#and if anyone would be interested in that at all too...

[bucketbueckers]

WILD MOUNTAIN THYME

pairing: paige bueckers x fem!reader

content: au, language, slight spoilers for sinners (2025) but it kinda deviates from the plot a bit, angst, blood, death, ending is happy but happy could be debatable tbh, complicated history between reader and paige but they love each other a lot 😕, smut, make up sex(ish), oral (r!receving) (bc what is sinners if not a movie about eating puss), scissoring, spitting 👅, what do you call sex when your partner is trying to kill you but they Can't so they're fighting against their nature and their body and mind but they get you off so it all works out (kind of?), period typical mentions of racism, homophobia, & misogyny, minor historical inaccuracies, slight soulmates, horribly rushed ending, terrible proofreading

wc: 22.5k

synopsis: You and Paige Bueckers had a complicated history. You existed in that weird plane between lovers and something doomed by a bitter narrative, a relationship marred by the hatred of your time and the impossibility of desire. The two of you weren’t ordinary — you were an orphan taken in by a Hoodoo practitioner, and Paige, who wasn’t quite something or the other, was a woman who just couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. You should have known that she’d leave one day, not one to be tied down in a place she clearly didn’t belong. There’s no misery worth complaining about in the Mississippi Delta, but when Paige returns from Chicago with Smoke and Stack in tow, you realize they’d brought with them a whole lot more than ambition and foreign liquor.

notes: i have nothing to say besides i love sinners and i really hope y'all like this one 🙏 if you're hesitant about reading bc you haven't seen sinners, you really don't need movie knowledge, although i have a link to a totally legal website if anyone's interested in watching. this one was a challenge to write but im happy w how it turned out (even though i definitely failed my exams because i wrote half of this in a day when i should have been studying)!! please be gentle in the inbox bc i hurt myself with the end too but i debated three different endings and thought this one was Right 💔 as always tho i hope y'all enjoy 🫶

When it happens, you’re surprised. Almost devastatingly so.

You’re surprised because you know that you love Paige Bueckers. You had told her as much. You’re surprised because she had told you the same. Because she promised that one day, she would get the both of you out of the Mississippi Delta. That she’d take the both of you north, perhaps somewhere more tolerant of two women being together. It comes as a shock to you because of the way in which she left – silently, unassuming, simultaneously remorseful and unforgiving.

It’s surprising because she’d clearly been thinking about it for a while. She didn’t leave like she’d shared a stranger’s bed for a night, guilty and ashamed and clumsy all in one. Paige left in the same way you’d once watched a ranch hand put a horse out of its misery when it broke its leg – like it was inevitable, carefully thought out, meant more to save you than to keep you in pain.

That was the confusing part to you. You thought that you and Paige were fine. Having grown up together, you were friends for a long time until it blossomed into something more. Perhaps something more taboo, but you were never quite sure how something so pure could be considered wrong. You knew that you and Paige were unconventional. The Mississippi Delta was all thorns and flames, a region wherein its history was stiflingly pressed down on everyone who wasn’t white or male or wealthy. So, you knew that to be young, and women, and in love in the Delta was difficult, but that had never seemed to be an issue – not one that you would have allowed to tear the both of you apart.

She left you in the morning, and the night before was perfect in a way that gives you emotional whiplash. Annie, a Hoodoo practitioner who had taken you in at a young age, was out, leaving you alone in your shared home. You were standing at the counter, carefully layering pie lattice over a thick bed of apple filling, when Paige knocked and let herself in like she lived there her entire life. She may as well have, considering how much time she truly spent with you.

You grinned at her when she made her way into the kitchen, carefully toeing off her shoes, knowing Annie’s rules. She was carrying a bag in her hand which she set down on the counter before she pressed up behind you, her arms encircling your waist and her lips dusting a sweet kiss to your temple. “Smells good,” she’d commented, watching your fingers work the pie crust.

“Thank you,” you responded. “Flattery doesn’t mean you get to taste it before it’s finished, though.”

Paige sighed, the sound wounded and dramatic, and you laughed because you knew her so well. “What if I make you a deal? We can negotiate.”

You rolled your eyes, cutting the excess crust off of the edge, missing her warmth when she pulled away to reach for the bag she’d walked in with. “You’ve been spending too much time with Elijah,” you muttered. “Always tryin’ to swindle us good folk.”

You didn’t need to look over to see the mischievous grin on her face. “I prefer the term ‘looking for a bargain.’”

“A pig’s a pig even if you put lipstick on it,” you retorted, and Paige huffed something under her breath that sounded a lot like mockery. She pulled a container out of the bag, presenting it with a flourish, her smile wide like she’s holding diamonds. You glanced at her, then at the container, a smile of your own growing despite your attempts at trying to be nonchalant. “That ice cream?” you asked.

“Of the vanilla variety,” she said snootily.

“My favorite,” you hummed.

Paige pretended to look surprised. “Wow!” she exclaimed. “I had no idea. Although I heard it pairs real well with pie.”

“Baked pie,” you said gently.

“Pig’s a pig,” she responded immediately. “Baked or otherwise.”

You couldn’t help the sharp bark of laughter that ripped from your chest as you shook your head fondly. Reaching for a spoon, you dipped it carefully into the filling, still warm from combining the softened apples with the sugar syrup, and you held the utensil out for Paige. With a beaming smile, she enclosed her lips around the spoon, humming in happiness. It almost reminded you of when the two of you were younger and you always begged Annie to share the spoon when she was baking. That made you realize just how long you and Paige had been in each other’s lives, and how badly you wanted to stay in hers.

“That’s all you’re getting,” you chastised. You couldn’t keep your expression neutral for too long – Paige had looked so soft, so earnest, so full of love that it made something in your chest swell and slam against a cage made of bone.

But she’d just leaned in, a gentle hand settling on your hip, and pressed her mouth to yours with a sort of gentleness that feels like the flutter of eyelashes against your cheek and the warmth of the sun pouring in through the windows in the early morning. When she pulled back, the both of you were smiling, and she promised, “I got all I need.”

Your smile widened. She wasn’t talking about the apple pie waiting to bake in the oven. She wasn’t talking about the container of ice cream resting on the counter, already melting and the condensation sweating outside. In a language only the two of you could understand, she meant you. The two of you. The bond that you share and the love that you’ve nurtured despite society’s turmoil. It was sweet in a way that made you question how she could be so gentle, so in love with you, and leave you before the sun rose the morning after.

She spent the night. Once the apple pies were finished, you cut them into even slices while she carefully portioned out scoops of vanilla ice cream onto the top. She had looked so focused, leaning down to compare the amounts, and when she was sure, she handed you the plate that had more ice cream melting from the heat of the desert.

You and Paige retired to your bedroom, curling up in bed together with your slices of pie, bodies pressed together tightly under the blankets. You ate pie until your stomachs ached, laughed until tears slipped from your eyes, and kissed until her hand burned against your waist and the taste of her began to blend with the sweetness of the ice cream and the warmth of the pie.

It escalated from there. With the moon as your witness, you were sure that her lips had touched every inch of your skin and her hands knew the map of your body like it was her own. Like it was something sacred. That you were something to revere, to deserve, to love.

It felt different. Softer, vulnerable. Almost as though words weren’t enough and she was trying to fill in the blanks with her hands. You didn’t know at the time that it was an apology. You never considered that it was a goodbye, that your last memory of her would be one of love and not of her leaving you with the warmth of her body lingering in the sheets next to yours.

You laid together in bed, legs tangled and sheets bunched up at your chests. Your nose was tucked into the crook of her neck. She smelled like warm pie, like something earthy and sweet from her cologne, like something heady from the sweat that had glistened on her skin while she made you fall apart for her. The night was quiet, alive with the sound of crickets chirping, the slow drag of the wind through the crack in your window. You were asleep, breathing gently, ignorant of how Paige laid awake for hours.

It would have been so easy for her to change her mind, she thought. To stay in bed with you until late morning, to pull you back under the covers when you tried to dress. To begrudgingly (happily) follow you out for breakfast, then entertain (annoy) you at Annie’s shop, sneaking kisses when you weren’t organizing the roots or helping customers. It would have been so easy for her to tell Elijah and Elias that she wasn’t going to go with them to Chicago, to tell them that as terrified as she was, she was willing to be strong. For you. 

The south may never let the two of you be in love. In your lifetime, you may never be fully accepted for who you love. And that was scary, because all Paige ever wanted to do was love you in the open. Proudly, unashamedly. The thought of keeping your love indoors made her sick. You deserved someone who you didn’t have to hide with. That someone may never be her.

The letter she had tucked into her pocket was nothing more than a cop-out. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to leave your side if she had to look you in the eyes and tell you the reasons why she was leaving. It was an apology because literally and metaphorically, she could never be the man for you. She couldn’t be what society deemed as proper, couldn’t be the person to hold her family together, couldn’t be the one with the guts and the confidence to stay.

So her decision was made. She didn’t sleep a wink that night. As soon as the first breaths of sunlight poked through the window and the first rooster announced the moon’s retreat, she carefully slid out of bed, pushing her pillow to your chest, her heart shattering as she watched you bury yourself further into the blankets, seeking a heat and a body that wasn’t there anymore. She placed the note on your nightstand, tucked next to the satchel of black cohosh you keep for protection.

Paige stared at you for a long while, throat burning with the struggle of keeping her tears at bay. She watched the gentle rise and fall of your chest as you breathed, tried to commit your image to memory – the slope of your nose, the way your hair billowed out on the pillows, the dark bruise you sported under your jaw because selfishly, she wanted you to remember her after she left. She just didn’t know how badly you’d ache in her absence.

Unable to resist, she brushed a featherlight kiss across your temple, if only to remember the way your skin felt beneath her lips, and you hardly stirred. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or for worse.

Then she was gone. And you were left to pick up the pieces of yourself.

“This all for you, honey? Just the thistle and the High John?”

The little girl peeking over the edge of the counter nods at you quickly, and you don’t bother to hide your smile as you carefully pinch off the High John and put it safely into the small, cloth bag. Thistle is quick to follow. You tie it gingerly, holding it out to the girl – Elise, you think her name is, a regular at Annie’s shop, and you make eye contact with her. Her brother Will ambles quietly behind her. “Now, you remember Miss Annie’s rules, right?” you ask her. “Don’t sell none of that on the way home.”

Elise smiles at you brightly, tucking the bag of roots into her dress pocket. “Yes, ma’am,” she agrees sweetly. In return, she hands you a folded up piece of paper – more like a credit than actual currency, but you and Annie both knew how hard people had to work to obtain these bills.

“Thank you,” you say, and the two children skip out of the shop.

From across the room, Annie glances at you. She’s busy rearranging and restocking her wares. Her lips curl into a smile, one that’s a quiet kind of pride, a silent appreciation. “Those kids love you,” she comments. You drop your head in a gesture of shyness. Finally satisfied with her work, Annie crosses the room and you hand her the currency. “I mean it. You remember the other day when you were stuck tending to the goat?”

You huff a little, leaning back against the counter with your arms crossed. “That goat hates me,” you mutter.

Chuckling, Annie continues, “Well, all Elise and Will could ask was, ‘Where is she? Can we see her? Can we say hi?’ Think they come more for you than for the roots.”

You laugh. “You know that’s not true,” you say.

Annie just gives you a knowing look, but before either of you can say anymore, you hear the crunch of gravel under tires. Instantly, your hair raises on end, knowing that you mostly get foot traffic. Cars were rare, especially amongst those who shopped with Annie.

You crane your head, glancing out the window, but you can’t see much. You and Annie share a look. You follow the older woman to the back door, peering out, and you simultaneously relax and tense up at the sight.

There’s a man squatting next to the grave of Annie’s late baby. He’s dressed formally, pristine, and he’s laying down white flowers next to the clearing. His blue hat sticks out like a sore thumb. You know instantly that it’s Elijah – or Smoke, as most people know him by, and Annie sucks in a deep breath next to you.

If Elijah is in town, then you’re sure that means Elias – Stack – is too. And if the twins are back in town, then that means–

“Let me go talk to him,” Annie interrupts your thoughts, already stepping outside before you can say anything else. For respect and privacy, you close the door behind her, but you almost jump out of your skin when you turn around and you spot her in front of you. You react before you can think better of it.

“Jesus!” Paige exclaims. She catches you by the wrist, a blade gripped firmly in your hands, surprise on her features and an amalgamation of feelings on yours. Guilt, shock, anger. Despite the fact that seeing her again pisses you off beyond belief, your body doesn’t know what your brain does – it still yearns for her as if the two of you were years younger, more immature and devastatingly in love when being in love was the last thing two women of your statuses should have been.

You missed her. You hate that you do. But you know you couldn’t be surprised by it, even if it’s been months – or closer to over a year.

“You welcome in all your customers like that, or just the tall and pretty ones?” she jokes, but her humor does little to diffuse the tension. Your eyes narrow and her face falls slightly. Paige, not unkindly, carefully pries your fingers off of the blade in your hand and closes it in on itself, handing it back to you handle-first.

“You can’t just creep up on people like that,” you mutter, pocketing the blade, and putting space in between your bodies like you know that she and her are more of an inevitability than a possibility. You’d fall right back into her without a second thought. “I could have killed you.”

Paige hums, shoving her hands into her pockets, and that’s when you get a good look at her. Growing up, Paige was never a woman for wearing dresses, something that clearly got her into a lot of trouble with a lot of people. She’d pretended like she never cared for their perception of her, but you knew it weighed on her, even when she dressed how she preferred. Now, she’s wearing a pristine pair of black loafers paired smartly with a deep, purple suit so dark that it looks black. Her blonde hair is pinned back in a low bun.

Despite the distance, it’s clear that time has been kind to her. She’s aged beautifully – no longer the sixteen year old girl you’d found crying in town, trying to hold onto both parts of her family like it was sharp, unforgiving barbed wire. Paige had always struggled to belong. You should have known that insecurity and fear would take her far away from you, but you wish you’d fought a little harder for her, even when you bear guilt and anger of your own.

Maybe she should have fought a little harder for you, too, but you’re older now. Wiser. You know the both of you could point fingers at each other for as long as you wanted to, but it would solve nothing.

“I don’t know about kill,” she muses, a charming grin right back on her face. “I taught you to fight. I know you.”

Confidence seems to be something she’d picked up in Chicago, too, or maybe it’s just audacity. The audacity to come waltzing back into yours and Annie’s shop like she wasn’t the one who left you before the sun came up with nothing more than a note, an apology, and the aching feeling in your chest that you may truly never be happy again unless it was with her. The audacity to joke with you like there’s not a greater distance between you and her than there is distance between Mississippi and Chicago. The audacity to claim that she knows you when, if she did, she would have stopped hiding behind a bravado she picked up from Stack and started with an explanation. An apology. Anything at all to let you know that what the two of you had wasn’t something you hallucinated and that she loved you in the first place.

You don’t humor her, your face twisting up. “What are you doing here?” you ask instead, your tone flat. That cracks through Paige’s poised exterior, her throat bobbing like she’s resisting the urge to flinch. You take a step closer to her. She stands several inches taller than you, but you stare up at her fearlessly. “What ran you out of Chicago? Was it the Irish mob? The Italians?”

Paige presses a little closer now, something in her eyes flashing recklessly, her body eclipsing yours. You don’t stumble back, nor do you avert your gaze from hers. If anything, you push your chest into hers, feeling your heart beating out of your ribcage, her breath fanning against your skin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she mutters, brows furrowed in quiet anger.

“Don’t I?” you snarl. You pinch the fabric of her suit between your thumb and index finger, tugging it slightly, and in her surprise, she falls against you, her arms shooting out to cage you against the counter. But you hardly react. “You’re wearing a pinstripe top. Italian. Tweed trousers. Irish. Playing both sides again, aren’t you? Both at the same time?”

Paige says your name firmly, like she’s begging you to stop talking. You don’t, feeling the anger of her abandonment hit you again. “You can’t always be in two places at once,” you hiss. “But you always will be ‘cause you keep fucking running away.”

That makes her anger return tenfold. “I’m not running,” she scoffs.

You reach into your dress pocket, producing a worn scrap of paper, and you slap it against her chest with a firm noise. “Yeah?” you whisper, cocking your head. She holds onto your wrist with one hand, and with the other, she unfolds the paper, her body stiffening at the sight of the words scribbled in an all too familiar, messy scrawl. Her words, the very ones she’d left with you when she went off to Chicago, leaving the Delta behind in the fading shadow of the night. “What do you call this, then?”

She’s silent, her throat bobbing under the weight of her apprehension. You wonder if she’d admit it. If she’d apologize. But her blue eyes find yours, glassy with unshed tears, and you don’t realize you’re crying until her palm raises to wipe the water off of your cheek. Her hand lingers, though – her skin warm against yours, callused and rough from time but soft in a way that reminds you that it’s Paige in front of you. You’re not sure if that reminder is supposed to comfort you or make you cry harder.

“A regret,” she murmurs finally.

Oh.

Your eyes search hers. For deceit or for honesty – the difference between the two can be hard to tell apart most times. But you see earnestness. It makes you soften.

“I walked away,” Paige admits, her voice breaking. “From the one person in my life who’d made me feel like I belonged. Like I had a place. Like I was more than who my parents were or who my parents weren’t. I left a note and I ran to a city that cared for me even less than the Delta did.” She pauses, trying to find the words. “I regretted that decision every morning when I woke up on a dirty mattress in Chicago and realized I wasn’t next to you.”

“Was it worth it?” you ask, if only to hear the answer.

Paige doesn’t hesitate. “No. None of it ever was. Not when I had to lose you.”

“Why did you go?” You can feel the hesitation in her body, and you press a little further into her. “And make sure you tell me the fucking truth, Paige. No bullshit.”

“I didn’t deserve you,” she murmurs. “Shit, I still don’t. You deserve to be loved in the open, by someone who can provide for you and keep you safe. That was never gonna be with me.”

“I never wanted any of that,” you seethe, fisting your hand in her suit, dragging her closer to you. Her breath hitches, remorse and guilt on her face, but you continue speaking. “Do you understand that? I never needed anyone to provide for me, to keep me safe. I just wanted you to be with me.”

Paige doesn’t break eye contact when she utters, “They’d never let us be in love.”

You swallow your grief. “And what about we?” you say. “What about what we want? I’d rather love you in the dark than someone else in the sun.” You’re both silent. A lone tear slips from Paige’s waterline. You wipe it away gingerly, and her hand catches yours by her face, tangling your fingers together. “I just wish I got the chance to tell you that before you left.”

She nods, the motion like acceptance. Like she understands where you’re coming from – that she always has. That maybe she just needed to hear those words from you to understand it was never about what she thought you deserved, but about what the both of you wanted. As two women in the Mississippi Delta, it was always difficult to carve out that space for yourselves, to want so openly, to want each other so openly. You and Paige have been defying the norm for years now. You’d always thought that it would catch up with you. The love you had for Paige eclipsed that fear.

“Wasn’t the mobs in Chicago,” she confesses under her breath. You cock your head at her, and she deflates. “At least…not yet. The twins wanted out – something about coming back down here to open a juke joint. They brought liquor. Irish beer and Italian wine. They asked if I’d return and I…” The words get caught in her throat. She tries for a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. It’s one that says I’ve done everything I’ve could so maybe it’s time to let someone else do what I can’t. “Figured it was time to stop running. From us.”

“For good?” you murmur.

“For as long as you’ll have me,” she responds, thumb brushing across your knuckles. “If that’s still on the table.”

You tilt your head back, far enough away just to look at her. To study her. She’s older now. So are you. The two of you weren’t always going to have a simple story, on account of the both of you being women and being completely different people. But you loved each other, and while you’ve never made it any less complicated for each other, you knew in your heart of hearts that you would take complex with her rather than easy and loveless with anyone else.

But you’re not one to kneel. Bravely, you ask, “And how do I know you mean that?” That gives her pause, something in her expression falling – like guilt and acceptance and a I deserved to hear that all in one. “How do I know I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and you’ll have left another note?” you continue. “You hurt me, Paige. I laid in bed for days and wondered why I wasn’t enough for you to stick around. That doesn’t go away overnight.”

“I know,” she admits, her voice cracking. She meets your eyes, the blue in them so easy to drown in, water shimmering on the surface like sun on the waves. “I can’t undo that. Believe me, I tried.” She laughs a little self-deprecatingly. “Every day I prayed that leaving you was a bad dream I’d eventually wake up from. That I’d find the courage to tell the twins that I was getting on the first train back here to right my wrongs before you slipped through my fingers completely. But I couldn’t – I thought I fucked us up. For good. I thought that we were something I couldn’t save or be enough for.”

Your chest is tight, but you can tell that Paige has more to say, so you remain quiet, your fingers trembling in her hold. She takes a deep breath, trying to find the right words to say, but her shoulders sag in a way that feels like acceptance. Like finally understanding that she may never say or do the right thing, but the effort in honesty is more than enough. You’d always try to fill in the blanks. You didn’t need her to be perfect. You just needed her to be here.

“I know I hurt you,” she continues. “But I also know that I love you – that I’ve been in love with you since we were sixteen and you showed me what home is supposed to feel like. I know that I missed you.” Paige swallows thickly, not breaking eye contact, and she flattens your palm against her chest. You can feel the steady thump of her heart beneath your fingertips. “I missed you here.”

You can tell how much this means to her. You can tell that she’s genuinely remorseful, that she’s probably spent months beating herself up for leaving you in the way that she did. “I’m not expecting you to forgive me immediately,” she murmurs. “I can’t erase a year’s worth of pain overnight. Asking for one more chance is a lot, but I also know that I’d spend the rest of my life and then some making it up to you. I’m not running anymore. Not from you. Not from us. I’m not going to fuck this up again.”

You knew what your answer would be long before she answered you. Maybe you just needed to hear it – the promise, the vow that she’s not going to repeat her same mistakes twice. It makes the tension in your chest ease up, the lines on your face soften, and your shoulders relax. Your palm is still on her chest, so you lift your hand to trace the line of her collarbone absentmindedly. “I’m making pie tomorrow,” you say, glancing up at her with a wry, softer grin. It’s not forgiveness, but it’s something close to it, and Paige smiles brightly because she knows. “You should come by.”

She leans in ever so slightly, her lips brushing yours, and it makes your breath hitch at the contact. Her hands drop to hold you by the waist, her grip both firm and reverent like she’s committed to not letting you go unless you ask. “You gonna let me have the spoon?” she asks coyly, and your smile grows.

“Maybe,” you whisper. Then, you pull away slightly, enjoying the expression of shock on her face. “Now, tell me why you’re really here.”

Paige laughs, the sound full and relieved, and it makes you feel just a little bit more gone. “Already told you, baby,” she says. The nickname softens every sharp edge you’d whittled while she was gone. “The twins wanted to open a juke joint. Smoke came by to ask Annie if she’d cook.”

