#this person (you) is trying to get you (oc) to open up. how do u react... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kisapmta · 4 months ago

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love is a stillness i never knew | c. sturniolo

series masterlist

summary: you meet a cutie in the sauce aisle of the grocery store.

pairing: christopher sturniolo x fem!reader

warnings: none. for context, oc is 22!

notes: was inspired on vday by sam smith’s new song and just got around to finishing the first part. this is literally all just context and set up and back story and nothing too exciting but i hope u still enjoy<3

word count: 4k

—

Every girl dreams of being in love.

Well, maybe not every girl. And maybe not in the same way you do—which was often and unrealistic. Delusional. For as long as you could remember.

It started the day you watched Cinderella for the first time. You were 4 years old. Naive and sitting too close to the TV, you were completely engrossed by the way Prince Charming refused to stop searching until he found the slipper’s perfect match. The movie ended, and from then on you wondered who was going to yearn for you like that. Like a prince does his princess. Would he also sweep you up in a carriage? Or fight off an evil witch? Maybe he would be Flynn Eugene Rider. God, you hoped.

As you got older, your wonder never left, but reality had reshaped your options into much less promising prospects. Would he be the one who baited you into a 6 month long talking stage—the one with no balls who said ‘I wanna be with you, baby, but I’m just not ready for a relationship yet.’ Or maybe it was the one your friends nicknamed Oedipus—mommy’s boy—who couldn’t drive and didn’t have a job and still needed her help to wipe his ass.

Maybe it was the one who cheated on you. Twice. Because you loved him. And after the first time, with an ‘I’m sorry’ note attached to the first bouquet of flowers you had ever received from a guy, you swore he changed. So you took him back.

And then he cheated. Again.

It was a devastating roster. And yet, through every disappointing experience, you clung to your dream of love. You kept searching. Kept trying. Kept running headfirst into walls that, in hindsight, had been plastered with red flags.

And just when you started to think maybe you were asking for too much—maybe love wasn’t meant to be the way you imagined—he came along.

The almost. The one you thought was going to be different.

He was tall and well-built and had his own business. He always opened the door for you to the passenger side of his Porsche. He cooked. He cleaned. He knew how to follow basic hygiene practices. Not once did he ever say, ‘One more game, I promise, we’re just about to rank up.’ He didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. He gave you flowers—and not ‘I’m sorry I cheated on you flowers’, but roses sent to your doorstep by the delivery man. He bought you a sparkly, expensive bracelet. Took you on extravagant dates and could hold a conversation if he was interested in the subject. Even your parents liked him.

In theory, he was kind of perfect.

But he was old. And serious. And never laughed at your tik tok references—not because they weren’t funny, but because he didn’t really get them. He was always busy with business meetings and corporate events he had to attend. Of course, he would invite you. But after going to the first one, and what to you, felt like a literal LinkedIn mutuals meet and greet from your own personal hell, you wanted to poke your eyes out. It was not for you. The empty handshakes and the overwhelming smell of weird cologne and the way everyone unironically said ‘noted’.

And the thing is, it didn’t stop at the venue. These things followed you into dates, where conversations felt more like networking than anything real. Where his hand never reached for yours, where his eyes never lingered. Where love felt like an afterthought.

Work first, always.

Love, if there was time.

Because that’s who he was—a businessman, through and through.

So you tolerated it. The ever-growing emptiness in your chest, the sense that something was missing, though you couldn’t quite name it. At least he treated you well.

It wasn’t until he sat you down one day, looked you in the eye, and asked you to move with him to Hartford, Connecticut—to settle down for his business, to maybe start a life together—that you laughed. In his face.

You hadn’t even meant to, but the answer was so obvious. You weren’t ready for that. You did not want that. He was great on paper, sure, but there was no spark. No connection. No love.

And so, with Mr. Old Fuck, your childhood dreams finally started to crack.

———

“—And bitch, he was actually serious. Like I swear this was genuinely the first time I’ve seen him excited to do something together since that first event.”

It hadn’t even been an hour since Businessman asked you to drop everything you had in LA and move to Hartford, and you were already on the phone with Val, your best friend, debriefing yet another failed roster pick.

“Literally the first time I think I’ve seen him have a thought behind his eyes while talking to me in the four months we were together,” you added, dramatic but, in your opinion, entirely accurate.

“And what did you say?” she asked, barely holding back a smile.

“Nothing. I just laughed.”

There was a beat of silence before she lost it, laughter splitting through your phone speaker.

“Bitch—”

“No because I thought he was joking! And then he didn’t laugh with me and I was like, ‘Oh fuck, he’s serious.’” You explained between your own giggles, the memory of the conversation still ridiculous to you. “So then I had to make up some corny bullshit like ‘I think you deserve someone who’s ready for that life with you right now.’”

“No way,” she gasped. “You laughed in his face? Oh my God, I wish I was there.”

“To be honest, so do I, like I actually feel kinda bad. I literally wanted to point at him while laughing—maybe you could’ve stopped me.”

“Absolutely not.”

She never met him in person—never got the chance to, since he was always at work—but the second you told her he was 32, she imagined the guy to have halitosis and already gone through crown balding. He didn’t, obviously. But she just never took him seriously. Even when he treated you well. Even when he checked all the right boxes. Because she knew, in a way you hadn’t yet admitted, that he wasn’t the one.

“Four months in and you’re gonna ask me to move states with you—before even moving in together, like are you insane?” you groaned.

“He was old,” she stated, like it explained everything.

You didn’t acknowledge her, too wrapped up in your disbelief to have actually processed what she said. “But what do you mean Hartford? Like what is there for me?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing for you in Hartford—probably just more old people.”

You sighed. “Exactly. And I mean, I get that he had his whole business thing, but what did he expect me to do there? Sit?”

She giggled at this. “Pretty much, I guess.”

You breathed a laugh through your nose. “Why would he ever think I’d want that.”

You heard her shuffling around, absent minded as she replied, “‘Cause he didn’t know you.” Her tone stated it like it was obvious.

Oh. A small crack splintered through your chest. It hurt to hear out loud what you’d been denying to admit to yourself for months. You opened your mouth to say something—to defend him, for some reason—but the words never came. Because she was right.

He did know some things about you; your schedule, your coffee order—except he always got it slightly wrong. He remembered the easy things, the surface-level details, but he never asked about anything deeper.

You exhaled. “But it just made sense, you know? He was kind of everything I ever wanted. To be spoiled and taken care of.”

Val didn’t hesitate. “But it wasn’t enough.”

The earlier amusement between you two faded, leaving something else in its place. A quiet frustration that never fully went away.

You sighed, rubbing a hand over your face. “I just don’t get it.”

Val hummed. “What? He was weird, you dodged a bullet, end of story.”

“No, but like—it’s always like this.” You exhaled sharply. “Like, it’s not like I chase these guys. I don’t throw myself at them. They find me. Literally normal dudes I think I can finally be on the same page with, and then boom—just kidding, I actually spawned from Satan's ass.”

Her laughter came back. “Yeah,” she admitted. “You do have the worst luck.”

“Thanks,” you said blankly.

She continued. “I mean it. The roster is insane, every guy you've dated is so… unique.”

“Fuck off, Val, I’m serious,” you groaned. “Like, is this just my fate? He was perfect and he still turned out to be a freak—like what the fuck.”

She tsked at you. “No, dude,” she started, “you’re just unlucky.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

Val sighed. “Look, you’re not doing anything wrong. You just keep meeting guys who think they want love but have no idea what that actually means. And because you’re normal, it just takes a while before their weird intentions start to fully reveal themselves.”

This was not the first time you were hearing this. After receiving this same advice for a second time post Oedipus break up—the first time being after No Balls—the words kind of lost meaning to you. You groaned again, turning on your side. “So what, is this it then? This is how it’s gonna be forever?”

“Stop. It won’t be.”

“But how do you know?”

Val shrugged, even though you couldn’t see her. “Because you wouldn’t still be trying if it was.”

When you didn’t reply, she softened. “Look, I know it feels like you’re just in this endless cycle of getting your hopes up just to be let down. And yeah, it’s awful and men fucking suck. But you’re not settling. You know what you want, and you know to walk away when it’s not right.”

You stayed quiet.

“And that means that when it is right, you won’t have to guess,” she continued. “You won’t have to sit there wondering if you’re forcing it or making excuses for them. You’ll just know.”

You let out a slow breath.

“You think?”

“No doubt.”

And for a while, that reassurance was enough.

———

Two months later…

It wasn’t some grand, cinematic moment. Just an aisle and a shelf of pasta sauces.

You were trying to plan dinner, caught in a silent debate with yourself over which jar to pick. Too many options. As you scanned the shelf, you reached for two bottles, one in each hand, and carefully read the labels to compare. Four Cheese Combo or Four Cheese Blend.

“What the fuck is the difference?” you mumbled to yourself.

It was only your third time at this store. After getting swept up in a New Year’s resolution and convincing yourself you needed to eat better, you decided to start shopping organic. Not that organic was the issue—you still ate terribly, mostly instant ramen and frozen pizzas. But now, they were from the organic store. The effort made you feel better.

Over your past couple trips, you’d noticed the actual health freaks who shopped here didn’t usually venture into ‘preservatives’ territory, so it startled you when a voice came out of nowhere down this normally empty aisle.

“That’s a good one,” he said.

Did he say that to me?

You couldn’t tell. You weren’t the type to initiate small talk with strangers. At the very least, you usually said ‘hi’ before speaking to someone. So, naturally, because you never would’ve said that, you decided the comment was meant for someone else, and pretended not to hear it.

When you didn’t respond, he added, “I mean, unless you like watery sauce, then go with the other one.”

Oh, he did say it to me. Against your better judgment, you turned to the voice that spoke.

You didn't expect him.

He was gorgeous—effortlessly so. Not in a way that demanded attention, but in a way that made you look twice when you finally noticed. His build was deceptively modest, swallowed by the loose hoodie draped over his shoulders and the baggy jeans hanging low on his hips. But as he reached for his own pasta sauce, his slow and steady movements revealed a quiet definition in his forearm. The way his fingers curled around the jar. The subtle flex of his biceps covered by nothing in his wife-beater. You blushed. Sexy sleeper build aisle 8.

“I mean, I don’t know much about pasta sauce, but my mom swears by this one,” he said, pulling you from your thoughts for a third time.

My mom swears by this one. You had heard those words one too many times from Oedipus. This made you want to leave him there 0 for 3 with no response. But you noticed he had beautiful blue eyes. That was one of your two weaknesses—the other being ‘guys who look like they can crush me like a bug’— and Sleeper Build checked one of the boxes, so you entertained him.

“Didn’t know they hired the pasta patrol here,” you finally replied.

This made him laugh. Not just a quick exhale or that obligatory half chuckle people do to keep a conversation going, but an actual, full laugh. It caught you off guard.

“Pasta patrol,” he said through giggles.

His demeanor had completely changed. The initial nonchalance he held melted into something weirdly charming. His sharp features were softened by a perfect smile. His beautiful blue eyes disappeared in the squint of his laughter.

You chuckled despite yourself, and stared at him a little awkwardly. Your response wasn’t even that funny to you, but his reaction was contagious.

"Sorry, I wasn’t trying to interrupt you,” he continued once his laughter finally subsided, “just overheard you kinda struggling.” He nodded toward the jars you forgot were still in your hands.

You returned them back to their places on the shelf, and at the same time, you felt his gaze flicker over the rest of your body. You couldn’t tell if it was out of curiosity or maybe, hopefully, out of interest. It lingered just long enough for you to notice and make your stomach flutter.

You tried to brush off the feeling. “I don’t know if I should be trusting a recommendation from someone with that cart,” you bargained. Both of you turned to his basket—premade pastry dough, a pack of pepperoni, some mozzarella, and two Cadbury cream eggs.

He smiled at you. “If you tried my Pocket Pizzas, you’d know it’s fire.” He set his sauce down with the rest of his haul.

Tried the what?— “Sorry, tried your what?”

“My Pocket Pizzas. Pocket Pizza pizza pockets.” He explained like the repetition somehow clarified anything.

You didn’t respond. Your lips parted slightly, brain catching on something that surely wasn’t what he meant. Except now, it was all you could hear—pocket pussy, pocket pizza. Same thing essentially.

Sleeper Build, oblivious, glanced toward your cart. “Better than that frozen stuff,” he said, looking at the pizza pops in your basket.

The grin tugging at his pretty lips voided any offense you should’ve taken. Instead it sent butterflies through your stomach. You still very obviously judged him through a face you made. “I think the name of yours alone makes yours worse, actually.”

“Not fucking with a Pocket Pizza?” He said it so casually that it took a second for the words to register. A beat passed before his expression shifted, brows furrowing and lips pursing as he crooked his neck back slightly. Pause. It was written clearly all over his face as his thoughts finally caught up to your own.

Laughter broke between you two.

“Don’t think I could if I wanted to,” you replied, no longer referring to the name of his homemade recipe but the sex toy itself. Your giggles lingered as you tilted your head. “Do you though?”

He chuckled. “I mean—” He started, then exhaled through his boxy smile, backtracking his words. “Actually you know what? Forget it.”

With anyone else, you would’ve just let it go. But you noticed a faint flush of red start to bloom on his cheeks, so you pressed on. “No, my bad. You were so confident about it a second ago. Keep going.”

He laughed a little harder this time, running a hand along the side of his jaw. “Yea, no, we’re moving past this.”

“No? Well I guess, your pocket pizza just can’t be that good then.” You hummed, and after a moment you finished, “Mine’s better.”

His eyes widened in subtle disbelief as he stared at you, his heart throbbing smile never leaving his face.

It wasn’t like you to be this flirty and direct with a stranger. Or it was, but usually the circumstances would be different—at the club or the bar, under the influence, and with guys you didn’t really find that attractive, because it was just easier to flirt with them when they weren’t that cute.

But here you were, sober and very much attracted. Maybe it was his biceps. His strong sleeper build biceps and the way he was laughing at everything you said and the blush creeping further down his neck that was fueling you with the same confidence as a third shot of tequila.

His gaze flickered to your mouth for a second before he started shaking his head. “You’re a freak.”

You chuckled. “What?” Playing innocent, you reached into your cart. “Gourmet. Truly can’t get much better than this.” Finally steering the conversation back to actual food, you grabbed the frozen box and pointed at the packaging—Gourmet Pizza Pops.

He looked like he was about to reply when a voice called down the aisle.

“Chris! How fucking long does it actually take to pick a sauce?”

Both of you turned toward the source.

Two guys strode toward you, their presence effortlessly filling the space. Even from a distance, their resemblance to him, to Chris, was undeniable—same height, same sharp features, same easy confidence. Triplets, you assumed.

When they reached you, they dropped their items into the cart—a case of Dr. Pepper from one; a carton of eggs, Easy Mac, and a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the other. Guess you weren’t the only one making questionable choices at the organic store.

“I got it Nick, relax.” Chris replied, pointing to the sauce.

Nick—broader, a little older-looking—glanced down at the basket, then started shifting things around like he was looking for something. “What about the paper towels?”

Chris shrugged. “I haven’t gone yet.”

Nick shared a look with the third brother. You noticed this one had the same pretty biceps, but his were decorated with a sleeve of tattoos. He spoke this time. “So what the fuck have you been doing the past 15 minutes?”

Chris lifted a hand in question. He turned his head to look at you, silently asking ‘are they deadass’ through his expression. Not wanting to mediate what was clearly the start of a sibling debate, you just let out a quiet laugh and shook your head.

He turned back to them. “I was just getting other stuff,” he excused.

It was then both brother’s gazes shifted past Chris to meet yours. The slight annoyance in Nick’s expression instantly faded into something more attentive. You also caught the tattooed one’s slight eyebrow raise. Their stares were intimidating. They were all gorgeous.

You waved at them, pizza pops still in your hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hold him up.”

A look of realization flashed through Tattoo’s features, then he smiled at you. “Oh. No you’re good,” he reassured. He shifted his eyes back to Chris, “I know he was probably the one keeping you, anyways.”

“Matt, shut your mouth.” Chris’s chuckle cut through his serious tone.

Weak protest. Matt wasn’t done. ��15 minutes, dude, you could’ve just said you were flirting.” His lips curled into a knowing grin that matched his tone as he teased his brother. Nick raised a hand to his mouth to stop the giggle that accidentally slipped past.

The way he said it, like you weren’t standing right there, made you want to pass out. Especially knowing that Matt was blaming the wrong person. But you weren’t gonna tell him that you were the one who instigated the pocket pussy conversation.

“What are you talking about, we were just talking.” Chris defended, even though all four of you knew Matt was right.

You assumed it was somehow through their magical telepathic triplet senses that they could tell Chris was lying, but at least the other two were oblivious to what you guys were just talking about.

Nick chimed in. “Right. So did you give her your number yet, or were we still getting there?”

Chris had his head turned away from you, but by the way his shoulders shook slightly, you could tell he started laughing again. “I literally hate you guys so much,” he said through his giggles.

