how to do this. She did know that. But he did it so well.

He began to guide the movement of her hips, and all of her singing became mute. It was not that men had never done this for her; it was that they’d never done it quite so well, with this much vigor. With this much purpose. William licked at her as though he was alive just for that reason and she delighted even in watching him do it. It was so lewd, how he held her legs apart, and the way she watched, but it thrilled her.

His hips began to grind down into the mattress and when he moaned, she felt it in every morsel of her being. She tilted her head back, pressing her hand to the headboard. “Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Oh, William.”

His tongue began to lap at her more earnestly. He wrapped his mouth around her swollen bundle of nerves and sucked gently, looking up at her through his eyelashes. Her breath hitched. She squirmed beneath him, feeling the tension build inside of her. It seemed as though he was staring through her, seeing all of her. She felt unlike herself, as if another, braver version had taken hold and wouldn’t let go. This version of her let out a deep moan, wrapped her fingers around his hair and let herself feel the totality of this relationship of theirs.

He pinned her hips to the bed. As the orgasm took hold of her, he didn’t stop. His tongue flattened against her clit, and his fingers teased at her entrance. She came again, one bleeding perfectly into another.

William climbed above her, smiling proudly as his arms bracketed her head. The lamp enhanced his glossy lips and made visible the eagerness with which he had devoured her; there was even a bit of it on his nose. She laughed, panting heavily. He laughed too, though she was sure for a different reason altogether. It sounded so rich, warm and innocuous.

When he kissed her, she tasted herself on his tongue and she felt his hardened length against her torso. He seemed in no real rush to attend to it. It was a slow dance, the way he kissed her languidly, drawing her hand up above her head and threading his fingers through them.

“Marry me,” he said against her lips. “Tomorrow. I’ll get the papers quickly.” She smiled, amused. He shook his head. “No, I mean it.”

This only made her laugh. “I hardly know you.”

He drew up her leg, wrapping it around his waist. “We’ll find the time to get to know each other later. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

William pressed into her, not allowing her the time to answer. His fingers tightened around hers and he sucked in a shallow breath as he drew deeper inside of her. When his hips sat against hers, he gave her a lopsided smile. “C’mon, America.” His nose nuzzled against her jaw, “Say you want me, too.”

This request was easy enough; she squeezed his hand back and said, “I want you too, soldier.”

It was deceptive, but that’s what this entire thing was: a deception, an illusion, close to being a chimera. William adjusted their bodies, pushing her backside further up his body, up on his thighs, so he could situate himself in her more deeply. They shared a groan between them when he found the spot he aimed for inside of her. Nothing mattered. The whole world was on the verge of death.

How could it matter?

iii.

She stared down at the gold ring on the table.

“I’ve been a wife before,” she told William. What day was it? The fifth? The tenth? When had they started to blur together like this?

William, for his part, did his best to conceal his surprise. The ring on the table had been someone’s from his family’s - a mother, or grandmother’s. It was a thin gold band, beautiful in its simplicity. She put it in his palm and he wrapped his hand tightly around it.

“When?” he asked. His tone held no contempt.

“When what? When did I become a wife or when did I stop?”

“Both, I suppose,” he responded.

“I became one at nineteen and I stopped being one last year.”

He seemed to consider her. “What happened?”

She looked down at the ground, unable to meet his eye. “He died. He was a soldier too, but he didn’t make it very long.”

“I see,” he said quietly.

She looked up at him through her eyelashes, frowning softly. “I don’t think you do,” she replied. “You’re pitying me, thinking I’ve bedded you to replace him, when that’s not what happened.”

“You’re making assumptions,” he said evenly. “I haven’t judged you in the slightest. If we’re going to be husband and wife, we’re going to have to work on communication.”

She bit her lip. “William, I—I don’t think I can do that again. Marry someone I don’t know who will come back.”

He took a step forward, opening his arms to wrap her in his embrace. “I’ll come back,” he promised.

“You don’t know that.”

His lips fell upon her temple. “I do so. If you give me a reason, I know I will,” he muttered.

She sighed softly into his chest, wrapping her arms around him. “You don’t even know me, William. Doesn’t that frighten you?”

His laugh was soft, more of a hum as it traveled from his lips and into her skin, “You are what I need. That is all I need to know about you.”

She couldn’t be convinced. “You’re too naive.”

“Oh, hardly.” He gripped her shoulders, the wedding band still in his grip, pressing against her skin. His smile was boyish, impossibly tender. “I know it could end up terribly, but it might not, and I’ve begun to realize just how erroneous it is to worry my life away on things that might or might not happen. I’ll marry you; you wait for me. We’ll both have to trust each other.”

She found him terribly amusing, if not heartbreakingly earnest. Her fingers tucked beneath the strap of his suspenders. “I’ve not even known you for a month.”

He let out a groan, rolling his eyes. “You’re being terribly unromantic about this.”

She touched his lips with her fingers, smiling softly. “You’re not being sensible enough. How about if when you get back, I marry you?”

He shook his head resolutely. “It won’t do. I can’t risk the possibility of another man stealing you away while I’m gone.” William cupped his hands around her cheeks, touching his nose to her own. “I will be a good husband. If you’re a good wife is only half a concern to me. Can’t you understand that? Don’t you get what I’m asking?”

She understood all too well.

iv.

It took only a week of convincing.

Their honeymoon bliss stretched out for the sacred twenty minutes the army gave them. He bent her over the counter, his fingers running along the inside of her thighs, and his lips pressed between her exposed shoulder blades. There had to be rules about doing this sort of thing in a uniform. If there were, he gladly disobeyed them.

She arched her back into him when he pressed inside of her, and they released a collective sigh together. His arm wrapped intimately around her chest and she wrapped hers around his neck. When he rutted into her, her body pressed against the counter. Later, when he was gone, she knew there’d be purplish bruises on her hips to remember him by. The sharp ache of it was dulled by that fact.

She hadn’t even had the time to call her mother before William had been drafted. They hadn’t even consummated their marriage. It was her wedding day, and this war was taking another husband of hers from her.

She guided his hand up to her throat, but he took it away rather quickly.

“Please,” she asked, panting. William slowed his movements, hesitating. His lips brushed alongside her shoulder blades.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered softly.

“You won’t,” she promised, bringing his hand back up. He wrapped it around her throat delicately. When he moved inside of her, he tightened his hold without thinking. She gasped - not from pain - but because it was exactly what she needed from him. The exact feeling she is looking for. Before he could draw back again, she held him in place, putting her hand over his. He nuzzled into her neck.

“Say you’ll miss me,” he urged, grunting softly.

“I’ll miss you.”

“Say you love me.” His fingers squeezed.

She pressed her eyes close. “I love you.”

“Tell me you know I’ll come back.”

She reached around, grabbing at his hip. His thrusts had become more frantic, and the pain was gradually overtaking the pleasure as he fucked her into the edge of the counter. “Ah,” she winced. He stopped.

“Alright?” he asked. His fingers affectionately stroked her side. She turned her head and kissed him on the mouth. It was a slow kiss, stretched out for eternity. As she swallowed one of his moans, she began to set the pace for them again herself. Gripping the edge of the counter, she began to move herself back on his cock.

“Oh, fuck,” he whispered hoarsely. “God, love, you feel so…” He lost his words in his desire.

He filled her full of his youthful ambitions a few moments later. Because they were now married, she let him watch the way it leaked down her leg. Because they were now married, he let her use his fingers to push it back inside.

It was one last promise they made each other. A wedding present for the young and the doomed.

v.

To My Dearest Wife,

I miss you so badly I ache. I carry around a picture of you in my helmet, and when I feel myself losing hope, I take it out and remember all that I have to fight and live for. The other men in my unit think I’m quite lucky as well. I hope you still want me.

vi.

To My Dearest Husband,

I do. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I think it is only making mine restless and sick. Please keep yourself well and whole. If When you come back, I will love you most terrifically. I’ve learned how to iron shirts!

vii.

When he got home, William was different. More soldier than ever, reticent and removed, as though he existed far away at all times. He was nothing like in the letters, or the stolen moment of time they had shared before.

They did not speak of what did not happen: of that baby, the first long ago broken promise. Apparently, she found, shortly after William had left, that thing didn’t always take at first. It seemed to her like a bad omen, but William had made good on his promise, hadn’t he? When she picked him up at the train station, he was alive. Same blue eyes. Same lips. No missing parts. And she had made good on hers: she wanted him and she had waited.

The first night home, he slept soundly. The second, not so much. The third day was difficult because of it. The fourth was unbearable because he didn’t even attempt to sleep the third night.

It wasn’t that he was mean. She had heard from others that they could be, the men who came back—heard about women with black eyes or ones who had been murdered, even long before William returned. But William wasn’t that way. He was just quiet. Unbearably and uncomfortably quiet.

The fifth day, he sat by and watched as she bathed herself. There was nothing on the whole affectionate about the way he looked at her. In fact, if he hadn’t begun to stroke himself, she would’ve figured he was almost reproachful of what he saw.

His delicate, sharp features twisted, his eyebrows furrowed. He did it rough, squeezing himself harshly in his fingers, the tip of his cock a violent red.She rose from the water and padded over to him, but when she tried to touch him, he told her firmly, “Please, don’t.”

So she didn’t. She watched as he stroked himself, standing naked in front of him, and realized after a moment he wasn’t even really looking at her. She knew that she could’ve left the room, and it would’ve been the same for him. He came in his palm, groaning deeply, and then he washed his hands in the sink, his shoulders slumping.

It struck her, that first week back with him, how little they knew of each other before.

They did not talk about that, either. For months, they spoke of nothing.

viii.

After a particularly troubling night, she got the black eye she had heard about, and a bullet hole in her wall. For what it was worth, she knew that he hadn’t aimed to hit her with the butt of the gun. Not even in all of his anger had he done that on purpose. His hand had slipped. She had been standing in the wrong place at the right time. She did know that. But she also knew that the bullet had been intentional. He hadn’t meant it for her, not like that, but he had meant it.

The bruise on her face looked terrible and puffy, and he had cried himself sick over it, wrapping himself around her legs. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he had sputtered out, pathetic and honest. She hadn’t heard him speak so much all at once since he had come home. Part of her, though she had been scared, was grateful.

She bought herself expensive makeup with all the money she had not spent while he was away, and a boat ticket to America. While he had been gone, she had ventured to read Moby-Dick. She had recalled something in it about the soul and the sea being intertwined. Though she had never finished the novel, the idea seemed simple enough: hers was a soul that needed mending, and the sea was there, waiting.

William sat at the end of their bed, his back turned to her as she gathered her belongings and put them neatly into the suitcase. “How long?” he asked.

She didn’t need him to clarify. “I don’t know, William.”

He turned his head, so she could see half of his face. He looked remorseful. “For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t blame you if you never came back again, but I hope you do.”

If she was a harsher woman, she would’ve asked him why? She would’ve said, “So you can ignore me? So I can watch as your bullets find a body?” But she wasn’t a harsh woman. All that they were existed solely because she was not a harsh woman.

Her fingers squeezed his shoulder, and he draped his hand over hers. It was never meant to be this way.

ix.

Wife, In your absence, I’ve had much time to reflect upon my actions and the ways in which I’ve hurt you. That night was unforgivable, and I live in constant remorse over it. You must know that what happened during the war has changed me beyond reproach. Most days, I think it better to face death than to live haunted by this life, but I’m too much of a coward, and too much in love with you, to seriously debate the topic of suicide. So fear not.

I’ve started to read again. You left behind quite the collection of literature. I think, in some ways, I know you more intimately by reading those you’ve read. I didn’t know you wrote in your novels before. It feels, at times, like having a conversation with you.

I miss you terribly. I’m sorry. Please, come home. I will be the husband I promised you. I am, above all things, a man of his word and I vow to make it right if you will let me.

x.

The next time they saw one another, it was fate that drove them together. She had returned to England without telling him, for interests that were solely her own, and he had found her by accident. All the letters he had written, and that she never responded to, did not discourage him. The fact that she was there, and he had not known for how long, did not discourage him. Nothing could’ve. They had a way of finding one another that seemed to defy logic and reason.

As she stood before her late husband’s headstone, William smoked a cigarette, squinting against the wind. There was much about her he had yet to learn. For one: She was a woman who would travel across an ocean to stand by an empty grave, and mourn a man on the date of his death. It seemed intrusive, to watch her, dressed as she was in black, beautiful and solemn, and yet he could not pull his eyes away. He loved her as much as she had loved the man in the ground.

It seemed almost worth it then, to have lost so much. He stood by the graves of friends he would never see again, and knew somehow it would be alright. That, despite everything, she would come home with him when this was over and so all the senseless death that had plagued him for months and months would not be as senseless or as vile any longer. These men had died for life. For living.

