#happy twenty twenty five to this absolute shock horror

[marknee]

sometimes… u jus gotta write the essay @hongism

mists of celeste

a series by @hongism: by marknee

(contains spoilers! please be wary when reading)

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[seventeenpins]

a slight miscalculation - pt. i

pairing: Joel x F!Reader

word count: 8.3k

summary: Sarah is off to college, and Joel is about to be living in an empty nest. They road trip out together, and as she spends her first night in her new apartment, he's staying in a nearby hotel. Letting go of his inhibitions for the first time in a long time, he tumbles into a one night stand that becomes very complicated, very quickly.

content/warnings: smut, age gap, mycologist!reader, dick sucking, implied pussy eating, fingering, no outbreak au, reader likes to hike, reader also infodumps, joel miller has a big cock, he also has anxiety, reader has anxiety too, and a cat, reader is in early 20s--exact age not established, one (1) use of daddy, alcohol and weed consumption, joel is a diligent condom wearer, set in present day, discussion of girl scout cookies, joel is sweet and soft and hasn't been eviscerated by the death of his daughter

a/n: I'm intending this to be about five parts. This may change, but right now it's looking like five. I've been struggling to write for a while, unable to focus, but I think I'm back at it? as always, your feedback is hugely appreciated, and i'm kissing all likers and commenters and rebloggers deeply and with tongue 🩷

check out pt. ii

For the first time in nineteen years, Joel is completely adrift. Sarah's starting college in just two months.

It's the kind of realization that hits him like a bucket of ice water, a sudden shock and then an unpleasant trickling of anxiety wrapping about him in nasty tendrils. And then he feels guilty, because he's so, so happy for Sarah because he knows that she's thrilled, but fuck she's gonna be two time zones away and now what's Joel meant to do on Thursday movie nights when he's here without her?

It's terrifying, and it's new. And it's not that he's new to anxiety. He's usually anxious, and he has the Sertraline on his bedside stand to prove it. But if his general anxiety baseline usually hovered around a 6.4, where he was at now far surpassed a 10. It felt exponential, and totally exhausting.

When he voices his fears to Tommy, to Joel's horror, Tommy just doubles over in laughter.

"Jesus, Joel," he wheezes, wiping fake tears from his eyes in exaggerated movements, "You looked so serious I thought you were gonna say you'd killed someone."

Joel scowls. "The fuck you laughing for?"

"She's going to college, it's not like she's dying!"

"How'm I gonna be there for her? What if she needs me? What if-"

"Joel-," Tommy pats him gently on the shoulder, "She can always call you, and you can always call her. And we both know she's got a good head on 'er shoulders."

Joel snorts in concession. "Yeah, yeah. Better than yours and mine put together, and then some."

"Exactly." Tommy agrees, "And if there's ever anything that really goes wrong, you got me. We can drive out together and make sure she's okay."

Joel nods and feels the tiniest bit of tension leave him. One step at a time.

Just over nineteen years ago he found out he was about to be a dad. Suddenly, he had a purpose. Having a kid at twenty-two wasn't something he'd ever intended, but somehow he knew he loved his baby girl from the moment he knew she was a possibility. He spent a solid seven months running around, hustling, doing everything he could to get the very best for his kid. He'd take on doubles, working himself to the bone to make sure they had the best crib, and the best stroller, too. He was thrilled and terrified and so, so green.

Now, his heart feels so big he doesn't know how to handle it. His baby girl is an honest-to-god adult, moving out and going to college, and he has no idea what he's gonna do with his time now.

He has work, of course. But beyond that? He's really gotta to widen his circle, he realises, because who's he gonna hang out with? His brother?

He'd only just turned forty-one and had absolutely not come to terms with an empty nest--the few friends from high school he'd kept in touch with were so much further behind than him. The ones that had kids had them later in their twenties and thirties, and now they're raising middle schoolers while Joel's kid is a real fucking person, leaving home and everything. All the scrapping and saving he'd been doing since before Sarah was born–for his little girl to be able to follow any dream she chose–it was finally paying off. The precocious young woman she is, she graduated early and spent nearly a year working retail to save up some cash. She'd applied to colleges all across the country, and a few international ones, too. Joel had been crossing his fingers for months, hoping she'd choose something near Austin, but cheered with her all the same when she got her acceptance letter from Oregon State University. The previous summer, just before she'd started her applications, she and Joel and Tommy spent a miserable, wonderful week hiking round the Pacific Northwest. She fell in love with it, and the university offered a few of the majors she wanted to consider.

Joel didn't know what he'd do with his baby girl so far away, his life, his reason, but he sure as hell wasn't gonna tell her that. He will not clip her wings. His baby's gonna change the world and he's not gonna hold her back. He is, though, gonna require regular phone calls and check-ins and god they grow up so fast.

"Y'all should road trip out there," Tommy suggests one night over the dinner table.

Joel knew the conversation of how Sarah would get to the West Coast would come up, and it oughta be sooner rather than later. He was half afraid that she wanted to head out on her own, that she didn't need her dad anymore. Worried she would say she wanted to get a plane ticket, or take the Amtrak all the way to Corvallis. But he knows he needs to loosen his grip a little, so he braces himself when he turns to her.

"What'dya think, Sarah? You wanna be stuck in a car with your old man for a cross-country trip?"

Sarah rolls her eyes, but her face breaks into a grin. "Can we, Dad?"

This was too good to be true, he knew, but he wasn't gonna give up one last opportunity to spend some time with his girl till winter break.

"Course, baby," he tells her, and that flicker of anxiety quells just the tiniest bit.

The next few weeks fly by, and the knot of anxiety in Joel's chest feels like it's consuming him from the inside out. He's taken some time off, more than Sarah or Tommy can remember, but he's constantly trying to suggest ideas for activities to Sarah. For the most part, she's a good sport, understanding how much it means to her dad. She took pity on him, and let him drag her to places that ideally she would've gone to when she was little, but she humored him and he appreciated her dedication. He did his best to step back when she was heading out to spend time with friends--her time here was limited, after all, and she was always a social butterfly.

There are five weeks till classes start, four weeks, three, two, and in the blink of an eye, they're loading up the truck with all of Sarah's things, and Tommy is hugging Sarah goodbye, teary eyed. He gives Joel a hug, too. Joel would never admit it, but fuck he had really needed that hug.

They would take the scenic route. Make a memorable trip of it. Joel would make sure she settles in safe and sound, and then he'd head home.

6am Sunday.

You wake with a start. It's just over a week before term starts and your entire body aches. Fuck, you think to yourself, definitely overdid it with that last hike.

(The hiking part wasn't itself a problem, but one of the trails had washed out. You thought you'd found your way, but the "easy" three and a half mile hike took about five hours, leaving your calves bruised and your heels blistered.)

You roll over in your hotel room bed and, at the sound of a slight yelp followed by a gentle thud, realise with a sudden start that you just catapulted your cat off the corner.

"Shit, sorry goblin," you tell Spatula, who glares up at you with disdain as he licks at his paw. You reach down and, despite your inadvertent cat launch, he immediately rubs up against your fingertips and lets you scratch behind his ears.

"I'm sorry, baby," you soothe.

He meows, loudly. Howls, really. You take it as an apology accepted.

You sit up properly and look at your phone calendar. Nothing immediate. You don't need to get keys to your new apartment till tomorrow, nor do you meet your roommates till then–they're both moving in today, and moving is already horrible without having to navigate around the belongings of two other people. No, thanks. You can afford one more night at the hotel, and it'll make everything go that little bit more smoothly tomorrow. Besides, you have a bit of reading you'd like to get through, maybe stock up on non-perishables till you have a full-sized fridge, and get to know the city just a little.

You move gingerly, testing the ache in your muscles as you unfold yourself from the position you've been sat in and pull yourself from the bed. It hurts, but not something that won't be fixed with a little movement.

A plan forms. First, a walk, to try and loosen up your tight muscles. Then, errands. You have a whole list, with everything categorised by store, but then you enter IKEA and exit fifteen minutes later, only to find that five and a half hours have passed and it's evening now.

How was it that IKEA harnessed such a malicious power. How could anything harness that?

You need a fucking break. And a goddamn drink.

"Hey Dad," Sarah calls from the adjacent bedroom as Joel sweats, hauling another box towards her. The drive has been good, but it has been long. His legs ache. His back aches. There are parts of him that he didn't know existed that now ache.

"Yeah?" he calls back.

"Are you sure you're okay with me staying here tonight?"

Joel lets out a breath. He wants to be okay with it. And there's no way his nineteen year old would want to hang out with her dad when she could be spending the very first night in her brand new apartment. But he also wishes she wanted to spend one last night, hanging out in a hotel room with her dad. They could watch shitty movies together. Make the most of the final night before this cataclysmic shift.

But no.

That'd just be him being selfish. He can handle a night by himself. He's gotta handle a whole lotta them soon enough.

"O'course baby," he nods, hoping the smile he's plastered on his face looks totally genuine. "But we're still doin' breakfast in the morning, right?"

She nods, vigorous, and then waves her phone around. "I was looking up places! There's a diner called Tommy's," she laughs, "Wanna try that? 9:30?"

"Let's do it," he smiles, and this one is a little less forced.

"How much more do we have?" Sarah asks, nodding towards the box Joel's still holding.

"Last box," he grunts, "What else can I help with?"

He places the box down and lets out a slight, almost silent whimper. Sarah catches it, though.

"Maybe you should take it easy the rest of the day, Dad," she tells him, "We both know you have old man back."

He rolls his eyes but nods. "Guess you're right," he shrugs, "That my cue to take off?"

Sarah blushes but turns to him sheepishly. "Yeah, I-"

"No need to explain," Joel assures, "I know you must wanna get unpacked and settle in, get to know your roommates an' all."

She jumps up and, almost startling him, wraps her arms around him in a bear hug.

"Love you, dad," she grins, and she squeezes just a little tighter than usual.

He squeezes back, and they both pretend there aren't tears in his eyes.

As you step through the doors of the hotel bar, you decide you like it. The lighting is comfortably low. It's not loud, but it's not quiet, either. Colorful bottles line the shelves, the light of the filament bulbs glinting off the glass in rainbow prisms.

You take a seat at the bar and give a nod of thanks as the bartender passes you a small menu. It's unsurprisingly extortionate, hotel bar and all, but it'll do.

"Old fashioned, please," you tell the bartender, who nods in response. A minute later, he hands you a glass, delivered with a twist of orange and a cherry on top.

With your first sip, you feel your shoulders start to relax and some of the tension loosen from your body. The warmth of the burn envelops you and your stress starts to unravel, leaving only the buzz feeling good.

You order a second, and as the glass is handed to you, a voice to your right catches your attention.

"This seat taken?" a man asks.

You shake your head and offer a quick smile, gesturing towards it, "All yours."

"Much obliged," he nods, and slips into the backless stool next to yours.

The bartender comes over and passes him the same menu, but without looking at it he asks, "Could I get an old fashioned?"

You smile and catch his eye, tipping your glass towards him. "An excellent choice," you praise, "Though if you don't have a sweet tooth, I'd recommend asking Jeff there if he can go easy on the simple syrup."

"Oh yeah?" He asks, and then he leans in conspiratorially. "T'tell you the truth, I do have a bit of a sweet tooth."

You raise an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

Suddenly, he breaks into a grin and it's dazzling.

"Yeah," he laughs, "I've got cookies stashed in secret locations all through my house."

You raise an eyebrow. "If I keep 'em in my pantry, my brother'll find 'em and eat 'em all," he explains, "But ever since my kid was a girl scout, I always get cravings for girl scout cookies, so I buy an armful o'boxes and try and preserve 'em throughout the year, till I can replenish."

"What's your favorite girl scout cookie?"

"Caramel deLites, hands down."

"Oh yeah?"

"Absolutely," he nods.

The bartender, Jeff, sets the man's drink down with a clink. You catch one another's eye and both erupt into a fit of laughter.

You're not even sure what's funny. Maybe it's just been a long day? Maybe the whiskey was getting to you?

Whatever it is, it feels good.

The man takes a sip of his drink and lets out an aaaahh and it's goofy and charming and then he extends his hand.

"Joel," he tells you, "Joel Miller". You shake his hand, introduce yourself, and then take a sip of your own drink.

"So, tell me about yourself," you smile, "You coming from out of town?"

"Yes ma'am," he nods, "Come up here from Austin."

"Texas?"

Joel nods.

"That's a long trip."

"Yeah," he laughs, "It really is."

"So, you're a nice Southern boy, huh?"

"Well," he swishes his glass and tries to bite back a smile, "I don't know that I'd go quite so far, but my mama did raise me to be a gentleman."

"That so?" you ask and his blush deepens.

"I... have been known to get up to some trouble, but I like to think I've mellowed in my old age." He gestures at the beautiful little smatterings of silver at his temples, and you cackle.

"Okay, that's hot," you tell him and he chokes, but you keep going, "Old age, though? What are you, like, forty?"

He exhales, chagrined. "Forty-one."

You roll your eyes. "That ain't old."

"It feels it sometimes," he smiles, "My kid is grown. My little brother's married with a kid of his own on the way. My back hurts, pretty much all the time."

You snort. You also notice, without trying to look, that he doesn't have a wedding band. Doesn't have a tan line for one, either. Interesting.

"But more than that," he continues, "I guess I feel- I don't know. A little... aimless?"

"Yeah," you nod, and you let the moment sit. "I get that."

He lets out a little breath, and then turns back to you, focused.

"What about you? Where're you from?"

"Oof," you exhale, "All over. Spent a bit of time on the East coast. The Midwest. Lived a few months in the South, even," you tease as you bump your shoulder into his and he laughs. It's a surprisingly familiar gesture, but miraculously comfortable.

"Ever make it to Texas?"

"Naw," you shake your head, "My time in the South was all in Mississippi. After that I moved out to California, and I've been slowly working my way up the West Coast."

"And what have you been enjoying about the West Coast?" Joel asks.

"The mushrooms," you grin, and Joel frowns.

"Like, the kind you get in a little baggy from the dealer down the street, or-?"

"No," you laugh, "Or, well- Okay, sometimes. Gotta say it is great out here for that, too. But I mean fungus as a whole--mushrooms, mold, yeast, lichen. But I'm most interested in mushrooms. They're just really fuckin' cool, and there's so much we don't understand about them. And, they're delicious."

"Huh," Joel ponders, "T'tell you the truth, I've never thought much about mushrooms, besides enjoying 'em as a pizza topping."

"Most people don't," you agree, "But fuck, like-- Okay, so we know there are over five million types of fungi on Earth, but we've identified less than two percent of them. Some fungus aids decomposition. Some fungus is bioluminescent. Some are known worldwide for their delicious flavours, and others are known by the slow, horrible ways they kill you."

Joel raises his eyebrows, and suddenly you feel a little self conscious.

"Sorry, I do this," you laugh, rubbing at the back of your neck, "I get very excited about fungus and manage to alienate everyone around me."

You half expect him to stand up and walk away.

Instead, though, he leans in closer. "Don't apologise," he tells you, "I'm learning something new. Tell me more?"

"No, I should stop. Otherwise I'll never stop talking," you wince.

"How about just one more fungus fact?"

You sit for a minute, pondering. "This is- well, I guess this is one of the reasons I find fungus so fascinating. So, fungus can't photosynthesise the way that plants do--they can't produce their own food from sunshine, and water, and carbon dioxide. Instead, their mycelium-- they're these thread-like networks--they branch out beneath the earth, seeking out food, growing in the direction where it can find the nutrients it needs and breaking down organic material all around them, sometimes living organisms, as a parasite, and sometimes dead organisms as a decomposer, or both. And it's just- It's this hidden world, that exists right beneath the surface even in some of the extreme places on earth, temperature-wise. And most days, we don't even think about it."

You punctuate your thought with a large swallow of your drink, which is half-watered down now that the ice is melted, and doesn't hit quite as hard as you'd hoped, but then you look up at Joel and he's smiling at you, pensive, and--

"That's- That's actually really interesting."

Before you can respond, though, Joel glances at his watch and balks. It is getting late. "Shit," he shakes his head, "I think I oughta call it a night," he says, pulling back. "Early morning tomorrow, and if I stay at the bar I'll just keep drinkin'."

Fuck. That's a dismissal. Of course you went on too much about mushrooms. You'd fucked this up. You'd thought this was going well, but now it felt like a bucket of cold water was dumped over you. "Oh," you nod, matching his posture, and try to swallow down the sudden wave of disappointment. "Of course. Have a good night, Joel."

Joel stands up and then looks you up and down, considering. It's not brazen, but it isn't shy, either. And then understanding flashes across his face.

"Wait- Sorry, that's not how I meant it." He reaches out towards you and you melt into his touch. "I'm messin' this up." He chuckles, but it sounds pained. "Now look, I don't wanna make any presumptions. And I'm really hopin' I'm not coming off as some--dirty old man. Jesus, I haven't done this in a while. But I'm in room 308."

Your eyebrows shoot up. What you'd taken for disinterest was just--nerves?

"I reckon I'll be awake for a while yet. You're welcome to... drop by."

The disappointment melts, making way for a fluttering in your stomach.

"Twenty minutes," you assure him, "308?"

He nods and he brakes into a sheepish grin, shedding what you now realise had been something of an anxious wince. "308."

You watch him leave. When he's out of sight, you toss back the rest of your watery drink and go to pay your tab, but Jeff tells you it was already settled. You thank him and tuck your shaking hands in your pockets. You feel an electricity running through you as you take the elevator up.

When you get back to your room, you hop into the shower, just to freshen up--you keep your hair dry but scrub your body. Once you're clean, you brush your teeth.

Stepping back out of the en suite, you survey the hotel room. Spatula is lounging on the corner of the bed, entirely uninterested in your movements. You top up his dry food bowl and place a kiss between his ears before slipping out.

When you knock at Joel's door, you hear a slight rustle and clatter and then the door swings open, Joel's staring a little wide-eyed, like he didn't actually expect you to show. He's wearing grey sweats and a Johnny Cash t-shirt that looks like it's been around nearly as long as you have. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, an anxious tell that's desperately endearing.

"C'mon in," he smiles, and you step in, closing the door behind you.

You reach out to cup his face, delighting in the feeling of coarse stubble beneath your fingertips. Your first kiss is chaste. You both lean forward and press your lips to one another gently, exploring.

Then, you let out a little moan and Joel shudders. Heat surges between you, and his hands are cradling your head and brushing your cheek and he's pinning you against the closed door. You're kissing again, nothing chaste remaining, learning the taste of him, his rhythm, the crashing waves of give and take between you.

You wrap one leg around him and smirk when he lets out a throaty groan as you grind against his hard cock. You're pretty sure he's not wearing underwear, the thick bulge seemingly unconstrained in his grey sweats, the whole length pressing against your thigh.

Your head falls back and you let out soft, breathy noises as his lips trace along your collarbone, up your throat, and against that tender little spot behind your ear. When he puts your earlobe between his lips and presses his teeth gently against the skin, your knees go weak and he chuckles, strong arms wrapping around you, holding you up.

"Bed?" he asks, and you breathe yes and then, with a yelp and a throaty chuckle, you're lifted up and spun around and both tumbling into the duvet.

You're grasping at each other, desperate to keep your hands on one another. The only times you part is when you undress, and even then, you're helping each other--pulling the hem of his shirt over his lifted arms, pressing into him as he reaches around and moves to unhook your bra, but then he realises you're not wearing one and lets out a groan, his thumbs brushing alongside the tender skin along your ribs, moving gently as if to cup your breasts, but then he pulls back.

Normally you might wait, do this part slowly, draw out the tease just a little bit longer.

Tonight, though, you're ravenous.

As you fiddle with the buttons of your pants, you tug at the drawstring keeping Joel's sweats on his hips. The bow comes loose in one smooth motion, and he lifts his hips and you pull the sweats down.

Your mouth immediately waters seeing him bare, laid out for you. You watch a bead of precum drip down the head and pool on his belly. The coarse hair of his happy trail glistens with it. He's thick, uncut, and looks painfully hard, his cock head ruddy. "Fuck, you're beautiful," you tell him, and his cheeks redden but he grins. It's boyish, the way he grins, and devastatingly charming.

And, what you're saying is true. His body is gorgeous, something you wish you could sketch. Soft flesh over hard muscle, visible tan lines where his chest and shoulders are noticeably lighter than his arms. The muscles and veins along his throat are driving you absolutely fucking insane as he swallows and looks up at you.

He's got freckles on his shoulders, too, and without thinking, you lower yourself down to kiss at his shoulder. He shakes, just a little, and lets out the most beautiful gasp. It's addictive, pulling these noises from him. You follow the curve of him, giving him a taste of his own medicine--tracing feather-light kisses along his collarbone, up the tendons of his neck, behind his ear. You can feel the blood pulse in his veins as your lips brush along him. Joel goes from panting lightly to full on groaning, rutting his hips up towards you and, frustrated, meeting only air.

"Can I taste you?", you ask, and Joel lets out a half-strangled sound and nods, vigorous.

You scoot back, lower yourself, poke out your tongue and, without any preamble, lick at the slit of his head, tasting the salty, tangy precum.

Joel tips his head back and groans and you decide to be kind. You grasp onto his hips and take him in your mouth, slowly sinking down, inch by inch by inch and now you can feel him at the back of your throat, your saliva dripping down the shaft and collecting in the hair between his thighs.

You bob your head up and down, taking him deeper with each thrust, but your throat is full and there are still inches to go. You relax, doing everything you can to take him deeper, and he starts to thrust up gently.

You let him fuck into your mouth but release one of his hips, allowing him to move as freely as he needs and freeing up your hand, which you shove into your underwear, rubbing furiously at your clit.

It doesn't take much to lose yourself in it, to focus only on the sensation. You're so wet, slick coating your fingers, making the glide that much smoother as you touch yourself. Joel tastes so good, too, the intrusion of his cock the most delicious thing, feeling the way he shudders when you moan, the way he moans when you shudder.

"Fuck-" Joel gasps, and then there's a hand guiding you gently off of him.

You raise an eyebrow. "You okay?"

He swallows, hard, and nods. "More than okay. Felt too fuckin' good."

"Oh yeah?" and you lean down, as if to take him back in your mouth, but he chuckles and pulls you back again.

"It's been... a while. For me. And-" He drags his palm down his face, wearing an almost pained expression. "Christ, you just look too fuckin' good down there, mouth stretched 'round me while you touch yourself. An' it feels too fuckin' good, too. I ain't ready for this to be over yet but if you keep lettin' me fuck your throat like that it's gonna be over real quick. And I wanna feel that pretty pussy myself."

You sit back up and he pulls you towards him so you're straddling him.

"You gonna fuck me, Joel?"

"Yes," he breathes, "Yes, baby, please-"

You do an awkward wobble and then stand up, shedding your pants and letting your panties drop, stepping out of them, one foot and then the other, and the way he's watching you is addictive. He watches you with beautiful eyes, drinking all of you in, and suddenly the moment has changed into one of those quiet, intimate moments where you both exhale a laugh.

You straddle him again, and lean down to kiss him, and the electric current surges up. He grabs you by the jaw, meeting your desperation. His lips on yours are exactly the balm you need and you can taste the whiskey on his breath.

"Feels fucking good," you tell Joel as you slide up and down his length. He's not penetrating you, not yet, but the lips of your pussy are spread and you're gliding along him, feeling his head at your clit and thrusting back till you're nearly seated on his balls.

He watches you, nearly unblinking, drinking it all in. Then, he lets out a groan, and half-sits up, suddenly focused.

"Shit," he closes his eyes in frustration, "I don't have any condoms. Shit shit shit-"

You push him back down and kiss him again. Then, you hop off the bed and sift around in your jean pockets.

"Ah-ha!," you exclaim, once you've found your treasure. Joel raises and eyebrow and you wink. "Saw they were selling them in the lobby. Figured it might be a good idea."

"Shit," Joel laughs, and presses his lips just to the side of your mouth. "Clever girl," he tells you, and a shiver goes up your spine.

He leans to help, but you shoo him away and he watches, entranced, as you neatly open the condom wrapper and, with a small amount of difficulty, roll it down his cock.

"Feeling okay?" You ask him, "Shit, I shoulda gotten the Magnums. Is your dick okay? It's not being choked to death by an inappropriately sized rubber, is it?"

Joel snorts. "We'll manage," he says, and then he grips you by the hips, lines himself up. He draws his knuckles along your cunt and groans, "Fuck, so goddamn wet for me-" and, the moment you look at him and nod, he holds the head of his cock against your drooling lips and presses into you.

It's a big stretch as he lowers you down onto him, the intrusion almost painful, but before you can even take a breath, it melts into absolute pleasure. You've fucked people with longer cocks before, and you've fucked people with girthier cocks before, but never have you fucked someone with a cock that's both this long and thick and it feels like you're being split in two and it's perfect and you realise, with a sudden flip of your stomach, he isn't even fully seated inside you yet.

Then, you manage to focus on the words Joel is saying-that had really just been background noise for the past ten seconds or so-and suddenly you're tuning back in for "Tha's it," his voice low and hoarse, surprisingly gentle, "Good girl, takin' this cock so well, look at you."

His brow is furrowed and he's looking at you with such dark eyes, nearly black, the pupils are so blown. "Just a little more, that's it, just one more inch, you can do it, christ, look at you, takin' all of me."

His tone is reverent and it sets a fire through you. You can feel more slickness build and drip out of you, and from the way he moans, you're certain he can feel it too despite the condom.

"So fuckin' wet," he groans, "Soakin' my cock- grippin' me so nice-Fuck--"

He leans towards you and cradles your head in his hand, kissing you hard.

When you both pull back, you know your lips must be kiss swollen and red. His are--they're soft and bright, and you want to eat him whole.

"You're gonna be the death of me, woman."

He's thrusting into you lazily, holding you in place, but you need more, you need all of him.

You push forward and move his hand from your waist to your clit. As you manoeuvre him, his nostrils flare, and you'd wonder if he was angry, if not for the way you felt his cock stiffen even further inside of you. You start to move your hips, to rub up against the thumb on your clit, and to feel every fucking inch of him.

Urged on by the way he groans, you start to ride him, properly. Holding each other close, you fuck down onto him and he leans back, awed.

"Enjoying the show?" you ask.

"Damn- right- I- am-," Joel breathes, every word punctuated with a shuddering breath after you drive back down onto his cock, "Jesus- you- look- so- good- like- that."

You like being watched. Being admired. It sent an extra thrill through you, and your hips stutter, just a little, and now you're following a new, faster rhythm.

"Fuck, that's it, baby-" he praises, "Shit, yes- bounce on it."

You lean forward and kiss his throat, and then he makes this noise, half-strangled and beautiful.

"Shit, honey-- honey, honey, hold on-," he holds you still and you're glad he has, because your brain hadn't quite processed his words.

He's looking at you so earnestly.

"Baby, if you keep ridin' me like this I am gonna blow my load in the next twenty seconds and I don't wanna end this quite so soon."

You hum, a moment of consideration. You stare into his eyes, and part of it is calculated seduction, but another part is getting genuinely lost in the way he looks at you. The crinkles round his eyes. The way he seems able to focus on you, in a way that feels as frightening as it is exhilarating.

"How about this," You smile, "You get yours, and then you can eat me out till I get mine. And if you're ready to go again by the time I've come, we can see where we're at then. Hmm?"

You see a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, and take a moment to appreciate how much he's clearly trying to control himself.

After a moments of avoiding your eye, he looks at you again and he looks utterly wrecked. "You- talkin' like that?" He shakes his head and tries to even his breath. "Fuck, I nearly came right there."

"It's okay," you soothe, and you cup his jaw and resume you movements, riding him like you had before. "You can come if you need to-" your fingertips stroke the stubble of his chin, "You're close, huh? It's okay, daddy, you can let go."

Joel lets out a strangled noise and busts immediately.

You savor the way it feels, the pulse of his cock as he spills into you. No, into the condom, you correct yourself, but you can always pretend-

After his balls relax and you can feel him start to get soft, you hold the condom down as you pull yourself off, and you're nearly unseated when there's a sudden squelch noise that sends you both into tumbles of laughter.

It takes a while to calm down, and you find yourselves heaving, tangled in the sheets, and wrapped up in each other. The condom is hanging limply on Joel's now-soft cock and it's oddly cold and gooey as you accidentally roll against it, and that sends you both off again.

"Fuck," Joel snorts, and tugs at the condom, starting to roll it off his length, "I'd almost forgotten the weird texture of a used condom. Fuckin'... Slug-like."

"That-" you declare, "Is visceral. And I hate it. Thanks."

He snorts, and you suddenly have a question.

"Condoms not making too many appearances in your life?"

"Not many, no."

"What, you usually fuck raw?"

"Just haven't been sleepin' with anyone," he shrugs, nonplussed.

"Well, I gotta say, the good people of Austin have been missing out."

Joel shrugs again, and it comes off as casual, but you notice the way his ears tint pink. "Just- not been something I did. But now, I guess, I can. And with way less guilt."

"Why guilt? Are-" you venture, dread pooling in your stomach, "Are you married?"

His eyes flit up to you sharply, and then soften immediately. He lets out a breath and shakes his head. "No. Nothin' like that. I was married, but I've been divorced nearly twenty years now."

The tightness immediately uncoils and you realise how tense you were only a moment ago. I am not a cog in the machine of a collapsing marriage. Thank fuck.

But now your curiosity is piqued. "So... why the guilt?"

"Sorry, I- I really didn't mean to get into it. I'd rather not get into it. It's- complicated."

"Of course," you shrug, and it isn't a problem because this is just a hot fantasy hookup that you'll remember fondly, and it'll be wonderful masturbation fuel for probably the rest of your life, but you don't wanna make the poor guy go into his life's trauma, especially when he's looking at you so fucking earnestly and you are actually really fucking fascinated but no, you would not let this become a problem.

"Thanks," he says, and then steps out of the room. You hear the clang of the bin as he steps on the pedal, then drops the condom, takes a piss and washes his hands.

"You hungry?" He asks, and you realize very suddenly, you're absolutely famished.

"Yes," you jump up and he laughs when you run, bare-assed and shameless, over to the corner of the room filled with brochures and traveller info and finally, you raise it in triumph when you find it, the list of nearby takeaways.

"Okay," you look at the list, "There's one place at the top of the list here that's apparently highly rated, but I actually have plans there soon and I wanna wait till then to eat there. Hope that's okay."

