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harlowsbby · 8 months

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Snooze 💘

Requested, Jack admits he has a crush on the readers but wonders if she feels the same way.

“What if she doesn’t feel the same way? What if I ruin our friendship by telling her how I really feel.” Jack worriedly asked Ace.

“I’m telling you nothing will be ruined because I know she feels the same way.” Ace reassured Jack but he was still on edge.

Jack and You have been best friends since first grade and he’s had the biggest and fattest crush on you ever since. It’s been hard for him watching you go through life with other men that weren’t him.

But this time around he was going to make sure that you knew he loved you and not just as friends he wanted to love you outside of being friends, he wanted to make you his.

“How about tonight when everyone is asleep you take her out somewhere maybe to the movies or to the park to look at the stars? Didn’t you say your friend Jade has a ranch near by?” Ace suggested.

“She does! I’ll message her right now and see if she can set up a little picnic type thing under the stars.” Ace smiled. “I hope tonight ends well for the two of you.”

Jack nodded his head. “I hope so too Ace.” He sighed.

There was a lot weighing on Jack tonight it was either he’d gain you as his girlfriend or he’d lose you as his one of his best friends. He wasn’t sure how tonight was going to end up but he could on wish for the best.

“Imagine she turns you down?” Druski joked. “Gosh he’ll be crying about it forever and forever.” Urban said.

“He’ll be rapping about Y/N next.” 2fo added on.

“He’ll be like true love? What is a true love all I know is heartbreak man fuck out of here with all this love shit.” Druski attempted rap.

“You’re all idiots.” Jack mumbled and stepped outside to get some air as the guys laughed. “Please let tonight end well.” He talked to himself.

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“Where are we going Jack?” You questioned him as the two of you pulled him to Jade’s ranch. “Do you trust me?” He asked when the car was finally put into park.

You looked up and tried your best to inspect the area it looked like a farm but there wasn’t any animals around at all, just a few lights and lots of apple trees.

You looked at him with your eyebrows raised wondering what he had up his sleeve. “I do?” You stated but you were a bit unsure. “So just follow my lead.” He said.

Jack got out the car first and made his way over to your side of the car and opened your door for you. “Thank you.” You stated. “You’re welcome, now come on grab my hand.”

Your stomach started doing flips when you grabbed his hands. Your feelings for Jack have always been there you’ve just been way too scared to admit them to him, you didn’t want to ruin a good friendship by telling him that you wanted to be more than friends.

Even though you had lots of boyfriends growing up you mainly only had them to try and hide your feelings for Jack. You were in denial at first because there was no way you could ever fall for your best friend right? Well you were wrong.

Jack walked the two of you to the back of the ranch and you gasped upon seeing the picnic table with a few candles spread out, a red and white checkered table cloth and a picnic basket that had a few of your favorite snacks inside.

“What’s all this for?” You turned to Jack who was already looking at you. “We’re going to be watching the stars tonight so I figured we’d have a little like picnic while we did.” He smiled softly.

“This is so cute!” You squealed and gave him a side hug. “You’re cuter.” He mumbled under his breath.

“What was that?” You innocently asked him. “Oh I said let’s go sit yeah? I heard there was going to be a few shooting stars tonight.”

The two of you went ahead and sat down at the table and you looked up at the sky looking at all of the different stars. “I love watching the stars I wish I could be one.” Jack chuckled.

“Why?” He asked and looked at you and watched the way you admired all of the different stars in the sky. “Because not every star is the same every star is different and original in its own way kinda like you.”

“I’m original?” He asked. “Yeah you’re one of a kind Jack.” You smiled softly. “Ooo look a shooting star!” You pointed to the sky.

But while you were looking at the shooting stars Jack was too busy admiring you his heart started to race a bit with the thought of having to confess his feelings to you.

You knew he needed to do it sooner or later or else you’d become someone else’s. “Y/N.” He said and your head whipped over to him.

“Yes Jack?” You asked him nervously. “Uh.” He scattered the back of his neck nervously he didn’t know how to start the conversation.

“Well you see the thing is.” He gulped. “What’s wrong? You’re making me scared.” You nervously laughed.

You weren’t sure why you were so nervous but you just had this gut feeling in your stomach that something was going to go down tonight you just weren’t sure what.

“Fuck shit.” He chocked and you giggled. “Fuck shit?” He sighed heavily and stood up and rubbed his hands against his face. “I can’t do this.” He said.

“Jack?” Your lips turned into a small frown when you noticed just how frustrated he was getting.

“What’s the matter? You know you can tell me anything right?” He removed his hands from his face and sighed.

The two of you were now face to face. “I like you like I really like you, like you Y/N. I wanna be more than friends with you I really wanna be your man and I want you to be my babe, baby, honey pie, baby girl.” He kept rambling and you giggled.

“How about this for your answer.” You grabbed his face and connected your lips to his he was shocked at first not expecting for you to react like that but he nonetheless melted into the kiss.

You both pulled away for air eventually and both laughed softly. “I’ve always liked you for the longest Jack I was just scared on what it would do to our friendship.” You expressed to him.

“Me too but I promise I’ll never do anything to break your heart, will you be my girlfriend?” You smiled and nodded. “Of course I will.”

After some time the two of you decided to head back home to get some much needed sleep but one your way back to the car you had gotten a call from the guys.

“It’s one in the morning what are you guys doing up?” You put the phone on speaker so Jack was able to hear.

“Sooo are you finally Jack’s little boo thing?” Urban teased. “Yeah I bet they were kissing and making out all night.” Clay said and made kissing noises.

“You guys are annoying.” You giggled. “Mhm you say that now but you know we’re right just remember keep it wrapped up Jack.” Jack’s jaw dropped as you bent over in laughter.

“Alright we’re gonna go now we’ll see you guys later.” The guys chuckled. “Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.” They teased before hanging up.

(Sorry this is out so late a bitch been working 😭)

#jack harlow #jack harlow concepts #jack harlow imagine #jack harlow x reader #jack harlow x y/n #jack harlow x you

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insanityclause · 4 months

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“It must have been in about 1979, I was in New York on holiday. I was sitting up with a friend, and we were both stoned as owls.” Jane Wymark was retelling her brush with a piece of theatre history. She recalled the sound of a telephone cutting through the sour, rising smoke. Wymark answered. Distant and absurd on the other end of the line, a telegram message from her mother. “It said something like: ‘Wonderful job. Hamlet, please come home.’”

After several minutes of laughter, it occurred to Wymark that the call might not be a joke. “So I rung my mother up, and said ‘I’m really sorry if I’m waking you up in the middle of the night for no reason, but is this real?’ And she said, ‘Yes, come home right now, because they want you to play Ophelia.’”

Wymark was being parachuted into a production of Hamlet that was being talked about as among the best of the century. Derek Jacobi, a Shakespearean actor then in his forties and recently made famous by his star turn as the Roman emperor in the television series I, Claudius, was in the title role. In some quarters, Jacobi’s poetic, volatile performance was being talked about as the Hamlet of his generation.

A film of the production would be broadcast in America and viewed by more people at once than any in history. When The New York Times asked Jacobi how he felt knowing that a generation of viewers would come to consider his interpretation definitive, he replied: “That way lies madness.”

One night, Wymark recalled, the cast were taking their bows in the furnacelike auditorium. “By the time we got to the end of the show we were pouring sweat,” she said. “Well I wasn’t, because I’d been dead for a while, but Derek and the guy playing Laertes were just sopping. We’d done all the usual curtain calls and everything, and then Peter O’Toole comes wavering on to the stage.”

O’Toole, then almost 50 and skeletal-gaunt, was carrying in his hands a little red book. As the audience hushed he explained that the book was given to the actor who was considered the definitive Hamlet of his generation. When O’Toole had played the part in 1963, the actor Michael Redgrave had given him the book. Redgrave had been given it by someone else, a great actor of the previous generation, and now O’Toole was passing it on to Jacobi, who in turn could give it to whomever he pleased.

The notion that each generation has its definitive Hamlet is a critical will-o’-the-wisp that has dogged the play almost since it was written. The Edwardian essayist Max Beerbohm called Shakespeare’s most famous part “a hoop through which every eminent actor must, sooner or later, jump”, but only one actor in thousands gets to “give” his or her Hamlet in a professional production. “Everyone — great, good, bad or indifferent — wants to play Hamlet,” the actor Christopher Plummer once said.

Why? The question feels redundant. If you are someone who needs to perform, you are someone who needs to perform Hamlet. In Withnail and I, the 1987 cult comedy film about actors and their ambitions, the bloated, fey, lecherous character known as Uncle Monty has a short speech on the subject: “It is the most shattering experience of a young man’s life when, one morning, he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, ‘I will never play the Dane.’ When that moment comes, one’s ambition ceases.”

Earlier this year, I set out to find the red book.

As a trophy, a tradition, a secret succession, it seemed to embody some of the most romantic ideas about the part. I felt that in mapping its passage from player to player, I could trace a shadow history of the thing that has been driving the whole theatrical world for centuries: ambition.

This is what brought me to ask the retired Wymark about her encounter with the book. And this is how I eventually came to be standing outside a rambling, gabled cottage in north London, uncertain about whether to ring the bell until a vast Shakespearean sneeze told me I was at the right place. The door opened and I shook hands with a neat, elderly man who looked just like Derek Jacobi. The living room, decorated with antique furniture and hung with flower paintings, left an impression of a precisely chosen life. I said that I wanted to ask him about a red, leather-bound book, handed down from actor to actor, that had passed through his hands decades ago. I said he might be the oldest living actor to have held it in his hands. He furrowed an alpine brow and fixed his pale blue eyes on a tiny point just past my left eye. “Oh God,” he moaned, in an agony of remembrance. “It was a little copy of Hamlet . . . ”

Of course, there is no definitive Hamlet. This is true, and so obviously true that people have been saying it for hundreds of years. “There is no such thing as Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies.” This is true! Hamlet is sour, obedient, suicidal, sarcastic, self-indulgent, flip and outright murderous before the end of his second scene. Modern scholarship has been wincingly keen to stress the heterogeneity of possible responses. As I once heard a professor say in a university seminar, should we be speaking of Hamlets, rather than Hamlet?

Perhaps. But we should also be honest: that sucks and we hate it. We also can’t ignore the genealogy of great Hamlets that exists, stretching all the way back to Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s star performer and business partner, for whom the role was written. That the character and the play are both radically unstable and look totally different in different hands seems to have made us more eager to pinpoint a single actor’s performance as the one. Producers, theatre managers, actors and journalists have connived to reinforce that idea.

Hamlet does offer an actor a scope and centrality that no other part does. “It’s the great personality role in Shakespeare,” Jacobi explained when we were sitting down, his hands conducting the silence around him as he spoke. He had settled in a winged leopard-print armchair, like a portrait of himself. On the side table was an Olivier Award, a small bronze sculpture of the great Laurence Olivier himself, the man who won both Best Actor and Best Picture for his 1948 film of Hamlet, and then launched the National Theatre in 1963 with a production of the play. “You use much more of your own personality as Hamlet,” Jacobi said, “rather than becoming Hamlet by going out and acquiring things. . . Hamlet will look how the actor looks, sound how he sounds, move how he moves. You play yourself as Hamlet.”

Jacobi first came to prominence as a teenage Hamlet, in an eye-catchingly serious schoolboy production at the Edinburgh festival fringe. In his early twenties he joined the germinal National Theatre and played opposite O’Toole’s Hamlet as Laertes. In his forties, he was given the red book by O’Toole, filmed in the role and toured the world. He was sworn to revenge under sheets of pelting rain outside the real Elsinore castle in Denmark. He soliloquised and played mad by the Egyptian Sphinx as the sun set.

A particular challenge of playing the part, Jacobi told me, is delivering lines so famous they risk breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief. In his production, the second act began with Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy. Unusually, it was played as a speech delivered to Ophelia, rather than on an empty stage. In Sydney, at the end of the tour, Jacobi was waiting nervously in the wings. “I thought, ‘This is probably the most famous line in all drama. What if I forgot it? What if I went on and my mind went blank?’ And I went on, and I started . . .

“To be, or not to be, that is the question/ Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune/ Or–

Or–

Or–”

Blinded to the astonishment of a thousand spectators by the force of the footlights, Jacobi realised he’d dried. Dried completely. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten the words. It was like he’d never known them. An entire minute of silence passed, until he was audibly given his line by Ophelia. Somehow, he got through the performance and the rest of the run. Afterwards, Jacobi didn’t go on stage again for two years. When I mentioned the incident, his eyes turned tight and hooded. He asked to talk about something else. Sensing my cue, I returned to the red book.

“Oh God. Rich!” he called into the next room. “Who did I give the book to?”

“You gave it to Ken Branagh,” called Richard Clifford, Jacobi’s partner, from offstage.

“Ken! I gave it to Ken,” said Jacobi. Then, calling back: “Who did Ken give the book to?”

“Tom Hiddleston!”

“Tom! He gave it to Tom.”

I asked how he had received the book himself and he went back into the trance of remembrance. “Now, I was playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. And at the curtain call one night, Peter O’Toole came on to the stage with this book and gave it to me. And he had originally been given it by . . . Oh . . . ” He trailed off, unable to remember Redgrave.

“Oh!” cried Clifford from the kitchen.

“Oh!” cried Jacobi in the living room.

Johnston Forbes-Robertson. That was the name of the first owner of the red book. Forbes-Robertson was a legendary Victorian actor who played Hamlet into his sixties. The book itself was a Temple Shakespeare, a handsome reader’s edition of the play printed around the turn of the century and bound in red leather. He probably bought it in a West End bookshop, pacing around between rehearsals. Or so I’m told by Russell Jackson, an emeritus professor at the University of Birmingham. “It would have been instantly recognisable,” he told me. “You can hold it more or less in the palm of your hand.”

In 1996, Jackson was working as a script consultant on a film of Hamlet directed by Branagh, who was then in the middle of a hurtling, flame-tipped ascent to near-unprecedented eminence among Shakespearean actors. As a leading man who had run his own theatre company and could direct and star in internationally released film adaptations of the plays, there was no one to compare him to but Olivier. He was now at work on a princely four-hour fantasia, shot amid fake fallen snow at Blenheim Palace with himself in the starring role.

He had cast his old hero, Jacobi, as Hamlet’s murderous uncle Claudius. On his last day of shooting, after the traditional applause that follows a final take, Jacobi asked for silence. Jackson kept a diary at the time: “[Jacobi] holds up a red-bound copy of the play that successive actors have passed on to each other, with the condition that the recipient should give it in turn to the finest Hamlet of the next generation. It has come from Forbes-Robertson, a great Hamlet at the turn of the century, to Derek, via Henry Ainley, Michael Redgrave, Peter O’Toole and others. Now he gives it to Ken.”

Hamlet had been a pivotal document in Branagh’s life. As a teenager in 1977, he had seen Jacobi play the role at the New Theatre in Oxford. In his memoir, he remembers it as one of the moments that inspired him to become an actor. “I didn’t understand it at all, but I was amazed by the power of it because it seemed to be affecting my body. I got the shakes at times.”

Two years later, Branagh went to interview Jacobi, who was then playing Hamlet at the Old Vic. “I got a note from someone called Ken Branagh, saying, could he interview me for Rada’s magazine?” Jacobi told me, referring to the prestigious London acting school Branagh attended. “He was a personable young man. He asked good questions. As he left, he said: ‘I’m going to be playing Hamlet one day, and you’re going to be in it.’”

“Ken,” Jacobi added with a smile, “wasn’t slow in coming forward.”

It was no secret that Branagh had set his sights on matching, even reanimating, Olivier’s career. With his movie of Hamlet, he was threatening to run away with the crown. But while the film won plaudits from some critics, it made back only around a quarter of its budget, and Branagh was nominated only for best adapted screenplay at the Oscars, a curiously backhanded compliment for a Hamlet that advertised itself as the complete text.

Branagh held on to the book for more than 20 years, passing over several acclaimed Hamlets (David Tennant’s agonised spectre foremost among them) in that time. “I took special pains to make sure it was preserved,” said Branagh, who was reached with written questions via an agent and an aide during the shooting of his new film. “I felt the book was something rather treasured and private, and not something that you in any way crowed about. You were a temporary custodian.” In 2017, he finally handed the red book on to the actor sometimes thought of as his protégé, Hiddleston.

So there it was. Redgrave to O’Toole to Jacobi to Branagh to Hiddleston. But still, something wasn’t adding up. I began desperately ringing round old actors asking for snippets of information about the red book, and started reciting the list of names from Jackson’s diary entry: Forbes-Robertson, Ainley, Redgrave, O’Toole, Jacobi, among others. Every time I read the list, everyone said the same thing. Where the hell is Olivier?

Here is a story about Laurence Olivier. Once upon a time, in the early 1800s, there was a great Shakespearean actor called Edmund Kean. He was the Hamlet of the Romantics. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that watching him was “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning”. Kean was also renowned for playing Shakespeare’s other great soliloquist, Richard III. As the hunchbacked villain, Kean would rage and swagger and strut about, swishing a great sword in his hand. That sword was passed to William Chippendale, a member of Kean’s company. Chippendale gave it to an actor called Henry Irving, who gave it to the great Ellen Terry who, we understand, gave it to her great nephew. His name was John Gielgud. Gielgud gave the sword to his contemporary, Olivier, telling him to pass it on to the great actor of the next generation. And Olivier kept it.

He is rumoured to have been buried with it. Certainly, the sword has not been seen since his death. (One of the last people to see it was Jacobi, who confirmed to me that Olivier still had it as a very old man.) Is Olivier really lying in his grave with no tongue between his teeth and Kean’s sword beside him? If he is, it feels like a little parable about the sharp, inward points of ambition. Here was a man who got everything and more from a life in the theatre. But he couldn’t bear to part with a prop sword.

