#forgive me for the bluntness but god such a bad show

[el-cheung]

Charlie Cox, as Adam Lawrence, in TREASON (2022). 

[baptismbaby]

† GOD, FORGIVE ME PT. 3

mean! ellie x innocent! reader a/n: will post to ao3 baptismsbaby. sorry if this is a little rushed. smoked a blunt and brain is still fuzzy. unsure how i feel about the ending hope yall like it anyways warnings: toxic! ellie, degrading, praise, pup used as a petname, oral (ellie! receiving), strap usage (r! receiving), slight edging, possessive! ellie, reader is gagged at some point if anyone hates that creds to elliesgalaxy for ellie pic wc: 3.4k<3 part one part two

Six months had passed since you first hooked up with Ellie.

Looking back, you had changed drastically since that night. You used to be so strict with religion and refused to have any fun. It took a month of hooking up with Ellie to finally get over it and realize you could be a Christian and still have fun. I mean, it was the apocalypse. Rules haven’t existed in over twenty five years.

In the beginning, you were constantly telling Ellie “this is the last time.” She’d look at you with a teasing smile and that glint in her eye. She’d laugh it off, always saying the same shit. “You need me.” You’d go back, giving more and more of yourself up to her. Whatever she wanted, you gave to her. The more sex the two of you had, the better the friendship outside of the hookups got. Dina was extremely happy to finally hang out with both of you without the bickering. You loved Ellie outside of the sex. She had her moments still but she was the funniest person you’ve ever met. You wished she could be that way with you alone sometimes. You knew you had to hide your feelings if it meant getting to sleep with Ellie but it was difficult. Whether there was a party at Jesse’s or her place, she’d tell everyone in the smoke circle how bad she would want to fuck some random girl at the party. Ellie didn’t, of course. She’d just say that to get a rise out of you so she could tease you about it later. It hurt but you refused to let it show if it meant risking not being able to see Ellie anymore.

It was another night of partying for everyone and the girls were at your place getting ready. Ellie sat on your bed, wearing a brown flannel and some jeans. Since the weather had gotten warmer, she had trimmed her hair a bit. The way the choppy layers fell in her face sometimes made you blush. She looked so good.

“I’m thinking about wearing something super revealing,” said Dina, going through the dresses she’d find on patrol. “I need Jesse to be jealous.”

“I give it a week,” mumbled Ellie.

“I am not getting back with him!”

“You said that the last time,” you pointed out.

“And the time before that.”

“The time before that time too.”

Dina hit you and Ellie with the dress she was holding. “Stop it you two, I get it! I mean it this time.”

You looked back at Ellie who was already staring at you with a smirk. Dina groaned and continued to look for clothes while you laughed.

“The little being silent but talking with the eyes thing gets on my nerves,” complained Dina. She handed you a dress to wear and you held it up to your body. It was white and silky with a little lace trim at the bottom.

“That’s a little short,” said Ellie.

“Yeah, which is perfect. She needs to get some finally.”

Ellie shot a glare at the back of Dina’s head but neither of you noticed.

“I’ll try it on and see.”

You began to undress, turned away from Ellie. You could see her watching you through the mirror. You weren’t wearing a bra but was wearing a see through pink thong.

“Woah, where’d you find that? It’s so cute,” complimented Dina.

“I found it on one of my patrols a couple months ago.”

Actually, Ellie had found it for you.

You slipped into the dress and turned around, seeing your ass hanging out at the back. “Okay, maybe this is a bit much but it’s super cute.”

“Damn, I would so fuck you,” Dina remarked. “Please wear that to the party. At least five girls are gonna throw themselves at you.”

“Eh, that’s probably too much, Dina. We see the same people every time anyways. No one new to impress. Do you have something else for her?” asked Ellie. You raised an eyebrow at her, wondering why she was being like this.

“I have some more but-”

“I want to wear this, it’s fine,” you interrupted. 

“Okay cool, we ready to go?”

Everyone nodded and started to head out. Dina made it down the stairs first, leaving you and Ellie at the top. Dina was grabbing stuff to put in her bag so she didn’t see Ellie grabbing your wrist and pulling you back towards her. She wrapped an arm around you and used her other hand to hold your hair. Her lips brushed against your ear. “I fucking told you it was too short. Are you trying to piss me off?”

You sighed, tilting your head to the side further as she ran her fingers down your neck to your shoulder.

“I wouldn’t care if you wore that for me but in front of everybody? Are you fucking kidding me? You get a taste of my cock and now you’re a slut? Don’t even think about coming by tonight.”

She shoved you forward roughly. You stumbled but quickly stood up straight, spinning around to give Ellie a dirty look. “Stop it,” you whispered harshly. “You’ll be over it by the time the party's over.”

“I mean it,” Ellie hissed. “Don’t speak to me for the rest of the night. Whores don’t get rewarded when they don’t listen. Fucking brat, you know better.”

Ellie walked past you down the stairs, leaving you dumbfounded and angry. You stomped down and grabbed one of the bottles from the table to drink on the way there.

“Woah, pregaming?” questioned Dina.

“Yeah. It’s gonna be a long night.”

-

You were miserable at the party. It had been ten minutes since the three of you arrived and Ellie was acting like such a bitch. You sat by her on the couch while everyone passed around a blunt. She kept skipping you, telling the others you weren’t participating.

“Dina, give me the fucking blunt,” you demanded once it reached her for the third time.

“You’re not smoking.”

“Yes I am, Ellie. Even if it means I have to roll my own.”

Dina squinted at the both of you in confusion. If she was an outsider, she would’ve thought the two of you were a couple in an argument. But it was just you and Ellie. No way there was something going on.

“You can’t even fucking roll,” Ellie insulted. You leaned forward to see another smoke circle across the living room. 

“I’ll just join Jesse’s smoke circle. Sorry, Dina.”

You got up, pulling your dress down before walking over to Jesse’s group. You made sure to swing your hips a bit in case Ellie was watching.

“Why are you two arguing again?” Dina asked Ellie once you left.

“It’s nothing.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the two of you were fucking.”

Ellie took the blunt from Dina and puffed on it. “No way,” she declined. “You couldn’t pay me to fuck church girl.”

“I’d do it for free,” Ellie’s friend said next to her. When she passed the blunt to him, she made sure to elbow him hard in the side. “Ow! The fuck, Ellie?!”

“She’s gay.”

He frowned in disappointment. “Aw man, all the hot chicks are.”

Dina couldn’t stop eyeing Ellie. She was acting strange. Back at yours, she kept telling you to put something different on. Now she’s watching you intently from across the room as you do the thing she told you not to do. At that moment, everything clicked for Dina. Ellie liked you.

“So, what’s the deal between you and Dina?” you asked Jesse as you passed him the joint.

“Shit, I don’t know. Pretty sure we’re over for good.”

“That sounded convincing,” you said sarcastically.

Jesse made a face at you while he crossed his arms. “Oh yeah? What about you and Ellie? You follow her around like a lost puppy.”

“We’re friends now.”

“The way you look at her is not how you look at Dina. It’s how I look at Dina.”

As he spoke, his eyes landed on her from across the room. “Look at her. Talking up some other guy to piss me off. Ellie is staring at you. She looks jealous. I’d know.”

You glanced back but Ellie quickly averted her gaze. You sighed and looked down at your hands in your lap. You wanted to say something so badly but knew that Ellie would end it with you if you told anyone. A girl came and sat next to you, placing a hand on your thigh. “Hey,” she slurred. “Wanna dance with me?”

You looked up at Ellie who’s brows were furrowed in anger. You grinned and stood up, grabbing the girl’s hand. You led her to an open spot on the floor and pulled her close. She wrapped her arms around you as you started grinding against her with the beat of the music.

“I’m Grace,” she introduced herself. “You hang with Ellie and Dina, right?”

You nodded, too busy watching Ellie as her face grew red.

“You’re super pretty. You do a lot of that church stuff, right?”

“Yeah,” you responded dryly. You turned around so your back was pressed against her chest. Her hands rushed up and down your body until she grabbed your tits. You shoved them off and looked back at her. “Don’t,” you demanded. 

Grace saw movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up to see Ellie speedwalking towards you. Grace let go of you and ran off. You were perplexed, wondering if maybe you came off as rude. You felt hands grab you and start shoving you towards a door.

“Hey, what the hell?”

You were pushed into a bathroom. The door slammed and you spun around to see Ellie locking the door. “Ellie!”

Ellie shot daggers at you with her eyes, which meant you needed to be quiet. She pushed you against the wall and held you there with a knee between your thighs. Her hands went over your mouth to stifle any sounds you were making.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

She started to unbuckle her jeans, still covering your mouth. They dropped around her ankles to reveal the strap she was wearing over her boxers.

“You’re mine and mine only. This pussy,” she growled as she grabbed your clothed cunt tightly, “belongs to me.”

She kneeled down to yank your panties off. 

“E-Ellie, I’m s-”

“Shut the fuck up.”

She balled your panties up and held them up to your face. “Open.”

“What?”

“Open your fucking mouth!”

You obeyed and parted your lips slightly. She sighed in frustration and reached out to pull it open further, shoving the panties into your mouth.

“This will keep you quiet,” she muttered. “You’re really dumb, you know that? Good girls don’t try to make their girlfriends jealous.”

Before you could even react, she bent you over the sink and shoved her cock inside of you. You let out a muffled groan, the feeling of her filling you up taking you by surprise. She fucked you hard but painfully slow. She’d thrust in, wait a couple seconds then do it again. 

“I want you to watch,” she commanded. She grabbed a handful of your hair and yanked your head up so you could look in the mirror. You could see Ellie behind you with an angry expression on her face. “Stupid girl, you will never find better than me. Get that through your fucking skull.”

She sped up, making you squeal even louder. She placed both of her hands over your mouth as she pounded into you harder.

“Fuck,” Ellie whimpered. “Fuck, you look so good like this.”

Ellie noticed your legs started to shake as you felt your climax getting closer.

“You wanna cum baby?”

You whined, pushing yourself back against her so you could finish. Ellie pulled out of you and turned you around. She lifted you up onto the sink and started kissing up and down your neck. Ellie took your panties out of your mouth, shoving her tongue down your throat.

You tried to pull away to speak but Ellie grabbed your head to keep you still. Her strap would brush against your cunt, eliciting a moan from you.

“Do you think you deserve to cum?" Ellie asked when she pulled away. You shook your head no. “That’s right, baby. You’ve been so mean to me tonight. You’re lucky I’m even fucking you right now.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” you murmured. “I shouldn’t have danced with that girl. I belong to you.”

“You say you’re sorry but you have to prove it to me… get on your knees.”

You obliged and kneeled down, opening your mouth expecting her to fuck it with the strap. Instead, she slid out of the harness and her boxers simultaneously and set them down on her pants.

“I want you to make me cum.”

You were shocked. Ellie never let you touch her and she was going to let you eat her out? You didn’t know if you could do it since she never taught you. You didn’t want to disappoint Ellie.

“I’ll guide you through it, pup. It’s okay,” she assured you as if she read your mind.

Ellie leaned back against the wall as your face went towards her pussy. You stuck your tongue out and swiped it up her slit. Ellie shook a little, reaching down and grabbing your hair. “Move your tongue in circles,” she said.

You slowly moved your tongue in a circle on her clit, savoring the taste of her. You looked up at Ellie who was biting her lip to stay quiet.

“T-That’s it,” she praised. “My g-good girl.”

You sped it up a bit once you got used to it, Ellie’s legs trembling against you.

“Fuck!” she panted. “Just like t-that, pup. You’re doing s’ well.”

You decided to stick a finger inside her to watch her reaction. She grabbed the end of her shirt and bit the fabric, trying hard to not make a sound. You picked up the pace, curling your finger as she struggled to stay standing.

“I’m right there baby, don’t stop.”

She gripped your hair and yanked you away once her orgasm hit. She trembled as she started to come down, your hair still tangled between her fingers. Ellie pulled you up and slammed her lips against yours, the two of you desperate to taste each other.

She lifted you up onto the sink again and brushed a finger against your clit.

“You’re so good at making me feel good, baby. I bet you could make yourself feel good too.”

She stepped back and leaned against the door, her arms crossed and a huge smirk on her face. “Come on, touch yourself for me.”

“W-What?”

“I said I wasn’t gonna let you cum but that doesn’t mean I won’t let you finish yourself off while I watch,” said Ellie. She chuckled as your face grew red. “C’mon, I know you can do it.”

“I’ve never tried it, though. I prefer letting you do it.”

“I’m not touching you again until you make yourself cum.”

You whined, feeling too embarrassed to do something like that. You knew that if you refused again, she’d leave you there all alone. You slowly reached your hand between your thighs and pressed your fingers to your clit. You sighed and slowly started to move them in a circle, Ellie eyeing your cunt closely as she licked her lips.

“Atta girl,” she praised. “You like touching yourself for me?”

You didn’t respond. She laughed and grabbed your thigh gently. “You’re shy now, pretty girl? How cute. You were just fucking me and now you can’t even look at me.”

You sped your fingers up the more she spoke to you, soft whines escaping your lips and echoing off the walls.

“Good girl. You put on such a good show for me.”

Your legs shook as a knot began to build in your stomach. “El-Ellie, can I cum please? I-I’m so close.”

“Go on,” confirmed Ellie. You grabbed Ellie’s hand on your thigh and gripped it as your climax took over you.

“Shhhh, baby. That’s it. Be quiet.”

Ellie took your hand and sucked your fingers to get a taste of you. She hummed, wrapping her arms around you to help you stand. “You did so good,” she whispered, holding you close to her body. For some reason, you wanted to cry. Ellie hasn’t comforted you after sex since you lost your virginity, if that was even considered comfort. You melted in her arms and sighed. The warmth of Ellie’s body made your heart ache. You wished so desperately she was like this all of the time. You suddenly remembered what she called you earlier and wondered when you should bring it up. Ellie stepped back and grabbed your panties.

“Let me help you,” she said. Ellie pulled your panties up your legs and tugged your dress down. She quickly fixed your hair with a smile before putting the rest of her clothes back on.

“Can I ask you something?”

Ellie nodded in approval, putting her belt back in the loops and buckling it.

“You said… good girls don’t make their girlfriends jealous.”

“I did.”

“Am I… your girlfriend?”

Ellie shrugged, avoiding your eyes as she tried to focus on anything but you. “Uh… I think that’s up to you. I haven’t asked so… we really aren’t.”

“Are you wanting to ask me?”

“Fuck, why is this so awkward?” Ellie muttered to herself. “I’ve kinda been repressing some feelings towards you for a while now because I wanted this to be a hookup thing and nothing more. But tonight confirmed my feelings for you. Seeing you wearing that dress, knowing people would be eye fucking you… it made me sick. When I saw you dancing with that girl, I was infuriated. Dina kinda figured it out somehow and said I should tell you. I guess I’m not good at hiding my feelings once I have them.”

You smiled. You never thought your feelings for Ellie would be reciprocated. You knew it was hard for her to admit it, which made you like her even more.

“See, I knew something would come out of this!” you exclaimed. Ellie rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide the shit eating grin that grew on her face.

“Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

“I was certain that if you knew I liked you, you’d resent me.”

“Pfft, I knew you liked me. You do a shitty job at hiding things. I can’t go anywhere without you trailing behind me. You’re a pain in my ass but in a good way,” Ellie opened the door for you and followed you out. She wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you close to her.

“So, you wanna ask me?”

“Ugh, no. We’ve said enough for it to be official. You can’t make me say anything.”

“Aw, you’re shy!”

“Shut up…”

Ellie stopped and looked down at you, her thumb slowly brushing against your cheek as her eyes softened. “You were always mine, weren’t you?” she asked. 

“Of course I was.”

“I promise to be nicer. I know I said that last time but I mean it. I like this. You’re not so bad, church girl.”

You chuckled at the nickname. “I guess you’re alright yourself, Els.”

“What if I told you Jesse and Dina are making out behind you right now?”

You turned to look and laughed at the sight. “We already knew it would happen,” you said.

“Yeah. The party is starting to die a little bit. Wanna swing by yours so you can get a few things for the morning?”

“What do you mean?” you questioned with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re spending the night with me.”

“Wait, really?”

“I’m not saying it again. Let’s go,” Ellie said as she dragged you out by the hand. The two of you spent the rest of the night holding each other in Ellie’s bed, talking about anything you could so neither of you would fall asleep. Ellie felt nervous about entering a relationship and still felt some guilt about being such a bitch to you. And yet, something about this felt so right to her. She was okay with changing her ways since you changed for her. Ellie knew she made the right choice and that it would be worth it. You were wrapped around her finger.

[thetopichot]

•°♧ Auron Fluff Alphabet ♧°•

2/7 of the Yuuriboys. I'm working hard over here with these. These fluff alphabets are quite a creative workout for my writer's brain. However, this one was easy to write since I don't stop talking about this motherfucker. He's just too fine.

Anyway, enjoy!

CW: Suggestive

A = Abundance Of Love (Are they a loud lover that loves to express their love in many ways or are they a quiet lover that loves those quiet, intimate moments?)

This man is absolutely a quiet lover. As much as he wants to show everyone that you are his, the distance must remain between you two during office hours. However, when he does have you all to himself, you KNOW that man is gonna treat you right. He's more romantic than he says. He says that he's not a romantic type, but bro is holding you & telling how beautiful you are. Like, STOP LYING.

B = Brave (Were they the first to confess? If so, how did the confession go?)

Yes, he was & he genuinely thought that the confession would go worse. Maybe he was worried that you wouldn't like him. He does stay in his ivory tower alone, so he never got the chance to take an interest in anyone. When he saw you, though, he switched up real fast. Luckily, the confession went well & he was honest to god RELIEVED. I guess his ivory tower will be less lonely now.

C = Control (Do they take the wheel of the relationship or do they let someone else do the driving?)

I feel like he takes the wheel of the relationship. His whole story is basically about how one loses control & gets back on their feet afterwards, so expect him to take the wheel. Another thing is that he has this huge thing with taking care of problems without being asked to. If anything gets in the way of him or you, he will handle it accordingly. That is what he is supposed to do as his role in almost everything. Well, that's how he put it.

D = Dreamboat (What do they find attractive in their partner(s)?)

People would say that confidence is quite an attractive trait & they are right but listen, consider this; optimism. I feel like this is quite a controversial answer, but I feel like he likes more than just confidence. He likes a different kind of confidence. It's the fact that no matter the situation or who they are. You always find the best in things & the best in people. You believe that there is something more than meets the eye & he admires that. You see him more than just a cruel crime boss. You see him as him & he loves you for that.

E = Empathetic (If their partner(s) was in a not so good mood, how would they cheer them up?)

He's not really good at comforting people since he comes off as extremely blunt. However, that doesn't mean he isn't willing to try. He can try to comfort you with his words, but I feel like he would rather just hold you & listen to your rant. You ranting about your feelings & him holding you while you do that makes him feel like he's pretty decent at comforting. He's much more of a listener in rants.

F = Forgiving (If they had a fight with their partner(s), how would they apologize? Or would they be petty about it?)

Naturally, Auron would push people out of the way if they got in the way. However, you're not just people. You're his darling & the one thing he hates more than anything is to lose you, someone he cares about deeply. He probably was the one who initiated the fight since I know that man is stubborn & he will hold his ground, but there are more important things than pride. He is the first to apologize & he genuinely feels real fucking bad about it. He hates getting in arguments with you, but please reassure him that it's normal to get into arguments & that he doesn't have to push people away afterwards.

G = General (Random Fluff Headcanon)

Okay, I've been talking about this ALOT because it's important to me that I have this concept imprinted inside your hippocampus. I keep thinking about that one ATSV scene where Miles has this art page of Gwen. Are you seeing where I'm going with this? Auron just looks through your sketchbook to see an art page of him in there. He just looks at you & smiles. "I missed you, too." This is a bit self-indulgent jahqniajaiai

H = Home (How would they feel living with their partner(s)?)

HELL YEAH BROTHERRR 🦅🦅

He loves the idea of it. As much as he enjoys being alone, it's nice to wake up next to someone you love dearly. He's not safe from being domesticated & to be honest, he would let that shit happen. It could be your idea or his. It's up to you. In the end, just hearing your voice every morning is just soothing. LET HIM BE HAPPY GODDAMN IT 😤

I = Idealistic (What's their personal preference in a special someone?)

He doesn't take interest in timid people. He wants someone who knows exactly what they're doing rather than someone who isn't sure about their decisions. He wants someone who gets the job done. At the same time, he just wants someone a little more than that. Someone that just understands him. So throw that shit all into one quality & you get someone that is preceptive.

J = Jealousy (Do they get protective of their partner(s) when someone flirts with them?)

You bet your bottom quarter, except he doesn't really show it. He's cool, sorta calm, & collected. He's not gonna shout at them as maybe simple as a harmless flirt such as compliments like "Hey, you look very nice today." If they made you uncomfortable, on the other hand, he will be handling it. He ain't fucking around. If he gets jealous, it really depends on when we are talking about. If it's before you got together, then yes. VERY. If it is after you got together, not as much. You belong to him & he will prove the whole office if he has to.

K = Key To The Heart (What is something that will make them fall in love instantly?)

Bro fell in love the first time he saw you. He noticed that you dressed nice & how you were confident about getting the job. WHAT DO YOU MEAN?? He was HOOKED. It was love at first sight. I WISH I WAS MAKING THIS SHIT UP & I thought that I was DOWN BAD.

L = Luxurious (Do they spoil their partner(s) rotten? If they do, how do they spoil them?)

He is rich. You already know. However, I'm not gonna leave ya guys hanging with just that.

He likes to make his gifts very personalized for you. It's why he asks for your measurements, such as your fingers for getting rings or your ahem ahem NECK for uh suggestive reasons that I shall not disclose because we don't do NSFW here. So, I'm leaving that up to your imagination. Anyway, he does enjoy spoiling you mostly for him, though. There are some outfits that he wants to see you in. 😳

M = Marriage (How would they feel about getting married?)

I feel like he would like the idea of it. Of course, like anybody else, he would be a bit nervous about it. He's nervous because of how important this feels. It's something he HAS to get right in his eyes. So expect that man to plan this shit for MONTHS. This man might even rehearse before purposing to you. When everything falls in line, he does all of this fancy ass shit. He has this personal driver prepared to drive to a special location. I'm talking about a red carpet to the limo, then it takes you out of the city to a cliff that has a gazebo. You can see that fine ass man waiting for you & then you hop out of the limo. You see a trail of red roses & red candles lit.

You follow it & you meet your man all dressed up to the NINES. Like bro is dripped the FUCK out. Then he goes on to this speech on how much he adores you & how much you mean to him. Of course, the fine ass man gets on one knee & goes:

"Will you marry me?"

Bitch, YES.

N = Nobility (How honest are they to their partner(s)? Do they hide anything?)

As much as he trusts you, he does hide things. However, that doesn't mean he lies to you. He's unmoved by truth, but this truth is truly moving his ass. He did tell you that he is a criminal who killed more than one guy, but I feel like that as much he can tell you. The more you know, the more in danger you will be. He doesn't want you involved. He would rather you be unaware & safe than to be knowledgeable & in danger.

O = Overwhelmed (If they were in a not so good mood, how can their partner(s) help them out?)

Honestly. When he is stressed, he's definitely telling you not to worry about him. He always says that "I'm fine, rook. You don't need to worry about me." but in reality, this man needs comfort more than anything. During office hours, you could check in on him. Trish might find you suspicious for constantly going into his office, say, 6 times within the same 2 hours. Or a better, less suspicious way is taking care of him at home. Tell him to cancel whatever he's doing for the night & take a break with him. Of course, it's not gonna be that easy. However, persistence is key. He'll give in & just put his head in your lap. He enjoys the warmth that comes from your thighs, especially when you play with his hair. He might even fall asleep.

P = Passionate (What is something to them that means a lot to them that only their partner(s) knows about it?)

His writing. That's something he almost never shares with anyone. The only people he has shared it to were Charlie & of course, you. He finds his writings very important to him since they reveal ALOT about him, especially how he feels. Most of his writing recently has been about you, so he wants to keep his writing private. Bro is like me fr because I'm nervous when I show people my headcanons, so he's not alone.

Q = Quirky (Something silly that they do.)

On Auron's character design stream, Yuuri mentioned that Auron would own a multipen & I'm going add onto that. Auron owning a multipen reminds me of that kid in class who would write in a pretty font & make it cute when literally the topic is the most disturbing thing ever. That was Auron & still is.

R = Romantic (What is their love language?)

Call this man the Pokémon master because this bitch caught them all but if I had to pick a one, this might be controversial answer, acts of service. Just hear me out.

Auron does things for people without being asked to & never complains about it. He fully accepts the responsibility of taking care of everything & everyone, which leads to his love language being acts of service. He does go a bit too far & neglects his own needs because I believe that he doesn't see himself as a priority & there are other matters that are more important than himself right now. Please take care of that man because he needs someone to see him as a priority rather than something that can be pushed to the side for later.

S = Sublime (What is the best gift that their partner(s) can give them?)

He doesn't really ask for much besides your time & all of your love in return. He's not interested in getting gifts & he probably wouldn't want you to get him one since he's rich. Plus you do just fine as a present but you say fuck it & get him a gift anyway. The first idea was to get him a book, but that would be too obvious. You want something little more meaningful. You decided to somewhat write a half decent poem about how much you appreciate him. It's not the best writing in history, but he's enjoys that you put love & thought into it. That's enough for him.

T = Touching (How do they feel about PDA?)

Yeahhhh, probably not. He isn't really too fond of PDA, especially during office hours. He doesn't wanna look like he plays favorites, in my opinion. After hours is a different story because you two are alone & he has you all to himself, so he would rather that.

U = Undeniable (Did everyone know about their crush on their partner(s)?)

