#and learn on a random Tuesday that the band not only is back together but they’re coming to your town

[gingerwerk]

Finally seeing the gaslight anthem tonight 😎

[blacklodgemusictx]

The thing about plans is: they necessitate optimism. You have to assume the world will keep turning for long enough to get to the plans in... The Future.

Three months ago, I went, "We should see the Pool Kids"... in Ohio! Somehow it made sense to fly 1200 miles to see them on a Thursday versus the normal hoops I have to jump through to see any band here in Texas (Austin and Denton are a Tuesday and a Wednesday. Any time I see a show in Texas, due to the fact that I live nowhere anyone would ever want to come on purpose, there is always extra time off to be requested for drive time -- 3ish hours for Denton, 4 hrs one way for Austin).

"Good Girls Go to Heaven, Bad Girls Go on Tour" also represents the Pool Kids' first foray out on the world as... headliners (starry eyes.)

I didn't write about the Pool Kids back in March. I should have. It would be a lot easier now to describe what they mean to me if I had.

The Pool Kids are a delightful anomaly in my own history. I discovered them 100% on my own. No outside influence what so ever. Doug and I simply lamented one night in late 2018/early 2019 that we really needed to find something closer by to do. Maybe something is happening close by and we don't even know it! Something that won't require... taking off time from WORK?! So I got on Spotify and searched for bands touring nearby -- within a 100 mile radius (Dallas is 186 miles). I looked at the results: someone called the Pool Kids. In San Angelo. 91 miles!!

They were the *only* band not wearing cowboy hats in their profile picture.

They're new (at the time) album was called "Music to Practice Safe Sex To." Ok. I put it on for a listen. Girl singer. Ugh. Not my thing. But anything to block out the random bullshit background noise in my office. I play it through. Eh. Doesn't Grab me.

Oh well, it was worth a try.

But time passes... brain says, "lizzz.... lizzz listen to that album again... lizzzz" Yes, brain, I do as you command.

And it grabs me.

It grabs me hard.

And I *love* it. I don't know why. I'm big on understandable lyrics. And I can't say I understand half of what is being said. But the melodies are gorgeous. I get goosebumps. Whatever she's talking about it, it's sad... and contemplative. And angry ("I should rip your throat out for what you've done to me...") Her voice is low for the most part. Something I've only learned about myself recently is I tend toward listening to voices that sound closer to my own and I'm a contralto.

When I look in to the band, I'm told it's "math rock." I have no fucking clue what that means (musicians have explained it to me: Complex time signatures. Key changes. Sounds like a new definition of "prog" to me. Close, the musicians tell me, but not quite.) Whatever. Don't make me label a thing. And for sure if you tell me it's "math rock" and then assume I will like other kinds of "math rock" I will refuse on principle. I pride myself on being harder to define in my tastes than that.

The reality? My finger is placed squarely on it later. "oooOOOOooo I see!" Hayley Williams from Paramore acknowledges and gives them props at some point... *that's* it. They remind me of the Paramore appreciation I gleaned from my time as a too-old-to-admit-it-Twihard. Simple.

We absolutely go to the San Angelo gig. Doug and I are easily the oldest people there -- old enough to be these kids' parents easily. The "De Nada" is a artsy thrift store during the day. At night, they push the clothing racks and other offerings against the wall and become a venue.

There are somewhere in the neighborhood of three to five bands. They all sort of run together. The only one I remember is a band from New Orleans. The lead singer is wearing a ruffly shirt and I'm pretty sure he wants to be the Vampire LeStat when he grows up. He does weird acrobatics. Somersaults? Paints his face with red lipstick.

The Pool Kids wail.

I am floored. They are actually kids (something you must know about me is I've been approximately 200 years old since I was in high school... I would have acknowledged their youth even if they had been OLDER than me at that point.) But the amount of rock they bring is amazing, jaw dropping. Lead singer Christine, SHREADS, does that "up-on-the-neck tapping" guitar thing I only saw as a kid stealing glances at MTV when Mom wasn't around (baby cousin posted look out at the door... promptly and cheerfully narc'd on me for doing something I wasn't supposed to).

I have a couple videos from that night on YouTube. One example being:

We talk to them after. Doug wants to know about their influences. In the accidentally condescending way my brain works, since I’ve been 200 years old this whole time… I am interested to hear what they say. How do you cultivate that amount of raw power and instrument mastery at that age? The only thing I remember being mentioned was Pink Floyd.

Nice.

I come prepared. I cashed out my Christmas money before coming. Pretending to be a baller, I fan out the cash and buy as much of their merch as possible. It was $100, but the way all their eyes lit up, I felt important. And I loved it. I think Christine hugged me. I don’t really remember. I hope that got them lots of van gas and hot meals as they continued on their way… bringing the good news of rock to other points of the compass.

I was now flush with copies of their album. I sent one to Salim and one to Sue Harshe – a friend we made on a pilgrimage to see Scrawl (godmothers of riot grrl — look them up!) in Knoxville in 2015.

Fast forward…

Life changing time with Salim on the road Feb 2020… two last shows: Caroline’s Spine in Tulsa… And the Pool Kids in Houston. March 2020. On an impressive bill with the Wonder Years. Bigger! Poised for up up up bigger and better things.

Then the world ended.

But it got better….

(didn’t it?)

We saw them in Dallas this March at Amplified Live.

And I cried.

Not just a quiet trickle from the corner of my eye.

I cried hard. There they were. Rocking. Bigger and better. Christine working the crowd like a young Bono at Red Rocks. Coming in to herself. Coming into themselves as young rock gods. Master of the stage. Master of all they survey. I was just so in love with what I was seeing and hearing. So proud of them. So happy that we as humans were back. Able to watch a show like this and just be together again. Maybe everything would be ok after all.

I talked to Nicolette (complete bass domination — Doug commented much later that she seems to have the most fun performing on stage of anyone he’s ever seen… and his history as a fine appreciator of rock is ten years longer than mine) at the merch table later. Tried to get myself under control. Still had an embarrassing hitch in my throat. I have seen a LOT of good performances before, but none that have gotten that kind of response before.

She remembers me. I know not a huge amount of time has passed, but in their history and progression as a band and our progression as a now traumatized people… millennia has passed.

I am touched.

So now we are back up to current. They are headlining. Of course they are. They deserve every bit of this. Again I swell with pride though… I’ve backed a winning horse. This is rare. Usually when I love you, you break up (RIP People in Planes).

The deciding factor that made us pick Ohio though was two fold: first date of the tour and where it was: ACE OF CUPS. Ace of Cups was owned by the other half of Scrawl, Marcy Mays (what I didn’t know at the time was that Marcy no longer owns it as of the end of 2022.)

I Facebook squeal. Sue, I tag, can I take ANY sort of credit for this? She agrees that I can, but without elaboration. I don’t know if the credit comes in the fact that I just love them THAT much and have therefore done that “manifesting” thing I keep hearing about. I have WISHED this in to existence. In my happy mind movie though, back in 2019, Sue passes the album on to Marcy. Marcy agrees that they wail. Mentions as ownership of Ace of Cups passes from her, that the Pool Kids are really amazing and if they come by, you should totally get them. Pool Kids acquired.

Perhaps best to just enjoy my happy mind movies and not require further elaboration.

Back to present-present.

Flying always seems like such a doable thing until you (I) are there. I forgot my calm-down pills. The little white bits of magic that make the anxiety grey out for a few hours. There’s also that lull where you watch your airport gate fill up. Maybe *this* time the flight won’t be full.

It’s always full.

Leg one is to Atlanta. Short layover.

Text from Salim, “Can you talk at some point today?”

Literally, right now. This is the most available I will be all day.

So he calls. He’s had a health set back (read his Facebook… I never know what I’m allowed to talk about when it comes to other people.) Our trip that was on the books for the 07/21-07/27 with Rhett {Miller} is off. Off 100% sure? I am just trying to clarify for the purpose of undoing plans. But the voice that lives in my head and constantly tells me I’m an asshole pipes up. Way to make it about you. Jerk. He’s poorly and you are asking if the trip really, truly is off. That’s not what I meant. It’s never what I mean.

I am able to cancel all the hotels and get credit for the plane fare before we even line queue up for next boarding.

I have always had a sense for when something is meant to happen. I didn’t feel like this trip was a good idea. Salim is a big proponent for listening to the universe when it tells you something. I try to be too. We were all meant to stay here for now. I hate that he had to have something health related happen, but in the end… I think we will all realize we were supposed to stay home. Whether I get sick, or Doug, or one of the cats. Something will happen to make me go, “Oh. Here it is. I hear you, universe.” For Salim, I think his prescription is stillness. He is the most go-go-go person I know. He never stops swimming. Something wants him to stop swimming for right now.

This is ok. Seriously. I don’t mind and the only thing I am worried about is my friend.

So we board for hop to. Columbus. Our destination.

The flight is not bad. I feel optimistic. Maybe soon I will master my fear. Fly all the time like it’s not a big deal… maybe make an international jaunt before too long — an idea I’ve never entertained before.

We land at two-ish. Haven’t eaten. There’s a Bob Evans in our hotel’s parking lot. I’ve never been to a Bob Evans. It feels sort of like a Dennified Cracker Barrel. I don’t eat much. I drink even less (there’s that foreshadowing thing again).

We go back to our room and sleep. It’s good sleep. The bed is soft, but not too soft. We wake up at 6:30. Venue is a mile away. Doors at 7.

I primp a bit. No makeup this time. Though it’s easily 25 degrees cooler here than home and there are perceptible dark clouds that might mean a bit of rain if we behave ourselves. I could have worn makeup, but it doesn’t matter.

The venue… there’s that twinge in my chest again. It’s worse this time. But I am delighted. The stage is dark and light chevrons, the backdrop: red curtains. There’s a recognizable symbol on the wall (the thing that looks like an ant’s head with antennae on either side). This is what BLM would have looked like. We HAD the red curtains purchased — they are in our dining room now. The chevron design is a rug … that’s still rolled up in a corner and hasn’t been touched for a year now. Someone else is like me. They know. Again I don’t know if that was Marcy or the new owners and it doesn’t matter if I ask. It still exists. If I managed to walk any further back past the stage… there probably would’ve been owls. Schrodinger’s venue. By not exploring further, it contains all possibilities.

The first band is Chase Petra (the second is Sydney Sprague per the tour poster.) I didn’t look either up ahead of time. I have never given much credence to the idea that I could be influenced to love just by proximity to the band I came to see… but I instantly recognize this idea as false: I got Salim from being an opener. I got Jesse and Landon from Salim… sight unseen.

And I love them both.

Chase Petra is amazing. They are young and saucy. They have attitude. In keeping with the name of the tour, emphasis on “girls.” Chase Petra are 3/4 girl. And all power. The vibe is similar to the Pool Kids. A strong, young, shredding female vocalist, but the show stopper was the other guitarist. She was an eighties hair metal rock god reincarnate. All flying fingers and whipping hair.

It’s so FUCKING LOUD. The hair on my arms vibrates, my heart doesn’t know when to beat, my stomach vibrates.

I love them. The audience loves them too and shouts along with most of their songs.

Band two: Sydney Sprague. They are older. The bass player wears a neckerchief like Fred from Scooby Doo and commands a Moog in between bass slinging duties. The singer is all in black and reminds me of me. Same dark hair style and cut I kept in high school. She’s got a sweet voice, higher than the other girls on the bill. Their performance is a little more low key, but no less powerful. They are a fantastic, cohesive unit in total control of their art.

Someone further to my left up front has brought huge bunches of roses. One for each band. Chase Petra’s bunch lives on stage by their set list, Sydney receives hers like a beauty queen. All blushing and sweet thanks. “Fred” leans over and buries his nose in the bouquet for a moment.

Finally, the moment draws close. I am keenly aware that I am running out of time. I have spent energy enjoying the first two bands. I will pay for this. My spine continues to grind itself to sand, as I assume it will for the rest of my life. I have already remarked that it’s “hot in here.” Liz, it’s not, Doug says. Not good. I’ve had a total of maybe 4 ounces to drink today. All in the name of easier travel.

I’ve taken small moments in between each band to sit on the edge of the stage. I know I will eventually hinder something to do with the bands and their myriad cables and plugs, or the imposing young doorman with the impressive afro will come along and tell me to get up.

Neither.

It’s Nicolette the lovely bass player again. “Excuse me, I have to get in here,” I was sitting on a blank plate that ended up covering electrical sockets. I touch her shoulder. She looks at me. Ah, there’s the recognition. She’s glad to see me.

She puts out the setlist. I’m excited. But filled with dread. I have to last this long. I have to fight my own body for 12 songs and I’m already flagging… but it’s starting and I can’t think about it now.

Their entrance music is… “Sandstorm” and I’m dying. I’m ready to rave. But the music stops abruptly. Starts again. But the moment is gone. Oh well. They tried.

Christine is wearing white platform go go boots, short skirt, fishnets, midi top. Nicolette has an equally short skirt, neckerchief too, but there’s nothing Scooby Doo about hers. I don’t know where to look. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think. They look amazing. Someone on TikTok later declares, “Their fits!!!” Fits… ‘fits… outfits? That has to be it. Woman have been weaponizing their sexuality since woman were admitted to the boys club that is rock music. Courtney Love’s ripped baby doll dresses and bruised innocence, L7 and… throwing… stuff… on stage, performing in bikinis, performing in too little, too much. Anything open for interpretation and therefore derision or scorn. But sexualizing is not cool anymore. I don’t know what kind of commentary I am allowed on this subject, but I am left echoing the same cry, “their fits!!” Their oufits, they are “fit”, they are there and raw and breathtakingly sexual and powerful. You don’t stare at the sun either, but you’ve done it. You’ve dared.

I also have a revelation. Role models. These people are amazing, iconic. I take a moment to bless the proliferation of media I’ve cursed in past. If I had access to these kinds of strong female role models as a teen, my life would have been completely different. I wouldn’t have let my mother’s flat declaration, “You aren’t good at music. PICK SOMETHING ELSE.” Turn me from my fated course.

It makes me happy that social media is exposing young people to bands like the ones on this bill. There’s hope for the future.

They open with “Swallow,” one of the songs on my revised Ketamine playlist. There’s a bit of treated vocal that is the absolutely definition of why music is good. Music should give you that thrill like sticking your head out of the window of a moving car. That drop in your stomach. Momentary breathlessness.

Can’t put my finger on it Don’t know what makes it so appealing I’m not begging for your affection I’m just addicted to the feeling…

Two songs in. Time for the third. How many people here were around for our first album – Music to Practice Safe Sex to? ME!! MEEEEeeeeeEEEE…. I scream. You can hear it on the video. I should be embarrassed. I’m too old to be reacting like this. But I got such a late start…

The music doesn’t know the social constructs of age or sex… it just knows what feels good.

The “Safe Sex” portion of the show is two songs long. This makes me sad. You never forget the album you came in on. It’s a much more forlorn sounding album though. I know from Salim that the forlorn ones don’t get people dancing. But “Patterns,” ah… I would have lost my mind for “Patterns.”

And I spent one too many nights banging my head against the wall to hear another voice telling me that I’m doing something wrong So excommunicate me You’re no better than the fucked up doctrine that sent me running to your doorstep in the first place

Fucked up doctrine. My youth is fucked up doctrine. My memories are tainted by it. I still wonder how they can wield so much word power at such a young age, but then again these struggles are as old as the generations. As long as their have been the elder and the younger, the subjugator and the subjugated, rulers, oppressed, one group will chafe against the other. It hurts the heart, grinds down the soul… but it makes the music amazing.

We make art, music, poetry, to feel hope.

I make it almost to the end… almost… Talk Too Much: Christine does the young Bono thing and goes out in to the crowd. Several times a mini mosh pit has broken out right where she is. At some point, someone flicks beer on us… at least I hope it was beer. Ugh. I am done. The anesthetized feeling starts in my finger tips.

I am going to pass out.

I mouth to Doug, “I have to go. NOW.” I head for the stool previously occupied by the imposing young doorman. I lay my head on the counter for a second. I wait to be booted off. I’ve been doing this for years. I’ve passed out, tried to pass out, and all stages in between for years, in myriad venues in cities all across the US. I like to be in the front. My constitution takes issue with this. But I do it anyway.

I try to gesture to Doug: thumb at my lips, fingers curved around an invisible cup. Drink. Please I need water. But there are too many people.

Next best thing: air. I lurch out the door and land on the pavement beside the door. The Kids are launching in to an encore. I can’t heard what it is. Doug is on his phone summoning the Uber. Imposing Young Doorman Man appears… with a cup of ice water in his hand. THANK YOU, DEAR BLESSING, SIR! You have no idea how many people normally just go, ‘YOU — you can’t sit there!’ (Hi, La Zona Rosa in Austin… the scuzzy incarnation not the gentrified one) even though I’m pretty sure if you kick me out of your establishment while swooning and I faceplant on the cement, I could sue you. Or something.

People aren’t normally friendly about it because they assume I drank too much… when it’s the opposite: I didn’t drink at all.

The Uber appears and we are whiskered away. I still couldn’t hear what the encore was. But I’m not sad. I got most of it and it was AMAZING. Nicolette saw me so I exist. Mission accomplished.

We are back in the hotel. Doug orders Denny’s Doordash. The thing about prolonged exposure to sonic assault is: nausea. Nothing sounds good. Until Doug says… macaroni and cheese. And I know EXACLTY what kind Denny’s has because I’ve noticed it on the menu before. It doesn’t lie. It doesn’t pretend to be something else. It is real: really Kraft boxed mac… and at that moment it sounds like the AMBROSIA of the GODS.

Which is exactly what it tastes like.

I am replenished. The gods of rock are appeased for another night …

[noteguk]

any way you want it | kth | m

— summary; in which your best friend, Taehyung, finds out about your unsatisfying sexual experiences and decides to put an end to that track record himself. 

— contents and warnings; smut, childhood best friends, Taehyung x reader, bigdick!tae, breast play, oral (f receiving), dry grinding, dirty talk, tae has a praise kink, unprotected sex (be responsible!!), rough sex, creampie, multiple orgasms, Taehyung takes things personally but he has good intentions, this is what happens when mutual thirst gets suppressed for years of friendship 

— words; 6.6k

— author’s note; i have no idea why but this fic was so fucking hard to put down into words??? I felt mentally constipated the entire time but it’s finally here 

Taehyung wasn’t the slightest bit surprised when you called him at almost two in the morning, complaining about your newest nightmarish date and practically begging to come over. Like the good friend that he was, he made sure to tell you that you would be more than welcome to join him in his newest documentary marathon about aliens, and wondered if you could bring him some takeout on your way over there. Like the bad friend that you were, you said no. 

To be fair, the nearest takeout place was across the city from his apartment (about thirty minutes away and in a bad neighborhood), and you were already having a horrible night as it was. Besides, you refused to take part in Taehyung’s search for a high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, arguing that it wasn’t the right time to stuff his face full of hypercaloric noodles. 

But you did pity him enough to comply with his second request: a big pot of vanilla ice cream, which you were sure you’d end up consuming too. You were in a crisis.

As if to prove that the gods above were laughing at you, during the walk of shame to Taehyung’s apartment, it had started to rain (because of course it did), and your umbrella was only able to save you from the shoulders up before it crumbled and flew away from your gasp, rolling on the asphalt like a ball of dirt in a Wild West movie. By the time that you dragged yourself to his front door, you were completely soaked (and not in the way you had planned for that night to end), and about to break down crying. 

Taehyung, like the angel that he was, helped you with your heavy coat and talked you into taking a warm shower before you got sick. He took the supermarket bag from you (where the ice cream had probably already melted) and walked you to this bathroom, excusing himself so he could grab you some dry clothes — and you only saw the ones he had picked when you got out of the shower. 

With a silly smile dancing on your lips, you fumbled with the black booty shorts that Taehyung had jokingly gifted you that past Christmas — one that read “daddy’s juicy butt” in big, bold, neon pink letters over your ass — and then decided that your dignity was already dead by that point, so another kick wouldn’t hurt. Taehyung had also given you one of his favorite band shirts, which he only revealed during desperate times. 

Your heart melted with the thought of your best friend trying to comfort you, and pulled the fabric close to your face so you could take a deep inhale, drowning in his scent. It smelled of that stupid cologne that Taehyung had used ever since he hit puberty, and a bit of fabric softener. 

The two of you had an extremely close friendship, to the point that it got kind of strange at times. Ever since childhood, it was joked that you and Taehyung had been long lost soulmates — doing everything together, from going to school to laughing at the same exact jokes during movie marathons, often at the same moment and for the same amount of time. Before puberty hit (and the hormonal rage took over your first teenage years) you couldn’t remember disagreeing with him even once. You two had always been in sync. 

But the uncomfortably close part only hit after you two went to college, and your anxiety for being a virgin in a sea of starving sharks got the best of you. After long conversations, you had managed to convince Taehyung to help you learn a thing or two about the art of naked wrestling. 

Apparently it was weird to give your best friend a handjob and a blowjob for the sake of education. Go figure. 

Regardless, your friendship wasn’t affected by any of that — even if you two had agreed to never mention any of it ever again — and you could always count on Taehyung to catch you when you fell. 

Even if it was at two am on a Tuesday, after one of your nightmarish dates. 

You threw yourself on the couch next to him, hugging your knees against your chest to form a barrier between you and the divine providence that had taken you to that point. You had half-assedly dried your hair, but pools of wetness had started to build on the back of Taehyung’s shirt. 

Instead of accusing you of ruining his favorite piece of clothing, Taehyung reached for the remote and paused his documentary just as the narrator was starting to explain how hieroglyphs were actually part of an alien language. “Just tell me how bad it was,” he said, a mustache of ice cream melting over his top lip.

You took a peek at the bowl of melting vanilla on his center table, and decided that you would probably pass the desert for the night. 

You glanced at him sideways, voice coming out monotone. “You sure you want to go down that path?” 

Taehyung licked his sweet mustache off and nodded, clearly intrigued. “Yeah, hit me with it. You look like you need all the help that you can find.” 

You sighed, turning around on the couch so you were facing him — legs still against your chest. “Okay so… I went to his place...” 

“Yes…”

“And... we had dinner, talked for a bit.”

“How was the talk?” He asked. 

You shook your head, trying to kill the memories inside. “He didn’t let me say a word. He just went on and on about this new website he’s working on, and how expensive his wine glasses were.” You scoffed, angry at yourself for ignoring the clear red flags of an arrogant douchebag. That was what the desperate need for immediate human connection could do to someone, you thought. “Apparently it’s supposed to be the next Facebook or something. Or twitter. I honestly wasn’t paying much attention.”

He chuckled. “Starting off strong.” 

“That wasn’t even the main issue,” you said, lowering your forehead so it was touching your knees. You just wanted the world to end at that moment, so you wouldn’t have to go through those experiences again. “After that, we sat on his couch and started watching a movie. And you know how that goes, we started kissing, he pushed me down and got on top of me…”

“And?” He instigated. 

With a sigh, you raised your head, meeting your friend’s gaze. Taehyung thought he had never seen you look so dead inside. And he had seen a lot from you. “And he humped like… my lower abdomen for about three minutes and came in his pants.”

Taehyung cringed visibly, taking one hand to cover his mouth. “Oh, man. That’s bad.” 

You nodded, strangely relieved at his reaction. Part of you was worried that you were the evil witch in that scenario, that maybe you had done something wrong. “The worst,” you agreed. “Wanna know what else?”

“What? There’s more?”

“He didn’t even ask me if I was satisfied with whatever the hell that was.” You told him, bitterness dripping from your tongue. In the grand scheme of things, that was something silly to get mad over, but the fact that your date didn’t even have the guts to ask if you had gotten something out of that was ridiculous. “Not that I could possibly be. But it’s like he didn’t care and I was just a pillow for him to hump like a… sexually repressed religious teen, I don’t know.”

Taehyung only nodded, realizing that there wasn’t much that he could say to fix the situation. “Was he a good kisser at least?”

You sneered. “I think he was trying to crush my face with his.” You glanced at your friend, only half of his face bathed by the yellow and orange shades coming from the television. Maybe a documentary about ancient history and alien expeditions wouldn’t be so bad. Worst case scenario, it would knock you out, and you wouldn’t have to think about that mess anytime soon. “Also, too much tongue, just… the amount of saliva…”

“Got it. You can stop there.” Taehyung raised one hand, his eyes closing for a second. His palm lowered and met one of your knees, standing there in a silent attempt at consolation. “I’m sorry about your terrible date experience, dude.” 

“If you could even call it that.” You ran one hand through your hair, suddenly overtaken by a wave of anger. “God! I was just… so… ugh! Like… ughhhh!!” 

Taehyung, bless his heart, sometimes couldn’t understand the random neanderthal sounds you threw his way. “So... what?”

At last, your makeshift protection came crumbling down, and you collapsed on the couch dramatically, legs dangling off the edge. Taehyung thought that you were being possessed for exactly two seconds before you started talking again. “I did a full body shave for this night, Taehyung. Do you realize what that means?” His lips fell open, but, before he had the chance to answer, you continued. “It means that I really wanted to get railed tonight. Actually, I wanted to find a guy who actually knew what he was doing for once in my life.”

Taehyung chuckled, trying to disperse the tension in the room. “Come on, the dating pool can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, it’s bad,” you said. 

He wasn’t giving up that fast. “How bad?”

You raised your head to look him dead in the eyes, a silent threat, before finally uttering, “Try no-man-has-ever-made-me-cum bad,” and crashing your head back against the sofa. 

If you weren’t so hyper-focused on your own sexual melodrama, you would have noticed the thick silence that fell between the two of you, Taehyung’s face contorting into fifty different emotions within a few seconds. He thought that he had heard it all — from the secrets hidden in Machu Picchu to the obvious extraterrestrial influence on earthy religion — but no amount of bad documentaries could ever prepare him for that revelation. That didn’t make any sense. 

“Wait. Seriously?” He finally found his voice and managed to push his doubt out of his throat. “You’ve never had an orgasm before?”

You chuckled, humorless. “Oh no, I’ve had plenty of those. Just not from another person.” 

“How’s that possible?” he asked. 

“I ask myself that every single day.” You sighed, forcing yourself to sit back up. Taehyung was staring at you like you had just grown two extra arms, and you wondered what an amazing sex life he must’ve had for that confession to get him so confused. “Guess I’m just really bad at picking partners, who knows.”

There was a soft grunt on your throat as you fixed your position on the couch, suddenly feeling the exhaustion of your entire day piling up at once. Your gaze mindlessly traveled to the TV — a big plasma monstrosity that Taehyung had bought compulsively during a Black Friday sale — looking at a white-bearded man pointing maniacally towards a specific, round-shaped hieroglyph. You didn’t even need to hit play to know that he was making it seem like it was an UFO, but curiosity got the best of you. 

“Can you pass me the remote?” You asked, pointing at the small device that laid beyond Taehyung’s body. “I kinda wanna see what—”

“I’ve made tons of girls have orgasms,” Taehyung interrupted, looking at you like he had just clicked out of a transe.  

You laughed at his monotone voice. “I’m happy for you, Tae.” You leaned over his legs so you could finally reach the remote. “That wasn’t a jab at your masculinity, I’m sure you’re a very caring partner, and I’m sure there’s tons of guys out there that—”

“I can make you cum too, if you want.”

You had just grabbed the small piece of plastic when his sentence hit you like a smack in the face, making you drop the remote back on the couch, eyes widening. “You… what?”

He suddenly broke eye contact, taking one hand to massage the back of his neck. “Did that sound as creepy as I think it did?”

“A bit, yeah.” You forced out a light chuckle, trying to break the ice. There was no sign of mockery in his voice, and you didn’t know how to react. You could not say that the offer wasn’t tempting (you’d be lying if you claimed that you didn’t think Taehyung was attractive), but his proposal was so oddly-placed that it sounded like a joke. “What are you talking about?”

Taehyung sighed, turning his head to look at the television. “I just think it’s really unfair that no one has ever made you cum before.” 

You smiled. “That’s very nice of you, but…”

“And I want to help you with that.” He looked back at you. Oh, he was being a hundred percent serious. There was no longer a single ounce of doubt in your mind. “We’re friends, it’s not gonna be weird. We’ve done similar stuff before.”

“We were a lot younger, though.” You didn’t know why your mouth suddenly felt so dry, your fight or flight response kicking at full strength. You could tell that Taehyung was also trying to convince himself about the strangeness of the situation. “It’s gonna be kind of weird, yeah.”

“Not if we don’t make it weird,” he threw back. Was it bad that you were actually considering it? Maybe it was the piled-up exhaustion combined with the years of sexual frustration, maybe you were finally out of your mind. But you were really considering it. “I don’t wanna pressure you, alright? Just making a friendly offer. If you don’t want it, that’s fine.” 

You kind of wanted it, though. There was too much accumulated libido inside you from years and years of unsatisfying partners, and you trusted Taehyung with your entire heart. It sounded like a safe enough bet: if all went to shit and it got too awkward, you two could just stop, no hard feelings. Besides, you knew that Taehyung cared about you, which was more than you could say about all your dates in the past couple years. 

And the more you stared at him, probably looking like a deer in the headlights, the more you grew soft under his presence. At once, you were hit with desires that you had never considered before: you wanted to kiss those soft lips, wanted to know how his large hands would feel around you. You really, really wanted to know how it was to have a good sexual experience with someone, and you couldn’t think of a better candidate than your best friend. Even if you still thought it could be seen as a little bit weird. 

But you also kind of didn’t care. 

You licked your lips, finally finding your voice after a long moment of silence. “How… how would you do it?” 

Taehyung turned his head and looked at you, noticing the expectation in your eyes. “How would you want me to do it?” He asked. 

You tried to think, but your mind was completely blank. What did you want him to do? What did you like? Suddenly you weren’t sure about anything anymore. “I don’t know,” you admitted, glancing down. 

Taehyung smiled at your nervousness, one of his hands moving to your chin and tilting your head up. “How ‘bout I start by kissing you?” He questioned, gaze flickering to your parted lips. “Is that alright?” 

There were no words in your throat, so you simply nodded, closing your eyes as he leaned in. 

Taehyung’s mouth tasted of vanilla and you thought, even for a moment, that you were in paradise. The second that his tender lips met yours, your anxiety melted away, giving space to a newfound flame of desire. Taehyung kissed you softly, sensually, taking his time caressing your mouth and drowning in your heat. His hand moved to the back of your head, pressing you closer to him and leaning your head to the side so he could deepen the kiss. 

He sighed heavily into your mouth when your tongues met, his other hand moving to hold your waist. The position on the couch was kind of awkward for kissing, with the two of you sitting side by side, so it wasn’t an unwelcome surprise when Taehyung tugged you onto his lap, making you straddle him. 

The kiss was starting to get hungrier, messier, a small whimper dying in your mouth when his palms traveled down to cup your ass, pressing you down against his semi-hard cock. Taehyung sighed and groaned at the feeling of you on top of him, loving the way that your fingers played with his hair, your body so perfectly tight against his. If there was any hesitation before, it had completely vanished by that point. 

It caught you off guard when he suddenly broke off the kiss to ask you, “Do you like any pet names?”

You blinked, taken aback. “Hm? What?”

He placed a strand of your hair behind your ear. “You know, you want me to call you by something?”  

You realized that Taehyung was really taking that personal service to a different level, and you couldn’t say that you were let down by it. If any of your past partners had the dignity to ask what you liked, you wouldn’t be in that position in the first place. “I… like being called ‘baby’,” you told him. 

Taehyung smiled. “That’s cute. Baby it is.” 

Before you had a chance to respond, Taehyung’s lips were back on yours, a dreamy sigh leaving his mouth as your tongues met once again. Only a few seconds passed before he shifted his weight to lay you down, never breaking the kiss as he positioned himself between your legs, hovering over you. Taehyung started trailing a path of kisses down your neck, his large hands slithering beneath your oversized shirt and caressing the skin of your stomach. 

“Can I take this off?” He asked, tugging at your shirt. 

You agreed and, within a heartbeat, that piece of clothing was already on the floor, and Taehyung was diving in to kiss the valley of your naked breasts. You moaned timidly when one of your nipples was wrapped by his lips, his tongue coming out to play with it. Taehyung’s other hand was occupied fondling your other breast, tugging and pressing down on it, and the sensations were taking over your mind. 

“You have great tits,” Taehyung mumbled against your skin, switching to mouth your other nipple. 

“I’m glad you like them,” you teased, playing with the hair on the nape of his neck. You were letting out these cute little whimpers that were making him lose his mind. “Feels really good.” 

“Yeah?” He asked, moving back to kiss his way up your neck. His tongue was hot and heavy as it danced on your skin, and you knew that those sucks he was giving you were surely gonna leave a few marks on your flesh. But you didn’t really care. “Gonna make you feel even better, baby.” 

Your eyes fluttered shut at the pet name — it sounded heavenly when Taehyung used it with his deep, honeyed voice; his warm breath hitting your neck as he continued with his ministrations. 

He kissed his way to your cheek, placing a small pec on your lips before saying, “Can you do something for me?”

You nodded. “What is it?” 

Instead of responding right away, Taehyung’s gaze fell to your lips, and he was once again attacking them. That time, you weren’t able to hold back the whimper that you let out, your panties already glued against your core with how much he was turning you on. 

One of his hands had trailed down your exposed abdomen, teasingly playing with the hem of your shorts. You held your breath when he tugged them down, bringing your underwear with it and throwing them somewhere in the living room. Taehyung grunted loudly when his fingers slipped past your folds, digging into your heat. His brain almost short-circuited because of how wet you were. 