“Smoke did?” you echo, raising a brow, knowing about his and Annie’s lost baby. You knew that him coming here took a lot of guts. He wouldn’t have if he didn’t mean it. Paige hums in confirmation, the sound respectful as she knows the story, too. “They’re serious, huh?”

“Mmm,” Paige agrees. “Bought the old mill and everything.”

You exhale a little breathlessly, a smile on your face despite it all. “And you?” you ask. Paige’s eyes blink open, something curiously reckless in them. “Where do you fit into all this?”

“Was just hopin’ you’d still like me enough to dance,” she answers, her eyes bright and yearning. Her lips brush yours again, the touch like electricity after so many months of being apart.

You pretend to think about it, which makes Paige shake her head with a laugh and a grin. “Get me a bottle of that Italian wine and you’ve got a deal.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Paige murmurs, her eyes finding yours again with a flicker of hope. You can’t hide your amusement nor the love you have for her, so you finally give in, your lips meeting hers with a deliberate softness. She sighs against you as you press up on the tips of your toes for better leverage. Literally and metaphorically, it feels like coming home again. Your body could never forget Paige nor the way she makes you feel, even if the both of you were dealt an unfair hand of cards.

You feel her grin against your lips, adjusting the angle of her head to deepen the kiss. Your fingers tangle in the loose hair at the back of her neck, warmth creeping into every crevice of your body.

The kiss doesn’t last nearly long enough. You can hear the turn of the lock at the back door and you and Paige pull away from each other quickly, working on adjusting your clothes as Annie and Smoke walk in, a quiet air around them as well. Annie meets your gaze – a brow raising in both question and concern. You nod at her, mustering a small smile, and her features relax, drawing your silent exchange to a close.

Finally, you gather your belongings, letting Paige lead you out towards their truck. There’s only space in front for Smoke and Annie, so you and Paige opt to sit in the back with the liquors, which you’re not too upset about. It gives you the time and the privacy to curl up next to Paige, your argument and reconciliation not completely forgiven nor quite forgotten. Right now, it’s enough for the both of you, knowing that you’ll have the rest of your lives to figure this out. You know that neither of you are going to let this slip away again.

Once you all make it to the old mill, you all get to work. You and Paige work on sweeping the floors and cleaning while Annie works on frying the catfish. Countless friends stream in – old and new – like the Chows, Delta Slim, a pioneering blues performer who you’d thought to have mostly been a legend, Smoke and Stack’s cousin Sammie, and even Cornbread, who’s been hired to play bodyguard.

Everyone’s in high spirits, laughing and enjoying the time. You catch Annie looking at you and Paige with a fond look in her eyes and you try not to blush too much, even when Paige spins you around to the beat of whatever tune Slim is plucking on the piano.

Before you know it, everything is ready. Paige helps to set out the liquor, smiling wryly at you when she stashes a bottle of her wine in her suit, and you laugh as you serve a patron some of Annie’s catfish. The old mill fills fast, people looking for a break, to have fun, to let loose and listen to Sammie sing the blues.

For this one moment in time, everything feels…right. Peaceful. Like there’s not a single worry in the world, and you think that you can get used to this. The sound of soul in your ear, of laughter and love swirling around you, the heavy feeling of Paige’s gaze on you while she regales some of the customers with charming stories about who knows what. Her eyes find you more than appropriate, though, and you find it hard to stay polite in front of everyone.

But she sidles up to you, empty wine glass in hand, and her smirk is mischievous, loose, like she’s about to ask you to do something you can’t quite say no to. Her hand finds your waist behind the bar, palm warm against your skin, and you raise a brow at her. “Think I can convince you to stop workin’ for a bit and have a drink with me?” she asks, gaze predatory and sharp. “Pretty sure I owed you a glass of wine.”

“Sounds like you’ve got ulterior motives,” you comment, looking up at her through your lashes. “You tryin’ to get me tipsy?”

“Just relaxed,” she murmurs, her eyes trailing your figure unashamedly. “Anything after that is purely coincidental.”

“I’m sure.” Your tone is flat, but your eyes are amused. “Would have thought that you’d give it a few more days before you tried finding your way under my skirt. Just this morning you were begging for me to forgive you.”

That sobers her instantly. She blinks at you like she’d forgotten all about that, and it makes you swell with affection for this idiot in front of you. “We don’t have–”

You can’t help but laugh, tanging your fingers in the collar of her suit, and you gently drag her a little closer to you. It makes her breath hitch, but the look on her face makes it all worth it. “Pour me a glass and meet me in the back,” you murmur, releasing her. Just before you walk away, you offer her a teasing smile. “And don’t keep me waiting.”

“Yes ma’am,” she rushes out, already reaching for another glass under the bar, and you know she’s hot on your heels as she follows you to the back. You leave the door slightly ajar and she shuts it as soon as she’s in, the lock clicking into place as you take a seat on top of the table tucked into the corner. Her gaze is a little predatory when she steps forward, looking as though she wants to ravage you but be respectful about it – like she doesn’t quite know where the two of you stand after your difficult conversation that morning.

But she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t rush to fill the silence, even as she holds the wine glass in between two fingers and slowly tips the bottle over, filling it with the dark red liquid. Your eyes follow the way her fingers move, the veins in her wrist that protrude, and it’s then that you’re reminded of just how beautiful Paige Bueckers is.

It’s not something you consciously forget. You haven’t seen her in a while, and this is the first time in a good amount of time that you’ve allowed your walls to fall down. To allow yourself to want her so openly. It makes you ache because you know she wants you to and this entire thing – her pouring the wine for you, her fingers lingering on yours when she gives you the glass, is more of a formality than anything else.

You wait while she fills her glass, too, and then you tap the sides in cheer. “To a successful first night,” you murmur, catching the dark of her gaze over the dim lighting.

“To you,” she says. “And to us.”

To hide the blush growing on your cheeks, you roll your eyes slightly, tipping your head slightly to drink the wine. You like that Paige’s gaze is hooked on you, following the bob of your throat as you swallow the wine. She already looks like she’s unravelling and all you’ve done is drink. “Always have to one up me, don’t you?” you state, and she takes a sip of her own wine. The flavor is pleasant – not too sharp, but not too sweet. You can see why Paige and the twins played the Italian mob like this. They make excellent wine.

“Just wanted to be honest,” she retorts. “Something actually worth toasting about.”

You raise your brows, watching her figure as she takes a seat in the chair next to the table, her gaze locked onto yours. “Are you not actually into the juke joint?” you ask, curious.

She shrugs a shoulder. Her eyes linger on the way your skirt rides up your legs when you cross them at the knee. “This was the twin’s project,” she says, not unkindly. “I was just here to help. And to stop running from the things I love.”

You snort into your wine. “That sounds like something to unpack.”

“Probably,” she admits. “Sometimes…I look at a good thing, and my first thought isn’t that it’s good. It’s how devastated I would be if I were to lose it.” That makes you soften, and you reach for her hand, intertwining your fingers. “I think that’s why I was so scared of…staying. I thought I wouldn’t be allowed to be happy for long, that it would be taken away from me. I didn’t want to lose you. I guess it was easier to leave than to risk it.”

“But not anymore?” you question.

She shakes her head. “Still lost you,” she says. “Just in a different way. One that hurt a lot more.” Paige takes a long sip of her wine before she speaks again. “There was this Italian guy I met while I was in Chicago. He caught me at a bad time. I was drunk off my ass at a pub, and I guess he recognized me from running with the mob. He took me home and I started rambling about you. About missing you. How you’d give me peppermint to chew on when I was plastered because it would help my headache.” That makes you crack a smile as you listen to her go on. “Think I got really upset and lost it, and then he says, ‘How lucky you are to have loved someone so strongly that saying goodbye is hard.’ I woke up the morning after. My head hurt, and all I could think about was you and how not having you turned me inside out.”

Paige pauses for a long moment, clearly having more to say. You just brush your fingers across her knuckles. “I don’t think I’m scared of that anymore,” she confesses. “Not – of losing you. I don’t ever want to do that again. But I don’t think I’m scared of loving you. That’s a blessing by itself. And no matter how long…or how short…I think I’m lucky to be able to do that.”

You swallow thickly, realizing the seriousness of the moment, and you admit, “I don’t want you to feel like you have to run from me.” That catches her attention. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to do this alone. We’re…together.” Your voice catches on that word, unsure if that’s a term you should still use to describe your relationship, and you think that was a good choice because Paige’s face lights up. “I just want you to choose me when it gets hard and trust that we can figure it out.”

“I will,” she states firmly. “God, I swear to you, I will. I’m not gonna fuck this up again.”

You smile at her, gently, because you know she’s not going to. Not when she swears like her life depends on it. “I trust you,” you promise her. “But even if you do…it’s gonna be okay. I don’t want perfection. I just want you.”

That makes her smile turn a little tender, a little bashful. “I can work with that.” She finishes the rest of the wine in her glass and her voice is a hoarse when she says, “Think you might be stuck with me now.”

Your smile turns a little mischievous. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

When she looks at you again, her gaze is a little dark, hungry. “Depends on how you look at it.”

You set your wine glass down, not bothering with a response before you shift on the table, facing her fully, and you cup her cheeks in your hands as you pull her against you. She’s quick – groaning against your lips like she’d spent the entire day thinking about the next time she’d get to kiss you, and her arms encircle your waist, fingers pressing firmly into your skin.

She tastes like wine and something unmistakably Paige that makes your head spin. Her lips drag against yours, already making something in your core swell with heat and tighten, her tongue brushing against your bottom lip in permission. You don’t give it to her, tangling your fingers in the loose bun at the back of her head and tugging slightly, and she gasps a little breathlessly at the feeling.

“You’re a brat,” she mutters, standing from the chair fully. The movement forces you to disconnect your lips and with the natural pause, you slide your hands under her suit top, pushing the blazer down her shoulders.

“You’ve got a lot of groveling to do,” you retort. “Something about spending the rest of your life making it up to me, I think.”

Her resulting smile is a little sharp when she looks at you. “Oh, is that so?” she murmurs. You nod, already reaching out for her, and you wrap your arms around her neck while you connect your lips again. It’s wet, hot, and the both of you slide against each other with little restraint, the alcohol in your veins loosening the both of you up and intensifying the feeling. “You just want me on my knees, don’t you?” Her voice had dropped low, her tone teasing and rough, and it makes you squeeze your thighs together, which was obviously something that she picked up on. “You liked that?” She says it like it’s a surprise to her, like she’s discovered a secret you didn’t want to share, and you feel her grin as she kisses you again, drawing a moan from your lips when she squeezes one of your thighs.

“Would that make you feel better, baby?” she coos, fingers trailing a hot path between your thighs, pressing against the thin lace of your underwear. You’re already breathing heavily, and judging by the way she sucks in a deep breath, you’re sure that she’s found the wetness at the apex of your thighs. “You’re soaked for me and all I’ve done is kiss you. Still all mine. Doesn’t matter how long I’m gone.”

Your cheeks burn, and your fingers grapple for stability on her shirt. She leans in to press another filthy kiss to your lips, her tongue probing out to trace your bottom lip again, and you’re too lost in the feeling to open up for her. She doesn’t like that – an annoyed sound building at the back of her throat when she bites down on your lip – just a gentle nip, enough to get your attention but not enough to truly hurt, and she slips her tongue inside while you gasp.

It’s pure dominance from then on out – she unravels you with her lips while her fingers rub maddening circles against your clit over the lace. She was right. She hadn’t done much, but she’s always been good at tearing you apart. Even if she hasn’t been near you in months, she still knows what works, how much pressure you need, exactly where to touch you. And your body responds like it knows Paige’s touch. It doesn’t embarrass you to admit that there wasn’t anyone else while she was gone. This feeling has been building ever since the day that she left, and you suppose that it is her responsibility to handle it.

She breaks away from your lips to trail kisses to your jawline, sucking a dark spot at the edge of it. You can feel her smile against your skin as your mouth falls open in wordless pleasure. Her fingers are insistent, continuous, as she follows a path across your skin that only she’s the expert in, her lips enclosing around the lobe of your ear, the spot behind it that makes you shiver, your pulse point, the base of your throat where your necklace glitters.

Paige lingers, a little breathless at the sight of you, and the hand not tending to your leaking cunt reaches up to cup your breast, thumb tweaking your nipple over your top. Moaning, your head falls back, giving her ample space to work with, and she latches onto your neck immediately. Her teeth scrape against your skin, drawing a ragged sound from your throat. Her words vibrate against you when she speaks. “So fucking beautiful,” she murmurs, punctuating her words with another kiss, her tongue poking out to trail across your body.

It makes you shiver for an entirely different reason now. You reach up with one of her hands to cup the back of her neck, pushing her a little closer to you, and her finger swipes a little more firmly against your clit, making you keen. “Please, Paige,” you beg. “Need you, need more.”

“I got you,” she promises, finally sinking to her knees. Breathless, you clench around nothing, instinctively spreading your legs for her as she peers up at you through her lashes. Her palms are warm against your skin as her hands slide up your thighs, pushing your skirt up to give herself more space to work with. “Keep your eyes on me.” You don’t have the brain space to ask Or else what? but you’re so high strung that you don’t want to test her.

The edge of her smirk is hungry, predatory, like she’s seconds away from drooling, and it makes you ache. She presses her lips to your thighs, littering gentle kisses across your skin while she makes her way towards your cunt. Needy, you cup the back of her head with your hand, encouraging her to get a move on, and her smile softens as she listens to your wordless command.

She tangles her fingers in the lace covering you and pulls it down with an agonizing slowness, breath catching at the way a strand of your slick sticks to the fabric and snaps when the stretch is too great. Then, almost deliberately, she folds your underwear, setting it gently on the chair she’d sat in, and you’re seconds away from beating the shit out of her. “Paige,” you hiss, trying for an assertive tone, but you just sound whiny.

She doesn’t respond – she doesn’t have to. She slides her hands under your thighs and lifts your legs gently over her shoulders, opening you up for her, and she groans at the sight like you’re one of the ancient wonders of the world. Paige doesn’t waste anymore time before she dives in, her tongue already relentless as she strokes from your leaking entrance to your aching clit, moaning against you and already addicted to the taste. You whimper, head lulling back as your fingers tighten in her hair, but she nips at your clit. It doesn’t sting, but it gets your attention, and you return your gaze down to her.

Your slick already coats her mouth, glistening in the light, her eyes hooded and pussy drunk in the way she always gets when she gets to put her mouth against you. She’d once joked that she could die happy down here and you truly never realized how serious she was until now. Her brows are pinched, pleasure evident on her face like she’s the one moments away from falling apart, and her tongue traces every sopping inch of your cunt as though she’s afraid to let a single drop go to waste.

Her tongue slides in to drink directly from the source. Her nose brushes against your sensitive clit and it sends a lightning bolt of white hot pleasure up your spine, curling low in your belly, and drawing a whimpering moan from you. She works you like it’s her last day on earth and getting you to come is her only chance at salvation. Her pace makes you a little dizzy, her tongue going from hole to clit to kissing the aching bud until the pressure makes your hips buck. She’s everywhere all at once as though she’s trying to reacquaint herself with your cunt, like she’s trying to make up for lost time.

She said she’d make it up to you. You think she’s doing a damn good job, especially when her fingers tighten around the fullness of your thighs, pushing herself in deeper, and you spread yourself open a little more, too far gone to care about much of anything that’s not how good Paige Bueckers looks when she’s on her knees with her face buried in your cunt.

And then she starts talking. There wasn’t a chance in hell that you were going to last after this, not when she’s holding onto you like she’s the one who’s about to float away, and whimpering, “Missed this.” The whine in her tone makes you a little crazy, your fingers tightening in her hair, your hips bucking against her face as you try to chase a high you know she’d rather die than deny you. “Missed you so fucking much, baby. Missed the way you taste. The way you sound – fuck, the way you fall apart for me.”

“Please,” you choke out, but you’re not quite sure what you’re begging for. Paige nods anyways, the motion causing you to gasp when her nose brushes against your clit again, and she somehow doubles her pace, her tongue sliding against you with a vicious efficiency that all but pushes you to the edge. You’re teetering on it now, inches away from slipping off completely, and you ramble, “Shit, Paige, so close. You’re so fucking good, love you so much–”

Your words get stuck in your throat when she latches onto your clit and sucks. You’re almost sure that she breathes the very soul out of your body as you crumble completely, your legs tightening around her head as your hips buck wildly against her mouth. The sounds spilling from your lips are unrestrained, unintelligible, but Paige hums against you and drinks up every drop from your cunt like you’re the first sip of water she’s had in years. She’s always a little messy when she’s got a glass or two of wine in her system, but you think you like her this way – when she behaves like your pleasure is the most important thing to her and that she died if you weren’t unravelling on her face.

Sensitive, you cry out softly, tugging her back by the hair to give you room to breathe. But she doesn’t budge, her grip tightening on your thighs, and she glances up at you, brows tented, chest heaving, her expression nothing short of begging. Her face is slick, lips, cheek, nose, and even her neck covered with your arousal, and it makes something in your core simmer with heat. “C’mon, baby,” she pleads, her tongue already working you again. The oversensitivity makes you tremble, but you’re bucking into her mouth mindlessly, needing to come for her again. “One more. Lemme give you one more.”

You’re nodding, but you know she can’t see it, her tongue already sliding through your folds and lapping you up with a fervor. It won’t take much – you know she knows that, and she hums against your cunt in pleasure when you leak into her waiting mouth. “So fucking good for me,” she mutters against you. She’s lost in your pleasure, which makes you ache again, already teetering dangerously close to the edge.

This time, you don’t even have the chance to warn her. Her teeth close around your clit, nipping gently enough to make your hips twitch, then soothing the sting with a harsh suck. You spill over her instantly, your second orgasm somehow feeling stronger than the first one, and your head falls back in desperate pleasure while her pace finally slows. Paige helps you ride out the aftershocks, her tongue cleaning every inch of you before extracting herself from your cunt with great difficulty. If you were any more conscious, you might be able to see the way she stares forlornly at you while she draws back, like she’s a soldier heading off to war.

You can’t focus on anything but the way her palms rub your thighs soothingly, how she unfurls your hands from her hair and tangles your fingers together to help bring you back down to earth. The hand not holding yours curls around your neck as she lifts herself into a standing position, pulling you into her body, pressing her lips gently to your temple while she strokes the hair at the base of your neck.

Strangely, that’s what actually brings you back into a state of coherency, because her lips are sticky and wet from where she’d just spent the better part of fifteen minutes sucking the soul out of your body through your cunt. “You need to wash your face,” you mutter, not actually that bothered by it, and you wipe your own slick off of your forehead immediately.

Paige catches your wrist, slipping your finger into your mouth and sucking gently, her cheeks suctioning from the pressure. If you could feel your legs, you might knock her ass to the ground and return the favor, but the surprisingly serious expression on her face gives you pause. “Don’t waste that shit,” she reprimands you, gingerly wiping the rest off of your face and licking it off her fingers. “Haven’t had you in over a year and you wanna deprive me?”

“And whose fault is that?” you retort, not really intending to be mean about it, and Paige narrows her eyes at you.

“I just gave you two earth-shattering, mind-numbing, toe-curling–”

“Get to the point.”

“Two orgasms,” she emphasizes. “Two. How many more until I’m out of the doghouse?”

You roll your eyes, a little amused by how fucking annoying she is, and you curl your fingers in the collar of her shirt to plant a chaste kiss to her lips. You can taste yourself, but it doesn’t bother you. “You’re an idiot,” you mumble.

“You love me,” she fires back.

At that, you can’t really help your smile, and the next kiss you press to her mouth is a little more gentle. Softer. Full of something that words can’t really convey, even as you admit, “I do.”

The beaming smile on her face would be a little endearing if you forgot about the two orgasms she’d just drawn from you. “I love you, too,” she promises, and part of you aches for a different reason now. You’re not sure how long you’d been waiting to hear those words from her again, but it makes warmth bloom in your chest, curling around your heart like it belongs there.

She helps you back into your lace underwear, only half pretending to not miss seeing you naked, and the two of you leave the back room with your empty wine glasses in hand. At the bar, Annie raises her eyebrows at you knowingly, but you don’t say anything for both of your sakes – Annie practically raised you, and there were things she just did not need to know. Paige, blessedly, keeps her mouth shut, but she smirks at you as though she’s already thinking about the next time she can have you.

Spirits are high in the juke joint. You can spot Smoke brooding on the second floor, something you’re not really surprised by, and you have no clue where Stack is. You spotted Mary a while ago, which didn’t really surprise you, either; she always had a difficult time staying away from trouble, but so does the blonde who’s lingering in your shadow, not wanting to let you out of her sight.

The party rages on for another twenty or so minutes – everyone is still singing and dancing. Delta Slim is still plucking away at the piano, and you’re deep in conversation with a woman who frequents Annie’s shop when you hear a commotion at the front door. That’s what actually surprises you. The night had been peaceful so far. Cornbread hadn’t actually had to enforce his bouncer duties, but it seems there’s a time and a place for everything.

You follow Annie (and Paige follows you) to the front door. You step up behind the twins, then Mary’s behind you, and you’re all a little concerned at the sight. Standing at your doorstep are three individuals. They’re holding three different guitars and the man on the far right has a lantern clutched in his grasp. They’re white, so you can see why their arrival gives everyone pause.

“We heard a tale of a party,” the white man at the front says. You struggle to place his accent, your head cocking in confusion. There’s something…off, about him, something lurking beneath the surface, and you can’t place that, either. But your gut is never wrong. You nudge Annie, a silent conversation passing between the two of you, and she nods. She suspects it, too. “Drinks, food, blues music and the like.”

Cornbread looks perplexed. “You did?” he asks, his tone believing.

“We like to drink,” the man says. “We happen to be musicians, and, uh…we walked here. So, we hungry as dogs.” The other man with the lantern backs this up with a very emphatic woof woof! that disgusts you immediately. You shift uncomfortably and Paige curls an arm around your waist subtly. “You wouldn’t mind us coming in, now, would you?”

Cornbread narrows his eyes. “I think y’all are in the wrong place,” he states.

“What makes you say that?” the woman asks.

The man turns his gaze from cornbread to the twins, his features softening. “You fellas must be the owners of this establishment.”

“That’s right,” Smoke agrees. “And you are?”

They introduce themselves – the man in the middle is Remmick, and his companions are Bert and Joan. But when Sammie comes into view to check on his cousins, Remmick’s expression shifts. “You must be that voice I heard from out here. It was beautiful.”

“Goddamn beautiful,” Joan agrees unsettlingly.

“Even through these walls,” Bert adds.