Nope. He is quite phenomenal at being discreet, plus who would anyone in their right mind would take interest in the boss? IT'S US ACTUALLY SUAJNAAUJA

V = Visionary (What do they want their future to look like with their partner(s)?)

My first initial thought was "Maybe, he might give the crime thing." but oh sweet Louie from 5 minutes ago, there is no fixing this man.

Although, I think he would want to move away from the city & go into this warm, cozy setting he's been writing about. I doubt he would give up the crime thing since that's his responsibility & a thing that was passed down from Faust's dad to him, but who knows, maybe he might pass it down to someone he trusts. Maybe he might become a writer & just enjoy his life with you. We may never know.

W = Wacky (General Fluff Headcanon. Again.)

I like to think the way he sleeps is just wrapping himself in a blanket burrito. I dunno I think it's funny. Crime boss in a blanket burrito is the most fire thing ever.

X = Xaroncharoo (Yes, that's a word. Look it up. In a domestic sense, what are they exceptional at in the home?)

Cleaning. He's making sure this house is fucking NEAT. Everytime I think about him cleaning, I think about those moms that clean the houses like hell because company is coming.

"I don't care if we have to throw everything out, rook. I want this place to look like a new mediterranean fusion restaurant by noon."

Y = Yearning (If their partner(s) went out to get something without them/went off to work, how would they feel about it?)

Z = Zonked (How do they cuddle?)

Jokes on you, you goober. You guys already work together as it is. So it's not a problem because he can just watch you from the cameras. However, if you went by yourself without him? He's probably getting you an escort to take to where you need to be. You insist on like, "Hey, I'm totally fine. I can just drive there & when I get there, I can just call you." or "My friend can pick me up, " & all of that. In the end, you have an escort to take you to Weis. He may not look like it, but he does miss you when you're gone.

Head first in his boobs. That's exactly what we're doing. He would probably hold you on top of him while you just enjoy the warm comfort of his boobs.

☆ミ Author's Notes Underneath ☆ミ

🩷 - Let's fucking go. 2 down & 5 more to go. This shit is definitely gonna take all of November & maybe December, too. This is probably one of the most biggest writing challenges I have worked on yet. However, it's good to get my writers brain going.

Another good news, I'm a sibling again! I have another sibling now & she is so silly. I'm happy to have another one, even though being the eldest sibling is such a pain in the ass. You just gotta do what ya gotta do sometimes.

[danwhobrowses]

nothing to see here just a crazy shipper guy going crazy over Callowmoore under the bit, if that's not for you then go about your business

So fellow Callowmoores how we feelin' this morning/evening? Because it's evening right now and I'm still bouncing off the walls in my mind

The one post could not keep me contained! No seriously the amount of tags I put in hit a limit and doesn't show them all

I mean yes we didn't get a kiss (yet) but goddamn we got so much, it has possessed me, deranged me, it's leaking outta my brain I gotta talk about it, so either jump out or buckle up because this overflow is gonna be long

First off I just gotta talk about how so many things almost lined up how I imagined them because it just makes it feel like they looked into my head and thought 'hey that's kinda good'. Like, I wanted Fearne to take the shard at Mori's, it was a safer space for her than the Ziggurat which is tainted by bad memories (this and other campaigns), I just didn't expect it so soon, thought they'd at least have a full rest first. In fact I had a whole scene in my mind where in a desperate gambit Delilah took over Laudna while she slept and just knocked on Ashton's door in a form of dread going 'where's the shard Ashton?'. It's key to this I promise not only because I enjoyed the idea of Ashton not taking any of Delilah's shit (plus for you Imodnas out there the mental scene involves Ashton whispering 'Imogen's in danger' to wake her, they also ask where Paté is because they still have that 'Paté is Delilah' theory) but it also expanded on the possible helplessness Ashton would have being unable to assist Fearne with taking the shard

'You're a child, Ashton. A blunt instrument that charges blindly into harm, would you really risk Fearne's life to earn her forgiveness? You know what it can do, what happens when you can't protect her from it?'

Of course, Ashton would never give Delilah the shard, which would frustrate Delilah since she can't manipulate them, but the comment weighs on Ashton a little. Which is when the whole waking Laudna happens and she leaves, but Fearne is in his room (the Vox Machina bathtub scene being inspiration), having asked to sleep there for comfort and asks them if it worries them. Which is where I often got to use this quote

'I don't believe in fate, but I believe in you'

And it sticks with me because it's super romantic, but also on-brand for Ashton, there were variations like the longer 'things only affect our path if we choose to believe they do; fate is complicated, the gods don't give a fuck, and I don't wanna even think about legacy anymore, I don't believe in them, but I believe in you' but then the next morning comes and Ashton gives her the ring, since I forgot about attunement there were instances where it was a sneaky sleight of hand thing, and Fearne completes the process. Of course, with weeks to go on there were a lot more scenarios like Fearne pickpocketing the Ashton doll to practice talking to and putting it back, Ashton seeking Mori for advice, herbal tea visions where Ashton entered their own mind and encounters the empress while on the outside Delilah possesses Laudna to try and drain the power from them, one where the shard having been reshaped through Ashton is less intense on Fearne for the first 4 rounds (since they blew up on the fifth) because Ashton's essence is containing and dissipating the hostile energy, and one where the group secretly vote against Ashton being there for Fearne taking the shard (Imogen, Laudna, and Chetney 3 to 2 against Orym and FCG) but Fearne as the decider pulls them over because she needs them there, stuff like that I'm sure fanfic writers could consume to their heart's content (and are free to, go nuts). But these scenes stood out because it had elements of stuff that are linked to or actually happened in the episode; Fearne does take the shard, Ashton endorses that Fearne is the only one who can take it, Ashton gives her the ring and Shattered Vigor is apparently a thing where Ashton is practically taking Fearne's pain to protect her, that alone is enough to go insane over.

And can we talk about the ring for a moment, because like THE RING. I'm not talking about generically either I mean that this ring has been significant to the shard saga ever since Ashton claimed it. It was found on the corpse of someone infused into stone, into the earth, right between the whole eidolons stuff where Ashton connected with an Earth elemental and then the Grau Dashari stuff with the crystals they merged with their hammer and then the Bor'dor incident, that could've easily been a titan-based punishment. Also, Ring of Volcanic Flesh, like Ashton's stone arm? And if that wasn't enough, what was the first thing Fearne stole from Ashton when they reunited? The ring, the act that broke down Ashton's walls as they let out a most heartfelt 'I missed you, so much' the ring that Fearne stole right off of Ashton's fingers only for them to willingly put in her hand to protect her, because just as they said at the clock tower, everything they have belongs to her. And while legacy and hubris had a part in the shard incident, part of it was also for Fearne. I don't believe there's any situation where if Fearne said she wanted the shard at the clock tower Ashton would've said no; Ashton knows that Fearne was key to the shard dislodging in the lava, they sensed it was in a way key to both of them, but there was no reality where Ashton was gonna force Fearne to take the shard if she didn't want it. And yes it blew up in their face, much like Fearne they saw an image of themselves they didn't want to be, their soul broke with the realisation that they hurt the one person they never wanted to hurt, but thanks to Percy they also realised that they had to change. It wasn't enough to see everyone else having someone at the reunion and internalizing 'if someone has to not come back it's gotta be me' they had to make steps towards being the person the Hells needs them to be, someone who can come back with them.

Which is where last episode started setting it up, and I didn't speak much about it at the time because other than the pretty plain 'I would've rather died than hurt Fearne' insinuation (which in turn was confessed to save Fearne from falling) there was only crumbs that could be interpreted other ways; for instance Birdie's tale with Athion and Olly being somewhat of a parallel to Tevan and Ashton, the formers wooing Birdie and Fearne with temptations of indulgence while the latters drawing their attention by being subjects of intrigue, defiance and kindness, plus they saved the latters (Birdie literally via escaping the prisons and Fearne emotionally and literally), or before the Orym conversation when Ashton takes 'one last look' Taliesin looks towards Ashley last. But I knew there was poetic significance to Ashton failing the communication trial, Marisha sensed the vibe too, but even though Fearne was nervous about guiding Ashton, the fault fell to poor dice rolls (and Liam not keeping shtum and summoning thunderwasps) and once again Ashton in an attempt to prove themselves falls flat on their ass in front of the person they most want to prove it to. And that did break my heart a little I must admit because as poetic as it was who hasn't been there? Ashton's journey of proving themselves has been laden with failure too; being unable to protect anyone from Otohan led to them almost being TPK'd, being unable to keep the group together at the Malleus Key led to the group being scattered, and then Team Trauma's stuff - Orym was despondent and Laudna's a wreck, got a random 'shepherd's boy', a powerful Cobalt Soul teen prodding about the solstice and all of Deni$e here added as mainly combat support, loners but no leaders, Dawnfather angel thinks them insignificant, dark spirits trying to consume their only leads about the Hishari - and the moment Ashton started to trust Bor'dor after the pipe vision what happens? Betrayal, Hunger of the Shadow and Delilah is let back in, Ashton couldn't even keep Laudna safe from herself, they reunite, try to sort out their shit with their past, discover that they might have a destiny to fulfill and end up being too willing to die in place of others, and unable to protect their new family from themselves, because of these recent failures it was important that Ashton proved themselves in the trust trial.

And thankfully they did, there was no way to prove that anyone was a Doppelganger and yet, Ashton still trusted Fearne; twice saving her from the flora even when told to leave her behind. And they were close to another failure when the branch was snatched - after their attempts to keep it safe by throwing it in the pool alone - but they trusted Chet and Orym (father/son duo) to cover more ground while they helped Fearne. And even when FCG told Ashton 'I think it's Fearne', and when Imogen was untrusting of Fearne, Ashton abandoned their held action to save FCG from the brambles because they knew Fearne could be trusted. They trusted Imogen to connect to Ruidus and as mentioned endorsed Fearne to take the shard.

And sure, in my mental scenarios Ashton gives her the shard, doing the same she did for them, but I did say almost like how I imagined. And Ashton still did everything they could, plus Imogen comforted their visible worry, but once it's complete they're just in awe, and then their own spark awakens through her touch, a touch they were unafraid of even at the threat of newfound fire, and now for the first time ever they feel whole. She saved them, and now they finally feel complete, and now this time Fearne is agape, Fearne is in awe, and everything she had hoped Ashton would gain from taking the shard before has come to fruition through her, and it's just, joy, pure incorruptible joy, a kindred connection that belongs to just them. Plus a big piece of paper for all the new powers they are excited to learn about from each other, with each other, and while Matt can talk about there being risks to them because you gotta balance the combat the narrative significance is still there.

But dammit they need to kiss, I've yelled it enough times in my head; like the lava, the clock tower, before and after Fearne took the shard, the only times they did kiss was before the solstice (the forehead kiss) and the ziggurat and both preceded bad times, they deserve a proper one, not one at risk of being a goodbye, something precious, irreplaceable and theirs to have, to share. And I don't know if they should use the patented 'can I kiss you?' or take a tip from BeauYasha and use 'I wanna kiss you so bad right now' or find something else to make their own but I desire it so much, had it happened this ep I probably would've melted out of my seat. They're awkward and nervous but they gotta take the leap, Ashton needs to realise they're loved and maybe even be told that they deserve it even when they feel they don't, and Fearne has to take a risk too, the shard put doubt to her decisions but that doesn't mean she can run from her strong emotions. It doesn't fix everything of course, but sometimes people heal better together than apart. As a currently vorbed half-elf once said 'drink the courage first'.

Curiosity continues to send me after the ep, and while some people are attempting to blemish or rain on the parade (I mean, I try not to speak ill of other ships in general, but if you're gonna be negative about it you can at least do it in your lane, your tags not ours) I am still just riding the high of the possibilities. True, the unknown can make me nervous, and I will admit the group has to give Ashton and Fearne space (they're just excited, and with the bloody bridge hinting to be a final moon-based battle there is that sense of urgency) Imodna had nudges sure but they have been a bit heavy-handed and kinda chaperoned around them, Fearne and Ashton seldom get time alone, one can hope they can get that time with each other next episode.

[eight-cats-in-a-box]

Al-An SFW Alphabet

Finally finished this! Please tell me If there's any typos or if something is contradictory, and I'll fix it!

No warnings (that I know of, tell me and I'll fix that), no use of Y/N.

Enjoy!!

Affection- (how affectionate are they? How do they show it?)

They're very affectionate...in their own way. Don't get me wrong, they do enjoy physical touch, but it's a bit difficult to cuddle a robot centaur that's twice your size.

They prefer to spend time with you, whether that be working on the same thing or not. You'll often find them hovering nearby wherever you happen to be, working on something.

Al-An does enjoy physical affection, but it takes a while for them to get used to it. He has difficulty asking for it, but the way they act when they want to cuddle is also about as subtle as a Reaper Leviathan. Most of the time, they'll let you ask first, but on occasion, he'll scoop you up for some cuddles.

Best friend- (How would they be as a best friend? How would it start?)

They're not a terrible bestie. Al-An doesn't understand the concept at all. But hey, it's not that bad. Humans are small and adorable, and he would rip the universe to shreds if you were killed. They like to pick you up under the arms like you're a cat. You pass the dangle test.

Cuddles- (Do they like to cuddle? How do they cuddle?)

Al-An isn't often in the mood for physical contact, but when they are, it's pretty obvious. Hope you don't have anything to do, because you are not getting up for much. You don't need to! If you need water/food/etc, they can use one of their telepathy arms to grab it. Even if you absolutely have to leave for whatever reason, you best believe you're getting pulled right back in as soon as you're done.

Cuddling Al-An usually ends up with them laid down like a cat (loaf), and you curled up against them. Sometimes you'll find them laying like someone shot them, with a limb in every direction. Usually when they're like this, you'll end up getting held against their chest.

Domestic- (Do they want to settle down? How are they at cooking and cleaning?)

They cannot cook. They can work a fabricator, and they can catch fish or retrieve plants, but combining the two? Nope! (Not yet at least.) And god forbid they try to cook over a fire. It does not end well. They like to watch you do it though. The processes are fascinating, and knowing Earth has so many different cultures, each with their own cuisine? He's quite intrigued. They do eventually get pretty good at it, but it takes a while.

Al-An doesn't really need to clean. Architects have kind of evolved past organisation, so he can just scan a pile/locker and know what's inside. So if you're messy, it doesn't really bug him. They end up just making it so everything you need is within your line of sight- organized chaos kinda thing.

Ending- (If they had to break up with their partner, how would they do it?)

They're not showing emotion, but that doesn't mean they're not feeling any. Whether that be anger, sadness, pain- they're definitely feeling something. You'd have to have done something awful.

Fiancé- (How do they feel about commitment? How quickly would they want to get married?)

Al-An...doesn't really get it. In his mind, you're already together, and that's all there is to it. Once you explain it to them, he does rather like the idea. Even if there isn't any way to really seal the deal, it's a nice little thing between the two of you.

Gentle- (how gentle are they, both physically and emotionally?)

Al-An could never bring himself to handle you roughly. While they do know his own strength, you're incredibly fragile (compared to him at least) and they don't want to take chances. Al-An could never forgive themself if he ever hurt you- even if it's unintentional. They will also wipe anything that dares harm you from existence.

Emotionally, he can't help being blunt. They don't really understand human emotions, but if they hurt you on accident, they'll apologize, and figure out what they said/did so it won't happen again. Over time they get better at the whole feelings thing- though whether this is due to spending time together, remnants of the link between you, or some combination of the two remains to be seen.

Hugs- (Do they like hugs? How often do they give them? What are their hugs like?)

Al-An likes hugs. The first time you gave him one, they were...confused, to say the least. But after you explained, he became quite partial to the idea.

As with all physical touch, they aren't the biggest fan, but if you're sad, they'll scoop you up and cradle you against their chest. It's warm, and soothing, and you've never felt so safe.

I love you- (How fast do they say the L-word?)

It takes a while. After they tell you what they've done, why the planet was under quarantine, etc.- which takes a while on it's own- it'll take a lot of reassurance to convince them that no, you're not going anywhere without them, and of course you don't hate him. It'll take a bit for him to say it, but after the first time, it comes easier, and they try to make it a habit.

Jealousy- (How jealous do they get? What do they do when they're jealous?)

There isn't really anything for them to get jealous of, to be honest. But let's just do a hypothetical. Y'know. For science.

Their behaviour won't change much, but the fact that your normally purple/blue RGB robot centaur is suddenly glowing like the fires of Hades is kind of a dead giveaway. They're not going to intervene unless you seem uncomfortable. They know you won't take that shit laying down. (And even if you would, Al-An absolutely does not.)

Afterwards, they'll apologize for acting so rashly, citing your obvious discomfort as his reason for getting so angry. If he scared/upset you, they're even more apologetic (especially if he scared you).

Kisses- (What are their kisses like? Where do they kiss you? Where do they like to be kissed?)

They can't really give you kisses, but they do enjoy kisses on their faceplate. It's a soft thing, and it's physical touch, yeah, but to them, it's different. It feels more intimate. Softer. They like to bump their forehead against yours and looking at all the teeny-tiny details in your eyes. It's a good way to strengthen your mental connection as well.

Little ones- (How are they with kids? Do they want any?)

They're not...entirely sure what to do with them. They haven't really interacted with kids before, so they're going with a mix of trial-and-error and common sense. It's really cute seeing them interact with little ones though, they're so gentle.

Not sure how you'd make it happen, but they're definitely not opposed to having a kid or two. You'll probably end up getting cats or something like that, because kids are cute, but actually having to deal with them is a pain in the ass.

Morning- (How are mornings spent with them?)

Most mornings with Al-An follow a set routine. They wake you up around sunrise, and make sure you actually get up. Then you make breakfast and eat while the two of you talk about what you're doing that day. Then when you're finished, the two of you head out.

Some mornings they'll let you sleep in, usually on special occasions, or after a long night. Sometimes you just look so peaceful, laying there without a care in the world, that Al-An can't quite bring themself to rouse you.

If you're a nocturnal type, Al-An just does the same, but in reverse. They wake you up with the moon, and make sure all your light sources are adequately charged- no less than 100%. They know that going out into the open ocean at night is even more dangerous, so he tends to be a bit of a worrywart.

Night- (How are nights spent with them?)

Nighttime with Al-An is also pretty routine. When you get home and put your stuff away, you make some food. Depending on when you get home, it can be anywhere from supper to a late-night meal.

Also dependent on when you get home is how glued-to-your side they are. If you get home on time, they're generally not super touchy- the usual. However, the later you are the more worried they get, and if you're not home by the time night falls (or day breaks), they're going to come get you.

After you finish eating, you'll usually unwind a bit, whether that's with the worn-out deck of cards you brought with you, or with some cuddles and a mug of tea.

Open- (When will they start revealing things about themselves? Do they say everything at once or wait awhile to reveal things slowly?)

It takes a while. You've known each other for at least a year, if not longer, before he says anything regarding what happened here. They're afraid you'll resent or even outright hate him for what happened. That being said, they do trust you, but human emotions are unpredictable at best, and a constantly-shifting maelstrom at worst. They lost their people because of that mistake- they don't want to lose you too.

Patience- (How easily angered are they?)

Al-An is pretty patient. Even if they seem angry, nine times out of ten it's just worry in disguise. Ticking him off is quite difficult, and even when they are well and truly pissed off, it's very rarely at you. After all, arguments between you two are rare, and discussions are usually cordial- if you're angry about something, you talk it out. Most of the time, their ire is directed at something or someone that hurt you.

Quizzes- (How much would they remember about you? Do they remember every little detail you mention in passing, or do they kind of forget everything?)

Al-An has an excellent memory, so forgetting something isn't an option to him. In all the time you've known them (which is nothing to sneeze at), he's never forgotten a birthday, anniversary, how you like your coffee, or that you prefer symbiotes to peepers.

Remember- (What is their favourite moment in the relationship?)

Probably the first time you fell asleep on them. You had been up for way too long, running, running, running, and they had finally gotten you to take a break and come sit in the observatory with them. You relented, and curled against his side. They pulled a blanket over you, and as you watched the fish swim by, the faint whirring of Al-An's systems running in your ears, with their warmth augmenting your own, you found yourself drifting off to sleep, dreaming sweetly. They didn't move an inch, and you've never felt safer than when you're cuddled up to Al-An.

Security- (How protective are they? How do they protect you? How would they like to be protected?)

Al-An is quite protective, but it's for good reason. After all, 4546B is a dangerous place for the natural flora and fauna, let alone a little human. They don't like it when you go off on your own, especially on land, where the Iceworms lurk. The last time the two of you had a run-in with them, it... didn't go so well. You got thrown a good ten meters, and Al-An confined you to bed rest for three weeks because you broke a couple ribs. That Iceworm didn't survive, by the way. As soon as they heard you scream, it got vaporised by their ion cannon.

Try- (How much effort would they put into dates, anniversaries, gifts, everyday tasks?)

They don't put much effort in, but not how you might think. It's less of an "oh, I don't really care" and more of an "I already know what they like, so I'll get them something within those parameters".

Ugly- (What are some of their bad habits?)

They're a little too protective, to the point where you have to sit down with them and reiterate that you're a mature adult, capable of making your own decisions and dealing with the consequences. If he wants to be there to support you, that's fine- but he needs to let you make your own mistakes. They have a bad habit of brushing you off when they're working as well, but they always apologise for that- he never means to snap like they do.

Vanity- (How concerned are they with their looks?)

Not very. They don't mind if you give them little baubles to decorate their storage medium with, but otherwise? No fucks given.

Whole- (Would they feel incomplete without you?)

Absolutely. Al-An has lost so, so much in their life, I'm not sure he could stand to lose more. If they ever did lose you, they'd be distraught. They would catch themselves in a constant cycle of wanting to heal for your sake, and blaming himself for your death. This is exacerbated by the loss of his people, or eased by their support.

Xtra- (An extra headcanon about them)

They like playing War. The unpredictable nature of the game keeps them guessing, and it's the only one you can't really cheat at. They enjoy poker, but you banned it on grounds of them having an eternal poker face.

Yuck- (What are some things they wouldn't like, either in general or in a partner?)

They don't like big-corp assholes. The only ones Al-An ever came into contact with were Alterra, but they're all the same- and Al-An likes exactly none of them. There's a special place in Al-An's burn book for the elites of said megacorps.

He also despises those with little to no respect for the environment. He understands the Architects did terrible things in the name of science, and Al-An played a major role in that- but it was truly for the greater good. Nothing would have survived Kharaa if it had spread.

Zzz- (What is a sleep habit of theirs?)

Al-An tends to sprawl out like they've been shot and killed in a bad cowboy movie. They like having you curl up against their face, because it allows them to hear your heartbeat and ensure you're still there. They don't sleep often- once every couple months- but when they crash, they crash hard. Nothing is waking him from the dead sleep they've gotten themself into.

[warmaidensrevenge]

Pairing: Eddie Munson x Plus size reader

A/N: Hey. So surprised to see all the love. It will take some time for more postings. But I am working on it. I will try to release as much as I can. I'm writing as soon as stuff comes to me. It's a bit difficult because I'm not the best writer. Just as a warning this story will be super long. Also, I keep the summary short because I don't want to give too much away. So hopefully you guys will love it. Thanks again.

Warnings: angst, drug/alcohol use, and body insecurities, cursing, arguing. Not proof read and no word count. Using my phone.

Summary: Eddie gets you sick and man does it really pisses you off.

Part 2: Redemption

You woke up so tired the next morning. You felt for your friend. But he wasn't there. You opened your eyes and he was no where insight. While sitting up you noticed that the door slightly ajar.

You got up and walked to the mirror hanging on the back of the door. Noticing right away your eyes red and puffy. Cheeks stained with tear trails. Then you turned to look at the side that was hurt. Pressing your fingertips ever so slightly to the bruise. It still hurting but your heart hurt more. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath. Letting out a slow sigh.

That's when you heard voices coming from down stairs. You slowly went down and overheard your dad and Eddie.

"You need to talk to her." Eddie spoke calmly but stern. " You need to apologize. You have to make things right with her."

"I - I just.... What can I say? She won't forgive me...I wish I can take it back." Dad whimpered.

" I don't care what you say sir. All I care about is y/n. And that she's safe." Eddie paused for a second. " I'm sorry sir for being blunt. But if you lay another finger on her. I swear to God it will be the last time you do."

Eddie's words shocked you. You quickly brought your hand up to cover the small gasp you let out. Thankfully they didn't hear you.

Your dad sighed. " I understand. I promise I won't touch her again...I know I haven't been the best father."

Eddie scoffed.

" Okay. Not much of a father at all. But thank you. Thank you for being there for her. I know you would do anything for her and I appreciate you sticking up for her."

Eddie sighed. " She's my best friend. And I will protect her. Even if that means protecting her from you."

The silence after that was scary. The tension was so thick and almost unbearable. But you had to do something so that they wouldn't come to blows. So you decided to stop the conversation before it got worse.

You faked a smile and walked into the kitchen. "Morning."

Both Eddie and your father looked at you. You could tell your dad had been crying too.

Eddie stood up. "I'm gonna head out. Let you two talk."

He walked by you and grabbed your hand. Squeezing it gently. You looked at him and saw the sympathy in his eyes.

"You'll be alright, call me later ok?"

You nodded and he left.

" Honey..." Your father said low. Bringing his elbows to the table and burying his face in his hands. " I'm so sorry honey." He sniffled.

You sat down across from him and felt tears forming in the corner of your eyes. " Dad... You need help."

-

When Eddie left he hung around for a little bit. Just to make sure that you would really be okay. He stood near the front door. Listen for anything.

For the longest time he had wanted to say something to your dad. Every time you came to him crying. Or when you were afraid to go home. All he wanted to do was make sure that you always had someone there for you. To make sure you were safe. But he held his tongue.

Not this time. And never again. You would never understand how truly important you were to him. You came into his life at a crucial time. When he was so young and full of anger.

