#I wish I could have met him ❤

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Miss you Terry ❤.

[buckybabesonly]

Take Me Back To The Night We Met

Summary: He promised you forever and a day.

Pairing: Bucky x Female!reader

Genre: Angst

Word Count: 2.4k

Cold dinners, unanswered texts and overwhelming disappointment in your heart.

Just a standard Friday night, really.

You sat on the couch with your knees drawn to your chest, eyes fastened on the clock hanging opposite you. It was taunting you with each tick, tick, tick as you clenched your jaw and willed your phone to light up with a message from him.

You should be used to this by now. It happened so often that it would have surprised you more to actually see Bucky arrive home in time for dinner.

You knew it would be like this when you first got together. But after almost four years, it didn't make the disappointment sting any less. You knew he had bigger things to be doing - he was out saving lives and helping people. Yet a tiny, selfish voice in your mind wished that you could be placed as a priority for once. It felt like you spent half your time nowadays just waiting. Waiting for his call, waiting to spend time with him, waiting for something to give.

When the clock reached 11, you sighed and realized that it was going to be one of those nights where he'd stumble in at three in the morning, exhausted, or maybe not at all.

You packed the dinner you had made into a Tupperware box, pasted a sticky note on top with a message for your boyfriend when he returned. Reheat me for 3 mins! Love you ❤ 

It really was tough. It was one of those nights where you ended up staring at the ceiling of your bedroom in the dark, hot tears seeping silently onto the pillow beneath your head as those unhappy, insecure thoughts reared their head in the usual routine.

It was always this thick silence in the middle of the night that haunted you the most. It allowed you to be truly alone with your thoughts, and you had a lot of them.

You used to be so happy with him. And you still were, in a way. You felt so unbelievably lucky to have Bucky in your life, to be the one that he loved. And yet it was undeniably getting more and more difficult to ignore the problems that came with dating someone who did what he did.

The end to those upsetting thoughts came just as dawn cracked through the Manhattan horizon and you heard those tired, weary footsteps into the apartment, the sound of heavy combat boots being shucked off. Your eyes were closed, but you could visualize the way he silently crept into the room so as not to disturb you. You felt the tension leave your body when he slipped into the sheets beside you, and you instantly curled into his side like a cat.

"Did I wake you?" He asked quietly, his voice hoarse. He still smelt like blood and dirt, but you didn't mind.

"No," you whispered, your fingers grasping fistfuls of his shirt.

The relationship was unconventional and hard work, but you lived for the moments where Bucky came back home to you.

You stood on the snowy sidewalk, staring into the windows of the jewelry store wistfully. Diamond engagement rings stared back at you, glistening in the sunlight, dazzling you with their splendor.

More and more of your friends had been getting to that stage in their lives where they were becoming engaged, getting married, having kids (and some divorces, too). Every other day, it seemed like a new relationship milestone announcement was being made on your Instagram feed.

You were always being grilled by your friends about when Bucky was going to 'pop the question'. Your response was always a demure laugh and a joking retort of, You'll have to ask him!

But honestly, you weren't sure if that was where you were heading anymore.

Your relationship had never been conventional, and you knew what you were getting into when you and Bucky first started your relationship. Bucky didn't have a 9 to 5 job where he could come back home every night and help cook dinner with you and go to bed at the same time, make you breakfast in the morning and walk you to work.

It was never going to be like that.

So what did your future look like?

You trudged home in a slightly downcast mood, paper bags of groceries in your arms as you sighed.

You hadn't seen much of Bucky at all in the last few weeks. He had been out on a mission in Quebec, but he was going to be back tomorrow. A smile suddenly bloomed on your face - he was going to return just in time to celebrate your fourth year anniversary tomorrow.

I wouldn't miss it, my love, he had whispered on the phone to you two nights ago.

There was a new bounce to your step as you continued on to your apartment. You decided that you had to try and stop worrying so much about the future and just be grateful for each day - he was your Bucky, and that was enough.

Bucky was late.

He was supposed to arrive back at the apartment this morning, but he had sent you a couple of text messages at noon, your heart sinking.

Hey - have to stay in Quebec for a couple more hours. But will be heading back very soon.

Your reply was a hopeful, You promise?

Promise.

You remained hopeful even though there had been radio silence since. Bucky had never let you down on celebrating special occasions before - come rain or thunder, you knew he would make it back to you.

Or maybe that's what you used to believe.

You weren't sure what you believed now, as you sat inside the French restaurant opposite an empty chair, your nails tapping the tablecloth anxiously.

You clutched your phone in your hand like a lifeline.

I'm at the restaurant. Are you on your way? You texted him desperately, willing for him to suddenly appear in front of you with a bouquet in his hands and an apology on his lips.

Maybe you just loved torturing yourself. Living on whatever thin strand of hope was thrown your way, like a lifebuoy whilst you struggled to keep your head above the water.

Half an hour passed, the server with a sympathetic gaze coming over after 45 minutes and bringing you a starter and a glass of champagne on the house.

Your cheeks were burning, your chest tightening with such pain that you wanted the ground to open up and swallow you whole.

Finally, you called it a night and got into a taxi to take you home. Your feet hurt in your stupid heels and your dress felt too tight and uncomfortable, your heart hurting so much that you thought it might burst.

Surprisingly, you managed to hold the tears in. You held them in all the way up until you reached your front door, stabbing your key four times into the lock before you managed to open it, your hands shaking.

You wanted to slam the door back into it's frame as soon as you were in the safety of your home, and gasped when a gloved hand appeared out of nowhere to block it. You stumbled back, almost falling when Bucky materialized in the doorway, his arms holding you to steady you instantly.

"I'm so sorry." They were the first words out of his mouth as he kicked the door shut behind him, holding you close against his body. "I am so, so sorry."

You were quiet, your head unable to process his being in front of you when you had such crushing disappointment inside you from being stood up on your anniversary. Tears were silently running down your face as Bucky's grip tightened around you, your eyes staring at nothing.

You weren't even listening even though he was speaking endless reasons and explanations for why he was so terribly late, why he had been unable to text you back to let you know he wouldn't be able to make it in time. He was out there as usual, saving other people, being there for other people.

Not you.

"Call me selfish," you began eventually, your voice cracking. You peeled yourself away from Bucky, staring up at him with eyes that made his breath hitch. He could see the pain in them, the utter exhaustion in your gaze. "But I just... I wish I had you all to myself."

Bucky's face fell. He knew how you felt, and it destroyed him to see the way you stared at him now. He could feel how limp you were to his touch, and it suddenly scared him.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I know I let you down. There was nothing I could do. I'll make it up to you, I promise."

You almost scoffed at that word. Promise.

"That's the thing, Buck," you said sadly, taking another step back. His arms fell down to his sides. "Your promises don't mean anything."

He looked crestfallen at your statement. His lips parted as if he wanted to argue back, but you continued forcefully.

"How many times have you promised me that we'd be able to go on that trip together? How many times have you promised me that we can do a proper date night? How many times have you promised me that you'd be home for dinner?"

Bucky's lips pressed together in a stiff line. You had been angry at him before, of course you had. But what he noticed right now, overwhelmingly so, was that you were tired.

"I'm so... I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"What do you mean?" Bucky spoke then, fear creeping into his voice at your words.

"Look at me, Bucky," you half-laughed, gesturing at yourself. Your mascara was running down your face, you had kicked your heels off on the floor, you felt so ridiculous in this stupid dress that you had meticulously picked out for your special night with him. "I'm so sick of always being let down. I - I don't know how we can have a future together. I don't want to spend four more years not knowing whether I can expect to see you come home."

"We have a future together," Bucky retorted, his eyebrows furrowing. "I can't see a future where you don't exist."

"Can't you?" You shot back, honestly bewildered. "Do you really imagine us having a normal life together? Can you imagine us being married, having kids, settled down in a home that you're not always running away from?"

"Do you think I enjoy doing what I do?" Bucky asked, a flash of anger entering his tone.

"Actually, yes, I do!" You exclaimed truthfully. "You're hard-wired to fight and protect, Bucky. You need to help people. It's what you do."

Bucky was immediately quiet. You had hit the nail on the head. Fight and protect.

"I've barely seen you this year, Bucky. You've spent so much time out there on missions and saving the world and - and that's great, Bucky. Really, I am so proud of you. But you have to understand that I have things that I want and I'm not sure you can give that to me."

You felt like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders. This was really how you truly felt. The dam had broken, and you had finally told him what you had been thinking.

You loved Bucky with all your heart. You loved him so much that the thought of losing him was excruciating.

But you couldn't run away from reality. You didn't think you could live the rest of your relationship like this.

"Do you think you could change?" You whispered, your eyes welling up again with tears. "Could you give up being a hero and stay by my side instead?"

Bucky's hands were clenched into fists by his sides as he stared at you. You couldn't decipher his expression, and you wished so much you could climb inside his mind and know what he was thinking.

"I love you," he said eventually. Your heart splintered with longing.

"That doesn't answer my question," you said sadly.

There was a long stretch of silence that filled the apartment. Eventually, he spoke.

"I don't know if I can change. I - this is what I do. I have to help people. There are people who need me."

What about me? You wanted to ask.

You nodded once.

"I love you," he repeated again, pleading.

"I love you too," you said, your lower lip trembling. "I love you so much."

Bucky had brought you so much joy. Every stolen second with him, every smile shared, every memory was a blessing. He was everything you had ever dreamed of and somehow even more.

But it wasn't enough.

"I know what I want, Bucky." Your voice was shaking. "Once upon a time, I really thought that we could have that. But the longer I spend in this relationship, the more I realize that those thoughts are futile. I'm chasing something that I will never have."

Bucky wanted to fall onto his knees and beg for you to stay. He really did - he wanted to hold your hands in his and beg you not to leave him. That he didn't know how he could live his days without you.

But he knew what you deserved. You deserved someone reliable, someone you wouldn't have to wait on. In front of his very eyes in this moment, he could see the product of his neglectfulness towards you. He could see the agony in your face, the weight of the disappointment he'd caused in every tear track on your skin. The epiphany hit him like a crushing weight to the chest.

If there was one thing Bucky always wanted to give you, it was happiness. He wanted to make you as happy as your existence in his life brought to him.

Maybe, in a twisted paradox, he would have to let go of his to be able to give you yours.

If Bucky could go back to the night you first met, he would have stared at you from afar, traced your profile with his eyes, admired the gentle curve of your nose and the color of your lips. He would have felt his heart still the moment you turned and met his stare with a shy smile.

But instead of approaching you and introducing himself, he would have forced himself to walk away if he had known the pain he would bring to you.

If you could go back to the night you first met, you wouldn't have believed the love that would grow in your heart for this man. The impossibly potent feeling that was larger than life itself.

You used to believe that your love for one another could overcome anything.

You realized that wasn't true on that very night, when Bucky left your home and you remained standing in the darkness, alone once more.

[luveline]

𝐢𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬 | 𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧

You don’t mean to make an enemy of Eddie Munson — he’s handsome, and talented, but he’s the biggest jerk you’ve ever met. Eddie thinks you’re infuriatingly pretty, emphasis on the infuriating. Too bad you just can’t seem to leave each other alone. [13k]

fem!reader, enemies-to-lovers, rival rockstars, mutual pining (and hatred), slight miscommunication, angst, hurt-comfort, eddie has mixed intentions, kissing / heavy petting, hickeys, sexual tension, eventual hate-fucking, some misogyny (not eddie), TW readers bandmate is a bully, TW drugs/alc/smoking, disclaimer: I can’t play an instrument

𓆩❤︎𓆪

Indianapolis International Airport, Indiana, Late 1988.

There's a really sweet-looking boy sitting in the chair across from you. The airport is blotted out by both your headphones —huge chunky cans, the best you could afford— and your sunglasses. He's a shade of sepia from the lenses, dark hair darker still where it's tucked into the hood of his hoodie. 

There's no way he could possibly know you're staring at him while you're facing your lap, scribbling lyrics for a song that'll never get made with your body curled inwards, and yet he looks up from the novel in his. He smiles, his cheeks pulled up, and he looks younger. He isn't old by any means but something about his smile is transformative. 

You don't mean to give yourself away. You smile back just a little. 

He says something. You push your headphones around your neck and break the seal, soft 70's rock replaced by the sounds of the airport, footsteps and clicking and children laughing somewhere behind you. 

"I'm sorry," you say, covering the cans of your headphones to cut their weak buzzing, "what did you say?" 

"I said you have good taste."

He nods toward your guitar case patterned in overlapping band stickers. 

You notice his own case on the seat next to him. It's more conspicuous than your own with only one sticker, a band you've never heard of. 

"I wish I could say the same, but I don't know who that is, 'Corroded Coffin'?" you ask, purely curious. 

He sits forward, a picture of casual confidence as he drops his face into his palm, elbow digging into the ripped jeans covering his knee. "I'm offended, sweetheart. They're only the best sound to come out of Indiana in the last ten years." 

"The Stacey's?" you offer, scandalised by his suggestion. "Doorway to Cooperstown? The Cats?" 

He blinks at you. "You know the scene." 

"It's my scene," you say.

You don't mean to sound pretentious, and hopefully you don't, but music is your life. 

"It's mine, too," he says. He leans forward and scrubs a hand through his hair, scratching absentmindedly. "Where are you going? Must be pretty important to tear you away." 

"New York. I'm– I'm a techie for Godless. I will be, once I get there." You sound smug and nervous at the same time.

"Holy shit," he says. He smiles a gorgeous, awful kind of smile, like you've been friends for years, and your good news is his. "No fucking way. Go you." 

Godless have been compared to loads of bands but the one you favour is a heavier, feminine The Clash. It's an emerging sound, punk rock stolen, repurposed, and remade. Reborn by girlhood rage. You love their sound (though you have some notes), you love their statement, and you're probably the happiest you've ever been knowing you'll be behind the scenes of a new era of music. 

"And you're taking her?" he asks, gesturing to your guitar case. 

Inside is a beat up old bass guitar you got for nothing. You're self-taught, you're good, but you don't have any disillusions on what you'll be doing on tour. 

"She's worthless," you say, "mostly taking her for company." You reuse his pronouns, though you aren't the type to assign personality to your instruments. "What about you, uh–" 

"Eddie," he says, taking his guitar case into two fine hands. Your eyes snag on his ragtag assortment of rings, and he leans over the neck of the case to retake your gaze. "This… is Sweetheart." 

— 

Hotel Edison, New York, Early 1990.

"We have to go. Why are you guys never ready when I tell you to be?"

You panic slightly. "I need a minute." 

"Ananya, could you find, like, a modicum of patience? Fucking annoying." 

Sharp, Morgan's unhappiness sounds over the droning drill of your shitty hair dryer. You shift where you're kneeling in front of the floor length mirror to check she isn't talking to you — unusual, but not impossible that her hostility would be aimed at someone who isn't Ananya. 

Ananya stands in the middle of the hotel room, thick eyebrows pulled into a familiar scowl.

"Get it together," she says disdainfully, like Morgan's nothing more than a mild inconvenience. 

You wish you had her confidence when it comes to Morgan's tantrums. You stand up, clad in nothing more than underwear and a pair of black stockings, your t-shirt in one hand and the hairdryer still humming in the other. You turn it off and let it drop to the floor, worried you're just another rockstar cliche as you take in the state of your room. Your suitcase is open and your clothes are all over the place, laid flat in an attempt to dry your rain-soaked clothes. Your underwear dangle from the lampshade, a mix of pretty lingerie you've yet to wear and full-shaped panties that had made Morgan laugh for a minute, no pauses. 

"I can see why you're so desperate," she'd barbed. 

You slip your shirt over your head in case you have to act as a human shield. It's honestly not the worst thing they've had you involved in this year. 

"You're not wearing that, are you?" Morgan asks. 

She's a fascinating creature in that she isn't always talking with thinly veiled passive aggression. You genuinely believe she's looking out for you sometimes, or believe that she believes it, at least. She doesn't say it with malice, simply asks. 

She's multi-faceted. 

"No," you say, though you'd been meaning to. 

"Good, skirts really aren't your thing. You look blocky. I have a pair of flares in my bag, wear them." 

And Morgan — Morgan's the lead singer of Godless. You don't really have a choice. 

You find the pants she'd instructed you to wear and half tuck your shirt, scrabbling for your shoes as Ananya starts lamenting the time, sat on the small table by the TV.

"They have to wait for us, babe, that's the whole point," Morgan says, fussing over her eye make-up. 

"No, they don't. And we really don't need the attention right now." 

"That's dramatic." 

Ananya leans forward and clicks on the TV with a perfect finger. The screen buzzes to life. She clicks through the channels until she gets to the local news station, and then she slumps over the frame on her elbow. 

You giggle behind your hand. Onscreen, images of Morgan are blown up and slated, your bandmate sloppy drunk on the steps of Covey Gold. They've caught you red-handed in the background pretending you aren't with her, but luckily Morgan's too obsessed with herself to notice. 

"I really don't see the issue," she says breezily, slipping into her tiny heels one foot at a time. "I look sick." 

She looks stunning, easily, but that's not the problem. 

"You have a fucking snow trail," Ananya says. 

Unfortunately, Morgan's left nostril is crusted with coke. 

"It's punk rock!" Morgan's moved onto earrings now, and she's jutting her tiny pointed chin toward the door. "Hello? We're late." 

You don't roll your eyes, but you could. You slip your shoes onto your feet and tuck the laces inside without tying them while the news anchor on TV continues to relay current events. 

"Fletcher isn't the only rockstar making a mess in New York City this week. Members of up and coming heavy metal band Corroded Coffin were sanctioned by Flume Venues Tuesday night for damaging twenty six thousand dollars worth of equipment when their lead guitarist kicked over an amp and caused a quote unquote 'domino effect.'" The anchor laughs. "Their PR has certainly felt some corrosion." 

You look up at the joke and are just in time to catch a picture splayed across the screen of the band. You're so close that their faces are made up of red, blue, and green, more colour than photo. Your skin glows with the image. Your eyes widen, perplexed. 

"Do we know those guys?" you ask. 

Morgan grabs your hand and drags you up. "They know us," she says. "That's what matters." 

Ananya turns off the TV. 

You're thrilled at being included in the 'us'. You've been an unofficial official member of Godless for four months now. Each one feels more unreal than the first, and each one brings a solidity. In Ananya's words, you're on 'probation, given you can keep up', but you look at her now, her hopeless expression as she closes your room door behind you, and know she's not hoisting you off the stage anytime soon. She'd have to deal with the world's tallest toddler alone. 

Your tour manager and assorted personnel meet you in the hotel's lobby, furious and panicky at your being late. Morgan spouts the same spiel as you get shepherded into cars idling outside of the hotel.

"We're the talent. What were you gonna do, throw the gig without us?"

You're both embarrassed by her and impressed. Morgan is pretty and talented and extremely loud — she's not afraid to stick up for herself, even when she's (nearly always) wrong. She sees each hurdle in her life as an unfair disadvantage. Insanity, in your opinion, considering nearly all of those hurdles have been jumped by means of a favour, rather than any expended effort on her part. 

Her bad attitude aside, she's a good singer. She's gorgeous, exactly the kind of face that obliterates mainstream reluctance. 

She sits between you and Ananya and kicks her feet out over the console, boots between your driver and your tour manager, Angel.

"You guys can't be late like this. You have half the time you need for sound check now, you realise?" 

"I don't need practice," Morgan says. 

"It's not practice, Morgan, it's–" 

Morgan laughs and bursts into song. She does it whenever she doesn't want to listen to Angel, and she sings an apt tune: Angel by Aerosmith. You look out the window rather than watch, eyes snagging on the wet New York streets and taxis and people, so many people despite the weather, black umbrellas like inverse stars lining the sidewalks. 