Joel comes over to you and rests his head on your shoulder. "No problem."

"But... alright," you continue. "There's pizza. Or... more pizza. Or, look--there's a Southern-style place, that'll make you feel right at home!" Joel pokes you in the side and you swat at him as he grunts a laugh.

Suddenly, a warning sound starts playing on loop in your brain. It was dreadfully domestic, wasn't it? This was an absolute stranger you'd just met in a hotel bar? But... it also felt... nice? And it felt nice in ways that you'd never found yourself enjoying before. Even with long-term partners. Maybe because this was so low-stakes, you reasoned, such an inevitably temporary situation, so you weren't putting the same kind of pressure on yourself.

As soon as you think that, the eternal curse of overthinking shows itself and you suddenly feel desperately self conscious. Before you can pull away and make some excuse, though, Joel's arm wraps around you and his thumb starts rubbing little circles into a tender bit of skin between your hip and your tummy. The anxiety spiral you'd been teetering on the edge of suddenly vanishes.

"How about-," he nods at the list, "Pizza?"

After Joel calls in your order, the pizza delivery service tells you to expect your food in about thirty minutes. You remember you have a little box of edibles. You ask Joel if he minds if you take one, and he doesn't. You offer him one, and he automatically declines, but then as he starts to explain, he pauses and pivots, goes "Wait, actually. Yeah. Why not?"

A freckled kid who looks no more than sixteen pulls up with a short stack of pizza boxes and a two liter bottle of root beer. He raps awkwardly on the door after exactly thirty five minutes, and it swings open.

The room looks utterly wrecked, clothing strewn along every surface. Joel answers the door wearing a robe, his entire face smelling of sex, and his moustache still shining with the slick of your release.

"Thanks, kid," Joel nods, and hands him a small wad of cash. The kid eyes him and shrugs. "Keep the change," he tells him, and the door swings back shut.

The edibles have hit beautifully. You're both blissed out, comfortably hazy, lost in the sensation of bare limbs on bedsheets and the flavors of the pizza and it's assorted sauces. You lay together on the bed, paper plates strewn between you. In the background, an X-Files rerun plays.

"Ooh!" You sit up as you catch the premise of the episode, "I love this one! See the goo? There's a giant fungal... entity.. that's working on digesting them, and giving them hallucinations as they die."

"You and mushrooms, huh?" Joel laughs, but then looks back at the episode and contemplates the viscous yellow goo. "Jesus christ," he frowns, and sniffs, now contemplating the mushrooms on his pizza slice.

You spot his glare and snort. "I think you're safe."

He takes another bite and shakes his head as if to clear it.

"I'm getting tired," he admits.

"Me too," you agree.

"No pressure, but in case it wasn't clear, you're welcome to stay the night here."

"That's sweet," you tell him, and think it over. "If I took you up on that, would you be offended if I slip out early?"

Joel raises a brow.

"I have a cat," you explain, "And I'm working on moving into a new place, and meeting a friend for breakfast, and then I need to check out after breakfast because I won't be able to get my keys for the new place until the breakfast but I can't take my cat to a diner-"

You take a breath.

"Basically, I've got a bunch of things I need to do in the morning, but if you don't mind me slipping out around, maybe, 5-ish, then I'd love to stay."

He stares at you.

You regret saying as much as you said. You don't need to over-explain yourself to this actual stranger. He doesn't care. There's no reason for him to care. He's probably in it just for the fuck, and it was fun and if you stay then there's a chance the two of you will wake up at some point in the night, still horny and lustful and you might fuck again and you'd be lying if you said that wasn't part of the draw. You realise, though, you'd also be lying if you said you didn't care what he thought of you. All of a sudden, you are overwhelmed with caring what this man thinks of you.

How fucking inconvenient.

"I wouldn't be offended at all," Joel chews, swallows, wipes the corner of his mouth with a napkin and speaks again. "What's your cat's name?"

You don't know what you'd expected he'd say, but it wasn't that. You buffer for a moment. "It's- Spatula."

"Spatula?"

"Yep." You feel foolish.

"Huh. Spatula."

A silent moment between you.

"Got any pictures?"

You weren't expecting that, either. "I... do? Do you want to see them?" He nods. You pull out your phone to scroll through.

Joel, suddenly scrambled around for his phone, too. It was late and he hadn't checked it for hours. Had it been on silent? What if Sarah had called and he'd missed it?

His panic eased when he saw he had only two notifications. Both from Sarah, but neither were bad. He hadn't been neglecting any crises. The first text was a selfie of Sarah and an unfamiliar person, which she'd texted to him with the caption New roomie!! The second contained an address to the place they'd have breakfast tomorrow along with Just wanted you to know I've invited a friend to join us tomorrow morning! Is that okay? Realized I should maybe have checked with you? 😬

There was an ache in his chest. He wanted to keep her to himself, get to spend one last day, just the two of them. It was the start of a whole new chapter, but more than anything, he wished he could hold onto the moment for just a second longer.

But Sarah was stressed, he knew this, so he wasn't gonna make it worse and put this burden on her. He could handle it. He had to handle it. He typed back- No problem, baby. Can't wait to meet your friend.

After a moment, he followed up with another text. Gonna turn in now. Good nite!

The less he texted right now, the better. He did not want Sarah to know anything about the night he was having.

His screen lit up a moment later. Night Dad! He takes a deep breath and wills some of the tension away.

He slips his phone aside and you scoot into bed next to him.

"This," you announce, "Is Spatula."

Joel scrolls thru, his brows raising higher with each image.

With a single nod, he opens his mouth and instead of speaking, he collapses into laughter. It comes out a wheeze- "I-- I know this won't make any sense, but your cat looks just like my goddamn brother."

You're laughing now too, both of you almost hysterical, even though you have no frame of reference. You cherish the absurdity.

Then, Joel pulls up a picture on his phone and shows you, and now you're doubling over again because his brother looks exactly like Spatula.

You don't remember falling asleep. You curse your body's internal clock because you wake up right at 5am, and even though you know you should get up and leave, you wish you could have just a little bit longer.

It's such a comfortable way to wake up. One arm is folded under your pillow, and the other is slung over Joel's hip. He's asleep, snoring softly, and strands of his hair are mussed along his forehead. Your hand is holding his tummy, but you realise there's something pressing against the heel of your hand, and then realise, with a delicious jolt, that he's hard and straining against his boxers.

It's so fucking hard to get out of that bed, but with enough barely-effective reminders--you're gonna fuck up your whole day if you're late, gotta make a good impression, Spatula's gonna be so disappointed if you're late with his breakfast--you manage to bully yourself out of the warm and wonderful bed containing blankets and absolutely fantastic dick, and you tiptoe through the room, dress quickly, and, after making a note and leaving it on his bedside stand, you slip out.

Joel wakes up with a jolt, and then rolls over to see that the alarm clock (which he dared not contemplate the number of times he must have snoozed) was telling him it was 9:13.

He was late. Really fucking late. And then the panic made his brain spin faster and that's when he noticed the note on his bedside table.

I had a really good time If you're in town for a little longer, don't be a stranger?

It's followed with your name and phone number, and a rather detailed mushroom sketch across the page. He wasn't sure what kind of mushroom it was, but it was beautiful, and clearly hand-drawn, and for whatever reason you'd decided to tear it out of, presumably, your sketchbook? And you gave it to him, and he's gonna read that note and replay last night for the rest of his fucking life. It felt incredibly precious. He placed it in a book so it wouldn't get creased or folded. Made sure it was all contained and neat, totally flat in between the pages.

Then, he dragged himself out of bed and into the shower.

After scrubbing the smell of sex off of his entire body, he dresses quickly and checks his watch again. 9:28.

He texts Sarah and lets her know he's a few minutes behind. She responds with an eye roll emoji.

Joel settles in his truck and pulls up directions. It's only a few minutes away. He won't be too late.

When Joel steps into the diner, he's charmed by it. It's old school, with a checkerboard floor and bright red vinyl seats. He scans the room till he spots Sarah in a booth in the corner. She's laughing over a hot chocolate, and her friend must be in the seat opposite her.

He catches Sarah's eye and she grins at him, waving him over.

You've been at the diner about fifteen minutes, and you and Sarah are already getting along beautifully.

You'd met on a university message board and had become fast friends, but meeting someone in person was always a little terrifying. On top of that, you'd already committed to spending at least one (academic) year with this person, so you were damn sure gonna make it work.

Sarah waves over her dad. You can't see him yet, the back of the booth too high.

But then he's standing right there.

You already have a hand outstretched, but when he sees you and you see him, your stomach flips and dread runs through you. All the color drains from his face. He looks like a deer in headlights, and you'd be surprised if you didn't look the same.

Sarah looks between you, not quite concerned, but definitely confused. Sarah smiles and tries to diffuse the situation.

"Hi dad!" She grins, "This is my new roommate! Well, the other new roommate--the one in the picture, their name is Ellie, they weren't able to make it this morning. BUT. Breakfast seemed like a great time to hand off keys!"

Joel is still frozen and white-faced. Your brain whirs, and you know you've just fucking catapulted yourself into a disastrous mess, but you do your very best to save face.

Reaching your hand out further so he can't possibly miss it, he gives into some familiar social instinct, takes it and you shake. You think of his hands, how they dragged along your body last night, touched you, felt you, wrecked you.

You introduce yourself. He nods, avoiding eye contact.

"Joel." He grunts. "Miller."

Sarah frowns at him, but turns back to the menu.

This- was unexpected. Problematic. Arguably, really fucked up. All of those things and more. But it'll be fine.

All throughout breakfast, you repeat that to yourself, letting the words bounce around your head. It will be fine, you repeat your mantra, it will be fine, and you try not to feel too hurt at the way Joel's avoiding eye contact as if simply looking at you will cause him unimaginable disgust.

Everything will be fine.

Note: The fic's premise is loosely based on the book Mistakes Were Made which is a fucking excellent sapphic romance novel that utilises this trope. Would strongly recommend the book if you're into smutty queer stories.

[gukyi]

that’s the spirit! | myg

summary: min yoongi hates halloween. as his best friend and resident halloween-lover, that is simply unacceptable. but when halloween night rolls around and you and min yoongi feel farther apart than ever before, you discover that what’s come between you is more than just a bad trick, and that no matter what day it is, loving him is the sweetest treat of all.

{college!au, friends to lovers!au, halloween!au}

pairing: min yoongi x female reader genre: fluff, comedy, a little angst? (a little i promise) word count: 8k (woohoo! i did it!) warnings: alcohol consumption, underage drunkenness in flashbacks, misunderstandings, helpless but mutual pining, halloween parties, this is halloween during college, what else do you expect a/n: some scenes inspired by love, rosie, my absolute favorite rom-com! happy halloween, and i hope this brings some joy to your life before armageddon i mean election day rolls around! much love 🎃💜

Min Yoongi hates Halloween. 

Which is ridiculous, because you assume that there must have been at least one time in his life where he liked it. Halloween is a universally-liked holiday. It was the one day of the year where he, an unbridled child rebelling against authority, got to dress up as his favorite book character, superhero, or movie star, hang out with his friends past sunset, and solicit strangers for free candy. Free candy! How could anyone hate that?

But the thing is, it doesn’t matter what Min Yoongi was like in his youth. Ever since you met him, he has hated Halloween. For reasons completely unbeknownst to you. 

Unfortunately for Min Yoongi, just because he hates Halloween doesn’t mean that he gets to spend his October pretending that it doesn’t exist. Because, unlike him, you do not hate Halloween. In fact, you rather like it. So much so that Min Yoongi has to deal with the holiday no matter what. For better… 

“Ah! What the fuck!”

Or for worse.

You pop your head out of your bedroom to find Yoongi about to throw down with the fake skeleton you’ve propped up by the door, one of those cheesy ones from Spirit Halloween that make a zombie sound whenever its artificial brain can sense someone near it. He’s got this wide-eyed look on his face, fists up in front of him like he’s going to beat the damn thing senseless, even though Min Yoongi is barely five-feet-ten and has a body that functions exclusively on iced coffee and could probably get taken down by the average third-grader. 

Min Yoongi does not have a flight instinct. He only knows how to fight. 

He’s muttering to himself by the time you emerge completely from your bedroom, grumbling about how he nearly wet himself at the sight of the thing, fingers glossing over the plastic bones as he inspects them. There he stands in the doorway of your apartment, curled-up fists tucked inside the too-long sleeves of his too-big hoodie, pink lips parted in innocent confusion as he blinks at your apartment’s new resident. 

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” You chide from where you stand in your room, watching as Yoongi jerks his head up. The sound of your voice seems to catch him off guard for a minute, eyes wide in shock before he realizes that it’s you and his whole body relaxes. “Was that you I just heard screaming outside my apartment, Min Yoongi?”

“No,” Yoongi deadpans, fully aware that the both of you know that it was him. “Must have been someone else.”

“Yes, of course, my mistake,” you tease, coming up behind him to rub his upper arm, the palm of your hand pressing against the worn fabric of his hoodie sleeve as he sighs. “You don’t have a problem with my festive decorations at all, do you?”

“Not those,” Yoongi frowns, pointing to the orange and black streamers hanging above your apartment window, to the mini pumpkins sitting in the center of your dinky kitchen table, to the construction paper cutouts of black cats decorating your walls. He rounds on the skeleton, propped up right next to the door with the sole purpose of scaring whatever visitors you have. “This, I have a problem with. What is this thing?”

You smile proudly. “Reginald.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Yoongi looks at you, positively flabbergasted. “You named it?”

You scoff. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I? I bought him, he’s mine now, and he needed a name. So I named him Reginald. What’s the issue here?” You weren’t about to buy a twenty-five dollar plastic skeleton, set him up to be your personal doorman, and not give him a name. 

“The issue is that this—” he motions to Reginald’s face, “—is the first thing I see when I walk into your apartment, instead of—oh, I don’t know—you,” he says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

“Aw, I’m touched,” you say, pressing a hand to your heart. “Didn’t know you always wanted to see my face first thing when you come over.”

Yoongi’s gaze drifts down towards the floor, thumbs twiddling. “Well, yeah,” he mumbles, words barely audible. “Why else would I come over?”

“I don’t know, for the ambience, maybe?” You say with a shrug, watching him slide his backpack off of his shoulder and onto the floor by the couch. “Anyway, maybe if you had come with me to Spirit Halloween when I went shopping for decorations, you wouldn’t be so surprised.”

“I had two midterms that week! Two!” Yoongi reminds you.”

“I’m just saying,” you tell him, hands up defensively as you make your way to the kitchen, fishing out two teabags from the cabinet as you set the kettle to boil. You never used to like tea, but a year ago Yoongi convinced you to try this jasmine flower one from the Asian supermarket downtown and you haven’t looked back. Now there’s always at least three spare boxes in your kitchen cupboards, for you and for him. “No time is a bad time to get into the Halloween spirit.”

Yoongi sighs, loud and obvious, because this is the third year in a row you’ve brought up this conversation and it’s not any more convincing than it was the last two times. “Do we have to do this?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t we just pretend it’s November Eve?”

“Come on, Yoongi,” you plead, because he’s never given you a good explanation as to why he refuses to spend Halloween with you, and you just want to know why. “Won’t you just celebrate this one stupid holiday with me?”

“So you admit it’s stupid?”

“That’s not what I meant.” You frown at him, crossing your arms as the kettle starts whistling. 

Yoongi exhales, reaching over you to pour the boiling water into your teacups, matching His and Hers ones you bought from the sale section of Target last year for Valentine’s Day. “It’s just not my thing. You know that.”

“But we’re college students,” you exclaim. “Halloween is the best when you’re a college student! You get to dress up as whatever you want and go to five different parties and spend the night with your friends without your parents chaperoning you.”

Yoongi purses his lips, unconvinced. “So… basically an opportunity to get piss drunk in a frat house? No thanks, I’ll pass.”

“You know that I wouldn’t care what we did if you celebrated Halloween with me,” you say, leaning against the counter as you hold your mug in your hands, the heat warming your palms and steam brushing against the skin of your cheeks. “Even if we just stayed in and watched a movie. Or played one of those horror video games Jungkook’s always talking about.”

“That sounds worse,” Yoongi admits with a helpless laugh. It really does. Neither you nor Yoongi have ever been huge fans of the horror genre Jungkook loves so much. 

You chuckle. “Honestly, yeah, forget I said anything about that.”

“You know I just don’t care for Halloween that much,” Yoongi says, gazing down into the swirling brown of his mug, the steam from the water making his glasses fog up. “It’s nothing personal.”

You sigh. That’s about as good of an answer you’re going to be getting out of him. No matter what you suggest, whether it be a house party, a night in, or even just a candy feast, he has always declined, citing his unexplainable dislike for the festivities. The only reason he deals with the holiday in the first place is because you love it so much. 

“Will you at least help me carve some pumpkins please?” You ask, a last ditch effort to get him to participate. “The supermarket on Fifteenth Street is having a sale on them, and I wanted to decorate the windowsill. It’s easier with two people, you know.”

Yoongi narrows his eyes, looking hesitant. 

“Oh, please, Yoongi? Just this once? It’s not even, like, a strictly Halloween thing. It’s just a fall thing! Plus, we can roast the pumpkin seeds after for a snack,” you plead, placing your cup down on the counter so you can tug on his arms, hands wrapped around his wrists as you stare into his eyes, positively desperate. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yoongi says with a huff, that resigned tone to his voice that signifies that he’s caving in. “Yes, we can carve pumpkins together. That I will do.”

“Oh my God, really? Yes! Yay, thank you so much!” In a fit of excitement, surprise, and joy, you pull Yoongi in for a hug, wrapping your arms around his neck as he tilts back in shock, tea spilling out over the edge of his mug and onto the linoleum floor beneath your feet, drops of it splashing against your skin. 

“Whoa, whoa, okay,” Yoongi says, taken aback. Still nestled tightly within your arms, he carefully sets his mug down onto the counter so as to avoid more spilling, his other hand pressing against the small of your back. “I didn’t know pumpkin carving was so important to you.”

You laugh, pulling away as you look into his eyes, crinkled up into fond little crescents. “It’s not. But you are.”

“So cheesy,” Yoongi chides.

“You love it,” you remind him, pressing the side of your body against his as you lean against the counter together. Instinctively, you let your head flop onto his shoulder, fitting perfectly in the crook of his neck. “Thanks for doing this for me,” you say softly. 

“Of course,” Yoongi says. “Anything for you.”

“Look how festive campus is!”

Yoongi chuckles as he watches you skip down the main walkway, the one that winds right from the west to the east side of campus, relishing in the feeling of autumn. Yoongi always forgets that it’s fall until it hits him like a brick to the head, and suddenly it’s getting dark at five-thirty and he can’t go outside without a proper jacket anymore. It’s a week until November, and Yoongi still refuses to wear anything heavier than a denim jacket, no matter how cold it gets. It can’t be winter yet, right?

“Wow, all the tones really fit the spooky mood,” you tell him, leaves crinkling as your feet step on the fallen foliage, brown and orange and yellow and red.

“How convenient it is that orange happens to be one of Halloween’s signature colors,” Yoongi chides with a roll of his eyes. “Is the Castle still hosting that party next week?”

“The costume one? Yeah, I’m pretty sure,” you tell him with a nod. “We’re still going, right?”

“Only because it’s our first year,” Yoongi reminds you pointedly. “And since you wanna celebrate together so badly.”

You scoff. “Don’t act like it’s such a drag. I know you want to spend time with me.”

Yoongi chuckles to himself, casual and cool. He knows you’re just teasing him but quite frankly, if Yoongi could spend every day of the rest of his life with you, then he would. If he could turn himself into a witch and cast a spell to keep you by his side for the rest of time, then he would. From the moment the two of you met in your dingy dorm, you clicked. And Yoongi knew, in that moment. He just knew. 

“Oh my God, look at the pumpkins!” 

Your voice breaks him from his thoughts, your finger pointing excitedly at the carved pumpkins outside of the dormitories that line the walkway, lit candles nestled safely inside. They’ve got everything from the college logo to video game characters to the face of your lovable-but-memeable university president carved into them, decorating the street with a little more personality than normal. 

“They’re so cute, holy shit,” you tell Yoongi fondly, all endeared and heart-eyed, the same way you get when someone walks their dog through campus or a professor sends out an update email with a picture of their newborn grandchild. Yoongi’s only known you a couple of months, but already he’s starting to figure out what makes you tick. “I love them. Don’t you love them, Yoongi?”

You turn around to meet Yoongi’s eyes, and when he looks back at you it feels like his whole heart is lighter. He sees your smile and it makes his body fill with warmth, like someone’s wrapping a blanket around him, like a warm cup of hot cocoa on a cool autumn afternoon. He looks back at you, and it feels like everything is right. 

“Yeah,” Yoongi says, grinning. “I do.”

The lopsided legs of your creaky kitchen table tremble as the pumpkin hits it. 

“Damn, is this thing heavy or am I just getting weaker?” You ask, smoothing out the newspaper spread out on the flat surface of the table, two college students’ best attempt to avoid a mess. They’re old student copies with headlines like Brand New Cafeteria, but is the Food Even Any Good? and New Semester, New Me! sprawled across the front. You care about your school news, you really do, but the members of the newspaper team that hand out the papers practically stuff them down your throat whenever there’s a new issue, which is three times a week and at every street intersection on campus. So you’ve had extras lying around. 

“Nope, they’re definitely heavy,” Yoongi agrees as he plops his pumpkin onto the table next to yours with a thud. “Though it’s not like I go to the gym much anyway.”

“Didn’t we say we were gonna try and be healthier this year, since we’re graduating?” You ask. 

“That was before that new doughnut place opened up next to the ramen restaurant three streets up,” Yoongi reminds you. 

“Maybe grad school?”

Yoongi rolls his eyes, reaching over the table to grab the pumpkin carving kits the two of you bought from the drugstore down the road. “Caution. Keep out of reach of children ages three and under,” he reads. “Welp, guess I can’t do this then…”

“Ha ha, very funny,” you say with a deadpan frown, grabbing onto his wrist. “Hold on a minute, Mr. I Promised I Would Do This For My Best Friend.” Yoongi exhales dramatically as you pull him back towards the table, though it’s not as if there was much resistance from him in the first place.

You pry open the plastic wrapping that surrounds the kit, the orange tools eventually popping out of their casing and onto your newspaper-ed table. Sure, you could have probably pulled out two knives from your kitchen drawer and it wouldn’t make a difference, but spending ten dollars each on these two little pumpkin carving kits didn’t seem like a waste of money. For the sake of Halloween spirit, right?

“What do you want to carve?” You ask, handing Yoongi your open kit as you gaze at the instruction manual. Pumpkin carving shouldn’t be too difficult, should it? You cut open the top, pull out all the gunk from the inside, and then carve a face, or something. 

“I’m not a very good artist,” Yoongi admits, looking hesitant. 

“Well, the good thing about pumpkin carving is that no one expects them to look nice,” you point out. “I think I want to do that anime eyes face emoji. You know the one. Let’s see…”

You grab a hold of the plastic knife that came with the kit, hover the tip over the top of the pumpkin, and stab. It sinks into the squash up to the hilt. That’s the good part. 

The bad part is that, because you’re holding onto a knife made out of non-recyclable plastic, moving it once it’s inside the pumpkin is exceedingly difficult. You pull it right and left fruitlessly, watching as the knife sits firmly in place, the handle bending with the curve of your fingers if you tug on it too hard. 

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Yoongi says with another sigh, abandoning his own pumpkin, which he has already de-stalked in the minutes you weren’t looking his way. “Let me help you.”

Suddenly, you feel a warmth wrap around you. A figure presses against your back, this musky, coffee-laden scent surrounding you, and you watch as Yoongi’s calloused hands slowly envelop yours, fingertips pressing firmly against your skin. It makes you freeze up instinctively, jumping at the sensation of his body around yours, of his torso pressed against your back, of his breath tickling your ear. 

“Relax, alright?” He says, voice calm and gentle. He brings your hands to the knife, lets his palms rest against them as your fingers slowly wrap around the handle. You can feel him breathing, feel the slow rise and fall of his chest against you, the heat of his mouth just inches away from your cheek. “It’s just me.”

You force a chuckle. “You just surprised me, that’s all.”

You feel Yoongi pause behind you. 

“Seriously, I’m fine. Help me,” you insist. 

Steadily, albeit a little bit tentatively, Yoongi does. His hand wrapped around yours, together the two of you carve out the top of the pumpkin, his chest pressed firmly against your back, body engulfing you. He feels so close, so goddamn close, like there is barely an inch of space in between the two of you, like if he were to bend down right there and if you were shift yourself around you would see nothing but his face right in front of yours, his hazy brown eyes looking back at you, twinkling in the white light of your kitchen. 

It almost makes you want to turn around and look. 

“There we go,” Yoongi says, voice suddenly soft, quiet like there’s something else weighing on his tongue. “What are you thinking of carving?”

“I don’t know,” you murmur, lips upturned. “Maybe you?”

“I don’t make for a very attractive pumpkin picture,” Yoongi says with a shake of his head, even though that’s total bullshit for a number of reasons. 

First of all, a pumpkin portrait is by no means meant to be an attractive portrayal of you, unless you’re Keanu Reeves and you look photogenic no matter what. Second of all, there has never been a time where Yoongi has not looked good. He always does. He did during finals week when his body was made of nothing but iced coffee, he did in freshman year when the two of you would stay awake until the early morning getting vodka spilled all over you in frat houses, and he does now, tired eyes and soft skin, dark hair and pink lips, standing in your apartment like he belongs here, like this is where he was meant to be. 

“I think you would,” you tell him honestly. “You’d look good no matter what.”

Yoongi’s silent at that, but you can tell from the way his cheeks are turning red he’s taken the compliment to heart. It makes you want to shower him in them. It makes you want to freeze this moment in time, suspended in reality, and stay like that forever. 

“Then I’ll do you,” he says with a grin, because what else would he say? Who else would he choose? You are going to put two matching pumpkins on your windowsill, and they will be of you and him. Messy, Picasso-style portraits carved into the orange skin. Two best friends, together even as fucking pumpkins. 

You will carve out a picture of him, and he will carve out a picture of you, and isn’t that what this is really all about?

“Do you think people are gonna get the wrong idea about us?” 

“What do you mean?”

Yoongi turns around to face you where you stand in front of your dorm mirror, this giant plastic one hanging on two hooks that you’ve latched onto the door of your room. He knows that you can see him in the mirror, staring back at you with a black mask over his face and a cape draped over his shoulders, the giant yellow emblem printed out on a piece of paper and taped onto his chest. It’s a last minute costume, for sure, but it gets the job done nicely. 

“I mean,” you say, fixing the cat ears that sit atop your head. “Do you think people are gonna think we’re a couple, or something?”

Yoongi grins nervously and hopes that you don’t notice. “I mean, we’re just going to a frat party. I doubt it’s going to be light enough to see anything at all. Why?”

“Well, I don’t want people to get the wrong idea about us,” you say, adjusting the mask over your eyes. Yoongi, unabashedly, rakes his eyes up and down your figure. Your black turtleneck and skintight leather leggings don’t leave very much to the imagination. You’re definitely much more in costume than he is, to say the least. 

“We’re freshmen, people already have the wrong idea about us,” Yoongi scoffs. 

You turn around just so you can shoot a frown his way. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Why are you so worried about people getting the wrong idea about us?” Yoongi asks you, an eyebrow raised. This does not exactly bode well for him. “We can be Batman and Catwoman together no matter what people think.”

“I don’t know, I guess I just—” You stop in your tracks, letting the words fall off your lips and crash to the floor. “Never mind, it’s stupid.”

“What? You can tell me,” Yoongi says, concern lacing his voice. He rushes over to you, the two of you staring at your reflections in the mirror. Two friends, clad in black, wearing matching costumes. If Yoongi wasn’t sober right now, maybe he would actually do it. 

Maybe. 

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” you shrug it off with a shake of your head. “I’m happy to be doing this with you. Even if your costume totally sucks.”

“Hey!” Yoongi exclaims defensively. “It is not my fault you came up with this idea last minute even though you already owned everything. I had to pay twenty-five cents to print this in color, you know.”

“A Twenty-five cent costume and you still look good.”

You and Yoongi smile at each other in the mirror, lips turned up as you stare at yourselves, wondering if this is all you will ever be, or if there is something more. 

Yoongi sure hopes it’s the latter. 

And he’s determined to find out, once and for all, tonight. 

You’ve just lit the candles that sit inside yours and Yoongi’s pumpkins when you hear the knock at your door. 

You’re sure that Yoongi can hear you from a mile away as you scurry towards the door, white platform heels clapping against the floorboards with every step you take. You’re going to have to practice walking in these a bit more. Maybe you shouldn’t have bought them only a week before Halloween, and maybe you should have at least tried to break them in a little bit. 

“Hello?” You swing open the door. 

“He—whoa,” Yoongi begins before his eyes widen to the size of the moon as he fully takes in the sight in front of him. “What’s with the—uh, the… dress?” He’s scratching at the nape of his neck, eyes sweeping up and down your body. 

You hold out the skirt of your sequined, bedazzled dress as best you can, and grin. “I’m a gogo dancer! What do you think?”

“Wow, I—” Yoongi starts, a little speechless. “I don’t know. Wow. You look… you look nice, Y/N.”

You smile, thankful for the compliment. Yoongi seems weirdly breathless, blinking more often than usual, like he’s trying to convince himself that what he’s seeing is real. Although, you will admit that this dress is much more sparkly than anything else you have in your closet. You reckon a few disco balls were sacrificed to make this costume. 

“Why—uh, why did you call me over? Did you need something from me?”

“Actually, yes,” you say, ushering Yoongi into your apartment. 

As he’s walking inside, Yoongi notices the pumpkins sitting on your windowsill. “Hey, those look cute together.”

“Don’t they?” You say proudly. Nobody else has commented on them, but then again, you live on the fifth floor of your apartment, so you don’t imagine many people can even see them from ground level. But it’s nice to know that they’re there, and that they mean something. Not to a whole lot of people, but to you. And to him. “But that’s not why I asked you to come over.”

“Why, what’s up?”

You freeze when he looks up at you, like you can hardly will the next few words to come out of your mouth. They’re stuck at the dam of your lips, refusing to budge, because there is this tiny, this little part of you that doesn’t even have the courage to ask. To say it. Because you know already. 

“Hoseok’s throwing a party tonight—”

“No.”

“You didn’t even let me finish!”