In fact the day you showed up to school, he was having a really bad day. From his dad getting sentenced to 10 years in prison. To getting pushed around in the hallway just moments before he walked into the cafeteria.

You were his very first damsel in distress. And though you would say he saved you that day. You actually saved him from himself. For that he would forever be grateful for you and the friendship. He cared for you. And he wanted to be the one person on this earth to not hurt you.

That's why he couldn't tell you his secret.

...

You felt better about what happened last night. After the 3 hour conversation you had with your dad.

Praying that he would follow through on his promises. But only time will tell.

Later in the afternoon you went to your good friend Nancy Wheeler's house. In hopes she would have some extra foundation to cover your bruise.

Your shift at Family Video was starting soon. And you really didn't feel like answering the questions Robin or Steve would have for you when you got there.

You biked the 2 miles to the Wheeler's in a decent amount of time. Hoping to burn enough calories so that you can have more than a salad for lunch.

The thought reminded you of the time Eddie had pointed at your meal one day. " That there is what food eats."

You smiled to yourself at the memory. He always tried to get you to quit whatever diet you were on that week. Saying the sweetest things to you about how beautiful you were. And how any guy would be lucky to have you.

Then you thought about why he couldn't be the guy.

You pulled into the Wheeler's driveway and hopped off. Setting the bike against the garage. After, you rang the bell. The door was immediately answered by Mike. The newest addition to the Hellfire.

"Hey y/n. Surprised to see you."

" Hey Mike. Is um Nancy home?"

" Yeah." He then screamed "NANCY! YOU GOT COMPANY."

Your eyes widen. Jesus H!

He looked back at you. "Come in."

You stepped in through the door and heard footsteps coming down the stairs.

"Hey y/n. How- " Nancy started but cut off and froze at the second to last step. " What happened?"

Her brows were pinched together and she tilted her head to see your face better.

"Nance, uh can I talk to you in private for a sec?" You asked, turning your head so that Mike couldn't see the bruise.

" Y-yeah, uh come up." She said with a thin lip smile. Clearly worried about the mark on your cheek.

-

You looked around Nancy's room and admired the pictures hanging around her mirror. You saw one with a freckled red head girl.

Barb. You thought. Remembering when she died. Nancy was never the same after that. You guys hung out less and less after that.

All three of you guys became friends when you decided to join the schools paper in 11th grade. You knew that it would look good on college applications. Need something other than the Hellfire Club on your extracurriculars.

The small segment you had talked about upcoming events in Hawkins.

Nancy and Barb were the only ones who welcomed you to the paper. But Nancy was the one you were cloest to. She had warned you about Fred Benson. He was this seriously up tight bossy kid who was in charge. Kinda mean you thought but he mostly didn't speak to you.

" y/n?"

You turned to the worried Nancy and filled her in on what happened. Without mentioning too much about how you had fallen in love with one Eddie Munson.

She then apologized and gave you a hug. " You ok?"

You nodded, assuring her that you really were.

" I umm need something to cover this up." You pulled away and pointing at your cheek." I was wondering if you could help me?"

" Yeah! Uhh hold on a sec." She moved to the dresser and looking for foundation. " Here you go. You can keep it."

You took the small powder tin. " Thanks Nance."

You gave her a little smile and she returned it with the worry in her eyes.

You could almost hear her asking if you wanted to stay with her.

" It's ok Nance. I promise."

She nodded. But still looked scared for you. So you decided to distract her.

"Hey you busy tonight?" You asked.

" Uh no. Why? What's up?"

You grinned. " I was wondering if you wanted to hang out and watch a movie? I umm could really use the girl time."

"No plans with Eddie?"

"Yeah but...I kinda just want to stay in you know?"

" Well yeah sure. Just nothing scary please." Her voice sounded a little more upbeat.

" Ok sounds like a plan. Uhh say 8?"

" I'll bring the popcorn." She said through a smile.

...

Your shift at the video store went slow as hell. The 4 hours you spent there was filled with Robin and Steve arguing on who's turn it was to pick the next movie.

Also, the customers were extra stupid today. Asking if you knew what this one movie's called with that thing. Making you absolutely annoyed to the fullest. Especially when they asked " Hey do you have that one movie with that one guy in that other movie?"

Like WHAT? !

"I'm sorry umm can you explain a little more than that. Not sure exactly what you're looking for." you responded in your best customer service voice.

During your 10 minute break you broke the news to Eddie. He sounded upset but understood why.

Normally, you would go to the Hideout on Tuesday nights to watch Corroded Coffin or the Cast Outs. But lately Corroded Coffin had been getting more stage time. Which was very exciting.

So on Saturdays after a set, you would stay with Eddie at his trailer. Getting high and watching movies. Or listening to music while having some deep conversation about an existential crisis either one of you were having until Eddie would pass out. He always fell asleep before you.

But tonight. You really did need the girl time.

...

"Oh geez! Jake is gorgeous." Nancy swooned over the good looking jock in Sixteen Candles. " Right?"

"Uh not my type." You replied, tossing popcorn in your mouth.

"Not your type?! Hot isn't your type?" She sounded almost offended.

" Uh well you know. I like the more ... Edgier type. Not so clean cut."

She raised a brow. "Uh huh. The Munson type then."

You nervously laughed. " God no... More like Bender from The Breakfast Club."

" That's basically Munson y/n."

You shook your head and laughed a little. " No, no. Not Munson."

Between the conversations, painting each others nails, munching on some popcorn and diet pop you knew you were gonna regret tomorrow. The phone rang out of the blue making you looked at the clock.

It's almost midnight.

" Sorry Nance."

" It's okay. I'll pause it."

You got up and answered the phone. "Hello?"

When you heard what was going on you rolled your eyes. "Yeah I'll be right there."

You hung up the receiver and walked back into the living room. " Hey Nance. Could you give me a ride to the Hideout? Seems like Munson drank a little too much."

" Of course." She said standing up.

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to cut the movie short."

She laughed. " Don't worry about it, the Munson type needs you."

You chuckled lightly. " Thanks."

-

You walked into the Hideout after waving Nancy goodbye.

" Hey Nick. Where is he?" You asked the bartender.

" THERE SHE IS!" Eddie shouted. "There's my girl."

You sighed. " Nick. Coffee please."

"Already on it Hun." Said the scary looking man with the longest beard you have ever seen. He might look intimidating but he was just a big ol' teddy bear.

Finally reaching your best friend, you put your hand on his lower back. " Hey bud. Ready to go home?"

" After this next round." Eddie slurred a little. Holding up a coffee mug. " Yooo hoo. Bar keep. Fill 'er up."

Damn Munson. Too much tonight.

You've been around Eddie countless times when he was like this. But, it made it so much hard to get him to listen to you. He was a stubborn drunk.

Nick filled his mug and you waited until he finished it. Hoping it would sober him up enough to get him in his van.

"Give me the keys Munson." You ordered, opening your hand to him.

" Nope, no." He said through a burp. He then stood up from the stool.

" You can't drive like this bud."

" Pfff baby... I... I can do anything."

If he wasn't so hammered, you would have smacked him upside the head for calling you that.

He then downed the rest of his coffee and started for the exit.

"Munson, give me the keys and I'll make you some cookies."

He stopped and turned around slowly. With glee in his beautiful brown eyes and a grin on his lips. You swore that guy could get away with murder. All he had to do was bat his long eyelashes and smile.

"Promise? Like promise promise?"

" I promise. Cross my heart-" and just before you could finish he interrupted you.

" And hope to die!" He chuckled. Tossing you the keys.

While turning around on his heel, he lost his balance for just a second and caught himself. " ONWARD!" He said, raising both arms above his head and pointed to the door.

You hung your head and pinched the bridge of your nose.

God you're cute.

Once outside, you walked to the van. Eddie then decided to rush to open the drivers side door. Pushing you to the side. "Nope. Allow me. M'lady."

You couldn't help but smile." Good sir."

You climbed in and he closed the door.

You adjusted the steering wheel and watched him walk around the front of the van. And boom. He fell.

You leaned forward gripping the steering wheel looking for him. " Oh shit! Munson!"

He immediately jumped right back up and pointed at the ground. "Hey who put that rock there?"

You laughed so hard your stomach cramp.

He looked at you and laughed too while he cleaned himself off. " I'm alright best friend. Thanks for asking."

You laughed even harder and motioned him to get in. With a little hop in his step he got in.

...

Eddie sobered during the drive. So much so that he decided to roll a joint while you made him cookies. You always left the ingredients for them in his trailer. Just in case you guys ever got the munchies and he requested them.

The timer went off and his head shot up at the sound.

"They just need a few minutes to cool. Okay?" You laughed, while cleaning the mess you just made.

Eddie pouted as he lit up the joint.

He then started to hum a little tune.

You smiled. Hold the line by Toto.

You ended up working on all the dishes that were left in the sink. Singing to yourself with him. About half way through he came and leaned up against the kitchen counter. Holding out the joint for you.

"I can't my hands are wet."

He then moved closer to you and held it to your lips. You took a moment to think about how his fingers would touch your lips. The thought made your tummy do a back flip.

You inhaled and held the smoke until your lungs burned. You blew the smoke upwards and turned to gaze over to Eddie. He was having a stare contest with the cookies on the stove.

You lightly chuckled and looked back and down at the dishes." Go ahead bud."

He practically skipped to the oven. "mmm how do you get them to so soft?" He asked, while shoving an entire cookie in his mouth.

"Oh a little of this and a little of that."

He narrowed his eyes at you. " Fine. Keep your secrets."

You glanced at him for a second and saw him take another bite. Both of his cheeks filled. Making him look like a super cute chipmunk.

He then picking up another cookie and put out the joint.

" Here." He offered.

" I'm good bud. Those are for you."

" Nope you gotta have one. They're the best." He said while moving towards you. Holding it up to your mouth.

You move your head away, already feeling the joint kick in. "I'm ok Munson. Let me finish these up."

He moved closer. "Open up for the choo choo train."

You took a step back from the sink, dropping water on the floor.

Eddie wasn't paying attention when he followed after you.

"Oh common y/n- OH SH-"

He slipped and fell forward onto you. Both ended up on the floor. His full weight nearly knocked out your wind. You took a second to realize what just happened. He was now hovering over you practically straddling one of your thighs.

Then a case of the giggles hit you both.

"See you should have just ate the damn cookie." He said while leaning his lower half on yours. "You okay?"

" Y-yeah." You gasped while your face turned red from laughing so much.

Still with the cookie in his hand, he shook his head at you then popped it into his mouth.

Your guy's laughter faded.

He stared down at you and started lightly stroking your hair.

You raised your hand to tuck his behind his ear. Afterwards, you smile. You always wanted to do that.

A moment passed and you noticed him staring at your lips. But before you could actually process what he was about to do, he lowered his face to yours. Leaving a sloppy wet kiss on your lips.

Your eyes widen at the act. And even more so when he cupped your face and kissed harder. He then mumbled something that sounded like he said how soft your lips were.

When he let up, he rested his forehead on your collarbone.

You bit your lip, tasting the cinnamon sugar and weed he left on them. Making your heart race so fast that you thought it was gonna explode. He then sighed and rolled off. Laying next to you.

You laid there quietly for a minute to collect your thoughts.

Why did he do that? Like it isn't hard enough being in love with him. He goes and does something like that.

Your thoughts were interrupted by the small snores he suddenly was making.

" Munson?" You whispered." Common wake up. Go to bed." You nudged him. Feeling his chest rise up and down under your palm.

"Munson?" You repeated.

"shhhh I'm sleeping." He mummers.

"Edward get up and go to bed."

He sat up so quick at sound of his name. "alright alright! Geez I'm goin'."

You watched as he got up and headed to his room. He grunted as he flopped down on mattress.

You got up and finished the dishes with your thoughts screaming at you.

Once you were done you went to check on him.

He was laying flat on his stomach. You grabbed the blanket at his feet and pulled it over him. Wishing you could climb in with him. However, you thought that would be too much for you to handle right now. So you made the choice to sleep in uncle Wayne's spot on the couch. You kicked off your shoes and laid down. Pulling the couch throw blanket over you.

There was a question that seemed to haunt you until you finally fell asleep.

We had a moment. Right?

Your dreams were merciless that night.

...

The Sunday morning sun shinned right in your eyes.

Ugh!

You sat up and rubbed your eyes. After giving yourself a minute to wake up, you folded the blanket and put it back from where you got it. Then you went to make breakfast for Eddie and Wayne. First checking in on the butt head of your relentless dreams.

Still sound asleep. When did you take off your clothes?

You blushed when you saw him in just boxers. Curious eyes running over his body. Admiring his tattoos. Also taking in his pecks and flat tummy. Even his little happy trail. It was like you had never seen him without a shirt before.

"Alright perv." You said to yourself. "Gawking at your half naked friend isn't creepy at all."

You closed the bedroom door and returned to the kitchen. Opening up the fridge, you pulled out a carton of eggs and some bacon.

Making breakfast for the Munson's on Sunday mornings was always the highlight of your weekend.

Standing at the stove you began humming Renegade by Styx and began to work.

You wrapped up the finished plates in tin foil and worked on cleaning up. That's when Wayne walked through the front door.

You smiled at him. "Morning Mr. Munson."

" Morning sweetheart. Smells good." He said, sounding exhausted. But you could hear him try to be a little perky for you.

You looked so tired.

"Working doubles again?" You asked.

He walked over to the dining table, taking a seat and setting down his lunch pail on the floor. You grabbed his plate and a fork and set it in front of him.

"Thanks sweetie." he sighed. " Yup. Looks like it for the foreseeable future."

You grab the syrup for the pancakes you made last minute, and 2 glasses of orange juice. Setting it down at the table. Then you sat across from him. Grabbing a banana from the bundle that was resting on the counter behind you.

" I'm sorry Mr. Munson."

You sat there looking to his face. Seeing all the wrinkles and gray hair. You felt bad for Eddie's uncle. He worked so damn hard for himself and Eddie. He busts his ass to make money for a company that pay him barely enough to keep food on the table.

You thought about Eddie dealing to help out as well. You didn't care for it but you always told him. Do what you gotta do.

You watched as Wayne ate slowly. You were just about to say something but Eddie came walking in.

" You know people are trying to sleep here right?" He groaned while pouring a cup of coffee.

You move your attention from Wayne to him. Still no shirt but he had put on some grey sweatpants that hung loosely from his narrowed hips. As he moved to the other side of the counter next to you, he placed his breakfast down and hopped up onto the counter. You caught a glimpse of his package bouncing as he jumped.

You averted your eyes. Dear God!

"Morning son." Wayne said. " You plan on giving y/n a ride home anytime soon?" He looked at you. " Not saying you can't stay. But you know how rowdy my nephew gets when you're here. And I do plan on sleeping today."

You smiled. Loving the way Eddie got all bothered because of you.

Without saying anything Eddie nodded while shoveling eggs into his mouth, taking a sip of coffee afterwards.

" Alright. Get her home safe. "Wayne sighed and got up from his seat. " I'm gonna shower and hit the hay." He came over to you and kissed the top of your head. " Thank you for breakfast sweetheart. Don't let my nephew get into any trouble."

" I'll do my best sir."

He smiled. " If anyone can. It's you."

You grinned. That's where Eddie gets his kindness from.

Wayne then placed the dirty dishes in the sink and headed to the shower.

You sat patiently while Eddie finished his food too. You began peeling your banana and heard him clear his throat. You look up. While taking another sip of coffee he looked at you and raised one of his eyebrows.

" Seriously Munson? It's too early for your shit."

He chuckled while you shook your head.

He hurried and finished his breakfast. After putting his dishes away, he went to grab a shirt. You threw your peel away and grabbed your purse. Just then Wayne came out while you and Eddie were heading for the door.

You looked over. " Good night Mr. Munson."

" Good night sweetheart." He responded.

" Hey! How come he can call you by a nickname?" Eddie questioned. Turning around to face you and pointing towards his uncle.

" Because Munson. I actually like him." You said, while pushing him out the trailer. You waved to Wayne while he let out an exhausted laugh.

...

The car ride felt so long. You smiled and laughed listening to Eddie singing along to Master of Puppets. Every once in a while doing an air solo on his imaginary guitar.

As the song came to a close. You reach to turn down the volume.

" Hey did you ever finish learning that solo?"

"Nope." He sighed. " I keep messing up the riff."

" That's ok. You will get it eventually." You said beaming a smile at him. Making him grin back.

He pulled up into the driveway and put the van in park. You both sat in silence. It being quite deafening. You reach for the door handle when he began to talk.

" y/n? Uhh..."

You look back at your best friend.

"Y/n. Did I-" He cut off. Looking for the right way to ask you.

A few seconds passed

" Words Munson." You teased.

" Uh right." He let out an awkward chuckle. " Did-did I kiss you last night? Because I ummm. Either I did or I had the most vivid dream."

His question sent heat through your entire body. You anticipated this conversation. But, not so soon. Not right now.

Your hands drop into your lap. You couldn't look at him or say anything. You just played with your fingers. Anxiety creeping up on you like some type of monster. You closed your eyes and bit your lip to hold the beast back. Then you felt him burning a hole on the side of your face.

" SHIT! I did huh?"

All you could do was nod.

" Fuck y/n! I'm so sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

You could hear how apologetic he was. He really didn't mean to kiss you. Along with nervousness, sadness decided to join the party.

Eddie felt truly terrible about the kiss. But he felt even worse for making you anxious. So he placed his big callused hand over yours.

The touch of his skin on yours made how you were feeling a little less intense.

" It's ok." You said just above a whisper. Staring at his rings. " It uh it was nice."

You looked up at him.

Those fucking eyes. I seriously hate his eyes. Makes me feel like agreeing to anything.

You half smiled. " It really was a nice first kiss. It was sweet." You lightly laughed. " Literally."

Eddie's expression turned from worried that he fucked up to shock.

" Okay hold on. What?! First kiss?!"

The words brought back the anxiety.

Shit!

" That was your first kiss? Wait wait wait. What about Scotty? That one time you guys did the 7 minutes in heaven thing?"

" Try an eternity in hell." You scoffed " We just sat in the closet staring at the door."

"Really? You looked... Well you looked like you had."

" It was 98 degrees that day Munson. Locked in a small closet for 7 minutes. Ugh I'm sure if I had balls, I would have sweated them off."

You both let out a half hearted laugh then sat for a few moments.

He tilted his head a little. "So... Just nice huh?"

You nodded. " It was a little sloppy but hey at least you tasted good."

You immediately shut your mouth. Shit! That doesn't sound weird at all.

" I uh mean you had a mouth full of cookie. So you tasted like cinnamon."

"Ohhh. Okay. I was gonna say. Did we do more than kiss?"

" No. No. Nope. Just the one kiss."

Good save. You sighed to yourself.

Eddie nodded and lifted his hand to the back of his neck to rub it. Now you knew he was getting nervous.

" Was that really your first kiss?"

" Yes Munson." You said a little irritated.

"Well shit y/n! I can't let that be your first kiss."

You jerked your head back. " Uhh what?"

"Nice! Just nice!"

" Again Munson. What?"

" Y/n c'mon. Your first kiss should be... Something. It should be better than just nice."

You knew what he was gonna say. Even though you really wanted to. You said a silent prayer to the universe that he would just let it go.

" We gotta do it again." He suggested.

Guess not.

"Uh that's gonna be a no bud." You said, trying to play the part. " One's enough. Thanks though."

" Oh c'mon sweetie." He teased.

You finally turned to him and raised your hand to smack his arm. But before you could he grabbed your wrist.

" Seriously y/n." He said in his let's be serious right now tone. "Let me make it up to you. Let me redeem myself. I can't have my best friend thinking I'm a sloppy kisser."

Why do you care what I think about how you kiss?

" Umm. How about no Munson."

He let go of your wrist.

"Y/n if I can't redo this, my reputation will go down the drain...Eddie 'the freak' Munson is a nice kisser. NICE!"

" Hey! What did I say about calling yourself that? You're not a freak Munson. A butthead maybe. Overly dramatic? Definitely. But you are not a freak. Do you honestly think I would be friends with a freak?"

He sunk back in the seat. "Well no. But then again, are we really friends if you won't let me fix this?"

Your eyes met again. He stared at you with pleading puppy dog eyes. Pouting his bottom lip.

"Fuck! Alright Munson." You agreed while climbing out of his rust bucket.

Eddie raised his arms in victory but his hands hit the roof of the van. " Shit! Ouch." He wailed while rubbing his hands together in effort to ease the pain.

"See you tonight?" He called out the window while you made your way into your home.

" Call before you come over."

" Will do." He shouted over his engine roaring. " Love you baby."

You narrowed your eyes at him and gave him the bird. He left cracking up knowing he was getting under your skin.

You rolled your eyes and smiled.

Love you too.

-

"Hey honey. Where you've been?" Your dad asked looking up from the TV in your direction.

" Hi dad." You said closing the door. "I'm just getting back from the Munson's."

" Oh. You stayed the night again? I thought you and Nancy were having a girl's night." your Dad asked returned his attention to the TV.

"Yeah. But things came up."

"How did Eddie's boyfriend feel about you staying over all the time?"

Your head snapped towards him. " Uh what?"

" I hope he doesn't get to jealous that Eddie has a girl spending the night so often. Especially since you probably share a bed."

"Dad...Eddie doesn't have a boyfriend."

"No? Huh? Well don't worry honey. A good looking boy like that won't stay single for long. Especially now that he's added that bandana to his wardrobe."

Completely dumbfounded, you tried to comprehend what your father just said. Your dad thinks your best friend is gay.

Holy shit.

You ran your index and middle finger across your brows. Touching your cheek with the bruise. Drawn your hand back at the soreness. For just a moment you forgot.

You pushed those feelings away and was bombarded with new ones. Ones that were overwhelming you more and more each second that passed.

Kissing Eddie.... Again. Well this is gonna hurt like a bitch. When did my life become a fuckin' soap opera?

...

While listening to Queens album A Night at the Opera, you tried you best to work on your homework. But the thought of Eddie's full lips all soft and moist kept you from focusing.

Common girl. Get your shit together.

Your foot bouncing up and down. Shaking the desk.

Nope. We can't. I can't. It's just gonna break my heart. He wouldn't want to be seen hand in hand with some beached whale. He would never see me more than a friend.

You let those thoughts hurt you a little more for a minute. You then looked at the time.

7:30. Shit, the day went too fast.

Not sure what time Eddie would call, you figured you had time to shower. You made up your mind. It wasn't gonna happen. You weren't gonna let Eddie go through with it.

You grabbed your PJs that consist of a long sleeved button up green and black flannel that came down just above your knees and white cotton panties with a small green bow in the front.

All the while reassured yourself that it was the right move and went to shower. Wallowing until you heard the scratch of the album ending.

You hurried and dried off. Then got dressed. When you walked in you saw Eddie flipping the record over.

You jumped up in shock with your wrapped up hair becoming slight loose.

" Jesus H. Christ Munson!"

Eddie held up his hands so that he could show you he wasn't a threat. " Your pops let me in."

" You were suppose to call."

" Uh damn....yeah I forgot." He shrugged. " Sorry."

It was in this moment you realized your thick legs were showing. He had never seen you like this. No bra and half naked. The thought made you feel disgusted with yourself.

Eddie quickly turned around at the full sight of you. " Crap! Sorry y/n."

You move to your dresser and pulled out some leggings. Hurrying into them.

"Decent?" He asked, looking over his shoulder.

" Y-yeah." You stuttered.

The record began to play. And of course it would be playing 'Your My Best Friend' Why wouldn't the universe make you the butt of it's cruel joke?

Not cool man.

Eddie began his approach. To be completely honest. He was so damn nervous about this. All day he was running how he was going to kiss you. It had to be perfect. You deserved the perfect kiss. Out of everyone he knew, you were on the short list of most important people. So no matter what, he had to make sure that this was absolutely flawless.

You put up your hand as soon and he got close enough for you to touch his chest.

With your heart nearly pounding out of your chest you sighed and walked past him to your bed. " Munson we can't. It will be...it's gonna be weird."

He watched you walk away from him. " It will only be weird if you make it weird." He said while tilting his head and smirking.

Wise words.

"We're friends bud. Friends don't make out."

He jerked his head back and furrowed his brow. " Who said we're gonna make out?"

You bit your lip not sure what to say.

" Listen, I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to y/n." He said, bending his knees so he could meet your eye level. " I was just trying to make up for giving you a shitty first kiss."

You were silent for a few moments.

Are you really considering this? Crap.

" Alright." You whispered. "But, we won't ever speak of this again."

He agree with a scouts honor.

You let out a long shaky breath. With Eddie closing the distance. Your breath quickened and your chest rose and fell faster and faster. You didn't dare look him in the eyes. Because you knew if you did, all he would have to do was ask and you would give him your virginity too.

He pulled at the towel that wrapped up your hair gently, taking it off. Your damp locks falling down your back. He moved one of his hands to tuck your hair behind your ear. Accidentally hitting your bruised cheek. You flinch slightly.

" Shit sorry." He whispered. Placing a small kiss on your cheek.

You felt flushed. And you really hoped that he couldn't tell how nervous you were. You could have died right there. How much you've longed for him to do this. Dream after dream. Finally a real kiss.

He spoke softly. " Pretty girl still so shy huh?"

He then put up his arm like he always did when you were about to smack him. But to his surprise you didn't.

"Y-you ok?" He stammered.

You nodded. Because you couldn't find the words.

" Use your words Y/n." He taunted.

Then they came. "Fuck Munson! Will you just kiss me already!?"

He gave you the biggest smirk you had ever seen. His rough hand lifting your chin to make you meet his gaze. He slowly bent down to meet your height. Just as his lips were about to touch yours. A giggle came up from your chest and out your mouth, right into his face.

