#with the way I write the next will either be done with in the next week or in another five years

[wosospacegirl]

87 with Patri with a sprinkling of Kika and Jana being the team gossips.

Let them talk - Patri Guijarro

Summary: The team goes out for drinks after training, and you and Patri sneak into the bathroom.

Warnings: (+18) smut, fingering (r receiving)

Word count: 1k

A/n: I finished writing this one on June 3rd (draft)

..

You and Patri had been a secret for a long time. Exactly six months and twenty-eight days.

You were Barcelona's newest signing of the season. They needed a defender, someone who was quick and aggressive. Cata was growing too vulnerable in her positions, as other clubs had been adopting a more contentious strategy for their forwards.

You were the best option available on the market. They had bought you from your previous team, Wolfsburg. Your contract was done on the second day of the transfer window.

That was how good you were. You were very aware of it. And cocky too.

Good thing a certain midfielder liked cocky.

Patri was gentle and sweet. She welcomed you from day one, smiled at you like she smiled at all the girls, and you didn't like that. You wanted her eyes on you all the time.

But tonight, they were.

The team had gathered at a tucked-away bar far from the noise of Barcelona. The kind of place that was not listed in travel guides, the kind of place only known by locals.

It was small, rustic, kind of smelled of cheap beer, and the fries were too oily. You hadn't been here before, and you didn't mind the fries, actually, they had become one of your favourite things from the bar.

You took a fry from the plate and put it into your mouth; the oil was dripping down your fingers.  Everybody at the table was a bit too drunk to see how Patri was watching you in that way you knew too well: Carefully and hungrily.

Without breaking eye contact with her, you brought your hand up and licked the oil slowly. You smirked and then grabbed another fry. But this time the oil trailed a bit lower, it was down your chest, disappearing between your breasts. 

Patri didn't blink as if she couldn't handle the thought of not seeing you. Instead, she reached for her drink and swallowed the rest of it.

"Damn…get a room, "Kika teased, watching both you and Patri.

Okay, maybe not everyone was too drunk.

"This is literally a public space," Jana muttered playfully, rolling her eyes. "Vicky's here. She's, like, a baby. So can you two be proper?"

Vicky was sitting in the middle seat, and Esmee was right next to her, braiding her hair. She looked up at Jana, completely confused. "Mhm…what?"

The conversation was cut short when the waitress arrived with another round of alcohol, courtesy of Alexia, aka the best captain in the world. Thankfully, it was enough to distract everyone again.

You looked at Patri and then, subtly, tilted your head to the right, to the bathroom.

She nodded, a knowing glance in her eyes.

You stood up, and the wooden chair made a noise against the floor, but nobody looked, at least you didn't notice if they did. Maybe you were a bit intoxicated, too. You swayed your hips as you walked, and you took exactly ten steps before disappearing behind the bathroom door. 

It wasn't one of those bathrooms with stalls, it was just a single toilet, a sink and a mirror. It was very small, but you and Patri didn't need much space, not right now. Small was good.

Patri walked in seventeen seconds later, closing the door behind her without making any sound.

She didn't say a single word, either. She grabbed your waist and pulled you closer, kissing you hard. Her lips were warm, she tasted like beer, fries, and something citrusy. Orange juice? Maybe? You weren't sure if she had ordered that.

It didn't matter.

You wrapped your arms around her neck as you stood on tiptoe, trying to deepen the kiss even more. Your tongues were tangled. It was a messy kiss, reckless, too. You realised too late that you probably shouldn't have called her here, not when Jana and Kika were already nosy.

"Patri," you murmured against her mouth, but she didn't stop the kiss. You tried again, but this time you pulled back just slightly. "Patri, baby–"

Ptri pouted, but gave a step back, so she had enough space to look at your face. "What, cariño?'

"Kika and Jana, they–mhhm." Her lips found your neck this time, sucking softly, not enough to leave a mark, but enough to make your nipples harden.

You were losing your mind in a cheap bar, and Patri was to blame. 

You tried again, tilting your head to give Patri more space, a dichotomy from your words. "I'm serious, baby, did–did they see you leave?"

"Uhum," she said, licking a path from under your chin down to the top of your chest, right where your shirt started. "They did."

'Then maybe we should…Patri," you stammered as she tugged down your zipper and unbuttoned your jeans, like she had done a million times. Her fingers slipped into your underwear.

"You're so wet already." She grinned, clearly proud of herself.

'Maybe we should go," you repeated weekly, though your hips were already rolling into her finger.

"No." Her lips brushed your ear, biting your earlobe "We're staying right here. You're not leaving this bathroom until I make you come."

Two of her fingers slid over your clit, in a fast but firm rhythm. You gasped as your hands gripped her shoulders, now it was like you were both moving in sync, Patri was trying hard to make you come in no time, and you were more than happy to help her with that.

Patri always knew exactly where to touch you, and she knew exactly how to make you beg for more.

Your mind was dizzy. But you still didn't forget about the team, who was sitting on one of the tables just a few feet away.

"The girls….fuck," you moaned, your head falling back. Your body was already overwhelmed from the pleasure, feeling the rush of oxytocin running through your body. "Th–they will talk," you managed to say, barely.

Patri pressed deeper, her fingers sinking into you, hitting that spongy spot that made your eyes roll. She filled you completely. Always did.

"Let them talk," she murmured, her other hand steadying you by the waist. "Let's give them something to talk about, sí?"

Then she leaned in, her mouth was close to your ear. "Deja que nos escuchen, cariño" [Let them hear us, cariño]

You were good. Very well-behaved. So you did as you were told and gave Jana and Kika, who you were sure were listening from behind the door, something to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

..

A/n: This was a small little thing.

Tag list: @fortifyde, @naomigirmadefender , @neutraiise , @milkveed, @browercc , @ace-of-baked , @ikzzzya , @sky-the-trans-guy00 , @knight-16 , @wosohk04 , @evaissleepy13, @papimapileon , @unpoppablebubbles @whiskeredshrimp-blog @goodloe-e @liloandstitchstan @s0ciety-cxv @dfwspky @karmajn @awosofavs @wosofavfanfics @riyaexee @miaereen

[theorphicangel]

𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐢𝐭; 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 | 𝐬𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐮 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐨 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

tags: mentions of church, religion, religious guilt for like a split second, piercings, cw: needles, cw: blood, i know nothing about piercings lol, making out, references to sex but no explicit details, x gn!reader

a note from angel: i kinda didn't want to write a synopsis, idk i feel like surprising you. also this idea came to me whilst i was in church lol. also this would be interesting from the perspective of a male reader but i kept it gn! i hope you like the writing style im nervous to post this lol

word count: 3k

You can’t help but scratch your nose at the smell of incense. Your body couldn’t also help but fidget every now and again causing under the breath scolds from your mother. 

This mass was boring. As always. Statues of saints stare at you with glass eyes of judgement, the voice of the priest is monotone and slumber practically taunts you. Your eyelids get heavier each minute that passes. It doesn’t help that the large crucifix of Jesus stares down at you, his face painfully solemn. 

You wonder how much he secretly regrets dying for this humanity. 

The altar is covered in golden cloth where an array of flickering candles remain imprisoned to the yellow brass mantlepieces on either side. The bible lays open on the rest, the priest wetting his finger before turning another dusty page. 

Multiple coughs echo and interrupt the priest’s speech and cobwebs sway right above your head. There’s a constant flapping sound from those who use the church leaflets as a fan to keep them cool in the stuffy pews. Most people who attend are way older than you are, wrinkled with religious teachings from past generations. 

Coloured rays of sun are permitted through the glass stained windows, decorated with faces that you don’t recognise. The rays melt over the pews, spilling into the next and the next and the next. 

You realise you’ve made the wrong choice of wearing a sweater this morning, the heated material itching at your neck and arms. Lost in your thoughts, you don’t notice the mumble of prayer coming to an end before the congregation kneels down. Their limbs move slowly and drained as if the ache of their sins weigh them down completely. 

(‘This is my body…’)

The kneerest squeaks under the weight of everyone in your pew. Obediently, you bow your head like the rest as the same old words are repeated in the same old monotone voice you’ve heard all your life. Your teeth graze at your lips, wondering how long is left of this service. So far, your maladaptive daydreaming has done its service in entertaining you but in your peripheral you’re getting looks from your mother for missing the responses. 

(‘Do this in memory of me.’)

A bell chimes overhead.

Your mind wanders over everything and nothing at the same time. You wonder what you’ll do tomorrow. You’ve already forgotten what you did this morning and you’ll forget how long the line for communion will be. Almost everyone in the neighbourhood comes to this church, no pew left isolated. After all this was the only church around for miles. 

Unconsciously, your shoulders drop at the thought of your mother talking to everyone possible at the end of the mass, dragging on your time at the church for nearly half an hour. There’s resentment that grows in you like a seed planted in your stomach at how hard she tries. It’s not enough to get into heaven though, you think, but you don’t have the heart to tell her. 

In a blink the crowd rises again, feet shuffling awkwardly to form a line for communion. You wipe at your nose again before standing, unsure of how to move your body again. Obediently, you follow the queue of people in your pew.  Inch by inch you move as the rest of the church gathers around. As you wait to exit the pew you can’t help but feel a pair of eyes staring at you. 

You only have to turn your head a little to find a pair of brown eyes staring at you. They belong to a figure who seems to be one of the only people who is your age in this church. His hair is tied back into a man bun and the first thing you notice are the lip and eyebrow piercings on his face. You look away immediately as if meeting his eyes for another second longer would be another sin you’ve committed. The line to the confession cubicle is seemingly just as long. You’ve never seen anyone dare to step into church with piercings on their face, at least, never in this town. 

Joining the queue you try not to linger over the handsome face of the stranger and rather focus on which hand is the right hand to receive the bread. It takes a while for the queue to shuffle until it’s your turn, you deliver a quiet ‘amen’ before the loafer is placed on your palm. Your shoes squeak against the polished floor and the bread sticks to the roof of your mouth. Dry and tasteless but you still manage to swallow it down. 

On your way back to your pew you can’t help but find your eyes lingering on the stranger, still waiting his turn in the line. 

/

Once mass comes to an end a lowly hymn is sung, the creased choir book in your mother’s hands. Your mouth mumbles along when the priest walks by but other than that you remain quiet. You’re waiting for your mother to comment on your lack of participation when you walk out but to your surprise she walks straight ahead to the figure staring at you. 

A woman is with him and apart from the facial piercings you can’t help but notice the similarities between them. The creases near their eyes, the shape of their noise. Clearly, he gets his features from his mother. She greets the two of you with a warm smile, reaching the sides of her face. 

“So you’re new to the church?” your mother asks. 

“We just moved in last week.” the woman responds before addressing the figure next to her.  “This is my son. Suguru. He’ll be attending the university in the nearby city as well.”

His hands sit comfortably in the pocket of his sweatpants. His striking brown eyes are dangerous and they study you, drinking you in like the communion wine. He stares as if he knows everything about you. Your sins. Your secrets. The way that you tolerate attending church only to appease your mother. He looks like he knows that the bible on your bedroom shelf is only for decoration.

He stares as if he has a piece of information about you that even you don’t know about. It gives you chills up your spine. Your mother asks a few more questions, where they moved from, what street do they live on and it’s a few more minutes before the conversation is over. 

Your footsteps echo on the stairs leading out of the church, you and her both out of rhythm with each other. 

“I don’t like that boy. Too many piercings.” she mutters. “You moved in less than a week ago and you shame yourselves by letting your son show up to church like that?”

/

The next time you see those piercing brown eyes stare at you is from a park bench. 

You’re on the opposite side of the park path, sitting on a bench yourself with a book you have to read before your classes in September. You recognise him, dressed in all black matching sweatpants and hoodie with wired headphones. This time his hair is left down, shaping his face a little. 

He spots you before you spot him. Those same brown eyes burning a hole into the side of your face, your fingertips edge to turn the page but you’ve been stuck reading the same line five times because of that boy. 

You wonder how to approach him, you think about waving a little. He lives in that little blue house a few streets away from you.  But just as you attempt to reread the line again you hear footsteps approaching. 

“I’ve heard that book is good.” His voice is smooth. It doesn’t shock you or surprise you but his tone rather calls  gently for you to look up at him.

You hum, finally flicking the page. “It is.”

“Mind if I sit?”

You’re quick to decide. “Nope.”

There’s a comfortable distance between the two of you. He’s attentive in making sure he’s not intruding on your personal space. 

“I saw you in church didn’t I?”

“Yeah you did.” you let out a sigh, fiddling with a dog eared page. “Sorry about my mother…she just doesn’t know when to stop talking.”

“No, I get it. She made my mother feel very welcome.”

A stab of guilt hits you at your mother’s own words after speaking to them. You want to confess but you don’t want to make a bad impression so  instead you continue to fiddle with your book. But the guilt eats at your lower abdomen and the pages become sweaty under your fingertips. 

“You go to mass every Sunday?”

There’s something inside you that makes you want to say no but the words hesitate on your tongue. Thinking, you come up with a different answer. “Not by choice.”

“I see.” he smiles and it reminds you of the smile his mother had in church. They are practically the spitting image of each other.

You raise a brow now turning the question towards him. “Do you?”

He lets out a sigh before answering. “My mother’s a bit of a religious freak as well. I personally want nothing to do with it but–”

“But they force you to go anyway.”

He smiles again. And god he’s so…pretty. “Yup. You understand it completely.”

You shrug. “There’s not a lot of young people in this town so there’s a lot of pressure.”

“M’glad I met you then. I won’t always be alone.” he says. He’s comforting. For once you’ve met someone and it’s not been awkward. Just hearing his tone of voice makes you want to confess everything to him. There’s a warm fuzzy feeling that sparks in your stomach and you smile at the idea of telling him that he’d make a great priest in the confessional.  But you keep the joke to yourself.

“I like your piercings.” you note. In your head this was retribution for what your mother said. If it was up to you’d follow in Suguru’s footsteps and do whatever you like but that same privilege wasn’t there for you.

“Thank you, I did them myself.”

“Really?”

He nods. “My eyebrow piercing was rejected on the other side so I had to redo it recently.” you can see a jagged scar above his brow, it’s healing but the newly formed patch of skin still catches your eye. 

“Do you think you could do mine?”

And he answers in a sweet tone with a simple. “Sure.”

/

And that’s how you find yourself in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed not knowing what to do apart from fiddling with your fingers. His bedroom is far more decorated than your own with posters of bands, musicians, comics and movies that he likes. Your mother would never approve if you did the same. A horror movie poster meets your eye and you remember your mother directly saying to you how inherently demonic that movie was. You study everything around you: the neatly made bed, the figurines on his shelf, his textbooks for the academic year, his cds and books that you hope to poke around in later. 

Suguru’s preparing his materials, sterilising them before giving you a nose piercing. You asked for a simple stud piercing. Something small so that she wouldn’t be too mad. 

“After all, if you don’t break her down now she’ll never let you go later.” were his wise words. You unconsciously grip his bedsheets, your heart pounding in your ribcage at the thought of this actually being real. You wonder how he did it with his mother. Did he ask for permission first or sought forgiveness after? But after meeting Suguru’s mother you assume he had followed the latter, she seemed to be much more open minded than your own mother. 

Without looking he can tell how nervous you are. “It hurts way less than you think.” he reassures, throwing the same smile that you saw earlier.  The curve of his lips does help to settle the mountain of anxiety building in your stomach.

Suguru approaches you, asking you again if you’re sure. You give a nod, fiddling with the sleeves of your shirt. Suguru positions himself next to you. His faintly floral scent hits you and your throat finds it hard to swallow when he’s so close to you.

He looks at you and an intrusive thought pops in of how soft his lips must feel against your own. He counts down in a quiet tone and you close your eyes in anticipation.

 It’s quick and almost painless until your eyes start watering. 

“All done,” he says, “you did so well for me…hm.” A thumb reaches up to the corner of your eye wiping away a tear. Your eyes meet his, watery but full of gratitude for him.  “Are you okay?” His eyes are intent in making sure you’re fine and you nod letting him clean away any blood. 

He studies your face and it’s that same smile that makes your stomach churn. Thankfully, there’s not much blood but it still stings. Suguru gives you advice on how to keep it clean and warns you to not touch it too much. “It looks really good.”

“Really?” 

He nods, motioning towards the mirror in the corner of his room. “Take a look for yourself.”

A wordless gasp escapes from your mouth. Sure it was a small piercing but it was still a significant change for you and he was right. 

It really did suit you. 

Turning around to face him, you thank him. “How much do I owe you?”

Suguru holds in a snort. “Nothing.”

“Really? I feel like–”

“Really.” He interrupts, clarifying in a soft yet firm tone.  “You owe me nothing. I like doing it so you’ve already paid your dues by trusting me.”

You nod, biting the inside skin of your cheek. “So I can come back and do my eyebrows next?”

He lets an airy chuckle out and you swear you want to keep it on repeat for the rest of your life. “Whenever you want it, I’d be glad to do it for you.” 

You sit back on the bed, unsure of what to do next. There’s a comfortable silence between the two of you as Suguru tidies away his materials. You watch him meticulously clean his equipment. During your observation,  you wonder how many videos he had watched in preparation to pierce himself. His hands are gentle, you noticed, soft and cautious in their movements even now after the piercing. 

He joins you after packing away his things, sitting on the edge of the bed. Waiting. There’s something lingering overhead, it’s not overwhelming but you know that you both will have to acknowledge it soon. Not out of force, but out of impatience because it’s been hanging over the two of you since you first locked eyes. Your eyes soon meet him and you study his face. The curve of his nose, the shape of his eyelids, the plumpness of his lips and how the piercing sits comfortably in the corner of his bottom lip. 

Everything about him is just so…beautiful. 

And you want to take a bite of him. Greedily. 

Those brown eyes take you in once again and you don’t miss the flicker of a blink that drops to your lips. Inching, your bodies move closer together as if a magnetic force is at work and lean in towards each other. An inhale is the last thing your body takes in before your lips meet his. 

It’s slow, tender and testing. At first that is.

He gives you enough space to reject him, to change your mind and back away from him but you surprise him, you lean deeper into the kiss by putting pressure on his lips. You welcome the metallic taste of his lip piercing, the tip of your tongue brushing against it. 

You feel warm. So warm.

And there that feeling is again, awakened and bubbling in the pit of your stomach. You don’t know what else to do with it apart from delving into Suguru’s lips again. A soft hand reaches up to your cheek, greedily pulling you in inch by inch. It’s obvious he wants all of you but he’s trying not to indulge too much. 

At least that’s what you think until a tongue piercing grazes your lips and you moan in surprise and you feel Suguru’s chest vibrate with a chuckle. If you thought you couldn’t get closer to him, he proves you wrong and he tastes so goddamn sweet. 

So sweet it’s almost sickening. 

So sweet it almost feels wrong. 

You can feel the heat created by the two of you, the growing desire to continue. Suddenly you’re hit by the overwhelming fear to know everything about him. To know everything about his body. You wonder how soft his skin is underneath his clothes. 

And it’s clear he feels the same about you.

For a split second a wave of disgust rises through you. The realisation that you’re kissing someone you barely know and the feelings that emerge to take it even further. 

You shouldn’t be feeling this. 

This…pleasure.  The very same pleasure that you have been warned against your entire life. This pleasure should only be obtained after securing the sacred vow. You would be selfish to continue, to self indulge in your own natural desires, to obtain what you’ve been avoiding for your entire life.

The rules now swirl in your head like an aggressive tidepool. Crashing and building in your mind. 

 What was it again about keeping your purity?

Because there’s nothing pure about the way that the two of you latch onto each other, hands gripping one another like you both are the only saviour each other needs. It’s like you were made for each other, the rhythm matched by him and reciprocated. You hum into his mouth overtaken by the need to let his taste linger on your lips and you want to memorise it all, indulge every inch of him.

His nose gently bumps into your own, careful with his direction not to cause stinging to your piercing. 

When the two of you finally part for air there’s nothing but the sound of heavy breathing and the silent question of wanting to continue. Sugruru’s hands now cautiously move to your sides. He watches your reaction to this, observant to see if you deny him. 

But you know you never will. Just from his touch you can feel the goosebumps appear on your skin, sprinkled onto you. Barely a minute apart and he’s edging closer to you again, fixated on your lips, like an addict who can’t get enough. 

Without hesitation you let him in. You let him nibble at your lips and you can tell he’s waiting for your permission. Fingertips just edge to take off your clothes and devour you whole. Greed and Lust come combined to overtake you both. 

And you don’t fight against it. You don’t dare to think about the words of prayer or the consequences that will come once your soul comes to rest or what your mother would think of you. 

In fact, you don’t think at all. You desire. There’s nothing you want more than for him to take you wholly and break you apart. Similar to the same old words you hear every week. 

(‘This is my body

 which I have given up for you.’)

And this is the body you’ll…give up for him.

thank you for reading!! reblogs and comments are much appreciated! <3

[angelickks]

NOW SHOWING 🎥 THE BREAKFAST CLUB

starring, remmick

                                          🧾 TICKET STUB

attendee : @bleedingsunlight showing : au!loser!grunge!remmick x popular girl!princess!reader screening type : midnight matinee (rated NC-18) snack of choice : lollipops  genre : au!80s romcom/opposites attract

director's notes imma be so honest w you, ive never written anything faster because i was literally so excited. thank you rin darling for ur kind words!! and just know i ATE this up so bad (so bad that i might’ve, perchance have a diff version of the more “criminal” archetype version of him, but i digress) can't wait to write the next one! i hope i did this justice <333 just to preface, everyone’s of age here, aside from underage smoking but trust it’s for the fiction part of it all + it’s set in the 80s. lastly, since i lack STRUCTURE, posting schedule for a bunch of finished works that r just sitting in my wip folders coming soon!

