#don’t drive on the southern state

[longislandmasterblog]

Alex displays a curl because Alex is Italian. Here’s some info (I’m including the parts of the island that also belong to New York City):

I know some of y’all don’t like Wikipedia being used as a source so here’s a secondary source: Am from Long Island, everybody I’ve ever met here is Italian.

She’s the “baby cousin” of the Italy brothers ( ◠v◠ )

Also the lists are basically literally the entire island. The whole island is a giant glorified sandbar birthed by a glacier, shit’s 120 miles long and only 23 miles wide AT MOST. You can drive the entire length of the island in approximately 2 hours and 10 minutes if you drive at 55mph consistently. But let’s be realistic, the speed limit in New York is merely a speed suggestion, especially on the Southern State Parkway.

[ysabelmystic]

Y’all in the American SW and west Mexico better check the national hurricane center and your weather for this weekend and next week.

Hurricane Hilary is about to make landfall and that whole desert area is supposed to get a years worth of rain or more. Death Valley is supposed to get twice the annual rainfall. Severe winds, massive flooding, and landslides are all strong possibilities.

This is gonna get ugly. Please spread the word. This is a majorly anomalous event and people may be unaware of the threat headed their way.

EDIT AUGUST 19th

Hilary will hit the Baja peninsula this evening at a category 2. It will arrive in southern California as a tropical storm on Sunday evening before weakening and moving into Nevada as a tropical depression.

THAT SAID: for the Americans here, even if the storm is “weak”, I want to emphasize that the main danger is rain. We are most concerned about flooding. If you are in an area at risk for flooding, take appropriate precautions as per your city or state officials’ or the noaa’s directions. Even if you end up only being mildly inconvenienced, it is better to be prepared. Go to a friend or relatives house if you live near a body of water or a very low-lying area. Make sure you have water bottles and nonperishable foods. Keep your pets indoors. Don’t wade or drive into puddles.

Anyways, here’s some maps from the NHC

And here’s a link with information in Spanish.

AUGUST 20 FINAL UPDATE

Updated info from the NHC website.

Newsom also issued a state of emergency for parts of Southern California. Widespread flooding is expected.

Good luck y’all

[davdcorenswet]

🌪️ whirlwind.

scott miller x reader Synopsis: the bar has always been a safe haven after a long week of storm-chasing, but when tyler owens decides you’re his lucky charm for the night, you find that scott’s control has its limits. Word Count: 6.4k (pls don't look at me) Warnings: SMUT 18+ MINORS DNI!!!, mentions of near-death experiences, tornadoes (obviously), brief insinuations to cheating, tyler is a pot-stirrer, public sex, dry humping, fingering (f!receiving), degradation, nipple play (f!receiving), orgasm delay, biting?, scott miller has a whore mouth, minor choking, use of pet names (baby, sweetheart), lots of dirty talk, no use of y/n A/N: my first time posting fic & writing for scott so pls go easy on me 🥺 sometimes you just have to let a smug little asshole take over ur entire life, am i right? if you enjoyed, pls feel free to reblog or give it a like and as always, my inbox is open if you want to chat!!! 🤍

It’s been a grueling week, one tornado after another hammering Oklahoma into a state of disarray.

You’re still shaken from the last one, the anxiety of being alone in a motel with your thoughts almost unbearable. You’ve tried to avoid being alone since then, afraid that something worse is always on the horizon, and the thought of being isolated in a room while the rest of the team is out doesn’t sit well.

The bar, though, is a familiar sanctuary. A small comfort amidst the chaos. Even though you’re drained and the idea of socializing feels monumental, tradition is tradition. Javi’s sad puppy eyes and the inevitable guilt trip on the drive back to HQ tomorrow is enough to push you out of bed and into the shower.

And, as much as you don’t want to go, it feels wrong when even Scott makes an effort to go.

By the time you step into the dimly lit bar, clinking glasses and the hum of chatter soothe your worries quickly away. Whirlwind may have seen more than its fair share of fights and other throes of debauchery, but it was a frequent, favorite stop.

And it’s already packed. Between the locals and the other storm-chasers crowding the space, you can’t find Storm Par anywhere. A roar of laughter strikes from the pool tables, and you quickly pocket your phone, realizing you’ll have no luck calling or texting when it won’t even be heard over the noise.

Oh, well. You’ll find them soon enough. Making your way to the bar to greet Jack, the burly bartender who’s been running the place for years and has grown more familiar to you the more you frequent, you hear — rather than see — one of the storm-chasers you were hoping to avoid tonight.

Tyler. God damn. Owens.

You weren’t struck by his Southern charm — your days of easy flattery were past you — but he was hard to ignore. Then again, you should’ve known better by now. Tyler always seemed to be at his best when he had a crowd buzzing around him.

“I thought tonight couldn’t get any better, and then you walked in,” he drawls, finding a space alongside you as he sets his empty beer bottle down, his voice smooth. “Can I buy you a drink, darlin’?”

You consider turning him down, not sure if you’re up for his ego tonight, but you also know Tyler. He wasn't swayed easily, especially if he saw a challenge. Besides, a free drink was well, free, and as grating as he could get, you supposed one couldn't hurt. So you nod. “Sure, why not.”

Jack, who’d wordlessly gotten your drink as Tyler approached, sets a bottle of your favorite down in front of you, his brow raising to get your attention. You hesitate before taking it and catch his gaze shift slightly past you.

Before you get a chance to follow, Tyler steals your focus with a grin, the ever-present pain in your ass. You can’t fight your instincts to be polite. “So tell me. What’s a girl like you doin’ in a place like this?”

You meet his gaze, all swirling hues and open attraction. Maybe if you were that kind of girl, his smooth, clichéd lines would work on you. But you weren’t that girl. You preferred sensible. Practical. Safe. It was why you’d joined Storm Par in the first place, rather than one of the many other crews. This tornado wrangler just wasn’t for you.

Unfortunately for Tyler, he always seemed to miss that memo.

“Same as everyone else, I guess.” You laugh half-heartedly. Maybe if the conversation is light enough, you can slip away without it turning into a spectacle. “Just looking to unwind.”

If Tyler notices your lack of enthusiasm, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he makes a show of settling into his spot next to you, grin stretching wide. The beer in his hands is fresh and cold, same as yours, though unlike yourself he’s already taken a few drinks while you start to pick at the label. Javi would've poked fun by now, but your friend is nowhere near. Typical.

Tyler takes another drink, resting his arm on the bar, your eyes drifting to his tanned bicep. His grin stretches when he catches you looking, and you try not to scowl at falling for his display.

He continues with a well-used, “Well, you sure do brighten up the place.”

Thank god. Playing along, you don’t waste a second as your gaze wanders eagerly around the bar. From your new position you spot a cluster of tables on the other side of the room, Storm Par filling out the seats.

Scott sits alone at one of them, as he always did, but his posture is rigid, and even from a distance you can tell his focus is far from the game of darts Javi tries to include him in. Unsurprising. But rather than being distracted by his phone, worrying about the next job the team would have to take, his eyes are locked in on you.

The intensity makes you shiver. A few bottles sit empty next to him, and you only know they’re his by the unmistakable Guinness label adorning the side. A half-empty glass rests in his hand like he’d meant to take a sip before catching sight of Tyler.

Since joining Storm Par, the number of things you knew about Scott could be counted on your fingers. And in that time, you’d never seen him unwind. Not truly, anyway. As frustrating as it could be, you'd come to respect Scott's unwavering demeanor.

Amidst the chaos, no matter how intense it got, Scott was the stoic anchor of the team. There was a reason for his lectures and regulations. He was as dependable as the code he lived by, but most of the team often dismissed it as rigid and unnecessary. You knew it took strength and reliability to remain true to your values.

Much like you were forgoing now, your polite smile tight on your lips.

Beyond Javi, the rest of the team is scattered around Whirlwind, some dancing with reckless abandon on the makeshift dance floor while others clink shots over a job well done with the other storm-chasing crews. Scott is still firmly planted on the barstool, setting his glass down with a white-knuckled grip.

Tyler, of course, pays no attention. He leans in, casually inching closer to you, wrapping up some story of an exaggerated Wrangler exploit. Close enough to brush against you. When you glance down at the contact, Tyler notices where you’ve grown distracted, that easygoing grin slipping as he takes in your view.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tyler says with a sigh, head shaking in disbelief. “Just admit it — I’m a hell of a lot more fun than Storm Cloud over there.”

You disagree, but keep it to yourself. Tyler and his crew were reckless, and, sure, while there was some level of risk that came with what you all did, there was a clear difference between you and them. 

It was part of what had drawn you to Scott in the first place. He was meticulous and no-nonsense, quick to call out mistakes whether you were out in the field or back in the office. But even Scott wasn't immune to a lecture or two — something he'd gone to great lengths to keep under lock and key.

And you only knew by accident.

Another sleepless night had driven you out of your room in search of coffee, leading you to a diner where you’d stumbled across him and Riggs in a heated discussion. Your Mama had taught you manners about eavesdropping, but you were frozen in place, listening to Riggs furiously drill into Scott over another fuck up (not his fault) and whether he was serious or not about the work they were doing. Before you could slip away unnoticed, not wanting to be lectured too, Scott’s eyes met yours, giving you a small, subtle shake of his head.

You’d run straight back to your room after, hoping that maybe it'd been a weird nightmare and you’d wake up to business as usual. But after another hour of tossing and turning, Scott’s familiar knock sounded at your door, and when you’d gathered the courage to meet him face to face, he’d looked just as conflicted as you felt. After what you’d heard, the way Scott took responsibility for every mistake and didn't throw anyone under the bus, keeping it between you two was the least you could do.

Something changed after that night. When a particularly nasty tornado touched ground a few weeks later and nearly swept you up in it, nobody questioned Scott’s decision to reassign you to Scarecrow. Nobody questioned why your partner had quit shortly after, either.

Scott still hadn’t asked why you’d been awake that night, just the same as you didn’t ask about Riggs.

You glance over at Scott again now, the memory fresh in your mind. His knuckles are just as white as when you’d found him in the diner, expression still shadowed, like he’s torn between intervening and letting it play out. But even with a crowd between you and the two men, the tension is thick, crackling in the air.

Tyler leans in closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper as glances over at Scott. “He’s got that brooding thing down to an art, doesn’t he? Don’t you ever crave a little spontaneity?”

You shift away from Tyler, the weight of Scott’s gaze growing heavy. From the corner of your eye you can just barely make out the hard set to his jaw, no longer working the cinnamon gum he obsessively kept on him. You manage a tight smile, distracted, as Javi’s voice rises briefly above the noise — your attention divided between the brewing storm on the other end of the bar and the eye of the one you were currently stuck in.

“I… I think we all have our reasons for sticking around.” You say, just as Javi finally notices you, his smile dimming as his gaze slides to Tyler.

Shit.

“Oh, I’m sure you do.” Tyler’s drawl is playful, almost teasing, and if he sees that you’re not even looking at him anymore, he doesn’t seem to care. “I’m just saying. If you ever want to get away from Clipboard over there...”

This time you do look with a flash of agitation. “If I wanted that, I’d be part of your team, Tyler. Not his.”

“Now, hold on, just hear me out for a second.” Tyler takes another pull from his drink, but when he sets it back down, he’s too close yet again. Fingers brush unwarranted against you, his touch lingering in a way that immediately makes your skin crawl. “How about we make a deal? Let me show you a good time tonight, and I promise you won’t even remember his name by the end of it.”

The suggestion hangs heavy in the air. You're only just barely aware of the way your features shift as background noise fades and you’re left with a high-pitched ringing in your ears, each emotion rolling through you longer to process than the last. By the time disgust sets in, flinching away from his wandering hands, you see past the red just enough to catch his grin widening in amusement.

And you realize, with terrifying clarity, that he’s been toying with you the whole night, just to start something with your team. You try not to tremble, swallowing your rage, and remind yourself that you'll be kicked out if dump your drink on him.

A stool scrapes loudly from the other side of the room. Whatever semblance of peace snaps.

“Uh oh.” Tyler notices Scott’s approach, and has the audacity to flash you a smile. “Looks like we’ve got company. He sure knows how to kill a mood, doesn’t he?”

You don't have a chance to respond, Scott stopping beside you, barely restrained anger coming off him in waves. You instinctively step closer to him, your drink forgotten and unwanted on the bar. His eyes flash with anger as he regards Tyler, that muscle working overtime in his jaw — and you know he's seen everything, from Tyler whispering into your ear to the look of repulse that you'd tried to hide.

“We need to talk.” Scott’s gaze shifts to you. You recognize the silent message he sends, the urgency in his voice as he fights to control his composure for your sake. “Now.”

“Ouch, Scotty. Not even a hello? And here I thought manners came with that fancy degree.” Tyler whistles low, appraising Scott like he’s not seconds away from getting his nose broken. “I was just getting acquainted with your friend over here. Giving her the whole Wrangler pitch. You know how it goes.” His smirk growing, he takes your silence as a cue to continue. “Come to think of it, wasn’t that how Gabby left? Told me she was over all the huffin' and puffin', especially after—”

“Enough.” Scott's interjection is loud and clear, your heart stuttering at the icy tone. When he slides an arm around your waist, the weight unfamiliar, you can’t tell if it’s to keep you from lunging at Tyler, or himself. You glance between Tyler's satisfied grin and the glare Scott sends him, confused. Who was Gabby? “Shut the fuck up for once, Owens. Seriously. Do us all a fucking favor.”

You still swim with questions as Scott pulls you close, no longer waiting for Tyler’s approval or response — not that he needed it in the first place. Lights cast long shadows as he navigates you between tables, the ringing in your ears lessening the further away from Tyler you get. Scott ushers you out the nearest exit, his palm warm against the small of your back.

The back door slams shut with a final click as you spill out into the alley together. It’s as dimly lit as the inside is, a singular dying bulb flickering just a few steps away. The sounds of the bar are muffled here now that your hearing has returned to normal, leaving only the distant hum of traffic and your ragged breathing.

The chilled air immediately hits you as Scott pulls away, and you watch, lost, as he paces angrily while you try to sort your thoughts out.

“What the hell was that? I thought you said you weren’t coming tonight.” Scott’s voice is sharp, cutting through the night like a knife. He turns to face you with an intensity that makes your pulse quicken, his scowl reflecting the look he gets when he's about to unleash on someone. “You said you needed space, time to clear your head… So why are you here? With him?”

“I know. Plans change,” you reply, caught off-guard, hoping to sound casual even as you hook your finger nervously under the strap of your dress. You’ve never seen Scott this worked up before, and it’s unsettling.

“Plans change?” Scott scoffs, his voice rising with every word. “That’s your excuse? You say one thing, and then do the complete opposite? What was your plan, then? To drink with Tyler and maybe let him drive you home? Was that the idea?”

You’re taken aback by the sharpness of his words. “It was just a drink, Scott. I needed to get out and clear my head.”

“Just a drink?” Scott’s eyes narrow, and he takes a step closer, his frustration barely contained. “Do you really think I’m that naive? Tyler doesn’t just do ‘just a drink.’ He’s always looking for something more. And you—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head as if trying to clear his thoughts. “He makes a mess of everything he touches. You know what he’s like. Hell, you’re smart enough to see through his bullshit. So why are you letting him get close to you?”

“Scott, it’s not like that,” you protest, your voice wavering slightly under his scrutiny. “I needed to get out. It had nothing to do with him.”

“And you couldn’t find another way to clear your head? Without him? Without the guy who’s known for causing chaos?” His voice is thick with emotion, the carefully controlled mask he usually wears slipping away to reveal the raw frustration and fear beneath. “You think I don’t see what’s happening here? I’ve been through this before, and I’m not going to stand by and watch you make the same mistakes.”

“What are you implying?” You ask, confused and angry.

“I’m saying I think you’re using Tyler as a distraction,” Scott says, his voice sharp, “A way to escape from everything you’ve been dealing with.”

Frustration prickles at his words, and even though you try not to, it’s hard to keep the edge from your voice. “Escape? That’s not— I’m not running away from anything.”

“We’ve had a rough week. I know it’s been hard on you,” Scott says, his tone softening slightly, though he still looks on edge. His jaw ticks again, and your gaze immediately darts to the pack of gum you know he keeps in his right back pocket. “But if you’re letting someone like Tyler pull you away from what really matters, it’ll only make things worse. I’ve seen too many people get hurt by him.”

Your anger flares at his scolding, hating that you found yourself in one storm, only to be led willingly into the next. “And what, Scott? You think you know me so well that you can just decide what’s best for me?”

“No, I’m just—” Scott shakes his head, taking a step toward you, then rethinking it. “I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“Safe?” You try to suppress a laugh, but it comes out bitter. “Safe doesn’t really exist in our line of work, and you know that.”

Scott’s eyes flash with a mix of frustration and something else you can’t quite place. He takes a deep breath, struggling to steady himself. “You think I don’t know that? When things go wrong, I need to know that I can count on the people around me to handle their shit.”

You raise an eyebrow, uncertain where this is going. “And what exactly does that have to do with Tyler or me?”

“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” he asks, his tone almost pleading. “When you’re involved, everything gets complicated. I can’t think straight when you’re involved. I can’t focus. Hell, I can’t even sleep at night.”

Scott runs a hand through his hair, his fingers gripping tightly as if trying to ground himself. “That tornado— When the equipment malfunctioned because Dale failed to follow the calibration protocols I specifically fucking outlined— I was frozen, just paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I knew we couldn’t make it to you in time.”

You still, remembering how quickly Scott had cornered Dale when you got back. You’d thought it was because of the readings and the instructions he’d ignored that had nearly cost you both your lives.

Scott’s breath hitches as he continues. “It would’ve been my fault. My responsibility. My orders. I was convinced I’d lost you. And I thought if I could just keep you safe, try to control the chaos, that it might make things better. But seeing you with Tyler tonight... It’s like I’m back in that moment, feeling helpless, and I—” He cuts himself off with a shake of his head. “Look, I’m not going through that again. I can’t.”

His voice cracks, and you see the depth of his internal struggle. “I’m just… trying to protect you,” he admits quietly, “but I don’t know if you even see it that way.”

His words weigh heavy, the shock of it ripping right through you. Scott Miller didn't go out of his way to be kind.

You're pulled back through the last few months: the coffee, just the way you liked it, that Scott always had waiting for you after a chase; his lack of scorn when you fell asleep on him in the van the next morning, when exhaustion wins and his silence becomes safety; the lingering, unasked question on his lips every time you were tasked to go out onto the field again and you agreed, over and over, despite the very real fear of the very thing you chased.

For a moment, everything else fades away — Tyler, the bar, the noise.

“Scott.” Your voice breaks through the quiet in a whisper, drawing close to him. Your hands glide gently along the black fabric of his shirt, feeling the rapid beat of his heart beneath your palms. “I’m here,” you say, your voice steady but soft. “I’m with you.”

For a moment, that vulnerability continues to swim in his eyes. And then he steps closer, his fingers wrapping around your wrists. You think, for a split second of panic, that he means to push you away and close himself off the way he usually does; instead, his thumbs rub tenderly at your palms, the action so gentle and unlike him that it makes your breath stall.

Instinctively your gaze meets his, forgetting (as you often did) just how big he actually was. Tall, broad, and deliciously toned; when you thought of Scott, you thought of him behind a desk, not running laps around his neighborhood and clocking in hours at the gym. Your uniforms did an amazing job of hiding his physique, but it’s impossible to ignore now. His black undershirt clings to him like a second skin and reveals the hard, taut muscles of his body, further evidence of the control he wielded so effortlessly.

His eyes search yours, the intoxicating scent of his cologne enveloping you. You’ve never seen him so open before, and as his hands smooth down your arms to the curve of your waist, there’s a sense of urgency in his touch that he doesn’t vocalize.

Fear. Longing. Desire. His jaw sets again as his gaze drops to your mouth, and you think, for one terrifying moment, that he won’t do it. Would he regain his composure, push you away, then act like nothing had happened the next morning? His brows furrow, as if reading your thoughts. Maybe you’d be reassigned just to avoid the awkwardness of it all. Scott could send you packing with just a phone call.

Your heart pounds, frozen in place, each second lasting an eternity. His fingers flex on your waist, the electrifying touch causing your lips to part and your lashes to flutter. The sight makes his throat bob.

“God damn it,” he groans, his voice guttural.

It’s the only warning you get before his mouth descends onto yours. Though his lips are smooth, there’s nothing gentle about the way Scott kisses you. His mouth moves hungrily against yours, devouring and demanding and all-consuming, like you’re the very air he needs to breathe. You sigh, aching for more, that dull fire inside you growing hotter at the groan that escapes him. As he fists a hand in your hair, he wraps a strong arm around your middle to pull you closer, deepening the kiss.

“Scott…” Bunching his shirt in your hands, you’re helpless when he nips at your bottom lip, pulling desperate, needy sounds from you. As he trails hot open-mouthed kisses along your jaw, finding every spot with ease, his fingers wrap gently around your throat, your pulse racing against his thumb.

“God, I’ve wanted you like this for months,” Scott murmurs against your skin, his voice a low growl that makes your thighs clench. A soft moan escapes as you tilt your head to give him better access, his noise of approval rumbling deep in his throat. “I’ve dreamt of this.”

He presses you into the wall behind you as he ravages your neck, all teeth and tongue and the kind of marks that you’ll have to find excuses for in the morning. A shiver sends you arching up into him, fingers slipping into his hair as he palms your breast, lowering his mouth to suck a greedy mark there. You whine at the friction you’re missing, hips circling the air, desperately hooking your fingers into his belt loops to drag him closer.

“Shhh,” Scott pauses to hitch your leg up, slotting his knee between your thighs. Dark blue eyes drink in the sight of you as he squeezes your ass, a cocky smile spreading on his pink and swollen lips. “I know, sweetheart. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” You mewl when his knee brushes against your heat, enough to have you rolling helplessly against him but not enough to satisfy your desires. “So pretty, so desperate.”

“Yes,” You grip him harder for some semblance of a tether, that condescending, degrading voice only adding fuel to the fire. Did he know what you fantasized about late at night? The shower running to muffle your moans while you touched yourself to his deep voice, lecturing you over a simple mistake? Open desire swirls in your eyes, pleading now, every want laid bare for him. “Please, I want it.”

Scott’s low noise of approval sounds in his throat, pressing closer to give you what you need. You’d be half-ashamed at the way you eagerly grind against him if his own arousal wasn’t hard against your hip, straining, large and throbbing with every roll of your hips. The material of your panties do nothing to stop the delicious ache of his worn jeans against your clit, too many pieces of fabric between you, trying to quiet pretty sounds as you bite your lip.

“Look at you,” Scott growls, your dress inching higher as he seizes your hips, helping you find a rhythm. Hooking the lace of your panties under his fingers, he tugs the material up tight enough together to elicit a hiss, a dimple playing at the corner of his mouth as he smirks, “Is this all for me, baby?”

Barely managing a nod, you meet his eyes through thick lashes and whimper at the expression on his face. That intense gaze drinks in every inch of you like you’re a piece of art and the last thing he wants to remember, his usually stormy eyes hazy with desire.

“God damn... You just can’t get enough, can you, baby? When you touch yourself at night, do you think about me? Rubbing that needy little pussy on your pillow ‘cause you just can’t help it?” You press harder into him in response, his answering laugh dark against your ear. “But it’s never enough, is it? You always crave more, something thicker, something stronger.”

You whine against the loss of contact as he drops his knee, the sting of your panties snapping against your skin quickly forgotten when he trails his digits along the swell of your mouth. You open up greedily, the salty taste of his skin on your tongue intoxicating as you wrap your lips around him. 

“I bet you look so pretty,” he continues, his voice ragged, “Spread out like a top dollar whore with your cunt in the air, gagging on your fingers and wishing it were me. Wondering how many you need to suck on to fill you up just right. How many do you think, baby? Two? More?”

Scott pulls his fingers out with a pop, nuzzling against you as you try to remember to breathe. “Would you even be able to use that brain of yours, baby? Or would you be so fucking desperate to fill your hole that you’d use however many fit?”

He hikes up your dress while he pushes his hand in your panties, fingers slipping through your soaked folds. Fuck. He slowly circles your clit, stealing the breath from your lungs as you arch up into him. “Oh, I know, sweetheart. It doesn’t feel like this, does it?”

Not even close. Worst of all, you weren’t even sure if Scott knew just how true it was. Other men may have excited you, but nothing compared to this — not you, not the others you took to your bed, not even the fantasy Scott you envisioned. You buck helplessly against him, eager for more, whimpering out some sort of half-reply as you grip his wrist in a pathetic effort to keep him there.

Scott just grins. “What’s wrong, baby? Am I going too slow for you?” When he softens his touch, your nails dig into his skin, leaving little crescent moon marks. Lips desperately search for his, your eyes half-lidded and hazy. “I knew you’d be greedy,” he hums, gripping you roughly by the chin, his thumb swiping over your parted lips. “Letting me play with your pussy like this, where anyone could walk out and see how much of a slut you’re being.”

You bite back a moan as you remember where you are, glancing frantically at the door like it might open any second. Your pulse skyrockets when he resumes teasing, circling your clit then dipping down to press at your entrance. Fingers close around the fabric of his shirt, meaning to push him away and only pulling him closer with another desperate whine. “Scott, please…”

“Fuck.” There’s a dark look that flashes across his face, voice rough and ragged, and you watch, with nothing to shield his gaze, as his control snaps.

Sliding his hand over your mouth, it’s the only warning you get before he sinks a thick digit into your weeping cunt. The growl that escapes him when you automatically clench around it only makes you wetter, paralyzed with lust as he works you into pliancy. You pant, chest heaving, as he finds a steady rhythm that makes your eyes roll to the back of your head, every moan muffled against the palm of his hand as you arch into his touch.

You cry out when he adds a second finger, rocking your hips desperately as he angles his hand just right to rub against your clit. “Harder— Please, more—” The words are strangled, spilling out of you mindlessly now, unable to think beyond the way Scott stretches you out. You grab a fistful of his hair as he groans against your neck, dragging teeth and tongue along your skin, freeing your breasts from your dress before covering your mouth again.

“So god damned sexy,” he growls, quick to lap at your hardened nipples, the flat of his tongue spilling another pretty sound from your throat. He curls his digits deeper inside you, the wet schlick of your heat loud in your ears as he sets a brutal pace, switching his attention to your other neglected nipple.

Breath hot against your skin, Scott relishes how you become putty in his hands, holding onto him for support as he strokes that burning fire in you.

“Perfect fucking tits. Perfect fucking pussy. Jesus, sweetheart,” he nips at your skin, soothing the bite with his tongue. “Is this what you like? Being used like my own personal fucktoy? What would the others think if they saw you right now, fucking yourself stupid on me like a bitch in heat?”

He slips his fingers out long enough for you to beg, his smile dark against your skin while you whimper in desperation — and then he’s pushing back into you, stretching your hole with every rough thrust of his fingers. “Hear that, sweetheart? Even your body knows it’s meant to be mine.”

Scott kisses you hungrily as he drops his free hand to your breast, pinching your nipple hard enough to make you scream. His fingers slick harder into you, his cock thick and grinding into your hip while you try to breathe against his storm, your own control slipping as you fist his dark curls in your hands, looking for leverage.

“That’s it,” he growls, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. “This is my fucking pussy, isn’t it, baby? You wanna cum for me? Let the whole bar know you’re my toy to play with?”

“Please, please, please—” You can’t think beyond the brutal pace he’s set, not even sure that your voice sounds human as you babble, eyes big and watering. “Wanna cum for you, please, I need it—”

“You need it?” You gasp as the pain on your nipple subsides only for him to pinch the other, something dark and destructive swirling heavy in his blue eyes. You shiver at the expression, the carnal desire written so clearly over his face, every word out of his mouth deep, commanding, leaving no room for debate. “I’ll tell you when you get to cum. This is mine.” Pressing the heel of his palm hard against your clit, he watches with glee as you clamp down on your bottom lip to keep from screaming, obeying his command even as your body fights.

Your knees nearly buckle at the growl in his voice. Every thrust of his fingers brings you closer to the edge, the heat overwhelming. How many nights had you spent with your fingers in your cunt, picturing scenario after scenario of him taking you in the van, in the bathroom, on his desk after hours? 

“Say it,” Scott insists. “Tell me you’re mine.”