Morgan has a great voice, raw when she wants it to be and full of life when she doesn't. You can't hear Angel's venue instructions under it and are barely paying attention as a lanyard gets tossed into your lap. It sounds stupid, and a few months ago you wouldn't believe it, but you get used to the motions. Ferried from one place to another, all anybody cares about is technicalities, politics, public image, and how you look on stage. All you care about is the music. Your bass guitar in your hands, that familiar weight, the strings as your pick slides across them, and the sea of the crowd. Its waves and ripples, hands and eyes and mouths like poppies, red-pink tongues and black throats at the centre as they scream. When you throw your pick people want to catch it. They fight over it. You throw a few. There's always more in a box in some poor techies bag.

The cushy car you're in pulls up and parks outside of the venue's main entrance. You climb onto a wet curb and shield the top of your hand with your head, dirty rain splashing down in fat, sparse drops that chill your scalp. Morgan blitzes inside and Ananya tags behind her. You go slower, eyes following down the sidewalk where, in a couple of hours, fans will wait to see you, shivering in the cold. 

— 

Every breath Gareth takes sucks in Eddie's short sleeved t-shirt. Eddie scowls at the top of his bandmate's head and tries to shift away. 

"Seriously, man? There's a whole fucking couch," Eddie grouches. 

Gareth sits up with bleary eyes furrowed into a scowl of his own. He's pale and missing his glasses, giving him the appearance of a concerned zombie.

"Shithead." 

Eddie has a lot of emotions he wants to express and none he feels he can properly articulate. The injustice of his current situation, for one, is a burning irritant. How the fuck can you get grounded by your manager? And why did his warden have to be the most boring member of the band? Sorry Gareth. 

"Can't you sleep in your bed?" Eddie asks. 

"You'll sneak out." 

Eddie will sneak out. He's a fledgling rockstar in New York. Suddenly, there are a hundred colourful boozy doors wide open to him, and he intends on haunting the threshold of each one accordingly. 

But you kick one amp and boom, you're the antichrist. 

"You know this is stupid." 

Gareth rubs his eyes. "I mean, do I know that?" He reaches behind the couch armrest for the two-litre bottle of soda stashed there, and he talks as he brings the lip to his mouth. "You've been a real pissant lately, Munson." 

"You're a pissant, pissant," Eddie says, really scowling now. 

Gareth kicks him across the sofa. Eddie kicks back, foot jamming into the side of Gareth's knees. Soda spills in a shoot over the carpet. Gareth is a know-it-all with a predisposition for being as unpleasant as he can possibly be at all times, in Eddie's opinion, and Eddie knows the second the soda lands what he's going to say. 

"Nice going, hotshot. This is why you're fucking grounded." 

Eddie's halfway across the sofa when the door opens, an unimpressed Jamison standing with the light behind him. He flicks on the main switch and glares, brown skin golden in the resulting yellow light. 

"What are you losers doing?" 

"I prefer the term 'freak'," Gareth says, glare softening. "I'm fending off Munson's advances, what does it look like? No means no, asshole." 

"You're disgusting," Eddie says. 

"You look disgusting," Jamison echoes. "I don't know who forgot to tell you, but they invented running water a century ago. Go shower. I'll watch baby boy." 

Eddie thinks Jamison is hot in the freaky way — Jamison is conventionally attractive, and Eddie would let him get freaky if he asked. He has a perfect complexion, the most attractive of the band by far, medium brown skin and a broad-shouldered frame. He's the eye-candy, literally; they'd admitted him into the fold based one parts on his talent, two parts his image. 

He can play piano, guitar, bass guitar, violin, all that shit. He's a musician, and he's better than Eddie at everything but the guitar. 

Nobody's better than Eddie on guitar. At least, not anybody running in his circles. 

"I can't shower, I'm watching him." 

"I'll watch him," Jamison says, like this is extremely obvious and Gareth is an idiot. 

Eddie pulls a couch cushion over his face and drags himself onto his back, whining into the fabric unhappily. "This is fucking bullshit," he mutters

"This is due diligence," Gareth says. Eddie feels his weight lift off the couch and lets his legs slide into the empty space. 

"This is fucking bullshit," he repeats. 

There's a silence. He sulks. Gareth collects toiletries and the bathroom door clicks open and closed. The shower spray begins to sputter, and then the pillow is being tugged out of Eddie's hands and tossed aside. 

"Jame," he protests. 

"Shut up." Jamison stares down at Eddie. "Are you done being a child?" 

"I already told you, it was an accident. Yeah, I kicked the amp, because my fucking string snapped and nobody would listen to me. I didn't know it was gonna actually move." 

"If we go out, can you behave?" Jamison asks quietly. 

Eddie sits up ramrod straight. "Absolutely… Why? What's so important?" 

"Jeff's asleep, I'm bored, and-" He shrugs offhandedly. "If you got 'em, flaunt 'em?" 

Jamison holds up a silver pair of car keys. They clink together, the sound music to Eddie's ears. 

—

So you and Eddie meet for the second time like this. 

“Does it have to be this loud?” you shout over the music, pleading gaze on Ananya, who shrugs. 

She looks better after a show, even drunk. Her lipstick is a pink-red with a darker but incomprehensible outline, leaving her looking kissed sick. Her dark eyebrows are ruffled and thick, their minimal gel sweated off. She has the most heartbreaking expression about her, and you think it isn’t truly fair, how she can look so pretty and be so talented at the same time. A tragedy that other people have time for both. You feel as though you barely have the time for one.

Despite the volume, you love the sound. This is your sound. Small town hatred in a big room — begging to get out and the music proof enough that you did. It’s passionate and anxious, a two-chord progression that’s boggling simplistic but drawing you in anyhow. Wrinkled noses and bored eyes say it’s not to everyone’s taste, but you’d hazard a guess that whoever plugged it into the stereo isn’t the kind of person who worries about public opinion. If Godless worked more on your choices, this is how you’d sound.  

“Whose house are we in?” you ask. 

“Babe,” Ananya says, “seriously, there’s a whole room of people who want to answer you. Go bother someone.” Else. Go bother someone else. 

She dismisses you with little more than that, slinking into the kitchen with a toss of her thick hair. The red of her corset top darkens to a bloodier shade in the mood lighting. She looks as though she’s bleeding out from the back. 

You aren’t sure Ananya’s right. You aren’t, in the eyes of the people here, anything impressive. A techie who’s been filling in isn’t anything new, no, you’re only impressive if you get to stay, if you play better than anybody else. You’re never gonna prove that under Morgan’s thumb, and you’ll never prove it without her. 

I need a bump, you think. Morgan’s coke nose flashes in your mind and you change your mind. I need something to drink. Something fucking cold, but if Ananya thinks you’ve followed her into the kitchen she’ll throw a pissy fit in front of everybody. 

The room is a gaudy yellow, a tobacco stained fingerprint over the lampshade with whorls of dirt in lines, darker patches where shadier reconciliation plays; in one corner, a bag of coke, another something worse. This had been a surprise with age rather than location, the commonplace of cocaine and the bravado of its sufferers from high school and up. You’d die for some of that cocky confidence now, numb gums and a sullen credit card. 

I need to get paid. 

The heat of a cigarette tip kisses your shoulder. In your ear, the sound of someone taking a long, slow drag, crackling paper. You turn into it slowly, looking up slower, right into the skinny face of your missing-in-action bandmate. 

“What’s up?” Morgan asks, blowing her smoke in your face. Your eyes burn. 

She’s placing the cigarette between your lips before you can answer. Whether she believes she’s tormenting you or throwing you a life raft, you’re grateful for it, sucking in a blistering breath and wincing as it floods your nose. 

You blow it away from her. 

“Ashtray?” you ask, pinching the cig between two fingers. 

“The floor’s fine.”

You raise your eyebrows, unsurprised at her cavalier suggestion and flick it still smouldering into your cupped palm. The door is perpetually open, guests flicking in and out like the froth of a cresting wave, a rushing entrance and a sluggish recession. 

“Can you get me a bag?” you ask her. 

“I’m not your daddy,” she murmurs.

“Bored already?”

“I have to be bored?”

To bother bothering you? Yes, Morgan would have to be bored. Bored or wasted, and she doesn’t seem inebriated. You place the cig between your teeth and lean your head back to look at the ceiling rather than give her the attentive watching she desires, the roof of your mouth an uncomfortable heat.

You remove it, blow all your smoke skyward, and drop your head. “How are you gonna fuck with me tonight?” you ask plainly. 

You find you aren’t asking Morgan. 

In her place stands a much taller, much more handsome face, big eyes set into pale skin. You don't recognise him at first. He wears the uniform well, in company with every other guy in the room, a crumpled shirt you imagine discarded and re-discarded on different floors. Ripped, dark jeans. He could be wearing nothing at all and the air of intimidation surrounding him would survive — there's something behind his eyes that alarms you, a knife's edge. Sweetness bordering cruelty. 

"I don't know yet," he says. An insipid smile takes his lips from corner to corner as he eases the cig from your hand. "I'm sure we can think of something… together. Sweetheart." 

Boys don't always give you the time of day, not the nice ones, and he doesn't look very nice. He looks like he's trying to calculate what he can get out of you. You're thinking you'll pay just about anything if he can get you a bump of something fun. 

He sees your look too, his lips poised to mention it, but you've just realised where you know him from. 

"I saw you on TV."

"Yeah? In Madison Square Garden?" 

"In court." You give him your best doe eyes, a soft, sweet look, far from mastered and yet effective where it counts. "How much did you have to pay for all the stuff you broke?" 

His smile shutters, realigns. A split-second and enough to let you know his cool gaze is nothing more than a parlour trick.

"You look familiar," he says. 

You hum. "Rollerboy paid, huh?" 

He glares, the idea that his record label might pay for the damages he'd caused laughable and undoubtedly correct. You aren't trying to make enemies, aren't attempting to play someone you're not — you're meek mannered, mollycoddled, too naive to be in the industry for very long. You can see it on his face, exactly what he's thinking, and it's easy to see because everybody else is thinking it too. Even you. 

Before you can repair the offence you've caused, he's dropping your stolen cigarette on the ground and grinding out the flame. 

"Nice to meet you," he says slowly. 

You stare straight ahead and listen to him leave. Smoke tickles your nose. When you look down, the cigarette is smouldering. You squat down, pick up the flattened bud, and drive it into the floor until your fingers are black with soot. 

You wrap those same ashy fingers around the neck of a bottle of coke and try not to be too pissy about it. Fucking rockstars and their fucking egos. He did something embarrassing, and you're the villain? 

You feel bad halfway through your coke. Maybe he'd had nice intentions, but how could you know? You'd talked for all of two minutes. And even if he was bad news, he likely wouldn't have been any worse than half the jerks here. 

He'd have had a handsome face to look up into while said intentions were being acted out, at least.

You frown more. Wishing you'd been nicer to him because you're bored enough to want to get laid isn't strictly kind. Human, maybe. 

The feeling worsens when his appearance garners a small crowd. He sits in a nest of dirty couch cushions and a cloud of smoke, the smell of green strong enough to irritate you from here, telling a story with frenetic hands, and despite the cool look he'd given you earlier, he's making a show of it. Cussing, giggling, blunt between his lips as he ushers for a zippo. A pretty girl with surfer curls relights it, an act of flirting in the way she pulls her shoulders in. 

He takes the blunt from between his lips and blows the smoke so it misses her completely. 

"Thanks, sweetheart," he says, voice rough as hewn stone. 

You kick one shoe behind the other and squeeze your tired thighs together. You get this feeling like a matchstick, red powdered head flicking against gritty scratchpad but failing to strike. Something is familiar about the way he speaks, his sticky inflection. 

Or you're lying to yourself, and you just like the way he talks 

The way he would've spoken, thick fingers braceleting your wrists as he forces your hands into the pillow behind your head, the weight of his body on top of yours, the snugness of a knee between your soft thighs. Your hotel light would've kissed his left side, dividing his curls into strands, the individuals glowing like silver thread as they danced over your cheek and temple, as his breath warmed your lips, as he closed the distance. 

Joan, you could hit him.

"That's an unfortunate hand. Are you sober?"

Cheeks full of heat at being caught in a fantasy, you lift your eyes and meet light, almond brown eyes almost entirely shielded by darker eyebrows. A man stands in front of you, a comfortable gap between his nondescript skate shoes and your worn boots. He's tall and pretty and surprising: he's smiling at you like you're something worth smiling at. 

"I'm–" You brandish the bottle as if that might explain it but harshly set it aside. "No, not sober. I mean, not willingly. Coke's were out here, so…" 

"Oh, right," he says, nodding knowledgeably. "Right, I was sorry to hear about that." 

You lick your lips. "'Bout what?" 

"They banned beautiful women from the kitchen," he says. "Hadn't you heard?" 

"No, that one passed me by." 

"I'm Jamison," he says, holding out his free hand. 

You take it. You tell him your name. 

—

Morgan is crying. Big heaping sobs that she attempts to talk through, creating this ringing whining sound that fills you top to toe with anxiety. You lean back in your hotel bed, wondering what it is in the world that could've happened to her as a kid to make her this unsatisfied now. Ananya blows on her freshly painted nails though they've been dry for hours, knee to knee with you atop the squishy hotel sheets. 

"I can't fucking do this," Morgan cries, tears dripping down her bare skinned cheeks. 

The three of you have been sworn off of makeup, junk food, and unapproved wash products for the next four to five hours. You're happy for this to continue until the end of time. Morgan, less so. 

You're trying to decipher exactly why she's crying, feeling a confusion you'd liken to the first modern day archaeologist that laid eyes on ancient hieroglyphics. All these symbols and colours and stories. No clear translation. 

If Ananya were an archaeologist, she's the kind who got to see the Rosetta stone. Morgan's moods make sense to her, and while she often doesn't empathise with her, she at least knows what to say to appease the worst of it. 

"It'll be alright, Morgs," she says, her faux sympathy unconvincing.

You feel a little sorry for Morgan and clear your throat. "And you're not by yourself. We're here." 

"Fucking amazing help you've been," Morgan says. Her voice does a theatrical peak, pure hysterics. 

It irks you how good she looks. You think that, maybe, if you could make your problems pretty the way that she does, you'd be a lot happier overall. You've often lamented that you suffer the kind of unhappiness that makes people uncomfortable and unwilling. You cry ugly, and always alone, hands over your mouth to smother the sounds, and that's when you do cry. Mostly, you bounce around inside yourself and feel very afraid that this feeling is forever. 

But, you think presently, that isn't Morgan's fault. Not all of it. 

Morgan throws her hands out at you and Ananya and spins on her heel, through the bathroom and into her own separate room. 

"At least the backdrop of her breakdown is nice," you murmur, hugging the pillow against your stomach, heels digging into the mattress to keep your knees up. 

Ananya snorts and flicks to the next page of her magazine. "Right?" She stretches her naked legs out over your sheets. You know she's decided to ruin your bed with her after-waxing oils rather than her own. "Better here than back home." 

"Why's she so upset?" you ask. 

Already, your thoughts are starting to drift. You take another peek at the phone across the room and will it into ringing. 

"She draws them on everyday anyway," Ananya says agreeably. 

You summarise that Morgan's eyebrows are the root of the problem. You don't blame her for wanting to look perfect tomorrow night. Your stomach is a weight every time you think about it, solid as petrified wood. This will be your first TV appearance that isn't a recorded concert, a mid-show performance for the Prover Music Awards, and it should further cement your place in the band. If you look good and people like you, public favour might be enough to keep you around. If they don't, there'll be a couple hundred different audience members with industry links. If you play well, and you're certain you will, you might finally prove to Morgan, Ananya, and the rest of the management team that you're worth choosing. 

You want it badly. You want lots of things, and being a real part of Godless could hand them all to you on a studded platter. Recognition of your talent, further experience, the chance to perform and be supported, to be adored, and the money isn't something you'll pretend you don't think about. A rockstar's salary is hardly stable, but a lack of stability is almost always supplemented by the amount. Wouldn't that be nice? To buy your own bass, to buy whatever you liked. To go out and have spa treatments like the one you'd had just this morning whenever you please. To get to feel beautiful and limp as this all the time. More than anything, you want the validation, the poster that comes with it. 

If Godless decides to keep you, it's a huge, blinking, neon-lit sign that says you're good enough. 

They chose me, and you're stupid for letting me go. 

They chose me. I'm something worth something. You didn't see it, but it's there in me. 

The subtext isn't important. 

You're scared shitless at the reality of performing tonight, knowing any fuck up could follow you, or worse ruin your hopefully budding career in rock for the rest of time. You have this body and this name, and if you want to keep your life you have to be good. It has your fingers itching for your piece-of-shit bass guitar where you know she's hiding under the bed. You should be practising, but this entire week has been practising. The dress rehearsal went well, and you'll give yourself a pass for having certain distractions. 

Morgan warbles. You glance at the phone. 

"Waiting for someone?" Ananya asks. She misses nothing. 

You both wince as Morgan screams and throws something across her bedroom, the eventual clattering smash indicative of a fragile target. 

"Think room service will send up a sedative?" she asks. 

Room service won't send a sedative, nor will they send the single hashbrown Morgan is apparently craving. You're starting to panic when the solution practically jumps at you. 

"Morgan," you say gently, standing in the doorway of her room with a tentative smile, "can't offer you something, can I?" 

You hold up your little pouch. Morgan doesn't know you well, but she knows it's where you keep anything interesting. She should know, she pilfers it of anything truly exciting within the day. 

"Don't be stupid," she scathes. "My eyes will be bloodshot. You know smoking doesn't agree with me." 

You hold in a comment on how she'd literally been smoking out of the window last night. 

"It's a brownie. It's a couple days old, but… perfectly edible." You offer her the pouch, dropping it at the end of the bed among her things. 

She picks at the brownie, timid princess bites that make you want to roll your eyes. You often think the worst thing about Morgan is that you love her, or you could love her more, if only she felt the same way. She isn't all evil and she never will be, she's just a person. But she takes shit out on you and makes your life harder than it needs to be, so even her most endearing moments fall short. 

"This tastes awful." 

You laugh and kneel down at her dresser to start putting her thrown jewellery box back together. "It wasn't that nice when I got it," you lie. 

You clean her room. Morgan never wants to do anything she knows can be done for her, and you know she won't bother here, not when room service will spend the hour it takes themselves. You think of some poor service worker squaring away the impossible amount of stockings and garters for a sad $3.45 an hour and the task suddenly becomes much more enjoyable. 

Morgan doesn't say thank you. You don't insult her intelligence by thinking she isn't aware of what you're doing. She sniffles and blows her nose daintily with a balsam tissue. 

"I saw you talking to that guy from Corroded Coffin." 

You brush off your knees as you stand. "Which one?" 

"Eddie. The rhythm guitarist." 

"The loud one." 

"He's kind of hot. If he calls, you should go out with him." 

"That's not–" who I'm waiting for. You squint at her. "Morgan, that would be terrible." 

"Can you get me something from the minibar?" 

You kick open her minibar and grab a cold can of seltzer. She slides onto her back and accepts it, pressing it to her eyes with a relaxed smile. Eyebrows forgotten, it seems. 

"That would be perfect. He can be the cat to your mouse." 

"Your definition of perfect–" You cut yourself off again when she starts to laugh. You don't believe it to be genuine. 

She lounges in bed for an hour until she's high, reappearing in you and Ananya's suite with a dizzying smile. You don't mind high Morgan. She's smoked enough in her time to bypass the dizzying, giggly kind of stoner. This Morgan is relaxed, almost easygoing. She sits at the end of your bed and watches you pluck out a bass line proposal for one of their current works in progress, head bobbing. 

An hour again and the stylists appear to spray you down with smells and oils and make up, and soon you've been strapped into a short shining dress with a cowl neck, dark black stockings that shine like oil, and heels you can't really walk in. You complain about them politely enough that Mel, the man in charge of your 'costuming', swaps them out for shorter ones. 