                                            🎬 SYNOPSIS

What starts with a glitter pen, a lollipop, and an upside-down textbook ends in a gas station parking lot—with lip gloss on his cigarette and her skirt in his lap, Crowded House crooning through the stereo.

YOU SHOW UP TEN MINUTES LATE WITH YOUR HAIR IN A RIBBON AND THE SCENT OF DIOR PERFUME CLINGING TO YOU LIKE HEAT. 

A juicy fruit bubble pops between your glossed lips as you toss your lisa frank notebook on the desk.

Remmick flinches like it bit him.

He's already there—has been for twenty, pacing and panicking, doodling dumb shit in the margins of his composition notebook like don’t look at her tits today and squares are just sad circles.

You sit like you’ve done this a hundred times—like the library’s your runway and every dusty book spine is lucky to be in your orbit. Then you cross your legs—slow, calculated, a full-blown event.

Remmick’s eyes dart before he can stop them—skimming the dress you had to have gotten written up for (and definitely got out of with a well-timed bat of your lashes), the dainty kitten heels showing off a fresh, glossy pedicure that probably cost more than his entire outfit.

He chokes on absolutely nothing. Just air. Just existence. Just you.

“Okay, teach me,” you chirp, voice sing-song and sugar-sweet. “Or whatever it is you’re supposed to do.”

Remmick clears his throat. He’s sweating under his leather jacket, which is insane because it's seventy-eight degrees outside. His flannel’s got a rip at the elbow, one sleeve safety-pinned where it used to have a cuff, that’s now starting to bug him. There’s a faded Joy Division button barely clinging to his backpack—hanging on for dear life, just like him—and if he bothered to look down, he’d realize at least one of his shoelaces is definitely a split headphone wire knotted tight.

He’s a goddamn disaster. You know it. He really knows it.

You hand him your glitter-covered textbook like you’re passing off a love letter. He fumbles it, catches it awkwardly against his chest, and opens it upside-down like a moron.

“Smooth,” you say, smirking. You reach over, flipping it the right way. Your fingers brush his, and he almost dies. Spontaneous cardiac event. Just itching to collapse in the quiet section like a tragic little wet dog.

The moronic action alone makes him want to crawl under the table and die. Maybe smoke himself into oblivion first. Instead, he mutters something about “perspective.”

“Sorry,” he mutters, eyes fixed on the table. “It’s been a long day.”

You lean in like you’re examining something under a microscope. “Are you always this twitchy, Remmy?”

He flinches at the name. Remmy. You’ve been calling him that ever since he dumped an entire pen’s worth of black ink across your lisa frank folder during your first tutoring session—looked like he’d murdered a unicorn.

These ridiculous meetups aside, it was either two afternoons a week with you, or another long, soul-sucking weekend of detention. Again.

How either of you ended up there was anyone’s guess. Two star students on paper, two totally different universes. Him—the ridiculous burnout with a nicotine habit and permanent twitch. You—the high-gloss poster girl for honor roll and homecoming courts.

And yet, there you were. Both in the principal’s office, arms crossed, avoiding eye contact while your respective crimes were read aloud:

One stolen loosie smoked behind the gym. One elaborate prank that involved a slingshot, an ungodly amount of glitter, and the principal’s rustbucket Camaro, now forever shimmering under the sun.

He thought to himself that it was all peer pressure. You called it performance art.

Either way, here you were. Math books between you. Trouble behind you. And something way worse—or better—simmering just beneath the surface.

“I’m not twitchy,” he says, stiffly.

“You’re vibrating,” you deadpan, popping your bubblegum.

And he is. He’s one jolt of caffeine or one smile from you away from spontaneously combusting.

You twirl your pen between your fingers and start doodling lazy hearts in the margins of your notes. He clears his throat like he’s about to deliver the State of the Union and begins explaining polynomials—badly, with his words stumbling over each other.

You chew your pen cap, frowning. “Okay, but why are there letters in math?” you ask, dramatic as hell. “Like, that’s a hate crime. I didn’t sign up for a spelling test.”

Remmick blinks. Opens his mouth. Closes it. He then comes to the halting realization that he has no idea how to handle you. But then you tilt your head. You’re looking at him—not through him, at him. With those stupid pretty eyes and that little crinkle in your nose.

And he panics.

“Do you want a—uh. A snack?” he blurts. “I brought an extra pop-tart.”

You blink. “What flavor?”

“Brown sugar cinnamon.”

You wrinkle your nose. “Ew.”

He immediately puts it away like he’s just offered you a dead rat. You go back to doodling. He goes back to dying.

He clears his throat—twice—before attempting something that sounds like authority.

“You’ve got a test Friday,” he says, voice cracking halfway through. “You have to pass with at least a B minus if you want to keep your... you know—freakishly perfect GPA.”

You blink at him slowly, like he’s cute for trying.

“Yes, Remmy. I’m aware,” you sigh, already fishing a lollipop from your purse like it’s a sacred rite. You unwrap it slowly, deliberately, and use the crinkled foil to tuck away your gum with a practiced flick of your wrist.

The flash of your tongue—quick, glossy, unbothered—hits Remmick like a heatwave in a meat locker. He swallows hard. And then again, like his body forgot how to exist without full-blown panic.

“And that is important, but you see... I have very important plans on Saturday.”

He looks confused. Concerned. Like you just announced you were joining a cult.

“I’m talking not penciled in,” you continue, waving the sucker like a wand, “but bold, underlined, permanent ink, Remmy. Plans with a capital P.”

He stares at you blankly. “…What kind of plans?”

You lean in like you’re about to whisper state secrets. “Tiffany Marchand’s pool party. Her older brother’s home from college and her parents are out of town. There will be music. Boys. Opportunities.”

“Opportu—what?” he sputters.

You smile wickedly. “Do you think I shaved my legs for you?”

Remmick turns the color of a stop sign. Actually shifts in his seat like the mere suggestion set his whole body on fire.

“I just—I thought maybe you wanted to pass,” he mumbles.

“Oh, I do,” you say, lips curling around the lollipop. “But I also want to look incredible in a bikini while doing so. So unless this study session includes flash cards and outfit options, I suggest we prioritize.”

He knocks his pencil clean off the table. Doesn’t even bother picking it up. He’s too busy praying for strength. Or maybe an earthquake. Something, anything to save him from you.

“Yeah. Prioritize. Right. Uh… thoughts on decimals?” he stammers, like he’s never said a coherent sentence in his life.

Unlike you, Remmick had absolutely nothing going for him on a Saturday night. If anything, a late night gas station run, if his pack had run clean through.

The fluorescent lights of the gas station hum like static. They buzz against the night, pale and too bright, cutting through the dark like a bad idea.

Remmick shuffles inside, hands in the pockets of his worn-out flannel, trying not to look suspicious, even though he definitely is. 

He looked like he just rolled out of bed. Hair a mess, dickies ripped at the knee, headphones around his neck like a noose. He buys cigarettes with crumpled bills and barely meets the cashier’s eyes.

He doesn’t belong here, or anywhere really—just floats from place to place like secondhand smoke.

When he walks out, fumbling with the lighter, he nearly drops the pack. Nearly lets his own headphones choke him out at the sight. 

Because there, parked crookedly in one of the parking stalls was you. 

Sitting in the driver’s seat of your cherry-red convertible. Top down. Elbows on the wheel. The glow of the streetlamp halos your hair like a goddamn music video. He feels his heart tug a little, because your expression? Cracked. A misplaced thing on a face he’s seen as nothing but perfect so far. Your glossy lips pout in a way that isn’t on purpose.

You look like a heartbreak in highlighter.

He hesitates. Then takes a drag he doesn’t need, more to stall than smoke. His palms sweat like hell. He almost turns around.

But when you glance up, he notices right away—your mascara’s just a little smudged, a telltale shimmer of something softer than you usually let show.

“…Hey,” he says, voice cracking slightly, awkward as hell.

You blink once, then offer a crooked little smile—soft, sad, and nothing like your usual glossed-over charm. “Fancy seeing you here, Remmy.”

He laughs, nervous and jittery. “Didn’t think I’d run into royalty outside a Texaco.”

“Oh, eat my shorts, Remmick,” you snap, but there’s no heat behind it. Just a tired sort of ache curling around the words.

He winces, eyes flicking to the pavement. “Sorry. I’ll, uh—I’ll leave you alone.”

He brings the cigarette back to his lips, fingers trembling slightly.

“No…” you breathe, gentler now. “I’m sorry. That was mean.”

You nod toward the passenger seat, patting it lightly. “Come here.”

He doesn’t move right away. His feet shuffle like they don’t quite trust the invite. Like he’s waiting to be laughed at or pushed away.

You clock the hesitation instantly.

“Remmy,” you say, voice dipping into something teasing, syrupy, warm. “Get in before I change my mind.”

That does it. He moves like a deer caught in headlights—slow, unsure, but aching to be closer, like he’s being pulled in by gravity he never stood a chance against.

“Ah—wait,” you mutter, sharp and low. “Come to the driver’s side real quick.”

He pauses mid-step. “Uh—why?”

You roll your eyes, already leaning slightly toward him. “Because I’m taking a drag before you put that out, dummy.”

He fumbles to obey, circling around the front of your car like it’s an obstacle course. You reach for his hand without asking, plucking the cigarette from his fingers—your lips brush the same spot his just touched.

You take a long, practiced drag, exhale slow through your nose, eyes half-lidded as you look at him. His cigarette now wears the faint red stain of your lipgloss.

But it’s your fingers that linger—delicate and cold against the inside of his wrist as you ready to pass it back. And there it is.

His pulse. Racing. Like you could feel every panicked, pathetic beat slamming against bone.

“Jesus,” you murmur, half-teasing, half-surprised. “You’re about to faint.”

“I—no—I’m not—” he stammers, voice cracking again.

You just smile, coy and wicked. “You sure? ‘Cause it feels like your heart’s about to bust out of your wrist.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.

You hand the cigarette back—still warm from your lips—and tap your nails lightly against his palm.

“Now, get in the car, Remmy,” you whisper, voice like velvet and trouble. “I don’t bite unless you ask.”

“Jesus Christ,” He mutters in disbelief before snuffing the stick out with the heel of his boot. 

He makes his way to the passenger side, tripping over his own boot laces. Slides into the seat beside you like he’s afraid he’ll break it. Or you. Or himself.

His eyes are everywhere but you, as if suddenly the car has become much more interesting. 

And then his eyes land on the pile of cassette tapes scattered haphazardly across your dash like some kind of sparkly altar: The Cure. Siouxsie and the Banshees. The Smiths. Depeche Mode.

Each one decked out in your usual chaos—glitter stickers, pink hearts, a few sparkly stars—but the names are still clear beneath it all, scrawled in sharpie or original font. Like holy text with lip gloss.

He just stares. Blinks once. Then again.

You catch him. “What?” you ask, raising a brow like you already know.

He gestures weakly at the dash, like the tapes might bite. “You… listen to this stuff?”

You smirk, slow and knowing, tapping a manicured nail against Disintegration. “Don’t get me wrong, Madonna’s a hit—but this band? This album? Ridiculous. ‘Plainsong’? That’s not a song, Remmy. That’s a full-blown religious experience.”

His mouth drops open like you just declared you could breathe underwater.

You squint. “What?”

He shakes his head, stunned. “I just—I didn’t think girls like you listened to… I don’t know. This.”

This—being the soundtrack to every spiral he’s ever had. The exact mixtape he plays in his beat-up headphones when he’s lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, pretending he doesn’t want things he knows he’ll never have.

But now you’re here. In front of him. With Robert Smith on your dash and glitter on your cheeks and lip gloss on his snuffed out cigarette.

And suddenly, he doesn’t know a damn thing about anything. Especially you.

You just shrug, casual as ever. “Criminally low assumption of me, Remmy. You’re full of surprises, huh?”

He stares—really stares—for a beat too long, like he’s trying to memorize the way you said his name. You catch it, of course. And you can’t help but smile.

Then, softer, more human: “Party sucked.”

“Yeah?” he asks, voice low, careful.

You nod, something wilted settling in your shoulders. “Tiffany’s brother was a dirtbag. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the stupid math test. So I bailed.”

Remmick swallows hard, thumb nervously flicking the edge of his lighter. “What’re you talking about? You aced that thing.”

You grin at him, bright and amused and too pretty to look directly at. “That’s ‘cause my tutor’s a genius. A twitchy, chain smoking, leather-jacket-wearing loser—but a genius, nonetheless.”

His laugh escapes before he can stop it—quiet and disbelieving. A flush creeps up his neck, obvious even under the sickly glow of the streetlamps. You swear his ears go pink.

Then you lean in—elbows resting on the middle console, chin in your hand, eyes soft but sure.

And just like that, he forgets how to breathe.

“I like the way you explain things,” you say, voice quiet but deliberate—like you’re handing him a secret you haven’t told anyone else.

Remmick blinks. His whole body tenses, like the words hit too close to somewhere he keeps boarded up. His mouth opens, then closes. Nothing comes out but a shallow breath that catches halfway.

Your chin props up a little higher, studying him like a curiosity. “You get all flustered and talk too fast and your hands move a lot. But it makes sense when you say it. Makes me feel like maybe I’m not stupid in math.”

“You’re not,” he blurts, way too fast. “You’re—you’re not even close to stupid.”

His voice cracks at the end, and it makes you smile wider. You reach out, fingers brushing his wrist again, featherlight—just enough to feel that pulse again, hammering away like he’s running a marathon from a sitting position.

He doesn’t pull away. He leans into it.

“Remmy,” you murmur, voice dipped in syrup and something warmer, “are you always this nervous around girls?”

He lets out a strangled sound that might be a laugh. “No,” he lies, eyes darting to your mouth, then away, then back again. “Just you.”

You shift closer, your hands now brushing his knees, and his breath hitches so hard you feel it.

“You ever kissed anyone in a gas station parking lot before?” you ask, teasing.

He shakes his head, eyes wide. “No.”

You grin, tilting your head. “Wanna change that?”

And before he can even try to panic his way out of it, your lips are on his—soft and warm, tasting faintly of smoke and cherry lollipop. His hands hover awkwardly for a moment before landing on your cheeks like they’re not quite sure they’re allowed to stay there. You pull him in anyway, sliding your fingers into his hair, kissing him slow—deepening it when he lets out a little noise he probably didn’t mean to make.

The kind of noise that sounds like he’s aching.

When you finally pull back, his eyes are glassy, dazed. You’re still close enough to feel the heat off his skin.

“Holy shit,” he whispers.

You smile against his jaw. “See? Now that’s a religious experience.”

The air between you is buzzing now—heavy, crackling like the moment before a summer storm. His breath is shallow, pupils blown, lips pink and kiss-bitten. He’s short-circuiting in real time.

You sit back just enough to look at him properly, hands still lazily hooked behind his neck.

“Can I go to you?” you ask, voice soft, almost shy.

His brows knit, blinking slow, like your words hit a patch of static in his brain. “Go where?”

You huff a laugh, already moving, already shifting your weight. “On your lap, dummy.”

And that’s it. That’s the kill shot. His whole system crashes.

He watches, helpless, as you crawl over the console and settle into his lap like you belong there—like this was always where the night was headed. His hands hover in the air, unsure of the rules, until you take them and place them gently on your waist.

Your skirt rides high on your thighs now, fabric bunched around you like a bow on a gift he’s not sure he’s allowed to open. His fingers tremble where they hold you—thumbs barely grazing your skin, reverent, like you’ll vanish if he grabs too tight.

He’s warm all over. Sweaty palms. Frantic heartbeat. Head spinning like he just stood up too fast and found you.

“I—uh—I’ve never—” he starts, voice low and cracking, eyes fixed somewhere around your collarbone because if he looks any higher, he might combust.

You hush him with another kiss, deeper this time—more confident, more claiming. He lets out a soft, broken whimper against your mouth, hands tightening ever so slightly around your hips.

“Remmy,” you whisper against his jaw, trailing kisses down toward his neck, “you’re allowed to enjoy it.”

He nods. Violently. Too many times. He still doesn’t trust his voice, but his hands say it for him—curling into your sides like he needs the anchor.

You press your forehead to his, your smile so close it nearly touches his.

He’s never been more wrecked.

His heart’s punching through his ribs, his hands are clinging like he might float off the planet, and stupidly—so stupidly—his knees shift beneath you, like movement might help hide the hard-on growing with every brush of your skin. It only makes it worse. Obvious. Aching.

In his panic, he jerks slightly and knocks into your stereo. The radio bursts to life at full volume, startling you both.

Hey now, hey now… don’t dream it’s over…

“Shit—God, I’m so fuckin’ sorry, I—” he stammers, fumbling like he might tear the whole console out of the car in sheer embarrassment.

But you just laugh. Head thrown back, unguarded, bright and completely you. It cuts through the heat like wind chimes in summer.

“Relax, Remmy,” you grin, fingers curling against the back of his neck. “Crowded House isn’t a crime.”

Then, with mock-seriousness, you hum along—soft and teasing—your voice ghosting over the lyrics while your hips shift on his lap, and he swears he sees God.

“Didn’t peg you as the type,” you murmur, swaying just enough to make his jaw clench. “This your makeout soundtrack, or…?”

He tries to answer. Fails. His mouth opens. Nothing comes out.

“You’re so cute when you’re short-circuiting,” you coo, before kissing him again.

This time, it’s messier. Hotter. His fingers dig in just a little as your mouths slide together, lips sticky with lip gloss and heat. You sigh into him, all plush and warm and too good to be real, grinding down just enough to ruin him completely.

He groans—low, desperate—like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, his mouth, any of this. But you guide him. You teach him with every kiss, every slow roll of your hips, every sweet, breathy sound that slips from your throat.

“I’m dreaming right now, aren’t I?” he mutters against your mouth.

You grin, eyes gleaming. “You better not be, Remmy. ‘Cause I’m not letting you wake up just yet.”

Outside the car, the world is still. The parking lot is empty, bathed in flickering yellow light. Somewhere in the distance, a train moans through the night like a warning, but neither of you hear it. All he hears is you humming along to the chorus again, your breath warm against his cheek.

YOUR SEAT'S STILL WARM. THE CREDITS ARE ROLLING. BUT THE NIGHT ISN'T OVER. PICK YOUR NEXT FEATURE — NOW IN THEATERS : 700 FOLLOWERS CELEBRATION — JACK O'CONNELL MLIST

[paramythas]

𝐍𝐄𝐎 𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐒 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐅 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐖𝐈𝐅𝐓 𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍 on the uneven bars before she makes her way back to Chuuya, flopping onto the ground at his feet. A smile is tugging at her mouth, as if she can't quite keep it as small as she'd like, and she avoids it, for the moment, by lifting herself partly upright in order to stretch her limbs out. As she does, she thinks about the way he'd watched her all the while. Not with particular interest, exactly- but like someone trying to put together a puzzle that they couldn't quite find all the pieces of.

She knows he's curious- he's made that obvious enough by how he keeps asking things about her. Some subtly, most less so. Of course she understands- she's still anomalous, someone he doesn't know and something he doesn't understand. And before he can really trust her he needs to have a reason to. Or to at least know enough that he won't feel as though doing so will be detrimental.

It's not like she couldn't write it down for him. The bare bones of her life. Jot down everything from her cloistered childhood to her unstable teen years to... whatever had happened at the original 'end' of her life. Or the decision to start over again, at least. He already knows that part, at the very least.

Turning the thought over in her head, Neo turns as she stretches, peeking up at him over her shoulder.

Hey. Thanks.

Two words, short and brief, and it makes her face go hot with how unfamiliar it is to her, to show any kind of gratitude. Swiftly she ducks her head again, pretending to focus on touching her toes as more words creep into being in the air.

You went through all the trouble, even though you could've told me to do it myself. So. Thanks.

It's probably nothing he considers a great effort, all told- and it's probably pathetic to say it's the first time someone besides Roman has done something like that for her. Well, actually, even Roman hadn't been the type to do things like this. He was more the 'helping her get what she wanted by plotting things out for her' type. Organizing something like this would have been so far out of his wheelhouse it wasn't even funny.

Not that he was clever, in his own sharp, vicious way- but Roman's knowledge was all about people, and how to use them. Or crime, and how to get away with it. Things that involved finer details had usually been left up to her.

So this... it's nice.

The last person to be this nice to her had been... Brothers, she couldn't remember that either. How was that for pathetic?

When she's finally finished stretching, she leans back on her hands, and looks up at him with that same, lopsided smile again. He really is kind of a weird guy, but Neo thinks there's probably a pretty good reason for that. And the reason is probably whatever it is that tried to crawl its way into existing when she tried to copy him. She wants to ask about it- wants to know what it is, why it's in him, how it happened. The curiosity is killing her, so to speak.

But she's not going to ask, because it's not fair asking about something he definitely doesn't want to talk about when she has so much she's holding back as it is.

...maybe they can exchange, sometime.

Finally, she pushes herself to her feet, moving to pick up her water bottle and take a swig.

...you said there was paperwork, right? Let's get it done then, since I'm gonna be spending more time here.

A pause, and then she grins, 'laughs' and peers up into Chuuya's face, looking sly.

Can I try driving your bike next?

Despite the slight roll of her eyes, he spares her from any lectures.

