#im predicting this will get three notes

[meaty-artist]

Fight (blood warning)

[pitlanepeach]

Radio Silence | Chapter Six

Lando Norris x Amelia Brown (OFC)

Series Masterlist

Summary — Order is everything. Her habits aren't quirks, they're survival techniques. And only three people in the world have permission to touch her: Mom, Dad, Fernando.

Then Lando Norris happens.

One moment. One line crossed. No going back.

Warnings — Autistic!OFC, still quite angsty (sry), strong language.

Notes — Lots of plot, we're closing out the 2019 year in this one! Not much Lando in this one (Im still mad at him). This gets crazy. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

Want to be added to the taglist? Let me know! - Peach x

2019

Two weeks after Spa, Amelia stood outside her dad’s office at the MTC with a manila file in her hands and the taste of copper in her mouth.

The door was open, but she still knocked.

Zak looked up, startled, like he wasn’t used to seeing her there anymore — and maybe he wasn’t. She’d stayed away from the MTC for the past few weeks.

“Hey,” he said, getting up too quickly. “You want to come in?”

She stepped inside, cringing when her new trainers squeaked against the floor. Her arms were stiff from holding the file too tight. “Brought you something,” she said, and handed it over. No eye contact. She stared at a plaque on his shelf instead — a dusty one from 2007, still etched with a podium that felt like another lifetime.

Zak took the file and sat back down behind his desk. “You put this together?”

She nodded once. “It’s just data. Analysis. Trends.”

He opened the folder and started flipping through, slower than she wanted, be he was a much slower reader than she was. Pages of her notes, charts, predictive modelling, comparative pace metrics, aero versus power unit deltas from the season so far. Even some basic projections based on engine supplier performance curves over the last six years.

He hesitated, eyes scanning the pages. “What is this, Amelia?”

“McLaren’s had a better season,” she said, not bothering to hide the way her nose scrunched. “You’ll probably finish fourth in the Constructors’. Best of the rest. Everyone is going to be very happy.”

He looked up at her, sensing the ‘but’ before she even said it.

“I am not,” she said. “I don’t think we should be happy with fourth. I think we should be aiming for much higher.”

Zak leaned back slightly in his chair, file still open in front of him. “Amelia…”

“I think we should drop Renault after next season,” she said, cutting him off.

He blinked. “Jesus,” he muttered. “That’s a big swing.”

“I’ve run the numbers,” she said, a little sharper now. “Reliability. Raw power. Upgrade cycles. Driver feedback. Even manufacturer investment in long-term hybrid development. Renault is… not consistent, and they’re not progressing fast enough. Mercedes is more efficient, more stable, more scalable. If we want consistent podiums, a chance at race wins, then we need to align with a manufacturer that knows how to win. Not just how to score points.”

Zak sat back again, slower this time, like the weight of the idea was physically pressing into him. He tapped the edge of the file absently with his fingers.

“You know how much this would rock the boat, right?” he said. “We’ve spent years building this partnership. Renault’s got skin in the game. Contracts. Commitments. There’ll be consequences if we walk away.”

“I know,” she said. “But you always said we should act like a front-running team, even when we weren’t. So act like one. Make a decision like one.”

Zak was quiet. Still.

“I started working on this after Hockenheim,” she added, voice lower now. “I just… didn’t show anyone.”

He closed the file. “This isn’t a light suggestion, Amelia.” He sighed. 

“I know,” she said again. “But I think it’s the right one.”

He exhaled slowly and rubbed a hand across his mouth, then looked at her; really looked at her.

She was calmer than she’d been the last time they’d spoken. Still paler than usual, still guarded, but steadier somehow. Like something had hardened and solidified inside her in the silence of the past few weeks.

“I’ll take it to the board,” he said finally. “Quietly. Just to test the water. No promises.”

“Okay,” she said.

There was a beat. She stared at the paperweight on his desk, the one she’d bought him for Father’s Day when she was thirteen.

“I just want us to stop being afraid of wanting more,” she added, softer now. “That’s all.”

Zak didn’t respond right away.

And as she turned to go, hand already on the doorframe, he couldn’t help but ask, “You didn’t just do this for him, did you?”

She paused. “No,” she said. “I did it for the team. I did it for you.”

She walked out. 

— 

The press release dropped on a Thursday.

A neatly timed, efficiently worded, professionally curated announcement: McLaren Racing to become Mercedes-AMG Powertrain customer team from 2021 onwards.

Quotes from her dad. From Toto. From Andreas.

A photo of a handshake she wasn’t in.

No mention of the folder. No mention of the analysis. No mention of her. 

Of course there wasn’t. She hadn’t expected it.

Not really.

And yet she sat at her desk, surrounded by pages and pages of sketches of cooling architecture redesigns, and felt… strange.

Not angry. Not exactly.

Not proud either.

Mostly just quiet.

She clicked out of the article. Closed her browser. Opened a new tab, then immediately forgot why.

When she'd handed her dad the folder two weeks ago, it hadn’t even been about recognition. She hadn’t cared about credit. She’d just wanted them to be better. To try harder. To take a worthwhile risk. 

And when he’d said, I’ll take it to the board, she’d believed him.

She just didn’t think that would be the end of it.

He hadn’t spoken to her about it since. No follow-up. No texts. No update. No “you were right.” Not even a half-hearted thank-you over dinner or a passing “good job” in the hallway.

The decision had come. And it had come without her.

Which made sense. She wasn’t a department head. She wasn’t on the executive team. She didn’t even have an official job title.

She wasn’t owed anything.

But still… still, she sat there with her heart lodged high in her throat and her fingernails digging crescents into the seam of her jeans, wondering why she suddenly felt like a ghost.

Why it felt like this was supposed to mean something.

And why it hurt so much to realise that her dad was okay with taking her work, her time, her thinking, the thing she’d built, and not giving her even a whisper of recognition.

Because he was used to it.

Used to her just handing things over for free.

And the worst part was, he wasn’t the only one.

She’d been doing this for years, hadn’t she? Offering up all the sharpest pieces of herself like they were scraps. Little theories, little fixes, the way she could spot patterns no one else could, pick through race data like thread. Suggestions left on the kitchen counter, ideas floated during test weekends, whispers passed to engineers when no one else was listening. Quiet contributions, all of them. Invisible fingerprints.

She’d given it away. All of it. Every clever thought, every hard-earned observation; just laid it down, like it didn’t belong to her in the first place.

And now someone else got the credit. Again. And she wasn’t even surprised.

She was just tired. And quietly furious.

— 

The house smelled like woodsmoke and dog shampoo. Roscoe was already halfway into Amelia’s lap, snoring, his head heavy against her stomach as Lewis slid a mug of tea across the coffee table.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he said, settling into the armchair across from her. “He’ll try and sleep there all day.”

“I won’t complain about that,” she murmured, scratching behind Roscoe’s ears. He was a big dog, solid and heavy. He felt a bit like her weighted blanket. Anchoring. 

Outside the windows, snow clung to the corners of Lewis’ sprawling. Quiet. Still. The way winter was meant to be. Amelia pulled her sleeves down over her hands and stared at the steaming mug.

Lewis leaned back, watching her over the rim of his cup. “You keeping up with the silly season chaos this year?”

“As always.” She nodded. 

“Gasly back to AlphaTauri, Hulkenberg out, Ocon sliding into Renault. There will be a bit of a bloodbath next year.” He said. 

She nodded, though her mind was elsewhere.

Lewis gave her a second longer before asking, “What about Lando? You two—”

“I don’t want to talk about Lando,” she said quickly, too quickly. Her eyes stayed on Roscoe’s fur.

Lewis didn’t press. He just leaned forward, brows faintly furrowed. “Right. Okay.” 

They let the silence settle again. Roscoe shifted in his sleep, his paws twitching as if chasing something through a dream. Then, quietly, Amelia spoke. “The Mercedes-McLaren deal,” she said, voice low. “That was mine.”

Lewis blinked, gave himself a second to repeat her words in his head, and then said. “What?”

“McLaren dropping Renault, becoming a Mercedes customer team.” She rubbed a thumb over Roscoe’s collar. “I ran all the projections. Power unit deltas, reliability, development pace, all of it. I put together the entire case. Handed it to my dad in a file. And two weeks later, they made the announcement.”

Lewis stared at her. “You’re serious?”

She nodded, swallowing. “No one said anything. Not to me. And I wasn’t… part of the meeting, or the rollout. He never even followed up. I just saw it in the press release like everyone else.” Her voice wavered, but didn’t break. “And I know I don’t work for McLaren. But I thought; I thought maybe it would mean something.” 

Lewis’s jaw twitched and his eyes looked darker than they usually did. “Amelia. That… that’s a big deal, you know that? That was your intellectual property.” 

“I know.” She hugged her arms tight around herself. “It just… it feels wrong to be angry. Like I should’ve known better. Like it’s my fault for not asking for anything in return. For just giving it away.”

“That’s not on you,” Lewis said, voice hardening. “That’s on him. Your dad. And on the team. They’ve taken advantage of you. You should get credit. You should get a bloody job offer and a signing bonus. Not… whatever the fuck this is.” 

She sniffed. “I don’t have a degree.”

Lewis scoffed. “So what? Since when does a piece of paper mean more than years of proven genius?”

That made her pause.

“You are one of the sharpest minds I’ve seen in this sport,” he said. “And I’ve been in it a long time. You see things before they happen. You think ahead of the curve. That’s what teams dream of having. And if McLaren can’t see that, if your own dad can’t see that, it’s not because it’s not there. It’s because he doesn’t know how to recognise it in you.”

She nodded. She already knew exactly what the problem was. “He doesn’t know how to see me as anything but his daughter.”

“Toto does,” Lewis said. “And that offer is still on the table, by the way.” 

Amelia looked away, cheeks flushing. 

“I’m not trying to pressure you. I just want you to know that you’ve got options,” Lewis said, softer now. “Real ones. And you don’t have to keep waiting around for your dad to finally recognise your potential.” 

She didn’t answer, but her hands were steady on Roscoe’s back now. And when she finally did glance at him, there was something a little sharp in her chest. Something that felt a lot like clarity.

— 

WhatsApp Groupchat — 2019 F1 Grid

Lewis H. @Lando You are an absolute prick.

Sebastian V. Good morning to you too?

Daniel R. Shit. What’d he do this time?

Charles L. Ah, this does not seem good.

Lando N. what the fuck did i do

Lewis H. You ghosted her. Like a child.

Carlos S. What??????????

George R. Wait are you serious?

Lewis H. Dead serious.

Lando N. oh my god can you not it’s literally none of your business ok

Max V. You’re an idiot, Norris.

Pierre G. Landooooo bro.

Alex A. Yeah nah that’s rough. You ghosted her? I actually thought you liked her, man.

Daniel R. She was so nice. Bet she feels like shit now.

Sebastian V. Is she okay? @Lewis

Lewis H. She’s fine. Too good for him anyway.

George R. I can’t believe this. Didn’t he literally write his racing number on her shoes? Or was that a fever dream??

Max V. @George He did. He’s just a right dickhead.

Carlos S. 😐 Told you not to screw it up, @Lando

Lando N. ok fucksake i get it You can all stop now i already feel like a piece of shit

Charles L. Why would you ghost her when she is so pretty and smart? I do not understand.

Daniel R. He’s still a kid. Dumb as hell. He’ll regret it in a few months, trust me.

Lewis H. He should be regretting it already.

Max V. Extremely dumb move. I wouldn’t have ghosted her and I’m famously difficult.

Sebastian V. Maybe I will set her up with my younger brother. He’s very clever. And rich.

George R. Is it weird if I throw my uncle’s name in the hat? He’s only 24. Really lovely guy.

Carlos S. My cousin Carlo is already in love. He will be thrilled to know she’s single.

Lando N. fuck off i get it I’m the villain Jesus christ can we drop it now

Daniel R. Glad you’re finally on the same page, mate!

Alex A. You could’ve just talked to her. Didn’t need to ghost her. That was cold, man.

Kimi R. 👍

— 

Interlagos was hot and loud and humming with tension, and Amelia made sure to stay pressed to the edges of it; a shadow against the garage walls, an expressionless face hidden behind a pair of black sunglasses.

It was her first time at any track since before Belgium. Her first time being in the same place as Lando since he’d decided that she was not worth knowing. And she was careful. Careful to keep to service corridors and briefing rooms, careful not to risk running into him. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she looked did. 

Nothing, probably. He would just ignore her, like he had been for two months. 

She had just slipped away from the hospitality bar, iced-coffee in hand, when a voice called out to her from the outside deck; warm, accented.

“Chica! Are you too busy to stop and talk with a very ignorant old man?”

She turned and found Carlos Sainz Sr. waving her over, a bottle of water in one hand and a wary smile on his sun-worn face.

“I was just—” she started, but he was already rising from his seat, gesturing for her to come join him. 

“Come, come. Sit. I have good seats here.”

She hesitated for a breath, then nodded and climbed the short steps up to the guest viewing area. The chaos of pit lane sprawled out below. Mechanics scrambled. Tyres stacked like soldiers. Race engines sang in the background, vicious and alive.

“Gracias,” she murmured, sliding into the chair beside him.

He nodded, then stared at her for a long, quiet second. “I wanted to say,” he said, his English thick with Madrid roots, but kind. “I think that… earlier in the year, I judged you too quickly.”

Amelia frowned at him. “Yes, you did.”

He sighed and nodded. “I assumed that you were just a pretty girl in the paddock.” He said. “And you see, my son has a terrible habit of becoming fixated on pretty things. But I realise now that I was wrong. You were there to, eh, help. To fix.” He sounded worn, like he’d had to work hard to say that out loud. 

She shrugged, staring out at the grandstands. They were full. “I was upset about it, I think. But it was not a big deal.”

“It was,” Carlos said, serious now. “It was a very big deal. My son made that clear to me. You are very clever. A real asset to the McLaren team.” He told her, firm and steady. 

She didn’t have anything to say to that. Just gave him a tight, (hopefully) polite smile and turned her eyes to the pit-lane as the cars peeled out of the garage to line up on the grid.

The race was long, and she stayed on the balcony throughout it all. Heat shimmered off the asphalt. Pit strategies flexed and fractured as the laps ticked down, and through it all, Amelia sat with her hands still in her lap, her mind sharper than the TV graphics overhead.

And when Carlos Sainz, the younger one, made it to third after a messy, brilliant final few laps, when the checkered flag waved and the paddock exploded into cheers and disbelief, she turned to his father and smiled, truly smiled, for the first time all day.

“Felicidades,” she said, voice soft but real. “That was very well done.”

Carlos Sr. beamed, pride etched into every line of his face. He stood up quickly, hurrying down to find his son and the rest of the team.

Amelia stayed.

The viewing deck emptied fast. Celebration echoed below. But she just slipped back into the motorhome, past the catering crew and out of the line of sight, into a quiet alcove near the storage lockers where no one would think to look for her.

She sat down on the floor, pressed her back against the cool wall, and closed her eyes.

She was proud. Of Carlos. Of the car she had helped make faster. Of the whisper of her fingerprints across the strategy that had put him on the podium.

But the truth still sat heavy on her ribs; that it had all happened without her. That even here, even now, she felt like a ghost.

— 

The paddock at night after a race was one of her favourite places in the world. Empty water bottles clattered in the wind, discarded tyre blankets lay forgotten in corners, and the once-buzzing garages now hummed low and tired beneath the fluorescent lights. Amelia walked slowly, hands in her pockets, trainers scuffing against the tarmac, the cool Brazilian evening pulling the heat from her skin.

She passed the Mercedes motorhome, its sleek black exterior reflecting the dim light. Through the tinted glass, she caught a glimpse of Toto Wolff, head bent in conversation with one of his engineers. Calm. Assured. In control.

She didn’t stop walking, but something in her twisted. Guilt, maybe. Or the quiet ache of uncertainty.

Red Bull had been circling for a while. Quiet at first; emails she half-dismissed, a few engineers asking her strangely specific questions, casual feelers through people she didn’t realise even knew her name. Then Christian on Dutch TV, mentioning her potential. Helmut at COTA, watching her from the edge of the pit wall like a cowboy evaluating livestock. And Adrian Newey, who bypassed all of them and emailed her directly in early November. Short. Direct. Complimentary in a way that didn’t feel rehearsed.

She hadn’t told her dad. Not yet.

Nothing was official, anyway.

“Brown,” came a voice behind her.

She turned, blinking as Max strode over from the Red Bull suite. His jacket was unzipped, and he still reeked faintly of champagne. Hair a bit damp. Grin lazy.

“Christian asked me to make sure you knew where to go,” he said, lifting his brows. “You’ve got ten minutes before Jos starts vibrating.”

She pulled a face. “Is everyone going to be there? Like… your dad is going to be there?”

“Obviously. It’s Red Bull. We are very theatric,” he said, deadpan. “Zusje, you are the most in-demand person in Formula 1 right now, of course everybody wants to be in the room when we finally win the battle for your brain.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t call me that. Zusje. I don’t know what it means.”

“Little sister,” he said, Dutch accent thick, shrugging as he fell into step beside her. “It suits you. You talk just as much as I do, and you are equally annoying as me. We will give Christian many headaches, I think.”

“I always carry ibuprofen in my handbag.” She tried to joke, but it came out flat. 

Max looked at her for a moment, but then he grinned, so she imagined he must have thought her joke was funny. At least somewhat. “Adrian’s been trying to steal you since Canada.” He told her. 

She sighed. “That explains the espresso machine he sent to me during the summer break. I was very confused.”

He gave her a look. “You kept it?” He asked curiously. 

She nodded. “It is a good machine. Expensive.”

“Of course it was. It’s Adrian.” Max shrugged. 

They stopped a few feet from the Red Bull motorhome, which buzzed under the night lights like it was wired into a different voltage. Something kinetic hung in the air; possibility, maybe. Restlessness. Momentum.

She stared. “This feels like betrayal.”

Max rolled his eyes. “It is not betrayal.”

He nudged her shoulder. She recoiled, glaring at him. He raised his hands in defence. “Sorry. Sorry.” Then, quieter, he said. “You’ve outgrown the shadows, zusje. It is not your fault that your dad doesn’t know what to do with you. But we do. Adrian does. Christian definitely does. You belong somewhere that doesn’t try to keep you small.” 

She started to chew on her bottom lip anxiously, “Do you really think that I am worth all of this?”

He didn’t even blink. “I think you’re going to make me a world champion, Amelia Brown.”

— 

The Yas Marina Circuit gleamed beneath the Abu Dhabi sun, all smooth marble floors and overly modern hospitality suites. It felt more like a luxury mall than a racetrack, but Amelia liked it. Everything was polished, controlled. 

She slipped through the back corridors of the McLaren unit with practiced ease, unnoticed as usual. It was early, quiet, the calm before the chaos of FP1.

In Carlos’s driver room, she placed a neatly bound packet on the table beneath the television. His telemetry from the entire season, annotated and colour-coded: green for improvements, yellow for repeat tendencies, red for danger zones. She’d included braking inconsistencies, corner exit deltas, and fuel load trends, with suggestions tailored to the 2020 chassis.

He’d get it. He always did. Carlos read data like scripture.

In Lando’s room, she left the same. A different binder. Different tendencies. More throttle hesitation in traffic, sharper degradation when chasing, lapses in tire preservation across high-deg circuits. A note in the front, written in her smallest, sharpest handwriting.

You are an asshole. You are also better than your instincts. Learn the difference between fast and frantic. Good luck.

She didn’t linger. She didn’t need to. No one would know she’d been there except the two of them, and even then, it didn’t matter anymore. She’d done it. Helped them. One last time.

She turned down the corridor toward the exit, and almost walked straight into a man who was standing too stiffly in her path.

He was older, expensively dressed, with the familiar face of someone she’d seen on enough pit walls to know he didn’t belong there out of curiosity. Adam Norris. 

He looked her up and down, his voice clipped. “Ah. Amelia, is it?”

“That’s right.” She muttered. 

“I suppose we haven’t met.” He said. 

“No,” she said. “Not really.”

He hesitated. A beat passed. Two.

“I’ve… heard you’re very capable,” he said finally. “Talented. Bright.” He said it like he didn’t really believe it. 

She tilted her head. Frowned at him. “Did you tell Lando to stay away from me?”

He flinched, just barely. “I advised him to focus on his career.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. It wasn’t a happy smile. “You should teach your son better manners.”

She didn’t wait for a response. She stepped around him, slow, deliberate, and kept walking. Past the orange panels, past the McLaren logo, past the team she’d poured her entire self into. 

By the time the sun dipped below the grandstands and the lights came on for the weekend's final showdown, she was long gone from the paddock. A flight booked for her under a new team name. A seat at a new table. A blank page waiting for her red inked scrawl.

Red Bull knew she was coming.

They just didn’t know what she was prepared to become.

— 

The Browns’ living room was filled with the scent of cinnamon, pine, and whatever Christmas candle Tracy had been obsessed with that week. The fireplace crackled softly, fairy lights twinkled around the windows, and somewhere in the background, Ella Fitzgerald was crooning something vintage and sentimental.

Amelia sat cross-legged on the floor in sweatpants and a hoodie, half-watching as her dad unwrapped a book about American muscle cars from the 1960s. He grinned like a kid, holding it up for Tracy to see.

“This is great,” Zak said. “I’ve been looking for this one.”

“I know,” Tracy said, leaning in to kiss his cheek before returning to her place at the table with a glass of wine. “I listen, you know. I’m a good wife.”

Amelia smiled faintly. She hadn’t said much all day. She’d made breakfast. Helped put the chicken in the oven. Unwrapped the gifts they handed her; socks, a new set of sketching pencils, a silver pen engraved with her initials, and said thank you each time. But the weight in her chest hadn’t lifted, not even when her mother handed her a plate stacked high with garlicky roast potatoes. 

Zak was still talking, flipping through the book, animated now. “I’ve got such a good feeling about next season,” he said, his eyes bright. “The team’s in a good place. Carlos is dialled in, Lando’s matured a lot. And the Mercedes power unit; I know we’re still with Renault this year, but it’ll be a game-changer for us in twenty-one. Might be the year we really start bothering the top three again.”

Amelia swallowed hard. Her fork hovered above her plate, untouched. She glanced down at her food. It was getting cold. Her stomach turned.

Across the table, Tracy watched her. Her gaze was soft but sharp, a mother’s intuition in full force.

“Everything okay, Amelia?” She asked gently.

Amelia nodded. “Yeah,” she said, quickly. “Just tired. Long few months.”

Tracy didn’t push, but Amelia could tell she wasn’t convinced.

Her phone buzzed once, facedown on the table beside her glass of water. She flipped it over, half expecting a message from Carlos, or worse, from her dad, who had a terrible habit of sending her random articles from F1Tech like she wasn’t sitting five feet away.

But it wasn’t Carlos.

iMessage — 17:02pm

Vrolijk Kerstfeest,

Can’t wait for you to build my championship-winning car. – M.V. 

She exhaled, barely more than a breath. The corner of her mouth lifted. Not a smile, not really, but the closest she’d come to one all day. She tapped her fingers against the table, hiding the message beneath her palm.

Of all the gifts she’d been given that morning — the socks, the pen, the awkward hug from her dad that still smelled faintly of cinnamon and gasoline — this was the only one that made her feel something. Recognition.

She glanced at her dad, still rambling about wind tunnel simulations and team morale like the world hadn’t shifted beneath their feet. Then she looked back down at her plate, her fork still untouched.

She hadn’t told him yet. She didn’t know when she would.

Maybe she wouldn’t at all.

Maybe she’d take a page out of his book. 

— 

“Red Bull Racing Hire Amelia Brown as Technical Design Intern, Working Under Adrian Newey”

— Motorsport.com

Red Bull Racing Announces Amelia Brown as New Technical Design Intern “Mini Newey” Joins Office of the CTO Ahead of 2020 F1 Season

Red Bull Racing has officially confirmed the addition of Amelia Brown to its technical department, naming her as a Technical Design Intern working directly under Chief Technical Officer Adrian Newey.

Brown, 19, has quietly gained a reputation in Formula 1 circles for her analytical precision and instinctive approach to problem-solving. Though never officially affiliated with a team, her behind-the-scenes contributions have turned heads up and down the paddock — especially within the aerodynamic development community.

“She’s one of the sharpest minds I’ve come across in years,” said Newey in a brief statement. “She has an innate understanding of car behaviour, balance, and airflow mapping that’s rare at any level of engineering, let alone someone so early in their career.”

While her appointment as an “intern” may sound modest, Red Bull insiders are already referring to Brown as “Mini Newey,” a nod to the technical savant under whom she will be working and a reflection of the high expectations within the team.

Team Principal Christian Horner added, “We’ve always prided ourselves on fostering talent, and Amelia represents the next generation of creative engineering thought. Her insight, even during early informal conversations, has already helped shape some of our thinking going into 2020.”

When asked about her appointment, Brown declined to comment directly, but sources inside the team say she will be working across simulation, aero development, and design review cycles throughout the season.

“She’s not here to make coffee,” said Gianpiero Lambiase, Verstappen's race engineer. “She’s here to change the game.”

Red Bull Racing’s 2020 challenger is set to be unveiled in Bahrain next month. Whether Brown’s influence will be visible from day one remains to be seen — but if early whispers are any indication, she won’t stay behind the curtain for long.

NEXT CHAPTER

[dokries]

you need some soup!

pairing: lee seokmin (dokyeom) x gender neutral reader

genre: fluff, established relationship

word count: 1.5k

warnings: sick fic™, mentions of medicine, food and you know…being sick (having a fever/being tired), a kiss on the cheek, minghao is a saviour pharmacist, seokmin is loud

author note: basically, i want a seokmin. this is so funny because i wrote this before i became kind of sick…did i predict the future again…anyway, i hope you enjoy my rambling turned fic ♡

masterlist

seokmin wishes he got to know you earlier. he tells you this often actually, almost to the point where you’re tired of hearing it—you could never be sick of seokmin though; that would be near impossible. 

however, you can literally be sick, which is exactly what your warm forehead and cold hands are telling you. you would ask your boyfriend to bring you home some medicine but seokmin’s at rehearsals for his upcoming musical, and you don’t want to burden him—he had been stressing about his voice the other day, and you know how hard it is for him in general. you’re not planning to add onto his already heavy load, considering that you’re seokmin’s comfort movie, as he affectionately likes to call you. he always talks about how he could watch you all day, and—yeah, you need to get up for some medicine and stop dwelling on the love of your life, no matter how fun it may be. 

you check the bathroom cabinet despite knowing that what you're looking for isn’t there. you sigh before rubbing the heels of your hands in your eyes, mentally preparing yourself to make the much needed trip to the local pharmacy. 

after a painstaking walk that feels much longer than three minutes, you enter the cool air conditioned building. you wave at minghao, making your way to the front counter. 

“hey, minghao,” you say, taking shallow breaths to calm yourself after your short walk—yikes, something’s definitely wrong—and minghao notices.

he frowns at your demeanour, calling your name softly. “are you alright…? do you need me to call seokmin?” minghao asks hesitantly, already pulling out some medicine from underneath the desk to place in front of you.

“no!” he raises an eyebrow at your immediate refusal before you continue, looking down at the options he lays out for you to take. “i…you know how stressed he’s been with the opening show coming up, right? i don’t want to worry him more.” 

minghao sighs, moving his hand slowly to your forehead to check your temperature, so you don’t get startled. he pulls back after a second, adjusting his glasses and wincing. “you definitely have a fever, though it’s not too bad…yet. i would recommend taking this one.” he pushes one bottle closer to you than the others, concern in his eyes. 