You meet his gaze, the intensity of it nearly sending you over the edge. “I’m yours,” you say, caught between a moan and something stronger, your words choking off.

“Again.” His expression tightens, picking up speed. “Louder.”

“I’m yours!” Your body trembles with the effort to stay upright, writhing against him. The words feel like a vow, your grip on Scott tight as you sob them into him. “My pussy is yours, my body is yours— Just a pathetic, dirty, worthless hole for you to fuck— Fuck, Scott, please—”

Scott growls in response, fisting his hand in your hair as finds the spongey spot inside of you. His digits work you hard, the veins in his arms on display as you bite back a scream, waiting, begging, needing. “Cum,” he grunts, the sound of his fingers driving into you loud and damning, “That’s it, sweetheart. Cum for me.”

You fall over the edge hard and fast, crying out as all the tension from the night finally snaps. It feels like an eternity as he continues fucking you through it, every filthy promise spelled out clearly with his lips at your ear.

By the time you come crashing back down, you’re shaking and empty, blinking back stars as Scott steps back. “Oh my god,” you gasp, fighting to catch your breath, mind still a mess as you try to piece together everything that happened. “That was…”

You watch, mesmerized, as Scott sucks his fingers into his mouth, a groan of approval sounding deep in his throat. And when he squeezes at his bulge straining against his zipper, your core clenches tight at the thought of his weight on top of yours, fucking you into submission again and again until he gets his fill.

“Just the beginning,” Scott promises, stepping toward you to tilt your chin up, his free hand coming down to tighten around your soaked panties and pull. They rip easily in his strong grasp, his grin triumphant as he stuffs them into his back pocket. “You won’t be needing these anymore.”

“Why?” Your body tenses with anticipation, noting the defined dimple in his cheek, the kind of grin he only wore when he was about to be incredibly, infuriatingly smug.

“Because,” he hums, full of condescension, “I didn’t hear a thank you.”

Before you can fix your mistake, Scott silences you with a kiss, his mouth patronizingly gentle as a wicked laugh sounds in the back of his throat. “Don’t worry,” he says, dropping another chaste kiss to your mouth, your nose, the space between your creased brows. “It won’t happen again. I’ll teach you, sweetheart.”

Goosebumps rise on your flesh as Scott adjusts your dress to cover your exposed body, the act so gentle and unbecoming that you freeze enough to let him. The moment only lasts a minute, your eyes meeting as he squeezes the curve of your ass when he’s done, all that vulnerability you had seen locked away again, like he’s guarding himself as reality comes back to life.

A muscle feathers in his jaw as his gaze shifts from you to the back door you’d spilled from. You’ve known Scott long enough by now to know he won’t be the one to say what’s hanging in the air. It would be easier, safer, to walk back in like nothing had happened and return to the motel alone, hitching a ride with anyone other than Scott the next morning.

But if you turn away now, you’ll never see that side of him again: the side that stayed up with you when he could be sleeping, the kind that comforted you without words, the kind that lit your world on fire with every bruising mark he’d left on you. The chance of knowing the man behind the mask.

You don’t miss the way his muscles tense under your touch as you reach for him or the flash of relief that flickers through him. “You think I’m teachable?” You ask, turning big eyes up at him, begging him to see the way you lay yourself bare for him — hoping, praying, that he doesn’t turn you down even still.

“I’m not an easy teacher.” He says, low, still guarded. Still giving you one last out.

You shake your head, a laugh tumbling out. His throat bobs at the sound. “I don’t want easy.” The truth of that hangs heavy in the air, zipping between the two of you as recognition passes through his eyes. “Now are you driving, or am I?”

A faint smile tugs at the corner of his mouth before he presses his tongue into his cheek and takes a step back. “My van, my rules,” he says, his voice softer now but still firm, and you hear the familiar rumble of the Storm Par van coming to life. His keys jingle in his hand as he adds, “You should know that by now.”

You bite your lip, suppressing a smile, and follow him out of the alleyway.

You did know. And as you settle into the passenger seat, the scent of the van enveloping you — a mix of old leather and Scott’s cologne — anticipation crackles in the air. The night stretches ahead, full of unspoken possibilities.

You couldn’t wait to test how far those rules went... and just how much you both were willing to bend them.

[iconicstoner]

love bites & apologies

gn!reader x jasper hale

words: 1960

summary: when Jasper accidentally leaves marks on y/n’s neck after kissing them, he has to figure out how to make it up to them and their parents.

“Sugar, you are so sweet,” Jasper’s words came out like a husky southern growl, just centimeters away from your face. Slowly, his hands push through your hair as his icy lips move down your neck. He sends a chill down your spine with the feeling of his cold touch, and yet your whole body feels hot with pleasure. Just as Jasper begins to pin you down, his lips still grazing your warm neck, the sound of someone clearing their throat startles both of you. The two of you turn to face the person quickly, and embarrassment adorns your face when you realize who caught you. Jasper releases the firm grip he had on you and raises his eyebrows at the towering lean figure standing in the doorway.

“Y’know, I can hear all your thoughts, and usually that would be helpful, but I don’t want to hear,” Edward pauses to glance between the two of you, “those thoughts.” Your face flushes with embarrassment, and Jasper’s would too, if he was still capable of it.

“I’ll have you know, from the moment you met Bella, I could feel every emotion you felt about her, and that was ten times worse. Do you know how awkward it is to feel lust emitting from the house, just to find out it’s coming from your brother?” A smirk is still etched onto Jasper’s face as he finishes drawing out the words with his charming Southern accent. Edward tenses with embarrassment, and he doesn’t say anything for a long time, considering what Jasper knows. Then, as he begins to look back between the couple sprawled out on Jasper's bed, he begins to laugh.

“Why is he doing that?” you ask in a low mumble. Jasper gives Edward a look of confusion, before turning to you. The second he sees you, his face drops, no longer smirking, and he is in utter shock.

“Oh, Emmett is gonna love this,” Edward says between laughs. Before Edward even finished his sentence Emmett was standing at his side with just the mention of his name. When he looked into the room, he burst into laughter too.

“Nice one, Jasper!” Emmett exclaims as he pats Jasper’s shoulder with intense force, almost knocking Jasper, who is in a trance-like state, over. “It’s like you’re all grown up. Quite the cowboy,” He says, sarcastically. Your confusion is palpable to the brothers, but before you can even ask, Edward is pointing a small handheld mirror at you, giving you a great view of your neck. It’s almost entirely purplish-red from all the places Jasper had been kissing you. You let out a gasp that causes all laughter to cease.

“I’d love to help you,” Edward said with a smile, almost as if he was enjoying this moment, “but since Vampires don’t have blood, we don’t have this problem.” As his brothers spoke, Jasper stood to the side, continuing to look down at you with a slight horror at the mistake he made.

“We could try makeup? I know Rosalie has a ton somewhere around here,” Emmett suggests, at least trying to be helpful.

“Going home with pasty white makeup all over your neck is almost more suspicious than just letting people see the hickeys,” Edward said to Emmett playfully. “And also, curfew is in fifteen minutes, so I’d hurry home,” Edward says to you, knowing this will only be worse if you also break your curfew.

Before you’d even had time to think of a plan, Jasper was already ushering you to the car. He raced down the slick asphalt to your house in the silver Jeep. The car was completely silent the whole drive, but Jasper kept a firm grip on your thigh with his right hand. Emmett and Edward were in the back, and as you pull into the driveway, you can only hope your parents won’t kill you.

“Hold on,” Jasper says, his cool hand touches your jaw, and he leans in to give you a soft, cold, longing kiss, “just in case it’s the last time,” he mumbles into your ear as he reluctantly pulls away from the kiss.

“They can’t ground me for as long as you're alive,” you remark playfully.

“Yes, but they can ground you for as long as you’re alive,” he says, with a sweet syrupy quality to his voice. His hand slowly and delicately traces down your jaw until it's back in his atmosphere again. You crave to grab his hand or to press his skin against yours for just one last second, but you know you can’t look like this and be late. You climb out of the Jeep, step inside your house, and close the door behind you, but Jasper doesn’t take the Jeep out of park.

“What are we doing, Jasper?” Emmett questions uneasily.

“Jasper wants to know what y/n’s parents are going to feel when they see what happened,” Edward explained, already knowing what Jasper was thinking, which was helpful because Jasper would give anything not to speak right now. No one said anything for a moment, but then Jasper tensed, sitting up a little straighter. Edward slumped back, seeming almost uncomfortable by what was happening. Emmett could tell this meant that your parents had noticed, and things didn’t seem good.

“I can feel their emotions. It’s so strong that I can hardly distort them, at least not from this far.” Jasper paused after the words left his mouth, but he didn’t move. “What are they thinking, Edward?”

“I don’t want to say,” Edward said monotonously. Emmett stiffened, and for someone so hard to miss, he seemed to wash away with the tension of the moment.

“Tell me,” Jasper demanded. The brothers sat very still for a very long time before anyone spoke again. The sound of chirping crickets filled their ears, and the stars shined down on them. However, they didn't notice any of their surroundings, as they focused their attention on what was happening in your house.

“They think you’re a freak,” he paused, for what felt like centuries, before saying, “They want you two to break up.” Before Edward can continue, Jasper put the car in reverse and sped home so fast that even Edward wanted to suggest slowing down.

“What am I going to do?” Jasper asked as he opened the front door to the Cullen's house. Emmett and Edward shuffled in behind him without a word.

“You’re going to have to make it up to y/n’s parents,” Emmet advised.

“You’re going to have to make it up to y/n too,” as soon as the words escaped Edward's mouth Emmett and Jasper were staring at him, waiting for an explanation. “When I was listening to their thoughts, y/n was mad that you weren’t more careful.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Jasper said, his voice full of exasperation.

A week passes, and somehow Jasper finds himself standing next to Carlisle at your doorstep.

“Jasper, I’m surprised you asked me to do this for you,” Carlisle says quietly as he taps his stone-cold hand against your front door. “This relationship must mean a lot to you.” The door opens before their conversation continues, and they’re greeted with your father's presence. Days had passed since Jasper had gotten to see you. After what happened last week, Jasper called your house, but when your father answered, he told Jasper to never call back again. Jasper had hoped he’d be able to talk with you at school, but you anxiously avoided him, and he wasn’t looking to upset you anymore. It was the slowest week of his 160-year-old life.

“It’s great to see you. I’m Dr. Cullen, Jasper’s father. I was wondering if we could have a word?” Your father is hesitant at the question, but allows the two of them to come inside. The three of them sit at the dining table that your mother is already occupying. As they sit, Jasper nervously fumbles with his hands, worried that his plan to involve Carlisle as his ‘father’ wouldn’t work the way he hoped.

“Jasper,” you say as you walk into the kitchen, surprised to see them, “and Carlisle, what’s going on?” You make your way to the table and sit down on the far end, with Jasper on one side of you, and your father on the other. Jasper could feel the nervousness emitting from you, and it almost matched his own. He wanted to grab on to you and never let go as he took in your intoxicating scent and warm skin, but instead, he settled for inconspicuously placing a hand on your knee and hoping your family didn’t notice.

“I wanted to discuss with you all what happened last week,” Carlisle said, looking more serious than you’d ever seen him. When he said the words, almost everyone in the room had their eyes on your (no longer purple) neck. Except for Jasper, who was looking deep into your eyes as if they could heal him or ease his pain. “What Jasper did was irresponsible, and I do not condone that kind of behavior. We have both raised two very responsible, mature, and sensible kids. As disapproving as I am, what they did was not dangerous. Our children had the self-control to stop themselves before things got too out of hand. I know these kids make each other happy, and I believe we should continue to let them see each other.” Carlisle hardly gave anyone time to speak as he felt the disapproval radiate off your parents. “And if it would make you more comfortable, they don’t have to be together at my house anymore. At least not alone.” There was a long pause after Carlisle finished speaking, as if what he said compelled everyone to silence. Jasper gently squeezed your knee and glanced at you hopefully.

“I’ll agree that they continue to see each other, on the condition that they can only be alone together in public, or at our house, with the doors open, while we are home.” It might sound like a big ask, but Jasper knew how secretive and creative Edward was with Bella, and for someone so special to him, he was willing to try and be just as sneaky for you. The idea of sneaking into your bedroom late at night filled him with excitement, and he quickly thought of all the ways he could climb into your bed without your family noticing.

“I think we can agree to that,” Carlisle said with a wide smile and stood up to shake your father’s hand. Jasper smiled eagerly as he stood up, beckoning you to stand too, and wrapped you into a hug. Even if his skin was glacial, he still warmed your heart. You attempted to suppress your excited laugh as Jasper kissed your cheek.

“Hey,” your father called out disapprovingly, causing Jasper to loosen his grip around you.

“What?” you mused, “the doors are open?” Jasper tried to hide his smile in your hair as your parents let out a collective sigh.

“Don’t push it you two,” Carlisle said just loud enough for only you two to hear. He threw the two of you a knowing wink as he made his way back to the front door. Jasper smiled in a way you’d never seen before and slightly adjusted so his back was facing your parents. Gently, he leaned down to kiss you one more time. This time, he let his cold lips meet yours, and even if it was just for a second, you could feel every ounce of his love.

“See you soon, darlin’,” he said with a hushed sultry southern accent. Next time you two were together, he planned on continuing what you never got to finish.

[bless-my-demons]

Redamancy: Chapter Twenty-Nine

Series Summary: What happens when your soulmate is a vampire that struggles to maintain a diet of trying not to kill you? Common sense says run for the hills, nothing is worth your life - but my heart is whispering why not, what’s there to lose?

Warnings: does a handsy Jasper need a warning?

Notes: oh my god it’s been so long, I’ve been eating myself up over not posting. I’ve been working myself to death, but I’ve finally got a long weekend off and so I used it to get back to what makes me happy - this story! Omg I hope you guys love it🥹 I also have to go through and update my taglist later tonight, so bear with me on that until I add it!

Word Count: 1500

Series Masterlist

• April 3rd, 2006 • Forks HS •

Reader

Tingly.

That’s the state of my body this morning, the state of my mind.

Not only am I riding an emotional high from our conversation this weekend, but my dream last night… Good lord, that dream.

I can feel the echoes of his fingers on my skin, the coolness of his lips, the wet trail they would’ve left behind… the solid weight of what surely his body would feel like, pressed against mine. I can imagine all of what it would be like vividly, to be under him, to get carried away, to just explore-

“You alright, darlin’?”

His voice jolts me from the day dreaming stare I had on the locker before me, caught red handed. To make matters worse, that deep southern tenor questioned me inches from my ear, causing a blush to heat my cheeks to an almost uncomfortable degree.

“Perfectly fine, why?” I immediately busy myself within my locker so that I don’t have to face him right away.

“You do remember that I can feel you, right?” His voice is low and his hands find my hips tenderly, but the air changes around us.

My heart rate skyrockets, this is dangerous. His fingers flex against me and the death grip I have on this book in my hands turns my knuckles white.

“Jasper-” his name is a whispered warning, but also a plea.

“I know.” Instantly a cooling, soothing balm blankets our tension and I release the tightness in my chest. Leaning backwards into him I just feel tired all of a sudden, like I had run a marathon. “Let’s get out of here.”

His request sounds more like a demand and I twist in his arms, “Is that a good idea?”

“Darlin’, I don’t have many of those these days.” His mouth quirks up in a lopsided grin as he shoves all of my school supplies back in my locker, shutting it and tugging me along behind him towards the student parking lot.

Jasper

Something is on her mind, something dangerous. Something I absolutely want to know, something I’m not sure I have the strength for, but I can’t help it - it’s her.

I’ve never been more thankful for an overcast day with no rain: perfect motorcycle weather. Come to think of it, my sister had a knowing look in her eyes as my siblings all piled into their respective vehicles as I straddled my bike this morning. A decision that currently led me to now: Y/n and I leaving school before midday.

Those thoughts I interrupted earlier have her quiet, but her emotions are raging and it is driving me insane. Curiosity, need, nervousness - a dangerous concoction begging to overtake my rational mind. Separating myself from her feelings is almost impossible at this point, she is so well ingrained in me.

Finally arriving at my thankfully empty home, I shut my motorcycle off and offer a steady hand to help her dismount. Swinging my own leg over, I turn towards her and lean against it, observing her for a moment with crossed arms.

“What?” She makes eye contact as she struggles with the chin strap of my helmet.

Grabbing the helmet by the chin piece, I gently tug her forward between my legs, “Tell me.” I lace the command with neediness to encourage her to be pliant.

And judging by the way her lips part behind the dark visor, the immediate dilation of her eyes, and the weight of her hands settling on my thighs gently, I might’ve laid it on a little too thick.

Chuckling, I free her from my helmet and riding jacket. By the time I finish, she seems to snap from the daze and her hands clench on top of my legs.

“Not fair, Hale.” Feisty this morning.

I lean forward towards her ear with a grin as I stand from my bike to put away the gear, “All’s fair in love and war, sweetheart.”

Reaching to swat my chest, I grab her hand gently before she could injure herself.

Pausing as I hang my jacket up, her teasing response sends excitement through me, “Two can play at that game, baby.”

Stepping into my room, I realize too late what has her curiosity: my desk. Well, the art that occupies every inch, my art.

“What is all this?” Leafing through pencil sketches of my favorite hunting spots and pen etchings of my family at random moments, she gets to the important ones hidden below. Her breathing hitches and I know she’s found them, the ones of her.

Some are in pencil, some are in random felt-tip pens, but my favorites? Those are charcoal. A decently basic medium, but I feel like it captures so much more than anything else ever could. Maybe it’s because I use my fingers to smudge and shape her perfect curves and lines, but it radiates emotion in sweeping gestures and subtle shading - something that’s hard to capture with anything else.

“There’s-” awe, shock, surprise, they all shuffle through her and I’m on edge, waiting to hear her thoughts. “There’s so many…”

I watch her carefully examine each one and I smile when she chuckles at a few - some of her at school, some of her here in my home, moments I not only committed to memory, but to paper.

“Now you know what I do with my free time.” I smile through the minuscule anxiety that bubbles up at her seeing my secret hobby. Everyone in my family knows I draw, but they haven’t seen my drawings.

“Jasper…” I can tell she’s getting emotional, but a part of me is excited for her to see my innermost thoughts on paper, to see herself through my eyes - the unaltered beauty she contains.

“You haven’t even seen the ones I cherish the most.” Opening a familiar sketchbook buried under many other drawings, I reveal my favorites. “The very first ones.”

Her breath hitches, running a reverent finger down the first page. It’s the very first moment I saw her, crouched, scooping up papers on her first day of high school in Forks - absolutely radiant.

“You were a vision that day. A beautiful tornado that wrecked my world, I tried to capture every detail from memory because I never want to forget-”

Her hand finding my cheek breaks me from my explanation and my eyes find her watery ones, mouth open, searching for words clearly hard to get out, “Jasper…”

“I love you.” My confession steals her breath completely this time, the first time I’ve uttered these words aloud and it feels absolutely right. “I’ve loved you since the moment you hit me with that door. I knew I was absolutely ruined for anyone else and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Tilting her chin up with the tip of my finger as it wobbles at my confession, I smile, “Say something, darlin’.”

“I love you, too.” Now it’s my turn to go wholly still. “I knew from the moment I saw you I’d never be the same, I was yours-”

I couldn’t wait another second, I closed the minuscule gap between our mouths to seal these confessions. I love her and she loves me. Me.

Tilting her head back slightly as I cradle her, I take my cue to deepen the kiss, to pull her closer carefully. Groaning into her mouth, fuck I can’t get enough of her. Trailing kisses down her jawline as she tips her head to the side for much needed air, her gasps drive me to lift her onto my desk.

“Jaz…” her breathy plea of my nickname freezes me, panic seizing my actions.

“I am a gentleman, but only just barely.” My voice is gravel in my own ears, breathed down the slender column of her throat.

A shiver from her causes me to clench my jaw and attempt to gather myself.

“Maybe I don’t want a gentleman right now.” Her whisper damns me, it fucking sets me on fire.

A slamming door downstairs straightens my spine and my hands abandon the exploration of her. Fuck, my family’s timing couldn’t be better, but also worse.

“Honey, we’re home!” Emmett’s booming voice echoes up the stairs and immediately I know he knows, he can probably smell it.

Huffing, I help her regain her footing and straighten her clothes from the rumpled mess my hands made of it. I also take half a thought to smooth her arousal, a damn shame-but a necessity if we’re to face my siblings for the rest of the evening.

“Fucking Emmett.” Her frustration draws a chuckle from me as we make our way downstairs.

“I heard that!” My brother’s response causes her to roll her eyes at me playfully and I shake my head, my heart weighing much fuller in my chest as she plucks its invisible strings with her shit-eating grin.

Next

Taglist part 1:

@aoi-targaryen @Min-jianhyung @pbbsl @timelordhunterandmysterysolver @sheerangermany @clearwater-hoe @Blackbluerose666 @ivy-plays @random-human02 @delightfulbluebirdstarlight @steh-lar-uh-nuhs @gaymazinglula @l3ejm @angelfuzzy2 @losa12308 @thekinkpopstandsforkrackheads @flyawayprincess @ropickle @catbusloki @deviat3dsn0wf0x @lovesanimals0000 @unrevived @h-naec @cutesnakemum @zudooms @itsmytimetoodream @stinkii-boii @acoolnight @anothercoffeeblogx @irishblend10 @from-now-on-im-switzerland @kyraslife2 @naolvshan @kiiwiigii @rosedpetal @kiaraandrea @foolsgoldxo @heartfilia01 @azuredgalaxies @geekysimmerthings @graciereads @ramen-girl-2424 @0hmydekiru @creeqvealley @Cherriebat @whichwitchisthebitch @dragon-rider-with-a-book @secretfairytailpetscookie @psychobitchsthings

[bunnysbrainrot]

The Real Thing

Relationship: dbf!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Content: EXPLICIT, toys, filming sexual acts, Daddy kink, degrading/praising mix, dom/sub dynamic, creampie, unprotected p in v, sexting

Summary: You let it slip to Joel that you touched yourself without his knowledge. The thought drives him over the edge, eager to show you that the real thing is so much better.

This is a series! Click here to read the other parts!

The chilled glass rests on Joel’s lips when he receives your message. You’d been up to your usual nightly texting after your respectively busy days. Tonight, the thoughts of him had sent you into a shaking, sated frenzy after finishing yourself off. Your hands had barely been freshly cleaned of your slick before you texted Joel, your dad’s best friend, and your most hidden secret.

You pant as you tempt him, I touched myself thinking about you.

Meanwhile, Joel tenses as he mulls over those six simple words. You probably fingered yourself, Joel thought, after rubbing gentle circles on your clit. He could imagine your stifled moans like you’d given him before.

He’d watched you fuck yourself with your own toy. God, what he wouldn’t do to see this in person again.

Joel sets his glass of whiskey on the side table, flitting his fingers to issue a reply.

Did it feel good, sweetheart?

Your reply is swift, though you’re still catching breath as if you’d ran a mile. The waves of euphoria waft over your senses, elated.

Really good

But that’s not the response Joel wants to hear. A hidden, possessive part of him snaps. He replies quickly, his question leaving you hitching your breath.

Better than me?

You know the answer, but you’ve messed up already. Regardless of your answer, you’re sure you’re in for another lesson.

No, sir, you admit.

Joel presses further, I don’t believe you.

Anxiety courses through you, shooting directly to your aching sex, already thoroughly fucked on your own accord. You text Joel back, catching your lower lip between your teeth.

How can I prove it to you?

Perfect.

A smirk tugs at Joel’s lips until he grins at his cell phone. He clears his throat as he replies, covering for his heated cheeks.

You can prove it by heading over to my place. I wanna show you a thing or two.

His Southern accent still saturates his message, you can hear it as if he were whispering in your ear. To your dismay, you can’t have his company until you trek to his house. You shift and sit straight, and send a reply.

I can be there in 15 :)

Joel’s response is almost immediate. It sends a shiver down your spine.

Bring your toy, too.

Three knocks sound against the door of Joel’s house. He saunters over to the foyer, hoping it wasn’t Sarah who forgot something for her girl’s night. With any luck, she would be fine, and he could proceed undisturbed.

To his relief you greet him with a wide smile. You seem more confident this time around - last time you came over you were still doe-eyed and timid, but he helped you break past that.

“Hi,” such a simple word, but the way he draws it out is like a siren song. If it weren’t taboo, you would kiss him right here on his doorstep.

Your cheeks warm, “Hi, I um… I brought it.”

He turns sideways and gestures with an open arm for you to enter.

The words good girl brush across your skin as you walk past Joel into the foyer. He must’ve seen your flustered state, because his hearty chuckle fills the air.

“Where do you want me?” you pipe up.

Joel’s glance to you is soft, melting the rich brown of his eyes into something warm and safe. You stare into the deep chestnut until his voice breaks you out of the trance.

“You sound nervous, baby.”

In front of him you shift on your feet, clenching your hands into fists as he calls your bluff. Joel approaches you and rests his hands on your shoulders.

His lips rest on the crown of your head, “It’s just us, babydoll. Y’ain’t gotta worry when you’re here.”

You nod slightly against his chest. The thrum of his heartbeat hammers against your ear. You’re encased in Joel’s arms as your breathing steadies, just in tandem with his heart.

“Attagirl,” mumbles Joel, “won’t let anything happen to you, ‘kay?”

A hand on your lower back guides you to the staircase. Joel follows closely behind as you make your way up to the second floor, making a beeline for his bedroom, where you’d spent your night together last time.

The smell in the room hadn’t changed from Joel’s usual scent - that signature mix of freshness and earth.

“I think I just get nervous, even though we’ve done this before.”

Joel nods at your words. “Would it be crazy to say that I feel the same way?”

You whip around to face him. Comfort and pride fills your chest now that you know you’re not alone. Before you ask him to clarify he nods, giving you a sheepish smile. Returning that face with a smug smirk of your own, Joel lands a soft blow to your ass. No tolerance for brattiness here.

“On the bed.”

His command is short and distinct. You execute the task immediately, patiently waiting on the bed as he asked.

Joel shifts his attention to your bag, and gestures to it, “Lemme see it.”

You place your bag in your lap and rummage the insides, finally grabbing onto that familiar firm silicone, carefully kept in a velvet bag. Joel’s eyes grow dark at the sight of it slowly being unsheathed from the red velvet.

He strides to you and takes the toy for himself, holding it in both hands while he lets his mind wander. He’d watched you fuck yourself with this toy barely a few weeks ago. Hell, he had been inside you last week.

But even with that consistency, it wasn’t enough for him. There was hardly a moment of relief. Now that he had felt everything firsthand, fantasies raced through his mind like wildfire.

“Are you not going to touch me?” you ask.

Joel’s expression steels, and his lips curl into a smile.

He shakes his head, “Not yet. You know how this happened last time, right?”

You protest, “What am I supposed to do when you’re not around, Joel?”

The sharpness of his tone stops you. “You ask first. You tell me first.”

After a moment, you nod.

Another command has you exposing yourself, “Take it all off, sweetheart. Nice and slow for me.”

Layer after layer, cool air meets your skin, brushing over your perk nipples and caressing the mounds of your breasts. They ache as you notice how intently Joel eyes you while undressing.

Your tits catch the lamplight beautifully. Their skin looks soft to the touch, pillowy and supple.

“Fuuuck,” he groans. Joel lowers a hand to his crotch, palming a growing erection in his jeans.

Dutifully, you peel your bottoms and throw them aside, followed by your underwear, joining your other garments on the floor. You’re laid amazingly bare, ready and squirming with a new wetness between your thighs.

Joel hands you the dildo you’d brought along, nodding sternly. “Go on.”

You tense, “You’re not going to help me?”

“You did alright by yourself before. Don’t let me stop you.”

His tone makes you scowl. Joel breathes a laugh before he sits at the foot of the bed, placing a hand close to your thigh, temptingly close.

“Don’t look at me like that. You knew better,” Joel remarks.

You did. Maybe some part of you wanted this to happen - and maybe that part of you wasn’t as small as you’d thought it was.

Without further instruction, you take hold of the dildo’s shaft, placing it carefully at your tight entrance. It had grown sore from your session from before, but still welcomed the toy easily. It dips into your displayed pussy, slowly easing in to the hilt.

Joel is mesmerized by the sight. The way the toy stretches you wide around its middle, the way your eager cunt swallows the remains of the length. Your cries sound around the room.