The question of why Olivier never received the book becomes more pressing when you read the letters he received playing Hamlet from the Edwardian actor Henry Ainley, the book’s second owner. On opening night, January 5 1937, Ainley telegrammed Olivier in his dressing room: “THE READINESS IS ALL.” Later that night he wrote: “You, my sweet, are the Mecca . . . Pay no heed to the critics, they do not know. You are playing Hamlet; therefore you are a king [ . . . ] You rank, now among the great.”

Ainley’s hornily free-associating letters seem to imply a physical affair at times. “Larry darling, I have been tossing (now now) about at night thinking of you,” he writes in one of the letters, currently kept by the British Library.

“Well, you know what you did. I can’t walk [ . . . ] And the child has your eyes.” Yet it is Olivier’s fame that Ainley most obviously covets. “Soon you will be like [me],” he writes in another. “Your public, your following all gone, dear old boy! The harlequinade. We do not endure!” There is no mention in their correspondence of the red book. Whether Ainley had already given the book away, or felt compelled to hang on to it, or simply had forgotten it, remains a matter of speculation.

It’s not the only agonising gap in the archive. In 1963, an older Olivier cast Peter O’Toole in the production of Hamlet that would open the National Theatre. O’Toole had already played a wild, revelatory Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic in 1958, in which he famously climbed the proscenium arch mid-performance. It was an interpretation that harnessed the young actor’s modernity. “He’s a lean, lank, individualist Teddy Boy!” one reviewer enthused.

But in 1963, Olivier had other ideas. “It was very strange,” remembers Siân Phillips, O’Toole’s then wife, now aged 91. “Larry [Olivier] had talked him into this terrible costume. He looked like Little Lord Fauntleroy, with a Peter Pan collar and clean, beautifully cut dyed blond hair.”

Phillips thought Olivier seemed to want to trim the edges off her husband. “Larry had this new kind of concept of a very tidy Hamlet, which was the opposite of what [O’Toole] did best. But he had such regard for Larry, who was flattering him enormously. He just did everything asked of him.” Phillips had put her own starry career on hold to let O’Toole have the spotlight. She did his filing and kept track of gifts he had been given, making sure people were thanked, which was why she found it strange that she’d never heard of the red book.

Together, we wondered if the unhappy production had made it a sore point for her husband. “The thought did cross my mind once or twice that Olivier might be trying to sabotage him,” she said. “But how could he want to do that on the opening night of the National Theatre?” On the other end of the phone, I thought of Kean’s sword.

Perhaps this is harsh. Perhaps we can understand the desire to have and hold on to a physical token of fame, strength, adulation, applause, youth — the things that slip away from even the greatest artists. All performers live in fear of unemployment and redundancy, and even the successful ones are loved, fiercely and temporarily, for being someone they’re not. “Today kings, tomorrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that they are nothing,” wrote William Hazlitt, the English essayist.

“British theatre has traditionally privileged innovation,” the Shakespearean scholar Michael Dobson told me. In France, he explained, you could see Phèdre performed with the same gestures, the same intonation, for hundreds of years. “The British are always inventing new things, like gas lighting and ways of doing ghosts with mirrors. It’s never the old, boring Hamlet your parents used to like. It’s always got this young, original, absolutely real actor in it, instead of those stylised old geezers.”

In which case, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories about great actors who fell from fashion. It was Burbage who first delivered Hamlet’s acting advice to the players: “O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

Until the modern day, actors didn’t play big roles just once or twice in their careers, in a long run of performances. They performed them frequently. Even in Shakespeare’s time, actors became associated with certain parts in the minds of spectators. Burbage died in March 1619, and the funeral baked meats were hardly cold when he was replaced by another actor, Joseph Taylor.

An unreliable but enticing story has it that Burbage taught Taylor, and Taylor taught the next great Hamlet, Thomas Betterton. Betterton was the Hamlet of Restoration theatre, among the first to play opposite women. Confronting his father’s ghost, Betterton’s Hamlet could “turn his colour”, as though his face had drained of blood with fright. Betterton made his face “pale as his neck cloth”.

Betterton died in 1710, immortality assured. Within a few decades his reputation had been all but vaporised by the greatest actor of the century, David Garrick. Garrick was almost a religion among theatregoers. “That young man never had his equal as an actor, and will never have a rival,” was the poet and critic Alexander Pope’s verdict. Garrick was both a shameless showman and pioneering realist. He played Hamlet in a mechanical fright wig that made his hair stand on end when activated.

Garrick was replaced by John Philip Kemble, a severe and statuesque Hamlet. In the early 19th century, Kemble was outmoded by Kean, whose ascendant star was quickly selling out theatres. “Places are secured at Drury Lane for Saturday, but so great is the rage for seeing Kean that only a third and fourth row could be got,” wrote Jane Austen, struggling to get seats. Out with the old. Next came Samuel Phelps, the actor-manager who first made a point of performing the original texts of Shakespeare’s plays. He was toppled by Henry Irving, a drawn and gothic actor. Irving was supposedly the inspiration for Dracula; his theatre manager was Bram Stoker.

Enter the melancholic, effeminate figure of Forbes-Robertson, the first owner of our red book. His Hamlet, first performed in 1897 and still being revived into his sixties, was in some ways the last definitive stage performance in this unofficial, highly debatable but surprisingly enduring tradition. “Nothing half so charming,” George Bernard Shaw wrote of his performance, “has been seen by this generation.” Orson Welles described one recording of Forbes-Robertson as the most beautiful Shakespearean verse-speaking he ever heard. You can still listen to it on YouTube, uploaded from an ancient LP.

“The next reference to the actor’s art,” creaks the old voice above the hiss of imperfectly transcribed sound, “is Hamlet’s advice to the players, written, obviously, by an actor who has complete command of his calling.” In a voice ponderous with time but still capable of lightness and precision, he begins the passage in which Hamlet gives notes to a theatrical troupe. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.”

Forbes-Robertson would have seen more clearly than many of his successors how rapidly the galaxy of theatrical ambition was expanding. He was the first great Hamlet to play the part on film, in a lumpy silent production in 1913. If that film looks stagey and stylised to modern eyes, then looking back at these nested revolutions in realism, it’s also obvious that old actors have always looked that way in the eyes of their successors. Naturalism is just the style each era brings with it.

Hamlet’s advice was itself part of this reach towards the endlessly receding goal of the real. To an Elizabethan audience, the travelling troupe with their heroic verse and stagey couplets would have seemed obviously to belong to a previous generation of players, one playwrights like Shakespeare, and plays such as Hamlet, were making redundant. Hamlet says to the players what the theatre is always saying: be young, be modern, be new.

You can’t ask too much of very famous actors. Basic professionalism demands that they don’t tell you anything too interesting. They live like criminals, travelling under pseudonyms and booking the front seat on aeroplanes. We abhor in their personal lives the basic human latitude we praise in their work. “I am myself indifferent honest yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me,” Hamlet says to Ophelia. “What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth?”

I had hundreds of questions for Hiddleston, the 43-year-old star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and current holder of the red book. Unfortunately, Hiddleston is not an easy man to reach. As the man who plays Loki in the Marvel series (global gross about $30bn), he has been watched at his craft by an unimaginable number of human eyes. He does his work in green-screen and widescreen settings that would also have been unimaginable to 90 per cent of the people named in this article. Where Burbage played Hamlet without an interval, Hiddleston’s fame is a postmodern mosaic, put together in franchise films with an average shot length of two seconds. Given that he commands multimillion-dollar fees for these acts of cinematic pointillism, you may imagine his time is precious. I was able to reach him by phone for 15 minutes during press week for Loki season 2’s Emmy campaign. “Good morning,” he said, dialling in from Los Angeles. “I mean, sorry, good evening.”

Hiddleston played Hamlet in a fundraiser production for Rada directed by Branagh in 2017. He told me how he had left drama school and joined Declan Donnellan’s Cheek by Jowl theatre company, standing out as Cassio in a somewhat legendary modern Othello, in which Ewan McGregor played Iago opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead. Branagh saw the production and persuaded Marvel studios to let him cast this relative unknown in Thor, which then grossed almost half a billion dollars. Afterwards, they sat down for lunch and Branagh suggested Hamlet. “And I said, ‘I would absolutely love to do it with you. What an honour.’”

The production played for three weeks in Rada’s tiny theatre, with tickets that were won by lottery. Among the critics, Michael Billington, Britain’s most decorated theatre writer, was one of the few to have got a seat. “If I had to pick out Hiddleston’s key quality, it would be his ability to combine a sweet sadness with an incandescent fury,” Billington wrote in his review. On Saturdays, Hiddleston remembered, there were gala performances for graduates and theatrical somebodies. “I think at the first one almost everybody with the last name ‘Attenborough’ in the UK was in attendance.”

On one of these evenings, a glass was clinked with a spoon. Jacobi began to speak, explaining something about a book that had passed from actor to actor. “And then Ken was at the microphone, explaining that the responsibility of the keeper of the book is that they pass it on to the next generation. And suddenly Ken said, ‘I’d like to present it to Tom.’”

We were 10 minutes into our 15. I looked at my list of questions — on frontispieces, annotations, signatures, printing quirks — about the red book. Hiddleston was in LA. The book was in London. He was not contractually obliged to talk to me, as he was to the other journalists who were waiting on iPhones all over the world. All that was sustaining this conversation was the actor’s private enthusiasm for the kind of acting he is rarely, if ever, able to do anymore.

Hiddleston began to talk at length. He said the gift of playing the part was to be presented with the most beautiful, profound poetry written in English about the question of being alive, of death, of the possibility of spiritual life after death.

An email arrived saying our time was up. “It has the effect of making me feel more alive,” Hiddleston was saying. “Learning and internalising those great soliloquies, and having to perform them, there is no escaping those big questions of what it means to be alive,” he went on, the minutes ticking by. “And actually I find it very reassuring to ask those questions. I find it repetitively reassuring to say those words. Because it actually makes your life mean something.”

#tom hiddleston #kenneth branagh #Derek Jacobi #hamlet #the red book

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davilasinfiltro · 5 months

Text

Badboyhalo gets advice from Reddit

Bad panics after Skeppy releases Best Friend and decides to ask for relationship advice on Reddit because he doesn’t know who else to turn to

979 words

r/relationship_advice u/throwaway132166922

My (M29) best friend (M23) made a song about me and I don’t know how to feel about it.

I don’t even know why I’m doing this. I’m so paranoid about anyone finding out who I am but I frequent this subreddit a lot and can't find anyone who is in the same situation as me. I also don’t know who I can even talk to about this since we have a lot of mutual friends. If this gets too much traction I’m deleting it quickly, here goes nothing >_<

Here’s the context, me and my friend have known each other online for a while and have been friends for around 4 years (my friends poke fun that we have our ‘anniversary’ memorized but I digress.) We’ve half heartedly been making plans to meetup for the past few years. What can I say? I don’t like leaving the house and never really had the urge to meet any of my online friends. I’d argue that you could have a meaningful relationship with someone and never meet them irl. Anyways, I never took these conversations too seriously. I would always say I’m not ready yet, it’s too close to the holidays, who’s going to take care of my dog? The one time we did have concrete plans I was sick with covid and I had a long recovery. And we just never followed up with a reschedule.

I never knew how much this affected my friend until he wrote this sort of… rap and produced it with one of our mutual friends. He insults me, saying I have a massive ego, I’m a psycho, it’s my fault I made him ‘feel blue,’ and immediately backtracks and compliments me. There’s another lyric that says I’m pushing him away and if I’m hiding something? This part I have to quote verbatim because it’s the part I understand the least,

“I can’t really say my true intentions

It’s all just miscommunication

Please don’t take it the wrong way

I love you dude and I hope we’re okay”

And that’s how it ends. Meanwhile, I had no clue my friend was having this type of conflicting feelings about me. Or how much us meeting up meant to him. Yeah maybe we’d go from talking every day to messaging each other only semi frequently but that’s just the evolution of a friendship right? We were both getting busier as our respective careers became more time-consuming but that’s nobody’s fault, is it? I know I should apologize to him for never taking his requests for us to meetup too seriously but I think there’s something else under the surface.

Does he want to confess to me? I keep going back to that lyric, “I can’t really say my true intentions.” He’s pretty much ripped his heart out on this song but there’s /one/ thing he can’t say to me? Does it have to do with him wanting to preserve our friendship, that it’ll be strained in some way if he confesses? I don’t know what gives him that impression, a lot of our friends are lgbt+. Heck, a lot of them make jokes that we like each other already. Anyways, there shouldn’t be anything deterring him from confessing if that’s what he is trying to do. Or not trying to do.

Any advice is appreciated. I still haven’t said anything to him directly since he made that song.

u/amycat1203

Whatever you two have going on is gayer than any gay person I know irl

-> Reply u/throwaway132166922

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that -_-

u/justadudelmao

This is too outrageous to be fake, so I’m trying to take this seriously. It sounds like y’all have some shit to talk out in person. If the next message you send him isn’t a confirmation for a plane ticket you’re the problem

-> Reply u/throwaway132166922

If I travel to him it won’t be by plane, I have a phobia. But you’re right :/ I need to make it up to him soon if this is how he feels about us not meeting up

u/matchmakingismypassion

Maybe he has reason to believe you wouldn’t want him to confess to you. How do you react to the jokes your friends make about you together? Do you even reciprocate any possible romantic feelings to him?

->Reply u/throwaway132166922

It’s complicated, early on in our friendship he’d flirt with me as a troll and I’d always politely turn him down. I’ve known about him for so long, even before he was 18. I wasn’t comfortable indulging in this kind of joke. So even if he was 19 when he made these comments, he felt too young for me. He grew out of it and eventually we were inseparable as best friends, to the point that our mutual friends would tease us. Both of us would casually deny anything to our friends but honestly, I wouldn’t mind dating him if he made the first move. But you understand why I can’t make the first move, right?

->Reply u/matchmakingismypassion

To me it sounds like he shouldn’t make the first move either if all he’s ever heard from you is rejection. Especially if you can’t even make the effort to meetup, something he obviously wants from you. He made the song as a plea to start an open dialogue, and that starts with you bud.

u/skephalofan141414

EVERYONE. THIS STORY IS FAKE. This is some guy pretending to be Badboyhalo about the song Skeppy made called “Best Friend” on youtube. You’re a weirdo trying to karma farm off of a story that isn’t yours to tell

->Reply u/thisteaishotaf

Who??? Link please???

->Reply u/skephalofan141414

https://youtu.be/skDch34PtEM?si=Usxbm6LXisq9xWCD

->Reply u/thisteaishotaf

Why the fuck would his friend post this on a minecraft channel LMAO

#skephalo #skephalo fic #I wrote this a while ago I’m surprised it took me this long to post lol #badboyhalo #skeppy

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sincerely-sofie · 4 months

Note

I saw your tag about meeting your boyfriend because of posting on Tumblr and I'm very curious as to how that happened. Like, did you find each other's blogs, saw you had stuff in common and met up IRL? What happened? Please give us details (if you're willing to talk about it, no worries if not!)

Also, for a boyfriend tag, may I suggest... Calcium. Cuz you're a skeleton and calcium makes bones stronger... I'll see myself out

(Referencing the tags of this post)

Oh my gosh. Buddy you have just opened up Pandora’s box. Brace yourself for the most adorable couple origin story ever.

He followed me fairly early on into the process of me posting my work on Tumblr. I don’t remember exactly, but I think my TPiaG mini comic “Heart-to-Heartbreak” was the first post he ever reblogged from me. After that, he was super enthusiastic and involved with my blog and engaged with basically every post I ever made. This guy was one of THE followers of my work— if I posted something, he was always there to like it and share super thoughtful commentary or hilarious jokes.

I absolutely adored him even back then, and we had barely exchanged a handful of messages on Tumblr where he thanked me for inspiring him to get back into art and writing, and I blubbered about how meaningful that was to me. We eventually followed each other on Spotify and I think that’s about the point when I really should have realized I had it bad for him. I was CONSTANTLY rambling to my mom about how much I wanted to be this internet stranger’s best friend, but I was super hesitant because our family has been huge on online stranger danger and never really talking to anyone unless you know exactly who they are in real life. I’m an adult and all, yeah, but I was still super anxious about internet strangers at large— though he never once made me uncomfortable or wary :>

Eventually, he made a goofy post about it being his birthday, and I bolted to tell my mom about that and how I didn’t have enough time that day to polish up any content of his favorite characters I’ve written and post it as a gift for him. I was utterly distraught and pretty much full-on monologuing to my ever-so patient mother about how much I wanted to befriend this man and how amazing he was and how shy I felt about the matter, and she looked me dead in the eyes and told me to ask him if he wanted to message each other more and get to know each other better.

I sent him a message over Tumblr, we exchanged Discord usernames, and I’m pretty sure it was just over a week of messaging and getting to know each other more and more every day later when he told me he thought he was in love with me— to which I very eloquently rattled off a bunch of nonsense that ended in “I don’t know how to communicate this other than by saying ‘dude, same’.”

After that, we’ve only gotten more and more mutually obsessed. Thankfully he’s in the same country as me, and we’re even timezone neighbors, so he’s not on the opposite side of the world— and when I realized some of my household were going on a trip to the same state where he lived for a family wedding, I SCRAMBLED to insert myself into that trip last-minute. We had originally thought that we’d meet up when he could drive to my state (a process that would take a long time because of some complicating factors), but when I realized my family were flying down there, I was practically foaming at the mouth with the thought of seeing him so much sooner. We met up not that long ago and were even able to meet some of each other’s family members (my family absolutely adores him, and I think his likes me a fair bit too, hehe). But listen: when I tell you I adored him before, I was absolutely head-over-heels for him when we met in person. I got to hug him and I had this thought come to mind of “Oh. This is the person I want to marry.” And I’ve never once doubted it :>

During the times we met up we mostly sat around and basked in each other’s presence and stared at each other. I ended up breaking eye contact a lot because I kept getting flustered and also because this man is TALL and I had to periodically rest my neck 😂 I was able to give him some pins I had made of our PMD team that represents us, and my boyfriend. My boyfriend, you guys. He had the gall to send me a screenshot of an eBay listing of the world’s most adorable Snorlax plush weeks before while we were on a call together, bought it immediately after I had said I loved the plush’s face as we hung up, and then GAVE ME IT WHEN WE MET UP.