Of course he knows well now how to use Gravity without a lot of conscious thought. It comes as naturally to him these days as breathing does, most times, but occasionally it gets away from even him. When he gets pissed off enough, he sometimes explodes the ground beneath his feet. When he gets distracted enough, he sometimes catches himself drifting just a little farther than he'd meant to when he's gone feather-light and has to correct course.

And when he was younger and not yet grown into his Ability, he did in fact manage to accrue a few bruises and cuts here and there flying around too hard or too fast.

(In fairness though, most of the damage usually ended up being whatever structure he ran into, more than his own flesh.)

Of course, most of those things aren't really risk factors for Neo. She's not controlling it, she's just borrowing it, but that doesn't mean she won't get herself into a little bit of trouble if she misjudges.

But she'll find that out experientially, more than anything he has to say about it.

For now, he just lets her work, crossing his arms over his chest casually and shifting his weight to one hip to watch. Every little thing is a give-away to something. The way she so precisely dances her way across the bars with grace and refinement, not worried at all about falling, which he guesses has a lot to do with the tight-rope she mentioned wanting to practice on.

The information that she-- ...the cat? ...whatever, had given away still sat in his mind, processing. Grand theft auto at fifteen. Some time in a spy school (not surprising to him in the least, given what he's seen of her). A five-year larceny spree. Not to mention her tangible talents, the way she handles herself, the level she can read at (despite that its in a, notably, foreign language from another world. That still trips him up a little).

He's thinking, at least, that she's no disadvantaged slum kid like he'd started out. The way she carries herself, the skills she possesses... even if she was a genius, she could only have taught herself so many skills, and only up to a certain degree before they needed outside input to polish them further.

Of course, the whole spy school thing makes that possible. It makes... a lot of things harder to discern, really, if this school of hers was any good, or if it was even really a school at all and not some kind of little government-run facility or...

He frowns just a little, privately, at the thought. The trouble with things like that, especially in a world where a third of the population has Abilities, some more troublesome than others, it's not exactly outside the realm of possibility to induce things like brainwashing or even overwriting who someone is or thinks they are. He knows that personally, after all of that shit with the bastard scientist N. How he'd almost had it done to him. How it had probably happened once already to erase any early life memories he might've otherwise had before becoming Arahabaki. Its a rancid enough thought to make his insides squirm a little.

Another little thing to put a pin in until he could better learn the full picture.

But one thing he doesn't need to do much investigating into. She is quite impressive in how she moves. He might not have to work very hard himself to be able to do a lot of what he does, but he's been around plenty enough people to know that even with years of training, many people could never do the things she's doing, a little help from Gravity or no.

He's sure she's probably bruised and bled at least a few times to get to the level she's at. Right now its just fooling around, but he can definitely piece together how that sort of ground-work can translate into combat potential, for the creatively-minded.

"You like that, huh?" he chuckles a little when she looks back at him. Of course, that delight is just another of a few reasons why it was better not to go overboard with using his Ability to lighten her up. He knows better than anyone the thrill of being able to do what physics dictates he shouldn't' be able to -- which is exactly where some of the worst trouble can start. "Just don't let it go to your head. It'll hurt if you hit anything real solid."

And if she ends up hurting something, judging by her earlier trepidation, he doesn't exactly think she'd want to take a trip to Mori's office for a broken rib or something.

[unabashednightmarepizza]

AHH pranking varka by calling him another man’s name !11!!1

A/N: Lmao, I love the reaction of guys when they are called a different Man's name. Even my bestfriend isn't immune to it. Here is a quick scenario and some thoughts on it, dear anon!

The Grandmaster A.K.A "May the winds carry my betrayal because I don't matter to my s/o anymore" Varka a.k.a the "dramatic theatre actor even the Fontaine hasn't seen in years"

Cue you screaming at the top of your lungs at him from behind: "VARKA, YOU ABSOLUTE MUSCLE-HEADED HIMBO, IT WAS A JOKE—GET BACK HERE BEFORE I DRAG YOU BY THAT FLOOFY MULLET OF YOURS, YOU THEATRE DRAMATIC WOLF!"

*slow, dramatic turn from Varka as he stops his story to anyone who listened with the face of (⁠・⁠o⁠・⁠)*

So, we all agree that Varka is a silly guy. I mean, my man answered Venti while he was cornered and had the audacity to joke and laugh in that raspy voice 🤭

I think he is a really fun guy to hang out with, even as friends. He is that type of friend/lover to constantly find ways to put his work aside for some time and look for you around Mondstadt, only to pester you and demand kisses + for you to give attention to this poor man because he missed you a lot!

"You just saw me this morning, Varka... We had a breakfast together, remember?" /"TOO LONG AGO! 😞🥺"

Absolute kicked puppy, a golden retriever specifically

But an Eldritch horror monster on battlefield

We love a man like that🤭😋

However that day wasn't going so nice. The weather was too hot that it could melt your insides, the children were so loud that you wondered if they were on a hunt for your ears and people were starting to get on your nerves because you had a mission WAY far away from the city and had to run into 5 CAMPS of hilichurls and needed to cool off by cursing or whatever.

Or maybe it was because somethings were not going in the way you planned: you woke up too late, you stubbed your toe on the table in the living room, you were out of stock on your favourite drink, your favourite dress/shirt/pant was dirty and you didn't wash it and you spilled water on your socked feet.

Or you just felt playful and wanted see his reaction thanks to Donna's suggestion

Either way, you were either too overwhelmed because of the day or just wanted to be a little gremlin lmao

Yeah, sometimes a girl is just a girl with so many things going on 😞

That's when you decide to prank him.

"Okay, (Random Name), I get it."

He goes silent. Too silent and goes like "Who? 😐😑😐

After a moment, he dramatically holds his chest with a loud gasp that resonated through the wind and made a certain Archon wince in pain. “After all I’ve done for you! Braving storms, slaying monsters, cooking that awful stew I called ‘dinner’ last night... This is how I’m rewarded?”

Might even fake stagger back like he’s been mortally wounded, looking for something to lean on. Maybe your shoulder. Maybe the wall. Maybe a dog, and he dramatically fell on his KNEES with a cry much like a baby's.

All under your deadpan stare like 😑😐😑 "I am dealing with way too much..."

Then, as if he is a two edged sword, he got all too serious and latched himself on you. Immediately starting to question you as if you just murdered someone.

You did. You murdered this man's poor heart by betraying hım like that.

"Who’s this lucky bastard I just got mistaken for by my own s/o?" 🧐🤨

There’s amusement in his voice, but his eyes squint with playful suspicion. He's joking. mostly. Hopefully.

It seemed like he let go after you told him that it was just a prank and you just wanted to see his reaction/ was angry at that person and just said his name.

He lets it go... Only for a new reaction to start.

The "Petty Revenge Arc 😈"

Okay this man is petty PETTY. Like in the way "I-write-in-my-journal-as-if-I-am-in-a-novel" and leaves it open for you to find. There is definitely something like "Day 7. They still haven’t apologized. The cold of Dragonspine would feel warmer than this arrogance.”

And for the next few hours, he’s unbothered to the point of chaos. “Oh, don’t worry about the dishes. I’m sure Diluc can do them for you.”/ “Bet Kaeya knows how to swing a sword better."

He brings it up in front of his poor colleagues too. Poor Jean doesn't even know how to react to the man that is techniqally her boss

“Did you know they cheated on me... with a name? I’ve been emotionally betrayed.”

Jean: 😶🧍🏻🙂‍↕️ I am at the edge of my wits/ Varka: “Am I just another NPC in our love story?!” 🥲

Her inner monologue: “I command knights. I manage city defense. I handle Klee's explosives. But nothing...nothing prepared me for this grown man acting like he’s auditioning for a Fontaine opera.” she wishes she had brought earplugs and vacation forms.

He immediately starts calling you by every wrong name he can think of. On purpose. He saw the glint in your eyes the moment you said it. He knows it’s a prank. Doesn’t stop him from using it for maximum drama and fun tho.

“Sure thing, Flora—wait, was it Ella? Or Lisa? Hard to keep track nowadays.” And he smirks like he’s proud of himself.

He is treading on dangerous waters there, he just doesn't know you are standing behind hım with your sword/pan/mug, ready to throw it at him and right towards that handsome face.🐥🔪

You know he could catch it. That Man has insane reflexes. All that training, heavy muscles and the huge broadblade wasn't for nothing.

“I’ll just go train with the boys. Maybe they remember my name.” is another excuse he uses, and HE HAS THE AUDACITY TO FLIP THE ENDS OF HIS WOLFCUT RIGHT AT YOUR FACE JDJSDHSJ

LIKE A DISNEY VILLAIN IN A CAVEMAN’S BODY.

It’s not even a good hair flip. It’s a fluff-and-swoosh move that ends up tickling your nose and making your eyes water.

However, his sassiness and dramatics are all coming from his worry. He knows he may not be the best man for you, despite his position and respect from his people.

He worries that love isn’t enough when his presence can’t always be there.

He knows he goes away too much for too long, that he isn't as present he would like to, he has a lot of duties to attent but he loves you. Like in the way sun and moon would chase each other, or in the way people find comfort in rain, or a simple warm tea while sitting under a soft blanket, watching outside while cuddled with their s/o.

He plays it off dramatic, silly, full of energy because if he lets himself feel the ache?

It’s going to swallow him whole.

He’s afraid that one day the joke won’t be a joke. That you would actually find someone who stays.

Who’s less of a “once every moon cycle” and more of a “warm tea, every morning with kisses on bed." Who can wrap their arms around you every night instead of only when war and duty allow

One night, while cuddled up together in silence, he murmurs his worries. Not too outwardly or loud, but still loud enough for you to syraighten up over his naked chest, staring at his eyes with so much love that it physically ached for hım to look at them.

Like he couldn't believe his luck

“Just so you know... I’d never forget your name. Even if I got knocked in the head by a ruin guard.”

You would latch yourself on hım for the next couple of days after he tells you all of his worries and always remind hım your love, feeling bad that you pranked hım.

We love an emotionally smart man 👑

However if you, for the second time, try the prank, he cuts you off mid-word and plops on you as he threw you on the bed with a boyish smirk that promises what was going to happen next: "Nope. Not falling for it. You get one betrayal per season, darling.”

And if you saw a the hints of a banner with "welcome home, cheater" with a very ugly writing... No, you didn't.

You reassure him, and he pulls you close with a huff, heart at esse at knowing your true love and loyalty, whispering “Good. 'Cause you're mine. And I’m yours, right?”

[sachimami]

Orc fic pt 3

Pt 1 ♡ Pt 2

You’ve been at home by yourself for a while, tidying up, waiting for your orc rescuer to return. He had gone out to hunt for the day. The sun was just starting to set when he lumbered through the door with a deer carcass thrown over his shoulder. He asks if you would mind helping him slaughter it.

“I don’t know how, but I can try”, you say.

“What do you mean you don't know how?” he said, slightly winded from the weight of the body.

“I’ve never needed to.”

He doesn’t say anything, but looks at you with his brows furrowed, confused and skeptical.

“I’ve never needed to, it’s already done for us. Slaughtered, butchered, and washed”, you continued.

He scoffs. “Done for you? Sounds like you’re royalty where you’re from.”

You do your best to explain to him how grocery stores and industrial farming work, though he can’t quite grasp the scale of it.

“Hmph. You’re too spoiled. Follow me, princess, I’m going to show you how”, he snarked.

You follow him outside and watch him cut into the animal as he explains what he’s doing. You’re a little queasy watching the whole process, not quite paying attention to his words. You’ve never seen an animal be slaughtered before. You realize how disconnected you are from where your food comes from.

After he butchers the meat and cleans off, the two of you return inside to prepare dinner. You offer to help and he gives you potatoes and a large rectangle shaped knife. It’s made for hands his size and different from the knives you’re used to. You start to cut the vegetables, but struggle to maneuver the knife, and they come out wonky. He looks over at you.

“Don’t tell me you don’t cut your own vegetables either?”

“Our knives are different…” you say softly, eyes looking down. You’re embarrassed. You think he must find you useless and pathetic. He’s been so kind and hospitable to you, and you just want to return the same to him in what little ways you can. You’re plucked from your thoughts by a touch on your hand. With your hand on the knife, he adjusts your grip on the handle and guides it to cut the potatoes with his. The knife fits in his hand, even with your smaller one underneath his. You can feel the thick callouses on his palm graze against the top of your hand with each motion.

“There. Think you can manage now?”

You didn’t realize you had been holding your breath. You nod sheepishly, and do your best to copy his movements. After you finish, he looks at your work. “Good enough”, he says, and adds them to a boiling pot.

You help him prepare the rest of the meal, and the two of you finally sit down to eat. You can tell he’s starved by the way he eats, sucking his fingers and juice running down his lips. You can’t help but be a little mesmerized. You said something that made him laugh, a loud, booming laugh accompanied by his fist banging the table. You didn’t think it was particularly funny, but you felt a rush flick through your body from making him laugh and causing his goofy open mouthed smile.

After you take a bath, you settle next to the fire with one of your books. He’s joined you in the living room, reading one of his own. You ask him what he’s reading, and he says it’s about magic history. You scoot over close enough to him to see the writing on the pages.

“Can you read it to me?” you ask, intrigued by the the foreign markings, “I want to hear your language.”

He obliges, and the two of you sit by the fire, his rich voice filling the room. His language is tonal, his voice flowing up and down, each sentence sounds like a song. A lullaby drawing you to sleep…

He suddenly feels a weight on his shoulder. He starts, then turns to see your head on his shoulder. You’re asleep. He holds his breath, doesn’t flinch, he doesn’t want to wake you. He sits there in silence feeling the weight of you press on him, smelling your scent brush his nose. This is the closest you’ve been to his face. Why is his head spinning? His thoughts wander, not tracking time, when you wake up.

You jolt up off of his shoulder. “I’m sorry!”, you say, feeling warmth in your cheeks, “it must be time for bed!”

You offer to sleep in the living room tonight. Since he found you he’s had you sleep in his bed while he sleeps on the floor out here. You feel bad he hasn’t slept in his own bed in days, but he refuses your offer and insists it’s no trouble at all to sleep on the floor.

“Go get some rest, princess needs her sleep”, he snarked, “I need some too after my long day.”

“Good night!”, you say before scampering off to his room, his eyes fixed to your back as you disappear behind the door.

—————————

@blushycadaver @thoughts-of-bear-undercovers @hi-is-blog

[where-spar0w-barks]

First of all, I want to say congratulations on releasing Shift 2 of Big Bad Dogs!!! I cannot imagine the amount of work and effort you had to put in to code, draw, and write this story and bring it to life. I hope that you continue to enjoy the process and work at a comfortable pace! I wish only the best for you as the developer of this game!

I also wanted to say that I am intrigued and consider your VN as another excellent, underrated gem that contributes to a fresh perspective of a yandere, and surprisingly - an asshole.

I find that your characters aren’t 100% likeable. In fact they are explicitly, and CLEARLY flawed. It is a detail that players cannot miss/deny and it is clear that it was intentionally added as part of BB’s and Lane’s character. Your VN adds a layer of thought-out realism and just honesty regarding your character’s nature. You don’t hide it, you make it front and centre (especially Lane’s character) - and that is SO refreshing.

I don’t know how you did it bestie but dear Lord give me them C R U M B S yumyumyum

Also as I was watching Hello Yinny’s play through of your game, I was siding with BB, thinking it was a clear black and white answer. But in the end, it wasn’t black, white, or grey; it was more like a choice of simply choosing the lesser evil. And I LOVE it. I like how either rival still held a significant presence in other routes, and did not undersell nor oversell their presence. They showed up when they were needed, and I love that. I also like how they was a neutral route, which I have not experienced watching Yandere VNs.

And I gotta admit, the creep you encounter around the routes. I’m sorry, that was the most scary, unsettling experience I’ve encountered in a VN. The fact that there was nobody coming to save you, protect you (not even BB), was terrifying!!!! You also didn’t use the creep as a clutch for characters to portray them as a savior. However in the case of the bus driver or the player lying, I love how the agency of the player is actually an illusion itself. It is only thanks to BB’s involvement that you’re able to avoid the creep’s advances, and not gonna lie - that makes BB a much more intimidating character! BB really said it himself - no one is going to touch you unless you’re claimed, reinstating the theme of misogyny in your VNs. But that creep…uGh…that fucking weirdo can die in a ditch and I am manifesting that for the game!!!

Next, Amelia. This poor girl, but yes - we love this poor girl!!! I appreciate that Amelia did not overstay her welcome. She wasn’t like a tutorial, small talk, or just added dialogue. You didn’t bombard us that she was a friend, or how we know her. You just…let it be. You trusted us with the fucking. information ‼️‼️‼️. THANK YOU ‼️‼️‼️‼️ And her personality isn’t shallow either, it is clear that she has her pros and cons. Even though she had little presence, it was effective and significant. I cannot thank you enough for just. Making her exist. Bless you, sparow, bless you 😘😘😘😘😘😘.

I am sorry (NOT SORRY) for this long ass essay but I could not gatekeep my praise. This VN is officially one I look forward to seeing the developments on, because it just - MmmM - scratches a tiny itch in my brain that I didn’t know I had. Like whwjwbwnwkwlama

P.S - I heard there was SEVEN VARIATIONS OF THAT FIGHT HELLO????? HELLO???????? HUH?????? ARE YOU OK?!,!?!?!!?!??! BESTIE WHAT

Also ALSO ALSO I LOVED THE FIGHTING BETWEEN BB AND PB. UGHHH THE WAY BB SAID HE’D CRACK LANE’S THROAT WITH A TYRE HELLOOOOOOOOOOO CUM HERE PRETTY BOY 🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵💦💦💦����💦

Also BB being a killer???? Yes??? yeah. Imma absorb him

Also me wanting BB to do this to me:

Me to Lane:

OK I’M DONE FOR REAL NOW I’M SORRY BYE 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

THANK YOU SOOOO MUCHHHH POOKIEEEEBEARR!! <3

YESSSS YOU TOTALLY RIGHT!! in fact, when i started creating the VN, i knew the players were gonna like BB MUCH MORE than the other love interest (bc well, he is hot, muscular, masked man...) so i REALLY needed another love interest as interesting as BB :3

thats why i created Lane the way he is, not a perfect guy because first of all, it would have been very "cliché" (i dont say my game isnt cliché ofc xD! yk i like cliché sometimes!) to have a "bad" love interest (bc BB is described as THE stranger, THE weird guy) and a "nice" love interest, like choosing between bad and good kinda xD

also i HATE "good guys" in visual novels (not IRL OFC), i find them very boring and just here to be like "hey look i give you princess treatment, im a green flag, i have no flaws" like its just boring asf, no offense to anyone tho xD

rn Lane seems to have literally 0 green flag, but surprisingly people actually like him and i am so happy that i managed writing him like this x) thank you to have noticed that!! :3

the neutral route will be actually more interesting in shift 3 by the way! x) i think you can even already guess why, i mean... if you arent on Lanes side or BBs, only one person is remaining right? :3

aah yes that damn weirdo xD for the bad ending i dont wanted anyone to save the MC cuz to actually obtain it, you really have to be unlucky, like making the wrong choices in shift 1 etc... so idk it felt more "realistic" if i could say (+ it happens when you side 100% with Lane, so my poor guy get punched and BB disappears after, even if you dont have the bad ending, he isnt here (in fact its because going to see you after he literally punched your coworker isnt very a good idea, he didnt want to scare you cuz he knew hes gone too far + i said in another ask that BB is a human, he is fucking weird/obsessed etc... but he absolutely CANT be here watching the MC 24/24, i think that aspect is very good in stories like that because you can actually do things with other people with the yandere character not knowing it!))

im glad you talked about misogyny, its a very important theme in this story and thats one of the reasons the story takes place in 2009 :3 its also why i wont put a pronouns option for the game (sorry...) xD

YES AMELIA MY DIVA XD (she will have more screen time in shift 3 mueheheh) i wanna say that i very LOVE video games where nothing is explained explicitly, thats kinda what i wanted to do, just give hints to the players and let them guess x) (like thats why i NEVER say in the game that Lane and Amelia are siblings) also you mostly play in the present timeline, but a lot of things you don't understand will be revealed in the past, so the hints you have in the present will make sense once youre in the past :3

ACTUALLY I LOVED YOUR ASK THANK UUUU POOKIE :3 <3 SORRY FOR THE GRAMMAR MISTAKES I WROTE THAT STRAIGHT FROM MY BRAIN SO YEAH I DIDNT THINK MUCH ABOUT THAT XDDD

(BB coming to spank you)

[tired-teacher-blog]

Sorry if requests aren’t open I’m just in need of the comfort. But don’t worry about writing it if they aren’t. Could you do Denki, Keigo, Dabi and Shinsou (weird line up ik) where reader is about to lose her v card to him and she stops him right before he’s about to put it in like she kinda freaks out and says she’s not ready? Like how would they react? Idk this kinda happened to me so I’m just feeling like physically sick about it for some reason and ofc I have the sweetest bf and he’s so understanding but I still feel sick about it.