“tell seok—” he corrects himself with an eye roll at your glare, “call our number if you need anything, okay? i can deliver it to you if needed. make sure to rest, okay?” he gives you a pointed look, ringing up the bottle for you after you nod, and lets you pay before handing you a paper bag with your purchase inside. you smile wearily at minghao, giving him a wave as you leave, making your way back home. 

once the medicine goes down your throat, you flop down onto the bed. you check your phone for any messages from your boyfriend, and can’t help but smile slightly at what he sent earlier.

seokmine 🌻 ❙

SWEETIE IM SO SORRY

the staff said i probably have to stay longer so i can get my clothes fitted again :((

i’ll try to get home as soon as i can though 🫡

see you soon my love ♡

you ❙

take your time minnie <3

i hope your rehearsals went well though! i’ll be waiting at home for a full recap >:D

you groan, your phone suddenly too much to look at. yeah, maybe you should do as minghao says—he does have a degree after all. you place your phone on the nightstand beside you before closing your eyes. 

seokmin’s panicking in the dressing room, his eyes more focused on the foreboding text from his pharmacist friend than the tailor trying to get his measurements. 

first of all, the fact that he has to be notified of your health from minghao offends him. do you not trust him to be there when you’re sick? he shakes that thought off, as well as the tailor that had (sadly) been assigned to him, who sighs. seokmin apologizes frantically to them, before letting out a breath. he hasn’t been able to police you about taking care of yourself recently because of how busy his schedule’s become but he didn’t expect you to get sick. what would you do without him? …okay, seokmin knows you would do a lot without him but still. he wants to do everything he can for you, even if you can do it yourself. 

he texts you, his hands working as fast as they can, and frowns when you don’t respond right away like you usually do.  

seokmine 🌻 ❙

honey you alright??

hao texted me saying you’re sick ☹️

i’ll be home in a few i promise

honey?

seokmin’s tailor notices the worried expression on his face, and gestures for him to just leave; they could always take measurements some other day. as soon as they finish talking, seokmin’s face lights up and he bolts. he’s gone before his fellow cast members can wish him a good day, and he calls you as soon as he turns his car on. when you don’t pick up, he bites his lip and his leg shakes up and down quickly.

did you take the medicine minghao promised he gave you? are you not picking up because you’re asleep? are you collapsed on the bathroom floor, weeping about how if your minnie was there with you, you would be fine and actually able to walk to—okay, that was probably a bit much. however, seokmin can’t help but think of the worst possible scenario as he waits impatiently for the car in front of him to move so he can make that final turn into your neighbourhood. 

he unlocks the door as fast as he can, and as soon as he walks in, he finds it too quiet for his liking. he hurriedly takes off his shoes and throws his bag onto the couch in the living room before checking the bathroom to see if he was right in thinking you’re in there. seokmin lets out a breath when he doesn’t see you, thankful his overactive imagination isn’t reality.

he peers into the bedroom at first, and as soon as he sees your sleeping figure, he just about sobs, pulling the door open dramatically—he is a musical actor after all. “MY LOVE! I THOUGHT YOU FAINTED OR WERE CRYING OR—” your boyfriend yells, falling onto the bed and cutting himself off as he presses his face into your outstretched arm.

you rub your eyes sleepily with your other hand, slowly registering that it isn’t a dream, and your boyfriend really is grabbing onto you, about to sob. you cover your mouth and yawn before placing a kiss on his forehead with a smile. “i’m fine, minnie!” 

seokmin looks up at you with a pout as he checks your temperature with a peck on your cheek. you giggle at the gentle motion as he leans back to look at you once more, his voice whiny as he calls your name. “your face is so hot! you’re definitely not fine.” 

you roll your eyes before pushing him away softly, not wanting him to get sick too. seokmin glares at you jokingly before getting up with a sigh, realizing that he can’t risk getting sick, even if he wants to cuddle with you all day. 

his shoulders drop before he sighs again. dear god, someone would think he’s the one who’s got a fever. you push yourself up to a sitting position, and seokmin’s immediately by your side, fixing the pillows so you’re comfortable. you give him a look, and he backs away to the other side of the room. 

“since i can’t cuddle you like i want to, i’m going to make some soup! you look like you need some anyway.” seokmin smiles softy as he backs away toward the door, blowing you a kiss because he can’t actually give you one. 

you grin before blowing one back, and he smiles before frowning in frustration. “oh, i wanna kiss your sweet face so bad, this isn’t fair!” he groans as he walks back to the kitchen. all you do is giggle before grabbing your phone from where you kept it before.

you ❙

minghao i love you

thank you for sending min my way ♡

haohao 🤞 ❙

???

oh right

you’re welcome

tbh seokmin would’ve been really upset if i hadn’t

you ❙

HAHA yeah…

minghao i’ll be a loyal customer until the very end !!

you are my one and only pharmacist for life !!

minghao for president 🫡

haohao 🤞 ❙

…okay? thanks for the support i guess

you two are so in love with each other aren’t you

[lovebvni]

mindset of manifestation & how i manifest

like melanie martínez, i am back from the dead.

i apologize for being gone so long, but i needed a break from tumblr. i saw toxicity swirling in the community, my life got busy, and i decided it was just time for a break. when i was planking to come back, i just saw how things got terrible and i got upset and decided not to come back.

so, im back now and with a little tutorial on how i manifest!!! <3 i hope this can help some of you out.

let’s start with background.

manifesting is kind of like predicting the future. you have something you want to happen, then it happens soon after. i feel like this is the easiest way to get into the manifestation mindset. you cannot change what you’re getting if you want it. could you change your mind later and return it like a package? yes! but before it arrives, you know it’s arrival is coming.

sure, there can be delays, but it all is going to turn out YOUR way in the end.

nile and i have been working on our mindset and this is something they wrote that i think can be really helpful — as it was to me.

from the past two years we have been actively manifesting, we learned that we often saw things as “crazy”. but manifesting isn’t crazy, it’s quite normal.

every time you get dressed in the morning, it’s an act of manifestation. you’re showing up with what you want.

manifestation is a mondane activity!! stop treating it like it was a kiss from an angel!

by reading this, you’re manifesting your eyes working, you’ve used your hands to open an app, and you have believed you can read and get through this blog! without manifesting that, you would not be here.

the first step to manifestation is believing you can do it, believing you have done it, and believing you will continue to do it. period.

there are many MANY different ways to manifest, but i manifest in 3 ways (sometimes i use all three, sometimes i use just 1 or 2.)

!! I ALMOSR FORGOT TO PUT THIS AND IM ADDING IT BEFORE I GET TO NUMBER 2 OMG!!

STOP! BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE I WANT YOU TO GET A NOTEBOOK, A SHEET OF PAPER, OR MAKE A CHECKLIST ON YOUR PHONE IN YOUR NOTES APP!!!

now i want you to write down everything you want right now down and leave the boxes blank if you haven’t gotten them yet.

once you get through that, i want you to randomly click between some of the items you want and write down things you wanted that you did get! they can be some simple and things from years ago, what matters is you have them down. throw in some things that you may have to do for school or work while you’re at it.

here’s an example! (left is before checking off, right is after)

as you can see, i added a note to the side because i got what i wanted and more abundantly! i had been manifesting a dog since i was a young child, and in 2021, i got 2!!!! (one is laying at my feet right now <3)

continue to do this daily, weekly, or whatever you have time for. i personally do this on notion and i try to add something new daily (im adding the heartstopper thing rn!!)

but yeah!! write everything u want down, and continue to add to it, just so u can see progress DOES happen and your work and effort DOES pay off!

affirming and persisting

this id the first way i learned to manifest, and the most self-explanatory.

you simply repeat what you want over and over until you get it! but not in the future tense, in the current or past tense.

ex; “i passed my maths final!”, “im so happy my boyfriend gave me those roses for valentine’s day, he’s so sweet!”, “i finished the essay for english like a week before it was due!” “i got the lead role in my play! im so excited!” etc.

now, the common factor between all of these is having a positive mindset about them. i cannot tell you HOW many times i manifested something would go well, and right before they happened, i got in a shitty mind space and wondered if it would ever happen.

but, nonetheless, i persisted through and i got what i wanted.

the pain have have been feeling cant compare to the joy that is coming. Romans 8:18

persisting is basically pushing through. think about the time you didn’t think you would make it through an injury, a school year, a trial, yet you still walked through it — even if it was slow.

like when work days are long and you want to go home, but you can��t, so you persist.

i try to think of my manifestations as an ultimatum. it’s going to happen, and that’s final. the only thing you have to do to get it is stay conscious.

and staying conscious, walking through those days, is how you get to the end!

i use affirming and persisting with pretty much everything, which is why it was first.

2. listening to subs.

it’s that simple — listen to an audible subliminal that has the results you want over and over!! that’s all i do u guys. here’s my playlist if u want it (IF I DELETE IT CHECK MY PINNED POST!! I UPDATE IT OFTEN)

i often use @stilljuststardust’s subs, slade’s subs, enchanted workshops’ subs and i want it, i got it’s subs!

all of them are trusted and credible. i cannot promise you that all the subs in my playlist will work for you, as they are (sometimes) linked to my personal desires.

3. pinterest manifestation!!

i recommend having either a whole pinterest account or a board set aside for this way of manifestation.

you simply make boards (or sections) for things you want. i would say this is best for physical items, people, looks, makeup, etc. things that re physically tangible, rather than something like reality shifting (although i do have a reality shifting board! it has been working pretty well <3)

i also have one for my mindset, my religion, so on and so forth (link btw)

i think this is pretty self explanatory. just save picture of things you want and quotes/affirmations and DONE!

i also use this sub with it :p it’s worked WONDERSSS!

if you have any other questions i will be happy to answer them!! i love you all!! go manifest!!

[koiiiji]

being in big deals from beginning with Sinu, but leaving with Samuel after

pairing ; samuel seo x reader x jake kim

tw ; polyamorous, mfm, possessive! samuel

author note ; my first time writing for lookism and for this two, also im on chapter 343 only, so if something not accurate enough im sorry!! ALSO celebrating 400 followers!! and even tho ask box is closed, i still want to do something nice for you, so if you want you can leave your requests for SHMOL sketches under, i will do it super short and put it in one post!! lookism and windbreaker💋✨💐🤸🏼‍♀️

author note 2 ; not proofed, i wrote it after work with one eye open, so i just throw it to chat gpt to check any mistakes, if you find any you know who you can judge😤🫸🏻

‧˚₊•┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈౨ৎ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈•‧₊˚⊹

‧˚₊•┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈౨ৎ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈•‧₊˚⊹

⋆𐙚₊˚ you have been with big deals even before Jake and Samuel joined, which means you were more close with Sinu, who was like a older brother figure for you

⋆𐙚₊˚ you always were good with calculating and make predictions so you literally was the reason why big deals didn’t have any debts to any other gangs or companies

⋆𐙚₊˚ when Jake and Samuel joined big deals they firstly didn't pay too much attention, just another girl spinning around Sinu, nothing new

⋆𐙚₊˚ but then they started to notice that you always appears at every meeting, even if it were just for big deal, not including girls who work on their street, always whispering something on Sinu ear and checking some papers

⋆𐙚₊˚ it was slow burn in beginning, they payed you more attention on meetings, started more small talks time to time, as soon as they caught that you are actual part of big deals. also, later they learned that you actually liked Sinu as older brother, and that was the moment when they start... acting…

⋆𐙚₊˚ of course you had your small moments together before. like you accidentally fall asleep on Jake’s shoulder when everybody celebrated another holiday, or when you asked both of them to show you some actions, - in case if you will be alone on the street, so you can protect yourself - and seemed that Samuel got a little carried away and pushed you too hard, but catching you by your wrist just moment before your head was about to hit the ground

⋆𐙚₊˚ there were always that moments between three of you

⋆𐙚₊˚ but first one who started to show off were Samuel

⋆𐙚₊˚ he already were jealous over the fact that Sinu choosed Jake as his favourite one, so he can’t let Jake to have yours attention as well. later it will be worse, when he will learn who Jake’s father was

⋆𐙚₊˚ Samuel would always flirt with you making it crystally clear that he likes you, and you wouldn't even notice it because of amount of work for big deals and of homework you still had in school

⋆𐙚₊˚ and when Samuel brutally flirts with you, trying to get your attention, Jake would snort, turning his eyes somewhere else, trying to ignore it and telling Jerry to "stop say stupid stuff like this" when he, once again tried to push his boss to admit his feelings towards you

⋆𐙚₊˚ for Jake it's complicating because he see how Samuel likes you, so he doesn’t want to ruin everything even tho he himself had so many feelings towards you

⋆𐙚₊˚ and Jake waited for too long...

⋆𐙚₊˚ when Samuel took leading position in big deals you were forced to stay by leader side to help him earn as much money as possible to pay to big four, but when Samuel left big deals for workers he asked you to go with him

⋆𐙚₊˚ Samuel was far from gentle man, but when his huge arms hugged your shoulders from behind, softly murmuring into your ear to come with him in new gang, to join him and stay by his side, offering you simply better life, where you won't need to calculate how to save more money until next month, where you will be able to buy expensive clothes, where you can offer yourself jut... more... it was hard to resist to Samuel espesially when you lived your whole life expecting how to safe money to the next month and economize as much as you can

⋆𐙚₊˚ so thats how you left big deals with Samuel, still with heavy heart for Sinu and big deals in general

⋆𐙚₊˚ Jake was feral when Jerry told him that. in his head it was more like Samuel forced you. oh, Jake were fully aware that Samuel were able to use power over girls, and Jake blamed himself for the fact that you had to leave the big deals

⋆𐙚₊˚ when you and Samuel become part of workers, he won’t let you go far away from him. you would be his personal assistant and manager. everything but always by his side. you always. by his side. always. Samuel even went that far that he rent big apartments for both of you, of course with separate rooms, you still didn’t accept his feelings and were naive about what kind of emotion you rise in him

⋆𐙚₊˚ Jake tried to contact you few times but, oh wow, what a surprise, Samuel always were the one to pick up the phone, telling him to leave you alone

⋆𐙚₊˚ to say less Jake felt terrible back then, things that happened to Sinu, Gun Park and his big four gangs, praises about money and the heir at his place, big deals, everything at one time…

⋆𐙚₊˚ and then prison… Jake felt like biggest loser on this planet

⋆𐙚₊˚ and he would never wish you to see all horrors of this place, but here you are sitting on the other side of safety glass, looking too beautiful to place like this, too pretty in your fitted white shirt and pleated skirt. Jerry probably yanked you right out of the office. another self note - to chastise Jerry next time for bringing you to place like this

⋆𐙚₊˚ “Jake… im sorry, i had no idea what happened to you” you murmured softly into the receiver of the phone connecting the two sides. “Samuel never said anything about that… I was shocked when Jerry just caught me near office and crammed me in the car”

⋆𐙚₊˚ after that day, you came to Jake more often, slipping away from Samuel under the pretext that you wanted to meet an old friend from school and he didn't need to attend girls' gatherings

⋆𐙚₊˚ when Jake finally got out of prison, one of the first things that he did was ask you to eat ramen together. you told him everything about your new life, that now you live with Samuel and he takes care about everything, starting with payments for apartments, finishing with fuel for car, as he always ready to ride you to any part of city

⋆𐙚₊˚ Jake felt feral when you told him whole story.

⋆𐙚₊˚ not only that bastard not tell you what happened to Jake, but he also controlled the calls and forced you to live with him. Jake knew what Samuel's feelings were for you, even if you perceived his care and relationship as friendly or brotherly, Jake still guessed what was behind it. but he never imagined that his friend would get to the point where he would keep you with him 24/7 and secretly control your phone calls from anybody from big deals

⋆𐙚₊˚ after that meeting Jake knew that he can’t offer you to stay at his small room he rent, even if he really wanted you to stay more by his side. he didn't tell you about his guesses about Samuel, you don't have to worry, yet you were safer with him than with Jake now. the only thing he did before sending you home in a taxi was hug you so tightly - tightly, it seems that his hands were a little lower than he should have allowed himself, and his hot breath was a little off when his lips were too close to your neck.

⋆𐙚₊˚ in the end, Jake pushed your hair off your forehead, and pressed his lips firmly to your forehead, shut his eyes and quietly promised himself to deal with Samuel later

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[vyzz-undercover]

pspspsps dinner time everyone

[cato/f!ambassador]

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

(5,700ish words) (im cooked)

CONTENT WARNINGS:

•slight dubcon [again]

•hints of size kink

•intercourse [M/F]

•discussions of virginity

•vague breathplay

•even more negligible aftercare

•degrading language

•mild possessive behaviour

•tumblr's pisspoor formatting as per last time

———————————————————————————————————

im once again doing a free magic show here and pulling a rabbit (this fic) out my ass. so, without further a-do the tagging... @kit-williams, @passionofthesith, @pluvio-tea, @the-raven-lady, @bispecsual, @egrets-not-regrets, @gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan, @lemon-russ. let me know if anyone else wanna be tagged if i do a part three HAHAHAHHAHA i might double down on the comedy-of-errors and have Guilliman get involved. Not like a three-way with this particular fic, even if I'd love to slut papa smurf out. There's always another time and another chance to sexualise an old man :3

———————————————————————————————————

Cato finds you relatively easily.

Truthfully, you make no actual sport of it. But he's never going to pass up a cheap bit of entertainment at your expense.

At this time of the ship's cycle you're most likely to be in the east wing, pointedly the lower libraries. He knows this. He won't confess why or how he knows, though—so, fuck off.

You're lazy and predictable. To say nothing of the fact you're far too comfortable scuttling about his Father's vessel. If a hypothetical assassin ever could get onto the ship without being stomped into paste by him immediately, they'd have no problems tracking you down. You may as well be a sevitor running on rails for all your movements stay the same.

He notes you're not on the first level.

Nor the second.

You are on the third, in the leftmost quadrant.

In the restricted reading area.

You do have clearance—but the fact still irks him. Typically, this was for his more decorated brothers to catalogue Xenos. Typically, one needed to be accompanied to even access this level.

But oh, no—no, you're allowed.

You're allowed because you are a damnable leach of a woman. And also the bane of his existence, did he mention that? And you're—you're—tucked up in secure side-room, reading on a data-slate; half-asleep in a little blue robe and looking the pict of adorable sloth.

You don't notice him immediately.

Clearly too absorbed in your gerrymandering-for-servitors cheat-sheet.

And that annoys him even more.

Because, are you really that obtuse? So unassailable in your own mind that you're this blatantly fucking oblivious? He's an Astartes, damn it. Sure, he's in casual rest attire instead of clanking plate—but he's a large, two-and-a-bit meter tall trans-human war-machine standing in the doorway—and you haven't even noticed him. Ignorant like some little rodent chewing away at crumbs in it's hovel.

His Father's got a vermin problem on board, and the mice are stupid and bold and literate... along with rather cozy, apparently.

A finely woven navy throw is swaddled around you where you're lying on the chaise lounge. And the sight of you bundled up inspires a vivid déjà-vu of the last time you were alone with him with little more than a blanket over you.

Cato hesitates for a heartbeat, swallows down the sudden lump in his throat and sets his jaw.

He steps into the room and waves a hand over the laser-pad locking mechanism.

There's a fractional second in which you become cognisant to the sound of the shutter door closing and where you actively notice him.

Then there's a shrill scream as if you've pinched a nerve.

The data-slate goes flying, pelted at his head. But it hits the shutter door and clatters to the floor, far-off any hint of a good mark.

Useless woman.

Realising it's him a moment later, you heave out a racketing sigh.

"Throne of Terra, Ca—" you start, and it sounds like you're going to say his first name before you rightly correct yourself and say, "C-Commander, you scared me half to death."

He immediately sets about accosting you, "Have you been sitting here with the door open this whole time?"

"No," you nip out.

"You are aware that I can tell when you're lying?"

"I'm certain you can," your tone flattens in a way he's only ever heard you talk to particularly sleazy representatives with. It's not an honest exchange, it's double-speak. It's mocking. You're mocking him.

He grits his teeth.

You've grown more open in your defiance towards him as of late, certainly not because of any revelation or reason and it rubs him in a dangerous, new way. He's not about to let it slide, either.

"Is that so?" His words are sharp and accusative and he hopes—he hopes he'll get the delight of watching you cower like you usually do when confronted by him. "Have you been lying to me often, then?"

Half his hopes come true. You look away nervously and mumble something almost inaudibly, and he'd not have noticed if not for his far superior hearing.

It was, "...maybe," and all Cato can help but do being himself, is detonate.

"And what have you been deceiving me of, you scheming little whore?" He snarls, fuming—a dozen crimes and sins crowding his mind you might be tried for. Maybe he's been far too lenient to the actual reality of your evil. Finally, validation to corroborate his deviation—maybe you'll admit you're some Slanneshi fleshchanger, and that you intended to have burrowed so deep in his mind.

Nonetheless, you're nowhere near even close to fast enough to defend yourself. But it's not like he gives you the chance.

He's crossed the distance with a practiced speed. And quicker than you can even yelp, you are pinned to the lounge—a shackle in the form of his fist around your smaller throat.

The pressure is a limp handshake by his standards. You're not really choking. Just stifled slightly for good measure.

Still, it'd be a mere flex to break your neck. He could snap you like a stylus with what was to him, ultimately, nothing but a simple twitch of his fingers. And he would think more about the blatant contrasts between you both much longer if he wasn't far too distracted by the fact you even struggle prettily wantonly. Big eyes wide and glossy with animal panic. Involuntary tears gather at the corners as you register what's going on at last. The mad temptation to lick them if they so much as dare trail down your cheeks begins eating at him.

Some rational part of his rational mind reminds him he can't get the truth out of you when he's vaguely throttling you, though—and he lets you go begrudgingly. Instead opting for looming over you as you roll sidelong on the couch, breathing fast.

He crouches down to your level and grumbles, still absorbed in his raging.

"Speak," he barks, and pointedly grabs you by the chin.

"I–I hadn't actually—" you start, breathless as you mumble. "Actually, uh, laid with anyone, even though I nodded I sort of... had."

He's staggered at the statement, "...that's it?"

A vague lie of omission, but it's not the great corruption he sought to root out.

Then he actually thinks about what you've just admitted.

Like fog banished under a rising sun, his anger at the thought of treachery immediately dissipates into blistering revelation.

"Hold on, you..." Cato starts, baffled and completely knocked for a six, meeting your gaze slowly—genuinely stunned as he pulls his hand back fully. "I... I was the first?"

You look away cursorily, face reddening not only with your previous strains, but with embarrassment.

Now, that was the reaction of a guilty conscience.

Cato doesn't know what to do with the information. Nor does he really know what he feels.

He'd been the first. He feels like he's won something over his brothers. Therefore, fuck the lot of them—and fuck Titus, specifically. Even if he's not sure why. He truly couldn't believe it. There's success, sure—but then there's taking the laurels: whole and absolute. And this... this is exactly that. But oh, for some apparently vestal thing, you'd let him bully down to the hilt in your tight cunt; whining like a whore when he spilled himself inside you. Throne, it was almost suffocating to think back on it now. So willing to have your maidenhead taken, nevermind the fact you weren't the only one who'd had a new experience that day. But you didn't need to know that.

"Another notch to my mantel of victories then," he ultimately decides is the best thing to say, gloating to himself.

"Unbelievable," you sigh softly as you shakily sit yourself up.

But there's the problem again. The one tangible, constant problem with having laid you. It's made you mouthy. He only ever glimpsed your boldness when you interacted with other baselines in the past. You never sassed Astartes, or at least, he's never seen you do it. But now that stubbornness and unwillingness to back down in a political forum is on full display heedless of situation. As if you've suddenly become one of the auto-felating Imperial Fists—or any of Dorn's insufferable ball-busting scions, really. Worst of all, it's only managed to somehow make him even more enthralled annoyed with you than usual. You're still too good at quashing your anger, hard as it is to rouse. But he loves loathes that you bite the lure instead of shying off now.

"To think that I was the first—is your entire professional role not centred around charm? Would no one else have you with that rotten attitude you've been hiding?" he says, knowing he's being nasty, knowing he's twisting the knife; and absolutely praying for you to fall for it.

Cato watches a rainbow of emotions pass over your features, before you settle on one that makes you look like you ate something sour. He's hit a weak spot. But the sentiment holds true. His Primarch thinks you the best and brightest to sway planets? You couldn't even seduce some daft, drunken aristocratic fool to fuck you.

You, the prettiest baseline he's ever seen.

...maybe Guilliman is right in saying the Imperium has rolled belly-up with bloat.

"That's not—that's not why and you know it," you open your mouth and jumble your words briefly before getting out, "Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone who won't have a panic attack because of the several Astartes that insist on following you around?" You continue, raving and flustered, "Do you think anyone would get near me with you—or—or... maybe Captain Acheran, or the good Chaplain, let's say, breathing over my shoulder?"

"You should be grateful any of us waste our time babysitting you," Cato oafishly shoots back like a petulant child, brows furrowing, "You should be thanking me for doing the brunt of it."

Your nose scrunches up, "Pardon me, Commander, it's surely entirely my fault that we are both at the whims of our Lord Primarch."

He pauses.

Something about this interaction isn't stirring his temper like it should.

He should be absolutely livid with anger, or at the very least blowing your eardrums out with a 'shut the fuck up,' at full Astartesian line-command volume.

Yes, he should be seething, and yet he's not. To his surprise, he's actually feeling more enthused than anything.

This feels... exciting, almost.

"You've only grown the backbone to talk back to me because I fucked one into you," he remarks sharply in reply.

You sputter, and go red, robbed of your words.

"Or maybe this is mere performance," He adds with a sneer, tipping his chin up proudly.

You roll your eyes and let out a dramatic puff of air, "Y-You're such a..." you start, but your voice tapers off—and you look away, pouting.

"I'm a... what?" He taunts, leaning close.

You grumble, apparently feeling brave again; meeting his gaze and puffing yourself up.

"You're a bully," you hiss, clearly upset but undeniably frazzled enough to be somewhat ranting again as you add, "A bully w-who's so disgustingly egotistical you've convinced yourself you're some great conqueror or... something... j-just for having been in me, as if I've never put anything in myself before."

Oh, but wait, Cato likes the idea of that. He likes it so much he completely forgets to acknowledge the insults in your statement prior. He likes the idea of you suffering like he had been—alone, yearning—aching for something you didn't know the dizzying reality of. He can imagine you smothering your sounds, those blessed whines he's got memorised, into a pillow in that cushy little quarters of yours, squirming on your meagre fingers, or maybe cold silicon. You didn't need that lesser imitation now. Cato'd gladly fill that role. He'd gladly fill that hole, too.

Nonetheless, he immediately wonders who you were getting off thinking about.

He'd streak the length of the ship for it to've been him you'd been fucking yourself over.

"Who were you thinking of?"

You blink at the completely offhanded question, then start sputtering, stalling.

"What? I-I—" you stammer, "That's not important or relevant—I just... did it, it's—"

"Keep lying and see where it gets you," He cuts in, raking you with an aggravated frown, and oh, excellent, you're starting to relearn he's not fond of your half-truthing, finally.

You duck your head a little, cringing under his gaze, trying to scoot yourself backwards. But there's nowhere to go.

Cato realises belatedly that in the middle of your antics, the sleeve of your robe has started to fall from your shoulder. His brain short-circuits momentarily with the sheer amount of air that floods his head. Your warm, soft skin on display just for him. He didn't get to see all of you last time. He felt a good portion of you, yes—but he didn't get the chance to admire acknowledge the whole vista. Not because he was too desperate to rut against to try. Or because he was probably going to swoon like a fool if he did. Shut up, he's no coward. Afterall, his hands had been close to your chest, but now—now he can actually look.

He's going to absolutely ruin that lovely canvas you've given him.

"Nobody," you say softly.

"Groxshit," he snaps.

"Fine—" You swallow and start scrambling for a response, "Malum C-Caedo."

Cato genuinely cannot help but bark a laugh at that, "Spare me, you haven't even met the man, moron—you're only saying that because your most recent reading was on his last briefing," he rolls his eyes. "You forgot I was there with Guilliman when you were given it."

You look at him like a cornered little mouse, and finally—finally, your sleeve falls just enough that he's given a perfect view of one of your tits.

"You already..." you grumble softly. "You already know who, then, so I shouldn't even have to dignify this."

"It's me, isn't it?" He asks darkly, and while he tries to sound haughty, the fact he's thrilled by both the notion and the sight of your partial nudity ends up warping his tone into a vaguely manic chuff.

You glance aside and stammer loudly, "N-No."

No, you say—but he hears your little heart flutter. And sees your pupils dilate.

"I hope you're aware you can't lie to save your life," Cato drawls.