"This fucking corset is a nightmare," Morgan grumbles. 

"Sorry, love, that's all we've got." 

The commute is over in a blink. You arrive outside of the venue for the Awards, staring up at its imposing silhouette against the skyline, a dark building in the strange blue night. The sun is unseen but light illuminates the wet streets in blinding patches, so white they glow violet behind your eyes. 

There's a modest red carpet where you thankfully don't have to pose for many photos. After all, besides being a temporary member of the stage, you aren't truly in Godless. Most casual fans (the majority of their fan base) only know the faces in the magazines and on TV, and you have yet to be in either until tonight. 

After a bundle of shy and regretfully nerve-wracking photos, you're drawn inside the building and away from all the flashing hubbub. You sit in your seats, short rows divided by the occasional table for drinks, and you try not to sink into the carpeted floor. It smells insanely like nothing at all. No bleach, no air conditioning cleanliness. Every now and then another guest walks past your row and you get a whiff of perfume. 

A familiar scent pricks your attention. 

You look up, slightly over your shoulder, and your eyes meet familiar sticky brown. 

He drops down in the seat next to you, and you think, No way. 

He holds up the placard that had been under his thigh. His name is typed in clear blocked letters. 

It's a strange humiliation to have been read for filth like that. You're you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me expression can be pretty telling, evidently. 

"Hey, sweetheart." 

Matchstick against the box. You tilt your head and try to place him for the tenth time. 

"Have we met before?" you ask. 

He actually grins like this is the best thing you could've said. "You met my friend," he says, pointing down the aisle. 

Jamison stands talking to a woman who is admittedly gorgeous, and, to your sinking horror, much prettier than you. They kiss each other on the cheek and it's the kind of over friendly to make you sick. 

Eddie pouts at you. "Better luck next time, sweet thing." He throws one leg over another. "You look different. New haircut?" 

"You look exactly the same," you say. 

It's surprising how untouched he is. Sure, he's had some makeup applied and his hairs been tousled into life, but his outfit is remarkable in its simplicity. Surely rockstars can wear suits too? He looks neat and dark and tidy, but he also looks effortless. It's irritating.

This phenomena is not self contained, you find, as his bandmates sit down the row with their managerial chaperones and one date. Jamison sits right at the very end. He doesn't look at you. 

You avert your eyes and wonder if it's possible to die from embarrassment. 

The venue gets increasingly busy as the bigger names and bands flood inside. Soon, you're sitting amongst legends, people who pretty much spearheaded late 80s glam rock, punk, grunge. People you've only ever seen on TV. And it isn't restricted to alternative sound, there are pop stars and their supermodel girlfriends shaking hands and kissing cheeks in the row behind, while producers with names big enough to make your mouth dry up clap each other on the shoulders in front. 

"You'll catch flies." 

You turn to Eddie. He doesn't sound entirely cruel. He doesn't sound like much of anything. You could almost believe him to be a friend. 

There's a smudge of eyeliner on his cheek. 

"You have–" You point at your own cheek, a mirror. 

His lightness fades. "Nice." 

"No, seriously, you have something. Make up, on your cheek. I have a wipe if you want it." 

He scrubs at his cheek ineffectually. 

You're reaching out to help before you can stop yourself, witnessing your own actions with a strange out-of-body horror as you wipe the small black line gently. It spreads, and you panic and dab at it until it's an unfortunate grey shadow. 

"Let me get the wet wipe," you say. You'd been holding your breath, awkwardness stiff between you, and it sounds too much like a laugh. 

Eddie flinches away from your touch and covers his cheek. "I got it," he says stonily. 

He leaves, stepping over his bandmates feet like stepping stones, earning a cacophony of protests and disparagments. 

Dick, you think. Again, that had been a little bit your fault. Not all of it, he seems to be in a perpetual bad mood that can't be your doing, but you can understand why he might think you were laughing at him, and the defensiveness that comes with it. When he comes back you'll apologise. 

Or that's what you tell yourself. The lights go down, the curtains open, and the venue erupts with applause. By the time Eddie takes his seat again you're too afraid of disturbing the quiet. 

After half an hour you're ushered backstage. You have to move in front of Eddie and the rest of Corroded Coffin as you go. 

He looks up at you in silence. Head tipped back, face barely lit by the lights while you stand in between his legs. His lips part and he's all rockstar, his brown eyes and their edging of straight dark lashes, his pink, pretty lips. He has a distinct line to his nose, a cupid's bow perfectly shaped. His maker must have looked at him and known somebody, somewhere, would want to kiss him right there. His lips twitch. 

"Can I help you?" he whispers. 

You stammer a response that won't form and Morgan shoves you. 

"Fucking move," she says. 

His expression flickers. 

"Sorry," you say, unsure of who you're talking to. "Sorry." You sound pathetic. A kicked puppy. 

You keep your eyes on the floor until you're in the aisle, where a new set of nerves tries to swallow you whole.

—

Eddie knows exactly who you are, and he hates himself for it. He remembers you, the first you, shy and sweet and so excited, sitting pretty in Indianapolis International Airport with your guitar and your huge leaky headphones pounding death metal. While fame has broadened the amount of people who want to sleep with him, it hasn't changed his type, and you'd been a ringer, right there in the middle. 

You'd been pretty and maybe you knew it, maybe you didn't, it didn't matter — what he liked most was the way your hands had moved as you spoke, hummingbird thrumming, an energy he'd seen in himself and every other musician desperate for a chance. He loved the passion and your eyelashes and the way you'd smiled as you'd waited for your plane, the two of you destined for New York, where you both seem to have looped back now. Only, he'd been cursed with remembering your every detail, and you either didn't remember him or don't care. Both sting, but he likes the second better. He'll take purposeful cruelty over the casual any day. 

Like your thumb pressed to his cheek. The heat, and then your laugh. 

"The fuck is this?" Gareth asks, leaning over the space between their two chairs. 

Eddie looks up at you on stage and shrugs. While bands made up completely of women aren't new, they aren't as common as bands made up of men, obviously. He likes it, likes your sound, though it's not the kind of thing Corroded Coffin would ever play, and he won't join in on Gareth's doubt. Even if you are, like, a magnanimous shithead. You're good. 

"She's hot," he furthers. 

"Jesus, Gareth." 

"What? She's fucking hot." 

He has to squint to see you from this distance, and he can't truly make out many details. Gareth's not wrong. You're pretty, and out of the three members of the band you're the only one who actually looks like they're having a good time. 

The lead singer trails around the stage pulling Blond Ambition poses. She can sing well, she has a strong voice that does whatever it is she bends it into, but her propensity to drop the guitar slung around her neck to grab at the microphone stand like it's escaping isn't helping anything. 

The girl on drums is arguably given a pass, fighting to keep up with the pace, sweat sticking her thick hair to her neck in glossy spirals and her huge eyes set in concentration. Her messy lipstick sparkles under the stage lights, a party pink that pops against her brown skin. 

He thinks you might be trying to cover up the lead singer's sloppy playing. You're good, sure, but it's not the easiest to tell when it's ragtag and rough like this. Only because he's watching does he notice your pick slipping between strings to the floor, and your willingness to strum with the sides of your fingertips. He likes that. The dedication is hot. 

"I've never seen a girl on drums who didn't look like a guy," Gareth says. "She's killer. Think I can get her number?" 

Eddie groans. "No, you fucking loser." 

"I was just asking." 

You bounce around and Eddie shifts in his seat, annoyed that he'd assumed you were the one Gareth was talking about. 

He claps for you when the song is over and hates how you return to your seat during the break, back in your cute dress and beaming, practically dripping in deodorant and post-show adrenaline. 

You apologise again as you step over him, and if there's one thing he doesn't want from you it's a sorry. Twice now you've spoken to him in the last week and twice you've made fun of him like some plaything under your thumb. Eddie isn't in the habit of being under anyone's anything. Apologies feel like salt in the wound, even though he knows you aren't saying sorry for the stuff that's pissing him off.

"What the fuck was that?" Lead girl asks you, sounding about as uptight as she looks as she climbs over your leg. "What were you doing?" 

"Morgan, I don't know if you noticed, but you didn't play half of the song," you say defensively, the skirt of your gem-encrusted dress glancing off of his thigh. The gems are tiny, like pinprick stars in country night skies. They shine purple, green, orange. 

Morgan holds her hand up for an attendant. When one approaches, she says, "Appletini," and nothing else, waving dismissively. She pulls at her stockings and doesn't notice the ladder she makes near the calf. "You're here to play what you're given." 

"I did." 

"And only that." 

Your silence speaks volumes. What he'd thought to be an edge in Godless' sound may have been an improvisation, something Eddie personally applauds. 

"Christ," Morgan says, "you're more trouble than you're worth. I hope you know that." 

Eddie believes the sting of her barb to be in the presentation rather than the words themselves, though what she'd said is hardly kind. She looks away from you as she says it, like she's giving instruction far below her station. Factual, concise. 

You barely wince. The lights dim, and he watches you contend with how you're feeling from the corner of his eye.

Eddie isn't evil. You may have gotten off on the wrong foot, and he's definitely holding his resentment at being forgotten tight to his chest, but nobody deserves to get shit on like that. You'd played well, you'd had a great time, and that should be commended. What's worse, your lack of a reaction tells him this is a common occurrence. 

"I'm gonna go to the bathroom," you say. 

Morgan waves you away like she had the waitress. You stand, and you say, "Excuse me," to every person you pass. Eddie put his hand on the back of his chair to follow you up toward the back of the room where the sign for the bathrooms glows green. 

He sets his eyes back on the stage and begs himself to stay sitting. Corroded Coffin's nomination for best up and comer has already passed, a loss, and there's no reason he can't nip to the bathroom himself. There's also no reason he should go after you. 

Fuck it, he thinks. 

What could go wrong? What could go wrong, outside of the women's bathroom, where he has so obviously followed you, where he waits for you like some creeper trying to paw one off on you. He can't hear anything but the running tap. For a moment he thinks you haven't come here to collect yourself after all, you'd needed to pee, which makes his situation that much awkwarder. 

Stuck between indecision, he leans against the wall between the women's and men's and digs for a cigarette. His pockets are empty, a precaution for exactly this moment. You can't smoke in the Prover Theatre, pissant.

You appear and blitz past him. 

"Hey," he says before you can go too far, "d'you have a card?"

You turn on your heel. Hands already in your purse, you dig out an unopened box of cigarettes and offer it to him. You don't look as though you've been crying or anything like it, but you don't look him head on, so he keeps his theory. 

Eddie peels the plastic off of your box and slaps the end against his chest for good measure. 

"I don't think you can smoke in here," you say finally. Your voice is tired. 

He raises his eyebrows and peers down into the box, pulling a cigarette free and sliding it between his lips. He holds out his hand for a lighter and you give it to him, already waiting with it between two fingers. 

He lights it, inhales sharply, and passes you back your carton and lighter with a clouded, "Thanks." 

"Yeah." 

He's surprised when you don't move. You stand there and watch him smoke, whorls of pearly smoke dissecting the air between you, spider-webs over your pert face. You're waiting for what he doesn't know, so he'll give you something. He's nice. 

"She's a piece of work." 

You shift uneasily. 

"I'm not the feds," he says, pulling the cig from his lips to talk unfettered.

"Forgive me for wondering if you have my best interests at heart." 

He beams at you, really smiles, startled and enamoured by your sharp tongue. "Now why wouldn't I?" 

You don't say anything, only pull at the neckline of your dress in what's likely a nervous habit. He gets a flash of the top of your chest and looks away. He thinks you're beautiful in a rather understated way, and he doesn't not want to see what it is you're showing, but he knows you don't actually mean to be so forward. He might be an asshole, but he's not like that. 

It's quiet here in the foyer, like standing outside the doors of the movie theatre. You can hear the announcement of a new category, the roaring applause. The hallway and the bathrooms feel cordoned off from it in a strange way, an uncanny energy that has him on internal tenterhooks. 

"You always let her treat you like that?"

"Like what?" 

He steps toward you because the distance feels unnecessary. "Like that. Like you're a dog." 

"Fuck you, I do not." 

He pouts, the taste of smoke thick on his tongue. 

"What would you know?" you ask.

"Besides hearing it all fucking night, nothing. You must like that shit." 

Your eyes go wide. He hadn't meant to say it. There's a light behind them now, some life, something to cover up that shitty wounded despondency you'd been wearing. Your hands bunch in the soft skirt of your dress, shaking. He's touched a nerve. 

"I must like it," you quote, strained.

"Woof. Do you do any tricks, or is it just the one?" 

He doesn't mean for it to happen this way, he wants it on the record. He's a dick, he's a loser, whatever, he hadn't meant to argue but he will. And, you know, there may be a slight possibility that he isn't as sure in himself as he appears, and that there are nerves he keeps too close to the surface, too. 

"You can teach me one of yours, if you want," you offer, voice tight with annoyance, "I'm thinking smug asshole picks easy target, but I'm open to other options." 

That's funny. He takes another step toward you, another, your cigarette between his lips smouldering at the tip as he inhales through his smirk. 

"Yeah, like what?" he asks, smoke licking your cheeks as he breathes out. 

"How you get your head through the door might be a good place to start." 

He waits for you to explain, knowing the silence will force you to fill it. 

"You know, considering you're in the exact same place as me, only one of us performed tonight and it isn't the one acting like God's gift." 

"You think they invited you to play because you're good?" he asks, feigning an earnest tone.

"I know exactly why they didn't ask you." You hike the strap of your purse higher up your shoulder, chin lifted in a snooty superiority that makes his heart pound. "Wannabe rookie who had too much smoke blown up his ass and thinks he's somebody. But you're not," you say. "You're a child. They've seen a hundred guys just like you in the Indiana circuit."

"You're a jumped up fucking groupie that got lucky," he says.

The light behind your eyes dims. He takes that last step, the step that's gonna put you shoe to shoe. 

He should stop now, he would, but suddenly his anger is real, this isn't strictly fun anymore. He says what he knows is gonna hurt you. 

"You're a stand-in, a temp who's already overstayed her welcome." He flicks the tower of ash between your heels. You follow it down, watch as it settles into the fibres of the carpeting. "You're a burnout waiting to happen." 

Your breathing is loud in his ears. Slightly too fast. 

"You don't know anything," you murmur. 

"If it barks like a dog, and it heels like a dog," he says, pausing, words coming out thick and slow, "it's a dog."

Your face flares with hurt. You're gone before he can say anything else. 

He's glad for it. Honestly, he's not sure what else he would've said, and later, he'll regret this, regret blowing up at you, regret following you out here and making you feel worse when he'd wanted the opposite. But tonight he's lit up from the inside out, your words a reverberation. A hundred guys just like you.

"Yeah, right," he says to himself, scoffing with a surety he doesn't feel. 

—

Donington Park, England, August 1990

"I'd be a little more excited if I knew they weren't desperate this year," Jamison's saying, "that's all." 

"They're hardly desperate." 

"Last time they had KISS, Iron Maiden, Megadeth." Jamison sighs and falls back into the couch, muttering about the stale smell before continuing, "and this year, what do they have? Poison? Thunder? Who cares." 

Eddie thinks he might actually have an opponent for biggest ego right now. 

"You know they put Godless bigger on the poster," Jeff says with a bright smile. 

"Can we not talk about them for one fucking day?" Eddie pleads. 

He's a little disappointed at the lineup too, but that doesn't make this entire festival a bust. Monster of Rock may not be the most prestigious event they've ever attended but it's still impressive to be asked to play here, and this is only Corroded Coffin's third festival. Eddie's a smug bastard and even he knows Jamison sounds like a bitch. Besides that, he's so, so tired of talking about Godless. 

"They finally stopped stringing that poor girl along. What was her name?" Jeff asks, clicking his fingers. "Eddie, you know, the one who said she didn't know you in the magazines?"

"What?" Eddie asked. "They cut her?" 

Jamison sits up, eyes lit with mirth. "What's it matter to you, heartthrob?" 

"It doesn't." 

He's not being truthful. His bandmates are all unkind, and none extend the generosity of pretending they believe him. 

"Nah, she's not cut, she's official. Writing credits on the new album and everything, 'cordin to Rolling Stone." 

"You have it?" Eddie asks.

Jeff laughs at him but digs it out of his suitcase, brandishing it all rolled up. 

"Shit better not be sticky," Eddie mutters under his breath. 

"... Skip the interview with Kim Gordon." 

Eddie gags and flicks through the pages until he finds the article on you, or rather the column. 

"All female rock band Godless finally welcomed a new bass player this month after the departure of Millyanna Richardson in '89. Y/N L/N, 24, had been with the band for almost a year under a 'touring only' basis, though she performed live with remaining members Morgan Fletcher and Ananya Roy at the Prover Music Awards in early June. Fans have praised her talent and finesse, and are looking forward to her contributions to the band's next album expected this December. Hopefully she has thicker skin than her predecessor, who branded the band's inner politics as 'gruesome' and 'unlivable'."

There's a grainy photograph of you and your bandmates at the Prover Theatre overtop. You look exactly as you had that night, pretty and glitzy. He scowls at your printed face.

He can't fucking stand you, let it be known, and he thinks your frontman is the most spoilt brat he's ever seen. He hadn't seen the article, but he'd heard via word of mouth that you'd both had something to say about him. His approximation goes as follows: 

Interviewer: …and you guys will be performing at the Monster of Rock music festival in England this August, right? Any faces you're excited to see? 

Morgan: I think I'm better than everyone despite being in a mildly popular band that didn't qualify as hard rock until, like, three months ago, and I totally shit on our bass player for trying to make the change by the way, so I'm not excited to see anyone besides myself in the mirror. 

Interviewer: How sophisticated and mature of you. And you, Y/N, are you excited to see anyone? Photos from the Prover Music Awards show you were sitting beside Corroded Coffin's Eddie Munson, did you two hit it off? 

Y/N: Who was that, the guitarist? I'm so sorry, I don't really remember getting a chance to talk to him, but I'm excited for the opportunity to meet more people in the scene right now and to get to play for a new audience. Also I suck and I want Eddie sooooo bad. 

"I wish I were asleep." Gareth squints at the ceiling. "Asleep or back home."

"Miss mommy?" Jamison asks him. 

"And Cindy." 

"Oh, god," Eddie groans, "I don't want to hear it, seriously." 

"She always had smooth legs, you know?" Gareth says. "Always shiny, soft. Fuck, I miss her legs. Girls on the road never shave their legs." 

"Do you shave your legs?" Eddie asks. 

"Fuck off, Teddy, you know you like it better when they shave." 

"Do I know that?" Eddie asks. 

He turns to Jamison, giving him a much-used 'make him stop' expression. Eyebrows raised, lips parted. When Jamison says nothing, and Gareth starts to talk about hair removal in other places, Eddie scrubs his eyes with both hands and stands up. 

He's a guy. He has guy thoughts. Yeah, he thinks about girls, and their legs, and everything else, but he also thinks about them as actual people, something Gareth hasn't quite grasped yet. 

"Remember why Cindy said she didn't wanna come with you?" Eddie asks. 

"Because she was jealous of my success." 

Eddie snorts and shrugs on his jacket where he'd left it thrown over the ratty couch. "Because she was going to beauty school," Eddie corrects. "I'm going out." 

"We're miles away from anything interesting," Jeff says, magazine crinkling in his hands. 

"I'm sure I'll find something," he says, and doesn't add that it should be easy. 

What counts as interesting has taken a sharp turn since arriving in Donington. Which isn't to say it's boring, exactly, there's a rich culture Eddie isn't familiar with, and a fucking castle, but he's so used to loud dives and backroom parties that this has been a stark change. Wending had said to think of it like a vacation to get his head screwed on tight. Paula had said to think of it like a punishment, which had been funny at the time. Now he's wondering if she was serious. 

