#but even that was so different & broke such a routine that it makes her stick out in my mind

[earlyspringtranscendence]

currently 500 pages into rhythm of war, am enjoying the things im enjoying very deeply (mostly shallan and adolin. and veil and radiant and shallan’s dynamics. and kal but thats easy because he’s my favourite character and besides isn’t even hitting that hard in this one its just that everything he does is everything to me) but so much of it also is just such a slog and idk if it’s me because i usually set aside a day to read like 80% of the book in one go or if it’s the fact that a friend has now also read stormlight and shared some opinions w me that i dont disagree with or if its the book itself but like. navani is such a boring POV character and adolin’s reduction down to his fashion sensibilities is a snore and the bridgemen are practically absent so kal doesn’t even have anyone to endear him even more to me and even venli’s just too like. cautious to have anything going for her. like fr the only person i don’t have any sort of a complaint towards as of rn is shallan

[dontsh0vethesun]

the christmas fair

part four of home for christmas

natasha romanoff x reader

The hallmark movie inspired Christmas story that nobody asked for.

Natasha Romanoff fell out of love with Christmas, but perhaps a certain someone could help her find the festive magic once again.

Coming home to her small hometown from her life in New York City, the children’s author is reunited with the people of her past; some are happier to see her than others.

But, will rekindled relationships inspire the Christmas story she’s struggling to write? Or will she go home empty handed?

fluff, friendship, an attempt at humour, cringe of course, brief angst?

wc: 3.1k | part one | part two | part three | part five

Wanda’s arm wrapped itself behind your back as she took her place beside you on the sofa, supplying you with a cup of hot chocolate whilst Monica, Carol, Kamala and Kate sat around you too. It was routine for the group of you to get together after a date and this instance was no different, despite it not being your regular topic of conversation, a debrief of yesterday was a must. 

“Not to just jump right into the elephant in the room,” Kamala spoke. “But, she kissed you?”

“I can’t believe her,” Monica sighed. She's been strongly supporting your side since the beginning - as had the others - and she wasn’t giving the redhead the benefit of the doubt. To her, she is the one that broke your heart and nothing else. 

“Did you kiss her back?” Kate smirked. She, like Wanda, was willing to see the more optimistic side of the situation. Though they’re completely in your corner, with that also comes their desire for you to be happy. They’d attempt to beat Natasha up if that’s what you asked but they will also give her a little leeway - if that’s what you think she deserves. Your happiness is of the utmost importance to them all and they will support you with whatever choice you make. 

“I may have,” you mumbled, hiding your heated cheeks behind your mug. 

“Of course you did,” Carol laughed, stretching her leg as far as she could to give your knee a teasing nudge. 

“Was it a good kiss?” Kamala asked through a smile. All of your friends seemed to find much amusement in your embarrassment. 

“It was- I mean - it was a kiss, y’know?” you bumbled out, really hoping for a slight topic change to cool the way your skin had begun to burn beneath their teasing giggles. 

“So it was pretty good, then,” Monica smirked, laughing at the way you tried to hide behind Wanda’s shoulder. 

“God, I dunno,” you sighed. “It was good but I don’t know what that means - if it means anything. I don’t know if it changes anything for me and I don’t know if I want it to.”

“That’s okay,” Wanda spoke. Her voice was soft and the epitome of support and one glance at the softened eyes of your friends was enough to make your heart swell. 

“Yeah, we’re all here for you - no matter what,” Kamala nodded, receiving hums of agreement around the room. 

“We all know she broke your heart,” Monica added. “Whether you admit it or not.” She looked at you with a faux sternness with that, cutting off your murmurings of denial before you could even attempt them. “I, for one, do not like her. I hate her for how she left you but I can be civil-”

“I’m not sure that look you gave her the other night was ‘civil’,” Carol laughed and the woman couldn’t even deny it, she only shrugged with a huff of a laugh. 

“She deserved it,” she returned. “My point is, I’m completely on your side. If you want her to go back to New York next week and never come back, I’ll keep her away. If you figure out this mess you’ve got going on and you decide she’s changed - that she’ll fit into your life - I will stick by you.”

“Mhm,” Wanda nodded. “We’re fighting in your corner. This is your life, don’t let anybody else dictate your decisions. It’s about your feelings.”

“I’m sure we could all gang up on her for a fight,” Kamala added, making you all laugh at the clear determination on her face. 

“I could finally put my archery classes to good use,” Kate spoke. 

“Alright,” you laughed. “I love you all but I’m not sure any of that’s necessary yet. I just - I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never felt so torn, y’know? It’s such a mess right now,” you groaned. “I want your honest opinions. What do I do?”

“Tell her to get back on her high horse in New York,” Monica spoke.

“I say, give her a chance,” Kamala stated.

“Me too,” Kate agreed. “You’ll never know for sure if you don’t explore it all.”

“While I think second chances are nice and all, I say you let us send her packing,” Carol spoke, making you all laugh lightly at the way she mockingly showed off her muscles. 

“I think you should give her a chance,” Wanda smiled, she knows you best and she can see that glint in your eye. “But don’t give her a chance for her, do it for you. You deserve to know if she can give you what you deserve. I joke around with the ‘hopeless romantic’ thing but you know it’s just because I wanna see you happy. I’ll be with you every step of the way and I’ll help you pick up the pieces if it doesn’t go how you want it to. But I love you too much to just watch you give up a chance on something that could make you happy.”

“Okay,” you nodded, swallowing thickly at the tears that dared to bubble beneath the surface. “You’re the best friends a girl could ask for, you know that right?”

“Of course we do,” Monica grinned, stepping over to you to pull you into a hug. 

She was quickly followed by the remainder of the group, soon barely able to breathe, crushed within five pairs of arms. You’d have it no other way. 

“How about we take a night off from the Romanoff situation and go to the fair?” Kate questioned. 

—

An hour later, the six of you were fumbling around with skates on your feet, trying your hardest to stay upright on the ice. It was the perfect way to forget about everything burdening you, it was difficult to focus on much else besides the mere act of not falling flat on your face. 

Of course, to your luck, Yelena had decided to accompany her sister to the annual town fair right at the most inopportune time. You didn’t notice each other for a while, being fortunate to avoid one another at first. Little did you know, Natasha and her sister had been having a similar afternoon with a conversation surrounding you. She too, was attempting to steer clear for the time being, hoping the pair of you could organise your thoughts a little better before coming face to face again. 

But, during an attempt to amuse your friends by separating from the onlooking group to try your hand at some kind of spin that would have them in awe, your body collided with another. The solidity of a leather jacket-clad torse was a relief compared to the frozen ground you’d expected to land on when you stumbled. 

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” you hurried out, instinctively grabbing onto the arms that held you upright. “I- Natasha?”

“Hi,” she smiled. It was an observably awkward upturning of her lips but it was a smile nonetheless. “Fancy bumping into you here,” she laughed. You saw how it turned into a genuine chuckle when you laughed at the comment too. 

“It was a graceful fall at least, right?”

“Like a ballerina,” she lied. You both knew you’d almost taken down a couple of other people with you but that wasn’t the point right now - you were practically begging her not to make fun of you. It was almost like before.

“What’re you doing here? I mean, you’re at the fair obviously - but what are you - are you here with Lena?” you stuttered out, regretting the short glance towards your staring friends who failed at hiding their amusement at the scene playing out in front of them. 

“Yeah, she dragged me out here,” she laughed. “It’s almost as fun as I remembered.”

“Almost,” you whispered, voicing your thought aloud when you meant to keep it in. She looked at you fondly, remembering the way she’d used to do this all with you and you broke your inquisitive gaze with a clearing of your throat. The silence had lasted a little too long for your liking and Wanda skated over at just a glimpse of eye contact with you. 

“Hey, Nat,” she nodded.

“Oh, hi.” She’d clearly forgotten she wasn’t existing in a moment that only the pair of you shared and her cheeks flushed pink as she let go of your arms - neither of you realised you were still holding onto the other. 

“Sorry to drag her away but Kamala wants more hot chocolate.”

“Oh- right- yeah,” she nodded. “I’ll see you around?”

“Sure,” you smiled before letting Wanda guide you away. 

—

“Okay, scale from one to ten, how awkward was that?” Kate asked you. “It looked like at least an eight from where we were.”

“Surprisingly, I’d give it a six,” you answered before taking a sip of the sweet drink in your paper cup. 

“That is a surprise,” Monica returned. She was pleased that it hadn’t resulted in a need for a duel right there and then and that you were smiling bashfully at the thought of it. “I’d have put it at a nine. You literally fell into her, even I was embarrassed.” 

“God, don’t make me think about it,” you grumbled. “I saw my life flash in front of my eyes.”

“Anything seeming a little clearer yet?” Wanda asked, bumping her shoulder into yours whilst you made your way over to the ferris wheel. 

“Maybe,” you shrugged. “I’m not sure - I’m hoping to just avoid her for tonight and think about it tomorrow.”

“You do love to procrastinate,” Carol half-joked, as you joined the queue. 

A while later, practically shivering in the cold, your breath forming in puffs of white before you, the line had shortened enough for you to make your way onto the ride. Carol paired off with Monica and Kate with Kamala but you had your seat stolen by some queue-jumper you could’ve rugby tackled on the spot. 

You shook your head at Wanda just before she went to verbally attack them - you didn’t want to be banned for life. 

You waited for the next available seat to make its way to you and felt the freezing metal through your jeans, instantly regretting agreeing to come on this ride at all. 

“I can sit somewhere else if you want me to,” a voice rasped in your periphery. Natasha. Her hands were pushed into her pockets as usual and she inched away as though she knew your answer before you uttered it. The relieved grin she gave you when you patted the space next to you almost made you swoon; that smile almost made you forgive her on the spot. God, does she know how much she affects you? 

“Of all the ferris wheels in all the towns, you get onto mine,” you smiled, revelling in the laugh she let out at your quotation of a movie you’d shown her years ago. 

You let yourselves sit in the quiet as you lifted higher and higher off the ground. It wasn’t so uncomfortable this time. As though you’d both started to untangle the entwined and knotted mess of feelings about each other. Like the tension of a coiled spring beginning to loosen. 

Seeing the town from this high up was picturesque; you could pinpoint houses, and places where memories were formed. She pointed out the part of the place you both called home where she’d laughed at you falling off a skateboard until her cheeks hurt. She brought it up for years afterwards and just a gesture of her hand in the direction of the spot was enough to make you gently shove her. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she grumbled as the metal of the wheel groaned and you were left stationary in the air, the cold breeze against the tip of your nose from the highest point you could be. 

“Oh god,” you sighed, hearing the ride conductor shout up an apology and an approximate of ten minutes until you’d be let down. You laughed at the thought of Wanda stuck beside a stranger she’d taken an instant disliking to. 

“Guess we’re trapped for a while,” she breathed, resting her arms on the bar in front of you with her hands fidgeting familiarly. 

“Could be worse,” you laughed to ease the tension. “You could be Wanda.” 

You nodded your head downwards to where your best friend was suspended in the air, positioning herself so far away from the boy beside her that she was practically falling off. Natasha laughed wholeheartedly at the sight. You both did and it brought up thoughts of the past, how it used to be, which made you think of the fact that she was truly here. 

“How come you’re back?” you asked, turning as much as you could to challenge yourself to actually look her in the eye. “Not for the holidays - I mean, you just never come back. What changed?”

“I have to write a book. A kind of Christmas-themed one and, what better place to get inspiration than right here?”

“They got the twenty-first century Scrooge to write a festive children’s book?”

“Oh, shush,” she laughed, poking at your arm at the way you’d faked a gasp at her statement. 

“I thought that, maybe, forcing myself to come back here would spur something on inside me, y’know?” Natasha shrugged. “This is my home. The people here gave me the happiest times of my life - the kind of things New York hasn’t given me. I thought maybe, I could find that so-called ‘Christmas magic’ here again.”

“The kind you used to see?”

“Mhm.”

“And have you found it?”

“I think so.”

– 

It gave you a lot to think about. You could see that ounce of the old Natasha you knew before, in that time before it all changed. You can see that, perhaps, she truly has changed. Maybe that inner dialogue she was battling with had been defeated. You hadn’t even known it existed but seeing her now you can see that something had hurt her. 

You saw the light in her eyes that you’d missed so much and things were beginning to seem that slightest bit clearer. You can’t ignore it all and forgive her, as much as you wish you could, without some form of a true explanation. An apology. A true, heartfelt, clarifying apology. You know you deserve it and now you’re letting yourself see that she deserves to be given the chance to gift you with it. 

You’d been bombarded with questions after the shocked look on your friend's faces when they watched Natasha help you up from your seat. Of course, they wanted the gossip of the past twenty minutes. 

“I think she’s different,” you mused. “But it’s somehow just as confusing. She seems different but I don’t know if I’m just seeing what I want to see. And then I think, if I actually should forgive her, shouldn’t I have some kind of apology to accept? Oh my god, I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“You need to calm down,” Kate stated. “No offence,” she added with a sheepish smile. 

“You do,” Wanda nodded with a laugh at the way you rolled your eyes. “You don’t have to figure it all out in one night. Let's just enjoy tonight and we can talk about it tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, you’re right. I-”

“Fancy seeing you here,” Yelena interrupted, sidling up beside you with her arm flinging over your shoulder. She, of course, was not surprised as she had been having the same run-downs from her sister. She was also a lot less merciful and spotted the ‘couples wreath making’ booth nearby and directed you in its general direction before anybody realised. 

“Anybody want a go? Winners get a prize,” the man running the event announced as you approached, seemingly hoping to gain a final couple to join the others on the small stage behind him.

“These two do,” the blonde grinned, pushing you and the redhead into him with forceful hands on your backs. 

“Oh- no- we’re not-”

“We have our final contestants,” he beamed, not listening to your protests whilst he guided you to your place. 

“Yelena, you’re a menace to society,” Wanda uttered from where the group watched the two of you stand awkwardly. 

“I’ve gotta get my entertainment from somewhere,” she shrugged with a laugh, finding great enjoyment in the way you fumbled around with the objects on the table to try and make something that resembled a holiday wreath. 

“This goes here, right?” Natasha mumbled, attaching various decorations to the hoop in front of you. You only smirked at the innuendo you heard. She didn’t notice. 

“Yeah,” you nodded. “I mean - I’m not an expert but wreaths usually do have some kind of foliage.”

“Shut up,” she laughed, poking an elbow into your side. Wanda smiled fondly at the sight. 

“I don’t like her much but they do look kinda cute together,” Monica whispered to her and she nodded in agreement. 

“My sister’s an idiot but she’s not a bad person,” Yelena spoke. “She just needs to be honest, not just with herself but with our little friend up there.”

“I hope they can work it out, for both of their sakes,” Carol added. They all watched on as you laughed with each other and worked easily as you attached ornaments to the masterpiece you’d been working on. 

You won, of course, and Natasha braggingly lifted the wreath above her head to show it off.

“A perfect wreath from a perfect couple,” the man smiled and you both returned it uncomfortably. 

He handed you a Santa hat before wishing you well. 

“You’re joking?” you laughed. “This is the prize?”

“And the wreath, of course.” 

“Oh, well that was definitely worth the ten bucks we had to pay,”

“Alright, let’s go,” Natasha chuckled, guiding you towards the group before you actually did get banned for life. 

“Carol, you paid for this,” you frowned, holding up the hat defeatedly. Though it was Yelena’s idea, she pushed the payment onto somebody else, as she often does. 

“I dunno, I think the entertainment was worth it,” she smirked. Natasha took it from you to pull it onto your head, swiping a piece of hair out of your face with the tips of her fingers gliding over your cheek. 

“And you do look pretty cute in it.”

“Whatever,” you huffed, partly in annoyance and partly to disregard the way she made your heart beat aggressively against your ribs. 

“Should we head back? I’m freezing,” Kamala asked and, after a just about awkward goodbye, you parted ways for the night.

[kalims]

⊹ㅤasking you to be their valentines | first years

note. happy (late) valentines guys, not proofread

cw. reader implied to be around ace's height (in his part only) sorry I just can't keep the throwing an arm around your shoulder hc off 😢 aghhh but other than that I tried my best to not describe any features. (just imagine you tp to his height for one paragraph then your mc can go back to your height after LOL)

deuce spade ── has everything planned out but most of it doesn't go to plan

deuce sweats.

never in his life has he even considered doing something for someone in valentines day.

correction; he did not make a move to his old crushes so he could very well be compared to that of a kid with no knowledge about the area whatsoever which is embarrassing cause he knows kids younger who had somehow managed to score a lover.

he had always thought nothing of it and wondered about them being too young to even be 'in love' but damn was it humiliating to get humbled now!

the bouquet of flowers seem to be shaking in his grip every second and cater had commented that he should loosen his grip—lest he actually breaks it with his nervous strength alone, and that's the last thing deuce wants. the madol he spent for it was a hefty amount and his mother would strangle him if he broke the only thing he gave to someone in a romantic sense.

there's clear traces of gel in his hair. slicked back, shiny and unmoving. he looks a little weird standing in the middle of the field looking like he was plucked straight out of a private school which is ironic considering his delinquency.

deuce looks back at the hasty morning he spent. waking up, realizing he just slept past the 5 alarms he set up, clumsily finishing his routine before sparing a good moment to stand in his mirror and recite the paragraph he'd been constructing for days.

ace had caught him there once, talking to a mirror like it was someone; you. and snorted so loudly that deuce wondered if anything about it was wrong.

'everything is wrong with it' ace had told him with a dead kind of look, disgusted but amused nonetheless. deuce never took his word for it, his mother had said something similar to his father and look where they were!

he is practically choking the round, white plush in his other hand the more he tightens his jaw out of anticipation. eleanor smiles at him cutely, pink round blush stitched below her eyelids. eleanor, or so he'd named the egg plush. deuce would have went with the signature bear plush but the moment he set his eyes on eleanor he just fell in love.

... with the exception of you of course.

like a puppy brightening up when it sees it's favorite person deuce perks up and does a quick run over.

he'd practically begged trey to bake some of your favorite delicacy and trusted to leave it bravely within the confines of the heartslabyul fridge. of course sticking a sticky note on the container with a threat and an angry face.

if you accept he'll take you right over there for a little date.. (if he's being too presumption that it is that is)

flowers, got it. he misses the wilted petals from his previous vice grip.

"prefect!" he yells from across the field. successfully making you pause in the middle of your traversing towards the gate. your eyes land on deuce spade, looking a little different than you remember—clad in a suit that definitely isn't nrc's, slicked back hair and decked in the 'will you be my prom date' set.

you sweatdrop. but raise your hand in a friendly wave despite it. "hi deuce," you greet sweetly and deuce swoons from his spot. his cheeks erupt to fire as he shyly looks away.

is he okay? you think.

deuce gestures you to come over.

so that's exactly what you did. I can spare a few, you glance at the time and make your way over to the boy certainly acting strange.

once you do his arms reaches up to show a bouquet of.. flowers in it. you stare at it in confusion, then at the several parts that had stared falling off. deuce curses under his breath but keeps a twitching smile. ".. for you," he says.

you smile, unable to stop the laugh that had emerged. "are you sick deucey? what's the occasion?" you tease lightheartedly. nudging him and taking a whiff.

you sneeze.

then blink. oh that's kind of... strong?

deuce grimaces from beside you.

"uh.. nevermind those, you can have this instead," he presents you a plushie in the shape of an egg. once again, perhaps deuce really is sick. you can't help but laugh again at the endearing silliness.

"can I name it?"

"sure..?" he doesn't look too sure. it's name is eleanor he bites it back.

"(plushie name)." I was gonna name it ash but coughs

he forces a smile. "wow. what a nice name,"

deuce suffers in the silence that follows after, and he's a little bothered by the new name of his favorite egg plushie. you will be missed eleanor, he thinks. midst the loss of his friend he supposes the fact that his favorite person ever makes up for it.

you do a quick do over deuce, blinking slowly at the attire that seems foreign. "what's the occasion? you look fancy," that's right. deuce almost forgot the reason why he was standing in the middle of the field in the first place, he doesn't wanna blame the fact that you practically knock the words out of his throat but.. it is you.

and, momentarily he forgot what nerves were in that very moment.

he can feel it come back, to the cold sweat on his neck, the clammy fingers, and the tightening sensation in his throat. deuce unconsciously nips at the skin of his lips as he exhales—then he straightens his top to prolong his question.

"you.. know that valentines is coming up right..?" he asks nervously.

you nod. "yep, about a week from now," you pause. "why?"

he looks down. "do you,,, wanna be my valentine?"

silence.

deuce slumps at the non verbal response of rejection as the shame fully descends on him. how could he do this? now he's ruined the friendship he's glad he'd built with you.

"what's with the gloomy face? I haven't said no, you know,"

a laugh and instantly it shines down a new hope at his darkness, like light upon an enclosed room. sparkling eyes full of suprise stare at you and you resist the urge to pinch his cheeks and simply wrap him up in a burrito blanket. strange, you know but it fits him.

"you mean?" right. he'd burst into tears when he gets home if you're just playing a joke on him.

you smile at him fondly. "there's like, a gala that the school is hosting. let's go as each others valentines date," you laugh and close the space between you two. a hug, deuce recognizes and it's almost the warmest he's ever had.

albeit awkwardly arms wrap around your body and return your love fully.

ㅤ

ace trapolla ── is 'going with the flow' but 'forgets'

"you're totally down bad!"

ace huffs. what could cater know about romance? people would totally run away from him before he could even ask someone out! meanwhile he; the classic boy everyone's after. he claimed, but cater just laughed at refused to believe him.

whatever some people just don't have good taste. ace rolls his eyes and takes out his cellphone. besides, I'm not down bad at all! he groans. the chime of a notification has him looking down, sparing the air from his annoyed glare.

'a user has commented to your post'

at the sight of it his cheeks turn ablaze and he shoves the screen to his chest, obscuring the view of anyone who dares to peer.

(said 'anyone' is just the air, there's no one besides him and a group of students far away)

ace inhales sharply. he's not crazy he was just,, curious. a man's gotta have his secrets! even if he was gonna drown himself if anyone find out.

he spares one more look at the non existent crowd before swiping up. the big letters read: 'how do I ask someone out as valentines' he most definitely didn't run to google, googling things like 'why is the idiot no longer annoying' 'why do I feel like this I like it but I hate it' which would be cringe worthy if cater ever found out.

I am not down bad. he thinks as he clicks on the comment icons then reads the latest one.

monsieur d'amour_ : there is no better way than to speak from your heart! 💖 n'ayez pas peur ~

( n'ayez pas peur — do not be afraid )

this guy has screws loose. speak from his heart? what a bunch of stupid shit.. and he's not afraid! ace is no coward. he stares silently but he can't deny that it was just a tad, bit inspirational. how could he ever do that? his mouth basically runs on auto pilot to protect his pride and his pride certainly doesn't correlate with his feelings.

yes.. he's not scared.

do it pussy. a second conscious voice seems to taunt him, he sighs. sometimes he hates the attitude that his thoughts,, think.

as if the seven really wants to laugh at him for entertainment the object of his affections silhouette keeps getting larger and larger.

you; the prefect of ramshackle. the same person that had him up for a punishment on the first day of school, he can say that you're the reason he was almost expelled but you're also partially the reason why he wasn't. crazy isn't it? his best friend (other), the same person he just had to fall for.

you're coming closer, ace concludes and he squares up his shoulders and presents the most natural grin he can.

ace saunters up to you and throws a casual arm around your shoulders. it's been habit at this point, perhaps ace just does it because you're his friend or maybe he's just finding another reason to keep you close. (he does the same with deuce but there's an almost guaranteed wrestle and ruffling of the head aggressively affectionate right after)

"what's my favorite prefect doing around here?" ace grins. you roll your eyes at his words but mirror his smile. "favorite prefect? are you serious?" you push him with your shoulder lightly but never enough to shove him off and decline the skin to skin contact he gives. technically it is true though. he doesn't like nearly all the dorm leaders, perhaps with the exception of scarabia's but he can't say they're close.

he smirks. "who else?" then the raw confidence he doesn't have a problem excluding dims when he remembers the whole,, valentines thing.

his smile drops for a second before he repairs it back up.

okay ace, go with the flow. speak with your heart. he can't believe he's actually heeding that random idiots advice. "soooo... you must be date-less on valentines, I mean who would want to go with you?" cruel words seem to spout out of his mouth as a habit. it was like that the first time you met but you practically shoved it all back up his ass.

you were used to it so you didn't mind. maybe that's why ace likes you. you aren't as weak hearted, and sensitive like the other people. a little selfish and strange on his part but he always wanted someone who'd joke with him, not minding his rather dark humor.

"no actually. I'm going with someone," you say. all smiley and all and ace feels like barfing his breakfast in the toilet. his smile immediately falls into a deadpan that he could not hide from you. in turn, you smile mischievously at the new revelation. this idiot is so easy to read. you think.

likable, lovable idiot on your part.

ace grimaces and ignores the tight fist he has curled up on his other, free hand. "... someone actually wanted to go with you? suprising," he comments dryly. a little colder than you expected so you still spare a raised brow to his quick, words. you shove him playfully. "I am completely—perfectly date material,"

I'd like to be the judge of that. ace sighs quietly. that kind of thought seems way out of reach in reality now though, whoever got you first is one lucky bastard.

"sure,"

"yeah I just hope grim doesn't get us kicked out of the venue,"

oh.

oh.

incredulously, he turns to you with barely contained shock. "grim? you're going with grim?"

you tilt your head. "who else? we are each others platonic soul mate," you claim with a grin. grim might be a headache most of the time but you can't deny that you've grown fond of the chaos he brought into your life.

if he's your platonic soulmate then what is he? ace gulps. "I must be your, other kind of soulmate then?" he says in a joking manner. your romantic sense of soulmate? you side eye him.

"I think so,"

he blinks. are we flirting right now? he'd like to ask.

ace is great at changing topics.

kind of.

"you can't bring a cat as the one you go with. riddle will literally behead you with his bare hands," moments ago ace had let go of your shoulders and let his hands settle behind the back of his head. act casual, he thinks.

at some point he's been telling himself what to do several times in the middle of the conversation with you, taking in the points he constructs an appropriate action. he's completely gone off track from going with the flow.

you snort. "no way dude. with his tiny little hands?" obviously joking you shiver at the thought of riddle listening to your conversation and comment. you'd be beheaded on spot. he is true though, if you brought grim the rules technically wouldn't account him as a guest so basically you're listed alone.