The lack of touch has you writhing in front of Joel. Despite your slip-up, the least he could do was touch you, even if it was holding your hand. But he offered nothing.

Since you think a toy can be better than him, he’ll let you deal with this yourself.

“Joel-“ you mewl, shoving the dildo deep into your pussy. Your walls flutter around the length, desperately searching for the familiar warmth of Joel’s cock, but to no avail.

The sound of a belt unbuckling sends a chill across your body. You crane your neck to spot Joel freeing his thick cock from his boxers. He kicks his pants to the floor and reaches for his shirt quickly after.

Warm light highlights the tone in his arms and chest. The sculpted muscles of his torso ripple as he twists to face you once again.

“Feel good, sweetheart?” Joel asks in a whisper.

You nod fervently, but he can tell you’re straining for the pleasure. You’re reaching for the ecstasy that only he had been able to give you.

“Think you could make yourself come for me?”

The challenge weighs on you. At this rate, it was unlikely. There was only so much your arms and wrists could take while you fucked yourself. It would be so much easier to suction it to the floor or the shower walls like you’d done at home.

You shake your head. You admit the defeat.

Joel finally makes contact, stroking the fullness of your cheeks. Their warmth radiates into his rough fingers.

“Can’t do it, can ya?”

You scowl, “Usually takes a little longer than this.”

He objects, “And how many times could I have made you come in that amount of time?”

Point taken.

The dildo drags slowly out of your used hole, throbbing with each heartbeat. After the toy’s usage, you weren’t sure how much you could handle from Joel. But you knew he would push you to your limits.

“Now,” he starts, “I wantcha to turn over for me. Elbows and knees.”

You oblige but ask, “Elbows?”

With his help, you’re in position in front of him, your bare ass and drenched pussy in full view.

“If you’re on your elbows, it feels better. Just trust me, honey,” Joel’s cozy voice reassures you. You ease your muscles, trying to replace the nerves with excitement.

Out of sight, the heavy head of Joel’s cock presses against your wet hole. You release a long whine, pressing your ass into Joel. The gesture is eager and desperate, but it makes him chuckle.

Needy little slut.

He delivers a harsh slap to your ass, groaning when you whimper at the impact. The head of his cock pushes further, greeting your walls with its thick girth. A low moan thrums through you as his cock stretches you wide, slowly filling your delicious cunt.

“Fuckin’ Christ, you’re tight.”

The words roil through you. You clench down onto his dick, drawing out a low moan deep from Joel’s chest.

His cock fills you slowly, but so much deeper at this angle. Every inch molds you to him, shaping your needy pussy to accommodate his size. Your slick coats his shaft, letting his movements speed up, until the lewd sounds of your sloppy pussy fill the room. Each wet slap drives Joel into a frenzy of hurried thrusts and deep strokes.

Somehow, your body is withstanding his sweet torture. Your moans sound muffled in the comforter - you grip the blanket desperately to hold yourself steady.

“You really think a stupid fuckin’ toy is gonna be better than this?”

Joel’s voice is gruff. It grates over your skin like the rough stubble of his beard. His voice rumbles again - his thrusts are more precise to strike your sweet spot. Your moans are a song only he has memorized note for note. A siren’s call. A simple plea.

More. More. More.

“Not a fuckin’ chance.”

A harsh thrust sends you screaming into the sheets, hiding your face to quiet yourself. Joel’s fingers coast down your spine to the base of your hair. His fingers thread through and gain purchase, tugging you upward.

You gasp, but release a low moan as Joel slowly drags his cock through your walls, before slamming right back in.

Joel laughs; his words brush across the shell of your ear, “Oh, you like it deep, huh?”

The soft whine is all the answer he needs. Joel repeats the movement a handful of times, relishing in the sweet sounds you’re making.

A new idea comes to him. Joel props himself on one knee, now gripping your hip in one hand, and your head in the other. The fullness is suffocating, and your position doesn’t grant you much room to move. You’re pinned.

Completely free to be used at Joel’s disposal.

He doesn’t waste a moment, and the strokes are deeper even still. You let out a shrill cry at the stretch. Tightness coils in your abdomen as you near your climax, ready to release.

“Come for me, princess. Show me whatcha got,”urges Joel, maintaining his speed and angle. The way you caught your breath revealed what worked best.

After a few more thrusts, you’re at the edge of your orgasm, with every inch of your body being set ablaze as it struck. It shatters through you like lightning. For a moment, your hearing dulls, and your vision blurs as you cry out through your euphoria.

“That’s a good girl. That’s a nice big one, too,” he says admirably. Joel pats your ass as a reward. You whine through the aftermath of your orgasm, clenching gently around Joel’s cock.

His pace slows only for a moment before he resumes, this time leaning backwards to get a better view.

Joel had seen it all before, but he would never grow tired of this sight. As he moves, your sweet cunt stretches tight around his heavy cock, eagerly swallowing him back in. He drags his movements out to give himself a good show, like the greedy lover he is.

“Baby, I wish you could see this,” he marvels.

You whimper in response. If it looked as good as it felt, it would be a dream to witness. A new idea suddenly sparks.

You shakily point to his phone on the nightstand. Joel pieces it together instantly. You want him… to record this?

Damn it all to hell.

“Y’wanna make a movie, sweetheart?” Joel’s filthy comments string along as he opens his phone’s camera, and selecting the ‘video’ option. “Wanna see what Daddy sees?”

Your soft moan gives him his answer, so he presses ‘record’. Joel tries to keep the camera steady, while keeping his strokes deep and thorough.

To think that he could keep this for later, for his own private enjoyment.

A tightness grows in Joel’s spine, wandering to his abdomen and making his balls tug tight. He can’t last much longer at this rate. Not with you squeezing him like this-

“So fuckin’ pretty. This pussy is so fuckin’ pretty, baby,” he coos. If he talks through it, maybe he can last.

You mewl into the blanket, clamping around his cock in a vice grip. Joel growls lowly at the tight warmth enveloping him.

To think this will be on video… It’ll be real, and there would be no denying this affair.

You shudder at the idea - surely the both of you would take it for your own personal pleasure, using it as the perfect material for when you ached for the other.

A band pulls taught in your tummy and snaps free, sending you into another overwhelming climax. Joel embraces the new tightness and lets it tug him toward the edge. He angles his phone to show off your splayed pussy before he unravels.

Joel groans harshly while his thrusts falter. He stalls for a moment before a new heat fills your cunt. Hot ropes of cum coat your slick walls, buried deep with a harsh thrust.

The recording pans in further - now zoomed in on your stuffed hole. Joel pulls himself from you, exposing your abused pussy to the camera. Slowly but surely, Joel’s cum leaks from your cunt and over your swollen clit.

“Who’s better?” Joel demands.

You reply between gasps, “You… you are.”

Joel presses a thumb against your slick clit, teasing the bundle of nerves into a circle. You twitch and tighten your pussy on instinct, making Joel chuckle from behind the camera.

“Damn right I am.”

He presses the record button once more to end the video, tossing the phone to the side. You let yourself collapse into the bed as your hips relax back into place.

“Next time you wanna play with a toy,” Joel mutters, easing himself at your side. He catches you gasping for a steady breath, smiling nonetheless. “At least you’ll have some good material to think about.”

You huff out a laugh, and playfully try to slap him on the thigh. Joel laughs heartily, filling you with the comfort only he could provide.

His fingers glide along your spine. “Let’s get you cleaned up, how’s that sound?”

Hiiii everyone! I’m still alive don’t worry, I just had to take a mental health break. I appreciate your understanding!

If you enjoyed, please support my work by reblogging or leaving a like!

I’m very happy to be writing again. I missed you guys <3

[misctf]

Hunting for City Boys

“Ah reckon they went this way!”

Scott could hear the heavy footsteps and thick southern drawl of his pursuers. His back was pressed against a tree and he did his best to control his breathing. How the fuck did it get this out of hand? It started with the damn car. Of all the places for their car to break down, it had to be in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere. No internet signal, no GPS, nothing. Prior to leaving, Scott asked Will to make sure the car was ready to go. And Will reassured him that his father’s fancy BMW was more than ready to handle the drive across the state. Of course, Will insisted they take a shortcut to make better time.  And for what? To get to the cabin before the rest of their frat bros? In hindsight, it wasn’t worth it.

“Oh, Ah see ’im! There he is!”

Scott felt his heart sink. Did they really see him? No... not him. Will. Scott heard Will cry out in pain, followed by a thud.

“Nice shot, Clay. Y’all wanna keep lookin’ fer the other fella?”

“Ah reckon we ought to git this one back to the house. The other fella won’t git too far.” Clay said, “Besides, we don’t want ’im wakin’ up before we get home.”

Scott could hear the engines of their four-wheelers rev up. And soon enough, they peeled away through the thick forest and back to wherever they came from. When Scott peered around the tree, he realized he was alone.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Scott cursed, “This can’t be happening.”

He checked his phone again. No signal. He ran a hand through his matted light brown hair. The chase had left him worse for wear. His jeans were torn from running through the forest, while dirt and small cuts covered his hands. Even his white sweater was stained with mud. He quickly removed it, revealing a tight-fitting t-shirt that hugged his lean body nicely. He sighed. It would only be a matter of time before they started searching for him again. Those two fuckers. They came out of nowhere, driving on their stupid four wheeler. At first, Scott thought they were going to help them. It would’ve been clear to anyone that the two privileged, preppy frat guys had no idea what they were doing with the car. And despite Will being a straight As engineering major, his knowledge on car maintenance was lacking. As was Scott’s. Wasn’t like they ever really needed to learn anyway. But it was too late to worry about that now. Scott needed to figure how to get out of this mess.

“If they have a house,” Scott thought, “They might have a phone, or a car, or some way to get out of here.” He took a deep breath. He could follow the tracks of the four-wheeler back. But what happened if he got there and there were more of them? He sighed. He’d take the risk.

_______

Scott wasn’t sure how long he walked until he arrived at his destination. He spent some time hiding behind trees and bushes as his pursuers resumed their search for him. But somehow, he made it to the house undetected. Unlike the mansion his family occupied, this house (if Scott could even call it that) wasn’t much to look at. The home sits on a gravel path that winds through overgrown weeds and brambles, leading to a weathered structure that looks like it's been standing for decades. Its wooden siding is chipped and peeling, with patches of faded paint barely clinging to the surface. Scattered furniture and empty beer bottles littered the overgrown grass of the front yard.

“In and out. Find Will, find a phone, and bounce.” Scott whispered, his heart pounding in his chest. To the best of his knowledge, those fuckers were still patrolling the forest.

With a rush of adrenaline, Scott stealthily approached the front door. When he got inside, he gagged. The living room is a cluttered space with a mix of mismatched, well-worn furniture. An old plaid sofa, sagging in the middle, sits opposite a heavy wooden coffee table covered in a layer of grime and strewn with empty beer cans and fast-food wrappers. The walls are adorned with faded hunting trophies and old, family photos, framed in crooked, mismatched frames. A faint, smoky odor permeates the air, hinting at years of cigarettes smoked indoors, mingling with the pervasive smell of old wood and dust.

“Fucking pig sty.” Scott mumbled, maneuvering through the old home, “Come on, there has to be a phone or something.” But his search wasn’t all too successful, “Y’all can’t be serious, what kinda folks don’t got a phone?” Scott froze at the sound of the drawl leaving his lips “What the fuck?” He whispered, his voice returning to normal, “Shit, I’m losing it. Focus Scott.”

But there was no phone. Or car keys. Or even a radio. He took a deep breath, gagging more as the stale air filled his lungs.

“Alright, so I ain’t gonna be able to reach nobody. But where on Earth is Will?” This time, Scott barely registered the southern drawl that infected his words. Instead, he found himself focused on the basement stairwell. He gulped, “Maybe Will’s down there.” He whispered.

Scott started down the stairs. The smell that permeated his nose was more intense than the one upstairs. It caused the young man’s eyes to water and he felt like he needed to turn around to get fresh air. But Scott knew he needed to be quick. Find Will, get out of there. Head back the way they came until the got cell service. But his train of thought was shattered when he made it to the bottom of the stairwell.

“Will?” Scott asked, gazing at the figure restrained to the chair, “Oh god, Will?”

“Scott, that you?” The man said in a thick country accent, “Scott, come on now, you really gotta help me out here. Please, I’m beggin’ ya!”  

The man in the chair had very few similarities to Will. Or at least to the Will that Scott knew. Where Will’s toned abdominals once were, a small beer belly was jutting out. His stubble had darkened, while his dark locks had been shaved away and covered with a ball cap. His body hair was more obvious now, leaving him lightly dusted from head to toe.

“Will, good Lord, what in the world did they do to ya?” Scott’s mind raced when he realized he was once again speaking in a southern accent, “I cain't, for the life of me, stop talkin' like this! What in tarnation’s goin' on?” Scott’s hand shot to cover his mouth, but when he made contact with his newly grown stubble, he jumped.

“It’s happenin’ to you too, ain’t it? I reckon it is.” Will mused, “It’s the smell, I tell ya. Gets in your head and messes with ya a bit.”

Scott’s eyes widened in terror. And for the first time, he started to really understand his situation. As he looked down at his own body, he could see his stomach starting to push out into a small gut. Simultaneously, small hairs started to poke out from under his collar.

“No, that just ain’t possible.” Scott whispered in disbelief, “Will, we gotta get outta here, and right quick.” He ran over to his friend and began undoing the binds around his hands. All the while, Scott tried to ignore the itchiness of his new beard.

“I tried to put up a fight too, Scott. I reckon I did. But after spendin’ some time down here, I just went on and accepted it.” Will continued. Scott watched as his friend’s eyes dulled, “Ain’t no need for fancy degrees or gettin’ all dressed up. Just a good ol' nice, simple life."

“Will, listen here, you need to focus now.” Scott said, undoing the final bind, “There’s gotta be a way to fix this.” But Will shook his head and without a second thought, tackled Scott to the ground. Scott looked up at his friend in terror, trying to wriggle out from beneath his firm grasp, “Will! Lemme go, gosh darnit!”

“Well what do we have here?” Scott’s heart sank as he heard the voice of their pursuers flood the room, “Billy! What’re you doin’ strattlin’... Scott?” Clay shook his head, “Naw Scott ain’t a good name for a good ol’ southern boy, ain’t it?” He grinned, “We’ll think of somethin’ but go on now and finish the job, Billy!”

Scott’s eyes widened in terror as Billy nodded. And before Scott could stop it, he found his face in Billy’s rank armpit. The bush of moist pit hair tickled Scott’s nose, and the intensity of Billy’s country B.O. filled his nostrils. He wanted to yell out and beg them to stop, but when he opened his mouth, he only breathed in more of Billy’s stench. For poor Scott, it soon became unbearable. And as the laughter of his captors filled the air, Scott’s world went black.

_________

“We ain’t got all day, Billy!” Scott shouted from the driver’s side, “Git in the darn truck already.”

“Aww Cletus, I’m sure sorry. I went back for the gin.” Billy said, jumping into the passenger seat, “We got a long ride ahead of us.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Scott- now Cletus groaned, “Just don’t be tellin’ me about no new shortcuts. I ain’t too keen on goin’ through anything like this again.” He looked over at Billy, who was chugging the bottle of gin. He sighed, “I can’t stay mad at you though.” Sure, his upper class life was gone. And he could barely string together an intelligent sentence. His vocabulary was oversimplified and any education past the eighth grade was absent from his mind. Certainly, folks from his prior social circles wouldn’t tolerate his cigarette smoking, beer chugging, and crude jokes. Cletus sighed. His life as Scott was over, “Well, Billy, you ready?” His hand slowly wrapped around Billy’s cock and he gave it a few tugs. Billy moaned and bucked his hips, only for Cletus to stop, “I knew that’d get your attention. Besides, you got plenty more of that comin’, y’know. Especially if we go along with what Clay’s sayin’.”

Billy nodded, lifting his arm and taking a deep whiff, “Y’all think they’ll recognize us?” Cletus shook his head. There was no way their former frat bros would recognize them.

“Soon enough, they won’t even recognize their ownselves.” Cletus replied, taking a whiff of his own pits, “Now c’mon. We got a long drive ahead of us.”

[mossfrg]

Jersey Gotham

Okay as someone born and raised in Jersey, I feel like we as a fandom are missing out on truly Jersey-ified Gotham. Like, c’mon, Jersey Girl Brucie Wayne??? So here I am to present a list of things I need more of because god damn it make Batfam— mostly Bruce, Jason, Tim, Steph, and Duke— Jersey (all based on my own personal experiences/real things that have happened to me):

Bruce cannot pump his own gas. He just. Doesn’t know how to. It’s not like a rich person thing, he just never learned cause he’s from fucking Jersey and never leaves Gotham. Jason didn’t know how and Talía lost her shit “How??? You are child superhero??? Who died and spontaneously came back??? But you can’t pump gas??” Tim kinda knows cause of Titans but again, he never really had to. (There’s a Twitter threaded dedicated to the Wayne family titled “is this rich or Jersey”). Steph and Duke can but they both pretend not too.

There have been fist fights over whether it’s pork roll or taylor ham. Jason and Bruce are very adamantly pork roll like the good Southern Jersey boys they are— it’s the one thing they can agree in most days— but Tim is taylor ham. Steph and Duke, despite being South Jersey, like to cause chaos and flip sides constantly. Dick, Damian, and Cass couldn’t care less.

The Absolute Hatred of New York/NYC. Doesn’t matter which kid it is, Bruce (and Alfred) got them all on board with this. Don’t even get them started on the Statue of Liberty; it’s a Wayne family tradition to try and buy it from NY because technically it’s more in NJ than NY and it’s closer too. They’ve yet to be successful but Bruce has hope for when it’s Damian’s turn.

And bc of this hatred of NYC comes the support of Philly!! None of them are super big sport fans, but they do cheer for Eagles, 76ers, and Union. Bruce, thanks to Alfred, is a big fan of soccer (“it’s football, master Bruce, I didn’t raise you in a barn”), and is a member of the Sons of Ben. He can be found in the River End of the stadium with Jason cheering for Union at pretty much every home game. There are multiple videos of Brucie Wayne and Jason Wayne screaming at refs, launching fireworks off the roof, and cursing out opposing teams’ players. Duke and Tim can be found 76ers games, while Steph frequents Eagles games.

Accents. Pls for the love of god give those boys (and Steph) accents. They are from New Fucking Jersey. They say “cawfee” and “tawlk.” They pronounce 0% of their t’s in the middle of words— kitten is ki’en, Trenton is tren’in. Jason and Steph drop letters when they gets pissed, Bruce slurs words, Duke and Tim drop passive-aggressive “y’all’s” to piss people off.

Driving. Now it’s not that they’re shit drivers, it’s that everyone else is a shit driver, and it’s not helped that majority of them learned to drive in the Batmobile. Steph has a loudspeaker on her car and frequently yells “fucking Pennsylvania turn your goddamn blinker on!” while driving. Bruce has a room in the manor dedicated to his speeding tickets. Tim as gotten into multiple fists fights at lights because people were driving slow in the fast lane. Jason is infamous for doing the Jersey Slide.

Jason, Tim, and Steph have gotten mugged before. They talked their way out of it and gave tips to the mugger. Bruce has kicked a rabid raccoon while walking home before because what else was he supposed to do? Duke has ordered a “pork roll egg and cheese on an everything” before in Not-Jersey and cried because they don’t have it. Several foreign benefactors of WE have asked for translators at meetings with Brucie cause Brucie’s accent is so thick and exaggerated. IN CONCLUSION: making Batfam (and gotham) Jersey is funny as hell and presents so many good opportunities. Make Batfam Jersey! (again these are all just my personal experiences, big state yada yada, different experiences, blah blah idgaf I jsut need batfam fist fighting over pork roll)

[bettysupremacy]

hiii!! first of all I ADORE your theme💋

aaand I was thinking ab james potter w a southern reader! like any scene,just reader being southern asfff accent n all w james.preferably flirty friends🌝

have a good day/night babes!! dw ab writing this if u don’t wannaa💕!!

Flirty friends with jamie🙏🏻 cw: a lil suggestive

“Look who we have here.”

James whoops and whistles as you walk out of your small home. The grass crunches underneath you, louder than in the daylight. You look behind you cautiously. It’s nice being out of the four walls that make up your room.

“Shhh.” You giggle, letting him scoop you into a hug.

“Daddy let you off the farm?” James teases.

“No,” You muffle into him giggly. “and you know I don’t live on a farm.”

“C’mon, farm girl!” Sirius whoops from the car. “Hurry!”

James laughs loudly, pulling back. “He’s kidding.”

“Shhh.” You stress, eyes darting between the two boys. He’s got on a cowboy hat he found at a gift shop. He looks silly.

“Yeah, mate! Shut the f-“

“James,” Your hands fly to his mouth as he holds you. “Are you insane? You know my momma would have an aneurism if she saw me out here.”

Your accent tickles him. He laughs, the boyish music notes slipping through your tight fingers. “C’mon.” He muffles, pulling your hand from his mouth.

Your fingers twine with his, letting him coral you to the car. “I am not a farmer girl.”

“We know.”

Lily smiles as bright as her hair. “Cutest farmer girl I ever would’ve seen though.”

You hold your hand out to her graciously, smiling as James helps you into the car, and subsequently, onto his lap. Remus driving, Sirius shotgun, Mary, Marlene, and Lily in the back. Lily sits on Mary’s lap, and you sit on James’. It’s cosy, but tight.

“I agree.” James murmurs into your ear lowly, grinning when you shiver.

You’re more than friends, but any title higher doesn’t fit. Situationship, Marls had called it. She tugs at your dress now.

“Cute.”

It’s a simple white thing, james heavy carhartt jacket draped over it warmly. He’d lent it to you a week ago at the state fair, though you’d never gotten around to returning it. It was warm, what could you say?

“Yeah,” James adds. “Cute jacket.”

You feel warmth flood into your cheeks even if they can’t see it. “Thank yo-“

“Are those boots? Those are so cute!” Mary gleams at you.

“My daddy got them for me last spring.” You shine. “You really like ‘em?”

She nods, inky curls bouncing around her ears. “The leatherwork is beautiful.”

James suffers with the lack of attention. “Aren’t my boots cute?”

You turn to face him. More attention from you than he was expecting. His cheeks tinge. “You’re not wearing any, baby.”

“I’m not?” It’s a lame attempt at flirting, he’ll admit, but he’s warm and flustered.

“No, but your hat is very handsome.” You knock it.

“Thank you,” he recovers. “You know what they say?”

“Hmm?” Your fingers tangle in his button down.

“Save a horse,” he grins, shushing the groaning car mates. “ride a cowboy.”

“James.” You laugh quietly, dropping to stick your face in his chest embarrassed. You’re sticky with embarrassment, though their disgust isn’t pointed to you.

“What!” He laughs to Sirius, eyeing him in the rearview.

“Awful.”

“But true.” Marls shrugs.

“But hey,” Remus starts after a particularly hard speed bump. “She already is.”

James laughs louder than before, your embarrassment rising with it. Though, everyone catches the smile fighting to play on your lips.

“Let’s play the quiet game.” You murmur.

Everyone laughs.

[magnolia-among-the-stars]

the last bit of us (chapter two)

Plot: Tyler Owens hasn’t been home in a year. He’s survived all the storm chasing and motel living with his new partners as they try to save lives. But with all the damage they’ve taken from driving high beams first into monster storms, it’s time to pay the piper and bring the truck in for repairs. And the only person who can fix them is the best mechanical engineer he’s ever met. Eleanor Harding, his estranged wife.

Pairing: Tyler Owens x Estranged Wife OC (Harding Daughter)

Word Count: 2.7k

Playlist Song: the great war by taylor swift

prologue / one / two / three

I try with all I have to not feel any sort of pain over the look of hurt on the woman - Kate’s - face. That look of betrayal, like someone had killed her dog. Like a lover had kept a deep dark secret. I try to shake it off and hold on to the anger that my sad excuse of a husband had decided to show his face at my office. “So, I’ll ask again,” I turn back to the man in question. 

His smile has fallen and he looks at Kate almost apologetically before he drags his gaze slowly back to me. I ignore the sweet swirl of emeralds and sapphires in his eyes, I let the embers in my chest simmer. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

Tyler opens his mouth but all that comes out is an awkward gurgle of uhs. He clears his throat and glances down. I follow his gaze to see the thick clay mud speckling his good boots. The boots that I bought him on our first anniversary to wear to the rodeo. “I, uh…” 

I look up into his face with a hard gaze. I watch him close his eyes, collect himself. “I don’t have all day Tyler,” I say. My hands start to shake a little, the overwhelming buzz from the embers starting to billow into a subtle flame. The heat of anxiety starts to warm me from the inside out. I cross my arms tight over my mesh vest to stop the tremble. 

“The truck’s in rough shape,” he says, eyes opening to stare down at me. 

The loud cackle isn’t my intended reaction. It rips through my throat before I know to keep it in. I look over at Kate, gagging the slight discomfort in her features turning a little disturbed as she watches the two of us. I raise a brow at her and laugh again, turning back to the man. “Oh, the truck is in rough shape.” I nod once, then twice. I turn around to my team, watching with apprehension in the bay. “The truck’s in rough shape,” I call out, waving as if to say ‘false alarm guys’.

I can see Tyler wince again in my peripheral vision and when I turn back to him, the light nature of my tone is wiped from my face. “Go fuck yourself.” 

I only make it to the gate when I hear the music peeling down the dirt road. It’s loud, guitar riffs coming from the speaker on what I can only imagine is their RV. I watch as the other wranglers park and come staggering out of their doors. “Sorry we’re late, I had to stop t’ get some gas and,” Boone’s loud voice travels across the space as he comes up to Tyler’s side. He must miss the hard lines of Tyler’s face because he catches my eye and comes running. 

“There she is,” he calls out, wrapping his arms around my waist and spinning me around in a tight embrace before I can say anything. “I missed you, Ms. Fix It.” Boone’s voice is soft as his scruffy chin digs into my collarbone. 

The southern drawl of his nickname for me is a soothing cup of water, nearly extinguishing the burning in my chest. Boone was like a golden retriever. Boone had done his due diligence to send me postcards through the time since I’d last seen everyone. They’d always been blank, just pictures of different southern county spectaculars across the states but catching a livestream of the wranglers’ channel discretely playing on Carter’s desktop when he’d gotten up to go to the bathroom one day, I’d realized it had been the sweet man checking in. I missed his enthusiasm deeply, frustrated that Tyler not only took my heart with him when he disappeared one night but also that he took his whole crew of friendly faces with him. 

“Hey there Boone,” I breathe into his neck, my arms wrapping tightly around his shoulders. “Couldn’t have sent a warning postcard?” 

The tall man pulls back, “You got my postcards? Oh gosh, that makes me so glad,” he says, placing a hand over his chest. My words register in his mind and his smile stretches wide with guilt. “I’m real sorry ‘bout that. It took all my convincin’ to get the guy to even drive here. Did he mention the truck?” 

“He sure did,” I nod, acutely aware of everyone watching Boone and I. Boone seems in his own world, blissfully oblivious to the two crews watching us. I glance back at the truck where Tyler, hands on his hips, speaks in hushed tones to Kate, another man I don’t recognize and Lily. She catches my eye and waves. 

“Can ya help? Ya know there’s no one else who can fix her up the right way,” Boone says, fixing his dirty cap on his head.  

“Boone, ya’ll can’t just show up here after all this time and just ask me to fix up the truck,” I say. There’s pressure starting to build behind my eyes and I have to shake my head to rid the feeling. I step backwards out of his grasp. 

“I know it’s a real shit thing to do. We wouldn’t have come if we weren’t desperate,” Boone says. He takes a peak over at Tyler, looking back at me with puppy dog eyes. “He would not have come if we weren’t desperate.” 

The comment tugs at my heart strings and I can’t help but look out at the fields around us. The tall grass sways lazy in the breeze, the sun starting to rise higher in the sky. My stomach growls a little. I sigh, starting to shake my head again. 

“Please El,” he asks again, my real name not something I’m used to hearing from Boone.

“Goddamnit Boone,” I say. I wipe a hand over my forehead and lick my lower lip. “What’s wrong with the damn truck?” 