Despite the second hand embarrassment—or honestly, direct embarrassment that you were feeling from the way they called out their brother, the three of them fell into a comfortable fit of laughter with each other.

Nick started again once his giggles subsided some. “You need to hurry up, we still need to film.”

Chris exhaled and tilted his head backwards for a second, recomposing himself before turning back toward you. “I’m so sorry about that.”

“No, it’s okay,” you said casually, matching their chuckles with your own to mask the awkwardness you were feeling from the whole situation.

He still gave you a sincere apologetic smile, then reached into his pocket for his phone. He scrolled through the device for a few seconds before offering it to you. “Let me make you a Pocket Pizza one time.” The phone was open to a new contact page. “Trust me, you’ll never go back to the frozen shit.”

You hesitated for a second. The forwardness of his actions, despite everything his brothers just teased him for, caught you off guard. “I’m not eating it if you’re gonna keep calling it that.” The three of them giggled at this, and you took his phone anyway.

You entered your number and handed the phone back, your fingers brushing against his. His touch lingered—a second too long—but his eyes never looked away from yours. The earlier tension returned for a moment, brief but just as intense before it was broken once again by Nick’s voice.

“It was nice to meet you…” Nick looked at you expectantly.

“___,” you filled in, smiling.

At the same time, Chris glanced down at his phone, reading the name you’d saved in his contacts. He quickly typed something before his brothers started pulling him away.

Matt spoke this time. “Lovely to meet you, ___.” He flashed you their boxy smile. “Sorry to rush things, but we still gotta upload.”

Film and upload. You had no idea what that meant, but there was no time to ask. You made a mental note to bring it up the next time you spoke to Chris and settled for a simpler reply instead.

“All good. You guys have a good night.”

Chris’s eyes crinkled in a smile as they met yours once more. “See you later, ___.”

You waved as they walked away, finally turning your attention back to the reason you were here in the first place—to pick a sauce. But before you could even reach for one, you heard them speak again from further down the aisle.

“She’s so pretty.”

“Dude, I know. She’s also so funny.”

Their voices were hard to distinguish. You couldn’t tell that it was Nick and then Chris who spoke, but the compliments made your stomach tie regardless. Unable to help yourself, you glanced back at them.

Your phone suddenly buzzed in your pocket—the two-minute-delay iMessage reminder taking back your attention.

Unsaved Number: ___ sounds way better than a pocket pizza

Unsaved Number: Sorry

Heat rushed to your cheeks instantly. You brought both hands to your face, letting out an “oh my god” before quickly remembering where you were. You glanced around, checking if they—or anyone else—had caught you losing your shit. The preservatives aisle was empty once again.

Chris grocery store: omg hahaha

Chris grocery store: sick freak

You saved the number and hit send, smiling as you reached for the Four Cheese Combo—his recommendation. Little did you know how much this sauce and this chance encounter was going to change everything.

———

hiiii! thank u for reading 🫂 i love sexy sleeper build christopher sturniolo. lemme know whatcha think ily<3

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patscorner · 10 months ago

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CHAPTER ONE: BUY-IN

pairings: paige x oc

contains: pining, angst

word count: 2,575

a/n: okay, one chapter in. let me know what you guys think, my inbox is open. also let me know what you might like to see, the outline isn't set in stone. school has started so it might be a bit before the next chapter, but it's coming. enjoy!

My palms sweat as I dial the familiar number, one I’d memorized by heart. It’d been far too long since I’d called her, and I don’t really have a reason, so the bullshit ‘I’ve been busy’ excuse will just have to do.

=======================

JUNE 2023

“Hello?”

I clear my throat in an attempt to swallow the lump that magically appeared. “H-Hey, Azzi, uh-it’s CJ.”

“Who?” My heart dropped to my shoes as my brain scrambled to pick up the pieces of one word.

“I-uh..”

Azzi chuckles. “I’m just messing with you. What’d you need?” I let out a breath as I rub my head.

“Oh my god, I actually hate you, holy shit.” I laugh.

“Apparently, since it’s been, what, like three months since we’ve talked.” I could practically hear the eye roll.

It’s really not fair for me to ignore Azzi because, really, she hadn’t done anything but be my best friend.

Our best friend.

And maybe that our was the problem. Maybe that combination, the unity of the word, and everything behind it was a mistake. Maybe, letting her etch herself into the scrolls of my heart, so much so that the ink bled together. Maybe the missed cue of when mine became hers, and hers became ours, was poor oversight.

Maybe letting Azzi become collateral damage was where me and her went wrong.

I laugh it off, ignoring the pang it sends to my chest.

“Yeah, well, I have to mentally prepare myself to lose brain cells. Can’t let it fuck up my game.” I respond, earning a laugh from the brown-haired girl. There’s nothing like the nostalgia a sound can bring you. The memories and feelings, all hidden behind a single noise.

After she gathers herself, she sighs. “So what’s up?”

And suddenly, I remember why I’d called.

“Yeah, uh, there’s something I kinda wanted to talk to you about, before you hear it somewhere else..” I say, picking at my earlobe nervously.

“Ooookay… Is everything okay..?” her voice relaying softer through the phone.

I nod. “Yeah, it’s nothing bad. Or, at least, I don’t think..” I fall silent for a moment. This couldn’t be as bad as I’m making it seem, right? Right?

“Either way, I’d just rather talk about it in person.”

Azzi hums. “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Where do you want to meet?” I consider my options. I’m only in Minnesota to visit my family for about a week, and it’d take another day to get to Virginia… I would be back in time to move into my dorm. It’s inconvenient but doable.

“I could drive up to you in like a week, I’ll just meet you at your house.” I mutter thoughtfully.

“Wait, are you in Texas or Minnesota?”

“I’m about an hour out from Minny.” I answer, slightly confused.

“Oh, I’m here with Paige and the boys. We’re actually headed to the fair soon. You could meet up with us if you wanted.”

“Shit…uh, I didn’t think about them...” I mumble.

That’s a lie. Truthfully, every time I think of home, memories of the blonde flood my mind instantly. But then I’m reminded of what she’d done. How she ripped herself out of my chest like velcro, instead of carefully detangling herself, ridding herself off all strings attached. All for someone else.

For someone who used to be mine.

“Hello..? You still there?”

I shake my head to clear my thoughts. “Yeah, yeah, sorry. Uh, th-yeah, that’s fine.” I sigh, quickly trying to recover.

Azzi sighs through the phone. “Look, I still don’t know what happened between you two, so if you don’t want to come-” she amends.

“No! No, okay, sorry. I- just gotta change my clothes…” I say, biting my lip as I lie through my teeth. “I’ll just meet you guys there?”

I could practically hear Azzi smile. “That sounds good, just call me when you get there.”

After we say our goodbyes, I hang up. I groan as I throw my head back.

I’m always up to a challenge, but the thought of going and having to function around her, after all she’s said and done; after she’s ruined us before there even was an us, that might be more difficult than I’d thought.

It’s not like I have a choice, though. I’m gonna have to learn how to be around her every day, especially when the season starts.

_________

“Drew, bro, if you spray me with that shit one more time, I swear to god, I will beat your ass.” I glared at him as he hid behind Jose, who put his hands up in surrender. I should not have bought him that water gun.

I rolled my eyes as I turned back to Azzi, who kept looking around, then back at her phone, repeating the process. I kicked her in her shin. “Ow! Paige, what the fuck?” Azzi complains, rubbing her leg. “Who are you looking for?” I say, glancing around.

She looks back down at her phone. “Nobody. Just people watching.” I scoff. “Bullshit, are we being spied on, or what?” She shakes her head, looking up around once more. “Okay, bro, what’s going on? Who’s ass do I have to beat?”

Azzi rolls her eyes at me. “You couldn’t beat Ohio, let alone anyone else.”

I sit back in shock, putting my hand on my heart as I feign offense. “Okay, their defense was so unexpected. You can’t even put that on me.” She shrugged, looking back at her phone and standing up. “Where-”

“Bathroom.” she mutters. I watch as she practically sprints away. If only she did that shit in practice. I shake my head.

I open my phone and begin mindlessly scrolling through instagram, ignoring the thousands of times I’ve been tagged in pictures that I’d taken with fans today. Suddenly, I freeze.

It’s a post by the official UConn women’s basketball team. It’s a picture of CJ in her Texas jersey, the number 43 on the front. Her hair is in her signature bun, hair slicked back carefully, as she drives towards the basket. The caption reads “Welcome CJ West!”

What the fuck?

I’m in such a state of shock that when Azzi comes back, I don’t notice the figure next to her. I glance up at her, then back at my phone. “Yo, Azzi, have you seen this?” I look up at her again, and this time, I let my eyes flick to the person next to her.

CJ.

Forgetting what I’d just seen, my jaw drops as I take her in. She’s just as beautiful, if not more, as she was the last time I’d seen her. She’s wearing a basic casual outfit; a plain white crop top, paired with blue jeans, and gold jewelry that always makes her hazel eyes seem brighter. Or maybe that’s just how they look naturally.

“Oh, shit.” I whisper, clearly in awe. She rolls her eyes.

Fuck.

“Hello to you, too, Paige.” Double fuck.

That fucking voice.

I clear my throat, trying to recover. “Hey, CJ.” I breathe. The lighthearted air is swallowed by suffocating tension as I make eye contact with a stranger.

“Oooookay…” Azzi says, clearing her throat. “This is about as awkward as I’d thought it’s be…” she mutters. CJ looks at her. “I told you.”

I look between them. “What’s going on?”

Azzi looked at CJ expectantly, gesturing to her to speak. CJ rolled her eyes and huffed. “I-uh, I have news.” CJ glanced between Azzi and I. She cleared her throat as she picked at her earlobe, a habit she’d picked up when she was younger. I’d always hold her hand to stop her, and I want to do that more than anything right now. I think I’ve lost that right, though.

“I’m transferring to UConn.”

My eyes flick to Azzi’s who’s jaw drops. “Really? How-Why?”

CJ shrugs, trying feign carelessness. “Better environment, Texas heat ain’ my thing.” To the normal eye, CJ’s behavior could be seen as normal. But to me? I see the way her eyelids flutter, the hesitation behind her pretty lips, and the way her eyebrows raise just slightly. She’s a good liar.

Just not good enough.

I don’t say anything, though, not when she gets dragged away by Drew and Jose, not when Drew practically begs her to stay and hang out with us, and certainly not when she’s sat in front of me on the ride Jon chooses. I don’t say anything when the boys get swept away, and it’s just the three of us, like it always used to be.

It’s only when Azzi goes to the bathroom, leaving us alone for the first time in years that I say anything. “Try not to kill each other, please.” She orders as she scurries to the restroom.

It’s silent for a moment, and I can almost see the relief on her face when she thinks I’ll hold my tongue.

Unfortunately, I’m nobody’s peace.

“How long are you here for?” I ask, stuffing my hands into my black cargo pants. She looks up at me. “Uh-just for the week, gotta move outta my dorm, and it’s a long drive, so.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You driving on your own?”

CJ nods. “Yeah, I’ll just sleep in my car or something.” I shake my head. “No fucking way, bro, you serious? That’s like a twenty hour drive.”

She crosses her arms. “So? That’s how I got here.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not goin’ on your own.” I say. Truthfully, I knew she’d be fine on her own, but something about her driving back to Texas, just to go back to Connecticut, doesn’t sit well with me. I’m only concerned for her safety. Or at least that’s what I decide to tell myself.

She scoffs. “What, you’re gonna come with me?”

“I could, if that’s what you want.”

“That’s the last thing I want.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“It’s not. Didn’t even wanna see you today.”

I turned to her. “Seriously, dude?” She looks at me. “Yes, seriously.”

I roll my eyes. I know I hurt her. I know I fucked up. But that was three years ago. We were kids. I was eighteen. I can legally drink now. It’s been three years. How can someone be upset for that long? “You gotta get over it one day.” I say before thinking about it.

I regret it when I see a flash of hurt on her face. “Get over it? That’s easy for you to say, Paige.” she spits out harshly.

Ouch.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, even though I know exactly what she meant. “Exactly what it sounds like. You get over shit quickly.” She shrugs. Her nonchalant tone pisses me off more than the words. I take a step towards her. “I didn’t ‘get over’ anything. There was nothing to ‘get over’. You were just jealous-”

“Jealous?” She interrupts incredulously. “Paige, you stuck your tongue down her throat!”

“And that pissed you off. Hence, jealousy.” I shrug.

“You were my best friend! It’s not fucking jealousy, it’s betrayal!” She practically yells, taking a step closer, our toes almost touching.

“I didn’t betray anybody! I was drunk! She was drunk! And I apologized afterward!” I say, trying to ignore the way her scent invades my senses.

She laughs dryly, taking a step back. “Right, you’re right. Yeah, an apology fixes it all.” I blink. “Really?”

CJ stares at me. “You’re a fucking idiot.” she says, and the only emotion I can pick up is anger. “I know.” I whisper.

Just then Azzi comes out of the bathroom, looking between us. “Everything okay?”

“Yep.” We say at the same time, and Azzi raises her eyebrows. “Aaaalrighty then… Can we find the boys, I’m ready to go.”

I nod and begin to walk behind Azzi, but I don’t miss the way CJ looks at me. I’m no expert, but if I know one thing, it’s the gaze of someone who’s been heartbroken.

I know because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it every time I’ve looked in the mirror for the past three years.

__________

“There’s no way you’re driving to Texas by yourself.” Azzi gapes from the corner seat of the booth. Jose convinced Paige to drive us to some random diner. She’s so easy.

I roll my eyes as I take a sip of my sprite. “Bro, you sound like Paige.” I grumble.

“The fact that I’m agreeing with her should tell you how fucking stupid you sound.” she said. I look at her in shock as Paige throws her head back, cackling.

Fuck.

That stupid fucking laugh paired with that stupid fucking smile makes it so fucking hard to be mad at her. Maybe I should let it go. It has been three years…

No.

Instead of entertaining the thoughts, I opt for kicking her shin instead. “What do you think that says about you, dumbass.” She immediately shuts up, and I roll my eyes as Jon almost spits out his Dr. Pepper.

“I’ll have you know I was AP player of the year.” She defends, eyebrows furrowed. I raise my eyebrows unimpressed. “Still holding onto that, huh?”

Azzi laughs, and Paige shoots her a look. “Can we get back on task, please?” That seems to direct all the attention back to me. “Driving to Texas? All on your own?” Paige says.

“Yes. Did y’all forget how I got here? I didn’t fucking speedwalk.”

“Yeah, but you’re gonna go to Texas, spend, what, two full days staying up late and packing up three years of your life, and then driving the… twenty-nine, thirty, hour trip to Connecticut?” Azzi reasons.

I blink. “Well, when you put it like that..” I mutter.

Paige rolls her eyes. “Dude, just let us come with you. We can drive you there, so your car isn’t sitting in the middle of nowhere-”

“Isn’t your car in Storrs?”

“And we can switch drivers. Stay at a hotel halfway there, and then drive the rest of the way the day after.” She finishes, ignoring my comment. Before I can answer, the waiter comes with our food.

As he sets the plates down, I look at Paige, just taking her in. She’s wearing a plain black hoodie, with some red, white, and blue shorts on. It’s not much, but she could be wearing a trashbag and still be the hottest motherfucker around. It’s almost disgusting how effortlessly gorgeous she is.

I wouldn’t mind having someone to help me get to Connecticut. It’s a long drive, and it should be an easy yes. The truth is, when she looks like that, and acts like this, and talks the way she does… I don’t know how I’m going to get through the season, let alone a road trip.

I watch her lips as she says a thank you to the waiter, quickly averting my eyes when she looks at me. When the waiter leaves, I look back up and roll my eyes at her poor attempt to hide her smirk. As much as I wanted to wipe the smirk off her face, driving alone to Texas sounded dreadful. Plus, Paige has an okay music taste. Might not be that bad.

“Fine. You guys can come with me to Texas.”

Azzi smiles, clearly satisfied. Paige grins like a madman, clapping her hands. “This is going to be fun.”

I roll my eyes for the upteenth time tonight.

What the fuck did I just get myself into?

=======================

taglist: @wintersstan @bueckerrss @lilia22hicks @fake-intelligences @girlokwhatever @pbloverr @breeloveschris-deactivated20240 @cosmopretty @hellokittyfeenie @averagelobotomyenjoyer @elliewilliamsthang @chelisbae @angelscovee @st4rrzynight @cherryswisherz

#patsworks #paige buckers #paige #paige bueckers x reader #paige bueckers #paige x reader #paige buckets #paige bueckers fanfiction #paige bueckers fic #paige bueckers fluff #paige bueckers head cannons #paige bueckers headcannons #paige bueckers x female oc #paige bueckers x oc #cj west #ace of hearts

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outstretchedwingzz · 7 months ago

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♱ timeloop yan♱

i was scrolling back through some old art and found a drawing from like four years ago of my first ever yan oc!! so now he's y'all's problem hope u love him <3

(THIS IS SO LONG FOR A PART ONE LMAO IM SO SORRY)

⟡ The one on the right is the old art of him!! My boy!!

