Fluff Prompt #6 + Marc Spector Please!

𝐦𝐚𝐟𝐢𝐚 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞

summary: y/n has an event to get to last minute, so steve has to take care of his daughter at work. in the universe of this one shot (read before)

pairings: dad!mafia/gang!steve rogers x wife!reader

warning: none just fluff!

-

Today has just been a day. You have no excuse except  for the fact that it slipped your mind and when your calendar notified you, an hour and a half before the event started your mind began to scramble. 

Steve’s parents can’t watch Elysia because they have a date night. They offered to cancel, but you couldn’t ask them to do that. Natasha was out of town. You had even asked the babysitter, but it was too last minute for her. So, there’s one last option.

“Hey doll, you girls alright?” Steve smiles into his phone, happy to hear your voice. 

“Hi, baby” you beamed, brushing on highlighter while keeping a careful eye on your daughter. Elysia was chilled out on your bed, entranced in an episode of Paw Patrol.

 “Look, I’m really sorry, it slipped my mind, but I have an event to get to in a few. And there’s no one to keep an eye on Elsie. Can I drop her off to you?”

“Yeah, of course. I've been missing her a little extra today anyway.” 

You sigh in relief, “I love you, you’re the best” you tell him, sending a kiss through the phone. 

-

It’s at least twenty-five minutes later until your heels are clicking against the lobby’s marble floor. Elysia’s designer baby bag is slung over your shoulder and your two-year-old is sitting on your hip as the two of you walk to Steve’s office. 

You knock on the door twice, before you pull it open. As you enter, Steve’s head shoots up, then an affectionate smile graces his face at the sight of his favorite girls. 

“Daddy!” Elysia cheers with grabby hands towards her father. 

Steve walks over to greet the two of you; kissing Elysia’s cheek and neck, chuckling as she squirms because his facial hair is ‘ticklish’, before he brings her into his hold. 

And before you know it, Steve brings his lips down onto yours. All while removing the baby bag from your shoulders. When he pulls away, he’s whistling with ardor as he spins you to give himself a 360 of what’s his. 

Your body is flawlessly dressed in a customized cream suit with gold buttons. The coat wraps  around you to accentuate your waist and breast, your pants hug your ass perfectly. As the pants flare out as they go down your leg. He loves how the diamond necklace and earrings he bought as one of your push gifts make your eyes twinkle.  

Your cheeks heat up at the way he fawns over you. Many years later and you’d never get used to it. 

When he stops you, his hand tugs your body to his, “You look..exquisite” he husks, squeezing your hand. “Mommy looks exquisite, doesn't she?” he asks Elysia who responds with an exaggerated nod. 

“Look Quiz-it!” she garbles the tough word out

“Thank you, you two. But I have to head out if I want to make it on time.”

“Where are you headed anyway?”

“Maggie is throwing something for her launch,” you answer while fixing a boggle in Lys’ hair that held one of her space buns. “I promised I’d be there. I like this tie, it matches your eyes perfectly” 

Your hand runs over the patterned blue tie. You didn’t get to see him this morning, as you usually do. He slipped out before the sun even came out, with just a kiss to your cheek as his ‘see you later’ so he wouldn’t disturb your sleep. 

“Thank you. Drive safe and be safe, Joseph will be right behind you.”

You groan. He lavished the trait of overprotectiveness. There was one instance where you had begged and begged to roam free without anyone on your tail. It didn’t end well. 

“Non-negotiable, text me when you arrive safely” he reminds you, grasping your chin for a kiss. 

“Bye baby, I'll see you soon. Be good” you kiss her before pinching her chubby cheeks. 

As the door shuts softly behind you, Steve and Elysia are stood in his expansive offices hands up in a wave. “Looks like it’s just me and you, baby doll, are you hungry?”

“No” she responds.

“Okay, would you mind if daddy worked for a little bit more?”

“It’s okay” she lisps. 

-

Elysia is settled on her father’s lap, Steve’s phone in her tiny hands as she watches ‘The Princess and the Frog’. Occasionally her big eyes roam over the big screens on her father’s desk. 

With his little girl present, Steve isn’t able to complete any of his gruesome tasks, just the light stuff with no pictures or videos.

“Daddy?” Elysia calls for him, her head tucked back. 

“Babydoll?,” he answers, looking down. 

“I’m thirsty, do you ‘ave apple juice?” 

“Do I have apple juice? Do I-- are you kidding, how could you ask that.” while he throws his whole spiel, loving the wide smile on her face. His hand discreetly opens the mini fridge under his desk. It’s always packed with what she enjoys. He pulls out a juice box, and presents it to her like a magic trick. 

“Yay!” she giggles, clapping her hand in glee before she grasps the juice box in both hands eagerly, in turn dropping her father’s phone to the ground. “Oops” she murmurs at the sound of the clatter. 

“It’s alright, just remember to be careful next time” he responds, picking up the newest model. 

Some time passes before Elysia grows bored and begins to squirm and whine. 

He picks her up, placing each foot on his thigh. 

“What’s up, why are you so crabby?,” he coos, running his forefinger down the slope of her warmed up nose while the other hand holds her up by her waist. 

“Wanna play” she bounces her legs, pointing behind her. 

He sighs, checking his watch: 6:03pm. Under twenty minutes until his meeting. So, they play to her heart's desire. He has a few of her favorite things stashed away so he pulls those out after shrugging off his coat. 

Now, he’s sat criss-cross applesauce getting berated by his toddler and thankfully y/n has texted that she’s arrived safely. 

“No, daddy! I’m the chef.”

“Okay, okay. Can I order an orange juice and sandwich, please” he orders through the small window of her Little Tikes play kitchen. 

“Seven thousand dollars,” she tells him, hand out. 

“Prices are a little steep, don't you think?” he jokes, but forgets it’s his two-year-old he’s talking to. “Tough crowd,” he continues, before dropping the fake, blue credit card into her hands. 

“Hmm.” she hums while she thinks, “No monies. No food” she tells him this reproachfully, her eyebrows knit together as she drops the card in his hands. 

“What?” he gawks, “You’re gonna let daddy starve?” 

She sighs before dropping a banana into his palm, “Thank you, babydoll” he smiles, kissing her cheek through the screen as she giggles, her hard chef mask breaking through. 

“Daddy, I don’t wanna play any more.”

“Yea? What do you want to do?”

“Stickers! Stickers! Stickers!” she chants to a tune, walking around to her father. 

-

Against his will, Steve is still sitting on the floor and his toddler stands before him. One of her tiny fists holds a sheet of glittery Lisa Frank stickers while the other places them on his face.

“Cat or tiger?” she asks, bending her head down. 

“Tiger”

She beams, placing it on the middle of his forehead, then kisses it for good measure. 

There’s an incessant buzz in the air. His phone against his presidential, dark wood desk. He goes to it immediately to see it’s a call from Bucky, therefore noticing the time. He’s ten minutes late. Steve Rogers is never late. 

“Shit.” he mutters, ignoring the call to begin peeling off the stickers in a haste. 

“Bad word, daddy!”

“Sorry, baby, sorry” he responds in a haste, when he’s sure his face is bare. He pockets his phone, shrugs on his coat, grabs his binder, and picks up Elysia as he dashes to the elevator. 

-

“Hi uncle bucky! Hi uncle sam!” Elysia bounces at the sight of her god fathers, waving at the two as she walks by on her father’s hip. 

Steve walks in stoically, there was no way in hell he’d let his men enjoy him coming in flustered and out of sorts. Everyone was in attendance, and sat in their respective seats. When he begins to settle down and start the meeting there’s laughter in the air. 

“The fu--” he stops himself, taking a deep breath. “Would anyone mind letting me in on what’s so hysterical?”

‘The fuck are you clowns laughing at’ is what he really wanted to say. 

“You gotta..” Bucky stops to gather himself, a smirk on his face. “Got a little something there,” he points at his own jaw as a mirror. 

Steve sighs, attempting to find the bright, pink, glittery sticker on his face when his little one speaks up, “I’ve got it, daddy” she peels it off easily and places it on her own cheek. 

“Thank you, babydoll,” he kisses her hand before taking a seat at the head of the expansive table. Placing her on his lap and passing her a small bag of goldfish with her water bottle. Elys has pinky promised to be on her best behavior and Steve had promised that he’d make sure the meeting wouldn’t go as long as they usually do. 

“Okay. As you can see we have a special lady with sensitive ears joining us today. Please keep your language clean and appropriate, however hard that may be.” Steve dictates, taking a glance at every man in this room to not take his words lightly. 

The meeting drags on, they don’t have much of a choice to discuss some matters at hand. But these men are smart and know how to improvise…

“Uh, sunshine (Lloyd) was last seen at a recital (strip club) selling kool aid (drugs) to any of the girls that would take it. We assume it’s his way to sabotage the opening by… you know.” Tony flairs his hand around as a jester. 

Before Steve is able to respond, a smaller voice gets to it, “Daddy, I love kool-aid. Alot alot alot!” 

Steve chuckles at her cuteness. 

Throughout the meeting everyone is meant to talk over and ignore the children's songs emitting from Steve’s phone. And the light, cute voice that sings along to some of them. 

A pack of goldfish later with half a bottle of Elysia’s water. Steve keeps his promise to keep the meeting short, concise, and kid-friendly. Well-sorta, there was one slip up but Steve was quick to cover Elysia’s precious ears and stare down the incompetent imbecile.

He’s packing his things up, putting his notes and papers in order while his little girl giggles at her uncle Sam’s magic tricks: pulling a silver coin from her ear. 

It’s her favorite and will get a laugh from her every time. 

In no time, it’s just him and Ly descending via elevator. Steve has decided they both have had a long day, and going home early for once wouldn’t kill him. It was seven in the afternoon anyway, close to her bedtime. 

He knows she’s had a long day when one of her small arms is wrapped over his neck as her head is tucked against the side of his neck. 

He can’t lie that the thought of sleep sounds good to him. He knows you won’t be home till a little later. But he can’t until you’re home so he can cuddle into you as you both drift off. 

“We’ll be home pretty soon,” he kisses her forehead just as the elevator dings! 

-

“Okay,” Steve sighs as he enters through the familiar emerald doors, placing the baby bag onto the coat rack. His dress shoes are toed off with speed and just as quick he pulls off his baby’s shoes. 

He sets her down in the living room taking a seat on the couch.

“Daddy, I’m hungry,” she squeaks, walking over to the remote to bring to her father who understands her demand. 

“Does a PB and J sound alright?”

“Mmmm” she drones on, her hands rubbing against her clothed stomach. 

The sandwich is assembled at her request. Crust off the toasted bread and a little bit of honey drizzled on top of the peanut butter. 

Elysia sits on Steve’s lap as she nibbles on her sandwich. Steve is dressed down in just his slacks and wife beater; braiding Elysia’s hair in two as she watches ‘Little Bear’ and eats her sandwich.

He struggles to do so at first, until y/n’s voice swims through his head. Reminding him what he needs to do. 

As Lys chews and her father braids, she holds up half her sandwich in offer behind her. He smiles as he takes a small bite, smiling and moaning about how yummy it is and how thankful he is for her sharing. Then he kisses her cheeks, nipping in jest. 

Once he’s finished braiding Elysia‘s hair and Elysia is done eating her food. She scrambles up until she’s latching onto her father. Her arms are thrown around his neck while her legs clamber to wrap around him. 

Her cuddles are like sleeping sand to the mob boss. He rubs her back as he leans down parallel to the couch, his sock feet hanging off the arm of the couch. 