I refuse to be single in valentines day. you think in determination. but alas.. no one really had ask you. you cast an inquisitive look at ace, you certainly wouldn't mind him..

you clear your throat and look away, I am not down bad!

but if I don't ask now would I be able to spend a valentines with the person I'd like to be mine at all? you both think.

"hey do you—"

"I've been thinking—"

you both pause at each other running over the others words. you point at him then nod, but he shakes his head and nudges you. "you first,"

ugh.

"I've been thinking.. you said I can't go with grim, how about you?" you say quietly. embarassment coating your features and ace's heart actually started racing. is this really happening right now? is this real?

but.. "I'm gonna pretend you didn't beat me to that," he deadpans. and you smirk once you realize what he's talking about. ace does not like being one upped at all.

he fakes a cough and clears his throat. "wanna be my valentines?" you're lucky if you are my valentines. ace tells himself. but I might be even luckier.

ㅤ

jack howl ── actually asked crewel at first (since it seems like that man practically adopted you) before asking you.

"so puppy," in an empty classroom—his, empty classroom crewel sits on his velvety cushioned chair. over the table jack howl sits tensely, ears stiffed up high. his tail in a similar dilemma, listening to even a single sound of displeasure on crewel's face.

jack has never felt so nervous in the face of his professor, but he doubts crewel is even his professor right now. the 'technically' only family you consider right now would be the best word to describe him. even he wasn't this nervous the first time he was let on the field. his first magishift game.

he doubted crewel would even spare him the time. but when he mentioned something about you, the man's face shifted into something blank and frankly the way he peered down at him was terrifying. jack realized you were something precious to the man and had gotten a look deeper into his fatherly protectiveness.

of course crewel assumed something worse. and demanded, that he spit out whatever he has to say about you before he makes him. jack thought no one would find anything if he were to miraculously disappear right now.

he does understand, rather than thinking it was cruel jack emphasized. he would do anything for his pack too, his family.

"let's continue with that conversation we had shall we? now in particular," crewel hums. "I'd like it for you to spit it out, if anything happened to the prefect I assure you. the following events, you will not like,"

jack shivers at the underlying fury beneath his words and hell. he completely forgot to tell crewel the reason why he's in front of a noticeably worried parent. and perhaps if he did about a while ago? maybe he would be facing something more bearable, and less.. scary..

"I,,, I apologize sir. nothing bad happened to the prefect," jack clears his throat and breathes in the air in relief when crewel's sharp stare softens—he breathes a similar sigh to his. "why didn't you start with that? I can't say I like puppies who beat around the bush,"

he is not a puppy. jack would like to add but he doesn't think he'd like to see another sharp stare for the sake of his pride.

this one is fidgety. crewel notes, noticing his tense shoulders and averting gaze. he wonders what kind of business he has with him when the boy practically had done everything to 'discuss something' with him. maybe a failing grade? he is quite strict with academics. if he mentioned you then are you the one failing?

crewel huffs. impossible, you can't have a failing grade! he tutors you after class!

the man crosses his arms. "what is it then?"

the moment of truth. jack wills the anxiety to evaporate out of his body as he faces the man whose answer will depend on his answers. "I would like to ask if I could ask the prefect out this week—" jack feigns a cough. "—as my valentines as well,," not entirely consensual on his part but his voice trails off weakly at the end.

(okay I might be writing this too seriously. jack treats this seriously it's kinda comedic lol)

crewel blinks, huffs and barks out a laugh. a little out of disbelief but it's quite entertaining to him to see this puppy on his knees figuratively asking him? for the prefect? on a date? how funny.

maybe he would have said a simple; 'absolutely not' because no one could ever have someone as good as you. but he's seen enough, clearly this boy's love for you might even be beyond his imagination. if he says yes it will only continue to grow and surpass even his own.

the thought of someone loving you more than him is preposterous! maybe he feels a little old for this time to happen so soon. and no way he's letting some,,, boy take you away from him!

but it would do the both of you some good. he concludes.

jack stares at him in confusion. was it so ridiculous that he had to laugh?

crewel plays a rare smile, small but one nonetheless. "you must be jack," the prefect has told a lot about you. it seems like your love is returned in full. he thinks.

the door opens and jack jolts. speak of the devil. crewel smirks. this will make up for good entertainment.

what an unlikely pair, jack and crewel? you raise your brows in suprise. your eyes slide to the former, he looks kinda scared wonder what happened here. you wondered.

the smirk on crewel's face has jack internally praying. "has anyone asked you for valentines, honey?"

you deadpan. that is quite concerning, the first thing crewel would've done if that was the cause was hunt whoever that was down. "... no, why?"

crewel stands up and saunters over to the other side of the table—where jack sits and the boy tensed up quickly when he felt the skin of crewel's gloves on his shoulder. crewel was gripping his broad shoulders, menacingly but yet managing to smile at you.

"how about this one?" he grins.

in all fairness—you gaped, and stared at the two like they had grown three heads. "w-what?" you gulped. a little embarrassed by the stammer but can you blame yourself? you had gone in the room you know whose crewel's to unwind and maybe have a chat with him not.. this strange predicament.

you know full well what he's implying and if it were any other person you'd have no problem saying no.

but it's jack!

you scratch your head. awkward silence drifts over the atmosphere when you and jack both meet eyes. crewel's hands finally leave the former's shoulders but not without an aspirated sigh. he thought this would be amusing to watch, not... overbearing.

"oh for seven's sake. why don't both of you go to the gala as each other's valentines?" crewel smiles thinly, and it seems like there's no room for arguments. "any objections,"

you stare at jack's silence. he's alright with this? you nervously think before frowning. "that's.. unfair, jack would want to have a valentines that's his own choice," you shake your head. willing he strange pressure around your throat as you do so. hell you're practically already jealous on the person he'd choose.

"no." jack denies. "I'm glad, you're the only person I'd like to be mine," you assume he's referring to you as his valentines but honestly? the way he said 'mine' had you feeling kinda warm.

finally. crewel is pleased with his work.

he scowls. "good. now get out," enough of this teenage romance. crewel's had enough for the day.

ㅤ

epel felmier ── tried to ask you several times in a planned day but ended up chickening out. that is, until the situation just called for it

"what did they say?"

epel blinks away from his haze at the sound of vil's questioning voice. "what?" he dumbly mumbles out. besides heartslabyul famous rose maze, pomefiore has a rather beautiful garden. more variety of flowers and wildlife. exclusively only accessible to the dorm's students.

even epel can say that despite his hate for the dorm itself it's very nice to be around this particular spot—epel would have stayed, and used it as his hiding spot if vil didn't like it as well. unfortunately for him it meant that the garden is still under the scrutinizing gaze or the dorm leader.

which meant that he basically gets no break. epel would like to climb over the dorm's walls.

right now the field isn't housing people other than him and vil. he assumes rook had shoo'd them away, given how vil is currently using it. the latter sets down his tea cup on it's tray before raising a brow at epel. "... the prefect? you were going on all about how you were gonna ask them to be your valentines earlier," vil says.

epel curses in his mind and hoped that the distraught look was something vil didn't catch. though he doubts it he still hopes.

vil stays silent but keeps the raised brow for a second longer. he shakes his head after dropping it entirely. "don't tell me you failed," something as simple as that? come on. vil is sure that you wouldn't even deny the apple of pomefiore. anyone could see how reciprocated epel's feelings are.

his stare hardens in disappointment. "epel,"

epel keeps his mouth shut and replies in his mind. what? he told me to not tell him. epel resists to roll his eyes..

vil crosses his arms over his chest just as rook chimes from the entrance. "what a shame. I thought it was a perfect time to strike!" he grins.

epel blanches. "what the—rook you were there?" that, he did not know. epel points an accusing gaze at vil whom pretends to not notice, sipping on his tea and all. the smile on rook's face does not waver as he tips his hat as a greeting. "fufu.. we simply could not leave our precious apple without guidance,"

"I don't need your guidance, imma a grown man!" epel snaps. letting his accent accent slip past for a second before deflating once he realizes. vil stares at him silently, though rook spares him a look of pity. which is not really helping!

"I mean.. thanks?" as some kind of last effort to lessen the fury epel clears his throat.

fortunately vil was in a good mood so he let it slide.

"we were speaking about the prefect?"

vil urges epel to explain whatever happened and the boy's face twists into awkwardness. probably having war flashbacks hours ago, it was embarrassing because all the things he had planned went to waste. epel does not want to talk about it.

"prefect? oh they were looking as magnifique as ever~ they are on the way here as we speak now,"

what.

epel completely freezes as he practically was on the road to breaking his neck with how fast it snapped over to rook. did he hear that right? if he did epel hoped he was deaf in that moment. he looks down and hastily pats the crumbs of crackers out of his uniform.

oh seven no! he looked atrocious right now, his hair still had twigs from the mishap with you earlier and the literal reason he ran away was because he definitely did not want you to see him like he just crawled out of a jungle.

vil shoots him a look. I told you so. he should have taken up his suggestion of taking a bath to clear out the dirt. he didn't even have time to change, epel slumps. it's a miracle vil let him walk around like that which epel actually hoped he didn't for once.

maybe this is vil's influence. epel suddenly caring about appearance and all but he does admit he had grown a little self conscious when you were in his case.

he doesn't get a chance to ponder about it any longer since your head popped in to peer into the garden, suprised at the three guys looking right at you. all varying faces of happiness, indifferent and grief?

vil clears his throat even though it feels completely all right. "ahem.. rook why don't we finish our plans for the annual magishift?" the man is already walking to which the other follows. his words catches your attention.

your brows raise. strange "magishift? i thought you guys didn't like that," true. comes vil's blank face but his dorm isn't a loser. after all, their performance reflects on the evil queen and vil would hate it to be a bad light.

"hmph. we are not just beauty you know," he smirks and continues on towards the path, rook trailing behind him nodding along.

on their way out he can still hear the duo. vil's huff; "it's painful to watch them," and rook's response; "I am merely pleased i could bear witness to the fruits of love,"

you take in his messy appearance and epel winces, placing a carefully practiced 'cute' smile on his face. "don't say anything about it," please. epel has an abnormally softer voice compared to that of he shows you.

this boy is trying to manipulate me? you wonder in amusement. he does look quite messy though, it's a wonder vil acted so casual with him a few minutes ago. since you were the one who scared him to tripping on that poor bush you suppose the least you could do was help him clean up.

epel recoils away from your outstretched hand the moment it touched his hair. heat soars through his face as he nearly screeches. "what are you doing?!" calming down the slightest at your bewildered expression.

"there's twigs in your hair,"

",,oh,,"

reluctantly he sits back down in his chair, squirming at the sensation of your fingers digging in for the sticks and twigs he had forgotten to shake off. epel feels awfully flustered by a simple thing.

the time passes. the sky gets darker, and epel gets more comfortable. the tense in his shoulders eventually deteriorates into a relaxed posture. he's never felt so comfortably before. I hope there's more stuff in there so you don't have to go. epel thinks.

"all done,"

yes, epel will do anything to get you to stay longer.

"what if you were my valentines tomorrow..?" he blurts out.

you movements stutter in response. well that was forward. you think, you'd expect nothing less from epel, plans weren't his forte anyways. with vil's absence he has no problem saying his mind. then again, the reason he probably failed before was because of the presence of rook.

"I mean,, it's just a what if,," he trails off looking unsure.

you sigh and shake your head. unable to keep the smile off your face. "sure. let's ditch the gala tomorrow, yeah?"

the grin on epel's face is practically shining. "yeah!" he perks up in excitement before pausing. "I mean,, yeah," to pretend he's cool. you suppose.

ㅤ

sebek zigvolt ── ITS ALL LILIAS WORK

"you! where is the human prefect?"

the student at the end of sebek's finger pretty much all but froze up. staring stupidly at it (admittedly looking a bit scared) only igniting the impatience within sebek since he scowled and the scared silence and shook his head. what else did he expect from a human?

the intense sharp stare from sebek probably ran off the shock and fear from the student because finally, they started speaking. "u-uh... who are you looking for?" they quietly ask.

sebek's eye twitches.

did they not hear him? "hmph. if you were listening to what I was saying, you'd know," maybe a mouth he just kind of got from the early years of his father, maybe he did actually get that from lilia.

the student cowers. I want to go home. they knew they shouldn't have rolled off their comfortable bed... far better than this predicament. they definitely don't deserve this anger. but there's like,,, 4 human prefects, they'd like to add to defend themselves but the word just dies up in their mouth when sebek huffed—and turned like he didn't figure it would be wise to waste his time here.

they sigh.

further down fhe hallway sebek marches. quickly, quietly—back stiff yet proper, just as he'd been trained to do. proper manners. something you don't seem to have. you're always cooped up in the center of chaos somewhere, in the back of sebek's mind a voice reminds that you weren't given the same treatment and training as him but he needed a reason.

a reason to hate you, and love you less he supposed.

it doesn't seem to be working though, given as he's literally about to turn the school upside down to look for you.

he has no idea why he'd even asked his father in the first place. attempting to 'court' a human! it seemed preposterous when you're just about every trait he dislikes. ahem, the fact that you aren't a fae is enough for him to consider it horribly.

what if you were taken? someone delusional tells him in his mind.

why should you care? another chips in.

yeah why should he care? he grumbled incoherent words. currently he has the brain to stop in his tracks, not waste his time here—but not the heart.

because his heart speaks the feelings his mouth won't let him, because it beats for you, and is just about to leap out when you do anything that he'd really like to keep the withering smile out of his face.

he doesn't smile. soliders do not, a great one like his father had learned to control his emotions but the one they call 'love' is something he can't get the hang of.

sebek thinks back to the occurrence that had went by a while ago.

── 

"I don't get it father. I don't need to calm down I need a doctor!" sebek explained loudly. trailing after the much shorter boy like a puppy. lilia can tell that his very jolly dear son is taking hid 'disease' very seriously by the exaggerated hand motions that he pairs with his equally flabbergasted words.

lilia chuckles, silly yet so endearing. "go again by your symptoms dear," he strolls in the kitchen, completely missing sebek's mortified face.

should he run right now? but he must not ignore lilia's request!

some things need sacrifices. he concludes. "well! my chest is beating very fast, it's like I am going to have a heart attack. which is why I need a healer, father!" he argues before pausing. "—also I've been very warm lately, I think I have a fever as well," he adds.

my dear little sebek is oblivious, lilia giggles to himself. but in the face of his son he merely raises his brow in feign suprise. "and,,, all of this is with the prefect around?"

sebek nods.

lilia's giggles intensify.

"I know just the thing!"

the younger boy perks up. he knew going to lilia was a spectacular idea! lilia seriously beckoned sebek to bend down to his height a little. "you have to proclaim your feelings to the prefect themselves so it would go away,"

lilia added, "and to seal the deal you have to ask them to be your valentines,"

he grinned.

though sebek blinks in confusion.

── 

sebek thought his advice was strange but if lilia thought it was the right thing to do then he'd do it.

after a period of just questioning people around the halls. he found you himself—and all by himself. hm, if he knew the humans wouldn't serve any purpose he would have did this in the first place. to think he had conversed with them for nothing after all.

you remove one earbud from your ear at the light flooding into the room. you stretch your arms and yawn lightly. "sebek? what's up?" you greet shortly. the green haired boy shutting the door behind him with no regard to his strength as it lead to a loud sound of impact.

atleast it closed?

sebek scours the room with disinterest but answers you. "the ceiling, I'm suprised you don't know,"

you deadpan. "i- whatever, I meant to ask if you needed something from me," you gesture to him. "seeing as you entered my humble abode without knocking,"

he crosses his arms over his chest. "I thought ramshackle is your abode," less humble. sebek thought, watching you shrug and flop down on a cushion comfortably. the music still plays in your other ear, so it was kind of hard to hear him fully.

you hum along the melody. "it's quite far so I set up my little corner in the school," you snort. so this is where you probably disappear to. sebek thinks. he can't bring himself to insult anything.

"anyways. why're you here?"

"you've made me sick and father told me to tell you some things," he explained. surprising you with the lack of intensity and volume in his voice. sebek would very much like to flop down next to you right now but that wouldn't be proper at all..

and, he doesn't know if he can ever control that feeling if he does.

you raise your brow. "uh? go on?" am I going to be told a briar valley secret then executed for knowing? you wonder.

he exhales slowly. "I've told father about my symptoms you've infected me with," sebek huffs. his first words both concerning and confusing you. "the heart attacks, and warmth so I've come here to tell you to get rid of them,"

I have no idea what he's talking about. you think, other than a flu a month ago you're pretty alright in terms of health..

"to seal the deal i would like to ask you to be my valentine!" he proudly says.

you stifle a laugh. lilia, that bastard. poor sebek doesn't have an idea of what he's asking. with the whole valentine deal you can see what kind of 'symptoms' he's talking about. "um,, I'm not sure you're aware of what you're asking right now," you say. as much as you'd like to take him as your valentine you wouldn't be too happy if you knew it's not because he wanted you to be.

"how about I tell you what lilia's talking about then I'll ask you again if you want me to be your valentines?"

you smile at his nod then pat the spot next to you.

sebek is no fool.

he understood what lilia was doing. but to him it's a clear opportunity to take you for valentines without you knowing that,, he is. he feels kind of horrible for using lilia to cover it up but..

the time you spent together is enjoyable enough to let it slide.

[hypergamiss]

hello 💕

I’ll be 23 in February. My question is, what steps should I take to get a wealthy HUSBAND. I have a strong desire to be married, i have passion for this as I also don’t have big professional goals. I’ve dated wealthy men before, but they were of a lower caliber & I wouldn’t marry that type. For example, one man was a dealer I dated, took me on exotic trips and bought me things as expensive as 10k Chanel bags but was extremely toxic and too young for me. The second man was a white collar worker, respectable job yet he was an alcoholic and had a spending problem, his spending problem benefitted me, but by the end of the year he was basically broke cause he lost all his money lol. This is NOT healthy sustainable husband material to me. I live in Detroit but im moving to west palm beach Florida in a couple weeks which I know in itself will be a whole different playing field of men. I don’t have long term success with high quality white collar men as I may not fit in. I don’t need a millionaire, just someone with a high paying job and generous. I usually meet my men in clubs or online but I realize now the men of quality I want aren’t going to be there. Any tips ? 💕 I want to be a wife and out the game

Hi! I’ve said this before on here but I think it is worth repeating: I strongly recommend to wait for marriage until you’re at least 25 years of age or older. Obviously you’re going to do what you want but I want you to be aware that when you hit 25 it’s almost like you go through a second puberty and your thoughts change and even things about your body might also. I think it’s better to make life altering decisions after you have become a full grown adult because in our early 20s we simply don’t know what we don’t know. Having a passion for finding a husband while not having a life of your own will make it really hard to find one. You will continue to attract men like the ones you described above if you don’t have your own career and goals. Even if you’re not choosing a career that’s traditional, you have to be passionate about your own interests. Wealthy men tend to be bored in a way especially if they grew up with money. They’ve had many experiences and things given to them because they were simply available and they didn’t have to think about money. Even a self made man will have almost everything they’ve wanted or done what they’ve wanted to do a few years into reaching wealth. If all you have to offer is fixating on him and not being able to hold intellectual conversations he most likely will not stick around. Looks get you in the door and your personality keeps the person interested. Men love to hear you talk about your passions and see you get excited about your own projects. It’s attractive to them. I recently became friends with a wealthy 50yr old and we started talking about dating because he’s single. He said he didn’t really care what his future partner does, as long as she’s actually into something and working on something that gets her excited to start her day. He knows that a kept woman also needs to have something of her own going on or she will always be unfulfilled and unhappy with her entire life, including her marriage. Other than needing your own life/career/goals to be an interesting person this is also important so that you can be interdependent. You are independent when you need to be and you can support yourself financially. You’re dependent on a partner when it suits you, but you should always be able to leave him when your standards are not being met. Nothing gets a man to act right like a woman walking out the door the second he disrespects her. You’re on the right track by realizing that your current routine isn’t working for you. I suggest you go to places where you think you will meet your future husband during the day. Also, don’t underestimate the power of befriending young or older women who might set you up on a date with a man that they are friends with or related to.

[onmytape]

Highlights from The Star: "Connor Bedard wasn’t raised to be a hockey phenom. He made that decision himself."

Bedard fell in love with the game with minimal help. His first skating lesson at four years old went badly — “I was crying when I got off the ice,” he says — but at the end of the second lesson there was a stick-and-puck session, and he asked his father Tom if he could try. “I mean, ever since I kind of first touched the puck it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” says Bedard. “And I mean, I’m 17 now and that hasn’t changed.” He learned to skate. He rollerbladed on their rare flat street in hilly North Vancouver, but with purpose: self-made drills. He rollerbladed in the house. And lord, he practised. To save the windows out front Tom built a shooting box in the backyard, and Connor still shoots there when he’s home. Tom heard there were open ice hours at North Shore Winter Club, which was relatively affordable: he joined, and took Connor. Unlike most places in Canada, there’s not much outdoor winter ice in North Vancouver. “He’d stay there eight hours at a time,” says Tom. “More, sometimes. He’d come off, eat, go back on. His feet would be literally bleeding. I would go on once in a while, but normally I would just let him do his thing.

He played some soccer and liked it, but not like hockey. His dad thinks Connor had a natural baseball swing — Tom was a pretty fair baseball player — and golf swing, too, but Connor was born with the same obsession that every great player has to have. The street was full of young families and Connor would spend days outside being a kid, playing tag and running through sprinklers, but working at hockey most of all. He has never owned a video game console.

Even now Connor gets on the ice on optional morning skates or off days, accompanied occasionally by teammates: he works from different areas, tries different shots, pantomimes celebrations. He sometimes sneaks out of the makeshift school classroom at the Brandt Arena in Regina — a room left over from the COVID emergency era, where the players would gather — and the teacher retrieves him by following the sound of a puck ringing off the bar, shot by a young man wearing flip-flops on the ice.

“I think he’s obsessed, possessed by it,” says John Paddock, the veteran hockey man who is the coach and general manager of the Pats. “He’s so meticulous in his daily routine, game day, other days. It’s just another part of his game.” Paddock does say he has tried to dial Bedard back. “I tell John I don’t believe in them, in days off,” says Bedard. “But he makes us, a little bit.”

But when he was very young, Connor told his parents, “I get along really well with all the kids on the team. But I don’t think their parents like me.” Melanie figured rink politics would become the topic at the dinner table every night if she and Tom both lived it, and they didn’t want that. So Tom would get up as early as 2:30 or 3 in the morning and drive up the mountain way past Whistler, back when the Sea to Sky highway was a truly treacherous road. He’d fell trees for six hours; six, six and a half was the maximum, because it’s not a job where you can afford to lose focus. Tom knows a lot of loggers who were killed on the job, has been at the site of one logging fatality; he once broke his collarbone and neck when hit by a falling tree. His partner drove him out with Tom lying down in the backseat of the truck, bumping down the road. It was all hard work. “Yeah, it was hard, but you know, struggle is not a bad thing, really,” says Tom, a solid man with blue eyes. “It makes you close. It makes things more important, it makes things real. You know, if you have it too easy, usually it doesn’t work out very well. So I don’t mind struggle.” He would drive back and stop at Madi’s gymnastics in full backwoods gear, take her home, and drive Connor wherever he needed to go, while Melanie would make healthy snacks and coordinate everything. For a long time Connor’s drive could be channeled into teams and open ice and backyard shooting, but eventually the Bedards did what every parent of a serious hockey kid has moved towards in the last 10 years or so: trainers, skating coaches, hockey academies. Tom has friends who have their own kids in hockey, and he tells them he wishes he could tell them they don’t have to spend the money to keep up, but that’s how it works now.

A couple days before Bedard had to apply for exceptional status to play in the WHL as a 15-year-old, Melanie was driving him to the gym. “I did not sleep the day before,” she says. “And I said Connor, I don’t think you should do this. And I know it’s what you really want. I know. But I feel like as your mom I’m going to be taking something away from you that’s so special; just the ability to make stupid mistakes that we make, and have regret.” She worried that under the spotlight, in the age of social media, people would root for him to fail, as they did when he was a young phenom. She said she’d still get mad at him if he did something stupid, went to a party he shouldn’t go to, whatever. But she would understand he was a kid, too. “And he said, ‘I don’t care if I go to a party,’” says Melanie. “‘This is something that I want. You can’t. As my mom you feel bad about that, but you don’t feel bad about taking away something that’s so important.’ “So we did decide to go ahead with it.”

Melanie moved to Regina to be Connor’s billet the past two seasons, because nobody knew what it would be like for a kid of his calibre, and as Paddock puts it, “His whole preparations are based around perfection, and she’s the only one that knows it.” (Another Bedard youth coach, Dan Cioffi of Burnaby Six Rinks, recalls Bedard would be the kid ordering chicken caesar salad and a mineral water at age 12, surrounded by kids enjoying burgers and pop.)

There are other moments, though. The mom who passes him her daughter’s phone number. The letter that purported to be from a boy who was paralyzed who asked for a jersey, but whose address pops up in other, vaguely similar, differently-named letters. The yahoos driving by the house at 3:30 a.m. yelling TOE DRAG AND RELEASE. The autograph hounds here and on the road, pros, everywhere they go, forcing the team to change some of its protocols. After one uncomfortable incident that Bedard laughed off in the moment, he came home and told his mom about it. “He said, ‘You know, I’m kind of realizing in some ways I have to be just a robot. Because you know that certain people are just wanting you to say this one thing that they can pass on,’” says Melanie. “And I said to him, I feel kind of upset, but I’m also proud that you’re mature enough to be aware of that. Because it’s so important.” “I think it’s a small sacrifice to make,” says Bedard. “I mean, I’m myself most of the day; I’m at the rink and home most of the time. If I’m walking to the car and someone wants a picture or something, that’s all good. And, you know, for me, I think if I had to change things, which I haven’t much, but just a few things to try to achieve my lifelong goal, I think I’d do that in a heartbeat.”

Coaches say that from a young age, Bedard was the kind of kid who was really attentive to his teammates, and it wasn’t correlated to how good they were. He could have asked for a trade from Regina at the deadline. He didn’t want to leave; he felt a responsibility. “I think I’ve just always been almost sensitive to other people’s feelings,” says Bedard. “You know, I never want to hurt someone’s feelings or make someone feel bad about something. I’m still young, and if there’s something I need to say no to, I try to get my agent or someone to do it for me; I feel bad about that."

