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cherrygorilla · 2 months

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The Mixtape Mysteries: Chapter 1 (Part 3)

Can't Fight This Feeling - REO Speedwagon - 4:54

The first 20 pages or so of this part have been sat, untouched in my Google Docs for literal months - so I felt like getting it finished would be a good way to help me get back into the swing of writing again. And I guess it kind of did if the fact that it's 71 pages long is anything to go by lol. It's definitely not perfect, and I'm still rather rusty, but at least it's something! There's still a bit more of this first day/chapter to go, but I felt like it'd be insane to make it go on even longer in this part, so we'll just have to wait for next time. And hopefully, now that I'm not tied to a hideous uni schedule anymore, that shouldn't be as long of a wait as it was to get this one out. Listen along with the gang here. Enjoy!

A myriad of fluorescent lights shone overhead, and pop music of every genre shook the old building's walls. But it was the gentle thudding of approaching sneakers that drew an admittedly grumpy brunette away from the mundane task of cleaning off the nozzle of her soda gun. "Zack, I already told you your guys' pizza was gonna be another ten minutes at least."

"First of all, I ordered a turkey melt," a voice matter-of-factly corrected. "And second of all, the fact that you thought I was an eleven-year-old boy is so not ok."

Glancing up from her now slightly sticky rag, Mick's eyes first met gaudy carpet and well-loved Converse, before sliding up to meet the mossy gaze and playful smirk of a favourite patron of hers. "In my defence, I wasn't actually looking at you," Mick replied, managing a smile and a soft chuckle as Vivien leant on the edge of the counter.

"So you mean to tell me that you don't know what my footsteps sound like by now?" Vivien accused with a horrified quirk of her eyebrow.

Rolling her eyes, Mick laughed. "I'll commit the sound to memory for next time, don't worry." As she set her trusty soda gun back in its slot though, she found that the brunette's mischievous grin was still reflecting in the scuffed silver of All Skate's food bar. Looking back up curiously, Mick continued. "Well if you're not coming over here to bug me about when your food's gonna be done then what do you want?"

"What? Can I not just come and talk to my pseudo big sister for fun?" she playfully scoffed.

"Not with that face," Mick chuckled with a nod at the younger girl's roguish smirk and incessant fidgeting. "What do you want?"

It took roughly two seconds for Vivien to cave under Mick's knowing gaze, collapsing onto the counter with a dramatic sigh. "Where's Miles?" she asked, referring to the currently empty spot beside Mick, where her faithful co-worker almost always resided.

"Ugh, don't ask," Mick groaned, tipping her head back as she let her eyes roll to the ceiling and back again. But Vivien's puzzled expression did all the probing for her, without having to utter a word. "I've banished him over there," she started, tilting her head in the direction of the archway that opened into the skate rentals booth. "He's sentenced to an hour of skate cleaning duty."

"Why?" Vivien asked with an amused snort.

"'Cause he was pissing me off," Mick bluntly put with a snort of her own.

Vivien's laughter wasn't so suppressed after that comment. "Why? What did he do?" she asked, chest rumbling with mirth at the prospect of her two older-sibling-like friends bickering.

"He wouldn't shut up about you know who," Mick sighed with a nettled glance in the brunet's direction.

"I thought you said he was getting over her," Vivien said. Keeping up with the high school kids' drama was a real guilty pleasure of hers, and gathering information from her venting sessions with Mick often felt like piecing a big jigsaw puzzle together - picking up names here, and backstories there. It was a rarity that the drama actually involved people she knew though, especially people she was so close with - so she was particularly invested this time. And even if she wasn't, she just enjoyed Mick's company so much she'd listen to her talk about anything.

"I thought he was," Mick admitted with a disappointed sigh. "But then Ethan started encouraging- you know what? I'm not even gonna get into it. It's not worth it."

Watching Mick catch her quickly tensing shoulders before her swelling anger could erupt, Vivien felt herself let out a deflated sigh along with her - heart aching to see the girl so emotionally invested in a battle she had fought so valiantly in, and yet still seemed to be losing. "You want me to try to talk to him about it?" Vivien gently offered.

Sighing again, this time in appreciation, Mick softened at the sight of the girl's optimistic smile. "It's alright, Viv," she reassured her. "I'll be fine once I've had a couple of minutes to cool off."

But as Vivien watched Mick catch sight of Miles grinning and mouthing something across the room to the bodacious blonde behind the music booth, she saw the brunette's jaw clench, which told a very different story. "You sure about that?" she asked with a knowingly dubious quirk of her eyebrow.

Now taking her turn to crumble over her almost-sister's knowing gaze, Mick huffed and relished the chance to vent to someone who actually understood her stance on the matter. "Do you know he almost got into a fight with her boyfriend at school today?"

Vivien's eyes almost shot straight out of her head. "Seriously?! Over what?"

"I don't know," Mick mumbled, trying to let her mind wander back to the events of the tail end of the school day. "He said it was nothing - and granted, all I saw besides them talking was Eric shoving him - but still." Letting out a sigh that pulled her shoulders, and the corners of her mouth, down to the floor, she divulged, "I just… I don't want him to get hurt."

"He'll be fine. Miles is a sensible guy, when he wants to be," Vivien chuckled with an upbeat outlook that Mick could only have dreamed of. After noting the girl's reluctance to accept her point though, she tried a softer approach. "He's not gonna do anything stupid, Mick; he knows he's got all of us relying on him to stick around."

"I guess," Mick said with a somewhat reluctant smile, which only grew as Vivien's words sunk in. As painful as it was to admit that a thirteen-year-old had a better perspective of the situation than she did, Mick couldn't help but give Vivien the win. After all, the carbon fibre-like bond Miles had with his little brothers, and their little extended family was far stronger than any phoney fling this bizarre infatuation with their ditzy co-worker could ever bring about. Miles' family was everything to him, he'd never do anything to jeopardise that. She just needed to get better at trusting him. "I just get like, weirdly protective over him, you know?" she went on to confess, chuckling at her sisterly possessiveness.

"Mhm, if that Eric guy lays a finger again I'll take his stupid long arms and wrap him up like a pretzel," Vivien steadfastly agreed, her resoluteness setting Mick's shoulders off shaking with laughter. "And if Carrie breaks his heart I'll personally drag her through the forest out back by her dumb little ponytail," she added, jerking her head in the direction of the girl behind her, whose half-up hairdo was idly bobbing along to the latest song she'd selected to play.

"I don't doubt that for a second," Mick grinned once her laughter had finally subsided. "Especially after I saw you two teaming up on air hockey last week," she added, prompting Vivien to join in with fondly recalling the instance where Miles had jumped to the thirteen-year-old's rescue after she had been unfairly condemned to face a game against his two younger brothers alone. After dutifullying ragging on Royce and Bentley for suggesting such a thing in the first place, Miles swooped in to grab the fourth, previously abandoned, pusher. And, through many laughter-filled rounds, complete with enough boisterous chanting to fill a small sports stadium, the hastily put-together duo came out victorious, celebrating with high-fives until their hands were raw and Miles hoisting Vivien over his head like a trophy until her giggles left her gasping for breath.

As a contented silence fell over the pair, with Vivien looking, almost longingly, across at the brunet, Mick remembered the reason the girl was over there in the first place, and smiled as she decided to ask, "What was it you wanted him for anyway?"

"I just wanted to ask him something," Vivien replied, being knowingly vague if the skittish bouncing on her heels and avoidance of Mick's gaze was anything to go by.

"And it's not something I can help with?" Mick tested, raising an eyebrow.

"Not this time," Vivien confirmed with a firm shake of her head.

"Hmm," Mick murmured, nodding back, at first in earnest understanding, before a teasing smirk began to blossom on her face. "...And does this 'something' happen to involve a certain someone's little brother?"

Vivien's gaze snapped to Mick's with a disapproving frown. "...Maybe," she mumbled, having to shove the word out with her tongue because it was so reluctant to be spoken into existence.

Smiling fondly as the younger girl's cheeks flushed pink with embarrassment, which was only enhanced by the flashing of the skating rink's colourful, neon lights overhead, Mick chuckled. "Knock yourself out. He's only over there re-organising skates, he could probably use the company."

"Thanks, Mick!" Vivien grinned, breathing a sigh of relief as she followed the direction of the brunette's nod and bounded down the entire length of the serving counter to the partially walled off skate rentals section. Once there though, she slowed down her pace just in time to witness an interaction that quite literally left her speechless.

After several, painful attempts to mouth and mime the name 'Rick Springfield', Carrie finally signalled her understanding with an exaggerated nod and thumbs up, before scribbling something down and starting to flip through her cases of cassettes, leaving Miles shaking his head and chuckling to himself as he grabbed the recently abandoned shoe deodoriser spray again. Giving the aerosol can a masterful spin, he unloaded a cloud of pine-scented chemicals into the sweaty opening of a roller skate, jerking his head away just in time to miss the brunt of the backsplash. With his nose now a safe distance from the stomach-turning scent combination, he took in a deep, anticipatory breath before turning his head to see if Carrie had caught his can wrangling finesse. To his disappointment, her eyes hadn't left her collection of tapes once, meaning his attempt to impress her had gone entirely unnoticed. Letting that breath out with a self-loathing huff, mind swarmed with questions of 'what the hell was that?' and 'what did you even want to happen anyway?', Miles moved to set the aerosol spray back down on the counter. He set his other hand down to help steady himself as he did so, but what he failed to remember was that there was a roller skate in that other hand. And roller skates had wheels. It wasn't until those wheels met the burnished metal surface that he remembered that though - and by then it was too late. The wheels spun on impact and the roller skate took off, dragging Miles' arm along with it. Too shocked to realise what had happened right away, Miles didn't stand a chance at bracing himself, and before he knew it, his nose was the next thing to make contact with the serving counter, followed by the rest of his face as it smacked against the surface with a dull thud.

Vivien's hand flew to her mouth upon the impact - partly out of disbelief, partly to muffle her laughter. Although her incredulity soon turned to fond amusement as she hung back and watched Miles peel his face away from the sticky steel, and drag himself back to his full height.

He winced and cursed under his breath as he slung the wretched skate back into its assigned cubby, before muttering more obscenities about his own stupidity and gingerly pinching along the bridge of his nose to check that it felt normal. Even he had to admit that he'd gone down with quite a remarkable bang - he wouldn't be surprised if it had left lasting damage. To his relief, all felt well. And after a dreaded glance in Carrie's direction, he let out a further sigh of relief upon finding that her attention was still anywhere other than him. At least his insignificance to her had actually come in use for once.

"Thank God no one saw that," he grumbled, once again shaking his head at his own idiocy as he turned to select a new pair of skates to freshen up. But, to his dismay, a familiar voice behind him jumped in to remind him that he could never be so lucky.

"Holy shit, I knew you could be an idiot sometimes, but I didn't realise it was this bad."

Mouth agape in horror, and skin somehow prickling with even further embarrassment than it already was, Miles turned to find a pint-sized brunette laughing like a hyena at his misfortune.

"Please don't tell me you just saw all that," Miles groaned in despair.

"Afraid so, big guy," she chuckled, lazily crossing her arms across the serving counter separating them. "And you had the perfect soundtrack to it too," she noted, nodding to the overhead speakers blaring out Sade before adding, "That trick with the spray can was pretty cool though, I'll give you that."

"Yeah, before I hit the deck," Miles snorted, finding it much easier to laugh at his own misfortune after seeing how much it entertained his honorary little sister.

"It was actually kind of impressive how hard you went down," she acknowledged.

"I know," Miles agreed with a chuckle. "I was scared for a second there that I'd messed up my nose; it hurts like a bitch," he added, grimacing again as he warily prodded the bridge. "It's not bleeding is it?"

"No, you're good," Vivien reassured. "You just made yourself look like a total moron instead."

Rolling his eyes at the thirteen-year-old's smirk, Miles continued. "I think I do most days, Viv. We're not exactly making groundbreaking discoveries here."

Vivien's smirk only broadened as she pushed the boundaries of sibling-like teasing a touch further. "It's too bad Carrie wasn't watching; you could have pretended to have been knocked out and she might have volunteered to give you mouth-to-mouth."

The amused smile pestering Miles' face was dropped like a lead balloon, replaced with a look of weary cynicism. "Did Mick put you up to this?" he sighed, one eyebrow raised in interest, the other furrowed in frustration.

"No, I'm just being a nosy little shit," Vivien grinned mischievously, which soon dragged Miles' smile back into position.

"Aren't you always?" he questioned.

"Pretty much," she confirmed. "What's going on with you and her then? I thought you were 'happy just being friends', but Mick said that you almost got into a fight with-"

"Oh my god, it was not a fight," Miles cut in with an exasperated scoff, shooting Mick a quick look of annoyance as a result of her protectiveness before going on to hastily explain. "He was just being an asshole - and so was Carrie, actually. It kind of pissed me off."

Green eyes glittering with intrigue as Miles' steadily flickered with anger, Vivien asked, "Why? What happened?"

Miles knew that he shouldn't be unloading his problems on his thirteen-year-old brother's best friend; it wasn't her place to act as his therapist. But her look of genuine interest, paired with the fact that Mick had quite literally walked away so that she didn't have to listen to them anymore, made his tongue start moving before his brain even told it to. "I was just trying to talk to her in study hall to…I don't know, prove to myself that she cared about me outside of work, I guess. I still don't really know what I was thinking, to be honest. But when I was talking to her it was like she was just trying to get rid of me. Everything I said, she shot down. I'm pretty sure I was one question away from her straight up telling me to fuck off," he recalled, practically spitting the words out by the end because of how bitter they tasted.

"Damn, what a ball of sunshine," Vivien noted, voice dripping with sarcasm as she spared the blonde behind her a withering glare. Now she understood why Mick was so protective. Turning back to Miles, she pressed on. "Well if she was being such an asshole to you earlier then why are you standing here doing fancy spray can flips to try to impress her?"

"I wasn't- …" Miles' first explanation came to him so quickly, and yet this time it felt like there was nothing to say. Nothing that he could rationally explain to a recent pre-teen graduate anyway. Sighing as his gaze wandered to that all too familiar head of golden curls, bringing the accompanying, longing ache in his chest with it, he slowly admitted, "We had a… a run-in in the break room."

Screwdriver handle clamped between his teeth, Miles squinted at the bulb fixing of the faulty break room light. Nothing looked glaringly wrong with any of the wires that poked out into the opening in the ceiling, but then again they all just looked the same to him anyway. He contemplated going back to his boss to suggest calling an actual handyman again, but since he'd already seemingly been deemed expendable enough to risk electrocution by the balding cheapskate, he decided to just keep trying his luck. Something had to work eventually, right? As he stuck his finger into the hole again, brushing away what he hoped was just a clump of dust, to bring down another wire to start experimenting with though, a voice cut through the jumble of thoughts filling his head.

"Well, this is embarrassing."

The voice startled Miles so much he almost forgot he was balanced atop a set of stepladders. If anything though, glancing down to put a face to the voice, set his heart racing even faster than the prospect of falling and twisting his ankle did.

Resentment still bubbling away in his stomach, he quickly averted his gaze back to the plastic-encased copper between his fingertips. "What is?" he asked, dispassionate despite the frantic thudding of his chest.

"The fact that we both have the same taste in work attire."

The first thing Miles noticed when he looked back over at Carrie was the amused grin settled comfortably on her face - evidently she was unphased by their interaction earlier. But the next was her outfit, or more specifically, the t-shirt that her comment had drawn his gaze to. Atop the headache-inducing leotard, covered in glittering swirls of hot pink, neon yellow and electric blue (complete with matching pink leggings and yellow leg warmers), was a bright, cobalt blue t-shirt, emblazoned with All-Skate's logo. The very same shirt Miles had selected for his own shift that evening.

A feeble breath of laughter escaped around the screwdriver still wedged in his mouth. "Oh yeah," he acknowledged, quickly returning his attention to the wiring in hope that the interaction would end there, and that he wouldn't have to live through yet another conversation that he'd then spend the next hour obsessively analysing.

Alas, Carrie's chatterbox tendencies soon trampled that idea into the grimy, ash-stained carpet. "I'm kind of surprised this hasn't happened sooner actually; there's only so many shirt colours back there to pick from," she airily chuckled as she leant against the doorframe to the stockroom. "And I'm even more surprised Ethan hasn't straight up suggested it for you two."

The laugh that she drew from him was a real one that time, and Miles mentally kicked himself as soon as he felt it slip out. "Don't give him any ideas," he warned as he started messing with the screwdriver again. "We'd be matching every shift if he got his way."

"We'll have to set up a 'who wore it best?' wall. You know? Like those spreads in magazines," Carrie went on to gleefully babble, eyes glittering with amiable mischief. "And then get everyone to vote on the outfits as they come in."

"...Yeah, no one's gonna care enough to participate in that," Miles countered, popping the girl's idea with one, sharp snort of amusement.

"I can dream, can't I?" Carrie shot back, sending the boy a withering stare atop a grin that took away any of its credibility. "And besides, we won't know until we try."

"You want me to go and get Mick to grab her camera then?" Miles smirked as he pinned a loose wire into place.

"Woah, woah, woah, I never said anything about starting tonight."

"Why not?" Miles asked, eyebrow quirked as incredulous laughter rattled his chest. "You were all about it ten seconds ago."

"Listen, I've got a fragile ego. I don't think it would survive if we started tonight," Carrie jokily admitted. "I'll need to plan out a killer outfit to secure a win before we even think about breaking out the camera."

"Yeah right," Miles scoffed, playfully rolling his eyes. "Like you wouldn't win every time."

"I don't think I would tonight," Carrie said with that same, readily confident grin. "You'd give me a run for my money anyway."

Miles scoffed again, so hard that it dislodged the weight responsible for keeping his true laughter at bay. "Fuck off," he chuckled, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of the notion.

"I'm serious; you look great," she defended.

And to Miles' surprise, and somewhat terror, when he finally dared to search for that glimmer of teasing in her eyes, he found nothing but sincerity.

“Blue's your colour," Carrie went on to warmly explain as she approached Miles' set of step ladders. "It brings out your eyes." And as her lips curled into a mischievous grin, she added, "Plus, those jeans make your ass look fantastic."

It was a miracle Miles got any words out at all after that last comment - the very words making his brain short circuit. "In case you forgot," he said, as reluctant to accept the flattery as he was to believe that Carrie was actually being genuine. "You also have blue eyes," he finished, finally daring to rip his gaze away from the wire spaghetti to fire a teasing smirk at her.

"Hmm, not the right shade - not for this shirt anyway," she went on to muse, eyebrows furrowed, at first in deliberation, but then in confusion. "And what's with all the deflection? Would you just take the compliment for once?"

"No, because I think you're full of shit," Miles bluntly retorted with another hearty laugh. "As if anyone in their right mind would vote for my washed out jeans, and $10 sneakers over your…get-up. You look like you've just walked out of Barbie's Dreamhouse… Or a glow-in-the-dark sticker book."

Now it was Carrie's turn to snort in incredulity. "'Get-up'? Ok, Grandpa. I think it's time for your nap," she teased, flashing that infectious grin of hers that Miles fell victim to every damn time.

"I'm gonna fucking need one at this rate," he laughed, after trying to reseat the lightbulb in its casing, only for it to pop right back out yet again.

"What are you even doing up there?" Carrie asked, peering up at the electrical work with about as much understanding as she did with her last geography exam.

"Trying to fix this light that won't stop flickering," Miles wearily explained as he went back to tinkering. "Ralph thinks the wiring's gone, but I don't understand how because everything still seems to be connected normally up here."

“You actually know what you’re looking for?”

“…Sort of,” he sheepishly admitted with a bright, lopsided smile, trying his best to muster some conviction that would convince not only himself, but Carrie and her dubious frown too.

Apparently, the ditzy blonde didn’t need much persuading. “Hmm, alright,” she hummed, nodding earnestly despite the hint of an amused grin curling the corners of her lips. “You need me to hand you anything?” she then continued, scanning the table beside her, where Miles had spread out the contents of the roller rink’s hastily thrown together tool kit.

“I don’t think so,” Miles said, as he hooked a different wire into position and checked over the light bulb casing one more time. “Just let me try”-

As he popped the light fixture into position once again, to his amazement, it held in place. Trying not to let his excitement show too much, he gestured for Carrie to try the light switch by the door. And to their collective astonishment, as she flicked it, the bulb lit up with the rest of the fleet, shining brightly, and consistently, without so much as a stutter in sight.

“Let there be light,” Miles said, glancing down at Carrie with a rightfully smug, cheesy grin.

“Damn, I’m impressed,” she chuckled. “Looks like we really didn’t need that handyman after all.”

“Yeah, well,” Miles snickered as he climbed down the step ladders. “Not just a pretty face, am I?”

“I could have told you that,” Carrie replied with a teasing eye roll. “You do way too much for this place - way more than you get paid for anyway.”

“Hmm,” Miles acknowledged with a self-deprecating huff. “I’ve been told it’s because I'm a 'people-pleaser', but I think a more appropriate term is 'dumbass'.”

Carrie’s laughter bubbled up from beneath her bright blue t-shirt like a fountain, sprinkling Miles’ cheeks with further, infectious amusement that spread them into a smile he couldn’t have wiped from his face if he wanted to. And he definitely didn’t want to.

“Speaking of 'people-pleasing',” Carrie eventually sighed once she’d caught her breath again. “I'd better get out there before Mick starts giving me the stink eye. I still don't think I've managed to get back in her good books after skipping out on cleaning the big freezer last week.”

“It's fine, she won't hold a grudge forever.”

“Easy for you to say, she likes you,” Carrie snorted as she started making tracks for the door that led them out to the rink. Beckoning for Miles to follow her, she added, “Come on, you need to tell everyone about your mad handyman skills. Or am I gonna have to sing your praises for you, as usual?”

“Sounds good to me,” Miles laughed, eyes twinkling with mischief. “You need me to give you a beat or…?”

Stopping in her tracks, Carrie wearily shook her head with a withering gaze. "Come to think of it, 'dumbass' sounds like it'd be a pretty good name after all."

But Carrie's groaned complaints, a stark contrast to her amused smirk, only egged Miles on. "Oh come on, you teed that one up for me," he chuckled, bumping her arm with a roguish grin.

Carrie wasn't about to get caught admitting to such a heinous crime though. "Get to work, pretty boy," she retorted, jerking her head in the direction of the skate rental hatch as they finally emerged from the break room - fighting off the growing urge to laugh along with him by firing off a teasing quip of her own. "And work that blue shirt for some tips."

"You're delusional," Miles snorted in response to Carrie's wiggling eyebrows.

"I'm telling you," she pressed, giggling despite her sincerity. "One wink from you, in that shirt, with that hair, and the juniors will be weak at the knees. I know I am."

Thankfully, Miles' innate ease around Carrie allowed his mouth to run on autopilot - because if his brain had actually been allowed to process what she'd said, it wouldn't have been able to function for the rest of the night. Then again, perhaps it was so sure she was lying it had no trouble deflecting the comment with a sing-songed, reiterated: "Delusional.”

“Try me!”

For a moment Miles considered it, swept up in the challenging current of her glittering, oceanic eyes. But thankfully his feet found purchase on solid ground before he could totally lose his mind, and the rest of his dignity. “Yeah fucking right,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes and absent-mindededly running a hand through his hair - a recent habit of his due to its unseasonable length.

Without so much as a second thought about the action, Miles continued walking. It wasn’t until he heard a metal chair leg clashing against the wall that he realised what he’d just done though - turning his head just in time to watch Carrie dramatically collapsing against the painted brickwork, feigning a faint and almost taking out an entire table in the process. Sprawled out, with one hand bracing against the wall and the other pressed theatrically to her forehead, she momentarily broke out of character to check Miles’ reaction with a cheeky grin.

But Miles just watched her in open-mouthed disbelief, trying with everything in him to bite back the laugh that was just dying to escape. “You’re so stupid,” he eventually chucked, once more shaking his head at her as she peeled herself away from the wall.

“Ok, I was wrong, forget the wink - just go with the hair,” Carrie instructed, dramatically fanning herself as she jogged the few paces separating them - falling back into stride with the floppy-haired brunet with that same cheeky grin still plastered across her face. "And the shirt," she added earnestly. "Don't forget about the shirt."

"How can I when I'll be reminded every time I look at you?" Miles playfully retorted. If only she realised just how many times that would be though.

"Oh well," Carrie continued, breezing on through the rest of the conversation without giving Miles' comment so much as a second thought. "If you're not gonna celebrate your new role as resident electrician then I guess I'll just have to do it for you. You got any song requests?" she asked, turning to him, as they reached his work station for the evening, with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "I think I can put in a good word with the DJ for you."

Warmth bubbling away in his stomach, Miles leant back against the doorframe of the skate rentals booth. "Fine, I'll have a think," he conceded with a shy chuckle. There was no way he'd have been able to give her any song names on the spot; his brain was far too preoccupied trying to pilot his body through the rest of the interaction without self-destructing.

To his immense relief, Carrie didn't press him for an answer. Instead, she just dazzled him with that infamous smile of hers and started a few tentative steps over to her music booth, gently pulling the weight of nervous dread that had settled on Miles' chest with her as she went. "Alright, well, you know where to find me."

And he absolutely did, because for every moment that his mind wasn't occupied with another thought, his eyes seemed to default to the human glow stick and the silly little way she bopped her head to the music from behind her kiosk. God, he hated how endearing he found it.

After stumbling his way through a hastily abridged version of events, Miles dared to bring his gaze back to the thirteen year old opposite him, feigning nonchalance as he leant back and awaited her take on the interaction.

“...So what I’m hearing is: she was nice to you once and now you’re suddenly all over her again?” Vivien asked, eyebrow quirked judgmentally and intonation teasing.

Miles crossed his arms as he scoffed out a defence. “I am not, and never was, ‘all over her’.”

“I’m paraphrasing,” Vivien dryly retorted.

“How do you even know what that means?” Miles asked in disgruntled incredulity, about to launch into a no-doubt heated debate with the smug brunette until his better judgement stepped in. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. None of this does. Nothing’s changed with Carrie, and it’s not going to. Mick’s just overreacting.”

Despite listening attentively to the boy’s crabby rationalisation, Vivien’s smirk didn’t budge. And neither did her opinion on the matter. “…If you say so, buddy,” she eventually offered.

Knowing he wouldn’t get anything better than that, Miles merely rolled his eyes and decided to cut his losses - opting to change the topic instead of trying to fight his corner any longer. “What are you even doing over here anyway? What do you want?”

“Damn, and there I was thinking you were enjoying my company,” Vivien laughed through her incredulous horror.

“I was. I am,” Miles corrected with a laugh of his own. “I just want to change the subject - and fast; you’ve already been distracting me too long.”

“Yeah ‘cause you’ve got some real important work to do,” Vivien sarcastically drawled.

“Would you want to wear skates that smell like a hot, sweaty asshole?” Miles challenged, arming himself with a fresh pair of skates and his trusty aerosol can. Finally, Vivien had no witty comeback, and he could unload a generous spritz of forest-y freshness into the boot with a smirk of his own playing at his lips. “Yeah, didn’t think so,” he chuckled. “Now what did you want?”

“I need you to do me a favour,” she admitted.

Her earnest authority, paired with Miles’ borderline familial love for the girl, almost had him agreeing out of pure instinct alone. But after taking a second to actually process the request, the responsible side of his brain kicked into gear; swarmed with suspicion that ground his train of thought to an abrupt halt. “…What kind of favour?”

Inwardly grumbling about Miles’ wariness, Vivien explained. “In the next,” she began, pausing to glance at the big clock on the wall to give herself a realistic time frame. Or rather, a realistic ultimatum. “…thirty minutes or so, Royce is going to come over here to ask you a question. I need you to say ‘yes’.”

“What kind of question?” Miles cagily probed.

With how big of a breath the girl took in, Miles braced himself for an onslaught of apology-laced begging. But as soon as the reality of having to divulge her plan to Miles hit her, her brain scrambled that breath away and hid it with the rest of her hormone-driven itinerary.

“…I can’t tell you.”

Miles’ demeanour changed in an instant. “Yeah, no, deal’s off,” he said flatly, crossing his arms across his chest again. If he’d been nudging the gate into position before, now he’d slammed it shut. And padlocked it for good measure.

"What the hell? Why?" Vivien squeaked in indignation - forest green irises ablaze with frustration.

"I'm not signing off on something without knowing what it is."

"Oh come on, Miles. Don't be a buzzkill," she groaned. "It's not even a big deal."

"Then why can't you tell me what it is?" he challenged.

"...Because."

The girl's reluctance to answer on her own accord, paired with her neurotic fidgeting, was not filling Miles with much confidence. Vivien had been known to sneak out without her parents' permission before - the last thing he needed was Royce to start doing the same. So, regardless of the likely outcome, he wanted to get as much information from the girl as he could before he dismissed her. Plus, there had to be a reason for her over-the-top secrecy; she'd revealed secret plans to him before. Why was this time so different? "Is it something illegal?"

"Seriously?" Vivien huffed with a further incredulous, yet somehow still playful, frown. "Is that all you think of me?"

"You're the one who keeps breaking into abandoned buildings," Miles teasingly chuckled. "You forged that opinion all on your own."

"We don't 'break in', we walk in - there's a difference," Vivien clarified. "And no, everything's perfectly legal. You can take Deputy Butt Chin off speed dial."

Miles couldn't help but laugh at the line. "Deputy Butt Chin, that's great," he chortled, glancing across at Mick as he grabbed another pair of skates, making a mental note to inform her of her boyfriend's new nickname as soon as he'd wormed his way out of de-stinking duty. "Well if you're not planning on sneaking off to commit arson or something then what's with all the secrecy?" he went on to ask Vivien, turning back to her with an amused smirk that was a welcome change to his wary frown. "What are you two up to?"

"Nothing!" Vivien insisted. But she could already feel the cracks in her resolve starting to splinter under Miles' gaze. She couldn't hold out much longer, not with those sky blue eyes boring holes into her skull. "It's just… Ugh, look, I'm just gonna ask him if he wants to go to the movies, ok?" she finally confessed, blurting the words out like they'd been fired from a gun. "But he's gonna need your permission first, so I need you to say 'yes'."

Miles' smirk unfurled like a sunflower in midday, sitting proudly beneath a pair of irises that glittered with mischief. "The movies, huh?" he checked, biting back a chuckle. "...And it's only Royce you're asking?"

Cheeks the colour of a Coke can, and with enough embarrassment bubbling beneath to rival the carbonation of its contents, Vivien grumbled out her answer. "...Yes."

"What's wrong with your other friends? They all busy or something?" Miles asked, relishing the opportunity to tease the usually overbearing brunette to death.

"Don't push it," Vivien warned through gritted teeth. But a heavy sigh was able to disperse some of her mortification, enough to bring the nervous desperation back to the surface anyway. "Look, are you gonna say 'yes' or not? I've not lost hours of sleep over this for you to dick around and ruin it at the last minute."

"As long as you've got a chaperone and an age-appropriate movie lined up, I'm but your humble servant," Miles replied with an entertained grin that told Vivien he was enjoying this far more than he was letting on - and even then it was as obvious as the nose on his face.

"My dad's dropping us off, and it's The NeverEnding Story."

A bark of laughter escaped Miles' lips before he was able to stop the rest from tumbling out. "Holy shit, that's so good," he murmured. He couldn't have come up with a more endearing outcome had he tried - or a more amusing one, come to think of it. This would be keeping him entertained for weeks.

Deciding that he'd put the poor girl through enough discomfort for one night though, Miles finally took her proposal seriously, and offered her a genuine smile. "Sure, knock yourself out, kiddo," he said, partly just relieved that the request hadn't been anything that would have landed him in a courtroom.