Boone’s face brightens immediately, a wide grin back on his face. He hoots in glee, rushing the few feet across the path to hug me tightly. “Thank you, thank you,” he kisses my cheek a few times, his scratchy mustache rubbing against my skin. I try to push him off with a small laugh, noticing Tyler turning to look at the commotion. 

“Boone, Boone,” I say, laughing a little more at his excitement. “Show me what’s wrong before I change my mind, you bastard.”

He backs away, arms raised in surrender as he leads me back over to the truck. “Alright so, Ms. Fix It has offered to take a look at the sucker to get Betty back into tip top condition,” Boone announces to the group. Back in front of them, the lighthearted feeling of the moment with Boone fades though I catch Lily winking at me as I round the truck to look it over.

I can see the mangled iron of the drill blades under flakes of dried mud and grass. “What did you do to my base drills?” My tone is sharp as I turn to look at Tyler. 

“That was actually me,” a small voice quips from my right. I turn, identifying it as Kate. Hand raised, sunglasses tucked on top of her shiny caramel hair and guilty expression. My brows pinch together. “I took the truck through an EF5, got dragged through the ground. We’ve been going into more storms and Tyler hit a rock,” she continues. 

I only look at her, nodding slowly. “They weren’t built to survive EF5s but I guess that’s one way to test them…is that it?” 

“The rocket rig button isn’t workin’,” Boone adds. “We really need somethin’ with some more power.”

“Boone,” Tyler says, shaking his head at the man. He turns to me. “I can fix that, if you can just help with the drills.” 

I scoff, walking toward the driver’s side to pull the door open and examine the console but Tyler beats me to the door, sidestepping in my path to prevent me from tugging the door open. “I said, I can fix it.” 

“You came all the way here for a mechanic, didn’t you? Let me inspect the work,” I say, tilting my head and narrowing my gaze at him. 

“She’s been running mostly fine, just needs the drills,” he says again, squaring his chest. He looks calm for the first time since stepping out of the truck.  

I poke a stern finger into the soft material of his flannel as I say “Do you want my help or not?” 

He doesn’t flinch, only staring down at my hand hovering near his chest again. He must notice the lack of wedding band and the dainty engagement ring adorning my ring finger because when he looks back up at me, there’s a far away look in his eye.

“Move so I can see what other damage you’ve caused,” I say. 

It’s a low blow. I know it. He knows it. But too much time has passed for me to be kind in my compromising. The hard, stubborn look in Tyler’s eyes fades and softens at my retort. He looks away with a shake of his head, stepping aside while tugging the door open at the same time. My arm brushes against his shoulder as I slide past him. I lift myself into the driver’s seat and glance down at the panel of buttons I’d cleverly designed years ago when he started going out more seriously into the field. 

Crumbs are scattered all in between all the buttons, sticky residue from duct tape collecting dust. “God, would it kill you to take care of this and clean it every now and then?” I ask, cautiously brushing some of it away. 

Tyler ignores me, watching as I look over everything. I glance forward to see if my team is still watching and inhale sharply. The visor is flipped down to block out the sunshine. Gone is the old, tattered photo of Tyler and I on our first date. In its place sits a fresh, glossy photo of who I can only assume to be Kate staring at a storm. It catches me by surprise and the burning embers in my chest return. I make a mental note to dig out those papers from my junk drawer in the kitchen.

I look over at Tyler and we stare at each other for a moment. He’s watching me apprehensively, searching my face for a reaction, maybe an outburst. “Are there flares or rockets in the fittings?” I mumble, turning back to the buttons without waiting for his response. 

I barely hear him call to everyone to back up and instead try to shake off my unease. I hit the bright red button to shoot off the rockets and wait for anything to happen. I push it a few times, clearing out some of the crumbs that I can feel grinding up on the sides but still get nothing. There’s a piece of tap beneath the hitch button, Kate’s Barrels scribbled in Sharpie. I purse my lips and grab the joystick, pushing the button to deploy the drills. They shutter a little, digging into the ground and rattling to a halt with one digging further down than the other. I push the button to retract them and sigh, starting to climb out of the truck. 

“Well?” Tyler’s voice is thick as he steps closer. 

“You’re fucked,” I say, not bothering to look at him and instead motioning for Charlie to open the gate. 

“Can you fix it?” the curly haired man next to Kate asks. 

I look in his direction, then Boone is smiling like an idiot. “Course I can. Boone, can you get the truck inside for me?” 

Boone moves to jump into the truck at my request but Tyler grabs him, tugging him out of the seat to climb in instead. He starts the engine and Boone races to catch up to me instead. He’s joined by the others, walking behind me to the warehouse. 

“TempestEdge,” the curly haired one reads our sign and we get to the bay door. 

“Carter, can you grab my tablet please,” I ask and he nods, running back to my desk. 

“Wait, you guys are those government contractors building and updating infrastructures to withstand storms,” he says, sounding in awe. “You guys are like, state of the art.” 

“We try,” Charlie crosses her arms, tight smile on her lips as she and Birdie watch Tyler drive into the warehouse. Charlie nods in my direction. “El’s the mastermind of the operation, I just crunch numbers.” 

“The team is the mastermind of the operation,” I say, rolling my eyes. I put my hand out to shake his and Kate’s reluctantly. “I don’t normally come off this harsh. I go by my maiden name, Eleanor Harding.” 

“Javi Rivera,” he says slowly, trailing off. 

“Kate Carter,” she introduces herself, shaking my hand. “Sorry for the awkward introduction.” 

I don’t know how to respond so I just nod, turning to walk further into the warehouse. Carter meets me halfway with the tablet, while the others head back to their desks. “Thank you,” I say, starting to swipe through our inventory for possible scraps and parts I can use to fix the truck. Carter stops me though, placing my phone on top of the screen. 

“Before you do that,” he says, his voice quiet with the surrounding guests. “I think you should call your mom.” “Carter, my mom can wait for a call back. She probably wants to hear about how the test went. You know how she gets on days like today,” I say, pocketing my phone and going back to the tablet. 

“Wait,” Javi exclaims. I turn around in surprise, noticing he’s looking at some of the photos on the siding of the warehouse. “That’s where I know that name from. Your parents created Dorothy, they’re legends.” He turns back to me, eyes wide. My phone starts to vibrate again in my pocket. 

I dig my phone back out from my pocket to see the 14th missed call from my mom. “They’re something alright,” I say. A text pops up then. I read it quickly, passing the tablet back into Carter’s chest. 

“I was trying to tell you,” Carter says, holding my bag and keys out  to me. “I’ll catch a ride home with Charlie.” 

I glance up at him, the pressure behind my eyes building again. Can anything go right today? “Thank you.” I turn to head out to the truck without another word. Heavy footsteps stomp behind me, chasing me out the door. It’s not even 10 AM yet as I unlock the truck. 

“El, Eleanor, where the hell are you going?” Tyler bellows as he catches up to me. 

“It’s gunna take a few days to get parts, alright? I’ll call Boone when the truck is ready,” I say, tossing my bag into the passenger seat and starting the engine. It takes a few turns before the engine roars to life. Tyler’s hand catches the door, preventing me from taking off. 

“Hey, talk to me,” he murmurs, leaning into the cab. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t pretend to care all of a sudden, Tyler. You’ve got what you came for, I’ll fix your damn truck so that you can go head first into the next monster of a storm with your girlfriend, alright? I need to go,” I say, my eyes glossy when I look away from his hand to his face. 

He steps closer, pushing with force through my tight grasp on the door. He’s silent as he reaches up to grab the seatbelt, stretching over my hips and torso. I squeeze my eyes shut, distraught as my hands only find comfort on the steering wheel. The click of the buckle is so loud in my ear and I have to remind myself to take slow breaths until Tyler is no longer invading my space.

“Leave the reckless driving to me,” is all he says before closing the door and stepping back. I do my best not to look in the rearview mirror and I peel off down the road to St. Mary’s Medical.

Thank you for reading! Want to be added to the tagged list or share feedback? Click here :)

taglist:

@buckybarnes-1917 @kim-taehyung-12301995 @accordingtoawallflower-blog @axolotllover225 @tgmreader @smoothdogsgirl @paramedicnerd004

[dwellordream]

Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often

By Darby Saxbe, clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Southern California

I recently spoke with an anthropologist named Barry Hewlett who studies child-rearing in hunter-gatherer societies in Central Africa. He explained to me that children in those societies spend lots of time with their parents — they tag along throughout the day and often help with tasks like foraging — but they are rarely the main object of their parents’ attention. Sometimes bored, sometimes engaged, these kids spend much of their time observing adults doing adult things.

Parents in contemporary industrialized societies often take the opposite approach. In the precious time when we’re not working, we place our children at the center of our attention, consciously engaging and entertaining them. We drive them around to sports practice and music lessons, where they are observed and monitored by adults, rather than the other way around. We value “quality time” over quantity of time. We feel guilty when we have to drag our children along with us to take care of boring adult business.

This intensive, often frantic style of parenting requires a lot more effort than the style Professor Hewlett described. I found myself thinking about those hunter-gatherers last month when I read the advisory from the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, warning that many parents are stressed to their breaking point. There are plenty of reasons for this worrisome state of affairs. One is that we don’t ignore our children often enough.

The modern style of parenting is not just exhausting for adults; it is also based on assumptions about what children need to thrive that are not supported by evidence from our evolutionary past. For most of human history, people had lots of kids, and children hung out in intergenerational social groups in which they were not heavily supervised. Your average benign-neglect day care is probably closer to the historical experience of child care than that of a kid who spends the day alone with a doting parent.

Of course, just because a parenting style is ancient doesn’t make it good. But human beings have spent about 90 percent of our collective time on Earth as hunter-gatherers, and our brains and bodies evolved and adapted to suit that lifestyle. Hunter-gatherer cultures tell us something important about how children are primed to learn.

A parenting style that took its cue from those hunter-gatherers would insist that one of the best things parents can do — for ourselves as well as for our children — is to go about our own lives and tote our children along. You might call it mindful underparenting.

Children learn not only from direct instruction, but also from watching and modeling what other people around them do, whether it’s foraging for berries, changing a tire or unwinding with friends after a long day of work. From a young age, that kind of observation begins to equip children for adulthood.

More important, following adults around gives children the tremendous gift of learning to tolerate boredom, which fosters patience, resourcefulness and creativity. There is evidence from neuroscience that a resting brain is not an idle one. The research tells us that the mind gets busy when it is left alone to do its own thing — in particular, it tends to think about other people’s minds. If you want to raise empathetic, imaginative children who can figure out how to entertain themselves, don’t keep their brains too occupied.

An excellent way to bore children is to take them to an older relative’s house and force them to listen to a long adult conversation about family members they don’t know. Quotidian excursions to the post office or the bank can create valuable opportunities for boredom, too.

Leaving kids’ screens at home on such trips can deepen the useful tedium. It also forces parents to build up their tolerance to their child’s fussiness, an essential component of underparenting. Parents too often feel the need to engage their children in “fun” activities to tempt them away from screens. But by teaching children to crave constant external stimulation and entertainment, intensive parenting can actually worsen screen dependence.

To be sure, when kids are upset, in danger or require guidance, parents can and should swoop in to help. But that is precisely the point: It is only by ignoring our children much of the time that we conserve the energy necessary to give them our full attention when they actually need it.

In recent years there has been a lot of hand-wringing about so-called helicopter parents and their hopelessly coddled children. But we rarely talk about what parents ought to do instead. In an ideal world, we would set children loose to roam free outdoors, unsupervised. As a small-town Ohio kid in the 1990s, I spent hours with my brothers playing in the creek behind our house, with plenty of time to get good and bored. When that sort of “free range” experience is not an option, however, mindful underparenting is the next best thing.

This approach can take the form of bringing children with you not just on boring errands, but also when you work, socialize or exercise. I was at my gym the other day when a father came in with his 4-year-old son. The two of them took turns working out with a trainer teaching them martial arts moves. When it wasn’t his turn, the 4-year-old scrambled around the gym and, when he got tired, lay on his belly on the mat and watched his father practice kicks. Observing the boy, his big eyes taking in a ton of social information, I thought about all the parents who say that they have no time to exercise because they’re too busy with their kids.

At the same time, I thought about all the gyms that bar small children. Even as parenting has gotten more intensive, public spaces, especially in the United States, seem to have become more hostile to the presence of children. I wrote most of my Ph.D. dissertation alongside my toddler in a coffee shop in my neighborhood that had a mini play area with stacking toys, board books and room to park a stroller. That coffee shop is gone now, replaced by a sleeker cafe where it’s hard to picture a stray plastic toy, let alone a rambunctious 2-year-old.

Parents have it easier in countries such as Germany and Spain, where you can find beer gardens and tapas bars situated right next to playgrounds, or in Denmark, where parents routinely park their infants in strollers outside cafes while they socialize. In such places you can relax and catch up with friends while children romp around — a reminder of how much easier parenting gets when we enjoy the social trust born from shared investment in care.

In other words, underparenting requires structural change, and not just the obvious changes that we think of as parental stress-relievers, such as family leave and paid child care. It also requires that as a society, we build back our tolerance for children in public spaces, as annoying and distracting as they can be, and create safe environments where lightly supervised kids can roam freely. In a society that treated children as a public good, we would keep a collective eye on all our kids — which would free us of the need to hover over our own

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Are dolphins still being captured for aquariums/parks and is it ethical (or complicated?)

Thanks for the ask! Yes, captures unfortunately do still occur in unregulated countries, though far less frequently than in the past. One of the most infamous examples is the annual dolphin drive in Taiji, Japan. While the main purpose of this hunt is to kill animals for meat, a small number of young, attractive dolphins are kept alive each year for sale. Nowadays, only unaccredited institutions purchase these dolphins, and even the Japanese Association of Zoos and Aquariums now prohibits its members from acquiring captured dolphins. Although Taiji is the most well-known, the majority of cetaceans captured from the wild in the 2000s/2010s came from Russia, which recently prohibited the practice.

Western parks and aquariums have not purchased wild-captured cetaceans in decades. The last captures in US waters occurred in 1989, and the last foreign imports were in the early 1990s (long before widespread public sentiment turned against dolphinariums). I do not believe the practice was ethical, and almost all my colleagues would agree with me. Some of them were indeed brutal affairs, such as the infamous Penn Cove captures, in which several young Southern Resident killer whales (including the famous Tokitae) were taken. Multiple animals were inadvertently killed, and the hunters clumsily attempted to hide the deaths by stuffing the whales’ corpses with rocks. The bodies resurfaced, and following public backlash orca captures were no longer performed in the US.

As awareness of animal welfare grew amongst scientists and the general public in the 70s and 80s, collections of smaller cetacean species became considerably less vicious. They were typically supervised by a veterinarian, and care was taken to ensure animals were not physically harmed. However, these were still undeniably stressful to the animals.

I’m glad the practice stopped. Dolphins are not endangered, and I don’t think we can justify the trauma of removing healthy young animals from their pods. Of course, I make exceptions for individuals that are ill, injured, or a danger to themselves or humans (like Clearwater Marine Aquarium’s Izzy)—and these situations are never taken lightly. And if a species ever became endangered (highly unlikely for bottlenose, but a possibility for belugas), that would also be cause for reevaluation.

Dolphins do quite well in modern accredited aquariums. In the United States, all managed dolphins were either born in human care or have been out of the wild for over 30 years (excluding non-releasable rescues). While there are valid concerns about cetacean captivity, ongoing wild capture is not one of them.

[augustvandyne]

addison montgomery x reader, private practice style pretty pls

i love a good “who did this to you?” lots of angst and care taker addison. giving you kisses when you’re stuck in a hospital bed.

i also love a little bit of addison crying on the shoulder of someone worried about you.

i love a good who did this to you moment as well. and i also live for the angst!!

tw: mentions of charlottes accident, mentions of past abusive relationship

who did this?

You couldn’t have possibly seen it coming. You thought you’d gotten away from him, but now it was evident you hadn’t.

Sam found you as you were leaving the hospital, and thank god he did.

You definitely weren’t in a good state at all, and you’d been out for a while. You’d had surgery done by Charlotte for internal bleeding and you were going to make it.

But again, you weren’t in a good state.

Addison found out almost immediately, as she was getting prepared to leave when Charlotte and Sam were rolling you inside from the entrance.

Charlotte had to tell Addison to get back because she was a conflict of interest.

You fell for Addison quickly after moving here a few years ago, and you obviously never thought your ex would find you.

You laid back in a hospital bed now, slowly coming out of consciousness.

“She’s waking up,” You recognize the voice to be from your best friend, Cooper.

“It’s a slow process, Coop,” Charlotte sighs upsettingly. “She’s been almost waking up for hours now.”

Your vision is blurry as you try to take in the bodies in the room. It only looked like there was Addison, Charlotte, Violet and Cooper in the room.

You feel wetness on your right hand, and you assume that’s where Addison is sitting. You can barely see Violet pacing back in forth in front of your hospital bed, as well as Charlotte trying to console Cooper on your left side.

“I don’t understand what happened,” You hear Coopers heart breaking, and yours breaks all over for all of them. You wish you could tell them.

“It had to have been someone from her past,” Violet says, her pointer finger and thumb digging into her eyes. She was tired.

You imagine Charlotte hollowing her cheeks in anger.

She wasn’t sure about you at first when you first moved back to LA due to you being Coopers closest friend and her being undeniably in love with him, but she came around to you eventually. And now, she was like a sister to you just like Cooper was a brother.

“We’ll find them,” Charlottes says in her southern drawl. “He or she. Whoever that may be. We’ll get her justice just like you did for me.”

You feel Addison’s grip adjust in your hand, and you know that hit a spot. Even thinking about something like that happening to you hurt her deeply.

“What do you think Addison?” Violet asks, but only receives silence. You haven’t heard Addison say a word since you had slightly woken. “Addison?”

You feel her lift her head and look at the other three people in your room before standing and exiting the room.

You see Violet exit as well behind her.

“I should,” Charlotte nods and kisses Cooper on the head before exiting as well.

“Y/n/n,” Cooper grabs your left hand. “You need to wake up soon, got it? You’re driving me insane, and you’re driving Addison insane. And.. although she won’t admit it, you’re driving Charlotte insane too. She cares about you too. We all do.”

You’re listening to what he says as you try to make out what is happening in the hall.

Addison has her hands on her hips and she’s looking up at the ceiling. Most likely to stop the tears from hitting her cheeks. She has her lips pressed together to stop any quiet cries from escaping her lips.

Charlotte says something that makes her bow her head, finally breaking and letting everyone else see the tears.

You knew Charlotte wasn’t one for PDA, so you were surprised when you made out her figure wrapping around Addison’s to comfort her.

“It’s going to be okay,” Charlotte rubs her back. “I care about her just as much. And I’m just as scared as you.”

“We’re all here for you Addison,” Violet promises.

You awake fully, your eye site still blurry, but clearing up, nonetheless.

“Guys,” Cooper widens his eyes, coming to the edge of the door, hanging onto the door frame.

Addison removes her head from Charlottes shoulder and is immediately by your side again.

“Y/n?” Her eyebrows are crunched up sadly, and you’re afraid if you speak she might start crying again. “Oh, my sweet girl.”

“We should leave them,” Violet suggests from the doorway.

Cooper and Charlotte nod, and reluctantly follow the woman out.

“I was so scared,” Addison leans her head down, kissing your scraped up knuckles. “My heart dropped when I saw you on the bed. I didn’t know what to do or say.”

“I’m sorry,” Your voice is scratchy. “It’s going to be okay.”

“It’s not, Y/n,” She shakes her head angrily. “Who did this to you?”

“My ex,” You squeeze her hand in reassurance.

“Who are they?” She asks with tears streaming freely.

“It was a man,” You cough. “He was abusive when I was with him and that’s why I moved here in the first place. To get away from him.”

Addison shakes her head, “I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

You smile lightly at your girlfriend because you know she isn’t lying.

“Come here,” You move over in the bed, wincing slightly at the movement.

“Are you sure?” Addison asks. “I dont want to hurt you.”

“Addie, you won’t hurt me,” You laugh lightly. “I promise.”

She slides into the bed alongside you, moving so your head is on top of her chest and her arms are around you. She kisses you softly on the head.

You tilt your head up at her so she could kiss you on the lips, and she does.

“I love you Addie, thank you for taking care of me.”

“I will always take care of you,” She nods and the two of you fall asleep on the bed together. If you’re going to be uncomfortable, Addison may as well be uncomfortable with you.

[tom-hossain-minis]

Holy shit politics tumblr what the fuck. Are there no communists on this site? Or people with memory greater than that of dory from finding nemo ? Does nobody recall every promise Biden not only broke but actively did the opposite of what he said he was gonna do? And I also have to ask, and I’m sorry to do so, but I think it’s important, are you all white? Cause I seen yall saying “your pic friends will suffer” and the way it’s phrased makes me think perhaps yall are not yourselves poc, for the most part. Furthermore, all *my* poc friends are well fucking aware that Joe “I’m against desegregation” Biden is a fucking racist POS, as is his entire administration. Let’s not even get into increased climate destruction, his support for trans people being barred from sports, his general apathy towards lgbt people, his really fucking vile southern border behaviour and policy, his explicit fucking islamaphobia, anti black racism, and anti-Asian racism, his supreme belief in police barbarism, his total economic shitshow these last four years, and finally, something I suspect non Americans literally are unable to fathom, his vitriolic hatred of the rest of the world, and the danger he poses to humanity’s continued survival as a result. It’s true, your political system sucks fucking balls, I pity you for having only one party and not being able to remove your head of state, but don’t you dare tell me that you think Joe Biden is a “good president in most regards except Palestine”. And guess what, “trump is worse” is something I wholeheartedly agree with. But for some reason you Americans have no concept of “saying no”. You don’t have a permanent minimum standard. I can’t understand it, is there some weird part of American culture that says you can’t have a sense of personal dignity, or, dare I say it, a spine? It’s inconciliables to me that every person in the most well off, powerful, heavily defended nation on earth would not only allow themselves to be, in the most shakespearien sense, raped by their political system every four years, but that *some* would revel in it. I genuinely mean it when I say I cannot understand this behaviour. Aren’t you outraged at this treatment? Where is your fury against such degradation? Wouldn’t you fight and work and claw at everything against you until your bones were raw and white and broken rather than settle for this most violating and humiliating of lifestyles, in the hope of something better? Don’t get me wrong, I come from the cesspool that is Britain, and that’s its own thing, but I know why and how the British spirit was so thoroughly crushed so I know why people have given up there, and even then, we not only still have some resemblance of fight, but also a system that at least in theory can allow for some better representation than the American one. Britain has a proud history of rioting when things get too bad, we stole the idea from the French, just like everything in our history and culture, but America never seemed to have the same; is it just too vast a country? I just, really need someone to explain it. When and how were the American people politically lobotomised? And I’m sorry if this is rude or confusing but I really am at a loss. As a scientist I really am dedicated to and obsessed with making the world a better place for everyone, but America, the biggest problem by a landslide so massive it could be its own planet, completely and totally baffles me.

Tl;dr: fuck Joe Biden, I have a sneaking suspicion tumblr is mostly racist white people, America’s very existence can drive a man insane like the visage of Cthulhu

[puck-luck]

new beginnings | may 27 - june 2

note: before i start this, i just want to warn y'all that it's 24.4k. if you want to read this in one sitting, i recommend locking in.

please hit me up in my inbox to give me feedback! or your thoughts! or speculation on what's coming next! i want you guys to talk to me all the time and tell me every thought you have. if i could send each of you the google document and force you to leave comments, i would.

also, i think by the time this fic is finished, it might be long enough to be a novel. should we all work together to get it published?

1:90 – TREVOR

“Do we really think it’s a good idea to spend the summer down here instead of the Michigan house?” Jack asks. “We own that one, after all.”

“Everyone knows about the Michigan house,” Trevor points out.

Cole, who had plotted this with Trevor after last summer’s debacle, sighs. “We can’t keep having the same conversation. We decided that we would train at the Checkers’ rink when we can get down to Charlotte and use the cement slab as our own rink in the yard of the rental house in the meantime. So that’s not your problem. So, what is, Jack? You’re gonna miss the girls?”

Jack fixes Cole with a cutting glare. “Fuck off.”

“You know, there are girls in North Carolina,” Cole says, a grin dimpling his cheeks. “Sweet, southern belles, even.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “I can’t wait for the rest of the goons to get here. We’ll put it to a fucking vote and I’ll get to go home.”

“If you want to go home so bad, why don’t you?” Trevor asks. “We’re not forcing you to be here.”

“You triple-belted me in the backseat,” Jack argues. “You’re taking me away from Michigan and you can’t even let me have shotgun.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” Trevor mocks. “You have hands. And fingers. You’re not helpless.”

Jack huffs from his spot in the back, stubbornly turning his head to the right to watch the trees pass. Cole does the same from the passenger seat, tapping his fingers along the pane of the window.

There are twenty miles, an hour total, still on the GPS. Trevor hasn’t seen a town since they stopped at the gas station at the bottom of the mountain, the closest city being Winston-Salem almost an hour and a half ago, barely more than sparse houses and fields in the time since. They’re driving along a stream now and the latest exit off this small, two lane highway said “Love Valley.” Trevor snickers at the sign and goes to point it out to Jack, but Jack beats him to it.

“Don’t, Z.”

“It’s funny, dude.”

“It’s not, though.”

Cole cranks the volume up, drowning out the continuing argument that floats forward from the backseat. 

They drive on and Trevor thinks about it– everything. They have three unobscured months in Litchton, the only people knowing about their whereabouts are their families and coaches. The goons, as Jack referred to them, would be joining them sometime in the next day or two. Quinn and Luke had to wrap up some loose ends at home (Quinn, closing up his apartment for the summer; Luke, visiting some college friends as their semester comes to an end.

Litchton was the safest bet and Krebs had mentioned North Carolina to Trevor in passing the one time they caught up throughout the year, heaving heard from Leschyshyn that the mountain towns of his home state were notoriously quiet and drama-free and that their inhabitants, although lovers of gossip, kept to themselves. 

After those girls had snuck into the Michigan house at the end of the summer and started showing up wherever the boys went in the evenings, Trevor just wanted a summer off. He wanted time with his friends the way they used to have it, just working out together and drinking until they dropped, swimming and parading around the town like normal guys in their early twenties. 

In Litchton, they could pretend to be guys that were home for the summer, ready to start some corporate finance or everyday-tie job. It was a look into what could’ve been, had they not dedicated their lives to their sport. 

For three months, he gets to be Trevor Zegras, the kid who complained about his name being last on the roster in every class growing up and the kid who worked in his mom’s store after school. But he’s also Trevor Zegras, NHL superstar, ninth overall pick, owner of the best Michigan goal in the United States, so he might toss his name around in Litchton this summer. Just to see if it gets him anything.

If it doesn’t, his good looks certainly will. What’s flirting with a few old ladies on the street? It’ll be the highlight of their year.

Trevor misses the driveway the first time the car passes it. It’s hidden by brush and along a curve. The GPS reroutes them– but they have to drive an extra fifteen minutes along this road before they can turn around. 

They drive into a small town, a strip of eclectic stores littering the main road. There’s a small grocery store with a fruit stand out front that Cole points to.

“We could pick up some food while we’re out here,” Cole suggests. Upon hearing Jack’s mouth open in the backseat, he continues, “Just so we don’t have to come back later.”

Jack slouches against the backseat, huffing about being cut off at the opportunity to express his discomfort. 

“Jacky, will you relax? We’re going to have fun this summer.” Trevor tells him, turning into the parking lot and choosing a spot close to the entrance. 

Cole laughs when Jack unbuckles his three seatbelts in the wrong order and has to untangle them. Trevor flips the mirror down and fudges his hair, fluffing the ends. He had gotten it cut just before they left for this trip, so the edges were still even and sharp. 

Jack is the first to exit the car, practically throwing himself onto the pavement with his excitement to leave the vehicle behind, if only briefly. They’d been driving for hours. Cole flew into New York from Montréal, so Trevor had to pick him up from the airport. They picked Jack up in Jersey in the early morning and started driving south. 

Trevor can’t blame Jack for his annoyance. They’ve been in the car with him for ten long hours and they forced the first stretch of driving on him, having spent about two hours in the car before getting him. He had just woken up and had to drive four hours through the traffic of Philly and into Baltimore. He napped while Cole drove down through most of Virginia, and then woke up grumpy anyway when Trevor took over to take on North Carolina. 

It’s been a long fucking day.

