#first our knee gives out and then our fucking sternum starts hurting

[euclydya]

i need our body to stop fucking with us

[unknownjpegs]

leash and collar

On his knees, Johann feels so much smaller. Beneath her. Weakly pliant. So much so that Nomi feels if she tugs the leash any harder, she could upend him entirely. Sprawl him across the floor face first and then she’d put the heel of her boot to the back of his head—rather than where she’s situated it, across the tenting in his nice black slacks. She presses her heel down harder, eliciting such a pretty sounding whine that it reminds her of bells.

Johann pants with his shoulders hunched, face tilted so she can see one of his dark hazel eyes. Him, looking at her, like that—like that—makes all the hairs on her arms rise up, stand to attention. It makes something painful and blistering well up in her, between the points of her hips. Nomi pulls the leash so he’s forced to tilt his face, look at her with both of those disgusting, horrible dark eyes.

“Johann,” she breathes, voice raspy. Throat hoarse. She has to swallow, her tongue suddenly feeling too big for her mouth, watching the way his dips from between his lips and runs over his teeth. He’s smiling at her, in that way he smiles. That ‘you’re looking at me, Nomi, and I know you’re looking at me’ way. The supple feel of the leather leash in her hands becomes more tactile as she yanks. He bows forward, because his chest is pulled, while her boot stays firm. Keeps his lower half right there.

He moans, obscenely filthy as he rubs himself forward. They’re heavy heeled, thick soled. Run all the way to her thighs—it’s then that she realizes the boots are all she wears. His button up is going see through with his sweat. Indicates they’ve been doing this for far longer than it feels. She can’t put a start to it; or figure out where it began. Him on his knees, her standing in front of him, holding the leash connecting to the thick black collar around his throat.

Nomi isn’t sure when Johann blurred the lines. Or if she did. Her stomach roils at the thought, but the undeniable desire mingles and makes it torturous.

Say it, she thinks. My name. Say it. The way I want to hear you say it; say it while I make you hurt the way you like hurting. Say it so I can hear it, so you can finally make me yours and I can own you too. Say it and we’ll both feel good.

“Harder,” he says instead, his voice dark and rough and laced with pleasure. His hips undulate, his hands resting on her calves, brushing up. If he goes higher, he’ll touch skin—she’ll finally know what that’s like. His warm palms, on her. She curls a lip, thinks to yank the leash so hard she really hurts him.

Only then, warm hands cup her hips from behind. They move across her abdomen. Callused and broad. So much so that when he splays hands across her sternum, it’s almost the entire length. Tino’s hand—because she know’s it’s him, would know him anywhere, by the smell of his cologne—continues up until it rests on her collarbone. The other firmly tucks between her thighs and makes Nomi’s black painted lips part in a gasp.

“That’s our Johann, huh, Nomi?” On his knees, Johann smiles, tilts his chin back, looks up at them. His pupils are so blown, so wide, that they erase all that pretty hazel color. “Always fucking askin’ for somethin’, right, darling?” Nomi shivers at the feel of his breath on the crux of her shoulder and neck. There is the barest sensation of his facial hair, enough to make her own hips writhe forward against the press of his hand.

“Always,” Nomi whispers, feeling light headed, out of body, as she leans her head backward. It touches Tino’s shoulder as his mouth finds the side of her neck. He kisses at her pulse in a way that is almost better than his fingers slowly moving against her.

“We’ll give him harder, if that’s what the boss wants.” And Tino’s hand moves from her collarbone, over her bicep. Down her forearm. Joins her hand where she holds the leash. Nomi feels a certain hardness pressed against her lower back. She grinds her heel down on Johann in direct response to that feeling and he nearly howls. He throws his head back, his hands smoothing further upward, cupping her thighs. One more inch, he’d touch her for real.

She inhales a shaky breath, watching the bob of Johann’s throat against the dark leather collar. Tino’s fingers lace with hers on the leash. Her hips gyrate forward on his hand—and his impossible, welcome strength jerks her back against him. Fingers there as well. Nomi watches as Tino wraps the leather once, then twice around their joined hand—and he fucking yanks.

—

The dream sits with her the entire morning. She brushes through her dark navy hair in a daze, staring at her reflection in the vanity. Nomi dots blush on her cheeks to make herself look more alive, but the dark marks underneath each dull brown iris make her look like an insomniac. She feels like one, because when she’d woken from the dream, Nomi had refused to fall back asleep.

She’d sat at her computer desk, knees to her chin, watching a livestream of an aquarium until the alarm on her phone had gone off for her to wake up anyway.

Even after she’s dressed (simplistic, for that day, in just a black dress, barefoot even) and heading to the kitchen, Nomi cannot erase the dream. It stays dizzyingly disjointed in her head, bouncing around the vision of Johann’s face, his hands, touching her and Tino, his warm breath on her skin. She worries her hands together, fidgeting fingers to try and distract herself.

Runs straight into the head butler anyway.

“Jesus,” she swears, a hand flattened to her chest. He holds her by a cupped palm at the elbow, to make sure she doesn’t stumble backward. Tino is not the tallest man she’s ever had the misfortune of knowing—but he is the broadest. Barrel chested, with a thick torso and arms. So running into him feels too akin to hitting a brick wall. Only that morning, she’s thinking of how he’d felt curved around her back, in that horrific dream. He’d felt much…bigger in that.

“Just me, m’fraid,” Tino drawls in his thick southern accent, with a pleasant laugh. He leans against the lavish kitchen counter, an apple half bitten into. He chews, flexing the muscle in his jaws. Nomi had never really noticed it before, because he had facial hair. But it was nicely cut. And eating make the tendons in his neck stand out as well.

“You need a new shirt,” Nomi snips, dancing around him to jerk open the fridge and find something to distract herself.

“What’s wrong with my shirt?”

“Too tight.”

“Issit?”

Nomi pulls away from the fridge, empty handed. She folds arms over her chest, staring at the way Tino pulls at the button up sleeves he’d shoved to his elbows. The thin white fabric strains at his bicep, across his chest. And he has the nerve to keep a button undone at the top, exposing the pretty hollow of his throat. Nomi takes the apple from him, biting into it.

It makes him laugh, that handsome dark chuckle. She licks the juice from the corner of her lip.

“New shirt. Ordering it today. On Johann’s dime.”

“Whose dime?”

Nomi shrieks and throws the apple across the kitchen. It lands into the sink with a hard and solid sound, clatters against a dish that must have been left there overnight. Johann, uncaring, strolls into the kitchen. He wears those ridiculous silk soft pants and they immediately make her angry, because the strings are uneven—and he knows how much she hates looking at them when they’re uneven. Which makes her instantly gravitate toward him.

“Tino’s shirts are ill fitting and I’ll be buying him new ones today,” Nomi clips out, in her posh accent, because she knows he finds it a novelty. He does seem to smile at her, that ugly little grin he does when he’s sleepy. Nomi immediately yanks at the strings on his soft pants to get them the same length but he bats at her hand and yawns.

“Look fine, Tino,” Johann barely compliments. Tino salutes, but makes an easy escape out the side door. He can’t know about her dream—he can’t read it on her face, or smell it on her or sense that she’d dreamed Tino bending her over and fucking her right over top Johann—but Nomi feels like he does. She tries to avoid his gaze, which only seems to make him worry a bit. Tino’s hand grazes over her arm, just barely, this little knowing touch she’s always allowed from him. It feels unusually warm.

Nomi watches Johann as he strolls the kitchen. She can see the muscles of his back moving, underneath the thin stretch of fabric. The knot inside her stomach feels denser. She tucks her arms around her ribs, stares at him from under her lashes as her chin tucks to her chest. Johann turns to smile at her.

I imagined you cumming as I hurt you, she thinks, blinking rapidly behind her glasses. And you said my name when you did.

“Where are my eggs?” He tosses a hand toward the kitchen island, sighing. Johann pouts then, makes himself look sweet and innocent and cute. You loved it, you loved me above you for once. “Nomi, you know I can’t start my day without breakfast.”

She grits her teeth together.

“And eggs are your favorite breakfast,” she snaps. “I know.”

[phoenixyfriend]

Anakin and the Jedi Babies: Names and Faces

Context:  Anakin and the Jedi Babies, chrono

Word Count: 6,477

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

It goes like this:

Nobody wants to separate Anakin from the children in his care until they know more about why he’s here. The gamble paid off, to some degree, and he thanks the Force that it did.

He hasn’t felt that cold in years.

He knows the logic of why the Mandalorians he’s fallen in with aren’t doing anything yet. He’s an obvious Jedi, and they don’t know why he’s here or what he’s doing. Hedging on the Mando’a and the cultural obligation to childcare hadn’t been anything close to sure, but it was... enough. He got lucky that these Mandalorians leaned on those obligations, at least to the point of keeping them all in the same room. He can sense that much, even before he opens his eyes, and he has to be grateful.

The looming hypothermia had probably nudged things in his favor.

Anakin opens his eyes to a guest room of a cell, something well-furnished and cozy, but definitely not meant to be something he can escape from. His saber is gone, and there are Force-nullifying cuffs on his wrists, and he’s pretty sure they’ve taken his--yep, vibroblade’s gone.

Fuck.

His body doesn’t want to move, and he’s still shivering a bit, but he’s mostly back to normal. When he sits up, he notices that there is, in fact, only one Force-nullifying cuff. They detached his arm.

He closes his eyes and breathes deep and tells himself it was probably medically necessary. Large pieces of metal aren’t great for maintaining homeostasis. He’ll get it back.

Probably.

“Ah!”

The voice makes him jolt, and his eyes fly open.

Two cribs, one much bigger than the other. Both are occupied. The larger one has bars, and through it...

“Snips,” he breathes, lurching to his feet and then crashing to his knees, about as graceful as a newborn eopie.

“Bah!”

“Just--just one second,” Anakin grits out, grimacing as he tries to pull himself to standing again. The fact that he’s down an arm doesn’t impact him much, but the shakiness of his legs is... a problem.

“Owwww,” Ahsoka coos with an exaggerated grimace, reacting to his pain with the innocent sympathy of a toddler. She looks, what, two? Maybe? He’s not sure if there’s anything particular about how Togruta babies age. She’s too young for words, clearly.

“I’m fine,” Anakin assures her, even as his heart sinks. She’s Ahsoka, clearly, he knows her in the Force and it can’t be anyone else, but her memories...

She recognizes him, but that’s not saying much.

He manages to get over to the chair next to the crib, but doesn’t trust himself to take her out right now. The snow and the mess of a fight before that haven’t been kind to him. Instead, he just sticks his hand through the bars and lets her grab at his fingers.

He can’t help but smile, really. She’s adorable, and she’s so damn happy to see him.

“Skyguy!”

“Oh, so you are talking,” Anakin says, part of him relaxing just a tad. “I was worried.”

“Mine,” she stresses, patting at his wrist.

“Yeah, your Skyguy,” he says. So she remembers... some things, at least. “And you’re my Snips.”

She squeals and yanks on his hand, just enough that the Force-suppressing cuff clanks against the bars of the crib. “Sky, Sky, Sky!”

Oh, she’s precious.

“You having fun?” he asks, filling the air with words faster than his head can fill with doubts. “Has everyone been nice?”

“Mmmmm,” she grumbles, falling to her butt with a huff. “Doc!”

“Oh, a doctor?” he asks, wondering at his own tone. He never expected to be one for baby-talk. “Was the doctor mean?”

“Cold!” she tells him. “Cold here!”

She taps at her chest, right where someone might check her heartbeat or breathing; the metal would be cold, and also necessary. He doesn’t fault anyone for it. Considering how poorly Anakin had fared, he’s just happy they’re all alive and mostly fine.

He doesn’t know what year it is. He knows he’s not in the year he should be. He’s vaguely aware of the name Jaster--one of the Mandos had said it while bringing him in--but he doesn’t know when Mereel’s reign ended and Fett’s began. He does know both are supposed to be dead.

Has Anakin been born yet? Has Ahsoka? Hell, has Obi-Wan?

Can he give out any real names?

A series of small, upset noises start coming up from the other, smaller crib.

He stands, but Ahsoka clings to his hand and refuses to let go. He can’t pry her off, not without his other arm, but he pulls away with quiet reassurances that he just has to check on... on...

Her brother, he says, aware that there’s more than a slight chance someone has the room bugged. He’s a Jedi in Mando custody. They aren’t stupid, and neither is he.

Obi-Wan’s the most likely to have already been born. Having the same name and face will draw attention, will cause questions, but... he can’t just rename his master like a recently-adopted pet. That’s just... wrong.

Anakin’s less shaky than when he first woke up, but he still has no way of safely picking up the kids. He reaches into the small crib, something twisting behind his sternum, and tickles under Obi-Wan’s chin.

The baby--the infant--looks up at him with wide eyes, too blue for the Obi-Wan he knows, but full of wonder and--

Love, the Force whispers through the cracks in the effects of the cuff.

“Love you too,” Anakin whispers, though he wonders if Obi-Wan would really feel like this as an adult again. Babies love easily, he thinks, and he’s the only adult that Obi-Wan knows right now. Maybe it’s just chemicals.

He stands there for longer than is probably a good idea, with the state of his body, but he can’t help it. Obi-Wan keeps grabbing at his finger and kicking with tiny legs, and sticking a tiny, tiny fist in his mouth as he tries watches Anakin.

It’s all Anakin can do to mutter a stream of meaningless nonsense as he struggles not to cry. He’s always had too many emotions, and right now he’s the only person these two can rely on. He’s the adult.

The door whooshes open.

“The medic said you were awake.”

He knows that voice. He closes his eyes and doesn’t turn, because there are a million feelings in his chest and he’s not sure which one is going to come out first.

“Sky?” Ahsoka questions, likely feeling his worry. “Issokay! Good!”

No, she wouldn’t have the mind to recognize why this familiar face she knows as friend is quite the opposite.

Anakin turns away from the crib, and smiles. “Mando.”

“Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker,” the teenager in the door says. He’s not wearing his bucket, but the rest of his armor is in place. Anakin would peg him as younger than Ahsoka was, before. Not by much, but... fourteen, maybe fifteen. The face is painfully familiar, and stays utterly neutral as he answers the question Anakin didn’t ask. “We found your Ident card after you passed out.”

Cool, so, Anakin definitely can’t change his name.

“Are they yours?” the teenager that will one day create an army says.

“They have no one else,” Anakin tells him. It’s true enough. Still, he gets the feeling that’s not what Fett’s asking. “They’re family.”

Jango squints at him. “I was told Jedi can’t have families.”

Anakin’s mind flashes to Padme and the fantasies he’d long harbored of children born free, and tears himself away. He can’t think about that right now. He can’t think of who he’s--

“Jetii!”

Anakin’s head snaps up, and he realizes he’s shaking. Fett’s not neutral anymore, just... concerned.

“I’m fine,” Anakin spits out, and leans on the crib behind him. He can hear the little ones whimpering. He has to pull his thoughts in and bundle them up into something that won’t hurt the incredibly Force-Sensitive babies behind him. “I’m--I’m all they have. They’re all I have. Are the exact words important?”

Fett doesn’t grimace, exactly, but his expression isn’t pleasant. “I guess.”

Anakin waits to see if there’s anything else coming, but no. Just an awkward silence. He holds onto his frustration, but it still gets the better of him.

“What are my chances of getting my arm back?” he asks.

“Hm?”

Anakin waves what’s left of that arm, the tied-off sleeve flapping about. “My arm. If you don’t want to give me mine back, can I at least have some kind of placeholder? I can’t pick up the babies without worrying that I’m going to drop them.”

“I can ask the medics,” Fett says. He stares at Anakin for a little more, and then asks, “Aren’t you going to ask about our plans for you, or...?”

“If you wanted to kill me, you already would have,” Anakin mutters. “Right now, these two are my only priority. I’m more likely to keep them safe and alive here than I am if I try to break out. I can be patient. I would also assume they wouldn’t have been left in a room with me, alone, if any of us were in danger of medical complications.”

Fett flushes and turns. “I’ll tell buir you’re up and active. There’s a nurse droid in the hall, I can have it handle feedings until you get an arm.”

“Thanks,” Anakin drawls, aware that he’s a little bitchy right now, but not in any mood to temper himself.

He settles himself on the floor next to Ahsoka’s crib, lets her play with his hair while the nurse droid feeds Obi-Wan, and then feeds Ahsoka herself. Anakin thinks he could probably pull the droid apart for an escape attempt if it came down to it. He hopes it won’t be necessary. He’s barely existing in the moment as it is. The droid asks Anakin if he needs anything, and he... shrugs.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Perhaps some non-perishables,” the nurse droids suggests. “Ration bars, for if you are hungry before one of the Mando’ade returns.”

Anakin shrugs again. “Alright.”

He ignores the droid after that. He’s only mostly cut off from the Force by the single cuff. He can’t blanket his Master and Padawan in his own Force presence, try to make them feel safe and calm with the fact that he’s here and ready to protect them, but he can monitor them. He can meditate, even if it’s not the way he prefers to do it. He doesn’t have the strength for moving meditation right now, but a regular meditation... he can do that.

He needs to do that, because no other stress relief option is available to him right now.

Anakin lets himself feel the babies fall asleep, the two of them radiating contentment and warmth. He lets himself trust that, for the moment, he doesn’t need to worry. He lets himself sink into an absence of thought, and then the Force guides him deeper still.

“Anakin!”

His eyes fly open.

This is not the real world.

This is not the room-cell in the Haat Mando’ade base he’s managed to stumble across.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says again, a smile hidden in a beard and worn laugh lines about his eyes. The right age, the right size, reaching for him and--

There’s only a moment’s hesitation for Anakin to process, and then he sprints forward and yanks his Master into a hug.

“You’re good,” Obi-Wan mutters to him, rubbing his back as they both sink to their knees. There’s a click of bootheels against the empty white not-space that they’re in, and Ahsoka buries herself into their sides. Anakin pulls her in a little closer too.

They stay that for longer than is maybe necessary, but Anakin’s stress levels are sky high right now, and he needs this. A hug, even one that’s technically only taking place in his head, is important.

“Sorry, Skyguy,” Ahsoka whispers. “Thinking in the real world is... really hard right now.”

He pulls away from the desperate hug he’d started them off with, rearranges things so he’s leaning against Obi-Wan, lets Ahsoka lie down with her head in his lap, on her back and legs stretched out across the white nothingness.

“I don’t know what happened,” Anakin says. “I mean, Sith stuff, probably, but... we’re in the wrong year.”

“I’d wondered,” Obi-Wan admits. “I thought it odd that I couldn’t feel the clones, but I only have so much energy to think right now...”

“Please tell me there’s a way to fix it,” Anakin begs. “I can’t be the adult, Obi-Wan. I haven’t even been born yet, that’s how far back we are. I don’t know what to do, and I can’t just bang around making bad decisions without you there to pull me back and--”

“Breathe,” Obi-Wan tells him.

“We’re in the Force,” Anakin says, just a little hysterically. “We don’t need to breathe!”

“Actually, I think we’re in your head,” Ahsoka says. She’s pointing and stretching her feet like a dancer, but looks up to grin at Anakin like the little shit she is. “You’re the only one whose brain is big enough right now.”

“Hey,” Anakin complains, putting his entire palm over her face as revenge. She giggles and swats him away. “That any way to talk to the guy who taught you how to kill five guys in one move?”

She sticks her tongue out at him. He rolls his eyes and runs a hand over her montrals, smiling when she wriggles and makes a little chirruping noise.

“She’s not wrong,” Obi-Wan says. “Though the phrasing was unfortunate, it does stand to reason that as the only person without the brain of a toddler, you’re hosting. Our minds can’t handle the strain of our own selves, let alone sharing space.”

“Infant.”

“Hm?”

“Ahsoka’s a toddler. You’re an infant. Maybe six months.” Anakin grins, just this side of brittle. He doesn’t want to joke about a problem he can’t fix, but what else is there? “You’re the literal baby of the lineage now.”

Obi-Wan sighs over the riot of Ahsoka’s laugh. “Of course I am.”

“It’s okay, Master,” Ahsoka assures him. “Skyguy’s gonna take care of us until we can fight again.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says, grimacing slightly. “I am sorry for you being put in such a position, Anakin. It’s certainly not an easy one.”

Anakin wishes he could say that his immediate reaction isn’t a sense of hurt, a you don’t trust me, a you don’t think I can do this, a you’re disappointed someone else wasn’t here to handle things instead.

He wishes he could make that claim and have anyone believe him, but they are in a shared meditation, and in this moment there are very, very few secrets. He does not make the effort to hide his reaction in time, and Obi-Wan catches it.

Anakin turns away as Obi-Wan’s face fills with surprise and horror. “Anakin--”

“Can we just pretend you didn’t feel that?” Anakin asks, and flinches when Ahsoka pops up from where she lies and scurries around to hug him like a vise. “Can we just pretend I’m not--”

“Dear one, there are very few people I would trust as much as you in this,” Obi-Wan says. “Those who match up are largely the people who helped me raise me when I was actually this age.”

“Being completely reliant on your padawan isn’t--”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, cutting him off there. “I can trust you to care for me in ways that don’t just come down to making me a useful general again. I already trust you to risk your life and safety and freedom to see us survive, given what little I remember of that storm.”

“You handed yourself over to Mandalorians you knew nothing about so we’d be safe,” Ahsoka mutters into the fabric somewhere over his ribs. “That could have gone really badly, and you still did it because you were worried about us.”

“We trust you, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, pulling Anakin to his chest and resting his chin on Anakin’s head. “We know you.”

“You don’t even know what happened in the storm,” Anakin mutters. “You were asleep.”

“I caught enough listening to the doctors,” Obi-Wan says. He runs a hand over Anakin’s head and through his hair. “You did well, Anakin.”

Anakin wonders why they don’t do this in real life. Obi-Wan doesn’t usually hug him, let alone cuddle. Maybe it’s because they’re all stuck in too much truth in this shared meditation, and the other two are currently stuck in child bodies that crave physical affection in ways they don’t realize they’re expressing in here as well. Maybe it’s the stress.

“What even can you hear?” Anakin mutters, still in Obi-Wan’s arms. Ahsoka giggles at him, nuzzling into his side in a way he doesn’t think she’d ever let herself, normally.

“We can’t really think in the real world right now,” she muses. “Only when we’re sleeping, and probably when we’re meditating once we’re bigger. If I try to think too hard, my head hurts worse than that time Ventress got me in the head with the back of her saber.”

“Everything takes up more space than it should,” Obi-Wan adds. “It’s... all of my senses are bigger and brighter and take up more of my attention, but they aren’t very clear, really. They’re just more. I can’t focus on anything, either, except... well, the feedings.”

Ahsoka makes an annoyed noise. “The whole diapers and bottles thing is really embarrassing, by the way. Only here, though, I barely notice when I’m awake because...”

“Because you’re a toddler,” Anakin says drily.

She huffs. “How would you feel if you were stuck like that?”

That’s fair.

“I don’t remember much,” Obi-Wan says carefully. “But part of me recognizes familiar things, even if I can’t quite make the connection.”

“Was that Fett, earlier?” Ahsoka asks. “Because I thought I saw a friend, and I pretty much forgot the face as soon as they left, but--”

“It’s Fett,” Anakin confirms. “But I guess that’s good to know? You saw his face and your baby brain just assumed it was one of the clones?”

“Pretty much.”

“And we know we trust you,” Obi-Wan adds, and tightens the hug when Anakin stiffens. “Anakin, I can barely understand the world around me at all right now. It’s like being on the painkillers that don’t knock you out but leave you saying only the most ridiculous things that come to mind. You have a general understanding of what’s going on, but all your emotions are too much and the room spins, you can’t stay on one track mentally, you can’t remember what you’ve done and what you haven’t--”

“You can’t control your bladder,” Ahsoka mutters, just a touch spitefully.

Obi-Wan grimaces and nods. “An unfortunate commonality in the experiences, yes. What I was aiming to address, however, is the fact that I only remember a very few things with any reliability. Most of my adult mind, so to speak, appears to be stored in a stasis form in the Force itself, because the infant mind can only handle the barest edges of who I am. But what that infant mind knows, and what I remember thinking once I have some sense of my full self in sleep, is that there is no one I react to as positively as you, Anakin.”

“What he’s trying to say,” Ahsoka interrupts, “but can’t because he’s trying to be a serene Jedi Councilor who definitely doesn’t break the code, nosiree, is that we don’t remember much about ourselves when we’re awake, but we remember you, and we know that we love you, Skyguy.”

Anakin stares at her, and then twists around to look at Obi-Wan instead.

“Master Kenobi,” Ahsoka croons. “Stop being emotionally constipated. We’re literal babies right not, which sucks, but we’re like 90% emotion. Tell Skyguy.”

“Yes, er, Ahsoka was not incorrect,” Obi-Wan says, stroking his beard and refusing to meet Anakin’s eyes. “I, that is to say, we...”

“Master Kenobi,” Ahsoka says, a touch sharper than she might have dared if not for the reversal of their ages.

“I do love you, Anakin, and it’s one of the only things my child mind knows consistently.”

The Force does, in fact, sing with the truth of this. It circles them like a delighted tornado of emotional reality, pulsing like a coat of positivity.

Anakin buries his face in Obi-Wan’s shoulder and hugs him as tightly as possible.

“Oh! Oh dear, I--Anakin, really, this isn’t news.”

“Master Kenobi, you’re allergic to actually talking about your emotions. Let him hug you.”

“Anakin, I’ve raised you since you were nine, it would be nearly impossible for me to not care, why are you--”

“Master Kenobi, stop questioning him!” Ahsoka whines. “It’s affirmation time.”

“Ahsoka, have you been spending time with the mind healers again?”

“I was a teenager in a warzone and also Barriss bullied me into it for my own good.” Ahsoka shrugs. “I learned some stuff. You two should have gone, too. You were more karked up than I was.”

“Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan scolds.

“What are you going to do, spit up on me? You can’t exactly make me run laps, Master.”

“Both of you shut up,” Anakin mumbles, and tries to push as much of his own affection as possible into a little ball of feelings that he can just drop on the two of them while he’s still in his own brain and not somewhere he can’t touch the Force. “Just--just shut.”

Apparently, Anakin’s feelings are a lot, because Ahsoka bursts into tears and Obi-Wan zones out so hard Anakin starts worrying about him.

They’re in a mindscape, a thing that he didn’t really think happened, but does. He shouldn’t have to worry about his--

“Oh, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, pulling him in tighter. “Why did you...”

“Skyguy, I don’t think you planned on putting in the part where you worry about nobody loving you back as much as you loved them,” Ahsoka says, raw and uneven. “Because, uh, we got that? Skyguy, that’s really wrong!”

Oh shit.

“No, you were... you were not supposed to get that,” he says, just a little strangled. “I am so sorry, that wasn’t--”

“Be our dad.”

Anakin stares down at his Padawan. She stares determinedly back.

“What?”

“Fett asked if we were yours, and you edged around the question by saying we were family, but he was asking if you were our dad. I’m guessing you didn’t want to claim that when we couldn’t agree to it, so I’m telling you now: do it. Adopt us the Mandalorian way or whatever. You were already my older brother, basically, this is just a step sideways in how we talk about it.”

He stares at her a bit more. He doesn’t have words, and his emotions are such a cyclone of conflicting thoughts that he’s surprised the Force hasn’t tossed him out.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be born, but if I am, then I need a name so I don’t have the same one as future me,” she says. She takes his hands, holds them tight and leans in close. “You’re going to be raising us anyway. The Force already made it clear there’s no fixing this, we tried asking while you were unconscious, it wants us to grow up the long way. You’re going to be our dad. Just make it official. Make me a Skywalker.”

Anakin sits up straight, looks her up and down, the determination and affection and--

He turns to look at Obi-Wan. “Master?”

“...yes, Anakin?”

“I know she said ‘we’ and ‘us,’ but I’m not letting anyone speak for anyone else. Not for something this important.”

Obi-Wan blinks at him, and then rearranges himself to something a tad more formal. He takes one of Anakin’s hands in his own. “Anakin, we’ve been family since you were nine. This is just redefining the terms. We can adjust as we go forward, but for all intents and purposes, the majority of the time, I will be that youngling in the cot. For all intents and purposes, I will be your child, and... and I would be honored for you to make that official.”

“Even if it breaks the Code?” Anakin presses.

“All is as the Force wills it,” Obi-Wan says, almost but not quite overriding Ahsoka’s, “This doesn’t break the Code.”

They both turn to look at her. She shrugs. “What? You guys are always arguing about it and Skyguy was married. I went and did some digging about what is and isn’t allowed. This adoption would be skirting the edges of some rules, since we should be taken to the creche to be raised in a communal manner, and official adoptions are discouraged for reasons relating to later padawan stuff, but since the Force is also insisting we stay with the Mandalorians, I think it qualifies as an exception and will be treated as such, retroactively, by the Council. You also won’t be able to take either of us as Padawan once that time comes. It does not, however, violate the Code in and of itself.”

“What the hell, Snips?”

“I’m impressed, young one,” Obi-Wan says, with a smile Anakin can feel. “I could have expected to see you in court in a few years, with an argument like that.”

“You knew I was married?” Anakin squeaks.

“Rex isn’t a very good liar,” she says. She then droops. “Or, he wasn’t. Wouldn’t be. He tried, at least, but I caught on. That was against the Code, though. Just so you know.”

Anakin runs a hand over his face, tries very hard not to think about what and whom he’s left behind. He can save that breakdown for later.

He chances a look at Obi-Wan.

He gets a raised eyebrow in response.

“You’re not mad?”

“I knew you and the Senator were close, considering all the kissing you did in the Arena,” Obi-Wan says drily. Anakin isn’t stupid enough to ask how he knows it’s Padme. “I didn’t know you were married, and am a little disappointed you didn’t at least tell me, or consult me before you did it, considering you were still a padawan... but no, I’m not mad. Even if I were--and I am not--we’ve time-traveled, so I’m fairly certain that qualifies as annulment. It’s a non-issue.”

Anakin pushes down the tidal wave of grief for people who haven’t been born yet, and just breathes instead. This is important. This is too important for him to just kriff it up.

“Names,” he says.

“I still want part of it to be ‘Soka,’ if you don’t think it’s too risky.”

Obi-Wan shrugs with a smile. “Almost every time I’ve posed as a Mandalorian, since my first mission with Satine, I’ve gone by Ben. It would be fitting that, now that we’re here and apparently staying, I take the name for real.”

Anakin nods. He closes his eyes, and breathes deep, and thinks that they may be among Mandalorians on a world of snow, but he has the desert in his bones and will never forget it.

“Ahsoka Tano, sister of my heart,” he says, hoping he’s getting the words right, and takes her hands in his. It’ll have more meaning here and now, where they’re both of full mind. He holds her gaze. “You ask to join my family, to be of those who walk the sky. You shed your old name as you shed the chains of your past. You become my daughter, not of blood, but of love, loyalty, and survival. My wells are your wells, and all I own and earn is to set the path of your freedom. I name you Sokanth Skywalker, she who slips through every hunter’s trap, and you are my child.”

She smiles brightly at him, and looks like she might cry. He presses his lips to her forehead. He turns to his Master. He hesitates, because it’s one thing to redefine his little sister, but...

“Obi-Wan Kenobi, father of my heart,” he says, his voice catching where it shouldn’t. He can do this. It’s weird but he can do this. “You ask to join my family, to be of those who walk the sky. You shed your old name as you shed the chains of your past. You become my son, not of blood, but of love, loyalty, and survival. My wells are your wells, and all I own and earn is to set the path of your freedom. I name you Ylliben Skywalker, he who hunts the monsters of the darkest nights, and you are my child.”

The man before him almost laughs, well aware of how absurd it is for Anakin to be the one adopting him, but keeps it limited to just a twinkle in his eye and a quirk to his lips. Anakin presses his lips to his teacher’s forehead.

He pulls both of them in close. Padawan and Master. Ahsoka and Obi-Wan.

Daughter and son. Soka and Ben. His.

“I’m still gonna call you Skyguy,” Soka says wetly. “But Mas--um, Ben. Ben can call you buir, all the Mandos are gonna love it.”

“Fine by me,” Anakin says. “I’m going to be telling you Tatooine bedtime stories, by the way. You’ll remember creche stories as you grow, but these’ll be new.”

“I do believe that would be appropriate,” Ben says, laughing just a touch. “I also think we should perhaps disband this, unless you have something else to address. You’re going to be dealing with two very cranky younglings soon.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, we’re gonna have headaches after this,” Soka laughs, rubbing her face against his shoulder. “But it’s okay, we got what we ne--”

“No, shut up, what you do mean, headaches? You said that was only when you were awake!”

“I mean, we’d be sobbing after like three minutes if we were awake,” Soka says cheerfully. “This way, it’s been like... an hour or whatever between all the talking and the hugging and the crying and the feelings, and we’re just gonna be grumpy.”

“Oh my--wake up!” Anakin growls at both of them. “I’m responsible for you now, wake up.”

He ignores Soka’s laughter and drags himself back to wakefulness. Behind him, he feels slight confusion and pain mixed with love and delight. Ben starts fussing.

Anakin drags a hand over his face and groans. He gets to his feet, nods to the nurse droid, and steps over to the cribs.

“Can we put them in the same one until I get my arm back?” he asks. The droid obliges, moving Ben to Soka’s crib. She immediately crawls over to him and envelops him in a hug. She pouts up at Anakin, eyes going watery, and he drops into the chair next to her and offers his hand through the bars. She grabs it.

“You’re going to be trouble for a long, long time, huh?”

She sticks her tongue out at him, and he smiles at her. Yes, trouble in spades, his Snips.

He starts telling her one of the fables of Tatooine, the really sanitized ones meant for children her age, before they got to the slave stories and haunt-tales. She falls asleep for real, no Force Shenanigans, shortly after. Ben is dead to the world by that point, making small snuffling noises whenever the blanket tickles his nose.

Anakin knows he’s got the galaxy’s dopiest smile on his face. It’s fine.

It’s a few more hours before someone stops by. He’s used the fresher by that point, helped the nurse droid coax Ben through a feeding, and helped Soka play with the little stuffed eopie they’ve given her.

“They got names, aruetti?”

He looks up and over. “Yes.”

The middle-aged man ambles over, arms crossed. “Jango said you claimed to be all they had left.”

He is. “They’re family. I’ve had a few hours to think it over, now that I’m not getting shot at or dying in the snow. To any system that allows it, I’ll be their father.”

“No chance of returning them to their people?”

Anakin shakes his head. “Soka has none who would recognize her, and I already--I already babysat her regularly, and she thought of me as a brother. It’s an easy next step.”

“And the human?”

“I... the master-padawan relationship is often one that is compared to that of parent and child,” Anakin says carefully. “My own master was like a father to me, and Ben is... Ben is all I have left of him.”

There. Not quite the truth, but... technically not lying.

Ben makes a small noise in his sleep, fussing, and Anakin reaches through the bars to brush his thumb across the infant’s chubby cheek. He smiles helplessly as Ben whines and curls in tighter on himself, pressing a tiny fist to his mouth.

“You’re good,” Anakin whispers. “We’re fine, Ylliben.”

“I don’t know what you’re hiding,” the Mando says. “But I do believe you’re doing what you can for those kids.”

“That’s all that matters,” Anakin agrees, finally looking away from his... his son.

Mine, the greedy krayt in his chest whispers.

“When are you planning on going back to Coruscanta?”

“I’m not,” Anakin says, standing and looking the man head-on. Anakin’s taller than him. That’s usually useful. “I don’t know why, but the Force wants me to stay here, or at least with the Mandalorians.”

“You want me to believe that you support my cause?”

“I don’t know your cause,” Anakin admits. “But I don’t like Death Watch, and I know you don’t either. Nobody on Coruscant is going to know to miss me, and the Force is warning me away from trying to go back. Whatever it is that needs doing, I’m supposed to be doing it here.”

The man steps forward. “Anyone tell you who I am?”

“No.”

“I’m Jaster Mereel.”

Good for you, Anakin thinks, and doesn’t say. “I’m pretty sure you already know my name.”

“I do,” Mereel says. “Wanna tell me how a Knight with a seemingly valid ident card claims nobody will know to miss him?”

“No.”

Mereel doesn’t even blink. “Try that again.”

“It means exactly what I said,” Anakin says. “The ident card is real. My training and rank are earned and deserved and bestowed by protocol. All of it was done at the Temple in Coruscant, but if you phone up the Temple with my name and face, nobody will know who I am.”

“And you’re not going to tell me why,” Mereel grouses. “What’s stopping me from calling them up anyway and asking them to come fetch your hypothermic ass?”

“...the fact that I already offered to help you?” Anakin manages. “I... I did say that part, right? That I’d help?”

“What’s stopping you from wanting to go back? And don’t give me any of that ‘will of the force’ banthashit.”

“I broke the Code,” Anakain says. The words sit heavy in his mouth, but one of his violations is lesser than the other, and-- “I married, and we’re not supposed to do that. She’s... not around anymore, but it still stands that I did it.”

The Tuskens weigh on his mind, suddenly and intensely. He hasn’t thought about them in ages, has always pushed those memories down, down, down, but--

“And they won’t take you back?”

“They might,” Anakin admits. They probably would, with his full title and everything, especially if he told them about the future. “But they wouldn’t let me keep the kids.”

Understanding flickers. “Not allowed kids?”

“It’s not... technically against the code,” he hedges. “But they’d find out about my marriage while investigating my past--” maybe, he’s not sure what kind of investigation they’d justify for a complete stranger of a knight, especially to confirm the future, but if they had a psychometric so much as touch his saber or arm, once he gets those back, there’d be a risk, “--and after already breaking the code by marrying, they’d be far less willing to bend the rules about the babies.”

He doesn’t realize how likely the risk is until after he says it, because he’s just been focusing on staying alive and following the Force, but.. they’d want the kids in the creche. He’s broken the code enough that any investigation they set to prove he’s legitimately a Jedi Knight that isn’t recorded and isn’t in the system is going to uncover something through the Force. They might not let him keep his family.

“What are their names?”

“I already--”

“Jango kept his last name,” Mereel cuts him off. “Did yours?”

Anakin looks the man in the eye, and then attempts to cross his arms in response, to mirror the pose and hold his ground. Unfortunately, he’s forgotten that he’s only got the one arm, which is really kriffing irritating.