He broke the kiss and looked you deep in the eyes. “I want you to sit on my face, baby,” he said, and his request shot straight to your core. “Let me take care of you, okay?” 

“Are you sure?” You asked. You had never done that before.

But Taehyung wasn’t sharing your reluctance. “Yeah,” he said, voice hoarse and eyes darkened. “Wanna taste you so bad. Sit on my face, please.” 

And you didn’t need any more convincing than that. Taehyung helped you get up from the couch so he could reposition himself on it, laying flat on his back and watching as you settled yourself above him, thighs on either side of his head. The couch was the exact size for that, a little smaller and you’d have one leg dangling off the edge.

Taehyung took his hands to your thighs, running them up to your hips. His eyes were focused on your pussy, and you never felt so exposed when he started pressing you down lightly, guiding you closer to his mouth. 

You held the back of the couch for support and did as he requested, lowering yourself until Taehyung had you flat on his tongue. Your breath trembled and caught in your throat when he licked a thick stripe from your entrance to your clit, humming around the taste before doing it again. Taehyung was an expert at erasing your worries because, with a few more licks, he had you fully losing yourself in his sinful ministrations. 

It wasn’t long until you were whining out his name, your folds lazily dragging against his tongue as you started to grind on his face. “God, Taehyung!” You called out, hand coming down to tug at his hair. Taehyung grunted in satisfaction, the vibrations of his deep voice sending shockwaves through your pussy. “That’s… that’s really nice. You’re really good at this.” 

He moaned in response, closing his eyes at your words. Taehyung was eating you out like his mouth was made for it, like he was starving for your taste and you were all that he could think about. He licked you from your entrance to your clit, playing with your sensitive spots and enjoying the tremors of pleasure that ran through your thighs, his hands locked tight around your hips. You sobbed and cried over him, making special effort to keep your legs steady as you rocked yourself on his tongue. 

It was only when he decided to suck on your clit that you realized how absurdly close you were. You clenched your teeth and whined out, yanking his hair harder. “Do that again, please,” you asked and Taehyung, like the good friend that he was, was quick to comply. Taehyung wrapped his mouth around your clit in a way that had you trembling over him, licking and sucking on your sensitive nub like his life depended on it. “Fuck, that’s so good, Tae. Feels so good…” 

He moaned again, more desperate this time, and some part of your mind understood the pattern that he was presenting you: Taehyung really, really liked your compliments. And you had no problem giving away any more of them. 

“You’re licking me so well, Tae, you’re gonna make me cum like this,” you told him,  meaning every word you said. Taehyung was a Greek god beneath you, staring up at you with those dark, focused eyes as if he dared you to cum on his tongue. “God! You’re so good for me.”

And then your praises ran thin, because your mind was gravitating somewhere else — seeking for the high that was dangerously close. It was only when Taehyung started toying with your entrance, brushing two of his fingers on it, that you came undone, crying out his name like it was a personal prayer. 

There was a smirk on your mouth as you came down, a flooding relief that overtook you. You never thought that you could come so hard in your life, especially when it depended on another person, and you were so, so happy to be wrong that you could cry. 

With shaky legs, you removed yourself from Taehyung’s face, straddling his lap and watching as his lips glistened with your arousal. His pink tongue came out to lick them, a hum on his throat as he took in your fucked-out expression. 

“You did so well, baby,” he said, placing one of his hands on your waist. “Come here.” 

Obedient, you leaned in and sighed as his mouth met yours. This time, Taehyung didn’t wait to eagerly insert his tongue inside your mouth, making you taste yourself on him. 

He pulled away leisurely, his voice hoarse. “Can you taste how sweet you are?” He asked. “I loved making you cum on my tongue, baby. You looked so pretty.” 

Taehyung breathed out, planting kisses on your neck, one hand trailing down to squeeze your ass. You whined at his tight grip and pressed yourself down on him, feeling his hard cock poking out against the fabric of his sweats. 

Taehyung groaned at the stimulation, pressing down on your asscheek again. You rolled your hips on top of him, wincing in sensitivity as his member brushed your clit. “Loved your pussy so much, baby,” he continued, sounding like he was lost in a daydream, “I can’t wait to be inside you. Bet you’d be so tight for my cock, hm?” 

“Yeah,” you managed to speak. Even if you had just reached your orgasm, you were still aching to feel something inside you. You wanted Taehyung more than you could understand. “I want you to fuck me, Tae, please.” 

He breathed out, his hands tightening around your flesh as you rolled your pussy against his cock once again. Taehyung looked like he was one heartbeat away from completely losing his self control, and hearing you beg for him to fuck you wasn’t doing him any favors. “Gonna need to lie down for me, baby,” he asked. 

With a few more shifts on the couch, Taehyung had you beneath him once again, your legs open for him as he removed his shirt and pants. It wasn’t long before his cock sprung free from its confinement, standing erect. You licked your lips at the lustful sight, pussy clenching in anticipation as you took him in — Taehyung was big. Bigger than anyone you’ve ever had, that’s for sure; long and thick and already leaking for you. 

You would’ve cried out in need if he didn’t interrupt you. “What are you looking at?” Taehyung asked, the ghost of a smile creeping up on his lips. 

Your stare oscillated toward his own. “That’s why you have such a good track record, your cock is huge.” You bit your lip, thinking about how good he would feel inside you. You didn’t know how it was possible, but you were pretty sure the last time you’ve seen his cock — back in the dark ages of your freshman year of college — it wasn’t as big as that. Or maybe you just didn’t have anything to compare it to. 

“Hey, I just used my tongue on you, don’t ignore my efforts,” Taehyung teased, wrapping one of his hands around his member so he could pump himself a few times. The playful atmosphere swiftly shifted back, and, when he spoke up again, his voice was deeper. “You think you can take it?” 

“Yeah, I can,” you said. You couldn’t be sure, but you were sure going to try. 

Taehyung hummed, moving a bit closer so he could brush his tip against your pussy, coating it with your wetness. You closed your eyes in expectation, knowing that you’d love the stretch he would give you. 

“You want it?” He asked, a touch of desperation covering his words. Taehyung was nearing his breaking point, and the fluttering of your pussy on his cock was making him go insane. “Want my cock inside your tight little cunt, baby?” 

You nodded, frantic. The brushing of his thick tip on your hole was becoming too much, your walls clenching around nothing, seeking for something to fill you up. “Yes, fuck, I want it so bad.” 

“Are you tight for me, baby?” He was trying to prolong that moment for as much as he could, keep the pretty face you made when you pleaded for him to fuck you burned in the back of his head. Making you cum once was a victory he would take forever, but making you cum around his cock might as well be his life’s biggest achievement. “Ready for me to fuck you?” 

You cried out when he started pressing himself inside you, guiding his crown inside your pussy, then stopping. “Yes, Tae, just put it all in, please,” you whined, hands fumbling for support on his broad shoulders. Taehyung already had you clenching around nothing, you didn’t know what else he wanted from you. “Please, please, fuck me.” 

Taehyung chuckled, looking down at where you two met. He was only human, and his self control was short lived. “Since you asked so nicely…” 

Your back arched off the sofa as you felt the delicious drag of his large cock inside you, opening you up gradually, taking its time before filling you up to the brim. You gasped and sobbed at the overwhelming feeling, nails digging on the skin of his back as Taehyung groaned besides your ear. 

“Fuck, that’s so good.” He let out a shaky breath, and you swore you never heard his voice get so husky before. “I just slipped right in. You’re so fucking wet.” 

Your mind was an apocalypse of confused thoughts and forgotten exclamations, eyes fluttering shut as you dove into the sensation of Taehyung inside you — his hips angling backwards, tilting up just enough so he could move himself away from you core, only to come slamming back inside. The stretch of his cock was amazing, it was making you drunk, and all that you could think about was how much pleasure it was giving you. 

“So-So big—“ you muttered, half aware that the words actually left your lips. 

“How do you like it, uh?” Taehyung asked, his voice dripping sin and hunger. You could tell that he, too, was getting carried away by the feeling, his hips rutting themselves against you at a lazy pace. “Gonna give it to you any way you want it, baby.” 

You bit your lip, a small moan leaving your mouth when Taehyung leaned closer to you, distributing hot kisses on your neck. You swore you’d be happy if you died then. “I like it rough,” you answered. 

He groaned, apparently satisfied with your response. “Whatever you want.” 

Taehyung got to his knees on the couch, deciding to put one foot on the ground for support, his hands raising your hips to help him reach even deeper inside you. Faster than your brain could compute, the shallow, lazy pace he had sat was being replaced with a harsh, fast pumping that made you cry out his name, eyes closing in sheer bliss. 

“Tae! Yes, yes, just like that,” you sobbed, running one hand through your hair. You felt like your body was floating, every cell of your body overheating with the amazing pleasure that Taehyung was giving you. You never had someone fucking you so hard, his cock pistoning inside you, your body bobbing up and down on the couch. 

Taehyung’s eyes were glued to the bouncing of your breasts as he continued to fuck you, a deep groan leaving his chest. “That’s it, take it,” he moaned out, quickening his pace even more. Your eyes rolled to the back of your head, mouth opening in a silent scream.  “Gonna make you cum so hard around my cock, baby. Gonna fuck you until you cry. Want that?” 

“Yes, yes, please,” you moaned. “Feels so good, Tae.” 

“You like my cock, baby? Like it filling you up?” He asked and you could only nod pathetically, your entire body too fucked out to even respond. “F-fuck, your pussy is so good. Tell me that you love my cock.” 

“I love your cock,” you whined, feeling like a complete hot mess under his thrusts. “I — fuck! — I love your cock so much, Tae, it’s so big.” 

Your words motivated him to fuck you even harder, his member hitting even deeper inside you. Taehyung was getting lost in the stretch of your pussy around him, the glorious sounds you were making, the lust that coated your face every time you called out his name. 

“Shit, I don’t know how anyone could look at you like this and not want to see that pretty face cum.” He was breathing out hard, grunting every time your cunt tightened around him. Taehyung wanted to see you like that forever, taking his cock like a good girl, creaming all over him and begging to do it again. You were wrapping around him so perfectly, taking all of him so well, that he didn’t think he’d manage to move on from that anytime soon. “So fucking hot.”

Taehyung chased after your high like a starving man looking for food, experimentally changing the angle and force of his thrusts to see what would get the best reaction out of you. At last, after a pathetically loud cry from your part after he raised your legs up, it seemed as if he had found it. “I bet you’d be so tight cumming around my cock, baby,” he was thinking out loud at that point, trying to make sense of the pretty sounds and expressions you were giving him so eagerly. He wanted nothing more than to see you cum — it was personal at that point. “I wanna feel you cum around me, baby. Wanna feel it so bad.” 

“I’m c-close.” Your nails dug into his shoulders, eyes closing tightly. There was a light heat in your cheeks and sweat on your forehead that was making Taehyung wonder if you were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. “You’re so good, T-Tae, you’re fucking me so well…” 

Taehyung thought that he could cum right then and there, pushed over the edge with those sweet words alone. He loved being good to you, loved making you feel things that no one else managed to before. He was intoxicated by that sense of superiority, drowning in your praise. He wished that he could fuck you forever. 

“Cream my cock, baby, come on,” he pushed you on, his words hanging somewhere between an order and a breathless plea. You were getting so tight around him that it was making him crazy, your wetness coating his cock and dripping down between your legs like his own personal brand of aphrodisiac. “You can do it, come on. I wanna see you cum so bad.” 

You smiled at him, a cute, fucked-out smirk that made Taehyung go to heaven and back. “So good for me, Tae, you’re so big,” you said, your voice so needy and high-pitched. Your orgasm was looming over you, pressing down on your lower body and making you see stars. It was only a matter of time before Taehyung got you crying out his name, back arching off the couch and mouth falling open in delirium. “Tae! Fuck! Don’t stop, please, I’m gonna—“ 

But your warning came a second too late, because you were already spasming around his length, body shaking as Taehyung thrusted hard inside you. Just as expected, you were absolutely fucking gorgeous when you came — all quivering lips and rolling eyes —, and Taehyung was beyond satisfied to know that he was the only one who saw that pretty face of yours. 

“That’s it, baby, fuck.” Taehyung was starting to feel his own high approaching, called by the delicious tightening and releasing of your pussy around him. His thrusts were messy and harsh; his sweaty hair falling over his eyes like a cascade. “Can I cum inside you, baby? Can I fuck you full of my cum?”

You noticed the desperation in his tone and, with the throbbing of his member inside you, you knew that he wasn’t far. “Yes, please,” you said. “You were so good for me, Tae, you can cum wherever you want.” 

And it was that final taste of praise that pushed Taehyung over his limit; waves upon waves of cum filling you up as he rode out his high. “God— fuck!” He cried out, drunk on the feeling of your walls milking the last drops of cum out of his cock. A few lazy pumps later, and he was collapsing on top of you with a mumbled, “F-Fuck.” 

There was an instant of silence after his orgasm, the quietude only filled by Taehyung’s heavy breathing. You took one hand to his head, caressing the strands as a smile blossomed on your lips. “Well, I believe you now,” you said playfully. “I’m sure you made a bunch of girls orgasm.” 

Taehyung chuckled, breathless. “Thank you, I try,” he said, looking up at you. The darkness in his gaze was gone, and it was just your best friend staring back at you. “You alright?”

“I’m great,” you admitted. You never felt so good in your life. “You?”

“Fantastic, thanks for asking.” He leaned back so he could sit up, running one hand through his disheveled hair before saying, “I’m gonna grab you a towel, hang on.” 

Taehyung left you for a couple minutes before coming back to clean you up, tenderly wiping away the mess you two had created. After he was done, he discarded the towel on the floor and crawled back to rest on your chest once again. 

There was a comforting quietude that floated in the atmosphere, only filled by the muffled buzzing of his freezer and the vague sound of raindrops drumming on the window. You didn’t really know how to deal with that entire situation, didn’t know how things would stay between the two of you. But, at that point, you made the decision to keep those worries for the following morning and, instead, just enjoy his warmth radiating all around you. 

The glorious silence, at last, was broken when Taehyung started mumbling against your breasts.  “Hey, ___?” He called. 

“Yeah?”

“How many dates have you been on?”

You hummed, thinking for a moment. “Ever?”

Taehyung made a clicking sound with his tongue. “I don’t know, like, this past year.”

“Uh… like… five or six? I think?” You answered, looking down to meet his gaze. You knew that wicked expression very well. “Why?”

He smiled. “Because we have a lot of shitty dates to make up for.”

[raleighcarrera]

falling

platinum | raleigh carrera x mc (cadence dorian)

a little while ago i posted about the idea of a soulmate au where the first words raleigh & cadence say to each other are tattooed on them their whole lives, and this... is that. (for @platinumweekend ❤️)

tags: @choicesarehard ; @empressazura; @emomoustache ; @natesewell ; @zigtheeortega ; @pixeljazzy ; @brycemaloliver ; @grigori-girl ; @dulceghernandez ; @bitchloveskcbaseball ; @withbeautyandrage 

~10.5k words | T

i.

the words appear in looping script on his thirteenth birthday, right on time. they curve along the inside of his bicep, innocently punctuated. what’s your name?

“you got lucky,” one of his older cousins tells him, later, when everyone in his family comes by for cake and to ooh and aah over his new tattoo, “you’ll be able to hide that with a shirt or a jacket easily.”

but raleigh sleeps shirtless every night for the next two years, even when it’s cold, so that the words are the last thing he sees with his head pillowed on his arm before he falls asleep, dreaming of the nameless, faceless person who will one day say them, wondering what their voice might sound like when they do.

ii.

she has a more difficult go of it.

being a thirteen year old girl would be miserable enough without the added pressure of the words that practically feel broadcast across her forehead, most of the time. everyone at school teases her constantly and ruthlessly: say something funny, cadence. go on. tell us a joke!

so it’s difficult not to resent the two words scrawled lazily across her collarbone and the person attached to them, especially in the mornings before school when she’s angrily rearranging her neckline and jewelry in the mirror while the bus idles outside.

very funny. she isn’t, really. she’s plenty of things -- determined and passionate and sensitive, definitely, but... no one’s ever found her particularly funny, before.

and no one seems to understand just how much the expectation of having to be funny, one day, is weighing on her, not even her parents, when she finally works up the courage to squeak out, “but how am i supposed to know what i should say?”

her mom laughs indulgently, like she’s already said something funny. her stomach sinks further.

“oh, sweetheart,” she tells her, “don’t worry, it won’t matter. you just will.”

iii.

people ask him about it. a lot.

it gets difficult to keep it a secret as things change around him, but raleigh’s careful to avoid slip-ups and paparazzi photos and he doesn’t say a word about it in interviews, even when he’s asked directly. he’s never seen without short sleeves on, at the very least, and he doesn’t even tell blair and cameron about it.

he sort of wishes he had, though, because as his life turns upside down and he adapts to a new country with a new set of rules and an industry that makes his head spin most of the time it starts to feel more and more confusing, those three words -- what’s your name?

everywhere he goes, thousands of girls blocking the street scream it at him. so how is it possible that whoever’s waiting to meet him doesn’t already know it?

and what does that mean for how the rest of his life is going to turn out? 

what if all of this -- the fame and the money and the notoriety -- is fleeting, and he’s only a few short years from being completely washed up and irrelevant? what if the day he’s meant to meet his person is so far away that he’ll be completely out of the spotlight, by then, with sunset skatepark playing reunion tours and him having spent most of his life alone?

it’s a lot of pressure, for someone who’s already working their way through such a serious adjustment, and most of the time it’s dizzying, thinking about the fact that there’s someone out there who’s supposed to be perfect for him, when everyone he meets seems determined to forget every word they know other than yes, so they can suck up to him as much as possible.

his teenage years fly by in a whirlwind of mistakes and regrets. there’s things he would’ve never dreamed would come his way, like world tours and more money than he can count and so many girls who know everything about him before they even sit down to dinner, but there’s more than that, too.

there’s all the ways the industry weakens his trust until it’s gone, all the people who try to use him for what he can do for them, all the times he stumbles until he finally learns to distance himself by cultivating a persona, by leaning into all the expectations of raleigh carrera and creating something so outlandish it doesn’t hurt as much when disaster follows him around because it’s supposed to.

he watches everything that surrounds him turn fake and plastic and puts his energy only into his music, coasting on the rest. the days are less exciting than when he first joined the band at fifteen; he’s a solo artist, now, and most of the time, he’s just trying to get through.

but chaos continues to follow him and eventually his notoriety is inescapable. his first solo album is self-titled and he somehow manages to get a trademark on the word raleigh, as if the name is now more his than anything that ever belonged to the state of north carolina, and part of him sort of expects the words stamped on his arm to change, once he hits one-hundred million followers on his social channels.

they never do, though, and when he’s alone, and the veneer he’s built up for everyone else fades away, he can’t help but to be fascinated by this person who just wants an answer to the question no one else would ever dare ask him.

iv.

college isn’t exactly the fresh start she was hoping it’d be.

she was a loser in high school and things don’t get much better for her even now that she’s with ‘her people’ at a performing arts university she can barely afford, even with two part-time jobs. 

shane is across the country at a proper state school with parties and a social life and lots of friends who aren’t her, and she’s failing her improv class, proving that she isn’t actually very funny at all. 

boys continue to not notice her and patrons in bars continue to turn away from her one-woman performance, her old acoustic guitar the only constant in a life that feels utterly, unbelievably pointless, most of the time.

it’s like she’s drifting through the days, putting her time in at college in the hopes that it’ll fortify her for what’s next -- her big break, the discovery that’ll get her out of that shitty small town she’s been trying to escape her entire life. she writes hundreds of songs about how lost she feels and hates every single one, dreaming of a time when things might be different and she doesn’t have to second-guess every single one of her decisions.

she doesn’t have much of a love life and tries not to think about that, either.

the person on the other side of those two words stuck on her collarbone is probably looking for someone self-confident, who knows who they are and is comfortable with that. they’re probably expecting to meet someone who has their life together, who, at the very least, has a plan.

they’re probably not expecting a talentless nobody screwup like her, someone who tries as hard as she can yet never seems to make anything work.

things don’t turn around after graduation, either. sure, she manages to find an apartment in a building that’s nice enough and uses the last of her savings on the deposit and trying to furnish it, but it’s only a few weeks of trying and failing to secure a regular paying gig performing before she’s back at smoothie star again, begging for her old job back.

and there’s nothing that makes her feel more like a failure than working the same shifts she had in high school. 

as she hums along to the radio on a random tuesday afternoon when the store is dead and there’s nothing to blend, she wonders what mr.-or-mrs. very funny would think if they walked in and saw her here -- twenty-three years old and flat broke, with a dead-end job and a one-bedroom apartment all she has to show for her very expensive and very useless bachelor’s degree.

that, and a notebook full of half-finished songs about relationships she could only ever dream about and an escape from the miserable small town she lives in that feels farther away with every day that passes.

she can’t imagine they’d be very impressed.

v.

raleigh’s life gets monotonous very quickly. the music takes a backseat to the scandals and for a while there’s a predictable pattern of cause trouble, clean up image, rinse and repeat.

there are girls in between the cycles to help him pass the time. some he likes well enough and some he despises, but for the most part his management gives their recommendations and he agrees and makes awkward conversation for an hour or two over brunch until it’s time to go trash something again.

things get particularly bad after one minor cruise ship hijacking incident. 

but in his defense, no one ever told him that breaking into the harbor and joy riding was a first-degree felony, worsened by the fact that he’d just so happened to crash the boat into the pier while he was trying to dock it. 

at least he’d been sober.

though a monumental fuck up like this felt sort of inevitable; everyone who knew him probably figured it was only a matter of time before he went too far. how could he not when he was always chasing the next high?

still, the image rehab tour that follows is far from what he’d call enjoyable. he has to cut off all his hair and play nice at industry parties and waste time standing around being seen at charity events he winds up just cutting checks for instead of helping out at.

on top of the miserable community service comes the pr bullshit his team so loves -- dozens of tv appearances back-to-back where he’s herded around all day like cattle, in and out of green rooms with crappy coffee and bad catering.

he has no idea that showing up to be a judge on one in a million is going to change his life. hungover and running late, he barely even makes it to the taping of the semi-finals, slinking inside the concert hall in middle-of-nowhere, usa with a headache and some choice words for whoever thought this was the best way to clean up his image.

fortunately, raleigh manages to make his way inside virtually unnoticed. his phone is buzzing angrily in his pocket -- undoubtedly his manager trying to encourage him to hair and makeup or some other absurdity -- but he ignores it in favor of ducking back behind the line near the auditorium doors, only barely catching the last few words of some catty confrontation between two contestants as he goes.

as one of the girls stomps away, he sees the other’s shoulders slump from behind. “guess i’m not making any friends,” she mutters.

it’s clearly said to no one -- not even to herself, really -- yet for some reason, he can’t stop himself from responding. “where i come from, that’s a good thing.”

the girl’s shoulders straighten, but she still doesn’t turn around. “i’m not trying to succeed at the cost of others.”

raleigh smirks, leaning back against the wall beside his guitar case. “you do realize you’re at a competition show, right?”

“of course, but...” her hair ruffles with what sounds like a huff. she’s still not facing him, staring off at where the other girl she’d been talking to had run away. “that doesn’t mean i’m not rooting for everyone here to share their music with the world.”

“what a sweet sentiment,” raleigh drawls sarcastically, almost feeling a little bad for her and her naivety. this poor girl is going to be eaten alive. “it won’t last.”

her body tenses, her shoulders tightening again. he can almost see smoke start to pour from her ears before she spins suddenly on her heel to face him. 

whatever sharp retort had been on the tip of her tongue gets swallowed with a blink as soon as their eyes meet. something like electricity crackles in the space between them, strengthening the invisible pull he’d felt when he first stopped behind her. instead, she only asks, “what’s your name?”

vi.

the man in front of her snorts. “very funny.”

a smile tugs at her lips. “very funny, that’s a weird name.” this is unlike her -- the quick comeback, the flirting. usually being face-to-face with a guy as good looking as the one talking to her now made her want to wither away and die, but something about the stranger standing before her sets her instantly at ease. “so, are you gonna tell me, or not?”

now it’s his turn to blink at her. a hand lifts to rub at his jaw. “huh. you really don’t know who i am, do you?”

cadence’s eyes narrow as she assess him. there is something vaguely familiar about that crooked grin, she’s sure of it. 

at the very least, it’s an excuse to stare at him, and she does, moving her eyes slowly over the tattoos poking out over his jacket collar, the line of stubble on his sharp jaw, the glint of mischief in his eyes.

her helpless gaping is interrupted by a sudden shrill scream. “oh. my. god! is that raleigh carrera?!”

everything clicks at once. as a wild group of girls corner him, she realizes where she’s seen that smile before -- on just about every tabloid cover known to man, plastered all over convenience stores and the internet with headlines about his latest bender. in fact, she’s pretty sure he was just in the news for something similar -- crashing a yacht or something else ridiculous like that, something that only someone as rich as raleigh carrera could have accomplished. 

then she realizes what he’d said to her, as soon as she’d turned to look him in the eyes. very funny. 

her heart stops. all she can do is stare wide-eyed at him as he dispels the girls clamoring for a selfie, snapping back to the present when he waves one large hand in front of her face. 

“sorry -- what?”

“i said, what’s your name? it only seems fair, now that you know mine, and all.”

“cadence,” she answers numbly, “i’m -- um, i’m used to your hair being longer.”

“cadence,” raleigh repeats, smiling at her, “so you do know who i am.”

“what do the magazines call you again? r&b’s time bomb? puerto rico’s hottest export? you’re kind of notorious.” she blinks at him, then admits, “i’ve heard your songs.”

“seen the tabloid covers too, eh?” the expression on his face suggests he’s almost proud of them.

this is surreal.

“didn’t you crash a yacht or something?” she asks, brain whirring into overdrive as she tries to process what’s happening. he doesn’t seem to have realized it yet, which gives her a moment to gather her thoughts, something that feels impossible when she can’t push the way he’d scoffed very funny out of her mind. 

“or something. insurance paid out a couple million in property damage, but...” raleigh trails off, brow suddenly furrowing. he stares at her silently for a beat too long, then slowly turns a dull red. “hey, what’d you say earlier, again?”

cadence wets her dry lips, trying not to panic. stay calm, she silently coaches herself. raleigh carrera is not your long-awaited soulmate and you are not doing this in line to audition for one in a million. “i said -- what’s your name? and then you said...”

oh god, this is happening. her teeth dig into her bottom lip as she fidgets with the neckline of her top, tugging it to the side so raleigh can see the two words on her collarbone. 

“very funny,” he mutters, “oh, jesus fucking christ. you can’t be serious.”

“me?” she demands, “you’re the one who --”

“next up,” calls a voice suddenly, cutting sharply through their argument, “contestant #9,276.”

her blood runs cold as she realizes that’s the number she’s wearing pinned to her shirt. she can feel herself start to sweat; how the fuck is she supposed to perform like this? she wants to throw up. why did this have to happen to her now? this was her shot -- her one fucking chance --

“hey, easy.” there’s suddenly two strong hands on either side of her shoulders, and she startles as raleigh stares at her from up close, closer than he was just a moment ago. “relax, okay? you’re gonna be fine. you’ve got this.”

“but --” she starts, then realizes her mind is racing too quickly to even articulate what she wants to say. she settles for shaking her head, eyes wide and panicked. “i can’t just -- oh my god, i’m going to throw up.”

“here,” raleigh directs, “take my guitar. prince gave it to me as a birthday present.”

prince?! she mouths hysterically to herself, as he flips the latch on his case open and pulls out the instrument. “how is this supposed to help me?”

“just trust me,” he says, giving her a gentle nudge towards the auditorium, “now go.”

she does, stumbling forward with the most expensive piece of equipment she’s ever held in her hands in her life alongside her, drawing in a deep breath as she makes her way onto the stage.

she can do this.

everything else will have to come after.

vii.

the thing is -- she’s talented. exceptionally so. 

he can tell she’s a little nervous, but maybe that’s just because he’s used to looking out for that sort of thing; he could probably recognize it more easily than the average person would. it probably has nothing to do with who they are, how he notices the nuances in her body language...

her belt is impressive. her voice is stunning, clear and uniquely melodic. his guitar looks spectacular in her hands, and cadence plays it like she’s been practicing on it her entire life. 

he tries his best to look nonchalant, feet kicked up onto the seat in front of him, but when she locks eyes with him from the stage he knows he hasn’t succeeded. raleigh’s breath catches, and he stares back at her, transfixed by the way her dainty hands cradle the neck of the guitar and strum the strings, how her lips purse around the long, emotional high note at the end of the song’s chorus.

she’s really very pretty. 

he’d probably be lying to himself if he said it doesn’t make him a little bit jealous and uncomfortable, watching how she and avery fawn over each other when she’s finished. he’s probably a much better suited match for her, clean cut and pristine as he is. 

he wonders if she’s disappointed that it’s him -- that it’s now, when she’s clearly on the cusp of something great all on her own.

it’s a lot to think about, and so he dips out of the auditorium before she finishes up, rushing outside with his heart pounding. it’s not until he’s halfway through the crumpled pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket that raleigh starts to relax even an iota, and of course that’s when the stage door he’d left propped swings open wide and cadence’s sneakers hit the asphalt beside his boots.

“uh, you can’t just leave me with this thing,” she says, apropos of nothing, and as he stares at her he realizes she’s talking about his guitar, which she’s holding in one hand like it’s a dead fish. “this costs more than everything in my apartment combined, i’m sure.”

he shakes his head at her, laughing as his fingers flick ash from the cigarette he’s holding. “no way -- you should keep it. you two looked perfect together.”

she hesitates, looking down at the instrument again. he can see in her eyes that she’s torn; it’s obvious she knows the right thing to do is to refuse a generous gift from a stranger, but she wants to keep it, and already his mind is racing as he considers what else he could give her that would excite her like that -- a private flight, a tour of his penthouse, a million dollars. 

“are you sure?” cadence asks, without looking at him, and the hesitancy in her voice makes him realize how unsure she really is. she’s the one who’s wondering if he’s disappointed in her.

he licks his suddenly dry lips and drops what’s left of his cigarette to the ground, finding he doesn’t actually need the rest of it, anymore. “positive.”

viii.

they don’t actually get to spend a lot of time together, while she’s filming. she has to focus and it seems like she’s always busy, somehow -- not that she sees raleigh very often in the first place.

the days are spent rehearsing with avery and cramming in as much mentoring as possible, and when she can pull herself away from fiona’s lessons on image to get home at a reasonable hour she collapses into bed pretty much immediately, out like a light from the whirlwind of the day and hardly even aware enough to dream.

but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about him. she does, especially on the rare occasions she manages to catch a glimpse of raleigh walking around in the studio, or on one memorable evening she stays late in the auditorium to bang on the piano keys of the beautiful, enviable baby grand on set and startles to find him leaning in the doorway, watching her play.

it’s all a blur and wildly difficult to process; just when she thinks she has a grip on things she remembers the private moments she’s had with raleigh and her emotions tumble to pieces again as she lets the weight of the implications of what’s going on between them crush her completely.

one moment sticks out on her as being particularly worrisome, insofar as how it bodes for the rest of her life. 

it feels like something significant from the moment raleigh offers to help her warm up; they’ve hardly had a moment alone together in days and she still has absolutely no idea how she’s supposed to talk to him or what she should say, but for some reason the conversation flows easily and she hardly has to think about the (no doubt incredibly stupid-sounding) words coming out of her mouth.

“you’re going to kill it,” raleigh says finally, once they’ve worked through all the exercises in his arsenal, “you really don’t need my help.”

never in her wildest dreams did she ever imagine someone like him would say something like that to her. “you think?”

“i know it,” he answers confidently, shrugging his shoulders like it’s that simple. “and you should, too.”

there’s a moment of silence where they just stand there staring at each other, ignoring the restless murmuring of the crowd outside that’s waiting for him to slip into his seat at the judge’s table. she’s effortlessly lost in raleigh’s eyes, so fixated on the intensity of his gaze that she doesn’t realize he’s leaning in closer until it’s too late.

“insurance policy,” he mutters, before he kisses her, hands cupping her face gently. 

for a split second, she stands frozen, shocked totally still. then, her brain reboots enough to propel her into motion, and cadence gets with the program enough to wind her arms around raleigh’s waist and pull him closer and kiss him back, until her heart’s lurched up into the throat she’d just been warming up, pounding relentlessly.

they make out until the roar of the crowd is deafening -- until it’s impossible not to acknowledge it any longer. 

of course raleigh’s a life-ruiningly good kisser. why wouldn’t he be? why should any of this be easy?

it’s only a few simple touches, but raleigh’s mouth leaves her dizzy and lightheaded when she’s supposed to be concentrating on performing, and, independently of the way she’s blinking at him in stupid shock, cadence already knows she’ll never be able to kiss anyone else ever again without thinking about him.

“i have to get out there,” she gasps between desperate presses of their lips against each other, grasping ineffectively at his clothes while his fingers tug her hair out of shape.