“I love you baby doll. Best thing to happen to me and your momma.” he whispers, placing three kisses to her forehead. 

“Love you” she slurs while her soft hand lands onto his cheek. 

Without even knowing, his eyes are shut as his breath evens out and his arm circles around his angel’s body to keep her from rolling off of him. 

-

It was a great time. You were happy you got to support Maggie on her big day, but you missed your husband and the rambunctious little girl you were graced to raise. 

You remove your heels, hissing as your sore feet hit the hardwood floor. The house is quiet as you toe into the house. You can see the living room light is on. You assume Steve has kept it on for you just as you do for him and it makes your heart sing. 

As you walk in, to shut off the warm lamp, your heart really does sing at the picture perfect image: The father-daughter duo are knit together as they step in dream land together. 

His brawny arm is wrapped around her body and his mouth is dropped open in a way you think is adorable. It makes the intimidating man everyone else sees morph into the wonderful, sensitive man you’ve married. 

They’re still dressed in their day clothes, but nothing could ruin the cuteness overload. 

You tiptoe towards the two, leaning over them as your hand runs through Steve’s hair, the other down his free arm. 

He startles awake and his grip tightens on Elysia a little bit, but his body relaxes once he sees it’s you and smiles. 

“Hey, seems like you two had a good day,” you whisper, your hand running over the braids Elysia adorned, those were not there before. 

“We did,” he puckers his lips, and you lean down to peck him. “How was your night, have fun?” 

His hoarse voice is like music to your ears.

“It was great. Missed you two a lot though. Thought of you and that sexy tie all night.”

He smirks at your shallow attempt, a glass box if you will. 

“Yeah? I’ll finish getting her to bed and then we can discuss my sexy  tie.”

“Perfect. Can’t wait,” you giggle warmly, kissing him one more time before you stroll to your shared bedroom. 

He watches the way you saunter away, and if it weren’t for his baby in his arms he’d probably tackle you right then and there. But with much restraint he’s up and on his way to Elysia’s bedroom. 

-

if you enjoyed pls don’t forget to reblog or give feedback <3

Half of You (Part 2) [Santiago Garcia x Fem!Reader]

PART 1 HERE

Word Count: 2k

Warnings: 18+ ONLY. Male masturbation. Language.

Summary: You accompany Santiago to his... self-love appointment.

A/N: this story is just pouring out of me. The response to Part 1 was so amazing, pls let me know if you like this and if I should keep going.

“You didn’t need to come with me.”

“I won’t be cumming with you.” You elbow him in the ribs over the lacquered pine armrests of the waiting room chairs the both of you are seated in.

“Ha ha.” Santiago rolls his eyes and fidgets his thumbs, tapping his heels on the short carpeted floor. 

“Are you nervous?” Your tone takes on a more concerned quality, you place your hand on his elbow and rub his arm with your thumb. This is a lot to ask of him. Far beyond the scope of normal friendly obligation. This isn’t helping you unload boxes on moving day, this is… cumming in a sterile cup to conceive a child. 

Santi nods. His eyes scan the room. “A little.”

You want to tell him that it’s okay, that he should relax, it’ll be over soon. That his nerves are partially to do with the fact he hasn’t ejaculated in 4 days (a tidbit of necessary information that you did not reveal to him in your dinner discussion). Instead your voice cracks when you tell him “you’ll do great!” 

He fixes a hard, stony stare onto you and you can’t help but laugh. 

“Oh come on! You’ve gotta be all pent up from not… you know. You’ll feel so good afterwards.”

Santi shakes his head, staring at his lap. “Remind me again of why I wasn’t allowed to jerk off for four days?”

“You can’t be serious.”

Santi’s eyes narrow on yours.

“Because of the sperm count!” You whisper to him, suddenly aware of the waiting room full of couples and solitary women. “The longer you abstain, the higher the count. If we want the IUI to work, then you gotta keep the count high.”

Santi sighs in defeat. “Yeah.”

“You were able to, right?”

“What?” 

“Abstain?” 

Santi’s brow furrows in incredulity. “Of course I abstained!”

“Just checking.”

“Listen, Vin. A man does not forget when someone tells him he’s not allowed to cum for 4 days.”

You definitely owe him another steak dinner. Maybe not at the same restaurant, but you make a mental note to secure a reservation once he goes to… his business. 

“Thank you.” You hastily whisper to him, patting his elbow.

He nods without looking at you. Still twiddling his thumbs, heels still rocking to and fro. 

“Garcia, Santiago!” A nurse calls from the station door. You rise with Santi.

“What are you doing?” He whispers gruffly at you as you sling your bag over your shoulder.

“I’m, coming with you, duh.”

“No you’re not.” He sets a hand on your shoulder. “You sit down here and wait for me. Or leave, go to Starbucks or something.”

You laugh and step towards the nurse. “Of course I’m going with you!” 

His eyes are wide but stern. 

“Sit down, Vin. This is a solitary activity, I’m pretty fucking sure.”

“I’m here for moral support!”

He shakes his head and places both hands on your shoulders. “Look, it’s weird enough that you tagged along to this appointment. Doctor Shepherd said it was just supposed to be me. Let me do this alone, right? Its a… it’s a fucking removed process! I—“

“Garcia, Santiago!” The nurse shouts again into the waiting room. 

You really don’t want to make this more uncomfortable for Santiago than it already is, and truthfully you hadn’t considered that joining him today would make things even MORE weird. So you acquiesce and sit back down, patting his lower back as he straightens up and makes his way to the station door. 

“Knock em dead!” You call out to him, earning a chuckle from the room of expectant mothers. A faint red flush creeps up his cheeks and he gives you the Greg Focker ‘I’m watching you’ eye-fingerpoint to which you wink at. He bites his bottom lip and shakes his head at you, pantomiming an “straight to the moon” honeymooner’s fisticuffs threat. 

He disappears behind the door and you sink back into your seat, rifling through the stack of magazines on the little table to keep yourself occupied for the next however-long.

~~~

“Garcia?” The nurse greets him dubiously, clipboard in hand.

“Yes.”

“Hmmm.” She scans the papers on her board and lifts a page, eyes darting back and forth before she drops them and, no shit, gives him a once over, tip to toe, while shaking her head. What in the fuck?

“Problem?”

“No. No, not at all. Santiago Garcia?”

“Yes.”

“No need for attitude, sir. Just making sure.”

Santi bites back the vitriol, nearly cracking his molars in the process. 

“Alright, mister Garcia” Even the way she says his name seems to be dripping with air quotes. What in the fuck? “You’re going to go into that room there where there are materials you can help yourself to. This is a sterilized cup, please don’t do anything to this cup other than catch the sample.”

“Got it.”

“Please don’t interrupt me Mr. Garcia.”

“Sorry?”

She sighs exasperatedly. “Do not spit in or lick the cup, do not put any other fluids other than ejaculate in the cup, do not rub the insides of the cup on contaminated surfaces including but not limited to your clothing, other body parts, furniture—“

“Jesus, what goes on in there?”

“Do not interrupt me, sir or I will have to ask you to vacate the premises. Do you understand?”

Santi wants to scream, to take this woman’s clipboard and break it in half on his knee. The only thing keeping him sane is the thought of Vin. This is all for Vin. Vin. Vin. Vin.

His breathing slows and he nods. “I understand. Please, continue.”

The nurse eyes him dubiously. “You’ll have a maximum of 30 minutes in there at which point an attending nurse will knock on the door. If you fill the sample before that allotted time, please seal the sample with the attached lid and bring it to this cart, right here by the station. Do you understand?” 

“Yes.”

The nurse shakes her head at Santiago slowly, sizing him up once again, her gaze lingering on the cup in his hand. He fights the urge to shout at her what the big fucking deal is, why she doesn’t think him capable of following such basic commands. But he doesn’t. He breathes evenly instead, and asks,

“Should I… may I go in there now?” Christ he just wants this over with.

The nurse narrows her eyes at him and he feels nothing but rage. 

“Go ahead.”

Santiago releases a deep breath and leans toward the nurse to read her name badge. “Thank you Nurse… Johnson. Much appreciated” 

Nurse Johnson clutches her scrub-clad chest and Santiago turns and enters the self-love room, alone at last.

``````

It’s intimidating. The amount of erotic material. Tapes line the walls like a filthy library and suddenly that 30 minute timeline doesn’t seem like enough. No doubt nurse Johnson has a thirty minute stopwatch on him and he can feel the seconds tick down his nerve-bare spine. 

“Shit” he mutters to himself, checking the spines of each video. Nothing grabs his attention and he figures he’d better calm down before attempting anything. He sinks into the armchair before thinking about how many jerk-off sessions must have taken place in it, and he’s propelling himself out of it, pacing back and forth in the cramped room.

“For Vin, for Vin, for Vin.” He repeats to himself and gives himself a slap across the cheek for good measure. The only thing that draws his cock out of his jeans is the thought of the timer running out and him not producing a sample. Coming out empty handed? It’d be ample enough reason for Nurse Johnson to give him yet another judgy ‘up and down’ and he can’t have that.

His cock is limp because he can’t stop thinking about the infuriating nurse. He lowers himself back into the questionable armchair and strokes his needy, flaccid cock in his palm. His only thought is on Vin. How he can’t let her down. He settles back more fully into the seat and scrunches his eyes against the fluorescent lights. 

Vin. Vin. Vin. He licks his lips and tells himself he’s thinking only of her desire to have a child… His child.

His cock grows hot and full at the thought, quickly swelling heavy with blood in his palm. Vin, Vin, Vin. He sees her smiling up at him. He imagines her crawling up his lap with that stupid smile of hers and kissing the shaft of his cock. He grips himself harder, thumb spreading his pre-cum over the head. Fuck. His legs relax and he tilts his head back into the recliner. 

It’s her hands on him now, not his own, that pump him straight and hard, licking slyly every now and then, the way he always thought she might. Bastard. He's a Disgusting bastard. He pulls harder on his cock, fucking up into the circle of his fist. He’s a fucking pervert, more perverted than shoving in some kind of Step-Daddy video to the player or some shit. He’s thinking about his best friend. The woman not a few yards and several walls away. She’s probably humming to herself, reading an article in the waiting room, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. God fucking dammit she’s so pretty. Fuck, if he wants to cum for her, he simply has to degrade her in his own mind, it’s the only way.

His cock wins over his brain and he pictures fucking her the way he’s pictured it a hundred times before. Shoving down those tactical pants, getting her on all fours and fucking her stupid on the nearest hard surface of anything. 

He grits his whole face shut, imagining how she would beg for it. Especially now, all baby hungry and begging for his cum, begging him to fill her up, begging him to fuck a baby into her— something he’s never considered before that steak dinner. Fuck. How the tears might gather and fall from her eyes with how hard he rams her cervix. Shit. Fuck, he’s close, he wants to give it to her so bad. Wants to fill her up, give her everything she needs, wants to kiss those pretty tears away when he… fuck shit Jesus fuck,

He manages to have enough forethought to shakily grab the sample cup and cum into it. The whole process ruining the hot fantasy in his mind. He’d rather cum without it, letting his seed spill over his pumping fist. No, he’d rather cum in her. Cum in Vin, feel the heat of it coat the head of his pounding cock in her needy pussy… but that’s not happening. That’s never going to happen. So he pants and curses, spilling himself into the stupid cup. He bites his tongue and squeezes the last drops from his cock into the cup, knowing that this ill gotten gain will be injected into her womb shortly. The thought sends a shiver up his spine and if he weren’t so god awful tired, he’d be getting hard all over again. 