“I gave them my name,” he says. “They’ll know where they came from, but they are mine.”

Yeah, no shit they’ll know where they came from.

Mereel’s face twitches, but the man is unreadable in the Force. Still, there’s something in the air... “So, those names?”

“Sokanth and Ylliben Skywalker,” Anakin tells him. He spells it out when the droid asks. He assumes it’s just for the medical data their droids are collecting.

“How well can you fight without your laser sword?”

“You mean unarmed?” Anakin asks, and then smiles brightly and tauntingly and waves his empty sleeve around. Mereel does not appreciate the humor. “Pretty well, but I do better when I have the Force, and am not still recovering from hypothermia. And I’m a fair shot with a blaster, but no specialist.”

Mereel eyes him for a moment, and then nods. “One of my snipers is Force-Sensitive. Never was enough to get more than some basic training in mental shields and the control to not hurt herself, but when we mentioned bringing in a Jetii, someone asked her what she thought. Came by the room while you were unconscious and said she thought you felt sad, angry, and desperate... but that she had a good feeling about where you’d be going.”

“Sad, angry, and desperate?” Anakin repeats, a little offended.

“You act like a veteran, kid,” Mereel says. He shrugs. “Damn near everyone that goes through some kind of war has all that going on. S’normal. You got Kamira’s approval, though, and that means a damn sight more. Keep your secrets for now. We’ll get there eventually.”

No we won’t, Anakin thinks. Out loud, he asks, “So, how much of what kind of work would I have to do to borrow a ship to Tatooine and earn enough to free a slave girl?”

[honeymoonjin]

ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: ot7 x reader || ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 7.3k || ɢᴇɴʀᴇ: smut - rated 18+

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ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: filmed sex, voyeurism, exhibitionism, unprotected sex, edging, orgasm denial, teasing, dirty talk, dom!yoongi, use of sex toys, cumplay, multiple orgasms, creampie, oral (f receiving) face riding/sitting, use of the words slut, cumdump/cumsleeve and degradation in an entirely consensual context, also they drink in this episode so it involves sex under the influence of alcohol, but once again entirely consensual, overstimulation, cumeating (it is a yoongi chapter after all)

dedicated to my sfhs girls, everyone in the villa discord, and everyone who submitted truths and/or dares. i apologise if yours didn’t get drawn, there were over eighty of them

DAY SEVENTEEN

Waking up on Wednesday is the calmest you’ve felt in a while. Even though it’s not the start of the week, it still feels fresh, and you slept far better last night than you did before elimination.

That being said, fate apparently gives you very limited time to breathe, because the second you open your bedroom door you get a fright that just about stops your heart.

Min Yoongi, fist falling awkwardly in the open space, blinks at you. “Good morning.”

“Jesus,” you curse, hand pressed to your sternum as your heart races beneath it, wordlessly stepping back to let him in.

Yoongi slips past you smoothly. “I know the resemblance is startling, but we have been living together for two weeks, Y/n. I’m hurt.”

You scoff as he makes himself comfortable on the edge of your bed. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He shrugs, looking more casual than usual in a faded red tee and a pair of jeans rolled up at the ankles. His hair, newly mint, sticks up at odd angles like the first thing he’d done this morning was tip out of bed and come down to your door. It just makes him all the more endearing. “I have a proposition,” he announces vaguely, pulling out a sleek black object from his front pocket and resting it on the duvet beside him.

You narrow your eyes at the foreign object. Made of what must be matte silicon, there's the slightest hint of silver that circles an on-button at the base of it. Although it's not particularly long, it's wide and rounded, and it doesn't take much brainpower to work out where a toy like that might go.

Yoongi grins as your eyes rove over the toy. "Perhaps less of a proposition, and more of a challenge," he drawls slowly. A single graceful finger runs up and down the length of the black egg, keeping your gaze locked on it. "I'm gonna fuck you now, sweetheart, and if you can keep my cum inside you all day, I'll give you a reward. How does that sound?"

You suck in a breath, eyes flying up to his again. You're nodding before you even really process the implication of his words, but he's already quirking a finger to beckon you.

"Come sit," he commands breezily. He's already hard when you straddle him, your knees braced on the duvet and arms linking around his neck. Glancing up at you, you're taken by the honeyed way his eyes blink up at you with bemusement. "You're very obedient this morning," Yoongi quips, "is this why people like morning sex?"

You scoff, rolling your clothed core against him. "Hurry up and put your dick in me if you're going to, Min."

"Never mind, then," he sighs, but happily slips open his belt buckle with one hand, the other gripping the flesh of your thigh as he frees his cock from the confines of his jeans.

Still in a loose oversized sleep shirt and panties, it's easy enough for Yoongi to just tug the fabric over your core to one side, fingers sliding through your already-sodden folds.

"Didn't take much, did it, sweetheart?" he asks with a wry grin, and your cheeks heat, burying your face in the crook of his neck even as his deft fingers spread your wetness over you.

"Stop making fun of me," you whine, breath hitching when he slips a single finger deep inside you.

"Oh, but I'm not," he murmurs, voice just as languid as his pumping motions. "It's fucking hot."

You bite down hard on your bottom lip, Yoongi beginning to relax your muscles with a second finger, hooking and twisting and curling them in all the ways that make your legs weak.

"Does it feel good, sweetheart?" You can feel more than see Yoongi's smirk when you nod hastily, grinding against his fingers. "But it doesn't sound like it. Why can't I hear you, hm?"

A free hand presses lightly but firmly at your jaw, lifting your face away from him. You swallow down another moan as his thumb brushes just once over your sensitive clit.

Held up across from Yoongi, you can't avoid the way he frowns. "That won't do," he decides, before his fingers tug down your bottom lip. Without a single falter in his other hand fucking you, now three fingers in, Yoongi hooks his index and middle fingers behind your bottom teeth to keep your mouth open wide for him.

The next time he swipes your clit, you can't hold back the wanton groan that escapes. Yoongi's eyes positively light up at the sound as he fucks you harder, jostling you on his lap and making every little noise from your throat magnify.

When he eventually removes his sopping fingers from your core, you whine unabashedly at the absence. The heat that had built up, the beginnings of an orgasm, quickly dissipate.

“Patience,” Yoongi chastises in a voice thick with humour, before lining himself up at your entrance and swiftly pushing you down onto him.

You groan as he fills you, unable to stop the drool that’s begun to spill over onto his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t seem to mind the messiness, however, using the leverage to keep you steady once he starts to fuck up into you.

Your hands fly from the back of his neck to his shoulders, stuttered cries punched out of you with every bounce. Certainly not the biggest member in the household, Yoongi did know how to use his cock to make you melt around him and he quickly makes your fingers and toes curl with pleasure.

Even as he maintains his dominance with the unspoken ease he always carries, it’s undeniable that he’s close with the way he beings to lose his composure. Whether it’s his freshly-dyed hair curling at his temples with the sweat of his exertion or the grunts that slipped past gritted teeth, you love those little glimpses of the animal that wrecked you last week.

When his pace stutters into a desperate jackhammer that leaves you breathless, you know it’s only a matter of time before he spills inside you. Close yourself, you slip a hand down seeking your clit for the needed stimulation to push you over the edge.

The second you feel a glimmer of hot pleasure, however, a hand snakes around your wrist and pulls it away. Your eyes widen, drool spilling messily down Yoongi’s other hand as you babble. “Ngo, ‘o, p’ease,” you slur out, “‘oongi, wan’ cum.”

Your whine gets louder as Yoongi responds to your complaints by slowing down to a deep grind, breathing heavily in his chest. “What are our rules, sweetheart? You have to keep my cum inside you all day to win your reward, don’t you? Now be a good girl and let me fill you up.”

Unlike you, Yoongi has clearly still retained that edge of orgasm, and it doesn’t take much before he’s shuddering with a groan, painting your insides white. Finally lifting his fingers off your bottom teeth, he pushes them further in your mouth, instructing you to suck them clean of your own saliva.

Wrapping your lips around them with a dissatisfied whine, you grind your hips fruitlessly against him as he slowly begins to soften. No hope of cumming this morning, you resign yourself to the challenge he’s set you and let him tip you gently onto the bed, standing himself at the edge still inside you.

You blink up at him, licking your swollen lips once he retracts his fingers from your mouth, picking up the small black egg you’d almost forgotten about. “Is it games?” you ask blearily, sniffling when he pulls out of you.

With one of your legs held up to keep you at a good angle, Yoongi starts to push the rounded vibe inside you, aided by your arousal and his own release. “Is what games?” he asks softly, an airy chuckle leaving his mouth when the toy slips inside you, making you moan at the pressure.

“The prompts,” you explain, clenching around the intrusion that’s plugged Yoongi’s cum inside you. “Work hard, play hard. Are they different games or something?”

Yoongi pauses. “I- I’m not sure if it’s beneficial for me to confirm or deny that,” he admits slowly, before clearing his throat and backing up, letting your legs dangle off the side of the bed. “Can you stand? I’m just about ready for breakfast. Nothing like a good orgasm to build my appetite.”

You send him a scowl as you stand on wobbly legs. “Now you’re just rubbing it in,” you accuse, “this reward better be something special.” Even as you adjust your panties back over you, you’re expecting the silicon egg to come out at any moment. As it is, you feel like you might go crazy before the day’s out.

The doctor makes no effort to hide his satisfaction, eyes shamelessly running over you as you squirm in place. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you today,” he announces lowly, buckling his jeans back up. “If you want your reward you better not take it out or get yourself off. Your pleasure belongs to me today, sweetheart.”

“Yes, sir,” you mouth off sarcastically, even as the wetness between your thighs increases.

While Yoongi may have refused to confirm your theory about the prompts being games, it seems games are the theme of the day regardless.

By the time you get dressed - gingerly, like any wrong move would send the egg slipping out in a torrent of cum - and meet the others downstairs, you see the lounge has been cleared to make way for a misshapen pile of packaged snacks and a bowl full of slips of folded paper.

Taehyung, Namjoon, Jin and Hoseok are already surrounding the offering, cross-legged on the carpet. Yoongi, who’d come down before you, haunts the coffee machine. Just as you do a headcount and wonder where Jimin’s gotten to, the man himself approaches from the shadowy depths of the walk-in pantry, two bottles of wine held in one hand by their necks, and a six-pack of soju in the other.

Jimin jumps in surprise when he looks up to see Yoongi just in front of him, sending the older man a small smile. “Good morning.”

Yoongi eyes up the liquor suspiciously. “I suppose it must be.”

“Sejin dropped them off.”

“The bottles?”

“The games,” Jimin emphasises, pointing with a hand laden with bottles. “Jungkookie, Jin-hyung and I just thought we should make it more fun. Didn’t they tell you?”

Yoongi grumbles but doesn’t answer, cradling his coffee like it’s a lifeline and hobbling over to sit on one of the couches, pushed back to give more space.

Wary of your every step, you sit yourself down in a gap between Jungkook and Namjoon. The youngest perks up and turns to you, looking comfy yet stylish in a modern hanbok, black to make the red in his hair pop.

“It’s drunken truth or dare,” Jungkook declares, feet tapping the carpet in excitement. “Sejin said the audience wants more sexy games.”

Jin clicks his tongue. “He never said sexy.”

Jungkook doesn’t bat an eye, still grinning at you. “The ‘sexy’ was implied.”

“I’m sure it was,” you allow with a chuckle. It doesn’t take long for everyone to find their places, Jungkook turning to his other side and tugging on Yoongi’s trouser leg until he sits on the carpet with the rest of you.

Following the circle along, Jimin sits to Yoongi’s left, then Jin, Hoseok, Taehyung and finally back around to Namjoon who’s on your right.

“Alright, how is this supposed to work?” Yoongi asks reluctantly. “And how can I rig this to retain at least a modicum of my dignity?”

“Here’s the deal,” Hoseok announces, “we take turns picking truths or dares from the bowl. If you don’t want to do it, you take off a piece of clothing. Questions?”

Taehyung hesitantly lifts his hand, staring at the dom to his right. “What if we run out of clothes?” Though he’s moderately dressed in thick sweatpants and a long-sleeved tee, Taehyung doesn’t really have any layers, and he’s already barefoot.

Hoseok shrugs. “Then you play the rest of the game naked, I guess. Stripping is the whole raison d'etre of slutty game nights. What part of that don’t you get?”

Taehyung pauses. “The raisin part.”

“He’s saying the whole point of games like these is stripping,” Jimin explains quickly, clapping once to get everyone’s attention. “Okay! Let’s start. I didn’t have hands free to bring glasses so unless someone else wants to help out, we’re drinking from the bottles. Who wants what?”

It doesn’t take long for the alcohol to be dished out. Taehyung and Hoseok both scamper around like children and end up mixing plain soju with Fanta or sprite, sipping at the fizzing mixture as they giggle away. Jimin is making his way through one of the two wine bottles himself, a pretty moscato rosé that matches the baby pink lip balm he’s wearing. Namjoon has the other bottle, though he pours a full glass in a sturdy-looking coffee mug and pawns the rest off back to the middle. Jungkook and you wordlessly split a flavoured soju, something sweet and fruity with the classic burn at the back of your throat, and Jin sticks with an original one, leaving Yoongi the only one without alcohol.

The man himself takes a long swill of coffee. “Someone better pick a dare then.” Making no effort to actually help himself, he waits for Hoseok to wiggle on his knees to the centre of the circle to grab the bowl, keeping it secure on his lap as he blindly roots around for a slip of paper.

His subconscious grin of excitement fades the second he picks one and reads it. “My fucking luck,” he curses, before changing his voice to a monotone drawl. “Allow Jimin to give you a makeover. If Jimin draws this, pick another member.” He glances up in pain. “Can I pick someone else anyway?”

“That’s not the dare, Hobi!” Jungkook protests in an excited squeal. “Are you gonna let him do it?”

Jimin remains perfectly poised, simply arching an eyebrow when Hoseok sends him an accusatory glare. Like he’s disappointed with the calm reaction from his rival, Hoseok huffs and silently tugs off a sock. “He’s not getting anywhere near my face,” the dom insists, “I just know he’d make me look ugly on purpose.”

“The only way I could do that is by using no makeup at all,” Jimin petulantly responds. “Anyway, now that you’ve contaminated the air with your bare foot, can we move on?”

Hoseok huffs, but thrusts the bowl to his right, handing it to Jin. The therapist sighs like the discourse personally drains him, then picks a slip from the top, opening it with one hand. Immediately, he breaks out into a pealing laugh, shoulders shaking as he slaps his knee with his free hand. “Do a cartwheel.”

“What the fuck?” Hoseok shrieks. “Why didn’t I get one like that?”

“Can you do a cartwheel, Hoseok?” Jin questions calmly.

Hoseok’s mouth gapes. “I- no.”

“I guess you were doomed to be one sock down either way, then,” Jin consoles. “I, on the other hand, made it onto my high school cheerleading team.” He steps away to a patch of open carpet. “Well; I was the reserve. I never actually did any games.”

That’s the only warning you get before Jin is launching his torso to the ground, legs flying up and flailing as his hands meet the ground. On landing, his feet come down awkwardly, sending him sprawling onto the back of the couch. “Fuck,” he gasps out, catching his balance, “that was way easier when I was small.”

Jin returns to his place with a smug smile, leaving the room in startled silence. “What? Next person.”

Jimin takes the bowl and pulls out a piece of paper before passing it to his right in front of Yoongi. “Alright, I have…” His eyes rake over, plush lips moving. “What do you hope you can do most before you have to leave the house? Uh… I’d like to try something for the first time.”

Taehyung pouts. “Isn’t that a bit boring, Min?”

Jimin shrugs. “I guess I’m on the other end of the spectrum to Namjoon-hyung. It’s hard to find anything I haven’t done before. I’ve been working for Bangasm for years, and doing porn for even longer. Eventually it feels like everything is the same. I’d like to have something completely new, that I can look back on as special.” He clears his throat loudly and nods his head at Yoongi. “Your turn.”

Yoongi places his now-empty coffee mug on the carpet in front of him, rooting around carelessly for a piece of white. His eyebrows lift past the overhanging swoop of mint. “What sex act have you done that you’ll never do again?” Taking a second to think, Yoongi pushes his tongue to the side of his cheek. “Mm, my best friend and I once experimented with each other just before high school graduation. We were both well over 18 by then, but going to a catholic all boys high school, we were pretty repressed and dumb about those kinda things. He tried to suck me off and threw up right on my dick.”

You cringe violently, the sips of soju you’d already drunk sitting sour in your stomach. “Fuck, that’s so gross, Yoongi. Did he like, say sorry?”

Yoongi grimaces. “Ah, not at the time. He started crying and I had to comfort him while I was still covered in- yeah, I’d honestly kinda blocked that out until this question reminded me. Fuck. Okay, next person, I need to re-forget about that.”

None of you can blame him once he reaches for a straight soju and takes a few deep gulps, throat bobbing.

Jungkook’s next in line, looking a little green in the face from Yoongi’s anecdote. “Right, okay, lemme-” With his eyes scrunched shut, he selects his slip of paper and opens it up. “Get the person to your left in the pool within the next minute.”

Yoongi, too preoccupied with chugging as much liquor as he reasonably can, doesn’t pay attention until he’s deftly snagged around the waist and thrown over Jungkook’s shoulder, the half-empty bottle splashing out onto the carpet.

“Hey! What do you think you’re- Jungkook, where are we going?”

Jungkook races out through the back door faster than any of you can keep up with, Taehyung and Hoseok jogging after him to watch from the doorway.

Even from your spot on the floor, you can hear an almighty shriek followed by a splash, and some watery yelling. By the time Yoongi stomps back in, drenched, Namjoon has some towels from the linen closet.

Without the usual sexual tension of a truth and dare game, Yoongi strips off his wet clothes and wraps himself grouchily in as many towels as possible, the final one over his head and tucked under his chin.

Looking like a drenched cat, Yoongi scowls and shivers. “Can I at least go upstairs and get into some dry clothes, or do I have to risk a second dunk?”

Jungkook shrugs airly, passing the bowl down the line. “The risk of me dunking you again is pretty low, hyung. But never zero.”

The plastic bowl now rests in front of you. You eye the folded slips inside warily, before picking one roughly in the middle of the pile. Unfolding the small rectangle, you let out a week laugh once your eyes scan the neatly handwritten words. “Trade shirts with the person on your right.”

“That’s you, Joonie.” You rake over Namjoon’s getup with a wary eye. Luckily, he’s wearing a forest green tee over some chunky camo pants. You think he’s probably going to be worse off than you having to put on your own thin sweater. “Let’s swap.”

Slipping it off, you shiver in the cold air and feel the hairs on your arms stand up on end. Ignoring the rapt eyes of the others, you chuck it into Namjoon’s lap and watch his stomach and biceps flex as he lifts his own shirt over his head.

The fabric is cotton, but feels so silken against your skin, still warm from his body heat. While the hem of his shirt pools in your lap, your sweater on him strains around his waist, a solid two or three inches above his waistband.

You can’t help but let out a chuckle at the corded body, thick chest and meaty forearms barely being restrained by the slightly fuzzy pastel yellow sweater. “Looking good, Joon,” you jibe, poking him right where the skin of his hips is exposed.

He winces, carding a hand through his grey-silver hair, now ruffled from the closet change. “I’m sorry if it gets stretched out of shape after this. Is it my go?” Without waiting for an answer, he shakes up the bowl and retrieves a piece of paper from the bunch. “Jin’s cooking or Yoongi’s cooking.”

The colour drains from Namjoon’s face at the two men staring him down impassively, one of them sitting poised with an expectant glare, the other shivering slightly through layers of damp towels, round face poking out of the terrycloth with a warning frown.

“Um… I-” Namjoon gulps, and begins to undo the strap on his watch, leaving his wrist bare and slightly pale. “Tae, you’re up.”

Even without either man receiving the victory, they both seem mollified, Yoongi taking the opportunity to gather the towels and rush upstairs quickly. A small wet patch is left on the carpet in his place, Jimin and Jungkook on either side laying some fresh towels on top to soak it up.

Before you even notice Taehyung getting a slip, he’s hooting in excitement, jumping up to stand. “Design an outfit for a member in the house with random clothing in the villa!” He eyes up the people in the circle before gasping. “Wait! No! I’ll go do Yoongi while he’s changing!”

Like an excited puppy, he’s off up the stairs, chasing after the doctor.

“Do we...wait for him?” Jungkook asks uncertainly. His chest jerks with a hiccup, having finished most of your shared bottle of soju.

Leaning forward with a shrug, you snag another bottle, cracking open the lid and taking a sip of the refreshing green apple taste. Not your favourite, but you were just tipsy enough to not care all that much.

As the rest of you mind your time waiting for the absent two to return, some of the others begin on the snacks. Although Jimin has passed halfway on his moscato, he seems perfectly composed as he and Jin share a packet of rice snacks. Jungkook nibbles on the ends of a handful of Pocky sticks, wobbling slightly on the spot. Hoseok’s face is bright red even though he’s just been sipping at his fizzy soju concoction, so he gets a bag of Doritos and begins crunching madly.

Namjoon is holding his mug of white wine in both hands, so he stays snackless, shifting and sneaking glances at the stairs. Still looking comically beefy in your fitted sweater and camo pants with a million pockets, part of you thinks perhaps he was put out that he wasn’t the one to get an opportunity to change clothes again into something that fit a little better.

It doesn’t take long for a frantic thud-thud-thud echo through the room as Taehyung comes bounding down the stairs. “And introducing…!” he shouts cheerily. “The newest dom of the Red Room, Min Yoongiiii!”

When Yoongi comes down, the reaction he was expecting probably wasn’t cooing, but you can’t help it. Taehyung has done well to pick out glossy leather pants, thick-soled black boots, a white shirt and even a leather harness around the top of his chest, all the things that spoke to a professional dom, but on Yoongi it just looks like a sheep in wolf’s clothing.

Hoseok, clearly the original owner of the clothes judging by his gobsmacked look of recognition, is far taller than Yoongi, so the shirt drowns his torso and the pants are rolled up at the ends. All in all, he looks so tiny and sweet, hair still damp and tangled, that you imagine the dom clothes just served to make him appear cuter in contrast.

He scowls as he sits down, plump bottom lip sticking out, and reaches for his near-empty bottle of soju with a huff. “I hate this game,” he declares before taking a swig.

“You have had bad luck, hyung,” Hoseok admits, “I’m sure it’ll turn. And speaking of turns; it’s mine now!”

As Hoseok begins digging around for his, taking a dramatically long time just to make everyone groan, your pocket vibrates. Reaching down to check your phone, you suck in a breath when you see the text from Yoongi. It displays a single arrow pointing up, followed by an unambiguous now.

You clear your throat just as Hoseok picks a slip. “I’m just going to the bathroom, you can keep going without me.”

Apparently not concerned about subtlety, Yoongi just stands up and follows, his eyes dark on you.

Hoseok lets out a wolf whistle that makes your cheeks heat, before apparently giving up and returning to the game. You manage to make it upstairs with little fanfare, but Yoongi’s hand snakes around your wrist and his body cages you against the wall in the upstairs hallway before you can make it to your room.

Your breath hitches as his eyes burn into you like twin furnaces. “Have you been a good girl for me?” he asks in a low voice, lip quirking when you nod. “Let me check.”

Your eyes widen. “Here?”

Yoongi jerks his chin towards the sturdy metal banister that runs across the edge of the landing to the top of the stairs. “Bend over, sweetheart.”

You obey before you even realise just how exposed this position makes you. Gripping onto the metal like a lifeline, your face and upper body are well in view of anyone that came into the entrance foyer downstairs. As Yoongi slips down your panties and jeans in one go, your core throbs around the plug. “Please, Yoongi,” you breathe without thinking.

He slips a finger inside you without warning, hooking around the top of the plug and slowly dragging it closer to your entrance.. “Please what?”

“I- ungh.” Your mind comes to a halt as your walls stretch, the plug slipping out into his palm with an obscene noise. You don’t have to feel empty for long, as you feel the blunt head of his cock replacing the silicon toy, reaching much further depths to keep his cum from this morning buried deep inside you. “Fuck.”

Yoongi chuckles, using one hand to steady himself on your hip as he begins to fuck you in earnest, hips smacking your ass. “Well, that wasn’t a very articulate answer,” he teases, “it’s only been a couple of hours and you’ve already become a dumb little cumdump, haven’t you?”

You gasp at his sudden degradation, but you can’t hide the way you clench around him, biting down harshly on your lip to muffle a moan.

“Fuck, you like that?” he curses with a satisfied growl, picking up the pace so that his every thrust jerks your hips forward against the banister. “Spread out in the middle of the hallway for anyone to see, just here to keep my cock and my cum warm?”

You shiver. “Y-yes, Yoongi, fuck me harder, gi-give me your cum, wan’ it!” Denied from an orgasm earlier in the day, it’s no surprise that your dignity drops away so soon, your mind morphing into a desperate organ that needs relief. Doing your best to fuck yourself back on him, you let out a whine. You’d lose your balance if you took a hand off the banner, and you both know it. Something in you doesn’t think Yoongi would do it for you, either, if this morning was anything to go off.

“Such a slut, sweetheart,” Yoongi pants out, but instead of the hard edge of degradation, his voice is honeyed with praise. “So fucking good for me, my little cocksleeve.”

Your eyes begin to prickle, so close yet so far from the orgasm that he deftly dangles in front of you. Uncaring of who could hear you downstairs, or the fact that Yoongi probably wouldn’t listen anyway, you start to mindlessly beg him, letting out a weak stuttered moan with every plunge inside you.

As expected, he just shushes you and tightens his grip on your waist, his pace picking up impossibly fast until he suddenly goes stiff and spills inside you, catching his breath. “That’s a good girl,” he gasps between gulps of air, “still so tight, mean Yoongi not letting you cum.”

You whimper as he slides out slowly, pressing a hand on the small of your back to keep your ass arched up as he slips the still-wet egg back inside. Your legs tremble and your core clenches in dissatisfaction at the second denial, but the pleased smile on his face as you keep two loads of cum inside you is enough to make your heart soar.

He hands you a tissue to wipe the slick off your thighs before lifting your jeans back up, and he cleans off his hand, using his mouth to suck away the creamy mix of your arousal and his cum that had gotten on it from the silicon egg. “Did so well, sweetheart,” he coos, “not much longer now.”

Yoongi ends up returning downstairs first again, if only to give you some time to lose the wobbliness in your knees, but by the time you sit back down, it’s clear a round or so must have gone by without you.

There’s a near-empty glass in the middle of the room, a layer of sludgy green around the sides and gathering at the bottom. Hoseok bears a disgusted frown, swishing lemonade in his puffed cheeks. Jungkook isn’t wearing any pants, Taehyung has lost another sock, and Jin has a stripe of wetness running up his cheek like someone’s licked him. Namjoon doesn’t meet his gaze.

Yoongi glances up and runs his eyes over you as you sit back down gingerly. “Good timing. Your turn, sweetheart.”

You let out a sigh, take a gulp of the closest open soju bottle near you - this one sickly sweet - and pick a piece of paper at random. “How long are we even going to- Oh. What is your ideal sexual scenario.” Your cheeks are on fire. “I- Surely I shouldn’t answer, though, because then you’ll all just do it to try and stay in the game.”

“If it’s your ideal scenario, wouldn’t you prefer to experience it multiple times?” Jin questions, his eyes burning with curiosity even as he keeps his expression neutral.

Jungkook shrugs, the motion lifting his shirt to reveal grey boxer briefs. He seems totally unbothered about his state of undress. “You don’t need to be embarrassed, either. If it helps, I’ll tell you mine.”

You narrow your eyes. “Seriously? Fine, you go first.”

He shrugs again, shaking his head so the strands of red fall away from his eyes. “I’m in a five-star hotel. They gave me like the President’s suite or something because I’m super rich and super important, and it has a whole bunch of video games. I enjoy room service and play video games for an hour, only I didn’t come alone. I have a bunch of hot people, like at least five, and they all wanna fuck me.” Like he’s telling a perfectly innocent yet incredibly interesting story, Jungkook gestures and speaks emphatically, the other members of the house listening in with a dumbfounded silence. “I definitely wanna fuck them too, you know, but I’m busy. Playing games and stuff. So they do everything they can to get my attention, until eventually either I take pity on them and wreck them, or one of them decides to shut the game off and make me pay for ignoring them. I guess ideal would be some of both. And then we all fuck, and I’m right in the middle because it’s all about me. The end.”

You let out a disbelieving laugh. “Why does it sound like you’ve thought this through in great depth?”

“Because I have,” Jungkook answers simply. “Look, one time my friend and I got a fancy hotel room together and I thought it would be totally perfect if there were video games or something fun to do in the room, you know? And also I had a massive crush on her so my mind was also in the gutter and everything just came together.”

You blink. “Well… Okay, I don’t think mine will be so elaborate because I haven’t really… I don’t know. I guess mine would be renting a cabin or a chalet somewhere super remote for like a whole week with someone, knowing that we can basically have sex all day and all night without worrying about anything else.” Your cheeks flush, and you clear your throat awkwardly, staring at the fibres of the carpet.

“Sex retreat,” Jungkook summarises knowingly, “that’s a good one. Anyways, Namjoon’s turn again.”

Over the next few hours, the eight of you get consistently more tipsy, and eventually replace the alcohol with some steamed rice and leftover soup to sober up a bit. Taehyung had to do a blind taste test (apparently Hoseok’s elbow tasted like pork), Namjoon stripped off your stretched-out pink sweater to avoid answering a truth that made him blush so hard he wouldn’t even read it out, and Jimin theorised on who the biggest dick in the house was (guessing Jin, the eldest strutted around like a smug peacock for the rest of the night).

You’d gotten off decently lightly; answering a few questions about Sejin, music, and even Mango, then taking off your pants to avoid a dare that asked you to strip entirely. Though you wouldn’t admit it, you didn’t want to part with Namjoon’s shirt that soon.

Every time you managed to forget about the egg-shaped toy inside you, you’d laugh or change positions or reach forward for a drink and feel it shift inside you. You felt full in a way you’ve never really experienced before, and you couldn’t work out if you liked it or not. Another thing you couldn’t decide if you liked or not was the constant worry that your underwear would betray a dark patch or trail of cum that had escaped you, and the whole rooom would know exactly what Yoongi had done to you. The thought made your heart thud.

By the time Jin started to stack the dishwasher and Jimin - still the most sober one though he outdrunk most of you - cleans up the lounge, you feel equally tired and horny, desperate to get the reward that Yoongi’s been dangling in front of you.

He doesn’t even have to text you or command you; you quite happily trail him to his room like a needy pet, hoping your eyes convey your want.

“Can I help you?” Yoongi asks with a shit-eating grin, finally slipping out of the leather chest harness he’d been grumbling about all afternoon.

You narrow your eyebrows, feeling the toy shift inside you with every movement. “I think you can,” you pout.

His gaze glimmers with bemusement. “Come sit, sweetheart, let me make sure you’ve been good.”

He doesn’t even speak as he pushes lightly at your shoulder, guiding you to lie down on his bed, legs dangling over the edge. With his quiet demeanor of authority, much like you imagine he’d use in his clinic, he slides down your panties and parts your legs, humming in approval at what he sees. “You have been good. Keeping my cum warm for me, what a well-behaved slut you are.”

You suck in a breath at his words, tilting your hips up. “Yoongi, please.”

“I do want to give you your reward now,” he begins, and your heart sinks into your stomach at his reluctant tone. “Really, I do. But if you really want to please me, why don’t you let me fill you up one more time, hm?”

You have the rising urge to bite down hard on your knuckles, teeth grinding as you whine. “Yoongi,” you protest, but the need to please is too great to ignore. “Yeah, fuck me again, Yoongi. Please be quick, I want it.”

Yoongi laughs, a warm grumble in his chest. “Oh, sweetheart, you’ve already milked me dry twice today. I won’t be lasting long.”

Quicker than your arousal-addled mind can really process, Yoongi is tugging the plug from you and driving his cock in in one smooth motion. You cry out, a hand flying out to latch onto his arm to ground you as you tighten around his intrusion. “Fuh-fuck, oh god,” you make out through a tensed jaw.

“Shh,” the doctor coos, “are you sensitive? Poor sweetheart, Yoongi’s been so mean not letting you cum, keeping you plugged up all day.”

Your eyes tear up as he jackhammers his hips into you, brute force to achieve a quick and desperate orgasm. Though you doubt he’ll let you cum, you’ve been aroused so much today that heat already curls thickly in your stomach. You can barely respond with no air left in your lungs, so you just garble wordlessly, clutching at him for dear life.

Yoongi doesn’t seem to mind your inability to hold a coherent conversation. As he mercilessly seeks out your wetness, he continues to spew filth with a grin exposing his teeth. “Gonna fill you up so well, huh? Fill you right up to the brim, you’ll be leaking for days. Taking this cock so well, sweetheart. Just like that, fuck. My perfect little cumdump, only been a day and you’re so well-behaved, yeah? Just drooling for it, look at you.”

You’re out of your mind, holding on to his words and the shared contact like they’re your only lifelines. When Yoongi lets out a guttural groan and comes inside you for the third time that day, you feel totally boneless, unable to do more than whine and shiver on the duvet.

Edged yet again, the only energy left in your body is singing out for an orgasm, and so when you feel his hand cupping your heat, you rock into it mindlessly, warranting a quick and stinging swat to your thigh.

“You’ve been so patient, sweetheart, don’t be greedy now,” Yoongi chastises. “I need you to move for me, okay, on your knees on the bed. Clench hard; I don’t want my cum going to waste on the bedsheets.”

You groan weakly but follow his instructions, bleary-eyed as you watch him walk around the other sie of his bed before getting up and lying down on his back, mint hair splayed out on the pillow. He grins at you, tongue darting out to lick his lips. “Come on, then,” he lures, “take a seat.”

You moan out loud before you can even think to swallow it down. “Are you serious? Fuck, okay.” Feeling breathless but vibrating with excitement, you gingerly position yourself above his face, knees either side of his head. It takes a lot of energy to hold your walls tight together, but still his seed runs down your thighs.

He doesn’t seem to mind. Without a moment’s hesitation he mumbles, “let go, sweetheart,” and buries himself between your legs.

You cry out at the first swipe of his tongue, right over your entrance. Your muscles naturally flex, releasing more of him, but you remember his words and let yourself relax.

Yoongi laps up his own cum from you like it’s the sweetest nectar, driving his tongue sharp and deep inside you, then switching to broad, shallow strokes, before flicking the tip against your clit. Although you try to avoid squashing him, he hungrily grabs the flesh of your ass and tugs you down to meet him more fully, making you let out a broken moan and grip the headboard for support.

As he devours you, his hands encourage you to rock against his face, seeking out more pleasure. Whenever he dips his tongue lower to lick you clean, his nose rubs against your clit, and once enabled you can’t help but grind into the long-awaited stimulation, a constant stream of breathy sighs and hiccuped moans slipping from your lips.

The sensation of his cum leaving you is one that takes some getting used to, but it seems to go on forever, unbelievably wet against Yoongi’s face as he eats you out like a silver-tongued god. Your mind is filled with the visual of his eyes, clenched shut in focus, and the mental image of his cum filling your insides, an endless stream with how deep and full he’d fucked you today.

It’s no surprise that it takes you almost no time at all to reach that edge again, and you could cry in relief when, instead of edging you again, he pushes you over it with a sharp tongue, fingers digging into your ass as you rode it out on his face.

What does surprise you, however, is that once the pleasure turns to needling oversensitivity, and your muscles go lax, his grip only tightens, and his tongue just speeds up, ruthlessly pitching you long past the point of your orgasm.

“Yoongi, ah, ‘s too much!” you hiss, trying to wriggle away. Your knees are too wide to give you any leverage, however, and he lifts his forearms up and over your thighs, locking you against him.

You feel rather than hear the vibration of him grunting his response, but he doesn’t let up; not when you sob and writhe above him, not when you go totally silent, mind-blown at how the sensations are beginning to cycle around back to pleasure, and certainly not when a second orgasm is forced upon you, wracking through your body. More violent than the first one, you shudder against him and go slack against the headboard, moans weak and stuttered.

As your body continues to convulse and twitch with the aftermath of your back-to-back orgasms, Yoongi takes the wheel and gently maneuvers you to the side of his bed, head heavy on the pillow.

When he cleans you up, your pussy feels positively raw, and you hiss, locking your thighs around his hand and the damp facecloth he’d used. Mind hazy and floating, it seems like no time at all before he’s tucking the both of you under the covers, snagging you around the stomach and pulling you flush against his back.

Still in Namjoon’s soft shirt, you can nonetheless feel the heat radiating off Yoongi’s skin and his heart thudding in his chest. “Was that okay?” he asks, pressing a single soft kiss against the nape of your neck to punctuate his question.

“Fuck, more than okay,” you pant out.

You feel him smile against your skin. “I’m glad. Sleep well, sweetheart.”

You hum in response, getting yourself comfy, feeling secure in his hold. “Night, Yoon.”

[firebrands]

the square root of infinity | stevetony

2.7k, established relationship, first fight angst | on ao3 | for @maguna-stxrk

***

Tony finds out with his hands deep in JARVIS’ code. Former-JARVIS, actual-JARVIS, he hasn’t really decided on what to refer to the mess of numbers of letters that formed his former AI, and now, well—Vision, too. It’s all a mess, really, and Tony wanted something simple to do with his hands, minimal focus, low-risk.

He should have known better, really. Nothing about him, his work, his life, has ever been low-risk.

It’s a command from Steve with a privacy protocol. Search, identify, and surveil Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes, also known as The Winter Soldier. Missing, found, and missing again as of six months ago. Tony frowns at the monitor. He knows he hasn’t read it wrong, but can’t believe it; he reads it again.

Somehow, in the span of time of Steve coming back from Washington, of them settling in together, he’d done this. He’d asked JARVIS to do this for him, and keep it from Tony.

Tony leans back against his chair. “FRI,” he says.

His new AI chirps to life. “Boss?”

“Gimme everything JARVIS found on this.”

“It’s on your phone now, boss.” In front of him, a hologram materializes as well, displaying hundreds of photos, grainy and filtered, and copies of reports on sightings. Tony stands up, takes a step back and frowns some more. He opens his mouth a few times, borne of his need to verbalize even without anyone listening; he’s angry. He’s more shocked than angry, but the anger is there, low and simmering.