"Thank you," Vivien breathed, letting out a sigh so deep she felt herself starting to get light-headed. Gently shaking away the hazy relief, and trying desperately to subdue the giddy grin threatening to take over her face, Vivien finally felt herself starting to relax again. "That took a lot less blackmailing than I thought," she admitted with a mischievous chuckle. "Which is a shame, because I have such good material-"

"Alright, alright, you've made your point, you've got your 'yes' man, now get out of here. I've got like thirty more skates to de-stink," Miles cut in, fondly rolling his eyes and attempting to shoo the girl away before she could share any of the aforementioned material. After all, he'd felt enough embarrassment today to last him a lifetime. He didn't need Vivien to start contributing.

"Guess I'll just have to save them for a rainy day," she teasingly compromised as she wound down their conversation and started heading back over to her friends' table. Right before she could leave though, she tacked on a wicked: "And just so you know, that face plant incident is so making the list for next time."

"Yeah?" Miles challenged with a scoffed laugh to combat her cheeky grin. "Well, just so you know, I'm never letting Royce live down the fact that you had to make the first move," he smirked. "Vivien O'Brian: Balls of Steel."

Rather than accepting Miles' teasing congratulations for her bravery, or dwelling on what he'd said and what it implied about Royce's feelings (knowing that if she did, and the curly haired brunet turned her down, she'd have his older brother's head on a stick for getting her hopes up), Vivien decided to fire back a ribbing retort of her own. Because if he was allowed to poke fun at her love life, then what was to stop her from doing the same? "If you need to borrow them sometime then I might be able to get something arranged," she called out, backing away from the counter as she shot the blonde at the DJ booth a knowing look that soon found its way back to Miles. And that's how she left him, shaking his head in a mixture of disbelief and fond amusement, that was soon clouded by the heady aroma of more pine-scented deodoriser spray as he buried his feelings in more, mindless work.

Eraser rubbings, and pencil shavings decorated an already busy table top, where notepads dodged rings of condensation from steadily melting slushes, and plastic die roamed the crowded landscape like dragons seeking out a knight. And speaking of dragons…

"Thanks to Argus' stroke of genius, and Skylar's clever navigation, our band of unlikely heroes made it out of The Tinder Grove unscathed, save for some singed hair and minor burns-"

"Uh, I never agreed to being called 'Argus'," Royce piped up indignantly.

"Dude, stop interrupting the story!" Zack clamoured with an exasperated thump of his fist on their booth table.

"Why does it even matter what your guy's called anyway?" Kona asked with a weary roll of her eyes. Propped up on an elbow, and rocking a pencil back and forth between her fingers - she wasn't exactly a picture of great focus. But the constant stopping-and-starting of the campaign due to bathroom breaks, rule reiterations, and petty whining was certainly not stopping the rapid waning of her concentration.

"Well excuse me for wanting to actually have a say in my character design," Royce retorted with a huff.

"You picked out everything else!" Zack argued.

"Yeah and you took a fucking eternity - I thought we were gonna have graduated before you settled on your stat points," Kona groaned, taking to lazily doodling a flower on the corner of her paper.

"You guys were the ones saying to think carefully about it," Royce insisted with a disgruntled scowl.

"Yeah, it's important to get it right before you start, guys," August chimed in, offering the older boy a small, somewhat supportive smile.

"I didn't think we were gonna start at that point." Kona lazily fired back, shooting the pair another pointed look.

Then Bentley decided to give his two cents - partly gargled through a mouthful of green apple slushy. "I thought Argus was cool - didn't it mean like "guardian" or something?"

"Yeah, but it sounds like a gas company," Zack snickered, quickly earning himself a defeated glare from Royce.

"See? It sounds lame!" the thirteen-year-old exclaimed over his younger brother's raucous laughter, which only got louder as Zack backed his comment up by making fart noises with his hands. Kona, on the other hand, just looked at the boy beside her with a resigned disgust that could only have come from years of putting up with his shenanigans.

"You already are lame! What does it matter?" came Zack's next playful jab, punctuated with a hearty laugh of his own.

Before Royce could muster a further retaliation though, an unruly, chestnut ponytail plopped down into the booth beside him, eyeing the group with an amused, yet wary smile.

"What's going on?" Vivien asked, biting back a chuckle as Bentley tried his hardest to make his own hand-farts, although with significantly less successful results.

"Royce is whining about his character name again," Kona explained with another spiritless eye roll.

"I am not whining," he insisted.

Kona just snorted out a laugh of her own. "Could have fooled me."

Sensing the rising tensions amongst the ragtag group of friends, August attempted to placate them all with a timidly hopeful offer. "If you guys wanted, we could always revisit the characters and change them a bit after playing through the first campaign-"

"Yeah, go waste an hour of your own time," Zack told Royce. "My mom's pot roast is gonna be burnt as hell by the time I get home at this rate."

"You're having dinner at home?" Bentley asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"Yeah."

"...Then why the hell did we order pizza here?" August asked as incredulous laughter already began tumbling from Bentley's lips.

"'Cause I'm hungry, man!" Zack insisted. "Two fish sticks for lunch is torture. I've gotta eat!"

As Zack and his friends found themselves caught up in another animated debate, this time about his appetite that could rival (as he told them) an American Pygmy Shrew, Vivien turned to the disgruntled boy at her side, immediately snatching his attention. "You could always go back to Royce the Robust," she offered with a teasing smile.

"Yeah!" Bentley agreed, already starting to giggle again about the stir the name had caused when it was first suggested.

"Absolutely not," Royce said flatly, shooting the idea down in an instant - hating it just as much the second time around.

"Just stick with Argus, man. It's not that deep," Zack borderline pleaded.

"Yeah, I like Argus," Vivien agreed, this time wearing a smile showing nothing but innocent sincerity.

Royce paused and blinked, thinking he must have misheard her. "You do?"

"Yeah, it's cool," she confirmed. "And it means 'watchful guardian', right? That's perfect for you; you're always watching out for us."

The genuine warmth in Vivien's words, and that infectious smile of hers, had Royce's heart hammering in his chest so hard he was scared it would splinter a rib. Averting his gaze before his face could turn the colour of his cherry slushy though, he coughed and prayed his voice would stay steady as his heart skipped a beat and changed direction all together. "...Ok, uh, yeah, I'll stick with Argus."

"Thank you," Zack huffed, collapsing backwards in his seat with a dramatic eye roll.

"Sappy idiots," Kona scoffed, smirking and shaking her head at the pair of thirteen-year-olds, who were ferociously avoiding eye contact for fear of their cheeks growing hot enough to set their paper straws alight.

"Ok, ok, Royce is sticking with his name, Viv's back at the table, Zack's about to be fed - let's get back to the story!" Bentley demanded with an eager grin that August gladly replicated once the blond's eyes landed on him.

As the rest of the group mumbled their agreements, with varying levels of enthusiasm, and settled back into their seats, August lifted his binder back into his eyeline and continued to read his scrawled handwriting aloud, setting the players up for the next stage in their journey…

"Leading the charge, brandishing one of the Northern Gravelback's mighty fangs around his neck, like the medal it was, Omar Scale Crusher is the first of the group to stumble upon a towering structure of crumbling brick, overgrown with a century's worth of ivy. Although the oak door is chained shut, he notices the ivy has grown over a long-shattered window, already overrun with moss. Omar, what do you do next?" he finished, lifting his gaze to send his friend an inquisitive grin.

Zack's eyes glittered with intrigue beneath a set of furrowed brows. "This has to be the cursed wizard's old hideout, right?" he thought aloud. And although he scanned the table's occupants for confirmation of his suspicions, he decided on his next move before they could utter a sound, fuelled by pure adrenaline and a hero's instinct. "I'm breaking through the chain and heading insi-"

"Woah, woah, woah, slow down," Royce cut in with an outraged frown. "What happened to consulting the group first?"

"Yeah," Kona piped up. "You've gotta check for booby traps first, idiot - or do you want to get us all killed before we even get out of the forest?"

"They're cursed - they fled the night the curse was placed on them - there's no way they had time to set booby traps," Zack attempted to dismiss.

"Who's to say they didn't set them before they were cursed?" Vivien theorised. But when four pairs of curious eyes fell on her, each looking as lost as the next, she went on to explain. "I mean, if they've got a bunch of rare ingredients and magical artefacts in there, they'd have wanted some sort of security system in place to keep them safe, right? Otherwise thieves would have gutted this place years ago."

"Well the window's broken, maybe they already have?" Bentley suggested.

"And another one's about to," Kona added with a smug grin and a quick glance down at her character sheet.

Choosing to just focus on Bentley's question, Vivien continued. "We had to carve a doorway through that giant silverwood tree to get in - there was no other way into the glade - if anyone else had been here before us, that tree wouldn't have been in one piece. So the broken window has to be a red herring - something to ward off any thieves that did ever make it this far by tricking them into thinking someone had already beaten them to it. I don't think either route is completely safe, but I'd take our chances checking the window first over the main door. That way we at least get a look inside before we try entering."

As satisfying as Zack, Kona and Bentley's stupefied expressions, and Royce's awestruck grin were, it was the proud twinkle in August's muddy, olive eyes that finally drew a smile to her lips.

"Omar," August continued, biting back a smirk as his gaze returned to Zack. "Your next move?"

Shrinking under the warning eyes of his friends, Zack sheepishly mumbled his reply. "I'll go and look through the window to check for any signs of danger," he said, reciting the words in a monotone voice as though they'd been fed to him by cue cards.

As his smirk broke free, August turned back to his binder. "Omar approaches the cracked pane of glass and peers through the cobwebs adorning the gap. He casts a 'detect magic' spell and finds the cobblestone floor and door handle have both been charmed, whilst the padlock's mechanism has been laced with combustionite - a material designed to explode at first contact with any living lifeform."

Kona snorted and elbowed the boy beside her. "Still think breaking the door down was a good idea?" she teased, earning herself a disgruntled huff from the boy.

"Alright, alright, I get it."

"What charms are they?" Royce went on to ask, quietly hoping to impress Vivien as much as her inquisitive nature had impressed him. "Maybe if we can find out what they do we'll have something to counteract them."

"It's called 'Membrat Torpestus', it's a charm that, again, only affects living life forms. But unlike the magic used on the lock that makes whatever it touches explode, this charm works on the atoms in your skeleton, essentially disintegrating them," August began to explain.

"What the hell?" Vivien muttered, eyebrows pulled together in a mix of horror and concentration.

"It's like when you get 'jelly legs' after sitting in a weird position for too long - but with this your legs would actually start turning to jelly," August finished, eyes glittering with morbid glee upon watching his friends' reactions to his story. But before any of them could question him further, a new voice entered the debate.

"Do I want to know the context?" Mick asked with a wary, lopsided grin, hearing the tail end of the conversation as she approached the table with a steaming tray of food lofted over her shoulder.

"Yes!" Bentley and Zack cried in unison - but Bentley's enthusiasm for the game was only matched by Zack's enthusiasm for the slab of greasy cheese and marinara the brunette was setting down on their table.

Chuckling at the pair as they shot one another incredulous looks, Mick said, "Alright, well let me set this food down before it gets cold, then knock yourselves out. I've got a large pizza - half pepperoni, half veggie; a basket of waffle fries; two portions of chicken tenders; and one turkey melt." After placing the food in its designated place, amongst the scattered array of papers, and ravenous youths, Mick stepped back and addressed the group again. "Is that everything or can I get you guys anythi-?"

"Could you please get me a-?"

Before Kona could even finish her question, Mick whipped a little tub of ranch sauce out of her apron pocket and tossed it to the blonde.

"Aww, you remembered," Kona giggled with a grateful grin. "Thanks, Mick!"

"No problem," Mick smiled, sending the girl a quick, knowing wink when she next caught her eye. "Anyone else need anything?" she tried again. But since the caddy on the table already had a plethora of other condiments for the group to choose from, and Zack had already inhaled one of his pizza slices in a matter of seconds, they all seemed to be satisfied. "Awesome, fire away then. I've been dying to know what you guys have been doing over here all this time. You've been so quiet Miles and I thought you were plotting some kind of middle school coup," she snorted, tucking her serving tray under her arm.

"We're playing Dungeons and Dragons," Bentley exclaimed, spraying crumbs all over his character sheet in his excitement.

"...Which is?"

"It's like a fantasy role-playing game," Vivien explained a little more coherently. "You get to design your own character and work your way through each level as a group, and each decision you make helps determine where the story ends up going - like a choose-your-own adventure book."

"Right…" Mick slowly trailed off. Behind the bemused smile and vacant nodding though, there was a glimmer of understanding in those dark brown irises. "So how exactly do the jello bones come into it?" she went on to ask, fighting the urge to burst out laughing through the energetic responses the table of kids immediately started firing back at her.

"Miles!"

A smirk curled at the brunet's lips. "I thought you weren't talking to me," he called back, not even bothering to turn around to address the owner of the voice. But when his can of air freshener was snatched from his grasp, he had no choice but to end up face-to-face with the skate rentals booth intruder.

"Have you learned your lesson?" Mick challenged with a smirk of her own.

"Yes," Miles insisted, voice laced with desperation.

"Good," she replied with a teasing grin, before setting the aerosol can neatly on the back counter. "Then your time out's done."

"Finally," he laughed through a heavy sigh of relief, slinging the sweaty roller skate he was working on into the nearest cubby. "What's got you in such a good mood? I didn't think you'd be showing me any mercy until at least 7:30."

"You won't believe what your army of children are doing over there," Mick gushed, eyes sparkling with amusement.

"Planning a heist of Family Video?" Miles suggested with a jovial, yet weary huff. "Or something else that will land them all in juvie."

"You wish those little dorks were that exciting," Mick snorted. "They're all sat around making up a big fairy story. August basically has a whole book written already but they were saying something about playing it out and choosing what happens themselves - I don't know, I still don't think I fully get it. But whatever it is, your brothers are hooked. I haven't seen Bentley that invested in something since his ET phase last year."

Recalling the memory with a fond grin, Miles asked. "So what? They've started a writing club or something?"

"No, they said it's like a game - I think," Mick tried to explain. Although it was clear that she'd been so entertained by the sheer concept alone that the details of the matter had been lost on her. "They've all made up their own characters though. Viv's has this cool purple sword, and Bentley's got a magic paintbrush, and I think Royce said he was like a priest or something-"

"What the fuck? Seriously?" Miles chuckled.

"Yeah, I know," Mick laughed back, glad that she wasn't the only one who found the idea so comical. "I would have stayed longer but I was told they had to get back to their 'quest'."

"They have their own quests?"

"Mhm, something about a cursed ogre, I think," she mused, before being cut off by a hearty laugh from one of her best friends.

"Holy shit," Miles finally sighed once his laughter had started to subside. "I don't think I'm gonna have to worry about them sneaking off to wild house parties any time soon, huh?"

"Don't worry, you can just stress about them getting paper cuts or carpal tunnel instead," Mick shot back with a matching, teasing grin. "Please tell me you're gonna go over there and ask them about it yourself," she then went on to plead.

"Why would I need to when you've explained it so articulately yourself?" he sarcastically retorted.

"Oh come on, it's the cutest thing - you love seeing them get excited over stuff," Mick tried, hoping she was pressing on his weak spot. "Especially when it's dorky stuff. And what's dorkier than a magic paintbrush and an ogre?" When Miles didn't make any attempt to move though, besides a twitching, curious smile, Mick decided to lay it on just a touch thicker. "You know, apparently Royce, Bentley, and Viv have matching weapons satchels." And a touch thicker still. "And Royce was so distracted by a certain someone he couldn't settle on a name until she picked one out for him." Until…"And I even think I heard Bentley saying that if he managed to befriend the magic goat he'd found he was going to name it after a certain big brother of his…"

"What's this I hear about you plotting to take down an ogre?"

Attention immediately snatched from August's maniacal laughter as he taunted Zack with a mushroom from his pizza, Bentley whirled around in his booth seat and threw his arms around his brother's neck. "Miley!"

"Why are you acting like you didn't just talk to me forty minutes ago?" Miles snorted. Although he accepted the hug all the same.

"Come check out our game!" Bentley enthused, beckoning Miles to lean in closer over the back of the booth so that he could see more of their game sheets.

As his eyes scanned the table though, they widened with each new page he found, and just how much detail they contained. "Wow, you guys have been real busy, huh?"

"Well, for the best part of this afternoon, yeah," Vivien grinned, before warily asking. "Mick didn't send you over here to tell us to stop playing, did she?"

"No, knock yourselves out," Miles laughed. "I'm just here to find out what on earth you guys are doing - I've never known you guys be so quiet."

"We're playing Dungeons and Dragons," Royce explained. "It's this fantasy roleplaying ga-"

A lightbulb flickered on in the back of Miles' mind - accompanied with a hazy newscast featuring a crotchety old woman in a salmon blazer - and the colour started to drain from his face. "Wait, Dungeons and Dragons? Isn't that like demon worshipping stuff? Where did you find-?"

"It's not demon worshipping," Vivien groaned with an exaggerated eye roll. "Didn't you listen to your brother? It's a fantasy game. It's all made up."

"And we're only on Level 1 anyway - so even if we did summon a demon, it'd be a tiny one," Zack mumbled, peeling all the pepperoni slices off his latest slice of pizza and stacking them atop one another.

When it looked as though Miles was still feeling a little nervy though, August decided to step in to offer his own reassurances. "It's all totally fictional, Miles. I promise - my mom wouldn't have let me go anywhere near it if she thought it was gonna be a bad influence. The evangelical psychos on the news just wanted a new target to blame the state of the world on," he finished with a small, cheeky smile.

"Yeah, basement-dwelling dweebs," Kona tacked on.

Unable to stop himself from smiling back at the pair, Miles soon let go of any further qualms and returned to his teasing ways. "I take it that's what you guys are now considered then?"

Clearly unhappy with their new nickname, Zack frowned. "Not cool, man."

"Yeah, does this look like a basement to you?" Vivien added with a knowing smirk that Miles soon found himself laughing at.

"Oh, so that's what you took issue with - noted," he grinned, before lazily crossing his arms over the back of the booth seat and pressing on with his inquiries. "So if we're not summoning evil spirits, what are we doing?"

"We're searching for a wizard who's gonna help us join the Guild of Astral Explorers, but he's been cursed by an ogre and driven into exile - so we need to kill the ogre and figure out a cure," Bentley babbled, the words practically running into one another with how eager they were to be uttered. "Which is proving to be a lot easier said than done."

"You're just gonna let them kill you like that, Kona?"

"What are you talking about?" she asked, looking up at the older brunet in utter confusion.

"What? There's an ogre in the story and it's not you?" he teased, feigning stupefaction at such a revelation.

Over her friends' raucous laughter, Kona just shot Miles a withering glare, and sucked up a chunk of ice with her straw, that she then aimed and fired at his forehead.

Wiping the splattered trails of coloured syrup from his cheeks with a chuckle of his own, Miles then admitted, "I deserved that."

To which Kona offered a satisfied smile - served atop a neatly prepared middle finger, naturally. Miles had always had a little-sister-esque fondness for the unruly blonde, and the older-sibling-less girl gladly accepted the challenge of wit his teasing always promised.

"Can you guys even play as the ogres? How does the game actually work?" Miles went on to ask. And from there the group of friends began rhapsodising about the game mechanics all over again. The premise, the stats system, the way the dice came into play - he was schooled on it all. And once the basics were laid down, then came the vivid descriptions of each party member - and the convoluted backstories that accompanied them. He sat through the tall tale of how Pablo Leonardo Atwood (named after two painters, since Bentley couldn't settle on just one) carved his paintbrush from an ancient, magical redwood tree; how Cyrus Fletcher fled the king's army with nothing but the arrows on his back and a guilty conscious, ready to start a new life far from the corrupt nobility (or so August said); how Skylar Renee Sanderson earned the amethyst crystals encrusting the hilt of her sword; and, of course, how Omar Scale Crusher slayed the fiery beast that gave him his name. If his innate nerdiness didn't already have him hooked, the kids' passion certainly would have done the trick by the end of their ramblings.

"Damn, you guys really have been busy," he mused with a fond grin. Although it didn't take long for his sensible suspicions to creep back into the forefront of his mind. "You did all this and your homework?"

Miles should have known it was too good to be true, and yet Bentley's sheepish laughter soon struck him back to reality with a disapproving frown.

"Oh come on, Miles. We were on top of everything yesterday, and nothing we were set today is due for tomorrow. Can't we push it back a day just this one time?" Royce begged.

"Yeah, come on, you wouldn't want to be the killjoy that ruined all our fun, would you?" Vivien added, with a challenging smirk that, paired with Bentley's killer puppy dog eyes, had Miles caving within seconds.

"Alright, fine. But just this once," he gently warned. "I don't want you guys to make a habit out of slacking off work. Even if the reasons are totally awesome," he added with a chuckle.

"You're one to talk," Vivien fired back through a snort. "You've been talking to us for the last twenty minutes instead of working."

"Has it really been twenty minutes?" Miles squeaked in surprise, quickly peeling himself off the sticky, painted wooden frame of the booth seat and standing to attention. But as he straightened out his shirt and ran a hand through his admittedly unkempt hair, he soon drew up an excuse. "It's fine, it's not like we're busy anyway."

"Oh yeah?" Kona challenged with a smirk. "Then what's that big line over there for?"

Following the direction Kona had jerked her head in, Miles' eyes grew to the size of plates as he saw a haphazard queue of teens had gathered around the vacant skate rentals booth, visibly grumbling to one another. And without a worker in sight, he could see why. "Oh what? Why didn't you say sooner?" he cried. But before he could scramble back over to his abandoned post, a rough hand slammed down on his shoulder, and a head of shaggy hair appeared beside him.

"Yo, what's the crowd for? Are we offering refunds or something?" Ethan guffawed, the chill from the October evening air still clinging to his reddened, acne-smattered cheeks.

"Goddammit," Miles huffed in frustrated despair. "Mick said she'd cover for me. Who the hell is she making food for now? No one ever eats here! The food sucks."

"Sucks enough for us to eat it though, right?" Bentley teased, waving his chicken tender at his older brother before happily taking a bite. Sure, the preservatives were off the charts, and the salt content could de-ice a highway in Alaska, but the taste was kind of comforting in a weird, overly greasy sort of way. And besides, it's not like the TV dinners stacked in their fridge back at home had significantly better nutritional value.

Stepping in before Miles could start lecturing his brothers on their eating habits though, Ethan grabbed his attention with another snorted laugh. "I don't know, man, but it's not for a delivery." Miles' brows started to draw together in confusion, but Ethan explained himself through a smirk before he could even open his mouth. "I took the phone off the hook before I left."

Rolling his eyes and laughing at his coworker's antics, he went on to ask, bumping his shoulder with his. "Oh yeah, and how long's it gonna stay like that for?"

"Rest of the night if I get my way," Ethan grinned, eyes already blissfully glazing over at the prospect of a few hours of peace.

Unable to share that luxury, Miles grabbed his shoulder and started steering him away from the booth of middle schoolers. "Yeah, well not until you've helped me with these customers," he said with a smirk of his own. Stopping before he completely left though, he turned back to his brothers and their friends with a warm, yet wistful smile. "As much as I'd love to stay and hear about more of your adventures, you'll have to give me a rundown later on. Have fun tracking down that ogre though, kiddos." Reaching over the back of the booth to fondly ruffle Royce and Bentley's mops of curly hair, he added a gentle: "You guys know where to find me if you need anything."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Royce sighed over Bentley's giggles.

"That goes for all of you, by the way," he added, extending his fond smile to the whole table. After all, he'd known his brothers' friends so long by now that he practically considered them family anyway.

"Yeah, we know," Vivien chuckled. "Now go before they start throwing their skates at you."

Cringing in agreement, Miles gave the girl a quick nod before turning and calling out to the teenagers across the room. "I'll be there in a second!" Hoping that a timeframe, and an apologetic smile, would help placate them a little.

But before he could set off into a jog, Ethan's head popped up in front of his with a particularly wicked grin. "Not if I get there first!" he said with a childlike glee that Miles always found to be incredibly contagious.

The scrawny brunet dashed towards the other side of the room at an alarming speed, his Nikes hammering against the garish carpet with practised ease and the rhythmic thudding drowning out Miles' cries of protest, until he felt the toe of a tattered Converse knock-off hit the sweet spot behind his knee. With a yelp he crumpled to the floor, knee buckling reflexively on impact. A victorious laugh flew from Miles' lips as he took his chance Ethan's head-start snatched from him, and strode the few paces needed to take the lead. But his triumph was short-lived, because Ethan quickly retaliated by swinging out his fist and making impeccable contact with Miles' groin just as he started to pass him. Miles crashed to the floor in an instant, groaning out a string of complaints to his cackling assailant, who just laid down beside him in shared, silent surrender - the line of customers long-forgotten between their raucous laughter and boyish rough-housing.

Watching the idiotic play-fighting continue between the older teens as they started hurling jokey insults back-and-forth, and started helping one another to their feet, Vivien fondly shook her head at the pair and turned back to the table with an eye roll. "And he calls us 'children'."

"I wish he could get more of a break," Bentley mused with a sigh, dejectedly pushing ketchup around on the wax paper lining his basket-bowl with a limp french fry. "I hate that he has to work all the time. I wanted him to stay and watch us play for a bit."

"Maybe he can sit and watch a whole game another time if we play at your house?" August suggested with a small, hopeful smile. "On one of his days off?"

"He probably could have gotten away with staying longer if his coworkers actually pitched in and pulled their weight," Royce grumbled.

Frowning at his grumpiness, Vivien swiftly jumped to her friend's defence. "Well Mick usually does but she must be busy in the…" As she followed Royce's gaze though, and settled on a head of bushy, golden curls, shoved into an All Skate staff t-shirt, yet gliding around the rink with the rest of the customers, seemingly without a care in the world, the meaning behind Royce's statement started to dawn on her. "Oh…yeah."

Letting out a disgusted huff as Carrie began giggling with the two friends she was skating with, throwing her head back and applauding as one of them started twirling along to the song she'd set to play, Royce muttered, "She's so selfish she wouldn't even help if he asked anyway."

Remembering Miles’ deep-seated affection for the blonde, and hating to see Royce so frustrated by her very existence, Vivien attempted to coax him into giving her the benefit of the doubt. "You don't know that," she gently tried. "She probably just didn't realise how swamped the rental counter was."

"Yeah," Royce scoffed. "'Cause her head's stuck so far up her own ass she could be considered legally blind."

Zack's bark of laughter was quickly silenced by Kona disapprovingly nudging his arm though. "Oh please, what's she ever done to you?"

"Uh, blasted out my ear drums with her god awful music taste every time we've set foot in here?" he retorted. Royce's vendetta may have been personal, but Zack's was just as valid in his eyes.

"I swear it gets louder every time we come," Royce complained, scowling at the twirling blonde beneath the flashing neon lights. "I can barely hear myself think."

Although he usually assumed the role of the pacifist amongst the group, even August dared a somewhat reluctant: "It is kind of making it hard to concentrate."

The prospect of delaying their campaign even further, paired with the way August was hesitantly toying with his binder of notes, and his older brother was prickling with frustration, had Bentley jumping to action without a second thought. After all, with his inherent, yet naive, optimism, the solution felt obvious. "Then let's just go ask her to turn it down."

Bentley was rising from his seat and shifting onto his knees within seconds, but Royce, horrified at the very idea of communicating with the she-devil, yanked him back down with frantic urgency. "What?! No, Benny, come on," he hissed, eyes wide and desperate. "She's not worth it. She won't listen."

But to Royce's immense surprise, Bentley's hopeful smile remained. "Oh please, she can't be that bad if Miles likes her so much," he said, rolling his eyes at his brother's caginess and pushing himself up on his knees to get a clear view of the blonde. Stretching to the fullest height he could, and cupping his hands around his mouth he called out a friendly: "Carrie!"

Utterly oblivious, the girl continued spinning at break-neck speeds and laughing along with her friends - any attempts at grabbing her attention drowned out by the Dead or Alive song blaring from the speakers encircling the rink.

Royce rolled his eyes yet again, and Vivien even tried a cautious: "It's fine, Benny, I'm sure we can manage."

But the blonde was nothing if not persistent. "Carrie!"

Even though the second yell of her name went completely unnoticed by the girl, her bucket-hatted skating buddy caught Bentley's eye and, just as she was slowing her latest spin to a stop, directed her attention over to the group of middle schoolers. Giggles freely tumbling from her lips, and a slightly puzzled expression clouding her eyes, Carrie rolled over to the side of the rink closest to their booth. Sliding to a gentle stop, she called out an indifferent: "You guys okay?"

"Can you turn down the music? We're trying to play a game over here," Bentley hollered back.

Regardless of the programmed light sequence illuminating the rink, Royce's vision flashed red at the scornful laugh that fell from her mouth.

"Yeah, and I'm trying to entertain our customers," she retorted with a sickeningly blasé chuckle. "So no, sorry, squirt."

"We're not saying 'turn it off', just turn it down a bit," Bentley tried again, catching her before she could turn her back. "Please," he added with a hopeful, lopsided grin.

"Look, I'm paid to provide a good atmosphere for the skaters, our paying customers," she emphasised, souring the entire group's mood with a few, short words. "It's a roller rink, not a library."

"Come on, just this one time. We won't be here all night," Vivien said, jumping to Bentley's defence and hoping to give the blonde the opportunity to redeem herself.

But Carrie wouldn't budge on the matter, still as baffled by the suggestion as when it was first proposed. "No, I'm not here to babysit, I'm here to play music. If you want somewhere quiet to play your…'board game', go look somewhere else."

Temper running at an all-time high, Royce protectively placed his arm in front of Vivien before she could respond, and took on the challenge himself - facing the volatile blonde with a deep-seated distaste that bore deeper and deeper with every passing second. "They're not asking for much, you don't have to be so difficult. Just turn the music down," he barked, each word sharp enough to slash Carrie's gaudy leotard to shreds. "It's ruining our game; we can barely hear ourselves think."

Part of Royce wanted to be proven wrong - wanted Miles' judgement to remain untarnished. If only Carrie's face would fall, eyebrows pinched in dismay, and profuse apologies would start to spill from her lip gloss-lacquered lips. At least then this bizarre infatuation of his brother's would start to make a little more sense. But when Carrie's gaze stayed as vacant as ever, the burning hatred in the pit of his stomach roared to an inferno.

"Ok?" she snorted with an unbothered stare, already starting to roll back over to her friends as she delivered her final, oblivious piece of advice: "Go find someone who cares."

Besides, since when did middle schoolers' problems have to be any of her concern?

If Royce possessed the same magical abilities as his cleric counterpart, Carrie would have burst into flames before the wheels of her skates had made a full rotation. Sitting back in his seat, unable to bear the sight of the girl any longer, he let out a heavy, defeated sigh, as Kona spoke the entire table's mind.

"Damn, what a bitch."

"I fucking hate her," Royce muttered, heart hammering with pent-up frustration, and then utter hormonal panic as Vivien laid a comforting hand over the back of his own.

"Ok, well, that didn't exactly go to plan," Bentley noted with an awkward laugh, and cheeks tinged pink with embarrassment.

"I can't believe she was so rude. Miles said she'd been a bit weird at school, but she was super nice to him earlier," Vivien said, thinking back to their prior conversation.

"Yeah, well, Miles needs a lobotomy if he thinks she's a nice person," Royce spat, daring a glance in the blonde's direction - only to immediately regret it once he saw she'd returned to dancing about with her friends without a care in the world.

"Well, if that was my first and last time ever talking to her, I don't think I'd have any complaints," Vivien said with a jovial smirk that, with a little coaxing, at least got the corner of Royce's mouth twitching into a smirk of his own.