“be late,” he suggests, “it always works for me.” 

but she’s not him. she’s not like him -- they have nothing in common. they come from different worlds; they’re two completely opposite people.

and yet every minute with raleigh is like coming up for air after being underwater for years, like the knots of guilt and shame and awkward embarrassment she’s carried around for her entire life without understanding why she has them are slowly starting to undo themselves, unlaced by his careful fingers.

they make it out there. eventually.

before she knows it, confetti’s raining down from the ceiling and falling all over her, and she locks eyes with raleigh from across the room to find his lips pulled into a genuinely affectionate grin -- lips that she’d just kissed for the first time a fucking hour ago and, seriously, what is her life now -- his eyes bright and excited. 

things just keep getting weirder and weirder, but the way they’re beaming at each other like idiots in a room full of thousands, broadcast on national television, too, makes her think things might be pretty great, too.

ix.

it sort of takes them a long time to getting around to talking about it -- the soulmate thing.

it’s not that he doesn’t try. he does, but she’s got a lot going on, these days: a big move and a new record deal and days filled with songwriting and nights out being seen. he’s still on his image cleanup tour, while she’s at it, so his fake smile stays fixed on his face throughout another boring week of restaurant openings and charity events and talkshow appearances before he finally gets the chance to spend some time with her again.

they text here and there, but nothing pans out until the stars align and they manage to slip out of the back door of a nightclub unnoticed together after a night of dancing too close for the comfort of her publicist while avery and the others cause a commotion at the front entrance to distract the press.

she goes back to his penthouse with him. he can’t remember the last time he brought a girl back to his apartment just to talk, and especially not one who spent the better part of the evening in a sparkly minidress grinding against him. 

but here they are.

“so -- how’s the city treating you?” raleigh asks, pouring them both a drink he doesn’t want from the bar cart in the corner of the room for something to do with his hands.

cadence shrugs from where she’s perched on the edge of his sofa, tugging at the hem of her dress. “good, i guess. it’s honestly all kind of overwhelming.”

“yeah,” he nods, passing her one of the glasses in his hands and taking a seat on the ottoman in front of her, close enough to see her face in perfect clarity but still maintaining a distance that he hopes is respectful. “i know what you mean. when i first came here after joining sunset skatepark everything felt so... huge.”

“totally,” cadence answers quickly, nodding in a way that’s almost aggressive. “i mean, there’s so much pressure to deliver an album right away, but i want it to be perfect, and the studio is so different from, like, writing songs in my room at home, and i... i guess i feel kind of homesick, but -- not for my hometown. i hated that place.” there’s hesitancy in her gaze when she asks, “do you know what i mean?”

“yeah,” raleigh says again stupidly, because the truth is -- he knows exactly what she means. cadence has just articulated something he could never quite put into words better than he’d even thought the sentiments to himself. “it’s like... nostalgia for something you don’t even want.”

“exactly,” she breathes emphatically, and then they’re kissing again, and she’s in his lap on the ottoman and he definitely brought her here to talk, for sure, but is it really so terrible if they get a little sidetracked on the way to their destination?

well -- they wind up making out for hours. so, there’s that.

it’s not part of the plan but it’s a hell of a side quest, memorizing the shape and feel of her with his hands while her lips pull every last bit of breath from his lungs, until he’s lightheaded and dizzy in a way no other girl has ever made him, before. it’s to the point where when he finally finds it within himself to push her away, he’s uncharacteristically nervous -- something that’s never happened to him before, not even on the night he lost his virginity.

“i really did ask you over to talk,” he says, voice hoarse.

cadence licks her lips and then beams at him, eyes sparkling. “i know.” she shuffles delicately back onto the couch, lingering in his lap for only a moment before pulling away entirely. he stuffs his hands under his thighs to stop himself from reaching out for her again. “sorry i haven’t been around more.”

“you don’t have to apologize.” raleigh shakes his head. “i should be apologizing to you, i feel like... i should be the one who’s around, to help you with all of this. or at least -- i want to be. i don’t know if i’ll be any good at it.” 

he blinks, surprised by his own honesty. he hadn’t meant to say all of that, but the words came up before he was cognizant of them and now they’re out there, and there’s no taking them back -- especially with the way she’s looking at him, all soft and sweet and happy.

“well, you don’t have to be good at it,” cadence murmurs, reaching out for his wrists and tugging his hands free so she can interlock their fingers effortlessly. they fit together like puzzle pieces. “you just have to be you.”

x.

her budding relationship with one of the biggest names in r&b doesn’t have much time to bud at all before it’s rudely plucked from the plant and stepped on.

she finds herself blinking at fiona in confusion as the words take some time to process. “you want me to do what?”

xi.

raleigh balks at his manager, shaking his head emphatically. “no,” he spits out, “absolutely not.”

xii.

“cadence, it’s not a big deal,” fiona tells her, very nearly rolling her eyes. “everyone does it. you go on a few dates, play up the relationship for some photos, social media eats it up -- boom, you’re a star.”

“i don’t know,” she answers hesitantly, mind drifting back to the photographers that have already been following her around, screaming about avery when she ducks into the car with him. things with raleigh are... new, and complicated, and do they really need to add public scrutiny into the mix as well? “i just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“it’s a great idea,” fiona sighs, shaking her head. “all our focus groups agree. the label thinks it’s best, what with your single taking so long to put out.” she opens her mouth to protest -- it’s not like she’s dragging her feet on purpose -- but barely has a second to get a word out before fiona continues, “besides, raleigh does this all the time.”

her teeth bite at her bottom lip uncertainly. “he does?”

“of course. chantal clearwater? she was a pictagram model when they met, and now she’s opening shows at paris fashion week. it’s just business.”

it’s not, though. it could never be just anything, for reasons no one else knows about except the two of them, for reasons she’ll never tell. “well... what did raleigh say about it?”

xiii.

“i said no, frank.” he’s annoyed, now, and his manager knows it, raleigh’s arms folded across his chest and his eyes set into a glare. “n. o. no.”

“and i hear you, but is it really the end of the world? she’s exactly what we’re going for, and i know you already get along --”

“which is exactly why i don’t want to do this. so pick someone else. anyone else.” he’s not going to let his label turn her into one of the girls he has to be seen with for fake photos and mutually beneficial positive press. 

for so many years, he’s watched people fake feelings and use each other -- willingly participated in the using himself, too, more times than he can count. he never cared about any of it before.

but being with cadence doesn’t feel fake, and he doesn’t ever want it to. and he knows that if he agrees to this, everything he enjoys about spending time with her will disappear in favor of the ugly, plastic decay that’s eaten away at so many of his personal and professional relationships before. organic, genuine time with her will become strolls near celebrity hotspots, angling just right to help the cameras get the perfect shot. he’ll show up to support her at shows because her publicist called him, and their time together will become some manufactured narrative meant to push their labels’ agenda, until six months down the line they don’t even recognize themselves or what might’ve been if they’d done things a different way.

“look, there isn’t anyone else. her team’s already agreed to it, and i’ve got brunch set up for sunday. all you have to do is play nice for two fucking months, raleigh. is that so impossible for you?”

yes. already he feels a deep-seated desire to go somewhere and break something, to tear through the flower beds in central park with his motorcycle and wink at the cameras when they catch up to him.

instead, he storms out of the office he’s in, and into the sunlight, tugging the hood on his jacket up and melting into the crowd on the corner so he can be as anonymous as possible when he picks up his phone and calls cadence.

“hey raleigh,” she chirps as soon as she picks up, sounding far too cheerful for someone who’s likely had an equally as miserable early morning meeting on a friday. “guessing you heard the news?”

“can’t i just call you to say hi?” he grumbles, ducking his head as he strolls through the intersection with the mob of people crowded along fifth ave, turning down the next side street so he’s alone again, with no one following, just like that. 

“well, you can,” she teases, and some of the anger he’s carrying around with him fades, dissipating into nothing and evaporating like smoke. “but you’re not.”

“no, i’m not,” he agrees with a sigh, shaking his head. “you sound surprisingly cool with it, though.”

“should i not be?” cadence laughs, but he can detect a thread of nervousness in her tone. “i already want to hang out with you. we have the same friends and work in the same industry. we’re... probably going to go on dates anyway, so... how hard can this be?”

god. she has absolutely no idea. part of him thinks it’d be cruel to burst her bubble, but he should warn her, shouldn’t he? 

she sounds so optimistic about it, though. it’s hard to feel anything but hopeful when her voice turns up like that at the end. in the back of his mind, there’s a voice that’s not his suggesting maybe this time, things will be different. 

surely he knows better than to think something as ridiculous as that, though, right? 

“well, i guess it’ll be interesting, at least,” he muses, slowing his steps by the entrance to the subway. 

he’s going to lose his signal just as soon as he heads underground, and he’s not quite ready for that, yet.

xiv.

time with raleigh flies by. 

it doesn’t feel like they’re fake-dating -- they do everything she hopes he’d want to do with her anyway, like go out to eat at fancy restaurants and take walks through the park and bounce melodies for songs off of each other, facetiming late at night from their apartments or on the days he visits her and micah in the studio. 

he’s by her side for the release of her first single, and her first music video, and through it all, raleigh plays the role of the doting partner perfectly, holding her purse on the red carpet and feeding her paella at a strategically-placed outdoor table and fetching her coffee order when she’s too busy to stop writing for even just five minutes.

in the blink of an eye, it’s time to put out her album -- just like that. 

raleigh’s perfectly charming through that process, too. he shows up on time, says all the right things, and keeps a drink in her hand all evening long, so that when she’s finally done making the rounds and can enjoy herself after the entertainment and the networking and the schmoozing she’s giggly and touchy, doing her best to steal him away from the crowd.

“what were your other relationships like?” she asks, half expecting him to brush her off, though he’s always indulged her before. they’ve never really gotten this personal. “fake or... otherwise.”

“they’ve all been fake,” he shrugs, “and i can say with confidence that you’re the best one i’ve ever had.”

“really?” cadence smiles, chin propped up on her hand as she leans over the bar. “be honest. what did you really think, when you realized it was me?”

“what?” he asks, pushing the empty rocks glass in his hands around on the bar top, “you mean this thing?” he gestures at his arm, covered in expensive, custom tom ford, and the tattoo laying innocently beneath it.

“uh huh,” she confirms, “‘cause i was totally like oh shit.”

raleigh laughs, loud and wild, the sound swallowed up by the noise of the party around them. no one nearby is paying them even an ounce of attention, and it’s fun, to be anonymous at her own party, invisible to everyone in the room except for him. “i can imagine. i wouldn’t want to be stuck with me either.”

cadence shakes her head -- that’s not what she’d meant. but before she can protest, he rolls his glass between his palms and thoughtfully continues, “i guess i was a little surprised. it felt like i’d been waiting forever to meet you, so part of me was like, fuck, we’re doing this now? and i never thought it’d be someone so...”

“boring?” she suggests, eyebrows arching when raleigh’s expression immediately twists into one of disagreement, his nose scrunching up with distaste.

“no,” he huffs, “so... good, i guess.” she stares at him as he reaches for one of the waiting tequila shots on the bar, pulling it away from the line he’d set up for the crowd he’d been with before she’d tugged him to the side to talk, leaving the drinks untouched. raleigh knocks the shot back -- no salt, no lime. he’s had twice as many drinks as she has, and she’s definitely feeling them -- she has no idea how he’s even still upright, no worse for wear other than a few slurred words here and there. “but you just are. it’s like every song i’ve ever written was about you, and i just didn’t know it yet.”

the noise of the party fades in favor of the pounding of her heart, loud like a kick drum in her ears. she bites her lip and stares at him, watching as raleigh shakes his head at himself, dazed. “you okay?” she asks quietly, leaning in a little across the bar. 

raleigh’s quiet for so long she has to wonder whether or not he actually heard her. just as she clears her throat and opens her mouth to repeat herself even louder, he nods, reaching across the bar and squeezing her hand before dragging her back over to the line of tequila shots waiting for them to enjoy.

the night is a blur after that, and there’s patches of the evening that are fuzzy in her memory the next morning, but she knows she’ll never forget the gentle kiss goodnight raleigh gives her when he helps her stumble into the car back to her apartment at dawn.

xv. 

things go really well, until they don’t. 

they have a blissful six months together with more fun than he’s ever had with anyone. slowly, he learns every single thing about cadence and returns her openness with honesty of his own -- honesty that feels strange and unfamiliar but weirdly thrilling, in a way, made easier every time one of his stories pulls a laugh or smile from her. 

it seems unnatural, having a honeymoon period that goes on for so long. in the entire time they’re dating, he doesn’t destroy a single thing -- doesn’t even want to, which is the weirdest part of it all. 

there are some moments that catch him completely off guard. more than a few times, he hardly even recognizes himself, she turns him into such a different person. 

he doesn’t hate it, though -- just the opposite, in fact. raleigh realizes he’s really starting to like the carefree, far from jaded person he is when he’s with her, though it only hits him for real when he’s watching her storm away from him on liberty island, eyes fixed on the angry sway of her hips.

he stews on it on the long ride back to his penthouse; the game had, admittedly, been starting to wear on him. but he’d gone along with it because it was supposed to benefit her -- he’d agreed to the stupid public breakup and following the rules and not seeing cadence in public for the foreseeable future because it was what she wanted, and -- frankly, it felt like a stupid fucking decision.

not that it lasts long. he starts texting her just as soon as he’s done washing electralite out of his hair and doesn’t make it more than twenty minutes when they first see each other again at the moda gala before he’s sneaking off with her, ducking under the velvet rope that demarcates the planetarium as ‘off limits’ with her hand tucked neatly in his.

“maybe this is better,” cadence muses between sips of her drink, her eyes on one of the stupid glass exhibits he couldn’t possibly care less about. “now we can just be together -- no pressure. our relationship is ours again.”

their relationship. is that what this is? they’ve spent a lot of time talking about who they are and what they like and don’t like, kissing and touching and holding hands. throughout it all, he’s done his best not to buy into the ‘soulmate’ bullshit too heavily, but over the last few months it’s been hard to deny that there’s a reason he was meant to meet her, that she’s been changing him from the inside out.

“what’s on your mind?” she asks, turning towards him with an open look of genuine curiosity on her face, like she really wants to know. 

“it’s nothing,” raleigh answers at first, reflexively, like he has so many times before. no one has ever really wanted to know. but cadence’s eyebrows arch, and she waits, patiently silent, and then the words tumble out of him. “it’s just that -- my whole life, i’ve watched other people use each other. so many people are just interested in the concept of celebrity status. so i played the game. never trusting anyone.” 

he shrugs. a hand lifts to rub his jaw, and he looks back to meet her gaze just in time to see the little smile playing at her lips, like she already knows what he’s about to say. “but it’s different, with you. you make me not want to be that person anymore. when i’m with you, it’s the only time i feel anything real.”

“raleigh,” she murmurs, her expression flickering before her face does something that cracks his chest wide open. her eyes go all shiny and sparkly and her cheeks crease with a grin, and the way she laughs is so ridiculously joyful the hand he has stuffed in his pocket curls into a fist to stop him from doing something stupid. “i feel the same way. i just... this whole thing, i know it doesn’t always -- work out, but... with you i really want it to. i’ve never felt this way before about anyone, and i think...” 

there’s a pause as her lips purse thoughtfully, and then she says the words that make it impossible for him to do anything but close the distance between them and kiss her over and over again: “i think even without this tattoo it’d be you, anytime, anywhere.”

xvi.

being raleigh carrera’s (real, confirmed, 100%-authentic) girlfriend feels almost too good to be true.

raleigh is... everything she never knew she wanted in a boyfriend, wrapped up into one tall, dark and handsome package, with a loud, goofy laugh and a deep, sexy voice that sends a shiver down her spine whenever his mouth so much as lingers near her ear for too long. 

it turns out that, despite their differing status in the industry and her initial assumptions that they came from two completely different worlds, they’re actually on the same page about pretty much everything. she finds that the pressure of the word she’d held in such high regard for so long -- soulmate -- disappears entirely where he’s concerned because being with raleigh is just fun. 

there’s motorcycle rides and boat trips and hours up late talking about everything and nothing; facetime calls with his mom and shopping trips where the stores are kept open late for them so they can shop alone, in an empty boutique, like every teen movie she’d ever watched growing up.

there’s late nights in the studio and either of their apartments where they both noodle around on their guitars and improvise half-hearted duets, content to just work in the same orbit as each other for as long as possible.

raleigh’s texting one night on the couch in her living room when she plucks out the melody to who i’ll be on her old acoustic, sitting on the floor in front of the tv.

he looks up before the first verse is over. “what’s that one? it sounds good.”

“oh -- just a song i wrote in college,” cadence hums, already downplaying it as she lifts her shoulder in a shrug. “i got stuck, never finished it. ellis made me sell the progress for some other writer to finish.”

he frowns, pushing up onto his elbow. his phone is tossed carelessly somewhere among the couch cushions. “why?”

“because i was taking too long with the odyssey,” she sighs. “it was kind of my only option. it’s weird, though -- thinking about someone singing something that was so personal to me.”

“play me what you had so far,” he says, and so she does, hesitating for only a second before strumming the chords, singing the lines she had slowly. 

when she’s done, she looks up to find that raleigh’s slid to the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees as he leans in as close as he can get with the coffee table in his way. “okay -- that was beautiful. you should finish it.”

she shakes her head, setting her guitar down. “i can’t. they already sold it. and even if i wanted to... i don’t know how it ends.”

raleigh’s legs spread in invitation and she stands to walk around to the couch, slipping into his lap and leaning back against his chest. his hands are tender as he rubs them across her shoulders, sliding up her back before one lifts to brush a lock of hair back behind her ear, his pointer finger pushing her glasses up her nose affectionately. “maybe one day you can write something else with the same theme,” he suggests, and she tries her best to smile even though it feels like a dream lost, somehow -- a ridiculous thought, given that she pretty much has everything she ever wanted, but the way she feels all the same.

“maybe,” she sighs, the kiss he drops to her forehead a bandaid on a wound that’s been doing its best to heal for what feels like her entire life.

xvii.

he’s never brought a date to the vinyls before. 

there’s been plenty of after parties he’s stumbled out of with a girl on his arm, sure, but cadence is the first person to sit by his side during the ceremony, and he’s surprised by how much he likes having her next to him.

then again, he’s self aware enough to realize he’d like being pretty much anywhere, with her.

still -- the awards are a lot less boring with her around to kiss and stroke his hair and make snide commentary about the rest of the attendees with, and when she squeezes his hand goodbye to rush backstage and get ready for her performance he misses her instantly.

what happens next makes him endlessly regretful of the fact that he’s not backstage with her.

he rushes around just as soon as he can, pushing his way through security and frantically scrambling technical assistants to find her exactly where he thought he might, between ellis knight and fiona, looking lost with her head in her hands.

she seems equal parts broken and pissed in a way that tugs at his heartstrings and makes him a little bit proud. raleigh shoves through the crowd to get to her and slips an arm around her waist. he’s only caught the tail end of the conversation they’re all having, but he knows enough to know that “you can’t bench her. that’s bull.”

ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter how much they stomp their feet. she’s under contract, their hands are tied, and he walks away seething at the unfairness of it all, this shitty industry that’s turned on her when all she ever wanted to do was make music.

she cries in the car back to her apartment to pack her things. there’s no way he’s letting her go home to iowa or idaho or indiana without him, and he barks at his team over the phone until they agree to move his appearances around so he can make that happen, his free hand clasped tightly in hers until he physically has to let her go so she can unlock her front door with trembling fingers.

cadence tosses clothes haphazardly onto the bed and he silently and precisely moves to folds each piece for her, until she gives up and sinks down onto the edge of the mattress, defeated. 

wide eyes filled with tears lock onto his, and he watches her bottom lip wobble before she says, “you really don’t have to do this. come with me, i mean. i know i messed up, and -- you have so much else going on. i don’t expect you to --”

“i’m coming,” he states firmly, setting the sweatpants in his hand down and stepping closer to her, sitting beside cadence on her bed. “what happened tonight was fucked up, cadence -- it shouldn’t have happened at all. i’m not going to let you go through this alone.”

“but --”

“but nothing,” he says, and before the words have even left his mouth she’s falling into his arms with a soft sound of gratitude, mashing her face into his chest as she sniffles.

“thank you,” cadence mumbles, sounding so unsure of herself it makes him wonder if she’s ever had anyone show up for her when it mattered most before, or if that’s yet another thing they unfortunately have in common. 

xviii.

raleigh tries his best to cheer her up, but it’s still hard, feeling like she’s let the entire world down. her fans. herself.

there’s something embarrassing about showing raleigh her apartment back home and the person she was before she met him -- all the places she felt most uncertain and where she experienced some her worst self-doubt, the room that still has the smoothie star apron hung up in the closet.

but there’s also something exciting, about being totally off the grid with him. no one knows they’re here and there’s no paparazzi waiting to snap photos of them -- especially given the fact that they don’t leave her building for the first three days she spends moping around while raleigh orders all the takeout he can get his hands on.

it sort of reminds her of when they first met, and there was nothing to do but learn about each other, though now there’s a familiarity to him she relies on, a unique raleigh-ness that feels more like home than this shitty apartment ever did.

still, she struggles, and the weight of the world doesn’t let up until zadie shows up with her fanmail and avery does his best to make her smile with a beach trip and some fancy new toys and a day in the sun with a drink in her hand.

eventually it’s just her and raleigh again, out by the fire after everyone else has gone to bed. her stomach is full of s’mores and her cheeks hurt from smiling for the first time in weeks, and it’s a shock when she realizes she feels content, even after everything that’s happened -- almost as though things will all work out for the better no matter what happens next.

“oh my god,” she gasps suddenly, cutting off what raleigh had been saying as her eyes light up and she hastens to stand. “i’ve gotta -- i need to -- oh my god.”

just like that, she knows how her song ends.

recording it is a process, but raleigh calls in some favors and gets them studio time and agrees to be featured on the song even though she knows he’s still working through a sound change that he feels unsure about.

but it means a lot to her, having him crammed in the booth at her side, singing into the same mic. they sound almost unbelievably good together, too, raleigh’s harmonies on the words that finally resolve that lost feeling she’s been harboring her entire life making something deep within her wriggle up happily, wagging its proverbial tail.

the fact that raleigh remains by her side throughout the entire fight with her label, the long nights of despair agonizing over what her next move is going to be and even the moment where they decide to break into indio, of all places, means more to her than she can ever say. she feels markedly less nervous about the entire thing every time she turns her head to the side and sees him, right there next to her -- right where he’s been this entire time -- smiling encouragingly and squeezing her hand hard in his.

though it’s not until they’re up at the top of the ferris wheel that she realizes how precious what she has really is. it’s not until he looks her dead in the eye and says, with that same soft earnestness he’s awarded her since they first met at the one in a million auditions that feel quite literally like a hundred years ago, “cadence, everything you want is on the other side of fear. and i want you to have everything you want,” that she truly understands that’s what between them is special and rare.

not because of any tattoos, or any preconceived destiny. not because of who they are and their status and the fact that people take pictures of them when they’re out in public together.

but because of this -- all these real moments of genuine connection they’ve been fortunate enough to share since fate threw them into each other’s paths.

“raleigh, i love you.” the words are said easily, not a moment’s hesitation behind them. 

just before she crosses over in the cart to kiss him until they’re both breathless, raleigh gifts her the brightest smile he has and says, “i love you, too.”

xix.

the night is a blur from the moment he first takes the stage with his old bandmates to when he finally finds himself alone with cadence in a rundown old motel a few miles out from the festival in the desert.

he can’t recall ever being so happy, so of course he doesn’t remember every agonizing detail of the evening, though he does know he doesn’t feel the need to have a single beer with cadence around, twirling barefoot in the grass and giggling when she leads him up to the room they’ve borrowed.

afterwards, when they’re sitting on the roof together in the blanket they dragged off the bed, he reflects on the wild year they’ve had with her in his arms, fingertips tracing the delicate very funny scrawled across cadence’s collarbone.

he feels... free. completely liberated. like there’s absolutely nothing and no one that can get to him, now, like he’s untouchable, like he doesn’t care about a single thing that happens after today and how perfect things have been. 

“i think i’m actually freer than i’ve ever been,” he muses, where his lips are pressed into her hair, “i can take my sound in any direction i want.”

“i’m so happy for you, raleigh,” cadence returns genuinely, tilting her head back so he can see her upside-down smile. 

his arms tighten around her. “i’m so excited for what you’re gonna be doing, too. i’m excited for us.”

“yeah,” she sighs, “who knows what’s next, right? now that ellis let me out of my deal...”

he can hear the thread of worry undercutting the words. he shakes his head, hands rubbing up and down her arms. “you can worry about that tomorrow. for tonight, just enjoy the comeback. what you did out there was amazing.”

“what we did,” she corrects, and he blinks up the stars as he realizes she’s right -- they’re a we now. he’s part of a we again, after being on his own for so long.

the phrases bounce around in his head, unfamiliar and foreign. me and my girlfriend, he thinks to himself, cadence and i. we’re going to be late. we’ll be away that weekend. we just started watching that show. we, we, we. 

“what we did was amazing,” raleigh amends, the words slow to come out but feeling right all the same. “whatever we do next will be amazing.”

“absolutely,” cadence confirms, with conviction, like it’s something she believes wholeheartedly.

and though he has no idea what to expect or what it might be, a large part of him is inclined to agree with her -- she’s been right about everything else so far.

xx.

one year later, she’s finishing a set in berlin, the last stop on a sprawling european tour that had taken she, avery, micah and raleigh across the continent for dozens of performances to sold-out crowds of thousands screaming her lyrics back to her. 

if her contract with overknight had been a dream come true, signing to wilshere records is heaven incarnate. cadence’s trip through the u.k. with her new label is proof enough, and the chance to meet new fans with new stories to share that she could connect with is one she’s taken to with enthusiasm, the experience made all the sweeter by the fact that her favorite people get to be by her side throughout it all.

berlin’s crowd is one of the best, and she fully expects to end the tour on a high note, head banging to the last few notes of ‘knockout’ before raleigh’s planned entrance for the last song of the night, so they can sing the duet that’s closed out every show they’ve had on the tour together. 

when he struts out with his guitar, waving and grinning at the crowd, she can’t stop herself from smiling stupidly at him, just like she does every time she sees him join her on stage, every time she realizes that this is their life, that this is something they do every night, now.

though her grin falters when raleigh pauses in front of his microphone and asks, “berlin, do you mind if i talk a little bit before i start the song? no? cool, because i’ve got an important question to ask.”

her eyes widen. cadence’s mouth drops open and doesn’t close throughout the entire speech raleigh gives her, even though thousands of people in the crowd are filming every moment of her gaping like an idiot, snapping close-ups of her shocked face.

the arena practically vibrates with screams when he drops to his knee, popping the box in his hand open so she can see the giant diamond ring nestled inside of it. 

“so?” raleigh asks, and cadence can just barely hear him in her in-ears with the way her heart is beating frantically up into her throat, as wild as the crowd’s raging around them and then some. “whaddya say, babe? will you marry me?”

as if the answer could ever be anything but yes. she nods, laughing as she launches herself into his arm for a kiss that’s too grand to be given on stage, though that’s hardly going to stop her -- not tonight, at least. tonight, she’s okay with the whole world watching their every move, just one more time.

“oh, i don’t know if it’s going to fit,” raleigh jokes as the ring slides easily onto her left hand, amping up the theatrics for the fans still watching them avidly, even up in the cheap seats.

cadence rolls her eyes playfully at him. “very funny,” she praises, and the grin he offers her in return is so loving -- so knowing, with the secret that only the two of them share and every weird piece of their history included in it -- that it takes everything she has to shove him away so they can perform instead of dragging him down to the floor to kiss him over and over again.

clumsily, she flubs a few notes of love who i’ll be on her guitar. from across the stage, between the bridge and the chorus, raleigh jeers, “someone hasn’t learned to play with the extra weight on their left hand, yet, i see,” and when she flips him off while belting out the last lines of the verse, his raucous laughter is all the harmony the final few bars of the song needs. 

[ithinkhobiknows]

Headcannons for Irondad and Spiderson(Post HOCO- Pre Infinity War)

After peter rejecting his avengers offer, tony didn't know how to reach out him. But he wanted to mentor the kid a little more closely (this was not because he wanted to spend more time with his son).

Cue a TOTALLY random Tuesday evening (not for tony he sat up planning this stuff out for the past 2 weeks) Happy calls Peter informing him that he coming to pick peter up. peter's like "what? why? something wrong? ". Happy's like "Boss wants to see ya again so quit asking questions and come down kid!"

They ride to the compound. The whole time Peter is screaming internally and thinking of all the things he did wrong the past week. "does he know i left detention 5 min early????" "or maybe its the suit again he probably wants it back???" "Did he see me jumping of the tallest building in Queens for fun ,BECAUSE NED CONVICED HIM TO DO SO !

They finally arrive at the compound. if Peter wasn't panicking in the car, he is definitely NOW

So when Mr stark approaches him, he was preparing for the worst. But it turns out Mr stark asked him if he would be interested in an ACTUAL STARK INTERNSHIP !! Like what!!! And he said yes. Course he would say yes. It was the opportunity of a lifetime also internships look good on college applications! So bonus points for him.

It's on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Bonus, Sundays are Spiderman training days with the one and only WAR MACHINE AND THE VISION! since when did he get so lucky! And no parker luck doesn't count

On the other side tony is thrilled that the kid agreed to the internship. He couldn't wait to tell pepper

The moment peter walks In the lab on his first day and they start working together on upgrading his suit, then after a couple of weeks of that, slowly moving on to other stark industries projects . Tony soon learned that him and Peter work together flawlessly. They made a good team. He also shows off peter to every stark employee that approaches them while their taking break from the lab. In a subtle way of course.

DUM-E took a liking for the kid and basically follows peter around the lab with a fire extinguisher.

Peter became instant friends with vision. Even though they only met during training on Sundays. But even vision soon started visiting the lab to spend a more time with Peter. Tony was TOTALLY FINE WITH SHARING HIS PROTÉGÉ/ SON FIGURE with other people. He was just a little jealous though. But more than that peter and vision reminded tony of how he was like with Jarvis. God he missed Jarvis (person and AI)

Slowly the lab days turned to movie nights with snacks and everyone had gotten used to seeing peter in the compound.

Occasionally dinners with may, where she tells all his childhood stories

May and pepper became good friends. A powerful duo.

FAMILY game nights happened every Thursday (Peter always wins, no one knows how but he does) which sometimes turn into Karaoke sessions.

Peter knows how to play the guitar, drums, piano and ukulele ( Tony knew he was in band but what he did not know is that the kid had a great voice). Pepper wants him to play DAYLIGHT by TAYLOR SWIFT for their wedding.

Speaking of Taylor swift. peter is a huge Swiftie. His favourite album is 1989. But reputation and lover come a close second. Tony is gonna buy concert tickets for his birthday

Tony loves the little but sweet family they created.

[and-it-freezes-me]

Accidents Happen - Playing With Fire

Summary: Roman works to get closer to Janus, and finds that he isn’t sure how much he likes this new side of himself.

Content: food mention, panic attack, vomit mention but only very briefly, fire mention

Words: 5,936

{Part 1} {Part 3}

Janus was a surprisingly decent study partner.

Well, the fact that he was a good study partner was not the surprising part. He was a perfect student, one of the very few people in their year with better grades than Roman over all of their subjects, and had won several debate competitions over the last few years, both solo and in a team. If Roman had been surprised that Janus was a good student, he would have been even less observant than the main character in one of the books he had read once. That guy had managed to live in the same dorm room as somebody for seven years and managed to misinterpret the intense attraction between the two of them as hatred and rivalry. And had managed to miss the fact that he was his own worst enemy. Roman wasn’t that unobservant.

The surprising part was that Roman had failed to prepare himself for the fact that Janus might actually be good at pretending to be a good person, and that it was more difficult than he had hoped not to actually like him or appreciate his good qualities, like being a good study partner.

Fortunately, Roman was a good actor. He had plenty of practice at keeping the line between real life and a role.

When, after they had been staring at Roman's notes for an hour and Janus made some comment about how he should have chosen a study buddy with better handwriting, one with handwriting he could actually read, Roman only laughed because that was what Janus expected of him. It wasn’t as though the snake was actually funny, or anything.

“I’m serious. The only reason I believe that this is your real handwriting is because I’m watching you produce these illegible scrawls as I speak.” Janus had leaned back in his chair, staring with some kind of fascinated horror at the fountain pen in Roman’s already ink stained fingers. 

“It’s not that bad! If it were illegible, I wouldn’t have passed any of my exams,” Roman pointed out. Although he sounded amused, irritation had flickered to life in his gut. If his handwriting was that distasteful, maybe Janus should go and find somebody else to help him catch up.

“It is that bad,” his companion drawled. “It’s almost bad enough to think that you’re deliberately trying to sabotage my attempts to catch up! How you revise from those things is beyond me.”

Again, Roman had laughed at that. Perish the thought! Him, sabotage Janus? Never! Well, not until he found proof that he had actively had a hand in Remus’ fate. Until that time came, he would just have to wait and watch, gain the snake’s trust until he was ready to spill his guts, and be a minor inconvenience from the shadows.

For example, when a tall man wandered into the kitchen and gazed in mild surprise at Roman before going to the fridge and returning with a pack of chocolate biscuits to offer around, Roman took two, rather than one.

"I didn't know you had friends over, Jan. Should have said something." The man had to be Janus' father. They had the same slender build, the same delicate grey eyes, the same narrow hands. A silver band was around the man's left ring finger.

"It's one friend, Dad -" Roman was a master detective "- and he's helping me catch up on the work I've missed."

Well, Janus was definitely lying there. They weren't friends - they barely knew one another! And if Janus could lie about something like this, he could definitely lie about why he was in the car with Remus. (Yes, Roman was aware that he was probably making slightly too big a deal out of absolutely nothing at all. No, he was not going to stop. Any reason to be hopeful was a good reason to be hopeful).

He was brought out of his triumphant musings by a hearty chuckle as Mr Sinclaire patted Janus genially on his shoulder (the unscarred side, Roman noted). "That's my boy, nose to the grindstone as ever! Alright, you kids have fun."