You narrow your eyes, only half listening to the rest of the conversation as you try to place why these travelers unsettle you so. It’s not the color of their skin – far from it. It’s the almost robotic detachment, the way they’re here, uninvited, and Joan and Bert have positioned themselves  on either side of Remmick and far enough behind him to be considered respectful. They’re not equals. Remmick holds a sort of power over them, and you feel like you’re nearing the answer the more you stare at them, at the way Remmick stares into the juke joint as if searching for something.

The conversation passes. Questions like where are you from? Are you Klan? Even an unsettling rendition of Pick Poor Robin Clean that makes your hair stand on end. Smoke ends it abruptly, not a fan of the lack of blues, and Remmick points out that he and his friends have a lot of money they’d like to spend. They exchange a few more words before they walk away with an exaggerated slowness, stopping just short of the road leading into the woods.

“They gave me the willies,” Pearline, another of the singers, mutters.

“Crackers at night time will do that to you,” Stack says. Then, Smoke and Stack start arguing over why they’re here, if they’re actually Klan, before Smoke firmly states, “Don’t let them in.”

That seems to be the end of that, and the tension dissipates slightly. You return to the bar with Annie and Paige in tow, something uncomfortable settling low in your gut, and you top off your glass of wine and you take a long, slow sip of it. “I don’t trust them,” you declare in a huff, feeling Paige’s hand slide soothingly around your waist. “That man barked.”

“Woof, woof,” Paige imitates, and you wrinkle your nose at her in a way that makes her face fall. “Not funny. Got it.”

“I don’t either,” Annie admits. She glances up to the second floor where Smoke and Sammie are locked in conversation. Something makes her lips twist as she cleans a glass, something that looks a whole lot like I hope he knows what he’s doing.

Across the room, you spot Mary and Stack conversing, then you watch as Stack slips a small handgun into a holster tucked under her skirt. You know what her plan is long before Mary walks smoothly to the bar, sidling up next to you and Paige, looking at the taller blonde with a quiet request. “They’ll listen to us,” Mary says, her tone soft, spoken like it’s one of the quiet truths about the world and society that you’ll have to accept. “Remmick and them. The twins aren’t breaking even – too much plantation credit. The juke joint won’t be able to operate for another night if they can’t afford it.”

Paige draws her bottom lip between her teeth. You know her well enough to understand that she’d made up her mind. You give Mary a gentle look and she nods solemnly, stepping away from you two and giving you some privacy.

“Five minutes,” Paige utters, her voice hardly above a whisper. You might not be able to hear her over the thrum of the crowd. “Just to feel them out and keep an eye on Mary.” You don’t say anything, only looking up at her with an expression of calm concern, and she reaches for your wrist, pressing your palm to her hip where you can feel the outline of her holster, the handgun settled against her skin, unassuming.

You had a bad feeling about them, although it was significantly better for Paige and Mary to be out there together, both armed, than to let one or the other go alone. You didn’t like the situation, but you couldn’t do much. Sucking in a deep breath, you enclose both of Paige’s hands around yours, bringing them to your lips, and the both of you close your eyes as you pray over her. For safety, for protection. For the clear eyes to spot deceit. When you finish, she brushes a quick, gentle kiss to your cheek, squeezing your hands once before walking out of the door side by side with Mary.

Your chest is tense the entire time that she’s gone, but you try to keep yourself distracted, chatting with Annie while the two of you work the bar in tandem. She serves the fried catfish while you pour the drinks, an easy rhythm between the two of you. Even though you’re busy with the crowd, your eyes still trail off to the front door, hoping to see the tall blonde walk in sooner rather than later.

Eventually, she does, and Mary’s right behind her. You feel as though you can finally breathe a sigh of relief, although you wrinkle your nose when you watch Mary throw herself onto Stack and lead him into the back room you and Paige had already visited not even an hour prior. You suppose it’s a happy night for everyone, and you smile fondly at Paige as she rounds the bar once more, her palm finding your hip. “How’d it go?” you ask in a hushed whisper.

“Nothing to worry about,” she reassures you, but she doesn’t add anymore, which confuses you. Her hand presses against you a little more firmly, a knee slipping between your legs, and you can’t help but gasp at the pressure.

“Paige!” you hiss, glancing around, your heart in your throat. Annie is occupied with an inebriated man who is struggling to cut his fish, but it doesn’t make you relax anymore. Her grin is sharp, eyes dark, and you can smell the wine and something distinctly minty on her breath as she leans in. “You’re insatiable.” You try for a reprimanding tone, but you just sound a little breathless, feeling a heat coil low in your belly when she pushes you down on her knee slightly. “We just–”

“Still gotta make it up to you, don’t I?” she murmurs, the muscle of her thigh flexing under your weight, and you sigh softly at the drag, trying to not look like she’s ruining you in a room full of people. “Let Annie handle this. You deserve a break.” Her lips find the shell of your ear, her voice a rumbling, low timbre when she says, “You deserve to feel good, baby. Lemme help you.”

Still breathless, all you can do is nod, and she guides you upstairs, the both of you searching for a quiet corner. Paige pushes open the door to the loft area and her lips are on yours before the door clicks shut. She’s insistent, ravenous, something so different from the way she kissed you downstairs. Her hands curl under your thighs, lifting you easily, and she presses you against the door.

Your fingers tangle in her hair, ruining the bun she’d messily fixed after your earlier rendezvous, and she groans against your lips when you tug. She disconnects your lips, her head tilting back in pleasure at the slight sting of pain, and you don’t waste any time before you’re leaning into her. You sink your teeth into her neck, your tongue soothing over the mark. Her hips buck like the feeling of your lips on her neck already has her close to the edge. You trail your lips down, nipping at the vein protruding from the side of her neck, the tender area where her neck meets her shoulder. Paige’s fingers tighten around you, her muscles straining, and it sends white hot desire to your core when your palms slide down, feeling the definition in her shoulders and her biceps.

Your lips meet again and Paige breathes into you like she’s trying to gather your taste, to eat you alive. Her tongue meets yours, hardly needing permission this time around, and you sink into it, letting her unravel you. It’s a lot – the feeling of her teeth in your skin, the dangerous, almost instinctual way she kisses you, the primality in how she squeezes bruises into the skin of your thighs. It’s rough, heady, and right now, it is perfect.

You break away long enough to speak, your chest heaving. When you meet her eyes, her pupils are blown out, the darkest blue you’ve ever seen them, and you swear you see the smallest fleck of drool spilling out from the corner of her lips, but you can’t be too sure if it was from her or you. All you know is that you need her – right now. You need her, pressed bare skin to bare skin, her hips rutting against yours, her mouth on your chest or your neck or quite literally anywhere. “Need you,” you whimper, your lips brushing against hers, and she squeezes you once that feels like some strange mix between a warning and an apology.

She lifts you off of the door, her teeth scraping against your collarbone as she leads you backwards. There’s a fleece blanket spread out on the floor, the one that had been used to cover the piano during transport, and she lays you against it gently, a devastating contrast to the viciousness in which she’d kissed you with. Something in you aches at the sight of her. The heat coiling in your belly, the pulsating feeling between your legs, begging for attention. You’ve never needed anyone more than you need Paige right now.

When you peer up at her through your lashes, you’re almost taken aback by how different she looks. Her fingers are trembling as she unbuttons her dress shirt, but there’s simultaneously a stark rigidity in her spine, a tense feeling in her shoulders. It’s like she’s fighting between two different parts of her – her brain and her body, or something else otherworldly, like maybe some instinctual urge.

At first, you wonder if she’s only doing this because she feels as though she truly has to make up for her absence in making you feel good. Maybe something had gotten lost in translation or jokes that didn’t land well. So you reach out, stopping her movements when your fingers wrap around her wrists, and her entire body goes still. The tremor is gone. Her shoulders sag with something like realization, or relief, as though a weight had been lifted off of them. And her eyes – which had been burning with a heat, a desire you don’t think you’ve ever seen before, have calmed.

Gently, you whisper, your tone echoing a promise, “You don’t owe me anything.” You watch her throat bob as she swallows, her eyes trailing from your eyes, to your lips, before honing in on your neck, where the pulse from the organ behind your ribcage thrums in your neck. “We don’t–”

“I want to,” she breathes out, shrugging out of her shirt, and your eyes follow the lines of her body. You didn’t get to see them earlier. Her breasts are covered by her bra, something worn yet unshakingly reliable, the firm lines of her muscles crossing over one another and dipping beneath the waistband of her pants. Paige leans down, her hands pressed into the floorboards on either side of your head, her arms caging you in. The position shouldn’t make you feel as safe as you do, but she dips her head down to kiss you again. It’s gentler, more like what you’re used to from her, and the difference makes your headspin. She goes from rough to demanding to gentle and soft within minutes, and your body struggles to catch up.

“Wanna make you feel good,” she whispers, her voice wrecked, as she scrapes her teeth against your neck again. She pauses, her nose nearing your pulse point, where you’re sure she can feel the way your heart beats for her. Paige breathes in, like she’s trying to memorize the way you smell, and she presses a gentle kiss to your pulse point. She lingers there, her breath hitching, almost as though she’s forcing herself to keep moving. Like she knows she’s doing something she shouldn’t quite be doing.

“Wanna watch you fall apart for me,” she continues, her tongue darting out to lick the salt off your throat. She hums at the flavor and you arch into her. Paige leans back on her heels, reaching out for you, and she quickly unzips your dress at the back. “Wanna see you. All of you.” She punctuates her words by slowly pulling the fabric down, revealing miles upon miles of glistening skin, and her breath hitches at the sight. You’re bare, nipples already pebbling from the cool air of the room, and she sneaks in a feel as she pulls your dress down your torso.

It comes off easily. You lift your hips to help her out, leaving you in nothing but your lace, which is still damp from earlier. Her gaze lingers, and naturally, you spread your legs for her, allowing her to settle in between you with something like wonder on her face. But there’s something in her expression that’s still pinched.

You forget all about her weird behavior when her lips enclose around one of your nipples, her hand reaching up to fondle the other one. The pressure is otherworldly, all but forcing you to press up against her, and her free hand shoves your hips down with ease. You gasp a little, already sure that you’re leaking again, but she hums deep in her throat, the sound sending a shockwave straight through you.

“Paige,” you whimper, your voice breaking around a moan as she alternates, her mouth finding your other breast. “Please touch me.”

She laughs, fingers tracing the waistband of your lace, slipping under when you least expect it. But she doesn’t find your clit. She doesn’t press against you in the way that you need, doesn’t slip her finger inside like she usually would. She’s trying to draw out your pleasure, to make you beg for it, and that thought alone makes you wetter. “I am touching you, baby,” she teases. Her lips leave your breasts to trail down your stomach, nipping gently, soothing the sting with her tongue.

Huffing, you wrap your legs around her waist, tugging her a little closer to you, and something dangerous flashes in her gaze. “Don’t be a jerk,” you chastise, trying to sound strong, but your voice is breathless, full of need, and Paige knows it.

She grabs your thighs, pressing your legs back down onto the blanket, and leans over you with something dark in her eyes. “Don’t be a brat,” she retorts. The tone of her voice makes your entire body burn. “Think I don’t know what you need?” Her palms press against your stomach, fingers poking where she’d sucked brusies against your sensitive skin. It makes your hips jump. “You think I don’t know how to touch you? That when you’re turned on, and I press here…” Her palm finds your stomach, pressing down precisely, and a gasp falls from your lips. The smile on her face is far too smug. “…You make those sweet little sounds for me?”

“Paige,” you cry out again, feeling your need seep out of your cunt, surely staining your lace.

But she just keeps going. “You think I don’t know exactly how to fuck you? To make sure you feel me?” She shakes her head, lost in it, and she tangles her fingers in the waistband of your underwear. “I know you, baby. I know you’re soaking through this fucking lace for me. Know you’ve been wet all fucking night. If I had my way, I would have had my head between your thighs for hours until you cried for me.” Paige pulls your lace down slowly, her jaw falling open as she reveals your dripping cunt.

She glances at you, a satisfied little smile on her face, gaze heated, gone. “Is it that serious?” she coos, her tone teasing, eyes dropping to your thighs. “So fucking wet for me. Just want me to take care of you, huh?”

That’s when you spot it – the shining, viscous liquid pooling at the corner of her mouth, sliding down her chin, her neck. She’s fucking drooling. That realization hits you like a fucking truck, arousal seeping out of your weeping cunt, and you’re a little breathless when you ask, “Is that serious?” while you gesture to her lips.

Almost as though she’s coming back to herself, she reaches up, fingers finding the spit leaking out of her mouth, and she stares like she’s been caught. Something clears in her eyes. Embarrassment, maybe. Probably something else. Feeling your heartbeat in your cunt, you reach out for her hand, wrapping your lips around her fingers, and moaning in pleasure at the taste of her spit.

You can hear her groan – impossibly wrecked, destroyed entirely. She watches with rapt attention as you take her fingers down to the base, your tongue sliding between them, making sure you get every drop. When you’re done, her fingers are soaked, coated in your own saliva, and you drag a finger across the remainder pooling at the base of her neck. “What’d you say earlier?” you whisper, tone saccharine sweet. “‘Don’t waste that shit’?” You pop your own finger in your mouth while her brain catches up with her.

Ruined, she wipes her chin and her neck, offering her hand to you, and you don’t waste any more time before you’re taking her fingers in your mouth again, making sure to maintain eye contact. She groans, the sound low and devastating in her throat, her eyes not once moving away from you. When her hand is clear, she wraps it around your throat, not applying any pressure, but the hold is firm enough to push you back down onto your back. 

“Open,” she commands, and you do so wordlessly. The hand on your throat holds you still while, slowly, she lets her spit pool on her tongue, letting it fall into your mouth. You shudder at the feeling, your body impossibly hot, and her smile is a little reverent when she releases your throat to push your jaw up. You swallow immediately. Paige rewards you with a bruising kiss, groaning at the flavor of your combined tastes.

There’s no more foreplay from there, the both of you burning for each other. She fumbles with her belt buckle and shucks off her pants and boxers with an unnatural quickness. You reach for the hem of her bra, not wanting to be alone in your nakedness, and she raises her arms to allow you to pull it off of her.

The first press of her skin against yours feels like a lightning strike to your overheated skin. It makes you gasp, and she takes advantage of your pleasure to slip her tongue inside again, already working on pushing you to the edge with her lips alone. Her hands trail down to your thighs, pushing them open even more. She fits against you like a puzzle piece, pulling you flush against her, and you’re sure you ascend completely at the feeling of her wet cunt pressing against yours.

You both let out keening moans, your name falling from her lips while a curse falls from yours. Your fingers grapple for purchase on her back, your nails sinking in and scratching, and she moans against your lips at the sting of pain. Her forehead presses against yours, her hips rolling sensually into yours, and when your sensitive clits brush against each other, desire shoots up both of your spines simultaneously.

Her arms are caging you in again, the bulge and ripple of her muscles dragging you closer to a long awaited peak. Her hips roll with a newfound intensity, your combined slick making the slide impossibly smooth, and every brush of her clit against yours makes a moan tumble from your mouth. You’re unable to say anything, the pleasure immense and the words caught in your throat, and Paige kisses you like she understands, anyways. It’s needy, desperate, and reverent all in one.

Paige’s hips slam against yours, the both of you chasing your highs, and she releases your lips to press her mouth to your neck, directly over your pulse point. She kisses it, sucks a deep, bruising mark into your skin, and noses against your skin like she’s trying to memorize the way you smell – the way your blood smells as it courses through your veins. 

And then her teeth scrape against your neck. It makes you keen, tilting your head back to give her more room to work with, and she whimpers against your skin like the pleasure is too much. Her hips keep moving, even when her lips stall, but she mouths against your neck, almost as though she’s trying to gather confidence for something. Like she’s at war with her mind and she can’t make a decision. Like there’s something stopping her from sinking her teeth into you completely and feasting.

Eyes glazed over from pleasure, you finally peer up at her through your lashes, wondering why she’s pausing. Hesitating. Why she’s whining against your skin like she’s simultaneously hurt and seconds away from combusting with pleasure.

The sight above you isn’t one that you’d been expecting. It sobers you instantly, only halfway, the bump and grind of her clit against yours still sending shockwaves up your spine. There’s drool pooling at the corner of her lips again, but what truly gathers your attention and steals your breath away is the sharpness of her canines, the fangs protruding from her mouth. Her bottom lip is bitten raw, blood staining her mouth and dripping down her chin, as if she’d bitten her lip trying to prevent herself from biting you.

It’s then that you realize why the travellers had given you so much pause. Why you didn’t trust them. You’d been able to sense that lurking beneath the surface, they weren’t as they’d appeared. It wasn’t an inherent evilness. Even with Paige hovering above you, fangs out like she’s about to eat you alive, you can tell that she’s not evil. But she’s not herself either.

“Can’t,” she whimpers, almost as though she’s coming back to herself. You realize she’d been so weird ever since she returned with Mary because she’d been afflicted, fighting her mind and body and something else purely instinctual from the very moment she’d been let back into the juke joint. There’s something else in her head pressuring her to do something that she clearly doesn’t want to do – turning you, killing you – and she’s fighting every synapse and urge in her body to keep you safe. “I fucking can’t, ‘m so sorry.”

Her body and mind are split down the middle. Her fangs poke out, lips twisted up like she’s battling every urge to sink her teeth into your neck. But her eyes are as clear of a blue as you’d ever seen them. She doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to be this monster. Doesn’t want to hurt you anymore than she already has.

Then, there’s a flash of red in her eyes, something glowing, and she cries out as her head shoots back, her fangs digging into her lip again. She breathes heavily, and when she glances down at you, the red is gone and tears are pooling at her waterline. Blood dribbles from her lips, staining her teeth red. Your heart is caught in your throat, mouth open in disbelief and fear – not of her, but of what will happen if you lose her.

“Can’t hurt you,” she mutters again, her voice hoarse. “Won’t.” Her entire body shudders as she battles the urge. “Help me. Please, baby.”

Your fingers are trembling when you nod, wrapping your arms around her, and pulling her closer. She cries out like the temptation is blinding, pressing at every crevice of her body, but you trust her. God, you do. Despite everything that has led up to this moment, you know you’re safe with her. That she’d never hurt you. “It’s okay,” you promise, your voice steady, breathing hitting her ear. “You’re okay. Just move with me.”

You can feel her nod shakily, her hips resuming their slow motions against yours, and it’s this – this human connection, this bond between the two of you that’s more than just physical – that stabilizes her, tethers her to the reason why she can’t bring herself to sink her fangs in your neck and drain you like the urge in her brain is pressuring her to. “You won’t hurt me,” you whisper, squeezing the back of her neck, and she nods again. “Say it. You won’t hurt me.”

“I won’t hurt you,” she affirms, no hesitation, her forehead resting against your shoulder. Her breath comes out in a shudder, the pleasure coursing through her veins muddling with the uncertainty in her head. Paige noses against your neck, breathing in your scent, and something in her shoulders relaxes.

“You are not what he made you,” you say, one of your hands brushing through her hair.

“‘M not – fuck –” The words get caught in her throat, but she presses more firmly against you, and she breathes through it. “I’m not what he made me.”

Your lips find her cheek, her temple, grounding her, and your hips start meeting hers. “You are Paige Bueckers. You’re safe.”

Her voice is rough, but her tone is a little clearer when she repeats it. “I’m Paige Bueckers,” she whispers into your neck, her lips kissing your skin, almost like an apology. Like gratitude. Like a literal You are the only person keeping me here right now. “I’m safe.”

Your palms come up to cup her cheeks, pulling her out of your neck to meet her gaze. Her eyes are startlingly blue, tears slipping from her eyes, and her fangs are mostly gone. There’s still a slight edge on her canines, but you can feel it. She’s rejecting the bloodlust, the pressure of the hivemind she’s been trapped under. You kiss her gingerly, tasting the salt of her tears and the iron of the blood on her lips, and she sobs against your lips like that was the one thing she needed to remember who she was.

“I love you,” you whisper – you promise, and her hips are still chasing yours.

But you don’t give in. Not until Paige presses her forehead to yours, swearing vehemently, “I love you, too.”

You hold her gaze. Your eyes are steady, sure, and hers are trusting. She trusts that you’ll get her through to the other side of this, just as you trusted that she wouldn’t give into the feeling. So, you smile at her, faithfully, and you whisper, “Come back to me.”

She does. You latch onto each other as you fall apart in tandem. She’s still holding herself up by her hands, but her body shudders through the aftershocks as you kiss her temple, her nose, her lips, murmuring gently to her. You pull her onto your chest, her arms giving out, and she curls up next to you while she hiccups through the remainder of her tears. Her legs tangle with yours, her face tucking into the crook of your neck, her arms holding onto you like she’s afraid you’re going to run.

But you’d promised – the both of you did. There’s no more running from the people that you love. You brush her damp hair off of her forehead, kissing her skin gently, and it makes her shiver. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Paige look like this – scared of herself. Of what she is. She looks so young. It makes you hold onto her a little tighter.

“Where are you?” you whisper to her after a while.

She hardly shifts. “With you,” she promises. The last bit of tension in your shoulders dissipates. Paige is silent for a long moment. Then, you feel the heat of her tears dampening your skin, and you tighten your arms around her as she cries. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out, the same way a sinner might as he stands before God on judgement day. “I’m so sorry. I almost–” Whatever she was trying to say gets stuck in her throat, and you trail your fingers soothingly up and down her back as she finds coherency. “I almost hurt you. Again.”

“You didn’t,” you remind her, your voice firm. “You couldn’t.” Her breath catches like she’s trying to force herself to believe that. “I trust you. In every definition of the word. I trust you, Paige. If I’m not safe with you then there’s nowhere else I’d be able to survive. You didn’t hurt me. You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s not your fault.”

Paige nods; then, brokenly, she murmurs, “It’s not my fault.” You hum in agreement, feeling her body relax against yours. You both lay in silence for a moment until she speaks up again. “You saved me.”

“You saved yourself,” you retort. You cup her cheek, your finger tapping against her temple, and you draw her eyes up to meet yours. “Up here. You did that. I just helped you down here.” You press your palm to her chest, where her heart is. She settles her hand over yours, sinking into you.

Then, Paige stiffens like she’s just remembered something. “Mary,” she states simply, and the dread seeps back into your chest.

“She took Elias to the back when she got back in,” you mutter. Paige glances at you once before the both of you haul yourselves to your feet, redressing quickly, and you make your way downstairs.

The both of you are already too late. The juke joint has been cleared out, with only a select few people remaining. Smoke, Annie, Pearline, Sammie, Grace Chow, Delta Slim. They all linger around the door to the back room. Mary’s missing. So is Stack, but Paige winces like she knows exactly where he is and what happened to him.