Look at him. That’s my son now. I was trying to think of what to name the little guy when my toddler niece dubbed him Tummy. My boyfriend approves of the monicker— as he should, because it’s the bestest name for the bestest boy.

TL;DR— He followed me on tumblr, I desperately wanted to be friends with him and sent him my Discord username on his birthday, we exchanged “I love you”s a week later, and I was almost sick on a plane because I was so excited to see him during a trip to his state for a family member’s wedding. We are absolutely obsessed with each other and kind of instantly Knew from the get-go that we’re going to be each other’s Person™️.

As for the tag, I'm not sure I’ll go with it but I’m starting to consider “The Boyfriend Bird Feeder”, because it works out to the acronym BFBF which I find funny, I mainly want to make the tag as a way for him to easily find posts where I’m talking about how amazing he is whenever he needs a pick-me-up (and so people can block the tag if they find me raving about my man so much annoying lol), and his persona that we spent all day yesterday cooking up looks like this:

#sofie says stuff #sofie answers asks #stuff by sofie #Obbyposting

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hiddenwashington · 7 months

Text

** insert the yearly disclaimer that everything is fine and this is just maig being an absolute sap **

hi :)) somehow, by some miracle, we have made it around to yet another anniversary, and i can say with utter disbelief and overwhelming gratitude that hidden is now SIX YEARS OLD. i feel like a damn grandmother telling y’all a story here but, when i started this place in a 2am spite fueled, sleep deprived rage, and then hit the tags that same morning at nearly 5am, never once did i look at a main and think i’d be making a six year anniversary post. that we’d even stay open for that long, that this would grow to be… bigger than me, bigger than the team or hidden itself. hidden is a home to so many, a place where people can be themselves and find a community together, and that has everything to do with all of YOU.

the members who have been here for 6 days, or 6 years, those who have been here and poured their hearts out onto the dash, who have been here just to play a joke character.. the members who have come and gone, the members who are here now, all of you are the reason hidden is the way that it is. you all have created this incredible community with each other, that sometimes all i can do is just sit back and admire all of you. the way everyone has been so welcoming and warm to every new person who has joined, that you all have welcomed people in with open arms and genuinely like ?? no prompting from us ?? just from being yourselves. not only is this a home, a true real home in such a difficult world, but god the TALENT ??? i have never seen such amazing writing, or editing, the absolute joy you all have in writing your characters comes across so easily, the support you all have for each other. the events that we have, i don’t think could ever be pulled off with another group. i truly am sitting here just consistently in awe of all of you. i really could not do this without all of you here, you are the heart of hidden. the warmth in this place, the joy, the backbone, everything is you, friends. thank you for allowing me to be your head admin, allowing me to be utterly odd and strange and still loving me the way i love all of you, thank you for supporting this team, and this place. thank you for all the time and energy you put in here, and know that it does not go unnoticed. truly, just thank you.

and now, for 5 people’s absolute favorite time of the year, the moment when i gush like a proud mom about my admin team. please allow me to highlight these people, to lift them up for everything that they do, to show them the gratitude i truly hope they feel every other day of the year. sunny: gotta always start with you, my day one, the other half of my brain. i don’t know what i would do without you, genuinely. hidden would absolutely not be here today without you, without your support of me and my absolute batshit ramblings that i send in your dms, the way you have been able to look at a situation and calm it down with just one message.. for being the voice of reason that i need, for being the best friend i could ask for. finding each other wasn’t an accident and i’m so glad that i have gotten to know you through this weird fucking hobby and found so many more to share with you. also?? thank you for being there during my wedding, for keeping my head on straight that day. i love you so much. ♥ jodie, i just fucking love you fam, the absolute heart of the team. you are one of the kindest, most fiercely loving person i have ever met. if someone is struggling, i know you are right there to offer any kind of help you can (even if it's biting someone). you are always the one who i know will be there to have someone’s back, to support everyone when they need it. and i hope you know that that goes both ways. you are so loved on this team, thank you for all the research you do, thank you for taking all the marvel questions, for being the other teacher of my star wars school, for always laughing with me when we’re about to do something utterly ridiculous to get us yelled at. i am just so thankful for you, and i know i would’ve gone nuts if i didn’t have you here making me laugh. kasey, my player 2 (or i’m player 2?? idk), my bluetooth connected bitch. i swear people think us being the same person different fonts sometimes is a bit, and really it’s not. our shared braincell just doesn’t know how to function alone. thank you for always being there when i need to vent, for being able to offer a kind way of telling me to chill tf out, for being my platonic life partner. i know you hate the sappiness but i just need you to know that i couldn’t do this without you either. also a quick thank you for also being there during my wedding, for allowing me to be unapologetically myself and keeping me calm and laughing during all the insanity that was going on that week. just thank you. really, i love you so much, bitch, i won’t make you suffer with being loved on more.

aria, the actual owner of the braincell, the powerhouse of fc suggestions and research. your knowledge and ability to find suggestions and solutions to complex situations always has me in awe. i know when i see you typing in the chat, we’re going to get an answer, a solution or something new to consider that helps us fix whatever is going on. you truly are the reason things get solved around here. and also thank you for being the other face on the main, the way that you and ollie clear the inbox so fast always has me dumbfounded. and thank you for every check you have done, every moment you have spent here with us. i hope you know when i see little guys in shows, i always go “oh aria would love them”. your icons in the chat / your names always have me dying. you’re truly so fucking funny fam, the comments you make in dnd take me out. i just hope you know how loved and appreciated you are. thank you for being my friend, i love you a lot. and ollie, i don’t know what the fuck we would do without you. seriously, like only a year and a half in and you are ???? the reason the main gets cleared out most days. i don’t know how you do it, one moment it’s full and the next the entire mains cleared, the pages are updated, you and aria are working through their list of fixes and the entire check is done (INCLUDING MY PARTS :(( ). despite all of our teasing about changing the password on you, i hope you know that none of the work that you do EVER goes unappreciated. i also am just so glad that i have gotten to know you better over the past year and a half, that since you joined the team i am so glad that i get to call you my friend. also, i always know when i send a new frog, you’ll come in yelling about loving them and it always makes me smile. you’re so loved by me and the team. thank you for everything. okay, i’m done now.

i’m making myself stfu friends i promise. just, hidden you have no idea how utterly blessed we are to have these five as our admin team. i know i barely even know sometimes, because fuck i couldn’t do this without them. i just am so filled with love and appreciation for every single one of you, those who are here now, and those who may be lurking and have come and gone. know i love you all. and just THANK YOU. it is the greatest joy and blessing in my life to call myself your head admin. thank you for making hidden your home. here’s to SIX FUCKING YEARS and all the ones after it!

all the love always -- admin maig ♥♥

#admin maig #hidden6years #keep #i don't have a fun tag for this year i am not taking suggestions #and tumblr forced me into paragraph breaks send help #im so sorry this is so long i am just filled with so much love for this community #long post tw

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menaasstuff · 9 months

Text

The Misfortunate Incident

Chapter Two

While walking to the kitchen in search of some food after her shower, Emilia heard the familiar tune coming from her phone which notified her that Jessi was calling. Scooping up her phone, she grimaced when thinking about what this conversation would involve. She’d updated Jessi through text about how her presentation had gone and knowing her like she does, Emilia knew she’d have to give her a play by play before she’d even think about letting her stew in her own humiliation.

“He—”

“EMILIA!! Please tell me you were joking!” Jessi cut off. Pushing aside pleasantries between these two was common when there were more important matters to discuss.

“Well, I mean it really does sound worse than—”

“YOU PUKED ON PROFESSOR BARKLEY” her best friend nearly screeched before breaking off into a fit of giggles that made Emilia feel both mortified and amused.

“Jess—"

“Bhahaha—I’m sorry it’s not funny but— “Jessi snorted before another fit of laughter overtook her and interrupted her attempt to comfort her friend.

Pulling the phone away from her ear Emilia couldn’t help the slight smile that broke across her face, at the sound of her best friend’s uncontrollable laughter caused by her ridiculous misfortune. As she waited for her best friend to finally calm down and regain her barring’s, Emilia let out an amused sign before beginning to prepare her cup noodle dinner.

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

“I’m telling you Em, it really isn’t that bad, everyone will forget about it by Tuesday, and it’ll be like it never happened. Besides, if you ask me that was probably the most iconic thing you could’ve done in that class. Everyone knows Barkley is the least interesting, longwinded professor in our university” Jessi snorted after the girls debriefed the events of Emilia’s disaster of a day.

“He looked at me like I’d just ran over his dog as I walked out of class, I probably traumatized the poor man—stop laughing it’s not funny I can hear you!” Emilia whined. She’d long since finished her dinner and settled onto her couch, the girls had switched to facetiming each other halfway through the call. This gave her the perfect view to all her friends gasps and giggles that occurs during the recounting of events that occur in her last lecture of the day.

“Are we going to watch this show or not jess, you’ve only been asking me to watch it for the last couple of weeks” Emilia snorted while searching up her friend’s latest obsession, a show called F4 Thailand, which Jessi hadn’t stopped nagging her to get into since it started airing. After talking they’d decided to watch it together on facetime since neither girl thought it was a good idea to go out considering the weather.

“Yes, gosh we got so sidetracked its literally already nearing 7pm”

“I know, somebody was having too much fun laughing at my pain, you’re. lucky I don’t have work tomorrow or we’d never get to watch—” Emilia’s spiel was cut off as a crack of thunder sounded through the room and echoed from the phone.

Since they’d been on the phone the storm clouds had rolled in and darkened the once tranquil blue sky, turning it a dark grey almost black while the sun set to light up another part of the world till tomorrow. Her mother had messaged to inform her, shed be spending the night at the hospital to avoid going out in the rain, and asked her to make sure all the windows and front door were locked. She also reminded her daughter where the flashlights were kept in case of a power outage and not to stay up too late just because it was the weekend.

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

After settling in and pulling up the show on their respective tv’s, the girls hit play and began to indulge in their favorite past time just like the hopeless romantics they were. The girls loved to throw in their own commentary and overzealous reactions to the scenes playing out before them, which led for the apartments to be filled with laughter and yelling that looked a bit like this.

“Ooh he’s cute, is he the main lead”

“Why was that literally the most dramatic way to bump into someone I’ve ever seen” “Em I’ve honestly seen you do worse, leave that girl alone”

“No because literally all he needed to do was take a wet wipe and clean his shoe, its rhinestone” “I thought the exact same thing when I first saw that scene but like he’s also supposed to be a spoiled brat so”

“Wow she literally walked away from her when the ONLY reason she’s even getting bullied is because of her, I’m going to swing” “My thing is like okay yea I get not wanting to get bullied but like no one was even around, SHE COULD’VE ATLEAST SAID HI”

“Why is MJ kinda...” “Right, they need to give my man more appreciation”

“AHH NOT HIM BUYING THE BUS SHE TAKES” “IF HE WNTED TO HE WOULD”

“No wait—” A crack or thunder accompanied the tv and lights in the apartment shutting off and plunging the two girls into darkness with a screech.

“Ugh you have got to be kidding me right now” “No we were literally only on episode four you haven’t even got to see the best parts yet”

Sighing while getting up from the couch, Emilia headed to the kitchen cabinet under the sink to retrieve the flashlight and shine some light in the otherwise pitch-black living room. Walking back into her living room she calls out to Jessi and lets her know they’ll have to continue tomorrow before they bid goodbye and hang up for the night.

After double checking all the windows and front door locks, she was about to head into her room when she saw what she thought was a spark coming from the outlet that the tv was plugged into. Standing completely still it only took a minute before she once again saw the flick of sparks coming from the outlet, and decided it was better to unplug the set for the night than risk the possibility of a fire starting while she slept.

Crouching down she reached out for the plug, when -- CRASH -- the sound of a frame being knocked to the floor caused her to jump back onto her bottom while looking over to the source of the sound and seeing her cat Salem sitting on the counter while cleaning his paws.

“Do only exist to give me heart attacks” she chided while shaking her head and resting her hand on her chest to calm down. She’d always hated thunderstorms and now without the distraction of the tv and the only light filling the room being that of the flashlight coupled with the occasional flash of lighting, her fear was being to creep up on her.

Taking a second to collect her thoughts she refocused on her goal of unplugging the tv and heading to bed to sleep off the remanent of the day. Reaching forward she grasped the plug and pulled before she saw a bigger spark ignite and an intense buzz run up her arm through her body before everything went black.

#bright vachirawit #f4 thailand boys over flowers #f4 thailand #f4 imagine #thailand #thai series #thai drama #thai actors #tumblr fyp #reader insert #x reader #long reads #tu tontawan #win metawin #dew jirawat #nani hirunkit #prim chanikarn

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mackenzielovee · 2 years

Text

parenthood part seven: ingenuous

a/n: hi ! nervous but excited, i hope it's decent at least lmao. please leave all thoughts and opinions and i'll have pt 8 up soon! so much love xoxo

warnings: swearing, fighting, lil bit of crying, mentions of sex

ambivalence masterlist , parenthood masterlist

You stand outside Connor’s classroom texting Rafe as you wait for the preschool day to end. Rafe’s been sending you videos all day of Josie giggling, and you’d been watching them at work just to make your day better. You let him know that you’re waiting to grab Connor and then the two of you will be home, but you’re drawn out of your text message by a shadow over you. You glance up and smile, meeting the eyes of Connor’s new friend’s dad.

“Hey, Y/N,” he greets you.

He’d introduced himself to you as Nico, which you quickly learned was short for Nicolás. His little boy, Daniel, had become close with Connor since their school started, and you couldn’t be more thrilled. Both of them are kind, polite, and Connor has a lot of fun with Daniel.

“Nico, hi,” you smile, “How are you?”

He leans against one of the pillars, crossing his arms in front of him. His grin is effortless, you think, although it’s nothing to the feeling you get when Rafe smiles at you like that.

“I’m starting to think this day gets shorter and shorter,” he jokes, “I feel like I just dropped him off.”

“Aw, I’m always ready to pick him up,” you say, “I miss him after five minutes.”

He laughs, which makes you laugh. The classroom door opens and Ms. Angie, their teacher, smiles widely at the two of you.

“Connor and Daniel have been playing all day,” she says.

The two of you laugh and walk inside, finding Connor and Daniel standing together, putting their backpacks on.

“They’re going to be best friends,” Nico says to you with a grin.

“Looks like it,” you agree.

Connor’s head shifts, and at the smallest look, he recognizes you and smiles immediately.

“Mama!” he cheers, running across the room.

You squat down and take him into your arms once he reaches you, giving him a hug.

“Hi, baby,” you smile, “How was your day?”

“I played outside with Daniel,” he says.

“You did? Did you have fun?”

Nico laughs from above you, and you meet his eyes with a smile. Not far behind Connor comes Daniel, launching himself into his father’s arms.

“A lot of fun,” Connor nods, “Can Daniel come to our house? I told him about Josie and my soccer ball. He wants to play.”

You glance over at Nico and Daniel, who meets your eye and starts to shake his head with a shy smile on his face.

“We could get them together another day, if you want–”

“Mama, please,” Connor begs.

You stand up and take Connor’s hand in yours, giving it a squeeze. Nico removes Daniel’s backpack, then picks him up, holding him expertly against his chest.

“We don’t have anything going on this afternoon, so if it works for you two, it works for us,” you smile.

“Are you sure?” he asks, “I wouldn’t want to impose–”

“Not at all. We have a baby, so the house might be a little messy, but we’d love to have you guys over.”

“Yes!” Connor cheers, “Let’s go.”

You laugh and tug Connor back by his hand before he can run off, listening to Nico laugh, too. You unlock your phone and skim over a text from Rafe, reading:

Work thing. Taking Jo with me. Be home in a few hours. I’ll grab dinner, just tell me what you want. Love you, baby.

You swipe out of it before you respond, making a mental note to do it later. Then, you pull up a new contact and type Nico’s name into the bar, then hand it over for his number.

“I’ll text you our address,” you explain.

He nods and takes a hold of your phone, quickly typing his number into it and handing it back.

“I appreciate this, Y/N. Is there anything I can grab on the way over, or–”

“Not at all,” you wave him off, “I’ve got snacks for the boys and adult food for us.”

He laughs, “Great. We’ll see you soon, won’t we, Daniel?”

“Yes,” he chirps, “Bye, Connor.”

“Bye, Daniel,” he waves.

You and Nico exchange goodbyes, then you start out to the parking lot. Connor, with the promise of a friend coming over, doesn’t protest once when you put him in his carseat and buckle him in. Instead, he chats endlessly about what he and Daniel can do together.

When the two of you arrive home, you hurry in and try to clean up at least half of the living room. You’re sure Nico doesn’t really care, but you also want to look like you have your life halfway together.

You’re thankful Nico takes his time driving over, and when the doorbell rings twenty minutes later, you feel like you’ve at least got a grip on the messy house.

“They’re here, Mama! Can I get it?” Connor requests, being pulled to the foyer.

“Hold on, handsome. I’m coming,” you call.

You follow Connor to the front door and pull it open, greeting Nico and Daniel with a smile the second you see them.

“Hey, guys. Come on in,” you wave them inside.

Nico smiles and thanks you quietly while Connor grabs Daniel’s hand and starts to rush off.

“We’re gonna play, Mommy,” Connor yells to you over his shoulder.

“Okay, but no–” he cuts you off by running to the play room and pushing the door open, “Running.”

Nico chuckles, which makes you laugh. When you turn back to him, he seems to be taking you in, smiling as he does so, but you brush it off.

“Daniel runs everywhere, too,” he tells you, “I never know where he has to rush off to so fast.”

“Right?” you laugh, “It’s all their energy. I wish I had that.”

“Me too.”

You chuckle, which makes him smile. It’s the kind of smile that takes up his whole face, and you’re sure that smile is his charm.