He knows there'd been a convenience store somewhere down the road from the hotel. Or rather, the bed and breakfast, a strange cottage situation where the hosts keep an eye on you under the guise of making your dinner. Eddie's first world problems continue. 

He could get weed, possibly. He doesn't know where from, but he knows someone who knows someone who must know someone, right? 

Then he starts debating with himself about if he should smoke just to escape boredom. That sounds like a terrible idea, life isn't even bad right now, he's just hungry, and— 

Eddie turns the corner, wet sidewalk dark as pitch under his feet, and spots the back of your head as you disappear inside of the convenience store. The corner shop, as Wending had informed. Eddie doesn't understand because it isn't on a corner, but he has bigger fish to fry. He considers waiting for you to leave. What are the chances you'll walk back this way? Pretty likely. 

Don't be a bitch, he tells himself. 

Light rain spots his neck as he hurries inside, the bell above the door ringing to announce his entrance. He's confused as soon as he looks up, because in front of him is an aisle, and to either side is an aisle, and he can't make out where the cashier is. He takes a tentative step in, eyes tracking muddy footprints down the way to the drinks fridge humming loudly at the back of the room. 

Claustrophobic, he makes his way through the aisle and stops in front of the drinks. Because luck isn't ever his friend, you're standing toward the leftmost part, where a second fridge hums, filled to bursting with canned beer and litre bottles of cider. Eddie isn't sure it's really you until you turn to the left slightly and reach out for a colourful glass bottle. He should walk away. He doesn't like you, he has no business watching you, but there's something so sweet about it. 

You in the humming chill, a coat pulled tightly around you, your chin hidden by the multicolour of a yarn scarf. You turn the bottle in your hand delicately and blink slow as you read the ingredients. Your hair is frizzy from the wind, flyaways surrounding your face in a little wave. His fingers twitch. 

You keep the bottle and pick up a second, nails clinking against glass. Your movement pulls like you're moving through jello, and Eddie turns to the fridge in front of him hurriedly. 

He can feel your gaze on the side of his face. 

He picks up a couple of drinks without thinking, his face burning with heat. When he chances a glance your way, you've moved. He stares at the rainbow of drinks and the gaps where you've taken what you wanted. 

He leaves some time between your departure and follows the way you must've gone down an aisle of more alcohol that's unrefrigerated and pet food, wondering how they organise here, and is confronted with you again at the end. 

It's a snug building. You're blocking the way past where you're standing in front of the cashier's desk, a plexiglass shielded cube decked out in hanging sweets and cigarettes. 

"Do you have Newports?" you ask mildly. 

"Sorry." 

"That's okay, uh, I'll just take a carton of whatever you think is best?" 

The cashier retrieves a light blue box of cigarettes. "Lambert and Butler blues," he says. "Total, sixteen fifty six, and I'll need to see some ID." 

You pull your passport from an already opened purse and offer it to him. While the cashier's checking it over, you peek at Eddie, and you don't smile but you don't not smile, a formal quirk of the lips. 

"You're American?" the cashier asks. 

"I'm visiting for the festival," you say. 

Apparently having passed his test, the cashier hands your passport back and accepts your card. 

"Are you paying together?" he asks, nodding at Eddie. 

Eddie grins unconsciously, worse when you say quickly, "Oh, no, we're not together." 

"Your brevity wounds me," Eddie says.

You snort with a similar geniality. "You don't need me to pay for you, do you? I heard you're rich now." 

There has been an improvement in Eddie's finances lately. Your album breaking into the Billboard top 100 does that. 

"I thought you didn't know who I was?" 

"I thought that was kinder than what I really would've said." 

He hates how your snark makes him smile. You're not looking at him, waiting for your change with your eyes forward as the cashier clicks a couple of buttons on the till. 

"What were you really gonna say?" 

The cashier hands over your change. You slip it into your purse, put your purse in the pocket of your coat, and slide your hand through the weak blue handles of your plastic bag.

"Thank you," you say sincerely. You take a step like you're going to leave, but you pause, and you look Eddie in the eye and say, "I would've said you were mean." 

His jaw drops. You look hurt, and you leave with a discomforting frown. 

He puts the drinks he's carrying down on the cashier's desk and says, "I'll be right back," before following you out.

You've pulled your hood up to defend against the thickening rain, walking with your face angled down. Eddie beats along the wet pathway. 

"Hey! Hey, wait, wait a second, princess." 

"You can't be serious." 

"I'm so serious," he says. 

He weaves in front of you and stops. You look cold as he feels with his red-tipped nose and stiff fingers, your arms drawn together over your chest. You look pretty and he's so sick of thinking it and not saying it. 

"You're hot when you're mad." 

You glare at him. "I wish I could say the same." 

"Hey, hey, okay, we had a spat, but we got off on the wrong foot, you know?" 

"I thought that too," you say. 

He smiles. "See, we're– you're fucking with me. Nice." 

You start laughing, edging around him. He moves in front and you shrug, stepping off of the sidewalk and into the leaf litter clogging the gutter. 

"Don't be stupid," he says, hands held up in surrender "get back on the sidewalk." You keep walking. "Come on, don't get hit by a car. That would really put a damper on the festival." 

You take a step further into the road, the kind that would make a collision unavoidable. He checks both ways for cars and sees none, knowing you're fucking with him and hating it anyway. The two of you are locked into a stand off, grey skies above you and wet ground underneath, your face partially occluded by your scarf and your hood and the dribbling rain. If he listens, he can hear the small sounds of the festival preparations a half a mile away, guitars hooked up up an insane array of speakers and the pounding of a beat through the floor. 

You start walking again. He follows, treading backwards to keep your attention. 

"Seriously, come on." 

"No." 

"No?" he asks. 

"No. I don't have to listen to you." 

"You're being stupid." 

"Eddie, I truly, honestly, don't care." 

"Sure." The sound of tires on the road draws his eye. A car appears behind you, approaching fast. "It's your funeral."

"What do you get out of this?" 

He bites his top lip, shaking his head from one side to the other. "Out of what?" 

"Tormenting me." 

"Tormenting you? Sweetheart, we hardly know each other." 

"Exactly!" You almost trip over your own shoes. "Exactly, you don't know me, but you thought you could say all those things–" 

"You started it." 

You laugh again and Eddie would be pissed but the car is still coming, headlights beaming through the light downpour. He huffs and grabs your wrist, tugging you up onto the sidewalk with his second hand on your waist. He doesn't mean to rag you about, feeling especially apologetic when your face knocks into his chin. The car spins close and validates his concern. You have enough sense to realise what's happened, watching over your shoulder as the car beeps and whizzes past. Still, you yank your arm out of his. 

"Don't touch me," you say quietly. 

He dips his head to force you to meet his eyes. "Next time I'll let you get hit by a car. Great idea." 

"I wasn't going to get hit by the fucking car." 

You're infuriating. 

Infuriating, and yet he feels bad for pulling you around. He lowers his voice, softens his tone. "Sorry," he says. "I don't know why this happens, everytime I see you, I…" 

You look intensely uncomfortable. "I have one of those faces, I guess." You shrug away from his reach. "Try to play well tomorrow? I don't want to go on to a dead crowd." 

His mouth snaps closed. "If you need me to warm them up for you, just say that." 

—

You go to watch Eddie's set because you're awful. You want it to suck. You want Corroded Coffin to bomb it and you want it to be his fault, anything to wipe that pretty smile off of his face, smother the electricity of his bouncing steps as he bounds from one side of the stage to the other. He's entranced by the crowd — it's hard not to be. Ananya had told you on the plane that UK festival audiences are a different kind of enthusiastic, eager and loud, and it's obvious now that she was right, and that Corroded Coffin had more than a few loyalists in the sea of people. 

The barrier bends under the force of it, thousands of warm bodies throwing themselves against one another despite the terrible weather, mud to the shins and sliding. You've never seen so many people happy to be covered in dirt. 

Neither Morgan nor Ananya had wanted to join you so you stick to the shadows with your lanyard pass. You refuse to think about why you've dressed the way you have, a black, stiff corset type top to cinch your chest, exposing the soft hills of your breasts, and the flare pants Morgan had insisted make your thighs acceptable. You're bedecked in pretty jewellery and your hair looks perfect, and it's all for your show, you swear, all for your set straight after his. 

Eddie's dripping with sweat and rain at this point, darker curls wet and slick and sweet around his face. His brows are furrowed like he's in pain, and his thumb has split on the strings, blood like cherry juice running down the body of his guitar, a Warlock NJ Series electric with a red and black tortoise shell design. It shines like mother-of-pearl. 

You're impressed by him, and worse, there's a heat stirring in your abdomen you despise. He's attractive, you've always thought him pretty, but on stage he's something else entirely. The passion transforms him, makes him a different person. No trace of agitating smugness about him. 

And he's good. You're not a critic, an expert, and your opinion hardly matters, but if he's this good now you'd love to see him at Hammet's age, at Hanneman's. He could be one of the greats. 

You're riddled with jealousy. Bass and rhythm guitar are not the same, and they're comparable in some ways, incomparable in others, but you know you're not like he is. You want to be the next Entwistle, the next Ian Hill, but practising You've Got Another Thing Comin' until your fingers bleed is never going to give you what Eddie plainly has. 

You hide your bandaid covered fingers in your back pockets and shake your head. You can pinpoint the moment Eddie notices you on the side stage despite the small audience they've attained. His neck snaps to the side, and his eyes bore into yours for a split-second. 

You could pretend you aren't here. If he ever calls you out on it, you could lie. You want me so bad you're seeing me places, Munson. 

You don't do that. 

You wave. 

You've never been the prettiest girl. You know you aren't model material, people aren't shy about letting you know that, and so, you're practised in the art of quiet flirtation. Your wrist straight, you wiggle your fingers sweetly, a face of fresh make up and your sweetest smile, like he's a guy across the bar and you're trying to get a ride in his passenger seat. 

For a split-second you adore him. It's the meanest thing you can do. 

You aren't expecting him to fuck up. His hand slips down the neck and that's it, one missed second of sound. He throws himself back into it and doesn't look your way again, a storm of emotions clouding his handsome face. 

Not what you'd meant to do, and yet. There's a cruel satisfaction in knowing you'd had any sort of power over him.

There's a ten minute gap between sets, twenty because of the shitty weather. Morgan and Ananya are nowhere to be seen as Corroded Coffin pour off of the stage and down the short stairwell where you're waiting, picking at your clear nail polish absentminded. You don't look up, and the resulting quiet makes you think they've all left. 

A wooden board creaks. 

You look up. 

"Hey, you–" 

Eddie takes your shoulder into his warm, big hand and pushes you back. You wobble and rush to correct your posture, hand clamping around the crook of his elbow. Even though he's soaked through, wet to the skin, his hand is a blistering heat. 

Your shoulders collide with the wall under the stairwell. It's a snug fit, dark and out of view. 

"What gives?" you seethe, pushing at his chest. 

"You fucking–" Eddie tucks a lock of wet hair behind his ear, and his hand stays at that height, hovering between you. "What's wrong with you?" 

"What's wrong with me?" 

"You want to mess with me, is that it?" 

His hand takes to your face, index finger following the line of your cheek, his thumb along your jaw. He isn't kind. He isn't cruel. He's touching you, just touching you, and your mouth is bone dry at the sensation, the stuttering beat of your heart. 

"I don't want to do anything to you, Munson." 

"We both know that's not true." You've never heard his voice like this. It's scratchy– pleading. It's a desperation. 

He's breathing hard. Your proximity means you feel each one as it comes, heat fanning over your lips. You look to his, find them parted, the barest hint of pearly teeth between pink dewy skin. They look soft. 

You lift your chin. 

I dare you. 

His hand slides down. He presses his thumb into your bottom lip and inclines his head. You close your eyes, fine stands of his hair drawing lines of wetness against your face as he boxes you in. 

"Are you going to–" 

"Shut up," he says, crushing his lips to yours. 

It his nose you feel more than anything, the force of it as he moves in, bridge sliding down your own. His hands, and how they tighten, fisted in the slope of your shoulder and clutching at the underside of your jaw like you might slip away. His touch brings you in, his hips force you back, wedging your spine tight to the panelled wall behind you. 

You let him kiss you, let his lips work over yours, let him take what it is he wants. Your fingers slide softly up the chilled leather of his jacket, coveting the wet mess of his hair. You weave your fingers into it, their tips pressed to his roots, and pull him away. 

You steal the gap between you and try to take control. You don't know how to kiss like he is, you don't know where all that meanness comes from. You force his hand from your face and nip at his bottom lip, imprecise, stammering pecks that reveal too much. 

Eddie inhales hard, pulls the breath from your mouth. 

"Don't play games," he says. 

He presses a firm, hard kiss all lopsided into your lips and pulls away, yanking your hand from his hair and setting it against the line of his waist. 

"You like games," you argue. 

He tilts your head to one side a millimetre at a time, tilting his own to follow you. A teasing light burns behind his eyes, a playful flare of his lashes that worries and excites at once. 

His thumb haunts the column of your throat, pressing, releasing, pressing again. Never enough to hurt. 

"Stay still." 

You stay still. You aren't expecting him to weave the other way, the hot and unapologetic scratch of his teeth against your pulse. You laugh at the feeling, find it gets all clogged up when he starts to bite. The hand that isn't anchoring your head roams down your shoulder, your back, falling into the small of it as though it were made to be there. His fingers spread and pull and your pelvis pushes hard into his own. 

"Is that a–" You cough on your murmuring, chastened by his thumb outside your windpipe. "S'that a micronta quartz in your pocket, or are you just," —you hiss as his hickeying turns brutal, hand pawing ar his waist uselessly— "happy– Happy to see me?" 

Your shuddering makes him smile. He lets your bruised skin slip from between his lips only to scandalise you further, kissing and nipping, licking a humiliating stretch until he's under your ear, speaking into it. 

"I'm never happy to see you," he murmurs, hand turned, the back of his index knuckle stroking a tender back and forth. His forehead kisses your temple. "You should know that by now." 

A picture of composure but you know what you feel. You roll your hips to revel in his subtle groan. 

"You want me to mark up the other side?" he asks. 

His question sounds so genuine, you almost say yes. He laughs at your silence and kisses wherever he can reach, crescent moons, spit-damp and branding. 

He pauses to speak into the corner of your mouth. "Mess me up again during a set and I won't be this nice." 

"You're not nice," you say, lashes skimming the skin under your brows as he stands at full height, widening the gap between you to a safe distance again. 

"Exactly…" Eddie squeezes your cheek until it aches. His eyes are unreadable. "Have a good set, sweetheart." 

Unreadable turns smug. He pats your panging cheek, gaze dancing over the sore stretch of your neck, and turns without a second glance. 

You press the heel of your palm to the cold wall behind you and blink. Once. Twice. In that moment you hate him more than you've ever hated him, hate him like you've never hated anyone, because his retreating figure is unaffected, and you're dizzy with the lingering press of his lips.

You have to hand it to him. He's good at the game. 

You'll have to be better. 

𓆩❤︎𓆪

I wrote the bulk of this really quickly so please forgive any major errors I missed during editing, I’ll go back again in future and make more corrections! Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed, and if you did please consider reblogging or telling me what you thought, I promise it makes a big difference <3 I was super nervous about this one and I still am lol

[ponderingmoonlight]

Heyyy, i love ur jjk fics so when u posted abt writing for aot i SCREAMED bc ik you'll do it justice 😩❤❤

Do u reckon u could do like a levi post rumbling fic bc i need the confort rn and SO DOES HE I NEED HAPPY LEVI PLSS ❤❤❤🙏🙏🙏

When I tell you I had to write this IMMEDIATELY <3 Please let me know if you like it, this is my first AOT fic EVER

Levi finally getting his happy end with (y/n) after the rumbling

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x fem!reader

Word Count: 2k

Synopsis: When he met you after first stepping a foot at Marley, Levi didn't forget you until the very end. But while he thought you died through the rumbling, he meets you again for his happy end.

Warnings: this is the comfort I needed, I actually had to cry while writing this, not proofread because I wanted to publish this asap

Tags: @sanicsmut begging on my knees, please I hope you like this

You’ve been on his mind ever since he met you on that fateful day at Marley. So gorgeous that he couldn’t take his eyes off you, a smile so sweet it could melt even metal. Yes, you were so different from what he expected to find across that ocean, a truly pleasant surprise to say the least.

“Oh, you are quite small for a grown man!” you commented, giggling so effortlessly that Levi wasn’t able to even react to your rude comment.

“But to be honest, I’m a little small myself. Well, not all of us can be tall, right? Where are you from, stranger?”

“None of your business.”

His voice sounded harsher that anticipated, making your joyful face drop in an instant. Why…Why the hell did it even bother him to see you like that, that sad glow that formed in your eyes?

“I’m not from here”, he added.

“Oh, I see! Don’t worry about it too much, it’s like everywhere else!”

Oh, if you only knew how wrong that statement was.

His eyes landed on your right arm and the star that covered the sleeve of your blouse. Why would you wear such a badge? Upon closer inspection, he noticed your shattered clothing, the hem of your earth coloured dress completely torn.  

Before Levi was even able to react two men ran into you, forcefully pushing your body into the dirt of the streets.

“Get out of the way, scum”, one of them hissed towards you.

Anger rose inside his veins immediately. You were just standing there, minding your own business. Why on earth did they push you?

“Watch your step”, his voice suddenly called towards the men.

“Please, it’s alright. Don’t get into trouble because of me.”

And then your hand rested against his shoulders, making his heart beat so loud that Levi swore you could hear it. What was this? Why did your little innocent touch turn him all flustered?

Something about you just seems different. No, despite the fact that it is so wrong, despite being here only for a mission, his mind wanders to you every free second.

Even though you might be dead by now.

“I will leave after tonight”, he announced into darkness, your moonlit features making it hard for him to focus on staying serious.

Your lip began to tremble, glossy eyes darting towards him.

“What? But why do you have to leave? You just arrived…”

“I came here because I have a mission to accomplish, (y/n).”

“But you will return when you’re done, right?”

The hopeful tone in your voice killed him from the inside. Oh, how much he wished he could just take you with him, how much he’d love to have more time with you. But this is simply not possible.

His cold eyes glared at you through the darkness, desperately trying to keep his composure.

“I might never return to this place, (y/n).”

You felt like someone pulled the ground from beneath your feet. Within the last few weeks, you learned that Levi’s hard façade isn’t more than a trick. No, in fact, he carries a character made of pure gold.

You started to like him.

“Then I’ll find you wherever you’ll go.”

And you did. You never missed to write him letters. Levi can’t help but wonder how you did that, your elegant handwriting following him through the darkness of the night, lighting up his mood despite the situation he’s in. Yes, he looked forward hearing from you every single day.

Until the rumbling started.

Until he didn’t receive any letters from you anymore.

It broke his heart, waking up from his coma with all that was on his mind being your stunning smile.

“Did I receive any letters from her?”

“You mean (y/n)? No, not until it all started. She lived in the northern area of Marley so it’s very likely that…”

His heart shattered into a million pieces, dead eyes staring into the distance. Your beautiful smile, that promise you gave him the night before he left. The thought of you getting trampled to death…

“Don’t say it.”

“Hey, maybe she did it somehow. (y/n) is a smart woman. I’m sure she found a way out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, shitty four-eyes. She’s dead.”

He has seen it all, countless people died in front of his very own eyes. Why would it be different this time? Why shouldn’t you of all people be taken away from him? A little spark of luck, a minor ray of sunshine in this sheer darkness.   

He leans back in his wheelchair, darkness consuming him all over again. You deserved so much better, your whole life was still ahead of you. In a world that never wanted you, you always kept your smile as bright as the sun. Despite the fact that they treated you like the dirt underneath their feet, despite how poorly the circumstances were, your smile beamed brighter than anything else.

“What would it give me to burry myself in sadness? I only have this one life, why not making the best of it?”