Whenever you're ready

Characters : Dabi/ Hawks/ Kaminari/ Shinsou x Fem reader

Warnings and Genre : NSFW/ 18+/ Fluff/ tw: genophobia (fear of sexual intercourse)/ requested

Notes : Hello hello beautiful, first of all, I'm so sorry for taking MONTHS to get this done, I haven't been around lately and I have been dealing with some problems irl that left me drained and uninspired to write, and second, you shouldn't feel bad or guilty about changing your mind. In fact, I applaud you for speaking up and expressing your unwillingness to carry on when you felt uncomfortable because that was the right thing to do. Also, your boyfriend is such a gentleman ❤️

Masterlist | Second Masterlist | Third Masterlist

Hawks :

Keigo places wet open-mouthed kisses along your jaw, neck, and the swell of your breasts, murmuring gruffly words of praise against your tingly skin.

His crimson wings are spread wide behind him, casting an intimate silhouette over you both.

It's time now, time for the main event that you've been waiting for with bated breath.

_"Are you ready sweetheart?" he asks huskily, golden-brown eyes half lidded, and lips quirked into a cool smirk that's hiding his own excitement.

_ "Yes, I'm ready." you reply eagerly, smiling up at him as he hovered over your sprawled body, but the moment you feel the smooth tip of his length prodding your virgin entrance, your body stiffens and your legs press together, shutting him out abruptly.

He's taken aback, wide eyes shifting between the mortified expression on your face, and your trembling thighs blocking his view of your most intimate parts.

He needn't ask to know what's going on in your mind, because his softened gaze and the sweet smile taking over his face, say it all. He knows you're having second thoughts, and he acknowledges your fears.

_ "Hey, look at me princess," he urges with a gentle tone, moving to lie down next to you on the bed and bringing you carefully into his arms, "don't be afraid, nothing needs to happen unless you say so." he places a warm kiss on your forehead, one of his majestic wings covers your quivering body like a protective blanket.

Your heart skips a beat at his understanding reaction, and a sweet smile finds its way to your lips as you melt in his embrace, "I'm sorry things didn't go as planned, I was really looking forward to it but..."

_ "But nothing, we have all the time in the world," he tightens his hold on you, placing another kiss, on your lips this time, slow and sensual, stealing your breath away, "besides, we have plenty of ways to have fun until the time comes when you're ready for the next step." his smirk returns as he adds playfully, dragging a relieved sigh and a happy giggle from you.

Dabi :

You place your hands on the gnarled patches of skin covering most of his chest as you wiggle your way over his waist, your legs on either side of him.

You smile softly– and bashfully, while looking into his turquoise irises and urging your thundering heart to settle.

You've been pestering him for days now, to take your relationship to the next level, but everytime you bring it up, you're met with the resounding 'no' that leaves you desperate and frustrated.

It's not that he hates the idea of being intimate with you or that he doesn't find you attractive, because he does.. and extremely so, even if he refuses to admit it, it's just that he knows you're mostly driven by zeal for the experience without realizing that it might be overwhelming for your inexperienced body.

However, your stubbornness has outmatched his own, so here you are now, unclothed and straddling his lap, a flustered expression on your face, and his erect member resting against your stomach.

_ "Are you sure about this?" he asks gruffly, rough hands creeping up your legs and resting on your hips, squeezing slightly as his intense eyes bore into yours.

You simply nod, not trusting yourself to speak just yet.

_ "Alright good," he murmurs in that velvety voice that makes your knees weaken everytime he speaks, "lift up and lower yourself on my dick, slowly, take your time and set your own pace per your comfort."

You nod again, heaving a deep breath before raising your hips and watching as he aligns his thickness with your fluttering pussy.

You start lowering yourself, slowly, shakily, until the tip is pressing against your tight entrance, and that's when you gasp..

_ "No! Wait, wait." your shrill voice pierces the calm of the room, making him tense up momentarily before letting go of his cock so he could grip your hips and move you from his lap and onto the bed.

_ "Are you alright?" his voice is low and soothing, coaxing your raging heart and labored breathing to alleviate, "just calm down."

_ "I'm sorry Toya, I really thought I was ready and..."

_ "Stop it," he interrupts you firmly, but gently, cradling your cheeks and leaning his forehead against yours in a rare show of affection, "stop apologizing dumbass, you've done nothing wrong, we'll do it only when you're absolutely certain, is that clear?"

Despite the roughness in his tone, there is still a sliver of warmth in there that makes your heart stutter and your lips curve up in a genuine smile as you reply, "it's perfectly clear."

Kaminari :

His cock is already throbbing painfully behind the soft fabric of his boxers, after the hour or so he has spent worshipping every inch of your body to help you relax for what's to come. After all, this isn't only your first time with him, but it's also your first time ever, and he wants you to enjoy it as much as he knows he will.

When the time comes however, for your bodies to be connected as one, something in your guts twists and you immediately push him off of you before bringing the blankets up to your chin, squeezing your eyes shut and muttering in a trembling voice, "I'm sorry, I can't. I don't think I'm ready yet."

For a long while nothing happens. You're shielded behind the darkness of your closed lids, unable to see or tell what he's thinking, but just praying to whoever is listening that you haven't upset him too much.

As if he could read your thoughts, he tentatively places a warm hand over your slightly trembling shoulder, tracing soothing patterns and speaking in a soft voice, "hey it's okay. Don't apologize for this cutie, you haven't done anything wrong," he pauses for a brief moment before adding, just as softly, "we don't have to rush into it, let's do it only when you're ready."

Your eyes finally flutter open, looking up at him with a relieved expression on your face, and you lower the blankets slightly so they're now resting just above your chest, "you really mean it? So you're not upset that I changed my mind suddenly?"

He chuckles deeply and leans in to press a lingering kiss on your cheek before leaning back to study the hopeful gleam in your orbs, "of course I mean it, and of course I'm not upset. Listen, I love you, all of you, and waiting until you're ready is the least I can do to prove it."

Your body finally relaxes completely, and you sit up, allowing the soft blankets to drop to your waist as you launch yourself into his arms and hug him tightly, "you're the best Denki, I love you."

He catches you easily, laughing in amusement at your cheery reaction before replying smugly, "I know right? I'm the best!"

He truly is..

Shinsou :

_ "Are you feeling well?" he speaks between fervent kisses placed along your breasts and stomach, dark violet irises studying you from under his lashes for any sign of reluctance, and long calloused fingers– due to years of using his capturing weapon, are caressing your sides soothingly.

_ "I'm okay..." you reply with a soft and bashful smile, watching as he sits up and kneels between your spread legs, his eyes are intense, but there is an undeniable hint of warmth in their depth.

One large hand moves to wrap around his erect member, stroking it slowly, while the other remains on your hip, "I'll be gentle, so don't worry." he promises, and you believe him.

He inches closer, throat bobbing as he swallows hard.

This is it, it's happening.. your first time ever and it's with him, that's why he's adamant about making it perfect and memorable for you.

He presses the glistening tip of his length against your entrance, slowly, so slowly.. but then he stops, tensing up and pulling out abruptly before moving to collect you in his arms after noticing the color draining from your face and the tears welling up in your eyes.

He says nothing, and neither do you, as you both sit there in the warmth of his bed and among the rumpled silk sheets.

You hide your face in the crook of his neck, squeezing your eyes shut and willing your tears to cease. You're grateful he understood your predicament without you even saying a word, it's a part of why you love him so much.

He caresses your back in a soothing manner, kissing the top of your head and whispering gently, "it's okay beautiful, this is big deal I know, so you don't have to worry about it yet."

His arms tighten around you, and he kisses your temple this time, a soft lingering kiss that makes your heart skip a beat.

You can feel your body slowly relaxing, and your tears eventually stopping thanks to him, lifting your head to look into his eyes with a gentle smile that has found its way to your lips, "thank you Hitoshi, you really know how to make me feel better."

He is a man of few words, but his presence, his warmth, and his love for you speak volumes of the kind of person he is.

Divider by @/cafekitsune

[if-seal]

I used ai for my code and now I don't know what to do. When I started using it I thought it's okay as long it is mostly original but now I'm apparently a diabolical piece of shit who hates the environment. My game is really specific code wise and im really ambitious, so I was constantly stressed trying find help on how to do this and this. I just realized how bad using ai for anything was like two weeks ago. Idk if I should go on with my game and make a blog or just throw it all away. Like I'm 95 percent done. I'm scared if I continue what reaction I'll get, and idek if I deserve to be in the community. Should I just redo the whole thing? At the same time, using the ai wasn't a walk in the park either considering my goals. I'm so confused and stressed, and I have no motivation to continue whatsoever, even though I low-key need the patreon profits. This was supposed to be a project to slowly get my feet off the ground, making money doing what I love, but now my dream was just crushed. The conversation around ai is so confusing, like one second its not bad and the next you're lazy and a horrible person. Idek how to move forward or how to handle a future situation where I'm stuck with complicated code. This was a lot but I just needed to get that off my chest. Ik im not 100 percent innocent, I've just been holding that in for a minute.

Dear Stressed Friend,

In the kindest of ways, you made a mistake: you tried to shortcut without a solid foundation and are realising the limitations of doing so.

You do not mention which IF language you are using, but if you were planning to release a game with Hosted Games, you cannot publish there with genAI material.

LLMs are often wrong and you won't know how to fix the errors they create - it will also be hard to spot if there are errors at all if you don't understand the code you're using. This is one of many reasons why the professional narrative designers and game writers I know do not give LLMs the time of day (to put it mildly).

Whatever coding language your project is, there are plenty of people who are keen to help you understand how the code works. Asking questions and putting effort in to learn will enable you to develop your skills, work independently, and understand what you're doing in order to do your creative work.

With time and work you will reach a point where the creativity of code and writing can work together wonderfully and you'll have the potential to do this with more confidence.

You sound very anxious and having a lot of thoughts at once, and so I would recommend not starting a blog at this time. Certainly not a Patreon. Instead take some time to evaluate where you're at and work on your coding skills.

It may not be easy at first but we all start somewhere. I wish you well.

[ae-aeitch]

Dust Jacket - Bob Floyd

bob floyd x fem!oc

summary: two damaged people find a kindred spirit in dusty pages and dried ink.

a/n: OC is named but no description of looks or body are used. I love Bob Floyd and I felt like writing a little something and this came out of that. Sorry if the format is weird, i quite literally ran out of lines.

word count: 17.5 k (i got a little carried away.. sorry)

warnings: some angst, mentions of death, alcohol consumption, some slightly dark thoughts but nothing crazy

Greta James didn’t believe in happily ever after.

Fairy tale endings, she’d decided long ago, were just the final insult in a long line of delusions — sweetened poison for people too afraid to face the truth. The world didn’t offer tidy resolutions or magical kisses. It offered wreckage. Ruins. A long, unraveling silence after the last scream.

She read stories as a child, everyone had, but after reading the way the Pevensie’s story ended, Greta had come to a conclusion: only cowards got happily ever afters. The ones who never bothered to stay behind. The ones who didn’t look too closely. The ones who never asked what happened next.

Because next was grief. And guilt. And God, if He was still watching, didn’t have the decency to blink.

So no, she didn’t believe in fated love stories or second chances or people finding each other against all odds.

But someone, once, had told her to write her number in a book.

“If they’re worth meeting, they’ll find it,” they’d said.

She’d laughed in their face and done it anyway.

Bob Floyd wasn’t sure what he was looking for when he turned off the main drag and found himself on a quieter street — all cracked pavement and sagging telephone wires, the kind of place that felt like it hadn’t been touched since 1974.

The base was unusually slow that day, a rare lull that left his apartment feeling too still, too silent — like a room waiting for someone who’d already left. The thought of the Hard Deck, with its sticky floors and jukebox-on-repeat, made him queasy. He didn’t want noise pretending to be company. Not today.

So he wandered, boots scuffing gravel, hands tucked deep in the pockets of his worn jeans, until he found it: a secondhand bookstore wedged between a peeling laundromat and a half-dead electronics repair shop.

It didn’t even have a name — just the ghost of one above the door, sun-bleached and illegible.

Bob hesitated at the threshold, heart ticking out a quiet rhythm in his ribs. Then he stepped inside.

The smell hit him first — old paper, yellowing glue, and burnt coffee. There was a café counter in one corner, but the kid behind it was asleep over a crossword, pen slack in his hand. No music. No greetings. Just the hush of forgotten things waiting to be touched again.

Bob liked places where you could disappear.

He moved slowly through the aisles, fingertips brushing cracked spines and dusted-over covers. The philosophy and literature section was a narrow alcove in the back, cluttered and disorganized, titles shelved sideways and out of order.

He was flipping absently through a weathered copy of Meditations when his fingers landed on something heavier.

House of Leaves.

Its spine was split, the cover frayed at the edges, the dust jacket had long since been removed. Pages fanned open like a scream caught mid-breath. It looked like it had survived something. Or maybe caused it.

He pulled it free.

Inside the front cover, above a faded dedication, someone had written a phone number — no name, no message, just a sequence of digits in tight, steady handwriting: 402-555-2623

He stared at it for a long time. The sensible part of him — the part trained by years of protocol and precaution — said to put it back. It wasn’t meant for him. It was old. Forgotten.

But the quieter part — the lonelier one, the one that missed things he couldn’t name — wouldn’t let go. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was just curiosity. Maybe it was the ache for something unsaid.

Either way, he bought the book for four dollars and walked out of the shop with it tucked under his arm like a secret.

That night, long after the last of the sun had bled from the sky, Bob sat at his kitchen table with the book open beside him and the number copied neatly into his phone.

He stared at the screen. Typed a message. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted that, too.

He wasn’t this kind of man — not reckless, not impulsive, not the sort who reached out to strangers on a whim. But something about the number, the scrawl of it, the silence around it, pulled at him like a splinter.

Finally, he inhaled and typed:

I found your number inside a book today. Hope it's not weird to text you. If it is, feel free to tell me to fuck off.

Then he hit send. He immediately pressed the phone face-down on the table, like it might bite him.

Greta James was halfway through a glass of bad red wine when her phone buzzed against the warped wood of her coffee table. She ignored it at first, curled up on her battered leather couch with Judge — her one-eyed, snoring tank of a rescue bulldog — deadweight against her hip.

A rerun flickered on the TV, some procedural she didn’t have to think about. White noise. Predictable endings.

The phone buzzed again. Persistent little bastard.

She reached for it with a sigh, thumb dragging over the pristine film of her screen. Unknown number. No preview text. Area code 406.

She opened a browser tab, searching ‘area code 406’.

Montana. All of Montana.

Her gut clenched. It was probably spam. Potentially something worse.

She almost deleted it without opening it.

But curiosity — that old bastard — still hadn’t let go of her, no matter how hard she tried to kill it.

She tapped.

Unknown Number: I found your number inside a book today. Hope it's not weird to text you. If it is, feel free to tell me to fuck off.

Every instinct screamed. Creep. Scam. Trap.

But then the words caught — found your number inside a book — and memory came roaring back: her, drunk on defiance and bottom-shelf whiskey, scrawling her number into the flyleaf of a book nobody else would ever read.

Telling herself it didn’t matter. Telling herself it was a joke. Telling herself — in the dark, when no one was listening — that if someone found it, really found it, maybe they’d be someone worth meeting.

She hadn’t thought about it in over a year. Maybe more. It didn’t even feel like something she had done. Just a reckless moment in a younger life.

Still. Against every ounce of caution, she typed:

Greta: What book?

Then tossed the phone onto the couch like it might burn her fingers.

Her heart was hammering. God, she hated this feeling — this sharp, stupid, alive feeling.

It made her feel thirteen again. It made her feel hopeful. And hope, she knew, was the sharpest blade of all.

The reply didn’t come right away.

Greta sat curled in her usual corner of the couch, wine glass balanced between her fingers, Judge’s bulk a familiar pressure at her thigh. She tried not to glance at her phone too often, tried not to care. She told herself she didn’t.

It buzzed once. Just once. She jumped anyway.

Unknown Number: House of Leaves. Postmodern Literature section. Used bookstore near... I think it was C and 9th? In San Diego.

Her eyebrows knit.

C and 9th was less than five miles from her apartment. She’d walked past that crumbling strip of shops more times than she could count. The bookstore barely even looked open half the time. A coincidence, she told herself. Just because he found the book there didn’t mean he was from here. People passed through. People drifted.

Still, something cold pressed beneath her ribs — not fear exactly, just the old reflex of someone who’d survived enough surprises to know most weren’t good.

She stared at the message a moment longer, then typed back with deliberate care:

Greta: If you're lying, you're very specific about it.

A long pause.

Unknown Number: I’m not much of a liar. Bad at it, actually.

She snorted softly, more breath than laugh.

Greta: That’s what a good liar would say.

Unknown Number: Fair.

That was all.

She let the phone slip from her hand, landing in the soft hollow between couch cushions. A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, traitorous and involuntary. Judge gave a grunt of approval — or possibly just gas — and settled deeper against her side.

The next messages arrived not with urgency, but like leaves drifting down from somewhere high and unspoken. Neither of them pressed. Neither of them asked for more than the other seemed ready to give.

Sometimes hours passed between responses. Sometimes a day. But they always came.

It didn’t come consistently. Not at first. It came in flickers — like headlights through rain, arriving quietly when the world had gone still. Always after dark. Always just a little bit lonely.

Bob sat on the back steps of his apartment, beer sweating in his hand, the coastal air cool against his neck. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked once and went quiet. He thumbed out a message one-handed:

Unknown Number: You ever finish the book?

Across town, Greta was closing a case file she no longer had the energy to care about. Her eyes burned from too many hours staring at words that stopped meaning anything halfway through. When her phone buzzed, she grabbed it like a lifeline. Judge perked his ears, hopeful for a treat. He got nothing.

Greta: Define "finish." I survived it, if that's what you mean. Half the footnotes gave me vertigo.

Unknown Number: I’m halfway through. Pretty sure it’s trying to kill me.

Greta: If you make it to page 300, you should get a medal. Or a priest.

She smiled to herself. Just a flicker. Then it was gone.

The next time, it was nearly midnight. Bob was in his garage, sanding rust off an old fender, not really thinking about the car. His phone sat on the workbench beside him, smudged and dusty. He paused, wiped his hands on his jeans, and typed:

Unknown Number: Are we gonna keep calling each other “hey you” or...?

Greta, at home in her kitchen with a mug of stale reheated coffee and a headache blooming behind her eyes, stared at the question for a long moment before answering. No last name. No context. Just a single word with edges.

Greta: Greta.

Unknown Number: I'm Bob.

She blinked. Seriously?

Greta: Bob. That’s the best you could come up with?

Unknown Number: It’s short for Robert. Sorry to disappoint you, Nebraska.

She froze. Nebraska. He thinks I’m still there. Good.

That misunderstanding felt like armor — thick enough to keep him out, thin enough to let his voice slip through.

Greta: Fine. Bob. But I’m saving you as “Bookstore Idiot.”

Bookstore Idiot: Fair. You’re “Nebraska” now.

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it — sharp and sudden and strange in her own mouth. Judge lifted his head at the sound, confused.

They never talked about much. But they talked often. A few words, a question, a wisecrack here or there. Not enough to mean anything. Just enough to feel like something.

Bookstore Idiot: What do you do? Please don’t say influencer.

Greta snorted, picking cold lo mein from a paper carton with two fingers.

Greta: Lawyer. Criminal defense. I get yelled at by old white guys who believe in the death penalty.

Bookstore Idiot: Hot.

Greta: Don’t flatter me, Montana.

Bob paused, reading that one twice.

Not Bob. Not bookstore idiot. Montana. It shouldn’t have made him smile the way it did.

Bob: Got it. Back to our regularly scheduled banter. I’ll refrain from flirtations. Wouldn’t want to give Nebraska the wrong idea.

There was a long pause. Long enough he wondered if he’d stepped too far, even with the walk-back.

Nebraska: What do you do, exactly? Please don’t say motivational speaker.

Bob: Navy. WSO. I sit behind pilots and make sure they don’t kill us both.

Nebraska: So you’re the brains of the operation. Government property with a guilt complex.

Bob: That’s one way to put it.

She didn’t know his age. He didn’t know her real city. Neither asked for photos, or last names, or signs of life beyond the screen. And yet…

Bookstore Idiot: Do you leave your number in all your books?

The message came on a Saturday night, while Greta was scrubbing dried sauce off a saucepan in her oldest pair of sweatpants. A Cranberries record crackled on the turntable. To the Faithful Departed She dried her hands on a dish towel and leaned against the counter.

Greta: Just the ones that felt haunted. Don’t read into it.

Bookstore Idiot: Too late.

The messages came more often after that. Still brief. Still cautious. But steady, now — like rain on a roof you didn’t realize you were listening for.

At stoplights, Greta glanced at her phone. In the locker room, Bob checked his screen with damp hands before peeling off his flight suit.

They never said they were waiting. But they were.

Bookstore Idiot: Got any pets, or are you just a solo creature?

Greta: One-eyed bulldog named Judge. He bites.

Bookstore Idiot: Excellent name. Accurate branding.

Greta: He is a very discerning soul. Don’t expect a warm welcome.

Bookstore Idiot: I’d be disappointed if I got one.

They never talked about meeting.

Maybe they thought they were a thousand miles apart. Maybe it was easier to believe that. Or maybe some small, self-preserving piece of them knew: whatever this was — this thing made of misfired timing and borrowed language — might not survive being looked at too directly.

So they didn’t ask. Didn’t plan. Didn’t push.

They just… stayed. Two strangers, five miles apart, pretending there was an ocean between them. Talking like ghosts through glass. Sending out lines into the dark.

And neither of them wanted to stop.

By the second week, the wariness hadn’t vanished, not entirely. But it had softened — tempered by repetition, eroded by the slow rhythm of familiarity. What had begun as novelty had slipped, unnoticed, into habit.

