#even if it took me about a month or so to finish this...

[killerlookz]

Hiiii!

I saw your post about requesting for Joost, and idk if this is good but I'll try my best!(first time requesting something btw)

So, we all looooove some good jealousy prompts right?(or am I just weird?)

I saw some about reader being jealous and blah blah blah but how about a jealous Joost?

He isn't the type to be easily jealous he really isn't! He trusts you with his life! But... what if HE isn't enough?

He's on tour, away from you for months. He hates it but he loves it at the same time, on one side: his work is being seen, he's getting money, he's visiting other countries. But on other side... you're away from each other and it kills him.

So, one night, he just got back from a show, he showered on the hotel bathroom, he's drying his hair with a towel while he sees random stuff on insta, he sits on the fresh hotel bed when he sees one new story from you.

You're smiling and there's a friend of yours, smiling too, with a caption:"thanks for the amazing night (friend nickname) you're the best! ❤️"

And the two of you are at you favorite restaurant.

You did mentioned to joost that you were feeling lonely without him, that work was killing you and you wanted to go out... he is happy for you, of course, but... he just wishes it was HIM next to you on the photo, it was HIM that took you out. HIM that you were sending heart emojis to.

(Maybe reader and joost are dating or maybe you could do a friends to lovers on this one)

So, as soon as he's back, he's knocking on your apartment door.

He doesn't even waits, as soon as you open the door, he hugs you, he's all over you.

"Joost?! You're back already?? Oh I missed you too!"

You hug him back.

Joost lives this. This peace. This warmth. This love, his heart bursting with adoration, he wants to prove to you that he's the best, that no friend could ever replace him!

Sorry if this is not good! Anyway, thanks for even reading this!

a/n: omg thank you so much for this prompt anon! i looove a good detailed prompt, i think i stuck mainly to your request, i really only changed some dialogue to fit the story! side note... i had a lot of trouble formatting this for some reason, so hopefully this posts ok. tumbr is giving me grief lmao

Irreplaceable | Joost Klein

content: gn! reader, Joost wins Eurovision (as he should), drinking, a singular dirty joke, allusion to smut if you squint, and hickies. alternating POVS, some dutch, mostly pet names (schat, lieverd, liefje), and small phrases (ik hou van jou= i love you, het spijt me= i'm sorry)

word count: 3,630

Your fingers sweep across the glowing keyboard of your phone. The intense bright white of the display in contrast with the dark of the restaurant that surrounds you makes you lower your eyes into a squint, the letters blurring before you.

Much needed night with my girl <3

You reposition the text to fit with the picture, a half-tipsy selfie you had taken just moments prior with your best friend, Anna. Your finger hovers over the "your story" button on the bottom left corner of your screen. You do one last scan of the photo, looking at the wide grins of you and your friend, you couldn't remember the last time you had seen yourself so happy.

You tap the button, deciding the photo is worthy to be seen by your whopping 400 Instagram followers.

"Did I look hot in that?" Anna's voice pulls you away from your phone, you place it face down against the white tablecloth in front of you. She's raising an eyebrow at you as her red lipstick coated lips curl into a smirk. She swirls a nearly empty glass of red wine in her hand.

"Of course," You grin, "When do you not?"

"Good point." She winks before raising the glass to her lips, finishing what was left in a single swig.

You'd been more than grateful for Anna taking you out tonight. Truth be told, the last few weeks had been bleak. They consisted mostly of you sitting at your kitchen counter, hunched over your computer doing work. Who knew working from home could be so stressful. You'd been completely swamped ever since a co-worker who had shared your position switched companies. Now you were stuck doing double the work for the same pay.

But maybe even worse than the stress of work was the loneliness of it. Taking a remote job had seemed ideal when you accepted the position, however, now you realized it was just like working any other office job without any of the human connection or interaction.

Your life hadn't always been this lonely, but you guessed that was the price you paid for living the city life, coupled with dating a musician.

Joost had been doing music since you met him a year and a half ago, and in that short amount of time, you never would have expected how huge he would have gotten. A summer hit in Germany and a fucking Eurovision win catapulted him into success.

Of course, you were more than proud of him, in fact, words couldn't even describe how happy you were for him. He deserved each and every fan, and each and every stream.

But being a musician meant being busy, and in particular, being on tour for weeks to months at a time.

Truth be told, during these last five weeks, Joost was on tour you had been living vicariously through videos posted online of his performances, desperately wishing you were in the crowd getting to watch him do what he loved every night. You would scroll intently in the isolating darkness of your apartment, at this point you had to have seen every angle of every single performance he'd done on tour thus far. It at least helped you feel a little less alone, watching how he smiled on stage, adoring the crowd, similar to the ways he had adored you.

You'd barely left the house since Joost had started touring, but you owed everything to Anna for forcing you out tonight. You were actually enjoying yourself.

A shadow looms over you, forcing you out of your thoughts. Your head whips to the side, and your waiter is standing over you

"Whenever you're ready." He places the black leather book in the middle of the table and nods as his lips press into a tight smile before walking away.

"Dinner's on me," Anna smiles slyly, her hand darting out and swiping the check from where it lay on the table. You can't say you're shocked by her offer, she had always been generous, but your heart is warmed by her kindness.

"Oh you don't have t-"

"Yes I do," She cuts you off. "This is your night out. Remember?"

"Thank you," You grin.

"Don't mention it," she opens the book, glancing down at the check, "Oh," She looks up at you, "Zoë asked if we want to meet her, Noor, and Hanna for drinks after this. They're at that bar a few blocks away. And seeing as I drank most of this bottle of wine, I reckon you need a few more drinks in you"

Your head bobs up and down, nodding, "More drinks sounds just about perfect right now."

Moments later the waiter is coming by again, taking the check off the table.

You look down at your phone on the table, flipping it over. The screen shines bright, revealing two notifications.

Joostklein liked your story

Joostklein replied to your story: have fun, liefje <3

A smile creeps onto your face and your chest swells with a warmth that both comforts you and stings at the same time. What you would give to have him here right now. Your thumb grazes over the screen, tapping the message to respond.

"C'mon y/n" Your head flings up at the sound of Anna's voice, "I got my card back, we should get going."

You nod, standing up from your seat, slipping your still open phone into the pocket of your jacket.

Joost lay on the stiff linens of a hotel bed. The lingering scent of his shampoo filled his nose as he took a deep breath, turning over his phone to check his notifications once again. Nothing.

It had been three hours and fifteen minutes since he noticed that you saw his response to your Instagram story, three hours and fifteen minutes since you saw his response and didn't respond.

He flips his phone back down, turning to his side, the pillow is damp against his face from his freshly washed hair. He closed his eyes and thought about that picture of you, how you smiled so wide, the way your eyes twinkled. He couldn't help but smile as he thought about it, it was almost like a reflex to him. Seeing you in such a state brought him an unexplainable warmth.

However, a part of him felt weird, a strange sense of yearning as he thought about the photo, Anna so close to you, the way you thanked her, complete with a heart. Part of him hoped that that was him taking you out to eat, him getting you to smile like that. But it wasn't, and it hadn't been him in a long time, and it wouldn't be, not for a while.

Of course, the two of you shared heartfelt messages with each other every day, and phone calls whenever you could. But it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same as being right there with you in person. It was hard for him, and he knew it was hard for you too.

In an instant, he's thinking about the last phone call you shared, just yesterday, the way you'd broken down in tears to him, about your workload, about how isolated you'd been feeling. He tried to keep composed, but he knew that he was part of the reason you were crying, though you never outright blamed him. All he could do was gently coo to you on the other end of the phone, softly pleading with you to not cry, that you would be alright. Truth be told he wanted to curl up and die in that moment. He'd never forget the sound of your wavering voice, the way it cracked just before a desperate sob clawed its way out of your throat, "I just miss you so much."

Part of him wondered if you would ever get sick of this if one day you would wake up and realize you didn't want a boyfriend who was gone all the time.

He had no problem with you spending a night out with your friends, in fact, he was ecstatic that you seemed to be having a good time, it was the fact that he wasn't able to share that good time with you that led to the sinking feeling in his chest that he felt now. You having left him on seen had only added insult to injury. If he really thought about it, he'd much rather feel this jealousy than have you cooped up in your empty apartment all night.

He shook his head, rolling onto his side, damning himself for feeling so selfish right now.

He turned his phone over once more, and the time flashed in front of him, 1:47 AM. Fuck. It was later than he thought. His jealousy was completely replaced by worry, and his stomach flipped. Surely it was far too late for you to still be at dinner, you'd told him you'd text him when you got home.

Anxiety set in as he began to weigh his options, either he could call you and potentially disturb your night out, or not call you, leaving you unbothered, but leaving him worried about where you were. After all, what if something happened, he'd never forgive himself for not calling.

He unlocked his phone, scrolling his recent calls so he could call you. He swore he could hear his heart beating as the phone rang, once, twice, three, four times-

"Hmm hi mmbaby." Your words are sloppy on the other end, and for a moment Joost worries that he may have woken you up, until he clocks the combination of the stifled thumping of music, and screeches of laughter.

"Hoi schat, where are you?" His eyebrows furrow

"I am..." You trail off, "I am at a bar, like, i think. I think two blocks from the restaurant- wherever I was." You sigh.

"Are you drunk, lieverd, who's there?" Joost cringes at his words, silently cursing himself for his interrogative tone.

"Ummm... Maybe a little, or a lot" You giggle, "And um- Anna, duh, and... Hanna..." You pause to laugh for a moment, "Anna and Hanna," You repeat, obviously fascinated with the rhyme, "And Zoë and Noor."

"Okay," Joost sinks into the bed, relief washes over him when he recognizes the names of who you're with. "I don't want to bother, I just wanted to make sure you're okay." He's timid, it's unlike him to be so quiet, his words softly tip-toeing around his true feelings, feelings of how bad he wishes it could be him you were out with right now.

"Okay?" You repeat with more emphasis, "Not ok...I am great!"

"That's good to hear." He hopes his jealousy doesn't peak through his short words, it feels terrible, his stomach has tied itself up in knots and the guilt he feels for feeling this way strangles him.

He thought about the nights the two of you would go out drinking together, the way your eyes would light up when a song you liked played, you'd grip his hand tight, forcing him out up so he could dance with you. He'd always end up more drunk off his love for you than he did from the alcohol, no matter how much he drank. By the end of the night, like clockwork, the bartender would be shouting that it was last call, and Joost would stand at the bar, taking the remaining sips of his final drink. Your head would rest against his arm, eyes barely open. You'd complain your feet hurt from all the dancing you'd been doing, your voice thick with intoxication and exhaustion. As the two of you headed out, he'd let you climb on his back so he could carry you to wherever the pair of you were going. He'd love nothing more than to feel that now, to feel the comforting weight of your body against his back, to feel your arms wrapped around his neck, your head nuzzled against him, the warmth of your breath tickling the skin of his neck.

"I'm so happy," You state, and Joost can almost hear your smile through the phone. "M'so happy. Love my friends."

"Sounds like they're taking good care of you,"

"Yes, such such good care of me, don't you worry - they will have me back home in one piece."

"Goed, will you be home soon?"

"Mmmprobably, my feet huuuurt." You whine, causing Joost to let out a small chuckle, like clockwork, "Nngh- If only I had a tall, handsome, strong, dutch man, preferably one who is blonde and has a mustache and is also named Joost Klein to carry me home." You sigh loud and dramatically.

Your words sting, Joost knows you don't mean them to, but he can't help but feel a twinge in his chest at how badly he wishes he were the one taking you home.

"I'll carry you wherever you want when I get home, to make up for my absence, you won't have to walk a single step ever again."

Joost's face lights up hearing you giggle on the other end, but suddenly your laughter dies down, and you sigh once more,

"I think- I should go,"

"That's alright, get home safe, ik hou van jou"

"I love you t-,"

"Eyy," Joost cuts you off, "In Dutch."

"Ik hou ook van jou."

Joost <3: Flight was cancelled, I don't know when I'll be able to get on another, het spijt me, I was really looking forward to seeing you tonight.

It had been a whole eight weeks that Joost had been gone, and as you stared down at the text you just received, it felt like if you had were to spend one more second apart from him you might just explode.

Sure a cancelled flight may only delay you seeing your boyfriend for a few hours, maybe a day at most, you could still feel the tears welling up in your eyes. It already felt so late, you didn't want to wait anymore. You tilt your head back, blinking rapidly to fight the small droplets pooling in your waterline.

Your phone chimes again.

Joost <3: I'll see you soon, I promise, Oké?

You're barely able to read the message through your wet eyes before there's a knock at your door. You sniffle, and quickly dry your tears, confused at who would be knocking on your door at this time. You slowly rise up from your bed, walking with trepidation towards the door.

You press your chest up against the door, closing one eye tight to look through the peephole. As your gaze adjusts, you feel your heart slip down to you the stomach it couldn't be.

Quick, trembling fingers are racing to unlock the locks of your apartment door before flinging it open. It was.

There Joost was, standing before you. A grin plastered onto his face, he'd been holding something in each hand, a bouquet of flowers in one, a bottle of wine in the other, but still his arms were stretched out, inviting you in for a hug.

Before you can even think of a word to speak you're running into his arms, wrapping your own arms around his torso. The familiar warmth of his body heat fills your body.

He must be able to hear the sound of your heart from how loud its beating, or at the very least, feel its rapid pulses against his chest. You nuzzle your face against him, taking in the gentle scent of his cologne. It's so familiar, and inviting, and you feel nothing but overwhelming love as you let Joost overwhelm your senses.

"You don't know how much I've missed you." His kisses pause for a moment as he mumbles against your hair.

"I've missed you too," You strengthen your grip around his waist, "So much."

"Let me put this stuff down so I can give you a real hug, ok?"

You don't want to let go, not even for a moment, you'd spent far too long without him, and you feared if you let him go, even just for a second, he would disappear again. Reluctantly, you let your arms fall from his torso, sighing at the lack of warmth you feel as your body separates from his. He steps around you, leaning over to kiss your cheek as he passes you, "Stay here,"

"Huh?" You question, about to step forward to follow him into your apartment.

"No, no no- stay there." Joost quickly whips his head back around, moving towards the kitchen counter to place the wine and the flowers. He looks up and smiles before heading towards you.

His arms wrap around your lower back, beckoning for you to jump a little so you can put your legs around his hips and he can carry you. Once Joost had you steadily in his arms, he walked forward, letting go with one arm to quickly shut the door behind the two of you before placing it back around you once more.

"I told you, you wouldn't have to walk when I get back,"

"Hmm, won't have to or won't be able to?" You smirk as you push your body against his, laying your head on Joost's shoulder, he shakes his head, clicking his tongue.

"Such a dirty mind." He chastises

You place soft, passionate kisses against Joost's neck, slowly trailing up to his jaw, before eventually planting a kiss on his lips. He wastes no time in kissing you back, his lips hungrily going after your own. Your hands find your way into his hair, your nails softly scratching at his head as gently pull at the blonde strands.

Joost breaks the kiss so he can turn around, placing you on the kitchen counter. He stands in front of you, in between your legs, you wrap them around him in an effort to bring him closer to you. Your head flips to the side,

"Are these for me?" you pull at one of the flower petals with your thumb and pointer finger, feeling its soft velvety texture.

"Of course, and the wine. Well, I guess that's for us. I'll order us some takeaway, I know it's not as going out- but I promise I'll take you out tomorrow, I'll make up for every second I was gone," Joost's fingers gently grip your jaw, pulling you to face him. Your eyes meet his, deep and blue, filled with a light you missed all too well, "I'm sorry, liefje, for making you so lonely."

"You know that's not your fault." You tilt your head, pouting at his consolation. His words cut, how could he blame himself?

"It's okay if you say it is," His hand trails up your face, resting his palm against your jaw, his thumb rubbing soft circles into your cheek, "You can tell me."

You stare at him with wide eyes, your brain searching for the right words to properly convince him that he has done nothing wrong.

"No," You manage to whisper, "You don't know how happy it makes me to know you're performing every night, to know you're doing what you love."

"But if I wasn't gone all the t-"

"I wouldn't trade this situation for the world." You cut him off, staring at him intensely, hoping to communicate how deeply you mean your words.

"Okay," Joost concedes, his voice quiet, he was never one to fight you on things, "But one day, when I make enough money, I'll take care of you," He cranes his neck, planting a kiss against the opposite cheek of where his hand rests. The stubble of his facial hair is scratchy against your skin, in an oddly comforting way, it's familiar, and it reminds you of your close proximity. You sigh, drinking in the intimacy of the moment as his lips lower to your neck. He pulls away briefly, "You won't have to work another second and I'll take you everywhere with me."

A soft smile pulls at the corners of your mouth, and you cannot help the heat that floods your body as you picture your future together. It's a comforting picture, and it makes all the waiting, all the lonely nights worth it.

Your hand reaches out, tugging at the thick fabric of his sweatshirt, attempting to pull him even closer to you, like you wanted your bodies to intertwine, to fuse and become one so you'd never have to be without him again.

"I can't wait," Your words are short, your breath getting caught in your throat as Joost nips at your neck. His lips are soft, soothing the tingling pinch of his teeth against your skin.

His breath is hot, and each kiss is filled with an ardent longing. Warmth spreads through your stomach as his hand slips to the back of your neck, his fingers thread through the strands of your hair, before tugging gently, careful not to hurt you. But it is enough to make your breathing shaky and you wonder if you're even going to get to break open that bottle of wine anytime soon.

You hope he leaves a mark against your neck, you hoped he'd leave many. If you were in any space to talk, you'd speak up and tell him as much, begging for a pretty purple and red reminder of where he'd been.

As much as you ached for it, you didn't really need a mark to remind you of his love for you. You knew every word he spoke was true, how he'd make up for every second he spent without you, how as soon as he had the means to he'd provide fully for you. It was obvious, his love was warm, it was soft, it was something completely irreplaceable.

a/n: hiii!! wow my first time writing for Joost, I haven't written rpf in awhile, so i hope i did it justice! and thank you so much again anon for the request, i hope it is to your liking :-)

[likeumeanit9497]

watch | m.s. |

matt sturniolo x fem!reader

summary: after hearing you confess all of your insecurities to him, matt makes it his mission to have you see yourself the way that he sees you.

warnings: established relationship smut; fluff; mentions of body insecurities; hint of disordered eating; fingering (f receiving); dirty talk; choking; 18+

notes: i dreamt up this smut last night and immediately got to writing because it felt a little too real. i also knew it was gonna be a shorter one shot (compared to all of my others) so decided to try out second person narration rather than first person. i still can't decide which is better, so pls let me know which u all prefer to read. i hope ya'll enjoy reading this as much as i enjoyed dreaming ab it ;)))

─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─

With Mac Miller playing softly from Matt’s tv, you sighed to yourself as you applied the finishing touches to your makeup. You took a moment to inspect your appearance in the full length mirror that you had been getting ready in front of, and felt like you didn’t recognize the girl in the reflection. For some reason, you were having a bad everything day. You had started getting ready by doing your hair, and it just wouldn’t fall right once you had finished styling it. Moving on to makeup, you had struggled with making your eyeliner match and all of your base makeup looked splotchy; it was like nothing was sitting the way it should on your skin.

Filled with frustration, you were tempted to tell Matt to cancel the dinner reservation, scrub everything off your face, and tuck yourself in his bed for the rest of the night. But you wouldn’t do that, because he had been so excited about planning your date night all by himself.

You and Matt had been dating for a few months, and had built a relationship filled with the perfect combination of comfort and excitement. Even though you both lived apart, there was rarely a day when you and him were not doing something together — whether that be just laying in his bed watching movies all day, or going on a random adventure in the middle of nowhere. You could never grow tired of being around him, but for some reason your insecurities in your appearance were so severe today that you almost felt like you wanted to hide yourself from him.

As you leaned closer to the mirror to inspect your creasing concealer under your eyes, Matt walked into the room with a towel wrapped around his waist. “You look pretty,” He started, heading towards his closet to pick out an outfit. “You about ready?” You watched him through the mirror as he put on a pair of boxers, feeling a lump form in your throat at how undeniably beautiful he looked. You were hit with the realization that his looks so clearly outshined your own, and hated the idea of other people recognizing that whenever you two went out together.

Trying to get the negative thoughts out of your mind so that he wouldn’t have reason to worry, you cleared your throat. “Uh, yeah I am. I just have to get dressed.” After buttoning his jeans, he looked at you through the mirror and smiled warmly. “Everything okay baby?” He must have noticed the tension in your brow, or the slight downturn of your lips, but you nodded reassuringly. “Yeah of course, I’m just not really feeling my makeup.” You added a chuckle to the end of your sentence, hoping to make him believe that it was just a light hearted confession. He walked over to you and pressed a kiss to your forehead. “I think it looks perfect.” He said softly into your hair, and you forced a smile onto your lips.

You walked over to the clothing rack that Matt had put in his room for you so that you could leave a variety of your clothes at his place for when you stayed over. Scanning your options, you skipped over all of your more bold pieces — knowing your head space was far too vulnerable tonight to mess around with any of them — and decided on your favourite black Skims dress. It had never failed you in the past, and you tried to reassure yourself with this fact as you removed your oversized t-shirt and replaced it with the soft dress.

Your positive attitude was gone just as quickly as it arrived once you began to examine yourself in the mirror. From the front your body looked okay, but as soon as you turned to the side you grimaced at the sight of your bloated stomach from the massive deli sandwich Matt had bought you for lunch earlier. The thin, tight material of the dress did nothing but accentuate the swell in your lower stomach, and you wanted to scream out in frustration. Maybe if your hair and makeup had worked in your favour the bloating wouldn’t have bothered you so much, but because everything that could have possibly gone wrong had gone wrong, it was enough to cause tears to well in your eyes.

As you stood in front of the mirror fighting the tears from spilling over, Matt noticed the sheen in your eyes and your wobbly chin and raced over to you. “Hey hey hey! What’s wrong baby?” He asked, his voice laced with a hint of panic. You shook your head rapidly. “Nothing, it’s nothing. I’m just being stupid.” Your voice was thick with emotion, and it made you even more angry with yourself as you knew this whole thing was stupid. “It’s clearly not nothing if you’re crying, Y/n.” He turned you around so that you were face to face with him; concern evident in his furrowed brow and racing eyes. “Tell me what’s going on sweetheart.” His voice was soft, and he rubbed his hands along your bare arms reassuringly.

You sighed and brought a shaky hand to your eye; trying to dab away any fallen tears in a weak attempt to not ruin your shitty makeup. “It’s stupid Matt.” You wined, not wanting to tell him your insecurities out of fear that speaking of them might make him suddenly see them just as clearly as you did. “Y/n, please.” He begged, desperate to try and help you. Groaning, you finally obliged; your voice barely above a whisper as you confessed. “I just hate everything about the way I look today, that’s all.” Matt stared at you with a blank expression as he took in your words, and you waited in silence — nervous to hear his response.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Y/n.” He sounded almost angry in his response, and it caused you to bite your lip nervously as you shrugged. “Nothing turned out the way I wanted it to when I got ready today, plus you’ve been feeding me too much lately and it’s been making me bloated.” You explained further, and watched as his eyes travelled from your face down to your body. “Baby, you look absolutely beautiful.” He said, and you rolled your eyes. “You have to say that, it’s one of the unwritten rules of being someone’s boyfriend.” A dry laugh escaped your lips, and Matt moved his hand to the back of your head.

“You think I’m lying?” He asked, his tone of voice mildly threatening and absolutely serious. So serious in fact, that the weak smile left your lips and you could do nothing but stare blankly at his face; unsure of how you should answer. He tilted his head quizzically, clearly still waiting for a response. Tentatively, you nodded your head yes as a singular tear fell down your cheek. Matt’s eyes softened. “Oh baby.” He breathed before pressing his lips softly against yours. He wrapped his arms around your waist as he began deepening the kiss — turning it into one filled with passion without losing its gentle nature. Delicately, his tongue skated across your lips; requesting access to your mouth without demanding it. You released a soft whimper from his tender movements as his hands travelled down to your ass; massaging it gently through the thin material of your dress.

“Turn around.” He ordered against your mouth, and you immediately obliged. Now facing the mirror, he stood behind you with his hands planted firmly on your shoulders. Into your ear, he spoke. “You are the most beautiful person that I have ever laid my eyes on, and I need you to know that.” His words — overflowing with emotion — caused goosebumps to cover your skin. Using both of his hands, he grabbed each thin strap of your dress and slowly peeled them off your shoulders. Not stopping there, he used his grip on the straps to pull the dress completely off your body — creating a puddle of dark material at your feet.

“Look at you, Y/n.” His hands moved across your upper body; exploring every square inch of your skin as he held you in front of the mirror. You shuddered from his touch; his hands lighting your body on fire as they glided across it. He grabbed your breasts in both hands, massaging them slowly as he planted a kiss to the top of your shoulder. “You might see flaws when you look at yourself in the mirror, but I don’t. And I never have.” His hands moved down to my hips, squeezing them slightly. “I think I just have to show you what I see, and then maybe you’ll change your mind.”

Dropping one more kiss to your flushed skin, he walked you forward a few steps towards the mirror, before using his hands to guide you to the floor. Knees tucked into your chest, he sat behind you and pulled all of your hair over to one side before leaning in to whisper into your ear. “Open your legs baby.” You gulped before obliging, sliding your legs apart but keeping your knees bent. Your bare chest rose and fell rapidly, beginning to feel overwhelmed by the intensity of the situation. You titled your head to the side out of embarrassment of having your legs spread in front of the mirror — with only your small pink thong covering you. Noticing this, Matt brought a hand to your jaw, grabbing it firmly and straightening your head back in the direction of the mirror. “You are breathtaking, Y/n. I don’t want you to look away.” As he spoke, he moved his hand from your jaw down to your breast, holding it firmly as his thumb swirled around your sensitive nipple. “Keep your eyes on the mirror.” He whispered before taking his free hand and sliding your panties to the side.

Your eyes planted firmly on your glistening core as he used two fingers to spread it open. You watched as your arousal began leaking from your slit, and your jaw dropped in ecstasy as he collected the fluid on his fingers. His eyes connected to yours in the mirror as he brought his wet fingers up to your lips. Confused, you furrowed your brow. “Even your insides are beautiful. Taste yourself.” He urged, and his words stirred up something within you. Slowly, you opened your mouth and immediately felt his fingers press against your tongue. You wrapped your lips around his middle and ring fingers; sucking your own sweet juices off of them and moaning at the heat of the scenario as his eyes burned into yours through the reflection in the mirror.

“Good girl.” He praised once you released his fingers, before moving them back down to your throbbing core. As soon as his fingers connected with your clit, you released a breathy moan and screwed your eyes shut in relief. “Open your eyes sweetheart, and look at how fucking beautiful you look.” He demanded sweetly into your ear, making it impossible for you to even consider disobeying him. Through your droopy eyelids you watched, mouth agape, as his ringed fingers massaged your bundle of nerves; their circular motions hypnotizing you. You also took a moment to admire your body as it writhed in anticipatory pleasure — your sweat-coated breasts heaving as you gasped for breath. Matt rested his chin on your shoulder — his left hand still caressing your tits — as he watched in awe at your various expressions of pleasure.

“Look at your pretty pink pussy, baby. And look how unbelievably beautiful you look when you bite your lip. God, I could cum in my pants just from watching you feel good.” His words were equal parts sweet and filthy in your ears, and they added to the pleasure you felt building up within you. Suddenly, his left hand moved from your tits down your stomach and towards your core. You watched in awe as he swirled two fingers around your opening teasingly, and practically screamed out once he slammed them into you. Wasting no time, his curled fingers pumped in and out of you rapidly, hitting your spongey g-spot each time.

“F-fuck Matty, feels so good.” You managed to get out through breathless moans. “Mmm.” He purred, “Looks so good too, doesn’t it? Your pretty juices like honey dripping from my fingers. Tell me how pretty it looks.” You whined before obliging. “I-it’s so pretty.” I watched his reflection as he shook his head and smirked. “Good baby, but it’s not just your juices. It’s you that’s so pretty. Say it.” As he waited for your response, he nipped delicately at your neck. “I-I’m s-so pretty.” Your voice was shaky as your mind was overtaken by your impending orgasm that was very quickly approaching. You felt Matt’s lips turn up in a smile against your neck. “That’s right. And just wait till you cum princess, there’s nothing more beautiful than that.” His words caused your walls to flex around his pumping fingers and your stomach tensed from the familiar feeling.

“G-gonna cum baby.” You cried out, tucking your chin into your shoulder and arching your back off of his chest as your orgasm began to roll through your body. Suddenly, Matt pulled his fingers out of your core and grabbed onto your throat, gently straightening your head up once again. “Watch yourself cum, Y/n.” He rasped into your ear and you watched through blurred vision as your fucked out face contorted into one filled with pleasure as your orgasm tore through your body. Still rubbing your clit at full tilt, Matt filled the space between you both with muttered praises; his eyes firmly planted to your face as he almost fell apart himself from the view in front of him.

Once you came down from your high, Matt wrapped both of his arms tightly around you; leaving small kisses on your skin as he waited for you to catch your breath. “I don’t ever want you to have negative thoughts about yourself like that ever again.” He stated as he rubbed your soft skin gently. Still waiting for the fog around your fucked out brain to clear, you could do nothing more than hum in acknowledgment. “I mean it, Y/n. I get that having insecurities is normal, but, when I look at you, I swear to god I can’t see a single flaw.” Your eyes fluttered open and connected with his in the mirror. “You are perfect, Y/n. And I’m not just saying that.” Giving him a small smile, your heart did leaps in your chest at his heartfelt testament. The sincerity in his voice was undeniable, and when you took a moment to look at yourself again in the mirror, you realized that maybe he did have a point.