Connor’s been in school for weeks now, and you’d never seen anyone other than Nico pick Daniel up. Although, you think, Rafe’s only been there to drop off or pick up a few times, given his work schedule is less flexible than yours. Although you’re curious, you won’t ask.

“I was just about to make some tea,” you volunteer, even though it’s a lie and you were not even close to thinking about making tea, “Would you like some?”

“I’d love it,” he agrees.

You smile and lead him into the kitchen, the one you’d expertly cleaned in five minutes by shoving all of the dishes into the dishwasher and everything else into random cabinets, and grab the kettle from the stove.

“You have a beautiful home,” he remarks, his eyes traveling around the room.

“Oh, thank you. That’s very kind.”

He hums in response, watching you fill the kettle with water at the sink.

“Sometimes I worry that Daniel hates my apartment,” he confesses, “He sees houses around the school and asks me why we don’t live there. How do I explain to him that I just can’t afford it?”

You set the kettle on the stove and then turn around to face him, sympathy written all over your face. His jaw moves from side to side, telling you that he gets emotional just thinking about it. You tuck your bottom lip between your teeth and think for a moment, urging your brain to come up with the right words.

“It’s not about the money,” you say, “I know that’s hard to agree with, but you’re a great dad from what I’ve seen. He’s loved and he’s cared for and fed. He has a shelter and someone looking out for him. That’s all he needs. I think it doesn’t matter where all that happens from, because a big house isn’t going to make him love you any more than he already does, you know?”

Nico’s eyes flash with an emotion you don’t recognize, but when his lips tip up, you relax. You give him a small smile and he returns it, leaning against the counter and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Thank you for saying that,” he replies, “I think I really needed to hear it.”

“It’s all true,” you shrug, “I didn’t strain myself.”

He laughs then, and it feels like the energy in the room shifts. He glances over and sees the faucet dripping even though the sink is off.

“Does it do that all the time?” he asks you, nodding his head to the sink.

You nod, “My husband tried to fix it, but he couldn’t. We’re gonna have to call someone.”

Nico’s eyebrows furrow and he slightly shakes his head to himself.

“Do you mind if I take a look?”

The kettle whistles behind you, distracting you. You just shake your head at him as you turn to grab it off the heat, then move to get mugs down.

“You don’t have to–”

“I don’t mind. I did some home repair work when I was a teenager. I promise I won’t make it worse.”

You laugh and give in, gesturing for him to go ahead. He kneels and opens up the cabinet underneath the sink while you pour the hot water into mugs and leave them to steep.

“Your husband have tools?” he calls, a slight grit in his voice you hadn’t noticed before.

“Yeah, I think they’re in the garage–”

You move to grab them while Nico stands up, placing his hand on your arm and wrapping around it.

“I can find them. You relax and drink your tea.”

You’re not sure if it’s the gentle look in his eye or the offer to remain still for more than ten seconds, but you nod. He flashes you another smile and heads off for the garage door, escaping out there quietly.

He returns with Rafe’s toolbox and holds it up victoriously. You smile and offer him a mug with his tea in it, which he accepts in his free hand.

“Thank you,” he says, then nods toward the sink, “It’s an easy fix. I’m surprised your husband couldn’t see it.”

You draw back from him at that remark, unsure of what that means. After a moment, when Nico squats again and extracts a tool from the box, you shake it out of your head. You’re sure he didn’t mean anything by it. He meant exactly what he said; Rafe just missed it. No big deal. He’ll probably be relieved he doesn’t have to pay someone to come out and fix it.

“All right, there we go,” he says, extracting himself from the cabinet and standing up straight, “Should be good now.”

He turns on the water, and then shuts it off again, and you can’t help but grin when you see how it doesn’t drip.

“Oh, my God,” you chuckle, “That’s been driving me crazy for a month now. Wow. Thank you so much, Nico.”

“Yeah, of course,” he smiles at you, closing up Rafe’s toolbox, then standing to wash his hands.

Your smile remains on your face long after he washes and dries his hands, then picks up his mug and takes a long sip.

“I can’t believe how easy that was for you,” you admit, “How long did you do repair work?”

“Three years. I got into construction after I found out Daniel’s mom was pregnant. The money is better.”

“Understandable,” you reply, for lack of a better response.

A part of you is dying to know if Nico and Daniel’s mom are together, although he gives the impression that they’re not – especially when he said my apartment. Another part of you doesn’t want to push if it’s not something he wants to discuss.

“She lives in California now,” he explains, “She’s got a husband and a kid. The husband owns his own company or some shit. That’s why I never really believe people when they say it’s not about the money.”

You frown and take another sip of tea, considering how painful that must have been for him.

“I’m sorry,” you say, “That must have been hard.”

He shrugs, “She gave me Daniel, so, it is what it is.”

You usher Nico into the living room to sit, and the two of you continue to discuss his life. He asks you about Connor and Josie, and if you’d ever be open to having more children. You mention Rafe a few times in passing, but Nico never asks follow-up questions regarding him. You just assume this is because he never married, and he doesn’t know what to ask or discuss. You both run out of tea quickly, but when you offer him something more, he politely declines. Nico is so easy to talk to that you don’t even notice how much time has gone by until you hear the garage door open.

“Baby? Whose car is that?” Rafe calls from the kitchen.

“My husband,” you explain to Nico, then turn to talk to Rafe, “Living room!”

Nico leans back on the couch and sets his arm behind his head, seemingly unaffected by Rafe’s entrance.

“I’d like to meet your daughter,” he tells you with a soft smile.

You grin, “He’ll have her. Hopefully she’s not fussy.”

“I can deal with fussy. Daniel was so fussy when he was a baby.”

“Really?” your lips form a pout, “So you’re an expert then?”

He laughs, “Absolutely.”

Rafe walks through the doorway and, with hesitant eyes, observes you seated on the couch with a man he doesn’t know. He has Josie in his arms, one hand rubbing up and down her back as he holds her.

“Hello,” he greets, and you can instantly tell he isn’t thrilled, “What’s up?”

You stand, and Nico follows your lead.

“Rafe, this is Daniel’s dad, Nico. The boys are playing in the front room,” you explain, “Nico, this is my husband, Rafe.”

Rafe removes his hand from Josie’s back and extends it toward Nico, who accepts it with a grin.

“Good to meet you,” Rafe says, “Connor talks about your son a lot.”

“Same with Daniel,” Nico replies, “Y/N and I got to talking today and decided to get together.”

Rafe extracts his hand then, straightening his back and puffing out his chest. You watch him and furrow your brows, wondering about his shift in behavior.

“Is that right?” Rafe asks in a clipped tone.

Before Nico can respond, you place your hand on Rafe’s arm and smile, earning his attention.

“Nico fixed the sink,” you tell him, hoping it will improve his mood, “Can you believe it? It stopped dripping.”

Rafe’s expression doesn’t change, “I told you I’d get someone out to fix it.”

“Now you don’t have to,” you say.

“Hm,” he hums, pursing his lips, “All right. Well, thanks for doing that, I guess.”

Nico nods once, “It was an easy fix.”

You don’t miss Rafe’s jaw clench, or the way his hand travels to your back and tightens around your shirt. He’s gripping you, as if staking a claim somehow, which has you holding back from rolling your eyes.

“Do you want to join us?” you ask Rafe, widening your eyes at him as if to silently tell him to calm down.

“Josie needs to be changed,” he replies, “It’s getting late, anyway. We need to focus on dinner.”

“Well–”

Nico stops you with the wave of his hand, “He’s right. It is late. Thank you so much for having us over, Y/N. And for the tea and company. We’ll have to do this again.”

“Absolutely,” you agree with a smile, “Let me walk you out.”

Nico grins at that, and when you swat Rafe’s hand from your back so you can walk away, his expression falls. You shrug at him, as if to ask what his problem is, to which he widens his eyes at you, telling you that you should already know.

“Oh, let me take care of the mugs–” Nico starts, but Rafe speaks over your shoulder.

“Leave them,” he states, “I’ll get them.”

You turn around to Nico, “But thank you for offering.”

Rafe scoffs behind you, but you make no move to turn around and look at him. You’re annoyed; he’d come in with an attitude and barely even gave Nico a chance before he decided to act territorial and rude. Nico offers you a small smile, then follows you to the front room to get the boys.

“Later, man,” he says to Rafe, who offers him a tip of the head in response.

Connor and Daniel both protest, but when you two promise them they can play again next week, they agree to part. You wave goodbye to Daniel and Nico as they back out of the driveway, then tell Connor to clean up the playroom before dinner. He agrees and hurries back into the room while you go hunt down Rafe.

He’d changed Josie and now stands in the kitchen with her in her baby base on the counter. He’s on his phone, and when you enter, he glances up at you only for a moment before looking back down again. You just stand there, the kitchen island between the two of you, waiting for him to speak.

“He’s into you,” he mutters, placing his phone down on the counter.

You scoff, “You’re ridiculous. Is that why you were being so rude?”

“I was rude because he was sizing me up.”

“Sizing you up?” you repeat, “We’re not in high school, Rafe. He knows that we’re married. You’re the one who was giving off the weird energy–”

“I was trying to make it clear that you are not up for grabs,” he defends himself.

“He knows that!” you exclaim, “Are you seriously going to get all jealous right now?”

He draws back a step, his jaw winding tightly. He eyes Josie, placing her pacifier back in her mouth before he speaks.

“I’m asking you to imagine how I felt just now. I sent you a text three hours ago that you didn’t bother to respond to, then came home and found a man sitting beside you on our couch with no other person in sight. Then, I reach out to touch you, and you smack me away. So, yes, I got a little possessive. Trust me when I tell you that you would, too.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” you snap, “Because I trust your judgment. And I certainly wouldn’t be rude to a guest in our home just because I was feeling insecure.”

“Now I’m insecure?” he questions, his voice raising slightly, “Y/N, it’s not about me trusting you, it’s about some guy in our home with you that I’ve never met. I don’t know who he is, what he’s capable of. Of course I don’t trust him around you–”

“So, you’re saying I have to run every guest by you now?” you ask, raising your eyebrows at him.

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he groans.

“That’s exactly what you just said. If you haven’t met them, they’re not welcome in our home, right?”

He groans again and buries his face in his hands. You watch as he rubs his eyes with his palms, then looks up at you again.

“Sweetheart, I’m just trying to tell you how I feel. I don’t want to fight.”

You hear Connor’s feet as he approaches the kitchen, hurrying in and tucking his hand into yours.

“I’m hungry, Mama,” he tells you.

You give him a forced smile and reach down, grabbing him underneath the armpits and setting him down on the counter in front of you. Reluctantly, Rafe moves around the island and steps beside you, in front of Connor.

“Hey, squirt. How was your day?”

Connor grins and takes Rafe’s hand, “It was so fun, Daddy.”

“Good,” Rafe smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, “What do you want for dinner?”

“Pizza,” Connor replies immediately.

Rafe turns and looks at you, but you keep your eyes on Connor. His other hand grips yours, making you smile.

“Is that okay?” Rafe asks you.

“Yep.”

You see his jaw shift out of the corner of your eye, but he doesn’t say anything. He turns back to Connor and nods his head toward the garage.

“Wanna go with me to get it?”

Connor nods, “Yes. Maybe they’ll give me a sticker.”

“Maybe,” Rafe laughs, then turns to you, “Be back soon.”

“Okay,” you reply weakly.

You step over to Josie and greet her, giving her little kisses all over her face and watching as she smiles. Connor protests by the garage door before the two boys can escape, squirming in Rafe’s arms.

“We forgot kisses,” Connor lectures his dad.

“Hurry,” Rafe tells him.

“You didn’t give kisses,” Connor reminds him.

You turn and meet Rafe’s eye, biting your lip to soothe the anxiousness you’re starting to feel. Rafe steps back into the kitchen and over to you, gently and carefully tucking his free arm around your waist.

“I’m sorry I never greeted you properly,” he mumbles to you.

You nod, your sign of forgiveness, and stand up on your tip-toes to give Rafe a kiss. He holds you against him for an extra few seconds, letting his mouth mold over yours.

“My turn,” Connor says when Rafe pulls back.

You peck him on the cheek and he does the same to you, and when you grab Connor’s hand, he squeezes.

“Don’t be long,” you tell both of them.

Rafe holds your gaze for longer than usual, then leans down and kisses your forehead. You let him, allowing your eyes to close under his affection. Although you know that conversation is far from over, it’s nice to feel his love.

You and Rafe conduct business as usual for the remainder of the evening. You all eat dinner together, and he puts Josie to bed while you bathe Connor. Afterward, he comes into Connor’s room to say goodnight, giving his son a kiss. You’d think it was just another day, but Rafe’s lack of touches and kisses has you feeling empty by the time the two of you head back downstairs. As if to avoid talking about it too soon, you go into your bathroom and take a long shower. You let the hot water sink into your skin, washing away your anxiety about arguing with Rafe. You know it’s inevitable, given how opposite you both seemed to feel earlier.

Your suspicion of him not being through with it comes when you emerge from the bathroom and find him sitting on the bed with his arms and legs crossed.

“I don’t want him in our home anymore,” he says. His voice is quiet, but you can tell by his tone that he means business.

“I already told the boys they could play together next week. After that, I’ll indulge your jealousy.”

You’re surprised at your own response, but it’s exactly what you’d been thinking all night. The last thing you want is for Connor to suffer because Rafe can’t get a hold of himself.

“Being jealous would imply there’s something to be jealous of,” he reminds you, “You’re my wife. If anyone’s jealous, it’s him.”

You shake your head and walk over to your dresser, pulling a tee shirt and shorts out of it. Rafe watches you, waiting for your rebuttal.

“There’s no reason for this, Rafe,” you sigh, “He’s a nice guy. He told me all about his past and Daniel’s mom, and I think he’s just had a hard time lately. He needs a friend.”

Rafe laughs, “Did he give you this sob story before or after he fixed the sink for you?”

“Is that what this is about? The fucking faucet?” you spin around and look at him, observing his rolling eyes.

“I’m just saying,” he holds his hands up in defense, “Guys don’t just fix things. He’s into you, Y/N.”

It’s your turn to roll your eyes, which makes Rafe clench his jaw even more. He sits up on the bed, telling you he’s ready to defend that comment.

“Why can’t you believe he might just be a nice person?”

“Because I’m a guy,” he responds, “I know exactly what he was thinking, sweetheart, and it wasn’t even remotely related to making your life easier.”

“You’re ridiculous, Rafe. I thought you’d appreciate that he fixed the faucet, considering he just saved you the cost of having to call someone out here.”

He shakes his head, “I don’t need Nico’s help taking care of my home. Or my wife. Or my fucking kids.”

“Oh, so this is an ego thing, then,” you decide.

“No–”

“Let me ask you something,” you stop him, “What do you think could possibly happen? Even if, God forbid, he is into me, are you somehow under the impression that I’d run off into the sunset with him? That I’d… leave you?”

He winces, and so do you. Even just imagining that happening is enough for you to feel a pit in your stomach. You can feel your eyes welling up, but you shove the emotions down. You really don’t want to cry over this, over some stupid fight you shouldn’t be having in the first place.

“I don’t even want to think about it,” he admits quietly.

You turn again so your back is to him and remove your towel from your shower, tossing the shirt over your head and pulling the shorts on. Rafe is standing when you look back at him, his expression tough.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m not going to let our son’s new friendship suffer because you can’t get a grip.”

You watch his throat work, swallowing down your harsh words.

“Well, I don’t want you to be alone with some guy who’s sitting around thinking about all the different ways he could fuck you,” he shoots back.

You laugh sarcastically at that, unable to contain your normal tone any longer.

“He doesn’t get to, Rafe!” you remind him, “You do. Actually, you don’t. Not tonight. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Sweetheart, stop. This is getting out of hand–”

“Yes, it is,” you answer him, “You’re acting like we’re still seventeen. I am an adult and I can handle myself. I don’t need you to save me all the time.”

“Fuck that, I know you can,” he raises his voice, crossing to your side of the bed to stop you from grabbing your pillow and leaving, “But you’re not listening to me. If he makes an advance and I’m not here to help you–”

“Oh, my God,” you groan, “Nico is a friend. That is it. The same way Kelce is my friend–”

“Kelce wanted to fuck you for years,” he reminds you.

“Topper,” you fire back.

“Wanted to fuck you when we were sixteen.”

“No he didn’t!” you protest.

“Yes, he did,” Rafe replies, “He told me.”

“Well, whatever,” you wave him off, “That’s when we were kids. Nico is an adult, and so are we–”

“Doesn’t matter,” he cuts you off, “Your dick doesn’t stop getting hard just because you turn twenty-five.”

You sigh and pick up your pillow, ready to make a break for the couch. He steps to the side, blocking your exit.

“I don’t want to do this with you, Rafe,” you exhale, “You’re being immature.”

He frowns, “You’re being naive.”

You purse your lips and step toward him, ready to pass. He reaches his arms up instinctually and stops you, urging you to look at him.

“I’m sleeping on the couch,” you repeat.

“No, baby. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

You just nod, letting him lean over you to get his pillow from his side of the bed. He grips it tightly in his hand, then steps back, taking you in.

“Goodnight,” you mumble.

He watches as you turn back to the bed, placing your pillow down and pulling back the comforter. You can feel him still standing there, but you’re too chicken to turn around and face him.

“You’re gonna make me sleep on the couch and not say it?” he questions. You can hear the tiniest bit of teasing in his voice, and you have to wiggle your jaw to stop a smile from forming.

You inhale sharply, then turn halfway and steal a glance. Your eyes meet the floor before you speak.

“I love you,” you say quietly.

He steps forward, “You better. Kiss.”

You turn your head and peck his lips, and despite his sigh of disapproval, he accepts it. When you turn back to the bed again, you feel him start to exit.

He stops right at the threshold, just as you shift to look at him.

“I love you, too,” he tells you, “We’ll talk in the morning.”

You nod and watch him escape, crawling into the bed and turning off the lamp afterwards. You do your best not to think about the argument, or the fact that he’s not in here with you, even though you practically forced him out. Instead, you try to put it all out of your mind and go to sleep, which comes easier than you thought it would.