He pulled back just a little and hung his head. Your laughter making him laugh too.

He shook off the laughter. " What's so funny chuckles?"

You forced yourself to calm down. "I'm sorry Munson...I just umm." You cleared your throat. " What do I do with my hands?"

The question made Eddie toss his head back and let out a throaty laugh.

You held back your need to join. Even though it was hard as hell.

He didn't say anything. He just grabbed your right hand placing it on his waist. The cold of his rings felt so good against your warm skin. He had stopped laughing now and grabbed your other arm to do the same thing.

Once he had your hands in place he moved his to your hip. You moved a little because you felt embarrassed from where he grabbed a love handle. But he dug his fingers in and pulled you closer. Bringing his other hand under your chin again.

"You sure?" He whispered again.

You closed your eyes and felt his hot breath against your lips.

" Y-yes."

You made a small whimper as his lips touched yours. His lips sent what felt like liquid fire through your veins. They were way softer than you remembered.

You couldn't help but move your hands up to the collar of his shirt to pull him closer. But even that wasn't enough. So you stood on your tippy toes. When you did that you felt him let go of your chin and cup the back of your head. It was like no matter how close you were he wanted to be closer. And God, was it so good.

You even forgot to breathe. You were holding your breath trying your best to follow the rhythm he had set for you two. He pulled at your hip so that your whole body was flush with his. In the process, you opened your mouth a bit more. In which he then slid his tongue in. Swirling it in your mouth. Teasing yours.

This was million times better than you imagined.

The kiss slowed and as he pulled away he bit your bottom lip lightly. Pulling it slightly and then releasing it. You sucked on it to savor the taste of him one last time before letting go and pressing your lips together. Finally able to breathe again.

Eddie stepped back holding onto your arms. He looked you over for a second and almost freaked out.

What the hell was that? He thought.

He then lowering himself to try and meet your gaze again.

When you finally opened your eyes you caught a glimpse of that the ugly hickey on his neck. Bringing you back to earth. You felt your heart breaking right then and there.

You dryly swallowed the lump that grew in your throat.

Play it cool y/n. Play it cool. You chanted to yourself.

" I think...I liked the first one more." You broke the silence and met his doe like eyes. Not knowing what else to say.

Eddie couldn't get his thoughts together so he did what he always did. He joked around. He took a step back and grabbed his heart like he was shot.

You both laughed and you did your best to blink away the tears that were forming.

"S-so?" He asked. No longer joking around.

" I uh ... can see why you get so many dates."

He smirked. "Aww shucks. Thanks princess."

You stepped towards him and smacked his arm.

"Ouch!" He joked. " There's my girl." He lifted his hand to rub the back of his neck.

You shook your head. Why are you nervous?

He cleared his throat. " See ya tomorrow?"

You faked a smile. " See you tomorrow bud."

He grinned at you before giving you a quick hug. He then turned to leave and just as he stepped out of your room you called after him.

" Hey Munson...My dad thinks you're gay."

He spun around. "WHAT!?"

You walked to him and just grinned. " Thought you should know. . . Kay bye."

You closed the door on your wide eyed friend.

After, you climbed into bed and turned off the light and sniffled a little.

Yup. It hurt.

-

Eddie stood there flabbergasted. He had no idea what to think.

First, he adjusted his chubby that was suddenly there. Secondly, that had to have been the best kiss he has ever had. And finally, he was most definitely not gay.

When he got to the van he just sat there for a minute going over the kiss again. The way you pulled him closer. The way you whimpered and how he wanted more. How he wanted to keep going. It was almost as if....

" Nah. Nope. The kiss was only good because I tried really hard."

He chuckled a little and took one last look at your window.

" Goodnight pretty girl."

...

The next few weeks went by so fast. All your free time was filled with AA meetings or picking up extra shifts so you could work on saving money for Christmas. November was just around the corner. Late start for you this year. Between school, writing and work. You spent a little less time with Eddie. Not enough for him to notice but even if he did you had a perfectly good explanation.

To be honest, you actually tried to avoid him. It was hard being around him. Especially, after the kiss. When you were with him, you would catch yourself staring at his lips. Or you would constantly daydream about kissing again. So it clearly had to stop. And the only way to get it to, was to create distance. Even if it was skipping lunch period to hide in the library. But then something happened.

You got sick.

You woke up on a Wednesday morning feeling so cold with a sore throat. You sat up in bed feeling super nauseous and when you stood up, your body ached so bad you could barely move.

What's going on?

Your dad took you to the doctor's office when you came down looking like death. When the nurse called you back you let him know he didn't have to come back with you. After all you were an adult.

You had him stop going in with you for a while now. Once he had gone in with you and the nurse asking about your last menstrual cycle. Also, if you were sexually active.

You and your father were so embarrassed, but ever since then you let him know that you would be fine without him. You were sure he was relieved when you said it.

On your way home you were so tired but very angry. You told your dad that you had a really bad case of the flu. And that the doctor said you can go back to school once you feel better.

After the first week you felt good enough to make it downstairs and throw yourself on the couch. Your dad shouted from the kitchen.

"Y/n? Is that you honey?"

"Who else would it be?" You groaned.

Ugh. Period starting soon. You're being a bitch.

You whined and wrapped yourself tighter in the blanket you came down with.

" Here you go." Your dad said while placing a bowl of soup in front of you.

You gave him a thin lip smile and started to eat. The warm broth soothing your incredibly sore throat.

" Eddie called again."

Your rolled your eyes and ignored him.

" Honey don't you think you should talk to him. It's been a week. He sounds real worried about you." He paused for a second. "S-so am I. Who has the flu for this long? Maybe you got strep throat or something?"

"Yeah maybe."

" Well do you need anything before I head to work?"

You shook your head. Dad patted your back and took off to start his day. You turned on the TV and laid down.

It wasn't long after when you heard pounding on the front door. A familiar voice shouting your name.

You open the door still dawning the blanket. Rage filled your eyes when you saw the guy who made you sick holding a bouquet of daisies and his signature grin. Of course.

"Hi."

You didn't even have a second thought before you lunged. Smacking his arm a total of two times. You originally swung four times but missed the first two because he dodge them.

"EDWARD. FUCKING. MUNSON!" You yell while smacking. "MONO?! YOU GAVE ME MONO!"

Eddie put his hands up to stop you from coming closer to hit him again. But by that time, you were keeled over trying to breathe.

" y/n I'm sorry." He kept repeating over and over. " I swear I didn't know I had it....again."

You didn't want to hear him anymore. While standing up you flipped him off and went into the house. Throwing yourself back on the couch.

Eddie stuck his head in the doorway of the living room. "You know you could use some anger management sessions."

You scowled at him but saw empathy in his eyes. He looked like a scared lamb.

"You uhhh you calm now?"

You waved your hand and sighed. Throat hurting too much to speak now. After the initial wave of anger you did relax and took some medicine.

Eddie took off his jacket and tossed it on your dad's recliner. Then he set the flowers down on the side table.

He walked around the couch and lifted your head so that you could rest it in his lap. " I really am sorry y/n."

The way he sounded made you believe him. He was such a sweet guy. He would never purposefully put you in harms way.

Eddie then surprised you by stroking your hair and hummed something. You couldn't put your finger on it but it sounded nice. So nice that you actually dozed off for a second.

" Don't worry pretty girl." He said softly. "I'll take care of you."

" W-why do you keep calling me that?"

"Calling you what? ... Pretty girl?"

You moved your head just enough for him to understand.

" Because. You're a pretty girl."

" Wo-woman." You mumbled, weakly picking up your index finger on the hand that was close to your face. Letting it fall back down.

You opened your eyes just a bit after hearing a small chuckle coming from him. Then closed them back again. You fought for just a few more seconds to be awake before surrendering.

" Don't say it if...if you don't mean it." You said very low now.

He leaned in so he could hear you. His curls tickling your face. His response put a sweet smile across your lips.

"I would never lie to you."

"Promise?" You asked just before you fell asleep.

" Promise promise." He answered while leaning back into the couch. Still stroking your hair. " I think you're a beautiful girl."

...

You finally made it back to school two weeks later. Despite your father calling the doctors to find out why you were still sick. Getting the answer that it was doctor/patient confidentiality. He was suspicious but eventually gave up.

You made your way through the cafeteria and sat at your normal spot. Ignoring the farm animal noises that people thought were so funny.

Everyone at the table welcomed you back. You look at Eddie's empty chair.

Dustin noticed you looking. " He uhh he skipped." He answering the question before you could ask it.

Shaking your head. "How is this kid supposed to graduate this year if he keeps skipping? He better have a damn good excuse."

"Oh he does." Gareth blurted out before being nudged by Dustin.

You looked back and forth between Gareth and Dustin. "Oh-kay... What's going on?"

Dustin hesitated but answered. " He uhhhhh he ummmm skipped."

You sighed. "Yeah...I got that part."

Gareth couldn't take the tension and practically announced it to the entire cafeteria. "Eddie skipped with his girlfriend."

WHAT THE FUCK!!

"Oh-oh....ermmm....okay."

That's all you could say.

Girlfriend?

...

[hungtengu]

People hate my relationship with Hantengu because it's a common observation that he knew he did something bad, and my tolerance for him is disturbing to many viewers. He was exactly like his human self as a demon: on edge and agitated, full of unnecessary rage just waiting to spill out, self absorbed, manipulative, calculated and stealthy. This man has had to run and hide before and it's clear he's done this many times. The only drastic change he took on was a darker complexion, glowing eyes, horns and claw like nails. When I say I love him, I am also saying I acknowledge he had bad thoughts as a human and that he acted on those thoughts countless times. The murder and theft of the blind monk was only where it ended. That was the closest memory he had to his transformation, when Muzan came to him. He saw the end of his humanity because he erased all the other crimes from his twisted mind willingly. He rewrote entire chapters of his life just to begin another one with the same damn story. He was sick and was not helped. Partly due to his time period, partly due to denial. He was mentally unstable and he did not need to be married with children at a time when he was so unwell he couldn't be trusted to keep them safe from himself. God knows how he did it but he took children's lives and his pathetic excuses couldn't make it forgivable. He was so diabolical he was sentenced straight to death the moment he was caught. He became less good at hiding his tracks and became a deranged and unhinged old man the more he believed his own lies. He was willing to manipulate himself to keep manipulating others and it resulted in his death, eventually, at the hands of a young man who was under the impression his sister sacrificed her own life to allow him to catch this narcissistic coward who even subjected his own headless demon body to sunlight just to attempt to capture two blacksmiths.

As Tanjiro's steel agonizingly (and finally) penetrates Hantengu's neck, he questions if his life is flashing before his eyes which was a real "no shit you're gonna die, moron" moment for everyone. We no longer see Urami and we officially see Hantengu himself express defeat, his expression of fear and anguish drop and we see how pissed off he really is. He failed. Zohakuten was to be burned, another hashira spared. Before he witnessed Nezuko could withstand the sun, he, to his knowledge, failed his master and himself. Muzan was clever enough to convince Hantengu he believed his innocence. He knew how to talk to an unsound man and win his trust. Muzan sought out people he knew would accept his recruitment. We officially see a glimpse of his human life played back like an old movie. When he was caught because he didn't keep his hands to himself, he blamed his hands for all the trouble. Who knows what else he put the blame on before. If he stabbed someone, it was the knife. If it was blunt forced trauma, it was the object. If he strangled someone, it was the oxygen. No matter how unrealistic it would seem, he'd give it all the credit as long as it wasn't /him/ and that's why people find my social media to be cringe. People like him exist in this world. Unfortunately, we all know a Hantengu. I was raised in the presence of a few. I don't know if my love for him takes place in unhealed trauma to figures of authority, or if I relate with him in some shameful way, but I express confidence and commitment in my bond with him and if it puts me in the hole some day, oh well. Let it be an example of what happens when you don't help yourself. *Shrugs and cuddles up to my pillow*

I have had many real life partners who have suffered my deteriorating mental health show me nothing but loyalty. I return their love never to them, but to a fictional character. I too can be considered despicable. Will I change? Not sure if I plan on it. Perhaps my happy place is deeply in love with a man who is not real. A man I cannot hurt and a man who cannot hurt me. Society doesn't want people like me to fraternize with the public, so I suppose he will have to do. I am learning to be kinder on the outside, inside me is a neediness to be seen as innocent, lovely and charming, and I will keep telling myself this until I finally believe it. People may claim to be a victim by me, but I'm sure one day with enough convincing, those memories won't hurt my heart. If I believe myself to be innocent rather than accepting those crimes, I won't feel such sadness for what they claim I made them feel. Perhaps... We are perfect for each other, Hantengu and I. 🖤👹

[snow-system-wol]

Finally following up on that confession -- after returning home from that meeting with Fandaniel, G'raha catches a chance to speak with S'ria about that accidental "I love you" incident. (It is unfortunate that they are both bringing the thought "he should not choose someone like me" to the conversation.)

Ao3

(warning: S'ria lashes out and the dialogue does briefly become more nsfw for that bit.)

"You're avoiding me." It wasn't said in an accusatory way, just factual.

S'ria whipped his head around and, of course, there was G'raha in the hallway behind him. There was still plenty of space for S'ria to leave, if he needed, and that made things easier.

"Oh... I'm sorry, I think I have been." He wasn't sure if it was a conscious choice or not.

G'raha sighed. "I would take the words back if I could, if I have made you uncomfortable, but that is unfortunately impossible."

"No, it's not… I'm just being a bit of an ass about that, if I'm quite honest. Can we talk in my room instead of the middle of the hallway?"

G'raha relaxed a bit. If S'ria was okay with letting him into his quarters, things must not be as weird as he had first thought.

That thought was somewhat short-lived, as it was still immediately weird. Once they were in S'ria's room, they'd ended up just staring at each other silently for at least a minute. Gods, one of them needed to say something before this stretched on any longer, or he was going to actually lose his mind. He'd thought that burden would fall to him, but, surprisingly, S'ria spoke first.

"It's… confusing but nice, that you feel like that about me – I'm not upset about it."

"Full glad am I to hear that, but forgive me if this is too blunt – what has this last week been about, then?" G'raha looked briefly mortified. "Please tell me I didn't incorrectly assume that this was about me."

"No, it's related at least." S'ria sat down heavily onto his bed, leaving G'raha fidgeting awkwardly by the door. "Please sit down or something."

G'raha spared a nervous glance at the conspicuous empty space left on S'ria's bed and instead lowered himself into the chair by his desk. Probably for the best. 

S'ria continued without need for prompting. "I think the thing I've been worrying over is not your feelings themselves, but rather – what outcome would you be expecting in response to that confession?"

"Truly, it was not my intent to blurt that out – but it was also good to be honest with you." G'raha continued, tentatively. "Not to be presumptuous – if there was any chance you felt the same way –o-of course, there is no pressure, but... I'd hope we could see if it goes anywhere."

Several emotions flashed across S'ria's face, conflicting and difficult to parse – excitement, grief, fear, confusion – before settling on something dull and defeated. He laughed bitterly.

"Exactly how long would that last? How much would you give up on just to have the barest minimum of a relationship with me? There are things one would typically expect in a romantic partner, and I don't think those are things I can provide."

"I'd gladly accept whatever you can give, and have no need of anything you can not." 

S'ria looked unimpressed at the perfectly selfless answer, and regarded him doubtfully. "No need, huh? So you wouldn't want to fuck me if we were together, if you could?" 

G'raha's face, never very good at hiding his emotions, showed an immediate mix of shock, embarrassment, and frustration. He'd nearly forgotten how blunt S'ria could be, especially while in a less than stable place.

"S'ria." It came out sounding nearly scandalized. "I do not know how to answer that question. 'Yes' and 'No' sound like equally bad responses."

S'ria crossed his arms stubbornly. "Well, to be fair – I'm asking you to answer a question, not to figure out what answer I'd want to hear."

"Must I give you a direct response? I am attracted to you, and you may infer from that."

He displayed a surprising lack of any emotional response to that confirmation. "...I see. And you're saying you'd want to enter a committed relationship with the understanding that you'd likely never have that from me?"

"Considering I went a century without anything of the sort, I hardly think it would kill me, no."

"I wasn't thinking it'd kill you, I just–", S'ria trailed off, fidgeting. "You'd resent me for it. Someday, inevitably, you'd grow tired of not being able to fix me – and it just wouldn't be enough anymore." He paused before adding, quieter, "…I'd much rather keep our friendship than have you end up hating me. What we have now is important to me."

G'raha slid out of his chair and took one of S'ria's hands in his, telegraphing the movement as clearly as he could in advance. "No. My love for you need not be greedy. I am simply asking for your continued presence and support in my life and anything beyond that is a gift." Seeing S'ria start to open his mouth with a frown, he quickly added on, "and we could talk about it, if something like that ever truly became a problem."

"...Oh," S'ria responded with no readable tone. "I suppose we could, yes. Talk about it."

G'raha seemed to realize something and politely let go of S'ria's hand. "Ah, despite this interesting conversation of hypotheticals, you haven't – you've stated reasons why I should not be interested in you, but have not said anything of what you may want for yourself. I would understand if you... would not choose me."

S'ria blinked. "Oh. I forgot that was a necessary part of this conversation. That does matter, doesn't it?"

For certainly not the first time this week alone, G'raha entertained the thought of going back in time just to murder an already dead man. "Yes, I consider your opinion extremely important on this matter."

"...to be honest, I don't know. The idea is scary, but it's not – it's not that I don't want to. I think a proper relationship sounds… tentatively appealing, and I do care about you. A lot. I just, I'm not sure what love is supposed to feel like or if I have ever felt it before? But–"

"Please don't force yourself into something you aren't certain about."

S'ria's tail bristled a bit. "Hold on, let me finish. But I'm not going to understand my feelings on this if I just sit here and do nothing with them. I do not know what I'm doing or what I feel, but I do know that I want to try. Is that enough?"

"As long as you tell me if it makes you unhappy, then yes, that is enough."

"Then that's my answer, if it's acceptable. Oh, but, what… what does this change right now, precisely, with the restrictions that have been brought up?"

G'raha paused to think. "Aside from ideally trying to communicate a little – or a lot – better with each other, it need not change much at all. You are welcome to be affectionate in whatever way is comfortable for you, but I would hardly have had a problem with that prior to this conversation too."

"That sounds nice, actually. However–". S'ria grimaced. "That's… this conversation was entirely too stressful if that's all that'd be different."

"Well...yes. I suppose it has been. But I'd hardly have wanted to be on a different page than you about what we were."

"I am sorry for the way I chose to go about this."

"No, 'tis not –." There was still a lingering redness to G'raha's face. "I shall not deny that the way you chose to phrase that was, a bit, er... But I understood your concerns."

S'ria finally seemed to have relaxed. He looked deep in thought for several moments before his ears perked up. "Oh, I have thought of something else that might change." 

"If we're partners, does that mean I get to hear your singing voice again, Raha?" S'ria looked equal parts mischievous and genuinely excited at the idea. And oh, trust him to make that the first thing he thought of. G'raha had let his inhibitions slip maybe a little too far with the help of wine, once, and everyone seemed determined to wrangle a repeat performance.

"Pray tell, share?"

Gods, he couldn't even fully process the embarrassment of that being brought back up, face flushing immediately, before his mind caught up to "Raha" and got stuck there.

G'raha had also just properly realized that the conversation had, beyond his expectations, ended up at 'sure, let's try'. Best of all, S'ria looked happy about that conclusion.

G'raha got the feeling that he'd somehow end up even more flustered by the Warrior of Light than he'd been before this change, though he wouldn't really expect it any other way.

[shkika]

I LOVE ALL THOSE POINTS I also never really knew about the terror area that's so cool wtf!!

Anyway I definitely agree with like everything I find it really silly about how moon, despite how soft-spoken she appears to be-, talks so bad about the ancients while five pebbles being the one on the meaner/blunt side speaks so highly of them I LOVE that the iterators are their own people like they have their own opinions rather than just being machines..they really feel like they have that biological aspect to them :]

Most of my musings are based around fp (i miiight be a little biased) but I love the thought of exploring even more in depth with his relationship with the ancients ...like the way he interacts with artificer?? The way he considers her to be one of his citizens is so silly (I wonder does he find a source of comfort in that??)

Like... I wonder how did he feel about the ancients all ascending, he seemed to admire many of them and he must have felt some sort of emptiness at that (STARING at the posts of ancient talking to him like siri) like especially with the cities on top of the iterators too, like i wonder wonder wonder what daily life was like for the ancients

Aghghgh adding on even more I wonder does he ever feel rage towards the ancients, like surely he must feel some way abandoned, like yes ascension is such a big thing for them but still like how EASY it was for them to just get up and leave him behind

ALSO THAT ECHO THAT YU FIND NEAR MOON THAT MENTIONS THE RANDOM GODS it must've been so nasty to hear yur literal parents talking so badly about you. Like it wasn't the iterators fault they couldn't find a solution and it wasn't their fault they lost themselves to time but the ancients still seem to blame that stuff on them

As for cycles that IS really silly I think like it seems at first just like death but it goes so much further in such a weird way, I love games with vague ass lore but AUGH GODD

For having like everything based around those cycles there really is such little information on them........maybe nobody really figured it out? That's unlikely though considering how everyone talks about them

I've just started really playing the game so I have yet to get into every little thing but I really enjoy the broadcasts u find as spearmaster I love the like conversations I love how much further it pushes the previous thing of iterators being their own things but I'm sure they had so many limits put on them too

It's also pretty late for me forgive me if this is really rambled but yuhyuh

OH HEHE ALL THIS FOR ME YUMMY!!

moon is the kind of person whod smile passively agressively at you when she wants to strangle you and she has no mouth! so nobody ever noticed <3

I adore Pebbles attitude towards Artificer actually. It’s incredibly funny. She posesses an ID of a citizen and it’s attached to her. So like.. what is he supposed to do??? Yeah. she is one ig..

He even at some point tells you that he has absolutely no power to kill or kick you out (probably an ingrained taboo!) because of her id! which is why you can hit him with spears and rocks all you want and get him to yell at you. (did that for 30 mins <3).

My personal hc for him is that he wanted to kill this weird cat so bad. Wasn’t allowed to. and now shes his emotional comfort beastie (awful garbage dweller)!! shes part of his city, tending to it even. A citizen if you ask me! (the overseers literally give her ads i lost my shit at that). Ancients seem to share similarities with us!! They have campfires and festivals! (info from moon) They get copius amounts of ads, they have neat little shopping lists!!!

I think Pebbles is a deeply lonely little man who got stuck being Moon 2 (he was built to house her people in the first place) even though she doesnt even like them. Grew to like them himself and got then abandoned. I think the idea he feels deeply betrayed and hurt by the ancients leaving him really shows in the conversation with Suns. He can hardly believe all he was ever made to do is be.. uh.. some useless little bug. He wants to escape.

I also really enjoy thinking he loved the attention and loved feeling important. Them leaving was confirmation that he was not actually. (then we decided we’re gonna be the next sos actually). He also believed he had to go through everything alone. Pebs constantly asks to be left alone up until riv campaign. him acknowledging that maybe he doesnt have to be, so he probably got to share his last functional cycles with moon has me in tears!!

As for the echo!!! I can understand the anger partly. I’m pretty sure the karma gates and building complexes on the ground imply that not all ancients were fortunate enough to live on the back of an iterator. (Shaded citadel people did not!) That echo iirc was a worker I assume. Imagine wasting your entire life building a god that never even fulfilled their purpouse. They just crumbled on the ground you built them on!! Not to mention you had to suffer the rain if u lived on the surface (jeez Moons rain siren sounds horrifying btw!!!)

Hopefully cycle lore gets cleared up in rw 2 (cope)

Also also the logs for spearmaster are incredibly interesting and show that iterators are in fact very diverse little discord people that like gossip <3 and that nsh is horrifying i think <3

[lcnelyday]

💌 Anya / @wynterlanding

you are infuriating sometimes, you know that right? sorry, i think it's supposed to start out 'dear landon' or something like that. i never understood the rules set out in the world too much. forgive me if i bypass them just this moment. i'm not good with words like you are. i'm good with music. but i have tried the music thing, actually, i didn't try it. it just happened. and then i panicked. and i thought, this is so much easier than showing you something that came from my soul. not that i don't want to give you a piece of my soul, somehow i do, but i don't know how to be that vulnerable there yet.

so i am going to try to do the words thing. and i'm going to write it because god, you know how hard it is to string words into a sentence in front of you sometimes? the things you say, they are so beautiful, so poetic, sometimes i think i might pass out, collapse to the floor because my brain glitches so bad.

i don't remember what i said to you when we first met. i think it was something along the lines of 'excuse me, you're taking up all the space at the bar,' it certainly wasn't romantic or polite even, but i remember it never the less.

i'm no good with words. i am worse with conventional social manners. i'm more of a numbers girl than anything. did you know that music can be whittled down just to numbers? most people don't know that. i'm a no mess, one way street answers kind of girl. i don't like when things are confusing and conflicting ow when they make no sense. the funniest thing about that is that there hasn't been a single moment since we met that things have been no mess, one way street answers. the scariest part of all is that i find i actually like it. it's terrifying, don't get me wrong, but i like having all the lines blurred, nothing is black and white anymore and i can see things differently.

you are so honest, i think i might want to die sometimes, not that i don't appreciate the honesty, but its always about me. people have never lied to me. i'm used to that. coaches and teachers and mentors, everyone always told me when i was fucking it all up, they knew they could easily tell me because it was constructive. my parents were truthful about whether or not i could accomplish something, and then sometimes i liked to prove them wrong and accomplish it anyway. when i had my accident, the doctors didn't sugar coat anything. my parents were gone, i was eighteen and on my own, they couldn't sugar coat it. they gave me numbers, statistics, plans and risks. they didn't lie once. i could handle all of that. and then you walked in.

your honestly is so visceral. it's so blunt and poetic and sincere, and it's about me. not about my skills, not about my possibilities, not about my chances. it's about me. just me. sometimes my art, but always me, and i've never had that before. sometimes i am so embarrassed, i wish the earth could open me up and swallow me whole. not because i don't appreciate you, but because i never know what to do with it all. there's so much love behind everything you say and do and i don't know what to do with that. i've never felt that much love in the entirety of my life.

i'm no good with words, but i know feelings. i know feelings the same way i know the strings of a cello. the way i know an 'a' in every key on the piano. the way i know the difference between a viola, violin and a fiddle. my feelings for you have been nothing short of a drop off a tall cliff. my stomach is all riled up, doing somersaults like it's trying to win some gymnastic award or something. even at my darkest, i've never been happier than when by your side.

when you look at me, i feel like i am burning from the inside out, suddenly exposed. when you hold my hands, even just to comfort me, it's like two puzzle pieces coming together to fit just right. in fact, sometimes it feels like i have been a puzzle piece in the wrong box ever since my accident. i was so sure i was going into the right box, and something bumped into me and i landed somewhere else. never quite sure if i would find a place. and then you stumbled into my life and all of the sudden, i was in the right box.

this is all over the place, i am not good at words. maybe i should just show you the song. that seems like a smarter call. i think i love you. i don't know how i managed that, but i fell and i fell hard. i'll show you the damn song. and if it works out, and you think you could love me too, maybe i'll give you this.

anya xx.