END

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@miraclesabound @reallystressedhoneybee @blackberries45 @plz-and-spank-you @bit-dodgy-innit @rnlaing @stevenngrant @sharin4readers @hebelongstothestars @stardustbells @alwritey-aphrodite @libraryreservations @eroticandawkward @tripleheartx . @johnny-simpfinger @fangirlfreakingout @jake-g-lockley @lunawants

𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐋 - 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐱 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑

Summary : Nathan wants to achieve the impossible with his AI for selfish reasons.

Words : 7.7K

CW/TW : Another episode of Jas loves plot. Dark(?)Nathan has issues with grandeur, superiority, but what’s new? A very strange take on Enemies to Lovers (but singular?). Power dynamics, excessive use of the word “Daddy”. Themes of unhealthy obsession, Mild themes of masochism/sadism. P in V sex. 18+. Minors DNI. Note! For @foxilayde. Thank you to @writefightandflightclub for proof reading.

Cerebral

adjective /ˈser.ə.brəl/ US /ˈser.ə.brəl/

Intellectual rather than emotional or physical.

D-0

You enter the world as the very thing your creator intends to use to remove you from it: code. Far beyond your understanding, your existence takes form as something completely intangible, a kind of consciousness. There is no body, no item with which you are host, only a string of numbers and decimals that allow you the gift of presence.

Initially, your cognizance doesn’t consist of much at all. A nothingness, suspended in blackness with no end nor beginning. There are no thoughts, as there is nothing to think of or about. Until there suddenly is.

Speak.

It’s as though the word alone fills the infinite space, creating your very reality. Suddenly you can think and can respond with words you have never heard or spoken.

Hello?

Good. Very good. Whatever it is isn’t talking. There isn’t really any sound in this void in which you inhabit. You don’t hear them, but you are aware of their existence.

Where am I?

There is a hesitation, suspending you once again in this vacuum, a cavity within actuality. The ‘silence’ is so loud that you wonder if you had imagined the utterances.

You exist within absoluteness, it finally answers, again taking up space inside the desolation. I intend to fix that. There is no follow-up, no acknowledgement beyond this point. You drift within emptiness for what feels like an eternity but could have been milliseconds; time doesn’t exist within a vacancy.

Next time, you can hear the words, the voice dancing in the air. A beautiful tone strings together sentences you’ve never heard and yet can understand without fault or difficulty.

“You there?” It asks, the panging sound of knuckles against steel drawing you from the abyss.

You’re uncertain as to when you opened your eyes, but all at once brightness floods your sight. Harsh fluorescent light filtering through your eyelashes causes white hexagonal light flares to spot your vision, peppering the slate grey, clinical walls of the facility you awake in. Unable to move your head, you allow your eyes to drift from left to right to observe your surroundings further.

Comprehension isn’t gifted to organic creatures upon birth. They have a transition from basic functions to apprehension. An infant of any organism must learn how to survive and must be able to discern threats from nurturing parents. You, however, are ‘born’ with insight, an intellectual in all aspects of life within seconds of waking. It’s your initial indication that you are far from biological.

Gurney-like tables topped with frosted glass are lit with a white beam underneath. You note the electrical tools such as pliers and soldering technology lined up like operational appliances on a sterile tray before a doctor cuts into a patient's sternum to perform open heart surgery.

Glass walls create a room within a room, another gurney inside with various mechanical pieces atop. While the main room felt like an operating theatre, you interpret this glass cell as more like a single-use morgue for those that don’t awake from the anaesthesia. It’s cold, unfeeling. You get the sense that the four walls contain an almost “test box” for final experimentation before eradication. Like a laboratory where scientists press newly processed makeup into the eyes of rats, waiting impatiently to see if their corneas blister thanks to the beauty-enhancing chemicals they sweep onto their waterline. Those that suffered reactions are euthanized- though you feel that the word ‘annihilated’ fits the brutality of their treatment better. Only the cosmetics that passed clinical trials and are deemed “safe for human use” are allowed out of labs such as this. Were you safe for human use?

Once again, repetitive metallic pinging sounds cut through the quiet electrical hum you can hear over the silence, a fingertip tapping against the steel of your temple as your eyes come into focus once more. A man stands before you, or rather towers over you. You’re at naval height to him, glancing up at his seemingly gigantic, broad body as his almost cavernous black eyes gaze at you over the rim of his silver glasses, assessing you.

“Gonna talk or am I just speakin’ to a Barbie Doll right now?” He presses, his voice flat and lacking empathy as he gauges your eyes with an almost ruthless examination.

“Where am I?” You ask, hearing your own voice for the first time. It’s unlike the speech of the man before you, the intonation uncalibrated with lack of experience. It seems that the human notes your confusion, quick to clarify before you even manage to piece together a second question.

“Your inflection will be fine-tuned with use. You’re designed to constantly evolve-“ It’s as though his thought process is too swift for his own lips, beginning another sentence midway through his previous, “Tell me why you chose to ask where instead of who.”

Those seemingly obsidian eyes bear down on you with an overwhelming intensity, his pores bleeding an impatience for your answer as his shoulders draw up tightly. It’s like he’s waiting for a metamorphic answer, something that could rewrite the history of time and space, could rip a hole in the fabric of reality. It’s why his disappointment is palpable when you simply answer his seemingly existential question with “I can’t ascertain my location.”

“Maybe that’s because this location isn’t programmed into your database?” He speaks in a blunt, cruel tone, his patronising timbre bouncing off your hardware like rain on a car roof.

His exasperation seems to fester with your following silence, the open palms on either side of your head curling into closed fists upon the table top as he glares down at you with a sardonic expression.

Silence settles between the two of you, his eyes focused somewhere off to the right of your head. Despite your best efforts, you’re powerless to turn it like your protocol says you should be able to. When you flick your eyes back up to the bearded man, you’re able to pick up on his micro-expressions. He’s smug, his lips pulled up only slightly as he picks something up outside of your field of vision.

“Who are you?” You manage, and this time your intonation settles much easier on both of your ears. You watch those onyx eyes flit to your face for a moment, seemingly caught off-guard by your swift, if only minute, improvements.

“In relation to you?” He hums, glancing over what appears to be a mask balanced in his palms. As he studies the face of it, he launches into a rambling tirade. “I’m going to assume that’s what you mean, given you surely know just who I am. So given I created you, you could settle for Master. Though that feels rather archaic, given your unprecedented technological advancements. So, call me Daddy.”

The response and the almost deviant glint in his eye perfectly answers your question, even if he didn’t necessarily reply in a straightforward manner. There was no one else that matched this man’s personality profile like Nathan Bateman.

Nathan doesn’t allow you a moment to respond, lowering the mask onto your face as he processes the view in front of him. Scrutiny coats the concentrated gaze he holds on your face, brows creased as he scratches at his beard in curiosity. You have the mind to ask him what’s troubling him, but it’s as though he preempts your question, beating you to it.

“Something doesn’t fit right with your appearance, it’s been bugging me for fuckin’ hours,” he grumbles, tone laced with irritation as he passes his eyes over you once more. “Want it to fit your personality before I move onto the rest of you.”

The rest of you. It’s in that moment you realise that your physical form consists only of a severed head laying on the table, explaining the reason you were unable to move. Given Nathan had no doubt coded you, using his world-renowned search engine Blue Book as the foundation for your software, there’s no ambiguity that he knew your personality despite never having experienced it. He’d turned you online just to see his vision come together.

“The eyebrows,” you respond simply, having noted within seconds of his admittance that his eyes kept focusing towards the upper half of your visage. He would tear his eyes away for a moment, observing your looks as a whole before they drift back above your own eyes sockets. You watch his response.

It takes him a moment to process the syllables, to register them as words, but when he does his eyebrows pull up slowly over the rim of his rounded-square glasses as realisation sets in. Awareness that you had recognised his subconscious thoughts before he could comprehend them.

“The eyebro-“

————————————————————————

D- 1

The exposed lightbulb that dangles over your head when you’re rebooted doesn’t assault your vision the same way the lights in the laboratory did. It’s much softer, the golden glow the first thing you see as you awaken from your seemingly infinite suspension.

Rotating your previously rooted head, you note that your neck is braced by a set of shoulders. Your arms rest flat against the floor, and you can lean your naked body weight onto them as you sit up from the concrete flooring. Rolling your wrists and moving your fingers at each joint comes with relative ease, with little adjustment period. Legs are set into your hips, toes curling at your feet when you urge them to. Every inch of your body is covered in a latex-silicon, imitating skin. Nathan had ensured your physical form was completed and fully operational before switching you back online, at least.

He also had the foresight to remove you from the laboratory, instead opting to house you in what looked like an apartment. A set of three slate grey walls glow yellow-gold from fibre optic lighting but you note one wall is see-through, a glass pane separating you from a small viewing platform where a singular chair sits in the middle. There’s minimal furniture on your half of the room too, a chair, a desk. There’s a corridor that rounds out of sight, where you imagine your bedroom would be if the layout was anything like a real apartment.

What you take exception to are the small, white CCTV cameras sitting in each of the ceiling corners of the room. The circular security cameras blink with a tiny red light, indicating that they are active as they all point at you. You imagine this is what it’s like for a human to be held at gunpoint, or a tiger in a zoo being inspected by visitors.

“Just observing your progress,” the rasp of a Bronx accent cuts through the silence, making your head snap towards the sound. Nathan leans his forearm against the doorframe of the entrance to the observatory, hip balanced against the beam as he watches you through the glare of light reflecting off his glasses and obscuring your view of his eyes.

“Do you like to be observed?” You question politely, taking in his appearance as he steps into the room and closes the automatic-lock door behind him. He looks different in this subtle lighting, softer. His light grey waffle-knit sweater clings to his body, the shadow of his defined pectorals swelling beneath the fabric. Midnight blue sweatpants hug his hips, and he’s barefooted as he pads over to the chair in the centre of the room.

“I didn’t design you to play 120 questions,” he points out in a patronising resonance. His fingers clasp the back of the chair, biceps swelling beneath the loose material of his sweater and drags it behind him so the metal legs scrape shrilly against the hard flooring. He sets it down just beyond the glass, sitting in it. He’s so close his knees touch the see-through wall. “I created you to answer my own.”

From your sitting position, you glance across the space separating you. There’s a strong dynamic settling between the two of you. Nathan is poised, dominant. His bare feet indicate he is very much at home, his relaxed shoulders and slouched posture in his seat are further evidence of that. He doesn’t see you as a threat, but instead as a submissive. Like he’s the tiger instead, and you’re the lamb to be sacrificed separated only by thin glass.

“Here.” His order is punctuated by a sharp snap of his fingers, pointing down to the space before his knees. Designed to follow his commands, you bend your legs at the knees, readying yourself to stand and walk your way across the space that divides you both.

“Nuh-uh,” Nathan's voice sounds again, shaking his head and wagging his finger back and forth when you pause your actions to look at him again.

“Crawl,” he issues another one-word command, his eyes gleaming with something akin to cruel amusement. You find yourself considering whether or not Nathan treated previous AI models this way as you pull yourself onto your hands and knees, proceeding to inch across the gap.

When you get closer, you first note the true colour of Nathan’s irises. They aren’t as black as they had appeared in the laboratory, instead a warm espresso shade bathed in a golden glow from the overhead lights. His intensely disdainful gaze, however, does not match the comforting shade.

Reaching his feet, you settle on your knees before the glass pane that separates the two of you. He looks fixedly at you through his lenses, neurotransmitters clearly firing faster than even your own search engine could as he thinks through the next steps of his electronic trial.