They shop together, but they bicker quietly. After years of friendship, their arguments seem more like brotherly spats. The knowing smiles from the women in the grocery store prove that they’ve heard encounters like this before, likely in their own homes. 

Eventually, Trevor rolls his eyes and goes to sit in the car. He leaves Cole and Jack to pay for the groceries. Upon leaving the store, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and pulls up Instagram, hoping to catch up on the posts that he had missed on the long drive.

Walking past the fruit stand out front, Trevor bumps into someone and he stumbles back.

“I’m sorry,” Trevor apologizes, reaching out and steadying the girl with a touch to her elbow. “I didn’t see you.”

“Hard to see me when you’re on your phone,” she replies with a tilted smile. 

Trevor lets out a little laugh at her reply, barely a breath. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

She nods with an approving hum and turns back to the stand, picking up a peach and turning it over in her hand. 

Trevor turns and walks to the car, climbing into the vehicle and settling behind the wheel. He watches the sliding door for his friends, but his eyes drift back to the girl.

She’s tied a red bandana in her hair and she slips peaches into her mesh bag. She talks to the vendor, using her hands to speak. She’s pretty, he realizes, far prettier than the girls he knows from California. The vendor hands her a basket of strawberries, which she takes carefully, inspecting the red berries by twisting the basket’s handle from side to side, spinning it. Trevor can see her profile this way– the slope of her nose, smooth. Her eyelashes, long. Her lips, pink and pursed into a little smile. Her stance is tilted, one hand on her hips.

Trevor is back outside the car before he can think. He approaches her as she pays for her fruit, standing behind her when she turns around.

She jumps when she sees him. “You’re still here?” She asks.

“No, but I’m back,” Trevor replies, realizing just how lame he sounds. “My friends and I are staying here for the summer and I just wanted to introduce myself.”

When he falls silent after explaining himself, she looks at him expectantly. He can see the bottoms of her teeth as her lips part. “So introduce yourself.” She gestures for him to go on.

“I’m Trevor,” he says, sticking his hand out. “My friends call me Z.”

Her eyes drop to his hand briefly. She considers it before reaching up and taking his hand, shaking it. “Why?” She asks.

“My last name starts with a Z,” Trevor supplies. “Zegras.” The smile he gives her is strained, expecting her eyes to light up in recognition. They do, but it’s not in the way he expects.

“You’re Greek?” She asks, her interest piqued. 

“Yeah,” Trevor replies. “But not, like… Greek. I’m from New York, but I live in California now.”

At the mention of California, her face stiffens. She hums disapprovingly. “Got sick of the West Coast, I take it? Is that why you’re back east this summer?”

Trevor flounders for a moment. “I love California, but the guys and I always spend our summers together. Usually we’re in Michigan.”

“So y’all travel all around, huh?” She asks. She doesn’t sound impressed, which makes Trevor nervous. In fact, she sounds almost disdainful, but the look on her face appears as though she’s holding back a laugh. Whether that is at his expense, he doesn’t know.

“We’re very lucky,” Trevor confirms, nodding tightly. “Most of our travel is for work, though. We all work in the same industry and it involves a lot of, um, business trips.”

“Business trips?” She asks, letting the laugh overtake her this time as she looks him up and down. “You?”

Trevor looks down at his own outfit, the basketball shorts and loose t-shirt. They’re two of the few clothes he owns that are not branded with the Ducks logo. He scratches the back of his head sheepishly. “We’ve been driving a while and I wanted to be comfortable.”

“You certainly look comfortable,” She agrees with a nod, her grin knowing and wide.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Trevor says with a similar grin, shuffling forward just a step now that he’s got her smiling and laughing.

It’s then that Cole and Jack exit the grocery store, each with a hefty load of grocery bags on their arms. They’re laughing, so it appears Cole has managed to cheer up the sullen Jack in Trevor’s absence. Trevor watches the girl’s eyes leave his, drawn to the movement and volume of his two friends. He curses them in his mind, watching as they find him and decide to approach.

“I thought you were warming up the car, Z,” Jack accuses, his eyes flickering between Trevor and the girl. “D’you get distracted?”

Trevor bites his tongue before forcing a smile on his face. He turns back to the girl. “These are the some of the friends I mentioned, Jack and Cole. The other ones, Jack’s brothers, aren’t here yet.” Trevor knows he’s overexplaining, but he can’t help it. Something about this girl has him awkward and tongue-tied, yet his tongue can’t stop forming words and pushing them out.

“Yeah, your business partners.” She rubs a hand over her face, smoothing out the half-smile that was clearly keeping a laugh at bay. “Are they also from California?”

Cole snorts. “Business partners?” He repeats. “From California? No way. You’d never catch me dead in Anaheim, unless we’re playing there. Believe me, I’d be on the quickest flight back.”

“I just said we all worked in the same industry,” Trevor corrects, throwing on his most charming smile to try and salvage the situation. He wasn’t lying, but this girl might think he is, and that would be disastrous. He doesn’t know why, but it would be. He wants her to think highly of him and now he’s made two bad first impressions.

The second one is his friends’ fault, of course.

And she does think he’s lying– Trevor can tell by the way she looks him up and down, then Cole, then Jack. Her eyes squint imperceptibly at Cole’s mention of “playing” in Anaheim, rather than working. It was a statement that could have extended the conversation, but this girl seems to decide that she is uninterested.

She nods sarcastically, then scoffs quietly. “I have to go,” she says. “It was nice to meet you, Trevor. Have fun in Litchton this summer, boys.”

“Oh, we will,” Jack assures her. Trevor hates how his eyes rake over her, combing through each detail of her skin, her clothes, and her hair.

“Nice meeting you!” Cole calls after her as she walks away.

Both boys turn to Trevor, equally annoying smiles on their faces. 

“Shut up,” he hisses before they can say anything. 

“Who was that?” Cole asks.

“I didn’t get her name,” Trevor growls through gritted teeth. “She was just about to tell me and then the two of you showed up.”

“Boo-hoo,” Jack teases. “So you won’t be the first to bed a girl this summer, for… how many summers in a row is it now, Coley?”

Cole’s laughter breaks his face, but Trevor interrupts before he can speak.

“It’s not even a real competition, Jack. You only act like it is because you fuck the same girl every summer as soon as we get to the lake house. It’s trashy.”

“Being a winner isn’t trashy, Trev. In fact, maybe I should go follow after the girl you were just chatting up. I’ll show her how a real man flirts.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Trevor feels a flare of anger well up inside of him when Jack insinuates taking this girl for himself. It should be anger about questioning Trevor’s manhood, but it is not. “Get in the car.”

He stalks off, starting the car this time and situating himself behind the wheel. Jack vies for the passenger seat unsuccessfully, souring his mood yet again. Despite Cole’s smaller stature, Jack is the one left in the backseat with the bags of groceries around him. Soon, Trevor’s shirt joins him after a misguided throw to the trunk of the car where their luggage resides.

When they arrive at the house, Jack only carries the groceries inside. He claims he’s been stilted all day and Trevor can’t really do much to prove otherwise. Cole carries in his and Jack’s luggage into the home– a rental that Trevor paid good money to book for the entire summer. 

“I get the best room!” Trevor yells after them. “I paid for it! I want the ensuite bathroom!”

“Go fuck yourself,” Jack replies. He’ll leave the room for Trevor to take anyway. 

The three boys had planned this ahead of time. They would be in Litchton the whole summer, so they will take the three bedrooms that have king beds. Quinn and Luke will take the queen beds in the other bedroom, and the various guests throughout the summer will take the bunk beds in the basement. From the pictures alone, Trevor realizes that the house could sleep more than ten people. If they can find ten people, maybe they could throw a party. 

and invite that girl, Trevor thinks.

He’s taken aback by the thought and its suddenness. He doesn’t even know her name or if he’ll see her again– so why is he thinking of her?

Trevor shakes the thought and grabs his bags from the back of the car. He used an extra practice bag from the bottom of his closet in Anaheim to pack his clothes for the summer, so he has a free hand to open the door that Cole closed behind him. 

He finds the big bedroom easily and drops his bag in the closet, not bothering to unpack. He looks out the sliding door onto his porch, the wrap-around that encircles the entire back of the house. His porch holds two rocking chairs and a wooden bench. The house is built out of wood– almost overwhelmingly so– and the decorations match. His bedframe, his dresser, his bedside table, his small desk, the fan, even the blinds on the window… all of them are made of wood. 

His bathroom has double sinks and a granite countertop. The handles are gold in color, but likely not in material. The spout of the sink is more like a water spigot that one might find outdoors, but it’s classy. When Trevor enters his bathroom, he’s in awe of the jacuzzi tub and shower on the other side of the room. 

The tub and shower are both built from dark marble, bespeckled with lines of darker ore. The tub has wooden cabinets beneath the feet of marble on either side of the tub, which holds towels and toiletries on the right and left respectively. The tub has jets and a handheld spout that’s detachable. Trevor considers them. He can think of a use for both.

The shower is spacious with an overhead spout, wide and fancy. It has ledges for toiletries, as well as a seat in the corner. The door is glass and there is a hook for towels next to the opening. The shower stands from ceiling to floor, completely confined. Despite the windows to the side of it, the occupant of the shower would be completely hidden from sight, once the glass door steams up. 

Trevor explores the house further, but doesn’t take up residence anywhere. Cole and Jack seem to have put the groceries away while he found his room and looked around. Now, they’re nowhere to be found. They’ve likely taken up residence in their bedrooms for the night, tired from their eleven hour drive.

Lord knows Jack needs sleep before he braves this vacation. He always gets grumpy when he’s tired, part of the reason why he naps prior to every game. 

Trevor is glad that all of the boys can make it up for the summer. He can’t wait to get things started.

2:90 – HONEY

She wakes with the sunrise, as she does every Tuesday. It’s her first day of the week at the bookstore and she has to open. The Reading Nook is always closed on Mondays and she is one of three workers– the owner, Ada and her best friend since childhood, Bea. Ada opens the store on Thursday, whereas Bea opens it on Friday. Every other day of the week, the responsibility falls on her.

She makes her coffee and drinks it on her couch, looking out the window towards the mountains in the distance. It’s clear today and she can see the rows of mountains clearly– ten rows back. Once, her father had told her that if you could count ten rows back, you were looking at the mountains across state lines. If you could count ten mountains, then you could count all the way to Tennessee. 

She believed him, until she realized that the sun always rises behind those mountains. She faces east. Tennessee is to the west.

Still, the memory comes with fondness. It was before she moved away from home to pursue a life of quietness in the mountains, her favorite place in the world. Those days are long in the past. She has no interest in returning to them, given how far she’s come. The only person from her hometown that was welcomed into this new life was Bea and she has proven time and time again that she is deserving of that role.

Not only did they grow up together, but she got her nickname because of her friendship with Bea. As children, a long-forgotten teacher had made a comment about the two being attached at the hip, stuck together like glue. She had corrected herself with a laugh, evidently feeling clever when she said: “No, more like a bee to honey, right, girls?” From that day on, she had only gone by Honey and Bea had shortened her name from Beatrice to keep the analogy. 

She drives to The Reading Nook and unlocks the store, wiping the counter and sweeping the main room while she waits for her regular patrons to enter the store.

On Tuesdays, the “founding” women of Litchton convene in the bookstore and knit. Some days, Honey joins them. Others, she just wishes to sit and read at their table, listening in on the gossip of the week. The women are not so much founders as the grandmothers who lived in Litchton since their birth, having married and worked and raised families here. They are true Appalachian women– driven by superstition and fantastical solutions, lovers of a good story, and wonderful bakers who only crave to share their gift. They are churchgoers, often multiple times a week, and headstrong believers in their chosen politician. These are the attributes that Honey does not share with the women– she was an outsider, although she has been welcomed into the Litchton society since moving here. She attended church when the ladies asked her to, usually for the rare wedding or baptism. Rarer for a funeral, luckily. Honey does not feel any particular way about politics, at least not out loud, and she’s lucky that the ladies try to reserve that topic for the debates of their husbands over dinner parties, not the knitting circle on early Tuesday mornings.

Sacha is the first to arrive to the bookstore that morning, armed with blueberry muffins in a tupperware that Honey will have to wash in the little sink in the back while the women are knitting. Sacha has left one too many tupperwares and bowls in The Reading Nook and Honey won’t allow her to leave another behind. 

Honey plates the muffins for Sacha while the elderly woman secures the long table in the store for her friends. It does not take long for Scarlett, Gillian, Vera, and Rosalind to join. The women each knit their own project, waking up over coffee and muffins before the gossip starts.

It begins with Vera’s son’s divorce, something she had been dreading since he proposed to his soon-to-be ex-wife while they were still students at NC State. They had moved to Raleigh permanently, an action that Vera believes started this whole thing. When her son left home, and his wife finally revealed that she didn’t want children, Vera knew it was over. Or so she said. Honey thinks that she’s just butthurt about her son fleeing the nest… ten years ago. She wonders, briefly, if her own mother feels this way about her.

Honey shakes herself out of her thoughts as soon as Scarlett introduces the next topic, the topic that Honey knew was coming since the night before.

“Did you see those young men at the store yesterday? I know you always do your shopping on Monday evenings, Rosalind.” Scarlett tilts her head like she’s conspiring with Rosalind, like Rosalind has been holding information from the group.

Rosalind nods, eyes glinting behind her wired glasses. “They were such handsome boys. Lord, I tell you, if I were a young lady nowadays…”

She trails off and Honey stifles a laugh, looking down at the counter. She can feel the ladies’ eyes on her, no doubt hoping that the mention of boys piques her interest. Honey knows how these ladies were in their day– boy crazy but also efficient, looking for the perfect match and settling for no less. All of them prevailed, although from their complaints, you would never know their husbands were the loves of their lives.

“Ladies, you know this conversation would be better suited for Bea,” Honey teases. 

“Bea is too forthcoming, you are still somewhat of a mystery.” Gillian lifts an eyebrow. 

“Where is Miss Bea?” Vera asks. “Wasn’t she supposed to be here half an hour ago?”

Honey doesn’t stifle her laugh this time. “Miss Vera!” She exclaims. “It is a Tuesday morning. You know Bea has no interest in showing up to work for at least another hour.”

Vera shakes her head. “You and Ada have got to stop allowing her to show up so late.”

Sacha laughs. “As if they could stop her if they tried!”

All of the women, and Honey, laugh at the joke. It’s well established in Litchton that Bea is the tardy sort, whereas everyone else prefers to be early or on time. Bea has the attitude of a city girl, to quote the old ladies, but the work ethic and priorities of a Litchton woman. She likes her men, she likes her job, but she loves a nice lay-in.

“Besides,” Honey tells the women, hesitating with a coy smile before dropping the bomb of information: “I’ve already met those men.”

The effect is instantaneous. All of them drop their knitting onto their laps and gasp. Gillian clutches at her chest, always the most dramatic of the quintet. 

“My darling,” Rosalind marvels.

“Well?” Scarlett questions. “How? When? Tell us everything.”

Honey moves from behind the counter to an empty seat at their table. She sits next to Sacha, the woman taking her hand and holding it tightly. 

“You ladies seem to forget that I go to the fruit stand outside the store on Monday evenings,” Honey begins. “Which is where I ran into them. Literally, too– one of them had his nose buried in his phone and bumped into me. He could’ve knocked me over!”

“You should have fallen so that he could have helped you up,” Rosalind suggests. The women murmur in agreement.

Honey rolls her eyes. “I did not. He apologized, I told him that he only bumped into me because he was caught up in his phone, and he said he would be more careful next time.”

“Next time,” Gillian repeats, nodding. “So he wishes to see you again?”

“Turns out, ‘next time’ was about five minutes later, when I went to leave the stand and he was right behind me!” Honey reveals, purposefully lacing incredulity into her voice. She places a finger on her lips and widens her eyes, playing into the dramatics of the ladies as if to say “What do you think of that?”

The women gasp in time. 

“Which one was it?” Scarlett asks.

“I only saw the other two for a moment, so I don’t think I could describe them well enough to you,” Honey says. “The one I spoke to is named Trevor.” She pauses to roll her eyes before adding sarcastically, “But his friends call him Z.”

Scarlett and Rosalind nod and look to each other. 

“It must have been the one who left earlier than the other two,” Scarlett says. “With those awful tattoos.”

Honey bites back a giggle. Once a southern mother, always a southern mother. “He did have tattoos,” she confirms.

“You two would get along,” Vera suggests, not so subtly casting a glance at the leafy vines that crawl up Honey’s arm.

Honey goes quiet, glaring at Vera. She has worked to try and get the ladies to stop commenting on her body and habits over the past few years, but the ladies are stubborn and traditional in most senses.

“How long will they be here? Or were they just stopping through?” Gillian asks.

“They’ll be here all summer, so I’m sure we’ll get our fill of them.” With that, Honey effectively ends her role in the conversation. She returns to the counter and opens her book, pretending to read it.

She knew the ladies would have caught wind of the men’s arrival by now and would want to discuss it. She knew that the ladies would be interested in setting her up with one of these new arrivals. They were cute, she’d give them that. At a glance, any of the three could have been nice company at a brewery, but Honey wasn’t looking. She was perfectly content with finding herself and making her own life, even if it meant that she wasn’t finding a husband like most women in Litchton wanted her to do.

The other thing was this: Trevor hadn’t made the best first impression. He bumped into her, then startled her, then told her some story about business partners or colleagues that definitely was not true, and he was from California. He’s a yuppie, a hipster who probably enjoys the bustle of Los Angeles and can’t handle the slow, satisfying life of a small town. To her estimate, Trevor has got a week before he leaves Litchton for something more glamorous and fast-paced.

The ladies relay the news to Bea when she finally shows up for her shift, a travel mug of coffee in hand from which she sips throughout each tantalizing detail of Scarlett’s retelling. Upon Honey’s information, Bea’s eyes flicker knowingly toward the counter and Honey just shrugs. Bea’s eyes then narrow, accompanying a questioning tilt of her head. Honey shakes her head at that, and Bea lets it go.

“Well, I heard the reason that Mr. Mayes wasn’t at church last week wasn’t his hip acting up,” Bea says to the ladies when it’s her turn. That starts a whole new tangent for the knitting club, one that will keep them occupied and in their seats for a number of minutes. It gives Honey the time to slip into the back and cut up one of the peaches that she brought from home to snack on during work. 

The ladies leave The Reading Nook about an hour after Bea’s arrival, leaving the store empty except for the two girls and floaters looking for their next novel.

Bea leans against the counter with a smug smile, blinking innocently at Honey. 

“What do you really think about them?” She asks.

“I think they’re trouble,” Honey says. “They didn’t seem on the same page about their jobs, they don’t know anything about living in a small town, they travel a lot, and I think I saw one of them carrying a 48-pack of beer.”

“Are they cute?”

Honey fixes Bea with a stare that could put a stop to anyone else’s questions. Unfortunately, Bea is immune to Honey’s intimidation tactics and her sarcastic jabs. She sees right through them. Honey’s silence is another thing she sees through.

“Interesting.” She draws herself up to her full height. 

“I think you would find them cute,” Honey says.

Bea hums. “You can’t backtrack now. You said enough without saying anything at all.” She crosses her arms over her chest then leans back down onto the counter. “So, tell me, Honeybear,” she muses. Fortunately, she changes the topic. “Did you get my strawberries from the stand, or were you too enthralled by the pretty boy in front of you?”

“He wasn’t pretty.”

“Sure he wasn’t.”

Honey scoffs, then leaves to the back to grab the basket of strawberries. She does so carefully, not touching the strawberries in case she breaks out in hives like she did last time. Bea swears that more exposure to the fruit would “cure” her allergy, but Honey only picks up the baskets to humor her. Honey doesn’t think she’s missing out on much, being allergic to strawberries. It’s her peaches that she would miss, and the blackberry pie that Ada makes when her vines turn ripe. That’s something to look forward to– blackberry season is starting and Ada could show up with a pie any day now.

The day continues slowly, with Ada making an appearance to close down the shop with the girls and help unpack a new shipment of books. After they’re done, Honey and Bea head to their respective homes.

Honey curls up with her book in her bed and listens to some music before the soft noise of the background and the comfort of her blanket draws her to her sleep.

3:90 – TREVOR

They have to go to the hardware store today. 

Yesterday, the boys wasted the day, sleeping later than they have in weeks. They ate a late breakfast, which turned into their lunch. They played pool on the pool table, ping and beer pong on the foldable table, and sunbathed out on the porch. Cole watched lazily as Trevor and Jack tried to outline half of a rink in chalk on the cement slab. They never finished the other half of the rink.

Today, they have to go get some wood and tools to make the rink into a 3D structure so the pucks don’t go flying into the woods when they shoot them. Trevor and Cole are the ones who are supposed to go to the store– Jack has decided to stay behind and wait for Quinn and Luke if they show up while the other boys are at the store. 

A convenient excuse, even though the goons are planning to show up today. Trevor expects the brothers to try and weasel their way out of working on the rink, claiming that they’re too tired from travel or they need more time to unpack. The thing is, the boys are flying into Charlotte and renting a car for the summer so that there will be two at the house, so they’re only driving for like an hour compared to Trevor’s eleven. They have no right to be complaining, but they will likely enact a vote and outweigh Cole and Trevor because if the Hughes are anything, it’s lazy and loyal to each others’ laziness.

They’re very driven, but only when they choose to work. When it comes to hockey, they’ll work all day. When it comes to creating the hockey rink or putting together equipment, they would much rather watch. Jim spoiled them that way– he was always the builder of the family and the boys were left to go do whatever they wanted as long as they weren’t annoying their father.

Trevor and Cole put off the trip as long as they can, hoping that maybe the Hughes brothers will show up early and they can force them to go to the store before they can even get out of the car. 

When the clock hits two, Trevor decides that the waiting is useless. They could’ve done so much during the day instead of sitting around waiting, but no. He was lucky enough to sit around and do nothing all day and watch stupid daytime TV with Cole while Jack read his texts with his brothers out loud.

The hardware store would be heaven compared to this.

He leaves without Cole at first, driving slowly down the driveway until he sees Cole’s figure run out of the house and after the car. Trevor can imagine what he’s saying as he yells after the vehicle– something about not being left with Jack in case the other Hugheses show up, something about how Trevor is a dick. 

They follow the one road on the mountain up to the strip where all the stores are. The hardware store is just a few doors down from the grocery store, so they park in the same parking lot.

Cole and Trevor walk side by side, Cole’s eyes on his phone as they walk while Trevor takes in the brick walkway beneath them. Names are etched on some of the bricks– Jude Doyle, Frederick Lawson, Ansley Hood… Grandma. Trevor has seen stuff like this before, but there’s something different about these names being etched on the bricks of this small town. Everyone probably knew these people, or knew someone who knew them, when they died. It’s so personal.

When they reach the hardware store, Trevor holds the door open for a man leaving. They give each other a curt nod, just a passing glance. Trevor sees absolutely no recognition in his eyes and comments on it. Cole doesn’t care, and says so. Trevor punches his shoulder.

“Welcome in,” the elderly woman at the counter greets. “What are you boys looking for?”

“Hi,” Cole replies, a charming smile on his face. “Could you point me towards the power tools? I can find my way from there.”

The woman smiles and points toward the back of the store. “They’re on the left, sweetie.” She turns to Trevor. “And what about you?”

“We’ll be needing some plywood,” Trevor says. “We’re building a little roller rink.”

“Oh, how fun!” The lady, named Vera if her nametag has any truth to it, claps her hands. “How much do you need, dear?”

“How much have you got?” Trevor asks. 

Vera waves her hand. “I don’t know. I’ll call Earl, he’ll send you off with what you need.” She turns and takes a breath before shouting the man’s name. Trevor’s heard that shout before– his grandmother used to do the same thing with his grandfather. 

The balding, age-spotted man appears at the door to the back of the shop. “I done told ya I have my hearing aids in, woman,” Earl grumbles to his wife, fond and mean and familiar in the way that only a couple who has been married for fifty years can be. 

Vera smacks Earl’s arm as he ambles by her. Earl pulls his arm away and puts another foot between them. 

“What do you need, young man?” Earl asks.

“Lots of wood,” Trevor says. “A couple of sheets of plywood and some 2x4s, maybe?”

“Boy, you do not think I have all’a that laying around.” Earl fixes Trevor with a stink-eye. 

“Don’t you tell him that!” Vera chimes in. “I know you’ve got plenty of wood out back because you bought all of it and never finished our damn basement.”

“I’m going to finish it!”

“Earl, you’ve been saying that for thirty years, you ain’t never finishing the basement.”

Trevor wants to laugh at the absurdity of this conversation. He wants to laugh at this domestic argument and how unreal it is that it’s unfolding in front of him. Instead, he clears his throat. “Excuse me,” he interrupts gently. “I don’t know if I want thirty year old wood for this. We’ll be hitting pucks off the boards all day and I’d like to keep the pucks inside the rink, please.”

“You’re a hockey boy?” Earl questions with a raised brow. When Trevor nods, he lets out a grunt. Trevor can’t tell what that means. Nonetheless, he waves Trevor to follow him into the back.

Trevor squeezes past Vera– she pinches his butt, he thinks– and catches a glimpse of her knitting under the counter when he walks by. She’s knitting something green. It’s too bundled up for him to tell what it is, though. Maybe he’ll ask later.

When he enters the back room, Earl gestures around. “Take your pick of the wood and make a pile over there–” he points to the corner– “and you can drive around back and we can put the wood in your truck there.”

“Oh, I didn’t drive a truck down,” Trevor says before he can help it. Earl makes a face. “But my friend and I can carry the piles ourselves to the car, don’t worry about that.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Earl gripes, shuffling away to sit at a bench with a circular saw and a half finished product on the table. 

Trevor sifts through the wood, all neatly arranged into piles of similar sizes– but labeled completely wrong. Trevor thinks that Earl might’ve refused to follow Vera’s labels when she first put them up in the shop, but realized that they’re more helpful than harmful. He’s just petty enough of an old man to ignore the labels, but follow the categorization.

Trevor ends up with a pile of ten sheets of plywood– four that are as long as lunch tables, and six that are just squares. Those will go behind the goals, while the long ones will go around the sides of the slab. He picks up a couple of 2x4s, just in case he needs them, and throws them on the pile with a clatter.

“I’m going to go grab my buddy,” Trevor says to Earl.

Earl grunts, but doesn’t budge. He also doesn’t look up from his station.

Cole is chatting up Vera when Trevor rejoins them. He’s leaning over the edge of the counter, asking about Vera’s knitting and her grandchildren. He’s got a bag of goodies next to him– powertools and nails, Trevor assumes. 

“Coley, come help me,” Trevor interrupts.

“No manners, this guy,” Cole says to Vera, scoffing and pointing his thumb at Trevor with a shake of his head. 

“Well, don’t keep the bear waiting,” Vera replies. Trevor watches her pinch Cole’s ass as he passes, but Cole just laughs and bats her hand away.

Fucking annoying. Always so good with the grandparents.

“The bear?” Trevor asks once Vera is out of earshot. “Is that me?”

Cole smirks. “We’ve got nicknames.”

Earl looks up when they reenter the back. He lets out a laugh, just a short bark. “This is your friend who’s going to help you carry all that wood?”

As the smirk falls off Cole’s face, Trevor picks it up.

“I can carry some wood,” Cole insists. “Probably all of it. I’m stronger than Z is, anyway.”

Earl’s gaze slides over to Trevor. “Z,” he repeats. “I hope you don’t stick with that one.”

Trevor laughs. “You sound like–” he cuts himself off. He never did learn her name, anyway. What’s it to this old man, who he sounds like?

Cole picks up on it though. “Like who, Z?” He asks with a tilt of his head.

Trevor glares at him. 

“I don’t give a rat’s ass who I sound like and I don’t want to hear your smug little bickering,” Earl admonishes. “Get your wood and get outta my shop.”

Trevor laughs in Cole’s face, then pushes him over towards the pile of wood. “Go on, strong man.”

Cole makes like he’s going to throw a punch at Trevor– Trevor doesn’t flinch, because he hasn’t fallen for that since their first stint on the US team– and puffs up his chest before deciding to pick up the long pieces of wood.

“Compensating for something?” Trevor asks.

“Go fuck yourself,” Cole replies cheerfully, turning on his heel and swinging the wood around with him, hoping to hit Trevor in the stomach. Trevor jumps away.