"Like it makes me emotional, because I am so grateful. (Tom) learned so much in that moment. And he never has critiqued Connor. They talk about things, because Connor is his biggest critic. And I’m so grateful for their relationship, because what I’ve seen, and a big part of why I wanted to step away, was I would look at these dynamics ... Connor would say some of his teammates would be crying because they didn’t want to go on the car ride with their dad, with their parents. “And I thought, all these people in this machine, you are losing sight of the most important thing: your relation. Because even if they are the next Crosby, they’ll probably be done in their 30s and you’ve damaged that relationship that you could have had the rest of your life. Like, you’re gonna make everything in your world with your child about whether they scored a goal or not? That always was strange to me in that world.” (Melanie Bedard)

[the-firebird69]

Now our son knows women are kind of nasty but they aren't like this idiot who does women's stuff and very pronounced way and harshly everyday and women want to move in next door and they want these idiots out and they refuse to leave and she started doing the cop routine to get him out the issuing threats and we're cutting them off they're going to stick them around his neck hes so dumb.

Is a few more things happening here

-John Riva Lord his name is mud and they want him out of here and they're going to declare him an outlaw and ban him from the United States not just Florida. But they would do it steps and first to get ban him from here. And Tommy F sees him attacking the centers and his reporting out the counter and they're going after Trumpsters headquarters. And they're using your name in vain all over town all of the macks and foreigners. Huge huge hits to put on you and bounty by tons of people and warrants by others and they want you in foreign countries for trial. One reason is you handed all the businesses out and I wanted to tell you and find you for it and hang you and move you on to the next country no they each want to burn you so they're going after your people Trump

-huge signs everywhere you're not allow this man in our country they're tearing up your election headquarters all over the world in the United States are setting fire to them after they raid them it's going on today

I have to say this you're fired Trump and yeah you're my stuff works all over the world and it's way over the top and it's this idiot Trump who did it I can't believe how many of our places well no they're your places okay not mine you idiot are on fire it's like 90% of your election headquarters are on fire it says to me maybe he has some big ones left and he does so I'm going to go after those

Bja

So Trump is starting to yell at him like it's an animal again and that's our sun is out yet so I said makes fun of him it's a matter of retard haven't had enough are you so stupid you don't know anything's happening

-we do have a couple other things happening here there's a huge number of people yelling at us try to tell us what to do we have no idea what they're talking about they're going after them with special warrant right now

-there's a huge war on Donald Trump and by practically everybody and it started up again last night is moaning and groaning the whole fleet's gone and I can't do anything if you will try to tell him it's backwards and you just listen to him and you believed him and he's flipping him off her son is flipping off Trump saying you believe me and I got you and I got you by it it's cuz you're weak and Trump is backing up and say you can't believe it and it's hard to say what's there to believe you're getting rid of your own people you dumb f*** you dumb focker.. you say it like he was saying for that month it was a whole month then coming out and waking our son up finally as he called our son called the cops so that's enough you're not going to do anything you're going away the guy just kept doing it and doing it even afterwards now he's doing different stuff killing rabbits as a makeshift pistol he has to leave now his people are going to be seriously depowered today. And yeah we're located and destroying your computers look everyone else right now because you want to say something to change a word and you're a loser but he's going to have a lot less power it'll probably not be sheriff and it's not going to be this other roles either like mayor of Port Charlotte he's not going to be anybody ever anywhere again but today is going down and I mean big time something broke and it was when he posted the Dr nardone and people said we're sick of you and they went after the hospital stuff while they're doing that you decided because you got shot to go after his people in his headquarters because you're an idiot and now they're going after you,, so really they're going after each other very hard and headquarters and it's going to set like in stone and the clone that shot him is up in Chicago and it's in jail and it's due for trial and the clones are trying to break him out. There's a bunch of those clones up there arrested and he was doing it as a cop saying as a friend of our son and all this dumb s*** said it doesn't have anything to do with it it sees this huge criminal and your behavior is odd in a way or way off because you are covered for him and accept it and you make it work and it doesn't matter why it's too big for you it's too big for Mac alone. Is the way for your ascertain that unless you do a complete you have to say how many ships you have how many people down there how many facilities how much hardware I put the list out there you probably don't think any of it exists and it does all of it does and it's got two planetoids coming up online with huge lasers, he says old people are mad at me have better try and is trying and screwing up and here we are with him all screwed up. Couple more things but really he's going down these two are at it they're having a war and it's because he was shot but the head clone badly by the way

-there's a few people around town recommending we say stuff but we don't want to this place is going to start busted open and the clones are going to start fighting the trumpsters at any moment and we're coming in to make sure that nothing happens never tell them to take it elsewhere if you don't grab them both and Intel will be coming out on them and we need it

-there's a huge number of people who hate these people especially those two and then going after them and one of them is Dan AKA Dave and he's going after with a lot of people here and put them in Port Charlotte too and it's getting put down. his guy suck his lady suck and he's out of the way shortly but nobody here and this is before court and needs to go to court too and he's going to have no Force here and he'll try and leave and they may let him and they may prevent him from coming back in and if they come back in they're going to be in prison wherever they get in and then in prison trying to get here and that's what they're doing and they're going to outlaw them today they say it too

-we've had a real trying time with these two imbeciles mostly Trump believe it or not he's more unreasonable than Tommy F who has very very huge amounts of power and can threaten a lot of people with Trump around it is blaring idiot mouth we had the focus on him so we could think. It's time for us to get rid of him and I'm calling a meeting so can utilize what's happening to make sure it goes to the end of his clan. We enacted the protocols and we're going to do it again and we're going to send it out again and make it into a huge deal too

Thor Freya

Zues Hera

I'm tired of hearing you Trump and I'm going to shut you down

Olympus

On a positive note although this is very positive we don't like Trump we are in receipt of tons of motorcycles and they're in Florida 20 million of them in 100 million will be here this afternoon and people are at the shops already and most of them are sold out and have to wait till this afternoon to get their bike and they're ordering more now

Hera

Thank God

Uriel and Goddess Wife and her son and daughter point out with this a****** Trump on the ropes these things happen and we agree it's all of the morlock and here and it's it has to be done and we're putting the orders out

Good job Zues Hera both

Olympus

We thank you yes we do

Hera Zues

[stairysky]

From time to time, when my father needs to reload his patience, he fires a shot directly at me. I like to think he's stressed on those days—well, I bet he's stressed everyday because of his job. I mean, that's always been the case with my mother. When she was so tired to hang the laundry, she would break the hangers on me. There's no reason for my father to be any different. Now, when my father hits me, my mother would shout at him, and try to stop him, which the thought of absolutely disgusts me. I don't understand those actions. Hasn't she been doing the same to me all those years? Are humans just blind to their own wrongdoings? Does that mean she never thought she's done me wrong, and that she was actually doing me good with those arnis sticks she broke on my legs? How about the hurtful words she would intimately whisper on my ears on a daily routine, were those all disciplinary to her? When my father hits me, these words follow,

"Wala ka bang natututunan sa paaralan? Pinag-aaral ka nga para matutunan mo kung paano kami respituhin. Nag-aral ka pa."

No, I'm studying Mathematics and Sciences. You put me up for STEM yourself. What's wrong now~

"Wala kang respeto sa mga magulang mo."

Bakit kita rerespituhin? Sinaktan mo 'ko? If you remember all the terrible things I did as a literal child, I remember yours too. How can I respect a person who does not return the favour.

"Kung gusto mong magsarili, umalis ka."

You bet I will, you fucking nightmare 💀

"Akala mo kaya mo nang mag-isa? Ang yabang mo, akala mo kaya mo na."

Yeah, I really don't yet. That's the point why all of us must be suffocating right now.

"Lagi ka na lang nagdadabog. Lahat ng kilos mo padabog."

Because I hate you. With my every action, I want to piss you off. What alse can I possibly do? Tell you directly how bad of a parent you are and that even breathing the same air as you makes me want to kill myself? You never even taught me how to do those things. You're always angry, but you're so surprised I grew up angry.

And many more things he doesn't even know the meaning of. He believes I eat very little just because my body is smaller. Boy, he's a security guard, and he works with massive people. And he dares say I have a small body. Hasn't he considered his surroundings? More than that, I'm a literal child, a minority, of course I'm damn smaller! He's barely even home, what could he know about me. His facts could never be any more inacurate. He's delusional. They are both delusional. Everyday convincing themselves they're proper adults when in fact I'm older than them. Because they are children who fucked and birthed. They are children who never had chances. And that doesn't make me want to forgive them in the slightest. If anything, that makes me feel sick. To have children as my parents, I must be really unlucky. I would want to write more, but the stimulant is going away. Now I am starting to not care again. And my memory of them is fading back to the depths of my consciousness. I can no longer hate at this moment, for I care not any more. I just know I wish they'd just die.

[k2iwios]

sum jujutsu kaisen headcanons !!

ft. toji, gojo, itadori, nobara, megumi, inumaki, yuuta, maki, geto, sukuna, and nanami

warnings : curse words here and there, slightly suggestive content on toji & gojo's part, mentions of blood on yuuta's part (related to exterminating curses), mentions of alcohol on nanami's part (related to his drink preference)

fluff, light and funny, with a dribble of angst - just a bit tho! hehe :>>

toji !

i have a feeling papa fushiguro would hate being called daddy-

i'm sorry he'd think it's weird 😭😭

and it reminds him of the two kids he left behind 💔

he prefers just being called toji but is secretly a sucker for pet names

too embarrassed to admit it tho, cuz he likes to assert dominance 🥴🥴

gojo !

scams feet pics on onlyfans 💀💀

payment first then BOOM content unlocked but it's a picture of ants on some shaggy park bench-

gets reported 1000 times but still managed to bribe the company to un-ban him by sending thirst traps 🤨

orrr sending heck amount of cash in suitcases — like mobs in the movies

itadori !

does dance covers of kpop groups and posts them on tiktok 💘

hella good moves too!

he'll ask nobara's help to edit the vids, maybe even pay a professional (this happened at least once lol)

other than dance content, itadori's also famous for movie & food reviews which usually involve nobara and megumi cuz they're opposites (in terms of personality and all)

having opinions from two different kinds of people makes his reviews trusted

nobara !

does journaling

it helps expressing her sometimes wild emotions

most of the pages are pictures of maki 😃😃😃

and paragraphs of how she'd destroy the whole world if anything happens to her

nobara's hammer isn't customized

she happens to walk by an antique store and found a pretty hammer with a red heart carving on it!

megumi !

has the best skincare routine & products on GOD.

like, fr have you seen this boy??

so so pretty.

nobara would pester and beg him to spill his skincare routine

but he refuses to answer 💀💀

so nobara stole everything in megumi's bathroom cabinet and tried all of the products.

megumi always drinks room temperature water with two ice cubes

inumaki !

inumaki... loves reading fanfics and BL mangas 🥴🥴

maybe he's gay, maybe he's not, but inumaki loves a soft, fluffy BL story!

inumaki buys a lot of stationery items despite rarely using them

but he does carry around a cute small notepad with a shiba inu drawing on it and a monster's inc sulley pen in case he's too lazy to pull out his phone or in case his phone died

inumaki would beg gojo to bring him to disneyland and uses gojo's card to buy bags of souvenirs

his favorite is the toy story hamm (the piggy bank) hat/headcover. here's a reference photo :

yuuta !

lowkey hates getting his clothes dirty from blood

one of the reasons why he wears a white uniform is to prove how clean he is at killing curses (smooth boi)

yuuta gets away with buying alcohol without showing an id thanks to his sleep-deprived eyes even though he's not actually sleep deprived

that's just how he's built.

ps : no, the alcohol's not for him but for gojo and shoko 🤺🤺🤺

maki !

secretly names all her weapons and talks to them (which is cute imo 🤍)

but not to nobara cuz now she's thinking ‘WHO TF IS MAKI-SAN TAKING TO?? I'LL BEAT THEIR ASSESS’

*loud stomping noises*

only to discover maki talking to a sword 😃

okay now this woman is so fucking talented she's never even once broke her glasses.

no broken lens, no broken frame, no broken anything

the one time she changed her glasses is at the end of her first year. she wanted a new and bold style

panda !

goes rampage at a zoo once, just to scare people

those zap/tazer sticks doesn't work on him and it scared the workers. neither does tranquilizer guns

panda ran out of there and went to a ramen restaurant

then went grocery shopping — bought veggies and fruits — went back to the zoo and feed the animals

the zoo was closed for a month due to that catastrophe 💀💀💀

geto !

kinda dislikes his outfit but wears it anyways as a fashion statement

it has so many layers?? he feels like roasted turkey underneath all that 😭

after taking a different path, he knows he and gojo will lose each other

so he tried everything to hate his best friend but couldn't come to it no matter what

still kept pictures of the group — him, gojo, and shoko — and places it beside his bed (i'm sorry it turned kinda angsty 😫)

okay here, geto never hits on/flirt w people but is still a heart robber — thanks to his man bun

idk but i'm convinced he sprays the bathroom with disinfectant & perfume after taking a shit 💀💀💀

likes opening up the fridge for absolutely no reason.

sometimes he opens the freezer door and just stands/sits in front of it

headcanon that geto's favorite weather is winter then shoko beats his ass (cuz shoko likes spring & cherry blossoms and hates winter cuz the trees looks like bones)

sukuna !

does manicure

them wierdass nails are cared for.

his nails are originally black

it's not nail polish.

sukuna hates itadori's body cuz it makes him shorter than he actually is

sukuna is the reason why itadori uses deodorant

threatened to stop his heart if he doesn't use them

creates art using the bones in his domain

he's bored okay ☹️

nanami !

his fridge is rather empty because nanami prefers takeouts (since work drains his energy)

there's probably milk, butter, some leftovers, and strawberries (yes, headcanon nanami loves strawberries!! 🤍)

but he can cook tho and is surprisingly good AMAZING at it!

nanami's perfume always catches people's attention

it's the scent of soft white musk

nanami visits dog shelters often! and recommends his acquaintances (who are interested in owning a pet) to adopt dogs/other animals instead of buying them.

okay, nanami loves visiting the aquarium. it's therapeutic seeing little fishies 🤍🤍

nanami especially loves seals and siamese fish (god, please give me a nanami) 😞💘

and apparently,, nanami dislikes coffee!

his favorite drink is alcohol (he's canonically a heavy drinker) and hot chocolate 🍻

likes and reblogs are appreciated! 🤍🤍

© k2iwios — do not copy, steal, or translate my work. publishing them to other platforms are also prohibited.

[tropes-and-tales]

Honor Amongst Thieves

CW:  So many!  Derogatory terms for sex workers; talk of past abuse; murder; domestic violence; smut (PiV, unprotected; obliquely described oral sex for both m! and f! receiving), 18+ only. 

Word Count:  13,262

AN: For the lovely (and very patient!) @chemicalalice! 🌻

AN2:  Shit got waaaaay out of control.  13k words?  Get the fuck out of here, me.

AN3:  Guaranteed typos.  Word kept wanting to change “Merrimen” to “Merriment.”

When Ray Merrimen is released from prison, his girlfriend is the one who picks him up.  Holly, his on-again, off-again girl.  Started dating in high school, broke up when he joined the Marines.  Got back together.  

She says that she’s been faithful during his stint in prison, but Ray doubts it.

Ray doesn’t care either way.

He’s home for all of a week before she starts on him.  She’s waited long enough, she informs him.  She’s tired of waiting any longer.  She wants what her friends and her sisters have:  a big fat diamond on her ring finger, then marriage.  Kids.  A house in the suburbs.  The whole domesticated routine.

Ray’s not really into the whole domesticated scene, so he breaks it off.  Packs up his shit—there isn’t much, just a few bags—and moves in with Mack in his Mission Hills home.

The few bags of his effects summarizes Ray Merrimen better than any military head shrinker or prison case worker ever could:  he’s a man who doesn’t like baggage.  He’s a man who travels light.

-----

Mack’s place is fine.  Ray settles into his room, doesn’t bother to decorate.  Keeps his bed made to military precision, keeps everything neat and orderly.

The rest of the place is chaos.  Mack has tons of family, tons of friends—and he calls them all “cuz.”  He seems to know almost everyone in Los Angeles County, and that includes his neighbors.

“Old couple on the right of us,” he tells Ray when he gives him the tour.  “Retired, keep to themselves.  He’s an old con and she’s his old lady, you know?  Nice though.”

Ray nods, doesn’t say anything.  Makes note of the keeps to themselves comment.  He doesn’t want nosy neighbors tipping off police if they happen to see something they shouldn’t.

“Girl to the left of us, single.  She’s nice too.  Quiet.  Minds her own business, but keeps shitty hours,” Mack continues.  

Another silent nod from Ray.  Another mental note that the girl next door minds her own business.  A mental note of the shitty hours comment.  

Ray files it all away in case he needs it later.

-----

He doesn’t meet you—the girl next door—until a month later.

He sees you plenty before then, though:  sees you leaving your house, coming home.  Sees you dressed up like you’re going to a fancy party, sees you in all black workout gear, leggings and black sneakers and a black hoodie.  Sees you late at night, just as the streetlights are switching on, sees you early in the morning.  

Shitty hours, Mack said.  He wasn’t lying.

Ray doesn’t know what you do, but he can guess:  irregular hours, different styles of clothes.  Sometimes your hair is drastically different, and he guesses that you wear wigs.  Some days, you have blonde hair, an icy silver that is stick straight.  Other days, long auburn curls.  

Once, even pink, a short little cut that brushes against your jawline.

Ray guesses that you’re a sex worker.

Not that he cares….or judges.  People do what they can to get by.  Why should he care what you’re doing, so long as you mind your business and turn a blind eye to what he and Mack and his crew may be doing?

-----

He meets you a month after he moves in.  He and the guys are in Mack’s garage, built out into a gym.  The door is up, and they are blasting music—old school rap, metal.  Ray’s going through his reps with a military precision, and there’s a moment where there’s a throat clearing, then Mack reaching to the stereo to turn down the music.

Ray looks up and sees you.

This seems to be the real you:  the way he sees you when you’re just around your house, in your backyard.  Your real hair, your real clothes.  Just you.

“Hey, Mack,” you say, greeting the man with a smile.  

“Music too loud?” he asks.  He shakes his head, a little rueful.  “We can keep it down.”

You wave him off, your smile never wavering.  “You know you’re fine.”

Mack nods, and you turn to the other guys.  You nod at each of them, greet each of them by name.  

Then you look at Ray, and Mack catches your glance.

“This is my buddy,” he tells you, introducing the two of you.  “Ray Merrimen.  Moved in about a month ago.”

“Hey,” you tell him.  “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

Ray just nods, you nod back, and you turn to Mack.

“I’m headed out of town for a few weeks.  Mind keeping an eye on the place while I’m away?”

“You know you never need to ask, sweetheart.”

You grin at him.  “And you know that I always ask anyway.”

-----

Turns out, you and Mack trade favors, like good neighbors sometimes do.

He keeps an eye on your place when you’re out of town.  You sign for Mack’s packages when he isn’t around during the day.

Once, you stop over when the guys are in the driveway, changing the oil on Bosco’s Trans-Am.

“Hello, boys,” you call out, your usual teasing grin on your face.  You nod at each of them in turn, then look at Mack.

“The brakes on my car have been acting up.  You mind if I bring it over for you to look at?” you ask.

Mack shakes his head.  “Think you can make it to the shop?  I can put it on the lift there.”

Ray perks up at that:  he doesn’t like the thought of you in the chop shop.  Not that they leave their blueprints and guns and body armor there, but still…

“That works for me.  Tomorrow, then?”

Mack nods, then he sidles up to you, hooks an arm around your shoulders and pulls you close.  “You know what it’s gonna cost you, sweetheart.”

You laugh, feign a punch to his stomach, and Mack pulls away, pretending to be wounded.

“I know what it costs,” you say, laughing, and you walk away with a backwards wave.

Ray waits until you are inside your own house, then he turns to Mack.  “You really inviting her to the shop?”

The smile on Mack’s face disappears, and he turns serious.  

“She’s solid, man.  I trust her.”

Ray shakes his head.  “You sure you’re thinking clearly?  You can’t trust a girl just because you fuck her.”

Mack laughs at that, throws his head back and laughs.  Laughs so long that Ray rolls his eyes, crosses his arms.  The other guys chuckle, the laughter infectious, and Mack eventually calms.  Swipes at his eyes where a few tears crept out.  He slaps Ray on the back, but he doesn’t clarify what is so fucking funny.

-----

What does it cost for Mack to fix your brakes?  

Not anything sexual at all.  You pull into the shop the next day, climb out.  Reach into the passenger seat to retrieve a platter covered in foil.

It’s fucking lemon bars, and Mack helps himself to three before he even puts your car on the lift.

You wait while they work on it.  You sit on the table where, until just recently, the blueprints for the club they want to rob were laid out.  Ray studies you out of the corner of his eye:  you’re in shorts and a t-shirt, canvas shoes.  You look scrubbed-up and fresh-faced, a girl next door after all.  You swing your legs a little as you chat with Bosco and Lavoux.  

When Ray finally gives in and helps himself to a lemon bar, he catches you watching him.  You watch him as he takes a bite and chews, a little smile curving your lips.

-----

Couple months in, Ray starts to get a better feel for you.  All told, the two of you have only shared a handful of words—hey, bye—and the usual nods of acknowledgement.  But Ray learns more from the favors you and Mack share.

After the club heist, Ray catches Mack handing you a paper bag with most of his cut.  He watches as the big man bends his head to yours, giving you instructions too low and quiet for Ray to make out.  You nod at the man, serious, and take the bag to your house.

Later, Ray asks about it, and Mack shrugs.

“She launders it for me.”

Ray stills at that intel, his beer half-raised to his lips.  “She launders it?”

“Yeah, she handles it for me.  Washes it clean.  Sends some back to my family in Samoa, puts the rest in an offshore account where it draws interest and is safe.”

Ray stares hard at his friend, his perception of you shifting dramatically.  “Wait, I thought she was a hooker.”

Mack shrugs again.  “Don’t know what she does in her own time.  But she helps with this stuff.  She’s good at it.  She’s a whiz with all that computer shit, you know?”

“You trust her?  How can you be sure she’s not stealing it?”

His friend shrugs a third time, shakes his head a little.  “I know she sends the cash to my family because they get the cash, right on time, every time.  And I have the bank details for the off-shore account.  The balance is always square.”

“What’s her cut?”

Another shake of the head.  “She doesn’t take one.  Calls it ‘the friends and family’ discount.”

-----

Ray just wants to run perfect ops, plan perfect heists.

But some of his mental capacity is taken up by you now.

He doesn’t like it, doesn’t like that you are burrowing into his head.  You are, though.  He’s curious about the money laundering, about the computer shit Mack mentioned, how it shifts his perception of you.  He’s curious about your odd hours—are you laundering your own income from sex work?

He’s curious about what you are up to.  Why do you help Mack so much and ask for so little in return?  New brake pads don’t seem to make up for money laundering and whatever else you may do for the man.

Ray also doesn’t like the other thoughts about you that roll through his head:  the scent of you, when you stand close enough, the light floral scent over something sweet.  The way your legs look in your jean shorts, the frayed ends against your smooth thighs.  The way you smile at Mack and the others (and sometimes even him), the way you tilt your head and squint your eyes, the smile a little crooked.

He doesn’t like how those thoughts seem to flare up at night, and how they lead to other musings:  the smooth skin of your thighs—what would it feel like to touch you?  The sweet, subtle scent of you—what would it be like to put his mouth to you?  Would you taste as sweet?

----

A month later you stop over again, and it’s not like any other time.  You aren’t smiling and goofing around with Mack, nodding at the guys as they lift or hit the punching bag or work on one of their cars.  You are jittery this time, and even though it’s just Ray and Mack chilling with a few beers in the garage, you ask if you can talk to Mack alone.

“Whatever’s up, you can say it in front of Ray,” Mack tells you.  You glance over at Ray, and he’s never seen you like this:  scared.  He offers you a half-smile, as if to tell you that it’s fine.

You nod, after a long moment.  You take a deep breath.

“I need a gun,” you tell them.

-----

Guns.  Ray Merrimen knows guns.  And there’s something about how scared you seem that sparks something protective in him that’s been dormant for a long, long time.

He and Mack pull together options, and Ray walks you through them one night when Mack is out at the shop and Ray is home alone.  He lays them out on the kitchen table, and he tries to ignore the feel of you right beside him, studying each gun as he describes it.

“This is a Glock 19.  9 millimeter.  Reliable, best in class.  This is what a lot of cops carry.”  

He points to another.  “This is a Glock 43.  Also 9 millimeter.  Less popular because it carries fewer rounds, but for protection, you only need a few shots anyway.”

“But this one,” he points out, “is probably the best one for you.  Smith and Wesson Shield.  9 millimeter too, but it’s nice and light.  Small.  You could carry it in your purse and no one would know.”

You look at him and frown.  “I don’t need to carry it in my purse.”

Ray returns your gaze.  Frowns too.  “What do you mean?  Don’t you want to carry it for when you work?”

“Yes, but…” You trail off, hesitate for a moment.  “But I don’t carry a purse when I work.”

Ray doesn’t know that much about hookers.  Most of what he knows is hearsay, or learned from television, which is to say:  nothing reliable.  Still, don’t women carry purses?  Wouldn’t it make sense for you to carry one while you work?

You seem to sense his confusion, and you tilt your head.  “What do you think my work is exactly, Ray?”

“Aren’t you a hook…a sex worker?” he amends at the last minute, not wanting to offend.

You pull in a sharp breath, and he thinks he has offended you after all, but then you laugh.  Your laughter shifts you off balance, and you reach out a hand to steady yourself on his bicep.

“Why would you think that?” you manage to wheeze out between gales of laughter.  “My god, Ray, honestly.”

He can’t help but smile at your glee.  “You work weird hours.  And you’re always dressed up…weird.  Every time, weird hair, weird clothes.”

It sets you off into a fresh wave of laughter, so much that he chuckles along as you start to cry, and then cough from the force of it.  You let go of his arm and plop down into a kitchen chair, and he gazes down at you for a long moment—taking in the sight of your bent head, the way the hair at the nape of your neck curls.  He can just see down the back of your collar a little, at the soft-looking skin between your shoulders, and he has the brief, mad thought of what it would feel like to kiss you just there.