"Look, can we forget about the fucking dancing poodle lady?" Zack demanded with a weary groan. "I don't care how much of a bitch she is, or how stupid her hair looks - that's old news as far as I'm concerned. But I do care about finishing this damn game!"

Laughter burbled throughout the group, thankfully raising their spirits once more as they confirmed their agreements and settled back into the story - greasy pizza and stuck-up DJs long-forgotten. The rest of the evening flew by as the wannabe adventurers traversed the sprawling Maldonado Grove. Whilst Cyrus kept their precious dryad bark and serpent oil safe: Skylar and Andromeda outsmarted a rival royal spy (and stole all their supplies), Argus and Pablo thwarted a giant centipede, and Omar single handedly took down a rather pesky, rabid badger.

With the ogre's hillside hideout so close, each move the party made was crucial. So when they stumbled across an overgrown swampland, inhabited by a rather unfriendly giant toad, Bentley's excitable franticness led to some rash decisions being made. And so tensions began to rise…

"What are you doing?!" an alarmed Zack cried, trying, and failing, to snatch up the die before the blond. "Those things have 18 hitpoints - and you've only done 11 damage!"

"So they've got…7 left?" Bentley said, silently confirming his calculations with the others around the table as he happily rolled the plastic, diamond-shaped die around in the palm of his hand. "That's nothing! It's an 8-sided die, I could do that with one roll."

"You've only got one roll, Ben," Kona somewhat painfully reminded him.

His cool blue eyes widened. "Oh wait, what?" he squeaked in dismay, his train of thought screeching to a halt as he tried to process what the girl had said.

"Giant frogs have 18 hit points, but it's limited to 4 rolls of an 8 die," August gently explained to him. "You've already used up 3 of them to get to 11."

"Oh…" Bentley trailed off, with a disheartened frown as the reality of his predicament dawned on him. It was quickly swapped for a look of optimistic determination though. "That's fine. It's still possible, right?"

"Well yeah, but the odds aren't exactly in your favour," Kona began.

Royce, never one to stand idle when he saw his younger brother struggling, soon interrupted her though. "It's ok, Benny. We can all pitch in and kill them together."

But as the brunet started offering what he thought were helpful strategies for making this mutant amphibian easier to destroy, Bentley just let out a frustrated huff. He loved his brothers more than anything (yes, even more than Super Pretzels), and he knew they wanted the best for him - but sometimes the way they jumped to his aid at the first sign of trouble made him feel utterly useless. Sure, he understood that he was the baby of the family, and that they were just looking out for him, but that didn't change how inadequate it made him feel. For once he wanted to prove to Royce that he could do something on his own - that he didn't need to rely on his brothers to get him out of trouble. He could handle this himself.

"No, come on, we're almost at the end. Let's not waste any more time," he insisted as a baffled Royce watched him start to roll the die around in his cupped fists. And above the shocked arguments and attempts to reason with him, Bentley silenced his friends with an assured: "I can do this."

At the mercy of Bentley's ink-stained fingers, the dice soared through the air, captivating the whole party with a collective gasp, before bouncing onto the sticky, varnished tabletop. It skittered across the playing field, scattering nearby crumbs like fleeing soldiers, until it rolled to a stop under August's nose.

No one dared to breathe; their eyes were all glued to the hunk of plastic like jocks to the SuperBowl. But as the die sealed Bentley's fate, the players' gazes slowly lifted from the number to meet his own - each one wearing the same, awkwardly apologetic expression.

Bentley almost couldn't believe it at first. He couldn't have been that unlucky with his rolls 3 times in a row, right? Maybe it was actually a 7 and he just couldn't read it properly. But when, for the first time that evening after a monster battle, nobody cheered, something clenched in the pit of his stomach. "Oh…" he murmured, heart sinking to his feet. "Damn."

Lifting his gaze to the nearest face for some sort of comfort, Bentley found the panic-stricken stare of August, masked with a layer of what seemed to be genuine sorrow at his friend's misfortune.

"Benny, we told you!" Kona cried, throwing down her pencil in frustration.

But Royce just looked concerned, rather than annoyed. "Why didn't you wait for the rest of us?" he asked, almost appearing hurt that his help had been so vehemently dismissed.

Avoiding his older brother's gaze, for fear of it making that faint, sick feeling in his belly even worse, Bentley pushed his fervent sense of remorse aside and clung to that faithful, yet naive optimism of his. "It's fine," he hurriedly insisted, fixing a lopsided, almost desperate smile to his face as he looked back up at August. "What happens now then if I didn't kill it? Does it just hop away and I don't get any XP?"

"No, doofus, it swallows you whole," Zack retorted.

"What?! How? It's a frog!"

"Yeah, a giant one," Kona reminded him.

Bewildered dismay streaking across his face as his gaze flew between his classmates, Bentley asked, "Is that bad then? How much damage does it do?"

"Once you're swallowed the acid attacks give 5 damage points," August slowly explained, hating every second of dismantling the boy's inherent, infectious optimism. "And I think you only have…"

Bentley's gaze fell to his character sheet, where the freshest pencil scratching marked a '3' where his current health allowance resided. Stunned into near silence, Bentley stared at his shoddy handwriting until he came to terms with the fact that it wasn't going to change. But even then, he could barely comprehend what that meant. "Hold on," he started, meeting August's olive, pitying eyes with utter stupefaction. "Does that mean I'm 'out'?"

The dungeon master's nod was reluctant, but there all the same.

"Are you serious? I lost the game because I got swallowed by a big frog?" he exclaimed in utter disbelief, as his party members just looked on helplessly.

"I did try to say we should have all healed up after fighting those mud mephits," Kona started, but after a swift kick to the shin under the table from August, she soon went quiet.

"So what? Am I really just dead now?" Bentley asked, still reeling from the whiplash his plummeting enjoyment of the game delivered him.

"Well, for the rest of this campaign…yeah," August awkwardly admitted. But as soon as he saw the distress clouding the boy's blue eyes, he scrambled to try to raise his spirit (in more ways than one) once more. "But I can work something into our next one where we avenge your death and resurrect you!"

"Yeah, we'll come back and cut you out of its big slimy stomach," Zack agreed with a guffaw. "And then we'll cook it over a big fire and eat its legs like they do in France."

"Do you only think about food?" a disgruntled Kona muttered.

"Or you could make a new character if you wanted," August added, hoping that his suggestions could bring the boy a little peace of mind. "It's up to you, really."

But Bentley's mind couldn't quite cope with thinking that far ahead yet. "What am I supposed to do for the rest of this campaign though? Just sit and watch you guys play?"

That dejected frown of Bentley's was almost too much for August to bear, especially after putting so much time and effort into creating a storyline he thought his friends would enjoy, which made his next proposal all too easy. "You can play as Cyrus for me if you want? It's kinda hard trying to play and be DM at the same time," he said with a shy smile, before tentatively offering, "Or you could come and help me DM?"

It may not have been the victorious end to the adventure he'd hoped for, but getting to help lead the mayhem as the campaign reached its climax was a pretty sweet consolation prize. And if his gasp of intrigue and excitable grin weren't clear enough responses on their own, his enthusiastic nodding definitely sealed the deal. "Ok, yeah!"

As the pre-teens all swapped places, laughing and teasing one another about the recent turn of events, Bentley’s jovial attitude quickly returned. And as August eagerly began pointing out the various sections of his DM binder, and brainstorming ideas for how to make Pablo's death far more heroic and spectacular than it actually was, some semblance of peace fell over the group of friends again.

Although Royce had remained quiet throughout the resolution of the frog debacle, a pensive stare masking the churning sea of bewildered concern flooding his mind, Vivien's silence could only be blamed on a head of auburn hair.

The faint call of "Pip!" as the die first bounced to the tabletop made her ears prick up, and as the roll descended to chaos, her mossy green eyes found its source in an instant. After all, that stupid, wannabe rockstar, spiky hairstyle of his made him stick out like a sore thumb.

At first she was just confused; Riven never came to All Skate. But when he started waving enthusiastically at her from the arcade section, and was briefly joined by his two classmates: one with the ends of her hair haphazardly streaked with blue raspberry Kool-Aid, and the other swinging a pair of rental skates by their laces - it all began to make sense. Erica did seem to have a mild obsession with Q*Bert if her pact to get a tattoo of the little orange guy for her 18th birthday was anything to go by.

Returning the wave with an inconspicuous one of her own - not wanting to draw the table's attention at such a high-stakes moment - she half-expected the interaction to end there. But when Riven started attempting to mouth things to her across the vast room, any understanding of the campaign crisis unfolding before her was completely lost.

"Have you kissed him yet?" came Riven's first question, paired with a mischievous grin.

With the flashing coloured lights and general low light levels though, it took several attempts and some incredibly cringeworthy miming for Vivien to finally understand what he'd asked. But when she caught on, a look of horror jumped to her face as she furiously started shaking her head.

Riven just tossed his head back and laughed at her response, and steadily reddening cheeks. "Have you at least asked him out?" he tried.

Squinting through the darkness, Vivien still struggled to make out what he was saying, even with his comically exaggerated lip movements. But when she did, she dared a quick glance at the brunet beside her before sheepishly shaking her head once more.

Riven's eye roll was so dramatic he practically did it with his whole body. "Come on!" he mouthed with an amused smirk, thoroughly entertained by her embarrassment. "Grow some balls!"

Vivien had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing out loud at the comical hand actions that accompanied Riven's latest comment. And so, for a third time, she ended up shaking her head at him - this time in a sort of fond, ribbing way though. "I'm working on it!" she dared to mouth back once she was sure the rest of the table's occupants were too enthralled in their own discussion to notice.

Glancing between the big clock on the wall and the bespectacled brunette, he raised his arm and gave a theatrical tap of his clunky, digital watch, that Vivien always teased he'd pulled out of a children's spy kit. "Tick tock!" he playfully taunted. "Or am I gonna have to come over there and ask him for you?"

Once more, Vivien shook her head, this time a little more desperately, as mortifying images of Riven having to speak to Royce on her behalf flooded her mind. "I've got it under control," she promised, daring another sideways glance at Royce to confirm it to both parties. But if the way her stomach lurched at the very sight of him told her anything, it was that she was a barefaced liar. Still, the red-haired asshole and his smug little smirk were not making the process of keeping her anxiety at bay any easier. So just as he started miming even more kissy faces at her, she sent him a flustered glare with a definite message: "Go away!"

Thoroughly satisfied with the teasing he'd subjected his makeshift little sister to for the moment, Riven obeyed with a final chortle and a silent: "Love you!"

Even though she wanted nothing more than to see the back of the sophomore's stupid head, the sentiment had her grinning like a fool all the same. She desperately needed to get this blistering blush under control before she attempted any sort of contact with Royce though; this situation was already going to be painfully embarrassing enough - she didn't need to be starting it out already on the back foot. But as she shot the clock a quick glance of her own, she realised she really was on a time crunch; her dad would be arriving to pick them up soon. And Royce still didn't even know about it.

Casually trying to splash some of the icy condensation from her slushy across her burning cheeks, Vivien took some long, steady breaths to calm the raging battlefield that her mind had become. And before she could talk herself into backing out again, she cleared her throat and croaked out a timid: "Uh, Royce?"

Broken out of his pensive stupor, Royce's umber eyes found hers - blinking a few times to rid the cloud of brotherly anxiety from his brain so that fresh, hormonal curiosity could replace it. "Yeah?"

"I, uh," Vivien shakily began, rubbing her sweaty hands along her jeans and immediately dropping her gaze. Dammit. How did she always crumble so quickly? She didn't have time for this. She couldn't afford to waste any more time worrying about the heat prickling her cheeks, or the way her stomach was twisting itself into knots. She just had to rip the band-aid off. And besides, if it all went horribly wrong, at least she had Riven nearby to pummel to a pulp and wipe her tears and snotty nose on for telling herself it would be ok. "I don't think I ever finished asking you about The NeverEnding Story earlier."

"...Ok, what about it?"

The blank, somewhat confused look Royce shot her made Vivien's throat feel drier than the croutons sat atop her untouched side salad. But she ploughed on anyway. "Well, you know how you missed out on going to see it over the summer?"

"Yeah…" Royce slowly replied, still completely oblivious, and a little wary, as to where Vivien was going with this.

"Well the theatre downtown is replaying some of the big movies of the summer, and there's a showing of it later tonight…" This was it. She couldn't back down now. And so, steeling her nerve and meeting Royce's gaze with a tentative smile, she took in a big breath and made her offer. "So I wondered if you'd maybe want to…go and see it together?"

Something caught between bewildered surprise and utter disbelief flashed in Royce's irises, and for a second Vivien wanted to bolt out the rink's door and keep running until she crossed the state line. And whilst the shock didn't quite dissipate, a smile managed to break through the endorphin-induced chaos. "Yeah! I- uh, yeah," he said, scrambling to downplay his borderline cringey eagerness. "That, uh, that sounds great."

"Really?" Vivien breathed through a Cheshire Cat smile of her own. It almost felt too good to be true, but when Royce confirmed her hopes with a nod, the sigh of relief that left her brought out all the remnants of her nervous ramblings along with it. "Awesome! You're gonna love it! I've been holding back on talking about it for months. I can't believe I can finally ask you about all the characters and everything. It starts at 8:30 but that's just the ads and trailers, so it doesn't matter if we're not there exactly on time. But my dad's coming to pick us up at 8:15 anyway and it's only like an 8 minute drive, so that'll give us plenty of time, but I guess it just depends on if we want to get any snacks or not-" And then her spiel ground to a halt as she realised she'd left out one crucial detail. "My dad's gonna have the twins in the car too though, so there's only enough space for us two… Is that ok?"

Although Royce felt a little strange leaving his brother out when the three of them were so used to doing everything together, he was pretty sure his heart would have stopped beating in protest if he'd turned down the opportunity to spend some time alone with Vivien. "Yeah, yeah, that's ok," he said, sparing Bentley a glance to find him completely enraptured with the fantastical, gruesome details of his DnD character's impromptu death. "Looks like Benny's got the rest of his night sorted anyway."

Ignoring the wistful edge to Royce's smile, Vivien pressed on with a further, relieved sigh. "Perfect. My dad's gonna drop them off at home first, but that shouldn't take long."

"So it's just gonna be the two of us at the movie theatre?" Royce checked.

Vivien's smile faltered a little at the question, worried that he may have suddenly changed his mind. "Yeah… Is that alright?"

"Yeah, yeah, no, that's perfect," Royce hurried to reassure her with a breathy chuckle. "It'll be great."

"Yeah, it will," Vivien agreed as a contented grin split her pink cheeks and a proud warmth spread out from her chest. Looks like Riven had been right: she'd had nothing to worry about after all. Well, that or the many hours of rehearsals with her Big Bird plush had been worthwhile.

Caught red-handed, and red-cheeked, the giddy grins and incredulous giggles of the thirteen year-olds were dropped in an instant as their blissful bubble of puppy love was popped by an impatient dinosaur enthusiast though.

"Hey, lovebirds, are you guys ready to finish this thing or not?" Zack barked across the table - pencil at the ready now that the rest of his friends had finally settled down enough to resume the campaign.

Stealing one last, shyly longing look at one another, elated grins fighting to remain under control, the pair conceded and returned their attention to the game - even if the only thing their brains could focus on was one another.

Besides, in around an hour they wouldn't have to think about anything else anyway…

Once the customer build-up had been dealt with, the rest of the evening was as pedestrian as every other Monday shift at All Skate, which meant plenty of downtime. And downtime for the trio behind the serving counter meant resorting to the most asinine tasks they could find in order to stay awake. Miles had (shockingly) volunteered himself to finish freshening up the skates, Ethan had taken to organising (in the loosest sense of the word) the bin of single-serving sauces, and Mick had started polishing the silverware…because the zit-faced teenagers that graced their establishment deeply cared about the quality of their hospitality.

After a good five minutes of begging, Ethan had finally managed to convince Mick to make him some nachos - feeling victorious even if she had only agreed so that she could get five minutes of peace from his whining as she left to heat them up. And so, as Miles leant against the archway into the skate rentals booth, wearing an amused grin, and Mick trudged through the silver swing doors, Ethan chuckled to himself and reached into the bucket at his knees to grab a new handful of sauce tubs. Hunched over on the stool he'd pulled up to the counter, he selected his latest victim (a pot of honey mustard) and delicately placed it onto the third layer of the 'condiment pyramid' he was constructing on the counter behind the bar.

"How many layers are we aiming for?" Miles asked, tossing the last skate he'd been working on back into its cubby before grabbing a sauce pot of his own from the pile to add to the stoner's masterpiece.

"As many as we can get," came Ethan's snorted reply. "We might need to extend the base though; I don't think this is gonna be wide enough if we wanna use them all."

Laughing at the very thought (since there were easily over 200 sauces in that bin) as he retreated to collect a fresh batch of size 8s, Miles spared the booth his younger brothers were sitting around a quick glance, checking to make sure that they were still ok. Finding them whooping and hollering with their friends, a contented grin settled on his face. He knew deep down that he had nothing to worry about, but he still felt the need to hover over them like a damn dragonfly at every opportunity possible…just to make sure.

When he returned to observe the rest of the savoury statue construction, he was rewarded with the sound of Ethan's dulcet, raspy tones singing along to the REO Speedwagon song Carrie was blasting through the rink's sound system. And when he swapped a pot of barbecue sauce for two, freshly cracked glow sticks from the arcade prize bucket, which he proceeded to use as drumsticks for his imaginary drum kit, Miles' amused grin just widened.

"And I'm getting closer than I ever thought I might," Ethan wailed along with Kevin Cronin, bashing out the beats to the song's chorus with his neon green drumsticks, and the same passion as the rockstar himself. His dedication to the authenticity of the performance plummeted when he decided to take some creative liberties with the second half of the chorus though. "'Cause Miles can't fight his feelings anymore."

Although mildly annoyed that he was about to be subjected to even further ribbing, Miles found himself biting back an entertained smirk all the same.

"He's forgotten Mick's advice so he'll ignore," Ethan continued, tucking one of the glow sticks behind his ear so that he could turn the other into a microphone. Shooting his best friend a mischievous grin, he carried on singing. "Every time Carrie walks on through that door, his dick won't face the floor-"

Springing into action, Miles attempted to silence him with a flustered: "Ok, ok, we get it."

But as Mick returned from placing the nachos in the oven, the thoroughly amused brunet turned to her to finish his rendition of the chorus. "Mickey, Miles can't fight his feelings anymore."

Rolling her eyes with an unimpressed frown after having heard the tail-end of the reimagined chorus on her way out of the kitchen, she huffed, "You guys are disgusting."

"What did I do?!" Miles asked with an incredulous laugh.

But Ethan just brushed her revulsion off with a baffled, yet blasé: "Really, Mick? Can a man not talk about his best friend's boners anymore?"

"No, no he cannot. Especially when they're triggered by…her," she affirmed, momentarily switching up her scolding to send the blonde a sharp, overly protective glare. And to punctuate her annoyance, both at the DJ and the stoner for bringing her up all over again, she sealed her disapproval with a swift flick of the latest sauce pot Ethan had balanced on his pyramid, sending it, and the row beneath it, tumbling to the countertop.

Deeply affronted by the destructive act, Ethan turned to her, mouth hanging open in stupefaction. "I know you didn't just do that on purpose."

"Of course not," Mick teasingly simpered. "I wouldn't dream of it."

Narrowing his eyes at the brunette, over Miles background chortles, Ethan returned his warning glare and the remainder of his concentration to rebuilding his masterpiece. Not letting his frenemy's prior comments go so easily though, he continued to rhapsodise about the most contentious topic of the night, much to his co-workers' dismay. "You can harp on about it all you want, Mick, but you can't get in the way of nature. Something's gonna happen sooner or later; he hasn't stopped looking at her all night."

The second Mick's challenging stare, and that spine-chilling quirked eyebrow of hers, settled on him, Miles snapped back into defence mode. "I've been stuck here cleaning skates with you all night, you idiot," he said, spraying the air from his now-empty can of air freshener right beside the stoner's ear as punishment. Continuing, despite Ethan flinching so hard he nearly knocked the rest of his elaborate tower over, Miles added, "Or did you conveniently forget that part?"

"No," Ethan retorted with a smirk. "How else do you think I know you've been staring at her every other thirty seconds?" And although Miles had tried to prepare a rebuttal that would maintain some shred of his dignity, Ethan's smug observations dug his grave. "He wipes the wheels, checks the toe-stops, sprays the inside, stops to look at her boobs, then swaps them for a new pair - like clockwork."

The judgemental frown that had settled on Mick's face was swapped for a dopey caricature of her long-time friend, complete with an exaggerated impression of his prior statements that evening. "'Mick, I don't know what I was thinking. You were right - everything about her spells bad news. I'm over it, trust me'," She rattled off before that judgemental frown and raised eyebrow came crashing back to the foreground. "Ring any bells?"

And although it evidently did, he did not appear impressed by her impersonation. "I don't sound like that."

"Sure you don't," Mick smirked sarcastically with an exaggerated, teasing eye roll.

"Sounded pretty good to me," Ethan piped up, earning himself a rare, genuinely appreciative grin from Mick that went unnoticed thanks to his preoccupation with the placement of another tub of honey mustard.

Rolling his eyes and volleying the empty aerosol can into the trash can with a defeated huff, Miles admitted defeat. "I don't know, guys. I don't know what I'm doing. It's like I know it's wrong, and that I shouldn't be thinking about her like that, but my brain just won't stop going back to her - it's like it's stuck on a loop or something. I feel like I'm going insane," he said before grabbing a new air freshener and popping the cap off. "That or the fumes from these cans are finally getting to my head."

Glad to see that he wasn't a total lost cause, Mick conceded with another teasing smirk. "Well, at least you're self-aware."

"I still don't see what's wrong with it," Ethan mused as he gently placed down two tubs of ranch. "It's just a little crush-"

"Little?" Mick snorted, sharing a playfully taunting grin with Miles over the stoner's head. "Really?"

"Well, little or not," Ethan revised, leaning back to speak more directly with his best friend. "You've said yourself that you're never gonna act on it. So what's so bad about just thinking she's hot from afar? It's super normal to have crushes like that. And besides, it's not like you're ever gonna tell her about it. She doesn't need to know you've got the number of freckles on her face committed to memory. Just crank a few out to her every night and move on with your life. It'll blow over eventually."

Stunned into spluttering silence by Ethan's latest pearls of wisdom, Miles couldn't even try to dispute the claims the guy had made - swiftly preoccupied with requesting: "Can we stop talking about my dick for like five minutes?"

"I second that," Mick said, raising her hand as further confirmation on her way to shut off the timer that had just started blaring from the kitchen.

"Whatever you say, baby,” Ethan purred with a teasing grin, turning her raised hand into an opportunity to high five her as she passed.

Although Mick slumped in annoyance at first, her instincts soon kicked in as she moved that hand to swat the back of his head in retaliation before disappearing through the kitchen doors once more.

By the time Miles' guffaws had died down to gentle chuckles, and a sulking Ethan had added four more barbecue pots to his pyramid, Mick returned with his food. "There, maybe that will shut you up," she said flatly, sliding the steaming dish in front of her personal nuisance, not having even bothered to decant the nachos from their plastic packaging. "Or do I need to make you a ball gag?"

"Woah, woah, woah, slow your roll, Mickey," Ethan spluttered as Miles' belly-rumbling laughter started up again behind them. "Does Officer Funbags know you're into kinky shit like that?" he continued, quickly turning Mick's slick jab back on her, much to her rising frustration.

"I don't know, let's ask him," Miles tagged on to the teasing, resulting in Mick smacking his arm with the end of the tea towel she was just about to tuck back into her apron belt as he turned to dump his latest set of clean skates back down.

When she saw a figure approaching the food counter out of the corner of her eye though, she realised Miles' ragging hadn't just been to push her buttons after all. And suddenly, as a head of hastily coiffed brown hair dropped onto the closest stool opposite her, the prospect of being subject to hours more of her co-workers' stupidity felt a lot more manageable.

"Evening," an exhausted Butchy huffed to the trio.

"You look chipper," Miles teasingly noted as he picked up a pot of mustard and balanced it atop one of barbecue.

"Oh I'm feeling chipper," the boy's older brother figure sarcastically fired back, with the expected level of conviction from someone who'd just worked a soul-destroying 9-5, and had then had to go on a solo grocery run.

"Rock on, sheriff," Ethan mumbled with a chuckle, more so to entertain himself than anything considering the fact that Butchy didn't acknowledge it in the slightest.

Crossing his arms on the silver bartop, Butchy's head was mere seconds from hitting the deck until an ice cold bottle of Coke was gently slid in front of him - right on time. Looking up, he was met with the gentle, loving smile of his girlfriend, with a mildly concerned glint in those addictive, syrupy irises of hers.

"You ok?" she murmured.

He nudged the bottle aside and reached across the counter, closing the gap between them as he took her hand in his with a tired smile. "I am now that I'm with you," he promised, lovingly squeezing her fingers.

"Rough shift?" she guessed as he started lazily rubbing circles into the back of her hand.

"Yeah, how was work?" Miles tacked on, as enthralled with the pyramid building as his best friend judging by the fact he had yet to lift his eyes from it since Butchy had arrived.

"Same as ever: bullshit," he wearily sighed. But he managed a hopeful, lopsided smile to Mick all the same, "How about you? Are they behaving?"

Chuckling as she and Butchy spared the pair of newly-qualified construction workers a glance, she retorted with a playfully coy: "They're keeping me entertained." But she soon switched her attention back to her boyfriend; her concern for him and his profession taking priority. "Was it really that bad?"

Not wanting to worry her, but not wanting to lie either, he softened and decided on, "It was just a bunch of mindless paperwork again. I feel like I'm losing brain cells by the hour being cooped up in that crappy office."

Pouting and leaning over the bar to press a tender kiss to his forehead, Mick quietly promised: "It'll be worth it one day, I promise."

"It had better be," Butchy chuckled.

Once Mick's sneakers met the tacky linoleum again, she was faced with a grateful, if not exhausted, smile that made her heart swell. After all, it was a definite improvement from when he'd first walked in. "What about your CPR training? Wasn't that today? How did that go?"

"Why? You volunteering to help me demonstrate?" he flirtily retorted, sending Mick's heart rate through the roof.

But the brunette never got the chance to respond, because an all too familiar voice trilled over the latest pop song she'd chosen to play, prompting the couple to sport matching grimaces.

"Buongiorno!"

"Jesus Christ," Butchy groaned, closing his eyes in despair at the pointed, yet botched, Italian accent. "Like I needed my day to get any worse."

"Well, well, well, if it isn't my least favourite police officer in town," Carrie greeted, rolling to a stop beside said police officer with an impish smirk.

He took one look over the girl and just scoffed. "Do you own any normal clothes or are you so desperate for attention you have to make a spectacle of yourself everywhere you go?"

The firm frown her frigid reception prompted didn't stick around for long though. And instead of attempting to defend her bold fashion choices, she stuck with her tried-and-true excessively sweet teasing. "Don't pretend you're not pleased to see me."

"I'm surprised," Butchy offered, having to avert his eyes from her headache-inducing leotard before his skull split in two. "Still not been fired yet?"

"Oh don't you worry, I'm not going anywhere," she promised.

"You’re really tellin’ me Ralph’s happy forking out the cash to cover a glorified Barbie doll pressing buttons every night?" Butchy challenged with a menacing scoff, as irritated as ever by the blonde's inane job.

"Yes, actually," Carrie said, prickling with anger at the (unknowingly) touchy diss.

"I've got no fucking clue why," Butchy deadpanned. "Might as well replace you with a monkey - which would probably have more employable skills anyway - or even a digital radio; it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper."

Although she couldn't stop herself from rolling her eyes at his dismissal of her 'talents', she stuck it out to fight her corner regardless. "You do realise I'm here to do more than just play the music."

"Well you barely do that and I've yet to see you do anything else…" Butchy cheekily retaliated, leaving his statement there so that Carrie could fill the rest in herself.

Instead she fixed the smuggest grin she could muster to her face and embraced the claims. "And I can afford to do all that because I'm a 'personality hire'."

"A what?" Butchy almost choked on the word, disgusted by the very notion.

"You know, someone fun the boss hires to boost morale for the rest of the employees, make shifts less miserable…bring in more customers," she explained through a smirk, inflating her ego further with each addition to her list.

"You really think any of that's true?" Butchy scoffed incredulously, cutting her off before she could do any further damage.

"Of course it is," Carrie insisted. "I can understand how you wouldn't have ever heard of it though, you know, considering that you don't have a personality."

Butchy rolled his eyes so hard he almost triggered a migraine. He may not have had a personality, but he'd have rather that than have one as insufferable as her's. Finally turning back to Carrie with a look of resentful despair, aiming to make her leave as soon as possible, he asked, "Is there a reason as to why you're over here?"

"You're not enjoying this?" she questioned with a smirk.

"Not in the slightest," the police recruit fired back without skipping a beat.

Instead of retaliating, she bandaged her wounded exterior with a hopeful smile and turned to her co-worker behind the counter, holding out an empty, teal, metal water bottle. "Mick, could you please-?"

Also trying to end the interaction as quickly as possible, Mick took the bottle from the girl before she could even finish her question. "Sure," she tightly replied, turning to get her the refill before she could strike up another conversation.

But Carrie's talkative tendencies made that nigh on impossible.

"Your sister beat you here tonight," she pointed out to Butchy, much to the couple's shared dismay. Although they did have to admit that the smile she offered alongside the observation seemed innocent enough.

"Mhm," Butchy mumbled, praying that the girl would get the hint and stop trying to force an interaction.

"She's awesome, I can't believe you two are related," Carrie chuckled, this time with a touch more spite, yet a real, genuine fondness for the raven-haired sophomore. "We've been getting along great - she's like the little sister I never got but always wanted," she rambled on, as Butchy fought the urge to acknowledge the conversation and/or turn around to check on his little sister himself. "I took her shopping at the weekend and we were out for hours - it was a blast! Things seem to be going really well with her and Tanner too; it feels like she's over at our house more than yours lately. She's good for him though, they seem really happy." As frightening as it was for him to ponder the influence Carrie could be having over his perfect little sister, the topic of her new relationship struck an entirely different nerve with Butchy. And the second Carrie clocked his change in demeanour, she began plucking that nerve like a banjo string. "If he's brought her here after their little dinner date though then I give it like…ten more minutes until he slips me a 20 and gets me to play Careless Whisper."

He immediately kicked himself for taking the bait, but his protective instinct kicked into action to ask before he could stop it. "Why? What does Careless Whisper have to do with anything?"

"It's number one on his 'hookup' playlist," Carrie snorted, making Butchy's stomach lurch. "From my extensive experience as 'wingwoman'-"

Extensive: the very word made Butchy's hairs stand on end.

"-once he knows he likes a girl, he'll take her out for a nice dinner, bring her back here for a bit of fun, and then when he feels like the moment's right: I get the signal, George Michael comes on, he makes his move, and next thing you know, they're out through the doors before the song's even over, with a one-way ticket to pound town."

The giggles spilling from Carrie's lips were a stark contrast to the tense horror gripping Butchy's lungs, stopping him from taking in enough air to keep the room from spinning.

In a rare moment of mercy, Carrie saw the protective, panic-stricken look on his face and gently swatted his shoulder. "Oh please, at ease, sergeant," she teased. "It's not that serious. It's not like they're running off to elope." But when she saw that made no difference, she added, "Even if he does get me to play it, I wouldn't worry if I were you; he's said he wants to take it slow this time."