⟡ His name at one point was Lucas, however I'm retconning that and thinking of a new one because Why Would I Choose Lucas

⟡ Some Tuesdays are just better than others, you've decided. You had a rough day, some kid had spilled fruit punch down your front, you had spent a frankly ridiculous amount of time trying to de-popcorn the aisles of the movie theater you worked at, and you kept getting pestered by some shy dude who wouldn't even buy a ticket! He just kept asking nonsense questions and then shuffling back to the arcade!

⟡ All you wanted to do when you got home was shower until you were a raisin, play video games until your brain was mashed potatoes, and then curl up in your bed.

⟡ The next morning you wake up feeling a little better, very little residual blah left from how shit your previous day was. Luckily, you had today off to reset and recharge.

⟡ That being said, you stayed up late and slept in even later, only to be woken up to the sound of your phone ringing where you had tossed it the night before. You groan and grumble as you get up, shuffling your way to your phone and picking it up.

⟡ It's your boss, because why wouldn't it be, and he's asking you why the hell you aren't there yet! Your brain takes a moment to kick back into gear before you answer that you had worked a double YESTERDAY and had today off.

⟡ All you get is an angry "Check again! And be here before I start goin' grey, yeah?" and then he just hangs up on you. You fucking hate that guy. Still, you check your schedule while grumbling and muttering some not so nice things.

⟡ The shock and dread settles in your stomach when your calendar finally loads in, and in big, bolded letters at the top it tells you that today is Tuesday, and you definitely have work today.

⟡ You register that "oh. i think im passing out." in the second before you hit the corner of your desk.

⟡ You wake up with a gasp, sitting up quick and clutching your chest, looking around wildly only to find yourself.... back in your bed. The clock on your wall tells you it's morning. You scramble quickly to your feet, rushing to grab your phone and begging it to not be slow as you open your calendar.

⟡ Tuesday.

⟡ Now, skipping past the inevitable few Tuesday long breakdown you have where you simply refuse to believe this is happening, you eventually figure out the loop resets every night when you go to sleep, or if you somehow die. That was a fun few days.

⟡ After a week or so of this, and of screaming profanities as your boss over the phone for a few of the loops, you decide to maintain some normalcy you were gonna start going to work. Sure you never gained any money, but at least it got you out of your house and sometimes you could even pretend that things were different day in and day out.

⟡ After awhile even that gets boring though, when everyone becomes recognizable, and you begin to know what movie tickets they're gonna get and their exact food order.

⟡ It's only after three days of monotony (yet you refuse to stop going to work, clinging to the last shreds of some kind of normal) that you realize that it's not all the same.

⟡ Well, one thing changes. That guy, the one who kept asking questions that first day. Sometimes he wasn't even there, and everyday he seemed to have different questions. Ranging from personal, to stuff about the work, but still different.

⟡ It's that sudden lightbulb moment that has you going off the rails just a tiny bit.

⟡ You're stuck waiting a few days for the next time he comes in, but eventually he does. He always does. He's hardly able to get a word out before you're scrambling over the counter, and grabbing him by the front of his shirt. You choke him a little on his own necklace, but that's fine.

⟡ It's not until you're in the corner of that dusty little arcade he hangs out in that you shove him up against the wall, glaring daggers into his soul.

⟡ (Ignore the way he wets his lips and just how much it looks like he's giving you heart eyes right now it's all totally in your imagination.)

⟡ "Who the fuck are you, and how the fuck are you doing this?" Are the first words out of your mouth. He looks confused for a second, going to open his mouth when you just start rambling.

⟡ About the never ending fucking Tuesday, about having to clean up the same spills everyday, about getting the same bullshit call from your boss, about selling everyone the same! Fucking! Movie ticket! It's never ending!

⟡ It's not until you stop to breathe that you realize just how hard he's shaking. Just how his chest heaves as he sobs, hands having came up to clutch at your wrist desperately.

⟡ You step back quickly, dropping his shirt and in turn dropping him. He scrambles forward on his knees, gripping the thighs of your pants with shaking hands.

⟡ "You're stuck too?"

#yandere #sub yandere #yan boy #timeloop yan #yandere oc #yandere x you #yandere x reader #gn reader #hes so gross i love him

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bratbarzal · 11 months ago

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On Your Side (NH13) / Chapter One

Pairing: Nico Hischier x Fem!OC Poppy Jensen*

*I say it's an OC, it's just a name and third person POV. I use minor character descriptions because I don’t get on with writing vague reader inserts/YN for long-form, story heavy fics, but I will generally try to avoid including race and body type or really any physical descriptors. I’m always open to feedback on my writing, or how to be more inclusive.

WC: 14k

Chapter Warnings: angst, miscommunication, drinking, some fluff!! a cute flashback and a happy ending, references to poor relationships with parents/bad parenting (including minor mentions of maternally-encouraged disordered eating but not an ed), instagram stalking, allusions to cultural appropriation and problematic tweets, depictions of anxiety, a lot more words than necessary because it was like 23 words away from the next thousand and I'm nothing if not a yapper

Summary: Poppy Jensen’s job with the New Jersey Devils was supposed to be her first big step into adulthood - a way to prove to herself and her overbearing parents that she could make her own way in life. She was never supposed to become involved with any of the players. Becoming best friends with their captain was stupid. Getting her heart broken by him was tragic. Getting knocked up with his child was just plain messy.

Series Masterlist

Previous Part (Prologue)

A/N: thank you thank you thank you for all your kind messages and feedback around the first part it really means a lot to me!! taglist included at the end, if you want to be added pop me a message :)

when I first started writing and mapping this series out I never intended to have split pov chapters cos that's !a lot! but I ended up writing so much more from Nico's perspective I literally never write male pov cos who wants to be in the mind of a man?? not me. but Nico comes easy to me what a man what a man what a mighty good man. he's a bit dumb in this series but who isn't. don't shame him. he is very precious to me.

Poppy

How Poppy ever thought she would have been able to get away with tricking Jack Hughes into forgetting she said she would come to his party by just waiting out his drunkenness, she does not know.

The guy is a nuisance.

Her phone has been blowing up since she and Nia started getting ready for their evening festivities, sharing a bottle of rosé between the two of them as they both sit in Poppy’s bedroom doing their hair and makeup.

Jack: What time do u think u’ll get here? 😬

Poppy: idk

She’d tried being somewhat aloof in the hopes he would move on from bothering her and she could let the wine do it’s intended purpose of blurring her mild irritation from the day, but she’s starting to think mild irritation is Jack’s middle name.

Jack: rough estimate?

Poppy: roughly? 🤔

Poppy: idk 🙂

Jack: cool

Jack: ur uninvited

Poppy: cool

Poppy: see ya next year

Jack: ur reinvented

Jack: invited*

Jack: attendance is mandarin

Jack: mandatory* ffs

“Is that Hughes?” Nia questions the continuous buzz of Poppy’s phone. She’s sat on the floor in front of the mirror with a curling wand in hand, her hair 90% done and curls pinned up to set them. Nia has borrowed some of Poppy’s pyjamas, and is sat wearing a silk robe she didn’t even know she owned. “Dude needs a hobby.”

“Annoying me is his hobby, I think.” Poppy locks her phone and puts it face down on her dresser as she skims through her closet. She did have an outfit picked out already for her usual New Years celebrations, but bar hopping around New Jersey and attending a fancy private party with a bunch of rich athletes and their drop dead gorgeous partners are two different ballgames entirely.

Poppy knows all too well what it feels like to turn up to an organisation event underdressed, and she won’t be making the same mistake ever again - even if this is a party held in a player’s own residence, she knows that people will be dressed up.

It’s New Years Eve, for sake - everyone will be primed for a photo opportunity for the instagram dumps, her usual trusty top, skirt and boots combo won’t cut it.

“Blazer dress?” She holds up her latest suggestion so that her best friend can see it. She’s worn this one a couple times before, knows it makes her legs look incredible when she pairs it with some pantyhose so she doesn’t have to worry about getting too cold on the way there, but it limits her shoe options if she is going to cover her legs.

“Boring,” Nia throws back, and Poppy isn’t even sure she’s looked, but she knew the second she pulled it out her friend would decline - it’s what she’s been doing at everything Poppy owns for the past half an hour.

Poppy’s thankful she hadn’t started by trying on the options, knowing that if she was in and out of all the dresses she’d suggested, she would be a hot, flustered mess by now.

“Surely you’re running out of excuses by now, Ni,” Poppy sighs, stepping away from her closet so she could stare down Nia’s reflection in the mirror she was sat before. “You’re being absolutely no help.”

Nothing has been right.

The red strapless dress that flared out at the waist? Too Christmassy. The navy blue one shoulder body con dress? Too millennial. The rhinestone silver slip dress? Too much. The black off-the-shoulder mini dress? Too plain.

There is nothing in Poppy’s closet that is going to appease her best friend’s tastes, so she doesn’t know why she’s bothering.

“Just give me 2 minutes and I’ll find the one, trust me.”

“Why have you let me stress about this for so long if you’re just gonna come over here and pluck out something random like you’ve had it in mind this whole time?”

“Because I like winding you up and watching you go, Pop.” Nia winks at her from the mirror, holding up her near empty glass. “Top us both up, babe, you still have your cranky pants on from earlier.”

“I’m not cranky.” She mutters to herself, picking her phone back up from where she had just discarded it, and collecting both their glasses to take back through her apartment into her kitchen.

The device buzzes as soon as she sets it on the counter, but she ignores it in favour of pouring herself a drink, taking gulps of the rosé she’s just poured before topping both of the wine glasses back up with equal measures. She needs the extra pick-me-up to calm her nerves, and debates swigging down her second glass when she turns her phone back over.

Jack: ur grumpiness is contagious btw

Jack: u have broken my captain

Below Jack’s messages, he has sent through a picture. It’s a setting Poppy knows all too well, having only left a few hours ago after helping finish set up the party. In the midst of everything - decorations, attendees with drinks in hand chatting away and mingling with each other - Nico stands alone. He has his arms crossed, the sleeves of his sweater rolled up to his elbows, and he looks deep in thought. The people around him have turned into their own conversations, but he shows no interest in joining them, not in the picture at least.

It’s not the way she remembers him to be - not the way the pictures that still litter the front of her refrigerator portray him to be. Front and centre in most of them, tongue sticking out or mouth open in a face consuming grin in all, drink in hand in a few. Her free hand lifts until her fingers graze over one of the pictures - taken when the Devils had thrown a party after they had clinched the playoffs at the end of last season. Nico and Poppy stood together, his arm slung around her, cheeks smushed together as the rest of the boys and a couple other friends from within the team pressed themselves into the frame, smiles so big she can barely see their eyes.

She doesn’t know why the pictures are still up. She should have taken them down, by now. Made way for new memories. Pictures of her with Nia or any of her other friends, pictures of her with family, but she struggles to recall a memory as happy as the ones magnetised to her fridge door - none from the past few months, anyway.

Her eyes dart back to the picture on her phone. Nico doesn’t seem himself, but, then again, he hadn’t seemed entirely himself earlier, either. The few smiles he had offered hadn’t quite reached his eyes, she had noticed, and he constantly broke out into nervous ticks - chewing at the inside of his cheek, scratching at the skin of his elbow when he folded his arms across himself, rocking on the heels of his feet.

Sure, she hadn’t been the nicest to him, but that was the first time they had spent any longer than a minute in each other’s company since the summer, and she’d noticed him being off before that interaction.

He’d been similar when she’d seen him throughout the last week at work. Zoning out sometimes, eyes focusing on some far off spot until someone spoke directly to him and shook him out of it.

Whatever is going on with him isn’t her fault.

Her grumpiness is not contagious.

She isn’t even grumpy.

Poppy: not grumpy

Jack: he’s watching the door

Jack: has been since he got here

Jack: clearly waiting for someone 👀

Poppy: maybe you should talk to him instead of texting me

Poppy: be a good host

Jack: he’s waiting for u 🙂

Poppy: not friends, remember? 🙂

Jack: popstar

Poppy: 🙄

Jack: pls hurry

Jack: he’s depressing me

“This one.” Poppy hadn’t even heard her best friend approaching, her lack of shoes and her featherlight step making her the perfect creeper. Nia is stood on the other side of the kitchen island, holding a dress between both of her hands. Poppy puts her phone back down on the counter and leans over it to properly assess what is being shown to her.

The dress is asymmetric, she thinks - she can’t entirely tell by the way Nia is holding it and she knows she hasn’t worn it before, can still see the tags attached to the label inside - one of the shorter ones in her closet, but not in the way she will worry about flashing her co-workers all night, and a boat neck so she doesn’t have to worry about it being too revealing up top. It ticks most of her boxes. Not too bright, not too showy. She’s pretty certain she’d shown it as one of her earlier options, but Nia had turned her nose up at so many things she can’t remember. She only wishes she had saved herself 30 minutes of irritation by not asking in the first place.

She reaches out to where Nia is holding it, feeling the fabric between her fingers, testing to see if she can see them through the material and breathing a sigh of relief when she can’t. She takes the garment out of her friend’s reach entirely and holds it up in front of her body.

“Are you sure? It’s not too dressy?” Poppy mocks, trying to catch her reflection in the glass parts of her kitchen cabinets.

“It’s perfect,” Nia says, eyes pulled down by the flash of a new message on Poppy’s phone. Too distracted by trying to get a good look at herself, Poppy doesn’t notice her best friend pick up the device and start looking through.

She wouldn’t usually mind, but Nia has been dropping comments ever since she had arrived at Jack’s place earlier, and Poppy has only just been able to shrug off her commentary.

“Why is Jack sending you weird, sad pictures of Captain Sexy?”

“Could you stop calling him that?” Poppy frowns, reaching back out for her phone only for Nia to pull it out of her reach.

“Oh my God, Pop, he’s waiting for you!” She pouts, flipping the screen to show Poppy the newest picture of Nico sat checking his watch.

He’s doing her no favours right now.

“Don’t you start with that, too. I don’t know why everyone’s so intent on blaming me for how sad he looks.” she scoffs, “He’ll be waiting for his girlfriend, Ni,”

“About that,” Nia taps away at the phone before turning it again towards Poppy’s glare. “There’s no trace of a girlfriend on his insta,”

“You’re probably checking the wrong one.”

“Nope. Checked both while you were in the shower before. Not even a sneaky hand shot or a corny Christmas stocking with her name on.”

“Give me that,” Poppy finally manages to snatch the cell back, crease forming between her brows as she frowns down at the device, scrolling through Nico’s private instagram where she knows for a fact there had been pictures of him and Talia earlier in the month.

It isn’t that she checks frequently, she just hasn’t unfollowed him yet - wasn’t ready to put the final nail in the coffin wherein lied their friendship, so to speak - and so she’d seen them as he posted them. And she had maybe tried not to throw up in her mouth and had cast her phone beneath a stack of cushions and throws on her couch to avoid it for a few hours after the fact.

The pictures of them in New York City have disappeared. As have the ones from early December, where they were looking at Christmas trees together, wrapped up in matching hats and scarves with sickly sweet loving gazes cast toward each other. Nothing in November, when Talia had started coming to games and he had posted something with a corny caption along the lines of her being his biggest fan. No carousels, no story highlights, and when she checks his following list, Talia is nowhere to be found.

“Huh,” she mutters, going into the search function and trying to hide from her best friend that Talia is already one of the options there. She really needs to clear her history before that lands her in trouble.

Her latest post is a photo dump from Christmas, Talia with her family, as well as a few other pictures of her in New York throughout December, no sign of Nico in any of them, and he hasn’t liked it. Hasn’t commented his usual red heart. She has no qualms about checking her story - she and Talia were never introduced, she’ll have no idea who she is or care that she’s viewing her story, and she’s a model with thousands of followers, Poppy isn’t sticking out to her at all - and squints to read the text over a video of fireworks before realising it’s written in German. She isn’t in New Jersey. She’s already in 2024 in a whole other timezone, and has left Nico behind.

No wonder he’s grumpy.

Not her fault, after all.

When Poppy snaps herself out of sleuth mode, she looks up to meet Nia’s knowing gaze. She looks smug. Like she’s caught her out - and Poppy can’t even deny that she has. “Stalker."

“You started it.” She huffs, pointlessly locking her phone knowing Nia knows the password and throwing it onto the side.

“I was doing my due diligence as your best friend,” Nia shrugs, picking up the wine glasses as the pair make their way back toward Poppy’s room to finish getting ready. “If we’re heading into a New Year, we are doing so as new and improved women, Poppy. 2024 is the year of reconciliation!”

“I thought 2024 was the year of saying yes.” She mockingly references the mantra her best friend has been spouting since the start of December every time she made a somewhat irrational decision.

“That too, obviously.” Nia smiles big, waiting until Poppy has laid her dress out on the bed to hand her her drink over, holding her own glass out for a toast. “To saying yes to reconciliation!”

“You’re an idiot.” Poppy says, but clinks her glass, anyway.

“No, you are, Pop.”

Poppy can’t shake the buzz of anticipation as the two girls finish getting ready, the previous pool of trepidation in her gut swirling into something a little more optimistic.