Annie catches sight of you first. Her face crumples with relief and she marches over immediately, pulling you into a tight hug that you eagerly reciprocate. “You’re okay,” she breathes out.

“I’m okay,” you murmur, mostly to soothe her, and Annie pulls away. She takes one glance at Paige and she stiffens, knowing that she’d left and returned with Mary. Her eyes narrow, but none of you get the chance to say anything before a handgun cocks and Smoke is pointing the barrel directly between Paige’s eyes.

She flinches, not because of the gun aimed at her. But because Smoke is one of her best friends and he hadn’t hesitated before he turned the gun on her. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand,” he says firmly.

For that, Paige has no real answer, but you step in between her and the barrel of Smoke’s gun. “Because she wouldn’t kill us,” you declare, your voice soft, yet it echoes in the emptiness of the juke joint. You glance back at her. Paige’s eyes are shining. “Couldn’t kill us.”

Smoke looks at Annie, who looks at you. Something in her features softens. “They’re not Haints,” she announces. “They’re vampires. Fangs, red eyes. Garlic, silver, sunlight, and wooden stakes are lethal. When they’re turned, they’re killed. Their soul is trapped inside their body and they’re unable to move on. But…there’s always a rare case. Sometimes souls are shared.” Annie meets your gaze again. “You’re the reason why she’s resisting the curse right now.”

You nod solemnly, already knowing as much, although you didn’t have the vocabulary for it. Smoke’s eyes linger on you. Then Paige. Then Annie. He lowers the gun, sliding it back into the holster, and Paige relaxes immediately. So do you. You step back, linking your fingers together. The tension in the room doesn’t completely dissolve, but it’s not nearly as heavy now.

Everyone starts making preparations. Annie assembles jars of pickled garlic. Silver jewelry is shared. Chairs are broken down and whittled into sharp, wooden points. Paige helps, but she’s a lot slower, her fingers trembling around the stake in her hand because she knows she’s holding the one thing that could ever kill her. You stick close by her if only to offer support, and you converse in hushed murmurs.

“You can’t stay here forever,” you say. Her throat bobs, quiet acceptance on her face. “The sunrise will kill you.”

“I’m not leaving you,” she argues.

You look at her. Your features soften. “Paige,” you whisper, your voice cracking under the weight of your emotions. “You couldn’t kill me.”

“Won’t.”

“I can’t kill you,” you confess. “Won’t.” She pauses, her gaze meeting yours. “I can’t sit here with you until sunrise and watch you burn up.”

“I don’t want to die.” Her voice is a quiet murmur. “I don’t want to be where you aren’t.”

You reach out, plucking the stake from her hands. She’s shaking. You slide into her lap, her arms immediately encircling you, and you press your foreheads together. “I don’t want to lose you either,” you say. “Which is why I want you to run when I tell you to. I’ll find you.”

She chokes on a laugh, but it’s watery. “I thought we said no more running,” she says, trying to keep the mood light, and you can’t help your giggle.

You kiss her gently. “If you die, you’re running away from me. You owe me.” She nods against you, her smile a little softer. “Promise me you’ll go when I tell you to.”

She’s silent for a moment. Her fingers trace your skin, the blue of her gaze searching yours. And she gives in. “I promise.”

You kiss her again. You hold onto her for a little longer, and then the both of you get back to work.

There are a few interruptions as you do. Stack returns with Mary in tow, asking to be let in. Obviously, no one lets that happen. Then Bo Chow returns – Grace’s husband, and you can sense that she’s moments away from giving in. At least, until Remmick shows up next to Bo and says something in Mandarin that makes Grace lose it. She’s dragged away kicking and screaming while someone slams the doors closed.

You can hear Remmick and the rest of the vampires locked in another haunting rendition of Pick Poor Robin Clean. Grace is at her wit’s end. You and Paige stay close, but commotion draws your attention. Smoke and Annie are holding Grace back while she thrashes. All you hear is, “Come on in, motherfucker!” and you know that your night is about to get a whole lot worse.

The subsequent fighting passes in a blur. You hardly remember it. You drive your stake through the chests of a few vampires, and so does Paige, even if the look on her face makes it look like she’s killing herself, too. You think you’re starting to make good progress until you see Stack hovering over Annie’s body, his fangs in her neck.

Everything goes devastatingly still. The fight still rages on. Gunfire echoes through the rooms, the cries of staked vampires falling on deaf ears. All you can see is the way Annie’s jaw hangs slack, pain etched on her face, and you can hear the agony in Smoke’s voice. Paige’s head turns, her face crumbling at the sight of her body.

She doesn’t hesitate. She tackles Stack, punching him clean across the jaw and disorienting him. The infighting causes a ripple of confusion among the vampires and it gives Smoke enough opportunity to stake the one holding him down before he rushes over to Annie.

You’re already next to her when Smoke falls to his knees next to her. He applies pressure over the wound at her neck, but you rest your hand over his, your fingers trembling. “It’s too late,” you tell him, your voice choked up.

Annie manages a nod, and with a weak voice, she wheezes, “You promised.” Her gaze is locked on Smoke.

He knows. With shaking hands, he reaches for his discarded stake. You wrap your hand around it, too, and together, you and Smoke both murmur, “I love you,” and Annie nods again like she understands. The both of you drive the stake through Annie’s chest, finally allowing her to move on and be at peace.

Her death causes a massive retreat. Paige grabs onto you, joining the rest of your friends as you hurry upstairs with Sammie. Delta Slim hangs back, cutting his own wrist cleanly, and drawing a crowd of the remaining vampires and allowing the rest of you the chance to escape.

On the second floor, there’s a door leading to a staircase outside. Smoke is ushering all of you out of it, and one by one, you make your way down. You glance up at the sky, noting how close to dawn you are. With your heart in your throat, you grab onto Paige’s hand, and you force her to meet your gaze. “Go,” you command.

She swallows thickly, glancing behind you to the crowd of vampires who have made their way out to intercept you. She doesn’t want to leave you. Not when this is what you have to face without her.

“You promised,” you remind her, your voice cracking when you recall that those were Annie’s last words, too. Paige seems to recognize that, nodding, and she presses her forehead to yours once more.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs again, kissing you gently. You just hold onto her a little tighter. “Please be okay.”

“I will,” you swear – because you will be. Paige has made sure of it. “I love you.”

Paige glances up at the sky, at the way the sun has begun to peek out from the horizon. She bows her head in a defeated acceptance. “I love you, too.”

Then she’s gone – her figure disappearing behind the trees. Her absence still aches. As strong as you try to be, you don’t know what the morning holds.

The sun comes up while Remmick and Sammie are locked in on each other in the shallow pond. Smoke comes up behind you, looking defeated, and you wonder about what happened to Stack. All around you, the vampires clutch their heads in agony as the sun blisters their skin, bright balls of orange flame encompassing everything.

The night ends in a way that makes you wonder if it’d even happened at all. There are no piles of ash, no indication of what just transpired if not for the blood on everyone’s clothes or the burn marks at the front of the juke joint from Grace’s molotov cocktail. The morning is still. Quiet. You watch as Smoke and Sammie hug each other tightly, as if they can’t believe that they’re even alive. Smoke sends Sammie off. He was supposed to help his father with the morning service, and the fact that Sammie goes willingly reminds you more of a trauma response than anything else.

You watch the sunrise with Smoke. Neither of you say anything, a shared sort of grief in your heart. When he looks down at his dog tags, at the chest of weapons he’d stashed in his truck, you know of his plan before you think he does. Gingerly, you wrap him in a hug, and you murmur, “Say hello to Annie for me.”

His fingers tremble when he hugs you back. “I will,” he promises. “Go be with her.”

You nod, releasing him. You find a car that had been left behind, find the keys left on the seat, and you drive a little catatonically back to Annie’s shop. The sun is well into the sky by the time you make it there. Everything is quiet. Unmoving. You cut the engine, step out, and make your way to the door. You open it.

Paige has you in her arms before the door even closes. You sink into her embrace, clutching onto her tightly, because she’s somehow still the one thing that makes even a little bit of sense in this fucked up world. She lets you cry into her chest and you’re pretty sure that she’s crying into your shoulder, but the two of you just remain locked in each other’s arms. She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t ask you if you’re okay or how you’re feeling. She knows. She gives you the space to quietly grieve, to not be strong. The both of you had lost so many people tonight. Friends. Family. Everything else.

She didn’t expect you to be okay. You didn’t know how long it would take for things to feel okay. To feel normal. Maybe the truth is that you might never feel normal again. Your girlfriend is stuck under this curse for the rest of her days, even though she’s still Paige Bueckers, but there’s so much you’ll need to learn. To do. You’ll have to change so much about your lives just to survive.

But you’d made her a promise a while ago. You would rather love Paige in the dark than have anyone else in the sun. You hadn’t realized the irony of your words until now, but you mean it. As long as you and Paige have each other, this new part of your lives might not be so difficult. It will just be yours. For now, that’s all you can really ask for.

“You still makin’ pie today?” she asks, her voice soft and exhausted at the edges.

It draws a light laugh out of you. It relieves you to know that you could still be happy after this. “Yeah,” you promise. “I’m making pie today. And you can have the spoon.”

Paige holds onto you a little tighter after that. And she doesn’t let go.

Life after the night at the juke joint is…different. An adjustment.

Sammie disappears to only God knows where, although in the years after, you’d heard whisperings of a blues singer who’d taken the world by storm. As much as you cared for him, you struggled with keeping up with him and his adventures. He reminded you too much of that night and everyone you’d lost – Annie, Smoke, Delta Slim, the Chows. Even Cornbread.

But Paige doesn’t remind you of the horrors. It’s always a little different with her, even if she isn’t what she used to be. She’s trapped in that supernatural plane between being human and something not quite. Following Remmick’s death, she was no longer shackled to that all-consuming hivemind of hate and malice. Not that she was fully in it in the first place – her heart was a little too human. She’s more like herself now than she was that night, which does bring you some comfort.

You’re not comforted by the fact that her soul is trapped in her body, though. Not comforted by the fact that she’s dead, yet she’s still living half of a life for your sake because she’d been unable to kill you while under the spell of vampirism and you were unable to kill her yourself, too. Paige is a walking folktale, unable to touch silver, eat garlic, or feel the sun on her skin. She hides in the shadows during the day and comes out during the night if only to feel your skin against hers.

You’re not an ordinary pair. You’ve never been – two women connected by fate and bonded by love in Mississippi. You fell in love despite the fact that the world thought you shouldn’t. You survived the attacks at the juke when it was improbable. Now, you’re still two women learning to navigate life as one of you ages and the other remains stuck at 23.

After that night, you return to town. You try your best to explain to Lisa, the Chows’ daughter, what happened. You don’t think she believes you – you wouldn’t either. But life goes on for her, even though her parents never return. You take over Annie’s shop, still serving Elise and Will and telling them that Annie and Elijah had actually gotten married and moved out of the Delta. They were too young for the truth, and you didn’t have the heart to explain it to them.

During the day, Paige helps you in the shop, confined to the shadows indoors, staring longingly out the window. She’d once told you that she never realized how much she’d miss the sun until it was gone. That made you feel a little guilty, but she just kissed you, forgiveness and atonement on her lips. She wasn’t going to hate you for being unable to kill her when that was also a crime she’d committed.

At night, she’s glued to your side, trampling gently over weeds and grass in the woods as you search for roots for the shop. You don’t practice the craft like Annie used to – it wasn’t your place. But honoring her memory makes you feel less like you’re drowning. Only after sunset is Paige able to go outside and feel the ground beneath her feet, inhale the fresh air without burning up. Truthfully, it brings you both closer, just having to figure out different ways to love each other.

Neither of you run, even when it’s hard. Paige is there to console you after horrible dreams of that night. You’re there with remedies when her gums ache. Her pain is a little more instinctual than it is medical, but it does bring her some relief. 

Stack and Mary came to visit one day. Paige had stood glaring at your side while the two of them spoke with you. They meant no harm. They told you that much when they knocked on your door and asked for an invite inside. Perhaps foolishly, you’d believed them, but you chose to believe they were capable of goodness despite their new nature, just as Paige was. Stack told you about a place they’d come across during their travels, a state in New England – Connecticut. It would be a fresh start away from the horrors of the Delta.

You weren’t sure. Part of you wanted to keep up Annie’s shop, honoring her practice and her traditions for as long as you could. It was difficult to be incognito when half of the town disappeared suddenly one night and the juke joint was littered with bodies. Stack and Annie hugged you before they left, telling you to visit if you ever found the time. You could only nod, and Paige was only able to breathe once they were gone.

You’re tangled in bed together that night, your head on Paige’s chest, listening to the juxtaposition in the sound of her breathing despite the lack of a heartbeat. You never knew that you’d miss that sound, either. Her nail drags up and down your arm soothingly, almost lulling you into a slumber, but she breaks it to murmur, “Connecticut?”

“It’s pretty far,” you respond. “A lot colder than it is here.”

“I wouldn’t be able to tell,” she jokes, which rips a surprised laugh out of your chest. Her finger pauses in its movements, but she shifts, slinging a leg over yours and pulling you closer. That wasn’t anything new – Paige was always physically affectionate, long before Remmick turned her into this. Now, it means something different. You’re warm. Having you close makes her feel a little more alive, even if the skin-to-skin contact can’t fully replace the lack of her own body heat. “We can’t stay here forever,” she continues, her voice softening. Then it breaks when she says, “I can’t stay here forever.”

Her family had long since been shattered down two lines. Still, it weighs on her, the idea of never seeing her parents again, or her siblings. She couldn’t keep them and lie to them about the nature of her being. She also knew they would never believe her fully or see her the same. It would be impossible to explain to people why you continued to age, yet Paige remained the same for years. Impossible to explain why no one ever sees her in town anymore, not even for the holiday celebrations she’d loved as a kid.

“I know,” you whisper.

You had no one left here besides her. All of your friends had passed during that night. Your only connection to the Delta was keeping Annie’s memory fresh. But customers would dwindle, and you know better than anyone else that Annie would tell you to move on. Be happy. 

You shift in bed, craning your head to meet Paige’s eyes, and you find that she’s already looking at you. She’s soft, her hair mussed, flowing down her shoulders in wavy strands. She has an imprint of your teeth on her neck from where you’d gotten a little too carried away but she wears it more like a badge of pride than a symbol of irony. Her smile is so tender, her hands cradling you like you’re her entire world, because you are and you know it and she knows it.

It makes you ache a little. But it’s a good ache. You don’t have to give the idea any more thought before you’re asking, “Well, how do you feel about the snow?”

She kisses you gently on the lips, chaste, innocent, something that makes you feel warm all over. “Anywhere’s good as long as it’s with you.”

It takes a few days, but eventually, the two of you make it to Connecticut. You settle down in a small town called Storrs, and honestly?

It’s really, really nice.

Storrs is nothing like the Delta. It doesn’t get nearly as hot. You feel a little more free here. And while you do miss the authentic fried catfish, you think that you can turn Storrs into your home. Your neighbors are kind and they don’t ask questions about you and Paige – they just leave you be. It’s not in a way that makes you think they don’t care about you; rather, it feels like respect and grace, because you weren’t different. You and Paige weren’t something to be stared at. You just were, and your neighbors seemed to understand the value in minding their own.

You and Paige attend three different welcome dinners, getting to know your neighbors and their families. They tell you what life is like in the neighborhood and which establishments were hiring. They send you home with leftovers and you make sure to clean and return them along with one of your homemade pies. It’s a comforting tradition of feeding and taking care of each other.

Paige lands a position at the local high school as an assistant coach for their basketball team. She knows next to nothing about the sport but the position had been vacant for years. She’s a quick study, though – she’d helped lead the team to the district championship by the end of the year. You were teaching language arts at the elementary school, having always enjoyed a good book, and the kids loved you, too.

And so your routine was simple. Not monotonous enough to be boring, but stable enough to be peaceful. Paige would drop you off at the elementary school with a kiss goodbye and a surprise in your lunch bag. It was always a sweet little note consisting of reminders to breathe and to smile. She’d drive to the high school, where she’d scout other teams and draw up training plans or practice drills, often being a role model to her boys and keeping them on the straight and narrow. They came to her for any and everything – advice on how to be better players. One even asked her how he should ask out his crush, which had endlessly amused the both of you as you chatted over it at dinner.

You asked her what she advised him to do, obviously. She’d gotten a little quiet, a small sort of smile spreading across her lips as she brought a piece of chicken up to her mouth. “Told him to be honest,” she said after a moment, looking at you meaningfully. You softened. “That he shouldn’t be afraid to want her.”

“Sounds familiar,” you commented wryly, and she smirked at you over a glass of water.

“Sounds real,” she shot back.

Your kids, while younger, aren’t lacking for stories, either. You tell Paige about the time you watched a boy push a girl on the playground during recess, only for the girl’s friend to step in, hands on her hips like a disappointed mother lecturing an unruly kid. He’d gotten punished, obviously, but it warmed your heart to see the girl standing up for her friend like that – without hesitation.

Then, on the same day, one of your students came to the front and loudly demanded to know where babies came from.

So maybe children came in all shapes and sizes.

Months passed. You and Paige don’t change. You’re still hopelessly in love, finding new ways to love each other. It’s all about the intention and effort and reading the nutrition labels on your food to make sure the suppliers hadn’t slipped garlic in there or making sure to keep the curtains drawn on the days there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It’s buying large umbrellas and telling your new friends that Paige has a severe skin condition where she burns easily in the sun and you have yet to find a sunscreen that works. It’s cuddling up with her late at night, pressed skin to skin with hardly an inch of space left between your bodies, because Paige craves the body heat like she craves having you next to her.

The school year eventually ends and over the summer, you and Paige visit Stack and Mary, as promised. They’re still down south. Mary looks radiant and when you hug her, you congratulate her on keeping Stack out of trouble. Stack had nudged Paige with a raised brow and a look that clearly said I’m keeping her out of trouble. You make a joke about needing an invite into their home and the four of you laugh about it three hours later when you’re all a little tipsy from the wine.

Seeing them makes you feel like you haven’t completely lost anything. That you can still find your family so long as you know where to look and as long as you trust them. You spend a few days with the two of them, and then you and Paige make your way back up to Storrs.

You teach, reminding your students of the importance in looking between the lines, in reading and learning from the source. Paige coaches, instilling grit, passion, and integrity into her players. It wasn’t about being perfect or anything of the sort. It was about doing what you loved with all that you were. The two of you live on, happily.

A year passes. Then two. You’re transferred from kindergarten to the second grade after one of the teachers retired. Paige gets promoted to head coach after winning the district championship win and taking her team to the state finals. You’re turning 27 this year and Paige is still 23. She likes to joke that she’s being preyed on by an older woman and you wish that she wasn’t virtually invincible because you’d like to flick her head just once and have it mean something.

The fact that you’re aging and she’s not isn’t really a concern right now. You’re happy. That’s what matters.

Paige asks you to marry her a year after that, when you’re 28. You say yes, obviously, and Stack and Mary make the trip up to see the both of you. Your wedding is intimate, private, not quite official but official in every way you need it to be. On legal documents, no one would ever know that you were Paige Bueckers’s wife, but you knew that, she knew that, and your closest friends knew that, so it was good enough for you.

You teach. She coaches. Storrs is your home now, even if you miss the Delta and everyone who didn’t make it out. Their loss isn’t your gain. It’s your memory and you honor them everyday. Slim, when you listen to the blues, thinking about how much he’d like this new shit, as Paige calls it. The Chows, when you go to the grocery store and smile at the elderly couple who runs it. You always pay a little too much, pretending not to hear them calling about your change when you walk out. But when you return days later and find that they’ve repaired a light fixture or have a new cash drawer, you can’t find it within yourself to mind too much.

TIme is constant. It moves. It’s unyielding. You get older. Paige doesn’t. But it’s okay.

Years pass. A decade. Two decades. Paige eventually steps down from the head coaching position at the high school because she’s supposed to be almost fifty but doesn’t look a day over twenty. Your neighbors ask how she remains so youthful, and her smile is always a little sharper when she says, “I’ve got great genes.”

She doesn’t look at you like you’re anything less than the woman she’s been in love with since she was sixteen. You don’t forget that, not when there’s crows feet at your eyes and your forehead is beginning to wrinkle. Not when teaching is catching up with you and the hair at the crown of your head starts greying. But you don’t give it up. Paige looks at you like you’re still the most beautiful woman she’s ever seen in her life. She finds other employment opportunities, ones where nobody knows who she is and wouldn’t be confused by her image.

She builds stuff now. She’s a carpenter. She plays basketball in her free time when she’s not working on projects and offhandedly, you comment, “Well, you could always enroll at that college a few miles away and play ball for them.”

You could tell she was always really into that idea, but something was keeping her here with you. You would never find out why and Paige would never tell you if you asked. But the truth was she just wanted to spend as much time with you before your age started actually catching up with you. Paige liked going on your late-night walks, breathing in the cool air and making you laugh by telling jokes that aren’t even funny anymore. Paige liked that you’d try to play basketball with her, even if you couldn’t fully dribble the ball between your legs. You knew that she just liked “defending” you, which meant that her hands wandered everywhere the ball wasn’t, but you liked it too, so you never called her out for it.

Nobody tells you how difficult it can be to be nearing sixty and being in love with someone who’s been twenty-three for three decades. You don’t have the same energy you did when you were younger. Paige didn’t love you any less.

Years pass again. You’re nearing seventy. You retired from teaching a few years ago, but you’re still active in your community, keeping up the local garden and smiling at the daughter of the elderly couple at the grocery store. Your neighbors ask you about why they don’t see Paige anymore and you can’t quite meet their eyes when you say it’s difficult for her to get out because of her arthritis.

You’ve lived a good life – that much you can admit. You survived, you got to keep Paige, and you made a career for yourself at the elementary school. You were afforded a lot more happiness than you ever thought you would have. You wonder what it would be like if things were different – if you and Paige were both cursed to be forever young, or if the both of you hadn’t made it out before the sun rose. You like what you’ve built, so this life was good enough for you.

The 90’s roll around and in spring of 1991, you’re sipping on tea when Paige quietly informs you, “I think I’m going to apply to UConn.”

You try for a wry smile. “Perfect. A twenty three year old with, what, sixty years of basketball experience? That’s just what that new coach needs.”

That made her laugh a little. “I think I’m prepared enough to walk on,” she teases. “Hopefully those freshmen don’t pick my pockets.”

You raise your brows at her and she relents like she’s accepting the possibility that she will get embarrassed by eighteen year olds. Like…actual eighteen year olds. Then you soften, setting your tea down, and meeting her gaze. “You’re serious?” She nods shyly. “Well, just make sure you bring your own pen and paper to class,” you say, lips quirking again. “Us teachers aren’t made of money.”