Even through your makeup, your cheeks were filled with a lively glow that wasn’t there before. Your eyes seemed to glisten in the light, and your lips were swollen and pink. You would have expected your hair to be messed up, but Matt’s hands running through it had actually made it fall exactly they way you had hoped it would when you were styling it. You still struggled with your bloating, but flashbacks of your body squirming sensually under Matt’s touch — and the residual satisfaction of your orgasm a reminder of just how good your body could feel — allowed you to find a new appreciation for it. Feeling a lump form in your throat just as it had when you tried on your black dress — this time for an entirely different reason — you gazed adoringly at Matt. “Thank you baby.” You whispered before turning around and planting a deep kiss to his lips.

“It was my pleasure, sweetheart.” He responded, both of his hands on either side of your face so he could stare at it up close. “You think you’re up for dinner still? Because let me tell you, you’re on a whole other level of sexy when you’re shovelling steak into your mouth.” You erupted into giggles at this, and wrapped your arms around his neck. “I’m serious.” He continued, his voice filled with laughter. “You think I have blue balls now, just wait until after dinner. They might explode.” You shoved his shoulders playfully at this, and hoisted yourself up to your feet to find your discarded dress. “You add a lobster to my dinner plate, and I might just be able to help you out with that on our way back.”

─ ⊹ ⊱ ☆ ⊰ ⊹ ─

[minswriting]

spencer reid + car sex after he got out of prison yes please!!

nsfw | mdni | spencer reid x reader | car sex, p in v, degradation, unprotected sex

“pull over,” spencer said with irritation in his voice as you drove.

it had been a few weeks since spencer had gotten out of prison. the bau had just finished another case and it was a bit of a difficult one. you were driving back to quantico with only spencer, a decision made by you to get spencer alone for awhile.

your relationship with spencer was complicated to say the least. you guys had a sort of colleagues-with-feelings-but-don’t-want-to-admit-it-so-you-opt-for-sex-instead sort of situation going on. so you had taken the opportunity for finally have time alone as you guys hadn’t had time to really be alone since before he went to prison.

“is everything okay?” you asked as you pulled the car over on the empty highway and put it into park. you turned your head to look at spencer, who just leaned in to capture your lips in a desperate kiss. you let out a small noise of surprise before kissing spencer back, placing a hand on his cheek.

“need to feel you,” spencer murmured, his hot breath on your lips. you nodded your head, unbuckling your seatbelt as spencer did the same.

it didn’t take long before your pants were pulled off and your panties were pulled to the side. spencer’s pants were unzipped enough to let his cock out as you sunk down onto his cock. the both of you let out moans as you relished in being full again. it has been far too long since you had been with spencer and your body craved for his cock.

“i missed this,” spencer groaned, keeping you still for a moment as he took in inside of you. you instinctively clenched your walls around his cock, causing him to hiss in pleasure.

“i missed you so much,” you murmured shakily as you leaned forward to rest your head on spencer’s shoulder. his arms wrapped around your waist.

“i missed you too, baby,” spencer replied softly as he held you. and after a few moments of silence, he began to thrust up into you, causing you to moan in his ear. “i thought about this every single day since i got arrested,” he grunted into your ear as he moved his hips. “dreamt about your dripping pussy and how you’re always so wet for me like a bitch in heat.”

you moaned at spencer’s words and the feeling of his cock inside of you, your eyes fluttering shut. spencer hadn’t been one to degrade you often during sex. but when he did, it never failed to turn you on. especially because the words just sounded oh-so-good leaving spencer’s lips. “i love your cock,” you said, bouncing your hips up and down to meet spencer’s thrusts. “always makes me feel so good.”

“yeah?” he asked. “did you touch yourself while thinking about me while i was locked up?”

you nodded your head, moaning loudly as spencer gave a particularly harsh thrust. “yes!” you whined. “oh fuck. fucked myself so much wishing it was you, spence.”

“naughty naughty girl,” spencer replied, burying his head in between your neck and shoulder. “who knew you were such a fucking slut?”

the sex was desperate and a bit awkward due to being in such a confined space. but it felt amazing nevertheless. having not had sex in the last few weeks, months even, it was not hard for either of you to guess that the other was extremely pent up. but you knew especially that spencer was.

“such a slut for you, spence,” you moaned into his ear, grinding your hips against his. “only you.” your walls clenched around his cock purposefully to make your point.

spencer let out a low groan. he brought a hand to your hair, gently moving your head so that he could kiss your lips properly. the kiss was hot, desperate, and definitely hard to maintain with you bouncing on his cock and his thrusts up into you.

it didn’t take long for you guys to cum at all. spencer had brought his hand down to your pussy, rubbing your clit to help you reach your peak as he began cumming inside of you with moans that went into your mouth. you began to cum as well, thighs shaking and back arching as you came on spencer’s cock.

and when you both were finished, you stared at one another for a few moments. an unspoken exchange of “i love you’s” and “thank you’s” that you don’t expect to hear out loud any time soon. because in the end you’re still colleagues. and adding feelings into the mists would just complicate things.

after a bunch of maneuvering and awkward elbows in random places, you had gotten your pants back on and back into the drivers seat while spencer tucked himself away and zipped himself up. the both of you went back to as you were before, pretending as though nothing happened.

[ao3commentoftheday]

On a whim and because I was momentarily taken by a new fandom I had made a requests accepted fic where I took in requests. From a few requests I wrote I got two requests from the same person and wrote them but they were so annoying because all the response I got was "I want this to be longer"

That was something that added to me eventually not being as into the fandom anymore and so I haven't written the other requests for a long while.

It's part many things and is also because the fandom is very very new so the characters' personalities aren't that known yet so I'm not quite sure how to characterize them in my writing. So I feel a bit guilty about not writing the other requests and regret completing the request of the disrespectful person first, I didn't know they'd be like that until they commented that reaction to what I wrote.

Sorry for the ramble but TLDR how does a writer handle feelings of guilt from not completing requests quickly? Like I think it's been months now.

... and it's been even more months since you dropped this ask in my inbox, sorry!

To start with, I'm just going to flag for folks that you should not post "I'm taking requests" works on AO3. It's against the Terms of Service, so if it gets reported, the PAC team will ask you to remove it. You don't say here where you posted yours, but I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on that count.

I'm really sorry that your experience with writing for requests went kind of sour on you. That's never a fun time. I can see how it would sour you on the practice, especially in conjunction with the fandom being new and the characters still not very fleshed out.

When it comes to disappointing people, you kind of have to pick your battles. Human beings these days encounter thousands of people in any given week, thanks to the internet, and we can't hold ourselves to the same standards of caring for a person we've interacted with one via a screen and the people we've built up relationships with.

That isn't to say it's alright to be a dick to people. Wil Wheaton has been very clear about that. It's just that carrying guilt over something you haven't done for a stranger is very different from carrying guilt over something you haven't done for your partner or your best friend.

In my experience, the best way to move forward is just to reply to the message that gave you the request and say, "I'm sorry, I don't think I can work on this right now. Please feel free to share it with another author." You can add in that you hope they find someone. You can change the "right now" to "after all". You can make the message as long or as short as you want, but just include those 2 ideas:

I'm not going to fulfill this request

if you're still wanting to read this thing, ask someone else to write it (or write it yourself)

The guilt is because you know that someone wanted a story and they haven't received it. What you don't know is whether they still want that story, whether they specifically want it from you and only you, and to what degree they were invested in the idea versus just throwing something out there on a whim.

If you do still want to write the stories, remember that fandom is a hobby not a job. Fic requests aren't assignments. You don't have any due dates. Inspiration comes and goes as it pleases, and sometimes we bite off more than we can chew.

Be kind to yourself, anon. Write the stories that interest you. Give away the ones that don't. Allow yourself the time you need to finish what you want to do. 💗

[warnersister]

How the peaky boys react when dating a girl with a praise kink (nsfw) -> headcannon

Goes without saying, nsfw warning

Find the request here, sorry it took so long

Tommy🪖

🪖Tommy had you figured out before you’d figured yourself out.

🪖He knew what was going on in your head before your did.

🪖You were working late one Friday at the Garrison, of course many working men joyously engaging in Friday night drinking and drunkenness while their wives whittled wistfully back home.

🪖You weren’t expecting the Blinders tonight, but of course you’d always find room for the Peaky boys in this establishment, regardless if you were chocker with customers that the bar didn’t really have the capacity for. The door chimed and you spun, peering to see if you had the numbers to accommodate the x amount of customers you had walking through your door.

🪖”Evening boys, meeting or drinks?” You ask, readying yourself to go clean the business Roman that was wordlessly their property. “Just drinks tonight, love” Tommy answered with a small smile and you nod, placing your hands on your hips; balled into fists while you ponder around to find their empty table.

🪖You notice a table of rowdy youngsters occupying the usual Shelby spot and you narrow your eyes at them, internally questioning if you had the inner morals to boot paying customers out of their seats.

🪖”Be a good girl and get us a booth please, sweetheart” Tommy asks, well instructs, as he lights up another cigarette.

🪖He noticed the way your eyes darkened at his request and your lips parted slightly. You nodded. “Of course Tommy, give me a moment lads” you say, heading to the young gentleman to ask them to either head to the open seats at the bar or get gone.

🪖"hiya lads, sorry to bother.” You say as you approach the lot who look at you in question “but I’m afraid we need this booth, happy to serve you up at the bar or I’m sure another will open soon” you wince, apologetically. One scoffs. “Why should we? We’re paying customers?” He asks, beginning to instigate somewhat of an issue, when Tommy swoops in “I believe she asked you nicely” he grunts, and it was almost awe-strucking watching how fast the boys scampered out the door with mediocre apologies.

🪖Thomas wanted to test his small hypothesis again, placing a gentle hand on your lower back “such a good lass to your old Tom, aren’t you?” He hums and he watches as your jaw slackens and you swallow on your own saliva, beginning to stumble around a response. “My pleasure, Tom”

🪖And then a few months later, when he’d taken you out a couple of times you were more widely known as Tommy’s girl than you were your own name.

🪖It was again a Friday evening, usual crowd shuffling to their places and so were the boys.

🪖“evening boys” you smile, handing an older man his shandy as he makes his way back to his missus who was still sipping on her gin.

🪖“evening sweetheart” Tommy smiles, leaning across the bar to peck your lips as the rest of the boys head to their normal spot.

🪖business as usual

🪖you begin pouring their beers automatically, following Tommy to the table with umpteen pints and of course an apple juice for John, whom you’d cut off from alcohol.

🪖“good girl” Tommy applauds as you hand them their drinks, quiet enough that the rest of his rough crowd didn’t hear but loud enough for you to become unsteady on your feet.

🪖you didn’t know when you’d agreed to go home with Tommy. You don’t even remember locking the door to the Garrison. But now he had you buried deep beneath him as he rutted into you and there was nothing you really cared about more right now. If there was a problem you can deal with it when you were finished.

🪖he was trying to coax it out of you. Trying to coax out the fact that you revelled in it when he praised you. And it got him off to see that when other blokes such as Harry called you a ‘good lass’ for a decent shift, you didn’t bat an eyelid.

🪖“Come on love, got one more in you haven’t you?” You shook your head at his question, almost hoping that he’d let you rest after your third. “C’mon sweetheart, don’t you want to be a good girl for your Tommy?” He asks and you nod up at him through dazed eyes. “Hmm?” He asks, holding your jaw still with one hand while the other held him up above you. “Please. Please Tommy. Wanna be good for you” you mumble out, and he smirks - rutting into you at yet again, another relentless pace.

🪖”that’s it. Such a good girl f’me. So so good” he praises as your moans progressively get louder as you mewl beneath him.

🪖and eventually, when you’d both calmed down, he looked at you and smirked “good girl aren’t you?”

🪖”shut up Tom.”

Alfie🧸

🧸Eats that shit up, no crumbs, licks the plate clean.

🧸already kind of babies you, he doesn’t mean too. You’re a few years his younger and as your husband he sees it as his job to protect and provide for you while doting and taking care of you like any good man should.

🧸then one night he comes home a bit late from the bakery, readying to apologise when he’d noticed you’d just finished cooking dinner. “Well here I was all soppy and ready to apologise to you, yeah. And no, my good little girls just gone and made dinner!” He says, almost chuffed. You giggle and plate up the food, sitting across from him as he begins to eat.

🧸”what ‘y doing over there, then?” He scoffs “c’mere.” He instructs as you move to sit in his lap and he relishes in the meal you’d prepared “you’re so good to your old man, aren’t you?” He hums “so so good” he exclaims, only trying to show his appreciation but he noticed your pupils dilate at his words. He brushes it off, nothing major.

🧸later in the evening his sciatica was playing up so you wordlessly left the room to go draw him a bath with some new salts you’d bought from your elderly neighbour whom your husband refused to speak to on account of her being ‘a witch’ as he said.

🧸”oh you are a good’un aren’t you, poppet?” He hums, as he enters the room, allowing you to help him undress and get into the bath, afterwards preparing to make your leave and get him some medicine from the cupboard downstairs.

🧸”and where do you think you’re going?“ he questions, and you raise a brow “to get you some medicine” “I need no such thing. Now get in here w’me.” He grunts and you do as he says, never one to turn down a good relaxing soak in the bath with your husband.

🧸”there you are, good girl aren’t you? Always listening to your old man. What did I do to deserve you. So perfect” he rambled, and doesn’t notice the ever hazing glint in your eye and when he finally looks down at you he narrows his eyes and finally realised what that look was.

🧸his praises got you going.

🧸”tell y’what would make y’old man feel so much better,” he hums and you cock your head ready to help his pain ease “if you be a good girl f’me and give us a distraction” he suggests and you see the smirk unveiling under his beard, as he reaches for your thigh to pull you over his lap and to settle atop of him. “Seeing as you asked so nicely” you mumbled into his shoulder, as you began to rock against him.

🧸”there you go, there’s a good girl” he says as you come undone on top of him and collapse onto his chest, stroking your back gently with one hand and holding you close with the other. “Y’want to move, poppet he asks?” And you shake your head, eyes closed as you recover.

🧸 as soon as his sciatica pain eases up, he was going to abuse that little trick as often as he could.

Arthur🍺

🍺poor baby needs just as much praise as you do. Thinks he’s a shitty partner

🍺but god when he found out it was like finding the fucking Magna Carta.

🍺it was his ticket out of everything. Came home drunk? “I’m so sorry, you’re so good for putting up with me” In a fight? “you’re such a good wife for patching me up” literally anything you’re not agreeing on? “Oh my good girl”

🍺he’d found out when you were already buried beneath his, mewling as he took out his frustrations on you rather than the man he was originally destined to kill that day.

🍺”y’better feel good about y’self.” He grunts “man’s life was saved cause of you, you and this fucking insatiability.” He thrusts and you groan “please” you number “hmm? Feel good? Little saint you are, fuckin’ angel. Stopped me killin’ a man. Wanna get me into heaven do y’angel? Huh? That’s where you’re sending me?” He asks and you groan louder.

🍺”yeah, cause you’re such a good girl aren’t you?” And that’s when you let out the most gluteal pornographic moan that almost stopped his movements, instead it pushes the throttle and sends the both of you over the edge.

🍺”god Id’ve spared hundreds of men if it meant I got to hear that from you”

John🥃

🥃The Shelby family were enjoying an afternoon at the Garrison. Given, it was incredibly backed with gang members and people dissimilar; still the atmosphere was was light and full of laughter.

🥃you’d volunteered for the Saturday shift seeing as Harry needed extra help nowadays seeing as the customer numbers were ever growing.

🥃John was flirting with you, as ever. While you just rolled your eyes at his antics and offered him another drink.

🥃”blimey, I need to drop drinkin’ the hard stuff. I’m seeing an angel!” John feigned surprise, as he took his cap off his head to greet you, plopping it onto your own as he leaned in to kiss your cheek sweetly. “And I’m seeing a man who’s had one too many. I’m cutting you off” you warn, wagging a finger at him. “Well I do like a lady who takes care of her man” he smirks, but was cut off by a voice that altered the atmosphere in the bar.

🥃”I am looking for Thomas Shelby” the voice announced, and you felt uneasy; John’s face darkened as he clearly recognised the man who was a stranger to yourself. You look to the rest of his family who have a similar stature to him on their faces.

🥃”get behind the bar flower” John mumbles to you calmly, “that’s a good girl. Stay down there, sweetheart” he coos as you duck your head out of sight and into the small crawl space under the kegs.

🥃As the conversation continued, John looks over the counter to you discreetly. And your large doe eyes look back, and he could see the trust in them. He leans his hip against the oak bar edge, holding his hand over and motions for you to give him your own. You thread your hand with his, and he strokes the back of your knuckled gently; giving it a squeeze as Harry instructs them to take this out of his pub.

🥃John gives you one last reassuring squeeze of the hand before grabbing an empty beer bottle and heading out the door with his brothers. A few minutes, a couple of shouts and a gun shot the three walked back in as if nothing had happened.

🥃John leans over the bar “y’alright now, good lass” he says as you peer back up and get back up from your seat on the bar. He rests his arms against the wood and grins at you. “Let y’old John reward you f’ being such a good girl, hm?” He raises a brow and honestly expects nothing from his advance.

🥃you look at the clock on the wall and decide Harry could fend for himself for a while. You look at John and wet your lips, leaning down and grabbing his collar to bring him closer to you. “Meet me in the back”

🥃He jumped over the bar.

Bonnie🥊

🥊revels in it without really meaning too.

🥊also uses it to his advantage. He doesn’t mean it, honest.

🥊you were knelt in front of him, sitting back to rest on your ankles as you wrapped his hands for his fight. “You’re so good t’me, thank you angel” he thanks, stroking your jaw with his thumb.

🥊he knew what he was doing to you. Trying to get in your head.

🥊since he’d fallen hard and fast he’d decided that you were it for him. You were his and he was yours and nothing else. Especially when you agreed to live out his gypsy fantasies with him and give up the traditional home you were so accustomed too.

🥊and he was convinced you’d make the best mum.

🥊so this little praise obsession of yours was the perfect way to sway you onto his wavelength.

🥊”you’re gonna be great tonight, Bon” you say, smiling at him comfortingly. “M nervous” he mumbles and you shake your head, holding his hands in yours “it’s gonna be fine, just go out there and do your best. I’ll always be proud of you.” You say and he seems to settle slightly. “Y’d be such a good mother, darling” he tells you, moving some loose hair out of your face and behind your ear.

🥊he notices a slight blush on your cheeks, and decides to pry. “BONNIE; TIME!” His dad shouts through the door and you tap his leg, standing up to give him his good luck kiss. Instead, he slowly walks you back until your back hits the wall, two wrapped hands caging you.

🥊 “hmm, would’y like tha’? A mammy?” He asks and you stare up at him with dazed yet wide eyes. “Oh you’d be such a good mammy. So caring, so sweet. Y’so good t’me imagine how good y’d be to a young’un.” He hums, resting one hand on your waist. “So, so good” he bumps his nose with yours. “Then I’d marry y’a.” He continues “be a good wife too. The best. Such a good girl” he coos and you audibly whine and he smiles.

🥊”y’d like that? Gonna let me make y’a mammy?” He hums, ghosting his lips over yours “BONNIE!” His dad reiterates and Bonnie huffs. “Y’can do whatever Y’want to do to me, bon” you reply hazily and he smiles as you lean up to kiss him deeply, pulling away to lean your forehead on his, hands cradling his face. “After your fight.” You nod and he raises his brows “promise?” You smile back “promise.”

🥊fastest knockout he’d ever done.

Isaiah♟️

♟️uses it against you. Purposefully

♟️defo teases you for it

♟️you’d be at the garrison, having gone accompanying your twin brother Finn and expecting to see your boyfriend there eventually when you weren’t in your usual spot at home.

♟️he’d turned up around half and hour after you had, only looking to get a drink defo not looking for you.

♟️he sees you at the bar, yet by your side was some bloke he didn’t recognise. Some six foot slime ball with his hair slicked back so far it looked like it created a permanent surprised upkeep on his eyebrows. His suit was brand new, Isaiah assumed the tag was still tucked into a pocket somewhere for him to return and scrounge in the morning.

♟️and why were you talking back?

♟️you were drinking something dark, presumably the alcohol Isaiah preferred for you not to have.

♟️had he bought it you?

♟️Isaiah stormed his way over, fully prepared to lay out the man talking to you and throw you over his shoulder and lead you straight out of the pub; but the conversation you were having with the boy stopped you.

♟️”what d’y say love, wanna get out of here?” He asked “and for the fifth time. No. My husband will be here any minute. He’s a blinder y’know?” You scoff “well he ain’t here now, is he?” He asked you when Isaiah sweeper in and pressed his gun to the man’s temple “isn’t he?” He asked, cocking it as the man before you swallowed and visibly began to sweat.

♟️”I suggest you take yourself out of this pub, out of Birmingham and fucking away from my woman.” He grunts, and the man immediately scampers. Then Isaiah looks to you, and the relief decorating your face is immediately apparent.

♟️”oh Isaiah I’m so sorry I tried to get rid of him-” you begin and then your boy begins to smile “your husband?” He asked, raising a brow cockily and you begin to rock back onto your heels “just wanted to get rid of him” you mumble, and he wraps hands around your waist and settles them on the small of your back.

♟️”you’re so good to me, aren’t you doll?” He asks, smirk growing “rejecting other men f’me?” He hums and you nod “y’know good girls get rewarded, don’t you?”

♟️or when you’re not behaving as he’d want you too.

♟️”where d’y think you’re going?“ he asks as you open the door.

♟️”Ada invited me for drinks” “y’not going, not safe. Not w’them Italians crawling round” he instructs, expecting you to shrug off your coat and come join him in the lounge. He turns but hears the door click shut. And when he’d looked, you were gone.

♟️he was fucking fuming, livid, murderous.

♟️and when you’d shown back home at 2 in the morning, hiccuping, he was already stood at the door with his arms crossed.

♟️you smiled “hi Isaiah” you giggled, but he didn’t say anything as he walked you backwards and your back hit the wall. “In what fucking world does a woman not listen to her man?” He asked and you were immediately silenced. “Hmm?” He asks “why did you think you could just go out without me, you know how dangerous it is” he says “well-” “good girls don’t disobey their men, d’they princess” and he noticed how you cowered and sunk into your shell.

♟️he threw you over his shoulder and carried you up the stairs, rutting into you in the bedroom more times than you could count telling you how disappointed in you he was and every time you were close to release, he’d stop and tell you why you didn’t deserve it.

♟️he loved torturing you.

Michael🎱

🎱so belittling with it.

🎱loves to use it against you whenever he can because it always means that he wins

🎱the first time he’d sussed this little predicament of yours out was when you were entertaining him while his brother dealt business with your father deep within the Cotswolds.

🎱you’d served him tea and polite conversation, talking about your purity and how much he idolised you.

🎱”and you’ve no husband?” He asked and he placed his cup on his saucer you and you straightened your posture before responding “no, no husband” you confirm and he is forced to stifle his smirk “well you’d make the perfect wife” he tells you and he notices how you swallow harshly “well that comes appreciated, mister gray” you reply and he narrows his eyes.

🎱and then when you were married and doting on him, he’d always remind you of how he impacted you.

🎱he knew just how to get to you. “Dear, go be a good girl and fix me a drink” and you’d do so. “I’ve got to go to London for the week. Be a good lass and don’t leave the house” and you wouldn’t.

🎱and sometimes he’d take you to family meetings. Personally believing that the women shouldn’t really be at these meetings. But a quick slap to the head from his mother soon sorted him out.

🎱and then he walked in on John shamelessly flirting with you, and he knew full well you weren’t meaningfully engaging with his cousin, it’s what you were taught to do from a young age. But still, you were engaging.

🎱”flirting with my woman, John?” Michael grunted, entering the room to which the former rolled his eyes “just showing her what a real man could give her” he winked at you before swaggering out of the room. “Why did you entertain him?” “I didn’t-” “thought you’d promised to be a good girl for me tonight?” And that shut you right up. The desire to be praised overpowering all.

🎱 “how ‘bout you make it up to me tonight, sweetheart?”

Finn🎞️

🎞️for his whole life, Finn has always been overshadowed by his older brothers. So being able to have so much control over you was so addictively intoxicating that he just loved to abuse his power.

🎞️and he’s at that age in his early twenties when his hormones are heightened and all he wants to do is act like a rabbit in a hutch during mating season.

🎞️and sometimes you weren’t up for it.

🎞️not until he figured you out.

🎞️he’d had you going for three rounds. Overwhelmed from how his brothers had been belittling him all day during business meetings and finally finding a vector to take it out on.

🎞️you’d come undone beneath him, very exhausted from the relentlessness of his actions, when he blurted out “fuck you’re so good at this” as he released inside of you. You mewled and whined, wrapping your legs around his waist. “Again” you mumbled and he raised his brows “you sure?” He asked and you opened his eyes as he recognised how your irises had deepened two shades and smiled giddily “well alright then”

🎞️so whenever he needed something or someone to release his frustrations on all he had to do was stroke your cheek and call you “my good girl” and you were pretty much tearing his clothes off.

🎞️and even sometimes when he’s upset he uses it to tell you just how much he appreciates you. When times are particularly hard and when he just can’t cope with situations; he’d let you hold and cradle him and rock him back and forth while silent tears sunk down his face “you’re so good to me” he’d mumble over and over again in a sleepy voice until he’d fallen asleep in your arms and you’d manoeuvred him into a comfortable position as his arms tightened around you.

Aberama🌞

🌞oh god this man is insatiable.

🌞defo calls you his ‘good girl’ and doesn’t give a fuck who hears it.

🌞likes to shelter you from everything in this horrible world, thinks it’s his job to protect and shadow you from anything. You were just a dainty young thing with no clue, someone had to step up and he decided he was the man for the job.

🌞just loved to take good care of you so those for eyes stayed innocent and undamaged. Bare and pure unlike his that were darkened and locked with such an intricately pessimistic past

🌞one day Thomas Shelby decided to pay a visit to the camp and Aberama had beckoned you over and you did as you were told, he motioned for you to lean closer as you approached him. “Need you to stay out of the way for a while sweetheart, can you do that for me, is that alright? Just until he goes?” He asks with sweet eyes. You smile and nod at him “good girl, off you go” and you were off into the woods to pick some berries for a recipe you had an idea for.

🌞eventually he’d come looking for you, find you deep into a bush trying to reach a berry that you’d just had to have but couldn’t quite get too. He’d stayed back for a while, leant against a tree while he admired you. Until he’d felt the masculine desire to aid his lady. Coming behind you and placing his hands on your waist as he leant to grab the berry for you. You’d gasped but turned to see him, smiling brightly at him. “Thank you” “anything for you” he replied, pecking your lips gently.

🌞”always willing to help my special girl” he says “can always count on you can’t I?” And the grin turns into a gaping expression, wide and heavy eyes looking at him and he’d decided he had to have you right then and there.

🌞he’d hiked the skirt of your dress up to your waist and told you how much he appreciated you as you screwed your eyes shut and threw your head back.

🌞then he’d carried your worn out, sleeping figure bridal-style back to camp with your basket selection of berries resting in his arm as he looked down at you lovingly.

[dreamwritesimagines]

The Eye of the Hurricane [22] - Newcomers

A.N: Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback, you made my day! ❤️I hope you’ll like this chapter as well, and please don’t forget to tell me what you think! ❤️

Summary: New deals mean new players.

Word Count: 2300

Pairing: MobBoss!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Violence, guns, crime, blood, explicit language, dysfunctional relationship. This is an AU, friendly reminder that I don’t condone any of the actions depicted on this story and please read with care.

Series Masterlist

You had always loved watching the city at night.

When you were little, after making sure everyone else at home were asleep, you would sneak out of your room to get to the terrace, and sit there for hours, watching the glimmering stars and the city lights. Even after you grew up, it still filled you with a sense of peace-

Well.

Until now.

You were so lost in your thoughts that you only noticed Bucky’s presence in the living room when he touched your arm to hold out a cup of coffee. You paused for a moment, then shook your head.

“No thank you,” you murmured and he put it on the coffee table, then clicked his tongue.

“You didn’t sleep last night?”

“I couldn’t,” you managed to say. “I know I said I’d come to bed, but…”

A silence fell upon you before Bucky heaved a sigh from behind you.

“Charm, last night—”

“Was the proof, wasn’t it?” you asked. “He doesn’t believe in me.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It makes it official.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s official or not.”

You shook your head again and he clasped his hands over your shoulders, your eyes fluttering close for a moment despite your better judgement, a warmth spreading over your skin before you opened your eyes again.

“The therapist said open communication,” he told you, making you roll your eyes.

“You don’t even believe in all that.”

“You do,” he said. “And he said we’re supposed to talk about our feelings so, how do you feel?”

“I want to kill Ian.”

“I don’t think that counts as a feeling, Charm.”

“Not with that attitude, it doesn’t.”

A small chuckle spilled from his lips.

“Listen, you know I have no problems with killing him, but you told me yourself that it’s not the way to putting you on top. Besides—” he paused and shook his head. “Your father named him his heir, and he’s not an idiot. He would know that we killed him, which is fine by me but…”

“That’d officially put an end to the truce,” you finished his sentence for him. “It’d make me look just like Ian, and then no one would back me up because the whole reason why we’re doing this is to keep the truce.”

“Not the whole reason.”

You turned your head to look at him and he scoffed a laugh.

“Come on Charm,” he said. “You can tell everyone else whatever you want but part of the reason why you want that crown is because you want power. It’s not the worst thing in the world.”

You swallowed thickly and turned around to see him better.

“I want to keep the peace.”

“Never said you didn’t,” he murmured. “But someone has to be on that throne while keeping the peace.”

You ran a hand over your face.

“The meeting is next month with the rest of the bosses,” you said. “If my father named him heir, it means he gave him some sort of responsibility, something to give him the opportunity to show off. A part of the territory, or…”

“He wouldn’t give him a part of the territory,” Bucky told you. “Not with HYDRA attacking every territory. He can’t afford any security flaws.”

You arched a brow. “Shipment?”

“Shipment,” Bucky said with a nod of his head and you tapped your lips with your finger, stepping away from him.