It means nothing, she tries to tell herself as she fastens her earrings and fans her hair out down her back so it doesn’t get all tangled up in the hoops. Instagram isn’t a reflection of reality, Poppy, you know this.

There are several reasons the pictures could be gone.

There is a high possibility he has archived the posts because someone leaked the photos of him and Talia. They were on his private account for a reason, and Poppy knows the guys have all had trouble with this kind of thing before - photos from private events being posted all across fan socials because someone had taken screenshots from a hacked account. And she also knows there had been some kind of discourse around Talia online - about some tweets she’d put out years ago or a photo fans had found from a halloween party where her costume wasn’t entirely appropriate - but Poppy had tried not to get lost in it. She didn’t want to form an opinion on the girl without having properly met her, considering they still technically operated in the same circles despite Nico’s insistence that he and Poppy no longer did.

Nico is a protective person by nature - she’s been on the receiving end of it before, so she knows how quickly he can shut things down when intrusive fans become a little too much - and having his privacy violated like that would definitely cause him to be grumpy.

But with the looming possibility that she is looking too much into such an easily misinterpreted detail, the memory of their earlier interaction floods back to the forefront of her mind.

He had spoken to her. In clear, full sentences. As much as she had let him, at least. Had tried to initiate actual conversation, wanting a back and forth that she hadn’t been prepared to reciprocate. He had wanted to help her, wanted to be around, and for as long as he had been with Talia, he hadn’t wanted any of those things.

Something has to have happened, another voice chimes in within her. He’s been off all week, remember?

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

Poppy can’t let herself fall down the rabbit hole of what ifs and hypotheticals. Not anymore. She’s spent the last 4 months in her head about the whole thing, and if she’s going to enter the next year a new and improved woman, she needs to learn to let things go.

Saying yes to reconciliation is one thing, letting delusion take over is another.

She casts a final look over herself in the mirror, fingertips flitting over each of the touch points she wants to check before she leaves. Hair still feels smooth, free of knots and frizz so far, earrings are secure, necklace clasped and positioned right, heels buckled, a couple of rings on odd fingers.

When her right hand brushes her left wrist, her eyes dart over to the jewellery box on her nightstand, where all her favourite pieces are discarded at the end of each day. She knows what is sat in the bottom, has had to ignore its presence every day when she reaches in there to put on her other bits.

On her right wrist sits a welded bracelet, identical to the one currently wrapped around Nia and her other friend Kelsey’s wrists. The trio had gotten the matching permanent jewellery at a random pop-up one weekend in SoHo, figuring it was the more responsible thing to do than get tattoos to symbolise their friendship, and it has lasted well for being 3 years old. Still shiny, still pristine, still as gold as the day it was fixed to her arm. Still never cut off for the sake of an MRI like her mother keeps threatening she will need. Sometimes she wears a watch, usually one gifted to her by Nia after one of her trips to Japan - gold banded with a mother of pearl watch face, classic and goes with everything - but she likes it more for every day, and doesn’t trust herself not to lose it or break the dial if she’s out somewhere at night with a few drinks in her.

Her left wrist has been bare since September, around the time she stopped reaching out to Nico. Before that, since she had received it on her birthday a couple years ago, it had been adorned with her favourite piece of jewellery she had ever been given.

Most people gift Poppy silver, and not that she’s ever ungrateful to receive any present, she can’t bring herself to wear it outside of seeing whoever gave it to her. Silver just never looks right. Mixed metals aren’t her thing, either.

But Nico had gotten it right. A gemstone bracelet, pink tourmaline and opal stones dotted along a fine gold Figaro chain, similar to the one permanently enclosed around her other side. She had worn it every day, wouldn’t even take it off to sleep, and had only stopped when she started to feel the true weight of it.

A constant reminder of a once formidable, now broken link.

“Look, I know you said no gifts,” Nico turned to face Poppy as she unbuckled herself from his passenger seat, turning the engine off so he could focus on her for a minute without the sound of the car running in the background. He usually does the same thing when he drops her home, parks up on the street and leaves the car off until she’s safe inside.

“The flowers from the team are very pretty, so you’re forgiven for going against your word,” She gestured towards the bouquet sitting on his back seat, craning her neck to look back and admire them. She had never seen a red arrangement quite as beautiful as this one - the use of tulips instead of roses a nice touch. “They’ll be dead in a week, but I’ll cherish them for as long as I have them.”

When she looks back toward Nico, he’s wearing a shy smile, and when her gaze drops to his shuffling hands, she notices the elongated black box within them.

“What’s that?” She asked, on too much of a high from such a good day to give him a hard time about it, a playful smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as her eyes look back up to meet his.

“We don’t have to call it a gift if you don’t want to,” he extended his hand out towards her, the box clutched between his fingers. “It can be payback for all the snacks you’ve given me in the last year.”

“The snacks you’ve stolen.” She corrected.

“Well, when you keep your office stocked with the stuff only I like, is it really stealing? That sounds like a trap to me.”

“I’ve been collecting evidence against you for your crimes. What I do with it depends entirely on what’s in here.” She had tried to shake the box by her ear to gauge the contents.

“You’ll like it.”

“You sound very sure of yourself.”

“Open the box, Mohn.” Nico’s voice was lower, commanding, and he leaned forward over the console, so close she could probably count his eyelashes if he gave her the time to do so.

The box itself was fancy, bound in black velvet and magnetised like a sunglasses case, so she knew it had to be something nice in there - knew he wasn’t pranking her with team merchandise or a bobblehead version of him for her desk like Jack had tried to give her.

She tried to shrug off the heat of his gaze as she pried it open, never enjoying opening gifts in front of the giver, but her mind went blank as she looked down at what he had gotten her.

The stones in the bracelet matched that of one of the rings she already owned and wore every day, an ornate opal ring passed down from her late grandmother. There were pink gems in there too, and she knew as soon as she saw them what they were.

“It’s your birthstones, right?”

She nods, unable to form any words yet, passing the box back over and holding out her left hand. Most other people she knows don’t pay enough attention to notice she wears gold everyday, and Nico knows her birthstones. “Could you put it on for me, please?”

Nico clasped the chain around her wrist, taking her hand in his and angling it a few ways to make sure it was the perfect fit - loose enough to move around and reposition with ease but not enough to fall past the base of her thumb. “Is it okay?”

“It’s beautiful, Nico.” She smiled softly up at him, watching his eyes reflect the dim ambient light in the car. “I’m never taking it off.”

“You probably should around water,” he had chuckled, bashfully, looking down and breaking their gaze, “I found it in a market back home, I’m not sure how durable it is.”

Poppy knew real gold when she saw it - knew the shimmer of natural gemstones and the shine of genuine opal, the stone on the bracelet mirroring that on her ring that she knew was antique and valuable. And although she didn’t care if it was expensive or not, she understood what he was trying to do.

He hadn’t just stumbled across this on some street market.

Poppy reached over to grab either side of his face, leaning across the console and planting a firm, loud kiss on his forehead, chuckling slightly to herself when she pulls away and he wipes at where her lips had just been in faux disgust. “I’ll look after it, I promise.”

“Happy Birthday, Mohn.”

“Thank you, Nico.”

She had found herself admiring the bracelet every time it caught the light, and when she had met up with her mother days later to celebrate her birthday with her family, the authenticity of it was confirmed when she had heard her shocked gasp - her mom, an expert in fine jewellery, spending the entire evening fawning over it as if she was jealous it wasn’t clasped around her own wrist - and had spent the evening fighting off questions about who had gifted it to her.

She shouldn’t wear it tonight, she thinks. That would be a bad omen - an assumption that one conversation between the two of them was going to immediately put them on the straight and narrow path back to being friends again.

But it’s just a bracelet - a gorgeous one, at that, and Poppy has it in her head that she’s one beautiful accessory short of perfection. She marches over to the jewellery box, opening it up and picking the bracelet up from where it has its own compartment. No one will even notice she tells herself as she manages to clasp the metal around her wrist with one hand, it doesn’t mean anything.

She is about to enter the year of saying yes, after all.

“You good to go?” Nia asks from the doorway of Poppy’s bedroom, Poppy’s phone stretched out for her to take.

“Let’s go.”

Poppy: omw stresshead

Jack: finally!!!!!!

Poppy and Nia arrive to a party that is well and truly in full swing. It’s crowded, Jack having invited all the team and a quite lot of the staff, and everyone has brought a plus one, so Poppy is glad she overcompensated for him when she ordered all the drinks and food. She's also glad Jack and Luke had overcompensated for space when picking out an apartment meant only for the two of them.

The girls had ubered over from Poppy’s apartment despite it being so close, partly due to the almost freezing temperatures in the midst of winter in New Jersey and partly due to the amount of wine they had consumed when they were getting ready.

Poppy is tipsy enough that her previous anxiety around coming has quelled for the most part, but not so much that she is unsteady on her feet.

She’s has a sociable kind of buzz - not that she isn’t usually sociable - that makes her slip into conversations with ease and without much thought about what she needs to say.

She has introduced Nia to whoever she has talked to so far, her best friend holding her own in conversations too, and, attached at the hip, they have immersed themselves into random discussions with the guys, flitting between the different groups that had formed before they got here.

They joke with Luke about Jack torpedoing through the apartment checking in that everyone is having a good time.

John Marino cracks a joke about how on earth Jack has managed to lure Poppy out of whatever hole she’s been crawling into after work, and Nia joins in, affectionately jibing that 2024 is the year Poppy renounces her life as a recluse. She doesn’t usually take well to being the butt of the joke, but she’s happy her friend is getting on with the guys, and the rosé has now managed to fog up the part of her brain that takes offence to little things.

She chats with Holtzy and Jesper about their Christmas spent in each other’s company, not having the opportunity to do so in the week when she had been working. She talks to Dawson about his brief trip back home, to Curtis about his sons and coos at all the pictures he shows her of them in their cute little Christmas get-ups.

She reaches a point where she doesn’t even remember why she hadn’t wanted to be here.

She has built such great relationships with the guys on the team over the years she has worked with the Devils - those friendships extending to their significant others, too.

And it’s only a matter of time before she is pulled into a group of the girls. It’s been a while since she’s been able to catch up with them, having not spent too much time with any of the team outside of work for so long. She is introduced to the new faces, is flashed the sparkling new engagement rings she had only seen on instagram, and is practically given a play-by-play for all the things she’s missed since she truly had dropped off the grid to them.

It is Jesper’s partner, Nicole, who has the guts to open the gossip floodgates. It starts off innocent on her end, telling Poppy about how she and Jesper had hosted Christmas at their place for some of the European bunch, which she already knew after her conversation with Alex and Jesper, and how she had been stressing about how many people she was going to have to entertain. She mentions the amount of food she had to cook, especially considering the amount of hungry athletes in attendance, and then says, “I am thankful Nico turned up alone, after all, though. We ran out of chairs, I almost had to have people standing to eat.”

“Nico went to Christmas alone?” Nia’s ears have clearly perked up at the information, along with the few of the other girls, who all lean into the circle - a telltale sign, if any, that they have stumbled into a juicy topic of conversation.

“Yeah, him and Talia are done.”

“I knew it!” Nia yells in triumph, pointing at Poppy with a too loud, “I told you so!”

Poppy pinches her best friends finger until she drops it, the other girls giggling at her outburst. Thankfully, not too many eyes have been cast their way, the steady thump of the music overpowering their conversation.

“You didn’t know anything,” Poppy rolls her eyes. “She just stalked his instagram.”

“Yeah, sure, I stalked his instagram,” Nia scoffs, “His instagram which his girlfriend has mysteriously disappeared from, Pop, doesn’t take a genius to put 2 and 2 together!”

Poppy really doesn’t want to be having this conversation again. “He probably archived the posts, Ni.”

“Nope. They’re done. Deleted.” Nicole shrugs, “No chance we’ll be seeing her again.”

“Why?” For someone who doesn’t want to engage in a gossip session about the object of her own problems, Poppy sure has had her interest piqued there.

“She dumped him like 2 weeks ago.”

They had literally just been on a romantic trip together, Poppy remembers, why would she dump him?

“Over text.” One of the other girls adds.

“What?!”

“Nia!”

“Sorry!” Nia grimaces at her previous volume, this time definitely attracting attention. “Over text?” She whispers to the circle of girls, who nod in response. “What a bitch.”

Poppy’s stomach feels tight, like her insides are cringing at the realisation of what she’s engaging in. The girls continue to talk around her, but she can’t focus enough to make out words, guilt clouding her senses.

She doesn’t want to talk about Nico - not like this, at least.

She doesn’t want to dissect the breakdown of a relationship he clearly cherished - enough to squash their own. Doesn’t want to pick apart what went wrong, or map out a timeline of how and when things fell apart.

She doesn’t think she could even if she did want to, because all she can do is think about those pictures Jack had sent her earlier, and about how she’d shut Nico down before when he had maybe tried to talk to her - potentially wanting to open up to someone.

As much as she hasn’t been that person for him in a while, she has always wanted to be, and so she can’t help the shame that gnaws at her. Wondering that maybe if she’d had the nerve to take a proper look at him when she’d seen him earlier, or at any point when she’d been in his vicinity and ducked around corners or hung her head to avoid him in the past couple of weeks - if she’d taken notice of him, just once - she’d have been able to see through him.

She’s been so wrapped up in the way she’s been feeling, the way she has been hurting, that it hasn’t occurred to her that he could be hurting, too.

Maybe not for the same reasons, but hurting, all the same.

“I’m gonna get another drink.” She mutters out quietly, excusing herself from the group and ambling through everyone to get to the kitchen.

“Why do you look like that?” She hears as she’s looking through the different bottles littered atop Jack’s countertop. “Please tell me you’re having a good time.”

“It’s not quite the depression session I was promised,” Poppy pouts mockingly over at her jittery friend, trying to fix whatever Jack had seen on her face to question her. ��Are you having a good time, Jack?”

“I am if you are.” He reaches out for one of the bottles in front of her, twisting off the cap and taking a swig straight from the bottle of Jim Beam. Poppy grimaces at even the thought of how that tastes. The poor kid is wasting his night away stressing when he should be enjoying himself, she thinks.

“You’re sweating.” She observes.

“Yeah, well, I think I’ve hit 10k steps checking in on everyone.”

“Everyone’s having fun, you should relax.”

“Not everyone,” Jack sings, clearly having found some liquid courage in his gulp of hard liquor.

“99.999% of your guests are having a great time.”

“You know me, Poppet, I’m nothing if not a perfectionist.” He swings his arm around her, guiding her away from the counter until he can point towards the far side of his apartment.

Nico is stood with a few of the other guys - Curtis, Dougie and Timo. He’s listening to their conversation, nursing a bottle of beer in hand, looking between them as they speak, but he’s not engaging in it. Not talking back, only just smiling when the rest of them laugh.

“If I’d have known you’d break him, I never would have sent him to help you earlier.”

“Yeah, I never thanked you for the ambush,” she shrugs out from under his arm, walking back to pour herself a drink, mixing herself a makeshift Paloma with what’s on the counter - tequila and grapefruit juice with a wedge of lime to try and jazz up the plastic cup. “You ever thought that maybe his bad mood has nothing to do with me?”

“No.”

“Jack, we’re-,”

“Not friends. Right. And the Pope’s not really a Catholic, and the Earth is flat.” Jack mocks.

“You know, I’ve always had my suspicions Luke would be the Flat-Earther in your family.”

“He is. He also thinks the world is run by lizard people.”

“Weirdo.”

“Total weirdo.” Jack chuckles, almost losing himself. “Stop trying to dodge the real issues, here, Poppy.” The lack of any childish moniker is Jack’s way of attempting to be stern, he doesn’t resort to it often, but when he does, Poppy tends to fold.

She’d tried her best to avoid broaching the topic of Nico at length with Jack. He’s his captain, his teammate, his friend, too, and it hadn’t felt fair to vent her feelings about the whole situation to someone he was equally, if not more, close to.

There was also the minor detail regarding the voice inside her telling her Nico never cared about her in the same way that stopped her from opening up about her disappointment and hurt out of sheer embarrassment. The potential that she was mourning a friendship that never meant as much to him, and doing so to other people who saw all along what she was too naive to notice.

But that hadn’t stopped Jack from trying to eke out information from her the whole time there had been a noticeable tension between the two of them.

He’d try and initiate conversation between them in group settings, often getting one or two word responses before one of them excused themselves. He’d invite either of them to plans he had with the other person, and there was even a stupid group chat he’d tried to form that Poppy quickly archived and ignored after Nico never responded to Jack’s clear attempt to reel them both in.

“You should talk to him,” Jack pushes, sticking to his guns and rooting for the revival of their relationship. “He’s had a rough couple of weeks, could really use a friend.”

If Poppy Jensen is motivated by anything in life, it is the crippling guilt that Jack knows just how to spark up.

“So I’ve heard. Maybe you should go check on him,”

“Don’t be annoying.” Jack frowns. “I know it sucked that he dropped you before, he’s an idiot and I won’t back him up for it, but you can either mope about it forever and both suffer, or suck it up and move on.”