"Which means?" Butchy cagily questioned.

"I don't know," Carrie snorted, but attempted an answer for him all the same. "He just said that it feels different for him this time around - like he doesn't want to rush anything, he wants to make sure it's special and meaningful for her - and that she feels ready before they-"

"Don't say it," Butchy jumped in to cut her off; the very idea of his sister's name and that word being in the same sentence made his stomach turn.

"I don't have to; you get the picture," Carrie chuckled, as Mick loudly placed the girl's metal water bottle back on the counter after several attempts to hold it back out to her had gone completely unnoticed.

Despite thanking the girl and collecting her refilled bottle, Carrie didn't get the hint to leave, and turned back to Butchy with the entertained grin of a child tormenting their sleep-deprived parent. "You're being awfully chatty tonight."

"Believe me, it's not by choice," he shot back without even bothering to look at her, sharing his girlfriend's desperation for her to leave them in peace.

Blatantly ignoring their cues, Carrie broached a new topic entirely. "How's it going at work then, sheriff?" she asked, using the same, grating nickname as Ethan, that the pair found thoroughly entertaining. "You arrested anyone yet?"

"Oh my god, are we not done yet?" Butchy exclaimed with a dramatic huff that just fired Carrie's desire to continue.

Hitting him with a total deadpan, unphased expression, she paused a beat before trying again. "...Have you?"

"No," he grumbled. "Now can you please-?"

"Seriously? What the fuck? That's so bogus," Carrie scoffed, half-genuinely disappointed, and half-incredibly satisfied by the revelation. "What do you do all day? Answer phone calls? Sharpen pencils?"

"Nah, he's on that paperwork grind," Ethan piped up to the trio's surprise - the three of them almost having forgotten that he and Miles were even there, let alone listening in to the bickering.

Butchy understood Mick's frustration with the guy more with every minute he spent in his company; that moment in particular brought on a strong urge to reach across the bar and throttle him, especially when he clocked the smirk caked in Carrie's borderline clown-like makeup.

"They really haven't let you arrest anyone yet?" she went on to ask - eyes already sparkling with mischief.

Butchy didn't even have to move; she knew his answer already - and the way he was glaring at her made her next offer all the more entertaining to deliver. "That's so unfair… Tell you what: I'll go move my car out front so it's parked illegally just so you can practise. I'll let you bend me over the hood and everything - and you can put 'em on extra tight."

Carrie's devilish smirk was opposed by an unimpressed scowl that just soured once she started acting out the interaction herself.

As hard to miss as her fluorescent buttcheeks were, especially when she was practically waving them under his nose, Butchy had no trouble forcing them into his periphery as he looked her in the eye. "I'd rather sit here and scoop my eyes out of my skull with a plastic fork," he promised, almost retching at the thought…of the mock arrest, that is. And even if his mind was swimming with all the road traffic offences he'd read through that day, and all the potential charges her claim could receive, he didn't want to give her the satisfaction of playing along.

Stung by the vehement rejection of her advances, even if they had been totally provocational, Carrie just stood back to her full height and found that Butchy had swapped his glower with her sickly sweet smirk.

Taking advantage of the fact that the girl was on the backfoot in the conversation again, Mick dared to chime in with a dig of her own. "If you want to practise arresting people," she began, glancing between Butchy and her two most incompetent co-workers. "Just hang around here until you catch these two hotboxing the break room again."

Although Carrie appeared unphased by Mick's comment, maybe even a little impressed by the remark, Ethan had nothing but earnest defences to offer, momentarily leaving Miles (who was proving to be as good a listener as he was a builder) in charge of the pyramid construction so that he could inform his peers that: "Hey, listening to Tiny Dancer with a buzz is a spiritual experience."

"He's not wrong," Carrie noted with an amused scoff, both at the way the point had been phrased, and the memory tied along with it.

"So was the moment Mick and I found you," Miles finally piped up with a chuckle of his own, far more willing to joke along with the stoners than Butchy would have liked him to be. "I don't think I've ever seen you so high - it was hilarious," he added with a teasing glance at Ethan.

"No it wasn't, it was horrible," Mick argued, frowning at Miles' treachery. "You almost passed out when you opened that door. And the couch cushions still stink of weed now."

"Aww yeah, it was baby's first proper contact high," Ethan said, jokingly turning and squeezing a guffawing Miles' cheeks like he was a chubby toddler. Once Miles had finally managed to swat his best friend's hands away though, Ethan continued gushing about the momentous day he had succeeded in convincing one of the most popular girls in school to split a joint (or two) with him, finishing with: "That was so fun - we totally need to do it again."

"I'm down," Carrie chuckled, completely disregarding Mick's annoyance with the topic.

"Mmm, yeah, sounds interesting," Butchy piped up with a mockingly casual tone and a sensible smirk. "Just tell me when and where and I'll get something extra special arranged."

"Don't worry, sheriff; it's just a joke," Ethan tried, raising his arms in mock surrender with a poorly-executed, nonchalant laugh.

"Oh yeah, totally a joke," Carrie confirmed with an exaggerated nod. Although she made no effort to cover up her wicked smirk. "Unless you want to whip out those handcuffs after all?" she cheekily added, holding out her wrists to him once more with a wink.

Emboldened by Carrie's continued teasing, Ethan brought back an idea from a now-defunct smoke session that had Carrie and Miles laughing their heads off within seconds. "Yo, if actually you want to do a fake drugs bust I could totally try turning one of the old skates in the back into a bong."

As the three co-workers joked around, passing their three collective brain cells back and forth like a game of 'hot potato', Mick's frustration began to rise to a boiling point. Her protectiveness of her own moral integrity, and even moreso, her boyfriend and his career (which she was still immensely proud of), made her anger swell. And before Miles could finish quizzing Ethan on the logistics of the bong's construction, Mick found herself jumping in with an exasperated huff.

"Oh my god, can you give it a rest? This isn't something to joke about - you genuinely could get arrested."

Surprised by the girl's sudden outburst, Miles folded in an instant and tried to set her at ease. "They're not being serious, Mick. We were just messing around."

"Yeah, well, I don't find it funny," she mumbled, skin still burning with defensive aggression.

"...I kinda still do," Ethan reluctantly admitted, before sharing a quick glance with Carrie that immediately set them both off spluttering with laughter again.

Although Miles had settled her with an apologetic smile, Mick's glower was completely ignored by the dense dopeheads. Carrie finally managed to catch her breath enough to speak with her directly though. "Oh come on, Mick, lighten up a little," she taunted with a lax grin and playful eye roll. "You don't have to take everything so seriously all the time."

"Well if I don't, it doesn't look like any of you three would," she snapped back - the sentiment completely lost on Ethan and Carrie, yet filling Miles to the brim with guilt.

"Well maybe if you took that five-foot stick out your ass you might be able to loosen up enough to have some fun of your own for once," Carrie suggested, the sweetness of her tone a stark contrast to the sharpness of her words. "Makes a change to bitching about the rules all the time… You should try it!" she finished with an over-the-top, bright smile that had Mick fighting the urge to slap her. At last, she finally took the hint and decided to leave though, swiping her water bottle and rolling away from the serving counter - but not before she uttered a final warning to her favourite police-plaything: "Watch out for George Michael!"

By the time Butchy turned to retaliate, the girl, and her poisonous smirk had disappeared back onto the dancefloor, leaving a seething brunette in her wake.

"Fucking hell, that could be a military torture device," Butchy muttered, wearily turning his attention back to Mick and rubbing the frustrated exhaustion from his eyes.

Dropping her wounded gaze to the countertop before he could catch it, and blinking back hot, angry tears, she mumbled, "I thought she was never gonna leave." She didn't want anyone finding out how deeply the blonde's words had cut into her; she didn't want her friends to worry, and she didn't want to give Carrie the satisfaction.

Sensing her bristled silence anyway, Butchy leaned across the counter to take her hand again, lifting her gaze to his just in time to send her another, comforting smile. "You really have to put up with her every shift?" he asked with a playfully incredulous tone.

A gentle snort of laughter escaped before she could stop it. "And those two bozos," Mick confirmed with a nod in Miles and Ethan's direction - the pair having returned to their condiment stacking within seconds.

"Damn, maybe I do have the easier job after all," Butchy said with a sympathetic grin that drew a smile to Mick's face as effortlessly as her taking a breath.

The way Butchy could piece Mick's world back together never failed to amaze her - and neither did Carrie's ability to smash it to pieces again.

"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna liven things up a little bit with this next song," the wannabe 'Popstar Barbie' announced over the speaker system, snatching Mick's attention in an instant. And as the blonde's neon-illuminated smirk broadened with each word she purred into the microphone, Mick's stomach sunk closer and closer to her Nike Air Forces. "'Cause, believe it or not, it's good to let your hair down and have some fun every once in a while. If not, you too could end up frigid as a nun and dating a literal pig. So change it up! …Sound familiar? This one's for you."

Although Carrie had given her the grace of leaving out her name, Mick's face burned with embarrassment regardless. No one on the dance floor batted an eyelid at the intro to the song, but as the opening notes of Cyndi Lauper's 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' blared across the rink, Ethan and Miles' wide eyes were pulled from their tubs of sauce to her scarlet cheeks. Wanting the ground to swallow her whole, Mick's defeated glare tracked Carrie's every, smug move: the little giggle to herself as she shut off her microphone, the hop over the lip of the rink from the carpet, the stupid, effortless twirl she did as she skated up to her brother and his date to encourage them to dance with her - loathing every cell in her body. Why did she get away with everything? How could she be so cruel and still get people laughing? How could she be so irresponsible and still get paid the same as her? How could she spit in Mick's face like that and still have Miles drooling over her like a moron, and Lela ditching their weekend plans to go and fritter her savings away on tight skirts and gaudy hair accessories? And how could she still dislike Mick after all these months of working together when she'd managed to 'befriend' everyone else?

Mick tore her envious gaze from the blonde, dancing and miming along to the lyrics as though she was aiming them directly at her, as Butchy's firmly protective gaze found hers again. "Just ignore her," he insisted. "She doesn't know what she's talking about."

"She sure makes out that she does," Mick replied with a poorly disguised, defeated chuckle.

"Yeah, 'cause she's delusional," Butchy said. "And she's gonna have one hell of a reality check when she realises the whole world doesn't revolve around her and her huge, fucking bejewelled ego."

As Butchy's comment succeeded in finally pulling a genuine smile back to Mick's face, the night fell back into its usual rhythm. Mick left to go and whip up the most palatable dinner option she could find for her boyfriend, the skaters filtered on and off the rink as their call times came and went, and Miles even had the rare pleasure of exchanging 50 prize tokens from the arcade for a green, palm-sized polyester Care Bear for a blue-haired sophomore, which was swiftly handed off to her friend. The evening drew on, minutes dragging by at a snail's pace - the only indicator for time (besides the giant clock on the wall) being the systematic filling of soda cups each time a group of teens were cycled off the rink, how many different items Ethan had experimented with to help give his (actually quite impressive) condiment pyramid some stability, and how many conversation topics the quartet had managed to burn through. But just as Ethan was switching out the basically empty tip jar for a two-litre soda bottle, and Mick was finishing up teasing Miles (who had spent an obscenely long time checking she was ok after the run-in with Carrie) about the state of his hair, Butchy's night took a turn for the worst.

"Who are you trying to look like, Steve 'The Hair' Harrington?" Mick snorted as she stole one of her boyfriend's now stone-cold fries.

"Oh my god, no, for the fifth time, I just haven't had it cut for like two months," Miles retaliated with an exasperated groan, attempting to tame the bird's nest by combing his hand through it.

"Why's he gotta be influenced by that wannabe jock?" Ethan cut in with a frown. "Why can't he be inspired by an equally handsome, but even cooler trendsetter with awesome hair?"

Just ignoring and rolling her eyes at Ethan's not so subtle prompting, she laughed through the question she aimed back at Miles. "Why don't you just get it cut then? Gonna miss playing with it every thirty seconds?"

"When I can afford a haircut, Mick, I'll get a haircut," Miles replied. "But until then, we're stuck with this. And with the way things are going, I'll be looking like a member of Whitesnake by the time I graduate."

The sound of Mick's giggles, and Ethan's praises for such a niche rock music reference, were rivalled by the fade-out of The Safety Dance though, which steadily morphed into the opening synth notes of the next song. At first it went completely unnoticed - as irrelevant as most of the tunes Carrie selected for the skaters, even with Ethan's brainless singing overlying the vocals to the first verse. But when the beat kicked in and he threw in some admittedly very comical body rolls to match it, the other three started to take some more notice - Miles even attempted a few of his own, to Mick's thorough entertainment. The moment that famous saxophone solo kicked in though, Butchy's face dropped like a lead balloon.

Mick's eyes found his, mildly worried about how he would react, but the brunet was frozen, partly out of fear, and partly out of disbelief. It was like the instinctual part of his brain knew he had to react, to rip the input cables out of the speakers, drag his little sister into his station wagon, and drive her home, never to let her out of the house again. But the logical side of his brain knew he couldn't do anything; he just had to sit there and let it happen - if he wanted Lela to ever speak to him again anyway. Stiffly turning to the rink, he found the couple locked in a slow-dance embrace, lovestruck grins playing at their lips as they swayed along to the music and giggled about god-knows-what. As protectively concerned as he was for his little sister, a much more visceral reaction was triggered by a flash of neon pink in the corner of his eye; the sight of Carrie smirking and proudly displaying to him the twenty dollar bill she'd taken as a bribe made his blood boil - and the comically exaggerated, racy dance moves she progressed to, paired with her own miming of the lyrics turned his stomach so violently he had to avert his eyes before he barfed all over the carpet. The swinging hips and kissy faces he could potentially put up with, but the lewd hand gestures just infuriated him.

Saying that, when he turned back to the other trio, and found that Ethan had managed to get Miles to fully commit to swaying and clicking in time to the music as they flanked and serenaded a very amused Mick, he did have to admit that the act was rather comical. Although she was very reluctant at first, Miles finally managed to coax her into at least somewhat dancing along with them - stepping and snapping along to the beat, and occasionally being twirled by him. But as the final chorus approached, Ethan's passion overcame him, and his (now almost entirely glow-less) glow stick was snatched up from the countertop to act as his microphone once more - accompanying his grinding dance moves up against Mick and Miles that had Miles laughing so hard he couldn't breathe, and Mick shoving him away from her, almost sending him flying into his condiment masterpiece - which just contributed to Miles' state of hysteria.

The antics as the song wound to a close were lost on Butchy though, who had finally dared another, cautious look towards the roller rink, only to find an empty space where his sister and her date had been. Searching again, he saw her head of raven hair disappearing out the smudged glass doors, her roller skates swinging from Tanner's hand as he wrapped his free one around her shoulders. A lump formed in his throat that he desperately tried to push away. Reminding himself that he couldn't bubble-wrap the girl forever, he swallowed every protective instinct he had with one deep breath - praying that would be enough to keep his mind at ease. He spotted Carrie giving the retreating couple an exaggerated wave in his periphery, but he refused to make eye contact with her; he wasn't about to give her the satisfaction. So instead, he turned back around to find Miles relinquishing Mick's hand as the song came to an end, so that they could both applaud Ethan's performance - Mick's claps were significantly more reluctant, but her entertained grin was undeniable.

"Holy fuck, I love a saxophone solo," Ethan breathed, slinging his pretend microphone onto the back counter and shaking his head to regain some semblance of control over his unruly, ratty locks.

"I can tell," Miles chuckled.

"Hmm, I think that's enough excitement for one night," Mick said, immediately preoccupied by her boyfriend's change in demeanour.

Before she could question it though, Ethan gasped, blurting out a query of his own. "Oh my god, do you think she's got Baker Street?"

"I don't know, maybe," was all Miles could offer in response, smirking at the guy's dopey, childlike enthusiasm. "Go ask."

He needed no persuasion; scrambling out from behind the serving counter and dashing over to the DJ booth with all the grace of a spider on a freshly mopped floor.

"What's Baker Street?" Mick asked Miles, momentarily distracted by her confusion at the stoner's actions.

"Another song with a sax solo," he explained, but when she showed no sign of recollection, he added, "You'll know it once it starts, trust me."

Despite her scepticism, Mick took his word for it and returned her attention to checking her boyfriend was alright. Although she'd gotten the gist of the issue, she had no time for probing further by the time Carrie threw her head back in laughter at the stoner's request and happily flipped through her collection of cassettes until she found the right song to switch to. At first, Mick was none the wiser as to what the song was, completely perplexed by the dreamy flute notes and why on earth Ethan would request such a thing. But as soon as the infamous saxophone motif kicked in, and Ethan, despite being on the other side of the room from Mick and Miles, whipped around to face them, sporting a pair of novelty sunglasses he'd swiped from the prize bin, and with the fire extinguisher off the wall grasped like a mock-saxophone, she realised exactly what she was about to be subjected to.

The guffaws flying from Miles' lips were instant as his friend put his all into miming along to the saxophone line on his journey back over to them. And although Mick just shook her head at him, she couldn't clamp her lips together hard enough to stop her own giggles from spilling out, much to Ethan's delight - in fact, it just spurred him on to dance even more enthusiastically. He made sure to keep his miming of the lyrics much more subdued and serious though, providing an even starker contrast to the over-the-top gyrating and parading of the fire-extinguisher-turned-instrument.

"I didn't know this even had lyrics," Miles admitted to the brunet, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

"Well consider yourself educated, my friend," Ethan retorted, before tucking the fire extinguisher under his arm and lifting an invisible guitar from its invisible stand beside him. Thrusting it under an incredulous Miles' nose, he added, "Now come on, I'm on the sax so you've gotta take the guitar solo."

Playing along and taking the air guitar, despite laughing so hard he could barely stand upright, Miles did eventually regain enough composure to mime along with the solo. Even Carrie, stuck over in her little DJ booth, had slid her own giant sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose, and was using her water bottle to mime along to the chorus' saxophone line (although whether her hand and mouth gestures were imitating a brass instrument, or the lewd activities she'd implied her brother and his date had gone off to partake in, was still up for debate, much to Butchy's disgust).

Leaving her co-workers to their antics, Mick returned her attention to her boyfriend and cheered him up in their own way - far from the boisterous teasing and idiotic dancing surrounding them. Between the jokes about his own shitty coworkers, and the promises of future date plans, Butchy slowly felt the air being breathed into his lungs again. In fact, they had almost completely forgotten where they even were until a fourteen year-old waltzed up to the counter and demanded a chocolate milkshake.

By the time Mick had returned, and had gladly exchanged the shake for the cash she methodically counted into the register, the latest of Carrie's music selections was starting to play. And since Mick and Ethan had had songs dedicated to them in their own ways throughout the night, now it was Miles' turn.

He'd almost completely forgotten about his interaction with the blonde at the start of their shift, to his great surprise, but when Rick Springfield began telling him about his good friend, Jessie, over a familiar, plucked guitar riff, his ears pricked up. Knowing that he'd have hated the extra attention any sort of preamble she could have given for the request, Carrie had left it to drift in from the end of Don't You Want Me without uttering a word, only offering a hopeful smile and a questioning thumbs up once he caught her eye, to prompt him to show his reaction. Chuckling to himself, he gave her a thumbs up back, indicating the song had been a good choice. Trying to stop the interaction from progressing any further - his conscience still bruised by how the girl had acted around his friends earlier - Miles dropped his eyes back to the new box of barbecue sauce tubs he was unpacking, since he and Ethan had already burned through their existing supply (to their amazement). It was roughly thirty seconds before his instinctual curiosity got the better of him though, and his denim blue eyes were drawn straight back to his t-shirt twin with a reluctant smile - only for him to tear them away again a moment later, frustrated that his resolve was so weak. That game of chicken lasted for the majority of the song, but as the bridge, and its guitar riff, took centre stage, Carrie managed to grab his attention well and truly with her own attempt at an air-guitar solo, inspired by his prior work on Baker Street. At first, the plucking and miming was just for her own entertainment, but when she caught him watching her (much to Miles' horror), she turned up the energy for a full performance. Once his initial panic at being exposed for staring at her had passed, his dopey, longing stare was soon replaced by an amused smirk that, despite trying to hide behind his hand, Carrie soon clocked and demanded to know the reason for. As had become the norm for them recently, Miles started mouthing his reply across the room - explaining that her technique was terrible. Feigning horror, Carrie gasped and demanded that he show her how it was done then - and although he was reluctant at first, he did end up doing a much more reserved air-guitar riff of his own for a very impressed Carrie. After taking a moment to express how she'd forgotten how much she loved this song, she tried her best to replicate it, but soon gave up in favour of returning to her comically exaggerated playing and jumping around in a bid to keep the brunet laughing. And laugh he did, so enraptured by the silly performance and the warmth it filled him with that he completely forgot about all of the questionable things she'd done that day. He even forgot about anyone else watching, so caught up in the moment they shared that he was about to pick up his imaginary guitar to join in again, this time of his own accord, without any regard for what his friends would think, or if they would even see him. But as the final chorus started up, a head of tawny blonde hair lumbered into view, and the moment the hunk's arms were thrown around Carrie's shoulders from behind, their exchange was abandoned - seemingly as meaningless to Carrie as the rest of her interactions that evening, considering that her conscience had not taken part in a single one of them.

Having watched the entire interaction, from the coy smiles all the way up to the fake guitar lessons, the way Miles' shoulders slumped so quickly prompted a smirked question from Ethan: "Yo, when did Eric change his name to Jessie?" he teasingly asked, obviously referencing the song's lyrics and their meaning, as Miles just frowned in disapproval, and gently whacked him on the back of his head as he went back into the store room to find more boxes of condiments. After all, the longer he stayed out of the room, the less PDA he'd have to subject himself to.

"Guess who?"

The husky voice purring into Carrie's ear, paired with the weight of the arms that had been draped over her shoulders, made her legs go weak at the knees. And with wide, excitable eyes, she whipped around to face her boyfriend with a grin so brilliant it could have blinded him. "Oh my god, you scared me!" she laughed through her surprise, before throwing herself into an eager embrace, immediately basking in the familiar comfort of his Herculean grasp. "What are you doing here?"

"What, I've gotta have a reason to come see you now?" he asked with a teasing smirk as Carrie set her skates back fully on the ground and his arms snaked around her waist.

"I thought you said you had an extra practice tonight," Carrie said, idly raking her nails through the hair at the base of his head.

Although confusion appeared to cloud his eyes for a moment, that classic, glazed confidence quickly returned. "Oh, uh - it got cancelled," he explained, brushing off the slight falter in his voice with a gruff laugh. "Rescheduled again: back to normal time tomorrow now. And since I was giving someone special a ride, and Mom told me to pick up the little bro, I thought I'd come see you too."

"Who'd you bring?" Carrie snorted, before her eyes flew wide with delight. "Wait, is Julie here with you?"

Taken aback by the sudden spike in enthusiasm, and how it had increased tenfold compared to when he'd arrived, the jock's confusion returned. "What? No. Ed was meeting a girl here."

Carrie's excitement evaporated in the blink of an eye, her disappointment so great she couldn't even begin to mask it.

Shocked that his girlfriend's reaction was so drastic, and that her enthusiasm for his presence had also been significantly dulled, he continued. "Oh my god, what's that face for? You'd think she was the one you were dating."

Eyes darting up to meet his with a mildly scolding frown at his obviously mocking tone, Carrie rolled her shoulders back and pushed her grievances to the back of her mind. Hoping to distract him rather than try to explain herself, she fixed a loving smile to her face and leant in close. "Then who'd kiss your lucky socks before every game?"

"I don't know," he dopily chuckled as her minty breath tickled his cheek.

"Well let's hope we never have to find out," she mumbled against his lips before locking them between hers, and being further silenced by his tongue working its way down her throat - evidently his own way of showing his agreement.

Although their makeout session was as long, and sloppy, as ever, it was Eric that was the first to surface for air, mumbling an autopilot: "How's work?" as he did.

"Same as usual," Carrie sighed, once more toying with the hair at the back of his head. "I've played some good songs, messed with the others over there a bit…nothing that exciting."

"Oh yeah? Looked like you were having fun when I came in," Eric noted, a slight, tense pressure creeping into his tone. Sparing the counter where the brunet resided a glance, he added a warning, "How's Miles been?"

"Like I said: same as usual," Carrie slowly replied, with a slight frown of disapproval. "Just as quiet as ever - I was only playing him a request 'cause he fixed a light in the break room for us. That's about as interesting as it gets 'round here." Drawing Eric's decadent, chocolate eyes back to her with a gentle tilt of his chin, she let her lips melt into a smile, uttering a flirtatious, "My night just got a hell of a lot better though." As Eric's face split into a grin, revealing the dimple she adored on his right cheek, Carrie rocked back onto her toe-stops to reach up and kiss it - so head-over-heels for the guy she could hardly keep her hands off him. Letting her hand slide down the back of his head again as she pulled away though, something by her wrist caught her eye, and for a moment, her smile faltered.

"What?" Eric chuckled, eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

Carrie plucked at the neckline of his football jersey, leaning in closer to inspect it herself before trying to hold up the fabric for him to see, despite the flashing coloured lights. "What's this?" she asked quietly, her eyes not once leaving the smudge of baby pink streaking across the white nylon, her mind already swirling with suspicions that made her feel nauseous.

Eric scoffed. "You tell me, you're the one who reapplies her lip gloss every five minutes."

The confidence in his voice, the speed of the reply, that dopey smile she fell in love with all over again every time she saw it… How could she have ever thought he'd stoop to-? No, she didn't even want to say the words. Pushing the doubts to the back of her mind, she conceded and giggled her way into a further kiss - relishing the assuredness of his hand on her hip, and the way he slipped his hand under her hair to cup the back of her head.

She may not have immediately recognised the shade, but she had to admit that she'd bought a lot of lipsticks over the years… And, she wasn't known for being the…neatest when things got heated. Maybe her hot pink lip gloss had just smudged a lighter shade…right?

Yet again, Eric was the first to pull away from the kiss. This time though, he straightened fully and stepped back a little, creating more of a gap between them as he cleared his throat to ask: "You taken your break yet?"

Sharking her head as that mildly disapproving frown crept back onto her face, Carrie replied, "No, not yet." And although she knew exactly where Eric was going with this, she still asked, "Why?"

"You wanna take it now?" he offered with a suggestive smirk. "...We could move this outside-"

Carrie let out an exasperated sigh. "I can't, I need to use it to grab some food; I've not eaten yet tonight."

"Oh my god, skip the food," Eric replied with a cocky chuckle. "Come on, what's gonna taste better?"

"I don't care about the taste," she said with a playful eye roll and a gentle swat of his chest. "I'm hungry - last time I ate was like 12:30."

"It's fine, you'll live. You've probably got a week of dinners sitting right here," he snorted, reaching around to slap her thigh and jiggle it around with his hand.

Mortified, Carrie's breath stilled in her throat. She wanted to slap that sweaty paw of his away, but she couldn't move; rooted to the spot as he poked at her like she was a piece of meat.

"Oh come on, Carrie. You know I'm only saying it 'cause I care about you," he tried, sensing her stiffen under his fingertips. But his cocksure smile and offhand tone showed no remorse. "We both know this place serves garbage, and if you keep eating it the pounds are gonna keep piling on. You even said yourself that your cheer skirt was starting to feel a little tight-"

"Alright, you don't have to keep bringing it up," Carrie defensively huffed, turning back to her table of cassette tapes so that she didn't have to look at his judgemental smirk any longer. Not one for taking hints, Eric soon snaked his arms around her waist again though - but whether or not he noticed her sucking in a breath to help flatten out her stomach, was still up for debate.

"Aww, come on, baby. Don't go all schizo on me now. I don't care what you eat," he promised. And for a moment, Carrie dared to believe that the sentiment was genuine. "As long as you look good." Yep, there it was. Nevermind.

Deciding it wasn't worth the fight her mind was rearing up for, Carrie compromised with a sigh, "It's fine, I'll just grab something when I get home."

"That's my girl," Eric smiled, pressing a kiss to her forehead as Carrie's eyelids slid closed in a silent acceptance. Using her surrender to his advantage, Eric produced a pack of Marlboros from his back pocket and brought it in front of them both. "Now, about that break," he said, plucking out a new cigarette and tucking it behind his ear before returning the box to his jeans. "I'll let you split one with me if you come out now."

Carrie could hear the smirk in his voice, but his confidence was entirely misplaced. "You know I don't like them," she grumbled.

"You don't have to smoke the whole thing."

"I don't want to smoke any of it; I've got a singing lesson tomorrow and I've told you before, they mess with my throat," she explained, a little more tersely than she'd intended, but when her frustration began to rise, her control over it started to slip away. After all, Eric definitely did know all of this information already, he was just weaponising his masculine incompetence.

"Like that matters," he scoffed, hiding his eye roll behind Carrie's turned back. Convincing her to ditch the acting stuff after she booked a gum commercial at the start of their relationship was one of the best things he could have done for her; being in community theatre would have totally tanked her social life. "You're never gonna do anything with them - it's not like you're gonna sing the national anthem at a Red Sox game." Laughing over any attempts Carrie could have made to try to defend herself, and no doubt rub her bruised ego, Eric pressed on with his latest attempt to sell her on the idea. "Plus, I heard 'em say on the news that they can suppress your appetite," he proudly smirked, taking the cigarette back down from its perch to wave it in front of the blonde's cold, blue eyes. "So who knows? A couple of puffs on this and you might not even want dinner later."

"Gee, how nutritious," Carrie flatly shot back, self-consciously hugging her arms around herself as the jabs at her weight started to take their toll.

Oblivious to her discomfort with the topic, he continued, "They increase your metabolism too, you know. If you cut out the junk food and work through a couple of these bad boys a day, by the time it's prom you could look like the girls on the cover of Playboy."

"Oh yeah? And how'd you know what they look like?" Carrie challenged, but if Eric's dopey chuckle was anything to go by, he wasn't phased in the slightest.

"Lucky guess?" he offered with a snort of laughter that showed he'd clearly amused himself. But Carrie's flat stare told him she was harder to impress. Sighing, he finally dropped the frat-boy-esque behaviour and wrapped his arms around her in a hug again, as he promised a quiet, "I'm sorry, baby. I'm just messing around. I'm not gonna make you have any if you don't want to."

Finally, a genuine smile started to creep back onto Carrie's face as she melted into the embrace - relieved that the part of the jock she'd fallen in love with was still in there somewhere.

Alas, his moronic social blindness was never far behind. "I left my lighter in my gym locker though, so you're still gonna have to come out with me so I can borrow yours."

Rolling her eyes, both at his forgetfulness, and how insecure his masculinity was, Carrie just let out a heavy sigh that had Eric scrambling together any last minute persuasions he could think of.

"Come on, I'm gonna need company out there," he tried, scattering kisses across her temple with a knowing grin. "You can't let me be lonely."

"Says who?" she challenged with a teasing chuckle of her own, starting to feel as though she was able to muster at least a little bit of her usual mojo.

"The best boyfriend in the world," Eric offered, once again just prompting Carrie to roll her eyes.

"And people say I'm the one with the big ego," she grumbled, managing a reluctant smile as she swiped up the plastic pink lighter from her desk in the DJ booth, checked the current cassette would last the next fifteen minutes or so, and then let herself be dragged towards the glass doors by the victorious quarterback. She wasn't entirely convinced by Eric's prior statement after how rocky the majority of their recent interactions had been, but she didn't have a great deal to compare it to. Nothing long-term anyway. And every couple had their disagreements, right? It was totally normal. Not perfect, but normal - she could cope with normal.

She could love normal.

"Thank fucking god. At least they're moving the tonsil hockey outside," Butchy grumbled, returning his attention to tinkering with the clunky old radio from the break room, hoping to be able to fix it up for the two staff members he actually cared about.