She laughs again, the sound gentle. Paige stands to brush a kiss across your temple, murmuring, “Don’t worry. I’ll be the best student ever.” She’s off to locate the application, and you smile at her retreating figure.

Neither of you are quite sure how, but she manages to get in. You didn’t consider the fact that her diploma was awarded in the 20s, and truthfully, you don’t really want to know what she did to get her application accepted. By fall, she’s enrolled full time at the University of Connecticut. In August, she walks directly into Geno Auriemma’s office, requesting to walk on in tryout. Afterwards, Paige will tell you that Geno stared at her for a solid minute and a half until she felt like she was slowly being gaslit. “What the hell,” Geno had said, standing up from his desk. “I’ve got time today. Let’s see if you can actually hold a ball, hotshot.”

You knew that Paige could do a lot more than hold a ball. Considering the fact that Geno let her join the team, you guess he figured out that Paige could do a lot more, too.

Everyday, she comes home with stories from practice, telling you about the drills they ran and how Geno sees perfection and demands something more. She doesn’t have to tell you for you to know that she really likes the intensity, the rigor. Geno works them so hard that she forgets she’s able to live forever because one practice makes her feel like it’s her last day on earth. You’re just happy that she’s happy.

You attend all of their home games, unable to be seen with Paige until the both of you are home and you can congratulate her on a good game. But the next four years pass quickly. The first three are winless. You and Paige both know that the Huskies are very close to a national championship win.

In 1995, they finally earned their long awaited one. Their first program win, Geno Auriemma’s first national championship win, and Paige’s, too. She’d led her team there, filling out the stats sheet, and she cried when she held the trophy for the first time.

It must be different for her, you think, to have been cursed to live forever from a young age. There will be no growing old for her. No children or grandchildren to ask her what it was like to win UConn’s first national championship. There will be no huffing and puffing about dentures or anything of the sort. She probably won’t be remembered after this year, but winning feels like building something permanent. It feels like being alive – like truly alive, and you wonder if she holds any resentment towards you for being unable to save her at the juke joint.

But the kiss she dusts across your cheek afterwards, the long hug she pulls you in – sweat and all – makes you feel like she could never be angry at you for that. Especially not when she murmurs, “Thank you for giving me this life,” and you realize that the two of you had sacrificed so much for each other without truly knowing it. Whether the two of you realized it or not, you made something beautiful with the life you’d been given. Not many people can say that.

Paige doesn’t keep the championship net, only the small fragment that she’d cut down. She leaves hers with Geno, who obviously doesn’t understand why she wouldn’t keep it, but he’d coached her long enough to realize there’s no arguing with her.

You think that this is what happiness feels like. What love and fulfillment feels like. All you really know is that you were glad to do it with Paige.

After the national championship win in 1995, the years pass in a blur. You’re slowing down. You can feel it.

You’re well past 90 in 2000 when you realize that this was it for you. You’ve lived a long, good life. You’ve seen a lot, touched the lives of many people around you, and you know that there’s not much waiting for you here. Having no tangible family, assembling your will is an easy task, opting to have your wealth donated to the UConn women’s basketball program anonymously.

In early July, the evening is just beginning to wind down when Paige finds you sitting on the porch. The sound of crickets echo around you, the distant hoot of owls cooing, accompanied by the sound of squirrels running through the underbrush. She takes a seat next to you on the sectional, not a day past twenty, a staunch dissimilarity from you.

You’re both silent for a moment. Contemplative. You don’t have to say anything to know that the both of you are likely thinking the same.

Softly, she murmurs, “I’d like to watch the sunrise with you,” and you know better than anyone what she means by that. What the consequences of that mean.

So you do. She grabs a blanket from inside, large enough to drape over your shoulders, and she helps you onto the earth. Paige guides you to the edge of your property where a small pond rests, the glow of the moonlight reflecting off of the still waters. You sit together, your head on hers, and you spend the entire night talking.

You reminisce about the first time you’d met – you, adjusting to life in the Delta, and Paige, wanting desperately to get out of it. The both of you laugh when she recalls the first time she’d ever met the twins. Elias claimed they were cousins, baiting her perfectly. You remember all of your firsts. The morning when she left you for Chicago – even now, she still apologizes for that, to which you respond with, “Well, don’t leave me in our next life. How about that one?” and she laughs, a determined little smile on her face as she declares, “I’d spend every moment of it looking for you.”

The hours trickle by. For years, you’d thought of this moment, about what would occur when one of you inevitably decided that it was time to go. You imagined nerves. Uncertainty. Fear. Now, you’re comforted by the knowledge that you and Paige are just going to find your way back to each other no matter what. All you feel is a deep rooted peace, like you’ve finally earned a happy ending after the turmoil of your life. Maybe in the next one you’d be able to love her openly, but your promise from this one stands: you’d rather love her in the dark than take someone else in the sunshine.

You hear the chirp of birds before you see the sunrise. You feel Paige stiffen next to you, knowing it’s more of an instinctual discomfort than it is pain or fear, and you wrap her hands in yours, calming her with the heat of your body. She tries to relax – she does, but the both of you know this is it. It’s a heavy feeling, not one of a damning finality. One of hope, because no matter what, there’s so much more waiting for you both.

You glance at her. Paige is already looking at you, her gaze reverent and full of love, and she dusts a kiss to your wrinkled cheek. The sun is rising higher now, the rays poking through the trees and peering above the early dawn clouds. Her body begins to shimmer, some sort of golden flame licking at her skin, and she breaks your stare to look up at the sky, a slow smile curling on her lips.

“I love you,” she whispers to you, something like a promise. A vow, one that will hold true for more than this moment. “Don’t keep me waiting, okay?”

You smile, too, reaching up with your hand to cup her cheek. It’s warm to the touch. “I’ll see you soon,” you swear. “I love you.”

Her hand wraps around your forearm, leaning into your touch, and she presses the lightest ghost of a kiss to the inside of your wrist as the gentle flames consume her completely. Before you know it, Paige is gone, and your hand falls to your side limply.

But you’re not too far behind, either. You wrap the blanket tight around your body, leaning your head against the rich soil, and you gaze out at the pond before you, memorizing the blue of the water, the peace of the moment, the beauty of the life you and Paige managed to create for yourselves when it all felt impossible. Content, you shut your eyes, knowing that it’s finally time to rest.

(The next time you open them, Paige is standing before you, her arms extended wide, and you sink into her embrace like you know it’s the one place you’ll always belong. Like she’s the one place you’ll always be able to call home. And maybe it’s because she is. Maybe it’s because the two of you are just getting started, and you have so much time together. Your lives are just beginning.)

bonus

Coach Geno Auriemma, now in his sixties, is poring over recruitment film in his office during a calm day in May 2015 when his associate head coach, Chris Dailey, knocks on his door. She enters moments later, iPad and clipboard tucked close to her chest with a pensive expression, and sits down across from Geno.

He looks up, brows raised and lips drawn into an unimpressed line. He hardly seems concerned by CD’s expression as he says flatly, “What did Stewart do now?”

CD ignores that comment. “I was looking through the middle school film. Watch #1 in blue.” She flips the iPad around, pressing play on the video on screen. Geno hones in on the player in question – blonde, perhaps a little undersized compared to her peers, but he can tell this is an eighth grader playing on varsity. She’s dribbling the ball at the top of the key, calling for a screen, and she ducks around the defender on the right, stopping just short of the free throw line and shooting the ball gracefully from the midrange. It sinks in – because of course it does – and the player backpedals for defense.

It’s then that the camera catches her features. It’s grainy, but Geno can recognize that face anywhere. The assured confidence, maybe a little misplaced and delusional, but it’s almost as trademark as the midrange pullup. Something in him simultaneously softens and breaks.

In 2000, Paige Bueckers, the player who had won UConn’s first national championship for women’s basketball in 1995, had disappeared. Not a trace. She had no family to reach out to, and when Geno approached police and authorities for a wellness check, he’d been told that there was no record of her. Nobody could explain how she lit up the court every week yet ceased to legally exist. It would become one of UConn’s greatest memories. Surely everyone had just missed something.

But this? This wasn’t a coincidence.

“Paige Bueckers,” CD says quietly. “Same face. Same jumper. Same player.”

“Born 2000 or 2001?” Geno asks. CD nods resolutely, and the head coach leans back in his chair. At his age, he’d thought he’d seen everything, but this takes the cake completely. “Well,” he mutters after a while. “Guess I must have really pissed someone off to have to coach her twice.”

In the same office years later, the 2020 season has just begun, and Geno is waiting for a student to arrive for a meeting. Her name had sounded so familiar to him, and after the whole situation with Paige Bueckers, Geno is learning to trust his gut a little more when it comes to things that feel more like fate than coincidence.

There’s a gentle knock at his office door, and he calls for the student to enter. That’s when you walk in, a little flushed from your walk over, bag slung over your shoulder. Geno knows he’s never seen you before in his life, but there’s still something familiar about your face, the energy you’ve brought into the room simply by sitting. You’re a kinesiology major – pre-med, you’d specified in your email to him, inquiring about whether or not the conditioning team would have any space for a freshman looking to intern.

If you were any other person, he would have told you that his hands were tied with the season’s preparations and recommended that you reach out to the conditioning team. But this was different. You were different, and so was that blonde point guard from Minnesota whom he’d put his heart into recruiting – not because she would change the program. She’d already done that back in 1995. He did that because he knew God didn’t put people in his life twice in a row for no good reason.

You and Geno talk for a few minutes, and he’s no closer to placing where he knows you from until there’s another set of knocks on his door. He has half a mind to send them away, but in walks Paige Bueckers, and that’s when the entire room stills. You and Paige lock eyes like he’s not sitting a few feet in front of the both of you, awestruck expressions on both of your faces like this isn’t the first time you’ve met – even though it is.

In this life, at least.

You introduce yourself to Paige and that’s how Geno realizes. He knows that infatuated look in Paige’s eyes. It was the same one she had so many years ago when she was clearly in love but couldn’t quite be honest about who it was and whatever fashion it came to be in. Geno may never understand the true nature of why Paige had kept you a secret while she was at UConn in 1995, but he knows what this is.

It’s not a coincidence. He wasn’t the man to believe in fate or luck. But this is just how things are supposed to be, so he bites back a smile when Paige stands in his office like a bumbling idiot in your presence.

“Well, Bueckers?” he says dryly, which gathers both yours and Paige’s attention. The blonde’s ears are slightly red, which amuses Geno to no end. “You gonna keep flirting with our new conditioning intern or are you gonna show her around the facility?”

You look at Geno with a gleeful expression, shock lacing your features, and Paige stutters over her words as she nods, saying, “Yeah, I got you, Coach.” Clearly having forgotten what she’d initially come in to pester him about, Paige holds the door for you, shutting it gently, and Geno can hear your shared laughter through the walls.

He smiles to himself, leaning back in his chair with crossed arms. This wasn’t the first time you and Paige have met. He knew that much to be true even if he couldn’t prove it. He also knew that this wouldn’t be the last time, either, and he would never admit it, but he’s really, really grateful to have been part of yours and Paige’s stories twice.

[gotaksboyfie]

HII :3 can you do Baku x reader who is his polar opposite 💔 love your fics/headcanons!

purr-fect

gif creds: @cesowi

pairing baku x gender neutral reader

summary you're happy by yourself. then comes baku stumbling into your life after he finds you feeding a stray cat behind school

word count 2.2k

warnings/tags developing relationship

when anyone thinks of eunjang, they think of baku. the undefeated king with fists made of steel, and an outgoing personality. he practically ruled over eunjang, making sure to protect the weak and fend off any unwanted pests (cough, the union)

but you?

you were quiet. never speaking unless called on by a teacher. which was never, because they seemed to forget about you too. you weren't a background character, you were a walking ghost among the eunjang halls.

no one paid you any mind, not even the bullies. they too seemed to not notice you, but better ignored than to be a bread shuttle.

if humans ignored you, the animals sure didn't. leading you to your current predicament.

there was a stray cat with a small litter hidden behind the bushes, and you took it upon yourself to care for her. she hissed and scratched whenever you tried picking it up so moving it home with you was not an option.

you built a makeshift cardboard shelter the next day, even painting it green to hopefully blend in enough to not draw attention. the last thing you wanted were some lowly thugs torturing the kittens.

skipping pe was a regular occurrence for you, so the cats were just an added bonus. who would willingly want to run or play basketball? you snuck away to the convenience store instead and bought cat treats, feeding them to the cat.

"...tuna will be your name." you muttered, watching as tuna rubbed her head against your fingers. the kittens were fast asleep, piled on top of each other.

it's only been a few weeks since you've met tuna, but she trusted you almost instantly after you gave her the cardboard box. she shed the defensive stray cat act and instead turned into a clingy kitty.

she meowed as you poured water into a small bowl, lapping it up quietly. you squatted as you watched, zoning out and thinking of nothing in particular.

"that's sick! is that a cat?!" a booming voice came from behind you, making you jump and fall on your ass.

you winced as you glared up. who the fuck—oh. it's baku.

"what's up," baku lazily grinned, plopping down next to you. "how long have these kitties been here? aww look, one has a spot in the shape of a heart on the belly!"

you blinked as you turned away from him, watching as tuna got into a defensive position and hissed at baku.

"yeowch man! can you help me?? i don't think she likes me very much!" baku exclaims, clutching his scratched up hand. you scooted closer and rubbed tuna's head.

she melted under your touch, but immediately backed up the second baku inched closer.

"not fair dude, she only likes you!" baku moans, pouting as he watches you pet tuna's head. "not much of a talker, are we?"

the bell rings and you get up, dusting your pants off. baku watches you in interest and follows you back into the building.

"what's your name? i never caught it," baku asks, walking with his hands behind his head next to you. you scowl and walk faster, hoping to lose him. thank god you didn't share a class with him or else you would have to deal with his yapping for the rest of the day.

rushing into your class, you take your seat and ignore baku lingering at the door. he leaves soon enough and you forget about him.

until the next day, that is.

there baku is waiting for you. new scratch lines prominent on his forearm as he smiles at you. you sit a foot away from him, leaving you in an awkward distance away from the cats but you would rather die than willingly sit near him.

"ah, i see your nametag now. hi y/n!"

you don't respond, instead pulling out some wet food for the kittens. they all gravitate towards you, still wary of baku.

it's almost funny how reversed the roles are right now. baku is sat like an outsider while you are the center of attention.

nothing seems to dim baku's joyous mood though, because he's still looking cheerfully at you. he snorts to himself, causing you to look up and furrow your brows at him.

baku bites his bottom lip and holds back his laugh just to say "what's a cat's favorite food? paw-sta!"

you don't bother giving baku anymore attention, instead plucking leaves out of tuna's fur. you can hear baku laughing at his own joke, even running out of air once.

baku keeps cracking dry cat puns, but you don't say anything (obviously). he's not deterred by the silence at all, and keeps at it. you grimace at another odd rendition of "purr-fect!" and scoot further away from him.

"does she have a name, or will i just have to keep calling her 'the cat behind school' forever?" baku questions, watching as tuna contentedly rubs against your knee.

"her name is tuna." you stiffly reply, short and straight to the point. it's a stark contrast to baku's tone but when has that ever bothered him?

"aww! is it tuna because she likes tuna the most? or is it just because? does she have a favorite food? are the kitties named? there's 5 of them, we should start distinguishing between them!"

"the kittens have no name."

"let's name them tog–" baku is cut off by the bell ringing. baku curses under his breath, muttering something about "stupid bell" and "worst timing"

he gets up and waves "bye!" as he runs off, kicking up dirt. talk about a dramatic exit, it looks like he's farting up a storm from it. you suppress a laugh (and a sneeze) as you wait for the dust to settle.

the next month or so is the exact same. baku showing up at your spot and claiming it as your shared spot. you think this is more of some form of encroachment but you don't bother talking to him, opting to care for the cats instead.

baku also got the hint and stopped following you to class, noticing the way your eyebrows furrowed in annoyance and you hunched inwards as people asked baku "who's that?". at least he got that social cue.

it becomes sort of a silent rule that baku buys food while you bring water and whatever tools needed, like toys or a fur brush. tuna still hates him so you have to feed her and the kittens.

you don't want to admit it but he's actually helpful. the free food supplied by him has given you more money to spend on other things.

those nine words you spoke before remain the only times you've actually talked around him. despite this, baku welcomes your presence with open arms.

he's constantly talking your ears off, but you start to find that it's not actually that bad anymore. his voice is pleasant to listen to. a nice background noise, even. you know almost everything about him now.

you're starting to enjoy being around baku now, you belatedly realize. even if you found solace in being alone, having someone there wasn't.. all that bad. he never forced you to reply either, just happy that someone was there to listen.

still, baku does not share the same invisibility you have. he wasn't at his usual spot today, and you felt a small pang of disappointment. but at the last ten minutes of class, you notice baku jogging towards you, a scowl on his face.

baku sits down and immediately starts complaining while pouting. per usual, tuna starts to shuffle away from his side closer to you, worsening his pout.

hyuntak has been stricter on him recently, forcing him to not skip today and instead make him teach juntae how to play. which is like talking to a brick wall, because that boy does not seem understand a word they teach him, according to baku.

"isn't it the same? talking to me?" the words slip out of your mouth before you can think and you clamp your jaw shut immediately.

thank god baku wasn't looking at you, or else he would've seen the panicked look on your face. you've kept your expressionless face around him all the time, you can't let that mask slip now.

"not really. you're different," baku says. there's a a pause from him as he sighs, not continuing what he wanted to say for some reason. his voice takes a different tone at the "different", twinged with a softness that makes your heart stutter.

you nod slightly, and baku returns back to his babbling about anything and everything. no one says anything about how you scoot closer to baku, brushing his shoulder with your hoodie. or how baku does the same, sitting side by side with you now.

the bell rings and you look down at tuna and shoo her back to her house. it was awfully barren, perhaps you should get her some things. it must be boring with only the bushes to play around. not to mention it's going to get colder soon.

baku does his same 'wave bye with his whole body and head in first' and you follow behind him after unlatching tuna from your pant leg.

the next day, you make a quick stop to a pet store before class and another during pe to the convenience store.

by the time you get to the same spot during pe, baku is already sitting there. he beams as he sees you turn the corner, loudly beckoning you over. he looks more energetic today, you note.

"look, look! she's letting me feed her!" baku is holding a tube of cat treats while tuna laps at it. you raise your eyebrows as a way of saying "wow", and baku is nearly shaking in happiness. seems like tuna has finally accepted him.

you sit next to baku, opening up the plastic bag you brought. it contained of different cat toys, all silent of course, and a large cat bed with a blanket.

baku makes a (Ö) face as he watches you carefully lift the kittens into your lap and set up the new bed. tuna is too occupied eating from baku's hand to notice the small cat-napping.

never would you think you'd be thankful for baku, but he just made the process 100 times easier. tuna was a menace when it comes to someone touching her babies.

"damn, you bought a bunch of stuff today," baku whistles. the half the kittens were eating whatever baku bought and the other were playing with you.

"y'know, i didn't think you'd be like this," baku starts and you prepare to tune out whatever weird shit he was going to start spouting. no need to hear about how weird you were. "you're actually pretty chill to be around. do you know yeon sieun? he's like you, except more bitchy."

yeon sieun? that study nerd who's known for being a smartass when it comes to fighting? you??? and him??? similar???

your confusion must be apparent on your face because baku cackles. it's a deafening sound compared to the quiet purr of the cats, but it's nothing you're not used to.

"you guys are both all dark, quiet, and brooding. but you're actually pretty..—nice! pretty nice, haha, and kind to animals, and you don't just walk away when i talk," baku flushes and you pretend to ignore that awkward pause in the middle of his sentence. the ground is suddenly really interesting, baku thinks.

he has odd taste, but whatever suits him. you glance at tuna. she just finished eating and is sniffing baku for more.

"i thought you'd be more into like, hmm.., beating up nerds on the side. like out of school. but you don't really seem that bad."

"i don't like fighting."

it's the first time you've talked about yourself, and baku is careful to not scare you off. "oh really? why?"

"i dislike blood."

"honestly me too. it stinks a little and the taste is just nasty. getting a nosebleed always sucks because it just tickles my upper lip and ruins my focus in fights. i don't really like fighting either, but i have people to protect."

you don't respond, because what was there to say anyways? baku just continues talking, knowing that the chances of you wanting to reply were slim to none.

the bell rings again and you grab the plastic bag to throw away, but baku beats you to it. your hand lands on his and you blink. a moment passes with your hand still on his, and baku is beet red.

"oh! uhm, ahaha i'll just take it and throw it away and yeah you don't have to worry about anything don't even worry about it!" baku rambles, his back ramrod straight as he stands up. he moves robotically to the trashcan, and glances back at you multiple times before looking at his hand.

as he leaves, he's smiling ear to ear as he waves widely at you despite being only 2 feet away. "bye! i'll see you on monday!"

you smile softly at him, making his mouth open in surprise. "bye, baku."

the blush returns full force on his cheeks, and his grin grows impossibly wider. he's skipping away giggling to himself like a schoolgirl. did he forget you could still see him?

what an odd guy, you shake your head and laugh to yourself.

fin

a/n eek yapper x listener my favorite trope!!! i feel like baku's opposite would be someone similar to sieun, considering how outgoing baku is (´ ε ` )♡

[dxmedstudent]

This is true. I think you have to approach established relationships as a team - whilst being observant of behaviour (ie actions rather than just words), to confirm that the other person is also doing a reasonable job of being a team player, too. I've also been seeing a lot of really bad takes about dating recently. Some of which essentially boil down to:

"Online dating should be a numbers game, remove all references to your interests from your profile, and hide anything interesting about yourself when you start dating, because women won't like you if you're a nerd/gym bro/ (or insert thing here)".

I hate how cynical and soulless this kind of approach is. Like... pretend you aren't you until you can find someone to tolerate you - even if they are only really tolerating you because they don't actually know you. Because that's healthy and will lead to a long, lasting relationship! /s

Like... no. The numbers approach is precisely why online dating sucks so much. Stop swamping everyone by sending copy paste messages to 1000 women at a time. Stop thinking that the aim is to just expose yourself to as many people as possible in the hope that anyone bites, rather than try to find people similar to you who are genuinely interested.

You don't want to be with someone who tolerates you because they don't really know you, or they thought you were a different person when you met. You want someone to be with you because they appreciate who you are - and that was what drew them to you.

If you have interests, sharing them may put off people who don't want to hang out with you - but you don't want those people, anyway, so scaring them off is just saving you time.

But it'll actively attract people who have the same interests and who are looking for someone like you. My husband and I found each other via online dating in part BECAUSE both of us wore our respective nerdery on our sleeves - and that's true for other couples we know as well.