The best…

“Fuck!” he cries out, slamming a nearby book against the wall in frustration.

Why you? Why out of all the people, you are the one who had to lost her precious life? He never had the chance to tell you how he feels, how you turned his world upside down, that he survived for you.

Dear captain Levi (I love to call you that),

How are you? I hope your mission is going well and that you’ll return soon. I have some exciting news to share with you! After working so much over the last few weeks, I was finally able to buy myself a new dress! Although I wanted to get a white one because I know you love the colour, I bought a dark green one in honour of you. When you come back, we’ll be matching!

I miss you and our conversations late at night. Please tell me you and the others are okay.

In love,

(y/n)

That dark green dress he never got so see, the joy you fuelled inside of him despite being hundreds of miles away from him. God, how much he misses you. How much he fucking misses talking to you through the darkness of the night, to hear from the world through the unwavering veil of your optimism. What would he give to stretch out his hands after you for once, holding you tightly against his chest? It truly kills him from the inside, knowing he will never be able to hold your hand or kiss your lips tenderly, that you’ll never tell him old fairy tales anymore.

You were special. An angel in a world full of devils. Your word alone should have been enough to end every war in the blink of an eye. It definitely was enough to end the war inside himself.

“Captain Levi, will you assist me?”

“Stop calling me that, Onyankopon”, Levi mumbles, silently following the taller man into the heart of the city.

The war made the remaining 20% realize how precious being alive is only after their lives hanging on a thread. While the others carried on with their lives, Levi himself got stuck in this cursed city, the city he last saw you in. Returning to Paradis would mean giving up on you, giving up on the spell you put on him. And he simply can’t take it. Even though the whole town got destroyed by the merciless feet of titans, despite numerous people telling him than no one was able to escape, he always looked out for that dark green dress you described to him.

“Thank you”, a little girl giggles at him, eyes widen at the delicious sight of the lollipop in her hands.

All he can do is stare at the ground in front of her tiny feet with empty eyes. How nice it must be to have something to hold onto in times like these, after losing everything and everyone.

“Hey, can I get another one?”

“Don’t get greedy, young lady!”

That voice, that angelic voice almost reminds him of you. How long has it been since you last spoke to him? So long that the sound of your speech slowly fades in the back of his mind.

But that woman, that woman almost sounds like you. His gaze wanders up her dirty shoes, the hem of her green dress…

A green dress. Dark green, to be exact.

“Levi?”

His eyes widen, his heart stops beating.

No, this can’t be. Is it a dream?

“Levi Ackerman? Is that you?”

His gaze darts towards your face, time stands still. Your facial features, your joyful eyes. It’s you, it has to be you. Without any doubt.

“(y/n)”

He can’t catch his breath, his orbs lingering over your delicate figure, your dark green dress.

That dark green dress.

Before he can stop himself, his eyes get glossy. It is really you. You’re standing in front of him, uninjured, just like you did before.

“Levi!”, you cry out.

In the matter of seconds, you kneel in front of him, hungry arms holding onto his frame for dear life. Oh god, how much you prayed to see that man again, how much you longed to finally be able to hold him in your arms.

“I never gave up hope. I always believed in your abilities and that you’ll return to me someday”, you mutter against his chest, your salty tears soaking through the fabric of his shirt.

“I thought you were dead.”

His voice isn’t more than a fade away whisper, hand running through your soft hair. He always wondered how it would feel against his fingertips. And now you’re here. In his arms, alive.

You are alive.

“I’m fine. I did leave this town just in time because I wanted to see you again. It was a close call, I almost got crushed but…I made it. I couldn’t leave after telling you the fairy tale about the fox and the rabbit, right?”

Silent tears stream down his face like a waterfall while you cry rivers against his chest. His whole life Levi was haunted by loss and grief. As if he was cursed, everyone around him seemed to die in front of his very eyes. Just after letting himself fall, after trusting someone, after gifting them his feelings…They just lost their lives like flies.

But you’re safe and sound, you look just like you did in his memory.

“I love you, (y/n). I should have told you this way sooner and I did all of this just to return to you.”

Your heart sinks in your chest, body overflowing with feelings. Without thinking twice, you press your lips against his scarred ones, letting yourself sink into his lap while your hands hold onto his face for dear life. This man right in front of you, the man who never left your mind, the man who risked his life to save yours. He survived. He survived and came back to you just like you always dreamed of.

“I love you too”, you shriek, smiling at him so widely with tears overflowing in your eyes that you make his world whole again.

“But as you see, I’m not the man you met back then…”, he begins, looking down his disabled body.

You shake your head vehemently, gently taking his hands into yours.

“All I see is the man I love and waited for”, you reply.

You wipe away your tears and a trail of snot in the most unladylike and precious way Levi ever witnessed before standing up and straighten your skirt with trembling hands.

“So now, what do you think? How do you like my now old new dress?” you croak.

You twirl around, making his life complete. This. This is exactly what he fought for, why he never gave up even after Hange dedicated her life. You standing in front of him in that dark green dress, smiling widely after he told you that he loves you.

This is all he ever wanted.

“You look lovely. Absolutely lovely, (y/n)”, he replies.

And for the first time since forever, a genuine smile is formed on his face.  

[suashii]

— 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓈 𝓉𝑜 𝓊𝓈𝑒 ౨ৎ

okkotsu yuta x f!reader. 2.2k wc. ﾉ smut ﾉ nsfw (mdni) ﾉ characters aged 21+ ﾉ unprotected sex ﾉ tit + nipple play ﾉ a hint of dacryphilia ﾉ brief handjob ﾉ mentions of cheating (neither yuta nor reader) ﾉ yuta is a little obsessive

note: eeee it's yuta's birthday ! ! i wrote this fairly quickly to post in time so pls forgive any mistakes :3 enjoy + wish the pretty boy a happy bday ‪‪❤︎‬

yuta has imagined your first time at his place on more occasions than he can recall and none of them could have prepared him for the reality of your first visit—sitting on his couch with your knees hugged to your chest, quiet sniffles filling the air as warm tears stream down your cheeks. it’s a bit awkward, partly because of your crying but mostly because yuta doesn’t mind it. he’s sure that a majority of men wouldn’t see this as attractive or opportunistic but, as he pulls a tissue from the box to offer you, yuta can’t help but think that this moment is perfect.

“i can’t believe he’d cheat on me.” you accept the tissue from yuta, dabbing the corners of your watery eyes. you crumple the kleenex in your hand but the action seems a bit premature as a new set of tears glaze over your eyes. a couple of them spill past your lashes when you turn to face yuta. he swallows the lump in his throat that comes with being the subject of your tearful gaze. it must be wrong to find you so pretty when you’re clearly upset. “do you think it was me? could i have done something to push him away?”

yuta’s head is shaking in denial as soon as the question falls from your lips. he can’t believe that you’d ever think that. what could you have possibly done to push him into another woman’s arms? if you were to ask him, he’d tell you that your ex was the dumbest man on planet earth for leaving you—and for someone else, at that. though, he’d also have to thank your idiotic ex for letting you go. he never deserved you to begin with and his absence was the opening that yuta often found himself praying for.

“you didn’t do anything wrong,” yuta tries to reassure you with a soft smile. he wills his hand to stop shaking as it comes up to wipe your tears away. the palm of his hand is warm against your face, the pad of his thumb rough but comforting as it brushes your cheek. the contact makes your eyes widen and lips part—you’ve been friends with yuta for a while now but he’s never touched you like this. it’s tender and you like it. to your dismay, he only lets his fingers linger a second longer before bashfully pulling away, choosing to clumsily scratch at his neck instead.

“i’m sure that you were a perfect girlfriend,” yuta tells you, and then he thinks better of his words. “not that him cheating on you would have been excusable if you weren’t!” he raises his hands and waves them in dismissal. if yuta were lucky enough to call himself your boyfriend, no number of little mistakes or miscommunications would run him away. he’d be by your side for the long haul. he’d never want to let you go.

“i just mean…” he looks up to the ceiling as he gathers the hectic thoughts bouncing around in his head into a coherent sentence. “nothing you did drove him to that.”

with a sigh, yuta closes his eyes and shakes his head subtly. his nerves are starting to get to him and he doesn’t want some stupid jitters to be what ruins this chance for him. you’re finally within his reach, just an arm’s length away, his for the taking.

he’s gotta pull himself together.

when the man tilts his head down and opens his eyes, he’s met with the sight of you. it shouldn’t make him jump, but your body is turned to face him and you’re closer than you had been before. he can feel his heart thump against his chest at the proximity but he supposes it’s a good sign. his words didn’t rub you the wrong way like he thought they might have—he’s still got a chance.

your knees are tucked beneath you now, hands resting on your thighs. your fingers nervously tap at your leg as you hold yuta’s gaze. you couldn’t be exactly sure why yuta was the first one you called upon finding out that your relationship had all but crumbled. maybe it had to do with the fact that he always seemed to want to help or maybe it was simply the fact that he was always around. regardless of the reasoning, the overwhelming sadness you had felt when you arrived is beginning to dissipate, replaced by new feelings that you’re sure you shouldn’t be acting on. 

but that fleeting thought doesn’t stop you from asking, “you really think so?”

he nods, never taking his eyes off yours. “i do—”

his words jumble as you lean forward to press your lips against his. you can feel him gasp a bit but he doesn’t pull away. his lips are warm and softer than you thought they’d be. it’s a sloppy kiss, uncoordinated and messy with spit, though, that fact doesn’t stop either of you from deepening it—from chasing more.

your leg swings over his thighs so that you’re straddling him, hands coming up to cup his jaw as you run your tongue along his lower lip. your chest and yuta’s rise and fall with heavy breaths between the two of you. the air surrounding you is thick and charged and you want nothing more than to feed off of it. “is this okay?” 

“yeah, but…” he doesn’t want to come off as too eager, although, he’s sure you’re having no trouble telling with the way you’re grinding on the growing tent in his jeans. he hopes he doesn’t regret asking, “are you sure?”

“i just—i need to get my mind off of him. i need a distraction,” you tell yuta, rolling your hips against his. your hands drop from his face in favor of making their way to his hair, fingers tangling in the dark, inky strands as you stare into the depths of his widened eyes. “can you be that for me?”

a strangled moan—one that yuta desperately tries, and fails, to hold back—sounds in the quiet air of his living room. nothing would make him happier than to be yours to use. the hands that had once been stiffly resting at his sides come up to make a home on your waist. “god, yes, i can.”

his confirmation is all you need to dip your head down and capture his lips in yet another kiss. yuta doesn’t attempt to swallow down his moans and you don’t either—not that it would be possible upon feeling his bulge rhythmically nudge your panty-clad clit. the contact makes your skin prickle with goosebumps and contributes to the growing wetness between your legs.

impatience overcomes you as your mind races with thoughts of what yuta feels like without all the fabric barriers. you reach down between your bodies to fumble with the buckle of his belt, lips still occupied with his. with your attention divided, it takes you a couple of botched attempts before you’re finally able to loosen his belt, undo his button, and pull down his zipper. 

the sequence of actions reveals his black underwear and brings you one step closer to seeing him in his entirety. yuta’s breath hitches in his throat as you palm his cock and you take that as an opportunity to break away from the kiss, turning your full focus to the member between his legs. 

your fingers slip under the waistband of his boxer briefs and pull the cotton down, releasing his erection. it slaps against his t-shirt and the cool air must bite against his head because you can hear him hiss at the new position.

your hand hesitantly hovers, eyes locking onto his in a silent plea for permission to touch him. he catches on quickly, hurriedly nodding. he’s imagined this countless times, too—how your fingers would feel wrapped around his cock. and yuta thinks he’s been patient enough until now. 

when you finally take him in your hand, he’s warm and heavy in your grasp. the precum beading at his slit is plentiful. you let your thumb run over the opening, spreading the pre over his head and down his shaft, slowly stroking his length. he’s painfully hard, so much so that yuta tosses his head back to rest on the couch cushion.

he fidgets with the hem of your shirt that hugs your midsection in an effort to keep himself grounded. at this rate, he’s going to come all over your hand. he needs something to busy his mind with to keep that much from happening. “can i—” he swallows thickly before tipping his chin down to look you in the eye, “can i take off your shirt?”

you hum, raising your arms over your head so that he can pull your tee off. your absence between his legs doesn’t go unnoticed as he tugs the shirt off your torso. the fabric falls from the light grip of his fingers when he realizes that you aren’t wearing a bra. his cheeks grow impossibly warmer upon being met with the sight of your bare chest, though, instead of giving in to embarrassment, yuta’s hands come up to massage your tits.

as good as it feels to have his hands all over you, you’re aching for something more. so, while you have no intention of stopping him, you reach under your skirt to pull your panties to the side. both sets of your eyes are glued to the space between you, the space that lessens with each inch you take as you slowly sink down onto his cock. the stretch makes your lips part and your head loll as you adjust to his size. 

“shit,” yuta swears under his breath, his thumbs sweeping over your hardened nipples. he can’t believe he’s buried in you, being swallowed by your warmth. he didn’t know it was possible to feel this way—like he’s walking on clouds. his next words come out quiet and breathy, so low that you can barely hear them. “you feel so good.”

a small smile pulls at the corners of your lips at his whispered statement. you’d tell him the same if you weren’t more concerned with chasing your high. as your hands come to rest on his shoulders, you lift yourself up and down, setting a relaxed rhythm that’s just enough to attain the pleasure you’re after.

it’s mesmerizing, yuta thinks, the way your breasts bounce as you ride him. he licks his lips hungrily before latching onto one of your nipples. his tongue swirls against the peak while lithe fingers pinch at and roll the other between his rough pads. the moans that push past his lips and vibrate against your skin as he sucks at your tits fuel the fire of arousal in your abdomen. 

you dig your nails into his shoulders, the fabric of his shirt bunching together in your grasp with your tightened grip. between his touch, his mouth, and the way his cock head keeps bumping your g-spot, you’re not sure that you want to—or can—draw this out for any longer.

your pace quickens as your climax approaches and the rhythm you took care setting earlier has all but disappeared as your hips knock into yuta’s. your hastened tempo makes his cock twitch. that feeling of tightness in his muscles returns, the one that warns him of his impending orgasm. while he wouldn’t be ashamed to come before you, he thinks it would be more romantic if you do it together.

with his lip pulled between his teeth, yuta’s hand sneaks down to rub your clit. the unexpected touch makes you gasp in surprise. his fingers must be magic or the closest thing to it because a few simple circles are all it takes to snap the tension that had been building up in your tummy.

yuta’s name is sweet on your lips as you cry out for him. your walls spasm around his cock as your orgasm washes over you, nails biting into his shoulder blades in an attempt to ground yourself. 

yuta is sure that his desire to come inside of you is unmatched, though, he isn’t sure now is an appropriate time to do so. so, he ignores the devilish thoughts begging him—urging him—to paint your insides white. he pulls out and lets his cum spurt on his sweaty shirt with a shaky groan.

beyond your shared heavy breaths, yuta’s apartment is silent. it gives you both a moment to think about what just happened, but the thoughts on your minds starkly contrast.

you’re starting to feel the weight of your actions and you’re almost positive that the regret will be in full effect once you’ve slept on it for a night. it’s not typical of you to take on rebounds and certainly not ones that run in your everyday circle. you’ll be lucky if yuta is willing to forget that any of this happened.

unlike you, yuta feels absolutely and positively weightless. you��ve successfully put every fantasy he could dream up with you to shame. if it was this good the first time, he can’t wait to see what it’ll be like when he actually gets to fuck you—when he’s able to call you his.

thanks for giving this a read! if you enjoyed, pls consider reblogging or commenting :3

[braxlrose]

Heyy i LOVE your writing your my of my favs writers

was wondering if u could do like hc of tom with a reader like childhood bffs to dating only if you can ❤

a/n: i love this trope so much so im so glad someone requested! imo it's one of the best and cutest tropes to ever exist. it's actually the one I'm using for my DR 💀 this is also kind of like a pt 2 for this post except with Tom instead of bill and there's not much mentioned of georg and gustav

childhood friends to lovers w/ tom

tom x fem!reader

• you met tom and bill when your mom moved you to Loitsche when you were 5 years old, right next to tom and bills house. their mother met yours when their mother went over to introduce herself to you guys. that's when she mentioned that she had a daughter the same age as her sons.

• that night, your mom brought you over there for dinner and you played with Tom and Bill. you guys had tons of fun and ended up becoming great friends that night.

• after that, you guys hung out every day and hung out at school. you were their new bestfriend and as I mentioned in this post, you helped them switch back and forth and confuse the teachers.

• the teachers were already used to their antics but with you, it just got worse and more complex. your mom scolded you a ton and ever had a fight with Tom and Bills mom because you kept getting into trouble but there was nothing they could do to stop you guys from hanging out.

• it was really hard to tell them apart when they were younger so you got relieved as they got older and started to have their own style

• you guys went bike riding all the time together and would ride for hours doing random shit

• you, bill, and tom would always go to the pet store to see all the cute little animals

• you would pick flowers for bill and make him a flower crown and even know tom refuses to admit it, he wishes you made him one too.

• both bill and tom were very over protective of you, but tom mostly. if he ever found out that anybody hurt you in anyway, he'd be pissed.

• you went trick or treating with bill and tom every year. (even though it wasn't too popular yet in the 90s in Germany)

• sharing and switching candy with them was a must

• you and tom were a bit closer than you and bill but you were still friends with both of them. it's not like you had a choice anyways.

• you always slept in toms bed whenever slept over (which was pretty much almost every night) and you two were always cuddling.

• bill and tom had bunk beds, so whenever you slept over you guys would put blankets around the edge of the top bunk and then tell scary stories

• you guys would sneak onto the ice cream truck and steal as much as you could. you'd always end up puking after because of how much you ate.

• you and tom would sit next to eachother every time in class and whine whenever you two had to move or got told to move because you guys were talking

• tom has a massive sweet tooth and you guys would steal stuff from the corner store

• you, bill and tom would hang out at the pool tons.

• you and tom would practice playing guitar allllll the time

• you were apart of the original "band" and played for weddings and other gigs with them

• you helped their mom bake a cake for their birthday every year and you always had so much fun with her. she even taught you how to write their names on a cake

• you went cd shopping with Tom for new cds and other old cds he didn't have.

• when tom had his first kiss (WITH A 16 YR OLD GIRL AT 9 YEARS OLD 😨😨😨) you didn't really know what to feel. you weren't even sure what you were feeling but you didn't like that he was kissing another girl

• you never said anything though, what could you even say?

• you and tom started out as just friends, no feelings at all not until you guys were pre-teens.

• as you guys grew older, tom and bill started getting girlfriends. you never dated anybody though; mostly because of your insanely massive crush on Tom.

• you basically just pined for him while he dated other girls. but you did feel nice sometimes. you got to see the side of him other girls didn't. you got to see how sweet and fun and nice he was with you. he was always different with you and if any girl had a problem with that, he'd drop them immediately.

• you got to sleep in his bed and cuddle with him and stay up late and hang out with him 24/7. they didn't get to do that, you did. and that gave you a sense of security.

• when the band started to actually become a band and you guys started getting more gigs, you and tom would always play next to eachother and even created your own style of playing with eachother

• you helped tom pick out his red guitar

• you and tom also have matching stickers on your guitars

• whenever girls flirted with Tom, you'd always get jealous and sometimes even try and steer tom away from them. like if they started flirting, you'd come up to tom and say "we need to get to band practice" or "Bill needs you for something" etc. etc.

• after a while, you'd come to the conclusion you just weren't his type and he'd never have feelings for you like you did for him.

• when tom first told you guys he lost his virginity, your heart dropped. tom, your tom, lost his virginity. you wanted to cry but you couldn't, they wouldn't get it, they wouldn't understand. so you just laughed along with the guys and make jokes.