Beneath it, though, is a grain of doubt: Why? Why did he keep it hidden? Especially now—after all the truth came spilling out of them, crystallizing into something Tony held dear. And after all Steve had said, about keeping secrets, about trust. He briefly considers asking FRIDAY to print it all out, just so he can throw the sheaf of paper in front of Steve and demand: what the fuck, but he’s better now, more mature. Or so he likes to tell himself.

So instead, he walks to the penthouse and finds Steve reading.

Tony clears his throat.

Steve looks up. “Hey,” he says, setting his book down. “You done working?”

Tony smiles, pained and tight. “So,” he says, sitting at the foot of the bed. “Bucky.”

Steve’s eyebrows meet, looking concerned. “What about him?”

Tony shuts his eyes and counts backward from five. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

Steve inches closer to him and rests his hand on Tony’s knee. Tony doesn’t open his eyes.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” Steve says very quietly.

Tony’s eyes fly open, the anger now boiling over. “Oh is that it?” He asks sarcastically. “So you decided to use JARVIS—without my permission, to look for him?”

Steve’s mouth works, and he looks genuinely shocked. “You said I could talk to JARVIS.”

“That’s not the point!” He pushes Steve’s hand off him and stands. “Why would you keep that a secret?”

“I—I didn’t,” Steve says haltingly. “I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to know if JARVIS could find him, but I knew it was almost impossible anyway, so there was no real point—”

“If there was no point,” Tony says, voice lowering, “then why’d you do it?”

“Tony,” Steve stands now, too, tries to reach out and touch Tony’s elbow, to disentangle Tony’s arms that have crossed over his chest on their own volition. “He’s my best friend. I’m worried about him. I just thought it was something I should do myself.”

Tony nods, not really listening. His head is swimming with what he thinks could be actual reasons why Steve had kept this from him. A tangled mess of fear and insecurity, then shock at his ability to be aware of it. Is this maturity? He doesn’t like it much. Better if it stayed Steve’s fault—and it is Steve’s fault, it is. But maybe Tony doesn’t need to work himself up like this. But then again, Tony’s already worked up. “Stop,” Tony grinds out.

So Steve stops, a foot away from Tony, looking more scared than Tony’s ever seen him.

“I’m going to go.”

“Don’t.”

Tony looks up at Steve. He hadn’t even realized he’d looked away. Steve takes a deep breath, closes the space between them, and takes Tony’s hands in his.

Tony sighs.

Steve threads their fingers together, squeezes Tony’s palms. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Want to say more than one syllable, maybe?”

A joke? Now? Tony feels his frown deepen.

“No.”

“Is this a fight?”

Tony looks up at him. “A fight means you don’t think you should be sorry.”

“Now, hold on a second,” Steve says, a small frown beginning to form on his face. Barely perceptible, if you didn’t know the signs. “I already explained why—”

“And that’s supposed to make it okay?”

“Where is this coming from?” Steve asks, letting go of Tony’s hands, which means he’s mad too, which drives Tony insane.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“There’s no need to raise your tone—”

“Don’t fucking use your de-escalation tactics on me.” Tony hisses, turns on his heel, and walks out the door. He gives himself the satisfaction of slamming it shut.

***

The next few days are filled with small acts of penitence: a cup of coffee on the bedside table when Tony wakes, a sandwich in the workshop, a completed report for a day-old mishap. It’s on Thursday that Tony’s heart finally softens. Over nothing, really, just a small doodle on his desk. He realizes, in that moment, that of all his achievements, perhaps learning to understand Steve Rogers should rank highest. Right up there with being understood by him, too.

Tony’s lying in bed, reading a report on his tablet, when Steve peeks in.

“Hey.” He sounds tentative.

Tony sighs, sets his tablet aside, and takes off his glasses. “Well, come in.”

Steve’s barely able to hide his grin, and nearly bowls Tony over when he hugs him. “Hi,” Steve says, burying his nose against Tony’s neck.

“Hello to you too, you overgrown labrador,” Tony laughs, pushing Steve away a little lest he be crushed under all combined weight of supersoldier and three bowls of pasta that Clint prepared for dinner.

“I missed you,” Steve says, hugging Tony closer to him. He looks up at Tony, resting his chin right on Tony’s sternum. “Was that our first fight?”

Tony snorts. “Unlikely to be our last,” he says.

“Hey,” Steve chides, leaning up and brushing Tony’s nose with his. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. Anyway,” Tony leans closer, brushes their lips together. “Make it up to me.”

Steve arches an eyebrow.

“Don’t start,” Tony warns.

Steve huffs out a laugh, tips them over until they’re lying down, and makes it up to him.

***

As a man of science, it behooves Tony to conduct experiments and to test hypotheses.

First, identify the problem.

Second, conduct research.

Third, develop a hypothesis: follow if / then structure.

Fourth, test through experiments: ensure factors are varied one at a time.

Fifth and final, draw a conclusion.

Tony’s tapping the tip of a screwdriver against his bottom lip as he thinks, and then two strong arms wrap around his waist and just like that, the problem has identified itself.

(One frustrating blind spot in Tony’s life: relationships. Which isn’t to say he hasn’t tried to make sense of them, sped read through self-help books and trawled through Reddit. Unlike everything else, research pales in comparison to experience, and there’s only so much he can do to make sure this one precious thing in his life is perfect.)

“Busy?” Steve presses a small kiss on the back of Tony’s neck. Tony can barely suppress a shiver.

He wants to say, I was, until you showed up. It doesn’t just apply to this moment. That fact shouldn’t hurt.

Instead, Tony says: “Yeah, kinda.”

“Okay,” Steve says easily, pulling away. He comes back to press a quick kiss to Tony’s cheek. “See you later?”

“Yup,” Tony says, and okay. Maybe he needs to spend a day or two really figuring out who the problem is, here. (It’s him. He knows this. He’s always the problem.)

 Two days later, Tony settles on having to review related literature. In this case, this means sitting alone in the workshop as he relives every moment when Steve was distracted. Was that a sign? In a brief moment of clarity, Tony asks: “Fri, am I crazy?”

“Signs point to no, boss. But I can pull up recent results on the search engines?”

“I’d rather not hear what the general public thinks, thanks,” Tony says, sighing. He rests his face in his hands. It’s not like he meant to think of this—what is wrong with his brain, that the intrusive thoughts come in the form of the few moments he’d asked Steve what was on his mind, only to be brushed off?

What did that mean?

Did it matter?

Step three: if that was a sign, then there was a problem.

If that wasn’t a sign, then there wasn’t a problem.

If Tony didn’t figure this out, then there would definitely be a problem.

This isn’t how a hypothesis is meant to sound. Tony’s a terrible scientist.

“Fri, call Bruce.”

“Tony?” Bruce’s voice is rough. He sounds annoyed.

“Hey, seven PhDs, how do I form a proper hypothesis?”

“Fuck you, Stark.” The line clicks off.

Tony turns his wrist, checks his watch. Three AM? Figures.

He stretches out his back. “Friday,” he says, standing up. “The search functions for Barnes.”

“On it, boss.”

“Atta girl.”

***

Try as Tony might—and he’s trying, which in itself feels like a failure, because Tony stark does or does not and there is no need to attempt—he feels like something has shifted between them, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

Maybe he’s just making it all up in his head. That’s the easy solution, isn’t it? And that’s usually the answer: start with the easiest answer and work your way up. He can already see Natasha rolling her eyes at him. Maybe the solution is to stop treating your relationship like it’s quantum theory.

Steve’s hand is on his lower back, steering him inside a restaurant. He thinks only of what Steve said, all those weeks ago: I had to do it myself.

Tony wants to argue, right this moment. But how can he? It’s awful that they can be so alike. The only reason he keeps his mouth shut is because he knows that Tony’s used that argument before. Maybe this is growth, to know when to back down from a fight. Or to avoid one totally.

Steve reaches over the table, brushes his fingers over Tony’s wrist. “You okay?”

There are a lot of answers to that. Tony settles on the truth. “Not really.”

Steve’s brow creases with worry. “What’s wrong?”

Again: an infinite multiverse of answers to answer a question that simple. With this, Tony does struggle for a moment, and the next words are much harder to say—they almost feel caught in his throat, like a lump of meat. “I don’t know.”

“You can tell me anything, you know,” Steve says gently. So gentle, it almost breaks him; Tony doesn’t deserve this. Steve doesn’t deserve this.

“I know,” Tony says, and this is him lying through his teeth, and this is what he’s good at, and maybe this is why he’ll never know how relationships are. It’s a trust issue, probably. He doesn’t know if the issue is with Steve, or with himself. “Don’t worry about it.”

Tony tries harder, now: smiles more, eats with gusto. He knocks Steve’s thigh with his knee, looks up at him from under his lashes. This is what life is like for Tony Stark: it’s acting. He knows the approximations to get his point across. As their evening goes on, the small wrinkle on Steve’s forehead smooths out, and maybe Tony wishes he wasn’t so good at pretending.

Maybe he wishes that Steve read him better.

***

The moment of epiphany is often described as transcendental.

This one hits like a ton of bricks—literally, because Tony does know what that feels like, and the suit is shock proof, sure, but that shit still fucking hurts, and even in moments of epiphany, somehow he still manages to go off on a tangent. The point remains: Steve’s hand is on his hip, and they’re in bed, and epiphanies usually equate clarity, peace.

Tony freezes up.

“Tony?” Steve murmurs, sliding his hand up Tony’s side.

“I’m sorry,” Tony says, sitting up. “I know I’m being difficult.”

“I didn’t say you were.” Steve sits up beside him, rests his hand on Tony’s shoulder, and turns Tony to look at him. “Who said you were being difficult?”

“Me, I’m saying it,” Tony says. Panic is beginning to bubble in his belly, slowly rising up his throat. Typical of him to mistake a eureka moment with a panic attack. Par for the fucking course for Tony Stark. “I’m being difficult right now.”

“No you’re not,” Steve says, rubbing up and down his arms. “Tony. Look at me.”

Tony breathes out through his mouth, then in through his nose. Steve tips his chin up and meets his gaze.

“Here are the variables,” Tony breathes out, is afraid of what he’ll say next, his brain is fogged over and full of static. “I love you, and I don’t know what to do with that.”

Steve takes a deep breath, takes Tony’s face in his hands. “Here’s a constant,” he whispers, breath warm on Tony’s cheek. “I love you. I love you. You, Tony Stark. I love you.” He kisses Tony, hard and close lipped, more aggressive reminder than affection.

“Okay,” Tony says, because there’s a wild part of him that still thinks—there was a problem, there was a problem and if this is love, then what comes next? If this is constant, then what variable will arrive to change all of that?

Steve kisses Tony again, almost desperate, this time. “Is this about Bucky?” Tony sucks in a breath at the question, horrified at being discovered. Steve hums, then he runs one hand down Tony’s back, up his arm, down his side. A reminder of his presence. Tony is suddenly grateful for it.

“And if it is?” he murmurs.

“Tony,” and somehow, Steve sounds fond, which throws a wrench in this whole debacle, and deep in the recesses of Tony’s brain, rationality begins to take root. “He’s my best friend. You’re the love of my life.”

Tony breathes.

“Did you hear me? You. You’re the love of my life. Please don’t make me compare,” Steve huffs out a small laugh, and it warms Tony all over, like sunshine peeking through the clouds after a strong rain. “And maybe you don’t believe me just yet,” Steve touches their foreheads together, then rubs his nose against Tony’s, the affection plain and chaste. It makes Tony feel more loved than he’s ever felt in his life—not that there were many moments to compare against, but still.

“I feel a little crazy,” Tony says, finding it in himself to smile up at Steve.

“A little crazy in love?” Steve asks, grinning.

“I can’t believe you just made a Beyonce reference. In the middle of my panic attack.”

Steve bites his bottom lip, a poor attempt at stopping himself from laughing. Tony flicks his forehead. “Say it again,” Tony says, and his smile still feels a little wobbly, but it’s a step.

“Crazy in Love?” Steve asks, pulling Tony close and wrapping his arms around Tony’s waist.

It’s an odd angle, and eventually Steve shifts to lift Tony up onto his lap. “Ass,” Tony says. “You know what I meant.”

Steve smiles again, right before pressing a kiss to Tony’s shoulder. “Step one,” he says. “The problem is you’re afraid I don’t love you. Step two: find out how to show you that I do.” He pauses, and Tony feels breathless as he presses another kiss to Tony’s bare skin. “Step three. Hypothesis? If I show Tony I love him all the time, then eventually he’ll believe me.”

“Sounds like a shaky hypothesis,” Tony says, but his voice quivers a little as he says it. He can’t explain how he feels, other than warm in Steve’s embrace.

Steve tuts. “Step four, experimentation. Small gestures, date nights.” Steve rubs Tony’s back as he speaks, and stops to tilt Tony’s head up to face him. “Am I getting this right?”

Tony smiles. “I don’t know, what’s the conclusion?”

Steve wraps his arms around Tony’s waist once more. “You’re here. I’m here. I love you.” He leans up, brushes their lips together. “Is that enough?”

[hongism]

mists of celeste ➻ 34

➻ pairing: ??? x fem reader ➻ genre: space au, pirate au, space pirate!ateez, angst, smut ➻ Word Count: 6.7k ➻ Rating: M ➻ Warnings: language, violence, guns and weaponry, blood, future warnings tba ➻ summary: Sneaking aboard the ship of a renowned space pirate may not have been the best idea, but you’ll have to make do with what fate has handed to you

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✧✧✧ act five ➻ part one

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“Wooyoung.” The voice is soft on your ears, and you revel in the peace it provides while you can, mind bringing the comforting image of San’s feline features without hesitation. Merely the sound of his voice fills your chest with warmth. It’s something that blossoms and spreads throughout your whole body as you begin to slip into consciousness. “Wooyoung, get up. They brought us some food.”

Wooyoung.

A hand clamps down hard on your shoulder. Your eyes open against your will, fluttering lashes that reveal a dimly lit scenery around you. The same scene you saw before with it’s cold, metal walls and rattling chains that rupture with noise every time someone shifts a muscle. It hits at that moment. This is not your body, you are not seeing with your own eyes or hearing with your own ears; you are merely looking through a piece of foggy glass and watching this dream – if it can even be called that – unfold with no control. At first, you had a sliver of control over the body and you moved on your own, but now it’s like you are merely a ghost inhabiting Wooyoung’s body alongside his consciousness.

That lack of control is terrifying, to say the least. Seeing things happen and not being able to help or do anything at all. You felt this fear once before, when you were trapped in prison and watching your team unravel and come apart because of your actions. Now, you are witnessing the repercussions of your identity in a whole new light.

San’s sharp features fill your vision. A hand reaches up between your bodies and cups the man’s cheek, turning his head left and right as your eyes flit over his face in search of something.

“Bruises are worse today.” It’s Wooyoung who speaks, soft and mellifluous tone falling from what should be your lips but isn’t. The entire situation is a bit baffling because you can’t reconcile where your consciousness ends and Wooyoung’s begins.

“I’m fine. They brought us some water. You should use it to clean your cuts before they get infected.”

Wooyoung waves the Spectre’s concern off and shakes his head.

“I’m fine. My knee is the only thing still bothering me. Once they take the chains off I’ll be able to set it properly. Ribs okay today?”

“Peachy,” San murmurs, hand coming up to rub at the mentioned spot subconsciously. “I’ve broken plenty before. This is no different.”

“Except you haven’t had proper treatment. I don’t even know if it’s a stable or transverse or oblique fracture… could even be comminuted for all we know.” Wooyoung lifts a shaky hand to his hand and combs through the charcoal-colored strands with no direct purpose. “I-I don’t know – I don’t know how to treat broken ribs. Yunho didn’t – I never asked him h-how to and I—”

“It’s fine, Wooyoung. I won’t die from a broken rib.”

“And if one of the bone shards is lodged in your lung? Think you can survive a hole there? Just… j-just let me know if anything changes. I don’t know what I can do if you start coughing up blood but I’ll figure something out.”

San is silent for a moment. His gaze shifts to the dirtied floor where thick iron chains weave crude patterns over the tiles. They cling to his wrists and ankles, a bit too loose but not enough for him to slip out of them. Wooyoung bears the same kind along with Mingi off in the corner. The Spectre seems to debate something for a moment before he glances up at the ceiling for a half-second, then he pulls closer to Wooyoung to mutter in his ear.

“They’ve been watching us for days. If we can break the cameras then I can use my abilities to—”

“To what, San?” Wooyoung interrupts. He shakes his head ever so slightly and heaves a deep sigh before speaking again, this time quieter than before. “The second a camera feed goes dead, they’ll send someone here to investigate. Mingi is too weak and injured to fight, you can hardly move or stand up straight with that rib, and what am I going to do? I can’t fight as well at you two, and I certainly can’t defend all of us, not with these chains and not on my own. Besides, the collars you and Mingi have are specially tailored to your class. They’ll restrict your usage of your abilities and you’ll only get hurt worse if you try using them.”

“But we – we have to get back to the others. We don’t know what they did with them or if they were taken too. They could have taken Y/N a-and Yunho and Yeosang. And who knows what happened with Hongjoong in the arena or if Seonghwa and Jongho found him?”

“I’m sure they’re okay.” Wooyoung’s tone remains noncommittal, but there’s something about the way he speaks the words with enough certainty to imply that he knows something San doesn’t. San rubs at the skin under his shackles. His wristband must have been taken because it’s nowhere in sight, and you can only assume that they did the same with Mingi’s as well. “We need to wait for a better opportunity. See where they’re taking us and why. We’ll find the others when we can, but right now… let’s get through this together.”

“Fine, but at least clean the cuts on your arms while you can. Who knows when they’ll bring fresh water by again.”

“Give it to Mingi. His injuries are the worst.” San inhales sharply. His lips part to no doubt deny Wooyoung’s request, but the shorter man levels him with a small shake of his head. “Please, San. I need you to trust me when I say that I will be fine.” Wooyoung glances over to another corner where said Berserker sits with shoulders slumped and head hung. You can’t tell whether he is awake or not, but that doesn’t seem to be important because San manages a hesitant nod then goes to approach the man.

Wooyoung watches San’s back as he walks. It’s careful, calculating, almost vigilant and the moment he decides San is at a far enough distance, he whips around to face the corner. Eyes glare holes into the seam of the wall and floor.

“I know you’re there, Y/N,” he whispers, and if you weren’t practically in his body, you would struggle to hear the words. You can’t even properly panic at his direct acknowledgment of whatever this is — he knows you’re there, whether it’s seeing through his eyes or pushing your subconsciousness alongside his. “I don’t – I don’t have time to explain. They’re transporting us to a different facility today. I think they’re going to separate the three of us into different cells. One of the guards mentioned putting Mingi in a steel cage on his own. I’ll try my best to convince them that we should stay together. I…” Wooyoung pauses, lips darting over his dry and cracked lips. “If they separate us, I w-would be able to explain this better but – listen, Y/N. I know this must be confusing and disorienting for you, but I need you to do two things for me when you wake up. First—”

“Wooyoung!”

Wooyoung cuts his thought short with a sharp hiss and a quickly exhaled curse.

“His fever is getting worse.”

“Fuck,” Wooyoung mutters, turning back around and rushing over to where San kneels beside Mingi’s hunched form. He brings a hand to Mingi’s forehead, brushing the damp hair there back so he can have better access, and even you can feel the heat emanating from the Berserker’s skin. Wooyoung withdraws his hand quickly and reaches down for the hem of his shirt. “Get the water for me, I need to make a rag of some sort to put on his head.”

Wooyoung yanks at his shirt, ripping it along one of the side seams and tearing all the way to the other side of his waist. San moves behind him in a rush to get the water as Wooyoung bunches up the wad of torn clothing.

“Mingi, can you hear me?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you mention the fever earlier?”

“Didn’t wanna worry you both.”

“Ah, Mingi…” Wooyoung sighs. San comes up on his side and delivers a glass of water into one of Wooyoung’s waiting hands. “I need you to lie down flat on your back. We’ll put this on your forehead for now, and I’ll look over your stomach again, okay?” Wooyoung dunks his makeshift rag into the cup, soaking it thoroughly while San reaches forward to tug Mingi’s shirt up to his sternum. The moment Wooyoung’s eyes flit over to glance at the newly-exposed skin, you are overwhelmed by the urge to vomit.

Right beside Mingi’s left hip, nestled close to the band of his pants and almost as long as a small blade, lies a broad cut. The skin around it is swollen and angry, holding a yellowish tint to it that you can see in the lowlight of the room. It is wide open, and the stretch of Mingi’s taut skin does nothing to keep the wound sealed shut. You don’t need to be a doctor to realize exactly how bad the cut is. San and Wooyoung exchange a nervous glance, and the worry in San’s eyes is so palpable and thick that it nearly chokes you. Wooyoung’s hands tremble as he eases Mingi onto his back. Water splashes over the floor, and Wooyoung nearly drops the rag in his efforts to calmly place it over Mingi’s damp forehead.

“Woo—”

“I know! I know it’s bad! Okay? L-Let me think this through.” Wooyoung sits back on his heels, tongue swiping over his lower lip. “Mingi needs rest right now. We can’t do anything without supplies a-and we need to just hope that they won’t let him die.”

“And if they don’t care?” San questions. He clamps a hand down hard on Wooyoung’s shoulder and pulls the man to face him head-on. “We don’t even know why they took us, let alone what they plan to do with us!”

“Yeah, well, quit looking at me like I have all the answers! If they wanted us dead, they would have killed us by now. There’s no way they would go through all this trouble to just let us die before we even get to our destination.” San’s hand falls away from Wooyoung as the Spectre sits back as well, eyes glued to Mingi’s reclining form. “It’s the middle of the night, San. I’m sure they’re planning something for the morning if they’re giving us food this late so let’s hold out a little while longer. Get some rest, I’ll watch over Mingi for a bit and make sure he can sleep okay.”

San pulls further away from Wooyoung at that, relenting in his arguments to return to his corner of the all too small room, and Wooyoung watches him go with lips pressed into a thin line. He doesn’t stop staring at the man until San is curled into the corner with his eyes shut. A sigh passes through Wooyoung’s lips as he turns back to Mingi, one hand stretching out to smooth down the Berserker’s hair.

“You comfortable, Mingi?” He asks. Several seconds pass in silence, and the only sounds that can be heard in the room are the steady and raspy breaths falling from the Berserker’s lips. “Hm, I’ll take that as a yes.” Wooyoung lets a couple more minutes go by without saying a word or making a sound, and it’s only when he seems confident that both San and Mingi are asleep that he speaks again. “Y/N, when you wake up, tell Seonghwa that the moon is shining over cold waters. I know it sounds weird, but he’ll know what it means. A-And Yeosang. Please tell him that I’m okay and he doesn’t need to worry. Then give him the same message as Seonghwa, okay? He’ll… he knows what’s going on b-between us, this whole connection, all of it. He can explain it to you for me. I would – I would do it but I can’t risk Mingi or San overhearing this. It’s already risky enough like this. I’m gonna send you back now before one of them starts asking questions.”

Something cold blossoms in your chest, like someone is trying to claw their way out of you and rip you apart from the inside out.

“Look after Yeosang while I’m gone, Y/N. I won’t forgive myself if something happens to him and I’m not there.” That’s the last thing you manage to hear before shadowy tendrils snake across your vision and bring you back into pitch-black darkness.

You wake up with a start, jerking back into full consciousness in your own body, and you jolt upwards into a sitting position. Everything burns and aches. Sweat beads your brow, slick down your back as well even though the room is cold. Of course it’s only a dream, a weird premonition that plagues you every time you lie down to sleep at night. It has been three days since that day in the arena, the one where three of the crew were stolen away from under your noses, and these dreams have become incessant in their persistence. This one was a first though: the first time Wooyoung has ever acknowledged your presence and spoken to you the way he did, and no matter how much you try to rack your brain, you still cannot get it to make even an ounce of sense.

The right side of the bed remains cold to the touch. It’s a familiarity, yet at the same time, it burns a hole deep in your chest which will linger for hours on end. Seonghwa hasn’t left Hongjoong’s bedside in days. He refuses to look you in the eye when you two are in each other’s presence. You can’t pretend that you don’t understand why because it’s blatantly obvious given that it started the day you met with Jisung and had that emotionally-charged conversation afterward. Yeosang won’t leave the room he’s staying in, and Jongho stays with him for hours on end just to try to ease some of his broken emotional state. Yunho is the only person who tries to maintain a sense of normalcy, but even so, he can’t do much. You have yet to hear a true apology fall from his lips, and until he gives you that much, you are content to greet him with a cold shoulder as petty as it might sound.

As for Jisung, you haven’t heard anyone breathe a word about him in days. You are positive that Seonghwa is going to meet him during the day at some point because the man will disappear for one or two hours then visit Yeosang for the same amount of time before returning to his incessant vigil at Hongjoong’s bedside.

You positively despise everything about the situation you all have been thrust into, and at the forefront of it all are these damn dreams. It almost seems as though the universe is trying to punish you for being the reason why the others were taken – San and Wooyoung, more specifically – because why else would you see through Wooyoung’s eyes and see the direct results of your mistakes. Even a cold shoulder doesn’t do anything to ease your worries, and thus you push your way into the room across the hall with a new sense of determination. You don’t stop until you reach your intended destination, lingering beside Seonghwa’s shoulder where he kneels at the side of Hongjoong’s cot. He shifts his chin to the slightest degree as he look at you out of the corner of his eye.

“Did you sleep okay?”

You aren’t sure what your plan was when you decided to come to Seonghwa. You haven’t thought about what you want to say or should say, but it seems a bit odd to lead with something like ‘every time I go to sleep I wake up in Wooyoung’s body and see through his eyes’ so you can’t very well start with that. The issue is that you don’t even know where to start with this conversation or what to say.

“Um…” You trail off, thought dying in the back of your throat. Seonghwa twists to look at you more directly now.

“Y/N?”

“T-The moon—” you cut yourself short, tongue darting out to wet your lips. “The moon is shining over cold waters?”

It doesn’t process right away. The man blinks back at you with confusion shining in his bright and round eyes, and you are ready to backtrack and tell him not to worry about it. Then, Seonghwa’s expression goes flat, color drains from his features, and his mouth falls agape. He jerks his head forward to stare at Hongjoong’s unconscious body, eyes darting all over the place, while you can do nothing except stand there and wait.

“Who – how do you… god, hold on.” Seonghwa squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that it hurts to look at. He brings a hand up to rub at the spot between his eyes, lips barely moving a centimeter when he speaks next. “Where did you hear that?”

“Wooyoung asked me to tell you that,” you whisper back. It’s utterly illogical since the two of you are alone in the room and Hongjoong isn’t awake, but you’re afraid to speak any louder than that, like you’re divulging a secret for just the two of you to hear.

“Wooyoung. When did he—”

“Last night.” Seonghwa lifts his chin.

“How?”

“I-I don’t know how to – to explain it. He told me to deliver that message to you and to Yeosang as well.”

“That… that explains why I couldn’t find you last night,” Seonghwa murmurs the words under his breath, and you’re almost certain that he isn’t intending them to be for your ears until he jerks his head to look you in the eye. “Daichi knew where you were but said he couldn’t tell me.”

Ah, so he was in the Dreamscape last night. Waiting and looking for you. While you were off inhabiting Wooyoung’s body and living in his consciousness. Then does he not know?

“You mean you didn’t – you weren’t there?” You inquire, tone a lot less confident all of a sudden.

“Where, Y/N?” Seonghwa pushes himself to his feet and stands at his full height, looming over you a little bit as he moves to stand in front of you. “What exactly did you see last night?”

“What is Wooyoung?” You ask rather than answering his question. Seonghwa tilts his head to the side a bit and looks off to the wall behind you. He inhales sharply, tongue dragging over the front of his teeth, and his hesitance tells you all you need to know. “Seonghwa.”

“We need to go to Yeosang,” Seonghwa says after several deep breaths of silence. He reaches down to grab your wrist, fingers nearly closing around your skin when you yank your arm back in defiance.

“You’re just – no! Why can’t you tell me what he is?”

“I don’t even know what you saw last night or what you mean by he told you to deliver a message. It is impossible for that to happen. Even if he is a — it’s impossible.”

“Is he a Si—”

A hand clamps hard over your mouth, Seonghwa’s other hand flying up to cradle the back of your neck as you jerk backward, and you blink at the man in utter shock. He doesn’t look back at you, however; his eyes are glued on Hongjoong’s reclining form, eyes so wide that you think they could bulge out of his head. He watches the steady rise and fall of Hongjoong’s chest go undisturbed for two, five, fifteen seconds before letting his hand drop back to his side.

“Not here,” he hisses under his breath, and for the first time, you hear him speak directly to you with a certain sense of vehemence in his tone. “Y/N, please.” You manage a small nod, unsure of what else there is for you to say, and Seonghwa takes hold of your hand again, this time letting his fingers slip through yours. You don’t know what comes over you in that moment; perhaps it is simply a leftover sense of bitterness that bubbles deep in your gut.

“Yet if this is what you truly want… if you have a chance to rest peacefully at last with someone you love, who am I to deprive you of that? That is all I could ever want for you.”

You tug your hand out of Seonghwa’s grasp, pulling it close to your chest as you turn around and head back towards the door. Turning around now would be a mistake; you can’t bring yourself to think about the expression of pain that surely crosses his features.

“I’m sorry. I would do anything for you, but I cannot force you to stay. That is the one thing I cannot bring myself to do.”

There is so much left unsaid between you two right now, so much you want to say but can’t, and you know that it will probably be the way for quite some time. You would rather run from this than face it head-on and look Seonghwa in the eye to tell him that you need him to make you stay because the guilt that eats away at your gut won’t let you stay otherwise. You don’t stop to see whether Seonghwa is following you, but you don’t really need to because you can hear the soft shuffling of his footsteps trailing after you as you step out of the room and into the hall. The air around you is too stiff and quiet. The silence brings the starkly haunting image of the cell San, Mingi, and Wooyoung are trapped in to mind.

You wait beside the door as Seonghwa knocks on the wood and calls out softly to Yeosang inside. When it cracks open, you expect to see the blond standing in the doorway; rather, it’s red eyes and dark hair that greet you, and you make brief eye contact with Jongho before he redirects his focus to Seonghwa.

“Need me to step out?”

“Yeah, you can go downstairs and eat with Yunho. He should still be down there.”

Jongho nods twice then glances back over his shoulder. He says nothing more as he steps out of the room and replaces Seonghwa’s spot in the hallway. You’re about to follow the lieutenant in when Jongho lands a hand on your arm, squeezing tightly at your forearm and pulling your focus towards him for a moment.

“How are you holding up?”

“…Could be better,” you murmur back.

“We’ll get them back soon.” Jongho sounds so confident, and you can hardly feed into that confidence yourself thanks to the turmoil rushing through your mind without cease.

“Yeah, I’m sure we will,” you lie, pressing a smile onto your lips if only to reassure the Berserker. Whether he believes you or not remains to be seen. He steps away and continues on down the hall, however, so you can escape his scrutiny for the time being and follow Seonghwa into Yeosang’s room.

The first thing to hit you is the darkness of the room. All the lights are turned off save for a lamp beside the bed and the soft morning light filtering in through the window. Yeosang sits in front of the fogged glass with his back to the door, illuminated by the pale light. In this atmosphere, you can truly see his princely features and it makes perfect sense how he could have been a prince in the past with the sharp angles of his jaw, even slope of his nose, blond hair falling in soft waves around his head and resting flat against the back of his neck. If you didn’t know how cruel he could be, you would dare to say he looks almost angelic with the sun’s rays hitting his hair and reflecting off it in soft halos.

“Yeosang,” Seonghwa starts, tone hovering above a whisper.

“More plans from the double agent today?” Double agent? You don’t realize what he means by that until Seonghwa clears his throat and drops his chin to his chest. Jisung.

“No, there’s something else we need to discuss.” Seonghwa shifts to look at you, and it’s only after he gives you a small nod that you realize what he wants. It’s on you to bring up the topic of Wooyoung, to deliver the message he gave you, and to start this conversation. Yeosang swivels in his seat as slowly as possible. You choke on air when he looks directly at you, not even bothering to spare Seonghwa an ounce of his attention once he notices you are in the room as well.

“Wooyoung asked me to tell you th-that he’s okay and you d-don’t need to worry,” you whisper. It’s hard to meet Yeosang’s intense stare, and you regret it when you do because of the sheer lack of emotion in his dark eyes.

“Wooyoung asked you to tell me that. Right.” Accusatory, cold, disbelieving. How the fuck are you supposed to get this man to believe what you witnessed with some weird string of words that he’s supposed to know the meaning of? “Do you take me to be an idiot, Y/N? Why the hell would I ever believe something as ridiculous and inconceivable as that? Don’t tell me you believe her, Seonghwa.”

“You should just — the moon is shining over cold waters,” you sigh, squeezing your eyes shut to hide your frustration.

“Where did you hear that?” There’s a shift, wood scraping hard against wood, and all of a sudden, you’re forced to open your eyes because the man is in your face with hands clenched so hard around your biceps that you can feel the bruises forming already.

“Yeosang,” Seonghwa warns. He takes a step closer to the two of you.

“Where the fuck did you hear that?” Yeosang demands, louder this time as he presses so close to you that his breath cascades over your face.

“Wooyoung told me to tell you that,” you spit back. You shrug his hands off you with a quick jerk of your shoulders, stepping back a bit to put some distance between your bodies. “Because for some fucking reason, I can’t go to sleep at night without waking up in his fucking body and seeing through his eyes with zero control or ability to do anything for myself like I’m some backseat driver in his consciousness while I watch him spend hours trapped in a cell with San and Mingi until he either falls asleep or ‘decides to send me back’, whatever the fuck that means!”

“What?” Seonghwa exhales, head whipping so hard you could get whiplash just from watching him. “Y/N, what did you say? I thought — you mean you didn’t go to the Dre— you didn’t see him there?” You’re acutely aware of the way Yeosang’s eyes flit from Seonghwa’s body to yours, cold and calculating as ever, but something in his features expresses a pre-existing knowledge, like he knows exactly what Seonghwa is talking about with needing an explanation. It sends shockwaves of panic through your body. You can’t stand the way he’s staring at you; it feels too much like he is picking you apart piece by piece.

“W-What? What the fuck are you saying?”

“Oh, cut the damn act, Y/N. I know what you are.”

Both you and Seonghwa reel on Yeosang, and your vision spins with the haste at which you move. He huffs out a laugh, lips twisting at one corner as he grins at you with a sense of cruelty to his gaze.

“If you’re going to pretend to be something, you ought to do a better job, especially seeing as I’m the only true Elitist on the crew. I don’t know who you thought you were fooling, but even if Wooyoung hadn’t told me what you are, I would have known regardless.”

“W-Wooyoung? Wooyoung told you what I am?” You stammer, eyes as wide as saucers. “How did he know?” Your eyes go directly to Seonghwa, and you search for answers in the man, or at least some indication that he was the one to tell Wooyoung about your identity but he shakes his head. Given the shock on his features as well, you’re inclined to believe that he truly had nothing to do with Wooyoung knowing.

“Did he not tell you anything? Not even about the meaning of that phrase he gave you? How typical of him to get sidetracked.” Some of the hostility slips away from Yeosang’s tone at the mention of Wooyoung in such a way, and he shakes his head a bit.

“He said he couldn’t explain because Mingi and San could overhear. But I still don’t understand what’s going on or why this is happening. Why didn’t this happen with the two of us?” You direct the question to Seonghwa, hoping for some sort of answers from the man given his previous knowledge about Sirens, but what you get instead is disappointment and confusion.

“I’ve never even heard of such a thing happening, never read about it, or seen any sort of legend talking about this type of connection,” Seonghwa says through a sigh. “Yes, Wooyoung is a Siren just as we are, and while I had my suspicions about your identity as one, he is the one who came to me and confirmed it because… because he had a dream of sitting in a black lake with a red moon and seeing your reflection in the water instead of his. I didn’t know what it meant back then, and I don’t know now.”

“W-When?” You can’t recall a time when Wooyoung was ever in your body or if you even realized that he was there.

“Right after you came onto the ship. In the first four days you were hiding in that box, Wooyoung came to me saying that he saw a girl’s face in the water, and when I asked him to describe her features, I instantly knew it was the one who I ran into outside the airlock. You.”

“And you two were just — you weren’t going to tell me that this was happening? Or that Wooyoung knew all this time?”

“Seonghwa and I are the only two people who know about Wooyoung’s identity. It’s been that way for six years. Not even Hongjoong knows, and that’s exactly how we intended for it to be. You would never have known if not for this connection between the two of you.” Yeosang blinks between the two of you. He folds his arms over his chest, letting one hand rest under his chin. He says nothing more than that but you can clearly see that there is more on his mind than merely that.

“Then what about the meaning of the phrase? You said it had a meaning, Yeosang.”

“The moon is shining over cold waters. Wooyoung’s moniker is Tsukio, meaning moon. Your moniker is Umiko, is it not? Child of the sea? We came up with it as a failsafe in this sort of situation, where if Wooyoung was in danger and you happened to inhabit his consciousness, then he would give you the code to deliver back to us. Seonghwa would tell you his identity as a Siren, and I would do my best to explain whatever I could in Wooyoung’s absence. There is nothing he does not tell me, even down to matters like this.”

“I don’t understand why Seonghwa doesn’t have this ability as well though.”

“As I told you, Y/N, all Sirens are different. They interact in different ways, and they all have different abilities. Yeosang and I haven’t stopped looking for answers or trying to find even the slightest bit of information about this. Given what Wooyoung has told us, we have only come to one conclusion. You are the sea, and Wooyoung is the moon. No matter where you are in the universe, the seas are always influenced by the moon and tied to the moon in some way. Tell me, Y/N, have you ever seen Wooyoung in your dreams before this?” Seonghwa pauses to let you process and answer the question. His eyes search yours for any sort of response, but you can’t come up with one right away.

“H-Help! Someone – someone help!” You cry out, voice croaking like a frog, and your throat burns from the effort. One of the chained prisoners in front of you turns at the sound of your voice. Dark charcoal hair flutters in the still air as he whips around to face you, eyes wide and curious as they land on you. All the air leaves your lungs. Your heart constricts painfully in your chest, and you choke on nothing as his face comes into focus.