“Go check on him, Jack.” Poppy speaks through almost gritted teeth.

“Poppy,"

“Don’t be a dumbass.” She sighs. “Be a good host, maybe see if he needs to get another drink,” she enunciates her words as much as she can, and her eyes widen suggestively, waiting for him to catch on.

“Oh!” Jack exclaims, shooting back with a slacked jaw as realisation washes over him. “Yeah, he looks thirsty! Great idea, Poppy!”

He dashes off, bumping straight into someone and getting mildly distracted as their drink spills down his front.

Poppy mutters a profanity to herself, not able to watch the absolute train wreck of a man in front of her.

This is where making spur of the moment decisions gets you, she thinks, but her own thoughts are drowned out by another voice inside her head - one that sounds a little too much like her annoying, inebriated and loud best friend. This is going to be the year of saying yes. Yes to growing up, yes to moving on, and yes to olive branches offered to her from pouty Swiss hockey players who are clearly going through it right now and don’t need her to be stubborn about her forgiveness.

She tries to busy herself in Jack’s kitchen, making quick work of straightening out all the drinks and throwing away some of the discarded cups - anything to avoid looking over to where she knows Jack is being his obnoxious self.

She can practically hear him from where she stands, not knowing lowkey if it smacked him in the teeth. Poppy’s asked me to lure you to the kitchen or Poppy’s absolutely desperate to speak to you, Cap.

Annoying.

“Hi.”

Unlike earlier in the day, Poppy allows herself to truly take Nico in when he stands in front of her, this time.

He’s dressed in all black, a dark sweater and dark jeans, no hat for once though - his hair has grown out enough that it’s at the length he usually gets frustrated with it and hides it under a beanie or a backwards cap, but tonight he hasn’t, unless he’s taken one off and discarded it somewhere. It is a little unruly, but more in the way he might have been running his hands through it all night. And he hasn’t shaven in a few days, she can tell - the darkened formation of a shadowy stubble frames his jawline and runs in a slightly jagged line below his cheek.

“Hey,” she attempts a warm smile when she notices him chewing at the inside corner of his mouth, nervously anticipating a response. Her own heart is thumping so hard in her chest it almost feels like it’s echoing. “You want a beer?”

“Yeah,” he nods, stepping further into the kitchen so he’s on the same side of the counter as her. “Jack just stole mine straight out of my hand. Thanks.”

Of course he did. “He’s a strange boy.” She says, wanting to distance herself from his behaviour. If she’s being fair to herself, she hadn’t asked him to be a freak in his endeavour to send Nico over here - he chose that path, himself.

“Very.” Nico affirms, taking the bottle out of her hands by the neck to avoid touching her. “He’s asked me seven times already if I’m enjoying myself.”

“Yeah, I don’t think we should let him throw another party for a while, it makes him go weird.” She watches him smile as he takes a sip from his drink. “Are you, though? Enjoying yourself, I mean.”

She doesn’t remember talking to Nico ever making her feel like this before. Like an uphill climb to figure out what to say and still only coming out with unfamiliar small talk. But she can give it time, she thinks. Maybe it just needs time. They just need to warm up to each other, again.

“Yeah, but I want to make him sweat a little, so don’t tell him I told you that.”

“I won’t.” The smiles they share are familiar. Knowing. Like they’re the only two people in on a joke. “He said you’ve been off all night.”

She only realises once she’d said it that it’s almost word for word what Nico had said when she saw him earlier in the day. She wonders if he remembers the same thing, wonders if Jack had said something similar to Nico to prompt their run-in. If he had been worried about her in the same way she was starting to worry about him.

“Is that why he sent me over here? For you to scope out the reason for my bad mood?” He tries to keep his tone lighthearted, as Poppy’s has been, but she can tell it’s an effort not to sound bitter. There’s a disappointment that presses obviously on his posture, shoulders dropping.

“Cute how you think I’m at his beck and call like that,” she leans against the counter behind her, wanting to send a message through her body language that she’s settling in for a conversation, instead of avoiding one like before. “He’s worried about you, I think.”

“And you’re speaking to me now for his benefit?”

“No.” She tries not to frown at the accusation. Maybe his back is up after their earlier interaction. All she can do is own up to her actions. Growing up. Moving on. Accepting olive branches from pouty Swiss hockey players. Maybe even offering one of her own. “I feel bad for being a bitch to you before. You were trying to talk to me and I was shutting you down.”

“I didn’t think you were being a bitch, Poppy.” He leans against the counter that is perpendicular to her.

“Oh, I’ll try harder next time, then.” She makes an attempt at a joke, and relief washes over her when he breathes out a chuckle. “I was for sure trying to blow you off.”

“Yeah, I got that from your two word responses.” He jokes back.

It starts to feel like progress. A silence falls between them, and it isn’t uncomfortable, per se, but she doesn’t quite bask in it like she used to. Her muscles don’t relax the same and her worries don’t entirely ease up.

She glances over at him, able to take a good look as he stands with his arms crossed, looking down at the floor as if in deep thought. And, not for the first time in her life, Poppy wishes she could read Nico’s mind.

Nico

Nico is cursing every day he has spent in the cold, away from the warmth of Poppy Jensen. How he’s survived this long, he doesn’t have a clue, but he wishes more than anything he’d worked to fix things so much earlier than now.

It’s not the looming deadline of midnight that’s making him feel like this - he knows deep down that he’s placing an unnecessary time limit upon a reunion - but the instantaneous relief he feels whenever Poppy’s eyes meet his, and she keeps them there, looking straight through the privacy film he’s wrapped himself in for so long. He’d forgotten how good she was at that - making him feel deeply seen with one glance.

It’s the relief he felt when she’d smiled at him - fully, properly smiled; eyes crinkling slightly in the corners, soft, balmy lips stretching and cheeks rounding - or when she’d casually fallen back against the counter, feet crossing over each other at the ankles, showing him she had no intention of running away from him anymore. She’s even facing away from everyone else, not actively looking for a way out. It’s like a flashed out version of the Poppy he had only managed to catch a glimpse of earlier.

He wishes he could have felt this sooner, the absence of the consternation that has clouded his every thought lately brings a welcome comfort. He feels like he’s taken his first deep breath in months, and he’s greedy with it, filling his lungs with everything she can offer. Snark - albeit with less bite than before - sarcasm, jokes, even the littlest offering of pity she seemed to give. He doesn’t have much time for anyone else’s attempts at empathy, but with her he doesn’t care, he’ll take it. With Poppy comes genuine concern, and that means she still cares.

That had been a little hard to gauge before, her avoidance and indifference blurring together, and her lack of emotion had stung, but he sees it better now. Sees it clearer - how she is consciously making an effort to make him feel better.

He doesn’t entirely know why, doesn’t think he deserves it.

“Did you have a nice Christmas?” He asks in an attempt to shift the conversation, not quite ready to attempt to tackle the behemoth elephant in the room - not with everyone around, at least. Although as soon as the words leave his mouth, his toes curl at how he’s now engaging in small talk with her.

Poppy scrunches her nose in a wordless answer, and he feels himself smile before he realises he’s doing it. “It was pretty boring,” she shrugs, “I had dinner with Nia and her dad and then came home, watched some football and snacked myself into a coma.”

Nico frowns, thick eyebrows pushing together as something akin to a fiery guilt bites away at the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t like the idea of Poppy being on her own for the holidays - she’s usually so tied into a routine around this time of the year that it doesn’t seem right. “You spent Christmas alone?”

“My parents went to California to see Oli and his family.”

“And you weren’t dragged along, kicking and screaming?” He asks. She shakes her head and gives him one of those smiles again - and pride swells in his chest at how well he knows her.

Nico finds it strange how much comes flooding back to him when he gives himself the opportunity to think about her. To think about all the parts of their lives they had shared with each other, and all the little details about her that were ingrained within his memory as much as details about himself. Recalling tidbits of information about her comes to him as effortlessly as breathing.

“I’m a big girl, now, I can make my own decisions about where I spend my holidays, thank you very much.”

“I hope that’s not what you said to your mother.”

Nico can’t recall a single person in the world who intimidates him as much as Priscilla Jensen, and he has constant face-offs with amped up, aggressive, mostly 6 foot-whatever hockey players on a regular basis.

That woman is scary, but no one can handle her better than her daughter - he’s witnessed it first hand.

The first time he had ever met Poppy’s mom had been an unfortunate, unplanned accident. He’d been returning from a roadie, and Poppy had loaned him her headphones after his AirPods had given up on him mid-workout the week before. He could have just bought a new paid, but he’d run into her on her way out of work before the team were about to leave, and when he’d mentioned he was about to fly cross-country with no music, she had taken pity on him. She’d placed her headphones around his neck, telling him they had a full charge and should last him until he was home.

And they had. He’d gone straight from the team bus to her place after they’d gotten back from the airport - not much of a detour, her apartment not out of the way on his usual journey home - and when he knocked on the door, he was a little shell-shocked when her mother answered.

A lot of things about the woman before him immediately intimidated him to the nth degree.

The way she somehow seemed to look down upon him, even from a stature that was inches shorter than his own. The way she was dressed, prim and proper, not a wrinkle in her fancy dress, somewhat out of place in the doorway of a Jersey City apartment. The way she so easily made her distaste of him obvious from the second she laid eyes upon him. Dread had consumed him, like he’d stumbled into a lion’s den and the only exit was immediately blocked behind him.

“Who are you?” She had asked. No hello or can I help you? Just pure distain and an eyre of being inconvenienced by his mere presence.

“Oh, I’m Nico,” he stuttered. “Is Poppy here? Poppy Jensen?” He was starting to think he had to have the wrong place, and had seriously just ruined this woman’s day by knocking on her door and interrupting whatever sacrifice she was making to the gods behind closed doors to keep her youth. She was going to sacrifice him, next. But, there was no mistaking the relation when he took a proper look. The slope of her nose, the curve of her lips, the unique shade of her eyes, he was definitely in the right place. “This is Poppy’s apartment, right?”

“What do you want with her?” Her glare was just as accusatory as her tone, like he could ever be worth a second of her or her daughter’s time.

Nico’s throat was closing up. As captain of the Devils, he had faced some hard press in his time Having to deal with media after back to back losses, organisation restructures, poor performances, and dancing around admitting to injuries for himself and his teammates - but he hadn’t had to answer to anyone like this in a long time, and he was seconds away from apologising, forgetting how to speak English, and bolting back down the stairs before he heard Poppy’s voice.

“Jesus, Mom, cool off,” she had sighed, coming into his field of vision behind the scary woman before him. “This is Nico, he’s here to whisk me away into the sunset and elope so I don’t have to answer to you guys anymore.”

Nico’s eyes widened. If she didn’t have a reason to hate him before, she sure did now. Thanks, Poppy.

“That isn’t even remotely funny, Poppy,” her mom snarled, disgust evident in her tone. “You have 5 minutes before we’re leaving.”

She had stormed off then, the echo of her heels clicking against the hard wood floors of Poppy’s apartment echoing until they eventually dulled when Poppy came out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.

“Hi,” Poppy gave a bright smile, as if Nico hadn’t almost just been traumatised.

“I just came to drop these off,” he had gulped, with an alarmed look to make sure she had definitely closed the door and he was safe. He handed over the headphones, as well as a cookie he’d got her from the airport. “Did I do something? Has she gone to put some sort of generational hex on my family back there?”

“You didn’t give her your last name, did you?” Poppy asked, her eyes widening in mocking horror.

“Not funny.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Poppy scoffed, “She wouldn’t waste her evil energy on such petty curses. She’s already forgotten you exist, bud.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better.” He shuddered, “I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody that so outwardly hates me within seconds of meeting, before.”

“She’s like that with everyone, I wouldn’t take it personally.” Poppy tears open the wrapper to the cookie before bringing it up to her mouth and taking a bite. She hums in appreciation.

“What, even you?”

“Especially me.” She covers her lips as she speaks around the mouthful of gingerbread. When she’s finished, she gives a gentle smile, reaching out to pat his arm, thankfully. “Thanks for the cookie, I’ll let her know who’s to blame next time she’s over and I’m like half a pound heavier.”

“Maybe I should take that back,” he frowned, reaching forward only for her to pull her arm back, out of his reach.

“Nope. This is my only sustenance for the evening. Who knows if she’ll let me even look at the hors d’oeuvres.” She shudders. “I’m resigned to a night of sparkling water and biting my own tongue.”

“If you need me to make up some emergency for you to leave whatever hell it is you’re being taken to, I could call you. I’m really good at fake crying.”

“I bet,” Her eyes shone with mischief, biting back a grin. “Unfortunately I don’t think she’d care enough about your wellbeing to let me leave, but I appreciate the effort, thanks, Cap.”

It was only the rush of blood to his cheeks and the need to divert his gaze from the teasing glimmer in her eyes that brought his attention to Poppy’s attire. An ankle length, satin cocktail dress fit like a glove to Poppy’s figure, the bright magenta colour not something he was used to seeing her in, but complimented her skin tone perfectly, nonetheless. Her hair fell in loose waves, one side tucked behind her ear, and her makeup was soft - cheeks flushed, lips balmy and a small spattering of barely-there shimmer in the corners of her eyes, making them sparkle even more than usual. “You look nice, Mohn” He hadn’t tried to make his voice sound any kind of way, but it had come out lower, breathier than normal, and he couldn’t quite pinpoint the new feeling that began to brew in the pit of his stomach.

“Thank you,” she had given a bashful smile, reaching her left hand up to tuck her hair behind her other ear, too. The bracelet on her wrist had caught the light, the same one he had gifted her on her birthday a few months before, the same one he hasn’t seen her without, since. The beat of the peaceful silence that fell between them was harshly interrupted by the shrill call of Poppy’s name from within her apartment, accompanied by a banging on the other side of the door. Instead of shouting back, Poppy just banged back on her side with her elbow. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Only if you can figure out how to break the curse she’s for sure put on me back there.” He pouts, “Otherwise, it might be too late.”

She smiles big, and his lips automatically mirror the curve of hers, arms instinctively opening for her to shuffle into his embrace. “I’ll see what I can do to save the fate of all future Hischier children.” She promised as her arms wound around his back. “Bye, Nico.”

“Bye, Mohn.” He’d pressed his lips to the top of her head before backing away, making sure she was somewhat safe inside before making his way back down the stairs.

Nico had left her that night to whatever her unspoken, fancy plans with her mother were. He’d driven back to his apartment, unpacked from his roadie, and had spent the evening alone, watching soccer and eating meal prep. He couldn’t even find it in himself to be embarrassed at the fact he had ended up viewing Poppy’s instagram story a mere 40 seconds after she had posted it.

She had been with Nia, still dressed up, both of them wearing goofy smiles as they fed each other greasy pizza outside one of the hole-in-the-wall vendors in the city across the river.

That had been maybe 18 months ago, and it concerns him only slightly how little has changed in that time.

He’d done the same thing tonight, before Poppy got here. Sat on his own, busying himself by doing nothing on his phone, refreshing instagram in the hopes she or Nia might have posted a story and he could tell where she was outside of checking the door every couple of minutes for her arrival.

He wonders, as he remembers back on how easily Poppy had handled her terrifying mother, if things are still the same with them, but refrains from delving too deep into that whirlpool, and instead asks, “She didn’t blow up on you, then?”

“Worse, she gave me the cold shoulder for a week.”

“Sounds like the dream.”

“You’d think so, but my mother’s version of the silent treatment is surprisingly loud.”

He doesn’t know how he hasn’t noticed it before now. He’s had his eyes on Poppy from the second she came in. He’s watched her hug everyone she speaks to, has watched her hands gesture around whatever story she’s telling, watched her cover her mouth when she laughs a little too hard at someone else’s joke. But it’s only as she lifts the plastic cup she’s holding to her mouth and takes a sip that he catches the glimmer of the gemstones adorning her wrist.

She wasn’t wearing it, earlier today.

Hasn’t worn it in some time, he doesn’t think.

But she’s wearing it now - the bracelet he had given her for her birthday 2 years ago - as pristine as they day he had bought it. She’d worn it so much before that he had thought she’d permanently fixed it to herself, but she’s always taken good care of it. Always cherished it, despite him selling her short on its value.

And he knows he shouldn’t read too much into it. It’s just a piece of jewellery. But it isn’t. It never has been. Not to him, and certainly not to Poppy. So he can’t stop himself before the words tumble out from between his lips. “I think I need some air."

He looks up from her wrist to meet her eyes, now widened in confusion. “Oh,” her lips form a pout around the exclamation, her feet uncrossing and her back straightening until it’s no longer resting against the side. “Okay.”

She seems disappointed, and he immediately realises that she thinks he means without her. “Would you come with me?”

“I, uh,” she cranes her neck to seemingly look back for something in the crowd of their teammates. “I didn’t bring a jacket.” She’s frowning when she faces him again, and he knows not to take it as another attempt to avoid spending time alone with him. She’s genuinely disheartened at the thought of missing out.

“You can borrow mine?” He suggests.