After a while, she stepped away from the grave and made her way towards him. He gave her a soft, sympathetic smile. Out of all the things in the world he had thought of saying to her, and he went with: “Hello.”

“Hello,” she replied back.

They both found that simple space again, in which they had found one another and married. Love had a funny way of blooming in all the wrong places. Like a flower that knew no better than to grow in the crack of a sidewalk, they started again at the graveside of lovers and friends.

Notes:

tumblr: pennyserenade

Chapter 2: dear, dark child (thomas shelby)

Summary:

tommy wakes up from a nightmare and you help him through it.

Notes:

pre-established relationship, unprotected sex, nightmares, mention of drugs, mention of suicide, mention of childbirth, cigarette smoking, mentions of prejudice against romani people, angst, pinv, creampie, dirty talk, rough sex, doggy style.

Thomas Shelby is the most handsome augury of death you have ever seen. He has finely carved cheekbones, a glow in his crystalline eyes, lips full and pink and kissed with freckles. His mother walked herself into the cut, and they say there is a madness embedded in them all—his sister, his brothers, the aunt. You stand at the end of his bed, lips parted, looking at him in all of his haunted beauty, as if to say something, but you decide against it. 

In the black of night, he is not as he is in the daylight. There’s a fresh sheen of sweat on his skin, and a look of fear in his eyes. As you stand at the end of his bed, cold, unsure, you mouth out the words: “All is well, Thomas, all is fine.”

He is the Romani boy they say speaks in spells, in curses, who has been othered because they think he is half devil. As a child, he clung to the skirts of his beautiful mother, loved her to the point of anguish. She dreamt of him when he was in her stomach, pictured a raven haired boy who spoke her words, who had her eyes. Tommy learned her language far better than the rest of her children did. His mother knew the world would give itself to this child of her. He would be beautiful, he would be ambitious. He would be cunning, too, and devious. She knew that many times in his life, he would have to figure out how far things could bend before they snapped completely. When she had pushed him out in the dark of a tunnel, she feared nothing. She did not need light to know this child of hers, because he had come to her in dreams. “He’s a boy,” she had told his father, “and his name is Thomas.” He had cried louder than his brother before him, and she knew that in darkness he was born, and that in darkness he would stay. But she laid him upon her bare breast, and promised herself that she would tell him of the light in the world, and she knew that the good in his soul would weed out the bad. This son of hers was not cursed; he was only a child of the night. She would spend the rest of her short life telling him this, and he would never learn it. 

You reach out and touch his trembling hand. Beneath your touch, he is clammy. You feel his present emotions pulsate beneath your fingertips. He is ashamed, afraid, and angry. Before he can speak, utter something he does not mean but won’t take back, you crawl into his bed, onto his lap.

Your mother was like his in many ways, and in your veins you carry on the tradition of knowing. It is for the same reasons he tells people he can charm animals that you pretend you know nothing: to survive.

You know you will love him, and you know he will betray you. When you press your body into his, wrapping your arms around his sweat drenched skin, you do it because you know in this foreboding future of yours that he never meant to, that he is sorry, that he loves you, too. Some things are fated, prewritten, unavoidable and inevitable; the failure to comfort him won’t change the shape of your lives. 

He clings to you, perhaps to his own confusion, and a little to your own. You feel beneath you a mass of frustration, of anger, of fear. You expected something dangerous, something explosive, not this. Though you lurched at him to tame it, you weren’t sure it was going to work; now that he sits beneath you, holding you in the same manner you hold him, you let out a quiet, relieved sigh. 

“It’s okay,” you assure him once more, with more conviction. Your voice is less meek, more your own, the fear of his anger ebbing each second he holds his face to your chest.  

“I’m sorry.” He chokes out, though there’s no tears that wet the cloth of your gown. His fingers clench around your sides, gripping at the fabric, before he pulls back to look up at you. “The things in my fuckin’ head—“

“It’s alright.” Your fingers thread through his damp hair, pushing back the strands that have fallen over his forehead. This is no devil beneath you. Just a man. Just a boy. “You don’t have to explain to me.”

He swallows roughly, falling back onto the pillows behind him. Tommy rubs his hand over his face and sighs. As the frustration coils more tightly in his stomach, you feel anxious—too aware of the emotions in his frame. Your hand touches the skin of his stomach. It is scorching beneath your cool touch, alight with fury, with fear. He hardly knows the difference between the two. 

“Take off your gown,” he says, deep voice still gravelly from sleep. You do, gathering the ends of the fabric up by your waist, then lifting it above your head. 

He has seen you like this many times before. You’re no whore–don’t have the emotional bandwidth to handle it–but you’re certainly no prude. The first time you locked eyes on Thomas Shelby, something more palpable than the spirits told you what he wanted with you. The light in his eye. The tweak of his lips into a smirk. The attraction you felt, passingly, then fully, as he approached you in the pub. You had known this was him, the boy they said was the devil, could see it in his eyes, but did not mind. 

He does not fuck as roughly as others, but he also does not fuck as kindly as you know he has the craving for. He explores your goose pimpled flesh, still in the midst of regaining his composure. His fingers tremble, but he pretends they don’t. Tommy dances them across your bare chest with calculated ease, tweaking an already pert nipple, cupping the tissue into his too warm palm. 

Desire grows inside of him, takes the place of anger. You kiss, hard and fast, because his body is hungry for a fix—stronger than tobacco, better than whiskey, safer than illicit drugs. He grows hard beneath you, and it begins to leak out, gone in moments, the things that made him hot to the touch. He takes your head between his hands, and brushes too affectionately over your jaw. Somethings are too instinctual to stop; this is the good his mother saw, her dream manifested. His body molds into your own, craves a thing he can’t comprehend just yet, because he is too tired, too young, to know what love might begin as. 

Tommy asks you to lay flat on your stomach, but he has a way of requesting things that make them seem like callous demands. The gruff of his voice. The anger that wraps around all of his words, that has done since he got back from war, changed. You might be the only person who does not flinch or take offense. You lie on your stomach, hands tucked beneath his pillow, eyes pressed closed. Sometimes, he puts his mouth on you. To ready you, he explained, and you like that. Tonight he doesn’t seem to be in the mood. He positions himself between your legs, kisses along the arch of your spine, and whispers against your ear, “Ass up, then.” 

There’s nothing to separate you two: no blankets, no articles of clothing, not even the frigid air of his bedroom, the fire long gone out. You feel the head of his cock at your entrance mere seconds before he plunges inside of you. 

You muffle your groan in the pillow beneath you, fingers tightening around the cloth of the sheets, holding on. At first the intrusion of him is too much, a burning chafe, but he slows, holding himself mid thrust inside of you. You feel the hair on his stomach prickle against you as he leans over your body, curling around you, lips touching your shoulder. The tenuous string of connection you have with him grows stronger, less blurred around the edges, more in focus. Inside of you, he feels safe. It’s inexplicable, but you feel it too; comfort even in his roughest touches, knowing he doesn’t mean harm, that he thinks of you, that he wants you. Your body catches up, slick gathering between your legs as he slides himself in again, more slowly. 

His fingers wrap around your neck, cradling your neck more than pressing into your skin. Tommy’s thrusts begin to pick up, and they become more punishing, driving your hips down into the bed. You moan, toes curling, desire pooling in your stomach as your clit rubs passively against the sheets. It’s not enough friction to do anything but drive you insane. 

He moves back up, sitting on his knees, the fingers on his free hand finding the curves at your side. He holds you there, pushing himself in, emitting soft grunts into the still of night as he buries himself inside of you. The bed begins to creak beneath you both. Old as it is, it is never quite prepared for the violence of his movements. He doesn’t care. Let the whole house hear; God knows they’ve done it to him many times before. He needs to bury himself deeply inside of you, to feel the way you clench around him when he guides your head back to look you in the eye. 

Your lips part, wrapping around a quiet moan. Tommy drives his hips against your backside in a determined rhythm, trying to find the part of you that cries out obscenely. He likes you best in positions where you arch, submit, take what he gives happily. His cock hits the top of your walls, and he nods when you finally audibly moan for him, smug. It isn’t enough that you’ve gone slick between your thighs, that his cock is coated in it. More, more, more—for he still is the boy who has not quite learned how far things can bend before they break. 

He rubs his thumb against your bottom lip, and you wrap your warm mouth around it. “You like that?” he grits out, fucking into you roughly, quickly, determined. There’s a new sheen of sweat on his body, mingling with your own in the places you meet. It is better, less acrid than the stuff he was coated in before. 

“I do,” you pant. You reach out and wrap your hand around the metakl frame of the bed. He laughs, though you’re not sure he finds anything funny.

“I know,” he answers, taking his hand from your face, your neck, gripping instead on your shoulder. He pushes you back onto his cock. “Always do like it. Always take everything I give you.”

“Yes.” Your fingers tighten around the bars. Words escape you, thoughts diminishing into emotion, into sensations. His fingers on your skin. His cock in your cunt, hitting the top of you. The entirety of him behind you, up on bended knees, a supposed half devil. A child of the night. The fury of his passion. The swirl of anger he has pushed away. The fear he doesn’t want to come back. He buries it inside of you, these things he cannot say. 

His hips sputter against yours, and it is over: the warmth of his cum fills you, and he wraps an arm around your stomach, pulling you close to him, kissing along your shoulder. 

Tommy isn’t forgetful; his other hand reaches around and finds your neglected clit. His teeth scrape against your flesh as he circles it with his fingers, drawing out more delicious sounds from you. His cum begins to drip down your legs, but he does not mind. You twitch, jut, fight out of his embrace, but he holds tighter, humming in delight because he knows only he can touch you like this. 

“Show me,” he demands, voice rough, “Show me how much you like my cum in you.” 

You reach behind, grip onto his hip. “Tommy,” is all you manage. 

“Show me.” He rubs your clit faster, pressing down harder. His face tucks into your neck. “You’re grateful, aren’t you? That I fuck you so good?” The desire builds in your stomach. He kisses the side of your mouth. “Fuckin’ show me!”

You cum, and it lasts for what feels like an eternity. You register the sensation of his prideful, earnest laughter against your skin, a familiar timbre, an echo that your bones know well. At one moment it’s too much. Then it’s nothing: his hands, his fingers, his cock abandoning you. 

With all of his troubles still leaking onto your thighs, Tommy reaches over to the nightstand to grab a cigarette. “Do you want one?” he asks. There’s no disinterest in his tone—only the monotonous, somber sound of his voice piercing the air. You lay on your stomach, face pressed against the now cool pillow. “Guess that’s a no.” 

The room smells of sex. Not bad, per se, but potent. His smell and yours, sweet and acidic, and something indistinguishable. His hand rests on your back. “Alright?” he asks. 

You turn your head in his direction. “Alright,” you confirm. “And you?”

The cigarette burns orange, the crackle of his inhale filling the space between you. “All is well,” he says, repeating the words you gave him. 

You hum in agreement. Yes, for now, in this moment, in this place, all is well. The darkness cloaks you both, shields you from the future, and nothing can bring you any harm. 

How fortunate it is to know this much.

 

Chapter 3: common people (jim o'mahony)

Summary:

old enough to know better, but too exhausted by life to really think about it, you have an affair with a man you met on the bus.

Notes:

explicit smut, questionable morals, age gap (reader is in her mid to late 20s, jim is in his early 40s), pinv, angst, infidelity, unprotected sex

The line that drew you here – sitting on the bed in your shoddy three bedroom flat with your mouth wrapped around Jim’s fingers – is by no means a straight and narrow one.

It had begun with a glance. You had done it because you wanted to feel seen. Jim had sat on the opposite side of the bus, wearing a puffy winter jacket, his black hair peppered compelling with visible grays, and his face had been indifferent as he watched out the window of the bus. With his arms crossed over his chest and his lips pressed into a pout, he struck you as an interesting subject. You had allowed your eyes to roam over the sharp sculpt of his jaw, and to inspect the enticing dust of freckles along the bridge of his nose, which danced out to the hollow of his cheeks. Then you caught his eyes as he turned his head in your direction. The sweet thrill of being noticed itched up your spine, just the way you were used to it doing.

Jim hadn’t let his face of plain indifference shatter in the wake of being watched, but you knew that he was watching you too, and that was enough. That wasn’t to say he was special. There’d been other people - other men - whom you had engaged in this game of sorts with before. Before Jim, it really meant nothing. You did it with people you didn’t even find all that attractive, just to know you could. There was the power in the act of maintaining eye contact with these people, and you liked the ambiguity that resided in the length of your stares–what it could suggest, or what it could lead to, even though it never had. The only thing that separated Jim from all of them was that he looked back for longer, and in his eyes you saw something more potent.