You wake in the middle of the night on your side, your back pressed into Rafe’s warm chest. You turn and find him asleep, wrapped around you, both of his arms holding your own. You have no idea how long he’s been holding you like this, but it makes you instantly choke up.

“Rafe,” you whisper, nudging him, “Rafe.”

“Hmm?” he hums sleepily, keeping his eyes glued shut.

“I thought you were on the couch.”

Even though it’s dark, you swear you can see his lips tip up. You purse your lips to hide a smirk, thankful he’s keeping his eyes closed.

“Bad dream,” he lies, and it’s obvious, “You complaining?”

You take a deep breath, “No.”

He smiles then, tucking you even closer to him and inhaling your sweet shampoo.

“Go back to sleep, sweetheart. We can fight in the morning.”

You obey his raspy voice and relax in his arms, a part of you thankful to feel him. Although you dread the conversations to come in the morning, afternoon, and evening tomorrow, you’re at least glad that it’s him you get to do it with.

Tags:

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elodieballard · 2 years

Text

(I READ CITY OF BONES.)

CITY OF BONES. —part one.

jace wayland x fem reader

summary: this will be the city of bones book storyline, movie characters. (a series)

warnings: hint at prior 💋💋🍆🍆 , knives and daggers, mentions of fighting.

———————————————————————

jace rolled over, his nose hitting your shoulder. he smelt like the cologne he sprayed last night before bed, when he got home from the pandemonium.

he was snoring lightly with no nose, just the little whistle of his nose. normally, anyone would think it was annoying. but it was jace; the boy who was fierce and strong and talented at fighting. the boy who was hardly soft, hardly having emotions. he was at peace in his ignorance, and this, this you appreciated.

you stared at jace’s ceiling, the tall rail of the bed creating a square in it. before you’d thought to wake jace up, to leave his room and go into yours then, the door knob rattled.

jace remained sleeping as the door opened, and on the other side stood a surprised izzy.

her jaw dropped. “oh, my—”

“isabelle.” you hissed, sitting up. “we will talk about this later.”

“but you—”

“please izzy,” you looked at her with doe eyes and she stared, remaining with eyes wide.

“i suppose once you two are…” he looked at your collarbone, your naked chest covered with the blanket you’d held up. “dressed— that we can talk about you and jace.”

izzy seemed contained. her voice didn’t seem as surprised as her face.

“thank you,” you sighed, leaning back into bed a bit. “he’s sleeping, can i take your message?”

“well actually,” she pointed behind her with her thumb, still a little red-faced. “i went to wake you up, too, but you weren’t in there. i assumed you were eating breakfast already, you early bird, so i decided to wake jace up… but you’re… not eating breakfast, that’s for sure.”

“why were you gonna wake me up?”

izzy was starting to calm down by now. she shrugged. “hodge wanted me to.”

“what does hodge want me up for?” you asked, feeling a little anxious.

“he didn’t tell me.”

you nodded.

“mess with jace and i’ll mess with your throat,” izzy said suddenly, then spun on her heels and stalked out of the room.

you were appalled. it was random, but it made sense. izzy is basically his sister. but you were her best friend.

you rolled over gently, hitting the tip of your nose on have’s bicep. he groaned for a second, but then his eyes fluttered open.

“morning,” he said in his morning-raspy-voice. you smiled.

“morning, love. i have to—” he cut you off by kissing you on the lips.

you groaned as you pulled away. “jace, i—”

“no,” he said, and he started kissing your neck.

“okay, jace, seriously.” he pulled away from your neck, looking at you with hurt eyes.

“listen,” you hissed, sort of climbing onto his chest, your body half on his and half off. “it’s important.”

jace pretended to consider it, then tilted his head at you. “go on.”

“izzy, she, she came in to wake you up.” you said. jace didn’t say anything.

“i don’t see the problem.”

“jace, this isn’t funny!” you felt helpless.

“i’m really not laughing,” he whispered, touched by your anger.

“jace, she saw me.” you said finally.

“oh,” he looked away.

“yeah.” you sat up, wrapping yourself in the blanket.

“well,” he started, reaching for a dagger on his bedside table and spinning it on his finger. “she should be happy. she was the one who thought we’d be just adorable together.”

“she said i can’t mess with you,” you whispered. “not— not in the way we already did, but i mean, break your heart. she said she’d ‘mess with my throat’ if i did.”

jace chuckles a laugh, seemingly teasing. “she’s just being the overprotective sister she thinks she is. she thinks she’s superior. which, obviously, is a funny joke to me.”

as you stood up, you shot him a sideways look. you’d brought extra clothes into his room the night before, so you had them on your side of the bed.

“jace,” you called. “you don’t think she’s mad, do you?”

your head turned and resting on your shoulder, you saw jace consider this. “not necessarily,” he answered, “i think she must have always expected this would happen. haven’t we?”

jace was always the one to chase you, and you hadn’t started liking him until a year back. so in a way, you did kind of see it happen. “sort of.”

“what do you mean, sort of?” jace asked, sliding a shirt on. you put your black jeans on, then looked at him. he looked hurt.

“we grew up the way alec and izzy did together,” you said slowly.

“not true. they’re siblings; blood.”

you nodded. “we considered ourselves as siblings for the longest time, because we loved each other so much. now we see it was in a different way, i suppose. i never saw this coming until about last year.”

jace’s eyes relaxed, and he turned back to his clothes. you smiled, slipping a shirt on.

“okay, but what would hodge think?” you turned around, as did jace, but he did more slowly.

“oh…” he whispered. “i didn’t— i didn’t think about that.”

you bit your lip. “we work well together, we fight well together. we’ll most likely work together better now.”

jace sighed, not saying anything and slid a hood on.

“done?” he asked, walking over to you and grabbing your hands.

“yeah, i just need to brush my hair.” you told him. he nodded and let go, grabbing a brush from his dresser. you muttered things about it being knotty under your breath, curating as it hurt your hairline.

“careful,” jace said, coming close to your ear. “i did that. watch your mouth.”

you stopped brushing to understand what he was saying, and your eyes widened as you noticed what he meant.

“come on,” he said impatiently as usual. he grabbed your arm and pushed you out of the now open door, not forgetting to stick his stele into his pocket.

he grabbed your hand once he shut the door, grabbing your hand and leading you down a winding set of steps.

“you know where he is?” he asked. he looked around, probably to see if anyone saw you and him holding hands.

you considered it for a second. “the library, probably.”

he nodded. “the usual.”

you giggled as you reached the bottom of the stairs, heading to the library.

you let go of jace’s hand, starting to feel like it was sweaty.

you walked into the library as hodge stood up. he eyes you too suspiciously.

“good morning, dear lovebirds.”

#jace herondale x y/n #jamie bower x you #jamie campbell bower #jamie campbell bower x you #peter ballard #peter ballard fluff #001 stranger things #001 x reader #001 x y/n #001 x you #henry creel #jace wayland x y/n #jace wayland #jace wayland x reader #jace herondale x reader

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dollslayer · 3 years

Text

Sweeter Endings

Sugar Daddy!Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: Still reeling from the financial realities of losing your mother you turn to a lucrative website for help and get more than you could have bargained for.

W/C: 5,325

Warnings: Smut (no minors 18+ only), light D/S dynamics, brief mentions of alcohol consumption, unprotected sex, swearing

A/N: NO MINORS, I wrote this for @donutloverxo 's Sugary 4k Challenge (Congrats!!) I love sugar daddy AUs so I was really excited to write this!! If you like it then please like/reblog/comment I'm all ears! Also maybe check out my other stuff if you want! Cheers!

Main Masterlist

____

The saying ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’ was truer than you’d ever imagined and you found out the hard way. Life had hit you hard last year. You had watched your mother succumb very quickly to cancer. A cold that just wouldn’t go away turned into a doctor’s visit turned into three months left to live. Having no one else in her life, the cost of her funeral and medical bills fell to you. The bills outweighing the inheritance you had no choice but to drop out of school.

One year later you were hanging on by threads to keep yourself off the streets without turning to a loan shark or selling yourself. Stocking shelves at a bougie grocery store in Soho by day and bartending in Tribeca by night had you working six days a week. What free time you had you were too exhausted to do anything with. Something had to give or you were going to collapse from the stress, you just didn’t know what.

A couple weeks ago you had been casually venting about how broke you were with a coworker when she jokingly suggested signing up for one of those Sugar Daddy sites. You laughed along with her but it sounded better than getting a third job. You had quietly asked one of your roommates to borrow their laptop saying you needed to look at job postings only half a lie, really and locked yourself in your room.

You were just gonna check out the website, maybe sign up and poke around, it didn’t mean you were committing to anything, just looking. You remembered first looking at the website once your shitty wifi loaded it, promising ‘beautiful and successful people making mutually beneficial connections’. You balked after reading that but you couldn’t look at any profiles without making one yourself so you had set to work.

After making your profile you hadn’t gotten any hits in about a week so you shrugged it off. You couldn’t keep hogging your roommate’s computer anyways so you set off back to work. Your days at the store wore on into endless nights at the bar and you wondered what other options you really had when you had no degree and no experience in any relevant field.

___

6 o’clock on a Thursday night, the typical after work crowd begins to roll in. The bar you work in is upscale, classy. Definitely trying to lure in the businessmen that worked in the area and their wallets. It annoyed you to deal with the same type of customers you did at the store all over again but with the high end crowd came good tips so you couldn't complain too much.

It was busier than usual when a group of men in suits walked in together asking for a booth. You saw a lot of business meetings take place over whiskey sours in this place so you didn’t think much of it. You tried your best to keep tending to your regulars when a pair from the group came over.

One of the men had deep brown eyes and a sly grin that when split gave you the perfect view of the gap between his teeth. He was confident but he had a kind look to him. His friend had dirty blond hair and a beard that clung to his perfect jawline and you’d be lying if you said you hadn’t snuck a second look. You turned your back and continued filling orders to distract yourself when one of them cleared their throat behind you.

As you turned to face them you found it was the blond calling after you. His face held a hint of surprise but it was quickly replaced by a look of amusement as he smirked and one brow lifted, like he knew something you didn’t. He was like any other typical customer for you, professional and handsome, probably over-confident in himself. You returned his smirk and prepared your best charming banter. Time to earn those tips.

“Something to drink for you, gentleman?” You offered.

“We’d like a round of scotch for the table over there. You don’t mind bringing it over, do you sweetheart?” the brown-eyed man asked.

“Of course not” you answered. Pricks.

“Good girl” the blond said with a wink. Creep. A hot creep but still. Before you could ask he took his card out of his wallet and put it on the counter for the tab.

____

A round had come and passed, soon they’d asked for another but this time it was just the blond that approached you. You lifted your eyebrows in anticipation of an order.

“You here often?” he asked. Ugh, not even a good pick up line.

“Am I here at my job often?” You retorted with a playful smile.

The man’s shoulders shook as he chuckled. “Sorry you just uh, you look familiar that’s all. What’s your name?”

You supplied him with it and asked him if he wanted another round of scotch. He nodded.

“Smart girl, I’m Steve by the way.” He laid down his business card which you picked up with a look of challenging curiosity. Steve Rogers, CEO of Shield inc.

Oh. You didn’t recognize the name but you definitely knew the company. It felt like a quarter of their employees stopped in for a drink throughout the week and it was prominent enough of a company that you read about it weekly. Play it cool, these types want to feel like an every-man at the bar but still wanna feel important.

You raised your eyebrows again in recognition. “Nice to meet you, Steve, I’ll have your round right out.”

“Good Girl” he winked again at you. Okay so it’s hot, but he’s a total stranger and you don’t even know him. Stay on your game.

___

10 o’clock came around and things were thinning out slightly, regulars made their way out, awkward Tinder dates and rowdy young 20-somethings made their way in. The party of businessmen was still around but they were hopefully wrapping up after the 2 more rounds they’d had. Steve approached the bar once more and you preemptively picked up the bottle of scotch.

“Whoa, easy, girl! I’m here to pick up the tab” He said, taking out his wallet.

“What’s the name on the tab?” You decided to play dumb but based off the grin on his face he knew you were playing with him.

“Steve. Rogers.” He replied, his tone was stern but his eyes told you he was in on the joke.

You cashed him out and left him to sign his receipt so you could make more drinks. You saw him move in your peripheral and turned your head to see his face.

“Have a good night, sweetheart. I’ll be seein’ ya” he promised.

“Take care!” You smiled back.

A few minutes later you circled back to collect his receipt and found three $100 bills staring back at you. You blinked dumbly in disbelief, who the hell leaves a 200% tip? Looking around to see if Steve was still here he was nowhere to be found. You had no choice but to pocket the money.

____

Another week went by and left you wondering how much energy and concentration it would take for you to just evaporate, since that seemed easier than going to work today. Sadly still in solid form, you punched in at the store and stowed your things in your locker.

Your upscale customer base was a mostly pretentious and successful group of yuppies so even though you were grateful to not be on the streets you were constantly reminded of the professional success you couldn’t help but feel that you were missing out on. Stuck instead to listen to incessant whining ‘is this organic? I won’t eat it unless it’s organic’.

The upside of this job was that the time went by quickly because you always had so much to do. Plus with how monotonous the work was it was easy enough to zone out. So much so that you hadn’t heard someone calling your name and approaching you. A hand softly touching your shoulder snapped you into the present.

You looked up, startled to find a pair of blue eyes staring back into yours. You took a step back and processed who it was. “CEO guy?” Steve?

“‘CEO guy?’ I thought I recognized you, ‘barmaid’ or should I say… ‘stock girl?’” He joked using his fingers to make quotations.

Now that you thought about it, the store isn’t that far at all from the bar, it would make sense if he’s in the area. You smiled and tapped your nametag in response.

“I just came in on my lunch to grab a few groceries” looking down at his basket it held some protein powder, some eggs, and one lonely banana. “Clearly, I’m single. But you’d know that already, wouldn’t you?”

Your brows twinged together in confusion. What is that supposed to mean?

“Excuse me?”

He edged a little closer to you and lowered his voice “SeekingConnection.com?”

Your eyes widened in shock. The fucking Sugar Daddy site! I forgot about that! Surprise was quickly replaced with humiliation. You looked down and away as you felt your cheeks heat up.

“I don’t mean to embarrass you” Steve placated, “But I gotta say, I’m pretty hurt you never responded to me. I sent that message weeks ago and let’s just say I’m not used to rejection.” He kept his tone light, letting you know he wasn’t mad.

“I-I um, I’m sorry, I don’t have a computer and they don’t have an app, I was using my roommates’ computer and I guess I forgot about it…” You admitted.

Steve nodded in acknowledgement. Please say something to salvage this conversation. Please.

“Well,” Steve rummaged in his pocket for another business card. “You got a pen on you?”

You dug around in your apron and came up with one. Handing it to him you watched as he wrote on the back of the card. He held the card and the pen out to you.

“That’s my number, I’d ask for yours but I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable, you already look like you wanna sink through the floor” Not helping, but I do. You took them from him and tucked them away in the pocket of your apron.

“You do have a phone right?” You only glared at him in response. “Well, if you check your profile, you would’ve seen I asked you out to lunch, offer still stands. Just text me when you’re free”

Should I even say yes? I mean, the winking the other night was weird but he’s good looking and at least somewhat considerate. I mean, it’s not like I had any other intention when I signed up for that site. What the hell. right?

“I… usually work mid shifts so I don’t know if lunch is doable, they only give me half an hour but, maybe we could do coffee? I’ve got tomorrow off from the bar I could meet you” you suggested.

If Steve felt pity for you he hid it well behind the wide smile he made when you offered coffee instead.

“There’s a place around the corner from here, just up a block, you know it? I’m off tomorrow at 6, why don’t you meet me there?”

“Sounds like a plan.” He winked at you again and started walking away. What the hell just happened?

____

You did end up borrowing your roommate’s computer once again when you got home to look up Steve’s DM. Sure enough, there he had been in all his internet glory. ‘Steve, 33, CEO. likes: art, conversation, whiskey. Digging around further on his profile you found that he owned several houses here and in Europe, he had a dog that was cuter than he was, and that he was ‘Seeking deeper connection’. All of these things piqued your interest.

‘Hey, Doll. Saw your profile and I had to ask, what’s a girl like you doing in a place like this? Kidding, of course. But maybe you’d care to tell me your story over lunch? Your profile says we’re both in New York. - Steve’ Sent three weeks ago. Fuck.

You had texted him earlier to confirm, which is how you found yourself walking up the sidewalk towards the shop with a mind running rampant with nervous thoughts. What if he just wants to feel big about himself in comparison to me? What would I even really have to offer the relationship? A college dropout working two dead-end jobs with no social life. You needed to snap yourself out of it. You were just meeting for coffee doesn’t mean anything.

Pushing open the door you found Steve waving at you from a quiet corner. He was still in a suit, presumably coming from work himself. Even the buttons on his shirt looked expensive. You were wearing dirty jeans and a worn pair of work boots paired with a flannel. You couldn’t have looked more different if you tried.

“I waited for you to order,�� He said. You smiled up at him, only now realizing how tall he was in comparison to you. He ushered you both towards the counter where you both placed your orders. You moved to take your wallet from your purse but he had already beat you there.

“Really? As if I’d let the lady pay, and on the first date no less?” He said playfully.

“Oh, so this is a date now, is it?” You kidded.

Steve shoved his hands in his pockets and gave you that boyish grin and a shrug. The pair of you made your way back to the table and waited for your drinks to be brought over.

“How was work?” You asked, “What exactly is it that your company does?”

“We offer security and surveillance software domestically as well as international. Stadiums, airports, other government buildings. Things of that nature. And work was fine, thank you for asking” Steve said with a genuine smile. “How was your day, doll?”

“Oh, my day was fine, more of the same but y’know,” You answered half-heartedly.

“You know, you never answered me, what’s a funny, pretty gal like you doing on a site like that?”

Embarrassment hit you again, this time maybe accompanied with a hint of shame. You were saved momentarily by your drinks being delivered. He seemed truly interested and since he was paying you supposed you owed him an answer.