Still, there were rules. Quiet ones, unspoken and sacred: no pictures, no phone calls, no mention of meeting, no breaking the spell. Months passed like this, each following the unwritten code in hopes of allowing this thing to continue for just a bit longer undisturbed.

Late at night — when the ocean air pressed cool fingers through the screens of Bob’s windows and Greta’s apartment finally exhaled the heat it hoarded during the day — their messages floated back and forth like notes slipped under a locked door. Words distilled by silence. Tethered only by sarcasm and something that might’ve been hope, if either of them had the stomach for it.

Bob had trouble sleeping that night. The dream hadn’t been violent, but it left a shadow in his chest — something without a name or a shape, only weight. He sat up in bed with the sheets twisted around his legs and the faint hiss of far-off traffic humming through the dark.

He didn’t think. Just reached for his phone and typed:

Bob: Weirdest thing you’ve ever found in a book?

Greta’s bathroom light was off. She was stretched in a cold bathtub, the water long since lukewarm, the air prickling against her skin. The TV was still on in the next room, casting blue light through the hallway like an artificial dawn. Some forgotten detective show. Someone being accused of murder.

She hadn’t planned on answering. But her phone buzzed on the edge of the sink, and her hand moved before her brain caught up.

Greta didn’t have to think long. The memory arrived fully intact, as if it had been waiting in her bones for someone to ask.

She shifted in the cold tub, water lapping against porcelain, her phone balanced on the curve of her thigh.

Greta: An envelope. Taped shut. Tucked inside a medical ethics textbook. I opened it. Of course I did.

Bookstore Idiot: What was in it?

Greta: A letter. And a photo.

She stared at the next words for a long moment before sending them.

Greta: It was a suicide note. Dated 1993. Signed with just the initial “D.” The photo was of a baby. No names. Just a year scribbled on the back.

There was a pause. No buzz back right away. Good, she thought. Let that sit. Bob’s response came slower this time.

Bookstore Idiot: Jesus. What did you do with it?

Greta: Put it back where I found it. Didn’t feel like mine to keep.

Bob sat with that for a minute. Ran a hand down his face.

That was the thing about her — Greta didn’t dramatize anything. She just dropped it in your lap and let you decide what to do with it. Unflinching. Honest. Brutal in a way that felt almost holy.

His thumbs hovered, then typed:

Bob: Of course you did. You’d carry something like that around for years, but you’d still say it’s not yours.

Bob: Very on brand, Nebraska.

Nebraska: Your brand is pity shopping at used bookstores. No judgment.

Bob: Excuse you, that’s nostalgia therapy. I did, however, once buy a book just because someone underlined every mention of the word mother.

Greta tilted her head, considering that. The water rippled.

Nebraska: Fuck. That’s bleak.

Bob: Yeah. I think it’s what sold me on it.

There was a pause. Just long enough to feel it.

Greta dried her hands on a towel and climbed out of the tub, wrapping herself in her oldest robe. The cotton was threadbare, the color faded from too many washes. She didn’t bother turning off the TV.

Back on the couch, Judge shifted in his sleep as she settled beside him. Her wine glass was empty, but she cradled it anyway — something to hold. Something to do with her hands.

Greta: I think people leave pieces of themselves in books on purpose. Like they want to be found, but only by someone willing to look too closely.

Bob stared at the message, his throat dry.

Bookstore Idiot: Maybe it’s a test. Or a trap.

Greta: Same thing, really.

It was strange how easily they slipped into these deeper waters. No warning. No build-up. Just… a crack in the surface and suddenly the light changed.

Greta didn’t believe in soulmates. She barely believed in second chances. But something about the way he responded — quiet, unafraid, not pressing — made her feel a little less sharp-edged. Like she could speak plainly and not be punished for it.

Bob wasn’t looking for answers. He wasn’t angling for revelations. He just… kept showing up.

Bookstore Idiot: I once found a grocery list tucked inside The Bell Jar. Bread, vodka, lightbulbs, duct tape.

Greta: So basically Sylvia Plath’s starter pack.

Bookstore Idiot: Exactly.

She smiled. A small thing, half-genuine. The kind of smile that pulled at parts of her face she didn’t use much anymore.

Bob shifted onto his side, phone warm in his hand.

Bookstore Idiot: What were you doing before this? I mean—When I texted.

She considered lying. Considered saying she didn’t remember. She found herself spilling the truth.

Greta: Watching a show I’d already seen. Drinking wine. Trying not to feel like a ghost in my own apartment.

A long pause followed. She didn’t delete it. Didn’t second guess it. She let it land like a dropped stone.

Bob’s reply, when it came, was gentle. Too gentle.

Bookstore Idiot: Ghosts don’t leave their numbers in books.

Greta: Maybe not. But they hang around in the margins.

The margins. 

After that last message, neither of them sent another.

Bob set his phone on the table, screen down, like it was something sacred — or dangerous. Maybe both. The apartment around him was still, just the hum of the refrigerator and the faint whoosh of traffic outside. The hour had folded in on itself, bleeding toward morning.

He turned toward the book. House of Leaves.

It had been sitting there for days, untouched since the last time he flipped through it, unsure why he’d brought it home. The spine was already splitting, the cover soft-edged with wear. He’d made it about a quarter of the way in the beginning, but he’d forgotten it in the living room, stunting his headway. 

He opened it. Not to the front — not to the number — but somewhere in the middle, letting the pages fall where they wanted.

And there it was. A thin, slanted note in the margin beside a particularly brutal paragraph:

“Monsters don’t live in closets. They live in picture frames.”

Bob blinked. His fingers hovered there, brushing the edge of the page. The handwriting was the same. Tight, sharp, elegant. Confident. It wasn’t scribbled or sloppy — it was deliberate. Every letter had weight.

He turned another page. And another.

“We’re all just walking trauma with skin suits.”

“This part’s a lie, but a beautiful one.”

“This feels like standing in my childhood bedroom after the funeral.”

Some comments were visceral. Some made him laugh out loud. But some… some stopped him cold.

“I’ve never felt more seen or more sick.”

“I hate that this makes me cry. I hate that I’m still capable of it.”

“This is the part where I stopped believing in God.”

He sat back, the book resting open on his knee, the margin notes unfolding like secrets she hadn’t meant to leave behind. Or maybe she had. Maybe she’d wanted someone to find them. This was a thriller that she had found familiarity in.

He didn't think it, not clearly — the words didn’t form a shape yet — but something in his chest twisted with slow recognition. A kind of gravity.

He’d spent years trying to find something that felt real, something that wasn’t just pretty or easy or polite. And now here she was — a voice in the dark, all edges and honesty, too smart and too sad and too real to fit into the world the way it asked her to.

Greta, whoever the hell she really was, had carved pieces of herself into the margins of a book that nearly broke him — and he couldn’t stop reading.

He wouldn’t stop. Not now.

Bob stayed up until nearly four. He read until the words blurred, not the book itself — he barely followed the story — but the margins. Her margins. He was chasing her through the wreckage of someone else’s narrative, trying to piece together what kind of mind left these breadcrumbs behind.

At some point, he realized he was holding the book differently. Gently, like it might bleed if he bent it wrong.

When he finally closed it, it felt like he’d just put something living back in a box.

He thought about texting her. Just something simple. Something like: I’ve been reading your thoughts all night.

But it felt too exposed. Too much. So instead he typed: you annotate like it’s confession.

Deleted it. Then typed again:

Didn’t realize I’d picked up a book haunted by a lawyer’s existential crisis.

Sent. He set the phone down and waited.

Greta’s phone buzzed against the kitchen counter just as she finished pouring water into Judge’s bowl. She wasn’t expecting anything — not at this hour, not after what she’d sent.

When she read the message, her stomach tensed. She leaned against the fridge and reread it.

Shit.

She had forgotten the notes. Or no — she hadn’t forgotten, not really. She just hadn’t expected him to read them. Not this soon. Not this closely.

She stared at the screen for a long time, weighing responses like evidence. Incriminating, all of it.

Nebraska: You’re welcome. I charge $350/hour for annotated mental breakdowns. A moment passed before she sent another. Nebraska: Don’t psychoanalyze me, Montana. It won’t go well for either of us.

She hovered over her phone again. Then, with a sigh:

Didn’t expect anyone to actually read those. Didn’t think anyone would care enough to try.

Bob smiled. Not a grin — something smaller, closer to reverence. He was lying on his back on the floor now, one leg propped against the couch, the book splayed open beside him like a diary that had decided to trust him.

He thumbed out a reply, quiet in tone:

Bob: Well, someone did. Someone does.

Greta stared at the message. Felt it land.

Her first instinct was to gut it with humor. Say something like that’s suspiciously tender for a man who uses periods in his texts, or careful, you’re almost sounding sincere.

But she didn’t. Instead, she put the phone down. Poured herself a glass of vodka, something stronger to guide her through the deep conversation that they were inevitably barreling towards. Sat in the dark, Judge’s head heavy in her lap.

She didn’t reply right away. Bob didn’t expect her to. But still, the silence gnawed.

Not in a needy way — not like he needed her to perform something for him — but in that quiet, aching way you miss a song even while it’s still playing. Like you can feel the moment slipping out of your hands as it happens.

He picked the book back up and flipped to one of the pages he'd marked earlier with a note that had hit him like a sucker punch:

“This part reminds me of what it felt like to be fifteen and realize your father was just a man. And not a very good one.”

He didn’t know what it meant. Not fully, but it stuck to him.

He thumbed his phone again, hesitated, then sent:

Bob: There’s a note in the book. Page 112. About your dad, I think. You okay?

Greta read it.

She read it three times.

Then she stood up, took her glass into the bathroom, and turned the faucet back on. Letting the water drown out the noise in her head. Let it thunder into the tub while the message pulsed, unanswered, on her phone screen.

She wasn’t angry that he read it. Not exactly.

But she felt seen. Too seen. And that was a vulnerability she didn’t know how to carry without armor.

Nebraska: That note wasn’t meant for you. But I guess you already knew that.

Beat.

Nebraska: Still. You asked if I’m okay. I am, most days. I function. I don’t scream into pillows or throw things at the wall. But I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night. So do with that what you will.

She didn’t expect him to reply. She kind of hoped he wouldn’t.

The water had stopped running. Judge snored at the foot of the couch. Greta stayed still, curled in her corner, the phone balanced on her thigh. The light from the screen made her look half-carved — shadows under her eyes, glass untouched on the table.

The silence stretched. Then her thumbs moved.

Nebraska: My parents are dead. So’s my little brother. Car crash. Christmas Eve. I was sixteen.

No softening. No exposition. No it was a long time ago. Just fact, flat and heavy as slate. She hit send before she could second-guess it.

Nebraska: My older brother lived. Barely. I was in a coma for three months. Shattered pelvis. Traumatic brain injury. Lost a chunk of my hearing for a while. Woke up to a different world.

She waited. Not for pity — God, not that — but for something. Recoil. Silence. Something cold and distant like most people gave her when she didn’t wrap the truth in cotton.

But Bob wasn’t most people. Most people would drop their scatter like salt but the dots blinked for a long time.

Bob: Jesus, Nebraska. That’s a hell of a thing to live through.

Then another beat.

Bob: Thanks for telling me.

Nothing flowery. No “I’m sorry for your loss” or “that must’ve been so hard.” Just… a presence. A recognition.

It hit her like a lungful of air she hadn’t realized she’d been without.

Nebraska: Don’t know why I told you. Maybe because you read the notes.

Bob: Maybe because I didn’t look away.

That stopped her, she stared at the screen. Her fingers hovered over a dozen possible replies. All of them too much. None of them right.

So instead she said:

Nebraska: What about you? You carrying anything dark and awful, or am I doing all the emotional heavy lifting here?

Bob sat with it a moment, thumbs still, the night folded close around him like an old quilt he couldn’t quite shake off.

Bob: My dad died five years ago. Heart attack. Sudden. One of those gone-before-I-could-say-anything things. Haven’t been back to Montana since the funeral.

He stared at the blinking cursor.

Bob: I love my family. All of them. Big loud house. Siblings who still call me Bobby. Mom who prays for me daily. But without him, it doesn’t feel like home.

He paused, then added:

Bob: He was quiet. Like me. Not shy — just… reserved. Selective. Never needed the middle of the room. He’d sit in the corner and listen. Watch. Clock everything. Didn’t waste words. Bob: He was the only person who made the silence feel like company.

Bob hit send. Immediately regretted it. Sat still and stared at the message like it might burst into flame if he blinked wrong. Then the phone buzzed.

Nebraska: Yeah. I know that silence. I miss it too.

She didn’t ask questions. Didn’t offer platitudes. Just gave him a place to put the weight.

Nebraska: You don’t talk about him much, do you?

Bob: Not really. Most people talk over it. Or get weirdly uncomfortable.

Nebraska: I won’t. I’m not most people.

And God, didn’t he know that by now.

Bob: Thanks, Nebraska.

Nebraska: You’re welcome, Bookstore Idiot.

Bob: That nickname is gonna follow me to my grave, isn’t it.

Nebraska: If I have anything to say about it, yeah.

Bob: You always this gentle after emotionally wrecking someone, or am I special?

Nebraska: Don’t flatter yourself, Montana.

Bob: Right, sorry. I forgot I'm not supposed to flirt with you, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Nebraska: Please do. I’m fragile and drinking.

They lingered there, once again circling the wreckage with humor — not because they needed to laugh, but because it was safer than crying. Still, something had shifted. Deeper. Quieter.

They weren’t strangers anymore, they were witnesses.

They lingered after that. Neither pulling away. Text after text. Little things. Specific things. The kinds of things you don’t tell people unless you know they’ll hold it right.

Greta told him about Valentine — the flat, brutal nothingness of the Nebraska horizon. How her dad had been a pastor. How she never quite forgave herself for surviving when the rest didn’t.

Bob told her about the ranch — wheat fields and siblings and a mother who made the best blackberry pie this side of God. How everything after his dad felt like a noise he couldn’t tune out.

There were long silences. Comfortable ones.

Every message wasn’t a bombshell — some were stupid, mundane, normal — but the weight of what had been said hummed underneath everything now.

Something had shifted. Irrevocably.

So they stayed. Two strangers, five miles apart, pretending they were oceans away. Talking through glass. And somehow... neither of them really wanted to stop.

The next morning, the sky over San Diego was silver-washed and slow. The kind of coastal overcast that never quite broke, just hung there — muted and soft like a sigh.

Greta’s phone buzzed at 7:42 a.m.

Bookstore Idiot: Morning.Bookstore Idiot: Weird texting you in the daylight. I feel like I’m breaking curfew.

She smirked, one leg kicked up on her coffee table, Judge already snoring in a warm circle at her feet. A legal pad full of notes sat abandoned in her lap, pen still uncapped.

Greta: Careful. Sunlight might ruin the mystique.

Bookstore Idiot: You say that like I don’t already imagine you as a chain-smoking vampire with a law degree.

Greta: Only smoke when I’m losing. So… almost never.

Bookstore Idiot: Obviously.

A pause. Then:

Bookstore Idiot: Wanna play 20 Questions?

She blinked. Looked out the window. A thin marine layer still curled around the tops of buildings. It felt... surprisingly intimate. Texting with the sun up. Like seeing someone without their makeup for the first time and not pointing it out.

Greta: Are we twelve?

Bookstore Idiot: Emotionally? Debatable.Bookstore Idiot: Come on. It’s structured. You love structure.

Greta: Fine. But I get to go first.

Bookstore Idiot: Naturally.

Greta: 1. Have you ever been in love?

There was a pause. Not long — but long enough to register.

Bookstore Idiot: Once. I think.Bookstore Idiot: Felt like drowning in honey. Couldn’t tell if it was sweet or killing me.

She sat with that. Let it sink into her chest.

Bookstore Idiot: You can go again.

Greta: 2. Ever wanted to disappear?

Bookstore Idiot: Daily.Bookstore Idiot: Mostly in meetings.

Greta: You’re dodging.

Bookstore Idiot: I’m deflecting, Nebraska. It’s a trauma response. Bookstore Idiot: Okay. Yes. A few years ago, I almost took orders that would’ve sent me out past Diego Garcia. Middle of nowhere, radio silence. Didn’t go. Kind of wish I had.

Bookstore Idiot: 3. If you weren’t a lawyer, what would you be?

Greta: Bartender in a bad dive. Greta: One of those places where the walls sweat and everyone lies for a living. I’d be excellent at remembering everyone’s drink and none of their names.

Bookstore Idiot: I believe that.

Greta: 4. Do you believe in fate?

Bookstore Idiot: Nah.Bookstore Idiot: I believe in coincidence. And timing. And people who leave their numbers in cursed books.

Greta: Fair.

Bookstore Idiot: 5. Worst thing you’ve ever done?

Her reply came slower this time.

Greta: Survived.

No explanation. No clarification. Just that.

Bob didn’t try to fix it. Didn’t fill the space with platitudes. Just let it be.

Bookstore Idiot: 6. What’s your worst fear?

Greta: Falling in love again.Greta: And trusting the wrong person with the wreckage.

His chest ached. He stared at the ceiling. Texted back:

Bookstore Idiot: 7. What did you think I looked like when we started talking?

Greta: Balding trucker. Probably with gout. Possibly a knife collection.Greta: You?

Bookstore Idiot: Woman in expensive shoes who says things like “gentlemen” and always wins.Bookstore Idiot: Still not convinced I’m wrong.

Greta laughed. Out loud. An actual laugh that startled Judge from his nap. She shook her head, then typed:

Greta: 8. Why haven’t we met yet?

Bob didn’t answer immediately. It came slowly and felt more intentional than it should have.

Bookstore Idiot: Because the longer we don’t, the easier it is to pretend this is safe.Bookstore Idiot: And because I think if I ever saw you, I’d forget how to speak.

Greta: 9. You ever cry in movies?

Bookstore Idiot: Absolutely not. Bookstore Idiot:…Except once. Field of Dreams. I was twelve. My dad said, “wanna have a catch?” like the guy in the movie and I just— yeah. Bookstore Idiot: Anyway. Never again.

She didn’t answer right away. When she did, it was simple:

Greta: That’s a valid exception. Greta: You get a pass.

Bob smiled, soft. Almost forgot it was morning.

Bookstore Idiot: 10. What’s something harmless I wouldn’t know about you from our messages?

Greta: That’s dangerous.

Bookstore Idiot: That’s the game.

She stared at the blinking cursor, feeling her chest tighten.

Greta: Greta’s not my real name.

Silence, a long one. Then, three dots. Then nothing. Then again—

Bookstore Idiot: Wait. What? Bookstore Idiot: Like… not your name at all? Bookstore Idiot: Are you serious? Bookstore Idiot: What else aren’t you telling me? Is Judge real? Is Nebraska real? Are you real?

She winced. Not because it wasn’t fair — but because it was too fair. The next text took longer. She could practically feel him pacing.

Bookstore Idiot: Jesus, Greta.

Her reply came quick, clipped:

Greta: Greta is my name. Just… not all of it. Greta: It’s what everyone calls me. Greta: Has been for years.

Stillness. Then—

Greta: Greta is to me what Bob is to you.

There was a beat. Then another. Bob felt the breath leave him in a slow, shamed exhale.

Of course. Of course.

Bookstore Idiot: Oh.

He stared at the screen. Closed his eyes. Ran a hand through his hair.

He felt stupid. Felt… hurt, for a second. But now it just felt foolish. He of all people should’ve understood — names were permission. Names were boundaries.

Bookstore Idiot: Okay. Bookstore Idiot: That’s okay.

Then, almost shy:

Bookstore Idiot: …So what is it then?

Greta: What, my name?

Bookstore Idiot: Yeah. Let me guess.

She smirked.

Greta: Be my guest.

Bookstore Idiot: Geraldine.

Greta: Try again, grandpa.

Bookstore Idiot: Gretchen?

Greta: Warmer.

Bookstore Idiot: Margaret?

Greta: Bingo.

He stared at the name for a long second, like it was a secret she’d whispered into his collar.

Bookstore Idiot: Margaret. Bookstore Idiot: Margaret Bookstore.

Greta smirked at the stupid joke before thumbing out a reply.

Greta: Not quite.

Bookstore Idiot: Wait— That’s not your last name?

Greta: Nope. Greta: Still holding some cards.

Bookstore Idiot: So what is it?

Greta: You get first and middle. That’s all. Greta: Margaret Rebekah.

Bookstore Idiot: Whoa. Bookstore Idiot: Margaret Rebekah. That’s a lot of name.

Greta: You think Bob has room to talk?

Bookstore Idiot: Point taken.

She let a beat pass, then added:

Greta: Nobody calls me Margaret. Not ever. Greta: Margaret was always for school forms, legal documents, and trouble.

Bookstore Idiot: I like knowing it. Bookstore Idiot: It feels... private.

Greta: It is.

The space between texts grew softer after that. Laced with something that tasted like reverence.

Bookstore Idiot: 11. Do you believe people can change?

She stared at the question a long time.

Greta: No. Greta: But I think they can choose differently. Greta: And I think that matters more.

Bob read that one three times. Let it carve its initials into him.

Greta: 12. What’s your worst habit?

Bookstore Idiot: Biting the inside of my cheek until it bleeds. Bookstore Idiot: That and saying yes to things I should walk away from.

Greta: Ooh. Yeah that would be a good one to quit.

Bookstore Idiot: 13. What scares you more — being known or being forgotten?

That one hit like a sucker punch. Greta’s breath stalled just a little.