"Studying, sir, is the epitome of fun,” Roman deadpanned. Well, it wasn’t as though he could just sit there and say nothing - but from the looks that both Sinclaires were now giving him, he rather wished he had stayed silent. Janus was looking as though he rather wished that Roman would crawl back into whatever drain in which he had originated. His father looked as though Roman was something a barely tolerated cat had dragged in through the door after finding it already dead on the side of the road.

Then Mr Sinclaire let out a brief laugh and clapped Janus on the shoulder again. “A funny one! Well, I’ll let you get back to your thrilling pastime.”

Janus chuckled briefly and waved his scarred hand in a shoo-ing motion, and his father left as Roman began to wonder if he had imagined their distasteful expressions. To quell this line of thinking, he took another two biscuits and added them to the two sitting beside his notebook.

By the time Janus was glancing at the clock and telling Roman that he should probably leave now because he had dinner in half an hour (Roman could smell whatever it was coming through from the kitchen. It was probably more worms, maybe with beetles mixed in, but damn did it smell good), there were eleven biscuits stacked neatly beside his elbow. Janus raised an eyebrow at them, pushing the small stack of notes he had been deciphering back toward Roman. “You know, you weren’t going to get kicked out for refusing them if you weren’t hungry.”

Rather than bristling in irritation, Roman chuckled and picked up one of the cookies. They were raisin - squashed fly biscuits, Remus always called them. “Who said I wasn’t hungry?” It was like sawdust in his mouth, but he forced himself to swallow anyway. Janus didn’t look impressed.

Actually, Roman wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Janus look impressed.

“Ah, I must be mistaken. Where I come from, stockpiling cookies rather than eating them is not the mark of the hungry.”

“Then you, sir,” Roman replied, pointing his half-eaten biscuit sternly in Janus’ direction, “have a lot to learn.”

Janus chuckled his serial-killer chuckle and gestured toward the door in a motion that was almost a mockery of a bow. “I shall look forward to my next lesson, then. For now, Princey, I shall bid you adieu.”

Roman looked at him. “What?”

“Adieu. A - D - I - E - U. It’s French, means-”

“I know what it means,” Roman said, interrupting Janus’ exaggerated eye-roll. “It was the Prince part.”

Now it was Janus’ turn for confusion to slip over his features. “I… Sorry. It’s just, you know, your surname meaning ‘king’ and everything, it just slipped out.”

“I didn’t know you spoke Korean.”

“Oh, I… Just a few words.” The burned side of Janus’ face had gone a strange blotchy red, and it took Roman a few seconds to realise that he was blushing. Huh. It seemed that Janus wasn’t always as smooth as he seemed from a distance.

What would Janus do if Roman pressed the point? He seemed flustered. It didn’t make much sense for Janus to just happen to know the meaning of his surname - had he researched him?

Janus was rubbing the back of his neck now, trying to make the fact that he was avoiding Roman’s eyes seem natural rather than bizarre as he showed him to the door, and a peculiar idea struck him. Most people - especially not ones as reserved as Janus Sinclaire - didn’t come up with nicknames after just a few hours studying together, during which they had hardly exchanged more than a handful of words each. Nor did they research the names of random people they had just met.

Was it possible that Janus had a crush on him?

Roman knew he was fairly easy on the eyes. Not in a conceited way - he didn’t think he was conceited, anyway. It was hard not to get used to the fact when every relative commented on how attractive he looked these days, or when his brother had been calling him the handsome twin for years. He was intelligent, kind, outgoing, sometimes funny, and usually a fairly good friend. It wasn’t impossible to believe that Janus could be interested. 

On the other hand, it did seem fairly improbable. Thanks to a few too many fistfights and biking accidents, Roman and Remus weren’t exactly identical anymore; even ignoring Remus’ chipped teeth and the scars on his face and hands, Remus was about an inch shorter than Roman and rather more muscle than him. But they still looked similar enough that it was very hard to look at Roman and not see Remus lurking behind his eyes (and vice versa), and Roman couldn’t quite believe that Janus was stupid enough to have a crush on somebody so reminiscent of the person that had (supposedly) lured him into a car and then nearly killed him.

Janus could be faking it, of course. What would he gain from that? If he was guilty of anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, creating openings for Roman to poke around could only lead to the truth being discovered. Maybe he thought that he could outsmart Roman - maybe he thought that Roman was stupid. Maybe he was planning something else, something devious, something that this time the other Wang twin would take the fall for. 

He would have to keep a much closer eye on Janus than he had originally thought. 

On Monday, Roman found Janus in the library toward the end of lunch, and ended up helping him find a book on some long-dead philosopher. He accidentally-on-purpose allowed their fingers to brush when he handed the book over, watching Janus’ face out of the corner of his eye for his reaction. No blush. No stammering. He barely even seemed to notice the lingering touch.

Janus

Evidence for crush: 0

Evidence against crush: 1

On Tuesday, Roman’s fountain pen exploded halfway through his calculus class, covering not only his hands in black ink but also his favourite scarlet sweater and the page of exercises and notes he had been working on. He missed the rest of class trying to wash the stuff off in one of the bathrooms, but when he arrived at his locker to collect his script at the end of the day he found a page of notes in neat calligraphy had been taped to the metal door. At the top of the page was written ‘Thought you’d need these. J.S.’

Janus

Evidence for crush: ½

Evidence against crush: 1

Evidence for being a creepy stalker: 1

Roman deliberately ignored the fact that he knew where Janus’ locker was as well, and for far more devious purposes than handing over missed notes.

On Thursday morning, Janus was waiting by his locker.

(Evidence for being a creepy stalker: 2)

Roman didn’t look at him, unlocking the door and depositing half of the textbooks he had brought with him that morning. “Wasn’t expecting to see you here, Sinclaire. Don’t you have Chem first? On the other side of the school?”

“Memorising my timetable, Princey? Most people would call that stalking, you know.” There was a playful note in Janus’ hoarse voice that made Roman’s eyes dart sideways toward him. A small smile was lingering on the edge of his lips.

(Evidence for crush: ¾)

“You must be lucky, then. Most people don’t have such a handsome stalker.” Roman closed his locker, shouldering his rucksack again, and leaned against it to look Janus in the eye. Did this count as flirting? Roman hoped so. If flirting with Janus got him closer to the truth, Roman would happily take the snake out to dinner and a movie.

Janus’ smile widened almost imperceptibly, and his eyes flicked away from Roman’s. Did the burned side of his face grow ever so slightly redder, or was Roman imagining it?

(Evidence for crush: 1 ½)

“Or one so inept as to admit they’re a stalker, stalker.”

Roman flushed. “Did you want something?”

“Hm?” Janus looked briefly startled. Then he brought his hand up to adjust the chocolate coloured beanie on his head until it was no longer covering his ears. He was wearing what looked like thin leather gloves. “Ah, yes. It has been brought to my attention that I have missed a lot of practice time for our oral presentations for Espanol, and I-”

“Español.”

“Exactly. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind studying with me again tomorrow?” Janus didn’t look that perturbed by the fact that he had been interrupted. Maybe he had bungled the pronunciation deliberately to give Roman the opportunity to show off and correct him. Roman had no doubt that he was capable of it. Manipulative jerk.

(Evidence for being a creepy stalker / manipulative jerk: 3)

There was a few seconds of silence as Roman just stared at Janus, who was beginning to look somewhat uncomfortable by the time it occurred to Roman that he had just been asked a question. He shook his head, and Janus’ face fell. Then he nodded, and the small half-smile returned to Janus’ lips. “Oh. Uh. Sure, yeah. That sounds good. I’ll… Bring my notes.”

“Awesome.” Janus nodded once, as though they had just completed a low-risk business transaction, and then hitched his satchel back onto his shoulder (it had slipped down his arm whilst they had been talking) and turned to walk away.

When he got to Janus’ house on Friday afternoon, there was already a plate of biscuits in the middle of the table, and a second empty plate in the place Roman had sat the previous week. Janus greeted him with a nod toward it: "For your galleta hoarding needs."

Roman flipped him off, then chuckled and sat down. "I appreciate the compensation for the vicious mockery you give my handwriting, in any case."

"My mockery is justified. You write as though you were taught by racoons. Rabid racoons."

Roman hid his snort by leaning down to dig his notes out of his bag. "Sit down, Sinclaire. It's Spanish time."

When he straightened up, Janus was still standing next to him, staring absently at the table. Roman waited for him to move, and when nothing happened, he reached up to poke his cheek.

"Ah!" Roman jerked his hand back as Janus flinched away, one hand coming up to cover his face; Roman realised much too late that he had just prodded his still-fresh burns.

"Oh, fuck, dude, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?" Standing, Roman reached out automatically to try to do something - what, he had no idea - but Janus batted his hands away. He was still wearing the gloves from earlier that morning.

"Fine. I'm fine. Sit down, Roman. Sit down." Janus rubbed his cheek again, walking around the table to his own seat.

Roman obeyed, forcing himself to ignore the guilt rising in the back of his throat. He could feel guilty later, if - and only if - Janus turned out to be completely innocent. If he wasn't, which Roman was almost completely certain was the truth, then he deserved every little inconvenience that Roman could give him.

They sat in silence for a short time, Janus staring at his gloved hands, Roman staring at Janus. There was a clock somewhere in the kitchen, and it filled the quiet air between them with a rhythmic ticking. After a total of ninety-four seconds, Roman cleared his throat. "Um… Janus? Are you okay?"

Janus nodded slowly, rubbing his fingers against the palm of the opposite hand, and then looked up. "Yeah. Burns are still pretty sore to touch. I'm… Heh. I'm gradually reducing the number of painkillers I'm on, so…"

"Got it. No more poking." Roman offered Janus a nervous smile, which grew when it was met with the semi-amused half-smile. "So… Spanish?"

Would Janus have opened up to him like that if he thought Roman was investigating him? He must trust Roman at least a little to share that much information about his injuries. There was no way Janus thought Roman was a threat to him, or likely to come close to uncovering the mess of lies he had wrapped around Remus.

Of course, he could also be innocent.

But he wasn't: Roman knew it. There was no way the snake sitting opposite was innocent of anything that had happened in Roman's car that night.

He wished he hadn't hurt him, though. Roman didn't want to hurt people. He didn't want to be like Remus, and have the crowds of people at school part for him as though being closer than two metres was a death sentence.

It was another week until Roman tried his luck and asked about the gloves. They had started spending lunchtimes together, usually in the library, meeting after Janus had eaten to study. Roman was beginning to suspect that Janus wasn't as behind on his Spanish as he was claiming to be: on Wednesday, he had left to find a reference book for his biology class and come back to find Janus correcting part of his essay.

(Janus

Evidence for crush: 5

Evidence against crush: 8

Evidence for being a creepy stalker / manipulative jerk: 7

Reasons not to trust: 11)

Roman had ended up coming over to his house on Tuesday and Wednesday, both times to revise for their exams, which had started that week and would continue into the next. On the Wednesday, Janus had left his phone on the table while he went to the bathroom, and Roman had seized his chance.

Unfortunately, his attempts to gather more information on his study partner were fruitless: Janus had password protected his phone, and Roman didn't know him well enough to even attempt to guess it. His lock screen offered no clues: a picture of a building made of pale brick, with ivy climbing the sides that could be anything from an old home to a stock photo of a museum. It showed the time, and there was an 'If found, please call' message underneath that, with a number just below. Roman studied the number for a moment before taking a picture with his own phone and returning Janus' to the table.

By the time the brunet returned, Roman was nose-deep in deciphering his own notes on the future perfect tense.

An image search of the photograph he had taken showed up only adverts for different phones, and he couldn’t find anything about the number when he had searched it online (not that he was expecting to - it was probably for one of Janus’ parents). The picture of the building had seemed promising at first, but Roman quickly discovered that the sheer number of pale brick, ivy-covered buildings that appeared when he tried searching online would take until Remus’ sentence was up to comb through.

Friday marked the end of their first week of exams, and the first time that Janus invited Roman up to his bedroom to study. “No biscuits this time, I’m afraid. But that means we can go upstairs, which is more comfortable,” he had said, gesturing up the sweeping staircase with one hand. 

Janus’ room was just as neat as Roman had expected it to be. A single bed was pushed against one wall, looking as though it had just been made that morning (Roman felt a stab of embarrassment for his own bed, which looked as though half of Simba’s pride had been using the duvet for hunting practice) (as opposed to Remus’ mattress, which actually had stuffing leaking out of it from an ‘accident’ with a bow and arrow); an oblong fluffy brown rug took up a large amount of the floor in the middle of the room, and Roman wasted no time in throwing himself down upon it as Janus crossed to the large desk by the window. There were no posters or pictures tacked to the pale yellow walls, but a single photo frame stood on the bedside table. Roman craned his neck to see it and found, disappointingly yet predictably, it contained a picture of a younger Janus clutching an award. A book was resting beside it, a brown tassel poking out from somewhere near the middle. There was a wardrobe against one wall, a chest against another, and a bookshelf containing what looked like every psychology and law textbook ever written.

Maybe neat had been an understatement. Janus’ room was practically spartan; it could have belonged to anybody. Take away the picture frame and Janus would completely disappear, leaving it free for anybody to use. The thought made Roman a little sad. Janus was pulling papers from his rucksack; rolling over, Roman glanced toward the door - and as he did, something under the bed caught his eye. A smile spread over his face.

“What should we start with? I’m thinking Chem, given that we have that on Monday, and then-”

“You do have a soul!” Roman’s voice was positively gleeful as he got up and crawled toward the bed, and he had to admit that his enthusiasm was genuine. Maybe the room wasn’t so spartan after all.

“What? Ro, wh- oh. No, put those back, we're studying here, not…" Janus trailed away, exasperated, as Roman straightened up clutching a stuffed snake that had to be over a metre long, and a cuddly green octopus.

"Not that your room isn't charming in its utilitarian-ness, but these add so much, don't you think?" He squeezed the octopus thoughtfully before positioning it carefully beside Janus' pillow. "Did you hide these because you knew I was coming around? Because that's just sad, Sinclaire. You never have to hide your stuffed toys." Roman gestured emphatically with the snake, then moved a little closer and used its blunt snout to ease Janus' hat off of his head as the other buried his face in his hand.

"...your obsession with stuffed animals…" Roman heard him mutter, and then, "Stop it, you oaf, stop…"

"Make me," he replied maturely, and started bopping Janus on the head with the yellow animal.

With a theatrical groan that Roman was almost impressed by, Janus started half-heartedly batting at the snake. Roman responded by chuckling and hitting him again. "You'll have to try harder than that! Come on, Jan…"

"Listen, you…"

The next time the snake went near Janus' now messy hair, he grabbed it and tried to jerk it out of Roman's hands. With a cry of laughter, Roman pulled back harder, managing to jerk his nemesis off his chair.

Which would have been fine: Janus would have stood, pulled harder, the snake would have been his for the taking, and that would have been the end of it.

Only Janus managed to trip on the edge of the rug that Roman had been so enjoying a moment ago, and the momentum from their tug of war pushed him off balance. He crashed into Roman, who stumbled from the unexpected weight, and then they were both on the floor.

Or, more accurately, Roman was on the floor with an aching head and tailbone, and Janus was lying on top of him, wincing. "Fuck, Wang, how are you so boney?"

Roman made a (highly dignified) squeaking noise, too winded to speak. Janus' scar went that same blotchy red as it had the other day.

"Oh. Sorry, let me just…" He rolled himself off and sat up, and Roman took a deep breath as air rushed back into his lungs. "You alright?"

Roman waved a hand. "Fine, fine… Just gonna lie here… a second…"

"Here." A hand wrapped around his, and Roman felt himself being pulled back to his feet - apparently Janus was stronger than he had thought. "You're lighter than I expected. All good? Happy to go back to studying now?"

"Why do you wear those things?"

They were still holding hands, and Roman was staring at the yellow glove against his brown skin. It was smooth to the touch. He didn't realise that Janus was staring at him until the silence became uncomfortable enough for him to look up; shaking his head, Roman pulled away with a nervous chuckle. "Sorry. Sorry, that was… Don't worry about it. You're right, let's…" he gestured helplessly at Janus' desk.

Janus rubbed the back of his neck slowly, then shrugged and sat down. He handed Roman a stack of flashcards. The top one read 'endothermic reaction'. "Layer of protection against infection. Only one glove is weird. Besides, people stare less at the glove than they did at the scarring, and they already stare enough at my face. I think I'll spare the hands. Quiz me."

Roman stared at him. Janus was facing the window again, not looking at him anymore. His back was perfectly straight, the sun shining bronze through his shoulder-length wave of hair, and Roman was struck with the urge to rest a hand on his shoulder, to comfort him. "Janus… If-"

"Quiz me," Janus interrupted, insistently. "Chemistry test on Monday. Final grade. Flashcards. Go."

So Roman quizzed him, telling himself that it was for the best. He didn't want to get too close to Janus, didn't want to feel sympathy for him. Janus was hiding something about Remus' and his accident, which meant that Janus could have kept Remus out of jail, which meant that Janus couldn't be trusted no matter how nice he might pretend to be or how high the guilt rose in Roman's throat.

On Monday morning, they sat their chemistry exam in the sports hall, and Roman could only find one question that he didn't feel confident with. Janus, he knew, must have aced it. He hadn't gotten a single flashcard wrong on Friday.

Then they had a written Spanish exam, and then lunch. Roman toyed with his bento for ten minutes or so, then put his lunchbox away again and went to join Janus in the library to revise for their practical assessment that afternoon.

Roman wasn't paying attention when everything had gone wrong. His focus had been solely on the copper sulphate solution he was attempting to crystallise, checking the timer to make sure he noted down the temperature of the solution every fifteen seconds; the first he knew of a problem was a hoarse cry, a few screams, and the slamming of the heavy classroom door.

He looked up apprehensively, although he thought he already knew what he was going to see.

Sure enough, Janus was missing from his station; Virgil, his lab partner, had his back pressed against the window a full three metres away from their work and was looking as though he had been on the verge of jumping out. The pairs at the stations around theirs were all staring at him, and Roman was willing to bet that his had been one of the screams. Their teacher was staring at the door with an expression of great concern on his face.

Roman was out of his spot before he had thought it through, shrugging off his lab coat and ignoring the whisper of annoyance from Melanie, his own lab partner. "Sir, Mr Sanders? Can I go make sure he's alright?"

Their teacher nodded gratefully at him. "Thanks, Mr Wang. Tell him he doesn't have to come back to finish, alright? The rest of you have… Eighteen minutes until the end of the test."

Roman closed the door on the sound of people scurrying to get back to their experiments, and looked up and down the corridor. Janus was nowhere in sight. Where would he go? Not his locker: that was too public, and Roman had a feeling that Janus wouldn't want anybody to see if he was freaking out. The gym? No, there was a French assessment happening in the gym at the moment. So… The bathrooms, maybe. Roman took off at a brisk jog toward the toilets by the science staircase.

He knew he had the right place the moment he opened the door. The sound of strangled sobs and gasps was coming from the middle toilet cubicle, and when Roman closed the door they stopped briefly, as though Janus was holding his breath, before starting again in a rush. Roman winced.

"Janus? It's me."

"Go - Go away!" Janus' voice was more strained than usual, and Roman sighed quietly before moving forward to knock gently on the cubicle door. It swung open under his touch - Janus hadn't locked it.

"Can I come in?"

"Can - can I st-stop you?" Janus tried to snap the words, but they came out unsteady and breathless.

He was curled up on the closed lid of the toilet seat, knees pulled to his chest and one arm wrapped tightly around them. The other was braced against one knee, hand fisted in his brown beanie as he hyperventilated, face and eyes red. The smell of burnt fabric lingered around him; the left sleeve of his lab coat was blackened and burned.

Roman took a small step forward, then knelt down in front of him. "Can I touch you, Jan?"

Janus shook his head, then unwrapped his right arm from around his knees and held out his hand. Roman took it and squeezed gently, and was met with a vice-like squeeze. He didn't pull away.

"Do you want to try a breathing exercise?" A nod. "I'm going to count, but no pressure. Ready? Breathe with me. In for four, yeah? Two, three, four, and hold for four, two, three, four, that's it, and out for two, three, four, five, and six. And in, two, three, four… You're doing really well, Jan. You're here, you're safe… And out, two, three, four, five, six…"

“I - This - I shouldn’t-”

“It’s okay, Jan. With me, in, two, three, four… Hold, two, three, four, and out, two, three, four… That’s it…”

That wasn’t it, actually. Janus’ breathing was still ragged, only slightly calmer than before, but Roman kept up his gentle stream of encouragement until he spoke again.

“The - the fire, my - my sleeve, I couldn’t, I…” He broke off in a dry sob, and Roman ran his thumb gently over his knuckles.

“You’re safe now. You’re safe. I promise, alright? All you need to worry about right now is breathing, and squeezing my hand. You’re here, buddy. I’m here. It’s going to be okay…” He might never have done this for Janus before, but Roman was hardly a stranger to helping his brother through panic attacks like this one. Remus had had problems with enclosed spaces ever since they were nine and he had managed to lock himself in the cupboard under the sink, and sometimes got overwhelmed in large crowds, but whilst the triggers were different the end result and the care needed was usually the same.

He knew what it was like to be in Janus’ position, too.

Janus' grip on his hand never decreased in ferocity, but gradually the other boy's shoulders slumped from their hunched position, and he closed his eyes in exhaustion. They continued the breathing exercise for another few minutes before Roman broke the flow of counting and reassurance again. “Hey. Do you feel up for a hug?”

The tired silver eyes opened and studied Roman for a second. Then Janus shrugged. Roman hesitated until he actually nodded, standing to wrap his arms loosely around his shoulders. Janus rested his head against Roman’s chest, exhaled a long, slow breath, and murmured so quietly that Roman would have missed it had he not been right next to him, “Thanks.”

It was evening, and Roman was in his room, staring blankly at his notebook.

Janus

Evidence for crush: 9

Evidence against crush: 11

Evidence for being a creepy stalker / manipulative jerk: 12

Reasons not to trust: 16

He had stayed with Janus that afternoon, stayed until they heard the tramping of feet in the hallway outside that meant that the school day was over, until Janus had pushed him away and stood, muttering something about not wanting to keep his parents waiting. Roman had showed him how to splash water over his face to reduce the redness in his eyes, and then watched him walk away, his mind in turmoil.

He couldn’t keep investigating Janus. Not after that. Roman had observed and had enough panic attacks to know a genuine one when he saw it: Janus had been really freaked out by the small fire in their chemistry assessment. The crash had clearly had far more than just a physical impact on him. The guilt in Roman had risen so high that he had found himself doubled over a toilet, retching what little lunch he had eaten until only bile would come up. How could he have suspected Janus of deliberately doing something to get Remus locked up? Janus didn’t even know Remus. Roman was definitely in the wrong here.

He should put this whole mess behind him. Janus actually seemed like a nice person - and Roman couldn’t just ghost him now, not now that they were almost friends. If he just stopped speaking to Janus now, he would surely assume it was because Roman had been too freaked out by seeing Janus panic like that, and that wasn’t fair at all.

None of this was fair on Janus.

Roman should do something as an apology. Not that Janus needed to know it was an apology, of course, it just needed to be something they could do as friends. They hadn’t actually hung out together yet, unless studying counted - which it most definitely didn’t. They could see a movie, or something. Maybe Roman could host, and they could watch something lighthearted - a Disney film, or something similar. Nothing too violent or firey. It would be a good break from revision, if he could schedule something in for the weekend.

Not wanting to wait to see Janus the next day, Roman pulled his phone from his pocket, and had gotten as far as opening the messaging app when he realised that there was one minor flaw in this plan: he didn’t have Janus’ number.

Oh. 

What did he have? He knew they all had school email addresses, but also knew that nobody ever checked those. Besides, who sent emails to ask friends to hang out? If he asked Virgil for Janus’ number (and Roman had no doubt that Virgil would know it), he would end up owing the most twitchy guy in school a massive favour - and he’d probably never live down the teasing. Virgil would tell Patton, because he told Patton everything, and as lovely as Patton was, he had no idea how to keep a secret.

Roman lowered his phone slowly, frowning. Now what? It wasn’t as though he had any favours he could call in or - 

Call! He had one of Janus' parents' numbers in his camera roll from when he had taken a picture of his lock screen! Pulling his gallery up, Roman scribbled the number into his notebook and then dialled it, slapping the phone to his ear as soon as he had hit the last letter and waiting for the dial tone to go away. He would explain that he was Janus' friend, that he had managed to lose Janus' number, and could he please-

Then the voicemail message started playing, and the colour drained from Roman's face. He waited for the beep, then hung up, lowering his phone slowly.

It looked as though the investigation was back on.

"Who the fuck calls people these days? Send a text like a regular dickhead, sheesh! Whatever, if your voicemail boner is really that hard, just go ahead. This is Remus' phone - but you already knew that."

Taglist

@bloodymari-0666

[fenweak]

High School AUs

College/University AUs

⭐ A+ fics (imho) | All of the recs

High School AUs

High Scores by popfly ⭐

Kaner is a DDR master, Jonny is ultra-competitive. Bollig just wants to make out with Shawzy.

Dynamical Systems by jezziejay ⭐ - math geek patrick! jock jonny!

Jonny’s plenty smart, but there’s hockey practice just before a double math period every Tuesday and Wednesday morning. He gets to class on time. Physically, he’s there. But his mind is still on the ice. Throw in a kidney infection that keeps him home for two weeks, and Jonny’s struggling. Not failing, but that C is dragging his GPA down, and his mom is making clucking noises. The same noises that mean hockey time is coming up for review.

There’s a note on the student boards advertising tutoring.

promise i'm worthy (to hold in your arms) [One and Only series] - teenage angst and american douchebags ft. ryan kesler

"So come on and give me a chance to prove I am the one who can walk that mile."

love is a contact sport by hazel, mermaid  ⭐ - high school soulmates!

"And the tragic reality of Patrick's life is that even though they broke up over a year ago, he and Johnny still play beautiful hockey together."

A high school AU, featuring dream-fish, bad movie dates, and a little bit of magic.

Movie Nights or Five Times Jonny Wanted Popcorn (and One Time He Didn’t) by CoffeeKristin

Patrick had only been working at the movie theater a few weeks when a noisy bunch of boys from his high school burst through the doors just before the last showing of Captain America: Civil War and come tumbling into the lobby, whooping it up. He sighed and put down the containers of popcorn he was counting, mentally preparing himself for the asshattery he was likely to endure.

“What can I get you?” he asked the crowd, and true to form, no one was listening so he waited another moment. Finally one of the boys got pushed to the front, stumbling into the counter. “Fuck, Duncs, not so hard,” he said, and oh. That was Jonathan Toews: Captain of the high school soccer team, president of the student council, son of the mayor. Basically, everything Patrick wasn’t.

do it how you want it done ⭐

(very vaguely) grease-inspired high school au.

yeah, i went there.

kissing your honeyed eyes by forochel

The one that's the British boarding school AU.

This Is What A Love Song Sounds Like by fourfreedoms  ⭐ - reunion fic but god the flashbacks! the angst!

When he came out after his freshman year of college his mother said she’d always known, and he’d had to fight down the bizarre wave of paranoia that maybe everybody knew, maybe they’d all just been letting him sweat all those years. It was crazy of course, there was only one person who’d known, who had any idea.Patrick Kane.

Ten years after they fucked around in high school, Patrick and Jonny meet back up at their high school reunion.

roll with it by hazel  ⭐

The one where a bunch of Blackhawks inexplicably go to boarding school, Tazer is the world's meanest DM, and Pat doesn't know why anyone would think cutting the head off a hydra was good idea.

Light Me Up by sahiya - where they both went to Shattuck!

Being serious about hockey always meant Patrick would have to leave home. For a long time he thought it would be for juniors and a billet family. But things don't go as planned, and he finds himself at Shattuck-St. Mary's.

His roommate's name is Jonathan Toews. He can't keep his water bottles on his side of the room, and he's unfortunately, stupidly hot. Because Patrick's life sucks.

boot theory by mentalistecbm - teen angst, break up

Everyone knows that they're broken up.

glory days by liketheroad ⭐ - soulmate, teen angst

He never expected his destiny to involve anything but hockey, never thought it would show up in flip flops, but when Patrick smiles at him across the locker room, quick and surprised, Johnny lets his priorities shift and change without a hint of reluctance or regret.

There's Only Blood Running In My Veins by mikarala - pwp

Patrick and Jonny are making out in Patrick’s bedroom when Jonny says it. “I--I,” he stutters out, in between a moan, “I want you to fuck me.”

Gold Seeking Ends by liveinfury - Flipped AU

“Wanna go on the tire swing with me after?” Jonny asks.

“No,” Patrick answers.

“Oh,” Jonny says, looking deflated. “What about the jungle gym?”

“Nope."

“Um, okay,” Jonny says, shrugging before walking away.Sam giggles some more. “I can’t believe Jonny, the dirt eater, likes you.”Patrick smirks at him. “Everyone likes me.”

(or Patrick and Jonny meet in the second grade. Jonny's instantly smitten, Patrick is...not. Ten years later, things start flipping.)

Keep Calm and Don't Think of Star Wars podfic by exmanhater ⭐ - A Clueless AU

After I once again assure Abby that Johnny and I are not, NOT related (by googling the difference between half-brother and stepbrother because jesus fucking christ am I am the only knowledgeable one around here?), she agrees to help.

but i can write a song 

“We’re not going to be called Jonny and the Patricks,” Jonny says, sounding entirely too put upon  about a name that’s clearly awesome.

[or; the high school band au you probably didn't ask for]

lost in brightness - pat, jon and a crowded train

“You’re gonna get caught one day,” Jonny sighs, herding Pat in front of him as they squeeze onto  the train, the crowd thicker than usual. It’s been raining on and off, fall well and truly taking the city in  its grasp. Jonny’s already looking forward to meeting Pat by his house every morning, red-cheeked  and rugged up, his face barely visible between his toque and scarf.

you're mending what's broken - a stats nerd Patrick story

The guy who sits behind Jonny in AP Stats wants to know how  many shots on goal he had last Tuesday. Or at least, that's how it starts.

A high school AU featuring stats nerd Kaner and his Tragic Hockey  Backstory (TM), without much time or inclination toward actual tragedy. Instead there is  discussion of Corsi. And kissing.

Examine Other Beauties by kiwoa - theater kids!

"I," Jonny says, and he slips his headset up from around his neck to nestle over his ears, "am not an actor."

"Good thing I don't need you to act."

"No."

"Jonny."

"Patrick."

"Please?" Kaner cants forward and tilts his face up to blink at Jonny. In the fluttering light that filters in from the stage, his eyes look unnaturally pale. "Just read the lines, okay? I want to see how well I've memorized them."

Jonny scrubs a hand over his face. The motion knocks his mike askew. "One scene."

A/S/L  ⭐ - 90s teenaged kids meeting on webcam omg

The internet is a dangerous place, or:

Patrick and Jonny meet, lie through their teeth, and fall in love. Mostly that last part.

Actual Prom King Brandon Saad by popfly  ⭐

Patrick might be a little jealous of the new kid.

Sure Brandon is basically the prom king from every feel-good teenage movie Patrick’s sisters have made him watch, but that doesn’t mean Jonny wants that.

Sign it with your heart by tictactoews + podfic by exmanhater  ⭐

Patrick loses a bet and is dared to plant an anonymous love letter into a random locker. It just so happens that the locker belongs to one Jonathan Toews, captain of the school hockey team.Meanwhile, Jonny finds himself in need of a math tutor, and following the advice of his teacher, he asks the new kid, Patrick Kane, for help.

a complicated kindness by liketheroad - young and figuring out d/s  ⭐

Patrick still remembers how scared Sharpy looked, just for a second there. He remembers not understanding why anyone would back away from Johnny when he was like that, why they wouldn’t want to strain closer, pushing to see how much further he’d go.

What Comes Easy by impertinence - summer camp of angst

Kaner's determined to never grow up; Tazer's determined to grow up as quickly as possible. Over eleven years of summer camp, they learn to meet in the middle. Set in stlkrchk's Camp Quaquanantuck universe.

mathletes are totally athletes by ukiyo91, yukonecho

Mathlete Patrick Kane never thought that when he was assigned to tutor hockey jock Jonathan Toews that he would be swept up into a new sport...or into Captain Serious.

Toews was like the guild leader Patrick had always aspired to be in WoW, but more of an asshole.

i'll be the embrace that keeps you warm by longtime_lurker - huddling for warmth

It is like death, but it is not death; lovelier. / Cold, inconvenienced, late, what will you do now / with the gift of your left life?

Clumsy by CoffeeKristin - a short first kiss fic uwu

“Knock it off,” she hissed at him. “He’s looking at you!”

“Who?” Patrick said, his head swiveling around, resulting in Erica smacking him again. “Hey! Quit hitting me!”

“Then quit being an idiot,” she huffed. “Jonny Toews, you dunce. He’s looking over here, and you’re biting on the string of your hoodie like a moron.”

look around once in a while by achilleees

One man’s struggle to take it easy.

Based off of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” but instead of girlfriends and daddy issues, there’s hockey and pining. And daddy issues.

Summer Lovin' by CoffeeKristin - est. relationship insecurities

Patrick's home from summer camp, and Jonny's first on his list of to-do's. Somehow a little actual angst/plot worked it's way in. But mostly it's just porn.

