For the bookish ask game!
6. what books have you read in the last month?
10. do you have a guilty favourite?
15. recommend and review a book!
Thanks for the ask my friend 🥰
6.
June Reads!
*Unfix Me by Emory Weste
*Hat Trick by EM Lindsey
*Last Minute Walk-in by EM Lindsey
*Level Up by Max Walker
*Deal breaker by Maia Kinley
*Pumped by KM Neuhold
*Until Him by Cora Rose
*The Reality of Wanting my Husband by Lexi Amber and Bec Benson
*Finding Home by Lizzie C. Koz
*Stealing Forever by Lizzie C. Coz
*Until We Meet Again by Christina Lee
*Like Real People Do by EL Massey
10.
All the pleasure none of the guilt lol...perfectly secure in the fact that most of what I read is not considered high brow literature! It makes me happy and that's what matters!
15.
One of my favorite books, We Burn Beautiful by Lance Landsdale is getting an audiobook and I'm so stoked. The book is absolutely beautiful and heartwrenching but also hilarious. I cried and laughed in equal measure. God tier read IMO!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Mother's Day has always been difficult for Ilya but this year he finds comfort from someone unexpected.
Read below or on Ao3!
****
Ilya was drunk.
It took a lot to get a buzz going for a Russian who had been drinking vodka since he was fourteen, but Ilya had passed buzzed three drinks ago. He was sitting alone at some shitty bar in New York. They had lost 3-2 to the Admirals in overtime, which sucked, but that wasn't why he was drinking.
He was drinking because his heart ached.
Fuck Hollander's Instagram post with his stupid beautiful mother. Fuck the video they'd shown at the game of the players with their moms. Fuck this whole stupid holiday.
And fuck his Mama for leaving him.
He bit back a sob.
"Rozanov? You ok?"
Ilya groaned into his glass. Of course. Scott fucking Hunter.
"Go away, old man. Is past your bedtime," Ilya slurred.
"Yeah, I'm not leaving you like this."
"Is not your problem."
"No," Scott said, sliding onto the stool next to him. "But I am curious why you're alone and crying in a bar."
"Was not crying. I got vodka in my eye," Ilya lied.
"Sure you did."
Ilya scowled and lifted his glass, ready to tell Hunter exactly where he could shove his concern, but then Scott let out a long breath and scrubbed a hand down his face.
"God, I hate today."
Ilya gave him a strange look.
"Mother's Day," Scott said quietly. "Everyone always makes it such a big deal and it hurts. I lost my parents when I was twelve and it still hurts every day."
Ilya froze. The glass stilled in his hand.
"I lost my Mamochka when I was twelve."
Scott smiled at him sadly. "It's the shittiest club to be in, isn't it? The dead parents club."
Ilya let out a wet, broken laugh and sniffled. "Sometimes I am angry at her. I know this is not fair, but I miss her so much."
"I think it's okay to be angry. The anger comes from pain and loneliness." Scott said thoughtfully. "It's always there, like a dull ache. But on days like today..."
"Is a gaping wound," Ilya finished quietly.
Scott nodded.
"I am usually not like this," Ilya said, "but everything was so in your face this year. This whole big tribute, and I just sat there. Tried to hold it together. My teammates were all smiling and..."
He shook his head, unable to finish.
"It's hard," Scott said. "You don't want to bring everyone down, but it's just too much. I almost asked my coach to healthy scratch me, but it's the playoffs."
"Yes, I thought the same. Usually hockey makes me feel better." Ilya stared down into his glass. "I don't know why I am so sad. She has been gone longer than she was with me. I feel like she has missed so much."
He swallowed hard.
"I wonder if she would like the person I've become."
"What was your mom's name?" Scott asked.
"Irina," Ilya said quietly.
"Mine was Mary." Scott was quiet for a moment. "I don't know where she is today. I'm not a religious person. But I know she'd be proud of me."
He nudged Ilya's shoulder gently with his own.
"And I think Irina would be proud of you too."
"Why are you being so nice to me, Hunter?" Ilya asked.
"Because motherless lost boys stick together." Scott shrugged. "We don't have to like each other to understand each other."
"I like you," Ilya said softly.
Scott raised his eyebrows.
"Do not get smug. I will probably not remember saying this tomorrow, and if I do, I will deny. But I like you, Hunter. You are good person. Good captain."
He paused, then added, quieter:
"Good...friend."
"Thanks, Rozanov. That means a lot," Scott said.
"No, no more sappy. Have a drink and we...what is the phrase...trauma bond," Ilya said.
Scott laughed.
Ilya raised his glass. "To the shittiest club in the world."
"The shittiest club in the world," Scott echoed.
"For Mary," Ilya said.
"For Irina," Scott replied, and they clinked glasses.