He picks up the rest of the wood and follows Cole out of the shop, bidding Earl a quiet farewell.

Earl grunts.

Trevor nods to himself, not surprised by the response. Vera is much more sad to see them go, gushing over how strong they are and telling them to come back soon. 

“What’s your nickname?” Trevor asks suddenly, as they load the wood into the back of the car.

Cole grins, crooked and smug. “Sweetie.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Oh, I assure you, I’m not. I’m a real hit with the ladies.”

“Yeah, you’re a real fucking hit with the married seventy year olds,” Trevor scoffs. “Don’t fucking talk to me, dude.”

Cole laughs, tossing his head back. He looks over Trevor’s shoulder. “Hey, isn’t that your girl?”

Trevor spins around. “Where?” He asks, looking to his left and right. 

When Cole starts cackling behind him, Trevor takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, dude.”

“Bear, you wouldn’t know what to do without me.” Cole pats Trevor on the chest before rounding the car, settling in the passenger seat.

“Fucking passenger princess,” Trevor seethes. 

“You wish you were me.”

“I fucking don’t.”

“The more fucks you say, the more fucks you give.”

“Fuck off.”

They drive back to the house in silence, Trevor’s knuckles white as he deliberates driving off the mountain and taking Cole with him. There are pros, certainly, the top one being that Cole would no longer be part of this vacation. The cons, unfortunately, outweigh the pros: without Cole, Trevor would be alone with the Hughes brothers all summer, except for the occasional visiting savior.

Quinn and Luke have arrived by the time the duo returns to the mountain house. They brought with them another SUV, this one only slightly bigger than Trevor’s vehicle. It’s got a third row of seats, but it’s cramped– they’ll definitely have to take both cars down to Charlotte when they go to practice. Because of the limited trunk space in Quinn’s rental car, Trevor’s car will likely end up being the gear car. 

Which is lucky, because who wouldn’t want to spend three hours total in the car with smelly gear while the other car gets to have fun and smell nice?

On second thought, the time alone might be good for Trevor. He loves his friends, he really does, but it’s hard to be around them for so long. He’s lucky that they’re all on different teams, that they keep up when they can, and that it’s not constant. Jack can’t escape his brothers, especially not Luke, but Trevor can escape all three of them.

He spends the evening building the outdoor rink, mostly alone. Quinn helps a little bit, mostly chalking up the lines on the remaining half of the slab. He holds the wood for Trevor while he screws some nails into the pieces to keep them in place. They work mostly in silence, as they often do. Trevor is itching to talk with Quinn, see how he is, but he knows that Quinn is a man of few words. He also knows that Quinn is quick to say that Trevor talks too much. They’re at the point in their relationship where Trevor lets Quinn dictate how much they speak.

Luke tries to cook dinner, he does. Trevor can’t fault him for trying. Jack had to jump in to save them from burnt steaks and soggy vegetables, and even if he can’t salvage everything, he does a pretty good job. Luke apologizes and does the dishes. He’s quiet for the rest of the night, falling asleep on the couch during the movie they picked out, and Quinn wakes Luke like a good big brother and shoos him to bed. 

It’s more calm than the lake house, Trevor thinks. They’re not really doing anything differently, are they? And yet, here they are, sitting together in calm silence. They’re drinking bottled beer and laughing over the same jokes they’ve heard a million times, reminiscing about summers past and what they’ll do this summer. Quinn wishes for a lake. Jack tells him they’ll find one.

Trevor goes to bed when the movie ends, frogs croaking past his bedroom window in the depths of the night.

4:90 – HONEY

It’s a Thursday, so Honey gets to sleep in until nine. Sleeping in until nine means that she really wakes up at eight, because she just can’t sleep in late after working at the bookstore for five years now. She sits on her couch on Thursday mornings and reads. She does the crossword in the Litchton Local, the newspaper that comes out weekly on Wednesdays. 

There’s an immeasurable stillness in the mountains.

Honey noticed it the first time she came up to this house as a child. Everything moves, like the bugs outside and the leaves on the trees, but everything is so still. Like it’s being held in place by something bigger. She knows the feeling well, but it’s comforting here. 

At home, it was uniforms and piano lessons after school. She loves piano, even still, but there was something so crushing about the weight of her perfect posture on that bench when there was all the pressure of beauty breathing down her neck.

Home, Honey thinks again, and laughs. 

In the mountains, all of the beauty of the world is there and present and taking up space– but it’s not forced. It’s not the idealized version of everything. It just is.

And everything is so green, especially on a rainy day like this. Honey thinks there’s something sacred about the greenness of the mountains, but it’s the melancholic side of divine that leaves you waiting for another whisper or breath in the wind that never comes.

She used to have a piano that she could play in the mornings. She toted it to the antique store down the road when she made the mountain home hers. Sometimes, she wonders why she did that and regrets it, staring at the dents on the floor where its legs used to stand.

But then she remembers that she’s thinking about the past again and she shakes herself out of it. Five years later, but it’s hard to forget all of the things you grew up knowing.

Honey picks Bea up on the way to work, relishing in the girl’s consistent lateness because it allows her the chance to catch up with her friend. They see each other every day, yes, but the bookstore isn’t suited for some topics.

Such as Bea’s current woes:

“I’ve run out of dating app men,” she complains.

Honey bites back a smile. “Did you run out, or did you just swipe left on all of them?” She asks knowingly.

Bea cuts her eyes at Honey. “All the ones I swiped left on are ugly,” she says. “I can promise you that.”

“Is anyone good-looking in Litchton, Bea?”

Bea’s silence speaks for itself.

Honey laughs, her hair whipping around her face in the breeze from the rolled-down windows of her car.

“If I had known you were dragging me to the Ugly Capital of the World, I wouldn’t have come with you,” Bea announces, like it matters. She’s a liar. She wouldn’t have let Honey leave their hometown without her, no matter where she was going.

“You couldn’t turn it down, you had to come,” Honey replies. “Especially since they asked you to be Mayor.”

Bea gasps, affronted. She stares at Honey, her jaw hanging open. “Are you mad at me? Be honest.” She pouts, her voice whiny.

“Oh my God,” Honey groans, rolling her eyes. “No, I’m not mad at you.”

“Okay, well, stop being a cunt, please,” Bea sasses. If Honey were more annoyed, she’d reach out and slap Bea’s arm for the attitude. “We have to go to work and I need to put all my focus into pretending to like you.”

“Yeah, because it’s so hard to like me,” Honey says. Her voice is dripping with sarcasm, monotone and grating. 

“Yeah, it is, you suck.” Bea flips her hair over her shoulder, digging through her bag to find her Walmart lip gloss. She smears the cherry flavored gloss over her lips and puckers up, batting her eyelashes at Honey exaggeratedly. “Gimme a kiss.”

“No.” Honey pulls up to The Reading Nook and parks on the street in front of the building, parallel parking with the practiced ease of someone who’s been dealing with nothing but parallel parking (except in the grocery store and church parking lots) for the last five years.

“Ugh, one day you’ll kiss me,” Bea mutters, staring forlornly out the window. 

Honey rolls her eyes. “Bea, we’ve already kissed. You weren’t that good and I didn’t like your lip gloss then, either.”

Bea cringes. “That was like ten years ago, Hon. Things have changed since then. Number one, I’m not in middle school. Number two, I’ve had boyfriends and I’ve had sex since then. Number three, you know it wouldn’t mean anything. I want you to try my lip gloss so bad, come on.”

Honey stares. Bea’s got a stupid smile on her face, teasing and annoying. They hold each other’s eyes for too long before Honey speaks. 

“You’re insufferable, did you know that?”

Bea nods. “You are so easy to work up.”

Bea and Honey exit the car at the same time and enter the store through the front, the bell jingling behind them. Ada greets them from behind the counter, teasing Bea for being late again and threatening to cut her pay. She never will, never. Bea is too good with the kids, too happy to talk to mothers, and just dry enough to understand the miserly old man that walks through the door looking for a new World War I book. 

In the back, Ada has a bowl of biscuits and jam that Honey reheats and eats over the counter before she starts her day. 

She’s supposed to reshelve some books from their Borrow Before You Buy section, the part of the store that acts as the town’s public library. It’s a small task. The pile of books that were returned yesterday is less than a hundred. A good portion of the books are little kid chapter books, the kind you could finish in an hour as an adult because the font is so big and there are full-page pictures twice a chapter. 

Bea has to read to the kids at noon– some of the mothers bring snacks, like the end of a youth soccer game. It’s like a potluck lunch and the kids love Bea. Most weeks, it’s just her, but since it’s summer, she’s starting to bring in guest readers. Honey refuses to do it every time. Well, that’s not true– she acts as guest reader once a summer, right before school starts. It’s her one moment of the year. 

As she’s restocking the books, Honey hears the bell twinkle with each new customer that walks in. She’s grown used to the noise over the years, so it doesn’t draw her eye anymore.

What does draw her eye, however, is the blunt tap on her shoulder. When she turns around, Bea is blinking innocently at her– no doubt the offending hand in this scenario– with Trevor by her side.

“I was just talking to Trevor here, Honey,” Bea says. “And he was wondering if we had any books that a man his age might like. I thought maybe you should talk to him.”

Honey glares at Bea, purposefully obvious about it so that Trevor sees. What does she know about book recommendations for a man in his twenties? He probably wants some shit sports biography, or worse– he’s embracing his inner old man and he’s ready to venture into the world of World War I non-fiction. Either way, book recommendations are Bea’s thing, not Honey’s. She just stocks the books, builds the shelves, and bonds with the old ladies who come in on Tuesdays.

Bea shrugs with a coy little smile– Honey wishes she could slap it off of her face– and disappears behind the stacks. Honey can tell that she’s still listening from a few feet away, always nosy and overly interested in Honey’s exploits. If she can’t indulge in her own, she’s happy to butt in on Honey’s.

“Trevor,” Honey says, crossing her arms over her chest. She didn’t wear a bra today. She doesn’t trust him not to look. She also doesn’t trust her nipples not to peak in the cold air. 

“Is Honey your real name?” Trevor asks. 

She balks at him. “What is it with you and my name?”

Honey expects Trevor to back down, to act timid and normal and earnest like he did at the fruit stand on Monday. She expects him to apologize, yet again, for another inadvertent mistake that Trevor seemed unable to avoid. It’s because he doesn’t think– he just says the words as they come to mind, hoping that the sentence comes out fully formed and making sense.

And yet, he doesn’t.

“Just wanted to know what name I’ll be saying when I’m telling you to come,” is what Trevor answers. 

Honey gathers her wit quickly, scrambling to find a response to Trevor’s bold statement. She wants something clever, something to turn him down, something to tell him that he’s a cocky prick for saying such a thing while she’s at work, but she comes up with none of the above. Instead, she settles for: “It’s a nickname.”

A smirk tugs at Trevor’s lips and Honey wants to reach out and strangle him. He’s smirking because he thinks he bested her– bested her– and that he’s got the upper hand.

“What kind of book are you looking for, Trevor?” Honey changes the subject, trying to get back on task. She turns, continues restocking the Borrow Before You Buy shelves. 

“I’m not sure, Honey,” he replies, really milking his use of her name. “What kind of books do you think I’d like?”

She glances at him, looks him up and down. She tamps down a smile and says in a curt, monotone voice. “Guides on how to make the best of your business trip.”

Trevor laughs at that, more of a shake of his shoulders than a real laugh. “You’re funny, Honey.”

Honey raises her eyebrows and waits for him to continue.

“Hey, that rhymed. Maybe a book of poetry? I need to study my craft if I’m going to be waxing poems about you.”

He’s bold, she thinks. He’s really bold, much more sure of himself than he was on Monday. He’s much more confident, a sharp 180º from where he was the other day.

“Why don’t you keep your waxes to yourself?” Honey asks.

“How can I?”

She turns to him, planting a hand on her hip. “Don’t you have something to do today other than bother me at my bookstore? You don’t even know me. Why are you here?”

“I’m here to get a book. I’m not trying to bother you, I’m just trying to make conversation.” Trevor shoves his hands in his pockets and has the decency to look ashamed, even if it’s just for a split second and just to see if Honey will crumble. She knows his type. She’s seen them before.

“You’re flirting with me,” Honey accuses. “Not making conversation.” She puts air quotes around the last two words.

Trevor smiles. “You caught me,” he says simply, no shame evident in his voice. The smile stays on his lips as he and Honey look at each other. He raises his eyebrows and she takes it as a challenge.

“I’m not interested, Trevor.”

“I could show you a good time, Honey.”

“In Litchton?”

“Don’t you hear how good it sounds when I say your name? It’s like we’ve been hooking up for ages and I’ve got a special little name for you.”

“A name that everyone else uses.”

“It’s special to me.”

“How about a self-help book?”

Trevor clutches at his chest, jaw dropping in fake-misery. “You think I need help?”

“If you’re not going to buy a book, then you need to leave me alone.” Honey places the last book in her stack on the shelf and looks at Trevor expectantly. The silence sits between them, suspended for a moment.

“Do you have any books about space?” He asks. 

Honey notices that his voice is softer, a little more genuine. She examines his features, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She waits for the joke about not wanting space from her, needing her in his orbit, or whatever. It doesn’t come. She scans his figure one last time, realizing that her brow is furrowed and she’s chewing on the inside of her bottom lip as she does so. She smoothens her expression, hoping Trevor didn’t pick up on her calculating stare.

“How do you feel about creative nonfiction?” Honey asks.

Trevor scrunches his nose.

“Memoirs, personal histories, stuff like that,” Honey supplies. She softens her voice to match his tone. She almost feels a little shy. “We only have one book about space that I’ve read and it’s creative nonfiction, but it’s really good.” Quieter, then: “I liked it.”

Trevor nods, a little hesitant. This is the Trevor she met on Monday. “Okay.”

“Follow me.” Honey leads him to the nonfiction section, to the rows of books whose authors bear a last name that starts with ‘D.’ She runs her fingers along the titles of the books at the height of her chest while scanning the upper shelves. “It’s there,” she says, pointing to the row just out of her reach. “It’s by ‘Dean.’” She looks down, around her on the floor. “Where’s my step ladder…?”

“I can reach it,” Trevor says, stepping forward. He places a hand on the small of Honey’s back and reaches up, fingers hesitating as he searches for the right book. When he finds the spine bearing Dean’s name, he bounces up on his tiptoes for just a second to slide the book from its position on the shelf. 

Honey has never been more aware of a hand in her life. His touch is light, just a passing glance really, but it weighs on her. It’s like she’s standing in quicksand and she waited too long to try and get out.

He’s so close to her when he stands flat on his feet again. He’s got the book in one hand and his other still rests on Honey’s back.

She steps away.

His eyes follow her, but instead of saying anything, he just flips the book over in his hand. He reads the back cover and as he does so, Honey puts more space between them. She takes a breath, trying to stay quiet, and grounds herself.

“Is it really any good?” Trevor asks. “Do I have to buy it?”

“Yes, and, um.” Honey throws a look over her shoulder. She lost track of Bea while she and Trevor went to find this book. Fuck, her nosey best friend could be anywhere. “You can borrow it. We just usually give people a week or so to bring it back, and if you don’t, we track you down.”

“Track me down?” Trevor asks, chuckling. 

“Yeah.” Honey nods. “Small town. Everybody knows everybody, or knows somebody who knows everybody.”

“Stalking me, Honey?” Trevor teases.

“We’ve met twice, and both times it was because you came up to me. If anyone is the stalker here, it’s you.”

Trevor turns the book over in his hand again, looking down to avoid Honey’s gaze. “Leaving Orbit, huh?” He bites his lip and takes in the sight of Honey in front of him. He taps the book with his other hand. “I’ll let you know if it’s any good.”

“I know it’s good. I read it.”

“Baby, if you knew good, you’d be all over me.”

Honey scoffs. “Alright, fun’s over. Get out of here, Trevor.” She shoos him away, practically pushing him out of the shop. She sticks her tongue out at him through the glass after closing the door behind him. She watches him laugh, run his hands through his hair, and turn away.

‘Zegras’ is written in bold letters across his back, the number 11 in the center of his t-shirt. The detail catches Honey’s eye as she watches him walk away, down the street towards a car with a New York license plate that looks far too perfect and expensive to belong in Litchton. She bites the inside of her lip again, pondering. If anyone asks, she doesn’t care, but Trevor’s different than anyone she’s ever met. She wonders why.

But no, she doesn’t care.

Bea does.

“He plays hockey,” Bea announces, revealing herself. “He’s good, too. NHL. He was a top ten pick when he was drafted.”

Honey just nods. Twice. That’s all she needs. They’re small movements and she’s still chewing on her lip.

“What did he get?”

Honey clears her throat. “Just the, uh, Dean book about space.”

Honey can practically hear the face Bea makes behind her back. “You think he’ll enjoy that?” Bea asks. “It’s really personal.”

“It was the only book I could think of,” Honey replies with a shrug. She finally turns around to face Bea. “You’ve got to stop spying on me. I know you listened to our whole conversation.”

Bea pouts and stomps her foot, the sound echoing along the stacks around them. “How could I not?” She demands. “‘Just wanted to know what name I’ll be saying when I’m telling you to come?’ Honey, girl. Be serious.”

“Bea, you know I’m not looking for that right now.”

“You’re never fucking looking for that,” Bea hisses, pinching Honey’s wrist until she flinches away. “It’s falling into your lap and you’re pushing it out the door! What’s wrong with you?”

Honey glares at her with a tilted head. 

Bea relents. “One of these days, I’m going to kick your ass,” she threatens. “You can’t be a spinstery old maid forever, Honeybear. They’re only here for the summer. Maybe you should embrace it.”

“He’ll be gone within the week.”

Bea sighs. “Whatever you say.”

5:90 – TREVOR

“We need to throw a party,” Trevor says over breakfast.

“Why?” Luke asks, voice scratchy from lack of use. He yawns and runs his fingers through his hair, further messing up his already messy curls. He’s not wearing a shirt– none of them are– and Trevor is astounded by how pale Luke is. 

“We need to get you outside more,” Trevor mumbles, then clears his throat and continues speaking. “It’s like a housewarming thing.”

Unimpressed, Cole rolls his eyes. “Who do you want to invite?” He asks.

Trevor pauses, side-eying his friend. “Nobody,” he deflects. 

Quinn snorts, the spoon he’s using for his cereal clinking against the side of his bowl. “Not much of a party.”

“He wants to invite the girl that he met the other day,” Jack says, butting into the conversation. 

Luke frowns. “What girl?”

“Some townie that he met at the fruit stand when we went to the grocery store,” Jack explains. “He doesn’t know her name.”

“Her name is Honey, actually,” Trevor interrupts. 

The table stills. Each of the boys’ eyes turn towards Trevor and he suddenly feels like an ant under a child’s magnifying glass, boiling under the glare.

Cole pushes up an invisible pair of glasses and raises a finger, pursing his lips. “Actually,” he mocks, then drops the tone. “How do you know her name, Z?”

Trevor shrugs noncommittally. “I ran into her when I went into town yesterday.”

“Oh, when you were supposed to pick up laundry detergent and you came back with a book instead?” Cole asks. “That makes sense, much more sense than what Luke said.”

Trevor blanches. “What did Luke say?”

Jack snickers.

Trevor turns to Luke. “What did you say?”

Quinn smiles and hides his face, taking a large mouthful of his cereal to leave Luke hanging if he asked for help.

Luke flushes. “I mean, you know… that maybe you confused the two.”

“How the fuck would I confuse laundry detergent with a book?” Trevor snaps. “They’re two completely different things, fuckface.”

Luke throws his hands up in surrender. “We were just thinking of reasons why you might’ve come back without the one thing we needed.”

Trevor looks around the table. “You guys are such assholes.”

“Bro, you’re the one that forgot laundry detergent because you were too busy chatting up some chick,” Jack defends the group. “Now we can’t even do our laundry.”

“If it’s so fucking important to you, go get the detergent yourself!”

A smile breaks out on Jack’s face. “Maybe I will,” he says, his voice shit-eating. “I might need to grab a book for myself, too.”

Trevor’s anger increases tenfold, for no fucking reason. “The fuck you do,” he snaps. “You don’t even know how to read.”

Jack’s face twists, his emotions finally aligning with Trevor’s own. “Fuck you, dude. You know I can read, I just don’t like to.”

Trevor scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I just want to have a party,” he mutters, stabbing at his eggs with his fork. 

The boys fall into silence, finishing their breakfasts. Trevor pouts, frustrated that the boys weren’t immediately on board with his idea for a party. 

If they were in Michigan, the Hughes brothers would have the front door of the house unlocked past 10pm. The people they know from the golf course, from the lake, from the pickleball courts would all be pouring through the doorway and into the party. Everyone knows that on Saturday nights, the Hughes brothers invite people over and they have a big bonfire. Apparently, that only applies in Michigan.

Trevor leaves the breakfast table first, to jeers from the other boys about being pouty and bitchy for not getting his way. Trevor knows that he’s going to invite Honey and her friend– Bee? Bea? B?– over tomorrow night no matter what the goons say. There’s not much to do in Litchton, he knows that, so he doesn’t want to leave the girls out. Otherwise, they might just sit at home all night. Trevor can’t have that.

Obviously, that’s his only motive. He would never have any other reason to invite Honey and Bea over to the house at night. Never.

Maybe one other reason.

But that’s irrelevant. 

He spends the morning outside, using the extra wood from Earl to build a fire pit in the half-circle clearing near the edge of the forest. When they were younger, Trevor’s sister might’ve thought this area was where the fairies lived, and maybe she would have built them a house. He wonders briefly if Honey was the same way when she was a child, when she was growing up in rural Litchton with nothing else to do but imagine.

Come to think of it, he doesn’t know if Honey grew up here. She seems so intimately integrated into the town that she has to be from here, has to have grown up here. She must know all the town secrets and all the town gossip and fuck, Trevor wants to know all of that and more. 

He can’t explain the feeling he has about Honey. He’s just… drawn to her. It doesn’t make sense– he doesn’t know her. He’s barely met her. She did not exist in his life a week ago and yet, she’s popping up in his thoughts like they’ve known each other for years. Like they’ve been inseparable for years. When he thinks about it, he decides that Honey is like one of the girls he would have met in elementary school in Bedford. Honey is one of the girls that he would have grown up with, one of the neighbor girls from down the street with whom he rode his bike on hot summer days. 

She’s got a hometown charm feel to her. Trevor has to see her again.

He finishes building the wooden part of the fire pit before realizing how stupid it was to build the pit out of wood. A lightbulb seems to go off in his head, though, because it’s an excuse to go see her, to invite her to his party. He can go to the hardware store on the way, pick up some stone and gravel to line the wood, protect it from catching flame. He can pick up some firewood from the grocery store for their first fire and pick up the laundry detergent he forgot yesterday. Jack won’t be so annoying then.

Trevor doesn’t bother telling the boys where he’s going– he just gets in the car and drives away. 

It takes all of fifteen minutes to make his way to the bookstore. It’s still early, so he doesn’t even know if it’s open yet. Trevor and the boys are so used to waking up early for hockey that they’ve been up for about two hours and the whole day is still ahead of them.

When Trevor pulls at the front door of The Reading Nook, it doesn’t swing open the way it did yesterday. He knows the doors are easy on their hinges, considering how easily Honey slammed the door behind him yesterday, but today, the wood is barely budging. He knocks on the door, loud. 

Honey’s friend’s head peeks out from behind a stack, confusion written all over her expression. Trevor waves at her, gesturing at the door. She laughs, then approaches the door. She points down at the ‘Closed’ sign hanging near the handle.

Trevor tilts his head, unimpressed. “I have to talk to you,” he says through the glass.

Bea unlocks the door and opens it with a snorted laugh. “What’s up, Trevor? Honey’s not here yet.”

“I have a proposition for you.”

Bea steps aside and lets him into the store. “You want her.”

Trevor sputters at her honesty. “I don’t know her.”

“You want her,” Bea repeats with a nod and a knowing smile. “And you want to know how to get her.”

“Well, yes,” Trevor says. “But also, no. I wanted to invite you– both, you both– to a party tomorrow night.”

Bea smiles. She crosses her arms over her chest. “You want my best friend and all I get is some measly party? Come on, Trevor. What’s in it for me?”

Trevor thinks for a minute. “What do you want?”

Bea laughs. She pokes her tongue into her cheek and looks expectantly at Trevor.

“Whoa,” Trevor says, taking a step back. “That’s really… forward, but–”

“I don’t want you, Trevor,” Bea scoffs. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “So self-centered, Honey was right about that. But, I’ll help you get her and I’ll make sure we make it to your party if you give me what I do want.”

Trevor hums, narrowing his eyes. “What do you want?”

Bea smiles, devilish and conniving. “The dating pool up here is pretty dry, and I hear you’ve got a few friends.”

Trevor nods.

Bea blinks at him. “Do you have any pictures of these friends? I would’ve looked you up, but Honey and I swore off Instagram years ago.”

That makes sense. That’s why he couldn’t find Honey when he looked her up last night– not that he had much to go off of. Still, “Honey Litchton NC” didn’t reveal many results.

Trevor fumbles with his phone, showing her a picture of the group from last summer. He watches her fingers pinch and zoom in on the picture, on each individual. She keeps her expression neutral, a poker face that impresses Trevor. She hums, thoughts racing behind her eyes too quick for Trevor to understand them. 

“We’ll come to your party,” Bea says simply, handing the phone back to Trevor. She snatches it back at the last second. “Wait,” she says, and clicks around for a second. 

Trevor waits, then she hands the phone back. On the screen is a contact page for ‘Bea McLean.’ 

“It’s pronounced like McLane,” Bea tells Trevor. “Since you’re so obsessed with names.”

“Okay,” Trevor cuts her off with a sarcastic nod. 

Bea laughs. “Don’t get sassy with me, I have all the power here.”

“Yeah, but I have your number,” Trevor flaunts.

“I could just block you, easily,” Bea points out. “Then where would you be?”

Wisely, Trevor bites his tongue. After a deep breath, he asks, “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. Now get out, Honey’s supposed to get here soon and I don’t want her seeing you. She’s annoyingly on time. She’ll know we’re in cahoots.” Bea, much like her best friend did yesterday, pushes Trevor to the door and shoves him through it. She slams it behind him, flipping the sign so it says ‘Open’ instead, and waving Trevor off with a blown kiss.

she’s a flirt, Trevor thinks. those guys will not survive her for a second.

He doesn’t know which boy she has her eye on, but it doesn’t matter. Quinn’s too quiet for her, Luke is too awkward, Jack is too cocky, and Cole is too… short. 

Trevor snorts at the insult, laughing to himself. He heads to the grocery store, where he parked, and purchases two gallon bottles of laundry detergent and a Sharpie. He writes “JACK” on one and puts them both in the trunk of the car. Then, he walks to the hardware store. 

“Bear!” Vera greets from behind the counter, joints creaking as she moves from her chair behind the counter to give Trevor a hug. 

“Oh, Vera, you don’t have to come all the way over here,” Trevor says awkwardly, but hugs the woman back nonetheless.

“Of course I did!” Vera exclaims. “You look so handsome, young man.”

Trevor blushes, shying away from Vera’s examining fingers. She squints at the logo on his chest, one of his shirts from Anaheim. 

“I live in Anaheim,” Trevor explains to the woman, catching her hands in his and holding them securely in front of her body before letting go. “Do you have any stone that I could secure a fire pit with?”

“Yes, baby!” Vera claps and leads him to a section of the store that’s, somehow, even more peculiar than Earl’s workshop. There’s bags of gravel, sure, but it looks like fish food compared to some of the other bags and miscellaneous stones on the shelves. “Pick whatever you’d like. I’ll give you a discount for being so darn cute.”

Trevor chuckles. “I bet you give that to all your customers,” he teases.

“I had a local girl put it in the computer for me after we met you and Sweetie on Wednesday,” Vera teases back, batting her eyelashes. Her cheeks are red with blush, too much blush. “His discount is a little more because I see you’ve changed the body God gave you.”

Trevor follows her eyes to his tattoos. He rubs his opposite hand over them sheepishly. “Yes, ma’am.” He tries to smile charmingly. “Maybe I should’ve sent him to do the shopping today, since you like Sweetie so much.” He throws a wink into the mix to punctuate his sentence.

Vera laughs, a twinkling sound.

“Plus, it’d be cheaper for me,” Trevor says, like it’s a scandalous secret.