[maiiruo]

worship.

nsfw ahead ! mentions of religion, christianity specifically.

you and hobie had both been raised in similar christian households, yet you both were polar opposites of each other. hobie, no longer religious, turning to anarchism and complete rebellion, whereas you, completely devout to god— praying for forgiveness every night, your bible being the answer to everything you ever wanted to know; except this.

hobie was never far from the church on sundays. loitering around the back, the smell of weed that encased his body. you never understood why he decided, out of anywhere else, to smoke behind a church—until he texted you.

“come see me :)”

automatically, you wanted to say no. you knew he was a bad influence, a tainting to your character as a child of god, yet the way you thought of him was far from that. they wouldn’t notice if you were gone, would they? it’s only a few minutes.

“fine, hobie. 2 mins.”

slowly, u edged away from the conversation you were previously occupied with and saw hobie behind the building, leaning on the wall with a blunt between his dark toned lips. wafting the smoke from your face, his pretty lips part to show his smile, low eyes resting on yours.

“hobie, what do you want? i don’t have long..”

“come on luv, i can’t just wanna see u no more?”

despite how you reacted, you loved when he called you that. the way his voice flooded your senses; you could never fully hide his effect on you.

his eyes slowly traced your body, despite you wearing nothing particularly revealing, he looked at you as if you stood in front of him completely naked. what felt like hours passed and hobie slowly started to edge towards you, blowing smoke on your face with no care for your holy principles.

his lips that you secretly dreamed of exploring your body touched yours, his hands finding your waist as if he had done this god knows how many times before. your body almost reacting faster than your mind, leaning into his scent, his body, his lips—yet you forgot where you were.

almost in a screaming whisper, “hobie w-what are you doing? i cant be seen doing this, you know that!”

“didn’t seem like you cared..”

you were more worried about how your image as a pious, unwavering christian girl was affected while hobie kept his eyes on you, almost waiting for a reaction.

“hobie you—gosh! i cant deal with this right now, i’m leaving.”

“aw come on luv, come see me at 7, yeah?”

acting like you didn’t hear him, you walked almost shamelessly back through the church doors trying to convince yourself not to go see him— he was the textbook example of a sinner, after all.

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

6:40 and you’re staring at the time as if it had stopped, mind circling around his words. it should have been an easy answer—go see hobie, a complete disgrace to the church, or stay at home with your bible. despite everything in your body saying no, you left the house feeling like god himself would strike you down before even getting to hobie.

back at the church, hobie’s leaning on the wall the same way he was before, the smell of weed letting you know he was around. his clothes were tight on his body, outlining his slim waist so perfectly—why were you thinking about this when you shouldn’t have been here in the first place?

“i see youu, rebelling in my footsteps?”, laughing as he teased you.

you never wanted hobie to know when he won, so, again, you acted the complete opposite of how you felt; “whatever...what do you want?” he led you through the church, all the way to the alter, hands finding ur waist once again as your mind slowly went fuzzy, so much you almost forgot where you were, again.

speaking through his lips on yours, you tried to resist, “h-hobes, we can’t do this here.”

“why not? if you’re quiet maybe god won’t ‘ear you, right?”

his lips finding yours again, you were more lenient this time, finally letting your body loosen up and allowing yourself to indulge in how much you wanted this, despite being in the house of god.

you could tell he wanted this, for you to sin for him in the holiest of places. his hips slowly leaned into yours, bulge rubbing against you while your cunt revelled in this, thighs slowly becoming sticky with your slick. hobie’s lips slowly parted from yours, your body still instinctively leaning for more—he lifted you so slightly, kneeling in front of you while slowly undressing you and keeping his eyes on yours.

“just relax ‘n let me worship you, luv.”

the stained glass around the room surrounded you, the moon shining through just right as to shine on hobies pretty, dark skin. distracted by the crucifix that monitored you, he placed kisses from your lower waist, your stomach, slowly inching towards your cunt until he dragged his tongue across what he saw as heaven itself, your voice echoing through sky high ceilings.

“h-hobes..please—i cant”

“shh relax, sweetheart, ‘want you to use me.”

hobie ate you out as if he hadn’t eaten in days, moaning from his awareness that he was making you feel so good—he found pleasure in worshipping you, as if you were his god. almost automatically, your hips bucked into his mouth, finally using him like your toy and grinding on his tongue like he wanted you to.

out of nowhere, hobie’s tongue slipped effortlessly into your hole, his eyes looking up at you as he did so he could watch as your whimpers turned into moans and became louder— he revelled in hearing his name out of your mouth.

“fuck you’re so beautiful, ‘wanna ruin you, right ‘ere.”

completely out of your mind, considering this was your first time doing anything, you replied in a way you would have never heard yourself say, let alone in a church.

“mhmm.. p-please ruin me—god, please” you never used the lord’s name in vain but you blamed it on lust, just this once. your thighs trembled against his hands, so much bigger than yours, that you used as support—you felt yourself coming to your climax, almost embarrassed to let him know that.

“h-hobie..please i wanna—please..”

“you gonna cum for me, yeah? come on luv cum on my face f’me, do it f’me, please.”

his words guided you through it, pushing his head against your clit as your thighs wrapped around him and your body shook with overstimulation, both your moans flooding the church halls with unending echoes.

as your climax came to an end, you realised how hard your thighs were around him- “hobes oh my gosh— sorry..” hobie stood to put his lips on yours again, smiling against your mouth, the taste of your own fluids now on your tongue as well as his. you slightly averted your gaze to see his grey sweats wet with—you know what. he really did get off to your pleasure.

your mind flooded with embarrassment and shame as you finally came back to your senses, noticing your environment, the mess you made on your face— but it seemed like hobie noticed before you;

“sweetheart, don’t worry ‘bout it. you know you deserved this. love worshipping my girl.”

don’t steal, translate or repost my work

©maiiruo

[hesitatenever]

12.27.22

life can be kind of insane. what is it? no one even knows. we are meant to navigate our lives with purpose, a purpose that is individually our own in every way. it's incredible all the paths that each individual human being can feel and access. how does it come to us? dreams? thoughts? other people? where do I find my ultimate bliss. maybe I want too much. or maybe that's is a societal ideal that ones goals are out of reach. I've been on a path recently of which its pulling me to be more positive, speak more positive. I also need to tap into meditation a little bit more. my own personal prayer if you will. some people pray, some meditation, some drink. in meditation I feel like I can become one with our world, a separate being than the vessel I fill. like deep meditation can bring you to new links. its funny because my mother is a very serious christian woman, so I compare what my meditations bring me and her god. its helpful in the same ways, just different outlets. I have always been a flawed person, unable to change and better myself in the ways I feel necessary. in freedom I find peace. even if my freedom is laying in bed all day. in truth, as much as I complain and sometimes have a bad attitude about life, I actually find it that my life is good in most ways. I have a good job and people who support each other within that job. I love my mother, even if my trauma can sometimes complicate our relationship, there is nothing but love. I have two fur babies that I love beyond belief. kind of unreasonably so. but they are beautiful. all of earths creations are so beautiful. positively I feel as though I have changed in ways that allow me to see the beauty of life around me, even in the flaws and pain. someone once told me, “ if you were some kind of higher spirit and someone asked you to come to earth to experience love and forgiveness and pain and suffering, would you do it? “ and the answer is hell yes. the emotional spectrum of human beings is unmatched to anything in this world. not only are our emotions attached to deep things indebted in us for hundreds of years, but also in new things, new emotions and more sensitivity as things become so easily accessible in our modern world. as cosmetically terrible I believe technology to be as far as addiction and codependency on it, it has beauties as well. like allowing us to see inside the mind and emotion of another person. for so long it was only books and conversations that can provide a perspective of someone else's life, but now as populated and openly blunt as technology, you can really see into anyones life as they allow. I'm very much someone who enjoys divulging as much information as possible when speaking with someone. because I have an innate quality to be open even when other may find inappropriate. I like bringing that side out of others as well, being a scorpio I find it that people easily open up to me. and I'm very thankful for this. so for today remember even a small honest talk with someone might be a new perspective on life. and always show love to others and allow them to show love to you. life is beautiful especially when it can be shared and equally appreciated thru friends or close people, or a complete stranger. its a beautiful thing to be vulnerable and open to everyone, even if they don't reciprocate and maybe even try to bring negativity onto your path, it can still positively effect you to be the person who is willing to be yourself and a positive person in peoples lives. even those unwilling to be the same, they will appreciate you at some point and find themselves regretting what their negativity did to you. its not all about an eye for an eye, sometimes its about giving to others what they are incapable of giving to you. 

thx 

haiz

[shigarakis-cumdump]

Day 31: Halloween Party Pt. 2

https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shigarakiscumdump/works

(If you like what you read, consider supporting me on Ao3!)

Kinktober 2021 masterlist here!

Title: Happy Halloween

Summary: One down, how many more to go? You weren’t sure, but you had to fuck whoever just walked through the door… The person under that ghost face mask must be hot..

A/N: I don’t reveal the name of the man under the mask until the very end, so if you’re wondering before you read, this is dabi x reader. Also, Happy Halloween! Hope everyone liked my kinktober lineup this year!

Word Count: 1.2k

.✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.☆.*｡･ﾟ✫*..✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ✫*..✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.☆.*｡･ﾟ✫*..✫*ﾟ･ﾟ｡.★.*｡･ﾟ✫*.

With all of the heroes at tonight's party, it worried you to think that villains might be running the streets. But right now, the only thing that was worrying you was how many people Mina had fucked, and how you were probably far behind and losing. You make your way back over to the bar and order another round or drinks for yourself and whoever was lucky enough to catch your attention. As you sip your margarita, you prance around the agency looking for your next fuck. 

“Who are those guys?” You overhear a girl ask. You turn your head to the commotion and notice a few more heroes walking in, a bit late considering the halloween countdown was in less than 2 hours, but whoever was under those masks must be hot. There were 3 people in total: a ghost face costume, another devil costume, and a villain costume. They had Twice’s bodysuit on and you only hoped it was a costume and not the real thing. Although he wasn’t the one who caught your attention. The ghost face was. You walked over to him and handed him a drink, welcoming him to the party. 

“Nice costume!” You say.

“Not too bad yourself,” he replies, taking the drink from you, “it’s sexy.” Well he’s blunt. You giggle and thank him, asking if he wanted to go to a quieter place in the building. “I just got here and there’s already a hot girl on me? Sure baby, why don’t you show me around a little.” 

You take the man’s arm and lead him to a back room that not many people are around. 

“There, some peace and quiet. I hate parties to be honest.” 

“Yea, they don’t really seem like your type of thing.. I never asked your name by the way,” the man said, “although I’m sure I’ll have better names to call you anyways.” He finished smoothly. 

“The name’s Y/N. And yours?”

“Just call me daddy, ‘kay doll?” You blush at the nickname he gives himself, but ultimately settle for it. Taking sips of your drinks, you talk for a bit about your hero work, and so does ghost face. 

“I just hope the villains aren’t out there running the streets. What an image for the heroes if we’re all partying while some lowlives are wreaking havoc on the city.” you muse. 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, don’t worry that pretty little head off. I’m sure a few hail mary’s will make the people forgive you, no?” He leans in closer to you and laces his fingers through your necklace. The heat radiating off of him is intoxicating. You just want to grab him by his hair and kiss him, have his hands linger on your body and- “Doll?”

“Huh?!” You snap out of your daydream and notice how close he is. “You have a little too much to drink?”

“I think so, haha,” you scratch your neck, “just don’t take advantage of me like this.. I don’t think god would be very happy, is all..” You feign sadness. 

“Good thing I don’t believe in god, then.” The man smirks, though it’s gone unseen due to the mask. He keeps his close distance between you two as he takes in your features. You’re not sure who this masked- man is, but maybe he’d add another number to your fuck count? 

“So, daddy~,” you coo, “what brought you here tonight? You’re a little late, ya know.” 

“Just wanted to let all the pretty girls get a few drinks in their system before I made my entrance, and I’d say my plan worked perfectly,” He trails his hand down your chest, not- so- subtly groping your tits. You take his hand in yours and bring it down to your sex.

“You have any other plans after that..?” You bite your lip and look back up at him. 

“A few..” He takes no time in palming your cunt just the way you like it, leaving you breathless and needy for more. 

“Mmm, don’t tease me daddy, make me feel good..” you whine as you begin pulling your dress down. You hear a deep chuckle from behind the mask as he watches you give him a strip tease. “Like what you see?”

“Love what I see..” He replies hungrily. You can see the tent in his pants grow the more you reveal of yourself. “Fuck, you’re sexier than I imagined.” 

“So you’ve thought about me then? All whiny and needy for you?” You ask with puppy dog eyes.

He can barely contain himself. “Look at you, fuckin’ slut. You’re trouble..” The masked man tugs your dress the rest of the way down and slides two fingers in between your folds. “So wet for me, too. I bet you’ve been waiting all night for this, huh?”

“Mmhm,” you watch his fingers as they disappear inside of you. Gasping, you spread your legs wider for him so his hot fingers can get as deep as possible. “Fuck, feels s’ good daddy, don’t stop.” 

“Don’t worry doll, I won’t be.” His fingers seem to heat up the more he fucks you. They curl perfectly, hitting your g- spot with every thrust. Your quiet moans fill up the empty room and egg the man to keep going. He takes your hand and brings in down to his cock, motioning for you to jerk him off. You slide your hand under his costume and grab hold of his, my god, huge cock, and pump his length for him. 

“God, your little fingers feel amazing, sweetheart.” he praises. He wishes he could reveal himself right now, take off his mask and kiss you deeply, taking your breath away in more ways than one, but ultimately decides to wait for a better time. His slender fingers bring you right up to the edge of completion and he loves the way you beg for him to let you cum. “Not yet, baby. I’m not done with you yet.” He replies, to which you groan and whine. He takes his fingers out of your twitching hole and takes off the lower half of his costume, finally revealing his cock. He gives it a few more pumps before thrusting in balls deep, bumping your cervix perfectly. 

“Oh fuck, daddy please, please can I cum?!” You beg with tears pooling your eyes.

“Calm down, slut, I’ll tell you when you’re allowed. He sets a quick pace, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back into you, making you see stars. Both of your groans are filling the room, and at this point you don’t care if anyone hears you two- the more the merrier. 

You can feel that he’s close when his rhythm is shaky and his hips stutter. 

“Go ahead doll, cum for me. Cum all over this cock for me.” With his approval, you allow yourself to finally cum, your cunt twitching and squeezing his cock, milking it for all it’s worth. With the both of you tired out, he collapses on top of you and you just cuddle for a bit, until you hear everyone in the other room shouting as they count down: 

“Three.. Two.. One… Happy Halloween!” As they all cheer and yell, the man above you finally takes off his mask. “Happy Halloween, doll.” 

You can’t believe your eyes. The person you just finished fucking was Dabi from the League of Villains. Your eyes widen in fear as you shove him off of you. 

“What’s with the face? Scared~?”

[harry-writings]

Drive Me Wild

- where Harry has a problem expressing emotions, and Y/n talks too much

Masterlist 

A/N: mentions of drug and alcohol abuse, indications of depression, and a very mild form of smut (if we can really call it that)

Song mentioned: Invisible String by Taylor Swift 

-

December 23, 2016

“Do you even have feelings for me?”

Celeste was sitting across the booth at their local diner, a half-empty mug of hot chocolate left stale at the table top, her eyes wet and cold just like the December she’d been trying so desperately to feel warm in.

Harry had his hands held together in front of him, his eyes void and stare blank as his mind played back to all the times he’d given his all to her. Sure, he didn’t always do it with a smile on his face or with lovestruck eyes, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t happy.

And how could she not see it? How could she not feel it? He didn’t even bother spending his time with anybody else because he didn’t like anybody else. She was his only company, his only kiss, his only friend.

How was that not enough?

“What would make you think that I don’t?”

She laughed, right in his face, like it wasn’t enough to tear him apart.

“You’re kidding me, right?” She looked serious then, her face fallen and lips frowned. He felt stupid because he must have done something he couldn’t remember, or something to blindly hurt her feelings, yet he had no idea what it was. They were doing so good. “Do you even know how you look at me? Like I’m not even here. Like I’m boring you half to death. I can’t even tell what you’re feeling right now.”

Broken, sad, confused. He wanted to tell her that — he really did — but what would it have mattered? He’d still have that same meaningless stare and that same emptiness that had brought them to that very moment. She wouldn’t believe him even if she wanted to.

And it shouldn’t have broken him as much as it did, considering they weren’t even dating — just testing the waters, feeling each other out, wondering if their dreams could ever belong in their reality — but it hurt him just the same. She was the closest thing to a girlfriend Harry ever had, after all.

“Talking to you is like — it’s like talking to a wall. You’re just… there.”

She stopped to look at him more intentionally then — maybe she had missed something all along. Maybe, there was something he did to show the smallest of his emotions, like a shift in his eye, a pitch in his breath, a quiver of his lip.

But just like every other time, there was nothing. He was incurably empty.

“I think you’ve laughed at something I’ve said maybe, five times?” She let out a breathy chuckle because the tension was so thick she could hardly keep herself together, and she was so nervous, and he was so unpredictable. “And then you have this way with your words where, like you say certain things to beat around the bush about how you truly feel about me, and then it makes me wonder if it’s because you don’t even feel that way at all.”

He wanted to argue with her so bad. He wanted so badly to prove to her how wrong she was but how could he have, when she was so right?

Nobody had ever taught him how to do that — the relationships, the emotions, the vulnerability that came with being human. He couldn’t even recall a single time his parents had laughed at something he had said — couldn’t recall his parents ever having friends over, having date nights, even smiling at one another.

And to make matters worse, he was an only child. He was constantly around the voidance of his parents, the empty conversations, the pit of silences — really, that was all he had ever known. And later, that was what he grew into.

And if he could have changed it, he would have. But how does one go from keeping it all inside, to letting it all out?

He’s tried it all — emptying bottles of wine, smoking down blunts, shoving pills down his throat — and still couldn’t he laugh alongside himself, smile at memories that haven’t let him go, pour his heart out to strangers.

That wasn’t him. That wasn't who he was supposed to be, no matter how hard he tried to be that person for her.

But again, why wasn’t that enough?

“But I’m here, aren’t I?”

Celeste looked at him like it was the last time she was ever going to. And he knew.

“I don’t think you want to be.”

-

Y/n is utterly incapable of leaving Harry alone.

And Harry’s always alone, Y/n finds. Between every meeting and during every lunch hour, Harry always has a space beside him that’s just as empty and vacant as he is — well, just as empty and vacant as he comes off — and she assumes that’s why nobody’s ever been willing to take it.

But Y/n finds herself beside him more than she finds herself anywhere else.

Everyday when the clock hits twelve and lunch hour begins, Y/n sits in the chair right beside his and talks to him about anything and everything she can think of — the books she’s read, her childhood memories, the dreams she had the previous night — because he shouldn’t be left all alone the way he’s been so used to.

He doesn’t deserve it. He isn’t just a heartless, lifeless man passing through his days and night without feeling anything, he’s so much more than that — so much more than his blank stares, his vacant expressions, and his linear lips.

There’s something so unexplainably mesmerizing and compelling about him, she can’t help but wonder how nobody else has felt it. It’s magnetic, the way he tells the world everything it needs to know by the look and glimmer in his eye.

It’s all there, everything is there, yet nobody sees it except for her.

It’s as if the universe is telling her that right beside him is where she belongs. Nobody else has claimed that spot, after all, and it’s the only place that feels so right to her.

She feels as if it was always waiting for her, long before twelve o’clock, long before they had even met.

-

August 7, 2016

“Do you know how embarrassing it is?”

Y/n was sat on her kitchen counter in nothing but underwear and an oversized white t-shirt, sobbing and shaking upon the granet, her elbows on her bent knees so her arms were covering her mascara-run face — too ashamed to show herself to the world that’ll only find its way to break her down again.

Cooper was sitting on the barstool just three feet in front of her, his dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck, his tie loose to his collarbones, sleeves rolled up against his elbows, eyes defeated yet raging with resentment.

She had never seen him quite like that — so vengeful and so unforgiving. She was so unloved, she saw it in everything he did that night — from telling her to shut up in front of his friends, to making her take a taxi home because nobody could stand the sound of her voice anymore.

The love of her life didn’t even want to take her home, and that was all she needed to know that everything she had ever held onto was everything that needed to be let go of.

“Darling… it has got to stop at some point. I know it’s because you’re nervous but you don’t do anything to change it.”

But why does she have to have to?

That’s all she wanted to know — all she wanted to scream at him at that moment in time but god forbid she had anything to say to him anymore.

And how many more times did she have to keep wasting her breath trying to convince him that she couldn’t help it no matter how hard she tried — the constant talking, the rambling, the scrambling to tell stories, the muttering in awkward silences.

It was her way of calming down her nerves in new environments she could never seem to adapt to — her way of dealing with groups of unfamiliar faces, her way of coping with the rest of the world.

And it seemed as though no matter where she went, there was no place for her. She constantly felt stuck in someone’s way, felt like she was always blocking the entrance, and no matter how many times she tried to find a corner to shelter herself in, there were people still climbing over her to go their own way, and she was always left behind, beaten to the ground.

She just wanted to catch up so badly, but only did it make her fall backwards, time after time again. Yet she still did it, time after time again.

So, she just kept crying, too embarrassed to look at him, too afraid to speak, too hurt to know that she could never forgive him no matter how hard she tried.

“Your habits become a problem when they negatively affect everybody else around you. Y/n, you barely have friends, you can’t make friends with mine, all because you don’t let anybody else talk.”

And what an over-exaggeration. Of course she let other people have a chance to respond and have side conversations… just maybe not as often as they would have liked. But it wasn’t extreme enough where the only conversations she carried were one-sided — not that she had noticed.

“I used to love you for it but lately it’s just been — it’s been too much. I can hardly stand it anymore. Don’t know how to say it without making you cry.”

There was no way to.

The babbling, the rambling, the talking… it was all in her nature. If somebody didn’t like it, then they didn’t like her, and it was just as simple as that.

There was no way around it — there was no magic serum, no prescription drug, no cure for over-talking. And there were days, endless days, that she felt cursed, because why is the one thing that’s so wrong about her the one thing she can’t fix?

But again, why would she have to?

“So — so all the times you kissed me whenever I started going on tangents wasn’t because you loved me or because you wanted to, it was because you didn’t know how else to shut me up, right? You didn’t want to have to hear me anymore. Didn’t even want to hear me cry.”

He didn’t have to answer her because she already knew the answer herself. What she once thought was manifested from pure love and endearment was just as toxic and conniving as everything else she’d ever put her hands on.

Why couldn’t she just be enough?

She refuses to move her hands away from her face.

“You never loved me.” Y/n whispered beneath the sobs that shook through her already broken soul. “That’s the worst part.”  

-

Harry doesn’t like being alone.

He never has, but he’d been able to tolerate it through the years. He didn’t have much of a choice — forced to shove the feeling down to the very depth of his core and carry it around with him until it faded to a subtle numbness that pricked against his chest with every move he made.

Loneliness now, though, has taken on an entirely different meaning that Harry can’t tolerate no matter how hard he tries. Because now, loneliness means Y/n isn’t beside him, and he despises being away from her.

There’s something about her that’s unexplainably addicting, like a drug he can’t get enough of even when it’s soaking in his veins and taking over every one of his senses — one that gives him withdrawals that make him so far gone he can barely stand on his own two feet.

She’s unlike anybody he’s ever met.

Because though she seems to put herself out for the world to see, there is so much she keeps hidden. He can see it in her eyes — all the darkness and pain that’s been seeped within them, and nobody else has ever seemed to notice, because nobody else seems to care.

But he does. God, how much does he care, how much does he want to curse every person in existence for not seeing how deserving she is to be happy. It’s all she deserves.

And he’s convinced that the universe created her solely for him, because everyday when the clock strikes twelve and lunch hour begins, he’s reminded that she doesn’t choose anybody else — it reminds him that she chooses him, every single day, in a room full of people that are so much more approachable.

She keeps choosing him because somewhere deep down, he makes her happy. And he’ll keep choosing her, too, long after twelve o’clock.

-

Harry’s having a bad day.

Since the moment he blinked his eyes open, every little thing has been driving him absolutely mad — from somebody honking their horn at another driver (that wasn’t even him), to the way Jeremy asked him to change one of the slides for his upcoming presentation (even though he told him as nicely as he possibly could), everything was getting under his skin and onto his nerves like a newborn leech.