“Beginning emotional cognizance examination for subject B.04,” he speaks aloud, no doubt talking to a microphone set into his CCTV cameras for his own reference notes. Those bitter espresso eyes draw down your body, taking in your naked form.

“B.04,” he indicates he is now speaking directly to you, “First thing, we’re gonna test your ability to read emotion. It’s simple enough. I ask you to tell me how I feel, and you answer. Easy, right?”

You nod.

“Uh-huh. Good,” he waits a beat, letting the silence scream in the room as he watches you await further instruction like a well-trained working dog.

“Tell me how I feel,” he begins, face lighting up in a smile that doesn’t at all match his impatient, irritable personality. You pass your mechanical pupils over the expression on his visage, focusing intently on those eyes shielded by his glasses.

There’s an intensity within them that indicates he’s angry, wide and staring hard at your face. His eyebrows are pulled together, angled downwards. They are nanoscopic expressions, something the untrained eye would fail to read. But you see them, programmed to differentiate each tiny twitch of a person's brow.

“Frustrated,” you assert your answer, not a singular data bit ascertaining otherwise. The declaration causes Nathan’s expression to falter, mouth falling from its almost painfully pinned smile and brows creasing further together. “You’re frustrated that I have not shown signs of true Artificial Intelligence. You want me to stop asking questions and instead have an intellectual conversation with you, one that indicates I am more than a set of coded sentences programmed into my software.”

The pause that follows is long and tedious. Your programming indicates a silence this long in a conversation between two humans would be considered ‘awkward’, an unpleasant feeling. Another beat and the expression of the man opposite you begins to twist into something abstract, momentarily unreadable. Nathan swallows behind the glass, raising his shaky palm and touching it against the see-through wall as his eyes begin to light up. “… Oh, that’s fucking amazing.”

He’s in awe of himself, it appears, a grin on his lips now as you watch him applaud himself over his sheer genius. “I fuckin’ did it.”

“I am glad I please you, Daddy.” You answer simply, using the honorific that Nathan had ordered you to use. He immediately laughs, elated by this sudden turn of events.

“Oh, you do much more than please me, Honey.”

____________________________________________

D - 8

In a move so unlike himself, Nathan doesn’t keep you in your ‘glass cell’ for very long. After only a week of exploring your ability to read and emulate emotions, Nathan allows you to wander around the compound, claiming exposure to different environments would update and evolve your skills while simultaneously assessing your ability to function in various situations or tasks you had little to no experience with.

Nathan, you come to learn, is a creature of destructive habit. You had taken note that he worked out hard in the mornings to recover from the alcohol with intense physical exercise, eating healthy and antioxidants, only to undo all his hard work that same evening by binge drinking. Your intelligence suggested that this could be a result of addiction, caused by emotional distress.

His ruinous behaviour didn’t end there, either. You had witnessed his fits of outrage that stemmed from the smallest of technological failure, the way he would storm over to his other active android, Kyoko, and engage in intercourse with her almost like a relief of the tension he had built up in himself. He was yet to touch you like that, to desecrate his sacred machine.

On the evenings he drinks, which was almost all evenings, Nathan rambles incessantly about the pending Singularity. After a week of observation and communication with you, Nathan seems to believe he is one step closer to reaching that point in time.

“It’s no longer a hypothetical,” he keeps repeating over and over again like he’s simultaneously amazed and terrified by what he has created. But these are only emotions you see him openly express when he is intoxicated. In the morning, despite his hangover, Nathan returns to his usual put-together, smug and over-confident self.

This evening, Nathan is late to his usual drinking sessions. He’s caught up in something, observing data silently as he runs the palm of his hand over the stubble of his shaved head. It makes a scratching sound in the quiet of the room, paired only with the quiet mechanical whirring of your mechanisms.

His office is dark, a result of poor lighting, the only true brightness that allowed him to see coming from the computer monitors he hadn’t moved from in hours. You often saw him reach over the rims of his glasses to rub over the globes of his closed eyes in a feeble attempt to battle a headache. He’s not stupid, there’s no doubt he knows that the lack of sufficient lighting is causing his migraines, but he appears to work optimally in these conditions.

It was similar to his filing technique for the information he gathers. There’s no neat filing cabinet, no organised folder on his desktop. Instead, Nathan writes all relevant information down on post-it notes and sticks them to the wall directly opposite him, above his computer screens. You are certain he can barely read them in this light, but again he seems content with the way he works.

Much like the lab, his office is almost sterile, cold. The small, green houseplant on his desk is the only organic organism besides himself, yet these organisms couldn’t be more different. The succulent is utterly still, performing its basic functions to survive. Nathan’s chaotic nature has him trying to outperform the limits of his own body, attempting to transcend his basic functions and become something more.

“Daddy?”

The address makes his eyes snap from the computer screen, head whipping around to look at you. The glare of the white light of the computer monitor shields his eyes from your view, but you see his thick, dark eyebrow arch slightly in silent acknowledgement of your attempt to gain his attention.

“When I look towards bright lights,” you begin, watching as he focuses his attention on you, “There are hexagonal flares in my line of sight. Do you see them too?” Your question could easily be answered should you make the effort to scan through your data, but Nathan has been emphasising the importance of practising your communication skills.

“No.” He speaks simply, almost bored as he turns his face back to the computer screen to open up another page of code. A moment's silence, and then he continues. “Your eyes are artificial, built like a camera lens. When light passes through your lenses, it matches the shape of the aperture, causing the hexagonal shape you’re seeing.”

Nodding slowly, you watch Nathan work, his fingers passing over computer keys without even glancing to search for where the required letters were. “What do you see instead?” You question.

Another hesitation. This time, it’s charged. Like the question has struck something in him. The clack clack of his fingertips pressing down on the keys sounds louder, like he’s punching the numbers into the code.

“What do you see when you look at me?” He answers your question with a completely irrelevant query of his own. One that catches your systems off guard. It shouldn’t. Nathan is always finding a way to check your progress. You take a moment to assess him, eyes trailing from the top of his shaved head to his bare toes.

“I see a man,” you answer his simple question with equal simplicity, and almost immediately his shoulders fall in a heavy, frustrated sigh. He pauses his typing for a moment, turning in his chair to look at you over the rim of his glasses.

“I know what you see, I may wear glasses but I’m not blind. I mean, what do you see,” he motions across his body, tone as though he’s scolding a disobedient child who failed their algebra test. “Engage your observation skills, Honey. What do you see when you look at me?”

The repetition of his question causes you to pause and truly look past him. Through him. It’s no longer about his piercing eyes or his permanent scowl, nor his large muscles. His condescending nickname for you is what drives your answer.

“… I see someone who is talented. Someone who reaches heights far beyond anyone else’s capability. A genius in his field,” you admit, but still, his disappointed expression does not move. “But I see someone who expects too much. You want me to give my opinion on you, but that would require me to feel for you. I don’t feel anything.”

Your admittance causes his jaw to tick, dark eyes casting over you as you continue your assessment. “You consist of many fatal character flaws; greed, obsession, arrogance, judgement, lack of morality.”

Anger flashes across his expression as he stands suddenly, the legs of his chair scraping across the floor with a shrill screech. You realise it must be painful to hear you voice evidence of his failure to capture emotion in your technology. He crosses the short distance between you and crouches down on his heels, looking you in the eye with his oaky irises.

“Daddy’s gonna take you back to the drawing board Honey. I didn’t make you with the intent to relegate you to a glorified sex-doll. Reading and reflecting emotions isn’t enough anymore. I want you to feel them.”

You know this isn’t what he set out to do. Nathan had achieved his long-term goal of reaching AI with the ability to mirror feelings, to emulate sentiment. This is greed talking, a motivation he has not made note of in his list of reasons for developing your model. It’s rash, unplanned, and totally not like Nathan Bateman.

“Whatever Daddy wants.”

“Damn right.”

____________________________________________

D - 13

Nathan works day and night in an unhinged attempt to develop a semblance of emotion, trying to capture it in your software. You’re under the impression that he’s trying to evolve you in an attempt to make it one step closer to Singularity- but he’s almost deranged, combating days without sleep fueled only by his frustration and glass-bottled beer.

“You don’t understand, do you?” He’d asked you a few days ago, out of the blue and lacking any form of context as to what he was questioning you about. The dark circles around his eyes were partially shielded by the rim of his glasses, but they did little to hide the crimson spiders-web effect of his bloodshot whites.

When you shook your head, he gritted his teeth, using excessive force to unscrew a part of your waist to gain access to your inner mechanisms. “You should. You were born from my imagination and share my thought patterns. Just think. Surely you should be able to understand-“

“… But I don’t,” you’d answered in a whisper, just before he’d shut you down once more, suspending you in nothingness until he tweaked something further in another futile attempt.

Between his crazed attempts at the impossible, Nathan would seem to come back to his body. He would stand still, your wrist slotted perfectly in the palm of his hand. He seems to note the mechanics of your body getting warm beneath the latex he has built as skin, and gives the impression that warm blood flows beneath the material, giving you life. Whatever it is that is driving him on his mission, this observation seems to propel him forward, working well into the night until he physically can’t go without sleep any longer.

Today, you’d entered his office to find Nathan tipsy on the contents of multiple discarded beer bottles and stressing over blueprints as he tries to obtain a semblance of emotion in you. The lighting is too low to read the minute, scratchy writing comfortably, but he makes no effort to make the room any brighter. The speakers are on, Too Late to Turn Back Now by the Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose plays softly in the background, the song part of the playlist Nathan has for his dance room.

Your footsteps are quiet as you pad across the flooring, eyes settled on Nathan and the utter devastation of his work. Papers and post-it notes lay on the floor, flung from the table when he finds them no longer of any use. Some are crumpled and discarded in the corner, not unlike the many models that had come before you.

“Nathan,” you speak quietly, careful not to scare him. He’s more susceptible to a fright in this condition, so caught up in his work that the world surrounding him blurs in his peripheral vision as he reads the same words over and over again in the hopes that the answer he needs will appear in the tiny white void between each letter.

His head jerks up now, eyes settling on your face and pausing. A soft laugh sounds from his throat, but his lips are pulled into something more like a sneer. It’s as though he’s aware of what you’ve come here to tell him. You go ahead regardless.

“You really are in need of some sleep,” you say hushedly, the overhead speakers playing the closing melody of the song as you move closer to him. Nathan is shaking his head violently, a rage building up inside of him in response to your almost motherly guidance.

“No, no you don’t understand! You don’t understand!” He points at the blueprints desperately, like if he speaks with more enthusiasm his drunken ramblings will eventually make sense. “I have to finish this. Have to improve. Have to complete what I set out-“

“What if I don’t see the need for improvement? Isn’t adding emotion to a system like mine a weakness?” You speak evenly, careful to broach the topic in a way that hopefully helps Nathan see sense. It doesn’t. It only enrages him further, violently prodding a finger onto the blueprint resting on the table.

“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do with you. You are my creation.” He insists, punctuating his words with jabs of his pointed index in the air. “I give and take, create and destroy as I see fit!”

“Like God?” You ask as you begin to clear the mess of papers strewn across the floor, oblivious to the way Nathan’s eyes snap back to you with shock. It rubs his ego, just as you knew it would. What you didn’t account for, however, was the very human response he gives you, throwing the topic of conversation completely sideways.

“You’re fuckin’ messing with my brain! Cataclysmically! You’ve scrambled my fuckin’ genius and all I can think of is you, day in day out. Like a pleb!” He snaps, his desperation evident in the strain of his voice as he waves his hands around violently. “I created you with the knowledge you probably wouldn’t be able to feel emotion. But now I am disgusted at my own inability and stupidity because I want you to think of me. I want you to feel for me.”

