#i used it to fuck with a stoplight that was hung up in the house for some reason

[jimcornflake]

Prologue - Mantis

A/N: Hi! I’m Jim! This is the first piece of a long slow burn Asa Emory X Fem!Reader I’m making! If you liked this little blurp, please feel free to stick around for more regularly posted chapters.

🎀

“Y/N, I refuse to just sit here and take this hater-ass behavior from you. I’m coming over at nine and we’re getting ready together. Take a break! You deserve it.”

You nibbled at the peeling skin of your cuticle on one hand while the other pressed your phone flat against your ear, too deep in thought to respond right away. You had so many things to consider, one of the most important things being: was it worth it?

You knew who you were. Where there’s a party, there’s drugs, and where there’s drugs, there’s you. You refused to be ashamed of the fact that you couldn’t even handle being around drugs without giving in and using.

However, Alyssa was right. You’d been working your ass off! You had two jobs and picked up any spare shift you could get your hands on. You had been saving up money for a new car so you could stop walking and taking the bus and you’d reached your halfway point just today.

You had come home from waitressing at your second job at a local diner that was always filled with hungry drunkards. Being harassed everyday did take a toll on your psyche, no matter how used to it you had become over the years of existing as a woman.

“Y/N,” Alyssa spoke softly.

There was a long stretch of silence.

“Fuck it,” you sighed, releasing the breath you had absentmindedly been holding. “Don’t come to my house though. I need to throw everything everywhere to find what I want to wear.”

“Whore.” Alyssa hung up. That meant that you were supposed to meet up with her when she texted you the address three hours later at ten.

You let your phone fall out of your hand and land safely on your mattress as your body followed in its path. You enjoyed feeling the soft mattress mold to your spine and your eyelids began to slip close as soon as you fully relaxed.

“No!” You suddenly cried out, using every last ounce of strength to jerk your shoulder forward and toss yourself off the bed on to the floor. You landed hard on the vinyl wood, definitely feeling an early-stage bruise on your elbow.

You pulled yourself off the ground and forced your legs to carry you to your bathroom to swipe some shimmer across your lids and face, then follow it with mascara and lipgloss.

You were a simple woman. You went to a party to party and have possibly dangerous adventures. That meant that anytime you tried to wear a full-face, half of it would end up on somebody’s shirt or window.

10:35PM (iMESSAGE): asslicka🩷

the dick tator is being summoned

10:36PM (iMESSAGE): asslicka🩷

1 Attachment

When your phone buzzed with the anticipated message, you were ready.

You packed your purse with everything you needed and slung it across your body.

You quietly exited your apartment and tiptoed down the hallway past your neighbor who’d brought home her newborn baby yesterday and quietly exited through the complex’s main entrance.

Once the hot air of the balmy summer night hit your face, you felt free. You skipped your way across the street to where an elderly woman you befriended lived. The poor thing had entrusted you with her car keys once when her son wasn’t available to drive her to the doctor’s. Ever since you had done her that favor on your way to work, she always left the keys in the car so you could borrow it at your leisure.

Once you were in the car and sat at the nearest stoplight. You quickly rifled around in your purse and pulled out a CD Case labeled “MIX 1”. As you watched for cars in the rear view, you opened it and popped the CD in to the disk drive.

You turned on the radio and adjusted the knobs all the way to full blast. As soon as the light turned green, you floored it down the dead street and hit the play button, leaving a trail of the scent of burnt rubber behind you.

🎀

Hi! Did you like this? If so, please check out my other works! Thank you and have a beautiful day! 🩷

[instructionsnotincluded]

State of Grace

Chapter X

Excerpt:

“It says here that the Limbrey’s own like half of Charleston,” Kiara’s thumb moved rapidly across the screen of her iPhone a little over two hours later as the Pogues entered Charleston, “but what I can’t figure out is what they want with us and why they want to help John B out.”

“It’s gotta be something to do with the symbol,” Pope said as he idled at a stoplight, looking over at Kiara, Audrey, and JJ.

“The gold,” JJ nodded, eyes trained outside his window as he looked over the large, old buildings surrounding them, “it always comes back to the gold.”

“Please come alone,” Kiara looked over at Pope after reading the end of the letter, “that’s totally suspicious, right? Like…they want you alone?”

“The whole thing’s creepy as fuck,” JJ shifted in his seat, “just like these buildings…”

“They’ve had three governors in the family…” Kiara continued to read as Pope resumed driving down the tree lined street, “a couple of state senators, several professors, a few highly decorated military veterans, a vice presidential candidate…”

“So they’re basically the Kooks of Charleston,” JJ shifted his arm to slide it around Audrey as he rubbed her shoulder, catching the look on her face and knowing she was lost in thought about the watch. His girlfriend had been pretty quiet the last few hours and while he knew she was trying to process the new information, he was still worried about her.

“Yeah—they’ve basically run Charleston for the last three hundred years.”

“Well…” JJ ducked his head down again to eye the plantation style building Pope pulled up alongside, “these Kooks make our Kooks look like Pogues.” Pope only snorted, shifting the truck into park as four sets of eyes turned to study the building that sat behind an incredibly tall, dangerous looking wrought iron fence. The trees hung low over the fencing and Audrey only felt goosebumps break out across her legs as she stared at the creepy looking house. “You sure this is it, Pope?” JJ glanced over at his friend, hand squeezing Audrey’s arm, “‘cause it looks really…uh…intense…?”

“This is it,” Pope lifted the letter in his hand, “does anyone else have a bad feeling in their stomach?”

“Yes.”

“Oh for sure.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ok—good,” Pope nodded, inhaling deeply before opening his door, “glad we’re all on the same page.”

The Pogues slipped out of the truck, Kiara’s head tilted all the way back in an effort to take in as much of the house as she could. Pope double checked the address on the envelope with the numbers on the house and the map on Kiara’s phone while JJ swung his arm around Audrey’s neck, keeping her close as he pressed his lips to her hairline.

“We’ll get answers, I promise.”

[enigmaticdamned]

𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭. 𝐈𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐈 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐮𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐜𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲.

There’s no greater betrayal than the one that comes from someone who shares the same blood as you in their veins. The one who creates you. A father. Noel Maher. I wish I could remember him for what he pretended to be. The man with a smile like a palette of warmth, a sunlit mirage that masked the colder currents beneath the surface. A man who kept himself up in the latest fashions. A true wolf in sheep’s clothing. The best business man. There wasn’t a deal that he couldn’t make. I wanted to remember him for all the things I admired him for. Instead I remember him as the man who stood over me with a blade in my chest. He meant to kill his only living son and that didn’t matter to him. He didn’t even care for what got us there either.

𝐅 𝐋 𝐀 𝐒 𝐇 𝐁 𝐀 𝐂 𝐊

“I don’t want him apart of this. You promised you would be good for him and that he could be good!” My mother shouted at my father. I can hear them in his study. I suspect they are unaware of my presence or that I’d be coming by this late. “My patience has run thin, Roselyn! Our son will do what I tell him. I ask of nothing from no one except to fall in line with no exceptions.” His response to her was cold and careless. I never heard him speak to her in that manner when I was around. I could hear her storm off, swinging open his office door. I stayed hidden behind the corner, keeping my presence discreet. “You know. . . for years I stood by and turned a blind eye to all the blood you shed. I looked at you and pretended you were an angel when I knew you were the devil. You begged me to have our son and you promised me you wouldn’t do this to him. I could turn a blind eye to everything but I won’t with this! I will do everything in my power to stop you!” She finally walked away, descending the stairs and he got up to follow her. “You dare?” He asked her but she ignored him. I slipped out the back door, figuring I’d go home that night and give them some air. I wondered what my mom knew and why she was so adamant to stop him.

I went to sleep that night thinking I’d wake up and start unraveling this mystery at dawn. Instead I was disturbed not even two hours later by a phone call from the hospital. “Mr. Maher, your mother is in the ICU and her condition is critical.” For a second I spaced out and all I could hear was the pounding of the beating organ in my chest. My world crumbling around me. This doesn’t feel coincidental. Did my father hurt my mother?

I hung up before I could get the full details from the doctor. I heard something along the lines of her slitting her own wrists and I knew it in my soul that was furthest from the truth. In a panic I rushed out of the bed, grabbing the clothes I had just taken off to shove them back on. I snatched my keys from my dresser and then I headed to my black Audi to race back to my parents place. I skipped stop signs and stoplights, driving almost 80 miles per hour to get to him.

I will unveil the truth. I don’t think he will look me in the eye and tell a lie.

When I arrived I hopped out my car without even removing the keys or closing the door behind me. I was nothing but rage that needed to be purged on him. What could be more important than the bond between family? If you can’t trust family then who could you trust?

I walked inside the house and I looked around for him. I started with his office but he wasn’t there. I looked everywhere until I successfully found him in the backyard sitting by the pool with a glass of whisky in his hand. It was almost like he was celebrating something. I wasted no time as I approach.

“What the fuck did you do to her?”

Enraged I asked him, knocking the glass out his hand and it shattered on the ground. He looked up at me. “What is this about, Nolan?” he asked nonchalantly. He isn’t even pretending to be upset or show any remorse. Is this the monster I looked up too? Is this the moment I see him in his real skin. The truth that had been veiled in the smoke and mirrors of affection, cloaked by the tender illusions of our shared vulnerability.

“I heard you two arguing last night! I was there! I thought I’d leave to give you both some air but—” I couldn’t get my words out because he cut right in “So then you heard enough to know she was threatening my empire. A means to a very tragic end don’t you think?” He spoke of my mother like she was nothing but some outsider threatening his stupid fucking empire! I wanted to break him down for it. “You coward! She is my mother! Your wife! Does that not mean anything to you? Is expanding your empire everything?” I reached down my fingers ruffling up his shirt to grip him by his collar. I raised a fist to strike him but he catches me by the wrist and he said “You like your life don’t you, Nolan? The fancy cars you drive and your penthouses! You wouldn’t have all that if it weren’t for me! I sit back and make all the hard decisions while you and Roselyn enjoy the luxuries!” He stands up to push me off of him. I shake my head in disgust. I’m filled with regret that I ever looked to him as someone I wanted to be like. All the things I did to impress him. I was truly foolish in the end.

I have so much love for him that it makes me ache. It makes me angry and for so long it trapped me like an animal in a cage.

“Fuck you and your empire! I’m going to take it all from under you and make you watch it burn down! You aren’t my father! You are nothing to me, Noel Maher!” For the first time I felt free saying those words. Like the cage I was in had opened.

In my father’s eyes flashed a devil that I never seen before. “It’s a real shame. I thought you’d take after me instead of your pathetic mother.” Blinded by my rage I didn’t see the sharp thick blade that he lunged forward right into my chest cavity. I looked up at him in disbelief, feeling real betrayal for the first time in my life. Not from an enemy nor a friend but my own father. In that moment I learned blood spills blood. So if I can’t trust family then I can’t trust anyone. “You…how could you?” The only words I could force out. The pain of the blade was crippling as he sticks it deeper. Each breath I take I could feel the air getting shorter. With the little strength I had I tried to push him off and he shoved me to the ground like I was light as a feather. “I watched all the footage from my cameras last night and I knew you were here! I figured you’d come back and come to your senses about all this but I realize you could never take after me! You disgust me!” He spoke down to me as he tried to press his foot down on the blade to push it deeper. Treating me like scum beneath his shoes. Hovering over me like he was a god that gets to decide the fate of my life. I reached up to catch his foot, trying to relieve myself of the pain and stop the deadly blade from pushing deeper into me.

“𝙏𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙨 𝙖 𝙙𝙤𝙜 𝙚𝙖𝙩 𝙙𝙤𝙜 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙. 𝙎𝙤𝙤𝙣𝙚𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙’𝙫𝙚 𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙣𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧.”

𝐏 𝐑 𝐄 𝐒 𝐄 𝐍 𝐓

Those were the last words of his that I remembered as the darkness swept me away and I drifted into unconsciousness. It has been seven years since it happened. The scar on my chest is a reminder of how lucky I was to escape deaths embrace.

Today marks the anniversary of my mother’s death and I feel I don’t deserve to mourn her. I am out of Noel’s clutches completely but he is still out there and we are at war with one another. I have my own position of power now which makes me untouchable but he is still a powerful man himself which makes it even harder to get to him.

This mark on my chest feels more like a reminder that I failed to get my revenge as long as he still lives.

I stand on my patio, gazing out at the beautiful view the penthouse had to offer. I couldn’t properly enjoy it thinking about Noel. I’m reminded of how my mother said he begged her to have me. I often questioned why he wanted me. To have a child without intention to love them. I was only here to be molded in his image. He didn’t want me to live my own life. He wanted to live through me in the worst way.

[nexus-nebulae]

ough

[myelocin]

To Let A Good Thing Die | Sakusa Kiyoomi

Synopsis: In which you reminisce on your journey of healing, and the other, was well, Sakusa Kiyoomi.

Characters: Sakusa Kiyoomi, You, Iwaizumi Hajime

Warnings: Infidelity. Genre: Angst, Slice of Life

Word Count: 1.8k+

a/n: This was supposed to be for Tsukki, but I read it again and decided I wanted to mess with your Kiyoomi feelings so <3 Also! This was inspired by Bruno Major’s To Let A Good Thing Die, so PLEASE listen to the song!

Thank you to Angelo for pitching in your idea bc without it, the ending would have been completely different but as I wrote it like this, I wouldn’t have it any other way. <3

-

 “Congratulations.”

He was blunt and straight to the point but that still had you stop in your tracks to find space to sit down on the wooden floor. Pushing a half filled box to the side, a sigh would occasionally escape from you as you let yourself lean on the box.

“Congratulations.” You read out loud. “He’s as boring as usual.”  A small chuckle found its way out of your throat as you set your phone on top of one of the taped off boxes.

Sakusa Kiyoomi had appeared in your life in a mirage of colors. In your youth, he was yellow. A yellow sweatshirt worn by a boy who’d grumble when his cousin showed him affection but the way he blushed pink you swore to your six year old self that he was the boy you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. And so you saw him in the yellow sunflowers your mother grew in her little garden. Little Kiyoomi would routinely scowl when you plopped down next to him and tuck the flower you secretly plucked from the garden behind his ear. He’d scowl and tell you to knock it off, that the flower was dirty, but the rosy blush on his cheeks told you that he didn’t mind.

Then in high school, his presence danced in subtle shades of blues. Baby blue, like the sky he stood under during the opening ceremony where he stood across you, one arm stretched handing you your favorite bread, the writing in the package inked in a deep navy hue. By this time, your friendship had long matured from playdates and childlike antics to study sessions and the occasional heart to heart conversation. From an outsider’s perspective, it would have been a no brainer to conclude that the two of you were best friends. And at first, to you, that had been the case. Kiyoomi was the one who despite still scowling at you, would go the extra mile to take out the cheese on your burger before handing it to you, or would leave practice early to visit you if he noticed your uncharacteristic silence throughout the day. And if he couldn’t, he’d leave a parcel of your favorite snack inside your locker, the words “eat it and stop being like that” neatly written on a sticky note in deep, blue ink.  

And so on your third year, your smile would only widen as you scrolled through the same five selfies you forced Kiyoomi to take during your graduation. The sky being that same soft blue as that day during the opening ceremony, though only this time his head leaned against the top of yours (he always made it a point to emphasize his height), and a smile resting on his lips, his signature mask nowhere to be found.

After looking through the photos, you laid back in bed raising your right hand to look at the bracelet he silently clasped on your wrist. A blue butterfly charm hanging next to a yellow sunflower. He was never public or too showy about his affections, but you never bothered to care. He found ways to always get the message across.

During your final years of university, Kiyoomi became red. Red, like the color his cheeks never failed to bloom into when you kissed him in the mornings. Red, the color of the cherry tomatoes he always asked you to include to pack in his bento box that he took with him on the days he had to go to work. It had become your favorite color, because red meant it was the season where you’d see the Christmas stockings hanging over the fireplace next to the tiny Christmas tree that you and Kiyoomi had decorated together. Red, like the love that bloomed in your heart when he clasped a rose charm on the same bracelet he bought you years ago, the petals on the flower painted in deep red.

And then after that one Christmas season, you began to hate it. Red was the shade of the lipstick you saw smeared on the collar of his dress shirt. The color that made you begin to doubt yourself. The color that made you sneak to the bathroom in the middle of the night, because maybe, just maybe, you still had that red lipstick your friend had gifted you a year ago. Except every time, you didn’t. You always hated how red looked on you.

So you sat him down the next day, the same dress shirt with the same smeared red on the collar set on the table in between the two of you and asked him a silent “why?” And then Kiyoomi responded to you at first in silence, his head hung low, then eventually a silent sorry murmured from his lips.

You decided that you hated red, but you kept asking him the who, the when, and again the why. He sounded apologetic because you knew he was like that. You knew Kiyoomi was sorry for being caught as he explained it was a classmate he’s known since his first year in university, that it’s been happening for a little over two months, but paused before answering your question of why. You sat across from him and nodded once, lips clipped shut, because you do know that girl. You knew she always wore red lipstick because it looked great on her. But you never would have guessed Kiyoomi looked at her like that. And then he cleared his throat a little awkwardly before meeting your stare.

“I’m sorry. I just felt like we were missing something.”

This became the part where for a brief second, all you saw was red. You watched the man sitting across from you, bubbling with seething anger, your cheeks flushed and red, your lips bitten raw and red from containing yourself. Slapping him was definitely considered, but instead you reached for the clasp on your right wrist and took off the bracelet. Setting it next to the crumpled dress shirt, with the fucking red smear, you stood up said “Fuck you, Sakusa.”, turned to grab your phone and wallet, and left.

Red, was the color of the stoplight when you glanced at your phone for a quick second, your eyes automatically watering upon catching the ‘I love you, can we please talk?’ written on the screen. But green was the color the sign switched to as your resolve suddenly solidified. And you were sure, as you took a shaky breath and let the tears fall. You took it upon yourself to remember green. As you pressed on the gas pedal, and just fucking moved. Moved forward into a future without Kiyoomi. And you’d come to love the color green, because it reminded you in that standstill where all you saw were flashes of red from the anger and love that had been lost, that all you could really do from then on was just to go.

And so now, years later, as you looked at the half filled boxes littering the apartment you were moving out of you felt okay. Because two years ago, you had met Hajime at an intersection where the pedestrian lit up green. And because of him, you let go of the man who used to shine to you in colors. Let go of the red that had cut you open and left you to bleed out as an aftermath. Hajime looked at you with patience in his eyes that never faltered as he walked with your healing. The soft green in his eyes, mirroring the color you’ve grown to love, and teaching you to forgive.

You stood up after taping the final box close and labeling them correctly. Hajime pulled you closer to him as he pecked the middle of your forehead. “You ready? Oikawa wants us to drop by his place and get the housewarming gift he was talking about. Something about how it’s supposed to mean joy or some shit.”

“What’d he get?”

He shrugged as he picked up the box and headed towards the door. “I don’t know. You know how unpredictable he can be.”

You followed his actions and picked up another box but not before pocketing your phone, “He means well, Haji.”

And you know Oikawa means well as you sit on the passenger seat of the car while Hajime drives to the house you two were moving into. You know Oikawa meant that he wished the two of you joy as you held a small flower pot with a budding sunflower peeking out. Hajime looks over at you when the stoplight blinks red as the car rolls to a stop. He looks at you, green eyes gentle and patient and reaches over to squeeze your hand. “This time, this flower will mean our joy.” He says as the lights turn green and the car begins to gain momentum.

You look down at the flower pot, then back at Hajime, an honest smile on your lips. To you, twenty something years ago, yellow sunflowers meant afternoons in sunny playgrounds where you’d put flowers in Kiyoomi’s hair. And in that snapshot in time, it’s undeniable that it had given you joy. And so you let yourself exhale, because Oikawa means well, and Hajime is right. This is your joy. In the green eyes, patient smiles, and warm touches that was Hajime.

-

And later that night, Sakusa Kiyoomi found himself seated at a bar stool that had become familiar to him over the years. His first order of a whiskey sour sat in front of him as he stared into the open window to his right. His phone vibrated softly and the screen lit up against the dim lights of the quiet bar.

His eyes were quick to read the, ‘Thank you. Hope you’re doing well :)’ reply you texted him. The deep brown of his eyes stayed fixated on the screen, rereading the texts over and over again until the screen turned black.

He quickly downed the liquid that was left in the glass before he turned to the bartender. The man behind the bar nodded in his direction, “Another one? Same thing?”

Kiyoomi let his left hand move into the pocket of his jacket, feeling the familiar shapes of the charm bracelet you left. If he closed his eyes he would remember how they looked on your wrist. A yellow sunflower, a blue butterfly, and a red rose. It took him a little while but he finally understood why you associated memories with people into colors. He began to do it after you left. But now all he saw was the black of the phone screen that was staring back at him.

Picking up his phone, he let his eyes look over the text you sent him again, then finally sighed and set his phone back on the table facing down. Remembering his request to order, he looked up at the bartender still waiting for his reply.

“Can I get something a little stronger?”

-

 “Life isn’t like the movies, but it sure will make you cry when it dawns on you that it’s time to say goodbye.”

-Bruno Major

[jimmys-zeppelin]

ghostin'

chapter ten

(table of contents)

(chapter nine)

april 3, 1976

help me

Ellie tried keeping her mind off of her potential situation after she got back home. As soon as she landed, she was at the doctor's office getting her blood drawn. The doctor said she'd have her results on Monday.

She observed how Jimmy had been acting in the 12 hours they were together before she left after their night out. It wasn't that he was on-edge, but he was definitely a little less than comfortable. And that was an understandable reaction considering how unexpected all this was.

She was separating, folding, and putting clothes away from her suitcase when the doorbell rang an incessant amount of times. Ellie knew it could only be one person with the insistence in which the doorbell rang.

The bell only stopped when Ellie finally yanked the door open, "Andrew, what the hell!" she joked. The dark-haired man nearly screamed with delight and engulfed the blonde in a hug.

"God, that was the longest fucking three weeks of my life! How was it? How'd it go? Did you break some beds?"

Ellie held her mouth agape for a second before laughing and ushering the man inside. He followed her back upstairs as they spoke, "No beds were broken, contrary to popular belief. But it went great. Jimmy said Charlotte really liked me after we stopped by a second time. And his daughter is so sweet."

"So you're cool with the family! Awesome. Now you know you'll probably be seeing more of them. Try not to catch the baby fever, though."

Ellie chuckled dryly at the statement, "You might be a little late on that one, Andrew."