And what’s even worse is that Y/n is aggravating him when normally, he dreads the final minutes of lunch hour because it means they’re going to have to part ways and only see each other at team meetings until it’s time for them to go home.

They’ve been friends for two years and not once has Y/n ever made his leg bounce with impatience, or had him fiddle with his glasses out of anxiousness, or made his jaw clench with annoyance, until today.

It’s only twenty minutes past twelve and Harry is begging for death.

“You see, I didn’t know it at the time, though! I was twelve and the chaperones weren’t around to watch what I was doing. I saw the duck come towards me and for some reason, I really wanted to know what its beak felt like. I didn’t think it would actually bite me, I wasn’t food!”

And normally, he’d nod his head or give her some sort of indication that he was paying attention to her because he always was, but he hasn’t even so much as lifted his head from above his food since she started talking.

“And it hurt! Proper cried and screamed because it was so much worse than I thought it would be. Ducks are evil little things. I remember one time me and my mum were at the park having a picnic when a duck came flying by and almost hitting her right in the —”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

Silence.

He shouldn’t be talking to her like this, he knows that, but right now, he can’t seem to dwell on the consequences that’ll surely come after this. This headspace he’s in is so unforgiving, it somehow convinces him that Y/n never talking to him again is exactly what he wants, when it’s so far from it.

This bitterness that’s consuming him is only swallowing him down for today, it’s temporary, he knows this because it’s happened to him before. It makes him act instinctively and selfishly, like he’d tear limb from limb if he doesn’t get what he wants in that very moment in time.

He doesn’t care who he hurts in the process, even if who he hurts is the only person he cares about.

“W — what?”

She knows what she heard, she’s heard it so many times before, she just can’t believe Harry was the one who said it.

Never, in a million years, would she have believed he would ever be the person to make her feel this way — so heartbroken, so lost, so confused. He’s always been so different with her, in ways she couldn’t explain, and it always made her feel worthy of something so good.

It never crossed her mind that he’d betray her like this, she never saw that in him — she never saw him being angry at her, or resenting her, or disliking her until this very moment, as he’s staring right through her, like she doesn’t even exist.

“Would appreciate it if you left me alone for today.”

There’s a thud in her chest that makes her blood run cold and her insides freeze with sadness. And there’s this look on her face that makes Harry want to take it all back, and he almost does, but he doesn’t.

She’s lived twenty four years of misery, yet never has she felt so hurt, because never has she loved so hard.

“Oh, o — okay.” She mutters with a faltered voice, nodding her head through unshed tears.

There’s forty minutes left of lunch hour and the only friend she has doesn’t even want her here. She has nowhere else to go.

But she leaves anyway.

-

Y/n locks herself in her room that night.

It’s a bad habit she made out of herself when she was a teenager — where she’d lock herself up, shut herself out from the world, and keep herself quiet until she’s forced to leave her house again.

She keeps the lights off and sits in the corner in silence, keeping herself awake by repeating self-loathing mantras in her head — like a form of punishment only she is deserving of.

She cries, but that’s all she allows herself to do.

-

Harry doesn’t sleep that night.

He lays in the dark and just stares up at the ceiling, wondering how he let himself do what he’s done.

Y/n means everything to him, whether she knows it or not, she’s the only thing he has. There’s nothing left in this world for him to hold onto, except for her, and he still managed to let her go.

Tomorrow, he wants to tell her he loves her, because he does. But that’s just another form of selfishness he can’t put onto her again.

He won’t allow himself to, though that’s all he wants to do.

-

Y/n doesn’t show up for lunch hour the next day. 

And Harry’s never felt so alone.

-

Harry sees her three hours later organizing files in Jeremy’s office.

Suddenly, his hands are slicked with sweat and his fingers shake with nervousness. He feels as if the world has stopped turning because what he chooses to say determines whether or not he could ever have her the way he so desperately needs her.

He wipes his palms against his pants, gathering his breath and his thoughts before he slowly creeps himself up behind her — terrified that if he makes one wrong move, she’ll walk away from him again.

He really wouldn’t be able to survive it if she did.

“Y/n.” Harry greets her hesitantly, knowing in the pit of his stomach that what he’s done was so much worse than he thought because she doesn’t even acknowledge him —  doesn’t even look at him — when that’s all she ever used to do. “Can I have a word with you?”

Still, she doesn’t look up at him. She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t even want him looking at her and she would tell him that if she were still talking to him, but she isn’t. She’s just going to keep biting her tongue until it falls off and she has no choice but to swallow it down whole.

Harry’s heart breaks when all he’s met with is her silence.

This isn’t her, and this isn’t what he wants.

His hand reaches down to her wrist, holding onto it so lightly, Y/n almost doesn’t feel it. Her movements halt.

He’s never touched her before.

“Please.”

Her eyes follow the path to where they’re connected, watching as Harry’s thumb traces the smallest of circles against her skin. And as she stares down so pathetically, she feels Harry’s eyes casted exactly where hers are, too, wondering when he’s going to have to let go.

And though his touch is mending the broken bones within her, his words cut like knives, and she’s still bleeding out so helplessly.

She rips her wrist out of his grasp, her eyes now just as far away from him as before. It happened so fast, Harry wonders if he imagined the whole thing.

“Busy.”

He waits for her to say something else — waits for her to curse him out, to yell and scream and rant to him about how much she hates every last bit of him because anything is better than this. But again, he’s left with nothing.

His world falls apart.

“One word? That’s all you give me?”

Her eyes flood with tears.

“That’s all you asked for.”

He slams the side of his fist against the shelf in defeat, so incredibly angry with himself that he can hardly stand on his own two feet without wanting to beat himself down. She’s crying and avoiding him like he’s the last person she ever wants to see, and the worst part is that he can’t even blame her for it.

He has half the mind to walk away and never look back because she doesn’t deserve this; wants to spare her the heartache and let her find somebody that is so much better than he is — somebody who can look at her like they want her to be there, somebody who can smile at her, somebody who can laugh with her.

He can’t give her any of that because that’s not the kind of guy he is, but he doesn’t have that kind of heart. He can’t let her go because deep down he knows she loves him, too, and what would it make him if he were to destroy something so beautiful before it’s even started?

“Look, if you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine. All I’m asking is that you listen to me, please. Y/n, you know I didn’t mean it.”

He runs his fingers through his hair, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“I like you so much.”

Y/n looks back at him now, her eyes still as wet and distant as before, and it tears him apart.

She looks into his eyes because all of her answers are there — they always are — and she can tell this has taken a toll on him the same way it has her. Even with his voice being so stagnant, and his face being so cold, he’s falling apart.

She wishes that was enough.

She looks away from him again.

And Harry’s at a loss. He doesn’t know what else to do to convince her how much he means it — how much he really is sorry and how badly he wants her. He’s so bad with words and so bad with expressing himself that he doesn’t know what he can and can’t do to get her to forgive him.

So, he does the only thing that feels right.

He grabs a hold of her arm and spins her around until her chest is against his, and before she has the chance to say anything to him, and before he can talk himself out of it, he kisses her.

His hands are intertwined with hers as he gives her everything he has. He’s absolutely relentless but it’s nothing short of passionate and desperate, longing for her even when she’s right up against him.

It’s better than either of them could have ever expected it to be.

He’s the first to pull away, and Y/n is let completely and utterly lovestruck.

-

“You can take it back!”

Harry looks up from his notebook with furrowed eyebrows and curious eyes, watching as Y/n slams the door shut behind her before standing at the head of the table with her arms fisted at her sides, nervously biting on her bottom lip and tapping her foot with anticipation — all the while keeping her composure as firm and collected as possible.

“Pardon?”

“The kiss.”

She waits for him to say something about it — anything about it — maybe even scoff or gag a little at the reminder. But alas, he gives her nothing but empty stares and emotionless lips.

“You can take it back, if you want to. I promise, it won’t hurt my feelings.”

And of course, she’s lying.

It would really break her heart in two if Harry felt that what happened yesterday was a mistake — that the feelings only fit in that one particular scene, that he was just caught up in the moment and didn’t know how else to apologize.

She had been waiting a lifetime for that sort of magic to be casted onto her — the kind of magic that has her feeling like she’s been granted everything she has ever wanted and more than she could ever ask for. And it feels so surreal that he kissed her that her head keeps swooning with hopes and dreams of everything that could possibly lay between them.

But if he isn’t laying in bed, desperately wishing for the same things she is, she needs to know before it’s too late.

“Oh.” Harry purses his lips, looking back down at his notebook as if she hadn’t said anything at all. “No, thank you.”

Y/n’s mouth drops ever so slightly before she shuts it closed again, flaring her nose as she lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She had been preparing everything she was going to say for every possible scenario, yet here she is, racking her brain trying to come up with how to respond to such an ambiguous yet lucid answer.

And now he won’t even look at her, his undivided attention set upon the pen and paper below him as he writes the ideas for his next project, like it was the most casual and most nonchalant conversation he had ever been in.

“Was that all, love?”

Y/n blinks at him and tilts her head to the side, dazed in her confusion and lost at his choice of words.

Love. He called me love. He’s never called me that before.

But when his eyes sneak back up to hers, she shakes her head as if to pull herself together. She didn’t sacrifice last night’s sleep just to get lost in those very eyes — she needs to know where he stands with her before she takes another leap of faith, though all she wants to do is jump right into the same arms that were holding her so closely yesterday.

“I’m giving you a chance to opt out.”

Harry feels his chest fall to the pit of his stomach.

He straightens himself up upon the chair, his shoulders tensing and his fingers stiffening around his pen, feeling uneasy because does she want him to opt out? Does she want him to take back the kiss that’s been lingering on his lips for far too long now?

And he just looks at her, desperate for her to tell him how badly she wants him to do it again — tell him how badly her lips are aching without the feel of his and how badly she wants him to kiss at them until they’re numb and no longer her own, because he’d do it. He’d do it in a heartbeat if she asked with those pretty eyes of hers, with that stutter and that stumble over her words that never fail to make his heart give out.

And if that just becomes another long-lost dream in his never-ending curse of a life, it will do him in deeper than any of the trenches that have been dug out from within him — deeper than any cut anybody’s ever made on him because right now, in this moment in his life, she’s all he has.

“This is the one and only time I will let you break this off without me babbling about how perfect we could be together and how serious I am about you. Because it’s not going to stop — this rambling thing that I do — and I just want you to know that that’s what makes me who I am and it’s not going to stop for you or for anybody else. And so if it annoys you, if it bothers you and embarrasses you, I’m giving you the chance to leave before either of us get hurt and we can pretend nothing’s ever happened between us.”

She thinks we’d be perfect together.

That’s all his brain can process despite everything else that came with it — all that’s stuck in his brain and tightening at his chest.

He thinks they would be, too, when he really thinks about it. She gets lost in stories he lives so vicariously through, and he gets lost in feelings she lives so curiously in — submerging herself between the lines, reading what lies so dangerously beneath him. And nothing sounds better to him than spending every second of his day relishing in that feeling of intimacy they had both been deprived of for so long.

So how dare he? How dare he make her feel so insecure, so unworthy and so undeserving, to be standing here defending everything that makes her who she is when he’s so captivated by it all? And why is it so fucking hard for him to just tell her?

He feels the corners of his lips dip slightly to his chin, but that’s all he can manage to do. He hopes she can see it, and he hopes that it’s enough.

“I’d rather not.”

She frowns herself, looking down to her feet, feeling slightly ashamed for putting him on the spot like this. But what else was she to do? She couldn’t risk getting her heart beaten and bruised because of her stupid mouth all over again.

“But I’ve annoyed you before.” Y/n mutters between a pout, her foot kicking softly at the ground, wishing she didn’t let his words cut her as deeply as they did. “And like I said, it’s not going to stop. I’m still going to want to be around you and talk to you and keep you company and I don’t know what I would do if later down the line you decide you’ve heard enough of me and can’t handle the way I deal with my feelings anymore.”

But he wants all of that, too, more than he’s wanted anything else in his entire life. He wants her next to him during lunch hour talking about her days and her nights, wants her midnight pillow talks, wants her to be the only company in his cold and vacant home.

He just wants her to see it, wants her to feel it, just as much as he does.

“That was different.” He tries to sound more convincing for her sake, but he fails so miserably it hurts.

Talking to you is like talking to a wall — that’s all he can hear beneath his words and it makes him want to give up on the conversation because he’s afraid it’ll only bring her down more, but he can’t leave her like this. Besides, it’s Y/n. And for reasons so unknown, she understands him.

“I wasn’t aware of your importance.”

“My importance?” She scrunches her nose, squinting her eyes. “My importance to what?”

“To me.”

Y/n’s eyes widen in disbelief and she sucks in a breath so deep, it settles in her chest and she swears her heart is on the verge of flatlining.

“To you, right. To you. Because I’m — because I’m important to you...” she mumbles mainly to herself, so quietly and so breathlessly before it dies down on her tongue — the sight of Harry taking off his glasses and throwing them onto the table making her knees buckle and head spin with emotions she’s never felt before.

He’s got this glimmer in his eye and a faint smile painted on his lips and she really can’t breathe, now, as he makes his way towards her.

This is the first time she has ever seen him smile, and though it is as soft and small as any other she’s ever seen — so soft and small, she would have missed it if it were on anybody else — she’s the reason it’s there, and it’s a sight she wouldn’t dare take her eyes off of.

He stands before her now, his fingers reaching up to cup the blush of her cheeks, eyes following the shapes he traces with his thumb against her skin. And though his smile has faded to nothing and he looks as serious as ever before, he doesn’t look away from her for even a second.

And that’s enough.

“Is there anything else you’d like to say?”

She flutters her eyes closed upon his words, knowing this moment is going to end all too soon, and she doesn’t have the heart to say goodbye to it yet.

She wants to remember this feeling for when she has to.

“No, no. That was all.”

He ducks his head and nudges his nose gently against hers before pulling away to pull her back into reality, just for a moment — just long enough for him to know that she isn’t holding herself back from him.

“And I’ve put your worries to rest?”

Oh, how her worries have subsided to nothing but a stomach full of butterflies and a chest of pulled heartstrings.

Nobody has ever made her so sure of anything, the way Harry makes her so sure of him.

“Yeah, I — you make me feel really good, Harry. Can’t explain it. Can’t even put it into words, really. Just, really, really good.”

He makes her feel loved.

And she wants to tell him that, she does, but that word — loved — it’s the same word he called her not just five minutes ago, but it’s so much more than that. Maybe he doesn’t love her, she surely doesn’t expect that from him just yet, but how is she ever going to explain that her feeling of feeling loved is what other people — normal people, she supposes — would consider feeling liked?

And as Y/n’s practically melting between his palms, Harry is trying so hard to understand just how he’s ended up here, being this close to her, when he always believed he’d go his whole life not being this close to anybody.

His eyes bore into hers just to reassure himself that it’s okay — that she’s okay and that they’re okay and that now, it’s okay for him to do the one thing he’s been dreaming about doing since yesterday. And when she smiles at him, a real and genuine smile, he nods.

And he leans in for their second kiss, his thumbs rubbing along her cheeks, humming into her mouth because his own has been watering for a chance to do this again. And it’s perfect. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this way about anything.

And Y/n is on cloud nine. She could really kiss him all day every day and still feel like she hasn’t missed a thing. This — this feeling, this moment, this person — is everything she’s ever wanted and everything she will always need. It’s irreplaceably and undeniably hers, and she’ll do anything to keep it for as long as she lives.

Her hands are on his neck, pulling him further into her because she can’t get enough of him and nothing else matters besides them meeting in the break room, kissing behind closed doors like teenagers who haven’t learned how to keep their hands to themselves.

The only thing that breaks them from their moment is the sound of the copy room door being slammed in the hallway, their breaths heavy and lips red and wet from each other’s.

“Have dinner with me tonight.” Harry suggests as his fingers tuck loose strands of hair behind her ear. “Wherever you want.”

And Y/n’s unsure as to whether it’s the sleepless night sneaking up on her or if it’s the aftermath of Harry kissing her senseless, but she can’t think of a single thing she could possibly want for dinner when she just wants to be with him. He could take her to the most run-down restaurant in this city and she would still feel as though she were on the highest of hilltops, overlooking the prettiest view, all because of him.

“I don’t — I don’t care, really. It wouldn’t even really matter, anyways, just — just as long as you’re with me. Don’t even have to have dinner, if you don’t want to. Could do anything you’d like.”

She’s blushing and looking down at her feet, and Harry hates when she hides herself like this, hates that she puts herself under to put him first when she deserves to be the first and the only — he has a sick and twisted feeling she’s never been any of those things to anybody.

“Y/n.” His tone is slow and stern as his head ducks down so her can eyes can meet his. “Wherever you want.”

And how could she say no to those eyes — though always so dark, so void, are also so gentle and so kind, so deep and so open? The light in them changes just ever so slightly whenever he looks at her, and she wouldn’t dream of ever taking that away from him.

“I want what you have for lunch on Tuesdays.”

His thumb brushes against the edge of her jawline.

“It’s homemade. I can pick you up around seven, eat dinner at mine.”

Her fingers wrap around his wrist absentmindedly, holding his hand so that it stays pressed against the back of her head.

“No, Harry, that’s not — that’s too much work for you. Let me at least drive and meet you at your flat, yeah? I can’t let you do that.”

She really is just the cutest, sweetest, most considerate person he’s ever met, and the most beautiful he’s ever laid eyes on. And if she wasn’t all of those things, he would let her drive and meet him at his flat for dinner, but she is, and what kind of date would it be if Harry didn’t come knocking on her front door, holding out his hand, and leading the night away?

She deserves to have a night that’s just for her. And surely, Harry wants this date just as much as she does, but it’s not about him, because as long as she’s beside him, he doesn’t have a care in the world what he has to do to get her there.

“Y/n.” His voice is as low and stern as before. “I’m picking you up at seven.”

Y/n looks at him for a moment, studying him, wondering how she’s ended up here — the only place she has ever wanted to be. She lets out a breathy chuckle, her cheeks flushed, her bottom lip tucked between her teeth.

“I’ll see you at seven, then.”

His eyes light up.

And they kiss.

-

It’s 6:35 when Harry actually comes to pick Y/n up, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to see her so badly, and he couldn’t just sit on his sofa trying to justify waiting to be with her again. He would have been more than willing to watch her finish getting ready, or just stand at the other side of her door, trying to convince her to let him in because she’s going to look beautiful no matter what.

He doesn’t even care if he comes off as desperate, because he is.

And Y/n is, too, because of course she was ready by 6:35. Since the second she got home, she was putting herself together as best she could, though refusing to try as hard as she normally would with anybody else because for whatever reason, Harry likes her for her — likes her in her work clothes with her hair up, without makeup on, first thing in the morning — and she wouldn’t ever dream of jeopardizing that.

And Y/n is left speechless as she opens her front door, because not only does Harry look as handsome and fit as ever, but he’s also holding the prettiest bouquet of flowers she’s ever seen.

“Harry, I — wow.”

He holds them out to her, failing to mention anything about them, just handing them to her like it’s something so normal and so casual, when in reality, the gesture is anything but.

Out of all the years she’s lived, nobody’s ever given her a reason to believe she’s been thought about once out of sight. Even when she was with Cooper — her one and only boyfriend — he’d never bought her flower arrangements or spontaneous gifts whenever they were apart, even on the days he should have, like she only existed when it was convenient for him.

This is just her first date with Harry and she’s never felt more alive. She lives in his mind even when she’s blocks away — nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be heard.

She takes the bouquet from his hands, looking down at what must have been two dozen flowers, wrapped all together by a rubber band and light purple plastic wrap.

“Lilies.” She marvels at him, eyes wide with an open-mouthed smile, like she couldn’t believe the sight of them. “These are my absolute favorites.”

He nods, his hands locked behind his back, lips pursed and body rocking from heel to toe. “I know.”

She tilts her head at him.

“You told me a couple months ago during lunch hour.”

And again, she’s left speechless.

She can’t even remember telling him about her love for lilies, yet here he is, recalling all these small details about herself she’s said in passing. Even in the moments he wasn’t the most fond of her, even in the moments he could hardly stand her company, he was paying attention to her. He was listening to her, so much so that her words have stuck with him despite all the days that have passed.

And it’s no wonder she’s fallen so quickly under his spell — it was made just for her. Nobody else could ever see what he sees in her, and nobody else could ever see what she sees in him, and that’s exactly how they’ve ended up here — both standing on her doorstep, refusing to take their eyes off each other, anxious to spend the rest of their night together, hoping it’s forever.

“I love them, Harry, thank you.” She blushes, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I’m just going to put these in a vase real quick. You can come in, if you’d like. Or you can stay out here, it doesn't matter.”

He follows her into the flat, which looks and smells exactly how he imagined it would. It feels just as warm as she does and smells like a mix of lavender and honey, just as intoxicating as her.

And though there are so many things he wants to see — the books she collects beside her living room couch, the movies scattered alongside her DVD player, and the pictures hung up on her walls — all he can focus on is the woman that’s stolen his heart so effortlessly.

He leans himself against the wall of her kitchen, arms crossed over his chest, watching as she pours the water and powder into the vase, stirring it together gently between her hands. And as she unwraps and unties the flowers, Harry wishes they could live for as long as they do.

This is the view he wants forever — Y/n putting flowers he’s gotten her in clear vases, surrounded by her favorite things, sharing comfortable silences she’d feel so nervous in if it were with anybody else.

She is his, he decides, and he is helplessly hers.

“Didn’t tell you when I first saw you but, you look stunning.”

She looks over at him, her eyes gleaming and lips tugged upward at his words.

“Yeah?”

His lips tug upward, too, in the same way they did earlier today in the break room, and it amazes her how something so small could mean so much to her.

“Yeah.” He breathes out, his eyes soaking her all in, still convinced she’s a dream he hasn’t woken up from. “You always do.”

She blushes, reaching forward to place the vase onto the windowsill above her sink. She can feel his eyes on her still, refusing to break away from her, and it makes her feel like the only woman in the world. And maybe she is — at the very least, the only woman in Harry’s.

She walks over to where he stands so irresistibly — so tall and so handsome, with a chest she so desperately wants to make a home out of and kiss at until she has nothing left but the burning of his skin on her own.

And as she stands before him, neither of them have anything to say because in times like these, their breaths are taken away and all they can process is how close they are to each other.

Her hands graze over his chest ever so slightly, hesitant to touch him the way she’s been shamefully aching to, afraid to push him away. But she can hear his breath hitch in his throat and can see his pecs tighten beneath her fingertips, and she lets out an uneven breath. He likes it.

“You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do this.” She whispers, her breath fanning his neck and she swears she can see his eyes fighting to stay open.

Her hands graze up to the dip of his collarbones, her thumbs running along the sides of his throat. And to give her more access, Harry dips his head back, overstimulated by the feeling of it all.

“To touch me?”

His voice is strained and croaked, borderline delirious. And though his eyes are fluttering closed as her fingers now run along the shape of his shoulders and up the sides of his neck, dancing along his jawline, he can see her bite down on her bottom lip and it makes his heart hurt, in the best way possible.

Her eyes gleam as her fingers twist around the chain on his neck.

“It’s been all I could think about since I met you.”

His head falls back against the wall, the smallest of whimpers falling from his practically drooling mouth.

God, everything about her drives him wild. He has so completely lost himself in her, he can’t even remember his own name. He can’t even remember who he was just twenty seconds ago, much less who he was before he met her, and it’s something so new he can’t grasp the reality of it.

Her hands all over him is a feeling he can’t put into words, and one he certainly can’t hide.

He is falling.

And falling.

And falling.

-

It doesn’t take them too long to figure out how similar they are despite their differences, certainly not after downing half a bottle of wine mixed with being so incredibly drunk on each other.

Y/n confided in him about her past — about how her nervous habits have never made her feel like she never had a true sense of belonging because everywhere she went, she was constantly kicked out. She’s had such unfathomable lows that she’d lock herself in her room for weeks on end, forcing herself quiet, because even she was sick of hearing herself.

And as Harry listened to her speak about all the cruel, heartless things that have been said to her, he couldn’t help but feel understood despite the feeling of guilt throbbing in his gut, for he had done what everybody else did not just one day ago.

Harry confided in her, too, about how he had always been left out because he always managed to bring down everybody else’s mood. He told her things he hadn’t told anybody else because he had nobody else to tell them to — told her about all the drugs he’s taken and all the other toxic habits he’d pursued in a poor, desperate attempt to become emotional.

Then, they talked about their parents — a conversation so barren and so untouched, it was almost impossible to talk about.

Y/n grew up with parents who didn’t understand her, because who could? Even when she was little, barely forming an identity and her only concept of friendship being imaginary ones, her parents would tell her that she was embarrassing herself. She’ll always remember the look on her mother’s face at a New Years Eve party when she said, “I just can’t take you anywhere, can I?”

Harry grew up with absent parents — absent in a sense that they were around, just never really there. His parents hardly acknowledged him, hardly ever spoke to him, and when they did it felt so forced, like an obligation they couldn’t find their way out of. He’ll never forget the way they looked at him, like he wasn’t even there, like they didn’t even want him to be.

It makes them question just how strongly the universe works in their favor.

Because what seems to be the first time in her life, Y/n has found something only made for her, a place where nobody else belongs, and it wouldn’t have brought her here if she had kept herself locked away, rotting in her self pity, refusing to let anybody in for all the rest of her years.

And for what seems to be the first time in his life, Harry feels he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, with the person he’s supposed to be with, and it wouldn’t have brought him here if all the wine, all the blunts, and all the pills did what he so desperately wanted out of them all those years ago.

They had spent their whole lives trying to make something out of themselves when they were always enough, because they were enough for each other, and each other was what they were made for.