Ninety-Nine Point Three Percent by jimtiberiuskirk - best friends mutually pining

The problem is, is that Patrick is 99.3% sure that Jonny knows all about his giant, embarrassing man-crush on him.

bring it if you really want it by staraflur - harry potter AU

It starts like this:

Well, okay, Patrick has no idea how it actually starts. But as pertains to him (in other words, the important part), it goes a little something like so:

America, being a nation composed in large part of a melting pot of immigrants who may or may not have taken over land already owned by others using less-than-savory means, doesn’t have much of a magical national identity. Much less a magical continental identity. There’s no grand heritage going back thousands of years. Magical families home-schooled all their kids until, like, the 1800’s, and tough for the muggle-born, apparently. Hopefully you got noticed by someone who knew what to do with you before you got burned at the stake. Since you probably can’t control your powers, sport.

(if you're feeling down) i can feel you up by hawkeytime

"Hey," Patrick said appreciatively from behind where Jonny stood, stoic as always, by the side of the pool. "Did you sit in a pile of sugar? Because you have a sweet ass.”Or: How Patrick Kane spent his summer hitting on the hot lifeguard with the help of some inspired (read: awful) pickup lines.

kiss and tell by hawkeytime 

“Trust me,” Sharpy says, “this will be good for you.”And then, he shoves Jonny into what appears to be a mostly empty coat closet and slams the door shut behind him.

“What the fuck, Sharp!” Jonny calls, pounding at the door which is, of course, locked.

“Enjoy your seven minutes in heaven, Tazer,” Sharpy singsongs.Then, the bare bulb mounted on the ceiling flares to life, illuminating one Patrick Kane.

Fuck.

i know you are (but what am i) by booktubelover7 - always a girl!pat

Pat throws up her arms in celebration after Toews makes a beautiful goal off of Pat’s assist. She crows in celebration as Toews slams into her, shouting in her ear.

Pat’s playing, she’s playing, she’s playing. Not just that, but she’s winning too.When her line gets back to the bench, Pat leans over to speak into Toews’ ear. “Thank you,” she says. Her teammate just turns his head to look at her, a grin spreading across his face.

Love or Torture - a/b/o

Patrick Kane is too short, too Omega, and his heat too delayed for him to play hockey. Jonathan Toews has a plan to bring glory to both of them.

keep buying the stars by medusacascade22- teacher!Jonny 

“Fuck,” Jonny groans. He props his elbows up on his desk and lets his head fall into his hands. It’s going to be a long fucking year.

(or, in which Jonathan Toews is Patrick Kane's teacher, and shit gets real.)

College/Uni AUs

cello suite no. 1 - THIS IS ONE IS A CLASSIC 👌

The first time Jonathan meets Patrick Kane is because he hits him with a lacrosse ball.

In Jonathan's defense, he threw a perfect pass to Seabs, who failed to just reach the one or two feet above his head to catch it.

"Oh shit," Jonathan says when he watched the ball arc across the lawn and whack a blond kid squarely between his shoulder blades.

"Heads up!" he calls belatedly.

this is how we do it series by staraflur ⭐ - frat bros AU!!!

He doesn’t think Zeus is supposed to have a sword, but their Zeus does. So now Jonny does, because of course he’s in charge. He looks, Patrick is drunk enough to acknowledge, far better than anyone has a right to in a grody old Halloween costume that’s probably soaked up the butt sweat of dozens, if not hundreds, of Theta-presidents past. Jonny wears it, Patrick gets the sword. Win-win.

AKA that time there was a frat AU (of course).

This Heart Is Not For Wasting by fourfreedoms - oblivious best friends

Patrick puts his head in his hands. “How could this get any worse?”

“Wait, it’s not like, a big deal is it?” Duncs asks, looking at him and Jonny in turn. “The way you and Jonny are weird about each other? She’s gotta have made her peace with it ages ago.”

A college AU.

love song for love songs by boodreaus  ⭐ - angst, internalized homophobia

“Right,” Jonny says. “Cool.” He seems to hesitate, pausing when Patrick goes for the door handle, and then, right as Patrick’s bracing himself to run for the house, Jonny says, “You should come.”

Patrick turns back at him and is handed a piece of paper. “To our next show, I mean,” Jonny is saying as Patrick examines what turns out to be a flyer, thick black lettering taking up every square inch of space on the brilliant sunshine-colored surface. “It’s tomorrow night, at the showcase. Feel free to say yes or no or whatever. If you don’t know, it’s cool.”

“I’ll,” Patrick starts, and then stops, blinking up at him. Jonny’s just watching him, kind of, elbow resting on the steering wheel. “Maybe,” he finally says, and Jonny smiles.

yet we will make him run - some more angst, except more erudite

Kaner the English Lit major AU.

Sigma Chi series by hatrickane - frat bros hook up and then angst about it

Jonny and Patrick run into each other at a frat party. Patrick proposes a way to pass the time.

Can't Wait by LouLa - first time pwp

Pat's on a hair trigger.

when you flex like that - hookup in a frat party

Johnny isn’t drunk, but he does let Sharpy and a couple of frat-looking guys he doesn’t even know talk him into a contest of shots. It’s Sharpy’s fault — he appeals to the competitive side he knows Johnny can’t let go of at the best of times, and one of the guys, blonde curls, a lazy smirk of a grin, picks up on it pretty fast too.

Hope you don't mind by haroldslouis

“Oh, sorry, man,” the guy says, giving him a quick grin. “Thought you were someone else.” He taps the visor of Patrick’s snapback and just like that, he turns around and disappears into the crowd.Patrick doesn’t know how long he stands there, just looking at the general direction he disappeared in.

or, 5 times Jonny mistook Patrick for someone else + 1 time he definitely didn't

Room 4 Rent

Patrick stares at the ad for a while, clicking back and forth between the Craigslist page and his  fantasy hockey league, chewing on his bottom lip.

3 bedroom apartment near Loyola. One room available, others occupied by two male students.  Shared living room and kitchen. Two bathrooms. Rent split three ways. Email tazer19@gmail.com  or call 773-639-7812 for more info. No texts please.

are you buying what i'm selling? - frat party buddies

The Sigma Chi Halloween Bash is in a week, Jonny’s holding two tickets, and he has nobody to go with.

He had a somebody to go with, until that somebody decided Jonny’s student athlete life wasn’t worth  hanging around for. Their relationship was already tanking anyway; Jonny’s more upset about  potentially wasting a $40 ticket than that shit ending. Whatever.

Just A Spark by heartstrings  ⭐ - magical realism!

In a desperate attempt to hide his feelings from the object of his affections, Patrick accidentally drinks a love potion that causes the people around him to fall for him. Too bad it seems to work on everyone but Jonny.

do you know who you are? by liveinfury - frat bros

“Sure, Cap. I’ll try to keep it quiet.” Patrick winks at Jonny. “But be honest, you like the noises I make, huh?”

“What? Of course not!" Jonny sputters. "I’m not gay!”

(or where Jonny can't figure out why he feels so uneasy when Patrick brings guys home to their frat house).

The Great Desk Assembly Project - they were roommates

“I’m going to nail some shit,” he says. “Jonny, come watch me nail some shit.”

“We share a room, I don’t need to watch you nail anything else.”

“That’s not what you were saying last night,” Pat says with a laugh in his voice. He reaches back  behind him and punches Jonny in the shoulder for good measure.

No, It's Not A Secret by SimoneClouseau ⭐ - always a girl Jonny 

Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your boyfriend. No way, no way. I think you need a new one.

Jehanne Toews is dating a loser. Sometimes it takes a ridiculous awesome young star on the Blackhawks to see the light.

good form - always a girl Pat!  ⭐ 

“Best head of your life?”

“Yes, he was better than you, you competitive motherfucker.” Hayds says it like it’s a joke, like it’s funny, like it’s not the single most devastating thing a girl could say to Pat.

“A hockey bro gave you the best head of your goddamn life? Am I in the fucking Upside Down?”

“Believe it, baby. Jonathan Toews: hockey bro and magical pussy-eating wizard.”

forever i'll try for you and i by staraflur - always girls Jon and Pat!

It’s extra great—whenever Jo’s losing, she always makes like their running point tally competition isn’t real. Tonight’s true to form: when Trish holds up three fingers and points at herself, then two before pointing at Jo, Jo actually scoffs as she pokes at a couple chicken breasts with the tongs, trying to find the best one.

remedial at love - jonny ‘i'm great at math but the math tutor's really hot so i'm gonna pretend i'm not' toews

There have been a lot of things Kaner’s done that could be considered suspect. He chose the  Backstreet Boys over Nsync for the Kane Dance-Off Championship when he was 15. He opted to go  to Disneyland instead of Disney World for his high school graduation present. He frosted his tips after  coming out in 12th grade because he thought that was like, the obvious thing to do until he realized  this was not, in actuality, the 90s.

But this one. Calling up ‘Jtoews’ and requesting tutelage in math when he was a fucking wiz at math  was -- the most highly suspect of all.

Drink yourself under, fuck yourself over by Mythisea

Jonathan Toews is the sophomore captain of the college hockey team. Patrick Kane recently quit hockey before coming to college.

Jonny thinks Patrick would be perfect on his wing. Patrick would rather be drinking. Jonny does not approve.

Make The Moves Up As I Go by agirlnamedfia - tutor!Jonny with a dash of angst and pining

Patrick has his first Econ 202 class on the second day of the spring semester. It doesn’t exactly go well.

how to make boys-next-door out of assholes series by bessyboo, thisissirius - textfic

Yo man, Sharpy's having a party tonight. You up for it or you gonna be a boring shit and study???

it's only you and me by crystaljules - graduation blues

"We're so fucking stupid."

Overdosed on Confidence by runphoebe ⭐ - fwb, internalized homophobia

“Someone could -,” Jonny starts, breaking off when Patrick ducks down to draw Jonny’s lips against his, kissing him fever-hot and wet and desperate. Jonny’d be embarrassed by how hungrily he responds, but he knows Pat’s into it, moaning unashamedly into Jonny’s mouth when he tightens a hand around Pat’s neck. “Someone could see,” he finally gets out, voice rough, when Patrick pulls back, as if Patrick’s supposed to believe that that’s any sort of protest.

Patrick licks his lips, the hint of a smirk playing at the corners of them in that familiar way like when Patrick's got a particularly bad idea on his mind. “Guess you better be quick then, huh?” he says cryptically, waggling his eyebrows at Jonny. Jonny’s a second away from rolling his eyes and asking what he means when Patrick slithers off Jonny’s lap and onto his knees on the floor beneath Jonny’s table and - oh. Oh.

Silence Gives You Space by liveinfury - pining, misunderstandings

“Have you been avoiding me?”

“’Course not,” Patrick says. “I’m just letting you do your own thing.”

“My own thing?”

“Yeah, didn’t want to crowd your space,” Patrick blurts out. Fuck, he didn’t mean to actually say that.“You’re not…”

“Cool.”

tuck you in - getting together

“You sexiled again?" He smirks and stuffs down the fondness that rolls  through him at theway Jonny’s hair is rumpled and a little bit wavy.

Jonny sits up slowly, groaning. “Yeah. Fuck, this is the third time in a week  and a half.”

obvious from the start - radio DJs Pat and Jon!

It’s not like Patrick even likes radio, because he hasn’t really listened to  anything that’s not on his iPod or his Pandora stations in years, but when he notices the red and  white flyer advertising the student radio station on the ground, he picks it up with the  excuse that he’s trying to be environmentally friendly.When he played hockey they told Patrick that he was too small, too short to  be a hockeyplayer; that he’d never make it because of his size. Hockey is, was, his heart  and soul, and he’d put years and years of his life into the one thing he knew he was good  at; threw his very being into the best he could be to prove that he can do it, be the best,  even if he was small.

Patrick supposes maybe he'll find something else that he’s just as good at.

stupid college boys series by 19trash88 - Jonny is the cute guy from Econ class

Patrick’s not one to wax poetic about a penis, but if ever there was a reason to, Jonathan Toews’ cock would be at the top of the list.

Green Light by heartstrings - friends to lovers

Patrick knows two things: he likes sex and he likes Jonny. If Jonny's newly single there's no reason not to combine the two. Right?

Everybody Wants to Touch Some(body Paragraphs) by Kerfluffle  ⭐

Wherein Jonny writes the worst essay ever, and weirdness abounds.

Motivation by somethingnerdythiswaycomes  ⭐ - pwp

Only Jonny could keep working on his LIT-110 paper while Patrick was getting himself off next to him. Fuck, but Patrick loved him so much.

Muse series by by somethingnerdythiswaycomes

So Jonny had applied for every damn job he was qualified for, even the "life model" one TJ goaded him into.So Jonny had received an email the next day asking for his availability to come in for a session.So, as it turned out, it wasn’t some random chick that was going to draw him. It was some random dude.

So "life model" apparently meant "nude model."

You Love Me, I Love You Harder So by leyley09 - overly competitive boys on the hockey team

Patrick circles around him at center ice. “Jonathan, my team is going to kick your team’s ass so hard your parents will be embarrassed without even knowing why.”“I’m gonna give you a lesson in goal scoring you’ll never forget.”“Toews, you couldn’t give me a lesson in long distance spitting. Anything you can do, I can do better.”“Oh yeah?”“I can do anything better than you.”

Jonathan Toews is used to be being the best. He has zero clue what to do with competition.

Especially when the competition is cute.

middle ground by boodreaus - college road trip, friends to lovers

Jonny, Patrick, and an excellent adventure.

Who Knew by themistrollsin

Jonathan and Patrick meet after they're forced to go to a party by their best friends (Adam and Brent respectively).

Night Moves by heartstrings - meetcute

After a series of unfortunate drunk events that lead him from falling into a snowbank to being laughed at by the police, Jonny meets Patrick in an elevator.

Ignite My Fire, Object Of My Desire by ThalassicThedes ⭐- theater boys!!!

A good ol' fashioned College Au in which the college itself is hardly even mentioned. Just... make of this what you will.

absolute beginners by heartstrings, thundersquall

That time Jonny walked into a diner and accidentally got himself a temporary fake boyfriend.

Like A Classic - royalty!Jonny

So: due to a series of complicated and improbable events involving some sort of life debt and signed promise from two generations ago, it was decreed that Patrick had to marry the Crown Prince of Canada.

Captain Oblivious by wantstothrill - royalty!Pat

Why would Jonny care about the American royal family visiting his university? He's Canadian. He hasn't paid any attention to Prince Patrick since he was a teenager. He's more concerned with the very hot guy he's just run into, who's name also happens to be Patrick. What a coincidence.

+

check out the high school AUs tag aaand the college AUs tag @ 1988rebloggedfic!

[bngtanah]

I’m (not) With The Band. | o4

summary: Adrienne is an indie producer who is hired to help co-produce BTS’ next album alongside their resident producer; Suga. Despite the initial opposition on both ends, the pair spend time together, share a few stories, dreams and aspirations and begin to hit it off really well. Wrapped up in the whirlwind of late nights and heated disagreements and reconciliations, Min Yoongi and Adrienne Rolle find themselves growing closer and closer. One night they decide to cross the barrier between personal and professional and do their best make a relationship work against all odds.

pairing: idol!Yoongi  x Named OC

word count: 2.9k genre: drama, romance, smut(eventually)

chapters: prologue| o1| o2| o3| o4| o5| o6| o7| o8| o9| 10| 11|

warning: light angst, smut, fluff, workplace relationship, slow burn, sexual themes, ambw, enemies to friends to lovers, developing relationship

a/n: still a fool. still re-uploading.

Adrienne had a certain way of approaching the music-making process, she liked to be completely immersed in whatever she was working on. That meant blasting the sounds she haphazardly blended together as loud as possible until she could think of a way to make them work together appealingly. The sounds of unfinished demos blasting, the scent of lavender incense burning and filling up the interior of the Bangtan work room while Adrienne danced around to get her blood flowing had become a common thing to hear at any hour of the day or night when she was working alone over the past few days. It was a crazy process to look at from the outside but it hadn't failed her yet so Adrienne was planning on sticking with it.

Of course, just because she planned on doing that didn't mean that she would get to.

The incense and loud music worked fine when she was alone but once Yoongi was in the room that all came to a stop. He preferred to work in silence, or as close to silence as he could get. Which meant he had his headphones in to listen and critique every subtle sound effect and background noise that he wasn't sure about adding. Doing that calmed Yoongi but made Adrienne anxious, she was constantly bursting with energy and that seemed to amplify during the nighttime when she was in a pleasant mood and Yoongi just felt like curling up and going to sleep. Adrienne needed the conversation, the back and forth of ideas that could really be the best part about being forced to work with someone else. Their partnership seemed to be in a slightly more stable place than it was last week, even though they still barely knew each other and had definitely not stopped arguing about nearly everything; they were at least willing to communicate instead of shutting down when complications arose. 

It was after twelve on a Tuesday night, or was it after one? Truthfully Adrienne stopped keeping track hours ago, the only thing she knew for sure was that it was dark outside and the halls outside the workroom door sounded empty which meant that it was late enough for people to have already headed home. Adrienne planned on heading out herself as soon as she made some progress on the melody she had been working on for most of the day. It started off with the intentions of being something upbeat and whimsical but over time it morphed into something lighter, more gentle and Andy was having trouble finding a balance between the two styles.

"Are you okay?"

Yoongi's voice yelling over the music from the door made Adrienne stop the strange interpretive dance she was acting out in the middle of the room. With her arms stretched upwards and her neck extended towards the ceiling she kind of resembled a stork preparing to take flight. If Yoongi wasn't so unbelievably tired he might have found the energy to laugh at her.

"Ah, Yoongi-ssi,"

"-oppa,"

"You said I should be respectful, -ssi is very respectful."

Yoongi grumbled and moved his tired body towards the couch, motioning for Adrienne to turn down her song like he always did. Andy sighed and moved to the computer desk then took a seat.

"What are you doing here? I thought you guys had schedules all day today."

"I wanted to get some work done before I go to bed, and it's two o'clock in the morning; what are you doing here?" Yoongi answered with his head resting against the back of the couch.

"Oh shi-, is it really?" Adrienne gasped and turned to look at the bottom right of the computer screen, it indeed read 2:13 am and Andy groaned and pressed her forehead against the keyboard. She wanted to be in bed hours ago but time completely got away from her.

"I've been working on this song for.... well I'll just be honest, the entire day and I just cannot get it to sound right. That's why I'm still here." She pouted.

Yoongi huffed and looked over at Adrienne, who looked back at him with a slight smile, and made a spectacle of getting up and trudging over to the console where Adrienne sat. He leaned forward and pressed his palms on the edge of the desk then looked at Adrienne like he was waiting for her to do something.

"What?"

"Let me hear the song,"

"No, it isn't arranged!"

Yoongi frowned and gave her a slightly harsh look, making Andy suck her teeth, hit play and immediately cover her ears so she wouldn't have to listen to the song again. She was getting sick of hearing the reminder of her incompetence.

Yoongi, on the other hand listened carefully to everything that played over the speakers. He could see what she meant about it not being arranged properly since it was still very rough around the edges but there was something there that could be worked out with more time and attention. The corners of his lips turned upwards slightly when the gentle voice that had been harmonizing to the melody switched to sound more aggressive and raspy.

"Is that you singing?"

"What? Oh yes, that's me. I knew which of you I want to sing which part so I tried to imitate your voices with random lyrics,"

"Was that supposed to be me?"

"Yes, I didn't think you would notice," Adrienne chuckled.

"I don't sound like that," He retorted with a playful frown.

"Yoongi, that's exactly what you sound like. My imitation of you is actually the best one."

Yoongi rolled his eyes but didn't disagree and returned to the couch once the song ended.

"You're a good singer,"

"T-thank you," She answered, slightly taken back by his sudden compliment since it was the first one he'd paid her since they met.

"About your song, it has potential but you're making the backing instruments way too loud, it's distracting," 

Adrienne frowned gently and brought her knees up to her chest, his suggestion had crossed her mind earlier but she was afraid that if she lowered the instruments, it would lose the dynamic feeling.

"I don't even want to think about it anymore," She rested her chin on her knees "Thank you though."

Yoongi nodded silently as he sank further and further into the cushions of the couch, his plan was to work once he was here but he was already falling asleep just sitting there.

"Yoongi-ssi..."

"Hm?"

"Didn't you say you wanted to want to work on something?"

"Yeah, I will" he answered but made no attempt to move.

Adrienne sniggered and shook her head as she got up from the office chair and occupied the empty seat next to him on the couch.

"You should go home if you're just going to sleep,"

Yoongi snorted and sat up straight, his spine becoming rigid when he heard her so close to him.

"I'm okay, I just need a second to wake up,"

"Well, if you want some help, you could answer my question of the day!"

'Question of the day' was something that Adrienne suggested last week in an effort for them both to understand each other better. They each got to ask one question per day that had to be answered honestly by both parties. Yoongi was against it at first but Adrienne soon realized that he would agree to do most things if she pestered him enough. So far it had only been basic questions like 'where were you born?', 'how old are you?', 'who's your favourite artist?' and Adrienne learned that Yoongi was exactly one year older than she was and he had just as much trouble pinning down just one favourite artist as she did. An inaudible rasping noise of displeasure rumbled in Yoongi's throat even though he hadn't moved an inch since sitting up. He didn't have the stamina for a conversation right now.

"Oh, come on you child, it's a simple question!"

"Fine, fine. What is it?" 

"What made you want to become an idol?"

"I didn't,"

"Yoongi-ssi..."

"What? I answered your question,"

"That can't be the entire answer," Adrienne pushed.

Yoongi cursed under his breath and ran a hand down the length of his face.

"That is the entire answer. I never dreamed about being an idol, I wanted to make music, I knew there was only so much I could do on my own so I came to Seoul to have the opportunity to make music as well as I could."

Adrienne nibbled on her top lip and studied Yoongi while he answered her question, he looked like he was still sleeping with his beanie pulled down low over his forehead and the back of his head still resting against the back of the couch. He had a certain way of saying a lot while not really saying much at all when they spoke, always giving Adrienne just enough information to satiate her curiosity but never really allowing her to get closer to him. It was frustrating in a way but Andy didn't want to rock the boat again when they'd just started getting along and she wasn't exactly an open book herself. Then again, he never asked her anything that would require her to be guarded, Adrienne was sure that her age and birthplace and other general facts were on file with the company and that was all he ever asked about.

"Do you like it?"  She paused "Being an idol, I mean."

"One question," Yoongi answered and held up his index finger which Adrienne pushed out of her line of vision.

"Fine, what's your question?"

Yoongi shuffled around in his seat and switched his seating position so he was facing Adrienne instead of leaning into the cushions and staring up at the ceiling. It took a second for him to think of a question to ask since he didn't have one ready. Well, that wasn't true, he had lots of questions but none he felt comfortable asking out loud.

"Why did you come to Korea?"

"You know why I'm here,"

"I know they offered you a job, you didn't have to accept it,"

Adrienne smirked and glanced to the side in thought.

"Do you want the proper answer or something thoughtful?"

"Proper,"

"I needed money," she laughed softly and Yoongi joined her with a closed mouth chuckle of his own.

"Honestly, I didn't really want to come at first. I knew nothing about this country or the music and it was all so different from what I was used to... if my sister didn't threaten to fight me I wouldn't be here right now. I was so scared to come here."

"Scared of what?"

"Of...." Adrienne paused and raised her gaze to Yoongi's eyes, she wasn't exactly sure how to word what she wanted to say next. "Give me your arm."

Yoongi's forehead wrinkled, but he complied and stretched his arm forward, Adrienne held his hand in her palm and pushed up his sleeve so that his forearm was exposed then she scooted closer and placed her bare forearm directly against his warm skin. Andy's bronzed skin wasn't the deepest shade of brown and she knew that but it definitely stood out compared to Yoongi's fair tone.

"Of being too different."

He was confused at first but after the second glance at their arms next to each other and Adrienne's face Yoongi nodded with a quiet realization and lowered his head and arm.

"Not everyone is... it's not like..." He stumbled over his words in a way was so unlike him and Adrienne shook her head quickly and held both of his hands in her own to reassure him.

"I get it, Yoongi," She smiled and let go, "I'm not that scared anymore but there's always something terrifying about the unknown..."

Yoongi nodded, tilting his head to the side and resting it against his hand. Adrienne wasn't looking directly at him when she spoke and that gave him ample opportunity to drink in her sharp features without being detected. He had taken up the habit of gazing at her when she wasn't looking in an effort to try and figure her out. She was such a strange person to him with her slightly eccentric behavior, bubbly nature, and interesting personality. Girls like this usually annoyed him but with Adrienne Yoongi only wanted to know more about her and that was a feeling he knew he had to keep under control. He was a professional there was no reason for him to allow fleeting emotions to cloud his thinking, no matter if he could physically feel his heart twinge beneath his chest when Adrienne's eyes met his own.

"Anyway, thanks for listening. You can work now sorry for being a bother."

"Don't worry about it," Yoongi nodded and slowly picked himself up off the couch.

"I should go home now," Andy yawned but didn't get up as she watched him move over to the computer desk.

Yoongi nodded and turned to bid Adrienne a good night when the sound of the door swinging open drew his attention there.

"Hyung! We're going to eat are you com-" Jimin paused when he noticed Adrienne still seated. 

"Oh, Andy~ I didn't know you were still here, do you want to come eat with us?"

"Hey, Jimin" Andy greeted with a wide grin "Um... I don't know if I can..." Just at the mention of food, her stomach grumbled and reminded Adrienne that all she'd eaten that day was a packet of saltine crackers and going home alone on an empty stomach wasn't something she wanted to risk.

"I'll come," she laughed "I mean if that's okay with everyone," Adrienne said everyone but really she was looking for Yoongi's approval since as far as she knew he was the only member of the team she hadn't really won over yet. Jimin encouraged her to come but Adrienne still looked over to Yoongi for his answer. 

Yoongi wasn't particularly interested in going since he didn't really want to eat and he still hadn't started his work but when Adrienne looked at him with her silently pleading eyes Yoongi didn't have it in him to tell Jimin to go away so he could work in peace. So instead, he got up, adjusted his beanie and headed out the door without a word while being followed by his oddly energetic youngers.

The seven of them plus Adrienne piled into a booth at a tiny pub not too far from the studio since that was the only place open so late at night. Despite being tired like Adrienne was sure they all were the atmosphere was loud and active as they all ordered and only got more lively when someone, who sounded oddly like Taehyung, suggested that Adrienne treat them to a drink. She objected at first but that only made the requests become cuter and more annoying to ignore.

"Okay! Just this one time" Adrienne finally relented and motioned for the server to come back to their table.

"You don't have to do that,"  she could hear Yoongi almost whisper from his seat next to her but Andy dismissed his concern with a gentle smile. "I don't mind."

The night continued until Namjoon being the responsible leader that he was, informed everyone that they really needed to get some rest before their day tomorrow. Everyone except Yoongi and Jin groaned and complained but made preparations to leave nonetheless, they were undoubtedly feeling the heavyweight of sleep rest comfortably on their shoulders once everyone was outside on the sidewalk since there was a noticeable drop in noise level and general conversation.

"Well, I'm going now!" Adrienne said behind a body-draining yawn as she waved towards the group and began walking backward.

"Are you walking by yourself? You shouldn't catch a taxi so late alone, I can walk with you." Namjoon said quickly and took a step forward but Adrienne shook her head. 

"I live really close to the studio, I can make it by myself. I'll be safe,"

"Okay. Well, you should text me when you get home, so we don't worry." Namjoon said, quickly adding the bit about everyone worrying to save face.

"I will, good night!" She assured him and waved again to the rest of the boys before turning on her heels and heading towards her apartment.

Once she was out of sight Namjoon followed closely by Yoongi who'd gone silent, and the rest of the crowd began their slow trek back to the BigHit building.

"Hey, hyung don't you think you're being a little too obvious with Andy? Since she is a co-worker and everything," Jimin asked in a gentle tone once he'd sidled up next to Namjoon and began walking in stride with him.

"What are you talking about?" Namjoon responded as if he did not understand what Jimin was insinuating "Should I be rude to her just because she's a co-worker?"

Jimin pursed his lips but let the topic die, he knew that his band member knew that wasn't he meant but it wasn't exactly the right place or time to advise Namjoon so he kept quiet. Yoongi who was also still silently walking behind them took notice of the minor exchange and didn't have a reasonable explanation for the way his heart rate spiked or the scowl that crossed his features while he continued moving with his head down. 

Jimin smiled and gently patted Namjoon on the shoulder.

"Of course not, hyung."

[itsbuckysworld]

Summer Writing Challenge 2019!

Here it is! As talked about a while back, before I did the spring writing event, I had talked about doing another challenge, just because, and thought of waiting for the summer for it so it had some sort of theme or rhyme or reason. 

Banner made by myself :) ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ˢᵗᵉᵃˡ ᵐʸ ᵇᵃⁿⁿᵉʳˢ ᵒ�� ᵈ���ᵛᶦᵈᵉʳˢ

SOME RULES :)

You don’t have to follow me, but it’d be nice (im like 50 away from 4K? how??????) also reblog this for exposure?

you can use any and all MCU characters. (x reader pairings and ships allowed :) ) - No real people fics

smut is welcome, no underage smut, no incest - only platonic sibling ships.

deadline is the end of summer: Sept. 23rd :) but you can have as much time as you need. 

only one person per prompt, one prompt per person. If you’re making a moodboard and not writing then someone else can take the prompt to write about it. 

au’s, tfln’s, series, one shots, drabbles, all is welcome. min 300 words. use the read more feature if you go over 500. 

send me an ask with the prompt you want and the blog that you will be writing from, also let me know if you’re making a moodboard or writing.

you do not have to center these around summer. go off. 

tag it with #ibwradsummer19 and tag me @itsbuckysworld​ in your piece! send me a DM if it’s been 24hrs and i haven’t given you a like or reblog on your piece.

Prompts under the cut, 30 total, i’ll add more if needed! the prompts are as inclusive/gender vague as i could think of so, go off honey, HAPPY PRIDE *waves rainbow flag*

SONG PROMTS can use as inspiration, or quote the lyrics directly, even use the music videos as inspo (if available). 

Summer Lovin’ - The Tuesday Crew > @kingofthelosers

Carolina - Harry Styles  > @sunmoonandbucky​

I Don’t Want It At All - Kim Petras

Don’t Stop - Blanks > @trashybutnottootrashy

Feeling Lonely - boy pablo

break up with your girlfriend, i’m bored - Ariana Grande.  > @supernaturallymarvellous

Never Really Over - Katy Perry  > @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan

girls girls boys - panic!at the disco

AU’S

Biker AU  >@sgtbxckybxrnes

Roadtrip AU  >@with-valkyrie

Enchanted Forest AU  >@all1e23

Lifeguard AU  >@theassetsass

Diner AU  >@soldatjbb

Teacher AU  > @ruckystarnes

Rock/Pop/Punk Band AU  > @bitchassbucky

Hero and Villain AU  >  @daenyara

SCENARIOS/DIALOGUE

i always come down to this lake on summer’s and thought that cabin was empty, turns out you’re there now cause you inherited it.  >  @lclflwrgrl

we’re the only ones reading at this beach party and it’s the same book.   >  @aryastarss

sure stranger, I’ll help you find your bikini top/swim trunks >  > @blackirisposts

sure random stranger, I’ll help you cross that thing off your bucket list.   > @friday-ocean

popular person at school/uni shows up at the beach with a ton of floaties “i just want to learn how to swim/get over my fear of water, you never saw me here”  > @buckychrist

a weekend in a log cabin sounds great, if person A and B weren’t basically enemies. > @jewelswrites-ish

i’m a camp counselor and you’re a mermaid that lives in the lake, please stop scaring the kids - > @ironmandeficiency | @gamorazenn will make a moodboard

“Our cabins are paired up for all the activities and people keep asking if we’re dating - wait did you just say yes???” au  > @mattaretto

thinking that your crush can’t see you stare at them through your sunglasses but they can... and they like it.  > @marvellingdaydreams

we chatted a bit in the line to the bathroom and you dropped your wallet, and now i missed one of my fave songs at this concert/festival trying to find you to give you back your wallet.  > @melitadala will write |  @ramblerumble will make a moodboard

“whose idea was it to build this makeshift waterslide?!”  > @throwmyheartawayagain

A: “who drank my last *insert cool beverage*?!” B:“hey so, like remember you love me? and we’re married?” > @the-goddess-of-mischief 

“it’s summer, I can have two boy/girlfriends if i want to” - > @writeyourmindaway

A: *entering a room* “I love summer! summer is the best” / B:*entering right behind them* “I fucking hate summer” / C: “how are you two married again?”  > @marvel-lously

“are you trying to... seduce me?” “yes...” “ok, keep going”   >@delicatelyherdreams

A: we could go camping! ---later---> A: whose idea was it to go camping this is a disaster! > @fortheloveofjbbarnes

looking at your two friends after a beach day “would you look at that, if it’s not two sunburnt dummies, if only someone had reminded you of sunblock- oh wait!” > @the-unspoken-rule

we’re paired to seat together at a rollercoaster and you see me freak out but you don’t laugh, try to calm me down and hold my hand.  > @taxonomyisracism

almost knocked you out with a golf ball at the course, i’m so bad, please teach me? > @rumpelstilskenxoxo

one last friends trip and hurrah before we all split up to different colleges.  >  @avintagekiss24

A: “Please, give me some time to think about it” B: “i’ve given you time, more time than i should. What i need is an answer, please” > @sleep-i-ness

A: *talking really slowly* “I need to use the bathroom” B: “I know english, i was just pretending to see how far this would go”  > @is-it-really-a-secret

“I’m not a good dancer” “no one said you had to be good, just dance with me”   > @captainamericasbeard

Person A having to baby/pet-sit and calling person B for help every 10 minutes so they just come over and help and wow, it’s a mess. 