"Listen, kids are cute, but when you actually have to take care of them, it's a hassle. Wait till you're old and wrinkly and you've already lived."

Her heart sank in her chest, would her life really be slowed down that drastically by a baby?

"El, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Can we not talk about babies right now?" She asked, pinching the bridge of her nose and crumpling up a shirt she had been holding, tossing it into her dirty clothes pile quite aggressively.

"Uh, oh. Seems like I hit a nerve. Did Jimmy say anything to you about having kids?"

"No, not exactly. He wasn't opposed to it. I just—I don't want to think about kids right now. Can we talk about something else?"

"Okay, fine I won't budge," he said, throwing his hands up in surrender before stammering in an attempt to find a new topic to talk about, "what was the house like?"

"It was beautiful. Huge. Like imagine my house but like ten times bigger. I know he doesn't need all those bedrooms."

"You two should've had sex in all of the rooms. A new room every night." Andrew said, almost excited at the prospect.

"What is it with your obsession in my sex life? Aren't you getting some?"

"It's a little hard for my scene of people, Ellie. And plus, it's not my fault your boyfriend is a total looker. I don't know how you don't just stare at him all day."

Ellie chuckled at the comment, "Well we did have a morning that we spent in bed. It was nice."

"You're keeping something from me. Ellie, we don't keep secrets."

"What do you—" Ellie tried to play off, only to enter a stare-down with her best friend. She kept eye contact for as long as she could before the dryness made her scrunch her eyes shut. "Fine! I am keeping something from you."

"And it is....?"

"I can't tell you just yet. But I will say one thing, I'm extremely worried about Jimmy. I walked into his office the other day because I was looking for something and there were just bottles. And drugs. All over the desk."

"What kind of drugs?" Andrew asked, leaning in.

Ellie folded up a skirt, putting it away in her drawer before answering, "heroin and coke."

"Heroin? I hear that shit is wack if you take too much. Was he shooting it?"

"He'd done at least three. He was completely zooted. Out of his mind. His arm looked like an inexperienced nurse trying to find a vein. Andrew, it was horrible."

"Oh, God. I can only imagine. I'm sorry, babe. What did he say when you saw him?"

"He didn't say anything. I got kind of mad at him afterwards because he knows I get worried when he uses the stuff. He tried to butter me up and say sorry, but I just kinda brushed him off."

"Aw, Ellie. Do you wanna go out tonight; get your mind off it?"

"I don't know...I don't really wanna drink this weekend."

"We don't have to drink." He shrugged.

Ellie eyed him suspiciously, "since when does 'going out' not consist of drinking?"

"I heard Queen's still in town. We could try to look for 'em. Maybe I can get Freddie to sign my chest." Andrew said, stroking his chest sensually.

"You sound like a groupie." she chuckled.

"Listen, you're the famous one, not me. I can be as whorish as I want."

With a roll of her eyes, Ellie picked up her hamper, walking off to the laundry room with it to get started on her clothes.

☆

Later that evening, after Andrew had gone home, Ellie picked up the phone. She held it in her hand for a second before hanging up the receiver. Looking at the clock, the blonde noticed it was only 6pm. A drive would be nice. She thought to herself.

Grabbing her sunglasses and a coat—it was unusually cold for April—and took her keys from the table by the front door as she made her way over to her car.

Deciding she'd go down to West Hollywood and stop at her manager's office, Ellie took the long way and chose to take her time while driving.

Turning on the radio, she just caught the beginning of "Help Me" by Joni Mitchell. She turned the volume a bit louder and relaxed against the driver's seat; letting the California sun hit her face and a slight breeze come in through the window. She forgot about everything that'd been on her mind as she drove down the highway, taking in the music and bobbing her head along to the beat.

Taking a turn onto Santa Monica Boulevard, Ellie observed the tons of stores and people that littered the sidewalk. As she slowed to a stop at a red light, she took a look across the street to find a particular head of bleach-blond hair. Rolling down the window some more and pulling her sunglasses down, Ellie's suspicions were confirmed.

"Roger!" She exclaimed without thinking. Her heart dropped to her ass at the realization that she'd just publicly yelled at someone she'd only met twice before. "Shit." she whispered under her breath.

"Ellie?" Roger asked in response. He was visibly leaning over and lowering his own sunglasses to be able see the singer inside her car.

"I thought you went back home!" Ellie said, nervously glancing between Roger and the stoplight.

"No! I hung around! The guys went back home," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets, "I've been calling you!"

"I've been away! I should've told you! I just got back!"

Another glance at the light.

"Can I call you later?"

"Sure!" Ellie exclaimed when the loud blaring of a car horn behind her caused her to jump in her seat. She waved a quick goodbye to Roger before going on her way. It wasn't until she caught her breath that she realized she'd been holding it. She shook her head and took another deep breath, continuing down the street.

☆

"Carolyn'll see you now." The receptionist said. Ellie stood up, now with her coat and sunglasses off, she felt a bit more at ease. She said a quick thank you to the receptionist before letting herself into the office.

"Ellie! Sit down, babe." Carolyn said cheerfully. "You said April 1st."

"I got a little caught up in some personal stuff."

"I hope nothing too bad. You didn't overdo it on the blow did you?"

"No, no. I promise, Care. That's one thing you'll never have to worry about with me."

"I better not. Don't need you dying on me or anything. How was your trip?"

"It was great! Jimmy and I got some alone time, it was nice. I met his daughter. Absolute sweetheart."

"You didn't get knocked up, did you?" Carolyn asked, furrowing her brows at her.

Ellie practically jumped in her seat, her eyes widened, "No! I don't—why would you—?"

"Oh my God, you got knocked up didn't you? You were there for barely three weeks, Ellie!"

"I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow. I'll call you as soon as I can to let you know how it went. I just don't want to think about it right now." Ellie sighed, not wanting to think about her worst fears for another second.

"Fine. Let's see if the record company needs anything from you." Carolyn replied, flipping through a notebook that was sitting on her desk before looking back up at her, "I need you to get a song out, or even an album. Tell me you did something other than screw around with your boyfriend on your trip."

"I started a song, then I kind of abandoned it when I had an idea for a different one...it's a bit personal so it'll definitely be on the slower side, I think." Ellie explained.

"Got a name?"

"Uhh, it doesn't have one yet."

"Is it finished?"

"Nearly."

"Alright, well. Finish it by this week and we can get you in the studio in two weeks."

"I'll try." Ellie replied.

☆

Ellie sat hunched over her songbook scribbling a few words down and crossing out others. She chewed on her pencil, staring at her thoughts on the page. The blonde hadn't thought about the song she'd written while at Jimmy's house in a while.

Trying to hum out the tune she'd created, Ellie was about to run and grab her guitar upstairs when the phone rang; this stopping her in her tracks. Detouring to the phone, she quickly picked it up off the receiver, "Hello?"

"Ellie?" the man on the other line asked, his voice identifiable immediately as Roger's.

"Hi, Roger." she said, the smile on her face audible in her voice.

"Hey, how've you been?" he asked. "You went missing for a bit there."

"Yeah, I'm doing okay, I went to England with Jimmy for a few weeks. He played host for me for once." She joked, twirling the phone cord in her fingers.

"Oh wow, was it your first time?"

"No, not at all. I go back to visit him quite often, actually. When I'm not busy, of course."

"Right, right. Uhhh, listen, I was about to grab a bite to eat. Did you want to come with me by any chance? Unless you've eaten already, then it's a redundant question." Roger added quickly to the end of his invitation.

Ellie hesitated at her answer, although she didn't know why, "...Sure! Yeah, I was just gonna wind up making some macaroni and cheese anyway, so, I guess it's better to go get an...actual meal." She replied. Her answer was painfully awkward and she physically cringed at her response.

"Okay, great! So I'll come by in a few to pick you up. Say, 8:30 ish, if that's okay with you?"

She glanced at the clock, 7:55pm. "Yeah, that's fine. I'll see you then!"

The two said their goodbyes and hung up. Then, when Ellie started on her way upstairs—again—the phone rang again. It was Roger, realizing he'd never asked for her address. They had a laugh about it before Ellie told him the information and she went to get ready.

---

masterlist | playlist

Taglist: @diaryofafan17 @tophats-n-lespauls @witchesdust @jonesyjonesyjonesy @paginate54 @hejustsatisfiess @salixfragilis @princesspagey @reincarnated70sbaby @rebel-without-a-zeppelin @kyunisixx if you want to be added to the list lmk!

2-12-21

7-13-21

[kindahoping4forever]

I’d Rather Be In Love // An Ashton Irwin 5 + 1 Fic

I had been feeling a bit off creatively so while I was on my Tumblr break, I started playing around with the 5 +1 fic format, mainly as a writing exercise; coming up with the overall “theme” and then thinking of the vignettes that would fit in with it is actually a pretty cool brainstorming activity. I don’t know what it was about this particular idea I had but once this popped into my head, I couldn’t stop writing and finished it in about a day. It’s a bit of a departure stylistically (and tonally?) for me so I was wayyyy needy and insecure about it so thank you (as always) to @cal-puddies​ for encouraging me and to @ashtonangst​ for hyping me up when I needed it.

Description: Five first times and one last time with Ashton

Warnings: Boyfriend!Ash (I mean), implied smut (it’s only implied, I know, I’m shocked too), mild angst, a lot of fluff (I know, I’m shocked too)

Word Count: 3,707

Masterlist // Taglist // Ko-Fi

Let  me  know  what  you  think!

————-

The First Meet

“I’d get comfortable if I were you, I’ve been sitting here for 20 minutes and haven’t seen a bartender yet.”

You’re not usually the type to talk to strangers in bars and you’re especially not the one to break the ice but there was something about this man that had you feeling bold. You’d been sitting at the back bar, people watching, waiting for your friends to arrive and he caught your attention as soon as he walked in. Hair slicked, perfectly styled save for one stray curl dangling in front of his eyes, crisp leather jacket and black jeans matched with a pressed button down shirt, impractically left unbuttoned enough to reveal a variety of necklaces and an alluring amount of chest hair. You never realized you found chest hair attractive until now. Huh.

He fixes his eyes on you and any nerves you were feeling are immediately drowned in a sparkling sea of hazel coloring and amused curiosity. “Is that so?” He replies in a voice tinged with an accent you can’t quite place. “This kind of thing happen here a lot?”

You grin, impressed by his smooth way of asking “do you come here often?” without actually saying the unoriginal phrase. “I’m a regular, can’t say that I’ve seen it before,” you eagerly take the bait. “The guy served me and a few others, dipped and hasn’t been back. The big crowd is always at the main bar at the front of the house, which is why I like to sit back here at this one.”

“I came back here for the same reason,” he smiles, sitting on the stool next to you, listening intently to your story.

“Smart man,” you flirt, trying not to think about how he’s now close enough you can smell his cologne.

You’re not sure how long you sit and talk with him - it feels like both a fleeting moment and a lengthy dream. You learn his name is Ashton, he’s a musician and like you, he was here to meet friends who ended up cancelling at the last minute. He asks you about your evening, your job, your life; you’re surprised at how easy it is to talk to him and how actually interested he seems in your answers.

After a while, Ashton looks around the bar and with still no barkeep in sight, he turns to you with a mischievous gleam in his eye and advises, “Keep a lookout?”

You watch enchanted as he confidently strides behind the bar and makes himself a drink. You raise an eyebrow at him and he holds a finger up, telling you to hold on; he reaches into his jacket and pulls out some cash that he leaves under a glass next to the cash register. “I’m thirsty, not a thief,” he explains as if this sequence of events were a totally normal thing to watch happen.

He sits his glass on the bar in front of where he was sitting and then stops to evaluate you for a moment; you feel yourself blush under his gaze. “Whiskey girl,” he declares, letting out a surprisingly adorable giggle when your shocked expression tells him he’s guessed correctly.

He serves your drink and casually comes around back to his seat, no one any the wiser. “Impressive,” you compliment, raising your glass to his. “Bartending skills aren’t too bad either.”

Ashton chuckles and you think to yourself you can’t imagine ever tiring of the sound. “To our friends and their flaky ways," he toasts. You clink glasses and his eyes never leave yours as you take your sips. He leans in and his hand grazes your arm; the feeling is so electric you nearly jump. "Glad they didn't show up, I think I'd rather spend my time with you."

————-

The First Time

"Should we take this to the bedroom?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

You snort at his cliched response and then gasp as he stands up from the couch, lifting you off his lap and locking your legs around his waist in one swift motion.

You were quite proud of yourself for not going home with Ashton that first night, even after talking at the bar until closing. You’d met him for drinks a couple more times that week and tonight when he asked you if you wanted to split some food at the bar, you figured that was dinner adjacent enough that this was essentially a date and you could reasonably justify inviting him back to yours.

You resume kissing as he starts down the hallway, accidentally bumping your back into the wall more than once. He briefly pulls away from your lips, muttering against them, "I have no fucking clue where your bedroom is located."

You affectionately snicker into his neck while pointing him in the right direction; your laughter sets him off and by the time he reaches your room, you're both giggling wildly. He drops you down onto the bed and you start wrestling with each other’s clothes. You immediately reach for his belt buckle but he grabs your hand and sternly warns, "The giggle train stops here, sweetheart, once the clothes come off, it's serious business."

This, of course, only makes you laugh more until you feel his lips on your neck and suddenly things feel a lot less hilarious.

Your hands and mouths eagerly get well acquainted with each other; you feel like you might burst into flames if things don’t progress sometime soon but you also feel like you could live off his exploratory kisses and surprised gasps if you had to.

You bite your lip to keep from smiling as he raises himself up from between your legs, hair goofily out of place thanks to the way you were tugging at it. Despite your best efforts to hide your amusement, he notices and playfully bites at your neck in protest.

“What did I say about your attitude, missy?” Ash taunts, smiling against your skin. “I’m putting in some of my best work here, you’re gonna give me a complex.”

You pull his face towards yours, kissing him deeply and hungrily. “Guess maybe you should try harder,” you tease, putting the emphasis on the word harder, reaching down to palm him.

He groans into your mouth and ruts into your hand. After a few more minutes of teasing, you pull away and direct him to the condoms you keep in your bedside table. You both get yourselves situated and when he finally enters you, you say a silent prayer of thanks to your friends for ditching you that first night.

He’s as attentive and communicative in bed as he is in conversation and your chemistry easily translates into one of the best first encounters you’ve had with someone. In the afterglow, you and Ashton lay there, catching your breath, joking and talking as if you’ve been lovers for years. You’re taken aback by the familiarity and fondness you feel but it doesn’t make you as nervous as you thought it might.

You excuse yourself to the bathroom and when you return, Ash is looking around the room, collecting his clothes that were strewn about.

Without thinking, you blurt out, “You’re welcome to stay the night.” Not wanting to be That Girl, you quickly try to save it. “It’s pretty late, I’m sure you’re tired, probably just want to crash… so… it’s cool if you’d like to do that here. Or, you know. You can go home. That’s cool too.”

He smirks at your obvious panic, walks over and kisses you. “I’d rather stay.”

————-

The First Doubt

“Is it weird I haven’t met your friends yet?”

Ashton’s quiet and it takes you a few seconds to scrounge up the courage to turn and face him; the question had been on your mind but you didn’t mean to let it out on a post-dinner car ride like this. It just happened.

"I don't know… is it?" He glances over at you before turning back to the road. "I'm not being an ass, that's a serious question. Is it? I just hadn't thought about it."

“You’ve met my friends?” You weakly offer, losing your nerve to have the conversation.

He makes a face. “I mean, just a couple of them,” he counters. “And that wasn’t even on purpose, that was just me not leaving your place in time before the brunch brigade showed up.”

You chew your lip, trying to think of how to word your concerns. “It’s just… we’ve been seeing each other for a minute and I think it’s going well -”

“It is,” he interjects, reaching over to grasp your knee reassuringly.

You lace your fingers in his, holding them in your lap. “I guess I was just thinking about it because of the other night when you made plans with me but forgot you had plans with them and I know they didn’t mind postponing but I wouldn’t have minded if they had just hung out with us,” you shrug.

“That option didn’t even cross my mind,” he admits quietly, eyes focused ahead.

“That’s kind of what bothers me,” you say, forcing a laugh so you don’t sound quite as pathetic as you feel. “Do you not think we’ll get along? Are you afraid they’ll embarrass you in front of me? I can’t think of anything I’d do that might embarrass you, but…”

“Baby, no,” he insists, giving your hand a strong squeeze. You smile to yourself - it happened so naturally, he might not realize it, but it’s the first time he’s called you “baby” outside of bed. The car pulls up to a stoplight and he turns to look at you. “You’re not even a little bit embarrassing, they’re definitely going to embarrass me but there’s nothing I can do about that and I do actually think you’d all get along.”

The light turns green and satisfied with his comfort, you’re prepared to drop the topic; it’s quiet for a couple minutes and then Ash is talking again. “If you want me to set something up, I can do that,” he thinks out loud. “I honestly just haven’t thought about it because when I think about wanting to spend time with you, I want to spend time with you… don’t tell anyone, but I like you a lot better than them.”

You grin and lean across the car to kiss his cheek, giving his hair a good tousle. “This is actually probably something that would qualify as embarrassing, huh?” You giggle, trying to finger brush his hair back into place. “Probably shouldn't do that around the boys.”

He flashes you a beaming smile and a light-hearted shrug. “I mean… I’d rather you didn’t.”

————-

The First I Love You

“Oh good, you're here! Can you reach that container on the top shelf with the blue lid? I don't know where the step stool went."

"Happy to see you too," he jokes. "I knew you were only dating me for my height."

"Please, you're not even that tall," you jab, pecking his lips lightly as he hands you the item you requested.

Ash looks around your kitchen, overwhelmed at the mess; he's glad he arrived early so he can help you get things in order. It was his turn this week to host game night for his (and now your) friend group and you offered to hold it at your place; when you insisted on also providing the food, he never imagined you'd go all out like this.

He lightly smacks your ass before peeling off his jacket and walking over to the sink, to turn on the tap and start washing your collection of dirty dishes.

"You should really let me buy you that dishwasher like we talked about," he declares. "Save you so much time and energy, babe."

You press a kiss to his neck tattoo and then hoist yourself to sit on the counter to continue your conversation. "And like I told you, I wouldn't use it enough to justify it," you insist. "My lease will be up next year and I really only need it when I have people over, which is never."

"Well with the way everyone's feasting tonight, I'd say that's definitely going to change," he chuckles, handing you a bowl to dry. "What's on the menu tonight?"

You happily rattle off the list of food you'd spent the day preparing: homemade pizzas for dinner, dips and salsas for snacks, various cookies and mini cakes for dessert. For most dishes, you'd provided both vegan and non-vegan options and had placed them in specifically colored containers to keep track.

Ashton stops the sink and comes to stand between your legs; you look at him curiously as he takes the plate you're drying out of your hands and sits it aside.

"It's really sweet that you went to so much trouble," he says thoughtfully, playing with the hem of your lounge shorts. "You know you didn't have to."

"I know… But I wanted to," you pause a second, evaluating the large stack of containers on the counter opposite you. Your eyes widen and you start rambling, "Oh god, I'm trying way too hard, aren't I? I didn't even think about it, I just went for it, how embarrassing, they already like me, why did I do this? We can stash this stuff and just order something, like normal people would, Jesus Christ, who makes pizza from scratch for game night, I cannot believe ---"

Your rant is cut off by your boyfriend's lips quieting yours. It's a sweet kiss; passion-filled but soft and ultimately reassuring. He laughs softly against your lips, "I love you."

You pull away to study his face, you're not sure why your first instinct is to ask if he's joking but judging from the fondness in his eyes, you know he's not.

He senses your uncertainty and doubles down on his statement. "I love you and I love that you care enough about something as stupid as game night to do all this." He kisses your forehead. "And everyone else is gonna love it too."

You pull his chin towards you and kiss him slowly, deliberately, joyfully. When you're done, you pull him close to you, wrapping your arms around his broad build, burying your face in his neck. "I love you too, by the way," you share.

“Glad to hear it,” he responds. You can hear the smile in his voice. Suddenly, he’s hooking your legs around his waist and lifting you off the counter, carrying you out of the kitchen towards your bedroom.

You giggle, “Ash, what are you doing? Everyone’s gonna be here in less than an hour, we’ve got to set up!”

He shakes his head. “They can wait, I'd rather show you how much I love you.”

————-

The First Fight

“I honestly didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

“It’s just wild that you thought this would be uninteresting to me."

You take a deep breath. “I never said I didn’t think you’d be interested, I said I didn’t see why you were so upset, seeing as it wasn’t going to affect you at all,” you state as calmly as you can.

“My girlfriend moving across the country sure as fuck sounds like something that would affect me,” Ashton snipes.

“For a few months, during most of which you’ll be on tour,” you emphasize, patience beginning to wear. “Also love how you only ever call me your girlfriend when you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not mad, I’m disappointed.”

“There’s no way you actually just used that phrase right now, you’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

He huffs and begins pacing around the room while you sit on the couch, shaking your head. He borrowed your computer while you got ready for your date - which would have been fine except you’d left your email logged in, making him the inadvertent audience to new messages in a thread titled “NYC housing options.”

“You don’t even like your job,” he says incredulously.

“No, you don’t like my job,” you clarify.

“I don’t like how stressed and upset it makes you and I don’t understand why you’d want to devote months of extra hard work and more training for something that doesn’t even fulfill you,” he says matter of factly.

“The doors this could open for me have the potential to make my job more fulfilling - ” you start to explain.

He cuts you off, “Why don’t you just do something fulfilling in the first place?”

You purse your lips, getting angry. “Well, we can’t all be pure intentioned virtuoso artists like you, Ash.”

“Don’t be mean, I’m just trying to understand what’s happening,” he says, exasperated and scowling.

He sits on the opposite end of the couch, running a hand through his hair. You can tell he’s not just mad, he’s hurt. You’ve had fights before but they were trivial and easily resolved; this was something else entirely.

You inch closer to him. “I promise I wasn’t intentionally keeping it from you,” you say carefully. “I legitimately thought since it wasn’t a done deal that it didn’t matter. I’m just being considered for the program.”

Ashton toys with the rings on his fingers, avoiding your eyes. “But why wouldn’t you have told me it was even a possibility, why wouldn’t you have wanted to celebrate that your boss thought of you for this? If it’s something that exciting and important enough to you that you’re considering upending your life for it, why wouldn’t you want to share that with me?”

“I don’t know,” you confess. “...I guess I just didn’t think it was that serious.”