They sat in silence for a while, but eventually Scott set down his empty glass and clapped a hand on Ilya's shoulder.
"Come on, Rozanov. Let's get you back to your hotel before you get more vodka in your eye."
Ilya muttered something in Russian as he stood and pulled out his phone to order an Uber.
"Hunter."
"Yeah?"
"If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you."
Scott grinned. "Wouldn't dream of it. See you around, Rozanov."
"Bye, Hunter."
Ilya opened the gallery on his phone and scrolled to the picture he was looking for. His Mamochka grinning, blue eyes shining, her arms wrapped around him as she kissed his cheek.
"I miss you," he whispered. "I love you."
And even though his heart was still broken, he suddenly felt less alone.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
It would have been easier if Alexei had just hated him. Hate is cold, impersonal. But what Alexei felt for Ilya ran deeper than hatred. It was resentment.
Alexei hadn't been blind to it. The way his father treated his mother. She was young and beautiful, and he was a dark cloud, powerful and suffocating. Even at five, Alexei felt the shift in Irina when his father entered the room. She tried to protect him from it, but he saw how Grigori would yell at her, mock her, call her terrible names. Stupid gold digger, trying to leech onto a man with a future. Irina would accept it, brush it off, tell Alexei that his father was stressed, that it was hard being such an important man.
Then Irina started talking to Alexei about where she had grown up, away from the city. About his grandparents. About the freedom of being away from all of it. He watched her pack a suitcase and hide it away, and she told him that one day they would go visit, that he had to be ready whenever she said. It would be an adventure, just the two of them.
But a few days later, his mother started feeling sick. She and Alexei went to the doctor's office, and he watched her nod, watched her eyes dull as the doctor handed her pamphlets. Then they walked home hand in hand, and when they arrived, he watched her unpack the suitcase and kiss him on the forehead.
Nine months later, Ilya arrived and sealed their fate.
I love the way you write Buck and Eddie’s friendship. I’d love to read something from around the time when Buck came out. 🥹
thank you frienddddd for sending this to me. i love love love love love the coming out scenes, and the one with eddie is so soft and loving. so this is a similar vibe, if you will. post-hospital kiss.
we'll call this one "peace after pain."
[wc: 1427]
By the time Eddie gets a slice of cake and sneaks into the hallway, Chris already back at the house with Abuela, headache receding from all the tequila and worry, it’s quiet.
The lights are dull, hospital visiting hours passed by an hour before, only the 118 and a few stragglers remain tucked into chairs lining the waiting room. They sit stacked together offering final congratulations to the happy couple before drifting apart before reuniting for their next shift.
There’s something about the ‘after’ – the way an emergency always heightens adrenaline, carries worry like wildfire, rampant and unending across harried terrain – that softens everything slowly.
Eddie’s used to the chaos – knocked up his girlfriend as a teenager and got carted off to war two times over. Lost his team in a helicopter crash that only brought their bodies home but left their minds back out in the desert. Every day the klaxon rings and every day he prays he makes it home to Christopher, waiting for the day his luck runs out.
But in the aftermath of pain is always peace.
And even if the pain carries on for hours, days – years, even – it always finds its way to peace eventually.
Today was a lucky one, one where his prayers were answered not just for his safety but for everyone he cares about. Chim survived, relatively unscathed, and found his words enough to promise forever with Maddie.
So, today, the peace soothes quickly, brings a barrage of beauty and, with it, Eddie finally feels like he can exhale.
When his eyes scan the narrow hallway, they eventually land on Buck, tucked in a corner on a bench at the end of it, Tommy slumped on his shoulder in sleep. He offers a little wave to Eddie with his free hand, the other holding a plate with cake of his own.
Eddie smiles, warmth filling the last little bits of his chest, love from Chim and Maddie blooming beside moments shared with Chris and Abula already settled there. But it’s not lost on Eddie how big this day was for Buck, too.
How hard it was for him to admit he was on a date with Tommy that night at the loft. The way he’d been so quiet, worry pinched between his eyes until Eddie finally realized he was focused on the wrong thing. Eddie hadn’t experienced something like that, himself, but he knew his job was easy.
Buck let go, and Eddie just had to catch.
When Buck disappeared after the ‘I Do’s and came back with Tommy, dragged along by his hand through the sea of people at the door, Eddie was already grinning. When he looked up and saw the soot lining Buck’s mouth, the giddy smile across his cheeks, he knew Buck made a choice that was so completely him, Eddie couldn’t be prouder.
“Hey,” he murmurs now, sinking onto the bench beside Buck. He leans over to make sure he hasn’t disrupted Tommy, but when he does Buck tosses a dismissive wave at him.
“He’s dead to the world,” Buck laughs. “Was at that wildfire the last day and a half. I don’t think you’d wake him up i-if you slapped him.”