“That could make things easier for me,” you said. “And to make sure he makes a mistake.”

Bucky grinned at you.

“You know how it works,” he said. “A lot of things could go wrong with the shipments.”

The question you wanted to ask him was on the tip of your tongue but before you could open your mouth, his phone started vibrating and he took a look at the screen, then held it up.

“Speaking of shipment,” he said. “Excuse me.”

He answered the phone and walked away from you, and you bit inside your cheek, massaging your temples. Your headache from last night was getting heavier by the minute the more you thought about it, so you pressed your palms on your eyes, then dropped your hands.

“I need a nap,” you muttered to yourself and made your way to the bedroom with Alpine following you.

                                            *

When you woke up from your nap to the nonstop vibration of your phone, it was already afternoon and as the note on bedside table told you, Bucky had already left for work. You rubbed at your eyes and grabbed your phone, pressing your lips together when you saw your father’s name flashing on the screen. For a couple of seconds, you considered not answering but the old habits were hard to shake off so you touched the screen and took the phone to your ear.

“Y/N, sweetheart,” he said. “I hope you weren’t busy?”

You bit inside your cheek, commanding yourself to be calm.

“Father.”

“We could barely talk last night,” he said. “How are you?”

“How do you think?” you asked back and he heaved a sigh.

“I’d rather it if we didn’t have this conversation on the phone,” he said, making you let out a dry chuckle.

“I agree.”

“But I’d like to invite you and Bucky for dinner whenever you’re free this week,” he said. “Your aunt is back in the city, she arrived this morning and she’s so excited to see you again.”

You rolled your eyes and made a face.

“She said that?”

“Of course. Despite some disagreements, we’re still a family and she knows it. So does Ian.”

You dragged the tip of your tongue over your teeth, willing yourself not to take the bait.

“I know you’re angry,” he said, making you raise your brows. “But in time, you will see that I’m looking out for you.”

“Oh do you now?”

“Y/N…”

“I’ll ask Bucky when he’s free this week,” you told him. “I can let your assistant know.”

“You can just let me know,” he told you. “It’d be a nice change, getting a phone call from you. Just saying.”

You bit back the retort and threw your shoulders back.

“Is there anything else, father?” you asked, your voice completely calm and he paused for a moment before heaving a sigh.

“No,” he said. “See you at dinner then.”

“Sure,” you said and hung up, then threw the phone on the other side of the bed with a groan. Alpine meowed from her spot on the floor and you hung your head off the side of the bed to see her better.

“Fathers, am I right?” you asked and she blinked at you, then made her way to you to plop down next to you. You reached out to scratch at her head and heaved a sigh.

“Do you want to come to that dinner?”

Alpine meowed again and ran back to her spot, making you click your tongue.

“Of course you don’t,” you said and sat up, then pushed yourself off the bed. “Very well then. Let’s text auntie Becca and Leila to see what they’re up to and if they want to go shopping with me. Some distraction can’t hurt.”

                                                   *

As it turned out, Becca and Leila were busy; Becca had therapy while Leila had to drop by her office to take care of some last minute changes. You did manage to distract yourself a little with shopping, and once you got bored you decided to pick up sandwiches from the shop you knew Bucky liked, then told your driver to take you to Bucky’s office.

When you got to Bucky’s office, his assistant greeted you and stood up.

“He’s about to be finished with his meeting, Mrs. Barnes,” she said as Bucky’s laughter reached outside, making you tilt your head.

“Sounds like a fun meeting.”

She offered you an apologetic smile.

“The sign of a deal gone well,” she said. “Miss Williams was already sure of herself when she walked in, I’m not surprised."

That made you arch a brow.

“Miss Williams?” you asked and she nodded.

“Mr. Barnes’ appointment,” she said, motioning inside and you nodded.

“Ah,” you said, your stomach doing an unpleasant flip for some reason before you threw your shoulders back. “I’m in a bit of a hurry actually, I’ll just—”

You didn’t even bother finishing your sentence as you walked to the door and knocked, then stepped inside and closed the door behind you. Bucky’s smile widened when he saw you and the woman sitting on the armchair across from his desk looked over her shoulder, letting you see her face.

Oh.

Well, apparently this Miss Williams was not only funny, but also very beautiful.

What you were feeling couldn’t possibly be jealousy of course, perhaps just mild irritation but you didn’t dwell on it as Bucky stood up to walk to you.

“Hi sweetheart,” he said, pressing a kiss on your temple. “Anna, this is Y/N, my wife. Y/N, this is Anna, our new shipment manager.”

You willed a smile on your face and walked to her as she stood up as well, then offered your hand.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too, Mrs. Barnes,” she said with a smile as she shook your hand. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“So have I,” you said as Bucky went to sit behind his desk again and you took the armchair across from her. “Sam speaks very highly of you, Miss Williams.”

“Please call me Anna,” she said with a wave of her hand. “And I’m forever in Sam’s debt. He was the first person to actually give me a chance in all this.”

“Sam has a talent for finding the best people for the job,” Bucky said, making Anna grin.

“I’ll make sure to tell him that.”

“No no, don’t,” Bucky told her. “He will hold it over my head forever.”

You bit inside your cheek, trying to shake off the discomfort pulling at your stomach before you crossed your legs.

“Oh but I must tell him,” Anna teased him. “He’s my first reference after all. There has to be some loyalty.”

“Can I by any chance buy your loyalty?”

“I wouldn’t be standing here if anyone could buy my loyalty,” Anna said with a grin, making Bucky chuckle.

“Very well then.”

It wasn’t jealousy.

Of course it wasn’t, you and Bucky weren’t even together.

In any case, you were irritated because this was a business decision and Bucky had decided to hire her without so much as your input, that was all.

That had to be it.

Anna’s phone beeped and she took a look at the screen, then gasped.

“Oh I completely lost the track of time!” she said, jumping on her feet. “I had another meeting, I’m so sorry.”

“Not a problem,” Bucky said, standing up as well. “So my people will send your people the details then.”

“That sounds good,” she said and shook his hand. “Looking forward to doing business with you, Bucky.”

First name basis.

Great.

“And it was a pleasure to meet you,” she told you and you nodded, giving her a smile.

“The pleasure is all mine.”

“I’ll see you later then,” she told Bucky and walked out of the office, then closed the door behind her. You tried to get rid of the bitter taste in your mouth, then cleared your throat, shifting your weight.

“The new shipment manager?” you asked and Bucky nodded.

“She’s a genius,” he told you, making you arch a brow. “Seriously, I thought Sam was exaggerating it, but apparently he downplayed it.”

You picked at a piece of lint on your dress, humming.

“I thought I was going to be involved in the business decisions,” you said, making him frown slightly.

“Yeah but this has nothing to do with your father’s business,” he said. “Or the plan. It’s just shipment, and I killed the last guy because he tried to kill me. You were there.”

“Right.”

“Sam vouched for her,” he reminded you and you shrugged your shoulders.

“Yeah I know, it’s just…” you trailed off and shook your head. “Never mind.”

“Charm.”

“I just think it’s funny you had no problem involving me when it was a guy, and now that it’s a very hot woman, you decided not to involve me.”

“That’s not what it’s—are you actually jealous?” he asked as if the mere idea was ridiculous and you let out a small laugh.

“Jealous?” you repeated. “Get over yourself Buck. You told me I would be involved in the business decisions, you can’t blame me for questioning whether it has changed.”

He gave you a chiding look.

“It hasn't,” he said. “Sam vouched for her, and it’s just one shipment right now as a trial period. I can give you her file if you want.”

You rolled your eyes and shook your head.

“No, if you decided she’s good, I’m not going to muddy the waters,” you said. “Trial period it is.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “And you’re sure it’s just the business side of things?”

You scoffed.

“No, this is me telling you I desire you carnally,” you spat, making him chuckle and hold up his hands.

“Fine,” he said. “Just asking.”

“I brought you lunch but if you’re going to be like this, I’ll eat what I brought in front of you—”

“You brought lunch?” he cut you off, staring at you and you nodded.

“Yeah, why?”

“Marry me.”

“Way ahead of you on that one,” you deadpanned, then let out a laugh. “Why?”

“I haven’t eaten anything whole day,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “What did you bring?”

“Sandwiches from that shop you like.”

“Jesus, you’re amazing,” he told you and you grinned, then stood up from the armchair.

“I really am,” you told him as you walked to get the paper bags from the waiting room. “Make sure to keep that in mind, will you?”

[moondustpugh]

Okey, I just saw your re-post of the music video of expresso by Sabrina Carpenter. And it occurred to me (bc you do a great job basing fics on songs) that you should write a fic of Joe head over heals for reader based on the song of expresso. Just giving you and idea, if you don't want to is totally Okey ❤️

Espresso

Joseph Quinn x Fem!Reader

Summary: Joe's thinking about you every night. Is it that sweet? You guess so.

Author's Note: To celebrate 300 followers, here's a little gift. Thank you all for the love! Currently, I have been obsessed with this song and Sabrina. So, I'm so glad that you requested this! Thank you for this! Enjoy! :)

Disclaimer: 18+, smut

Wordcount: 2.1K

It was midnight. 

Joe had been tossing and turning for about an hour already, and he couldn’t seem to sleep at all. He took a deep breath and turned his body so that he was laying on his back and gazed up at the ceiling. The light from the lamp post outside slightly reflected through the crack of his window curtains. The night was quiet, and his mind kept pondering about the thought of you. 

“You’re so beautiful, you know that?” Joe whispered through your bare skin as he left repeated kisses on your bare back. 

You giggled softly, looking over your shoulder. You were laying on your stomach, and Joe had moved himself closer to you. His fingers gently tugging on the duvet to expose your bare back, his lips finding your soft skin. He planted soft kisses all over your back, his long lashes tickled your skin as his fingers stroked your back softly. 

“I can’t get enough of you, I swear.” Joe murmured. 

Chuckling softly, you turned your body to face him. Joe hovered over you as you pulled the duvet closer to your chest. He grinned happily as he leaned down and kissed you softly. His hands slowly slid the duvet away from your naked body and his hands roamed your sides. A small moan escaped your lips as he parted from the kiss and trailed his lips down and traced the line of your jaw. Then, his lips found your neck as he sucked on the skin lightly, making you moan again in his ear. 

“God, I love that sound.” He murmured through the kiss. 

“Hmm…” Smiling through the kiss, you curled your fingers through his hair and pulled him down close to you. 

Joe pressed his face on your chest, planting a soft kiss on it. If anyone would ask him, he would prefer to stay in your arms forever. He could happily stay here and just indulge in every part of you. However, that was not how life works. So now, he was laying in his bed alone and couldn’t sleep at night because all he could think about was you. All he could think about was your soft skin under his touch. The sounds you would make in his ear, and your soft lips on his skin and his lips. 

God, he was so head over heels. 

He didn’t even realize it until now. You were running in his mind 24/7 and when he tried to push the thought of you away, he only missed you even more. Grabbing his phone from the bedside table, he saw that it was 12:30 am already. Pursing his lips, he opened up his messages and stared at the screen for a moment. 

Still awake?

He sent the message and waited. After a few minutes, he saw the three bubbles popping up on the screen. A smile immediately tugged on his lips. 

You were working late because you had some reports that still needed to finish. Your mind has been somewhere else, and you have been trying so hard not to stress too much about your work. Though, here you were up late and finishing up reports for work. When your phone vibrated next to you on your desk, and you saw Joe’s name appear on your screen, you immediately grinned happily. You needed a little distraction after a long day.

Still working. Why are you still awake?

The text message that you sent to Joe sent a warm feeling in his stomach as he smiled at your text. 

Can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about you. 

Biting your lower lip, you grinned at his message. You couldn’t help but think how the last two months that you have been seeing Joe, you have been so happy. You didn’t even care about the fact that your friends kept telling you to be careful because he was an actor. That he might just immediately change his mind and find someone else. Though, that wasn’t what it was at all. 

From the way he kept calling you every night, you didn’t have the time to feel insecure at all. He kept telling you that he was always thinking about you, and he couldn’t even sleep because he only wanted to be next to you. 

He was too sweet. 

You couldn’t relate to the desperation that your friends would act when it came to their boyfriends. 

Aww! :( Want me to come over? 

You bit your nails, grinning cheekily as you waited for him to answer. Joe, who immediately sat up on his bed, reached over to turn his lamp on. He stared at your text and then shifted his eyes towards his clock on his bedside table. 

Yes, please. 

He stared at the text for a moment before deleting it. What the fuck was wrong with him? Why was he acting like a 16 year old boy? At his big age too. He couldn’t help but chuckle at himself for acting so stupid over you. Rubbing his forehead softly, he stared at his screen and didn’t know what to reply to your text. He never acted like this before, not even with his exes. He didn’t know what it was that he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about you. He couldn’t sleep because of you. He kept thinking about how beautiful you were. He kept thinking how smart you were and such a hard worker. He couldn’t really describe it, but he was just so deep in his feelings for you since you two had started seeing each other. He was feeling so drunk of you like he had drunk ten espresso shots every night before bed. 

It’s okay. It’s late. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?

He typed the text message and sent it to you. He was right though. It was literally past midnight, and he was bothering you because he couldn’t sleep. 

What an idiot. 

Exhaling a sharp breath, he set his phone down on his bedside table and gazed up at the ceiling again. After a few minutes of silence and no reply, he figured you had fallen asleep. His mind wandered back again at the thought of you. 

“Don’t be cheeky.” Joe laughed, pressing his face on your neck.

You had told him a dirty joke, and he couldn’t stop laughing. The way he was literally hooked with your humor all the time. The one little joke made him all flushed and flustered that he was hiding his face from you.

“That’s not fair. Don’t hide your cute face from me.” You grinned, lifting his head and cupping his face between your hands.

Joe’s chocolate button eyes sparkled as he gazed down at you with a loving smile. You loved seeing him like this, and you certainly love the fact that you could make him act like this. 

Sighing, Joe closed his eyes and pushed the memory away. 

He needed to sleep. 

This was getting ridiculous. 

Pulling the duvet closer to him, Joe settled himself comfortably in his bed and closed his eyes. He forced himself to really sleep and as soon as he started drifting off, he felt the mattress of the empty side of his bed dip. For a moment, he thought he was just dreaming. Then, familiar arms wrapped around his torso, and he knew exactly who it was even if his eyes were closed. 

He was thanking his little stars that he gave you that spare key for his flat.

“It’s late.” He murmured, holding in his smile as he pulled you closer to his body. 

You let out a soft approving hum, planting a soft kiss on his cheek. Even in the dark, you could see his beautiful facial features as you softly stroked his cheek with your fingers. 

“You can’t sleep lately.” You whispered. “I’m worried about that.”

“It’s your fault, you know.” Joe teased.

You laughed softly, moving yourself on top of him, straddling his hips. 

“Yea?” You trailed kisses on the line of his jaw and then down his neck. 

Joe had to bite his lower lip to stop himself from moaning. He swore if he was dreaming right now, he would hate his brain in the morning for giving this much of a vivid dream about you. He was already folding for you, and his brain was now betraying him even more? 

This was so foul of his dreams to do to him. 

“Yes.” Joe gasped the word as you ran your hands down his bare chest. “I think I’ve gone mad.”

You smiled through his skin as his fingers curled around the strands of your hair as you kissed his bare chest. You loved that you could wrap him up around your finger, and he would just fold under every kiss you left on his skin. You never had anyone act like this over you, and you were enjoying every minute of it. 

He was adorable like this. 

“Hm…” You smiled, grinding against his hard member that was between your legs. “I can help you lose your mind even more.”

Joe’s fingers immediately curled at the back of your head, pulling you down for a hungry kiss. Smiling, you giggled softly through the kiss as he tugged on your shirt and pulled it over your head. Soon, he was tugging on your pants too and it joined the rest of your clothes on the floor. 

You reached your hand down to grab his member, wrapping your fingers around it and slowly slid himself inside of you. Both of you gasped softly as you helped him thrust inside of you. His lips were sloppily kissing you, his tongue licking your bottom lip. 

“Shit…” Joe groaned softly as he trailed kisses down your neck. 

Your hands found his headboard as your pace quickened, and it only made Joe moan louder as he found his lips on your nipple, sucking on it softly. 

“Ah—Joe.” You arched your back as he moved deeper inside of you. 

He could hear your voice sounding distorted and far away as he continued to suck your nipple and then trailed his lips up on your neck, sucking the skin softly there. He wasn’t the kind of man that loved to leave a love mark, but he couldn’t help but leave one on your neck and then on your chest. You moaned softly as you leaned down and buried your face on his neck, feeling your walls tightened around him. 

“Love, you’re so tight.” He moaned. 

You kissed him hungrily as he thrusted faster inside of you, your legs trembling and feeling the pleasure build up in your stomach. Joe had forgotten everything around him. He had forgotten what time it was. He had forgotten about the fact that this all started because he couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t stop thinking about you. 

You were here. 

You were really here. 

You were in his arms, and you were making him forget his name. He could feel the pleasure build up in his stomach as he flipped the both of you over, and he was hovering over you. He thrusted deeper and faster inside of you, your toes were curling and your nails were scratching down his bare back. 

“Come for me.” You whispered in his ear, making Joe tremble from the way your voice sounded in his ear. 

He usually was the one who was able to make his exes feel like this but with you, he was weak. He would do anything for you. He never felt this way about anyone before. With shaky hands, he reeled you in his arms and pressed your body against his flushed one. 

“Right there, baby.” You moaned in his ear. “Don’t stop.”

You gasped, your nails digging into his skin deeper as pleasure crashed over the both of you. Stars exploding at the back of your eyes as you screamed his name. Both of your bodies shuddered, both panting together as Joe collapsed his heavy body against yours. 

“Holy shit.” Joe cursed under his breath, still panting. “You’re literally amazing.” 

You smiled, trying to catch your breath. You stroked his curly hair away from his sweaty forehead and planted a soft kiss there. 

“Now, you could sleep.” You joked, making Joe scoff at your little comment. 

“No.” He whispered, pressing his face on your neck and nibbled on the skin lightly. “We’re gonna be up all night.”

You grinned widely, flipping the both of you over so you were on top of him again. 

“Hmm… Don’t challenge me.” You smiled deviously under the dark. 

“You’re the one who’s been keeping me up all night, so don’t challenge me.” Joe retorted back. 

You laughed softly, kissing him hungrily again and grabbing the duvet from behind you. Covering the both of you with the sheet, Joe tangled his fingers through your hair as you both blissfully enjoyed each other’s flushed bodies against each other. 

Time had frozen, and Joe didn’t care if he needed to be up early tomorrow morning. You were literally the espresso shot that could keep him up all day and night. 

Somehow, that was enough for him. 

********

Taglist:

@palomahasenteredthechat @sunvick @eddies-acousticguitar @demonsanddemogorgons @joesquinns @mmunson86 @ghostinthebackofyourhead @corrodedcoffincumslut @figmentofquinn @tlclick73 @browneyes8288 @munsonluvrr @ali-r3n @ficsbypix @capricornrisingsstuff @missonlypost @ali-in-w0nderland @amberolivia666 @lalalala-melmosworld @niallersfreckles @nanas-lasagna @emma77645 @indulgence-be-thy-name @readergf @ladamari68 @1paire2vans @d4rk4ng3l86 @paleidiot @josephquinnsfreckles @readergf

[jakesduskwood]

even statues crumble if they're made to wait

Pairing: Jake x Fem!MC

Genre: Post-Episode 10 Duskwood, Post-Episode 1 Moonvale

Words: 8,916

Summary: It's been three months since the explosion in the mine. Three months since Hannah was found. And MC's accepted that Jake is never coming back. When she gets roped into another missing person's case, it makes for the perfect distraction. Jake is dead. It's fine. That is, until she finds herself on the phone with Alan Bloomgate who says he has something to show her. But it's fine. Jake is dead.

Until he's not.

EPISODE-1 MOONVALE SPOILERS AHEAD (MAYBE)!

[ A/N: Hello! :)

I know it's been a while since I've done this, but I finished Moonvale Episode 1 and if you've seen the ending (and used its Duskwood code), you know what happened and how excited I was to receive that bit of Duskwood. So, I took it and ran with it, and out came this extremely long fic. I did not proofread this as it took me literally almost 12 hours to write so it is completely and 100% me and my love for Jake and I hope you love it.

Side note: I suck with anything related to timelines, so I made one up on my own. I know Episode 1 of Moonvale takes place over the course of a day or two, but for the purpose of this fic, it made sense to make it longer, so it's not a typo, or me losing my mind, it's just the way my brain processed this.

Enjoy! :) ]

It’s been three months since the explosion in the mine.

Three months since Richy had been killed. Three months since Hannah was rescued. Three months since I had last spoken to Thomas or Cleo or Lilly or…or Jessy. I didn’t blame her then and I don’t blame her now. Any of them, really. I didn’t share the bond they had with each other. I wasn’t from Duskwood. It didn’t matter that we’d experienced a tragedy together—and yes, perhaps them more than me, but I loved Richy too. I had lost Richy too. And Jake—

But mostly, I think they just wanted to forget. To move on. They didn’t want to remember that their friend had been capable of…of that. And I was a constant reminder of that to them. So I understood why we didn’t necessarily talk anymore.

The one person I did keep in contact with from Duskwood, oddly enough, other than the occasional update from Alan Bloomgate, was Dan. We weren’t best friends or anything, but he allowed me to check in on our friends in a way that I didn’t know how to do with anyone else. Maybe because I thought he was the least affected among them. I knew he cared about Hannah, but he wasn’t to her what Thomas or Cleo or Lilly were. And he wasn’t to Richy what Jessy had been.

I’d learned from him that Thomas and Hannah had broken up. There was no bad blood, but Thomas hadn’t quite figured out how to accept the things he’d learned about his girlfriend when she’d been gone, and Hannah hadn’t quite figured out how to re-trust someone after Richy. Even if that person was Thomas. But I’d hoped they would find their way back to each other in the end.

I thought about reaching out to Jessy every once in a while—even just as an apology for everything that had happened. I’m sorry that Hannah was found at the expense of Richy. I’m sorry that he did this to you. I’m sorry I didn’t realize it sooner. We should have. We should have. We should have. I miss you. But I never send it. I’m not all that sure she’d respond anyway.

Cleo and I were never all that close. She has her best friend back, so I think she’s probably as okay as she can be. Helping Hannah find a new kind of normal in a time where her childhood friend had kidnapped her in order to prove a point. I don’t know how you come back from that—I don’t know how you come back from knowing that you killed somebody at all.

I hadn’t found the courage to ask if somebody had told Hannah about Jake.

Not that I think it would matter anyway. I hadn’t heard from him since before the explosion in the mine, which was, like I said—three months ago. I waited the appropriate amount of time—twenty-five days—before I broke down and concluded that maybe he hadn’t survived. Which just piled a shit-ton of guilt onto my shoulders because it was supposed to be me in that mine. He had gone in place of me and now he was dead.

It was the only explanation that made sense. I was used to Jake disappearing for days at a time, but never as long as he had been now. And he didn’t seem like the type to tell me he loved me and then leave without a single explanation. Not unless he had to. But it had been three months and as much as I missed him, as much as my chest ached with the thought that we would never eat Chinese food out of shitty motels and have that on-the-run ending we talked about, I had accepted that he wasn’t coming back.

I wonder if he had known about Richy or if he had died still thinking Michael Hanson was the one who had kidnapped Hannah. I wonder if his last thoughts were of me. Maybe it’s selfish, but I kind of hope they were, because I’m pretty sure I’ll think about him for the rest of my life.

I wonder what it would have felt like to run my hands through his hair. To kiss him. To spend every waking moment with him and know it was because I loved him. Because I would have. Talking to Jake became about more than just finding Hannah. It became a part of my day I looked forward to more than anything else. He confided in me in a way that told me he never had with anyone, maybe not even Hannah, and I needed that from somebody. I needed somebody to trust in me the way that Jake did. I needed somebody to love me the way that Jake did.

It was strange—and maybe a little ironic—the thought that something so beautiful could come out of something so tragic.

Anyway, my point is: it’s been a long couple of months. Of thinking about my friends. Of thinking about Jake. Of wondering if I should have done things differently. I should have gone to Duskwood to help. Not even with the mine, but sooner. I could have. I could’ve gone when Jessy was attacked on the way home. I could’ve gone when the group made plans to cut out of town and hide away in the house Richy had found. Selfishly, I should have. In that moment, when they were settled around the fire and Lilly called me, I had never remembered wanting anything more. I should have grabbed Jake—metaphorically, maybe even literally—and rode it out with them to the end.

I don’t stop missing them after three months. Of wishing things could have been different. Wishing I could have done more. But exactly ninety-five days after the explosion in the mine, seventy days since I had accepted that Jake was never coming back, twenty-two days since I had last heard from anybody from Duskwood (Dan included), my phone dings with a new message.

And the cycle starts all over again.

It’s somebody named Eric, who claims he needs my help to find his friend Adam, who disappeared while he was waiting for a ride in someplace called Redlog Pines. And much like with Duskwood, I have never heard of Redlog, and the case reminds me way too much of Thomas’ first message to me, so much that it makes my chest ache, but I can’t say no because there’s somebody missing, and if I’d say no the first time, God knows where Hannah would be.

So, I say yes, and I help out where I can, and Eric decides he needs to bring about four more friends in on his little plan and I try my best to stay emotionally unattached because I remember everything that happened the last time and I can’t go through that again. I offer up information when I can and keep my words short and careful because I’m not ready to get attached to somebody else I know I might never meet.

I know how this ends.

Two days in, Ash, one of Eric’s friends, brings up my Duskwood past and the unhealed wound I’ve been trying to mend breaks open again. She asks about Richy, and about the mine, and then because I’m me and I can’t help myself, I tell her about Jake. She tells me the news never mentioned another body and I shove that thought to the back of my head because hoping for something that will never come true will kill me.

Four days into Adam’s disappearance, and the police not giving a shit—as Charlie, somebody who reminds me far too much of Richy for comfort, points out—my phone beeps with an incoming call from somebody I haven’t spoken to in a while.

“Go for [MC].” I answer my phone.

Ever since Hannah had been found in the mine and Jake had…you know, my phone had been more silent than I’d gotten used to. Until this new case. But even that—it was only a few days old and I didn’t want to go down the same path with them that I did with my friends in Duskwood. We didn’t really know each other that long, sure—even though sometimes it’d felt like it—but it felt like I’d finally been a part of something. Like, I had found these people who had chosen me for me.

And originally, maybe they had. Maybe they’d had every intention of keeping me around, but then Richy was the Man Without A Face and Alan Bloomgate had rescued Hannah and nothing was the same as it had been when we’d met each other. We knew too many secrets about each other by the time the town settled. Secrets we would have to take to the grave.

Or maybe I’m losing my mind a bit and I had really only been a means to an end.

Either way.

“Alan?” I raise my voice when there’s nothing but breathing on the other end of the line. “Did you mean to call me?”

His tone is clipped. “I found something.”

“You found something.” I repeat.

My heart clenches. For all I know, it might fall into my stomach. As far I know, from watching the news, from what Ash told me, Jake’s body was never found. Richy’s was. Or what was left of him to find, anyway. I had assumed that there just hadn’t been enough of Jake left. The thought left me nauseous, but it was better than hoping for something I knew I could never have.

“I’m sending it to your phone now.” He responds. “Let me know what you think of this.”

And then he hangs up.

That was a riveting conversation, I think as my phone dings with a message. I do my best to ignore my other messages—contacts from Duskwood I’m still not ready to acknowledge—and click Alan Bloomgate. He sent me a video that looks like—oh God.

Immediately, I’m overcome with emotion as an all-too-familiar forest pops up on my phone. It’s a video of Alan’s bodycam footage. He’s searching the Duskwood forest. A forest I’ve seen too many times in the background of other video calls.

I watch as he stumbles upon an object that’s too dark to make out at first. When he gets closer, it’s clear that it’s a backpack. It’s simple. Black. Nothing about it that screams this is mine and I left it here about anybody in particular. You stupid, stupid idiot, I tell my heart when it rattles against my chest in hope. He’s dead.

Alan stands and treks away from the backpack—I want to scream at him to go back, to open it and look through it and tell me if it’s what my heart aches to believe, but I can’t, because this is a video and I’m simply watching with wide eyes, waiting for…for something. But then. But then, he moves further into the forest and I watch as he stumbles upon an object that makes my knees tremble and tears rush to my eyes and my hands shake. A black hoodie. It looks like it’s been through hell, with holes scattered up the sleeves and dirt cakes into the hood, but it’s unmistakably his.

And then—Alan lifts the hood and picks up something that makes me sink to my knees with a sob that wracks my entire frame. Because I’m staring at Jake’s mask. The mask he doesn’t go anywhere without. The mask that protects him. And so my relief is short-lived, because I realize that even if he’s alive—which seems like a very big possibility at this point—he’s alive without the things that he needs to survive.

And then the anger kicks in. Because if he’s been alive, on his own, for three months—why has he not contacted me? Unless he survived the mine but he didn’t survive the after. But that didn’t make any sense. So, okay, he wasn’t dead. But that didn’t make any sense either. He told me he wouldn’t let them catch him. Because catching that meant he would be apart from me. Did something happen that prevented him from being able to reach out and tell me he was at least okay? A quick text that said didn’t die in the explosion in the mine, you don’t need to mourn me, by the way, going off radar for another year. Did he think I would have given up on him?

I wipe my eyes and shoot a message to Alan.

ME: Recently?? Did nobody search the forests before?      

ALAN: Searched the forests for what, [MC]? The logical assumption seemed to be that if anybody was inside the mine when Richy set the fire, they would have perished alongside him. Officers were stationed outside every known entrance and exit. Besides, after the story you and your friends spun around this town, do you think anybody would have gone back into its forests?

ME: But it’s possible?

ALAN: I would say these items had been there for some time. But I would say it is likely he ditched them when he fled the mine, yes.