“It’s serious enough that you’re already looking at apartments,” he notes, jaw clenching.

You’re silent; he has a point.

You exhale slowly. “I think part of me was maybe afraid that something like this might happen,” you share quietly.

“So then you did keep it from me,” he accuses.

“No, I think I was just… procrastinating?” You lamely defend.

Ash is cool and eerily reserved as he responds, “Just to be clear: I’m not upset about your offer, I’m upset that you clearly don’t care enough to include me in the important parts of your life. I share everything with you.”

You blink in disbelief. “That’s not fair, you’re not listening to me at all.”

He shrugs, disinterested. “Tell me where I’m wrong.”

“Tell me you’re not just mad that I’ll be too busy to follow you around on tour like some starry-eyed groupie,” you toss out, irritated.

He scoffs, “At least the groupies are honest about what they want from me.”

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep your hot, angry tears from falling; you refuse to let him see you cry. “You should leave,” you announce flatly.

“Gladly,” he agrees darkly, standing up. “I'd rather be anywhere else.”

————-

The Last Night

“Thank you for being here for this... you didn’t have to be."

“Of course I did, don’t be ridiculous,” Ashton says. “I want to help plus it'd be kind of shitty for me to let you do all this on your own.”

You shake your head appreciatively. “Yeah but going from literally stepping off of a tour bus to loading all my stuff into a moving van is a lot.”

“Well I didn’t literally do that, I drove my own car here,” he jokes.

“You’re the absolute worst,” you deadpan.

“I’ve heard that before,” he grins.

You stick your tongue out at him and then yelp as he grabs you by the waist, wrapping you in his arms, pressing an absurd amount of kisses to your face.

Giggling, you escape from his embrace and go back to stacking the boxes left in the room, making sure everything is correctly labeled and sealed with tape.

"What room do you want this sorted into?" Ash asks, holding up a bag filled with various tubes of lotion.

You squint, trying to see which products are inside. "Uh… that can be bathroom," you direct, pointing to a box to his left.

He holds up a stack of plastic novelty cups. "Kitchen?"

You shake your head. "I actually use those on my desk - that box is over here." He passes them to you and you blow a kiss in response.

You both quietly continue organizing but you keep feeling Ash's eyes on you, studying your demeanor. Finally, he asks, "So… last night in your very own LA apartment… how are you feeling?"

You honestly hadn't stopped to ask yourself that question yet so you use this moment to take a break and ponder your feelings. You flop yourself onto the bare mattress that’s been left in the middle of the room for you to sleep on and stare at the ceiling.

"...Fine? I mean, it's weird," you share, sorting through your thoughts. "Obviously I've lived other places but this… y'know… this move feels different."

He smiles softly at you and sits on the edge of the mattress. "That's because it is," he states. "Bigger milestone, bigger plans…" He mindlessly digs through a box by the bed, you reach out and lightly rub his back.

"Definitely bigger as far as how much I'm moving - how do I have so much stuff?" You joke, gesturing around the room.

He snorts. "I was thinking the same thing," he teases. "See, I should've asked you to move in with me as soon as you got back from New York last year. You could've made do with just what you had in that small ass apartment, problem solved."

You laugh heartily, your exhaustion and excitement making his joke a lot funnier than it actually is. You check your phone for the time and sigh. "Think we should call it, babe. We can finish up in the morning."

He sets aside the box he was looking through. "Well we already packed up your TV and stereo, what do you want to do for the rest of the night? It's still kind of early," he shrugs.

“What’s the opposite of christening a place?” You coyly ask, striking a pose. “Because I vote we do that.”

Ashton smirks, moving to lay beside you on the bed. “Nothing I’d rather do.”

————-

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[qjhughes]

Just Physical

Pairing: FWB! Tom Holland x Reader

Word Count: 1.5k+

Summary: Being friends with benefits was all good, until you broke the rules of your agreement.

Warning(s): Talk of sex (no smut or even slightly descriptive stuff hehe), some cursing, mutual pining with neither knowing (dumbassery) 

A/N: Here is one of the 43 drafts that I had unfinished. Now there are only 42!! We’re making progress :))

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Masterlist

You couldn’t do it anymore.

You had started this months ago. A fun, no-strings attached ‘relationship’ with the one and only Tom Holland. You thought it would be easy. He was an insufferable, egotistical douchebag. Plus, it was just sex. 

But then it turned into more than that. A month after the agreement, he stopped leaving your apartment directly after you both had finished. He started staying the night. You would wake up to the smell of pancakes or eggs if he was up before you.

And then there were the days that you woke up first. You would be cooking and he would stumble into the kitchen groggily, and wrap his arms around you from behind and just bury his head into your neck. 

You would stay with him until you were done cooking. Then you would eat together.

You should have known. The more that you hung out with him, the more attractive, the more appealing, he became to you. 

Then it started to become a whole lot more than just sex.

You knew that this was bad. You fell for the one person that you had sworn you wouldn’t. Hell, you had a whole fucking agreement based on it. No feelings on either side.

And God, you had tried your best to ignore the feelings that had developed. But it was so, so hard.  

I mean, come on, the boy was perfect. 

He had the mop of brown curls that fell just right on his forehead, no matter what he was doing. He had the prettiest brown eyes that you had ever seen. Yeah, most people would say that brown is a boring eye color, but there was something about Tom’s that made you want to look into them for hours on end. He had this amazing body, fit, muscular. He was a perfect 10 in the looks department.

But you weren’t that shallow. It wasn’t just his looks that made you begin to fall for him.

To be honest, it had absolutely nothing to do with his looks. Yeah, he was one fine man, but who he was when he was with you was what made you catch feelings. 

He was so sweet, even if he wasn’t in between your legs. 

You would be driving around town, him at the wheel and you in the passenger seat. He would have his hand on your thigh, but during these times it was never in a sexual way, it was more for comfort. When he would come to a stoplight, he would look over at you, catch you staring, (which you did quite a lot. I mean how could you not?), and make some comment about it like “take a picture darling, it’ll last longer” to which you would blush at.

One of these particular times, Tom had done something completely unexpected.

He stopped, looked at you, and said “So, about that picture you seem to want…”

You just looked at him in pure confusion, your mind tended to not work very well when you were around him. Hard to concentrate when you were in his presence.  

“So you don’t have to stare at me all the time.” He says like it was so obvious, and in hindsight, it probably should have been. “Would you wanna take that picture?”

“I mean, I guess. I’d need to get my camera though.” You say. The look in his eyes letting you know that you were clearly not understanding what he was saying.

“No, I want you to take a picture of us. Like right now.” He chuckles out.

So, you did. You took the picture of you both smiling and then he insisted on another. This one with him kissing your cheek, the blush that he says he ‘loves so much, darling’ littering your cheeks.

“AirDrop me those.” He says, and you comply, without question.

At the next red light that he came to, he unlocked his phone and set the second picture as his lock screen.

Your heart did a flip at that and you did the same. You thought that it was the cutest thing that Tom had ever done with you. It was like there was something more than just sex between you to him and that made you so freaking happy.

You had thought about that day a lot. Like, a lot a lot. 

And that was what finally pushed you to talk to him about it.

“Hey, Tommy, can I talk to you about something real quick?” You say into your phone, knowing he was on his way.

“Yeah, darling. I’ll be at your house in just a second if you wanna wait. If not, go ahead.” He responds, making your heart flip at the pet name.

“I can wait. I’ll see you in a second.”

And you do. Within the minute, he’s knocking on your door. 

You rush to let him in, wiping your sweaty palms on your jeans before opening the door. You try to hide the nervousness with a smile so he doesn’t know how flustered you truly are about what you’re about to tell him.

But, of course, he knows you better than that.

“Hey, darling, I brou- wait, what’s wrong, love?” He looks so concerned, but that just makes you even more nervous. What if he doesn’t feel the same way and you never get to see that face again?

“Um, I just needed to talk to you about something.” You say, fiddling with your hands.

“Come on, darling, let’s sit down. You know that you don’t have to be nervous about talking to me about anything, right?” He leads you over to the couch and you give him a small nod.

You do know that, but this was different. You were about to hand him your heart and hope that he didn’t crush it into a million pieces.

“I-I um, I just needed to tell you something. And I don’t know how you’re going to react and it’s a little scary.” He looks at you for a moment.

“Y/n are you pregnant?” You giggle before you realize that he’s being completely serious.

“No, Tommy, I’m not pregnant.”

“Well, look, love. Nothing that you can tell me is going to make me run away from you. Not even if you were pregnant. Because that would be my little thing, too. So, you don’t have to be nervous about it. Whatever it is.” He takes your hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze, letting you know that it’s safe to tell him.

“Um, so we made this agreement, right? And it was just sex, no feelings. Well, um, I kind of, you know, broke those terms. And I know, I know. I promised. I said no strings attached. I shook on it. But God, Tom, you make it so hard. You started spending more time around me, which you explained, of course. Don’t want anyone else sleeping with me while you are. Had to make them think that we were something. But you didn’t just make them think it, Tom. You made me think it. I found myself wishing that the whole thing was real and I just-” There are tears in your eyes, making his figure in front of you blurry.

“Y/n…”

“No, no, don't say anything yet. I need to get this out. Um, so I started finding myself not realizing what was real and what was an act. And that started messing with my head. And I know that you don’t have feelings for me, Tom. I do, I just needed you to know that, um, I’m kinda, sorta, maybe falling for you.”

You look down at your hands, not being able to keep the tears in any longer.

“Love?” Tom puts his finger under your chin and lifts your head until you’re looking at him.

“Y-yeah?”

“Look, I know that we agreed that this was just physical, but I broke that too. I made that excuse when you asked why I was spending so much time with you because I thought you wouldn’t want me to be around you. You make my whole day brighter, darling. That’s why I’m here with you all the time. I want to be around you. Yeah, this started as a physical relationship, but I want so much more. I want to wake up with you every morning and know that you’re mine. Know that I don’t have to leave at some point to go back to an empty apartment. I want to have you steal my clothes all the time, not just after sex.”

“R-really?”

“Yes, darling. I am so whipped for you that it’s kind of crazy. So, um, since we got the whole confrontation thing out of the way, do you maybe want to, um, go out with me? Like for real? I want to do this right.” He looks down at his hand that’s intertwined with mine.

“Y-yeah, of course.”

He pulls you into a warm embrace and kisses your forehead.

“Thank fuck. I was terrified you might still say no.”

You laugh at that, mumbling a “not a chance” into his chest before cuddling into him and drifting off into a peaceful sleep, knowing that he was there to stay.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter eleven: the end of the world

The next morning was a cold, gray, and soggy one, but Sam had no intention on returning to Louie's apartment for another round that day: she had already packed her things in the back seat and she nestled down in the front seat with her arms folded across her chest and the lapels of her jacket pulled up to her ears. She had no hood or something to cover her head but she wished for one. She didn't want to be seen. Louie himself meanwhile, locked the door behind him and he headed down the steps. She looked on at him as he rounded the front end of the car and opened the door. She sighed through her nose as he climbed into the front seat.

“You okay?” he asked her in a low voice, and she nodded her head.

“Look—I was thinking about this last night before I fell asleep, too,” he started, “neither of us mean to inflame or kick up any old wounds with anyone. We're just—fooling around, messing around, you know?”

She gazed out the window right as he said that. She had nothing to say to that.

“If either of us made you uncomfortable—and I can tell we did—we didn't mean to. I didn't mean to, and I know Alex didn't mean to, either. And for that, I want to personally apologize to you for it.”

Sam never moved from her spot in the seat next to him. She couldn't hardly stop thinking about any of what went down the night before, such that it almost brought a tear to her eye.

“Also—I, uh—” he stammered and then he cleared his throat, “—hate to tell you this, but I'm kinda out of money.”

She turned her attention over to him and frowned.

“What do you mean you're out of money?” she demanded.

“I'm out of money,” he repeated, “well, for now anyway. Remember what I said yesterday, I had enough for breakfast and a cab?”

“Oh, right, right.” She hesitated. “So what's this mean?”

“Well, I have a full tank of fuel to start with,” he stated, to which she frowned and scoffed at that.

“Louie, we're not driving back to Elsinore from here—it's too far.” She was scorn.

“But the train already left, though,” he pointed out. “It's kind of overkill to fly on down to Elsinore, too.”

She sighed through her nose again.

“Don't really feel like driving through the valley, either,” he added.

“Yeah, it's boring as hell,” she said in a soft voice.

“Boring as hell and still hot as fuck, too,” he said, “at least here we have a bit of leeway with the San Francisco fog. Seven hours of nothin'.” He paused for a second. “We could take the coast.”

“That's longer, though,” she pointed out.

“Nicer, though,” he insisted.

“True. It's way nicer, actually.”

“Bet you've missed the Pacific Coast, too,” he said.

“I have—it's one of the many things I haven't been able to do like at all. Especially when I was growing up out here.”

“Really?” Louie was genuinely taken aback by that.

“Yeah.”

“Well, let's—” He set his hand on the ignition key and turned it. “Let's.”

Sam strapped herself in and Louie shook his head of hair about a bit.

“One thing I really wanted to do with Zelda,” he started again as he pulled on the parking lever, “when we were together was go on a road trip with her somewhere. I always considered driving from Providence down to some place like D.C., or go all the way down to like West Virginia. The two of us on a trip together and just hanging out together.”

“What kept you from doing it?” she asked him.

“Touring and making albums—and dealing with record company horse shit in her case—and in my case it was living a double life. There was no way I could do it, not with my other life in full swing.”

They pulled ahead and began up the block, around the cemetery and towards the block on the other side.

“So—I haven't really taken the Pacific Coast Highway much from my place so just kind of—like—bear with me here,” he sputtered.

“It's okay, it's okay.”

Louie glanced over at her at one point as they rolled up to a stoplight.

“You know—and I'm being perfectly honest with you here, Sam—I'm a little intimidated by you,” he confessed.

“You?” she asked him.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I dunno,” he replied with a shake of his head, “but there's just something about you that completely intimidates me. Like it's hard for me to maintain composure when I'm near you.”

“There's no reason to be, though,” she promised him.

“But I feel it anyways, though. It could be because you made a bold move in moving across the country and back again, but I can't really say for sure.”

“Funny you say that 'cause you did that,” she pointed out.

“True. But see, you weren't living a double life like I was.”

“I mean, I kinda am now,” she assured him.

“How so?”

“Joey doesn't know about Bill. He also doesn't know that I'm hanging out with you guys, either. For the record, Bill doesn't know that I'm hanging out with you guys, either. It's like a triangle of sorts with me come to think of it.”

“A delta,” said Louie.

“A delta?”

“Yeah. You know the Greek letter delta?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah!”

“Apparently in the realm of science, it's symbolic of change. Like change in temperature or heat.”

“How do you know that?”

“I dunno if she's shown you this but Morgan—you know, Morgan from the Cherry Suicides—has this old chemistry textbook back at her place. She found it in the garbage believe it or not.”

“Something wrong about that,” Sam declared.

“Oh, yeah. Unless it's actually trash, books do not belong in the trash. But yeah, she found it and I just happened to prop it open one day, and I read a tidbit in a chapter about equations at one point.”

“Huh. Bill has a bunch of old books at his place—mostly old literature, but it's worth a peek, though. I keep meaning to crack them open but I'm not sure where to begin.”

The light turned green and Louie lunged ahead on the street. The clouds hung even lower over them as he merged lanes and they headed for the 880 Freeway. To the right of them was the stretch of gray waters that made up the very Bay itself.

“If you ever come back up here this way,” he started again, “you know you're in a car on the P.C.H., you've got to cross the Golden Gate Bridge at some point. There's just—something majestic about it, even if you've lived here your whole life like the five of us. Well, four of us, anyway, unless Chuck was telling a fib about where he was born. This will take us right by Santa Clara and down to the interchange in San Jose, which'll in turn take us all the way down the coastline to the City of Angels.”

Sam nodded her head and she peered out the windshield to the gray overhead. To think that the assumption with the California coast was all bright sunshine and infinite beaches: it made her laugh the more in which she thought about it.

“What's even the deal with him, anyway?” Louie asked her out of the blue.

“Who, Bill?” She looked over at him with her eyebrows knitted together and he took a glimpse over at her.

“Yeah.”

“Well,” she began, “I mean, you were sitting right there when I called Chuck and told him what was going on.”

“Pff, how could I forget? But what I'm asking is—is there like a time limit with him? Like you signed a marriage contract plus a prenup but surely someone over at the school has to figure that out at some point because it's totally illegal. Setting you up like that and forcing you into something that you had no desire to get into and then threatening a whole bunch of bullshit with you like locking you in your room and forbidding you from going out and visiting people.”

“Well, when I first came out here and I spoke to Marla over the phone—you know, she's been trying to get a job and she finally did with Belinda up in Albany. But she went to the school and she told them that he was still on the payroll. He got fired, Louie, but there was some weird glitch of some sort so he still got paid and he got paid a lot of money, too. So he was able to afford that large house and care for his daughters, such that he enlisted them in a private school.”

“So he loses his paycheck, he's fucked, basically,” he followed along.

“Yeah. Unless he got something to help him out when we weren't looking, he's probably got to pull the girls out of school and sell the house.”

“And what happens to you if and when that happens?” he asked her.

“I—” She froze. Louie glanced over at her with his eyebrows raised. “I—don't know. Oh, wait!” She snapped her fingers.

“What's that?”

“My mom's moving down to the Southland soon. Where exactly is another question, though. She might be going out to Catalina or she might be going to San Pedro, I dunno.”

“Or you can go back to Joey,” he pointed out. “You know, make things easier on your mom. It's another cross country, for sure, but I feel it'd be more beneficial to take that risk again and go with him rather than put extra pressure on your mom like that. But that's my opinion, though. You do whatever you want.”

“There should be a way to null it, too,” she added.

“Yeah, being in a car with another dude,” he joked, and that brought a laugh out of her.

Within time, signs for the interchange came into their view and Louie took the next exit which looped around and met up with the Pacific Coast Highway. Right as they matched up with the pavement, the clouds over them swirled about like the old feathers or the wisps of paint mixed into the wash for a watercolor project. She looked out to the low hills off to the right, all of them different shades of green and yellow. All of them still that rich green despite the late summer. All of them still rich dark green despite the yellow dead grass everywhere. The clouds overhead beckoned rain but at the same time waned away from the coast line.

Such a strange position to be in as was the state of California, but that pocket there, the hills that followed her and Louie all along the highway on that lengthy seven hour drive, reminded her of that special place.

The quiet place. The spot that she and Charlie had found together and the place where she and Joey visited during their final days together.

“This is almost like the precious part of California,” she noted aloud.

“Nah, the eastern Sierra is the precious part of California in my opinion,” he said. “There's something lonely and ancient about the eastern Sierra Nevadas.”

“This whole area here reminds me of a place that Charlie and I found together when they were making the Stormtroopers of Death album,” she followed up.

“Really?”

“It was like this little nook in the trees down the street from the studio,” she explained as she returned her attention to him. “We called it 'the quiet place' because you go in there and it's like completely untouched in comparison to everything else. You walk down the street and you have to duck underneath the trees as you're going in there.”

“Sounds like something you keep a secret,” he remarked.

“I told Joey about it, though,” she told him. “I imagine upstate being covered in places like that.”

“Places you go to that no one else knows about,” he followed along. “This part of California and the eastern Sierra is like that, too. Lots of nooks and crannies and what have you. Like there's a place outside of Salinas—I'll have to show it to you when we get there. It's closer to Monterey Bay, though, which means we'll have to leave this highway, though.”

“It's okay—it'll get us over to the ocean.”

“The ocean makes everything better,” he remarked.

The highway took them down past Morgan Hill and then Gilroy: at one point the road turned towards Monterey Bay; off in the distance loomed those cold dark gray waters that seemed to stretch on forever. The view enlarged as they came closer and closer to the next turn off and the 156: Louie told her it would take them to Highway 1, which would in turn take them to the place he had in mind. At that point, the clouds increased and everything grew dark despite it being almost ten o'clock in the morning.

“While we're over here, you don't mind spending a little money for breakfast, do you?” he asked her at one point.

“Not at all. I was just gonna ask you if you're hungry at all.”

He showed her a grin in response, and then he pointed out the windshield to the next sign up ahead: the town of Castroville as well as the turn off to Highway 1.

“So anyway, this place—it's over by the Salinas River, which eventually heads out to the ocean,” he explained. “When I first met Zelda, and I was waffling on if I wanted to go with her or stay with my concurrent girlfriend and our baby, I always came here. It always helped me clear my head to drive down here when the baby fell asleep and Zelda was back in Rhode Island. I remember staying down here for a full afternoon once. Like I didn't get back home until well after the sun went down. Needless to say, I almost got in trouble for that.”

She laughed at that, and he gave his long smooth hair a little toss back from his face and the side of his neck.

“And the highway will take us all the way down the coastline, too. Take us down to Big Sur and all around the coast, all the way down to San Simeon and Cambria, and then Morro Bay, and then that'll take us over to San Luis Obispo and that's where we meet up with 101 again.”

“And that'll take us all the way back to L.A., too.”

He nodded his head at that, and then Sam cleared her throat.

“I don't think I get Alex,” she confessed.

“A lot of people don't,” he assured her with a straight face.

“It's funny, he said the exact same thing to me,” she recalled. “Word for word.”

“Well, because it's true! A lot of people don't get Alex. That kid is a bundle of contradictions, many of which are not for the faint of heart. I've only known him for a few years but can confirm that, though. And what's mind blowing to me is he's completely aware of it, too. I remember the first time I got into an in-depth conversation with him a few years ago when Testament first formed and we were still Legacy. Sam, I never had such a worse headache.”

“Well, like. For example, when we were in Germany and he and I spent a whole day together—”

“And he missed the train?” he finished for her. “Chuck told me.”

“Yeah, he missed the train and he got upset with me when I tried to grab his attention and get him to come onboard. Then the fireball happened and he realized the error of his ways and we patched it up. And then, you know last night, he opened up the wound over Cliff with me.”

“The fireball happened and what exactly did he do there?”

“I put my arms around him and held him close to me,” she explained. “Wept like a baby right into my chest.”

“He probably liked to feel your chest,” he pointed out.

“What makes you think that?”

“Sam—he's nineteen, soon to be twenty. When I was nineteen, that was all I ever thought about were touching and feeling boobs and clits. We're horny bastards at that age, and I would imagine that he is especially, too. Alex is bit of a nerd—it's the whole thing about how girls don't really talk to nerds.”