He shakes his head and sits down beside you instead.

“I’m not a sex worker,” you clarify once you recover.  “No judgement, though.  I did work as a cocktail waitress a few years back, but that was as close as I got.”

“What are you then?”

You don’t answer.  You cross your arms in front of you on the table and stare at the guns.  “I don’t need a gun for protection,” you offer after a long moment of silence.  “I need a gun to kill a man.”

You shock Ray with this:  the statement, and the straight-forward way you say it.  But you aren’t facing him, so you don’t catch the look of surprise on his face, and he has time to school his expression.

“That’s a different matter then, sweetheart,” he says, and Mack’s nickname for you comes out so smoothly he doesn’t realize he’s said it until it’s out of his mouth.  You turn and look at him, wary, but he gifts you a small smile.

It takes a long beat, but you smile back.  

-----

You don’t know a damned thing about guns.  It’s obvious, the way you try to hold them.  Half afraid, a loose grip, as if it’ll twist around and bite you if you aren’t wary.

Ray chooses for you:  a gun for premeditated killing is different than a gun for maybe-killing in self-defense.  He has an old Colt Python, a .357 Magnum caliber revolver from 1992.  An old model, untraceable.  A heavy gun, but reliable, and able to do the one job of killing perfectly before it’s dismantled and scattered.

“It looks old,” you comment, and Ray sidles up to you, shows the advantages of it.  Semi-automatics, he explains, spray their casings everywhere.  A revolver keeps the evidence within the gun, leaving less evidence behind.

“Smart,” you murmur.

“So let’s go teach you how to use it.”

-----

Ray does most of his shooting at a nearby range where he’s a member.  For this, though, he doesn’t want you on camera practicing with a gun.  Doesn’t want you signing in to use a .357, only to have a .357 used in a crime that can be linked to you.

He knows a place out in the Mohave, and that’s where he takes you.  The two of you leave before dawn.  He stops at a gas station outside of the county limits to get the two of you coffee and breakfast sandwiches, greasy hash browns that leave your fingers slick with cooking oil.  It takes four hours to get there, and the first hour is quiet.  Not that Ray minds—he likes the quiet.  You don’t seem to mind either; you only watch the landscape out the window, watch the dark sky lighten in the east.

It feels comfortable, the silence, and Ray notices it.  He never had that with Holly:  if he were quiet for too long, she’d ask what was wrong, and a fight would start soon after.

An hour in, you clear your throat.  He can feel your eyes on him.  

“Appreciate you doing this,” you say.

“No big deal.”

“Still…I know you have better things to do, Ray.”

He turns and looks at you, offers you a smile.  “Not today I don’t.”

-----

There’s the barest bit of small talk for the rest of the ride, but halfway there, you ask if you can turn on the radio.  Ray nods, and you fiddle with the tuner until you find a classic rock station.  Zeppelin, Hendrix, Pink Floyd.

You don’t sing along, not really, but Ray catches you mouthing along to the words when the Stones’ “Play with Fire” comes on.  Must be one of your favorites, like you can’t help yourself, yet you try to hide it—you turn away, and he catches your reflection in the window, your lips moving anyway.  He bites back a grin to see it.

-----

The place in the Mohave is just a shitty trailer where some of the guys go for different reasons.  Mack took a cousin there once, strung out on heroin, and helped him detox in the middle of nowhere.  A pseudo-hippie friend of Bosco did a bunch of sweat lodges there for a string of months.

Ray hardly ever comes out here, but it’s quiet and far from civilization.  The perfect place to practice shooting in privacy.

He teaches you the way he learned.  He has you take the gun apart to show you how all the pieces fit together.  He has you name each piece, over and over.  He makes you explain it all back to him, how it works.  He makes you put it back together, makes you run a bore snake through the barrel and charge holes, cleaning the entire thing.

You are a good pupil.  You stop him to ask questions.  You nod at what he says.

He takes you out back, a box of empties from the previous occupants—Bosco’s buddy’s sweat lodge assholes—in his hand.  He lines up cans and bottles on the rail of a fence, then has you load the revolver.  

Ray show you how to stand, how to hold the gun.  And sure, he takes advantage of the situation, stands close to you.  Stands behind you and kicks a foot between your own, nudges you to spread your legs a little more for a sturdier stance.  He’s taller than you, an entire head taller, so he takes advantage there too—takes a deep breath right above you, catches the clean, soapy scent of your shampoo.

He starts you at five yards, and you suck at first.  The gun obviously scares you:  you cringe before you pull the trigger, jerk the barrel up in anticipation of the kick.  The gun is heavy, but the kick isn’t terrible, and you get used to it.

You get better.  You are a fast learner.  

Five yards, then ten.  Then fifteen.  You miss a lot of the cans and bottles, then you start nailing them.  You catch the rhythm, and Ray recognizes the moment when you stop seeing the pistol as a weapon and start to see it as an extension of yourself.  As a tool.

This is the moment where Ray Merrimen falls in love, possibly for the first time in his life.

He’s certainly never felt anything like it, this moment with you in the Mohave.  You stand in the sunlight, the wind kicking up little eddies of dust, ruffling your hair, as the Colt gleams silver in your hand.  You look like some goddess of the desert, bright and beautiful and harsh and deadly, and Ray Merrimen—who has only loved the precision of the military, the precision of robbing banks—falls into messy, chaotic love.

-----

On the way home, the two of you stop in Barstow at the Denny’s.  You take a corner booth, and the restaurant is almost empty.  Over your waffles and his pancakes, Ray tries to draw out the situation that requires you to get a gun.  He mentions, as obliquely as possible, that he has the know-how to help plan something, that he’d help you…  

You don’t tell him anything.  You press your lips together until they are a thin line, and Ray sighs.

“Look, you don’t trust me, that’s fine.  Just…when you’re done doing whatever you’re going to do, bring the gun back to me.  I’ll clean it and dissemble it.  I’ll get rid of it.”

You stare at him a long moment, then you nod, once.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” you offer.  “I just don’t let a lot of people into that part of my life.”

“I get it.”

Another long moment where you gaze at him.  Another nod.  “Yeah, I suppose you probably do.”

He drops his voice even lower.  “You know the shit I get up to.”

“This a quid pro quo thing?” you ask with an arch to your eyebrow.

“Maybe.”

You sigh and take another bite of waffle.  You chew it, swallow, take a sip of coffee.  “Okay, fine.  Before I do anything, I’ll come talk to you.  I’ll let you know the…the shit I get up to.  At least a little of it.  Okay?”

“Fair enough, sweetheart.”

You snort at his co-opt of Mack’s nickname for you, but you duck your head too, and Ray wonders if you can guess at what he’s feeling.

*****

Life was a hell of a lot easier before Ray Merrimen moved next door.  It stayed easy as long as the guy remained his usual silent self—contained to only glowering at you, gifting you with a nod and a “hey” when you go over to Mack’s.

The whole gun situation cracks the tight little sphere of your life open:  first when Ray takes the time to give you options, then when he takes an entire day to teach you how to use the gun.  You catch him looking at you out in the desert, and you feel the tight bands you keep around your heart crack open a little too.

Ray fucking Merrimen, of all people.  

He raises a fair point at Denny’s, so you think it over.  Would it be so bad, letting someone in?  Mack could probably guess at some of your less legal activities—he certainly benefits from some of them—but no one knows your real work.

There’s something about Ray that you recognize.  A quietude that sets him apart from others, and you understand that.  The feeling of being a bit outside of things, a bit out of step with the rest of the world.  You’re alone but not lonely, but still…maybe you could reach out a little.

-----

You make your final plans, and you keep your promise to Ray.  You invite him over a few nights before the big event, and the two of you sit at your kitchen table, each with a beer in hand.  

“I’ll give you some details,” you tell him.  “And you can ask any question you want, but I reserve the right to answer or not.”

“That’s fair.”  He takes a sip of his beer and looks at you, steady.

“But whatever I tell you will be the truth, even if you may not want to believe it.”

Ray nods.

“Okay then.”  You take a deep breath.  “You know I wanted the gun to kill a man.  I’ve been looking for this man for a very long time.  I finally found him, and now I’m going to kill him.”

Any other man would laugh at you.  Or be horrified.  Ray is neither.  He nods and sips his beer.

“This guy hurt you, I guess?” he asks.

“Yes.”  You pause, weigh the words.  There’s some words you don’t like to say aloud, words you don’t even like to think.  “The usual way a man hurts any helpless person,” you offer.

That makes something cross his face, some expression like a cloud scudding over the moon, making his eyes dark and dangerous for a swift, short moment.  The expression passes, and he nods his understanding.

“He hurt a lot of others too.  When I found him, he’s…he’s currently in a position to hurt more.”

“I get it.”  Ray reaches a hand out across the table, and he doesn’t touch you, but he lays his hand, palm up.  A gesture of supplication.  Of understanding.

“I learned a long time ago that the only justice a person can get in this world is the justice they take for themselves,” you say.  “So now I’m going to take it.”

Again, it should horrify him.  Ray just nods.  Asks what the play is and how he can help.  It makes the tight control you have—over your life, over your heart—crack open just a bit more.

“You’ve already helped,” you tell him.  “More than you’ll ever know.”

“Still,” he replies.  “Walk me through it, whatever you’re comfortable sharing.  I’ll let you know if I see any trouble spots.”

You hesitate for a beat, but then you nod.

*****

Ray could have guessed at this, could have guessed the vengeance angle.  It doesn’t explain why you have such irregular hours, all the costumes and disguises, but it explains the gun.

The two of you polish off a six pack, him drinking the lion’s share of it.  He’s not drunk, but it loosens his tongue, which warms you up to him.  The reserve you held before thaws a little, and his own reserve around you thaws in turn.

You walk him through the plan without giving any specifics.  No name of the intended target, no specific location.  Ray has to admit—it’s a solid plan.  He’s impressed.  You’ve thought of every angle, and he doesn’t have much constructive criticism for you.

“I’ve killed, you know,” he tells you.  “Both for the country with MARSOC, and not.”

“I know.”

“It changes you.  It’s not something you can take back, sweetheart.”  He isn’t trying to change your mind, but he wants you to understand it.

You gaze back at him, your mouth tilted into a smile without any of its usual warmth.  You stare at him a long moment, your smile spreading until you say, “he won’t be the first one I’ve ever killed, Ray.  He’ll just be the first one I shoot.”

You don’t answer any of his questions after that.  You just smile and shake your head, politely declining.  Ray would think you’re bluffing, that you’re feeding him a line of shit, but he believed you when you promised to tell him the truth.  

Besides, Ray can pretty reliably suss out a bullshitter, and he is certain you’re being honest with him.

He thinks back to that day in the desert, shooting the gun.  How beautiful you looked.  How deadly, the gun in your hand and you aimed at the line of bottles he’d set up.

Like some goddess of vengeance.

If he thought he was going to get out of this unscathed, the warm unfurling in his chest never given a voice, Ray was dead wrong.  You’re a fucking killer, efficient and professional, and he’s never wanted anyone like this before.

-----

The night of, Ray comes over to your house beforehand.  Some of the steps you take might seem like paranoia to others, but to Ray, he recognizes the reality:  this is good, solid planning.  You’ve covered every angle.

“Here,” you tell him, handing you your phone.  “I took the lock off of it.  Just fiddle around on it tonight.  Go into the different apps, leave it on.  Run one of the streaming services on my TV too.  Actually, watch ‘Narcos,’ if you haven’t seen it.  I’ve seen it before.”

“So your phone won’t ping on any towers,” he adds, nodding at the precaution.  “And so it doesn’t looks suspicious, your phone being off, if the cops narrow on you and a span of time.  And the streaming as an alibi.”

You grin at him.  “You got it, hoss.”

You leave your own car in your driveway, lights on in your house as Ray pretends to be you.  Mack drives you to the chop shop where a different car is waiting for you.  Everything is checked out on it, Ray knows:  he’s the one who checked it.  Taillights and headlights operational.  Up to date tags.  Nothing to draw a cop’s eye for a traffic stop.

After that, Ray just waits.  He fiddles on your phone as he promised, and if he’s looking for any hidden intel on your life, he’s disappointed.  Your social media is just reblogs and bland commentary on celebrity gossip.  Pictures of sunsets and puppies.  An entire schtick to throw anyone off who you really are.

-----

It feels like an eternity, but the reality is that you return within a few hours.  You drove back to the chop shop, and Mack drives you home, and that’s that.

Ray stands up when you come through the back door, all in black.  You push the hoodie back from your face, and he can see a million things on your face.  A million emotions playing out in real time:  your eyes wide and a little vacant, your lip chapped from where you’ve been worrying at it.

“Everything okay?” he asks, cautious.  He takes a few steps toward you, his hands out in a calming gesture.

You nod.  “It’s over,” you say, your voice raw.  “It’s done.”

“How do you feel?”

You don’t answer.  You hold up your own hands, as if you expect to see blood there, but Ray knows you wore gloves.  Three pairs of them, in fact, to protect against all the evidence you may leave….and all the evidence that may have followed you.

This black gear you’re in now is not what you wore to the scene of the crime.  Ray knows all of it was burned the minute you got back to Mack’s shop.

You reach into your pocket and you hand Ray the gun, as promised.  By this time the following night, the gun will be dismantled and scattered across the county.  

“I feel weird,” you tell him.  “I thought I’d feel relief, or maybe even guilt.  But there’s nothing.  Just…keyed up.”

“That’s adrenaline, sweetheart.”

“Yeah.”

“You want to talk about it?” he asks.

You smile, but it comes out a grimace.  “You’ll probably hear about it in the news.

Something about you sparks at that protective part of him, even if you are a killer.  Even if you just killed.  You aren’t a natural born killer; you’d been hurt, and this was revenge.  But maybe he wasn’t a natural born killer either.  He had been a boy once, just a carefree kid who wanted to look at girls and cadge cigarettes from his older brother before a slick military recruiter talked him into signing his life away.

A head shrinker might point out that Ray’s protectiveness over you is a way to deal with his own lost innocence, the boy who went into the military and didn’t come out a man, but a machine.

“Come here,” he mutters, and he holds his arms out.  He doesn’t even realize what he’s doing until you step into his arms and he enfolds you against his body.  You stand there, rigid for a moment, then wind your own arms around his waist.  You hug him back.

“Thought I’d feel done,” you say, and your words are muffled by his broad chest.  “Thought I’d feel complete.”

“I know.”

The moment stretches on.  You shift a little on your feet and hug him tighter, and Ray holds you tighter in response.  He’s never touched you before aside from incidental stuff, or when he took you out shooting and corrected your form.  

It hits all most of his senses at once, you in his arms.  The scent of you, that floral, subtly sweet scene underneath something sharp and dangerous—that adrenaline-laced sweat that Ray recognizes from both battle and crime.  The feel of you, solid and warm, your hair tickling against his neck.  The sound of your breathing, deep and even.

Ray can’t remember a moment like this.  With Holly, fucking was a chore, a duty.  The willpower to get hard and stay hard, more bored than aroused.  Just this—just holding you, his little killer-next-door, his goddess of vengeance—makes his dick twitch to immediate life.

You feel it.  You tilt your head, crane your neck to look up at him, and there’s no recrimination like he thought he’d see.  

There’s a question in your eyes, a dark little gleam that makes him even harder.

Ray bends his own head and kisses you.  It’s no fairy tale, no romance:  a brutal mashing of his lips against yours, of his mouth working yours open so that he can slide his tongue into you and taste you.  You kiss back just as brutally, biting his lower lip, sucking against his tongue, and Ray Merrimen’s descent into messy, chaotic love is cemented right here.

-----

You said you didn’t feel anything, which may be why you take Ray to bed.  

Actually, he takes you to bed:  he slaps your ass, slaps the side of your leg until you get the hint and hop up into his arms, one looped under your ass, the other around your back as he carries you to your room.  He stumbles on the way there, blinded by his own lust, distracted by the increasing need you seem to have.  The desperate way you kiss him, the way you grip his short hair in one hand to tilt his head and grant you access to his neck, where you lick against the pulse point, nip against the tendon there, making him groan.

He tosses you onto the bed, smirks at how quickly you recover from the bounce:  you get your legs under you, you kneel on the mattress.  You gaze up at him with eyes that are almost black, your pupils thrown wide by how turned on you are.

“Don’t you dare be gentle,” you order.  “I want to feel it tonight, and I want to feel it tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll just fuck you tomorrow too,” he drawls, and you pounce on him, a messy scrabble of your hands to get his flannel off, his t-shirt.  He’s tugging at your clothes too, hears fabric tearing but is too far gone to care.  Once he’s shirtless, you bend your head to his chest, bite hard against his pec.  It hurts, your sharp line of teeth leave indents in his skin that you run your tongue over, but fuck if it doesn’t make his cock ache with how hard he is.  

Ray reaches out and grabs your ponytail.  Grips it in his fist, and he steers your face away from him, pulls your hair until your head is tilted back.

“I gotta put a muzzle on you, sweetheart?” he growls, and you snap another bite, this one playful, at him in response.

It’s messy.  Messy and brutal, and it’s the best fucking sex Ray’s ever had in his life.  Not to be a romantic asshole about it, but when he’s tearing off your clothes and shucking off the rest of his own, he wonders if it’s because you’re cut from the same cloth.  You are both so similar.  Ray’s only ever fucked women who live on the right side of things, girls who are just the regular amount of damaged and dirtied up by life.

You?  You’re like him.  A killer.  Completely out of step with the rest of the world, but completely in step with each other.  The fucking girl next door who turned out to be the dark, shadowy version of that.

Once naked, you turn away from him, get on all fours.  No need to convince him:  he climbs on the bed behind you.

“Don’t be gentle,” you remind him.

He isn’t, but he’s not not gentle.  Not at first.  He goes slow by necessity, his pulse already in his cock, already putting him on the narrow tightrope of coming too soon.  Fuck, when was the last time he had that problem?  With Holly, half the time, he couldn’t even come, only stopped when she sighed and told him to give it up.

You’re so fucking wet.  Hot and wet, and gripping him like a vise.  Ray grits his teeth as he bottoms out in you, the end of him nudging at some part of you that makes you gasp when he hits it.  He looks down, and that’s a mistake—almost comes from the sight of himself buried in you, almost comes when he pulls out a fraction and sees how you’ve soaked him.

He builds up to it, finds the rhythm that makes you fucking sing.  A goddamned symphony of sounds, whines and cries and moans that make the blood roar in his ears.  It’s obscene, the skin-on-skin sound, the way the two of you work against each other—him riding you hard and deep, you pressing back with your arms to meet him as he does.  

“I said…don’t be…gentle,” you pant out, and Ray snarls.  Grips your hips harder and hammers into you, his fingertips pressing into your soft curves, likely leaving bruises that will bloom in the morning.

Your orgasm comes quick and hard, giving him no warning.  You arch your back like a fucking cat, the sight gorgeous just as your pussy ripples against him, just as you groan out, fuck, right there.

He rides you through it, curves his body over yours.  Reaches out a hand to wrap it around your throat, but he doesn’t choke you.  He isn’t into that shit; he just wants to hold you steady, wants to feel the way your pulse hammers against his thumb, the way those whines of yours tear out of your throat when he comes too.

-----

Who can say if it was just the heat of the moment, the adrenaline leftover from you exacting your vengeance?  

Still, you don’t kick him out that night.  He falls asleep beside you, his leg thrown over yours, and he sleeps so deeply that he doesn’t dream.

Ray wakes early, a habit from being in MARSOC and in prison.  You’ve turned in the night; you face him now.  Your face, he realizes, must always have a subtle tension in it.  Only in seeing you asleep does he realize it.  Now, asleep, you look peaceful.  Like the girl you might have been if life hadn’t hurt you so badly.

He doesn’t get up.  He only watches you sleep, and when you finally stir to wakefulness, Ray keeps his promise:  he fucks you again before dawn, and this time it is slower, and quieter.  A quiet moment that leaves you gasping in his arms, leaves him biting off your name between his clenched jaw when he comes.

-----

Whoever you killed, it doesn’t hit the news in a big way for a while.  Or, it’s hard for Ray and Mack to know.  That night, there were as many murders as there ever are in Los Angeles County, a handful, but Mack and Ray can’t know if the victim was even found the next day.  The ones that were found shot include a convenience store clerk, a low-level drug dealer, a jogger in Griffith Park, and a homeless man in Venice Beach.

You never say a word.

It’s two days after the event that there’s a big, splashy news story.  

Ray had made assumptions, but he was learning that assumptions, when it came to you, were a lost cause.  Ray had thought about what sort of man might have hurt you, might have inspired you to seek your revenge and kill him.

Best Ray could come up with was maybe a college boyfriend who hadn’t taken ‘no’ for an answer.  Or any date, really, some handsy fuck who forced himself on you.  Or maybe something darker, like a stepfather with wandering hands….but no.

You killed a priest.

The news story, at first, is somber.  Carefully contained outrage.  Father so-and-so, longtime priest, transferred to such-and-such church a few years ago.  Beloved by his parishioners.  Beloved by his fellow priests.  At first, the news story is just an excuse to editorialize about the rising crime.  How could a man of god, jogging alone in Griffith Park at dusk, be gunned down?  

At first, the news called it a random crime.  

Then the story shifts.  There’s a dismal press conference where the cops talk about leads.  Ray’s skin breaks out in a cold sweat, but the leads don’t just point to you, if they point to you at all.  

The leads point to an entire army of children this man has hurt.  How can the police narrow it down to one or two suspects, when Father so-and-so has so many victims?  Those victims grew up to be adults, those victims have parents and siblings and loved ones who may have sought vengeance on their own accord.

The story shifts a third time, recriminations against the church.  They knew, of course.  Why else did the slain priest bounce around the U.S. (with a stint in Mexico, too) every time accusations started to flare up?

You never say a word.  Not when Mack asks, and not when Ray asks.  

When the news breaks about the other victims, countless children, Ray makes an off-hand comment to you. Says something casual, a metaphor about killing a rabid dog, how no one should mourn a predator when it’s finally taken out.  

You stare at him for a long beat, and your eyes get shiny with tears before you nod at him.

You don’t start to cry in earnest until he pulls you into a hug, just like that first night, but with a key difference:  this time, he just comforts you, holds you until your tears and your shaking are spent.  Ray’s heart, he has found, is not as small and as shriveled as he thought it was.  Some soft part of him survived war and prison, like a seed that’s lain on parched land for years.  Only now it’s started to unfurl, to find purchase.

-----

You and Ray fall into a thing.  You aren’t like Holly; you don’t force him to define it.  You don’t put a fence around it, call it one thing or another.  You still keep your strange hours in your strange disguises, and Ray focuses on their next hit.

Or, he tries to.

For the first time, he finds his precision in planning is off.  He’s got another club in his sights, a rave this time, and he finds his mind drifting from the planning to you.  Instead of focusing on routes to and from the rave, he thinks about your mouth, the way it felt on his cock the night before.  The way your eyes had peered up at him through your eyelashes as you worked your tongue against him.

Instead of studying the blueprints of the club, he thinks about another night when he ate you out.  The way your eyes had gone wide when he coaxed you into sitting on him, then the greedy way you had ridden his face, using him for your pleasure.  The way you had soaked his face, the way he had felt used and fucking loved every minute of it.

Instead of coming up with a plan to handle all of the cameras inside the place, he thinks about all the intel he’s learned about you.  The two of you trade off, usually after sex, a tangle of sweaty limbs sharing inside information.  He opens up about the shit he saw in the Marines.  You open up about your rocky childhood back east.  He tells you about prison.  You tell him about your job as a process server (a giant lightbulb goes off in Ray’s head—all those costumes and strange hours finally making sense).

He tells you about his heists, past and present and future.  You tell him about your real work—that’s how you phrase it, your real work—which seems to be a sort of killer Robin Hood, exacting vengeance and stealing from scum.  How your job as a process server gives you some inside baseball with the courts.  How you see the way the rich and powerful elude justice.

How you dole out your own justice.  The sneaky ways you punish them:  sometimes just robbing them blind, sweeping out their bank accounts and running the cash through a hundred digital laundries before it lands in a handful of offshore accounts.  

Sometimes, though, you kill them.  Never the same way, never enough to clue in law enforcement that there’s technically a serial killer in their midst.  An angel-faced, girl next door who makes her crimes look like accidents or misadventures or accidental overdoses.  

The assistant district attorney who got caught with child porn?  Cut a deal and evaded prison time, ended up hanging from the rafters in his garage.  It wasn’t a suicide, no matter what the coroner said.

Other human scum, handled by you.  Hot-shots laced with fentanyl.  Subtler drugs that look like a heart attack or stroke.  A house fire attributed to faulty wiring.

You take out the worse monsters to walk Los Angeles county.  You take their money, wash it clean.

No wonder then—for the first time in his life, Ray Merrimen is distracted.  He lays out his crimes against yours and finds himself a bit ashamed.  He loves heists because it’s a game, a test against his own mind.  Can he think of every angle, can he execute it properly?  Can he read the people he is working worth?  

You, though?  You’re something biblical.  Old Testament shit, the way you kill without remorse.  He’d think you are a psychopath, but you have a warm heart for the people you care for, it seems.

You don’t scare Ray.  He’s seen plenty of death, plenty of carnage.  What scares him more and more, as each day passes, as each night seems to end with you in his arms, is the outsized love he has for you.  It terrifies him.  At first it had just been a little twinge in his chest, a spark of protectiveness that made him want to shield you from the world.  

Now it’s worse.  It’s too much.  If Ray thinks about it too much—what it means to love someone, what it means to contemplate losing them—he feels his chest get tight, his throat closing around the sudden emotion.

-----

Mack, Bosco, Lavoux…they notice that Ray is slipping.  They notice he’s distracted, and they know why he’s distracted.

Ray tries to course-correct.

“We gotta figure out a way to take out those cameras,” Lavoux says at the chop shop while they are deep in planning.  

“They all run on wi-fi,” Ray says.

“Can we get a scrambler in there?” Mack asks.

Ray points to the blueprints of the club where the rave is set to occur.  He taps one blunt fingertip against the second floor section, the nerve center where the owner’s office is and the security hub with all the cameras.

“If we could get someone in there, that night, beforehand…” he starts, but Lavoux picks up the thread immediately.

“The owner is always pulling women up there.  If we had a girl with a purse, we could tuck the scrambler in there.”

“They’d find the scrambler when they wand her at the door,” Bosco interjects.