• when durch den monsun came out, more and more girls were all over tom. but at this point, you'd gotten used to it. when you realized how many girls he was sleeping with, you just shoved all your feelings down and locked them away. feelings would ruin your friendship, right?

• your hotel room was right next to toms so you could hear basically everything they were doing. it was absolute torture. why couldn't tom see your feelings, why didn't he feel the same way?

• tom treated you like a little sister. it was awful. you wanted to cry everytime he called you dude or bro. he would never call you baby, or babe, or sexy. like he does other girls. he'd never see you like that.

• when you guys are at clubs, you try your best not to watch him flirt with other girls. it's easier that way. but along with that, you just end up getting drunk.

• tom would come running into your room at like 11 pm at night asking you for a condom. this became routine, and over time your heart shattered a little bit less only because you'd gotten used to this. used to him liking other girls.

• one night, while you guys were out at a club. you got sloppy. when you were drinking you ended up stumbling over to tom and dragging him to another room. and that's where you confessed to him down you were feeling.

• you ended up bawling your eyes out and saying how stupid it was because you know he'd never feel the same and that he doesn't want a serious relationship but you couldn't "help how you feel".

• tom took you back home that night and cuddled you and rubbed your back until you fell asleep. little did you know he felt the exact same way about you...

edit: I'm super tired and wanna go to bed, but let me know if you want dating headcanons for this bc I will do it, I'm just so tired.

taglist: @hearts4kaulitz @burntb4bydoll @spelaelamela @bored0writer @fishinaband @billsleftnutt @tokiiohot @bluepoptartwithsprinkles @saumspam @5hyslv7 @killed-kiss @memog1rl @80s-tingz @billybabeskaulitz @victryzvv9 @banshailey

[thebomb-thebird-andtheburntbitch]

w.count: 1.1k - golden birthday wishes for him only (っ◔◡◔)っ ❤

evening was settling in when you came face to face with zhongli's front door. you knew he was cleaning up around his home today, he told you so after all.

"it's pleasant starting off the new year with a fresh start, and there's no better start than your own home," he had told you.

staring at the liyue styled door, you sway between knocking or just using the spare key he keeps stashed away not far from the entrance. on one hand, you felt like it would be rude to just interrupt his progress- even if the both of you had plans once the sun set. on the other, wouldn't it be just as rude to barge in unannounced- even if he was partially expecting you?

not coming to a proper conclusion, you decide to cut your awkward standing at his doorstep short. quickly finding the key, you crack open the door and with the little space you granted yourself, peek your head inside. the small lamp inside the doorway on the small shelf he kept was lit, so he was at least home. you didn't see him or his shadow anywhere though.

stepping further inside, you knock on the already open door twice before shutting it behind you. why chose between two options when you can just do both after all. toeing off your shoes, you step cautiously inside. although less than likely, you didn't want to startle the fake geo vision holder if you could help it.

"zhongli?" you call out, stepping into the main room. looking back and forth and even moving to check to see if he was in the kitchen; maybe he would be rearranging his tea leaves because there is no way he'd use his kitchen for cooking. lord of geo he may have used to be, that man cannot be trusted in the kitchen.

walking back, you stand at the bottom of the staircase that leads up to the second floor. he must be up there- and upstairs he was. once you reach the top, you could hear him rummaging around in a room with the door half shut. and old storage room he kept all sorts of things in if memory serves.

approaching the door, you knock softly a few times before peeking in just like how you did at the front door.

"zhongli?" you parrot from earlier and are met with his back. he was stood in front of an old wardrobe crafted from sandbearer wood- common to liyue. "well, don't you look handsome," you compliment when he turns to face you. walking inside, you come to his side and flick his long hair that rested on his chest over his shoulder to behind his back where it now rests along his spine.

the outfit he wore was one you didn't even know he had. though different from his normal whengsheng funeral attire, it had a familiar pattern to it. deep shades of brown lined with gold and flickered with designs that mimicked golden stars. the scaling pattern along the fabric was a nice touch as well; no doubt a nod to his golden form that had put on quite the dramatic show at his 'death'.

"i've never seen these pieces before," you tell him, reaching up to straighten the collar that crawled up his neck. zhongli's chest jumped in light chuckles at both your actions and words.

"i had forgotten i had them in truth. though, a long time ago, i used to wear them often." turning back to the open wardrobe, you notice an over coat with large shoulder guards that obviously went over the skintight under-layer he currently wears. "i came across them while tidying up, and in the spur of the moment decided to... remanence a bit."

"hmm," you hum in acknowledgement. seeing his normal clothes hanging neatly up away from him you indeed notice how similar they are. "did the person who made your clothes of today also make these?" his eyes blink in astonishment at your query.

"that is correct. you have sharp eyes to notice."

"i wouldn't go that far." you look up at him and brush his bangs around his face, fixing him up in small and rather passive ways. still, zhongli allowed you to do what you wanted. he enjoyed your preening; it made him feel cared for. your fingers move to brush around his ear that held a golden cuff that curled around his earlobe instead of his normal white dangling one. "are you planning to wear this out then? im sure it's creator would love to have it seen the moonlight of liyue on the eve of a new year, no?"

"the thought had crossed my mind," he admits. "perhaps i shall."

"then we better have a good time, or else the moonlight on the fabric will be wasted." you turn away from him to search the nearby dressers for shoes that aren't his daily ones. maybe a nice pair of boots instead... and maybe longer gloves to hide the golden veins running across his wrists. as you rummaged around, he watched you with stars in his eyes.

the way you encouraged and even prompted his whims filled his chest with so much warmth- it was like he could bleed gold.

"dear," he calls. when you turn to offer him your attention, his hand is outstretched towards you. a silent plea for you to come to him. and you do. placing your hand in his, he holds it tightly and tugs you gently so his lips can be pressed into the crown of your head. "you'll stay with me into the new year, yes?"

"where else would i be?" you notice over his shoulder the last rays of the evening darkening into a blanket of night. "but if you wish to see the festivities of the end of this one, we should hurry out soon." pulling his lips away from your head, he agrees. you help him into his coat- as out of style on an 'ordinary' man it was, it still looked far too good on him.

standing at the front door, you slip on your shoes you had left there earlier. and with his hand on your back, he falters when you stop suddenly before turning to face him. he blinks down at you and you wonder if he still remembers his birthday, or if he even cares at this point in his long long life.

"happy birthday, rex lapis," you tease. seeing as he was wearing his archon clothing, it felt right. zhongli just shut his eyes in amusement and thanks you by nuzzling his nose into your temple before leading you out into the harbor's busy streets.

call him greedy, but a part of him wanted to stay home so only you could see him like this. and additionally, only he could bask in your presence for the turning of the year.

perhaps he could sneak you away just before the clock ticked fully down and spend the first few minutes of the year of the dragon alone- even if it's hidden in an alley.

[clone-whore-99]

Perfect Stranger

Hunter x f! Reader

18+ minors gtfo

Warnings: SMUTTY MCSMUTTERSON! unsafe consumption of alcohol, one night stand, morning sex, 69ing, oral (both receiving), overstimulation, fingering, doing the deed with strangers, not beta or proof read. LMK if I missed any (✿◡‿◡)

Summary: Waking up next to stranger leads to a series of pleasurable events.

Authors note: Turns out Hunter is my comfort character and nothing gets me back into writing like the death of a loved one. Those were things I wish I didn't have to learn like this, but at least my pain can be your gain ❤

Also please like, reblog and maybe even comment if you enjoy this, it really means a lot to me 🥺👉👈

If you want to, you can also help me by buying me a coffee ❤

The galaxy. Vast. Big. Dangerous.

But not at this moment. At this moment, you were safe and secure.

Which was odd, considering you were a single woman living alone, and yet there was an arm draped around your waist and a heart beating beneath your head.

The last rotation was a complete blur to you, only a few flashes of memories appearing before you, then disappearing just as quickly.

Slowly you opened your eyes and once the focus had set in, you were met with a sight to behold. Rock hard abs, as if they had been sculpted in marble just for you to see. And from them was this trail of short trimmed hair, urging your gaze to follow it lower. Only to be cut off by a pair of tights, holding on for dear life, low on the strangers’ hips.

That’s when you realized the shirt you were wearing must've been the strangers as well. It was matching in color and seemingly in texture too. It didn’t feel like anything had happened the night before, but maybe you had just been too drunk to realize. Though if that had been the case, you probably wouldn’t feel so safe in his arms. But you did.

Curiosity finally getting the best of you, you slowly - careful as to not wake the stranger - managed to turn your whole body around, so you were now facing him. 

You were still for a moment, waiting to see if you had disturbed his slumber. But his low snoring and calm heartbeat continued, proving success in your quest. 

His other hand was prepped behind his head, the shy morning sun barely peeking through the window, highlighting his features in an almost perfectly picturesque way.

His arms were muscular and led towards these broad, strong shoulders that looked like they were made to hold the weight of worlds on them. Just like his abs, his jaw looked like it had been hand sculpted and around it hung this beautiful, dark curly hair, held back by a bandana. 

Weird, you thought, sleeping with a bandana on. Though it seemed like sleep had probably taken him by surprise.

The bandana had a skull painted on it and right underneath that skull, was half of the man's face tattooed.

Delicately, you let a finger trace the tattoo, starting from the bandana down. The tattoo avoided his eyebrow, but covered his eyelid which could not have been a pleasant feeling. It avoided his nose and a big part of his cheek, much like a skull in itself. 

Your finger followed it all the way to where it met, at the edge of his lip in the shape of teeth. His lips curled into a smirk underneath your soft pad. He was awake. 

This didn’t stop you though, as you continued your tracing towards the middle of his lips, which then perked up into a kiss.

You let your hand fall back down to rest on his chest. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

The man let out a huff, though his smirk persisted. “It was bound to happen,” he replied nonchalantly, his voice deep and raspy, sending a thrill straight towards your core.

The strangers’ eyelids were twitching, as if debating whether or not they should face the day or stay in the comfortable darkness. 

“Did we…”

“No.” His answer was blunt, not even allowing you to finish the thought. “I’m not really into drunk people.” He then added with a devilish smirk.

“Then how come you’re here?” The words escaped your mouth before you had even thought them through.

His eyes opened just enough for him to see you, dark and caring. “Guess you really achieved your objective, huh. You went to the bar last night, put down a bunch of credits, claiming you wanted to forget. Never specified what though.” His hand began stroking your back, sensual in nature but with a hint of trying to map out your body with just his touch. “By the time it closed, you were a wreck. I helped you home, get clean and put you to bed. I was about to leave when you began whimpering and turning onto your back, so I decided to stay the night to make sure you’d make it through. Guess I fell asleep along the way, though.”

Heat rose in your body, fuzziness tickling your insides and forcing your lips into a smile. It was easy for him to lie to you, but his words rung truth within you. You meekly - yet sincerely - thanked him and silence fell over the two of you again.

His hand continued its disguised mapping of your body, while your finger began tracing the tattooed ribs on his chest.

Somehow the tracing turned into kissing, at first just one, but when there was no protest, several more. And when the tattoo ended, the kissing continued onto his abs, then hips and down the trail of hair, all the way to the band of the tights, which was now restraining a bulge.

The stranger wasn’t exactly innocent either, as you reached further down, so did his hand. From your back to your hips, down your thigh and up again, until it could grab a handful of ass.

You glanced back at him, wordlessly asking for permission to continue. 

He responded by grabbing your hips and pulling you over him, so you had a knee on each side of his head.

As you freed his cock from its restraints, he pulled your panties to the side to get a better view. He mumbled something under his breath, you couldn’t hear what but it sounded like admiration. 

You were also guilty in taking a moment to admire the sight before you. His cock stood tall, average in height though far from the same could be said about the girth. Your mouth began salivating, your walls clenching around nothing, which the stranger evidently noticed with a chuckle. The thought of having him inside you was almost enough to drive you crazy.

Like a starved person, you licked all the way from the base to the head, before engulfing your mouth around his cock.

The stranger hissed at the sensation, straining his hips not to thrust up into you. His approach was far less aggressive and more like he was studying your sex and seemingly relishing the scent of your arousal, though you could be mistaken.

After what felt like an eternity of him just staring at your most private parts, fingers every now and then ghosting over where you wanted the most contact, his tongue finally pressed onto your sensitive bud.

At first it was just small, careful licks. Then his lips closed around your clit and began to switch between licking and sucking. You moaned into his cock and he returned the favor, the sound vibrating through your body.  

You couldn’t even close your hand fully around the base of his cock, though you did your best while pumping up into your mouth. You kept switching between licking, sucking and slurping on the now messy mixture of precum and spit.

Once confident enough, you let go of his base to fondle the balls instead. Relaxing your throat, you took in all of him, hollowed your cheeks and swallowed.

The strangers head back with a groan, abandoning your sex in the process. “Kriff, I - ah - won’t lassssth,” he muttered barely apprehensible. His hands grabbed onto your thighs for dear life.

You didn’t care that he had stopped on his end. The pleads, moanings and groans were more than enough to satisfy you. You continued, feeling his balls tightening in your hands with each little movement you made.

It didn’t take long before hot, creamy ribbons shot down your throat, as you swallowed around his cock. The stranger had probably thought that was the end of it, but you were feeling mischievous and continued sucking, overstimulating the poor guy. 

His hands were now holding you in a bruising grip, his moans sporadic and desperate. But when he let out a weak “w-wait!” you stopped and glanced back at him.

In less than a second, your world was turned upside down - literally. You knew the man was strong - I mean, just look at him - but you had never imagined that he could so easily just grab you, pick you up and spin you around, so that now you were lying in his place and he was on top of you.

It had all happened so quickly, you barely realized it before he was taking off your panties completely. 

“Oh, and by the way Y/N” He said with a smug look while patting the inside of your thigh. “The name you’re gonna be moaning is Hunter.”

That was a challenge and a promise.

His attack was relentless. If you had thought his careful exploring earlier was due to inexperience, you’d be sorely mistaken. He started with a couple of broad strokes of his tongue, from your entrance to your clit, before diving into you. His tongue was exploring your insides, slurping in all you gave him. Meanwhile he was expertly using his nose to tease your clit, building your orgasm in no time.

You were helpless in his hands. Your body squirmed under the sudden attack, but his grip was holding the most important part still. Your moans grew louder and more desperate, though you kept stopping yourself right before saying his name - you weren’t going to lose the challenge that easily.

Your fingers slid through his luxurious locks, gripping anything they could get a hold of in an attempt to ground yourself. It didn’t work.

Your back arched into the bed, as the coil in your stomach snapped and waves of pleasure washed over you. A string of incoherent words escaped your lips and if the stranger - Hunter - hadn’t held you in place, you would probably have ascended to the stars.

He ate up everything you gave and then some. Your whole body was shaking as it came down from the orgasm, but he wasn’t relenting. No, he wanted revenge from you overstimulating him, he wanted you to moan his name and he was going to get it.

Hunter moved the attention back to your clit, sucking and licking the now oversensitive bud. He prodded one finger inside you, quickly adding another when he realized there was space. They seemed to be searching your insides, until he found that hard to reach spot inside you.

“Hunter!” You gasped, back instantly arching into the bed once more. You felt the smirk on his lips, as his gaze raised to meet yours. It was hungry, mischievous and victorious.

While remaining eye contact, he added a third finger, filling and stretching you more than you thought possible. All the while, his tongue continued its expert work.

You held eye contact for as long as possible, but had to give up, as each thrust and stroke of his fingers coerced a second orgasm to come forth.

“Hu-Hunter,” You moaned, by now having completely given up all control of the situation. “I can’t.” 

This seemed to finally stop the oral attack on your sex, though the fingers continued their hard work. “You can, Y/N. I know you can. Do it, for me, cum for me.” His voice was deep and raspy, encouraging yet commanding. How could you ever deny him his wish?

Hunter returned to his work on your clit, the small break from the stimulation and then having it instantly revived was what finally sent you over the edge.

His name was on your lips like a chant, your vision blurring as tears pricked your eyes, your walls squeezing around his fingers while the rest of you was spasming from the orgasm. His free hand was making sure you weren’t hurting yourself or him in the process, but had given up on keeping you in place. He had won and was now letting you ride out the high.

When you finally returned to this plane of existence, Hunter was sitting up, caressing your thigh and looking at you with such admiration. His hair was hanging loose around his face, making you realize you pulled off the bandana during the act. Half of his face and upper chest was glistening in your juices.

He was beautiful.

“Think you can handle one more round?” He asked, once you had managed to catch your breath again. His eyes quickly darted downwards before returning to you, urging you to follow their destination. 

And right there was his weeping cock, standing at attention and ready for action. 

You looked back up at him, quirking up an eyebrow as you challenged: “Do you?”

Dividers by: @djarrex and unknown

Taglist: @zoeykallus @rain-on-kamino @ashotofspotchka @chxpsi @maulsrightleg @the-sith-in-the-sky-with-diamond @wildmoonflower @nunanuggets @lokigirlszendaya @wholesuhmsstuff @pb-jellybeans @dangracoon

(LMK if you want to be added to the tag list (✿◡‿◡))

[billkaulitzgirlfriend]

♱❤︎ Dating Tom Kaulitz head cannons ♱❤︎

·:*¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨*:· ·:*¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨*:· ·:*¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨*:·

Warning: NSFW (sorry in advance for any spelling errors)

✮ When you first started dating, he was quite awkward with you. He’s known as a cocky guy and very full of himself, but that’s just how he acts on camera around you. He’s a whole different boy. He doesn’t want you to think poorly of him, so he walks on thin ice around you. But after a few months of dating, he starts getting more comfortable and showing you all sides of his personality.

✮ He loves play fighting with you and then letting you win and pin him down (he likes having you on top of him).

✮ Tom was your first kiss (or not). He was super gentle with you the first couple times he kissed you, but as time went on, he became more aggressive and passionate, seeming to not be able to get enough of your lips. (He always tastes like mint and cigarettes).

✮ He’s always really sad when he has to leave on tour; not seeing you for months at a time breaks his heart, but sometimes (he wishes it was all the time) he’s able to take you with the band. When you’re on tour with him, you're at every interview, he always answers so proudly that you're his girlfriend, then kisses you (he knows you like to make his fan girls jealous). He tells the interviewer that he’s so happy that he met you; he never thought he could meet a girl like you and fall in love.

✮ He always wants to show you how much he loves you, but you already know that. But he can’t help but shower you with gifts (mainly a lot of expensive jewelry and shoes). He loves how your face lights up with joy every time you open a new gift box.

✮ He will stare at you for hours, just bathing in your presence. He always compliments you and tells you how lucky he is to have you. He calls you “mien süße Mädchen” (my sweet girl).

✮ Tom is always so rough and mean with his band mates and others, but when it comes to you, he can’t help but get all mushy and sweet. Bill and Georg always make fun of him for acting like a "pussy" around you he couldn't care less.

All of the things you read beyond this point are going to be NSFW!!!!!!

·:*¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨*:· ·:*¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨*:· ·:*¨༺ ♱✮♱ ༻¨*:·

✮ The first time you and Tom had sex, it was all about you. He made sure it was extra special (especially if it was your first time). He’s been with quite a few girls before you, so he’s really experienced. He knows exactly what gets a girl off.

✮ He loves going down on you; if he could, he would spend hours between your legs, but my lord, he loves getting his head from you. The first time you sucked him off, he felt as if he were in heaven. He kept accidentally bucking his hips, causing you to gag. He apologized, but secretly, he loved it. "Scheisse baby, are you sure you haven’t done this before? You’re doing so well," he says as he guides your head with his hand, making you choke again. I’m not sure how he expected you to answer with his cock down your throat.

✮ He can’t control himself when you ride him. He loves to watch as your face turns in pleasure. He always gets all worked up and grabs your hips and guides you to go up and down at a faster pace. “Mhh-fuck mein süße Mädchen you feel so good go faster for me yeah? I know you can take it, for me please?”