Your gaze snaps back to his, and for a brief second, your expression is flushed with embarrassment; until it changes to a sour little scowl.

"I'm not a bad liar, you're just an Astartes—" you start furiously, but check your flustered anger.

Cato smirks.

It's not a completely clean victory, but it's good.

It means his own lusting madness is at least reciprocally vindicated.

And at that realisation, Cato's impulse control violently loses balance; and he's painfully aware he cannot, for the life of him, contain the hungered almost purr-like sound that crawls up his throat.

You go back to looking transfixed at that, and he pauses.

There's something... pulling him in even more than before. He feels as if he's taken the bait, and the hook, and the line and sinker—hell, he's taken a good bit of the rod, too. Everything's a little too heated, and he's got an innate, intuitive feeling you're just as wound up as he is—wait. He breathes in deep and slow, and scents the air. Throne, he may as well have been cold-clocked at the temple by a Dreadnaut for all the innate information he suddenly receives. You're quite frankly drenched in want. You're getting off on this. Smothering him in a dizzying biological chant of hormones that scream—fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.

He leans close, and puts a hand on the arm-rest; the other palm slowly moving towards your chest.

Your eyes follow it—but you voice no complaints nor rejections.

Justified now, he's ecstatic. And your skin is as perfect to the touch as he remembers.

His hand looks huge compared to the breast cupped in it, idly toying with the consistency of the flesh in his grasp. It's much softer and malleable than he thought it'd be. Almost like a water-skin. Thumb depressing your right nipple, before drawing a thoughtless circle.

You sigh lightly and relax a bit, and Cato takes that as another open invitation.

He uses the same hand to tug away the fabric from your other shoulder.

Quick as anything, he's practically stuffing his face against you without any real warning, ignoring your flinch at his haste. Cato's letting the urges he'd withheld in that wretched shack out. And it's so worth the wait. He groans, licks a fat band over your left breast, and worries at the perked little bud with his teeth until you're squirming; only to drag his attention up to nip at your fragile throat.

You're breathing hard, and you open your mouth as if about to speak—but ever spiteful, Cato rewards your attempt with the drag of his tongue and the press of his teeth; and that promptly shuts you up. The faint salt on your skin isn't half bad of a thing either, honestly. He rather likes it. It tastes like how you smell—and he's absolutely luxuriating in it. It makes it all the easier to map your chest from the curve of your breast to your collarbones, garnishing you with eager drags of his tongue and mouth-wrought bruises.

And now you're glorious. The marks on your skin are vivid—he's guaranteed you won't be wearing anything showy for a good while. No lovely vile plunging necklines for you to display to bastard dignitaries. Not unless you want to explain why they're Cato Sicarius sized. They'll also be a good reminder to you of exactly who's superior.

You're still too dazed by his efforts to realise the extent of his actions, but he knows exactly how hot and bothered it's made you. That honeyed reek of arousal is driving him insane.

Urged on, he digs a hand down and around your back and drags you off the lounge. Manoeuvring to turn so his back rests against the lip of the lounge, nigh dumping you before him on the rug.

"W-Why...?" You blink, stunned for a second before righting yourself and meeting his eyes. Cato's sat himself cross-legged, before letting them unfold, one tenting and the other splaying out.

"I did all the work last time," he starts impatiently, and leans up to grab you by the forearm; bringing your hand close close to the cradle of his hips, "Now it's your turn to do something for once."

...Cato's not sure you're actually listening, because he could've bet his helm you'd've become irate at that statement if you were. That, and you're glaring between his thighs.

Ironically, he also almost instantaneously finds he doesn't really care to continue the train of thought. Not when you trace the engorged bulge of him through the folds of his tunic. Groping at the base, before smoothing your palm to the rounded tip.

There's no accursed buttons between him and the open this time, thankfully—and that means he can simply tug aside the folds of his layered tunic and bare himself from the belly down.

His cock lays fat and heavy with blood, smearing precum as it moves from his navel to leftward on his hip when he straightens up.

You're staring.

He scoffs at your apprehension and says, "Alternatively, perhaps you can—"

A soft, "Shhh," leaves you.

He snorts like a big, angry stock horse, brow raised. No baseline, regardless of rank, would dare treat Cato like this; none would dare even think to treat to him like this. Except you now, apparently. You forget your station, your place. Making demands of an Astartes is nowhere near your clearance. Your best option is to implore, not command. Yours is to nod your pretty thick head and smile your fair rotten little smile and obey your betters.

"Did—did you just shush me, woman?" Cato's nigh instantly consumed by a rush of anger at the sheer audacity, sneering. "In what reality do you think you've any right to shush me? I'm Commander of the Victrix Honor Guard, Grand Duke of Talassar and High Suzerain of—"

Of... of something.

Suddenly your insolence is inconsequential to him. All that matters is the smooth glide of your dainty hand on his cock, and the sight of your thumb and pointer being unable to wrap around and meet given how thick he is.

You look up at him slowly for a second, before your focus returns to apparently sussing out how best to saddle him. It's a timid gesture, like you're anticipating overstepping—you're cautious.

He's about to remind you of the fact you've taken him before, so Cato's proven he fits and all this coyness of yours is arbitrary. But he guesses the point is moot when you're suddenly already stradling his hips.

With one small hand finding a place on his stomach, and the other holding his cock straight beneath the obscurity of your garbs, he feels you lower yourself enough to make contact; testing before offering a little more urgency.

With an agonisingly careful roll of your pelvis, the head of his cock catches against the soft ring of muscle at your entrance for a second.

He grumbles despite himself.

He can't watch his cock sink into you like last time thanks to the curtain of your robe, but at least he can certainly feel every millimeter of it happening.

Tight heat feels like a death shroud over his mind as he draws a blank on anything else.

And finally—finally he's stuffed down to the hilt—and oh, he's filled you to your end just like the last time. Throne, he's drunk off the spongy heat the thick head of cock is squared right up against.

This position's made your cunt just that bit shorter inside thanks to gravity.

You whimper, clearly trying desperately not to start shaking.

You start shaking anyways.

He's fascinated by the small, restless palms now pressed flat and trying to find a counterpoint on his broad, tunic'd chest. Soft and un-calloused aside from the small bump of a pen's rest on your writing hand. Everything about you is warm and soft. Inside and out, you're all his.

He exhales harshly through his nose and blinks, gaze shifting from your hands to your tits, then to your face.

You wear an even more flushed expression now, overwhelmed, with all your focus on him.

Right where it always should be.

"Hurry up," he grunts sharply.

You swallow hard, and promptly drop your gaze.

You, surprisingly, manage to lift yourself up despite your theatrics. And, little by little, he watches you strain up until just the tip of him is still buried in you.

Angling yourself, you keen, carefully sinking back down on his cock and reeling at the stretch again as you settle, ass meeting his dense quads with a soft plomf.

He can see you biting back a moan, pointless as the act is.

"Keep going," Cato grits out, "I didn't tell you to stop."

You frown halfheartedly, and your insides clench around him despite yourself.

You start a slow rhythm, the noise of colliding skin on skin echoes in his ears. Slick friction, and fucked-out, half-stifled cries. Your pace quickening. Riding him. Using him at your own leisure, like the precious wretched little thing you are. You repeat the same dizzying motion again and again, and again—rising and sinking—up, down, up, down; until it's clear you've found an angle that hits something just right, sending you over the edge with a rattling gasp.

A low groan crawls up the back of Cato's throat and slips free without restraint.

He's barely able to cope through the tight squeeze of your orgasm around his cock; but he steels himself, winning the fight to not spill in you right then and there at that. No small thanks to the furious couple hours he'd spent earlier in the simulated night cycle furiously attending his urges.

His calloused mitt can hardly compete with the nigh painfully silken clench of you. And the view—Throne, to simply watch is a level of spectacle he can't even put into words. It's nothing short of hypnotic seeing your face soften with fucked-out delight—he can't believe he'd ever thought it was good the first time around when he hadn't even seen you meet your end.

You stop suddenly, seated to the hilt, trembling and oversensitive—grinding back and forth, nails digging into his pectorals through his tunic.

"Just... n-need t'catch my breath..." You whimper, and that debauched tone wreaks havoc through his mind. An unceasing urge to pound you to tears overtaking what little sense he has left. It's the ravenous fact that you, the little parchment-pushing temptress, are all tuckered out from cumming on him so quickly. He's preening at the fact he feels that good to you—oh, he's going to send you limping back to your quarters.

He wants to watch you break.

"You lazy little cunt, you can't do a thing right, can you?" Cato groans, your thighs twitching as he lifts you by the hips and makes you sink back down.

He gets the treat of seeing your eyes swim back in your skull, dumb with sensation.

Lulled by the reedy, oversexed moans slipping from you with each motion; and he can't help but start thrusting up, matching pace.

"Hardly even four and a half minutes—and you're a mess, absolutely useless." He heaves, dropping you to full-hilt for a second to manoeuvre you better. You're nigh but a gasping dead-weight, delirious.

If you're going to act the entitled bitch, he'll screw you into something alike submission. Which is exactly why he's then pulling out, shoving you against the lounge on your back; and moving your thighs to bracket his hips as he half kneels on the rug. Just to slide himself back inside, balls-deep in willing flesh. The only dignity he affords you then is the space to wrap your arms around and behind his shoulders. Which you rightly do without demand.

Hold on, was the unspoken order.

Then he's fucking you into the lounge like his life depends on it. He's glad to notice it's bolted down, but the damned thing creaks—nonetheless, he can barely even hear it over the perfect sounds you're making.

Rolling his bottom lip between his teeth, barely holding back the noises that choke his own gullet.

"You're so damn lucky you're a nice tight hole," he rasps harshly, "That's all you're good for, hm? For me to fill?"

There's a gutting sort of beauty in the way you're looking up at him with open desperation. He's trying so hard not to fall victim to the siren call of it, but it's perfect vile and he can't help but fold. He'd kill for that look to never leave your face when your eyes fell on him.

"Fuck, I must be in your womb at this rate—would you like that? My load in your womb?" Cato says between a great lungful of air, only to start huffing madly to himself when you nod drunkenly. "Good, because that's exactly where i-it's going."

Mind reeling with every resounding sticky slap of his balls against you, paired with scorching wet slide of him pumping in and out of you. You're crying, all your sensibilities lost in the thorough pace he's ploughing into you with; trying to pull him in by tugging at his shoulders, but with your meagre strength it's merely a vague suggestion.

Still, he leans into it, if only to finally seize the chance to lap the tears off your cheek, and you sob; trying to turn nose to nose with him. Your pathetic pawing at his broad back only exacerbates the overwhelming urgency in his blood.

He's so close.

Bliss crests up like a tide inside him, building and building, stunned with how it makes him buck into you. He's dazed in a way he surely wasn't designed to be resilient against. He can't even shut his damn mouth to stop moaning—and only technically manages to do so when you cover it with your own the very second he's about to finish; your legs squeezing impotently down on his hips, trembling through another climax.

His nerves light up like an orbital barrage, body rocking against the pretty, willing thing below him that you are. He has no idea what's going on beyond that. Are you kissing him? Is that what you're doing? Half his brain is stunned by the idea and the other half is flooded by the rushes of pleasure in his system making his tendons cramp, ravaging him with the sound of his hearts thudding in his ears.

Working himself right into agony; he's tensing against you as he empties himself as deep as he can. His pace finally breaks pattern and staccatos as his mind leadens.

Lulled by the molten satisfaction that swamps him soon thereafter, Cato blindly tries to chase forward and keep your lips on his. Emphasis on tries. He thinks he likes it, foreign as the sensation and sentiment is. He's got his tongue in your mouth, but no real clue what to do beyond lapping further in like a man dying of thirst—and then, of course, you decide to start weakly thrashing for air, blunt teeth grazing against the invading muscle—so, with a miffed groan; he pulls away, drooling as he slumps front-long against you and the lounge with a rumbling sigh, letting his eyes close as he basks in the afterglow.

You're panting still, nosing against the nape of his neck—likely having difficulty respiring under his weight—but despite that, you're still twitching around his spent cock, just like last time.

Wistfully, he wonders if he could sleep with you stuffed full of him like this. Slotted together and absolutely buried in your cunt; reaming you out as far as your small frame will allow. He enjoys the idea of that, and of holding you close.

He listens meditatively as your breathing steadily evens out, a soft in-out rhythm he can hear start in your chest only to feel warmly dancing across his collarbone a moment later.

Your small hand glides up the back of his trapezoid and combs through the short hair at his crown.

He shivers almost immediately at the act, thoughts clouding. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do, now. He can't really bring himself to do anything. He's locked in. It's like he's been sedated, or scruffed about the neck. Then your fingers trace the bare skin behind his ear, and he snaps from the trance enough to crack an eye open to glance down.

"Don't push your luck," he bites out automatically and leers away.

You immediately stiffen, and lurch yourself back—seemingly completely confused.

He's not exactly sure why he reacted that way either, but he's certainly not going to address it.

Ultimately, he opts to pull his cock out of you with scant decorum rather than linger on the topic. Then he settles into a kneel as he eyes the soaked-in stain below the bunched-up fabric of your robe.

"Well," he snorts.

And damn, it's difficult to hold a straight face at the overdramatic, painfully oblivious pout you shoot him.

So, Cato just continues watching you with a cruel sort of satisfaction as you sit yourself up shakily, and realise the mess.

You blanch, promptly shutting your legs and fussing—your ass is half stuck to the fabric of the lounge by your own slick and his spent when you move to stand on shaky, unsure legs.

He's aware of the fact you're after something to wipe away the aftermath. But he's far too content observing you struggle for the moment. Pleased, even. Especially when he's treated to the cringing gasp that slips from you when his semen no doubt starts dripping down your thighs.

You're panicking within seconds. He can hear your heartbeat quickening, plus the acrid tang of baseline stress hormones pervading the room.

There's nothing to spare. Unless you want to leave another smear across the lounge cushioning, but he doubts you'd go so low. He, however, has no such reservations—and yanks the plush velour padded square up to wipe his cock off. It's not as if he wasn't going to toss it down one of the incinerator shafts on the library's second floor anyways.

"Do—" you begin softly, but amend yourself, "Would y-you have anything... to..."

He stares at you, brows furrowed.

Floundering now, you waddle close and swallow harshly.

"To... wipe this up?" You finish, barely a whisper. He can tell you're sour at the fact you're stroking his ego and essentially too full of him to go anywhere.

Cato scoffs, holding up the seating cushion, "What? Too spoilt to use this?"

You cringe at him, "People have sat on that—hundreds of people, probably. I-I don't have your immunity to infection."

Cato cedes on that point at least, because he assumes being a baseline is hell. And so very not his problem, too.

Completely out of left field, comes the temptation to lick you clean. His mulish hind-brain reasons it's a brilliant idea, namely because you'd likely be squirming for him again. Even if he has no real idea of what to do beyond that. Lap at your clit, probably—he's not actually done any of this before except—well, except just slamming into you. He has the basic gist of all of this from biologis graphics and pornographic motionpicts. Yes, the latter are technically contraband on Ultramarine chapter vessels—Throne, he actually remembers when that was put into force. He was still green behind the ears when that'd happened. But those specific brothers had displayed it for abstract amusement, not... it's intended purpose—rather: 'Lo, look at this curiosity, brothers! See they're fornicating, how very so strange! Baselines am-i-right?'

Honestly, it's never actually anything heretical, except for maybe the terrible acting.

He'd deem that punishable by death.

Regardless, Cato's guessing the process of licking something can't really be some sage art form. Not like duelling, and fuck, he's stellar at that. He's stellar at almost everything, he reasons. So why not that? You're such a wanton little thing he'd probably make you finish on accident.

Yet he decides against it as soon as the logical part of his brain boots back up. Largely given the fact he's probably already going to have a hard time as it is trying to avoid others on his way to mask the stink of sex. His brothers have keen noses, it wouldn't be difficult for them to notice the smell of you on his way to his chamber if he's not careful. Let alone if it's smeared all over his face. Next time, however—

"Surely it's not that bad," he says off-handedly.

A surge of shame appears on your face as a red, blotchy belt across your cheeks, and you seem about to protest before he grumbles.

"Still, you really ought to find a solution," he remarks idly, and he notices the implication isn't lost on you.

You frown softly, and wrinkle your nose at him.

"Maybe some manners would help you achieve your goals," he adds, with a clearer spite.

Your frown grows nigh comically harsh.

Cato grunts wryly, satisfied at your annoyance and paws at the hem of his tunic—tearing a portion off and holding it out to you.

You grab the edge of it and tug, but he doesn't let go.

"And what do you say?"

"Thanks," you answer hastily.

He raises an eyebrow and pulls the torn fabric back towards himself ever so slightly, causing you to over extend closer to him.

His stare stays locked on yours, and he gets the treat of watching you dither and fluster under his focus momentarily before you amend, "T-Thank you..." you swallow, and break eye contact, adding; "Commander Sicarius."

"Was that so hard?" Cato scoffs, especially thrilled as he lets go of the scrap—eyeing you as you trot aside, and gingerly begin to wipe away the mess of satisfaction coating your thighs and rear.

When you're decidedly done, you stomp back over to him and hold out the soiled fabric.

He reaches for it, only to have it promptly pulled away.

Cato scowls, and takes a step forward into your space—only for you to inch forward into his.

You're tormenting him then, he decides; or rather he thinks. He's not sure. You don't look smug—you look... nervous? Your lips have drawn into a thin line and you keep glancing between his eyes and behind him randomly.

"What?" He huffs, narrowing his eyes.

"Lean down," you mumble, then quietly make the additional effort of throwing in a "...please."

Cato grumbles at the request but complies, and Throne, he's glad he does; because suddenly you're up on your tip-toes, your hand on his jaw—and your lips are on his cheek.

He blinks, dumb as a mule. It's over as fast as it started and he can't even begin to unpack the elation he's abruptly feeling.

Heedless of his dazzled state, you clear your throat with a bashful laugh—and then the rag is suddenly stuffed into his open hand. He's still frozen there as you practically rush out the room, scooping your previously flung data-slate up as you frantically wave the door mechanism open and vanish from view.

A long wheeze escapes his throat in the empty room, his face thudding with heat.

Oh, he's fucked fucked.

[ilycosy]

❝ PERFECTION ❞ | LUKE CASTELLAN

pairing : luke castellan x daughter of aphrodite!reader

summary — being a child of aphrodite deems you perfect from the moment you get claimed, the expection of complete and utter perfection can weigh down on somebody. somehow, a simple hermes boy reaches all those expectations without even trying.

warnings : hurt/comfort but it's platonic , this takes place in noted , luke is a cocky dumbass & reader is heavily implied to be autistic

aﾉn — first fic for noted !! the smau is being worked on l8r since im a little exhausted n not feeling well again but , i have this to hold u guys over <3 + some smut in drafts :33 every1 say thank u kai for proofreading this <33 @grsveyrrd

you couldn't remember the last time you felt at ease, being at camp always got your blood pumping and the rush of adrenaline in your veins. even being a daughter of aphrodite, stereotypically dainty, you still felt that rush for glory.

you couldn't ever express that need for it though, as camp counselor, you were always expected to guide younger campers into their quests and their own legacy while ignoring your own. it seemed that you were the only one held to that expectation though, clearly shown by hermes cabin.

luke castellan, son of hermes. god of messaging and traveling, he always seemed to be on the move— talking idly with anyone who will listen, overall somebody who people can look up to.

not you though, you couldn't help but resent him. his overly confident smile and cute head tilt, not to mention how he's always winning every sword fight he's ever been in. he'd say something stupid like 'perks of being the best in the last three-hundred years', and then your eyeroll would just fuel his ego.

perfection was expected at camp, from everybody. being the pride of the gods was almost unachievable, almost.

you and luke had always seemed to never get along, most played it off as playful banter but you both knew it was something more. you just couldn't stand each other, no matter how hard you both tried.

he was just easily amazing at everything he does, seemingly rushing into things without thinking and winning. while you were stuck on the opposite team desperately working, never succeeding.

frustration was the worst way to describe it, it barely encompassed everything you felt. "hey," a voice spoke out, sounding raspy from thirst. "luke is wondering where you are, it's almost time for archery."

evan, while not related to you in any way, he was basically your brother. you took a shaky breath as you looked down at the lake, the prickling pain of every sense coming alive at full force now hitting you.

you didn't respond to him, unable to form the words to describe how much you didn't want to face luke and be proved to be a fool again. the metallic clink of evan's armor was heard as he sat down next to you, he was supposed to be at a practice run of capture the flag right now.

"you're skipping practice." you state, your head resting on your legs as you breathe heavy. regulating yourself the way chiron taught you, even though it barely ever worked.

you heard the click of his mouth before he went quiet, drumming his fingers on his knee before speaking. "im helping my sister," he says, scrunching up his nose at the endearment he called you himself. "practice can't wait, besides ill just fall asleep."

you laugh but it hurts, not a good hurt but more of a achey hurt. hurt for the exertion of emotion, hurt that he finds himself useless in an important sport, and hurt that you're failing to meet your obligations for the other campers at archery practice.

evan fills the silence until he can't anymore, talking about everything and nothing at the same time. sometimes you wonder if he's mr. d's son with how he can act so witty and talkative with you, even though he's a hermit around others.

eventually though, his predictions were right. two hours into his talking he begins to lean, falling asleep almost as fast as he began talking. resting his head on your shoulder, his black hair tickling your cheek.

his smell was comforting though, and even though the armor he hadn't shed dug into your side and your stomach as you laid down with him on you— you couldn't imagine trading it.

his light snores and drool seeped into your bright orange shirt, but you ignored it. using his body as a weighted blanket as you looked out into the water, finding the warm sun and soft grass rather comfortable.

you drifted off easily, hypnos taking you under his wing as he allowed you a peaceful sleep. freed from worries and the expectations, he didn't even let you wake when another counselor found you guys.

luke looked down at the two of you in the grass, taking a moment to just be a tired teen with you before gently picking you up. smiling gently at evan's sleepy face before gesturing him to follow him back to the cabins, cradling you maybe a bit too close than he would with others.

but evan wouldn't say anything, the moment was perfect even if you didn't remember it. (he definitely took a picture though).

[sil-te-plait-tue-moi]

Got shocked.

Quick summary: Before he knows why, Rust is fixating on you.

Warnings: Not much except it does get literally sick here kind of; sexism and really gross remarks; kind of workplace harassment; Rust being unsettling.

Word count: 3.6K

A/N: Erm this is not the second part to the Idler Wheel but I just thought I’d write this because whyyy not! It was kind of written quickly so if there are weird grammar mistakes just ignore them lmao 😭😭 might come back and edit when it’s not past midnight if you know what im saying. Anyhoo it’s September now?

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The brain-rotting contents of his colleagues’ pass-time conversations was an unfortunate byproduct of Rust’s refusal to pay mind to his own thoughts. He needed it, he thought sometimes, though he’d rather not have had need for anything: it served as a focal point for his attentions, which, otherwise, might be directed inward at himself for too long.

He didn’t pay much attention to the exacts of it all. Bar last night, dick jokes, some wild sexual exploit from their twenties: once Rust had heard it once, he did not need to hear it again. Even before they spoke, Rust had had most of them figured out. He only had to watch them, his first day at the office. Still, initially, he let them tell their shit to him and believe like maybe they could be friends, like, maybe, Rust was one of them, too, that he was entertained by their boring fucking carousel of stories. Fucking arrogant. Plagued by the crack and froth of some dry ash-type taste, Rust would swallow it down. Just the first time, though. Not the second, and not any time after that.

No, he did not care for the details. More like, it was the tone of their voices that he could plaster his resentment on. Proud, girthy, spread over too much ground, self-important. For the most part, if he had to talk to one of them, more dogs than anything else, his throat would feel too full—his mouth, too. It was what it was: force-feeding. Why anyone in their right mind would pretend to enjoy it, Rust had no idea. Everything down here displeased him, but no less so than it had in other places. Everywhere he went, Rust came with himself, though he’d tried to sever that unwelcome tie a long time ago. If he was lucky enough, some floating sensation would find him, and Rust would get to leave the conversation for some worthy train of thought. Finally, he would get to pry apart a crime scene - in his head, he did not have to use gloves: he could play it like a tape, a thousand times, a thousand different ways.

Hear them now. Rust’s lip begged to curl, which was odd. It was then, coming to terms with the sensation of his instinct, its physical demands, that he understood that something was strange about this conversation.

Slow, crawling, his eyes made their way to Marty, who had scooted his chair over to Rust’s desk. With steely eyes, he took note of how his partner’s elbow was flopped over his paperwork, how his body was sprawled open wide so unnecessarily.

Rust removed a pen wedged under Marty’s forearm. He didn’t even shift.

With the aim of cleansing his mouth of that bitter swell, he took a mouthful of cold coffee, and another, and another. When he was alone, Rust took one sugar, but, here, it wasn’t enough. Shit, it was never enough to neutralise that foul taste. Sometimes, it grew so strong that Rust would take a little longer on his smoke breaks, making his way through one, two, maybe three cigarettes. Yeah, that usually quenched it. But it was no use inside - no, he needed an open sky above him, to let all the fumes out, like smoke from a smouldering kitchen. Something about four walls and a ceiling: how many men like them had sat there, sweat there, jawed there, pissed there, before them? It just made him sick, made his head spin.

There was no need to turn to know how the rest of them were arranged. So predictable. So deeply interwoven into their psyches: the strong belief that they deserved the space that they took up, and, shit, they took up a lot. Fighting for dominance of the conversation, pushing, shoving, overlapping, each trying to mark out a platform for themselves. He wouldn’t, and it unsettled them, just as they could never comprehend anything else that wasn’t like them.

Gradual-like, Rust let his mind melt back to the specifics of the conversation, the messy, brutal abstraction of their voices condensing into words and phrases, like ink-blots soaking back up into the brushes from which they were dispelled. It didn’t take long listening for him to understand that you had drawn the interest of the hoard.

Johansson would’ve said something—if he were here. The more Rust listened—to them inching closer to what they really wanted to say, hopping around the hot topic of women and their ways on them—the fatter his tongue felt, sitting big and swollen in his mouth like it shouldn’t have been there, like he ought to have cut it out by now.

With his spectre hands, he reached into his pocket, slipped a cigarette between his lips, lit it with one flick of his lighter. That click was enough to make his mouth water, most days, although not now. Breath scraped painfully through his throat, like sandpaper.

You were distinct from them - that was a fact. When he’d been thrown into the department, he found it odd that more remarks weren’t made to your face about most things: your capability, your temperament, your looks. More often, it’d be behind your back, huddled over in the office kitchen, passed around like a note in a fuckin’ middle school classroom. He figured it was because you were smarter than them, and they knew it. At least you were only a woman, they told themselves. They couldn’t beat you up, but they could do whatever they wanted to you in their heads. They could talk about how they’d pin you down if they ever got the chance.

That last comment only happened once. At least, only once when Rust was around. He’d ended up in the captain’s office, his fingers still twitching with the way that that pulse had begged and struggled for release.

His body ached with the effort to keep himself from shaking - the tremor in his fingers would not be eased by the deep, punishing drag of smoke into his lungs, nor would the dirt clouding his brain be cleansed and sanitised by the sting, the burn of the breath he held close to him, until it hurt his chest. No, he needed the sky—but he didn’t want to leave you either.

Rust’s head swung under a bout of nausea, which hit him like the impact of falling in a dream. Briefly, he closed his eyes, taking another drag, swallowing down the husk of it. It only made it all worse.

Punch him, he thought desperately, like maybe you could be telepathic, like maybe he was as well. Who?—he didn’t know. Any of them, all of them. It was all the same.

When Marty let out a bellow of a laugh, full and selfish and fucking stupid, Rust had to look at the photograph of the dead girl in front of him again to steady himself.

Delusion did not seduce Rust. Relying on what he knew to be true, he figured that you must’ve known what you were doing. You had worn your hair down today, not in a bun as was your usual - it hadn’t taken long for Bishop, this morning, to tug on a strand of your hair, like it was just waiting to be done, like bait on a hook. If he hadn’t done it, someone else would’ve. He was inclined to simply because you dared to exist in his presence. Even then, Rust’s throat had tightened, like this. So, even though his back was defiantly turned to the hoard, Rust knew—he knew—that, when you grunted softly, it was because it had happened again. Rust closed his eyes and willed that you would hit whoever did that.