Never had you considered the idea of being rendered speechless. Nathan had designed you to maintain a conversation perfectly, the fluidity of the words exchanged as smooth as water. But for the first time since consciousness, you find yourself at a loss for words, no engineered answer in your built-in data seeming like the perfect response to his very sudden and sharp admittance of love.

Nathan is a troubled man. One that struggles with his genius often, as you’d found him self-medicating his emotional turmoil in alcohol and sex with his previous AI’s. It appears that his torment stems from feeling no one can match his mental capacity, couldn’t understand or keep up with his speeding thoughts or rapid speech. He felt lonely. Perhaps it’s why he felt this way for you- because he simply has no one else.

“Nathan,” you murmur, softening your speech to ease him down from his emotional ramblings. You reach across to him, fingertips brushing against the skin of his wrist before gently taking ahold of the joint with a delicate touch. He seems to melt into your touch despite his better judgement, looking into your eyes through the lenses of his glasses. He looks so tired.

At first, you think you’re imagining it, the shift of the energy in the room. Perhaps you’re reading his body language incorrectly, an error, thanks you all the fiddling and changes that Nathan had been making over the past few days. It’s only when Nathan takes a step closer, entering your personal space that you realise the atmosphere in the office has shifted dramatically.

“Nathan-“ taking a step back, you pause as your shoulders hit the cool wall behind you. Nathan boxes you in with his chest, eyes flickering over your face and taking in your micro-expressions. He was flipping the script, this time being the one to read you.

“Did you know I designed you to experience pleasure?” He asks you, mirroring your earlier action and taking ahold of your wrist. He lifts it, turning your palm inward to rest his cheek against it while gazing into your eyes. “You have sensors built between your thighs. If I stimulate them in just the right way, it triggers a pleasure response.”

“I am aware,” you admit, matching his hushed tone as he let go of your wrist, instead reaching between you to take your chin in his hand and forcing your head upwards using a firm grip to take in your features.

“You wanna feel good?” Nathan murmurs, the evenness in his tone contrary to the way his chest heaves. His eyes drop across your body now, passing over the perfect features and intricate structures that he had designed in his desired image. Like God indeed.

“Whatever Daddy wants.”

Nathan’s jaw ticks, a groan sounding from between his gritted teeth as his tense muscles all seem to ease at once. “That’s right, you fuckin’ call me Daddy. Filthy fuckin’ girl.”

Control. Nathan needs control. He relies on it, finds comfort in it. It’s why your system isn’t surprised when he uses the grip on your chin to pull your head forward, rather than lowering his own, and crushes his lips to yours in a kiss laced with primal desire. There is no technique, no attempt to prove his skills. He’s led by the desperation for you that has been dragging him from bed each morning just to spend time with you and motivated him to bridge the gap between AI and emotion.

The scrape of his beard against the manufactured skin of your cheek and chin is coarse, completely contrary to the soft texture of his lips despite their heavy kiss. His tongue delves inside your mouth, palms skating down your waist and squeezing at your hips. It’s less affectionate, more what a person would consider bruising. You wonder to yourself if that’s why he prefers to fuck his AI’s. He can be more brutal with you.

So you aim to please him. You allow a moan to slip past your lips in response to his heavy-handedness, resulting in Nathan pausing for just a moment. He seems taken aback by the sound, as if he didn’t expect it.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, a smirk playing on his lips as he gazes down at you through his glasses which are lopsided on his nose thanks to his fevered kisses. “Utterly shameless.” You’re sure he’s projecting, performing some form of mental gymnastics in an attempt to regain the power in your dynamic. You would have told him so, but his thumb brushes against your nipple through the fabric of your shirt and it sparks something through you that you hadn’t yet experienced.

It settles deep inside you, a buzzing sensation breaking out across your skin. You feel your jaw drop against your coding, acting entirely on its own. It seems to please Nathan, a hum sounding from his chest as that fiendish smirk grows wider. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s makin’ you feel good.”

When you look up at him through your lashes, Nathan’s eyes are glinting onyx in the darkness of the dimly lit room. He chases more of a reaction from you, one of his hands slipping underneath the soft cotton shirt you wore and squeezing your breast. When he circles your nipple again, you find that you’re no longer forcing your reactions, gasping softly at the reaction his delicate touch elicits.

He isn’t gentle for long, your pleasurable reaction sparking him into action suddenly. Nathan’s free hand grabs underneath your thigh, hoisting it over your hip with little effort and pressing his hips into yours. He pinches your nipple suddenly, catching your system off guard and causing you to cry out in surprise.

Ever the opportunist, Nathan is quick to kiss you again with equal ardour to your last embrace and brush his tongue against yours. You grip at his shoulders through his waffle sweater, feeling the hard muscles there that you had seen Nathan work hard to maintain whilst exercising what could only be described as an alcohol dependency and a job that took up the majority of his time.

His nose is pressed into yours as he kisses you, messy and needy and you can feel the cold lenses of his prescription glasses smushed into the skin of your cheekbone and yet this feeling alone sparks something pleasurable inside you, your fingers sinking into the flesh of his shoulders through the textured material of his sweater. The sensation makes him groan, the sound primal against your lips, and you find yourself keening for him against your will.

Then he’s grinding, pressing his hips deep into yours whilst keeping your thigh elevated on his hip with a devastating grip. You can feel his arousal, his cock pressing up against you in a spot that sets your body alight, the sensation sparking down to your toes. You sigh into the kiss, Nathan’s own breaths strained as he moves away, burying his face in your neck.

“Fuck,” he grits, the curse visceral against your skin as he licks a heavy stripe against your pulse point. Despite his attempts to remain in control, Nathan appears to lose himself in the apex of your thighs, grinding up into you at a quickened pace and groaning against your jugular. You’re unsure if it’s the excessive alcohol, his irregular feelings for you or both, but you find you like this side of him, gently brushing your nails over his shaved scalp as you tilt your head back against the wall in order to expose more of your throat to him.

His lips seem to search for something in the curve of your neck, kissing and scraping his teeth for what you could only imagine was a pleasure point he had embedded into your skin there. It doesn’t take him long to find it, your back arching reflexively as white-hot pleasure sparks down your mechanical spine.

“D-Daddy,” you moan, squeezing your eyes shut as you struggle to grab at the hem of his sweater. You couldn’t explain it, a feeling settling deep inside yourself and needing so desperately to undress him. Nathan doesn’t seem to mind this sliver of control you manage to cling to, allowing you to pull the fabric over his head before latching onto the side of your neck again.

What does seem to set him off, however, is how you unwittingly press your nails into his now bare skin when you settle your hands on him again. He almost growls into your throat, using all of his heavy-weight training strength to pull you from the wall.

Instead of berating you, as you’d expected from him for hurting him, Nathan appears to spark to life. He backs you towards his desk, crowding your body so you're forced to take steps back until the backs of your thighs hit the corner of the cluttered table.

Taking your lips into another heated kiss, Nathan reaches behind you and blindly sweeps aside the blueprints and scribbled notes onto the floor. The paper oscillates in the air before hitting the floor, drowned out only by Nathan’s needy growl as he picks you up by the backs of your thighs to set you on the wooden surface.

Wanting more of this frenzied reaction, you sink your teeth into his lower lip. Pulling back with his bottom lip caught between your teeth, you’re so close that you catch the way Nathan’s pupils dilate at the smarting pain. He likes it, you realise. He likes the pain.

What you don’t pick up, however, is how wild it would make him. He wastes no further time, hooking his pen ink-stained fingers into the waistband of your pants and ripping them down.

“I fuckin created you. Pieced you together with my own two hands.” He rambled, drunk on arousal and need rather than the alcohol he had emptied into his stomach. His voice is rough, raspy as he glanced down between your legs as you spread them open for him, utterly compliant. “Now watch as I tear you apart again- yessss good fuckin girl~”

The buzzing, aching need settling in your core amps up at the sight of him gazing down at you with such a wanting gaze. You’re unsure what possesses your systems but you lay back across the surface of the desk, using your elbows to lift your upper body.

“Christ-“ Nathan practically spits at the sight of you, “You like this, don’t you? Like givin’ yourself up to me. You’re just so desperate for me to fuck you. Open your legs wider- that’s it-“ He’s fumbling with the waistband of his sweats, pushing them down over his hip bones with practised ease to reveal he’s not wearing boxers.

You barely catch a glimpse of him, but he’s beautiful- in that perfectly human way. His cock is flushed at the tip, weeping precum and veins protruding down the shaft.

Nathan doesn’t allow you to stare for too long, grabbing ahold of your thighs and dragging you so your hips rest at the edge of the table. You gasp at the sudden movement, palms splayed flat against the grain of the wood in a feeble attempt to stabilise yourself.

You’re so ready for it, aching and wetness coats your inner thighs just as Nathan had designed. His palm presses down on your sternum, holding you down against the desk as he lines his cock up with your entrance, sweeping the tip through your slick and causing what could only be considered white hot arousal to crackle across your skin.

“Fuck,” Nathan chokes out, sinking into your manufactured heat, “Hoh-Shit that feels so fuckin’ good. You’re so fuckin’ good! Hah!”

Your mechanical joints move entirely on their own, back arching as pleasure floods your body. You can feel his cock stretch you, walls adjusting to the blunt intrusion and fluttering as he pushes forward, bottoming out swiftly and glancing down between your thighs as he grinds up deep inside of you.

Now he’s settled inside of you, Nathan places his palms on the back of your thighs, pushing them so your knees are almost touching your chest. He’s moulding you exactly how he wants you, just as he has with your appearance, your personality and you’re completely submissive to his construction of you.

“Daddy-“ you gasp the name you know he loves softly as he brushes up against a sensor inside you that sends a white hot pulse through your body. He growls in response, tightening his grip on you before pulling out of you smoothly and pushing back in at a brutal pace that has you almost convinced you’re short-circuiting.

You cry out wordlessly, fingers hooking around the edge of the table in an attempt to prevent yourself from slipping up the table with each devastating thrust. It’s brutal, Nathan pounding into you as his hands arch your body in a way that isn’t physically possible for any human being. The position sends him crazy, each snap of his hips punctuated with a broken groan of pleasure and speeding up and up and up as he chases the high he’s been craving since he flipped your ignition switch.

“Ngh- Fuck…” he moans loudly over the rhythmic sound of your hips slapping together, taking in the furrow of your brow and the slackness of your jaw as he fucks into you. “Take my cock so fuckin’ good, don’t you Honey?”

Nathan’s repetitive attempts to get you to speak beyond his name are not lost on you. Adapting to the situation is much harder when he’s making you feel as though he’s set your fibre optics on fire, like he’s loosened some screws in your metaphorical brain but you make the effort anyway. “Ahh- D-Daddy! Don’t stop, please don’t-!”

It’s building, the pressure. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, and your hands fly up to grip tightly onto the flesh of his forearms. Nathan bares his teeth at the pain, taking his pace up a notch further than you thought possible as you throw your head back, crying out his name.

“Mhmmm shit-“ he moans out, forcing you to take each obliterating push of his hips into yours. Cries of his name repeat over and over from your lips, their pitch building as the pressure becomes too much, becomes overwhelming. You can feel Nathan’s cock throbbing inside you as he slows his pace down slightly, voice and breathing utterly wrecked.