“Are you sure? It’s barely 30 degrees out,”

“Yeah,” he shrugs, like he even understands Fahrenheit, anyway. 30 degrees sounds decent. Where he wants to go, there won’t be much need for a jacket, but that would involve divulging more information to Poppy than he needs to share, right now. He just needs to get her to come with him. “I run hot, remember?” He swears he sees her blush - tries not to give into the quiver of his lip that’s fighting to curve into a smirk. He feels giddy, almost. “I also live upstairs.”

“Oh yeah,” she chuckles, nervously. “Let me just find Nia?”

“Of course.” He straightens up, “I’ll grab my jacket and meet you by the door.”

Nico had shrugged his jacket off somewhere in the corner when he had come in, and when he goes over to retrieve it, digging it out from a pile of coats that had formed since he got here, Jack rushes over.

“Are you-,”

“I’m having a great time, Jack.” He chuckles, and this time he thinks he means it. “Me and Poppy are gonna go out for some fresh air, so don’t go blowing up her phone when you can’t find her.”

“I would literally never do that,” he snorts in denial, backing away and acquiescing immediately, giving up whatever he had come over to bother Nico with. “You kids have fun!”

Nico finds Poppy waiting by the entrance to Jack’s apartment, hands busying themselves by playing with the rings on her fingers. She looks up as he approaches and smiles, accepting the jacket he hands over to her and immediately shrugs it on.

The jacket is only slightly shorter than her dress, and so her bare legs come straight out from the bottom, but he hopes it’s enough to keep her warm for the time being. It has a fleeced collar, a thick overall lining, and he knows that if she puts her hands in the pockets, the soft sherpa interior will melt her icicle fingers in no time. And if her legs do get cold, he’s almost desperate enough for her approval that he will shuck off his pants and give them straight over to her.

He holds the door open for her, and when they get over to the elevator, he presses the button. They wait side by side in a comfortable silence, arms bumping each other as she sways very slightly on the spot. He tries not to get into his head about how she doesn’t move away. They stand similarly when they get into the elevator - he reaches forward to press the button at the top, and falls back into place beside her, her shoulder brushing his bicep.

“We’re going up?” She asks. “I didn’t think you could get on your rooftop.”

“They opened it up back in September,” he tells her, “It’s nice, there’s seating and tables up there and everything.”

“Oh wow, you’re gonna get hypothermia.”

“I’ll be alright,” he breathes out a laugh as the doors open, and he gestures for her to step out before him. He buries a hand into his pocket for his keys, pulls them out, and reaches around her to unlock the entrance to the roof - only accessible to a few people in the building if they have paid for the privilege. There’s a single flight of stairs before they make it up there, and they climb them side by side before he pushes the door open. He’s grateful for the lack of wind, tonight, but she’s right. It’s cold. And as much as he’s used to temperatures like this, he’s thankful he had the foresight to prepare for this earlier.

Nico guides Poppy with a hand on her back to the far corner of the rooftop, toward the pergola that surrounds the outdoor seating area.

The city provides a decent glow at this time of night, but the pergola is lit up with ambient lighting strips, and it looks cosy. The couches have plush cushions, and the weather hadn’t been too bad the past couple of days, so it’s all dry.

“Wow,” Poppy steps away from Nico, toward the side, hands reaching out to grasp the railings as she looks over what she can of the edge of the building. There’s a safety perimeter that stops her from being able to see to far if she wants to look down. “This is a lot higher than my roof.”

“It’s a great view, huh?”

“It’s incredible.” Nico had been on her rooftop with Poppy a couple times, and she has a great view, herself, but hers is blocked by some of the taller buildings to either side of hers on the waterfront. “You can see my apartment from here.” She points, and Nico’s eyes follow the direction of her finger. “We’ll have to get binoculars and test if you can see me through all my windows.”

As ridiculous as that suggestion is, Nico’s heart beats erratically at the idea of it. He can picture the scenario in his mind, clear as day. She’d get him to call her to test the theory, ask him if he could see how many fingers she was holding up, and flip him off from the window in her bedroom.

He laughs out loud at the thought.

“Do you come up here a lot?” Poppy burrows into his jacket, stepping away from the side and toward the seats.

“Not really,” he denies. He’d only gotten a key from the building manager today. He’d put in an urgent request after he’d seen Poppy and Nia, and realised Poppy wasn’t going to get to fulfil her New Years tradition. He’d wanted to do something nice, and as he takes in the wonder and amazement she exudes, he’s happy he did. There had been a few scenarios of how he’d get her up here, and he’d actually settled on a plan to give Nia the key and tell her to take Poppy up before midnight, but he much prefers how this is playing out. “Hasn’t been the weather for it.”

“Right,” she sighs, sinking down onto one of the couches, sitting with her knees tucked beneath her and her feet hanging over the edge so her shoes don’t touch the cushions. “Because the weather now is ideal for a rooftop gathering,”

Nico lifts the top of the storage trunk that sits beside the couch, reaches in and retrieves the blankets he’d stashed in there earlier when he’d scoped the place out. He throws one over to her and chuckles at the surprise that spreads across her face when she catches it.

“I take it back,” she bites back a smile as she unravels the blanket, wrapping it around her shoulders and making sure it spreads to cover her legs. Nico waits until he’s sat before he wraps his around himself. He sits beside her, inclining his body towards hers, one leg under himself and elbow leaning on the back of the couch. When he drapes the blanket over himself, he does a quick check to make sure there isn’t any bare skin of Poppy’s he can see that he’d need to extend his cover over. “I never asked about your Christmas.”

Nico thinks that maybe he doesn’t hate small talk as much - talking about anything with Poppy is good enough. “It was pretty boring,” he echoes her earlier sentiment, smiling down at her when she glances over and rolls her eyes.

“C’mon, I know what you European guys are like when you all get together, Holtzy said a few of you were over at Jesper and Nic’s place.”

He lets himself wonder for a second if she’d asked about him, specifically, when she was talking to the other guys about how they spent their holidays. If she had still cared enough to consider where he had spent his Christmas, and wasn’t just asking now to fill in any potentially awkward silence or reroute the conversation from anything else.

“It was good,” he offers, vaguely, “I do think I was bringing the vibe down, though, wasn’t really in the Christmas spirit.”

Christmas at Jesper’s hadn’t been as bad as he’d made it out to be in his head in the build up to the day - he’d had a good time in the end, but he had left just after dinner; told everyone he was still tired and aching from their game the few days before. He’d paid no mind to the pitiful glances cast to him from throughout the group, and he would never in a million years admit to any of them that even in a room full of people that he did genuinely care about and love being around, he couldn’t shake the feeling of loneliness that crept up every time he glanced around and saw his friends all loved up with their partners and having the time of their lives.

He realises that he and Poppy had both been alone on Christmas, and maybe if he hadn’t have been such a royal idiot about things, he could have invited her along and had a chance to truly engage in all the festivities and joy.

“Never had you down as a party pooper, Nico.”

“You sound like Jack.”

“I take great offence to that.”

“I got dumped.” He may as well get this part of conversation over with, he’s going to struggle to skirt around it much longer. He almost expects surprise on her end, shock or disbelief, but Poppy just nods in understanding.

“I heard.” She purses her lips, shuffling until her elbow is against the back of the couch, a mirror of his own position, and she can listen with intent. “I’m sorry, I know how much you liked her. It seemed like you two were perfect for each other.”

Nico can’t hide the frown that takes over. He doesn’t feel like they were perfect for each other. Doesn’t remember trying to make it seem that way, or remember telling anybody in any kind of detail how much he liked being with Talia. He doesn’t quite understand how she had come to that conclusion.

When she takes in his expression, her shoulders tense. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry or anything.”

“No, you’re fine, I don’t mind talking about it.” With you, goes unspoken, but lingers quite obviously between them, he hopes. He nudges her elbow with his, narrowing the space between them in the process. Pry away, he thinks. He’d much rather have Poppy poke around at the inner workings of his brain than anyone else. She’d be able to make much more sense of it. But she needs to do so with the right assumptions. “It’s just that it wasn’t really like that, I don’t think.”

“Oh.” She sounds almost disappointed, he thinks - disheartened, maybe. It almost seems like she wanted them to be good, wanted him to be happy, and seemed unsettled by the idea she had the wrong perception of it all. The idea brings back a constricting feeling in his chest. “Breaking up around Christmas must be like torture, either way,”

“The returns policies aren’t too bad this time of year actually.” He shrugs. He feels like enough air has cleared between them that he can attempt a joke to pick the mood back up. He doesn’t really want to talk at length about his break up - he’s processed it, he thinks, despite the short passing of time since it’s happened. He wants to talk about Nico and Poppy - he’s finally ready to now.

That doesn’t change the swell of pride he feels with the way she looks at him, like she hadn’t expected him to make light of the situation, and doesn’t know whether it’s okay to laugh until his own cheeks dimple and his eyes crinkle with mirth.

She scoffs out a genuine chuckle, and he can no longer feel the cold seeping into his bones; the blanket covering him is just a mere coincidence, it’s the warmth that radiates from Poppy that does the trick.

“That’s bleak,” she shakes her head, biting back a full smile.

“I thought it was funny.”

“You can’t joke your way through heartbreak, Nico, trust me,” She gives a familiar sigh, and he wants to tell her his heart hasn’t been broken, but that’s a partial lie. It just hasn’t been broken for the reason she thinks. “My dad always says that’s like patching up a boat hole with a bandaid.”

“You Americans have such a way with words.” He smiles, fondly. “I think it’s easier to see the situation for what it was now that I’m out of it.”

He notices that pang of disappointment make another quick appearance before she has the chance to check herself. She seems to let his words stew for a second in her brain before forming her next question. “If you aren’t cut up about the breakup, why have you been so down these past couple weeks?”

Nico tries to remember all the times he had seen her in that period. The time she was speaking to Jack in her office, a couple times on the plane to and from away games, he’d maybe caught a couple of glimpses of her around the Prudential Center when she’d been working - but all those times, he had never managed to catch her eye.

Had she been looking out for him, too?

His lips part to form a response, but words fail him for the time being, and all he can do is tilt his head and try to properly decipher that look about her that she reserves just for him.

Poppy’s eyes glow in the subdued light, reflecting the faint beams that line the structure around them, and they narrow only slightly as he stares at her for a prolonged moment.

He’d been a little harsh earlier when she’d tried to measure the scale of his mood - thinking it was only because she was pushed by someone else to do so - and she had said that Jack was worried about him, but maybe she was worried, too.

He doesn’t want to worry her.

He wants to explain things, but a sudden barrage of emotions seems to hit him at the concern etched upon her soft features. Months worth of inner, suppressed turmoil wreaking havoc within him like a tornado of grief, stress and longing. He had maintained an unwavering calm about himself for the last two weeks - or, so he had thought.

Whenever anyone had directly asked about the breakup, he’d given short, unattached answers, never showing his hand, never revealing his true feelings, and now he can feel it all climbing its way out from the depths of his chest. Feelings from before then, even, when he had been struggling in the months leading up to that God-forsaken text from Talia, and he’d had no one to talk to, clawing their way up, scratching his throat and burning the back of his mouth like acid that he needs to spit out before it has the chance to poison him.

He wants to tell her none of it had been purposeful. How he’d slipped straight into routine, at first - pre season had been rough in comparison to his somewhat slack summer training schedule, and he and Poppy never used to hang out much at that point in the season anyway. In the beginning, it hadn’t felt like he was doing anything wrong by not reaching out.

He wants to tell her about the first time he’d seen her after he came back from Switzerland, at the end of summer get together the team had thrown for the whole organisation in the Prudential Lounge, and he’d seen her slink in through the side doors with one of her colleagues from the foundation to sneak some food from the buffet. He remembers the nerves creeping in, and how something had kept him rooted to his side of the room where he would have normally gone straight over to greet her. He’d introduced Talia to the team as his girlfriend that afternoon, and had tried to focus more on making her feel welcome than tracking where Poppy had ended up.

He wants to tell her about the pages he’s formed on his Notes app - wherein sits a bunch of drafted messages to her from the past week. Even stupid stuff that his mind has lingered on - mundane questions he wants to ask in order to catch up with everything in her life. Does she still have a weird food fixation for Caesar salad and French fries? Is she still trying to force herself to like matcha? Is she still thinking about getting a cat? Did her super fix that cracked tile in her bathroom that she keeps cutting her foot open on and complaining about it every time she has to walk more than usual?

He wants to tell her about how he was so focused on being the best player, the best captain, the best teammate, the best boyfriend, that’d he’d forgotten how to be a good friend. He knows that if anyone had no expectations of him to be the best, it would be Poppy, and so the excuse seems a bit pathetic when he reflects on it.

Instead, through a lump in his throat and the welling of tears in his eyes, he tells her, “I’ve missed you,” and hopes it’s enough to answer her question, and for her to understand the insurmountable weight of those 3 words.

Nico anticipates from the quiver of her bottom lip and the rounding of her eyes that she gets it.

Poppy offers him a kindness he knows he doesn’t deserve when she sits up straight and takes the weight off of where she’s leaning on her elbow. She shrugs the blanket from over her shoulders and throws her arms around him - barely giving him a millisecond to even fear a negative reaction.

Her grip around his shoulders is tight, burrowing her face into the crook of his neck, and he tries to match her fervour with his own embrace, arms looping around her ribcage and cradling her back. They both seem to squeeze, his hands stroking soothingly up and down her back, and he’s not sure if the erratic thumping he feels in his chest is his own heartbeat, or that of hers pressed against him.

They stay together like that for a good minute, maybe more, her body relaxing a little more into his until she’s practically in his lap, knees overlapping his.

Nico can’t remember the last time he felt this calm.

It’s only when he hears the hitch in her breath that he pulls away.

He feels like he’s taken a hit to the gut when he gets a good look at her face - eyes glassy with unshed tears, her lips pursed as she bites at the inner corner of them.

“I’m so sorry, Mohn,” he mutters softly, thumb raising to swipe at her cheek when a tear falls free. “Please don’t cry.”

“I don’t understand what happened,” she laments, “You just shut me out. It’s like you went home for the summer and decided you didn’t want to be friends, anymore.”

“That’s not,” he begins to rationalise it before realising he can’t. He barely has an explanation he can voice, not one he has been able to bring himself to understand, yet, anyway. “I wanted to come over and speak to you after like a week of being back, but I just-,” his throat starts to feel tight again, but if he doesn’t get this out now, he might not get it out at all. “Every day that passed that we didn’t talk, that I didn’t reply to your texts or come find you, things just got worse. And then, after a while, no matter how much I needed to reach out, it felt like I’d left it too long.”

He knows it’s a cop out of an answer, and that she deserves more, but she also deserves for him to be at peace with what he wants to say, and he isn’t quite there yet.

“You could have just come to me and told me you were being an idiot.”

“That doesn’t feel like it’s enough.”

“It can be for now.” For now. She gets it. “I missed you too much to hold a grudge.”

“Really?” Nico can’t fully comprehend why she would go easy on him. She’s well within her rights to cause a scene - kick and scream and never speak to him again - but instead, she gives a remorseful shrug, glassy eyes casting down to her lap.

“I don’t want to lose you for the sake of my pride, Nico.” She admits. “And I could have fought harder, too.”

He knows he’s long lost the right to ask such a selfish question of her, but he can’t help himself. “Why didn’t you?”

“You seemed happy.”

The thud of his heartbeat rattling around his brain turns into an incessant ring, like the kind that people use to measure the frequency in which they stop hearing noise. His bones feel like they’re buzzing, and his lungs feel like they’re plummeting somewhat throughout his body, his breath stuttering in his chest.

Maybe this is her way of dishing out some unintentional cruelty - he can’t argue that he doesn’t deserve it - implying she would have, in any way, suffered herself, just because he seemed content in shutting her out. It hurts to acknowledge that he had let her hurt for so long.

“I wasn’t.” He feels slightly better having said that. It almost makes up for what he’d chickened out of saying before, hopefully saying more than the 2 words might suggest.

Maybe if they’d been speaking all along she’d have seen right through him - got a glimpse behind the curtain of the charade he’d been putting on since the summer. Maybe it would have eased the weight of whatever was sitting on his chest for the past 4 months, would have made everything just that little bit easier to have shared his true feelings with someone who had no expectations of him other than to be there.

He has missed having someone he can be honest with. Has missed not having to keep up appearances, or make himself bigger or smaller to fit someone else’s needs.

And when Poppy’s fingers wrap around his, looping through them when they open up at her touch, and the bracelet she wears tickles softly at his own wrist, it washes over him just how much he truly had missed her. He’d said it before, but there aren’t enough ways to to say it and accurately convey the depth in which he feels it. Having her here, now, makes him feel whole in a way he hasn’t for a long time, and he hadn’t realised all the time he’d known her just how much she calms the storm within him.

He pulls her hand back over his shoulder and circles an arm around her waist, tugging her body back into his embrace until she’s cuddled into him and he’s leaning into the back corner of the couch. There’s no point in which she fights the movement into the position, and when his muscles settle into the cushions, she follows suit, her head resting on his chest and her legs thrown over his.