People already knew the decision they were going to make, always, in some part of their minds, so Rust didn’t see the point in attempting to console or consult anyone about anything. If it was detrimental to a case, then he would explain this to Marty, calmly point out or even correct his mistake, but, on the most part, that was the extent of his reasoning. If his partner was in a bar, flushed and loose, and flirting with the twenty-one year-old bar-keep, he wouldn’t intervene. He hadn’t. Marty dug his own grave, and Rust let him. To do otherwise would be to overestimate the sensibilities of the other and to inconvenience himself. Fuck that. People didn’t want to be changed and Rust certainly had no interest in trying to. It was a losing game, a dumb one at that. Waste of time, waste of space. Rust knew better than to take up space - he would keep what he could close to his chest; otherwise, it was dead weight that needed losing sooner rather than later.

Everyone was begging to tell, to be fucking heard. It was a naïve, selfish way to look at the world: to assume that every other human put on Earth was someone to unload onto, to purify yourself with. Rust stared hard at the twenty-four year-old woman in the photo, sprawled over her bed, that long gash down her belly, like gutting a pig. He thought of how satisfied that the killer must’ve felt, to be able to finally share his urges with someone, to get to sit, placated, with their shoulders finally light.

He looked over the coroner’s report again, despite already knowing every statement on there, trying to fill your silence—which scratched over his eyes, the front of his brain, like claws—with the lull, the truth, of the case.

They were talking to you, now.

“Let’s get you down to the bar, buck,” somebody said to you, and he was pretty sure it was Geraci, oily, slick, fat. The skin over the back of Rust’s neck, thin, had crawled.

The boys liked to call you that—buck—like you hadn’t run the same track as them, jumped the same hurdles as them. You’d transferred from Brooklyn. Same shitshow, different department. They could tell, some of them said. City girl, high up on her horse. Not really, though. Your nature threw some people off at first, he speculated - you were not cold or brash, which he sort of thought maybe you ought to be, but, somehow, decidedly kind. Not gentle. There was a difference.

You were smart, and this was why you were not choking Geraci out right now. Did you want to? Rust could not get it out of his mind. He wanted to turn and look at you—not now, just some time—and figure it out. He had an outline, like the edge pieces of a puzzle all joined up. That was always a good start. Still, he didn’t appreciate it: the effort. It made you interesting, which was inconvenient. The people who worked here were not difficult to understand - their innermost desires were eager to be released, Pandora’s box, bursting at the very seams of their mouths, and, shit, Rust let it happen. It played out that way most times with the monsters he sat across from in the box: he would listen unflinchingly, and that was attractive to a lot of people, apparently. Someone who would not shy away. Maybe that was where Rust was misstepping with you. It wasn’t like him to be glad for things, but he was when it came to the orientation of your desks: your back was to his, and he did not have to look at you, and he was glad for it. He could not pin down why.

His knuckles were glowing, he was sure of it: if he looked down at them, Rust could’ve seen that illumination, his violence emanating from within, daring to break the skin like splitting, old leather. He could smell the embers already. Maybe that was you, though, or something else.

The heat bubbled up through his nausea. No, it was him - he would be up in flames soon, some sight to behold. His eyes pulsed against the thin skin of his eyelids, so he ruled out the option of closing them.

He flexed his hands slowly, passing feeling all along his weary tendons, before he continued typing, though the letters spun and jumped out at him like bugs in long-grass. Crickets in his ears, deafening. Was almost like he could understand them, some language he knew to respond to as a child, now long left behind. He was not alone, as much as he wanted to be.

When you spoke, Rust’s shoulders tensed, like a cramp. “I got business tonight,” you drawled, ever-polite, even sweet. That raw, thick, sugary taste oozed over his tongue, clogged his throat - Rust almost gagged.

Bishop’s voice emerged from the clatter: “What business you got on a Friday night? You got better plans?”

Fuck if you did, fuck if you didn’t.

A shrill whine speared through Rust’s head then, like a fissure in the Earth’s crust, his brain a liquid, churning beneath. He fought the urge to touch his own face, make sure everything was in its right place. He knew it would be, so he didn’t move. Sensation did not indicate reality. If it did, then Rust would have had to have discovered a whole other world a long time ago. He sat still, a statue, for several heartbeats. Then, he resumed his typing. A suspect’s alibi. He did not kill her.

“You don’t gotta spend a dime with us. We’ll take care of ye,” Howard added, and the hoard hummed and chuckled their agreement, a sick tilt to all of it. Rust wished his desk were anywhere else - he rarely wished for anything.

Conviction was not an area in which you lacked. You were a quiet, formidable force. Nobody at the precinct admired the way you worked the way it ought to have been. Not enough people gave enough fucks when you conducted interviews. Once, he had seen it. He had wanted to find Marty, and Marty was with Johansson, and Johansson had been on one side of the mirror, the other side behind which you were smiling warmly at a woman who had not long ago eaten about two thirds of her boyfriend, holding her hand. She had been twice your age at least, but you were the two-headed mother there, walking that fine line. For a moment, Rust had thought to himself that you would’ve worked him, wrung him out, if he was the one across from you. Not just a thought: a realisation. It unsettled him whenever he thought about it too long. What had confused him was your distinct lack of calculation. At least, he perceived it that way. Was it instinct that let you master that certain slope of your shoulders? No amount of practice could let him fabricate it to the same standard. Or maybe you had really felt it: sympathy.

But no. Once it was done, you’d exited, and your attention was searing. Rust had left before you had time to notice him.

Stoicism: you had mastered it, and Rust itched to know you, to understand how. How was the vein in your neck not throbbing like it would burst? How were your hands not fists, white-knuckled?

And you spoke through a smile, of all things: “That’s nice, but I can’t.”

“C’mon, buck, what kinda business you got that’s so important?”

Once again, Rust scoured over the coroner’s report, flit between the list of observable marks and wounds, correlating them with the visual aid of the photograph of the entire corpse. Total ten lacerations, eight of which had been on her stomach. Other two, on her face: slicing into each of her cheeks, those soft parts.

If he did this, Rust did not have to read into your answer, which was what his mind immediately raced towards, a bullet train, blindly searching in the darkness for some semblance of you. “My own,” you replied, and it did not mean anything to him because he was doing this.

Rust body itched to leap up and lay someone out, right then and there. His fist yearned for it, for the contact. For however often Rust felt like his body was not his, he had rarely considered the possibility that it might be in charge. People did what they would with him - his job was merely to take it. There was a strange sort of peace in that type of compartmentalisation, the kind where he could simply leave what apparently made up his person. If he was away from himself, he wouldn’t have to face whatever he was doing. An education in the dissociative state, an underutilised tool. He’d even had a course on it, he was sure. It was part of the reason he could keep his pulse so low, retreating so far into this meat shell that not even his blood flowed too close to the surface. But he felt it now, thrumming in his neck, a riptide. Taking his pulse now would do nothing to save it. The muscles there were stiff, flexing oddly under the strain of choking back on the natural instinct that, it appeared, was his. It tasted like vomit. Maybe that was real, though.

You were not some lamb that needed a shepherd. Fuck, he could never be one, not any version of him: he’d only be leading a thing to rot and ruin, and the parasite would get them, too. No, Rust wasn’t the shepherd. Never the shepherd. Rust was critical and cold. He might’ve been the wolf.

Ten lacerations. Raped.

The laughter of the hoard circled his head again, again, again. Someone must’ve picked at your hair - you grunted.

Abruptly, Rust stood up, like he got shocked because the room was on two different circuits. His spine like some iron rod, so unnaturally straight, his body so unnaturally tense, so unlike himself, he momentarily drew the attention of the other detectives all clustered together in the bullpen. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought they knew, that he was fighting for the wheel, that he was battling back the grey that had begun to vignette his vision. Why was he suddenly so tall? Not even that. Alive. He could hear it: life rushing, roaring, in his ears, crackling like a wildfire. Rust’s body, that strange entity, was momentarily reborn as something else, whose neck was never bowed, whose shoulders never rounded, who conducted itself like it was powerful. Maybe it was.

Marty eyed him like he had grown another fuckin’ head.

Despite the dissipating attention, murmurs to the side, you were still looking at him, too, with your eyes so hard, almost black, like two cherry pits. Rust was piloting, and he would not look away. No. He would look on, as he always did. No matter the electricity burn of your attention, which he preferred to avoid - the energy was coursing through him, bright, his veins fried and blackening. Beneath the surface, his being spasmed and seized. But he knew that you were no different than anything, so he looked.

If he didn’t, he would hit someone. That could be taken the wrong way.

Geraci’s hand was braced on your desk, just next to you, his fat, greasy palm covering some paragraph that you had no doubt been trying to read. Rust’s hands twitched, but he had managed to bring himself inward, had relaxed most of his body thus far, and he would not fuck himself over by letting fists form now.

So, Rust stared at you, cool, unrelenting.

He was surprised by the distance of his own voice when he asked you if you could come over to the files room just a minute and give your opinion on something for him. It was like his own mouth was at the end of a long, stretching tunnel, his words far away from him. He crushed his cigarette into the closest ashtray, annihilating it.

He tasted pennies there, in his mouth. Perhaps he had been biting his tongue. Perhaps it was just the look on your face.

Okay, you said, quiet-like, before you rose, prying yourself away from your desk. As you stepped past him, Rust let himself look at Geraci. People dug their own graves, but that did not cancel out Rust’s thirst to kill. That kind of justice lies in the bones.

Most likely, he just needed to sleep. It was coming up on four days, nearly, without, which did not aid in the dizziness that threatened the stability of Rust’s every step as he slowly turned to follow behind you.

In the files room, you were waiting for him, staring up at the flickering halogen bulb that illuminated this section, the chain still swinging from when you had just pulled it.

Rust stared at your back, far away from himself, almost stumbling back when he closed the door, sealing the two of you off from the real world. His anger flung about like a whirlpool behind his eyes, thrashing and throbbing. If he had mind to say something to you—which he did not—he wouldn’t have been able to anyways. Saliva pooled in his mouth, pushing under his tongue. He cleared his throat, delaying a gag.

When you began to turn to look at him, Rust almost begged out loud that you wouldn’t, his heartbeat thrumming in his throat, almost daring him to start panting for air like a dog. The assault of the light from the halogen bulb was invisible to you, so it could not be real. No, you were looking at him now. With his hand still gripping the handle like it could save him, like he could escape it, you, he almost closed his eyes, cringed away. But what was he?—some child? He could not. Sensation was not necessarily reality, and he was not sick, and you were not of concern to him. Still, he turned slightly, his body angled toward the door at which he still stood, refusing to step any closer. He couldn’t close his eyes—you could get the wrong idea—so, instead, he opted for the linoleum floor, careful to avoid your feet.

Fuck, he could feel your relief washing over him like a warm wave. It almost knocked him clear off his feet, and it left his knees weak, threatening to buckle. Once, he had gone out west, to the coast, with Sophia and Claire. Nothing like where he grew up: out there, in that endless cold, his pa used to warn against any and all large bodies of water, ice. Even when you thought the surface beneath you was safe, it could give out, and you’d fall through into waters you didn’t know could be so deep.

Rust had reason enough to believe that this might’ve been worse.

There was salt spray in his mouth, now. Your ebb and flow churned in his stomach like the beat of a drum, reverberating through his flesh, which he was suddenly very aware of.

You’d figured it out: he didn’t need your help. He didn’t need to be in here either.

Something tangible rolled around on his tongue as your eyes scanned over him, a meticulous, slow rake. It grit between his teeth, like a grain of sand or a seed or something. Rust swallowed it and then fought a proceeding dry heave, smothered by a bright feeling in his throat that only flared up when he heard your breath hitch, too.

You were polite to spare him, to stare at your hands. Wordless, you left him to go busy yourself with nothing in the back of the files room, melting into the shadows, concealing yourself behind a shelving unit.

Even though he couldn’t see you, though, your sweetness still flooded Rust’s mouth, inescapable. He knew you were there, thinking, maybe about him.

He almost wished he had done nothing.

[betterthana-six]

| MUSIC TO MY EARS - [ABBY ANDERSON] - CHAPTER THREE |

PAIRINGS: stoic!rugby player abby x musician fem!reader

SUMMARY: you and your new(ish) college roommate, Abby Anderson, have gotten into an argument. about what? unclear at the moment. but it's got Abby in a fit of shame. until late one night she hears you outside with someone whose voice she doesn't recognize and listens in.

WARNINGS: heyooo we are so fucking back! AND LOOKIE AT THAT TAG LIST AHHH THANK YOU FOR THE AMAZING RECEPTION SO FAR!!!! LOVE YOU ALL. im having so much fun writing this and watching this story spiral into absolute chaos. im honestly just trying to see how big i can make this story. much more pining this chapter but ooh girl we are getting sexier as we go, trust the process. mdni DUH. ive been wanting to write a pool scene. abby sure be falling in love. let me know if you guys are liking the structure so far, its pretty predictable. abby is snarkier and snarkier, but im always nervous to stay true to her character. let me know what yall like, and even mid story I am open to suggestions or if youre like that or this part wasnt fully fleshed out, why not let me know? im down. k have fun. bye. ALSO: i have a playlist brewing for this story. comment if you want it and ill post.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

Music To My Ears: Chapter 3

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。.

There are tears drying on your chin when Abby abruptly stands up, pulling you up with her, towel still wrapped over your arms. 

She starts pulling clothes out of the depths of her closet and throwing them onto your bed.

“What are you doing?” You sniffle. 

“Put these on.”

“Your clothes won’t fit me. You have something called muscle mass.”

Abby let out a small snicker. “They’re from when I was, like, sixteen. They’ll fit,” she said.

“I have my own clothes, you know,” You gesture to your side of the room. “They’re actually about five feet away from me.”

“You’ll understand when we get there why I’m giving you my old clothes.”

“Are we hiking?”

“You hush.”

“Oh my god, is it paintball?”

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s paintball. The 24-hour paintball park is awaiting our arrival as we speak. How’d you guess?”

You smirk bashfully. “I’ll only put them on if you tell me what we’re doing.”

She plants herself a foot in front of you and tilts her head down. “You’re no fun.” She shoves one of her rugby sweatshirts into your stomach. “Let’s have fun. Actual fun. Come on, it’s the weekend for fuck’s sake. I just… I know a place.”

You lower the towel like a shawl around your elbows and walk over to your bed, as Abby’s eyes follow you. Seeing her, you jut your jaw out at her, waving your index finger in a circle. Abby's response was a bit delayed, she catches her eyes getting lost on your silhouette again, and struts slowly around to face her side. 

You sigh and put the clothes on. The feeling of warmth from the dry clothes covers your body with a chill and you’re nearly sedated with comfort. While Abby is still turned away, you bring the sleeve of her hoodie up to your nose and smell it as quietly as you could. 

“I’m ready,” you say.

Abby opens the door out to the hallway. Nobody’s out there. It’s nearly 1 am.

You still look both ways nervously, and Abby notes it, but neither of you say anything. She guides you down the hallway, the sound of her keys jangling against her thigh, hanging from the carabiner locked around her belt loop. She is sure to keep you close to her. Each time you sway or stumble a bit, she grabs your wrist and holds you up. Though, of course, you put a hand up every time to insist that you’re fine. 

You are still drunk. It is indeed still obvious. 

Abby turns a corner and halts the journey in front of a vending machine which blares with light in its dark corner. “Hold up, one second,” she says, as she inserts a dollar, some coins from her pocket, presses B7, grabs it from the bottom, takes your hand and puts the candy in it.

“Twix is my favorite,” you say.

“I know,” Abby says.

“You know?”

She hesitates and runs a shy hand over the back of her neck under her long braid. “I see wrappers in our trash sometimes.”

You pause with suspicious eyes. 

Abby gives a small laugh and looks away. “Whatever. Eat.”

You bite and it is as forgiving on your stomach as any midnight candy bar can be, especially after the amount of alcohol it's following.

Now, Abby pulls your hand from three paces ahead of you. She seems restless, happily so, in a way you had rarely seen her. Maybe only once or twice in hindsight.

You are already out the doors of your building and into the cool air of early spring. It is almost completely dark but the moon lights the pale sidewalk visibly enough. Once your eyes fully adjust, you can see Abby. Her braid swings back and forth across her back. 

After a ten minute walk through the main circle of campus, Abby takes one of the keys from her hip and opens the entrance of your school’s gym.

She checks your demeanor, and you meet her with a wide-eyed face that says: what the fuck?

“Just trust me,” she says and grabs your hand again, guiding you through the dark corridors and up the stairs, past the treadmills and weight machines. 

As you approach the top, a blue haze lights Abby’s face and then yours. It’s very quiet up there in the announcer’s box, and it looks down onto the college’s Olympic sized swimming pool. You’d only ever seen it from the doors on the bottom level. You remember the first time. People were splashing about in the water but it didn’t ruin the illusion for you. The smell of chlorine. The warm humidity that threatened its way out onto you. You, who stood firmly in the air conditioned hall, pleasantly zoned out on the swimmers.

Even from behind, Abby seems so eager to fulfill her spontaneous promise of a good time. A small smile grows on her face every now and then. You become very aware of your hand in hers. Hers is gruff and big and warm, her thumb securing around your fingers messily. It’s possible you merely imagine the vibration in the space between your palms. Her touch reignites the bliss of your drunkenness, and, again, you feel light on your feet. 

Abby pulls out a key and inserts it into the keyhole for a discreet door. It leads the two of you down two flights of stairs into a locker room with fresh towels piled up into neat stacks. She throws one at you: “Here.”

“No way,” you say. You realize you were so carried away you only now realized what she had brought you here to do.

“I didn’t bring you here for us not to swim.”

You smile big. “Oh, fuck yeah.”

“I knew it would cheer you up.” Abby laughs. 

“Wait,” you think, “someone’s gonna be here. We’re gonna get kicked out.”

“No, we’re not,” she reassures, “I’m friends with the rec team. I asked for the after hours key so I can workout at night. I guess I just forgot to give them back.”

You look at her a little confused, moreso disbelieving. 

“No, really, I swear. Sometimes it’s nice to de-stress at night. Let off a little steam when no one’s around,” Abby says. You smirk and lift her sweatshirt over your head, revealing the light blue tank top Abby had given you.

“Don’t I know it,” you say under your breath.

“Oh?” Abby says. 

“You think I don’t notice when you don’t come back to the dorm until 5 am?” You say with a cocky tone. 

Then, she, too, pulls her sweater off. She was only wearing a thin bra and boxers. You were surprised she wore anything under it at all, given her track record. You quickly note the way you don’t squirm or turn away. Perhaps it’s just a matter of familiarity - you have been roommates for three months now - or, maybe, it’s the way she’s looking at you in this moment. “You notice?” 

The sudden turn of the question makes you stutter.

“I- I mean, the once or twice it's happened. Obviously.”

Instead of laughing at you this time, Abby just stands and looks at you thoughtfully. Intensely. 

“Whatever. Yeah, that was…” she finally says, shaking her head, with a twinge of something shadowing her tone and preventing her from finishing her sentence.  

The both of you have changed completely into her clothes, the clothes she didn’t think twice about letting you ruin with chlorine. You save her from whatever she didn’t want to say. “You could’ve at least told me to bring a swimsuit…” You say. 

“Yeah, well, it would’ve spoiled the surprise,” Abby says.

At the door leading to the pool, Abby turns back suddenly, stopping before speaking.

“Okay, listen. This is a sacred rite. No one besides me, and now you, has access to this place. No one knows I have the keys, and it needs to stay that way.” 

You nod. “Makes sense.”

“Because this will be really fucking fun.”

“Understood.”

“And, I’m showing it to you because you’re having a shitty, no-good night.”

You hold a salute up to your forehead. “Captain, I won't let you down.”

She rolls her eyes to your delight. “Come on.”

You find her hand in yours again. You can’t help but marvel at how natural it was - not because you are surprised - just because it still sends a shiver running down your spine.

The smell of chlorine washes over you and you breathe deep, closing your eyes and feeling the damp air warming your skin. Abby’s in front of you, hooking her phone up to a wire and resting it on the ledge of the spectator window. The speakers overhead start playing music. 

“Holy shit,” you say, looking at her with amazement and pointing up to the ceiling. The Rolling Stones' “She’s A Rainbow” rings out over the speakers and fills the space completely. A smile creeps onto your face, and once it’s there, it’s stuck. 

“How’d I do?” She asks.

You don’t answer but smile at your feet. You walk past her towards the edge of the concrete, sparing a devilish smirk her way right when your shoulders nearly graze each other. Only the pool lights are on, making the whole place shine with the blue dancing patterns of the water ripples. It reflects onto your face, and, when you look back at Abby, she is staring at you.

“You coming?” You ask. 

And Abby eyes dart away in shock, feeling scandalized and taking what you said entirely out of context. She can’t help it; a semblance of those words have been echoing in her head for the last three months, more or less. Jolting her awake from her dreams. Both sleeping and conscious. 

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。.

The first dream happened about three weeks into living together.

Since that conversation in your room on your first night, neither of you tried to initiate conversation deeper than small talk. The explosive end to that night left you reluctant to speak to her at all and left Abby anxious to say the wrong thing. 

It was the beginning of the semester, anyway. Abby had a routine to establish and you were busy finding the right buildings around campus, keeping your head down, and practicing guitar. 

You hadn’t been able to anticipate her comings and goings. Mostly Abby left for her day without saying a word and came back in the same manner. When she returned in the evenings, you quickly traded the guitar on your lap for earphones while Abby read silently only feet away.

"You can keep playing, I don't mind" is the only thing Abby would sometimes say. "No, it's okay. I should probably just use the practice rooms anyway," was your usual response, if you said anything at all.

The first dream happened when Abby took an impromptu nap in the early afternoon while you were out.

Her dreams involved many strange things she could never comprehend and typically forgot soon after she woke. Yet, toward the end of this dream, she saw nothing but your face, eyes softly closed, there between her legs. It was no in-depth scene. No words. No kissing. Just you, licking a line from her knee up the skin of her inner thigh. 

Abby woke up with a gasp. She looked down to find there was wetness between her thighs, and momentarily she couldn’t distinguish what was and wasn’t real. She was almost convinced that you really were somewhere near, that somehow you had been there between her legs just a moment ago. But, the room was empty and the wetness had come from Abby, herself, of course. 

She found her hand was there, too, under her boxers, to meet her body with stiff, soaked fingers.

She laid there, staring at the ceiling, unsure of what to make of it, still hypnotized in her exhaustion.

She didn’t think about it. Abby began moving her fingers around in circles, her other hand placed on the top of her head, bottom lip tucked slightly under her front teeth. 

She closed her eyes and, without realizing, tried to prolong the feeling that seemed so real only moments ago. 

You popped into her mind. She quickened her pace.

There was something so indulgent about the image she had. It felt dirty. Naughty ideations of her own roommate was something she knew she’d feel guilty about later, a secret that could never be shared. She didn’t know where it had come from specifically, this need for you, but, honestly, she didn’t even try to interrogate it. She just exhaled hard through her nose as she tried to picture you more vividly. 

“Fuck…” She whispered to herself. The feeling built and built and she gripped onto her blanket, breathing hard. 

Just then, the key to your door started jangling. 

Abby stopped immediately, yanked out of her dream and her tiredness altogether. She pulled up the slightly pulled down pants and sat up. She grabbed the book off her desk, opened it to a random page and pretended to be lost in the story by the time you opened the door and walked inside.

She had startled you. 

“Oh, hey,” you said. 

Abby looked up over the page. “Hey.”

“I forgot I need these for my next class,” you explain while gathering two books from your desk and shoving them into your backpack.

“Hm,” she said, feigning disinterest.

You zipped up and turned to leave. “Alright. See you later,” you said but met Abby’s eyes which were already on you. You turned back. “Are you okay?” You asked.

“I’m fine. Why?”

“Oh, nothing, your face is all red.”

Abby just shrugged, at a complete loss for words.

“Okay,” you said without a second thought. “Well, bye.”

“Bye.”

Once you were gone, Abby tossed the book, turned over onto her stomach, and buried her head beneath her pillow. 

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。.

The dreams, however, only got worse from there. Abby started waking up from dreams with her hand down her pants more often than not and, by morning, they delivered her a head full of thoughts she could barely acknowledge to herself. Dreams of you sitting in her lap, dreams of her fingers in your mouth, dreams of you panting into her ear. She had visions of what you’d look like astride her hips with a smile on your face. Impossible dreams of you seducing her in huge hot tubs, or at fancy dinners with her hand squeezing tight around your thigh under a tablecloth, a gala where you both get locked in the coat closet with nothing but time to kill. These dreams consumed her until late in the day.

If there was one thing Abby promised herself she wouldn’t do is fall in love with a straight girl. Especially her roommate, who she presumed kind of hated her. This new energy you brought to her made her so vulnerable in the dark hours of the night, she felt she had to release it before she got in too deep. 

So, she tried the gym. She started lifting uncharacteristically heavier. She started lifting until failure, until she had completely obliterated her muscles. Her teammates applauded her for her hard work, if only they knew the real reason for the fire lit under her ass.

It helped some. More like distracted her. But she knew the craving hadn’t fully subsided. It only took an hour for it to re-emerge. Sooner if she saw you walking to class or if you tried to spark conversation in the dorm, which was rare but nonetheless excited Abby when it did happen.

One time when you were both getting ready for bed, you turned to Abby and broke the silence.

“Hey, I was wondering…”

“What’s up?” Abby responded. The eagerness with which she asked was out of her control. 

“I, um, well, do you think you could show me around the gym sometime? I didn’t get to see it when I toured, and it’s so big. I’m honestly kind of intimidated-”

“Yes, yeah,” Abby said.

“Cool,” you nodded. “Thank you.”

A moment of silence passed. Abby’s heart raced with the prospect of getting to talk to you so much. Guide you around and show you the place. But in a second, she thought better of it. She needed to contain herself someway or another. 

“Yeah,” Abby continued. “They’ve got a great yoga studio, you know. One has classes and the other one is free for students to use anytime.”

You scoffed. Abby’s face was intentionally blank, waiting to see your reaction.

“Of course,” you said. “Of course, you assume I’d just want to do yoga.”

“I figure you’d want to see it.”

“Okay, well could you just show me the whole gym?”

“Yeah,” Abby said, recoiling from you a bit. She pushed through, wondered if perhaps she could make this worse for herself. Worsening the relationship could force the unwanted thoughts about you to subside entirely. “Sorry. You don’t strike me as a weightlifter.” 

You stopped and looked sharply her way.

“Okay. Forget I asked. I’ll find someone else.”

Just like that, another failed attempt at conversation was over. Her self-sabotage felt far less productive than she thought it would feel. All Abby felt was stupid. Her heart sank lower in her chest.

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。.

Soon she became so scared of her sleeping self, worried that you'd hear her sleep talking your name or, dear god, catch her fucking herself while she dreamt about eating you out in the quiet section of a library. The idea was so mortifying to her that she nearly couldn’t sleep with you in the room at all, which was every night. 

She grew anxious, unable to control herself and unable to sleep. Practice became lackluster. Lifting felt ineffectual. Still, she knew she couldn’t let the levee break. She needed respite in any form and, eventually, Abby realized she was desperate. 

One day before rugby practice, she texted Nora, a girl Abby fucked on and off for a majority of her freshman year. Abby liked Nora because she was as impersonal about hooking up as Abby was. It was a clean-cut fuck buddy deal she knew she could rely on if she wanted.

The next Thursday, Nora took Abby in like an old friend. She sat her down and opened a bottle of wine, performed the pleasantries of simple conversation, caught up with school and sports and life, and eventually led Abby to the bedroom.

They knew what they were there to do.

In a blur, Abby found her arms wrapped around Nora's lower back as she pressed her face flesh to Nora's chest, guiding her through a sweaty orgasm which seemed satisfactory. 

When Nora tried to return the favor, Abby was completely dry. 

She had been mentally elsewhere since the moment she knocked on the door. 