And then when I see who's posting this kind of advice, it's normally someone like an 18 year old incel who thinks women and men can't even be friends, and doesn't think they'd ever have anything in common with women, anyway. Oh and thinks all women hate men having any hobbies. And hate men who aren't chads. etc

Like... of course the 18 year old incel thinks that no women would ever want to date a nerd, they've had literally no experience of women as friends or as partners. Women are an alien species to them.

Like...don't take relationship advice from people who are incapable of forming relationships. If someone's setting themselves up as a relationship advice-giver - take a look at their background. Do they have a rich social life. Have they had a dating past and some experience of relationships? Do they fundamentally see other people as complex and interesting and worthy to get to know? Or do they spend their time whining about how nobody likes them and how online dating sucks?

So much of the worst dating advice comes from a place of assuming your partner is manipulative and deceptive and then trying to counteract that psychological warfare in kind. Anyone who is in a genuinely happy long-term relationship can tell you that dating should not play out like an episode of Death Note. At it's best, it's just two people caring passionately about each other in a deeply human and honest way. The really insidious part of this advice is that if you ever meet someone who does genuinely care about you and doesn't want to play games, you'll probably drive them away by constantly assuming the worst of them. In your efforts to defend yourself from dishonest and scheming people, you become the most dishonest and scheming person in the relationship.

[undreaming-fanfiction]

Mary Harrington finally gives up one day, boards a plane home alone knowing that her husband is likely already in bed with a woman ten years younger than her. For the first time in her life, she doesn't feel hurt. Only mildly disgusted, maybe with herself too.

She arrives in Hawkins to ruins that are slowly getting rebuilt, smoke almost cleared, and weird whispers about her son and his new friend, the trailer trash Eddie Munson. Something about being too close, too intimate for two men. She feels the familiar disdain, the words "what would your father think" - and then exhales and lets them go. She is past caring about Richard Harrington.

Instead, she sits down with them. She is honest, she was in love once and she knows those eyes - Steve's look like her own, after all. Behind the adoration, she sees the darkness in Steve's face, the pain, and thinks - I couldn't fix my husband, but I can fix this. She gently asks them both if anyone has been giving them trouble. When she hears several familiar names of local God-fearing women, she laughs for the first time in what feels like forever. "Leave them to me," she says.

She stops by for coffee. Chats a little. Gently opens the topic of the rumors about her son. And then: "I understand, Linda. Homosexuality is a sin. What a funny thing, one could say the same about fucking my husband last spring. Of course, it's been so long...I'm sure your husband knows?" One by one, the rumors quiet down and Mary's smile grows into its old radiance.

The first evening back, she summons all the remaining rage, disappointment and sadness over wasted years, poking at old wounds until she's sobbing. And like that, she calls Richard and wails into the phone how everything is destroyed, their house almost gone, and gently guides Richard to the brilliant idea of signing over the small flat in the center he's been renting to Steve. She knows Richard has no patience for her emotions, and she sobs out how Steve has been fixing the town, how he'd become everything Richard had ever wanted, a true pillar of the community, but he has nowhere to sleep, oh how it's breaking her heart, what would the town think-

He promises to send over his lawyer the next day. She thanks him through the tears, says one last "I love you" and with the click of the ended call, dries her tears and pours herself a glass of wine. "How did I do?" she asks.

Steve just laughs and hands her a cheese plate he's been preparing in the kitchen. He nudges Eddie who is staring with wide eyes. "What?" asks Steve with a smirk. "You've always admired my bitchiness and pragmatism. Where do you think I got it from?"

The flat is signed over the next day. Mary kisses her son and Eddie goodbye - she would go back to her parents for a while, she says, just to get the divorce finalized. Plus, one of her old friends still seems interested, her being the one that got away and all that, and Mary intends to test that theory. She will keep in touch, she says. And for the first time, Steve believes her.

[lostazuree]

Hiii!! u asked for more requests and im kinda here to save u SO OKAY HEAR ME OUT maybe smth with size kink or/and breeding??? U can do anyone u like (from bllk plsss) (Rin. WHO SAID THAT?) (Isagi 🤤OKAY IN GETTING HACKED??) (Kaiser… ngh1.. IM TROWING MY PHONE AWAY) u dont have to do it if you don’t want to!! have a good day/night :)

YES, ILY, GIRL. YOU ARE ME, I AM YOU.

↨❣  ࣪ 𝜗𝜚 ̟⸻❝𝐍𝐨 𝐟*𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧' 𝐰𝐚𝐲....𝐦𝐚𝐲𝐛𝐞?❞

𝗦𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀: His undeniably kinky behaviour.

✰𝐅𝐭. 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐊𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐫, 𝐈𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐢 𝐘𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐢, 𝐈𝐭𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐢 𝐑𝐢𝐧, 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐮 𝐑𝐲𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐢.

𝘚𝘮𝘶𝘵-𝘚𝘪𝘻𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘬, 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘬,𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘸.

♥︎ 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐊𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐫

He never particularly thought about it before, but now that you tell him, he sees it too. Not that he'd admit. He liked teasing you about how small your hand was compared to his, but that wasn't the extent of his teasing. After all, he was very well endowed. And he secretly found some sadistic pleasure in watching you struggle to take it. The way you'd become a pathetic, whimpering mess beneath him, tears staining that pretty face.

Gripping your legs, spreading them apart while you're writhing under him, nails raking over the tattoo on his arm, he can't help but notice the way his dick lines longer and bigger than your pussy as he presses the tip against your chubby folds, comparing his cock to your tummy. "Look at you pretty, so small." he said, fascinated. "It's..mh..it's so big." you whined when he pushed deeper into your velvety walls, you were struggling to take each and every veiny inch. "Damn right, it's big, liebe." he said cockily, his mind hazy and the veins of his dick twitching when you'd call him big. "M-..Micha. It-..it won't..fit." That caused him to open an eye, a cruel smirk adorning his visage as he whispered, "I'll make it fit, ja?", he held you steadily, shoving his inches into you as you cried out, a mix of pleasure and slight pain, nails digging into his flesh, but he doesn't mind. He had your eyes rolling so far into their sockets that you were discovering new galaxies on the way. He drilled into you so deep, you were sure your sputtered moans could be heard in the whole house. "Look at this little greedy pussy, suckin' me in so eagerly. I'm gonna fuck her so good."

He squeezed your nipples, pinching them as if to keep you awake. You could feel your walls clenching around him, he never failed to make a comment on how big his cock was compared to your pussy. And he realised, well, he did infact have a size kink. Now you knew it too. But no way in hell, would he, the Michael Kaiser would ever admit to having something so ludicrous. But he just loved shoving his length down that cunt just so he could hear your loud gasps, his the veins on his dick twitching at the feeling of your slick walls, the feeling of your nails raking over his skin while he gropes your breasts roughly. He'd wake up to find new tattoos on his back, all red and fine streaks. Tease him about it later to see just how quickly he flips the tables on you, calling you filthy for even thinking of it.

♥︎ 𝐈𝐭𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐢 𝐑𝐢𝐧

He himself never knew he had a size kink. He was way too busy to think of lukewarm people stuff. You had mentioned it once or twice, seeing his mannerisms, and he'd blatantly deny it every time. But lately, he'd been involuntarily noticing how small you are compared to him. He can't help but eye the way his hoodie hangs so large and loose over you, and the sight's got him thinking some interesting stuff. But poor boy would soon prove himself wrong.

He's got you under him on the bed. Propped up on his palm as he spreads your legs mindlessly, he can't help but notice, His dick really is kinda big for your pussy. "Fuck..look at that little pussy." Not that he minds. Yes, he'll give you all the preps needed for you to accommodate his size. He pushes in, slow, stretching you out for good, his eyes already rolling back when you struggle to take more than his tip, a string of strangled moans leaving your lips. But he won't be pulling out anytime soon. "You'll take me, right? All of it." And he just sounds so breathless saying it, plunging deeper, forcing you to take him, inch by inch, bottoming out, letting you adjust. "G-..gosh..Rin! C..can't!" you can't help but whimper out, after all, he is stretching you out so much. He just gets harder hearing you tell him that his cock is too big for you. "Oh yeah? Is my dick that big, huh?" he'd whisper in your ear shamelessly. "You shouldn't be complaining. You're already takin' it, babe." He thrusts, his movements rough and paced. He revels in the sounds you make, and he just can't tear those teal eyes away from your pretty little cunt stretching and struggling to take his length. And that's when it strikes him, you were right. He does have a size kink. Not that he'd ever admit how much he loves seeing his dick disappear inside you, how your face twists in pleasure whenever he pushes in all of his length. He thinks it's valid, after all, his dick might be too big for your little pussy. And your suspicions are confirmed, Itoshi Rin has a size kink. Confront him about it later and he'd be a blushing, protesting mess.

♥︎ 𝐘𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐢 𝐈𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐢

Yes. This man has thought about it before. He does have a size kink, and a slight breeding kink to add to it, as if that makes it better. He wants little copies of you and him running around the house. And he knows he's big, he just wants to hear you say it. Though yes, he won't outright admit how nasty he really is.

It starts off simple enough. He's got you under himself as usual after a match, a pillow tucked under your back as you arch it, something he definitely read somewhere because of course, he does and searches up questionable things when he's not solving an infinite pieces jigsaw puzzle in his head about soccer. His blue eyes just rake over your form, how he can pin you down so easily with his hips, how he can easily trap both of your wrists with a single hand of his, how his cock lines up thicker and bigger than your entrance. "What's wrong, love? Too big?" It's his guilty pleasure that he loves absolutely demolishing your pretty little cunt with that big dick of his, while mumbling the most filthy things known to mankind. He's slamming hard, groaning, grunting gruffly all while slurring. "Look at you, taking my cock like the little slut you are." He whispers in your ear, he just can't help it, he gets that tone and that filthy vocabulary on autopilot when he's trying to prove a point, or rather, make one, be it a football field or your damn bed. "I-Isagii...sh-shut up." you can't help but whine, breathlessly, your eyes rolling back as he rams into you, his other hand squeezing your breast. "Mm, 'm sorry pretty, but I'm not lying." soooo fucking cocky with it, like he's purposely trying to break you both physically and mentally with these thrusts and those words. He knows he's kinky, he doesn't need to realise it. He is a little sadistic, he does not care at the moment whether if it hurts or not. He is just reveling in the feeling of being sucked in so sloppily. He pinches your nipples with one hand, lifting your hips up, even above the pillow just so he can hit deeper, make you cry louder. He goes back to being a sweetheart soon enough. Confront him after this and he'll gaslight you like the little fucker he is.

♥︎ 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐮 𝐑𝐲𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐢

This mf is feral. He does not give two shits about anything. He knows he has the nastiest, most violent size kink, to top it off, a breeding kink too, because nothin's really better than cumming inside his pretty thing. And he doesn't even deny it. He's so outright and vocal about his kinks, very blatantly expressing just how much he enjoys being a fucking brute to your smaller form.

With Shidou, it never starts simple. He'll purposely egg you on to the point you get so hazy and clouded, typical and dying for his dick. He teases you a lot, rubbing the tip of his cock over your clit, over your entrance just until he feels those nails clinging to his shoulders like a lifeline, "Ryuu...come on..ugh.", And he can't help it at that. He lets out a low chuckle, a fairly amused one as he silences you with a finger. "Y'know, you're complaining a lot tonight." His mouth latches onto your nipple, his tongue circling the hardened peak before he pulls back with that deviant grin, "Maybe I should give you a better reason to complain." As he finally pushes in, ramming into you all at once. He looooves when you whine, when tears prick your eyes. He's a little mean about it. He goes feral when you tell him how big he is. He knows how big he is. And he loves when his pretty thing struggles to take him in. "Come on, you can do better than that, right? Look how she's sucking me in. It fits." Horny asf, filthy, devilish, and whatever synonymous adjectives exist, are not yet on par with this man. He gets you in an achingly good mating press, throwing your legs over his shoulder while he plunges deeper, his one hand holding your thigh, and the other holding the bed frame for support, dunno if it's to support him, or the bed. His mouth finds its way back to your breasts, leaving bite marks and hickeys everywhere while he's making some infuriating comments about how your stomach protrudes up when he goes in deeper, how his cock is literally and figuratively too big for your weeping cunt. "She ain't ever been fucked this good, ngh. Come on, you'll give me little ones, right?". He's fascinated by the idea of having mini Shidous' or..ankle biters as he'd say, so he won't really cum a single drop outside of you! He doesn't care if you accuse him of having said kinks, he'd literally sit and elaborate why he does.

𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐩 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 ♡

Reblogs would be highly appreciated! ♥︎

[frownyalfred]

I know that the appeal of the Brucie Wayne identity is shameless incompetence covering up extreme hypercompetence, but another interesting aspect of Bruce's in-between persona (not quite public, but not Batman, explicitly) are the large/significant changes he makes and has to go to great lengths to keep subtle or easily dismissed by the public. Reducing something massive and complex to what amounts to a "happy accident" or forgettable coincidence on paper.

Examples:

Buying the Kent Farm. He couldn't buy the house outright, it would draw far too much attention and link his and Clark's identies, even with several steps in between. So Bruce bought the bank, then the Farm.

In Batman Begins, he buys certain gear in bulk to avoid suspicion. He gets thousands/millions of cowl prototype bases because buying ten would be strange.

All of the journalistic manuvering. It's very look here, don't look there. It's artistic. It's sleight of hand with the media. "Brucie falls into a fountain the same night Batman needs to take a night off" no, even better. Bruce, as Brucie, captures attention in a way that doesn't let you even realize that you should be paying attention to something else. He isn't taking away your attention. He has it, and that's the point.

The painstaking and painful steps he takes to fund and oversee the Justice League while maintaining credible distance. The fact that he's able to spin it as CSR without anyone putting the pieces together is impressive.

Tech/behaviors he employs to ensure the government thinks Batman is a low-level vigilante with limited access to complex resources.

Doubling up missions/priorities for events. If he can get intel and a a JL target out of a stuffy Gotham event, he can and will. And on the other side, doubling up patrol/investigations as Batman to benefit Bruce Wayne. None of that intel is a coincidence. Keeping those two lives completely separate only harms him in the long run.

[beastyeastfreak]

Read your Beast Cookies x Human Sized Reader! Can we get a part 2 of that with the Beasts navigating life with their beloved? Such as going to work with them? Learning about new foods and such?

Absolutely!!! I think at some point the beasts figure out how to turn human/humanoid so the first half will be cookie sized and second half will be human sized

Cw and tags: lighthearted, romantic, fluff

Written pre silent salt update

Mystic flour

🌾 - At first, shes reluctant to ask for help. She navigates and learns silently, usually out of sight. After some adjustments she’ll ask you for help. Not directly, she’ll look at a place she wants to be and stare expectantly at you to hold your palm out for her. She can re-enter the game at any point, and she definitely will if you don’t treat her like a fellow human and like a small cookie. Its testing to say the least, you have to be completely dead faced when shes backhandedly threatening another cookies life or hold back “awww”. She is this powerful figure in the cookie world, able to end kingdoms if she sees fit. But here she was, sitting in the palm of your hand at chest height.

🌾 - After she gets used to being around giants, she decides to attend family gatherings and occasionally work with you. Of course in hiding, she’d rather not be treated like a toy. You end up sewing in a comfortable spot in your bag where she can sit and not be crushed. Why she wants to come with you is beyond you until you have a bad experience at work. On your lunch break she comes out and speaks to you. Reminding you it doesn’t matter and helps you calm down. This is done out of care but hopefully it will also be further convincing for you to join her in the cookie world when the time comes.

🌾 - She loves getting gifts from you, if you give her something she always takes it with her back into the game unless its to help her in the real world. Letting her touch you or following what she asks is another way to earn her affection. She’ll often sit with you while you’re at your desk, if she sees you stressed she’ll have you lay your head down and meditate with her for some time. She tries to get you to come with her, suggestions to join her in the cookie world. You deny, she doesn’t mind, you will come around, she’ll drag you in if you have to.

🌾 - Of course soon she figures out how to make herself human. She doesn’t come to work with you one day, you come home and set your things down, as you do she comes behind you and places a hand on your shoulder. You freeze, she speaks. “I understand why you wont become a cookie with me, this form is an improvement.” She says and you turn around and hug her much to her surprise.

🌾 - Now in this form, she has to get used to a body rather than surroundings. You’ll catch her not using her thumbs and grasping things like she would in cookie form, all fingers stiffky wrap around something. She’s hesitant at the thought of water and the food you eat but slowly gets used to it. she insists on going in person where you go (obviously not to work anymore). She speaks for you at restaurants, she follow you in to the store like a ghost and stare threateningly at anyone who looks at you weird. She comes with you into family parties if they’re tame enough, they all wonder why she already knows their names.

🌾 - Not wearing her usual icing felt odd, you explain its far too formal for this day and age. After a while she sort of develops a more modern style still matching her aesthetic. Thats one of the many lifestyle changes she goes through, she of course cant eat jellys for sustenance so she’ll try food off your plate often times or put something she’s interested in in the shopping cart.

🌾 - She is extremely scary, you could be laying in bed cuddling with her at night one minute and the next she’s no where to be found. You get up and see two bright slit eyes and a dark figure in the hall nearly scaring your dinner out of you. She’s calm every time, by the end of the first month of her being human you’re immune to scary things in the dark. Mostly because she scares you unintentionally but also she scares everything else off intentionally.

Burning spice

🏜️ - Burning Spice doesn’t ask this being thats a hundred times larger than him for permission. He just does what he wants. Unfortunately, the cookie world is more fragile than your world due to it being all baked goods. No matter! He’ll find a way to break everything anyway. Where Mystic Flour will have you hold her, he just climbs onto you. It leaves tiny little holes in your clothing you have to sew up.

🏜️ - His destruction is humorous in your eyes, he talks a lot of crap for someone you almost step on once a week. The both of you poke a lot of fun at eachother, he calls you weak you call him small and cute, its all out of love though. He threatens to kill anyone who gives you an issue, you just lean your head on the table and nod along. He can tell you find his threats amusing but just you wait.

🏜️ - He likes to blare loud music, anything with hard bass, guitar and drums he loves. He likes animal planet or nature documentaries, i know that sounds crazy bear with me(pun intended). As herald of change he watched countless civilizations rise and fall, animals are constantly fighting to stay alive and relevant. He’s amused seeing beings with such short life spans documented being born and dying, just like those kingdoms on a much smaller scale.

🏜️ - his favorite form of affection is touch. He’s the equivalent of your cat laying on you and burning you up, its amazing how much heat a little cookie can have. Going to sleep with a snoring beast laying in your hair or on your chest is surprisingly comfortable. He likes to accompany you places when you’re not expecting it. “How are you not soggy?” You hear outside the shower curtain one time. “He should not have spoken to you like that…” you hear from your bag as you exit a conversation with a coworker. It ends up becoming rather helpful, pep talks are the best from him. He seems to think customers are enemies to be slain the way you describe them.

🏜️ - Finally at some point he figures out how to become human. You had just gotten home and complained to him, still in cookie form, how much you hated your job and he told you he’d make sure you were respected and protected as his partner should be. You thanked him but it was clear you were just playing along. You went to take a shower and change and when you exited he was standing there, a very imposing human bearing an axe longer than your table, longer than you are tall. He laughed heartily, “Is a change of form convincing enough? Will you believe me now when i say i will bring destruction upon those who harm you?”

🏜️ - It took some time but you convince him to not murder people and destroy public property in your world. He’s fond of rage rooms which is your way of appeasing him. He’d really like boxing and wrestling if you could figure out how to get him an id or explain his gem and antennae, if not he’s fine just watching it with you. If you do get him into some matches, he is a MENACE. He’s easily winning matches, taking punches like a brick wall and dishing them out like a professional. Of course you may have to pull him out before they start questioning his identity. You take him to a lot of concerts too, he enters a mosh pit no one comes out alive unfortunately. He’ll also put you up on his shoulders so you can see and no one bumps into you.

🏜️ - You don’t need to be assertive, he’s doing that for you. Someone got your order wrong? He’s opening up the car door and walking inside to get it fixed, no questions asked. His warmth thankfully carried over to his new form, he definitely lays flat on his back taking up the whole bed so you have to crawl on top of him to cuddle. You dont even need blankets, he’s a massive heat pad. He’s more of a cuddle bug than you’d think.

Eternal Sugar

🌷 - She doesn’t really need help getting around, you often find her hovering around the ceiling on a soft blue cloud, or lazing on the leaf of a blooming houseplant, or on your bed. If you have a pet, she has them obedient to her within days. If they only knew sit before, suddenly they could fetch items or move things for her. She’s the worst influence if you’re a procrastinator, she wants you to be happy and so why should you worry about that little issue? Just relax, turn on the movie you both love! She loves to just lounge around with you, seeing you happy and relaxed is her biggest goal and she’ll do anything to achieve it. Anything.

🌷 - From the second you walk into the house she’s softly fluttering to you with a yawn. She’ll sit on your shoulder and have you talk about your day. “Oh i have to do this-“ no you dont, you’re tired! You need to lay down, she’ll help you relax. With her, you lose track of time as if it didn’t exist to begin with. She’s easy to talk to, she just wants you happy and you want her happy, win win when you’re both lazing around rewatching a show deep into the night.

🌷 - She wont ask anything of you, but if you give her things its appreciated. You may try to accommodate by adding house plants when you notice a flower growing marvelously all of the sudden when shes around, soon you have a garden. You obviously can’t keep actual cakes and desserts out like decorations, but candles and anything to make the house smell sweet she’d like. If you take her anywhere, she’s the easiest to have unhidden. From a glance she looks like a bird, you can probably just keep her in your pocket or on your shoulder.

🌷 - She’s napping in the crook of your neck one spring day, you’re both laid on the couch. You’re fast asleep when you feel like theres a weight on you. You stirr but then hear the sound of her yawning, but it sounded loud. You open your eyes to see you’re being laid on by Eternal Sugar still, but shes now a human still with large wings and pink skin. She opens her eyes as if sensing your eyes on hers. “Is something wrong?~” she says before kissing your flushed cheeks with a small wing twitch.

🌷 - Unfortunately she’s impossible to bring anywhere unless you figure out how to hide her wings. She doesn’t mind not leaving the house, just gives her a reason to keep you lazy and in her arms. When its dark, she can definitely go out if you want to walk but rarely will she choose to. She’d much prefer to lay in bed with you eating sweet snacks, in fact when you have to go to work thats exactly where you’ll find her when you’re home if she’s not in the game.

🌷 - You smell so sweet from your proximity to her. Sweet in a way that a carnivorous plant is. You are her little tempting treat, witches forbid anyone else become tempted to take a bite or harm you. She doesn’t want to learn transformation from Shadow Milk but she will if she finds her future garden goer is being bothered. Your coworkers and friends are probably sick of hearing how much you talk about her when they haven’t even seen her. It’s mutual though, the beasts have to endure her gushing about you as well.