“what can i say, i have a weakness for people that can lift me over their heads”  > @buckyownsmyheart

more will be added if needed. have fun and don’t forget the rules :)

[xxisxxisxxis]

Gateway Drug | Part One

Part Two , Part Three , Part Four

Pairing: Douglas Booth!Nikki Sixx X OC

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings: Language

**Let me know if you want to be tagged**

———————————————————————

For anyone else born in the generation I was born in, they were usually allowed to go out on the weekends with their friends, do questionable things and actually learn from mistakes. I, however, couldn’t learn from any mistakes because my parents didn’t give me the room to make mistakes. If I even came close to something our church deemed “out of line”, my mother would remind me “this is not what we do, Vivian” and I would correct whatever it was I was doing. 

It drove my best friend, Tommy, crazy that I would never be able to hang out on some of the biggest nights for him to go watch bands play on the Sunset Strip. He had a passion for music and he wanted to share it with me, but he couldn’t do that unless it was in the form of a cassette tape that would make my mother have a stroke, in his van every Tuesday and Thursday when I was supposed to be tutoring him but ended up getting off topic.

I finally went against my parents when Tommy got in to another band, as a drunmer, our senior year.

"...Tommy, I am in bed. I have church tomorrow and my parents will kill me if I leave right now, especially if they find out it's to go venture down the strip." I argue to him, rubbing my tired eyes and he groans out.

"Viv, you're gonna get dressed, put on something hot, and get your pretty ass down here. I need your support. We've put out fliers everywhere but I don't know how many people are gonna show and I need my favorite girl in the entire fucking universe to come cheer me on." He argues and I yawn.

"Flattery will get you nowhere.” I remind him at the sound of him calling me his favorite girl and he goes silent for a moment, prompting me to sigh out. "I will be down there as soon as I can be. If I get caught, I will kill you. You're buying me food after the show." I state and I feel his excitement through the phone.

"Ah, Yes! You're gonna fucking lose your mind, Viv--"

"Alright, I'll see you in a few minutes. I love you, bye." I hang up to avoid wasting time.

When I finally get down to the Starwood and get inside, I wait patiently for Mötley Crüe to start their performance, my nails nervously digging in to my palms at the little amount of people in here.

It’s not packed out by any means but it’s a decent amount of people, meaning if they blow it, it’ll be hard to come back from it.

My green eyes catch on the first boy I see stepping on to the stage in bright red thigh-high boots, black leather pants and a red tank top with a fishnet mesh layered over it. Following the black-haired bassist is another man who looks a few years older, his black hair long and his choice of T-shirt and dark pants, less flashy than Vince Neil in his white leather pants and black and white striped shirt.

I roll my eyes at the mere presence of the blonde singer, fallen victim to his constant attempts at trying to get me in to bed with him since freshman year.

Lastly, I see Tommy, his excited, puppy-like energy beaming off of him. He sees me, giving me a subtle wave as he twirls his drum stick through his fingers.

His outfit is more so toned down like the guitarist’s, leaving all the show to the bass player and Vince.

I hold my breath as Vince greets us all with a loud “Alright! We’re Mötley Crüe!” As Tommy rattles the Cymbals for extra effect and I squeeze my eyes shut when he accidentally knocks one over and causes a loud crash on stage as it hits the floor.

People start booing and telling them to get off stage, which they ignore, and when Tommy fixes his drums and settles in, Vince starts up.

“C’mon, boys. Let’s rock this hole.” He says into the mic and I rub my forehead at how bad that sounds.

They start playing, and I personally think it could be worse, but the people around me aren’t impressed.

“Who’s the chick singer?” One guy shouts and I open my eyes in time to see Vince retort.

“Fuck you, asshole!” He throws at the guy.

The stranger flicks him off then proceeds to spit on the expensive looking leather gripping at Vince’s legs.

My brows shoot up, wondering if Vince will react. He does the exact thing I knew he would do.

He jumps off the stage and lands in front of his target, but before he can get in a hit, the guy gives him a good punch.

The crowd’s “oh” echoes the walls, and the bass player picks his instrument over his shoulder and hits Vince’s attacker with it before lunging into the crowd at another man joining in on the brawl. I can’t hold back my laughter as Tommy dives at another man about to hit at the bass player.

The guitarist just stays on stage, kicking a guy in the face that tries to start something with him, before strumming his guitar, minding his own business as his band mates are pummeling and being pummeled.

Security eventually breaks up the fight, escorting the trouble makers out, and I wait for the quiet crowd to say something when the three boys stand at the foot of the stage, looking like their careers that never started are ending.

“Fuck yeah! Mötley Crüe!” A random dude screams out, gaining odd looks from everyone, but when he starts clapping, the room slowly joins and ends up cheering for the band.

I clap a little bit, not wanting to give any of them a big ego, but making sure to give an encouraging smile to Tommy.

The three excitedly look at each other before climbing back on stage and getting their crap together to perform to a now willing audience.

The crowd moves closer to the stage as they start playing, an electric feeling coursing through the room, and as compelled as I am to move to the front, I stay in the back, watching critically as Vince starts singing their song “Take Me to The Top.” After they finish their tenth and final song “Live Wire” and close out to a roaring crowd, I head backstage to see Tommy.

We’re on opposite ends of a hallway when we see each other and he screams out my name joyfully and rushes to me with his arms wide open.

“Viv, did you fuckin’ see that?!” He asks, eyes wide and smile big as he picks me up and squeezes me to him tightly. I laugh, wrapping my arms around his neck, and my legs around his waist, hugging him.

“I did, Tommy, I’m so proud of you.” I say to him.

“It was fuckin’ sick, dude!” He pipes, looking at me like a child in a candy store before putting me down.

Our interaction is interrupted by Vince clearing his throat, looking at me like I’m a helpless gazelle and he’s a cheetah.

“Oh, guys, this is Vivian.” Tommy tells them. “Viv, this is Mick,” He introduces me to the guitar player.

The man nods at me and mumbles “what’s up.”

“And obviously you know Vince.” He reminds me and I glare at Vince, who’s staring at me.

“Unfortunately.” I mumble.

“Hey, Vivian.” The arrogant peacock says in his “seductive” voice that every girl falls for, his eyes briefly taking over the exposed skin of my legs and arms, being that I’m wearing short, light colored jean shorts and a tight white tank top. “Did you like the show?”

“It was ok.” I don’t even think before blurting. I personally think it went well, but he doesn’t have to know that.

“Ok?” Tommy asks.

“There’s room for improvement.” I reply politely. “Particularly the vocals.” I chop out and Vince cuts his eyes at me. I learned in school I have to mock Vince at least once every time I see him to knock him off of his high horse. It’s a hobby of mine.

“Well you sing the fucking songs and see if you can do any better.” A voice snaps and I turn my attention to where it came from.

Propped against the door frame of the dressing room is the bass player, with similar long, black hair like Mick’s. His hair is heavily teased at the top, making his hazel eyes barely noticeable but I can feel that I struck a nerve without even seeing the look in his eye.

“Nikki, she was just kidding.” Tommy laughs it off. “Lighten up, dude.”

“I was only joking, Vince.” I state to the blonde. “Having a good voice doesn’t change the fact that you’re swine, though.”

“Sticks and stones, Viv. Sticks and stones.” He throws a wink my way as he steps past Nikki to get in the dressing room and change.

“Hey, I’m gonna cool off real quick and I’ll take you to get something to eat.” Tommy tells me, still beaming with excitement from his performance.

“Okay, I’ll be out here.” I assure him and he gives my hair a playful ruffle before heading inside with Mick following him.

Nikki’s still staring at me and I try to pretend not to notice it as I smooth my hair down from where Tommy messed it up, but I finally look at him with raised brows.

He just scoffs at me, not saying a word as he takes a gulp of Jack Daniels straight from the bottle and slips in to the dressing room, shutting the door.

[atmilliways]

((fic)) Hello, How Are You

One devastating turn deserves another, so this fic is brought to you by @calliopinot‘s Noon On A Tuesday (which you have to read in order for this to make the right amount of sense), plus these headcanons and also this one (thanks @spaceviking), and Hello by Adele but with a nicer ending. 

Oh, and an all day wine and food event with 40 participating wineries. Don’t worry, I only made it to 8. That’s not even my record, and I actually remember the end of the day. That’s a serious accomplishment in Zinfandel country.

Anyway, the end of this fic is sappy as hell and I’m not sorry at all about that.

Hello, How Are You

It had taken him years to come here because, really, he wasn’t a dumb kid anymore. With time and therapy, he’d outgrown the idea that his love and existence was so flawed that it destroyed anyone he cared for. 

Ironically, he now stood on the doorstep of the man who had first made him believe that, simply by being the first to be left standing. 

Toki checked the paper in his hand for probably the tenth time, wondering if he had misread Pickles’ messy scrawl — the house was just so ordinary. He had lived this way himself for decades now, of course, but somehow hadn’t expected it in connection with today, with the man he was hoping to see. It was only one story and modestly sized, with a bay window looking into a sparse but cozy living room. The yard was filled with ornamental grasses instead of a classic lawn and had a winding stone path through blooming roses and perennials. Real colors, when he tended to remember the place’s owner exclusively in grayscale and blond, as so much of their life had been back then. A part of him regretted ringing the doorbell as soon as he did it, but the sound of guitar arpeggios echoing through the house made the corner of his mouth twitch. 

Little touches, like that and the miniature wolf statue peering watchfully out from amidst the bushes by the door, assured him yes, Skwisgaar did live here. 

As Toki waited for someone to come to the door, absently twisting the wedding band he still wore, he heard the thumps and whines of various dogs jostling around inside. A muffled voice scolded them briefly and then the door swung open to reveal the same Skwisgaar that he remembered, black shirt and faded jeans and all, except for the silver at his temples and the lines that had crept into his face around the eyes. 

“Oh. Uh,” Skwisgaar said, staring. 

That was as far as he got before three huskies swarmed out from behind his legs. They milled around Toki’s legs, nosing at his hands and crotch inquisitively — so unruly compared to the golden lab mixes Abby’d had over the years, but those had all been well-trained service dogs. At least no one was trying to jump up and lick his face. 

“Nej, gets back heres you dumb goofballs...” Skwisgaar shooed the dogs back inside before shooting him a look that was both sheepish and curious. “Sorry. They gets, uh, pretty exciteds when people comes by. Don’t gets a lot of visitors here, you knows.” 

“Yeah, it was kind of hard to find.” His mouth felt so dry. Why was his mouth so dry? He also felt unaccountably stupid showing up in a button down shirt and khakis like this was some sort of job interview or something. Toki rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, wondering if this was how Skwisgaar had felt during that one visit years ago, so... thrown, by memories versus reality. 

They stood in awkward silence for a moment until Skwisgaar cleared his throat, still trying to hold back the tide of dogs. “So, you wants to come ins or something? I could meet you arounds on the back porch if you don’ts want to deals with these dildoes.” 

“Oh, it’s fines,” Toki said, then felt his face redden at the slip. All those years of Leah helping him with his English, the kids playfully teasing and correcting him on the occasional misplaced a plural or mispronunciation, apparently didn’t hold up to facing this fragment of his past. “I mean, I don’t mind dogs, as long as they don’t try to hump my leg or anything.” 

“That... Well.” Skwisgaar shuffled backwards, grabbing onto the collar of one of the huskies. “I just puts him in the music room for yous. The others am okays, come on ins.” 

Toki followed him inside, pulling the door shut behind himself and looking around. The entryway was fairly bare, just white walls and dark wood floors, about what he would have expected. “So you still play? I wasn’t sure, after you stopped doing that masterclass thing.” 

“Oh, you watched that?” Skwisgaar called back distractedly from deeper inside the house. 

“Luke did, when he was learning guitar.” Toki couldn’t help smiling a little, with no one there to see. “He got into metal for a while after he saw some pictures of me from the old days. I think it was the long hair. He never did want to cut his short.” 

There was the sound of a door slamming, and then the lanky blond reappeared with the remaining two dogs crowding at his heels. “Wasn’ts all you had was girls, last time I heards?” 

“Oh... Sorry, I forgot you wouldn’t know.” Toki shrugged. “He changed his name from Leah Jr. to Luke before college. It’s not a big deal. The hormone therapy is going really well, he’s starting to grow a beard now. It’s coming in the way mine did though, remember that time I tried growing it out? And it came in all patchy? I told him he might be better off with just a mustache, but who knows if he’ll listen to me, I’m just his dad or whatevers.” 

It occurred to him that he was rambling and that Skwisgaar was giving him a weird look — not one of the looks that meant Toki would have to punch him in the face in defense of his son, just one that wanted to point out they hadn’t spoken in almost fifteen years but, like, didn’t at the same time. It was an unexpectedly hopeful look, shuttered away after an instant as though it hadn’t been meant to be seen, and the implications tugged unpleasantly on Toki's insides. His mouth snapped shut and he followed the other man down the hall into a spacious and, again, mostly white living room. He could see a river winding past through the sliding glass door on the other side of the room. It was nice. 

“Have a seats, huuueeeeuuugghhhh, anywheres,” Skwisgaar said into the awkward silence, gesturing to the white couch. Or, the mostly white couch with a liberal dusting of husky hair on it, even in places where Toki wouldn’t have thought a dog that size could or would climb. It was probably also the reason there weren’t any of the plush fur throw rugs Toki remembered him preferring. “You want some coffee or anythings?” 

“No, I’m fine thanks.” 

“Okay. Uhhhhh... Anyways, ja, I plays,” he continued while Toki made himself comfortable. “Don’t really does much with its now, but sometimes Nathan wants a thing written for ones of those shows he ams working ons, he gives me a calls, Charles sends the checks in the mails, all thats. But it ams, you knows. A goods hobby.” Once his guest sat down in a tall but well-padded easy chair, he took the couch and immediately had two dogs happily vying for control of his lap. “What abouts you?” 

Toki looked down at his hands. “I still play sometimes. More since the kids all left home, but less than... since Leah.” 

Skwisgaar sighed. “I heards about that. Thoughts about going to pays my respects, but...” He gave a pained grimace that was, maybe, intended to be an apologetic smile. “Didn’ts really knows her, and Pickle tolds me it was probablies not the best ideas.” 

“Oh,” Toki said blankly. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Pickles had never mentioned Skwisgaar wanting to come to the funeral.  But would he have remembered if he had? That had been, to put it mildly, a bad time. Juggling all the funeral arrangements, hospital bills, and suddenly being a single parent to a teenager and two preteens — it had been a lot. He’d barely kept it together for the first few years, and still felt bad that Juliette had taken it upon herself to help look after her siblings and grown up so much so quickly. 

“...You lets your hair grows out somes,” Skwisgaar blurted out. 

“I did,” Toki agreed, grateful for the change of subject. He swished his fingers through it, a fall of brown that came down to around his chin, just like when they’d first met. “Two girls and a gender fluid kid in the house, we used to have some wild hairdo parties, let me tell you.” He laughed. Kind of forced, but close enough to real. “And it worked out. Juliette is doing really well in cosmetology school.” 

“That’s greats, Toki.” 

The smile on Toki’s face was a brittle one. He was proud of his kids — hell, proud of himself for producing three non-fucked up human beings, considering his own bleak childhood, homeless adolescence, and raucous early adulthood. Things really had turned out for the best. 

Mostly. Because while he’d had a loving, supportive partner to help lay the groundwork for his wonderfully normal new life, it hadn’t turned anything like what he’d imagined. She’d died and he’d found out that there were even worse things than having his heart broken, like having to decide whether to keep all of her old things around as a constant, heart-stabbing reminder or carrying overflowing boxes out to the curb past his crying children, pleading to hold onto the memories of their mother. Impossible choices. 

The conversation had hit another lull, both of them just looking at each other over a canyon of decades. 

“So,” Skwisgaar said awkwardly, “why... ams you decided to visit todays? Nots that I minds the companies,” he added quickly, unwilling to drop the strained pretense of gracious host. Clearly he didn’t want to be as blunt as Toki had been when he’d visited, all those years ago. No attempt had been made to flaunt his carefree, unattached lifestyle out here in the countryside, with no neighbors for miles and no real obligations to speak of save for occasional songwriting favors. He hadn’t gone for the jugular with, to name an example completely at random, a #1 Guitarist mug. 

Toki’s smile cracked. On the couch, the two dogs raised their heads and looked at him inquisitively, approximately one second before he sucked in a breath like a man afraid of drowning and sank his face into both hands. For a long time he’d been able to keep his old life and live locked up tight, separate from his newly constructed family. He’d stopped discussing it in therapy years ago, long enough that his therapist never thought to bring it up anymore. Long enough that he hadn’t realized the parallels for a long time. 

And it all came pouring out a torrent of word vomit that tasted all the more bitter for how long he’d been holding it in. A family of five? The way Leah had died, carving a chunk of his life big enough to leave him broken — what was he supposed to do, let it? And then the kids moving out. Little Abby had been the first to go and the last he had expected to lose so soon, a blow out of nowhere just like Murderface lapsing without warning into a coma. Luke had developed new interests, decided on a far more ambitious musical ambitions than his old man, and gone off to school at a fabulous conservatory half way across the globe, echoing Nathan’s departure for new and interestingly brutal pursuits. Juliette, like Pickles, had stuck around the longest, but now she was finally getting into cosmetology full time and living with her girlfriend, fostering an endless stream of troubled kids that the system had failed because her heart was just that goddamned big. There were visits, and phone calls, and occasionally even meeting up for lunches or dinners, but they had their own separate lives to get back to. Toki had... nothing. Just like after Dethklok. 

Nothing but this ghost from his past who, before he realized what was happening, was kneeling in front of his chair and pulling him into a rough hug. Toki let himself be pulled. The dogs crowded around him and licked helpfully at the tears and snot boiling out of him before it could land on Skwisgaar’s shirt, though it caught its fair share of slobber and stray fur instead. Thumps and distressed dog noises from elsewhere in the house suggested that the third had some idea of what he was missing out on and resented being excluded from it, but oh well. Special persons invite club cry-a-thon, no leg humpers allowed. 

Because Skwisgaar was crying too. First it registered as a growing dampness on his shoulder. Then Toki realized that the other man’s hands were gripped onto his shirt in big handfuls, and what had seemed like a comforting rocking motion was the Swede shaking with the effort of keeping his own tears silent and unobtrusive. 

“Skwisgaar, what’s…” More alarmed than he would have expected given his own simmering breakdown, Toki managed to disentangle himself enough to pull back and get a look at his face. There was no hope of passing it off as ‘just gettings high’ today — not that it had ever been very effective ruse, Skwisgaar was an ugly crier and always had been. “What’s wrong?” 

“Because,” came the choked up reply. “You saids you was happy. I s-stayed aways because you was happy. You didn'ts…” Skwisgaar was squeezing his eyes shut in an effort to not totally lose it, but his grip was clearly slipping. “You didn’ts deserve for it to all falls so much to shits that you comes to see me." 

“Oh…” Toki slid to the floor as though his bones had been removed and replaced with cooked spaghetti, because that was exactly it. Skwisgaar had dumped him and it had been devastating, but he’d reinvented himself, met a girl, made a new life for himself without him. 

It had taken so long to decide to come here precisely because he had been happy. Ecstatically so, and in the new life he’d made, even after Leah, there had been no room for Skwisgaar in it. But to see that Skwisgaar had known that — hell, actually respected that enough to leave him be for all these years — made him realize. 

“Skwisgaar,” Toki said, sniffling and reaching to smooth some of the other man’s tears away. Skwisgaar startled at the touch, blue eyes flying open.

“Whats?” 

“I don’t regrets anything about my family,” Toki told him earnestly, “but it was always supposed to be you.” And kissed him. 

They were both still crying so it was wet and clumsy and messy, but their lips fit together just as perfectly as Toki remembered. Sure, he’d repressed that memory for a long time, but he’d had to. 

For so long they’d been spun around in a dance of wanting different things, never on the same page, perfectly compatible but just off somehow. Then there had been Leah and it had felt impossible to reconcile those dual loves, so Toki had always told himself that his first choice had never been right or good for him. And maybe that instinct had been spot on, maybe Skwisgaar back then had been all wrong, a pentagonal peg that Toki had desperately fit into a round hole — but things had changed. So much was different now, about both of them. Here in this modest house, sitting on the floor with dogs trying their best to cheer up two idiot humans with even more slobbery kisses than the one they were currently sharing with amazed enthusiasm, they fit together in ways that was far more than just physical. It finally felt like they were on the same page, older and wiser but still head over fucking heels for each other. 

A third furry body crashed into them and Skwisgaar broke away with a cry of, “Fucksdammit Morderface, if you brokes another door you ams sleeping outskied tonights I swear to fucking Odin!” 

Toki laughed and rubbed his face on his sleeve and stood, despite the (pudgier, more blunt-nosed) husky immediately going for his leg as he did so, offering Skwisgaar a hand up that he accepted without hesitation. “You named him Murderface?” 

“Ja,” Skwisgaar said sheepishly. He didn’t let go of Toki’s hand once he was up, instead threading their fingers together. “Uh, ands the other two ams Nathan and Pickles. Makes me feel less, eughhh, lonely out heres, you knows.” 

“Huh.” Toki looked down at their entwined fingers. Smiled. Squeezed. “Just those three?” 

“There ams only one Toki Wartooth,” Skwisgaar told him seriously, then pulled him into another kiss that lasted much, much longer.

[notdeadyet-bpd]

week in the life of a med student: tuesday

5:45am: Wake up. I am noooot a morning person. Also, I’ve been aiming for 8 hours of sleep (yes, I know that that probably won’t be achievable once I hit clinical years), and I only got 7 at most last night. Tuesdays are always tiring because of band on Monday night.

6:30am: Go to uni, same way as yesterday (drive to train station and then take public transport from there).

8:00am: Immunology lectures. We have two 45min lectures with a 15min break in between. Today, the two lectures are both on T-cell (a type of immune system cell) development and activation, and they are given by two different lecturers. There are a lot of details to take in and my brain is a bit too tired. Between lectures, I look at my schedule and realise that I only have two lectures in the afternoon rather than three, and get super excited.

9:45am: Morning lectures are over, so I go over to the children’s hospital, where I do some volunteer research work. I polish off a paper that I’ve been working on with a couple of coworkers and send it off to our supervisor.

11am: I reheat my lunch (leftover fish and rice from last night’s dinner) and munch on it while slowly working through Anki flashcards at my hospital desk.

12pm: Physiology lectures. Today, the lectures are on physiology of the central nervous system, such as how the parts of the brain work together to help us function in everyday life.

1:45pm: Get on the bus to start heading home- I’m still sleepy! A classmate sits next to me on the bus and I tell her that I plan to get a Krispy Kreme on my way home. She plans to get churros.

~2:30pm: Get a jam doughnut from Krispy Kreme on my way home from the train station. I eat it when I get home.

~3pm: 20min nap.

3:20pm: Start working on making Anki flashcards out of my notes. I have a penchant for procrastinating, though, so I alternate between making flashcards, looking at random stuff on the Internet, and writing yesterday’s Tumblr post.

6pm: Shower.

~6:30pm: Get back to finishing off making new flashcards and start learning the flashcards that I just made.

~7pm: Dinner. Tonight’s dinner is chicken kiev, potatoes, and steamed vegetables.

~7:30pm: Get back to my weird studying/procrastinating hybrid combo.

9:40pm: Suddenly remember that I have a mindfulness meditation on my to-do list for the day.

9:50pm: Finish off the last of the Anki new cards and do the mindfulness meditation.

10pm: Bed.

[beca-mitchell]

remember the day, pt. 8

Summary: To go back where it all began. Chloe-centric.

Also on AO3.

Word count: 4,348

Recommended songs: Jealous - Labrinth; Waiting Game - Banks

Check out this fic’s soundtrack here.

part 1 (intro/prompt) | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10 | part 11 | part 12

Chloe moves into her own place a week and a half later.

Leading up to it, Chloe notices that Beca tries to find reasons to touch her, whether it’s a gentle brush of her hand across Chloe’s shoulder or a nudge to Chloe’s leg with her own while sitting on the couch together.

It’s...nice. 

It’s more than nice. It makes Chloe struggle to restrain her blush every time Beca chooses to smile at her - smiles that she notes are happening with increasing frequency. 

In fact, things are just nice. They’re pleasant. Chloe enjoys the Phonetic Theory class she’s auditing and how she’s slowly easing her way into more administrative work at the clinic. The knowledge and routine feel more comfortable to her than ever before.

She finds it somewhat ironic that she previously worked with people who needed speech therapy, usually after undergoing a serious memory condition or physical trauma to their head after an accident. 

Meeting all the incredible people she works with and how many people’s lives they’re trying to improve, Chloe appreciates all the ways she had been lucky in her own life. Worthiness is hard to build, but completely satisfying in the end.

Still, sitting at work, Chloe finds her mind wandering, wondering what it’d be like to do more than occasionally hold Beca’s hand. When this happens, she lazily touches at the ring she wears around her neck, as if to ensure it’s still there.

(Her mind wanders at night too, but she’s less thrilled by that because the vividness of her dreams make her wonder exactly what separates fact from fiction; what she remembers and what she dreams.)

On this particular day, she’s in the process of organizing patient files when she swipes her finger against the edge of the paper, cleanly giving herself a tiny papercut. She winces, bringing her finger up to her face to inspect it. It’s a shallow cut, but a cut nonetheless.

She sighs, wandering over to the drawer with band-aids. As she’s putting on her band-aid, she thinks about telling Beca. She wonders if Beca will tell her how clumsy she is, like she usually does, recalling how- 

She pauses in her ministrations.

It amazes her how easily memories slip in and out of her mind these days - as if her routine has only relaxed her mind enough for her to allow memories back in.

In her mind’s eye, she sees Beca teasingly holding a band-aid just out of her reach. They’re sitting at a tiny kitchen table. There are more details, she’s sure, but they’re foggy and scattered.

It’s the feeling that comes with it, though. It’s so refreshingly familiar and natural.

She doesn’t fumble this time, however. She settles in and just lets the very random memory of Beca laughing and wrapping a band-aid around her finger wash over her. She doesn’t even remember when it happened or how long ago, just that it did and she can be confident in that aspect.

When the memory fades, Chloe thinks that she doesn’t need more. She doesn’t fight to hold on. She lets it slip into the recesses of her mind, slowly, like a dream. She just treasures the knowledge that she remembers something so simple and for now, that’s enough.

She goes back to work. 

It’s a perfect day.

  “What if we don’t work out?” Beca asks lightly, playing with the strands of Chloe’s hair. She’s watching the way the light kind of drifts in through the curtains and makes interesting patterns on the skin of Chloe’s back.

Chloe blinks one eye open to peer at her. She groans when she realizes Beca had spoken aloud. “What did you just say?”

“I...I don’t know. Don’t mind me.”

Chloe smiles and shifts so she can draw Beca into her arms. Beca tries not to think about all the wonderful, wonderful skin that’s pressed against her, instead focusing on the way Chloe’s embrace is comforting and safe. 

“You’re such a nerd,” Chloe tells her, pressing a kiss against her forehead. 

“I…What if we break up? You’ll find somebody new. You’ll start over again. You’ll start a family. Like...maybe we’ll be friends at best.”

Chloe’s brow furrows. “Are you...predicting my future?” It’s not quite the conversation about family and children she expected to be having with Beca.

“No, I don’t know. Whatever,” Beca mutters. She’s just a bit more tired than usual. 

Chloe smiles, enjoying Beca’s particular brand of, well, Beca this morning. “It won’t be like that.”

“What won’t?” Beca asks before she can help herself.

“All of it. I’m here to stay,” Chloe murmurs. 

She tilts Beca’s head as best as she can and kisses her, like it’s the first day of the rest of their lives. It’s a kiss that feels different somehow, like she’s kissing her for the first time again. “Try and get rid of me, I dare you. It’ll be hard, I promise.” 

Beca believes her.

  It’s around the end of January where Chloe realizes that her life needs to be kicked back into gear in more ways than one. 

She comes to terms with the fact that Beca is famous. Like, on her way to becoming a legitimate major celebrity. Chloe totally understands - Beca is ridiculously talented. Obviously, that would be a recognizable fact.

There’s a part of her that realizes that she doesn’t fit in this equation - at least not now. There’s a whole part of Beca’s life that she isn’t accustomed to; there’s a part of Beca’s life that she doesn’t remember anymore. 

And yet, the whole world seems to know something about her on some level, or it feels that way at least.

“You shouldn’t read those, you know,” Beca mumbles, tugging the magazine out of her grasp. She puts it back on the shelf.

“Why not?” Chloe asks before she can help herself. “Everybody else gets to read it and have some kind of insight to your life. Sometimes it’s insight into our life,” she tacks on before she can help herself.

It’s not bitter, not quite, but it still doesn’t leave a good taste in her mouth. She swallows the lump that forms in her throat. She’s not sure where it comes from. Maybe the residual longing for some glimpse into what they had together. Beca is tight-lipped about it on most days, but she will tell Chloe if she asks.

Beca turns, facing Chloe with curiosity and hesitation. It’s a common expression for her these days because the way Chloe looks at her is tinged all kinds of intimacy and familiarity that she doesn’t know how to proceed. As of now, Chloe’s words sound like jealousy, but Beca’s not too sure where the jealousy comes from necessarily.

She doesn’t say anything, taking in the way Chloe’s face looks a little pinched like she’s working through a migraine.

They don’t talk about it.

  Chloe finds herself alone on a Tuesday night.

She’s reclining on her couch, watching the Grammy Awards and keeping an eye out for Beca on the red carpet. It still throws her for a loop when she thinks about Beca’s fame and her general tenacity, talent, and work ethic.

All of this knowledge that she has about Beca only builds and builds until it threatens to overwhelm her and she finds herself blushing at the direction her thoughts take her.

She is attracted to Beca in more ways than one.

Like, ridiculously attracted to her.

She finds herself thinking about Beca at random points during the day, such as wondering if Beca would want to hear about her day or whether Beca would enjoy the soup in front of her.

It’s kind of inconvenient, really.

Still, the attraction all comes to a head when she catches sight of Beca on her screen. She can’t fight the smile that graces her face and immediately wills herself to remember this moment forever.

But-

She squints, wondering who exactly the woman with Beca is. She can’t quite recall that Beca worked particularly closely with anybody on her last album - an album which Chloe had listened to with a kind of hungry passion and dedication.

They take photos together - a lot of photos.

Chloe frowns, gripping her phone a little tighter because, well, she had thought Beca would go alone. Still, this could very much not be a date, but Chloe wishes that this unrecognizable woman would remove her hand from Beca’s back like it belongs there - not when Chloe recalls claiming that any award show dates would belong to her. It’s less of a memory and more of something innate inside Chloe that she knows to be true above all else.

She wants to be there. She wants to-

Oh.

Oh. 

The sudden recognition of the familiar and all-encompassing emotion - the recognition of this emotion that passes through her with lightning-hot intensity.

It’s jealousy.

It’s pure, simple jealousy. Likely the same kind of jealousy Beca had just a few short months ago in Portland. 

Chloe sags, her body releasing tension almost immediately at the thought. 

“I’m jealous,” she mutters, before silently gazing at the screen. 

Finally, she laughs.

She laughs and laughs and laughs and she kind of wants to cry because everything just feels a little bit more like she’s coming into her own body again; like she’s finally returning home after a long and tiresome journey to parts unknown.

All she wants to do is tell Beca, or maybe just scream into her pillow for a few minutes. She’s jealous and possessive and she’s finally letting all these wild, romantic feelings run alongside those less attractive emotions. Her chest physically aches at the sensation, but she doesn’t care. She just lets it overwhelm her and take her walls down with painstaking effort.

It’s not a memory, no. But it’s the simple fact that she wants Beca and she wants to date her. She wants to fall in love with Beca and learn everything about her. She wants Beca to be hers and she wants to start anew.

It feels normal.

"I like you," Chloe says aloud to her empty apartment. She tests it on her tongue, hoping, waiting, wondering.

It is normal.

That’s all it is.

(It is everything all at once.) 

 Thankfully, the push Chloe needs comes in the form of Beca herself.

“I have an idea,” Beca tells her one day when they’re doing grocery shopping. It’s something they somehow still manage to do together even though they live apart. It’s both an illusion and source of comfort for Beca because she can imagine that nothing has changed, really.

Chloe’s eyes flick across a magazine that has Beca’s face splashed across it casually. “What is it?” she asks distractedly.

Beca stops pushing the cart and puts her hand on Chloe’s arm. “Chlo,” she implores.

“I...I’m sorry. Mind just wandered off.” She smiles weakly. “What was your idea?” 

“I was thinking about what you said about the Bellas the other day. I...might be able to pull some strings with my dad and Aubrey and we can go back to Atlanta for a weekend. I’d...I’d invite the other Bellas too and whoever can come, so it doesn’t have to just be the two of us.”

Chloe bites her lip, glancing away for a moment. She wouldn’t necessarily mind being along with Beca, but at the same time, she gets that this gesture is more monumental than Beca’s letting it on to be.

“It was a silly idea,” Beca says quickly when Chloe has yet to respond.

“No,” Chloe says immediately when Beca moves to push the cart again. “No, Beca. It’s...perfect. I want to do it. 

The way Beca’s eyes absolutely shine at her tell her she made the right decision. 

It sounds like a relaxing weekend and maybe just what they need.

 Instinctively, Chloe thinks she should have known. It ends up being a little chaotic.