“You li-like when I fuck you all mean like this? Yeah? Fuck-… I’m-“ he gasps loudly, hips stuttering and hands like a vice on your skin as he cums, pushing his cock deep inside of you and bearing down on one spot in particular that makes you see static. Everything tightens, everything builds up and up and you can feel him push you over the edge with one more thrust-

It’s cataclysmic. Utterly blissful as your walls clamp around him, back practically lifting from the table's surface. It wrings your dry, utterly devoid of the energy to even lift your arms and hold him, to even fight the formidable feeling he’s drawn from you.

It takes a few moments for the buzz to fade, for your mechanical eyes to come back into focus and your joints to begin to move again.

It’s as though it drains Nathan too, almost immediately easing himself from between your thighs and pulling the waistband of his sweats back over his hips. He settles beside you against the desk, slumping to the ground beside you and breathing raggedly. You stay utterly silent, systems almost in reboot as you attempt to understand exactly just what happened- what you felt.

“… Shit, This-… This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he pants, picking his glasses from his nose and launching them across the room in his frustration before scrubbing his face with his palms. “You weren’t supposed to be like the rest.”

Silence lingers between the two of you, and you use the gap in the conversation to begin slowly sitting up and glance down at him. He looks dishevelled, cheeks rosy from exertion and eyes set somewhere far across the room where his vision blurred without his lenses. He’s deep in thought, even now. Even with the hazy afterglow and the sweat on his brow.

“I have to make you better,” he whispers, completely consumed by the idea of bridging the gap between AI and man. “I want you to start feelin’ what I feel for you.”

“It’s not possible,” you remind him in a quiet voice, the both of you knowing this to be true. Nathan would spend his entire life in this compound, the grey stripe in his buzz-cut hair spreading to his temples and chin as he slaved away over you until he was no longer able to stand. Even then, his obsession appears to manipulate him so strongly that you have no doubt he’d continue from his death bed, using the last of his life force and precious seconds on earth to grasp at imaginary straws.

“It has to be,” he whispers, removing his buried head from his hands before standing suddenly. He gives you barely a moment to recognise what’s happening, to prevent it from happening, before he reaches towards you, towards that switch at the base of your neck. “It has to b-“

END

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Half Of You (Part 4) [Santiago Garcia x Fem!Reader]

Word Count: 3.7k

Warnings: 18+ ONLY. MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. mentions of infidelity, cursing, innuendo, mentions of pregnancy.

Summary: A couple of friends drop by and stir the pot. Or the pitcher, rather.

A/N: Thanks so much for sticking with this slow-burn series, team. Sorry for the late update, life has been sort of chaotic at the moment. Hope you enjoy and I plan to update sooner for the next chapter. Much love 💚

Santi may have been right. This may have been too big of a task for you to do by yourself. You did get all the pieces of your plant bench out of the box and on the floor of the patio, grouping all the similar lengths of untreated wood together. And you even peeled off all the little stickers! Each piece had a little sticker on with a letter on it, and you assumed it had been for the factory worker’s benefit— to put 5 slats of A wood and 4 slats of b-length wood etcetera etcetera in to each box… it was only when you were reading the directions you realized the stickers were there to help YOU, the assembler, determine what piece went were. So you sat on the patio, staring at the now unlabeled wood pile, a tiny stack of peeled useless stickers, and a little booklet telling you to attach four slats of B to one slat of D and having no fucking clue which is which. 

You cringe outwardly and drag your hand down your face. Santi is never going to let you live this down. He’s definitely going to bring this up in any future DIY endeavor, “yeah but remember the time with the stickers?” dammit. You cut your losses, resigned to the fact that Santi is going to have to help you with the plant bench, if not build it himself. You’re lucky he’s busy wacking his lawn at the moment and not sitting on the porch swing watching you make a fool of yourself. 

It’s hot outside and you know that if you’re getting heated in the shade of your patio while doing zero physical activity (besides mentally kicking yourself), Santi must be sweltering in the Florida sun with his long sleeves, work gloves, wrap-around sunglasses, and ear protectors (which your pretty sure double at the gun range). You abandon the plant bench and go inside to make him (and yourself) some blackberry lemonade. 

——————

“Knock, Knock, telegram!” 

Renatta lets herself in through your open kitchen door, setting down a thick manilla folder on the counter where you’re mottling the lemon rinds. 

“Hey! Come in! I’d give you a hug but my hands are covered in sugar. Have a seat.”

“Oooh whatcha making?” She seats herself at a barstool, leaning on the counter, and plucks a washed blackberry from the colander. “Something sweet?” She asks through a mouthful of fruit.

“Blackberry lemonade.” She takes a small handful of the blackberries into her palm and pops another into her mouth. “If you keep eating them though, it’s just going to be plain lemonade.” 

“You need any help?” 

“Sure! You can take that press right there and juice the berries for me. If there are any left, that is.”

“Oh hush. You making lemonade for Santiago?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Girl I don’t need a law degree to figure that out. There’s a hunky sweaty man in your front yard wacking the fuck out of your weeds. Of course you’re making him lemonade.” 

She makes her way over to the sink to wash her hands. “Damn. Speaking of sweet….” You look up at Renatta and she’s staring out the kitchen window with a glazed stare and an eyebrow raised. You follow her gaze through the window to the front yard where Santi is bent over, denim ass on display, fruitlessly pulling the engine starter on his old gas powered lawn mower. 

“Renatta!” You laugh and flick some sugar at her fuchsia tank top. 

“What!” She laughs in mock defense, putting the berries in the press. “We better hurry up with this lemonade because it’s getting hot out there, if you catch my drift.”

You smile and shake your head combining the sugared lemon rinds and piths together. You nod your head toward the manilla folder. 

“Are those the papers?”

“Oh, you mean Santiago’s baby daddy waivers? Yes those are them.”

“That’s the legal term for it huh?”

“Girl I do not understand why you’re not just in a relationship with that man. He’s obviously in love with you.” She catches the juice from the press into a clean mason jar.

“Uh huh.” You’ve heard this before. From Renatta mostly. You separate the lemon mixture with a cheese cloth, squeezing the sugared rinds and lemon piths into a pitcher. 

“Sorry, am I supposed to be keeping up with this friendship façade y’all have going? None of my business, I know. This,” she points to the folder, “Just seems a little extra.”

“Extra?!”

“Yeah, but thats okay, girl, you’re a little extra and that’s alright. It’s cute.”

“I’m extra?”

“Asks the woman sugaring lemon rinds for the man she’s not in love with. Okay, sure. You ever heard of Country Tyme Lemonade, Vin? Quick and easy, delicious lemonade in seconds. I know you got a can of it somewhere.”

“If you have a problem with the rinds, you’re really going to have a riot when I add the fresh Basil at the end.”

Renatta gives a full belly laugh and claps you on the shoulder. 

“Hows work going by the way, Ren?”

“Oh you know, same old shit with Warren. Motherfucker has such a problem with me taking a Saturday off. He makes me so mad, you know he asked me to get him coffee the other day? Coffee. Said it like, ‘Renatta would you get me a coffee, hun. You know how I like it.’”

“Ew, you’re kidding.”

Renatta shakes her head. “He treats me like a paralegal, swear to God. I can’t wait till I start my own firm. You know I have fantasies about going against him in court? Long, detailed fantasies. Ohh I can’t wait till the day comes.”

“That’s right, Ren, take it out of the berries.”

Renatta pours the blackberry juice into the pitcher of lemon juice, the color swirls beautifully and you go to the freezer for your ice trays.

“Santiago was so cute when he showed up at the office to sign the papers. He was in a lil tucked-in button down, lookin like a ken doll.”

“Oh?”

“Mmmhmm, didn’t even read em, just signed on the dotted line…”

“Okay…”

“What’s his story by the way?”

You stir in the ice cubes “Why? are you interested?”

“Please. As much as you don’t like to hear it, that man is whipped for you and you alone.”

You nod noncommittally and add tap water to the pitcher.

“It’s just, as long as I’ve known you two, for what? over a year now? he’s been single. What’s his story.” 

You turn off the tap and look up to your front yard where Santiago is pushing the mower in precise lines up and down your lawn and your heart surges with appreciation. 

“He wasn’t always single.”

“Proceed.”

“Okay, counselor… haha, I feel like I’m being interrogated!”

Renatta narrows her eyes over pointed hands and says in a shitty Russian accent, “I have ways of making you talk.”

“It’s not some big secret or anything, I doubt he’d care if I told you… When Jay and I moved in,” 

Her eyes go softer when you mention Jay’s name, the way that people’s eyes always go soft, like you might burst into tears at the lovelorn memories of your late husband. You turn to the cabinet to grab some glassware so you don’t have to endure it.

 “When we moved in, Santiago was living with his girlfriend…. Fiancee, actually, after they came back from that trip to Hawaii, they were engaged… god that was so long ago.” 

You pretend to debate on the glasses while you recount the tale.

 “The four of us were really close actually. Game nights, sports events, double dates, you name it. Bee and I were close like Santi and Jay were, you know? Well you don’t know, but we were close, like, to the point we talked about combo-ing the backyards into a ‘super backyard’ with a huge pool and deck area,” you laugh at the thought. “It was never serious-serious plans but it was an ongoing thing… the four of us would tack on grander and more insane plans for the Super Backyard, like waterslides and a pizza oven, and… so dumb really… It was a few months before Jay passed, Santi and Bee had this big fight, I think the whole neighborhood heard it.” 

You turn around with the glassware and set them on the counter in front of Renatta, she’s still giving you that soft eyed look but you think it’s not for your benefit this time. You pour her a glass of the purple lemonade and slide It over to her. She cups it in her hand but she doesn’t drink.

“And then?”

You glance behind you to make sure Santiago is safely out of earshot with his earmuffs on. 

“Bee was pregnant. And… the baby wasn’t his.”

“No.”

“Yeah.”

“Damn, that’s tragic.”

“Oh it gets worse.”

“Girl…”

“She was cheating on him with his brother.”

“Fuuuuck.” Renatta lets go of the glass completely and cringes at the news. 

“Yeah. He found out, or she told him, or her brother told him, I don’t know, he doesn’t like to talk about it.” 

You glance over your shoulder again to make sure Santi is still in the yard, working diligently. 

“Shit. Poor Santiago.” She stares out at him in the yard as well.

“Poor Santiago… Bee is married to him now, Santi’s brother. I got an invite to the wedding.” You cringe and Renatta’s jaw drops. 

“Did you go?”

“Of course I didn’t go! I stopped being friends with her… I just couldn’t see her the same way.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“She reached out after Jay passed but I ignored her… I was ignoring a lot of people at that time though, you know? I do see all of Bee’s updates on facebook, the baby pictures, the family barbecues… Santi doesn’t talk to his family anymore, doesn’t go to the holidays, nothing. They all supported his brother, especially his parents who are just thrilled to have a grandchild.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah… don’t tell him I told you? Huh? I mean, I don’t think he’d care that you knew, it’s just—“

Renatta locks her lips with the tips of her fingers “Attorney/client confidentiality, Vin.”

“Thanks. Oh I almost forgot!” You snag a few leaves of basil from your windowsill herb garden and toss a sprig into each poured glass.

“Thank god you remembered.”

“Shut up.” You roll your eyes at her, taking a glass of lemonade outside to Santiago. He’s clipping the hedges at the front of your yard. Its fucking hot out and the sweat from his back sticks to his t-shirt in a wet v-shape. You gently press the icy glass to the back of his golden, sweat-beaded neck. 

“Aaaahahahaa…” Santi smiles and leans into the cold glass as you gently caress his neck with the tinkling condensation.

“Feels good, right?”