Another sob tears through my throat. Jake is alive. I don’t know quite what that means for us as of now, but I know it’s the best news I’ve heard since Hannah was found. Jake is alive. He’s out there somewhere. And even if it’s been three months, and even if I’m a little bit mad at him right now, I know that if he was here, I would throw my arms around his neck and hold on to him until someone dragged me off, and even then—I would fight kicking and screaming.

I close out of my messages with Alan and pull up a conversation I haven’t had the heart to look at in quite some time.

ME: Jake’s alive.

LILLY: …

LILLY: Have you spoken to him?

ME: Alan called. He found some of Jake’s things in Duskwood. I don’t know a lot of details. But I know he made it out of the mine.

Lilly types for a long while, but she doesn’t respond. I don’t take it personally. I think it’s probably hard for her to be happy that her brother’s okay while also trying to accept that her sister may never be okay again. Her sister, who had once-upon-a-time been kind-of-sort-of in love with their brother she didn’t know she had. I think that would probably mess with any family’s heads. And on top of all that, you throw in manslaughter and a kidnapping. I wouldn’t wish anybody, not even my worst enemy, to have had to go through what the Donforts had.

When it becomes adamant that Lilly isn’t going to respond, I start scrolling through messages with the rest of the group in Duskwood. I click on Jessy. I’m here if you need me. That had been the last thing I sent to her, a couple of days after Richy’s death. She hadn’t responded. I click out of Jessy’s contact and click on Thomas’ instead. Thank you for everything. That had been his last message to me after we found Hannah. I’d liked it. I hadn’t expected at the time it would be the last thing we’d ever say to each other. I click out of Thomas’ and click on Richy. So, you want to turn yourself in? I’d asked. That was before he called me. Before he lit a match and burned himself and the mine to the ground. Some people would call that heroic. I mostly call him a coward.

I click on Jake’s name. It’s been a while since I read messages between the two of us. Maybe before I had accepted—thought—he was dead. In that twenty-five-day period when I’d hoped with all I’d had that he would come back. I love you. That was the last message he sent me. I’d responded with I love you too, Jake. Then, four days later: Are you okay? A week later: Jake, please, you’re starting to scare me. I know you said you would contact when you could, but it’s been a week. After twenty-five days, when I had finally accepted our fate, I’d sent one final message: I hope you know that I love you, and I will always care about you, but I think it’s time for me to move on. I’m so sorry that I sent you into the mine. It should have been me. And I will probably feel the guilt from that for the rest of my life. Thank you for everything. Take care of yourself, wherever you are.

After that, I had closed out of our messages and hadn’t looked back. Partly because I couldn’t bear the pain of it. It felt like I had given up on him. I hadn’t—if I had thought for a second that he was alive, if I knew then what I know now, I would have never sent that message. But holding out hope for somebody who I thought was a ghost at the time? That was slowly killing me.

It’s only then that I notice the screen flickering. Much like the way it used to whenever Jake would hack into my phone. I don’t think he’s much in the mood to be hacking right now, but somehow, I know it’s him. When had he done this? Recently? If I had opened our messages, would I have seen this ten—twenty—even fifty days ago? It hadn’t looked like this the last time I texted him. Did he see my last message about needing to move on? Was that why he hadn’t reached out to tell me that he was okay? Because he thought I was moving on happily without him?

No, my brain supplies. He wouldn’t. He would reach out anyway, because he knows how much the thought of him not being okay would have destroyed you.

The screen flickers once more and then a message pops up, bright and blue-tinted and clear as day on my phone.

[MC]

I WILL FIND YOU

And the world around me shifts.

--------------------------------------------------

Maybe it sounds crazy, considering I’ve never seen his face before, but I always thought that if I’d ran into Jake one day, maybe on the street or at one of those motels he stayed at or maybe even in Duskwood, surrounded by all our friends, I would know it was him. I would, because it’s him, and it’s me, and we’re the only two people who understand each other quite the way we do.

I still believe that.

I believe it when I book my flight to Duskwood (or rather, twenty miles outside of town, which is the closest airport). I believe it when I board the airplane and find a seat next to a mother with her screaming child and when I shoot off a quick text to Eric to let him know I’ll be MIA for the next few hours, but to message me if he needs anything—and I think about how much easier this case would probably be to solve if we had Jake.

Maybe it would have been harder to find Hannah without me, but I know damn well they would’ve never found her without Jake.

Dan picks me up from the airport. I haven’t told the others yet. Something about it felt off—like I shouldn’t message them and say hey, I know we haven’t spoken in a while, but I’m booking a flight to look into why my maybe-slash-not-really boyfriend left his belongings in a forest we really wish we could forget about, and by the way, can I crash at your place?

It’s quiet on the car ride back into town. I’m looking through my messages from Eric and the group from Redlog Pines and thinking about how I’m Duskwood with this group and I want so badly to laugh because it’s ironic, but Dan wouldn’t understand. He might just call me crazy. Better yet, he would ask how I manage to get myself into these situations, and really, I don’t have an answer for him.

“How have you been?” I ask, just to break the tension, as Charlie, in my messages, tries to persuade his friends to head back into that creepy cave in the middle of the forest. He’s going to get someone killed, I think.

Dan looks over at me. “Are you still with Hackerman?”

My chest squeezes. “His name is Jake, Dan. And we were never really together.”

“Hm.” He nods like he doesn’t quite believe me. “You already know mostly everything that’s been happening here. Thomas and Hannah called it quits. They say it was some mutual decision, but it’s hard to find them in the same room together. Jessy hasn’t been out with us since. I think we remind her too much of Richy. The group’s all changed.”

“And you?” I ask.

He gives me a cheshire-like grin that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m always the same.”

We make it to Duskwood just as the sun’s going down. Much too late for me to try and trek through the forest and retrace the steps Jake might have taken that night. Not that I think it would help give me any clues as to where he might have gone, but mostly because I wonder if it will make me feel closer to him. We’ve never been in the same place before, and even if he’s not there now—he once was.

“Can you drop me at the police station?”

Dan blinks. “The police station.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“We answered their questions for weeks, [MC]. I don’t think anything you have to tell them at this point is going to help. The investigation’s closed. Everybody knows Richy did it. He died with the fire in the mine. Everybody’s trying to move on from that.” He works his jaw. “Did you come here to open old wounds after all this time?”

I try not to show the hurt look on my face. “This isn’t about Richy. Look, Alan called me. He asked if I could look at some things. I figured it was better for me to do it in person. That’s it. Nothing to do with Richy. Nothing to do with Jessy. Nothing to do with you.”

He sighs, and I’m not entirely sure he’s going to abide by my wishes until we pull in front of a tiny building—tinier than most—that says Duskwood Police on the sign. Duskwood must not have that much crime. Well, not until this, I suppose.

“Thank you.” I tell him as I reach over to undo my seatbelt and climb out of the car. “This is a nice ride, by the way.”

He raises a hand in some mock-salute. “Need me to pick you up?”

“Nah.” I shake my head. “Think I’ll explore the town for a little bit.”

“Suit yourself.” He shrugs and then he’s off.

I square my shoulders and take a deep breath before opening the door to the police station. It wasn’t like Alan asked me to come down here. He hadn’t. Even during the investigation into Richy’s death and Hannah’s kidnapping, when he questioned us, he never asked me to come to Duskwood. We’d done way too many video calls and phone calls and at one point, I had asked if he thought it would be easier for me to come to Duskwood, to which he responded back, are you ready for that?

No, I hadn’t been. I’m not even so sure I was now. But knowing that Jake was alive, that here was the last place was, I had to try.

“Can I help you?” The woman at the front desk asks.

I clear my throat. “I was wondering if I could speak to Alan Bloomgate. I’m one of—I was involved in the Hannah Donfort case. My name is [MC].”

Her eyes widen. “Give me a moment.” She stands and heads to some back office—which looks to me more like a closet—and then returns with a clipped smile. “He’ll be right out.”

Apparently, she isn’t lying, because not two minutes later, Alan is stepping out from the same door and staring me down. I hold his gaze and hope it says that I’m not here to argue. I will tell him my truth, but only my truth, not Hannah’s, not Jake’s, not anybody else’s.

“I was wondering when I would see you.” He says.

I shrug one shoulder. “Isn’t a few months later better than never?”

“Let’s go into my office.” He says, and leads me around the desk and back into the closet space he had come out of. He sits behind the desk and motions for me to take a seat opposite him. “I’m just going to guess you’re not here to talk about Miss Donfort.”

“I want to see them.” I tell him. “His things. I want to see them for myself. And whatever you want from me in return, I’ll give to you.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game here, [MC].”

“He isn’t a game to me.” I snap back and then sit back and try to relax. “I appreciate that you called me. It’s—I helped you find Hannah. I would do it again. Even with knowing the things that we do now, I would do it all again. That’s how much that group means to me. That’s how much he means to me. I’m not asking you to break any rules or to lie for him or to—to let him hide in your basement for the next five years. I’m just asking you to show me what you found.”

He stares me down for a moment. Then, he sighs, says “wait here for a minute” and disappears to another room. When he comes back, it’s with an evidence bag in his hand filled with the objects I saw on his bodycam footage. My breath hitches in my throat.

“I can’t let you touch them.” He says as he lays them in front of me.

I stare into the eyes of the mask. “Did you tell anybody that he’s alive?”

“I don’t know that he’s alive,” is all the answer he gives, which is an answer to my question. I slide my gaze down to the black hoodie, to the dirtied sleeves and muddy hood, and think about the fact that Jake wore this. I’m so close to him.

And yet I’ve never been further away from him.

“Thank you.” I tell him. “For—for this. And for listening to me about Hannah. If you hadn’t, I—I don’t know what would have happened. How much longer he would have gone on for. If he would have ever stopped.”

Alan’s silent for a minute. Then, he clears his throat. “You know, it was strange to me. Both Hannah and yourself swore to me that neither of you knew the other.”

“I don’t.” I swear.

It was one of the (albeit many) things that didn’t make sense to me. How Hannah got a hold of my number. How she sent it to Thomas. She’d told Alan she hadn’t really remembered texting him my number at all.

“I believe you.” He reassures. “I just think it’s strange. One mistake, if you can call it that, and you throw yourself into a missing persons case to help a stranger.”

“They’re not strangers.” Even though Hannah is kind of still a stranger.

“But they were.” Alan reasons. “You had no reason to say yes to helping Thomas. I doubt anybody would have held it against you if you turned the other way. But you decided to follow this until the end. To make sure they found Hannah. And you care about them. Maybe that’s why I find that I’m more lenient with you than maybe I should be. Why you’re sitting across from me right now calling the shots. Why I’m not asking you about the hacker.”

“I wouldn’t tell you if you did.” I look him in the eye so he knows I’m telling the truth.

He returns my gaze. “Maybe that’s the other reason.”

“Hm.” I acknowledge before I turn my gaze away—from him, from the objects that I know belong to Jake and it takes everything in me not to snatch them up and run. “Well. Thank you for allowing me to steal some of your time. For letting me—” I cut myself off before I say something that makes me break down in a fit of tears in front of him. “—just thank you.”

Leaving the station is easier than coming in. I’m still not any closer to knowing where Jake is than I was when I arrived here, but there’s a comfort in knowing he walked these streets. I wonder what he would think if he knew I was here. He hadn’t wanted me to come to Duskwood when everything was happening…but now that it was over, would he be happy that I was here? That I had come to Duskwood to piece together where he might have gone? Would he track my location and come to find me and…or was I grasping at straws?

It felt like I had just gotten him back. Not really, not entirely…but knowing that he was alive, that he was out there somewhere, maybe thinking of me and looking for ways to come back, to live the life we talked about when he asked me if I was sure…that was worth it. The thought that we could maybe someday have that—even if it was a twenty percent chance.

I check my phone again to see a new message from Ash. She’s asking me if I’ve heard from Charlie in the last few hours. Apparently, he’s AWOL, and I want to help, really, but…it doesn’t really feel like that’s where I am at the moment. Not just physically—obviously—but mentally. We got lucky with Hannah. And that was really only because we had Jake. Adam didn’t have a Jake. Or…maybe he did and I just hadn’t met him yet. But I already had a Jake and I didn’t want another one.

Maybe—if I found him, I could convince him to help. That was a big maybe. Not because I thought Jake would say no. He would say yes to anything I asked of him. The maybe was whether or not I could find him. More likely, the maybe was whether or not he would find me.

Three months ago, I would have been able to come to Duskwood and have no shortage of things I wanted to do and people I wanted to see. Now, as I stand outside Duskwood’s police station, I feel nothing but loneliness. Nobody knows I’m here. I could pass Thomas on the street and he wouldn’t even know it. I could run into Jessy at the library and she would walk by me without even a second thought. Why would they? I hadn’t told them I was here.

So, with nothing left to do, I walked. Toward the town center. Toward the library that Jessy showed me on our walk through Duskwood. Toward the Rainbow Café where I knew that Cleo and Hannah had spent a lot of their time. Toward the Black Swan. Toward—

Ah, what the hell.

I had nothing better to do and The Aurora seemed like a great place to drown my sorrows. To think about my next steps. To figure out—now that I was in Duskwood—what I planned to do. The thing about Jake being so secretive (and on the run) was that I couldn’t retrace his steps. I wasn’t able to ask if anyone had seen him. One, because he would make sure nobody had. And two, because three months was a long time to forget somebody’s face if you didn’t know who you were looking for.

I pull open the door to the bar and step inside. Immediately, I’m hit with the stench of whiskey and a handful of chatter. Duskwood’s a small town. And The Aurora definitely proves it. The bartenders move melodically around each other, serving patrons on the other side of the bar. If you walk down further, there’s a handful of tables.

And dead in the center is a table with my friends. Or, some of them. Dan and Cleo and Lilly. Could I still call them my friends? Ex-friends, maybe? Acquaintances? I didn’t know what they were. Or how to address them. It wasn’t like we had gotten into a fight. We didn’t stop talking for any reason other than that we did. We stopped talking.

I make a beeline for the bar to avoid a confrontation and plant myself on one of the stools. One of the bartenders—a girl cute with bleach blonde hair and brown Bambi eyes—asks what I want and I channel my inner Dan to order a whiskey—neat.

Looking over my shoulder, I focus on the table of them. On Lilly, who’s smiling at something Cleo said. On Dan, who’s the only one of them who actually knows I’m here. But even he’s focused on the conversation they’re having. It’s strange—to see Dan a part of something I’m not sure he would have been before. It’s nice.

“[MC]?”

I turn my head away from the table of my friends and focus my attention across the bar on someone I should’ve expected to see. “Phil.”

“I thought I recognized your voice from when we talked.” He smiles. “I wasn’t sure, but I saw you staring longingly at them—” He nods towards Dan and Cleo and Lilly. “—and I knew. What brings you around here? I expected you to show up maybe a few months ago, but by now, I thought you’d moved on without us.”

I was tired of the words move on. Like I’d had a choice. Like the people from this town might open their arms and welcome me back into their lives. So I’d been part of the group who’d saved Hannah Donfort. So had a lot of people. It didn’t make me special and everyone here knew it.

I offer him a smile in return. “I’m looking for somebody.”

“Anybody I know?” He asks.

I shake my head. “Nah. At least nobody you would recognize.” I pause. “How’s Jessy?”

“She’s—Jessy.” He answers, like that is an answer. “I don’t know if she’ll ever really be okay with the way things happened with Richy. I wouldn’t expect her to. Obviously. But I don’t know. I think I just thought she would have gone back to her normal life by now. And then I remember that most of her life revolved around him. He was her best friend. She worked for him. And I’m trying to be patient about that. But—” He shakes his head. “Maybe you should talk to her.”

“She doesn’t know I’m in town.”

“Okay.” He hums. “So, you’re not in town for my sister. And you’re not in town for your group of friends because they’re over there and you look like you’d rather be anywhere else. There’s always Hannah, but I don’t think you knew her that well. Or at all. Would I be right to assume this is about a certain hacker who helped to find Hannah?”

“He didn’t help find Hannah.” I defend. “He was the entire reason we found Hannah. I would have never been able to do it on my own. Even with the others’ help. He’s the only reason we found out about—” I pause before I say something I maybe shouldn’t. “It doesn’t matter. He’s the only reason we found her. Everything I did was just dumb luck.”

“That wasn’t what the news said.” A voice cuts in and I turn my attention from Phil to focus on the stranger that slides into the seat beside me. Not too close—a couple inches away. I don’t recognize him. I don’t know him. But I don’t know every person in Duskwood. Maybe a total of like nine or ten. “I’m sorry to interrupt. But I heard you had a lot to do with finding Hannah Donfort. The news said you were some kind of hero.”

I offer him a tight smile. “That’s nice of them. But…if they knew my—friend—knew what he did to find her, I don’t think I would be as much of a hero as everybody says.”

“That’s noble.” He says, eyes meeting mine, and it strikes me at once how handsome he is. He has dark hair. Bright green eyes. Focus, [MC]. I scold. You have a…a someone.

My phone buzzes.

ERIC SENT A PHOTO.

ERIC: What do you make of this?

I sigh and click on the photo. It’s of—some object. Much like the one that was addressed to me on the envelope in Adam’s glove compartment. The image is a bit different—but I don’t know enough about what it means to have an answer as to why.

ME: Was this one addressed to me?

ERIC: Nope. Ash.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks.

I clear my throat. “I’m a popular person—apparently.” A thought strikes. “Have you ever heard of a place called Redlog Pines?”

Phil frowns. “No.”

I turn to look at the stranger. “You?”

“Redlog Pines is a small town about two hundred miles north of Duskwood.” He answers. “Known for their wooded forests, much like Duskwood.”

“Why are you looking into a place with forests as creepy as ours?” Phil asks, incredulously. “Didn’t you get enough of that with Hannah’s case?”

“Yeah.” I sigh. “You would think.”

“Hey, [MC]!”

I wince at the sound of Dan’s voice. Shooting Phil a look that screams please help me to which he shakes his head amusedly, I turn and plaster on a fake smile as I take in the shocked looks on Cleo and Lilly’s faces. I should have known better than to come to The Aurora and talk to Phil when the three of them were having a conversation across the room. I should have known they would sooner or later see me. I just hoped it was later.

“Hey.” I hop off my stool and make my way across the bar to them. “It’s, uh, fancy seeing the three of you here.”

“What are you doing here?” Cleo asks.

“I haven’t really figured that out.” My eyes meet Lilly’s. “It sounds crazy to say it out loud. But I was hoping that—I’m not sure if Lilly told you—”

“That Jake’s alive.” Cleo nods. “None of us ever really thought he wasn’t.”

I don’t think she means it as a dig—but it still feels like one. Like she’s saying you gave up on him you gave up on him you gave up on him even though she’s not and she didn’t really know him and the only person I can talk to at this table who even might understand is Lilly and even—Jake didn’t confide in her the way he did me.

“Right.” I acknowledge. “So I thought that maybe if I came here, I could trace his steps from when he was here and—I haven’t really thought that far ahead. It’s not like I thought he left me any clues in the forest or anything like that. I don’t think he expected me to be here. He hadn’t wanted me to be the last time we talked. But that was before everything happened.”

Lilly’s eyes track behind me. “Does Jake still have Nymos on your phone?”

“Uh.” I furrow my brows. “I think so. I hadn’t heard from him in a while, but I went back and read through our messages after I talked to Alan and…my phone glitched, like it used to when Jake had hacked it. And then this message appeared on my screen.”

“And by chance, can Nymos track your location?”

“What—” I shake my head. “Maybe. I don’t think I ever really asked him. It didn’t seem necessary at the time.”

“Uh huh.” She focuses on me once more. “Let’s say, for one minute, that Jake has access to Nymos who has access to your location.”

Cleo must catch onto something I’m not sure of. “Jake didn’t want you here.”

“Uh, thank you?”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” She waves me off. “He didn’t want you in Duskwood. He had been adamant about that when we were talking about the mine. That’s why he went. If you showed up in Duskwood—”

“Nymos would have alerted him.” Dan finishes.

“Okay…” I’m not entirely sure I’m on the same page as them. “So—you think that Jake found out when I came to Duskwood.”

“Correct.” Lilly beams like she just solved life’s greatest mystery.

“And you think he would—come find me?”

She smiles sympathetically at me—like I’m the world’s biggest idiot for not realizing what she has been trying to say sooner. “I think he already has.”

“You think Jake’s in Duskwood.” I deadpan.

“[MC].” Cleo grabs my shoulders and turns me around. “We think he’s in this bar.”

Stranger, as I had nicknamed him—AKA the guy sitting beside me at the bar, with Phil and Redlog Pines (which he probably only knew about because of me) and the whole Hannah being kidnapped and not taking any of the credit thing—was looking back at me. So was Phil. Like they thought I was the crazy one. Like it would’ve been so hard for him to look and me and say it’s me or anything that might have clued me into the fact that—

“Jake?” I whisper, because I’ve lost quite a bit of sleep over the past couple of months and I’m not one hundred percent sure what—or who—I’m seeing is real. “Are you here?”

He tilts his head and smiles at me. Actually smiles. A bit shyly, like it’s something he’s not used to doing, but maybe like it’s something he could get used to. And I think about how terrible I probably look right now because I’m not wearing makeup and my hair is tousled from constantly pulling at it and my clothes are wrinkled from the plane and the police station and I look like a mess. But our relationship has never been about looks. Clearly. I didn’t even know the person I’d been talking to until Lilly and Cleo and even Dan pointed out the obvious.

“If I—” I close my eyes and open them again. Nope. Still there. “I need you to still be there by the time I reach you because it’s been a—” I sniffle. “—it’s been a rough few months and I don’t think I could handle you disappearing again.”

He stands from the stool he was sitting on and shuffles his feet. Like he’s not quite sure where he’s supposed to stand. If he thinks about moving, I’ll tackle him onto the floor of The Aurora and then apologize to Phil later. It feels like everything I wanted is right here in front of me. And I’m scared to death that it’s not real.

“What’s one thing you would take with you if you were stranded on an island?”

His smile stretches. “My computer.”

And that—that’s what breaks me. I think I might start blubbering like an idiot but I don’t remember the time it takes for me to cross the measly twenty feet between us. All I remember is grabbing his black hoodie—because of course—and dragging him to me. I don’t kiss him, despite how much I want to, because I don’t want our first kiss to be tainted with my snot and tears. Instead, I bury my face in his collarbone and wrap my arms around his neck and hold on for dear life.

Because I can. Because he isn’t dead.

“Y—You’re here.” I pull back and cup his face with my hands. “How are you here?”

“You came to Duskwood.” He responds, and then—hesitantly—he presses his lips to my forehead in a kiss. “Alan called you.”

“He found your things in the forest.” I whisper back. “He said they’d been there a while. The police hadn’t searched the forest because they assume you died in the mine.”

“They aren’t looking for me here.” He confirms. “I didn’t expect it to take so long for them to find my belongings, but I anticipated that you would find out. At the time, it wasn’t safe for me to reach out and contact you. They kept on my trail for a while before they assumed I died in the mine with Richy.”

“Why didn’t you contact me then?” I ask. “Is it because of what I last messaged you? I didn’t mean it—I swear, I thought you were dead. If I had known you were alive, I would have waited, however long it took. I wasn’t trying to give up on you.”

“Hey.” He places both hands on either side of my face. “I know. I know that, [MC]. That was never why I didn’t reach out to you. I know you said you wanted this life with me. But I didn’t want that for you. But I was selfish. I couldn’t let you go. So I was trying to find a way to make both of those things true. But I was always coming back to you.”

“And did you?”

“Come back to you?” He asks.

I sniffle. “Find a way to make both of those things true.”

“Not entirely.” He admits. “Nymos alerted me you had boarded a plane headed in the direction of Duskwood and I—” He shook his head. “I knew I would find you here.”

“You could have found me sooner.”

He lets go of my face and he feels like he takes my skin with him. “It wasn’t that easy.”

“It could have been.” I demand.

I’m angry again. Now that I know he’s alive and okay and that he could have found me, I’m angry that he didn’t. I told him I would choose that life with him. Over and over and over. He didn’t need to make the decision for me. He didn’t need to try and protect me. And yes, maybe the fact that he did makes my heart flutter a tiny little bit, but that’s besides the point.

“I told you before you left me.” I tell him and I’m aware it sounds like we’ve been in a relationship for five years and I’m aware that everybody in here is watching and listening in on our conversation and they probably all know we’re who we are, two people involved in helping to find the kidnapped Hannah Donfort, and maybe that’s all we’ll ever be in this town. But I would rather be the girl who found Hannah Donfort in Duskwood with him than be me anywhere else. “You told me you would let me go with you.”

“That was before I told you I loved you.”

My heart skips a beat. It screams I love you I love you I love you back, but I say— “What does that have to do with anything?”

He looks somewhat amused. Like he knows I would never hold it against him. It’s clear to both of us that I wouldn’t because even though I’m glaring up at him with my furrowed eyebrows and my lips pouted, I’m still pressed tightly against him. His hands—even though they’ve moved from my face—are now resting on my hips. Pulling my tighter to him. There’s no space in between us. If it was up to me, I’m pretty sure there never would be again.

“[MC].” He says, and oh god I wish he would say my name every day for the rest of his life. “Have I—in the short time we have known each other—ever struck you as the type of person who says I love you? But with you…” His words are a whisper against my lips. “It’s easy to fall back into old emotions with you.”

“I want to be angry with you.” I tell him.

He shakes his head. “No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.” I agree. “But I might be if you don’t kiss me.”

He brought one finger underneath my chin and tilted it up until our lips were separated by a fraction of an inch. My eyelids fluttered. I didn’t care that everyone in here was about to see just how much Jake meant to be. I didn’t care because I had waited too long for this. And then—just as I’m leaning toward him to press our lips together, he whispers— “[MC]?”

“Hm.” I acknowledge.

“Who’s Eric?”

My eyelids crack open and I shove at his chest. “That’s what you’re worried about right now? Here I am, in front of you, covered in snot and tears and who-knows-what-else because you’re here right now, and you’re worried about some guy I don’t even know?”

“Who’s Eric?” He repeats.

“Ugh.” I run my hands through my hair and take a step back. “I don’t know. He’s the other side of Thomas or whatever you want to call him. If we lived in a different town.” I glare back at him and try not to admit that I think his jealous side is a little cute. “He messaged me. Thought I picked up his friend from some parking lot and I didn’t, but his friend sent him my number, and it was Hannah all over again. I’m trying to help them.”

“This Adam has been sending you a lot of videos.”

“You know I hate when you hack my phone.” I complain, even though I really don’t. Even though I had prayed for him to help me with this case. “I really don’t know Adam. Like—even less than I know Eric.

“But you know Eric.”

“For like a week.” I reassure. “He added me to this group chat with him and like three other friends of his. They’re desperate to find Adam who has apparently dropped off the face of the earth and I don’t know what to do. I had you with Hannah’s case. And you knew her. And they—” I look over my shoulder at Cleo and Dan and Lilly, who are pretending like they’re not listening in even though I know and Jake knows they are. “—they knew her. And obviously Adam’s friends must know him but I don’t and you don’t and there is no Jake in Redlog Pines.”

“I don’t trust him.” He shakes his head. “Any of them.”

I laugh. “Jake, you didn’t trust half the people in this bar when we first started talking.” I look over at Phil and then Dan. “It doesn’t mean they committed a crime. If I had backed off when you asked me to help you find Hannah, we may never have.”

“I thought that was all thanks to me.” He sounds smug, like that little smiley face he loved to annoy me with (AKA make me fall in love with him). “Did he flirt with you?”

“No.” I deadpan. “I think he was focused on his missing friend.”

“I was focused on my missing sister.” He shoots back.

I close my mouth. Alright. He has a point. But I wasn’t flirting with Eric. He was focused on finding Adam and I was focused on mourning—and then finding—Jake. Maybe it felt like Eric and I were two sides of the same coin. Maybe that’s why I agreed to help him. Because I didn’t want to happen to him what I thought had happened to Jake—to me.

“You’re being ridiculous.” I say instead. “How do you think I could ever entertain the idea of being with somebody else when for the past three months—more than that if you count the time we have actually had together—I’ve been focused on you? On discussing Hannah with you and then talking to you about anything and everything and then worrying about you and then hating you a little for convincing me you should me the one to go into the mine and then mourning you when it was hard to even think about you and then finding you?”

His eyes are wide. I think I’ve rendered him speechless. Which—serves him right. I know he’s not somebody who serves their feelings up on a silver platter. I know that. Obviously, I knew that from the first time I spoke to him. Back when he was nothing more than ??? and I was almost convinced that Dan was right and he was the Man Without A Face—a thought that I now hate with everything in me. But I need him to trust me. Jealousy streak and FBI and the missing persons cases aside, he needs to trust me.

“Trust me.” I cup the sides of his face again. “He’s nothing like you.”

He swallows. “Some people might consider that to be a perk.”

“I don’t.” I say.

And then I’m kissing him and it feels like coming home.

[salaimoi]

i wave goodbye to the end of beginning ˚. ✦.˳· ⋆.✧̣̇˚.

pairing: gojo satoru x fem reader sypnosis: he wasn’t what you desired anymore, but he couldn’t let you go. months passed since your bitter breakup, and yet, he didn’t stop loving you for a second. cw: slow burn. angst for the sake of angst. falling out of love for no reason fr. unrequited love. alcohol consumption (gojo only) no happy ending me thinks, or maybe somewhat. who knows word count: 3.1k

author's notes: i’m mourning gojo and so should you! so here’s a piece of an angsty fic that’s been rotting, unfinished, in my drafts since march 29. i was only gonna post a sneak peek of this and suddenly the holy spirit took over me and drove me to finally finish it??? IF U EVER READ ANYTHING OF MINE PLEASE LET IT BE THIS😭😭i’m so in love with the reader crying scene u don’t get it. the metaphors?! i outdid myself. i am so terrified of the deep ocean, and the fact that i find myself writing about it during angsty hours says a lot about me. i can’t emphasize how much i adore this fic. i just love angst sm idkidkidk

also, this is my first time attempting angst for the sake of angst as well as slow burn (?) so idk if i’ll ever come back to this. not beta read.