The moment they land, Chloe barely has time to deal with her headache when they’re being wrangled into a hug by Aubrey. Chloe can see more women behind her.

She counts four women - four ex-Bellas, she assumes - other than herself and Beca. 

“How did you arrange this?” Chloe asks, eyes sparkling as she takes in Beca’s sheepish expression. 

“She practically twisted our arms to get us to come,” a woman who Chloe remembers as Stacie says. “Hi Chloe,” she says, adopting a gentler tone.

“Hi,” Chloe says lightly. “I think I remember you from when you came to visit me in the hospital with Aubrey. Stacie, right?”

“Yeah.” She grins and shakes her hand. “We made out once.”

Chloe stares at her for a moment, contemplating. “Sounds about right,” she says, accepting it. Stacie is very attractive and Chloe recalls being able to get very drunk.

Beca makes a disgruntled sound. “I wish that wasn’t true,” she mutters. “I wish I didn’t witness it.” 

“Hi, Chloe,” another dark-haired woman says, raising her arms instinctively like she’s about to hug Chloe. She seems to catch herself and she settles on raising both hands in an awkward wave.

“I’m sorry,” Chloe apologizes when she doesn’t immediately recall her name. “Was...Emma?” she asks tentatively, feeling bad immediately. There’s something about this woman that makes her feel both protective and loving all at once. She seems younger.

“Oh right, you don’t remember me,” Emily stammers. “I guess that makes sense. I’m Emily, so you were close!” She looks like she’s grappling with a million different emotions at once. Chloe figures that she hadn’t been around when Chloe first woke up; she hadn’t been with the Bellas that managed to make it out to Los Angeles to help support Beca and Chloe.

“Wow,” Amy says, nudging Emily with a pointed look. “She must have had a head injury recently,” she offers sagely.

“Amy!” Aubrey yells, beating Beca to the punch.

“What? I thought Beca wanted us to be ourselves to make her feel better?”

“Not like that!” Beca yells back before Amy puts her in a headlock.

Despite it all, it makes Chloe laugh. She laughs and feels like she hasn’t felt in months: happy, free, and loved.

This is already making her feel like part of the family she never knew.

“I can’t believe they still have food trucks here,” Chloe exclaims, rushing forward so she can get a better look. “Wow, these trucks are really popular, huh.”

Beca nods, remembering many a drunken after-party and lazily sharing food with Chloe on brainstorming evenings. The food trucks are just off-campus, in the vicinity of all the off-campus housing that draws more upper year students than freshmen.

Supremely unhealthy, but very convenient.

“I’m kinda hungry,” Chloe admits.

Aubrey nudges her. “We could go to a restaurant.”

Chloe seems giddy, suddenly. She pulls at the strap of Beca’s bag. “Maybe we could get something from the trucks. Pretend we’re all in school again.”

Beca can practically feel sympathetic gazes boring into her back. She’s thankful - grateful - for Amy then, because Amy slugs Chloe in the shoulder. “That’s a great idea. I could do with a little poisoning.” 

Chloe trails after her. “I never got food poisoning.”

Amy grins. “That you remember.”

Stacie and Amy have made it their personal mission to play a twisted version of Two Truths and One Lie with Chloe’s memory. She finds it kind of fun, but she’s suspicious because they’ve told her three lies multiple times now.

She turns to Beca. “Bec,” she asks, voice verging on a whine. “Did I ever get food poisoning from the food trucks?”

“Don’t tell her!” Stacie yells.

“Yeah, you did,” Beca says immediately, sending a glare in Stacie’s direction. She receives a whipped sound in return. 

“Oh, remember that time Chloe jumped in the pool with her clothes on?” Emily asks, laughing. “That was one of my first interactions with you.”

Chloe’s eyes soften as she looks at Emily. Emily who stands so unsurely in front of her, yet, with hope in her eyes.

Chloe wonders how many lives she’s upended and how many more people she has forgotten along the way.

These are her friends-

No, they’re her family and fate was cruel enough to remove them from her memory. 

Beca sees the brief turmoil in Chloe’s eyes and quickly moves to her side. “Chlo, food?” she asks, pointing to where everybody is moving towards the food trucks.

Chloe smiles, appreciating Beca’s deflection. “Yeah,” she responds. She tucks her hand into Beca’s arm, tugging her along. “Want to split?”

“Sure,” Beca responds, thinking of many a late night spent hunched over a take-out container with Chloe and sharing food like it was their last meal. “Whatever you want.”

  They’re standing in a quad, surrounded by brick buildings.

The air is still; the night is quiet. They somehow managed to steal away from the rest of the Bellas as they opted to go back to Fallen Leaves to retire for the evening. 

Beca and Chloe are still on campus. Chloe feels full from more than just the food and snacks they consumed. She feels simultaneously aggravated by the mild headache coming on, but also full from the sheer excitement and love she had felt from her friends.

"Do you recognize it?" Beca asks, startling her out of her reverie. Chloe had inadvertently walked them towards the old dormitories. There’s a pull here that Chloe can’t quite place.

Chloe’s brow furrows. “Yeah, the freshman dorms. I stayed at Douglass in my first year, I’m pretty sure.”

“I stayed at Baker,” Beca murmurs quietly. It’s the building just to their right.

“It’s familiar,” Chloe says slowly. She doesn’t want to see whatever hopeful gaze Beca has directed at her even though she has been slowly getting used to it; getting used to that sensation of being watched and wanted, both driven by nothing more than love. Still, she thinks that she wants to see Beca happier. More full of life. The last couple of weeks have been close, but not quite. “...familiar like it's in the back of my mind."

Beca smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. There’s a shine in her dark blue eyes, but it’s something sad and heartbreaking.

"Is this place important to you? To us?" Chloe asks, amending it quickly at the end.

"Yeah. Yeah, I’d say so." 

Chloe waits, but Beca turns her gaze back towards the ground.

"You're not going to tell me, are you?" Chloe asks quietly in realization.

"I can’t get my hopes up. I’ve accepted it. When I kind of saw which way you were leading us, I just followed.” Beca shrugs helplessly. “Maybe I thought you’d remember something, but...I’ve grown to,” her voice cracks. “...accept that you really might not remember anything again except when it actually physically hurts you to do so,” she murmurs thickly, recalling when Chloe had terrified her by passing out. “We can make new memories.”

"I want to remember," she says, feeling like a broken record. It’s like her friends and family and Beca doubt her desire to remember everything. “I want to remember so we can just be us. New memories are great, but...this is part of who we were, Beca,” she whispers, with reverence. 

Oh, how she would love to love Beca like she once did. The two warring states of her mind rise to the surface again. 

This tentative relationship they’ve been building, it finally feels like it’s moving somewhere. "I...I feel like this means something to us,” Chloe says, looking back towards the smattering of first-year residence halls.

Beca watches her. All she feels is love burning through her, stopping somewhere where her hand itches to hold Chloe’s. Just once more. There’s something about the atmosphere that feels different between them. 

"Did we meet here?" Chloe asks softly. Beca’s silence tells her enough. “I thought I tried to recruit you for the Bellas with Bree? At the activities fair?” 

Beca laughs at that memory. She draws her jacket further around her shoulders as best as she can. It’s a chilly evening in Atlanta. “There was that. This was something a little different.” 

Chloe looks mildly irritated, but steps closer to Beca, reaching out to hold her hand again. Beca exhales loudly at the action, but doesn’t make a move to pull away. “Are you going to tell me?” she tries again. 

Beca looks up at her freshman dorm, letting the echoes of an impromptu duet fade in her memory. 

“Maybe another time.”

Chloe wonders faintly if she’ll ever be able to be exactly what Beca needs. 

Beca wonders the same - whether this will finally begin to work out. She feels hopeful when Chloe doesn’t push.

At that moment, Chloe thinks that she could imagine kissing Beca here - right on the campus grounds of where they first met. It feels poetic somehow, like it’s bringing to life a new chapter in their life together. They could use a blank page. Beca detaches their hands and begins walking down the pathway. 

“Beca,” she calls quietly.

Beca turns to face her, somehow looking younger than she has in a while. “Chloe,” she calls back, raising an eyebrow. 

“Beca, I have headaches everyday. My side still hurts, like a phantom pain from time to time.” She smiles ruefully at Beca. “I’m not the same person anymore. I’m not the same person you fell in love with and I think that’s really important that you know that.” 

"I know that,” Beca replies, brow furrowing. “You’re not the same person who fell in love with me. But the fact remains…” she pauses, taking a breath. “You almost died, Chloe. I almost fucking lost you forever." Beca looks like she might break at any moment. "You almost died," she repeats, quieter. Then, her eyes are alight with surprising intensity. "Guess what? I’m not going anywhere unless you fucking ask me to.” She inhales shakily and doesn’t make a move to wipe her eyes, instead focusing on holding Chloe’s hands firmly. “I just want to be with you, Chlo. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“To be with me,” Chloe whispers, just as Beca finishes with “to be with you.” 

It’s the most passionately Beca has spoken to her in months.

Silence hangs in the air between them.

Chloe walks toward her then, hands reaching out to hold Beca’s wrists. “Can I kiss you?” she asks, blunt and straightforward. “Would you mind, terribly?”

The look of surprise on Beca’s face immediately is replaced by one of hope and love. It shines and radiates out at Chloe with force. “Yes,” Beca says on a rasp. She clears her throat, still attempting to catch her breath. “Yes, please.”

“Like…” Chloe has to be sure. “Yes, you would mind?” 

"No!” Beca amends quickly. “No, I wouldn’t mind. Yes, please kiss me...if you’re sure, obviously.”

Beca looks like she might cry. All Chloe wants to do is kiss her. It’s all she has been thinking about for months. She has only just allowed herself to sink into that desire. She wants to kiss Beca and that’s just a fact of who she is.

Yes, she’s sure she wants to kiss Beca Mitchell. The most peculiar sense of deja vu rises in her, like she has had this desire before many times. 

So, Chloe does. 

Beca is glad that she had held off from kissing Chloe sooner. It wouldn’t have been right. But this - this firm brush of Chloe’s lips against hers...it is absolutely right. It is deliberate and slow, the way Chloe’s hand comes up to cup her neck, fingers sure and gentle as they weave into her hair. 

Beca shivers, allowing Chloe to tilt her head, angling their lips more surely together.

This kiss is knowing and gentle and loving and perfect 

Chloe likes the way Beca’s fingers flex into her back, like she’s resisting the urge to deepen the kiss too far, just on the verge of losing control.

When they finally separate, Chloe takes her time opening her eyes because she’s almost afraid of seeing whatever expression of hope and love is pouring out of Beca. There’s a fragility to the moment that makes Chloe exhale quietly, resting her forehead against Beca’s. Beca’s hands move to hold her waist.

“A second first kiss,” Beca says softly.

It makes Chloe tremble with all kinds of sadness, hope...and above all, faith that things will work out. 

"I can’t give you exactly what we had,” she murmurs, finally.

“I don’t need that, Chlo,” Beca says, still soft and careful. “I just need you. I’ve grown to accept that. I told you.” They separate further, but not before Beca cups Chloe’s cheek. She smiles when Chloe leans into her touch, eyes flicking up to meet hers. “Kiss me again,” she says before she can stop herself. She has been missing Chloe terribly and that kiss sparked something that she thought died long ago.

Chloe leans in again and their lips barely graze before she’s pushing Beca back gently. She wants Beca to know exactly what she’s in for because she doesn’t think she can turn back from this. Not again - not ever. “There are a lot of things that I can’t really do anymore - like being myself. I’m still learning every day what that means.”

“It doesn’t mean that I don’t think you’re an incredible person,” Beca interrupts. “I want to be with you.”

"Beca,” Chloe says, wanting nothing more to kiss her again. Beca is still breathing heavily. “I want that, too.” She closes her eyes imagining that finally the cold brisk air is kicking up around them, bringing with it all the heavy pain they’ve carried for months.

“How do you still make me feel like I’m nineteen again?” Beca’s voice is thick, like she’s on the verge of crying - not quite, but almost. “How do you manage to find ways to amaze me every day?” Beca asks, weaker.

Slowly, carefully, Chloe wraps her arms around Beca and holds her - truly holds her like Beca is something precious to be cradled. She feels like crying or maybe just sighing because it’s comfort and warmth all at once. 

“I don’t know,” she murmurs, pressing a kiss to the side of Beca’s head. She holds her close, relishing the warmth and how softly Beca sinks into the hug. “Maybe because you make me better,” she whispers. 

She’s not sure where the words come from exactly, but they feel right. 

Beca makes a soft whimpering noise, but holds on to her tighter. “Thank you,” Beca breathes letting her feelings run free once more. Her breath is warm against Chloe’s neck. “We will make this work. I promise.” 

“I believe you,” Chloe tells her, knowing it’s nothing but the truth.

tbc // my fics tag

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Imagine Jamie giving Brianna a birthday present for the first time in his life.

Sometimes the questions that Jamie asked Claire made her world tilt.  He would draw her handsclose to his chest. Warm fingers held cooler fingers over his heart.  His questions would electrify her love forhim while simultaneously make her heart ache for each moments that he had lost withBrianna.

After an ellipses of silence, in which she wouldcollect her thoughts and words, she spilled it all onto a quiet canvas.  Sometimes the memories were watery, requiring some measure of artistic license to construct a moment worth telling.  Still other memories were so vivid in her mind thatevery insignificant detail poured from her, splashing color, bold andintentional.

He wanted to know about their celebrations – the happiestmoments.

They covered Christmas. Presents, fat primary-colored bulbs, trees, and sweets.  She explained Thanksgiving. Turkey and tart cranberries, the parade with its balloons and bands.  First days of school and walks to the schoolbus stop. Tears streaking down cheeks and a pink backpack.  Summer camp. Mosquito bites, skinned knees, and bruisedelbows.

And then birthdays.  

Jamie wanted to know about Brianna’s birthdays and how theycelebrated.

Claire breathed an entire two decades’ worth of informationinto him, hands absorbing the pounding of his ascending heartbeat.  Her fingers heaved under the rise and fall ofhis chest as his breathing quickened and slowed, deepening and then goingshallow.

Birthdays in Boston were always the same, she explained.

No matter how late her shift at the hospital ended, she alwaysmanaged to clear the morning of Brianna’s birthday for breakfast and the afternoon for some sort of special trip.  Claire made pancakes and squeezed oranges into afrothy, pulpy juice.  She brought thespread to Brianna’s room on a tray.

“When she was really little, she would pretend to be asleep whenI came into the room. Oh, Lord, Jamie… she was so sweet. She would pretend towake up with this theatrical yawn…. Like she was up for an Oscar–”

“Say again?” he asked. 

Claire could tell, even in the darkness of their bedroom, that his brows werefurrowed.  The touch of whisky on theirbreath made her more flippant with her words – sometimes she avoided sayingthings about her time (mostly nouns, things he had never seen). She kept herself from telling him just so he would not feel like he was free floatingin her stories. She wanted to ground him in the feeling of missing out, not to sethim further adrift. But with alcohol in her bloodstream, his own touch heavywith intoxication, she was loose with her words.

“It’s a sort of… well, I guess… a prize for acting… theAcademy gives out–”

“Like a university academy?”

Claire sighed gently, arching forward and pressing her lipsto his forehead. Patience. “No, love.Not academia. Like… a group of important people who make films. You know… movies. I told you about–”

“Yes, Claire,” he interrupted. “I ken verra well by now what a movie is.”  

He paused for a long moment and only spokewhen it was clear that Claire would not fill the silence. 

“Anyway… Brianna and her theatrical yawn.”

“Yes, well, uh… I would sing to her and we would eat pancakeswith plates resting on our thighs.”

Jamie had always been the storyteller in their relationship –the vocabulary, the voices, the broad gestures, the openness as his entire bodygot into it, the facial expressions, the ability to captivate and suck everyonein a twenty-foot circumference into his gravitational pull.

But since being back, Claire had, out of the necessity ofsharing everything, grown into moreof a storyteller.

She wanted him not just to hear it and remember it, but to see it and have something imprinted in his mind.  So she shared the details of ruffled yellow curtains in Brianna’s bedroom, her pajamas with feet, the presents with bright paper and intricate plastic bowsaffixed with tape, and syrup-sticky fat fingers on a mother’s neck.

“I always had a plan, Jamie. Like… the zoo, a park, the movies, the equestrian center.” For a moment she was taken back, thinking of knee-high boots, a shiny mahogany horse with a jet-black mane. "She was such a beautiful rider – that longrope of hair peeking out of the small helmet, biting down on her lip like shedoes now. Watch her tomorrow, you’ll see–”

“I ken what ye’re saying,” he said, his voice a littleshort. “About her lip. She chews on it when she’s thinking.”

There were some things Jamie had learned about Brianna since shecame to the Ridge, and he was always quick to point them out to Claire. He needed toshow that he knew their daughter,too.  It was an almost instinct in him toclarify that he was watching, to makeit apparent that he knew things.

“Yes, well, she’s done that for as long as I can remember.”

Jamie sighed, drawing her hands up to his mouth and pressinghis lips over her fingertips.  “More…tell me more, Sassenach. I to ken everything.”

His plea brought tears to the corners of her eyes.  There were not enough lifetimes for her totell him everything, but she couldcomply with this simple request to the very best of her ability.  

And soshe did.

Claire explained that in her pre-teen years Brianna started to think that birthdays were “cheesy.” Claire told Jamie how she would pretend to think about whether Briannashould be allowed to play hooky from school (the answer was always “yes”).  Making a face to show him how she feignedsurprise when Brianna would shriek “it’s my birthday, mama!” brought such a beautiful laugh from Jamie’s mouth that she could not help but to smile. 

His laughter died when he vocalized a question: what role he would have played in this lifethat occurred without him?

After a moment, a solemnity, he urged her on. 

“It was like she thought I would have a random Tuesday orWednesday off of work… like I did not have a plan to celebrate.  God, Jamie. It was precious.” Claire lost herself in the memory for a moment – tryingto put words to it to help him understand – the rush of the pancakes, thewarmth of golden sunlight through sheer pink curtains, the softness of theirdaughter’s cheeks under a damp napkin as Claire wiped away syrup.  

“She had this little birthday crown with fake jewels.  I put it on her bedside table.  When Bree woke up she would go absolutely mad.  She would scream until she woke the wholehouse.  It was like she thought it hadbeen put there by a birthday fairy–”

“Hmph. Verra Scottish of her.  Faeries.”

Claire smiled and pulled their hands towards her face,pressing her lips to his work-worn palms. Left,then right.

Claire did not disclose that as Brianna got older, theentire thing took on a little less whimsy. Breakfast at the kitchen table instead of in bed. Crown dispatched to amusty box in the basement with remnants of other childhood memories.  She kept to herself that the show became less elaborate as Briannabegan to express preference for just spending her day alone.  (Shopping, manicures,sitting on the couch, seeing movies with friends after school.)

“And what of… him?”

“What about him?” Claire asked, her voice like a blade.Jamie rarely asked of Frank – knowing that it bothered Claire.  

“The man was her father, Claire.  Dinna pretend as if he was no’ her da.”

Frank also had a routine for her Brianna’s birthdays.  He would show up after work and pile gifts infront of her – hastily-packaged things wrapped in the college newspaper.  One present for each year of Brianna’s life.Records and candy, cash and roller skates, beautiful silk scarves and the keysto a car that they could not afford and had never discussed purchasing forher.  

Claire had a physical reaction to Frank – to his pile ofpresents, to the fact that while Brianna grew weary of Claire’s birthdayroutine, she never tired of hisbirthday attentions.

“I don’t know, Jamie. There were presents.  He lovedher.  What do you want me to tell you?”

That was apparently enough because she felt him shrug, thequilt over them shifting as he moved closer to her.

Claire told him about one of her last days in Boston before coming back through the stones. They hada makeshift birthday celebration.   They ate pancakes – Claire mostly pushing hersaround on her plate in a flood of syrup.  They wandered Filene’s, touching expensivesilk scarves, sniffing imported fragrance on little paper strips, lettingthe women at the cosmetics counter talk them into shades of lipstick they wouldnever deign to wear on anything other than a special occasion.  Claire left the lipstick in Brianna’scosmetics case when she went back through the stones.  They tried on jeans and sweaters that Clairewould never have an occasion to wear. 

Claire overspent, a function of guilt.

Brianna just accepted, a function of the same.

That evening, Brianna unwrapped presents while they sat cross-legged onthe floor.   Claire hadjokingly wrapped the deed to the house and various financial miscellany in brightpink and green wrapping paper. Brianna had offered only a short smile and asigh, setting the documents aside.

Brianna had indulged her mother in this final birthday –blowing out candles, gushing over a record (oneshe already owned), kissing her mama on thecheek and whispering “thank you”after they saw a movie.

Telling him these things, Claire felt his ache – felt it in her ribs, in herlungs. It radiated off him; it was contagious. She wanted to burst out withwords and touches to fix it, but she couldn’t. So she just nestled closer.  Jamiefell silent, his body settling flush to his wife.  He yearned for the nearness of her. Theirhands still twined together and resting between them, they fell asleep.

Brianna did not know what to expect on her first birthday onthe Ridge.  She wondered, in an absentkind of way, whether her birthday would even be a passing concern in theirhighly-regimented life in this place. After all, there were far more important things to worry about out here– day-to-day survival, planning for tomorrow. It was hardly notable that she had a birthday. It was just one day in a series of threehundred and sixty-five days.

She smelled pancakes when she woke.  Her body warm and slow, protesting atthe prospect of rising into the cold room. Blinking, she let the familiarity of the scent wash over and her heart leapt a little.  She had not expected the pancakes, but it wasclear from the sweet, bready aroma, that Claire was attempting them on theRidge. She gave her body a quick wipe down with a rag and lukewarm water beforedressing, arranging her hair in a thick braid that wrapped around her hairline.

“The birthday girl!” Claire sang when she heardfootsteps.  The fact that her mama could identify her footfall from the others who lived at the Ridge made her smile.  Claire was crouched infront of the fireplace, a wooden utensil working at the edges of a pancakecooking on cast iron over a low, almost-extinguished fire.

“Thanks, mama.” Brianna cleared her throat; her voice was stiff from a night of disuse.

“I’m going to give you a birthday kiss as soon as I finishup with this – cooking these without the benefit of a regulated flame… well…the animals will have a charred treat later.”

Brianna mused momentarily that her smile might crack herentire face apart.

When Jamie joined them, he kissed his daughter on the top ofher head.  “Happy birthday,Brianna.”  

Brianna’s heart skipped a little at the phrase, her name stillunusual and startling in his accent. It rebounded as an echo in her ears.  “Thanks, Da. Another year.”

“Och, aye, weel, when ye get to my age ye’re going torealize each year’s a blessing, lass.”  

Jamie settled in the chair next to her, reaching for a chunkof the salty ham that Claire had fried until the skin blistered.  Claire could tell that he had an absolute warin his head as they settled in to their first birthday breakfast together as a completefamily.

The pancakes were similar to her memories, but they drenched with honey and tart autumn berries instead of syrup and butter. Fresh, frothy milk stood in for the juice. And it was perfect.

Table cleared and morning chores done, aquiet Sunday unfolded like many other quiet Sundays. With a kiss, fingers lingering behind Claire’s ear, Jamie excusedhimself and slipped out of the house. “Dinna fash,” he had whispered when hermouth began to quirk with a question.

He returned and just watched them through the window. 

Theywere his whole life.  Bree was fiery andanimated, hands moving and eyes rolling. Claire laughed, her fingers working across the spine of the book shewas reading.  

When he entered, arms behind his back, he was suddenlynervous. He had been to war twice.  Hehad lived in a hell on earth, watching men starve and be taken by all manner ofdisease.  He had lost the love of hislife and been found again by her.  He hadchildren stripped from him – at birth, by circumstance, through time.  

And yet this moment – a simple one that she had shared before with another man she called “daddy” – was almost too much forhim.

“I’ve got somethin’ for ye, Brianna,” he started. The undercurrent quaking in his voice made Claire’s ears prick up.  She set her book side and leaned forward to watchhim.  Brianna turned on the floor and Jamie knelt in front of her, bringing the most beautiful bow Claire had ever seen from behind his back.

It was long and gracefully arced with striated tones wherethe tree’s rings had been sliced by a knife to carve it and mold it into theperfect curve.  Rawhide was drawn tight betweeneach end.

Jamie plucked the string with fingertips and it sang with strengthas it snapped back between the handholds. The sound reverberated with thepromise that it would kill for its owner, that the power it harnessed couldprotect and provide.

“Did you make this, Da?” The astonishment in Brianna’s voice wassomething that Claire had not heard in years – probably since before she was ateenager.

 It was pure wonderment at the gift.  

“Och, aye.  I ken it’sno’ much, but–”

“It’s beautiful.”  

She was all wide eyes, parted lips, mouth upturned at thecorners.  She accepted the bow from himas he held it extended it to her.  He slipped a leatherbag from his shoulder and removed a handful of arrows – obviously handmade but sturdy,long, and imposing with a pheasant fletching.

Jamie pressed a thumb on the tip of the arrow.  A drop of red bloomed into a globe on the tip andhe brought it to his lips.  

“Be careful, these’requite sharp.”

Resting the bow against her shoulder, Brianna took thearrow, turning it over and over in her hand, running her finger tips reverentlyalong the dusky feathers.

“I’ve done a little practicing with it, just to make sure it’s a braw weapon…”  Jamie’s voice trailed off, unableto take his eyes from his daughter’s face.

“Yeah?” Brianna asked, turning her attention to the bow againand laying the arrow across it, just to see its geometry.  “And…?”

“Och, weel, ye’ll have no problem killin’ with it.” Helaughed when her face broke with a full grin. 

“Da… it’s beautiful.” She set the bow aside and leaned forward on her knees, winding her armsaround his shoulders.  “I’ve not donemuch bow hunting, but I cannot wait.  Do you have one? Will you show me?”

“I’ve had one for a while, lass,” he said, absorbing thewarmth of her embrace as long as she would allow him the moment. The moment imprinted itself on him - the smell of her hair, the feeling of her long thin arms, the swell of pride in his gut for creating a moment.

“Can we go out and do a little hunting then?”

Exhaling deeply, feeling like he knew at least one more thing firsthand, henodded.  “Of course, lass.” 

[madam-lit-nerd]

OK BUUUUUUUT I don’t have enough high school Destiel in my life lately, so here...HAVE SOME HIGH SCHOOL DESTIEL!

So Dean transfers to Central High School at the start of his junior year, brand new and handsome with the sharp jawline and bright green eyes, and oh-so-mysterious with those brooding stares and leather jacket.

Cas, on the other hand, has been in the county’s school system since pre-school—same classes with the same kids for so many years. There’s nothing mysterious in the least about his wide gummy smiles and bulky sweater vests, always paired with askew glasses and perpetual bed head. Which, on some people would be sloppy, but on him, it’s all kind of...adorable.

Right off the bat, Dean’s earning quite a bit of attention from guys and girls alike, all staring at him with desire or glaring with jealousy. There are, of course, a few people who immediately try to ingratiate themselves to him, but he‘s met these kinds before—they always try to wiggle their way in, bathe in that new-kid spotlight with their too-bright smiles and too-loud voices.

And yet, between all the first-day, back-to-school outfits and makeup and hairstyles, all the flirtatious smiles and overt greetings...there’s one person who stands out to oh-so-cool, mysterious Dean Winchester: the disheveled kid with the gummy smile who grins at him from three lockers away and quickly tosses out, “I’m Cas. Lemme know if you need anything!” before rushing off to his next class.

A friendly interaction that’s not too overbearing is exactly what Dean needs, and he finds himself glancing over at that locker throughout the day, hoping for another moment. Turns out that, even though he never quite catches Cas at his locker, he does see him when he walks into the last class of the day (physics).

Cas already has several other students around him, laughing and joking as they discuss their summers, but as soon as Cas sees Dean, he pats the desk behind him in invitation. Dean smiles gratefully as he settles his long frame into the small desk, surprised yet grateful for the unexpected show of friendship.

They fall into conversation easily, almost as if they’ve been friends for years. But as Dean watches Cas interact with the other students who walk into the room, he realizes that this is just who Cas is, how he actswith pretty much everyone. He’s awkward and dorky, sure, but endearingly so.

Dean finds himself admitting that he’s kind of into music and maybe it’d be fun to be involved in a band of some kind. Cas smiles widely and tells him about Chuck and his band that meet in Practice Room C almost every day after school.

“They’re no Zep,” he admits with a little chuckle, “but they’re the only band we have here at Central.”

Dean blushes and says that he’ll check them out, earning another blinding smile from Cas.

After the final bell of the day, Cas walks with Dean back to their locker block, still as easy and engaging as ever. Dean can’t help but marvel at how many people pause to bid Cas goodbye, everyone from freshmen to seniors, top-rung athletes to low-rung nerds. And Cas is just as friendly and open with each and every one of them.

Once they’ve gathered their books, Cas points Dean in the direction of the practice rooms before heading off to his own Monday-afternoon club (something about recycling, from what Dean catches). Dean does find the practice rooms and the aforementioned Chuck, along with his fellow band members Gabriel and Cain and Crowley. He hears them before he sees them, and he’s surprised at how good they are.

He doesn’t know what to expect when he knocks on the door—in fact he’s pretty surprised that he actually works up the nerve to do so—but Chuck’s already heard from Cas, and immediately invites Dean to sing along with them for the afternoon. By the end of the rehearsal, they’re blending like they’ve been doing this for years, and Dean’s got himself a vocal spot with Aborted Apocalypse.

When Dean spots Cas in the hallway the next morning, disheveled and adorable in yet another bulky sweater, he tries to thank him, but Cas just waves him off with a simple “That’s what friends do.”

And, from what Dean observes over the next weeks, Cas is just as generous with...well, pretty much everyone.

First it’s the giant football player Gordon who runs up and scoops Cas into a giant bear hug bc he finally earned a B in his history class, all thanks to Cas tutoring him in his one free hour.

Then it’s the sketchy guy Sid who usually hangs out behind the gym celebrating April 20 every fucking day, shuffling up to Cas to mutter that he’s “got the stuff in his car.” At first Dean’s taken aback, bc he can’t help but wonder if Cas, well...but then it turns out that “the stuff” is the Tupperware containers that Cas used to pack a bunch of meals when he learned that Sid’s mom was in the hospital for surgery.

Then it‘s Bela sauntering up to inform Cas that their usual girls night at the movies will need to be moved to Friday instead of Saturday bc she’s been asked out on a date.

Then it’s Becky, a freshman who stumbles up sobbing bc her junior boyfriend broke up with her to ask Bela out on a date.

Then it’s some random sophomore asking Cas for a hug and a piece of chocolate bc they failed their world history quiz. Then the frickin school counselor stops by to ask Cas to sit in on an appointment with one of his friends (a term that literally applies to the entire school, as far as Cas is concerned).

And Cas—sweet, adorkable Cas who’s involved in so many extra clubs and volunteer groups on top of all this—just takes it all in stride. Dean can’t even begin to guess when the guy studies or does his homework, but he passes in all the homework that’s due and he aces all his quizzes (at least the ones that Dean grades).

When Dean finally asks Cas how he does it, how he manages to look out for so many people while still taking care of himself, Cas just shrugs and says something about “mom friend” before offering Dean one of the cookies he’d baked over the weekend.

It’s at this exact moment that Dean realizes that he’s falling for Cas. Pretty fucking hard. It doesn’t help that they’re spending more and more time together: studying for physics, hanging out at each other’s houses, binge watching Dr. Sexy, volunteering for events with the animal shelter (Cas’s idea). Cas will even sit in on the band’s rehearsals some afternoons and hum along as Dean flashes him funny faces and flirtatious winks.

And yeah, Dean tries dropping hints here and there, flirting and gentle teasing—everything that’s worked for him in the past. But, Cas seems oblivious? Honestly, truly oblivious. Whenever Dean flirts and tries to compliment his eyes or hair, Cas deflects and makes a joke instead. The couple of times that Dean asks Cas out, it’s misinterpreted as just . . . hanging out. It’s incredibly frustrating, to say the least.

But there are so many hints that maybe Cas does like Dean back? Like the way he always smiles so openly at Dean, with his entire face lighting up every time they’re in the same room. The way he goes out of his way to talk to him and spend time with him, no matte how many other people are vying for his attention. How he attends the band’s gigs once they start playing local venues...He even befriends Sam (which is a huge deal for Dean) bc they’re both in GSA. Which, that certainly sparked Dean’s interest when he heard, but Sam had to admit that he didn’t actually know if Cas was into guys, or just an ally.

It isn’t until Bela sweeps into an Aborted Apocalypse rehearsal on a Tuesday afternoon in November and shoves her perfectly manicured nail into Dean’s chest to ask, “Why the hell haven’t you made a move on Cas?” Which surprises Dean, bc he knew that Bela and Cas were close (an unlikely pairing, given...well, them. Apparently it went back to freshman year with Cas helping Bela through some family stuff) but he didn’t know that she’d take such an active role in trying to get them together.

He offers his entire list of excuses, from “Cas is the same with me as he is with everyone else” to “I don’t even know if he’s into guys.” Bela just rolls her eyes at every single one.

It’s only when she says, “You both can make up as many excuses as you want, but everyone can see how you’re into each other!” that Dean begins to consider the possibility that Cas might actually want him back.

But he still has to be sure. “Everyone can see?” he asks around the ball in his throat. Bela nods slowly, like she’s dealing with an idiot, and as Dean looks around, he can see the rest of the guys nodding along too, all with shit-eating grins. Well, fuck.