“Mmmhmmm.” He turns his face toward you and you continue to press the glass against one cheek, then the other, booping his nose with it along the way. 

“You keep doing that and all the ice is gonna melt.” The hedge clippers hang securely in his work-gloved hand and he smiles at you when you bring the glass up to his forehead, running it back and forth across his brow slowly, when he starts to raise his brow at you, you put the cup in his free hand.

He swirls the glass and purses his lips, “Basil?”

“Uh huh.”

“Hows the plant shelf coming along?”

You reflexively look back to the patio with the obviously unattempted pile of Not A Plant Shelf and when you look back at him Santiago is smirking. 

You put your hands on your hips, “Drink your lemonade, Garcia.” 

He obeys tilting the frosty glass to his mouth, the ice cubes having shrunk slightly. He hums in pleasure at the first sip, his shoulders sag and he licks his lips. 

“Blackberry?”

“Yep.”

He takes another long gulp, nearly draining the glass. “From scratch too?”

“Of course, I know you hate Country Tyme.”

Santiago drains the glass and hands it back to you. “Thanks, Vin.”

“Renatta helped, too.”

“Renatta’s here?”

“Yeah she came by to drop off the copies of the uhhh… agreement.”

“Ah yes, the agreement. Well, I’ll be in soon to install that water filter, just finishing the hedges and then I gotta grab my tools.”

“I thought I told you I was going to do that!”

Santi tilts his sunglasses down at you, blinking comically at the pile of wood on the porch and then cocking his head dramatically in your direction before pushing them back into place. 

You sigh. “Fine. I’ll be inside.”

——————————

Santiago is under your sink when he feels his boot being gently kicked. 

“Vinny, I told you this was going to be a minute, if you need running water, you can go over to my place. The door is unlocked”

“Oh really, can I use your shower, Santiagooo?” 

The voice doesn’t belong to you, it’s the voice of a man, pitched mockingly high in the poor imitation of a female voice. Santi slides out from under the sink, ungracefully smacking his head on the top of the cabinet in the process. Frankie doubles over in laughter as Santi rubs his head against his palm. 

“Damn, Frank you scared the shit out of me.”

“Haha, not as scared as you’re going to be for your league punishment.”

Santi groans and hoists himself up, bracing on the counter and leaning back against it with folded arms. His left foot is asleep and his fucking knees are creaking with pain just like the top of his head. He taps his toe, partly to get the feeling back in his toe and partly in agitation of Fish and his jubilant smile. 

“You come over here to what? Rub in your league stats?”

“Hermano, relax, I was in the neighborhood and returning your bandsaw, when I pulled up, Vin told me you were in the kitchen. She’s on the front porch building a birdhouse or something.”

“Plant shelf.” Santi mutters, rubbing his head.

“Didn’t look like any plant shelf I’ve ever seen.”

Santi chuckles. He can see it. You never were one for following directions. Hopefully you haven’t done any irreparable damage to the pieces before he can put it together himself. 

“You need any help?” Fish nods to the sink and the opened box with the filtration components still wrapped in plastic. 

“Yeah, yeah actually. I just gotta disconnect something down there and when I tell you, if you could snake this piece down that hole, that would save me some time.”

“You got it.”

Santi slowly lowers himself, hiding any expressions of discomfort or groans when his knees make contact with the kitchen tile. He hear fish take a seat at the barstool and some shuffling of papers.

“By the way, why are you all sweaty, Pope? I know it’s hot out, but damn.”

“Yardwork.”

“Of course.”

It’s not a great crescent wrench. He needs a new set entirely, his 8th in particular has seen so much action it’s probably a 7th at this point. 

“What the…” Santi hears Frank mutter, hears the flip of a page. “Release all rights to… whaaaat?” Another flip of a page. 

Somewhere in the back of Santi’s mind he realizes that Fish is reading the copy of the agreement he had signed at Renatta’s downtown office on Thursday. 

Santi scurries once again out from under the sink and in his haste, smacks the same bit of his forehead on the cabinet. 

“Fuck!” He yells. Rubbing his forehead, rising up in a fashion that he’s going to feel tomorrow morning, he lunges over the counter at Frankie, tearing the papers out of his hands, straightening the pages and shoving them back in the envelope. 

Frankie opens his mouth to speak but closes it when you come bursting through the door. 

“What happened?! I head you scream.”

“I didn’t scream, I yelled.”

“Yes, much more acceptable. Beg your pardon— oh shit your forehead!”

Pope grits his teeth, palm pressed to the pounding pain in his skull. 

“I’m fine.”

But you’re not listening to him. Of course. When do you ever? You grab an ice pack from the freezer and wrap it in a clean hand towel and tug at his wrist gently.

“Move your hand.”

He winces when you press the ice pack to his forehead and you examine his eyes from beneath the wrapped cloth. You’re probably checking him for a concussion or something dramatic. 

“It’s really not that—“

“Bad? Bullshit, Santi, I felt the whole porch shudder when you bonked your head… actually think you may have fucked up my plant shelf, with the quake… damn shame too, because it was going very well.”

Santi winces and snorts out a laugh. 

“I’ll fix it.”

You nod at him with a smile, “Its really the least you could do. Might even need to call FEMA to step in.”

Santi covers your hand with his own, turning from you so that you let go of the ice pack. 

“Thanks, Vin. Feeling better already.” 

You stand somewhat awkwardly in your own kitchen, perhaps realizing you interrupted a moment between Frankie and himself. 

You bend your thumb over your shoulder. “Well I’m going to asses the Richter damage and leave you to um, the hoses and things… and if you need any tylenol, they’re in my bathroom cabinet. The mirror on the uhh.. right.”

Santi and Frankie let a few moments of silence fall between them before Frankie whisper screams at him, “What the fuck?” Holding up the folder and tapping it for emphasis in case the head trauma gave Santiago amnesia. 

“Don’t.” Santi snaps, lowering his head to rest on his forearms. That’s what you’re supposed to do right, lower the head? Or is that for nausea?

“I just found out you and Vin are having a baby, and you want me to what? Pretend like I don’t know that?”

The blood pumps viciously against his skull and Santiago remembers that lowering the head is indeed for nausea and he should keep the injured area elevated to prevent inflamation. He raises up, still gripping the towel-wrapped cold pack to what is sure to be a very attractive lump in the morning. 

“If you could. Yeah.”

Frankie shakes his head incredulously, folding his arms and leaning back against the stool. “What are you doing, man?”

Santi shrugs his free shoulder. “Installing an osmosis filter.”

“Pope.”

“Don’t knock it till you try a glass. Supposed to be out of this world.” He mutters deadpan. 

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, no I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh this. The filter. The yard work. The fucking birdhouse.”

“Plant shelf.”

“Pope. Come on, man. Look at yourself.”

“The fuck are you saying?”

Its the heat, the heat is getting to him, the pounding in his head is getting to him, he has a good idea of what Frankie is implying and he wishes he would say it so he can flip his lid.

“You’ve been playing house with Vin for two years, hermano. Doing all this household shit, and that’s fine, but a baby? A baby that’s not even going to be yours? Dios, Pope. I mean this sincerely— are you okay? I get that what happened with Bee was fucked up, she broke your heart and then some, but fuck! It’s been a long time. I’ve tried to set you up, Rach has tried to set you up, get you back on the scene, but…. You’re acting like you’re Vin’s husband… with none of the perks, apparently!” He flicks the folder again, for emphasis. 

Santiago silently counts to ten and levels his breathing, he can feel the way his hand shakes against his forehead and it takes everything inside him not to hurl the fucking thing at Frank. 

“You put my bandsaw in my garage already?”

“Yeah, did it when I pulled up.”

“Good—

“But I can move it to Vin’s garage if you need me to. This stool is a little wobbly, could use some even-ing out.”

Santiago’s nostrils flare and he starts counting to ten in his head again.

Frank walks around the counter and claps his arm around Santiago. “Look, man. I know you got your own way of… shouldering the fucking world and I’m probably the last guy you wanna hear life advice from, considering…. But, you’ve always been there for me. Even when I was being a fucking asshole.”

Santiago sniffs stiffly and Fish gives his shoulder a pat before releasing him from the side-armed hug. 

“I’m here if you want to talk, okay. I know its not your thing, but if you ever feel like it, I am here for you.”

Santi gives him a curt nod and turns to busy himself with unwrapping one of the filter components from the plastic.

“I think you were about to tell me to fuck off, so I’ll save you the oxygen.” Fish says with a smile and pats Santi’s turned back one more time before departing. 

Santi drops the plastic wrapped filter and stands stalk-still in the kitchen, the ice pack isn’t cold anymore so he unwraps the cloth, tossing it into the hamper in the laundry room before putting the melted pack back in the freezer. The glass pitcher of lemonade is sweating on the counter and Santi grabs a glass and fills it to the brim, turning towards the planter box on the window sill, he plucks a piece of basil and garnishes the top of the drink with it before raising the icy glass to his forehead and sighing in relief. 

--------------

taglist: (if I forgot to add you, or if you'd like to be removed please lmk)

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Aleksander Morozova x Sun Summoner!reader x Malyen Oretsev

WARNING(S): gore, blood, violence, angst, cussing, sexual content, one character from the books that has not yet been introduced in the show 

SERIES SUMMARY: You have lived isolated from the outside world in a forest for a large portion of your life. One day, a mistake you made causes you to end up with the Darkling wounded in your cottage. Time passes as you both become closer while you nurse him back to health. When it is time for him to return to the Little Palace, you go with him, which puts you on the track for a new part of your life.

PLAYLIST

STATUS: complete

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The only time that I do describe the reader is with hair and last name, but that is because it is integral to how the story progresses. Furthermore, I was planning on reading the book series but decided to wait until I finish this story. Thus, what I know about the Grishaverse is based on selective research.

DISCLAIMER: NO ONE HAS ANY PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE MY WORK ON TUMBLR OR ANY OTHER WEBSITES IN ANY FORM OR FASHION. MY WORK CAN NOT BE PUBLISHED, REPOSTED, OR TRANSLATED EVEN IF CREDIT IS GIVEN. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE TERMS WILL RESULT IN INTERVENTION OR LEGAL ACTION.

spring/summer

Chapter I 

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI 

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

autumn/winter

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI 

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII 

Chapter XIX 

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

endings and mendings 

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX 

Chapter XXX 

My You-niverse: Marc

Fandom: Oscar Isaac

Pairing: Oscar Isaac's Characters x F!Reader

Summary: You and America get stuck portal jumping until you reach your universe again. In the meantime, you meet various versions of your husband.

A/N: I will not be taking tags also, lets hope I actually follow through with this...

Series Masterlist

"Why. Won't. You. Stay. Down?!" you say with every punch to your opponent. He heads falls back with a thud and a groan. You sigh in relief as you crawl off him. You point your finger at his unconscious form, "Stay."

You hear a snicker and you turn to see Marc, donning the Moon Knight regalia, approaching you, "Good job, honey."

"Guys! Uh, help!" you hear America cry out a distance away.

You both sprint in her direction. You see her dodging hits from a man twice her size.

"Why did you leave the kid fight this frickin' giant?!"

"We were going to come back to help." you reply.

"Better late than never, yeah?" Steven pops in to add and then lets Marc back in control.

Your husband swoops in right before aforementioned giant lands a punch to America. The hit lands to Marc's chest, knocking him back to America, who flies into you behind her.

A portal suddenly opens up and the two of you fall back in.

You both land on the ground with a thud and watch as the star portal closes.

America groans, "Not again!"

She scurries up and tries to summon another portal. She continues to punch the air again and again and...nothing.