“But he's a guitar player, though. I would imagine the girls getting all hot and bothered to guitar players.”

“Not Alex and not our crowds, no. He's like the thinking man's guitarist. I'm sure you've seen him before a television.”

“Oh, yeah, he's all over news reports whenever they come on. Well, I was with you guys in Boston and he and Greg were right before the TV in the room there.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right! But still—at the end of the day, even with his large brain and social scientist parents, he's still a guy. And he probably wanted to feel something soft and warm and comfy.” Louie glimpsed over at her. “You said he was scared, right?”

“Yeah. It was right when that big fireball went up. He just—came over to me and burst into tears at the sight of it. I held him so close to me and I let him weep into my chest.”

“Well—if you see him next time, really pay attention to his behavior towards you,” he advised her. “If he's actually sincere with you, then it's probably because he's confused and his inexperience is showing. If not, like if he gets close to you again, then don't bother with him for a second longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“What I'm saying is he either wants you for you or he's using you,” he explained. “I wish I could tell you more about it, but I'm not Alex, though. I can only tell you what I know from being in between two women for a couple of years.” He shook his hair again and then raked his fingers through one side: outside, the signs for Castroville emerged from the scraggly shrubs on either side of the road.

“I imagine him being soft and sweet, though,” he confessed in a low voice, such that it took her aback to hear that.

“Is—there something about him that you see with him?” she sputtered out as she took a glimpse over at him with a bewildered look on her face. Louie bowed his head and cleared his throat.

“Let me ask you a question,” he said as he leaned his head closer to her.

“Okay.”

“Does it bother you at all—” She could tell that he chose his words with care. “—when a guy finds another guy attractive and it's obvious he's not gay at all?”

She opened her mouth to say something to that, but no sound came out.

“Take as much time as you need to answer that, too,” he assured her, “—I asked Zelda this once and she really had to think about it.”

She thought of all the times that she made art while in class, and she thought of the time that she drew Marla in her journal. It wasn't until she really got to know Marla as well as Belinda when she began to see them as a couple of beautiful women. Indeed, as she thought about their willingness to help her out even while she had posted up out on the West Coast, the more she wondered if the whole thing extended further than their smooth New Yorker skin. Further than Marla's colorful hair and further than Belinda's soft doll like features. There was something more to Alex, much like there was something more to Louie in the seat there next to her, and there had to be something more to herself as well. More to them all, and the fact that she and Louie both had a quiet place, a place where they went that fell on blind eyes, was enough to give her a clue.

The hidden spots and everything in between. It was only the beginning.

And thus it only made sense to her to realize that it resided with everyone, including Alex himself.

“No,” she replied after a long while. “No, it doesn't bother me at all.”

“Okay,” Louie proclaimed as they rolled into Castroville. “Sometimes I look at Alex and I think, 'god, he's a really beautiful boy. I imagine being the perfect cuddler, like he must be adept to snuggling and feeling soft underneath a bunch of blankets.' Not necessarily sexy, although he does have a nice chest and thighs.”

“Nice arms, too,” she said in a soft voice.

“Yeah, he's got those really lanky strong guitar player arms.”

“Hey, you've got nice arms, too, Lewis,” she declared.

“Drummer arms.” He shook his right elbow about: his muscles were tight and sinewy.

“Reminds me of Joey's arms,” she said.

“Oh, yeah, that's right! He's a drummer, too.”

“Drummer and a hockey player.”

Louie took the first exit off into that small town and Sam volunteered to buy the both of them cups of coffee and a couple of scones for themselves: she took a chocolate one where he took a peach one for himself.

Within time, they climbed back into the car and Louie guided her over to the spot in question, right down by the Salinas River and where it widened out before it reached the ocean in small narrow fashion. It was there that the shades of yellow that followed them out of the Bay Area returned to that rich dark green that reminded her of New York. The space in the forest outside of the studio where she and Charlie ventured to together, and then she and Joey visited under a blanket of pure white snow.

“We all have a quiet place,” she declared.

“We really do,” Louie said as he sipped on his coffee.

“We all have a house and a home, even if it isn't physical,” she said.

“Yeah, we all have an attic. We all have secrets. We all have things that we show to everyone.”

“We all have things that we've buried—skeletons in the closet,” she muttered.

“And we all have a quiet place,” he added with a raise of his eyebrows.

He took the next right turn, one that brought them down the Salinas River and away from civilization. All the while, the ponderosa pines stretched high up into the sky around them, all up into those low dark swirling clouds that enveloped them in a blanket of coziness. Soon, the pavement gave way to gravel and broken pieces of pavement itself; and every so often, Sam spotted a series of shrubs all over the places, shrubs with little light pink and pearly white flowers.

“The rhododendrons are still in bloom I see,” Louie remarked.

“I don't think I've actually seen those before,” she confessed; the whole scenery made her think of the hole in the wall back in Ithaca. “They only grow here on the coast and in northern Nevada, we have all manner of pines and trees but nothing like this, though. Nothing as delicate and fluffy as those, though.”

“You guys get oleanders down in the Southland. I've seen those a number of times, they're quite lovely.”

“Oh, yeah. Only drawback with oleanders is they grow like weeds down there. Which is absolutely amazing to me because they're very poisonous.”

“At least it's not strychnine,” he told her. “Strychnine or—better yet deadly nightshade.” And Joey entered her mind right as that final word left his lips. “I don't even know if strychnine grows out here,” he continued.

“Yeah, I don't know, either...” Her voice trailed off at that. She thought about Joey and what he was doing right at that moment. They were still touring over in Europe and they were about to drop their brand new album in the meantime as well. If nothing else when she got back to Lake Elsinore, she had to pick up a copy of that.

She would have to search about for that familiar lettering: she knew it when she saw it.

“There should be a garden somewhere,” he continued, “one full of poison plants.”

“The most dangerous garden in the world,” she declared.

“We should literally call it that.”

“'We'?”

“'They', I should say,” he corrected himself; before them, the little road led to that wide part of the river. Big lush ponderosas as well as oak trees with large wide green leaves the size of dinner plates and tall narrow trees with high canopies surrounded them.

“I was just gonna say—do you really wanna go there, Louie?”

“Unless you wanna.” He tugged on the parking lever and switched off the car. “I ain't gonna do it unless you want to do it.”

“We gotta be careful, though,” she pointed out.

“Oh, absolutely. That's something that's just not for the faint of heart. The quintessential declaration of 'you can look but don't touch'. Might wanna throw in a 'for the love of god' in there, too. 'You can look but for the love of god, do not touch.'”

“'Welcome to Shelley and Clemente's poison garden,'” she declared with a gesture of her hand, “the most dangerous garden on Earth. We've got everything from strychnine to belladonna to oleanders to—whatever else we can find. Have it all together under one umbrella. You and me—we could retire off the profits.”

“You think people would actually pay money to see that?” he asked her, stunned.

“Yeah. People pay money to see the weirdest shit, Louie.”

“Case in point!” He gestured to himself.

“You guys aren't weird,” she assured him.

“Yes, we are. We're as weird as weird can possibly be.” He sipped on his coffee a bit more and then he unbuckled his seat belt. “Anyways, this is where I come to clear my head. I call this place 'the end of the world' 'cause it's far removed away from anything. It's only ten miles back to Castroville but—still.”

They both climbed out of there in unison; Sam peered up to the gray sky overhead and she took in the smell of the salt as it filtered in through the trees before them. The Salinas River flowed right next to the small stretch of gravel and partially collapsed pavement.

“This is like the perfect place for a poison garden,” she told him as he led her to the soft dark river bank.

“Oh, yeah, this lush soil here. Look up the plants and see what kind of environment they thrive in.”

“I do know oleanders like heat,” she told him, “it's why they're everywhere in the L.A. area and in the south, too.”

“Have a special greenhouse for those guys,” he continued as he held his cup of coffee close to his chest. “Kinda clean up the pavement behind us a bit so—Skolnick can drive around on it on his—golf—cart.”

“Shelley and Clemente's poison garden—featuring Alex Skolnick's golf cart.” She laughed at that and he laughed with her.

“Can you imagine Alex on a golf cart?” he asked her, and then he held out his arms, “'oh! Oh god! Oh god here we go!'” And he lowered his voice to where he almost matched Alex's tone.

“Four wheelin' on a golf cart,” she laughed some more.

“Hey, Alex! Take it easy, little man!” Louie lowered his voice to a near whisper. “There's stuff in here that'll kill you faster than you can say your middle name!” He shook his head and chuckled some more, and then he took another sip of his coffee.

“So what's the quiet place like?” he asked her as they neared the river's edge.

“In upstate?”

“Yeah.”

“It's about like this, without the river, of course. There was another spot that Joey and I went to when Stormtroopers were in Ithaca a few summers ago—right by the water's edge at the one lake—one of the Finger Lakes that's there. It kind of reminds me of that, like I'm getting the same feeling as that.”

They stopped at the water's edge and Sam leaned out a little bit for a view beyond the trees. The stretch of rich black and gray that was the Pacific Ocean, a mere stone's throw up ahead of them. Even though Louie had a different opinion, Sam couldn't help but feel that there was something prehistoric about this part of the river; something precious and untouched.

“Sometimes, when it's a bit sunnier out,” he started again, “I'll kneel down to the waters here and search around for insects and rocks and stuff. There's a lot of bizarre life here that's endemic only to this part of the river and as far as I know, the whole state.”

“Kind of like a 'keep it forever' sort of thing,” she noted.

“Exactly, right. Keep this whole place hidden away from the world so as to protect it from everything and everyone. Eastern Sierra is the same way. Exact same way.” He sipped on his coffee once again.

“C'mon, I think it's gonna rain—I feel it.”

They returned to the car and sure enough, as Louie fired it up again and they made a turn back at the dead end and proceeded back up the pavement, the first large drops of rain pattered on the roof and the windshield. It would be some time before they reached the Highway 1 once again, but once they did, Sam wondered as to how far they could go without seeing another sliver of civilization between Monterey Bay and the next spot on the coast.

To the left of them stood the high sea cliffs in all their withered and eroded glory, strong and high over their heads, much stronger and higher than the buildings back in New York City or Los Angeles or even San Francisco itself. To the right stood the ocean: the gray and black waters that went on forever into the horizon. Empty and cold, and cradled by the clouds over them. Everything gray and black.

Every so often, Sam peered down to the waves down below as they crashed on the rocks. She looked to the left once again: every so often in the cliffs, a minute ponderosa jutted out from the cracks as if it gasped for the fresh oceanic air. The coast line seemed to stretch on for infinity before them. She glanced over at Louie and the serene expression on his face.

He was her drummer in that moment.

She turned her attention back out to the ocean beyond them as they went around a corner. Maybe it was the lack of anything discernible on the cliffs or the fact that the ocean appearead so endless beyond them, but something about all of this made her squirm in her seat.

Louie's occasional peers down to the gages behind the steering wheel didn't help, either.

An eternity in such a small pocket of the coastline. They really were at the end of the world.

A sign emerged on the side of the road but she had no idea what it read.

“We probably should've stopped for gas in Castroville,” he told her at one point.

“Why, are we low?” she asked him as her heart skipped a beat.

“Sorta. I hope. I don't really know the economy on this thing—I don't really pay attention to that sort of thing.”

They rounded another corner and Louie drummed his fingers on the steering wheel: that time they had a full view of the ocean. The grand view of the waves as they welcomed her to the end of the world, and they were about to run out of gas as far as she knew right then.

Another sign emerged from behind the guard rail and that time she saw that they were ten miles from the central part of the coast.

“Mother fucker!” he spat under his breath.

“It's okay—we're almost to San Simeon,” she told him.

“Yeah, I know—I'm still kicking myself, though. We'll probably gonna coast there the rate we're going at right at the moment.”

“Seriously?” she demanded, shocked.

“Yeah!”

She closed her eyes and she thought of Joey over in Europe. The only thing that seemed worse than losing Cliff to a bus accident that was far beyond her control was her being stranded on the Central California coast and not being able to tell anyone. But then again, they were close to the next piece of civilization.

“As long as we don't drive into the ocean, I think we'll be fine,” she told him.

“We don't drive into a—poison garden,” he muttered as they went around yet another bend in the road: the cliffs soon began to lower away to the sight of more ponderosas and scraggly shrubs.

“There's no poison gardens here,” she assured him.

“You sure? 'Cause like—there's a bend here—and another here—it's like this.”

They rounded a corner as it wound around the coastline: the road dipped inward into a gentle curve and they doubled back to the next crevice in the landscape.

“Sit—” He pointed to the left. “—down—” He pointed to the right. “—sit—down—sit—down—poison garden.” He pointed straight ahead at that last part and she chuckled at that.

Sure enough, the car sputtered a bit right outside of San Simeon: Hearst Castle rose up off in the distance but they had no time to visit right at that moment.

“Told ya we'd have to coast,” he told her as he guided the car to the gas station right there at the edge of town. The engine sputtered again and died right as they coasted into the first spot near the driveway. He let out a low whistle and leaned back in his seat.

“That was close,” she remarked.

“Yeah, I'll say,” he breathed, and then he turned his attention to her. “A twenty'll get us to the heart of Lost Angles and it'll get me up the Grapevine and into the Central Valley.”

“You're not gonna hang out there with me?”

“I can't,” he told her. “We're supposed to make a new album ourselves.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right!” She handed him a twenty dollar bill, followed by another which would ensure him a ride back home to the Bay Area.

Once they were filled up, they returned to the road.

“I don't know if Hearst Castle is even open,” Louie confessed.

“I don't, either. It's getting kind of late in the day, too.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

Some more coastline and they found their way down into Solvang and then San Luis Obispo where they were met with the Pacific Coast Highway yet again, and they moved away from the end of the world. So much that she wanted to show to Joey. And so much that she wished Cliff could see again, especially that one stretch of the highway where everything felt so finite and endless at the same time.

They wound their way through the low foothills and yet another unknown pocket of California, until they skirted the outside of Santa Barbara followed by Carpinteria.

The waves down below thrashed even more as they wound along the cliffs towards Ventura. At that point, the sky began to darken with the setting sun on the other side of the blanket of clouds overhead.

“Part of me wants to go down to the beaches here,” Louie confessed to her. “Like—take a walk on one of the beaches here. Yet another thing I wanted to do with Zelda when we were together.”

“We don't have towels, though,” she pointed out.

“And it's cold, too!”

“Right!”

The highway led them into Camarillo and then the heart of Los Angeles, where it ended and became the 210. At that point, night was about to fall over them, and the feeling of dread washed over Sam herself. She knew that Bill would be furious by the mere sight of her walking through that front door without any sort of explanation.

Louie drove them down to Corona and then the hills which cradled Lake Elsinore away from the rest of the region. The clouds had finally dissipated and gave way to a violet and orange sky overhead. Such a great length of time to be in that car with him and a part of her wished they had more time.

More time together. More time to relish over the idea of the poison garden.

But that time was all they had right then and there, much like that stretch of highway that overlooked the ocean.

She guided him to the house by the lake and within time, she recognized the neighborhood in question.

He pulled up to the curb and she sighed through her nose at the realization. Her head spun a bit from having driven such a great distance but at least they could come to a stop on a steady piece of ground. She looked on at the house, with its windows dark and the shades pulled despite the fact that it wasn't that late in the evening.

“Do you need any help?” he offered her, to which she shook her head. Instead, she sighed through her nose again and she climbed out to fetch her things out of the back seat. She decided to give her mother a ring later that night when Bill and the girls had gone to bed, that is if they already did. She hoisted her overnight bag over her shoulder and she held her purse close to her body as she reached the driver's side window. He rolled it down so she could speak to him one last time.

“Louie?”

He leaned closer to the window with his eyebrows raised.

“Thank you,” she said to him in a soft voice, and he showed her a sweet smile.

“It's my pleasure,” he told her with a wink. “Poison garden.”

“Poison garden,” she echoed him with a smile on her face.

“Also—”

She stopped and he gestured for her to come on closer to him.

“Don't worry, I'll—I'll talk to him,” he vowed to her.

“Who?”

“You know. The little man.”

“Oh, him!” She stopped right in her tracks. “What for?”

“Just to see if he's alright. One thing I've noticed about him when he fucks up something—he's real hard on himself. So if it's kinda messed between the two of you, I'll check in on him. I'll check in on him anyways.”

“Good plan,” she told him. “You be safe going back up, alright?”

“You be safe, too. Poison garden!”

Sam stepped away from the car and she turned back to the house, still in one place. Louie drove away right then and he disappeared around the corner. Another seven hours and he'd be back up there. She returned to the front door of the house and she opened it with ease. Silence.

She knew that he wouldn't do it. Sam shook her head and she bowed upstairs to her room.

[snarkwrites]

01 & 02 | home; juice ortiz.

Notes:

.... and apparently, my brain yearned to write angsty and kind of tragic things. I really haven’t written much for sons of anarchy beyond a few little short things here and there so.. be warned. I’m gonna loosely follow some of the things that happen on the show timeline, but.. this one might take longer to write / post / update because I’m going to try to watch SOA again as I do this. Try being the operative.

So uh.. buckle up?

Also.. I haven’t made a cover for this yet. or a soundtrack. And this is c

Pairing:

Teller Morrow OFC x Juice Ortiz.

Summary:

“Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and laughter never ends.” “A house is made of bricks and beams. A home is made of hopes and dreams.” “Home is not a place…it's a feeling.” 

“Home is wherever I’m with you.” 

Years ago, Hazelynn Teller (Morrow) left Charming behind. She turned her back on everything in search of something.. anything that felt like it fit. But nothing ever did. After a series of events cause her to re-evaluate and she finds herself returning to Charming, can she fix everything she broke when she left?

And again I ask.. why must my summaries suck? I swear this might possibly be better than the summary.

Warnings:

Injury / accident tw - for this chapter only. Mentions of a genetic heart defect / a newborn in NICU. fighting / violence tw - duh, this show was pretty damn violent and there’s no way I can escape having at least some of the major stuff that happened present. slow burn and angst. because people don’t just fall back together and feelings aren’t magically healed. eventual filth. any other triggering  things that arise I’ll warn in those chapters. These are just the ones I can think of, immediately, right now.

Other Stuff:

[ faq - tag list doc ] 

Tagging:

@brithedemonspawn

@chasingeverybreakingwave

@kyleoreillysknee

@rampagewriting 

@sassymox

@twistnet

                                      ONE.

The phone ringing had Jax Teller sitting up in bed. He grimaced at the pounding hangover and he reached for his cellphone, answering.

“Are you family of Hazelynn Teller Morrow?”

“She’s my baby sister, why?” Jax wasn’t getting a good feeling at all. The woman on the other end of the line sounded so formal and her tone was so clipped. Unconcerned. It was his own personal experience that usually, when you got a call like this in the middle of the night, nothing good ever came of it.

What the nurse told him next left him reeling.

“There’s been an accident. She’s been admitted to Santa Monica General. Her daughter is in the NICU.”

“You said Santa Monica General, right?” Jax was sitting up in bed now, trying to get his heart down out of his throat. He was slipping out of bed, grabbing for his jeans on the floor. “Are you sure there isn’t some mistake? My sister, she… She doesn’t have a kid. Not that I’m aware of..” He was hoping against hope that there was a mistake somewhere, but the nurse spoke again.

“Your sister was in labor and on her way here to give birth when the accident occurred. We had to induce labor. Given the state your sister is in, we’re calling the family since we have no way to know who the baby’s father is… Just to err on the side of caution.”

Jax’s stomach rolled. Tara hugged against him from behind. “What’s going on, Jax?”

Jax shushed her, listening to the nurse detail his sister’s injuries and the fact that while they were trying to save his niece she slipped into a coma and had yet to wake up. When he hung up the phone, he swung at a wall.

“Jax?”

“I have to go pick up my mom.” Jax grabbed the keys to his bike and rushed out of the house, firing it up.

The entire drive across town to his mother’s house passed by in a daze. He didn’t even remember what color the stoplight had been when he went through it, only that he was sitting in his mother’s driveway only three and a half minutes later. Rushing to his mom’s front door. Pounding on it to wake her up.

Gemma threw the door open, a brow raised at Jax when she saw him standing on the other side. “Jax?”

“Mom, it’s Hazelynn… The hospital in Santa Monica called me.”

Gemma’s mouth opened only to close again. It was probably one of very few times over the course of his life that Jax Teller had actually seen his mother speechless. Or about to cry.

“What happened? Jax, talk to me. Talk to me now.” Gemma demanded, her voice shaky. Jax took a few deep breaths and put his arms around his mother, explaining what the nurse told him when she’d called. Gemma’s tears started to fall and she bolted back into the house, shaking Clay awake.

Clay grumbled at the early hour but sat up.

Looking as if he’d vomit as Jax repeated everything the nurse told him for a second time that night.

“I’ll drive. Neither of you are in the shape.” Clay was up and getting dressed on auto pilot, stopping at one point to question, “They say whether she had anybody there with her?”

“The whole reason the nurse is calling family is because she was coming to the hospital alone because she’d gone into labor. They can’t track down a father.”

“Oh, I’ll find the bastard.”

“Clay…”

“I’m not kidding Gemma.” Clay’s fists clenched and he took a few deep breaths.

“We’ll just get there and assess the situation. Go from there. She needs us.” Gemma gave Clay a firm look of warning and it seemed to get him reasonably calm.

The next few hours were sitting in silence in a waiting room. Endless pots of shitty break room coffee. Gemma jumping every time someone coded.

And finally, around 9 am, a doctor got around to them.

Hazelynn was awake. And her vitals seemed steady. 

“Can we go back to see her?”

“In an hour. We  want to make sure she’s up to it.”

“What about my niece?”

“One at a time. I’ll send a nurse over to get you prepped to go down to NICU.” The doctor promised, setting off to go and track down a nurse.

The nurse showed up a few minutes later and Gemma stood, the shock starting to subside but only slightly. As they walked back to the NICU nursery, the nurse told Gemma that they’d detected a heart defect and Gemma explained that both herself and her granddaughter’s uncle suffered from similar. 

“We’re not supposed to let anyone back here that isn’t a parent until 8 pm.. But given the circumstance…” 

Gemma thanked her and stepped into the room, taking a seat in the chair in the corner. The nurse brought over her granddaughter and Gemma took her in her arms.

“Oh sweetie. Everything is going to be okay.”

But Gemma was afraid. So very afraid.

XXX

“ You don’t have to leave town, Haze.”

It was the last thing my brother said to me. He’d hugged me. Then my mom hugged me and wiped at her eyes. Made me promise a thousand times to call and come back to visit. I promised her I would, even though I knew deep down I’d be limiting myself to calls only.