“But I know what you’re going to say,” Yoongi says like it’s obvious, because it is. “You’re going to ask me to come with you. And I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, Y/N, but I am not going to go. I’m just not.”

“But it’s not a shitty frat party or anything!” You exclaim, desperately trying to dig yourself out of a hole you’re already six-feet in. “It’s at his place, an apartment across campus, with just some friends of his. There won’t be crazy music and sleazy guys and jungle juice. It’s just going to be a house party.”

“I don’t care, I don’t want to go,” Yoongi tells you. “There’s nothing you can do to change my mind.”

“Why? Why won’t you go?” You demand, because the least your best friend of nearly four years could do is give you a real reason. A real reason as to why he hates Halloween, why he never wants to celebrate it with you, why he never wants to go out with you on your favorite night of the year. 

“Because I just don’t want to! Why can’t you just accept that? I don’t want to go!”

Silence. It’s almost as if Yoongi’s shocked he was even speaking so loudly in the first place. 

Next to you, the candles flicker. 

“I don’t get it,” you say, resigned. “I don’t understand. This is our very last year to celebrate Halloween as college students, as best friends, and you can’t even give me a real excuse as to why you won’t come with me.”

Yoongi frowns. “What do you mean, ‘a real excuse’?”

“Exactly that,” you say sharply. “A real excuse. Even when I offer for us to just stay in and eat KitKats and watch a shiity movie you refuse. All because it’s Halloween. I don’t get it. It’s not the crowds, and it’s not the drinks, and it’s not even the other stuff, like the pumpkins and the decorations. Is it me? Am I the reason you don’t want to celebrate Halloween?”

“No, what the fuck, it’s not you!”

“Then what is it, Yoongi?” You plead, not even making an attempt to lower your voice. Can’t he hear the sheer desperation in your voice? The hopelessness? “Why won’t you just tell me why you don’t ever want to celebrate this goddamn holiday with me? Is it my fault?”

“I just don’t!” 

The sound of Yoongi’s shouts echoes throughout your living space, bouncing off of the walls. You look back at him, feeling helpless, but he doesn’t look angry, or enraged. He looks exhausted. Like this conversation has knocked the wind right out of him, stolen the breath from his lungs. Like suddenly the pot has boiled over, only it’s extinguished the flames that kept it burning. 

“I just don’t,” Yoongi repeats, fists clenched tightly by his side. “I’m sorry, Y/N.”

He gives you one last tired look, matching your own defeated expression, before turning around and walking out of your apartment. The door shuts firmly behind him, neither a slam nor a gentle stop, leaving you stranded in the middle of your living space, watching his silhouette disappear. 

You sigh. You don’t think Yoongi will ever tell you why he hates Halloween. And while that may be no fault of your own, you can’t help but feel like it has something to do with you. 

Yoongi could probably count the amount of times he’s gone to a frat party on one hand, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t already know everything there is to know about them. In his eyes, once you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all. 

Still, he supposes that it being Halloween makes this one a little different. Everyone’s in some sort of costume, whether it be good or bad or just plain old lazy, and there are at least a few orange and black decorations lining the walls of the Castle, and they’ve curated a playlist with Halloween songs as well as rap songs Yoongi has heard plenty of times before, so for once, Yoongi will give the fraternity a bit of credit when it comes to their Halloween party-planning. 

Beside him, you take another giant chug of your drink from the orange solo cup in your hand, wincing as the alcohol burns your throat on the way down. 

“Hey, take it easy, okay?” He says, though he doubts you can even hear him over the music, loud in the kind of way that his ears are going to be ringing far into tomorrow morning. 

“I’m fine!” You shout back, even though you are definitely not. The entire room reeks of a mixture of vodka and sickly sweet soda. 

“I just want to make sure you’re not overdoing it!” He tells you as the two of you get shoved together from some massive guy pushing past Yoongi and sending him crashing towards you. He catches a glimpse of the contents of your cup, eyebrows raising when he sees that it’s almost empty. You just got that drink five minutes ago. 

You smile. “I’m not!”

The song changes, and Yoongi swears that he can feel the entire house shake as everyone screams, cheering as they bounce up and down, dancing to the beat. Next to him, you are finishing the last few drops of whatever’s in your cup, finding an empty ledge to place it down on when you’re done, and pulling him in close to you. 

“Let’s dance!” You shriek excitedly. 

And who is Yoongi to resist?

He lets you take your hand in his own and parade him around the tiny little space the two of you share, a couple square feet of freedom in this crowded room, chock full of sweaty bodies just like his. Yoongi may not have had as much to drink as you, but the little bit of alcohol in his system is already shutting down normal mental processes like not-staring-at-you-constantly and pretending-that-he-likes-you-just-as-a-friend, sending him into a tizzy whenever he meets your starstruck eyes.

Even in this dingy, sweaty, unventilated fraternity living room, you are beautiful. You are beautiful here, and you are beautiful at three in the morning after twelve straight hours of studying, and you are beautiful after spilling the dining hall’s chicken noodle soup all over yourself. 

God, you’re the only person Yoongi is looking at in this room. You’re the only person he sees. 

Shaking his head, Yoongi abandons those thoughts as the song comes to an end, a hand wrapped around your wrist as he leans into your ear. “Do you wanna go outside? It’s hot in here!”

“Okay, whatever!” You agree easily, too easygoing after you’ve got a few drinks in you. 

Yoongi grabs a hold of your sweaty hand and tugs you towards the back door, one that he thinks leads to a fenced in backyard. You squeeze through the crowd, getting a couple of drinks spilled on your shoes on the way until you reach the back door and Yoongi fumbles with the knob, shaking it a couple of times before it gets loose. Eventually, the two of you stumble outside into the backyard, where a couple of people are playing beer pong and a couple of others look like they’re making out. 

It’s a frat party. What else did Yoongi expect?

It’s the end of October, and Yoongi doesn’t even have on a jacket, but the chill of the night has little effect on him after being in a room that’s felt like one hundred degrees for an hour. Out here, Yoongi feels like he can finally breathe. 

“It’s kinda cold out here, don’t you think?”

Yoongi doesn’t even have time to respond before you’re wrapping yourself up in him, curling into his body and placing his arm around your figure, letting the heat from his frame radiate onto your skin. 

“Better than being in there,” Yoongi reasons. 

“But aren’t you having fun?” 

He looks down to see you looking up with him with big, wide eyes, like you’re afraid that he isn’t having fun, or afraid that you’re enjoying this night more than he is. It makes him smile. “With you, I am.”

You grin at that, turning back to face forward, head pressing into the crook of his neck. “That’s good to hear,” you tell him. “It seemed like you were kinda nervous.”

“Nervous?” His voice cracks as he says it. Fuck. 

“Yeah, is there something you wanna tell me? It looks like you’ve been dying to say something all night,” you comment mindlessly, clearly much more observant now than you are when you’re sober. Or perhaps, Yoongi’s just more obvious. 

He takes a deep breath, pressing his eyes shut tightly. This is his chance. He knows it. 

“Actually, yes, there is,” he says, and it feels like he has to force the words out of his mouth because they’re refusing to come out on their own, pausing at the edge of his lips. It feels like he has to overcome his own mind in order to tell you, feels like every word is a sucker punch to his lungs. 

You pull away from him, looking up at Yoongi with big, blinking eyes. It’s a clear night, and Yoongi knows because he can see the fucking stars reflected in your pupils, see them twinkling as your glossy eyes gaze back up at him. You look up at Yoongi and God, you are just so beautiful. You are beautiful, and Yoongi wonders, then, if you know. If you know how Yoongi looks at you. If you know how he feels about you. He is so in love. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. You are beautiful and he is so in love, and he’s been dying to tell you that and this might be his only opportunity to do so, because tomorrow will be a new day and Yoongi won’t have the guts tomorrow. This is his only chance. 

You deserve to know. 

“Well?” You ask him. “What is it?”

Yoongi wraps his arm around the small of your back, pulls you into him, and presses his lips to yours. 

Hoseok’s party is fun. It’s definitely one of the better ones you’ve been to in your four years of university so far. There aren’t too many people, and the drinks are actually good instead of just burning your throat, and his music taste is impeccable. 

And yet, you don’t think you’ve ever been so unenthused at a party in your whole life. Thriller by Michael Jackson blares from Hoseok’s television speakers, chatter fills the room, and Hoseok’s girlfriend, Haebin, is constantly checking up on you, but never has one place felt so empty. 

It’s not really very difficult for you to wonder why. 

“Hey, Y/N!”

You whip your head around to find Haein standing by the kitchen table, gesturing towards Hoseok as he’s looking up the recipe for a drink he wants to try. 

“You want one? Hoseok’s trying to make Long Island Iced Tea,” Haebin asks. Next to her, Hoseok is struggling to get the measurements right. At least he’s making an attempt. 

You stare down at your nearly-full cup of strawberry daiquiri. You took one sip when Haebin first handed it to you thirty minutes ago, and haven’t touched it since. “No, I’m alright, thank you.”

Haebin sighs, patting Hoseok on the back encouragingly before she makes her way over to where you’re sitting on their couch, pressed up against the arm of the sofa as you mindlessly swirl the drink around in your cup, eyes zoning into the whirlpool you’re creating. She sits down next to you with a smile, with the kind of look on her face that makes you simultaneously thankful for and dread the conversation you’re about to have.

“Hey, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.” You don’t even believe yourself when you say it. 

“Listen, you don’t have to tell me. I just know that Halloween is your favorite holiday and I was wondering if there was something getting you down tonight,” Haebin says in that comforting, gentle sort of way, like an old friend who knows all your tells. 

“It’s not a big deal, really. I think I’m just out of it tonight,” you say, not drunk enough to divulge more information but also not sober enough to keep your mouth completely shut. 

Haebin smiles at you, lips pursed. “Alright then. If everything’s alright.” She pushes her hands onto her thighs as she gets off of the couch, heading back towards the kitchen to help Hoseok figure out how to mix drinks. But before she leaves you alone, she turns around and says one more thing. “You know, I don’t know why Yoongi’s not here or anything, but I wish that he was. You always look so much happier whenever he’s around.”

And that just sends your mind into meltdown. 

Defeated, alone, and best friend-less, you place your cup down on the end table to your left and get up off of the couch, beginning to gather your belongings, your coat and your shoes and your bag, tugging your arms through the sleeves as you storm towards the door, eyebrows knitted together, lips pursed.

“Hey, where are you going—?”

“I gotta go, Haebin. I just—” You pull on a shoe, tugging at the boot as it slips over your heel, “—I gotta go. Thank Hoseok for me, okay? I have to go.”

You only have time to catch Haebin nod, wordless, before you tug open the door to Hoseok’s apartment and stomp outside.

This is the worst Halloween of your life, bar none. The time when you were four and you tripped over a curb on the sidewalk, spraining your ankle doesn’t even come close. It’s your very last year to celebrate Halloween as a college student, to celebrate it by getting dressed up in a low-effort costume and spending time with your friends, and your best friend isn’t even here. He refused. 

He refused and you still don’t know why, but worst of all he refused and you still wish he was here. You wish you could have spent time with him tonight. More than anything else. You wish you could have spent the night wrapped up together on your couch, or on your bed, watching your favorite television shows and enjoying each other’s company. You wish you could have curled into his body as the television blared, pressed your head against his shoulder and felt the warmth of his skin on yours. God, you wish you could have. 

You wish you could have told him. 

You wish you had the guts to. 

Twenty minutes later finds you outside one of the dozens of frat parties likely occurring on campus right now, the bass from the music so loud that you can feel it in your eardrums even outside of the building. No part of you wants to go inside something like that, but at this point you start to wonder if maybe hopping different frats is actually your best idea. Get a drink, get drunk, and then move onto the next one. Rinse and repeat until you don’t remember a thing about this terrible, awful night. 

As you walk along the sidewalk, you spot another student sitting on the curb underneath a leaf-less tree, a cheap black drugstore masquerade mask covering the top half of his face. He doesn’t seem to be having a particularly enjoyable night either. 

Normally, the last thing you’d want to do is sit down next to a stranger whose face is disguised, because who knows what could happen to you if you do, but there are at least twenty people surrounding the two of you, loitering outside the frat house in the hopes that they can eventually get inside. And honestly, you could use a fucking break. 

As casually as you can possibly manage, you take a seat next to the boy, a few inches apart from him as he looks up at you. You can’t make out too much in the dim light of the frat house, but he’s illuminated just enough for you to see his eyes widen at the sight of you. 

“You don’t mind, do you?” You ask. 

He shakes his head. 

You smile in thanks, shifting around where you’re seated on the cold cement, eyes drifting all over the place, from the houses across the street to the road to the people standing around, anything to avoid turning back towards the boy and initiating an even more awkward conversation. Sitting down, the world stops spinning, just a little bit. You didn’t have too much to drink at Hoseok’s, but it was enough to loosen your mind. 

“Can I say something?” You say loudly, turning towards the boy. 

It was enough to loosen your lips too, apparently. 

The boy stares back at you, silent. 

“I’m sorry, I just need to get this off my chest.” You close your eyes, breathing in and breathing out, feeling your chest rise and fall. “I am not having a great night. And I wish I was out here with another friend of mine, instead. He’s my best friend, actually. He just… didn’t want to come out tonight with me. But I wish he was here, because I love spending time with him, and I miss him.”

The words spill off of your tongue like lava from a volcano, bursting from your lips completely unfiltered. It surprises you, a little, how much you actually have to say. How much has been weighing on your chest.

You don’t expect him to respond. Truthfully, you can’t even believe you’re unloading all of your baggage onto him in the first place. Since when are you the type of person to tell other people about the tragedies of your life?

But then, he says, “You do?”

And it makes you wonder what else you’ve been keeping hidden. 

“Yeah, I guess I do,” you realize. “I love spending time with him. He makes every day brighter, turns everything he touches into laughter. And I wanted to spend time with him tonight because I actually thought he would want to. You know, we carved pumpkins together a few days ago. Of each other’s faces.” You force out a laugh. “We carved each other’s faces into pumpkins and he still isn’t here tonight. I wanted him to be here because he’s my best friend, and because he makes me so happy, and even other people are noticing what effect he has on me. Noticing how fucking happy he makes me. Because he does. I feel like I’m a better person with him. I want to spend the rest of my life with him and he’s not here and instead of going to look for him I’m sitting here telling you the sob story that is my life and I just wish—”

“Does that mean you love him?” The boy asks softly. 

“What?”

“Does that mean you love him?”

You turn to look at the boy, eyebrows raised, almost ready to deny such a thing, but when you open your mouth, nothing comes out. 

How could you say you don’t love Yoongi? Of course you do. He is your best friend. You never want to live a day when he’s not by your side. You want to spend the rest of your life with him. He makes you smile and laugh like it’s nobody’s business, brightens your day without even trying. Just seeing him is enough to lift your spirits. Seeing his face on the other side of your apartment door, all ripped jeans and Converse sneakers, hands wrapped in the sleeves of his hoodie, dark brown eyes blinking back at you, pink lips parted in a grin. That image you have of him in your head—it’s one you don’t ever want to forget. He is standing in your apartment, lips upturned, eyes crushed into crescents, smiling at you. He is mid-laugh, grinning from ear to ear at something you said. He is right there. 

“Well, yeah,” you say, because what else are you supposed to do? “I guess I do.”

Suddenly, your chest feels a whole lot lighter. 

The boy next to you smiles, the dim light barely illuminating his features, but when you look at him there is something so strangely familiar about him, about the way he blinks at you, about the peak of his Cupid’s bow, about how his lips are stretched into a grin. It couldn’t be him… could it?

But before you have time to ask, he is leaning towards you and pressing his lips atop yours, crashing your mouths together in a desperate, messy kiss. His palm presses against your cheek and you can’t help but sink into it, sink into the way his other hand curls around to rest on the small of your back, let yourself be engulfed by him. 

You’ve never kissed Yoongi before, but you know that this is what it must be like. 

You know, from the way your blood starts to sizzle, sparks rushing through your veins. From the way your heart is pumping, loud and clear in your ears, like it’s been jolted to life. Like a shock is running through your body. Like a warmth is filling you up, from the inside out. 

When you part, as Yoongi takes off his mask, he can’t keep the smile off of his face. “I knew it. I knew you loved me.”

“What are you doing out here?” You ask, positively shocked. “I thought you hated Halloween.”

“I do,” Yoongi confirms. “Or, well, I did, I guess.”

“Then what changed?”

“You. Us. We changed,” Yoongi says, motioning between your bodies. “I hated Halloween because it had bad memories for me. Nothing crazy, but, yeah. You don’t remember?”

“What?” Your mouth drops open. “What should I remember?”

“We kissed that night.” Yoongi begins, eyes shifting down towards the ground. Clearly recalling this is awkward for him. “Halloween, freshman year. Outside of the Castle.”

You don’t remember this at all. 

“Well, I kissed you and you kissed me, and I thought that we had established then and there that we liked each other. You know, like, really liked each other. But you were so drunk that night. I don’t know what you had, but you could hardly walk by the time I got you back to your dorm. Your roommate was furious with me.” He shakes his head at the memory, replaying in his mind like a movie. “And I thought, okay, we’ll just talk about this tomorrow. But you must have had a wicked headache or something, because I saw you the next day and you said—”

“God, whatever happened last night, I don’t want to know.”

It’s the middle of the day, the sun high in the crisp November sky, but you have been cradling your forehead ever since Yoongi last dropped you off, back at your dorm, when you were slowly starting to crash. 

“What?” His voice is hollow, empty. 

“Last night fucked me up real good,” you say with a huff, shaking your head. “I’m glad I don’t remember what happened last night.”

As Yoongi traipses back to square one, his heart shakes in its cage. 

“I guess you just didn’t remember,” Yoongi tries to explain, much to your horror as you realize that you and Yoongi have been crushing on each other hopelessly for three years extra without you even realizing it. “So, uh, yeah. That’s why I didn’t like Halloween.”

“You kissed me that night?”

“What?”

“You kissed me that night? Outside of the Castle?” 

A tingling on your lips. A faint feeling of warmth. You remember bits of that night. It was cold, and you were freezing in your costume. And you and Yoongi had gone outside to escape the crowd, and he said something, and then you said something, and then he—!

“Yeah.” Yoongi nods. “I did.”

“And I didn’t remember?”

“I mean, you were really drunk.”

Your shoulders sink, the thought of Yoongi, helplessly pining after you for three more years because he thought you didn’t like him like that, because he thought that the love you shared was one-sided, still sticking by your side as your best friend. At the thought of him deciding it was better to be best friends and keep that love hidden than tell you and risk it all over again. At the thought of him accepting what he thought was his fate. 

“I’m sorry,” you say. What else is there to tell him? If you had remembered, if you just didn’t say those words, if you had just told him how you felt, this would have all been so much easier. 

“It’s okay now,” Yoongi says, expression growing fond as he pulls you in for a hug, sad to see you so gloomy. “You love me and I love you. What more could I want?”

A realization dawns on you. 

Pulling apart from him ever so slightly, you quirk an eyebrow. “You know, you could have just kissed me again the next day, and then we wouldn’t have had to deal with all of this. Plus, you would have still liked Halloween.”

Yoongi scoffs, pressing a kiss to your icy cheek. “So what? I like it now, how about that? I fucking love Halloween now. It turned my best friend into my girlfriend. She’s the love of my life. We can celebrate every Halloween together from now on until the end of time.”

You grin, pressing a kiss back on his little button nose, pink from the cold. Finally. “That’s the spirit.”

↳ don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

[hansolmates]

jjk; off-league

summary; you decide to do a little boudoir photoshoot for yourself—a little sexy lingerie, some bunny ears, maybe even a little nudity to make you feel more body positive about yourself. that little photoshoot doesn’t end up being for yourself anymore when you accidentally send those sexy pictures to your stupidly hot, stupidly talented childhood friend who you haven’t spoken to since middle school graduation.  pairing; photographer!jk x fem!reader genre/warnings; childhood friends to lovers!au, flangst, mutual pining, feelings of insecurity and body image, suggestive language, nudity  w.c; 6.2k a/n: i was feeling a lil meh about this fic after finishing it but a month later it finally makes its debut! for @btsghostiewritersnet​ BGW Bingo Bash! today’s trope is “childhood friends to lovers” which surprisingly isn’t a favorite of mine so it was definitely a challenge to write! 

“C’mon, I need your opinion. Deadass. Don’t just say shit to make me feel better.” 

“Gimmie those nudes, baby girl,” Johnny makes an impeccable fuckboy impersonation, making you feel a little squirmy to your stomach. 

It’s an hour away from being the ass-crack’o-dawn and your impromptu pin-up photoshoot just needs the sexy-star-of-approval from your best friend. Johnny Suh is also up for reasons unmentioned, but you had a feeling his pretty boyfriend is fifty percent of the reason. 

You look at yourself in the mirror, smoothing your frame against the black bodice of the sheer teddy. The only parts that are fully concealed are the parts that don’t matter. The sheer bodice reveals your pert nipples concealed by a thin black mesh, coupled with the deep V in the sweetheart neckline, accented by a little black bow in the dive of your highlighted cleavage. The silky a-line raceways to a set of black garters hugging your thighs, barely hanging onto a pair of lace thigh-highs. 

It doesn’t leave you butt naked, but enough to make you feel confident about yourself. These pictures are for you, and Johnny. And Johnny’s boyfriend if he’s being nosy. 

You tug off the silk bunny ears from your head, flinging it somewhere in your room. The wire started to dig in your brain, giving you a major headache. 

“Sending them now,” you hang up and start compiling the pictures in a folder on Google Drive. Once that’s done you copy the shareable link, sending it to Johnny’s number. It happens all so fast, and you feel kind of giddy. As you were posing for the camera, taking your time to find all the right angles, you felt good, you felt sexy in your little get up. Channeling your inner Ariana Grande was one of your childhood dreams, your fifteen year old self would be proud. 

Five minutes pass, fifteen, and by the twenty-five minute mark you’re pissed. What’s taking Johnny so long? 

Makeup scrubbed clean and face bare, you shuffle in your duvet, far too tired to be waiting up this long. Punching in his number once more, you cry, “Hey! Why haven’t you looked at them yet?” 

“What?” your friend’s voice sounds pebbly through the line. Was Johnny sleeping? “You never sent them!” he whines tiredly. 

“No, I definitely sent them!” you pull the phone away and keep Johnny on call, ready to prove him wrong. 

But to your surprise, the last message you sent to Johnny was this afternoon. 

The most recent message is to a person named John Kook. 

You scream. 

Johnny screams back at you with an equal amount of force, “What the fuck? Did someone break in? Are you being mobbed? See, this is why I wanted to put the baby monitor in your room—” 

“Worse!” you’re well prepared for any break in, but not for this. “I sent my pics to the wrong John!” 

“Well… is he at least cute?” 

“I mean, in the fourth grade he looked pretty cute with that front tooth missing,” you find your output of frustration, your bunny plush, pulling it by the ear and hitting it against the bed. “His name isn’t even John! It was just his English name for a silly project we did in middle school. This is so embarrassing, all I can picture is a twelve-year-old Jungkook mortified from sexual harassment. I basically sent him nudes!” 

“Tasteful nudes.” 

“I’m gonna die.” 

“He’s gonna die, of happiness.” 

Jeon Jungkook was a classmate from elementary through middle school. Time and time again was he the object of your affections, from the first grade at the roller rink to the speech he made at graduation. But really, who cares? You’re old and have a job, and it’s not like you’ve communicated with any of your former classmates. 

Your horror amplifies when the Delivered receipt is changed to Read 3:41AM. 

“Fuck! Fuck me with a fuckin’ fuck nugget he saw it!” you cry, “does he still have my number? What if he deleted my contact, would that be even weirder?” 

“Girl, stop.” Johnny sighs, and you can already picture him running his thumb between his brows. “This doesn’t change anything, alright? You two don’t know each other anymore. Block his number and go to sleep.” 

Johnny leaves you alone after that, and you’re left alone to mull over the implications of sending Jeon Jungkook your nude photoshoot. 

You do block his number, knowing that waiting for a reply would drive you nuts. The one thing that you do which is possibly worse, is look him up on Instagram. 

Of course, he’s stupid hot. 

He doesn’t seem to like being on the receiving end of the camera however, in favor of his timeline being filled with romantic shots of the beach and city. In between the picturesque views and watercolor sunsets do you see glimpses of him and his current life. You can’t help but smile when you see him with his brother and parents during his college graduation, easily towering over all of them. He looks tall with fluffy cocoa hair, big pearly whites gleaming proudly at the camera. He grew up well. 

To torture yourself even more, you even look through his story. Twelve hours ago, he was at the gym lifting weights. Normally, you’d be disgusted by people trying to show off their grunt faces drenched in sweat, but of course Jungkook has to have on a silly smile and pump his fist up after he deadlifts. The sweat clinging to his shirt is also a high plus. His gorgeous display of abs has your hands fluttering over your own belly. Maybe you need to exercise more. 

Four hours ago, you see him and a pretty woman with their cheeks squished together, using the puppy filter. Of course he has a girlfriend. 

Reluctant, you open up your Google Drive and scroll through your photoshoot. Deflated, you frown at the pictures that once made you beam with pride, picking at every little detail that bothered you. You really can’t believe you sent these to Jeon Jungkook, no longer a fourth grader with one front tooth, but a man way out of your league. 

By the time you will yourself to sleep, the sun peeks from the horizon, telling you to move on. 

“Hey Gyu,” you tiptoe over to the table much too small for Mingyu’s frame. The string bean is slumped over his iPad pro, drawing intently at some chibi OCs. “Got a plot for that one?” you ask, pointing at the little pink and blue creature decorating the screen. 

Mingyu grunts in reply, obviously engrossed. It isn’t until you slide him a matcha frappe from Starbucks that he becomes intelligible, muttering a “thank you” as he blends with his pen. 

Sensing that it’s going to be awhile before you get through to him, you take your usual rounds around the front desk and lobby of the cosy photo studio. There’s pretty pictures of Mingyu’s work, along with the other employees Minghao and Hoseok. Each section of the wall features a different taste of each person’s interest. Mingyu is a divine lover of soft bed sheets and hot tea, many of his photographs and paintings featuring cafes or perfectly messy beds you’ve seen on hotel advertisements. Minghao is a tasteful artisan, splotches of color retaliating against neutral backgrounds. Finally, Hoseok manages to find balance in the people, large cityscapes telling both large and small stories.

“Alright,” Mingyu’s deep voice forces you to curl your head, where he’s sipping at his drink with haste. “What’cha here for?” 

You frown, “Don’t you remember? I told you last week I’d be stopping by to get my photos developed,” you gesture to the Pentax in your hands, an heirloom from your great-aunt. While you did take digital photos for sending them to Johnny, the ones you wanted developed were taken side-by-side with the film camera. You figured that film would give a little more authenticity to your photoshoot. 

“Shit, that’s today?” the camera falls like deadweight, slapping against your sweater as you watch Mingyu frantically look through his digital calendar. He looks at you, dejected. “How many prints?” 

“I don’t know, maybe like six. Or eight?” 

“That’s gonna take too long, I’m heading down to Hidden Grounds for a vision meeting at two.” 

“Alright, I’m free all day. What about after?”

“Nah, you came all this way. I can just let the new guy help you.” and Mingyu makes a show of cupping his hands in the direction of the open hallway, “Yah, Jeon Jungkook! Get your cute ass out here!” 

The Pentax around your neck suddenly feels like weight akin to a two-ton boulder, and you surge forward, not caring that the corner of the table is digging into your belly. “Mingyu,” you garble, and Mingyu is shell-shocked by the desperation in your eyes. “Isn’t Minghao around or something? Or I can come back another time? These photos are really personal and I don’t feel comfortable having a stranger see them.”

“What? We’re professionals, don’t belittle us.” 

“No, seriously,” you whine, you tug at the collar of his denim jacket, noses practically touching. “These pictures are different. My tits are out and my legs are spread—”

“—interrupting something?” 

You hear some shuffling, and you turn around to see Jeon Jungkook’s back, comically turned to face the entrance. 

And damn, he did have a cute ass. Nothing is going to hide the glory in those jeans, absolutely nothing. 

“Hilarious,” Mingyu drawls, and you push him away. “Forget it, Kook. She doesn’t feel comfortable letting a stranger develop her photos.” 

Sensing that it’s safe to turn around, you watch as his black bangs flutter as he faces you. You hope your body language doesn’t betray how you’re really feeling, because you are a mere mortal and you’re weak in the presence of god-like figures. 

“Oh, what a relief then,” he smiles at you, and his voice sounds like honey. If there was malice or surprise in his tone, his good-natured expression betrays it. “Because I’ve known this friend since elementary school. We go way back.” 

You ignore the burn in the back of your head, as you are positive Mingyu knows you’re hiding something. 

“Really, what a coincidence.” Mingyu replies carefully, and you feel utterly stuck between these men and their banter, locked up like cream in an Oreo cookie. 

Nothing argues against Jungkook as he easily weaves through the thick wave of awkwardness, hands reaching out to touch your camera. “Wow,” he marvels, holding the object in his hands, “my dad has one of these.” 

“A-ha,” you take a step back, only to bump into the corner of the table, again. Ouch. “It’s okay, Jungkook. I’m actually busy today so I can come when Mingyu’s free–”

“Oh, I thought you were free all day,” Mingyu drawls, looking up through his lashes as he sips languidly at his drink. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Jungkook says good-naturedly, as if Mingyu just didn’t out you. “We got a lot of catching up to do anyway, c’mon.” 

Jungkook moves to place a hand in the small of your back and that’s enough to get you to rev up. Refusing to let any contact get between the two of you, you zip ahead down the familiar hallway, turning your head to catch Mingyu grinning with all canines, shooing you with his fingers like a puppy. 

You send Mingyu a stream of “fuck yous” into his inbox for later, unwilling to settle with this curse. Busying yourself with your phone, you avoid eye contact with Jungkook until you reach the dark room. The red light turned off at the top of the doorhenge signals that the room is not in use. Jungkook makes a move to open the door and that’s when you pounce, blocking the doorway with your small body. It’s comical, really. 

Jungkook raises a brow at you, but says nothing. 

“I really can wait, Jungkook,” you steel yourself, forcing a sympathetic smile. “I’m sure your girlfriend wouldn’t like you developing my pictures—”

It’s then that his pretty cupid’s bow unfurls into a full-fledged grin. “Girlfriend... you’ve been keeping tabs on me?” 