Wooyoung.

A cloaked man steps in front of you and effectively blocks your line of sight before you can examine the sight further.

Wooyoung.

A searing pain blossoms over your cheek, and it takes a moment for you to process that the person has just punched you.

Wooyoung.

Another blow comes down on your head. You feel your body go down before your mind catches up, and you enter a harsh freefall. Your chains clatter as you tumble to the ground.

“Y/N!”

“You have,” Yeosang states, arms falling limply by his sides. You’re about to agree when another memory hits you out of the blue, something you haven’t seen in a long time, all the way back from when you had the surgery on your arm and when Wooyoung plugged an anesthesia shot in your neck.

The dream is beginning to fade, darkness swirling into one large mass, but before the serenity around you can disappear entirely, you catch sight of something new. Amongst everything that is familiar and known, this is completely foreign. A new figure, shorter than Daichi for certain, but also bearing dark hair. He stands off at the other side of the lake, near the shore like Daichi had been, but his back is facing you. He bears garbs like yours, white and flowing despite the lack of a breeze.

“Twice. After the surgery on my arm and after the m-mission to get the serums.”

“You merely saw him? Not through his eyes?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“And now this is the first time you’ve seen through his eyes.”

“No. It started the first time I went to sleep after what happened at the arena.”

“And you waited four days to say anything?” Yeosang scoffs, face contorting into a scowl in an instant.

“He didn’t speak to me until today! Without that damn phrase, you would have called me insane and not told me anything.” Yeosang opens his mouth to retort, but you jab a finger at his face before he can. “Don’t try to tell me I’m wrong.”

“I think…” Seonghwa trails off, puffing his cheeks full of air and exhaling deeply. “I think Y/N and I need to speak with Daichi about this. It sounds like this connection – whatever it is between the two of you – it sounds like it’s something that is triggered when the other is in danger. Wooyoung inhabited your body when you were dying in the boxes in the cargo hold.”

“He had control though,” Yeosang cuts in.

“He had control over me?”

“Over your body, yes. He told me that he climbed out of the box in the middle of the night and left a blood trail leading to the box. He knew San would be on the first shift to do inventory in the morning, he knew San would have mercy and not be able to kill you, and he knew that San would be able to pick up on the blood trail leading to your box.”

“He…” He saved my life. Your throat closes in on itself. Wooyoung is the only reason San found you in that box. You probably would have died the next day if not for him.

“She was physically incapable of doing even the bare minimum at that time. But you said you have no control over Wooyoung’s body?”

Two shaky hands dart up to your neck, clasping around something terribly cold and metal. It’s a collar of sorts, and it refuses to budge even a centimeter as you try to yank at it. A finger slips under the ridge of the metal. You brush over the cold skin there only to find a blossoming scar across your neck, one that spreads no matter how far you move your hand along the collar. You jerk your hand out from under it with a growing feeling of disgust churning in your stomach.

“I h-had control the first time. But for less than a minute. Like once W-Wooyoung was fully conscious again, he took control.”

“I need time and my notes back on the ship,” Yeosang mutters. “Y/N, I’ll need you to come visit and tell me everything that has been happening in these dreams, along with all the things that started happening when you first came aboard. Once we’re back on the ship, of course.”

“Well, that will be coming sooner than expected.” You and Yeosang glance over at Seonghwa at the same time, eyes wide with unspoken questions. “We’re going back to the ship this afternoon. Yunho plans to transport Hongjoong back with Jongho’s help. He’ll make the rest of his recovery there, but we need to get moving. Jis–our double agent finally figured out where they’re taking the others. Geofflan system, planet Dorado.”

“Seonghwa, that’s—”

“Yes, I know, Yeosang,” Seonghwa interrupts. His lips twist into a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and no matter what way you look at the grin, you only see sadness in it. “We would inevitably have to go there at some point. I can’t keep running forever, can I?”

Dorado? Why does this feel familiar?

You peer at the side of Seonghwa’s head in silence, mulling over the words and racking your brain for that sliver of a memory about Dorado.

“Maybe Hongjoong found a lead on Dorado, and that’s where we’re heading next. Seonghwa might be tense because of that.”

“What’s so important about Dorado?”

Jongho’s eyes find yours and suddenly grow wide. He shakes his head a few times, but the nervous gleam that dances across his eyes doesn’t escape your notice.

“Perhaps it’s time for me to go home and face my demons after all,” Seonghwa whispers, letting his smile stretch a bit wider. It falls away a second later, and something dark takes over, something you decide you don’t want to see cross Seonghwa’s features again. Because in that moment, you see something sinister and cruel, and all the legends you heard about the man come to life before you. The stories of a man in a black cloak bearing a silver scythe in one hand with a gun in the other, the fearless killer who stands beside the Scourge of the Black Sea rearing death in his wake. When Seonghwa turns on his heel and leaves the room, you see it. The dark shadows billowing behind him curl outwards and sweep across the floor, crude shapes built by the light in the hallway, and that cloak of darkness sits on Seonghwa’s shoulders. It’s like the Lieutenant of Death has crawled his way out of the dark abyss of hell that Seonghwa kept him buried in, and the face he rears horrifies you.

✧✧✧ a/n: hehe 👁👁🍿 jk um what is there to say about this except hi hello! new act! act five! lots of exposition for this part, i’m sorry about that, there’s a lot to explain and thus it takes a lot of time to explain it, but this is only the first layer of explanation so aidjfoidsjfio strap in!!

taglist: @faeriewoobin​​ @sugarrimajins​​ @atinyinwonderland​​ @2504-life @lil7bluedragon​ @sparklychangbin​​ @jeong-uwu​​ @jeonartemis​​ @anothershorthuman​​ @xxbluestrifexx​​​ @haotheheckk​​ @noonawriter​​ @lostscenarios​​ @nlost21​​ @mirror-juliet​​ @okokokok123-45​ @purple-aeon​ @theoinkypiglet​ @toothlessshiber​ @atinyarmyx1​ @simpforhyunjin​ @hwangwoosan​ @vampire-jimin​ @softyubi​ @drumboydowoon​ @chatsgotmytongue​ @just-a-starfruit​ @babydolljo​ @scintillating-souls​ @khjssss @felixity​ @rawrrainn​ @hewwo-from-the-other-side​ @hangsxng​

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

[stellarboystyles]

serendipity

ahhhh she’s finally done!! now i can rest my weary soul. thank you to my lover @bfharry​ for putting this lovely event together, and i’m sorry this late, i’m a mess.

7k pining, fluff and smut

friends to lovers college au // trigger warning - mentions of illness, family death and childhood trauma, mentions of alcohol use.

She was reaching as high as she could, desperately trying to get to the book on the shelf that was much too high for her to reach. She turns to Harry, who’s smirking down at her with crossed arms.

“Need a lift, sprout?”

She gives him a look of eloquence. “Please.” 

She giggles as he dips down, wrapping his arms around her legs and lifting her up. Now, she’s happily at eye level with the desired shelf. 

Her fingers skimming over the spines of all the hardbacks sitting comfortably on the wood surface. E...F...G...H...

“Found it!”

Once her eyes lock on the title, she pulls the book out as fast as she could.

“Okay, let me down.” 

“Sure? Don’t like the view from up there? Know you’re not used to it-”

“No, now let me down before I bruise you like the peach that you are.”

“Ouch.” he snickered, setting you back down onto the ground beneath. “S’harsh.”

“Deserved it.” she teased before he sticks out his tongue in a playful response. 

“What d’ya need the book for?”

“It’s for that analysis we have to do for poetry class.”

He blinks at her once, eyes widening slightly. “What analysis?”

She giggles at his expression. “You didn’t read your emails, did you?”

“Fuck!” he exclaims, voice slightly above a whisper, but it was enough to agitate the other students in the library who are trying to either study or get their own work done.

“Shhh!”

“Sorry, sorry.” he apologizes to the people around them before Y/N puts a hand on his bicep and he leans into her to hear her whispering words.

“You just have to pick a poetry book, analyze it, make a conclusion, all that stuff.”

“So it’s like an essay?”

“Kind of.” she follows Harry as he starts to examine the shelves for a book himself. “You know how Greene is, he’s super chill. He wants it to be more of a review, what you think of the book and the author.”

“So, like a review.”

She blinks at him. “That’s what I just said.”

“M’tired, gimme a break.” he sighs. “He never challenges us in that class.”

“I guess not.” she shrugs. “Easy grade, right?”

“Sounds like it.” he gives a casual nod. “When’s it due?”

“Tuesday.”

“Sweet.” he nods, eyes skimmed across the shelves before landing on a cornflower blue hardback. Harry chose books by their cover a lot. Not metaphorically, just literally.

“Ready?”  

He nods again. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Once they’d both gotten their book signed out, they started down the path across the patch of grass, making their way to their next class that they had together. 

“So you really didn’t check your phone all weekend?”

He shakes his head. “No, my phone was off ‘cos Gem was visiting over the weekend, remember?” he taps on the side of her head with one finger. “Helloooo, earth to Y/N, you were there.”

“Quit it!” she scolds, swatting his hand away. “Yeah, I think I remember her. She’s the least annoying Styles’ sibling, right?”

Harry unexpectedly clutches his chest, wincing in pain. “Ouch, ow!”

Panic rushed through her, the first thing popping into her mind was that he was having an asthma attack. “Haz, are you okay?” she drops her bag onto the ground so that she can help him. “You’re scaring me, do you need your inhaler?”

He leans over, eyes squeezed closed. One hand is resting on his knee, the other still grasping at his sternum. 

“My ego...it hurts.”

As soon as the words registered, anger washed over her, jaw rippling before punching him in the bicep.

“You’re such a little shit.” 

“Oi, tha’ hurt!” he laughs, which makes her even more angry, whisking her bag off the ground and walking away from him as quickly as possible. 

He lets out a lighthearted sigh before starting to jog up to her. “C’mon, wait up.”

“Go away.” she grumbles, quickening the pace of her steps towards the building that their next class was in. Her hand was less than a foot away from reaching the door, about to push it open but she was no match for his longer legs as he jogged to catch up with her.

“Hey, hey.” he manages to get her hand in his grasp. She turns around in his grip, eyes fiery with vex. 

“What.”

“C’mon, don’t be like that.” he frowns, moving so that he’s holding both of her hands in his as he stood in front of her. “Please? M’sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, leaning against the brick wall behind her. “Yes you did.”

“Let me make it up to you?” he offers, resting his palm on the rough surface above her head. 

“Whatever you want.”

The pounding heartbeat in her ears is deafening, but the prank that he’d just pulled wasn’t quickly forgotten.

“I’ll let you know when I think of something.” Pushing herself off the wall, she turns and pushes the door open to the classroom, leaving a sad Harry behind. He trudged along behind her, silently moping before sitting next to her. Not even a minute after they sat down, Harry was leaning over to her, trying to get her attention. 

“Y/N, please.” he whines, laying his head on her shoulder. “M’sorry.”

The butterflies in her stomach were crumbling her resolve, and she lays her cheek on top of his curls. “It’s okay.” he can hear the smile in her quiet voice. He peers up at her, an endearing smile beaming back at her.

“Not mad at me anymore?” he clarifies, voice filled with hope.

“How long have we been best friends?” she laughs. “Y’know I can never stay mad at you.”

“We were babies, don’t you remember?” he snickers. “Like, actual babies.”

Neither of them really remember. 

Harry and Y/N’s parents had been neighbors and friends for years before either of them were born, and when Harry was almost two, they’d given birth to a beautiful baby girl.

“Harry, look.” Anne coos to her son as he sits on her lap. “See the baby?”

He stops playing with his teddy, toddling over to the sound of his mummy’s voice and he’s so fascinated, probably because he’s never seen a real baby before. 

“I hold her?”

The new mum says “of course” before she gives her baby to Anne, now holding her in Harry’s lap. 

“I pet?”

He carefully lifts a chubby hand, places it on her tummy and pats gently at the pale lavender onesie. 

“My sweet boy.” Anne kisses the top of his head, smoothing out his blonde bangs.

Harry leans down and pushes a soft kiss onto her cheek, and it’s safe to say both mums melt at the sight. 

“They’ll be best friends for sure.” 

He looks up at the baby’s mum. “She seepin’?”

She nods with a smile. “Yeah, she's sleepin’.”

He gives her another kiss on her cheek before speaking again, this time in a hushed voice. 

“Night Night, baby.” 

“Our mums are never gonna let us forget that day.” he groans, twisting open the cap of the drink in his hands.

“Or that you had a crush on me.” 

He nearly chokes on his juice, making her split into a fit of giggles.

“Maybe I did.” he admits, leaning his elbows onto the desk. “So what?” 

“You definitely did, remember when you kissed me?”

His cheeks heat up at her teasing, arms crossing on top of the desk before laying his head down in embarrassment. He cracks one eye open at her laughing. “y/nnnn.”

When Harry was five and Y/N was four, he asked if he could kiss her, at school.

“You’re the prettiest girl in the whole world.” Harry tells her as his fingers draw in the dirt.

“That’s what my mummy and daddy tells me!” she cheers, and he may only be five years old but he knows that no other girl on the playground would happily sit in the dirt with him like she would. Her cheeks are resting against her hands and Harry thinks that they’re the cutest cheeks he’s ever seen.

“Can we kiss now?” 

She thinks for a moment before speaking.

“You can’t tell your mummy, because she might tell my mummy and we’ll be in trouble.” 

“Won’t tell anyone, not even Niall.”

Her eyes go wide with a gasp. Niall was his best friend, he must really mean business.

“Really?”

“Promise.” he holds out his pinky for her to squeeze.

Unfortunately for them, while Y/N was over next door at Harry’s for a playdate Anne caught them kissing in the back garden and they were both forced into the friend zone. Y/N was super sad, and Harry didn’t like that one bit, so he tried to make her feel better. 

“Don’t cry, someday when we’re grown ups we can kiss and hold hands anytime we want! We can be best friends ‘til then, okay?”

“The start of an epic friendship.” he reminisces, flashing her a wink. 

“Good times and bad.” she nods, and the mood drifts to sad silence.

“We’ve really been there through everything, huh?” he acknowledges, meeting her gaze. 

When Harry was twelve and Y/N was eleven, Harry’s dad left. Left his family with nothing and Harry was devastated.

“How could he? This isn’t fair to any of you.”

Y/N was standing in Anne’s kitchen listening to her painstakingly tell her what had just happened. He’d left while Anne was working and Gemma and Harry were at school, leaving the remainder of the family devastated. 

“I know darling, but we’ll get through this. I’m worried about Harry, he ran off. He was so upset. Do you know where he could be?”

“I’ll find him.”

* 。˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。 * 。 • ˚  ˛ 。* 。• ° 。* 。 • ˚

Her mind and legs worked together to pedal faster than she ever had before through the park behind their street. As soon as she crosses the bridge she sees him. He’s sitting under their favorite oak tree, knees dew up to his chest.

“Harry!”

She throws her bike down and sprints to him, falling next to him.

He looks up, releases the grip on his hair and reaches out, grasping her hands and she quickly pulls him into a hug and she’d never held anyone so tight in her entire life. Her own hot tears started to fall from her face at the sound of his heartbreaking cries and she doesn’t know how long they stayed there like that, slowly moving her fingers through his curls as she held him. He let out a whimper when she forced his face out of her neck, cradling his cheeks in her hands. He looked so defeated and she had to use every ounce of strength in her body not to sit there and cuddle him against this tree all night. His mum and sister needed him, and he needed them. Her fingers brushed across his wet cheeks and he leaned into her touch as she repeated the action. 

“I’m so sorry, Haz.” another sob escapes him at her words. “You don’t have to talk about it. You can cry, scream and yell, whatever you want...but we gotta get home., it’s getting dark.”

“Don’t wanna go back there.” he shakes his head and tightens his hold on your shirt. 

“H, your mum and sister need you, and you need them.”

“I need you.” 

Y/N’s heart flutters and she’s not sure why, but she’s sure Harry can feel it because he’s still fisting her shirt. 

“I’ll stay the night at yours, my mum won’t care.”

“What about your dad?”

“He’ll get over it.”

Understandably, of course her father wasn’t too fond of the idea of his daughter sleeping over at her best friend’s house, because he was a boy. But she reassured her dad countless times that “boys were gross” so he begrudgingly allowed it.

They’d cuddled countless times, that night was no different. She held him, stroking his hair some more as they talked. The mood is lightened after awhile. Even though the healing process hasn’t even really begun yet. Harry was gonna be okay, because he had Y/N. 

“Gemma gets so jealous because she can’t have boys in her room.” he jokes, making her giggle. 

“She’s also fifteen and has a boyfriend.” she reasons. “We’re just best friends.”

“True.” 

Comfortable silence engulfed Harry’s room for a few moments, the vibe was mellow from each other’s presence before Y/N spoke again.

“It’s gonna be okay.” her voice was barely above a whisper, brushing the stray hairs away from his forehead. 

“You don’t know that.” he whispers, peering up at her. The moonlight shining through the window is enough to illuminate their faces while they talk.

“Yeah I do.” she argues softly. “It’s bad right now, but it’ll be okay someday. Promise.”

When Y/N was seventeen, her world came crashing down.

“Harry, can you come down please?”

He quickly put down his phone, shoving it into his pocket when he heard the urgency in his mum’s voice coming from downstairs. Ever since his dad left he’d grown closer to his mum and sister, more protective.

He rushes downstairs, finding her in the kitchen. 

“Mum? What's wrong?”

“I need you to go next door and check on Y/N, alright?”

His face fills with confusion and fear but Anne doesn’t give him any time to respond. 

“I just got off the phone with Rachelle, she and Will had gone out to dinner and he started to have some terrible pain. They’re at the hospital now, they did some tests…they found something and they think it might be cancer.”

Harry’s face falls.

“Oh God, Mum—”

“I know, baby, I know.”

“Does she know? She had to work after school today, does she know?”

“Her mum said she was going to call her once she’d gotten home from work.”

“She gets off at eight thirty,” he pulls out his phone and sees that it’s nine fifteen. “She should be home by now.” He briskly walks over to the window that faces Y/N’s house. 

“Her car’s there.” he reveals. “M’goin’ over there. I’ll be back.”

She agrees and without another word Harry’s at her front door. 

Locked.

“Shit, shit, shit.” he mutters to himself before remembering the spare key under the flower pot by the door. Once it’s retrieved, his trembling hands fumble with the piece of metal before successfully unlocking the door and pushing it open. As soon as he’s inside, he hears muffled crying from upstairs and it’s all he needs to hear before he’s rushing upstairs and down the hall to her bedroom. Normally he would never just walk in her room uninvited, but when he saw the white wooden door decorated with silver stars all over, he wasn’t going to stop until he got to her. As soon as he pushes her bedroom door open, the sight alone is enough to make him cry. He watches her yank her desk chair out, screaming as she throws it as hard as she could across the floor.

“Y/N!” 

He rushes to her, pulling her in the most protective hug he’s ever given. Her arms retreated to frightfully gripping the front of his shirt, knees buckling. They ended up crumpled on the floor, backs against the wall as he held her. Her gut wrenching cries were hushed by Harry’s embrace.

“Hey, hey—shhh. M’here, look at me, okay? Deep breaths, breathe with me, okay?” 

“I can’t, it’s too much. This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening.” her cries made his heart ache, all he wanted to do was make it better, but he just couldn’t.

Needless to say, they’ve been there for each other through everything. Y/N’s dad passed away later that year, leaving everyone devastated. Harry waited a year to go to college to be there for Y/N and her mum.

“Are you excited for NYU?”

She tried to sound happy for him, but her voice was laced with sadness. His back was facing her so she couldn’t see his face as he glanced at the sunset out her window.

“M’not going.” he admits, voice small and her jaw goes slack.

“What? What d’you mean you’re not going?” 

“Can’t leave you two here like this.” he turns around and tears are brimming his waterline. “Already talked it over with mum, and the bakery’s not really willin’ t’let me go yet.” 

“Harry.” she warns.

“Hey,” it’s alright.” he pulls her into a protective hug. “We’ll get everything sorted out, okay? It’ll be nice to take a year off from school anyway.”

His lighthearted tone isn’t enough to soothe her anxiety. “You don’t have to put your life on hold for me.”

“I’m not.” he promises. “We’ve been there for each other through everything, yeah?” he pulls away slightly, giving her a warm smile. “That doesn’t just stop because we aren’t kids anymore.”

“We make a good team.”

Her words warm his heart and he turns to her, nodding with a sweet smile.

“Yeah, we do, don’t we?”

* 。˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。 * 。 • ˚  ˛ 。* 。• ° 。* 。 • ˚

Her.

Admire her.

Tell her how the crinkles in her eyes are like crescent moons, glowing when she smiles. 

Watch how she giggles at your jokes that aren’t funny, and how coy she gets when you’re sweet with her. 

She couldn’t help but get lost in books like this. Somehow they managed to capture everything she’s ever been through, and everything she’s struggling with now. It was torture, really, being in love with her best friend, seeing him everyday, hiding her feelings from him in fear of their friendship being ruined forever. She couldn’t even fathom if that horror were to become her reality, she surely wouldn’t survive the heartbreak.

Touch her. 

Tell her that the stretch marks that paint her skin are magnificent, and that her body is just one dazzling part of who she is.

Snuggle her with tender touches and soft fingertips, love on every curve of her body.

She found herself daydreaming at times like this—the midday sun beaming down on her through the window of the library as she sat in one of the lounge chairs, reading one of her favorite poetry books. She would think about how Harry would touch her if she were his. How he would caress her skin, what his lips could do, where his hands would go.

Adore her.

Cherish her. 

Her reading was quickly interrupted, her vision obstructed by a pair of hands covering her eyes followed by a familiar voice.

“Guess who.”

“Uh...Bigfoot?”

“Heeeey.” he protests, moving to sit in the lounge chair next to hers. “S’mean.”

She giggles at his pouting, squeezing one of his cheeks. “Poor baby.”

“Ouch.” he brought his hand up to his face to rub the sore skin. “Like beatin’ up on me, do yeh?”

“Just a little.” she winks. 

“Yeah, yeah.” he playfully rolls his eyes before turning his attention to the book in his best friend’s hands. “Whatcha readin’?”

Her heartbeat quickened as she realised that she had been caught, swiftly shutting the book and tucking it into her bag. “Nothing.”

“Nooo, lemme see!”

He didn’t give her another chance to respond, knowing her all too well. She shied away from his words, cheeks splashing with pink.

“C’mon, pleeease?” he frowns, nudging her arm with his elbow. He notices her apprehension, not wanting to push her.

“S’just me.” 

His voice is softer, giving her a fluttering feeling as he leans in closer. “Y’trust me, right?”

The close proximity made her heart thump in her chest. She gives him a slight nod before quietly replying. “Yeah.”

He gently bites down on his lower lip, his eyes flickering from her eyes, down to her lips.

Were they going to kiss?

“Why won’t you tell me what you were readin’?” he quirks with a small smile, tilting his head slightly. You can see the wheels turning. “S’it naughty?”

“No!” she gives him a look, as if to say stooooop, Haz.

He chuckles at her nervousness, patiently waiting as she keeps fumbling over her words, avoiding his captivating eyes. “No...no, no, it’s a...it’s just a book.”

“Obviously.” he blinks. “What kind of book.”

“Just poetry.” she mumbles, hoping he would drop the subject quickly.

“S’it for your poetry analysis thing? What kind of—”

“Harryyyyy.” she whines, hiding her face in her hands. 

“M’not doin’ anything! Can’t I be interested in what you’re readin’?” he defends, resting his cheek in his hand, elbow leaning on the arm of the chair. 

“M’only teasing.” he swipes his fingers across her heated cheeks as he speaks softly to her. “You’re bein’ so shy.”

It’s so adorable, he thinks to himself. 

“You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to.” he reassures. “M’starving. Did you still wanna go to lunch?”

She perked up at his question, the book in her bag eventually forgotten, just as she wished. “Please, I’m so hungry.”

“Can we get—”

“Chinese?” his face lights up. “Please please please?”

“We had that last weekend.” 

“So? S’the best food ever, and since when do you turn down chinese food?” he rests his head on the table. “I’ll help you with French Lit.”

“Compelling argument, I didn’t know you were taking a debate class.”

“So funny.” he rolls his eyes. “C’mon, please?”

* 。˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。 * 。 • ˚  ˛ 。* 。• ° 。* 。 • ˚

“I love chow mein so much.” 

Y/N’s words barely register in his ears, let alone his brain as he admired the sight of her, eyes closed in bliss as she slurps another noodle.

She’s just so fucking cute.

“I love you so much.”

“What?”

He’s sure his heart had just dropped into his stomach and his eyes were going to pop out of his head. He hadn’t even realised he’d said it out loud! 

“Didn’t say anything.” he mumbles, mentally cursing himself after feeling the heat radiating off his cheeks. He avoids her gaze as he shoves another spoonful of hot and sour soup into his mouth.

“So how’s your story for creative writing going?” she wonders, twirling some noodles with her fork, because no, she didn’t know how to use chopsticks, and yes, Harry never missed an opportunity to tease her about it.

“Awful.” he pouts, to which she mirrors his expression. 

“You stuck?”

“Very.” he groans. “Just can’t seem to get the words out, y’know?”

“I’ve been there.” she nods. “Do you want some help?”

“Please.” he begged, giving her puppy eyes. “S’due next friday, been workin’ on it every night and still can’t get a single word out.”

“I think you just need to take a break, babes.” she offers. “Let’s have a sleepover this weekend and I’ll help you.”

He gives a sigh of relief, making her laugh. “You’re a gem. What would I do without you?” 

“Your life would definitely be less exciting.” she notes, taking another bite.

He was silent for a moment, probably thinking of a comeba—

“At least I know how to use chopsticks.” 

“You won’t teach me!” she pouts at his teasing. “Quit being mean.”

“Want me to teach you?” he perks, peering up at her.

“Yes.” she lets out a breathless giggle while nodding. 

He playfully huffs, slightly rolling his eyes as he moves to sit behind her on her bed. 

“Okay, so you hold them like this…”

* 。˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。 * 。 • ˚  ˛ 。* 。• ° 。* 。 • ˚

Friday, October 12

Dear Diary, 

I feel like I’m going crazy. I keep trying to finish this story for my creative writing class but I keep getting distracted...all I can think about is him. I can’t help it, he’s all I ever think about. How am I supposed to write a romance fiction piece when all I can think about is how I’m in love with my best friend? Harry is charming and sweet and funny and genuine, any girl would be lucky to be his. How did I get myself into this mess? Harry would never like me like that, ever. My heart hurts if I think about it too much. Sometimes I feel like I should just tell him, bite the bullet, rip off the band aid and hope to God that our friendship isn’t ruined forever. In a perfect world,

Y/N drops her pen at the vibration of her phone.

Harry is calling…

“Hello?”

“We’ve known each other for how long and you still answer with hello?”

She lets out a breathless laugh. “Are you having a bad day or are you just making fun of me for shits and giggles?”

“Lil bit of both, yeah?” she can hear the cheekiness in his voice. “We still havin’ a sleepover this weekend? Might have to do it at yours, Niall’s havin’ a party and I doubt we’ll get anything done.”

She could hear the sheepish tone in his voice. “Oh no, if you wanna be at the party we can totally reschedule.” she offers.

Harry scrunches up his nose. “Need to get this paper done, m’never gonna finish it with all the noise.” he’s lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Besides, I’d rather spend the weekend with you.”

She feels her heart flutter at his admission, cheeks tingling with heat.

“ Okay...can you bring some snacks?”

There were no two humans on earth that loved fruit more than Harry and Y/N. so around fifteen minutes later, when Harry showed up to Y/N’s door with two smoothies, she melted like sugar. 

“Berry for you.” he hands you the icy purple smoothie in his left hand. “Strawberry banana for me.”

“Awh, thank you!” she gently pinches one of his cheeks. “You’re so sweet.”

“Oi, worse than my mum, aren’t you?” he rubs at the newly pink cheek. 

“No.” she defends. “C’mon, I’ll help you with your story so you don’t drag it out all weekend.”

“I resent that.” he mutters, sitting beside her on her bed as he flips open his laptop. 

“Do you have an idea of what you wanna write?”

“I have a little bit finished, now, about five thousand words. Wanna have a look?”

Y/N reads it over and it’s nothing short of a masterpiece so far. How can he be so pretty and talented at the same time?

“This is beautiful,” she gapes, turning to look up at him. “This is so good, H.”

“Oh, stop.” He sheepishly brushes off her praise. “Don’t think it’s bad so far, just need to come up with a conflict.”

“Just figure out what breaks your characters, what makes them the most vulnerable, what would completely crush them?”

“Losing each other.”

“More specific?” she tries, staring at the screen in front of her. “It’ll help with the details.”

“Rory’s afraid to tell Daisy that he’s in love with her.” he says. “He’s afraid that, if she finds out, it’ll ruin their friendship.”

Y/N’s lungs felt empty, like all the air had been sucked out by Harry’s words.

“Okay, um,” she gulps, trying to collect her thoughts. “So...write about that, and see where the story takes you.”

Three hours later

“Can we take a break?” he groans, laying back on the pillows of her bed. “M’starving.”

“Me too.” she pouts, fiddling with her hands. “Whatcha hungry for?”

“Mmm,” Harry thinks for a few moments before speaking up. “A veggie grill just opened up downtown, we should go there!”

“You’re making me crave nachos.” 

“You always crave nachos.”

“Why do you always have to call me out?” she whines, giving him a bashful glance.

“S’fun, innit?” he smirks, nudging her shoulder with his bicep.

“No.” she giggles, lying down next to him. “I’m gonna go get a shower then we can go.”

“Okay.”

An endearing smile adorned his face as she snuggled slightly into the soft pillows. Her eyes leisurely blink at him, falling closed after a few seconds.

“Sleepy?”

“Mhm.” 

“Thought you wanted a shower?” he hummed. Although, he wouldn’t mind staying here all night. “You can stay here, I’ll go pick up some food.”

“No, it’s okay.” she yawns, pushing herself up off the bed. “I’ll be quick.”

* 。˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。 * 。 • ˚  ˛ 。* 。• ° 。* 。 • ˚

Harry gets bored easily, although his best friends room was much more lovely than his. He thinks his room is pretty basic; but Y/N’s room was much more charming. The walls were painted a pale ivory, decorated with fairy lights above her bed, which was dressed with a crisp white comforter and matching pillows. The knitted plum blanket that Harry had gotten her ages ago for Christmas was at the end of her bed. He vividly remembers when he had given it to her.

Her eyes were sparkling with joy as she pulled the blanket out of the box.

“Your mum helped me make it.” he mentions with a sheepish smile. “She was so patient, even though I had no idea what I was doing.”

“It’s beautiful.” she beams, pulling it close to her heart before looking up at him as they sat on the floor of Harry’s living room. “I love it.”

He gives her a soft smile, but he feels melancholic energy surrounding him. He keeps telling himself that he didn’t have a reason to be sad, because they weren’t together...but all he wanted was for her to be his. She was so cute, beanie snug on her head under the glow of the Christmas tree.

“Can I ask you somethin’?” 

To which she nods. “Of course.”

“Do you think,” his lips are pressed together in thought for a moment. “Do you think that fate is real?”

“Like kismet?” she cocks her head with a smile and he nods, breaking into a laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, like kismet.”

“I think,” she takes a moment, fumbling with her hands before looking up at him. “Yeah, I think it’s real.”

Ten thousand words. Harry has to write ten thousand words by next Friday and he doesn’t have a single word typed out. Creative writing was supposed to be fun, and he had to write a romance fiction piece? Harry didn’t exactly thrive when it came to love. In fact, his love life was bone dry, to put it lightly. Other girls were...boring, compared to Y/N. Harry was charming and romantic and sweet and loving—but he didn’t want some random girl, he wanted Y/N to be his girl. Pining over her was his full time job, always has been.

He walks over to her desk, admiring the pictures that graced the wall just above. One of the photos that catches his eye is Y/N, probably about three or four, and her dad is reading her a bedtime story, her mum most likely being the one taking the photo. Sorrow washes over him, because it never gets easier, does it?

His eyes float to a few photos of Harry and Y/N laying  next to each other on their friend Jess’s parents house on the terrace. It was the first time they’d ever gotten drunk and they were trashed. The first photo is them attempting to sit up for a picture.

“You guys are so drunk.”

“M’not drunk.” Harry glances at Millie and Jess, who were behind the camera. “M’Harry! Who’s drunk?”

Harry’s rebuttal left both of them bursting into a fit of giggles.

“Haz, Jess wants a picture of us, pleeeeaaaase?”

Harry holds himself up by leaning back with one hand on the ground, the other arm slung around Y/N’s shoulder. He then turns to nuzzle his nose into her hair.

“Y’so pretty.” he murmurs drunkenly into her ear.

“Shut up, you’re drunk.”

“M’not, m’serious.”

 The last one from that night was them cuddling on the sofa at the end of their night, Harry’s face nuzzled into her shoulder as they slept soundly well into the afternoon.

His fingertips brushed across his favorite photo of them. They were working together at the bakery, and Harry had just traced his flour dipped fingertips in a line across Y/N’s cheek before she retaliated by sweeping some icing across the bridge of his nose. He grins from ear to ear at the memory.

“Hey Y/N, guess what?”

She turned around to face him when he abruptly drew a line with his flour dipped fingertips across her cheek.

Her jaw went slack at his bold action before icing was swiped across the bridge of his nose.

“Now we’re even.” that is, until she flicks some of the remaining blue icing from her fingers onto his face. 

“Aw, c’mon!” he wipes his face with his apron before narrowing his eyes. “Really?”

“You started it.” she pointed out and Harry gave her a shrug.

“I am so gonna get you back the next time we bake at my house.”

His eyes fall down to her desk, and he promises he didn’t mean to see it. It was his name, in her handwriting, written in purple gel pen inside an open book. Was it a journal?

Friday, October 12

Dear Diary, 

Shit.

He looked away for a moment, lip caught between his teeth. Should he read it? No, but he couldn’t help himself. 

I feel like I’m going crazy. I keep trying to finish this story for my creative writing class but I keep getting distracted...all I can think about is him. 

Him? Who’s she talking about? Does she like someone? The empty feeling in his chest isn’t a good feeling by any means. 

I can’t help it, he’s all I ever think about. How am I supposed to write a romance fiction piece when all I can think about is how I’m in love with my best friend?

All the color drains from Harry’s face. 

“Is she talking about me?” he murmurs.

Harry is charming and sweet and funny and genuine, any girl would be lucky to be his. 

His heart flutters at the mention of his name, aching at the next line. 

How did I get myself into this mess? Harry would never like me like that, ever. My heart hurts if I think about it too much. 

He felt like he was going to cry. How could this girl not know how much of a sucker he is for her? His heart thumped inside his chest and he could feel the heat radiating off his flushed cheeks.

Okay, don’t panic. Just calm down, don’t freak out.

He ran a hand through his hair, trying to process what he had just read whilst trying to decide what to do. Does he just tell her? Show her the page? No, she’ll be so angry that he read her diary, who does that? 

In that moment, he chooses to do the only thing that makes sense.

He listens to his heart.

* 。˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。 * 。 • ˚  ˛ 。* 。• ° 。* 。 • ˚

She’d just hopped out of the shower when she heard a knock on her bathroom door.

“Hey, s’just me.” Harry’s voice clarifies through the wood. “Already ordered some food, m’gonna go and pick it up, I’ll be back.”

“I can go with you if you want-”

“No, s’okay! Be back in fifteen.”

And he’s gone.

After exiting her bathroom, she changes into some comfy clothes before deciding to read something from her book collection until Harry gets back. WHen she turns to go over to her bookshelves, she sees it.

A familiar lavender book, her diary, was lying open on her desk, and her heart sinks. Had he read what she’d written earlier? That must be why he was in such a hurry to leave! She probably scared him off. Y/N’s heart was racing as she stepped closer and realised that the page the diary was open to wasn’t written in her handwriting.

It was Harry’s handwriting.

Hi lovie, it’s Harry. 

I was too nervous to tell you this to your face, so I’m gonna write out my feelings. 

You’re my best friend in the whole world, and I absolutely adore everything about you. 

I love how you talk in your sleep, and yes, you do talk in your sleep. I know how much you love to snuggle when you’re sleepy or sad or you just want a cuddle...and how you still sleep with a night light on like when we were small. You always tell me it’s so you can see in case you need to get up and have a wee in the middle of the night, but I know it’s because you’re still scared of the dark.

She couldn’t believe her eyes. Was she dreaming?

I love how you crinkle your nose when you laugh, and how your smile glows like moonlight and how you play with your hands when you don’t know what to say. I love your love for books, and how much better your taste in music is than me. I love how you love to snuggle, especially when you’re...inebriated.

She giggles silently to herself, because he was so right. Not that he was any better.

I could go on forever, but I don’t wanna get caught writing this.

I am so in love with you, Y/N.

Love, H. x 

Y/N didn’t know how to feel. Her heart was warm, but she was so nervous. What does this mean for them? How will this affect their friendship? Hundreds of questions run through her brain until she hears a knock on the door.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” she whispers. “Okay, just... be chill, please be chill.”

Trying to calm herself down in a matter of seconds was pointless. Walking over to the door, she took a deep breath in before opening the door.

“Hi.” he blinks at her, letting out a light laugh before setting down the two paper bags in his hands. “M’back. They didn’t have the-”

“I read it.”

He avoids her gaze and he feels frozen by her words, digging his vans into the carpet.

“Harry.” she breathes. “Say something.”

His eyes flicker to meet hers, taking a step forward.

“I...I love you.”

Y/N feels like a weight has been lifted off her chest, like she just came for air after being kept under water for too long. 

“If this makes things weird, I’m sorry. I’m so fuckin’ sorry, but I love you to pieces and I-”

“I love you too.” 

His smile is pure joy before he takes her hand in his, pulling her closer to him.

“Can I kiss you?” he begs, almost breathless. “Please.”

She nods, and he cradles her cheeks in his hands, pressing a sweet kiss to her lips.  

His lips were so soft, moving with hers like they were made for each other.