Greta: Being known. Greta: Being seen and still left behind. Greta: That’s the real horror.

Bob’s reply came slower this time.

Bookstore Idiot: For what it’s worth — I don’t think I could forget you if I tried.

She didn’t respond right away. She couldn’t. Instead:

Greta: 14. What’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for you?

Bob leaned his head back against the couch. Stared at the ceiling.

Bookstore Idiot: When my dad died, my little sister crawled into my bed the night of the funeral. She was six. Didn’t say anything. Just curled against me like I was still strong. I don’t think she knows she saved my life that night.

Greta: Jesus, Montana.

Bookstore Idiot: Yeah.

Bookstore Idiot: 15. What do you actually look like?

She snorted, sinking deeper into the couch.

Greta: You just used your question for a picture request?

Bookstore Idiot: No! I just want to know if the truck-stop ghoul thing was accurate.

She gave the basic run down of her hair color, her eyes, delving a little deeper than the color.

Greta: Kinda big, kinda sad. I’ve been told I have a “don’t fuck with me” face, but mostly I think I just look tired. Broken nose that almost healed right. People assume I’m mean. I’m not. I just don’t smile unless I mean it.

Bookstore Idiot: That’s oddly specific.

Greta: You asked.

Bookstore Idiot: You left out “jaw like a blade” and “eyes that could cut glass.”

Greta: Flattery will get you nowhere, Montana.

Bookstore Idiot: Damn it woman, let me flirt with you every once in a while.

She smirked. Could almost picture him flushed and flustered behind the screen, red ears and all.

Greta: You’re allowed to flirt. Just don’t get sentimental. Greta:  I’m allergic.

Bookstore Idiot: Noted

Greta: Turnabout’s fair play. What do you look like, Montana?

Bookstore Idiot: Ah shit.

She smirked at her screen, already picturing him fumbling over it.

Bookstore Idiot: Brown hair. Kinda curly, kinda floppy. Doesn’t do what I tell it. Glasses, most days. Blue eyes—like, plain blue. Nothing poetic. I burn easy. Look like I grew up under a cloudy sky. I’ve been told I have “resting nice guy face,” whatever the hell that means.

Greta: It means you look like someone who’d return a dropped grocery list and apologize for reading it.

Bookstore Idiot: …I would do that.

Greta: I know.

A pause. Then he added—

Bookstore Idiot: I’m not a big guy. Not short, but not someone who walks into a room and takes it over. I tend to hang back. Watch things. Got broad shoulders, though. Ranch kid perks.

She read it twice, her expression unreadable.

There was something… human about that. No ego. No smoke. Just a man who knew his body like you’d know a work truck: practical, used, maybe a little beat up but still running clean.

Greta: You leave out the part where you’re Navy. Probably built like an American sin.

Bookstore Idiot: You said no flirting.

Greta: That wasn’t flirting. That was categorization.

Bookstore Idiot: God help whoever tries to date you.

Greta: God help you, Bookstore Idiot. Greta: Next question?

Bookstore Idiot Idiot: 16. How do you want to die?

Greta: That escalated quickly.

Bookstore Idiot: Told you I wasn’t good at small talk.

Greta tilted her head, thoughtful.

Greta: Quietly. After a good meal. Full glass of wine beside me. Music playing. No hospitals. No wires. Just… a little peace.

Bookstore Idiot: Damn.

Bookstore Idiot: 17. Have you ever broken someone’s heart?

Greta: Not in the way they think. I’ve just never let anyone all the way in. Some people want the version of you they can fix. And when you won’t let them, they break themselves trying.

Bob sat with that. Thought of past almosts. Half-formed things.

Then typed:

Bookstore Idiot: 18. Do you want to get married?

Greta blinked. Did she?

Greta: I used to. Then I realized most people want a wedding, not a marriage. I want something quieter. Truer. I want to build something that doesn’t need a ceremony to be real.

Bookstore Idiot: Fuck.

Greta: What?

Bookstore Idiot: You just keep saying things I’ve never had the words for.

She swallowed that. Let it sit. Then:

Greta: 19. What’s something you’ve never told anyone?

Bob didn’t answer right away.

Then—

Bookstore Idiot: Sometimes I wonder if I’d be a better person if he hadn’t died. Like maybe he kept me centered. And without him I drift.

She didn’t text anything back. Instead, she set the phone down for a moment. Ran her hands through her hair. Breathed.

Picked it up again.

Greta: 20. If I asked to meet you, would you say yes?

Bob’s phone lay silent inside his locker, a small, quiet enemy. Every time his mind drifted to the screen, the beep or buzz went unanswered, swallowed by the relentless rhythm of the day.

Morning roll call was sharp and brisk — Maverick calling the squad to attention. Bob’s thoughts flickered to the last message from Greta. He thumbed his pocket, itching to type a reply, but the briefing’s gravity pulled him under, and the absence of the metal in his pocket left a staunch reminder of what he was supposed to be focusing on.

Mav’s voice cut through the noise: “Eyes up, team. We’re not here to daydream.”

Bob forced his gaze forward, catching Mav’s steady, no-nonsense stare. He knew discipline — and he expected it. Bob bit back a smirk, rubbing the side of his neck.

Later, in the hangar, Hangman stood next to Rooster, glancing over a pre-flight checklist with practiced ease, shouting over the engines’ growl, “You seen Bob? Dude’s been ghosting us more than usual.”

Fanboy chimed in, “He’s glued to that damn phone, man. A few months back he left it in my truck and didn’t even care.”

Bob forced a grin, but his fingers itched again.

“Hey, Bob, you good?” Payback asked quietly, stepping beside him. The two shared a look only years of service could forge — understanding and quiet concern.

“Yeah,” Bob said, voice clipped.

“You’re not fooling anyone,” Payback said softly.

Midday, the squad broke for lunch. Bob tried to slip away to the corner of the mess hall, phone finally in hand. He was ready to write back when Javy — Coyote — caught him.

“You okay, Bob? You’ve been all over the place today,” Javy said, his tone casual but sharp.

“Just a lot on my mind,” Bob admitted, locking eyes with Javy, who nodded knowingly.

Back in the locker room, Bob finally had a free moment — a quiet lull. His thumb hovered over the keyboard, heart pounding. Just as he was about to send a message, the intercom crackled.

“Floyd, get ready for the next hop,” Halo’s voice ordered.

He slid the phone away with a sigh.

Meanwhile, five miles away, Greta was spiraling.

Her apartment felt colder, the walls closer. Judge’s steady breathing was a small comfort, but it wasn’t enough.

She poured herself another glass of coffee and stared at the blinking cursor on her phone, the unanswered message mocking her.

She shook her head, frustration mounting.

I’m a lawyer. I deal with facts and evidence. Not... this.

Desperate for distraction, she grabbed her laptop and keys.

I’m going to the office. Maybe if I’m somewhere that smells like old books and paper and doesn’t have these four walls closing in, I’ll stop driving myself crazy.

Greta’s office was quiet, the low hum of her computer and distant typing filling the space. She tried to focus on a brief, but her mind kept drifting to Bob’s silence.

Her phone sat beside her — dark and cold.

She checked it again.

No buzz. No light.

Back at the base, Bob’s hop ended late afternoon. He was exhausted, muscles aching, mind raw.

He shoved his phone back into his pocket.

Natasha caught his eye from across the room. “So what’s on your phone, Bob?” she teased gently.

Bob looked away, his cheeks pinking slightly. “Nothing.”

The night stretched long and silent, two lives tethered by a thread of words and half-sentences, each waiting, wondering, and afraid.

The squad wasn’t subtle.

“C’mon, Floyd,” Hangman grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re burnin’ daylight—and your phone’s been quiet longer than a moth at midnight.”

Rooster laughed from the back, “You look like hell, man. You need a beer. Or three.”

Bob groaned but didn’t argue. After a day spent chasing choppers and dodging duties, the Hard Deck was exactly the kind of loud, chaotic mess he’d sworn he was avoiding—but the guys had made their choice.

Inside, the stale air smelled of spilled beer and worn leather. The jukebox thumped a rhythm that rattled in Bob’s chest. For the first time all day, he pulled his phone from his pocket.

His thumbs trembled over the screen as he stared at Greta’s name glowing in the messages.

Bob: Sorry for the radio silence. Hop got me all tangled up today — phones locked in lockers, every spare second swallowed by drills and waiting. I’m not great at doing this—texting, I mean—when there’s chaos. It feels like I’m not really there, y’know? But I want to talk. I want to hear everything you’ve been thinking while I’ve been MIA.

He hesitated, then hit send.

The response came quickly, almost like she’d been holding her breath.

Nebraska: I was starting to think you were a ghost or a scam.

Bob smiled, the first real one of the day. He took a slow sip of his cherry soda, the noise of the bar fading around him.

Sometimes, connection was just waiting for the right moment to be grabbed.

Bob’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, then finally typed,

Bob: Yeah. I want to meet. But… how would that even work? You’re in Nebraska, right?

His phone buzzed almost immediately.

Nebraska: Bob.Nebraska: I’m in San Diego.Nebraska: I’m assuming you are, too — based on where you found the book.

He blinked at the screen, the words sinking in slow. Then it hit him—the sharp, unexpected twist of reality.

The realization cracked the edges of his world. He glanced around the Hard Deck, the raucous noise suddenly muffled and distant.

His eyes lit up, a grin spreading wide. Without a word, he nearly sprang up from his stool, turning to the squad with a look somewhere between excitement and disbelief.

Hangman raised a brow. “Hey, Floyd, you okay?”

Bob barely registered it. He was already grabbing his jacket, fingers flying back to the phone.

Bob: Wait, so… you’re here? Like, actually here?

Greta: Yep. Probably five miles, give or take.  You’ve been right under my nose this whole time, Montana.

Bob’s smile deepened, heart pounding. He glanced at his friends, who looked on, puzzled but used to his moments.

“Holy shit,” he muttered, eyes wide. “She’s here.”

Without another word, he hopped away from the table, nearly knocking over his bottle.

“Wait—where you going?” Hangman called out, but Bob was already headed towards the door. The squad exchanged baffled looks.

Rooster shrugged. “Since when does Floyd bolt out of a bar like a kid on Christmas morning?”

Fanboy leaned in. “What’s got him so wired? Who’s ‘she’?”

Payback laughed. “You think it’s a girl? Floyd? No way.”

“He just said ‘she’s here’ you dumbass, obviously it’s a girl. You think one of his sisters is in town?” Rooster asked with a raised brow. 

Natasha shook her head, smirking. “He’s been glued to his phone all day. Something’s up, and we’re not in the loop.”

Coyote smirked. “Guess we found Floyd’s little secret.”

They watched Bob nearly sprint out the door, phone in hand, the glowing screen his only clue.

Bob’s phone lit up again with another message from Greta, fingers flying over the screen as the words tumbled out in rapid-fire texts.

Nebraska: So. When? Where? I know a quiet café just off 1st and Market. No loud music, no crowds. Just coffee, actual chairs, and six-dollar paninis that I would kill someone over.

Bob: Perfect. I’m free tomorrow afternoon.Bob: Wait, do you have any coffee preferences? I’m more of a black coffee guy, but I can survive a latte if it means less snobbery.

Nebraska: Black. No judgment here.Nebraska: And I’ll bring Judge—he’s a tough audience but fair.

Sleep didn't come easy for either of them.

Bob lay on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling fan rotating slow above him. His room smelled like jet fuel and clean laundry, quiet but still humming with leftover adrenaline from the bar and the texts.

He rolled over, rechecked his phone. Still there. Still real. San Diego. Five miles, maybe less.

He blew out a breath and tucked the phone under his pillow like it was something sacred.

Greta wasn’t fairing much better. She’d curled herself sideways across the couch, half a blanket tangled around her knees, Judge snoring gently at her feet.

She’d tried to read, tried to distract herself with the noise of courtroom transcripts and emails, but nothing stuck.

Bob. Montana. He was here.

She looked at the message again — Tomorrow. 3PM. Café on 1st and Market. Simple. Specific. Real.

The kind of thing you could build a new world on.

She tucked her phone under her cheek and whispered, “Don’t be a creep, Bob.”

Bob stood in front of the mirror, shirtless, towel slung around his hips. He looked at himself harder than he usually did. It wasn’t nerves—not exactly. Just weight.

He didn’t want to be Lieutenant Floyd today. He didn’t want the uniform or the posture or the built-in authority. He just wanted to be Bob. The version of him she’d come to know in lowercase texts and late-night confessions.

He pulled on a pair of worn jeans still dusted with Montana dirt, a soft black t-shirt with the logo of his hometown diner faded across the back. His boots were scuffed at the toe, but he cleaned them off anyway.

By the time he grabbed his keys, he could feel his pulse in his hands.

Greta didn’t try to glamorize. She didn’t want to pretend. That was the thing with Bob—he made her want to show up exactly as she was.

So she did.

She pulled on a pair of sunwashed overalls streaked with dried paint, a forest green tank top hugging close beneath. Her dark brown boots had a chunky heel and made a satisfying click when she walked. Her makeup was minimal—mascara, a swipe of deep-berry lipstick—and she pulled her hair back with a tortoiseshell clip.

No perfume. Just her.

Judge stood at the door, tail wagging once, solemn and ready like a soldier. She fastened his harness and leash, ran her fingers over his head once, and started the two-mile walk to the café.

Her pulse beat in her throat the whole way.

Bob got there a few minutes early. The place was small, tucked on the corner of a sleepy street framed by jacaranda trees, their purple petals littering the sidewalk like soft confetti.

And that’s when he saw him—one eye, broad chest, tan and white and lumpy in the way only bulldogs are. The leash stretched from his harness to the hand of a woman seated just outside.

She was turned away at first. Her shoulders narrow. Claw clip holding her hair up. One booted leg crossed over the other, the sole of her heel scuffed. Her fingers tapped gently on the handle of her mug, as if she was counting seconds.

When she turned, it knocked the air clean out of his lungs.

She was Greta. The voice, the words, the humor, the bite, the dark current always undercutting the softest of admissions—she was all of it, alive and three-dimensional in front of him. And more beautiful than his imagination had dared.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

Greta looked up. Saw him. Her eyes met his like they’d been doing it for months. Judge gave a lazy snuffle, uninterested in the reunion happening above him.

Greta’s expression didn’t change much—but something behind her eyes did. Like a door quietly unlocking.

She stood slowly. Didn’t say anything at first.

Neither did Bob.

They just looked at each other, thousands of words suspended between them, neither ready to break the spell yet.

Finally, Greta tilted her head just slightly and said, “So. You’re taller than I imagined.”

Bob huffed a laugh, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “You’re… real.”

“I get that a lot,” she murmured, mouth twitching into the beginning of a smile.

Bob took the final few steps forward and said, “Hi.”

Greta nodded once. “Hi.”

Judge sneezed.

They sat across from each other at the little café table, two steaming mugs between them, Judge snoring already beneath Greta’s chair like he had zero interest in playing chaperone.

The first few minutes were a little stiff.

Bob kept fiddling with the sugar packet even though he didn’t take sugar in his coffee, and Greta kept smoothing her palm along her thigh like it might make the nerves settle.

They’d spent months talking. Sharing little pieces. Confessions and wisecracks and strange 1:47 AM honesty. And now here they were—real.

“Does it feel weird?” Bob asked after a beat, voice softer than usual. “Like…we’re actors in a reenactment of our own texts?”

Greta smirked behind her mug. “Yeah. I keep waiting for the camera crew to pop out and tell me this was all a very elaborate TikTok prank.”

He smiled. Tilted his head a little. “But it’s good-weird, right?”

“Better than expected,” she said, and realized a beat too late that she’d meant it.

His face lit up—his whole face, not just his mouth. The kind of smile that started in the corners of his eyes and worked its way down like sunrise.

And damn, Greta thought. He’s even hotter when he smiles.

Bob had described himself as “nothing special.” Just average. Not that tall, broad shoulders, wears glasses when he remembers. That was it.

But he was not average. Not by any goddamn stretch of the imagination.

He had to be six feet easy, built like a man who could haul a full-grown steer without breaking a sweat. His worn black t-shirt clung just enough to show his frame—lean but muscular, and his arms? Jesus. His arms.

Greta blinked. Hard.

Because his arms were veiny. And strong. And covered in faint freckles like someone had dusted him with cinnamon. And when he reached to tuck that one loose curl behind his ear, her brain short-circuited.

Get a grip, Margaret, she scolded herself. But her brain was already playing a dangerous reel of mental images that would make a priest sweat.

She took a large, unnecessary gulp of her coffee to drown the thought.

Bob noticed, of course. “Too hot?” he asked, concerned.

No, I’m just overheating because your biceps look like they could snap a man in half, her brain screamed.

“Little bit,” she replied casually, clearing her throat.

Bob pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and looked at her over the rims. “You’re quieter in person.”

She blinked. “You’re not.”

He laughed—quiet, delighted. “Guess I don’t need a keyboard to flirt after all.”

That made her smile. Small, but real. “Don’t get cocky, Montana.”

His grin widened. “Too late.”

The awkwardness faded fast after that—melted like ice under the warm weight of familiarity. They weren’t strangers. Not really. The texts had been a lifeline, a rhythm, a secret language only the two of them spoke. Now they were just learning how to speak it out loud.

They talked. About everything. About nothing. Bob told her about growing up in Montana with more siblings than common sense, about the dog he had as a kid who hated everyone but him. Greta told him about law school in Boston, how cold it got, how she always wore two pairs of socks even indoors.

They slipped into the kind of banter that had built this thing in the first place—sarcastic, sharp, but always soft at the center.

And when Bob laughed at one of her offhand comments—“Judge likes you. He only likes men with emotional trauma.”—she swore she saw something flicker behind his eyes.

Recognition. Understanding. Connection.

Bob had always been the quiet one.

The observer. The one who watched the room before speaking. Who chose his words carefully, when he chose them at all.

But something about Greta unlatched his ribcage and let all the unspoken stuff tumble out.

Maybe it was the way she looked at him—dead-on, unwavering, like she’d already read the footnotes to everything he was trying not to say.

Maybe it was the way she sat—anchored. Like her body had decided a long time ago she didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. Her boot tapped softly against the metal of the chair leg, and every now and then, she tilted her head like she was challenging him without saying a word.

And God help him, she was beautiful.

Not pretty. Not sweet. Not nice.

Beautiful the way a storm front is—striking and heavy and honest. Her hair caught in little wisps around her face, and that damn claw clip made her look both accidental and precise at the same time. The overalls shouldn’t have made him feel like this, but here he was, needing a second to remember how breathing worked. And when she smiled? Real smile? The one that didn’t come easy but meant something when it did?

He was done. Doomed. Wrecked. Absolutely floored.

And the worst part? She was still talking to him.

Like he was someone worth knowing. Laughing at his jokes like they weren’t the awkward throwaways of a guy who was suddenly and violently in love with a woman who had a bulldog named Judge and eyes like an unfinished story.

“Are you always like this?” she asked, sipping her coffee.

Bob blinked. “Like what?”

“Talkative. Animated.” Her eyebrow arched. “A little twitchy.”

He chuckled—actually chuckled, and it surprised even him. “Only when I’m trying not to ruin a good thing.”

Greta blinked once. That wasn’t the answer she’d expected. Her lips parted, but she didn’t reply right away.

Bob leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers laced together. “I usually let other people fill the air. I watch. I listen. But with you…”

His voice softened. “With you, I don’t want to miss a single minute by being quiet.”

She stared at him.

Just… stared.

Bob squirmed a little under it. “Too much?”

“No,” she said finally, voice low. “Just… unexpected.”

He nodded, pretending that didn’t make his stomach twist in twelve directions. He reached down to absently pat the dog, who gave a grunt of vague approval and rolled to his side like a seal.

Greta looked him over again, slower this time.

The black shirt hugging his chest. The freckled arms. The glasses slightly askew. That earnest, earnest face. And still—he hadn’t looked away from her once.

And it hit her.

Bob was nervous. For her.

Her, with her baggage and her bluntness and her broken-thing-in-a-nice-dress energy. Her, with the black coffee and mascara and zero intentions of being someone’s dream girl.

But this man was looking at her like she was holy.

“Montana,” she said finally, voice dry but laced with something warmer, “if you keep looking at me like that, I’m gonna have to excuse myself and scream into the void.”

Bob grinned, eyes flicking to her lips, just for a second. “You brought it on yourself, Nebraska.”

“What, by showing up?”

“No,” he said. “Being exactly who I hoped you’d be.”

She stared at him again. Then blinked. Then took a long sip of coffee to stall the fact that she was, quite literally, about to short-circuit.

They stayed longer than they meant to. Of course they did.

Two coffees turned into a shared muffin neither would admit to wanting. Judge snored like a warthog beneath the table. Greta had to gently nudge him off her foot more than once, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind any of it.

Especially not the way Bob was looking at her now.

That quiet, observant farmboy from Montana—the one she’d imagined shy, maybe stiff, probably a little prudish in person—had suddenly developed a talent for flirting so potent she half-suspected divine intervention.

“You’re not what I expected,” she said, leaning back in her chair, watching the way his fingers toyed with the cardboard sleeve of his cup.

He quirked a brow. “What were you expecting?”

She squinted at him. “Definitely balder. Probably gout, maybe scurvy. Some guy named Keith, texting me from a truck stop recliner with mustard stains on his shirt.”

Bob feigned offense, pressing a hand to his chest. “You thought I was a Keith?”

“You kinda gave off Keith energy.”