“Fuck, well I had to!” your face is as red as the dark room’s alert light, now on because Jungkook flicked the switch and he’s between your arm to unlock the door. Your hand brushes his as you both reach the knob. “I’m really really sorry I sent those pictures. They were for Johnny—you remember Johnny Suh from English class? And I saved you in my contacts as “John Kook” so it was an honest mess up.” 

Jungkook hums, so light that the breathiness in his chords flutters your grip on the knob. He forces the door ajar, and you’re left to follow him in the dark room, cluttered with solutions and fancy equipment. 

“Thought so,” Jungkook shrugged, giving a one-over at the materials in the room, mulling over his next steps in developing your film. 

You’re still petrified at the doorway, holding your Pentax between both hands like a lifeline. Jungkook’s head lols to you, and you get a pretty view of the way his bangs brush over his forehead, Adam’s Apple bobbing. His expression is a little tired, but overall unreadable. He sighs your name, lethargic. 

“We’re already here, so might as well get this done,” he gestures to the camera in your vice grip. “Do you wanna pick the shots or do you want me to?” 

He’s already seen the digitals, what’s so different about getting a couple prints? With a slight pout you drag your feet over to him, relinquishing your camera. “I’m thinking you have a better eye for this than I do.” 

“You think right.” 

You fight the urge to roll your eyes. Cocky, but what you’ve seen on Instagram definitely justifies his sentiment. Jungkook pays no mind to you, busying his hands with the various containers in front of him, measuring the solutions for the developer, stopper, and fixer. You were always entranced by the process of developing film, especially in highschool where their photography club holed themselves in the darkroom like a secret lair. 

“Alright,” he pops open the canister, carefully laying out sections of the film in groups of four. “Want me to pick a random one for a tester?” 

You frown, “At least put some thought into it.” 

“Always,” it looks like he already decided way before he popped the question, immediately taking a negative and placing it in the carrier. 

His fingers are nimble as he takes the time to clean off the dust and any debris that could potentially ruin the image. Then he turns off the lights and begins the process. You dive around him, trying to keep your distance but still too curious to leave his side. If he’s annoyed he fails to show it, in favor of humming whatever song comes from his Echo Dot. 

You always got the solos in choir. You wanted to reminisce, but you’re too nervous to say it out loud. 

Even though it’s his job and he’s being a professional, you romanticize the experience, watching as he carefully puts the print in each liquid process. Your image blooms to life, and you feel your stomach churn as the photo develops before your eyes. 

After a final dip in the solution stopper, he places the first product in a bath of water. Even though you are mere centimeters away, you can clearly see the image of you swimming around the container. 

“Alright!” Jungkook hangs the finished picture on a pastel pink clothespin, tacking it in place. “Whaddya think?” 

Your breath catches in your throat, feeling heavy as you look at the image of you reflected in the glossy paper. You’re perched on your bed, a hand splaying between your legs as the other hand toys with the silk bunny ears. You’re leaned slightly, giving an ample view of your cleavage. However, the image of you is definitely different from being blown up in comparison to the negatives, and you squirm uncomfortably at your full display. 

“I look,” you bite your tongue, internally debating whether you like it or not. Not to spare Jungkook the theatrics you shrug, “It’s good.”  

The lack of enthusiasm seems to dissatisfy Jungkook however, as he has to take a double take and look back and forth between the image and the real thing. “What’s wrong with it, do you think Johnny’ll not like it?” 

“What?” you furrow your brows, breaking into a nervous laugh. “Johnny has a boyfriend. I just wanted his opinion. This photoshoot is for me, y’know? Just something to make me feel good about myself.” 

Jungkook’s lips morph into a little ‘o’, and you see a little bit of the child you once knew in the way he’s mulling over the situation. 

“Then can I give you my honest opinion?” Jungkook clips off the half-dried photo, holding it between you two. “Stop thinking so hard about every little thing you don’t like about yourself. If I was your boyfriend and you gifted this to me, I’d be creaming my pants. You look fucking sexy, all grown up since you cried in the fourth grade.” 

You’ve just been flung a litany of words you have no brain capacity to digest. Along with that, the immense heat you didn’t know you’ve been suppressing surges to your belly, low and simmering. Jungkook stares at you in earnest, despite his sudden gush of honesty, you don’t know what to say. There’s a dash of pink staining his cheeks, betraying the confidence he previously displayed. He stiffens when you don’t reply immediately and moves to clean his materials, his sudden bout of bold honesty quickly shrinking. 

“Y-you know,” you look down at your feet, “the only reason why I cried in the fourth grade was because you told me Santa wasn’t real.” 

Jungkook softens, tilting his head. “Sorry about that.” 

“Thanks though,” you gently reach for the photo in Jungkook’s grasp, looking at it without contempt. “But won’t your girlfriend be upset if she knew you were saying things like this about someone else?” 

He chuckles, shaking his head. “Well, if you looked through the rest of my Instagram story,” Jungkooks cards a hand through his already mussed hair, splitting the ends. “You would see that she’s not my girlfriend, but my tattoo artist.” 

For added measure, he wiggles his fingers in front of you, revealing pretty ink and silver bands across his knuckles.

“Oh,” your voice is feather light, and you’re sure you’re drooling as you stare far too long at the letters that mark his hands, curious as to what they symbolize. 

“So, as a singleton telling another singleton,” he continues, “I know it’s meaningless if you don’t believe it yourself, but I’m telling you, you’re attractive.” 

“Thanks,” you hold the picture tightly in your grasp, eyes flickering to the negatives in the room ready to be galvanized into a full-fledged picture. “Why don’t we wrap this up, huh? We can continue another time.” 

If he notices how much the paper wilts in your grasp, he doesn’t comment on it. “Are you sure? I know it takes a lot of time, but I don’t mind.” 

“I’m sure,” you force a smile, one hand on the lightswitch. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready, okay?” 

Jungkook swallows, nodding mechanically. “Okay.” 

“It was really nice seeing you, Kook.” you blurt before you could chicken out, letting the room bask in darkness a little longer so he can’t see your flustered state. “I’m not even going to downplay it, you look great.” 

You half-expect a cocky remark, or a little chest pumping from the compliment. At the sound of his nickname however, 4th grade Jeon Jungkook resurfaces and he shoves his hands in his pockets. “Like I said, so do you,” he replies easily, sending you a soft smile and opening the door for you. 

The door closes shut behind you and you exhale, patting your cheeks and willing for the chilly air to calm you down. 

When you get home that day, you shuck off all your clothes and crawl into bed. You cry out when the metal framing of your bunny ears stabs you in the back, and you fling it to some unmentionable part of the room. You reach for a bag of half-opened sour gummy worms, flipping open your MacBook to continue streaming the soft magical girl anime you’ve been hooked on these past few weeks. 

Not even Sailor Uranus can distract you; however, by the time it’s dark and you’ve run out of distractions, you finally pull the plug and unblock Jungkook from your list of contacts. 

Your phone buzzes, the incessant vibration relaying all the messages you’ve missed. 

[March 12th, 3:53AM]

You: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0343…

John Kook: ??? 

John Kook: you probably sent this to me by accident… sorry i clicked on it

John Kook: is it weird if i said you’ve done a massive glow up since the middle school dance?

[March 12th, 12:02 PM]

John Kook: are u mad

John Kook: you’re mad

John Kook: am i makin this weird by continuing to text you

John Kook: im making it weird. 

[March 31st, 6:24 PM]

John Kook: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/049…

You tilt your head at the folder link, it was sent only a few hours ago. With a click, you’re enlightened to a set of digital photos. Your photos from your photoshoot, but not quite. They’ve been expertly edited, not too much to distort your looks, but only to enhance your features. A small, barely there smile creeps from your subconscious, ultimately touched by the gesture. 

John Kook: sorry if i pushed too hard today. 

Guilt overrides your nerves, prompting you to immediately press the call button on his contact. Not to your surprise, Jungkook’s light voice calls your name through the line after the second ring. 

“Don’t be sorry,” you blurt, forgoing the hellos. “It was the right amount of push, I feel better, really. If anything, I’m sorry. I blocked your number because I was scared to read your reaction.” 

You hear him sigh along the line, and you feel that breath ripple through your nerves, as if he’s right next to you. “It’s fine, I would’ve done the same thing.” 

“The pictures you just sent, they’re really beautiful. You did a good job.” 

“Thanks, I had a bit of help. I didn’t have to do much.” 

“Oh, did Mingyu come back from his meeting?” 

"No, I uh," Jungkook chuckles, and while you don't really know why, the sound is nonetheless pleasant. “It was mostly the lighting and coloring I fixed up. Didn’t need to do much since you already looked so pretty as it is.” 

You choke on your saliva. 

“You okay?”

“Y-yeah,” you cough, “just choked on a snack I was eating.” he hums in reply, and you pray he doesn’t hear your stomach fervently retort that you haven’t eaten since lunch. “So, I think I’m up for developing more of the film. When can I drop by?” 

“I’m free Saturday,” Jungkook chirps, “I have a shoot until noon but you can come anytime after that.” 

“Sounds good, I’ll be there,” you clutch the phone with both hands. “I can bring lunch. What do you like to eat?” 

“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

“I’m already buying for Minghao,” you lie, “do you like burgers?” 

“I can’t say no to a good burger,” Jungkook’s smile feels almost palpable against the line, “do you remember our field trip to the national museum of history? We had burgers on the street!” 

“Oh, those were so good,” you moan, fuzzy memories of a middle grade field trip resurfacing to clarity, “but you ate like, ten of them!”

“I still get nightmares,” he warns, “don’t let me go to bed like this.” 

You giggle, letting your body meld further into your warm mattress. “Maybe I’ll just show up with ten burgers for you tomorrow.” 

“I’ll throw up on you, try me.” 

Minghao’s adjusting the frames on their display wall by the centimeter, and it’s pissing him off. 

“Ah, it’s off,” he mutters to himself when you walk in, indicated by the electronic bell. He turns to you briefly, pulling a leveler out of his overall pocket. “Doesn’t this look off?” 

“Uh,” you look towards Mingyu at the front desk, who is paying no mind as he continues scribbling on his iPad. You tilt your head towards your former college classmate. “It doesn’t look off from over here?” 

Tacking the leveler on one of the frames, he whines, “It’s five degrees off.” 

Mingyu puts his pen down to reach over the counter and grab the paper from your hands, steaming with the scent of fast food, “He’s been like this for hours, don’t mind him.” 

He doesn’t even ask whether the food is his, Mingyu sees grease and he claims. Reaching for an oil-wrapped parchment, he unfolds the paper to reveal a handsome burger with all the fix-ens. 

Barely satisfied, Minghao steps away from the art display. There is a sizable gap in the display, now divided between four artists instead of three. You wonder how Jungkook’s work will look amongst the other artists. 

“Cute ‘fit.” Minghao mumbles, nodding approvingly at your clothes as he digs into the bag for his own burger. 

You send a half-smile his way. If an outfit is Minghao-approved, that means you’ve gone above and beyond. At least, you tried to play it off like you didn’t try to look cute. It’s not like you’re intimidated by Jungkook, living with a major fifteen-year glow up. After all, he’s already seen more than you can imagine. 

Mingyu takes notice, eyes going south to where your white blouse meets your cleavage. You hurl a fry at his face, “Eyes up here, perv.” 

He scrunches his nose, lifting a greasy thumb to slide a manila envelope over to you. “Here’s the developed pictures. Intercepted Kook and I finished them this morning.” 

You frown, “Jungkook’s not done with his photoshoot yet?” 

“Oh, he’s been done.” Mingyu’s eyes roll back to one of the studios. “But I’m saying is, you got what you needed. So you can leave if you want,” but he grins at you, canines so sharp you feel his stare jabbing you in the proverbial neck. “Unlesssss you want to go in and say hi.” 

If he has any inkling of what’s going on in your head, it’s definitely confirmed when your face turns hot. Damn body, you’re betraying me! With a flourish you grab the fries from under Mingyu’s nose, along with whatever’s left in the fast food bag. 

Minghao’s smiling through his burger, knowing if he pulls any type of savagery his lunch would certainly be pulled from under his chin. 

“Whatever you’re thinking, drop it or the burger will be going in your ass instead of out.” You mean to sound menacing, but the Min-squared and their boisterous laughter follow you down the hallway and into the occupied studio. 

“Hey Jungkoo—wow.”

You’re sure you look like Alice, enthralled by the little wonderland she just stepped into. The set is beautiful, right out of a fairytale. It has a very old-romance vibe, like Morticia and Gomez Addams. There lay a couch made of the darkest, richest wood, with velvet red cushions covering the body. Across the floor laid hundreds of black rose petals, blanketing the floor in a sea of ebony. 

“It’s for a wedding, gothic themed.” Jungkook supplies helpfully, still fiddling with whatever he was looking on his digital camera. He’s looking utterly soft in a matching grey sweat combination, something that would easily disgust you during high school, but unfairly works with him. 

“The shoot must’ve been beautiful.” 

“It was.” 

“I uh, got this for you.” Your fingers start to sweat from clutching the bag so hard, and you place it on his work table. 

He finally looks up from his camera, giving you a wan smile. “I thought you got those for Minghao.” 

You mentally slap your cheeks, trying to ignore the way his smile made your stomach do somersaults. “He got his own. Your portion has a cookie in it, so.” 

His cute teeth unveil themselves at the mention of sweets, and you can’t help but smile back at the familiarity. 

The two of you take your time in enjoying your lunch, not meaning to stay but the very back of your mind hoping he’d like to share a meal with you. After all, Mingyu and Minghao are probably at the front relishing in your very obvious attraction. What can you say, first crushes never die. 

Between sips of your milkshake, you’ve taken to flipping through Jungkook’s portfolio. There’s a myriad of different subjects: beaches, people, the occasional squirrel. Each section of the portfolio feels like you’re being transported to a new side of Jungkook and his artistry, and you ached to know more. 

“Wow,” you point at an action shot of two girls in a dance studio, “this duo looks like Chungha and Hyoyeon.” 

He swallows his (second) burger, having the audacity to sink sheepishly in his sweater. “It is Chungha and Hyoyeon.” 

You nearly choke on your cookie. “That’s amazing.” you say breathlessly, looking closer at the image. In fact, the beautiful women photographed are famed hip-hop choreographers Chungha and Hyoyeon. You can’t imagine how good Jungkook must be to manage a photoshoot with them. 

As proud as you are of Jungkook, it reminds you that since middle school you two have lived completely different lives. You wonder if Jungkook gets these kinds of gigs all the time, hanging around with gorgeous, talented people like himself.

Jungkook says your name once, twice. He looks at you concerned, and you’re melting in his large carmine eyes. If he notices your usual overthinking, he doesn’t say anything, and gestures to the section at the end of his portfolio. “This isn’t my best work, but it’s one of my favorites.” 

There’s something familiar about this set. A playground with a busted swing set. Children riding on bikes and colorful class shirts. Ice cream melting on fists. 

Thirteen-year-old you hanging on top of your middle school’s leafless tree, clutching your baseball cap as you shade yourself from the sunset. 

“Was this the first time you took pictures?” you ask, thumbing the picture of yourself. 

“Yeah. It’s when I decided it’s what I wanted to do the rest of my life.” 

“I know we didn’t know each other that well and we’ve only recently connected but,” you give him a shy smile, “I’m really proud of what you’ve grown up to be, Jungkook.” 

He looks like you’ve hung him the moon and stars, his half-eaten burger loosening in his grasp. His lips are parted cutely, like a kitten who’s just been offered a fresh glass of milk. You cough at the sudden pause in conversation, feeling self-conscious of your impulse confession. You don’t even have it in you to be disgusted when Jungkook hastily shoves the second half of his burger down his throat, tips of his ears pink. 

Leaving him be, you press a palm to your cheek, looking at the wedding set. 

Jungkook downs half a water bottle before he speaks again. “Y’know, it would be a shame to clean up this set already. It was kind of expensive.” 

“Yeah,” you echo, standing up and kicking off your slippers. You kick your feet in the air, watching the black petals kiss across your ankles.

“I have an idea,” he wipes his hands on his sweats, “why don’t you go back home and get an outfit you really like. Lingerie, a cute outfit, whatever. Let me give you a photoshoot you’d love.” 

You look up from your petal dance, balking. “Jungkook! That’s not necessary, I told you the photos I took were okay.” 

“Yeah but, you didn’t seem entirely happy. C’mon, I got a camera and a beautiful set. Why waste it?” his hands naturally gravitate towards his charging camera, already turning it on. “I can do lighting, I know all your good angles. What’s stopping us?” 

Really, what’s stopping you? Your hands fiddle with your open flannel, the soft material comforting you as you look across the set. You try to imagine yourself, your body draped across the velvet pillows and black petals. Would it look good? Would you feel good? You think back to how you felt the first time, how scared you were when someone other than Johnny would be looking at your photos. You remember how something weird and sour contorted in your stomach when you scrolled through Jeon Jungkook’s Instagram, no longer the little boy you knew but a man who could have everything he wanted—

“Stop thinking about it.” Jungkook suddenly snaps, and you break from your reverie to catch him looking upset. It’s been awhile since you’ve seen him like that. 

“Thinking about what?”

“Thinking that you’re out of my league.”

“Excuse me?” 

“You were like this the other day too,” and he looks sad, and puts his camera down to come closer to you. “Why are you feeling this way. Is it me?” 

“Not necessarily,” you huff, hugging yourself.

“Do you not feel beautiful? Do you not like your body?” 

“No, I do.” you say to yourself, and you mean it. Even though there will inevitably be days where you may not feel one-hundred percent positive about yourself, you know at the end of the day, you love you and all its parts. “I don’t know, Jungkook. I had no problem letting Mingyu develop the photos originally, because he knew me in college and I was already sure of myself back then. But I guess when I sent them to you, I felt like I did when I was a little girl, y’know? Going through puberty, and worrying about what other people think.” 

And it’s not like Jungkook teased you or made you feel lesser of yourself. In fact, Jungkook was the student you wanted to be when you were younger. Someone sweet and caring, and unabashedly confident about himself. 

“I guess seeing you so successful and the fact that my stupid childhood crush came back from a time where I always felt low, made me feel a little insecure again.” 

Something sinks in and you feel hyper aware of how crushed Jungkook looks at your declaration. “There’s no leagues, you got that?” he says quietly, walking so close that he’s hovering over you, sneakers brushing. “I get it. I get unsure and insecure just like you. Hell, I was nervous this morning, wondering if you’d really come. We may not feel insecure over the same things, but middle school wasn’t that great for me either.” He makes a funny face, and you feel a smile twitch across your lips. “But it’s okay. Because we’re human and we grow. But now, you are successful. You’ve grown from your time growing up and you’re a wonderful, powerful person. I’m proud of you too.” 

“I know,” you mumble, leaning your forehead against his chest. His arms wrap around you in response, holding you snug.

“And for the record, I thought you were the most beautiful person in the world in fourth grade. Even though my world was pretty small back then, I can say now that what I thought back then still stands true.” 

You look up from his embrace, where he’s leaning down to press a slow, cotton soft kiss to your forehead. He backs up a little to read your face, and you give a tiny nod in response to signal it’s okay. Jungkook exhales in contentment, relaxing against your frame. 

“Thanks, Kook,” you crack a smile, feeling your insecurities slowly evaporate. You feel better, light, knowing that these negative feelings are only temporary, and you’re not alone. Being in Jungkook’s arms, an honest boy turned man you’ve known all your life, it feels almost like home. 

You two stay like this for a while. Exchanging feather-like kisses, feeling irrevocably young and hopeful. Suddenly feeling emboldened, you tug him by the strings of his hoodie to press a long, hot kiss to his lips. There’s a stutter, and you’re pretty sure Jungkook choked on his saliva at the sudden change of pace but you continue, letting Jungkook catch up and follow your lead. 

“Wow,” Jungkook pulls away and his lips are shiny and flushed. Adorable. You think 7th grade Jungkook would be rolling in his Naruto sheets if he knew you two would inevitably end up together. Conversely, 7th grade you would be squealing in your kitten plushie, proud that you managed to nab your childhood crush to live out all the fantasies you’ve imagined since the 4th grade. 

“Jungkook,” you let your flannel fall to the floor in a heap, only leaving your baby blue top in a thin ruched camisole. “I think I want to do the photoshoot. Can’t pass up these pretty petals, y’know?” 

He runs a hand through his hair, gaping. “Really?” 

“Yeah,” you press a wet kiss to his neck, “anyway you want me, baby. Full creative control. I want you to like this as much as I do, okay?” 

With the permission to hold the wheel, Jungkook’s lightheaded and spinning. His eyes rake up and down your gorgeous form, wondering how many good deeds he’s done in his past life to earn a right just as this. 

“In that case,” he presses a palm to your shoulder, pushing you to sit along the velvet cushion, “strip for me.” 

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with MustangSally

MustangSally has 33 stories at Gossamer. Even if you haven’t read it, you’ve probably heard of at least one of them, Iolokus, since it’s an X-Files fanfic classic. All her fics hit big and are well worth your time. I’ve recced some of my favorites here before, including And Dance by the Light of the Moon, All the Children are Insane, and Iolokus. Big thanks to MustangSally for doing this interview.

What's the story behind your pen name?

I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Yes and no. Yes, because life has moved on since the early nineties and the characters and the fans are in vastly different places now. Our current tech would make the premise of the X-Files impossible. No, because of the longevity of some of the Star Trek TOS work (there’s an archive of hard copy fanzines at the University of Iowa). Top-drawer authors started out in TOS fandom.

I’m just greatly saddened that my physical body is showing wear and tear while the fic doesn’t. Fic gets to stay smooth-skinned and muscular, captured at the peak of perfection.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

At the risk of sounding atrociously trite, I think of the friends I made.  I met some very remarkable women that I’ve been able to stay friends with online for over twenty-five years.  We may have moved to Facebook and post entirely too much about our pets and which of our body parts has sagged this week, but we’re friends.  It’s a furiously funny, feminist, and well-educated group of women with jobs in the highest levels of academia, finance, communications, and media.  I’m amused by the fact that if I have a question about how a virus replicates, I can ask a PhD I’ve been drunk with in Las Vegas.

Back in the day, I had a job that sent me traveling around major cities in the US and UK. I could post on a message board and within ten minutes there were people I could go out for dinner and drinks with. We already knew we had something we could talk about for at least a couple of hours. Additionally, most of these people were women so there was an added level of security. Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Well, it was mostly atxc and the Yahoo! groups mailing lists that spiraled out into Geocities sites and, eventually, LiveJournal. The amusing thing is that getting in on the ground floor of social media and the Internet has helped me get jobs!  When I look at a new piece of software, I think, ‘this is hella easier than uploading to Geocities.’  We had to walk uphill both ways, in the snow, on dial-up, fighting off dinosaurs with our AOL CDs while writing HTML code. What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

The past four years in politics have basically been the ugliest online kerfuffle the world has ever seen. I survived the Shipper Wars of ’96 and I thought those were brutal, but that was NOTHING. The only way to win an argument online is to not have the argument at all. Arguing with a troll is like mudwrestling a pig: You both get filthy and only the pig is happy.

Also, READ THE FUCKING TERMS OF SERVICE.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I had the most terrible straight-girl crush on Scully. I wanted to be her best friend, I wanted to BE her.  I wanted to order Chinese food and paint each other’s nails and talk about bones.  Scully and Princess Leia and I could all just hang out poolside with hot and cold running waiters and poolboys, drink margaritas, and bitch about how unfair it all was – if the stupid men would just get OUT OF THE WAY AND LET US DO OUR JOBS, the world would be so much better. What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

This question is really about Iolokus, isn’t it?  You can’t fool me. [Lilydale note: I can neither confirm nor deny the motivation for this question, but I cannot complain about the answer.]

Simply put, I was enraged. The moment it was revealed that Scully’s ova had been used in experimentation, I lost my feminist mind. It was the most obscene defilement imaginable.  Scully wasn’t nearly as angry as I was.  What I thought needed to happen was for Scully to become a fiery force of vengeance against the MEN who had done this to her.  Clearly, I was not going to get that level of satisfaction from the show, as I was imagining Kali-like carnage on a global scale. I emailed RivkaT (whom I did not know well at that point) with a proposition that we work together. Strangely enough, we didn’t meet face to face until we were well into the project, but we did talk on the phone quite a bit. The rules were simple – everyone had to be punished in truly horrific ways, and at some point, we had to see if we could write a car chase (only because that seemed impossible).  Then it basically turned into a very twisted game of chicken to see who could be the most outrageous in terms of killing people off or writing really horrific things that fit within the structure of the narrative.  I did, in the end, write the car chase, but RivkaT one-upped me by throwing in a helicopter (a FOX News helicopter, at that).  

Really, RivkaT?  A helicopter? What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? I am terribly proud of what I wrote, pleased that it brought pain and pleasure in equal amount to people, and, again, thrilled by the people I became friends with. I admit that I stopped watching the show when Scully announced her pregnancy.  I could only see a long jump over a shark tank for the rest of the series. I haven’t watched the new episodes, either.  It is complete in my mind and doesn’t need to be continued.  I wouldn’t say no to having a reunion with some of my fic friends, although we’re still chatting online like everyone does.   Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Rivka and I wrote in the Buffy fandom for a few years, but then we moved on to real adult jobs that left absolutely no time for me to write. I’m in education, and I regularly sweat blood for fear that someone is going to find my old fic. The Buffy people were fun; there was a certain *shininess* to them that I really enjoyed. The X-men authors were just batshit and delightful, and some amazing stuff came out of Marvel fandom, particularly in the Thor/Loki and Steve/Bucky subgenres. I’ve learned to appreciate a good coffee shop AU and one famous Erik/Charles fic where all the main characters are crabs. Seriously, crabs—it’s hysterical. [Lilydale note: Other Crabs Cannot Be Trusted by groovyphilia currently has almost 2,500 kudos at AO3.]

Every few years, I’ll have a student try to explain to me what fandom is and I just smirk. Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? No. Not really. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I fell into an X-Men hole a few years back and had a great old time wallowing in the Cherik muck, and there was a flirtation with BBC Sherlock as well. Strangely enough, I became interested in A/B/O fics only because of what they were saying about the role of women in our society. The limitations on the male omegas seem absurd and then you realize those are the same limitations put on women all. the. time.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

RivkaT very nicely formatted everything and put it up on AO3. What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I will always be stupidly proud of how shocked and horrified people were by Iolokus. The truth of the matter is that Iolokus has Greek drama at its core. Scully is Medea, and the entire story is lousy with “blood on the threshing floor” and Dionysian rites. The everyday is subverted into horror, and wives and daughters will tear men limb from limb like the Maenads. Since I was ultimately disappointed with what Chris Carter did with the entire show, that approach seemed appropriate.

At a certain level, all fic is corrective fic.  Like critic Anne Jamison said, “Irritated fans produce fanfic like irritated oysters produce pearls.”  And because fic has fallen so much into women’s sphere, a pure form of correction is not just the death of the author but the MURDER, a new creation springing up from the spilled blood like Cadmus sowing dragon’s teeth.

Okay, that’s a bit much. Maybe I should just take myself back to the isle of Goth Amazons or something. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I had to write a self-evaluation and a reflection on pedagogy today. If that’s not fiction, I don’t know what the fuck is.

All my creativity is caught up in trying to pretend to be a normal middle-aged white woman so no one knows I am really a lizard.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Keep writing, keep reading, keep fighting the commercialization of narratives. As things grow more and more commodified, all our dreams and desires reduced to tchotchkes made in China, it’s a revolutionary act to separate your work from the marketplace. Be bold, take chances, turn the trope on its ear and kick it in the ass. Take everything the creators have done to make a work palatable to the unwashed masses and set it on fire.

Be subversive.

Be mean.

Have a great fucking time.

(Posted by Lilydale on March 2, 2021)

[starbuckie]

𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬

challenge: winter warmers writing challenge by @spaceodditybarnes

prompt: “it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas” by michael buble

pairing: bucky barnes x reader

words: 2k without lyrics, 2.1k with lyrics

warnings: i genuinely don’t think i can say anything besides FLUFF, oh wait theres some mentions of the shmexy sex (i promise im a functioning person)

summary: in which they take a little holiday stroll and talk about what they are.

a/n: THIS MADE ME VERY HAPPY THANK YOU FOR HOSTING THIS CHALLENGE JADE!!! i kinda veered off the idea of christmas with this one, but my mind created another idea and i kinda just went with the flow. anyways, i really enjoyed writing this one, and i hope you all had a lovely holiday season <3 LOTS OF LOVE Y’ALL

main masterlist || sebastian stan characters masterlist

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Everywhere you go

Take a look at the five and ten, it’s glistening once again

With candy cane and silver lanes that glow

Snow sprinkled to the buildings and sidewalks of Midtown Manhattan, making the traffic clog up to the oh so lovely sounds of taxis and cars honking. It was far from what people pictured it, really, New York was absolute hell during the holiday season. Sloshing boots and teens smoking pot outside the scantily decorated discount store that held very little, sad-looking Christmas lights.

It didn’t bother Bucky. No, he had never been a big fan of the holiday season. Even back in the forties, with his ma and little sisters, they had never been huge on celebrating Christmas, instead choosing to work those shifts during the holiday so they could make a buck or two more to hold them over. Now in the twenty-first century, the holiday just reminded him how truly lonely he was, everyone and everything he used to know long gone.

But then he found Y/N. Granted, it had not been a formal introduction. The poor girl had nearly damn run him over with her motorcycle for Christ’s sake, but nonetheless she crawled into his heart that cold December morning two years ago, and had not left ever since. 

Now she walked by his side at Rockefeller Center, her cold fingers intertwined with his warm ones, admiring the tree while he admired her. He already had every part of her memorized, from late night escapades in the sheets to studying the slope of her nose at team breakfasts. Even when he wasn’t with her, he was always looking at her, unable to pull his eyes away from Y/N’s radiance. 

This little… dalliance of theirs had only started a year back, and they had still yet to put a label on it. Sam had called it friends with benefits, Sharon called it being a couple without the name. Bucky had shut both of those ideas down, claiming that they were taking it slow and weren’t looking to call it anything yet they still had not really talked about it. Was it really worth ruining the bond he had with the girl he fell madly in love with? Whatever it was, they had never taken time out of their day to actually discuss what they meant to each other, but, God, he’d be a liar if he said he didn’t want to know.