Sometimes you wonder, the way you, as the other woman, are apt to do, about the way he is different for his wife. Does he gather her in his lap? Does she put her mouth around his fingers and does he hum in delight for her, too? Or is this yours, just as that first shared glance was on the bus?

His fingers sit heavy on your tongue now. They taste of nothing. You arch into his body and his lips form into a smirk that makes you bloom inside with an insidious warmth. This man is someone’s husband, and he is spending a Tuesday afternoon in your bedroom. He is the creature of adulthood that lurks in your barely post-graduation adobe, a shape of security who sometimes brings your flatmates bottles of inexpensive ale and dinner to keep them amiable when his wedding band gleams in their direction. To make matters worse, he is older than you – so much so that you wouldn’t like to tell your mother about it, even if he wasn’t married.

Drawing his wet fingers out of your mouth, Jim trails them down your body, bunching up the fabric of your sleep shorts between his fists like a greedy child. You reach between your bodies and pull the leather out of his belt buckle. The clack of it resounding through your stuffy room makes you feel obscene and naughty. He marvels at the way you take initiative, his blue eyes following the diligent movements of your fingers as they work the belt through the hoops in his pants.

He leans back on the bed for you, and with a soft sigh, he accepts the cold tips of your fingers dancing across the skin of his lower stomach. You linger there, tickling over the hair below his belly button, relishing in the warmth his body has trapped beneath his jumper.

Before you pull the sweater up any higher, he takes your eager hands in his palms. “I didn’t even ask you how your day was yet, you know?” he says, voice airy—too light for how earnest you feel about fucking him.

A coil of frustration winds up inside of you. It must be treason, these small intimacies of his. Not only is he a husband but a father, too: an island of his own; a man with a country to abandon, to betray.

You offer him a placid smile. “It was slow. I was waiting for you.” Your fingers escape his grasp and he winces when they race out to his warm skin again.

“Mine was fine too, thanks,” he laughs, his own fingers gripping onto your hips. You ignore him, in no mood for conversation.

Jim allows you to draw his shirt above his arms. He pulls you closer against him after you do, your body flat against his exposed chest. You can smell the tea you made him on his breath, and feel the lustful fascination he has with you poking against your hip. He may be the most interesting thing that has ever happened to you, and you might be his.

You snake your hand down the front of his jeans, measuring the width of his want, the strength of your appeal. “Fuck,” he hums against your mouth. The deep timbre of his voice runs through you, causing slick to gather between your legs.

Jim opens his mouth for you, licking his tongue against yours as his fingers slide down the slope of your stomach to your clothed cunt. When you draw out a surprised breath, Jim inhales, taking your air before pressing his lips harshly upon yours. One hand curls round the back of your neck, holding you there.
There’s a primal aspect to this, some need that existed before the both of you being manifested. His other hand cups your cunt, and he watches with invested interest as you grind down into his palm, desperate for release of any kind.

After a few moments of you grinding above him, Jim retracts his hand from you. Smiling, he takes off your shirt as you undo your bra. It’s a dance you’ve practiced so many times together, and it happens without falter or failure this time. You fist a handful of his salt and pepper hair as his warm tongue traces circles around your freshly exposed nipple.

Moaning softly, you rut against his crotch, trying to relieve the ache that grows between your legs as the warmth of his mouth wets your pert nipple. His tongue begins to trail up, wetting the skin of your chest, and he guides you back on to the bed. Nibbing softly at the skin below your ear, Jim’s hands slip off your shorts. You help, raising up your hips.

He smiles down at you, a soft, gentle thing, and you feel like a co-conspirator–a shameful title, but oddly thrilling all the same.

“Oh, Jim,” you say softly, before he has even touched you. Caging your lip between your teeth, you watch him as he stands on his knees before you, making room between your legs. Your head feels full. He doesn’t even bother with taking off his slacks. With the tip of his cock leaking already, he strokes himself, showing you, allowing you to see what you wanted to all those months ago on that bus: how much he wants you, how much you can be wanted. It is an accident– an incredible error–that you throb at him looking at you lovingly as much as wantonly these days.

You’ve read the reddit forums: women, like you, who know better and do wrong anyway. You’ve read entire threads about the reasons why they do it, and how they cope with it, and most of all, you search out the women who have seen themselves all the way through it. It scares you to think of all the paths this could lead to, when it wasn’t ever meant to lead to anywhere. Will you be the jilted lover in the end? One of the women who talk about how liberating it is to be free from something so private and soul crushing? Or will you end up concocting a story with him like the women who marry their men do? The ones who say they met on vacations or in bars months after the divorces have been filed so as not to be treated cruelly by the public? And could you live being either of those things?

“Missed you so goddamn much,” Jim whispers against your mouth, bracketing your head between his hands. You take his bottom lip between your teeth, kissing him hard, pulling him more closely to your body, as if your desire will eradicate that you want more than just lust from him these days.

He lines himself up to your entrance, his intense eyes watching your face twist up as he inches inside of you slowly. Jim is thick, and a little bigger than the other men you’ve been with in the past. It takes a moment for you to adjust around him, but he gives you it, kissing you tenderly until he‘s bottomed out inside of you. “Gotta be quiet,” he whispers against your lips. He swallows harshly then, as if having to digest his own sounds.

You feel the ghost of his breath against your chest when he hangs it down, watching the way you connect together. Wrapping your legs around his waist, you allow him to go deeper, pleading with him inaudibly to stay inside for longer. His hand pushes strands of your hair away from your face. Sweat begins to gather between your bodies, and he moves inside of you with the care of someone who is used to being discreet.

When the bed begins to creak beneath the sway of his hips, something primal unfurls inside of you. It is evidence that this is real. Evidence he allows - that he encourages - his needy fingers moving down, griping the flesh of your thigh as his cock slides back inside of you with ease. He grunts against your shoulder. “Fuck. Fuck, you’re so wet, darling,” he says. “Wanted me badly?”

You nod, turning to your head to capture his lips. You slide your hand underneath the waistband of his slacks, gripping onto his ass, guiding the movements of his hips as they press into your own. You feel an overwhelming desire for him, a thing bigger than you would like. It is warm, and blinding, and makes you stupid. “Wish you could be inside of me all day,” you say, meaning it.

“Fuck,” he whines. “I want—I want that, too. You’re taking me so good.”

You can feel the increasing ease with which he settles deeper and deeper into your body. “You make me feel so good,” you tell him. Your voice feels like it’s coming from some place deep inside of you, another version, who wants everything and can say it.

“Do I?” he manages to say, eyebrows threading together. He’s not really paying attention to what’s coming out of his mouth no more than you are. His eyes drop, looking at you beneath him, and then his head does too. His mouth wraps around your pebbled nipple, tongue swiping against your chest. He hums: the same satisfied song he sang you when you put your mouth around his fingers.

“Do you fuck her like this?” something inside of you speaks, hungry, desperate, needy. “Your wife?”

Too turned on to stop, or perhaps prepared for this inevitable question of yours, Jim gives an abashed, crooked smile, but does not stop. 

“I fuck you like this,” he whispers, his voice low and sultry. It is such a non-answer, clever and just right. His hand comes up and gropes at your breast.

For a moment you imagine it, let the whole idea take place. Some woman you do not know, a faceless but important woman, older and wiser. She wears a wedding band on her left ring finger, and is elegant and caring. He has told you that she likes to go to the theater, and that she is a good mother. She is not the type to cheat. In fact, she is hardly the type to have a husband that cheats, either, but then life can be impossibly cruel, and not what you imagined it might be. Jim pulses inside of her, telling her he loves her, meaning it, probably. When she says she loves his cock inside of her, it doesn’t sound needy or submissive but erotic, demanding, and he asks her for another child, maybe. The things you do to save a marriage.

A man can only have so much, and you’ve never been particularly demanding. You won’t win this. Even here, under him: you want to give him everything, to allow him to tell you what to be and when to be it. His hand curls around your mouth, his head burying in the hollow of your neck. There is the warmth of his tongue against your flushed skin, and the idea that he could leave whatever marks he might like on you, despite the fact that you can’t do the same to him. You’d let him, happily. This he knows.

He does not tell you that he loves you, but instead mutters, “I want to make you feel good.”

In some ways, you have more than his wife does. Maybe what he’s given you has more weight, more truth; maybe it will last indefinitely longer than marriage vows that have been said and broken. You grip onto one of his arms as he pushes inside of you. You tell him, “You are.”

His skin has grown damp and warm beneath your fingers. You run your hands down his back, becoming intimate with the muscle and sinew of his frame as it writhes above yours. He grunts as the movement of his hips become more frantic—shorter and steadier thrusts, the creak of the bed too loud as he settles himself deeply inside of you.

It doesn’t make you feel embarrassed. It doesn’t even make you ashamed. An overwhelming flame of desire engulfs your soul, and all you can focus on is the way he feels: hot, warm, the full length of him stretching you and yet still looking to go deeper and deeper still. His mouth finds your shoulder, and you listen as he pants against the flesh there, stalling an inevitable end. He slows down, and you relish the slow push and pull he does with his hips. You’re sure you’ve never been so wet in your life, and he seems to agree, moaning at the sound of your cunt taking him.

“I want to ride you,” you puff out, brushing your lips against his ear. He nods eagerly in agreement, and you assist in pulling down his slacks until they’re hanging around his ankles.

Deftly, he kicks them off into a dark corner of your room, and then looks up at you, light eyes clouded with lust. “I love when you tell me things like that,” he tells you softly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His hand finds your breast, his mouth sliding across the column of your throat. “You’re so fucking hot. You gonna cum on my cock?”

He twitches inside you and you kiss him hard on the mouth. “Yes,” you whisper back.

Jim pulls out of you slowly. He sits in the spot next to you on the bed, lifting himself up onto his elbows in anticipation. You straddle him, gripping onto his shoulder for balance. He offers you a tender smile as his fingers grip onto your hip in encouragement. “Take what you want, then,” he nods.

Your fingers wrap around his cock, slick and hot, and his eyes dart down to watch as you line him up to your entrance. As you slide down onto him, Jim closes his eyes, leaning his head back against his shoulder and moaning softly. He looks so beautiful like that: his jaw clenching just beneath the surface of his taut skin, his hair mussed from your hands running through it, his cheeks glowing red from desire.

You press your chest to his and kiss the middle of his throat. His fingers travel over the swell of your ass, and you begin to move your hips for him. “That’s it,” he hums, opening his eyes. You maintain eye contact as you draw up off of him. It is as if you are the only two people in the world, your hands playing with the hair at the nape of his neck, the head of his cock sitting at your entrance. He lets out a sigh in relief when you slide back onto him. One of his hands reaches up and splays out across the small of your back, guiding you as you move. Your breathing becomes more shallow, and the hazy sensation of an orgasm begins to grow in your pelvis as you grind down into him.

Sensing this, Jim’s lips twitch up into a smirk. “So tight for me,” he mutters. His lips brush against your warm chest. “Fuck, and you’re wet. Not gonna last much longer like this.”

You tuck your face into his neck, panting softly as your hips roll into his. You listen to the soft grunts that fall involuntarily from his lips, and think about him cumming inside of you. He’s done it once before, and you liked it more than you should—it’s another sign of his desire for you to devour.

The orgasm hits you in waves and you gasp, gripping helplessly at his shoulder for purchase. Every limb in your body seems to give into the sensation, until you are reduced to nothing but that warm glow spreading rapidly through you. He kisses along your shoulder, your collarbone, tucking an arm around your back to support you as you slump down onto him.

You feel him twitch dangerously inside of you, and know that if you go for a little longer, he’ll cum too. Gathering the last of your strength, you lift your hips, watching between your bodies as his cock plunges inside of you. His fingers brush against your stomach, and the air between you becomes little more than a shared moan.

“I’m gonna cum,” he warns. He gives you the choice of what to do. You rest your head against his, your noses brushing against each other as you pick up the pace. He cums inside of you with a strangled gasp, and you smile when the hot spurts of his want fill you. His fingers press into your sides, his body stiff beneath you.

For a moment you sit like that, his cock buried impossibly deep inside of you, your fingers intertwined in his hair. Sweat mats his fringe to his forehead in places, and he swallows harshly, his breathing labored. You can’t find it in yourself to be ashamed that you don’t want to part from him as you brush his hair away from his eyes, smiling.

He smiles back, content. All the lust that once filled his eyes is replaced with an affection you consider infinitely more dangerous. You lay against his shoulder and close your eyes. His heart thuds against the cage of his chest and his fingers stroke your back softly.

“I’m sorry for what I asked,” you murmur. The shame finds its way to you.