Eddie raises his brows and teases “Or sprained his ankle?”
Buck shakes his head, rolls his eyes, and takes another bite of vanilla and buttercream. He looks happy in a way Eddie doesn’t quite remember seeing him before. Like he finally feels calm.
Peaceful.
“How’s the hangover?” Eddie asks, digging into his own slice.
Buck closes his eyes and takes a breath. “I’m gonna sleep for a day…or five.”
Eddie takes out a bottle of water he’d shoved into his pocket and cracks the seal, handing it over to Buck.
“Thank you,” Buck says before inhaling half the bottle. He offers it back to Eddie with a grimace, “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie shrugs. “There’s more. You keep it.”
They eat a few more bites in quiet company, the occasional door swinging shut nearby, Maddie’s laughter drifting from across the hall. Bobby and Athena duck out and wave goodbye to the pair before heading out themselves.
When they finish, Eddie takes Buck’s plate and stacks it with his own, tossing it in a garbage nearby before settling back beside Buck.
“I’m glad he could come,” Eddie says, gesturing to Tommy.
Buck looks up at him, eyes shimmering with surprise and that alone makes Eddie’s chest ache.
Proving people care in a way Buck doesn’t think anyone does is like fighting the devil himself sometimes, thoughts so ingrained they’re burned into Buck’s bones.
“R-Really?” Buck asks. “I-I mean–”
“Well, I had a question for him about the Cheville,” Eddie says, crossing his arms over his chest.
He cares, but he is still Buck’s best friend, after all – he can’t resist the teasing.
It works and Buck chuckles, the tension in his shoulders dropping slightly, his elbow playfully jabbing into Eddie’s ribs.
Eddie turns toward him, catching his eyes so he knows Buck hears him.
“Really,” Eddie says. “I’m proud of you, man. You didn’t let all this,” he gestures to the hospital halls, rooms lined with crash carts and nurses in scrubs, “trip you up.”
“Yeah,” Buck says, the weight of everything slipping away as he sinks against the wall, Tommy going with him. “Easier to do it a-all at once.”
“I’m sure it’s not easy, but…” Eddie says, leaning against the wall beside Buck. “You seem really happy.”
Buck turns and his smile widens, tears shining in his eyes, the brightness in them dimming the last of the worry. The ache in Eddie’s chest softens at the sight.
“I am,” he says.
Eddie glances between Buck and Tommy and it’s hard to stop the smile spreading up his own cheeks. Buck’s hand is laced lightly with Tommy’s, thumb brushing absentmindedly over his knuckles.
Tommy’s a good guy – and Buck’s the best guy Eddie knows – seeing them together like this makes so much sense, Eddie’s shocked he didn’t realize it sooner himself.
“And,” he nudges Buck, “Now everyone knows. You can bitch about him leaving towels on the ground at work like you always do.”
Buck elbows him a little harder this time. “I don’t always bitch at work.”
Eddie smirks and puts his hands up, “Then how do I know everything about the way your exes left their towels around?”
“It’s not…that’s–”
“Taylor uses three towels for one shower, Eddie. And then she gets another one to wash her face!” Eddie says in his best impersonation of Buck. “I got this fancy new apartment and there’s three places to hang towels in my bathroom, Eddie. Three! And Ali just–”
“Okay,” Buck concedes, laughing himself now. “Okay, yes. Fine. I like towels to be dry, sue me.”
“It’s a thing, Buck,” Eddie says.
“It’s not a thing, it’s normal!” Buck replies without pause.
“It’s definitely a thing,” Tommy mumbles from beside Buck, pinching Buck’s ribs and sinking deeper into his shoulder. “You already yelled at me for using the wrong hook the other–”
“It was the one farthest one from the shower, Tommy!” Buck scoffs, looking to Eddie for support.
Eddie offers none, just laughs and leans over Buck to tell Tommy. “It’s his weirdest thing. That and the other thing – with gum.”
Tommy cracks one eye open and furrows his brow. “What about gum?”
Before Eddie has a chance to explain, pain spikes up his shin and he hisses, glancing to see Buck’s foot collide with it again. “Ow, jeez Buck.”
“Shut up,” Buck grits out. “I have no things.”
“Well,” Tommy smirks, “You have one thing.”
Eddie can’t let it pass by, seizing the moment and saying, “Yeah, the towel thing.”
“I’m leaving,” Buck says and starts to shove Tommy off him and slip from between them. Tommy wraps his arms around him and holds him in place with a playful whine.
“No, no, no,” he says, “We were kidding. Come back, Evan. Please, you’re so warm.”
“You were just surrounded by fire for twenty-four hours, how could you possibly want to be warm?”
Eddie inhales and takes the opportunity, standing and turning toward the couple. “I’m gonna take off. I gotta relieve Abuela so she can sleep in her own bed.”