He shook his head, laughing. “That’s low, even for you.”

She tilted her chin. “Is it?”

“Maybe a little.” He grinned again—dangerously. “For the record, I thought you were gonna be some icy corporate lawyer with a corner office and a thousand-yard stare.”

“Not entirely off,” she muttered into her cup.

“But definitely wrong about the hair clip.”

She paused. “What, is it not intimidating enough?”

“No,” he said, tilting his head slightly, his voice lower, smoother. “It’s… distracting.”

She blinked. Oh.

A beat. Then: “You’re flirting with me.”

“I’m trying to,” Bob said, completely deadpan, “but you keep talking about gout.”

She laughed—really laughed—and it cracked something in both of them. The last of the awkwardness melted clean off, like it had never really mattered in the first place.

“So,” he said after a moment, catching her eye again, “you gonna tell me your last name or do I keep calling you Nebraska like we’re in a very emotionally fraught western?”

Greta rolled her eyes. “Margaret Rebekah James. That’s the whole thing my dad required us all to have at least one biblical name, hence Rebekah.”

Bob tried it in his head. Margaret Rebekah James. It didn’t sound wrong. Just… older, like something sacred etched into stone. Something strong.

“And you said you had other nicknames, not Greta?”

“Yeah, my mom used to call me Molly. My grandma calls me Peggy, like I’m a founding mother.”

He grinned. “So, Greta’s your rebel phase.”

She raised a brow. “My burnout phase.” A slight scoff came out in an almost laugh, “Everyone else called me Greta, not really sure how I collected four names but…” she trailed off. 

He pretended to make a note. “Good to know. Greta… James?”

“Yeah.”

Bob smiled to himself. “Greta James. Sounds like a woman in a novel I’d read in one sitting and then grieve when it ended.” Greta blinked. That one hit a little deeper than she expected.

“And you?” she asked. “What’s the full Bob?”

“Robert Joseph Floyd,” he replied without hesitation.

She snorted. “Jesus. You sound like a country singer and a pope had a baby.”

“I am from Montana.”

“Well, Floyd. What’s it like finally meeting a burnout lawyer with trust issues and a dog named after a judicial title?”

Bob leaned forward slightly, eyes steady and soft in a way that made her heart twist.

“It’s like finding a sentence I didn’t know I’d been waiting to read.”

She swallowed. Hard. “Montana,” she warned, voice a little breathless, “you can’t just say shit like that.”

He smirked. “Then stop making me want to.”

Greta tried to bite back the smile, but it escaped anyway.

Flirting. Jesus Christ. This was flirting, and she wasn’t bad at it, apparently.

They didn’t mean to stay so long.

The sun had started to dip low, dragging gold across the windows of the café, tinting the world in syrupy light. The barista had flicked the lights on inside—soft amber bulbs that cast warm halos around every table—but hadn’t asked them to leave. Not yet.

Greta stretched her legs under the table, brushing against Bob’s shin. Neither of them moved.

“So,” she said, tossing the last of her lukewarm coffee into her mouth, “what happens now? Do we do the awkward ‘well, this was nice’ thing and go our separate ways?”

Bob tilted his head, considering her. “Do you want to?”

Greta squinted at him. “Are you offering an alternative?”

He looked down at his empty cup, then back at her. “I was thinking dinner.”

Greta blinked. “You wanna… extend this?”

“Sure,” Bob said, casual in tone but definitely not in the way his thumb rubbed circles against his thigh under the table. “Unless you’ve got plans with someone taller, more charming, and less Montana.”

Greta tilted her head. “You’re, what—six foot?”

He nodded his head slowly, “Just about.”

“Then you’ve already cleared the height bar.”

Bob grinned. “That sounds suspiciously like a yes.”

She rolled her eyes, smiling despite herself. “It is. I’m starving.”

They stood, gathering themselves—Judge loping sleepily to his feet—and Bob held the door for her without a word. The sidewalk was bathed in the kind of evening gold that made everything feel cinematic. Greta glanced up at him as they walked, her hair swinging just a little with each step.

“So,” Bob said after a beat. “Is this… like… a date?”

Greta stiffened instinctively. Her gut twisted. She expected the usual panic, retreat, abort reflex—but instead, the question hit her differently. Gentle. Curious. Not demanding anything of her.

And worse: she didn’t want to say no.

She glanced sideways, watching the way his hand casually bumped his thigh as he walked, how his boots scuffed the concrete. “You want it to be?”

Bob’s voice was quieter when he answered. “Kind of, yeah.”

Greta blinked, surprised by her own response. “Then yeah,” she said. “It’s a date.”

He stopped just short of tripping over the sidewalk. “You okay there, Floyd?”

“I—uh—yeah. Just wasn’t expecting you to say that so fast.”

She smirked. “What, you nervous?”

He looked at her, cheeks pink, adjusting his glasses. “Little bit.” Greta pretended not to melt.

They ended up at a quiet place tucked just off the beach—a diner with string lights on the patio and tables made from salvaged wood. The kind of place that wasn’t trendy enough for tourists but perfect for locals. Greta hooked Judge’s leash under the table leg, and Bob pulled her chair out like some kind of actual gentleman.

Dinner was easy. Somehow, easier than coffee. They talked. They talked.

About everything from worst-case courtroom moments to Bob’s weird fear of ceiling fans. Greta recounted the time she was mistaken for a court reporter and ended up being called “Miss Typist” by a judge for an entire week. Bob told her about the time he nearly missed a hop because he got locked in the gym sauna trying to sneak in a post-flight sweat.

And the flirting? God. It was flourishing. Bob, for all his quiet reserve, was laying it on thick.

At one point, Greta was mid-bite when he leaned forward slightly, eyes on her mouth. “You do this thing,” he said, voice low.

She swallowed, warily amused. “What kind of thing?”

He gestured. “When you’re about to say something brutal. Your mouth twitches, just at the corners. Like you already know it’s gonna hurt, but you’re gonna say it anyway.”

She stared at him for a second. “Jesus, Montana. You been studying me?”

His ears flushed. “Just paying attention.”

“Dangerous habit,” she murmured, taking a sip of water to cover her traitorous blush.

Later, after Bob made a dumb pun about her drink order—“You’re really going for the strong stuff, huh?”—Greta rolled her eyes and tossed a piece of her fry at him.

“Is this your idea of wooing?” she asked.

“Depends. Is it working?”

She tilted her head. “Shockingly, yes.”

Bob flushed scarlet. He opened his mouth to say something—then promptly stuttered, choked on a word, and covered his face with both hands.

Greta barked a laugh. “You okay there, Romeo?”

“Just—give me a second,” Bob mumbled through his hands. “I wasn’t built for this much positive reinforcement. My system’s rebooting.”

She grinned. God, she liked him.

It was dark by the time they stepped outside the diner. The air had cooled, that specific coastal chill that settled low in the lungs and made streetlamps feel somehow warmer. Judge trotted contentedly at Greta’s side, leash slack in her hand, tongue lolling.

“Well,” she said, almost shyly, “I’m parked about… two miles that way.”

Bob blinked. “You walked here?”

Greta shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I like walking.”

“In heeled boots?”

“I’ve got thick skin.”

Bob just stared at her for a long moment, his expression somewhere between disbelief and pure, exasperated affection.

Then—softly, but with steel underneath: “Absolutely not.”

Greta raised a brow. “Excuse me?”

“You’re not walking two miles home in the dark.”

“I’m a big girl, Montana. I can—”

He stepped slightly closer, enough to tower just a bit in the dim glow of the streetlight. His voice dropped a register, the edge of his accent slipping loose like it had been shaken from him.

“You can argue all you damn well want, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re gettin’ your butt in that truck, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart.

It dropped into her belly like a lit match in dry grass. Hot. Immediate. She hated that she liked it so much. Hated more that it made her want to listen to him.

Still, she muttered a token protest as he opened the passenger door for Judge, who bounded up like he’d been chauffeured his whole life. She climbed in after, her boot heels clunking against the step.

Bob shut the door behind her and rounded the hood.

The truck smelled like leather and cedar and something faintly sweet—pine soap, maybe—and Greta tried not to fidget with the hem of her overalls. Bob slid in beside her, turned the key, and the engine hummed to life. A soft song filtered through the speakers.

Neither of them spoke.

He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting lightly on the gear shift. The windows were cracked just enough to let in the cool air, and streetlights blurred past like low, glowing ghosts. The whole cab of the truck felt suspended in something fragile. Holy.

Greta’s heart was racing. Not wildly. Not with panic. With something slower. Deeper. A blooming. A return.

After a few blocks, emboldened by the quiet, she reached over—fingers brushing the gearshift, then sliding over the back of his hand.

Bob didn’t flinch. He flipped his palm, open and warm, and she threaded her fingers through his. His hand was calloused and steady and safe.

They didn’t look at each other. Didn’t need to.

The radio hummed on. The hush between them was sacred.

By the time they were nearing her street, some quiet song was playing, soft and breathy. 

“You really didn’t have to drive me,” she murmured, but her fingers stayed laced in his.

“I know,” Bob said, glancing at her for the first time in ten minutes. His voice was low. Warm. “I wanted to.”

Greta looked at him—and goddamn, he looked beautiful in the dashboard light. Like the kind of man you trusted without needing to know why. Like the kind of man who made you want to believe in things again.

Bob put the truck in park and glanced at her again, like he’d been stealing looks at every red light, like he couldn’t quite believe she was still here, sitting beside him, real and radiant and entirely too much for one man to handle.

Greta didn’t move right away. Neither did Judge, curled up asleep behind her. “Thanks for the ride,” she said, voice low, almost hoarse. She was still holding his hand.

Bob gave a soft nod. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

“You really don’t—” He was already out of the truck.

She followed with a quiet laugh, her boots clunking softly against the pavement as they crossed the small stretch to her front stoop. The porchlight above flickered once, then steadied. The air was cool and still. The kind of night that begged you to stay in it a little longer.

Greta turned, keyring loose in her hand.

Bob stood just a little too close. Close enough that she could see the deep green flecks in his eyes, the faint sunburn at the tops of his cheeks, the way he watched her like she might disappear if he blinked.

She swallowed. “Hey, Montana?”

His lips quirked. “Yeah?”

“Can I kiss you?”

His breath caught—sharp, surprised—and his face bloomed scarlet. He nodded, then cleared his throat. “Y-yeah. Yes.”

She leaned in.

The kiss was soft. A question asked and answered in the space between heartbeats. His hands hovered, not grabbing, not rushing—just there, like he didn’t want to do anything that might break the spell. Greta tilted her chin, deepened it just a little, one hand curled in the collar of his tee, the other still holding Judge’s leash.

Bob made a quiet noise in the back of his throat—a small, reverent thing—and Greta felt it in every nerve ending she thought had been long dead.

The world went quiet. The kind of kiss you didn’t come back from unchanged.

When she finally pulled back, her breath stuttered in her throat. She blinked up at him, dazed, pupils wide.

“Jesus,” she whispered, half-laughing.

Bob’s smile was shy but wrecked. She stepped backward, fingers fumbling for the door handle.

“Goodnight, Margaret,” he said, voice rich and full and devastating.

Her knees buckled. No one called her that, not like that. Not in that voice, with that look on his face.

Warmth spread through her like smoke, low and slow and crawling.

She turned her head just enough to mutter, “Goodnight, Robert,” before hurrying inside, Judge at her heels.

She didn’t exhale until the door clicked shut behind her. Didn’t stop smiling until she fell into bed, fully clothed, her mouth still tingling from the way he’d kissed her like a prayer and said her name like a promise.

Nebraska: Just got upstairs. Judge is already passed out. Traitor.

Bob: Glad you made it in safe. Thanks for tonight.

Nebraska: Don’t thank me. You’re the one who kissed me stupid.

Bob: Was it stupid? I was trying for charming. Might’ve been feral. Hard to say.

Nebraska: It was feral. In a good way. Like, ruin-me-a-little kind of feral. You ruined me a little.

Bob: I think you’ve already ruined me completely.

Nebraska: Jesus, Floyd. You can’t just SAY things like that.

Bob: Why not? They’re true.

Nebraska: Because I’m going to reread them like twenty times and smile like an idiot.

Bob: That’s the goal. Bob: I keep trying to write something cool back but all I can think about is how you looked when you walked out of that café. Like a painting. Like I’d found something I didn’t even know I’d been looking for.

Nebraska: I thought I was imagining how good you looked. Tall. Glasses. Curls. Veins. Christ. You said, “I’m average,” like a liar.

Bob: Okay, that was a little strategic. I didn’t want to scare you off.

Nebraska: Bob. You made me feel like a Victorian man seeing ankle.

Bob: Greta. I wanted to kiss you again the second I pulled away. Bob: I still do.

Nebraska: Me too. Might be reckless but I don’t care. I want to see you again. Soon.

Bob: Tomorrow? Bob: Or is that too much? Too soon? I just— you make it easy to want more.

Nebraska: Tomorrow’s perfect. I don’t sleep much anyway.

Bob: I’ll pick you up.

Nebraska: That kiss was a threat and a promise. I liked it.

Bob: Margaret. You’re gonna destroy me.

Nebraska: Good.

The next morning Bob walked into the hangar fifteen minutes early.

He always did — punctuality was practically a love language to him — but this morning? He was humming. Not loud enough for anyone to call him on it, but just enough that when he passed Phoenix, she looked up from her checklist with suspicion.

“You’re humming,” she said flatly, narrowing her eyes.

Bob blinked at her, startled. “I am?”

“You never hum. You barely speak unless someone prods you like a catfish with a stick. So yeah, you’re humming, and it’s freaking me out.”

He shrugged, but couldn’t quite hide the way his mouth twitched upward. “Just… good mood, I guess.”

Natasha squinted at him like she was trying to see through his skull.

By 0700, Rooster and Hangman had arrived, and the hangar was awake with its usual noise: tools clattering, engines humming, the crackle of radios and the occasional curse from someone who dropped a wrench on their foot.

But Bob? Bob was smiling at his notes. Grinning into his coffee. Checking his phone at every break like it might sprout legs and run away.

Fanboy noticed it first. “Hey, has Floyd always smiled at inanimate objects?”

“Only when he’s concussed,” Coyote replied.

“I think he’s seeing someone,” Halo chimed in, biting into a protein bar. “I mean, look at him. He’s got post-date face. Like he held hands or something. See also: drug trip.”

“I’m sorry,” said Payback, “held hands? What is this, a Jane Austen novel?”

“I think it’s a woman,” Natasha added, spinning a wrench around her fingers. “Definitely a woman.”

“She’s real lucky,” Rooster muttered, only half-joking. “Whatever's got Bob looking like that? That’s the kinda serotonin hit I’d pay rent for.”

Jake leaned in. “Do we know her name?”

“We don’t know anything,” Nat snapped. “Which is why we’re launching an investigation.”

“Oh no,” Coyote muttered. “Not again.”

Nat pulled out a notebook. “I’m calling it Project Who’s Making Bob Smile Like That.”

Meanwhile, across the city, Greta was already in her office, sleeves rolled up with legal briefs stacked like sandbags around her keyboard.

Her coworker, Elena, walked by her door with a paper cup of coffee and froze mid-step. “Okay. Who are you and what have you done with Greta James?”

Greta didn’t look up. “What?”

“You’re smiling.”

Greta paused, brows furrowed. “No, I’m not.”

“You were.”

“I’m scowling.”

“That was a scowl-smile.”

“No such thing.”

“Maybe not in Nebraska, but here in the real world, that was a full-on ‘scile’.”

Greta blinked at her, deadpan. “Get out of my office.”

Elena laughed and walked away, and Greta sat back in her chair.

Her eyes flicked to her phone, then to the framed photo on her desk — a family snapshot from her childhood that she kept turned face-down most days. Today, it was upright. She hadn’t realized.

She sighed. Then smiled. Just a little and went back to reading case law.

But every few paragraphs, her thoughts drifted. Not to the case. Not to her next argument.

To Bob. To the way he’d blushed last night when she called him by his full name. To the kiss. To his stupid curls and soft voice and veiny fucking arms. To the fact that they were seeing each other again tonight. And it made the whole day feel easier to carry.

Jake turned his head towards the others and whispered to the squad, “Okay, he just checked his phone and smiled. Again. That’s five times today. Five.”

Rooster leaned back in his chair. “This is getting serious.”

“He’s hiding her,” Fanboy said. “Do we think it’s a civilian?”

Jake slurps the last of his iced coffee and leans dramatically over the picnic table like it’s a war table. “Alright. Operation: Who the Hell is Bob’s Girl. Let’s hear the theories.”

Coyote pops a chip into his mouth. “She’s gotta be sweet. Real soft energy. Golden retriever girlfriend vibes.”

“Totally,” Fanboy agrees, tapping a pen against his thigh. “I’m thinking bubbly, sunny voice, one of those girls who sends good morning texts with heart emojis and little coffee cup gifs.”

Natasha glances up from her sandwich. “Kindergarten teacher energy. The kind who makes her own granola.”

Jake: “Yoga on Tuesdays. Pilates on Thursdays. Her name is definitely like Lindsey or something. Something with a ‘y.’”

“Or Bella,” Payback says. “All pastel sundresses and ‘Live Laugh Love’ décor.”

“She wears cardigans — even in summer,” Rooster adds, serious as a sermon. “Bakes for fun. Has a Pinterest board titled ‘Wife Life.’”

“Lindsey has a small white dog named Tulip,” Jake continues confidently, “and she puts bows on its ears and calls it her baby.”

“Drinks chamomile tea. Probably has a lavender diffuser in every room,” Natasha deadpans.

“Bob met her at a coffee shop,” Fanboy suggests. “She offered to pay for someone’s latte and he fell in love.”

“And she makes him lunch in bento boxes,” Coyote nods. “Little handwritten notes with doodles.”

“‘Have a great flight, babe!’” Jake mimics in a high-pitched voice, pretending to blow a kiss.

Rooster sighs. “God, Bob’s definitely dating a Lindsey.”

The whole squad nods solemnly.

In Greta's office, there's not a Lindsey in sight.

Greta James stands barefoot on the black-and-white penny tile floor of her office, a vision in paradox. Her skirt is high-waisted, tailored, black as ink, hugging every curve like a secret. Her boots sit by her desk—tall, dark, heeled like weapons. Her vest is blood-colored burgundy, fit to perfection and buttoned to the throat. Her lipstick is crisp. Her eyeliner—lethal.

Her hair is half-wound in a the same tortoiseshell clip as the night before, the rest cascading down her back. There’s a single cigarette in a vintage gold ashtray on her desk—unlit, just there, like a dare. Her espresso cup is drained. A candle flickers nearby—something expensive and layered, like sandalwood and tobacco and memory. The softest tendrils of smoke trail upward in lazy spirals.

The speakers in her office are blasting Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre like she’s plotting a murder—not defending one. Her secretary has long since stopped asking questions.

The air smells like victory, conviction, and perfume that costs more than some people’s rent.

This is not a diffuser-and-daisy situation. This is Greta fucking James. She is silk gloves over brass knuckles. A lit match in a room full of gasoline. And right now? She’s smiling. Just barely. Just enough to crack the marble exterior.

Her phone buzzes. A single message lights up the screen.

Bob: How many witnesses did you eviscerate before lunch today?

She types back with one hand, languid.

Nebraska: Only one, he cried. The judge had to call a recess. I feel powerful. What about you, Cowboy? Are we still good for dinner?

Then she sets the phone down, stretches once—lazy and feline—and pulls her boots back on like armor.

She walks out of the office with the slow precision of someone who’s never rushed for anyone in her life.

Bob’s phone buzzes. He glances at it and smiles before he can help it. It’s small. Private. But real.

“See that?” Jake nudges Phoenix, whispering loud enough for everyone to hear him. “That’s definitely a Lindsey smile.”

“God,” Rooster groans. “She probably sends him little poems or GIFs. Voice memos. Songs that remind her of him.”

Coyote laughs. “I bet she calls him Bobby. Or Bo.”

Fanboy’s nodding sagely. “And she’s always like, ‘Drink water, sweetie!’”

But Bob—who could hear them clear as day—isn’t thinking about any of that.

He’s thinking about Greta. Greta, who wears victory red like blood in water. Greta, whose idea of flirting is snarky banter and staring a man into repentance. Greta, who quotes law like doctrine and scripture like poetry written in poor taste, and listens to big band music with her espresso. Greta, who smells like leather and fire and flowers at midnight. Greta, who was probably some sort of demon you’d make a crossroads deal with in exchange for your soul—and thank her for it.

Bob texts her back with a faint grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

They’re imagining a Lindsey. But Bob? Bob is already a little bit in love with an enigma wrapped in stormclouds. And every time she calls him Cowboy, he forgets what air feels like.

They were done for the day—wiped out, sore, and sun-drenched—but Bob had practically broken the sound barrier getting to the showers. His phone, normally secured in the safety of his locker like government-grade intel, had been left behind in the chaos, face-up on the bench like a trap waiting to be sprung. That alone was suspicious; Bob Floyd didn’t do careless..

The rest of the squad strolled in at their usual pace, dragging their feet and joking like it was the first day of summer camp instead of the end of a ten-hour flight op. Hangman passed Bob’s phone mid-sentence, caught the light of the screen, and stopped cold.

He blinked. Then blinked again. “Holy shit,” he gasped, grabbing Phoenix’s arm with the urgency of someone who’d seen a crime. “Phoenix. Look at this.”

He held the phone out like it was radioactive.

Nebraska: Good. My place first? Maybe you can help me out of these work clothes.