“I was going to Columbia and I had a pretty good internship when my mom got diagnosed with cancer. She died three months later and since it was only always just the two of us I ended up footing the bill. I was on partial scholarship but between the hospital and the funeral I can’t really afford the rest of tuition on top of working for free so here I am” you explained, “Oh my god, I’m sorry I’m totally oversharing aren’t I? You probably don’t wanna hear about a bummer like this, sorry”

You tried to laugh to ease the tension you thought you’d created. Braving a look at Steve, he looked thoughtful and only a little bit like he pitied you. You could live with that.

“I’m really sorry about your mom, mine also got really sick before she died, I know it must’ve been hard. What were you in school for?”

___

You and Steve talked for hours, trading anecdotes of childhood and talking about each other’s interests. You had a similar sense in humour so you got on swimmingly. The evening seemed to be coming to a close as the night sky sent in through the window.

Being with Steve was probably the most relaxed you’d felt since before your mom was diagnosed. It became difficult to focus on anything but your financial situation and even though that’s what brought you here in the first place you had managed to forget all about it.

“So look, us getting together wasn’t exactly the most conventional on meet-cutes but to put it bluntly,” He said, “The CEO life makes it hard to meet real people and it gets kinda lonely, I mean, you saw my grocery basket” You both laughed at that. “You need money and I need company, I feel like we could help each other out. Whad’ya say? Think you could put up with me?”

You knew what this was but hearing it put so plainly was a little surprising. At least he was to the point.

“So if I said yes what does that mean, exactly?” you inquired.

“Well,” he started, “We take care of each other. Let me cover some of your bills at the very least, make it so you’d be comfortable quitting at least one of your jobs. And you’d keep me company, we go on dates, maybe you could come over, there’s the occasional work event or charity gala I’d need you on my arm for. Thoughts?”

God I can’t even imagine what it’s like to work only one job anymore. Maybe I could even save up and go back to school. He’s cute and he seems sensible, why not?

“Could we maybe take things slow? What you describe is something I’m down for but I don’t want to make myself completely dependent on you. But I’d love to be there for you, and I have to admit, the thought of only working one full time job is pretty crazy to me” You laughed.

Steve swallowed and placed one of his large, warm hands over yours.

“I can do things the old fashioned way, if that’s what you’d feel good with. I gotta say though, with looks like that it’s not gonna be easy” he jested.

You smiled shyly and looked away. You both stood to leave and he held the door open for you.

“I’ve already got your number from when you texted me earlier but I’ll talk to my assistant about my schedule and maybe I could take you out to dinner this weekend?”

“I um, I’d really like that. It’s a date” You stated.

“Oh, so you think this is a date now?” He jested.

You lightly punched him in the arm and he took the opportunity to pull you closer to him. You looked up to find his face inches from yours. You could smell his aftershave and his deep voice gave you goosebumps when he spoke next.

“I kinda want to kiss you goodnight, would that be okay?”

You could only nod as he shut his eyes and closed in. Your lips met in one perfect, chaste kiss. You sighed and leaned into his hand as it briefly cupped your face.

You broke apart and made promises to see each other soon. You felt like you could’ve floated home as you boarded the subway, caught up in the swarm of newly forming feelings.

_____

You sat in the break room when your phone buzzed to life, ‘Saturday at 7?’

You were about to type out a yes when you forgot you worked closing at the bar. Your thumbs moved quickly to tap out the reply ‘Working, sorry :/ the pitfalls of bartending. Sunday at 7?’

You were nervous telling him no and asking to change plans. You hated not being able to make things work but you only just met the man and the weekend tips were killer, it’s not like you could turn the shift down.

‘Ah yes, almost forgot. Sunday works too, I’ll text you the details. What’s your address? I’ll pick you up’

Oh, God. Steve can’t see my building! His cufflinks probably cost more than my rent!

‘I’ll just meet you there, don’t worry about it’

‘Not a chance, doll. Just tell me where and I’ll come get you’

You let out a worried sigh but knew you had to let it go. You sent him your address and went back to work.

____

Saturday was maybe the longest day in your entire week, in fact you loathed it. Mornings at the store followed by running immediately to the bar. Last call in New York was 4am so it’s a good thing you didn’t try to make brunch plans with Steve for Sunday. But ultimately both your shifts passed without major incident and now it was Sunday and you tried to ready yourself the best you could.

The place Steve mentioned was fancy, you knew that much from a quick search. Panicking instantly upon realizing you don’t really have any nice clothes you turned to your most fashionable roommate for help. She loaned you a cocktail dress that was revealing enough to draw interest without giving everything away. You just hoped Steve would like it.

‘Downstairs, doll. Silver BMW’ you exhaled. Hoo boy, here we go.

____

Steve handed his keys to the valet and rushed around to open your door for you. You held his hand and you clambered onto the sidewalk in your heels. His warm hand on the small of your back as he steered you towards the doors was a comforting weight.

Dinner has been lovely so far, he chose a place that wasn’t completely white-glove but was upscale enough to make you feel only a little underdressed.

You joked back and forth with him over the course of the meal, talked about your lives, and even found out you both have a guilty pleasure for cheesy rom-coms. It wasn’t until dessert and your third glass of wine came that you realized how much time had passed. You frowned slightly thinking of the early morning ahead of you followed by a long night at the bar.

“What’s wrong, doll?”

“Oh, nothing I just didn’t realize how late it was, I’ve got both jobs tomorrow it’ll just be a long day that’s all” you tried to wave it off but Steve frowned in response.

“Quit the bar” he stated.

“What?”

“Quit the bar. This is your card, I’ve already loaded $3000 on there. Put me in touch with your landlord and I’ll get you taken care of.” He slid the card across the table to you. Your name printed on the front. This got real very quickly.

“Steve, that’s.” You were in shock, a loss for words almost “that’s too much, I don’t know what to say.” You felt embarrassed taking the money. You knew that was the essence of your arrangement but actually taking his money had you feeling uneasy.

“Honey, this is what I’m here for. Let me take care of you. Give up your late nights. I wanna take you out on the weekends and you’ll need to be available for events. You can stay at the store if you want but quit the bar, you don’t need it.”

You took a deep sigh. He did say he wanted you to be comfortable quitting one of your jobs; it's just making the change that scares you. But something about Steve felt safe so you nodded and looked up to him.

“I’ll put in my two weeks”

“Good girl” he patted your knee and you involuntarily clenched your thighs. He smirked at that but let it go.

____

A few months had come and gone since that night and your time with Steve had been great. Only working the one job gave you so much more free time. You'd spent a good chunk of it just trying to form a normal sleep schedule but all the time you spent with Steve made it difficult. Not that you minded especially since your allowance was monthly but he’d showered you with gifts here and there.

They started off small, perfume, chocolates and flowers, or a simple pair of white gold hoops that reminded him of you. They gradually became pricier and more elaborate. You’d felt guilty accepting it all at first but he was insistent you deserve the best. He had even mentioned you moving out maybe finding a better place but you reminded him you needed to go slow.

He’d also been nothing short of a gentleman. Out in public at least, you’d learned the hard way that he was an absolute animal in bed. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep your hands off of him.

Something you had appreciated about Steve is that he never made you feel bad or less than for being broke. Never held his money over your head like leverage. You’d felt equal to him in all aspects, understanding you had just as much say as he did.

Still, there was a small nagging voice in the back of your head that reminded you Steve is not your boyfriend. This isn't a relationship and he's looking to get something out of just like you are. But if you were being honest you were catching feelings, it was hard not to when the man was giving you the fantasy. You decided to push that voice aside whenever it came up and let yourself be swept away. Maybe that would bite you in the ass but for now you were happy.

____

You were buzzed into Steve’s building and on the elevator ride up to his penthouse your phone buzzed. ‘I have to make a quick call- I’ve got a present waiting for you in the living room.’ You couldn’t help but feel giddy.

The doors opened and Steve was nowhere in sight but as you entered the living room a bag from Chanel and the Apple Store sat on the table. Oh god, what this time? I swear this man is too much.

You opened the smaller bag from Chanel first and found a beautiful black and white evening bag. It was sleek and simple, very much to your tastes. You were nervous to open the Apple bag, Steve always went overboard. Shakily removing the paper you pulled out the slim case in disbelief. A MacBook Air and a pair of AirPod Pros. The man well and truly spoiled you.

“You said you didn’t have a computer.” His voice came from behind you and startled you.

“Steve, this is too much. You’re too much.” You swung your arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Nothin’s too much for you, doll.” He kissed the top of your head.

“Think you could take a couple days off of work? I just got off the phone and confirmed plans for my house in Nice.”

A trip? France?? Oh my god. How is this my life? You felt so overwhelmed that you grabbed Steve by the collar and brought his face down to meet you in a kiss. His tongue swiped your lips and you granted him entrance. Moaning into his mouth your hands traveled up into his hair, pulling softly and coaxing a groan out of him.

He guided you to sit on the couch and brought you down into his lap. You ground down onto him and felt his hard-on through his slacks. Your hand moved slowly to undo the buttons of his shirt as he kissed down your jaw towards your neck. You sighed softly when he found your sweet spot and started sucking.

He helped you take off his shirt while you got started on his belt and undid his pants. He lifted himself off the couch slightly to move them down to his knees, taking his briefs with them. His cock stood proud and an angry red, leaking at the tip.

“I wanna ride you, I can’t wait.” You pouted as you writhed against him in need.

Steve tutted at you “that’s no way to get what you want. Ask me nicely, baby. Beg to ride my cock,”

You ground down even harder and whined. “Please, sir, please let me ride your cock. I need to feel you, I can’t wait any longer please.”

“Good Girl” Steve's hands flipped up your skirt and found your panties, ripping them to shreds. They were La Perla and had cost a pretty penny but he didn’t care.

He lined himself up and brought you down harshly gripping your hips. You moaned loudly in surprise and satisfaction and wasted no time moving back and forth. Steve made you feel so close and connected to him whenever he fucked you but he still made you feel sordid and dirty. You couldn’t get enough of the feeling, you’d gladly chase it.

His eyes were hooded as watched you chase your own pleasure and giving him some in return. His hands kneaded your ass and smacked it just to get a gasp out of you. He grabbed the back of your head and brought you in for a searing kiss that was all teeth and tongue. He’d nip at you and lick the pain away.

His hips met yours, finding your rhythm and speeding you both up when he gripped your hips.

“Can’t wait to have me, you had to fuck me on the couch huh?” Steve panted, “my dirty girl. So fuckin’ gorgeous.”

You put your forehead against his and went harder, pushing your clit to grind against the muscles of his abs.

“Only yours, sir.” Your orgasm was building. Steve was a pretty relaxed dom but you still needed permission.

“Sir, please let me cum I can’t wait any longer” you tried your best to slow your movements a bit.

“I think you can hold it baby, I wanna enjoy you a little longer”.

You could only whine in response and tried to slow your pace but his grip on your hips and his own movements pushed you further and further towards the edge. You tried to squirm out of his grasp but his hands only tightened. It felt like forever until Steve finally gave you permission.

“Go on baby, cum for me you earned it. Fuck your self on my cock and cum all over me”

Your movements were frantic, desperate to chase your orgasm when finally the perfect angle of his cock inside you and your clit against him set you free. You cried out above him and dug your nails in deep.

Steve held you firmly in place and started slamming into you from below, finally letting himself think about cumming. All you could do was hold on for mercy. Moments later he brought you down onto him one final slam as he came inside of you with a cry.

The only sound in the room was both of you trying to catch your breath. You sighed again and collapsed against him, nuzzling your face into his neck. He kissed the side of your face and let you make yourself at home while he caressed your back.

____

One shower and two more orgasms later you were both clean and made your way to the kitchen. Steve was gathering the ingredients for dinner when you hugged him from behind. Your head resting against his back. Steve twisted around and hugged you in full. You both stayed like that for a moment until you looked up at him.

You were so content. Moments like this where you were just domestic were some of the best between you. It wasn’t about money or material, it was just the two of you making dinner and enjoying each other, no barriers.

“Are you really going to take me to France?” Your voice came out muffled against his chest.

“Of course, doll. After dinner I want you to use your new laptop to buy some outfits for the trip. I left my card in your new purse.”

You lifted onto your tiptoes and kissed his nose.

“You really do think of everything, don’t you?”

“What can I say? I’m a planner” he retorted.

You didn’t know it yet but Steve was going to ask you to become official while you were there. He wasn’t worried in the slightest. In fact he’d never been so sure about something in his life.

#sugary4kchallenge #steve rogers x reader #sugar daddy!Steve rogers x reader #sugar daddy!steve rogers #sugar daddy au #marvel au #marvel fic #marvel x reader #fluff #smut

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bastillewolf · 4 years

Note

Hello idk if the requests are still going but if not then its okay ignore this and if they are please don't over work yourself and you don't need to do my request if you don't want to just stay healthy and eat well and drink lots of water we all live your work (and are simps for corpse-)

The ask : could I ask for a corpse husband x reader where they used to get shipped together before they even meet each other and when they meet each other corpse goes soft for reader and they play two rounds In among us together where they are imposters together and corpse is an imposter alone in the other round

Reader info : reader has a very soft voice and is a softie and the pronounce is she/her or they/them ( as you wish)

Again you don't gotta do it if you don't want to

Thanks so much for the ask, An. I was feeling like shit and this was a lot of fun to write. I’m sorry though, I completely read over the part where the reader was supposed to have a soft voice. I’ll see if I can make another one with this specification sometime. Also, I wrote this rather quickly because I’m watching Twilight for the first time and now my feelings are hurt.

#CorpseBride - Oneshot

Pairings: Corpse / Reader

Twitter wasn’t really your forte, but you knew how to get around. It’s just that you never really had the time to check it, let alone to see what’s on the trending page every single day. At the very least, you were capable of replying to your friends’ stuff and letting your viewers know when you were streaming or when a new video would be up. Again, you weren’t a pro, but you got by.

Until you didn’t.

“Hey, everyone,” you greeted, and immediately went to change your Among Us figure to its usual colour and outfit before someone else took it.

Everyone welcomed you, while it seemed Toast was still busy trying to get a last person to join.

“Whaddup, baby,” Corpse’s shot out from the rest of them. It was pure teasing, something he’d grown quite comfortable with ever since people had blatantly started simping for his voice. “Nothing much, honey. How’ve you been?” You cheekily replied. “Pretty good. Streaming still makes me nervous, though.” “You greeted me with ‘Whaddup, baby’ and then proceed to tell me you’re nervous? Don’t get upset when I say that I don’t believe you.” He chuckled at that.

5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

Impostor

“Ha!” you called out, “I doubt this will soothe your nerves, Corpse. You’re teamed up with me now.” You sneaked in a glance at chat. “We are not an old married couple! If anything, he can be my bitch for this round. I’m just not gonna murder anyone.”

And that’s basically how it went. He managed to kill three people and still wasn’t being sussed. “Alright, I think I’ve tortured him enough,” you laughed, “I’ll even spare Sykkuno for the man.”

You managed to corner Toast and killed him in a corner where the water wheels were, before heading out into admin. You vented until you found Corpse in Labs and jumped out. It was right when Sykkuno walked in.

“Oh, god no. Please, Sykkuno.”

Your kill count still wasn’t down yet and he was obviously planning to run straight out the door to hit the emergency button, but he was stopped. Corpse had murdered him in an instant.

Your mouth was hanging open. “Did… Did he just kill Sykkuno for me?” Chat was going absolutely wild. “What the fuck just happened?” You decided to report the body anyway.

“I can’t fucking believe it,” Corpse growled, “Not my best friend, Sykkuno.”

You had to mute yourself to keep the laughter at bay. Corpse evidently vouched for you, saying you’d walked in on the body together. Felix was sussed and voted out.

“Corpse, you killed me!” Sykkuno cried out.

“I’m so sorry, Sykkuno! I wanted to spare you but you walked in at the wrong time!” You pleaded.

“Sacrifices had to be made,” Corpse merely responded.

“Wait, what happened?” Sean asked.

“I walked in on one of them venting and then Corpse killed me!”

“Collateral damage. You watched me get killed one time, too.”

“Blame me, Sykkuno. It was my fault,” but you were laughing as you said it.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard such regret coming from an imposter,” Sean laughed along, “Also, why the fuck were you two being so slow? Three meetings in and you’d only killed three people.”

“Corpse was simping for me,” you replied.

“I was not.”

“Yes, you were. Otherwise you would’ve asked me what the hell I’d been doing that entire time.”

“Fuck off,” he laughed.

“Corpse is an UWU-boy!”

“Oh my god, you guys are already trending.”

“Wait, what?”

Your phone was being blasted off to space, getting tons of messages with the hashtag #CorpseBride. It was number 1 trending on Twitter.

“So… whaddup, baby?”

“Oh no, you better buy me a drink first.”

“Sure.”

You hadn’t thought he’d been serious in that moment, until he’d asked you to meet up after the game had ended. You hesitantly agreed, but reminded him that he absolutely did not have to participate in this just for the meme. “I’m not doing this for the meme,” he’d said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for a while, I just never knew how. It seemed like the perfect timing.”

You met him at his apartment, knowing how he was about going out in public, and feeling extremely nervous. You’d brought takeout, and because you hadn’t been sure what he wanted you’d ordered way too much. Upon opening the door, he looked at you, down at the bag, and said, “Shit, you got food?” Not really knowing what else to say, you simply replied, “Uh, yeah.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have lots of leftovers, then.”

He smiled, gave you a hug that ended way too fast and left you paralyzed for a minute, and then invited you in. It turned out he’d already ordered food, too. “Plenty to choose from,” he laughed awkwardly. “Uh… You got any neighbours who might want some?” you asked.

“I-I don’t really talk to anyone outside of my friend group.”

“Oh, of course. I could go around, if you’d like.”

“You’d do that for me?”

You furrowed your brows. “Of course I would. Why not?”

“Alright, but let me at least come with you. You just do the talking.”