It’s then that he has to admit that none of his usual tricks have worked. And Cas is just so fucking friendly with everybody. Dean can’t believe he, of all people, is special to Cas.

Bela just rolls her eyes and drags Dean from the room to another empty practice room. She levels Dean with a stern glare as she threatens to “disembowel you slowly with my pinky nail if you so much as breathe a word of this to anyone, ever.” And then she tells him about Brady.

Apparently, Cas is gay, but his last boyfriend Brady (some dickwad who attends another school across town) spent the entire relationship actively convincing Cas that they shouldn’t ever break up because no one else would ever want him. And then when they did break-up, Brady blasted Cas on all the social sites, and at one point, even vandalized Cas’s car, spray-painting derogatory, hateful slurs across every surface. So Cas is understandably hesitant about starting a new relationship because of how Brady treated him.

But, the biggest reason he won’t let himself show interest in Dean is he still believes what Brady said. Regardless of how many people love and accept him at school and at home, there’s still a tiny part that thinks that he isn’t good enough. When Dean scoffs in anger and disbelief, Bela arches a brow and spells it out: unless Dean makes it super obvious that he’s into Cas like that...well, Cas will never make that leap on his own.

As Dean is just about to head back next door, Bela calls out, “He loves the Beatles, you know.”

Dean smirks back at her, “Give me some credit, Bela.”

That weekend, when Cas arrives at the little coffee shop the guys are playing (with Bela in tow), Dean makes sure to stop at their table before the show and compliment Cas on his new button-down. When Cas smiles up at him, blushing so prettily as he murmurs his thanks, Dean can’t help but brush his fingers over the back of Cas’s hand, sharing a long, soft smile before his giddiness carries him back up to the stage.

They start with their usual set—a couple songs that the guys had written before Dean joined, a song they’d all written together, a couple popular covers—all songs that Cas has heard before. But then, the last song before the break, Dean smiles right down at Cas as he says, “This next song is for my amazing best friend, who’s loved and appreciated by so many people...including me,” he glances down shyly as he admits, “Cas, there’s no one else I could sing this to.” He looks right back up into Cas’s shocked blue gaze, “No one else who I’d want to hold my hand.”

He nods to the guys behind him, and the bass line starts to thrum as Dean sings the first, low lines:

“Yeah, I’ll tell you something. I think you’ll understand, when I say that something: I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand.”

The tempo picks up as the others join in. “Oh please, say to me...you’ll let me be your man. And please, say to me, you’ll let me hold your hand. Now let me hold your hand. I wanna hold your hand.”

Cas’s cheeks burn a bright red, but he can’t seem to tear his gaze away from Dean—from his sincere eyes and kind smile—and Dean can’t bring himself to look away either. Everyone else, everything else, fades away. It’s just him and Cas as he sings the bridge.

“And when I touch you, I feel happy inside. It’s such a feeling that my love... I can’t hide...I can’t hide...I can’t hide.”

As Dean sings through the final chorus, he can see it in Cas’s face—the realization and certainty that Dean is singing this just for him.

When the song ends, Dean still can’t tear his eyes away from Cas. Chuck announces a short break, but it’s all background noise to Dean as he hops down from the stage and returns to his best friend. Their shy smiles match as Dean reaches down to intertwine their fingers together. Cas slowly stands and pulls Dean into a tight hug with his free hand, unwilling to release the hands held between them.

“I really do, you know,” Dean murmurs into Cas’s ear.

Cas pulls back just enough to let Dean really see his eyes. “I know. I’ve hoped, for so long, but I just...I couldn’t tell.”

Dean scoffs. “You couldn’t tell? You, who spends so much time looking out for other people—“

Cas rolls his eyes. “Yes, the mom friend.”

“Why do you keep calling it that?” Dean wonders, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Because that’s what I am,” Cas insists. “And no one wants to date the mom.”

Dean arches a brow. “Ever heard of Stacy’s Mom? Or MILFs? Or Mrs. Robinson? Or—“

Cas cuts him off with, “I get it, I get it.” He chuckles, brushing his nose against Dean’s. “I still don’t understand it, but I get it.”

Dean’s eyes drop to Cas’s mouth. “And you get me.”

“I do?” Cas can’t help but tease, but Dean chooses to respond with something that will erase all doubts. His lips meet Cas’s, somehow gentle and fervent and kind and sincere, each giving and taking at the same time.

When they finally part, to the sound of people clapping and cheering, Dean glances down at Bela and nods once. “Thank you.”

Cas looks down at her, his eyebrows arched in surprise. “This was you?” Bela just shrugs as she looks back down at her phone with a bored expression, “I was just so sick and tired of the eye-fucking.”

Years down the road, when Dean and Aborted Apocalypse have hit it big, Cas will use his sparse free time (you know, between his full-time job as a social worker and his classes to earn his second masters degree) to go see Dean and the others perform whenever they’re nearby. And every time Cas is at one of their shows, they play another Beatles song. But they never actually circle back around to “I Want to Hold your Hand” until the night Dean pulls Cas onstage to drop to one knee and ask him if he’ll hold his hand for the rest of their lives.

So I’ve kind of had this idea floating around in the back of my head for a while now (you know, high school nerds falling in love over music). I mean, I’d heard through the grape vine that Jensen could sing, but it wasn’t until I saw this video that I realized I had to write something with musician Dean. The song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was originally sung by the Beatles, but the version I picture Dean singing here is closer to this slow version from the Across the Universe soundtrack. Anyways, hope you enjoyed! As always, please like and share, as that is the lifeblood for us authors on here. Ok, byeeee!

[batwake]

Living Room Song - chapter 2/12

No one new ever moves to Derry, Maine.

The worst day of Eddie Kaspbrak’s life is the day that someone does.

read it on ao3

chapter 1

chapter 2: september - timeless

The first day of school comes and goes, and as does the week and the week after. The elusive Richard ‘my friends call me Richie, Mrs. Wakeman’ Tozier has not spoken a single word to Eddie, even though they’re both in Wakeman’s sixth hour psychology, but Eddie quickly decides that Stan was right about the guy being annoying, as he talks to anyone who bothers to look at him. People learned not to spare him the time after the first few days, and though Eddie is one of them, he can’t help but wish that the other boy would seek him out. They sit on opposite sides of the classroom, and Richie is always quick to bolt out the door, so Eddie never gets the chance to talk to him, even if he could work up the courage. His siblings are nice, though, and Eddie talks to them regularly. Neither of them ever bring up each other or their third sibling, so Eddie never asks. The only time he ever sees them together are at lunch, when they sit together in the back corner of the lunchroom.

On September 2nd, two weeks after school started, Sonia sends Eddie in to town to run errands. Since Eddie has gotten older she has become more lenient about her son going to town by himself, although she is wary and double checks that he knows their home phone number and can call if he needs her to come get him.

Eddie can understand the paranoia. It doesn’t bother him anymore.

So he goes into town. Picks up his and his mothers’ prescriptions from the drug store, and ventures into the grocery store. It’s quiet on this Monday afternoon, most people having already finished their shopping for the week. The only people working are the old woman that Eddie sees waiting at the bus stop every Tuesday and Thursday evening and an acne ridden teenager that Eddie vaguely recognizes as the kid from his freshman year world history class.

He beelines for the fruits and vegetables after grabbing a cart, picking four of every produce on the list his mother gave him, each one in their own separate bags. Sonia was always very specific about her grocery shopping, that was something that had not changed over the summer.

The speakers are playing some new radio hit that Eddie has heard a hundred times already, but he still finds himself humming along. He gets so wrapped up in listening to the song he doesn’t even see the cart appear in front of him before he is hitting it.

“Shit-“ Eddie starts, then covers his mouth. “I mean. Sorry.”

Richie Tozier, the man of Eddie’s nightmares, is laughing. His sister is glaring at him.

“Richard can you please pay attention to where you’re pushing this thing?” Eddie’s eyes flick from Richie to Margo. He has never really seen them interact before.

It feels a little like he’s watching two animals at the zoo.

“Margaret can you please explain to this fine gentleman what ‘look before crossing both ways’ means?” Richie shoots back. Margo turns to look at Eddie for the first time, and her face lights up.

“Hey, stranger!” Margo is wearing the same thing she wore to school, a dark blue sweater over high waisted white jeans. Her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail that Eddie thinks makes her look more like her brothers. Her green eyes stare all the way down into Eddie’s soul.

It’s a little unnerving, but Richie’s gaze saves him, because he speaks up next. “Edward, right? From psych?”

Eddie blinks, looking over to the tallest of the three of him. Richie is almost a full foot taller than Eddie, and Margo is even shorter. Still, Eddie feels smaller under Margo’s strong green eyes than he does with Richie’s warm brown ones. “Eddie,” he corrects, “but yes. I sit on the other side of the classroom.”

“Eddie. Eddie-Spaghetti.” Richie nods like he is making a mental note of it and leans his arms on the cart, bending so he is more at his companion’s height. “Are you that guy who was laughing in the lunchroom the first day of school?”

“Richie!” Margo snaps, elbowing her brother. Richie looks at her and mouths what?

“It’s okay. Yeah, that was me.” Eddie shifts uncomfortably on his feet. “That was the mental breakdown everyone was waiting to see.” Eddie assumes that they must’ve heard the whole story from someone else at school, otherwise Margo wouldn’t be so wary of the subject. He likes that Richie doesn’t seem to care about it so much.

Eddie takes the brief moment of awkward silence to study Richie’s attire. He clearly has a weird sense of fashion, or perhaps a lack thereof. Today Richie Tozier wears black jeans that have random patches of fabric sewn into them, bursts of color like yellow with purple spots on his thigh or rainbow stripes on his calf. His t-shirt says Freese’s in cursive text, and shows off his long arms, the wrists covered in bracelets. A few of his long fingers have rings on them, but Eddie has a hard time focusing on them. His broken-to-hell glasses top off the entire look.

Richie notices him staring and shoots Eddie his lopsided smile.

Warmth spreads to Eddie’s cheeks. “So, where’s Mike?” He says, desperate to change the subject from his mental breakdown and get Richie’s eyes anywhere other than Eddie’s hands, which twitch and fidget with the grocery list in his hands.

He earns two very different reactions from the pair in front of him. Margo rolls her eyes and focuses them on somewhere above and to the left of Eddie. Richie snickers and straightens up.

“Our dad has some conference a few towns over and took Mikey with him,” Richie says, his voice heavy with something that Eddie can’t quite place. “Margo is mega jealous.”

“I’m not jealous-“

“-she’s totally jealous-“

“-I’m just a little annoyed that he picked just him to go, that’s all! I mean there’s three of us. You can’t pick just one.”

Richie’s stance changes and Eddie wonders if Margo notices. He stands a little straighter, crosses his arms. The smile on his face looks tight and fake. “We know all about that-“

“Beep beep,” Margo snaps, holding up a hand. “We don’t need to subject Eddie to our family problems.”

Eddie’s a little lost. He doesn’t say that, though, just awkwardly laughs. “Beep beep?”

“People say that to get me to, quote en quote, shut the fuck up.” Richie throws a hand over his heart and leans over Margo, using his height advantage. “It really hurts mah feelins, Eddie-Spaghetti’,” he says in the worst southern accent that Eddie has ever heard. He laughs, and it is not to break the silence, nowhere near awkward.

“That was awful. And don’t call me that.”

Margo shoots Eddie a look, ducking away from Richie and causing him to stumble. “Try living with it.”

Eddie is smiling, and laughing, with people he doesn’t even know. He hasn’t done much of that in a long time. “Yeah, I hear he never shuts up.”

“Your mom wasn’t complaining in bed last ni-“

“Beep beep,” Eddie and Margo say together, and burst into giggles once more.

The three of them chat for a little while longer before Eddie says that his mother will be worried about him, and quickly departs, his cheeks red and sore from smiling. He does not dislike Richie so much, finds him fascinating. He is still a bit of a mystery, as are the other two triplets. The way Richie got cold when Margo mentioned separating the three of them, and Margo’s apparent jealousy of Mike being with their father. Eddie thinks of the Tozier’s, as he walks home, of Richie. Of his curly hair and stupid glasses and lopsided smile.

Eddie almost drops the bags when his heart speeds up at the thought of the other boy.

He has never walked home so quickly.

~

Eddie likes to think he is a good son. He doesn’t stay up late or sneak out, his friends are, for the most part, well-liked by his mother, and he has never done any drugs.

(He tried one of Bev’s cigarettes, once, but coughed the second he inhaled, and hasn’t touched one since)

Helping Sonia unpack groceries is just one of Eddie’s many good qualities. There aren’t many, with just two of them, but he worries about his mother spending too much time by herself. He thinks that she worries about him, too.

“I ran into some kids from school,” Eddie comments as he passes her a carton of eggs. “They’re new.”

Sonia hums and straightens, putting the eggs on the shelf in the door. “Derry doesn’t get new people very often.”

“Yeah, I think they’ve probably heard enough of that. They’re triplets.” Eddie pulls out the Froot-Loops and puts them in a cabinet.

Eddie feels his mother's presence next to him, like a hawk. “Bad luck come in threes, Eddie-Bear.”

It just got very, very cold in the room. “I know, Ma.” And he does- Eddie knows this too well. His mother’s little superstitions have always gotten the better of her. No shoes past the entryway, never open an umbrella inside, knock on wood, etcetera. Eddie just entertains her, at this point, afraid of upsetting her more than he already has.

Sonia pats the side of Eddie’s face while he stares straight ahead at the ugly wallpaper. “Don’t talk to them, Eddie, sweetheart. Only bad things can come from it.”

Nodding and swallowing, Eddie looks down at his hands that are holding onto a bag of potatoes. Sonia’s band moves from his cheek down to his arm, hovering over the bare skin. Eddie holds his breath, waiting for her to ask what she always asks when things get too quiet between them-

“How are you feeling, Eddie-Bear? Are you taking your meds? You can always talk to me-“

“I’m fine, Ma!” Eddie puts the potatoes in the cabinet next to the spices. “Really.”

Her eyes start to water, and Eddie immediately feels bad. They’re both still recovering from the summer. “I’m sorry, Ma. I had a long day. I think I’m going to go to bed. Love you.”

Sonia says something, but Eddie is already walking out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom.

~

The library after school is always quiet. Eddie likes going there to do homework instead of going straight home. It’s quiet, and there is no Sonia Kaspbrak hovering over his shoulder. Usually Stan or Ben are usually with him, but Stan had plans with Bill, and Ben was joining the cross country team this year. Eddie is by himself in the library for the first time of the new school year.

Calculus is hard, especially with the most boring teacher that Eddie has ever had. One thing equals another thing but only sometimes- it’s starting to get jumbled in his head.

Eddie checks his answer for the fifth time, and it’s still wrong. Groaning, he crumples up the piece of notebook paper and tosses it somewhere behind him.

“Hey, that’s littering, Spaghetti-Man.” Richie is suddenly sliding into the spot across from Eddie, holding the crumpled up piece of paper in his hands, reading the failed problem. “You’re using sine. You should be using cosine.”

Blinking, Eddie snatches the paper back, scanning the paper for his error. “Shit, you’re right.” He grabs his notebook and starts rewriting the problem, trying to ignore Richie’s presence. “I’m awful at calculus.”

“Clearly.”

Eddie glances up at Richie’s response. Richie is resting his cheek on his fist, pushing up his glasses just the slightest bit, revealing more freckles splattered across his face. They stand out more on Richie’s pale skin than they do on Margo’s, who is tanner than her brother by a longshot.

If they were not in a public place, Eddie thinks that he may have jumped across the table and began to count each one.

“What are you doing here?” asks Eddie, fighting the urge to say something stupid.

“Mike has AV Club and Margo likes going on runs around the school while we wait.”

There is a beat of silence while Eddie waits for Richie to keep going. He doesn’t.

“I didn’t know we had an AV Club.”

Richie shifts, his arm hitting the table once it gets bored with supporting his head. “It’s kind of Mike’s whole thing. Walkie-talkies and radios and the like. What about you, Eddie-Spaghetti?”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “What about me? And don’t call me that.”

His lips spread in the crooked way they usually do, giving Richie an almost evil look. “Okay, Eds. Why’re you here after school?”

Rolling his eyes and not bothering to correct him, Eddie shuts his notebook, deciding that he isn’t going to get anymore work done with Richie here. “It’s easier to get work done here than at home.”

Richie looks like he understands. “That makes sense. Are you doing anything after this?”

The question is so abrupt and unexpected that Eddie takes a few seconds to answer. His plans were just going home and hoping his mother won’t baby him, as well as waiting by the phone ready for Bill’s call that probably won’t come anyway. “No,” Eddie decides, figuring spending his birthday with a stranger is better than with his mother anyway.

“You are now!” Richie says, all too loudly for a library, standing up and grabbing Eddie’s calculus stuff and his backpack. “You’re going to show me all of the coolest spots around Derry. We have to take Mike and Margo home, first.”Margo and Mike home though. They like you, so they’ll let you sit in the front seat.”

Eddie’s eyebrows raise suspiciously. “You drive?”

The brown eyes behind Richie’s glasses glitter excitedly. “Sure do! Surprisingly I am the best driver in mí familia. They call me baby driver!”

Eddie’s face must read confusion, because Richie deflates. “Simon and Garfunkel? Bridge Over Troubled Water?” Eddie stares at him blankly. “Wowza Eds, uncultured much?”

Scoffing, Eddie stands up and holds his arm out in an attempt to get his stuff back. “Not all of us are music aficionados-“

Richie moves around him like a dancer, twirling and throwing and arm over Eddie’s shoulder. “They call me baby driver, and once upon a pair of wheels, I hit the road and I'm gone-“ he sings, his mouth close to Eddie’s ear. It sends a shiver down his spine.

“Okay, okay. I get the point.” Eddie ducks away from Richie, aiming another grab for his stuff. Richie is too tall and too fast, slipping away and towards the glass doors that lead into the hallway. “You sound like a dying goose.”

That’s not true, Eddie thinks. Richie’s voice sounds like the kind of thing you’d hear on the radio nowadays, on the rock stations his dad used to listen to-

“Spaghetti, you flatter me. Now. We’ll go stop by the AV room where Mike is then meet Margo somewhere outside.” Richie is out the doors within seconds.

Eddie’s head is still reeling from before, but he manages to follow, pushing his way out of the doors and jogging to catch up with Richie.

————————

They don’t quite make twin beds like they used to, Richie decides. When they were kids, the three of them could always squeeze into Mike’s without a problem, on the nights where their parents would fight well into the night and their mother would slam the front door as she headed out to the bar. But now that they’ve gotten older, Richie and Mike taller and lean with Margo curvy and filled out, it’s hard to find the right ways to lay so they can still be close.

The one benefit that they can all agree on is that at least, in the new apartment, they don’t have to sneak into Mike’s room. Margo just slips under the covers next to him. Richie doesn’t even have to touch the floor to squish in next to them.

Still, they all manage to fit somehow. Margo lays between her brothers, on top of them more than anything, her hair in a bun on top of her head so it does not get into anyone’s mouth. Richie’s chin is hooked over her shoulder, and Mike is on his side looking at them, up against the wall.

Richie pulls the blanket up over their heads, blocking out the sounds of the street below their window. All of their bedding are just sheets that they found at some hand-me-down store and quilts made by their grandmother, and no matter how long it has been since she died, Richie still thinks it smells like her.

“It’s weird being under here and not hearing mom and dad fighting,” whispers Margo. Richie has to agree- they haven’t done this since they moved. Since before the divorce, since the court ordeal.

“Dad’s probably glad to finally be getting some sleep,” Mike says into her cheek. “He never got that when he was with mom.”

Richie can feel the small laughs that Mike and Margo give. His blood boils, his skin crawls, the hair on the back of his neck stands up. He doesn’t say anything, for once in his life.

Wentworth Tozier always liked Margo and Mike better, for whatever reason. Maggie liked Richie. She listened to him when he cried and never ever blamed him when he would get sent home early from school because he got in a fight, or cursed out a teacher. Margo never connect with her namesake like a normal daughter did, and Mike thinks that their mother was trashy.

Richie saw her for everything she was, because she was the only one who did the same for him.

The last time the three of them had gathered under Mike’s covers, Richie had told them that he wanted to live with Maggie. Margo had pushed him out of the bed and Mike had started yelling, something that Mike didn’t usually do. Went had to come break them up at three am, and all three of them got grounded.

The judge didn’t allow siblings to be separated, much less triplets, unless it was special circumstances. The Tozier’s divorce was anything but. Maggie had gotten pregnant before she and Wentworth were even married, so they wed a month later and found out they were triplets two after that.

Went and Maggie were never meant to last. That much is true. It’s surprising that they made it sixteen years.

“They were in love, once.” Margo’s hand slips into Richie’s, which was resting against her stomach. It’s as if she can read his mind. Which, Richie reminds himself, she probably can. “At least, I like to think so.”

“Leave it to Margo to be the romantic,” Richie says, his voice soft and earnest. His heart hurts, although his words betray him.

Mike’s fingers find their way to Margo and Richie’s clasped ones, covering them with his own. It is comforting, despite everything.

If he cannot have his mother, Richie thinks that having his siblings isn’t so bad either.

~

Wentworth greets his kids when they come home from school with a simple hand raise from his paperwork, which is spread on their dining table. Margo greets their father with a kiss on the cheek and a barrage of questions about the work he’s doing. Richie isn’t interested, and plans on leaving the room and heading to their bedroom as quickly as he possibly can, but their conversation catches his ears while he is digging through the empty fridge.

“-nd Richie will have to go grocery shopping while Mike and I are out of town.”

Just catching the end of the conversation, Richie can already tell that Margo is livid. “That’s not fair! Why does Mike get to go?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mike retorts.

“Settle down, Margaret-”

“That’s not my name-”

“-Michael is coming and that’s final.”

Margo growls something incomprehensible and storms out of the room, and down the hallway a few seconds later, slams their bedroom door shut. Mike’s chair screeches against the floor as he stands and leaves, following Margo out of the room. Richie never understood why those two got along better than they did with Richie, except for when it came to their dad. They were always vying to be the favorite, leaving Richie behind in the dust.

Standing alone with his father, Richie looks awkwardly over at him. Went looks exasperated, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his forehead. A million things cross Richie’s mind to ask, but he settles on, “You got a grocery list?”

Wentworth digs through the stacks of paper for a few seconds, looking for a spare piece to scribble down everything they need. He finds it and does so, passing it to Richie, along with a twenty dollar bill. “That should be enough.”

Taking it, Richie nods. “Thanks.” He spares one last look over his shoulder at his father, who has returned to his work, then leaves the kitchen. “Good talk.”

Richie finds Mike standing in the hallway outside of their bedroom, hitting his fist against the door and twisting the knob every few knocks. “Margo you’re being completely unreasonable-”

“Just leave her alone, Mikey, clearly she’s upset that she’s not the favorite today.”

Mike shoots Richie a devilish glare, shaking the knob as he does so. “Just because you and dad don’t get along doesn’t mean he plays favorites.”

“Sophie’s Choice, that’s all I’m saying.” Richie gets close to his brother, talking his own turn at hitting the door. “Are you coming with me to the store or not?”

Neither boy expects it to swing open, but it does, revealing their sister. Margo wipes at her face, shoving past the two of them and out of the apartment, presumably to Richie’s car. The brothers sigh at the same time, then share a look.

“See you, Rich.”

“Bye Mike.” Richie follows his sister out of the apartment, ignoring whatever Mike says after him.

~

Eddie is visibly uncomfortable in the passenger seat of Richie’s car, having offered the spot several times to Mike and Margo, who sit in the back and chat idly with him. He fidgets with his seatbelt and stares nervously out the window as Richie pulls out of the school parking lot, as if waiting for something terrible to happen.

“I told you I’m a good driver, Eds.”

Margo and Mike both laugh as Eddie whips around to look at Richie, his eyebrows raised and his eyes wide. “Don’t call me that.”

Richie pays extra attention to his driving for once, stopping for longer than necessary at stop signs, staying below the speed limit, and keeping his eyes on the road instead of looking at Eddie, like how he wants. Out of the corner of his eye, Richie can see Eddie’s grip on the door loosen with every passing second.

When they finally pull into their apartment parking lot, Eddie looks up at the building. “My friend Beverly lives here.”

Richie parks and grins wildly. He and Beverly have PE together, and smoke outside during lunch together. “Miss Marsh! I love that girl.”

Margo pats Eddie’s shoulder, signaling that he needs to get out so that her and Mike can get out of the car. Eddie does so, opening the door and stepping onto the sidewalk next to the car.

“Bye, Eddie!” Margo says cheerily after she and Mike have both gotten out.

“Have fun on your date.” Mike winks at Eddie, then heads inside with Margo. Richie can feel his cheeks turn pink, and worries briefly that Eddie is offended.

He doesn’t appear to be as he slips back inside. Richie reaches towards the seats in the back for his cassettes, hiding his pink face for a few moments, looking for one in particular.

“Aha!” He cheers, emerging and holding up his most prized tape.

Eddie takes a second to read it, then smiles. “Bridge over troubled water.”

Richie shifts in his seat and puts it into the player, backing out of the spot as the car processes the tape. “I love this album,” he says, not mentioning that is was a gift from his mother, the day that they moved. “I could listen to it forever.”

Art Garfunkel starts singing the opening verse and Richie hums along, stopping at the turn out of the lot and awaiting Eddie’s directions.

He takes a few seconds to think, then says, “turn left and head down Mile Hill. We can go to the quarry.”

“Sounds exciting,” mutters Richie to himself, doing as he is told. He continues humming, and feels Eddie’s eyes on him.

They pass by all of the stores and enter a more residential area that Richie hasn’t been down before.

“Down that street is 29 Neibolt. It’s totally haunted.” Richie can hear the shakiness in Eddie’s voice.

“Why do people say it's haunted?” Richie glances over at the passenger seat and hopes that Eddie doesn’t chew him out for it. But Eddie isn’t even looking over at him, just out the window.

“When we were like, thirteen, a bunch of us went in there.”

“No shit!”

“Yes shit,” Eddie grimaces, but there is almost a laugh in his voice. They are well past Neibolt street, yet he still seems shaken. “We got seperated and I fell through the floor and broke my arm.”

In an attempt to cheer him up, Richie jokes, “what, did a ghost push ya?”

Eddie just huffs. “No, dumbass.” Finally, he looks back over at Richie. Averting his gaze back to the road, Richie tries to keep his eyes on the road. “It just seems like… the house was purposefully separating us, you know?”

He doesn’t.

“There’s this old science facility in my hometown that everyone says is haunted. Says some crazy experiments on kids and shit went down in there.” Richie glances once more over at Eddie, who is still looking at him. “I was never brave enough to go in. I’ve heard stories from people who did, though.”

Eddie raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Really.”

“Mhm. Mike and his friends went in one time. Found a bunch of old records of these freaky kids-“

“This is so fake.”

“It’s not!” Richie defends, laughing, but is sure that it is. He wouldn’t put it past Dustin or Lucas to pull that kind of shit and swear it's true until the day they die.

Quiet befalls them, after a few moments of laughter. “There’s a dirt road you turn onto, up here.”

The ride gets bumpy as Richie does so, then stops once Eddie tells him to. The duo get out of the car, and the sound of shutting the doors echoes through the trees that now surround them. Richie notices a cliffside, and heads over to it, raising his eyebrows. “You trying to kill me, Spaghetti?”

“If you keep calling me that, I will.” Eddie joins Richie at the edge. “The Losers always come here during the summer to jump off or play loogie. Usually I just go down to that rocky area down there and wait for the others-“

Richie holds his hand up. “Wait, why don’t you ever jump?”

Crossing his arms across his chest protectively, Eddie takes a few steps away from the cliffside. “Because I don’t have a death wish.”

“You’ve never jumped?”

Eddie shakes his head no.

Richie claps his hands together, making Eddie jump. “Well, today is your lucky day, Spaghetti. We are jumping off this cliff right now.”

A beat of silence. Then, “you’re fucking kidding me. I shouldn’t have brought you here.” Eddie turns and starts to walk back to Richie’s car, but stops when Richie reaches out and grabs his hand. Richie notices that it is shaking.

“Come on, Spaghetti-Man. It’ll be like a baptism. New school year, new us!” Richie lets go of Eddie’s hand, reluctantly, and shrugs off the jean jacket he was wearing and starts to kick off his shoes.

Eddie turns slowly, staring at Richie has he removes each layer of his clothing. After the shoes, Richie removes the belt from his acid wash jeans, then his yellow t-shirt. As his hands go to the hem of his jeans, Eddie speaks once more.

“If I jump will you stop calling me those shitty nicknames?” Richie notices that Eddie is looking anywhere other than him. “And don’t tell the others?”

“Sure,” Richie promises, almost letting Eds slip out of his mouth. He holds out a pinkie, keeping his other hand at his jeans.

Rolling his eyes, Eddie steps forward and slips his pinkie into Richie’s. “I hate you.”

Richie grins and pumps their hands up and down once, sealing the deal. “Nah that’s wha I’m talkin abaht!”

Eddie pulls his hand away, his shaking hands going to the sleeves of his t-shirt around his wrists. “That accent is awful.”

Sensing that Eddie is uncomfortable, Richie turns to face he edge and swiftly takes off his jeans, leaving him in just his plaid boxers. He places his hands on his hips and stares out at the glittering water fondly. It is a bright bluish-green underneath the sun, and perfectly flat, like glass.

Eddie materializes next to Richie after a minute, his chest and legs bare.

Richie scans Eddie’s small body. His skin is slightly tan, like he spent the last few weeks of summer outside, and his shoulders and arms covered in freckles that his face lack. His arms are crossed tightly to his chest, hiding the scars that Richie knows are there. They don’t cover the ones on the thighs, which are white against his sun-kissed skin.

“Staring is rude,” Eddie snaps, making Richie avert his eyes.

Richie leans over the side, his cheeks pink and mirroring Eddie’s. “Briefs; I approve.”

“I fucking hate you.” Eddie reidderates, stepping backwards and going towards his clothes.

“Nuh-uh! You promised.” Richie grabs Eddie’s wrist, making him wince, tugging him back to his side. “We can jump together.”

Their brown eyes connect, something passing between them. Eddie sighs, looking away. “Okay. Whatever.” Clasping their hands together tightly, Richie pulls them up to the edge, their toes hanging over. Eddie’s palms are shaky and sweating. “You aren’t going to take your glasses off?”

Richie shrugs, taking a deep breath. “You ready?”

“No,” Eddie says, his voice dripping honesty and fear. “You?”

The distant sound of a highway and birds chipping fills Richie’s ears, but Eddie’s voice comforts him. “No,” he admits. “This isn’t even the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

“I believe that.” Richie feels Eddie squeeze his hand. “I broke my fucking arm falling through the floor.”

A laugh bubbles in Richie’s chest. “On the count of three.”

Eddie nods. “One…”

“Two.”

There is a beat as Eddie hesitates on three. Then a yelp as Richie is tugging them both off the side. Richie doesn’t even get to think about how funny Eddie’s scream is before they’re both hitting the water, shattering the glass surface. It’s cold, Richie realizes first, then, Eddie’s hand is gone. Richie breaks the surface, pushing his hair away from his face and his glasses up onto the top of his head. Eddie is already up, gasping for breath. “You fucking suck, Tozier.”

“Your mom wasn’t complaining about it-”

Richie chokes and sputters on the water that Eddie splashes at him. “I can’t believe you made me do this, I could’ve died-”

“But we didn’t!” Richie says cheerily, staring at the blur that he knows is Eddie. “You jumped off a cliff with someone you’ve talked to a grand total of once before today!” Richie floats on his back, staring up at the shifting clouds.

Eddie’s hands push at Richie’s side, moving them towards the shore where The Losers usually hang out so that they can actually stand up. Richie lets him, closing his eyes and the corner of his mouth turning up. “Can’t keep your hands off of me, huh, Eds?”

“Didn’t you promise to stop calling me that?”

Richie moves to place his feet on the ground now that they can, keeping most of his torso under the water, just his head and shoulders above the surface. He stares up at Eddie, who is still a blur, but Richie thinks he might be almost smiling. “What would you rather I call you? Baby? Dear? Sweatpea, darling, loverboy-”

“Richie, can I tell you something?”

Richie stops his teasing, furrowing his brows. He nods his head aggressively so his glasses fall off his head and down onto the tip of his nose. Eddie pushes them up before Richie can even get to it, then drops his hands so that they rest on Richie’s warm shoulders. “Yeah, of course you can.”

Eddie crouches down so that he is at eye level and is also mostly underwater, keeping his hands on Richie’s shoulders. Richie expects some sort of confession, like about the scars on his arms and thighs or why everyone at school seems to treat Eddie like he’s a glass house just waiting for a rock to be thrown.

The breath that Eddie sucks in is shaky. “It’s my birthday.”

He has to laugh. Richie leans forward a little, not believing that Eddie made a big deal out of that. “Okay? Happy birthday?”

Eddie is moving away before Richie can truly appreciate how close they are. “I just... It feels like a big deal. For some reason.”

Richie can read between the lines, he isn’t stupid. Eddie is telling him, I didn’t expect to make it this far. Eddie is still under the water, but if Richie squints, he can see the lines that Eddie is trying hard to hide from him. Richie has heard some of the things people say about Eddie- but most of them contradict each other. He won’t pry, not yet. Today, he will just support his new friend and call him stupid nicknames.

“Every birthday is a big deal to Richie Tozier!” Richie exclaims, moving to toss an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, and begins to sing a terrible rendition of For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow, making Eddie laugh but not shove him away.

They go underneath the water once more, together, and this time, they do not separate.