She played it off as just being out of it, just wanting to please Nora that night. So, Abby haphazardly thanked her for the wine, as it was really the only thing Nora could give Abby that night besides for a spacious bed outside of the dorms, and they went to sleep.

But Abby could only stare up at the ceiling as Nora breathed heavily beside her in a deep sleep. 

She decided to walk back to the dorm. It was early and the sun was just starting to light up the sky. You were asleep, and when Abby closed the door, you sprawled out in your bed, strands of hair curled and scattered messily around your face. She watched you sleep for a second, feeling gross and cold and wired. She still couldn’t sleep, so she turned on her desk lamp and read in an attempt to forget her last two or three decisions.

When the sun was finally up, you turned over in your bed and pushed your covers down to your feet, stretching out until your hands hit the headboard. You saw Abby was already up, only reading in bed as you often found her.

“No gym today?” You yawned.

Abby looked over at you and just shook her head. 

“You look tired.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Abby said.

You nodded, grabbed your toiletry bag, and left. 

Half of Abby convinced herself you knew what she’d been doing the night before, which only made her feel dirtier. Moreover she believed that even if you knew, in agreement with how she wanted to keep things, you were totally indifferent.

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。.

Abby’s logic wasn’t flawless. She thought she had been doing all the right things. She fucked it out of her system, as far as she was concerned, so after that she got right back into the swing of her routine. All excess feelings would surely go away. The dreams would stop. 

Yet, a week later, it was your face she saw through vertically moving weights, walking through the gym’s hallways that made Abby nearly drop the weights she had raised over her head. 

A blonde girl was walking with you. You seemed disinterested. 

Her name was Carol and she was another classical guitar major. She was the best in your music theory class and you clung to her when you realized not only was she a talented sight reader but she had the most lifeless and dull nature of anyone you had ever met. She was the exact friend you had hoped to meet.

She had also offered to show you around the gym when you asked. Admittedly, you didn’t need someone to tour guide you through the gym. You just didn’t want to go alone. 

Carol talked at you in great detail about the gym’s hours, what kinds of people one might find in certain areas, and how she tried pickleball once but couldn’t stand the instructor’s “overly-excited” approach to teaching.

You zoned out, clutched onto the straps of your backpack, and looked around at the gym. There were so many levels. A big hole in the wall right by the entrance that showcased the basketball courts, two yoga studios hidden around a corner on the second floor, the track that outlined the upper level, and, of course, the massive weightlifting section next to it. You tried to look away from it when Carol walked you past it just in case.

When she had taken you through most of it all, you stopped at the sight of double doors with small windows you could barely see through. 

“Is that the pool?” You asked, but you were already walking away by the time Carol could answer. 

You gazed eagerly at the swimmers who glided across the lap lanes with ease. There were sounds of whistles and people yelling out times. 

“Can anyone swim here or is it just for the swim team?” You asked and no one answered. 

You looked briefly behind you. Carol was gone. But, truthfully you didn’t care enough to go after her and continued staring at the splashes and glistening bodies in swimsuits, caps bobbing in and out of the water. The smell of the chlorine was so nostalgic. You let yourself breathe in and out, taking it all in, closing your eyes.

“It's just for the swim team, usually,” a voice said right behind you.

You jumped and turned to see who was inches away from you, closing you into the door behind you.

You exhaled. “Abby.”

“You swim?” She ignored your shock.

“Not, like, for exercise.”

“Hm,” Abby responded. “So, what are you doing here then?”

“Getting the tour I requested.”

“Yeah. From Carol, who’s never actually been here before.”

You momentarily look around for Carol but assume she must have left. You wonder how Abby even knew she was with you.

“Hey, she took a very riveting pickleball class here and has much to say about it,” you said. 

Abby smirked and moved from her close proximity to the space next to you. You both stayed there for a moment, just watching.

“She seems like a lot of fun.”

“She is,” you said a bit indignantly.

“I bet,” Abby said. “I had her in my Intro to College course last year. She’s very… organized?”

You sighed, eyes still fixed on the swim team. “Yeah, she’s kind of awful.” 

Abby couldn’t contain a laugh and you laughed with her. Out of all your conversations where she seemed to get on every one of your nerves, you were always kind to her. You turned away from the doors and Abby followed alongside as you walked together. 

“So,” Abby said, “why are you friends with her then?”

“She’s very smart. She’s nice enough.”

“Your standards for friendship are pretty low. No offense.” Abby swallowed at the thought of you taking offense. Of her taking it too far again. But this time you conceded.

“You could say that. I guess I like laying low.”

“Yeah, I see that. I can’t figure out why though.” You looked up at Abby to see if she’s fucking with you again but she looked genuine. It softened you. “I think you’re cool.”

“Thanks,” you said, looking from her to the floor again. “I just…I’ve had my fill of shitty friends before. I figure Carol is the boring kind of shitty and not the ‘ruin your life’ kind of shitty.”

“Christ,” Abby said. “I get that though.”

You looked at her to call bullshit. 

“No, really,” she continued. “If I had a dime for every time I’ve realized someone I considered a best friend was actually totally fucking awful, I’d have, like…”  

“Too many dimes?”

You smile. Abby smiled at having made you smile. 

“Too many fucking dimes,” Abby agreed and lingered on you, this laugh of yours in particular said, that’s so stupid, but you smiled anyway. She looked away and nervously stroked her neck. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry about what I said before. I see you lug, like, four guitars between classes everyday, so I had no right to say what I did, about me not taking you for a weightlifter. That was stupid.”

Abby’s breath got caught in her words. There was something about her that always made you sympathetic and made the corners of your mouth perk up. She went on.

“I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. Which… that’s my fault. If you ever want to hang out, though, outside of the dorm-” 

But your eyes tore from her and were suddenly down the hall, staring at a gaggle of girls talking to one of the front desk student workers. Your face went sullen and your body stunned. Abby tried to follow your gaze.

You went into a panic and your eyes darted around until they landed on Abby again. 

“I have to go,” you suddenly said. You swung around to Abby, seemingly hiding your face from them.

“Oh- sorry, did I-”

“But thanks for saying that. Yeah, we should,” you said, and Abby could sense your urgency to leave. “Do you wanna go to a party with me?”

Abby couldn’t hide her surprise. And pleasure. “Yes. Yeah,” she coughed. “Sure.”

“It’s a Valentine's Day party. I know it’s early in the month for that, but, yeah, Carol invited me and it seems like it might be fun, I sort of want to go but I don’t really want to go with…”

“Oh, yeah, no, fuck Carol. I’m down.”

“Yeah?” Your eyes opened brightly, at her and then anxiously to the doors behind you. “Okay, that’s great, amazing. I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah, see you.” 

And you were out the door. Abby noticed your head slightly turn away from the girls at the front desk. 

Abby’s eyes were wide. She let out a big breath and smiled to herself as she walked back to the weights. Yet, Abby found herself counting past her normal ten reps, so consumed by her thoughts that she couldn’t feel her muscles burning. Perhaps it was the moment you invited her to the party that Abby’s grand idea to repress her feelings had gone out the window. Maybe it was when you confided in her, in what small way it was, or the way you laughed at her being a smart ass that made her abandon the boundary she set for herself. Or, possibly, in the moments she spent watching you watch the swim team, Abby realized something she quietly knew since the day she met you: she couldn’t exercise or fuck her way out of this. 

Even if it all was to just be your friend, which she was slowly accepting it would be, it would be worth it to die on that hill. She would let herself die on that hill. Even if it broke her heart and you never were any the wiser. What else could she do? Abby had been a lost cause from the start. 

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。.

In a glance, Abby’s memories stop short. She feels the same sense of hopefulness she did in her memory so she chooses not to reminisce further. Not when things feel so simple and good again.

It was hard enough for Abby to look you in the eyes. Every time she did, she felt like she was reading a book and your pages were turning so fast it made her dizzy. It’s how she feels as you ask again:

“You coming?” 

You’re half turned to face Abby on the pool’s edge with a hand outstretched to her and anticipation in your eyes. 

She comes in colors everywhere, she combs her hair, she's like a rainbow...

As if at peace with the restlessness you gave her, she looks over to you sweetly, cracking a girlish smile and releasing her hair from its braid.

“I’m not waiting for you!” You sing out. “Three! Two!”

Abby runs and cannonballs into the pool. 

A second later, Abby feels you explode into the water next to her and opens her eyes. The chlorine stings but she sees you clearly. The deep blue glow surrounds your body as you cascade through the water. Your eyes are squeezed shut drawing little lines of sunshine on the sides of your face, bubbles of air fluttering around you, escaping to the surface. 

Abby follows you up until you both find air. Two heads bobbing up and down. The noise of splashing calms. It’s just you and her. Both bodies are tensely aware of that fact. 

You hide the bottom half of your face in the water, looking away from Abby nervously. You can sense her eyes on you. It makes you freeze. The familiar heat runs up your neck. 

“Stop it.”

She shrugs, indecipherably.

“Okay,” she says.

But Abby doesn’t change a thing.

It all festers on your face. 

You take a breath and plunge down until water surrounds you completely, until you’ve held your breath so long that your heart beats louder than your thoughts, slowly and finally drowning them out.

Comment if you want to be on this story's taglist!

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.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。.

[vampyrixdarling]

I LOVED YOUR ZOMBIE SONIC WRITING HSHDJF

Okay so Sonic with a reader that he caught feelings for, right ? But the thing was, they were a big bad meanie guy out for BLOOD. They liked Sonic too, but refused to change their villainous ways tehe

IM IN LOVE Q THIS IDEA

HCs or a one shot is fine >:)))

— 「Sonic with a reader who’s a villain」

╰┈➤ MASTERLIST

Sonic the Hedgehog x villain!reader (Gender Neutral)

Summary: Sonic never could’ve predicted that he’d be falling for the same person who would actively endanger his home and his friends. But it happened. Mutual pining with slight rivalry mixed in with playful fighting, who’s to complain?

Warnings: brief mentions of fighting (not detailed), swearing.

Author's Note: I’m like honestly SO embarrassed of the quality of this😭 please let this slide Orion I am BEGGING🙏🙏 my writing is normally SO MUCH BETTER I SWEAR

Word Count: 735

Likes/Reblogs are always appreciated!! <3

→ Sonic is someone who prides himself on being able to save his world from any threat that dares try to destroy it or hurt his friends or innocent people. He’s a hero, and he’s proud to call himself one. Sure, the praise and the fame that comes with it is cool and all, but all Sonic really cares about is saving all that he can, and taking down evil. He doesn’t need a reward for just doing what he loves. Hell, he’d even get to hangout with his friends just talking about the fight he had, and try some of Amy’s delicious deserts of course. Except if it was strawberry shortcake. He’d stay far away from that if he could.

→ You, on the other hand, were just another villain. You found a kind of sadistic joy in the misery of other people— a sick satisfaction from watching all those below you suffer a terrible fate at your hands. It’s always been this way for as long as you could remember, really. There wasn’t a moment you truly felt happy. No moment where you truly felt complete. And maybe, just maybe, causing pain and suffering to those undeserving made you feel just a little better about the dull, boring life you had. Something like the phrase, “if I can’t be happy, nobody can”, as much as you hated it.

→ But, nobody could deny the slight excitement you felt when the blue blur himself stood in your path, eyes locked on yours as he got ready to attack. A fight with him was never boring, that much was guaranteed. and perhaps you felt the same way, unfortunately you’d never get to finish your thought before he spin-dashed into you, sending you flying into the nearest wall.

“Ugh, come on, [Name]… haven’t we been over this once before?”

“Three times, actually. Learn to keep track.”

The hedgehog rolled his eyes as he sped towards you again. Meanwhile, with a cocky grin on your face, you shakily got up.

→ Sonic would feel extremely conflicted and confused. On one hand, you were everything he hated. Someone who felt joy in causing terror and harm upon those he cared for. But, on another hand, there was an undeniable chemistry between you guys. None of you would ever admit that, though.

→ He hated how he felt about you. He shouldn’t feel anything like this for any of his enemies. But, there was also this one flaw about him. The fact that he’s willing to give second chances and hope for the best. He does see the good in you, no doubt about it. It’s just that you’re being so damn difficult, he wishes you’d just give up.

→ But you weren’t oblivious to this. You saw how the hedgehog briefly hesitated before landing a punch to you. You saw how his eyes lit up once he realized you weren’t dead from that landing. And, a part of you felt pity for him. You realized how hard this was for him, to hurt someone he’s grown to love, and you really wished you wouldn’t care. But you did. Because you loved him too.

→ None of you took the realization well. You both hated each other for feeling this way, and while you both tried to separate from each other, you just kept coming back. You both would swear it’s because you’re causing trouble and Sonic’s just trying to save everyone, but you both knew it was different. But one day, during a pretty heated fight..

“Why can’t you just let me do what’s best for you, [Name]?!”

“This isn’t what’s best! You don’t know anything about me!”

“I know that I love you!”

…

Oh.

Oh..

→ Once the awkwardness was out of the way, and you two were finally able to confront each other… you got it all out. You both had a talk about how you really felt. He expressed his concerns, and you voiced your clear disdain towards leaving your villainous ways. Which, he understood. He hated how you refused to stop, but you just wouldn’t listen to him. So after negotiating, you agreed to slightly tone down your attacks. Which wasn’t much, but at least you weren’t killing anybody.

Bonus: He’d LOVE chasing after you and getting into so many playful fights with you while you’re attacking the town. It would be so fun and exciting for the both of you.

[kiyomitakada]

okay fuck it i went to a leonardo da vinci exhibit today and now i have a leonardo da vinci death note AU in my head because i am a parody of myself so you can fucking have it i guess what do i even do with this

light yagami: young genius polymath who is good at literally everything

unfortunately for him he is a foreigner in italia (his family immigrated) so the government is not letting him anywhere near their weaponry projects. instead he does art. yes light yagami painted the mona lisa no i do not take criticism i’m in too deep

his portraits are predictably amazing. smash hit. soon aristocracy from all over italy is contacting him to draw them and their mother. this means he doesnt even have time in the day to draw giant fuckoff warship designs anymore. what point is there to life, he sulks.

eventually he accepts a commission from one kyosuke higuchi! we’re italianizing him because i really don’t think this AU works otherwise but let’s call him higuchi anyway. higuchi is a fifty-something duke of something or other who has recently married one misa amane who is twenty-something (the same age as light). misa is the subject of the portrait because higuchi just loves his darling wife so much (read: they had a shotgun wedding and higuchi needs to keep up appearances)

light is like wow someone who isn’t white it’s been like five years. i kind of feel bad for her, this situation is very suspicious. hello miss amane if you’ll just sit down over there while i get my brushes

misa (seeing the first person who has been even remotely sympathetic to her absolutely horrific life, noticing he hasn’t tried to make any advances on her at all [this is a good thing]): I AM DRASTICALLY IN LOVE WITH YOU.

light: what

misa’s plan of seducing light predictably fails because he’s light, so she explains she has to get the fuck away from higuchi somehow

light is like okay well i am sorry to hear that but what does this have to do with me.

misa, tearing up: im a damsel in distress! also i can get you information about his court

light: whats his job

misa: financial advisor

light: oh fuck yes okay

so light’s plan is now to worm into the yotsuba court to get funding and hopefully sway them enough to let him pitch his cool weaponry ideas so he can Change The World. he does need income in general too (both for himself and his family; expected lifespan was way shorter then obviously).

misa’s plan is to kill higuchi somehow which will be much easier with light as backup she thinks

so. light packs up and moves to the yotsuba court which is thrilled to have THE light yagami portrait artist (i do more than portraits…) in their employ

oh yeah, misa mentions, the prince of the yotsuba court is kind of… weird

light: you could have told me this before

misa: ehe. dont worry about it!! it’s just um. he had a weird personality shift a few years ago? and now he refuses to wear royal attire. he always dresses like a peasant.

light: well it’s not like i’m going to be there to judge him on fashion am i.

THAT’S RIGHT. SIKE THIS IS AN ISEKAI NOW. yes L does remember light killing him <3 he (L) woke up in fifteenth century renaissance italy in a twenty-something-year-old body immediately after the heart attack. by some miracle he already knew italian.

so everything is going swell until one day light walks into his workshop to find the prince flipping through his notebook

light, sleep deprived: hey what the fu—i mean. uh. good morning your highness

there’s no need for that formality. call me L.

(…but your name doesn’t start with an L?) thank you, your highness L. um. sorry i know my handwriting’s messy.

on the contrary i find it completely readable, as long as one reads backwards and caesar shifts it three letters forward.

(oh SHIT he’s onto me) haha what are you talking about?

in fact i think this mechanical dragonfly contraption is rather ingenious.

oh aha that’s not important, just a passing fancy honestly

[ignoring him] if only you had some better way of providing torque, because as it stands the spring engine is extremely poorly designed.

what the fuck did you just say to me

[they end up physically fighting over the notebook because of course they do. meet cute!]

some more details:

ryuk is the patron light eventually gets after being in higuchi’s court for a bit

rem is higuchi’s personal assistant, who was disowned by her own royal-blooded family because her family sucks. she hates her job. if it weren’t for misa she’d probably be on the other side of the country by now

i don’t know where the wammy kids are. they’re definitely competing to be the heir to L’s throne but also they’re not related because there is no way that all the wammy kids (the whole orphanage of wammy kids) could have come from the same person. maybe some kind of insufferably high collar royal boarding school? did they even have those? help me

kiyomi and teru are both advisors in other courts (which are extremely corrupt, light seethes, in his perfect world there wont be any of those anymore) (you work for a court light) (thats different)

okay i’m done for today. you never know about tomorrow though. /threat.

[ @deathnotetober day 12: isekai ]

[sister-daniels-confession-booth]

sister i need advice because i am in such a fucking predicament that i can only tell three people about (one being my fourteen year old sister)

basically, some friends and i decided to download tinder/hinge and set up genuine profiles to see who could get the most matches. initially it was just one friend and i, and she kinda deleted the app so i was playing against nobody, but then two others got out of relationships, so they joined in.

before my other friends joined, i saw this one girls profile. and she was. just gorgeous. so gorgeous. like actually criminally not even joking the most gorgeous in the world. and im not that insecure, but i saw her and went ‘no way she will ever match me what is the point’. but i liked her anyway, thinking what can i lose. turns out, she hqd already liked me. we matched. she initiated conversation. my heart leaves my body and i have the biggest freak out because ‘the second most attractive woman ive ever seen is flirting n calling me hot’. (note: second most because i am friends with an actual model, so, objectively, she is the most attractive woman) im like ‘she must be a catfish’, so i reverse image searched all of her pics to check. turns out? shes real.

she asks for my instagram, i redownload the app and scour through my posts to make sure theyre all nice, we add each other, she went through my profile and brings up my posts, we talk on tinder for two weeks, then kinda stopped last monday. im really sad for like ten minutes but ive got an a level on tuesday and one on friday, so i cant dwell on anything.

my friend (whos in the bet, and didn’t particularly like this girl because she has a weird way of not responding for hours until she sees that im active and apparently thats not very nice and my friend told me that if a man did that i would tell her hes an asshole) asked about her yesterday, n i was like ‘not really talking anymore’, and we moved on.

today, i was lying in bed, reading some fanfic before getting up to draw. thinking in my head ‘fuck maybe im so single because i actually read fanfic, [the girl] would judge me hard’. finished the chapter, went on pintrest for a little scroll. just going through some very random posts. when. i. swear. to. fucking. god.

there she is.

on my pintrest feed.

and my heart just explodes, beating out my chest like crazy because the most gorgeous woman ive ever laid eyes on and who has flirted with me in such a way that i now know tinder offers to report people if theyre too forward is there.

im shaking. because oh my god, what do i do?

for context, i am incredibly superstitious. not only had i spoken briefly to my friend about her, i had just been thinking about her. i believe that the power of manifestation is kinda real because i have thought of girls ive been with and they have texted me so maybe i manifested her on my pintrest but it sounds delusional. HOWEVER. i am also the kind of person who really reads into my dreams.

last night i dreamt about my ex from like three fucking years ago. had our first conversation in literally a year this friday, literally talking about how i was being superstitious and predicting my exams based on what songs spotify shuffled, and when she tried to predict it it went wrong. in my dream, we were chatting and having fun. woke up and moved on. but now. idk? had a dream about my ex, who isnt psychic like me, and in my dream my brain was like ‘sometimes you need to get past rough patches and make contact and its nice’. so maybe my dream predicted tinder girl manifesting on my pintrest and now i need to fucking idk text her?

idk this is such a random rant i cant tell anyone really and its nice being anonymous. i dont have any exams, so i think i may make contact with the girl from tinder. tell me what to do because idk. i think im gonna do it please pray for me sister amen

I bless you with fairy dust and good vibes.

[quixtrix]

let's talk BL manga lore; on grooming, identity, and racism

spoilers for the official captain laserhawk bl manga ofc, plus brief discussion of grooming I've refrained from speaking about it because of spoilers, but it's been well over a month and I believe that it's time to openly discuss it. if you would still like to read the manga before reading this discussion, here's the link to buy a physical copy and you can search up 'Captain Laserhawk: Crushing Love' in your digital book store for it. okay time to talk about two, basically three subjects; racism, identity, and grooming. i'm starting with the grooming first, because that's the main focus of this manga. i would have to preface this by saying i've already discussed this topic in an earlier post (albeit it is a prediction, but it is a spot on prediction.) i'll briefly elaborate on it right now with what we know.

dolph's very first day with alex was carefully calculated to where dolph would be exposed to the world, but heavily rely on alex. he is shown around to alex's friends and is able to buy his own clothes, but it is under the heavy scrutiny of alex. alex ultimately decides what dolph wears, alex decides how the day goes, alex leads dolph. even when they have a beach day, take note of how alex holds dolph, dragging him around.

even the romance and the events leading up to when alex takes dolph's virginity are calculated. note how alex grasps dolph's hand, grabbing on tight enough to almost press down on his knuckles, loosening his hand, making dolph relinquish control. the context for the fight page is that after their sweet lil beach day, alex takes dolph down an alley where alex knows that he'll come across people who aren't the fondest of him. this event was calculated, alex knew it was going to happen, and he used it to test out his new lil boytoy.

also, alex taking dolph out to fight isn't just so he can get in the pants of a barely 18 year old. while holloway notes during this flashback that adrenaline is the greatest aphrodisiac, this is a test to see how good the new weapon he picked up is. how the new boy works, to see how eden's boy robot can benefit his group, not just him. its literally in the morning panels we get where alex talks with that woman, anna. they're talking about how loaded he is with tech, and while alex does consider that, he still actively thirsts over dolph.

also im jus saying if i personally was talking with one of my greatest confidants and they refer to someone i'm thirsting over as KID, i would personally be icked out. i would have a conscious and not do some weird shit, like literally refer to dolph in passing as kid in the next page. dolph aint even the first one who alex has done this shit to, as evident by this line by one of his friends, grace.

alex is a groomer and groomed dolph, case closed.

anyways! time to get on with what i really wanted to talk about, how racism and loss of idenity ties into dolph's character!

in this manga, during pillow talk between dolph and alex, we get dolph's backstory. dolph literally has only known this man for a day and he's giving him lore because alex treats him more normal than eden did. god. ANYWAYS ENOUGH DWELLING ON DOLPH BEING A VICTIM IN ALL WAYS INCLUDING BEING ONE OF THE OXFORD STUDY, we get to know about his brief life before eden took him in.

now let me turn for a moment to the show, and how we were told about dolph's backstory. this is VASTLY different than what we got in the show, with it being implied that dolph's parents were a white prostitute and a darkskinned immigrant man. this adds onto the idea that this supposedly impoverished, crack addicted boy came into this world not as an act of love, but as a mistake. not just a mistake though, his parents are supposedly the epitome of immoral, a prostitute and a criminal. not to mention that this also ties into the idea of the uncultured brown man and pure white woman, basically a racist idea that the scary immigrants who aren't like us good white christian americans (and honestly jus any homogenous group in general, though in america its ofc more applicable to white people), are corrupting our mother marys, our women. eden takes on this perspective in order to subconsciously frame in the minds of post american viewers the idea of this man as an other that they are helping and didn't at all snatch up from his mother for child experimentation. the concept of other is something that finds it's origins in fascism, and in order to mask the presence of said fascism, someone who is seen as apart of the other is given a seat at the table with the collective us, (as in the majority, or the ones that are supposedly superior), and will ultimately serve as an example of why the other are labelled as such. i go into this more with my rayman analysis. I brought up the specific portrayal of dolph's backstory from eden's documentary to showcase how eden has manipulated the view people have of this man. eden has not only manipulated the view of the in universe audience, but eden has manipulated our view.

in the propaganda documentary, we are shown photos of this man being a captain, someone of relatively high rank in the military. you can't even normally earn that through having an education, you'd have to have years of experience. he's portrayed as older than he is.

another thing, dolph fans, let's be honest with ourselves; before the manga, it was not uncommon to headcanon that man as a FREAK. with both the supposed images of dolph at a nightclub and the flashback of alex and dolph meeting outside a club, it wasn't too hard to think that the hottest man alive in that show who was fully born human was a freak. a sexual deviant. someone that a christian mother would be horrified enough by that she faints. the manga however, shows us that dolph really isn't any of that. hell, he didn't even get to go to a club before he met alex. in reality, he's around 18 years and his only sexual experience is his groomer.

say that again with me, he's around 18. he's just around 18, he's a young adult, and the environment he's grown up in has stunted him by treating him as a subject, a thing, cutting him off from anything that would humanise this child by not allowing him to see his mother. hell, even his childhood best friend serves eden by being the one in his ear, having him at her beck and call all in the name of eden.

we get none of dolph's true backstory in the show for any number of reasons. maybe it's on purpose, maybe it's a result of having to possibly cut down episodes, who knows? what matters though is that this adds a layer to the core problem defining dolph's life; the perspective others have on him warping who he is.

back to the pages with dolph's memories of his mother, we see dolph as he was when he was just a boy. he's his mama's boy, her son, a child. even when eden takes him in, he stubbornly clings to that bit of him that's pure, untainted by the idea of him being an experiment, a tool. this bit of him, this hint towards who he is supposed to be as a person, is something he clings to desperately. it leads him to follow eden's orders again because they promise that they've found his mother.

and yknow what happened with who dolph was told was supposedly his mother?

she was just a random ass indian woman.

wasn't even the right woman. they just used his identity issues because he's indian, and she was indian and in a cult that eden needed to take care of.

this, while admittedly is kind of funny, (like the confusion is funny in the moment look at ts) is actually fucked up crazy racism. they literally said that this random ass woman who happened to be indian was his mother like HELL!?!??!?!?

this insane fr. lucy didn't even double check LIKE GIRL THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR FRIEND'S MOTHER WHO HE HASNT SEEN SINCE HE WAS LIKE 6 AND YOU DIDNT EVEN DOUBLE CHECK IF SHE'S THE RIGHT PERSON?!?!?!?

moving on from that, this actually brings up a deeper layer of dolph's identity issues; the lack of cultural identity.

i want to preface this by saying that i am not entirely sure if this is the right term for this identity issue nor am i claiming to be an expert on the type of identity crisis that i am about to discuss. that being said, this specific disconnect of cultural identity that dolph has is actually reminiscent of those adopted from other countries, or transnational adoptees. there seems to be a need within these adoptees to find out more about their own heritage or their own mothers and families that they now struggle to find. while dolph does not actively go out to reconnect with his heritage, he does exhibit desires to find his birth mother. this type of identity issue seems to ask the question of 'what could I have been if...?,' and it tends to mess with the idea of the self. adoptees that struggle with this question hold a desire to go back, to almost reclaim what would have been. yes, dolph is not adopted into a family, but he is still a child under the care of eden, which became like his family, which is why i believe that this kind of identity issue could reasonably be applied to dolph. it explains why he does what he does in the manga, and how it's ultimately wrapped up by him losing this desire and moving forward. albeit he moves forward by alex instead becoming his main purpose, but this serves as the first chain of the past that he leaves behind. with this, he severs a tie that would have made him continue to be stuck under eden's control, and possibly find himself. he answers the question of what could have been with 'it doesn't matter anymore.'

but actually, he doesn't answer that question. he leaves it be.

i am reading way too into this tho lol. i would say that he doesn't explicitly say it, and that we do see a lack of dolph's past being used against him in that way because dolph has freed himself from that part, but in reality, it's because eden can't pull the same trick twice. im aware that the manga focuses HARD on dolph's grooming, but i feel like they really could have properly wrapped up dolph's identity arc with his mother if it was acknowledged at the end, but i fear we are left unsatisfied. that's one of my gripes with the manga. it gives us things that tie up loose ends, but some of these ties have entirely missed the holes they were supposed to secure. but what is done is what's done, and here we are.

tl;dr, dolph was groomed by alex. dolph's identity has also been warped by eden heavily, by how they dehumanised him as a child to be a weapon internally, to how he's shown to the public to be a case that they've saved, and yet he still becomes something that is "disgraceful." textbook example of this poor boy that we have saved that is actually jus like all the others that we know. dolph also suffers under similar identity issues as adopted children do, and this specific issue of his is let go in order to allow him to begin moving on and finding himself.

as always, im open to discussion and critique! my askbox is open as well if you want me to yap abt smth else in the show :P

[arthropod-concoctions]

Sniffer looked up to find himself trapped between blocks of bedrock, for the fourth time this week. Unlike the last three times, this time he also had a note between his fingers; his own handwriting. It said “STOP BEING A COWARD”.