Nat screeched. Full-throated, hands-to-mouth shriek like they were in a slasher film.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.” She was already cackling, calling the others over. “You guys—get over here right now. Bob’s got a sexy text. A full-blown seduction text.”

The phone made its rounds like contraband. Everyone gathered around like a bunch of teen girls spying on their best friend’s secret crush. Rooster leaned in, squinting. “‘Nebraska’? That’s it? No last name? No picture? What is this, a codename?”

“Could be a sugar baby,” Payback offered. “Or an undercover agent.”

“Or a hooker,” Rooster said again, nodding gravely. “Could definitely be a hooker.”

Nat grabbed the phone back, fingers already flying. “I’m texting her. I’m doing it.”

“Wait—what? How do you know his password?” Hangman reached for the phone. “No! Wait—yes, but let me help.” She smacked his hand away.

Nat (typing): WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOUR INTENTIONS WITH OUR BOB?

Coyote doubled over laughing. “Our Bob? Like he’s a Victorian debutante?”

“We don’t know this woman!” Nat hissed, hitting send. “She could be dangerous!” Right then, the shower cut off. A hush fell over the room.

Bob reemerged, barefoot, curls dripping, towel slung low in a way that was frankly indecent. He blinked at the crowd frozen mid-crime scene.

“What’s going on?” he asked, already suspicious.

Everyone turned at once. Rooster pointed accusingly. “Who. Is. Nebraska.”

Bob froze, just for a second. Then—bless him—he tried.

“It’s a—uh—state,” he said innocently, rubbing his face with one hand while stepping into his pants. “In the Midwest. Known for—uh—corn.”

Nat held up his phone like Exhibit A. “You left this out. That’s your first mistake. You never leave this out.”

“I was in a hurry.”

“You were in heat,” Hangman corrected. “Look at you. You’re glistening.”

Bob pulled his shirt over his head and reached for his boots, acting unbothered—acting, being the key word.

“We’re just saying,” Phoenix went on, “if someone’s asking you to help them out of their clothes, we deserve a heads-up. Or a background check.”

“Did you spray cologne?” Rooster demanded.

Bob paused, halfway through tying his boot. “No.”

“You reek of sandalwood, my guy, and...santal?” Fanboy said. “You’re practically smoldering.”

“Shut up,” Bob muttered, already packing his bag.

The phone buzzed again in Nat’s hand. Everyone lunged toward her.

Nebraska: Tell them they sound fun. But you’re mine tonight.

Everyone screamed.

Bob, face redder than a missile warning light, yanked the phone back and shoved it into his back pocket with the kind of tenderness that screamed my whole heart lives here now. He grabbed his hat, threw a distracted wave over his shoulder, and made a beeline for the door like it was a war zone.

“ROBERT FLOYD,” Rooster thundered after him. “ARE YOU IN LOVE WITH A WOMAN WHO CALLS YOU HERS?!”

Bob didn’t answer. Just disappeared down the hallway, shoulders a little too straight, a smile pulling at his lips.

Phoenix stared after him. “That man is gone.”

“He used cologne,” Nat whispered again, as if that explained everything. And maybe it did.

A few miles away, Greta eased her car into its usual spot, her heart already beating a little faster than the engine cooling beneath her. Bob had just texted—five minutes out—and with all the subtlety of a man ready to worship, he’d promised to help her out of her work clothes.

She smiled to herself, the kind of smile that didn’t reach her lips so much as settle low in her stomach.

From the passenger side, she grabbed Judge’s harness, the leather worn smooth from habit. He huffed, one eye squinting as she fastened him in, regal as ever despite the pirate aesthetic. She stepped out into the warm evening, heels clicking against the pavement, then reached into the backseat for the solid weight of her old dog—fifty pounds of scarred, cranky mutt wrapped in cyclopsian loyalty and quiet judgment.

With Judge cradled in one arm and her work bag slung over her shoulder, she made her way toward the building, leash in hand. Just as she rounded the corner, headlights sliced through the dusk.

A red pickup rolled into the spot by the front door as she set the dog on the ground.

She slowed her steps. Watched as boot-clad feet hit the ground, as a tall, familiar frame unfolded from behind the wheel. He rounded the truck, eyes scanning—and the moment he saw her, his face lit up. Not the polite glow of friendliness, but the full, unguarded blaze of recognition.

He smiled at her. Then smiled again, just for Judge.

By the time he reached them, he was nearly breathless with affection.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

That damn drawl. Like honey over gravel. Like sin in scripture.

Was he trying to get her to jump him on the sidewalk?

“Well, howdy, Cowboy,” she murmured, and let her eyes drag across him. The slow kind of look that maps terrain and stakes claims.

His jeans clung low and fitted, soft denim framing a waist she’d wrapped her legs around more than once in imagination. His shirt was rolled at the sleeves, stretched faintly at the shoulders, and hung loose over his chest in a way that felt like permission. And those arms—veined and capable, made to be touched. Traced. Bitten. His curls, still damp from the shower, curled over his ears, and the hat—God help her—the hat just made it worse.

He wasn’t wearing his glasses. He’d lost the soft academic charm and replaced it with something deeper, something hungrier. It didn’t lessen her desire. It sharpened it.

Without a word, Bob reached out and slid the strap of her bag off her shoulder, looping it over his own like he was built for the burden. And maybe he was.

But Greta caught the strap before it left her hand completely and gave it a sharp tug—pulling him toward her, knocking him slightly off balance.

He stumbled forward, breath catching, and she smiled up at him.

“I’m gonna kiss you now, okay?”

She looked into those blue eyes—ocean in winter, sky before a storm—and wondered how long it would take to memorize them. How many years. How many lifetimes.

Bob’s voice came rough and reverent. “Thank God,” he breathed. “Been thinkin’ about kissin’ you all day.”

And then he did.

It was not a polite kiss. Not a hello or a welcome home. It was an answer to a question neither of them had asked aloud. His lips met hers like a memory returning to the body, like something ancient and instinctual clicking into place. Her free hand pressed to his chest, fingers curling in the fabric like she needed something to anchor her.

The kiss deepened. One hand cupped her jaw, thumb stroking along the bone like it was something delicate, worth knowing. The other wrapped around her waist and pulled—until there was no distance left between them, no margin of error. It felt like his body was trying to mend hers. Like if he could just press her hard enough, he could fuse her bones to his and carry the ache for both of them.

When she finally pulled away, it was only because her lungs demanded it. She drew in a breath, barely had time to exhale, and he was already kissing her again—like he’d gone a day without water and she was the only thing that quenched.

She smiled into the second kiss. Not a smirk, not a defense mechanism, not the careful, calculated grin she offered the rest of the world. This one was different. It was real. It was wide and warm and a little bit giddy, and Bob felt it like a strike to the ribs.

He pulled back, blinking down at her like she was a sunrise he wasn’t expecting.

Greta reached up and gently rested her hand against his cheek, the tips of her fingers brushing his curls. “We’re dating now,” she said plainly, like stating a fact. Like reading a law already passed. “I’ve just decided. Hope you’re okay with that.”

Bob’s smile bloomed slow, stunned and shining, the kind that started in his mouth but lived behind his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, voice soft with awe. “Yeah, sweetheart. I think I’m more than okay with that.”

Upstairs, the door had barely clicked shut before Bob’s hands were on her—slow, reverent, steady. Not rushed. Not hungry. Just thorough. Just as promised.

He helped her out of her work clothes piece by piece, his fingers dragging across fabric and skin like he was translating a language he never wanted to forget. His hands didn’t wander—they traveled, like they were mapping her terrain, memorizing her turns and scars and borderlines. Her jacket slid off. Then the blouse. The waistband of her skirt loosened beneath careful fingers. He kissed her once on the shoulder, once on her sternum, then pulled back just enough to whisper:

“You’re somethin’ sacred, Margaret.”

She stilled for a second. Then gave him a look like he’d just handed her a loaded weapon and said “use it.” He kissed her again for good measure. For defense.

Greta pulled on a pair of jeans that had lived in her bottom drawer for years—worn to softness, hugging low on her hips—and a faded red tank top that had seen better decades but suited her perfectly now. She left her feet bare for a moment as she twisted her hair into a half-up knot, messy and fast, pinned with muscle memory and a sense of time. A pair of old black Chelsea boots completed the picture: effortless, low-key, radiant in that only-Greta way.

Bob watched her from the bed, eyes trailing her like she was moving in a different gravity.

Another kiss—long, grounding, her thumb brushing his cheekbone like a priest anointing a penitent—and then they were out the door.

The burger place was one of those local legends. No sign, no website, just a cash-only window and weathered picnic tables under a string of soft lights. It had been there longer than the zip code. The grill hissed behind a curtain of smoke, and the air smelled like grease and good decisions.

Greta leaned across the table, propping her chin on one hand, a cold bottle of Coke in the other. Bob, hat brim propped high just above his brow, gestured animatedly with a fry as he explained something that had him practically glowing. Something about the dynamics of wing formation and drag coefficient at low altitude, but he made it sound beautiful.

“…and if you time it just right—if everything clicks—you don’t feel the drop. It’s like gliding. Like a held breath finally exhaling.”

Greta was smiling at him, not like she was humoring him, but like she was watching the moon rise. “That’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever heard someone say about falling.”

Bob ducked his head, cheeks pink, but he didn’t stop talking. “Then I must not have told you the things I think about you.” He reached across the table, hand brushing hers — fingers curling together in that way that says mine without a single word spoken. 

Their knees touched under the table. Her foot bumped his. It was casual. Quiet. Intimate in the kind of way that required no ceremony—just proximity.

Halfway down the block, a black SUV jerked to the curb like it had hit an invisible wall. Nat held her phone up in the air like a tracking device. “He’s here. He’s right here.”

Everyone piled toward the windows like they were trying to see inside a bank vault.

“There,” Reuben pointed. “That guy. The one at the red table.”

“That’s not Bob,” Jake said skeptically. “But also… maybe?”

“No, no way. He’s not wearing glasses,” Mickey noted. “The posture’s different. He looks relaxed.”

Rooster squinted. “Is he smiling? Like, smiling smiling, not just a little shy smile?”

“More than that,” Javy said slowly. “He’s talking. Like, a lot.”

Callie crossed her arms. “When does Bob ever talk that much?”

“No, no, that’s not Bob,” Jake declared. “That guy is gesturing. That guy is animated. That guy has confidence.”

“That guy has dimples,” Nat said faintly. “Does Bob have dimples?”

“Okay,” Bradley started, “but be real, that’s the only guy sitting there. All the other tables are either all women, or men too old or too young to feasibly be Bob.”

Everyone fell into stunned silence as they watched the man turn his head slightly, tipping his head back in a laugh. As his head turned the group was able to see clearly, Bob, or a version of him it seemed they had yet to meet. 

Jake scoffed, “Well shit. I guess that is Bobby.” 

The car fell into stunned silence as they watched the woman across the table laugh at something Bob-Not-Bob had said —head thrown back, full-bodied, radiant.

“Okay,” Bradley muttered, “who the hell is that?”

The woman was stunning. Not in the unattainable, magazine-gloss kind of way. No, this was rockstar-wife at home who has fended off the very thought of affairs. There was something sharp about her, something precise—like she didn’t tolerate bullshit and hadn’t for years. Her smile was killer. Her hands were expressive. She touched the maybe-Bob across the table with absolute familiarity—fingers dragging across the back of his hand, knuckles brushing his wrist like she belonged there.

“You think that’s Nebraska?” Fanboy whispered.

Nat’s eyes widened. “Holy shit.”

“That’s Nebraska,” Javy said reverently. “It has to be.”

“But she’s so—pretty!” Jake said, baffled. “Like, she’s got… cheekbones. And confidence. And that whole messy hair/hoop earrings/I hurt men for sport thing.”

“She looks like she wins fist fights and arguments,” Callie said. “I’m scared of her. I respect her. I want her to teach me how to do taxes.”

“She touched his wrist,” Rooster said, still not over it. “Who touches Bob’s wrist?”

They all watched as the two stood, throwing their trash away together. She bumped his hip with hers. He leaned into it instinctively. She reached for his hand and threaded their fingers together like it was second nature. And maybe-Bob looked at her like she held every star in his sky.

“No one can ever tell Bob we saw this,” Nat whispered. “We go to our graves with this knowledge.”

“Agreed,” Jake nodded solemnly. “He’d kill us. Or worse—she would.”

“She’d kill us, hands down. And I feel like Bob would stand to the side offering encouragement.” Callie said.

“She’d kill us brutally,” Javy added. “And in a way they probably wouldn’t find the bodies.”

“...but also,” Rooster murmured, “I kind of get it now.”

And they all nodded in unison.

Because whoever she was—Nebraska, goddess, assassin, dreamgirl in boots—she had Bob smiling like that, talking like that, looking like that.

And honestly? That was more shocking than anything else.

The lights in her apartment were low, golden and soft, pooling across the tile like liquid comfort. The dishes from their late-night snack—leftover fries, half of a milkshake, two half-empty coke cans—were still sitting on the counter, untouched.

Greta had music playing from her phone speaker. Something old and crackling, some syrupy soul song about love that lives in bones and between fingers.

Bob had just been trying to help—clearing a plate, rinsing something off. But she caught his wrist, curled her fingers around it, and tugged him gently toward the center of the kitchen.

He blinked down at her. “What are we—?”

“We’re dancing,” she said, like it was obvious.

He looked uncertain for half a second. Then she pressed one hand flat against his chest and kissed him once—slow and warm and easy. A grounding kiss, like she was lighting a candle and not striking a match.

So he put his hands on her hips. She slid hers up around his neck. And they swayed, slowly, like the night had no more demands of them.

Bob didn’t speak much. He didn’t need to. He held her like gravity didn’t work right without her near. His hand traced idle circles at the small of her back, and her nose brushed along the edge of his jaw as she tucked herself close.

“You don’t have to go,” she whispered. “You can, if you want. I won’t be mad.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth. Then his pulse point. Then the little spot under his ear that made him stutter.

“You can sneak out in the morning,” she murmured. “I won’t say a word.”

His hands flexed against her ribs like he was trying to commit the shape of her to memory.

“I don’t want to sneak out.”

“Good,” she whispered.

And just like that, the decision was made. Not with a declaration, but with the way he kissed her again—open, tender, wanting. With the way he toed off his boots at the door, socks dragging along the tile. With the way he touched her, slow and unhurried, like staying was the only choice that made sense.

The lights had dimmed further. The music still played quietly. Her shoes were at the door. His shirt was on the back of a chair. They lay curled together under the throw blanket on her couch, her hand on his chest, his nose buried in her hair.

“You still okay with dating me?” she whispered against his throat.

His only response was a hum and the brush of his lips to her hairline.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

[loganwritesprobably]

But, why? (T.F.)

Synopsis: Toji comes home with a revelation Tags/Warnings: Toji/GN!Reader, angst? Kind of?, hurt/comfort, Toji gets vulnerable, established relationship Word count: 785 Notes: I sat down to write something else completely and then this happened

AO3 | Fanfic Masterlist | Request Rules | Fic Trades Guide

I'm celebrating 500 followers - join the party and play some bingo

“What have you done to me?” The words caught you off guard, making you look up from where you were hesitantly chopping vegetables. It wasn’t that you were scared of your lover - he would never hurt you. But, you wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to use the knife in your hand to hurt the walls, and managed to hurt you in the process. It had been a long time since you saw him this riled up, and he didn’t deign to tell you anything about why exactly he was pacing the living room of his apartment, huffing like an angry bull. “What?” You asked softly, stabbing the knife into the wooden board so you could step away, moving through the space until you stood in the open doorway between the kitchen and living area. “I-” Toji grunted and in a few fast, large steps he was directly in front of you.

His large hands gripped around your upper arm, looking down at you. If you were to attempt to use a word to explain his expression you might say lost, but still it didn’t accurately capture the array of emotions swirling in his eyes as he looked down at you.

“I can’t- stop thinking about you. Ever. You’re in every moment of my day. Doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I’m thinking about you or hearing what you’d say or imagining your goddamn shampoo-” he cut himself off by stepping away from you, going back to the pacing he’d been doing before. “Toji-” “No! I ain’t done,” he took a deep breath, clenching his hands at his sides so you wouldn’t notice the way he trembled, “you are everywhere. Your shit on the sink, your clothes in with mine in the machine, half the time you’re already here when I get home makin’ dinner even though you don’t live in this shitty ass apartment that’s fallin’ apart - fuck you even started fixing it up!” He yelled, swinging as if he was going to slam his white knuckled fist into the wall, but he stopped just short of a spot you’d already filled in and fixed, a hole created before you walked in and made yourself a space in his life.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” You whispered, hands pushed into the pockets of your joggers to prevent you from fidgeting, uncomfortable, but more than anything scared. Scared that this meant he was going to send you away and his would be the last you saw him, that this would be the final conversation of the best thing that ever happened to you.

“I don’t know either. I just- fuck. I don’t know- how ta deal with it, doll. You just fuckin’ waltzed in here and acted as if I was normal and- worthy of all this. Cause I ain’t and we both know it. I’m- fuck I’m an asshole. I’m an asshole to you too. But instead of walking out like you should’ve from the first fuck, you stay and you keep staying, and when I say stupid shit you just laugh and give back as good as you get. I don’t-” he hesitated, breathing deeply to steady himself, like saying the next words would shatter him entirely, “I don’t deserve ya. Don’t deserve none of this shit you’ve done. Don’t- you’re so soft, I ain’t like that. But you don’t care, and you stay soft anyway. And all I do is think about ya and how I just.. Hope you’re still here when I get home cause I don’t know what I’d do without ya anymore.”

Toji couldn’t look at you. He remained staunch, shoulders tense and fists clenched, staring ahead at the front door as if it would somehow come and save him. You, in sock clad feet, padded softly across the floor to wrap your arms around him from behind. “Because I love you, To. I love you so much, and I don’t want to be anywhere but here.” Your words were so soft, and yet they seemed to echo across the empty walls of Toji’s crumbling apartment, one you’d been making into a home slowly through the months that you’d been dating. “I love you too.” He said, and though his voice broke as the words fell from his lips, like it was a confession ripped from him by force, you didn’t comment. You stepped back slightly, and slowly guided Toji to turn to face you. With a kind smile, that Toji was so sure he didn’t deserve, you reached up to cup his cheek and wipe away a rogue tear. “I know.” You said, laughing softly as he leaned down to smash his lips against yours.

Tag list: @claryeverlarkf @uselessboots @cainnoable @hyperfixationthingss @queenmimi2817 @villainousace @skullfacedlady

If you'd like to tip me you can head over to my Kofi

[not-poignant]

In the FFS universe, do you think Efnisien, Arden and Kadek would ever do a formal scene together? If so, what do you think the dynamics would be like?

Hi anon,

It really depends on what you define as a 'formal scene.' If you mean a situation where all three have gone into a space together with the knowing intention to dual-tie Efnisien and then provide aftercare together, then yes.

If you mean anything else, then they definitely haven't done that yet. (As to if they ever would, that's literally what Second Star from the Right will cover! :D ) - There's basically 'formal scene with Kadek as a rigger' and 'formal scene with Kadek as a dominant' and they are both very different things introducing extremely different dynamics.

And that would count as a formal scene for me, but that might not be what you mean.

As for the dynamics, Kadek is very different in rope as a rigger, compared to how he is as a dominant outside of rope. Kadek tying is quite laidback but still assertive and bold (we've seen this in Falling Falling Stars to a degree, where he freely makes suggestions to Arden, comments on how pretty Efnisien looks etc.) and it would likely be an extension of what's already in the story. Arden would take primary lead, Kadek would help facilitate/tease/make suggestions, etc.

Not only that, but I actually think Efnisien will develop a strong preference to playing with them as individuals, and not all three of them together. Arden and Kadek can have quite disparate styles, and Efnisien really likes slipping into a headspace that doesn't make him feel split between two people's needs. In rope that's not an issue, but in any other kind of scene, it would be.

My goal was never to actually have the three of them doing regular scenes together, to the point where my first instinct is to go 'no' even though they have literally already done this and it's been mentioned in the canon (Constellations, I think) re: rope play parties lol. It was more to independently start connecting Efnisien and Kadek on a different BDSM axis which is what Second Star from the Right is for!

So while it might not be exactly what you're looking for anon, we'll definitely get more of Efnisien's kink / scene journey in that story.

[woofools]

I was re-reading parts of the pitch bible and suddenly an entire plot spawned in my head fully formed. Have a first chapter.

[fionnaskyborn]

People like this have made me terrified that I am mischaracterizing my favorite character by playing into his strengths and emphasizing them so much... That I'm making things "too anime", "too over-the-top", and by doing that straying away from the groundedness that made the character compelling in the first place... But I think it's better to be a fan who loves someone so much they're willing to step into goofy over-the-top showcases of strength and morals out of love than being a fake fan who only ever rags on what they proclaim is so dear to them. I dunno. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that. I'm hella insecure when it comes to my own writing, especially with this guy because I want to do him as much justice as I possibly can as a writer. But I have to convince myself that it's not too much.

[laugtherhyena]

Ough writing bugs,, i missed you buddies

[teh-nos]

I watched Avengers: Age of Ultron (apart from I skipped some overly long action sequences) and I am not sure so can someone tell me whether or not Tony Stark was the baddy in that film? Because about halfway through I was sure he was but then it was maybe just an evil robot after all and I am confused because either this film was surprisingly subversive or it was about robots hitting each other.