If I went home to visit, I might not ever leave again.

And I didn’t want to be like all the other girls I went to school with, settling down and settling for whatever came their way.

I left town with all these big ambitions and plans. And one by one, life knocked them right out from beneath me. Life tried again and again to break me but I was too stubborn to be broken. 

But this last blow.. This last blow was too much.

The nurse came in to check on me and the first thing I demanded was to know if my daughter was alright. The second and a half it took the nurse to tell me that my daughter was alive and currently down in NICU was the longest second and a half of my entire life and the second I heard the nurse tell me that my daughter was alive and I hadn’t lost her, I broke.

Sobbing. Grateful.

If I’d lost her… I shoved the thought out because I just couldn’t.

“Wait.. NICU… What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with my baby?”

“The doctors detected a heart defect.”

I took a shaky breath. I’d been warned by my mom that there was a possibility that any children I had could end up with the heart defect, even though it managed to skip over me. At my last checkup, my doctor had been concerned about the genetic heart defect present in my brother and my mother. Nothing had shown up in any of the tests they’d been able to do at that point, so I’d been hopeful.

I nodded. Taking a few deep breaths. Moving to sit but wincing when a wave of pain washed over me.

The door to my private room opened and my brother stepped in. My birth father Clay standing behind him.

Jax rushed over to the bed, putting my legs back into it. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going to see my daughter. I.. She needs me, Jax.”

“She needs you healthy, darlin.” Clay spoke up quietly.

Awkwardly, I let him hug me. Things had always been tense between us. More so when the truth came out that he was my actual father. It had thrown my entire life in a tailspin back then and while I’m not proud to admit it at all, I’d went full on rebellious. Refusing to acknowledge him.

But he’d kept trying.

“I couldn’t even keep myself from crashing a fucking car. I failed already. She could’ve died.” I was full on sobbing now as everything hit me. I looked from Jax to Clay and asked quietly, “Where’s mom?” I.. Need to see her.”

“Your mom’s down in NICU.” Clay explained, doing his best to give me a reassuring look. Wincing at the way my forehead was stitched. “Least you got the Morrow hard head, huh?” he tried to joke. Jax gave him a warning look, but rather than stubbornly refuse to go along with it like I used to in all of Clay’s past attempts to bond with me over the years, all I could do this time was nod. Mutter quietly, “Thank god.”

My brother cleared his throat.

“What about the father?”

“What about him? He’s married. Dropped me like a bad habit when he found out I wasn’t getting rid of the baby. Only after he tried to pay me off.”

Jax’s fist clenched and I shook my head. “I’m better off… I.. I mean I think I am.” my words fell away and I leaned my head back against the pillow behind me gingerly. 

“You didn’t have any friends you could get to drive you?” Clay questioned. I shook my head, not bothering to open my eyes. “I’d just moved here. I was.. Working up the nerve to come home. I didn’t really know anybody.”

“So the kid’s dad is elsewhere?” Clay questioned further. I could just tell by his tone that he was already thinking of the best way to make the situation right. To make the father of my child pay for being an actual piece of shit.

“Clay, whatever you’re thinking, don’t. Leave it alone, sir. Not everybody has to pay for their wrongs your way. The bastard will regret it one day when she grows up and she’s amazing and she didn’t need him. I don’t want the guy near me.”

It didn’t stop the look in his eyes and I sighed. Appealing to the last card I held that I thought might work. “If you care about me at all and you still want to be a part of my life, sir.. You’ll leave this alone. I just… I want to put it behind me.”

I let out a ragged breath and searched his eyes. When he seemed to relax and grumble while shaking his head, I relaxed. It felt as if he were going to let it go as I asked. Maybe going away had changed things just a little.

Jax spoke up quietly. 

“ You scared the fuck out of me.”

“Try being me.” I muttered quietly, letting my brother hug me, holding on just a little tighter.

The door to my room opened again and my mother stepped in. She didn’t look like the same carefully put together woman I remembered. She looked like she was drained. Scared to death.

Suddenly, I wanted to go back in time and punch my younger self in the throat. How could I have ever thought that just because I was a reminder of the affair my mom started with Clay Morrow before Jax’s father passed away that she cared less.. Or that me being around was just painful for her to begin with?

I felt worse than I’ve ever felt before.

Jax stopped my mom, asking if she thought they’d let him go back and sit with my daughter. My mom led him back out in the hallway, probably to go find the NICU nurse on duty and find out the answer, and this left me and my birth father alone together.

“I know we never got along real good, kid.”

“I’m sorry.” I blurted it out before he could say anything else. “I was messed up, okay? The way it came out… The way it made everyone fight… I just.. I don’t know.” I dropped my gaze to the thin white blanket over my legs and Clay sighed.

“If you want to come home… It’d make more sense, I’d think. Gonna be damn hard to help out with my grandkid when you’re all the way in Santa Monica. And I’m not about to let my daughter take all this on by herself. We clear, Red?”

I mulled it over. It wasn’t something I’d already been heavily leaning towards for the better part of a month now. I’d just been too scared to pull the trigger and do it.

“Yes sir.” I answered, managing a smile.

My mom stepped into the room, door shutting behind her quietly.

“I cannot wait until you are away from this hospital. Do you know how fucking difficult it is to get anybody to answer a simple question?” my mom muttered, leaning down, hugging me tight. Fussing over a stitch on my forehead, grumbling “They didn’t even attempt to close this properly. I’ve seen bikers at Sturgis do a better sew up.” and making me laugh. Just a little.

She pulled away from the hug and brushed some hair away from my forehead. “Sweetie, I..” she started to say something but I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mom. For everything.”

“I’m sorry too. I didn’t know you felt the way you felt until your brother threw it up right after you left. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Don’t start crying.” my mom was reaching for a tissue, gingerly dabbing it at my eyes. “The important thing is it’s behind us. Okay?”

I nodded.

“You’re moving back to Charming.”

Normally, my mother making demands would’ve set me on edge. But I wasn’t that same angry rebellious girl anymore. And deep down, I was starting to realize just how much I loved and needed my family, especially right now.

Warts and all.

“Okay.” I managed a weak smile.

“Was she okay?” I asked quietly after another tight hug that had me wincing just a little and reminding her gently that I was one giant ache. My mom smiled and nodded. “She’s as beautiful as you, sweetie. And despite the family flaw striking again, I think she’s a fighter already. Have you got a name?”

“ Emma Sophia.”

My mom smiled at that. I figured she would because Emma was basically just Gemma, shortened. And Sophia in tribute to all the old movies she used to make me sit through with her when I was younger, after an actress named Sophia Loren.

“I like that, sweetie.”

When she was sure Clay wasn’t actively listening, she whispered quietly, “And the father?”

“Is not an issue. Nor will he ever be one. I got him to sign away paternal rights.”

“You’re sure.” My mom asked again and I nodded. “He was married, mom, I... “ I trailed off, waiting for a lecture. Instead, my mom sighed and nodded. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

And for the first time in years, I really believed she was right. Maybe everything really would be okay now.

The doctor came in to check on me again and check my vitals and after doing that, he turned to address my mother and Clay.

“Mother and baby’s vitals are holding strong and steady. I’d say that if the pattern continues, we can release Mother by the weekend.”

“What about my baby?” I spoke up quickly.

“We want to keep your daughter for observation. I’d say at least another two weeks.”

I took a few deep breaths, starting to panic a little. Wanting to cry. My mom grabbed hold of my hand and repeated calmly, “Everything will be fine. They kept your brother just as long.”

I nodded, even though the thought still scared the hell out of me. 

                                                    TWO.

The Welcome to Charming sign passed by and I smiled a little. Emma was sleeping in the carrier. I was almost home.

And hopeful.

Just as I turned down the road my mom lived on, my cell phone buzzed. I switched the call so that it went through my radio to answer.

“ Exactly how big is too big for a stuffed animal?” Jax asked and I groaned, shaking my head at the question. “What have you done, Jax?”

“There was a unicorn.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.. Remember that one Clay won you when you were twelve? This one makes two of that one.”

“Where the fuck am I putting this?”

My mom spoke up from the background. “We got it in the nursery. Barely. I told your brother he’s not allowed near the stuffed animals anymore.”

“In my defense ma, it’s my niece.”

I parked behind the motorcycles lining my mother’s driveway. Tensing just a little when I recognized Juice’s Dyna Glide parked next to Tig’s motorcycle.

And as soon as I saw him, it was like everything froze. I wasn’t ready to face him. Especially not when I considered that it felt like someone had just knocked the breath right out of me. As I walked past him, I didn’t dare look over.

I couldn’t do it, no matter how badly every part of me wanted to. My brother and Opie came over, arguing about the unicorn, Opie nearly lifting me off the ground in a hug. I reached back into the car, killing the engine and shutting the driver door. Making my way to the backseat and unbuckling the carrier.

“Awww. She’s even got the same chubby little cheeks, man.” Opie chuckled, elbowing Jax who nodded. I smiled and as soon as Emma started to wake up and cry, I dug around in my diaper bag for the bottle I’d pumped for her at a rest stop.

Sitting the carrier on the trunk of the car, I unfastened Emma, pulling her out.

Instantly drawing over at least ten gigantic bikers. Watching them fuss over her had me laughing and smiling a little.

Juice hung back. Leaning against the tree in the yard with a tire swing. Watching. Like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to come over with everyone else.. Near me. Or whether he wanted to just leave.

When he started to make his way over after Chibs stopped to whisper something in his ear, I swallowed hard. The guys had gone back to the grill set up behind the house by now. It pretty much left me sitting in the passenger seat of my car finishing up feeding Emma. Humming softly as I did so.

Humming what used to be the song that Juice and I dubbed ‘our song’.

“Visiting? I’m surprised your man let you come by yourself.”

I glanced up at Juice, taking a deep breath. Bracing myself for all the anger and bitterness I thought I’d find waiting in his gaze. Surprised when all I found instead was concern. Maybe a little hurt.

But deeper down, the same way he always used to look at me.

“Juice..” I started, but I went quiet. I didn’t know what to say. There was so much I wanted to say but it was probably beyond too late for that.

More than anything, I wished I had a rewind button.

What if I hadn’t left town? Ran from the way I felt about everything back then?

“I had a while to get over it.” he muttered, gazing at me. Going quiet. “Jax told me why you had to go. I fuckin hated it, but I had a while to get over it.”

I nodded.

Somehow I got the feeling that he was pretending it didn’t kill him. To save face.

Kind of exactly like I was right now.

“You could’ve said somethin, ya know?”

“Juice..”

He shook his head and took a deep breath. Leaning against my car. Staring up at the bright blue of the sky overhead. “It’s over and done with though.”

My stomach churned. I wasn’t sure if what he was saying was a good or a bad thing. Seeing him again after all this time, I wasn’t even sure I wanted it to be over.

Because when I left it all behind, I hadn’t just left behind a family that actually loved me, I’d left him behind too.

And looking at him now. With a more adult perspective… I suddenly found myself wondering if leaving him behind had been the biggest mistake of my life…

“Do you want to hold her?”

Juice eyed me but nodded, reaching out for her. “Hey pretty girl.” he muttered, smiling a little. After he held her for a few minutes, he placed her back in my arms.

And as he did so, the touch lingered as we locked eyes.

“I missed you.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“I barely survived.” Juice answered, biting his lip as if he wanted to say something else. He turned and walked away and I spent a few minutes trying to pull myself back together again.

It had been harder seeing him again after all this time than I thought.

Harder to resist him. Harder to shove down the surge of emotions. Harder to try not to think about just how much I still loved him and harder to swallow the fact that by now, it was probably too late.

I got the feeling that it was only going to get so much harder.

And I sighed, because every part of me wanted to hold out hope that there was still something there but I had to accept the fact that I’d probably lit a match and set everything on fire when I left town back then. That there wasn’t any hope to be had.

That Juice was done with me.

And that hurt more than I was prepared for.

I shoved it all out of my head, wandering over to where my mom sat. Giving Tara some serious side eye.

“He had to bring her.” my mom was glaring in Tara’s general direction. Rolling her eyes as Tara carried Abel around. Everything Tara Knowles did annoyed my mom. That much hadn’t changed at all.

“In his defense, mom, she’s kind of his old lady.” I pointed out quietly. Taking a sip of the pink lemonade she’d pushed in my direction.

My mom shrugged, grumbling under her breath. Probably something to the effect of she wouldn’t be if my mom had her way about it. I sat down next to her at the picnic table and she peeked in the sling I had Emma strapped into. “Hey sweetie.” she cooed.

Emma grinned up at her, sleepy eyed. After a few seconds, my mom spoke up.

“Speaking of old ladies… If you’re wondering. Juice doesn’t have one.”

“Mom, I.. we both know I ruined everything there when I left.” I sighed, shaking my head no. Trying to cut whatever crazy idea she was formulating out before it took hold. Somehow I got the feeling that it was too late for that. My mom, being the meddling mom she’s known to be at times, she was going to try to shove me right through the ‘healing process’ over the end of my last breakup.

My mom shrugged, shaking her head. Quick to protest, “You never know.”

I didn’t say anything. For one thing, I was trying to get my head around my mom seeming to push me towards Juice. I hadn’t really thought she liked him all that much back then. I know Clay didn’t particularly care for him.

XXX

Juice wasn’t listening to a word Chibs said. Chibs caught sight of the direction he was staring in and he chuckled to himself, nudging Juice in the side, nodding in Hazelynn’s direction. “Go over n’ try t’ talk.”

Juice shook his head. “Every time I think about it, I remember that she’s the one who thought she was too good for any of this and left. Without a good bye. What’s done is done. I wasn’t good enough for her then, why do I wanna be good enough for her now, huh?”

“Maybe it wasn’t that at all.” Chibs butted in. Grumbling as he took a drag of his cigarette. The kid wasn’t listening. He wasn’t stopping to think about everything that unfolded prior to Hazelynn’s decision to leave. Chibs went quiet. He knew better than to try reasoning with the kid. Juice was a hard headed little shit.

“Look at me, Chibs. We both know it was.” Juice insisted, shaking his head sadly. “I tried to be good enough man.. I just fuckin wasn’t.”

Chibs brushed off the statement, putting it down to Juice’s recent downward mood swing and tension. The guy had been down about a lot lately. Like he had a million things on his mind. If Chibs ever tried to bring it up, Juice dismissed it. Stating he didn’t want to talk about it.

Juice bit his lip. Staring at Hazelynn. Sighing as he stubbed out the cigarette he’d been smoking. Every part of him was still drawn to her. If he could, he’d go over. He’d tell her that he still loved her, he’d never stopped.

But there was so much going on right now.

The biggest part of it being the secret he was being forced to keep. Just the thought of the betrayal he was currently being forced to carry out against men he thought of as brothers was enough to have him tensing up all over again. Any second, they’d figure out it was him. None of the guys in Samcro were that stupid. Even the ones who acted like they were.

Sooner or later, everything would come out.

And Juice Ortiz was living with the weight of that dread and his secrets and decision every single day.

,, I just have to stay away. Keepin her at arms length is keepin her safe.” the solemn thought weighed heavily and he tore his eyes off of her.

Somehow, he got the feeling that would be easier said than done.

[dashhoney25]

SB: three

NATASHA

King's comment about Malcolm really got under my skin. It was inappropriate and childish for him to bring up my past infidelity at a time like this. Yes I'm a little tipsy, and yes I'm horny and just because I haven't had sex with King in 5 days it doesn't mean that I'm cheating... but I did cheat, and I am putting him through it again. I promised King that I'd remain faithful and let him know when I have the urge to step out. We agreed that we'd either break up completely if I couldn't change my ways, or we'd work it out to curb these nasty habits of mine. I was wrong for pursing Adonis in a drunken stupor, just like I was wrong for pursuing Malcolm. The difference between Malcolm and Adonis is the fact that Malcolm and King were friends, they were partners in music. I came in between a friendship and money, but I lied about as if it would just go away. I lied thinking that I could maintain a healthy relationship with King, and still have my side of Malcolm as I pleased. I lied as if there wouldn't be a consequence to my outside activities, as if King hadn't caught onto my distancing. I lied so much to the point that I didn't care if I smelled like Malcolm's cologne. Lying about the visible passion marks on my body only intensified my naughty thoughts of hoping that the marks between my thighs would deliver a rise from King. This fling with Malcolm was a thrill for me, I couldn't hide that I was in the wrong, but I didn't want the high to end. Though the affair ended, the bond between King and Malcolm was broken. Through my lies and inadequacies, King still felt that I was worth all the trouble. Til this day I still pay for ruining our sacred bond, and somehow I feel that things will never truly go back to normal.

As I walked inside the house I found everyone standing around the table taking shots randomly. The door behind me had opened and it was King. He took my hand and walked over to the table with me and announced that we were leaving. King dapped up Dro, Taye and Rich, and I walked over and hugged Audrey. "We'll finish our convo later right?" she questioned. "Of course honey!" I replied. "You get some rest okay?" she encouraged. "I will" I replied. I walked passed Adonis and pulled Mercedes into a hug. "You guys leaving?" she asked. "Yes, thank you for inviting King and I. Your house is gorgeous" I said kindly. "Please come back and stay the night. I'll make sure to get rid of Adonis" Mercedes said jokingly. "Sis you're drunk, how about you and Adonis have a good time tonight, we'll discuss the girls night later" I said pulling away from her. "Fuck him. He's not even paying attention to me right now" Mercedes said. My eyes got wide as I looked around the room and saw Adonis on his phone away from everyone. "Just go talk to him Merc" I encouraged. "Later. Thank you and King for coming, ya'll drive safe" Mercedes urged. "We will" I said. As I walked away I received a text message from an unknown number.

Unknown: Let's meet tomorrow.

Me: Who is this?

Locking my phone, I walked outside to get some air. I received a message from the unknown number and opened my messages. I opened the attachment to find a picture of Adonis and I from the club. In the picture we were really close to each other, we looked boo'd up. I was smirking playfully, while Adonis stuck his tongue out; his dimples showing slightly. We looked like a couple enjoying a night out on the town. I eyed the picture for a moment, not knowing how to respond and confused at who was texting me. I felt guilty standing on Mercedes' property with the possibility that her fiancé could be texting me. I locked my phone and closed my eyes to take a deep breath. Exhaling, I could hear King's voice "You ready to go?" he asked.

"Yeah" I said simply. We walked down to the driveway and got into the car. I put on my seatbelt and leaned against the window to relax. I could feel King's eyes on me from time to time as he drove. King placed his hand on my thigh in a comforting manner, "You okay over there?" he asked. I jumped at his touch and moved my thigh away from his grasp. "I'm fine King" I said coldly. He sighed, "I'm sorry for what I said back there. You know I didn't mean it" King replied apologetically. "How should I know that King? You do have a habit of bringing him up. But I never thought that you'd bring Malcolm up in public!" I replied. "We were alone!" King said. "Anyone could've walked outside! Who knows, someone might've heard us already!" I raised my voice. The car slowed down as we approached a stoplight. "Baby, I said I was sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up" King said. I shook my head, "It's been almost 2 years and you still find a way to bring up my past. You always tell me how we've progressed and that you love me, but yet; whenever you get suspicious you find a way to throw it back in my face. Jermaine I am sorry that I haven't fucked you since I hung out with Alana. I'm sorry that I turned you down this morning, but I tried to make up for it and suggest that we leave early but you wanted to stay." I admitted.

King pulled off and continued to drive, "It's never my intention to bring up the past. I just don't want to go through that shit again aight! I've forgiven you..." "But what! You've forgiven me but what?!" I yelled. "Im still hurt! That shit still haunts me when you come home late at night! I can't just act like you came in between me and someone I called my brother" King continued. I scoffed and sunk down in the seat. "Here we go" I sighed. "So all of this is my fault for wanting to go to Mercedes' house in the first place huh?! I questioned. King pulled into our driveway and turned off the car.

King unbuckled his seatbelt and faced me, "I could say a lot of things, but I can't change what I said today; like I said I'm sorry baby." King caressed my face, I glared at him and felt remorseful. His intuition was right, he was feeling this feeling because he knew deep down that something happened to me on Friday night, he just wasn't sure how to confront me. My eyes locked with King's, he lifted my chin to his and kissed me. His soft lifts put my mind and body at ease, the way his tongue danced with mine I felt butterflies inside. King gripped my thighs and I immediately moved myself to his seat. Straddling King, I placed my arms around his neck and continued to kiss him passionately. King's hands roamed my back, his hands traveled down to my ass and he cupped it. A smile came to King's face as I grinded against him. "Bad gyal, I see you" he let out in his thick Nigerian accent. I giggled and placed kisses all over his cheeks, kissing his neck I began to unbutton his button down. Opening his shirt, I placed kisses all over his chest, sucking on his skin. King groaned lowly. My hands roamed his stomach, admiring his chiseled abs. "Hold up a minute" King said. King flipped the sun visor down and pushed the button on the garage door opener. He turned on the car and slowly moved up the driveway as the garage door opened. "So you don't want anyone to see us?" I questioned joking. "Hell nah, not for what we bout to do. Soon as this garage door comes down, get ya ass in the backseat" he barked. I continued kissing on King as the car pulled into the garage. We were now in total darkness as King turned the car off. Taking the keys out of the ignition, we sat there in silence for a moment. Anticipating for King to yell at me I burst out in laughter. "Get in the backseat like I said" he laughed. As I got up, King slapped my ass as I climbed over the drivers' seat and fell into the backseat.

My laughs were muffled as King hovered me and kissed me slowly. "You know we can go in the house" I said still laughing. King cupped my face and kissed me passionately, lowering himself onto me. I wrapped my legs around his waist and rubbed his back, I couldn't see him but the fabric of his shirt was bothering me. King sat up for a moment and resumed kissing me, when I rubbed his back my nails instantly dug into his skin. Shit he knows what I want even in the dark. As my nails grazed King's back, I felt the fabric of my navy blue jumpsuit slowly coming down. Soft kisses to my neck trailed down to my chest as my ass was cupped by King's hands. A low groan escaped my lips as his skin brushed up against mine, King was onto something and even though we couldn't see each other, he still had me wrapped around his finger. "C'mere" King teased as I felt him pull me onto his lap. He pressed his forehead against mine as he cupped my breasts and hummed against me.