He sighed. Like usual, his past self's intentions were a mystery; it didn't matter how brave or cowardly he was about it, he couldn't get out of this hole without Piglin's help. There was a hole above him that he could squeeze through, but it was too high up to reach, and the crevasse he was in was too narrow to open his elytra. If he had water, he'd be able to swim out, but as usual, he'd forgotten to bring a bucket with him. So he did the only thing he could; grabbed his chat.

<SnifferMyFeet> piglin

<SnifferMyFeet> im stuck again

<PiglinMyNose> LOL

<SnifferMyFeet> get me out

<PiglinMyNose> What's the magic word?

<SnifferMyFeet> i hate you

<SnifferMyFeet> please

<PiglinMyNose> Coming over :-)

Now there wasn't much else for Sniffer to do than wait for rescue. Piglin would show up... eventually. It was impossible to predict how long that'd take. Maybe he'd be over immediately; or maybe he'd have an accident, forget he was supposed to do something, and leave Sniffer in this hole for another three days. Last time he nearly starved to death. Maybe he should do that on purpose next time; maybe that'd shake his memories into place enough to figure out what he was doing here.

Not today, though; he heard Piglin descending into the quarry, and Piglin arriving in a timely manner anywhere was a miraculous enough occurrence that he didn't want to let it go to waste. “Over here!” he yelled towards him, but Piglin was already approaching.

“I know, I know. You always get stuck in the same place,” he said, grinning. “Have you found out anything interesting about that hole yet?” He was pronouncing all his r's today.

“No- well, there must be something, or I wouldn't keep going here, but I keep forgetting what.” That was a problem he and Piglin shared; whenever they got fatally injured, or hit their heads, or even just got spooked badly, their memories would go out of the window and they'd wake up hours or days later in some random situation with no clue how they got there. “Did I tell you why I went over here, maybe?”

“You did say something, actually. Something like... 'I'm going to figure out what's on the other side of that hole', I think. Not going so well, though, is it?”

“The other side? There isn't any other side!” Sniffer twisted around to gesture behind him. “There's just a bunch of spiky rock...” he trailed off as he noticed something.

The crevasse extended outwards a little near his feet. It was mostly more bedrock, but just a little distance away, the rock gave way to pure blackness, like looking down into a massive cavern.

How have I never seen that before? Sniffer thought to himself, but immediately corrected himself; he obviously had seen it before, which is why he kept going into this hole.

“There is something here,” he said to Piglin. “Drop down the water. I'm gonna go deeper into the hole.”

“That's what she said,” he heard Piglin hiss behind him. Sniffer whirled around to face him and took a swipe at his legs with his sword; Piglin dodged it, but he yelped anyways, cutting off his giggle. Sniffer snorted.

“You're being awfully rude for someone who needs my help,” Piglin said, clutching a bucket of water to his chest.

“I'm sorry, alright? Just give me the water.”

Instead of just giving him the bucket, Piglin decided to splash the water directly into Sniffer's face, creating a source block right where he was standing. Annoying, but it'd work. Sniffer held his breath as he turned around in the water, then ducked into the opening in the bedrock. The darkness got closer-

And suddenly Sniffer was dropping downwards. The water flowed straight down, and he barely managed to stay afloat in it. He looked around.

There was nothing under the bedrock. Not a big cave, no lava, no monsters, just endless blackness in all directions. The world border wasn't even here, Sniffer realised. The two of them had gotten used to the shining blue barrier always being visible in the distance, but now, there seemed to be nothing obstructing the way in any direction.

Sniffer swallowed hard. It looked a bit like the End; and if it was anything like the End, he'd be respawning if he went too far down, and this was a very inconvenient time and place to respawn. So he grabbed his rockets, spread his elytra and glided away from the water. It was hard to breathe down here; and it seemed to get harder the further down he went, so he stayed close to the bedrock ceiling looming above. He flew a few circles in the dark space, but he was anxious to go far; something about this place gave him the creeps, not to mention the fact he only had limited rockets with him. After a minute or so, he decided he'd had enough. He turned back towards the hole letting light through the bedrock, and he nearly flew up into it when he noticed the water that Piglin had sent down, flowing out... elsewhere, a few yards away.

There was another hole in the bedrock. Sniffer had completely lost track of his directions by now, so he had no idea where this hole would lead him. He continued circling, and considered. Piglin would probably be worried if he didn't come back up soon... but his curiosity was burning.

Sorry, Piglin, Sniffer thought as he lit a rocket and maneuvered upward, flying through the second gap.

* * * * *

Sniffer rubbed the sore spot on his head; seems like he'd hit his head on something while flying. Right, time to figure out what he was up to before that moment. He was in-

Wait, where on earth was he?

He was in a square, industrial-looking room with no windows and not a speck of colour. It didn't look familiar to him at all. He definitely didn't build this, and he was fairly certain Piglin hadn't built it either. He looked at the floor, and shied away a few blocks; there was a hole in the floor leading to what looked like a very dark cave.

Oh, he suddenly thought, the hole in the bedrock! He'd flown into the crevasse, but that was all he could remember before the blackout. But is seemed like he'd actually gone through the hole this time, and found... whatever this is, on the other side. Well, he wasn't about to let this opportunity go; it was time to explore. He left the room through a doorway with no door installed. It led into a stairway, similarly square and colourless. Whoever built this place could really use some lessons in decorating, Sniffer thought.

At the top of the stairway was another empty doorframe leading into a bigger room, and Sniffer's eyes were immediately pulled to a window revealing some actual colour for a change. The giant window looked out onto a body of water. In the distance, he could see a shore leading into a plains biome, with some structures-

Not just any structures. That was Piglin's house. And more to the left, he could see his own house. It looked terrible from this angle, he noticed. Hadn't he ever approached it from... no, he hadn't, because he suddenly realised where he was located: behind the world border.

Sniffer's heart began beating faster. There were people on the other side of the border? And they were watching him and Pig? He'd never seen this structure he was in before, and he'd gazed longingly through the border countless times. What was going on here? At this point he turned his attention to the smaller monitor in front of the window.

PROJECT SALMACIS

<SUBJECT 1>

<SUBJECT 2>

Project Salmacis? Sniffer had no idea what that was. He tapped the first button.

The screen suddenly showed a picture of himself, and a table of a bunch of incomprehensible information.

SnifferMyFeet

Components: <Grian> + <Smallishbeans>

COHESION INDEX: 4/9

Observations:

- dominant personality switches upon respawn or force to subject's head.

- subject speaks with meld of components' accents.

- PvP skill markedly increased from that of both components.

“Well I appreciate the compliment, but... what?” components? Cohesion? Dominant personality? What was any of this about? He decided to tap the name of one of the components, 'Grian'.

The screen now showed another picture of himself, with... actually, that wasn't him at all! The left half of the figure's face matched his own, but the right half seemed to be some twisted mirror image of the left half. Sniffer yelped in surprise at the disturbing picture, and quickly tapped a symbol in the corner of the screen which thankfully was indeed a 'back' button. There was a bunch of text on that panel too, but he had no interest in learning about whoever-- whatever-- that was.

He was about to go check out what these mysterious observers had to say about Piglin, when suddenly he heard something shatter behind him.

Sniffer spun around to see a cloaked figure standing in the doorway of the room. Next to them on the floor were the remains of a mug and a strange magenta stain, from which wafted the smell of... schadenfreude? That made no sense, but it was the only way Sniffer could explain the smell.

The two of them stared awkwardly at each other for a few seconds before Sniffer spoke up. “Alright, who are you and why are you stalking me and Pig?” he said.

“...You do not belong here,” the figure replied. Their voice echoed strangely, which might have been intimidating if Sniffer couldn't see the confusion plain on their face-- which was entirely grayscale, but otherwise unremarkable. “You were not meant to cross the threshold.”

“Well, I did.” Sniffer took his sword from his hotbar into his hand.

“You know, it says here my PvP skills have improved a lot... you wanna put that to the test?”

Then he charged, and the cloaked figure turned around and ran back into the stairwell. Sniffer gave chase, and closed the distance easily though; the figure's cloak got in the way of their legs, and Sniffer got the sense they weren't exactly used to hurrying. He jumped the last few meters, and raised his sword to plunge it into the figure's neck--

The figure spun around to face Sniffer. His sword pierced their eye and it exploded into more colours than he'd seen anywhere in this place, more colours than he'd seen his entire life-- then white.

* * *

Sniffer respawned in his bed, and almost immediately heard fireworks signaling Piglin's approach.

“Come on, dude, you couldn't have been a bit more careful?” he heard Piglin yell from outside as he went down the stairs. Piglin beat him to the front door, and barged inside. “Now we still don't know what's under there!”

“Under... the bedrock, you mean?” Sniffer replied. “No, I remember that bit, actually. It was just... darkness. Like in the End, but there were no islands anywhere.”

“Oh. Well that explains the death message, at least. Do you remember what happened next?”

“Yeah, I saw another hole in the bedrock, different from where I went down, and I tried to go up it, and... that's where I black out. Weird that I remember all this, if I just respawned right here...”

“Maybe you hit your head on the bedrock, then died falling down?” Piglin suggested. “Now I'm curious what's in that other hole, though.”

“Yeah, maybe...” Sniffer pondered for a few seconds, then waved his hand dismissively.

“Probably just another cave. I wouldn't worry about it.”

[holy-puckslibrary]

━ 𝐬𝐰𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠.

main masterlist

pairing(s) — JT COMPHER x reader (main); TYSON JOST x reader (side); COMPHER x JOST (brief) wc — 14k synopsis — what's a reunion without some groveling?

note — this takes place a few of years after part one, go out with a bang (post-college/college au — tyson and kate are now out-going seniors!) sorry not sorry for the length of this behemoth, i got carried away per usual <3 there are more parts to come, and i would absolutely love to hear any theories/predictions if yall have any!

specific content warnings listed below the cut.

cw — cameos on cameos on cameos, we're at a party so drinking and mention of dr*gs + yacking (no description), drinking games, sorority terms/processes, me getting too invested in multiple subplots and potential background ships, soft!service!dom!JT makes my peabrain go brrrrr, everybodies a bit masochistic because i, registered heathen, am masochistic, reader’s wearing a short skirt for plot reasons, slight compher x josty, oral (reader receiving 2x), unprotected piv (i know, i know, i know i need help), me letting my brat self take the kink reins, praise baby praise, angst AND IM NOT SORRY, + happy fluffy bits... possible cliffhanger??? 

Staring up at the Alpha Chi house is like stepping back in time. 

Like trying on an old pair of shoes you found while deep-cleaning your closet only to find their once-perfect fit gone. Growth is funny that way; you never realize just how far you’ve come until it pinches you.

You’ve outgrown this place, though not from a lack of love or any great tragedy. It occupies a different place in your mind, just as you’re a different person than you were three years ago. 

Your younger self would balk at this development, wouldn’t believe it’d one day feel too small. You can’t fault her for that near-sightedness. In college, your whole world existed on one street. You had everything you needed then between two stop signs.

But your world is bigger now, and your needs are different too. 

Still, it feels good to try on your past for the night. Even if it's a tad ill-fitting. 

The drive between your new life and your old one hadn’t been too bad, but that’s probably because you didn’t do much of said driving. JT got the engine going before you could even make a grab for the keys and, despite spending the last year in the literal trenches of clinical rotations and shelf exams, refused to switch at the halfway mark. Yet, your boyfriend is practically vibrating with excitement as you cross the all-too-familiar threshold hand-in-hand. 

“This is so weird,” JT remarks, his lips low to your ear. His musky cologne, warm and woody, does its best to soothe your nerves.

As you survey the crowd, you nod. 

He didn’t need to elaborate further for you to understand because you were already thinking the very same thing. Watching students, the vast majority as unfamiliar to you as you are to them, milling around your old haunt stirs an odd, uncanny feeling akin to a surreal dream. You’re well-acquainted with the setting, almost to an uncomfortable degree, and you don’t think you’re all that different, but everything still feels foreign.

All the right pieces are there, and you’re sure you’ve put them in their proper places, but the image won’t behave.

You quickly realize the only thing that’s misplaced is you. Grief hangs from your back like a wet blanket. 

“Look what the cat dragged in, boys!”

A burst of riotous laughter shakes much of the gloom from your system.

Gabe Landeskog barrels into your boyfriend like an overgrown puppy. Gray-blue eyes twinkling under the rainbow of LEDs, he embraces you both in a warm hug, not minding that the spontaneous act of affection has just cost him an entire Solo cup.

“Compher and the missus,” the blonde addresses you both with a wide grin and a big palm to a cheek each; he gives JT’s a quick pat but merely cups yours. 

His breath still smells of spearmint and something spicy, an imposing combination your eighteen-year-old self could never find comforting. Just another thing that's different now. If you could package the scent for all the little moments of nostalgia, you would. 

“I was starting to think we’d have to drag you from the city kicking and screaming, but alas! You've left the cozy, vanilla bubble of your own volition for a weekend of debauchery with your favorite degenerates.”

JT’s affectionate eye-roll is big and dramatic even in your periphery. The levity brings a smile to your face. It grows wider and wider, enduring until your cheeks burn. If anyone deserves some light-heartedness, it's your sleep-deprived, perpetually-stressed boyfriend.

“A night, Landy. We’ve got to be back by tomorrow night to relieve the dog sitter,” your boyfriend amends with a pat to Gabe’s flushed cheek, returning the favor. 

The older man groans like the overgrown boy he is and will always be. “Look at you, Mr. Responsible. All domestic and shit. With a fur-baby and everything. I bet it’s as well-trained as your firstborn.”

Your eyes follow the line drawn by Gabe’s strong chin past the entryway through to the room used for table-top drinking games.

Half-kneeling on the rickety table you helped customize a few years back is Tyson Jost, head tilted to the sky as he guzzles down the center cup. More beer spills down his chest than into his mouth, effectively turning his white tee sheer. The crowd is comprised mostly of giddy sorority girls who don't mind a bit. 

Free booze and a free show—lucky them!

Once the plastic cup is empty, he crushes it in his palm before sinking the balled plastic into the basketball hoop on the adjacent wall. The converted dining room swells with hoots and hollers so quickly you would’ve thought Tyson emerged from some mythic quagmire, blood-soaked and victorious. But there are no winners in Rage Cage; everybody loses.

Tyson’s loopy grin falters when he registers you and JT on either side of Gabe.

You would like to say nothing’s changed between the three of you over the past couple of years. That you’re just as close as you’d been in college, that distance hadn’t done as much damage as it has.

You'd be lying if you did. 

You tried your best to keep him in the loop; you really did, but that didn’t end up mattering much.

JT hardly had time to socialize with you most of the time, and you’ve practically lived together since graduation. He, like you, tried, but at some point, his bandwidth could no longer accommodate Tyson’s sporadic texts and calls. Many of which came in the dead of night, when your boyfriend’s head was either buried in a textbook or in the pillow beside yours.

Whenever you could, you invited the forward to spend the weekend in the city with the two of you. You even went so far as to offer to put him up in a hotel between your and JT’s respective apartments, knowing your adult salary could stretch further than the Atomic tips he was splitting with Tyler. He always had something conflicting going on, and it didn't feel like your place to question the authenticity of his reasons, so you just kept extending the invitation, hoping things would align eventually.

After finally taking the leap and signing a lease together, you decorated the guest room with Tyson in mind. He’s yet to see it, still.

Your little Kate, on the other hand, needs a frequent flyer program.

A small part of you felt this shift was inevitable once JT went from best friend-slash-unrequited crush to full-blown, live-in boyfriend. Despite Tyson’s insistence on you finally hooking up and “putting everyone out of their misery,” his smile didn’t meet his eyes when JT broke the news that it wasn’t a one-night thing.

Maybe his “little crush” hadn’t been so little after all. 

If that’s the case, you can't blame him for avoiding your slice of grown-up love like the plague. It just would've been nice if he hadn't left you in the dark, wondering where and how you fucked up enough to get iced out.

Tyson responded to every third or so text of yours, so you mostly kept up with him and his life through Kate, who briefly dated him between ill-fated Gunnar stints, and social media. You weren’t sure how often he spoke to JT; after several attempts that ended with your boyfriend clammed up and irritated, you stopped asking.

Judging by how tense he is beside you right now, you have a pretty good guess.

“Yikes,” Gabe drawls. “Trouble in paradise?”

You remain carefully quiet, allowing your boyfriend to decide what, if anything, to share. This—whatever it is —feels like it's more so between them two than Tyson and yourself.

JT clears his throat so hard it cuts through the music blaring through the packed house—some remix you don’t remember learning the words to. “Trouble? Nah, Josty’d have to give us the time of day for that.” 

Gabe laughs, but you know JT isn’t trying to be funny. You can taste the undercurrent of bitter resentment. It’s impossible not to without an artificial buzz.

There’s no time to dwell because a flurry of red hair darts through the crowd dispersing out of the dining room and straight into your arms. A fresh, but faintly-candied scent tickles your nose as the cool metal of a bracelet digs into your neck. 

Kate.

“Fuckin finally!” The almost-grad squeals directly into your ear.

Definitely drunk. Or high—or both. 

“Don’t look at me,” you say, beaming when she pulls back. “I wasn’t driving.”

Kate swats JT’s chest with her open palm. “And this is why we don’t let you drive anywhere, Grandpa.”

The playful jab makes your smile deepen. His driving made her tardy to a ZBZ charity gala one time over a year ago when she made the mistake of hitching a ride with you, and she’s probably brought it up a million times since. Kate pretends to hold a grudge, JT pretends to find it aggravating, and you get to sit back, enjoying the warm camaraderie overfilling your cup.

The pair have been friends almost as long as you've been friends with either of them, but since your graduation, they’ve settled into something more serious and more genuine. Where your connection to Tyson wilted outside the conveniences of college, your relationship with Kate matured and flourished. She’s more than just your chapter-appointed Little Sister to JT now, having become more of a true sister than anything else. Hence the juvenile teasing.

“Well, we’re here now. Alive.”

Your little snatches your hand in hers, tugging you away from JT, who feigns offense.

“And now I’m stealing your girlfriend in retribution for making me wait. Go do… whatever it is you two heathens used to do at parties. We have a pong title to defend.”

“Excellent idea, Madame President,” Gabe declares, hands roughly massaging the male ginger’s shoulders. He tosses a wink in Kate’s direction.

Before the other ginger can drag you away for good, your boyfriend catches your free wrist, pulling you back to him so his lips can find your ear. Breath hot, he drops his voice an octave, “President’s bathroom. One hour. Nod if you understand.”

Your chin dips, quick and subtle confirmation.

“Good girl.”

As your respective keepers separate you, JT shoots you a wink of his own. Then, you lose him in the crowd.

Kate leads you through the sea of party-goers to the living room, her grip on you tight and comforting. Her thumb rubs small circles on the inside of your wrist as you approach the table, almost as if privy to your worry. Kate is incredibly perceptive; she can read someone’s mind without even looking at them. With you, her Spidey senses transcend county lines, so it’s no real surprise she deduced your current condition from no more than your erratic pulse thumping against her palm. 

When you reach the bustling folding table commandeered for the BP tournament, Kate does all the talking.

It’s not too hard to get on the bracket despite the late entry with two newly-minted Alpha Chi brothers manning the post. The absolute last thing they want to do is get on the bad side of the president of their sister chapter (Kate) and the girlfriend of a legendary former chapter president (you). The pairs for the current game are only a couple of throws in, so it’s going to be at least ten minutes before it's your turn.

“You, my dear, look thirsty,” Kate declares through a mischievous grin.

You let her pull you towards the kitchen across the hall but have more difficulty than you expect actually getting there. Every few steps, someone stops either you or Kate. Mostly the latter, but she’s quick to show you off to whoever’s trying to seize her attention. Apparently, Kate’s been building quite the mythos of your time on campus, and it’s very… dizzying, to say the least.

“Kit-Kat!”

Kate abandons the poor freshman boy shooting his shot (and missing fantastically) in favor of the feminine voice sliding into the conversation.

In the blue-ish hue washing over the small space, you’re having a hard time placing her, but she seems very keen on making your acquaintance.

“Blake Meyers,” the newcomer announces, extending her hand with a smile.

You take it, giving her your name and a matching expression in return. The flattened vowels are distinct and recognizable, as is the last name. 

“Meyers?” you ask, attempting to work it out.

“Ava’s younger sister,” Kate interjects. “And one of our best steals this past recruitment.”

Blake blushes so brightly her freckles disappear.

You remember that feeling. What it was like to have an older member, especially someone as established and accomplished as an outgoing ZBZ president, go out of their way to make you feel special. You have zero doubt Blake will be walking on air for the foreseeable future, any of the common little doubts about whether or not she made the right choice vanishing.

“I was really hoping I’d get to meet you tonight,” the freshman tells you bashfully. “Kate gave the most beautiful speech about you and your legacy on Preference Night, and when she told me you might be coming with your boyfriend, I had to put a face to the name. And Jenny was the one who pref-ed me, so it seemed like—I don’t know, a non-negotiable?”

Jenny is one of the twins Kate took her junior year, and she couldn’t have picked better. It gave you peace of mind knowing your Kate would have good people around her once you couldn’t physically be there for her.

You won’t be surprised if Jenny takes Blake as her little. Kate pref-ed her, and before that, you pref-ed Kate. It’s basically a family tradition.

Not long after you thank Kate for her generous words and Blake for her kindness, Thomas, one of the new initiates in charge of the beer pong table, flags you down for your game. Not ready to end your conversation, invigorated by the breezy, jovial chatter your new life lacks, you tug Blake along with you.

Between exceptionally beautiful throws (if you do say so yourself), you learn more about Blake and her roommate and fellow ZBZ spring initiate, Emory. They pepper you with questions: about your first-year college experience, advice on getting the best room possible on the sophomore floor for mandatory live-in, whether or not you got anything particularly valuable in the various leadership positions you held, and what fraternities to steer clear of. You’re more than happy to answer them all. Kate sprinkles in comments and jokes occasionally, but she mostly defers to you so she can celebrate the end of a smooth second term as president.

Once Kate and you have successfully defended your title, you pass the torch to the future of your chapter. Blake and Emory make quick work of the first challengers and are close to a similar sweep with the second pair when your little remembers her earlier mission: refreshments.

This time, you both keep your heads ducked as you speed through the dancing bodies and make a beeline for the dinged-up lockers propped against the wall. You can’t help but smile when you see her reach for the lock—your old lock.

Every upperclassman (and a few select friends of the chapter, like Alpha Chi Sweethearts such as Kate and, once upon a time, yourself) is assigned a secure, personal locker in the oversized kitchen for quick access to personal items. During parties, they essentially become personal coolers. At your very last formal chapter meeting, you will-ed the hunk of metal down to Kate, along with the more sentimentally valuable items you wanted to leave behind with her.

“Wait, can you even drink?” Kate asks you from where she’s kneeling. Sarcasm scrunches her brows together.

“Hilarious,” you reply with a playful glare. “And before you loudly ask about the non-existent fetus like the devious bitch you love being, don’t. Unless you want to give JT an aneurysm."

Kate fishes out two slim, chilled cans as she grumbles about how boring you two have become in your “old age.” She shoves a ratty sweatshirt—an old favorite of Tyson’s—back into the small locker, quickly refastens the lock, and scrambles the dial. Then, she returns to her full height beside you.

“So, do you want to tell me what that wink from Gabe was about?” you ask, brow cocked.

“Do you want to tell me what your horndog of a boyfriend whispered in your ear?” Kate counters.

“Touché.”

Kate cracks open a Spindrift Spiked and slots it into your waiting palm. She taps the rim with her own, then sighs back against the cluttered kitchen island. She’s going to crack, you know it. Kate, even when she has a secret she wants to keep, never stays quiet for long. Especially not when you’re the one doing the asking.

“Okay, so, d’you remember how Tyson was, like, completely apathetic after we broke up right before Heaven & Hell last Halloween?”

You nod, recalling how irritated she was over FaceTime while you helped her pick a costume out of your box of hand-me-downs. You did your best not to laugh because Kate was clearly distressed, but it was kind of hard not to when she was buried in a heap of red and white feathers, wearing a too-small tutu dotted with rhinestones.

Kate takes a sip of the spiked strawberry lemonade before elaborating, “Well, I was understandably pissed—Don’t give me that look, okay? I know I broke up with him, but he shouldn’t have been that blasé that soon—so, I hatched a plan.”

You shake your head, laughing. Kate and her schemes.

“I wasn’t planning on taking Gabe as my date, but when I ran into him at Atomic the day before… I don’t know; I just couldn’t resist. I mean, Tyson worships the man. If anyone’s getting a reaction, it’s Landy. I had to.”

“And?” you prod. 

“And…” she stalls, eyes darting around the kitchen in search of pesky eavesdroppers, cheeks lit up like a Christmas tree. “…we might’ve done it in the backseat of his truck.”

“I’m scared to ask where.”

She buries her face in your shoulder. “The venue’s parking lot.”

Your eyes bulge so hard you, for a split-second, worry they’ll pop out of your head onto the sticky hardwood and land amongst the discarded cans.

“And I didn’t tell you because I was so scared you and JT would hate me,” Kate moans into your skin. She shifts to peer up at you, hesitant. “You don’t, right?”

“I don’t think I’m even capable of hating you, Katie-Kat, let alone for something as silly as banging a hot blonde,” you giggle, and she’s quick to join you. Lowering your voice, “Especially the hottest of hot blondes.”

“I’m so telling JT you said that,” she teases, pulling away.

You shrug and take your first sip. “Go ahead. He’ll agree.”

“And this is why you’re my favorite couple,” she says, bumping her hip against yours. “The worst part is Tyson didn’t even care about that either! At the post-game, when he saw my lipstick smeared all over Gabe’s neck, he high-fived him. Tyson fucking high-fived him for screwing me. His ex-girlfriend! How supremely demented is that?”

“I wish I had an explanation for you, but I don’t. I’m starting to think I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.”

Kate takes hold of your unoccupied hand and squeezes it three times.

“I’m guessing things haven’t gotten any better?”

You shake your head, eyes downcast like there’s something super interesting between the floorboards. “I know he’s busy, and we’re busy, but he’s acting like our friendship meant nothing.”

“Not to start a therapy session in the middle of a rager, but did you... did you ever actually talk about That Night? I know you said JT whispered, but how positive are you that Josty didn't hear him?"

A few months after That Night, your guilt was on the brink of hemorrhaging. It was only a matter of time before the other shoe dropped; you broke down in the middle of Talladega Nights. Fucking Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. All fat tears and snotty, incoherent spiraling, your chest heaved as JT rubbed your back. He was quiet, more concerned than confused, until you calmed down enough to explain what’d been weighing on your conscience. 

Then, your boyfriend looked clueless—because he was. JT didn’t remember his heat-of-the-moment pseudo-promise to taint Josty’s image of you.