Lavoux waves him off.  “Nah, my wife has a purse with a fake bottom.  Uses it to sneak food into Lakers games.  They hardly ever wand purses.  They just poke around in there.  If we put makeup and tampons and girly shit in there, they’ll barely look at all.”

“What about your girl?” Mack asks Ray, and it’s funny how little time it took for you to be the girl next door to Ray’s girl.

Ray knows that the guys notice his increasing sloppiness, so he course-corrects.  Or tries to.  Which is the problem with that sort of thing:  sometimes if you are drifting left, you can jerk too hard and end up too far on the right.  Which is exactly what Ray does now.

“She’s not my girl,” he snaps, irritated that they’d even think to bring you into this.  “I know someone else who can help.”

-----

The reason Ray and Holly were always so on-again, off-again is because Holly is easy.  Which isn’t a knock on her, though it sounds like one.  Holly is just easy to handle.  She believes in that love-at-first-sight, first-love, puppy-love bullshit.  Because Ray and Holly were together all the way back in high school, it’s easy for Ray to hook her back into his orbit.

The fact that he even feels a little guilty?  He credits you for that, the sharp sting of conscience when Holly eagerly agrees to help the guys.

-----

It seems that Ray can only keep complete control over one area of his life at a time.

The moment he regains control of his crew and his operation, things with you fall apart.  

It’s his own fault, really.  He hasn’t slept with Holly again yet, has kept her at a careful distance…but he can’t keep her completely away.  Holly thinks she’s back with Ray, has no idea she’s being used, but Ray has to play along a little.

He tries to keep the two of you separate.  Even if you haven’t forced him to define the thing the two of you have, Ray still knows you’ll be hurt if you knew.  Even if he explained it to you, laid out how it’s all part of the plan, you’d still be hurt.  You’d still want to be the one that helps them; you’d want to be the one who has him completely and doesn’t have to share, not even for pretend.

He tries to keep Holly away from Mack’s house.  He really, truly does.  But now that he’s back with her, he’s reminded of how close she likes to stick to him, like Velcro.  And maybe it’s worse now because he went back to her.

He and the guys are lifting in the garage, the usual metal and rap blaring from the speakers, when Holly strolls up like it’s nothing.  Like it’s no big deal.  Like she belongs there, with her man, and in her mind, that’s the fact of it.

Ray doesn’t have enough time to usher her inside when he sees your car pull up.  You park in your driveway, and you climb out of your car.  It happens like a slow-motion car wreck, and Ray—meticulous, thinks-of-every-angle Ray—can’t stop it.

You start to walk across the thin strip of grass that separates your house from Mack’s.  You approach with that same smile on your face, but it falls so fast when you see Holly.  Her arms are hooked around Ray’s neck, she’s perched in his lap where he sits on the weight bench.

Ray sees how your smile falls.  He sees the hurt that flashes across your face, quick as lightning.  But it’s there, and he sees it, and it haunts him for a long time afterwards.

-----

At first, he promises that he’ll fix it.  After the heist at the rave, after he disentangles from Holly, he’ll fix it with you.  He’ll explain it all:  how it was just a ruse, how he didn’t want to put you in harm’s way.  The club owner, after all, has groping, grasping hands.  Ray would never ask you to deal with that, and doesn’t that prove, really, how much he cares?

But as the days pass, the quiet little voice in the back of his head whispers, maybe it’s better this way.

What can he offer you, really?  He’s an ex-con, technically a current con too.  He’s got PTSD.  He’s antisocial.  His emotions have been flattened, battered down into dust.  Is he really the best you can do?

He knows he’s not.  He knows you can do a million times better.  Maybe it’s better this way.  Leave it as a clean break, let you find someone you can have a future with.

-----

It shouldn’t hurt as much as it does.  The fact that it hurts at all tells Ray that he’s fucked up terribly.

The heist of the rave goes off without a single flaw.  Another perfect robbery:  in, out, no one hurt.  No suspicions on them.  They check all the cash, find the lone dye pack, and they divvy up the rest.  It’s an outstanding haul, better than they expected:  the club hadn’t done a cash drop in several weekends, for fuck’s sake.

Ray and his crew take it all.

He cuts Holly loose again, and it’s a relief.  Pretending takes a lot out of him, and Ray finds himself alone again.

He could march next door and set you straight.  He could push his cut of the heist onto you, payment for treating you terribly.  The two of you haven’t exchanged a single word since you saw Holly sitting in his lap, though sometimes the two of you make eye contact when one is coming and the other going.  

You never look furious when you see him.  You only look sad.

He won’t march next door, though, because you’re seeing someone.  Mack has mentioned it in passing, how you met a friend of his cousin at one of their parties, how the two of you are testing the waters.

Ray pretends it doesn’t hurt, but the truth is, it feels like his heart is being pulled out of his chest.

-----

Ray Merrimen always has his temper under control.  Some of his buddies from the Marines, they fly off the handle at the slightest provocation.  Not Ray:  he’s cool as a fucking cucumber.  He’s his own zen center of his own zen universe.  Completely under control.

Until you.  Something about you has set him off-kilter, even now when you don’t speak to each other.

There’s a party at Mack’s, a joint birthday party for Mack and one of his cousins, and there’s so many people that Ray doesn’t see you right away.  He only notices you later in the afternoon, as the sun is starting to sink in the west, casting the entire scene in a deep gold light.

You’re in a cute sundress, sexy as hell, but you’re with your new guy.  Mack’s cousin’s buddy.  A big hulking dude, thick with muscle and covered in tattoos.

Ray instantly hates him.  He hates the way the guy seems to have a tight grip on you, his meaty paw wrapped around your waist or your wrist, never letting you out of his sight.  He hates the way the guy’s eyes go narrow and suspicious when you try to talk to other people.

Ray never for a second would think you can’t take care of yourself.  He knows the truth of who you are, and he knows that if you’re dealt any pain, you’ll deal it back threefold.  Still, there’s always been something about you that tugs at him.  That makes that dormant, protective side of him flare up.

Once the sun sets, the party turns, as parties often do after dark.  It goes from being fun and festive to….more.  People are drunk and stoned and sated after a day in the sun, and couples drift away to their cars or to shadowy corners to do what couples do.

You and your new guy drift into the house, and Ray can’t help but follow at a distance.  He’s not a pervert or a voyeur—something is pinging against his internal radar about the scene, and that protectiveness flares up hotter and brighter.

He hears the argument before he sees it:  your dude’s low voice, steadily getting louder.  Your own voice, pleading.

“I saw you flirting with that guy,” your dude says in a low growl.

“I absolutely wasn’t,” you protest.

Ray rounds the corner just in time to see the asshole raise his hand to you, sees him slap you, hard.  Your face snaps back, and Ray catches the hurt and surprise in your eyes.

Ray Merrimen, who is always as cool as a fucking cucumber:  he fucking snaps.

Your dude is big, but Ray is bigger.  Three quick strides and he’s on top of him, has the element of surprise.  Ray grabs him around the throat, slams him to the floor with a neat leg sweep, and then he’s on him:  kicking him in the ribs, in the kidneys so that he’ll piss blood for a month.  Then kneeling on his chest, his fists making hamburger out of his face.

You don’t try to stop him.  You only stand against the wall, your hand cupping the bruise blooming on your cheekbone.  

Mack is the one who hears the commotion.  Mack is the one to pull Ray off of the dude before he kills him, but it takes another cousin and Bosco to actually hold Ray back.  He’s insane with rage, wants to see the dude’s brains splattered against the carpet for daring to hurt you.

Ray makes sure the dude knows.  Waits for the fucker to look him in the eye.

“You touch her again, I’ll kill you,” Ray snarls.  “But I’ll make you suffer first.”

Then it’s commotion, as the dude’s buddy comes and leads him away in a stagger.  As Bosco and Mack hold Ray back.  

As you slip out in the middle of the chaos, disappearing from Mack’s house and returning to your own home.

*****

You wanted to move on from Ray Merrimen.  You really, really did.

It should have been an easy thing.  He had a new girl, didn’t he?  A gorgeous blonde girl perched in his lap, his arm around her waist, comfortable as could be.  You’d been stunned, hurt, but you had hid it.  Had turned on your heel and marched away, then stayed away from Mack’s place for months.

When Mack’s cousin’s friend sauntered up to you, it seemed an easy out.  What was the saying?  The easiest way to get over one man was to get under a different man.  So you did.

But maybe you couldn’t get over Ray Merrimen as easily as that.  Even if you turned off the lights, made the new guy go silent when you fucked…even if you tried to pretend it was the guy you really wanted in your bed, it didn’t quite work.

Besides, the new guy was pushy in a way you didn’t like.  Jealous, and not in a passive way.

Mack’s party sealed it for you.  A man only ever gets one chance to put his hands on you, and the moment the dude slaps you, you’re already planning your revenge.  If he hits you, guaranteed that he’s hit others.  He’ll hit others after you.  Hit them and maybe worse, and the gears are turning in your head before you realize what the sudden flurry of activity in front of you is.

It’s Ray fucking Merrimen, beating the shit out of the dude.  Kicking him, punching him.  Blood splattering until it looks like a Pollack painting.  Ray snarling and growling, feral in a way you didn’t think he had in him.

It’s chaos.  It’s madness.  Your face is hot, throbs in pain from where the dude hit you, and in the midst of the pandemonium, you flee.

-----

You aren’t surprised when Ray turns up later.  The fight must have broke up Mack’s party for good; it’s gone quiet next door, and all of the cars in the street are gone.  You are slouched on your sofa, a bag of frozen peas held against your cheek, when you hear the knock at the door.

You know it’s him before you even answer.

At least he looks ashamed of himself.  At least he ducks his head when you turn on the porch light and glare out at him.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

“Why?”

He hesitates, then says, “I want to apologize.”

You cross your arms and narrow your eyes.  “Don’t.  You did that guy a favor, in the end.  Now I don’t have to sort him out.”

The corner of his mouth twitches into a ghost of a smile.  “I knew you’d handle it.”

“So why’d you beat the shit out of him?”

The ghost of a smile falls.  He scuffs his shoe against your porch in an ‘aw, shucks’ sort of way, making him seem like a boy.  

“Didn’t like seeing you get hurt,” Ray says.  “Saw red.”

“Okay.  Well, thank you.”

Another moment of hesitation, his eyes studying your face.  You notice how they zero in on the bruise, the bit of swelling, and you notice how his eyes narrow at it.

“I wanted to apologize—”

“I said not to.”

“—for everything else,” he continues.  “For…for not including you in the heist.  For using another girl for it.”

You shake your head, push down the hurt that blossomed at the mention of it.  “Don’t apologize for that either.  We never defined our thing.”

“I know.”

“So let’s just chalk it up to a fling and move on.”

Ray puts his hand on the door jamb, leans into it a bit.  He’s usually got a stoic’s face with minimal expression beyond the odd smirk or smile, but right now he looks sad.

“Can’t we talk about it?” he asks.

You sigh.  “I’d rather not.  I’m exhausted, Ray.  Let’s just move on.”

He nods at you, knocks lightly against the door jamb.  Then he leaves, and you pretend not to notice the way his shoulders seem slumped in defeat.

-----

Time passes.  If Ray moves on, you can’t tell:  the blonde girl isn’t around anymore, and the only women you ever notice next door are Mack’s sisters and cousins.

You don’t date either.  The incident at the party left you shaken up.  It dredged up some old shit that leaves you with far too many sleepless nights.  Your work suffers a little, and your real work suffers too.  You ease off the gas a little, take things at a slower pace.  Resituate yourself.  You ask Mack to keep an eye on your place and you go north for a week, to the quiet country where you can think and breathe in clean air.

When you come back, things go as much back to normal as they can.  It still hurts to look at Ray, to remember how much you had opened up to him, just to have him toss you away.  It still hurts to feel like you’ve been played, but something tugs at the back of your mind—the man looks sad every time you see him.  

You get the same sad little smile, the same half wave, and you’re curious what he would say to you if you let him talk.  

-----

You get the chance sooner than you think.  You pull into your driveway after a day spent running down a particularly wily deadbeat father who was dodging your attempts to serve him with court papers.  Your feet hurt, you have a blistering headache…

Ray catches you in the middle ground between your and Mack’s house, the grassy strip that serves as a sort of DMZ.

“Hey,” he says, taking a few strides over to greet you.

“Hey.”  You squint against the sunlight, wince at the clamor in your head.

“Wanted to tell you, your front tires are getting bald.  Wanted to offer to put new ones on for you, if you wanted.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I’m offering,” he interrupts.  “Because they aren’t safe.  You could lose control, have a blow-out.”

You stare at him a long moment, and he just stares back.  That same sort of sad expression, but he doesn’t try to take advantage and start talking about the stuff between you.

Finally you sigh.  “I’m tired, Ray.  It was a long day—”

“Tomorrow then,” he offers.  “Or…or I could take it and swap them out for you now.  You don’t even have to be there.”

It shouldn’t affect you.  It shouldn’t make your heart hammer the way it does, just this simple offer to help with your car.  Hell, Mack does that all the time.  But it means something:  it means that Ray still notices you, and Ray still wants you to be safe, and you scold your treacherous heart before you finally nod.

“Okay,” you tell him.  “Tomorrow then.”  Then, as an afterthought, and softer than your other words, you add, “thanks for looking out, Ray.”

“Always,” he replies, just as soft.

-----

You take your car to Mack’s chop shop the next day, but Ray is the only one there.  You realize that it’s probably intentional—the man doesn’t half-ass anything, and if he wants time alone with you, he will have planned it.

And with your car up on the lift, you’re kind of a captive audience.  Sure, you could order a car and leave, but that traitorous, treacherous heart of yours still beats with a hopefulness that you thought was long dead.

Both tires are off before he even says a word.  He bounces the worn tires on the floor, rolls them over to you to show how bad they are.  They are thin, the rubber cracked and worn down.  He pulls a penny out of his pocket and shows you how to test your treads:  if you can see Lincoln’s head when the penny is between the treads and upside down, it’s time for new tires.

“Thank you,” you tell him.

He nods, tucks the penny away.  He fixes you with that penetrating stare of his, then says, “I never slept with her, you know.  Never let it get that far.”

You snort.  “Not my business, Ray.”

“It is.  It should have been.”

“Well…”  You don’t have a witty retort, and you squirm a little under the force of his gaze.

“I know we never defined it, but I thought of you as my girl,” he continues.  “Thought of myself as yours, you know?  The whole thing with Hol…the other girl, that was just for the heist.”

Another snort.  “You could have asked me to help.”

Ray bounces the tire a little, breaks the gaze with you.  “Yeah, I could have.  Could have done a lot of things different, but I didn’t want to pull you into that.”

“I pulled you into my shit.”

“Yeah, but the heist…might have put you in the path of a bad dude.  Didn’t want to even imagine him looking at you, let alone touching you.”

You huff out an angry breath, can feel your temper ticking up a degree or two.  “So instead you ice me out, get back with your ex, and let me twist on the line for a while until I get the hint and move on?  Stellar fucking planning, Ray.  Great work.”

His jaw flexes as he bites back his own temper.  “I never said I was any good at the relationship shit,” he grits out.  “You think guys like me have healthy fucking communication skills with their girls?”

The way he says it makes you smile in spite of yourself.  Of course he’s never done the relationship stuff in a healthy way.  You haven’t either, really.  And wasn’t that the attraction to him, that you were both sort of fucked up in a way that somehow worked when you were together?

“They don’t teach you to talk about your feelings in the Marines, Peckerwood?” you ask, laying in a teasing lilt.  Just a little, just an opening salvo, maybe.

“Not in prison either.”

“My taxpayer dollars hard at work.”

He snorts, an approximation of a laugh.  He looks at you again in a long moment of quiet, then nods to himself.  Gets back to work on your car, and doesn’t venture any other comments that touch on the hurt between you…but it’s an opening salvo, just as you thought.

-----

Thing is, Ray seems to try.  Behind the cold gaze, behind the steady and precise way he is, he tries to tap into some romantic side.

It can’t come naturally to him.  You can picture him doing an internet search on romantic things, planning out a list, working through the list with the same military precision he uses for any other mission.

You’re the mission now.

You get flowers delivered to your house.  Food, mostly candy and sweets.  You wake up one morning after winds carried ash and smoke from the north to find your car washed and sparkling.  He must have gotten up before dawn to do it.

More flowers.  Expensive candy from a gourmet chocolatier.  A case of expensive wines.  A tennis bracelet once, the diamonds sparkling obscenely on your wrist when you try it on.  Diamond earrings, then emerald earrings, then rubies.  

Ray Merrimen is running through the entire catalogue of precious stones, and when he starts in on topazes, you gather up all of his gifts and march next door to return them.

“It’s too much,” you tell him.  He’s there alone, and you set the box—now overflowing—on the kitchen table.

He shakes his head.  “You deserve it.”

You look at the box, all the velvet boxes with all the jewelry.  All of them guesses, because he doesn’t know you well enough to know your tastes.  “It’s all too much.”

“So pick what you like best and sell the rest,” he tells you with a shrug.

“You can’t buy me off with jewelry.”

His mouth twists into a smirk as he studies the contents of the box closer.  “What about chocolate?”

He’s got you there.  “I ate the chocolate, asshole.  And you know it.”

-----

If you fell into bed with him the first time, it takes longer to fall the second time around.

Ray dials down the gifts, but they never stop.  He just is more cunning now.  He orders dinner from your favorite restaurant—he knows how crazy you are about the local Thai place’s curry puffs—but he orders for two.  Shows up at your door with a big bag from the Lemongrass Café, with a smile on his face.

“Hungry?” he asks, and you roll your eyes.  Invite him in because it’s a dumb question:  you’re always hungry for curry puffs and drunken noodles.

It becomes a habit, the two of you sharing dinner.  You actually, finally get a little sick of the curry puffs, so you sometimes make dinner.  Nothing elaborate, but Ray always eats with relish and thanks you when he’s done.

Dinner turns into dinner and sitting on the couch.  Which turns into the sharing of secrets, like before.  You tell him about the latest guy in your sights, a guy who is rumored to drug and rape aspiring actresses.  He tells you about his new idea to rob the fed.

“It’s just an idea right now,” he tells you.  “But I think I can pull it off.”

You ignore the warning bells chiming in your head.  Regional banks, clubs….those are one thing.  The fed?  That’s another beast altogether.  That could get Ray killed.

The sharing of secrets leads to incidental touches on the couch:  him brushing hair out of your face, you curling under his arm as he holds you lightly.  

It goes from there.  Kisses, and this time they are more tentative, more questioning.  Ray peers into your eyes, seems to look for something there.  You gaze back at him, looking for any future betrayal, and he senses it.

“I’m sorry,” he tells you, over and over and over again, and you know talk is cheap and men lie, but Ray is a man who knows the weight of words.  He rarely speaks, so his words seem more precious than more talkative men.

Eventually you forgive him.  Eventually you realize that he’s being honest when he tells you about his ex, Holly, and even if he isn’t honest, you realize that you have to take that leap of faith and trust anyway.

When you finally let him back into your bed, it’s so different than before.  There’s a desperation there, but it’s not feral.  He doesn’t let you get onto all fours; he makes you turn around and face him.  Makes you lay underneath him and look at him, and even if you feel like a raw, exposed nerve under the force of his gaze, you realize how much better this is:  his broad body fucking you into the mattress in slow, steady thrusts. His hand reaching down to hike your thigh higher on his hip.  It changes the angle just enough to make the thick drag of him hit that spot inside you, the one that makes your vision wash out in a haze of sparks.

Afterwards, as you’re falling asleep, you can feel how he pulls you to him, feel the solid bulk of him curve around you.  Lying like that, so close together, you can’t tell if he’s trying to protect you in his sleep or if you’re his life preserver keeping him afloat.

Maybe both.

-----

Now it’s different than before.  Before, Ray seemed reluctant to admit that the two of you had a thing.  Now, he sticks close to you at Mack’s parties, hooks an arm around your shoulders.  Maybe it’s a little proprietary, marking you as his, but he’s gentle about it.  Doesn’t turn mean like the other dude.

He invites you around for when they start to plan the fed heist in earnest.  You meet the new guy, Donnie.  The driver.  He seems nice enough, but the entire heist feels dangerous.  When Ray is bent over the blueprints, you feel like there’s a ticking clock over his head, counting down the scant time he has left with you.

This is going to get him killed, you think.  You’re acquainted enough with death the recognize the chill as it draws closer.

You ask him one night why he needs to do it.  Ray shifts a little underneath you, turns his head to look at you.

“Well, I don’t need to, sweetheart,” he answers honestly.  “Maybe before I did.  Needed to prove it to myself, that I was better than the other assholes who tried to rob the place.”

“So….”

“So now it’s just the money.  Thirty million clean.”  He presses a kiss to the top of your head.  “Think of the life we could live.”

“So it’s just about the money then?”

“Yup.”

You twist in his arms, lift your head until you are gazing down at him.  “So don’t do it.  I have money.”

“Sweetheart—”

“What if I told you I already had money?  More than your cut of the fed heist would be?  A cool ten million sitting offshore, and a house in Panama just waiting for me.  For us, if you want.”

Ray’s expression goes from startled to incredulous.  “Bullshit,” he says.

“No bullshit.  I’ve been at this a long while, and I’ve never been caught.  And it’s all stolen from monsters, so there’s no guilt.  At least not for me there isn’t.”

Ray sits up too.  “You’re serious.”

You nod.  “I am.”  You reach out and take his hand in yours:  his hands are huge compared to your own, and your thread your fingers through his.  You can feel the tears rising in your eyes.  The panic starts to bubble in your chest, acidic and hot.  You can feel the chill of death nearby, hear the clock ticking down…

“Please don’t do this heist,” you plead.  “I’ve never asked you for anything.  I’m asking for this one thing.”

“You asked me for a gun once,” he points out with a smile.

“I asked Mack for a gun.  You just took over.”

He hums, and you continue.

“I have a bad feeling, Ray.  A gut feeling, and they are never wrong.  This heist….I think it’s going to end badly.”  He opens his mouth to protest, but you hold up a silencing hand.  “I mean, I think you’ll plan it perfectly, but there are too many variables.  Do you really know Donnie?  Can you be sure you’ll get an armored car without any trouble?”

He stares at you so long that you know he’s going to tell you to fuck off.  To shove your gut feeling, to get over yourself.

But you’ve always underestimated Ray Merrimen a little.  A lot of people do.  They see a silent man with a stern face and make assumptions, and even with your little glimpse into his inner life, you make assumptions too.  Wrong ones, it seems.

“Panama?” he asks.  “My Spanish is shitty.”

You smile, feel the first tear break free and course down your face.  “We can learn, Ray.  The house is gorgeous, though.  It’s in Bocas del Toro, overlooks the Caribbean.  The water is so blue, Ray, I swear—”

“Okay,” he says simply.

“Okay?”  You blink, freeing a few more tears, and he pulls his hand from yours to wipe them away.  

“I said okay.  Let’s do it.  Let’s go to Panama.”

“You’re serious?”

“I am if you are.”

You are.  You are serious, and it turns out Ray is too.  The heists were never about the money, really, and now that he has you, the need to prove himself to himself is gone.  Just like that, the sick feeling in your stomach fades.  The chill of death in the air dissipates.  The ticking clock stops, resets.

Maybe in another life, Ray Merrimen ends up dead.  Maybe in a shoot-out with police, maybe dead in prison after he’s caught trying to rob the fed.  Maybe double-crossed by one of his compatriots.  Who can say?