Time and again, this mahogany dining table was the scene of numerous heartwarming interactions – mementos Satoru wouldn’t be able to replicate a second time, even if he spent a thousand lifetimes trying to do so. Sure, it was more than easy to recreate the scene, but not the genuine warmth the two of you felt in that moment. He could go to great lengths, such as hand-crafting every single piece of furniture in the room that bore witness – carving and polishing wood until his palms became more splinters than skin. But even then, he wouldn’t come close to reliving any of those gratifying sentiments from so long ago.

All the shared laughter at his trivial attempts at comedy had caught up to you; your smiles were forced lately, and he could tell. He possessed that diamond-blue, six-eyed gaze which consistently made you feel as if he could undeniably read your thoughts, but that wasn’t the case. Even a blind person could discern the unforeseen shift in your comportment toward him, and due to this, Satoru questioned himself relentlessly. 

What if he’d said something to offend you? What if he left the toilet seat up one too many times for your liking? What if he began snoring in bed but you were too considerate to say anything about it? What if he forgot a special date? What if he tried to offer you something you were allergic to? 

What if he stopped being the love of your life...? 

It seemed as if, in a fraction of a second, all the enjoyment you once felt had deserted you, and with it, your love for him. Had you forgotten how happy you were by his side all in the spawn of a few hours, or was this the universe’s twisted interpretation of a joke?

Even if it was, you weren’t laughing.

You told yourself it was fine, that it was a mere wave of sadness that would soon pass, but instead the harmless tide you paid no mind to had brutally swept your body into a sea of despair. Before you could process your predicament, the shoreline was well out of sight – blurring with the deep blue expanse of the oceanic abyss that enveloped your mind.

The longer you fought to stay afloat, the clearer the path became for the briny water to replace the oxygen in your lungs, giving you no choice but to drown as everything around you became a pitch-black, bottomless pit – devoid of any sense of worry for you. 

It was rather often that you were accused of abandoning the ship when things got bad, and yet, here you were – submerging along with it.  

How ironic.

Even he couldn’t save you now. The solace his mere presence bestowed upon you when you needed it most wasn’t there anymore. There was no more capability of initiating conversations with him when you were the only other person in the room, causing the once-upbeat and soothing environment to give way to one of silence and uncertainty; it was as thick as syrup.

Syrup. The sugary taste of it from when you consumed it during breakfast was all but replaced by a repugnant, sour one in your mouth. A persistent echo of those homemade fluffy pancakes you had turned down remained, even though he had made them just for you — his precious girl. 

You insisted you would eat later – an obvious white lie to mask your despondency and lack of appetite – but he spoon-fed you, because in his own words, “What kind of boyfriend would I be if I allow my girlfriend to starve? No, that won’t do. I’ll take care of you even after I've exhaled my last breath.”

“And how would you do that if you’re no longer breathing, genius?” you asked, a wilting smile on your face that you had put on display for him. 

“Well, my dear," he retorts with a smug grin. "I've always believed that love has a way of transcending the boundaries of life and death. And as luck would have it, our love transcends the mortal realm. I will always be with you, in spirit if not in flesh.” he smiles, a twinkle of amusement behind his sapphire eyes before continuing.

“Once I've moved on to the afterlife, I'll find a way to send you sweet nothings and a box of chocolates from beyond the grave. Consider it an eternal gift.”

He declares in a complacent tone as he lounges back in his chair, head resting comfortably on the back of his hands. 

"But in all seriousness," he then adds, his tone becoming more genuine, "I'll do everything in my power to ensure you're taken care of – even if it means making sure my eternal resting place has a Wi-Fi connection for you to receive my messages.” 

Your thoughts were entirely silenced in that moment; white noise overtook the black space within your mind. How had he managed to say such heartfelt words as if they were second nature? This early in the morning, nonetheless.

Would he actually…?

You knew he would.

"But let’s not dwell on my demise just yet,” his words bring you back to the present conversation. “Until the day comes, I promise to make the most of our time together. Besides, knowing me, I’d probably haunt you just to ensure you have someone annoying to keep you company."

He finally remarked, going back to stuffing your face with the soggy pancakes that had been sitting in syrup for too long. 

And you were cognizant of the fact that you alone were privy to this side of Satoru Gojo: the mushy, gentle one who tended to his companion as if it were a god-given mandate. 

To the public, he was a stoic, impervious character who had no dread of others. To you, he was far more vulnerable than he would ever confess. 

But that wasn’t nearly enough to deter you from taking the disheartening decision made later that day.

“I can’t stay here anymore.” austere words you didn’t wish to speak, but needed to, in order to provide some semblance of closure for the both of you. “I can’t love you anymore.” 

A hushed supplication could be heard flying across the room at the speed of light once your hand reached out to turn the bitterly cold door knob, hitting against the back of your head – identical to an equally-cold shower.

“Please don’t leave me,” he immediately protested weakly. 

He approached you with cautious strides, every step causing fragmentation in his all-too-frail emotional state. Even if it was ephemeral, the mutual love between the two of you had already left a blazing watermark on his soul. His feelings for you transcended the nagging rationality that bound his mind, defying all sensible objections he had on the matter of permitting you to depart from his life. Having failed to quell the ardor her felt, it persisted apodictically until he was an arm’s length from your frame. 

And that was exactly it – the same frigid sensation your hand clinged onto emulated the one you felt in your wretched heart the moment he approached you. You’d already turned your back on him and expressed every afflicting anguish that tormented your soul, so why plead now? Now – when you already made the conscious decision to leave him behind. 

Tears neither you nor he could hold back began flowing down your features. A familiar hand lifted towards your cheek soon after, wiping the salty residue off your delicate face with his thumb. 

He never ceased to remind you how gorgeous you were when you cried, frankly because the manner in which your wispy eyelashes retained the saltine tears in your eyes resembled the delicate surface of a tranquil pond.

Every tear you shed would become the gentle water that tickled his skin as his body wafted about in your iris – an eternal reservoir he’d swim in without tiring if the heavens so permitted it.

However, this occasion differed from the rest; the once gentle waters he yearned to lay in became calamitous waves, which may lure him to the ocean’s most profound recesses in the blink of an eye – your blink of an eye. He would usually stay afloat among that innocent gaze of yours, but tonight it was ruthlessly drowning him with no lifeline in sight. 

Even after he implored that your crying would come to a halt, more pungent teardrops bled onto his fingers. An eroding desperation flowed through you, aching to hold onto something, anything, in order to cease the mental decay within your subconscious.

Thus, your own hand extended to hold his against your cheek, a glacial embrace overpowering the warmth of his skin; an identical chill tickled his spine when he absorbed the crispness of your graze, but he paid it no mind.

“Not you too…anyone but you,” he pleaded in a low voice, causing more accursed tears of yours to cascade mercilessly as he embraced you in an endeavor to sway your decision. His voice was gentle and soothing, mimicking a caress you’d never experience a second time. 

“I’m sorry.” you muttered.

Being unable to bring yourself to meet the sapphire eyes that imitated a midwinter sky so perfectly, your head lay low; the only thing visible to him was the top of it. 

It was unclear what you were sorry about. Perhaps you were sorry that you had to leave him behind. Or perhaps you were apologizing to yourself that he was no longer what you thought you wanted with every fiber in your body.

You desired more in this life, and on your game board, he wasn’t a playing piece who could frolic alongside you. It wasn’t because you didn’t fancy his company, rather it was the fact that his own strategy of playing was one that did not catch your eye anymore; it had become a monotonous rehearsal. Every move came to be a discernible one to you – even before he picked up his pawn, causing you to lose interest in the entire game itself.

That realization alone shattered his entire world.

Satoru’s head lay low all throughout as he sat on a wooden stool amidst the empty bar. It was 2 a.m. and he needed to go home, but why should he?

You wouldn’t be there to greet him – or even scold him for that matter. 

Colorless, almost lifeless, marbles stared vacantly at the picture of you on his lock screen; he consistently spoke to your picture as if he were having a conversation with it. At this point in time, it had become routine. Maybe one of these days the frozen-in-time frame would speak back to him for once?

Just once.

Where had that tender smile he’d fallen in love with gone?

Where had you gone?

On a nightly basis, the same detestable conversation from that night redounded from one end of Satoru’s mind to the other incessantly – akin to a religiously recited sermon. 

It was impractical to disregard the harsh reality that sooner or later every cherished individual he held dear to his heart willingly departed from his life – Suguru, and now you. 

If it entailed becoming a regular person, he’d give his life as a sorcerer to ensure the permanent presence of at least one individual in his life. Where was the value of possessing such prowess when one’s vulnerability in the realm of love was inescapable? 

What twisted transaction was that?

He'd even willingly forsake his divinely bestowed talents for the purpose of altering the passage of time, thereby reverting to a period where your presence was far from being nothing more than a diminishing recollection. 

Ijichi had been dealing with this side of his boss for months on end. Regardless of his efforts to encourage Gojo to put an end to this melancholic act of his, he never managed to convince him to do so. Ijichi attempted the compassionate approach, but to no avail. His optimism and patience were dwindling, fearing that this would continue on for eternity – and perhaps it would’ve if he hadn’t stepped in.

This had to end sooner or later, and for everyone involved’s sake, it had to be the former. So tonight, he opted for a sterner, and perhaps more unforgiving, path.

Your car was parked out front of the bar Ijichi had sent you the address to – forehead pressed against the steering wheel as an audible, exhausted sigh escaped your mouth. It was late and you knew this was nothing short of inane behavior. You weren’t doing this for you; you had to remind yourself that you were doing it for him, with the hope that he would ultimately find someone who would be there for him in a way that you were unable to. 

Weary, almost weak, legs lead you to enter the desolate bar. A knife prods at your chest when your eyes dart over to where Gojo was. He kept his head lowered; the only part of him you could clearly see from this angle was his back.

An overwhelming sea of emotions plagued your mind when you witnessed him in such a state. You could feel the knives twist the longer you stared at the back of his fluffy white locks. 

Months had passed since your split, and you realized Satoru’s grief and distress were indeed as dire as his assistant conveyed to you during the phone conversation. 

A tap on his shoulder was accompanied by a sweet voice that had vanished into the depths of his consciousness a long time ago. Perhaps because he didn't wish to recall the agonizing memories that came with your voice, or perhaps because he needed to maintain a pristine, untouched image of you in his psyche.

As you occupy a vacant stool one seat away from him, your attention is drawn to the half empty vodka bottle in his grasp. 

“You know, I talked to your therapist. He said you were getting sober.” 

What you said held true, except you didn’t hear it from his therapist directly; Ijichi was the one who was initially informed about that, and being the caring person he was, he relayed the details to you. Mostly because he felt as if, deep down, you still wanted to know about Gojo’s well-being.

"What are you doing here drowning yourself in alcohol?" you added, seemingly concerned for your ex-boyfriend.

He looked up at you, his eyes red and bleary from the drink. His body froze. Blue pupils dilated in a mixture of shock and happiness. It really was you. Had you come back for him after all this time? 

"What does it look like I’m doing?" he muttered, his voice bitter and angry.

Satoru detested alcohol; it always interfered with his abilities, and being the strongest meant being ready whenever – no questions asked.  After your departure, though, he grew fond of the bitter, burning feeling the liquid provided. That sweet poison was the sole substance capable of muffling the eternal pessimism plaguing his mind.

You approached him cautiously, taking the bottle from his hands and setting it aside. "Come on," you said firmly, "we need to get you home."

He wasted no time to speak what was really on his mind. Even if it was for a mere second, he had felt the sensation of your touch once more. That was more than he needed to vocalize the thoughts that tormented his sanity. Either that, or it was the alcohol he had consumed speaking. 

“Why won’t you love me back?” His words slurred, being far too drunk to care, though. 

“…You’re drunk, let’s get you home.”

“What home? The one I bought for us that YOU left me all alone in?” he deadpans, the silence following being as deafening as a scream.

Ouch. 

“My room feels so empty if you’re not there. I see your precious face and I don't know what to do.” His expression dampens with anguish before he continues – somewhat unclearly, ”whatever I do, I cam’t fubking get you out of my head amd it’s ruining me.” 

“I told you to move on a million times every time you drunk dialed me, Satoru.” 

“If that’s what you wanted, why did you continue to pick up the call?” He retaliates, eyes glazed with forbidden tears on the verge of cascading against his pale skin.

You knew perfectly well why. He knew perfectly well why. Everyone Satoru vented to about you knew why, so why continue to deny it? 

Attempting to keep your temper in check, you take a deep breath, eyes darting back and forth between the door and him. It was more than easy to run away from your problems, like you always did. But not this time.

You owed it to him to at least finally stick around long enough when things got tough. You wouldn’t put up an invisible wall between the two of you anymore, not today. 

You sigh, taking the empty seat right next to him. 

“We can’t go back to how things were. We broke up, remember?” 

“I know,” he grumbles, taking a sip of his beverage. He shook his head, his drunken state making it almost impossible to focus his thoughts or his vision. “But maybe drinking will make me forget that we ever did. Maybe tonight I can pretend we’re still together,” his voice and face etched with sorrow.

His voice trailed off, followed by another long sip of his drink. 

“You need to quit drinking yourself into a stupor, Satoru. This isn’t healthy,” you responded, voice softening out of concern. 

His eyes still clouded with alcohol, he looks at you before speaking. “I don’t know how to move on.” He admitted, voice barely audible. “I don’t know how to live without you. I loved you…and I still do.”

He silently weeps once and for all, crumbling before the love of his life. You didn’t know what else to say, so you settled on simply allowing his head to rest on your shoulder; you always were his favorite shoulder to cry on, after all. Wrapping an arm around him, you pet his head as you lull him. Instinctively, he envelops you into a warm embrace, face burying itself deeper into your chest. 

As he continued to sob like a baby, the sorcerer allowed his emotions to flow freely – months of bottling them up into liquor bottles had finally caught up to him. 

He was beyond ecstatic underneath all the melancholy; not only had you allowed him to get closer to you, but even went as far as hugging him too. He couldn't believe it. Just a few moments ago, you were talking about forcing him to move on, but now – you were actually back in his arms, where you belonged.

He felt relieved for a moment, almost to the point where he wasn't thinking properly anymore. You were finally back in his arms, where you needed to be; he refused to let go.

It felt like a fever dream, but this was all he needed. Even if you’re gone, morning come, he’ll live in this moment for the rest of eternity. 

[thecowinblack]

Burning Hearts pt 2

Pt.1

Pairing: Eris x Reader, Earlier Azriel x reader

Summary: You arrive at the Autumn court and things are no longer what it used to be and without either your brother or Azriel in the way you and Eris start to catch feelings for each other.

Warnings ⚠️: A little agains, Mentions about sex, Alcohol, fluff, Mean!Azriel, mean!Rhysand, Swearing, mentions about cheating.

Word count: 1549

AN: Firstly I want to thank everyone who has supported me. I love you guys and I am ao thankful for everyone who's liked, followed or reshared. I'm sorry that it took such long time for me to finish this but I've had a lot going on. Hope you like the fic! Love/The cowinblack.

You arrived at the autumn court, feeling nauseous after the past events of the day. Azriel, the mate you’d loved ever since you met him so long ago, wasn't yours anymore. Looking up, Eris was already by your side, concern in his eyes.

“What happened, love?” He calmly asked.

“Azriel… Elain'' That was the only words that came out of your mouth, tears streaming down your face. But Eris didn't need anything else, he understood. You had told him about your concerns with Azriel and Elain earlier. Eris pulled you into a hug and you just stood there crying out for what felt like an eternity until the world became dark and you fell into a long dreamless sleep.

__________________________________

It had gone weeks since you got to the autumn court and you and Eris were closer than ever. Since Beron had been assassinated just months before there was a lot to fix here, laws to remove and things to change. You had helped Eris all you could, even if he said that you should rest and regain your strength. But you’d just laughed it off. Working distracted you and when Eris realized that he’d given you your own office and now you could sit all day working and helping people in need. 

Suddenly you heard a knock on the door and Eris walked in.

“Good afternoon sweetie, care for a stroll in the gardens? I’ve got dinner so we can have a picnic.” He told you. You hadn't really realized that it was already afternoon. Guess time goes faster when you have fun.

“Yeah, sure” Only now realizing how hungry you were.”I'm starving,” you added with a little giggle.

“Good you really should take more breaks from working, otherwise you're going to get wrinkles all over your beautiful face!” Eris joked and you shared a laugh. A laugh, that was the first time since Azriel cheated you’d actually laughed. Adoration shone from Eris' eyes, he really looked like you were his sun, the only thing that mattered to him. 

“Come on, I wanna eat before it gets dark!” You giggled, dragging him out in the fresh air. You and Eris walked around in the gardens for a bit before you got to your usual place, a beautiful orange tree beside a river. As you spread out the blanket Eris took out the stuff that was in his mystery basket. Strawberries, wine, pancakes and even more delicious things that made your mouth water. You sat and ate and talked for a while and when the time had reached midnight the two of you were drunk, like really drunk.

“You look really pretty tonight Y/N” He told you.

“ So do you, handsome.”

As his eyes met yours the both of you leaned forward and your lips met. The kiss wasn't gentle nor sweet, it was passionate, needy. As the kiss deepened something clicked. Maybe you and Azriel were wrong for each other. Because the passion you felt with Eris was something that you never had experienced earlier. 

Carefully Eris laid you down on the blanket.

“Is this okay with you love?” he asked nicely.

“Yes, Eris, yes.” You mumbled into his hair. And so you ended up making love in the fresh autumn air.

__________________________________

The next morning you were woken up by a gentle kiss pressed against your forehead.

“Good morning love, how are you feeling?” Eris asked. 

“Amazing, how do you feel?” You asked with a sleepy voice.

“Better than ever.” He said, now trailing kisses down your neck. “But we have to talk about us.” He continued.

“Of course, Eris I love you, a part of me always has, as you were the one who took care of me all those months ago when we got back from Under the mountain. You were there for me when no one else was, not even my mate. I totally understand if you don't have the same fee-” Eris cut you off with a kiss, a kiss so different from the one you shared before, this was so much more… Real. He wasn't leaving you.

“I love you Y/n, you're my world, I've loved you for so long, always thinking that you didn't see me in that way, we can take it slow if you want, but you’re the one I want by my side, forever.” Eris declared.

“Your little drama queen.” Was the only thing you could get out of your mouth, to shocked by the fact that Eris, the boy you’d had a crush on since you were so very young, was declaring his love before you.

“Well I'm your drama queen.” He laughed pulling you into another kiss.

__________________________________

Months past and you and Eris just grew closer. Your family had made several attempts to see you but you didn't feel ready. They had abandoned you when you needed them the most and you couldn't just forget that. Rhysands had said in a letter that everyone was missing me and that Cassian, Mor and Amren almost had killed Azriel for what he’d done. They were all sorry and just wanted me to come home.But the Night court wasn't your home anymore. Slowly you’d begun to love The Autumn Court and Eris and you had gotten married just days ago. Now you’re Autumn's high lady. It wasn't official. Just the court knew and you wanted to wait before declaring it, or at least make it dramatical. You and Eris had discussed when and where and then the perfect opportunity showed up:

 A High Lord (and lady) meeting was to be held at the Day Court, to discuss the restoration of Prythian. And you were going to be there, but for the first time you weren't going to stand by your brother's side, no you were going to have your own throne next to Eris. If you were going to see Rhys you were going to do it on your own accord. That was when you were going to reveal your title. And that meeting, that meeting was today. Right now you were packing and planning what to talk about, what to wear and how to act. You’d known Helion since you were a little kid and the two of you’d always gotten along. He was like you, hiding all his troubles with humor and you hoped that your friendship would help to stabilize an official, and well needed, alliance between the Day Court and the Autumn court.

“Love, are you ready? We have to get going now!” Eris said as he entered your room, greeting you with a kiss on your cheek.

“Yeah let me just get changed real quick!” You murmured to him.

“Do you need a hand?” He asked playfully. 

“No we don't have much time and I have a feeling that if you help me my dress is probably going off instead of on” You told him and quickly went into your ginormous wardrobe, an adorable chuckle following you. The dress you had chosen to wear was a piece of art. It was a clear beautiful red color which faded out into endless yellows and oranges. The bodice looked to be made of leaves in all of autumn's colors. It was in short just… Ethereal. You quickly got changed and right outside your room you saw the pleasant sight of your husband leaning against the doorframe. He was clad in a stunning tailored suit, a suit that matched your dress perfectly. In his hand he held the tiara version of the crown that covered the top of his head. He sweetly placed it on top of your head and then held out his arm for you to take. You laid your arm on his and a couple moments later you had arrived in Helions favored castle. 

Eris had winnowed the two of you to one of the many entrances where the two of you were greeted by a couple guards. They scienly led you into a ginormous, beautiful room with a glass roof painted in gorgeous golden patterns. Around a round marble table 8 chairs were placed. You quickly realized that the two of you were the first to arrive since the only people in the room, beside the two of you, were Helion and a couple guards. When he saw us he strode towards us with softness in his gaze. 

“Y/N! Long time no see. I heard what happened in the Night court and I became so worried that I wouldn't get to see you here!” He greeted you coming in for a hug. You wrapped your arms around his broad figure as he lifted you up, spinning you in the air.

“Oh and hello to you too Eris, what a fine Lady you have gotten your hands on.” Helion said as he put you down.

Eris answered with a chuckle and then spoke. “Fine indeed. Helion could you be an angel and ask your guards to get another chair. We can't have Autumn's High Lady stand through the whole meeting!” He announced.

“High Lady? Well Y/N I guess congratulations are in order-” Helion abruptly stopped and you knew what just happened. You spun around quickly, Eris clinging to your arm, offering support, as you uttered the words “Hello big brother.”

Taglist:

@queerqueenlynn @se7enteen--black-blog @@mybestfriendmademe @cleverzonkwombatsludge

An: I've got loooots of ideas for the next part and I hope to see you then!

[justagirlobsessedwithwizards]

let me help you

dad’s bsf!theodore nott x fem!reader

minors dni!!!

summary: theo catches reader masturbating and helps out

warnings: age gap (reader is 20 and theo is in his late 30s), masturbation, piv, creampie, unprotected sex, degradation, overstimulation, oral (f receiving), fingering, lowkey perv theo? (kinda), squirting, bulge kink, breeding kink, subspace

Theo had lived next to your family for a few months now, and him and your dad had gotten pretty close. He was a little bit younger than your dad, but still a lot older than you, which is why you knew this was so wrong.

It was so messed up to be doing this, but you couldn’t help yourself. It was like he was doing it on purpose. The casual touches. The subtle glances. It was like he was teasing you.

That’s how you ended up like this, rubbing circles on your clit while biting your lip to keep yourself from moaning.

You imagined it was Theo’s fingers on your clit instead. Your eyes closed as your head fell back against the pillow, moaning quietly. “Fuck, Theo..”

You were so close, so desperate for release. Your hand moved faster, your other hand coming up and toying with one of your nipples.

Small whines and whimpers escaped you as felt your orgasm starting to approach.

“Damn, bella.”

Your eyes shot open to find none other than Theodore Nott standing in your door way, staring at you.

You threw the blanket over yourself, bright red in embarrassment. You could have sworn you locked your door.

Theo simply cocked his head in amusement, “I never told you to stop.”

You couldn’t bring yourself to utter actual words. And oh god, did he hear you moaning his name??

“C’mon baby, you were so close, weren’t you? Don’t you wanna cum?” He took a step closer. “Or do you need me to help you?”

You froze. Was he actually implying that he wanted to sleep with you? What about your dad? Wasn’t he downstairs?

“My dad’s-“

“At the store.” Theo finished for you. “Your dad went to the store. It’s just you and me, principessa. And i know that you must be so worked up,” he took another step closer standing right by your bed now. “Let me help you.”

You couldn’t help but squeeze your thighs together at that. He was so eager to help you. To make you feel good. You both wanted it so much. So it couldn’t be that wrong, right?

“Theo-“

“Shhh, I’m gonna make you feel so good baby, don’t worry.”

All your worries and doubts washed away as he pulled off the sheet that had been covering you, and his eyes darkened.

“dea,” he whispered under his breath, “please baby, i need to taste you.”

you couldn’t help but whine out at that. “please..”

Theo smirked slightly, kneeling down at the edge of the bed and yanking your body towards him. Before you could even react, his face was burried in between your legs.

“Ah- fuck teddy-“ you couldn’t finish your words, a loud and pitiful moan leaving your lips. Theo was eating you out like he was in the desert and you were the only source of water.

His tongue flicked your clit as he added his fingers to the mix, pushing two fingers into your cunt.

You whimpered at the stretch, but yearned for more. For him.

He was basically making out with your clit as his fingers sped up the pace, slamming in and out of you roughly.

Soon enough, you felt that familiar heat pool in your stomach, and your eyes rolled back, thighs shaking.

“Ah- Theo- I’m cumming- fuck-“

Theo moaned against your cunt, his tongue flicking your clit faster as his fingers curled, hitting your g-spot.

You couldn’t help but cry out as your orgasm rushed through you. Your body shook as a clear fluid rushed out of you and soaked the sheets and Theo’s face.

Theo’s movements came to a stop as he looked up at you. Once you came down from your high, you looked down and your cheeks flushed when you realized what happened.

“That was so fucking sexy, bella.” was all he said before standing up to rid himself of his clothes.

Once he was fully undressed, he hovered over you, and pressed a soft kiss against your lips. “Please let me fuck you, baby. I need it. I need to fill you up nice and full with my cock. Is that what you want?”

You mindlessly nodded, still dumb from your previous orgasm. “Fuck me, teddy, please.”

That was all the permission he needed before he guided the head of his dick inside you, moaning as he felt your walls stretching for him.

You whimpered, tears pricking your eyes as he slowly pushed himself all the way in.

“Shh, I know baby, I know. But you asked for this remember? You can take it.”

His thrusts started slow, but began to speed up once he noticed you weren’t in any pain anymore. Quite the opposite, actually.

You were a moaning mess for him, tears streaming down your face as he fucked into you.

“Yeah? You like that, hm? You like when i fuck you deep?”

You couldn’t reply, mind slowly going blank as he fucked you dumb. You could do nothing but lay there and take it.

Theo’s eyes drifted down your body, downright whimpering when he realized he could see himself fucking into you. He watched the bulge of his cock slipping in and out of you roughly.

He grabbed your hair, forcing you to look and see what he was seeing.

“You see that, baby? See how deep I am? How well you’re taking me?”

You moaned, clenching around him, screaming his name as his hand pressed down on the bulge, pushing himself out of you.

His thrusts got faster as he felt himself nearing the edge. “I’m gonna fill that perfect little pussy with my cum, yeah? I’m gonna fucking breed you, baby. And you’re gonna lay there and take it like the good little cumslut that you are.”

His words were filthy and disgusting, but you loved it. You loved how he treated you like nothing more than a whore for him to use how he likes.

Soon enough, you were cumming again, a second rush of fluid shooting out of you.

“Fuck, you’re so pretty squirting on my cock-“

Your orgasm seem to go on forever, making a complete mess of your legs as you kept squirting.

“Yeah? You just can’t stop cumming on my dick, huh?” Theo asked. Just as you thought you had finally came down from your high, Theo’s thrusts got faster, and his thumb rubbed rough circles on your clit.

Sobbing, your third orgasm took over, and you couldn’t do anything accept lay there and let him use you.

“That’s it, keep squirting on my cock you filthy fucking whore.”

He whimpered as you clenched around him, and soon painted your walls with his cum.

Theo whimpered slightly as he pulled out, his cum dripping out of you and down your thighs. You shivered at the feeling.

“You did so good for me baby, now let’s run you a bath before your dad get’s home, hm?”

(this is my first time writing a full oneshot im sorry it’s so bad)

[caribbean1989]

It's Better Together - A Baby Lasagna fanfiction

Who: Baby Lasagna / Marko Purisic Request: maybe the reader is representing another country (doesn't have to be a singer maybe in the team) and after the behaviour of isreali's team (as many people said they treated them bad) she isn't feeling well and marko helps her and supports her. Requested by: anonymous Word count: 916 Warnings: some implied swearing and rudeness.

A/N: Thank you so much for your request. I have changed it a little bit, so it's not specifically about the Israeli team being the rude one, but it can still be read as such.

If you want me to write more Baby Lasagna fics, you can always make a request through my Ask Box. For more information on my Baby Lasagna fanfics, see this masterpost

It had always been your dream to represent your country at the Eurovision Song Contest. This year, your dream came true true when you were selected as the contestant for your country.

After months of preparations, the moment was finally there. As soon as you'd arrived in Malmö it was everything you had hoped for and more. Your fellow contestants were really nice and supportive, the organization was flawless, and so far you were really enjoying yourself. You weren't the favorite with the bookmakers, but they still tipped you for a top 10 candidate.

The schedule was demanding, though. Each day was filled to the brim with rehearsals, interviews and other press-related obligations. Some of the interviews were fun, others were dull, but today you had had an interview with a journalist who was flat-out rude and even somewhat hostile. During the interview you were able to keep your cool, but it took every ounce of your self-control to do so.

Immediately after you were done, you stalked out of the room and made straight for the contestants' lounge. That area was only accessible to the performers, and strictly off-limits to any kind of media-personnel. Since it was late in the evening and most of the other contestants had already finished their duties for the day, you expected it to be empty. And some alone-time to cool off was just what you needed.

Without even checking if someone else was in the lounge when you stepped in, you angrily slammed the door closed behind you, and loudly released an entire string of curses in your native language.

A startled gasp from further down the room made you realize that you weren't alone after all. You let your eyes roam over the dozens of sofa's and armchairs crammed into the lounge, and indeed found one, halfway down the room, occupied. It was Marko who sat there. Your little outburst had clearly startled him, and he had jumped up from his seat. He now stood looking at you a little wide-eyed.