The hold they have on each other now feels a lot more secure, and he manages to wrangle the blankets back over the two of them, covering her legs so they can stay like this for a little longer.

“Thank you for letting me back in.”

“Thank you for coming back to me.”

Neither of them make any effort to move, content in each other’s arms, not caring about the time - even when the distant calls of a countdown stagger in the air, stirring a pulse of anticipation, and muffled cheers erupt from the surrounding buildings, a symphony of joy washing over the city like a tide. Not even when the sky ignites into a breathtaking explosion of colours, the fireworks painting their world in vibrant hues, do they break free from their tranquil embrace.

“Happy new year, Mohn,” he whispers into the crown of her head, placing a soft kiss into her hair.

“Happy new year, Nico.” She whispers back, looking up at him to give him a heart-stopping smile that had his chest aching in an entirely new, almost welcome way.

taglist: @alwaysclassyeagle @bunbunbl0gs @idgaf-if-youre-here @youflowerr-youfeast @thearchersstuff @bellsdi0r @wonderheartz @jjgsunflower @butterflies35 (sorry if your tag hasn't worked btw)

> Chapter Two

#nico hischier imagine #nico hischier #nico hischier x oc #nhl fanfiction #nhl imagine #anyways listen to the elevator by lizzie mcalpine that is nico and poppy's song I hear it every time I write them looking at each other lma #you might think the ending wraps things up a little quick and you'd be right #rude but right lmao #but like bare with me on it ok x #pretending to be grown but actually never resolving things is these two's bread and butter #I got really in my head about how to end this one cos I had a lot of stuff drafted for this that I've moved to the next chapter #it was getting way too long lmao #but hope you like it anyway #*writing #*oys

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kyleoreillylover · 7 months ago

Text

here is a sneak peak into a wip of a jey uso x oc x roman reigns fic of mine. set after crown jewel 2024! lemme know what u think.

tagged: @southerngirl41@venusesworld @jeysbae @reci1996@tbones450 @steakwithasideofmashngravy @selena-tyler-564@saintaquarius@whatdoeseverybodywant@raya-hunter01@hope4more

The knock on the door was sharp but casual, the kind meant to say, It’s just me, no big deal. Jey leaned against the doorframe, trying to settle the nervous energy buzzing in his chest. He glanced down the hall, checking for wandering eyes, before knocking again. “Yo, D,” he called, letting the last letter stretch with a singsong lilt.

The door creaked open, and there she was: Davina, standing in a tank top and sweats, one hand clutching her phone and the other already mid-roll of her eyes. “Jey, what do you want?”

Jey smirked, stepping inside before she could shut him out. “That’s how you greet me? Thought we were better than that.” He nodded toward the half-packed suitcase sprawled on the bed. “You leavin’ me already?”

Davina sighed, her fingers brushing a stray curl from her face. “House shows. You know the drill.”

Jey shook his head, hands in his pockets as he sauntered over to the suitcase. “Nah. You’re not takin’ that flight.”

Her brows shot up. “Excuse me?”

“Give me this.” Without waiting for her permission, he snatched the suitcase and held it like a shield, stepping back when she reached for it.

“Jey!” She stomped a foot, a little stomp that made him bite back a grin. “What is your problem? I have a match tomorrow—”

“Not anymore,” he cut her off, shrugging like it was no big deal. “Change of plans.”

Davina planted her hands on her hips, her lips pressing into a line he knew too well. “What plans?”

Jey’s heart thudded harder, but he kept his tone light. “Look, I got you. You don’t even gotta worry about paying for nothin’. Just grab your jacket, and let’s go.”

“Go where?” She crossed her arms, her voice sharp now. “Jey, you better start explaining before I—”

He sighed, the weight of what he had to say making his shoulders sag. “SmackDown,” he admitted.

Her silence hit him harder than her words ever could. Davina blinked at him, then laughed bitterly. “SmackDown?” she repeated, like he’d just suggested they fly to Mars. “Jey, no.”

“D, come on—”

“No,” she snapped, her tone as firm as he’d ever heard it. She took a step closer, trying to grab the suitcase again, but he shifted it behind his back. “Give me my stuff.”

“Not until you listen,” he said, his voice gentler now. “Look, I know you don’t wanna hear it. I know you’ve been tryna stay outta this Bloodline mess, but D—”

“Don’t,” she interrupted, her voice wavering now. “Don’t bring them up. You know I’m not—”

“You are,” Jey insisted, his tone soft but unrelenting. “You are blood, D. Just like Sami. And we need you.”

“I’m not blood,” she shot back, her voice sharp again. “And I don’t care what Roman, or Solo, or any of them need. I’m done with it. Done.”

Her words stung more than they should’ve, but Jey didn’t let it show. He set the suitcase down, stepping closer until they were inches apart. “This ain’t about Roman,” he said quietly. “This is about me. About Sami. About family.”

Davina’s gaze softened, but her jaw stayed tight. “Family doesn’t call you nothing but a… a slutty opportunist when you walk away.” Her voice cracked on the word, and Jey’s chest tightened.

“Hey, nah,” he said quickly, his hands gently gripping her shoulders. “Don’t even say that again. That’s not you. Roman was hurt. He was wrong, but he don’t get to define you.”

Davina’s eyes darted away, her lips trembling. “He meant it, Jey. He meant every word.”

Jey shook his head, his grip firm but warm. “You’re Davina. You’re the strongest, smartest, sweetest person I know. Don’t let what he said live rent-free up here.” He tapped her temple lightly, earning the smallest twitch of a smile.

“Jey…”

“Listen,” he said, his voice dipping softer now. “I know it’s a lot. I know you don’t wanna go back to him. Hell, I don’t either most days. But Solo’s out there actin’ like he’s the new Chief, and he’s hurtin’ everyone we care about. Roman, Jimmy, even Sami.”

She flinched at Sami’s name, and Jey seized the moment.

“You think Sami don’t feel the same way you do?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion. “You think he ain’t scared to face Roman again? But he’s comin’, D. He’s comin’ because he knows this ain’t just about Roman. It’s about us. All of us.”

Davina stared at him, her defenses crumbling bit by bit.

“Please,” Jey said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Come with me. Just to talk. I’ll be there the whole time. If Roman says somethin’ stupid, I’ll knock sense into him myself. Just… don’t leave me hangin’, D. I need you.”

The room was quiet for a long moment, the tension thick between them. Finally, Davina sighed, her shoulders slumping in defeat.

“Fine,” she muttered. “But I’m doing this for you. Not Roman.”

Jey’s grin was instant, his relief pouring out in a shaky laugh. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

He grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair and held it out to her. “C’mon. Let’s go before you change your mind.”

As she slipped on the jacket, he caught her muttering something under her breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly, though her cheeks flushed.

Jey smirked, his heart lighter than it had been in weeks. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say, D.”

For the first time in what felt like forever, he felt like they had a shot at fixing things. Together.

He just hoped Roman didn't fuck things up.

But that was just wishful thinking.

#wwe x oc #wwe imagine #wwe x black oc #wwe x fem black oc #wwe fanfiction #wip #jey uso x oc #roman reigns x oc

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dioslesbianwife · 4 months ago

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How whoud the Jojo's react to a female killua

Her running away because she doesn't want to be a assassin and how she helps them and just wants to live a normal life like them (they don't have a normal life but it do be like that ) .

They can still see how she grew up as a assassin silent steps high pain tolerance sharp nails.

ooh cool idea- i actually have an oc in my head thats almost exactly like this, heavily inspired by killua haha, anyways hope you enjoy this and thank u for requesting!

Jonathan Joestar

Jonathan would be extremely sympathetic to your situation. He believes everyone deserves a chance to choose their own life, and he admires your strength in running away from that dark world.

He’s protective but not in a way that undermines your abilities, he respects that you can handle yourself.

Even if you try to act normal, he easily picks up on the way you move- silent, calculated. It makes him sad to think you had to grow up like that.

Joseph Joestar

Joseph is blown away by your skills and definitely tries to hype you up. “You can dodge all my tricks? Damn, that’s awesome!”

He’d jokingly call you his “secret weapon” and ask you to teach him some assassin tricks, but deep down, he respects that you want a normal life and won’t push you.

He can tell that under your cool exterior, you just want to belong somewhere safe, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you feel at home.

Jotaro Kujo

Jotaro doesn’t say much at first, but he notices everything- how you move soundlessly, how you react a little too fast to danger, how you flinch slightly when someone moves unexpectedly.

He doesn’t judge you for it, though. If anything, he respects you even more. He’s also someone who had to grow up fast, so he gets it.

If anyone from your past comes looking for you, he’ll step in before you can even react. “She doesn’t want anything to do with you.” No argument.

He won’t say it outright, but he makes sure you feel like part of the group, so you don’t have to face things alone anymore.

Josuke Higashikata

Josuke is initially a little intimidated by your past- “Wait, you were raised as an assassin?!”- but that quickly turns into admiration.

He’s got a huge protective streak, so even though he knows you can handle yourself, he still worries about you.

If you ever get hurt, he will heal you with Crazy Diamond, no questions asked. Even if you insist you’re fine, he’ll say, “You don’t have to be tough all the time, y’know.”

Loves when you open up to him about wanting a normal life. He might not have one himself, but he’ll encourage you to find your own happiness however you can.

Giorno Giovanna

Giorno completely understands wanting to escape a dark past. He might not have been raised as an assassin, but he knows what it’s like to grow up in a world of violence.

He acknowledges your assassin skills but never treats you like a weapon, only as a person.

If you ever start doubting whether you can truly be normal, he tells you, “The past doesn’t define you. You’re more than what they made you to be.”

He actually finds your abilities useful for taking down enemies, but he never forces you into a fight. He respects your choice to step away from that life.

Jolyne Cujoh

Jolyne is instantly intrigued by you. “So you’re basically a ninja? That’s so sick.”

She has no problem with your past because she knows better than anyone that people aren’t defined by where they came from. She sees you for you, not just as an ex-assassin.

If you struggle with opening up, she’ll be patient but also blunt, “Look, you don’t have to act all tough around me. If you need to talk, I’m here.”

She gets that you want to live a normal life, and even though her life is anything but normal, she’ll support you in any way she can.

Johnny Joestar

Johnny is fascinated by you but also a little wary at first. “You’re really that fast?” He doesn’t doubt you, but he’s surprised by how effortlessly you dodge attacks.

He can relate to feeling trapped by your past, but his first instinct isn’t to comfort- it’s to observe. He watches how you interact with people, how you move. Eventually, he realizes you just want what he does, peace.

If you ever feel like you can’t escape your past, he reminds you, “If I can change, so can you. Don’t let them pull you back.”

He respects your abilities but doesn’t push you to use them. Instead, he just treats you like any other person, which he figures is what you really want.

Josuke Higashikata (Gappy)

This Josuke is a little more reserved, but he finds your story really interesting. He asks a lot of questions- not in a prying way, but just out of curiosity.

He might not fully understand what being raised as an assassin is like, but he gets what it’s like to not have control over your own life.

If you ever get frustrated about not being able to just be normal, he reassures you, “Hey, normal is overrated anyway. Just be yourself.”

Lowkey loves how skilled you are but never makes you feel like you have to fight. If anything, he’d rather you not have to use those skills at all.

#jojo's bizarre adventure #jonathan joestar #jonathan joestar x reader #joseph joestar x reader #joseph joestar #jotaro kujo x reader #jotaro kujo #josuke higashikata x reader #josuke higashikata #giorno giovanna #giorno giovanna x reader #jolyne cujoh #jolyne cujoh x reader #johnny joestar x reader #johnny joestar

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481mclarg · 5 months ago

Text

Scared to love you | AL65

★ I've never been good at telling people how I feel, but you make me want to try.

STLY • FANFIC + SMAU

• Arthur Leclerc x Male!Oc Driver

« K » They aren't in Bariloche, but Bariloche is the only snowy place I have as a reference. It never snows in my province😿 (El gordo paisaje nacional, en esta y la sig. parte uso varias fotos de Bariloche).

Warning: Suggestive content – sexual jokes. Possibly worse English than usual (I'm so sorry).

. . . October . . .

matteolombardi

♡ Liked by charlesleclerc, zhouguanyu24, arthurleclerc, maxverstappen1, giancarlogirotti, olliebearman and others...

matteolombardi: I think she hates me for being out too long :(

⇲ Comments

user1: VAL, I MISSED YOU

user2: Oh, she looks PISSED

matteolombardi: 😔

charlesleclerc: he's mad because you spend more time with Leo than with her

matteolombardi: Well, it's not my fault if she also hates being with people. I can't take her to the races😿

user3: PSSSSST PSSSSST VAL VAL PSSST PSSSST

user4: How do you manage to leave your house, leaving that baby alone😭😭

matteolombardi: someone has to work to buy her expensive threats, and she's not going... (+ I always leave a trusted neighbor in charge. She's never alone at all)

user5: she's so cute😭♥️

matteolombardi

♡ Liked by olliebearman, arthurleclerc, maxverstappen1, landonorris, dennishauger, alex_albon and others...

matteolombardi: Oh, nevermind. I think she just hates ME

⇲ Comments

user6: OMG this cat is plotting your downfall

user7: SHE LOOKS SO MAD😭

dinobeganovic: She's EVIL

maxverstappen1: Oh- I don't think she wants to come play to Jimmy & Sassy

matteolombardi: I can try to ask her if you want😥

maxverstappen1: I'm not sure that I want😰

user8: Val il gatto = hello demon

arthurleclerc: I'm a little scared now

matteolombardi: I swear to God she's nicer in person

matteolombardi: Guys, I have to take her to the vet next week😰 Wish me luck

dinobeganovic: 🫡 we'll never forget you

dennishauger: 🫡🫡🫡 Rest easy

arthurleclerc: 🫡🫡 it was a pleasure to meet you in this life

olliebearman: My baby will be named in your honor 🫡🫡🫡

paularon: It was nice while it lasted🫡🫡

matteolombardi: GUYS?? 😭

arthurleclerc

♡ Liked by matteolombardi, olliebearman, giancarlogirotti, dennishauger, pierregasly, dinobeganovic and others...

arthurleclerc: 🫡

⇲ Comments

charlesleclerc: YOU made that gift ?

arthurleclerc: the shock ???? I made gifts all the time. But no, this time it is a gift for me, u hater🥱

user9: GIANCARLO LIKED THIS POST ???

user10: SO, THIS IS OFFICIAL ?ARE THEY DATING???

user11: bro thinks he's softlaunching

user12: Is it casual when your former manager liked my post?

dinobeganovic: 🤧

user13: DINO SPEAK NOW

dinobeganovic: NO😙

user14: he's definitely dating Matteo

user15: we need to act shocked when Arthur and Matteo confirm that they are dating

dinobeganovic

♡ Liked by matteolombardi, arthurleclerc, olliebearman, dennishauger, paularon and others...

dinobeganovic: BARCELONA TEAM IS BACK. Limited edition, now in the snow.

⇲ Comments

matteolombardi: Hope you're happy now

dinobeganovic: Very😁😁😁

Arthur fell onto the bed, sighing. He was tired from the trip, but happy.

Getting back together with the same group that had accompanied him on his birthday, seeing that they were all still friends, and that the only thing that had changed was that this time Matteo was going to stay by his side only made him happier.

The Italian sat down next to him.

—It's nice. —he commented, staring out the bedroom window. The open curtains left a spectacular view of the snow-covered city and its mountains.

—The city? —he asked, sitting up.

—Everything. —he replied. —The city. That we're all here... that we're together. —He looked at the brunette next to him.

—Yes... it's very nice. —He put an arm around the Italian's waist, letting him rest his head against his shoulder, both admiring the views they had from their room.

They couldn't tell if a couple of seconds, minutes, or hours had passed like that. They felt an embracing calm, which invited them to stay in that comfortable silence.

—Did you talk to Giancarlo again? —he asked when he remembered that the man had been making a presence on social media, attracting not only his attention but that of the fans as well.

—Yes... We are thinking about him returning to his job as manager. —he mentioned. He already knew that they had spoken a couple of months after he had canceled his contracts. Giancarlo explained that he did not feel the same contempt for him that his father had, and he regretted that his actions were perceived that way.

Arthur found it funny how Giancarlo seemed to be an older version of Matteo. An extraordinary ability in his work, but a gigantic fear of personal relationships. Talk being their biggest enemy.

Having developed so much affection for his pupil had scared him. Realizing that his annoyance went beyond marketing or public image, but that he was hurt by the lack of trust and that the boy began to act in a rebellious manner instead of talking to him.

He had also tried to distance himself, to understand that Matteo was just another client, another of the many boys he had worked with throughout his life; while Matteo did the same with the replacement provided by Ferrari.

Sooner rather than later, they realized that theirs was almost a paternal relationship, giving in to the logical thought of dialogue.

That Giancarlo hugged him after having told him how afraid he was that he would hate him in the same way that his father did only make him cry.

The first time in years that Giancarlo had seen him cry.

—In the end, you both are so soft inside. Just very complicated. —Arthur laughed.