Three knocks at three different doors later, and someone accepted the offer and took over some of the food. “Hang on a minute,” the elderly man said, clad in only his pyjamas and a bathrobe, managing to make the situation even more uncomfortable, “Aren’t you my neighbour? You always scurry off before I get the chance to talk to you!”

You looked at Corpse, and he back at you, and you turned back to the elderly man. “He, uh… He’s very people shy. He has anxiety. I’m trying to help him cope. Also, his vocal chords are damaged.” Nothing you’d said so far had been a lie, technically, but the man still remained sceptical. “Then why didn’t you just leave a note or something?”

“Uh…” you jumped at the small voice appearing from behind you. It’s just that his ‘small voice’ is still nothing close to small. “I know, I’m terribly sorry, sir. I also just wanted to let you know that if you ever need anything, I’m just a few doors away.”

This seemed to please the man enough.

“I can’t believe you made me do that.”

“I made you?!” You gasped, “I didn’t make you do anything, you filthy liar! You’re just as bad in real life as in Among Us, when you’re the impostor and I’m the innocent crewmate.”

“No comment.”

“I didn’t even ask you a question.”

“No comment.”

“Deadass?”

“Deadass.”

You both laughed. Corpse hesitated for just a moment, but decided to ask anyway, “Were you nervous when I opened the door?”

You chuckled awkwardly, admitting, “Yeah, I was. I always get anxious meeting people. Well, we’d met before, of course. But just, you know, in real life.”

“I get it.”

You stood there in silence for a moment, until you noticed the rest of the takeout in your hands was getting cold. “Come on, wife,” he joked, linking his pinkie finger with yours, “Let me get you that drink.”

If he hadn’t dragged you along then and there, you could’ve sworn your knees would’ve given out.

TAG LIST CLOSED

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#corpse husband #corpse #corpse x reader #corpse husband x reader #pewdiepie #jacksepticeye #among us #youtube fanfiction

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high-functioning-lokipath · 3 years

Text

SH - Sherlock x Depressed!Reader - With a Little Help from My Friends - Words: 2,793

IMPORTANT A/N - PLEASE READ: As stated in the title, this story contains discussions of depression. There is mention of suicidal thought and self-harm. I personally don't think it's too intense in it's descriptions HOWEVER!!! If this will trigger you, for your own health and safety please do not read. My messages are always open if you'd like to talk. I wrote this partially based on my own feelings so I can understand to at least a degree. You're amazing and I love you all. As far as this story goes, just remember: it has a happy, very fluffy ending but it doesn't start that way. I hope you enjoy it, feel free to leave a comment!

Brief Backstory: Reader is friends with John and Sherlock. She is a nurse who works with John. The three met shortly after Sherlock came back. Sherlock and Reader have crushes on each other but won't admit to it. I think the story explains everything else.

"Y/N, I'm going to be honest," John said, putting his hand on your shoulder comfortingly. "I may have PTSD but I cannot fully put myself in your shoes. My depression is different than yours." You had called your best friend, John Watson, in a mild panic. You had been feeling depressed for some time, as he knew, but that day had been especially bad. There was no particular reason but your depression had gotten so intense that you knew you needed help to get past this particular wave. John invited you over to 221B, assuring you that his flatmate would be out for the next couple of hours. "As a doctor, I am going to prescribe you some medication. Lowest dose possible and only because I want to help you get some immediate relief but I know you do not want them to become permanent. Let's work on finding another solution for you, ok?"

"I don't know, John," you replied. You'd asked John to be your Doctor since you didn't go to one regularly and he didn't mind your irregular checkups. "I've tried just about everything. The only outlet that seems to help is writing and even then," you trailed off, trying not to cry again. "This feeling just won't go away and I don't even know why it's there in the first place. I just want it to stop."

"I think you should talk to Sherlock."

"What?" You squeaked. "Why in the world would I talk to Sherlock?"

"I can't tell you why, Y/N. As both your Doctor and Sherlock's, I have to respect certain amounts of patient confidentiality. However, as your friend, I think you should talk to him."

"I don't know."

"Trust me," He replied. Smirking slightly, he added, "Doctor's orders."

"Ok, John," you chuckled. He smiled and hugged you. "Thanks."

"Now how about we go and fill this prescription and then maybe get some ice cream?"

"Well, honestly," you sighed. "The ice cream sounds great but I didn't sleep well last night. I was actually wondering if I could just take a nap here for a bit. I sleep better here sometimes." You blushed but John nodded understandingly.

"Of course," He replied. "I'll run down to the drugstore and fill this for you. Meanwhile you get some rest. I'll let Sherlock know you're here just in case he ends up getting back before I do. Will you be ok by yourself?"

"Yeah," You smiled. "This is a safe space for me. I'll go grab a blanket. Thanks again."

"Don't mention it. Just remember, talk to him."

"I'll try."

About 15 minutes later, Sherlock arrived back at the flat. He'd gotten John's texts.

John: If you get home in the next 45 minutes, be quiet. Y/N is over and she's taking a nap. I have to run out for something.

Sherlock: Is everything ok? - SH

John: She said she had a bad night.

Sherlock: She must have had a reason to come over in the first place though. - SH

John: She's going to need to tell you that herself. Don't ask. Do you understand me? Let her tell you. Be nice, ok?

Sherlock: When am I not nice to Y/N? - SH

John: Ok, that is true. You like her too much to be rude to her. If you could just hold back your deductions for one second I will say this: you two have more in common than you think.

He hurried home, not to wake you up of course, but because he wanted to see you. If there was something seriously wrong, he wanted to try and brace himself for it first. He couldn't help the smile playing at the corner of his lips when he thought of you. You two were good friends, that much was obvious to everyone. But Sherlock could see the potential for something more. He liked you a lot. You were just as smart, sassy, and sarcastic as he was. But you also could be extremely kind and caring to others and especially to him. He still didn't quite understand why you cared for him so but he was grateful. Before he could dwell on that too much longer, he arrived at 221B.

He quietly slipped inside and smiled at what he saw. You were curled up on the couch, sleeping like a baby. Apparently, though, you'd kicked off the blanket you had grabbed. Instead of picking up the blanket, he decided to take off his long coat and carefully lay that over you. You quickly cuddled into the warm fabric, unconsciously taking a deep breath, inhaling his unique signature left behind on the coat. Satisfied with what he'd done, he took off his suit jacket and went to the kitchen to prepare some tea for when you woke up. He knew you had a favorite tea and, unless John moved it or drank it all, there still would be some in the cupboard.

You woke to the smell of your favorite tea and a hushed exclamation from the kitchen. Opening your eyes slowly you saw Sherlock in at the counter trying to set up a tray with the teapot and cups. Recognizing your surroundings a bit more, you realized what was on top of you. Sherlock was just about to bring out the tray but you decided to pretend you were still asleep. The chances of fooling the Detective were low, but you wanted to try.

"There," He whispered to himself, setting the tray on the coffee table. You could hear him settling down on his chair, likely getting into his 'palace pose' as you called it. For a moment you were happy. You had actually gotten some quality sleep, you were currently cuddled up in Sherlock's famous coat and Sherlock had even made you tea. But that feeling quickly faded. Tears threatened to spill out of your still closed eyes as self-deprecating thoughts filled your mind.

'John probably told him to make me tea. He probably covered me with his coat so I wasn't as much of a distraction. He doesn't want me here. He never does. Why does he even tolerate my presence? He probably wishes we'd never met,' You thought. Your mind was going a million miles an hour and gaining. Without your notice, the tears began rolling down your cheeks and quiet sobs escaped your lips.

"Y/N?" Sherlock whispered. You're eyes shot open. You hadn't heard him get up. Now he was kneeling right next to you, one hand hovering over your arm. "Are you ok?"

"Oh, Sherlock!" You cried. "I-I wish I knew."

"C'mere," he said, motioning for you to sit up. Once you did so, he pulled you into a tight hug.

"What's this for?"

"You always give me and John a hug when you see us. You haven't done so for the past 5 days. I-" he paused briefly before lowering his voice and continuing. "I missed it."

"Oh." You weren't quite sure how to reply to that. You leaned into his embrace, letting yourself get lost in the moment.

"Y/N? Is there something I can do to help?"

"How much did John tell you?" You asked. You wouldn't have been mad exactly if John had told Sherlock to talk to you, but you wanted to think Sherlock was reaching out on his own.

"He told me you had a bad night."

"That's all?" You asked, surprised. You pulled away slightly and stared into his eyes. Sherlock nodded, frowning slightly as he tried to deduce you.

"Why are you afraid to talk to me?" You turned away, embarrassed and unsure what to say. "Be honest."

"I don't want you to make fun of me. I have-" You took a deep breath, steeling your nerves and preparing to just jump right in. "I have been extremely depressed lately and I didn't want to hear another speech about how all I need to do is exercise and eat right and stop thinking about sad things. Well you know what? I can't stop it! I can't help it if I feel like a useless pile of trash that should be thrown in the bin and burned." By the time you finished your little tirade, you'd gotten up and started pacing the floor. Then you turned and faced Sherlock. His expression was neutral but there was an obvious sadness in his eyes, one you didn't expect to see. It wasn't of pity. If you had seen that you also would have given up on the conversation. No, it was almost an understanding, an empathy. His eyes were actually glistening with tears.

"Have you ever felt like," he paused, voice unsteady. "Like giving up?" He whispered, unable to hold eye contact. You nodded silently. He got up slowly and walked towards you. At first, you thought he would hug you again but then he started unbuttoning his shirt.

"Uh, Sherlock?"

"Just wait a moment. I want to show you something." He carefully shrugged off the purple shirt that you, admittedly, loved so much and tossed it on the chair. "Only one person knows about this. You will be the second. You remember I told you about Moriarty's network?"

"Yes, the day we met. I asked you about your work, a simple question. And I got an answer that lasted 3 hours." Sherlock chuckled dryly.

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"Oh, no. Please don't apologise. I-" You sighed, rubbing your forehead. "I tend to make jokes when I'm nervous."

"I know." He smiled at you with, yet again, a completely unreadable expression. "You remember though." You nodded, opting to stay silent as he explained. "Well, those 2 years dismantling his network weren't easy. Not physically and certainly not emotionally. As a result of the different missions, I received many wounds on my body in various locations. I was," He paused, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. "I was depressed, guilt-stricken and suicidal. I figured I had hurt my friends enough. If they thought I was dead maybe I should just go on with it."

"What changed your mind?"

"I didn't want to do it on a mission. I wanted to see home again one more time. So to temporarily relieve the pain I," He sighed. Well, I wouldn't let my wounds heal. I'd pick at them. Mycroft finally convinced me to come back officially because he needed my help. I never told him about this. I think he knows but we don't discuss it." He looked down, obviously embarrassed and feeling more emotionally naked than physically. "You can look," he said. It was as if he'd read your mind. You were trying to be respectful and not stare but you realized that's what he wanted to show you. You had, on occasion, seen him shirtless before but you had never realized how bad some of the scars were.

"Sherlock, I-I don't know what to say. I-" You were completely shocked. Not offended. But actually comforted that he understood you. "Thank you," You finally said.

"Actually I wanted to thank you. I didn't just show you this to prove that I understand your feelings." You looked at him confused. "The day we met. You were leaving work, correct?" You nodded.

"It had been my first day there. John had been happy with my work and requested that I stay assigned to his office permanently. John had already finished up and headed home but there was some paperwork I had to finish so I was leaving about an hour late. Come to think of it, John said he had plans with you that evening. Why were you there?"

"That's what I wanted to tell you. I met you less than a month after I came back. I had still been quite depressed so I was still picking at my injuries. That day had been a bad day for me. So I cancelled my plans with John and I decided to go back to where I started this whole mess and finish it."

"Wait, are you telling me that-"

"You saved my life." Sherlock took one of your hands in his own and held it tightly. "I had memorized the work schedules of most everyone there and knew how to slip in unnoticed."

"But you didn't factor in me."

"Correct. When I ran into you, quite literally in fact, as I was entering the building, I was surprised. Not just by your presence but by what I deduced about you. You intrigued me. I had to find out more about you so I invited you to have a cup of coffee with me."

"Which turned into dinner." Sherlock nodded. "And since you were so intrigued by me, you forgot all about that."

"In a manner of speaking. You weren't a cure-all, mind you. You helped, though, by giving me a new mystery to investigate: you. That night, when I got home, I told John everything. He helped me too and when I mentioned you he couldn't stop singing your praises. He is very proud of you and your work you know."

"Yeah, I guess so," You replied, a little embarrassed. "Thank you, Sherlock. I'm sorry that you went through all that, but, I'm glad I have someone who understands. And I'm glad you're here to help me."

"Me too, Y/N. Me too," He replied.

"Can I, um, can I have another hug?" You asked, blushing and smiling. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

"If you must," He sighed, holding his arms out. Any other day, you would have thought he genuinely didn't want personal contact. But today you realized he was simply teasing. You wrapped your arms around his waist and leaned your head on his chest. You felt him relax as he leaned forward a little to cocoon you in his arms. "I care about you, Y/N. I don't care about many people but you mean so much to me. I-" You looked up at him and pressed a finger to his lips to quiet him.

"You don't have to say it, Sherlock. I know." He smiled and looked somewhat relieved. You knew he wasn't good with feelings and that was fine with you. "I love you too."

"I wanted to be the first one to say that," He pouted. You chuckled softly and booped his nose.

"You already have." He smiled and kissed your forehead lightly.

"I know this won't fix everything right away. I know you'll still have bad days. But I wanted you to know you could come to me too."

"I know. Thank you again, Sherlock." At that moment, John walked in with a bag from the store.

"Oh, hello!" He chirped, happy to see you hadn't gotten into a yelling match. Then he noticed Sherlock's shirt, or rather, lack thereof. "So, uh," He stuttered, unsure of what to say. "What should I do with this?"

"First of all, thank you, John, for giving me the guts to talk to him about this. And second, I think I'll give it a try. You know, to try and prevent a really bad day when you guys aren't available or if talking still isn't enough. But for today I think I'll be alright," You said, turning to John with a smile.

"Well, I'm glad. So did you just talk about that or did he finally tell you that he's had the biggest schoolboy crush on you from the moment he met you?"

"John!" Sherlock yelled. You laughed loudly.

"Not in those words exactly, John," You replied. "Don't worry," You added, turning to Sherlock and ruffling his curls. "Your secret's safe with me."

"Good. Now if you don't mind, I need your input on this case."

"Me?" You asked, quite surprised.

"Yes," He said as if it was obvious. "You're a woman after all!"

"And that is important because?"

"The killer was a woman obviously but I can't understand why she would do it!" The two of you went off into your own little world, completely ignoring John as he cooked dinner.

John: Ok, mates, get your tuxs out. Won't be long now.

Greg: He finally proposed? 😀

John: Not yet, give it a week.

Mycroft: John, you forget I monitor his spending habits.

John: And?

Mycroft: He's had a ring purchased for some time now.

Greg: 3 days tops.💍

Mycroft: I would estimate about 3 days as well, Detective Inspector.

Greg: We're in a Group Text. Talking about our friend like a bunch of teenage girls at a slumber party. I think you can call me Greg.

Mycroft: If I must.

John: So, girls, will you help me make the plans?

Mycroft: Of course. He is blood after all.

Greg: Count me in! Wouldn't miss it! 🕵️👰

Sherlock BBC Taglist

@lucywrites02

@delightfulheartdream

@bartv21

@another-crazy-fangirl

@ladylulu143

@gaitwae

@for-hearthand-home

#sherlock #sherlock bbc #sherlock imagine #sherlock fanfic #sherlock x reader #sherlock x y/n #sherlock oneshot #depression #ptsd #mentions of torture #self harm discussion #potentially triggering #trigger warning #TW #anxiety #good friends #john watson #mycroft holmes #greg lestrade

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blu-joons · 4 years

Text

The Boys Discover Your Relationship From Their Lockscreen ~ BTS Reaction

Jin:

He quickly reached for his phone as he watched it light up, hoping no one could see the photo he had, glancing across at Taehyung. “I saw the photo; you don’t need to pretend to hide it.”

“Please don’t say anything,” Jin requested, glancing down at the message you’d sent, “I’ve not told anyone yet, I just wanted to give it a bit of time.”

“Putting her as your lock screen isn’t the best way to keep a secret.”

“I know, I shouldn’t have left my phone out in case someone spotted it,” he frowned, placing his phone back into his pocket. “It’s not that important anyway, it’s still early days.”

“You know that we’d all be happy for you, we’ve been encouraging you to date for ages,” Taehyung reminded him, resting his hand against Jin’s shoulder.

His smile softened, “I just don’t want it to get out, I thought having the photo as my lock screen would be a subtle way of maintaining the secrecy of it all.”

“Just do a better job of hiding it from now on,” Tae teased, “but I won’t tell a soul.”

“I’ll tell them all soon, I promise.”

Yoongi:

“That’s the girl you were with the other night?” Kook remarked as he glanced across at Yoongi’s phone as it lit up, smirking at his elder. “I thought you said that she was just a friend?”

Yoongi frowned, hiding his phone before anyone else saw. “She is a friend, but I guess she’s a little bit more than that too. Just, don’t say a word to anyone.”

“I knew there was something going on between you both that night.”

“It’s still early days, it’s only been a few dates,” Yoongi informed him, trying to keep him calm, “I just want to see where it goes before, I’m too hasty.”

Jungkook nodded, unable to stop himself from smiling. “I promise to keep it quiet, I’m just so happy that you’ve found someone that makes you happy, she seems nice.”

“She is nice,” Yoongi clarified, feeling his cheeks darken as he thought about you. “For the first time ever, I’ve got butterflies with her.”

“I can’t believe you’re in love,” Jungkook joked, “are you going to get married? Have children?”

“We’re a little way off of that yet.”

Hoseok:

“Who’s that?” Jin questioned as he looked across to see what Hobi was doing on his phone, noticing a photo of someone he didn’t recognise. “Have you got a secret girlfriend?”