"Oh my god, would you stop looking at them?" Mick asked with a fondly exasperated huff as she too watched Carrie and Eric disappear through the rink's exit - mentally clocking the time to make sure that the blonde's break time was actually adhered to, which, given her track record, was a rarity. "They won't bother you at all if you don't see them," she added, breezing past her boyfriend and Miles with a tray of empty plates and glasses on her way to the sink in the back.

"And I'm the one that gets ragged on for staring at her," Miles sarcastically teased, scooting around Ethan (slumped forwards on the staff counter, beside his now-complete condiment masterpiece, drooling into his elbow) to take up Mick's role of keeping the older boy company.

"I'm plotting her demise, you're planning how you're gonna propose," Butchy shot back with a monotone tone and a judgemental quirk of his eyebrow.

Miles just rolled his eyes, losing all motivation for the playful jabs. "When is everyone gonna let this go? Nothing's gonna happen," he wearily insisted.

"When are you gonna let it go? You're the one that keeps crawling back every time you say you're 'done' with her," Butchy replied with a pointed scoff.

"...She is nice if you get to know her," he weakly tried, but one look at Butchy's sceptical frown and his resolve came crashing down.

"No she's not, Miles," he deadpanned. "She's just using you to get out of doing any real work around here. When was the last time you saw her wiping down a table? Or unpacking a case of napkins?"

"She helps with the cleaning when we're closing down every night," he offered, but Butchy wasn't having any of it.

"Oh, she does the bare minimum? Well damn, let me give her a participation ribbon," he sarcastically scoffed, using a screwdriver to free a trapped wire inside the radio. Before a defeated Miles could try to come up with any sort of counter-argument though, he continued with his lecture. "Just face the facts, Miles: she doesn't pull her weight. She barely does half the shit you and Mickie do, and then she rides on your coattails to get away with it. And that's all she's ever going to do - Eric too. They're both as hopeless as each other: too fucking dense to amount to anything themselves. Eric'll get his dad to hand him a real estate job on a platter, Carrie will sit around at home, sponging off his bank account in exchange for him parading her around like a glorified sex doll to his meathead friends, and they'll be stuck in Hawkins forever - becoming the same stupid carbon-copies of their 'suburban dream' parents they always insisted were so lame. They're not worth getting involved with, trust me."

Although Miles could picture the pair's proposed future as clear as day, he wasn't ready to admit the truth he was faced with just yet. "Carrie's not gonna stay in Hawkins," he insisted, with a quiet, yet completely misplaced confidence that had Butchy's eyebrow twitching again.

"How would you know?" he asked.

"She told me," Miles simply replied, harkening back to one of the many conversations they had shared over a soapy mop bucket. "She's got dreams. She wants to move to California after school to become an actress, or something."

"...And you really think any of that's gonna happen?"

The almost painful disbelief streaked across Butchy's face wasn't enough to completely crush Miles' confidence though. "I don't know, maybe? Crazier things have happened around here."

"One news scandal a year ago does not count," Butchy deadpanned. "It's never gonna happen, Miles. She's gonna be stuck here, working her way through every colour at Stacy's nail salon, and bitching about the other moms at her pilates class, until she finally wakes up one day and realises she's wasted her entire life in a dead-end town, surrounded by people she just pretends to care about. And even if, by some insane miracle, she actually did break up with that braindead oaf and move to California… What then? Are you gonna go after her?"

Trodden into submission, Miles relinquished his optimistic defiance with a small shake of his head. Of course he wouldn't follow her; he was just as stuck in this town as her and Eric were. If he earned enough money to own his own house one day that'd be a goddamn miracle - and their town was in the middle of nowhere, it's not like the housing market was competitive. He'd never have the funds to move. He couldn't follow her even if he wanted to. And then he had his brothers to consider; they'd never up sticks and move without a damn good reason - and Carrie was definitely not a good reason.

"No, of course you're not. Your whole life is here, Miles. You wouldn't give that up for her, I know you wouldn't. So stop chasing after her, tricking yourself into thinking you would. You're just setting yourself up to get your heartbroken," Butchy said, combining his protective urgency with an almost apologetic smile that Miles had to admit did soften the blow a touch. "You're better off focusing on what really matters: your family," he added with a gentle emphasis that Miles was much happier to agree with.

The older brunet was right; his brothers were his whole world. Everything he'd done for as long as he could remember was for them, to give them the best life he could. Anything else was just a distraction - especially if they were clad in head-to-toe neon. Whilst part of him didn't understand why he had to pick between a girl and his family, since self-proclaimed family man, Butchy himself, was somehow allowed to have both, the rest knew that even if given both options, his brothers would take priority anyway. They had to; they were all he had.

"I know, I know," Miles sighed, handing his friend a different screwdriver from the junkpile of a toolbox the rink owned, and offering him a small smile of acknowledgement. "She's a friend, nothing more. No more distractions."

"Miles!"

The call of his name made him start, jumping to attention, but when he realised that the voice didn't belong to a glittery dress-up doll, and had in fact come from one of the very boys he'd just been thinking about, his grin widened.

"Speaking of family," Butchy chuckled, following Miles' gaze to find Royce scurrying over to the serving counter.

"Or distractions," Miles smirked, before turning his full attention to his brother. "You ok? What do you want?"

"Vivien's asked me to go see a movie with her tonight. I can go right?" he checked, breathless with anticipation and eyes glittering with excitement.

Suddenly Miles' conversation with his self-appointed little sister from earlier on in the night came flooding back to him, and he had to fight the urge to burst out laughing. "Oh, she did, did she?" he probed with an almost mocking eyebrow raise.

"Please, Miles, I already missed out on the movie once back in the summer," Royce started to plead.

"What's the movie?" Butchy asked, an amused fondness tugging his lips into a smirk to match Miles'.

"The NeverEnding Story," Royce hurriedly explained before turning back to his big brother, just missing the snort of laughter Butchy had to hide behind his fist and a forced cough. "I can go, right?"

Letting out a sigh, the mirth slipped from Miles' face. "I don't know, RJ," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck as his eyebrows furrowed in an almost pained expression. "I want you to go, trust me. But I also need you to make sure Benny gets home safe since I can't clock out until 10."

"Oh come on, Miley, please. Benny will be fine, we're always fine - he's even got his own key now!"

"The same key he lost within fifteen minutes of me giving it to him?" Miles questioned, having to suppress the smile the memory instantly triggered.

"Yeah, but we found it like three minutes later - and he's got it on that strap inside his backpack now so he's not gonna lose it again," Royce defended, before leaning heavily on the serving counter and going straight back to his begging. "Please, Miley. I'll do all the dishes for a week."

"A week? That's your best offer?" Miles snorted, leaning down to his little brother's eye level.

"You really wanna go see this movie, huh?" Butchy noted with a knowing smile. "You heard good things or something?"

"Viv said it was good," Royce shyly mumbled. "That's why she wanted us both to go see it."

"You 'both'? So it's just the two of you?" Butchy chuckled, that knowing smile of his just broadening.

"Yeah…" Royce slowly admitted, failing to see what the two older boys were finding so amusing.

"What? So you're going to a movie alone with a girl and I'm just finding this out now?" Miles asked, feigning surprise and playing up his protectiveness. "Who's the chaperone? What's the rating? How do I know you're not just gonna sneak off somewhere else instead?"

"I'm off-the-clock for the night, I don't mind chaperoning," Butchy offered with a smirk, deciding to join in with the ragging, much to Royce's dismay.

"Oh my god, we don't need a chaperone!" he insisted with an exasperated groan. "It's not a date we're just…"

As his brother trailed off, Miles propped his chin up with his elbow and teasingly probed further. "Just what?"

Embarrassed frustration spilling over, Royce finally found the courage to reply. "Just friends!"

Butchy and Miles shared another knowing grin, this one making Royce want to dissolve into a puddle at their feet. "Friends, huh?" Butchy went on to question, swapping his screwdriver for a pair of pliers.

At first Royce thought that they were going to let him get away with it, but he should have known Miles would never have let him off that easily whenever Vivien was concerned.

"So where exactly does the 'giant crush' part come into this 'just friends' thing then?"

Butchy's laughter was quickly drowned out by another exasperated groan from Royce though. "Oh my god, shut up, her dad's gonna be here any minute," he huffed in despair. In a final bid to bargain with his big brother, he straightened up, trying to come level with him once more, and rattled through the reasons to support his final plea. "He's dropping us off and picking us up as soon as the movie's done, so there's no chance of us sneaking off anywhere; I don't know the rating, but I'm pretty sure it's aimed at kids, so it's not like I'm gonna be scarred for life; and you don't need to worry about us doing anything, or telling me about the birds and the bees before I go, because we both know I'm way too lame to even think about doing anything close to 'making a move' on her… Happy now?"

Miles went quiet, mulling over the proposal with an expression that gave nothing away, and making Royce even more agitated until he finally went with: "...But you do want to 'make a move' on her?"

"Miley!" Royce exclaimed, cheek burning with embarrassment as he sent his brother a frustrated glare.

"Alright, alright," Miles laughed, deciding that he'd given the boy enough grief for one night as he affectionately bumped him on the arm. "I'm just messing with you, of course you can go."

Although still a little bristled by all the teasing, the relief on Royce's face was clear as day. "Thank you! I won't be back late, I promise," he grinned through an elated laugh. He wanted to run straight back over to Vivien to tell her the good news, but before he could, another matter jumped to the forefront of his mind. "Wait, have you got any money I can borrow for my ticket?"

Fondly rolling his eyes at Royce's nervously pleading smile, Miles chuckled, "Why did I know there'd be a catch?" But he straightened up and reached for his wallet anyway, even if it was light as a feather. "Let me see what change I can pull together-"

"Don't worry, little man," Butchy cut in, gently bumping Royce's arm and whipping out his own wallet, sparing Miles a reassuring smile as he did so. "Ticket's on me, tonight," he said, producing a crisp ten dollar bill and handing it over to the boy. "Treat yourselves to some snacks too."

"Really?" Royce gasped, eyes wide with gratitude. "Thanks, Butchy! I'll pay you back, I swear."

"It's fine, really," Butchy chuckled at his enthusiasm. "Just get me a mention in your guys' wedding speech and we'll call it even," he added, teasingly ruffling the boy's curls as he and Miles shared a laugh.

"Gross," Royce grumbled, but he took the time to fix his hair in the reflection of the serving counter before going back to face the girl anyway.

"You won't be saying that for long, trust me," Butchy snorted.

"Make sure you say 'thanks' to Vivi's dad for the ride," Miles started to lecture, but Royce was quick to cut him off.

"I will, Miley, I'm not an asshole."

"I never said you were," Miles chuckled. "I'm just giving you some pointers."

"Don't listen to a word he says, Royce. He's a lost cause when it comes to girls," Butchy said with a teasing grin that the thirteen-year-old happily replicated.

Miles just chuckled and nodded along. "He's not wrong." With his younger brother back smiling, and now adequately funded, he was satisfied to send him away. "Alright, come on, don't keep her waiting, Romeo. Go have fun."

"Yeah, have a good time," Butchy added with an equally fond smile.

"Thanks, guys. See you later, Miles!" Royce called out as he started making his way back over to his booth of friends, who were still finishing their drinks and starting to pack up their bags for the night.

"See you, kiddo," Miles called back, so pleased for his little brother his heart could have burst if he let himself dwell on it for too long. But the more he thought about it, something kept nagging away at the back of his mind. And with one look at his friend, Miles knew he shared the same sentiment. "We totally could have given him a harder time about that, huh?"

"Oh absolutely," Butchy laughed.

On one hand, Vivien was pleased that Bentley and his friends had enjoyed their game so much that they hadn't stopped talking about it all night. But since she had been watching the clock like a hawk, even more so after Royce had cemented their plans, how slow they were at packing away their stuff was making her want to scream.

She'd already been waiting by the door for them for several minutes, staring out into the inky black, starless sky, and the smattering of hand-me-down cars in the parking lot, waiting for a new set of headlights to roll into view. But as one song drifted into the next, and August dug his handbook out of his backpack again to point something else out to his friends, delaying their exit further despite the clock hands ploughing forward on their course, the nervous tightness in Vivien's chest reached an all time high. Desperate for some sort of respite, she spared her friends one last glance before pushing through the grimy glass doors. The night drenched her face in chilled, autumn air, and although an even colder wind whipped around her seconds later, forcing her to pull her violet fleece closer to her chest, the stark difference to the stuffy sauna of a roller rink was a welcome one.

At first she just enjoyed the stillness of the evening, save for the quiet rumbling of engines on the main road, and the muffled thumping of music from inside - relishing in the peace as she steadied her breathing and started to regain some control over the racing thoughts in her mind. But not before long, she heard some voices just out of sight - familiar voices at that - and her curiosity got the better of her.

Peering around the protruding entrance to the building, she spotted a mane of overly-hairsprayed curls that she recognised in an instant, huddled up beside a giant oaf that must have been her boyfriend. Although, from Vivien's perspective, he couldn't look any more disinterested in her if he tried. And as she sank back just out of view, from the sounds of their conversation, she found that her suspicions might have had some credibility.

"Can we not just talk about it?"

"Oh my god, Carrie, no. Can you give it a fucking rest?" The angry bark of Eric's voice made Vivien flinch. Her parents had had their fair share of arguments (and were steadily growing in frequency), but hearing that kind of tone out in public, from a couple that presented so overly loved-up just felt…wrong. "How many times do I have to say it before you get it through your head? We’re not doing a couples costume, especially not Barbie."

"But why not?" Carrie pressed, remaining defiant despite the push-back. "You picked my costume last year. Why can't I pick this year?"

"Because they’re lame as shit, Carrie. They’re dolls for little kids," he snapped, only pausing to take a drag on his cigarette. "I don’t care how much you like the costumes, I’m not dressing up like a fag and becoming the laughing stock of the school."

"Eric, I told you to stop using that-"

"I don’t give a fuck, Carrie. I’ll say what I want; it’s a free country, isn't it?" he said, silencing Carrie's scolding and blowing out his mouthful of smoke in one breath.

"Doesn’t always feel like it," Carrie muttered, dejectedly nudging a stray stone with the edge of her roller skate's toe stop.

"What was that?" Eric asked with a tight, warning tone.

Although she refused to meet his gaze, she also denied him the satisfaction of answering. Hugging her arms tighter around herself, trying to hide away from the whipping wind instead.

"That's what I thought," he continued, a hint of a smirk tickling his lips before he pursed them and took another drag on his cigarette.

As he let the smoke seep out the corner of his mouth, Eric held the glowing tube of tobacco out to Carrie - more of an order than an offer, but she refused it anyway, keeping her arms wrapped around herself and levelling him with a frown. "So what? I have to go as a sexy nurse and you get to go as whatever you want, yet again?"

"What are you talking about?" Eric asked with a frustrated sigh, barely even listening to her now.

"I'm talking about how I never get a say in what we do anymore."

"Oh my god, are you seriously gonna die on this hill over a fucking costume?"

"It's not just about the costume-" Carrie tried, but Eric cut her off before she could give her case any sort of credibility.

"Argue all you want, Carrie, but I'm not going in anything with you. It's bad enough the guys all think my brother's gonna turn out to be a big pansy - if I showed up in a pink shirt I'd never hear the end of it."

The dig at the quiet, sensitive eleven-year-old she'd just spent the better part of her evening with had Vivien seeing red. But, to her surprise, before she had even finished processing what the bigot had said about his own flesh and blood, Carrie jumped to the boy's defence, earning herself a shred of respect from the hidden, bespectacled observer.

"Stop saying that-"

"Then quit pushing my buttons" Ethan barked back, placing so much force behind his words it rooted Vivien to the spot in shock.

Despite the warning glare, Carrie stood her ground. "You're really so insecure you think a shirt colour's gonna make everyone-?"

But Carrie never got to finish her question, and Vivien never got to finish her breath; the explosive outburst from the jock stole it away.

"Carrie!" he yelled, burning brown burning brown irises leaving the blonde cowering beneath her stony exterior. Flecks of his spit decorated her cheeks and his venomous breath made her throat feel as though it was closing, yet she stood as stoic as ever. "Shut your fucking mouth before I make you-"

Acting before she really let herself think about it, driven by the sheer panic that she was about to witness the 'lovers spat' taking a nasty turn, Vivien stepped back closer to All Skate's entrance and took a deep breath. Even if she couldn't care less about either party, she couldn't have just stood by whilst things turned ugly. "Come on, guys, hurry up" she started, praying her voice wasn't trembling as much as it felt like it was as she called back to her friends inside - but hoping that it was loud enough for the older teens to hear. And given the fact that they both fell silent, it was. "My dad's gonna be here any minute now."

Luckily, the group of newly appointed party members finally got her message, and moved their animated discussion outside. As they did, Vivien stepped further back into the parking lot to give them some room to gather their bikes from the racks. But as she did, she also emerged from her hiding spot - exposing herself to the couple as the disturbance of their peace (if you could call it that). Whilst Eric didn't even bother to look at her, too preoccupied with the passing traffic and tapping the ash from the end of his cigarette, Carrie found the girl's gaze almost instantly. Arms still hugged around herself, huddling away from the cold in her magenta, violet and sapphire windbreaker, the once loud and proud girl couldn't have looked more unassuming had she tried. She offered Vivien a shy, yet grateful smile - so small the brunette almost didn't see it at first, or perhaps she just didn't believe it. But instinctively, Vivien found herself smiling back. Again, it was a little shy, almost cautious, but the sentiment remained unchanged. And for a moment, Vivien felt a connection to the girl. Before she could dwell on the moment any longer though, Bentley's enthusiastic chortles washed away any lingering discomfort hanging in the air.

"Seriously, Gus, it was awesome! I've never seen anything like it - how'd you come up with that final battle?" he gushed, excitedly clapping his friend on the back and then hanging from his arm as he delivered the rave review, his face alight like a firework show.

"Yeah, it was way better than any book I've read this year," Zack agreed.

"That's not hard; all you do is watch TV," Kona snorted, earning herself a swift punch to the arm from the subject in question.

Over their squabbling, and Kona's furious rubbing of the impact spot, Royce cut in with an appreciative, and genuine: "Well I do read a lot of books, and I must admit, it was really impressive. You've got a real talent, August." And with a fond bump of the younger boy's arm, he added. "I can't wait for the next one."

"Thanks," August said with a bashful smile, unused to such flattery, but relishing it all the same. Eager to continue pleasing his friends though, he went on to suggest, "If you guys are that excited I can start working on the next campaign tonight. I've got all our ideas written down already so I'll just have to see what I can-"

"August!"

The joy drained from the boy's face at the sound of his older brother's voice, as did any lingering excitement; replaced instead with a weary dread. "Yeah?" he called back, drowning out Eric's muttered apologies to his girlfriend as he turned to face him.

"You heading home?"

"Yeah?" August tentatively repeated, hating the added attention that having to project his voice across the parking lot like this brought.

"Not on your bike you're not, get in the car," Eric said, nodding his head in the direction of his red Audi Quattro.

"Why? It's not far," August tried, once tense shoulders slumping in dismay at the thought of being singled out from the rest of his friends, who all had their bikes at the ready, and were no doubt exchanging uncomfortable glances behind his back.

"I don't care, Mom said I had to pick you up if I saw you. You know how freaked she gets after the shit with the Byers last year. She's gonna be all up in my ass if she finds out I left you here," Eric grumbled through a mouthful of smoke.

"So don't tell her," August attempted to argue, grabbing his helmet from its spot hanging from his handlebars.

But Eric, still not one to accept any backtalk, just scoffed. "And risk taking the fall for you again? No chance." Using the remainder of his cigarette to point towards the Quattro again, he added, "Put your bike on the backseat and get in, we're leaving."

Rolling his eyes and letting out a despondent huff, August turned back to his friends. "Guess I'll see you guys tomorrow then."

"Hey, at least you get out of the cold quicker," Kona offered with a hopefully optimistic grin, which she promptly buried beneath the neckline of her coat, pulled up as close to her chin as she could physically manage.

"And it's better than getting grounded," Zack added, to which August managed a small, thankfully more cheerful smile. "Plus I'd have totally beat you home anyway."

"In your dreams," August chuckled with a playful shove before starting to walk his bike over to his older brother's car.

"See you, Gus!" Bentley called out, offering one last farewell to the boy, along with a cheesy grin that stopped the boy in his tracks.

Breath catching in his throat before he could reply, August shot the group a final smile with a sigh of acceptance. "Bye guys."

"Fucking buzzkill," Zack grumbled over Eric's gruff greeting to his younger brother before sliding into the driver's seat and slamming his door.

"One day I'm gonna give that guy a piece of my mind," Kona said, glaring at the spot where the six-foot-something quarterback had once stood, eyes filled with the same hatred for the unnecessarily callous attitude the guy had for their friend as the two boys beside her. "Sooner rather than later if he keeps talking to him like that."

"You could right now if you didn't have such spindly legs and noodle arms," Bentley chuckled, for once pipping (a thoroughly amused) Zack to the punch when it came to teasing the blonde.

"Oh yeah? Well let's see how you like it when these spindly legs beat you to the end of Hawthorne," Kona shot back with a challenging grin, readying her sneaker on the pedal for their traditional bike race home.

"You're so on," Bentley laughed, before turning and throwing a final glance over his shoulder at the pair of thirteen-year-olds hanging around at the entrance, waiting to load their own bikes into Vivien's dad's car whenever it arrived. "Have fun you two."

"Not too much fun!" Zack hollered mischievously, as he rode his bike in a preparatory circle.

"See you later, RJ!" Bentley added as he kicked off from the asphalt and started pedalling up to the unofficial starting line, leaving the duo huddled on the sidewalk with their breath fogging in front of them and the porch light above them attracting a swarm of tiny flies, obviously as desperate for warmth as they were. He watched it for a second as it flickered, inexplicably unable to tear his eyes away. But the pull was released the moment the bulb returned to casting the paving slabs beneath in a steady, butter yellow glow, taking the breath he didn't realise he'd been holding with it.

"See you, Benny!" Royce called back, gladly returning the boy's fond grin and tacking on a wave as the trio disappeared into the horizon.

Although Vivien offered up a smile and wave of her own, her attention was still rather preoccupied with the aftermath of the almost-altercation she'd broken up. She hadn't been able to make out most of the muttered apology Eric had provided, but Carrie's minute, resigned smile was hard to miss.

Once it had been decided he'd be driving his younger brother home, he simply handed the rest of his cigarette off to his girlfriend (instructing her to finish it) and mumbled a half-hearted: "See you tomorrow, baby," on his way over to his car.

Catching his arm before he could leave, Carrie gently pulled him back, her unnerved concern evident as she made him stop so she could properly look at him. After an initial pause, perhaps for her to decide what she actually wanted to do, Carrie rocked up on her toe stops and pressed a tender kiss to his cheek. Her face softened into an almost apologetic smile as she shared her own reply, "Bye, baby."

But her efforts just pinged off the jock's hardened exterior. He may have attempted a smile back, but it was as false as the 'prize every time' claim on the claw machine inside. And as a result, when he turned his back, any traces of Carrie's own slipped to the ground, beside the cigarette stub she dropped to the asphalt and promptly stubbed out with her toe stop the moment his Audi rumbled into the distance, muttering under her breath and rolling her eyes the entire time.

"Your dad definitely said he'd be here at 8:15, right?" Royce checked, interrupting Vivien's thoughts with a playfully doubtful grin after taking a glance at his old, scratched, plastic digital watch.

"Yeah, he'd better not be any later," Vivien chuckled, relieved to have her attention returned to something she actually cared about. "He's normally good with being on time, but I bet Ollie's held him up at his hockey practice," she added with a loving eye roll at her brother's expense. "He shouldn't be much longer."

"Good," Royce said with a small chuckle of his own as he crossed his arms and buried his red, raw hands under his armpits. "It's freezing out here."

Just as Vivien was hurriedly swallowing the urge to suggest huddling together to share their body heat reserves, a voice from behind them interrupted their assumed privacy, accompanied by the scraping of plastic wheels over crumbling concrete.

"You guys ok? You waiting for a ride or something?"

Both Vivien and Royce turned to look at Carrie as though she'd been dropped off by a spaceship, utterly baffled as to why she had chosen to talk to them after giving the impression that she'd rather do anything but that earlier on in the evening. And whilst Royce's chosen tactic was to just ignore the sparkly senior, Vivien tentatively replied - her recent interaction with the girl having thrown her opinion of her into disarray. "Uh, my dad's picking us up," she explained, quickly averting her eyes but feeling Royce staring horrified daggers into the side of her temple anyway.

"He couldn't give you all a ride?" Carrie questioned, seemingly genuinely confused as she gestured towards the direction the three eleven-year-olds had left in.

"We're going to the movie theatre," Vivien clarified. Whether the blonde's bewilderment was due to the group's lack of synergy, or due to the fact that she couldn't comprehend the simple self-sufficiency of having a bike being one's only mode of transport though was still up for debate. And if the angry steam Vivien could feel rising from the top of her best friend's head was anything to go by, it was a debate he wanted no part in.

"Stop talking to her," he hissed through the corner of his frown, still partly in disbelief that the girl had acknowledged Carrie's existence at all, let alone was engaging in a proper conversation with her. And although Vivien shot him an awkwardly apologetic, lopsided smile, she didn't get the chance to reply properly before Carrie cut in with a response of her own.

"Oh nice," she noted, appearing to hold back a chuckle of amusement before offering her next question. "You want me to stay out here with you until he gets here or-?"

"No," Royce asserted, not even giving her the chance to finish her proposal before making his stance abundantly clear.

Although Royce was furiously avoiding eye contact with the older girl, keeping his irritated glower aimed firmly on the horizon, Vivien turned back to her with a slightly more polite, but still strained confirmation. "We're fine, he shouldn't be long."

"So leave us alone," Royce barked, taking both Vivien and the desired target by surprise.

"Damn, ok. Whatever," Carrie mumbled with a bewildered, but vaguely affronted scoff. Matching Royce's defensive stance, she crossed her arms across her chest, doubling as protection from any further wounding the pair's caustic remarks may cause. Quickly returning to her 'couldn't care less' attitude, her attempt at a friendly smile vanished. And with an almost bored sigh, she uttered a resigned farewell before rolling back through the double doors. "I'll leave you to it."

Part of Vivien's mind had still latched onto the mystery surrounding Carrie though - how she could be so heartless one second, and then so amiable the next; how she could present so confidently, and yet let herself be pushed around like a microfibre mop; how she could have people falling at her feet at the same time as having people cursing the very ground she walked. And although her opinion still hung in the balance, the glimpse of humanity she'd caught had drawn her intrigue. So, although she was certain it went unnoticed, Vivien still gave the older blonde a cautiously gracious smile as she left the younger teens in peace.

Maybe Miles' hadn't overshot his estimations of her so drastically after all.

Although, Royce didn't appear quite as impressed. "Why did you talk to her again?" he asked, still as shell-shocked by the event as when it first happened.

Having to bite her lip to stop herself from giggling at the comically horrified look in the curly-haired boy's eyes, Vivien just shrugged, unable to fully understand it herself. "I don't know, she just seemed like she was being nice. I wanted to give her a chance."

Royce rolled his eyes, sensing the same optimism in Vivien that Miles had displayed when he'd first started working with the blonde, and was still desperately clinging onto to this day. "Don't tell me I'm losing you to the dark side too," he sighed, with a fond, but wary frown.

Her giggle wasn't so easily concealed this time. "Strong is the pull of the Force, Master Royce," Vivien chortled, doing her best to deliver the worst Yoda impression she could muster.

Royce's sceptical resolve came crashing down in an instant, totally at ease in the brunette's presence once more. But Vivien wasn't done yet; after glancing towards the roller rink's entrance she caught his gaze again and fixed a smirk to her face. "But not that strong."

"No fair! You guys got a head start!" Zack cried in retaliation to a victorious Bentley's whoops and Kona's airy laughter as the pair passed their invisible finish line, crossing the threshold onto the street just before the turn-off for his street.

"Sure we did," Kona laughed, slowing her pedalling so that Zack could close the gap between them.

"Whatever's gonna help you sleep tonight," Bentley added with a chuckle of his own once he clocked his friend's disgruntled expression.

"I can't believe you won again, Benny," Zack huffed, half-frustrated, half-impressed by the boy's biking prowess.

"I've just had extra practice lately with Miles' car waiting to go into the garage," he explained, graciously taking the victory in his stride as the trio leisurely rolled down the rest of the residential street, waiting for their rapid breaths to even out again.

"Yeah, well, it's only a matter of time before I smoke you again," Zack teased with a misplaced, but very entertaining confidence. "I've just been going easy on you both."

"Ok, bozo, if you say so," Kona snorted, rolling her eyes as they approached the boy's turn-off. And as he took his turning, she called out her latest farewell. "See you tomorrow."

"Bye guys," Zack hollered over his shoulder, maintaining a steady course down the cul-de-sac despite raising one of his arms to wave at the pair.

"Bye!" Bentley called back, before adding with a mischievous grin, "Don't forget you owe me a candy bar!"

"Whaddya want?" Zack shouted back.

"A Sky Bar," Bentley replied, just about catching Zack's thumbs up before he disappeared from view and their exclamations were swallowed up by the heavy silence of the frigid, night air.

"You freak," Kona had chuckled as she lazily cycled beside the boy, shaking her head at his pick.

"What? They're good," Bentley defended with a grin. "What other candy gives you that many different flavours?"

"Lifesavers," Kona offered, lifting her eyebrow before tagging her opinion on the end. "But that doesn't mean they're any good."

After continuing their playful bickering over various confectionary items for the next few blocks, Kona reached her stop and conceded her role in the debate. "I'll see you tomorrow, Ben," she finished with, so used to waiting to bid his older brother a farewell too (once his slower pace on their evening commutes allowed him to catch up with them) that she still found herself looking for him along the inky skyline over her shoulder. But, obviously, she came up short. "Try not to get lost on your way back," she added with a cheeky jab at the boy's reliance on his older brother.

"Yeah, 'cause I really don't know my way home by now," Bentley sarcastically shot back, prompting the pair to share a laugh before they went their separate ways. "Bye, Kona!" he hollered with an enthusiastic wave at the girl's retreating form, waiting until her blonde pigtails disappeared into her family house's garage before kicking off and resuming his journey.

The route back to the Murphy residence was relatively simple, but tedious if you stuck to the main roads. However, there was a well-known shortcut down a sidestreet that branched off just after Kona's house that cut out a good chunk of the richer neighbourhoods. With a dense patch of woodland flanking one side, and sporadic driveways lining the other, it made for a pretty idyllic journey. Sometimes, if the weather was nice enough, he and Royce had been known to stop and stargaze on one of the patches of grass at the curbside. But with the consistently dropping temperature, and his solidarity becoming more painfully obvious with each muffled dog bark, or owl hoot, all Bentley cared about was getting home.

A few minutes passed and the breeze started to die down, the wind no longer gauging lines out of his cheeks, and the pothole-ridden road evened out onto a recently relaid stretch of tarmac. For a moment, Bentley felt himself relax and started to fully enjoy the novelty of the solo ride. But the sentiment was lost in an instant when the headlamp at the front of his handlebars started to flicker, just like the bulb back at All Skate had done. Confused at first, he reached down and tried to adjust it - tapping it a few times as he tried to figure out where on earth the bike could have been hiding its battery supply, as that obviously had to be the reason for the display. Coming up short, he tried to push the steadily nagging sense of dread to the back of his mind, chalking it up to nerves as the light sputtered back to life and he continued on its way.