🌷 - She’ll always wrap you in your wings when you get anxious or sad, letting you hold onto her while she guides you somewhere better. She makes sure you know theres always the option to live the rest of your life in the garden, but if you decline thats ok. Because slowly she had wrapped you around her finger. From the first time you listened to her to take a break to the millionth time you had watched something with her instead of going to visit a friend. You didn’t need her garden, she had turned your home into one.

Shadow Milk

🃏 - Can you imagine the reaction on his minions faces when he returns with one big lipstick mark on his face? No, but gradually their jaws drop less and less when he comes back with that same mark nearly every day. He swears he’ll bring you back one day but Black sapphire doubts it and doesnt show it, Candy Apple hopes he doesnt.

🃏 - He doesn’t need much help getting around, he floats and summons small things. He will request things from you like him sized furniture or maybe a stage. Like Burning spice he kind of just accompanies you wherever. He likes to put you in situations that make you have to lie. One month you have a pet cockatiel then the next a cockatoo. Little changes to play with your friends minds, yet the evidence was right there. He would change his form to play along with these lies.

🃏 - He hates tvs at first, he’s appalled at the idea that you can just watch something that isn’t live performance. But after a couple episodes he slowly eases in, if you mention his affinity for it while he’s nestled under the covers on your chest, he’ll get mad, deny it and float off to watch it in secret. His favorite thing to watch are recordings of theater shows and while you’re not home he watches cartoons. (argue with the wall i know he does) He asks you to go watch some new show at least twice a month. He also preforms for you occasionally, arts and crafts is his favorite way to spend time with you.

🃏 - Well, the time comes and he hones the ability to One day he promises that soon he’ll be able to preform for you without you needing to be so close to his little stage. On a big stage, with other actors. And he’d dip you down and kiss you romantic movie style You clearly didn’t take it seriously but still went along with it because you liked the idea, he just grinned and asked you to go get something for him. When you return he’s gone, great… hide and seek. You look around for a moment but out of no where your hand is brought over your head and you’re spun without warning. After a moment you find yourself exactly as Shadow Milk said he’d do, and there he was in human form doing just that.

🃏 - From then on he’s sort of just this sudden boyfriend you have to introduce to everyone. He had poor social skills in the cookie world, he has abysmal social skills in the real world. He’s interesting though. He brings his minions out (in human form of course) if you ask or if he needs help with something. His first intention was to bring you into the cookie world but now that he’s entered a world where misinformation is spread left and right he’s decided he’d add your world to the roster of places to conquer.

🃏 - Black Sapphire absolutely starts a podcast or a radio show from your house, Candy apple cookie becomes a horrible influence on local children. Shadow Milk is rather mysterious about his free time. You know he gets into a lot of acting roles(after changing into something less blue) but for some reason it seems like hes always up to no good. Had you just released a potential monster onto society? Yes, but for now he seemed relatively harmless so maybe he wasn’t too much of a concern. unless he decides to run as a politician

[thebestsetter]

Undressed

Synopsis: Break ups are tough. The ones with the one you swore you'd spend your whole life are even harder. He'll never get over you, he's sure of it. How could he, when everywhere he looks, you're there?

Characters: Rin Itoshi, Oliver Aiku, Michael Kaiser, Sae Itoshi

TW: The word fuck sometimes, OOC characters 😟

A/N: This is obviously inspired by Sombr's song "Undressed". Y'all should totally listen to it.

A/N²: THEBESTSETTER'S WRITING COMEBACK???

I don't wanna get undressed for a new person all over again

Rin Itoshi has never had an easy time opening up to other people.

Ever since he was a kid, talking about his feelings and thoughts never came as easily to him as it did to others. Feelings were... well, complicated. The only one who could make him come out of his little shell was Sae Itoshi, his older brother. The one who promised to always be by Rin's side. The one who he looked up to. The one who comforted him and gave him free popsickles.

The one who betrayed him. The one who felt disgusted by Rin. The one Rin wanted to crush and destroy.

And also the one who broke Rin. Who made him cry countless times, wondering just what was wrong with him.

After that fateful night, Rin never opened up to anyone again. Why bother? If even his own brother abandoned him, others would too, right? People come and go, so what's the point in being an open book? They're gonna leave anyways, he's clearly destined to be alone (And he's okay with it, really.)

Or perhaps not, cause somebody else managed to break through the walls he oh so carefully built up. You managed to.

Talking to you was easy. He didn't felt like he was forced to speak, it just came naturally. It was as if his own body wanted to open up to you, to have a shoulder to cry on - or maybe it was just the effect you had on him, he'll never really know.

He told you everything. He talked to you about the ugliest parts of him, the ones he tried so hard to hide. He told you about Sae and how the whole situation regarding both of them made him feel. He felt vulnerable enough to cry in front of you, multiple times.

He still remembers your arms around him, the embrace strong, yet so gentle. It was clear you cared for him. Scratch that, you told him you loved him, more than once. And he loved you back. So, so much.

That's why he doesn't understand what went wrong. Why he's here and you're there. Why he's alone again.

"...Rin?"

Well, not exactly alone.

Don't get him wrong, his new girlfriend is good. Great even. She's pretty, the media loves her and her cooking is very good.

There's just one problem.

She isn't you.

"Is everything alright?"

His shoulders are shaking as he lies with her in their shared bed, his back facing her while he looks at the wall as if it was the most interesting thing in the room.

"Mhm" He nods, trying to calm down. His breath is unstable, even if he tries to hide it.

"You're shaking. You sure you're alright?"

The feeling of her hand going up and down his back, clearly trying to calm him down, does nothing to help. Actually, it only makes things worse: he feels disgusted by it. Her touch feels so, so wrong. It feels forced. Out of place. Strange.

He brushes her hand off like it physically burns with a little more force than normal. He realized it was too much though, so he tried to play it cool.

"Sorry" he says, finally finding his voice again "I'm fine, really. You should sleep now... Love"

He almost spits the word, like it's acid going through his mouth. The stinging sensation in his lips after saying it makes his head start reeling and his heart beat faster.

"Rin, you know you can always talk to me when something's wrong, right? I'm your girlfriend, sweetie. You need to trust me for this relationship to work"

Trust? He trusted too many people already. Sae. You.

And, suddenly, the earning becomes hatred. For a split second, he holds the pillow tighter, the longing he felt for you quickly replaced by pure anger.

You promised him. You told him you'd never leave him. And the worst part is that he believed you. He wanted to believe.

He really should talk to her. She's waiting for an answer, staring at him in silence. She stares at him like the kids used to do when he was little: like his feeling were too confusing to understand. Like he was too much.

You never once looked at him like that. You looked at him with understanding in your eyes. With care and patience.

The anger turns into tears. One by one, they begin to spill from his eyes as he hiccups into his pillow. It's as if the ghost of your hands is right there, wiping away his tears.

"Talk to me, Rin" she says - no, she pleads.

But he can't. Even though he knows he should, his mind doesn't want to. He opens and closes his mouth, trying to find the right words to say, but finds none. His body physically holds him back from talking to her the way it used to do with you.

"...I can't"

He'll never be able to open up to another person, as long as the ghost of you still haunts him. He doesn't want to.

I don't wanna kiss someone else's neck and have to pretend it's yours instead

This wasn't supposed to happen.

He wasn't supposed to get attached.

It was meant to be an one stand, a quick "fuck and go" to help him get his mind off of the current... situation he was facing.

But Aiku couldn't help it: she just looked too much like you.

Her hair, her face, hell even her name sounded like yours - which really helped him cover his slip ups (moaning your name instead of hers) many times.

When they were sleeping together, she put her cold feet under his legs to warm them up just like you used to do. Her favorite series are the same as yours. Her style looks liked yours. She was almost you.

Almost. She wasn't you.

But if Aiku closed his eyes really tight, he could pretend it was you.

He knew he looked crazy, but he just couldn't stop it.

When he gifted her the perfume you used, he brushed it off as a coincidence. Many girls wear that fragrance, so it's not a big deal, really. When he "accidentally" bought her VIP tickets to that rock band you liked - the one he refused to go with you many times, claiming he was "busy" - even though he knew she doesn't like rock, he just shrugged and said he liked the band - he doesn't know a single song beside your favorite one. When he kisses her neck, he needs to pretend it's you, or else he physically can't be affectionate with her. He closes his eyes and inhales your her cologne, smiling to himself as he mutters your name.

"Aiku?" She asks, turning to look directly at him "Who's that?"

And that's when he realized: she was not you. Because her eyes were nothing like yours.

He misses them. Your eyes, I mean: the way the colors in your iris danced, inviting him in and making him grow an inexplicable need to kiss you till you're both a breathing mess of love and earn.

That's why he knows he should stop.

He really should.

"What do you mean? I said your name"

There's not an ounce of doubt in his voice when he talks to her, as if they've had this conversation hundreds of times already.

"...okay then"

And when she turns and he can't see her face - her eyes - anymore, he automatically goes back to pretending it's you again.

So you have to understand, he couldn't let go of her. Cause then he'd have to get over you, and he's not sure if he's ready to.

I look across the tracks and see you with another

There's nothing worse than seeing your lover moving on while you still suffer

Kaiser feels sick to his fucking stomach.

What the actual fuck is happening just in front of him? Why are you at your cafeteria with a lowlife? Your cafeteria. Yours and Kaiser's. The one you had your first date in. The one where he asked you to be his girlfriend.

He's gonna throw up.

Why are you with that bastard? He looks like a fucking dog that hasn't taken a bath in weeks - no, months. He's so much better than that idiot in front of you right now. He knows it. And he's sure you know it too.

So why are you smiling so hard?

How can you be smiling so hard without him, when he's never gotten over you? When he still earns for you, still goes through your old photos on his phone. When he still calls you just to listen to your voice on the voicemail.

How can you move on while he's still suffering? And how can you look so pretty while doing it.?

It's unfair. He's been on dates after your break up, sure, but never managed to find anyone even close to your level. That's why he doesn't know how you managed to.

Kaiser knows he's pathetic. He though those lovesick fools from the movies you forced him to watch were ridiculous - until it was him in their position.

He rejects every girl that even tries to talk to him. The scented candles - the ones that have your scent - are always lit. He checks your social media like it's a ritual.

He even cries himself to sleep sometimes, trying to figure out just what went wrong. Why he's so easy to abandon. Why no relationship ever works for him.

"Mich... Kaiser" He hears someone call.

It's you. Hand in hand with your new... Lover.

He can't help the disgusted expression that appears in his face.

"...hey" It's so weak, so low, so unlike him that even you seem surprised

"What are you doing here?"

I was looking for you, hoping to see you here. Alone. Looking for me, too

"Ah, just passing by. The coffe here is the best, you know."

It's not a question, it's an affirmation. He knows you know. You told him yourself that they serve your favorite coffe.

"Yeah, I know" an uncomfortable silence settled, but Kaiser didn't even oay attention. His eyes were focused on your hands, intertwined with that guy's. "So..." You start, looking at him. Oh, how he missed your eyes.

But not like that. You're looking at him with indifference, not with the loved you used to. "How's life going?"

"Amazing" Bullshit "I'm seeing someone" it's the most absurd lie he's ever said.

"Really? That's great!" No. You're not supposed to be happy. That would mean you...

"I'm glad you also managed to move on" Also? "You know I still care for you, right?"

He's gonna cry.

"Y-yeah" How many times has the mighty Michael Kaiser stuttered?

"You should call me" he's blocked.

You seem to remember it, since you blush and look to the side. His face softens when he sees this. You really haven't changed. At least, not completely. "I'm gonna unblock you, don't worry"

Oh, how long has he earned to hear those words? But not like this. Whatever this is, it isn't what he wanted.

"Sure" he puts his cold and alone hands inside the pockets of his jacket, pretending it's you holding them. "I need to go, now. She's waiting for me at home"

There's no one at his house - he can't call it home anymore. Home is wherever you are.

"Yeah, sure. Goodbye, Kaiser"

"Goodbye"

He begins walking away, his eyes glossy and the air around his face filled with the puffs from his heavy breathing.

"Oh, I almost forgot"

He looks at you again, locking eyes. He takes in your whole body, almost as if it's the last time he'll ever see you: and it might be.

"Take care of youself, Micha."

It seems his pillow will wake up wet again.

I don't want the children of another man to have the eyes of the girl I won't forget

Sae changed.

Spain changed him. Life changed him. Football changed him.

Whatever was going between you both before he travelled was over. He made it very clear that day, when he broke up with you on a snowy day.

He knew he needed to do it. He needed to if he wanted to he the best midfielder in the world.

He also told you to not wait for him, even though you told him you would. He wasn't selfish enough. He knew you deserved to be happy.

And even though he said you shouldn't wait, he still held hope. Hope that you had waited for him, just like you said you would.

That's how he finds himself in Japan again after almost 5 years, strolling through the park where you spent your whole childhood playing together, searching for you.

Everywhere he looks, there's a piece of you. The swings you both ate ice cream in. The sand box where you'd play with Rin. The bench where he confessed his love for you. The olive tree where you first met. The...

"Daddy, look! It's Sae Itoshi, from Real Madrid!"

He snaps out of his daydream when a highpitched voice breaks him out of it.

"It's really him, daddy!"

"Are you sure, sweetie?"

"Yes! Yes! 100% sure!"

"Okay then, go talk to him"

He looks to his right and sees a little girl running up to him a smile on her face and her arms open wide. Her dad is behind her, recording the whole thing while smiling.

"Hello" he says, ruffling her hair a little. He doesn't really like paparazzi, but he really likes his kid fans. Only when they're not spoiled, though "What's your name, little one?"

"I'm Hannah!" She says, still hugging his legs "And I'm your biggest fan!"

He smiles a little

"Well then, 'biggest Sae fan'" he hears her dad say, laughing and coming closer "Why don't you let him go now so you can take a picture together?"

She reluctantly lets go, still not able to contain her smile. When the photo is taken, Sae crouched down to her height to say goodbye, like he always does with kids.

Except it's not the same. The words die in his lips.

Because he recognizes that look. Those eyes.

They're exactly like yours. Even the sparkle in them is the same.

He's suddenly brought back to the thoughts of you. The way you looked at him when he declared his love. The way your eyes sparkled when he won one of the most important championships of the town with his silly school football team. Hell, he even remembered the way your eyes filled with tears when he broke up with you that day.

All because of that little girl.

It can't be... can it?

"Hey, man" he hears the girl's dad say, which makes him quickly rise up again (without really saying anything to the girl. He got too distracted)

"Yes?"

"Could you give a shout out to my wife? She really likes soccer, so I'm sure she knows you"

Oh God.

"Sure. What's her name?"

Please don't say her name please don't say her name please don't say her name please don't...

"Sure. It's..."

He tunes everything down the moment the name began to form itself in the man's lips. Maybe if Sae didn't hear it, it wouldn't be truth.

Yeah, maybe.

But it wouldn't. The truth was simple: you moved on. And the proof was there, right in front of him, smiling without a care in the world.

"So, think you can do it? The video, I mean"

Those kid's eyes will haunt him forever. He's sure of it.

"...yeah. I'll do it"

[basementcherub]

I decided to watch the X-Files again recently because I missed Mulder and Scully. God I love them so much. They are my all-time favourite couple and I have A LOT to say about the romantic aspect of the show.

The X-Files never set off to be a romance, and during the show, the producers seemed to try really hard not to make it one for a long time. And that's fair, the X-Files is a show about aliens, conspiracies, and mothmen.

And I can see it: the show doesn't really feature typical romance hallmarks or tropes (or not too many anyway). No obvious behaviours that indicate crushes, no mentions of having butterflies, no chats with third parties who try to push them into bed (or very few), no real attempts at flirting or asking each other out, no Valentine's Day episodes... Even when there is jealousy it toes the line between their professional and personal lives. Did Scully feel more threatened by Diana Fowley on a personal or professional level? I'd argue both. Likewise, a few declarations by Mulder and Scully are kind of related to their professional roles (i.e. Scully saying she wouldn't herself on the line for anyone but Mulder) so there is plausible deniability as to whether they mean it romantically or professionally.

Naturally, later in the series, there are more romantic scenes, but for a long time, there are fewer traditional "indicators" that it's a romance. The show isn't really signaling that it's a romance.

Which, ironically, in my opinion, is why Mulder and Scully are a great romantic story.

All it boils down to is:

- 2 sexy actors with explosive chemistry. That one scene I mentionned where Scully tells Mulder she wouldn't put herself on the line for anyone but Mulder? The way they look at each other conveys a LOT. And it's there throughout the show...Their eye contact, every small touches... there is something there that can't be explained. It's just... there!

- They are two interesting and complex characters while apart, and very compelling when together;

- The Respect. It's there from day 1. Despite Mulder's reputation, she came to work with him with an open-mind. When Scully comes to him with the bites mark on her lower back in her underwear, he is an absolute gentleman and reassures her. Also, they may disagree on fundamental things, but they never say that one thing that's over the line or that is just nasty. You know, the low blow, the one thing that the other is most sensitive about, that makes the other reconsider the very partnership. And they also never talk shit about each other to other people. And with Mulder's reputation, Scully fends off comments more than once. Over the years, they become the one person they trust above all. And there is something really powerful about that.

- They are 2 characters who, despite their differences, fundamentally understand each other and who are always there for each other. They have - literally - gone - to the ends of the Earth for each other.

- From my POV, they just... genuinely seem to like each other and spending time together. On a professional level, they could have gone their separate ways many times. The X-Files were shut down more than once, and yet, they went to great lenghts (sneaking around underground parking lots at night) to keep on seeing each other. On a more personal level, Scully turns down a date to spend some time with Mulder... on episode 5!

Maybe it's just me, but... that's what love is? I don't mean this as a diss towards other types of romances (there are many good ones out there), but I don't think I would have needed to see them getting butterflies, or chatting with a friend about maybe asking them out, or big traditional love gestures. The love shines through. It seems to me like the fundamentals for a profound, lasting relationship are all there.

[psin314]

Hello! I was scrolling through your BSky and was wondering the story behind your OCs Sean and Eugene, also if you plan on doing more art for them.

glad you asked anon! so so glad!!! sean and eugene (i call them yush) - one of my strongest ocs hyperfixations ever, i love them so much. but i'll try to tell about them as short as possible. (everything's under the cut!!)

also more art? easy. i made them in 2019...

funny pics:

pretty pics:

spicy pics: somewhere on their th pages.

a little about the world they live in (i unofficially call it ryzhebes. i made it in 2017 and it still doesn't have a proper name...):

it's almost like our world but hell and heaven, angels and demons + witches exist here too. hell and heaven look pretty ordinary and modern, no lava pools or screams of horror and pain. satan is a tired workaholic, and god uuh angels say he's a nice guy. demons and angels mostly don't care about humans (also humanity doesn't know that all this exists), but some of them love to have their vacations there (all of them can use "magical" disguises to hide their supernatural features and look like humans). after death humans go either to hell or to heaven, where they live a slightly better or slightly worse second life. of course there are some naughty demons (or even angels) who love to do shit like in movies like the exorcist but there aren't that many of them. (i can write more info about this universe if anyone's interested, but let's keep it short for this post.)

so! about my boys. the first version of them was much darker with catholic guilt and a suicide attempt but I don't want them to suffer so they're simply in love and very happy now.

eugene black is a 42 yo demon, a tattoo artist with an engineering degree who knows 20+ languages. loves to drink beer, smoke cigarettes and act like a cool guy in leather with a motorcycle (he can't afford a motorcycle. he lives with his mom. but he can afford a leather jacket and pants.) (also he's silly.) he's a stutterer, has problems with pronouncing the letters d t p, sometimes n and m. and he doesn't really care. loves to talk. sensitive and romantic guy, will do everything for the people he loves. loves his family, has 5 siblings. has health problems, needs to eat a lot, almost all the money he has he spends on food and still can't gain weight much. has a supernatural ability - can teleport wherever he wants, just needs to know the place or see the needed place on the map. (he uses math and physics for this but no one would understand him anyway.) has problems with teleporting from closed spaces.

father sean farrell is a 30 yo catholic priest from ireland. traumatized childhood, father issues, long depression episodes but he's mostly okay now. although anxiety can't leave this man alone. very kind, supportive, understanding and friendly person. he is very non-aggressive and easily controls himself during an argument. loves to listen and help people. although he's a simple priest, goes to the gym and plays rugby regularly. he's… big and strong. (also getting tired physically everyday helps him fall asleep peacefully.) never been in a romantic or sexual relationship before eugene.

how they met.

1994. eugene lost a bet to his friend and had to go to any random church and steal something. hungover, somehow disguised, he went there in the morning and got right to mass. he had to stay and listen. but somewhere along the way he fell asleep. unexpectedly for eugene, someone started trying to wake him up, holding him by the shoulder. it was this priest who was reading mass. the sleeping man smelled of beer and cigarettes, but he slept so soundly that sean was even a little scared. when he finally woke him up, eugene mumbled something unintelligible (probably his name??) and ran away. sean didn't understand anything. and eugene fell head over heels in love, because the priest turned out to be very pretty.

eugene returned to the church in the evening. in his demon form, because he thought that he would quickly go there, steal what he needed and leave. but he crossed paths with father sean there, who was delayed there to clean up. eugene didn't lose his composure, said hello, joked, tried to come up with a reason for his presence. but sean was silent and looked at him strangely. eugene looked at his hands and realized that the priest was now seeing a demon in front of him. as soon as he raised his head, he received a thick bible book in his face. eugene tried to calm him down, sean wanted to hit him with the book again. but eugene managed to grab him by the wrist and carry him with him to hell.

they fell on top of each other on the road near eugene's house. sean was starting to get hysterical, but eugene, sitting on top of him, grabbed him by the hands and very angrily asked him to calm down and that nothing bad would happen. surprisingly, this calmed sean down. he noticed eugene's nose was bleeding and gave him a handkerchief… (sean thought it was because of the bible blow but teleportation took a lot of eugene's strength. now he'll have to wait until he rests to be able to bring sean back.)

sean looked around, hell looked… nice. normal. an ordinary suburb of a small town. trees are blooming, it smells like normal evening air and and the rain that has just passed. then they went to eugene's house, luckily his mother wasn't home, he made sean some green tea and told him a little about hell, demons, himself and his stupid bet. sean was mostly silent because he was in shock. then a couple of hours later he brought sean back. they went their separate ways.

eugene couldn't stop thinking about sean, he fell in love, he wanted to see him again. sean couldn't sleep either. he had to rethink his whole life, but it didn't work out very well, there was too much of new information. as a result, eugene returned to the church after some time. this time sean noticed him first and immediately ran to him, to discuss reality.

they started talking to each other. first on the topic of the universe, and then moved on to personal topics. started seeing each other more often. it didn't affect sean's faith much in the end, although he almost had 7 nervous breakdowns at once. being a priest still made sense and he continued to do what he always did. he already sort of knew that all this existed. just not in the form that he imagined.