"You know I love you right?" he asked. Straddling King, I moved my panties to the side to let my imagination run wild through the feeling of his shorts. "Of course I know that" I responded. "It won't ever change" King let out before kissing my collarbone. Grinding against him I couldn't help but fumble at his belt. I just knew he would leave hickeys the way he began sucking on my collarbone driving me wild. His pants weren't coming off fast enough and I knew I was leaking on his shorts. King moved his hand to his belt, and his hand grazed against my warm, juicy center. "She ready?" he questioned seductively. "Mhm" I said biting my lip. I lifted my hips and gripped King's shoulders, "Take off your pants Papi" I cooed sensually. Nibbling at King's ear, I could hear the cling of a belt and something falling on the floor. Sucking on King's earlobe, he slightly pulled away and pulled me into a kiss. I could still hear shuffling in the seat, King lowered me back into his lap and I instantly felt his skin against my hips. My wet center rested on his hard member teasing me, "I'm ready" I said lowly gripping him. I proceeded to line myself up to King, "Right there" he said holding my hips. Slowly, I took him into me inch by inch, and the feeling of being filled caused my eyes to water.

"Tight as fuck" King muttered. I held onto King's shoulders and took in the moment, I threw my head back in amazement, he felt so good I didn't want to move, I just wanted him just like this. King pulled me into a kiss and switched positions with me, he placed me in the seat and put my legs on his shoulders as he slid back inside of me roughly. Gasping, I was caught off guard by the thrust and I struggled to keep my legs open. "Fuck" I let out as I held onto King's wrists as he stroked me quickly. "Just like that baby girl" he said flicking my clit. I threw my head back and hit my head on the seat. "Shit!" I groaned painfully. "Let's go inside" I let out. King stroked me a few more times and slowly pulled out of me. He lowered my legs back to the floor and got out of the car. He turned on the light in the garage and came back to the car to get me. I sat there admiring him naked and I couldn't keep my eyes off of him. "Damn" I said biting my lip. "Get out the damn car" King laughed. Getting out, I turned around to get my jumpsuit and underwear out of the car when King picked me up and carried me in the house.

"We can get that shit later. I'm not finished with you" King said as he walked me into the kitchen. He placed me on the island, my legs dangled on the edge. King stood in between my legs and rubbed my thighs. "Damn you're beautiful" I smiled, I caressed King's face and pulled him into a passionate kiss. Moaning against him, I felt his hands prying at my folds. Opening up for him, King slid two fingers inside as he continued to kiss me. The deeper his fingers plunged into me, the more I pulled away from his kisses. King bit at my bottom lip, watching me give into his desires of his fingers. I rolled my hips against him, King moved me further onto the island and I placed my feet flat on the island for stability. Placing my hands onto King's shoulders, I sat up, squatting, and rolled my hips against him as he continued pumping his fingers in and out of me. "Damnit King" I groaned as the tension built inside of me. "Hold that for me" King encouraged "Don't cum just yet" he commanded. I guess King couldn't take me bouncing on him the way I did because he quickly scooped me from the island and took me to bed. King sucked his fingers dry and laid me on the bed and dived in between my thighs.

My body instantly curled at his touch and my hands found their way into his thick head of hair. His warm tongue graced my center generously and I kept my eyes on him, watching him slurp every drop of me. Biting my bottom lip in agony I kept my eyes focused on the ceiling, so much that I cupped my breasts and stared at the ceiling so hard I thought I could see myself. Damn Adonis was a beast for having mirrors above his bed, maybe King and I should invest in one. I closed my eyes and opened my legs wider for King. Coming up for air, King pulled me close to him and caressed my back. I placed kisses all over his neck and chest and ran my fingers through his hair. I pulled him into the bed and decided to please him. I took King down my throat and inhaled deeply to conquer his length. Bobbing up and down, the head of his dick hit the back of my throat. Cupping his balls I kept my mind focused on not gagging. Pulling him from my mouth, I sucked on the sides of his shaft and watched as my spit dredged down his balls. Taking his balls into my mouth I stroked his dick fast, making sure to alternate between his balls and shaft to keep it moist. "Fuuuckkkkk Tasha. Damn girl" King exhaled. I looked up at him innocently and ran my tongue up and down the sides of his dick. I was in love with how he looked at me, more importantly; I loved how I made him feel.

I swirled my tongue around his head before deep throating him. Doing this, I continued to cup his balls and made my way to suck on them alternating between which one I loved the most. "Shit baby girl!" King winced. Smiling, I pulled away and straddled him. I lined myself up with him again and smiled. King looked so relaxed, yet so horny he couldn't contain himself with the stimulation that I had given him. I rolled my hips slowly enjoying the feeling of him inside of me, brushing against my walls. King held my hips and looked in my eyes, "I can't go another 5 days without this" he let out, attempting to hold back his grunt. I sat on my knees and gripped my ankles and proceeded to bounce on his dick, rolling my hips to alter the grip that I had on his member. "Don't let it happen again" I said before kissing him. "Fuck, I promise baby" King breathed.

King gripped me and flipped me over on my back, carrying me to the back of the bed he laid me on a pillow and placed one of my legs on his shoulder and he left my other leg flat. Sliding into me, King stroked me slow and deep. I could hardly describe how good this shit felt, but all I knew was that we had all night and this love making wasn't over.

**

I was lying in bed snuggled up into a pillow when King got out of bed to head to the bathroom. I heard water running and continued to lay in bed. King stood at the threshold of the bathroom door and stared at me. "You tired ma?" he questioned me. I sat up on my elbow and eyed him. "A little bit, I'm out of commission for the next few days" I joked. King peeked into the bathroom and looked back at me, "You gotta get out of that bed in 5 minutes" he said to me. I huffed. "But I don't wanna" I whined. "Trust me, you're gonna like this" he stated. Sighing, I got out of bed and met him at the bathroom door. I wrapped my arms around his waist and gave him a big kiss. "Damn I love you" I said looking in his light brown eyes. "I love you too" King smiled back.

"So why did you want me to get out of bed?" I questioned. King took my hand and walked me inside the bathroom. There was a bubble bath set up for us in our claw-foot tub which contained a few red rose petals. My face lit up and I couldn't stop smiling. King turned off the water and pulled me into a hug. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, "Kingyyyy! Baby. This is beautiful" I said in awe. "Let's get in" King said taking my hand helping me step in. Once King got in, we settled into the warm bath water. I tied my hair into a high messy bun and rested my back against his chest. I closed my eyes and felt his lips against the side of my face as he held my lower half in his arms. I loved this moment of intimacy with him, the silence was everything and the ambiance was perfect for us two. As I snuggled into King's chest, I felt a sense of comfort and protection in this moment. "Tasha, I've been thinking" King let out. "About what babe?" I asked looking up at him, admiring him upside down from my angle. King leaned down and kissed my pouty lip. "I wanna go all the way with you" he said. I turned around and straddled him. "What do you mean Jermaine?" I asked in all seriousness. "I wanna take that next step with you. I want a family. I wanna have kids with you. We got a house big enough for at least 3 kids." King said with a smile. I blushed, and felt a bit nervous at his revelation. My mouth opened, but no words would come out. King smiled and caressed my shoulder, "I know we agreed to have kids once we're married, but I want you to know that I'm ready for that." King said with the utmost sincerity. The way he looked in my eyes, I knew it; deep down in his heart he felt this deep within his soul. "Natasha, I see myself marrying you. I see you being the mother of my children, and I don't know when, but I want this to happen." King said. Tears filled my eyes as he told me this, I couldn't do anything but wrap my arms around him. "I love you too Jermaine. No matter what, I want to spend the rest of my life with you" I said in a somber tone, trying not to sob. I pulled away from King and he continued to hold me, staring in my eyes. "I don't know when I'll ask, but I will. I want you to know that I'm intentional with my actions and I want this, for real. It's been 4 years, I don't need a lifetime to know that we're meant to be" I pulled King into a deep kiss and held him close to me. Pulling away I breathed into the crook of his neck and just held him. I couldn't help but feel so wrong for everything I had put him through that I wouldn't even know how to repay him for all the years we've been together.

"Jermaine, I'm ready whenever you are. I'm... I'm sorry for everything..." I spoke as a tear ran down my face. "I'm sorry for everything seen, and unseen." I said looking away from him. "I'm not the perfect wife" I said sadly. King caressed my face and wiped my tears, "You don't have to be, and that's why I love you baby." King spoke confidently to me, sealing his statement with a kiss.

@soufcakmistress @liilbougievert @honeyandpeaches  @goddessofthundathighs @nahimjustfeelingit-writes @thehomierobbstark  @mochaxmars @harleycativy @blackpinup22 @19jammmy @mbjfangirl  @killmonger-fics @browngirldominion @woahitslucyylu @loudcowboylawyertree  @bigchoose @uzumaki-rebellion  @nizzle-mo @luvwitoutlimit1 @honeytoffee  @queenflaws @callmemckenzieee​ @kkrown​  @madison2035 @illegalxbae @stokeleybabymama @cecereads209 @imanerdychubbyqueen @nyneebey @shaekingshitup​ @thickemadame​ @amorestevens @mymeira12universe-blog​

[ofwolvesandbutterflies]

notch | i

Pairing: Jeon Jungkook x Reader

Genre: angst

Tags: unrequited!AU, college!AU, f2f!AU

Warnings: language, mentions of mature content

A/N: i’m back i’m stressed i like writing. i wrote this a while ago, will probably turn it into a series if i ever get around to finishing it. 

01 | 02 | 03

Synopsis: early morning calls. picking him up from some stranger’s house after a few bad decisions. the torment of loving someone who was incapable of loving you back. those two small words create such a large chasm between the two of you. but hey, what were best friends for? 

I got the text early in the morning. Early like 03:27 in the morning. Rolling over in bed, I glared angrily at the unwelcome brightness of my phone screen. A scoff left my lips when I read the text; of course the morning before school started would be another one of those mornings with Jungkook. 

“That dumb fuck…” I grumbled while rubbing the remaining sleep out of my eyes and rolled out of bed. I groaned, stretching my hands high over my head to stretch out the tired, stiff joints that inhabited my body. Sighing, I stumbled into a pair of pajama shorts and clumsily pulled one of Jungkook’s oversized crewnecks over my head. 

There were worse things that could happen, I mused unhappily to myself. He could be driving home intoxicated. He could have gotten in a car crash. He could be beaten up by the side of a road, half dead and bleeding out. However, the sour, disappointed lull between heartbeats reminded me that no, nothing was worse than being stuck in the friendzone, picking him up in the early morning after each of his overnight rendezvous with an assortment of the worst girls. 

Slinging my hair up into a ponytail, I slid my feet into my favorite pair of old vans, grabbed my keys and slipped back into the quite literal cold, harsh reality. I plugged the location Jungkook sent me into my phone and twisted the key in the ignition. The steady vibration of the car’s engine brought me back to the present and further permeated the bitter irritation coursing through my body. Humming along with the sad love songs stuck in my head, I studied the glaring facade of the lonely stoplights surrounding me. The deep indigo of the clouds floating above me only darkened my mood. 

Love was quite the burden, I thought to myself. There was just something so… vexatious when loving someone that had no capacity of loving you back. But what was I to do when in reality, I had no control over my best friend’s romantic - or lack thereof - life. 

A familiar dialing tone broke through my reverie and drew my attention back to my cellular device. Loved dearly and something of a sepia-d memory, Jungkook’s caller ID popped onto my dimly lit screen. Withholding the sigh waiting to pass my lips, I watched at the phone ring a couple more times before pressing ‘accept’. 

"Jungkook," I mumbled through the phone. "Which apartment are you coming out of? I'm stopped outside of the complex."

“I’ve never heard a sweeter sound,” he chuckled lowly ignoring my actual question. The shuffle of clothing through the speaker only encouraged the bile building in the back of my throat and I was again reminded of why I was here in the first place. 

The frown etched itself deeper into my face as I responded. “The hum of my loud 2009 Chevy Aveo engine and the sleep deprived, deeply irritated voice of your best friend here to pick you up at 3 in the morning after your 3rd one night stand in the past two weeks? I find that hard to believe, dumbass. Especially after what apparently just happened in there.” Irritation oozed from my words and I made no move to shield it. 

“Aww come on, Y/N,” Jungkook hummed, relief flooding me when the sound of a door opening and closing played through the phone. “It’s not like I was planning on this happening again…”

All that left my lips was a disbelieving scoff. Glancing up at the apartment complex, I spotted a familiar figure descending the stairs on the third floor. 

“Y/N,” Jungkook spoke, louder this time so to combat the whisper of the autumn wind. “I’m hanging up now, I see your car.”

With that the call ended and I watched as my best friend’s figure neared the car. A simple black zip - up hoodie zipped up halfway hung loosely about his frame left a sliver of his toned torso out for admiration and the disheveled hair peeking out from under the hood softened my frown slightly. White washed denim joggers sat low on his hips and hugged his body in all the right ways. Balled in his left hand was a bundle of white and black cotton. His shirt and boxers no doubt. 

Reaching across the vacant passenger seat, I unlocked the door as he approached and the impish grin that graced his innocent face had me rolling my eyes. It was too ironic to be coincidental, that such a soft face could hide such a broken, lost fuckboy.

“Hey Y/N.” His post-sex voice sounded tired and fucked out beyond belief and for a brief moment, I pitied the poor, clueless girl that would wake up alone in the morning.  

“Hey kiddo,” I simpered, playful smile hiding the concern and irritation washing about in the pit of my stomach as he climbed into the passenger seat. “You sound tired as fuck.”

“Hmm... Probably more so than you.” He shot me a look I couldn’t decipher and tossed his shirt and boxers in the back. “I don’t think I’ll ever go from the gym to a party again.” 

I hummed in acknowledgement, focus more on the well-being of my best friend than the road. He sighed deeply, sliding his hood off and leaned his head against the window. Waves of exhaustion rolled off his body. A song popped into my mind and I spoke suddenly. 

“Jungkook,” I murmured, the falling moon and darkness of the sky reminding me of how late it was. The weight of his gaze on me transferred to my phone when I tossed it into his lap. “Open spotify, yeah?” 

“Okay… it’s opened.” 

Lyrics sat impatiently on my tongue before I had even told him what to type. 

“Search niki. N - I - K - I. Then just hit shuffle play.”

The silence that hung between us while he spelled out the artist’s name was not one begging to be filled and we sat in companionable silence. Finally at a stoplight, I paused to glance over my best friend. His bottom lip remained stuck between his teeth. Though tired, his deep brown eyes focused in on the screen of my phone. A vermillion glow washed over the two of us, kissing his exposed collarbones and hiding the flush dusting my cheeks. 

The light turned green and we were off as the bittersweet verses of ‘Warpaint’ slid out of the car speakers as an aesthetic white noise. I watched quietly as Jungkook’s eyelids fought to stay open before finally sliding closed, a melancholic feeling settling over my heart. The faux smile I had present fell back into a frown and I released the heavy exhale I had withheld for so long. 

Ever since high school, he had been jumping from girl to girl the numbers quickly racking up from two to three to five to six girlfriends a year. I watched from the sidelines, always there as a shoulder to cry on, a shield from other girls, a wall flower he’d leave alone for a couple months while he fucked around. For years I had fought the feelings off every time they surface, knowing I was nothing more than a friend, around only for him to come back to when the hidden emotions he refused to show got the best of him. 

Shooting a sideways glance over at Jungkook, I let my eyes travel briefly over his tired body. The breath entered and exited his lips slowly, steadily, almost in sync with the beat of my heart. I began to take a right at the intersection onto the street that led to his apartment when he reached out suddenly and stopped me. His warm, calloused hand closed over my cold, sweater paws and effectively halted the car. My gaze shot up to his.

“No- wait,” he groaned, blinking blearly and pushing himself back into a sitting position. “Can… Can I stay over tonight?” 

Still stopped in the middle of the intersection, I gazed at his deflated figure… ‘No’ would have been the right answer in a situation like this. No. You can’t stay over. No. You can’t encourage the feelings I do have for you. No. You don’t understand what staying over is going to do for my heart.

Immediately the ‘yes’ slithered through my lips before my mind processed the weight of the situation. After all, he did have a dresser of stuff over at my apartment and the guest room was hardly ever occupied. 

“Sure.” 

A grateful smile graced his lips and he retracted his hand from mine. 

“Thank you, __...” he mumbled. “God, you know you’d make the best girlfriend in the world, right?” 

The offhand comment threw a poison tipped dagger straight through my heart and the breath I had been trying to take caught in my throat before he resituated himself against the car door and added, 

“I guess that makes me lucky you’re my best friend.” 

Deep, devious, and devilish, the darkness concealed the hurt masked in my eyes and Jungkook shot me a playful smile, ignorant to the fact the smile I offered back did not reach my eyes.

series m.list

>>

[midnightartemis]

Chapter One

The call came suddenly like it always did. A new home. A new foster parent. A new school. At least this time I would be starting right at the beginning of the year. That was easier. I could work with that. I only hoped that this one would last.

I had my small bag of things packed within five minutes and I sat waiting anxiously on the edge of my government-issued co-housing bed. I wondered what shitty luck the universe had decided to drop on me this time.

It wasn’t that I was a bad kid. I tried to keep my head low, my grades high… it’s just that I usually got the short stick when it came to foster parents. The bad eggs. The abusers who somehow slipped through the cracks of the shitshow that is the United States child protective services.

It had become some sort of sick game for me. I move into a new home and it’s okay for a few days, weeks even. Then the abuse would start and I would start gathering evidence. When I had enough I’d wait until a particularly bad day to call the cops, drop the evidence, and get their licenses revoked.

I was a survivor. I could take the punches, the days without food, the yelling, and everything in between, but others couldn’t.

I check my watch and grab my bag. Time to go. My caseworker and house mom are waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. My caseworker is a tall, skinny woman with white-blond hair and a kind face. She tried her best, she really did. It wasn’t her fault I always found the worst homes. My house mom, known affectionately as Aunt Z, was much the opposite, short, large, and with a permanent scowl on her face. I also couldn’t blame her for that. She had to deal with all the girls who came through. I had only known her for two months, but that was long enough to know that she had a big heart. My heart hurts a little at the thought of leaving her, but I had very little control over where they sent me. Miss Holdo, my caseworker, breaks into a huge grin at the sight of me. “Miss Niima! All ready to go?”

I nod. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice.

“Girls,” Aunt Z barks. “Get in here and say goodbye to Rey.”

I bite my lip. I didn’t want a big send-off. I hardly knew most of the girl’s names. I only ever talked to most of them at group therapy sessions. It was better to not get attached. One by one, they trailed in. There were six of us in total. Most of them mumbled a goodbye and slunk back out of the room, but Ara raced up to hug me with tears in her eyes. She was the youngest of the group and had grown attached to me over the course of the summer. I hugged her back.

“It’s okay. I’ll make sure to text you and visit if I can.” She sniffled back her tears and I ruffled her red hair.

“Alright, time's a-wastin. On with you.” Aunt Z grumbled but affectionately patted my shoulder. It was her version of a hug.

Miss Holdo smiled and I followed her out the door, chatting as we walked to the car. “I think I found a good one, Rey.” Her eyes were a little guilty. “We’ve had really good success with her in the past. She only takes cases like yours and as soon as she saw your profile, she called me to ask about you.”

Great. I tried to hold back that flicker of hope in my subconscious. I had gotten my hopes up before and, yet, here I was again. I got in the passenger seat of Miss Holdo’s car and immediately took a piece of gum from the container on her dashboard. She started the car and I buckled up. She handed me the AUX cord as she always did.

I plugged the cord into my beat-up iPhone and started scrolling through my songs. Hozier sounded good. “Where are we headed?”

“Not far, just an hour. Republic.”

Republic. I had never been. New school. New people. New everything, then. Okay. “And this foster mom?”

“Unmarried. A bit older, in her fifties. She seemed very nice and very interested in you. She runs a tavern on the northeast side of town by the river.”

I frown. “Is she going to make me work there?”

“No. She told me that she likes to keep her work separate from her home life, especially when there is alcohol involved. She let me check her cupboards. There’s not a drop of alcohol in that house, Rey.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Okay.”

“I did a super thorough inspection. Even called her previous cases. They all stayed with her until they came of age. I really think this could be a good fit for you, Rey.”

In other words- don’t fuck it up. All I wanted was to put my head down and get through junior year in peace. “If you say so.”

We drive in silence. I look out the window watching the town of Jakku, Vermont slide away into the past. Holdo is bobbling along to the music and I close my eyes, soaking it in.

It’s late afternoon when Republic appears in front of us. Worn down houses and trailer parks line the streets of the southside. There are sketchy gas stations and abandoned storefronts. People sit on their porches and stand on corners, their eyes watching Holdo’s sleek black car as we drive past. I’m waiting for her to put her blinker on and turn off the main road towards one of the broken-down houses or parks, but she keeps going. The cracked sidewalks get a little nicer, the storefronts, less abandoned. We pass through two stoplights and then we’re crossing over a river and a trainyard. This side of the river, the houses are nicer, many of them newly renovated. We pass through a downtown shopping area filled with little boutiques, an ice cream shop, an old fashioned movie theater, a coffee shop. It’s quaint, perfect. “I think you missed your turn.”

Miss Holdo laughs. “Nope.”

Shit. Well, okay. I’d dealt with rich fosters before. It didn’t end well for them. Let’s just say that the dad was a little too hands-on. The anxiety is back in my chest. I worry my lip between my teeth. The downtown area slowly morphs into old historic houses and residential housing.

“I want to show you your new school first.” She seems much too excited. We keep driving until the historic houses have turned into rows of newer developments and gated communities. She takes a turn and we pull into the parking lot of a huge tan building. New Republic High School is marked on the side in large silver block letters. The front is filled with huge windows and the inside looks incredibly new and clean with white walls and wide stairs and solid oak doors leading to classrooms and offices.

I raise my eyebrows and Miss Holdo chuckles at my shocked look. “I know. It’s huge. Some of the best teachers in the state work here. They were very impressed with your transcripts, especially with everything you’ve been through. They still want you to take some placement tests, but they’re excited to have you.”

“Oh, okay.” I think I’m in shock, just a little bit. It all seemed too good to be true. Everything was completely different from the shitty schools in Jakku.

“Oh, shoot. We better go, I don’t want you to be late to meet her.” Holdo sped us out of the parking lot and back towards town. We pass by the new developments and into the historic district. We turn down a tree-lined road filled with huge Victorian, Colonial, and 1920s style houses. Everything seems picturesque, each lawn trimmed and cared for, the vines perfectly placed. Holdo slows and we pull up in front of a tiny 1920s bungalow. I breathe a little sigh of relief that it’s not one of the giant houses that flank either side. There’s a huge, old oak tree out front, a little brick path leads to the steps of the porch. There’s a light on. A white swinging bench is hung from the porch roof. The siding is painted almost a teal, seafoam green-blue with white trim. Flowers line the house and there’s a seashell wind chime hanging from the porch. My nerves make my stomach twist.