Harry was sitting on the edge of her bed, her thighs straddling his hips and she sat across his lap. Her hands were in his hair, the fluttery tendrils twirled around her fingers. His hands are settled on her waist, slowly moving to her thighs.

“Is this okay?” he murmurs the serious question against her lips and she nods quickly. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” he breathes. “M’just checkin’.” 

“It’s okay.” she laughs breathlessly against his lips. “Everything's okay.”

Reluctantly, he pulls back slightly to look at her, searching for any sort of doubt, but there was none.

“Don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, okay?”

His voice is cautious. “M’not goin’ anywhere, ever. Don’t have to rush anything.”

“Just go with the flow, H.” she murmurs, sliding her hands up his clothed biceps.

“Sorry, who are you?” he raises his eyebrows, a baffled expression on his face. “Since when do you ever go with the flow?”

“A lot of things have changed today.” she confesses, hands resting on his shoulders. “Why not?”

They’d always felt so safe with each other, so now was no different. 

They both dived back into the kiss. Harry’s tongue swiped across her bottom lip, testing the waters before lips and tongue worked together to deepen the kiss.

“Wanna ride my thigh?” he wonders, mumbling against her lips. “Don’t have to if-”

“Yeah. yes.” she gulps, moving to slide her shorts down while he shuffles out of his jeans. Once they were both without pants, they didn’t waste anymore time.

“C’mere, darlin’.” he flicked his fingers, encouraging her back onto his lap.

“Just feel my touch.”

The tone of his voice was unbelievably hot, raspy and low as their lips continuously brushed. His hands grip her hips, guiding her movements.

“Feel good?” he suckles on her bottom lip, drawing a whimper past her lips. She’s rocking against his bare thigh, coarse hair stimulating her even closer to the edge.

“Feels so good, Harry.” 

Her moans are nothing short of melodic, chasing her orgasm through the lace. He pushes her t-shirt up, kisses are decorated down her neck until his mouth is on one of her breasts. She tilts her head back at the suckling sensation with another moan, and it’s so fucking intoxicating to Harry. His tongue flicks her nipple a few more times before lifting his head.

“Like that?” he hums, moving to cup her breasts. She nods and his thumbs start to tweak her nipples and she arches her back at the feeling.

“Harry.” she whimpers, gripping the material of his shirt in her fists. “Please.”

“Whatcha need, tell me darlin’.”

“M’gonna come, m’gonna come.”

He gives a thick moan, hands moving to hold her backside. “Know you are. C’mon angel, you can let go.”

His sweet words coax her through her orgasm as she’s coming down, and she feels like she’s floating.

“Did you like that?”

“Mhm.” she nods, her eyes fluttering closed as Harry’s hand brushes some baby hairs off her forehead. “Wanna keep going.”

“Jeez, at least let me take you out to dinner first.”

[distinctlywhumpthing]

Together 8: Her after.

Previous — Masterlist — Next

CW: explicit language and content, multiple whumpees, torture, captivity, beating, welts, conditioning, dehumanization, noncon touching (non-sexual), manipulation, creepy whumper, intimate whumper, letmeknowifimissedany

They strip me down to my usual clothes, take the collar off, and hand me the soap before locking me in. I drop the bar and stand under the shower fully dressed. I can’t unsee August’s terrified face or stop hearing his desperate pleading.

I don’t realize the water has been off for a while until Carlos starts screaming at me. Somewhere among all of the curses and threats, I catch, “You’ve got somewhere to be, Princess!”

I shuck off my wet clothes. Replace them with dry ones. I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of hell Wyatt has lined up for me next. If there’s any fairness in the world, August will get to have a go at me and he’s strong enough that maybe I won’t survive. That’ll be the day.

They do take me to him but in reality, he’s lying facedown on the floor in our room. They couldn’t be bothered to put him on the bed. I already know I won’t be able to lift him on my own, he’s so much taller than me. The fact that he’s here, still bleeding, can only mean one thing.

My fingers ache when I straighten them since I’ve kept them balled into fists for so long. I refuse to glance at the camera as I dare to reach out to brush the hair off of his face. No shock.

Fuck me, this is part of it.

August is out cold, which I suppose is a blessing. It doesn’t take me very long to clean the lashes on his legs and feet and get them bandaged. I can’t believe the pharmacy of products stocked in the cabinet. The times he’d hurt me, Wyatt did the first aid himself, to make sure that he wouldn’t leave a scar. I don’t think August will be so lucky. It’s already a bad sign for both of us that he’s getting treated at all because it means Wyatt wants to keep him around.

—

Later, Wyatt comes downstairs himself. He doesn’t even glance at August, asleep, finally up on the bed. He just steps back from the door so I can follow him into the hallway. I can’t defy Wyatt near August, so I step out with my head down. He reaches behind me to close the door.

I keep staring at his knees, hiding my face from him.

“Emma,” he warns.

My hands are shaking. I clench them into fists. Fuck you.

One warning is already generous for Wyatt. He takes my chin in his fingers, forces my face up.

I keep my eyes on his knees until I can’t and then close them. I haven’t done anything like this in years. My legs feel numb, his hand now defining my standing. Withholding is one of the worst things I can do. He’ll still be calm and calculated as I attempt to reverse our roles and punish him, gain any power. My defiance is like making the bed in this burning house—more like pouring gasoline on it—but I don’t care.

Wyatt switches hands on my chin, holding me so firmly my head doesn’t move at all when he slaps me across the face.

He holds me up when my body wants to go down. My ear rings and my head feels like it will explode. He would have already known I’d choose now to try to rebel from perfect obedience. Everything I do only proves and substantiates his claim over all of me, even my reactions.

I open my eyes. I can’t see him through the tears anyway. I hate you.

He doesn’t have to say that there is no need to make things harder for myself. ‘The only thing that will change is your level of pain,’ he used to say.

“You’re allowed to be angry,” he tells me. Because I can feel whatever I want as long as I don’t hide it from him.

A sob racks my body. Why are you doing this to me?

My vision clears enough to see that Wyatt is looking at me stoically. “Your efforts won’t be in vain,” he says, validating his plan so far.

I think of August’s sweet smile, even after all that pain. Why him? What did he do to deserve this?

I don’t realize that breath by breath I’ve been backing into the door until I’m flattened against it. Wyatt still grips my chin and has been keeping my face angled toward his gaze as he follows. He moves even closer, pressing our bodies flush together. My legs don’t hold me anymore, he does, as he pins me there, crushed against him.

Every inhale of his forces the breath from my chest. I can only fill my lungs when allowed by his exhale. He keeps it slow and steady, patient and methodical. I stare back into his eyes, nowhere else to go while he waits.

I know he’s capable of wholly and irreversibly breaking a person but would never settle for something that only proves him just as empty. It’s much more impressive to do it through me. I’m an extension of him, a reflection of his prowess. His twisted mind is what warped me into nothing more than what he made me, incapable of divergence.

I can’t be the reason August suffers more than he has to. I won’t let you hurt him.

Wyatt reads the surrender on my face. It would be less defeating if he looked smug but he doesn’t have to. There was only ever one direction for the dominos to fall.

He slowly drags his thumb, with the rest of his hand trailing along, from my chin, down my throat, and over the collar, peeling our bodies apart slowly in advance. He traces down my sternum, to my waist so that he can hold me when he pulls his hips and legs away from mine, knowing otherwise I’d fall.

My legs and feet still feel disconnected from my body.

“Good night, Emma,” he says softly, holding my gaze for another breath before he drops my waist and turns away, leaving me alone in the hallway to listen to his footsteps fade.

He’s done this before. I’ve wondered why he even bothers locking me up. It’s not like I could exist anywhere but here, with him. I know that. There’s no place for me to go except slinking back into the room. Especially now that August is in there, needing me, and deserving so much more than I can give. All I have is playing my part, as much as it will slowly break both of us. I wonder who will be first.

Previous — Masterlist — Next

Taglist: @deluxewhump

[piningfor-pinestwins]

Natural Attraction - Bruised Egos (Stan X Reader Slow Burn; Eventual Not SFW)

Your group makes it partway through the dense forest before you lose daylight, grateful for the four flashlights that Fiddleford had stowed away for this. You’re stepping unsteadily in the midst of thorny brushes and thick vines, grateful for your sturdy boots as you step on less-than-solid ground and sink into some mud. Grunting with effort as you make your way up the slippery hill, you hear Ford swear from behind you as he does the same.

“Where do you think the thing would even be at night? What kinda birds are active in the dark?” Stan’s voice comes from behind you a little loudly, leaning heavily on a stick he’d found somewhere during the trek, using it to support his weight as he goes. Ford’s head whips around to find his brother’s form in the dark, giving a harsh “Shh!” as he continues onward. Stan murmurs a quick, “Sheesh, just askin’,” as he continues onward. You follow Fiddleford’s steady light from ahead of you, trusting the man as he continues his walk, and turn to quietly answer the man anyway.

Owls, mostly. I think you have nighthawks in this part of the country, too, You inform him, shivering. You nearly run your nose into Fidd’s back, finding the lanky man had come to a stop ahead of you to hold up a branch for you, after apparently being hit in the face with it. Taking it in hand, you murmur a thank you, pointing your flashlight to the ground for the twins behind you to duck under the thing when they get closer.

Ford ducks easily beneath the thing, murmuring a thanks to you as he does. Stan isn’t far behind, though the man nearly stabs into your foot with his makeshift walking stick. “Sorry, hon,” he quickly apologizes, lifting the thing out of the soft dirt by the toe of your boot. You smile fondly despite yourself, motioning him ahead with the beam coming from your flashlight.

Get moving, slowpoke. I don’t want you to get lost behind the pack, you tease in a whisper. He catches your smile despite the dim light of the moon and chuckles himself, shifting his walking stick beneath his arm, and flashlight into the other hand. His fingers land at your elbow as he tugs you along, the warmth of the digits seeping through the teeny-tiny holes of your sweater.

“Yeah, you neither. With your luck, our superbird’ll think you’re some sorta prey.” Stan’s voice is playful, and this close you’re able to make out the features of his smile despite the darkness surrounding you. You chuckle, walking beside him with your twin flashlights and his hold leading the way. Me? What about you? You argue back, You’re the one with more meat on your bones.

He snorts at that (only to be shushed by his brother once more), careful to watch his step and not be too loud again as he moves alongside you. “What, me? Honey, I’m all muscle--the thing wouldn’t want something as chewy as me.” You laugh louder then, shaking your head, only to have the light of Ford’s flashlight pointed at you. You can make out his frown and--jeez, what is he, your older brother? Sheepishly, you give him a little wave, biting into your bottom lip.

When his light goes away from your face, Stan snickers, having found getting you in trouble amusing. You move to elbow him despite his hold on your arm, and he chuckles as he jostles you in response.

Still giggling, you take one step in the wrong direction, yelling out in fear as your heel slides the wrong way against the soft ground. The joint twists as your weight starts to fall backward, and you drop your flashlight, the sharp pain in your ankle now an afterthought to the fear of a fall down to an unseen point below.

Ford and Fiddleford turn at your cry, but Stan’s already there, the hand at your elbow quickly landing at your forearm instead. In one swift movement, he tugs you to his chest, grunting quietly at the impact of your face against his sternum, budging half a step backward with his own force.

“Fuck--are you alright?!” Stan asks breathlessly, looking down at you with worry as he pushes hair from your face. You pant as you wince, your weight coming back to your twisted ankle. Heart beating in your ears, you don’t hear him very well. Looking up at him wide-eyed, his worry only deepens. “Hon, you okay?” He repeats, and enough of your brain is back to you that you’re able to nod in response, shifting your weight against him to ease off your hurt ankle.

Stan says something to the duo coming closer, but you miss the bulk of it as you try to slow your breathing, glancing back to where you would have landed--and, as it turns out, where your flashlight has landed. The plastic thing lies muddied and flickering, left useless on some rocks nearly ten feet below. Shivering from the cool wind that blows through, and from the realization of just how lucky you’d been with Stan’s touch, you clutch a little tighter to the leather arm of the man’s jacket.

“Alright, that’s it. With me gettin’ my face smacked with a branch, and her nearly dyin’, we’re wrappin’ this walk up for the night. Soon as we get past this line o’trees, we’re hunkering down for the night.” Fiddleford insists, looking to you apologetically. “I’m sorry, I should’a said something about the drop. I saw it, but only just ‘cause my light was pointed just right.”

I-It’s fine, you stammer, ignoring your white-knuckle hold to Stan’s sleeve and shaky knees. Ford huffs a sigh, scrubbing lightly at his face, “I’m glad you’re okay. We’ll...need to make up the majority of our movement during the day, then. It’s safer that way, anyway. God forbid one of us had found that fall while chasing our creature.” Your colleague turns, murmuring something to Fidds as he points toward a clearing past the trees, the both of them pointing their flashlights to make their way.

Stan’s hand lands carefully at your lower back, guiding you as he points his flashlight to the ground. “C’mon, I’ve got you. Take a deep breath, okay?” He murmurs the words quietly, and you feel the warmth of his hand sliding up and down the fabric of your sweater. You do as he says, exhaling a shaky breath. S-Sorry, about all of this, you whisper, taking another breath as you carefully step away from him, wincing at the feeling in your twisted ankle.

To your surprise, however, the hand on your back slides down your arm, catching your wrist with a light, but firm touch. Stanley looks at you uncertainly, and your slowing heart rate decides to uptick once more at the way his cheeks darken in the moonlight. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like...W-Well, I wouldn’t mind holding onto you until we’re out of these trees. If something happens again, I can...be here. Plus, y-you’re hurt. Can’t risk a fall on a bum ankle.”

You chew into your bottom lip, grateful for the warmth of his hand enveloping your own cold digits. He’s looking to you as if asking permission, a softness in his gaze that you’ve now seen multiple times from the stubborn man, yet you can never quite get enough of. Nodding, you give him what you think he’d been waiting for, and he shifts your hand in his, his thumb and forefinger becoming snug bookends to the knuckles on your own hand.

Clearing his throat, Stan glances over his shoulder to spot the steadily moving lights of his brother and F. Shifting his weight to move toward them, he squeezes your hand to get your attention too (as though your attention wasn’t already on your joined hands).

“C’mon, we shouldn’t get too far from those two. Is your foot good enough to walk on?” Stan’s gaze searches your face for pain, the beam of his flashlight pointed to your boots before you wave his concern away with your free hand. I can walk, just...maybe a little slower than I was, you look at him apologetically and he nods, moving to reflect the change.

Now on your hurt side, Stan switches the flashlight into his other hand, quickly wiping his palm against the thigh of his jeans before he takes your hand once more. He sticks his elbow out just slightly, allowing a makeshift armrest for your forearm as he leads you to take one step, then another.

Being sure to point his flashlight to the ground, he avoids your eye, casting you a quick glance as he pulls you alongside him. You follow along easily, still trying to catch your breath from the excitement of the near-miss and the...current connection. You almost want to thank him, but from the way his eyes stay turned down from yours, he’s definitely both focusing on the ground and not looking at you.

“Easy here, honey. Lean on me while we step over this root,” Stan murmurs, and when you do as you’re told, he easily takes on your weight as you both continue walking. Legs still shaky from adrenaline, you limp at his side as he guides you toward your research partners, further into the trees.

As you step over a log, leaning into his broad shoulders to do so, you take an extra moment to adjust your hand in his by entwining your fingers. He stills the moment you do it, looking at you with an unreadable tint in his moonlit gaze, but he says nothing as you continue walking. Nerves flutter in your belly, wondering if you’ve pushed this too far--maybe this handholding really was only supposed to be out of convenience, or to make sure you aren’t any more of a klutzy nuisance during this trip…

You’re certain that you imagine it when his thumb brushes against the back of your hand. You flush when you feel him do it a second time, more pronounced than the first.

When you look at him from the corner of your eye, his profile is illuminated by the moon. His jaw is set tight, and you can make out the dark flush of his cheeks as he pulls you close once more. He notices you’re distracted, the smallest lift of a smile at the corner of his mouth, but Stan clears his throat to will it away as he murmurs something about watching your step. You hobble your way over another pair of tangled-up roots before you find yourself stepping out from the dense woods, finally finding the small clearing that Fiddleford and Ford are already preparing.

Fidds is working on a makeshift ‘campfire’ for light (made of one of the flashlights pointed at one of the large jugs of water), making the light shift like the bottom of a pool on a sunny summer day. Ford is sitting on his knees, grumbling in frustration as he wrestles with the plastic rods of the portable tent.

Despite the light (which you’re grateful for, don’t get you wrong), you wish it was closer to a real campfire. You’re cold, and the dew on the long grass around your ankles is soaking into your skin, making the chilled breezes even cooler.

“Gimme your tent and I’ll get’cha set up.” Stan mumbles, releasing your hand from his and holding it out to you expectantly. You aren’t focused on his words, looking down at his hand, meeting his eye, and then coming to the realization with a quick, Oh! as you reach to unclip the tent bag from the duffel bag on your shoulder.

He smiles a little as he takes it from you, looking at you with something like amusement in his gaze as he looms over you, just a little. “Are you going to hold up alright while I do this, honey?”

You aren’t sure if it’s the tone of his voice, or his close proximity, or the way his brow quirks as he smiles at you, but heat floods your cheeks as you nod, trying to keep your cool despite your fluster. I-I’ll be just fine, thank you.

The brunet wiggles his brows at you as he turns away, stomping down some taller grass in order to flatten the area he’s planning to prep your tent. You push your hair behind your ear, shaking your head as he drops to his knees to unzip the bag holding the tent.

Damn him. Sincerely, honestly, damn him. You’d come here to work, to focus on the astounding artifacts and creatures waiting for you in Gravity Falls. But no, instead you’re enamored by him. You rub at your face, feeling the way your mouth screws up as you try not to think too hard about it...especially when the target of your misplaced focus is just feet away, effortlessly putting together your tent for the night.

You fidget with your hands as you watch him for a moment, one thumb brushing over the palm. If you concentrate hard enough, you think as you look down at your hand, you can forget the lingering warmth of his palm against yours, or the way your fingers entwined into his, or how you’d imagine his touch would feel somewhere other than your hand...

“How’s your foot?” Ford’s voice startles you from where you’d stared off at your palm, and you nearly jolt from the tree you’d been leaning back against. A pair of polydactyl hands catch your elbows before you can lose your balance too much more, pulling you gently to rest more soundly against the bark at your back. The brunet ahead of you quirks a brow with a short chuckle, “Now, was that because of your foot, or because I scared you?

You can’t just sneak up on me! You half-laugh in response, feeling heat in your face. You hadn’t meant to be so distracted, really. Ford smiles a little wider at your words, and you can see that all-too-quiet analyzing gaze pointed your way. Despite the low light, you think he can see your flushed cheeks, and you bring your hands up to cover the warm patches on your face. He nods as if confirming something, cheeky grin only widening, “What has you so distracted, hm?” Ford asks, and you suspect he’s teasing you. The ass.

L-Looking for our mystery monster, obviously. Since the rest of you are so busy, I thought I’d keep lookout, you give one solid nod, feeling the heat only spread beneath your fingers as you lie. Nothing to report yet.

“Well, glad someone worries,” Fiddleford’s voice comes from the direction of where Ford had been not long ago, and you look over the brunet’s shoulder to see the lanky man and Stanley both hard at work to put together the unfinished tent Ford had left in poor shape.

Your tent, however, is perfectly set up and ready for what additions you have to bring into it. Ford sees the two working and gives you a secret sort of smile, offering you an arm to help you toward your shelter. “I do worry,” He argues back, careful to support your weight as you lean against your friend, “But I trust her to be our lookout. Are you saying you don’t?” He winks at you as you make your way across the clearing toward your shelter for the night, and you smile as you turn the teasing toward someone else, for once.

You really should be more upfront with your feelings, Fiddleford. Just be honest, do you trust me? You grin as you ask the playful question, turning to look as the honey-blond man sputters and flusters, “O-O’course I do! I’m not one’a those backwards thinkin’ hillbillies who--who..!”

“Easy, easy!” Stan laughs, reaching to pat the man’s shoulder, “She’s just givin’ you hell, buddy. You’re right though--it’s good to know someone cares, seeing as Ford’s too busy getting handsy with his new assistant.” Stan grins cockily toward both you and his brother, which only makes both of you fluster.

“M-Me?!” Ford sputters a little loudly, and you’d almost laugh if you didn’t know where he was going with this, “I’m not the one who’s asking about how she was in college, or--oof!” He quiets himself with a grunt, and you move to pat his back as though you hadn’t just elbowed him in the ribs.

W-Well, uh, good to know you all respect me, and...enjoy my company, you laugh a little, acting innocent even as Stan catches your eye. He’s very much fighting a laugh, having watched you silence his brother. Ford quirks a brow at you, grumbling as he rubs at a rib with his free hand, “And to think, I came over here to help you to your tent.”

And I thank you, you grin, giving the arm you’re holding onto a little pat as the man rolls his eyes. He’s smiling a little when you make it to your tent, and you take a moment to shift and hand him your duffle bag, thanking him quietly as he ducks alongside you to help you into the tent. You thank him again as he lowers you to the floor of the shelter, finally smiling your way even as he rubs at his side while dropping the duffle bag to you. “Get settled, I’ll see if Fidds’ first aid kit has one of those ammonium chloride ice pack things.”

Thank you, you repeat, fiddling with the zipper of your carryon to open the thing. As the man steps from the unzipped flap of your tent, you call a soft, Sorry for the elbow, which only makes him snort a laugh.

“I didn’t know it was a sore subject, jeez.” He teases over his shoulder.

It’s more of, uh...not a subject at all, you correct with a wave of your hand and a little laugh, quickly turning your attention to getting your folded quilt from the duffle bag. The brunet quirks a brow, but doesn’t say anything as he purses his lips and makes his way from your tent.

You hear the three chatting amongst themselves as you set up your space. It’s definitely darker in the tent than outside of it, but you manage well enough to situate your quilt and pillow in a corner of the tent, patting the blanket down to be sure it lays flat. You pat around in the duffle bag next, searching for your pj pants. When you’ve found them, you make quick work of your boots and pants, wincing as you try to keep standing with your aching ankle.

You hear a quiet swear and the sound of fumbling feet as a flashlight beam shines against the flap of your tent. “Y’decent?” Stan’s voice asks, and you yank more frantically onto your pajama pants to get them up. Y-Yeah, one sec--! You call out, tripping over your own pant leg and falling over with an ungraceful grunt.

“Shit, did you fall again, toots..?” Stan murmurs, taking the liberty to open the flap and make his way in despite the fact that there’s still fabric resting low on your thighs. By some miracle, the flashlight beam points at the back of the tent first, allowing you just enough time to yank the pants up to your hips just as the light points down to where you are on the floor. The light makes you squint up at Stan, your nose wrinkled a little as you give him a little smile. He’s smiling down at you, clearing his throat as he kneels down to meet you.

“Honey, you can’t go tripping in front of me every chance you get.” He teases lightly, putting down the flashlight near you while his gentle hands help you sit back up. You shake your head as you sit up, stretching your legs out in front of you with a bashful smile, I promise, it’s not on purpose.

“So you aren’t fallin’ for me?” Stan asks, his voice low as he searches your face, gaze meeting your own. Despite the playful smile on his face and the quirk of his brow, there’s something that makes your stomach flip. You frown despite your fluster, feeling almost like the butt of a joke. Be nice to me, I almost died, you grumble, pushing lightly against his shoulder. He leans with the push, chuckling as he moves to sit beside you. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I thought of the joke all the way back there, and...well, I couldn’t let it go.” Stan’s smile goes a little more tender, reaching over to pat your knee gently.

Stan perks up a little as he seems to remember something, patting behind him to find the plastic packet he’d brought in. “I brought you an ice pack for your ankle, if you think it’ll help. I think Fidds has some pain killers too, but you’ve gotta get some food in ya first.” You nod at his words, taking the thing from him and shaking it to activate the chemical reaction inside. I packed some snacks, actually, you look at him then, and his brows quirk as he reaches for the flashlight again to find the goodies.

In my bag, in a little tupperware with a green lid. It’s just peanut butter sandwiches, but food is food, you smile, stretching to put the finally-getting-cooler pack on your foot with a wince.

“Hopefully you packed enough,” he chuckles, tucking the flashlight beneath his chin to hold it as he digs into your duffle bag with both hands, “ ‘specially since I was your savior and all, back there, it’d be an honor for you t’share your dinner with me. So I don’t have to eat whatever F and Ford are inventing out there.” Stan teases with a glance to you and a grin. His hands stop their motion in the duffle bag, and you can see his cheeks darken in the low light of the tent.

You worry even without the confirmation of what he’s seen, sure that...well, something in that bag must have caught his attention. Y-You find the sandwiches? You question, moving slightly to check what’s in his hands before he quickly shuffles them into the duffle bag once more, “Shit--ah...Yeah!” Stan pulls the little plastic container from your bag, eyes widening at the neatly-folded pair of lacy underthings atop the box.

Your face heats as you quickly reach out to snatch the fabric away, crumpling it in hand and shoving it beneath your thigh, effectively sitting on it as you look at him wide-eyed. He fights a smile and loses, the grin on his face accompanied by its endearing dimple, both visible and tugging at your heartstrings even in the low light. “See, that’s what I was tryin’ not to do--sorry, honey,” Stan laughs, now passing the offending tupperware over for you to fidget with as he moves the flashlight to stand upright, pointing the light above the both of you to better light the tent.

Snooper, you scold him for the second time today, but this time it comes out in a mumble as you turn your attention to open the thing, a little smile on your face. You can’t be upset, you know it was an accident, but...well, despite the little embarrassment within you, there’s something else you can’t quite place.

He snorts a laugh, moving his hand up to cover his eyes, crooked smile still wide across his cheeks, “Here. Can’t snoop if I can’t see, happy now?” You glance up at him and smirk, picking up a cut half of the peanut butter sandwich and putting your hand out in his direction, waiting for him to uncover his eyes and take the makeshift meal.

“Y’know I can’t hear your head nodding, right? I need words, babe!” Teasing, Stan peeks at you from between his fingers, amber gaze falling to the sandwich half held out to him. “Oh, thanks--” He uncovers his eyes then, smiling still as he reaches for it and bites in greedily. You almost laugh, If you were so hungry, why didn’t you say anything before?

“‘Cause then one of those two would’ve told me to go hunt or somethin’,” He scoffs between bites, looking at you with humor, “Ford would’a picked me some sort of weird-looking thing to eat and said it’s ‘high in protein, just right for you Stanley’, an’ Fidds probably would’ve invented something for me to kill the thing with, like….I dunno, magic slingshot or somethin’,” Stan murmurs into his sandwich. You snort a laugh as you munch on your own half, kicking him lightly against one of his knees, They help in the best ways they can.

“Oh, sure--every way except actually hunting dinner themselves,” he laughs, moving his foot to nudge your leg back. You laugh too, shaking your head as the both of you eat. You eye him subtly, watching how he leans back against his palm, idly crossing his ankles as he looks around your (his) tent. “Y’know, ‘m glad this thing holds up good. I’d hate to think of you getting stuck with a bum tent, or just a little quilt on the ground, like you wanted,” Stan teases lightly, looking over to you with amusement as you both eat.

You shrug as you finish up, smiling as you wipe lightly at the corners of your mouth, I would have ended up fine, probably, you catch the way his gaze moves with your fingers at your lips, and you quickly glance away to warrant him the blessing of thinking he hadn’t been caught, Else fails, we’d all have just ended up cheek-to-cheek in one tent.

Stan scoffs a laugh, licking a stripe of leftover peanut butter from his thumb and sucking the remainder from the digit casually, releasing it with a quiet pop, “Like we were in the truck? I don’t think our cheeks could handle anymore squishin’ like that.” He glances over to you, catching your gaze as it drifts from his lips. Amber eyes crinkle in the corners when smirks, returning his thumb to his lips once more (you’re sure there’s no more peanut butter, and that he’s just torturing you). “Thanks for the snack, sugar, but I think I’m gonna turn in for th’night. Knowing those two, we’ll be awake way too early, and one of them will bitch all day because no one brought coffee--”

Already a step ahead of you, you grin, pointing toward your duffle bag. He casts a glance over and shakes his head, pointing that crooked smile your way, “Geez, you think of everything, don’tcha?” Stan winks at you as he moves to get up, standing hunched in the not-quite-tall-enough frame of the tent. He looks down at you, and you catch him look over your pajamas, smile giving himself away as he points down to your ankle, “Do you need any more help tonight, or are you alright?”

You shake your head, I think I’ll keep myself in for the rest of the night, thanks. As long as I don’t have to pee at some ungodly time, I’ll be fine. Stan snorts at that, taking the few steps toward the flap of the tent, “Just don’t cry to me if you end up dreaming of waterfalls,” He teases. You wrinkle your nose at the implication, but can’t hold back the laugh as you scold him for being gross, Stanley.

“Sorry, babe! You’re stuck with this gross man this whole trip.” Stan winks over his shoulder at you, grinning wider as he turns to leave, “Actually, reminds me--I should make a pitstop before I hit the boys’ tent for the night.”

Gross! You insist with a laugh, hearing him join in with a chuckle of his own. If you had a shoe nearby, you’d throw it at him. Goodnight, Stan. I’ll see you in the morning.

“See you then, babe. G’night.” He smiles in your direction, a genuine tenderness in his gaze as he ducks out from your tent. You shuffle your way to the flap to zip it closed, hearing the trio of boys giving each other hell as Stan returns to their shared sleeping space, but not being able to pick out individual words to hear what hell is being given.

Not that you mind, really; you are sleepy. A near-death experience and some….moderately embarrassing flirting will do that to a person. Using the flashlight Stan had left, you make your way to settling into your makeshift bed, remembering something from the general health class you had to take in college and using your duffle bag at the foot of your comforter as a way to raise your ankle. You fold yourself into the quilt easily, settling in for the night with a soft sigh that turns into a yawn on its way out.

Reaching behind your pillow, you pull out your journal, cracking the cover open and holding the flashlight beneath your chin as you write out some accounts of the day (and, when you remember it exists, adding the polaroid of the creature’s tracks over the terribly-drawn version you’d made). When you finish up with your entry for the day, you start to close the journal, instead seeing the pages open up to the one previous-- Stanley’s pages.

You glance to the flap in your tent, almost as if afraid he’d be standing there to catch you. You don’t know why it worries you--especially since you’ve added both a Fiddleford and Stanford page, to keep track of those two as well, but… There’s something akin to indulgence, you think, that stirs in your chest when you make an addition to this page. Today, it’s an addition to the ‘Likes’ list, (peanut butter, which truthfully doesn’t surprise you because the only food listed in the ‘Dislikes’ list is canned Spam), and today’s date with the simple, albeit shaky addition of Stanley caught me from falling into a ravine on our hike today.

Not wanting to go too into detail this late at night for fear of nightmares, you shut up the journal and return it to its place beneath the pillow, setting the flashlight beside the cushion as you turn the thing off. You settle in for real this time, tugging the blanket to your chin and exhaling a soft, slow breath to try and relax yourself into sleep. As your eyes start to drift closed, you have the inkling that you’ve forgotten something--though what it is, you’re unsure. It must not matter much anyway, as you’re pulled easily into the warm darkness of sleep.

--

It mattered.

A lot, actually.

You swear, Stan was either a medium without knowing it, or some sort of magical asshole who bestowed curses on you without you noticing. You’re swearing at him under your breath the whole way as you hobble into the woods to find a suitable spot to pee.

Much more relieved, you’re now making your way back to your tent, flashlight held tightly in one hand, a roll of toilet paper tucked beneath your arm, and your other hand outstretched to help you make your way through the trees and back toward the campgrounds. You shudder at the cool breeze that’s blown in, indicative of the upcoming cold front you’d overheard about on the television a night or two back. Finally seeing the campsite coming into view, you sigh, knowing you probably went further out into the greenery than you needed to, but….

Well, god forbid any of your research partners find you with your pants down.

Making your way closer to the campsite, you sigh, rubbing at your face sleepily. To say it had been a long day was a gross understatement; you were exhausted.

Which is why you worried that you were still in your tent dreaming, as you hear the fluttery sound of air moving somewhere near you. You look up just as quickly as you heard the noise, pointing the flashlight up to see better in the dim night light.

There’s nothing..?

Despite your rising nerves, you keep moving ahead, maybe a little quicker now as you point the flashlight to the campsite. You’re more aware of the life in Gravity Falls now; you know of the gnomes, the eyebats, the creatures who move in the dead of night who are, you think, moving with you even now. The familiar prickling feeling of being watched begins to scratch at the back of your neck, but when you glance behind your shoulder, only the darkness of the woods greets you.

A fluttering again, this time directly above you. You’re almost more hopeful than certain that you’re just hearing things, and instead of pointing the light to the sound, you motion toward your goal as best as you’re able to. You limp quickly, hearing the sound once more--closer, maybe just past your ear? You yelp in fear as your battered ankle gives way, falling into the plush grass mere feet from where you’re supposed to be sleeping. Pointing the flashlight up, you try to catch a glimpse of the thing that’s been chasing you, hoping to at least see the thing before it gets you.

Stan’s voice saying your name makes you jump from where you’re lying on the ground, whipping around to point the flashlight beam at him. He winces, blocking the light from his eyes as he moves closer to you. He must have been at least somewhat asleep, only in loose sweatpants, his hair mussed as it falls into his face. “Honey, what happened?” He asks, hurrying with his arms outstretched down to you. You’re trembling, but you hadn’t noticed, clutching close to the flashlight as you shake your head, Something was after me--i-it flies. I don’t know, you stammer, unable to get out one set sentence as his arms wrap around you. Stan lifts you easily, holding you to his chest as he looks up, trying to find the flying thing despite the dark.

“What’s going on--oh shit!” Ford’s voice calls, eyes following Stan’s gaze up just as your flashlight beam lands at the topmost branch of a tree. You feel the chest against you puff up, feeling Stan’s arms bracing around you as you hold your breath, too, looking up to try and find the source of the fluttering against your ears.

You spy the yellow eyes first, following them down to the large, feathery body of probably the biggest owl you’ve ever seen. Fuck, you whisper, all at once feeling foolish at the realization that it’s just… a common creature. Tears prick in your eyes, embarrassment and exhaustion melding into the response before you can stop yourself.

“Jesus, that damn thing--I thought I heard hootin’ somewhere in the woods, but...I dunno, I thought it’d be smaller,” Stan says, still holding you as he makes his way up the rest of the little hill that the campsite is situated on. “Even as big as this specimen may be, I don’t think it’s our offending creature at the Shack. Do you?” Ford’s voice asks you, and you shake your head, avoiding his gaze.

N-No, not at all. The tracks may be similar, but the ones back home are much bigger, you confirm, pointing the flashlight back down to watch the grass ahead. You realize that you haven’t put any weight back down onto your bad ankle, feeling the gentle brush of Stanley’s chest hair against your arm as he continues to hold you. You fight the urge to push out of his arms, especially when you feel your bottom lip wobble in protest to you trying not to cry.

You feel Stan shift his arms, the clearing of his throat echoing in his chest as he turns to face Ford. They seem to have some unspoken conversation about you while you’re pretending to ignore it altogether, and instead of listening, you hear the tree leaves rustle heavily overhead. The owl must have taken off.

“You poor dear,” Ford says, coming closer to where Stan stands with you in his arms. You’re not looking at either of them, waving Ford off with a little huff, I’m okay, it just scared me. I just need to crawl back into bed, today has b-been awful.

You bite into your trembling bottom lip, willing it still between your teeth as you give Stan a pat on his arm, signaling that you’d like to be put down. The brunet seems to understand, but hesitates, instead only slightly relaxing his grip of you. “Let’s get you back to your tent, then. You need the rest.” He soothes, taking a few steps in that direction. You give in, letting yourself be carried as you glance to see Ford (and now Fidds, who’d woken up sometime in the commotion) ducking into his own tent, rubbing at sleepy eyes and yawning all the same.

You don’t have to carry me, but thank you, you mumble quietly, stifling a sniffle as you rub your nose with the back of your hand. He shrugs, the motion shifting you as he pushes open the flaps of your tent, “No skin off my back, babe. Jus’ can’t risk you falling again. If you bust your head open, then I’ll only have these two assholes to deal with again, and I can’t let that happen.” Stan jokes, and despite your exhaustion it makes you smile, even if only a little bit. Still, the hot sting of tears wins out, and you’re only just able to wipe at your eye when the first one falls, just as Stan steps into the little tent with you. You feel him shift again to set you down, but he stops at the sound of a sniffle. “Hon, you alright?” He asks, and you can now hear the gravel that comes with sleep in his voice. You swear, you’ve never heard him be this tender, but it still sounds so familiar all the same.

Y-Yeah, you say, voice shakier than you want it to be, I just feel, uh...dumb, you laugh a little, and he frowns down at you, tilting his head to get a better look at you. You turn your head down slightly, still trying to hide under his attention, Thanks again for helping me. Again. The full situation washes over you in a wave, and you flush with your tears at the realization that he’s holding you to his chest--which would be embarrassing on its own, maybe, but he’s shirtless and you’re crying and, really, this isn’t a good look for you--

“Honey, y’gotta get outta that head sometimes,” He scolds gently, and you look up at him in confused surprise at his words. That almost makes him laugh, a little smile quirking at his lips as he guides you to your feet. “Careful,” He whispers, hands on your waist to keep you from putting too much weight on your bum ankle as you lower yourself to sit on your knees atop the blanket. You glance down, remembering the roll of toilet paper firmly tucked beneath your arm, and you toss the thing to the duffle bag, watching as it bounces off, and then lands haphazardly next to the thing.

“You had an iron grip on that thing, didn’t ya?” Stan asks, and you sniffle as you smile, After losing the flashlight the first time, I had to be sure to hold on tight.

It’s his turn to look at you with surprise, his little smile growing more genuine as he sits in the middle of the tent. He’s closer than he was when you ate together, but he isn’t imposing. He’s just...here. And that’s nice, you think.

“I’m not really the killjoy of this group, but you really should’ve said something before you left, toots. What if I wasn’t up, and you had to fight that thing all your own?” He asks, sleepy voice surprisingly a little stern. You glance over to him as you reach for your pillow, fluffing it idly before wiping a stray tear at your cheek. It’s your fault I had to go out, anyway, you argue lightly, sure his brow is quirked as soon as you say it, You’re the one who mentioned waterfalls.