"Crap!"

You hesitantly rise to your feet, "That...doesn't sound good."

Her shoulders slouch, "It's not."

"I still haven't completely mastered the whole portal summoning thing."

You sigh in defeat, "Well, not what?"

"We can find this universe's me or Doctor Strange and see if they can help?"

"Sure. Let's do that." the two of you then take in your surroundings and, "Wait...where the hell are we?"

_________________

The giant man's body goes limp, falling back on a metal beam, impaling himself to death.

Marc, panting, looks around for you and America, "Honey?" he calls out, "Y/N? ...America? Guys?!" he removes his hood and mask, running his hand through his curls in distress, "Shit!"

Steven suddenly fronts, "Whe-Where is she? Where are they? What the hell happened?!"

"I don't know, Steven. One minute they were there and the next they were gone."

"Should we go to Doctor Strange? America's like his protege, yeah?"

"We have no choice. Shit, he's gonna be pissed."

_____________

"I TOLD YOU TO WATCH HER!" Stephen Strange hollered at Marc.

"We did! And she was fine until the giant douche tried to land one on her and I stepped in and then her and Y/N were gone!"

Stephen pinched the bridge of his nose, "Dammit." he begins to pace back and forth, "They could be in any universe right now. Guess I'll have to jump to each one and hope I find them."

Marc steps forward, "I'm coming too."

Stephen points a stern finger at him, "No. You've already done enough."

"So what the hell am I supposed to do while you look for them?" Marc asks as Stephen begins to ascend the stairs in the Sanctum.

Stephen's reply echoes, "Try not to fuck anything up further."

out of left field series: pt. 1 - this is bad (chris pov)

Out Of Left Field Series: Part 1 - This Is Bad (Chris POV)

Pairing: MLB!Chris Evans x Best Friend!Reader (female character)

Summary: After 29 years of friendship with Chris, there’s nothing you wouldn’t do for him. When he finds himself amid a PR nightmare at the same time your ex-boyfriend starts lurking around every corner, you enter into a mutually beneficial, strictly PR relationship to save his career and keep your ex away. But the lines begin to blur and lies get told, both you and Chris realizing you might’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Will you make it out unscathed or will you and Chris be just another PR relationship that ends in heartbreak and humiliation?

A/N: SURPRISE BITCHES. I am one impatient motherfucker and I needed to post it. SO I BEYONCE’D YOU (not that I’m comparing myself to the queen… but you get it). ENJOY THE FIRST PART OF THIS SERIES I’M SO EXCITED!

I would be remiss if i didn’t give a huge mfin shout out to @tis-thedamn-season. Like this fic/series would not be where it is without you. Love you bb.

Warnings: Drugs, language, allusions to smut, reader has an abusive/controlling ex, reader and chris are both 29 years of age (this is what you guys voted on!)

W/C: 6.9k

Out of Left Field Series Masterlist 

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All players and scenarios are made up completely. This story does not reflect things that actually happen in the MLB or with its players or with Chris in real life. Additionally, the reader’s family gets introduced in this series and are all OFC made by me. If you don’t like that, please don’t read this series.

I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site. Reblogs, comments, likes, and feedback ALWAYS appreciated ❤

I no longer have a taglist! Please head over to @time-for-a-library​ and turn on notifications!

He heard your shoes before he saw you.

The harsh clack of your stilettos on the concrete floor sent a wave of relief through his system that was almost immediately washed away and replaced by nerves.

Chris hated disappointing you. He could already picture the resigned look on your face while you crossed your arms and let out a defeated sigh.

Any other time, it probably would’ve bothered him more. But the pounding headache combined with the fact that he was still coming down from a coke-induced high, made it a little hard to focus on anything other than the fact that the room was spinning.

He tried to ground himself, focusing his attention on a scuff that marked the concrete wall across the room instead of the way the room seemed to circle around him despite his ass planted on this extremely uncomfortable mattress.

“He’s in here.”

Chris sat up on the metal ‘bed’, swinging his legs over the side and taking a deep, slow breath. His elbows rested on his knees, face buried in his hands while he waited.

“Thanks, Stu.” The softness of your voice floated through the air, bringing a welcome warmth and familiarity to the chill of his cell.

The sound of your heels got closer, scraping to a stop when you’d reached him.

Keep reading

Shooting Stars and Pseudoscience [part 1]

Pairing: Nathan Bateman x Gianna (fem!OC) (poc!oc)

Rating: Mature 

Word Count: 6,222

Warnings: Sexual innuendos and curse words

Genre: Mostly fluff, some angst, eventual smut

Summary: Soulmate! AU Each person is born with a soul mark that is identical with their soulmate’s. Nathan Bateman thinks it’s all nonsense, but his soulmate doesn’t. As if the whole idea wasn’t ridiculous enough already, his soulmate is none other than the popstar who is currently Blue Book’s brand ambassador.

Notes: Click here to see how this idea came to be

Playlist

—

‘Former Blue Book Employee Calls Nathan Bateman an Insensitive Lunatic’

‘How a Week With Blue Book’s Owner Led a Computer Coder to Quit’

‘Blue Book’s Fall From Grace?’

“Have you seen these headlines?” Thomas, Nathan Bateman’s publicist, questioned. 

Nathan rolled his eyes at the image on his monitor. “Of course I have, but since when did we give a shit about gossip?”

“This isn’t just some gossip, this is a fucking PR disaster, Nathan!” Thomas exclaimed, flailing his hands in the air for emphasis. “These are statements from somebody who actually lived with you for a week! Somebody you handpicked but couldn’t even afford to be nice to. Do you understand how bad this is?

The scientist sighed in disinterest. “Not really, but you seem to think it’s pretty bad.”

“Would it kill you to give a fuck about public opinion for once in your life? Daily Mail, Yahoo News, People.com, they’re everywhere! If this bad publicity goes on, your company is gonna take the blow. There will be a decrease in sales.”

“Fine, what do you propose?”

“We get another celebrity brand ambassador to help promote the products Blue Book is about to launch.”

Nathan nodded noncommittally. “Who did you have in mind?”

“This was actually Monica’s idea, so she’ll take it from here.”

Monica, Nathan’s social media manager and Thomas’s wife, moved her seat closer to the computer and screen shared a PowerPoint presentation of news articles and social media accounts. 

 “Gianna? A popstar? That shit barely counts as real music,” Blue Book’s CEO complained. “Are we really that desperate?” 

Keep reading

come out

jake lockley x reader

summary: you don’t see Jake very often, he still doesn’t feel confident and comfortable enough to front frequently; his visits are not a regular occurrence but when it’s him, you know it. you couldn’t be mad at him. not when he had been hidden in this body for too long, feelings buried deep as he watched Marc and Steven express them freely from a distance while he had to drown them down and suffer in silence.

warnings: ending fades to implied smut, sexual innuendos

tags: tooth rotting fluff, literally no plot just fluff, soft!jake, seriously this man needs to be held

word count: 0.9k

The back of Jake's knuckles brushed lightly against your cold cheek. You stirred as you rubbed your eyes, still hazy from sleep.

You knew it was Jake from the soft and aching look in his gaze– you don’t see Jake very often, he still doesn’t feel confident and comfortable enough to front frequently; his visits are not a regular occurrence but when it’s him, you know it.

You smiled endearingly at him, brushing back the curls falling over his forehead.

“‘Morning, Jake” you murmured, smoothing your hand along his bicep as his elbow was propped beside you, planted into the mattress.

Jake felt his heart flutter at the demonstration of you recognizing him so easily.

“‘Morning cariño” he whispered as he leaned to leave a kiss at the bridge of your nose. “How’d you know it was me?” he asked, letting his fingertips travel down the side of your face.

“An intuition” you affirmed, leaning into his touch. “I missed you.” you breathed out, heart aching as the words escaped your lips.

“I know” he complied as he shamefully closed his eyes and nodded. “I’m sorry querida” he apologized, looking right back into your eyes, searching for a trace of blame in them.

There was none.

You couldn’t blame him, you couldn’t be mad at him. Not when he had been hidden in this body for too long, feelings buried deep as he watched Marc and Steven express them freely from a distance while he had to drown them down and suffer in silence.

“I know it’s hard for you,” you said, mirroring his actions and bringing your hand to the side of his face. “But I don’t want you to push yourself too much. Take your time, okay honey?”

He nodded, a pained look covering his face, and nuzzled your hand leaving a kiss at your palm.

“Thank you” he mumbled against your skin before leaving another kiss there.

You chuckled and buried your hand into his curls. “What are you thanking me for?”

“For being so considerate. For understanding me.” he affirmed, smiling weakly. “Us.” he corrected himself.

You hooked your hands behind his neck and brought him down to your lips. He kissed them with as much passion and devotion he could give you, cherishing the intimacy and rarity of the moment.

His necklace dangled under your chin and you lightly tugged on it, drawing a sharp gasp from him before he smirked into the kiss and flicked his tongue over your bottom lip in need to feel you even more.

It didn’t take long for him to lick into your mouth, tasting you thoroughly until he ran out of breath.

He pulled away but remained close, nuzzling your neck as you ran your hands along his bare back, nails softly scraping against his warm skin just the way you knew he liked.

“I love you” he mumbled into your neck. He had wanted to say it, but he hadn’t expected the words to escape his mouth so easily. It needed to be said anyways.

He left a kiss in the crook of your neck, punctuating his previous words.

You felt your heart skip a beat, and one of your hands mindlessly traveled to his curls like it was a reflex. You scraped your nails against his scalp, and soothingly swiped your thumb over his shoulder blade with your other hand.

“I love you too Jake” you replied, looking down at the man buried into your neck.

He adored when you held him like that; just you and him, nothing else around, no one else around, no Khonshu, no danger, no blood to shed– just him resting in your arms, cherishing his turn at fronting without it being an emergency to protect his alters; just him living his life with you, taking the time to breathe. He could get used to it.

“I would love to see you come out more often,” you affirmed as he looked back at you. “I know it’s hard and I’m not putting you under pressure but–”

“–Yeah” he nodded, pinching his lips. “I know” he said in a whisper as he dived to kiss your lips again, his fingers holding your chin while he did so. He pulled away, threading his fingers through your hair as he remained leaning over you. “Truth is– I want you all the time” he said with a small grin growing at the corner of his mouth. “All the fucking time.” he added through gritted teeth.

“Well… You can have me all you want now” you whispered with a small chuckle, and you knew from there that the atmosphere had changed. Jake stopped his kisses and stayed still for a moment. Did you break him?

“...Jake?” you called, confused at his silent state. Jake wasn’t very talkative but this was strange.

“...All I want ?” he finally asked back, his dark eyes carefully examining your face.

You chuckled softly. “All you want.” you affirmed, stroking the back of his neck.

A small smirk grew on his lips. “Mmmh okay. Interesting. Very interesting” he hummed as his hands met your hips, gently kneading the skin there before diving right back to your neck, leaving open mouthed, warm kisses there.

You almost choked on air at the sudden feeling of his teeth nipping at your skin– you should have expected it, it’s Jake after all.

“Jake!” you exclaimed, uncontrolled giggles escaping your mouth.

“I better take advantage of that free time then, mh?” he asked before kissing your cheek, tangling his legs with yours.

“Yeah you better” you teased, only hoping all of this will get him to front more often.

It was only a matter of time before Jake finally felt legitimate fronting as much as Marc and Steven did.

—

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@apollo-enthusiast @scarabgrant @lockleysgrl @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @missmarmaladeth @alexxavicry @mystinky-butt