Tommy offers a tired wave and Buck knocks fists with Eddie before he heads back toward the room to bid the happy couple farewell. The peaceful warmth that slotted into place seeing his best friend so happy carries him all the way home.
Heated Rivalry edit makers! I am desperate for someone to make a Hollanov edit to "Lie to Me" by Shane Mack. It gets me in the feels every time and I am not talented enough to do it myself 🙏🙏🙏
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
"4-year-old male, managed to get himself wedged into the playground equipment. Father attempted removal but the leg is still trapped," Captain Hyatt relayed to his firefighters as they climbed out of the truck.
Tommy yawned, hoping this would be quick. The shift had been brutal and he was running on fumes. He really wasn't cut out for ground crew anymore.
"Firefighters! What number are you?" the little boy called out. He didn't seem too stressed about his predicament.
"Hey buddy, we're here to help," Tommy said, kneeling down to assess the situation.
"I know that. But what number are you? I'm collecting stations." The kid's eyes lit up. "I have the 122, 126, 118..."
Tommy's chest tightened at the mention of the 118.
"Uh, the 217," Tommy said. "What's your name, buddy?"
"Theodore, but everybody calls me Theo and I'm four years old. I just moved into a new house because my mom and dad died in a car crash, so I live with my dad. But he's not my old dad, he's my new dad. My old dad died with my mom. So now I have a different dad and I live in a new house and I have my own room with trucks on the wall."
Tommy's throat went tight. "That's...that's a lot of change, Theo."
"Yeah. It makes me really sad sometimes. I used to call my new dad Mr. Poop, but now I call him Buck."
Tommy froze. "Uh...Buck?" His voice came out strangled. "Theo, what's your new dad's job?"
"He's a firefighter. At the 118! That's why I know that one." Theo beamed proudly. "Do you know my dad?"
Tommy couldn't breathe. Evan had a son. And Tommy had missed all of it.
"I just turned around for a second and he was stuck...I don't know how he manages to do this stuff. He's such a good kid but he's always getting himself into these crazy situations and..." Buck rambled to Captain Hyatt before turning back to Theo. "Hey kiddo, I'm sure these firefighters will have you out in a jiffy."
Then he looked up and froze.
"T-Tommy?"
Their eyes met, and Tommy saw everything flash across Buck's face: shock, hurt, longing, hope. Then Buck seemed to remember how to breathe.
"Evan... you're a dad. This is, uh, wow. How?"
"It's kind of a long story." Buck's voice was soft, uncertain. "Wow, Tommy. I..."
"Hey, is anyone gonna get me out?" Theo interrupted.
"Yep, you got it, kiddo. Why don't you squeeze Buck's hand nice and tight while I use this big saw? Make sure you stay really still," Tommy said, not quite meeting Buck's eyes.
"Okay. I'm very brave," Theo announced.
Buck knelt down beside his son, offering his hand. "The bravest."
Tommy lifted Theo out of the equipment and handed him to Buck. "Why don't you head over to that ambulance and my friend will get your leg all checked out?"
"Okay. Thank you, Mr. 217," Theo said, settling into Buck's arms. "Let's go, Buck!"
Buck adjusted his hold on Theo but didn't move yet. "Tommy, would you...I mean, I know you have to get back to Harbor and I've got all this dad stuff to take care of, but..." He took a breath. "Can I call you? I can explain everything. Maybe we could talk? Actually talk for once?"
Tommy's heart was pounding. Evan was a father. Evan wanted to talk. Evan was standing right there with hope in his eyes and a four-year-old in his arms.
"Yeah," Tommy said quietly. "Yeah, you can call me."
"Okay... okay, yeah, great," Buck said, a genuine smile spreading across his face.
"Talk to you soon, Evan. Stay safe, Theo." Tommy gave them a wave and turned toward the engine, allowing himself to imagine a future he'd been certain was lost.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
“Whatever the results show, we’re in this together…”
Some Troy/Harris for you, love!
****
"Whatever the results show, we're in this together," Harris said softly, squeezing his boyfriend's hands and looking into his eyes with complete sincerity .
"Harris—" Troy began.
"We've been through worse, and we can lean on each other," Harris continued, his voice steady and reassuring.
"Harris, it's not that serious," Troy said.
"Troy, I know that you are new to this whole out gay man thing, but this is a cultural rite of passage!" Harris said. "My baby's first drag race. I'm so proud."
Troy stared at him. "You're being ridiculous."
"I am being supportive," Harris corrected. "There's a difference."
"It's a TV show," Troy pointed out.
"It's not just a TV show," Harris said, clutching his chest dramatically. "It's art. It's fashion. It's charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent."
"You've been waiting to say that, haven't you?"
"Maybe," Harris admitted with a grin. "Now sit down and prepare to have your life changed."