(yes, there are no classic demon-priest relationships here, where the demon seduces the priest and destroys him. it's a romcom. :))

well and yes, after a few months their talking to each other turned into romantic interest. sean slowly fell in love with eugene. he didn't really care that eugene was a man, he wasn't homophobic but he couldn't come out yet. he was naturally worried that eugene was a DEMON and also... celibate yeah. he had never had a relationship, but what he felt for eugene was a very pleasant feeling.

so a few weeks later of what should i do what should i do, one warm evening, sean kissed eugene, and then quickly ran away, because they almost got seen. they met that same night, in the park, in their usual place, where no one would see them. sean wanted to tell eugene that he did it by accident without thinking, they need to stop this, but this time eugene came to kiss him and sean forgot about everything. now they were kissing properly. sean didn't know what to do, this was all wrong, but he really liked eugene. they talked about it and decided to have secret meetings.

after some time it led to sex ofc... after it sean was kind of happy, but also worried even more. one part of him said that this needed to end, and the other part said that he loved eugene. sean told him about it again. they both came to the conclusion that they love each other. eugene didn't want to ruin sean's life so he doesn't mind becoming the priest's secret wife.

im talking to much sorry, and this part to this day isn't properly explained haha ​​sorry x2 i just want them to be happy.

well, in the end. they continue to date and love each other, keeping their secret. (eugene's whole family and his best friends know that he's fucking a priest.)

(sean said that eugene's like a star for him, that of all the billions of shining stars, he found the brightest one. and eugene didn't know that he can say things like that. maybe i'll redraw and repost it someday idk.)

[distort-opia]

do you think bruce and joker could impersonate each other to a perfect or near-perfect degree? if there ever was such a situation that bruce had to become joker for a little bit for a... mission i guess, a strange mission but anyway, to gain access to whatever, do you think he could do it without anyone suspecting something's up? what about joker? with him it comes down to who exactly, right? batman, playboy brucie, or 'normal' bruce (whoever that's supposed to be *side-eyeing DC*)

Oh this is an interesting question. And my opinion is that they both have the capacity to impersonate each other near perfectly, but that they'd find the experience incredibly unpleasant, which is a huge deterrent.

And here I am making a difference between masquerading as the other vs. honestly and genuinely trying to impersonate and pass as the other. Because Joker has put on a Batman costume and gone around causing chaos plenty of times; but it wouldn't be accurate to say he was impersonating Batman with the aim of fooling anyone. He was just mocking Batman, replacing Batman, putting his own spin on Batman... Meanwhile Bruce, the madman that he is, has on multiple occasions taken Joker gas just to see what it's like, and then used the experience to predict Joker's actions. This has made him act or look like Joker, but it doesn't mean he's ever genuinely tried to fool people into thinking he is Joker. At least not to my knowledge. (You know who did successfully impersonate Joker though? Dick Grayson. Which I find fascinating, because Dick also impersonates Batman in Snyder's works and fools Joker with it too. But I digress.)

The numerous works and alternate universes in which Batman and Joker are either facets of the same personality, or merge to become one single being (à la The Batman Who Laughs or Bat-Joker/Jokerborg) show that they relate heavily to one another-- too heavily. I think that pretending to be Joker, or pretending to be Batman, would push their psyches too far into the mind of the other. I don't think either of them could handle it; all the things one thinks and feels are things the other is constantly trying to run away from. Things that scare them. Bruce has repeatedly said or implied he can't truly laugh because then he'll lose himself. Joker believes Batman's head is where fun goes to die. So at the end of the day, I think both Batman and Joker know each other well enough to pass as each other if they wanted, but that there's a reason they've never actually done it; the experience has the potential to erase the line between their identities and lead to a loss of self.

[sadclowncentral]

i never ever send stuff like this lol but i guess im wondering how to exist as a loud queer person in high academia spaces. im entering a really prestigious uni program soon and im scared of having to put aside my identity or presentation for the sake of professionalism and being taken seriously. your life seems so so interesting and filled with likeminded peers. im somewhat jealous of how you’re able to integrate that world without having to sacrifice yourself in the process. if not too much to ask, how do you do it? is it really that easy?

this message breaks my heart because i would give anything to tell you, yes, it is that easy, but it really is not. existing as an openly queer person in a high academic, prestigious traditional place is so fucking exhausting. i am very aware of being the first and only (openly) trans man at my academy and the pressure of being easily digestible and non-confrontational to not face any backlash. i have to smile and wave away a lot of trans- and homophobia lest i am perceived as "too sensitive" and many of my peers are ultraconservative, rich brats who have never struggled for anything in their life who look down on me out of principle anyway.

and yet. i am accepted, and respected, by many of my peers. i have made great friends that support me completely and without any prejudice. i love and i am loved. those people are in any place, and you just have to find them. i have had days were i have regretted even coming here, i will not lie to you, but as my best friend said recently, even 80% assholes are worth feeling right with 20%. i think my main advice is: don't try to change anyone's mind, but meet people's honest curiosity with openness. so many rich people grow up so sheltered. said best friend is an Egyptian man who had never met a trans person before and who had a few questions in the beginning but now yells at people for purposefully misgendering me. don't get discouraged, don't hide yourself, you can be happy there despite it all. i certainly am here.

[zluckychap]

i think that the act of saving painter would be very difficult, and here's why (see below)

say it was super easy, barely an inconvenience, to save painter. all you have to do is pick up the guy and carry him home.

we already know that sebastian would like to save painter if he can. with such a convenient way to do it, what reason would he have to NOT do it at this point?

sebastian leaving painter behind, when he would have to do practically no work and make no sacrifices whatsoever in order to save him, would be kind of a weird shift in character for him.

and if saving him is too easy, there aren't any stakes! as wholesome as it would be to see these two get their happy ending ASAP, it wouldn't be that interesting to have them not actually do any work for it

something is preventing sebastian from saving painter. seb's conflict stems from whether or not it is worth it to risk his own survival to overcome this... "something" in order to save his new friend, or to just ditch painter and leave on his own

he's wanted out for so long. it's all he's been able to think about for years. freedom is just around the bend. he can't let anything or anyone get in his way. it's not like he needs anyone else...

... right?

these are just my personal headcanons! i'm sure whatever they're cooking for the game will be splendid! i have many more ideas and headcanons about pressure's story and characters but they're hard to summarize and the ones i don't want to yap about, i am saving for future comics

yes i'm obsessed with this game's story

it's infected my brain and taken over my headspace and it's barely been half a year

it makes me happie. i think it is neat. i like analyzing things

[zykamiliah]

between yandere yqy and sweet himbo yqy people do really water him down, don't they? i mean this is the guy who famously favors sqq and is the sect leader of cang qiong "we defend our own no matter what they do" mountain sect. yue "my hand slipped" qingyuan. the same zhangmen-shixiong who went "I will throw hands with huan hua palace right here in jin lan" and who qi deviated so hard trying to save shen qingqiu (first for the original and later for the transmigrator) he had to be locked up in a cave. twice. yue qingyuan is a failed mxtx protagonist, with everything that implies, in the sense that he never gets what he wants no matter how hard he tries despite having all the character traits required. he doesn't hesitate to break the law to defend his people (his person). he can be very nice but also quite terrifying. he reached the top of the world, took a place of power and proceeded to protect the person most important to him and those in his care regardless of what the world had to say about it or whatever moral stance that required of him. because, are morals even important to someone who's looked the ugly side of humanity in the eye since he was a kid?

he craved the power that would make him the ultimate protector and caretaker of shen jiu and look where that took him. his impulsiveness, his desperation is so potent it damaged his cultivation to the point his body had to be broken and renewed in order for him to survive. that man has seen horror you can't imagine. alone in the darkness crying out for someone to please let him out. the one thing that matters the most to him and it seems he almost always fails to accomplish it. don't you think that would fuck up with anyone's head, on top off all the other slave childhood trauma?

but because he's always ^_^ he fools everyone into thinking he's Normal. boy that man is ANYTHING but normal

also gentle reminder that HE'S STRONGER THAN BINGGE, even with a crippling sword that's the manifestation of all his heart demons (the parallels...)

adding mutual's tags @stardust-falling bc they're relevant too

#THIS ACTUALLY#sj fits the typical ‘uwu trauma’ apologism criteria#woobifying him is just to be expected#yqy REALLY gets his complexities sanded down#I’ve had so many comments on my fics like… surprised (positive) that I actually acknowledge HIS being traumatized and dysfunctional#there’s also something so intriguing to think about how he ALSO grew up witnessing abuse#and so to some degree while he does know it’s wrong what SJ does is just… normalized to him#he and sj should actually be looked at through a similar lens#he’s not just the quest-giving npc or the too good for this world pure gege#he’s not innocent either#and there’s an interesting commentary on trauma responses + how different people are shaped by different experiences#that gets lost when you sand him down into a one dimensional flawless good guy

breaking my silence when i dont think shen jiu is the most mischaracterized svsss character. not even shen yuan. i think the character people butcher most is yue qingyuan because that man just went "i'll half heartedly tell you to be less mean to your disciple, but i'll never actually use my authority as sect leader to step in and stop the abuse everyone knows about because i feel guilty about our past. in fact i will publicly defend you against allegations of abuse that i know are true." and then he gets dumbed down to a gentle sweet himbo who never did anything wrong

[gr63defenselawyer]

All of the George hate seems completely unnecessary and over-the-top. The “reasons” I see when people explain why they hate George just doesn’t make any sense to me. (very long rant about George Russell and the hate he gets)

1. I saw a few other comments on TikTok saying that he looks too feminine. In what world is that a valid reason to hate on a driver??? Those haters are probably the same people who judge female f1 fans for “only liking drivers for their looks.” The double standard goes crazy.

2. A lot of people say that he is too emotional. I thought it was clear after Isack Hadjar in Melbourne that emotions does have a place in f1. That’s what makes racing interesting. Those people are probably the same people who would praise Max for being emotional and passionate today when he deliberately crashed into George out of frustration.

3. Apparently, he is too “media trained.” Not every driver needs to speak their mind on camera when we all know that no matter what the media will try their absolute best to twist their words into the next headline. I don’t blame him for actually thinking before he speaks and avoiding causing a mess for his pr team to deal with.

4. I saw another random guy who said that he hated George because of what Mazepin said about him which was when he commented “I have a secret about you mate that people might call a coming out” while George was on Instagram live. How on Earth could anyone find a reason to hate on George because of what Mazepin said??? First of all, are you seriously believing Mazepin of all people? The same Mazepin who posted that very disturbing instagram story where he touched the girl very inappropriately?? Also, that comment itself is so ridiculous. If Mazepin’s comment was true, that’s even more disgusting.

5. Other people said that he is boring. I’m sorry what… He is a diva and made Monaco slightly exciting with the galex sideplot. He’s actually funny in interviews and not to mention his memeability is through the roof.

6. And don’t even get me started on what happened today. The comments I keep seeing defending Max and bashing George makes me want to scream. Some Max fans said that “George had no business to fight in turn 1.” Dude, that was a normal overtake and yes he overshot it and touched Max but it was NOT on purpose. George accidentally bumping into Max did not excuse Max’s DELIBERATELY crashing into George. I don’t understand how people keep thinking that it is a laughing matter. They are in f1 cars. This is not in sim racing where you can restart your game or bumper cars or lego racing. This is in real life formula one. I’m not anti-verstappen but I think it was a dangerous move and unnecessary. Also, another comment on instagram said that “[max] just did what we all want to do to russel sometimes 😂.” How is that ever an appropriate thing to joke about? Also some people said that it wasn’t Max driving into George but George driving into Max. Did you watch the race black out drunk or something? I mean I can somewhat understand people who say that Max’s move was unintentional but it is definitely NOT george’s fault.

[lightlycareless]

well that was fast. naoya meeting y/n at satoru's genpuku a.k.a coming of age ceremony because why not.

warnings: everyone here is young. satoru is 15 i think, naoya 14, you 13. naoya is an a-hole even at this age, but that's not surprising. minimal proofreading.

happy reading!

Naoya initially believed that the rumors he heard were a simple matter of miscommunication, if not a hallucination of his relatives.

But when the whispers grew stronger, and far more recurrent, he set out to investigate only to find out they were true.

Satoru was to indeed enroll into Jujutsu High starting this summer, in Tokyo, of all places.

It was highly… unheard of. No heir, not at least before him, was to even consider doing such a thing. All of them were homeschooled, with the most prestigious of tutors at their disposition—dignified of someone of their position.

And yet, here was Satoru. Advocating for an experience Naoya never thought necessary, nor wanted. Why would someone as exceptional as him spend his time in a place where they let just about anyone mingle? From those of lesser clans, to those he’d consider on the same level as livestock…

But apparently Satoru wanted it so much, he was willing to completely renounce his family just to get it.

The only way they managed to convince him otherwise was by giving him permission, if he fulfilled one simple condition.

Cue this coming of age ceremony.

The Zen’in heir wasn’t precisely invited, but it's one of those things he knows won’t be denied entrance if he ends up showing up anyways.

If anything, his father would’ve sent him in his representation. When was the last time Naobito appeared publicly anywhere, at least to official endeavors? Not even he knows at that point.

Either way, the celebration was not short of extravagant, just about what he expected from the Gojo’s.

What he didn't anticipate, however, is for so many people to attend.

Most of the people there had to be outsiders to the clan, judging by the colors they wore to their lack of physical similarities. But yet again, Satoru always stood out as a sore thumb—more so with that hideous haircut…

This made Naoya glad he was the only one of his family there. He doesn't think he could've tolerated their annoying bickering and comparisons, not that he didn't know he was at the same level as Satoru, but that wasn't the purpose of today.

He just wanted to see if the rumors were true, what kind of face Satoru had, and what the rest thought of this succession. And now that he's gotten his fair share of answers, was ready to head back home.

Unless… a figure where to catch his attention, just by the corner of his eye he manages to distinguish a young girl who stands out (whether knowingly so, he can't discern otherwise) from the crowd due to her peculiar choice of kimono color and hair.

She looks… immature, juvenile. Like she didn’t know what type of ceremony she was attending and simply wore whatever she could get her hands on. And those ponytails? Was she in middle school or something? 

She couldn’t be any more ridiculous!

Though the word he was more likely looking for… was cute.

“Who is she?” Naoya murmurs as he continues to stare at her and her apparent solitude for none of the adults around seemed to chaperone her. Not that she looked so distraught by it, her eyes solely fixated on the Gojo heir passing just before her…

And it suddenly dawns on him. Who you truly are. Because why else would you allow yourself this familiarity if you were a complete stranger?

What he doesn't know, however, is why even after concluding this fact he still finds himself interested in you. 

There’s no need to pursue a girl whose purpose was already claimed.

But he does so anyway, like moths to a flame. And just before he knew it, he was just a few steps away from you. Taking advantage of the moving crowd to get a better look at you and realize you were far more… interesting when within reach.

And perceptive too. He would've been appropriately scolded for being too obvious in his movements had his master been around.

“Is there something wrong…?” You murmur, as if afraid of calling him out but certainly uncomfortable that he's been staring at you for a while now. “Do I have something in my face?”

“What? Why do you ask that?” He responds, offended unsurprisingly. Naoya's clearly used to women never stating their minds, but he didn't expect you, of all people, to be like the rest. Isn't there a high expectation burdening your actions?

“You've been staring at me for quite some time now” you add, mustering the courage to look up to him. Grave mistake, on his part at least. Your bright eyes made him forget the world around him for a second. “It's quite rude to do that to strangers.”

“But you're not a stranger, are you?” he responds. “I know who you are.”

“I—I don't know you” you fret, is it time for you to consider your retreat?

“You're Satoru-kun’s fiancé, right?” Naoya claims, and so confidently so that you can help but let out a soft chuckle, easing whatever tension brewed between the two… until you immediately quiet upon seeing his flourishing embarrassment. “Why are you laughing?! Is it not the truth??”

“No, it isn’t. But if it makes you feel better, you're not the first one that confuses me for my sister.”

“Don't patronize me.” He scolds, making your eyes jolt wide open.

“O—oh, I didn't mean to.” You worry, shaking your head before curtly bowing. “I'm sorry”.

And he knows that. With your softness it's clear that you solely intended to ease his shame.

But instead of being displeased by your concurrent imprudence… he feels majorly relieved that you're not the one Satoru is to marry.

Does that mean he still had a chance with you? To pursue more…?

Huh?!

Just what was he thinking?? You’re just some strange girl he just met a few moments ago and yet, already envisioned himself doing more?

Is this what happens when someone decides to go out of the norm? The whole universe falls out of balance?

“If it's her you wish to meet, I'm sure I can find her…” you say, looking around the crowd. “I think she ran off to follow a cat…”

“A cat?” He raises an eyebrow. “Does your sister not know basic decorum? I didn’t expect the future wife of Satoru-kun to be this… reckless.”

“Hey, she likes cats!” You rush to defend her, a side takes him by surprise; he would’ve never guessed you harbored this fierceness within that seemingly  shy outside.

It makes you look cuter. He wonders how you’d look jealous because of him.

…

…

…

What the hell?

“And she's a really good sorcerer too. Hinata-nee deserves a distraction from time to time.”

“Hinata? Is that her name?” Sounds only familiar, perhaps he has heard of her. But she's not the one whom he cares for ultimately. “What's your name?”

“L/N. L/N Y/N.” you respond. Naoya now remembers your last name. “May I know yours too?”

“Naoya.”

“Naoya what?”

“Isn't it obvious?”

“Oh, I… I'm not very good with faces.” You sheepishly admit. “I'm sorry”

“You apologize too much” 

“I'm so— I mean, I guess.”

“It's Zen'in, by the way. 

You gasp.

“No way! You're… wait a minute, you're the heir, right? I knew your name was familiar!” You say, as if discovering a new species, or making first contact with an alien. With your overprotective father, it might as well be. “You're Naobito-sama’s son, right?”

“Ah, so you do know who I am” he says.

“Just in theory, that means I only have one heir to meet! But I'm not sure if the Kamo have any yet…”

“What are you? Eager to collect them like stamps?”

“More like gym badges” you smile. 

“Gym badges?” He raises an eyebrow. “Whatever you’re talking about?”

“Oh you—You don't know what Pokémon is?” you blink, confused. He seemed old enough to know, unless he was younger? Or older?! 

“How old are you?” You dare to ask.

“How old do I look?” He responds, intrigued. Naoya always liked to appear more than he was, gave him a false sense of authority, like he was more likely to be taken seriously. 

But on this occasion, it could only be counterproductive.

“25?”

“Huh??? I'm not that old! Your eyes are messed up.”

“Then how old are you?!”

“14.”

“Really? You don't… look 14. At all!”

“Why? I don't have wrinkles.” Naoya frowns, as if that were the sole reason someone could look older.

“Well, because you have piercings and dyed hair!” You explain. “Did your parents really allow you to do that?” 

“Parent. It's just my father, and I don't care what he thinks, I can do whatever I want. Let me guess, you still ask daddy for permission, don’t you?” He scoffs. “I shouldn't be surprised, you're just a woman. It's kind of expected.”

His words hurt, naturally. But it's not the first time you've heard them from someone like him, of a traditional approach, so they didn’t… irk you as much.

Rather, what wounded you the most was the unwilling reminder of your absent mother, still fresh in your heart, it was only natural that it’d bled at the slightest provocation. “Well, I don't have anyone else to look to anymore” you confess. “It's just me, my siblings, and my dad now.”

Naoya is the kind of person to spew words and not care about repercussions. Throw a stone and hide his hand, while enjoying the havoc it unleashed.

But when he sees your dimmed eyes, the subtle frown of your lips, and overall absent enthusiasm, but most importantly, the realization it was him who caused such a reaction… for the first time in his life, grows regretful.

Whatever it was that he struck, he didn't mean to do so. Less end up hurting you.

“Ugh, I— I didn't mean it that way—”

It's too late for apologies though, or anything else really when your father eventually comes into the picture; like a desperate man finding water in the middle of the desert, he calls out for you.

“There you are, I told you to not stray too far from your sister, pumpkin!”

“Dad!” You cry, cheeks burning red at the use of his pet name. No matter the age, he'll still continue to use them. Could he at least not do it in front of others…? Guess not. “I didn't stray… she left me on my own!”

“Did she, now?” He asks in disbelief, just what could've possibly inspired her to be so irresponsible? “...it was a cat, wasn't it?”

You nod.

“But I wasn't alone, dad. I actually met the heir of the Zen'in, can you believe that?” You proudly exclaim, a revelation that makes your father pale, eyes wide as he ardently searches for the so-called successor, quietly hoping he wasn’t around anymore.

Unfortunately, things wouldn’t proceed as he wanted, yet again.

It is almost comical the way his facade drops, switching from an exasperated father to a protective one, quick to put himself between you and Naoya and boldly declare the only thing that crosses his mind whenever seeing those of his kind.

“Get away from my daughter.” He states, so uncharacteristically dark, you can't help but gasp in disbelief. 

“Dad! He was just—he didn't do anything!”

“If I ever see you near her again, I will not care if you're Naobito’s son—I’ll make you regret even considering leaving the house.”  

“Sir, I barely even know her—”

But he doesn’t fall for it. Even if he’s 14, still a child, there’s nothing to excuse the horrors he’s capable of committing. What he will do if given the chance.

And he'd be a damn fool to allow you near him knowing such dangers.

Thus, before you could even bid your farewells past a breathy goodbye Nao—, your father takes hold of your hand and plucks you away, leaving a distraught Naoya that considers your whole existence to be plagued with drama, too much trouble for him to even bother getting involved…

And yet, he can't keep you out of his mind. Not through the following summer, or autumn. Not even winter.

Instead, he'd spend his time trying to find out more of your family; allegedly under the pretense of investigating where your father got the audacity to treat him that way, and how he could get his revenge—either through him or your brother and sister.

He may have fooled everyone else, but not him. And when he found out that your siblings were also enrolled in Jujutsu High, his mind took him to the only logical assumption and course of action.

“Father, I'll be enrolling in Jujutsu High this year, Tokyo.”

“Jujutsu High? Ah, so now we have to deal with the Gojo's impertinence too?” Naobito scoffs, but agrees either way if it meant some peace and quiet around the estate for once, even if his youngest’s decision appears to be done with the sole purpose of irking the elders, as he usually did; go against their wishes just because.

In reality, he was going against your father's.

naoya appropiately thinks of you as cute, or pretty. wow, is it possible? yes if i make it so lmao also as you can see i am a sucker for falling in love at first sight. something about fate is just 🥹 hope it was to y'all's enjoyment!!