“Bucky?” Her sweet voice brought him out of his thoughts, the glittering red and white lights of the Christmas tree reflecting in her eyes. “You seem kind of distracted right now, sweetheart, are you bored? We can head back to the compound if you like.”

He smiled at her worried tone, delicately kissing the tip of her nose. “‘M just thinking, doll, wanna stay as long as I can out here with you.”

The grin he received in return was breathtaking, her red-painted lips turned upwards and a little twinkle (literally and metaphorically) in her eyes. “Good.”

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Toys in every store

But the prettiest sight to see, is the holly that will be

On your own front door

“Oh, look at that helicopter, Buck! That’s so cool!” Y/N pointed at a little boy in the store controlling the airborne toy with a small remote. “They didn't have those when I was a kid, I just had my Tamagotchi.”

He scrunched his nose, staring at her with an emotion that could be described as nothing other than distaste. “What the hell is a Tamagotchi?”

“A Tamagotchi was like this little digital pet thing that you could take care of, mainly used for kids who were trying to prove to their parents that they could take care of a real pet. That’s why I had one at least, but I never did get a tabby cat like I wanted.” Y/N continued to ramble about her weird pet thing as they walked through the toy store, though Bucky didn’t really care. But he’d never stop her either. The way her eyes lit up in childlike wonder and her fascination with the toys on the shelves was too precious to destroy. This was the girl who he had seen slit throats and blow aliens’ brains out, and in the moment she was ogling an American Girl Doll like it was the last pancake at the breakfast table. 

Y/N finally convinced herself that she was done looking at the toys, claiming that she was too mature for such things (she really wasn’t), but he let her lead him out the door, before she halted right in the doorway. ���What is it, honey?”

“Mistletoe.” He glanced up at the little sprig of green and red berries above their heads, hanging by a small strand of twine. A small group of kids with families stood around, watching them with both happy and annoyed faces. How could they not notice Y/N L/N and Bucky Barnes? Bucky’s vibranium arm may have been recognizable, but Y/N’s cheery, a little-louder-than-normal humming had caused a little group to watch them throughout the store. “I think they’re waiting for us to kiss, Buck.”

She leaned into him, placing her lips on his and placing her freezing hands on his cheekbones. Though Bucky had never been big on PDA, the rest of the world seemed to slip away when he was with her. He grinned into her lips, hugging her tightly around the waist so she squealed. When he forced herself away from her intoxicating mouth, she was sporting a bright smile and smudged lipstick that had rubbed off onto his. 

Giggling, she took her thumb and swiped off some of the red residue she had left. “You had a little something there, sweetheart.” 

A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots

Is the wish of Barney and Ben

Dolls that’ll talk and will go for a walk

Is the hope of Janice and Jen

Bucky watched Y/N point out all the different street cart vendors as they walked to Radio City Music Hall. She’d insisted that they go look at the window displays there as well, and who was he to argue? Strangely enough, they hadn’t talked much, other than the occasional “are you cold” from Bucky, to which Y/N assured him she was not. Her quiet voice sang the lyrics to Last Christmas when a little girl stopped in front of them, two auburn braids and green eyes boring straight into hers. 

The small child pulled on Y/N’s skirt, a silent plea to go down to her height. “Hi there, are you lost, sweetie?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” she looked back to an older woman, who gave her a thumbs up and a smile, “because you are my favorite superhero and I hope you have a very good Christmas.”

Y/N nearly melted at the toothless smile the girl, who she assumed was named Sadie by the necklace she wore. “Thank you so much, sweetheart. I hope you have a good Christmas too, and do you know this guy?” She dragged Bucky down next to her, the large, buff man hulking over the small girl. “This is my friend Bucky, do you know him?”

He eyed her warily, as if he were absolutely terrified of the tiny human. “You’re the Winter Soldier!”

Uh oh. The name was one that struck a chord of fear through everyone, still in shock of the events that had taken place in D.C. in 2014. While he and Sam had tried to label a new brand for the Avengers, people didn’t forget all the horrors of HYDRA and their prized assassin. Of course it hadn’t been him, even he knew that, but trying to convince people otherwise still made him feel guilty.

“You’re my second favorite Avenger, after Y/N, of course.” Sadie brought her hand to hover over Bucky’s vibranium one, her eyes wide with excitement. “Mr. Bucky, can I touch your metal arm?”

The man in question could barely utter out a word, muttering some sort of agreement before nodding with a timid smile. Giddily, she touched his arm, feeling all the cool ridges of gold-plated vibranium against the gun-grey metal. Sadie continued to pelt questions at him, about Sam and Redwing to his “adventures” with Y/N on the team.

Bucky, though shy at first, got more and more relaxed as they continued their conversation, his grin growing wider. Y/N loved her fans, she loved them so, so dearly, but seeing them interact with the man she loved was something different. Not a bad different, but a word that could only be described as pure joy. 

“Darling, I think we better leave Ms. L/N and Mr. Barnes alone. Say thank you and happy holidays.” The little girl looked sad, turning to look at her mom with a little pout, but she reluctantly obliged and soon the duo were off, into the crowded streets once again. 

“Y’know once upon a time I had dreamed about having kids,” Bucky commented. They walked along the sidewalks in a comfortable quiet after the encounter with Sadie, but Bucky’s mind had not stopped reeling from the happiness his conversation brought him. “Was gonna come home from the war, settle down with a gal, and live to be at least seventy years old.”

“Well, I can tell you you’re good on the last bit of that, Buck.” He snorted at her jab at his age, something that has become a norm for their little makeshift family of four. “What do you want now?”

He stopped in his tracks and looked over at her with a fond tilt of his lips. “Oh, just something real special.”

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Toys in every store

But the prettiest sight to see, is the holly that will be

On your own front door

“Y/N, what are we?” She glanced over at him from where they sat on the Met stairs, giving their feet a break from walking for hours. 

“What do you mean, Buck?”

He grabbed her hands and held them to his chest, trying to make her understand the amount of confusion and impatience he had with this one burdening question. “We’ve been sleeping together for a year, Y/N. We make each other breakfast, we go out together, I literally have half of my closet dedicated to your stuff, but even after all that we haven’t given us a name yet.”

Y/N sat in stunned silence, staring at the outburst from the man in front of her. To be completely honest she had never really thought about the question, choosing to enjoy each second she got to spend with the wonderful man with her. What she had noticed however, was how whenever they parted ways or were in the most intimate of moments, three little words nearly slipped off of her tongue. Every. Single. Time.

“Well, what do you want to be, Bucky?”

“I want to be the man you love. I want to be the man who loves you with his entire heart, though I like to think I already am. I want you to be my best gal more than anything in the world, and that I want to be the man who gets to hold and love you every night.” Slowly they drifted to each other, a magnetic pull bringing them to each other. “What do you think, doll?”

“I think,” her lips split into a grin, hovering over his own with the exact same expression, “that I want to be your best girl and the one who gets to make you pancakes in the morning and I want to be the one you get a cat with, who we’ll name Alpine because if I know you, names are the most important part of having a pet. I want to be held and loved by you every night, Bucky Barnes, and I am the girl who loves you more than anything in this entire damn world.”

Not another second to spare, Bucky pulled Y/N in close, letting himself get lost in one of her sweet, loving kisses, finally knowing that he was hers and she was his. At long last.

Sure, it’s Christmas once more

[someonestolemyshoes]

Toys Shouldn’t Move

This is a repost of an old.....frankly chaotic fic I wrote a few years ago, but as I was asked to repost some of my old Ackerbabies fics, I figured this one can see the light of day again. Whether I think it should be in the public eye again is. Debatable. 

Anyway, this is technically part of my Our House collection and I’ll archive it in there as well, but I figured since it’s, um, Different. It can have a place of it’s own too!! 

Warning: Non-graphic depictions of sex between inanimate(?) objects. 

They’re getting ready for bed when Levi brings it up, and he only thinks to mention it because Hange is wearing a slip of a nightie, the cool, thin silk see-through at the breast, riding high over her thighs. On any normal day he wouldn’t hesitate, but today he feels dirty. He freezes when her finger grazes over the skin of his chest, body rigid, and at Hange’s questioning gaze he says, “the Cookie Monster fucked Elmo.”

It all started with that fucking Tickle Me Extreme Cookie Monster toy.

Levi wasn’t fond of them, those fuzz-coated, boggle-eyed, shit-your-pants scary robots marketed to brats as young as his own and he can’t see the attraction, doesn’t understand the way Samson claps his hands and spits his laughs, all wide-eyed and full of joy as the fluffy little demon chuckles it’s weird, demonic laughter and rocks in time to the wriggle of Samson’s grubby, tickling fingers.

“Toys shouldn’t move,” he says one day, arms crossed and brow furrowed as Hange takes to the floor and sets the doll in motion. She rolls her eyes, and puffs a lock of hair from her face.

“Say hello to the twenty-first century, short stuff,” she says as Samson dives for the Cookie Monster with a kind of undignified gusto Levi rarely sees in him. Hange stretches to her feet, bends to press a kiss to Levi’s pouted mouth and scoops Leelu out of her chair.

“If this is the twenty-first century, I want out.”

Leelu stretches tiny, sticky fingers and grabs at the air in his direction. Levi lifts her out of Hange’s grip, and settles her on his hip, smudging a streak of chocolate from her cheek with his thumb. She points down at Samson, points at the god-forsaken toy and says, loud and clear and bossy as ever, “want one.”

Hange barks out a laugh, rests her hands on her hips and tips her chin up and guffaws, entirely at Levi’s expense, like there is anything remotely funny about the idea of having not one, but twoTickle Me Extreme Cookie Monster’s shrieking their laughter all day, every day, for the foreseeable future. Levi chucks Leelu’s cheek and scowls.

“Little traitor.”  

**

In the end, they compromise.

On the plus side, no more Cookie Monster robots, and upon hearing those words Levi is about as happy as he can be with Leelu sucking the ends of his cravat between her tiny little teeth.

Instead, though, Leelu will receive her very own Elmo Live – in short, another hairy, beastly little android.

Hange unpacks the box while Leelu watches, eyes wide behind little, round-lens glasses, while Samson pulls tiny tufts of fur from his Cookie Monster and pretends he isn’t looking, too. Levi sips a cup of strong tea, resigned to this fate.

The minute the batteries are in and the switch is flicked on, Elmo rockets to life, voice high and nasal. He throws his head back and laughs, mouth gaping, eyes bulging, and Levi stares over the rim of his tea cup in horror as Leelu beats her palms together, and giggles along with the monstrous toy. Hange is smiling, wide and victorious and yes, a little malicious, too. She casts her eyes to the side, to Levi.

“I hate it,” Levi says, stiffly, blinking at the manic red bot. “I hate it so much.”

And then the Cookie Monster is off alongside it, bending at the waist and gyrating, busting out it’s awful laughter as Samson shrieks, nudges it to set it away again. Elmo is chatting with his mouth spread as wide as it goes, an empty, black pit yawning inside and oh my god, oh my god.

Levi thinks, as Hange steps behind him to rest her chin atop his head and the diabolical sniggering continues, that things absolutely, 100% cannot possibly get any worse.

**

Levi thought wrong.

It’s when he’s packing the day away that he realises his misjudgment. He crosses the room, scooping toy cars and Barbie dolls and Lego pieces from the floor and throwing them into the toy box, and on his final leg of the room, there they are.

They stand side by side, Elmo and the Cookie Monster, bulbous white eyes watching his approach. His hands are tentative as he reaches for them, half expecting the evil little bastards to spring to life in his palms, wriggling and chuckling, but they remain still even as he closes his fingers around their fat, hairy middles.

They remain silent as he carries them across the room, don’t utter a sound as he traps Elmo beneath an arm to make some room in the toy box, stay quiet as he drops them into place.

It’s only when he steps back, and turns to survey the room one more time that it happens.

The Cookie Monster starts it. His infernal laughter rips through the room making Levi jump, twisting and staring in absolute horror as the tiny beast’s body rests where he’d placed it, curled against the back of Elmo, chortling and grumbling phrases Levi can’t even understand and this is bad enough, this is the worst, most terrible thing he has ever witnessed in his whole life, bar none.

And then Elmo joins in.

Elmo shrieks, throws his mouth open and howls and the sounds are terrible enough, but there is one thing that is even worse.

Tickle Me Extreme Cookie Monster has one feature that interests and amazes kids, that has Samson’s eyes bugging out of his skull whenever he turns the damn thing on, and it isn’t his laughter, it isn’t his jolly little phrases, and it isn’t his touch-of-a-hand reactions.

It’s that he moves.

TMX Cookie Monster bends at the waist in jerky little movements; three down, and three back up, lather, rinse, repeat. It’s horrifying enough, watching the fuzzy blue devil do this alone, but right now his fat little body is curling and uncurling itself pressed right up against Elmo’s back.

And Elmo is still screeching, still belting out his laughter, head knocked back and mouth agape and Jesus Christ—  

“They’re fucking,” Levi says to no one, staring at the toys where they sit in the box.

He is hasty to find the off-switch, and he drops them back in the box, shocked and speechless, before shaking his head and abandoning the room.

They’re getting ready for bed when Levi brings it up, and he only thinks to mention it because Hange is wearing a slip of a nightie, the cool, thin silk see-through at the breast, riding high over her thighs. On any normal day he wouldn’t hesitate, but today he feels dirty. He freezes when her finger grazes over the skin of his chest, body rigid, and at Hange’s questioning gaze he says, “the Cookie Monster fucked Elmo.”

Hange frowns, pulls back and settles herself against the mattress, one leg folded neatly over the other.

“If you don’t want to have sex tonight you can just tell me,” she says, a note of humour in her tone. Levi shakes his head, shucks his jeans off and scrubs his hands through his hair.

“The toys,” he says almost desperately, and at Hange’s raised brow, he elaborates. “I was packing them away and they weren’t switched off, and the way they were lying…it looked like they were boning.”

“That’s,” Hange begins, blinking owlishly, “that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Levi doubts this, knowing the kinds of things Hange reads and watches to keep herself entertained through the day, but he doesn’t argue.

“Can we just go to bed,” he says instead, and Hange nods, shaking her head and chuckling low under her breath.

Sleep is difficult, dreams wrought with red and blue and high, squawking laughter.

**

It happens again the next night, but by the time he drags Hange out of bed and down to the living room they have stopped and they sit, silent and mocking in the toy box, unseeing eyes staring into the room.

The worst part is, it never happens to Hange. Night after night she clears away, slips every used and abused toy into the box, and night after night Elmo and the Cookie Monster remain still, and silent.

Years go by; Samson and Leelu age and outgrow the toys they once loved. and Elmo and the Cookie Monster are no exception. Leelu is five when the robots are packed in cardboard and hauled up into the attic, and Levi sets the box to rest with a smile. He’s never been happier to see the back of any inanimate object in all his young life.

New toys come and go, some horrifying, some begrudgingly kind of cool, and as the kids shift from childhood to their teen years the phones come along. Cheap, at first, with thick, fat buttons and black and white screens and Snake, and as the kids grow older the phones become more complex.

They flip, they slide, they twist, they have the entire alphabet squeezed onto individual keys and then they have no keys at all, the epitome of modern technology.

Samson is sixteen, tapping away at the screen of a phone too complicated for Levi to even comprehend, when Hange suggests they clean out the attic for more storage space.

It’s a good idea, Levi thinks – though it’ll create messes he has to clean up – as he re-positions the ladder beneath the hatch for the third time. He holds it still as Samson and Leelu clamber up, and it’s only when Samson yells, “whoa, some of these are from like, ten years ago!” that Levi remembers what demons they’ve buried in boxes beneath the roof of their house.

“I’m making tea,” he says, and Hange nods.

“I’ll grab a coffee before we get started.” She angles her head up the opening and yells, “be careful up there, guys,” before smiling, pecking a kiss to Levi’s cheek, and leading him downstairs.

**

“Man, Lu-Lu, you had terrible taste in clothes as a kid, too.”

Samson dodges the smack Leelu sends his way and crumples the voluminous snot-green dress back into the box

“I, on the other hand,” he begins, brandishing an item from his own box, but his face falls into a grimace at the sight of the bright orange tee and he folds it away with a quiet, “sure glad Mum and Dad don’t dress me now.

“Hey, shit-for-brains,” Leelu says. Samson looks over. “This is all our old toys.”

“Oh, sweet! I bet mine were all better than yours, too.”

Leelu kicks at his thigh as Samson crawls the space between then and he scowls, rubs the battered limb and settles beside the box.

“Hey, look!” He laughs, pointing inside, “the Cookie Monster!”

“He’s squashing my Elmo.”

“Well, yeah,” Samson says, “Cookie Monster comes out on top every time, sis. Everyone knows CM trumps Elmo any day. God, I even picked better toys than you. Nothing’s changed, huh.”

“You know, Samson,” Leelu says, cracking her fingers one at a time. “I’d hate to ruin a perfectly good day by shoving your egocentric fucking face through the attic floor, but I’m not above doing it.”

Samson splays his hands and nods his head in surrender, and then he blinks wide, glinting eyes and reaches for the box.

“Wonder if they still work.”

It takes one touch to set the Cookie Monster flailing.

Samson prods him with a finger and Tickle Me Extreme Cookie Monster thrashes in the box, his rhythmic bending and unfurling awakening Elmo, too. The pair of them screech and holler, decades old laughter ricocheting off the attic walls, and Samson barks, pointing a long finger and grinning from ear to ear.

“Randy little bastards,” he hoots, fishing his phone out of his back pocket and opening the camera.

Leelu stares, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

“What the fuck,” she breathes, gazing in abject horror as her childhood crumbles before her eyes. Samson can barely hold the camera steady, shoulders shaking, tears leaking down his cheeks as the Cookie Monster—

“He’s railing him,” Samson cries, voice high and strained as he fights to get the words passed his laughter. He angles the phone to catch Leelu in the lens, body hunched and eyes bulging, as she stares in terror at their childhood playthings.

“This is the most sordid thing I’ve ever seen,” Samson wheezes.

“I can’t fucking believe it,” Leelu says, quiet, monotonous, and horrified.

It takes a little longer before she thinks to switch them off, and when the idea finally springs to mind she hesitates to reach into the box. It feels dirty, touching them, and Samson wipes the tears from his face when the noise finally comes to a stop.

“I gotta show Mum,” Samson says, coughing out a few additional, choking laughs. Leelu follows him down the ladder in a daze.

**

“Mum, you’ve got to see this.”

Samson rockets into the kitchen, eyes alive, arm outstretched with his phone clutched in his hand. Levi sips his tea and raises a brow, gaze falling on Leelu as she drags her feet over the threshold and slumps into a chair. There’s something about the look in her eyes, a violated kind of shock that Levi has only seen once before, on himself, all those years ago, way back when…

Oh, no.

“Hey, Levi!” Hange laughs, setting her mug on the table. She peels Samson’s phone from his hand and turns it, tapping the screen. “Look what the kids found.”

There on the screen it plays, Elmo Live and Tickle Me Extreme Cookie Monster in all their sleazy glory. Levi jabs a finger first at the horror unfolding on the screen, and then at Hange

“I fucking told you,” he says, sitting a little higher in his chair to take one long, dignified slurp of his tea.

“My Elmo,” Leelu says. She looks at Levi a little imploringly. He shrugs a shoulder.

“It’s a long-standing affair,” he says. Samson claps him on the shoulder while Leelu buries her face in her hands.

“Taking it right in the childhood there, Lu-Lu,” Samson says, “just like Elmo’s taking it right in the—”

“Fuck the fuck off.”

“You didn’t believe me,” Levi says, listening idly as Samson and Leelu argue beside him. Hange replays the video and stares, laughter bubbling up in her eyes. Levi folds his arms, sniffing haughtily. “I told you those things were disgusting. Can we throw them away now?”

“No!” Samson wails, voice a little choked where his neck is hooked under Leelu’s arm. “You can’t punish them for love, Dad. I thought you were better than that.”

“Oh my god.”

“He’s right,” Hange says, grinning impishly, “I didn’t think you were the discriminating type.”

Levi scowls, then purses his lips.

“Can we just throw the damn things out?”

“I’ve lost all respect for you, Pops,” Samson says, and he tries to sigh, but his breath is gurgled when Leelu squeezes his neck a little tighter.

“Throw them out,” she says, “get rid of them.”

Levi kicks his way out of the chair, legs scraping over the kitchen tiles as Samson yells, strangled and desperate, “Injustice!”

Hange replays the video for a third time, tilts the screen first one way, then the other.

“It’s pretty impressive,” she says, “that they’re still working after all these years. And Elmo is way more flexible than I thought.”

Leelu tightens her headlock on Samson, choking off a snide, spit-heavy comment about stamina, and Levi drops back into his chair, tilting his head against the back rest to stare, resigned, at the ceiling. He listens to his children argue, to Leelu’s threats and Samson’s jeers, to Hange’s laughter and her half-hearted reprimands.

And to the monstrous, ungodly audio of toys fucking in his attic.

[twilightinanotherlife]

A Diner in Philadelphia

A Jessamine and Alice story set in my Bella the vampire hybrid AU. Warning for slight homophobia. Word count: 746

Jessamine’s P.O.V 1948

Never before had I felt such pure, unadulterated hope radiate from one person. The emotion flooded my senses. I wanted to drown in it. To be so consumed by hope that it filled my lungs and became my air. Alice’s fingers were interwoven with mine and our hands rested on the table. I squeezed her fingers. A gentle but firm grip to remind myself that she was real. Alice squeezed my fingers in return. She stopped mid-sentence to smile brightly at me. Her hope became entangled with understanding. Only one hour together and she already understood me better than anyone had in my eighty-five years of existence. I wished to tell her what empathy meant to me.

“I already know.” Her voice was soft and clear. Like wind chimes in the summer breeze.

“I understand that you have endured traumas in your time as our kind. That you haven’t known sincere love in decades. And that you have been a pawn in someone else’s goal for the future.”

Both of her hands held mine now.

           “It will take time for you to grasp that what I feel for you is genuine.” Alice continued. “I have felt this way since my very first vision of you.”

I didn’t know how to express my gratitude for her patience, but I didn’t need to.

           “I have waited twenty-eight years for you. I can wait longer. We have all of the time in the world. And if that’s how long it takes for you to open your heart to me, then that’s okay. Just know that I’ll be ready and waiting with mine whenever you are ready.”

Alice continued her story about the coven with strange gold eyes. She had had a vision of their leader who had learned to survive on the blood of animals. It perplexed and fascinated me. Yet the proof of such an unorthodox lifestyle was in front of me. The pupil of Alice’s eyes were rimmed with bright gold. A weight lifted from shoulders. Perhaps it would be possible to find peace and happiness in this endless semi afterlife. So long as I had Alice with me.

The beatific creature before me described her visions to me. Alice saw that we would be greeted by the coven’s leader - Carlisle she called him - and his mate Earnest.

           “Alice, I don’t have the most…friendly appearance.” I gestured to the scars that marred my neck. “Are you sure they will welcome me?”

           “They’ll be afraid at first,” she answered honestly. “But once we explain things to them, Carlisle will be more than happy to welcome us into his family.”

Family. Not a coven. Not an army. A family.

           “The Cullen’s,” I began. “Will you tell me more about them?”

           “Well, there’s already a gifted member. Her name is Edythe. I can see we’re going to be best friends…”

As Alice described our will-be family to me, I felt a tinge of shock. A single drop of incredulous curiosity in my sea of hope, but it created a ripple effect. The curiosity became realization. Which grew into a blend of horror and aversion. I had been happily drowning in the hope that Alice showered me in. Now, these new and appalled emotions were pulling me up to the surface.

I feared these emotions were coming from Alice. That she had become disgusted by the scars she felt on my hand. But my fears were unfounded, because Alice’s mood was just as joyous as it had been when she greeted me. I paid more attention to the humans in the diner. There were very few of them, but their eyes were fixed on mine and Alice’s entwined hands. They whispered and gossiped about the nature of our relationship. Murmured about our scandalous and sinful behavior. I almost wanted to laugh. There’s a long list of sins that will send me to hell but holding a beautiful woman’s hand isn’t on it.

           “Jessamine,” Alice said. “Have you seen Franklin Square? There’s a fountain that is absolutely gorgeous. It’s a lovely place for a stroll.”

It was clear that Alice had heard the whispers of the patrons too and wanted to escape from their judging eyes.

           “A stroll in the park with you sounds perfect.”

Alice left a dollar bill, for our untouched black coffees, on the table. I was sure she overpaid, but I didn’t care. I followed Alice out of the diner and into a brighter future.

[slytherinnbitch]

A continuation to this aka the most awkward Hogsmeade visit/lunch in the History of Hogwarts.

@moramystery I clearly love you a lot else you wouldn't be finding me writing this at this hour, I tell you.

***

It is easily the worst thing ever in Harry's opinion and he had fought a dragon so that is saying something.

As promised Draco and Harry had come to meet his godfather and Moony. They had arrived earlier but that turned out to be the wrong thing to do. They had been in the middle of a thoroughly heated kiss when the elders had entered the Three Broomsticks. The worse part was that neither of them had noticed until they were both literally standing in front of them. Harry had been as red as a tomato while Draco had smirked slightly. He had looked every bit of the pureblood he was moulded to be but Harry had seen right through it, his eyes had given him away. Not to any one else, just Harry.

Now he was sitting in front of what he considered his father figures while Draco went to get their orders.

"So what should we address first?" Moony asks as he turned to between Harry and Padfoot.

"Clearly why he is dating Malfoy of all people." Padfoot mutters and Harry feels his heart sinking.

"Pads...." Remus warns and continues, "Harry, why don't you tell us how you both got together? That would be a good start."

Now that is something Harry could easily do, he tells them how they had just kissed after the whole 'Potter Stinks' fiasco and from there it had started. By the time he finishes, both of them look amused and definitely not as skeptical as when they both had come. Draco comes in just in time, he places the drinks before each of them before taking Harry's hand and sitting down, placing his head on his shoulder as Harry finished their story.

"So now it's your turn." He says after he thinks he had given them enough time to absorb the whole thing.

"Our turn to what exactly?" Sirius asks.

"To tell us how you both got together of course. I mean we both have bets placed. Although Harry couldn't even guess that you both were together and he is your son." Draco retorts back, Harry's heart skips a beat at the last word and so does Padfoot's by his look which is equal parts shocked and pleased.

"Not happening." Moony replies. "Oh come on, Moony! Also he means we have bets over which year you got together because Draco thinks it was clearly at Hogwarts and not before that, although I'm not sure." Harry pleads.

"Draco is absolutely correct. Quite some perspective you have there, Malfoy." Padfoot smiles at them and shares a look with Moony.

"Sirius we are not telling them, absolutely not." Moony says, he is most definitely blushing.

"Five galleons says it was something very hilarious or drunk kissing or worse straight up-- no gay up sex." Draco whispers in his ear, he is smirking and Harry knows that the chances of his winning are very, very low but still he whispers back, "You're on."

"Okay so it was sixth year." Moony says, giving nothing away. He hadn't noticed that they were talking while Draco and Harry made their bets.

"So who won that one?" Sirius asks, clearly interested in knowing the bets they had placed.

"Potter unfortunately. I had said it would be fifth year or before." Draco says, not pleased that he has buy Harry at least twenty chocolate frogs and not to mention share his treacle tart with him for the next month.

"Now that's like my boy." Sirius says and his widens when he realises what he just said. But Harry's heart is threatening to burst with all the warmth and love he is feeling. He beams at Sirius and Sirius grins back.

"And how?" Harry prompts but neither of them answer him. They share a look between them and smile at each other but say nothing.

"Not happening, Harry" Sirius replies after several moments.

"Oh come on! This is going to be fun!" Draco whines.

"Maybe a couple of years later." Moony concedes, "But not now."

Muttering their agreement, they start eating again. Soon they return to the castle, Moony and Padfoot in tow. They had said they wanted to meet McGonagall, although Padfoot had called her 'Minnie' and had laughed at their expressions of horror when told that he had been calling her that to her face since second year.

Things were still a bit awkward between them and he was sure they had more questions for him but that could wait. He also knew that they approved so he wasn't dreading the coming holidays and the questions much. He was just happy that his godfathers knew about it and that's all that mattered, the rest of the world could stick it up their arse if they had a problem with him and Draco for all he cared.

[mandoalorian]

Holiday with Maxwell Lord

DAY ONE: Holiday with Maxwell Lord [Requested by anon] 

Taglist (let me know if you want to be added!)

Permanent: @supernaturalgirl​ @phoenixhalliwell​ @ah-callie​ @luvzoria​ @stardust-galaxies​ @wickedfrsgrl​ @goth-topic​ @nerdypinupcrystal​ @wonderfulfluffer @kiwi-the-first​ @pedroepascal​

December Writing Challenge: @mandos-blaster​ @silent-and-resigned​ @valentinasubmarina​

December Writing Challenge Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Word count: 2k

Warnings: None

Rating: PG

The bracelet was beautiful, a gold bangle that fit your wrist perfectly. Maxwell gently clipped it in place, his thumb grazing your skin just enough to send a tingle up your arm. You admired the way it sparkled under the amber morning light and you couldn’t wipe the smile from your face. You bolted onto Maxwell, wrapping your arms around him and nuzzling your head into the crook of his neck. Taken by surprise, he wrapped your arms around your waist and sat you on his nap. 

“I love it so much.” you beamed, your eyes sparkling with excitement.

“I’m so glad you like it.” Maxwell chuckled, and you pressed a small kiss into his jaw, your arms squeezing tighter around his body - never wanting to let go.

“I love it so so so much.” you repeated excitedly, tracing your finger along the bracelet and holding your wrist to the window so the rays of sun bounced from it.

“That’s not all.” Maxwell whispered in your ear and your head snapped towards him, eyes comically wide. He handed you an envelope with your name written on it. Your eyes went from looking at the envelope, to looking at him, to looking back down at the envelope in bewilderment. Maxwell had a tendency to go overboard when it came to treating you to gifts and presents, especially on occasions like Christmas. He looked even more excited handing you the envelope than he did handing you the bracelet.

You hesitantly opened the envelope and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Maxie, did you write me a letter?” You were trying to hold back a smile but it became near impossible as you felt your cheeks warm up with love. He shrugged and you bit your lip, unfolding the piece of paper.