But in this life, no such thing happens:  he meets you before that path can be set in stone.  His killer angel, his goddess of vengeance who turns out to be his salvation in the end, who takes him to a paradise overlooking the Caribbean where the two of you find your peace, put your demons to bed, with each other.

~~~Tag List~~~ @bananas-pajamas  @massivecolorspygiant​   @imspillingcoffee​   @amneris21​   @paintballkid711​   @mad-girl-without-a-box​   @bestattempt   @rosiefridayrogersunday​   @strawberrydragon​   @hoeforthefictional​   @greeneyedblondie44​  @leannawithacapitala​   @stardust-galaxies​  @buckybarneshairpullingkink​   

[fierte-verte]

Being Steve's Neighbor + Rival-to-Lovers Would Include... (Part 2)

Part 1 / Part 3

Summer 1983

the summer days before junior year rolled by in a haze— between babysitting will, track, and going to robin's soccer matches, you rarely had time to think about anything else

the nights, however, seemed to drag on forever; the quiet slide of a window hinge, shuffling feet, the gentle notes of a tears for fears song— it happened routinely when you slipped into bed, radio silence penetrated by noises from next door

you never dared to draw back the curtains, fearful of all the things you might encounter, dreadful of the things your sleep-deprived mind wanted to see

was it steve perched on his window sill, doe eyes glazed behind cigarette smoke? or was it another girl climbing into his room, unaware of the heartbreak ahead like always?

your stomach churned at both possibilities, neither doing favors for your efforts in ignoring him

the knowledge that steve occupied your last waking thoughts infuriated you to no end (as did the blue box that sat in your closet, collecting dust per lack of neighborly chucked items)

even robin noticed the silence during sleepovers, rob lowe's dialogue no longer sparsed between cross-house banter

"so... either you've murdered harrington, which in that case, good for you, or we've entered an alternate universe where you two aren't fated to be mortal enemies"

since your porch blowout with steve, gracie's wandered off for another three times in total— always ending up around where steve first found her, always shaking as though she's seen something sinister

"hey bud, what's with the escapades, huh? those walks not enough for you, explorer?”

September - November 10, 1983

junior year marked many a turning points: you were promoted to captain after aaron's graduation, the regular sleepover schedule now included some robin-style gushing over tammy thompson, and steve had begun dating nancy wheeler from the year below

although you and nancy ran in different social circles, you were familiar with mike through will's animated stories— it was endearing, the way he occupied most of will's attention (which would otherwise have been wasted on people like lonnie byers)

though he seldom mentioned his best friend's older sister, will would occasionally let slip about mike and steve’s late night run-ins

"mike makes this scrunched up, grossed out face whenever he talks about nancy and steve, it's cute. like silly cute"

you realized what all those sleepless nights must have been: steve in his navy green sweater, hair perfectly coiffed and ready to romance all the way across town

could it be possible? steve harrington in an actual committed relationship? the thought rolled around your head like an aimless pinball

still, amidst all the confusion, surprise, and frankly, doubt, you had hoped the two wouldn't crash and burn as steve's previous attempts at dating; the development brought on a heady onrush of emotions, coupled with the lingering intuition of something big brewing ahead

soon, your gut had proven you right on a tuesday afternoon in the form of a missing person poster, tucked beside a food drive poster on the hallway bulletin board

a nauseous spell washed over at the idea of will in danger, and you set off to look for him in plausible places around town, running into a distressed and pacing jonathan outside his house; noticing pieces of a camera sticking out his bag, you'd coaxed the truth about these past few days out of him

"let me get this straight— there's a creepy picture of wheeler in your camera, which steve and his goonies broke, both will and barbara holland are missing, and there's an eight-foot tall monster lurking in the woods?"

christ, what happened to hawkins being the most banal town in midwest america? and why does this sound like a breakdown of one of will's d&d nights?

questions bubbled up your throat only to fizzle into nothing— you realized the only option was to take everything in stride; yes, you could theoretically wallow in disbelief, but it wouldn't bring you any closer to will’s whereabouts

remembering his tendency to hide out at castle byers, you offered to scope out the place again, letting jonathan know you'd call his house firsthand with updates

to your frustration, your search in the woods was fruitless; the lack of candy wrappers and unopened comics told you will had been absent from the hideout for a while

besides, there was something strange about the area; it was colder, a biting freeze almost, and unnervingly dark for an afternoon in early november

steve was en route home when he spotted you along randolph, hands in hair and visibly distressed— flashes of that evening on your porch burning through his mind

"(y/l/n)," he slammed the brakes as you whipped around, eyes darting between the bmw and his face. "what's wrong? you okay?"

"have you seen will? will byers? four feet six, bowl cut, big brown eyes?”

“wha-who- why do you keep losing—” steve gaped, until something registered and his eyes grew hard. “wait a minute, this is about that kid on the poster. byers? as in peeping tom byers?”

you soured at the comment, feeling a familiar drop in your stomach; there was no worse time than the present for a fight with steve, but he was just so damn good at picking one

“actually, jonathan’s a nice guy. but i don't expect people like you or hagan and his circus of clowns to care”

“and you do? the last i checked, you two were complete strangers at school”

“hmm, didn’t realize your head was out of your ass long enough to know that”

“don’t work that pretty little head of yours too hard, princess. i’ve got big enough eyes to see most people”

“bigger than your hair? sure, jonathan might be…odd sometimes, i’ll give you that— but he’s a good brother to will and a good son to joyce. that’s better than half the men here in hawkins”

“which makes voyeurism okay? he took pictures of nance in my bedroom!”

“no,” pinching the bridge of your nose with eyes squeezed shut, you felt the waning fight seep from your body. “not at all, steve"

his head, too, slumped at the crestfallen mutter of his name, all tension in the air now exhausted

"what jonathan did was wrong— and nothing except a genuine apology to wheeler will make it right. but right now, this is about will. he's eleven and nowhere to be found. steve, please, if he ends up on the wrong street in town..."

did the idea of slamming his head against the dashboard appeal to steve? yes. between nancy's distant treatment and his own growing irritation at tommy and carol, he'd been on edge all day

still, did the crushed expression on your face trump all his self-pity and frustration? damn yes

wordlessly, his hand reached for the car locks, head gesturing towards the empty leather seat beside him

"c'mon, let’s drive up lover's lake, see if the kid's camping out around the boat house"

who'd have thought— steve harrington and (y/n) (y/l/n) in the same vehicle, and heading towards the town's number one make-out spot at that? even so, you supposed stranger things had gone down in hawkins before

with a conscious sigh, steve leaned forward to crank the radio down, duran duran's mumbles filling every gap of thick silence

you two kept your eyes on everything but one another, afraid to look (and even more so to look away)

the road signs and block houses all melded together in a blur of colors through the window, stretching north to lover's lake

steve noticed the bundle of nerves pressed against his own chest— which is absurd to think about, for he'd driven the same route more times than he could count since freshman year; so what was so different about this?

deciding to risk a glance at the last intersection— big mistake, really— steve realized the setting sun had begun to work its magic, tender light splitting to coat even the roughest edges in beauty

you were swathed in the delicate glow, hair fanning out around your face like a makeshift halo— the only divine thing in a town that was insipid at best

"take a picture, harrington," you teased, but the jibe was heatless, amused and almost...sweet, "it'll last longer"

a peep in the rearview mirror revealed a steve flushed from ear to ear, and for a moment the sight was enough to ease your worry about will

arriving at the lake, you two began the search— not only did steve weave between trees and boulders with the precision of indiana jones himself, he was also surprisingly chivalrous, extending a hand for you to grab onto at each tricky obstacle

"done a lot of exploring around here, harrington?" you grimaced at the tone of your own voice, neither friendly nor casual enough for your liking, too deliberate in its pointed pitch

steve, too, had been surprised by the question, rubbing the back of his now slightly reddened neck

"not more than the average teenager," he replied uncertainly, "but what's it to you, princess?" (it was the exact same question, two years apart and still, no answer in sight)

instead of a half-baked answer, steve received an elbow to his stomach instead, instantly doubling over per his personal brand of theatrics

"sneaky way to get me on my knees, (y/l/n)"

"as if i have to stoop that low," you had almost smiled at the return of his pink-tinted cheeks

November 10 - 12, 1983 

your futile trip to the lake was a last shot at optimism before an ensuing two days of hell; between news of a body in the quarry and the eventual announcement of will's funeral, you were sucked into a whirlwind of shock and grief

robin had been your rock through the forty-eight hours, making sure you were eating and taking naps despite your complete lack of will to do so

he'd been so young, will, so full of dreams and wonder and hope, always cheered up by the prospect that there'd be another campaign to plan; all those nights spent in each other's company— you had come to see him as a friend, a brother

and all you did was fail him, the voice inside you raged, punching at your insides until there was nothing to do but crumble on your doorsteps

some time later, the roar of an engine broke through your hysterics; steve had pulled into his driveway, one hand on the steering wheel and the other hovering above his door handle

one minute your vision was a teary mess, and the next it plunged into darkness; immediately, you breathed in the smell of klein cologne and detergent

"christ...harrington..." you choked out, caught between shoving the jerk away and reeling him in by the lapels

almost bent over from the push and pull of elation and agony in your chest, you were steadied only by the firm grip of steve's arms

"i'm so sorry," he whispered, his head a grounding weight atop of yours

"it's my faul- my goddamn fault - didn't even know he was travelling home so late, if only i had offered—"

"hey hey hey," his voice was firm, as you blinked through the curtain of tears to focus on his face, "it's not, okay? you had no control over what happened— don't go punishing yourself because i know you will, you've got too big of a heart"

"i just wish—" the rest of your sentence blubbered into nonsense, though steve had guessed it nonetheless, thumb rubbing circles into the crook of your arm

"i know," he looked pained, the most empathetic you had ever seen him, “i know, princess”

sensing your quick descent into fatigue, steve leaned down and slid one arm behind your knees, the other supporting your back; with a slight lift he was carrying you inside the house and onto the living room couch

you tried hard to hold onto his jacket sleeve, desperate for another warm presence in the vacant house, but merciless sleep took over before you could mumble stay

you didn't need to, however— steve had remained at your side until he heard the sound of your parents' car in the driveway, at which he slipped through the back door, into the garden, and over the fence to fall, in a very non-ninja like manner, face first into his hedge

you didn't wake up until well into noon the next day, when you were knocked out of heavy slumber by a series of brash, urgent knocks downstairs

the door opened to reveal— and you swore hawkins was just getting more and more flabbergasting by the day— steve harrington, pressing a coke can to an alarmingly huge bruise on his face

he was obviously agitated, mouth opening and closing repeatedly as words seemed to escape him

"steve," you tugged him into the house, closing the door in case nosy mr. pleet from across decided to poke his head out, "you okay? what happened, why are you—"

"i screwed up," he made a face that was half wincing and half frowning, though you couldn't tell from the amount of blood smeared on his cheeks, "i screwed up with nance so bad, (y/n), i'm such a goddamn idiot! a stupid, no-good, hot-headed waste-of-time—"

"okay—" you interrupted before he could spiral any further, guiding him to the couch, nudging him to sit down and plucking the can from his hands, "though i am thoroughly impressed by your vocabulary, you are going to split that face wide open if you keep up the vigor. sit here, i'm getting the first-aid kit"

steve watched with half-swollen eyes as you sprinted to the kitchen, busted lips left stinging in an ill-advised attempt to smirk when he spotted the bunny slippers on your feet

it was even harder for him not to when you threatiningly held up a damp towel to his face, false hostility betrayed by the gentle grip of your other hand on his chin

“make one comment,” your gaze dropped to the white slippers shortly, “one comment, steve, and i will smother you with this towel”

“wasn’t about to say anything,” he shrugged and mimmed zipping up his lips, a flash of delight visible in his brown eyes before they dimmed, before current circumstance flooded his memory

“c’mon lover boy,” you tossed the bloodied towel aside, moving onto antibiotic cream and brushing it over steve’s nastier scrapes and cuts. “what really happened?”

for two hours, steve had relayed his twists and turns with nancy, jonathan, and what now was probably his former clique

the conversation had you reeling between disappointment and hope, second-hand embarrassment and relief, all of which you concealed under the calm guise of treating steve’s face

smoothing over one last band-aid near his temple, you rapped your knuckles against his forehead lightly, determined to get his full attention (not that he’d been able to concentrate anywhere else with you so close)

“i don’t know what goes on in here, assuming there’s actually something— but your only way out is through. drag your sorry ass to wheeler and jonathan. apologize. you’re obnoxious, steve, but far from despicable”

he’d held your gaze with such appreciation that it nearly made you blush; within the duration of a week, it was as though your neighbor had shed his entire king steve persona, now a simple boy seeking redemption

no, not simple, you corrected yourself— nothing about steve harrington was simple

“alright,” he relented, the ghost of a smile hanging on his mouth, “if you say so princess”

when he returned the next day, it was with double the expected good news; not only had he made amends with nancy and jonathan, will was alive, passed out in the hospital but nonetheless alive

you’d managed to jam your feet into one shoe, ecstatic to see the kid before steve wrapped a hand around your wrist, drawing you closer to him on the porch

“(y/n),” he cleared his throat, then reached into his coat pocket to pull out a tiny tazer the size of a matchbox, “promise me you’ll be careful? lock the doors at night and keep this with you at all times?”

you frowned at his grave expression, lips parted to seek an explanation when he beat you to it

“i just- after this thing with will - i want you to be safe,” he pressed it into your palm, “please, princess”

and pray tell, how were you supposed to refuse those doe eyes?

you nodded, slipped the tazer into your bag, and tiptoed to hug steve briefly; his neck was strangely warm

“thank you,” you pulled back with a bright grin, before dangling the keys that you had sneakily tugged out of steve’s jean pocket seconds ago

“now drive me to the hospital, harrington”

[script-nef]

Tomorrow | Rick Flag

Category: 18+/smut Warning: Handjob, thighjob (? is that a thing-), soft sex, pet names, praise kink, Ricky is a simp 2.7k words; Fuck, you’re insane. But then what does that say about him, who’s attracted to your entire shtick?

A/N: There’s this one part that i’m not sure is anatomically correct-

The team is insane. There’s a semi-talking shark, two weird mercenaries, a depressed twig with an alien virus, a girl who controls fucking rats, Harley with her name just speaking for herself.

And yet you’re the certified batshit crazy one. By everyone. Especially Rick himself.

You’re off to the side, talking to your ‘soulmate’ Harley about her break-up with the Joker because while the news about how she was up for grabs to villains was blaring everywhere, you weren’t paying attention. You got into a new show and it was amazing. A show about a homicidal, psychopathic cannibal psychiatrist falling for his insane patient. And you called it the best form of romance. Sometimes he wants to grab anyone of higher authority by the shirt collar—preferably Waller—and rattle them until they give him at least a semi-functioning person.

“Really? You broke up with him?”

“Yeah, we weren’t working well together. It was better this way, ya know?”

“I do indeed, Harley. Good for you, sweetie! So proud of you. Well, I like you and I don’t like him, so do you want me to go over and wreck his shit? He was mean to you for a long time and I would love to spear—”

“That’s enough.” He steps in, yanking you by the back of your shirt, away from Harley before she can respond, ignoring your whinings of Ri-ick, I was only joking and the petulant, ineffective dragging of your feet against the ground. He's basically your impulse control, stopping you whenever you're about to do something reckless with no regard for your health and safety, taking on your childish pokes and prods because you're bored and his skin is so nice. You say it’s a compliment but he's not sure if that’s completely true. From you, it could either mean you want his skincare routine—he doesn't have one—or you want to skin him so you're in possession of nice, clean flesh.

Fuck, you’re insane.

But then what does that say about him, who’s attracted to your entire shtick?

Okay, it’s not like he wants to be. Every single fibre, bone and sensible thought in his body constantly berates him for this. Really? Her? Her? Out of fucking everyone in the world? And he agrees with them one hundred percent. He should be removing any and all thoughts about you that don’t pertain to the mission, lock them away in a box, solder it shut, kick it down a ravine and into the sea, hoping it gets crushed by the water pressure. That’s exactly what he should do.

That’s not what happens. You have a different agenda, ruining his chances of ever finding peace. Latching onto him at whatever opportunity and excuse that pops into your head at any point, and you have a lot. “I’m cold!”, “I watched a puppy be all alone and you didn’t let me pet it so I’m sad.”, “You have a deadly disease called ‘no-affection-sickness’. It’s super fatal and you’ll die if you don’t get kisses and hugs. I don’t want you to die, Ricky, you deserve better than that.”

Maybe it would be better if you did it to everyone else, climbing on top of them every once in a while, calling cute—fuck did he just admit Ricky is cute—nicknames, but you don’t. It’s just for him. And he doesn’t know if he likes that or wants it to stop. Everything you do kills him.

The back of his head sticks into the valley of your tits, sinking in way more than he should allow in front of everyone. Even when he tries to pry his head out of your grasp, you make a noise of frustration and wrap your arms around his neck, locking him into the position. Half-choking him in the attempt to see the plan over him, the plan that would be easily visible if you just let go and sat down next to him like a normal person. Like everyone else in the room. He can see the others sneaking looks, side glances at your blatant display of affection. Can’t do anything about it.

You don't wear bras to sleep, just a thin shirt that droops to your thighs—it’s way too big for you because it’s his, and he has no idea how you got it but he doesn’t have the heart to ask for it back—and of fucking course you take the spot next to him, beaming and sniggering like you're in on a joke no one else is. He can't catch a break from you. (Does he even want one though?)

“Big day tomorrow! Nighty night, guys!” You say it like it’s a picnic, or a lunch date tomorrow when they’re actually walking to the jaws of death. Everyone replies to you in their own way and shuffles to sleep.

Snores echo in the room, pulling Rick back from the arms of sleep every time he gets close to it. How a shark sounds so loud is totally lost to him. In fact, can sharks even snore? Fuck if he knows.

You’re awake as well, fiddling with the sleeve of his neon yellow shirt. He’s given up on telling you to stop at this point.

“If we survive, can we get a day off before going back to prison?” You whisper in the dark, right next to his ear like you’re sharing a secret. He turns his head to your side even though it’s so dark that he can barely see the faintest outline of your body. He knows you’re looking straight back at him, eyes wide and curious even though you should be a bit drowsy at least.

“Probably not. And it’s not if, it’s when. You’re going to make it.” You giggle at his words and place a kiss onto his cheek, shorter than all your other ones but the only one so far that feels… genuine. The voices in his head give up then, disappearing completely, and oh. Oh. Shit.

It’s the night before a coup and the mission and it’s the worst fucking time to have this revelation. It’s not fireworks, not an eye-opening revelation. It’s like sitting on the beach, the seawater halfway up his chest and a wave washing over him. There’s something rising in his chest, something way too big and dangerous, so he swallows it back down. Locks it up, just for the next 24 hours. Then he can think about it after not dying. So he decides on choking out a “why?” to distract himself. You don’t reply for a while.

“I want to go home.”

You don’t have one, though. As far as he knows. The dossier on you was two pages; one and a half being all the places you visited and the people you wasted. It didn’t mention permanent residence. Running all the time, hopping from one motel to another and leaving a trail of dead bodies or looted safes behind you, infamous for being slippery as hell until he finally caught you. Pinned you to a wall before dragging your ass to Belle Reve.

“You wouldn’t know it. No one really does. I have a tortoise there, Wilbur. I think he misses me. I want to hug him one last time before I never see him again.” He hears shuffling, then heat as you cuddle up to him, fingers tentative against his arm, asking wordlessly if you can hug it. His body’s already moving to let your arm link with his before he realises. “If— When we get out of here… maybe you can visit me. I can probably escape once before they lock me up in some high-security place.”

Chatter should follow up, your mouth running at a thousand miles per hour to fill the lull, go off on a tangent that makes no sense, but you stay quiet. He can feel how tense you are, breathing shallow and subdued. The reasonable part of his mind chalks it up to vulnerability issues, clamming up as if you’ve talked too much already. You never really share anything about yourself that’s not ‘useless intel’, according to Waller. The screwed up and emotional part of his mind follows up with she trusts you, your feelings are reciprocated, say yes, say yes, say yes and despite his best effort to not listen to that part of himself, he can’t stop himself from replying in the kindest tone he can manage.

“Sure, sweetheart.” Where the fuck does that come from? “I’ll come with you.”

It’s dark as shit and he can’t see you, but he knows you’re smiling, beaming like a star. He hopes he can see it in the sunlight tomorrow, standing in the rubbles of Jötunheim.

---

“Get the fuck away from him!”

You smash something against Peacemaker’s head, knocking him to the side and don’t give him a chance to get back up, stabbing him all over and turning him into a fountain piece of blood, mangled and ugly. The asshole barely has time to gurgle out anything before the light disappears from his eyes. Good fucking riddance.

You’re drenched in blood, clothes red and speckles of it splattered into your hair, a few dots on your face. He can smell it on your hands—the disgustingly familiar copper stench—when you cup his face, asking him to focus and not go towards the white light. The sheer absurdity of that comment makes him laugh, then regret it. Abdominal muscles are half-dead in pain and you’re so warm that he wants to go to sleep. Fuck the mission and fuck everything. Just want to be near you.

Your arms wind around his neck, bringing his head to lay on your chest and it hurts because he’s most definitely broken at least two or three ribs, but he can’t reject you when you’re whispering oh thank god you’re alright, I was so scared, I was so, so scared fervently next to his ear, squeezing him like he’s going to turn into bubbles and slip right out of your grasp. It’s a moment, just you and him, breathing together, the sounds of the tower collapsing far in the background and barely noticeable.

Liquid slides down the side of his neck and you’re crying, streaks of salty tears clearing up the dust coated on your face. Oh, you’re so pretty. You look like a dream, made for him. His lips slip over yours before you have the chance to hug him again, and even with the broken bones and aching muscles and the tonnes of concrete above them ready to fall any second, he thinks everything will be alright.

---

It’s a house in the middle of nowhere. Oddly picturesque; white picket fence, olden style structure, front and back garden with overgrown weeds. Kind of dilapidated, understandable seeing as you haven’t visited here in some time. Has that 70’s vibe, or the 60’s. He doesn’t really know. You introduce him to Wilbur, who’s still alive somehow. He’s as confused as you are but doesn’t push it, remarking that you deserved another miracle. You giggle and agree, hugging him tightly. He winds an arm around you as well. It feels right.

He doesn’t really understand what happens after that. He was cleaning up dinner—fast food on the couch, legs tangled together, you occasionally feeding him bites of your burger, nibbling into his—and you appeared out of nowhere, bringing him down by the collars and smashing your lips onto his. Salty from the chips and plush to his chapped ones, parting open to shove your tongue into his mouth, sucking on his and god it’s filthy and your saliva is getting everywhere but that just makes it hotter. His eyelids are drooping as he gets drunk on the feeling, barely registering you pushing him down onto the creaky sofa and straddling him.

He’s already half hard from the makeout when you take him out, white liquid pearling on the tip. A throaty groan leaves him when you clench your fist around him, jerking him up and down while pressing your thumb against the underside, specifically a vein that’s way too sensitive and makes his arms all wobbly. You seem to like that, licking your lips while peering down at him, replacing your digits with the smooth flesh of your thighs, signing his death warrant.

It feels way too good, almost criminal, and he’s well on his way to a climax when you shuck off your pants, discard your panties and seat himself in you with one stroke. A choked gasp explodes out of the both of you, forehead pushing against each other, trying to grab onto something, anything, to ground yourselves. You choose his shoulder, he chooses your hips.

You’re so warm. Almost hot. Almost scorching and binding around him, such a stark difference to your cold and sweating skin. You both stay still for a moment, feeling like you would combust at the smallest twitch or shift.

He wants to pound into you, snap his hips up until the bones connect and he breaks you open, carve his territory inside your welcoming pussy. It would be so easy, so so easy. But the tremors in your hands grasping onto his shirt, the rapid fluttering of your eyelids, the muted chant of his name on your tongue. They make him want to cherish this moment. Make it unforgettable for both you and him, so that when you go out into the world to steal and kill and maim and be left alone, you’ll at least have this one night’s memory of him worshipping your body, and he would have the sensation of your walls around his cock and the feeling of your gasps grazing on his skin when he’s stuck halfway around the world in a shitty cabin.

So he changes his rhythm. The thought of punching a hole through your insides replaced with the thought to massage them, slowly but surely to leave the imprint of his cock inside you. You turn into a mess of limbs and moans and drool, cheek on his chest and unmoving. He has to pull you back and slant his mouth against yours to muffle the squeals that rip out of you with each languid thrust, each jolt of his waist to yours.

You’re so reactive, shivering and contracting at his every whisper, every kiss, every skimming of fingers across your skin. Then he says ‘you’re so tight around me, I love it’ and you beam through your addled brain, probably like that night before the mission, maybe even wider. It’s so pure and sincere that he halts to a stop, lungs squeezing through his ribcage at the sharp inhale, trying to stop his chest from caving in at how utterly cute you are. You’re a serial killer and a master thief with a body count in double digits and so goddamn precious.

“Sweetheart, you’re taking me so well, good girl, good girl.” He’s almost babbling at this point, voice deep and husky and filled with desperation, sprouting anything and everything to see that smile again, to make his heart feel full knowing he’s the reason for it. “Baby, look at me? C’mon, pretty, look at me.” Your eyes connect with his for a fraction of a second, the bursting of a supernova within each of your dilating pupils, then they disappear as you keen, convulsing around him, pushing him to his end as well. Ropes of cum spill inside as he slumps against you, breathing haggard and sweating all over.

You’re already drifting away on top of him, your sex covered with his seeds and soaking into the cheap fabric of the couch. He should move. Get out of you, clean you up, tuck you into bed and make sure you don’t have stiff joints tomorrow morning, open a window or something because the whole house reeks of sex now. He should very much move.

But you whine when he tries to slip out, face digging deeper into his shirt and legs clamping around his waist. Like a koala or a panda or something equally cute but also hot.

The clean-up can probably wait until tomorrow morning.

[i-cant-sing]

Yandere Rei Hurting Reader Pt2

Yes yes. Its out now. I won't delete this one. Enjoy!

Part 1 is here. Part 3 here.

Check out my MASTERLIST for more!

Yandere Todoroki Clan:

It had been so awful at first. So hard for everyone to adjust to the new change. Of course, it was especially difficult for you to adapt to the new circumstances.

When you had first woken up after the unfortunate incident, approximately 3 days later, you didn't expect to be home so soon. You expected- you hoped that you would wake up in the hospital and have them call the authorities. Then again, you also didn't expect never being able to use your eyes again.

Shotou was the first one to notice when you had woken up from your coma. He hadn't left your side since the accident. He jumped from his seat beside you and held the glass of water to your lips when you tried to speak. The family came rushing in when he called for them, announcing that you had woken up. You could hear Fuyumi and her crying tears of joy as Natsuo came to check your vitals. You knew your eyes were bandaged, which was expected because of the hot oil that was poured on them, but when you asked Natsuo when they were coming off, he went silent. Your heart sank when he told you what had happened, how your eyes were fucking fried to the point that the arteries supplying them were also destroyed, which meant they couldn't be replaced, ever.

You screamed a lot that day; you would've cried but you didn't have any tear ducts. You didn't let anyone touch you at first, especially Rei. You would scream, throw yourself away from her if you felt her come near you. Eventually, Natsuo put some sort of tranquilliser into your IV, finally calming you down.