Thank you so much for reading please let me know if you enjoyed it and if you have and advice I will gladly take it.

[danosrosegarden]

(from my phone) nshtn: for the valentines event what about... helping Edward with his self-care routine, by giving him a nice, soothing, warm soapy bath with your own shampoos in your own tub while he flusters and flounders from the sheer intimacy, the act's worth, the fact that he's naked and you're treating him so innocently and gently?

warming up - edward nashton x gn!reader ₊‧꒰ა❤︎໒꒱ ‧₊

{valentine's requests: two ♡}

{contains: mostly just sweet fluff and comfort. mentions of nsfw activities, but nothing in explicit detail.}

Even through the blurred, orange glow of the candlelit bathroom, you could still see Edward’s peachy skin burning with blush.

While the bathtub filled with water–tinted a milky white with bubbling, floral-scented soap–you watched him shed his clothes from the corner of your eye. You had promised to do the same, just to make him more comfortable. It wasn’t as if you’d never seen him naked before. He just got shy sometimes. 

You had suggested the idea of giving him a nice, long, warm, tranquil bath after he’d tumbled in the door of your shared apartment one evening, aching and sallow from another rigorous day of work. Jaundiced bags of exhaustion were painted underneath his eyes. A long, weary sigh snaked out from his throat as he trudged into the bedroom without offering a single word to you. You couldn’t lie and say you weren’t hurt by the block of distance he’d placed between you two, but you were determined to make the block melt and evaporate. You simply wouldn’t allow his temporary stress to unravel the stitches that held you two together so tightly.

Edward offered a crooked smile to you as he climbed into the tub. A confirmation, almost. I see you, vulnerable and bare. You see me, vulnerable and bare. We’re here, we’re here together.

The steam that feathered into the air from the hot, soapy water made Edward’s forehead slick. You tucked away the wet strands of hair, your hand traveling down and rubbing the tense muscles of his shoulder. His eyes fluttered shut as a small smile crept across his face.

“You’re so good to me.” His voice was gentle. Soft. As if the quiet aura of glistening comfort that sparkled in the air would shatter into little irreparable pieces if he spoke too loud.

Both of your hands traveled back to Edward’s hair, the pads of your fingers rubbing tender circles into his scalp. It went on like this for a while, you gently fondling his damp hair, him sighing, having fallen deep into a thick, cool serenity.

You took advantage of his eyes being shut and drank his whole body in; Edward would normally shy away and try to cover up whenever he saw your eyes wander. But each curve, each splattered patch of freckles, each dash of a blemish, each roll and wrinkle and inch of his being was breathtaking to you. You wished he’d recognize that. 

You hadn’t noticed that your fingers had stopped their mild circling until Eddie’s eyes cracked open. His smile broke as he caught your stare.

“Hey,” he whispered defensively.

You wrapped your hands around him and rested your head on his shoulder, feeling the coolness of the tub that separated your bodies against your bare skin. “Hey, yourself. I’m just looking. I’m surprised you could even see me staring without your glasses.” Edward’s chest rattled with a high giggle.

You sat together in the warmth of the quiet, dim bathroom. Occasionally, Edward’s legs would twitch and the water would bob with gentle ripples. 

Maybe your fingers had slowly found their way to his sides, your nails brushing up and down against his skin. Maybe you just couldn’t help yourself.

When you’d first met Edward, he clearly had a few layers of protection slathered around him. You can never be too cautious. Each night you spent by his side, though, another inch of wall would crumble. You could almost sense him becoming more comfortable. More him. But when he finally got the courage to take your hand and dive into something more with you, the process began again.

He’d bite his lip to keep from being too loud, no matter how many times you insisted you would like the noises that leaked from him. He wanted to shed his clothing with the lights off. He’d ask to do it under the covers. You’d never push him into something that would make him uncomfortable. That would vacuum-suck any enjoyment out of it. But watching his unease slowly curl away and unravel…that was rewarding. The noises he made. The way his hands roamed your body. The nods of confirmation, the words of encouragement. He was delectable when he felt safe, and you were his home. 

Edward shivered as your nails grazed against his plush skin and drew a sharp gasp as your hands slowly plunged below the water and rubbed his thighs. You planted soft kisses across his round cheeks. He was burning hot, searing with blush.

“S-so good to me,” he repeated, his own hand brushing against yours in the balmy, pearly water.

You thought of the nights you’d spent together in bed, wrapped in each other's arms, the room so quiet that it was as if you could hear the stars twinkling and the fat moon glittering from outside your window. You thought of the times he’d twirl your hair in his fingers or make you dinner or text you silly riddles to solve while he was at work or cuddle you close while you weren’t feeling well. He was so good to you, too.

Maybe he needed to work on his knee-jerk reaction of wanting to hide away in the shadows when you’d look at him, your eyes glazed over with chunky layers of love, but at least he was warming up to that idea that he could be loved wholly. He could be cherished unconditionally. There was no goal he had to achieve, no milestone he had to reach before you’d envelop him in your warm, sweet care.

You’d meet him where he was.

[imyourbratzdoll]

Could you do Bucky's POV for "she was his angel and he was her knight"? I would just want to know if Bucky did feel guilty but he was just hiding it.

I like your storys very much wether if it's smut, fluff or angst!❤❤❤❤

hi honey! thank you so much!

this is a sort of part 3 of you aren't nat, and she was his angel and he was her knight.

summary - bucky tries everything to destroy your happiness.

warning - angst, no happy ending for bucky.

the gif I use isn't mine, divider by @newlips and @firefly-graphics

“So… You fucking my best friend now?”

The words echo in Bucky’s head.

“Can’t say I’m surprised. You have always been super easy.” 

He stares at himself in the mirror, following the bruises he received.

“I bet he wishes it was Natasha or maybe even Sharon. Do you really think anyone would want you as their first choice?”

His hand opens and closes. 

“Why should I? It’s not like you like her, and she’s just your rebound because you can’t have who you really want.” 

Bucky’s eyes connect with his own.

“Go on, Stevie. Tell her the truth, c’mon. Doesn’t she deserve to know that you aren’t better than me?”

His anger grows inside of him, remembering it all.

“You can’t take me, Steve. You’re weaker than I am.” 

All because of you, Bucky had lost his best friend. You just had to go and spread your legs for anyone who paid you enough attention, and Steve was the poor soul caught in your web. Bucky hated you and had hated you ever since he met you. When you asked him out, he found the perfect opportunity to make Natasha jealous and possibly hurt you simultaneously. Bucky really had no reason to hate you. When you met him, you welcomed and treated him like family. But the more you hung around him, the more he had grown to hate you, and now he hated you even more because you’ve turned his best friend against him. 

Bucky had come out of his room and headed to the loungeroom, noticing you and Steve curled into each other and Natasha and Sam the same. He scowled. He wished you would just disappear. No one wanted you here. He smirked. Maybe he could prove that Steve was just using you, yeah. He’d do that, and there’d be no way you’d ever compare to the Peggy Carter. He abruptly left the room, coming up with the perfect plan. 

A few weeks passed, and you and Steve were happier than ever, and it was pissing Bucky off. He smiled as a woman walked into the room and toward him. She was the spitting image of Peggy, which should make you see that no one wants you. “Bucky?” He nods, surveying her and feeling happy she kept with the 40s style. “What exactly am I doing?” 

He smiled charmingly, “You're just going to be my date to a party. Is that okay?” She nods, linking arms with him, and they head off to the party Tony had organised. More like yours and Steve’s engagement party, but if Bucky had it his way, there’d be no engagement, wedding, or you. They had entered the room, and Bucky grinned when Steve’s eyes widened slightly. His focus was on the woman beside his ex-best friend. When you saw what Steve was looking at, Bucky's smile widened even more. The smile on your face had fallen.

Bucky began to lead the woman over to the happy couple, feeling his heart skip happily as Steve’s gaze focused on the Peggy look-alike. “Hello, I guess congratulations are in order.” He watched you gulp, your eyes flickering between Steve and the woman. “Oh, right! This is my date.” She smiled, introducing herself and shaking your and Steve’s hand. 

Steve squeezes your side and smiles. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Steve, and this is my beautiful fiancee, Y/n.” Bucky frowned, wondering why he was now looking at you, not the woman he had brought. Steve’s eyes moved to Bucky’s icy blue ones and hardened. Bucky didn’t know that Steve wasn’t like him, even if he liked to think he was. Steve really did love you. He had loved you when you first met and loved you through it all. No other woman could compare to you, and Bucky had to realise that. 

Months after the party had passed, and Bucky tried everything to get rid of you, to hurt you. But it seemed like nothing fazed you anymore. Steve had clouded your mind from Bucky, and he couldn’t even ruin your wedding. 

Bucky sat outside, glaring at everything, not noticing Steve making his way over. “You know, she never did anything to you.” His gaze moved, and he glared more, “I don’t know why you hate her, and I don’t care anymore. You need to stop trying to ruin our happiness, do you understand?” Steve stared into the distance, where you stood, hand placed gently on your stomach.

“Please, you don’t love her.” He grunts as Steve slaps him across the back of his head. 

“Shut the fuck up. I love that woman with my entire being. We’re happy, Bucky. You should’ve been there as my best man. You should’ve been happy for me. You should be the fucking godfather to my child! But for some fucked up reason, you hate my wife. She treated you like a human from the beginning, and you just threw that kindness away. For what fucking reason?” Bucky stared at his old friend as Steve spoke, tears in his eyes with every word. “You don’t even have one. I don’t even know who you are anymore.” 

And with those words, Steve left, leaving Bucky alone. And for many years, Bucky would continue to be alone.

thank you for reading!

feedback and reblogs are greatly appreciated.

[ghostfacd]

ּ ִ⠀🫧 LIVVY ! | G. PERREAULT AU

au masterlist

❤︎ introduction to yn olivia “livvy” hughes and how her and gabe came to be!

Y/N Olivia “Livvy” Hughes is not only the only girl Hughes but also the youngest Hughes

She was born a year after Luke, she’s a 2004 baby which means she’s older than Gabe by a year!

Gabe and Y/N met because Gabe was going on a Princeton tour to see if Princeton was the right fit for him (it wasn’t, at first)

When Gabe first saw Y/N, he absolutely fell head over heels. Kinda wished he picked Princeton just so he can see her pretty face everyday

Y/N’s middle name is Olivia, which is why people call her “Livvy” It’s a nickname that Quinn, Jack, and Luke have called her since they were all babies so it’s definitely very special to Y/N

Y/N is extremely smart, she was a valedictorian in high school and had high honors. Our Princeton girly.

Gabe actually made the first move and he went all the way to Princeton again just so he can ask Y/N if she wanted to come watch his hockey game (she of course said yes, how could she say no when he went all this way just to ask)

Luke is very protective over Y/N, he calls her “my livvy”

Quinn, Jack, and Luke all don’t know that Y/N and Gabe are dating (they’d probably lose their minds if they did know)

It’s not like Y/N or Gabe are ashamed of each other—they know how people can be so Y/N proposed they kept it a secret for a while

Gabe and Y/N both have private instas where they post one another.

Literally the “he fell first and he fell harder” 🥹🥹🥹

Always teasing Livvy for being a cougar but he secretly loves it because he gets babied by her

His friends always tease him too saying “damn Perreault, how’d you pull a hot girl and a sophomore?”

Gabe is gonna tell everyone he went to Princeton because it’s an Ivy and he’s cool like that but the truth is,, he was already set on going to Boston College until Livvy came into his life.

So this boy was just like “bye bye Boston college” and confirmed his stay at Princeton

LIVVY AND GABE ARE JUST SO CUTE, they’re always attached to the hips and Gabe doesn’t look at any other girl in his direction

He’s the type to be like “uh sorry I have a gf” to any female who literally could be like asking for class notes 😭

Always mentioning Livvy somehow, which makes his friends be like dawg are you serious this is the fifth time

The Hughes brothers always checks up on Livvy like literally all the time, Jack and Luke are just happy she’s in Jersey so they can spy on her (leave your sister alone!!)

Livvy calls Quinn “Quinny”, Jack “Rowdy” and Luke “Moosey” and they all love that

Ellen knows about Gabe and she’s very supportive, she doesn’t tell her sons because Livvy asked her not to and Ellen respects that

Livvy goes to all her boyfriend’s hockey games with his jersey on and she’s there when he gets drafted!! She has a mask on so people (especially her brothers) don’t recognize her

[miyazas]

Hellooo! I have a request if you take them. Could you do a pt 2 if haikyuu boys sneaking in including Osamu and Iwaizumi + others of your choice? If you can’t that okay and I understand!

-<3 anon

SNEAKING INTO YOUR ROOM PART 2 — FT.HAIKYUU

[❤︎] — Miya Osamu, Iwaizumi Hajime, Bokuto Koutarou , Aran Ojiro

warnings: suggestive content, making out, Arans is hinted at friends to lovers

PART 1 | PART 3 | TOKREV VER

MIYA OSAMU ༢

“Your room is so fuckin’ cute, darlin.” Osamu teases as he lifts the stuffed animal that sits on your desk. “Samu stop teasing me.” You huff and yank it out of his hands before gently setting it back where it belongs. “m’ not teasin’ m’just stating a fact. What’s this one’s name huh?” He grabs another animal this time from your bed. “Leave them alone Samu.” You whine and try to grab the brown teddy bear from his hands. “Can’t, this little bear just can’t keep its paws off me.” “You wish Samu, now give me my bear back or we aren’t cuddling tonight.” You pull the bear out of his hands and hold onto it as you make yourself comfortable in bed. “Taking away ma cuddles privileges darlin’, that’s harsh.” He holds his chest in winces before settling himself in bed. “Are those glow up stars on the ceilin’? Took mines down when a’ was eight.” “Go to sleep Samu!”

IWAIZUMI HAJIME ༢

You feel yourself start to drool when you see Hajime lift himself inside your window with little to no effort.Biceps bulging out of his muscle tee he swings on leg over the window seal and is met with you impatiently waiting for him in your satin nightgown. “Hurry Haji, hurry!” You pull on his sleeve. “You ever learn a thing or two ‘bout patience doll?” He growls when he almost tips from your insistent pulling. “Yea yea, I want a kiss.” You grin and jump into your boyfriend's arms before shoving your lips on his. Hajime groans when he feels the softness of your body connect with his hard one like pieces of a puzzle. “I think I need to teach my doll a lesson about patience.” Iwaizumi chuckles before he gently sets you on the bed.

BOKUTO KOUTAROU ༢

“Push your shoulders together and just slide in Kou.” You tell him as he struggles to fit his big frame in your too small window. “Eugh! Did your window get smaller since the last time?” he complains as half of his body hangs inside of your room and the other hangs out your window. “ I think I’m stuck, help!” Kou starts to yell and you scurry to clamp his mouth shut. “Kou, you’re going to get us caught.” You whine and pull him—with all your might—into your bedroom. Boruto finally falls into the room and immediately stands up as if he didn’t take a harsh fall to the hard ground. “Baby, I missed you so so much.” He wraps his arms around your waist and sits you on the desk right next to the window. “Missed this nose,” he kisses your nose, “missed those pretty eyes,” he kisses your fluttering eyelids and you slowly wrap your legs around his hips “especially missed this cute pout” he plants a wet kiss on your lips. “Let me kiss you some more before we go the bed, please?”

ARAN OJIRO ༢

Aran stealthily sneaks into your bedroom window like he’s done this one hundred times, because he has. “Ro, what are you doing here?” You whisper hiss because he’s not supposed to be here. “Had to come keep my baby some company, obviously.” He rolls his eyes as if that was obvious. “Since when did I text you for some company?” You remark when he flops on your bed face forward. “I read your thoughts.” He says trying to hold in his smile as he wraps his arm around your waist and shoving his face in your stomach. “You got a crush on me or something?” You tease and rub at the back of his head. “Shut up and cuddle me.” He chuckles and the vibrations course through your body. “Like platonically?” You stutter as your face starts to heat up. “Don’t make me spell it out for you, you know I want you.”

[thedivineflowers]

Had a funny thought but imagine RSA meeting middle school!reader, and seeing how absolutely feral they are.

But some see past that, and see just a child and immediately go to pick them up and hold them like a stuffed animal saying:

"Awww look at the little baby!!!"

❤ anon

HOLY SHIT YOURE SO SMART ❤️ NONNIE ONG

So.

Apparently selected students of RSA were allowed on a field trip to NRC.

And you being one of the most popular students at NRC Crowley said that you'd be giving the students a tour. You of course couldn't go against Crowleys word or else you wouldn't be eating for the week 😔.

You had to wait in the mirror chamber for the RSA students to come through and when they did you had introduced yourself. "My Name is Y/n, I will be giving you all a tour of the school, and after that I will lead you to where you all will be staying for the next three days." You said, trying to stay professional like Crowley said so he doesn't take your allowance.

Neige

Before you couldn't say anything else the student named Neige Leblanche had tilted your head up so he could take a look at you. "Aww! When I heard Vil talking about you he showed me a picture of you and you look even cuter in person!! You have to see this!" Neige squealed as he squished your cheeks and showed you to the dwarfs

That's how it was for the whole tour, even when you got into a small fight with a Savannaclaw group Neige squealed over you.

"Oh, look at how brave you are! I'm sure Vil is so proud of you! I seriously wish I met you sooner!" Neige said as he hugged your head. Dawg his hands were so soft and warm it took you everything in your being to not sob and cry in his arms right there.

And when you lead them to ypur dorm where they were staying Neige was CONCERNED FOR YOU.

"Oh, so you stay here by yourself?" Neige asked. "I stay here with a Cat named Grim, I'm sorry about how dirty the dorm is. Crowley left me on a short notice so I could only clean three rooms decently." You said calmly to Neige. "Really? I've taken care of a cottage by myself but not a whole dorm building! That must be so tiring for you to clean so much!" Neige said with a concerned face. "I'm used to it. Anyways I have to go make dinner for you and the others." He looked at you with a shocked face as you walked into the kitchen.

10/10 would recommend but he insisted that he go to have a conversation with Crowley with how he treated you. In the end you got him to stay and he gave you cookies. His dwarfs also are the bestest of friends with you and have given you flowers to press in a book that Neige gave you for the inconvenience.

Chen'ya

You and him immediately locked eyes and smirked. Y'all are the bestest of the silliest of people. Literally you can tell when he is with you that is how close y'all two are like fuck.

You were dubbed as Chen'ya's younger sibling with how you two will mess with people by the RSA students who went on the trip

And genuinely he like cares about you that he refuses to let you sleep on the couch while he slept in your room he had to roll you up in blankets and place you on the bed while he slept in the room you cleaned for him.

Even when you got into a fight with the Savannaclaw group he backed you up and scared the students away with you.

During the tour he gave you the most randomest things that he claimed to have found lying around. You ended the day with 1,000 more madol in your pocket.

If you're seen as feral on a normal Tuesday then wait for when Chen'ya appears. Riddle and Trey will be jump scared so much by the two of you you were so close to being burnt by fresh tea and getting hit with a whisk.

10/10 outta pocket fella and you two harassed Crowley into giving you more allowance. (MC has magic after their own overblot) He even taught you how to appear and scare people the way he does using your magic.

My Spotify was fucking up and I got annoyed but I genuinely liked writing this even if it seems to not have any energy to some people.

I would've added prince Rielle but I don't know anything about little man but if I find out more about him to be able to write him I will do it.

I might write when you met them for the first time maybe. 🧍‍♂️

Anyways here you go my ❤️ anon pookie ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[jadeylovesmarvelxo]

Hidden Feelings

Summary; The Hellfire Club does not like Eddie's girlfriend Alice one bit, she's bitchy, and rude and Eddie always seems miserable. They think he deserves better.

Y/n is new to Hellfire and in love with Eddie but knows he's off-limits so keeps quiet.