My love,

I know you have always said that you wished to travel the world. I’ve had the privilege of going to many countries, but I would like nothing more than to return to them with the love of my life. The past year has been amazing and I just know that this coming year will be even better. Which is why I have booked for us to visit twelve capital cities all around the world, one every month. It’s going to be a busy year but I know we can make it together. I love you so much darling.

Yours truly,

Maxwell

You were speechless. You didn’t know what to say. Your hands were shaky and you looked up at him with glazed eyes, your lips parted slightly from shock. “We- you- I-���

Maxwell smiled, reaching over to your wrist and covering his hand over the bracelet. “I want this year to be one you will never forget. So with every country we visit I’ll get you a little charm for your bracelet, to remember.”

“Max,” you exhaled, exasperated. “I don’t need a charm to remember travelling the world with you. I can’t… I can’t believe it. I can’t…”

“If you’re overwhelmed we don’t have to do it,” Maxwell said calmly, tilting your chin up with his finger so you were looking into his eyes. “It was just an idea.”

“Best idea you’ve ever had!” you screamed, tears spilling from your eyes as you pressed your lips to his. “I love it so much. I love you so so much.” You cried, your tears dampening his own cheeks as you pressed your forehead against his. He cupped your face and wiped away your tears. “Max,” you sobbed. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what-”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he affirmed, smoothing your hair out of your face. “C’mon, let’s get up and get started on making the Christmas dinner.” he grinned, taking your hand and pulling you out of bed.

Maxwell lived for the phrase 'go big or go home'. “Next year you're going to struggle to beat this year's Christmas present!” you nudged him playfully. 

"Oh honey, I already have next year's present planned." he smirked suspiciously, but you just brushed off the comment.

The festive season was never an easy one for Maxwell Lord. Celebrations were always rife in the Lord manor, until Maxwell's father passed away on Christmas Eve when Maxwell was only sixteen. After that, Maxwell was thrust into corporate business bullshit without a choice. No more fun for Max, not even on Christmas.

Before you, December's were usually the same every year. A couple of charity Christmas galas here and there and a good fuck from one of his assistants or secretaries. Plenty of alcohol to drown out his sorrows. It had been about twenty five years since Maxwell enjoyed a traditional, hearty, Christmas dinner.

You were his angel. His saviour. His own little Christmas miracle. As you set up the kitchen utensils and preheated on the stove, Maxwell put on a Christmas record. You tied your apron around your waist and threw another apron over a begrudgent Maxwell. "You don't want to get your suit messy, do you?" you teased, giggling as he sighed in defeat and let you tie the cloth around his body into a pretty little ribbon.

"I can't believe I'm actually making Christmas dinner." Maxwell shook his head in disbelief and you shrugged with a sheepish smile.

"It's not that hard. Your housechef will appreciate Christmas day off and I promise you'll enjoy the meal so much better knowing that you worked your own blood, sweat and tears into it." You rubbed his back and gave him a small peck on the cheek.

"Blood?" Maxwell gasped, his eyes widening in horror. You rolled your eyes and approached the sink, washing your hands.

It was January second when you and Maxwell set off to your first destination— London. The city lit streets were still lapped in thick pearly white snow. "London is one of my favourite places in the world," Maxwell told you, taking your gloved hand in his as you walked through Hyde Park. Trees were lit in sparkling gold lights and the ponds were completely iced over.

"That doesn't surprise me," you shivered, Maxwell wrapping an arm around you. You knew he was a city boy at heart. "Can we go to the palace now?" you asked, blinking your glazed eyes.

Maxwell smiled so hard the corners of his eyes crinkled. "Of course darling." he promised, pulling you out of the park and along Downing Street. 

If Maxwell was anything, he was a man with a plan. He knew you'd be absolutely enamoured by the beauty of Buckingham palace. You stood by the gates, trying to grab the attention of the beefeaters and squint into the windows. "What do you think the queen is doing right now?" you asked Maxwell curiously.

"Uhm, I don't know honey." Maxwell responded, only paying half attention to you. He was too busy rummaging in his deep coat pockets for your gift. The first charm on his list of twelve promises. He brought out the red velveteen box and presented you with it with a charming smile. "Surprise!" he grinned.

You took the box and slowly opened it, revelling in what was a beautiful gold charm of the exact palace you were standing outside. "Oh Maxie," you whispered in shock. "It's beautiful." you began to feel yourself tear up. You hadn't had an easy life, but Maxwell knew how to spoil you. He never failed to treat you like the princess he saw you were.

"To remember London." he told you, taking the charm out of the box and clipping it onto your gold bracelet. You smiled, standing on your tip toes and pressing a grateful kiss into his soft lips.

"I love you so much." you told him, hugging him tight.

Maxwell kept his word. Each month, you found yourself in a brand new destination with your boyfriend. A place you had never been before. In February it was Rome, then Paris, then Madrid, Vienna, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Cape Town, Cairo, Berlin, Mexico City… and before you knew it, you had an almost full up charm bracelet and it was back to December.

You frowned, leaning over the sofa and switching off the news. There was a blizzard and you were back home, completely snowed in and unable to leave Washington DC. But for Max, it was perfect. You looked at your charm bracelet, wondering if you could even fit on a final charm. Not that it mattered anymore. It looked like your plans were out the window.

"Darling?" Maxwell called from the balcony. You sighed, standing up and padding along to the double glass doors. Icicles hung from the roof and little snowflakes were gently falling from the sky.

"Everything ok-" your eyes widened when you saw Maxwell down on one knee, little pearls of snow laced in his dark blonde hair. He was holding an open ring box with the most stunning diamond ring inside.

"I never imagined myself doing this. I gave myself a whole year to prepare. Sweetheart, this was always the plan. I knew from the day I met you I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. You make me the happiest man on the planet and everyday I wake up feeling completely undeserving of you but so thankful. You changed me for the better and you gave my life more meaning than just fame and fortune. I wanted to do this some place nicer than here, some place you'd never been before. Finish our adventure with a bang. But there's no place like home," Maxwell smiled as happy tears began to spill from your eyes. "I'm sorry it's not a charm," Maxwell sighed, taking your hand in his. "But if you'd do me the honour of wearing this ring for the rest of your life…" Maxwell's eyes were filled with nothing but hope and adoration. Nervously, he breathed your name. "Will you marry me?"

"Yes! Oh yes Max I'll marry you." you cried and Maxwell chuckled happily, taking the diamond ring out of the box and sliding it onto your finger. He stood up and wrapped his big arms around you as you sobbed happily into his chest.

"I love you so much darling," he whispered, pressing a kiss into your hair. "I'll love you forever."

[quillsareswords]

Breathing Room

Damian Wayne

Of course the little dog here is basically my sweet baby girl Rogue with a different name (Baby/Babe because I'm sure all of you at home have dogs you'd like to substitute names for), who sends all her love and puppy kisses to all of you! Ugh this was fun to write. So goddamn fluffy I could call Build-a-Bear a competitor.

Reader is a Titan.

Requested:

Prompt List // Masterlist (in bio)

"If I die, I'm leaving my dog to you."

Damian turns halfway to give you a suspicious glance over his shoulder. Then, he turns back to the fire place, where he's successfully stoking the flames currently living there.

The animal in question is the next victim of his scrutiny, laying perfectly peacefully on the corner of your blanket that's been left unused on the couch next to you. He points, you nod, he rolls his eyes.

"Awe! What? You wouldn't take my poor baby girl in?" You're borderline incredulous. "Did you hear that Baby? He doesn't love you!"

He scoffs, then pushes himself to his feet and joins you on the couch once more. The little dog lifts her head to look at Damian, almost accusingly.

You pet her gently. "Don't mind him, Baby, he's just jealous because I love you more," you soothe, babytalking the eight pound pooch like the spoiled princess she is.

"Firstly, you aren't going to die, it's only a snow storm," he argues, "and secondly, even if something were to happen, of course I'd take in your large rat."

You gasp and lightly slap his chest. "Damian Wayne!" you shrill. He chuckles loudly. "You take that back right now! Apologize!"

He rolls his eyes, knowing that if he doesn't, you'd probably give his spot on the bed to Titus, who's listening to the entire exchange from the giant pillow on the floor. He reaches across you, lays a hand on her little head, and says clearly, "Baby, I am sorry for calling you a rat. You are clearly small not-dog."

You sigh in exasperation and defeat. He laughs, though it's obvious he's trying not to and failing miserably. "What am I going to do with you, you scoundrel?"

His arm lays across your shoulders as you shiver for the second time in the last five minutes. "Well, you can first let me chose what movie we watch since I started the fire for you."

You can't help snuggling closer to him. "Firstly," you mock, "I could have started the fire myself. Secondly, I'll let you pick the movie if you let me pick the genre."

"Deal," he relents.

Two comedies and a horror film later, you hear the front door downstairs unlock, with a roaring chorus of arguing voices behind it.

When Kori and Dick invited you and Damian to a Titans Winter Vacation, you had been a little skeptical. You hadn't been a Titan for very long, and you weren't as familiar as you'd like to be with any of them.

However, you'd known Damian for years, and he insisted it wouldn't be as bad as you thought. He wasn't entirely keen on the idea either, but you'd eventually agreed that it'd be nice.

They'd rented a cabin up in the mountains. It was three stories, with six bedrooms, five bathrooms, two living rooms, a home theater, and a game room. You especially loved the balconies on every level. That provided a truly glorious view of the Smoky Mountains.

Though, when you heard it was six bedrooms, you knew that meant sharing a room. You only really slept alright by yourself or with Damian, so it concerned you that you'd most likely be sharing a bunk bed with Raven, as you and Damian were seventeen. But, because Dick knew you wouldn't be doing anything more than cuddling, he was more than happy to let you and Damian share a queen-size in the loft, directly above Garfield and Jaime's.

To sweeten the deal even further, everyone was in perfect agreement that you should definitely bring your dog. She was very sweet and quiet, and perfectly mannered. You didn't worry about taking her anywhere. It made you feel even better that Damian was taking Titus.

So here you are now, tucked into Damian's side on a plush plaid couch in the loft, Baby curled up next to you and Titus sprawled at your feet, listening to Gar and Raven and Cyborg come shivering in through the front door.

"Holy hell, it's cold as balls!" Gar shouted, kicking off his boots at the door. You were about to call down to ask how town was, but he was already sprinting up the spiral staircase.

Damian sighed, though only loudly enough for you to hear. He thought of the loft in it's entirety as yours, even though the bedroom was an entirely separate room, kept private by a thick door.

Garfield paused by the couch to lean over and pet Babe, which she gladly accepted, before zipping over to the firepalce to warm up.

"How was town?" you ask. Damian grabs the remote and backs out of the movie, which was already rolling credits.

"Eh, it was okay. Grocery store was neat, though. Had a candy section that was lit."

You laugh softly. "Get all the groceries?"

He nods. "Yeah, but their produce section was so confusing."

"Are you sure you aren't just dull?" Damian quips. You roll your eyes and flick his ear as you sit up. "Hey!" he chirps.

"Ha!" Garfield shouts and points boldly, though he looks as though he's about to hurdle the railing behind you. "Damian got in trouble!"

Damian, the tough, mature man he is, flings a pillow toward the green boy with as much force as he can while slouched against the couch back.

"Watch the fire, you dufus," you scold, laughing, as you slide toward the steps with Baby at your heels.

"Ha ha! You got in trouble agaaiinn!" Garfield sings. Then he shrieks, and then there's a green bird diving over the wooden railing and Damian's shouting something that has you scooping up Baby and hustling down the stairs to stay out of his way.

• • •

Your bedroom is dark, and because you both like the curtains pulled away from the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the drop of the mountain your cabin is perched over, it is quite cold.

Too cold for your liking, even pressed against Damian's back and Babe curled into the small of yours.

It's been fifteen minutes of listening to Bob's Burgers play on the television over your shared dresser and the collective body heat still isn't enough. So, in a desperate attempt to chase the chill off, you half unwind your arms from his waist, and slide them under the hem of his tee shirt to press them flat against his side and his back.

While you're sighing in relief, he's jumping and sucking in a breath of absolute shock. He all but gasps, "What are you doing with your ice cold hands up my shirt?"

You almost laugh at the tone of absolute offence he's using. "I'm cold! We can't all keep the same core temperature as the sun, Wayne."

"Well Jesus, you could have at least warned me," he grumbles, rolling in your hold to face you.

You fall asleep pretty quickly now, wrapped up in his arms, legs tangled with yours beneath a heavy quilt.

• • •

You're always the first ones up. Well, not always, but for the past four days that you've been on the trip, you both have. It's usually Damian, and only Damian, but you aren't far behind once your main source of heat leaves you alone in bed with sunlight beaming into the room.

You, Baby, and Titus all follow him down the spiral staircase and through the main common room, dining room, and the intermediate stretch between the two staircases and two bedroom doors.

He turns on the coffee pot for the rest of the team while you start the kettle and set out tea bags and mugs for the two of you. While he's still fiddling with the settlings on the machine, you let the dogs out to the small fenced yard off to the side of the huge cabin.

The machine spurs to life just as you're lifting yourself up onto the countertop of the kitchen island. "Are you gonna make pancakes and eggs?" You keep your voice low, considerate of Raven in the room on the left and Jamie and Garfield in the room on the right, all still sleeping.

"I wasn't planning to," he answers, leaning against the counter by the gas stove, where the steel kettle is still heating up.

"But you promised. . ." You just out your bottom lip and tilt your head just a little, soft eyes oh so slowly grinding away at that steel cover he keeps locked around his heart.

After exactly forty two seconds, he caves in. "Did the Happy Bunch even get the ingredients yesterday?"

Your sweet begging facade switches on a dime, now housing a devious glint in your eyes. "Of course they did, I put it on the list."

He sighs, loudly. He lets the dogs in before he goes around the kitchen, gathering all things necessary for the pancake mix you love so much.

It's twenty minutes later when Kori and Dick are opening the basement door and emerging from the hall downstairs, Kori's hair just as unkept as every morning and Dick's shirt just as wrinkly as the night before.

"Sometimes I think you only love me for my pancakes," Damian chides playfully, having yet to associate the creaking hinges with the basement door.

"I won't deny it," you laugh, grinning down at the bowl you're stirring with more dedication than is probably necessary.

"Damian, I didn't know you cook," Kori states, with enough surprise that you're a little taken aback.

He turns to look at her over his shoulder, still dicing strawberries without looking and making your nerves twitch while he does it. "Only occasionally."

"Hey hey, watch what you're doing, boy," you sound a little too much like someone's grandmother, but you're really a little aghast that he hasn't steeled himself yet.

Damian reserves a certain part of himself around most people. It's a part of him you're allowed to bask in only after years of assurance and affection. You wouldn't be so surprised if it was only shown to Dick, but it was Kori he was speaking to, eyes still a little glittery and smile still lopsided and prominent.

In a moment of adoration and maybe a little pride in him, you hum, "Only for me, of course."

To yours and even Kori's awe, he chuckles. "Only when you force me, you mean."

You recover faster than she does, and cover yourself with a laugh. "I wouldn't call you promising me strawberry-blackberry pancakes forcing you, but if you wanna try and save a little face . . ."

Kori turns to Dick, with a look on her face that is silently asking if he's seen the same thing. His eyes flit between her, you, and his youngest brother, before they settle on you. He seems a little less jarred.

"Gezz, what'd you do, (Y/N)? Drug him in his sleep?"

With Garfield's arrival, Damian's smile fades off and he resumes quickly dicing strawberries on a wooden cutting board.

You mumble into your batter, "I'm starting to wonder."

• • •

At 11:15 in the morning on the sixth day, a war commences.

While you and Damian decide to hide out the still-raging snowstorm in your cozy little loft with your faithful hounds, half the team is out in the snow, hurling handfuls of snow that vaguely resemble spheres at one another from behind artificial snowbanks.

Though eventually, you decide the total war out in the front yard is far more entertaining than anything on his Hulu or Disney+. So, you pop a bowl of popcorn and brew your third batch of tea, and sit backward on the couch to watch out the massive windows that take up most of the front wall of the common room.

Over the porch roof, you can watch all the atrocities of battle play out from the safe warmth of your loft together.

Though, some time around three, Damian reminds you that you have plans to drive into town to explore, and asks if you'd rather stay and finish the battle.

An hour later, you and Damian stand at the front door, dressed to brave the weather, having bid your dogs goodbye as you left them in the warm safety of your bedroom.

Damian's hand is on the doorknob, but he seems hesitant. "Are you ready?"

You flip up your hood and pull your scarf up over your nose. "Yes."

He hauls the door open, and with your hand in his, you quickly cross the porch, jump the steps, and make it halfway around to the driveway, when you hear somebody shout, "Civilians! Open fire on civilians, they're both wicked!"

Damian spins on his heel to threaten the entire group, but you beat him to it when you see Jamie, snowclod wound up, aimed right at you.

Silence falls over the battlefield like the snow still drifting down at an alarming rate.

You point a sharp finger at him. "If you do this, I will never forgive you," you declare lowly. "I swear to every god in existence you'll wake up with your head sewn to the carpet."

He stops. Narrows his eyes. "You're bluffing."

"Am I?"

A moment's debate. You can image the Scarab waving you off with we can take her. But oh, that thing has never seen you with a grudge.

He swivels on his feet and hurls it at Raven, who's been hiding behind the snow that'd been shoveled off the sidewalk that morning.

You take Damian's hand again and make a break for his car.

After the drive to Downtown Gatlinburg and three or four hours spent roaming the streets, you're already talking about living there. In all honesty, he isn't so opposed to the idea of buying a home in the area. You seem so in your element here, and the town and the scenery surrounding you is so breathtaking.

But you know you'd never be able to drag him out of Gotham. Perhaps a vacation home, or maybe retirement.

You decide to stop in to a little cafe in a place called The Village, which is a collection of shops surrounding a lovely courtyard off the main stretch of Downtown.

It's crowed inside, so you decide to stand out by the fountain while you sip your steaming drinks and converse about the little shops you liked best so far. You are particularly fond of a candy shop, and he would very much like to check out a blade shop a block or so down the way.

Your teeth chatter as you talk about wanting a souvenir, something small to keep on a shelf, and finish the rest of your hot chocolate.

"Are you that cold?" his question is simple enough, but his voice is so soft and so drenched in concern it catches you off guard.

You laugh lightly. "I'm okay, just might need another hot chocolate before we set off again," you shrug, jamming your hand into your pocket has he takes the paper cup from you and nods.

"Well, I'm sure that can be arranged." He smiles.

There's something in his eyes, though. It's subtle, in the little wrinkles between his eyebrows, and the redness of his nose and his cheeks. As much as you like the way it looks on his honey crisp complection, it's starting to worry you. Not the blush he gets from the cold's kiss, but the slightly out of character openness he's been exhibiting. You like to think that maybe he's growing out of hiding his louder emotions, for his own sake, but you can't take the risk that it's something else.

He returns to you with an offering of mint hot chocolate. He smiles again when he greets you, and the pair of you set off back toward the sidewalk do a little shopping.

"Hey, Dame?"

"Hm?"

You wind your arm around his elbow with your free hand. "Everything okay with you?"

He turns his full attention on you. "Yes, of course. Why do you ask?"

You take a sip out of your hot chocolate. "I don't know, you've just been acting a little differently the last few days." His eyebrows crease in a worried way, and you get the sense he's disappointed. "In a good way, I mean," you correct yourself quickly, "I just want to be sure it isn't for a bad reason."

He shakes his head and takes a deep breath. You turn out onto the sidewalk, and start making your way farther up the street. "No, there isn't anything wrong," he assures. "I can't exactly explain it, which I'm not entirely okay with, but it's been. . . nice, this trip. The land is beautiful, the air is much cleaner than in Gotham, the people here are nice." He turns to face you again. "And you seem a lot more comfortable with the Titans. I'm glad; I'd feared you wouldn't bond with them at all, truthfully, and they're all far more bearable with you around."

You nod as he speaks, eyes jumping past him to the signs on the building fronts every once in a while. There's something he isn't saying, and you know it.

"And. . ." He sighs. "And you."

You pass him a quizzically quirked brow.

His voice lowers and he lays a hand over yours on his arm. "I love you so much, (Y/N). I can't even find the right words anymore."

Your eyes lock with his and you stop walking. Your lips part because your jaw goes a little slack, and your wide eyes reflect all the neon colors of the signs in the window on your right.

It isn't the first time he says he loves you. And you know it won't be the last, but he hardly ever says it so freely. It always behind closed doors in the softest moments, when you're both vulnerable or so drunk on love for one another neither of you can think straight.

You can't remember the last time he's been so open about in in front of anyone else, and it only ripens your concern.

You pull him closer, eyebrows slanting together. "Damian, I'm serious, are you okay?"

Now he's the one with one eyebrow reaching for answers. "Pardon?"

"I'm sorry," you blurt, "you know I love you from here clear to Alpha Centauri but you're really starting to worry me."

He laughs at that. Then, his eyes are as soft as his smile, and his hands smooth down the sides of your arms before they rest on your forearms. "(Y/N), I promise you there is nothing wrong with me now that hasn't been for the past seven years. Am I not allowed to let once in a little while, and allow myself a little breathing time?"

You hadn't realized you were so tense until you relax under his touch with the assurance. "Of course you are," you reply after a pause. You take one hand off your hot chocolate to rest it on his chest, coincidentally over his heart. "I just worry sometimes. I don't want anything to happen to you, Dame."

"I know," he says. He gingerly takes the paper cup from you and sets it on the bench you hadn't noticed before. He pulls you into his arms, enveloping you in a warmth like sunshine and a scent that's too particular to Damian Wayne to be mistaken. Your arms wind inside his open coat to the hoodie he's wearing underneath.

A long moment passes in relative silence. Your eyes are closed, ears perked to the drifting sounds of uncaring passersby and the rumbling of passing cars.

"I really want to slip my hands under your shirt right now," you mumble into his shoulder. "But if you tell me not to, I won't."

He grunts.

And for a moment, you ponder weather or not that was a denial. You silently make your choice and close your eyes again.

He leaps under your touch. "Damn it, (Y/N)!"

[embersrpg]

IT’S TIME ----

No one feels ready or prepared for the Reaping that has come on the early summer day. For some, the sun shines bright and hard, beads of sweat running down temples, sweat causing shirts and dresses to stick to backs. For others, it’s raining hard and there’s no refuge, leaving everyone soaked and shivering as they await for the bitter fate of the two tributes that will be heading into the Quarter Quell.

The Escorts stand amongst the crowd, before them, a massive bowl stands, littered with papers of the names of the victor’s loved one. No questions have been answered. Will Capitolites be in the pool? Will victors be in there? What about loved ones crossing over districts?

The moment is tense but it goes forward without question.

ONE:

Saffron Sky

The name which is first drawn in One summons Saffron Sky to the stage. Thirty-nine, she’s beautiful, tall, fit. She’s wearing a long silk dress as she blows a kiss to her cousin, a victor from a time long before she was able to win. She holds her head high. There’s absolutely no telling what the expression on her face says. She is a complete wildcard. Maybe that’s what she wants.

Gold Farlock

Gold is built. Standing at 6′6, people have always wondered if the Farlock family bread, or maybe even genetically altered, a perfect soldier. He’s standing beside Tiberius, who looks prideful as she shakes his nephew’s hand and he ascends to the stage. He’s far past the age of being able to fight in the Games in a normal year. It can’t help but raise questions; coming from a family such as this, why hadn’t he fought back then? And why were they so excited now?

TWO:

Osa Pittsmith

Elegance has never looked so clear on a face before. Osa Pittsmith, older sister to the brutal victor, Teal, was always rumored to be brighter, more charming, more attractive, but what she made up for in personable skills and looks, she lacked in sheer brute force. As far as you can tell, she’s an enigma. But both she and her sister share a long, meaningful glance that is hard to define.

Terra Ivornary

The audience freezes as they all cast their eyes to the older woman. In her early sixties, she’s plump, but she walks with pride up the stage. She’s a baker from the square, but she has confidence. The only noticeable mark of her age, regardless of the graying hair and withered skin, is her trembling hands. To come from a Career district, reaping a simple baker seems shocking.

THREE:

Zero Holloway

Someone clears their throat when the name gets drawn from the bowl. The young man fixes his glasses before he starts for the stage. Someone tries to reach for his wrist but he slips from their grasp before it’s too late. It’s cold. It’s quiet, but Zero stands among the rest, accepting fate.

Citron Gulwether

No one even knows who Citron is, who they’re connected to. Seventy, withered, and looks tired. There’s someone far off that you could mistake for calling to volunteer as tribute, but it goes ignored. Citron moves slowly towards the stage, but manages with no help. Their breath is loud, they’re running out of steam but it’s all for the game. 

FOUR:

Marina Tidestrum

She emerges from the crowd, but not confused. Just a slow step forward as if this is a declaration of sorts. The ex of Roux Selkirk Her fingers rub together nervously as she tries to search for eyes that will give her the answers. She doesn’t get them. She just gets to the stage where she’s championed like an icon. It feels far from that.

Abe Iss

Abe stands tall. He’s built well enough that there are some that clap at his reaping. A lot more reassuring of victory than the previous draw. He’s smiling, or at least, it looks like it’s supposed to be a smile. He’s not particularly attractive or charming, but he’s built. He’s a mentee to an old victor, much like a grandson. His fists clench and he looks brutal, but also, for some reason... uncomfortable.

FIVE:

Darby Skiberry

Darby Skiberry was a nurse. Specifically, one that took care of the children. She was in her mid-forties, been a nurse for thirty years. She was a mother figure to many, including the victor for the 67th Games, Ambro Forge. There’s some sobs from the crowd as she climbs to the stage, her fear is evident.

Kin Rosesand

The youngest child in the Rosesand family, youngest sibling to Aven, perhaps the most needy in the bunch, but now a young adult, trudges onto the stage and cries. Openly. They do not want to be there, and the eyes of hundreds on them, gives them a visible tremble. This was not what they were prepared for.

SIX:

Helena Clearwater

She’s forcing a smalls mile on her face, dusting off her dress as she starts for the stage, no guidance needed. Pista Clearmark’s mother, ever the beacon of warmth, has now found her time. It’s hard, judging from the audience, if she’s happy or heartbroken.

Cabil Stulvurg

Stulvurg is an old name. Cabil is young. Twenty. Everyone knows that boy is twenty. He was birthed in the river from his mother who didn’t get to see the face of her new baby boy. Stulvurg designs the very trains they build. Baster Stulvurg, Cabil’s father, was intense but never terrible. But Cabil was warmth. Cabil, who made the mistake of falling in love with Haldi Commonbo, the winner of the 70th Games. Haldi, who shrieked and cried as her lover sauntered onto stage. Baster, a cold and collected man, yelled for his son’s freedom. For once, power couldn’t buy safety. 

SEVEN:

Nettle Blume

She can’t exactly see straight. She walks with a cane even though she’s in her thirties. After a lumber accident, Nettle was considered useless. Her family was going to perish after she couldn’t work any longer. Caspan Roseleaf, who was a victor over forty years ago, hired her to tend to his home in the victor village. For over a decade, the two have had a tight bond, and watching her struggle to get on the stage makes the crowd uneasy.

Harbor Gazel

There’s confusion that settles over every one. But Harbor... he’s not around anymore, is he? Doesn’t matter, next thing everyone sees is a frail, weak figure being tugged onto the stage. Harbor Gazel, is hard to recognize. There’s no hair to be found on their face. None from their head, their eyebrows. There’s wisps of eyelashes but they look near transparent, and there’s small adjustments to his face. Different cheekbones, mainly. He looks... kind of like Harbor. Then raises the question, has he been in Seven this whole time? No one can know, because before questions start being asked, he looks to the camera, and raises his hands, beginning to form gestures and movements. And then---... the camera cuts out.

EIGHT:

Beck Baxwoll

A younger sibling to Emory Baxwoll, not so small anymore, looks tired and worn from the day’s work as he steps onto the stage. It’s like there’s no room to process the pain of it all before he stands there. This is just another job he has to do, isn’t it?

Chrysanthe Silverhair

The local clothes maker. Sewist of all things even remotely appealing within Nine. Chrysanthe became friends and primary caretaker of Dahilia Feher years ago. A victor, now in her nineties, with no living family. Chrysanthe has always been a beloved force within the community, and there are sobs heard when they step onto the stage.

NINE:

Sola Honimoore

The reaping of Perri Honimoore’s son is met with silence. There are some in the crowd who are old enough to remember the story. The birthing of the young boy who became attached to Perri’s leg. The boy scooped up in the wreck of the Games. And now, as much as Perri has fought against it, it seems his ties to the Games is not ready to release yet.

Holly Nightwing

“It’s not fair!” She shouts only seconds after her name is drawn. “I didn’t ask to be loved!” She’s young. Maybe her mid-twenties. She looks at stocky as the grain that blows in the wind behind them. Only in whispers do they know of Holly’s secret companionship to victor Kuds Full, a victor from the 72nd Games. A Victor who had been married to someone else only monthsafter returning from victory.

TEN:

Ginger Flatlock

The daughter of the 32nd Hunger Games winner, Archer Flatlock, ascends to the stage with trembling knees, if only for a split moments before her back straightens into something that resembles forced confidence. Looking to her father, his face is pale, almost green, but makes no noise. He’s frozen in silence.

Bire Wildvale

Tall, but not especially built. Bire had a tendency to work on the fields. Just a simple man, in his late twenties. Bire married Fennel two years ago, the son of Archer Flatlock. Bire, while not blood related, was just as much a son in the Flatlock house as his husband. His eyes are read and he’s squinting from the son but he stands beside Ginger, hand on her shoulder. The Flatlock family, and specifically Archer, feels no mercy this year.

ELEVEN:

Birch Peaceroot

It’s a swift reaping. Elven is far too sued to their loved ones and their promising youths being ripped from their cracked fingertips. The young Birch, Rigg’s Nephew, hurries to the stage. It’s hard not to spot the horror that’s on his face as he looks out to his expansive district, and their forced apathy.

Parsley Fairwillow

There’s not many victors in Eleven. Not that are alive anyways. But Parsley, who’s close to middle age, peppered with silver makes in her hair, looks confused as she steps onto the stage. Her father, a victor of the 13th hunger Games, had died thirty-four years ago. As she’s lead on the stage by Peacekeepers, the horror registers on the face of some of those in the crowd. Even in death, your loved ones aren’t saved.

TWELVE:

Wren Thornewood

There’s an audible wail that comes from the crowd the second the name is drawn. Though it’s hard to find, without much fight, the young girl ascends to the stage, her hands joined together at her front. The crowd looks disturbed. The girl they came to know and adore. The girl who just barely got by last year from her sister. Her time as finally come.