“Aw, sorry, but you should know by now that I’m right about a lott’a things. It’s annoying as hell, I hear.” It is, you laugh with him, finally glancing up to meet his eye. You feel a little pitiful; foot and ego injured as you watch the kind man who both helped and hurt that cause.

Stan has this unreadable look in his eye, one you’re sure you’ve seen before, but it worries you all the same each time it happens. You glance down at your hands to avoid the shift in his gaze, but find yourself looking up again when he says your name like a quiet question, his brow furrowed at you with a tilt of his head.

“Are you doin’ okay? Today’s been...hell and a half for you, and I know you had t’be scared to death.” He reaches out, palm lying flat on the edge of the quilt beneath you, and though he leans to go with it, he doesn’t make any further move to touch you. You rub at your face with a sigh, pushing hair from your face as you start to nod.

I mean, the day wasn’t all bad, but...nearly falling however-many-feet down, and then being stalked by an owl weren’t the most fun parts, either, you admit, feeling the way your voice wavers when you do so. You shrug, smiling a little when you look at him now, and you try to ignore the way your heart pulls at his worried face, you do, but...with those amber eyes looking at you with such tender concern, you have to admit that it absolutely pulls, tugs, and twists at your heart. Damn him.

“I’d offer to take you back home, but I don’t think you’d like that. Plus, those two would get lost without you.” The brunet is careful in his word choice, something you appreciate. You reach to comfort him in the same way, reaching your hand out to lay atop his with a little rub of your thumb across the back of his hand, and his face softens a little when you reply, Absolutely they would, they don’t even know what kind of critter they’re going to face. Truthfully, neither did you, but you had theories. Though...somehow, you think, this isn’t the time to bring them up.

You can feel the energy between you shift before you see it, his palm turning upward to meet your own. The warmth of his fingers glides against your hand, fingertips curling just under yours to cup your hand with his own. He’s watching down at your joined hands, thumb brushing lightly against your four knuckles when he speaks again. “Are you, uhm...unhappy, that I keep trying to help you?” Stanley’s voice is soft as he asks the question, and you almost need him to repeat himself with the way your heart is hammering in your ears. When you don’t answer immediately, he continues, “I-I know that you’re strong. You’re very smart--well, no shit you’re smart, you’ve done all this for gods’ sakes--anyway,” He breathes, and you swear there’s a deeper color to his cheeks even in the dark here.

“I like helpin’ you. I’m not nearly as smart as you ‘n Fidds and Sixer, but I gotta be useful somehow. And you’re just, uh...easier to help, than the other two. You’re marginally less annoying, and...prettier, too.” Stan glances up then, his gaze searching through yours with an air of desperation. You can tell, there’s maybe more to be said, but his adam’s apple gives a decisive bob when he closes his mouth into a thin line. Whatever else there is to be said, it isn’t for tonight.

I don’t mind, you finally say, looking down at the way your fingers have folded nicely over his own. Your heart thuds against your chest, so loud in your own ears that you’re afraid you might shout these next words. You take extra care, then, to whisper them. I...may not like being helped, or I may get embarrassed or frustrated and run off sometimes, but...I do like you. And I don’t mind when you’re the one helping me.

You turn your wrist at an almost-uncomfortable angle to put the back of his hand upright without breaking his hold of your fingers, leaning forward just so to press a little peck to the back of his hand. Turning your hands back the right way, you look up to him, almost afraid of what his reaction may be. What if he laughs at you? Or finds you stupid, to think you could resist his charm? What if he stands now and leaves into the darkness of the wood to leave you alone and embarrassed and in need to explain the situation to your colleagues?

“Hey,” he whispers, and you realize that you’re so afraid of the what-ifs that you’ve almost missed his reaction entirely, though that’s the whole reason you looked. Stan’s face is certainly flushed, vibrant eyes forgoing their sleepiness as he looks at you with such entranced sincerity. For a moment, you think he’s forgotten what he wanted to say, but he interrupts that thought with a firm tug at your arm. Before you know it, you’re pulled off-kilter, leaning toward him, then closer, before you reach to catch yourself with your other palm against his chest.

His lips land on yours then, the gentle scratch of stubble against your face as you lean into him. This close, with your hand on his chest, you can feel the way his pulse mimics yours. You have half the mind to tease him, but the idea stutters out when the palm of his free hand slides up to cup your jaw. Stan holds you there as you kiss him, tasting just slightly of peanut butter and feeling so warm, your noses bumping together gently before he pulls back for a breath. You open your eyes to find him already looking at you, his gaze still sliding up from where he’d been looking at your mouth.

“Y-You’ve gotta get some rest, sweetheart,” He whispers, the newest petname settling itself very terrifically into the space carved into your heart by the last one, “We both should, uh...sleep.” You feel yourself nod, though you still lean into his touch against your face until he pulls it away. Stan bites into his bottom lip, clearing his throat as he pats your hand on his chest, and for once, you realize, the jokester is near speechless.

Moving your hand away from his body, he pulls your joined hands close to his face, pressing one last kiss there before his fingers release your own. Watching as he stands, Stanley pushes his hair from his face, rubbing gingerly at the back of his neck as he turns away from you and toward the exit. He stands there a moment, almost like he’s forgotten what he’d gotten up for in the first place. Though you aren’t exactly itching to kick him out, you smile as you give him the reminder.

Goodnight, Stanley, you whisper, and your heart does turns when he looks at you from over his shoulder. He’s brushing his fingertips against his lip subconsciously, the movement stalling when he meets your gaze. His dimple reappears for an instant, his smile at you wide and inviting.

“Goodnight, sweetheart. I’ll see ya, first thing in the morning.”

I’ll see you then, loverboy, you tease, giving him your first pet name. It doesn’t go unnoticed (for as not-smart as he claims he is, nothing goes unnoticed with this man), and he looks absolutely giddy when he leaves out the front flap of your tent. You think that you hear him trip and swear to himself, but he doesn’t return. The boys in the tent next door begin to murmur, and you suppose he’s found his way back in there when you hear his tell-tale laugh amongst the other voices.

You touch your own lips, reminding yourself of the feeling of his own there, and your heart goes racing again. You huff a little laugh of your own, shaking your head, and realizing you haven’t stopped smiling since that man left your tent. You settle into your quilt again, still exhausted, but much less tired than the last time you’d been here. Reaching under your pillow, you find your hardback journal once again, turning easily to the pages about Stanley once more. In one swift curl of cursive, you make an addition, just under your large declaration of Stan’s name at the top of the page.

AKA: Loverboy.

[wonderlustlucas]

jack pot ; part 3 - hwang hyunjin

⇢ prompt You know it’s bad when you’re high as a kite and he’s still on your mind. ⇢ pairing hwang hyunjin x female reader ⇢ word count 6.4k ⇢ genre fluff & angst (not heavy, just in a slow burn kind of way) ⇢ warnings (18+) drug use, a suggestive make out & the mention of a boner twice maybe ⇢ summary College is a matter of working hard and playing hard. It’s an opportunity to start fresh, to grow as an individual and to blossom with those you befriend. People come and people go, leaving their mark on your life and showing you all the parts of becoming an adult. Some, however, do more than leave their mark. Some take just as much as they give. Things become complicated once they take the entirety of your love because you outright offered it to them.—college!au ; stoner!au ; friends to lovers!au ⇢ a/n AAAAAAAA omg im so excited to post this, this by far is my fav part of jack pot & i cant wait to hear what u all think!!! sorry its a bit shorter than the other parts, & technically this is the *last* part, but there will be an epilogue where you will see how everything comes to be!!!! have fun reading!!! <3

⇠ part 2

five.

“Oh, fuck, he’s good,” Yeji gasps, shoving her phone into Maddie’s hands before faceplanting into the table.

“Are you H-T-T-P because I’m colon-slash-slash without you,” Maddie reads with a chuckle, thumbs hesitating over the keyboard. “Quick, YN, look up some pick-up lines.”

Closing the tab on the article you should be reading but has been long forgotten, you promptly do as you are told and open the first link from your search, Minho and Jisung leaning in to help. “There,” Jisung stops you, pointing to one, “’Are you a parking ticket? Because you have fine written all over you.’”

The table can’t help but burst into laughter at such a sentence. It’s stupid, but ever since Yeji and Kim Sunwoo began texting, their conversations have been full of tacky puns and emoji-filled compliments.

“Damn,” Maddie whistles, setting the phone back into Yeji’s limp hand, “he’s already typing back.”

“Gross,” Ryujin teases, busy typing away on her laptop. How she manages to multitask so well is a skill you certainly lack. “Why don’t you just like, I don’t know, ask him out?” Jisung asks and when you glance up, he’s looking at you. “Because that’s the guy’s job,” Maddie quickly saves the day, winking to you when you send her a grateful smile.

“Bullshit,” Jeongin scoffs. Everyone, even Ryujin, stops to look at him.

Did he just curse?

“I mean, like,” he stammers, cheeks turning rosy at all the attention, “it’s 2020. Guys have insecurities, too.”

“I agree,” Minho hums, looking to Maddie with hearts in his eyes, “that kind of confidence is enough to make any boy fall in love.”

“Yeah, but—”

Lia rebuts, but your attention quickly falls elsewhere when a text message first appears on your laptop, then your phone.

hwang hyunjin🦔🕺🏻💞🧻 [now] Where r u rn?

Unable to fight your smile, you quickly type back.

[3:39 PM] YN: outside hollin st café [3:39 PM] YN: why? :)

“Have you seen their new house, YN?” Minho asks, prompting you to click your phone off and set it back on the table. “Whose house?”

“Changbin’s parents.”

“Oh,” shaking your head, you distantly curse Chan for keeping your friend busy today. Unlike Jisung, Changbin likes to write lyrics and do whatever other music stuff during the day at a normal time instead of the middle of the fucking night while stoned and trying to finish his computer science assignments at the same time. “No, he forgot to send me pictures.”

“Dude,” Jisung sighs dreamily, “it’s huge. So nice. I think the front door alone could cover tuition.”

“Is it really that nice?” Maddie asks in awe.

“He started to show me pics the other day but couldn’t finish but the kitchen… unnecessary,” Ryujin quips, pausing her work to check her phone. “Yeah, it’s insane. The whole place is unnecessary but the kitchen is like, a house in itself,” Jeongin hums, head shaking in disbelief.

“Damn, now I really want to see it,” you sigh, making a mental note to hunt Changbin down so he can show you. “It’s like Hyunjin and his rings,” Minho snickers, “he has so many. Whenever we’re out, if he sees a ring, boom. It’s his.”

Well, he’s not wrong but… You bite your tongue no matter how badly you wish to defend Hyunjin and his affinity for rings and jewelry in general. The boy has taste, what can you say? You certainly are not complaining about Hyunjin’s long fingers and the way he chooses to decorate them.

“I never thought I’d hear Changbin’s parent’s kitchen be analogous to Hyunjin’s jewelry collection, yet here we are,” Maddie chuckles, leaning over Yeji to peek at her conversation with Sunwoo.

“Wow, speak of the devil,” Jisung pipes up of course as soon as you have reopened the tab to your assignment. Changbin or Hyunjin, you don’t know, head whipping up to find out and a peculiar mix of relief and panic settling over you once you spot the latter. “Uh oh, YN’s gonna go into cardiac arrest.”

As subtly as you can, you elbow Jisung in the stomach and smile at Hyunjin as he nears. “Hey,” keeping his eyes on you, Hyunjin approaches your table and stops behind Maddie opposite from you, “I’m sorry, I should have asked if you were busy.” His cheeks, already flushed, burn pinker once he looks away to smile weakly at everyone else.

“I’m not busy!” You squeak, scrambling to close your laptop and shove it in your bag. “Are you sure? I can come back later?” He offers, tilting his head and this is when you realize he is holding a bubble tea in each hand. And from the looks of it, one seems to be your usual order. “No, she’s not,” Jeongin answers for you, recognizing your stupefied expression.

“I was just – yeah. No,” rushing to stand and swing your legs out around the bench, you nearly fall flat on your face, “I wasn’t doing anything, actually.” Steadying yourself with a hand on Minho’s shoulder, you heave a labored breath before carefully walking to meet Hyunjin.

“Okay,” he beams, either oblivious to how flustered you are or simply choosing to ignore it. Turning to wave to your friends, he hands you one of the cups and you realize it is, in fact, your favorite boba. Oh boy. “See ya later,” you wave to them as well, nose wrinkling when both Jisung and Maddie wink in return.

Following after Hyunjin, you finally allow yourself to take notice of his attire and can’t help but feel confused. He looks good. And not in the good attractive way—he always looks good. But good as in formal. It’s four o’clock on a Tuesday in October and he’s out here looking as if he just got out of a business meeting. White button-down tucked into fitted black slacks, dress shoes, black tie, and he even has a black suit jacket draped over his arm. His hair is styled, too; ever since he dyed it back to black, he’s been growing it out long enough for his bangs to cover his eyes. Now, however, it’s parted down the middle and seems as if he’s ever so slightly curled it away from his face.

Suddenly, you feel ridiculous walking beside him in mom jeans and a baggy sweatshirt from high school.

“Thanks for the boba,” you mumble around your straw, brain still preoccupied trying to get over how utterly handsome he is. “Why do you look so fancy?”

The side of his mouth twitches up at your words, but his eyes stay glued to the sidewalk as you continue to your unknown destination. “I had an audition,” Hyunjin admits, voice devoid of emotion as if it’s not important at all. “An audition?” You echo. “Why do you sound so not super mega excited? How did it go? What was it for?”

“Well—”

“Wait!” You interrupt, stopping your walk once you realize he had an audition and you didn’t know. “You had an audition? What – why didn’t you tell me?”

Hyunjin frowns, avoiding your gaze and dragging his bottom teeth over his top lip. “I didn’t tell anyone,” he finally says before reaching for your hand and tugging you away from the walkway and into your campus’ main courtyard. “Why? Is it some sort of secret or something, Hyunjin?” You scoff, sounding way more annoyed than you intended. But you are annoyed; why didn’t he want to tell anyone?

“No,” he sighs, finding an empty area in the grass and lowering himself to sit, “I just… didn’t want anyone to know. Didn’t want to make it a big deal.”

“Hyunjin,” you sigh, visibly softening for him and settling down next to him, crisscrossing your legs, “it is a big deal. I don’t know what it’s for, but if it’s important enough for you to audition, then it’s important to us, too. You don’t need to be humble twenty-four-seven, you know. I’m sure you could have used our support.”

“I didn’t get it, though,” Hyunjin whispers, “they just – I didn’t get in. I wasn’t good enough.” Sensing the sadness in his voice, you find a lump forming in your throat when you notice the way his bottom lip trembles. “Hey,” panicking, you set your boba down and sit up on your knees to wrap your arms around him, cradling his head into your chest once tears start falling, “no. Don’t ever say you’re not good enough, Hyunjin.”

“But if I did better, practiced more, than I would—"

“Stop,” you hush, combing your fingers through his hair and brushing strands away from his eyes, “I’ve never met someone who works as hard as you do. You can’t beat yourself up over this. Everything happens for a reason. You don’t know what could have happened if you got in. You could have hurt yourself eventually, or maybe met someone who’s a real asshole.”

“Yeah,” is all he says, quiet and muffled when he turns to press his forehead into your sternum, body still trembling as he lets out all his tears. You stay like that for a while, holding him against you and soothing a hand up and down his back until his sniffling falls quiet. “Listen,” you finally sigh, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him back. Your heart sinks once you take in the wet trails down his cheeks and the puffiness of his eyes. “Forget about it. Was it something for dance?”

When he nods subtly, you cup his face in your hands and swipe his cheeks with your thumbs. “You are an amazing dancer, Hyunjin. You can’t let this get to your head. And I don’t want you working your ass off more than you do already. Practice makes perfect, sure, but you need to rest. What about the idea Changbin came up with?”

“The YouTube thing?”

“Yes! Filming dance tutorials or just posting your routines is a really good idea,” you remind him, wiping your hands on your jeans once he falls back onto the grass with a gentle thud, hair flaying around him like a halo. Your limbs twitch with the urge to lie beside him, maybe throw an arm around him and rest your cheek on his chest, fingers tracing the soft features of his face, stroking through his hair and reminding him just how innately perfect he is, inside and out. You, of course, resist such a temptation, flopping down beside him and staring up at the clouds with a heavy heart.

“I could do that. Maybe,” Hyunjin huffs. Tilting your head to look at him, you find yourself knee-deep in that familiar longing feeling, pausing simply to appreciate how pretty he is in the evening sun, cheeks rosy from crying and hair begging to be touched. Shaking your head to rid such daydreams, you remind yourself how fragile his emotions are right now. Now is no time to get caught up on a fantasy. Reaching for your tea, you lean up on an elbow and redirect your gaze to the trees, the promise of winter having turned what was green burnt sienna and butterscotch, leaving trees barren and branches swaying gently in the crisp breeze that leaves you curling into yourself. “You should,” you hum, distant, mind clawing to come up with the words you want to say.

“Come here,” Hyunjin says now, voice stronger than before and when his hand wraps gently around your wrist, you can’t find it in yourself to resist. Allowing him to pull you back down beside him, you curl into his side, resting your head a safe distance away from his own and onto the curve of his arm. “Thank you for being so good to me,” he expresses. You squeeze your eyes shut when the arm you lie on wraps around your shoulders and pulls you substantially closer. “I need to tell you something.”

A long stretch of silence falls upon you and for a moment, you are unsure the words even left your mouth. What are you thinking?

“Wait! I have something first,” Hyunjin sighs, missing the way your breath hitches. “Okay,” you whisper, fiddling with one of the buttons on his shirt and focusing all your attention there.

“I just – I think… I owe you an apology,” he finally says, “I need to apologize for something that I did a while ago that I know probably hurt.” Your chest tightens. There’s a lot that has hurt you when it comes to Hyunjin, but none that he’s done purposely. None that are his fault. None that he should be apologizing for.

“I feel like we came to some mutual understanding to not mention what happened when we were freshmen, but it kills me to know that – that something happened, and we never talked about it,” Hyunjin starts, grip tightening on your shoulder and suddenly, you think you are dreaming. This cannot possibly be real. “I know it was awkward but, I also know me and Yiren dating was… ah. I don’t know.”

When he falls silent, you are unsure of what to say or do. You have no idea what the end goal of this conversation is. Hardly a minute ago, your heart and your brain decided it was time to tell him. Now, you’re not so sure you can do that until he finishes, and you are not about to give him your two cents if his reasoning for bringing it up is not the same as yours.

“I just want to apologize for not being brave enough to talk to you about it. I know I was confused, but I’m sure it was worse for you when they told you about her,” Hyunjin continues, sensing your rendered silence, “and it’s been so long since that happened, and now, you’re one of my closest friends.” Ouch.

“But I’ve been thinking,” when he picks up again, your eyes fly open in a panic. He’s been thinking. Hyunjinhas been thinking. You think you are going to pass out. “And I just feel like we… me and you, I mean—"

The standard iPhone alarm blares from beside you, promptly cutting him off and you think it is the biggest cockblock known to man. “Shit,” he hisses, leaning up to tug his phone from his pocket and in the process nudging you from your comfortable position. Sitting back up, nerves aflame and heart racing, your brows shoot up in confusion when all he does is stare at the number calling him. “What are you doing?”

“It’s the studio I was just at,” he scoffs in disbelief, barely glancing at you before looking back to his phone. You have never wanted to shrivel up and die as much as you want to right now. “Well? Aren’t you going to answer?”

Hyunjin makes a noise of acknowledgement before tapping the green icon and bringing the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

Sitting quietly beside him, you watch with a forced smile as his hummed responses and subtle nods morph into enthusiastic laughs and wide, beaming smiles. Hyunjin notices your confusion when you tilt your head, mouthing a ‘What?’ to him.

“They made a mistake,” he whispers, covering the speaker of his phone, “read off the wrong Hwang. I’m in.” When he grins excitedly at you, your response isn’t as cheerful as it could be. As it should be. “Yay!” You whisper, clapping gently but quickly turning to your boba when the other line begins speaking again. Looking away, you take a hefty sip, nearly choke on a tapioca ball, and build the walls around your heart up all over again in a matter of seconds.

“I’ve gotta go,” whispering, you manage one more pained smile before getting to your feet and wiping your butt of any possible grass stains, “good luck!” When he shines you one more breathtaking smile and waves excitedly, you hastily head in the other direction, wrapping your arms around yourself and swallowing past the lump that threatens to form the farther you walk.

It must be nice, you think, frantically wiping at your waterline. Must be nice to put yourself out there and have things work out the way you want them to. Must be nice being told you’re ‘in,’ you’re wanted, you’re desired.

It must be nice.

six.

Pick up food, you said. Ask Jisung, you said.

Your conscience is a big fat oompa loompa ass bitch. You would have never called Jisung to ask him if he wanted anything from Taco Bell if you knew he was with Changbin. And not just Changbin, you realized four minutes into your call; Seungmin and Hyunjin, too. Apparently he went over their place to record, or something, and didn’t care to let you know. Not that you’re his mom and he has too—but it would have been nice, and would have saved you from spending almost fifty dollars at Taco Bell.

“I tried calling Jisung but he didn’t answer,” you snap once Seungmin answers your call with a muffled hello. “Can one of you please come out and help me carry this in?” You glance at the five large sodas and two bags full of food in your passenger seat with a grimace. “Sure,” he agrees and you make a mental note for the umpteenth time just how much you love Seungmin, “I’ll be out in a sec.”

True to his word, you spot him making his way out of their apartment and across the small courtyard to meet you by your car not even a minute later, hauling each bag under his arms. “Thank you,” left only with the cupholder, you hurriedly lock your car and follow after him. “No problem. Thanks for being our Uber Eats,” then, pursing his lips, “how much was this?”

“Forty-seven something,” you grumble unhappily, knowing this was a big hit to your debit. “We’ll pay you back, don’t worry,” Seungmin smiles, leading you up the final flight of stairs and kicking open the ajar door.

Immediately, you’re hit with the smell.

“Dear, fucking hell,” making a face, you rub your nose to keep from sneezing, “it reeks in here. How have you guys not been kicked out yet?”

The stench of weed generally does not bother you anymore, but still—they could light a candle, or something. Seungmin shrugs, setting the bags down on the kitchen counter. “Luck, I guess.”

“IS THAT YN?” From another room, you hear Changbin shout, followed by an excited shriek from Jisung. “They’re high. Very high. You’ve been warned,” Seungmin whispers just as tweedle dee and tweedle dum themselves come flying around the corner. “YN!” Jisung grins, engulfing you in a dramatic hug. “Watch,” you hiss, regarding the blunt held between his fingers that comes dangerously close to your hair.

“Sorry,” he smiles, then, without warning, sticks the thing right between your lips. “I didn’t even offer.” Well, when life gives you lemons…

You hesitantly take the hit and blow the smoke away from him. You weren’t planning on getting high today, but here you are. “Thanks,” shaking your head as if that will clear it, you turn to Changbin and snugly wrap your arms around him. Every day you thank the heavens that he is a chill, calm high, unlike your maniac of a roommate.

“Thanks for the food,” fishing into his pockets and pulling out a crumpled ten-dollar bill, he slaps it into your palm. You only hum in reply, shoving it into your own pocket and praying you don’t lose it before you remember to put it in your wallet. “Where’s Hyunjin?” You ask, no longer caring about being slick.

“In his room,” Seungmin answers, rummaging through the bags to find what he ordered. Then, “HYUNJIN!” You jump, reaching for your soda and standing away from the other three until they have claimed whatever belongs to them. No sooner than Seungmin calls for him, you hear a door being cracked open and out comes Hyunjin.

He looks extremely disheveled. Like, just woke up from a two-month hibernation, disheveled. In the blink of an eye, however, he rakes a hand through long blonde hair and promptly sets a baseball cap backwards to keep the strands away and suddenly, he doesn’t look so disheveled anymore. You force yourself to look away, cursing the way your gut twists.

“Gimme my crunchwrap,” you say around your straw, snatching the blunt from Jisung’s fingers and moving around him to fetch your dinner. He doesn’t even protest.

He knows you need it more than he does.

“That’s a lot of food,” Hyunjin says once he has finally entered the kitchen, voice groggy and eyes puffy from sleep. Or from being high, you can’t tell. Pressing his chest to your back, he wraps one arm around you to keep you against him while the other reaches into a bag to take what’s his. Swallowing past the desert dryness of your throat, you manage a thick inhale from the blunt before tilting your head to look at him and mentally thanking the other three for taking it as their cue to head out.

“Not my fault you guys eat like animals,” you chuckle shakily, trying to ignore the firmness of his body against yours, veins prominent on the arm that holds you against him and the ripple of muscle along his abdomen noticeable even through his shirt and yours. Dear god, it is too early for this. Not even seven o’clock and you are already drooling in more places than one.

Hyunjin pouts as if it is not true. “How much do I owe you?” He asks, finally moving away to grab his drink and you can’t help your disappointment, quickly finishing the blunt before tapping it out into one of the many ashtrays. “Don’t worry about it,” you wave off, digging through their drawers for a paper plate.

“YN,” Hyunjin deadpans, regarding you with a raised brow once you come up and begin unwrapping your food. You refuse to look him in the eye. “What do I owe you?” He repeats, firmer this time and it sends a chill down your spine when it most certainly should not. Sighing, you retrieve the receipt from your pocket and count everything he got. “Thirteen.”

Humming in content, Hyunjin reaches for his wallet on the counter and pulls a ten and five out. “There,” he beams, tucking the bills into your pocket himself. Rolling your eyes, you pray he does not notice how you flush and hurry out of the kitchen to join Seungmin on the sofa.

“House Hunters?” You ask with a laugh, looking at the TV once you have settled next to him. “I told you HGTV is the best.”

Seungmin hums in agreement. “I thought it was stupid at first, but Hyunjin was watching Fixer Upper and I got addicted,” he says, nodding to the older boy doing a little dance in the kitchen as he eats one of his tacos. Your heart does somersaults at the sight. “They’re all so good,” you agree after taking a few bites of your own food, eyes trained on the television, “House Hunters is a classic, though.”

“I like the international one,” Hyunjin adds on his way over, crashing unceremoniously next to you. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice Seungmin wrinkle his nose when Hyunjin sets his free hand casually on your thigh. “Shh,” he grumbles, vaguely gesturing to the screen and chewing a mouthful of food, “I wanna hear what the house has.”

One episode turns to two, which turns to three, which turns to four, and suddenly you have been watching House Hunters with Seungmin and Hyunjin for almost three hours. It definitely is the weed, always making time perpetually slower, and it did not help when Jisung and Changbin reappeared sometime during your binge with one of Felix’s bongs. Not necessarily how you intended to spend your precious Friday night, but there is no sense in complaining when you are with your buddies and Hyunjin, of course.

Taco Bell long gone, you watch with blurry eyes when Hyunjin gets up from his slumped position against you to head into the kitchen and open the freezer. This, as well as the realization that House Hunters has ended and gone to some other, not-as-cool show, brings both you and Seungmin somewhat back to reality.

“It’s almost ten,” Seungmin announces, staring dazedly at the time on his phone. You hum in acknowledgment, certainly sober enough to reply but simply too lazy to. “I think I’m going to bed. Or play something. Don’t wreck the place,” he sighs, dragging a hand down his face before standing up. “G’night, Minnie,” you smile, watching with a furrowed brow as he continues down the hall and into his room. It isn’t until you hear his door click shut does the weight of being alone with Hyunjin settle on your chest.

It’s not like you haven’t spent time alone with Hyunjin before. In fact, that usually is the way it’s been in the past three years; whether the two of you decided to do your own thing or the rest of your friends eventually left or went to bed, you are used to this feeling. Used to ignoring the butterflies in your gut when he does something particularly cute and used to tampering down the mental images you conjure up knowing it’s just you and him.

But that doesn’t make things any easier. No matter how hard you try, you simply can’t help but feel this way around Hyunjin, especially when you’re alone. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

“Whatcha wanna watch?” Hyunjin asks around one last spoonful of ice cream before setting the pint back into the freezer. “Uhh…” You drone, blinking heavily at the TV and back to him as he makes his way back over. “I dunno, I’m sure you’ve been watching some drama. You can put that on.”

“You sure?” He asks with a raised brow, collapsing next to you and slumping dramatically halfway down the cushions. “Yes,” laughing, you find yourself reaching out to tuck messy strands of hair back behind his ear without hesitation, “also, why are you wearing a hat inside?”

Hyunjin pauses, straining to look up as if he will be able to see the back of his cap against his forehead. “I’m wearing a hat?”

“Yes, you idiot,” in comes the endless weed giggles and you find yourself unable to stop laughing, watching with teary eyes as he sits up and takes his hat off. “I don’t remember putting this on,” he chuckles airily, flipping the cap back and forth in his hands before tossing it onto the coffee table. “Should I cut it?”

“No!” You shout a little too quickly and a little too loudly. Shrinking against the arm of the couch, you ignore his amused smile and look to his long hair, freshly bleached strands falling down to his neck and shorter pieces brushing against his cheeks. Fuck, it should be illegal to look this good. “I like it long. It really suits you.”

“It’s annoying,” Hyunjin grins despite his complaint, lifting his legs onto the couch and flopping onto his side, head now resting on your lap. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

Now that he’s offered playing with his hair on a silver platter, you don’t hesitate combing your fingers through it, tugging out pieces stuck under his head and brushing it out completely. “You could pull the sides back,” you hum distantly, separating a section of hair near his temple to pull back, “or make a bun with what you can. You just have to play around with it.”

Humming in agreement, Hyunjin resituates himself after reaching for the remote and switching to Netflix. When you go back to simply raking your fingers from root to tip in irregular directions, you don’t miss the way his eyelids flutter at the motion and make sure to pay extra attention to his scalp. When this turned into a head massage, you’re not entirely sure.

The drama Hyunjin puts on is unbearable. You stopped paying attention a while ago, focusing more on him and how he seems to enjoy it, fingers busy braiding random sections of hair, taking them out, and then braiding them again. With two finally done the way you want them to, you are midway through the third when your fingers begin to cramp up.

“Why’d you stop?” Hyunjin asks seconds after you drop the braid and stretch your fingers out. “Fingers are cramping,” chuckling at the disappointed pout of his lips, you crack what knuckles you can before going back and undoing the unfinished braid. “Oh,” he mutters, cheek still pressed against your leg, “feels good.”

Humming in response, you ignore the way his words make your heart swell and begin gathering all his hair into a ponytail, pressing the braids to lay flat and finally tying it with a hair tie once you have combed up all that you can. Immediately, his bangs and hairs closer to the nape of his neck fall out, leaving the ponytail spikey and messy. At least the braids look good. You can’t help but giggle.

“What?” Hyunjin asks, pausing his show and leaning up. “What’d you do?”

“Go see for yourself,” pointing to the bathroom, you comb out a looped piece of hair before he stands to do just that. His ponytail bobs the entire walk there.

When he reaches the door and flips the light on, you watch from your position as he checks himself out, brushing away his bangs and flicking the pony. You frown when he accidentally yanks at a braid.

“Come here,” you say, sitting up, “you messed up the braid.”

“Honestly,” Hyunjin considers his reflection one last time before skipping his way over, “it doesn’t look half bad.” Expecting him to sit back next to you, your pulse quickens when he anchors a hand to the armrest and leans in front you, only inches away from your face. “No, definitely,” you say once you have gotten over the shock of him being so close so suddenly, “I like it in the ponytail. You’d really impress the girls if you braided your hair yourself.” Reaching up to tuck hair back into the braid and press it down flat once more, you don’t miss the way his brows draw together and lips twitch down. “What?”

Time ceases to exist as Hyunjin begins to come closer. In reality, you know it simply is a matter of seconds, but all of space and time seems to still once he leans forward. It feels as if an eternity goes by, allowing you to count each individual eyelash, memorize the details of his skin, take note of the smoothed lines on his plump lips. The way time slows is cruel; it allows panic to set in, the realization that he most certainly is looming over you with his eyes on your lips sending a spark of excitement and anxiety through your veins.

And then, just as this realization and this panic has set your nerves aflame, a gentle hand comes to cradle your jaw before Hyunjin’s lips press against yours.

It is so easy to surrender to the taste and touch of him. Instantly, an eruption of emotions and thoughts spiraling out of control fills you, yet your brain focuses only on Hyunjin, Hyunjin, Hyunjin. This is not the first time you have kissed him, nor the first time simply having him so close, but the feeling that radiates from your heart outward is unlike anything you have felt before. This is uncalled for. This is not like two years ago. You were not expecting this.

Hyunjin sighs into the kiss when you lean up to loop your arms around his neck. No sooner have you done this, he breaks away to sit beside you once more, hands reaching for your waist and guiding you to sit over his lap.

You could kiss him all day, you think, palms lying flat by his collarbones before fisting the material of his shirt when his tongue prods at the seam of your lips. Blood seemingly coming to a boil and nerves sparking dangerously, you find yourself quickly sobering up as the minutes tick by, completely and utterly addicted to him and this feeling, this feeling you have craved but never crossed the line for. And now, it’s yours to keep.

Forgetting the braids, you seize the opportunity to rake your fingers through his hair. Different, than how you did earlier. Desperate. Combing it away from his face once, twice, swallowing his groans when you tug at the roots, you realize with a whine that his hands have left your face in favor of dragging down your sides, circling back to squeeze at your breasts, rubbing at your thighs and finally sliding back to your ass, situating you more comfortably on his thighs.

When Hyunjin finally breaks the kiss to journey elsewhere, littering chaste kisses across your jaw, below your ear, down your neck, the weight of your actions finally hits you. It is overwhelming, the way you come spiraling back to reality, and you are not sure if the quiet moan that leaves you is due to the press of something else against your thigh or simply the realization that you are making out with Hyunjin.

You have to stop before you get hurt again.

“Hyunjin,” you gasp, shuddering when his soft lips brush against your jaw, “wait. We need to talk.”

He pauses at this, fingers digging into your sides and you feel his frown against your neck. “What’s there to talk about?” He murmurs, arms sliding around you and tugging you closer, prompting you to wrap your arms around his neck and hug him close and pretend like his boner isn’t digging into you.

It’s your turn to frown. “About us,” whispering, you lift one hand to stroke through his hair, “we need to talk about us.”

“I thought my feelings were very clear,” Hyunjin scoffs, all tenderness in his voice gone. Instinctively, you lean back, blinking at him in surprise. “Unless this is just another one of your games? Does this not mean anything to you, YN? I don’t think I could stomach you running off to Changbin or fucking Chan again.”

His words pierce your heart before you have even fully processed them, hurt flashing across your features and your body goes numb. “What?” Is all you can manage, scrambling to get away from him, chest heaving and eyes suddenly burning with the brine of tears. “What are you talking about, Hyunjin?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about!” He shouts. You flinch, not from the way he raises his voice, but from the genuine sadness in his eyes. “The past three years have been a constant battle with you. We’re best friends, for fucks sake, I figured out a long time ago that you have feelings for me. Feelings more than best friends. Yet every fucking time we started moving in the right direction, you turned your back on me.”

You can do nothing but stand there and let the tears fall. All the words and bottled emotions you wish to say are right there on the tip of your tongue, but you simply cannot bring yourself to voice them. Not when he’s right. Not when you have turned your back on him time and time again.

And then, he hisses more to himself than you, “Is this just sloppy seconds? You never once thought about my feelings in all of this?”

The anger brewing within you suddenly bursts from the dam and hisses through your body like deadly poison. “Sloppy seconds?” You snarl, fists clenching. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Your feelings? You just said you know how I feel about you, so why didn’t you ever do anything about it? How was I supposed to know you felt the same?”

“I thought it was pretty fucking obvious,” Hyunjin spits back, gaze narrowing, “didn’t think I had to spell out the fact that I like you, YN. You’re a smart girl.”

“Do not treat me like a child,” clenching your jaw, you have to look away for a moment, pacing one, two, three steps, hands raking through your hair and wiping away the stream of tears from your cheeks. You have never been filled with such rage. Having finally reached its boiling point, it now consumes you whole, sweeping off in waves and destroying all boundaries. “Confessing is not an easy thing, as you apparentlyknow, so don’t make me seem like the only idiot here. But maybe I was wrong about you if you think of me as just sloppy seconds.”

“I never said that!” Hyunjin barks, standing up to grasp your wrist when you turn away to grab your keys. “Don’t put words in my mouth! I would never, never think of you that way. I just don’t understand why you never spoke up after all this time. I’ve been dying, YN, you have no clue how badly I have been—”

“Oh, believe me, I know,” you snap, yanking your arm away from him, “I told you, Hyunjin. Telling someone you love them isn’t as easy as learning to ride a bike. You’re right, I have turned my back on you. But not intentionally. I’ve been scared, I’m a pussy, whatever.” Biting your top lip as if it will stop the tears that continue to fall freely, you avoid looking at him and glance back to find not only Seungmin, but Jisung and Changbin, too, peeking out from their doors with eyes blown wide with shock. Once you have noticed them, however, they panic and scramble to get out of sight.

Sighing shakily, you look back to Hyunjin and cannot ignore the way your heart sinks at the sight of him. Even upset, he is beautiful. You wonder how much you will see him after this.

“You don’t have to tell me you like me back to make me feel better, Hyunjin,” bouncing on your heels, you suddenly feel exhausted, body and soul heavy with the words you not only spoke, but heard, too. “We can figure this out another day, but for now, I need to go home. I’ll see you.”

Turning away once more, you do not make it very close to the front door before he stops you once more. “Wait, YN,” Hyunjin huffs, smiling softly when he reaches for your hand and you do not pull away. Running his tongue over his lip, he seems to hesitate for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts.

“Did you mean it when you said you love me?”

⇢ epilogue

[whump-town]

Scratch

Here is the Scratch fic. I sincerely love the beginning but the ending makes me want to scream in frustration. However, I simply can not stand to look or think about it any longer so cherish this fic for the first 800 words and pretend the last 400 don’t exist because... it’s just miserable writing and I can’t fix it 

There used to be a point in time when Derek Morgan despised some of the additional duties of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Aaron had been the barrier of that bad news, physically bringing him the sign-up sheet and explaining the general ins and outs of each option. Hotch always does the hostage negotiation class and it’s where he fits best. He was there when Dave, Jason, and Max started the book they teach out of. Being a hot-headed thirty-something Derek wanted to go to bars and hang out with friends in his spare time and he wanted nothing to do with the academy. If anything, he’d like to stay out of that hell-hole as best he can and away from the little savor complex having adrenaline mongers that it holds within its walls. But he’d grown… and more than that he saw things that he can’t forget. Fallacies and stumbles happen when agents aren’t taught by people who know what they’re doing. He’s watched them happen to his family and, suddenly, it didn’t matter all that much if he had to spend his Friday morning with cadets. 