He only managed a few more feet before the flickering returned though, bringing a fresh wave of unease that crested as the bulb gave up all together, plunging the patch of road ahead of him into darkness, thanks to the distinct lack of street lamps on the rural stretch of street. Bentley froze, coming to an abrupt stop as he tried to settle the thudding in his chest and figure out what he should do next. He slowly dismounted from the bike and peered at the bulb, at a total loss as to why it had started acting up so suddenly, and why it felt so coincidentally linked to the faulty light back at the rink, when all of a sudden…

A twig snapped.

Bentley's heart stopped, and his breath caught in his throat. He told himself he'd just watched too many scary movies, that it was probably just a stray cat, or a rabbit or something. But still, the noise struck a fear in him that rooted him to the spot - eyes wide in the darkness that felt more consuming with every passing second.

Several moments crawled by in total silence. Only to be broken by the rustling of the dead leaves blanketing the forest floor.

This time Bentley's heart leapt into his throat, and before he could dwell on it a moment longer, he started pushing his bike in the opposite direction, back towards the main road. Sure, it would take him significantly longer to get home now, especially since he was already a decent way down this side street, but at least the main road was properly lit, and wouldn't let his imagination run rampant with the sounds of native wildlife. Once again, he tried to steady his breathing, his feet pounding the asphalt with the same urgency as his heart pounding against his ribcage. His mind was overrun with manic thoughts of every level of concern - total blasé apathy to anxiety-riddled terror - and all he could do was pray that at least one with some sort of logical solution would present itself. But instead he was left with a rising sense of dread and the inability to think straight.

Knowing his mind was just playing tricks on him, a product of the overblown anxiety spike, Bentley thought for a second that he heard footsteps behind him. But considering that the entire time he, Royce and Miles had travelled that route, they'd only stumbled across another person a handful of times, and not once after sunset, he knew that couldn't be the case. Part of him wanted to just keep walking, albeit slightly quicker just in case, but the other part just wanted to check… Just to make sure.

Hoping that it would help to set his mind at ease, Bentley dared a glance over his shoulder, eyes struggling to adjust in the twilight. At first he saw nothing, just the same beat-up cars and overgrown sidewalks as before. But then a shadow emerging from the treeline made his blood run cold.

The figure, nothing but a black blob at first, stalked further out from the thick foliage. And as it was backlit by more of the minimal light from the sky, it became the distinct shape of a man - a tall man at that.

Bentley's head whipped back around and, acting on pure instinct alone, too afraid to do anything else, he started to run. His aim was to gain as much distance from the man as he could - after all, maybe he hadn't even noticed Bentley was there. He could just be getting himself scared over nothing. But when he heard the footsteps quicken in reaction, over the frantic panting of his own breath, his heart rate doubled.

Bentley's mind raced at a million miles a minute, trying to understand what the man could possibly want with him, what he could have possibly done wrong, and, most importantly, how on earth he could get out of this living nightmare. But the more he thought, the less control of his thoughts he had. His adrenaline was running too high to think properly. And even if it was, he had no idea what to do in a crisis; he usually just ran to his older brothers for help. And whilst he was definitely running, his brothers were nowhere to be found this time.

Sensing the footsteps growing louder, ergo closer, Bentley's fight-or-flight instinct kicked into full gear. As much as he loved his bike, it was dead weight as far as this pursuit was concerned. So he dropped the handlebars and broke out into a sprint, listening to the framework topple to the ground and skitter down the road until it scraped to a stop. He didn't dare look over his shoulder to see where it had landed, but he knew he'd just have to come back and collect it the following day. After all, he'd sooner sacrifice his bike than himself, and he was sure Miles would agree once he explained the predicament to him later.

Whilst part of him had envisioned the bike hitting the assailant on its way back down the slight hill, the footsteps just picked up their pace to match his once more, filling him with an even deeper sense of dread. His chest grew tight, making it harder and harder to gasp in the breaths required to sustain his stamina. His calves started to smart with the force of his strides - his legs moving so wildly they almost didn't even feel like his anymore. Hot, terrified tears burned his eyes - blurring what limited vision he had in this suffocating darkness.

Something snagged his backpack and Bentley's heart rate hit an all time high.

He furiously wrenched himself free from the straps and threw himself back into a sprint, running faster than he ever had before. Fleeting thoughts of anything in that backpack were thrown out the window: his homework, his sketchbook, his house keys - no matter their importance, they paled in comparison to getting to safety. But with the shadowed stalker hot on his heels, even though the main road was getting closer by the second, that was starting to feel more and more hopeless. He thought about screaming for help, but none of the houses that were actually inhabited were close enough for anyone to hear him - plus, his throat was so dry he didn't even know if he'd be able to make a sound anyway. He just kept on running. Pound after pound after pound, attempting to plan out which house he could beg for sanctuary at once he broke out onto the main street. Thud after thud after thud, desperately trying to remember the countless lectures Miles had bored him with about what to do if he was ever in trouble, and yet every piece of advice alluding him. Sob after sob after sob, frantic tears streaking down his cheeks as he clung to whatever thoughts of his brothers he could muster to drive away the all-consuming terror that came from-

A cold hand clamped down on Bentley's shoulder and he felt his entire body turn to ice. His breath was stolen away as the nightmare swelled to its climax and the pounding blood in his skull grew so deafening he lost his sense of hearing too. The ringing of alarm bells filled his ears and his brain was replaced with cotton wool as every coherent thought besides 'oh my god, somebody help me' fell out of his head, along with the last shred of his sanity. Although he was petrified of what he'd find, Bentley found himself turning to face the shadow man - perhaps in a final attempt to try to shake him off, or wriggle out of his grasp. But as a bolt of fear surged through his body, crushing his organs with a pressure too great for him to even begin to comprehend - the attacker reached out a gnarled, pale hand.

Bentley's vision flashed white. And then there was darkness.

Nothing but darkness.

#if the majority of this just feels like the last part of the story set at All Skate - i'm sorry - BUT it is intentional haha #i think I've read through it so many times now that it feels really boring #but i had fun writing it so hopefully reading it with fresh eyes will help it out a bit haha #it was so weird trying to remember how to write everyone for this story - i really struggled getting back into it at first #and the bit i had to come back to was the dnd scene which was an absolute nightmare to write tbh #i had no idea what i was doing and i had a set plan that needed to happen but no idea how to make it feasibly happen #and my research was pretty hopeless so if it's inaccurate and cringey to read i can only apologise lmao #but i'll stop rambling now!#I hope you like it!#sorry it's been an eternity since I last posted any of this story #you might want to do a re-read of the last part but I don't feel like it's necessary - I feel like you'd get the gist of what happened...#just from reading this one #and i know lots of this has just felt like everyday boring set up - but hopefully you can tell it's starting to pick up a bit now 👀

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jensthwa · 2 months

Text

show & tell (SMG x reader).

part of the love's an uncharted path universe ★.

SUMMARY:

You have known Mingi since you both were fourteen. You’ve been by his side through thick and thin and you would do anything for him, really, considering he’s your other half. When he has an unfortunate bed experience and asks for your help and you say yes, he starts considering that, maybe, you’re just the best friend a guy like him can have.

PAIRING: best friend!mingi x afab reader.

GENRE: childhood best friends to ?

WORD COUNT: 8k.

WARNINGS: SMUT ☽ (MINORS DNI) attempt !!! at comedy, wooyoung being a little shit, hwa being the voice of reason, sex talk, pet names (love and also dude and bro but in a sweet way), mingi scaring the sense out of you, descriptions of female anatomy, kissing, dirty talk (sort of), teasing, a little bit of voyeurism, fingering, squirting, almost getting caught, unresolved feelings.

NOTES: had to do a lot of research for this one, so i figured nothing better to post as my first fic here! this is 100% self indulgent, as all fics should be, and i think i've re-read it so many times that if you find a typo or something that just doesn't make sense, you can blame it on english not being my first language i guess lmao. i hope you enjoy it and if you do feel free to send to my askbox/reblog/type in any feedback or thoughts! <3

POSTED: july 18th 2024.

masterlist. / part two.

“Delete her number right now!”

“She's such a bitch for saying that to you…”

“And over text too? Wow.”

“Yeah, no, I didn't like her from the start.”

Wooyoung’s living room comes to life once again that morning, voices echoing and insults flying out, all towards the girl Mingi’s seeing.

Was seeing. You're sure she's out of his usual rotation with the lovely shit show she just caused.

You stay silent, your eyes fixed on your best friend's expression, on his red cheeks and apologetic eyes because everyone told him that girl was bad news.

He should've listened to you when you told him you liked her friend better. She was a sweet girl, clearly had a thing for Mingi.

Unfortunately, Mingi has a type. And that type always ends up breaking his spirit one way or another.

But you stay silent, letting your friends have their little rants about how much of a bitch she is for hurting Mingi's ego like that, until he covers up his face with his hands and lets out a frustrated whine.

“That's enough, everyone. I think he got it.” You smile a little and everyone turns to you, Yunho’s chest heaving and everything but Seonghwa (who also kept his mouth shut all this time) interferes before anyone else has the chance to start again.

“You know you shouldn't feel ashamed for that, right?” he asks Mingi, who slowly lowers his hands to his lap and looks at you for a brief second. You nod, confirming what Hwa says “No one is born knowing everything and she shouldn't expect you to know how to make a girl squirt.”

“Jesus Christ,” Mingi whines again, closing his eyes “Don't say it like that.”

“How else should I say it?” Seonghwa is confused but he laughs a little bit and turns to you.

Being the only girl in the room, you think everyone it's expecting you to pick your friend up and join them in their insults but you can't (for Mingi’s sake). Instead, you let out a sigh “I mean, it's hard to even make it happen on your own without any help, Mingi. I don't know what the fuck she's on but…” shrugging, you extend your arm to pat him in the shoulder two times “Hwa’s right.”

“So you do know?”

“Woo—” Hongjoong reprimands right away and you turn to Wooyoung, confused.

“Huh?”

“You said that it's hard making it happen,” he explains, smiling because he just found a new target for the next few days “So you must know.”

Talking about sex with them was never difficult, it didn't make you uncomfortable whatsoever but you know what Woo is doing.

You look down at Mingi before answering though and his eyes are glued to the carpet, begging for the topic of his unfortunate encounter with that bitch to die on everyone's tongue.

So you take mercy on him.

“Oh. I mean… Yeah.” You shrug once again, leaning back against the cushions on the couch while Wooyoung claps like he just heard the most hilarious joke ever.

“You truly are amazing.”

Rolling your eyes, you get up from your comfy seat “Sure. But it took a lot of practice and the whole ordeal was frustrating for me, so, again, I don't know what the fuck she was on,” you say again, smiling down at Mingi before taking a few steps towards the door “It's noon already, by the way.”

“Shit.” Woo gets up quickly from his spot on the floor and everyone else follows suit.

“Alright, everyone out! We have a midterm to cheat on.” San calls out and everyone takes it as their sign to actually leave (not just hang around the apartment) and continue with their days.

This reunion was a little impromptu, just because Wooyoung texted everyone begging to come over and hang out with him and San before their online philosophy midterm.

“And by that he means that you need to stay,” Wooyoung hugs Seonghwa hard, almost begging him with his eyes “We didn't study… Don't look at me like that! Please?”

“I'm not doing your fucking midterm for you!”

You chuckle, leaning on the door and waiting for your ride home to get his shoes on. When you look down at him again, Mingi mouths a thank you and you blow him a kiss.

When you get downstairs, you swear you still hear Wooyoung begging his senior to take the test for him.

Everyone is quiet in the car. You can tell they're tired from exams and life in general, so you don't press them with questions and just let the music play in the background while you look out the passenger window and, eventually, at Mingi.

His grip on the steering wheel lets you know he's a little more affected than he let on back there. But, again, you say nothing.

You know better than to pressure him into telling you his feelings.

Mingi and you have been friends forever. He lived a few houses down from yours, becoming your first friend when you moved to the city. You both were fourteen when it happened, so you've known him long enough to know what happens when he gets his heart broken.

Not that Mingi loved that girl or anything, but he never really took embarrassment well. He didn't when the first girl he liked rejected him in front of the whole ninth grade class and he didn't when his pants ripped in the middle of the stage while performing a routine with his dance team on senior year.

You stood by his side every single time and every single time he waited to sit down and let everything out, collect his feelings and talk to you through his frustrations. You really loved that about him, because he never said anything he regretted just because he was upset at the moment.

Maybe that's why you two have been friends for so long. Opposites attract, or whatever your mother told you one time.

In reality, you think it's because you two complement each other well.

He knows when to speak his mind and you're kind of impulsive, heart on your sleeve and sharp tongue ready to defend your and your loved ones honor if needed.

That's why it takes a lot of strength for you to not pull up that girl's number from his phone and give her a piece of your mind.

One by one, you drop your friends off in different parts of the city and when it's time to go into your own house, you circle the car and Mingi rolls his window down.

He reads the look you give him a little too well, so he opens his mouth to stop you but you shake your head.

“Call me, come over or just let me know if you need anything,” you start before he says anything “If you need me to beat her up, I can do that too.”

He huffs out a laugh “You don't even know how to fight, love.”

You sigh at the nickname, he's been using it since the time you told him you had a crush on his friend, way bsck in highschool, and that you were positive you were going to get together and he would csll you love because that's what good boyfriend's do.

Turns out, you weren't exactly his friends type. Neither were the other girls in your school.

“I don't give a shit, I'll do it,” You two smile to each other fondly for a few seconds and then you tap the top of the car “Thanks for the ride, dude.”

“You’re welcome, bro.” He rolls his eyes, annoyed because he hates when you call him that, but waits for you to get inside either way.

And in the solitude of your room, you wait.

You distract yourself with papers that are due in a few days, you start studying for your finals even though they're months away and you even go downstairs to say goodbye to your parents when they leave for a fancy dinner with their colleagues before you hear your phone ring.

Mingi's FaceTime comes right on time, because you were getting really anxious from the radio silence on his end.

“I have a small query for you.” He puts on an accent that makes you grimace immediately and he laughs at you.

“Ew. Never do that ever again,” you beg, going back upstairs to your room “Go ahead.”

“How do you do it?”

“Excuse me?”

“How the fuck do you make yourself squirt, love?”

Oh.

Definitely not the conversation you were hoping to have with him.

It caughts off guard and you stammer your response “Um… You— I mean, it's not really a thing I can explain.”

“You have such a way with words, though.”

You stare at him through the screen, annoyed, and he just laughs again “Don't make me come over and beat you up.”

“Alright, alright,” his giggling dies out and you distract yourself from the heat you feel creeping over your cheeks while putting away your statistics prep for the quiz you have next week. There's a bit of silence and then you hear him sigh “I do really want to know, though.”

“If you're asking me this to then go over to her house and prove her wrong, I'm not telling you shit.”

“No! No, that's not it at all,” he defends himself quickly when you turn your head to the camera, scowl in your face “When she asked me to do it, I really did try to make her, you know…”

“You said squirt so freely a minute ago, Mingi,” you tease, smiling, but at his expression, you give in “What exactly did you do?”

“I tried to, you know, do it like they do it in the movies,” he demonstrates his point with his free hand, his middle and ring finger down on his sheets, pressing and moving side to side “And she was enjoying it and she came, but nothing really… came out.”

“Wow, first of all: you make her come and she has the nerve to give you shit over text? I hate her,” you shake your head, disappointment written all over your face “and second of all, that was a terrible mistake.”

“What? Going like this?” He does it again and you roll your eyes, laughing a second later.

“No, dude, trying to porno your way into making her squirt.”

“Oh.” His movements on the sheets slow down and you grimace again.

“Please stop doing that,” you beg and he snaps out of his thoughts to look at you through the screen. You take your phone and move to the bed, resting your head against the pillows with a huff.

You ponder for a moment. You're sure telling him what he wants to hear it's not really a threat to your friendship, but it's also something that's very personal and intimate. You can talk about sex with Mingi and the other guys, sure, what doesn't mean you tell them about your sex life.

Maybe that's why Wooyoung was so excited earlier today, because you spilled something that involves you directly and not something vague and general like you usually do.

“Would it give you peace of mind if I explained it to you?” You ask, your voice barely a whisper as you sit straight on the bed.

Your best friend takes what feels like a lifetime to respond and, when does, it's in a hushed tone as well “Please.”

You groan and you comply either way, trying to find the right words to even start “Okay, I'm going to be very technical about this.”

“I wouldn't expect anything else from you.”

His teasing tone makes you glare at him for a few seconds before dismissing it with a click of your tongue “The very first thing you need to make sure happens, is that you wash your hands—”

“Yes, Y/N, I'm not a virgin,” he huffs this time, annoyed “I know all of that, just skip to the part where I make her squirt.”

“Jesus, fine! I also want to clarify that this works on me and I'm not really sure if it'll work on anyone else, alright?” he nods and you look away from the screen because you're not sure how to look him in the eyes “The first thing that I do— The first thing that you need to do,” you correct yourself quickly “Is make sure she's comfortable. And I mean, the space. Towels, water bottles… She needs to hydrate a lot.”

“Hydrate… a… lot…” You turn your head to the screen and your jaw goes slack at what you see.

“Are you writing this down?!”

“I’m making sure I don't forget anything!”

“You're unbelievable…” You let out under your breath and take a deep one before resuming the, apparently, class “Squirting can be confused as peeing and—”

“Shit, hold on.” He interrupts and you hear his mom’s voice at the door, asking him something you can't really catch through the shitty airpod audio “It's just Y/N… I'm not really saying anything so I don't understand how I'm being too loud for— Yes ma'am.”

You try not to laugh because he's literally being scolded right in front of you.

Old habits die hard, and Mingi's mom loves to put him on the spot.

Your laugh dies hard as well, because the next words, for some reason, make your heart drop to your ass.

“She's telling me to either cut it out or go to your house, so… I'm coming over.”

“Oh, I— Hello?” Your lockscreen mocks you because the call literally ended before you could tell him to go and fuck himself “Shit.”

You don't know why you panic, but you do. You tidy up the room, you change your pijamas into something more presentable and you try to remember what were you telling him before he pulls open your bedroom door.

“Mingi! Fuck, you scared the shit out of me “ you're panting, hand over your chest.

He’s also panting, like he runned to get to your house, but he looks dumbfounded by your reaction “Your mom literally gave me the spare keys in your presence.”

When he steps closer, you notice he's wearing cologne and that his hair it's a little wet, still, so you figure he took a shower before calling you tonight.

Which means he probably wanted to sleep everything off, like he usually does, but whatever this is made him call you.

“Yeah! But I thought you— Nevermind.” He shrugs and gives your hair a kiss before he moves to sit at your desk, the same way he usually does when he steals your laptop and notes to complete his assignments for the few classes you share.

God. Somehow, you wish he was doing just that so it brings back some sense of normalcy. Maybe then, your heart can calm down enough for you to understand why this specific situation has your senses going insane.

You sit back down on your bed and try to get your heart back to its place in the meantime.

“They're not home, right? I didn't see your dad’s car.”

“Company dinner.”

“Ah.” He nods and you both fall in uncomfortable silence. It shouldn't be awkward, but it kind of is, even if you laugh when he pulls out the notebook he was writing on from underneath his oversized shirt and steals a pen from your pencil case, it's still a little weird.

You gulp.

“So, squirting can be confused as peeing.” He recalls the last thing you said with a smile and then he turns to look at you for a second “Go on.”

You're grateful he's taking notes all of the sudden. He's turned to you, so you have a clear view of his back and you can freely take a grounding breath before continuing “It can make you feel very uncomfortable if you think you're going to pee yourself and that's really why most women don't squirt in the first place.”

“You sound like you're reading a text book.” He confesses with a laugh.

“I told you, I'm being very technical about this— Besides, I did my research when I was trying to…” you gulp again “You know.”

“You said squirt so freely a minute ago.” Mingi teases you the same way you teased him earlier and you squint your eyes in return.

“Very funny. Anyways… Yeah, when you feel that, you usually tense up. You need to relax before even making it happen,” he nods, writing it down quickly “I also read that, depending on the person, you can confuse the liquid with, like, usual… arousal? Yeah, arousal” you sound more confident the second time you say it, unsure on how to call it because you never really explained anything related to your vagina to anyone else.

He turns to you, confused “So… If she doesn't squirt a lot, how can I tell if she did it?”

“I guess you'll notice it in her reaction?” You shrug and then cough a little to try and get rid of the sudden lump on your throat “I mean, it's not my case, so I wouldn't… I wouldn't know that.”

Mingi, because -you guess- hates you, just raises a brow and looks you over one time before turning back to his notes.

“A-anyways,” you cough again “It's all in her g-spot. It happens because it gets stimulated and that g-spot it's like…” you, once again, try to find the ideal words to explain “It's like the upper wall of the vagina? No, no, that's not right,” you see him draw a line over what he clearly wrote down on the paper and you laugh, apologetic “It's more like the, uh… Like the front wall of it.”

“Front wall?”

“Y-yeah?” you offer, nervous and unsure “I mean… Ugh, let me explain again. Something that you need to take into account is that you can only find it if she's really, really turned on.”

“O… kay.”

“Sort of like when you get hard we, uh, also get hard. Just differently,” you notice he's no longer taking notes when you turn to him again and the room is suddenly very hot.

The AC’s on, right?

Fuck.

“And apparently it only really shows up when you're really aroused. The g-spot, I mean,” Quickly, you're up from your bed and walking around it, fetching your water bottle and taking a big gulp of it with your eyes closed.

Mingi clears his throat a second later.

“So it feels hard to the touch or…”

“Not really, um… It kinda feels like a berry.”

He laughs “What?”

“Yeah, it's kind of soft but it has a texture to it too. And we, uh… have this gland that fills up with the liquid— Kind of like a prostate gland! Yeah, that's what that article said,” putting even more distance within Mingi and you, you sit back on the bed, just on the other side “If you try to do it before it fills up, you end up with nothing. That's what frustrated me the whole time I was learning how to do it.”

“You didn't drink enough water?”

“No, no— It fills up when you get really turned on. And when I was trying, I was trying way too hard and didn't, uh… I didn't do a lot of foreplay before trying, s-so.” You nod, finishing the explanation in a softer voice.

Your cheeks feel hot and you swear your upper lip is sweating a bit. Why would you even say that?

“Y-you didn't touch yourself enough or…?”

“Exactly, I didn't, I just… Tried t-to stimulate it. Wasn't even wet enough so I used, uh, lube.”

“Oh… Lube. Sure, okay.” He nods again, and then moves his hand over his face, looking away for a second “And then?”

“I'm not really sure how to… Give me a second.”

What were you even telling him before exposing yourself like that? Before the tension in the room skyrocketed in a suffocating way? You're not sure.

Oh, foreplay. Okay, what's next?

“Fingering,” you say out loud when you remember and at the sudden word Mingi turns to you, eyes wide and you stumble over your words yet again “Y-you need to finger her to stimulate the g-spot, duh.”

“Don't duh me, Y/N, I'm learning!”

“Sorry!”

“Okay! Now what do I do when… fingering.”

That makes you frown. You're not really sure what to tell him next. So you look straight ahead and, unintentionally, move your ring and middle finger the way you do when you're touching yourself.

In the silence of the room, you audibly hear Mingi’s breath hitching and that draws you back to reality.

When you look at him, his eyes are solely focused on your fingers.

“I don't really know how to explain this next part.” You sound apologetic, your lips tensing into a straight line.

A bit passes.

And then another one and another one where Mingi looks at you with a weird, foreign expression on his face.

So you open your mouth to apologize to him, but he beats you to it.

“Then show me.”

You swear you never even heard him sound like that before. Or maybe you have, the tone of voice similar to when he just wakes up, low, grouchy, as if his throat might be dry.

It just never affected you this way.

“W-what?” you blink hard, a few times, trying to focus on whatever the hell is going on.

“Show me how you do it… I-if you want to.”

“Mingi!”

“I just— Look, you don't have to,” he says right away “If you don't want to, you can forget I ever asked but I'm so… curious”, he says, getting up from your desk chair and planting his knee into the bed “And I'm also really butthurt over what happened. I want to learn but I don't really have anyone else to ask.”

“What about, uh… Minseo! Yeah, what about her?” you offer quickly, also getting up.

“San's ex?!”

“I don't know any other woman that you also know, Mingi!”

He gulps and breathes heavily, gathering his words, his thoughts, just like he always does and you remember: This is Mingi. Your Mingi. The Mingi you've known for years and care about more than anything.

“I'm asking you because I trust you,” he says, looking you over once again “And because if I fail, you're not… going to make fun of me for it.”

There it is.

You soften at that and he seems to relax at your reaction. His demeanor lets you know he's not just saying that because he wants to see you touch yourself, he's being honest.

So you decide to be honest, as well. In a whisper, because your voice will tremble and give away how strongly you feel about his request.

“I've never done it in front of anyone before.”

“So no one has ever make you—”

“No,” you confirm before he even gets it out and you sigh “I never ask for it and I haven't really… I've only slept with—”

“Hangyeol.” He nods and scrunches his nose in disgust at the memory of your highschool boyfriend. They never really got along and it was a shame, because Han was a great guy, he just wasn't the one for you.

“Mingi,” you walk over to him and he straightens up his spine “This could really… I mean, there's no getting rid of me on this lifetime, buddy,” reminding him makes him smile and you do as well, nervous, your body on high alert “But this could mess us up.” You finish in a whisper.

“I'm not letting that happen.” He says back, eyes scanning your face before zeroing on your eyes “There's no getting rid of me either, love.”

That nickname is going to be the death of you, you're sure. It makes you suck in air you very much need at this moment.

Fuck it.

“I'll… get the towels, then.” You smile a little even though your cheeks are burning and you feel a little dizzy while holding his gaze, but you don't back down.

Before you move, though, he stops you with his hand holding your waist “I know where they are. Stay here.”

You could literally melt right now. And you know it's a short trip to the downstairs hallway closet from your room, so you make sure you strip your duvet before things get messy.

You should go to the bathroom, too, to clean yourself up a bit before Mingi finds out what you find out when you sit on your bed.

You're so wet.

And it's so fucking embarrassing, because you're not supposed to feel this way for him, for this.

Because, if anything, this is clearly just an educational experience.

And if Mingi’s excited look when he re-enters your bedroom tells you otherwise, you're choosing to ignore it for the clearly educational experience’s sake.

“These will do?”

You take the two mismatched towels and place them on the bed right away, not even looking at him.

“Yep.”

You think he nods but you're not sure, you just caught a glimpse of him moving towards your desk while you pretend to fix the towels in the bed to perfection.

“Okay, so… You need to, uh, be comfy and shit. Drink water, you just did that a few minutes ago…” when you turn to him, he's reading his notes like he's actually about to conduct an experiment and you chuckle before shaking your head “The… The foreplay part should be next, right?”

“Right…” you drag out, biting the inside of your cheek before he looks back at you.

“You look really tense, Y/N,” he deadpans, looking down at his notes again “You need to relax so it can happen, right?”

“You're about to see me touch myself and you think I can relax?”

“Oh,” he frowns, immediately and then blinks a few times to refocus, you think “I'm not the one doing it?”

“Uh… Yes? Later? I thought you wanted to see me first, y-you… You asked me to show you…”

You can feel him think, the gears on his brain twisting and you think he's going to backpedal at any second because he's not really saying anything. Then you see it, the moment the image crosses his mind.

And the next second you have him in front of you, towering over your form and then he's not.

Getting on his knees, he tentatively places a hand on your knee and parts your legs so you can make room for him to touch the end of the mattress with his chest and raise his chin just enough to make you think he's asking you to kiss him.

Oh God, you want to kiss him.

His voice is a sweet murmur when he speaks again “Show me how to get you there, love,” he sounds like he's pleading, like he's begging you to instruct him and your breath catches when he moves his hand up your thigh “What do you like?”

Your mouth moves before you can even think “Kiss me.”

You don't even notice you're leaning forward until his breath fans against your chin and he tilts his head even more so that your noses touch.

“How do you like being kissed?”

You breathe out a laugh, a little annoyed by his constant questioning “Figure it out, Mingi.” And then the last thing you see is his smirk before his mouth presses against yours.

It's not what you expect. If anything, you expected him to take the lead. Han used to do so, all the guys you've ever kissed did it as well. You don't really know why his patience surprises you, but it does and if your heart could race even more, it would.

Because he waits for your guidance, waits for you to grab his shirt and jank him closer, waits for you to sigh against him and then returns the gesture when he feels your fingers move upwards and tangle in his dark hair.

His mouth is complying to yours, his tongue is exploring it and wetting your lips in the process and you've never felt this good with anyone before.

That's something you'll need to unpack later, but your brain disconnects when your best friend lets out a noise the second his hands touch your waist under your shirt and you forget, for a split second, that the point of this is to have you on your back pleasing yourself for him to learn.

Because you want nothing more than to hear him make that noise again.

The kisses grow needy and so do you when he trails a path with his wet lips from your chin to your neck and the next thing you know is that your back is against the towels you laid down before and his mouth is kissing the valley of your breasts over the cotton of your shirt.

You look down and it takes a second for him to feel you staring before he looks up at you “Should we take this off?”

Your voice gives away how gone you are when you reply a simple yes and your shirt is on the floor the next instant.

Now, you're sure this is not the first time Mingi has seen you in your underwear. You both have gone swimming before and he has walked into your room a million times while you're getting ready. You're even sure he's seen you walk out from your bathroom in this specific bra before… But he's staring at you like it's the first time he's been able to trace the way your breasts spill a little bit over the fabric of this old bra you decided to wear today, like it's the first time he's allowed himself to enjoy it.

Like it's the first time he's allowing himself to feel any sort of attraction for you.

“Fuck,” you whisper, shallow breath hitting his cheek when he returns his mouth to your jaw “Let me… Come here.”

You scoot up until your head rests against your pillows and he follows, resting his body weight on his side and chasing your mouth when you turn your face to him.

You should speed this up. There's no way you're not going to feel like shit if tomorrow you wake up and remember you're letting yourself enjoy this more than you should.

There’s no reason for you to lose your breath when his fingertips trace softly the skin under your breasts or for your legs to grant him access so quickly when they reach your belly and bypass every other part of your body before going straight in between them.

And he notices it too.

“I don't know why I asked you so many questions before,” he starts, turning his hand so that he back of it and his nails start caressing the inside of your thighs through your sweatpants “I know what you like. I pay attention to you whenever we're talking about sex with the guys.”

You frown, about to remind him that you never speak directly about your own experiences but he continues his ministrations, giving your other thigh attention “I usually watch you closely in case any of it makes you uncomfortable, but I notice your reactions when they speak about something that you like.”

Oh. Heart on your sleeve, your biggest flaw.

“Like that one time Woo was going on and on about marking and you couldn't stop fidgeting on your seat…” his nose traces your jaw softly before his teeth take the skin underneath it and you gasp just enough to prove him right “Or that time Yunho said he hated teasing because he's an impatient little shit” he chuckles, his index finding the spot next to your mound and going down slowly until his knuckle graces the crevice where your leg and your hip connect “and you defended it until we had to stop you guys from yelling each other over it…”

Your breath shakes and your eyes close at the sensation “Mingi…”

“Am I wrong?”

You shake your head no and you can all but hear him smile when he speaks again.

“Of course I'm not.”

You open your eyes and expect him to look at you the way he does when you're unable to defend yourself against his quips, but he's not. His eyes are following his own actions and his bottom lip is pulled by his teeth when he takes the fabric of your sweatpants and pulls it up, enough to give you some friction where you need it the most.

“Can I take this off?”

“Fuck, y-yes.”

Joining your shirt on the ground, you're left only in your underwear while Mingi is fully clothed and it bothers you out of nowhere.