Holdo turns off the car and we get out. She grabs her bag of paperwork and we start up the path. I’m holding my breath as we climb the stairs of the porch and Miss Holdo knocks on the door.

“Oh! One second, one second! I’m here.” The door swings open and I look down at the smallest woman I think I’ve ever seen. She can’t be more than four-six, four-seven. I tower over her at five-eight. Her eyes are huge behind her round, black, thick-framed glasses. Her grey hair is coiffed perfectly and she’s dressed like she’s been working in the garden all day. I smile. She opens her screen door and beckons us in. “Come in, please. I hope you’re hungry. I made burgers on the grill. It’s such a nice day out and I couldn’t resist. Oh, where are my manners? You must be Rey. I’m Maz. Maz Kanata. I would prefer Maz over Mrs. Kanata, but,” she clicks her tongue. “I’ll also take ma.”

I’m completely overwhelmed. I glance at Miss Holdo and she shrugs. The door opens straight into the living room which is filled with an eclectic assortment of chairs and a couch. Art hangs on almost every surface and there’s a small TV over the fireplace. It’s warm and inviting if a bit chaotic. A set of stairs leads up to a second floor. We follow Maz through the living room and into a large kitchen. Everything seems like it was pulled out of a vintage magazine and cobbled together with love and color. There’s theory to the chaos. An archway leads to a dining room with a huge colorful table and none of the chairs match. A door in the kitchen leads to another porch outside. This one isn’t covered, but it overlooks the backyard. I can’t help but gasp at it. Stone paths circle raised garden beds. There are a hoop house and a pond and a bench beside a huge fir tree surrounded by flowerbeds. It’s beautiful. What the hell is happening?

There’s a table on the porch beside a grill and it’s been set for three. Maz hurries over. She’s awfully fast for an old woman. “Sit, sit. Please. I wasn’t sure if either of you were vegetarians, so I made some bean burgers that can make even a carnivore cry.”

I smile and take a seat. Shock. Yep. Definitely in shock. What’s the catch? Maz builds our burgers and piles our plates high with chips and fresh fruits and vegetables. She pours us a glass of lemonade each and finally, takes a seat. I hesitate, looking between Holdo and Maz, unsure of the protocol. Everyone was different. Maz's huge eyes glance at my plate. “Well, eat up, hun. You’re as skinny as a stick.”

I eagerly dig in and moan. It’s so good. “This is the best burger I’ve ever had.”

“Good. I’ll teach you how to make them. Now, business is best discussed over a good meal, let’s get on with all the legal mumbo-jumbo.” Maz winks at me and I giggle to myself. She was definitely different, like no foster I’d met before.

“Right.” Miss Holdo wipes her fingers on a napkin and pulls out my case file. It was far too thick and I glance at Maz, but she didn't seem fazed. Right. She would have seen it. “Miss Niima is to remain in your care for the foreseeable future. She will be taking classes at New Republic High, as we discussed. We will have weekly check-ins in person for the first two months. And if all parties are comfortable after those two months, we will move to bi-monthly check-ins until Miss Niima turns of age on October 13th, 2021, one year and two months from now. Miss Niima will also continue to go to group therapy sessions once a week with the local therapist. I believe you’ve already contacted him and gotten an introduction session set up?”

“Oh, yes.” Maz pulls a card out of her pocket. “Here’s the number and the date and time of the appointment.” She looks at me. “Wednesday afternoon, once you get out of school. But, we can schedule around any after school activities you want to take on.”

“After school activities?” My jaw drops. I’d never been given the opportunity.

“Oh yes, they have a billion different little groups and teams there. I’m sure you’ll find something.”

“Okay.” Holdo grins. “All I need for you to do is sign and Rey is in your care.”

I sign and then Maz signs. It didn’t take a lot for me to sign my life away. It was signed away a long time ago. This wouldn’t last, it never did.

“Now.” Maz folds her hands together. “I like to set down my expectations for you in front of your caseworker so that we can all be on the same page. If that’s okay?”

Again, not like I have much of a choice. I nod, curious to know. “Yeah. Yes.”

“School comes first. You can get a job if you want to, but you have to keep up your grades. Judging by your past transcripts though, that won’t be much of a problem, but I know that junior year comes with a lot of stress. I will make sure that you are safe, fed, and clothed. It’s up to you how you want to take my hospitality. I’ll hold you responsible for your actions, and breaking rules will have consequences. All the rules are posted on the fridge and you are welcome to discuss them with me at any time if you would like to amend them or add more. Okay?”

I nod.

“School night curfew is 10 pm. For every time you’re more than five minutes late, that curfew will be moved up by fifteen minutes. Weekends, we will start at 11 pm and go from there. There’s also a list of chores you’ll have to complete. They’re designed to help you become a self-sufficient adult. So, you’ll do your own laundry and clean your own room and dishes. You’ll also help me cook and work in the garden on the weekends. But,” Maz’s large eyes go very serious, and I still myself for the catch. “Above all, I want you to build relationships and trust. Trust goes both ways, Rey. You have mine, right now. From the start. If and when you have problems, I want you to be able to come to me. I will never call anyone on you as long as there’s no immediate harm to anyone. I’m on your side. And, I’m here for the long term. That means we work through our problems, together, okay?”

That was not the catch I was expecting. My heart is racing and I feel like I’m about to cry. It’s too good to be true. I guess I would believe her when I see it. “I- yeah… Okay.”

Maz smiles. “Good. School starts in the morning. I’ll be starting you off on a twenty-five dollar allowance. It should be enough for snacks at school and coffee with friends. If there are any other supplies you want, talk to me and I’ll see if I can get them for you. How’s that sound?”

“Okay. Twenty-five a month is more than I usually get, so-”

Maz chuckles. “No, sweetie. Twenty-five a week.”

My eyes go wide. “Oh.”

“I’ll be taking you to school and picking you up, but if you want to start learning to drive, I can make that happen. This is going to take a lot of communication, Rey. Probably a lot more than you’re comfortable with. But you can ask me any questions you want, okay?”

I nod, feeling overwhelmed.

“How are you feeling, Rey?” Miss Holdo looks over at me, a gleam in her eye.

“Ah… A little overwhelmed. I guess.”

“That’s perfectly normal. Should I let you get settled in?”

“Yeah.” I glance at Maz and she’s happily biting into her burger. She’s strange, but… I think I like her.

“You have my number, so don’t be afraid to call. I’ll see you Saturday morning at ten, okay?” Miss Holdo stands to leave and grabs her paperwork. “Thank you for the dinner, Maz.”

“Any time, hun. You should call more.” Maz raises her eyebrows.

“Sorry, Maz. I will. I promise.” Miss Holdo gives Maz a small hug and I’m left bewildered.

Maz sees my face and chuckles. “Long before she was your social worker, Rey, Amilyn was causing quite a bit of trouble for me.”

I suddenly understand Holdo’s certainty that I would be a good fit here. “You were in the system?”

Holdo nods. “Almost didn’t get out of it, if it wasn’t for Maz. She’s a good one, Rey. I promise. Just keep that nose out of trouble.”

“I don’t go looking for it,” I grumble. Holdo smiles and bids her goodbye. Maz gives a big old sigh and starts gathering plates. I automatically grab my plates and follow her into the kitchen.

“Just put the scraps in the compost bin and set your things on the counter. I’ll take care of it tonight. The rules are on the fridge if you want to read them over and sign them. We can discuss any of them that you want to.” Maz steps up on to a stool so that she can reach into the sink and starts running water for dishes.

I shyly make my way over to the fridge and read the list. It’s what she basically already told me plus a few extra notes about cleanliness and food. Anything not marked in the fridge is fair game. Shower regularly. Add necessities to the shopping list before Friday. All of it was already more room than I had ever been given in most households, that is beside the ones that didn’t give a shit. The last bullet just says- Respect is built. Love is given freely. Responsibility is learned. Trust goes both ways. Beside the rule list is a whiteboard daily chore chart. Weeding the garden is marked for Saturday and Sunday (subject to weather). Clean dishes and homework are marked every day. Sweep is marked every other day. Laundry and clean room are unmarked. The date of school starting and my therapy appointment is marked in red on a calendar. Despite the eclectic feel of her house, Maz seems incredibly organized. I pick up one of the markers stuck to the fridge and sign the rule list. I date it.

“All good?” Maz is waiting for me at the entrance to the living room. I nod and she gestures for me to follow her. I climb the stairs behind her and we end in a hallway. There’s a door in front of us, and another to my left and right. Maz gestures to the door in front of her. “My room. You need anything at any time and I’m in there you can knock .” She points to the door on my right. “That’s the office. There’s a computer in there that you can use to research, watch your Youtube videos. Though I think they give out laptops at that school now. I don’t know, I’m not the most technologically up today as the kids these days. I apologize in advance. There’s no cable and I can’t figure out the Apple TV doo-dangle-thing.” She points to a half-open door on the right side of the hall. “That’s your bathroom. I never go in there so, you’re responsible for telling me when shit breaks. I went out and got you some supplies, but if there’s anything else you need, let me know. Now…” Maz opens the final door on my left and flips on a light. She leads me into a simple room, painted cream and blue stripes. There’s a twin bed covered in a white comforter pressed against the wall, a wooden desk under the window, a dresser against the wall with a record player and a box of records, and an open door to a walk-in closet that looks like it’s filled with clothes. I can’t help but stop and stare.

“This is mine?” I set my one bag down at my feet.

“All yours, hun. You can arrange it and paint it how you want. Most of this stuff is leftover from previous girls. You can have whatever you want and anything else, I can put in storage. I think Jyn left a lot of her old clothes and you’re about her size.” Maz looked over the room. “Tomorrow, if you want, we can go shopping for any clothes you might need. Underwear. Bras. Whatever. Oh, and this is for you, for your first day.”

Maz picked a plain blue backpack up off the bed and handed it to me. I took it hesitantly and unzipped it. It was filled with notebooks and pens and pencils and even a calculator. Tears sting at my eyes. It’s too good. It’s too good to be true.

“Oh, hun. Can I give you a hug?”

I nod and her surprisingly strong arms wrap around me. I break and tears fall and I’m sobbing now. I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve any of this.

[reddie-fangirl24]

"I don't want to be alone" Eddie Kaspbrak ♡♡♡

This was @zozotheoujiaboarddemon​ request, too. I hope you enjoy! This is a Barry AU.

Support me on my Ko-Fi! 

Studying through the pages and pages of dialogue that Cousineau sent to him for the scene from Glengarry Glen Ross, Richie found it difficult to watch for his victim and study the lines at the same time. 

It was night. Richie hated the dark. That was a secret. Steve knew, but he used that fear against him only to get what he wanted. Once he turned out the lights in his room, locked the door, and left a panicked Richie banging against the door. When Steve came back, Richie agreed. 

His phone buzzed. Ugh, was it NoHo Hank yet again asking to see if he killed Paco yet? Fuming, Richie just wanted to get out of here. Of all places, he didn’t want to go back to that sleazy hotel room. And they were being watched by those men who didn’t even know how to use a gun at the nice hotel Steve was at.

Except it wasn’t Hank. It was from Eddie.

“Hey, Eddie!” Richie answered, relieved. He was so enthusiastic that he forgot to keep his voice down. “God, this monologue that Cousineau sent to me is so long...”

“I can’t believe she would do that to me!” Eddie cut him off ranting in anger, clearly still very upset. Earlier that day Richie took him to this audition. Eddie refused to talk about what happened, but obviously the audition didn’t go the way he had expected. He collapsed crying in Richie’s arms right after. “Can you believe that she would plan a fake audition just to get back at me?”

“Oh... uh, sorry.” Richie had no idea what to say. He didn’t know what Eddie was referring to. Eddie was sobbing on the other line. Richie’s heart fell. Out of all the actors in the class, Eddie went above and beyond, going over the limit at times. Its what an actor had to do.

As Eddie rambled on, Paco came outside of his house from across the street. Bolting up from the torn up couch that he had been sitting on, Richie grabbed his gun and took aim. Too bad Paco went right back into the house. “Fuck!” he whispered to himself. Luckily, Eddie didn’t hear.

“Maybe I am just wasting my life,” Eddie’s voice sounded so drained. “Maybe I am just a shitty wannabee actor.”

“No, Eds, don’t say that. You’re the best actor I have ever seen!” And that was the truth. Out of all the students in that acting class, Eddie was the only one who took his scenes to heart, exploiting emotion, and completely losing himself to a different character. Richie wished he could do that. 

“Are you sure that you can’t hang out?” Eddie asked him, desperate, after a moment of silence.

Richie sighed, adjusting his glasses, and staring at the gun in which he never wanted to touch ever again after leaving the marines. “I can’t.”

Another silence. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” Richie whined to Steve over the phone. This was the worst night he ever experienced since he left the Marines. Haunting memories plagued him, protruding terrifying images of the demon from his childhood. The clown shot him and killed him in a recurring nightmare.

“I’m busy right now,” Steve told him with little care in his voice. Richie heard music in the background. He knew that Steve was never faithful to him, but there was nobody else.

“Richie, you’ll be fine. You’re strong. You’ll get over it.” And he hung up the phone.

“Rich?” Eddie asked over the silence, his voice shaking.

Standing up, and throwing the gun to the side, Richie raced to his car. “I’ll be there as soon as I can!”

Driving through stoplights and zooming through traffic, Richie was not going to ignore Eddie’s pleas. If he learned anything in his time with Steve, Richie vowed never to leave anybody alone in their time of need.

Almost driving right by Eddie’s small apartment, Richie found Eddie sitting on the front porch guzzling down a glass of wine. In the instant Richie got out of his car, Eddie quickly walked up to him. His eyes were big, like saucers. Faded tears shown on his cheeks.

“Do you really think I am going to make it as an actor?” Eddie asked him, his voice wavering yet again to that hysteria Richie noticed. In his hand, Eddie carried his inhaler.

To calm him, Richie put his hand on his shoulder. “I think you’ll be a successful actor, Eds. I have seen what you can do on that stage, and man, you’re so fuckin’ talented! Really I-”

Eddie grabbed Richie’s face and pulled him in for a kiss. Caught off guard, Richie didn’t pull away. Wow, Eddie was a good kisser. Placing his hand on his face, Richie kissed him back. They stayed out there on the front lawn for a bit until Eddie took him inside to his bedroom.

Cuddling together, and catching his breath, Eddie hugged Richie close to him as he slept. Staring at him contently, Richie wrapped an arm around Eddie. This was nice. Steve never cuddled. After they had sex, Steve made him leave.

His cell phone buzzed on the table. As much as he tried to refrain from checking what it could have been, Richie gave in.

Steve: You’re in trouble

“Is something wrong?” Eddie asked. His eyes were still closed.

Richie threw his phone to the side and cuddled against Eddie. “No, Eds, everything is great.”

[honeymoonjin]

WTLTLD part two - jimin x reader

Read the first part to Would You Like to Live Deliciously? here. Part two: when Jimin accidentally fucks up and ticks an invite to his friend’s hangout as ‘plus one’, he freaks out and contacts the only girl he knows - you, a succubus whom he had previously summoned to take his virginity. Unfortunately for you, blending in as a human girlfriend will be difficult when his friend group consists of some familiar faces. Mentions of sexual content but nothing explicit. 2.9k words. This will have more parts to come! Please let me know what you think!

--

“Just call her, dude.”

Jimin huffs in irritation. “It’s not like it’s some random girl, Jungkook. She’s a fucking sex demon. Besides, I don’t want to bother her.” He focuses stubbornly on the road ahead as he holds on to the steering wheel a little tighter.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Jungkook narrow his eyes at Jimin and pout. “It’s not fair,” he whines, “I was the one that found the incantation in the first place. If you’re too pussy to call her again, then I should be allowed to!”

He exits off the highway with a harsher turn than is probably necessary. “I’m not a pussy, Jungkook. And you can get your own sex demon. No one’s stopping you.”

Judging by the toothy grin he’s being sent, that was the wrong thing to say. “Ooh, Jimin’s jealous! Jimin likes her! Whatever, dude. I told you yesterday; if you don’t call her when we get there, I will.”

The two of them were headed to a weekend hangout at their mutual friend Hoseok’s beach house. It had been a couple years since the last of them had graduated high school, and most of the others had moved away even before then. Their group of seven which had remained unbreakable, even over the distance, was finally reuniting in person, and the two in the car couldn’t have been more excited.

There was only one issue. Jimin had fucked up and accidentally hit the plus-one on the electronic invites Namjoon had made, and he was too proud to admit it was a mistake, so now an entire false narrative had been created around Jimin apparently having a girlfriend, and the only girl he had really spoken to and was comfortable with was, ironically, a succubus that he literally summoned from the depths of hell.

“I’ll call her,” he finally admits in resignation, “I made sure to pack the salt, I just… What can I possibly offer her, Gukie? There’s no reason for her to say yes.”

Jungkook falls into contemplative silence for a few moments, clutching at his seatbelt where it sometimes dug into the skin of his neck. “You know,” he says slowly in an odd tone, “I reckon I have an idea.”

Jimin takes the opportunity of a red stoplight to twist and stare at Jungkook, the younger boy’s eyebrows knitted in thought, nodding slowly. “What is it?”

“Okay, bear with me,” he starts, protesting when Jimin sighs. No doubt it would be another one of his hairbrained schemes. “Hey! Seriously, hear me out! Y/n wants sex, right? And obviously, last time you were more than happy to offer your dick up, so she probably won’t want to do all this work for something she’s already had before-” Jimin rolls his eyes, starting forward jerkily when the light turns green again, “bu-ut, maybe if you throw in a little extra she’d be willing to work for it.” Jungkook stays quiet with a big smile on his face, expectant.

Jimin groans. “Wow, so that whole spiel was just so that I’d let you fuck her, huh?”

“No! Well, yes… What I’m saying is, all you gotta do is sweeten the pot, buddy. Think about it- we’re going to be spending a whole long weekend with five other dudes. I was FaceTiming Namjoon the other day and he mentioned about how jealous the other guys were of you having a girlfriend, because they’re all single.”

Jimin frowned. “I thought Yoongi had a girlfriend.”

“Are you kidding? They broke up ages ago. I’m thinking you plus six other horny boys is a pretty great bargaining chip.”

A great sigh leaves Jimin’s nostrils as the car pulls onto a residential street running parallel to the street. “So, you’re telling me I should tell everyone Y/n is my girlfriend and then also get them to have sex with her? They’re not going to take part in that, because for them, it’d be cheating.”

“I’m not an idiot, hyung. Tell them you’re in an open relationship, because the little minx has a raging sexual appetite and your chili pepper dick can’t keep up.”

“Fuck off,” Jimin snaps reflexively, but his mind is already whirring.

--

“You seem grouchy,” Namjoon teases as the two of you sit in the bed of his truck at the old train station crossroads half an hour out of the main city.

Your frown deepens, and you take another swig from the glass bottle of vodka dangling limply in your hand. Demons couldn’t get drunk, but you very much enjoyed the burning sensation of high percentage alcohols. “No shit.” You sigh, letting your legs swing off the edge aimlessly. “I got summoned for the first time in, like, forever. And then he acts like he’s all smitten, and his friend was there, and I was hoping they’d summon me again. I could do with a regular fix, you know. But nothing.” You laugh bitterly. “Fuck, it’s stupid. I shouldn’t have given them my name.”

Namjoon’s eyes widen. “You what? Y/n, why would you risk it? If they found the resources to summon you, they could easily…” He breaks off with a sigh. “I hope for your sake they’ve just forgotten about you or moved on from seeking out the company of kind like us.”

You hum noncommittedly. “Anyway. I was thinking you and I should go downtown and spend some of those souls of yours this weekend. Splurge a little.”

He laughs incredulously, dimple deepening as his eyes stay locked on the slowly setting sun. “Oh, so you have one bad day and now you want to use my hard-earned souls for a little retail therapy? I see how it is.” He nudges your shoulder, but then drops the smile. “No can do, sorry. I have plans.”

You place the bottle on the metal bed of the truck. “Plans? Since when do us demons plan anything?”

He shrugs. “It’s… a thing. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back on Monday; we can go then. Deal?”

“Sure, whatever.” You huff and lean back, staring up at the deep orange wash of the sunset as it blends into navy. “You and I never hang out anymore. Not since…”

“Y/n,” Namjoon warns, voice a little more distant now that you’re lying down, “it’s not that I’m avoiding you, because I’m not. I just think there’s no point in being so bitter towards him anymore. He didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just how he is.”

You scoff and kick one leg out into the air petulantly. “Why is everyone on his side all the time? He walked out before I could even get any closure. He didn’t leave a message, nothing. How is he the victim here?”

Namjoon sighs patiently, turning around to face you, leaning over and blocking the last warm rays of the sun. “Need I remind you that you broke up with him? He’s still not over you, Y/n.”

You sit up suddenly, and Namjoon has to jump back to avoid your heads colliding. “Min Yoongi can go suck a dick. He didn’t have to be an asshole and leave like he did, even if he knew what I was going to do. It’s just cruel.”

Namjoon tilts his head to the side. “Y/n,” the crossroads demon begins slowly, “have you really never considered that he left like that because he couldn’t bear to face you and deal with the goodbye?”

Your face falls solemn for a moment, eyes distant, before you shake your head roughly and get up off the truck, landing heavily on the dirt. “It doesn’t matter either way,” you spit, “I’m never going to have to see him ever again, so he can find some succubus pussy elsewhere if he’s that hung up on it. Goodbye, Namjoon.”

“Y/n, I wasn’t trying to upset you, I just-”

His voice is abruptly muffled as you depart from the earthly plane and return home to your silent, cold apartment.

--

You wouldn’t dare admit it to anyone, but later that night when you feel that tug in your chest and the telltale tingling in your extremities that signifies you’re being summoned, you happily drop everything and stand up in anticipation. Finally.

Quickly schooling your expression into something a little more neutral, your heart races as your new surroundings materialize in front of you. It’s a cold, dank room, with a naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling. To your right is a bay with a washing machine and a dryer, to your right lies a metal rack with wet clothes strung over it. And in front of you, dinner.

“Mortals,” you recite slowly, hoping your smile comes off as sly rather than genuinely happy, “for what purpose have you summoned me?”