“It’s s’alright.” His lips brush against your shoulder. “I haven’t fucked her in a long time. Not like that. I’m not saying that just to make you feel better.”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better.” You lift your head off of him, meeting his eyes. “None of this does.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“You’re still in me, for Christ’s sake,” you laugh. He laughs too, and you know that’ll probably be the end of the conversation. A part of you is happy to let it go. You’re not ready to end this, even though you know you should. You don’t feel like the other woman, after all. She was meant to be more clever than this, wasn’t she? You feel like you’ve fallen into something you can’t get out of, something you’re terrified to even approach for what it might say about you.

“Hey,” he nudges his nose along your jaw. “You alright, then?”

“Sure,” you nod. “Stay a little while longer?”

“Yeah, of course.” He pats the hair on your head down, laying back on the pillow behind him. You rise up off of him, but still straddle his thighs. He holds you close, wrapping his arms around your torso. You can feel his cum trickle out of you.

“I like you a lot, if that’s any consolation. More than I should,” he tells you. “Enough to frighten me, really. I never thought I’d be this guy, you know? The cheater, especially with a younger woman. I don’t—you were the first I’ve ever felt anything for, you know?”

You lay your head on his chest again, and let out an amused laugh — though nothing feels particularly amusing. “Jim?”

“Yes?”

“You don’t have to convince me of anything.”

“Right.” He kisses your temple, staying there for a moment before pulling back and saying, “I’m just saying. I don’t want you to look back on this and think I thought of this as meaning nothing. It’s a big thing for me, too.”

You let out of a soft sigh, tracing up his freckled arms with your finger. “Jim?”

“Yes?”

“Will you fuck me again? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. ”

He laughs softly, kissing below your ear. “Of course,” he responds, his hot breath cascading across your sensitive neck. “Only this time, tell me what you want, love. I want to hear you say it.”

Chapter 4: can't buy me love (robert fischer)

Summary:

jane and robert aren't in an arranged marriage technically, but he sure has a way of making her feel like they are. fed up with it, she decides to take matters in her own hands.

The slight pout of her husband’s lip offended Jane Fischer. So, too, did the flutter of his eye lashes against his newly tanned skin, and the stretch of his finely made dress shirt against his shoulders as he leaned over his chair and tied his dress shoe. On days like this, she felt something akin to hatred swell in her chest for him, and she could never be sure whose fault it was: him, for being so silent, so stoic, so complacent, or her, for watching him be these things, and allowing it to make her burn inward with fury, but never expressing it. 

Jane Fischer—née Hartley—was, on paper, the perfect match for the scion of Fischer Morrow. The woman was a Texas oil heiress in her own right, and beautiful in that charmed, non-offensive way that Robert’s father always encouraged him to look for. When Robert met her, she had been twenty-two and a recent Bryn Mawr graduate with a degree in history. They’d met at a charity benefit in New York, introduced to one another by friends of friends. They’d hit it off that night purely for the fact that they were both good-looking, affluent, young, and unsure of what to make of any of it. 

Jane and Robert had stumbled their way awkwardly through three dates, and married two months into knowing one another, spurred on by the encouragement of both of their families. Her father told her that she would be the richest girl in the whole world, and Jane had agreed that would be a fine accomplishment. Any worries she might have  had about doing something with her degree before becoming a mother and wife were quickly quelled by Robert’s quiet assurances that he did not wish to have children until much later. It seemed she could eat her cake and have it too with him. 

Their marriage had been one largely void of conflict and strife. Robert was a quiet individual, who spent so much of his time working at his family business that he seemed, at times, to be merely an extension of it—like a traveling salesman who never found his way home. Whatever Jane did in the time she was not directly in front of Robert appeared to be of little consequence to him, except on the rare occasion that his own father took interest in it. 

In the second year of their marriage, when Jane had considered going back to school for her doctorate, Maurice had taken Robert and her out for dinner and dissuaded her from doing so. He feared it would make her seem “too ambitious” and “unrelatable” to the other women she would encounter being Robert’s wife, which she found amusing, until she did not. On the ride home, Robert had told her that he did not care one way or another if she went back or not, but the way he had said it made it seem like he did care, and was only saying he did not simply to save face, so she abandoned the plan with only slight embarrassment—for whom, she wasn’t still entirely sure.  

In time, she came to find that all of Robert’s vulnerabilities lay in two places: his father, who treated Robert like a chess piece more than a son, and his mother, who had died when he was a boy, and who seemed to take all the love he had experienced with her. Robert never seemed to know what to make of Jane. When he came home most nights, he approached her with polite hesitancy, as if she were a perfect stranger and not his wife. They talked about nothing—about the dinner the chef had made, or the size of their apartment, or the way the clouds swelled in the sky and threatened rain, and how dreary New York was in the winter, and how he was quite happy to be returning to Australia with his father the next week for business. 

She had tried to unfurl for him, to take the first steps towards vulnerability. One night shortly before he came home, she sat upon their love seat dressed in a diaphanous nightgown, wearing nothing beneath the fabric. They’d had sex on several occasions before it, but the act felt perfunctory, even impersonal—like it had happened because of circumstance more than desire. Jane wanted to prove her willingness to give, and perhaps, in some way, to shock him out of the collected demeanor that greeted her every night when he walked in. There was more to Robert than he let on, and she knew this: she had witnessed it that first night they had met, in the smiles and the bits of conversations they’d had in the corner of the ballroom. 

When he’d come home, Robert did indeed look shocked–almost scandalized. His lips pursed and he averted his eyes, before letting out soft peals of laughter that held little mirth. He did eventually turn his eyes towards her, but she could tell it took a great deal of effort; he smiled tightly, his cheeks drowning in a deep shade of red. 

His embarrassment made her feel uneasy, like what she had done was somehow impure. She covered herself with a pillow and told him softly she had thought he might have liked it, but could see how he didn’t. Jane didn’t allow him to stutter out an explanation or apology, for the whole thing was bad enough and to experience any more of it would only cause her more harm. 

Since that incident, they hadn’t had sex at all. He’d only recently just returned home from Australia, and for the first few nights they’d been able to blame it on him being tired from the long journey. It had felt distinctly relieving not to worry about their curious lack of having it while he had been away, and easier to forget about it all together in the nights following his return. But she knew they could not live like this, for she could not handle it. 

Robert was a grown man. He had free will and the ability to string together words and communicate as far as she knew, and she’d had enough. Placing her coffee upon their shared breakfast table table, she said, “Why don’t you want to sleep with me? I know this is an inopportune time to bring it up, but it’s an odd thing, isn’t it? It baffles me.”

Robert’s surprise was evident—in the furrow of his eyebrow, in his audible swallow as he considered her intently, like he hadn’t quite heard what she said. But he had. “I don’t know what you mean,” he evaded. He was no good at lying. It took only a moment under her unflinching gaze. “I don’t know. I…was worried you might be doing it to make me happy, and I didn’t want to make you do something that made you unhappy.”

She realized he was being earnest as she watched him. “I’m your wife, Robert.”

“Yes, but—“ He did not finish the sentence, probably thinking the next words unkind. 

Jane didn’t care. Unkindness was better than nothing. “But our parents forced us together. Told us to do it, is that it?” He nodded stoically. She scoffed. “I know you might not have chosen me completely of your own volition, and I have always known that, but I don’t mind it. I didn’t mind you, either. I mean, I did want you. I do. I was the one who said yes.” He was quiet, as always, so she continued. “How many women have you slept with? Someone once told me that you were something of an ineffable playboy. Is that true?”

“Really, Jane.”  The lines on his forehead creased. He was ruffled by what she was saying. Annoyed. He didn’t want to talk about it. He was not the only one in the business of getting exactly what he wanted as soon as he’d wanted it. though. Jane continued.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I just want to know you, Robert.”

“You do know me,” he said pointedly. The familiar red hue formed on his cheeks and he averted his eyes downwards. 

“Do you have a mistress?” 

“What? No!” She saw a flash of anger in his eyes, and it thrilled her. “I have no interest in discussing these things with you.” 

“I’ve slept with four men,” she prattled on, bringing her coffee cup up to her lips again. Her eyes ventured to the window, where the clouds threatened to spill over the city. But they weren’t going to talk about that. Not now. Not ever again. “Five counting you, really.”

He rose from the table, flush from his head to his toes. “I really must go.” 

She stood as well, blocking him from moving forward. His eyes narrowed and for the first time in their married life, she saw there was something more to him than the simple shades of cool he presented to the world. He hardened. She spoke like one would to a timid deer. “We don’t have to talk. You could fuck me.”

“That’s a crude way to talk,” he scolded. 

“I can be crude. As my husband, you think it would delight you.”

“Well, it doesn’t. You were meant to…occupy yourself. To have hobbies and interests. Don’t you?”  

The words went through her, simple, meaningless puffs of indignant air. “I went to an all girl’s college, as you know, and we were often in want of the male appendage, but we had no male. Would you like to know the intelligent and clever ways we’d manage?”

His head dropped. Exasperation gripped him. “No. I would like to go to work.” 

“I want it.” Jane stepped forward, so close to Robert she could smell the expensive quality of his cologne mixing with the scent of his skin. Her finger grazed the cuff of his suit as she batted her lashes up at him. She knew how to be beautiful when she wanted to be beautiful—had spent many hours of her life giving in to the sin of vanity—and she used it then. “I want sex.” 

Robert’s jaw twitched. “Tonight,” came his clipped response. With that, he sidestepped her, walking briskly towards the door of their apartment and slamming the door shut. 

Her lips curled into a self-satisfied grin. 

—

Robert had a habit of never coming home when he was meant to, so it was a matter of guessing and waiting. Jane had guessed seven, and she had waited until nine. 

By the time Robert unlocked the door and entered the apartment, the red lipstick she’d applied had long ago faded against the brim of her whiskey glass. But she was not drunk or angry. In fact, she had not yet even begun to develop the hazy fringes of disappointment. 

She could tell it had been a long day just by looking at him: His shoulders slumped like Atlas’, and the blank gaze of defeat drowned out his eyes. There was no point in being so rich, she thought, if you had to be this miserable all the time. 

“Does this mean I’m going to have to wipe this makeup off and get in one of those ratty nightgowns fit for grandmothers?” She attempted to joke. 

Robert’s resulting look was withering. She took another long sip of the watered down drink in her hands before rising off the couch to greet him. 

This time she’d put on more clothes: an expensive black tulle and pink silk evening gown with a tastefully scooped neckline. Its flared skirt had an intricate floral bedding along the bottom, and on her neck, she wore a dangle rhinestone necklace that her father had gifted her for her twentieth birthday. The heels she’d worn with the outfit sat abandoned under the coffee table, so that all separated her from the plush carpet were her stockings. 

Robert surveyed their apartment as a soldier might a battlefield. His distrust of her was made evident by his rigid body, and how he stuck close to the door, as if he might need to flee out of it at any moment. She couldn’t help but let out stifled laughter. Her amusement sunk its teeth into her words. “Don’t be afraid of me, Robert,” she cooed, fingers wrapping around his tie. 

He wet his lips but said and did nothing but look at her, his pale eyes alert. Up close like this, she could see him and all that made him desirable: the sharp sculpt of his cheek bones, the pretty twist of his freckled lips, the restrained intensity in his eyes. 

In the times they had slept together, it had managed to be pleasurable in the way things you did for necessity could be: knowing, offhandedly, that it was good for them—that even though they did it with structure and hesitancy, the result was the same for them as they would have been otherwise. She had liked the way he tucked around her, and she did look forward to the moments near the end where, unthinking, he’d bring his hand up to her breast and hold it there. There was nothing wrong with him, only that he gave her fragments of himself when she wanted the whole thing. No longer did she want to part her legs and guide him into her, smiling sheepishly as he gathered the blanket around them and rocked forward. They weren’t making children, after all; they were meant to be making love. Fucking, even. 

“You still look frightened,” she said, frowning playfully. Robert tensed. His hands wrapped around hers as she grabbed onto his tie. 

“I’m only tired,” he answered. 

“You’re always tired.” 

“I’m always busy, that’s why,” he said sullenly. “My work requires a lot of me.” Her fingers loosened around his tie, but he kept them trapped in his palm. “I’m not afraid, though.” 

“Then what are you?” she probed. The bit of alcohol she’d drank - or perhaps the two years of unfeelingness that lingered between them - made her bold. 

“I don’t know. Obligated,” he admitted. He let go of her but stayed close. His voice was low and confessional–seductive to her for its newness. “I have been with women before, but none like you.”

“Not even the society girls?” 

He smiled, somewhat amused. “What I’ll say is that I’ve met a lot of simple people with a lot of simple wants, and you are not one of them.”

“And what–you wanted something simple?”

“No. But you know that my father is a demanding individual; this is my life, for better or worse, and it was that way before I met you too.” 

“So simple is what you think you deserve?” She didn’t mean for him to answer, but he did. She’d never gotten so much out of him all at once. 

“No. But it’s a small price to pay for all that I have–for what we have,” he corrected. 