"I'm so sorry about that." You passed a hand over your face and took a few deep breaths to calm yourself down. "I survived," he chuckled, before a frown crossed over his face. "Are you alright?" "Yeah..." You sighed. It wasn't truthful, but you didn't want to burden him with your troubles.

But Marko wasn't so easily fooled. He cocked his head slightly to the side, and gave you an intense stare for about a second. "No, you're not." He stated quite confidently. You couldn't help but laugh. Of course you had met Marko in the previous days. You liked him, and you had had a few nice chats with him, but you two didn't really know much about each other. So the confidence in his statement surprised you.

"Please, don't take this the wrong way." Marko immediately second-guessed himself. "But I think you still look... upset." He wrung his hands together, clearly uncomfortable by his own words and wondering if you were going to get angry with him now.

"You're right," you finally confessed. You weren't nearly alright yet and still way too upset by how the journalist had treated you. Yet, you were strangely relieved that Marko was here and had seen that you were still distraught.

"Maybe you should sit down." Marko quickly recollected himself. You nodded quietly, before walking over to where Marko had been sitting and throwing yourself down in the armchair opposite him. "Here." Marko handed you a bottle of water and sat down as well. You gratefully accepted the water, taking a few sips of the much needed hydration.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Marko smiled shyly. "It's just... this journalist." You shook your head. "The interview I've just had was awful. So rude and disrespectful." "Ah..." Marko understood immediately. "I know exactly who you mean. If it's any consolation, he's rude to everyone. I had to do an interview with him yesterday, and... let's just say that I was glad when it was over."

Marko's words did make you feel a little better. If someone could be rude to a gentle soul like Marko, they were just mean and heartless.

Suddenly you remembered that tomorrow you had another, even longer interview scheduled with the same journalist. "Oh, no!" You buried your face in your hands. "I totally forgot I've got to do more press with that guy tomorrow." To your surprise, Marko chuckled softly. "You and me both. Quite literally actually." "What do you mean?" You looked up at him. Marko smiled crookedly at you, giving a one-shouldered shrug. "You and I are teamed up for press tomorrow."

You blinked stupidly at him for a few seconds. You needed a moment to remember that Marko was indeed right. In your fury and frustration that fact had completely slipped your mind. "So sorry," you mumbled, "I forgot about that." Marko smiled another shy smile. "It's fine."

For a few moments there was silence between the two of you. "I'm glad we're teamed up for tomorrow." You broke the silence. "You're a good guy, and I feel really at ease with you." Marko blushed slightly red. "Me, too. And if anyone is rude to us tomorrow, I'm sure we'll be able to get each other through." "Absolutely," you nodded happily, all the anger of just now quickly draining from you.

And suddenly, tomorrow's press day didn't seem so bad anymore, because you knew Marko would be there with you.

[sibylsleaves]

seven sentence sunday

no one tagged me...tragic. a little something from...a little something. let's ignore the fact that im supposed to be finishing some things fall right now because im technically on vacation so THIS DOESN'T COUNT!!

Eddie cards his fingers gently through his hair. “Are you thinking about the wedding?” It had been months of planning. Months of Buck and Chris driving everyone around them completely insane because they needed every detail to be perfect. The wildfires had thrown everything out the window—even if they’d managed to get the day off, their wedding venue in Malibu had to close due to the smoke and proximity to the fires. Buck just shakes his head. “After everything we’ve seen over the past few weeks…after all that devastation…I’m just glad we’re here. That everyone we love is safe in their homes. That’s all that matters to me.” Eddie strokes his fingers over Buck’s temple, brushing his thumb over his blush-pink birthmark. He loves this man so much. And Eddie knows—has known, since the minute Buck breathlessly confessed his feelings and Eddie took his face between his hands and kissed him for the first tme—that he’s going to love him for the rest of his life. “We’ll figure it out. We can still have the perfect wedding you wanted.”  Tomorrow, they’d wake up and start from scratch—find a new venue, figure out which vendors would allow them to reschedule, which ones would give their deposits back. Set a new date. He wanted nothing more than to be married to Buck like they’d planned, but if it took another year and a half, he’d wait. Buck should get to have everything he wanted. But Buck just shook his head. “I only wanted it to be perfect for you, Eddie.” Eddie just snorts. “Buck. Sweetheart. I’d marry you in a mall parking lot and it would be perfect.”

tagging @housewifebuck @iinryer @transboybuckley @littlespoonevan @glorious-spoon

@smallandalmosthonest @homerforsure @clusterbuck @buckactuallys @bibibuck

@spaceprincessem @devirnis @eddiebabygirldiaz @sunshinediaz @messyhairdiaz

[farfromstrange]

Do No Harm

CHAPTER TWELVE: Oh, Chaos!

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Summary: You have an eventful day at work rekindling with a new acquaintance and dealing with a peculiar trauma case, but the most prominent thing on your mind is dinner with Matt, and you could really use some advice from someone who knows a thing or two about dates to keep you from canceling.

Warnings for this chapter: slight angst, self-hatred/doubt, mentions of past abuse, mentions of injury

Word Count: 5.3k

A/n: I'm sorry this took so long. I took an unexpected hiatus, and I couldn't break out of the writer's block, so this took close to a month to finish. I read this a dozen times, and I fixed what I could. This is rather "boring" compared to what came before and what I've got planned, but there is plot in there that will become important again later down the line. Just so you know what you're getting yourself into in advance. 'Kay, thank you!

Read Chapter 12: Oh, Chaos! here on AO3

Four missed calls, and twenty text messages. The chat is full of one-sided advances. ‘Claire’ is written on top, but her contact resembles an empty void in contrast. 

I don’t know what I did to deserve this radio silence, but I thought you would like to know I asked Matt out again. I like him. We’re having dinner on Friday. Do with that as you will. 

Hope you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere. 

Call me when you can. Please. 

I’m worried about you. 

Love you. 

It has been like this since Matt called you when you least expected it. Whether he was looking for support, professional advice, or just the sound of your voice, you’re not sure, but it warmed your heart to know he thought of you and no one else, and he picked up the phone to call you. 

Before, you tried telling yourself that there isn’t much between you. You tried telling yourself that perhaps, it would never go anywhere and not to be disappointed because from the start, Matt has been too good to be true, but after sharing a glimpse of your past, you feel closer to him, and you don’t want to let him go. He is the first good thing that has come to you in years. 

Claire’s radio silence hurts. You don’t want to admit it, but sending text after text to your best friend and receiving not even a ‘read’ sign both concerns and upsets you. Ever since she took you under her wing when you came to New York, you’ve—sometimes involuntarily—shared your anger with her, your sadness, your pain, and those rare moments of happiness. 

She was the one who told you to go for it, so her behavior remains suspicious. You want to ask her; you want to confront her about everything and get the truth out of her, but unless she answers your contact attempts or shows up to work, there is not much you can do. You tried from the moment you got home to the second leading up to your next shift at the hospital. So far, nothing. A few days ago, you would have called the police and said that this was nothing like Claire, but now, you’re not so sure anymore what to believe, and it is pissing you off when you should be excited.

Things are looking up. You don’t want to look down and ruin this for yourself, knowing there is a chance your thoughts will most likely turn against you again at some point. You have to enjoy it while it lasts. 

Glancing down at your phone, you walk down one of the hallways at Metro General. You shake your head. It’s been hours. Perhaps after you get off work, you will head to where Claire is staying. Just to check on her. The nagging feeling that shit is about to hit the fan won’t leave you, and it seems like the right thing to do, even if just to ask her what her problem is. 

She’s always so quick to tell you what’s good for you. She gives you advice you never even asked for, but you end up appreciating it regardless. She knows what she’s doing, and she is a lot smarter than you are most of the time. You know her as well as you possibly can after two years; Claire is hiding something, and that is unlike her. If she gets herself in danger because of something she feels like she can’t talk to you about, or if she has an opinion afraid to share with you, you need to know because it is important to you. Your mind is disordered and distorted; you are well aware that sometimes, you don’t see things as clearly as you should. Claire’s rationality is a blessing and a curse. You’re dependent on it.

“Hey, Doc,” a familiar voice sounds from the nurse’s station.

You stop in your tracks, looking up from your phone to the man standing across from you. You haven’t seen that face in a while, even though he spends a lot of time here—almost as much as he does at work. You doubt he ever goes home to sleep. 

Your face lights up, and you stuff your phone back into the pocket of your coat. “Ben!” you exclaim, your lips curving into a smile. 

“Long time no see,” he says in an attempt to match your delighted reaction.

You hate to admit it, but Ben Urich looks worse for wear. Dark circles under his eyes match the deepened wrinkles of exhaustion, and his lips are cracked in more places than one. His shirt shows the slightest of coffee stains he tries to cover with his visitor badge. You doubt he has had the time to do his laundry in a long time. And there is that expression of agony he usually knows how to hide, but the walls he once built around himself are starting to crumble. 

The sympathy you have for this man cannot be put into words—because your feelings are unpleasant most of the time, too, and unless you have been in an impossible situation, all you can have is empathy. You, however, are not a stranger to despair, and the people around you all seem to be carrying too much of it, too. 

You clear your throat, putting the file in your hand aside to shake his. “How have you been?” you dare to ask. 

He shrugs. “Could be better, but… I’m alive. Healthy,” he says. It’s a modified standard answer you do not buy for even a second. 

Your eyes soften, but you try to keep the mood light. God knows what he has been through since the last time you saw him on this very floor. “Yeah? That’s good. The Bulletin still giving you a hard time about the things you want to write?” You chuckle. 

“Ah, you know how it is.” Ben leans against the counter. “Readers these days are apparently more interested in celebrity scandals and gentrification than true crime.”

The pen scratches against the chart you have to sign. “Well, just know that you will always have a loyal fan of your true crime section in me, and I would tell that to Eric’s face if you ever need me to.” You offer him a smile of pure honesty, and his eyes actually light up this time. 

He chuckles. “Can I quote you on that?”

“That depends. Am I getting paid?”

“I’m afraid the only form of payment I have is cheap office coffee.”

“You’re in luck then,” you say, “I am a sucker for cheap office coffee because it’s still better than cheap hospital coffee.”

His face contorts. “Yeah, I’m not going to argue with you on that,” he says. 

Again, you chuckle. The question rests on the tip of your tongue, but only when the silence stretches out painfully long enough to prompt a drop of sweat to run down his temple, you ask, “How’s your wife?” No pain or pity in your voice—you know he doesn’t need it. 

Ben swallows in response, scratching his fingers through his hair. “Uh, hanging in there. They told me she’s had a good day today. Lucid,” he tells you. 

“That sounds like progress. You know, with her condition, every good day is a success.”

“Yeah, yeah, I, uh… I agree. But… she’s not the only reason I’m here. Shelly called me here today to, uh, discuss my wife’s future at this hospital…”

The muscles in your shoulders tense and stiffen. You slowly lift your head. “Oh,” is all you can muster up to say. You know where this is going.

“Yeah,” he says. “I tried convincing her to keep her here a little while longer. But apparently, you guys can’t accommodate her much longer, and she wants me to look into hospice or some other form of long-term care.”

“I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault.”

But what else are you supposed to say? You clear your throat. “I, uh… Shelly’s under a lot of pressure, you know? We’re having funding issues in every department, and she is just trying to make due, but… I know your wife’s been here for a very long time, and she’s dependent on the care. Alzheimer’s can be incredibly cruel, and I’m sure hospice is a lot more expensive than what your insurance covers if she stays here, so it isn’t fair. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” says Ben. 

“Can I help in any way?” you ask. 

“Well, unless you can win the lottery or find a cure for Alzheimer’s in the next seven days, I’m afraid not.”

“Believe me, people are trying, but—”

“I know,” he cuts you off. “I still appreciate it. You’re one of the few doctors here who still care about the people.”

You shake your head, saying, “It’s not that easy. The system is rigged against us. We’re all aware of it, but some of us just… fall off the wagon because they think the only way through is to become what we hate the most. Selfish, egotistical money-makers always chasing recognition rather than caring about the patients we’re supposed to serve,” you explain. “These new fancy medical centers only those with millions in their bank accounts can afford are where all the funding goes, and those who cater to the underprivileged and uninsured—like us—have to suffer the consequences because we don’t chase after money. I would know; I did my residency at one of those hospitals, and I hated how some of these people treated their patients, so I always tried to use the resources we’ve got to help people, even those who couldn’t afford it. Of course, not all of my fellow residents stayed on that path with me. The more high-risk surgeries, the better the payout, even when unnecessary. Upcoding and needless tests were the standards we were held to. I’ve always hated that. Public hospitals are at the bottom of the food chain, and the patients end up pulling the short straw, but most doctors don’t start with the mindset that it’s just something we have to accept. That lethargy comes with time. And the system.”

“Kind of reminds me of that kook in the black mask,” Ben muses. “With his disbelief in the system and his…his twisted sense of justice.”

You scoff. “Well…”

Your mind flashes back to the other night in that alleyway. The way he interfered when he heard you in trouble. The cockiness he seemed to exceed, but it quickly vanished when he realized you may have risked your life to save someone else’s, but you were not going to leave another person injured. You don’t have a lot of trust in the justice system, but that man seemed… different; like the only way he could believe in justice is when he does something against the persistent injustice that so many turn a blind eye to. 

But it’s not just Hell’s Kitchen, which the Man In Black seems to gracefully ignore. He does what he needs to where he thinks he has to, but it is not just the system in his beloved city that is wired against the people it is supposed to protect and serve. It’s not just the justice system or society overall, it’s the government, too. And you truly believe he knows that, too, he simply does not have the manpower to fight all battles at once. No one has. 

Ben eyes you curiously, up and down. “What, you don’t agree?” he asks. 

You sigh. “I don’t think he has a twisted sense of justice, no.”

“Why? You met him?”

Saying yes would make you an accessory to his crimes. “I’ve heard the same things you have, Ben, and I think he really is trying to change something,” you answer instead. 

You find a sudden determination in his eyes as he leans closer. “You treat his victims, right? You’ve seen what he can do with his bare hands. Taking out entire syndicates that have been bothering Hell’s Kitchen for decades, going up against bad seeds and corporations, and he never backs down,” he says. 

“If you’re trying to say it’s a bad thing…” You trail off. 

“I think it’s a grey area. A fine line.”

“Well, as fine as that line may be, I don’t feel as much empathy for the people he puts in here because I’ve seen what they can do just a few blocks from here,” you state and close the chart in front of you on the counter. “I had to watch lives and families get destroyed. The ones responsible for serving justice either didn’t have the evidence, or they were too late, or the only witnesses died on my table, or—and that happens quite frequently, too—they just didn’t care,” you say. “The times I watched them make arrests, the legal system ended up failing the victims anyway. Now, I’m not saying I condone violence, but this city needs help. Depending on the area, police sometimes don’t even bother to check, and that pisses me off because a lot of the time, tragedies could have been prevented if first responders just got there on time. Or if the perpetrators involved in a crime suffered the consequences for their actions instead of bailing out the same day on a domestic violence charge. I know that the police can't be everywhere at once, but… A lot of people feel safer with this guy out there because they know he tries.”

Ben desperately scribbles along on a small notepad you’re not sure where he got it from. He’s not even wearing a coat. 

“It’s like David and Goliath,” you tell him, too animated to pay closer attention to your surroundings. “It’s a contest wherein a smaller, weaker opponent faces a much bigger and stronger adversary. I just… I don’t know. In this city, there are a lot of metaphorically weak individuals who don’t have the means to fight back against the big guy. Like I said, a system rigged against its people does not help the people live a safe and happy life in a city that makes them feel like all their advances are futile.”

“That’s excellent,” he murmurs.

You glimpse down at his hand, frowning. “It’s just my opinion.”

“There’s nothing ‘just’ about it. I know a lot of people feel the way you do, and yes, that’s fucked up. But that’s why we need people like you to speak up. People with more influence than the little guy. People who serve the people.”

“Ben,” you try to get a word in.

“Hear me out,” he says. “If I can get Eric to sign off on it, I want to write a think piece for the public. About the man in the mask. About Hell’s Kitchen and New York, and the things no one likes to talk about. And I’d like to get you on the record.”

“With all due respect—and I do love the concept—I don’t think interviewing me would be such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

Your pulse has inevitably gotten higher. Because if my ex finds out where I am, he’ll kill me. The thought screams like a banshee, echoing like the trajectory of a bouncing basketball. It takes you a moment to realize that the thudding is your heart. Dull, aching, and infused with a panic as old as time. 

You squeeze the pen in your fist, feeling the plastic crack under the weight. “I can’t have my name or face on the record,” you confess. “It’s a, uh… protection thing.”

The most human thing to ask would be, ‘Protection from what?’ You don’t have to read minds to know that those are the words forming on Ben’s lips the second you offer him an explanation that is not quite the truth. It couldn’t be further from it, but your truth is a tank and tanks can take down everything in their path without suffering as much as a scratch. 

You take the stage before he can ask—before you can ride yourself further into this pile of dirt and lies. “I treat people for a living, and my opinions out there… I need to protect myself if someone ever wants to file a lawsuit against me for prejudicial behavior because they could easily use an interview I gave as evidence,” you say. “I could lose my license.” Your license, and your life. 

He releases a strangled breath. “Yeah, no. Of course,” Ben says. “I knew that. But I could always refer to my source as anonymous. Most of the time, people don’t care about who said what anyway. They just want something to talk about.”

You want to scream. The alarm is blaring loud enough for the nerves in your body to hear it. The rage is so hard to swallow. Not at him though. It isn’t Ben’s fault that even now, you have to live your life as if it was never yours to begin with.

“But,” he adds upon seeing the look on your face, like a deer in bright headlights, “unless a certain Man in Black decides to leave another stranded criminal on my doorstep, Eric will never sign off on it. I’m sorry,” the exasperation in his voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard. “I didn’t mean to jump this at you. I know you have more…important things to do than worry about an old journalist who knows damn well his best days are behind him.” 

The shake of your head follows in an instant. His confidence lies drowned in the invisible puddle at your feet. “You don’t always have to go with the flow of time,” you tell him. “If you want to write something, you should. People’s tastes change, but there will always be someone out there who wants to read what you have to say.”

Ben smiles at you. “Does that mean you’ll think about my offer?” he asks.

You return the gesture. “When I’ve done my important things, maybe I will.”

And chances are, you will think about it. You will think about it, and then you will cry over a bottle of wine and wish you were never born or that, once again, he killed you when he had the chance. You will wish that you didn’t run, and you will curse John and your entire existence to hell and back because without him, you wouldn’t have to guard your heart like a maximum-security prison, and you wouldn’t have to hide who you are like a secret from Pandora’s box. In the end, though, you know you will have to decide if he doesn’t forget what he offered you—and knowing Ben Urich, when he is allowed to write about what he wants, he won’t forget the sources he tried to recruit along the way. 

You look up suddenly when the sirens start blaring above your head. 

Attention all staff, Code Red, Emergency Department. Code Red, Emergency Department. Trauma team to the Emergency Department immediately.

“That sounds bad,” Ben comments. 

You turn back to him, but before you can open your mouth and excuse yourself from the conversation (and your internal self-hatred party), one of the nurses behind the counter picks up the phone with a knowing nod. A second passes and all color fades from her skin before her features contort. “I’m sorry, what?!” she damn-near screeches.

You frown back at her. “Hey, Evie,” — you snap your fingers — “What’s going on?”

She moves the speaker away from her lips. “Um,” she stammers. “Have you ever seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”

“Oh, my God.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s 11 am!” you say, your eyes darting between her and the wall as if that would change anything.

Ben cuts in, “That doesn’t mean much in a city that never sleeps,” he says. “People are always crazy ‘round here.”

You scoff. “Apparently! I’m so sorry, but I’ve gotta–”

“Yeah, no. I know.” He nods, his eyes softening in an instant. “Go!”

With a grateful nod, you leave your work on the counter and head into a sprint down the hall. 

A life-saving surgery can take up to several hours. There really is no margin for error, so you tune out the noise of the world outside and focus on the chaos you have to control. You focus on what you know and what you have learned because if you don’t, the person you are cutting into with a scalpel could die at your very touch. For those few critical hours, you are nothing but a doctor, but the world doesn’t stop or disappear in real life when you cease to exist; when you come back after those few hours, the world is still falling apart, and you still have to go back home and face the reality you are forced to live in. But how can you think that when people are fighting for their lives every day before your eyes; when you can try as hard as you want to help them, but you fail more often than you do not? Mental scars often out-rule the physical scars of a trauma patient, and whenever you tell them it gets better, you feel like you are lying to them. Because it never gets better, it feels like.

People are dying and falling apart, and so are you, and it hurts that nothing ever seems to change, not even when you try to tell yourself that people are dependent on you and that your world can’t stop again because this is your job; you signed up for this. But you didn’t sign up for this kind of life. You fell in with the wrong person, craving a love like in the fairytales you used to read as a little girl. You missed the feeling of being loved because the people who were supposed to love you died and fell apart, and you were left fantasizing. It’s a downright mess in your head and everywhere around you, and you are continuously stumbling over the broken glass on your floor, falling into the shards and cutting yourself over and over again until you’re bleeding out but never fully dead. 

You spend the next six hours in the operating room, forgetting about Matt and the implications of your dinner. The one you asked him out to. You forget about Ben and his offer, and you think finally, finally, you can breathe. Human anatomy isn’t quite as complicated as this. The one thing you have been worrying most about, the person who has occupied your every waking thought for days now, fades into the shadows for a little while, but then you’re threading the needle through the skin of the man whose life you have saved, and your second to breathe turns into a riot.

Ben’s words return to your conscience; the masked individual he seems most fascinated with moves to the forefront of your fragile mind. He is all over you again, and it sends a thrill down your spine that positively terrifies you; it terrifies you that it doesn’t terrify you. He shouldn’t matter, and you shouldn’t lose another thought to him, but Ben Urich knows how to cast out a net to catch even the most unlikely adversary. 

You redial the last number on your phone. Standing in the emergency room that has grown quiet for the afternoon, you feel the weight of the world sinking back in. The clock keeps ticking closer to the end of your shift and inevitably, dinner. Forgetting is a blessing until you realize that thinking about it would have prepared you more, and now you barely have time. 

You want to cancel. You should cancel. Claire has not been picking up, and you’re worried about her. But she’s an adult, isn’t she? She pushed you into doing this, and then she bailed. A good friend would at least give you a reason for her change of mind. She hasn’t said a word because she refuses to answer, and it’s starting to leave a bitter taste in your mouth. 

“This is Claire. Leave a message,” her voicemail greets you. 

You sigh. “Hey, I don’t know why you refuse to pick up my calls, but I could use your help. I’m, uh, freaking out about this stupid dinner that wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for what you said, so the least you could do is call me back and help me pick a dress, maybe talk me off the ledge,” you say. Your voice cracks. “Please, Claire, call me back.” 

The silence is defeating. You put your phone down, staring at the paperwork before you. You have a lot more of that in your office, but you can’t be bothered to be entirely alone right now. Not when you are fighting a war with yourself inside your head. The one soldier you thought you could count on has retreated from the frontlines. 

You look up when your peripheral vision picks up on movement. “Trouble?” one of the nurses asks, motioning to your face.

“Depends on the definition,” you say.

“Hit me with it. Maybe I can help.”

You couldn’t shut up even if you wanted to. “Well… Do you know anything about proper date attire?” 

She grins, dropping whatever she was holding before to turn her undivided attention to you. “A date?” she asks. “Well, well, Doc. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Oh, just… a guy I met. A good guy.” You smile sadly at the thought of those beautiful brown eyes, and the green forest that he hides in his irises whenever the light hits his beautiful face just right. The wrinkles, the dimples, and the faint freckles on his nose, too. He is so beautiful. 

She leans forward on her elbows on the counter of the nurse’s station. “The good guy who left your number here the other day?” 

You raise your eyebrows, flabbergasted. “Wh—” The blood rushes to your face, and you suddenly feel very warm as you gape at her. “Does everyone here know about that?” you ask, your voice bothered on a high-pitched siren of embarrassment. 

The nurse only smirks. “He is very handsome,” she states. “It’s hard to forget a face like that. And he’s come here twice. One of those times he sat by your bedside. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would marry a guy like that in a heartbeat. Bodies in the basement included.”

You hope he doesn’t have bodies in his basement. What if he does though? What if he is just another bad choice waiting to be made? What then? You can’t imagine it, and the things you’re feeling… you have only felt them in your mind because nothing you had was ever real, but you love feeling them now more than you thought possible. It’s the fact that you love that treacherous feeling so much that you feel like you’re not thinking clearly enough to make rational decisions. But you don’t want to make rational decisions, you’ve realized. Life shouldn’t be about that. You can’t turn the voice in your head off and make it stop screaming at you, but you know how to feel. If you only knew how to channel that without falling apart at the hands of your self-doubts though. If only you knew. 

You run a wary hand over your face. “Okay,” you murmur, closing your chart so you can look at your colleague. “Claire isn’t answering her phone and this date… it’s freaking me out. She said I had to get back out there, but she bailed on me,” you tell her. “I don’t know what to wear or how to behave because the place we’re going to is… fancy? And I don’t even know how to pay for it. I… I don’t know if I should go because the last time I was on a date… let’s just say it didn’t end well. So, if you could just tell me that this is a bad idea and I should take on a second shift instead so I won’t feel bad about lying to him, I would be forever in your debt.”

She shakes her head, not having missed a second of your rambling. “Oh, hell no!” she exclaims. 

You match her incredulity, propping your hands up on your hips. “Excuse me?” you ask.

Her head stops, and the way she stands there reminds you of your English teacher from high school. Tall, brunette, and sassy. “You are not bailing on that date like Claire bailed on you just because you’re experiencing anxiety,” the nurse tells you. She’s insistent. You doubt you will get a word in that isn’t an utterance of agreement. 

“You don’t understand,” you try to convince her, or are you trying to convince yourself? “I can’t do this.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Did you miss the part where I said my last date ended in disaster?”

“So what? I’ve had a lot of disastrous dates.”

“That’s not…ugh!” It is your turn to shake your head, looking at the sterile wall as though it were a screen. 

A life built on a lie is not much of a life at all. You have as good a reason as anyone to bail on this date, and it’s not just a disastrous date. You didn’t pick the wrong guy off of Hinge and fall in love with him. What happened to you was different on a level you can’t easily describe, but it also shouldn’t define you; she’s right. Your insecurities are going to be the death of you one day.

“Let me ask you this,” she says. “Do you like him? Or do you just think he’s a really good guy because he was nice to you?”

Your jaw slacks. The Audacity. “I… I think he’s a great guy. Nice. Forthcoming. That’s all,” you answer. It’s not a lie, but it is not the full truth she wanted to hear.

“Uh-huh. I may not be a human polygraph, but I can smell a lie from miles away like a bloodhound. And you, Doctor, are lying and therefore interfering with your treatment.”

“I’m not a patient.”

“Are you though?”

You sigh. You should not have confided in her, but also, perhaps it was the best choice you could have made. 

“I like him,” you confess upon looking into her eyes. “Okay? I like him. He’s not just a good guy. He’s… different, and that’s why I like him.”

She stands up straighter, a newfound energy filling her veins. “That’s more like it. Now, let’s forget the whole ‘canceling and using work as an excuse’ thing. What’s the vibe?” she asks.

The change of subject throws you off for a second. You’re walking on eggshells, fragile train tracks you could fall off and electrocute yourself with if you only take one wrong step. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take risks. 

“Fancy-ish,” you answer. You don’t have any strength left to fight. “I don’t know. It’s dinner.”

“Dinner’s romantic. Put on a silk or velvet dress because those are the fabrics with less risk of becoming a sensory nightmare, possibly some jewelry, but you don’t need much more than that. He’ll fall in love with your personality first. The rest is just… for your confidence and his imagination.”

She looks so proud of herself. You can’t deny that it’s good advice. It’s not the sound of your voice filling a voicemail to the brim or a solely blue chat history; it’s something you can work with. 

You nod slowly. “If I didn’t have mountains of paperwork waiting for me, I would kiss you,” you say.

With a chuckle, she retorts, “Save that for your date.”

“I’m not kissing him.” You grab your pile of work. “It’s just dinner. I don’t even want to kiss him.”

On your way to the elevators, you catch a glimpse of her smirk. She’s not buying it. You don’t want her to. You don’t even trust yourself to tell the truth.

“I don’t,” you say, loud enough for her to hear but mostly to yourself. “I don’t want to kiss him,” you repeat because you don’t.

You don’t want to kiss Matt Murdock.

Except that you do, and you would do anything to make that happen—if your world wasn’t so unfair to begin with. 

Tag List: @shiorimakibawrites @allllium @siampie @auroraslibrary @roseallisonparker @abucketofweird @thatonegamefish @capylore @kniselle @sumo-b98 @peachstarliight @danzer8705 @kakamixo @littlehappyperson @atemydadforbreakfast @stevenknightmarc @zheezs14 @shouldbestudying41 @kiwwia-wiwwia @writtenbyred @echo-ethe @kezibear @peterbarnes

[h8ani]

Sasuke Uchiha x Reader

Word Count - 4k

Warnings - smut, angry sex, public sex, fear of getting caught, hair pulling, angst, slight paranoia, kinda non-canon structures (its been a long time since i watched naruto tbh so disregard the village not being exactly how the anime is), oral - male receiving, face fucking, gagging, degradation, penetrative sex, fem!reader, choking, reader is described to be wearing a dress in this chapter, there’s a voyeur

A/N - Just a reminder that if you have joined my taglist and change your username please let me know! If you haven't joined I put the link down below :) But holy hell you guys I can't believe I actually finished this after almost 5 months in my drafts, but I hope you enjoy it!

taglist! - @bloodsiren @blackfire2013 @benkeibear @suyacho @kodzukein

join my taglist → here

Part One → Part Two → Part Three → Part Four

It’s been a few days since the last time Sasuke was over. You’re used to the silence in between his visits; it’s become second nature to go days, even weeks, without seeing him, and the radio silence between each time he visits has become more common than the last. 