Jimin, who’s back in his childish clothes – this time a thin white sweater and pink skinny jeans – flinches at the burst of hellfire and waves sheepishly, but the younger just grins widely. “You can drop the formalities, noona,” he gushes, “we’re like friends now.”

You roll your eyes, though the comment inspires a muted bloom of joy within you. “Why am I here?”

Jungkook grins and leans back to stare down at his friend wordlessly. Jimin rubs the back of his neck and laughs awkwardly. “The thing is, uh… I kind of told my friends I had a girlfriend. A-And I don’t. So, I was wondering if you might, uh, pretend to be my girlfriend?”

You blink at him, eyes narrowing slowly. Any spark of excitement at the thought of feeding well again is snuffed out. “Excuse me? Why would I do that?”

The older boy helplessly shrugs with a pained expression, so Jungkook takes over. “Here’s the deal. Jimin needs a hot chick to show off to his friends; you’re a hot chick. You’re a demon from hell who needs to fuck for survival – huge fan, by the way – and we have seven people in our friend group who would love to assist in your plight, I’m sure. We’ll tell them you and Jimin are allowed to have sex with other people, and you can have your pick. Quid pro quo.” Proud of himself, Jungkook nods once decisively and falls silent.

You glance over to Jimin. “He’s telling the truth? You believe I’ll be able to feed well here?” Realistically, you should just say no and return to hell, or perhaps somewhere else on Earth for a midnight snack, but an offer like this had never come around for you before, and it’s not like you were going to do anything this weekend anyway. Jimin nods cautiously, and you sigh in resignation. “How long do I have to pretend? I do not know anything about mortal relationships, so I cannot guarantee I will be very convincing.”

“It’s easy,” Jungkook blurts in passionately, “all you have to do is be touchy feely, compliment Jimin, and always agree with him. Those are the three pillars to perfect PDA.”

“One weekend,” Jimin clarifies gratefully, “just until Monday morning when everyone heads back. I can, I don’t know, tell them in like a month from now that we broke up. Thank you so much, Y/n.”

“Also!” Jungkook very nearly yells, and you cringe at the way it fills the small room. “Also, human girlfriends always wear sexy clothes. You know, tight dresses, short skirts, low-cut tops. Hoseokie-hyung has a pool, so you should get a bikini too.”

You glance down at what you’re wearing. Clothes were normally unimportant to you unless you were on the hunt, so you had been spending the evening in your apartment wearing a loose tee and some sweatpants. In your experience ‘sexy’ varied from person to person, and so it seemed the younger boy found showing skin to be attractive. “I’m not your girlfriend,” you answer simply, “so it is irrelevant to me what you think of my attire. Jimin,” you focus your gaze on him, “what do you want me to wear?”

“Uhh…” For a moment, you wait and stare at the way his mouth drops open and his eyes widen in thought. Beside him, Jungkook is mouthing something you’re pretty sure is ‘lingerie, lingerie’ but Jimin doesn’t pay him any attention. “you don’t have to be sexy for me, you can just wear whatever you want. Whatever’s comfortable.”

You refrain from rolling your eyes at the non-committal response, and instead shut them briefly so that you can focus on slipping into his mind. Smiling a little at the way his kinks and fetishes seemed to have evolved from last time, you let yourself savor and get to know his taste.

“…is she okay? Fuck, Jimin, she’s probably glitching out or something. Throw more salt on her; maybe the call is running out.”

“I’m not gonna throw salt on her. Y/n, are you good?”

You crack open your eyes with a satisfied smile, then look down at you clothes, dematerializing the casual attire and replacing it with a pair of black shorts and an oversize yellow sweater that hangs off one shoulder to expose your bare skin, no bra strap in sight.

Jimin’s mouth hangs open, and he closes it to swallow hard. “That’s… that’s my sweater.”

“The one you were wearing at our first meeting, correct. It was the only item of clothing of yours I had seen in enough detail to recreate. Is this acceptable attire?”

Jungkook sighs out dreamily. “Most certainly. Stealing his sweater? Classic girlfriend. Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”

Before you can answer, a doorbell rings somewhere outside the room. Jimin swears and puts a hand across his forehead nervously. “Oh god, what if they don’t believe me? What if they won’t have sex with her and I have to sell my soul to make up for the deal? Oh god, what am I doing?”

“Calm down,” Jungkook commands with a soft punch to Jimin’s shoulder, “it’s probably just Hoseokie-hyung getting back from the store. Y/n,” he swivels and fixes his gaze on you, “just pretend like you only just arrived, okay? We’ll introduce you.”

‘Hoseokie-hyung’ turns out to be a boisterous, extremely friendly young man with black hair and tanned skin, and before Jimin even gets your name out, you’re enveloped in a tight hug, feet almost lifting off of the ground.

“So nice to meet you! Jimin’s been pretty hush-hush about everything. Guess he wants to keep you all to himself, huh?”

“No!” Jimin yells suddenly, making Hoseok flinch in surprise. “Uh, sorry, we’re just not, um, monogamous. I didn’t tell you guys much because…”

You smile softly, internally cringing at the way he awkwardly stumbles on his words. “I asked him to keep quiet,” you pitch in, “I didn’t want him talking me up too much!” Your eye twitches when Jimin laughs in relief a little too loudly.

“Oh,” Hoseok states, a little less energetic than before, but still with a radiant, friendly beam on his face, “that’s fair enough, I know Jimin certainly likes to overexaggerate things. But you seem lovely, it’s nice to meet you!”

“You too.” You remember Jungkook’s advice: compliments, physical contact, and agreement. Without warning, you’re leaning into Jimin’s side and slipping your hand into the back pocket of his jeans. Secretly loving the way the muscles in his ass jump at the pressure, you smile pleasantly. “Any friend of Jimin’s is a friend of mine.”

Jimin tugs at the neck of his white sweater, then lets his arm gingerly rest over your shoulders. “Hobi-hyung, when are the others arriving?”

Hoseok’s eyes light up. “Soon, I hope! Most of the others met up at the main station to get an Uber together, but-” A ding breaks his concentration, and you frown, craning your neck to locate the origin of the source.

Hoseok pulls out a black, flat device from his pocket and stares into the light that comes out the surface. You were of course familiar with mobile phones, had seen them in the wild, but had no use for one yourself. You watched curiously as he looked at it for a moment, squinting to try and make out what showed up on the surface. “Oh! Yeah, so as I was saying, most of them are en route now, but Yoongi showed up separately. He just text; he’s at the front door.”

Your head rocks back and your pleasant façade freezes. Jimin feels you tense up, and hastily removes his arm from your shoulders as if that was the problem, then asks you if you’re okay, but you’ve tuned out the earthly plane you’re on, homing in on your other senses.

It could be a different Yoongi, you had hoped for a moment. Maybe it had become a popular human name. But no. You could feel his familiar energy radiating through your skull, the way it did when he was near.

Another ding sounds in the back of your mind, but this one doesn’t come from Hoseok’s device, but the direction of the front door. Your ex-boyfriend is here.

[avatarofthepining]

Worth the Wait

hey so that post i made days ago about duck proposing? yeah i kept thinking about it. so here’s 3350 words of my thoughts on it. ♥♥ (also the link to it on a03 i guess??)

Duck stood shuffling nervously outside Indrid’s Winnebago, his hands shoved in his coat and breath making small clouds in the air. He’d been waiting outside in the cold December air for almost five minutes now. With all of Indrid’s future seeing bullshit, and Duck telling him what time he would be there, he should have been ready to go. Any other time Duck or the Pine Guard had come over he’d opened the door right before they knocked. He shivered against the cold wind that swept across the mountain, hands clenching in his pockets. Fuck.

Duck felt around again then started slapping all of his pockets. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The box wasn’t there. He jogged back to his truck and clicked the lights on. There’s no way. There’s no way I forgot the ring. Sure as shit, though, Duck forgot it. As he was having this realization Indrid placed a hand on his shoulder and spun him around before kissing him hard on the mouth.

Duck turned a deep shade of red, but blamed it on the cold. “Well hey there, darlin. I-”

“Seem to have forgotten something. Shall we go back to your apartment first then?” Indrid was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet and smiling like this was the best day of his life. Duck squinted at him for a moment and prayed to Minerva that this was just him being excited about the date. He sighed and walked Indrid around to the other side of the truck.

“Go ahead and climb in, Indrid.” Duck opened the door and offered his hand for help.

Indrid immediately turned the heat up as high as it would go and took off his gloves. He hated being cold but he was willing to suffer through it if it meant feeling Duck’s warm hands. The second Duck got his seatbelt on Indrid snatched his hand. “Can I have that back until I get us outta this forest?”

Indrid sighed and let go, “I suppose so. Where are we going tonight?”

“That, uh, that Wolf Ember Grill that we’ve been to a few times.” Duck flipped on his brights, driving extra slow. “I know you like the… the fruity lemonade they have there.”

“Oh lovely. I can’t wait.” Duck turned onto the main road into town and turned the radio on. They were silent, only the roar of the engine and a soft bluegrass song playing on the radio filling the car. After Duck turned onto the main road he reached his hand across the car and snagged Indrid’s hand again. He knew he had probably foreseen most of this, but he hung onto the hope that he could still surprise him. “Don’t forget to swing by your house, Duck. And no, I didn’t see it coming. Just know your patterns.”

Indrid switched the radio over to some awful pop station and Duck groaned, “Aww come on Indrid… You know I can’t stand this garbage.”

“Really? You don’t? Because…” Indrid took a deep breath and started singing, horribly off key and warbly. “I still hear your voice when you sleep next to me… I still feel your touch in myyy dreams.”

Duck went white knuckled on the steering wheel. He didn’t want to admit it, especially not to Indrid, but this was his favorite song in college and knew every word to it. Softly, he whispered, “Indrid, no.”

“You know you wanna sing. Come on…” Indrid leaned across the cab of the truck as he sang the next line. He kept touching Duck’s face and putting his head on his shoulder. Not only was he being distracting, but Duck was finding it harder not to sing along. They’d pulled up to a stoplight right as the chorus was about to start.

Duck took a deep breath before belting out the chorus, wildly pumping his arms and dancing. Indrid joined back in through a fit of laughter, honored to see this happy, carefree side of Duck that he didn’t show very often. They’d been dating for a year now and Duck had loved every second of it. Sure, it had been awkward at first, beyond awkward, as Duck hadn’t had a long-term boyfriend in over five years and Indrid hadn’t really even had friends since the 1960’s.

They muddled through the first few months with a lot of teasing (and maybe some advice) from Aubrey and Ned, until they’d settled into a rhythm with each other. Something that was predictable and familiar and absolutely wonderful. Duck looked forward to coming home and finding Indrid curled up on the couch, Lulu in has lap, crumpled visions and timelines scattered around the coffee table. Sometimes there was a home-cooked, sometimes it was just take-out, but there was always Indrid.

He parked his truck in front of his apartment. “I’ll be right back, honey. You don’t go anywhere.”

Duck kissed his cheek and hopped out, jogging up the stairs. When he came back downstairs, Indrid didn’t look surprised at all. Just leaned across the truck again to rest his head on Duck’s shoulder, “Ready to finally get on with our evening?”

“Hell yeah.”

Duck and Indrid were sitting in a secluded corner of Wolf Ember Grill. The sun had long ago set over the Allegheny Mountains but it was still fairly bright outside thanks to the full moon. Indrid found himself frequently staring out the window in admiration. He’d moved around the country some decades ago, but sight of the full moon on illuminating the forest and the river would always his favorite. He noticed Duck watching him and, well, it was one of his favorites. Indrid reached across the table to squeeze his hand and tell him he loves him, but stopped.

He suddenly got several visions at once: A car accident on the far side of town, two timelines where Duck proposes tonight, one where he didn’t, and a baby being born in- Wait. Indrid’s head snapped up, tears forming in his eyes. He had gotten a vision of this earlier, but a part of him hadn’t expected it to come true. Mostly because a small part of him often questioned why Duck was ever interested in him in the first place. Why would he want to be with someone who had a propensity for drinking things that tasted like nectar and occasionally turned into a large humanoid moth.

Now though, the visions had been much more clear and Duck was shuffling in his pockets, searching for what Indrid assumed was the ring. When he found it in his coat and glanced up, he noticed Indrid wiping at his eyes, smiling like he knew a great secret. “Goddammit, Indrid.”

“No, no it’s fine.” Indrid leaned forward trying to look less... Knowing, he supposed. “Please-”

“Nope. We’re gonna finish our dinner and I’ll try again later.” Duck shoved a bite of cake in his mouth, clearly disgruntled but not actually angry.

“You know you’ll never be able to surprise me, but I appreciate the effort.” Duck smiled but tried to hide it. “I love you.”

“Yeah, I love you too, Indrid.”

~~~~

It was almost another month before Duck tried again. It was the week after New Years and the town still had the Christmas decorations up. He had thought it would be nice to go look at the lights and go ice skating. That was until Indrid emerged from their bedroom in a mound of coats and sweaters, vaguely resembling the little brother in A Christmas Story. So maybe this wouldn’t be as romantic as he’d wanted it to be but he’d make it work. He snagged Indrid’s hand and they headed out the door.

Despite all of his layers, he still ended up shivering after about thirty seconds of being outside. Though, he insisted he would be fine as long as they didn't stay out too long. Indrid was more excited to go ice skating than see the lights. He claimed to love it despite not having gone in years. When they got there, the rink was fairly busy but Indrid didn’t care he wanted to go anyways. Duck vaguely wondered if he knew what he had planned, but tried not to think about it. Watching all the little kids carelessly zoom and tumble around the rink, he had a different concern.

Duck was already mentally cursing himself for what he was about to do. He tried not to ask this unless related to the Pine Guard, but he couldn’t help himself. “Hey Indrid. Uh, how do… How do you-”

“See this shaking out?” He said with Duck.

“There are, oh, three timelines where things go off without a hitch and one where this ends in disaster.” He stood, very wobbly on his skates and extended a hand. “Are you ready to see which one will ring true?”

Duck took it and stood up, “Yeah. Let's go… Hey. Should we be worried about you breaking your glasses?”

“Perhaps.” He thought as he half walked, half stumbled into the rink. “Although, I don't foresee anything going quite that poorly.”

Duck made his way onto the ice much more gracefully than Indrid, though that wasn’t saying much. He moved with all the grace and beauty of newborn deer. He shook his head and skated up beside him, “Hey honey. I thought you said you’d done this before.”

“I have!” Duck grabbed one arm to keep him from falling and Indrid latched on to the wall with the other. “I never said I was good… It’s about to start snowing.”

Sure enough, about fifteen seconds later, the snow started coming down in fat, lazy flakes. The kind that clung to the streetlamps and your clothes, quickly coating anything they touched in white. Indrid looked ethereal, haloed from behind in the fading January light and snowflakes stuck in his hair. He laughed at the dumbstruck look on Duck’s face and for a moment Duck completely forgot where they were or why they were there. He was only distantly aware of being in the way of people when he leaned towards Indrid and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. As he pulled away, he remembered the ring in his pocket and he decided, fuck the original plan.

He opened his mouth to speak, but as he did Indrid’s face twisted for just a moment. Just long enough to let Duck know he’d had a vision, and of course he did. Now, he was smiling like he had a month ago, but he could tell Indrid was trying not to. Duck hesitated, he’d been in love with Indrid for over a year now and had been planning on proposing for a few months. He wanted to just do it already. But he really wanted to surprise him, too, even just once. Duck knew it was ridiculous, Indrid was almost never surprised. It came with the seeing crap. But, he wanted this to be something more than just another predicted future for him.

No matter what Duck wanted, it seemed fate had different plans. As Duck was weighing his options, someone crashed into him. He toppled over onto Indrid, suddenly thankful he’d worn all those layers. While it may have protected his body, it did nothing to protect his head from cracking against the ice. Duck quickly pulled himself into a kneeling position next to him. Fuck. This had gone to hell seven ways from Sunday. His own lip was bleeding, he got the distinct feeling his knee was bruised, but worst of all: Indrid’s glasses were broken. He made to sit up but Duck put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Indrid, darlin, I need you to stay still for just a second. You uh- Your glasses are broke.”

“Oh. This is no good.”

“No shit, babe.” Duck rolled his eyes. “It’s only the one lens though. So, why don’t uh… Why don’t you… Keep a hold on your glasses I guess. And I’ll. I’ll try and pick you up?”

Duck climbed to his feet and with the help Juno, who he hadn’t seen there before, they got him off the ice. Indrid sat on the bench, holding the lens of his glasses together, while Duck removed their skates and but their shoes back on. He gave him the keys to go start the truck and get it warmed up while he returned everything. Duck idly wondered if this was the disaster timeline, or if this was something Indrid hadn’t seen altogether.

Back in the truck, Indrid was still holding his glasses together and rubbing the back of his head. He knew his own injuries were superficial, but that was only because Indrid had taken the worst and cushioned his fall. He pulled out of the parking lot and started heading back to the Winnebago. They’d kept it hidden at an old ranger station in the Monongahela just in case there ever was an incident where Indrid was lost or broke his glasses, and tonight they were both very glad they did.

“How are you feelin, Indrid?” Duck reached over to put a hand on his knee.

“Oh you know. I’ve got a headache, my chest hurts from where I broke your fall. But overall could be worse.” He laughed for a second. “Though, this was definitely the disaster option.”

Indrid had about a dozen pairs of backup glasses, but he could never remember where he left them. By the time he found them, both he and Duck were exhausted and decided to crash there for the night. Indrid began turning on the space heaters he had set up while Duck found all of their blankets and spread them out on the bed. Indrid heated up two glasses of eggnog and made his way into the back room. He set one on each side of the bed before climbing and curling himself around Duck.

“Hey Indrid?”

“Yes, love?”

“You…” Duck sighed. “You know why this. Why I-”

“I don’t, Duck. You and I both know there are very rarely things that surprise me.” He gave him a small squeeze. “This is important to you, though, so this is important to me.”

~~~~

Over the next few weeks Duck just… Kept the ring on him at all times. He thought maybe if he surprised himself with it, he could surprise Indrid too. But that future seeing motherfucker always knew. No matter what Duck did or where. Indrid. Always. Knew. There had been one frustrating incident leaving the Lodge where he’d accidentally pulled the box out of his coat pocket instead of his keys. Duck, very mistakenly, thought Indrid would be surprised and was three words into the speech he’d had prepared before he cut him off. To give him credit, Indrid tried not to laugh while he told him he knew.

Duck tried everything he could think of: romantic dates, sitting on the couch watching tv, while they were grocery shopping. Nothing seemed to surprise him. When the full moon hit in January, Duck had the brief idea of inviting Indrid to the hunt and planning a small cushion of time to propose then. They had been sitting in a meeting in the basement of Amnesty Lodge and Mama had been going on about having to corner this one near the river bank a ways out of town. They needed two people to head out there first and keep an eye out for when the abomination showed up.

Indrid and I could go out there, he thought. It would give me plenty of time. He didn’t get much farther into the thought as Indrid’s voice cut through the room, far more serious than anyone had ever heard it. “Duck Newton, absolutely not.”

“I wasn’t- Fuck, Indrid, I’m not..”

“Duck Newton you will not ask me to marry you on that hunt. There is not a single timeline where it doesn’t end in utter disaster.” Duck was pretty sure he would’ve taken his glasses off and glared at him would he not turn into a giant, humanoid moth. Instead he cleared his throat and went back to doodling. “Besides. I don’t think it’s nearly as romantic as you do.”

Duck crossed his arms, grumbling about how it couldn’t end that bad, and tried to ignore the stares from everyone else. It wasn't like they didn’t know he had a ring and everything.

Valentine’s day rolled around and Duck had all these romantic plans, but no plans to propose. Well. Maybe one. It didn’t matter, Indrid would see through it anyways. He’d gotten better at not being obvious he knew what was about to go down, but he had a few small tells. He’d find Duck’s hand and squeeze it, then start fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. Christ this was frustrating but Duck knew it would be worth it in the long run.

They stumbled through the door around ten on Valentine’s day, both of them more than a little wine drunk and laughing about running into Ned and Barclay at the couple’s pottery and wine night. (The event was hilariously titled the Chug & Squeeze) Duck helped Indrid out of coat before taking off his own and hanging them up. Indrid had ready made his way into the kitchen and was haphazardly scribbling something onto a napkin. He quickly crumpled it and tossed it aside before Duck walked in and started pouring them some eggnog.

Duck took one of the cups out of his hand, “Darlin, is this even good anymore? It's been sittin in our fridge for what? Two months now?”

“It smells fine… Though the whiskey might be hiding the rotting smell.” Indrid took a sip and smiled, though that didn’t encourage Duck any. Instead he remembered that he'd left Indrid's ring in his jacket. He’d thought about making a little clay box and putting it in there, but he'd decided against it when Indrid started smiling at him. He set the cup down on the counter and went to go back to his coat, but Indrid snagged him by his back pocket and spun him around.

He wrapped his arms around Duck and sighed happily, “Love, you know you don’t have to surprise me, right? I'll be happy no matter how you ask.”

“I know… It's just… I wanna. You know it's-” Duck put his head on his shoulder. “I just feel like I should I guess?”

“Duck, it is impossible to surprise me. I can think of, oh, four times in the past ten years that I've been surprised. You know this.” He rubbed small circles into his back. “I love the sentiment you're trying to put into-”

“Indrid! You fuckin future seein asshole.” Duck grabbed the napkin he'd just spotted on the counter. “You had a vision about this! Right before I came in here!”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yes I did. The one earlier this evening and the one just now are the only two I've had in a while. The amount of visions I'm having about you and I are becoming less and less and I was starting to get worried you'd never ask.” Duck actually looked angry and Indrid could understand. He was, in a sense, manipulating the future. “I saw us having a heartfelt conversation and you asking me, but clearly that's not coming true anymore.”

Duck stomped out of the room and rifled through his jacket pocket. For a split second Indrid thought he might be getting ready to leave. Not permanently, but maybe go blown off some steam, as this was definitely the most upset he'd ever seen him. Instead, Duck stomped back into the room and threw the box him, barely giving him time to catch it before it hit him in the face.

“Indrid, for god’s sakes will you just act surprised and marry me?” Duck crossed his arms over his chest and bit his lip.

“Well,” Indrid flushed bright red, staring at the box as he turned it over in his hands, and mumbled “This isn't how I saw this going. In any timeline.”

Before Indrid could say yes, of course he was going to say yes, Duck was kissing him. He was surprised for just a moment before kissing him back, and yeah. This was definitely worth the wait.