“Don’t you know that other men your age and in your position don’t live like this? That none of them are so constrained by their father’s wishes?"  

Robert loosened the tie around his neck and took a step around her to set his belongings on the chair. “Those men run businesses; my father is giving me an empire,” he said as he threw his cufflinks down on the coffee table. 

If she were any other woman, one that came from a plain or even slightly lesser background, Robert’s wealth and importance would have staggered her to silence. Be it as it were, she only felt pity. Robert was trapped in a life of his father’s design, made to play the part of the dutiful son in a way that was unnecessary—and he didn’t even know it. She hated to think that even her, standing there as she was, had happened because his father had said so.

“Well,” Jane continued on, stepping down from the entrance. “This home isn’t an empire and I’m not an employee. Not in any conventional sense, anyway,” she teased. 

Robert huffed out a laugh as he bent down and grabbed her tumbler off the coaster. He filled it again, the amber liquid sloshing around without ice as he brought it to his lips. Wincing at the sting of the unmixed alcohol, he wiped his mouth unceremoniously on his sleeve. 

“You know, I always knew I wanted a wife so rich she didn’t need me at all,” he told Jane soberly. “That way if she ever did want me, it would be of her volition. It feels silly, saying it out loud, but my father warned me that I would be sought out for the wrong reasons if I didn’t watch out. So I developed a list of things to look for, and I picked rich and I picked intelligent. I didn’t figure anything beyond that.”

“Why? Wouldn’t a fool be easier?” Jane took the empty glass from his hand and sat it back on the table. Her lips hadn’t transitioned out of their smile. “They want very little—desire less than anyone, I’m told.” 

“I know you thought I was foolish,” he told her. She went to protest but he shook his head. “It’s alright. Perhaps I am, in a way. A lot of men would’ve been very angry with you for the way you spoke this morning. For what you said.”

“You were angry,” she recalled. 

“No. I was nervous. Well, maybe angry, but only with myself.” His eyebrows pinched together as he looked down, regarding her. “Composure has been everything to me, you see, and to my father, it ranks higher than any religion ever could. Ever since I was a kid, it’s been drilled into me how important structure and self-control is. My father has told me time and time again how fatal it would be if I were to do something to damage our reputation. He’s probably said some version of that to me more than he’s ever told me he loves me.” Robert paused for a moment, mulling his words over. “What you did this morning threatened all of my life’s training and practice, and it did frighten me. But I’m sorry I took it out on you.” 

Jane couldn’t resist stepping forward and intruding in his personal space. He didn’t move, letting her invade. “You know,” she began, “I used to get terribly confused between apostles and apostates. At times I wanted to be both. You’ll have to forgive me for my heathen behavior, because I don’t think I’ll ever get it right..” 

Amusement spread across his face, brightening it. “You could ruin me,” he told her. 

“I wouldn’t. I’ve got a vested interest in your personal growth, Mr. Fischer.” 

Her mouth parted slightly and her eyes shifted up to his lips. Robert was getting nearer, allowing himself to be tempted, swayed. He smelt warm and rich, like the expensive, woodsy cologne that lingered in the bathroom for hours after he’d left. She wanted to taste it on his skin. Dipping his head so his mouth aligned with her own, he closed the gap between them and finally kissed her. 

Jane could feel the beat of his heart against her palms as she slid his suspenders off his shoulders. Robert’s hand fell upon her lower back, while the other curved delicately around her jaw. She helped him remove his belt and he sighed happily against her lips when she tugged impatiently at his dress shirt, freeing it from his slacks. 

The more eagerness she displayed in her undressing of him, the happier he got, as if he’d finally come to understand she was more than a trophy he could appreciate, but not touch. He took off his undershirt and peeled it over his head, and her fingers roamed appreciatively over his skin. In the light coming from the large, open windows in the living room, it was easy to make Robert out—to see him. Freckles and moles unbeknownst to her appeared before her invitingly. Overwhelmed, or perhaps overjoyed, Jane kissed along the width of his exposed chest. 

Robert laughed happily, guiding her mouth back to his. “I think I’d like to hear that story about your all girls school and the lack of male appendages now, if you don’t mind,” he told her between kisses. 

Her fingers undid the button on his trousers and she grunted in amusement. “I can show you,” she whispered. She kissed his bottom lip and he nodded.

“Please.”

Robert began to undo the zipper at the back of her dress and she turned against him, aiding his efforts. The dress slid easily off her frame. His warm lips kissed the curve between her shoulder blades and his hands pulled her hips flush against his, so that she could feel his excitement forming against her. It was a far cry from the tepid foreplay they’d engaged in before. 

She laid her head back against his chest and put her right hand over his. “I’m sure you probably know the trick.” Jane guided his hand to the waistband of her underwear. 

His fingers fanned out beneath hers. “I think I might,” he answered.

Their hands worked together, moving beneath the thin fabric of her underwear. They brushed past her pubic hair as his lips pressed warm kisses to the hollow of her neck. It all felt so good, so solid and satisfying, she nearly shuttered against him—and he hadn’t even really touched her yet. 

As one of his fingers dared to brush lightly against her, Jane gasped softly. A gush of wetness developed suddenly between her thighs. He held her body against his and she let go of his hand, giving him freedom to do as he wanted. His tongue laved against her skin as he began to part her with his finger.  

For all of his previous timidity in the bedroom, she had suspected that Robert was not beside himself when it came to pleasure. Now, she knew it. He teased at her entrance, circling over it as his open mouth slid hotly across her jaw and found her lips once more. His tongue pushed into her mouth as his finger dipped experimentally into her cunt. 

They were no longer concerned with offending one another—or at least, they had forgotten that they had once been. He slid another finger into her cunt and swallowed a mouthful of her moans while he curled his finger inside of her. He brushed against the spongy top of her walls, and relished in the collapse of her body into his. 

“And who taught you this?” he asked warmly against her mouth. 

“Another girl,” she said, voice strained. “She…she told me about it. How to do it.” 

He tucked his chin over her shoulder, watching the unrestrained wiggling motion of her hips. “Have you done it often?”

Her fingers stroked up the back of his neck and she grabbed a fistful of his hair. She threaded her fingers through his waxen locks as he continued to work her open.“Often enough,” she panted. She could hear him swallow. 

“Lately?” 

“Nothing this good,” she whimpered, pressing her hips back into his as he drove his fingers inside of her. He huffed against her shoulder and began unlatching her stockings with his free hand. 

“And do you do this often?” she asked, attempting to collect herself. 

“Mm?” Robert kissed along her shoulder. “Touch you?”

“Use your fingers on women.” 

She could feel the curve of his smile against her skin. “Not often enough. And never—“ He brushed the pad of his thumb over her clit “—like this.” 

Jane reached behind herself to grip at his hip. “Oh, Robert!” she gasped, surprised by his sudden bravado. His laughter was light and she wanted desperately to keep drawing more of that sound out of him. Her hips pressed back into his own and she felt the hardened outline of him on her ass. 

He’d been born in Australia to an English mother and an Irish mother, so he’d not been circumcised. She liked that about him. Mostly, really, she liked that she got to know it about him. To Jane, there was an eroticism to knowing him like that. Whatever seas separated them, she knew the shape of his cock, how it felt, how it looked. 

Robert eased her underwear down her thighs, his movements reeking of earnest desperation. “I’m sorry,” he said, kissing her shoulder again. “I know this hasn’t been an entirely satisfactory marriage. We’ll—“ She felt him shuffle behind her and after a quiet second, his cock was brushing against her backside. “—work on it.” 

Jane wanted to give him everything: to allow crudeness and impropriety and fault, to show him that indecency could be beneficial. With a foolish sense of disregard, she said, “Fuck me, Robert, just the way you want.” She could feel his moan in his chest before it rose to his throat. 

Robert took her seriously, a thing he’d neglected to do many times before, moving her to the edge of the couch and turning her around to face him. He held her up by the arms, and, looking at her in the eyes, he seemed to soften slightly. His lips brushed lightly over hers and his cock jutted on his stomach between them. 

“You make me nervous,” he confessed, laughing self-consciously. “Always have, even that first night. I thought you didn’t like me at all, truth be told. I found I was trying to impress you, and I’d never done that before. You wore those little white gloves—“ He paused and took himself in his palm. Jane watched as he stroked himself lazily, the tip of his cock becoming exposed. He was awfully close to her cunt. Her breathing seemed to halt. “—and a pink dress that went down to the floor. You didn’t giggle or bat your eyelashes, or even so much as blink in my direction for too long. In fact, at one point you leaned in and let the man next to you light your cigarette. I couldn’t have been more entranced if I had tried.” 

Robert lined himself up to her cunt. She watched as the black of his pupils invaded the cool blue of his irises, and he pushed himself inside of her. It was a stretch at first, but one wholly desired by both of them. He panted softly against the bare skin of her shoulder, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She felt his shoulders move beneath her hands as he tugged her closer, pushing her so nearly off the edge of the couch that she barely sat on it at all.  

“I couldn’t understand you,” he continued, voice notably more strained, “I couldn’t understand your interest in me, couldn’t understand why you kept saying yes to seeing me again.” He pressed his mouth to the glistening column of her throat, brushing his thumbs against her warm cheeks. “And then one day, only a little after you had agreed to marry me, my father said that you were clever, dangerously clever, because now you were going to be the richest woman in the world and with a husband who wouldn’t say no to anything you wanted.” Robert’s eyebrows furrowed, accentuating the faint wrinkles between them. 

His nose traced against the curve hers, and he found his way back to her mouth. He hovered over her lips with his, and she exerted her patience by not lounging forward and kissing him. He continued speaking, his hips stilling against hers; she almost whined in protest. “How right he had been, after all.”

Jane’s fingers fiddled with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Your father wants you to be his goddamn puppet on strings, Robert. He knows nothing.” She guided his face towards hers, and she kissed him once more. He brushed his tongue against hers greedily as she parted her lips for him.

She could feel herself opening for him, the slick between her thighs doubling as he started moving inside of her again. Jane could hardly wait to say her next words to Robert. She pressed her cheek to his and they rolled off her tongue: “Before you came home, I inserted a diaphragm inside of myself,” she whispered, “which means you can do exactly as you like without worrying. And I do want you to take what you want. I want you to show me what you haven’t,” she encouraged. Her nails scraped lightly over his shoulders. 

Robert looked overwhelmed by what she was saying, his eyebrows still drawn together. She was worried that perhaps she’d crossed a line. But then he looked up at her and he smiled widely.  Jane was sure he’d never been so attractive. She swiped a thumb appreciatively over the dimple in his cheek as he began to rut into her. 

His thrusts were sharper now, so that she had to cling more tightly onto his slight frame to keep from topping over the couch. It felt incredible to be so full of him, and to be acting so unashamedly together like this. Nothing about their desire felt stolen or hidden. It felt open and free, like she had hoped it might come to be. 

They watched each other as he drove his cock inside of her. He was alight with his desire, red in the cheeks and lips, pupils wide, soft whimpers escaping as the sound of their sex began to become audible. The slap of skin hitting skin that filled the air between them made everything so much better for her too. She arched her back and he gripped onto her hip, trying to keep her still. 

She was surprised by the sturdiness of their bodies—by how much they could collectively give and take. He was fucking into her with force, as if seeing just how far he could go before he couldn’t anymore. Without meaning to, she began to moan; each time his cock jutted up inside of her, he hit parts of her she felt had never been accessed. She never wanted him to leave her, and so she clung to him. It only pleased her when he clung to her, too. 

Robert pulled her off the couch, moving so deftly that she didn’t have to react before she was laying flat on her back against the cushions of the couch. They barely fit on it together, but he managed, throwing off the back cushions quickly to accommodate them both. 

They took a moment. He smiled down at her, the same polite grin he had given her that first night, and she smiled up at him. 

“It’s my turn to show you something I was taught,” he said, his voice low. “Keep your legs down, okay?” She nodded, and he pushed up off her, bracketing her between his arms. 

She watched him curiously. His head hung and he maneuvered his body above hers. As he began to slip out from her, she gripped onto his arm. Robert looked up, chuckling. “It’s alright. This is how it’s meant to be at first.” He moved his body higher up hers, using the arm of the couch as a springboard. “See,” he told her, “When I push myself inside of you now, it’s going to feel good for us both.” 

“Where’d you learn this?” she teased. 

“Oh, same places you learned yours,” he answered happily, leaning down and kissing her fully on the mouth. 

He rocked himself upwards, simultaneously grinding himself onto her and thrusting in. Jane whimpered. “Oh,” she said, her body already so sensitive. She felt she could explode with the warmth of her want at any second and him now focusing his attention specifically on it only added fuel to that fire. 

Robert continued to rock forward, his cock thrusting slightly into her. They kissed and kissed, each one growing messier and less focused as they both became lost in their mounting desires. 