—I don't hear anything strange, so I'm letting you know that we're deciding where we're going to eat! —They heard shouts from outside the room, along with a couple of knocks. Dennis. —Come downstairs or at least look at the group chat! —

481MCLARG | 05 . 01 . 2025 | SIN CORREGIR

#formula 1 #f1 #maleoc #formula 1 x male oc #arthur leclerc x male oc #fanfic #f1 smau #f1 fanfic #formula 2 #f2 smau #f2 fanfic #STLY

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darkbluekies · 1 month ago

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heyy darling, do u have any writng advice? your ocs are incredible

Writing in general or specifically characters? I can give some short information about both, how I do because I don't really know how to tell someone to write, i just know how I do!

I can make up a oneshot on the spot here to demonstrate!

Plot

Personally, I start with a plot. I am a plot driven writer, which means that it's the plot that drives the story forward, rather than the characters itself.

Let's say I've read about a ship sinking (unusual i know). I start with the main focus: the sinking ship, and continue from there. What genre? Let's say horror

But there needs to be more than just the ship. So I try to scatter through my mind or notes for earlier story ideas that I have had that might work together with this one. Let's say I don't have any. In that case, I would try to think what could have led up to this sinking ship.

Here's where the characters come in. To fit the horror theme, I might create a young woman who has had heard weird voices these last years after a near death experience. Why would she be traveling on this ship? Is she trying to get away from someone? Or go to someone? Let's say she has a stalker.

Now let's go deeper onto the stalker. What could the stalker have done to want the main character to flee? Maybe sent notes to her? Maybe confronted her?

What happens on the ship? Do they meet? Does she know he's there? What does he do on there that makes her scared?

The ship sinks. This would be the ideal point to take her. This is where the thing should happen. Unleash whatever you have in your mind. Is she getting chased through water falled corridors? Does she have to hide in a room that's filling to the brim with water? Does he find her? Does she manage to escape?

Let's give her a happy ending. She manages to run away from him and get into a lifeboat. What now? Is she feeling relief? Fear? Guilt? Play around!

And the end. Either you can tie it up with a happy ending where she lives a good life afterwards and the stalker died, or you can do a more open, mysterious ending where, maybe when shes stepped onto the harbour, she sees him in the crowd.

This is an easy outline of how my thought process can go. This is very surface level, and if you want you can see it as a timeline where you put in the important things first and then fill out the remaining space with smaller scenes!

Characters

Characters are my favorite thing to do. I love to make people and put them in situations. Let's take one of my characters that you haven't met, that way you won't already know things about them and have old feelings about them.

This character is called Ben and I have had him since 2020. He is a 15 year old boy with a sore history. This is how I came up with him, and developed him. basically my thought progress

When I created him, he was actually nothing more than the best friend/protector/later developed to be a love interest (still unclear but there definetly is some real tension and they probably would get together if "something" didn't happen) to the main character Hugh.

I knew that this character, since he made himself a protector, would need to be physically strong, but also a bit intimidating. But I left it at that and developed the rest later when I knew the characters and their different bonds more.

Ben is rough. When he meets the other characters for the first time, he has bruised knuckles, smokes and is described as "violent looking". Until he meets Hugh. Because Ben is not a bad person. Towards Hugh, who has chronic pain and relies on an IV throughout the book, he's gentle, slow and careful.

So I decided to give him a backstory that would back up this behaviour. I made him a boy who had to fit in with the bullies in his city, to avoid get beaten up himself. But he knows that's not who he wants to be, and that's why he's now here with the other characters, to escape from it. And here he meets Hugh, who allows him to be that person he actually wants to be.

So throughout the book, Ben's knuckles heal. His smoking becomes less. He's happier, nicer, more protective and gentle.

If you want to know how they look in a scene, this is a small snippet, just so that you can get to see these thought progresses in action.

So, to create a character, you just have to start with the basics and work from there. And that can be along the lines, while you're writing. You don't need to have anything figured out while you're writing. That will come when you get to know your world and characters more!!

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aylacavebear · 11 months ago

Text

Soulmates? Yeah, right, pft. - Ch. 8

When you turn sixteen, and your soulmate's name doesn’t appear anywhere on your body that you can find, you figure you had to be the only person on the planet who didn’t have one. Most of the town shuns you, so you stick close to family. Your Aunt Ellen raised you after your parents died in a car crash when you were two, but what happens when the Winchesters return to town and buried secrets begin to come to light?

Pairing: Mechanic Dean Winchester x OC Reader/You

Word Count: 2866

Warnings: Angst, Fluff, Dean being a sweetheart, Dealing with emotional stuff.

A/N: This is my non-Supernatural fic I'm attempting. Please let me know what you think, as I always love hearing from my readers.

----------------------------------------- Chapter 8

Dean, for the first three days, respected your need for space. But in the confined quarters, it was impossible to truly escape each other. The tension between you and Dean grew like a pressure cooker about to explode with each day you spent apart.

It was that fourth day while you were sitting at the kitchen table having coffee, your back toward the living room, that Dean decided he’d had enough. He set his coffee cup down with a thud on the table across from you before he slid into the seat.

He knew it would cause you to look up at him, which was why he’d done it. “Okay. I gave you three days. I’m tired of the elephant in the room. I’m tired of you avoiding me. Yeah, I do have a soulmate, but there’s no guarantee that soulmates find each other. Am I really that repulsive that you’d rather avoid me than us maybe having something together?”

You blinked at him blankly, attempting to fully comprehend what he’d just said, and it threw you for a loop. He was far blunter than you were used to with him, at least on this topic. Then, you realized it was the things he hadn’t wanted to talk to you about that had helped you keep him at arm's length.

You took a sip of your coffee, then a slow, deep breath, trying to find your nerves, “You’re the furthest thing from repulsive, Dean. Hell, you’re one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. It’s hard to think you’d even want me since you still haven’t told me about your past,” you replied, and you had gotten quieter with each sentence. Your gaze even dropped to the liquid in your cup, feeling as though you were pushing him to talk about something he really didn’t want to share with you.

Dean was taken aback by your response, as it was not what he’d thought you’d bring up. “I didn’t want to overwhelm you with more than you were already dealing with. I’m- I’m sorry,” he apologized.

“I know you said you couldn’t talk about it, and that I had to keep what you had told me a secret, but there’s so much you avoid, so… I don’t ask. You know everything about me and… I- I just feel like you don’t want me to know about you,” you managed to get out, barely, your voice now barely above a whisper.

He rubbed his hand down his face, leaning back in his seat. The atmosphere of the kitchen seemed tense, and it was getting uncomfortable for both of you. You couldn’t do more than glance up at him briefly before looking back down at your coffee, which was mostly gone now. Finishing it off, you got up and refilled your cup but stayed standing at the counter with your back to him.

“You don’t have to tell me. It’s okay,” you told him in a sad, quiet tone.

Since he hadn’t responded, you headed to your room, coffee in hand, giving him the space of the rest of the house. You set your cup down on your nightstand, your gaze on the floor as you went back to your door to close it. Just as you went to push it shut, Dean’s hand was on the door, holding it open.

“I just didn’t want to put you in more danger than you were already in,” he told you quietly.

Slowly, you looked up at him and saw the worry in his eyes, “Probably can’t get much worse than being forced to hide out in this bunker for who knows how long,” you replied with a dry chuckle.

He managed an understanding smile, “You know, you’re probably right about that. Can I come in?”

You bit your lip nervously but nodded, then went and sat on your bed, taking your coffee cup between your hands. Dean sat across from you on the edge of the bed. You attempted to gauge his mood by his demeanor again. He was leaning forward, his forearms resting on his legs, hands clasped between his knees while he stared at the floor.

“Remember how I told you about that woman who had my name professionally tattooed on her? Well, she also had fake records. The name she gave me was the same as the one of my soulmate. It wasn’t until a couple years later that I found her real ID. Her name was Lisa. She even had a kid,” he began explaining, never moving from how he’d been sitting.

You stayed quiet, though, just listening. This was at least more details than he’d given you before, even if it wasn’t yet making much sense. You wanted to ask him questions but also didn’t want to interrupt.

“She used makeup to cover up her real soulmate's name. If I hadn’t found it when I did…” he shuddered slightly as he trailed off, “... she and I would be married right now. That’s the legal battle going on right now, trying to prove which one of the names on her is real and which one is the tattoo. My dad hired a detective and had her investigated. She’s working for the Vaught family.”

Your eyes went wide, and goosebumps ran down your body. You even opened your mouth to apologize but then quickly closed it. You hadn’t involved him in anything. He had been involved for a while now.

Slowly, your mind began attempting to piece together bits and pieces of information that he’d given you, as well as the things from your parents’ letters. Your right hand instinctively went up and rubbed your collarbone where your soulmate’s name had begun appearing. You still hadn’t been able to make heads nor tails of the marks since they still didn’t look like anything, yet.

Just as Dean was about to open his mouth to continue, you asked, “What’s your soulmate’s name?” It came out quiet, blurted, but you needed to know.

He sighed but didn’t look over at you, “I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” he replied quietly, now turning and revealing the name on the front of his shoulder; it was the same as yours.

Your name wasn’t common, but it wasn’t uncommon either. Seeing it on him, though, pulled at something deep inside of you. Even after he covered it back up with his shirt and looked back down at the floor.

“What aren’t you telling me?” you asked nervously. You felt all those anxiety feelings rising through your body again.

Don’t hope, don’t hope, don’t hope…

“I was hoping you could heal first,” he sighed, and you narrowed your eyes at him.

The anger was beginning to fester within you at his lack of a straight answer. The cabin fever you’d been feeling wasn’t helping the situation either. You’d been through so much since you’d turned sixteen, and the things you’d discovered from your parents less than two months prior. Not to mention how most of the town treated you. It was like a pressure cooker that was about to blow it’s top.

Dean quickly turned to you, a worried look in his eyes, “Hey, it’s okay. I know you’re angry,” he began, holding his hands up in mock surrender, attempting to calm you down.

That alone would have been enough to anger you further, but instead, his words almost comforted you in a way. You wanted to be angry, at everything, but something about him was making it utterly difficult.

“I know you’re my soulmate. I’ve known since I was sixteen,” he finally told you quietly, still holding his hands up, and it looked like he was hoping it would help calm you.

If you hadn’t been so angry, it might have worked, but all it did was piss you off, and you snapped. “You’ve known this entire time, and you never said anything! You went off with some tramp and let this whole town treat me like I was a plague! Get out!” you yelled at him, pointing at the door.

It was far too much in your angered state and you had lashed out. All he did was sigh, hang his head, and left your room, closing the door behind him. You had no idea how deeply your words had cut him. You also had no idea how badly he was hurting due to you pushing him away. It wasn’t a rejection, as his name, so far, hadn’t appeared on anyone, yet.

You spent the next almost hour basically having a tantrum like a pissed-off child before the sadness finally hit you. When it did, though, you curled up in your bed and sobbed. Everything hurt: your heart, your soul, even your body. Due to your sobbing, you didn’t hear your door open or close again. You didn’t hear his bare feet make their way across your bedroom and stop at the side of the bed your back was facing.

You did feel the blankets move and the bed dip as he slid behind you, then snuggled up against you, wrapping his arm around your waist. Him being this close while you felt this vulnerable only made you cry more, but you attempted to keep it silent.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he began in a whisper, “Even when I was around Lisa, I could still feel you and what you were going through, at least a little. She’d always keep up the lie, though, whenever I asked if she was feeling that way. I’m so sorry, Sweetheart.”

His words seemed to bring on more tears, but in a way, they were somewhat comforting, as was his closeness. You’d felt so alone for so long, and bottled it up, that now there was no holding back the damn of emotions that had broken through.

“After you turned sixteen and you didn’t seek me out, I thought maybe I was wrong. So, I left just after senior year and traveled. It wasn’t until after Sam started in college and found out what the authorities were trying to keep under wraps that he told me. It took him another couple of years to get enough information to do anything,” Dean explained, still in that soft whisper.

“Why does it all hurt so much?” you asked in between sobs.

Dean sighed, then gently rolled you onto your back. You tried to hide your face from him, not wanting him to see you cry, but he was gentle, wiping away your tears. “Sam explained it to me like this. When a soul is wounded, it’s like there’s this big empty spot on the inside. And that, being close to your soulmate helps it heal, but it can feel overwhelming and hurt, even physically,” he explained as he looked down and into your eyes, and for a moment, you thought you could see pain there.

“How do I make it stop?” you sniffled.

The way he looked at you at that moment could only be described as loving as his thumb brushed away a tear that slipped from the corner of your eye. Another mild jolt of pain throbbed in your chest, and you winced, grabbing your shirt where you felt it.

He leaned a little closer, now almost as close as he had been, when he looked at your collarbone, “Do you trust me?” he whispered.

You wanted to, God, you wanted to, but you were terrified at the same time, “I’m scared,” you replied, nearly inaudibly.

“I’ll never hurt you, at least not on purpose,” he told you softly, giving you that sweet smirk, one that you loved to see on him, especially when it was directed at you. “Even with you being scared, do you trust me?” he asked again, searching your expression for some shred of hope.

You took a shaky breath and bit your lip nervously for a moment, trying not to wince at the mild pain throbbing in your chest. “Yes,” you whispered, sniffling one more time.

Dean slowly leaned closer to where there was almost no distance left between his lips and yours. His eyes never left yours. You weren’t sure if the throbbing in your chest was pain, or your heartbeat, or possibly a mix of anxiety and anticipation. Just as you brought your hand up and held the back of his that was cradling your cheek, his lips soothingly met yours.

It would have been wonderful if that just fixed everything you were feeling and made all the nightmares of reality nonexistent, but that wasn’t how reality worked. The throbbing in your chest did seem to fade, at least enough to make it bearable. Your collarbone, on the other hand, burned, causing you to wince and pull away.

“What?” Dean asked, confused.

“My… shoulder… it burns,” you said between grimaces.

Dean furrowed his brow in confusion as he moved so he could get a better look. “Damnit,” he grumbled, seeing the red, irritated skin as more of your soulmate’s name was attempting to come through. It still didn’t look like anything yet, and now, it hurt.

He quickly got up, headed to the bathroom, then hurried back to you. He sat on the edge of the bed, opening up a tube of what you thought might be some sort of cream. It was cold against your skin and somewhat relieved the burning sensation.

“Sam said this might happen. You’re a true empath, Sweetheart,” he explained with a heavy sigh before looking into your eyes. When he saw how confused you were, it almost made him chuckle. “God, you really are adorable,” he smiled, brushing a few strands of your hair behind your ear.

The blush that crept into your cheeks and the pout of your lip did make him chuckle, though, “What’s an empath?” you asked, still pouting.

“It’s a special kind of person. You are capable of feeling people that aren’t your soulmate. The closer soulmates are to each other, the easier it is for them to feel what the other is. You, though, you can feel what anyone near you is going through or feeling. It’s stronger for those that you are close to,” he attempted to explain to you.

“So, what does that have to do with why my mark is burning?” you asked, still confused.

Dean thought for a moment, wanting to explain it in a way you could easily understand. “Because your soul is wounded like it is, because of what happened, the more your mark comes in, the more it will burn. You’re connected to those around you, not just to your soulmate. So, when you didn’t get your mark, and the town shunned you, it wounded your soul deeper than if you weren’t empathic.” He watched you, not only while he spoke but also afterward, hoping his words made sense. It was mostly how Sam had explained it to him.

The gears turned slowly in your mind as Dean’s words attempted to sink in. It was a lot to comprehend. You’d heard of empaths. Most of them were in professional fields, like the police, FBI, Therapists, and even Doctors. What he said at least made sense, but you still weren’t sure why you had to get stuck in the life you ended up in, as this just seemed like one more thing to make things worse for you.

“Why me?” you asked, feeling utterly miserable at the moment.

“I don’t know. I wish I did. I’m not going anywhere, though. You don’t have to go through this alone. You’re not alone anymore,” he answered, caressing your cheek again with that sweet smile on his lips.

You weren’t sure what came over you, but his words hit something deep inside. Sitting up, you flung your arms over and around his shoulders in a hug, which surprised him, but only briefly. He sighed contently, gently snaking his arms around your back and holding you close.

“Thank you,” you whispered, not wanting to let go of him.

It was hard to sort your thoughts, but at the moment, you at least felt a little better, even with the slight burning feeling on your collarbone. You pulled back just enough so that you could look into his eyes. Those wonderful emerald eyes that sparkled with his laughter and held the softest of gazes when he watched you.

You were debating kissing him when the alarm sounded from your closet, causing both you and Dean to look in that direction. Without thinking, you let go of Dean, moved across the bed, and were in the closet quicker than he was.

As you slid into the seat, looking at the videos flashing with red borders, Dean leaned over you, his hands on the back of the chair. Three men were in your house, moving through the rooms. Your heart was pounding in your chest again as you looked up at Dean, then back at the monitors. One of the men was clearly Azazel, but you hadn’t seen the other two before.

“I need to call Jodi,” Dean said through a clenched jaw, pulling out his burner phone. “Jodi, he’s here.”

----------------------------------------- Chapter 9

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