Work Text:
The attic was a silent, sacred little place.
Dust floated in the slanting sunlight like falling ash, and old trunks covered in cobwebs lay forgotten under canvas sheets, hiding the kind of things Marcella's family probably thought they'd never need again. Forgotten books. Broken lamps. A cracked vanity mirror.
Oh, and in one box, wedged between faded yearbooks and brittle holiday cards, there were magazines and pulp paperbacks.
A certain ragdoll boy hadn't meant to find them.
He was only looking for a button that had come loose from Raggedy Ann's apron. They'd tugged too hard during one of their games as they had ventured the attic occasionally the night before, she had noticed too late and Andy didn't want her to worry. It's the least he could do. So, he snuck out of the playroom once there were no one but just him and the other toys in the house. Another long busy day for the family perhaps... and he's sure Ann would be delighted to see her brother had found her apron's missing button once Marcella's back home from school.
But instead of the button, he found something else.
A shiny, glossy cover with a half-naked woman sprawled across it, hips tilted, mouth open, fingers resting between her legs. Her eyes looked directly at the camera. At him.
Raggedy Andy froze.
It was a strange thing. He wasn't even sure what the woman was doing, but he felt it, deep in the enchanted stitching that shifted between his thighs, a low warmth. Not just in his body. In his chest. In his mind.
He flipped through the pages with slightly trembling hands. The women inside weren't dolls. But they were soft. Open. Their bodies offered like something precious, something forbidden.
The centerfold made his cotton insides shift uncomfortably.
They were bent over, looking back at the viewer, her lips parted in a moan. There were captions. Descriptions. Short stories even.
"He spread her wide and licked her until she cried out his name-"
"She rode his cock like her life depended on it-"
"Huh..." his head filled with cotton tilted slightly, an eyebrow lifted.
Andy didn't understand most of the words, but he felt the shape of them. A rhythm...?
He looked down at himself.
He had a bulge, not quite like a man's, but something there, enchanted into his lower half. Before, it had been just another detail.
A joke. An anatomical curiosity, but it pulsed with something unnameable.
Andy stared at the page again. His mitted handtips traced the curve of the woman's thigh. And without realizing it, his voice came out in a whisper:
"...Can I be like that? ...with Annie?"
He flushed at the sound of his own voice. Even in the lonely empty attic, he felt shame bloom in his cheeks.
But the questions wouldn't stop.
Could he do that with her...?
...would it feel good?
Would she moan like that, if he touched her the way they did in these smutty pulp paperbacks?
Could he press his mouth between her legs, the way the man in these dirty papers tasted his lover with so much devotion? Would she sigh, writhe, call his name?
He swallowed hard, he could feel himself starting to unintentionally crave it.
Not just the act... but what it meant. That closeness. That raw, flooding intimacy. That look in the lovers’ eyes right before they broke apart into each other.
He wanted to make Ann feel that way.
Not any doll. Not anyone else. Her.
His own sister.
Andy winced at himself as he shut the papers quickly, hands shaking, guilt and need tangled in his chest like a bundle of knotted yarn.
The thoughts didn't go away.
He closed his eyes, and no matter how hard he tried not to, he started imagining her looking at him like the women in those pages.
Not ashamed. Not afraid. But wanting.
Wanting him.
He glanced back at the magazine once more, as he whispered a question to himself:
"...Would she let me?"
Andy swallowed. His throat felt drier than ever despite being made of cloth. His mind started to let those vulgar, intrusive wants; to touch her in ways he shouldn't even know about. The want to make her feel good. A want to feel her... but not to take anything, just a want to give. A want to be with her in a way that means everything. That changes everything.
Does he love her that way? Has he always sort of also loved her that way...?
...Yeah. I do. I think I always have. I didn't know what to call it... not until I saw how they looked at each other in those weird papers... and now...
Now he can't stop feeling it and... wanting it.
Craving it.