He was so looking at her as he never had before. There was a softness in his gaze as much as there was his desire. Robert rubbed himself against her with the express purpose of seeing how good it felt to her. 

She showed him; as her orgasm built inside of her, she shouted, “Yes, yes, yes” until she was arching up into him against her will and nearly shaking from the stimulation. Robert kissed every part of her as  she came on his cock. Every part of her felt on fire because of him. 

He plunged his cock more deeply inside of her as she came down from her orgasm, pressing his hand to her back so that she stayed slightly lifted off the couch and close to his body. She could tell he was close; his thrusts were becoming shorter and he was beginning to grunt against her. His hand crept up to her breast and she held her hand over his. “Oh, Jane,” he said, and that was it; his cock began to leak out into her. She laughed, proud and earnest and shocked. 

Robert collapsed into her body, and she was glad to have the weight of him on top of her. They felt so close like this. Her fingers carded through his sweat slicked hair, and she wondered whose heart was beating the fastest between them. 

His own laughter began to come out in soft peals. “I hope you do ruin me,” he panted. When she laughed, he added, “I really do, if what we just did was any preview of what that could be like.” 

“There’s a difference between ruining someone and love, you know?” She pushed back his hair, looking up at the high ceiling. “Though, for many it’s a fine line.” 

“Mm,” he hummed. “Well, you can be certain that I’ll be more agreeable to whatever you want to do to me from here on out, be it ruination or love.”

She smiled happily. “I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Fischer.” 

He looked up at her and for the first time, she saw playfulness in his gaze. “I hope you do, Mrs. Fischer, because I intend for you to feel the same about me by the end. We are going to be the richest, greediest, most in love people in all the world, if only in this home.” 

She didn’t think her smile could grow any wider. “I couldn’t want for anything more than that, darling. I really couldn’t.” 

Notes:

tumblr: pennyserenade

Chapter 5: money (that's what i want) (tom, the party)

Summary:

tom and reader are pragmatic about their situation.

Notes:

post the party, power dynamics, power imbalance, age gap (a little bit of a sugar baby/sugar daddy ordeal), pinv, fingering, greed of slightly biblical proportions, money hungry tom (as per usual), unprotected sex, mentions of drugs and alcohol, she doesn't make him better, capitalism jump scare, no use of y/n or you.

Tom liked these work mandated “cultural outings” best when the art part was blotted out by extravagance opulence, and tonight it certainly was: an arthouse gallery full of his money-hungry co-workers dressed in their most expensive apparel, looking at the pieces peppered throughout the gallery with distracted focus. He relished in the moneyed sounds of their champagne flutes being clacked against by their one million dollar bracelets and rings as they talked politely of all they intended to spend, obtain, and offer. 

Money was the language he spoke best of all, and this made these places familiar territory to him. It was somewhat curious, then, that the only person in the museum actually paying attention to the art pieces as she passed by them was the one that he had come to, as of late, tentatively refer to as his partner. He knew this, but he couldn’t bring himself to really care.

Wrapping an arm around her waist, Tom pulled her gently back into him as he stood behind her. He was happy to see that the perfume he’d given her months ago was finally on her skin, luxurious and smelling of vanilla. “Hey,” he told her, kissing up her neck. Patently ignoring those who turned to look at them, he added, words muffled against her skin, “What happened to not leaving my side, eh?”

She turned in his arms to look at him, smirking already. “Your company was boring. That’s what happened.”

The dark lipstick she wore on her lips tonight made him feel insatiable. He wanted to kiss it all off right then and there, but knew better than to act on the impulse; he figured his co-workers could only take so much. While they all openly admired and envied his ability to date someone like her—younger by half, prettier by miles—Tom had long suspected that they all thought this relationship was some midlife crisis that would sort itself out in time. 

And perhaps they were right. Theirs was an odd relationship and they both knew it. It was a thing borne of her necessity and his stupidity—or, his necessity and her stupidity, depending on who you asked. 

Months ago he had met her at one of their mutual friend’s book readings, and they had slept together that night because she had been introduced to him as “a budding writer.” He, having been made a cuck by a creative woman a year before, had been long craving a sort of revenge and when he saw the girl, hardly out of university then, he thought about what his ex-wife would think if she found out that he had fucked the younger, flashier version of herself. When he imagined the upset it might cause, how broken up to pieces she’d be to know he could fuck other people too, Tom felt good. So he did it. 

It was meant to be a one night fling, but Tom came to pity the girl because she was poor the way all budding writers her age tended to be. It began as a little thing: paying for the breakfast in the morning and the taxi home, and later, when he asked if she might like to meet up again sometime, the taxi back. Then, quietly - but obvious to anyone who knew them for more than an hour - Tom had begun to pay for a good deal of her expenses: her rent, her phone bill, the red satin dress that hugged her body beneath her leather jacket tonight. Hell, probably even the lipstick, too. If she was using him for simply money and he was using her simply for sex, it would be a considerably less complicated endeavor for them both. 

Tom rolled his eyes at her, but his lips curled up into an undeniable grin. “They probably wouldn’t like you too much, either, you know?”

“Oh, I’d certainly hope not,” she teased, moving out of his arms and on to the next painting. Tom lingered close behind her. He could sense that she was happy, even if she didn’t particularly like the people at the event, and he liked seeing her happy. It made him feel good. It was funny, how little effort it took on her part to make him feel that way. 

“We could skip the dinner,” he told her, just to see the faint lines around her mouth crease again. “I know you don’t want to go.” 

“I was really hoping you were going to say that. It’s Becca’s turn to cook tonight and I really wanted to see what she’s making. She’s gotten quite good at it ever since she started taking classes at the university.” Catching Tom’s lip curl up in distaste, she added, “What? Have you no regard at all for the proletariat anymore?”

“It’s got nothing to do with being poor,” he said humorlessly, “I just don’t want to hang out with your flatmates.” 

She had told him once—when he’d asked her about her flatmates’ often dismissive attitudes towards him—that they didn’t like what he stood for, or what he believed in.  When he had pointed out the fact that what he believed in—money, any way you put it—had benefited all in some form or the other, and that they never objected to his own when he bought them dinners or drugs, she’d shrugged. The conversation had begun and ended there. Tom knew the score, though: they were all okay with him being rich when he bought them shit, but besides in those specific instances, it was an offense.

In truth, he didn’t like them either, and never had. Even at first glance, he could tell they were the self-important artistic types that had marred his life when he’d been married to his ex-wife. 

“Let’s just go to mine, yeah? Order chinese.” He could hear the whine in his voice, but didn’t mind it, as it always seemed to soften her. One of his hands moved down lower on her back as he turned to look at the painting with her. Purposefully, he brushed his fingers over the top of her ass. She leaned her body into his. “I don’t understand how you can stand here and look at this shit all night. It all looks the same to me,” he told her. 

“That’s how I feel about your…people. I couldn’t stand listening to them for more than five fucking minutes. It was like watching the wild-life channel,” she replied. She didn’t sound disgruntled, though. She never did. “I don’t really want chinese.”

“What do you want?” he probed.

“Oh–” She considered it for a moment, her bottom lip jutting out. Then she grinned. “Hm…everything you’ve got, and the very best of it too.” 

He liked the way he wasn’t quite sure she was being serious or not. “So you’re coming over, then?” 

“I’ll have to think about it. I’m no class traitor, as you know.” 

He smiled a fool back at her, forgetting for a moment the type of man he thought he wanted to be. 

——

Her lace underwear was on his kitchen floor and her dress was up around her waist. Sat on the edge of his kitchen table, with his body between her legs, Tom had her just where he’d been wanting her. 

“Tell me you want my money,” he murmured against her cheek.  It amazed her at how gruff and demanding his voice could sound when he willed it. It was like a hidden power he stored away for moments just like these.

She dug crescent shaped indents into biceps, uncaring of the way it creased the expensive fabric of his suit. There was nothing she would not tell him when he asked for it like that. “I want your money,” she drawled, rubbing her nose against his. The quiet desperation etched into her voice was specific only to him, only to this. 

“I know you do, baby,” he teased. His fingers slipped beneath the band of her underwear. They both breathed in together as his fingers reached down and grazed along her clit. “My greedy, greedy money hungry girl. What would your friends think?” 

“Fuck,” she gasped, arching up into him. Her ass drew nearer to the edge—nearer to his body. Against her thigh, she could feel his erection beginning to strain against the fabric of his suit. Her fingers twisted up in the lapel of his coat jacket and she watched him. 

Tom’s eyebrows drew together. He looked solemn, but he wasn’t; it was how his face set, his natural way of being when he didn’t think about it. She liked it. It was far more genuine than whatever he put on around his fucking evil co-workers. 

He rubbed two fingers along her cunt, eyes flickering up to catch hers as he did. The tease of his touch made her ache. “You didn’t answer me,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her shoulder as his fingers teased his fingers against her again. “Do you tell them you’re with me for money? Do you say you fuck me because I pay for your rent half the time? Do you tell them—“ He teased over her hole with his finger. His voice caught for a moment. “Do you tell them I’ve got a nice house to myself, and that I never say no? Do you tell them you need me to survive so they don’t hate you? Do you believe that, too?” 

He slid a finger inside of her. The stretch of it was overwhelming, but also not enough. Tom prodded the tip of it in and out of her, watching her carefully, proud to be in control. But there was not a hint of malice in his eyes, or in his voice. He did not care what she did, what she said, who she aimed to please, because he knew the truth. He was happy to be her moral qualm, the piece of complexity she and all of her self-righteous friends chewed on and made sense of in their myriad of self-righteous ways. 

He wanted to tell them money didn’t just make the world turn, money built the world. It was in their favorite pieces of art, in the theater they watched, in the universities where they learned to be so self-important and pompous. 

“Yes,” she whimpered, hoping it would encourage him to go faster—or to do more with his finger. It didn’t. He stilled his single finger inside of her and let her pulse achingly around it as if to prove the depth of her want. 

Aggravated, she reached between them and unlatched his belt. He let her as he kissed her, vaguely aware of the earthy sweetness on her tongue from the wine. He sighed against her. “You know, you drink 300 dollar wines carelessly when you’re with me.” He was so hard, he was surprised he could speak at all, let alone so clearly. His words became measured, slow. “You even taste like money right now, your dirty little thing.” 

She pulled his underwear down only enough to take his cock out. He watched wordlessly as she began undulating her hips, fucking herself on his finger as she had him in her hand. His composure began to slip when she nibbled at his bottom lip.

At times hated himself for how much her cleverness turned him on. Once he’d gotten hard reading one of her stories, not because it was erotic, or even because he understood it — he hadn’t. It was the simple fact that she’d thought it up. The idea of her sitting there, laboring over her laptop as he’d seen her do on the rare occasion he’d stayed at hers, whispering her own words back to herself, drove him crazy. Everything had all been too much for him. 

Tom withdrew his finger from her cunt. Before she could say anything in protest, he brought it up to her mouth. She wrapped her lips around it, her eyes connecting with his as her cheeks hallowed as she sucked. She swirled her tongue around him, tasting her own self, her eyes dark and proud as they fixed on him. How pathetic he must’ve looked, watching her. 

She was not like his ex-wife, as much as he’d thrilled about the idea of it when he met her; Marianne had been pragmatic, posh, not the sort to fuck older men until much later in her life. She’d always had a leg up in everything, from her career as an artist, to her relationship with him, to her general position in life. People loved her: loved to hear her talk, to see her move, to see her smile. The world was Marianne’s to take. Tom felt on equal footing with this woman, only out of his depth in ways that didn’t matter very much to him. 

Not that it meant she was worse than Marianne. She wasn’t. Not at all.

She guided his cock inside of her, both of them conveniently forgetting that he wasn’t wearing any protection—a fire they both liked to play with. She hummed around his finger as his cock stretched at her entrance. When he jutted forward, easing the rest of himself inside of her, the table groaned beneath them, unable to take the strain.

They felt intertwined, one of her legs wrapped around his ass, his finger sat, heavy, on her tongue, their bodies pushed so close together that he could feel her hardened nipple through the fabric of his dress shirt. She gripped onto his suit jacket and he began to thrust inside of her, his hips focused on making her emit the delightful little moans she could never seem to stop, even with a finger in her mouth. 

The heat of his suit was becoming a bit much, but it paled in comparison to the pleasure he was getting from driving himself, unsheathed, into her. She was the wettest she’d ever been and she seemed nearly as reluctant to let him go as he was to let her go. Tom buried his head into her neck, and let his finger slip from her mouth in favor of clenching up the fabric of her dress around her waist. He laid his head against her chest and watched as his cock plunged in and out of her cunt. She clenched around him again. 