Being blind was hard, you knew that. But you didn't know that it would also be this humiliating. After the accident, they had starting infantalizing you even more, doing the most miniscule things for you.

Shotou would be the first person who greeted you in the morning and usually the last person to put you to bed at night. He would carry you around everywhere you go, telling you its simply unsafe for you to walk on your own. Sure you bumped into the furniture a few times and it was a bit hard maintaining your balance, but that didn't mean you needed him to carry you around everywhere. You had asked him to get you a cane, but he only said "why do you need a stick when you have me? Just tell me where you want to go". 

Each morning, Shotou would take you down the stairs to the toilet and more often than not, have Fuyumi come and help you, even for brushing your teeth. Then he would take you to the dining table where everyone is waiting for you. Fuyumi would give your breakfast to Shotou, who would cut it up and feed you. Once you're done eating, you would wait for Shotou to finish his food. During breakfast, everyone would make small talk while you remained quiet. After everyone's finished eating, Fuyumi and Rei would take dishes to sink. You would've helped, but everyone's pretty much forbidden you from entering the kitchen.

Shotou would then carry you either to his room or the living room, where he would turn on the TV and tell you what's happening. But since this always makes you remember how you don't have eyes, he would usually just read you some book. Somehow, they're always about princesses and fairytales. You were getting sick of hearing them.

Fuyumi would later come and fetch you, and take you to your bath. While you would be cleaning yourself, after politely declining help from Fuyumi each time, she would be out preparing your clothes for the day. She would explain to you what you're wearing and how you look, and how she's going to style your hair. As if any of these things mattered to you. But even if they did, its not like you'd have a say in anything.

You still remember the first time you were taking a bath, after finally convincing Fuyumi to let you have the "luxury" to clean yourself up. You finally had some time for yourself, alone and away from the rest of the house. You sank in the warm water in the tub, allowing yourself to relax. The privacy was comforting, but not long lasting, as you felt cold hands touch your shoulders. In an instant, you jumped away screaming. "GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY! GET AWAY!" Rei tried coming closer to you but you kept on screeching at the top of your lungs, alerting the whole house. "FUYUMI! SHOTOU! GET HER AWAY! SHOTOU GET HER AWAY!" At that point you didn't even care if they saw you nude, they just need to save you from her. The siblings rushed to the bathroom and upon seeing your huddled form in the corner and their mother sobbing, Fuyumi hastily covered you with a towel while Shotou took Rei out of there.

Shotou tried to make you understand that Rei was just trying to help you. That she just missed you and wanted to take care of you. He was basically telling you not to be afraid of her, and that your trauma is not valid. You stopped talking to him after that, only spoke when absolutely necessary.  

Natsuo would pick you up after your bath while Fuyumi went to make lunch. He would check your eyes (or lack there of), put on some ointments and replace the bandages with fresh ones. Fuyumi would come with your lunch and after she'd fed you, Natsuo would give you your medicine. They always make you sleepy, so you'd be put down for a nap.

Dabi wasn't always around, but when he was, he was still the asshole he was before. He would move your things to different places, or place stuff in your way so that'd you'd trip (he always caught you before you face planted), all so that you would ask him for help he could get a rise out of you. But you would just sigh and move on.

Enji liked to take you to the garden and read you books and newspapers. It was alright you guess, but you wanted to do something yourself, especially since they still didn't take you out of the house. You had asked him for a Braille, but he only replied "You don't need to stress yourself with that. I'll always be there to read you whatever you want." 

If Enji's running late, then Shotou would take you to the swings in the garden, pushing you as he tells what happened at school or with friends. After dinner, you’d be forced to spend some more time with your siblings, before you’d be tucked into bed.

That has been the routine for the past 6 months since your accident. And the family really felt like everything was returning to normal. It was, for them. This is how they always wanted things to happen: you, locked up in the house while they stripped you of all autonomy and infantalized you to the point where it was harming you, both physically and mentally. Your body was growing weak, your muscles got easily fatigued from their lack of use. And the pills Natsuo gave you didn't really help the case. They made you sleepy, and you think they even caused hallucinations since you felt like someone was in your room or someone was playing with your hair.

Even though you were stuck at home all day, you still never talked to Rei. Well she tried, but you would be the one to always flinch away. She wouldn't address herself when she entered your room, but you would still feel her lurking around the corners. And why should you acknowledge her? Especially after what she's done? 

Enji wasnt ignorant of your condition. He could see how quiet you had gotten, and how scared you were of Rei. He was getting worried for you. What were you thinking about? Enji knew if he didn't talk to you, things will get worse.

You were sitting by the lounge window with Fuyumi who was telling you about her day. Fuyumi greeted him when he came in the room. "Hey, dad!" Enji nodded. "Fuyumi, would you leave us? I'd like to talk to Y/n." Fuyumi nodded, pressing a kiss to your forehead before she left the room, only Enji noticing how you stiffened at her affection. He sat beside you and cleared his throat. "How are you?" "Fine. You?"you softly asked. "I'm good, too. I wanted to talk to you about something. About...your mom." "My mom's dead." Enji cleared his throat. "I meant Rei." "Oh. What about her?" "Why haven't you been talking to her?" You remained silent. “What happened was an accident-” “It wasnt an accident. An accident is spilling milk. Not pouring hot oil in someone’s eyes.” Enji knew this was coming.“She didn’t do it on purpose-” You cut him off again. “She did! She knew exactly what she was doing.” “Why would she do that?” “I don’t know. She hates me or something.” Enji grabbed your hand gently. “You know that's not true. Rei loves you very much and she cares about you a lot.” You didn't say anything. “Do you remember the day you came to our house?” You nodded. “Yeah. It was a few days after my parents funeral.” “Yes. And do you remember what Rei said to you?” You stiffened before nodding again. “She said that she may not be my real mother, but she’ll love me more than anyone ever has and ever will. Always.” “Yes. And has she not? Has she not loved you more than anyone?” You nodded slowly as Enji continued. “Between you and me, she’s always favoured you among all of your siblings.” You smiled at that. “So, are you willing to give your mother a chance?” You paused for a few minutes. “I- I cant.” Enji sighed. “Look. I know you’re scared. I understand. I know you want to blame Rei for what happened, but believe me when I tell you it wasn't her fault. It was an accident.” You shook your head. “And what if another “accident” like that happens again? And what if I dont survive this time? And what if-” Your voice broke down. Enji pulled you into his lap. “It won't. I promise. And if something like that does occur, I’ll be there to stop it.” Enji pressed a kiss to your hair. “I’ll save you. I promise.”

With Enji's persuasion, you had started mending your relationship with Rei again. Sure, you still flinched when she touched you and you were still hesitant to initiate conversations with her, but none of that bothered Rei. You were trusting her again, and she was more than happy to do more on her part to make you comfortable.

And you won't lie, but life was better with Rei. She knew when Dabi or Shotou were becoming too overbearing, or when Natsuo was fussing over you for no reason. She was there to stop Fuyumi from chatting your ear away, and knew when to stop Enji from feeding you too many sweets.

And Enji could see that Rei was sorry for what she did. He saw how she would often massage ointments on your face, her fingers barely tracing the charred area around your eyes before pulling away quickly. And other times, like today, as he stood by your bedroom door, he saw how gentle she was with you as she tucked you into your bed. He kissed his wife once she had left your room. "How are my girls doing?" Enji asked Rei in a hushed voice, not wanting to wake you up. Rei smiled. "Good." They slowly started walking back to their room. "Shes an angel, Enji. So sweet." Enji hummed in agreement. "Can I tell you something?" Enji stopped and turned to face his wife. He raised an eyebrow. "I'm kind of glad what happened...to her." Rei was smiling. "She's so much better like this. So docile now. I...I don't regret what I did, you know?" Enji's blood ran cold. "Rei... dont tell me- you didn't do that on purpose, did you?" Rei nodded, a bit too eagerly. "I know, I know. It wasn't ethical. And if I could, I would've taken away her pain in a heartbeat. But you must agree that its much better now, right?" Enji couldn't believe what Rei was confessing. "I mean, look at her now. She doesn't even try running away. She knows- she feels safer with us, inside." Rei sighed, running a hand through her hair. "I thought that maybe it wouldn't come to this. I thought that after Touya took care of her parents, she'd be a bit more scared to be outside on her own. That's why we told her they died in a car crash." Rei rested her cheek on his chest. "It scares me what I'm willing to do for her, Enji." Enji knew Dabi had something to do with what happened to your parents, but knowing Rei had a hand in it too, or more precisely, she was the one who told Touya to get rid of them. Enji didn't know what to do with this new side of his wife. But he did know he had to keep her hidden from you, so he ushered his wife to their bedroom, not knowing you had already heard them.

You had realised a couple of things that night. One, Rei and Dabi had murdered your parents. Two, Rei pouring the hot oil in your eyes wasn't some sort of psychotic episode. Three, Enji and the others were going to take Rei's side, no matter what.

A few weeks later, your birthday came around. The siblings had left the house to get some things for your birthday party, leaving you in the care of their parents. Rei was in the kitchen cooking up a whole feast for you, while you sat beside Enji in the lounge as he read the newspaper. Enji had already given you your present. It was giant teddy bear with chocolates from Belgium. They were utterly delicious. When you stood up, he asked you where you were going. You pointed at the box of chocolates in your hand. "I'm going to share them with, mom. Unless, thats not okay?"you asked meekly. Enji still wasn't all that comfortable with letting you and Rei be alone, especially after her confession. But... if he doesn't let you go to her alone, you'll always be afraid of her. And its not like Rei will hurt you again, right? Besides, the kitchen is just down the hallway. He's sure nothing will happen. He nodded. "Okay. Should I walk you there?" "No. Its down the hall. I think I'll be fine on my own." Enji then allowed you to go, telling you to call for him if you need anything.

Rei was chopping up some vegetables when she heard your footsteps. She turned around to find you standing just outside the kitchen. "Hey, angel! What are you doing here?" You remained outside the kitchen as you spoke. "I wanted to share these chocolates dad got for me. W-would you like some?" Oh, you're so kind. Rei quickly wiped her hands on a kitchen towel before walking towards you and leading you to the dining room in front of the kitchen. She helped you sit down before taking a seat next to you. "You want me to have your chocolates? But didn't daddy gift them to you?" You bit your lip as you replied. "Well yes, but I- I wanted to share them with you so that I could- I wanted to thank you for taking care of me. And for loving me. I would've gotten you something else but I'm not allowed to go outside..."you mumbled the last sentence, but that didn't matter as Rei quickly hugged you. "Oh honey! You're so sweet!" Rei took a piece of chocolate from the box that you had extended towards her. "And these chocolates are so delicious! Daddy really loves to spoil you, doesnt he?" Rei pinched your cheek gently. You smiled. "I'm glad you liked them. Especially, after all you've done for me. You deserve them more than I do, honestly." Rei stopped at that. "Honey...what are you talking about?" You smiled. "What? Am I not saying the truth? You deserve these chocolates, and all the sweets and flowers and medals for being the best mother." You popped a chocolate into your mouth before continuing. "After all, the criteria is very high. You need to not only have the intent to kill for your child, but you also have to commit murder. Then kidnap your child and force her to bide to your rules. And if she misbehaves, you must punish her as well, right? Because good behaviour gets chocolate," You popped another chocolate into your mouth. "And bad behaviour gets your eyes fried."

Rei just stared at you in disbelief. H-how did you- you didn't hear them talking last night did you? Or did Dabi tell you? Rei stared at you as you ate another piece of chocolate. "I wonder after you've killed me, will you be given chocolates or flowers?" "D-darling, w-what are you saying? I would never hurt you!" You chuckled darkly. "No no. You've done it before and I know you'll do it again. After all, it scares you what you're willing to do for me." You caressed her cheeks, and when you felt her tears, you wiped them. "I'm not saying you have the intention to kill me. No, you'll just hurt me again, another little accident, but this time I won't survive. I just hope you'll bury me somewhere where there's a lot of fresh air, maybe on a hill with a view?" Rei finally broke down at that, falling to her knees as she clung to your legs. "Please! Y/n please forgive me! Please baby, I- I just wanted the best for you. I don't want you to die, I- I promise I'll never hurt you again! I'm sorry! I'm sorry. Please baby, I'll do anything. Just forgive me!" You sighed. "Anything? I don't think you mean that." Rei nodded her vigorously, tears falling everywhere. "I do! I do! Just tell me what to do!" You tapped your chin, pretending to think. "Bring a knife. A sharp one." Rei's eyes widened. "W-What?" "Well...its only right for you to be punished as well. To atone for your sins, right?" "O-okay." Rei went to the kitchen and brought a big knife with her. "Lock the door." She did as you told her. You extended your palm, waiting for her to place the knife. She did. You stood up, right in front of Rei. You told her to stand against a wall, and she followed. You played with the sharp end if the knife. "I want to hurt you. I want to hurt you so bad. I want you to feel the pain, the hell you've put me through." This is it, Rei thought, you're going to kill her. For some reason, she was okay with that. "I want you to know you failed. I want you to know you're a bad mother. A selfish, bad mother." Rei was full on sobbing now. "Look at me. I want you to remember this." And with that you raised the knife before stabbing yourself in the gut, two screams ripping through the manor. Rei shot towards you, her hands trying to pull the knife away. "What did you do?! What did you do?!" Rei was crying. Enji was banging on the locked door for a few seconds before he burned it down and the sight he was met with...was nothing short of a nightmare.

There you layed on the floor, blood sputtering from your mouth, your shirt stained with blood and Rei. Rei, who was hunched over your body, with a bloody knife in her hand, crying out "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!".

Enji rushed towards you, pushing Rei back roughly. You were coughing up blood, your head turned away from him until you felt him touch your face. "D-daddy..."you whimpered out before your breathing came to a stop.

"No. No." Enji quickly gathered your limp body in his arms, running out of the house towards a hospital. He kept on chanting "no", because he didn't want to believe that he failed to protect you.

That he failed to save his daughter, again.

I had 5 different endings in my mind and Idc if this isn't your preferred ending (the ending I had in my mind was something out of Quentin Tarantino's movie). I'm just glad to be done with it.

Anyways, exams are coming up and I'm not going to be posting a lot.

And ill be taking up your follow up questions/asks for this part! I'll also be answering godfather hawks asks now that this part is out.

[hanoella]

Deserving

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x healer!Reader

Word Count: 2.1k

Summary: When someone bad mouths Bucky in your presence, you set things straight.

Warnings: Angst, but with happy ending, and one vaguely 18+ insult? I'm new.

Speaking of- @wkemeup has inspired me to post my writing for the first time! For their 9k writing challenge, I used this prompt:

"Character A is the target of harassment on the street. Shamed, they pretend it doesn’t bother them. Until it happens in the presence of Character B, who reigns hell on whoever dared to upset [A]"

Enjoy!

..........

Bucky was used to the whispers he got from people the street when he passed by them.

“Is that-?”

“Don’t make eye contact, he’s dangerous.”

“They just let him walk around like he hasn’t killed a bunch of people?”

His enhanced hearing picked up more than he wished it did. He liked to believe it didn’t bother him but deep down it did. It was just one more reason to stay secluded. Isolated. Alone. And he had been successfully doing that.

Until you came along.

Having been the test subject of a super serum version that focused on health and regeneration, you used your healing powers to help the Avengers get back to world-saving shape. Bucky hadn’t been keen on anyone touching him, much less someone he didn’t know. Despite his best efforts, he had caved in when you noticed he was having a bad day with his shoulder and offered to help. Since then, your companionship has been like a guilty pleasure.

You had this way of making him feel like he was the most important person in the world to you. Regardless of what he thought was evident, you only seemed to notice the good in him, even when he protested.

“There’s nothing I can do to right the wrongs that I’ve committed. Redemption isn’t possible. I don’t deserve-”

“Stop.” You said, cutting him off. “You are amazing. You have been through everything that you’ve been through and you still give back to the world. You fight for a world that made you this way, a world that gives you nothing back and yet you fight. It’s the world that doesn’t deserve you.”

Bucky swallowed hard. Looking at you in your eyes, he saw no dishonesty. Only pure admiration.

After that, there was no hope of him being alone. You cracked open his shell slowly but surely and now Bucky couldn’t imagine life without you.

Which led him to his current predicament.

“Come on, please? It’ll be so good and only a few blocks away. I know tapioca sounds gross, but you’ll love it!”

Bucky didn’t know what bubble tea was but apparently it was worth begging him for the past 20 minutes while you worked on his shoulder. Your hands emitted a warm white light as you gently massaged his shoulder. The direct contact wasn’t necessary but Bucky hadn’t complained when you started doing it and it’s become routine every since.

“I don’t know. I know I’m old but I don���t have to resort to tapioca yet.”

Bucky let a moment pass before his lip twitched up into a smile. You feigned annoyance as you cut off the healing and placed your hands on his shoulders.

“How about you go with me and I won’t bill the heck out of you for my magical five-star massages.” You say as you squeeze his shoulders.

“Okay okay, fine.”

Bucky put his hands up in defeat as he got up from the couch he was sitting on and turned to face you.

You swallowed as you let your eyes drift across his chest before you grabbed his shirt from off the back of the couch and tossed it to him.

“Alright! I’m so excited!”

Bucky listened to you chatter on about the different flavors he could try while he put on his shirt. Sometimes, he couldn’t believe he actually had a friend besides Steve. Sure, it helped that you had been Steve’s friend first. But there was something about you having grown closer to him that made him feel special. Never did Bucky think there would be a time that he’d be jealous over a girl that Steve was friends with rather than the other way around. Times were certainly different.

“You coming?”

Bucky broke away from his thoughts and made his way towards the doorway that you were standing in.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

---

Yeah, he knew this was a bad idea.

As soon as you two had left Stark Tower, the whispers started. While the café was only two blocks away, you noticed something was off a block into the trip.

“You alright?” You asked as you tried to decipher his facial expression.

“Yeah. Fine.”

You looked at him skeptically and then shifted your eyes to follow his, glancing around you. You slowly nodded in understanding as you looked at the people around you who were trying not to draw attention to themselves.

“Okay. We can talk about it later.”

Bucky was thankful that most people talked quietly enough so that you couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Keyword: Most.

You two arrived at the café, where it was slightly crowded. It was a warm afternoon, the perfect time to get a cool drink. Before heading inside, you gently placed your hand on his arm for a moment to reassure him.

“If you want, we could look at the menu out here and then I’ll go inside to order it.”

Bucky shifted his weight slightly from one side to the other as he contemplated it.

“Nah. We can go in together.”

“Okay.” you said, gently smiling to hopefully reassure him.

You both enter the building and make your way to stand in line. Bucky looked around at the seating areas. It reminded him of a Starbucks but with a more pastel color scheme. You looked at him and he raised an eyebrow in response. You smiled, happy that he was with you. Bucky’s heart skipped a beat and he smiled back.

That’s when you hear it.

“Is that that Hydra goon? Hey, go back to Siberia you brainwashed Hydra dog!”

You spun around violently the same time Bucky did with an incredulous look on your face, making eye contact with the college aged boy further back in line who was currently sniggering with his friends.

You stalked over to them before speaking in a low even tone.

“Sergeant Barnes has done more for the world than you could ever dream of doing. Apologize.”

You had let the venom creep into your voice, shouting the last word and silencing the rest of the line. Bucky walked up to you and put a hand on your shoulder, trying to turn your attention to him.

“C’mon. It’s not worth it.”

You let out a slow harsh exhale from your nose but didn’t move. The man only sneered.

“Why don’t you scurry along. I don’t care if you’re where he sticks his-”

The next thing Bucky registered was a nasty sounding crack as your fist connected with the jerk’s cheekbone. A round of gasps came from the surrounding crowd as he fell on the floor, completely dazed. You let out a pained grunt as you bent over, holding your hand while trying to cover the white light that started coming over your hand where the skin had bust open and something had definitely cracked.

“Okay, time to go.” Bucky said as he made an executive decision to get you two the heck out of there before anybody could react further. He put his hand on your back and quickly guided you out of the store, walking until you were out of the vicinity and almost back to the tower. You could tell that Bucky was not happy with you since he hadn’t said anything the whole way back. You entered the building and then stood silently in the elevator as it made its way up, refusing to meet his eye.

The elevator dinged as it opened up on the team’s dorm floor. You both walked quickly trying to avoid other people unsuccessfully as Sam stepped out into the hallway from the gym.

“Hey you two, what’re you… What happened to you?” He asked with a furrowed brow, nodding his head towards your hand as you walked past. Bucky and you answered at the same time.

“Nothing-”

“None of your business Sam-”

You gave Bucky a look and started chastising him.

“Hey, don’t be mean to him just because-”

“Keep. Walking.” He said through clenched teeth.

You rolled you eyes and shrugged apologetically at Sam as Bucky punched in the code to your apartment and swung the door open. He nudged you inside and then followed, shutting the door forcefully behind him.

Sam looked down the hall for a moment longer before shrugging it off. Natasha popped her head out into the hallway from the gym.

“What’s all the commotion?”

“Not sure. I think Mr. Tall, Dark and Metal left a few brain cells behind in the pod the last time he was frozen.”

Natasha snorted and then turned back into the gym.

---

Bucky closed the door behind him and then swung his arms out in confusion, giving you the same look of disbelief that he gives Yori when he starts a fight with his neighbors. You gave him the same look back, as if he was crazy for questioning your actions.

“What was that?” He finally asked.

“That guy was crazy! How could I not say something to him?”

“You didn’t have to hit him and hurt yourself! People say stuff like that all the time, you just have to ignore it and move on with your day.”

You stayed silent for a moment, averting your gaze and holding your injured hand that was gently glowing. Bucky gently let out his breath. He closed the distance between you and put his hand under yours to help you support it. His other hand grasped your forearm, gently moving over your smooth skin. He glanced down and watched as the inflammation went away and a bone shifted back into place under your skin.

“Please,” He whispered, his hold on you tightening ever so slightly. “It’s not worth all the trouble. It’s not worth you getting hurt.”

“No.”

Bucky snapped his head back up to see you calm and determined. Speaking again, you look into his eyes.

“It is worth it.”

He blinked twice, not having expected that answer.

“Why?”

“Because if I had let him say what he was going to say. Then to me, it would be validating anyone who has ever said anything like that about you. I can’t let you believe that any of that is true.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“But you do.” You cried out, slipping your newly healed hand out of his grasp and stepping away.

“I can see it in your actions, Bucky. I see it when you deny yourself anything that would make you happy. I see it when you try to hide yourself from the world. I see it when you look at me.” You spoke, voice wavering with the last sentence, averting your gaze again. Bucky stood silent as you continued.

“I see a deep sadness in your eyes. I can feel it in your soul when I heal your shoulder. Or when you touch my hand to see if I’ve fallen asleep. I can feel it emanating off of you. But I know for a fact that you deserve to be happy. You deserve to rest and to be happy. How many times have you fought a fight that wasn’t yours because it was the right thing to do? And don’t say it was to redeem yourself because I know it’s more than that. You are a good man, James. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone. But if you need to prove it to yourself than just take a look at me.”

You gently hold his face and guide it so that he’s looking at you. He’s surprised to find your eyes full of tears, threatening to spill over.

“When you look into my eyes, there is nothing but love and admiration for you. When you touch me, I feel the warmth you leave on my skin. When you hear me speak, you should be able to tell from what I say that I genuinely think you deserve the world. When you are hurting, the only thing I feel is your anguish. It kills me, to see you punish yourself so undeservedly.”

You were whispering now, looking up at him. Bucky’s eyes were watering as well, his jaw clenched in an attempt to hold back his emotions. With your hands still gently caressing his cheeks he slowly lowered his head so that his forehead was resting on yours, swallowing hard.

Bucky lifted his head slightly so that he could look at you and he saw nothing but love. Your eyelashes were wet and shimmering from tears you shed for him. Your cheeks were flushed from the overwhelming feeling that you had for him. He looked into the depths of your eyes and saw only his future with you. Finally, his gaze settles on your lips, soft and supple.

“Please,” you begged. “Please do not ask me to stand idly by as the world tears you apart. You are worth more to me than anything else in it.”

Slowly, his hands touch your waist and slide back until he’s holding you against him. Closing the gap between you, you kiss.

Nothing more in this world could assure him of your love. For once, he believes it.

[plant-flwrs]

Heyy!! I wish you would write a fic where Fred is lowkey really into Shakespear and Romeo and Juliet and tries to woo the reader cs she’s muggleborn? Idk but it would be so cute!! 🥺

romeo and juliet // fred weasley

masterlist!

summary: Fred reads Romeo and Juliet and can’t help but fall in love

a/n: schools out, so hopefully that means more time for writing! thanks for the request anon i thought it was adorable, hope you like it!!

(2.5k)

At first, it was a secret. Fred had no intention of actually enjoying it. He had simply accepted the book Professor Lupin had lent him, thumbed through it, and stayed up all night to read it by accident.

Maybe it was because Lupin had seen the way Fred looked at you across the class, separated by hidden bloodlines and upbringings. You, with your muggle pens that you smuggled in. You, with your muggle records you used an entire bag to carry onto the train. You, with your muggle magazines that spread through the common room like wildfire. You, with those weird little things called cigarettes that you sold in your third year to the older students. You, with the way the older pureblood witches would sit and ask you to do their hair for them because only you could do all the newest muggle styles. You, with your reluctance to Quidditch but your love for soccer.

Fred was gone, absolutely gone for you. He was even more behind than usual in class because he couldn't help but find you with his eyes, no matter the room you were in or the distance between you both. Remus Lupin, the secret romantic, asked Fred to stay after class.

"Mr. Weasley," Professor Lupin called, feet kicked up on his desk while he levitated a novel wandlessly in front of him. A half-eaten apple rested on a napkin beside a chocolate wrapper and Fred was forced to remember the breakfast he had barely eaten, choosing to instead pretend he hadn't noticed the fact you had only sat a few seats away.

Fred stood in front of Lupin's desk, waiting as the room emptied out and George shot him a wink from the doorway.

"Yes, Professor?" Fred rocked on his feet, hands stuffed in the pockets of his robe. He tried not to wonder if you had noticed that he had been called behind, or if you had noticed him at all. He vaguely registered that this might what his brother would call 'pathetic'.

"You never turned in that essay on wandless defenses," Lupin said slowly, the book moving to rest on his desk as he moved his feet to the ground.

Fred was quiet, biting the inside of his cheek as he couldn't seem to recall the last time a teacher had bothered to talk to him about his assignments instead of deeming him a 'lost cause' or a student who 'simply wouldn't apply themselves'.

Professor Lupin sighed, moving again to stand. Fred thought he caught a flash of pain on the professor's face, perhaps a wince as he stood, but the moment was gone before Lupin was giving Fred a calculating and sympathetic glance.

"Do you need an extension?" Remus offered, leaning his hip against the desk and inclining his head to show Fred the importance of this offering.

"I'd appreciate that, Professor," Fred admitted.

They were silent again, Remus still looking at Fred like he was something to figure out. Remus shifted, eyes dropped to his desk and lips lifting.

"What's got you so preoccupied?"

Fred was blushing before he could think of a lie, and then he realized he didn't want to lie. He hadn't even told George about his crush on you- no doubt it was obvious. Fred had had flings and crushes on loads of girls, all fun and easy, but this felt heavier. He didn't want to have a fling with you.

"I guess-" Fred sighed, removing his hands from his robes and wiping them on his trousers, "I've just been distracted recently. A lot on my mind."