“So you’re saying that all this time, we’ve been the exact same person?” Y/n chuckles, because though their conversation was so serious, the mood was still as lighthearted as everything else between them.

“Peculiar habits, a history of toxic behavior, no friends, and shitty parents? Yeah, sounds like it.”

Y/n laughs, shaking her head.

“Here’s to nobody liking us.” Y/n raises her glass.

“Here’s to nobody liking us.” Harry repeats, raising his own. “Except for each other.”

And they clink.

-

Maybe they shouldn’t have finished that entire bottle of wine to themselves, but they did.

What started off in the kitchen made its way to the living room, both sat beside each other on Harry’s sofa with their heads hung back, Y/n cracking jokes and humming along to the songs on her playlist, and Harry admiring her from the distance.

They both have their last glasses of wine nearly gone, holding them upon their thighs, taking their final sips throughout the hour and with every one they take, they feel closer somehow.

Y/n’s giggling about how Harry won’t stop looking at her, and though she can’t see it between her squinting eyes and their gaze set upon the ceiling wall, he smiles.

He can’t help it — looking at her like it’s the last time he ever will though it’s only the beginning, but he doesn’t ever want to forget the way he feels whenever he does. This is the only good feeling he’s ever had, and even when she’s not in view, he wants to hold onto it ‘til his dying day.

“You’re my favorite person.” Is all he says, his lips fallen. “My only person.”

Y/n finally turns her head over to him, now, so that her eyes are locked on his. And she wishes he can understand the feeling in her heart and the way it’s beating so eroticly, but she doesn’t, because it’s so overwhelming and too much of a good thing for her to make sense of.

Never in her life has she felt so good, yet here she is, feeling even better than that, all because of one person she met nearly two years ago.

“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

He nods, because he understands, and they both look away from each other again.

They’re getting lost in the music and lost in the feeling of the air that surrounds them — so full of unexplainable things that leave them wanting more than they did before, breathing in nothing but longing and desire.

And it isn’t until one of Y/n’s favorite songs comes on that the comfortable silence between them is all but broken, in the most beautiful way possible.

“Green was the color of the grass where I used to read at Centennial Park. I used to think I would meet somebody there.”

Harry stiffens beside her, his fingers instinctively curling tighter around his glass of wine — speechless and breathless as the sound of her voice intoxicates his already drunken state of mind, the room now spinning but only because of her.

“Teal was the color of your shirt when you were sixteen at the yogurt shop you used to work at to make a little money.”

This is heaven, he feels. It has to be because things this beautiful don’t exist in worlds so cruel, in worlds so evil.

Things this beautiful don’t belong here.

Y/n doesn’t belong here. She’s too perfect for her own good — too perfect for a world that refuses to believe in such things, but he does. He does because how can he deny the woman that’s sitting right before him? How can he deny the sound of her voice in a dim lit room, soaked in red wine, existing only to be heard by him?

“Time — curious time — gave me no compasses, gave me no signs. Were there clues I didn’t see? And isn’t it just so pretty to think all along there was some invisible string — tying you to me?”

Y/n’s raising her glass to her lips as the lyrics pause but god, if Harry has to watch her lips touch anything but his, it’s going to be the end of him. And right as her mouth puckers for a taste, Harry reaches his hand out to grab the bowl of the glass, lifting it from her fingers before setting it down upon the coffee table beside them.

She tilts her head at him with furrowed brows and squinted eyes, watching as Harry practically crawls over to her until his thighs are pressed to her knees and his hands are at either side of her waist.

“You’re so pretty.”

Y/n rolls her eyes at him but it hides behind her flushed cheeks and growing smile.

“Harry —”

“Sh.” He shushes her, laying his forehead against the top of her chest, slithering his arms to her lower back, and Y/n giggles. “Keep going.”

So, she does — keeps singing the very words she had been so hopelessly trying to put a face to, to the very man that holds her to them.

And she’s falling.

She feels it now more than ever as he practically buries himself into her, rocking her gently back and forth like she’s some sort of delicacy he wouldn’t dare to break. Everything about it is so intimate, so real, so raw — no boundaries, all walls crumbled down so vulnerably, feeling each other so deeply.

She wonders if he feels it, too.

And oh, does he feel it — her words, his touch, the room fading to nothingness. It is just them — no fears, no doubts, no resentment — together in this moment, becoming one, letting everything else simply slip through their fingertips.

Harry rests his lips upon her collar bone, settling them against her sweltering skin. He can feel her heart beating against his mouth, and it feels right.

“Spend the night with me.”

Y/n stiffens.

She wants to spend the night, she does, more than anything else she could ever want. It’s been her long-lived dream to be cuddled to his chest, feeling him breathe against her, burning in his touch until slumber clouded her senses; waking up beside him in the early morning and hearing that voice so rasped and far gone.

But all of her dreams are so innocent, so pure, and so holy by him, and what if that’s not where his head is? Between all the drinks, all the touching, and all the stolen stares, it could be somewhere so far out of her reach, somewhere so far away from her own, and it’ll absolutely ruin her if that’s all he wants out of her.

Harry must have felt her uneasiness because he’s quick to lift his head from her chest.

“No, no. Not like that, Y/n. I promise. Never even —”

Had sex.

He was so close to saying it to reassure her, but he couldn’t — he couldn’t because if he did, she’d have every reason to believe he was thinking of such things when it was the farthest thought from his mind. Really, he wants her to spend the night because once she leaves, she’s all he’s going to think about and all he’s going to want beside him. He probably would have ended up on her doorstep at two in the morning, dazed and confused, all because he never wants to be away from her.

She is so close, and he wants her so bad.

“Had a girlfriend.”

He settles for something less straightforward but just as truthful and vulnerable. Besides, he figured it’s something she should know because if he ever fucks something up, or fails to do right by her, even if it’s unintentional, maybe she’d understand why.

He’s absolutely terrified that he’s going to be the first one to start a fight and not know how to fix it, or be the first one to make the other cry and not know why. He’s done it before, with Celeste. And though what he has with Y/n is so different and so much more real than what he ever had with her, he still managed to break her heart enough for her to leave him. He wouldn’t blame Y/n if she ever decides to, too.

Y/n looks down at him with eyes full of sorrow. He’s not asking for pity, she knows that, but how he’s gone his whole life without ever being loved, she’ll never understand.

It’s all he deserves.

And she can’t help but feel like she’s the least deserving person to be the first because she knows, down to the very pit of her soul, that Harry isn’t like the others — that Harry wouldn’t kiss her, ask her out on a date, and snuggle himself into her the way he is right now just to get a proper shag — yet she convinced herself that maybe, somewhere so deeply within him, he is that kind of person, and that is so far from fair.

She runs her fingers through his hair.

“I’ll only spend the night under one condition.”

He blinks at her.

“Anything.”

She leans forward to rub her nose against his, a soft smirk set on her lips as she kisses him gently.

She giggles before pulling away, sliding out from underneath him and though the small pout on Harry’s face would send her right back to him, she chooses to stand beside him with an open-palmed hand sticking out before her, her eyes glistening, her lips bitten.

“Dance with me.”

And god, how could he ever say no to that face?

He lets out a breathy chuckle as he hitches his glasses up — the closest thing to a laugh Yn has ever heard out of him, and it makes her want to cry. And he shakes his head softly before grabbing onto her hand, letting her lift him from the sofa.

“You drive me wild.”

She hums, lifting his hand up to her lips.

She guides him behind the coffee table, grasping both of his hands in hers, and though she fully intends on pulling him to her and leading the rest of the way, he beats her to it.

He’s got her pressed up against him, one hand hooked to her lower back and the other holding hers between their shoulders, swaying them side to side as they dance together in slow circles.

They’re at peace. Together, they can do the most cliche of things — make a dance floor out of a living room, make a night out of a date — and not feel anything but pure, genuine happiness out of it.

They don’t need anything or anyone outside of each other, and that’s what makes it all the better.

“Hm…” Y/n hums, resting the side of her cheek against his chest. She feels at home like this. “Quite the dancer, you are.”

His thumb rubs at her wrist, and he shakes his head.

“Only for you.”

-

Y/n doesn’t go home the following night.

Or the night after that.

Or the night after that.

Or the night after that.

-

This must be the third time Y/n’s set off the smoke alarm.

And in any other circumstance, she probably would have given up and called Harry’s favorite take out to spare him from a night of potential food poisoning, but Harry’s spent the past two weeks telling her how much he wished Thanksgiving was a British holiday, and now that it’s late November and Harry has spent the past three months of their relationship doing all the cooking, she can’t quit him now.

Even as she’s flinging around the oven mitts trying to waft the smoke from the open oven out of her face, she still can’t quit.

The things she does for love, she fucking hates it.

“Pretty, you’re going to burn our flat down.” Harry chuckles from behind her, his hand landing on the small of her back as he rubs gently at it. “Let me take it from here, love. I’ve got it.”

Y/n’s quick to close the oven door back shut and press her back to it, practically flinging herself away from Harry’s touch as she does so. She’s panting and sweating and her hair is an absolute wreck, yet she refuses Harry’s helping hand.

This is his day, and she is his girl, and she just has to do this.

“No, no, mister! Don’t you even think about it! I’ve got it all under control.”

Her lips are pursed for the simple reason that she knows it’s an absolute monstrosity — she’s burnt two rounds of yams, somehow turned mashed potatoes into soup, and overcooked the green bean casserole to a cripst — but at least it’s all been made with love.

And she assumes Harry doesn’t believe her, either, because he’s trying his absolute hardest to not laugh at her, but that’s exactly what he’s doing.

“Pretty,” Harry laughs, facepalming himself before his hand cups around his mouth to try to stifle the sounds. “You — you closed the oven door again and it’s —”

“Fuck!”

She turns herself around before ripping the oven back open, coughing and groaning as a cloud of smoke hits her face for the millionth time tonight before reaching in to grab yet another round of burnt yams.

She slams it onto the stove, ripping her oven mitts off and throwing them onto the counter beside her.

Harry feels bad, he does, because she’s been slaving away in their kitchen for the past five hours and she’s the farthest from satisfied she could possibly be, but he can’t deny that he loves seeing her like this — so passionate, all cute and grumpy just to make him happy.

Oh, how he loves her so, even when she burns his beloved yams.

He kisses the back of her head.

“Looks incredible, baby. Don’t need anything else than what you’ve got.” His lips move to her cheek. “Let me set the table while you put everything in dishes, yeah? Starving.”

He lights two pumpkin spice candles upon the table, pouring two glasses of their favorite wine, and setting down two plates for each of them because they haven’t eaten all day in preparation for their dinner, and they’re both at their wits end.

Y/n sets dinner up buffet style along the kitchen island — the roasted young turkey set in the middle surrounded by bowls of corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, macaroni and cheese, and dinner rolls.

Though she’s far from being a good cook, she does feel slightly better when she sees it all set up in autumn-colored dish sets. It could have been a lot worse, it really could have been a lot worse.

And it’s the look on Harry’s face that makes the past five hours of hell so incredibly worth it.

His fists are on the kitchen table, his body leaning forward as his eyes marvel at the sight in front of him. Autumn has always been his favorite season, and he’s always been so fond of the concept of Thanksgiving — spending time with his loved ones, reminiscing all his favorite memories throughout the year, delving into his favorite foods.

He’d contemplated making a Thanksgiving of his own for the past couple years, but whenever it came down to it, he realized he didn’t have much to be thankful for, and he didn’t have any memories to look back on. So, he never did.

But now, he has so much to be thankful for — so many unforgettable memories, a lifetime of happiness, and a loved one to finally celebrate with — all of which are standing right before him.

Nobody else in the world would ever do the things she does for him. She is one and a million, his little miracle, and the absolute light of his life.

“Have I ever told you that you’re the best girlfriend in the world?”

She shrugs, a teasing grin playing on her lips.

“Once or twice.”

She loads their plates up with everything she made — giving Harry extra stuffing, of course — before she makes her way back to the kitchen table, sitting across from the very man she’s thankful for this year.

She didn’t realize how good it would feel — to spend a holiday with Harry, even though it’s illegitimate — but it’s warm and homely and everything else in between. It’s no wonder she falls more in love with him everyday, and no wonder she wants to spend all of her days exactly where they are now, until they’re old and grumpy and can hardly stand the sight of each other anymore.

Y/n lifts up her wine glass.

“This year, I’m thankful for being yours and only yours. I’m nothing without you.”

Harry lifts up his wine glass.

“This year, I’m thankful for you and your love. You’re everything to me.”

They clink, they eat, they kiss, and they do it all over again.

-

“You know, I don’t think guys are meant to do this kind of stuff.”

Y/n’s sitting across from Harry on their queen-sized bed, their legs crossed Indian style as Harry’s hand is spread out before her, Y/n grasping onto his fingers with her own as she paints a thin layer of black nailpolish onto his nails.

It didn’t take Y/n much convincing to get Harry in this position. She knows full well that all she has to do is pout and cross her arms for him to give her what she wants. And normally, she doesn’t use his weaknesses against him — she doesn’t think it’s right, and he’d never do it to her — but this is something so harmless that she gave herself a free pass.

Plus, she knows he’d look hot with his nails painted black.

“Shut up, H.” She giggles, shaking her head. “They’ll look really good, I promise. Besides, it could be our little secret.”

He can’t lie, it does feel nice to be pampered like this. Her hands are soft and it tickles when she goes finger-to-finger, and it’s a damn good excuse to touch her and look at her for minutes on end. She’s got her eyebrows pinched together as she moves his fingers around, trying to get into every edge and crevice, and he can see it in her eyes how much she’s truly enjoying herself right now.

His eyes take a peek at his nails and it’s not nearly as bad as he thought it was going to be. They make him feel… different, but in a way that can only be described as holding a certain power he never knew he had.

Guys normally don’t do this kind of stuff, but he is, and he looks damn good while doing it.

And as Y/n takes both of his hands out to her and starts to blow on them, his eyes flutter with amusement. Maybe, just maybe, he’d let her do this again.

She pokes one of her nails into his.

“They should be dry now.”

And though his nails are finished, Y/n still hasn’t let go of his hands, and her eyes haven’t left his fingers. Instead, she’s marveling over them — eyes gleaming, bottom lip tucked between her teeth, her digits twisting at his rings.

He smirks at her.

“Look good?”

She nods, lifting one of his hands up higher towards her neck.

“They look really good, H. So good, I —” She doesn’t even let herself finish before she brings his pointer and middle finger up and into her mouth, hollowing her cheeks and proper sucking on them like she was born for it.

Harry’s breath gets locked in his throat, his entire demeanor changing as he broadens his shoulders and tenses his chest, his eyes darkening and hawking over every move of her mouth, every swipe of her tongue.

She’s moaning — whimpering and whining like she’s been left starving and he’s her first proper meal in weeks. And nothing’s even started yet.

He reaches his free hand over to her face, petting her cheek with the back of his fingers.

“That’s it, my pretty girl. Just like that.”

She pops them out of her mouth, her lips red and wet and eyes glossy with lust. And Harry watches as she grabs a hold of his wrist and guides his two, sloppy and dripping fingers down her neck and between her breasts, stretching down the collar of her shirt, leaning back for him to have the most perfect view.

“Fuck.” He breathes out, the hand that was once on her cheek reaching over to grope at her thigh. “Is this what I’m going to get every time you paint my nails black? You being such a good girl for me?”

She nods her head, gulping.

“Y — yeah.” She shudders as the hand on her thigh inches up with every passing second. “Told you they’d look so good.”

He chuckles darkly before he reaches his hand up to grab at the base of her throat. It’s her favorite, when he takes her breath away like this, because all she can feel is him.

And right now, he doesn’t want her to feel anything else.

He pushes her down until her back is fully pressed against the mattress, and he crawls until he’s above her on his hands and knees, his fingers still squeezing at her throat.

Such a pretty neck, such a pretty face. And it’s all his.

“Let’s see how good they look all over you, yeah?”

-

Harry hears something when he passes one of the vacant offices at work.

It’s a bloodcurdling sound, one he hasn’t ever heard before and one he wished he’d never heard at all, but he knows exactly what it is before he sees it.

He could never mistake the sound of his girl — it’s all he ever hears and he’s been around her long enough to know the sound of her very breath. She’s a part of him — he feels her in his bones when she’s close and knows exactly what she’s feeling at every moment in time.

But what he sees is worse than he could have ever imagined.

Y/n’s sobbing something so awful her face is nearly blue, lips trembling and eyes all but swollen shut, shaking and convulsing upon the chair below her.

And Harry doesn’t know what to do.

His brain is working at a million miles an hour and he can’t keep up — doesn’t know left from right, up from down — because all he can feel is the overwhelming sense of heartbreak and his world crumbling out from underneath him.

He practically runs to her — tripping over the legs of office chairs, ramming his hips into the corners of the table, on the verge of collapse with every step he takes. Yet nothing stops him from falling to his knees before her, letting his hands grab a hold of her soaken cheeks, having his thumbs wipe away her endless tears.

“Pretty —”

He can’t even get a word out without wanting to cry, but he’s never done it before. He wouldn’t know how to even if he wanted to, but it’s there — that lump in his throat, that tightening of his chest, that burning in his eyes, it’s all there.

“What happened, baby? Talk to me.”

And though she really didn’t want Harry to see her this way, she can’t help but clasp her shaking fingers around his wrists, holding him there because she doesn’t know what she would do if he were to leave her now.

What happened today — what happened to her — is just further proof that the only person she can trust and the only person she can truly be herself with is Harry. The world is so vengeful and so deceiving towards her, for reasons so unknown, but it’s brought her to the very man kneeling between her thighs, with eyes full of unshed tears, wanting her and loving her even when nobody else does. And if he were to walk away from her now, though she knows he wouldn’t dream of it, she’d lose every last bit of hope she has, and she wouldn’t be able to survive it.

She needs him so badly it hurts.

“Can’t —” She shakes her head as she sniffles back a sob. “Can’t tell you.”

She can’t because she doesn’t want him to see just how bad it can get for her — see how her differences are so obvious to everything and everyone around her. It never ends. It’s been like this for as long as she can remember and she’s so scared and so afraid that if Harry sees it, too, he’d do the very thing that happened to her twenty minutes ago.

But even through her waterfall eyes, she can see just how devastated Harry looks at her words.

“Pretty, you can tell me anything. You know that. Can’t —” He shakes his head, gulping, one of his hands rubbing at the back of her head. “Can’t see you like this and not know how to fix it.”

She pulls her hands away from her tight hold on him so that they can cover her face — too ashamed for the world to see how much it’s broken her down, too humiliated to face somebody so much better than her.

“It — it’s s — so emb — embarrassing!”

She’s hiding from him. Harry hates when she hides from him.

“No, please don’t — please don’t do that.” He practically begs as his hands reach back up to hers, pulling them away from her face and intertwining their fingers together. “It’s me, baby. It’s me. You don’t have to do that with me. Please, don’t do that with me.”

He’s got their hands held on top of her knees, the pads of his thumbs stroking her palms, his lips pressing to the top of her exposed thighs because it’s the only thing he can think of doing right now.

He’s never done this — never had anybody break and shatter before his very eyes, much less somebody he loves — and he is so bad with words and so bad with dealing with his own feelings he wouldn’t even know where to start dealing with hers, but he does know that he can be the most affectionate boyfriend there is towards her, and he hopes that’s a start.

But he doesn’t have a single clue just how good it feels for Y/n to be loved by him when she feels so hated. He is the only person that really, truly matters to her, so to feel him touch her and kiss her when she’s at her absolute lowest, is all she really needs.

Harry notices her breath starting to shallow and her sobs fading to distant cries every time he presses his lips to her skin, and despite how much of a mess he is, it warms his heart to know that they share a love that can overcome anything life decides to throw at them.

He reluctantly lifts his head up to look at her properly, now. His glasses are all fogged and wet but he refuses to take them off the way he normally would with her, because that would require him letting go of her hands, and for both of their sanity, that’s not something he can do right now.

He’s crying.

And though his face is as stone cold and tight as always, his eyes, Y/n notices, are unlike anything she’s ever seen. They’re so undeniably broken, and her heart crumbles into a million pieces just at the sight of it.

She feels it’s all because of her.

“The new recruit, Mason, he —”

She sucks in a breath, trying to find the right words that could possibly explain the amount of damage that he caused her without sounding so weak and pathetic. It wouldn’t have hurt her as badly if it wasn’t something that’s happened to her more and more over the years, beating her down further and further each time, digging deeper and deeper into her already hollowed out chest.

And all Harry can think about is how one name, one person, has made this much of a mess out of her — one that she has to see every single day, that she has to speak to in order to get her work done, that she has to face time and time again.

He’s never hated so much in his life.

“What did he do to you?” He whispers it, afraid that one wrong tone of voice or one wrong word can tear her apart all over again. “Did he hurt you? Did he touch you?”

She shakes her head, her eyes casted down at their intertwined hands.

“Laughed at me.”

Her voice is so small and so sad, it’s the most heartbreaking sound Harry has ever heard. And he feels like he failed her.

He knows full well that somebody laughing at her and degrading her, hurts her more than any physical pain she could possibly feel. Even if Mason had touched her, it wouldn’t have made her like this — so afraid, so self-conscious, and so successfully ruined.

“In front of the whole team, just — just kept poking fun at me. Mocking me. Speaking about me as if I wasn’t there. Making fun of my nervous stutter and — and talking over me like, ‘oh, and she keeps going.’ and ‘wow, it just never ends, does it?’ and making everyone laugh at me.”

He should have been there. All he can think about is how he should have been by her side the way any boyfriend should — should have been there to protect her, to keep his eyes on anybody who dared to even look at her the wrong way, to never let her out of his sight.

They’re on the same team and he just should have fucking been there.

“Said he’d take bets with people to see how long it would take me to shut up and I wanted to tell him so badly that the more he says those things the more I ramble because it makes me nervous and I don’t know what else to do but apart of me — apart of me felt like he already knew that and kept going so that I could keep going so that he can keep making a fool out of me.”

Her bottom lip quivers again, and so does his, and Harry has had enough.

He can’t keep seeing her like this because who knows what his love for her could make him do. He’s already broken so many boundaries just from taking one look at her, he can’t even imagine what comes next, or what would come next, if he has to see it again.

With every last bit of courage he has, Harry lets go of her hands and brings his wrist up behind his glasses, wiping away the remnants of his tears, before bringing his hands back down to her knees.

“I’m going to tell Jeremy that you’re not feeling well and that you needed to go home, okay?”

She nods with a pout on her face because god, how badly does she want to crawl into their bed and hibernate beneath the covers until the weekend’s over.

“I’ll help you finish up whatever you need me to, and I’ll meet you back at our flat once I’m done.” He hooks his pointer finger under her chin, kissing away the pout his heart just can’t handle the sight of. “I love you so much. You’re everything to me.”

He didn’t have to tell her, because she already knew.

And it’s so hard for him to leave her like this, but he has to. He has to because she can’t stay here and face the same team that just spit on her name and pretend everything is okay, when everything is so far from it.

He kisses her one last time.

“Go home. I’ll be there soon.”

-

Harry wasn’t looking for Mason.

He really wasn’t, though every fiber in his body instinctively wanted to hunt him down and brutalize him until he was nothing but a pile of broken bones and battered flesh. His fingers ached for it, but he was more focused on getting home to Y/n so that she didn’t have to be alone — so that he can hold her, and kiss her, and remind her that the only reason the world keeps trying to knock her down is because she’s too perfect to be existing in it.

But as he stands in the copy room to help finish one of Y/n’s major projects, that’s exactly who he sees.

He walks in, whistling the same tune he does every other day, one hand holding a pile of papers and the other slinging the office keys by their lanyard. And as he occupies the empty copy machine next to Harry’s, he lifts his chin up as if to greet him on this truly horrible, unforgiving day.

Harry tenses on sight, his shoulders straightening up and his fingers tightening around the folder that now holds everything he needed to make his way out of here.

But how could he, when Mason is right here?

He takes one last glance at Mason and one last breath before he slowly and steadily makes his way to the door, shutting it closed, before he says anything at all. And really, he doesn’t even fully know what he wants to say, but he does know that he can’t let him get away with the things he’s done, or the words he’s said, or the pain he’s caused to the one and only person Harry cares about.

He’s never been one for confrontation — never been one to project his feelings onto people, or make his problems into somebody else’s — but fuck, it’s Y/n, and his love for her is so different than any other emotion he’s ever felt. It makes him hate, it makes him dangerous, and it makes him something so beyond himself when he sees her the way he did not just three hours ago.

And who would he be if he didn’t do what he knows is right?

“I’m not an emotional guy, Mason.” Harry starts, his fingers twisting and knotting against his palms, trying so hard to keep himself together. But this is too small of a room to carry around so much anger, so much loathing for one person, and the narrowing space between them is building so much tension Harry feels like he’s drowning in all of it. “But I am today.”

Mason’s full attention is on Harry now, fully suspicious of his actions and words, confused as to why the temperature in the room has suddenly fallen below zero.

“I’ve got a lot of feelings… never really learned how to express them. Got a lot of resentment, a lot of anger, a lot of love for my girl.”

Harry takes his glasses off, closing them shut before stuffing them in his jacket pocket.

“Got a lot of all three right now. But if it ever came down to it, I’d do what’s right by Y/n and I wouldn’t think twice about it. Can’t say that for anybody else, except for her.”

And it’s true.

She’s the only thing in existence that can get to this side of him. He’s been so visibly numb his entire life, it didn’t matter how angry he was, or how hurt he was, or how depressed he was, he was so incurably lifeless despite all the vulnerability scrambling inside him. Yet seeing Y/n practically fall apart between his palms set something so deeply within him, he cried alongside her.

And now, he’s rolling up the sleeves of his jacket.

“You understand what I’m saying, correct?”

There’s a pregnant pause in the air, and Harry’s left starving to feast on this poor excuse of a man.