“So good at being money hungry,” he purred against the dampening skin on her chest. She tasted like salt. The words were coming out of his mouth before they were thought now, things deep inside of him. “So fucking wet and horny just from admitting it. Because you like fuckin’--” He clenched his jaw as she began to match his pace, pushing herself down onto him. “You like winners. You like to be taken care of.”

“Fuck,” she panted. One of her hands ran through his hair, uncaring of the way sweat was beginning to bead through the dark locks. She held the back of his neck, fingers burying just beneath the collar of his shirt. Tom lifted his head to kiss her on the mouth and caught the words, “I’d be anything for you,” against his top lip. 

He gripped onto her hips with bruising intensity. His mouth began to go dry as his thrust became shorter and more sporadic. “Touch yourself,” he demanded. She did as he told her, her hand wedging between their bodies. 

He attempted to delay his thrusts, hoping to stop his quickly rising orgasm, but it didn’t help. Seeing her reach between them and take what was hers without any sort of shame or delay, seeing the way the pleasure etched across her face, her chest, her whole body, feeling the way it traveled through her as she tightened around him…it was one of the finest drugs he’d ever been on. Irreplaceable. Devastating. He didn’t care about anything at that moment but her, but what they were when together: A blaze of desire, two bodies and people who understood what they wanted and needed, and then took it. 

“Tom,” she whimpered, “Oh, fuck. Tom, you feel so…Oh. Fuck, I’m gonna cum.”

“Fuck. Yes.” He clenched his eyes shut. All he could feel was her: the wetness, the warmth, the clench of her cunt around him as he began to pull out. His fingers wrapped around the back of her neck as his cock twitched and his cum drippled down the inside of her thighs, dangerously close to her cunt. He dipped his head, and accidentally kissed her teeth, catching her mid-moan. He didn’t care, though; every part of him was in a state of unbridled ecstasy. 

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. Tom laid his head against her chest, listening to her heart pound in her chest. His free hand rubbed soothingly over the hip he’d been gripping viciously at. 

“And they say the best things in life are free,” he joked against her lips.

“Mm,” she laughed, running her fingers through his unruly, sweat-damped hair. “I think sometimes two things can be true at once.”

His nose nudged against hers affectionately. Kissing her on the lips again, he said, “No you don’t. But that’s okay, because I wouldn’t want you to.”

“No?” Her eyebrows furrowed. “You wouldn’t want me to want you even if you were poor?”

“No, because then you wouldn’t be very clever.”

“But I’m poor, and you like me.”

He laughed, swiping his thumb against her cheek. “I consider you an investment. In my line of work, those are just as good when the stock is promising.”

She shook her head, grinning. He kissed her again, once, twice, three times, liking the way he could feel her smile curve his lips. “You’re odd, Tom,” she said. “Which is why I like you only for your money.”

He laughed too, his finger sliding the thin strap of her gown down her shoulder. His eyes flashed down as her breast became exposed. “Mm,” he hummed, arousal forming already in his groin. “Just as I expected. Think we should fuck again in a little, just so we can both get our worth.”

She nodded in agreement, guiding his hand down to her nipple. “Yeah, and then you’ll order us an expensive dinner and snort your worth in coke, I’m sure.”

His eyes darkened, the blue of them drowned out by his pupils. “And you’ll like it, because money is what you want.”

“Because money is what I want,” she echoed.

Chapter 6: please please me (jackson rippner)

Summary:

sick of waiting for you to return his endless favors, jackson finally says please--at least, in the nicest way he knows how.

Notes:

explicit content, dubcon, noncon, coercion, oral sex (male receiving), slut shaming, jackson's crazy inner dialogue, toxic dynamics, slight innocence kink

This wouldn’t do anymore, Jackson had decided. He hated to be the bad guy - especially to you, such a darling little pawn in the grand scheme of things - but it wasn’t his fault you were so goddamned selfish. 

He’d been perfectly attentive since the moment you’d been assigned to him. In fact, he’d gone as far as to develop every trait you said you looked for in a man on that pathetic little dating website you signed up for: Polite. The perfect amount of introverted. Drank only at social events, didn’t smoke, owned one cat, took interest in topics such as: feminism, fiction, pop music. To put it short: he’d worked hard to become the sentimental, pussy eating man of your dreams. 

You, on the other hand, weren’t nearly as generous. At first, he had chalked it up to your nerves. It had taken longer than usual to infiltrate the distrusting bubble you lived inside; charm and simple gestures of affection didn’t work half as well on you as they had on the others. You wanted time. He had liked it in the beginning. It felt like a brisk walk after running marathons. But then it became tedious. You had let him touch you over your bra on the fourth date, but he had to wait an entire month and a half before you’d actually shown him your cunt. 

But once you had let him inside, you really didn’t want him out of it. God, you what a whore you could be—which didn’t surprise him. The demure types typically were; he liked them best for precisely that reason. What did surprise him was the fact that you didn’t like to return the favor—not half as enthusiastically as he did it for you, anyway. The timid way you had wrapped your mouth around him those few times, while he’d sat rigidly, as not to frighten you, paled in comparison to what he did for you, day in, day out.  

No--he wouldn’t take it anymore. With his mouth still coated in your fresh slick, Jackson crawled up your body and pressed his lips hard on your mouth. He’d abandoned his usual politeness: rubbing it off on his shirt first because he’d even considered you might be too much of a prude to want to taste yourself. Now he thought you might need to be taught about the things you really did want; he didn’t think you knew. 

“I think it’s my turn,” he told you. His eyes flashed dangerously, daring you to protest. Your fingers grabbed onto the side of his billowy button up and confusion drew your eyebrows together. You masked it with a smile. “Hm?” you asked.

As if you hadn't heard him right. He wanted to wrap his hands around your pretty little neck. 

“Oh, please,” he chuckled. Jackson tried to keep calm as he spoke, to force his tone to be excruciatingly patient. He was so close with you, and he couldn't risk losing it all over this. He cupped your face in his palms. “I don’t have to spell it out for you, do I, baby? I mean…” He motioned down his cock, which had long ago begun to strain against his slacks. “Listen—I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining here, but I’ve been on my knees a lot more than you’ve been on yours.” 

He sensed the shift inside of you--could see the way you were beginning to cower already. Any other night, he’d be placating, reassuring you that it was okay—that he could wait—but he couldn’t do that anymore. It wasn't good for you. You wouldn’t be the first person he had to talk into doing something he knew was good for them. Besides, he was sure you’d come to see it his way. You were smart when you weren’t under his thumb. 

“You’re gonna suck my cock because you want to make me happy, don’t you, baby?” he spoke again, voice even. He watched you try to read his face. The mask had begun to fall and what was left was unfamiliar to you. How worried you looked, his pet. “Don’t you?” he repeated with more insistence. 

“Yea,” you croaked. The word had been lodged in your throat. 

Jackson smirked. “On the ground, then” 

He directed you down as his belt slipped through the loops of his pants. You were better trained than he gave you credit for. Even with the hesitancy - or was it cold, hard fear forming? - in your eyes, you still did what he said. And my god, what a sight you were, kneeling at the side of the bed. 

With his palms pressed flat against the bed, Jackson leaned back on expectantly. “Take it out,” he guided. 

You hesitated. “Jack-”

His responding smile was terse as his eyes darkened. He was quickly finding out of the infinite pool of patience he thought he had for you did have its bottom. “Fine, I’ll start,” he said, tugging himself free.

You were about to work up the courage to tell him you couldn’t do it, as you had many times before; he could see it in your eyes. 

“I’m trying to be patient—“ He paused to stamp out the hardness that was forming in his voice. He knew it would do no good, frightening you. It would only make everything much messier than they needed to be. He continued on, conscious of every word. “—but this is just silly. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“But Jack-” you stuttered. You watched his jaw clench beneath the surface of his freckled skin. He looked a little frightening, his blue eyes all iced over as he stared down at you. 

He gripped your chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting your head up to look at him. While his hold on you wasn’t anything you couldn’t escape from, you were aware, for the first time, how strong Jackson could be. “It makes me feel good to make you feel good. Don’t you want to make me feel good?” he asked. 

“But I wasn’t any good at it before,” you protested.

“You didn’t try,” he insisted. “Try.” 

“Jackson, really—“

“Do it,” he spat. The last of the kindness had ebbed out of his voice. Forcing an encouraging smile back onto his lips, he said, much more lightly, “Please.” 

You wrapped one of your hands around the base of his cock, but hesitated still. Jackson let out an irritated sigh before you found the courage to bring your lips down around the head of his cock finally. 

Like before, it lacked a certain enthusiasm, but he wasn’t going to complain just yet. The hot, wet warmth of your mouth felt so good after having craved it for so long. All he could do to restrain himself was fist your white sheets in his hands, and watch you as did exactly as he had told you to do. Your eyes shifted up to look at him, always hungry for approval. Jackson tried to motivate you with a dazed smile. It was more genuine than he liked, given that you were hardly doing anything. 

He let your bop up and down, liking the way he was disappearing inside your mouth. There was beauty in the unskilled way you took him in—you were artless in your approach, eager to please. Innocent, in a way. You couldn’t take too much before you got nervous and came back up. He’d was certain he'd probably experienced better in high school, but he didn't care; he'd wanted it so badly from you. Already, he could feel the mounting arousal rising inside of him.  

He allowed one of his hands to sneak up your shoulder, resting at the place just where your neck began. His thumb moved over the soft exposed skin there, soothing you. His voice was low, just slightly above a husky whisper as he said, “You can do more, baby. I know you can.” 

Jackson moved his fingers up the side of your neck before he brushed his thumb delicately over your jaw. His lips parted in a soundless moan as you took more of him in than before. “That’s it,” he said, gasping, “Use your tongue—ah, fuck, yes.” His fingers twisted up in your hair, losing consideration. “Faster.” 

You were trying, he could tell, but he felt you had more in you than this. He’d seen how depraved you could get, after all. Just last week you’d let him fuck you into you the with no condom. The entire time you were begging for it, arching up and moaning while he pushed your face down into the bed. You liked being a whore. Week by week he’d been unraveling you, finding you out, bit by bit. 

He cradled your neck. For a moment, he saw the flash of awareness in your eyes—could see the obstinacy begin—but he held on tighter and said, “Remember when you sat on my face? When I let you do what you want to me?” 

With that, you let your resistance go. He wasn’t doing much more than you had been, after all, only guiding you down the wet line you had already created on his cock, only slightly faster. Still, your eyes kept darting up, nervous. 

He watched as a dribble of saliva escaped out of the side of your mouth and traveled down his cock. He knew then he couldn’t resist any longer. You felt so fucking good, so warm and wet, and he needed more. No, he deserved it. His other hand came up to your head and he pushed you down, making you take all of him. He hit the back of your throat with his cock. Surprisingly, all you did was gurgle.

Your nails pressed harshly into his thighs and you jerked back, slipping off of his cock with a crude pop sounding. Betrayal flashed in your eyes. He expected as much. 

Jackson ran his thumb along your glossy bottom lip. “I didn’t say you could stop,” he chided. 

“You…I just wasn’t expecting you to do that to me,” you stuttered. Startled tears had begun to gather in the corners of your eyes. “I’m not good at this, Jackson.”

He frowned, playing along with your little pitiful act. His tone became softer. “I didn’t do that because it felt bad. You’re were getting pretty fucking good, actually.” His cock jutted against his stomach, impatient as he felt. He stared blankly at you before adding, “I don’t really want to say please again, honey. You’re not gonna make me, hm?” 

Though it wasn’t necessarily a question, he appreciated the obedient nod you gave him. 

Taking his cock in his hand, he held it up for you to put back in your mouth. Your hands rested against the tops of his thighs and pride swelled in his chest as you took him back inside of your mouth. Your fingers pressed into his legs, but you didn’t jerk back as he guided you down again.

He wanted to cum in your mouth, to make you swallow it all down, because he knew you would. You’d do anything for him, probably. He only had to push you into it, sometimes, but wasn't that the way of relationships?

His orgasm was quickly building inside of him, only spurred on by the way you had begun to flick your tongue against the underside of his cock again. Jackson let go of your neck, grasping onto the sheets behind him once more. Tears began to slide down your cheeks. He wiped one away with his finger as you bobbed down on him.

Your nails dug deep into the skin of his thighs, but he didn’t mind; the stinging sensation only made what you were giving him all the better, mixing the lines between pleasure and pain in a way he knew you yourself would come to like eventually. 

You began to take him so deeply that you gagged around on his cock, but you didn’t stop. You were doing so much better than he anticipated now. He could feel the rise of his orgasm in his groin, could sense the way he was about to lose all control, but he said nothing. He didn't want you to know.

Jackson hissed and his cock twitched inside your mouth. Hot ropes of his cum spilled down your throat and he could see the surprise register in your glassy eyes as you looked up at him, but he didn’t care. He deserved this. He had been so patient. So good. “Fuck,” he moaned, his head lolling back as you took the last of his cum.