“You're so wet already…” he observes and you blush, puffing some air and covering your eyes with you hand. He just laughs “That's a good thing, it means that I'm doing okay.”

He's doing more than okay. Damn all the experience he has and the way he reads you so well.

But his sweet tone gives you some clarity and you support your weight on your hand to fix your position on the bed.

“Alright, let's… resume the lesson before my parents get home.”

“They probably won't for now. The company dinners last until like… two in the morning, usually, right?”

“That's when they decide to go out for drinks.”

“Your mom always wants to go out for drinks.”

“Let's not talk about my mom right now!” you beg and he laughs again, making you chuckle alongside him and you're glad he's talking all of this -the kissing, the teasing, the sweet-talk and the wet patch on your underwear- so well.

The awkwardness from before dissipated the moment he got on his knees in front of you and all that followed was this lovely tension you're dying to keep between the two of you forever even though you shouldn't.

“Show me, love,” he pleads and you sigh, his mouth finding your cheek for a quick second, encouraging you “And then you can show me how to make you feel good, too.”

You stare at him for a few seconds “Damn, you're good,” he shakes his head and you smile, getting rid of your underwear and pushing the quick moment of embarrassment being bare with him in the room gives you “Remember that this is what works for me, okay?”

He nods and then props himself up so he can see it better.

You take a second before your fingers dive into your wet folds and, when you do, you gasp at the feeling.

You've never been more wet just for kissing and teasing before. What the fuck.

You do what you usually do when you're alone for a while and try to contain yourself from moaning because Mingi's eyes keep moving from your fingers to your face. Then, you remember you should be talking him through it, as well.

“You see how I'm building it up?” you start, chest heaving and he hums as his reply “I'm not trying to make myself come but I'm kinda just… edging myself a little bit.”

“Edging,” he repeats and then hisses when he sees your thumb pressing into your clit just how you like it, making you sigh heavily “I know all about that, that's good.”

“Y-you do?”

“You'll be surprised,” he smiles, proud of himself.

“Okay,” you continue, taking a deep breath “Then you know about prepping, too,” he nods “So, a finger first…” you say, swallowing hard when your index makes its way into your cavity without much effort.

Dragging back and forth for a minute or so, you're incapable of containing yourself any longer. Air leaves your mouth in pants and your eyes close when you drag the pad of your finger upwards, locating your g-spot with ease because you're used to it.

“And then, two fingers.”

“Mhm.”

“Look at the position of my hand. I read that these two fingers work the best because they're longer than the rest, although…” you look at Mingi's hand over your belly. You didn't even noticed before this that he was touching you, but he is and his thumb is tracing a pattern that both relaxes you and sends shivers down your spine “I'm sure that it won't be a problem for you, huh?”

He sends a cocky smirk your way and you would've smacked him if you weren't so… preoccupied.

Pressing your precious spot and then dragging back and forward, you stop the movements altogether. It felt too good, way more than good and it's a different sensation of what you're used to.

And it's all because of him.

You look at his side profile, his eager eyes commiting to memory what you're doing to yourself, probably taking mental notes now that his notebook is long forgotten over at your desk and…

He deserves this. He deserves to be the one to have this, just tonight.

You hate to leave what feels like it's about to be your best orgasm in the hands of someone who's just learning, yet alone a man.

But Mingi is not just any man.

“Mingi,” you call and his curious eyes leave your heat a second later “your turn.”

“Did you… Did it happen? I didn't see anythi—”

“No,” you interrupt him, your fingers leaving you and you turn to him, your clean hand finding his face “show me what you learned.”

His mouth parts, but you have a newfound confidence and a glint in your eyes that is new, so nothing comes out.

“Prove that bitch wrong.”

That seems to do it.

His eyes go from being confused to spark with determination and want and electricity runs through you again because he seems so relieved he gets to touch you sooner than expected.

Shyness and nervousness buried six feet under, you both smile to each other before you feel him.

His fingers gathering your wetness, his thumb finding your clit with ease and expertise.

“Wettest pussy I've ever touched.” You can tell he's a little lost in the heat of the moment but it's okay. So are you.

Fuck.

It's been way too long since someone else touched you this way, so you all but melt at the circles he draws on your clit. He paid close attention before, because he's touching you just the way you like it.

“That feels so good…”

“Yeah?” he asks, dark eyes finding yours before a particular stroke forces you to close them. And then he gathers enough slick to insert his ring finger inside and you can't help the moan that slips past your lips.

You lift your hand to cover your mouth, but Mingi clicks his tongue in feign disappointment “I want to hear if I'm making you feel good, love. Don't hold back on me just because this is unconventional.”

The worries die altogether with that.

And now that you have free reign to stop containing yourself, you don't know how to stop.

It's not long before his index joins his other finger but he doesn't go for it right away. He fucks you slowly, allowing you to get used to the unfamiliar stretch of his way longer, way thicker digits until they slide in and out with little effort.

His pace picks up after what feels like ages and your hand fists his shirt for the second time tonight, nodding and moaning in encouragement.

“Deeper,” you instruct “curl them upwards and go deeper, you'll feel it then.”

He obeys immediately, his chest heaving and his mouth parting in delight when he finds it. The pad of his finger presses down on it tentatively and your grasp on his shirt hardens.

“Is that it?” you nod and he does it again, which earns another moan “What do I do now?”

Before you completely get lost in the feeling, you decide to drop the step by step bullshit aside and give him the full instruction in hopes that he'll remember it all without fucking up: “What works for me is pressing… Fuck, yeah, just like that a-and then…” you take deep breath “Just a little harder… Yeah, then rub it in a circular motion while maintaining that same pressure… Fuck, Mingi!”

He's a little too good at following instructions, because he touches you like he's been doing this forever and soon you feel the familiar swell, the usual buildup of it all and he's taking you over the age like it's nothing.

You forget how to speak, you forget how to tell him what he needs to do next and so, when you finally explode, you take his wrist and place his two fingers over your clit.

When you move them side by side, he lets out a fascinated giggle but knows exactly what to do.

A second later, your release is coating your thighs and the towels underneath you and you don't register anything else because your ears are ringing.

Did you lose consciousness for a second? It feels like you did.

That was the best fucking orgasm you've ever felt in your entire life.

And when you come back down, you only register the sound of your breathing and plump lips kissing your face, his fingers stopping their pace once he realizes you're done with it.

Opening your eyes, you stare at your popcorn ceiling for a second. Then, you look at Mingi who's already staring at you with a what the fuck just happened expression.

It makes you laugh. Softly at the beginning, post-orgasm bliss takes over but then Mingi laughs too and your whole chest swells with inexplicable pride.

You don't think twice before kissing him again. When you realize you did it, you pull back and blink at him like he didn't make you see stars three seconds ago.

“That was…” his eyes do the thing he usually does. You never notice it until now, but he scans your face so frequently you've grown used to it, but now… It feels different. His teeth nip his bottom lip and he shakes his head before speaking “Come here, love.”

And then he's kissing you again, slow, intimate, beyond the stupid lesson you just taught him.

But you don't mind it one bit.

You sit up, getting on your knees on the bed and basically forcing him to do the same. Ignoring the gross sensation of the wet towel underneath you, you pull him further into you until his chest presses against yours, until his hands roam your body and settle on your waist, securing the embrace.

This time, when you pull away, there's this whole unspoken new thing between you.

“That was…?” you press, smiling a bit, pulling both you and him back to reality.

Right now, with you half naked and his hard-on pressing on your belly, it's not the time to discuss your feelings.

“Possibly the coolest thing I've seen,” he starts, giggling when you roll your eyes “and the hottest thing I've seen, too,” you shrug, dismissing his stare because it's making you feel hot all over your body, again “and I'm really, really grateful you said yes, love.”

The soft tone he uses to say the last bit relaxes you and you nod, deciding it's not the time to tell him you never even came like that on your own.

Instead, you decide to grasp this intimate moment and extend it as much as you can. You can see Mingi is not expecting it when you reach his sweatpants and let your shaky thumb trace the outline of his cock.

Closing his eyes, he lets out a pleased sigh before he grabs you by the back of your neck and rests his forehead against yours.

“This is supposed to be purely educational, Y/N”

“Is that what you want it to be?” you softly ask, pulling your hand away but then his hips buck and chase after your touch, making you smile despite the emotions swelling in your chest “Let me help you… Please…”

“Fuck, don't beg me, love.”

“Don't make me beg, then.”

What the fuck are you even doing?

“Y/N, I—” he stops suddenly and you're too lost in the moment to notice why.

But then the sound of keys and a door closing downstairs scares the fuck out of you and you push Mingi away without thinking it through.

He lands with a thud on your bedroom floor, next to your discarded clothes.

“What the fuck, Y/N?” he whispers-shouts, both shocked and offended, but you're getting off your bed and picking up your clothes and the soaked towels so you don't really care about his feelings right now.

“Bathroom. Now.”

You're so blessed for having your bedroom right next to the upstairs bathroom. And so blessed that it is your bathroom and you don't have to share it. You’ll get on your knees and thank your gods afterwards, but right now you can only think one thing.

Don't get caught.

Lord knows you'll never hear the end of it if Mingi walks out of here with a hard-on. Your dad will kill him, your mom will cheer because she loves the idea of you and Mingi together and you'll probably pack your bags and move away if it happens.

When you lock the door behind you and make a quick show of putting your underwear and pants back on, you hear Mingi chuckle.

“We can always tell them we're having a sleepover, Y/N, you didn't have to karate kick me off the damn bed!”

“Hush!” But he just keeps giggling at your very obvious flustered state.

You're about to rip him a new one when he takes two strides, backs you against the bathroom sink, and catches your lips in a quick, sweet kiss and all your worries dissolve just like that.

“Guess they didn't go for drinks after all..”

“You think?” cocking your head to side, the smile on your lips can't be fought at this point.

He returns it and leans in for another kiss, longer this time and you sigh against his mouth before pulling away because you really, really shouldn't be doing this right now.

You hear your mother calling your name and then footsteps up the stairs. A murmured she must be sleeping and a hum from your father before they pass the bathroom door. You truly only relax when you hear their door closing at the end of the hallway.

“Okay, we're safe now.”

“When were we ever not safe?”

“When I was half naked on my bed, Mingi!”

He shakes his head with a smile and takes a step back.

You clear your throat.

“I really did want to help you out but—”

“Raincheck?” he asks and at you hesitation to say yes, he continues “If you want to. If you don't, it's okay. We… We'll figure it out, okay?”

“Okay.”

He smiles again “Good, uh…”

Mingi seems unsure on what to do next. Feeling the same, you decide the best thing to do is to get him out of here.

Opening the bathroom door, you carefully peek into the hallway, taking his hand in yours and beckoning him to follow you down the stairs, trying to make as little noise as possible.

“Shit, your shoes…” you whisper.

“I don't think they noticed if they didn't barge into the bedroom to check on us like they usually do, love.” He returns, in the same tone.

That does nothing to ease your mind, but he makes sure to put them on quickly and then grabs your shoulders, shaking you in a teasing manner.

“Quit worrying, Y/N. I can feel you thinking.”

Of course he does. There's no one, in this world, that knows you better than him.

It makes your heart flutter and it shouldn't. But you're getting on your tippy toes and stealing a parting kiss before you think about it too much.

It's irresponsible for you to do so, but Mingi grabs your waist and extends the duration of the kiss and suddenly you don't give a fuck about your parents or anyone else finding out about this… shift in your dynamic.

“See you tomorrow?” he asks against your lips and you nod.

“See you tomorrow.”

And with that, he leaves.

You lock the door and practically run to your room after.

What the fuck have you done?

If you read all the way down here: THANK YOU SO MUCH. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and since it’s an open ending (sort of), let me know if you want a second part!

#ateez #ateez x reader #song mingi #song mingi x reader #mingi #mingi x reader #mingi smut #ateez smut #ateez imagines #ateez reactions #ateez hard hours #mingi hard hours #mingi hard thoughts #first post!!!#pls tell me if u like it or if u dont or anything pls my askbox is open #<333 #fic; s&t

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fingertipsmp3 · 11 months

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Why do I never trust myself. I've lived in this body for 27 years, I literally know when it's getting sick, but I was like nooo, it's just because I'm sleep deprived and on my period and autumn sometimes does weird things to my body. Stupid. Stuuuuuupid

#i'm sitting here right now in web dev class... well we're on a break atm actually #it makes no difference though because i'm comprehending absolutely nothing whatsoever #i keep having to turn my camera off because i don't want people to see me continuously coughing and blowing my nose #i feel so lousyyyyy how did this happen. it happened so fast. this morning i just had a scratchy sore throat #i sat down in a class In Which I Need To Have My Camera On and my nose was immediately like 'quick let's do an impression of niagara falls'#i'm not comprehending any part of class. i don't know if it's the lack of sleep or my sickness getting to me #but it honest to god feels like we're zooming. we JUST learned what a function is and my mans is like 'write one and invoke it'#i'm sorry WHAT. invoke the function? like summoning a demon??? sir.#and when i tell you i copied his code EXACTLY but my shit still wouldn't show up in the console log... i'm sick of this #it doesn't help that i have this absolutely hopeless crush on one of my classmates so i was desperately writing down everything i find #annoying about him to try to give myself the ick. i fear it's too late though. i mean if his weird squeaky voice and the fact that he's #balding hasn't put me off; i don't think his weird room will either #it's not even weird. it just is suspiciously clean and devoid of personality. and his bedframe is weird. anyway #(there's nothing wrong with balding it just super doesn't look good on him. plus i like a good head of hair. i like something to hang onto)#MOVING ON. i've just sent a message cancelling physio tomorrow because i can't go and infect this woman who is the only reason i'm mobile #i've NEVER texted her before though because i booked the first appointment online and the rest in person and i usually just. show up #this is gonna be the first appointment i've missed since we began in june. please clap #i just hope to fucking god i have the right number lmao like i got it from her email but. help #i think i'm liable for a 50% cancellation fee because it's less than 24 hours... fucking kill me now #i'm so mad at myself for not cancelling this morning. i KNEW i was sick i was just in denial #this is because i ate a piece of sausage roll that had been in my niece's weird little hand isn't it.#she's a toddler with permanent postnasal drip and i have a terrible immune system because i don't leave the house. such is life #look it was eat the roll or allow her to leave it on the ground in a really nice shop I WASN'T DOING THAT #personal

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thinkinonsense · 20 days

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old!logan and his obsession with the cute diner girl *mdni

a/n: this is my first attempt at writing something smutty so if it sucks im sorry lmao also if any writers have any tips please share! :)

logan has been around for long enough to know when a woman is attracted to him. there was a certain essence given off that was always a dead giveaway. usually it came from women close to the age he looked like and it tended to be brief moments of lust before all hope was lost. this was until he met you.

the pretty young girl working at the diner during her time off from college. everyday, he came in and ordered a black coffee. the coffee wasn't even that good but logan would spend two dollars every single day of his life if it came with the view of you bending over in that tiny uniform skirt.

logan would watch you for hours while he drank and skimmed the news paper alone in a booth. your hair was always up in either a ponytail or held together with a hair clip. he loved seeing your pretty handwriting as you scribbled on your notepad, taking orders. it was part of your job to be nice to everyone but you were especially nice to him. even your friends began to notice how you would linger by his table, constantly topping off his coffee mug and making small talk; sometimes giving him a slice of cherry pie on the house.

"don't you think he's kinda old for you?" one of your friends whispers to you behind the counter.

it's stung but you suppose she had a point. what would a man old enough to be your father want with a young wild girl like yourself?

"i-i guess so?" you stuttered, embarrassed at your previous attempt at flirting with him.

the rest of the night, you hoped he would leave before close so you could have some time alone with your feelings. summer was almost over and you would go back to the city soon. it was time to forget these silly fantasizes.

by ten, all the other waitresses went home except you, the older woman in the back who counted the drawer every night, and a few of the cooks. the only customer still there was logan. he flipped through one of the books he brought with him; still sipping away at that damn coffee.

"isn't it getting a little late for you, sweetheart?" he asked nonchalantly, not even looking up at you as you bent over to scrub the table next to his. the fifth table you've cleaned in the last hour and the second time you've cleaned that specific table. logan noticed but you didn't.

"need the hours." you mumble, frustrated by a stubborn stain. all logan could focus on was your scrunched nose and how your tight top pushed your boobs together just right for his viewing. "college is fucking expensive plus grants and scholarships only cover so much."

"hmm.." logan grunts. grants? scholarship? what a goody fucking two shoes, logan thought to himself. "if you bring me piece of pie, i think i can help you out."

you lean off the table and go get what's left in the glass container. it's probably a little hard so you definitely didn't plan on charging him for it. you sit the plate down in front of him and before you could turn around to walk away, logan reaches for your wrist softly.

"join me." he offers.

you knew you shouldn't but what was really the harm? at least your friends weren't here to make fun of you. the radio played quietly on an older station while you watched logan take a bite of the pie.

"why did your friends leave you here alone?" he asked, watching your face turn sour at the memory of them.

"don't wanna talk about it." your voice was small in the empty diner.

"why? think an old man like me can't relate to it?" logan chuckles. your thighs squeeze together without thinking. so much for not embarrassing yourself.

"no, no, not that." you shake your head and a strand of hair falls from your bun. "just sort of juvenile, you know?"

logan could tell that you were trying to come off more mature around him. you didn't want him to see you as some college kid.

"juvenile, how?" he eggs on, pushing down his glasses a bit.

god, those glasses got to you; and logan knew it.

"they don't understand how i feel about someone." you sigh.

"how do you feel about this person?" logan noticed you now avoiding his gaze, not liking it one bit. "eyes on me, princess."

the nickname caught you off guard like a dear in headlight; blinking and trembling up at logan. something logan enjoyed very much and could get used to.

"it's not important, just some stupid crush." you lie through your teeth. "they will forget about me in a month."

"why don't you think it'll work?" he cocks his head to the side a bit. "you're a pretty young thing, dollface. anyone of those college boys would be lucky to be wrapped around your little finger."

"i don't want college boys." you mumble, slightly annoyed by the memory of your friends.

logan felt himself getting hard at you admitting you had a taste for someone older. his eyes grew dark as he leaned in a little over the table.

"then what do you want?"

your moment to answer was interrupted by the older woman from the back, releasing you to go home for the evening. this was your chance to get up and leave before you admitted anything else that you would regret.

both of you stood up. logan threw down some cash while you went to collect your stuff behind the counter.

"i'll see you tomorrow, lo-"

"you didn't answer the question."

"i must go now if i want to catch the last train."

logan worried about you taking the train back to your apartment alone this late at night. usually you drive back but your car has been in the shop for almost three days now. he would watch you get to your car every night to make sure you were safe.

"i can drive you home." logan offers.

you shouldn't be this excited to be sitting in a strangers truck alone at night but here you were. the two of you sat in silence for a few minutes before logan brought up the conversation from the diner again. what did you even want?

"i want someone who understands me..." you begin rattling off the first things that come to mind when you notice logan's hand on your knee. you don't dare move.

"someone who is responsible..." with every word, his hand creeps higher and higher up your skirt. logan is more than pleased when he notices your legs spread on their own.

"someone who is m-mature..." logan's fingers inch towards the delicate skin of your inner thigh. there's no way this was happening, you thought as his index finger plays with the lace on the center of your pink underwear. he smirked at the wet spot front and center, waiting for him.

"treats me r-r-right." every word was a struggle to form as he stroked you softly. back and forth. back and forth.

logan nods along, not letting up down below. his index finger hooks onto your underwear, pulling it aside. you weren't even sure if you were breathing at this point; all this teasing was torture.

"p-p-please, logan..." you whine. "touch me."

his thumb rubs tiny circles on your button, adoring the way his name pours from your glossy lips. your hands fly to his wrists, needing more; nails digging into his skin in the most delicious way.

"where did this greediness come from?" logan groans, dipping his index finger inside of you. "what happened to that good girl from the diner?"

logan's finger barely fit in the tight space. your head fell back and a loud moan escaped you.

"oh, you weren't letting those college boys touch you at all, huh?" logan mocks, adding another finger and creating a steady pace.

"n-no!" you whine, lifting your hips a little.

"you were waiting for a real man to have his way with you, isn't that right, pretty girl?" he growls, pushing your hips back down.

you completely missed logan pulling off to the side of the road until now. his pace increases becoming rather rough now that he isn't driving. logan leaves deep purple bruises down your neck and across your chest, praising you to no end until you gush around his fingers, completely soaking his palm.

your heart pounded like you had just finished a marathon. logan allowed you to catch your breath as he carefully removed his fingers, bringing them up to his mouth to lick clean. he can feel your dazy eyes staring at him as he does so, making a real show of it.

"i've been wanting to do that for months now." he admits with a smirk.

"me too." you said, leaning forward and pulling him into a kiss; tasting yourself on his lips and tongue. logan wraps his hands around your hair, pulling you back a little when another moan falls from your lips.

"and we aren't even close to being done."

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gilbertscurls · 26 days

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Taste ➵ Matt Sturniolo

warnings: SMUT, virgin!matt, softdom!reader, unprotected p in v, heavy on praise and consent, oral!f!receiving, can't tell if it's cringe or not lmao

synopsis: on their first anniversary, y/n and matt finally decide to go all the way.

“I can't believe it's been a year already.” You let out a quiet sigh.

Matt nodded, the thought of their year together bringing a smile to his lips.

“Yeah. It feels like just yesterday we had our first date,” he said, his voice tinged with a hint of nostalgia.

He remembered every detail of that day, the way you looked, the way he'd been so nervous he felt like he might throw up. But he'd found the courage to ask you out, and you'd said yes. It felt like a dream come true.

Matt's gaze drifted from your face to the room around them. The soft, warm light of the lamp by the bed was casting shadows on the walls, the room cozy and intimate. The silence between them was comfortable, broken only by their soft breathing. Matt couldn't help but feel a sense of contentment, a feeling of being right where he belonged.

“I can't believe how lucky I am,” he murmured, his voice low. “To have you, I mean.”

“I'm the lucky one,” you whispered.

Matt chuckled softly at your words, his fingers still tangled in your hair.

“Oh, please,” he said, a hint of a smile in his voice. “I'm the one who gets to hold you like this, to call you mine. I think I won the lottery.”

You giggled, a sound that always made Matt's heart skip a beat.

“I can't argue with that,” you conceded. You snuggled closer to him, resting your head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. “But I get to hold you back, so we're even.”

Matt's hand moved to your back, gently tracing circles on your skin. The feel of you against him, the sound of your voice, was comforting and soothing, but it also stirred a different kind of feeling in him. A feeling of desire and longing.

“Yeah, I guess we are,” he replied, his voice thick with emotion.

He tightened his arm around you, pulling you even closer, his fingers tracing your spine. Matt's heart thrummed with anticipation. The fact that you've never done more than kiss had been on his mind a lot lately. He wanted you, more than he could say. And tonight felt different, special. It was their anniversary, a milestone in their relationship. A part of him ached to take things further, to show you how much he loved you. But his insecurities and anxieties held him back. What if he wasn't good enough? What if he disappointed you? The thought was terrifying.

“Baby,” he finally said, breaking the silence between them. He swallowed hard, his heart beating a little faster. “Can I ask you something?” His voice was nervous, and he was suddenly regretting asking you anything at all.

At his anxious tone, you knitted your brows and turned to face him. “Of course. What is it?”

Matt looked down at you, his thoughts a swirling mess of anxiety and desire. He took a deep breath, steeling himself. “It's… It's our anniversary,” he started, his voice a little shaky. “And I was wondering…”

He trailed off, the words failing him. He felt like a complete idiot. He'd never been good with expressing his desires, especially when it came to physical intimacy.

You gazed at him with a mixture of concern and curiosity. You could tell he was nervous, and it made you worry. You reached up, gently caressing his cheek. “Yes?” you prompted, your voice gentle and encouraging.

Matt's heart fluttered at your touch, and he took another deep breath, summoning his courage. “I was just… I was thinking…” he mumbled, his words barely more than a whisper. “Tonight, I was hoping we could… Take things further.”

He felt a blush rising up his cheeks, and he quickly looked away, suddenly unable to meet your gaze.

“Oh,” you said quietly. “Are you sure? Like, 100% sure?”

Matt nodded quickly, his heart hammering in his chest. “Yeah,” he replied, his voice trembling slightly. “I'm sure. I've been thinking about it for a while now. I… I want you, baby.”

Saying the words out loud sent a shockwave of adrenaline through him. It was exhilarating, terrifying, and wonderful all at once. But he knew he needed to be honest, to lay it all out on the table.

“I'm just... nervous,” he admitted, running a hand through his hair. “I've never done anything more than kissing, and I don't… I don't know if I'll be any good.”

“It's okay,” you whispered, reaching up to caress his cheek. “But are you sure? I don't want you to do anything you'll regret.”

Matt leaned into your touch, the warmth and tenderness of your hand calming him down a little. But your words also made him pause. Was he sure? He desperately wanted this, wanted you. But his insecurities were still looming, a dark cloud in the back of his mind.

“I'm sure,” he replied, his eyes searching yours. “I want this. With you.”

“All right.” You nodded. “How… How far are we talking?”

Matt felt his cheeks flush even more, but he forced himself to keep eye contact with you. He appreciated your directness, and your willingness to talk about this openly.

“I, uh…” he began, his voice still a little shaky. “Everything, I guess. If you want that.”

He swallowed hard, his heart beating wildly in his chest. He hoped he wasn't pressuring you or coming on too strong.

You felt your heart skipping a beat and heat already pooling in your lower abdomen. “I do,” you said softly. “But I want to make sure you're completely comfortable.”

Hearing your confirmation sent a pang of excitement through Matt. He felt a mix of emotions, desire, affection, and a hint of fear. But overruling it all was a deep sense of trust. Your words, your reassurance, it was all he needed.

“I am,” he said, his voice a little steadier now. “I trust you, baby. Completely.”

A small, tender smile crept onto your face. “Okay.” Your voice was so soft, so sweet, so kind. “Do you… Want me to take the lead?”

Matt's heart leaped at your question, a mix of relief and desire coursing through him. The idea of you taking control was both frightening and exciting. He hesitated for a moment, but then he nodded, his eyes never leaving yours.

“Yes,” he whispered, his voice cracking slightly. “I… I want you to take the lead.”

You put one of your hands on his cheek before slowly and gently pressing your lips against his.

Matt's heart skipped a beat at the feel of your lips on his. He'd kissed you countless times before, but this kiss felt different, more intimate. He let out a soft sigh against your mouth, all his anxieties and worries melting away as your touch filled his senses. He brought his own hands up to cup your face, his fingers gently tracing your jaw, his touch soft and reverent.

The kiss deepened, their mouths moving against each other in a slow, languorous dance. Matt could feel the heat pooling in his stomach, the desire for you growing with every passing second. The fear was still there, but it was muffled by the overwhelming sensation of pleasure. He pulled you closer, his hands moving to your hips, his fingers pressing into your skin.

Not stopping the kiss, You moved to straddle his lap, your knees on both sides of his thighs.

Matt felt a shiver run down his spine as you straddled him, your body suddenly so close and so warm. His hands moved to your waist, pulling you even closer, their bodies now pressed together in a way you’ve never been before. The feeling of your weight on his lap ignited a new wave of desire in him, his kisses growing even more intense. He wanted you, desperately.

“You okay?” you mumbled into his lips.

Matt's breath caught in his throat as you spoke, the feeling of your words more like breath than a sound. He couldn't even form a response, his mind completely consumed by your touch and the taste of your lips. He managed a nod, a weak yes whispered against your mouth. He was more than okay. He was on fire.

Matt groaned involuntarily at the feel of your tongue against his lip, the sound more a mixture of pleasure and need than anything else. He immediately parted his lips, granting you access without a second thought. His hands moved to your thighs, his fingers gripping your flesh as he opened his mouth to her.

The kiss grew hungrier, more urgent. Their tongues tangled together, exploring each other without restraint. Matt was lost in the sensation, in the feeling of you in his lap, your body pressed against him. He could hardly think straight, his mind clouded by desire and need. His hips involuntarily bucked slightly, seeking more contact.

“Impatient, huh?” You teased softly, pulling away a little.

Matt let out a low growl of frustration as you pulled away, a mix of desire and irritation in his expression. He was getting so lost in the moment, he was aching for more. Your words, your tease only heightened his need.

“Baby…” he breathed, his voice a mixture of pleading and impatience. “Don't tease me.”

You smiled tenderly before grabbing his both hands and sliding them under your crop top, urging him to take it off.

Matt let out a sharp breath at the feel of your skin under his hands, your top soft and warm. Without hesitation, he moved his hands slowly up your stomach, his fingers exploring the planes of your skin as he helped you pull off your crop top. It fell to the floor, forgotten. His eyes went wide at the sight of your half-naked upper body, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Oh God,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with desire.

Matt couldn't have looked away even if he'd wanted to. His eyes were drawn to your chest, his breath hitching at the sight. It was as if his brain was shorting out, his desire for you overwhelming everything else. He felt a mix of awe, arousal, and a hint of nervousness. He swallowed hard, his throat suddenly very dry.

“You're… You're so beautiful,” he managed to whisper, his voice thick with want.

You smiled softly, your fingertips tracing his shoulders over the t-shirt. “Can I take it off, baby?”

Matt's muscles twitched under your touch, your words sending a shudder down his spine.

“Yes,” he breathed, his voice a little shaky. “Please.”

He wanted to feel your skin on his, the touch of your fingers on his bare chest. He raised his arms to help you as you tugged his t-shirt over his head, discarding it to the side.

Matt's muscles twitched under your touch, your words sending a shudder down his spine. “Yes,” he breathed, his voice a little shaky. “Please.”

He wanted to feel your skin on his, the touch of your fingers on his bare chest. He raised his arms to help you as you tugged his t-shirt over his head, discarding it to the side.

Once the shirt was off, his chest was now bare, exposed to your touch and gaze. Matt felt a mixture of vulnerability and excitement, his heart beating fast in his chest. He could feel your eyes on him, your fingers tracing soft patterns on his skin. He wanted you, all of you.

“Baby,” he murmured, his voice ragged with need. “Touch me.”

Obediently, You ran your fingertips through his shoulders, to his arms, to his chest. “God, you're so beautiful,” you whispered breathlessly.

Matt's breath caught in his throat as your fingers glided over his skin, your touch leaving trails of fire in its wake. He shivered under your touch, a small moan escaping his lips. Your words, your voice, your touch — it was all almost too much to bear.

“No, you are,” he breathed, his own hands moving to your hips, his fingers digging into your flesh. "So beautiful. So perfect."

You were doing everything so slowly and gently, knowing that he'd never done anything like that before. You wanted to make it so good for him. Matt was both grateful and frustrated by your slow and gentle pace. Grateful that you were so patient, and so understanding, but frustrated because he just wanted more. He wanted to be consumed by you, to lose himself in your touch. But he knew you were doing it for his sake, to make it easier for him, and that only made him love you more.

“Baby,” he gasped, his voice pleading. “Please. More. I need more.”

You smirked before leaning a little closer to his face. “You want more?”

Matt looked at you, his eyes dark with desire, his expression a mixture of need and pleading.

“Yes,” he whispered, his voice a little breathless. “I want more. I want all of you.”

He reached up to you, his hands skimming up your sides, his touch firm and possessive. He wanted to touch you, to feel you, to lose himself in you.

“Please,” he added, his voice a low, desperate plea.

You held his face as you kissed him once again, the kiss sweet and full of emotion.

Matt returned the kiss hungrily, his lips moving against yours with a mix of desperation and affection. He couldn't get close enough to you, his hands roaming over your bare skin, wanting to feel you, to touch you everywhere. He tilted his head, deepening the kiss, his tongue sliding into your mouth with a new, more urgent fervor. He could feel his desire for you growing, overpowering everything else.