Gage Overgrove

It’s horror on the man’s face as he starts for the stage. He looks back towards his wife, who looked plump with her pregnancy, that she was about ready to give birth at any moment. The Overgrove family doesn’t console, only stands frozen, and Gage can’t even look their sibling Hudson in the eyes as they stand beside the young Wren.

OOC --- THE MEAT AND BONES

Let’s just get into it. You guys voted, shockingly unanimously, wow. So, this is just a quick drop! We will have this plot drop for two days (two for my sanity because the next drop is huge and I need some time to write it all up), which is mainly meant to give you some time to write a self para reacting to this drop. It’s not mandatory. If you’d rather take the break, by all means, please do! I just ask, if you plan to write a self para, please take this time to get it up before the next drop.

For in character timeline, from here there will be quick movements. Characters get rushed to the train and there will be no meeting with loved ones (similar to Catching Fire, Katniss didn’t have a chance to talk to her family before being sent in again). You can write of your character getting on the train but do not write further than the first night on the train. The next drop will begin on the morning of the train ride to the Capitol.

Plot with other members if you’d like to mention conversations or interactions between characters in your self paras. I do not recommend this time to have threads since there will be so little time. But hey, if you can write a thread in two days, go off. 

If you have an fc for your designated npc, send it my way (or if you want me to pick, bc I can def feel some vibes from the ones you guys have). I might make a graphic since I definitely have some npcs in mind for some folks on this list. Not guaranteed but... I might make one.

You might be wondering if you will be able to write against any of these npcs. The answer is... maybe. 24 npcs sounds like a lot to me so I’m trying to figure out how to best write npcs that doesn’t burn me out and gives everyone a chance to write with and npc (doesn’t have to be the npc tied to your muse, could be any of them). If that’s something you might be interested in, message me. By gaging how many people are interested in how many npcs will give me an idea of the work it’ll take. It’s not a guarantee but it is a check for level of interest.

Many characters talked about volunteering in their threads, it’s up to you whether they did or not but if they had, it wouldn’t have been successful, and their volunteer would have been rejected. I am kind of bending some rules because I assure you, putting your character in the games would be really boring and not as much juice as what I have planned for what happens outside of the game. I don’t plan to metagame/godmod this hard as an admin beyond this, but hopefully you guys understand that I am just trying to keep everyone from writing themselves into a corner.

Also just want to say, I know not every character has a loved one that were reaped. I had tried to keep things pretty strategic and fair. The hope is that this creates an interesting dynamic to potentially cause conflict. Those who have loved ones at stake vs. those who have love ones that were spared. I am always open for feedback and if you feel that this plot doesn’t set your character(s) up for success, please let me know! We’ll try to work something out.

I think that’s all I’ve got to say. You know where to put questions. Happy Hunger Games. Heh

Start date: Right now

End date: April 28th

Tag: The Reaping (this is not a chapter because there is no time threading.)

[angrylizardjacket]

mouth full of white lies {Machine Gun Kelly} 3

3. i thought love was a kind of emptiness

Summary: So you’re in love with him. Not great. And you wanna tell your brother about it, but that means coming clean about everything, and you’re not gonna do that! So you’re just gonna suffer, because it’s for the greater good. And you’re not gonna make things weird. Speaking of weird though, how is this even going to end? Colson sounds kind of like a masochist when he talks about it, but there must be a way to make neither of you seem like the bad guy... When this all ends. Which it will, much to your chagrin.

A/N: watch me have no idea about american geography

the brainstrust: @sataninsatin @silvertonguedserpent @juliarose21 @kellysimagines @estxxbritt @machine-gun-casie @harringtonstudios @misscharlottelee @narcvissa @hiworlditishumbleme @angelwarner28 @nevilles-insinuations @rumoured-whispers @mgkobsessed @edwardtriggerhandzz @suckerforbarnes @wastelcve @bakerkells @local-troubled-writer @freddiessmallnipples @oopsiedoopsie23 @mayaslifeinabox @mrs-machinegun-norris @hxbbit

----

For the record, and if anyone asks, when Colson sends you a photo of himself in full Tommy Lee makeup, your heart definitely doesn’t skip a beat. The long wig, the sharp contouring, the eyeliner, it does absolutely nothing for you. You definitely don’t spend a good five minutes contemplating how much you want his lipstick to stain your mouth. Because he’s not your real boyfriend. You’re doing this to minimize the amount of nasty messages you get online. The fact that he’s hot and funny and surprisingly kind and weirdly observant, and god, have you already said hot? Because he tends to walk around your shared hotel room in shorts and little else and it’s really not doing great things for your productivity. 

The point is, all those things are a bonus! A happy little accident, if you will, a positive side-effect of this whole arrangement. Like getting a job and realising that you’ll be working with your brother, who currently is quickly becoming very, very close with your fake boyfriend.

There’s no-one you trust more in the whole world than Douglas, but if you tell him that your relationship is fake, you’ll have to tell him why you’re in a fake relationship, and he’s not above starting an online rampage against people sending his little sister death threats. Which, by the way, you’re not getting a lot of since dating Colson, honestly you might even be getting less than before, so it’s working.

Your absolutely fake relationship with Colson Baker, whom you have no feelings for whatsoever is functioning exactly as intended. 

Except for the fact that when you’re on set, and you see him in costume, smiling, it kind of makes your day. Watching him play drums? He just looks like he’s having so much fun, and you can’t help but be endeared by it! This was outlined as low commitment, high reward, and now your feelings are ruining it for everybody. Well, just for you. Because it’s just a small crush, and he’s your friend, so you’re not going to make it weird.

Which, right now, it isn’t. He hogs the blankets, which you pretend you’re annoyed by, and sets about fifteen different alarms for himself that have you waking up at the crack of dawn so that he can go in early to get his tattoos covered, even though you don’t need to be there until much later than he is. So you grumble into the blankets, and when you get to set there’s always a hot drink waiting for you. 

He’s out most nights, not late enough that he’d need to oversleep to be functioning the next morning, but it’s not uncommon for you to be curled up on your side of the bed, usually scrolling through social media, and he’ll come in, sometimes humming something, sometimes chattering away on the phone. Sometimes he’ll shower, but he always smokes, watching the stars, right before he comes to bed.

Or you’ll join him. 

On the weekends, you’ll grab dinner together after filming, and he’s in his eyeliner, the foundation sometimes a little worse for wear, and you’ll explore the nightlife that LA has to offer, seeing live bands, or going to clubs. Of course, as a famous musician, DJs will pull Colson up into their booth, to play a song or two, and you, without fail, always managed to feel out of place. So you hang back, maybe have a dance, or maybe get a drink, or even just people-watch. You enjoy it, but you enjoy going back to the hotel more.

Tabloids, or the modern equivalent at least, get familiar with your name, and it’s not long before your image starts to change.

About six minutes into a twenty minute ‘tea spilling’ video, the host says your name.

“Now, [Y/N] Booth, DuckDuckBooth, whatever you know her as, has been all over the mainstream media lately because - shock horror - she’s in a relationship with someone with a bad reputation! Because that’s what we love here, ladies and gents; rumours and slander,” the host, a young woman with bleach blonde hair and a thick English accent rolls her eyes, sarcasm dripping from her tongue, “so a bit of a run-down for those who don’t know, [Y/N] is a lifestyle and, I don’t know, entertainment industry insider - YouTuber? She makes videos on what it’s like to work all different jobs in the industry. And her brother’s famous? I think?” She looks to a point off-screen, presumably where her laptop was sitting, letting her look him up. “He was in Jupiter Ascending, he was the weird prince-dude; Douglas Booth, and he was in a bunch of stuff that was only really released in the UK.” 

It cuts to a new shot of the host tucking her hair behind her ears.

“So [Y/N] recently started dating Machine- MG- uh, I don’t know how to say it, it sounds wrong coming from me; Machine Gun Kelly? He’s a rapper I think? He’s been in a few shows on like, streaming services? I don’t know, I don’t know him that well, but apparently he’s one for scandal - allegedly.” She emphasises, before taking a deep breath, “and now he and [Y/N] are working on the same project, and have started dating, like two adults who like each other might start doing!” It’s condescending, as if directly responding to some less than polite criticisms she’s seen online, but she shrugs it off flippantly.

“Anyways, I’ve been following [Y/N] for a while, I’ve seen her recent uploads and Instagram stories and such; they’re cute, okay? I don’t personally enjoy his music, but that’s just my tastes, you know? And I don’t understand all the negativity she’s suddenly receiving; you all know she’s an adult, right? Like not just in the UK, she’s over 21, she’s allowed to go out and drink, and be a human being. It’s not like she’s suddenly become a different person; just because she’s not acting in the way your overly-sanitized view of her should, doesn’t mean she’s a different person, or that she’s corrupted or whatever. She’s not a bad person for enjoying herself.”

“Everyone speculating about whether it’s fake or not, like they have nothing in common, well it’s almost like you don’t know them personally; if it’s fake, who even cares, that’s -” she laughs a little, “that’s Hollywood, isn’t it? I think the people hating on her, or on him, or wanting them to admit it’s fake or just break up, are jealous, honestly, because even if it’s fake, it’s a hell of a commitment.”

“Do you ever worry?” You can’t help but ask, it’s late, much later than you know you should be up, but he’s awake too, yawning, looking at his phone. Both of you tucked up in bed, he takes a moment before looking at you. There’s something about the shadow of eyeliner he hadn’t quite been able to remove that just makes him look edgy and gorgeous.

“I try not to,” he answers candidly, “but about what?”

“About people finding out about us.”

“Usually,” he cracks a half smile, “when a girl asks me that, it’s about people finding out that we are together,” and he’s smiling, but you just frown in the dark, unable to appreciate the humour. 

“What’ll they say? Of course you’ll be fine, but I-” you swallow, shaking your head, “sorry, asshole thing to say; of course I care about what they say about you, just as much me, but -”

“But you’ve got a lot further to fall than I do,” he says with a surprising honesty, and you meet his gaze in the glow of his screen light, “honestly I have no idea how this is gonna end, I thought you did.” And you feel your stomach drop. 

How were you supposed to respond to this?! There is absolutely no way you can say what you’re thinking, that you don’t want this to end because you’ve started to catch real feelings. 

“I’m winging it,” you admit softly. Something about his expression softens, but his screen goes dark before you can see it, “I know you’re a good person but-”

“Then you don’t know me that well, Ducky,” he laughs a little, though the sound is hollow, and you can hear him rustling around as he looks up at the ceiling in the dark, “kid, you don’t know me at all -”

“Don’t call me kid,” you bristle, quietly defiant, but he just seems to ignore you.

“I know I’m a bad dude, okay? And if you want this whole thing to end with everyone thinking I’ve broken your heart, then do it, I’ve been through worse. I’ve done worse; if you wanna just worry about yourself, you can.” 

“So it’s black and white; I’m red riding hood and you’re the big bad wolf? That’s how we end this?”

“You think in fairy tale analogies,” he huffs an almost disbelieving laugh, “I’m just saying that if you didn’t have to be with me, you wouldn’t be; you wanted scandalous but not a scandal, I get it, okay? I’m good at that; good at both, actually, but I guess you’re cute enough that you can pick one and not the other.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You snap, feeling angry, almost betrayed by his callous words. In the dark, you can make out the shape of his silhouette against the stars.

“You’re all clean and shiny and shit, you’ve got a philanthropist big brother, and a life in the entertainment industry without the actual pressure of being an actor, and yeah, YouTube is hard, I get that, now more than anything else, watching you ‘s definitely given me a new appreciation for the effort that goes in, but -”

“But what? It’s not a real job?”

That shuts him up fast. 

Fuming in the dark, you clamber from the bed, and head onto the balcony, slamming the door behind you. The night air is cool and crisp against the warm anger bubbling just beneath your skin, and you take a few deep breaths. Why you’re out here, you’re not sure; you should have gone down the hall and stayed with Douglas, but here you were, cooling off on the balcony. 

You’re in his seat, the seat he always sits in to smoke before bed, and it feels strange, but you’re not going to give up the seat, even as he opens the door. He doesn’t look at you, instead, he leans against the railing, looking out at the ocean glittering with stars.

“I wasn’t -” he starts, before sighing, “fuck, I know it’s a real job, okay?”

But he’s met with silence.

“I was gonna say - fuck, there’s like, a quote thing someone once told me, I think it was Shakespeare or some shit - there’s more things in Heaven and Earth, you know, than are dreamed in your philosophy.” He paused, “I’m dealing with more than just your shit, you know? Every fuckin’ person wants to hate me right now; your shit is small fish, Ducky. If you’re not getting hate, then it’s worth it, okay? And after all of this, I’ll still be averaging the same amount of hate as I always get, not that I give a shit. It’s pebble in a stream stuff.” When again, he’s met with silence, he sighs gently, hanging his head, before heading back inside, though he doesn’t close the door.

On your own, for only a moment, you feel your insides twisting, frustrated at overreacting, heart warming at his words, just a little. 

“Pebble in a stream stuff?” You ask quietly, when he joins you once more, this time with a joint and his lighter.

“Immutable,” he says, voice flat as he focuses on lighting up, before taking a long drag. After a moment of holding the smoke in his lungs, he breathes out, watching it as he speaks, “like a river, if you throw a pebble in, it creates a ripple, but the current always corrects itself. No matter what you do, the river just keeps flowing in the same direction.” 

“Deep,” you muse.

“It’s from X-Men,” he responded, and there’s a beat, before the two of you break out into laughter at the absurdity of it all, of his philosophical ramblings being ripped from a comic book movie, of the idea of the two of you ever getting into this situation in the first place.

When the laughter dies down, you find yourself smiling at him, watching him while his grin is turned up to the stars.

“You say I don’t know you, even though we’ve been doing this for almost a month and a half now; I wanna know you,” you tell him as genuinely as you can manage in your tired state, and he turns to you with an unreadable expression, and you catch yourself before you act on the fluttering in your chest, “to make it more believable.” You add, and he nods, and his gaze goes back to the sky; if it was a little disappointed, you try not to think about it too hard, “so you don’t like cutesy dates like fairs, what do you like?”

Licking his lips as he thinks, he finally turns to you, eyebrow raised.

“Honestly?”

Why does his gaze right now make your pulse race?

“Honestly.” You dare not break his gaze.

“I like going to clubs with you, to see bands and shit,” he tells you, and... oh, you weren’t expecting that. There’s that soft, unreadable expression again, though he seems endeared by your genuine surprise, “but I sometimes get the feeling that you feel, uh, out of place?” He seems concerned.

“I mean, not really, it’s fun and all!” You try, but he gives a smirk.

“You don’t have to sugar coat it -”

“It’s sticky, and it feels weird with all the dudes trying to grind up on me when I’m like, meant to be with you. I always feel like someone’s about to pull out their phone, snap a photo and accuse me of cheating.” You blurt out, and Colson’s expression turned from surprised to amused.

“Stick with me then -”

“I don’t wanna be a bother; I’m not a music person, I shouldn’t be in like, a DJ booth I don’t think.”

“You’re with me, you can go wherever you want.”

The night is cool and crisp, and he’s got an early start, but the two of you sit out there, talking, laughing, actually getting to know each other. He tells you all about Cassie, about how proud he is of her, how much he misses her, and how proud she is of him in turn. You, in turn, tell him stories of yourself and Douglas from your childhood, of how he’d always been your biggest fan, and your first defender, and how you’d been to all of his premieres. At this, Colson’s eyes glaze over a little, lost in thought.

“I have no idea how this is gonna end,” he says gently, before looking to you, “but whenever you wanna call it quits, say the word.”

But you hear I’m read to cut and run at any moment, and you know it’s selfish, but it’s not what you want to hear.

“Thanks,” you respond, with a small smile instead, “same to you; don’t just stick around for my benefit,” you try to laugh, but it doesn’t quite come out right. It’s quiet after that, though it had to be said, and it’s not long before the two of you go to bed.

It’s a turning point, it’s where you start to really try to get to know each other, rather than just being around each other. Maybe it’s just hope, but it feels a little more real with each day that passes.

“Hello! Hello and welcome back, ducklings! Today we’ve got a very special guest! And if you’ve read the title of this video, you know who it is! That’s right, my boyfriend is going to try and teach me the basics of drumming!”

The comments of the video tell you that you both look so happy, look so cute, look so in love.

“You’re a good actor,” Colson tells you, as if he believes the starry-eyed looks you give him are a carefully calculated ruse. You, on the other hand, feel like a fool only moments from being outed as being in love with your fake boyfriend, which was ridiculous; he’s the only person who needs to believe it’s a ruse after all.

Even Douglas tells you the video is good, and suddenly you’re starting to feel like an asshole for lying to him for so long.

But it’ll work out. It has to. And neither you nor Colson is gonna be the bad guy. Because he’s not, no matter what he says .

He keeps buying you hot drinks if his alarms wake you up, and he keeps you close whenever you go out, and he gives you a blanket whenever you fall asleep in his trailer during breaks, and -

“Has Duck ever told you about how she found a frog when we were little, like a live frog,” Douglas was grinning over lunch, while you were slowly becoming more embarrassed by Colson's side, your forehead pressed to his shoulder as your brother recounted one of his favourite stories, “and she named it after me, because she was always a bit of a menace, but it got free, and mum and dad almost lost their minds when she came crying about how ‘Doug was missing in the woods!’” He grinned, both fond and a bit sharp, “they only realised she was talking about the frog when I joined the search party after getting home from a friend’s house.”

You heave a sigh, but Colson gives you a gentle, reassuring pat.

“No, that’s fuckin’ adorable, but no she hadn’t told me that; but I had heard about how you made the both of you duck costumes for your school’s Halloween,” and Colson gives him a toothy grin as Douglas flushes with embarrassment, though he seems endeared by the nostalgia of it all, “primary school, was it?”

“Not Halloween, it was a book fair,” Douglas corrected, and you surfaced finally, leaning into Colson, who wrapped an arm around you, and you level a soft smile at your brother, who returns one in kind, before his gaze flicks to Colson’s, and back. A smile. A nod. A silent approval. Fuck, you hate lying to him.

But you’re not above a little white lie to the internet for some advice.

r/AmITheAsshole posted by u/idkquackythrowaway

AITA for falling for my fake boyfriend and lying to my best friend about it?

So hello, throw away account because if either of them find this, I’ll be mortified and have to run away to canada and live as a goat farmer.

So I started ““““dating”“““ my “”””boyfriend””””, let’s call him C, a few months ago, because all of our friends kept accusing us of dating, and it was easier to just go along with it than deny it - there’s a lot of extenuating circumstances here; and yes I have issues lying to my friends, but I can deal with it for the greater good. It’s better for C and me in the short-term anyways.

Anyways so my best friend, D, is someone I’ve never lied to, we’ve always been so incredibly close, but now he’s getting to be good friends with C too, and approves of the two of us, but I’m just worried he’ll be betrayed if I tell him it wasn’t real.

Also, I might have real feelings for C, which he Does Not Have for me, so I feel like I’m betraying him too, by pretending that it’s not fake. ANd I wanna tell D about this, but then I’d have to come clean about everything, which....... its a lot. 

So Am I The Asshole for catching feelings in a fake relationship, and lying to my closest friend about it?

[324 comments]

The reaction is mixed.

And mostly unhelpful.

A lot of people are calling you the asshole, which, ouch, but you had kind of already come to terms with that. A lot more people, however, are just abstaining from making judgement, considering there was definitely more to the story. You’re not sure how to deal with those comments; you want to defend yourself, or give more context, but you also know you absolutely cannot. 

Eventually you decide to come clean.

“I’m in love with Colson.”

About the wrong thing. To the wrong person.

Douglas blinks slowly at you, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

“Really?”

“Really really.” You sigh, with an air of defeat, though this has him frowning, putting his fork full of pasta down. 

“What’s wrong, did he do something?” Douglas is playing the protective older brother, just as he has done for as long as you can remember, but it’s all you can do to shake your head.

In truth, Colson’s been fucking perfect; despite his reputation, he’s a fantastic - fake - partner. Perhaps it’s that you work together, so he doesn’t have to find a distraction outside of his main focus. 

“Duckling,” Douglas says it so gentle, taking your hand over the dinner table, “I’m happy for you, as long as you’re happy.” And what can you say to that? Another lie? You feel like you’ll be ill if you let another lie pass your tongue in front of Douglas.

“I love him,” you say, weakly, and you feel your eyes misting at the implication, the reality of your words. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I-” you choke on your words, and tears start to gather, threatening to spill, “I think I love him more than he loves me.” It’s not a lie, but it’s enough for Douglas. 

“I’m sorry,” he sounds so genuine, holding your hand tight in his, finishing dinner, and taking you both back to the hotel. He does the only thing he can think of to cheer you up; put on a movie on his laptop and wrap you up in blankets like he would when you were kids. The movie’s a little outdated, but he’s trying, and that alone makes you feel a little better. 

“Hello! Hello and welcome back, ducklings! Today we’ve just got a low-effort video, it’s just a top ten comfort movies from childhood that survive a modern rewatch! As decided by me and Douglas!”

Filming is set to move locations soon, from being on-location on the Sunset Strip to a back-lot about an hour away, somehow closer to the hills, and you feel like you can hear the ticking of a clock counting down.

“When filming’s over, we can end it if you want,” you tell Colson as you’re packing up your suitcases.

“Oh,” he seems surprised.

“Oh?”

“That’s soon,” is all the clarification he gives, but he doesn’t sound happy about it, “are you sure?” 

“I mean, I don’t wanna outstay my welcome,” you try to joke, but he makes a noise that you can’t quite decipher, “what?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Just thought it would maybe go until the premiere.” He admits, and you pause, actually surprised at his words, and he clears his throat, “it would be weird seeing you there if I was with someone else, right?”

“Right,” you muse quietly, before going back to folding your clothes, “that’s a year away still, I’m pretty sure.” You tell him, and he hums, but doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“Well I’ve got a few events before then I need a date for,” he says, noncommittally, “and we’ll see each other before then; if you wanna be convincing you can crash at my place if you wanna, in The Hills, at least for a bit, if you ain’t got anything else to do sort of thing,” he actually sounds a bit hesitant, and you swallow hard, before letting yourself smile, pleased.

“I think you like having me around.” When you look at him, he’s trying to hide a smile of his own.

“'course I do.”

[brooklyn-times]

Rising Sun

BUCKY X READER

Summary: An early morning rendezvous.

Warnings: fluff.

A/N:  It has all my favorite things and I just can’t help it. also, buck’s birthday. happy reading!

Masterlist

Consistent banging on the door wakes Bucky up at an ungodly hour.

And he is 99.768% sure he knows who it is.

The alarm clock next to him reads 4:23 and he is nothing short of horrified. And the fact that he knows you hate waking up in the morning anytime before nine leaves him alert.

Was something wrong with you?

Did you have one more of your nightmare?

Were you under att-

"Open the fucking door, Bucko," a voice shouts from the other side. "My arms are hurting."

In record time, he is off the bed and opens the door, frantically looking at you, searching for wounds or anything which would cause you pain.

He freezes when he looks at four large pizza boxes, two balanced on each hand.

"What?" He asks, stupified. He is stuck somewhere between shock, horror, and surprise.

"Come on, hurry up. Or we'll miss the sunrise," you say, pushing past him into his room. Uninvited.

You know you don't need an invite.

"Sunrise?" Bucky feels stupid, repeating what you say, but he is still suffering from the repercussions of the false alarm.

"Uh-huh," you nod and sit on his bed cross-legged, pizza on either side. "There is this cliff in the countryside. They say it's got one of the best sunrises view near New York."

"Didn't think I deserved a warning before dropping by, huh?" Bucky asks, glaring at you.

"I found out yesterday night at one. Couldn’t really warn ya." You are fidgeting, legs shaking and looking around his room like you haven't spent three-fourth of your nights here.

"Why were you awake at one? And how did you wake up so soon again?" Bucky asks, incredulous. He thinks his mind is going haywire.

"Buckyyy. Stop with the questions. Get ready. The sunrise is at 5:45. Its a forty minutes drive from here and it's already 4:28!"

"Calm the hell down," Bucky rolls his eyes and sighs. "Gimme five minutes."

"I'm counting!" You warn as Bucky rushed to the washroom.

Excretory jobs, a brush of teeth and a face wash later, Bucky and you head out the room, both of you with two pizza boxes each. You both creep down the hallways quietly, not wanting others to wake up.

You both reach the garage when Bucky stops you. "Wait. We both don't have a car. How are we even getting there?"

The wicked smile you give him sends a shiver down his spine. You turn around and point at your pant pockets with your head.

"Take the keys out."

Bucky balances the pizza boxes and grabs the key from your pocket.

When his fingers brush against the exposed skin between your shirt and pant, he thinks he might have as well died.

He gulps.

"Whoa, Tony's range rover? Are you sure we are even allowed to use it?" He knows for a fact that Tony is very possessive about his cars. He had once sent half the iron legion behind Sam for driving his Audi. 

"The last him I asked somebody for permission for anything was when I was eleven. And anyway, my pout and puppy eyes is something Tony cannot absolutely resist. No matter how angry he is."

Nobody can resist it, Bucky thinks. Of all people, I sure as hell know what it’s like to be on the receiving side. It’s sorcery.  

Praying that he receives protection by company, Bucky gets into the driver’s seat, waiting for you to strap in the seat belt. 

He starts the engine.

With the pizza in the backseat and empty streets to navigate through in the New York City, Bucky feels the serenity he only usually feels with you. The wind blows through your hair from the open window and you huff in annoyance, trying to get them out of your eyes and mouth.

You never fail to look adorable.

Both of you enjoy the silence, happy enough to simply remain in the presence of each other without the need for useless words to fill the air. That is one of the best things Bucky likes about you. Although you talk more than an average human, you also remain quiet when necessary.

You both reach the cliffside in thirty-five minutes.

“I knew it! There are still thirty-five minutes left!” Bucky groans, leaning back into his seat. What he won't admit is that he'd rather spend those thirty-five minutes with you than sleep.

“Shut up, old man,” you grit out. “It's at least better than being thirty-five minutes late.

Bucky hums. “Admit the fact that I'm right.”

“Over my goddamn dead body.”

Bucky grins and shoves your legs off his lap and gets out of the car. 

Still considerably dark, he sits on the car hood, not feeling too good about sitting on the ground with insects as the company. He knew for a fact that the only thing you have packed is food and there is no mat or blanket. You thought only about food about 75% of the time and the remaining time you just preferred to live a chaotic life.

Seconds later, you join him on the car hood. Lying back, you stare at the barely visible stars. It was at least must better a view compared to the city.

“You can sleep if you want, I’ll wake you up in time for the sunrise,” you offer, trying to be helpful.

Bucky snorts. “You and I both know that you'll end up sleeping.”

You kick him but don’t argue.

Bucky lies down next to you, his too-long legs almost reaching the ground. The sounds of owls hooting and birds chirping is everywhere and yet, none of them are seen. The cliff overlooks almost the entire city, few towers dwarfing the others. For some reason, the entire view makes you feel very poetic. 

“I wanted to be a writer,” you say all of a sudden.

Bucky turns to look at you with his eyebrows so high up that you are almost offended.

“Hmm. I was around eleven when I was taken? By then I had written two power rangers stories, around ten thousand words each, in which there are only girl rangers. And one pet droid. My English teacher had loved it,” you laugh, your eyes brighter than the sun, remembering the times you always refer to as before. And the tiny bit of longing lacing the laugh breaks Bucky’s heart.

“Now? What do you want now?”

I’ll make sure you’ll get anything you want, he promises to himself and you. Anything.

“Live to be at least forty,” you grin and close your eyes when a heavy wind blows right into your face.

For a second Bucky feels terrified at the thought of you dying. Fists clench and he breathes heavily, trying to get rid of that thought and image that his nightmares are made of.

You were there, right next to him. Perfectly safe and happy.

“You'll live. At least for another sixty years. Promise.”

When you don’t reply, he turns and smiles to himself, realizing that you were already asleep.

What an idiot.

Twenty minutes later, you wake up to somebody shaking you.

You groan and turn away, only to have an unplanned trip down to the ground, courtesy gravity.

You hear Bucky laugh from behind and you roll over to your back.

And hold back a gasp.

The sky has a pinkish tinge now as opposed to the dark blue when you had fallen asleep, and miles away, the pink has faded into shades of red and orange. 

And Bucky, Bucky looks like something out of paradise.

Orange rays fall directly on his face and his baby blue eyes seem to sparkle as he laughs, silky chocolate brown strands escaping from behind his ears with no hair tie to keep them together in place.

You can stare at him for eons.

“What ya staring at?”

When you try to reply, there is a knot stuck in your throat and coherent sentences refuse to come to your mind.

“Umm.”

“You didn’t hit your head too hard did you?” His expression turns into that of worry and he immediately rushes to your side.

This man probably has the most expressive eyes.

‘Yeah no, I'm fine. Sleep daze and headbang is not a good combination,” you manage to say, blinking quickly.

He still pulls you up and checks the back of your head for knots just in case.

Be still, beating heart.

“Five more minutes,” Bucky says, finally satisfied that you aren’t dying, as he runs his hand through your hair, removing the dry grass and twigs stuck to it.

“Tet's get the pizza out then.” You stretch your sleeping muscles, feeling the slight ache in your neck. 

Note to self: Do not fall asleep on car hoods. They are a hazard.

Together, you and Bucky climb up to the roof of the car- you refused to sit on that hood again-  with pizzas and make yourselves comfortable. 

You snap at Bucky every time his hands shift towards the pizza, wanting to start eating already. He whines each time and you refuse to listen to him, trying to ignore the feeling of kicking a hungry puppy every time he whines.

He is such a goddamn baby.

Suddenly you gasp and interrupt his whining by pointing at the sky. “Bucky look!”

Bucky turns and the prettiest smile takes over his entire face.

From between the high rise buildings of New York, the Sun peeks out and orange light escapes, coloring the entire city and the sky in orange. The buildings which usually look so tall and magnificent merely appeared like lego toys splayed across the surface of the earth. As the seconds pass, the Sun further comes into view, until a minute or two later, you have the complete, uninterrupted view.

It is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. 

You sigh softly, trying not the make any noise which would disturb the moment. You look at Bucky and are overjoyed when he appears to be as pleased and awestruck as you.