You rose quietly off of him after, wiping your mouth against your hand. Jackson liked knowing the way you looked—hair mussed, eyes watery, lips puffy and red—was because of him. It was so rare you weren’t in tiptop shape. 

“Was that good?” you asked weakly. Your voice was gravelly and he couldn’t help but smile, knowing how deep his cock had been inside of your throat just moments before; it was probably sore.

“Yeah," he nodded, smiling proudly. "I told you you could do it, didn’t I?” he beamed. 

The hollow look in your eyes as you nodded and smiled back at him only added to his heady elation. He leaned forward and kissed you on the lips once more. He could practically feel the way you molded in his hand now. “Mm,” he hummed, “that’s my good girl. Practice makes perfect.”

Chapter 7: baby's in black (thomas shelby)

Summary:

tommy may be back from the war in body, but reader finds he's certainly not back in his mind.

Notes:

explicit content, angst, unprotected sex, fingering, pinv sex, tommy is kind of mean but in an unsexy way, talk of war, ptsd, talk of pregnancy. don't worry tommy does NOT die.

“I think I love you,” she tells Tommy, all in one breathless go—and, like a match set to a candle wick, the emotion begins to flicker alive in the pupils of her eyes.

Tommy had once pushed her down into a puddle and made a mess of a favorite frock her mother had made her, simply because she had called him a wicked little bastard for jumping out and scaring her. While they are long past pushes in puddles, he is certainly no less wicked. He holds her head between her hands, voice like gravel as he tells her, “That’s just the gin talking, love.”

She steps back and glares at him. Despite his flippant remark, he looks devastatingly solemn. The sight of him is sobering. She swallows the well of emotion gathering in her throat, and reminds herself that his callous nature is merely his form of affection, lowly as it is. This is what they were taught was love. She exists in the inky dark of his life, bundled in the warmth of his bed, and he protects her in the day. That’s better than love, in fact. Worth more.

He wipes away one of her tears with the pad of his thumb. “None of that, eh,” he hushes, bringing his lips to her face. He kisses the side of her lips, a move so tender she nearly flinches.

Tommy guides them to the cot in the corner of his room, his palm sprawled on the small of her back. She’s wearing almost nothing—a shabby black cloth of a nightgown that allows him to see everything beneath the flickering light of the candle on his night-stand. He pushes her up to his pillow and kisses her as his hand eases up the sides of her thighs. His fingers are cool. “Please, Tommy,” she pleads, putting her hands over his own. “Don’t touch me like that if you don’t mean it.”

He kisses her again, once, a frown settling on his lips as he pulls back. “You’re not being right in the head,” he says. His hands don’t move from her body. Tommy leans closer to her. When he kisses her again, she sucks his bottom lip into her mouth, and he growls—a rich vibrating noise that inspires her to dip her hand beneath his shirt, fingers sprawling out across his warm skin to push him closer to her body.

Dropping his head to her chest, Tommy latches onto her nipple through the cloth of her gown. She whimpers beneath him and he moves his attention to the other one. All the fury about how he treats her clashes drowns itself in her desire as he sucks harder, teeth scraping against her sensitive nubs. She arches up into his body, despite herself.

He has been fucking her like this since she turned seventeen and he realized, watching one summer night as some other young man drew his fingers up between her thighs by the fire, that she was becoming a woman as much as he was a man. Before the war it had been different. Better. That Tommy had been so giving, so promising, full of happiness even when it was bitter outside and nothing felt like it would ever be good again. This Tommy, the one that knocks at her door at all hours of the night, who tells her she doesn’t mean it when she says things like I love you and won’t look in her direction during the day—she doesn’t recognize him very well. Maybe he’s right: she doesn’t love him. It’s the other Tommy, the one who never came home, that she wants.

His hands reach between their bodies, drawing the fabric up above her waist. She knows she should stop him, to save herself from the indignity of his pity, but she can’t—she doesn’t want to. He’s more hers now, in this room, than he will ever be anywhere else. So, she lifts herself off the bed to take off her gown, and she throws it on the ground by his cot. Tommy watches her quietly, keeping his cool hands on her legs.

When she had found out that he had survived the war, she had wept for a week and promised herself if he ever asked her to marry him, she would. But it had become apparent to her, rather quickly upon his arrival home, that this Tommy had no intention of marrying. He had survived, sure, but something had died—something important. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with her own miseries, she was sure she would’ve mourned him the same as if he had died.

She pulls his shirt out of his trousers and urges him closer until his body is lying against her own and she can feel the warmth of him between her legs. Her fingers push back the tuft of hair that has fallen over his forehead, too tender a gesture, and she gives him a weak smile. “Word is that you’re the devil now,” she whispers. He looks at her as she etches her finger over his bottom lip. The pity has gone out of him. What’s left looks almost affectionate, but she knows better; they don’t call him the devil for nothing. Tommy’s only mending what he’s broken the best way he knows how.

“That so?” he replies. His eyebrow arches in amusement.

She nods her head. “You didn’t used to be so mean, Tommy.”

He doesn’t move or protest. Instead he presses his lips down to her chest, kissing below her collarbone. “You people expect too much from me,” he tells her. There’s no edge to his voice, only cool exhaustion.

The tip of his nose nudges up her neck and he presses wet kisses against the sensitive skin there. As he moves up her body, she can feel his cock stiffen. Tommy takes her chin in his hand and guides her mouth to his. Between their bodies, she makes quick work of unbuttoning his trousers, growing impatient. Her fingers brush against the hair below his belly button. He parts from her, strings of saliva still connecting their lips, and he pushes his trousers and underwear down.

She groans into his mouth as he kisses her again. Her fingers cradle his jaw, digging into his cheek. “Tommy,” she gasps. He feels warm, and she wants him so badly she would be ashamed if it didn’t feel so good to want it. It’s always been that way with him—ever since they were young. They had spent so many hours discovering each other, fucking in alleyways and barns and under trees, anywhere they could manage, so much so that most of her prayers at the time had really just been pleadings to God, asking Him not to give her children. And every month her blood came. Most of the time they fucked through that, too, but that’s why she kept going to church; she felt heard, not punished. She’s not so sure she’s been spared now, though—Tommy is his own sort of punishment.

As his finger traces a path down her torso, her eyes roll back and she can’t help the moan that escapes her. He has a way of touching her that’s unlike anything she’s ever felt before. There’s always been an angry storm inside of her, violent and cruel from all the years she’s been made to endure, but Tommy quiets it when presses his mouth to hers and opens her up with his fingers. He quiets it whenever he’s near, really—especially when he’s gentle.

“You don’t love me,” he tells her again, voice even. Between her legs, he brushes his fingers over her cunt—touches her everywhere but where she wants him to most. Her stomach sucks in from the sheer anticipation of it, and gooseflesh forms all over her upper thighs.

She can hear him breathe beside her, small, focused breaths as he touches her. Her other hand reaches up so she can feel him; so she can know he’s there and real. Tommy leans into her, allowing it. “I wouldn’t be a good husband to ya,” he continues. His voice is so quiet—just barely a whisper. She feels as though the temperature in room has dropped twenty degrees. Probably it has. Nights have been so cold these days. “I’d lie to you and never be faithful,” he says to her.

His fingers prod teasingly at her entrance and her hands wrap around the back of his neck as if to prepare for it. There’s no words for her to say, nothing for her to do but feel. Tommy enters one finger, watching her. She opens her eyes and they stare at each other. He kisses her again, running his tongue against the back of her teeth as he adds another thick finger. The stretch of it is a lot, but it’s not unwelcome. “You’re to have a good husband. I’ll make sure of it. He’ll…he’ll give you children with your—“ Tommy kisses her again, pushing his fingers in and out slowly, “—eyes and your nose. Your good sense. He’ll know just what to do with ya.” He touches his nose to hers. “If he’s mean to you, I’ll fucking kill him. But then, I think you’ll likely beat me to it, won’t you?”

He removes his fingers from her when he thinks he’s got her slick enough, and he wipes them carelessly on the sheets beside them. Tommy has never felt so far away from her. She holds onto him, half afraid he’ll disappear into the dark if she doesn’t. “Oh, Thomas, you’re so fucking stubborn,” is all she manages.

Tommy takes himself in his hand. She feels him beginning to stroke himself before she sees it; the jerk of it shakes the bed slightly, and she sits up on her elbow to watch. She knows he’s right—he will be a bad husband—but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want him anyway. It aches her to think of any other woman taking his name and being his wife—of any other woman getting to him like this, cock in hand and beautiful, his light eyes infinitely kinder as they look up at her watching.

Tommy’s cock is wet at the tip, leaking pre-cum, and he swipes his finger over it. “Fuck,” he mumbles. She parts her legs for him and he takes the invitation; Tommy crawls upwards, so that his cock is at her entrance and his stomach is almost pressed against hers. She smiles at him, a thing she can’t help but do, and he looks as sorry about it as she feels.

Tommy’s cock edges in slowly, carefully, and her hands wrap around his back. It is cold in his room; the frigid air touches everywhere where he doesn’t, and she’s grateful for the way his body shields her from it, drawing close. As he bottoms out, he kisses her again. “I won’t abandon you,” he whispers. “I know that doesn't mean much to you, but it’s all I can give you now.”

She pulls his hips, wishing he’d move inside of her and stop talking. She wants him—wants him enough to just about plead for it. But he doesn’t make her. He begins to move, and beneath them the shitty little bed creaks. They don’t care. Tommy puts his hands beneath her back, so that he can guide her onto his cock as he pushes inside of her. She feels as though they begin and end in all the same places—that his desire is her own, warm and thick, dividing her up in the best way. Other men don’t fit in this way.

He flips them over so that he is lying on his back, his head on the pillow, and she is on top, exposed to the cold. Their hands intertwine, a natural instinct, and she rolls her hips, pushing herself up on his cock and then sliding back down. Tommy groans, a delicious, masculine sound that causes slick to pool between her legs. It is with ease she continues to bounce up and down in his cock. Tommy watches her closely.

Their fingers squeeze each other’s hands and the cold around them lessens; their bodies create enough heat to distract them from the fact that it is winter, and that nothing lasts, and that everything has changed. They have done this in every place Small Heath would allow them, and in every season, and they do it well now. The desire begins to mount in her pelvis: with each stroke she rubs against his body, taking pleasure for herself. She wants to cum around him, to allow him to feel what he can do for her.

Tommy lets go of her hand to rub her back encouragingly. “Fuck, you’ve got the best cunt,” he tells her. She’s happy they kept the candle burning. In the flicker of it, she can see how the warmth has traveled to his face. “Fuck, and if you’re not pulsing around me like you’ve never had a cock in you before. M’gonna cum if you don’t stop it.”

“Good,” is all she manages, panting. A bead of sweat travels between her breasts. Her mouth begins to go dry and she feels so close to the edge. Tommy pinches one of her nipples and licks away the sweat before he wraps his warm mouth around the other.

It doesn’t take much more than that. As he flicks his tongue against her, she feels the burst of warmth radiate all over her body, coming out like an endless flood. Tommy presses her close to his body, nodding his head. Her moans come unabashedly, so that along with the creak of the bed and Tommy’s heavy breathing, there’s an annoyed rapt against the shared wall too. Tommy smirks but ignores it, pulling her down on his cock, hard. Her orgasm seems to go on forever, a tidal wave of pleasure.

Tommy cums inside of her, careless or forgetful, or more likely, both. In Small Heath there’s only so much pleasure to have, and it’s only right people share it. He will find her a blue eyed husband who won’t think to count the months if anything happens—a good, gentle man who will love the child and make sure their stomach never knows what it is to ache from hunger the way theirs have. He will find her a good husband, regardless, because he knows he can’t be it. He will find her a way out of the smog and the dirt and the poverty, will do anything for her, because he loves her too in the only way he was taught to do it: fiercely, ugly, love as a survival instinct. He can’t say it. It’s as if that part of him was killed, and he can’t seem to revive him. He’s cold there.

When it’s over, she cries. Tommy holds her, watching as the morning light begins to sneak up through the curtains. “It’ll be alright,” he tells her with a gentle certainty. But she still cries, and he knows that she cries for him—for what he was and what he can never be again. He lets her exhaust herself. When her sobs quiet down, he tells her again, “It’s alright.”

But she does not believe him, and rightly so. For the rest of her time in Small Heath, all three weeks of it, she will lie at the grave of a man who lives, and he will not know what to do, for he is a ghost in his own body. Something turns off in her, a part that had allowed her to survive for so long in such a terrible place. Later, when people ask about the blue eyed daughter named Vera, her prayer unanswered, they will believe it when she says the child’s father was lost in war—mostly because of how she believes it too.