"Ah," Remus smiled fondly, nodding slowly.

A book began to move from a pile in the corner, elegantly and easily avoiding the tall stacks of clutter and various lumps of papers to levitate to Fred. Fred reached out for it, moving it in his hand to read the cover. Romeo and Juliet.

"I'll make you a deal, Fred," Professor Lupin said, his voice sounding so mischievous that Fred was surprised he hadn't become ten years younger right in front of him. "You can either write the essay on wandless defenses, or you can read that and write an essay on 'Romeo and Juliet'."

Fred thumbed through the book, eyebrows furrowed. He had never liked reading, most of the books at the Burrow belonged to Bill, Percy, or his father. He was pretty sure that George would find Fred reading Shakespeare to be just as funny as the time they released Cornish Pixies in the Slytherin changing rooms.

"Yeah, alright."

Fred managed to eat dinner that night, with you safely at the opposite end of the table. The curtains to his fourposter had been closed for hours and the light from his wand had been steadily bright for just as long. He had gone from laying on his back, head propped up beneath his arms, to resting his back against the headboard, to sitting upright in the center of his bed, head propped on his fist, to laying on his stomach, to laying on his back again with his head at the foot of his bed, and soon enough, the sun was flooding through a crack in the curtains. He had just finished Romeo and Juliet when he heard the showers starting.

"Lupin!"

Remus stopped and watched Fred catch up to him. He looked tired and simultaneously wide awake, his hair was a mess, and Remus was almost certain that he was wearing his pajama pants beneath his school robes.

"Mr. Weasley," Remus said cordially, continuing his walk to the greenhouse.

"I wanted to talk to you about that book you lent me-"

"Oh, you can keep it, if you'd like. I've read it dozens of times."

Fred hesitated, a wide smile spreading over his face, "Oh, thanks, Professor! It's just, I wanted to tell you I really liked it."

"You've finished it, then?" Remus asked with an impressed smile.

"Read it last night," Fred admitted, somewhat embarrassed.

"I look forward to the essay, then," Lupin said with a kind smile and a nod, turning into the greenhouses and leaving Fred in the corridor.

Inside his robes, he felt the weight of the tiny book against his chest. He kept it in a pocket there, fingers itching to hold it and read it again.

He couldn't help the roaring thoughts in his head. The idea that you were his Juliet, that you and he could find a hidden love, just for you two, amongst your external differences. He was oddly disappointed by the ending and decided he might not completely finish the book if he read it again, perhaps pretend it ended differently. He leaned his back against the stone wall behind him, fighting a blushing smile from his face.

So, Fred loved Shakespeare in secret. He loved reading in secret. He loved the weight of the book in his hands in secret. He loved the words and the phrases in secret. He loved the way it made him think in secret. He loved you in secret. He loved in secret.

Until you started dating Thomas Meadowbrooke. Thomas was a Ravenclaw, wickedly smart, handsome, kind, and the victim of many of the Weasley twins' pranks for a while. George didn't directly ask Fred why they were suddenly pranking this one boy so relentlessly all of a sudden, but he didn't need to.

Thomas wore blazers with patches on the elbows and combed his silky hair down the middle. He always had a flower in his coat pocket to give to you and he always carried a book of poetry with him. He was sensitive and wistful in all the ways girls loved, including you.

You thought Thomas was painfully boring. He would fawn over you in the most annoying ways, giving you poems that he wrote (horrendously awful, they were) and quoting lines from old and boring books to you. He didn't listen to Joan Jett or Janis Joplin and he cringed when you played your records. He suggested Bach or Debussy instead. He was boring.

You had only agreed to go out with him because he asked. Thomas Meadowbrooke may have been able to put a cornish pixie to sleep just by talking to it, but he was undeniably handsome. Well, he was more handsome before he had fallen victim to a particularly entertaining Weasley twin prank that turned his hair gelled and spiked up for a few days.

You broke up with Thomas soon after. He took it well, saying it gave him fuel to finish some poetry he hadn't been inspired enough for before.

Remus heard this gossip quite excitedly.

"She did, did she?" Remus tilted his head, a coy smirk on his lips.

The smell of fertilizer was strong, but he learned not to mind it as he watched the merry witch digging in various pots.

"He was quite heartbroken, the poor thing. Filius said that when he did routine bed checks, he could hear Thomas crying for weeks!" Professor Sprout sighed, patting down the soil and checking for weeds.

"Teen romance is always quite fickle," Remus commented, following Pomona as she moved to the next pot.

"Says you!" Pomona playfully scolded Remus, her red cheeks filling as she smiled.

Remus chuckled, thinking back to Sirius who would sneak into his office later to distract him from grading papers.

"You know, Pomona," Remus said in that voice of his, the one that got Sprout to drop her trowel and lean in close to hear the latest gossip. "I think Fred Weasley's got a bit of a crush on Y/n."

Pomona gasped, dirty hand flying to cover her mouth. She paused, scrunching up her face and sticking her tongue out to spit out the clump of dirt.

"He hasn't!" she continued, not minding Remus' amused smile and the clean rag he offered her to wipe her hands.

"He's always staring at her," Remus said, thinking on it. "I reckon he's quite the secret romantic."

Pomona cooed and awed as she continued to tend to her plants, she and Remus trading anymore gossip that they could think of.

The weather changed at quite a convenient time for Fred. With the slightly warm but still a bit chilled fall weather, Fred could dawn his lighter coats. His lighter coats that happened to have wonderfully shaped pockets on the inside, just the right size for a book.

Fred wondered if you had gone out with Thomas because Ravenclaw book nerds were your type, or if you had broken up with him because Ravenclaw book nerds weren't your type. Fred had spent almost all of the warm weather contemplating how he was going to continue to live if he was determined to remain secretly in love with you. By fall he had figured it out.

Fred wasn't going to hide anything, not the books he had recently begun to love, or the way he loved so strongly. He wasn't going to miss meals because you were so distracting. He wasn't going to suffocate under his crush on you.

It was a beautiful day. George was up in the dorms with Lee working on a prank and Fred had decided to take a walk down to the Black Lake. His lighter coat was a bit heavier because of the book in the pocket, and Fred pushed his hair out of his eyes as he looked down at the ground to avoid stepping on tree roots. He found a nice spot beneath a tree, resting against the trunk and reading.

"Hey, Fred," a voice called, coming closer as they easily avoided the maze of tree roots.

Fred looked up to see you, in those perfect muggle clothes you wore any chance you could, hair styled in that wonderful muggle way, one of those muggle cigarettes tucked behind your ear, walking towards him.

"Hey," he responded, surprised by how easy his voice sounded.

"Have you been reviewing at all for Lupin's?" You sat next to Fred like it was the easiest thing in the world, brushing your shoulder against his.

"No, not really," Fred closed his book with his thumb tucked between the pages saving his spot.

"Mmm," you hummed, leaning your head back against the tree and closing your eyes. "What're you reading?"

"Romeo and Juliet," Fred replied, looking at your profile while he had the chance.

"Didn't think that was your thing," you said playfully, opening one eye to catch Fred looking at you.

He flushed and turned his gaze to his hands in his lap. "Me neither," he admitted, swallowing.

"I always liked ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, personally."

Fred smiled to himself, because of course, you had also read Shakespeare, and of course, you would have a cool favorite.

"I like that one, too," Fred said lamely, enjoying the way you were smiling at him.

By winter, Fred had devised a plan. It was perfect, more perfect than any prank he had created or any Zonko's product he had bought. He would die if he kept all this love to himself, so he decided all he needed was one kiss.

The Yule Ball was in full swing, the classical and slow music long forgotten as everyone moved to the dance floor and rocked to the loud and fast rhythm. Fred had seen you when you first arrived, noticing with glee that you were alone, and hadn't lost sight of you since. He had removed himself from the heavily crowded dance floor, stumbling to the table with the juice he and George had spiked hours earlier. He loosened the collar of his robes and pushed his already disheveled hair out of his face.

You watched Fred move through the crowd like a tornado, a mass of energy that you felt required to look at and admire. He strode to the table, a quiet and self-satisfied smirk on his lips as he took a long sip of punch.

Fred caught you staring at him with pleasant unexpectedness. You looked just as beautiful as you did when the night started, skin glowing and everything dawned upon you with your magical muggle-ness. Fred put his cup down, a comfortable pink hue warming his cheeks, and approached you. He touched his hand to yours.

"Hey, Fred," you said with an entertained smirk, glancing down at his hand on yours.

"I need you to do me a favor," he slurred, voice easy and breath warm as it landed on your skin.

"What kind of favor?"

"I need you to kiss me," Fred pulled his mouth away from your ear, looking to your face.

He didn't have much of an opportunity, though, before your lips were on his and you stole his breath. He tasted of the spiked punch and his hands were trembling and careful as they rested on your waist. You grabbed a fistful of his robes, pulling him close to you with urgency.

He pulled away, lips red and swollen, with his eyes still closed.

"I need you to do me a favor," you said, mouth hovering above his.

"Yeah?"

"Kiss me," you whispered, just loud enough for Fred to hear.

He listened, and held onto you with less trembling and more confidence as you kissed for the second time.

[majestyeverlasting]

hey, I absolutely love your writing!!!❤️

Can you maybe write a Bucky x reader with the fluffy prompt 31?

(the reader is afraid of something and she lashes out on Bucky... like she rambles on, and on to Bucky so that she runs out of breath... and Bucky forces her into a hug, which she eventually relaxes into and then tells her the promt)

If you can't write this, I'll totally understand... enjoy your day🌼🌼

♡ Hi! Thank you, I'm happy to hear that you like my writing! I love this request, and hope I was able to capture the essence of what you wanted. I know you've been waiting, so thanks for being patient! To summarize, the reader's doubts lead her and Bucky to explore the idea of what it means to add value to the world. That of course leads to some intimate dialogue and soft moments. Towards the end, I played around with an idea that relates to Bucky having enhanced senses, and I think it worked out pretty well. But I suppose that's up for you guys to decide. 🌼

♡ Prompt 31: “Shh, I can hear your heartbeat.”

What Comes Naturally

There was an abundance of memories to hold onto as summer began to bid farewell. Each of them sweet, and owning a small fraction of your heart. The days, once long, were beginning to grow shorter, and nature itself was slowing to the new rhythm of the atmopshere. It beautiful time of transition.

But a rather peculiar round of thoughts had started to cultivate within your mind. They were dense and somewhat dark, awaiting the moment in which they could release their rain.

Their accumulation had been on the basis of value. The value you were adding to the world, specifically; was it enough? Could you be working more, creating more? Did strangers walk away remembering you? Did you better the lives of those around you? There were as many doubts as there were questions. And they all seemed to have come out of nowhere, plaguing you suddenly.

It was an unfortunate headspace to have fallen into. All things considered, you should’ve been happy. Happier than you were, at least, because it was the dawn of your favorite season. Yet you’d woken up and found yourself wondering if you were doing enough.

That afternoon rolled around quickly. You were curled up on the couch when Bucky returned home from his routine run. He lifted his hand in a wave, to which you responded with a quiet hi. The earbuds you had in played a song that served as a feeble distraction from your worries. You watched as he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water, taking a few big gulps. He focussed on you as he drank.

Then he set the bottle on the kitchen island, and dabbed his mouth with the back of his hand. A furrow formed between his brows as sweat glistened above along his hairline. “You okay, doll?”

The question barely registered, but you read his lips. Before speaking, you paused the song. “Yeah, m’fine. Just relaxing”

You might as well have been glass with the way his gaze went through you. “Okay, well, I’m gonna go hop in the shower,” he said, running a hand through his hair. A brief moment of silence passed. “We’ll talk when I’m done, okay?” There was a knowing to his tone.

All you did was nod, gratefully.

A couple minutes after he left the kitchen, you ended up padding to the bedroom as well. Rather than bothering with another distraction, you simply laid on your back across the bed. You stared at the ceiling as the sound of running shower water emitted from the bathroom. And though it was faint, you could also hear the timbre of Bucky’s voice as he hummed a tune. You closed your eyes, finding solace in the fact that he was near, and willing to listen.

By the time he came out, you’d dozed off into a light sleep. As soon he gave your knee a few gentle squeezes, your eyes fluttered open. There was a small smile on his face as he looked down at you. Damp locks of his hair fell into his forehead, and a beige bath towel was wrapped around his waist. You sat up with a soft grunt, and he pressed a quick kiss to your forehead before moving to get dressed. You caught of whiff of his cedar body wash in the process.

“Love you,” you murmured, rubbing your eyes.

“Love you too, pretty girl,” he said. “Wanna start telling me ‘bout what’s going on in that mind of yours?”

For a few seconds, all you did was look down at your socked feet and kick them. You heard a couple of dresser drawers open as Bucky saught out the clothes he was going to wear. “I feel like there’s something more I could be doing,” you finally said, turning to look at him. He’d tossed his towel onto the bed put on a pair of blue boxers.

“Something more?” He repeated as he pulled a black shirt over his head. “What do you mean?” His eyes met yours with genuine curiosity, wanting to understand.

You sighed, picking at the bed comforter. “The world is so big and people are out there doing so many different things, and it feels like I’m not doing nearly as enough. Like there are ways for me to step up that I’m not acknowledging,” you explained. “Like I’m missing the mark.”

Bucky put on a pair of sweat shorts before walking to take a seat beside you on the edge of the bed. He looked intently into your eyes. “What mark do you think you’re missing?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know,” you said, tone raising slightly. “There are people like you who go out and save the world, and do all of these crazy, larger than life things. People who have huge, innovative ideas that change entire industries. People who massive followings because they’re encouraging, or funny, and whatnot. And they all add so much to the world.”

Bucky thought about interjecting, but decided to let you continue. “It seems like I’m hardly doing anything. I at least try to leave a good impression on everyone I meet. And I try to extend the best of myself to the people I care about.” You turned your gaze from him, and directed it to the floor.

“But now there’s something’s telling me that I should be trying harder. And I don’t even know what that’s supposed to look like.” Bucky had began to run a comforting hand up and down your thigh. You released a harsh huff of air, not even realizing you’d been working yourself up. “I don’t even know where all of this is coming from. I just feel off, and...”

You fell silent when he wrapped his vibranium arm around your shoulders, and pulled you into him. Pressing a kiss to your temple, then your cheek, his stubble brushing against your skin. There was warmth radiating from his body, and he smelled good. So good. You let your head tilt to rest on his shoulder, and looked down to where your knee was brushing against his. Suddenly, it seemed as though everything you’d previously said was immature and incomprehensible.

“I’m sorry,” you started. “Maybe I’m just being—”

“Shh,” he coaxed. Then he said something that caught you off guard, and took your mind off of everything else, “I can hear your heartbeat.”

“Wait, what?” You breathed. “No you can’t.” When Bucky chuckled, light and airy, you lifted your head. “Can you really?” Your voice was soft with a disbelieving edge.

“Yes,” he said, letting his arm slip from around you. “Lay down for a second.” You did, and he fell onto his back as well.

There the two of you were, chests rising with your breaths, looking up at the ceiling.

You waited for him to explain himself or say something else, but he didn’t for a while. The air was quiet long enough that you figured it was only a matter of time before you began to hear your own heartbeat, or possibly even his. You didn’t, of course, and Bucky eventually broke the ambience that had established itself.

“I can hear it,” he confirmed, turning to look at you. “But just barely ‘cause it’s not as strong now.”

“Because I’ve calmed down?” He hummed in agreement. You studied his handsome features and began to smile. "I didn’t know could do that,” you told him. “I mean, I knew your hearing was good, but to be able to hear a heart beating is… cool.”

“Yeah. I just have to be close enough and focus extremely hard,” he explained. “And you wanna know what I have to say about adding value to the world?”

You’d almost forgotten about what you expressed to him in the moments prior. Almost. “What?”

He propped himself up on his metal arm, and placed his flesh one on your chest over your heart. He could feel the gentle thump against his palm. “This, right here, is all you need to know that you’re adding value; the fact that you’re alive,” he said, smiling when you placed your hands overtop of his. “Everyday you’re adding value in a way only you can. Even if it’s not always through some big and over the top demonstration.

“Just be and do what comes naturally. One day that might be saving a city, another day that may be making somebody laugh. Who’s to say they aren’t equally important in the end? They both effect how the future plays out, right?” He quirked his brows.

It was moments like that when you realized just how much of life he'd lived and how much wisdom he'd earned over the years. Even if you had've racked your brain, you wouldn't have found anything capable of standing up against his words. You took his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm.

“Right.”

-

Thank you so much for reading! Consider sticking around for more. <3

[kpostedsum]

daddy issues; D.M

summary: you and draco bond over issues in 6th year

word count: 2.4k

warnings: err angst, comfort, illusions to sex

song: daddy issues (the remix) - the neighbourhood

a/n: i tried not to make it stereotypical bc i didn’t wanna make it seem all “i like older men lol”, probably my fav fic i’ve written, also arent these anime gifs so cute

masterlist | taglist

Take you like a drug

I taste you on my tongue

Tongues battling for dominance, bodies rubbing against each other searching for a feeling. It’s become routine now, a different person in your dorm swallowing a new pill, entangling limbs with someone just to feel something.

You ask me what I'm thinking about

I tell you that I'm thinking about

Whatever you're thinking about

Tell me something that I'll forget

And you might have to tell me again

It's crazy what you'll do for a friend

It was a constant cycle, putting yourself out there seeking the male attention you crave, seeking validation, constant reassurance and trusting too easily. That’s how you ended up with a different guy who always in the end leaves. You trusted too easily and people took advantage of how trusting and naive you are just for a quick shag.

You wished it wasn’t like this but that’s all you knew, wanting to be the best version of yourself for someone just to feel needed, no matter if the person was good or bad for you. You didn’t care, you wanted love from anyone you could get it from even if it just hurt you more.

You’re familiar with the absence, something stable made you feel a bit wary. It wasn’t something you were used to. Your father wasn’t the most present in your life, and even though he's there, he's never really there.

Go ahead and cry, little girl

Nobody does it like you do

I know how much it matters to you

I know that you got daddy issues

And if you were my little girl

I'd do whatever I could do

I'd run away and hide with you

I love that she's got daddy issues, and I do too

You always wondered where you went wrong, he preferred your siblings over you and doesn't pay you a piece of his mind. Constantly going out of your way to get his attention whether it was academically or acting a certain way just to get some sort of reaction. But he was too preoccupied with his other children, even if they were from your mom or his affairs.

That’s how you found yourself right now sitting in the astronomy tower past curfew watching the rain fall, trying to clear your head while humming softly to yourself to keep yourself distracted.

You hear distant chattering from below and quickly get up from where you were sitting and make your way to your dorm unnoticed by anyone.

Except one person, Draco Malfoy.

I tried to write your name in the rain

But the rain never came

So I made with the sun

The shade

Always comes at the worst time

He’s seen you before, you’re known around Hogwarts for how you put yourself out there and how ‘desperate’ you are for some affection. He almost feels bad for you, but he’s in no place to judge. With his dad in Azkaban Draco had so much more to worry about, like his task and how he can succeed. But there was something about you that intrigued him that he couldn't ignore.

He saw you again in transfiguration the next day and noticed a few hickeys littering your neck that you had tried to cover but it didn’t work. He wondered why you gave yourself up to so many people, but once again he was in no place to judge. He noticed the way your tongue would stick out when you focused extra hard, the way your hands would tighten around your quill when you got a question wrong and your face.

The same face that many boys including the older years would fawn over, the face that entranced and attracted many, the face of someone who would do anything for someone for some affection and the face of someone who seeked out all the wrong things.

You ask me what I'm thinking about

I tell you that I'm thinking about

Whatever you're thinking about

Tell me something that I'll forget

And you might have to tell me again

It's crazy what you'll do for a friend

You walk out of transfiguration on your way to the owlery to send a letter to your parents and feel eyes watching you everywhere. You like it, the attention, it’s something that you thrived in, but you couldn’t help but feel a new set of eyes on you.

Once you reached the owlery you realized you weren't the only one there, Draco Malfoy was also there sending a letter to who you assumed was his mother.

“y/n, right?” he asked, trying to spark a conversation.

“Yea, listen i’m sorry about what happened with your father i know you really looked up--”

“Dont worry about it, he wasn’t as good an influence as I made him out to be,” he sighed, looking away.

“My dad isn’t the best either if i’m being honest, i guess we’re in the same boat” you let out a light chuckle.

And that’s how you found yourself hanging out with draco malfoy bonding over your shared issues.

Go ahead and cry, little girl

Nobody does it like you do

I know how much it matters to you

I know that you got daddy issues

And if you were my little girl

I'd do whatever I could do

I'd run away and hide with you

I love that she's got daddy issues

It’s been weeks since you two started hanging out since the interaction in the owlery and have been getting closer ever since. You both sat down together in the astronomy tower, backed against the wall as the cool wind blew against your faces. The aura between you two was calm, a comfortable silence.

“So tell me about your dad, how is it with him in Azkaban?” you asked, tilting your head towards him.

“Mother’s not taking it well” he frowned. “I can’t even say potter’s wrong for getting him locked up because he deserves it. All my life he praised the dark lord and taught me to be selfish and always defend my blood, but he was never there for me when I needed him. I would have done everything just to hear ‘i’m proud of you’ but it never came. It’s worse now because mother’s all alone. I wish I could have stayed with her” he sighed looking out the tower watching the stars twinkle.

“I’ve noticed you’ve been much quieter this year as well, you stopped making fun of people. It’s not that nice on the receiving end huh?” you said with a teasing look on your face.

He shook his head at you scooting closer to you, it’s like the demeanor between you two have changed over the past few weeks. You found yourself pining over him rather than being in someone's bed. But this is how the cycle always goes, you get attached and they leave, you couldn’t help but hope this wasn’t the situation this time.

“Tell me about your father”

Daddy stuck around but he wasn't present

Cheated on your mom but she never left him

First I didn't get it, now I understand

He broke her heart, left money in her hand

So everything got paid for

She made sure you and your brother had way more

Than she ever had growing up

And when you told me the whole story I felt like throwing up

“ I don't know if i’d even call him my father at this point, he doesn't want me.” you sighed. “He's been cheating on my mum for years now and she still won't leave him because she thinks they can work it out. He’s had affairs with different pureblood women and has children with them. But what hurts the most is how he treats them as his own children and treats me as if I don't exist” you said, looking down as tears pooled your eyes.

Draco moved closer to you and brought his arm around your shoulders for a sense of comfort and waited for you to catch your breath so you can continue.

“I just want him to love me” you cried. “I go out my way to try and get his attention with my school work but it never works. That's why I get along with so many guys. I seek the validation, the comfort and the reassurance that I can get from him from others and I am so tired of it. I just want him to want me draco.” tears slipping out your eyes as you looked up at him, you’ve never confessed this to anyone before.

“Everyone always leaves, please don't leave me” you cried

“I’m not going anywhere” he turned his face towards you, leaning forward cautiously as if you were made of glass.

You leaned forward, wanting the exact same thing. Both very hesitant he gently pressed his soft lips against yours and they moved together in sequence, only taking a break to go back to his dorm and to breathe, limbs tangled together for the rest of the night until the sun rose.

I can see it on your face it was rough left a bad taste on your tongue

And she didn't even take any drug

She would rain all day

Couldn't wait for her son to shine

And you made it shine

There when she cried, you saved her life

It's been a week since that night in the astronomy tower and draco had already been avoiding you. It’s humiliating, but you should have known. You thought the ‘bond’ you had with him would last, it felt so genuine this time. So real.

You’d see him around the halls snogging pansy on your way back to the ravenclaw tower, lowering your head down so he wouldn’t be able to see you so you could get by quickly and unnoticed.

But he saw you.

He stared you right down in your teary eyes as he made out with pansy. You couldn’t help but feel a sense of betrayal, for someone who promised he wouldn’t leave you like everyone else, he did the exact same.

You did the only thing you knew of, you ran.

I keep on trying to let you go

I'm dying to let you know

How I'm getting on

I didn't cry when you left at first

But now that you're dead it hurts

This time I gotta know

Where did my daddy go?

I'm not entirely here

Half of me has disappeared

Draco followed you to the girls lavatory, hearing your shallow cries coming from one of the stalls. He approached the stall you were in trying not to make too much noise so he doesn't startle you.

He felt awful.

He promised he would never leave you, after you both poured your hearts out to each other but he still left. He had too, he was putting you in danger just by being with him. If Voldemort ever found out about you and hurt you he wouldn't be able to live with himself, that's why he took it upon himself to hurt you first.

“y/n are you in here?” he called out even though he knew the answer.

You recognized that familiar voice anywhere. “What do you want draco?” you said, trying to make it seem as if you weren’t just crying.

“I want to talk to you, please”

“No,” you said getting up and pushing yourself out of the stall. “You don't get to just throw me away after I told you everything and just come back into my life like nothing ever happened. Just go away, that's all you guys are good for” you spat.

“Just listen to me, it was to keep you safe. I didn;t want to but i couldn't bear seeing you hurt” he tried to explain.

“Safe?” you laughed. “ and what exactly do i need saving from, malfoy.”

“From me” he said as he pulled up his sleeve revealing his dark mark to you. Your body instantly tensed, you knew he was having problems and his family was involved with the dark lord but you never knew it was like this.

“Draco i-” you tried to say something but the words were stuck in your throat. He stood there looking at you desperately like he was waiting for you to tell him everything was okay, you wanted to be there for him but you didn’t know what to do. You trusted him with everything but he couldn't trust you with this? You thought the bond you had made would have made him trust you in the slightest, but clearly it's always you who’s more trusting.

“Why didn't you tell me?” you managed to say, your voice hoarse.

“I thought you’d leave me, you were the only good thing i had. Please don't leave me” he begged, salty tears escaping his eyes and running down his cheeks as he looked at you with desperation.

“So you thought pushing me away by snogging pansy was better?” you yelled, as he continued to look at you slightly taken aback by your lashing out.

“You know what, go ahead and cry little boy. You know that your daddy did too, you know what your mama went through. You gotta let it out soon, just let it out” you taunted walking closer to him looking straight into his teary eyes.

“This time I'll be the one that leaves.” and with that you were gone.

Go ahead and cry, little girl

Nobody does it like you do

I know how much it matters to you

I know that you got daddy issues

And if you were my little girl

I'd do whatever I could do

I'd run away and hide with you

I love that she's got daddy issues, and I do too

It’s been months since that night in the girls lavatory, and you missed him. You wanted to visit him in the hospital wing once you heard what happened with Harry Potter, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do so. He left you, and you were tired of always going back to people who just hurt you.

Now here you were at the battle of Hogwarts, standing with everyone while Voldemort and his death eaters stood across from you all.

“Draco, draco come here” you heard narcissa call from across the scene. He looked hesitant, as if he was waiting for someone to stop him but no one did. So he started walking over to his parents.

But you grabbed his hand.

“Stay please” you whispered looking up into his eyes.

He looked back at his parents and back at you like he was contemplating his answer.

“I’ll stay”

If you were my little girl

I'd do whatever I could do

I'd run away and hide with you

I love that she's got daddy issues, and I do too

—————-

tagging fun ppl nd ppl who interacted (so srry if u don’t wanna be tagged)

@hellohellook @astoria-malfcy @justfangirlthingies @sfdlm @falling-loki @notvasi @gwlvr @malfoytookmyheart