While Aaron works in the lecture halls, Derek spends a lot of time teaching the hand-to-hand combat class down in the academy’s basement. Every few months, when the class sizes diminish as the season dies down and the cadets graduate, Derek hassles them all down there to his thrown of rubber gym mats and the stench of sweat. He’s always met with hesitation and outright dismissals but he gets every last one of them down. Reid laughs him off, anxiously trying to provide every reason under the sun as to why he doesn’t need to be down there. “Hotch doesn’t even put me in the field that much!” and “why do I need that? Why can’t you protect me?” They all present him with similar points. Garcia doesn’t actually ever go in the field, the best taste she gets is going to local precincts. Hotch nods and listens but ultimately promises to get some time in someplace else, running maybe. In Derek’s experience, the only running Hotch does is into fires so that’s obviously not helping too much. 

Derek has wrangled them all down. JJ goes without complaint, she enjoys rough-housing down there with him. He teaches her to protect her left flank, which she has an awful habit of leaving open. Emily will make her way down and raise hell but she’ll listen when he tells her to drop her shoulder more or to shift her weight a certain way. Derek’s trouble comes in Reid and Garcia and, though it’s both surprising yet not, Hotch. He’ll bait the other two down with snacks and the promise of lunch or a dinner date and they’re satisfied if not just putting up with him. Hotch… well, he has to catch him at the end of a seminar and ask him, in front of the students, to do it otherwise Hotch will just glare at him. Which is what he’ll do when Derek asks him in front of the cadets but Hotch has a dash of anxiety and wedged between Derek Morgan standing in his way stopping him from being able to go lock himself in his office and a hoard of cadets, he always cracks. 

He doesn’t do it to torture them (no matter what Reid and Garica think). He does it because...

He remembers the feeling of the cold November breeze drying his sweat to his skin when he heard Hotch’s shout sound through the woods. To find Reid digging his own grave in a dark cemetery hardly able to stand and collapsing right into their arms. The way that Garcia had whimpered and held his hand a little tighter when they walked past the dark stain of her blood sitting right there on her front steps. For the vomit that had crawled up his throat as he ripped the carpet in Hotch’s apartment. Jerking too hard and feeling the blood soaking into his clothes. For the ache of his knees when she cradled Emily on that floor, begging her to stay with him. Her fingers are already cold. For having to listen to JJ’s screams months after she was taken. Finding her in the closed-off rooms sobbing and being reminded all over again what had happened that day and what would have happened if Emily and Hotch hadn’t found her.

He’s just… he’s so tired of seeing them get hurt. 

“Hotch’s going there now.” 

Derek sits up, eyes darting around the car as he realizes if they’re all here Hotch is entirely alone. “Without back-up?” he asks. “That’s crazy. He can’t go in alone like that.” 

Dave shrugs, “well, I’d love to talk him out of it but he’s made his mind up. There’s no stopping him.” Dave meets his eyes through the mirror, face twisted in his own frustration with Aaron’s course of actions, but leaving them unspoken. “We’re right behind him, Morgan. He’ll be fine.” 

Derek averts his gaze to the window, clenching his jaw to ride out the tide of anger boiling over within him. Sometimes he finds that he can’t stand working on this unit. Not with Dave and people like Aaron and Emily. All the hiding and the faking, it’s too much. It’s exhausting. Derek loves Emily, he does but he can’t stand the tiptoeing. The way they have to play every new hand dealt like everything is going to be fine. Like Hotch isn’t going to put himself in danger. Like Reid isn’t too young to be doing the things they ask of him. Like being a family somehow saves the day.

“Be careful,” Dave advises. They don’t know what they’re walking into. Their only way to see insides hasn’t answered their calls. Not Garcia’s and not the three Dave tried to get through. “One of ours is in there,” Dave adds as if they can forget. As if the most pressing thing on any of their minds is finding Hotch. Afraid of what they’ll find but the need to find him regardless of what waits on the other side of that door is stronger. 

Derek goes in first. Reid presses in close, buzzing with his anxiety. The kid can never really get his mind clear but it’s worse when the danger is as clear as it is now. As they stand outside of the door knowing that whatever waits on the other side is entirely out of their control. And that can mean anything. “Ready?” Derek asks, but he’s not waiting for an answer.

The door opens without him needing to force it in but the house is bathed in darkness. Derek’s eyes dart to the only source of light, to his left a desk lamp, but he’s got to clear what’s in front of him. Leave someone else to assess that. He steps into the hall and throws up an arm as something sharp slices through the flesh of his forearm, his only warning the moan of an old floorboard. There’s a tangle of arms, their sight stolen by the way the walls of the hall consume the meager light from the desk.

Derek’s hand throbs as he punches blindly at ribs, finding no resistance, just bone. The other man puffs, caving in as Derek steals the breath from his lungs. The knife glints in the light, as the man turns his wrist but Derek sees it and he smacks it away with the flat of his palm meeting the man’s wrist hard. It’s over just as soon as it started. Reid gets a clear shot from the mouth of the hallway and Derek shoves the other man off and away from him. Staggering quickly to kick the knife further away.

His arm stings as he leans against the wall, moving his gun to throw the beam of his flashlight at his attacker. Finds the blood attached to the white dress-shirt. To the sharp jaw and the worry lines that he knows all too well. “Oh, God.” Derek falls to his knees, arm suddenly forgotten, as he defends himself from what’s left of Hotch’s fight. Slipping in his blood as Hotch tries to force him away, terrified. “Hotch--” the older man lands a solid blow to Derek’s sternum and all Derek sees is red as his vision dances and he struggles to pull in a breath.

It’s just enough time. Too much.

Pulling himself on rapidly numbing arms, Hotch slips in his blood. His adrenaline is working against him as his arms quake beneath him but there is still a threat and he has to eliminate it. Has to stop it from hurting the team. Peter is going to kill them. He knows. He knows it and he’s the only chance they have. His fingers curl around the knife but he can not force his legs to work. Can’t bend his knees. 

“Hotch! Man, it’s me. It’s--”

No. Tears sting his eyes as he thinks about the real Derek Morgan. His friends, his family. About the son, he’s left at home again. Waiting for him to come home. He’s not sure he’s coming back this time but that’s beyond his control. He can save the others. He needs them to live. Crying out as his arm gives out from beneath him, chin hitting the floor hard as his body gives out from beneath him, Hotch knows this is it. He’s got no time left but he won’t let Peter Lewis hurt his team.

The second bullet rips through the air and he feels it lodge itself in his chest. 

Peter is right there.

He doesn’t feel the third.

Derek cries out, his shout ripping his throat as he puts himself between everyone else and Hotch. Pulling the knife from Hotch’s cold limp fingers and throwing it down the hall as far as he can. “Hotch,” he cries, shaking the older man. “Hotch, man, look at me.” He grabs Hotch’s jaw, shaking his head. Trying to draw something sort of reaction out of him but only getting choked, strangled breathes. The wet sound of the blood hitting the back of his throat before it pools in his mouth. Gushing past his lips, trailing down his cheeks like a tear.

“Fucking help me!” Derek cries at the officers loitering-- all caught in the web of confusion. They’d just watched the downed man attack the special agent. They watched him go for the knife again, try to end it. It’d been their bullets that stopped him. They stopped him… “Move!” Derek screams at them. “Move! Do something! I-- I need help!” 

JJ drops down on Hotch’s other side, her hand swiping through the blood on Hotch’s face quickly. Her thumb cleaning it away as quickly as it appears, her other hand coming to cup the side of his head, shushing him gently as she strokes his temple. “It’s okay,” she soothes, calmly. “You’re okay, Aaron. We got Peter Lewis. We got him. You’re okay.”

He fights against them, struggling but ultimately too weak, to pull away from JJ’s warm palm and the hand Derek uses to keep both his arms down. He can’t go anywhere forced to look at them and he’s torn between the way his eyes deceive him. JJ’s hands are cold, they’re always cold. Peter Lewis wouldn’t know that. He wouldn’t know how softly his name rolls off her tongue, quick to slip in Aaron when he doesn’t even know he needs it. How she says it and he can feel his humanity slip right back into place. 

Peter Lewis couldn’t produce that panicked crack in Derek’s voice. The way Derek throws his words like punches. 

He’s not sure what’s real. 

“No, no, no!” Derek pushes at him, sending bolts of pain along his chest but Hotch can’t do it any longer. Each breath pulls more weight across his chest. The cold spreads down his arms, fingers hardened by its bite. He’s done. The confusion-- his vision fading in and out-- but he knows that when he closes his eyes the hands touching him are Derek and JJ. When he opens them again… he doesn’t know what is real.

“Stay with me,” Derek commands but he’s slipping there’s nothing. His hands are covered in blood and he’s torn between leaning into JJ’s palm and being convinced that maybe the voice in his head is right. This is all a trap. But he’s dying and he’d rather do it here with the fictive parts of them in his mind than with whatever is real.  

JJ squeezes his hand, worrying his knuckles with her fingers until he squeezes back. “Just hold my hand,” she encourages. “Just squeeze my hand.” He’s there but he knows his brain will lie if he opens his eyes. She's right there, he tells himself. Right there. “Hotch!” JJ shouts, feeling his hand start to release. She folds her own over his, forcing the grip. “Hotch! Hotch, answer me!”

[ladyreapermc]

Fic: Rules of Engagement Chapter 2

Summary: Henry and Em have been friends for almost ten years and involved in a casual affair for just as long. The rules were simple: no romantic attachment and their friends and family couldn’t know. Easy enough to do right? However, when new complications emerge, Henry and Em will need to navigate this relationship of theirs, if they can even call it that.  Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 04  | Chapter 5  | Chapter 06

Pairing: Henry Cavill x OFC (Emeline)

Wordcount: 4,5K

Warnings: some fluff and a tiny bit of angst

Author’s notes: I want to thank all the comments I got on the first chapter. I didn’t expect this series to get so much recognition. Thank you! Here’s chapter 02. I do hope you all enjoy it and once again I would love to read your feedback.

Chapter 02 - What are the odds?

As soon as Henry stepped out the car in front of the church, he couldn’t help but let his gaze wander, looking for Em. It was almost second nature to him by now, whenever he would meet their friends, his eyes instinctively looked for her.

This time they landed on Todd first, standing outside and holding his baby girl Sophie in his arms. Henry could already feel the smile tugging on his lips as he made his way over, adjusting his button-down and blazer in the process. Last time he had seen the girl, she had just been born, only a week before he had to travel and start shooting The Witcher, but Todd and Clara made sure to keep him updated with pictures of his future goddaughter.

“My God, mate! you’re huge!” Todd commented voice full of awe and Henry chuckled, too distracted by the baby in his friend’s arms.

There was a huge pink bow on top of her brown curly hair and her eyes were bright blue and staring at Henry as he made a couple of silly faces until he got a bubbly giggle.

“What are they doing to you?”

“You don’t want to know. Sorry, I’m late. My flight was delayed.”

“You’re not all that late. Em had wardrobe trouble and Clara is giving her a hand,” Todd said, chuckling as Henry offered his hands up to the toddler, and to his surprise, Sophie actually reached for him, asking to be taken and Henry smirked. “She’s 6 months and already under your charms,” Todd clicked his tongue, handing over the girl.

It was no secret that Henry loved children and children loved Henry. Not only that, but he was also actually good with them. Maybe it was all the nephews and nieces, maybe it was just his natural gift, but kids tended to be in his best behavior with him.

Someone’s got a booboo? Call uncle Henry to kiss it better. Crying fit over a stolen toy or a no? Uncle Henry will hold them until they feel better. Don’t want to sleep? Uncle Henry will tell stories and even do all the voices. Sugar high and need to tire them out? Uncle Henry is on the job with a good dose of Kal…

Henry truly didn’t mind being only a call away for his family and friends. Being the last-minute babysitter whenever he was in town and having a chance of spoiling them rotten. He loved being Uncle Henry but he just couldn’t wait for the day he would be the dad.

First, he needed to find a good partner but so far, his relationships had crashed and burned, some more epically than others. And Henry wasn’t getting any younger. He would hate to be one of those fathers that had their first kid in their fifties, but he was slowly approaching his forties and had yet to meet the woman he wanted to have that kind of commitment with.

Shaking himself out of those thoughts that would lead nowhere, Henry followed Todd to a sideway entrance of the church so they could go in without making much of a fuss. It seemed almost fate that just as they stepped inside, a small hidden door opened and both Clara and Em stepped out.

For a second, Henry just stared, because Em looked so beautiful in that form-fitting soft pink dress, her dark hair falling in elegant waves over her shoulders. He didn’t even notice the sigh he let out or the small snort that came from Todd.

Henry wasn’t in the habit of lying to himself, but he made an exception when it came to this because Em might be the only woman he ever really felt like he could have a long-term relationship with. They just clicked in every aspect.

She was funny and goofy, unafraid of giving him hell whenever he was getting a big head. She could be almost brutally honest at times, but Henry had become quite good at calling her out on it with just one look. Em never failed to make him laugh, and he knew that, aside from Clara, he was the only that got her to completely loosen up. And, of course, he couldn’t forget, that the sex was amazing.

Henry was still dreaming about their last encounter last month, the feel of her without any barriers, and how much trust she laid on him to even suggest such a thing. He loved her even more for it and if only she would stop being so stubborn and accept that she loved him too and that they were perfect together, Henry wouldn’t have this problem. Because he knew Em wanted kids too.

They had this conversation one drunken night about a year ago. She had just broken up with her latest boyfriend, for reasons he couldn’t remember, and came over with a bottle of bourbon ready to drown her sorrows.

It was a cool spring night and they lied in his garden watching the night sky and passing the bottle back and forth, complaining about life and love and everything in between. Kal lodged between them, snoring loudly and making them both fall in a fit of giggles every once in a while.

“Ok, confession time…” Em said, turning sideways to look at him. The way she squinted her eyes to see him made Henry laugh. “I miss the kingstache.” She traced the smooth skin of his upper lip and Henry grinned wide.

“You?” he asked in disbelief. “The one that mocked me the most? That called it a porn mustache?”

“Yes, alright?” she pouted at him knocking against Kal, alcohol impairing her coordination. The dog looked up startled and confused before slipping away from between them. “I miss it. It felt good, especially…”

“Especially what?” Henry asked, turning sideways too and now they were so close he could smell the whiskey in her breath; their noses almost bumping against one another.

“The feel of it whenever you were eating me out,” Em confessed, lip tucked between her teeth as they stared at each other. “And only you could rock a mustache like that, ok?”

“I love how honest you get when we put some alcohol in you,” he chuckled, pressing a kiss to her lips.

It was supposed to be just a soft peck but Em fisted his hoodie, holding him still while she explored his mouth in a sloppy kiss and Henry felt his body responding to it. The heat spreading, the stirring in his trousers but he pulled away and gave her a stern look.

“We shouldn’t. we’re drunk and nursing breakups…” he warned but she cut him off with another kiss. This one lasted longer, especially as she pressed her entire body against his, one hand coming to scratch his scalp just like Henry loved it and he moaned into the kiss.

“That’s why it’s perfect,” she mumbled. “We can fuck it out of our systems and move on… I don’t want the next guy to be a rebound.”

“Oh, but I can be? That’s lovely.” He arched an eyebrow, hurt and offended. She sat up and rolled her eyes.

“Like I wasn’t a rebound after most of your girlfriends, Hen? You know what? Forget it. I’m leaving.” Em got up in unsteady feet and Henry was by her side in a flash, helping to keep her upright. She could never hold her liquor all that well.

“You’re too drunk. Just stay here. I can get the guest room ready if you’re that pissed at me.”

“I’m not…” she sighed, resting again his chest, but looking away from him. “I really thought Alex was…”

“Really? I always knew he was a wanker.”

Henry felt the warm huff of her laugh against the exposed skin of his throat before she finally looked up at him, chin resting on his sternum, her big and warm brown eyes glassy, lids lowered, her cheeks flushed from alcohol. It was a beautiful sight and he loved how much shorter Em was; how she fitted in his embrace like she belonged there. Henry pushed the thought aside as he guided her inside and up the stairs.

“He was jealous of you, you know?” she flopped on the bed and let Henry take off her jeans, sweater, and bra. “I think he guessed that we have sex on occasion.”

Henry only hummed in reply, picking up one of his old shirts and helping her to put it on. It fit her almost like a dress, hanging almost at her knees, the neckline loose and slipping over her shoulder. He shouldn’t think it was this cute, but he couldn’t help himself. He bent closer, kissing her softly and Em sighed against his lips.

“I’m gonna grab some aspirin for you, please don’t hurl on my floor.”

She gave him a clumsy punch on the shoulder that Henry barely felt, and he chuckled all the way to the kitchen. He wished he could tell Em that he was glad Alex wasn’t the one and that he would like her to see Henry might be. They’ve been doing this for 8 years now and it was probably the longest relationship he had with anyone. If you could call periodically hooking up with a good friend a relationship.

He got back to the room and Em was already asleep, head buried on his pillow and Henry felt bad for waking her up but if she didn’t take anything right now, it would be worst in the morning. For both of them. He shook her lightly and she blinked blearily at him, but still accepting the pill he put in her hand and the sip of water he offered.

“Thanks, Hen. I love you,” she slurred, and Henry chuckled, setting the glass aside while he took off his clothes.

Em would always blurt that out when she was this drunk and it always warmed his heart, giving him hope until the bright light of the day came and he realized that no matter how many times she would say it, Em would still fight this pull between them.

“You’re welcome, love.”

He crawled in bed with her and Em immediately settled against him, tugging on his arm until Henry was spooning her, holding her tight. She was such a cuddler and he loved it. He loved to fall asleep with his nose buried in her head, inhaling the scent of sugar and spice that clung to her. He loved the feel of her warm skin and the soft snores that she never admitted she let out or the way she clung to his hand until she fell asleep.

It was sweet torture to have her like this, knowing that when morning came, Em would be out the door, both of them going their separate ways. But at least for those blissful hours, in the darkness of the night, Henry could pretend otherwise.  

For a while, there was only silence and Henry thought she had fallen asleep again. He was almost drifting off himself when she spoke again.

“You will be the perfect partner for some lucky lady out there,” she whispered, her voice surprisingly coherent considering how drunk she was. “And a great dad.”

“Thanks, Em,” Henry smiled and kissed her temple.

“I’m terrified of having kids,” Em confessed quietly, turning in his arms so they could look at each other in the darkness. “I mean, I didn’t have the greatest role model for a family.”

Henry pushed some hairs away from her face, looking at the big doe eyes staring at him with a glimmer of wetness. He knew her mom left when she was very young and her dad was… well, interesting.

“Do you want to?” he asked, thumb caressing her jaw. “Have kids, I mean?” she nodded, a flitting smile sneaking into her face.

“Yeah, two,” she said softly. “Because I hated being an only child. Good thing I had Clara. How about you?”

“I always thought at least three,” he replied, smiling too. “I want my house full, just like I had growing up.”

“At least?” she cocked an eyebrow at him, and Henry chuckled and shrugged. “I guess that sounds good too, maybe a little chaotic… I mean, how would that work with you and your wife working full time?”

“I would take some time off, of course…” Henry said, lying on his back, one arm around her, the other bent beneath his head. “I’m doing pretty well financially, and I could afford to spend some time off-screen or maybe take smaller roles, local productions…”

“You really thought this out, huh?” Em asked head tilted his way and Henry nodded. He lost count how many times he envisioned this scenario, the only thing that usually changed was the face he pictured for the woman in his life. “You would turn the guest room into a nursery?”

“At first, yeah, but I definitely would want a bigger place,” he said, drawing patterns on her arm. “A little farther away from the city, with a nice kitchen and a big master bedroom. A garden so Kal can run around and the kids could have a playground, maybe even a treehouse…”

“That sounds nice, I’d like that,” she mumbled, her eyes fluttering close, her breath evening out. With one last smile, Henry kissed her brow and let himself drift off too.

That conversation had stayed with him for way longer than it should. Em didn’t remember any of it of course, but Henry did because it seeded something in his heart that he had to work hard to ignore whenever they were together.

Henry guessed it could be seen as a small blessing that their hookups weren’t happened all that often anymore, even if they were both single. He also couldn’t help but notice that when they did end up together, Em seemed to fight the pull that existed between them until she finally relented and fell in bed with him. It made him wonder what changed. Why she felt like they couldn’t have this anymore.

“Henry! You’re here!” Clara greeted him with a kiss on the cheek before she looked down at her daughter comfortably settled on his arms. “And you already charmed Sophie, I see.” She looked at Todd with a grin. “You owe me a tenner.”

Todd rolled his eyes, taking the girl from Henry so they could walk into the church with their daughter, while Henry and Em took their places at the altar, side by side and he gave her a sideways glance to have a better look at her.

“You look nice.”

“You too,” she smiled at him. Her soft, glossy lips looked so tempting that Henry had to discreetly shift his stance to adjust himself.

“What was wrong with your dress?” His gaze lingered on the generous neckline that gave a very nice view of her cleavage. “Looks really good. Especially your tits. They look bigger somehow.”

“Henry!” Em hissed sharply with a glare, but he could see she was fighting off a smile. “But you might actually be right because I busted a seam under my arm and Clara had to sew it back together.”

Before Henry could comment on anything else, the ceremony started and they returned to their best behavior. Todd and Clara brought Sophie forward, handing the girl to Henry and Em so she could be baptized and they were named her godparents.

It was hardly a surprise for them that the couple had invited them, especially because Henry had Todd as a fifth brother and he knew Em viewed Clara as a sister, but they were both honored by the invitation.

Once the ceremony was over, everyone started to head to Todd and Clara’s place for the celebration. Henry was about to ask Em for a ride since he had taken a taxi but froze when he saw her heading to a car with a guy he didn’t know.

“Hey Todd,” he caught his friend who was on his way to say goodbye to a few guests that wouldn’t be able to make to the party. “Who’s that?”

“That’s Jack,” Todd said, following Henry’s gaze, catching sight of Em chatting with the blonde man. “He’s a friend of Clara’s. He and Em met a couple of months ago.”

“They’re dating?” Henry asked with a frown and uncomfortable burn in his stomach, like acid reflux. He had to swallow hard against the urge to puke.

“I don’t know,” Todd shrugged. “But they seemed to have hit off pretty well.”

As if on cue, Em’s laugh rang loud and bright as Jack held the door open so she could slide inside, and Henry had to clench his jaw to stop himself from cursing. From the look on Todd’s face, his friend noticed.

“Need a ride?” he asked, pulling Henry’s attention back him. “My brother is heading off right now.”

“Yes, thanks.”

Henry tried to push the thoughts of Em and the Jack bloke aside, pay at least a little bit of attention to whatever Todd’s brother was droning on and on, but it seemed to be an impossible task. Fortunately, the younger man didn’t seem to need his interaction to make conversation, so Henry just hummed occasionally, looking out the window. He wondered why Em didn’t mention Jack at all last time they saw each other.

Sure, it was a quick visit, but they did talk a lot before they ended up in bed together. It would have been nice to know in advance that she was dating. Was she dating? Em didn’t strike him as the kind of woman that would hook up with someone else if she was seeing another but maybe that was why she was so reluctant to sleep with him last few times?

Before Henry could reach any conclusion, they arrived and he thanked Todd’s brother for the ride before letting his gaze wander through the small gathering of people, locating Em. She was unsurprisingly surveying the cake and pastries since her bakery provided every single treat offered at this party.

Henry didn’t taste anything yet, but he knew they were delicious. Em had a unique talent for baking and it was no wonder her store was becoming more and more popular. He knew part of it was her perfectionism. Even though her team worked with her for years now and knew exactly how she would plan tables and displays, she still needed to survey everything, making sure it was up to her standards.

He took a step in her direction, but before he could go any further, Clara called his name and caught his arm in a soft but firm grip, giving the guest she was talking to a small smile of apology before tugging him to the side.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” she smiled and for a relatively small woman, she could be very intimidating. It was something to do with her piercing blue eyes that always seemed to see right through him. “Have you met Jack?”

“Not really,” he replied in surprise and confusion. Sometimes it felt like Clara could read his mind or something.

“Let me introduce you to him, then,” Clara said, pulling him along and Henry didn’t have in him to protest. He was after all curious about the man. “And please, be nice and make an effort to like him.”

“What does it matter if I like him or not?”

Clara turned to face Henry, her eyes narrowed as she stared him down, and weirdly enough, Henry felt like shrinking into himself at the weight of her stare. No wonder she was such an amazing prosecutor. That one stare was enough to make him want to confess all his crimes.

“So, you don’t know?”

“Know what?” Henry asked. This was one of the most cryptic conversations he had ever had, and he had to do interviews about DCEU without giving any spoilers. Clara heaved a sigh, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You’re Em’s judge.”

“Sorry, I’m what?”

“Em’s judge. For a man’s character. If you don’t like a man she’s seeing or interested in, she’ll dump their arse like a hot potato. You never noticed?”

“No! Clara, that’s… insane! I have no saying in who Em dates.” Henry huffed an awkward breath as he watched his friend. She could not be serious, but from the way she was looking at him, he knew she met every word.

“We both know you don’t have to say anything.” Clara rolled her eyes at him. “Honestly, I’m surprised that Alex lasted as long as he did considering your face turned sour everything time he was around. It was like you had shit stuck under your nose. But regardless if you believe it or not, could you make an effort with Jack? I really think he could be great for Em.”

“Fine!” Henry sighed just wanting to get out of this conversation. “But not right now. I haven’t eaten in six hours and I’m starting to get dizzy.”

“Thank you!” She flashed him a bright smile. “Head to the kitchen and grab something. Brunch will still be a while.” She came to her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek before walking away before Henry could even process what was happening.

Henry stood there for a few moments like gaping fish, still trying to wrap his head around the entire conversation but giving up because when it came to Clara, she was lightyears ahead of them on some things. He might as well do what he was told and get a snack before he passed out.

To Henry’s surprise, when he got to the kitchen, he found Em at the sink, finishing up a sandwich that she handed him as soon as he stepped closer.

“What’s this?”

“Toasted wheat bread, no crust, turkey slices, and that tasteless cheese you actually like. Honey mustard, but no mayo,” she said, leaning against the counter and giving him a smile when Henry’s stomach rumbled. “I figured you didn’t have time to grab a bite to eat at the airport...”

“I didn’t. Thanks,” he grinned at her, taking a bite and groaning loudly, making Em chuckle.

“Settle down, Cavill. It’s not that good,” she joked, popping a piece of turkey on her mouth, but grimacing. “Urgh, this taste like cardboard.”

“You’re ok?” he frowned at Em.

“Yeah, just feeling a little queasy all morning,” she replied. “But I have to eat something or my blood sugar gonna plummet.”

Abandoning his sandwich for a second, Henry moved closer to her, resting the back of his hand against her forehead and then neck, frowning lightly.

“You are a little hot.”

“Thanks,” she flashed him a cheeky smile that made Henry chuckle.

“You know what I mean.” He cupped her cheek and it was a testament of how bad she much be feeling if Em was actually letting her guard down and allowing this small intimate moment in a place anyone could walk in on them. “You might be coming down with something.”

“Fuck! I hope not. This is one of my busiest months,” she let out a long exhale, and maybe it was just Henry’s wishful thinking, but he thought Em might have stepped closer, almost leaning into him and all he wanted was to take her in his arms and hold her.

“Am I interrupting?” Clara cleared his throat, making them both jump and turn to stare at her guiltily as she looked at them with a knowing smirk.

Henry wondered why she seemed to be everywhere. He knew it was this sort of gift every great hostess had but it could be very annoying when all he wanted was some privacy with Em.

“No,” Em recovered first, stepping away from Henry. “I’m just not feeling well, and Henry was checking up on me.”

Clara just hummed, coming closer and mimicking Henry’s actions, her brow drawing into a frown.

“I don’t think you have a fever, but you’re a little hot. Maybe it’s just that time of the month?” she asked, giving Henry a sideways glance.

“No, I had my period…” Em trailed off with a thoughtful frown as if she couldn’t exactly recall and Clara chuckled.

“You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d joke you’re pregnant,” Clara teased with a smile. “I mean, the bloating and nausea and all that? Anyway, just lie down for a while. You’re probably just overworked.”

Once again, Clara was gone like a quick whirlwind, leaving Henry and Em to stare at each other in shock. He knew his eyes were wide and he was stunned into silence. Em just looked like a deer caught in headlights.

“No!” she snapped once Henry recovered enough to try to say something. “Don’t even think it, Henry. It was once and I have an IUD. It can’t be.”

“You’re right,” he agreed quickly, but his heart was still thundering in his chest, his hands sweaty and he could barely breathe, terror and excitement mingled together in his chest, but he didn’t dare to voice it. Not when Em looked like she was about to throw up.

“Clara’s right. I’m just tired,” she sounded like she was trying to convince herself, not Henry. “I just need a good night of sleep. That’s all. So, we’re not gonna talk about this, because it’s impossible. What are the odds of actually happening?”

Less than 1 percent, Henry found out later, once he was at home and couldn’t sleep, still thinking about the entire thing. He googled it to calm his nerves, surprised by the hint of disappointment he felt at learning it was next to impossible. It wasn’t enough to stop him from thinking and wondering, though.

Enough so that when he heard the sound of his doorbell, Henry nearly jumped out of his skin. It was a noise he practically had forgotten about since Kal would always announce newcomers way before they could ring it. But Kal was back in Budapest. It didn’t make sense to bring him over when Henry would only be staying a day.

Henry glanced at his clock, frowning at the late hour as he made his way downstairs and pulled his door open. Em pushed her way inside, her face tearstained and a mask of fury as she threw something his way. Henry caught by reflex, before staring at her in confusion.

“I hate you, Cavill! I fucking hate you!” she declared, sniffling and hugging herself.

“Em, what…?” he didn’t get to finish his question, because she gestured at the object he was still holding. Henry finally looked down, eyes widening when he realized it was a pregnancy test. One of those pharmacy types and it was positive.

“I did five of them. All positive,” she said, rubbing her face dry and glaring at him. “Damn you and your fucking Superman sperm!”

Henry stared at her wordless, still clinging to the white stick in his hand.

“What are we gonna do?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t know how.

chapter 01                                     x(tbc)x                                           chapter 03

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[elderbwrry]

Even if he doesn’t say so - Chapter 4/?

Kylo/Hux/Poe Witcher AU

Chapter summary: Poe gets into a barfight - minor warnings for blood. (word count 2141)

Chapters 1, 2, 3 and on ao3

Kylo and Hux were on their way back to the tavern where Poe would be giving his latest performance...

They had spent all the afternoon consulting with the mayor of this backwater little town as to what services they could possibly render him. He was an odious man who didn't seem to know exactly what he was talking about, and prattled on for hours about werewolf sightings – Kylo was almost certain that the mayor's reports were only rumour – before changing tack to ask Hux a million pointless questions. It had taken so long that it was now almost night. The least he could have done, if all he wanted was to be able to say he'd met a mage and a Witcher, was compensate them for their time. Still, it had been fun to see how politely Hux could insult him.

There was a considerable noise coming from somewhere ahead of them on their path, and, as they rounded the corner, it became clear that the source was the tavern. The place was full to bursting, people crowding in the door and standing on tip toes to see in. The music which should have been flowing out of the place was instead replaced with shouts and jeering. Hux and Kylo figured out what was happening at virtually the same time, quickening their pace.

The place smelt of spilt beer and sweat, and the loud, human noise bit at Kylo's senses with an acidic tang between his eyes and at the back of his neck, making his fists curl. Hux shouldered his way forward, but the crush parted easily for them, creating ripples of, “It's the Witcher!”, “that horrid magician,” “mutant freaks.”

If everything had stopped when they arrived, the solid blow of flesh hitting flesh kickstarted it all again, sending forth another round of jeers as everyone turned back to the commotion at the centre of the room. The last layer of people peeled back, and the cause of it all was revealed.

Poe, his lute and doublet discarded somewhere, was squaring up, fists first, to another man who was both younger and larger than himself. The sleeves of Poe's shirt were rolled up to expose his forearms, the collar of that same shirt flapping open lower than usual, his knuckles of a shade suggesting that a number of blows had already been dealt. His hair was in disarray, sweat sheening his skin, and there was a bright red split freshly on his lip. It was... handsome. It made Kylo angry.

Growling, he took an abortive step towards Poe's adversary, only to be blocked by a surprisingly firm hand on his sternum. Hux.

“What is the meaning of this?” the mage asked the room icily.

“They're voicing their unwanted opinions,” Poe told them, and it was with such hostility that Kylo would scarcely believe it could come from him, if he didn't know that Poe had a righteous streak a mile wide.

“We don't take kindly to things like you coming to these parts,” someone said.

“Witchers and their murdering.”

“Mages and their sin.”

“We've heard the stories!” another added, and noises of assent scattered around the room.

Kylo had been in situations like this before. He'd been known to act badly in them. Rashly. Angrily. He cast his gaze around, and people seemed to shrink back from it. He could only imagine how he looked, pale skin, red scar, irises a sick, blank yellow, like a vulture. Finally, he found himself facing the man Poe had been fighting.

“Inhuman thing,” the man looked Kylo up and down with disgust and spat at his feet.

Kylo could have had the man in a choke-hold in a matter of seconds, but a determined blur shot forward, ducking under the fists the man's slackening stance had let weaken. Poe punched the man hard in the stomach, causing him to double over enough that Poe could then bring a knee up into his nose, letting loose a fountain of blood. The man yelled in pain, grabbing a hold of Poe's shoulder. Kylo had never intervened faster in his life, hitting away the man's arm and standing in his way.

“You need your pet monsters to save you, huh?” the man taunted even though he was clearly scared, or at least wary, his eyes flitting between Poe and his reinforcements, his speech clodded up with his nosebleed.

“Watch your damn words!” Poe shot back. “My friends are better men than you'll ever be.”

“Pussy.”

Kylo had to stop Poe's lurching attempt at an attack.

“Everyone out!” Hux ordered, his voice almost impossibly loud. People began to slink out of the door, but slowly enough that Kylo decided to take matters into his own hands and bundle Poe off in the direction of the stairs. He went with a few firm nudges, snatching his lute and doublet up from where they were stashed by the bar as he went. His tendons stood out where his grip on them was so tight.

“Go to the room,” Kylo hissed at him, lingering on the stairwell in case Hux needed backup.

It was quickly revealed to be a pointless consideration.

Hux already had backed Poe's assailant up against a wooden wall, the point of a dagger to his throat, his other hand glowing at his side. Kylo was almost certain that was the initial stages of a nasty hex, more than was required to intimidate some bigoted peasant.

“He started it-” the man was saying, and Hux was shaking his head with a sneer.

“That could not matter to me less. If I hear a single word from you I don't ask for, you will regret it. Do you know you laid hands on a lord?”

The man's throat bobbed. Of course he hadn't known Poe was nobility.

“In his kingdom,” Hux continued, turning the dagger so the edge was on the man's clavicle, “he is known as a good man. A righteous man. You angered- no, you infuriated a good man. Riled him up enough to do this.” Hux's tone changed, getting impossibly sharper. “I am not like him. I could raze this pathetic spit of matchsticks, if I wanted to. And you,” he dug the dagger in a little, skirting the man's jugular, “would be the one to blame, for harming someone I hold precious.” He let the threat sit for a moment before stepping back, the glow by his hand dissipating. “In fact, you had better check your house isn't already up in flames.”

The man made to scramble for the door.

“And next time,” the man paused, the hate in his eyes now significantly dwarfed by his fear as Hux spoke, “I suggest you remember that a mage's wrath is far worse than our sin.”

Kylo got up to the room before Hux could catch him watching on the stairwell.

Poe was pacing restlessly. When Kylo entered, he stopped, tapping his foot. “You should have let me beat the shit out of him.”

“You should have let me beat the shit out of him,” Kylo replied, his voice curling into a growl. To hear the way the townspeople spoke about himself wasn't unusual – he'd lashed out before, and it was one of the reasons he stayed out of towns as much as possible – but it was the first time he'd heard someone speak about Hux that way, and it was the first time Poe had come to blows that Kylo wasn't there to stop before he'd sustained damage. Crossing the room and lifting a hand to carefully tilt Poe's head to the side, examining the bruising on his jaw and temple, Kylo asked, “Did he hurt you?”

“Just bruises,” Poe replied, his teeth gritted more, Kylo suspected, from residual fury than from pain. No, that would hit later when the adrenaline dissipated. “Those things they were saying about you – fucking rude. And untrue.”

Kylo hummed some assent. “You both should be treated like royalty,” he muttered, thinking it only true; Poe wasroyalty of a self evident sort of virtue, and Hux was both powerful enough and well respected enough to demand that sort of praise.

Poe laid his fingers on Kylo's wrist. “And the things about you,” he insisted, his brow furrowing in a way that said he was concerned in a new direction. “You don't believe them, do you?”

The disbelief in Poe's voice made Kylo want to deny it. Luckily, Hux joining them in the room saved him from stumbling his way some verbal deflection.

“Did he hurt you?” Hux asked immediately.

“Just bruises,” Poe repeated as the mage approached, before protesting with a weak “Hey!” as his shirt was unceremoniously lifted by Hux to inspect him for more bruises, wincing as his surprised twist to the side made something twinge.

“What if he'd had the presence of mind to pull a knife?” Hux reprimanded him, noting with disapproving exactitude the red patches by Poe's ribs.

“Well he didn't, so it's fine.”

“That is not-” Hux cut himself off with an irritated sigh, heading to where Kylo's pack was by the table and picking through it without asking. “In the future, please remind yourself of your mortality before throwing yourself into something so foolish as a tavern brawl.”

“You sound like Leia.”

“I desperately hope not,” Hux replied drily, and, having found the vial he was looking for, returned to stand before Poe, looking over his bruises again. He popped open the vial – Kylo recognised it as one of his own healing potions, too strong for Poe just to drink – upturning it with his finger over the top, before dabbing the liquid onto the bruises.