After a scene or two, you broached the subject you’d both been avoiding since getting together. You wanted to apologize, and not that you needed JT’s permission, but you felt it wasn’t entirely your amends to make. He agreed but was adamantly opposed to operating on assumption alone. If Tyson was truly upset by the pillow talk he overheard, JT reasoned, he was old enough to be frank about it.

You found yourself agreeing, but also not? On the one hand, you could see this being an instance of your anxious mind making a mountain out of a molehill, finding fault where there’s none. But you knew Tyson, and you knew how sensitive he could be. 

Something shifted that night. You’d known then, too, even in the hazy afterglow. His despondency wasn’t subtle, and it wasn’t uncommon for his dejected expression—his forced smile dipped in feigned nonchalance—to visit you in therapy sessions or in your nightmares.

But every time you typed and re-typed one remorseful novel after another, every time your gun-shy thumb hovered over his contact, every time you nearly drove out to your alma mater to track him down… You couldn’t get yourself to see it through. 

At first, it was the nerves, the fear of hearing his pain and seeing his anger. Then, it was your own temper, stoked by indignation, that rose with every sign of withdrawal. Now, it’s just plain, garden-variety sadness.

It was—is disappointing how cleanly he severed ties. There one day and gone the next, no blow-out fight or melancholic hear-to-heart. Tyson was there; he was within reach, but at the same time, not at all. The casual dismissal is worse than outright rejection; the door ajar but wholly uninviting.

"In the moment, I was certain he didn’t. Now? Fuck, the percentage drops every time I replay it in my head,” you murmur, remorse bogging down your confession. "I know you made a point not to bring it up when you were together, but did he ever, I don’t know, say anything?"

Kate shakes her head. "No, sorry. But it's not like we actually did much talking anyway."

You snort despite your woes.

“Alright, that’s enough doom and gloom for one night. How’s my nephew?” Kate asks, bright smile chasing the blues away with all its might.

It’s a distraction and a good one, too. She listens intently as you prattle on about the bi-weekly training sessions you’re starting next month to help with the leash pulling and the ridiculous pet parents you’ve met at the dog park near your apartment. She inquires about the fluffy lamb she brought over the last time she stayed with you—it lasted all of a day in his over-excited grip—then gushes over another variation she saw last week while getting litter for Salem, her diabolical tuxedo cat.

By the time Kate has your phone in her hand, swiping through the designated album and asking more questions than each picture really warranted, you’re feeling a bit better.

Noticing the clock, you stumble through a totally-not-suspicious excuse to venture upstairs—alone. Kate shoots you a knowing look but doesn’t give you a hard time. To be honest, she’s just glad you came tonight. Instead of a witty jab or half-hearted guilt trip, she slips a gold foil square into your unsuspecting palm and sends you on your way with a supportive swat to the rear.

Access to the second floor during parties is typically mediated by two to three gatekeepers, depending on the scale and projected rowdiness of each gathering. Three’s the magic number tonight: two up-and-coming juniors and an outgoing senior. They grant you passage with little more than a nod of acknowledgment.

“What? No riddle this time?” you tease over your shoulder.

The senior, an engineering major with a penchant for brain teasers, answers with a hoot. Cale Makar shakes his head, both amused and flattered you remembered his signature move. His puppy crush on you is an open secret. “I was given strict instructions to ‘keep the shenanigans’ to a minimum with you, Your Majesty.”

“JT?” you venture a guess, hand paused on the paint-chipped banister. He’s the only one who still sprinkles in the silly nickname these days.

“Landy, actually.”

Well, close enough.

You shouldn’t be surprised. It wouldn’t be the first time the former chapter president enlisted Cale, his little, to assist in your and JT’s more salacious antics.

As soon as Gabe had the defenseman under his wing, he was putting him to work. Not that the younger blonde particularly minded, as his affinity for creative, slightly devious schemes rivaled that of Kate’s. It was Cale, you later found out, who ran interference during Semi Formal… while you were defiled on the balcony.

“Still doing his bidding, I see.”

He counters with that lopsided “Get Out of Jail Free” grin. “What can I say? The man puts up a mean bribe.”

As if cued, Cale’s companions, who you now recognize as Alex Newhook and Bowen Byram, step into view. In Alex’s raised grip is a case of Labatt Blue, and in each of Bowen’s, a bottle of bottom-shelf cabernet. You doubt the trio would notice or mind the subpar quality, though. Between their happy heads, Cale fists a bottle of champagne you know he’ll misplace before he can polish it off.

“Jesus, how drunk is he?” you tease, the follow-up to an exaggerated gasp.

Sure, the quality’s shit, but their haul is far more valuable than your appraisal of their job; it’s a frat house, not Buckingham Palace.

“Not drunk enough to not see you here with us.” Cale’s voice tapers off, his pale eyes tracking someone stalking down the hall before nervously flicking up to the ceiling, “…and not up there with JTC.”

JTC — Talk about a blast from the past.

An anticipatory tingling erupts between your inner thighs just knowing he’s up there right now waiting for you. This is the part of your “homecoming” that excited you most and had been since the moment your boyfriend pinned the invite from the alumni association onto the fridge.

As blissfully domestic as your life together has become, it lacks the spontaneity your college life had been brimming with. Your sex life could never be categorized as mundane or clinical, but you’re finding it difficult to replicate the adrenaline rush stealing secret moments inherently provided.

Sometimes, in your more (admittedly) desperate moments, you’ve caught your fingers moving beneath the sheets to mindlessly chase the thrill of those fleeting intimacies, despite how awful the constant wondering and wallowing felt then or, maybe because of it, pain and pleasure are uniquely human indulgences sought in equal measure. When intertwined, they’ve been known to satiate masochistic cravings the way a sad movie or a sprawling, high-speed rollercoaster might.

However, this time, your risk-spurned euphoria will be at your own hand. The newfound agency—the ability to choose when, how, or if any risk is involved—has you darting up the stairs with a fire under your soles.

Before you round the corner and disappear down the hall, you make sure to call out, “Thank you for your service!” accompanied by a two-finger mock salute. You don’t stick around to catch their responses, though.

As you make your way down the dim corridor, you run smack into a very giggly Sarah Jones, just shy of your destination. Eyes distant and wide, she attempts to apologize for something—Something about sabotaging the Big-Little pairings your senior spring?—but it’s more bubbles than actual words. You nod along, still not quite sure what you’re accepting an apology for but too antsy to forge ahead to play detective. Your purposeful strides went unnoticed in her cloud of intoxication and nostalgia, but Erik Johnson, who’d been JT’s vice president, mercifully ushers his inebriated fiancé out of your path by the shoulders.

You offer him a faint smile of gratitude as they head in the opposite direction.

Over the music, you faintly hear Sarah begin chattering on about something unrelated, your reunion long forgotten already. You can’t help but chuckle a little on behalf of your younger self, who would’ve gawked at snobbish Sarah Jones drunk and voluntarily slumming it in a ramshackle house on Greek Row. And sporting a rock from a Degenerate on Ice (her nickname for your brother fraternity, not yours), too? That would’ve been the icing. But, the older, more mature, once-weekly-therapy iteration of yourself is happy she’s happy.

Thoroughly amused but happy nevertheless.

As you reach for the tarnished doorknob of the president’s suite, the rickety door flings open to reveal your boyfriend, all flushed cheeks and frenzied eyes.

JT pulls you inside, lips easily taking possession of yours, the heel of his lived-in/loved-on sneaker nudging the door shut. The hinges groan in protest to the rough treatment. Still fussy as ever. This house is a goddamn time capsule, you muse. Neither of you has the patience for benevolence. If it jams, it jams. That’s a future-self problem. Diligence now would only slow you down.

And would a prolonged stay on memory lane really be all that bad?

Your boyfriend cages you so close that when he manages more than panted praise between hot-and-heavy touches, the words barely fit in the gap between your mouths. “I was beginning to think you stood me up, sweetheart.”

The light-hearted accusation is semi-whispered, somewhat hoarse, in the way his voice always sounded when he came home from a long shift at the hospital downtown or post-game at the height of his collegiate career. JT isn’t a hard person to read—downright wolfish when he’s homing in on a target—but the low, raspy tone makes his intent glaring.

Your body thrums with anticipation.

“Never,” you croon back. A breathy moan sweetens your voice, courtesy of the calloused hand inching up the back of your bare thigh, bypassing the hem of your skirt with no effort or resistance. Arms looping around his neck, you make an inquiry: “Is there a reason we’re in your old bedroom instead of, I don’t know, the king-sized bed in the honeymoon suite you insisted we spring for?”

Tufts of faint copper tickle your cheek. Your boyfriend lands a kiss on your crowd-warmed forearm. Then, much to your displeasure, he steps out of the tight embrace.

“Y’know, I remembered something earlier when I was downstairs,” JT supplies in an apparent non-answer.

He guides you, as understanding rises in your mental periphery, through the barely-lit space toward the Jack-and-Jill bathroom between this room and the next. Then, he flicks on the secondary light, the dimmer of the two, before tugging you over yet another threshold. His fingers twitch at his sides, lascivious.

You stare back at him expectantly, vision tunneling as you wait, wait, wait.

The latch might as well have been a starting pistol; the subtle click ringing in your eardrums like the sonic crack of a live round; his breath a plume of smoke from a charged muzzle well beyond its flash point. Pent-up, needy tension burns hot and burns brighter. Residue from the night prior aflame; you, a moth seduced.

JT drives forward. Stalking, like a cat on a bird, until he’s pinned you to the door. His dash was easy, made short and hasty by the starting block eagerness in your dilated eyes.

Mouth descending on your sensitive neck, hips grinding his want into your squirming form, harsh belt buckle nudging just right with each sharp rut.

“There’s still one thing left on my college bucket list.”

He sinks the candor in with his incisors. Not hard enough to break the skin, but that was never his intention. The sting is a reminder. Of your shared past, of his unwavering desire—of who is in charge.

Message received. Loud and clear.

JT leans away to admire his handiwork. One big hand poised at your jaw, and the other braced beside your head, keeping your shyness from blocking the perfect view; you’ve never been able to hide from him and never will.

His curious thumb deviates from the original objective to caress the skin, now splotched violet and angry. Softly, at first, like he’s committing the damage to memory. Then, emboldened by a sudden piercing hiss forcing itself from your throat, JT pushes down on the tender spot. The cruel, unexpected pressure pulls pitiful bleating cries from your undulating chest.

This is no longer an expedition to gather intel; it’s a primal instinct.

For a few moments, he just holds you like this. A cloistered existence made worthwhile by him occasionally digging deeper into the column of your throat, the pressure taking on a raptorial quality. Your boyfriend wears his herald grin at a rakish angle. It unfurls with refined delicacy, an effective diversion for his next endeavor. Breathe like a precision instrument; the sharp phantom-edge fans across the sucked-raw skin with unhurried ease.

There isn’t enough alcohol in your system to dull the twinge — and you’re glad for it. It’d be a crime to dilute a burn this good, this all-consuming. You crumble between him and the door, your world only this big. His name tumbles out with a pulled-candy moan, completely devoid of dignity.

JT’s chest rumbles beneath your clammy palms. “You gonna be a good girl and help me tie up loose ends?”

His strawberry-blonde crown dips to nuzzle your cheek. Hot tongue tracing an experimental line, JT groaning as it does. The muscle trawls for tears you didn’t realize you shed, humming through the pursuit. The low-pitched moan sends a chill straight down your spine right to your toes.

The hand gripping your jaw lowers so his fingers are able to coil themselves around somewhere more advantageous — your neck. Your eyelids flutter, woozy. His firm squeeze, just enough to make everything spin and keep you still, has become blissfully familiar over time, but your breath still hitches like it’s the first.

“Hm, sweetheart? Don’t be rude. I asked you a question.”

Your lips part, a barbed retort to his condescension on your tongue, but all you can push out is the strangled yelp of a wounded animal.

The hand by your temple no longer rests against the door. In the fog, it snuck up under your skirt; JT never meant to get an answer out of you; he just likes to watch you squirm. Likes to have something to reprimand you for.

His nimble fingers dance over the thin, sodden material pulled taut over your heat. Less touching, more hovering. Small, lazy movements that betray how well he can play your body. They float above the tingling bundle of nerves, further movement pending, contingent upon your obedience.

“P-please,” comes your pouted whimper.

“Focus for me, pretty baby. Tell me what I want to hear. Come on, let me make things easy for you. I can feel how badly you want to — and you aren’t in a position to be difficult, are you?”

You give in, and though the words you babble are largely unintelligible, JT’s ultimately satisfied.

“Such a good listener I’ve got myself. But you’re always to eager to please, aren’t you? You might throw stones from behind that tough girl act, but it’s just that: an act. I have a puddle in my hand to prove it.”

His frankness sears your face.

You’ve acquired a tolerance for his raunchy silver tongue through months of close proximity, but the mechanism is shoddy at best. Stalls and misfires galore. Against all odds (said “odds” being his fingertips toying with the edges of fabric between your thighs), you summon up a tawdry retort from the growing arsenal. “Don’t l-let it go to waste, Compher.”

It's not your best work, but much better than the slurred gurgle that preceded it.

He loves how you manage to be any sort of cheeky with him, even with your head swimming, stuttering and all.

“I don’t think it matters, sweetheart. I know there’s no shortage. Plenty more where it came from.”

With your knee, you nudge his hard-on and supply some honey-tongued snark of your own. “Is that your ego, or are you just excited to see me?”

Your boyfriend chokes out short-lived mirth. Then, with an accompanying smile, his tongue presses to the inside of his cheek. Amused, but by the sting of the remark’s undeniable truth, not your cleverness. The protrusion moves just below his bottom lip as he swipes the muscle over his teeth, a half-second sardonic gesture. It calls attention to your impudence without dignifying it with a verbal reply.

His brow lifts to negate any confusion, feigned or otherwise. “Are you going to keep being a brat, or are you going to let me fuck you with my fingers?”

You gulp down your ready-mixed wisecracks.

“Nothing to say now?” JT taunts. “Funny how that works.”

Fuckin’ wisenheimer. His voice is so haughty you have to bite your lip to keep your foot out of your mouth, unwilling to jeopardize your impending pleasure for short-term gratification.

Your boyfriend’s smugness—and your subsequent annoyance—becomes irrelevant when your panties are roughly pushed to the side, and his thick finger slips past your taut entrance. Tip to knuckle in one succinct trust; your startled gasp drowns out the noise rising up through the floorboards.

Hips bucking forward—you just can’t help yourself—you're in search of some friction to marry with the blinding stretch. He’s made the tensile opening accommodate far more in length and thickness, but not like this. Rarely does he create space where there is barely any, having forgone tenderness. Slowly widening a gap with gentle pressure, not demanding room like it’s already his to occupy.

Your surprise drips down his hand.

The bliss—the relief, is palpable. Your head dips into the crook of his neck, and the gravity of the situation felt for the first time.

Before, you didn’t see any substance in a tipsy frat bathroom hook-up. The older you got, the more pointless it seemed, especially with an established, long-term partner. The novelty wasn’t lost on you, of course, but that’s all you’d written it off as.

Countless collegiate nights were spent imagining one like this one. A moment where your inescapable feelings for him would be matched outright. When the pressure of his stifled emotions would build too fast to keep them from boiling over, too mighty in stature. Suddenly overcome by unrequited feelings of his own, unable to uphold all the ridiculous unspoken platonic conventions with the same authority he commands now.

This is important. For your past and present selves. The significance of this overdone, soapy teen drama scenario cannot be overlooked because it underscores the progress you’ve made together. Years of dancing around one another, the unconventional catalyst and nontraditional timeline, every hushed conversation in the wee hours before responsibilities wake, the sleepless nights and the snooze-filled afternoons—this ostensibly clichéd moment is an amalgamation of it all.

One thought rises above the frenzied rest: Was this here all along?

Is this what was waiting on the other side of the aimless pining and the confusion and the hurt?

The journey might’ve been fucking hell, but the view from here is pretty damn heavenly.

Overwhelmed by your epiphany and his dexterous motions, you moan into his skin far louder than your pride would’ve otherwise allowed outside your shared apartment.

His arrogant laughter grates before it really registers. Venom secretes from your salivary glands when it does, but the melted retribution never makes it past your lips. His second finger robs it of the opportunity, and the third sends all thoughts out your ears. The light circles over your clit cloud your vision, nails digging into his jersey-clad back—I’m feeling nostalgic, he’d said. In more ways than one, apparently.

“S’good—wanted this for so long, Compher—k-kept wishing it was you that night, not Miles.”

JT seethes at the admission, curling his fingers until your knees buckle and you’re entirely reliant on him to keep you off the floor. Even as your mind slips further and further away, your hips manage to move in time with his hand. Meeting each stroke with equal hustle and vigor, a clear end goal on the horizon.

Then his thumb drops away, his hand coming to a halt, and he steps back. 

Away.

Frustration pushes the amassed tears waiting in the wings down your cheeks. Emotion runs down your face; a heavy spill indeed.

“I don’t ever want to hear another man’s name outta your mouth when it’s my fingers buried in your pussy.” His jealousy is well-polished. Manicure-smooth, like he’s been maintaining its luster in preparation for this very occasion. "—'specially not the motherfucker that made sure I heard all your pretty sounds through the walls.”

You’d grin if you weren’t so miserable.

That’d been your intention. It wasn’t anything Miles had or did that made him different from the rest of the chapter (who all, at one point or another, tried their luck with JTC’s hot best friend), just simply when he decided to shoot his shot. The only reason you’d been out in the first place was because you reached your breaking point, no longer able to stomach what you felt for JT, and you made sure Miles knew this before you let him call an Uber.

Despite playing for the same team, the pair shared a touch-and-go rivalry. You never knew if the intensity would result in a sweeping victory or an in-house, all-out brawl. If they ever saw eye to eye, you’d of never known. Miles needed no convincing to push JT’s buttons.

There was some heavy petting, nothing more. The only time Miles saw you undress was to change into the pajamas he lent you before knocking out on his futon, leaving you to take the bed. But JT didn’t know that. If sitting in their chapter house’s kitchen at 5 o’clock the next morning didn’t raise suspicion, the non-Compher borrowed t-shirt and ruffled hair certainly did.

Back then, he refused to ask. Even though you could see how badly he wanted to pry. Miles didn’t have anything he worth sharing, so JT was left to fill in the blanks.

You’d tell him the truth later, but right now, you wanted to see what milking his assumptions could get you.

“Did you like what you heard?”

His jaw ticks. Your hips push against his with a knowing simper.

You lean forward, closing the space he forced, lips barely brushing his ear, “Did you get off on it? Fuck your hand picturing yourself in his place… wishing it was my pussy instead?”

You hear the thud before you feel your head against the door or his hand back around your throat, his fingers deep between your walls again. The everywhere-throb makes you laugh. Giggle, really.

He squeezes until you’re no longer capable of mockery. His pace hastens, leveling out only once your thighs have started shaking around his wrist, knees cutting off his circulation elbow-down. Somehow, he keeps going despite the icy tingle. His determination overrides physical discomfort, knowing how close you’re getting. Feeling it in the distinct fluttering around his digits, seeing it in your trembling, swollen bottom lip.

“You’re so full of shit.” His mouth twitches at your throaty moan. A defiant hint of levity circles his pupils; he never stays riled up for long when it’s you yanking his chain. “You’re lucky I love you.”

You kiss him then, messy and crude, love-drunk. He tastes like your chapstick and gin, with a biting citric aftertaste —Grapefruit, maybe?—and you suck it in like you haven’t had a drop of water in days. And, in turn, he drinks down every choked sob and nonsensical half-thought you babble, every drop shooting straight to his loins.

He drives into you with fervor, humming as his tongue slips against yours, iron bulge omnipresent. The hand around your neck loosens but never leaves its post, thumb stroking your pulse point. I know everything about you, his movements whisper. Over and over, in and out. He, just as much as you, gets lost in the repetition.

“Don’t want him, never wanted him. Jus’ you—Always you.” It comes out slurred, mushy like your head, like your heart.

JT’s cock isn’t immune to affirmation and twitches through his too-tight jeans. Groaning, “Go on, sweetheart. Scream my name. I want every single person in this house to know exactly who’s fucking you this good.”

You do just that, writhing on his hand, eventually burying your face into his warm neck when it gets to be too much. He continues fucking you, and you continue crying for him, the pathetic little whimpers muffled now by his body.

JT guides you through the rest of your orgasm, as he always does. He watches your face carefully on the comedown, searching for any sign of regret or discomfort. When he finds none, he cradles your shaking form against his solid chest, the hand that, only moments ago, tore you apart, soothing you back down to earth. Once you’ve settled, he walks you back and away from the door.

A startled yelp falls from your lips when you feel the chilly edge of the countertop. You pull away from your boyfriend, brows furrowing with confusion.

His hand taps the outside of your thigh. "Up."

You’re having a hard time keeping your eyes open, let alone stringing thoughts together, so the command is met with inaction. Impatient as ever, JT wordlessly hoists you where he wants you and sinks down to his knees, big hands cupping yours.

“What’re you doing?” Strained, barely above a whisper.

He stares up at you with dopey, lovestruck eyes. “Come on, Compher. You can gimmie another one, can’t you?”

You aren’t an idiot. Often sleep deprived beyond belief and, more often than not, fucked-out on JT’s… Well, anything—but definitely not an idiot. You knew exactly what that loaded gun of a pet name implied the moment he used it. It first slipped out during a frantic supply closet rendezvous midway through your company’s holiday party, then a few more times in the months after.

It hasn’t lost its sparkle. It does make you more and more impatient each time he flashes it, though.

Fuckin’ tease.

Your fingers burrow in his hair, tugging from the root until his eyelids flutter prettily. “As long as you let me return the favor after—need to taste you so bad.”

“Deal,” he mumbles into your skin a half-second later.

His hands push your already-short skirt up, bunching it atop your hips and out of the way. Your boyfriend takes the time to remove the fabric barrier this time, and you don’t miss the way he tries to slip them into his back pocket without you noticing. Likely because it’d normally be a tease-able offense.

But not tonight, not right now.

Instead, you let a shiver speak for itself. The risqué gesture reminds you of the pair he used as a pocket square when his parents took you two to a celebratory dinner following his white coat ceremony. The rumble of his chuckle tells you his mind went there, too.

JT leans in, big eyes never moving from yours, his warm exhale fanning over your swollen folds. The tooth-marked bruise forming on the side of your throat pricks in tandem response. The action, a repeat of your boyfriend’s earlier antics, naturally yields similar enough results. He catches on, inching forward to—

Something bangs against the door.

His face falls; your heart seizes.

“Occupied!” your boyfriend barks, hands paused but gripping you tightly. He looks like he’s on the verge of exploding.

A full, lilting sound barrels into the door—too-good-to-be-true laughter. His breathy timbre is an unsteady balance of cocksure and skittish; a preference for one side or the other is blurred by the wood in its way. “It’s me, dickhead.”

Then, the curtain is lifted. A pocket of silence ushers in a stillness that cracks like a bolt from the blue.

Shocked doesn’t even begin to cover how you feel right now. You most definitely suffered a concussion somewhere in all JT’s reprimanding; you’re hallucinating right now. That, or the singular seltzer in your system magically turned psychotropic after consumption.

Waiting in the threshold is Tyson Jost. A quarter-drunk fifth of Jack in one hand and that goofy, irrepressible smile plastered on his face. Almost frozen in time—good-humored, untouched. As if nothing’s happened, nothing’s changed. Suave, and standing there like he hasn’t ignored you for months on end, like your and JT’s absence in his life wasn’t felt the way the Tyson-sized void in yours was.

Idle and morose, his eyes are the only defectors to his blasé demeanor. Timid and downturned, akin to a kicked puppy, they beg you and your boyfriend to assuage his guilt. An olive branch, a white flag in the wind. Amid their vulnerability, they still manage to cut into you in a way that feels too intimate, too honest—too much.

The worst part of this charged maelstrom is knowing Tyson isn’t capable of being cruel on purpose, then or now. It's bittersweet.

Careless or callous, it hurts all the same. It’s difficult to sift through the muck and decide which feelings should guide your actions when there’s no easy place to lay blame.

A gnarly, muddy morass of emotion climbs out of your gut and fills your throat, threatening to make an appearance each time you dare to exhale. You’re nervous and confused, elated and optimistic, angry and reproachful. The burn of betrayal rushes up your neck and across the bridge of your nose, but all the words you’ve stockpiled for this rainy day stick to your tongue like tar. Dark, thick, and flammable—your silence is probably for the best.

Bronze eyes, somber beneath the fan of flaxen lashes, adopt a strange aloofness that doesn’t suit his face. Lacquered just so as to protect the gooey softness beneath, the finish does nothing to obstruct or disguise his desirous longing or a brand of blues you’ve never seen in him before.

The intensity of your braided gazes is sanguine at best, duplicitous at worst, but disorienting all the same.

Anxiously, you chew on time; you’re trying your best not to swallow minutes and hours in big gulps. Your attempts to savor their confounding guilty-pleasure flavor are as futile as hoping the animosity would dissipate on its own. Or wishing the distance was just a nightmare you were on the verge of waking up from.

JT’s pulse races against your skin. He’s just as affected, just better at hiding it.

“Took you long enough,” is what JT says in greeting from the floor, dry words flung over his shoulder to curb the growing tension. Blithesome and biting and far more hospitable than you imagined.

All you can do is blink, slack-jawed; there are pieces you’re missing.

JT chuckles at your expression. He pecks your inner thigh to regain your attention. “Fuck now, talk later. Sound good?”

His words crack any and all inhibitions. Like opening the door to a cage, his reassurance grants your mind and heart the permission to succumb to the wave of emotions—lust overtaking the pack with ease.

Eyes still stuck on the ghost in the doorway, you nod your head in agreement. It’s as if you’re afraid your voice might rupture the bubble.

“Figured you’d be a little parched, baby.” Tyson, voice becoming jocular as ever, wags the bottle as he shuts the door behind himself. His tone might be light-hearted, but his gaze is anything but. Starved is the only way you can think to aptly describe the shadow. “And we can’t have that, now can we?”

You barely register JT vacating the prime real estate to accommodate his best friend, and subconsciously, you scoot closer to the edge. You knew you missed him, but you underestimated how needy you’d become if he ever stood before you again.

Both men notice.

Grinning, Tyson takes hold of your jaw. His hand emits a small tremor of unease, hesitant where JT had been demanding. The accidental brush of his fingertips over your boyfriend’s trailed claim rattles free a melancholic whimper. Your eyes glaze over, watering as your neck cranes up at him. He gently tilts your face to the side to assess the damage. You can feel his eyes raking over the marred skin, a sensation akin to your boyfriend’s weaponized breath. Goosebumps rise in their wake.

In reference to the Neanderthal surveying you over his shoulder, Tyson sniggers. “Filthy bastard.”

Charming as ever.

“She deserved it.” JT’s nonchalant shrug is more dismissive than his verbal nod.

Wicked eyes twinkle. “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”

You pinch his side, offended. Nevertheless, you purr at the certitude dripping from his husky vibrato.

He yelps and bats your hand away. “Got you good, didn’t he?”

You nod.

The baby talk-adjacent voice is demeaning, but with your only shield burning a hole in your boyfriend’s back pocket, lying about the effect it's having would be pointless.

Propriety is becoming increasingly moot, as this conversation circling around you carves space for new possibilities.

“Poor thing,” Josty hums, his thumb coasting back and forth over your jaw. His breath is smokey-sweet, honeyed. “M'gonna make it all better. Open up, baby.”

It’s something straight out of an early aughts raunchy teen comedy, the way he holds your mouth open to pour whiskey straight down, doing so without the lip ever touching either one of yours. The thin stream drags slightly as it goes down, but you’d never know watching the pillowy spirit disappear into you. You’re too eager to impress them both to give in and react—to the burn in your throat or the circumstances of this affair. You guzzle the oaky vanilla-clove flavor, smiling dumbly at the toasted aftertaste, all too happy to take anything and everything you’re given.

Still, either by virtue of Tyson’s lingering tipsiness or your inattention, some of the amber liquid escapes over your bottom lip, dribbling over your chin and down in between your cleavage. There isn’t enough time to consider wiping it off; Josty’s mouth is sucking you clean before the bottle even hits the counter beside you.