Finally, you open the pizza box quietly while Bucky’s attention is captured by the sunrise. You place the candles which were hidden away at the corner on top of the pizza and light it.

“Bucky?”

He turns and you nod your head towards the pizza with candles alight on top of it.

Grinning, you take in the startled expression.

Guess it is a day of surprises for James Buchanan Barnes.

Leaning forward over the pizza, you smile as his eyes widen. Your lips brush against his stubble covered cheeks and a wave of shock alights every single nerve in your body and you close your eyes in happiness and wonder, and you whisper,

“Happy Birthday Bucky.”

tags: @all1e23​

[foreverthesickestkidz]

i’ll put a summary here at some point but yeah it’s a serial killer!mark tuan au okay

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten

warnings: cursing, mentions toxic relationship, i think that’s it but this is a serial killer au so read w caution anyway

authors note: this is a short & shitty chapter but it gets better i swear lol

masterlist | guidelines | lullaby m.list

Jaebum’s office at the Eclipse Police Station was pretty clean. The sort of clean that those who just walk in and look around some don’t pick up on the reality that almost everything in it was covered in a thin layer of dust, the small carpet in the middle of the tiled floor was pulling apart at the seams, and the clock on the wall was twenty-two minutes fast. But, Jinyoung grew to pinpoint every miniscule detail of the Police Chief’s office while he sat there for hours at a time. Jinyoung’s back honestly started to hurt around the end of the first hour, and his patience with the Chief was little to none when they started this meeting, and by the end he knew he’d be ready to pounce.

“Detective, I hope you’re paying attention. There was another death last night,” Jinyoung snapped his attention away from the fraying rug and back to Jaebum.

“Yes sir, but with all due respect, sir,” Jinyoung pushed himself up in the chair, “I already know what you’re going to tell me.”

Jaebum raised an eyebrow, “And what could that be?”

“That it doesn’t show a link to any of the murders, and if I go ask the coroner what the autopsy results were, he’ll say the victim died from the fire,” Jinyoung was growing more frustrated by the second. “Which is absolute bullshit, I saw the body! It had major injuries that a damn house fire couldn’t have caused!”

Jaebum’s jaw clenched, “You have no idea what you saw, Detective. That body was burnt to hell, nobody could tell anything. We still don’t even know who he is!”

Jinyoung shook his head and stood, “Alright, sir. It was the house fire. Have a blessed night.” He knew arguing was no use, he’d seen four other cases mirroring this one. All cases tended to wear on Jinyoung’s heart, but these past four were worse. The first time he noticed the body’s clear fatal wounds didn’t align with the Chief and the Coroner’s story, he figured Jaebum was right, he really was just seeing things. The next two times he opted to keep his mouth shut about it, figuring if he was the only one seeing anything wrong than maybe there wasn’t anything wrong. But, this last case pushed him to the limit.

Jinyoung drove home in silence. His head filled with millions of thoughts at once, as he watched the road ahead of him.

Something isn’t right

What do I do?

Who could I go to?

Would anyone believe me?

Why are they doing this?

Unanswered questions ate away at the young detective’s mind and morals. Once home, Jinyoung decided he needed a drink, and popped the cap off the last bottle of Soju in his refrigerator

****

Professor Lee opened the door to his office, politely greeting you and allowing you to enter.

“Y/n! Hello! It’s good to meet you.” Professor and attorney Lee’s smile was present, but ever distant.

You smiled and greeted him as you took your seat at the table. There were several other men present and you gave a small nod to them each.

Professor Lee sat at the head of the table, laced fingers placed on the dark wood ahead of him.

“We will begin our meeting with with some introductions, and what your jobs will be as interns,”

After the meeting finally ended, you sat in your car for a moment checking your messages.

Double B:

-hey lets chill later i miss u

Jackson Wang:

-we need to talk

-meet me somewhere soon

(123)456-7890

-Hey y/n it’s Mark

The last message you read made you smile. You decided to just call Mark while you drive home since you were excited to talk, but didn’t want to text and drive.

He surprisingly picked up after two rings.

“Y/n? Hey, what’s up?”

Your grin widened at the sound of his voice.

“Hey, I just got done with my internship. I thought I’d call while I drive home.” You shifted the car into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot. “Why were you there, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Without missing a beat, Mark answered.

“I went to see a friend of mine that works there, actually.”

“Oh okay. I met a few people during my meeting, maybe I know your friend!”

“Ah, so that’s what you were doing there. I take it you’re a law student?” Mark twirled his pen through his fingers as he spoke, a nervous habit he picked up from Jaebum.

“Yeah! I’m almost done, though. It’s my last year,”

Mark caught himself smiling at your excitement. He’d never found joy in anyone else’s happiness before that very moment.

“So you’re just the whole package then, huh?” You could hear his grin.

Giggling, you questioned him. “What do you mean?”

Mark’s heart bloomed at the sound of your giggle, and he found himself wanting to hear it again and again.

“I mean you’re intelligent, that’s a given,” he chuckled, “but also, your beauty is astonishing. You’re magnificent.”

You turned the corner, nearing your apartment complex.

“...really? You really think that?” You were sure your face was neon red.

“Of course, babydoll. I would never lie to someone so innocent.”

His voice sent a shiver down your spine.

“How come you think I’m innocent?” You giggled again.

Mark smirked and took his bottom lip between his teeth. He deeply wished you were there with him at that moment.

“I can always tell who’s innocent and who’s guilty,”

****

Jackson’s Corvette sat glittering in the moonlight in front of your apartment. He pulled the key out as he exited the luxurious car.

Night had fallen upon the shoulders of Eclipse once again, and with it came the horrors of murder.

Weeks had passed since you moved back into town, and August heat had turned into September’s red leaves. The murders continued on, and with Bambam’s absence until November, he made you swear you’d let either Jackson or Yugyeom stay with you at night.

They traded off shifts every other day, and honestly you were relieved it was Jackson’s turn.

You were slightly startled by the sound of the turning lock, but quickly calmed at the sight of Jackson Wang in all his glory.

“You scared me half to death, Jackson. I told you to knock first!” You rolled your eyes and looked back down at the textbook in your lap. You’d been on the couch for hours studying the same few chapters.

“Sorry, princess. I always forget.” He winked at you as he dropped his keys into the small glass bowl by the door. The irony set in when you remembered that Yugyeom got it for you.

You huffed and roughly rubbed your eyes.

“This is ridiculous. I don’t need a babysitter,” Jackson sat down next to you, and you turned and sat criss cross facing him, “and stop calling me that. We’re not friends anymore, Jackson.”

He studied your eyes for a moment before speaking.

“I’m not babysitting you, I’m upholding my word. I told Bambam I’d do this so here I am,” he ran a hand through his hair, “and I know you hate me for how I handled everything between you and Yugyeom, but I didn’t know what else to do. He’s my best friend, y/n.” Jackson turned to look at the wall, lost in thought.

“I don’t like this, y/n. I wish everything could go back to how it was a year ago.”

You furrowed your eyebrows and shook your head in disbelief.

“You wish what?! Jackson, how could you say that? A year ago everything may have been perfect for you, but I was miserable.” You closed your textbook and walked out onto the balcony. The sea of lights illuminated your frustrated facial expression.

Jackson followed quickly behind, leaning against the railing beside you.

“You seemed happier then,” he almost whispered. “I noticed it, though. I noticed the change. When I first met you, you were unstoppable. You held the world at your fingertips, eyes wide and sparkling at every new adventure.” He paused and shook his head lightly. “Yugyeom was an asshole. You made him feel things he’d never known, but he didn’t know how to handle it. So, naturally he revered back to what he knew, to what he saw his parents do.”

You felt a tear threaten to fall.

“The most important thing right now to me, is that you come back to being yourself. If that takes hating me and Yugyeom, fine. But if your new boyfriend takes any progress away from you healing, I swear to God, y/n. I will end his shit. I made a mistake in defending Yugyeom, and I won’t make it again.”

***

Mark noticed the Corvette the moment he pulled his Hummer into the parking lot. After being together for weeks now, he learned of Bambam’s rule. He wasn’t happy with it, but he tried to understand from his perspective anyway. Jackson being in your apartment was annoying, but he was just an inconvenience at most. Yugyeom on the other hand, caused Mark’s temper to reach concerning levels. He was relieved it was just Jackson there today.

He knocked on your door before sliding the key into the lock. You decided giving him a key couldn’t be any worse than Yugyeom and Jackson having one, and Mark was your boyfriend now after all.

He found you on the balcony alone, sitting in the ground peering through the bars at the silent town.

“Y/n, I know it’s kinda late for dinner, but I brought you something to eat.”

You turned around and Mark’s heart ached at the sight of tears staining your cheeks.

He kneeled down, silver chains smacking together from the sudden movement. He placed his calloused hands on your cheeks, thumbing away the tears.

“Babydoll, what happened?” His voice was so gentle it shocked even him. He never knew he was capable of being so soft until you walked into his life. “Where’s Jackson?”

You sniffled and smiled softly to your boyfriend. “I think he went to sleep already… nothing really happened, I just, I just,” your lip started trembling again and Mark sat down with his back against the bars, pulling you into his arms.

“Shhh, it’s okay babydoll. I got you, nothing gonna hurt you,” he whispered into your hair.

You took a deep breath and relaxed into his arms.

“I’m scared, Mark. So many people are dying. What if I’m next?”

The comment made Mark cuddle you tighter.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you, let’s go eat and watch Disney movies, okay?” His smile made you feel better, and you found yourself grinning back at him.

“You know me so well already,” you giggled as he picked you up and brought you inside.

[sebbybooks]

Under The Paper Stars

Sebastian Stan x FanFiction

"Those lips are my wildest desires."

- n.t

December.

"Dance with me." It sounded more like a demand rather than a question. I didn't have to turn around to know whose voice that it belonged to. I was taken further by surprise when I felt the weight of his hand slowly slip around my waist. The tormented feel of his touch kindles imaginary flames that burst across my skin through the fabric of my dress. It was difficult trying to concentrate on my date especially when his face contorted with confusion because of the way Sebastian held on to me. He fused my body into his like he possessed me, like I belonged to no other man. In that moment I only wished that a drink would have magically appeared into my hand to loosen the rope that seemed to have lassoed around my vocal cords tying them in knots.

"Olivia." I hear Sebastian inhale a breath that he exhales alongside my neck. His chest was pressed firmly onto my back as he molded himself to me. Standing a few inches taller forced him to lower his head down closer to my ear. His lips lightly touched the curve of my jaw while his hand flexed around my waist. I had to force myself to conceal my natural reaction. I didn't want them to see the affect Sebastian was having on me. My feelings however ultimately failed me because I was unable to disguise the look of infatuation from my face for much longer. I had always been enchanted by Sebastian's ability to be unpredictable especially in moments when I needed it the most.

"Olivia?" Trever's mouth turned downward. His was voice pitched and nervy. He shifted from one foot to the other like a nervous tick while he watched anxiously to see if I would say or do anything. I flexed my tongue in my mouth hoping it would help me produce sound. I myself was even perplexed by whatever the hell was going on. Typically I was not a person that was usually lost for words but tonight I found myself utterly speechless.

It was New Year's Eve and I was sandwiched in the most awkward position that never in a million years would I have conjured. I didn't expect my night to transpire into the way it was seemingly shaping out to be. I had arrived here with someone from work thinking it wouldn't be that much of an awful idea to go out on a date with Trevor. We worked closely together and made a pretty good pair in the office. Though to my surprise he took me to a non profit organization that raises money for stargazers. I couldn't have made that one up if I wanted to. As the night when on I realized the two of us outside of work were completely different. We were opposites that did not attract. The majority of the date he went on and on about the wonders of galaxy. For starters I did not know that stars don't in fact twinkle and that the binary stars that we see in the night sky aren't actually that close to one another. Also it takes years for a star's light to reach earth. So in hindsight you're viewing the star as it appeared years ago.

The second Trevor walked away to put his entry into the nights raffle was when I quickly pulled out my cell to text my best friend that I needed help getting out of my date. Twenty-five minutes later I didn't except to see Sebastian dressed up in suit pretending to be someone trying to seduce me.

"I'm so sorry Trevor." I stammered. I couldn't think straight because of the way Sebastian was pressing me closer into him. I wanted to tell Sebastian that the wedge he was putting between Trevor an I was working and that he could stop this charade.

"I thought he was with someone else?" Trevor blinked looking utterly shocked by Sebastian's display of affection. His entire face twisted in horror. Guilt bubbled up inside of me because he was still a nice guy it and wasn't his fault I found him boring. I figured I let this go on long enough. I opened my mouth to put us both out of our misery, but of course Sebastian beat me to it.

"Does it matter?" I felt Sebastian rest his chin on top of my shoulder and I contemplated nudging him with my shoulder to inflict pain on him. I could already sense the cocky grin taking up his face. I wanted to get out of the date not wound his ego. I was a coward for not finding a better out than this. I still had to see him around the office a privilege Sebastian did not have.

Muttering inaudible words under his breath he looked absolutely defeated."Unbelievable." Trevor said stiffly. Pressing his mouth in a thin line and giving Sebastian and I a once over glance. I could only imagine the wild thoughts running rampant in his head. "I'm going to take this as my cue to leave then." Trevor found my eyes.

"Probably best." Both of Sebastian's arms slipped around my waist, he was practically cradling me at this point. More wild goosebumps simultaneously prickled my skin and I was starting to become filled with liquid lust. Not even for a fleeting second did Trevor make me feel what I felt with Sebastian. If this was all pretend I was a little confused as to why I was becoming hypersensitive to my best friend's touch.

"Enjoy the rest of your night Olivia." Trevor's voice was laced with disdain as he walked away.

"Happy New Year." I barely could hear the sound of my own voice as I uttered those useless words. I watched as he hurriedly disappeared into the sea of people clumsily bumping into the shoulders of dancing couples that glared at him as he went. When Trevor was out of my view it finally dawned on me what I had just let happen.

I stepped forward freeing myself from Sebastian's hold directing an incredulous look at him. I remove my small clutch bag from the pit of my arm and swatted it across his chest. "What is wrong with you?"

Sebastian pretends like it actually injured him. "I think the words you are looking for are you're welcome."

I scoff. "I still have to see him at work and now you've made our relationship awkward."

Sebastian's eyebrows raise up in confusion. "Relationship?"

"Work relationship! You know what I meant." I say defensively. Sebastian stares at me with a penetrating gaze and I'm on the verge of yelling at him till the air is knocked out of my lungs. Sebastian's lip curl into a knowing smile and his easy going charm oozes from him instantly. He has known me long enough to know that I was all bark and no bite. An that there was nothing and no one that could ever come between us. It felt nearly impossible to stay angry at him for long and he the bastard knows it. "You are such an ass." I say unable to keep my grin at bay.

"Correction. I'm your ass." He says with hilarity in his tone giving me his best sugar coated smile. Sebastian cast me a doting look and it takes everything in me to not dissolve into a puddle of mush. I would be lying to myself if I said that I didn't enjoy his little performance. Since I've known Sebastian a tiny part of myself always wondered what it would be like if we had been something more.Although I bet our relationship would have been nothing but a sinking ship. One that can only ever sail on friendship fucking island in order to survive. I shake the thought from the brain when I catch a tall gangly man more than likely someone my grandmother would find attractive decked out in a dull green loosely fit pantsuit watching me.

I figured it was finally time to put my lame New Year's Eve behind me and go home to finish off my strawberry cheesecake ice cream while watching terribly cheesy movies on the Hallmark channel. I don't know what I expected to happen tonight, but this definitely was not it.

"Not so fast Livy." The palm of Sebastian's hand gently rest on my lower abdomen while his other hand holds my back in place. Trevor was long gone so there was no need to pretend anymore.

My eyes dart around the room trying to spot the nearest exit. The room in the museum had been completely transformed into a star lovers wet dream. Astrophiles of various ages were scattered all around the room. Underneath my feet the entire floor lit up and replicated the pale gay moonlight that illuminated from the moon. The ceiling and walls projected golden celestial constellations on a black backdrops that interchanged to live maps of the stars. Hanging from the ceiling were glittery tiny silver and gold paper stars that dangled above our heads.

"Why are you running out of here like the place is on fire?" Sebastian's mouth pressed into my hair. I was falling prisoner to my feelings towards him and I swear he was starting to do it on purpose. He was my friend. Nothing more and nothing less.

"Because there is nothing keeping me here." I say with diffidence, readying myself to leave. I stare down at my my open toed shoes unable to look up Sebastian or the guy in the duck poo green suit who was gearing up to walk over to me.

He turns my face around and props my chin with his fingers underneath. "I never got my answer about that dance."

I remained quiet for a beat. "Shouldn't be you with Stacey? It's the last night of the year don't waste anymore of your time here." The question had been sitting on my tongue and it was leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. I needed to get it out.

Sebastian let go of my face while looking at me disappointedly. "You said you needed me so of course I was going to come down here." Sebastian says it with perfect ease. As if the mere thought of having a girlfriend didn't cross his mind. "After I got your text I told Stacey what was going on and she was fine with it." His voice went stiff when the thought of his girlfriend of two years finally penetrated through is mind.

"Well thanks for coming." I say while forcing a smile. "But the date is over now we can go our separate ways." For some reason Sebastian was hell bent on staying at this charity function. He was unmoved like his feet grew roots into the floor.

"Ok." He says briskly. Sebastian bit down on his bottom lip so hard they started to look flushed. I couldn't read the dead look of emotion on his face until all of a sudden his mouth curves upward into a mischievous grin.

Feeling a cold bony finger tap my shoulder knowing that it was more than likely attached to one particular person here. I was reluctant into turning around and being proven right. "Pardon me miss I couldn't help but notice that you're as radiant as the Andromeda Constellation. I just had to come over here to see if you were real." When he smiled I was at least relieved to see he had all of his teeth.

"That's sweet of you to say thank you." I had no recollection of what that constellation even looked it. It could've been the outline of a donkey for all I knew. I looked over to Sebastian to see if he would intervene yet again but he looked like he was enjoying this.

"Can I spin you across the room?" The man blurted it out with eagerness. He was a few inches shorter than I was and he smelled strongly of peppermint oil and vapor rub. His eyes light up in anticipation and I didn't have the heart to break his. Why was everyone so interested with wanting to dance with me? I had two left feet and could never stay on beat. Just when I was about to cave in this one time he went and put his foot in his fucking mouth. "Don't turn me away sweetheart that dress was asking for attention." His eyes zeroed in on my breast and stared up at my dress like he could see right through it.

Sebastian suddenly stepped in between us before I could give him a piece of my mind. "You look like you get around easy." He complimented him. "There is this youthful glow about yourself." I was getting confused with Sebastian and why the hell he was being so nice to him. I tried to step around Sebastian but he just kept on blocking me.

"The secret is being on good terms with your Dietician." I catch a glimpse of him leaning into Sebastian and wink like he really gave good him advise.

Sebastian feigned a laughed that they both shared. "Well you see the thing is I don't fucking care." Sebastian's cool tone diminished and turned to ice. "You should just turn around and not so much as glance her way for the rest of the night. If you do then you'll have to get on good terms with a Orthopedist if you want to walk straight again." Sebastian patted him on his arm with enough force that knocked the guy off balance.

I clamp a hand over my mouth to muffle my laughter. I peeped my head around Sebastian's shoulder to get a good look at the expression on the old guy's face. It was exactly what I expected. A fearful look washed over his face when he apologized to Sebastian. His face scrunched into pure hatred as he eyed me before going back to the hole he crawled out of. I must have been on a roll tonight. That was the second man who looked at me that way after having come intact with me.

Any second now I believed Sebastian would turn around and resume to being his normal self to poke fun at the situation. At least that's what I thought he would do. Instead he stood with his back still facing me staring off into who knows what.There must have been a haze that fell over the room putting individuals in weird behavioral moods. Because for about nine seconds while I waited for my best friend to return the living I caught myself ogling his ass in his black trousers. I immediately stopped when I realized I was no better than sleazy grandpa.

"Why don't I give you a lift home Olivia?" The emotions coursing through this night was enough to give me whiplash. Sebastian's demeanor had visibly shifted into the opposite of who he was when he first walked in here. Turning around he looked at me and that's when I knew something wasn't right.

"We can't leave yet!" I was trying to stall, but I hadn't quite figured out exactly what or how I was going to do it. Apart from it being New Year's Eve I had almost forgot what today meant.

Sebastian stared at me with wonder, but most likely confusion. "A minute ago you just wanted to leave."

"Is it a crime to change your mind?" It was a rhetorical question that I didn't wait to get a response for. "Plus I really like this song." To my surprise whoever was controlling the playlist for tonight despite its scattered age demographic. I liked almost every song that played. Someday We'll Know by New Radicals was one of my favorite songs released in 1999.

Sebastian was quiet for a second "I don't know if I want to you to spin me across the room." He laughed.

I sighed.

"Too soon." I said as I smiled at him while reaching out my arm for him to take. Removing his hands from out of his pockets he grabbed ahold of my hand in an instant. Feeling the weight of Sebastian's stare was intense if not intimidating. On the outside he looked like he was this impenetrable force of nature that left broken hearts in his path. Though in reality he wore his heart on his sleeve ready to give a piece of it to anyone in need. Not to skip over the fact the he was hotter than hell, but that was just my observation.

"Seriously though if that dress could kill we would all be dead tonight. He stated, Sebastian didn't give me a chance to respond before quickly taking the lead, because I clearly didn't know what I was doing.

Sebastian gently pushed me outwards before spinning me back around to him crushing our chests together. Practically using every cliche dance move there is and I couldn't help but enjoy myself. The song was starting to end and the music switched to a much slower song, and yet we still didn't break apart. I figured this was now my window of opportunity to rip the bandaid off. "So are you going to come out and tell me already or are you going to continue to leave me in suspense?"

Sebastian tilted his head to the side to advert his eyes away from mine. My arms were draped over his shoulder and I used one of my hands to turn his head back to me. "You can say it Sebastian." I tried my best to not look disappointed at what I already knew was coming.

"Stacey got the job."

Feeling a shot of pain in my chest, I said, "That's great news." I was lying and he knew it. Sebastian's girlfriend was a nature photographer who mainly did locational shoots outside of the country. He had mentioned it to me briefly a while back that she applied to work with a team that would be studying animal migration for six months to a year in Sweden. "Do you plan to go with her?" Again I already knew the answer to that question, because he confided in me one night about feeling guilty if didn't want to go.

"We've talked about it and she is really adamant about wanting me there with her." Sebastian's solum expression never changes. He looked as unhappy as he sounded. Or maybe I imagined it and just wanted to believe what I wanted.

"Oh." I nodded my head and pressed my lips together, not exactly knowing what the proper words were to say next. Sebastian's eyes held fire as he looked at me as if he was hoping I said more. I didn't know how to express myself emotionally to Sebastian so I come off looking detached. An I know the second I even try articulating my feelings for him I'll stop myself in my tracks from over thinking it. I can't help it I'm an Aquarius. It was becoming clear me that these star lovers were starting to rub off on me.

"I leave tomorrow Olivia that's also why I came here tonight." His words come out fast and straight to the point. Why did hearing him say it hurt so damn much? It wasn't like I was never going to see him again.

"It is a good thing we have phones then." I smiled meekly at my pitiful attempt of making a joke in the worse possible moment. I was feeling overwhelmed and, I couldn't figure why. Sebastian drew a step back slowly releasing his arms from around me and at the lost of contact I immediately felt misery chip away at me. He was actually leaving.

He released his pinned lip from beneath his teeth. Different emotions darted across his face; longing, disparity, then finally just anger. "Is that all you're going to say?"

"What else is there to say Sebastian? I hope you have a safe flight?" My voice started to trembled cause I knew I was losing him.

"If I told you I still didn't want to go what would you have said then?"

"You can't just put me on the spot." I whispered.

"Olivia. . ." My name slips out of his mouth in a plea that sounds like it's either from pleasure or pain. He tries to come forward again to bridge the gap between us, but I stop him by placing both hands on his chest.

"Don't say it." I say shaking my head. "A part of you wants to be with her. If you didn't then this wouldn't be so hard." I pause at the thought when suddenly the music stops momentarily so that someone could announce over the speakers that it was twenty seconds until midnight. In hindsight this felt like the shortest night to me.

"You know I have only ever wanted you." Sebastian replies. "I think I've made myself intentions clear long before Stacey entered the picture." He stated firmly. My forehead falls forward onto his chest, because I didn't want the lone tear to fall.

"We would have drove each other mad. An the thought of not having you in my life is unbearable to imagine." I say in a faint voice.

“You don’t know that.” Sebastian was right but I was too terrified to test that theory.

The same announcers voice broadcasted over the speakers again, gearing up the crowd. "Alright it’s time folks! Don’t let the malign star prevent you from kissing who you want at the stoke of minute! Grab a hold of your lover cause the countdown is about to begin!"

I pull myself away just enough so that our eyes hold on to each other. The same thought both crossed our minds. I didn’t dare go first and Sebastian looked like he was running out of willpower. The crowd erupted into a loud chant as they counted backwards.

5. . .4. . . .3. . . . 2. . .

Losing the courage to see what was about to happen next. I forced my eyelids shut and I swear I heard the smallest laugh come from Sebastian. Feeling the bridge of his nose gently brush against my face. My heartbeat sped up and I wasn’t entirely sure as to why I was holding in my breath.He was about to kiss me and for some insane reason I was going to let him. Sebastian’s hand loosened around me as he brought his free hand to cup the side of my face. His thumb traced the outline of my bottom lip that voluntarily parted slightly from his soothing touch. Slowly I stared to feel the warmth from his mouth as he inches closer to mine, short strands of his beard tickled my face. I could feel this pulsating need that was building up inside that consumed me with want.

My eyelids fluttered opened as I watched Sebastian bend down closer and within an instant his lips were on mine. I was having a hard time processing what was happening. It felt like time was being trapped in a bottle and everyone around us had frozen. It was a delicate kiss at first like we were afraid that if the other moved then that would be the end. I for one feared what the ramifications would be if we did more. In my head the voice I was hearing warned me against my actions. However, the minute I sampled the taste of Sebastian I wanted more of it.

I was sinking.

I hungrily pressed my mouth to Sebastian who was equally taking what he wanted. He angled his head better, as his tongue moved against my lips before entering my mouth. I arched myself further into him deepening our kiss. I held onto his shoulders because my limbs went completely numb. I kissed Sebastian back with everything I had in me. Our tongues weaved together in a languid pace that moved in perfect sync. He worked his mouth against mine, like he had all the time in the world. His fingers were threaded in my hair pulling me closer, applying more pressure our kiss. It was heaven and hell tangled into one paradox.

I could hear the celebrations take place around us. People were shouting and singing in jubilation because they made it to the New Year. The sound of a confetti canon went off , small strings of papers rained down from above. For a brief second I wondered if people noticed the two of us, how could they not we were making out in the middle of the dance floor. I should have broken us apart and pulled away, the idea was just to crippling. Air was needing to fill my lungs so instinctively I forced myself away from him.

Both out of breath we looked at each other without saying a word at first. We had just crossed a line that we couldn't come back from. "You shouldn't have done that." I panted, I could still feel the phantom feeling of him tingling on my lips.

Pressing his forehead to mine. "I shouldn't do a lot of things." His voice hoarse, not knowing what he meant by that.

"Don't go." I couldn't believe I said it until I heard the actual sound of my voice in my ears. Seconds ago I was hell bent on keeping my distance from him and fighting against everything he wanted. Truth of the matter was that I in love with him.

"Sebastian!" Someone was yelling his name in the crowd. I knew I didn't mistake the sound because Sebastian heard it too. We separated ourselves so fast like the other person’s touch was poisonous.

"I made it here just in time baby! When I was leaving the restaurant with the girls I ran into Olivia's work husband and he told me where I could find you." Stacey was all smiles as she clung on to the side of him like a koala. Peppering kisses all over Sebastian's face. I suppose Trevor was returning the favor by sending me her. "Did you tell her the news Bass?" She asked him.

I hated when she called him that. "Yeah Sebastian mentioned that you got the job. You must be thrilled." I wrapped my arms around myself for comfort.

She looked from me to Sebastian like she was bubbling with glee. "That's not all." Stacey says, she peers up at Sebastian lovingly while he looks like he's going to be sick.

"Am I missing something?" I asked with genuine confusion. Sebastian was so damn quiet it was starting to make me get nervous all of a sudden. He barely looked at me.

"I know it's not traditional but considering I'm a modern day woman I thought why not!" She paused. She nudged an emotionally detached Sebastian. "Baby don't leave me hanging." Too impatient to wait for him to speak Stacey spoke for him. "I asked Sebastian to marry me and he said yes!"

My heart fell out of my ass. I felt like the biggest dunce in existence. Everything that Sebastian said and did tonight was a complete waste of my time. This wasn't his way of saying he wanted to be with me, for him kissing me was his way of saying goodbye. I was gutted and embarrassed that Sebastian didn't tell me himself. "Congratulations." I swallowed down the lump in my throat. "If you'll excuse me." I was trying to make it known that I was now going to leave.

Sebastian stepped forward to stop me, grabbing ahold of my wrist. I turned around to face him, my eyes brimmed with tears. I sure as hell didn't want them to fall. "Livy at least let me explain first." He pleaded. "I can't let us end like this." Sebastian's look of anguish was almost convincing.

"You're such an ass." I bite out, repeating my words from earlier. Snatching my arm from his grip, I walk away before he could respond leaving him standing there looking as hurt as I felt. There was so much that I wanted to shout at him, but the words wouldn't come. I got out of there as quick as I could but it seemed as though everyone migrated to one central area. I had to force myself through a sea of people who was drunk on elation.

When I finally made it to the entry way there was a young girl no older than maybe sixteen waiting by the door, standing next to a table filled with colorful paper origami. "Miss!" She jumped out in front of me, startling me in my tracks.

"These are for guest to take home to commemorate tonight." She reached over and busied herself at the station. I didn't want to be rude to her, she seemed like a friendly kid but I was in mood for accepting souvenirs. Just as I was about to tell her that in hands she was clutching a three dimensional paper star that was basically the size of a head. Taking it in my hands it was photograph of Sebastian and I standing in the middle of the dance floor looking up at each other molded into a star. "I saw you guys tonight. God you guys looked so romantic together." She fawned.

I handed her back the paper star, not caring that I nearly crumpled it. “That was all pretend.”

{Part 1 out of 1}