“Look, mate —” Mason finally turns to him, smiling so obnoxiously it makes Harry’s stomach churn. Y/n’s spent the whole day crying and Mason is smiling, laughing, even, like he doesn’t have a care or a clue in the world that he’s broken somebody down so badly — somebody so innocent, somebody so undeserving. “I’m a jokester, alright? Whatever I said to her, it wasn’t personal. I was just trying to lighten the mood a bit — make some jokes, crack some smiles. All innocent here, yeah? It’s all good.”

Out of all the things he could have said, he chose all the wrong words.

And Harry just can’t understand how somebody could be so heartless and cruel and be so completely unaware of it — how someone could turn something already so foul into something so nauseatingly evil and do it with shrugged shoulders and a shit-eating grin.

His palms twitch.

But it isn’t until Mason pats his hand against Harry’s shoulder like he’s the one that’s being let off the hook, that Harry is pushed over the edge.

He should be on his knees, begging for mercy, begging for forgiveness, writhing in fear.

He grabs a hold of Mason’s wrist so tightly his fingers turn numb under the pulse of the very man he so desperately wants to demolish. And before he can even process what’s happening, before he has time to suppress the blackout rage crashing down on him, the fist of his right hand knocks Mason down cold.

It happened so fast, Harry couldn’t even keep up. One second he’s shoulder-to-shoulder with the enemy and the next, he’s towering above him with knuckles covered in blood that isn’t his.

“Man, what the fuck?!” Mason cries from the ground, his hand reaching up toward the side of his already swollen and busted eye, cupping the wound as if to keep the pain from spreading and the blood from dripping. “You just fucking hit me!”

Harry’s panting and shaking and still has yet to finish what he’s started.

“My girlfriend is not a joke. She is not somebody for you to pick on when you want to crack some smiles and she is not a punchline for you to use when you have nothing funny to say.”

The tone of his voice is such a contradiction to the rest of him that if anybody else were watching, they wouldn’t understand why he did what he had just done. Because he’s far from yelling, far from screaming, far from anything other than the way he’d talk in any other circumstance, yet he doesn’t care. For the first time in his life, he just doesn’t care, because what he did was enough.

He rolls his jacket sleeves back down, the side of his wrist wiping the sweat from his top lip.

“You could have done anything else, but you didn’t.”

His bruised and busted hand takes his glasses out of his pocket, unfolding the temples and sliding them back onto the bridge of his nose. And he doesn’t bother taking another look at Mason — doesn’t even want to — before he hooks his fingers around the doorknob.

“If you ever make a joke out of her again, I’ll kill you. That’s it. Just like that. I’ll kill you.”

-

When Harry gets home that night, he’s got his hands full of all Y/n’s favorite things.

Not only does he have two bags of her favorite take out, but he’s also got a pint of her favorite ice cream, a heated blanket she’d been eyeing whenever they walked down Bond Street, and a bottle of the sweetest wine he could find at the liquor store.

And when she walks to the front door to greet him, wearing nothing but underwear and one of his favorite sweatshirts, he realizes that he couldn’t imagine a single day not coming home to her, or loving her, or protecting her from all the bad that’s been chewing on her and spitting her out.

“What’s all this?” She smiles softly at him, reaching to take some of the bags out of his trembling hands. 

“A peace offering.” He whispers so quietly, Y/n almost doesn’t hear it. 

He knows what he did was right, but what he doesn’t know is if this will make her see him differently. Because what he did was not the Harry she fell in love with, and maybe it’ll drive her so far away she’ll never have to see him again. 

But he’s praying, down to the very depths of himself, that she’ll understand. 

“What?” She tilts her head at him, “What do you mean?”

His eyes fall to his knuckles, that are still scarred and busted from before. And as her eyes follow his gaze down upon them, she gasps. 

“Baby —”

“I had to do it, Y/n.” He whimpers, his eyes closing. “He made you cry, I had to do it.”

And later that night, after they ate everything Harry had brought home until they could barely get up from the sofa, Y/n kissed at his knuckles, one by one. 

He’d get his knuckles bloody every single day if it meant getting his hands full of all the love he has to offer her. He’d cry, and cry, and cry if it meant Y/n doesn’t have to face the world alone. He’d go against himself in every way, in every conceivable notion, just to make her smile the very smile he’s looking at right now.

She is stronger than any drug, stronger than any other pain, any other happiness, any other feeling he has ever felt. Because now, he is so much more than he could ever imagine himself being, and all it took was her.

She is his favorite person, his only person — his little miracle and the absolute light of his life, even after all this time, and he couldn’t imagine it being any other way.

And it was then, he knew.

[megumisbimbo]

Y/N (27) Athletic Trainer*

Ushijima x fem!reader

warnings: fluff, smut, little bit of oral

word count: 1.7k

minors dni please!!

all characters are aged up! (timeskip! ushijima)

a/n: this is my first smut so please be kind HAKDJ

Ushijima’s blunt manner could be seen as frustrating and at times, annoying. But you couldn’t help but appreciate the way he would simply tell it like it is. Like right now.

“I know this is sudden, but I’m interested in you y/n. Would you allow me to take you to dinner?”

Your heart races as you stare into the eyes of one of Japan’s greatest athletes. You were just a lowly athletic trainer, working under the equally as entrancing, Iwaizumi Hajime. Your hands are clammy as they clutch the clipboard that’s pressed against your chest. You had no clue this man had any kind of interest in you, you just worked for him. After all the interactions, the trainings, attending to his injuries, and basically being his personal trainer, he eventually caught feelings.

“Oh um- sure Ushijima-san, I would love to join you for dinner.”

You couldn’t lie, the thought of going out with such a prestigious and revered man sounded amazing, and it’s not like his feelings weren’t reciprocated. You’ve had eyes for Ushijima ever since Iwaizumi-san assigned you to him. It’s truly a dream come true that he developed feelings for you, and you were not going to pass this opportunity up.

“I’ll pick you up around 6 then.” He says, face straight and confident.

Your voice is caught in the back of your throat, but you manage to muster out a quick “sure.”

You race home eager to doll yourself up for the occasion. You finally had a date with the one guy that made you feel like more than just an employee. He was always so attentive. Constantly caring about how you were doing. He would greet you without fail, even if you weren’t working with him that day. Iwaizumi seemed to notice as well, always poking fun at the thought of losing “his best trainer” to a “very handsome, and very interested man.” You brushed off his teases, denying any sort of feeling for the ace. Deep down you knew your feelings. How your face felt 100 times hotter when he stood next to you, and how hard it was to keep your composure when you tended to his injuries. You were a mess around him and it was a miracle you were able to keep your job for this long. But not anymore. You didn’t need to hold back any longer.

You had picked out the perfect dress, not too fancy but not super casual either. It hugged your body in exactly the right ways, and showed off your assets a bit more than you wanted it to, but you couldn’t complain.

A knock at your door startles you. You quickly grab your purse and phone and run to go answer it. You’re met with the sight of Ushijima’s tall, stocky body leaning against the side of the entrance of your apartment. His olive eyes rake up and down your body taking in your perfect features.

“You look beautiful y/n, as usual.”

You blush heavily at his comment and curse the gods for making him so damn blunt.

“You look wonderful as well.” You say, your voice barely audible. You don’t see the slight blush that creeps across his tan skin. He takes you to his car and drives you back to his penthouse. He was rich of course, but you already knew that. This was not the first time you’ve seen his home, many meetings between the two of you were conducted in his home office. You never felt unsafe or out of place with him, so you were quite comfortable going to his house for various reasons. Although this time, the reasoning was a bit more...intimate. He pulls into the garage and leads you up to his place, which he has minimally decorated.

“I hope you don’t mind that it’s at my place, I couldn’t seem to find any reservations at the restaurant you like.”

“No! of course I don’t mind, I’m honestly glad you invited me at all.” You say, your voice once again trailing to a whisper. You were surprised he remembered what your favorite restaurant was, and that he would go out of his way to find reservations.

“You’re awfully quiet today y/n, that’s not like you. Am I making you uncomfortable in any way?”

“Not at all Ushijima-san! I just...haven’t been out on a date in a while and I’m not quite sure what to expect.” You answer, instantly feeling bad for leading him to feel this way.

“That’s a relief, I am pretty nervous myself. I also haven’t taken someone out in a while, but rest assured I will take good care of you tonight.” He says, his usually hard and focused eyes softening at the sight of your shaking hands. Your demeanor immediately changes and you’re back to how you usually feel around him, safe and protected.

The dinner goes smoothly. Ushijima insisted on cooking for the two of you, and the sight of him being so domestic definitely made it harder to hide your feelings for him but it was over sooner than you had hoped. He politely walks you to the door, but as soon as your hand makes contact with the handle and the door opens slightly, something in him snaps. His large hand slams against the door closing it abruptly.

“Forgive me for being so forward y/n...but I don’t want you to go just yet.”

His opposite hand rests on your waist as his lips attach to your exposed shoulder. His kisses were light and feathery, leaving a hot trail in its wake. Your body felt like it was on fire and you could feel the arousal pooling in your thin lace panties. You turn yourself around and grab onto the collar of his white dress shirt, pulling him flush against your body. Your lips smash against his and your tongues intertwine as his hand trails down the curve of your ass down to your thigh lifting your leg. You instinctively wrap your leg around him as he leans down to grab your the other one. He carries you into his room, and lays you down on his bed. The soft silk sheets he uses only add to the arousal as they crease slightly under your tight grip.

“y/n, can I take your dress off?” He asks, panting heavily.

“Please...”

He carefully removes your dress, his fingertips trailing down your body as his lips press sweet kisses across your chest.

“You have no idea what you do to me y/n. Can I take your panties off? Let me make you feel good.”

Your body gets impossibly hotter at how careful and considerate he is.

“Please Ushijima-san..take it all off..”

He obliges, pulling them down and off your body then reaching around your arched back to snap off your bra, throwing them both on the floor. He stops, giving himself a moment to take in your fully exposed body before he buries his face into your neck.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.” He says as his thumb slowly circles your clit.

“Gonna make you feel so good.”

You moan loudly, your hands finding purchase in his olive locks. You tug slightly, eliciting a soft groan from him. His face is red and flushed, embarrassed at the sounds he was making.

“I like your sounds Toshi...mmm don’t stop.”

He moans at the use of his first name, loving the way it sounds coming out of your mouth.

He slips a finger into your sopping wet entrance. You moan from the slight stretch. Noticing that he was still clothed, you reach out and unbutton his dress shirt. Your hands trial down his chest, finding the buckle of his belt and skillfully undoing it. He shakes his shirt off, letting it drop on the floor next to yours, his pants finding themselves in the same place. He inserts his finger into you again, accompanied by a second, and then a third. The knot builds in your stomach and threatens to snap.

“hngg- Toshi...more- please more!”

His quickens his movements pulling you closer to your release. In between moans and cries of his name, you come undone. He slips his slicked fingers into his mouth tasting your sweet release.

“You taste so good y/n...here taste with me.”

He reaches up and sticks one in your mouth and you diligently suck, tasting yourself mixed with his hot saliva. He pulls his fingers out, making a lewd popping sound.

He pulls his black boxers down and throws them in the clothing pile, his erect cock springing free. He lines himself up with your entrance and leans forward to kiss you.

“Tell me if it hurts. I’ll make you feel so good angel I promise.”

He pushes himself inside slowly, paying close attention to your body language and the way you squirm under him.

“mmm ‘s big Toshi- feels so good.”

“Yeah? Tell me how good you feel pretty girl.”

“Feel so full- ughh”

You moan and squirm as you feel the knot tighten a second time. His thrusts are slow and gentle, every move targeted towards your pleasure.

“Fuck Toshi- ‘m coming- hngg”

“Come for me y/n. Wanna feel you around my cock.”

His lewd words send you tumbling over the edge and towards your release. He pulls out giving himself a few quick strokes, his release soon covering your lower stomach.

He falls next to you, sweating and out of breath. You turn and cup his cheek in your hand.

“Thank you Toshi, you’re always so good to me...wanna make you feel good too...”

He chuckles, “Next time you can, but for now let’s sleep. Stay with me tonight?”

“Of course.” You respond, your cheeks starting to hurt from smiling so much.

After a few moments of catching his breath and stealing a few kisses, he climbs out of bed and grabs a warm, damp towel. He gently wipes your sore body down, massaging your aching hips in between. He pulls the sheet up and over your body and climbs into the bed next to you.

“Goodnight beautiful.” He says, softly pecking your lips.

“Goodnight Wakatoshi.”

<3

[vrisrezis]

My mcu favs w/ crush and relationship hcs (pt 2) (not proof read)

- gonna be honest she’s not familiar with romantic feelings, takes her awhile to even realize what she feels for you

- you make her heart all melty and soft, you make her face heat up, you make her question everything she does

- you make her feel even giddy and overly happy and it kinda annoys her tbh

- she thinks you’re out to get her or something and have casted some spell but when she asks thor he has no idea what she’s talking about until she describes what she’s feeling and he just laughs and thinks she’s joking

- she’s like no. I’m serious ?

- to which thor would tell her what it is, he has a bit of an idea because of Jane

- tbh loving somebody romantically, caring about somebody to this extent scares her

- she’s lost so many people and because of it became a raging alcoholic

- if she lost you she doesn’t know what could happen

- she tries to push you away but quickly realizes she doesn’t like doing that to herself or you

- asks you to go out drinking with her often if you’re up for that

- she’d find it funny how easily you get drunk but has no problem taking care of you, in fact she would probably drink with you more often so she can take care of you because it’s the closest to intimacy she feels she can have with you (no she is not taking advantage of you or anything, it’s more just the thought of taking care of you feels intimate to her)

- also you’re cute while you’re drunk

- trans with you so you can be tougher if you’re not that tough already

- tbh asks thor to do the same with you, whether it be cuz she’s not around or because you need the extra training

- eventually Thor’s at the point where he’s like you gotta tell em and she’s like no 🖕

- but she does eventually

- she’s kinda awkward about it but she tries to sound confident with it ^^

- dating you is very different than just being her friend tbh

- like you might’ve been surprised at her asking you out, even if it’s kinda obvious to anybody that knows her well

- to any stranger you just seemed like friends with a strange rivalry relationship but that’s really not the case

- she’s much more flirty in a relationship, since she’s confident you’re with her for a reason.. she’s not the type to doubt your relationship, you’re with her for a reason

- much more protective in battle though

- she doesn’t say she loves you enough, but she shows it through her actions

- asks thor about the romantic stuff but he has no idea really so she goes to Bruce who kinda has more of a grasp on it

- tries to take you to like normal restaurant dates... kinda awkward since she had no midgardian clothes at that point

- lotsa quick kisses on the cheek or forehead

- likes cuddling as she finds it just.. kinda intimate ?

- still likes to take care of a drunk you

- quick pecks on your lips are very often

- doesn’t like the idea of going on a lot of Thor’s saving the world shits unless you’re on board with it

- thor jokes about how she’s all badass and “I don’t give a fuck about saving the world or anyone else” until it comes to you

- she kicks his ass

- but he’s not wrong

- when she likes you she’s a bit like wtf

- like she doesn’t realize it for a moment until jane explains it

- before she was her usual talkative self but there was a lot of nervousness and stuttering at times, just unusual awkwardness that made Jane raise a brow

- it makes more sense now

- since she’s aware she likes you now she often asks you to hang out, to help her out, whatever it is

- the gal is clingy af what can she say

- lotsa hugs she loves giving you hugs often does them for a greeting

- just an excuse to hold you though tbh

- at times will get tongue tied

- she tries to flirt but it just makes you confused she’s not good at it you’re not even gonna know she’s flirting

- eventually grows impatient about it and is just like “I LIKE U DUMMY! DATE ME!”

- and now you date

- she gets into things a bit quickly so if it’s too fast tell her, hopefully not a dealbreaker

- dates are often because she’s got a lot of creative ideas for dates ^^

- still hugs you as a greeting but a lot longer and intimate and a kiss follows after

- speaking of kisses she LOVES to kiss you and she does so very often

- very needy

- big cuddler

- just like “CUDDLE ME”

- so demanding

- often talks about you and how much she loves you she can’t help it

- but if anybody did the same she like “shut up nobody cares”

- even with you though she’s blunt, but much nicer about it

- likes going on just good dates, restaurants , picnic, whatever

- she eats all the food

- tries to impress you so she might say she was best friends with thor at a point

- and that she’s helped him out before and .. yeah etc

- she likes buying you clothes tbh

- especially if you don’t dress good let her dress you up pls

- would be sad if you didn’t get along with Jane

- it would be a dealbreaker actually

- she knows she’s a bit much so she feels happy you love her anyways

- vision of course will not understand his feelings

- he understands you definitely make him feel something, that something being good

- for a moment he might think he feels like this is how best friends feel towards another, or even thinking he sees you in a familial light

- tony quickly tells him that is not the case

- once vision understands what he really feels he’s not sure how to go about it, he can be quite oblivious

- he’s aware of this but still .. what does he do?

- asks tony for advice, he tells him to flirt and see how it goes

- but tbh that doesn’t work, you don’t even realize he’s flirting gonna be honest

- he’s just bad at it

- so he tries to just simply state his affection, that doesn’t work because he doesn’t know how to word it without it sounding platonic, or getting too nervous about going too far

- he doesn’t wanna overstep boundaries

- tony is in pain watching this btw

- tony eventually is just like “he wants to know if you would like to go on a date” “w- I.. yes?”

- in a relationship he is very sweet

- kinda cliche though, since he doesn’t have a concept of romance at all

- looks up a lot of the things he should know about romance he doesn’t want to ask you that

- while he has no problem protecting you, he doesn’t feel the need to be overly protective unless needed

- he’s logical, reasonable, he only gets protective if he has to, even with how he feels towards you

- but do you distract him? Yes absolutely

- he’s okay with living comfortably and normally for once with you, unless it’s something you don’t want or are not ready for

- once you’re conditioned to a certain lifestyle, even if it isn’t a good one it can be uncomfortable to get out of and he understands that

- he loves to kiss you, often initiates kisses or forms of affection

- you were the first to kiss him, it made him so flustered but so happy and now he’s addicted to kissing you

- loves kissing your hands

- if you have any insecurity he will do anything in his power to prove you wrong and that he doesn’t see you in that light

- he understands he has responsibilities but other than that, loves spending his time with you

- he understands you’re a distraction so he tries not to fight with you, he wants to prioritize the people when it comes to this kinda thing

- which you of course understand

- once you teach him what dancing is, his love language is dancing with you

- you two just stay up talking about nothing and everything

- having kids with him isn’t an option, but he isn’t opposed to adopting children

- after all, all he’s ever wanted was to be a normal significant other to you

- do not have a huge concept on her character so forgive me 🙏

- she can be a bit flirty, not that you mind though right ?

- she just loves spending all her time with you

- probably met you before wandavision

- so you’re probably already together

- even then in wandavision you two were “roommates”

- doesn’t explain all the flirting girl .

- agathas fall would be letting Wanda find out she had a soft spot for you my god

- while she’s all confidence and flirty in general, she’s a bit softer with you

- like she genuinely means the things she says when it comes to you

- eventually asks you to date her, you don’t have much room for dates outside of wandavision

- you two are always together btw

- loves dancing with you

- she has a good grasp on romance so she has no issue with it

- she is full of confidence when it comes down to it tbh

- holds your hand often

- your relationship ain’t official till like the 70s probably

- might joke after wanda has kids that you both should have kids too

- while she’s causing her mischief you back her up to make her look less suspicious

- seriously in the mist of all this she’s grateful for you

- especially when you get her out of the hell that Wanda puts her in once again

- to which she will actually confess she loves you, and cares for you

- you aren’t just like.. some person to date

- she’s not the most vulnerable obviously

- so the fact she finally is.. it’s just a lot

- “idk I just love u a lot hun . Cant I show I love u 😊”

- she’s just so overly sweet with you

- she’s so awful to everyone else at times that she just likes being .. with you and being a softie

- likes you playing with her hair

- she loves a good cuddle

- cute nicknames like hon, or hun, or just teddy bear

- with a crush quill might try to act overly friendly

- and probably flirts a lot

- he’s very like obvious with the flirting so you’d have to be oblivious not to notice it

- he can be quite protective as well

- like not just in fighting but even with just others like even before dating he’s very jealous

- if he makes a joke you’re always in on it somehow

- he tries for form a close bond with you just cuz he likes you so much

- it’s likely he likes somebody that can easily protect themselves doe

- probably has some dumb handshake with you

- honestly he acts like a close friend to you

- people might mistake you for a sibling like relationship if it weren’t for his flirting and him staring at you like you’re his entire universe

- seriously Sam says Bucky has a staring problem, quill is fucking awful

- it’s constant and rocket is always like “you’re staring”

- and he’s like “nO” and then continues to stare

- has you listen to his favorite music of course

- especially the love songs ;D

- will just dance with you to the music he puts on

- one time you guys are dancing to the music he put on like normal but it’s a slow love song, so hes like let’s so dance bae

- and then he tells you how he feels for u

- now u date <3

- lots of forehead kisses

- cuddle bug absolutely

- still a jealous boyfriend though tbh he will try to seem all tough in front of any man he thinks might be better or something he will do anything to show off

- your relationship doesn’t change just lots of kisses and hugs now and I love yous

- you’re totally the relationship that’s like “I love you more” “nooo I love you more” and the guardians hate y’all so much

- he uses nicknames like hun, honey, love, sweetheart

- let’s just say you slow dance more often, and kiss while doing so ^^

- he flirts with you still but it’s a lot more sweet rather than before where he might’ve just flirted with you in terms of like it being kinda like calling you sexy and shit like that, now it’s more like wow u look beautiful I luv u 😊🙏

- would do anything for you, even if he wouldn’t like it

- doesn’t mean he wouldn’t hesitate tho

- going on separate dates isn’t really an option since you guys fight left and right and are always with the guardians, but he decided every once a couple months you guys go on a date together and have some fun

- Loki doesn’t get crushes, so this is a new thing for him

- and tbh he doesn’t know how to take it either, especially when he realizes how strong those feelings actually are

- he hates the idea of being vulnerable in general, especially when it comes to you

- over time it just... happens

- but if there’s any indication he likes spending time with you he will try to lie his way through it, he’s a good liar of course so it probably works

- however he shows he at the very least cares about you, he shows a sign of protectiveness when it comes to potential enemies.. enemies that happen to be dangerous for you

- plus he’s around you like constantly and claims he has nobody else to harass

- he claims he doesn’t care about you at all, but even thor can tell through this lie

- the way he looks at you makes it obvious

- the way he doesn’t try to get you involved in his more dangerous schemes

- and if you do, and you get hurt he feels guilty and tries to help you feel better

- he claims he just owes you one for getting you hurt though

- eventually thor bothers him enough to get him to confess feelings, which takes a lot for Loki to even go through with

- he acts confident, even moreso after you say yes, but deep down was extremely nervous

- the male is good at making you feel important, after trying so hard to hide his feelings he is tired of it and just wants to be more honest about how he feels about you

- no issue being vulnerable, he trusts you but sometimes it can be hard

- he goes to you for a lot of his problems, even if you cannot help, just venting and you listening helps

- he was already with you a lot but now there’s no excuses and it’s even moreso

- “what? I just wanted to visit my beautiful s/o” “we literally just saw eachother 5 minutes ago can I please go to bed”

- likes pressing your foreheads together, he finds it sweet

- jealous of thor? Absolutely. Pls comfort him and tell him you’d never leave him for thor

- he’s so used to just not being as good as him, he wants to be good enough for you

- deep down there’s just so many insecurities he has

- so it causes him to worry like all the time

- having a reassuring and patient s/o is so good for him ^^

- flirting becomes a thing in your relationship

- it makes him feel more confident pls give him this

- protective, he feels like he has to be tbh because he never gets anything good in his life and if he does he loses it, he’s scared to lose you too

- if for some reason he can’t see you he makes an illusion of you to talk to

- when he fake dies you’re the first he goes to see so you don’t think he’s dead, he loves you he wouldn’t want to do that to you =(

- finally

- gonna be honest bucky with a crush is cute

- first of all he smiles at you a lot, Steve is the first to notice how much he smiles around you, it’s the most he smiles like ever

- just has a lot of nice conversations with you about anything and everything

- also whenever you’re around even if other people are around you he’s just like “hey y/n :)”

- heart eyes for you, just can’t help but stare all the time

- he has a staring problem but with you? Yeah 10x over

- Sam always has something to say abt it also

- his idea of flirting with you is really just saying hi to you, just being overly friendly which is noticeable for a guy like Bucky

- eventually would ask you out, he tries to ease into it but he gets a bit impatient

- he was also nervous asking you out but yk

- when dating him he becomes very protective

- one of the most protective bitches on the list tbh

- he gets nightmares about you dying like all the time it breaks him everytime though

- lots of cuddles, whether it be from a rough day, he’s just tired, or had a nightmare

- he likes his hair being brushed by you and played with, even when he cuts it

- he’s scared of killing you and turning into the winter soldier again

- has dreams about when he’s hurt and fought you as the winter soldier, he keeps thinking about if Steve wasn’t there to help, he really could’ve killed you and that terrifies him

- even when you tell him it wasn’t him, he appreciates it but still feels horrible about it

- touch that metal arm, but like gently Yknow . Nobody’s ever touched that arm with such kindness and it makes him soft and feel lucky

- speaking of soft Bucky is very soft, there’s many soft moments with Bucky and vulnerability

- it’s easy to be vulnerable with you but not others

- lots of handholding

- he loves hugging you for long periods of time

- still has a staring problem but now Sam openly makes fun of him

- just big dumb smile on his face as he looks at you

- especially when you’re dealing with kids, seeing you be around them makes his heart warm

- maybe he does wanna be normal, settle down and have kids

- though the thought scares him it is something he desires

- we all know he calls you doll