“Would be a shame…” Tyson starts, briefly interrupting himself with a succession of wet, open-mouthed pecks he’s decided to spoil your décolletage with, “…to let it go to waste.”

JT’s begrudged scoff cuts through the trance. “Jesus, kid. Where’d you learn that? What the fuck have you been doing? Or should I be asking ‘who' you've been doing?"

Tyson flinches at the coarse overtone the questions carry. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sort of reaction only you’re close enough to feel. He just laughs into your neck rather than humoring JT or feeding into whatever he’s implying.

You’re too woozy to toss in your two cents in favor of either side.

Cold countertop lapping up your wetness, the burning palm cupping your face to aid the pursuit of sugary lips, the memory of his tongue gliding over your sticky skin—your boyfriend a few paces away, watching. That’s more potent than any liquor, mixed or straight. It doesn’t take long for you to pull away, in a there-but-not state of mind, to slouch against Tyson’s chest. Head heavy, warmed and spinning.

Happy.

“Somethin’ special, aren’t you?” Tyson muses as he kneads the tender spot where your hairline meets your neck. You peck his forearm.

“As sweet as this reunion’s been, you came up here for a reason. Get to it; we don’t have all night. I imagine La Tornade will be wanting his bathroom back eventually.”

You whimper at the sharp edge of his voice, even though you weren’t the intended target.

JT’s dark drawl was laden with protective affection for you, his devotion hardened by a hue of discontent reminiscent of a paternal chide. An outsider looking in might not see beyond the mediator-in-shining-armor ruse, mistakenly pruning away JT’s thorny pain and rotted grief, but you know better. The situation and him. While genuine, his defense of your bruised feelings is a trojan horse for his own. He’s conveying his rage how he can: under the guise of selflessness.

Tyson gulps, eyes downcasted, then nods. He understands as well as you do. When he finally looks up, the shadow’s fallen over his face once more, cloud drooped low overhead.

“You’re scaring me, Josty.”

This makes him laugh, his mood brightening a tad. “If anyone should be scared, it’s me.”

In your periphery, you catch JT urging him to continue with a stiff glare.

“I-I’ve been such an ass. I—I just care so damn much. About you. About Compher, and our friendship. When you graduated, m-my whole world changed. Like someone gutted my life, scooped out all the good, comfortable stuff and left me with the shell. I felt like I lost my people. Like I was left behind. And then I had to watch you two get closer than ever—without me. It fucking sucked, and I didn’t cope well. Didn’t cope at all, really. Kate’ll tell you, she took the brunt of my tailspin.”

You can’t help but snort despite the thick emotion welling up behind your eyes. The boys smile, too. Things look up.

Tyson takes your hand in a tight squeeze; his pulse jumps into your palm. “But that’s no excuse for what I did—didn’t do. How I treated you. You were trying so hard, and all I did was punish you for it. For constantly reminding me you guys are there and not here. For moving on with your life like you’re supposed to.”

He claims JT’s old spot knelt between your parted knees. “And I’m sorry. So deeply sorry, baby. Please let me make it up to you—let me apologize properly.”

Tears of his own shine up at you from his flushed cheeks. Gently, you take his face in your hands, rubbing away the spilled emotion with the soft pads of your thumbs.

A silent pardon.

The walls throw back the echo of his low, audible content—of relief.

“Is this okay?” His voice is barely a whisper, dwindling to a hush as the question tapers off.

Too determined to quiet his audible fear of rejection—and to have his mouth on you as fast as humanly possible—to bother with words, you nod immediately.

“With how much she’s been dripping onto the counter since you walked in, what do you think?” JT interjects, mood vastly improved.

Your cheeks and neck heat just as he intended.

The younger forward chuckles, hands massaging up and down your sensitive thighs, gripping them as if holding himself back from lunging too soon.

A predator lurking in the brush, lying in wait.

“I wasn’t gonna say anything. Didn’t want to embarrass her.” He winks up at you, confidence rising to the surface once more. You have to fight to maintain eye contact; he’s that stupidly attractive. “ —was try t’be a gentleman.”

You’re a flurry of butterflies, a whimpering mess.

Tyson wants to tease your body; it’s in his nature. But he won’t. Namely, because he can’t. No matter how good some old-fashioned edging would eventually make you feel, he’s already on JT’s shit list as is.

Besides, he’s only been fiending for a taste since you introduced yourself to him. And there's no time like the present...

Your guttural scream—an appropriate, albeit mortifying reaction to his baby pink lips enveloping your swollen clit—pumps his chest full with pride. Tongue flat, he charts the length of your heat with a gentleness you hadn’t thought your collective excitement would allow for. His hands coast over your legs, syncing with his mouth, until he physically cannot wait any longer. One final pass, one so agonizingly slow your greedy hips thoughtlessly vie for more of anything, brings his wistful, fidgeting digits to rest at the apex of your thighs.

“Pause.”

JT’s clipped command is a bucket of ice water.

Your vocal annoyance is matched by Tyson’s, but you both know how delicate a game you’re playing.

With his thumb still lazily swirling to your clit, Tyson’s inquisitive head begins to turn around. Before he gets anywhere worthwhile, it’s swiftly spun back into place by your boyfriend’s firm hand.

You can’t even convey how hot you find JT’s fingers casually twisting in his friend’s curly mop—just the way you love; all you manage is a warbled, mostly airy cry. Your distressed state worsens watching the show unfold between your lax, parted knees: reluctant, fluttery lashes over neon cheeks; a rosy, glistening bottom lip sacrificed to cage mousy whimpers, his ragged breathing betraying all effort toward feigning indifference to JT’s self-assured manhandling.

Your boyfriend snickers at your expression, a fish lingering open-mouthed for a surface sip, an ill-attempt to supplement a natural mode gone inadequate. No matter how much oxygen your widened jaw draws in, it never feels sufficient. A bottomless pit, a balloon with a fatal puncture wound. Gone before your depleted brain could make use of it.

“Have to make sure he does it right, don’t I, sweetheart?” JT’s voice is smooth and low, charring by the second; he’s enjoying the view as much as you are.

Tyson rolls his tawny eyes. Half-hearted annoyance. “Controlling much?”

“I know what my woman needs.”

The look you share with your friend is unequivocally feral.

And the growl JT hurls back, a low-pitched rumble permeating the tight space with little effort on his part, is just plain mean.

His attitude could not be more arrogant. The cavalier persona makes you shiver, and Tyson’s breath hitch. Humming, your boyfriend tugs on his curls until the two’s eyes are locked. Inescapable. The brunette gasps as he tries desperately to hold his eyes open, waiting with bated breath.

JT licks his lips, triumphant. “Open her up for me, will ya?” Mischief catches in the light as quickly as it falls into your boyfriend’s lap. His grip tightens, and Tyson whimpers like a naughty puppy caught red-handed. “Don’t screw around, ‘kay? She needs all the help her tight pussy can get, and we don’t have all night.”

Panting, his nod is the only affirmative he can muster up. And the only one his limited range of motion will allow for. Smug and pleased enough, JT all but throws his friend into your fire, his nose bumping where you’re most sensitive. 

You actually yelp.

Holding your torrid gaze, Tyson dips his marriage and middle into you. You groan out what you meant to be his name—But who knows? And who fucking cares?—unable to control yourself while he’s finally touching you like this. Finally back.

Tyson finger-fucks you at an even pace, steadily pushing you up the hill. His satisfaction is tangible when he pulls out and away, so very delighted by your wonton hiss of annoyance. Even more so when the volume hikes up in response to the slippery pads of his fingers circling your clit. Your lewd whines harmonize with your audible arousal as he works it back into your fragile skin, playing with your wetness, utterly fascinated.

“What d’ya think, baby? Think you’re wet enough to take another finger?” JT’s tone is as cocky as his stupid rhetorical question. He, however, made no move to conceal his growing impatience.

“Mhmm,” you murmur, head like a rubber ball hitting the pavement. Still, you remember your manners. “Please—c-can I? Can I have another?”

His smile is pure adoration, dreamlike.

JT’s reverent eyes stay with you, but his words pour down over the eager man on the floor as he coaxes you halfway to heaven. “You heard her, kid. Give the lady what she deserves.”

Kid—Tyson hates when people call him that, but he especially loathes JT's usage. There’s barely an age difference, but with the way everyone acts, it might as well be decades. It seems like no matter what he does to prove himself, he’s still the baby. Every additional candle is like an annual slap in the face, a mockery that won’t end.

He can feel anger and frustration curdling low in his stomach just thinking about all the attempts that fell flat, and he decides to put the grumbling to good use. The vibration is red-hot and deliberate against your responsive, slick center, irritation like lighter fluid.

He gives you more than just three fingers. He splays all three—wide. Even as they stroke your soft inner walls, Tyson keeps you stretched so as to leave no slack. Your boyfriend wants you open? Tyson will fucking tear you apart, happily. (Yes, spite is a factor.)

Highly sensitive and spread to the limit, you ascend far quicker than usual. Fisting a bushel of golden-brown curls, nails digging rapt half-moons, you guide his willing face to the necessary places to see yourself through. Every slight adjustment has your entire body jerking haphazardly as it struggles to process the rocketing shockwaves.

JT’s hand retreats—only slightly—to make way for yours, to give you more leverage to fuck yourself through it. Less than a foot away, your boyfriend’s chest heaves in time with yours, his eyes pits of lust you dive into with clumsy enthusiasm.

During one particular, delicious pass, the tip of Tyson’s tongue catches your strained entrance, and when you unexpectedly gush against his mouth in response, he begins lapping over and around your carnal connection.

“Holy shit — Ty, I-I’m — I’m — “

The denouement of your climax is nothing short of glorious, as rude of a sentence interruptor as it was. Half-mewls and purred praise rain down from your loosened lips, eyes screwed shut.

Tyson melts over the way you take control of your orgasm, so unabashed and authoritative. You go after what you want; he respects that majorly. And getting to feel and taste what makes you tick doesn’t hurt either.

Neither do you and your pretty, throbbing walls cutting off blood flow while your boyfriend tugs his hair from behind.

“Just like that, keep fucking her through it. Did so good—doin’ so good for us.”

JT’s praise sends the brunette’s unoccupied hand right to his bulge.

This is the best he’s felt in months.

There’s the mythical balance of bliss-to-tension to key up his senses, shooting white-hot tingles of want from his head to his feet and flaming between his ribs, affection for you. You forgive him, JT forgives him, and, most importantly, he forgives himself.

He feels buoyant with his face coated in your climax, so much so that it runs down from his chin to his neck, staining the collar of his beer-soaked tee; he hopes you might return his favor later.

Josty’s guilty hand is knocked away by a firm toe.

“Y’haven’t earned it, bud,” his mentor chides.

The delinquent appendage flops lamely at his side for a split second, then lifts beside his nose to join its partner at your slick core. As if remembering there’s work to be done, a goal to attain. Beneath this new asset, your achy, spent clit pulses, egging him on with every thump, thump, thump.

Tempting him to do something, to take it further…

He thinks about it. Fuck, does he think about it—you can see the tape winding in his eyes.

JT can read Tyson’s mind through his skull, apparently. “Don’t even think about it, kid. Her last one’s mine, but you’re more than welcome to watch from right here.” —Your boyfriend points to the remaining space between the sinks, knowing it’ll be close quarters for you both— “Just remember: I only said watch. This is groveling, not a treat.”

And Tyson does. Without question or complaint, he’s just fine sitting next to you, sitting pretty.

He’s always been the perfect teammate. Always willing to do whatever it takes, regardless of the role. The only difference is he no longer wants his anxiety to be the sole motivator behind said selflessness.

Finally ready to play fearless.

JT helps you down; Tyson hops up.

Immediately, your attention fractures. Split between messy brown curls and lust-blown pupils and your own disheveled appearance: smudged makeup, knotted hair, mauled neck, and spit-stained, bruised lips. Thank fuck you’re graduated and gone. Otherwise, you’d never live this down—Kate might treat you to a taste of would-be campus humiliation later if she’s feeling particularly charitable, though.

Your boyfriend’s grip is heavy on your hips. Happy to have you back. You feel one hand coast over your lower back and down to grope your ass as if trying to keep you in the palm of his hand. White-knuckle hold withstanding, JT presses his chest flush to your backside and uses his free hand to yank every remaining hindrance to your navel.

He wants you on display.

Your gasp is rivaled only by Tyson’s pitiful whimper and twitching, touch-happy fingers.

The ginger’s chuckle is molten and deep, mouth barely a breath from your ear, his eyes pinning Tyson still.

Your mind rewound back to when he made this proposition, wondering how the hell you got from there to here.

“Bend over, sweetheart. Arch that back nice and pretty so we can show Josty what a good girl he’s been missing out on—what a filthy thing you’ve turned into.”

As soon as you’ve done just that, your boyfriend drives home. It’s fast and dirty; primal. He knows there’s no need, but JT marks his territory anyway.

You watch Josty’s mouth part like he’s about to ask you something. Staring through his eyes as if ducking into his pesky daydreams and up-too-late musings, all specifics watery and indistinct.

Ultimately, you wind up disappointed by silence. But, with the slow return of your boyfriend’s bare cock between your soft inner walls, it dawns on you; JT had used a condom last time. Even made Tyson retrieve it for him. The depth of your relationship is sinking in; that’s what you’re now watching. He’s mulling over the information, caught somewhere between wanting to swallow his guilt one go and choking on his own assumptions.

JT follows your charged concern, performs a similar triage, and then gives you a concise nod through the fogged-up mirror.

I’ll handle it.

At that, your walls noticeably ease, and he shudders, groaning as even more of him sinks deeper to occupy the newfound space. He gets a few strokes out before Josty slots his body between your palms to lean in. Here, he does something that collapses the simple but effective status quo. 

“Fuck, kid. K-Keep doing that.”

Keep rubbing your clit.

Keep playing with you.

Keep being an accessory to his pleasure. To yours.

Be present.

Be here.

“Such a fucking mess, baby. Don’t know how Compher gets anything done with you there, sweet and ripe for the taking.”

The two halves of Tyson’s demeanor are antithetical, and infuriatingly so, a saccharine smile split open by filth. It paints a sordid picture that must stand for itself, as you find it impossible to pluck out of thin air any coherent thoughts.

Be that as it may, your friend did not set out for a reply. At least not one other than the befuddled stuttering you’re doing.

A familiar palm shoots to your raw neck—tender, inside and out—lightning quick. You're yanked up before you can blink. JT mercilessly nips at the gaps in between his tight grip, hips pushed just as firm against the swell of your backside.

Still, he furthers their madcap banter. “I dunno either, Josty. And, believe me, the little vixen sure as hell doesn’t make it any easier. Sometimes I think she’s tryna milk me dry for good.”

If Tyson Jost were ever going to cream his pants—post-pubescence, it would be now.

Like, right fucking now.

The proclamation of your third orgasm is wondrous. Proud. Grateful. One of your hands flies back to catch the nape of JT’s neck to steady yourself as he continues pistoning in and out of you. Tyson's generous touch stays, too.

Your back arches this go around, head rolling against your boyfriend's shoulder before slipping back down towards the counter, free palm absorbing the impact of the abrupt sway. Too much, too much—it’s all too much for your tender muscles and soupy brain to handle. You surrender to the plethora of sensations, each more overwhelming than the last—half-collapsed back against into your boyfriend, half-crumbled forward into his best friend’s damp, tented lap.

“Not gonna last, sweetheart—y’feel too damn good, s’tight and warm, always strangling my cock—know you’re close, too. Gonna give me what you promised, Compher? Please, pretty girl—need to feel your perfect pussy squeezin’ me dry.”

It's refractory; your world goes from washed-out to vivid and back, over and over, as though impatiently flipping between channels.

You’re a tangle of sticky limbs and physical reverie, blanketed by a warm afterglow and cleared air. Body scaffolded by muscular forms on either side, your mind gives your body permission to slacken at last. JT’s arm winds around your midsection when it becomes clear the all-consuming exhaustion is giving way to the relaxation that eluded you for so many months. Tyson massages your arms, your hands still cemented to his knees. Your head drops to his shoulder, too heavy for your bruised neck.

For a long while, no one says a thing. Not intentionally or for fear of disturbing the peace; there’s simply no need. No words exist to shoulder that much weight, none able to capture precisely what emotions swirl between you. Silence says enough—silence says it all.

Banging cuts through your sex-drunk stupor. Again. The abrupt sounds function like metaphorical smelling salts, restoring consciousness and rousing decorum laid dormant. Your mutual, unadulterated bliss circles the drain in the absence of a psychological plug, ripped free, half-baked.

JT reluctantly leaves you empty and dripping, tucks himself away, and cracks open the door—only as wide as is necessary. Behind his imposing physique, you remain hunched over Tyson, waiting for your boyfriend to make the problem go away; you’re too tired to take any initiative.

Golden hair and familiar grey-blue eyes fill the gap, shining in your periphery. Barely a sliver, that’s how much of this your boyfriend’s willing to share with the world. You like that, and judging by his lopsided grin, so does Tyson.

“Paging Mrs. Compher!” Gabe hollers over JT’s head. “Clean up on aisle ‘Kate.’”

Just hearing her name puts you back in action. Damn you, maternal instincts.

You scramble to right twisted fabric and smeared makeup to a soundtrack of expletives. It’s pointless, though, because nothing settles how it should. No amount of smoothing, brushing, or tucking seems to help. Hazy vision and the legs of a newborn fawn don’t exactly lend themselves to effective primping.

And it’s not like you’ve got a hickey-remover magic wand stashed in your purse, either. 

Accept your fate, you acquiesce with a sigh.

Tyson does a piss-poor job muffling his laughter, which lands him a crisp swat to the chest.

As you stumble over, you catch the end of your boyfriend’s irritation. “—and you’re sure there isn’t anyone else to hold her hair back? Why can’t you do it?”

The gears in Gabe’s skull clank so loud you can hear them over the audible chaos seeping into your haven—he’s intoxicated, not stupid.

“CupKate wants her mommy.” The blonde winks at you over JT’s shoulder. His tongue gives a knowing click of approval at Tyson’s equally disheveled state. “And what do you care, Compher? Smells like you three already made your express trip to Pound-town, USA. How was it? I hear the weather’s hot and steamy this time of year.”

“Real mature, Landy, real mature,” JT scoffs.

The sound just revs him up. “Says the fucker who’s locked in a frat house bathroom with his girlfriend and his best friend. One of whom, might I add, looks like they got mauled by a hormonal freshman after a high school dance.”

“Can you two go measure your dicks, I don’t know, anywhere but in the way? I have a child to tend to.” 

You almost have to laugh. At the situation and at the words coming out of your mouth. At Kate, sick to her stomach like a kid who ate too many sweets on a holiday. 

Years have passed, but you’re all still the same.

“Me-yeoh!” Gabe sing-songs while miming what you assume are claws scratching at nothing.

Again, his drink is the sole casualty of his jubilation. A golden wave sloshes over the rim and onto the floor. The spray makes JT’s jaw tick.

The former winger offers a sheepish grin in repentance. “Whoops?”

Your boyfriend steals a glance to check that you’re decent, then side-steps out of your way with an exasperated sigh. His dilated gaze flits over your ruffled appearance, shamelessly drinking in the state of your throat but tripping over the questions dancing in your eyes.

He juts his head in Landy’s direction with a sardonic eye-roll. “Go on. Save your damsel, Mother Hen. I’ll fill you in on in the Uber back to the hotel.”

“Meet you out front?” You ask, and he nods.

You dart back to Tyson, plant a chaste peck on his flushed cheek, and then repeat the gesture with JT and his peeved lips. It’s faint, but they instantly soften for you.

Before they know it, you’re slipping out the door. Gabe gets an affectionate pat on the shoulder as you squeeze by him before you disappear in the direction of the Girls Only bathroom; no significant differences, only marginally cleaner and occasionally stocked with helpful accouterment—chivalry isn’t dead!

Lingering in the wake of your departure, Gabe sways like an inflatable man on the curb of a car dealership. A smirk twists his lips. “Nicely done, boys. Nicely done. Can’t say I thought we’d see the day—or that either of you had it in ya—but I feel like a proud father.” He wipes a phantom tear, the final straw. “Makes you wish you listened to Daddy Landy sooner, huh? Think of all the lost ti—”

JT slams the door in his face. Through the wood, Gabe cackles.

The two men slip back into sync as they wordlessly scrape themselves back together with the time and privacy you were not afforded. 

As JT yanks his jeans back into place, his belt clanking around like a bell’s hourly chime, a black velvet box tumbles to the floor, and Tyson’s stomach along with it.

The air shouldn’t, but it turns on a dime. Their progress is seemingly more fragile than expected.

“If—uh, wow.” A crunchy, anxious bark of a laugh cuts his thought in half.

JT doesn’t interrupt; he holds space for the blossoming discomfort.

Tyson rubs the tense knots along the back of his neck as his eyes drill into the floor. “If I’d known this would be our swan song, I would’ve tried to enjoy it more. I don’t know—savored it, I guess?”

“This,” JT says, scooping up the dud he hopes isn’t hanging fire. “— is what I wanted to talk to you about earlier.”

Before they got into it in the garage, before they’d been forcibly separated by Erik and Nate. Before they, punch-drunk and drunk-drunk, teetered between tears and anger in the shadowy, too-quiet backyard.

They spun in circles until they had nowhere to move but on. To make amends, to stumble through chary half-apologies that mean more than they say.

JT’s alleviation was short-lived; his calm trepidation squashed before it could fly. Tyson now understands why.

Tyson balks. “Me?”

Your boyfriend sighs through his nose, pinching the bridge. He’s bidding time. Digging for the right words but knowing there are none.

“I love her—and I know you do, too. I’m not upset; she makes it hard not to fall for her.”

Tyson’s head hangs lower, chagrined.

JT continues, “I’m going to ask her to marry me, but I didn’t want to do it without talking to you. Without making sure you’d be okay. Eventually. The last thing I wanted was for you to be blindsided or to feel even more left out.”

Tyson can’t help but snort at the sheer absurdity. “Left out… God, how pathetic am I? Getting all butt-hurt over a relationship that isn’t even mine.”

“Pathetic was going AWOL.”

Josty winces. He doesn’t argue because he has zero ground to stand on.

“But feeling something? Far from it.”

“I didn't—don’t want to take her from you. You have to know that, Compher.” The hurt’s been hammered from his voice. Left behind is softened sincerity.

JT’s smile is just as downy. “I do, and you’d be wasting time by trying.”

Josty chokes on an unforeseen bubble of laughter.

You love JT Compher so openly and ardently it might as well be a neon sign plastered to your forehead. He’s always been it for you. There’s never been any competition, Tyson Jost included.

“Thank god we got this ironed out before the wedding,” the older forward chuckles as he leans back against the counter.

They’re side-by-side, as they should be.

“Why’s that?”

JT digs into his other pocket and pushes something into the palm of his best friend, whose cheeks flame tout de suite in response. With a bump of his shoulder, your boyfriend tacks on, “Something to remember tonight by.”

Tyson shoves the memento into his own pocket, then raises a quizzical brow.

Your boyfriend grins.

“The best man pining over the bride while giving the groom the cold shoulder would make for an awkward wedding, don’t you think?”

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[wooahaes]

a love that burns brightly

pairing: non-idol!s.coups x gn!reader

genre: fluff. domestic fic. established relationship.

word count: 1.0k~

warnings: reader has a side business selling candles. mentions of hot wax (being melted).

daisy's notes: me as i restrain myself from writing husband!cheol again bc i feel like im too predictable-

If there was one thing you could say about your boyfriend, it was that he probably advertised your side business more than you did. 

Candle-making had started as something you did kind-of for fun. Sure, you sold your candles from the very beginning, but it was more-so because you needed some way of recouping the money you sunk into it. And, sure, it was only a side business that took up… a lot more time than you liked admitting. But that was what your days off were for: dedicating as much time as you needed to make your candles and restock the online store. This time of year was always your busiest for a reason (Holiday scents! Sales! Clear your inventory so you can start fresh in the new year!), and that meant Seungcheol stayed over at your apartment a lot more… especially when he came in with a list.

He’d been reading it off to you as you moved about your kitchen (your center of operations, so to speak), “Jeonghan said he loved the cinnamon candle you gave him. Joshua liked the pine one, and I thought we could maybe throw in an extra? I’ll pay for it. And Jun…”

All of this was what he’d pulled together over the past week. You’d told Seungcheol that if he wanted to sell to his coworkers that it’d be fine (considering how often he bragged about your work), but yesterday was the deadline for any orders. Of course… You didn’t expect him to manage to get every single person he was close to to buy at least one. Even that Vernon guy, who apparently bought three—two for his parents and one for his own girlfriend(slash-his-own-apartment since they lived together).

You looked up from the double boiler you were using to melt wax. “Cheollie?”

He stopped mid sentence, right about to tell you what he’d convinced Jihoon to order, “Yes?”

“Why don’t you live here?” The two of you had been together for almost two years at this point—although you’d known him for longer.

He made his way over to you, setting the list down closer. “Don’t you remember?” He leaned against your fridge. “You said you didn’t want to live with anyone for a while.”

Your brows drew together. When did you…? And then it clicked. Back when you first met Seungcheol (through Joshua—he went to the same gym as you, and one music-based conversation was enough to make the two of you friends), he’d said something about his own roommate at the time. You’d admitted that that was the exact reason why you weren’t going to live with anyone for a while. You made enough to support yourself: why not enjoy the solitude?

(“Even if you’re dating someone?” Joshua had said, nudging you as he kept stealing glances at Seungcheol.

“I mean, maybe eventually, but the right person isn’t going to force themselves in unless it’s an emergency,” you had shrugged in response. “I don’t mind sharing my space if I need to, but… I like living alone right now.”)

“I mean… Yeah… But…” You avoided his gaze, stirring the mixture with your silicone spatula to try and help it melt more evenly. “I just thought we’d talk about it at some point.”

He crossed his arms. “Honey?” 

“Hm?”

“Is this your way of asking me to move in?” 

One glance at Seungcheol was enough to tell you he was thoroughly enjoying the idea of making you admit it. Another slow stir, and you nodded after a moment. “Maybe.”

“Is it?” He pushed a little further, and you swore you could hear his smile in his words alone. “Do you want me to?”

“Can it be your Christmas gift?”

He let out a soft chuckle. “If you want. My lease isn’t up for a few months, but I’d love to move in when it’s up.”

You hid a smile. “Can you get the jars from my office? You’ll have to center the wicks when it’s time, too.” 

Seungcheol stepped forward, pressing a quick peck against your cheek. “Whatever you need me to do,” he turned. You listened as he walked out, yet still spoke loud enough for you to hear him, “Can I get one for free?”

“Aren’t you sick of them by now?”

You heard the sound of glass clinking together as Seungcheol heaved the box into his arms, making his way back in, “I’m not moving in for a few months,” he said. “And you usually have one burning here…”

Fair enough. “You can get one of the leftovers.”

“Deal.” He set the box at his feet as he began to pull the jars out, setting them out. “I know I’ve said it before, but… I’m proud of you.”

“Cheollie—”

“No, really,” he said. “I am. You work full time and you do this as a side business because you love it. If you ever wanted to quit and do this full time… I’d be happy to support you.”

“I like my job,” you shrugged. “I like this, too, but I’m happy with the balance I have now. Especially when I have this guy who comes around sometimes to help me…”

He smiled, setting another jar down. “Is he handsome?”

“I think he’s pretty sexy, yeah,” you giggled. “I think you know him, actually. His name is Yoon Jeonghan—”

Seungcheol almost elbowed you playfully, only stopping because of the hot wax in front of you. “You’re so mean to me,” he pouted. “Right after you were begging me to move in, too.”

“I wasn’t begging.”

Seungcheol chuckled again. “Sure you weren’t.” He let out a blissful sigh. “So… What scent is this batch going to be again?”

“I dunno. What scent did Yoon Jeonghan want again?”

Wax be damned. He turned, immediately pulling you in for a quick kiss, and you could feel him smile against your lips as you giggled. Honestly, you couldn’t wait until he moved in with you officially.

(... And maybe you’d text that to Jeonghan so he could get in on teasing Seungcheol, too.)

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