Poe hissed at the contact. “Look, you can't expect me to just stand there while people insult you!”

“That is exactly what I expect-”

“Don't ask me to, Hux. I won't.” Poe's dark eyes flicked up to Kylo again, anguish creeping in to the set of his features. “Not when Kylo believes those things.”

Hux froze in what he was doing and straightened up, turning his own piercing eyes onto Kylo. “You do?” Voice as fine as wine, Kylo could detect in his tone notes of disapproval, mild shock, and, surprisingly, genuine pity.

Kylo had been standing there quietly until now, trying not to do anything to bring Poe back to that subject. “Well I...” he fumbled, casting around as if for an answer, pressure mounting as he could feel their attention trained on him, “I'm... it doesn't...” His eyes began to sting and – fuck that – he didn't. He didn't need to be pitied, by Hux, by Poe, by anyone else, no matter who they were to him. He knew what he was, and, though it made his blood boil to hear commoners who hadn't known half the fear and pain he had throw words around like they did, it only hurt so much because he worried they were right.

Poe was reaching out for his wrist again, and the contact made Kylo snatch his arm away and stalk over to the window with a snarled, “Just leave it.” He gripped the window sill and the wood of it creaked with the strain.

Three open-palmed bangs on the door, and the landlord hollered through to them, “I want you out! Out, you hear?”

A few more bangs had Kylo whirling round and snapping, “Fine, now fuck off!” Footsteps hesitatingly retreated, the landlord no doubt wondering whether they actually would go, but there was no way they would stay; there was an even chance Kylo would hit the next person who bothered them, and an only slightly less likely one of Poe doing the same.

“I'll fetch my things,” Hux said. They'd taken two rooms, and, as usual, Kylo and Poe were sharing while Hux got his own. “We should head north a mile or so,” he continued to lay out the reasoning for a sheltered spot he'd noticed, tending to the last of Poe's wounds.

He crooked a finger at Poe, who leaned forward a little. Hux dropped a little of the healing potion onto his thumb, and placed the pad of it tenderly onto the split on Poe's lip. It was just a moment, but though Hux was all business, Kylo noticed Poe's shoulders drop and his eyes flit to Hux's lips momentarily. When Hux removed his thumb the merest of seconds later and turned his attention to recapping the vial, Poe's tongue laved over the spot, which had already faded from red to pink under Hux's care.

The scene made Kylo want – he wanted to touch them, to patch the two of them up when they needed it, to look after them. He gripped the windowsill tighter. Next time, he'd be the one defending them.

[chrissys2boys-dannysteve]

Things Getting Hot

The story is already from 2015, but was never posted by me on Tumblr. I just noticed that when I put together another masterpost of my stories.

“This...was the worst idea you ever had!” Danny shouted breathlessly to be louder than the heavy drumming rain he and Steve were currently running through.

“Come on, Danno, how is this my fault?” Steve dared to ask while he hurried after him.

He sent him a death glare over his shoulder. “Are you kidding me? It was your stupid plan to observe the suspect and come here. And now we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, while it’s raining like hell, because that damn bloody suspect STOLE MY CAR!”

Steve ignored some promising threats of pain Danny muttered under his breath and he said, “I think we should look for protection against the rain. It’s getting worse.”

“No kidding?!” Danny snorted, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “That thought never occurred to me! I actually like swimming through mud and rain with my clothes still on!”

“You could simply get rid of your clothes if that’s what is bothering you.” Steve suggested and glanced around in hope to find a shelter.

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t- AHA! Found something! Come on!”

“Wha- Steven!”

He gave Danny no time to object. Instead he simply grabbed his elbow and pulled Danny with him. They had run a few more meters when Danny realized what they were heading towards.

“That’s a telephone booth, Steven.”

“Do you have a better idea? That’s what I thought.”

They arrived at the telephone booth and Steve wrenched it open before he ushered Danny in. Following him inside he let the door fall shut with a loud thud. It was just then that he realized how small that booth actually was.

“Steven…,” Danny started, still trying to catch his breath, “we can’t stay here. There’s no space for both of us.”

He couldn’t help admitting to himself that Danny was right. Danny’s back was intimately pressed against his front so that he was able to feel every breath he took. Swallowing hard he let his eyes wander over his frame. Despite the rain it had been a hot day, so Danny had left his jacket in the car. The white - and now wet - shirt Danny was wearing had become translucent, and allowed Steve to see Danny’s well-shaped upper body.

“Uhm…” Steve cleared his throat, “you’re probably right, I’ll just wait outside. You can stay here and I try to...” he trailed off. During his suggestion he had pushed the door with his back, but nothing had happened. No matter how hard he pressed his weight against it, it didn’t move an inch.

“Oh fuck…”

“What’s wrong?” Danny was alarmed immediately, obviously well aware of the dread in his voice.

“You’re not going to like it…”

“You don’t say.”

“I can’t open it.”

“What?”

“The door. I can’t open it. It’s stuck.”

Danny groaned in desperation. “Please...Steven, tell me you’re making a joke!”

“Sorry to disappoint you…”

“Not the first time today.”

Steve simply ignored his comment. “Do you have your mobile phone on you? Mine is lying in our car.”

“Great! Yes, I do. It’s in my back pocket.”

Despite this helpful news Danny made no move to get it. Steve furrowed his brows. “Danny?”

“It’s in my back pocket, Steven! He sounded annoyed and a bit embarrassed, and it took a moment for Steve to understand what the problem was.

When he finally did, he could help grinning smugly. His fierce partner didn’t dare reaching between their touching bodies. How interesting, he thought with a chuckle, only to earn a grumble from Danny.

“Hold still,” Steve said amused, taking the matter literally in his own hands.

Touching his butt hadn’t been Steve’s intention at all, but when he accidentally did, Danny startled so badly that he fought with every power he had to turn around in that very tight booth. Steve winced in pain, when Danny repeatedly stepped on his feet and rammed his elbow in his gut.

“What the hell, Steve?” he gasped as soon he was facing him.

His response was a whining. “I didn’t do it deliberately, Danno! Besides, I already got your phone!”

Danny murmured something under his breath and grabbed it from Steve’s hold, completely ignoring his sulking partner for a moment. “It’s not working. I think it might be wet,” Danny sighed.

“What’s with that phone?” Steve nodded to the telephone of the booth behind Danny. “Wait, don’t move!” He interjected reproachfully when Danny was about to turn around again. “I get this!”

“Fine,” Danny rolled his eyes and let Steve reach around him. “Try to call Chin.”

There was a moment of silence while Steve did as told. “I can’t, it’s dead.”

“What do you mean it’s dead.”

Steve shrugged. “I guess no one needs telephone booths anymore.”

“Well, apparently we do. Okay, let me get this straight. We’re stuck - not only in the middle of nowhere but also in a telephone booth with a not-working telephone. Our car has been stolen, my mobile is wet and nobody knows where we are. We have a cloudburst outside and something that feels like a sauna oven in here. Was that it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Great!” Danny groaned and ran his fingers through his hair. The thought that it was a beautiful sight flashed through Steve’s mind, even though Danny’s hair was wet. Or maybe even because of this fact.

“Relax Danno. We’ll get out of here somehow. You’ll see! Besides it could be worse, right?”

Danny took a deep breath and was about to say something agreeing, when he glanced outside. Or more precisely, he tried to glance outside. The glass of the telephone booth was fogged. Completely. It was impossible to see anything of the cloudy, rainy afternoon. Danny frowned at Steve and he raised his hands in defense.

“That’s really not my fault!”

“You’re breathing, aren’t you?” Danny stated dryly.

“Don’t make jokes Danno!”

“Oh shut up, Steve!”

They had been stuck in that booth for almost an hour and slowly but surely it was getting uncomfortable. Just out of sheer frustration Danny wrote ‘Help’ in the steam on the window.

“Now don’t be ridiculous, Danny. That’s a little bit over-dramatic, don’t you think?” Steve shook his head, still able to find a certain amusement in this situation.

Danny rolled his eyes at him. He tried to distance himself from Steve, but there simply was no room for that. The huge phone device bumped into his back and made him jerking forwards, actually bringing him even closer to Steve.

“Careful Danno,” Steve warned right into his ear, with his voice still amused and also low all of a sudden. As his arms sneaked around Danny’s middle to pull him away from the pain causing danger, he thought he felt Danny shivering slightly.

“Steve…” Danny’s breath got caught in his throat, but he had no idea what to say, his brain probably suffering the sudden loss of reasonable thoughts.

“Yes, Danny?” This time it was just a hoarse whisper that reached Danny’s sensitive ear, while Steve’s hot hands were burning his skin on the small of his back, right through his wet shirt. This time Steve made him trembling violently.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m keeping you from hurting yourself.”

“Uhm... well then.”

Steve smirked at his irritation, but that grin vanished suddenly while he was watching how Danny’s gaze wandered downwards. A flash of heat floated his body as he realized what Danny was staring at. He had tried to ignore it - actually he had pushed it far, very far, into the most distant corner of his mind - but now he couldn’t escape the fact any longer, that Danny was enticingly pressed against his body.

He was feeling him, every single piece of his senses. Danny’s chest were pressed against his, there were only their drenched shirts between them. All of it hiding practically nothing. Steve almost groaned. Once started he wasn’t able to stop his mind from taking in everything else about Danny. How the centers of their bodies were touching intimately. How one of his legs was caught between his. That was bad, really bad. And yet it felt so good.

Just when he decided that they had to bring some distance between them - no matter how - Danny lifted his head slowly and let their eyes met. Steve felt his knees getting weak on an instant. Danny’s eyes were gleaming, his cheeks were painted in a soft pink and his lips just had been wetted by his tongue. The breath escaped Danny’s mouth in chopped, hot puffs. An in addition to all that, he brought his palms to his chest.

“Steve…” He sighed, and Steve was pretty sure, that Danny was trying to stop what-ever-was-happening. However it sounded so sensual, that it kicked the last rational thought out of his mind.

“Fuck, Danny!” he groaned for real this time, his voice hoarse with desperation and desire. His hands on Danny’s lower back pulled him closer.

The air was thick and hot, and they were covered with a film of rain and sweat. Yet it seemed that both of them needed the proximity of each other more than ever. Steve let his hands trail over Danny’s back upwards over his shoulder and neck, until he could cup his cheek gently. Danny’s eyes were swimming with affection, longing and lust, so he closed them to as a desperate attempt to hide his feelings.

Compensating the loss of his eyes on him, Steve bent down in slow motion and allowed his lips to whisper over the skin right below Danny’s ear. Danny tilted his head to both, nestle his cheek further into Steve’s hand and give his lips more space. While pressing a warm kiss on his neck he caressed Danny’s cheek with his thumb before he moved his hand a bit to bury it in his wet hair.

When Steve teasingly nibbled at his earlobe, Danny gasped his name again and lifted one hand around Steve’s neck while the other is clutching his shirt. Steve shuddered as Danny’s fingernails were scratching his skin on both places. Encouraged he left open-mouthed kisses on his skin, kissing a way from his ear down to his collarbone. Danny threw his head back and his lower body arched against Steve’s. Still holding Danny close he only hesitated a second before his lips placed longing kisses on his sternum. He was about to move even lower when a throaty moan escaped Danny’s mouth.

“Steve…,” he breathed helplessly and carefully grabbed his head to pull him upwards. With a sensual sigh he pressed their lips together for their very first kiss. Finally getting what he had been longing for some time now, it felt as if his senses were exploding. Steve responded to Danny’s kiss in an instant, his mind and body inflamed with the need to never let him go again.

Their kiss was a back and forth between fast and fervent and heated and slow. They completely forgot about the time and their surroundings.

“Oh fuck, Steve, please stop…” Danny whispered desperately, but kissed him again almost at the same time.

“You first,” he breathed into his mouth and deepened the kiss passionately.

Danny whimpered but wasn’t able to break it either. They were so caught in each other’s presence that neither of them heard the thud.

“Steve?” There was the sound again. “Steve, Danny you in there?”

Danny tore his eyes open and pulled away as far as he could without hurting himself. (Therefore not very far). Steve merely blinked, not even moving his hands a single inch. Both of them struggled for air while staring at each other dumbfounded.

“Chin!” It was Steve who recovered his voice first.

“Got them,” both heard Chin say, probably to someone on the phone. “You’re both okay?”

“Yes...uhm...we...we’re stuck. The door jammed.”

There was a short pause on the other side of the door and Danny pressed his eyelids shut in embarrassment and annoyance. Steve chuckled. Danny opened his eyes again and glared at Steve, but with his face flushed like this, Danny looked fucking hot.

“Okay, hold on. I’ll get you out of there.”

“Thanks Chin.”

They heard Chin’s footsteps fading away and Danny glanced at Steve. “We, uhm should probably try to pull ourselves together. Quickly.”

“That’s not an...uhm...easy thing,” Steve replied dryly and got the chance to enjoy Danny’s blushing all over again. “I think we were equally involved in...that.”

“Should I…?” Danny started to move away. However, he didn’t get very far. Steve was still holding him in his embrace and made no effort to let him go.

“No, don’t move.” He shook his head. “Experience has shown that it won’t work like this anyway.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. How do I look? Decent enough?”

Steve took his time to gaze at Danny, noticing his swollen lips, the red cheeks, and his white shirt which he had pushed out of his way earlier. He groaned from the bottom of his heart and answered, “Definitely not!”

Danny looked at Steve with a mixture of annoyance, pride and amusement. “You’re not any better, you know, Steven!? Especially since I can actually feel it.”

Steve chuckled, “I can feel you too, Daniel.”

They could hear Chin return, soon working on the door to free them. In the meantime Steve and Danny tried everything possible to gain back the control over their bodies.

It was just when they were looking nearly decent enough - at least considering their situation - that there was the loud sound of yowling metal audible. A few seconds later the door of the booth sprang open and Steve almost lost his balance, keeping himself (and Danny for that matter) from falling just at the very last moment. Both stumbled outside and exhaled with relief to fill to fill their lungs with cool and fresh air.

“Don’t say anything wrong!” Steve warned Chin.

The corners of Chin’s mouth twitched. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“How did you find us?”

“GPS and luck,” Chin simply stated. “And what happened?”

Not willing to share anything that had happened, Steve simply stared at Chin for a moment. Danny quickly walked over to Chin’s car, as soon he was out of earshot, Steve grinned like a Cheshire cat, “That’s classified,” was all he said, before he strolled past Chin to follow Danny.

Looking back at the telephone booth, Chin realized that it was really small in there. Especially for two men.

That’s classified, Steve had said.

‘Well’, Chin thought with a smirk, ‘I hope he sticks with that, because I really don’t want to know that story.’

Tagging list: @gatorasmus @surewouldbeinteresting @auntie17 @bookemfangirl @conny-keksi @mcdannoangelwolf @82tweeder @minahahj​ @mymcdanno @murphyhatesme @yoko787878 @mireilleleerves 

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Secret Garden (SpicyHoneyMustard, stand alone, lemon)

Summary: Edge and Red are bodyguards for the Queen’s Judge, Rus, and they more than happy to watch over him.

In every way possible.

Notes:

Oh, man, I make no excuses for my writer's brain.

I've always thought that having the Judge be something otherworldly or divine was an interesting concept, so you'll forgive me if I explore that a little within my porn.

Tags: SpicyHoneyMustard, Fontcest, Fellcest, Sibling Incest, Threesome, Established Relationship, Possessive Behavior, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, LEMONY GOODNESS!!

Sequel to:

Showtime

~~*~~

Read it on AO3

or

Read it here!

~~*~~

Truth be told, Edge probably should scold Red about cleaning his weapons out in the open, but he had to admit. The cold stare from a fierce skeleton sharpening a gleaming knife did help keep any gawkers at bay.

This section of the prayer gardens was supposed to be restricted for the Judge’s use, but looky-loos still managed to wander in from time to time, trying to steal a worshipful glance at him or beg for a hasty blessing. Perhaps if Edge’s duties didn’t involve keeping Rus safe from those very Monsters, he would have been more understanding.

Judges were awe-inspiring, their souls acting in divine symbiosis with the Angel. Their people set the Judge high upon pedestals as marvelous beings of blessing and light coupled with their darker side of judgment and retribution, and Monsters often looked upon them with reverence.

Once, Edge would even have felt the same, before he met Rus. Within five minutes of meeting their charge, he’d tripped over his lengthy robes and fallen on top of Red, sending them both crashing to the ground with an astonishing amount of impressively creative swearing on both their parts. Reverence was difficult to maintain in those circumstances.

Love, on the other hand…

Edge leaned against a nearby tree, taking in the view that by rights of being a Chosen guard belonged only to him and Red. Rus was sitting cross-legged on a woven mat, his plainer, everyday robes settled around him, sockets closed and hands resting loosely on his knees. His expression was one of serenity, his chin lowered towards his chest as he sat amongst the riotous flora and greenery of the hanging gardens, as lovely as one of the many nearby flowers.

Softly, Edge asked, "What is he doing?"

Red only shrugged and didn’t stop scraping his blade against the whetstone, even though it was probably sharp enough by now to sever an hour into a hundred minutes. "meditatin'. chattin' with his inner sanctum, communing with the judges of the past, becoming one with the ether. whatever the shit he does, who the fuck knows.”

Who the fuck knew, indeed. Rus tried to explain to them many times what it was like to share symbiosis with the Judge, to carry memories from all the Judges of the past along with his own. Frankly, Edge found the implications of it to be horrifying, to never be alone in his own head. It wasn't a role Rus had wanted either, he knew, from soft, pained confessions in the darkest part of night, whispering to them even as Rus trembled in their arms, haunted by nightmares that weren’t his own. But Rus was Chosen, and he tried so very hard to uphold the dignity of his station but—

A low snore carried over to them, Rus’s chin falling to rest against his sternum.

"Yes, he's very dedicated," Edge said dryly. He left Red to his menacing and went over to Rus, crouching next to him. He took a moment to puzzle out where Rus’s limbs were buried in the voluminous robes, until finally Edge was able to scoop him up into his arms. "Come on, love."

“hnnn?” Rus mumbled sleepily. His sockets barely opened, pale eye lights peeking out and the happiness in his lazy smile at seeing Edge warmed his soul. “hi there.”

“Hi yourself.” Edge ducked his head and took a soft kiss, tasting the surge of sharp sweetness that could only mean one thing. He drew back and murmured, “Your magic is building up again.” Acting as a symbiont for the Judge meant Rus always had a high level of magic, far too much for his body to process. The excess of magic needed an outlet and the simplest way was—

Rus’s grin widened, honeyed tongue flicking out to sweep lightly across his teeth. “is that an offer?”

“It’s my honor and my duty to assist with all your needs,” Edge told him loftily, if only to see Rus’s expression.

As expected, Rus made a face, skull twisting in distaste, “less of that would be great. i know it’s your byline, but i don’t really care what it says on the tin.”

The sound of gravel crunching heralded Red’s approach, a distinct sign that he’d wanted to be heard even as he chuckled, “honey love, it’s our job to take care of ya when you’re horny, so how’s about you two come down here let me get to work.”

“you sweet talker,” Rus said dryly. But he gave Edge a soft peck then allowed him to settle them both back down on the mat, tugging up his robes and spreading his legs.

The thin, skinny pants he wore beneath his robes were easy discarded, revealing slim, lovely bones, smooth and pristine, and the soft folds of his already formed pussy, the lips gleaming with eager dampness.

Edge sat behind him, pulling Rus back between his legs and hooking his ankles over Rus’s to keep him spread open as he dropped a hand between his femurs to explore those silky folds. Soft and warm, slicked with slipperiness that let him effortlessly accept two fingers inside even as Rus warbled out a cry, arching up into that touch.

Red sat down in front of them and already there was a simmer of desire in his eye lights as he watched Rus shiver and writhe under Edge’s careful fingering.

“Already so wet,” Edge crooned. His fingers moved easily in that wetness, sliding in up to the knuckles. “Were you having good dreams?”

Rus shook his head stubbornly, though he buried his face against Edge’s neck as he mumbled out, “was meditating, not…oooh!”

He broke off on a gasp as Red seemed to decide he’d had enough of simply watching. He ducked his head, his hot, clever tongue briefly sliding alongside Edge’s twisting fingers. Red pulled off with an obscene slurp to ask, “what was that, pretty? can’t hear ya.”

“don’t stop!” Rus groaned, hissing as Edge scraped his teeth lightly across his cervical vertebrae, offering a tantalizing hint of pain to war against the pleasure of his thrusting fingers.

“oh, we can do this all day, pretty.” Red bent again to lick his way up, eye lights on Rus’s face as he tongued at his clit teasingly before drawing back to lick the syrupy juices from his teeth while his hands went to his belt. The buckle clanked loudly in the peace of the surrounding garden as he roughly opened his pants, pulling out his cock. “sweet as honeysuckle on the vine.”

Rus laughed weakly, a lovely honeyed blush flooding his cheek bones. Edge couldn’t resist kissing it, a brush of his teeth over angular bone and honestly, how dare Rus be so beautiful, adorable shyness tangled up with bold need. He didn’t hesitate to spread his femurs wider, giving Red plenty of room to shuffle between them. “do you even know what honeysuckle looks like?”

“nope, this is the only flower i need.” His cock wasn’t as long as Edge’s, but the girth was impressive, stretching Rus’s lips as Red pushed inside and his extensive collection of clever retorts petered out as he moaned, “fuck, rus, you always feel so good.”

It was a gorgeous sight. Sitting where he was granted Edge a unique, obscene view of Rus’s pelvic inlet, allowing him to watch Red fucking their lover, his cock visible through honey gold magic as he thrust into the slickness of Rus’s formed pussy. Rus writhed between them, wordless cries and pleading getting louder as his spine bowed in an arch, his hips moving frantically.

“oh!” Rus whimpered out, his skull digging into Edge’s shoulder as he threw his head back, quivering and jerking as he found his first peak. It was wildly erotic, watching him writhe while those slender hands grapple desperately at Red as Rus shuddered and squirmed his way to an engulfing orgasm, from his curling toes all the way up to the gasping mouth that frantically sought out Edge’s.

“That’s one,” Edge murmured when Rus broke the kiss, his head falling to instead pant hot and damp against Edge’s collarbone. He soothed a hand down Rus’s ribcage, seeking out places he knew were sensitive to keep him riding that crest of pleasure. The rasp of his glove against bone coupled with the rhythmic slickness of fucking sang through the air.

“we keepin’ count, bro?” Red grunted. His thrusts slowed, moving shallowly, and Edge could imagine the clench of Rus’s walls around him, knew exactly how it felt to have them tighten exquisitely when Rus came.

“Not at all.” Edge nuzzled a kiss against Rus’s skull, tasting the sweet tang of his sweat. “I'm sure you'll do the best you can manage."

“if you two start fighting over me,” Rus panted, “no one gets to play.” It was warning with some teeth; he’d shortcutted away from them before and left them frantically searching for him, panicked over the loss of their charge while he waited for them stowed safely away in their quarters.

“aw, we ain’t fightin’, darlin’.” Red couldn’t reach high enough for a real kiss and settled for pressing one against the inside of Rus’s femur where it was drawn up, teeth clacking softly against the bone. “me and my bro know how to share our toys.”

His indignant reply was cut off by a startled moan as Edge reached down and took his clit between two fingers, stroking the swollen nub in time with Red’s renewed thrusts. His slim hips rocked in hitched little movements, his sacrum pressing dissatisfying against Edge’s still-clothed cock. That was fine, this was for Rus, and Edge was patient. Besides, the desperate, adoring noises that poured from Rus’s throat were a distinct pleasure all their own.

It took three more orgasms before Rus finally sagged back against Edge, weakly clinging as Red came to a shattered climax of his own, hips jerking even as the golden magic in Rus’s pelvis bloomed with crimson, his brother’s come flowering inside him. Red sagged down on them both and Edge took their weight easily, holding them until Red finally sighed, deeply satisfied, and carefully withdrew.

“You are so beautiful,” Edge murmured against the side of Rus’s skull. He was, utterly debauched with his slim legs akimbo, the delicate, swollen folds of his golden pussy tainted with crimson, like petals bruised by a satisfying storm. One that wasn’t over yet, because Rus shifted in his lap, his weakly coaxing hips grinding back against Edge’s aching cock where it pressed firmly to his sacrum.

With the fingertips of one hand, he turned Rus’s unresisting face to his, covering that teasing mouth with his own, swallowing his sighs even as he fumbled at his belt with his other hand. He was more than ready for his turn and he wouldn’t finish until Rus asked, until he begged, that throaty, gorgeous voice of his wrecked and pleading—

“My apologies to interrupt your sacred duties.”

The queen was only at the garden entrance and turned away, but Rus still yelped, scrambling out of Edge’s arms.

The sound of her voice was enough to deflate Edge’s desire instantly, as was his own inner anger that he’d failed to notice her approach. She could have been anyone and it was sheer luck that she was no danger to Rus. Even the divine couldn’t always protect a Judge, that was their purpose, his and Red’s. Their sacred duty, to safeguard him even at the expense of their own lives and if Edge could admit to himself in the privacy of his own soul that it was less the Judge and more Rus that he would willingly die for, the Angel hadn’t taken him to task for it yet.

A glance at Red confirmed he was simmering in his own self-blame, straightening his clothes with more force than was strictly necessary, moving to stand close to Rus, who was still frantically cleaning himself up.

The pants he’d been wearing earlier were sacrificed to mop up between his legs, crimson soaking into the pale cloth that was hastily shoved beneath the meditation matt. Rus grimaced in distaste as he jerked his robes down over his mostly clean legs.

“seriously, tori?” Rus groaned, even as he tried to smooth his robes into some semblance of order.

The wealth of amusement in the Queen’s voice might well have been enough for her to purchase another kingdom. “There’s no need for embarrassment, surely! It isn’t as if I don’t know—”

Rus interrupted, a touchy shrilly, “let’s keep up a polite fiction, yeah?”

“Of course,” the Queen agreed. “Whatever fairy tale you prefer. Perhaps Little Red Riding Hood?”

“no jokes about riding, tori, please!”

The queen only laughed softly. She, at least, never tried to force Rus to conform to expectations any more than necessary. From what Edge knew, they’d been friends even before Rus was Chosen, and whatever pedestal she kept Rus upon was low enough for him to easily step off whenever his duties weren’t called for. Unfortunately, those duties were often needed, and her amusement faded as she said, more seriously, “Again, I am sorry to interrupt, but there is a Judgment required.”

Rus stiffened, but offered no protest. In mere seconds, calm settled over his features, those pale eye lights fading away, leaving his sockets empty and dark, and the disorder of his robes seemed to fall into place, smoothed by unseen hands.

Reverence was no longer what Edge considered when he thought of the Judge. Indeed, his emotions were far more blasphemous, bordering on hatred. Even Rus’s voice was deeper, holding the weight of Judgement and none of Rus’s innate sweetness as he said, coolly, “I’m ready. Edge, you will join me. Red, please wait for me back at our rooms.”

Red’s expression closed off and he nodded curtly, turning on heel and heading back to their quarters. Once there, Edge knew he would ready things for their return. Hot tea, something light to eat, soft blankets piled high on their shared bed and pulled back invitingly. Preparing not for the Judge but for Rus.

Edge followed behind Rus as he strode out, the Queen falling into step beside him as they made their way to the Judgement Hall. His own magic was heightened, searching for any danger, any violent intent towards their Judge whose long strides were carrying him towards the one who required punishment, and that was where his attention would be solely focused until it was over. He was lit from within in a terrible beauty, a golden halo of light forming around his skull and dancing like flames along the slender bones of his fingers.

Monsters stared as they passed, some falling to their knees in muttered prayer, asking for blessings from the Angel that Judgment never need be passed over them.

Edge paid them no mind past checking for any threat, and if Edge’s soul ached to see Rus overtaken, knowing he was lost and lonely within the confining prison of being an avatar to divinity, he said nothing. This was his duty, the vow he’d taken years ago at the feet of the Queen and her Judge, and he would see it done.

And when it was over, Edge would still be there, him and his brother, helping Rus to find himself again, guiding him back home.

-finis-

Read the next chapter

[h-e-l-l-b-r-o-k-e]

Stains on the Memory [B. Hargrove x you]

Request: @awildkaitlynhasappeared

Inspiration: Disintegration by The Cure

Word Count: 2421 Warnings: profanity and angst.

Written Date: 8/6-24/2019 Posted Date: 8/24/2019

The new Lego set includes too many pieces to count and a manual too difficult for the four-year-old to read. The pictured King’s Castle on the box brings wonder, but not enough for the stubborn boy to stick to the instructions or ask for help. Either way, blocks lock on together by able hands and his imagination runs far too wild to be tamed by boring words and numbers.

It wasn’t playful excitement that had him push past his dad and run past you, with your hands on your hips as your eyes flew from him to Billy, but rather a desperate eagerness to escape what is now taking place on the other side of his bedroom door.

“You forgot Jason in your car for two hours!”

Your muffled words pierce through Jason’s crayola-scribbled bedroom door. That tone in your voice is always reserved just for his father; it’s never been directed at your son even when he’s worn your patience thin by throwing a tantrum when Looney Tunes hadn’t been on TV while your feet were sore from wearing pumps at work all day.

Jason knows that this is only the beginning of an endless night.

The wires in his brain steer him to focus on the Legos he had been begging his parents to buy ever since he’d first seen the commercial on television. He’d asked and asked and asked but the answer was always a prolonged no.

There were far too many excuses his parents would give him that it was tough for his little head to wrap around the truth. The pieces proved hazardous for a child his age, you’d tell him. They weren’t sold in the stores in their town, Billy’d tell him. They were sold out last time you checked and were waiting for a restock, but, in reality, the price had driven you away. Billy simply just hadn’t seen any around―not that he was actually looking.

“Don’t tell me he was safe! You ditched our son to have drinks with fucking Perry!”

But, what had been the truth? After being strapped in with a seat belt with no form of entertainment except for watching strangers stroll by the sidewalk in front of the bar every now and then, Billy had returned to the car with a quick stride and a nervous twitch to his eyebrow. No apology. No explanation to the boy who was promised his father wouldn’t be gone long. Nothing that made any bit of sense except the drive to Target, and finding out that Legoland sets hadn’t been in some faraway land like Jason had been growing to believe and that his father had no problem pulling out a wad of bills from his pocket to pay for it. So why did his parents lie?

The knight figure has quickly become the favored piece as Jason mounts it on a horse, charging it against another figure he decided was the enemy in this private battle. A whoosh pushes past thin lips as the impact between plastic erupts, the enemy crashing against the carpet a few feet away.

Brain waves continue to buzz through his trickling veins in a vain attempt, like palms pumping against a dwindling chest, to keep his spirit from retreating into a cocoon. It seems to be working as the proud digits on his bedside table flick through the evening even though his heart isn’t fully invested in the activity.

“I didn’t mean to―”

“And yet you decided to get behind the wheel with our four year old son while who knows how drunk you were―”

“I wasn’t fuckin’ drunk…now will you keep your fucking voice down?”

Jason doesn’t know that his toy collection is decent at best. He has yet to start Kindergarten, so he doesn’t know many children his age to compare. The only children he knows belong to Billy’s co-workers down at the mechanic shop and yours from the restaurant you waitress at, but even then, most of the kids are too old to want to play with him whenever they visit.

If only he was old enough to read all the clear signs right in front of him. His parents are living paycheck to paycheck, and they just don’t have the heart to tamper his blissful ignorance with such a heavy burden.

“No, because it’s always the same thing with you! Is that what was normal when you were growing up? Butter up the kid with gifts bought with rent money every time your dad screwed up?!”

Small fingers loosen around the knight in matte armor and it’s white horse, falling out of Jason’s clutch. His sleeveless forearms rise past the Hulk logo printed across his chest as his palms cup his ears.

Your rambling is long and far too scrambled for Jason, yet certain words are stressed enough to slither down the hallway, slip through the cracks of the bedroom, and nail your sole pride and joy. Even when he doesn’t fully understand why these words hurt him.

The mention of possible family members who never call nor visit is part of the void that breathes between his fragile shoulders. He only had pictures tucked away under his parents’ bed in some weathered album. The faces had names he often forgot, and some even had titles of relation, but that’s about the extent of the knowledge you indulged him in. It hurt you too much to go any further and explain why your and Billy’s little family lived states away from everyone, but you handle it better than Billy who only ever changes the subject with a flick of his eyes whenever your boy asks about the redheaded women who’re pictured with an older man with a mustache who oddly resembles his father.

The photograph had been hidden in the last page of the photo album in which Jason had discovered on his own after flipping through the empty pages. The expressions of the three mysterious figure are anything but happy, yet the women do not send shivers crawling up his spine like the stern-looking man does. Jason knows he doesn’t like him, whoever he may be.

“Why don’t you just come out with it and say what you really mean?”

Behind the door, with ears taped closed by stiff fingers and eyes sewn shut by quaking muscles, Jason isn’t aware that Billy’s slammed a palm against the kitchen counter, nostrils flared and protruding vein on the side of his jugular, nor that you’ve merely dismissed a flushed Billy with nothing more but the shake of your head and an apologetic frown etched on your weary face.

Jason opens his eyes and drops his fingers, kneading the fibers of the carpet for a moment, when his bedroom door opens and your bare feet slip through the crack.

Standing before him with the doorknob pressed against the lumbar of your spine as your hands rest on the bronze, you don’t look a day over twenty-two, perhaps you even look a little younger. But, not to your son’s untrained gaze. To him, you and Billy look like just any other boring adult who has presumably completed high school, gotten their degree, and are now living their best course.

Instead, you and Billy are thousands of miles away from those who were meant to support and love you unconditionally, family and even friends alike. You both packed up whatever you could fit in the Camaro on a school night, cashed out whatever savings were available, and set out on a journey to Billy’s hometown.

Your knees sink onto the floor beside your little boy and you look at the mess of scattered miniature blocks. When you pick up a stray Lego and attach it to the clump in front of Jason, he speaks up, “Are you taking the toy back?”

“No,” you shake you head, “It’s yours, baby.”

You envelop him in your arms and kiss his curly crown. “This is the one you’ve wanted?” you ask even though you already know by the amount of begging he squeezed out of his lungs the past month.

“Mmhmm,” Jason nods against your sternum.

He pulls away after another second or so, peering up at you through curls that fall over his forehead. “Are you still mad at dad?”

A little bit, you think. Frustrated, definitely. It’s no longer about the money, especially not after walking in on Jason playing with the guilt-tripped gift. Picking up a few extra shifts is worth it if it means you can pull a few more grins out of Jason. But, no, the frustration comes from watching Billy constantly stomp on egg shells when it comes to being a father.

By no means are you a supermom―you’re still learning how to parent every single day―but at least you aren’t forgetting about your precious baby in the backseat of a car just to abandon responsibilities for a few hours. No, you’ve been holding it together since the minute you sat in the passenger seat and Billy shifted the gear back in Hawkins. It just seems that no matter how much you and Jason mean to Billy, it’s in his nature to rebel in some form―even when he knows the guilt is only a step away.

The acts that keep him from conforming into a father he’d wished he had as an adolescent could be something as mundane as bringing home a carton of low-fat milk when you had specifically said two-percent twice before. Billy just couldn’t get it right, and you didn’t know if it was somehow on purpose or not.

Before you could respond to Jason’s question, Billy enters. Ruby no longer rushes up his neck nor speckles across his cheeks in angry splotches.

Billy’s thick eyelashes flutter towards you and Jason, and he knows that you have every right to feel as you do, to yell at him as you did, and walk away before the argument could escalate to places he doesn’t want to imagine. And, he knows that you had just been a hairbreadth away from speaking it into existence, that Billy had inherited some of the qualities that made him hate his own father in the first place. He doesn’t think he could ever handle that.

He kneels down near the two of you, tucks a loose strand behind your ear, and ruffles Jason’s fluffly head of hair. “Hey buddy, you wanna continue reading the Hulk?”

Billy’s never been a fan of comic books, but Jason enjoyed the noises, the voices, and sometimes the acting that Billy did when he read to him. Max had given her older step-brother a few of her old copies before he left as a gift to her future niece or nephew she’d probably never get to know. She’s just another faceless shadow that will haunt every dark corner Jason comes across.

Your boy shakes his head and reaches out for the blocks he had formed to resemble what he thinks is a fort. “I just want to play.”

Jason goes to pick up the knight with the horse as Billy’s fingers caresses your knuckles before holding your hand in his own. Your gaze meets Billy’s, and somewhere in the blue of his pupils he’s apologizing without further dragging Jason into the mess. You nod and give him a small smile, hoping that Billy can see that you’re sorry too.

The King’s Castle box lays on the carpet a few feet away. Billy reaches for it and pulls out the instructions. “You want mommy and me to help you?”

“Yeah!” It’s the best idea Jason’s heard all day.

You glance back at Jason’s clock. It’s almost seven and you haven’t prepared anything since you’ve gotten a call by Gwen who told you she’d seen Jason in the car by himself in front of Stokey’s, Billy’s and his co-workers’ place to meet. By the time you’d gotten there, Billy and Jason had already left. “What about dinner?”

“I’ll call Domino’s in a bit,” Billy says as he reads some of the instructions.

You pinch Jason’s cheek then begin to gather the stray pieces that surround his bent knees. “You wanna help me get all the pieces together, hmm?”

Soon, all the blocks except for the yellow figures lie in a pile between the three of you as Billy begins describing the pieces needed to begin building the foundation of the kingdom.

You both know that there will be more bumps down the road, even Jason knows these moments don’t last forever. In the following years, Jason will realize the truth, in which imperfections haven’t expanded as he’s aged but that they’ve been sprinkled all over his home all along, waiting to finally be uncovered one by one.

Jason’s grin grows when Billy makes the horse gallop, letting out a horrendous neigh in the process and prompting you to jokingly throw a Lego or two at his head.

Happiness envelops the three, but that cannot be said for tomorrow or even next week without spilling a lie. Something will happen to drag everyone down, and it’ll be up to them to build everything up again. But this, this memory is engraved and will forever stay the same among stains that cannot be scrubbed off.

A/N: Boy, I really lagged on this one, but I’d say I’m pretty happy with the outcome. Leave some love.