“I know that’s right!” Vera claps again, waves a hand at Trevor like she’s slapping her knee. She walks off, back to the counter, leaving Trevor to shop for his stones. 

He shops through the stones for about half an hour, choosing his favorites. He settles on a midsize gray stone, one that he can stack and seal with cement. He buys the quick drying cement as well, and carries it all to his car. Vera carries the quick dry cement and giggles when Trevor easily shifts the stones in his grasp when she complains about the bucket being too heavy for an old lady. He picks up the bucket and shifts the stones again, knowing he can carry more than this if he needed to. He swears he hears Vera sigh dreamily behind him as he packs the car up.

Like he said, what’s flirting with a few old ladies?

When he bids her goodbye with a kiss on the cheek, Trevor makes eye contact with Honey in the bookstore window. He grins at her and winks to her for good measure. He thanks Vera for her help while he escorts her back to the store, just for the sake of Honey seeing how selfless he can be. He’s not self-centered, no matter what she told Bea. 

Vera insists that Trevor and “his band of boys” join her and Earl at church that Sunday morning, pledging to introduce them to the other members of the community. Trevor agrees, thinking that being on Vera’s good side might get him even closer to Honey.

Trevor drives back to his home for the summer to find that the boys are playing in the rink he built.

Come to think of it, he’s making a lot of improvements to this property, and the only one who has actually helped is Quinn.

Not self-centered at all.

He deserves a party.

“We’re having a party,” Trevor calls out, carrying his stones toward the fire pit. He dumps his supplies on the ground. “And I invited two girls.” He wipes the dirt and dust from his fingers. “Someone else needs to finish this fire pit because I’m tired of building your shit. C’mon, Quinn.”

He leads the way inside, to grab a beer from the fridge, and Quinn follows after kicking off his skates, eager to avoid the work. The other brothers and Cole are left dumbfounded on the concrete. Jack makes eye contact with the cement mix first, and he smiles. 

They always did love a little project, and maybe they can hide a drawing of a dick in the cement for the owners to find at the end of the summer.

6:90 – HONEY

“Where are we going?” Honey asks. 

Bea has barely crossed over the threshold of Honey’s home before the question falls from her lips. Bea’s been cagey about it all day– just explaining that “we have plans” and that “you’ll enjoy them.” Honey loves her, sure, but this is absurd. She feels like she’s being kidnapped. 

“More like when are we going,” Bea corrects. “Let’s get you an outfit.”

Honey stumbles back, Bea pushing her out of the way. She closes the door behind her friend, following Bea as she stomps up the stairs to Honey’s bedroom. Bea knows Honey’s place as well as she knows her own, a little townhouse off of the main street in town. Honey’s lucky to live a little farther from city center, closer to the magic of the mountains. 

“What kind of plans do we have, at least?” Honey presses. She looks at Bea’s outfit– a jean skirt that falls like an old Poodle skirt and a white bandeau top. It’s sort of see-through– Honey can see the shadow and outline of Bea’s nipples through the skimpy top. “I don’t want to dress like you,” Honey says.

Bea scoffs and turns to Honey. “My plan tonight is to get laid, your plan tonight is to accompany me while I evaluate my prey.” 

Honey pretends to gag. “I hate when you say that.”

“Maybe you’ll find someone to flirt with,” Bea says. 

“So, where are we going tonight? Statesville? Winston?” Honey asks again, hoping Bea will relent since she now knows the purpose of their adventure. 

“Dude, I’m not telling you,” Bea laughs. 

She reaches Honey’s closet and throws the curtain open. She strolls into the closet, looking through Honey’s clothes. 

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Honey asks, looking down at her athletic shorts and little tank top.

Bea turns around and surveys Honey. “The shirt is fine.” She returns to her task. “Nice tits.”

Honey looks down. It’s a revealing top and she’s not wearing a bra, because it’s a Saturday and she didn’t know they had plans until Bea told her this afternoon. “Maybe not, then.”

Bea glares at Honey out of her peripheral. “But that’s your favorite tank.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to get hit on if I wear this shirt.”

“You’re going to get hit on anyway. Keep the shirt.”

“No, I won’t, because my bitch face will keep most of the guys away.”

“Most of the guys. Which is the whole thing. Those ones will come to me.”

“Ew, you’re going to have a threesome tonight?”

“A threesome?” Bea spins around. “God, no! One at a time for me, thanks. I’m just going to fuck the other ones.”

“Other than who?” Honey asks. “I’m not fucking anyone tonight.”

Bea rolls her eyes. “You don’t know that.”

“Trust me, I do.”

“Whatever.” She digs through the closet, finding a long-buried white tennis skirt, the back pleats of the skirt puffy. Honey would never wear something like that, but Bea would– it’s probably Bea’s skirt in the first place. 

“I’m not wearing that,” Honey states.

Bea wrestles her into it– seriously. She tackles Honey onto the bed and literally redresses her, the absurdity of the situation so bizarre that it completely bypasses both girls’ minds. Honey fights Bea the whole time, but Bea comes out on top. She gets her way, Honey wears the skirt, but she’s not happy about it.

“Do I, at least, get to drive?” Honey asks.

“Oh, I was going to force you,” Bea laughs. “You don’t expect me to drive you home, do you? I’ll be… indisposed.”

Honey scowls the rest of the time they spend getting ready– Bea does Honey’s hair and forces Honey to put on some light makeup, just a bit of mascara, eyeliner, and some lipgloss. 

The only problem with Bea and Honey’s relationship is that Bea likes to go out, likes to meet people, likes to have a wild time, whereas Honey prefers to stay in. She’d rather watch a documentary or read a book or be present in nature than packed into a club dancefloor like a sardine in a larger can. Not that that matters to Bea.

By the time they get in the car, Bea is jumping off the walls trying to keep her secret destination to herself. Honey keeps trying to push, hoping for the right moment, but Bea won’t reveal her plans. All she does is direct Honey to the main road and type away at her phone, sending text after text to an unknown recipient, an unknown recipient that Honey is sure they’ll be meeting up with later.

They drive further into the mountains, to Honey’s surprise. They don’t head towards Winston or Statesville. They drive up, farther from town, farther from their neighbors. Near the top of the mountain, the houses are miles apart.

Perfect for a party.

Perfect for a party… thrown by boys in their twenties.

It clicks in Honey’s mind as Bea tells her to turn into the hidden driveway along the curve. “You’re not,” Honey says.

Bea laughs. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to catch on. I thought for sure you would’ve clocked me when we turned left instead of right.”

“Bea,” Honey scolds, her voice sharp. They’re on the driveway now, safe from the curves of the road, and Honey stops the car. She turns to her best friend. “You can’t be serious.”

For all of her audacity, Bea manages to understand the gravity of the situation at hand. It finally clicks in her head, why Honey isn’t happy with her plans, and why she’s even unhappier that she was dragged out here without knowing what she was walking into. She can’t just drop Bea off and leave– she would be abandoning her best friend in a house of strange boys all evening. Bea might be outgoing, but she hasn’t been hurt like Honey.

“It’s not going to be like that,” Bea reassures Honey gently, grabbing Honey’s hand with both of hers. “I promise, they’re not like that.”

“You don’t know them, Bea,” Honey explains. 

“You don’t either,” Bea points out. “And this time, we’re together. The second they do something– I mean it, the second– we’ll leave. I’ll go with you. Fuckery be damned.”

Honey grimaces, rolling her shoulders to try and relieve some of the tension. She takes a deep breath, then squints at Bea. “Are you really going to fuck all of them?” She asks.

Bea grins, knowing that she’s convinced Honey to at least try and hang out with the boys. She’s smug, getting her way once again. She winks at Honey, coy. “Just the ones you don’t want,” she simpers, giggling. “You get your pick of the litter.”

“I don’t want to fuck any of them. I don’t know how many times we have to go over this.”

“So, you don’t want Trevor? ‘Cuz I was thinking–”

“Don’t fuck Trevor,” Honey groans. 

“Why not?” Bea teases.

“You’re better than that, Buzzy,” Honey scoffs with a shake of her head. “He’s weird and a flirt and annoying.”

“I’m weird,” Bea says. “And a flirt. And annoying.” She puckers her lips and blows kisses at Honey as she shifts the car into drive and begins to creep down the driveway again. “Maybe it’s a match made in heaven, me and Trevor.”

“You don’t want him,” Honey growls, her voice short. 

Bea shrugs and faces forward in her seat, her hands tapping her thighs. Whether it’s from nerves or excitement, Honey can’t tell. If she had to guess, though, it would be excitement. Bea is the least anxious person that Honey knows, the kind of person who can talk to anyone or anything no matter the situation.

While they might be athletes, they’ve never met anyone like Bea. Honey never has, not since she met her best friend all those years ago. They’re fucked– and she’s irresistible.

Honey and Bea pull up to the house and park under the cover, right next to the front door. This house was a point of contention when it was being built the first year Honey moved to Litchton. It was her first introduction to the gossip of the founding ladies. Scarlett and Gillian had felt particularly perturbed by the building– a five bed, four bathroom house complete with a hot tub and a game room and two stories of wraparound porches. 

And it’s all made of the same wood, the same stain, the same ugly pattern. Honey cringes when she thinks about the number of trees that were cut down to make this house match. She’d think the same thing if it was made entirely out of the same stone. 

Bea knocks on the door as Honey wipes her sweat from her palms. It takes a minute, but then Honey hears the scrambling of feet and the shouting between one man and his group of buddies, who are just giggling as they do what they can to cut him off from the door. Honey can see it through the thin windows bordering the door, how they rush up the stairs and down the hall. She can also see how they’re holding Trevor back as much as they can.

The brunet from the first day opens the door with a charming smile. “Hi,” he greets. “Can I help you?”

“Jack, you motherfucker–”

Honey bites back a laugh as Trevor curses and struggles, still in the grasp of the shorter boy from the first day and one of the newcomers– another brunet, a taller one. She looks at him carefully– the curl of his hair at the nape of his neck, partially hidden under a baseball cap, the curve of his eyebrows, and the slope of his lips give him away. He must be one of Jack’s brothers. 

“We were invited to come over tonight,” Bea replies.

No matter how many times she hears it, Honey is always impressed by the way Bea turns on her charm and makes the people around her melt. It worked on her, too, when they first became friends all those years ago, and then less and less when Bea moved into Honey’s place when they first came to Litchton together and shared a bed for almost a year before Bea found her own townhouse. Then, her charm just got annoying, like a younger sibling who tags along with you everywhere because Mom said they had to.

It’s better for them when Bea and Honey have their time apart. Honey, especially, needs her time alone.

Jack’s eyes finally find Honey behind Bea and he grins. “That’s right,” he says, tapping his forehead like he just remembered. Honey can tell that all he’s doing is messing with Trevor, though. “The party! You must be the girls that Z invited. Hi, Honey.”

“Hi, Jack,” Honey replies, short and sweet. She turns on her customer service voice just for this. She finds Cole next to Trevor and smiles when her eyes slide over the imprisoned boy, as passive as she can be. “Hi, Cole.”

“Hey, Honey,” Cole says with an easy smile. Honey wants to snort and laugh– he’s got a smile that could get him into or out of anything. She wonders briefly if he’s childish and impish, still, even in their adult age, just because he’s got the smile to match.

Jack steps aside and lets the girls enter the house. He closes the door behind them and Honey has a sneaking suspicion that if she turned to glance at him, he’d be staring at one of their backsides. She doesn’t look. It’s not worth the joke that she could make if she caught him.

Bea nudges Honey and points up.

Honey tilts her head, and– “A chandelier made of moose antlers. Wow,” she marvels. She makes a face at Bea, then continues. “That’s really… something.”

“Isn’t it sick?” Cole asks, finally dropping Trevor’s arm and joining the girls where they stand. He spreads his arms out from his sides and spins in a slow circle. When he makes a full turn, he looks at both girls and wiggles his eyebrows. “Want a tour?”

The girls agree and Cole takes them throughout the house, leaving the other boys behind. From their pounding feet, Honey figures they’re headed downstairs, while Cole takes them upstairs. He shows them the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the common areas, the hallways, the outlet in his room that doesn’t work, and much more. They go back downstairs and get the same treatment– Cole even opens the fridge and helps himself to a beverage before offering anything to the girls. They see the kitchen, the living room, the den, the dining room and patio. Cole shows them the wraparound porch and its chairs. Honey takes in the view– it’s just as good as the one from her living room. 

Finally, finally, they make their way down to the basement. It’s a smaller room, minimized by a covered porch and larger patio with a hot tub. The basement is clearly the man cave, the game room, or whatever you want to call it. There’s a pool table, a large TV, a ping pong table, a foosball table… everything a boy could want. 

As evidenced by the two boys sitting on the couches near the pool table, while the other two wield sticks and study the position of the balls on the table.

Honey finds Trevor on the couch with Jack. His eyes found her first as she walked down the stairs and he hasn’t stopped staring. Neither has she, to be fair.

“Pool,” Bea notices. She looks at Honey and Honey shakes her head. Bea nods. “Honey and I are next,” she announces anyway.

“Oh, yeah?” Jack asks with a little laugh. “Are you any good?”

“I’m okay,” Bea says. She pauses, lets a smirk on her face grow as she looks over to Honey. “Honey’s worse.”

The boys turn to Honey. “Are you?” Trevor asks. 

“I wager she could still beat you, Z,” says the only boy that Honey had not seen when they arrived at the house earlier. He’s got dark hair, but it’s also hidden under a backwards cap. The only difference between him and his brothers, assuming he is one of the brothers that Trevor mentioned on Monday, is that he’s smaller, more sullen. The telltale sign is that his comment is offhanded, delivered with the calm venom of an older brother who knows exactly where to bite. He doesn’t even look at Trevor as he lines up his shot and sinks the ball.

Honey likes him immediately.

When she looks over, she notices that Bea likes him too. Her lips are pursed in thought, only the minutest pout on her mouth. There’s a tiny smile pulling at her cheek and her eyes are twinkling under the bright lights, but they would be hazardous in a club.

It’s a game they’ve played before. Bea sucks at pool– she always has, but… when you suck at pool, either the person you’re playing with will laugh at you or they’ll try to give you tips. The night usually ends with Bea sinking the 8 ball with a little bit of help from her gentleman caller and a celebratory, “thank you” kiss. 

Honey, however, loves pool. She wasn’t always great at pool, but found that, like almost everything, the more she practiced, the better she became. When Bea’s celebratory kisses turned into rushed hookups in the Winston-Salem dive bar bathrooms, Honey got her fair share of tips and tricks from the other men around. Usually, she would try to shack up with the alcoholic middle aged men who had nothing better to do than sip on their beer and play pool after dinner with their wives. It was rare that they flirted with Honey and she liked it that way.

The game goes like this: Bea finds a group of men that puff up their chest at the idea of beating a woman at pool, she “lets them win” against her (as if she would’ve won in the first place), and then it’s Honey’s turn. Honey, of course, feints a few shots and lets the men get comfortable before coming from behind and beating them. Usually, her win results in two drinks for her and her friend.

Today, the drinks won’t be her bargaining chip.

“What would you wager?” Honey asks the boy who last spoke. “If it were a real bet.”

His stormy eyes look her up and down while Jack’s brother, the tall one, paces around the table to find his best shot. “Money, normally,” he drawls. “But I’d rather not lose my money betting on you if you’re worse than her.” He nods to Bea, who takes the chance to blatantly look him up and down.

“How about this,” Bea proposes, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers. “I’ll play the winner of this game and then we’ll see if Honey can beat Trevor. If I win, I get whatever I want, obviously. If Honey wins…”

Honey meets Bea’s eyes. She nods, knowing that Bea is thinking back to the night when they visited ECU their junior year of high school and witnessed a rugby party in the flesh. It’s their usual punishment when their outings feature a house party and a pool table.

“...Trevor has to do a Zulu Run,” Bea finishes. 

Honey finds Trevor again and smiles, overexaggerated and sickly sweet. 

“What’s a Zulu Run?” Trevor asks, looking to the other boys and finding nothing but confusion. On the girls’ faces, he just sees plotted mayhem. 

“It’s fun, don’t worry,” Honey reassures him. “You only have to do it if you lose. Which, I mean, if I’m worse than Bea, then you should be fine.”

Honey sits on the loveseat across from Trevor and Jack, while Bea sits down next to Jack. Her knee presses against his, subtly, just enough that you can’t tell if it’s deliberate or just a lack of room on the couch and Honey presses her hand to her lips to hide a smile.

“So you’re Jack,” Bea says, interrupting the conversation that he and Trevor had been in when the girls walked down the stairs. 

Honey watches as Bea makes her eyes look wide and soft, very flirtatious and fairy-like. She’s got the perfect complexion for it– the light dusting of freckles over her skin, the ounce of baby fat still left in her cheeks and all the right places along her body, her expression just the right amount of interested but not desperate.

For a brief moment, Honey wishes she was more like Bea.

“You’ve heard of me?” Jack asks with a little smirk.

Bea scoffs and waves him off. “Don’t flatter yourself. Honey didn’t even tell me your name.”

Jack’s bright eyes turn to Honey. “Oh, yeah?” He tilts his chin up in challenge. “What is it with you and names? You wouldn’t tell Trevor yours, you haven’t properly introduced me to…”

“Bea,” Bea supplies.

Honey shakes her head fondly at her best friend’s eagerness. Honey bites her tongue to keep her comments at bay, and instead plasters a tight smile on her face. “I didn’t realize I would be seeing you all again,” Honey says, forcing politeness into her voice. “And I’m not the one who’s weird about names.”

Jack and Trevor share a look. Jack hides a snort poorly.

“What?” Honey asks, her eyebrows raised and her mouth in a straight, unimpressed line. 

Jack smirks and Trevor shakes his head. Jack speaks anyway. “I don’t know how you would have avoided us,” Jack says. “Considering.”

“Considering…?” Bea asks, leaning around Jack to look at Trevor. Honey catches Trevor’s panicked glance and can guess what Jack’s alluding to. She jumps in, hoping to switch the subject.

“Nothing to consider,” Honey and Trevor say at the same time. Trevor sounds rushed, Honey sounds indifferent. Both of their jaws drop and they stare at each other, Honey affronted and Trevor surprised. 

Cole, who had been sitting on the stool-saddles near the pool table, steps over the back of the couch and weasels his way between Trevor and Jack. “Creepy,” he says. “You’re like the twins from the Shining.”

Trevor cringes. “You know, I don’t think we are.”

Honey just hums, picking up her drink and taking a sip. She clears her throat and turns back to Jack. “So those are your brothers?” She nods over to the pool table, where the shorter boy is lining up the 8-ball with the corner pocket. “Trevor said you had family coming.” 

Honey doesn’t miss the smirk and blush on Trevor’s face when she says his name, even as he dips his head and takes a gulp of his beer to cover it up.

Jack smiles, a genuine smile. It’s easy to tell the difference with him, when he’s really smiling or if he’s smiling because he thinks he’s supposed to. 

“Yeah, the goons.” Jack looks over his shoulder and grins as his taller brother loses his game of pool. “C’mon, Rusty, you brought that pool stick all this way and your game still sucks?”

The taller boy glares at Jack and sulks, re-racking his stick. He walks over and stands awkwardly behind the couch, but flicks Jack on the back of the head and Honey giggles before she can help it.

She looks down at her lap after letting out the little laugh and misses the way Trevor’s eyes light up and train on her. 

“Luke, you fucker,” Jack swears, flinching at the impact of Luke’s flick. Jack frowns, his eyebrows furrowed as he rubs the back of his head. “He’s my little brother.”

“Little brother,” Honey repeats. “And you’re just going to let him flick you like that?”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Very funny, Honey. Obviously I’m not going to let him get away with it.” He reaches around and half-asses a punch to Luke’s dick, just hard enough that it expels an “oof” from the younger boy and he doubles over a little bit.

The other boy interrupts. “Quit it,” he says. He glares at his brothers, then his eyes fix on Bea. “Your turn.”

Bea stands and smiles, a smug little smirk reserved for her conspiratory looks with Honey that signifies that she’s getting what she wanted. She joins the man by the rack of sticks and clasps her hands behind her back, looking up at him through her eyelashes. “Which stick should I use?”

Jack looks a little put out by the loss of Bea at his side, and casts a glare toward his other brother. “And that’s Quinn,” he says curtly. “Pool master, or whatever.”

“So he’s the best in the house?” Honey asks.

“We’ll tally scores at the end of the summer,” Luke jumps in as Quinn says, “Absolutely.”

Jack scowls. “You just think that because you’re older. Remember, Quinn: first is the worst. Second is the best.”

Trevor snorts and takes another sip of his beer. 

He’s unnaturally quiet, Honey thinks. Trying to be cool in front of his friends, maybe.

“I take it you’re the second child,” Honey says. “That makes sense.”

“That makes sense?” Jack asks, repeating her statement like he can’t believe she dared to say that. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Honey looks over at Bea, who presses her lips together and raises her eyebrows. Daring Honey.

Honey rolls her head back, stretching the muscles of her neck. “You…” She starts, trailing off because she’s not sure how to finish the sentence without sounding mean. She scratches her eyebrow and scrunches her nose. “You like attention,” she decides, trying to keep her voice as free of judgment as possible. 

“Do I?” Jack asks, sounding unimpressed.

Honey shrugs. “You– I mean. Jack, you asked. You opened the door for us because you knew it would annoy Trevor, probably because you knew it would bother him that you were opening the door for m– us, instead of him. You flirt and smile when Bea sits next to you but you lean back and manspread when she gets up like you don’t want us to notice that you’re sitting without a girl at your side. You call your little brother a “fucker” and retaliate because you can, honestly escalating the situation from a flick to a punch to the dick. You act annoyed because your older brother is beating you at pool already this summer and it only just started, plus he took the girl from your side. It’s, uh… yeah. You like attention.”

Everyone but Jack starts to laugh.

“Stand up,” Cole says to Honey.

She does, her arms resting by her side awkwardly, her fingers twitching as she waits for him to do something.

Cole looks around the room and swears under his breath. “I didn’t think this through, one second,” he mutters, and disappears upstairs. 

Honey continues to stand there. She pats her hands against her thighs and looks around the room, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, but especially not Bea. If she makes eye contact with Bea, she’s going to burst out laughing. 

Trevor is still snickering, hiding his face in his shirt. Honey can still see the little crinkles by his eyes.

“She clocked you, man,” Quinn says with a shrug before pulling out a pool stick and standing it next to Bea. It comes up to the tip of her shoulder, Quinn’s chest. He nods in satisfaction and hands the stick over. Honey lets out a relieved breath of air at his approval, and then stifles a second when she watches Bea’s fingers brush over Quinn’s on the stick, her eyes lingering on his for just a second too long.

It’s too easy for her. 

Cole comes bounding down the stairs with a plastic soccer trophy in his hand. “Found this when I was snooping,” he says, approaching Honey and holding it out. He stands directly in front of her, makes eye contact with her, and stares into her eyes. “Thank you,” he says with a sincere nod. “For taking Jack down a peg. He needed that. We all needed that.”

And he hands the trophy off to Honey with a handshake, like she’s graduating from high school and he’s the principal handing her a diploma. He takes the handshake and pulls her into a hug, the trophy crushed awkwardly between them. 

When he pulls away, Cole puts both hands on Honey’s arms and stares into her eyes again. “If you’re going to do that again, please don’t do it to me.”

Quinn breaks the rack with a crack of his stick, standing at a slight angle, and Honey sits back down, cradling her trophy in her hands.

Cole engages Honey in conversation for a few minutes, with Luke jumping in here and there. Jack turns on the TV and pouts. As much as she tries not to notice it, Trevor just stays quiet and sips his beer and sneaks glances at Honey out of the corner of his eye. 

Eventually, the conversation dies out and the group turns their attention to the television, which is streaming some hockey game that Honey doesn’t have an interest in. The boys are chitchatting away, throwing out names and positions and yelling at the TV when a call doesn’t go their way– Honey can’t tell who’s cheering for what team, but she can also tell that Jack and Luke don’t like the team in white… at all. Trevor seems to prefer them over the team in red. Cole doesn’t seem to care. He’s just laughing, still, at Jack. Jack just sulks, but he seems to cheer up once the team in red scores, late in the first period.

“You all really like hockey, huh?” Bea asks between turns. Quinn has sunken a ball almost every turn, but Bea has only sunken one. Honey grins at her, then glances at the pool table and back to Bea. Bea sticks her tongue out at Honey, playful and easy. If Quinn’s the kind of guy that Honey thinks he is, it’s only a matter of time before he starts teaching Bea some tricks to tighten up the game. 

Cole laughs. “Yeah, I mean, I’d hope so.”

“What do you mean?” Bea asks, batting her eyelashes innocently, like she didn���t read all of Trevor’s Wikipedia page before coming here. 

“We play,” Luke says with a shrug.

Honey and Bea lock eyes and Honey plays along with her game. She tilts her head and blinks, as if this is the first time she’s hearing it. “Are you any good?”

Quinn snorts and shakes his head as Bea leans over to line up a shot and Honey notices his hand on her waist when he points at a different ball, explaining that that would be the better shot for her. Bea sinks the recommended ball and jumps up with a cheer, smiling brightly at Quinn and standing just a little closer than she would if she wanted to be just friends.

“We’re alright,” Trevor says, the first words he’s said to Honey since she walked through the door. He stands. “Does anyone want another beer?”

The boys’ voices ring out in a chorus of yesses, whereas Honey stays mostly quiet. Bea agrees to another drink as well, which is when Trevor turns to Honey. “You’re sure you don’t want another drink? I’m already getting them for everyone.”

“I’m sure, but thank you,” Honey says. 

“Why don’t you go and help him carry the drinks,” Bea suggests from her post next to Quinn. 

Honey glares at her, but stands. She leaves her trophy on her seat, saving it. “Fine,” she replies, hoping the edge in her voice is only detectable to her best friend. She follows Trevor up the stairs to the kitchen, like an antisocial cat who has FOMO, but only when it comes to their owner. She crinkles her nose in disgust when she realizes that that’s how she looks, not that Trevor would notice or care. Actually, he would probably be elated if she compared herself to a cat following him around.

Trevor opens the fridge and sifts around, the bottles of beer clinking. The beer takes up most of the bottom shelf, unsurprisingly.

“Do you think you have enough?” Honey asks, unable to help herself when Trevor passes her a third bottle, each a different brand of beer, to carry. 

“Q and J like Michelob, Luke is a Miller guy, Coley likes Budweiser, and I’m more of a Modelo drinker.” Trevor’s head is buried in the back of the fridge, rifling through a pack of Millers that seem to be running low. “We’ve had to go to the store three times since that first day because we keep running out of the one beer that someone wants.”

He retreats from the refrigerator and turns to Honey. He’s got two beers in his hand. He holds them up and asks, “Which one do you think Bea wants?”

Honey weighs her choices, but ultimately chooses the Michelob. Bea will use it as a jumping point for her conversation with Quinn– it’s a no-brainer. As annoying as Bea’s boy-craziness is, Honey is always going to be her wingwoman and helper when she can.

“Cool,” Trevor says and returns the other beer to the shelf. He turns back to Honey and takes two of the beers she was carrying, leaving her with just two, the Budweiser and the Modelo.

“I thought you were a Modelo drinker,” Honey says.

“I am,” Trevor replies, heading towards the stairs. 

Honey follows. “Then why am I holding your beer?”

“Because I want you to hand it to me.”

Honey snorts out a laugh. “Okay.”

When they return downstairs, they distribute the beer. Honey hands Cole his Budweiser and waits for Trevor to finish handing out the beers to the Hughes brothers and her friend. Bea has finally managed to get Quinn to do the work for her, with him leaning behind her and guiding her arms over the cue, pointing out where she should be looking and where to hit the ball. There are no other balls on the table except the 8 ball, which makes Honey chuckle. There’s no way Bea sunk all of hers– Quinn had to have “mistakenly�� knocked a few in for her.

Trevor returns to the sitting area and Honey stands, offering him the Modelo in her hand. On purpose, she realizes, Trevor closes his hand over her own to take the beer from her and thanks her with a smile, his eyes far too kind to be harmless and friendly. 