“Baby…” he breathed into your mouth. “Please, I… I need you.”

Matt swore, his head falling back on the pillow as you ground your hips with his. The feel of you grinding against him, the friction, the heat, and the pressure — it was almost too much. He gripped your hips, his fingers digging into your flesh, trying to pull you closer, to increase the contact. A low moan escaped his lips, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

“Oh God,” he panted, his eyes squeezed shut. “Baby… That feels… That feels so good.”

“You sound so pretty,” you praised breathlessly.

Matt blushed at your words, his heart fluttering at your praise. He let out another soft moan as you rode against him, his body responding instinctively. He was completely lost in the sensation, the feel of your body against his driving him mindless. He tried to form words, to respond, but all that came out was another low groan.

“God… Baby,” he breathed, his hands still holding onto your hips. “Don't… Don't stop.”

His body was on fire, his every nerve alive with desire. He could feel his own hardness growing beneath you, a testament to how much he needed you. His hips canted upward, seeking more contact, wanting to be closer, closer, closer. He opened his eyes, looking up at you, his gaze filled with a mix of want and awe.

“Sweetheart… I… I don't know how much… How much longer I can last,” he whispered, his voice thick with need.

“It's okay, baby,” you cooed, halting your movements.

Matt let out a small, involuntarily whine as you stopped moving, his body protesting the lack of sensation. He looked up at you, his eyes dark with desire and frustration, but also with a hint of relief. He was so close to the edge, he didn't know how much longer he could hold on.

“I… I thought you would keep going,” he breathed, his voice a combination of disappointment and need.

“Patience, sweetheart,” you teased, your hand running down his chest, from his shoulder to his happy trail, before finally resting on the buckle of his belt.

Matt's breath hitched at your touch, your hand igniting a trail of fire on his skin. He watched as your hand moved down his chest, down his stomach, to the buckle of his belt. A wave of heat washed over him, making his entire body shiver with anticipation.

“Patience,” he echoed, his voice a rough whisper. “You're… You're killing me.”

You gently hooked your finger under the belt. “Can I?”

Matt nodded, his eyes locked on yours, his breathing shallow and ragged. He trusted you completely and wanted you to take whatever you needed from him. “Yes,” he whispered, his voice thick with need. “Do whatever you want. I'm all yours.”

“So good for me,” you praised before expertly unbuckling his belt and tugging his jeans down.

Matt's heart leaped at your praise, a sense of pride and satisfaction filling him. He lifted his hips slightly, helping you pull his jeans down. He was now only in his boxer briefs, the material doing little to conceal his arousal. He was completely exposed, both physically and emotionally, and he could do nothing but lay there and look up at you, his desire for you burning in his gaze.

“Only for you,” he whispered, his voice a quiet admission.

“Already so worked up for me, huh?” you asked breathlessly, a small smile on your face.

Matt blushed at your comment, the heat spreading across his cheeks. He could feel the evidence of his arousal straining against the fabric of his boxer briefs. He was so worked up, so needy, so desperate for your touch. He swallowed hard, his voice husky and raw.

“Yeah,” he breathed, his eyes fixed on yours. “Only for you. I want you so badly, sweetheart.”

You sat back on his lap, caressing his cheek. “You want to try to take off my bra, baby?”

Matt's eyes widened at your suggestion, a mix of excitement and anxiety washing over him. He'd never taken off a bra before, and he was suddenly unsure of himself. He swallowed hard, his throat dry.

“Yes,” he rasped, his voice betraying his nervousness. “I… I want to try.”

His hands moved to your back, his fingers trembling slightly as he reached for the clasp of your bra. He tried to steady his breathing, but his heart was racing, his mind a jumble of thoughts and feelings.

“I… I'll probably be bad at this,” he admitted, his voice a hesitant whisper.

“It's okay,” you assured him softly. “I don't mind.”

Matt nodded, taking a deep breath to calm himself. He fumbled with the clasp for a few seconds, his fingers feeling both clumsy and inadequate. But finally, with a soft click, the bra came undone. The cups fell loose, revealing your bare chest to him. He stared at you for a moment, his eyes wide, his breath caught in his throat.

“Oh… Wow,” he whispered, his voice filled with a mixture of awe and desire.

You smiled a little sheepishly.

Matt's eyes drank you in, every inch of your beautiful skin, every curve and contour. His hands were itching to touch you, to feel your flesh under his fingertips.

“You are… You are so exquisite,” he breathed, his voice filled with a mixture of wonder and admiration. “You take my breath away.”

Noticing his hands twitching, your smile softened. “You can touch me.”

Matt couldn't believe you were actually giving him permission to touch you, to touch this beautiful woman who was willingly sitting on his lap, your body bare for him. He lifted his hands, his fingers hovering slightly above your skin.

“I… I want to,” he breathed, his voice a shaky whisper. He wanted to feel you so badly, but he was also afraid of doing something wrong, of upsetting you in some way. “Are you… Are you sure it's okay?”

“I am. Don't think so much. Just… Feel.”

Matt took a deep breath, allowing the words to sink in. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting go of the nagging thoughts and doubts in his mind. When he opened them again, his gaze was clear, his expression relaxed.

And then he touched you.

His fingers skimmed lightly over your skin, slowly, delicately, exploring the soft planes of your chest. A shiver ran through him as he felt the heat of your flesh, the suppleness of your skin.

“God, you're so soft,” he whispered.

Sensing that he was still holding back, You smiled softly and grabbed his hand, putting it directly on your breast, and gently squeezing his fingers.

Matt gasped, his breath hitching in his throat as your hand guided his. The feeling of your flesh, your breast, under his palm was almost too much. It was so soft, so warm. He could feel your heart beating rapidly under his fingers. He swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Oh God,” he breathed, his voice hoarse. “This… This feels… Incredible.”

His fingers traced a slow, tentative path over your breast, his touch firm but gentle. He could feel your own heart hammering against his palm, a perfect rhythm. He looked up at you, his eyes dark and full of desire.

“Is… Is this okay?” he breathed, his voice a low, raspy whisper. “I don't want to hurt you.”

“It's okay,” you assured him softly. “I'll tell you if anything. Just… Touch me.”

Matt nodded tightly, the lump in his throat suddenly replaced by a wave of desire and need. He took your words to heart, letting go of any lingering doubt or fear. He allowed himself to really touch you, to move his fingers over your skin, to feel the contours of your body.

His other hand moved up to your other breast, gently kneading it in his palm. “Is… Is this good?” he whispered, his voice almost inaudible over the sound of his own heartbeat. “You feel… So perfect, so soft.”

You let out a shaky breath. “So good.”

Matt felt a sense of power and satisfaction wash over him, emboldening him. He could feel your breath catching in your chest, hear the hitch in your voice. He knew he was doing something right, something that made you feel good. He continued to caress you, his touch becoming more confident, more sure of itself.

His breath felt hot and heavy, his heart hammering against his ribcage. “Can I… Can I kiss these, too?” he asked, his voice thick with desire.

You felt a sudden rush of so much love for this boy. “Of course. Anything you want.”

Matt's heart soared at your permission, at the way you were giving yourself to him so completely. You were so wonderful, so understanding. He leaned forward, his lips coming to rest on your breast, his tongue darting out to taste your skin. He was gentle at first, his touch light and tentative. But then he began to kiss you more firmly, more hungrily.

And then, a moan of his name escaped your lips.

Matt's heart leaped at the sound of your moan, the way you said his name. It was like music to his ears. He pulled back slightly, looking up at you with a mixture of awe and desire.

“Did… Did I do something right?” he asked, his voice breathless and shaky. “The way you said my name… It sounded… It sounded like it felt good, like you liked it.”

“You're doing… Incredible,” you whispered breathlessly.

Matt felt a surge of pride and satisfaction coursing through him. He couldn't believe this was actually happening, that he was pleasuring this incredible woman, making you feel this way. But the knowledge that he was pleasing you, making you moan and breathless, only fueled his own desire, his own need for you.

He continued to kiss you, his mouth moving across your chest, his tongue darting out to taste your skin. “More,” he murmured, his voice low and ragged. “Can I… Can I do more?”

“Anything.”

Matt felt a wave of heat and adrenaline wash over him at your word, your permission. Anything? The possibilities, the desires, raced through his mind. He wanted to explore you, to touch you, to make you feel things you'd never felt before.

His mouth moved down your body, his tongue tracing a path down your sternum, his lips leaving a trail of kisses along your stomach. He looked up at you, his eyes dark and full of need. “Can I… Can I taste you?”

You pulled yourself up on your elbows to look at him. He looked so pretty, looking up at you from between your thighs. But it was his first time, and you wanted to make it special do him. “Are you sure? I want it to be about you. You don't have to…”

Matt paused, looking up at you. Your concern for him, your consideration, made his heart swell. He could feel your gaze on him, warm and gentle. He knew you would never force him to do something he wasn't ready for. But he could also feel his own desire burning beneath the surface.

He nodded, his voice steady and sure. “I'm sure,” he whispered, his eyes never leaving yours. “I… I want to. I want to taste you. I want to please you… If you're okay with that.”

You nodded shakily, before bunching up the fabric of your skirt in your hands, pulling it down and revealing your little lacy panties.

Matt's eyes widened at the sight before him. Your panties were a beautiful lace, delicate and feminine. He could feel his mouth go dry, his heart quickening in his chest. He looked up at you, his eyes filled with an almost reverent awe.

His hands tentatively moved up from your thighs, tracing gentle patterns on your bare skin as they crept closer to your panties. “You're so beautiful,” he breathed, his voice laced with need and desire.

He leaned forward, his breath hot and heavy against your skin. His hands were still tracing feather-light patterns on your thighs, but he was now just millimeters away from your underwear. His heart was hammering, his mind a cacophony of emotions and sensations. “May I… May I touch you there?” he asked, his voice thick with desire.

“Please,” you whispered breathlessly, your chest already heaving.

Matt didn't need to be told twice. With a mixture of nerves and confidence, he let his fingers graze across the fabric of your panties, just touching the soft material. He could feel the heat radiating from you, the moisture already seeping through. He swallowed hard, his own body responding to the feel of you.

His gaze flicked up to your eyes momentarily, seeking reassurance, before returning to his task. “Is… Is this right?” he whispered, his voice a little shaky.

“Yes,” you whispered breathlessly. “Perfect.”

Matt felt a rush of relief and satisfaction at your words. He was doing well, making you feel good. He continued to touch you, to move his fingers across the fabric of your panties, feeling the heat and the dampness beneath.

As his touch grew more confident, more assured, he found himself getting more and more excited. His own breathing grew shaky, his heart racing. “Can… Can I do more?” he breathed, his voice slightly hoarse.

“Whatever you want,” you mewled. “I'll tell you if anything.”

Matt's heart fluttered at your response. The trust, the permission, it was almost too good to be true. He looked up at you, his eyes searching yours for any hint of hesitation. But all he found was love, desire, and a willingness to explore.

He took a breath, trying to steady himself. “Okay,” he whispered, his voice a little shaky. He moved his fingers down to the edge of your panties, toying with the thin strip of fabric. “I… I want to touch you without these in the way…”

He paused, waiting for your permission. He was already so close, already feeling the heat and dampness of your through the thin fabric, but he wouldn't do anything you weren’t comfortable with. He looked up at you, his eyes filled with desire but laced with the need for your approval.

You nodded. “Do whatever you want.”

Matt felt a shudder run through him at your words. Your permission, your trust in him, it was like fuel for the fire that was burning within him. He gently pulled at your panties, guiding them down your legs, discarding them on the floor.

The sight of you, bare and fully exposed to him, was almost too much. His breath caught in his throat, and he had to force himself to swallow the lump that had suddenly formed. His fingers itched to touch you, to feel the smoothness and heat of your skin, but he waited, looking up for your nod of approval.

When you gave it, he moved quickly. His fingers traced a path up your thighs, moving closer and closer to your core. His own breathing was ragged, his heart pounding in his chest, and he struggled to keep his hands from shaking as they got closer and closer to the most intimate part.

His fingers grazed over your skin, feeling the heat radiating off of you. He could feel the wetness there, the evidence of your arousal, and he couldn't help but shudder. He looked up at you, his eyes dark and hungry, his tongue flicking out to moisten his suddenly dry lips.

“You're… You're so wet,” he whispered, the words barely escaping his lips.

Your breath hitched. “Only for you.”

His heart leaped at hearing your words, at the idea that he was the only cause of your arousal. He could feel the power and the responsibility that came with it, and it only stoked the fire within him.

His fingers were now tracing gentle circles around your entrance, his touch light and tentative. He couldn't believe he was doing this, touching you this way. “Can… Can I… Can I put a finger inside?” he asked, his voice shaky.

“Yeah,” you whispered shakily. “Please.”

Matt could feel his breath catch in his chest at your words, at the desire in your voice. His whole body was trembling, almost overwhelmed by the enormity of the moment. He nodded, swallowing hard, his eyes fixed on you.

He gently, carefully, eased a single finger inside, a choked gasp escaping his lips as he felt your warmth and wetness around him. As he moved his finger, You suddenly let out a gasp.

Matt was instantly worried, his finger freezing in place. “Did… Did I hurt you?” he asked, his voice full of concern. He looked up at you, his eyes searching your face for any sign of discomfort.

“N-No, it's just…” Your face flushed. “Your fingers are longer than what I'm used to.”

Matt felt a sudden rush of pride at your words, his chest swelling. He had to admit, he'd always been a bit self-conscious about his long thin fingers. But the idea that they were causing her pleasure, that they were giving her a feeling you weren’t used to, that felt incredible.

He curled his finger slightly, exploring your depth. “Is… Is this okay…?”

Your breath hitched as he reached that one spot, and you almost screamed out loud. “Oh my…”

Matt was surprised by your reaction, the sound you made nearly sending him over the edge. But he was determined to make you feel good, to make you feel better than you'd ever felt before.

He kept his finger where it was, gently applying pressure to that one spot, a smirk on his face. “Is this the right spot, hm?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Matt,” you mumbled in pleasure.

Matt couldn't help but smile at your reaction, at the way you responded to his touch. He couldn't believe he was doing this to you, causing you to feel these things. And he couldn't resist the urge to tease you a little bit.

“Is that a yes?” he asked, his voice low and dripping with barely restrained desire.

“Add a second finger,” you instructed him softly. “And try to move them, curling them to hit that spot.”

At your instructions, Matt felt another wave of arousal wash over him. You were telling him what to do. You were guiding him, showing him how to please you. It was a new experience, but one he was more than happy to explore.

He obeyed, slowly adding a second finger to the first. The feeling was tighter, but also warmer. He began to move his fingers, just as you'd told him to.

The angle was a little clumsy at first, but then he felt that one spot, and he applied gentle pressure, curling his fingers at just the right angle. “Like…” he started, his voice a little breathless. “… like this?”

“Oh fuck…” you moaned, your back arching a little in pleasure.

Matt found himself breathing harder at the sight of you arching your back, at the way you were responding to his touch. He knew he was doing something right, and it only fueled his desire to please you more, to make you feel even better.

“Is… Is this good?” he asked, his voice a little shaky. “Does this feel good?”

“So good, fuck, so good…”

Matt's heart was racing, his breath coming in heavy pants. He loved hearing your praise, and the way you reacted to his touch. It was something he'd never felt before, and he wanted more, wanted to make you feel even better.

He kept his fingers moving and applying pressure, his gaze darting up to your face, watching your expressions. “I want you… I want you to feel… To feel so good,” he murmured, his voice a mixture of breathless and earnest.

Your noises of pleasure, your arches, and your moans, it was all driving him wild. He wanted to make you fall apart, to make you forget everything but him and whatever he was doing to you.

“You… You want to try to use your mouth?” you asked breathlessly in between the moans.

Matt's heart quickened at your request. He'd wanted to do that, too, but he hadn't been sure if you'd be okay with it. But now that you'd asked, he was more than happy to comply.

“Yes,” he responded, his voice hoarse with desire. “I… I want to. I want to taste you, too.”

He gently withdrew his fingers and slowly moved further down your body, his heart thudding in his chest. He settled between your legs, looking up at you as his breath came in hot, uneven pants against you.

As he tasted you, as he felt you against his lips, his tongue, his mind was overwhelmed. He hadn't expected this, but it was better than he'd ever imagined. You tasted sweet and tangy, and it only spurred him on.

He forgot about feeling out of his depth, he forgot about potential mistakes or awkward moments. All he wanted to do was pleasure you, to make you feel good. His tongue moved and explored, and his eyes fluttered up at you. He'd never seen you so undone, so lost in pleasure, and the knowledge that he was causing it only deepened his desire to please you more.

“God, you're so good at that,” you breathed out shakily.

Matt felt a wave of pride and pleasure wash over him at your words. He continued, his tongue moving over you, his lips applying gentle suction. Hearing your approval, feeling you respond beneath him, was intoxicating. But he was relentless, determined to bring you to the brink, to make you lose control completely.

His hands moved up, gently caressing your thighs and stomach, seeking to give you even more pleasure. He wanted you to feel good, to feel loved, to feel worshipped.

And eventually, your moans got even louder as you released on his mouth, his name on your lips like a prayer. Matt could feel your body shaking, could hear your voice as you cried out his name. It was a moment he knew he'd never forget, a moment that would be ingrained in his memory forever.

He slowly withdrew, crawling back up beside you. He couldn't seem to find his voice, his heart still hammering in his chest.

He was a little amazed at himself, too, he had to admit. He hadn't been entirely sure what he was doing, but he'd just seemed to know. He'd found a way to bring you pleasure, to send you over the edge, to make you sing his name like a song.

He found his voice again, his voice low, rough. “Was that… Was that good for you? Was I okay?” His heart was still beating fast, his body thrumming with a mix of adrenaline and pleasure.

“God, you're… You're unreal,” you panted out.

Matt couldn't help but smile at your words, the praise fueling his ego. “I… I am?” he asked, unable to hide the slight tone of smugness in his voice. He knew he should feel more humbled, but he couldn't help but feel a sense of pride.

He reached out, gently tracing random patterns on your bare stomach as you caught your breath. “I just… I wanted to make you feel good,” he said softly.

When you came down from your high, you sat up to rest their foreheads against each other. “Are you sure you're ready?”

Matt's heart raced as you asked the question, his mind suddenly flooded with thoughts and worries. Was he ready? He had wanted this, more than anything, but now that the moment was here, he felt a twinge of fear.

He looked into your eyes, searching for reassurance. But all he saw was love, desire, and a willingness to wait if he wasn't ready yet.

He nodded, taking a shaky breath. “Yes,” he murmured. “I'm ready.”

In response, you locked their lips in a passionate kiss, one full of love.

Matt responded eagerly, his body pressing against yours as their mouths met in a passionate kiss. Every thought, every fear, was pushed aside in that moment. All that mattered was you, your breath, your lips, your bodies.

His hands found their way into your hair, tangling in the soft strands, holding you close. He poured all of his feelings, all of his desires into the kiss, his heart hammering in his chest.

Matt's breath caught in his throat as he felt your fingers slide under the waistband of his boxers, the sensation causing a shudder to run through his body. He'd been on edge ever since you'd started, his desire already at a fever pitch. But your touch, your gentle caress, only served to drive him wild.

He pulled back from the kiss to murmur against your mouth. “Please…” he whispered, his voice ragged and pleading. “Please, don't tease me anymore. I can't take it.”

You let out a shaky groan before pulling his boxers down, seeing him fully exposed for the first time. You took a moment to really take him in, your eyes full of awe and love.

Matt's cheeks burned under your gaze, feeling suddenly very exposed and vulnerable. He'd never been looked at this way before, never felt this vulnerable. But he also felt a wave of affection at the awe and love he saw in your eyes.

He met your gaze, his own eyes full of a mixture of desire and trepidation. “Is… Is it okay?” he asked softly, his voice betraying a hint of insecurity.

“You're so beautiful,” you praised breathlessly. “So perfect.”

Matt felt his heart soar at your words, the insecurities fading away and being replaced with a wave of intense love. No one had ever called him beautiful before, and certainly not perfect. He'd always felt a bit too thin, too gangly, too nerdy. But to you, he was beautiful, perfect.

He drew in a shaky breath, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “So are you,” he murmured. “Perfect, I mean.”

You reached to gently caress his cheek. “Sit up against the headboard for me.”

At your request, Matt obeyed, sitting up and leaning back against the headboard. He felt bare and exposed, but he trusted you and knew that you wouldn't do anything to make him feel uncomfortable.

His gaze met yours, his heart beating fast in his chest. “Like this?” he asked, his voice a little breathless.

“Perfect,” you praised before straddling his lap once again.

Matt's breath caught in his throat as you straddled him, your body pressing against his in all the right places. His hands found your hips, his fingers gently gripping them, as if he needed something to anchor himself.

His eyes roamed over your body, appreciating every curve and contour, before coming back up to meet your gaze. “You… You look amazing,” he breathed, his voice a little huskier than usual.

The corner of your lips went up as you rested your forehead against his, just looking into his eyes for a few moments. You were so close now, the heat and electricity between them palpable. Matt found himself getting lost in your eyes, feeling a sense of calm and understanding wash over him. He could feel your breath against his lips, your body pressed against his, and it was almost too much to bear.

He reached up a hand, gently tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, his fingers feather-light against your skin. “I… I love you,” he whispered, the words coming out almost involuntarily.

“I love you too,” you whispered back, and your eyes reflected just how much.

Matt felt your words wash over him, the depth and sincerity of your love sending a shiver down his spine. He'd always known you loved him, but hearing you say it, seeing it in your eyes… It was as if all his fears and doubts vanished completely.

He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the words sink in, letting himself bask in your love. Then, his eyes opened again, his gaze intense, and he wrapped his arms more securely around your waist. “Show me,” he whispered. “Show me how much you love me.”

“You ready?” you made sure quietly.

Matt felt a flutter of nerves mix with the desire he was feeling, but he nodded, his hands gripping your hips a little tighter. “Yes,” he breathed in response, his voice a little shaky. “I… I'm ready.”

“If anything… Just tell me, and we can stop,” you promised.

Matt nodded again, appreciating your thoughtfulness. “I will,” he assured you. “But please… Please don't stop unless I say so.”

He drew you closer, his hands sliding up to your back, gently tracing the line of your spine. “I… I want this. I want you,” he murmured, his voice a low, earnest plea.

Matt shivered slightly as your hand moved over his chest, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. His heart was beating hard, his breath coming in shaky gasps. He'd never felt this alive before, this on edge, this desperate for your touch.

His eyes tracked your hand as it moved, a small, helpless noise escaping his lips. He knew what was coming, and he was aching for it.

Finally, your hand wrapped around him, giving him a few slow pumps. Your touch was like a spark to a flame, igniting a fire within him that he hadn't known was possible. He groaned, his head falling back against the headboard, his eyes squeezing shut as the sensations washed over him.

His hips involuntarily arched into your touch, his hands gripping your hips a little tighter.

“Oh… Oh God, that feels…” he gasped, his voice choked. “That feels so good,” he managed to stutter out, his words a raw expression of pleasure.

The feeling of your hand on him was overwhelming, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. He could feel his body tensing and relaxing instinctively.

You positioned yourself above him, and you looked him in the eyes as if to ask for one last permission.

Matt's heart thudded in his chest as he looked into your eyes. He knew what was about to happen, and he wanted it, more than anything. He didn't want you to stop, he wanted you, all of you.

He nodded, his voice unsteady as he spoke. “Please,” he whispered, his breath ragged. “Please, don't stop.”

And then, you slowly started to sink down. The sensation was almost too much for Matt. It was like a wave of pleasure and heat overwhelming his entire body. He let out a low, guttural moan as you slowly sank down, inch by agonizing inch.

He clung to you, his hands gripping your hips with an almost bruising force. His eyes were squeezed shut, his lips parted as he panted for breath. “Oh… Oh God,” he managed to say, the words a messy, incoherent jumble.

His mind was reeling, every thought driven out by the sheer intensity of the feeling. It was like nothing he'd ever experienced before, like nothing he could have imagined. You were warm, tight, and completely surrounding him, and it was everything.

He knew he was probably being too rough, too loud, but he couldn't help it. He was utterly lost in the sensations, losing himself in you. He was yours, totally and completely, and he loved every moment.

As you bottomed out, you rested your hands on his shoulders for support. “You okay, baby?”

Matt was trying to form words, to give some sort of response, but all he could manage was a series of ragged breaths and a nod. He was trying to ground himself, to stay in control, but it was nearly impossible.

He managed to open his eyes, his gaze meeting yours. “I… I'm… I'm okay,” he gasped out, his voice thick with pleasure. “Just… Just give me a second, please.”

You felt incredible around him, almost too good. He needed a moment to adjust, to find some sort of equilibrium, or he knew he'd lose himself completely.

He forced himself to take a few deep breaths, his heart hammering in his chest as he tried to steady himself. “You… You feel so… So good," he managed to get out between ragged breaths. He was struggling to find his voice, to express how he was feeling. “Just… Just give me a moment, please…”

“Of course. Take all the time you need,” you whispered, your hand gently caressing his cheek.

Your touch was like a soothing balm on his over-stimulated body. He closed his eyes and leaned into your hand, drawing in a shaky breath. He focused on the feeling of your fingers on his skin, your body surrounding him, anchoring himself to you. Slowly, the overwhelming sensations began to recede, replaced by a calmer, more controlled sense of pleasure.

He opened his eyes again, his gaze meeting yours. “I'm… I'm okay now,” he murmured. “You can... you can move now.”

You leaned in to press your lips against his before slowly starting to move your hips.

The feeling of your lips on his was like a jolt through his system, reigniting the fire that had been momentarily banked. He responded eagerly, his mouth moving against yours, his tongue caressing yours with an urgent need.

And then there was the movement of your hips. It was a gentle, careful circling motion, bringing him closer and closer to oblivion. Matt let out a guttural moan, his hands gripping your hips even tighter.

It was all too much, but he couldn't get enough of it. He felt like he was drowning in you, lost in the sensations of your body, your touch, your scent. He knew he was being loud, almost embarrassingly so, but he couldn't help it. He was completely yours, completely lost in you.

“Does that feel good, baby?” You asked breathlessly.

Matt could barely respond, too lost in the pleasure to string coherent words together. All he could do was nod, his voice choked off by a moan that tore its way from his throat.

He tried to form words, to tell you how good it felt, how incredible you were, but all that came out was a ragged gasp. “Y-yeah,” he managed to stutter out eventually, his voice hoarse. “Feels… Feels so good…”

You pressed their foreheads together before starting to move a little faster, moans escaping your own lips.

The change in speed made Matt's head spin. He felt like he was on the edge of an abyss, his body tensing and coiling with each move of your hips. He was a tangle of sensations, pleasure, need, and love, all swirling together.

He kept his eyes open, locking them with yours. Your moans, your ragged breaths, only amplified the sensations. He knew he was close, too close, but he didn't want it to end.

His hands left your hips, moving up to cradle your face in his hands. He needed to touch you, to feel your skin under his fingers, to hold onto you as he rode the wave of pleasure higher and higher.

“I… I'm close… I'm gonna… Oh God, I'm…”

You understood exactly what he meant, the urgency in his tone clear. Your movements became faster and more purposeful, pushing them both closer to the edge.

“I know, baby,” you whispered, your breath hot against his ear. “I know. Just let go. I've got you.”

Your words sent a shiver down his spine, the mixture of love and reassurance hitting him right in the chest. He wanted to hold on, to make this last as long as possible, but he knew it was impossible. He was on the edge, teetering on the brink of ecstasy.

“Baby…” he gasped, his voice thin and needy. “I… I'm… Oh God, I'm… I'm…”

He couldn't say the words, couldn't form the warning. All he could do was shiver as his body went rigid, waves of pleasure washing over him. He held onto you, his fingers digging into your flesh, as he rode out the aftershocks.

At the sensation of him releasing deep inside of you, you reached your climax as well, your back arching, and you let out a loud cry of his name. He felt you clenching around him, your own release as you cried out his name, and it was too much. He felt like he was being lifted into ecstasy, drowning in the sensations that swamped his body.

His hands moved to wrap around you, holding you close, feeling the tremors run through your body. He buried his face in the curve of your neck, his breaths coming in ragged gasps. “Oh God… Oh God…” he managed to say.

“I… I've never… That was…”

He couldn't complete a sentence, his mind reeling from the intensity of it all. He held onto you, feeling the rapid throb of your heartbeat against his chest, the heat of your skin against his, and the sweat that had gathered on both their bodies.

After You finally caught your breath, you looked at him, still straddling him, as you ran your hand through his hair. “Are you okay, baby?”

Matt was still reeling, his body trembling slightly from the force of his orgasm. He leaned into your touch, his eyes meeting yours.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, his voice hoarse and raw. “I'm… I'm okay. I just… I need a minute. That was… Wow.”

“You were perfect,” you said softly before lifting yourself from him and falling onto the bed next to him.

He chuckled weakly, still struggling to catch his breath. “Perfect, huh? I'm pretty sure I yelled louder than you did. I think the whole neighborhood heard me,” he teased, half-joking and half-not.

You chuckled breathlessly. Matt, however, could only stare in wonder at how his seed was leaking out of you.

Matt couldn't tear his gaze away, his eyes fixed on the sight in front of him. He had never seen anything so intimate, so erotic. Without thinking, he reached out, his fingers tracing the trail of his release dribbling down your skin.

“God, you're so beautiful,” he whispered. “And I… I made a mess of you.”

Your breath hitched as he touched you, still oversensitive, but you didn't protest. He touched you delicately, his touch light and hesitant, as if he was scared to break the fragile moment. His gaze was filled with a mixture of awe and desire, staring at the evidence of what you have just shared.

“You… You look even more beautiful like this,” he murmured, his voice low and gravelly. “Like I've marked you as mine.”

“I am yours,” you whispered.

The words sent a wave of possessiveness through him. “Mine,” he repeated, his voice almost a possessive growl. “All mine.”

He leaned in, pressing feather-light kisses along your jawline, his hands tracing aimless patterns on your skin. “I don't want anyone else seeing you like this," he whispered, his breath hot against your skin. “I don't want anyone else touching you like I do. You're mine.”

He continued to mark your skin with kisses, his mouth moving along the length of your neck and down to your collarbone. He wanted to keep you like this forever, covered in his marks, in his scent. He knew he was being selfish, but he didn't care. You were his, and he wanted the world to know it.

You let out a soft sigh, your fingers tangling into his hair.

The feel of your fingers in his hair only served to make him more possessive. He continued to kiss and nip at your skin, leaving a trail of love bites down your neck and chest.

“Mine,” he repeated, his voice almost a mantra. He wanted to keep saying it, as if by repeating it, he could make it more true. “All mine.”

“So… I take that I made your first time good?” you asked, a little jokingly.

Matt chuckled huskily, leaning back just enough to look into your eyes. “Good is an understatement,” he said, his voice still rough with desire. “That was… Mind-blowing. Life-changing.”

He paused, his gaze roaming over your body again, taking in the sight of you covered in his marks. “I think you ruined me for anyone else.”

“Well, I sure hope so,” you murmured before kissing him again.

He responded immediately, his mouth moving against yours with a desperate, needy hunger. He rolled you onto your back, pinning you beneath him, continuing the kiss with a fervor. He didn't want this moment to end, he wanted to revel in the feeling of your body under his, the taste of your mouth, the scent of your skin.

Between kisses, he managed to mutter, “You're the only one. The only one I'll ever need.”

tag list: @stuwniolo, @sturnobsessedwh0re

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