Dustin just wants his two friends to be happy but it's all just hopeless... Right?

Warnings; angst, Alice is a bitch, miscommunication, manipulation tactics (Alice) swearing, mutual pining, angst to fluff. AU ❤

Likes, comments and reblogs are always welcome ❤ I do not give anyone permission to copy my work 💫💞

❤💫

They could hear Alice and Eddie fighting from where they were seated. It was so loud it reverberated off the walls.

Y/n winces as Eddie storms in slamming the door irritation clouding his features and he joins them.

"Sorry, I'm late". He murmurs and as the campaign starts he isn't his usual exuberant and dramatic self which worries her.

Dustin exchanges look with Gareth and her and she walks over to Eddie when he calls for a quick break and gently touches his arm.

His beautiful brown eyes meet hers and her belly fills with butterflies.

"Are you okay Eds?". He softens and nods planting a smile on his features, all dimples.

"I'm fine sweetheart, are you ready for movie night? Harrington let me pick the movie. Get ready for Nightmare on Elm street".

Jeff shakes his head before she can answer Eddie back.

"You're fine? You've been late for the last two meetings man, every time I see you, you're fucking miserable because of Alice".

Eddie avoids the group's stares and swallows.

"Just drop it alright dude, I've had Alice in my ear all day. Don't need to hear shit here too".

Dustin bites his lip and nudges her to say something. The only trouble is that shes head over heels in love with Eddie and anything she does say would not be nice about Alice one bit.

Alice didn't deserve Eddie, she was always getting down on him, keeping that beautiful smile from his face.

Dustin, Robin and Steve constantly encourage her to tell Eddie how she feels but she can't.

Yeah, Alice is a bitch but she's still Eddie's girlfriend and that makes him off limits. He doesn't feel the same and she needs to accept that.

No matter how much it hurt.

The campaign continues but there's tension in the air and she hates it. Ever since Eddie started dating Alice a month ago all she's done is cause tension.

Once the game is completed she helps Eddie clear up with Dustin, Lucas and Mike.

"Do you think I should dump Alice?". Eddie asks her and she freezes because she desperately wishes to say yes but stops herself.

"It's really up to you Eddie, not to me or any of the guys. Only you".

He's silent for a moment and plays with the rings on his fingers, he's stressed she can tell and she places her hand on his to calm him.

Something crackles in the air when their skin makes contact. It's heady and intoxicating but she resists the desire to move closer.

Eddie stares at her for a loaded moment.

"I'm not the good guy in this situation at all y/n, I was in love with someone when I got together with Alice".

She looks up at him shocked then immediately knows who it will be. Chrissy Cunningham, according to Gareth back in middle school Eddie had a massive crush on her so maybe those feelings have returned.

"I mean yeah that's a bit messy Eds but she treats you like utter shit, she's mean to everyone here all the time and I hate how she yells at you all the time. You deserve better". It just slips out and she cringes.

Before Eddie can reply the boys join them excited for movie night.

💞💫💞💫

Alice hated her. She made that known from the minute they met and never let her and Eddie be alone for even a second.

At lunch, she sat beside Eddie which was usually Dustin's seat but Alice wouldn't budge from Eddie's side.

"Oh, y/n I was just wondering if you and Steve were a couple. You're both single aren't you?". She frowns shaking her head.

"We're both single yeah but we're just friends". Alice bats her eyes and giggles.

"Silly me. Why not date him though? Steve is very handsome". Alice asks confused.

"Yeah but I just don't feel that way about him". She watches Alice's eyes light up and it makes her uneasy.

"But you're in love with someone?". When she doesn't answer Alice smirks,

"Oh my god, you are? Who is it? Do we know them, surely you can say?"

What is she playing at? There's something like glee in Alice's eyes and she realises that is a game.

Alice knows how she feels about Eddie and is toying with her, knowing she won't say anything about it.

"Leave her alone Alice". Eddie snaps and the temperature plummets as Alice turns an icy glare onto him.

The bell ringing is her saviour because she is so close to snapping herself and gets up hurrying away quickly.

"Y/n, wait". Eddie catches up with her and she offers him a small smile. " Jesus H Christ, I'm sorry about that sweetheart".

She shrugs. She's used to Alice being a bitch to her.

"It's okay". He's quiet for a second looking like he desperately wants to say something but is conflicted.

"Are you in love with someone?". He eventually inquires and she feels flustered.

"Eddie, it doesn't matter". God, please don't ask anymore she begs silently.

"You are? He guesses correctly. Who's the lucky guy?". Something in his tone makes her pause, she can't put her finger on what is though.

"It doesn't matter, he doesn't feel the same way Eds". She's quick to say and hopes the conversation is done because if he guessed how she felt she would be mortified.

"Then he's an idiot". He murmurs and walks away, she watches him go longing to say how she feels.

💖💫

She's sick the next couple of days and spends most of it cuddled up in bed. Eddie, Robin and Steve join her for movies and popcorn which is very sweet because she naps through most of it.

Mostly they just keep her spirits up.

Eddie seems lighter than he has in ages but the sickness takes it out of her before she can ask what happened.

She figures she will find out what's going on when she goes back to school on Thursday as there is an extra Hellfire session this week.

So she just relaxes with the three of them unaware of the shit storm on it's way.

💫💖

Nancy keeps her busy at lunch working for the school newspaper so she doesn't see any of Hellfire or find out why Eddie is in such a good mood.

Alice seems to be extra pissed today and directs most of the ire her way for some reason and corners her after school as she is just about to head to Hellfire.

"We need to talk". Alice grabs onto her arm and she scowls.

"Get off me!". She pulls free of Alice's grip and glares at her.

"You think I don't know how you feel about Eddie you sneaky little bitch! I bet you were quick to poison his ear about me". Alice is inches away from her face and seething.

"What the fuck are you talking about? No, I haven't but yeah Eddie deserves better than you".

Alice laughs. "And you think that's you? You're pathetic babe. You and all that Hellfire shit".

Furious she decides to walk away before she does something she regrets, like slap the smirk of that bitches face but she's not a violent person so she tries to reign her temper in. Alice follows her.

"You think I don't know what those Hellfire freaks think. They don't like me? Tough shit. Alice hisses, I told Eddie all about your crush and he wants you out of the group, he's disgusted by it but just too nice to tell you himself".

She stops walking. Her heart beats fast, anxiety filling her.

Eddie knows how she feels and now she's humiliated but something irks her.

"No, he's the head of the group, he'd tell me himself". She's certain of that but falters under Alice's sneer.

"That's what you think. Hand in your Hellfire shirt tonight and leave Eddie alone. I don't know why you ever thought Eddie would want you". She snorts then leaves.

Y/n wrenches the shirt off trying very hard not to cry and heads into the auditorium where Eddie and the rest of Hellfire are setting up.

"Omg, you'll never believe what happened... y/n?". Dustin asks excited features slowly turning confused at her tears but she focuses on Eddie and drops the shirt on the table. He takes it looking at her puzzled.

"Sweetheart?" Alice walks in looking smug.

"Alice told me everything, that you want me out of the group? Do you think I wanted to fall in love with you knowing you don't feel the same way and never will?".

Eddie grips the shirt and looks at her in wonder.

"You love me?". Tears roll down her cheeks and Alice giggles.

"I told her how you felt Eds that you are so disgusted by her being in love with you and were too scared to kick her out of the group because you don't feel the same".

Eddie gapes and moves to hold her.

"No sweetheart". She backs away from him and Dustin swivels around to Alice.

"You bitch". Y/n doesn't understand what's going on she just wants to leave and runs out the door missing the way the auditorium erupts in a whole lot of shouting.

💫💞💫💞

Max won't let her miss movie night so Steve picks her up with Robin while she sits quietly heart still aching from what transpired yesterday.

Since it's Hellfire night and that can run on she comforts herself that she can avoid Eddie even though she's really missing him.

As they head inside Family Video Steve hugs her tightly.

"Go to the store room there are some new movies in. Pick whatever you like". She thanks him and kisses his cheek.

As she enters the back room and clicks on the light Dustin is there and Eddie. What the hell?

"This is for your own good" Dustin yells at her and locks the door behind him.

"You little shit". She yells and turns back to Eddie sighing.

"Sweetheart will you please let me explain myself. What Alice said was a pack of lies. I dumped her on Monday".

This stops her in her tracks. He dumped her?

"What? You did?". He nods.

"When you were off sick, I've been growing more and more tired of her shit. She was ragging on you and Hellfire and I lost it, she made me so fucking miserable, I had enough".

She listens intently and he gently cups her cheek.

"Remember, when I said to you how I was in love with someone when I got together with Alice? I never stopped. Wouldn't have mattered if Alice was the perfect girl and not a fucking nightmare. Could never get the girl I loved out of my head".

He smiles warmly and she feels hope for the first time in a while that her feelings aren't so one sided after all.

"I told Alice we weren't working and could never work because I'm in love with you and I was sick of hiding It from you. I never thought you'd feel the same way princess but then you told me you did and I was so happy but Alice had told you all of those lies".

She leans into him and he kisses her hair.

"So you had no idea how I felt?". She asks him and he shakes his head.

"Not until you said, I'm sorry baby. I should have just told you how I felt but I thought that you liked Harrington so I tried to move on, Alice guessed how I felt and told me I'd have no chance".

She swears.

"I love you, Eddie, I'm so in love with you but I never said it because I didn't think you felt the same way. Then you started dating Alice and I thought I lost my chance".

He closes his eyes beaming happily.

When he opens them, they are so full of love that she feels like an idiot that she never noticed before and kisses him.

"We are both idiots". He chuckles warmly and she nods through happy tears.

"Yes, we are".

Dustin shouts asking if they have sorted things out and opens the door when they both shout yes.

Eddie ruffles Dustin's hair and they join movie night hand in hand.

❤

The Hellfire Boys seem delighted that she and Eddie are together, they are both so much happier now they don't have to hide how in love they both are.

Alice also thankfully doesn't bother them again either and they finally get their happy ending.

❤💫❤💫

[mistyresolve]

| Sunder - Simon “Ghost” Riley x Reader (Edited)

Word Count - 2.2k 

Summary - Y/n is caught of guard when they discover a stray soldier had stuck around after his mission. Curiosity piqued, they decide to stay and talk with Ghost to figure out why he never went home.

Warnings/Tags - Fluff, Angst, Explicit language and description, Mentions of death (including a child and his family), Ghost is morally grey in this one

A/N - sometimes writing about Ghost makes me sad :( also i don’t know if this is fluff or angst my apologies 

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You hadn’t expected anyone to be lingering in the 141 barracks with most of them having left for home after their recent assignment. You expected all of them to return home actually. But Simon Riley was slouched on the couch in the common area. 

He was still in his gear, save his bulletproof vest and gun. The zipper to his black tactical shirt was undone, the chain to his dog tags peeking out from beneath the fabric. His mask was lying on the couch beside him, and he had yet to wipe off the black paint, faded from wear and time. It still lined his eyes and smeared down his cheeks. Not a single light was on but you could still make out enough to recognize it as him with the help of the moonlight leaking in through the windows.

“Oh,” you jumped, the stack of mail in your hand flying up to cover your eyes. The mail you collected for both Price and Gaz as they requested, and you came here intending to just leave it on the table in the commons room for when they return. You were a close friend of Gaz’s and spent every Friday night at their barracks playing pool or cards with him and whatever other member wished to join in that night. You’ve met Ghost a couple of times and played a game of cards with him a handful of times. He won poker every single time, his ability to bluff and lie always floored you. He’s taken hundreds of dollars from you. 

Not a single one of those interactions has he ever removed his mask. 

You waved the envelopes in front of your face, your eyes squeezed shut for added reassurance, “I’m just dropping off some mail for Gaz and Price,” you told him. If only to make sure he didn’t think you were trying to sneak in thinking everyone was gone and snoop. This time when you dropped the mail from your face, your eyes were on the floor. 

He huffed a laugh, the sound deep and reverberating. There wasn’t a hint of humour in it, “You can look up. I’m not going to bite,” he lilted. He sounded exhausted like he was latching onto consciousness with a death grip, forcing it to remain with him. 

You hesitated, turning the thought over in your head. He knew that you knew if you so much as thought about revealing his identity he would hunt you down and string you up to use as an example. 

You dragged your gaze up the length of his body. He was pure muscle and long limbs. He wasn’t built with cosmetics in mind but with the need for unbridled strength and power. His broad shoulders and chest were on display as he rested his arms on the back of the couch. He devoured the space. He looked like he was made too big for this world. 

You lingered on his face for longer than you’d like to admit. He’s always caught your attention but you had your reservations as to why you never actively pursue him. He didn’t seem like the kind of man you’d take home to meet your parents for Christmas. He didn’t seem like a man capable of something like love. He always left you with the impression that he was a ticking time bomb. His humanity held together by sheer will and spite. 

But looking at him now, nil the mask, he looked so mundane. He wasn’t at all like his many nicknames and reputations. He wasn’t Azrael, an angel of death. He wasn’t the Grim Reaper. The scars on his skin were evidence enough that he was capable of pain, injury, and eventually death. 

He wasn’t Death because it was Death that stalked him; It followed him into his sleep and it hovered over his shoulders as both his ally and foe. 

Without the mask, he was just like everyone else. He was also handsome. The type of handsome someone has to grow into. Hard lines and dark features. The oily black paint and dark room made it harder to distinguish every one of his features but you didn’t need to see them. Now, a small part of you wished you had tried your shot with him. 

“I thought everyone went home?” you placed the mail on the table, sorting through them by person so you had somewhere other than him to look at. 

“They did,” he quipped. His patience was evidently thinned, not by you, but by something else. 

The inquisitive side of you perked up, ears turning in on him. You eyed him from your spot at the table and your attention snagged on the glass in his hand, the amber liquid inside tilted to one side, “Everyone including you,” you specified. 

He leaned his head all the way back on the cushions, his face pointed to the ceiling, “No. Not me. I usually don’t.”

“Hmm,” you moved the kitchen and opened the fridge to find the sparkling water you left at the bottom. The can cracked and fizzed and the faint smell of strawberries and pomegranates wafted up, “No one you want to see back home?” it wasn’t that uncommon for someone to not want to return home, some people joined just to get away from it. Maybe he was one of those people.

“Nope,” he popped the p, his head rising back up to look at you. He wasn’t much of a talker to begin with but this was different.      

“No movies at the theatre you were looking forward to?” Since there wasn’t any source of entertainment at the base most of the soldiers raved about the movie theatres once they got back from leave. Although, the thought of the man sitting in front of you going to a theatre and eating popcorn was laughable. 

“I’m more of a show kind of guy,” he followed you with his eyes as you made your way to the couch opposite him. 

“How was the mission?” you went for the elephant in the room. Gaz had stopped by your office on his way to the air stripe, he sat with you for an hour to discuss the mission. You knew the result of the mission, but you had a feeling that even Gaz was leaving bits and pieces out. Leading you the conclusion that something had gone awry.  

“A success.”

Okay. Not really what you were looking for.

“I would expect nothing less from you and the 141, and you don’t usually come back to base until you’ve done your job. That’s why I didn’t ask if it was a success,” you tilted your head at him, “And if it was a success why are you not celebrating? Instead, you’re sitting in an empty barracks, in the dark, drunk. So, tell me, How was the mission?” 

“I’m not drunk. I’m drinking,” he pulled at the syllables with his tongue, emphasizing each one. 

Temper.  

“Hang me on a technicality,” you deadpanned, he needed a little pushing, you just had to be careful not to poke any bruises when doing so.   

“I don’t need a psychologist to be psychoanalyzing me and writing ‘unfit for work’ all over my file,” His teeth flashed white in the dark as he snarled. He was never this volatile, not that you’ve ever witnessed anyway. He was like an injured animal back into a corner.

“I was a counsellor, not a psychologist. I didn’t make diagnoses, I just listen and give advice where it’s wanted,” you reply, referring to your old civilian job before joining the force and working with the soldiers here. You had shifted career paths to health promotion and providing resources to anyone who came and asked for them. You were passionate about it, and wanted to help every last one of these soldiers. The only issue was that not many of them wanted the help, and Ghost fell into that category, “Whatever is going on in that head of yours, I can assure you I’ve heard it before. If not worse. Besides, I’m off the clock. Nothing you say will be repeated or recorded. Nothing anyone ever says is.”   

“Have you cornered anyone else from the 141?” he looked at you from beneath his brows, suspicion creeping in on him. 

You shrugged. The truth was that every member of the 141 has visited your office at one point or the other. All except him. He was on your radar but you were going to wait until he came to you. For now, you were extending a hand towards him. Whether he took it now, later or not at all was entirely up to him and you’d back down the moment he expressed that he had no desire to open up.   

You waited, folding your legs underneath in a show of, I can wait for you all night.  

He was completely still, his gaze glazing over in thought, in remembrance. There was a long moment of silence, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence that was making room for something else, something heavier, “They killed a little girl. She couldn’t have been older than eight,” he finished the last of his drink, “Didn’t want her to talk, so they shot her in the head and left her body for us to find. I stepped right over her and I still couldn’t even look at her face. Seems like the world’s greatest sin, right? Killing a child like that,” his gaze dropped to his feet, “But I’ve been thinking…I would have done the same if it meant protecting a mission. Seems like a pretty good trade to me, a single life to protect the rest,” He poured himself another half glass of whiskey in preparation to nullify whatever feelings were bubbling up, “I’m really, uhh,” he cleared his throat, “I’m really no different from the men and woman I’ve killed. We go out there and believe we’re doing the world a favour, but who’s to say we aren’t the villain in their story?”      

“You have to make some of the hardest decisions a single human has to make, and no, it’s not fair. Sometimes there is no right answer, no better option. You sacrifice every part of yourself for the sake of peace. So of course you’re going to lose in the end. Even if the mission was a success, you still lose. There are no winners in war, Ghost,” You pulled one of the decorative pillows to your chest. It was a harsh truth, but it was one that you wholeheartedly believed, and he didn’t need pretty or sugar-coated words. 

Devastation rang as you noticed his expression. He had been expecting you to hate him for his confession. Be disgusted with him. This man thinks he’s fighting this war by himself, that’s he’d completely alone in this world. To think he’s been dealing with these thoughts and feelings by himself. Ruminating over them till there is nothing left but self-loathing and abhorrence. 

“You’re not the monster you think you are. Maybe a little fucked up, yes, but who isn’t in this line of work?” 

He was quiet, his mouth a thin line as he contemplated your words. You could see he was listening, hearing you, but he didn’t necessarily believe you. That was okay though, you weren’t expecting him to. He’s tormenting himself for so long that cracking through that kind of damage would take time. Either way, you formed a metaphoric bridge to him, and gave him an alternative. 

His shoulders loosened after a long while, “I’m not going to become a regular,” he stated, meaning this kind of conversation was not something he planned on making a norm for himself and he wasn’t going to be showing up at my office anytime soon or very often.  

“That’s a real shame, I quite like your company,” you tossed the pillow to the side, stretching out your legs before standing up to leave. 

You were just picking up your can of sparkling water when he said, “Stay.”

It wasn’t a question or a demand, but rather a submission. He didn’t want to be alone right now. Knew that he needed someone else's voice to drone out his thoughts. 

You slowly slid back into the couch, understanding what he was needing at this moment. Inside your head, you jumped into the air and clicked your heels together, “And do what?” 

He sighed and his eyes fluttered shut, “Just talk. About anything. Not this, but anything else.”  

You pondered for a second, “You know, I’ve always wanted to see what you looked like under that mask. It’s been one of life's greatest mysteries.”

His eyes popped back open, a smile tugging at his lips, the hint of a dimple appearing, “Not a word to anyone else, you hear me?” 

“A word about what?” you feigned ignorance.

His smile grew the slightest bit, “Exactly.”

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A/N - I used Ghosts Azrael skin religiously on MW 2019 

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