Honey shakes her head with a look, then frowns when Trevor plops his happy ass right down on the other side of her loveseat. She shakes her head again and chooses to watch the end of the pool game, sitting on one of the stool-saddles near the table. She claps when Bea finally sinks the 8 ball after her third whiff. The ball only sinks because Quinn leaned over Bea again and did it for her, working together to finish the game.

“I win!” Bea squeals in delight, jumping in celebration in front of Quinn.

He lets out a little chuckle, the most awkwardly and quietly endearing laugh that Honey has ever heard. “You won,” he agrees. “With my help.”

Bea tilts her chin up and smiles at Quinn, proud of herself. “So we both win,” she says. “That means we both get whatever we want.”

Honey bites her tongue and ducks her head, waiting for what’s coming next. She wants to turn around and look out the window, even though you can’t see anything in the dark mountainside now that the sun has set. The thing is, she also wants to see the boys’ reactions to what Bea is going to say next.

Quinn smiles, a little tiny smile. His focus is only on Bea, who has inched her way closer to him somehow. There’s not much more room between them. “Whatever you want,” he repeats. “What do you want, Bea?”

Honey watches Quinn’s face, but she’s torn. She also wants to watch Jack.

“You know that tour Cole took us on when Honey and I first got here?” Bea asks, reaching out and smoothing out the turned-up fabric of Quinn’s sleeve.

“Yeah,” Quinn replies, a little confused.

Bea rests her hand on his arm, slowly making her way down so she can wrap her hand around his fingers. She watches herself do it, then looks up at Quinn through her lashes. “I don’t think I saw your bedroom,” she says. “Would you care to show me?”

Quinn’s lips part in surprise and Honey watches his eyes search Bea’s own for… insincerity, maybe? 

At the same time, Jack chokes on a sip of his beer. Honey’s eyes fly to him and Cole pats his back as Jack coughs it out. 

“Jesus Christ,” Jack says, clapping his hand against his chest and coughing one last time.

Bea smiles at him, oozing confidence and a little showmanship, as Quinn leads her to the stairs. He lets her climb them first and Honey giggles when Quinn sneaks a glance at Bea’s ass and visibly relaxes before hurrying to catch up with her and get his hands on her hips. Bea’s twinkling laughter grows softer and softer as she bounds up the stairs, her footfalls growing heavier as Quinn closes in on her.

“Well shit, Jack,” Cole says. “I guess you’re not the first to fall into bed with a girl this summer. The streak is finally over.”

“You don’t know that,” Jack says, pushing Cole’s hand off of his shoulder. He turns to face Honey, looking hopeful and a little desperate. “Wanna help me keep my streak up?”

A loud honking laugh escapes Honey. “Absolutely fucking not,” she replies, still laughing. She shakes her head at Jack, then notices the small, but mightily proud smile on Trevor’s lips. 

Choosing not to focus on that smile, a smile that she’s inadvertently becoming very fond of because she’s never seen him smile at his friends the way Trevor is smiling at her, Honey hops up from her stool and starts to gather the balls from the pockets of the table. She racks them, then grabs her cue and waves Trevor over. “I believe we had a game to play.”

“You had a game to lose,” Trevor corrects, standing and approaching Honey. He grabs his own stick, the one Quinn abandoned on the edge of the table when Bea proposed her bedroom shenanigans. 

“Hmm,” Honey voices, raising her eyebrows and exaggerating a grimace. “Consider me scared. Your break, Trevor.”

“When I win,” Trevor says. “I want to buy you dinner.” He lines up the cue ball and shoots, the colorful triangle of balls destroyed in a single swoop. One of the solids finds its way into a pocket and Trevor smirks.

“What a boring prize,” Honey muses. “But if you insist on those terms, then I agree.” She sticks out her hand to shake his. “And when I win…”

She leans down and eyes a line of three balls. The striped nine is farthest from the hole, but Honey wants to prove a point, so she angles her stick down at a steep slope and pushes– noticing Trevor’s mouth flattening into a line when her ball jumps over the other two and tips into the hole. She stands back up to her full height, tilting her head to the side. She cocks her hip and positions her hand against it, holding the cue up on her other side.

“I’m really going to enjoy your Zulu Run, Trevor.”

Cole whistles lowly from the couch. “I need to find you another trophy, girl.”

Honey shoots him a wink.

They play on. Trevor takes it easy– plays the safe route. With each easy fall into the pocket, he fistpumps to celebrate. Honey can only imagine how insufferable he is at the bowling alley. 

She shows him up, not even daring to let him pull ahead in their race and convince himself that he has a chance. She sinks the final black ball into the right-center pocket, bending herself all the way over the table to give him a good view of the girl who’s beating him. Her hips are high on the other side of the table, balancing up on her tip toes, facing the seating area. She doesn’t even look at the ball when she hits it, no, she’s looking up at Trevor with a tilted smile and mocking, bragging eyes. 

His eyes evaluate her– eyes, to lips, to chest, to ass. To the boys, making sure they aren’t looking, aren’t gawking at the round globes of Honey’s ass that are presented before them. Back to her ass. Her ass.

Honey stands, slowly, making sure Trevor memorizes the curve of her waist when she does. Her eyes drop to his pants, a smirk growing in time with his bulge, and she rests her hands on the edge of the table. She pulls her shoulders back, broadening her chest. 

It’s just a dominant stance. All Honey enjoys about this is the fact that his resolve and dignity crumble at the mere sight of a pretty girl bent before him. She likes knowing that he’s weak for her, but that she’ll never do anything about it.

She’s not looking for that.

“A Zulu Run,” Honey explains, clearing her throat to rid her voice of its sultry tinges. She shakes her hair back, over her shoulders. Trevor’s eyes darken at the sight of her throat. She smiles, but continues. “Is when you have to strip, sing a song, and streak around the house until the song is over.” She throws a glance over her shoulder at the other boys. “Usually your friends get to pick your song.”

Jack perks up at that. Honey turns and hops up on the ledge of the pool table, knowing that Trevor’s eyes have fallen to her behind. Jack looks at Honey with delight in his eyes, seeming to forgive her in an instant for psychoanalyzing him earlier in the night. His eyes slide to Trevor and the look in them seems more akin to yearning for vengeance.

“So, boys,” Honey drawls. “What’ll it be?”

They scramble over each other to reach her, shouting song suggestions as they fly into their head. Honey can’t hear anything they’re saying, so she laughs until they fall silent. Cole’s hand presses into the side of her thigh, she looks down at it in disgust, then back up at him. It falls to the edge of the table, noticeable space between her and the appendage. 

“How about this,” Honey decides. She sneaks a glance at Trevor, gloating as she lets her eyes roam all over his body. She takes in his arms, his thighs under his shorts, the way his shirt falls over his shoulders. “Trevor looks pretty fit. Why don’t we all pick a song?” She winks at him. “Make him run for, oh, eleven minutes or so?”

A flicker of recognition passes through Trevor’s gaze, but it’s quickly replaced by disbelief. He doesn’t know how she would know– weren’t they subtle about it? She lets out a breath of a laugh at the look– no, Trevor, you weren’t subtle, she thinks. but it’s cute that you think you are.

She realizes what she was thinking in a split second and shakes herself out of it, snapping her face forward and crossing her legs knee-over-knee. 

“But only his friends get to pick, so I guess I’m out.” Honey hops down from her perch and breaks through the boys, settling herself on the loveseat with her trophy, laying out to take up as much space as she could. She picks up the remote from the table and places her other hand behind her head, navigating to the Roku menu screen. “Do we have Spotify on this thing?”

Luke, Jack, and Cole each pick a song and Cole helps Honey connect to the outdoor speakers. He re-presents her with her trophy with a flourish and a bow, playful and lame. The boys push Trevor out to the patio with a whoop, pulling at his clothes even as Trevor fights them. 

Honey follows at a distance and watches through the glass door. She looks away when Trevor sheds his underwear and waits for Luke’s countdown to end before looking back up. She doesn’t want to see it. That’s just too far. She gets an eyeful of his ass as he rounds the corner of the house, though. 

As Trevor starts his third song, Cole’s cheesy Taylor Swift pick (“You can’t outrun my music now, bitch!”), Jack joins Honey at the door. 

“I think I’m going to head home,” Honey tells him, rubbing over the skin on her arms. 

Jack nods at her, shrugging easily. “I’ll walk you out.” 

Honey leads him up the stairs, hearing Trevor’s whoops grow louder as he finishes the second verse of the song. She knows he catches them walking up the stairs because his singing falters for a moment. His steps speed up. So do Honey’s. 

She walks briskly to the front door, bordering on a speedwalk, with Jack behind her. She swings her keys over her finger and wrenches the front door open. Jack catches it before it hits the wall. 

“What about Bea?” He asks, calling after Honey and making her pause. 

“She’ll find her way home,” Honey replies and steps off again. She has to get out of here before Trevor races up the stairs to stop her from being alone with Jack and she gets an eyeful of his– junk.

“Honey!” Jack calls again. 

She lurches to a stop and cringes, turning to face the boy. 

"Honey, I don't think I'm going to flirt with you anymore."

Honey takes a breath, walking back and reaching up to pat Jack's cheek, just forceful enough that it'll sting for a moment after she walks away. It's not quite a hit, but it's definitely not a love tap. "That doesn't hold the power that you think it does," she tells him with a nod and a close-lipped smile. She goes to leave, but Jack stops her by grabbing her hand.

"Trevor likes you, you know. He was quiet tonight, but he likes you. He's reading that book you gave him and everything," Jack says in earnest, his blues boring into Honey's own eyes. 

Honey picks up on the unsaid words. He's trying, take it easy on him, he might be annoying but he's good, and he likes you. You should like him too, and all of that.

The edges of Honey's smile soften and she gently pulls her hand from Jack's. "It's nice to know he can read," she replies, deflecting. Whatever Trevor feels for her, not that he can really feel anything because he doesn't know her like that, doesn't matter. She's not looking for that right now. "Thanks for hosting us, Jack. I'm sorry for what I... said."

"It's okay." Jack shrugs. "Thanks for coming."

"Goodnight," Honey bids him, and starts to walk away.

"Come back," Jack says, and Honey whips around and finds him looking like the words surprised him when he heard himself speak. He clears his throat. "Friday. Um, it's— it's National Chocolate Ice Cream Day and National Donut Day." He scuffs the tip of his shoe against the ground. "Really... important holiday."

Honey can't do anything but laugh. "I'll bring the donuts."

She walks to her car and ignores the chirping of bullfrogs echoing in her ears as she drives down the mountain to her home, alone.

7:90 – TREVOR

Jack glares at Trevor when he walks down to the kitchen early the next morning. As Trevor rubs the sleep out of his eyes with a yawn, Jack shifts under the frozen pack of peas that rests precariously on his shoulderblades. Trevor had barely touched him last night, he was just being dramatic. So he had a bit of soreness on his back from where Trevor pushed him against the wall and asked him what the hell he was doing, who cares? He went upstairs with Trevor’s girl. Alone. 

“Bea’s taking you to church with her this morning for laying a finger on me,” Jack growls out when Trevor looks at him and laughs.

“No shit,” Trevor replies, snorting.

“It’s true,” comes the female voice from the couch. Bea leans forward, her tube top skewed and tilted enough to draw a wandering eye. Trevor rolls his. “You shouldn’t get violent, not on my watch.”

“You weren’t even with me last night, Bea,” Trevor says sweetly, tilting his head down to dismiss her. “You didn’t see me do shit. How can you prove it was me and not Luke?”

“Luke put a video of it on his private story, then showed me,” Bea snickers in the same tone. “So you’re taking me home and helping me choose my best church outfit to hide these hickeys, and then you’ll join me at the service. It’ll be good for your reputation in town.”

“I don’t really care about my reputation in town,” Trevor laughs.

“Honey cares about your reputation in town,” Bea clarifies, a tight, ‘there’s no room for discussion here’ smile on her face. She pointedly looks him up and down. “Little Bear.”

Trevor scowls at her condescending tone and use of the nickname. How dare she flaunt her inner circle-ness to Trevor. 

“I was going to go to church anyway,” Trevor boasts. “Vera told me to bring all of the boys.”

“Well, you’re the only one resorting to violence–” Jack begins, seething, before Bea cuts him off.

“No, this is a good idea,” she says, waving her hand to quiet him. “We should all go to church.”

Jack scoffs. “I don’t think we need to go,” he says. “Sounds like you’ve got an ulterior motive.”

“I don’t want the town to think y’all are reclusive party folk who have no interest in the happenings of Litchton,” Bea snaps. “You’d be surprised how quickly the old grannies will turn on you.”

“And you get to walk into church with five guys on your arm,” Jack says, still scowling. This time, his attention is focused on Bea, not the man who physically hurt him the night before. 

“Said she wanted five guys, she ain’t talking ‘bout burgers,” Trevor deadpans, a disgusted look thrown Bea’s way.

She’s unperturbed by it, probably from many years of Honey– Honey.– throwing her similar looks. All Bea does is smile and reply, “My pussy already got murdered, Trev. I didn’t need five guys.”

“No way Quinn ‘murdered’ your pussy, Bea,” Jack jumps in, air quotes around the word. “The dude doesn’t fuck.”

Bea laughs. “I assure you, he fucks.”

“Yeah, I fuck,” Quinn agrees, descending the stairs. He veers to the couch first and drops a kiss on Bea’s head in greeting.

“Well, fuck your way to church,” Jack says. “Bea’s making everyone go with her.” Jack looks at Quinn expectantly, maybe waiting for pushback.

Quinn shrugs. “Okay,” he says. “It’s not like there’s anything else for us to do on a Sunday morning in this place. Everything is probably closed.”

“It’s true, everything is closed on Sundays except the grocery store and the gas station,” Bea says with a nod. “And the church, of course.”

Jack scowls and removes his pack of peas from his back. Trevor takes his opportunity to approach the fridge, conveniently behind Jack. “Why can’t we just stay here?”

“Because it’ll be fun,” Trevor replies, trying to exude optimism now that he’s not the only boy being forced to attend church and wash themselves of their sins. He turns and purposefully claps his hand down on Jack’s shoulder, hard. Jack howls in pain. Trevor squeezes just to watch him tense up. “It’s our chance to become one with the community, Jacky.”

Bea smiles, voice dripping with cheerfulness. “Yeah, Jacky, it’ll be good for you. Why don’t you two head upstairs and change?” Her eyes fix on Quinn, whose shirt rides up as he grabs a glass from the upper shelves of the cabinets. “I want to chit-chat with Quinn for a second.”

Trevor and Jack make a face, but scramble towards the stairs. They push and shove each other all the way up– Trevor is particularly satisfied when Jack bumps into the wall and groans– then split off into their respective rooms. Trevor treats it like a race– whoever finishes changing first wins.

Jack is already back downstairs by the time Trevor returns. Cole is there, and Luke, and both of them seem to be dressed for the service too. None of the boys have the best church clothes, but it’s a small town with farmers. Surely not everyone will be in their Sunday best every Sunday. Quinn is noticeably missing, but Bea is standing by the door with a smile on her face. Her lips look a little more red than they did before Trevor went upstairs. He narrows his eyes at her.

“You, and you,” Bea says, pointing at Jack and Trevor. “Come with me. Trevor, grab your car keys. You’re driving.”

“What about Luke and Cole?” Trevor asks, picking up his keys from their spot on the hook next to the door and trailing behind Bea. Jack trails behind Trevor, still grumbling and pretending like his shoulders hurt for dramatic effect. Trevor ought to show him some real pain next time.

The three people climb into the car, Trevor behind the wheel and Bea in the passenger seat. Jack, once again, finds himself relegated to the backseat. He straps himself in and Trevor catches his murderous glare in the rearview mirror.

“Quinn’s going to drive them,” Bea explains. “They’ll meet us at the church.”

“Whipped,” Jack coughs out. He does a terrible job of masking the word. 

Trevor rolls his eyes, just like Bea. She opens her mouth to say something, sass him, but thinks better of it.

They drive on in silence, the occasional sigh or grunt from Jack as he shifts in his seat. Trevor glares at him again in the mirror and Jack hits him with a fake smile before looking out the window to watch the trees whip by.

Bea directs them to the main strip of shops, then tells them to take a left onto one of the sidestreets near The Reading Nook. They pull up to a big brick house, separated down the middle by a massive staircase. Bea climbs the stairs and turns to the left again, unlocking and pushing her front door open.

She leads the boys into her living room, which is decorated exactly how Trevor expected it to be. The couch is white with pink pillows and a white shag rug beneath it. Her furniture is odd, thrifted and worn in. None of it matches, although Trevor suspects that her theme was “Barbie girl aesthetic.” It’s messy, and comfortable, and Trevor almost envies how she lives. His apartment in Anaheim is sparse– when you’re on the road so much and as busy with your job as Trevor is, you really only need a place to eat and sleep. His decorations reflect that.

Trevor sprawls out on the couch, leaving Jack standing awkwardly next to the coffee table. Bea disappears down the hall and enters her bedroom, her closet door creaking open.

“Jack, come here, will you?” Bea asks. 

Jack’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, but he starts down the hallway nonetheless. 

Trevor snoops in his absence, Jack’s presence no longer a threat to his comfort. He drags himself off of the couch and stands, advancing towards the shelves of knickknacks on the wall near the television.

Bea has got a number of books on her shelves, overtaking two of the four rows. The other rows are sparse and far more interesting– there are picture frames spread along the rows, six frames that depict Bea’s life and what she loves.

Four of the pictures feature Honey. The other two are groups of people that Trevor assumes are Bea’s family, her extended family on each of her parents’ sides. He can ignore those easily, not caring about about Bea to scan each of her cousins’ faces. The pictures with Honey are a different story.

There’s a picture of the two when they were ten, or eleven, riding their bikes down an asphalt street lined with suburban houses. Bea’s bike is pink with streamers and flowers and a little basket. Honey’s is dark green and sporty, similar to Trevor’s own bicycle from childhood. Honey’s smile is wry, whereas Bea’s is glowing.

The second, from a birthday party. It’s Honey’s birthday and they’re four, from the looks of the lit candle on her cake. Honey’s smile is wide, much wider than the previous image. Her hair is messy and her tongue is stained green, probably from a lollipop or a Jolly Rancher. Her arms are wrapped around Bea’s neck and she’s pulled her friend close, their cheeks pressing together. Bea’s expression is a little different. Only one of her eyes is squeezed shut, the one closer to Honey. Her lips are pursed like a duck and her little fingers are raised in a peace sign.

Trevor chuckles. If his mom had been the one taking the picture, she would’ve said “What a ham” about the girls’ goofiness.

In the next picture, they’re older. They’re sixteen, probably. Bea’s wearing these short jean shorts and a bikini top and Honey wears a matching top under some long, gray sweatpants. She rolled the waistband up and her back is mostly to the camera, Bea lifted off the ground in a swooping hug. Bea’s legs are kicked up behind her like she’s experiencing a really good, Princess Diaries kind of kiss and her face is frozen in laughter. Honey’s is the same. Trevor’s heart clenches at the smile on her face and the way her hair blows out behind her.

Finally, there’s a selfie of the two of them in a handmade frame. It’s from a high angle and Trevor can’t tell if it’s a .5 picture or a regular one. Honey’s eyebrow is raised and she wears an exaggeratedly thoughtful expression, goofy enough to tug at Trevor’s smile. Bea’s mouth is open and she has a hand pinching Honey’s chin, while the other is raised to take the picture. Behind them is the Welcome to Litchton sign that Trevor passes each time he goes into town. 

Trevor’s eyes glide down to the handmade frame, the written message along the top and bottom borders.

“New Beginnings!” and smaller, in the corner, a more personalized message. Trevor thinks that she wrote the message in a thin Sharpie– it’s too pristine still, after years. “There’s no one I would rather have join me in Litchton than you. Thank you for always being the Bea to my Honey! Honeybea 4ever <3”.

Trevor reaches out and takes the frame in his hand, inspecting it. He turns it over. More script, also in a Sharpie: “2019”, it reads. He replaces the item, making sure it’s back in the exact right spot. 

“Bea, hurry up!” Trevor calls, returning to the couch.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” she replies, leading Jack out of her bedroom. She’s clasping a necklace as she walks, then holds out her wrist and a bracelet for Jack to clasp. “We can go now.”

They leave the apartment and climb back into the car, Jack beating Bea out for the passenger seat this time. He’s smug about it too, grinning to himself while he buckles up. Trevor opens the back door for Bea and helps her into the car with a guiding hand in hers. When Jack realizes that he fumbled the chance to look like a gentleman, his face returns to its scowl. 

“If you’re not careful, your face will get stuck like that,” Trevor warns when he finally sits behind the wheel again. He shifts the car into drive and pulls out of the parking space.

Bea directs them to the church and Trevor pulls into the parking lot next to Quinn’s car, which is still running. They’ve got about five minutes before the service begins and Bea chastises the three boys for not going inside and reserving seats early. 

“There’s only a few instances where the whole town goes out to do something,” Bea complains as they walk inside. “Church is one of them. We’re never going to find a spot for all six of us.”

“No Honey?” Trevor asks, taken aback. He expected her to join them, especially since the ‘whole town’ is here.

Bea casts Trevor a look and snickers into her palm. “You’re sweet, Trevor,” she says and Trevor rolls his eyes at her saccharine tone. “But Honey decided a long time ago that she had enough religion in her life growing up. She and God know where they stand.”

Trevor reaches the door to the church first and holds it open for the group, letting them file in. He’s grateful that they’re in the church now, because all of the other boys are either too respectful of the space and what it represents or too awkward in a silent building to make fun of Trevor for seeking out Honey. Or they don’t want to get on Bea’s bad side and act a fool in church and suffer her wrath.

They file into one of the back pews, Bea sandwiched between Quinn and Luke. Trevor sits on the other side, right at the aisle. 

For an hour, he stays quiet and moves and speaks with the congregation. He counts the number of times that Cole tases Jack’s side, sticking his fingers between his ribs to cause him to flinch and make noise in the reverent area. He does this five times throughout the mass before Bea leans forward and threatens to cut his hands off herself. 

For an hour, Trevor stares forward and lets his mind wander to Honey, and all the thoughts he has about her. She’s a mystery and she’s quiet like Quinn, but confident in a way that Quinn never achieved. She knows exactly who she is and won’t budge for anyone, won’t change herself or act in any special ways around certain people. 

Trevor admires it– he’s spent his whole life performing for people, in a way. Hockey is his life and always has been, but sometimes it’s tiring to realize that all of his friends are people he met on ice. To think that he can be surrounded by his teammates and the fans in any arena and still feel lonely– it’s the kind of thing that leaves Trevor wondering if this career was a good idea. 

In another world, he’s playing in a beer league in a town like this, with a girl like Honey on his arm. 

The thought leaves him feeling heavy, weighed down. It ruminates in his mind, even after the service is over. It sours his mood completely and Trevor wishes he was back at the house so he could take a shower or something and stop the prickling feelings from taking over his skin.

In the parking lot, the group chats about nothing. Trevor doesn’t listen. Bea introduces the boys to come of the townsfolk and Trevor smiles and shakes the men’s hands, hugs the ladies or send a special look their way. Vera and Earl honk as they drive past the group, Vera blowing a kiss towards Trevor and Cole through the passenger window. Cole catches it and sticks it to his cheek, then sends one back. It makes Vera laugh.

Trevor tunes back into the conversation as the boys discuss plans for the upcoming week– Jack edges away from Trevor before he mentions that he invited Honey over that coming Friday and that Bea should come too. 

“Well, you’ll rarely find a Honey without its Bea,” Bea teases. She claps. “Okay. I’ll see you guys then. Quinn, take me home?”

Quinn nods and puts his hand on the small of her back to direct her to the car. Bea pauses and waves Trevor over, shooing the other boys away. Quinn stays, his hand still on Bea’s body.

“There’s a fruit stand outside the grocery store on Mondays,” Bea says.

“I know, I’ve been,” Trevor interrupts.

Bea quiets him with a click of her tongue. She chooses her words carefully, her eyes hard. “Go tomorrow at, like, six,” she suggests, a faux-nonchalant shrug lifting her shoulders. “You might find something that you like there. I recommend buying the strawberries. They make a lovely gift, Trevor.”

Trevor frowns, confused. “I don’t like strawberries,” he replies.

Bea closes her eyes and processes his words for a moment, a tight smile on her lips. “They make a lovely gift, Trevor,” she repeats.

“Sick,” Trevor says, his voice hard. He doesn’t understand what she’s saying. “I’m not buying strawberries for you, Bea. I don’t know you enough to give you gifts.”

Bea stomps her foot. “Good fucking God, Trevor. Quinn, can you explain this shit to him?” She asks, then walks off to the car. She takes Quinn’s keys from his hand and gets behind the driver’s seat herself. 

Quinn watches her walk away, then turns to Trevor. “She’s telling you that you’ll run into Honey, you fucking idiot, and that you should buy her strawberries.” 

He leaves Trevor standing there, eyes wide.

Yeah, he’s definitely heading to the fruit stand tomorrow and buying strawberries.

He concocts his plan on the drive home, silent compared to the other three boys, that are laughing and flopping around the backseat with every turn in a game of Jell-O. They’re not wearing their seatbelts. When they get too loud, Trevor envisions ejecting them from the backseat, leaving them sailing down the mountain, falling through the air.

He holes himself up in his room to nap when they get home, too excited to see Honey to let the time pass organically. It’s like time travel, this way. Trevor will wake up and be two hours closer to seeing her, to getting another chance to win her over. This time, with a gift.

In the afternoon, he laces up his blades and skates with the boys. Quinn has come back by now, not spending much time at Bea’s apartment after church, according to Luke. They all skate and shoot for a couple of hours, playing a game of pickup with an extra player to sub in and out. When that ends, they run some drills. Luke and Quinn play defense, like always, with Trevor, Cole, and Jack recreating their legendary line from USNTDP. It works out perfectly, and each boy pushes himself like they’re playing a real game. It’s the brotherly competition that fuels them– and when the drills start to fall into disarray from hits and other penalties that would certainly be called out in a game, they head off to shower.

The night ends slowly, fizzling out compared to the way it ended the night before. The boys lounge in the game room, sprawling out on the couches and snacking and sipping their beer. Trevor isn’t made to perform another Zulu Run, no one picks up a pool cue, and they watch shitty TV movies on the Spanish channel instead of English. They make up the dialogue as they go and Trevor is the first to go to sleep. He makes it to midnight, but then he forces himself to go to bed. 

He’s got a big day ahead of him… after 5 p.m., anyway.

–end–of–chapter–one–

[dawnbreakerluna]

johnny probably chatting up a girl sitting at the bar he frequents, but he doesn’t recognize her face. he’s never seen her around any part of newt, or the entirety of texas for sure. she doesn’t seem southern — come his presence to keep her company a moment later, he finds out she’s definitely not.

she’s visiting from out of state, reconnecting with long distance friends from high school. they all went their separate ways for college, and it’s spring break. she’s from the less bleak and more bustling california, full of oceanic cities and many hot spots for people of hers and johnny’s age.

he’s drawn to her in a way that is… unfamiliar. as he listens to her talk, getting all these important yet vague details about what she’s studying, how she’s graduating soon, her favorite authors to look for in bookstores and her favorite records from his favorite bands… johnny doesn’t want to hurt this girl.

and that makes him sick. he’s memorizing every feature of her face as she’s lively in their conversation, noticing the little habits in how she speaks and presents herself.

johnny wants to fucking hurl. he wants to tear his own heart out with his knife, and plate it before her—

“…you really should come to california, the boulevard on hollywood—oh! sorry, i— my friend just walked in.”

johnny smiles at her, shaking his head as he lifts his hand up in retreat, “don’t even worry ‘bout it. go on, hope y’all have a good time.”

she smiles back at him, prepared to walk off, but hesitates for a second.

“it was really nice talking to you,” she says. “hope i see you around? maybe in san francisco?”

they both chuckle.

as she walks away, johnny’s hand tightens around his glass of whiskey. he barely drank anything. his jaw hardens as his shoulders tense. he looks down at the barely touched drink she ordered — he assumes she probably isn’t much of a fan of alcohol.

still, he lets go of his glass, setting it beside hers with a space in between.

johnny reaches into his back pocket, a few crumpled bills in hand. he sets the cash in that empty space, whistling to the bartender.

“for the girl’s drink too.”

he walks out of the bar, not looking back. the sound of the girl’s hearty laughter is all he needs to encourage him to walk away.

maybe in san francisco?

johnny considers it on his drive back home.