It doesn’t bother you. It does. You could really care less. Sasuke has been the only thing that’s been on your mind. You absolutely hate him. You feel…conflicted.

~~

Limbs tangled with one another, all you could hear were the heavy breaths that escaped both of your lips, your body rising and falling every time Sasuke took in a deep breath as you laid on top of him, his hands dancing along the skin of your back so featherlight it almost tickled. 

Neither of you had uttered a word, just basking in the feeling of touching the other’s skin; the warmth radiating off each other’s body heat brought a sense of familiarity that you couldn’t quite pinpoint just why you felt most comfortable in his arms. You mentally shook the thought away; there was no need to focus on that. Your mind had already cleared up from the sex fog he had put you under and had started to race with a million different things that you wanted to bring up to him. Why did he do what he did? When was he going to leave again? He’s going to leave right away, don’t be stupid. When were you going to see him again? Why did he leave in the first place? You wanted to bring up so much, but you couldn’t brush off this feeling that something was about to happen, as if the rainstorm you were caught up in earlier today was a warning of a disaster brewing and about to happen. 

“What’s wrong,” Sasuke spoke up, his words sounding more like a statement than a question. His eyes were trained on you, making your stomach involuntarily tighten with their intensity. He had been focusing on the multitude of expressions that had graced your face within the last minute; you were completely oblivious to his stare; somehow, he wanted to blame the sex for your lack of inattentiveness and not the fact that you may feel safe around him, no it couldn’t be that. Being distracted has nothing to do with him and everything to do with you being incompetent. Yeah, that’s it.  

Your eyes met his, and before he knew it, your eyes lit up, a small smile appeared, and a simple shake of the head erased any form of contemplation he had previously seen. “Nothing.” You quickly say, “Just thinking.” Bullshit

“About what?” He interjects, his hands that were once dancing lightly across your back were now holding your hips, gripping ever so slightly. 

“Just thinking, random thoughts, it doesn’t matter.” 

“If it doesn’t matter, then you can tell me.”

Huffing a sigh, you stare back at him, his emotionless pools of black not letting you get a read on him, yours: uncertainty. “You won’t answer me even if I ask.”

He raises and sits up, causing you to reposition yourself in an upright position as well; your eyes stay trained on him as his stare hardens, almost as if what you just said offended him somehow. His eyes glance into yours as if he needs to be wary now. “I’m not answering anything about why I’m back in the village or why I left.” He blurts out quickly, a scoff following soon after. “You know you can’t say anything about seeing me. Don’t go blabbing about it to any of your little friends, or I won’t be coming back.” His stare solidifies as your jaw drops ever so slightly; the hardened look he’s giving you makes your chest tighten, and your body rises in temperature. 

Sasuke sees your expression fall ever so slightly before you catch yourself and, in turn, sends the signature scowl he’s grown accustomed to back in his direction. Your eyes narrow while you sit up straighter, the discarded sheet on the bed now pulled tightly to your chest, and he curses at the way that made his stomach clench. He doesn’t care if you’re mad at him, but he can’t lie and say he didn’t want to ruin your two’s good momentum today. The sex was great, and he wanted to leave on what would be considered a good note for the both of you.

“I think you should go,” you say simply. You avert your glare and decide to stare at the wall instead, avoiding his eyes. “You know where the door is.” Ouch.

He rubs his face and sighs. “Look, you don’t get-”

“I don’t care, Sasuke. Like I said, it didn’t matter. So why don’t you just leave? I never saw you, and I’m not going to tell any of my “little friends.” 

You sigh and throw the blankets off you, quickly grabbing your clothes and slamming your bathroom door shut. 

Your throat tightened from the moment you got up, wanting to get away from him from the very moment he opened his stupid mouth. You take a slow, deep breath and let it out; the tightness in your throat drops to your stomach. Why would he even snap like that? What gives him the right to think he could speak like that to you? You miff another sigh out as the conflict in you bubbles up even more with the thoughts running rampant. How stupid could you be for thinking he actually could’ve been somewhat of a nice human being after today?

Your thoughts were quickly silenced by the sound of your front door opening and closing, the door shutting louder than necessary. Fucking asshole.

~~

You shake your head to rid yourself of your thoughts as you look at yourself in the mirror, you fix your hair and check over your outfit in the mirror, quickly doing a little 360 in your mirror. Everyone had decided that tonight was a good night to hang out and have some drinks as no one had any missions for tomorrow, so there was no need to worry about any impending hangovers. 

You changed into a nice dress that fell mid-thigh; it was form-fitting and casual enough that you didn’t overdress or underdress with it. You pulled your hair into a high ponytail and just enough makeup to cover any eye bags that were more prominent than usual, no less from your sleepless nights thinking about he-who-shall-not-be-named-or-thought-of. You looked yourself over in the mirror and smiled. You felt pretty tonight, and it was nice not constantly to be in work mode for once.

The stressors from work and the expectations you always got from everyone took a toll on your body more than you would have liked. You were expected to never make any mistakes and always be three steps ahead, and it was simply a lot. Was it fair? Probably not, but it was also what you got for being a perfectionist at such a young age. You gave everyone expectations where you could only rise instead of fall. If you fell, everyone would know, and you just couldn’t have that. 

You leave your apartment and make your way down to meet your friends. The air had a slight chill to it as the sun was finally setting, but something along with the chill was bothering you. You couldn’t brush off the feeling that someone was watching you. 

Your feet skid to a halt as you spin, eyes cascading along the rooftops of the buildings around you. Your breathing picks up as your heart begins beating, and you feel every thump as your anxiety spikes. You internally curse yourself for being so stupid as not to even bring a single shuriken with you. For god’s sake, you could’ve popped one in your purse just for safekeeping. The anxiety you feel is derived from being paranoid, and you have to remind yourself no one is watching you and that it’s just your own mind playing tricks on you. You take a deep breath as you hear a name call out to you; turning back around, you see Shikamaru and Choji waving you over. You speed walk over to them, swallowing down the feeling of someone’s eyes on you. Was Sasuke here again? You wouldn’t expect him to be over so soon after the fight you two had just days ago. He’s never over this soon after he leaves anyway. Usually, it takes weeks for him to come over, sometimes even months. Although his eyes being the ones you’ve felt had to have been it, there’s no other explanation.

~~

The buzz of the alcohol was finally settling in; once you got inside, you decided you needed a tiny little shot to calm your nerves and anxieties, then another once all your friends arrived and wanted to take a group shot, and now here you are ordering your third. You’re a lightweight, no shock about that, and feeling a bit dazed as you stare at the shot of alcohol sitting in front of you. You’re so zoned out, not even realizing the presence of someone taking the seat next to you at the bar table.

“You look nice tonight.” A familiar voice catches your ear, and you turn, seeing Shikamaru next to you. A sudden rush of heat hits you as you stare back at him. “Oh, T-Thank you.” You stutter out and mentally smack yourself. You divert your attention back to your shot glass, suddenly remembering how intriguing it was just two seconds ago. 

Suddenly, hearing the sound of glass scraping against the bar table, you look up and see a similar shot in Shikamaru’s hand. “Cheers?” He holds up his shot glass, waiting for you to do the same. A small chuckle leaves you as you hold yours up and clink your glass with his. “Cheers.” 

You knock back the shot, grimacing over the familiar burn down your throat and the fuzzy feeling deep in your stomach. You sigh and slump back against your seat as you look at Shikamaru. “You look nice too, I think I forgot to compliment you back.” 

He chuckles, “Thanks, I didn’t really know what to wear. I wanted to come in sweats and a hoodie, but Ino just about had a conniption when I mentioned that.”

“Oh, don’t lie, you didn’t even want to come to this.”

“And you did?”

“Well, you got me there, didn’t you?” 

Laughter fills the air around you two as you continue to talk about past missions, the latest drama you’ve heard around the village, and even as mundane as the midnight snacks you two have had, you were actually…enjoying yourself; the thought of Sasuke had been dissipated like the rain that had come and gone from the prior days. Listening to Shikamaru talk was something you found yourself rather enjoying. Still, maybe that’s just the alcohol in your veins talking. Yeah, that was definitely it. “So, what’s new with you?” Shikamaru asks, his eyes finding yours, and the sudden tightness is once again back, whether that being because the only thing that seems to be ‘new’ in your life was Sasuke and every little defiling and obscene moment between you two replayed again in your head or because you actually might be liking the attention Shikamaru is giving you the world will never know. 

“Ah, you know. Lots of training, lots of missions, lots of-”

“Staying in your apartment all day and night?”

You quirk an eyebrow up at him, lips slowly following suit. “Shikamaru Nara, are you stalking me?” An indiscernible giggle leaves your lips, which shocks not only you but also him. You can see the pink rising to his cheeks at your minor faux accusation; his eyes widen, and his hands immediately come up to defend himself. “No, I just hear Ino constantly nagging at me to hang out with her, that’s how I know. I don’t stand out of your window or anything like that. Do you know how much time and energy that takes? Do you know-”

“Shikamaru?” 

“What?”

“I was joking.”

“Oh.”

“You know, for someone with an IQ higher than a tree, you’re kinda dumb.”

“You know what…Shut up.”

~~

The air around you as you step outside drops a few degrees, causing you to shiver despite the multiple shots you had earlier. Glancing around, you notice how barren the pathways are and how barren the town seems. You glance back over your shoulder to see that Shikamaru is already on his way with his teammates, all drunk themselves, as you see them stumbling against each other. 

Your apartment isn’t far from where you are, so you, in turn, make your way down the path. Bad idea. The more you walk, the more you regret that last shot you took and every single life choice you seem to have made tonight because the line you had been walking in had slowly turned into a wave, making you plant your hand on the building beside you. “Just a little more, and I’m almost home.” You blow out a sigh before taking another step forward. Looking up, your body freezes as you see a rock fly past you and fall to the floor to your right. Your senses come to realize that someone is near as you stare at the rock. The alcohol has slowed your reflexes because you’re yanked backward, a scream bubbling up in your throat. Still, before you can release it, a hand is clasped over your mouth, and you get dragged in between the two buildings down the small alleyway.

You begin kicking back and screaming into the hand, fighting as you’re dragged back further into the small space between the two buildings, your front pressed against the wall and the chills finding their way back up your spine once you hear his voice. “How stupid could you be?” His voice is loud in your ear, hand still firm against your mouth, not allowing you to utter a word. “Walking home drunk is one thing, but what the fuck are you wearing?” He seethes. Your dress is already riding up higher on your thighs, just below your ass, due to being pressed between the wall and the man himself. It took all of one big gust of wind to blow it up or one perverted old man to ‘drop’ something of his to catch a look up your dress. The anger that welled up in his chest was undeniable as he pushed off of you and spun you around to slam you harder into the wall itself. Your eyes caught him scanning over you; his already dark eyes seemed even darker tonight. The dress you wore hugged every inch of you perfectly, and it drove him madder seeing it hiked up higher than intended, all thanks to him. One more inch, and he could see the little lace thong he knew you were wearing. He finds your eyes and tsks at the dumbfounded look you gave him; just how stupid were you? 

“Sasuke-”

“Shut up and get on your knees.” He cuts you off, hands gripping your arms and tugging you down until you plop down on your knees. The dirt underneath you digs uncomfortably into your skin. You look up, pupils dilated as you stare up at the ravenette. “Unless you want us to be caught, I suggest you not utter a single noise.” Without warning, Sasuke pushes two fingers past your lips and into your mouth, pumping the digits like they were his cock until they were soaked with your own spit. “I suggest you act right, given your circumstances.” He speaks, and your eyes narrow up at him; the urge to clamp your teeth on his fingers threatens to come to fruition, but you can’t ignore the subtle throb in between your legs. “Suck.” He says while pushing his fingers deeper and tugging his pants down with his other hand, pulling down the material along with his underwear, allowing his cock to spring out. You could feel yourself salivate just looking at him, wanting to trade his fingers for his cock against your better judgment. He presses his fingers down harder against your tongue, causing you to gag and choke on saliva; you can hear the snicker that comes from him as he watches you trying to quieten your coughing spout. 

His hand threads into your hair, messing up your almost perfect ponytail, the grip burning your scalp as he pulls you forward, knees dragging against the ground while the tip of his cock presses against your wet lips, his precum smearing across them in an almost erotic way that Sasuke doesn’t think he could last by just looking at you. 

You drop your jaw open while he pushes his cock past your lips, enveloping himself in the warmth that is your mouth. The grip on your hair grants you nothing but pain as his hips begin to move to their own rhythm, his cock hitting farther back than the last thrust. You try your best to breathe through your nose as he fucks your face to his liking; maybe if your mind weren’t so focused on Sasuke being here, cock down your throat and his eyes watching you so meticulously, you’d have the nerve to push back, make him slow down, maybe even explain why he knew you were out with your friends in the first place and not at home. 

Tugging you even tighter, Sasuke pushes your head until your nose is brushing against his stomach; your throat tightens as he effectively pushes each inch into your throat. “You feel me? Do you think that Shikamaru could ever stretch your throat out like I do? He might as well try something with you seeing how fucking drunk you were tonight.” His hips rock forward until his dick hits further back into your throat. You choke around him, drool effectually spilling past your lips and down your chin. 

Eyes squeezing shut, you sputter another cough, which turns into a gag around his length. A disapproving noise is heard from him as he pulls away, allowing you to take in deep breaths. As you open your eyes, you see him crouched down in front of you, a look one can only describe as displeasure. “How stupid could you be?” he says, slightly shaking his head before he speaks again. You’re supposed to be better than them.” 

“Better than-”

Crack!

“Naruto! You idiot!” You gasp as you hear the rest of your friends walking down and getting closer to the alleyway you were in. They must’ve just now left the bar you all were at; this isn’t good; you need to leave; they can’t see you like this. You pull farther away from Sasuke as you see them pass the opening between the two buildings, all of them stumbling and unknowingly passing you as they walk. 

Another tsk leaves his mouth as he shoves you forward; you catch yourself on your hands while grimacing at the sting that travels through the skin of your knees. You feel his hands positioning himself behind you, all while pushing your dress up to your hips and pulling your thong to the side. Suddenly feeling every bit of alcohol drain from your system, you become hyper-aware of what is really happening; you jolt forward, and before you can spin around to ask him what he thinks he’s doing, you’re yanked back by your hair, back arching to the point where you’re staring straight into his eyes. “Make sure to be quiet, or else everyone is going to see how much you love taking my cock.” A deep chuckle vibrates through him. “What would they think when seeing you on all fours in an alley? Perfect little (y/n) crying from how good my cock makes her feel; how would you ever live that down? You think Shikamaru would ever give you the slightest bit of attention after that?” 

Letting go of your hair, a knee between your thighs pushed them further apart while you balanced yourself on your hands. The itching feeling that someone could see or be watching from a distance burns brighter than the pain in your knees. The swollen tip of his cock prods your already glistening entrance; you bite down on your lip to stop any form of a whine from slipping out. You swallow down the nerves as his hand leaves your hair to slip around your throat; the silent plea that he wouldn’t make this difficult left the moment his hips slammed into yours, his hand tightening on your throat, restraining the scream that threatened to bubble out. He gave you no time to adjust, his hand leaving your throat and falling to your waist, fingers digging into your flesh so tight as he slammed into you that you knew bruises would be there by morning. 

You can’t help but glance up, fearing that any of your friends could leave the bar at any time and pass by, seeing you in the most compromising position you feel like you’ve been in. The subtle feeling that there’s a pair of eyes on the two of you grows larger while you scan around. No one has passed by the entrance, and this feeling could only be explained by you being scared of getting caught. 

Sasuke’s breathy grunts found your ears, and a pang of alarm shot right through you as he was the one making noise. The subtle sound of skin slapping skin makes you even more fearful. The coil in your stomach is already winding tight; the quieter you have to become, the more your pussy grips him. You clench around him, pussy squeezing for dear life. Your nails dig into the ground beneath you, knuckles turning white. 

“Oh, God…” You pant, dropping your head down between your shoulders. The sounds of everyone’s voices can be heard in the distance, and you try desperately to focus on anything other than the impending orgasm that’s slowly building up. 

Sasuke shifts, bringing his hand in between your legs and fingers quickly to find your clit, rubbing quick little circles. You bite down hard on your lip, the silvery taste of metallic dancing on your tongue from allowing the moan that threatened to escape. No, You won’t give him the satisfaction of making you cum, especially this fast. You grab his hand to stop his fingers and feel his hand that was once placed on your waist slide across your skin and reach back up to your throat, drawing your back flush to his chest, knees digging deeper into the gravel on the ground and seemingly reaching deeper within you, a desperate whine left your lips as your eyes faintly rolled back. “Stop me from making you cum, and I swear to god, you’re going to regret it.” He growls while tightening his grip on your throat and bringing his other hand back to your clit. His hips snapped into you even deeper while he assaulted your clit. You struggle to gasp as the coil in you snaps; your body shakes as you lean back into him more, pushing him even deeper that you swear you see stars. You spasmed as you dug your nails into the hand that held your throat while he continued to pound into you. 

He was chasing his own release, and the way he felt like you two would be caught at any moment spurred him on even more. He knew tonight was a lot, even on his standards of fucking you, but the way your pussy was fluttering around him, the deeper he got, and the rougher he became, he couldn’t stop. Your walls clenched around him, climax dragging out as your pleasure was heightened as he fucked into you; your name tumbled off of his lips before he bit into your shoulder, muffling the sinful moan he released as he came. You both fell forward, barely catching yourselves before hitting the ground, with heavy breaths syncing with one another while you catch your wit on what you two just did. 

The feeling of someone watching you never did go away. 

The angry pair of eyes attached to the redhead at the back end of the alleyway never left you two, either. 

network: @enchantedforest-network

[lexamiele]

A Little Secret

Rightmost image from Elizabeth on Pinterest here, other two are mine

Part 2 of I Think It's Time to Switch Roles - Tom Riddle x Reader

Requested by: @lackingstateofmind @annaisanarchyofficial @justarandomcanadiantransdude

Word count: approx. 8.5k

Summary: You're done with Mattheo's reckless behavior. So is his brother, Tom. Where will your newfound connection take you?

Warnings/be aware: Tom Riddle III/Tom and Mattheo are the sons of Voldemort, ooc!Tom Riddle, mentions of cheating (not Tom), implied that the reader is a Hufflepuff, one major (1 week) time skip, use of Y/N, playboy!Mattheo, it's long

A/N: Part 2 of I Think It’s Time to Switch Roles is finally finished! Thank you all for being patient while I rewrote this like five times and also took finals. If you haven’t read I Think It’s Time to Switch roles, I would recommend reading that first here. For all of my Mattheo lovers I promise I will write something that's nicer to bby Matty soon, in the meantime I hope you enjoy!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            “I think I like your brother better.”

            You were trying to wind up Mattheo and it worked, his eyes flashing in anger as he looked at you in disbelief.

            “So that’s what this is about?” he demanded. “You’re just looking for a reason to go running off with – “

            “No, Mattheo,” you groaned, rolling your eyes as you tried to prevent the confrontation from devolving into him whining over your and Tom’s plan. “I’m looking for someone who’s mature and reliable and honest, and you just are not those things!” A month’s worth of frustration that had gone unreleased spilled out of you. “You did a great job of keeping me holding on for a while, but it’s over. I don’t believe you anymore.” He scoffed.

            “Fine,” he spat. “Go mess around with whoever you want, see if I care.” Your mouth dropped open at his utter lack of self-awareness as he turned on his heel and stepped away.

            “How in Salazar’s name is this about me?” you shouted at his retreating back, throwing your hands up in anger. “You’re the one who couldn’t keep your hands off someone else!” He ignored you, striding away with Blaise and Theo as you simmered with rage.

            “He will come around eventually.”

            You turned in the direction that the deep voice had just emanated from and saw Tom watching you, an even expression on his face. You knew there was no way he could’ve heard what you’d said to egg on Mattheo – it had been too quiet – but your stomach still dropped slightly at the reminder of his presence.

            “I don’t really care if he comes around or not,” you admitted, your voice catching in your throat slightly. You weren’t going to waste your time trying to change someone who refused to do so of his own accord. “I still care about him, but I don’t trust him anymore. And without that, there’s no point.” You let out a heavy breath. “Thanks for trying. I’ll see you around, yeah?” He didn’t react, leaving you to turn around and walk away.

            “Y/N?”

            You spun back around at the sound of his voice behind you. “Yes?”

            “You are much more than he deserves.” His eyes were narrowed, and if you didn’t know better you would’ve thought that he looked slightly sad. You blinked in surprise.

            “I…thank you.” He nodded once in response, watching as you walked away. You didn’t know what to make of it.

            You spent the next week drowning out the noise in your head with schoolwork, remaining resolutely holed up in your common room as you worked to avoid running into Tom, Mattheo, Lisa, or anyone else who might be out and about in the castle. The strategy proved oddly effective, and you had several remarkably productive workdays, finishing all of your assignments for the next several weeks. Once you ran out of essays to write, you moved to studying for NEWTs. You were in the process of marching through your Defense textbook and creating review notes when your studying was interrupted.

            “Earth to Y/N!” Something cushy and dense smacked you in the back of the head, causing you to make an errant marking on the parchment in front of you with your quill. You frowned and turned around, seeing that the object that had hit you was a throw pillow and the launcher of said pillow was your best friend, Hannah Abbot. Pressing your lips together, you tried to avoid snapping.

            “What, Han?” you sighed. “I’m a little busy.” She raised her eyebrows.

            “You’ve been busy for every moment of the past week,” she responded. “How many essays can you possibly have left to write?” You glanced at the floor.

            “None,” you admitted reluctantly. “I’ve been studying for NEWTs.”

            “Right.” She stood up and strode towards you, flipping the textbook in front of you shut and yanking the quill out of your hand.

            “Hey!”

            “You’re coming with me,” she declared, grabbing your wrist and pulling you in the direction of the staircases that led to the dormitories.

            “But I was working!”

            “Please, you were avoiding.” She shot you a skeptical glance as she walked. “You have to talk about Mattheo sometime, Y/N! It’s been a week and you haven’t even mentioned him.”

            “I will!” you protested. “Once I finish studying for NEWTs.” Hannah laughed incredulously.

            “Okay, so once you finish the Sisyphean task that we’re supposed to complete over the next two years, then you’ll talk about it?” You grimaced. “I’m your best friend!” she continued, pausing in front of you and looking you in the eye. “Please talk to me?”

            You sighed, feeling slightly guilty for isolating yourself so much during the past week. “You’re right,” you admitted. “I’ve just felt so…not myself over the past few days. Doing schoolwork is the only thing that makes me feel normal.” Hannah shook her head.

            “You’re going through a breakup, Y/N,” she replied, opening the doors of your dormitory. “And don’t give me that ‘we were never officially dating’ nonsense, he was important to you. It’s not going to feel normal. You have to work through all of those feelings to move on.” You stepped forward and plopped down on your bed. She joined you, kicking off her shoes swiftly and sitting cross-legged with her back against the footboard.

            “I know, there’s just a lot going on,” you explained, closing your bedcurtains and casting a quick Silencing Charm around the bed so that no one else could listen in. Her eyes widened.

            “Well there must be, if the Silencing Charm is coming out,” she remarked with surprise. “What’s up?”

            You told her about the events of the previous weekend – how you’d run into Tom in the library, your plan to teach Mattheo a lesson, and how he’d apologized to you but turned back into his old self the moment you’d questioned his willingness to change.

            “It’s over for good,” you said to Hannah. “I thought that maybe if the plan worked and he apologized, I would take him back. But there was just…something about the things he was saying, I didn’t believe him.”

            “And it seems like you were right,” she affirmed. “I mean if he switched from begging for your forgiveness to insulting you that quickly…” You nodded, feeling yourself tearing up at the memory.

            “It seemed so unlike him,” you said sadly as Hannah wrapped a comforting arm around you. “But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was exactly like him. He was so sweet to me when things were good, when I was new and shiny and interesting, but the moment that someone he liked better came along – poof. I didn’t matter anymore.”

            “Ugh, he’s such a loser,” she said sourly. Out of all your friends, she’d been the most skeptical of Mattheo’s initial advances. “You’re an amazing partner, Y/N. The way he acts says everything about his worth, not about yours.”

            “I know,” you agreed hesitantly. “I should’ve never gone out with him in the first place. He wasn’t even close to what I was looking for. He was just new, and exciting, and…I don’t know.”

            “People make mistakes,” she stated gently, rubbing your back with her palm. “He was a smooth talker and a nice guy in his better moments, I can understand what you saw in him. But you deserve to set higher standards for yourself! When you get back out there, whenever that is, you’re going to stick to your guns and find someone who’s everything that you want.” You pressed your lips together, hesitating for a moment.

            “I think I might have?” Your voice squeaked slightly and your best friend’s eyes widened with excitement.

            “Really?” she exclaimed, scooting forward on the bed. “Who?” You sighed.

            “Okay, it’s so bad,” you prefaced, leaning your head back.

            “No, sweetie, I thought we were done with the bad boys!”

            “It’s not that,” you clarified, covering your face with your hands for a moment. “It’s just…I don’t know, I’d never actually go for it. It was just sort of a whim that I got.”

            “Okay,” Hannah responded, looking intrigued.

            “It’s just that, well, when Tom and I ran into each other and came up with this whole plan…we ended up spending a lot of time together, and at some point I sort of realized that, well, he’s got everything I’m looking for.” You winced slightly as her mouth fell open.

            “No way,” she remarked, laughing eagerly. “Mattheo’s brother?”

            “Am I a horrible person?” Hannah shot you a skeptical look.

            “No, no,” she dismissed. “Under other circumstances…maybe it wouldn’t be a great look. But he cheated! You owe him nothing.”

            “Are you sure?” She laughed.

            “Yes, I’m sure! Honestly, I think everyone who’s ever been played by Mattheo Riddle would respect you more for it.” She paused for a moment, grinning. “What’s Tom like, by the way? He seems so scary.” You thought for a moment.

            “I was always a little intimidated by him,” you agreed. “He was always pretty stoic and difficult to read when Mattheo and I were together, but once we found some common ground, it was like – I don’t know. We just clicked so well, in a weird way. He’s so clever and mature…and responsible! He has his life so together! I think he has a planner and everything. And he’s such a gentleman, he was so respectful the whole time. Not to mention he’s gorgeous.” Hannah grinned.

            “You’re not wrong there,” she said. “I reckon he’d pull more than any of those other Slytherins if he’d just stop walking around looking like he’s about to Avada someone constantly.” You giggled.

            “I just have no idea how he feels about me,” you sighed. “Whatever. I probably just need to take a break from boys anyway.”

            “Don’t we all,” Hannah joked. “By the way, Gryffindor plays Ravenclaw in Quidditch tomorrow. Want to come with me?” She watched you hopefully.

            “Hannah Abbot,” you gasped playfully, your mouth gaping in teasing surprise. “Are you asking me to rejoin society with you?” She burst into laughter. “I would be honored.”

            The Gryffindor-Ravenclaw game was spectacularly exciting, with Ron Weasley making a remarkable thirty-six saves as Keeper and Cho Chang just barely beating out Harry Potter in a race to the Snitch to prevent a runaway Gryffindor victory.

            “Now if Hufflepuff beats Gryffindor next week, we’ll be in first place in the standings for the Quidditch Cup!” Hannah exclaimed to you eagerly as the two of you walked back to the castle. “We’ll be in great position for the House Cup as well, we’ve been earning loads of House Points lately. Slytherin was just ahead of us, and they lost a ton of points last week.”

            “Oh yeah, wasn’t that a party that got busted or something?” you asked, vaguely remembering overhearing a conversation about the incident during Herbology several days previously.

            “The fifth-year boys got caught with a stash of Firewhiskey that would be better suited to the Three Broomsticks than a Hogwarts dormitory,” Hannah clarified with a laugh.

            “I’m surprised it wasn’t the sixth years,” you remarked, shaking your head. “I’ve seen Zabini’s stash, that guy could open up his own pub and have stock to spare.”

            “Oh, Zabini,” she sighed, shaking her head and giggling slightly in spite of herself. “The last time I went to a Slytherin party, he was so drunk he called me ‘Susan’ the entire night and then spilled wine down the front of my dress.”

            “He’s lucky you’re so good at Cleaning Charms.”

            “He’s lucky I’m not better at the Bat-Bogey Hex,” she retorted playfully. You fell into a comfortable silence as you entered the castle, winding through the entrance hall, up the stairs, and past the library. “Shoot.” She frowned as she looked at the library doors. “I need to go find a book to finish that essay for McGonagall, I completely forgot to do that yesterday.”

            “Oh, did you want to go now?” You paused in your tracks. “I can come with you.” Hannah shook her head.

            “It’s from the Restricted Section, I haven’t got the permission note with me,” she explained, running a hand through her hair. “Ugh, I’m going to have to go get it from the common room and come all the way back. I’ve got so much work left to do on that essay, I’m going to be up all night.”

            “Isn’t that the one that’s due tomorrow?” She nodded despairingly. You felt a sudden surge of relief that you’d finished your assignments so early. “What’re you writing it about? I finished mine on Tuesday and I didn’t need to get anything from the Restricted Section.”

            “I chose the unregistered animagi and illegal animal transformations prompt, I definitely need to go to the Restricted Section,” she sighed, her forehead crinkling with stress. “And it’s going to take forever to find too, the Transfiguration shelves are terribly organized…I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish it. I can’t believe I put it off for this long.”

            “Hey, it’s okay,” you interjected, placing a gentle hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Are there parts of the essay you can do without that book?” She nodded. “Okay, perfect. I’ve already finished that essay, I’ll go find the book for you and then help you with yours.”

            “Really? Oh, you’re the best,” she remarked, beaming.

            “It’s nothing,” you dismissed with a grin. “We’re gonna get this done, okay?”

            “Okay,” she declared. “Right, we’ve got this.”

            Hannah revised her essay outline while the two of you ate dinner in the Great Hall. You were enjoying the food and the company until shrill giggles reached your ears from across the room. Glancing toward the source of the noise, you saw that it was none other than Lisa Turpin, fussing and laughing loudly as she sat on Mattheo’s lap. His hands were all over her, and before you could avert your eyes, they started snogging aggressively.

            “Oh, ew,” you groaned, your nose wrinkling in disgust as you looked back towards Hannah, who was across from you at the table.

            “What?” She glanced up at your objection. You nodded towards the Slytherin table and she turned around, her expression soon mirroring yours. “Nasty,” she remarked, shaking her head as she turned back to her parchment. “There are literally professors here! That’s disgusting. Acquire a sense of shame, please.”

            “It’s so good to not be with someone who has no concept of boundaries,” you declared, flipping your hair. To your surprise, you really meant it. You didn’t feel the expected twinge of sadness when you saw Mattheo and Lisa together – just secondhand embarrassment.

            “Cheers to that,” Hannah added, lifting her glass of pumpkin juice. You clinked yours against it, taking a sip of the sweet drink.

            After dinner, you headed back to the Hufflepuff common room with Hannah, where she passed the permission note to access the Restricted Section on to you.

            “No one should check too closely – Madame Pince is off duty after 8. But just in case,” she added, lifting her wand to the parchment and murmuring an incantation under her breath. When she handed it to you, you saw that it now said your name on it instead of hers. “Thank you so much, you’re the best.”

            “Of course! No worries at all,” you assured her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

            The library was quiet when you entered – most people must’ve gone back to their common rooms after dinner. Feeling slightly nervous even though you had a note, you walked through the stacks until you found the discreet Restricted Section. Carefully, you entered, the parchment from Hannah providing reassurance in your hand as you inspected the shelves. The only sound around you was the click of your shoes on the floor and an inexplicable hum emanating from one of the tomes sitting in the Defense Against the Dark Arts section. After a few moments of searching, you found the shelves containing the Transfiguration texts.

            “Animal transformations…animals, animals, animals,” you murmured to yourself, skimming the spines of each book on the shelves. You shifted from crouching to kneeling to standing on your tiptoes, searching the texts, but you couldn’t seem to spot the book listed on the note. Grimacing, you wondered if this was going to be more difficult than you’d imagined.

            Your resolve still strong, you crossed the aisle and began inspecting another set of shelves full of Transfiguration texts. Though you found scrolls, aging encyclopedias, instructions for transforming human skulls into all sorts of objects, and one collection of volumes that were suspiciously cold to the touch and looked as though their bindings were on the verge of crumbling, you couldn’t seem to locate to book in question. In the silence, you began to lose track of yourself as you explored.

            “Sneaking about, are we?”

            Nearly jumping out of your skin as a deep voice broke your focus, you whipped around to see none other than Tom Riddle standing behind you.

            “Merlin!” you exclaimed, breathing hard as you put a hand to your heart. “You scared me.” He stepped forward, and a tingle ran down your spine at his close proximity.

            “What are you looking for?” he asked in a low voice. Your mind went blank as you found yourself captive in his intense stare, and you scrambled for a few seconds until you recalled the note in your hand.

            “Um, this,” you finally replied, swallowing thickly as you handed him the parchment. His eyes scanned the writing for a bit before he placed the note back in your hand. He turned around, striding towards the end of the bookcase you’d been exploring. With ease, he withdrew a text from the shelf and placed it in your hands. Your breath caught in your throat as your fingers came to rest on top of his, and you felt your spine press against the shelves behind you as you stepped back.

            “Spiritae Bestiae, that’s a fascinating text.” He met your gaze with interest. “Of course, I’m sure Madame Pince would prefer if Abbot retrieved her own selections from the Restricted Section.” You felt your cheeks flush as you wondered how on Earth he’d known.

            “She’s worried about getting the essay done by the due date, I offered to get the book for her to save her some time,” you explained softly. His eyes softened almost imperceptibly, the harsh expression on his face fading into something more neutral.

            “I suppose this can be our little secret,” he replied, releasing his hold on the volume. For a moment, he stood before you, stealing the breath from your lungs with his emerald gaze as he watched you. Then, slowly, he stepped away and you came to your senses, moving back into the aisle as he pulled a book that had been on the shelf behind him away from its place.

            “What’s that for?” You were scarcely able to hear your voice over the sound of your heartbeat in your ears.

            “Nosy, nosy,” he murmured, the corner of his mouth tilting up into a little smirk. Your face grew warm again. “Professor Slughorn asked me to obtain it. I’ll be providing him with some after-hours assistance brewing potions next week.” He began to thumb through the pages and you stepped forward, standing on your toes to look over his shoulder. The pictures that adorned some of the pages looked rather gruesome, with one unfortunately afflicted individual grasping at his back while a pair of bat wings burst forth from his shoulder blades, and another grimacing as a tongue like a snake’s emerged from his mouth.

            “Yikes,” you remarked to yourself. Tom glanced over his shoulder, suddenly made aware of your presence, and decisively pushed you a few steps back with his forearm.

            “That’s not for your eyes, darling,” he stated, closing the book harshly and causing it to emit a small puff of dust.

            “I’m not a child, Tom.” You crossed your arms playfully, his serious gaze clashing with your grin.

            “This author has a deep fascination with magic of the most twisted nature,” he said, frowning. “You’re too sweet to be worrying yourself with such things.”

            Your heart fluttered at his words, but you couldn’t help indulging your twinge of curiosity. “What does Professor Slughorn want with it then?” Tom began to walk toward the exit of the Restricted Section and you fell into step next to him.

            “Unfortunately, the author of this book, for all of his morbid fascinations, was also a gifted Potions master,” he explained. “One of his great inventions was a powerful potion for dreamless sleep, the original recipe for which resides here.” He held up the dusty text in his hand. “It’s been revised endless times by other scholars hoping to improve it, but Professor Slughorn suspects that the original formula is actually superior. He hopes to test that theory.”

            “That’s…really groundbreaking work,” you remarked, raising your eyebrows. “Healers use dreamless sleep potions all the time. If you rediscovered a formula that was more effective than the existing ones, that would be incredible.” You’d always known that Tom was the most promising student in his year, but this was on a different level entirely.

            “We hope so.” There was a moment of silence as the two of you left the Restricted Section and began to walk through the standard library stacks. “Are you…alright?”

            The words sounded foreign in his mouth, and you nearly asked what on Earth he was talking about until you remembered how distressed you’d been about Mattheo the last time the two of you had talked. Oddly, it felt like a lifetime ago.

            “Oh, I’m okay,” you replied quickly. “Honestly, it doesn’t even really bother me anymore. Seeing him sucking face with Turpin in the middle of the Great Hall made me lose any respect I had left for him.”

            “Indeed.” You glanced over at him and saw his eyes flicker slightly. In a second it was gone, and he scoffed. “They were getting far too intimate in the Slytherin common room when I left. Between ordering them to get off each other every five minutes and listening to Malfoy’s constant yammering, it’s been impossible to concentrate lately.” The two of you came to a long table sitting amongst the bookshelves and he placed the book in his hand down, then set his school bag next to it. He removed a number of other books from it, including an old Ancient Runes dictionary and the narrow black one that you recognized as his notebook, along with a quill and ink pot. Hesitantly, you sat down next to him. You supposed that spending five more minutes with Tom wouldn’t delay your delivery of Hannah’s book too significantly.

            “Is that why you came to the library?”

            “Yes.” You opened the book you’d just obtained, your eyes skimming the pages as he wrote hastily on the parchment in front of him. His handwriting was sharp and neat, the letters tightly clustered together. As he wrote, the silver rings on his fingers flashed in the dim light. “NEWTs aren’t far away, I need some quiet.”

            “Well, I suppose I ought to stop distracting you then.” You laughed, feeling slightly awkward.

            “That isn’t what I meant.” His statement was abrupt and you blinked in surprise.

            “Then…I’ll stay.”

            “Please.”

            You found a strange peace sitting there next to him, reading the book in your arms as he took notes. Acutely aware of his close proximity, your mind wandered from the words before you.

            “Have you ever considered becoming an Animagus?” you asked suddenly. If there was any Hogwarts student with the talent to do so, it was him. He raised his eyebrows, not looking up from his notes.

            “I have other things to worry about at the present moment, unfortunately.” He let out a heavy breath.

            “Like your experiments with Slughorn?”

            “Yes, and Head Boy matters,” he said, finally looking up. “And finding suitable employment as graduation approaches, and other things. But I am certain it would be a worthy goal in the future.”

            “What form do you think you would take?” Your eyes sparkled with intrigue.

            “I – “

            “Tom!”

You both started and whipped your heads around at the sudden noise, looking for the source. It appeared to be a girl who was rapidly approaching, ignoring the stares she was receiving for making such a loud noise in the library. As she drew closer, you recognized her as a fifth-year and a Prefect. The girl’s face was glistening with sweat and more of her hair seemed to be escaping from her ponytail than actually captured in it.

            “What is it, Nancy?” Tom asked curtly.

            “There’s a rogue Fanged Frisbee hurtling around the Owlery,” she wailed. “No one can seem to capture it, it’s already bitten a few people, the owls are losing their minds –”

            “Oh, for Salazar’s sake,” he snapped to himself as he stood, quickly tossing his books, quill, and inkwell back into his bag. “Please tell them I’ll be right there.” The girl rushed off and Tom glanced back at you. He watched you with an indiscernible expression as you gave him a soft smile. For a second, he paused as though contemplating something, then he gave you a polite nod and turned his back to you, following the Prefect with quick, authoritative steps. After he left, you turned back to the table to grab Hannah’s book and leave yourself. As you did so, your eyes caught sight of the little black book that Tom always kept with him.

            “Shoot,” you sighed, realizing that he must have left it behind in his haste to sort out the Owlery situation. “Tom?” you called, hurrying towards the front of the library, but he was long gone. Shrugging your shoulders, you set the book on top of your own and scooped them both up in your arms, resolving to return his later.

            With your help, Hannah did manage to finish her essay by the next morning, though neither of you got very much sleep as a result. The next morning, the two of you made the exhausted trek to the Great Hall for breakfast, yawning copiously all the while.

            “Ugh, what I wouldn’t do for a double dose of Pepperup Potion right now,” Hannah complained, holding her head in one hand and a glass of pumpkin juice in the other. She looked as though she were about to fall into her plate of eggs and toast.

            “Uh, Han?” You glanced up to see Ernie MacMillan glancing over at the two of you hesitantly from the other side of the table.

            “What, Ernie?” she snapped in a tone that could curdle milk.

            “That’s my pumpkin juice,” he squeaked, wincing as he nodded at the glass she was holding.

            “Oh, Helga’s – sorry,” she groaned squinting at the glass in her hand and then sliding it back over to the other side of the table.

            “Did I miss a party or something last night?” Ernie asked. “Are you hung over?” You shook your head.

            “I was working on McGonagall’s essay,” Hannah explained.

            “I helped,” you chimed in.

            “You’ve got to stop putting things off until the last minute.” Hannah rolled her eyes. As your friends began to bicker, their voices faded from your attention as you glanced around the Great Hall. You saw several fellow sixth-years frantically trying to finish up their Transfiguration essays as others chatted eagerly around them. For a moment, your eyes paused on Tom, who was sitting at the end of the Slytherin table, reading as usual. On closer inspection, you saw that he was paging through the book he’d gotten from the Restricted Section the previous night. You smiled to yourself, remembering the sound of his voice and the feeling of his touch as he’d handed your elusive book to you.

            “Uh, Y/N? Earth to Y/N.” Hannah’s voice suddenly cut through your thoughts and you snapped back to reality as you quickly turned towards her. She was watching you with an expression of concern. “Heads up,” she added, pointing behind you. You spun around, confused. As you took in the situation, your heart dropped. Mattheo Riddle was approaching the Hufflepuff table, his eyes dead set on you.

            “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” You dared to hope for a second that you were mistaken and he was actually headed towards the Gryffindor table behind you, but sure enough, he was soon standing before you, that annoying little smirk that he usually wore on his face.

            “Get out of here, Riddle,” Ernie snarled. You had to hand it to him, he made a great effort to intimidate the Slytherin who was easily half again his size. Unfortunately, Mattheo just chuckled, raising an incredulous eyebrow in the other boy’s direction.

            “Good to see you too, MacMillan,” he drawled before turning his attention back to you. “Alright, Y/N?”

            “Perfectly fine, Riddle,” you said curtly. “Good of you to stop by.” You turned back to your food, hoping that he would take the hint to leave, but he seemed to deliberately ignore it.

            “Can’t we talk?”

            Your face contorted in bewilderment as you turned back towards him. “No?”

            “Look, baby.” Your eyes widened, shocked to hear the nickname that he’d called you when the two of you had been seeing each other. “We had a fight, we both said things we regret, it happens. But…I miss talking to you, alright?” Your brows furrowed in shock and anger, and you stood almost involuntarily.

“We didn’t have a fight,” you snapped. You crossed your arms in front of you. “You decided that you were seeing someone else. Why don’t you go bother her instead?” He tensed.

“Baby, she can’t compare to you.” His voice was oddly gentle, and it made you want to recoil. “I made an impulsive decision, but you’re the best I’ve ever had.”

You blinked in disbelief. This had to be some sort of sick joke, right? There was no way Mattheo was actually this stupid, arrogant, oblivious…

“Are you daft?” The words escaped your mouth before you could stop them, and you stared at him with wide eyes. “Genuinely, what is it like inside your head? You were snogging Turpin in the middle of the Great Hall yesterday.”

“I was trying to block out the pain of losing you!”

“Which was, for the record, entirely self-inflicted.”

“Please.” His eyes were wide, and it alarmed you how good he was at imitating sincerity. “If you want me to beg, I’ll beg. Please give me another chance.”

“You are with someone else.”

“Turpin knows it’s over,” he replied hastily. “I called it off last night.”

As his words sank in, you recalled what Tom had told you the previous night – they were getting far too intimate in the Slytherin common room when I left. Your blood boiled.

“You’re lying, Mattheo,” you snapped, your voice shaking in anger. “You’re lying to me! Again! I know exactly what you and Turpin were doing last night, and it wasn’t breaking up.” His eyes widened.

“Who – How…”

“Your brother,” you finished, crossing your arms as you smirked at him. “Who is sick and tired of hearing your PDA in the Slytherin common room while he’s trying to study, by the way.” Mattheo’s eyes darkened, glaring into yours.

“Why were you talking to – “

“Oh, get a grip.” Your lip curled in distaste. “Go pick someone else to bother, Riddle. I’m not in the mood.” He looked for a moment like he might say something, but then turned around and strode away. You sat back down at the table as Ernie and Hannah stared at you, eyes wide.

            “Nice work,” Ernie finally said, blinking in surprise.

            “Thank you!” you replied with a little shrug. “I thought so.”

            You finished your food quickly, eager to get to History of Magic so that you could think about anything except how annoyed you were at Mattheo. Finally, you, Hannah, and Ernie were able to pack your things and leave the Great Hall. You were nagged by the slight feeling that you were forgetting something, but you were anxious enough to leave that you pushed it out of your mind.

            “That was bizarre,” Hannah remarked, shaking her head as the three of you walked down the corridor. “I mean, if I was daft enough to lose you I’d beg for you to take me back too, but while he’s still snogging someone else? What exactly did he think was going to happen?”

            “I’ve no idea,” you replied with a shrug. “I can’t believe I had to hear that with my own two ears. I’m half inclined to tell Turpin about the whole thing.”

            “I feel like she ought to know,” Hannah agreed. “I’ll talk to her after Muggle Studies.”

            As you walked, you stuck a hand in your bag to make sure you had all of your textbooks for the day. History of Magic, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures… suddenly, your fingers touched an unfamiliar spine. Glancing down, you remembered the small black notebook that was tucked in between your supplies. “Shoot, I knew there was something I was forgetting.” You turned to Hannah, pulling the book out of your bag. “I forgot to give Tom back his planner, or whatever this thing is.”

            “How’d you end up with Tom Riddle’s notebook?” Ernie asked, frowning. “He’s always writing in that thing when he leads Prefect meetings, I didn’t think he’d let it out of his sight.”

            “I dunno, we ran into each other in the library. He left it on the table when he had to run off and deal with some Fanged Frisbee situation.”

            “I heard about that!” he exclaimed. “I was out on patrols on the other side of the castle, but Goldstein was there, and he said it was madness until Riddle showed up. Apparently he got rid of the thing in under two minutes!”

            “Really?” You raised your eyebrows. “That’s impressive.” Hannah shot you a knowing look and you felt your cheeks turn pink.

            “What a pair of brothers, huh?” Ernie chuckled to himself. “They’ve both got to have some sort of complex.”

            You laughed. “Mattheo, I’ll agree with. Tom’s not so bad.”

            “Did you see him during breakfast?”  You shook your head and Ernie shuddered. “Dunno how you didn’t notice, he kept looking over at our table. He looked like he was ready to kill.”

            Tom wasn’t at lunch or dinner. Ernie informed you that he’d seen him in the hall having some hushed conversation with Slughorn, and you wondered if their experiment had panned out. By evening, though, you were getting anxious to return the thing – you figured that if he kept it with him everywhere he went, he probably needed it. And as much as you were embarrassed to admit it to yourself, you liked the idea of having a reason to go see him. So as night fell, you ventured through the corridors and to the Slytherin common room, hoping that no one had changed the password since Mattheo had given it to you when the two of you were together.

            “Vici,” you declared when you reached the hidden entrance, and to your relief, the door opened. Stepping through the wall, you glanced around the large, dimly-lit room, feeling quite out of your element indeed. The eerie green light of the Black Lake shone off the faces of those sitting in the common room, some of them turning around to glance at you in confusion as you strode past, your steps echoing off the stone floor. As you looked back at them, you felt suddenly self-conscious – you hadn’t stopped to think about just how strange it would seem for you to be here after your very public falling-out with one of the school’s most infamous Slytherins.

            Tom was nowhere to be seen, and neither, thankfully, was Mattheo. However, you did spot a few of the sixth-year Slytherins that they typically hung around sitting in the corner by a large statue – Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, Theo Nott, and Enzo Berkshire. As they turned to look at you, part of you wanted to run and hide, but you steeled yourself with a deep breath. You’re just returning a lost object to a friend, it’s no big deal, you reminded yourself as you approached.

            “Um, hey guys,” you said, putting on what you hoped was a friendly smile. You directed your words mostly at Enzo – you’d always found him to be the least intimidating. “Does anyone know where Tom is? He left his little black notebook that he’s always carrying in the library last night and I know he must be anxious to get it back.” Pansy and Draco glanced at each other, her shooting him a look that you couldn’t decipher as Enzo grinned at you reassuringly.

            “Yeah, sure thing,” he replied lightly. “He’s probably up in his dormitory. Do you know where the Head’s dormitory is in here?” You shook your head.

            “Sorry.”

            “No worries, you’re going to want to go two flights of stairs up from the sixth-year boys’ dormitory and it’s right there. It’s the only room on the level, you can’t miss it.”

            “Amazing, thank you so much.” You waved politely at the group. “Good to see you all!” Enzo waved back, while the others acknowledged your departure with nods or less friendly stares. Letting out a breath of relief as you left, you strode toward the stairwell and climbed the numerous flights to the room that Enzo had informed you was Tom’s.

            The level felt eerily isolated. As far as you knew, the castle spontaneously created and eliminated Head student dormitories based on which houses the Head students were in each year, and the level you were on certainly had an odd air to it, as if it didn’t quite belong with the other dormitories. While the doors to the sixth year boys’ dormitories had been perpetually open and the room had usually been full of students coming in and out, chatting loudly, this floor came abruptly to a stop before a singular, closed door. You were initially unnerved by the silence, but as you drew closer, the sound of harsh voices reached your ears.

            You took pains to quiet your steps as you approached the door. Someone else was in Tom’s dormitory, and they weren’t having a friendly conversation. You wondered if the other person was Slughorn – had something gone bad during the experiment? But in the stillness, it became clear that the other party was much younger, the voice less weathered. It was one you knew well. The other person behind the door, you realized, was Mattheo.

            You raised your fist to knock, but a sudden shout halted you. “I won’t tolerate this anymore!” The voice was sharp and cutting: Tom’s. You paused, not wanting to eavesdrop, but reluctant to interrupt as well.

            “Tolerate what?” Mattheo demanded. His voice was slightly quieter, and it was more difficult to hear his words. “ – can’t let me have anything!”

            “You disgrace our family name!” Tom roared, so ferocious that it made you jump in your skin. “You know the circumstances by which we live, that we have to work twice as hard as anyone else to gain respect because of the destruction our parents wrought!” His voice grew lower. “…us to have good things…opportunities…squander it all…” You involuntarily stepped closer to the door, but he began shouting again. “I stuck my neck out for you once and I’m not going to do it again!”

            “I’m not asking you to do it again, you daft toerag!” Mattheo shot back. “—out of my business…Stop…deserving of everything!”

            “...a person, not a thing, Mattheo,” Tom snarled. Your eyes widened and you felt yourself jolt slightly in surprise. “—can’t…pick up and put down…wouldn’t keep fueling your lies.”

            “Oh, for Salazar’s sake, stop being so self-righteous!” A moment later, something smashed against the wall. “Guess what…chose me.” Your brows furrowed. Who were they talking about? The bits of conversation were so fragmented that it was difficult to tell.

            “…this morning.”

            “...would’ve done if you hadn’t gotten involved!”

            “By sharing that you still had your tongue in Turpin’s mouth last night?” Tom loudly demanded. “Are you so…anyone telling the truth makes you angry?” Your mind began churning as you connected the dots. Mattheo had asked you to get back together with him that morning…but you’d said no because Tom had told you that he and Lisa were still together. That was what they were arguing about.

            “I have every right to be angry!” Mattheo roared. You were barely standing close to the door, but his exclamations were plain to hear. “You don’t get to be some emotionless freak for seventeen years…decide that the one person that you want is someone who's mine!” Your breathing abruptly ceased as your heart pounded in your throat. You stared at the door in front of you in disbelief.

            “...was never yours” The fury in Tom’s voice sent chills down your spine as he taunted his brother. “…perfectly clear on that…suited you…”

            “You couldn’t have cared less what I did before!” Mattheo scoffed. “Now I have to listen to your harping every day…as if you care! …your reputation...just admit it!”

            “That has nothing to do with this!”

            “Right…don’t feel baser emotions.” Mattheo’s voice turned dark and faded into the distance.

            The muffled conversation continued for some time. Then, there was a moment of silence, and footsteps began approaching. You panicked, looking for a place to hide. To your relief, you saw a large bookcase in the corner perpendicular to the dormitory and ducked into the shadows next to it.

            “…end this way,” came Mattheo’s voice as the door opened.

            “Leave.”

            The threat in Tom’s voice was clear, and you shivered.

            “...mine first, you know,” Mattheo said darkly, a hint of arrogance sneaking through in his voice as he stepped through the doorway. You longed to step out from behind the bookcase and smack him. “That will never change.”

            “Leave!”

            From the shadows, you saw Mattheo storm out, his footsteps echoing noisily down the otherwise silent hall. You held your breath, but to your relief he didn’t seem to suspect any other presence in the corridor, and quickly disappeared down the stairwell. You closed your eyes and let out a heavy breath. In the darkness, you could feel the tremor of your hands.

            “Who’s out there?”

            You barely managed to stifle your gasp of surprise as your eyes flew open. Tom was glancing around the corridor, wand in hand as he looked out the open door of his dormitory. How could he possibly know for sure that someone else was present? You stayed hidden.

            “Who’s out there?”

            His body tensed, his grip on his wand tightening. Nervously, you bit your lip and emerged from the shadows before you could think better of it. You prayed that it wasn’t too obvious how long you’d been there.

            “Um, hi,” you squeaked, your voice cutting through the silence of the corridor.

            “Y/N?”

            “Yes, hi,” you repeated, your shaking hands struggling to pull the little black notebook from your bag. “Um, you left your planner in the library last night, and I figured you would want it, but I got a little…preoccupied…this morning, and then you weren’t around all day – Ernie told me that you were with Slughorn, by the way, congratulations, hope it went well – and I still knew the Slytherin password, so I came around, and, well, here.” You thrust the notebook out in front of you, clamping your mouth shut to stop yourself from rambling. “I figured you would want it.”

            “I haven’t got a – oh, that.” Understanding took shape on his face as he saw the notebook. His features smoothed as he took it from you, trapping you in his piercing gaze. He stepped away from you and you wondered if he was just going to slip back into his room, but he paused. “It seems you are very nosy, darling.” You felt your face heat up.

            “I didn’t look inside, if that’s what you’re wondering,” you assured him, your voice shaking slightly.

            “Eavesdropping is never a good way to stay out of trouble,” he countered, looking back at you and raising his eyebrows slightly. You froze as he opened his bedroom door.

            “Wait, Tom,” you called before you could stop yourself. He turned around you’re your nervousness seized you again, your stomach dropping. “I…” You took a deep breath, struggling for words. “You and Mattheo were arguing. Why?”

            “That’s none of your business,” he replied, his voice as cold as ever.

            “I know that it is.”

            He stared at you in silence, and you felt a bolt of anxiety run through you. Maybe you’d misheard him somehow or misinterpreted the conversation. You began to panic, but stilled as he stepped closer to you.

            “How much did you hear?” His tone was chilling.

            “Enough,” you declared defiantly. “Enough to know that you were arguing about…about what you told me last night. And about me.” He rolled his eyes.

            “This is ridiculous.” He stepped back. “I appreciate you returning my things, don’t bother me with this again.” As he turned to leave for the second time, you shook your head incredulously. How could this be over? All of your cards were out on the table already, you had nothing to lose.

            “That’s a shame,” you said, forcefully enough to freeze him in his tracks. “Because…I would choose you, you know.”

Again, he said nothing, and again you felt panic rising in your chest as he stood with his back to you, unmoving. Fine, then, you’d said your peace. Turning on your heel, you decided that the best thing to do was cut your losses and leave. But as you stepped away, you felt a strong grip on your wrist pulling you back. Your skin tingled as he drew you back to him.

            “Don’t play games with me, darling,” he murmured, a nearly imperceptible tremor in his own voice. “If all you want is to wind up my brother…”

            “I couldn’t care less about that,” you replied, your heart pounding in your chest with a force you hadn’t even known was possible as you took a step towards him. “I’m not here to get under Mattheo’s skin, Tom. I can’t stop thinking about you. I want you.”

            He held you in his gaze, the silence palpable. Then, suddenly, he was very close, and all you wanted was for him to be closer. He took your face in his hands and crashed his lips into yours.

            You froze for a moment, then came to your senses and started to kiss him back, grabbing the collar of his shirt in your hands as you felt his arms snake around your waist, giving you chills. The kiss was slow and deliberate, spine-tingling, unlike anything you’d ever experienced. When the two of you finally broke apart you could feel yourself shaking, your knees weak.

            “I’m sorry that I listened in.” Your voice faltered as you gazed up at him.

            “I’m not.”

A wave of heat appeared in his eyes and you took the initiative this time, standing on your tiptoes to kiss him. It was euphoric. His touches were slow and deliberate, as though he knew just how to take you apart piece by piece and he had every intention of doing so. Something in your body had craved the feeling of his hands on your skin since the first time you’d experienced it in the corridors, and you were finally able to indulge your addiction.

As he backed you into the cold stone wall of the corridor, his lips moved to the skin on your collarbone and you bit your lip hard in an effort to stifle the gasp that threatened to escape, remembering somewhere in the back of your mind that someone might hear you from down the stairs. He seemed to notice your hesitation and picked you up suddenly, bringing you to the other side of the doorway so that the two of you stood in his dormitory. For good measure, as he set you down, he gestured to the door beside him and it slammed closed, the air heavy with magic. You raised your eyebrows, wondering if some of the professors would even be capable of such a wordless, wandless spell.

“You know you can just close those with your hands, right?” You couldn’t resist the urge to tease him, recalling that fateful day in the library when you’d snapped your quill in half. Your spine tingled with anticipation as he narrowed his eyes at you, smirking.

“Salazar, you do have a smart mouth on you.” He backed you up against the wall, his voice low and hungry. “Who knew an angel could have such an attitude?”

“Yeah?” you retorted, your eyes sparkling mischievously. “Shut me up, then.”

He captured your lips in another mind-blowing kiss and your mind went blank as you let his touch intoxicate you. It was right, it was perfect, it was everything you wanted. You felt like you’d finally found your way home after a long wander in the dark.

“With pleasure, my darling.”

As the sun rose in the sky the next morning, you glanced into the Great Hall through the entryway, eyeing the calm and sleepy students who ate their breakfast amidst quiet conversation. Sunlight streamed in through the windows, and the scene looked utterly serene. You glanced up at Tom, who was already watching you with the slightest hint of a smile on his face. His arm was wrapped around your waist protectively, assuring you of his presence beside you.

“Ready to go shake things up a bit?” you asked, giggling softly.

“Maybe it’ll give the children enough to chatter about that they don’t go releasing feral frisbees in the Owlery.”

“Unlikely.” You grinned up at him. “But it’s worth a shot.”

“Indeed.” He absentmindedly ran his fingers through the ends of your hair as you took a deep breath. “Are you certain that you’re ready?” You shrugged.

“Oh, I figure that we’ll scandalize the school for a few days, and then someone will score a really great goal in Quidditch or drink too much Firewhiskey at a party and everyone will have something else to talk about. I’m not worried.” Then your brow furrowed. “What about you and Mattheo? Are you two going to be okay?” Tom glanced at you calmly.

“Family troubles are inherent to carrying the surname Riddle.” His thumb stroked your hip softly. “It won’t be the end of us.”

You nodded, taking in the silence for one final moment.

“Alright. I’m ready.”

His arm rested on your hip, holding you close, as the two of you stepped into the Great Hall together.