Hobi jumped when he realised someone was looking, placing his phone down. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re too nosy for your own good? You shouldn’t be looking.”

“Why can’t you just tell us who she is, what’s wrong about that?”

“Because you guys always overreact about these things, I just wanted to keep this to myself for a while,” Hobi groaned, knowing how persistent Jin would be.

Jin frowned, noticing he was touching a bit of a nerve with him, “I know we all joke, but if you’re in a relationship, we’d all be supportive of you.”

“Maybe so, but I just didn’t want to scare her off with all of this, it’s overwhelming,” he admitted, looking around at the chaos in the room.

“We’ll be on our best behaviour, if we ever get the chance to meet her,” Jin teased.

“One day, I promise you can meet her.”

Namjoon:

“No way, do you have a girlfriend?” Hobi teased, throwing Namjoon’s phone across to him. “Sorry, it was ringing, I thought I’d get it to you in time, but then it cut off.”

Namjoon quickly took his phone and noticed the photo that Hobi was referring too. “Don’t start shouting, it’s something that I just want to keep to myself.”

“I’m calm, I promise. But I’m just so excited for you.”

“I’m excited too, which is why I just want to take things slow and gradually introduce her to everyone,” Namjoon informed him, explaining his decision to keep the secret.

Hobi nodded, understanding entirely. “I get why you want to do that, but just know what if anyone deserves to find love, it’s definitely you.”

“Thank you, I really feel like I have found it this time,” he smiled, looking away from him, “she just makes me really happy; I think this could go somewhere.”

“Then I will be happy to meet her whenever you decide to,” Hobi grinned.

“You’ll get to meet her soon, don’t worry.”

Jimin:

“Can you take a picture for me to upload?” Jimin asked Hoseok, offering out his phone to his elder. Hobi took the phone, but as he turned it around to take the picture, the screen went blank.

He quickly pressed the home button as the phone locked, noticing the photo that Jimin had set as his lock screen. “Who’s this then?” He asked, showing Jimin the photo.

“It’s nothing, I’ll just unlock my phone for you.”

“Have you got a girlfriend?” Hoseok continued to push, refusing to give him the phone, “why didn’t you tell any of us that you’d found someone.”

His shoulders shrugged, glancing down at the photo of you, “I just wanted to make sure it was something serious before I started telling everyone.”

“Putting her as your lock screen must mean you’re pretty serious,” Hoseok challenged him, passing him the phone, “do you really like her?”

“I really do,” he blushed, “I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”

“Then I’m happy for you, you deserve it.”

Taehyung:

His smile grew as Jimin walked into his studio, throwing his phone down to greet his best friend. “What’s that?” Jimin yelled, watching Tae’s phone flip and a photo come up.

“It’s nothing,” Taehyung quickly told him, grabbing the phone just in time before Jimin reached out for it. “Why are you here anyway?”

“Don’t change the subject, what was that photo of?”

“Please don’t make a big deal of it,” Taehyung sighed, reluctantly turning his phone to show Jimin the photo of you both, “does that answer your question now?”

Jimin shrugged, studying the photo closely. “Yes and no, I’m happy I could see it, but I’m not happy I’m being replaced, I thought I was your lock screen?”

“You were, but then I met Y/N. I didn’t want to tell anyone because I wanted to get to know her for myself first,” Taehyung informed him as he took a seat.

“I’m happy as long as you’re happy,” he quickly reminded his best friend.

“I am happy, she makes me really happy Chim.”

Jungkook:

He pulled his phone out as he found a corner of the studio to check through his notifications, pausing for a moment as the photo of you came up on the screen. “Hiding something?” Namjoon yelled.

He barged into Jungkook lightly who quickly hid his phone against his chest. “Why would you make me jump like that? You gave me such a fright.”

“I can tell when you don’t want us to see anything,” Namjoon reminded him.

His glare was cold, eventually getting Jungkook to show him the photo. “Please don’t make a big deal out of it, I just don’t need everyone to start teasing me.”

“I understand, sometimes it’s nice to keep these things private for a while. I know you’ll tell everyone when you’re ready though,” Namjoon comforted.

“It’s daunting introducing her to you all, I’d rather just let her get to know me first,” he continued, glancing down at your photo once again.

“Just do things at your own pace Kook, don’t worry about us,” he smiled.

“Thank you Joon, I knew you’d be understanding.”

---

Masterlist

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frostedfaves · 3 years

Note

DHHFHJKJFDS I WENT TO BARTENDER!READER TO READ AND SEE WHAT I COULD REQUEST BUT IT'S A DARK!FIC!!! 😭😭😭 Not sure I can handle dark stuff lately. So

If you're not so kind and have a lil bit of love for this humble person, can i request for something fluffy in that universe? If not, make it part of the story with wandanat being kind and not-dark on a date with reader? If you wanna turn it into a mini fic or wtv, make it so reader is clueless about wandanat's being interested romantically on Reader

THAAAAANK YOU, FROSTY OF MY HEART!

Ps. I'll try to do better and stop dissapearing. I love you and send you my best vibes bby ✨💕

A/N: I might save the other couple requests for either this sunday or next weekend, but I was briefly in the mood to write, so enjoy this fluffy rewrite for dark!wandanat x bartender!reader. love you too, vee💕

warnings: creepy men, alcohol mentions

“What are you having?”

Wanda looks over at you, standing on the other side of the bar with a pleasant but expectant expression, your eyes cutting over to the empty glass inches away from her hand. She follows your gaze and quickly realizes what you’re asking, but her mouth hasn’t received the message yet.

“Oh, uh...I’m uh h-having a um--”

“Vodka cranberry, please? Thank you.” Natasha offers you a grin that you quickly return before moving away to make the drink.

“Sorry,” Wanda exhales heavily as a red tint appears in her cheeks. “I have the power to control the minds of everyone in here, but a gorgeous woman asks me a simple question and suddenly I shut down.”

“It’s okay, love,” her girlfriend assures her with a gentle rub of her hand across her back. “I’m just as smitten as you...I’m just better at hiding it.”

You quickly drop off Wanda’s drink and a refill of Natasha’s as well, assuring them it was no big deal before moving onto your next customer. They watch you work with the other patrons, smiling and laughing with friendly groups while keeping an eye on the sobbing drunk girl until her friends arrive to take her home. Wanda prepares herself to interact with you again as Natasha goes to flag you down to close their tab, but they stop in their tracks as they realize what’s happening.

An older guy that’s very clearly over his limit is grabbing at your clothes to pull you into a kiss over the bar as you attempt to fight him off, and Natasha is on her feet in no time, pulling him out of the building even faster. Wanda hurries over to the end of the bar, using her powers to undo the latch quickly before joining you behind the counter.

“Are you okay?” she asks quietly as she reaches you, subtly calming you with red mist pouring in from her fingertips as her hands land on your arms. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, I’m okay,” you respond in a shaky tone, pausing to take a deep breath before meeting her eyes. “Thank you for helping. Um, can I get you anything?”

“Are you sure you don’t wanna take a second? I know my way around the shelves,” Natasha adds as she approaches the two of you from the other side of the bar, and you shake your head.

“It’s okay, really. Thank you.”

“In that case, we’ll take some water. Gonna have to sober up so we can drive you home,” Wanda tells you with a light squeeze of your arm before dropping her hands to her sides again.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“No, but we will. You deserve to feel safe.”

The two Avengers return to their stools and gratefully accept the glasses of water you bring to them, and they spend the next couple hours taking turns with watching the other customers and lovingly gazing at you, not that you even noticed. Wanda’s touch seems to have a lasting effect on you, and it isn’t long before you’ve returned to where you were before, happily interacting with customers that were much more polite after witnessing your problem and part of Natasha’s solution.

“You really didn’t have to stay so long, let alone help me clean up,” you remind them as they help you return the cleaning supplies to the closet. “But I really appreciate it.”

“It was nothing,” Wanda assures you with a grin. “Now which way do you live?”

“Are you sure? I can take a cab.”

“We insist.”

Natasha wraps her hand around your wrist and begins leading you outside to the car, and you feel every bit of tension leaving your body as Wanda’s warm hand traveled down your back. You give them your address as you slip into the backseat of their luxury vehicle, and you ride in silence aside from their little comments and jokes to get your mind off what happened earlier.

“Thank you so much for tonight.” You climb out of the backseat and close the door before walking over to the passenger side window. “Sorry, I accepted your help without even learning your names.”

“How about you call us tomorrow?” Natasha quips, grabbing your hand and placing a folded slip of paper in your palm. “We’d love to take you to dinner if you’re available.”

“Yeah, I’m actually off tomorrow, so I wouldn’t mind…” Your voice trails off as you read Natasha and Wanda on the paper with a small heart beside it, and you gasp as you realize. “Holy shit, you’re Avengers. So that’s why you were so quick to help me tonight.”

“Well, we may have had other factors motivating us,” Wanda admits, chuckling a bit when she hears you come to another realization in your thoughts.

“I was wondering why you couldn’t speak around me,” you tease with a laugh. “In that case, I’d definitely love to go to dinner with the two of you. You gave me two numbers...should I make a group chat?”

“Cute.” Natasha rolls her eyes, but her smile gives away how much she wants to laugh. “Get to bed, honey. It’s late.”

You bid the couple farewell and hurry inside your apartment building, quickly making a group chat once you’re safely inside your unit and thanking them again for the night. Once you agree on a time for your date, you change into something more comfortable and flop down onto your mattress with a wide grin, wondering why it took you so long to realize two Avengers had a crush on you and how the hell you were supposed to sleep now that you knew.

#wandanat x reader #natasha romanoff x wanda maximoff #natasha romanoff x wanda maximoff x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x reader #black widow x reader #black widow #scarlet witch x reader #scarlet witch #natasha romanoff x fem!reader #wanda maximoff x fem! reader #avengers x reader #avengers #the avengers #marvel x reader #marvel

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trashforhockeyguys · 3 years

Text

Vienna Waits For You -1- William Nylander

A/N: The official start of Vienna Waits For You! I can’t wait for you guys to really get to understand William and Avalyn. This is probably the most unique story I’ve told so far. I hope y’all will enjoy the ride.

“Miss Bradshaw Kreitzburg, we can’t begin to explain how excited we are to have you here with us,” One of the Assistant Directors said as she was led into a posh hotel.

“Just Kreitzburg is fine, or Avalyn,” She cringed, hating it when people used the full name that her parents insisted on.

“There she is!” A loud voice boomed from the doorway of a very large conference room.

Avalyn couldn’t help but smile and nearly squeal as she ran to the man. Jackson Portland was one of the only people that she felt like really knew her. They’d been best friends since they first worked together in the early years. Back then, Jackson was an awkward lanky kid, not the bonafide sex god that he was now. Truthfully, Avalyn wanted to laugh every time girls literally threw themselves at him. To her he would always be Jacky, her best friend.

“You made it!” She jumped in his arms, holding onto him for dear life.

Jackson was like her life vest. She wasn’t sure she would’ve been able to do something like this without knowing he would be by her side the entire time. She trusted him with everything that she was. He’d been the one to call her about the role and tell her that she’d be perfect for it.

“And so did you! God you look fantastic Avey. But you really could eat a little more. Do the Monsters have you on another diet?”

“They wanted me to be on one,” She confirmed, “But none of them are here...soo I guess I’m not anymore?”

“Then you and I are going to burgers whenever this is over,” He declared, setting her down.

She nodded excitedly. Going out with Jackson was always her favorite. Somehow they always found a way to just be normal twentysomethings. Jackson and Avalyn made each other feel almost normal for the first time in their lives. Seemed only fitting that the two of them didn’t want to let that go.

“Have you scoped out our ‘advisors’?” Avalyn asked, holding onto Jackson’s arm.

He shrugged, flashing his famous dimpled smile, “Oh you’ll love them.”

Inside the room, most of the younger Leafs were somewhat huddled together, keeping their distance until told to do otherwise. But some of the older, more experienced players were talking with some writers and producers from the project.

Avalyn tried to calm her nerves, her grip on Jackson’s arm tightening with every step. She hated meetings like this. She didn’t know a single player on this team, hell she didn’t even know a thing about hockey. She knew that they probably all had their own preconceived opinions of her, none of which were good. Just like how nothing the media published these days was good. Good for press, but bad for her personal life. For once, she wished she could just pause it all.

Some of her friends from childhood, which she lost contact with long ago, went to college and are in steady relationships. None of them have their entire life looked over with a magnifying glass. They could wear what they wanted, or eat what they wanted, go out with whoever they wanted wherever they wanted...Avalyn never had that luxury. But she couldn’t say she was jealous of them...envious might be a better term to use though.

“Alright boys, listen up!” An older man in the team’s jacket called, “I want you to listen to what they instruct you. Remember, you’re representing the organization and Toronto.”

“Thank you for that Coach Babcock,” One of the show’s producers said before standing in front of everyone, “We’d like for all of you to pair up in a few minutes, but before we do that, why don’t all of you take a second and get to know each other. Get all of the awkwardness out of the way so we can all get to work? Gentleman, at each table is a dry erase board with a rink on it, I was told that’s what you all use in practice to show plays and things, feel free to do the same today. We’ll call you all when it’s time to come back together.”

Avalyn didn’t move for a moment, not as long as Jackson stayed where he was. But it wasn’t long before the producer was coming over with the other man, who seemed to be the coach of the hockey team. Behind them trailed several young men, which Avalyn could only assume were players. Jackson nearly jumped, seemingly excited about who was coming over to them.

“Coach Babcock, these are the two I was telling you about,” Eric, the producer, looked proud of himself, “These two are the stars of our show, Jackson, Avalyn, I’d like for you to meet Mike Babcock, coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs, as well as three of his star players, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander.”

“You don’t have to tell me who they are, Eric,” Jackson waved him off before extending a hand to the coach, “It’s an honor to meet all of you. You guys had a hell of a season last year.”

“Jackson grew up in Connecticut prior to becoming an actor, he’s one of the only cast members with hockey experience.”

“Sick man, I love that movie you were in last summer with Taylor Kitsch. Shit was badass,” The one with dark hair and blue eyes said.

Avalyn couldn’t remember who was who. All she knew was one had long blond hair, and two with dark hair. She used to joke that all hockey players looked the same when Jackson would try to make her watch games, but she couldn’t say that anymore. No two players in the room looked alike.

“See, I told you Avey!” Jackson joked, “She said there was too much blood. I tried to get her to watch American Assassin with me, since O’Brien and Kitsch are such great guys, but she wouldn’t.”

Avalyn felt uncomfortable in her own skin. She hated moments like this. Jackson always seemed to be in his element and on his game. But Avalyn wasn’t comfortable with these people. She didn’t watch hockey, all she really knew was that they constantly hit each other and fought over the tiny rubber puck.

But Jackson just seemed to fit right in with them. Almost like he was a member of the team and had been for a very long time. She was jealous of the fact that he always seemed to make it work. He was never a stranger. Whereas Avalyn always felt like a stranger. She often felt like she was playing dress-up all the time, and eventually someone would call her out on it.

“Thanks for making fun of me again,” Avalyn said under her breath, “It’s nice to meet you guys.”

“So, what are you? The token romantic interest?” The blond quipped.

“Willy-”

“No I uh-” She couldn’t really find her voice. She should’ve been used to people assuming she was only there to further the story. She was just pretty face, meant to smile and just be pretty.

Maybe that was part of the reason she took this role...she wanted to prove she was more than that. Yet, she couldn’t even find a way to tell the man standing in front of her the very same thing that she was fighting to prove.

“Actually, Avey is playing the only girl on the team. She’s pretty important actually,” Jackson cut in, “Pretty badass too.”

“Avalyn, we’d like you to pair with Willy, if the rest of you want to come over with me we’ll get you all sorted,” Eric suddenly interrupted, “You two can go over to that table over there.”

Suddenly, she was left with the blond that obviously didn’t exactly like her. Avalyn wasn’t uncustomed to it. A lot of people were standoffish with her at first, the sugary sweet persona she put on was enough to make anyone hate her. She knew that. But she wasn’t used to people being like this to her face. So blatantly obvious….he didn’t even bother trying to hide it.

The blond, William, rolled his eyes before walking over to the table. Avalyn knew this wouldn’t be a very fun time. Jackson and the rest of the cast and crew would probably spend the whole session laughing. Yet, she was pretty sure William wouldn’t be overly helpful or talkative.

She glanced around, hoping someone might come to her rescue, but everyone else was already paired off and talking to their respective hockey player. Jackson was already laughing with one of the dark haired boys, and a very large red headed man. Avalyn wished she could be like that.

“Are you coming or not?” The blond grumbled.

Avalyn took a deep breath and followed him to the table. He sat with his arms crossed. She wondered why he already seemed to hate her. Had he read something about her and decided she was a horrible human being? One of those cheap tabloids who made their living off of dragging her through the mud?

“I’m Avalyn,” She said, trying to break the tension, but her voice still shook.

He scoffed, “Yeah, I know.”

She nodded and reached for the glass of water. Couldn’t she have anyone else? Or just have someone else at the table? Why did they have to take Jackson and put him all the way across the room. She felt like she didn’t know how to do this without him. She was out of her comfort zone now.

“Okay,” She said quickly, “You obviously don’t like me, but I don’t really care. I have a job to do, and so do you. So can we just please drop the shit and you actually tell me what I’m supposed to know?”

“Who said I didn’t like you?” He fired back, leaning forward.

She let out an almost bitter laugh, “Oh, I got the message loud and clear. You have no reason to hate me, but you do. You know nothing about me, so next time maybe try to get to know the person before you form an opinion.”

It was his turn to laugh as he leaned over the table, getting closer. His eyes seemed to almost burn into her. For a moment she was afraid. She didn’t know this man, she didn’t know what he might do. But every bone in her body seemed to yell at her to run. Maybe everyone was right, maybe this was the worst choice she made.

“I know enough,” His voice was low, but the power of it made her want to shiver, “America’s princess on the outside, and a fucking bitch on the inside.”

He leaned back in his chair once more. There would be no more talking. It was like Avalyn and William were on different sides of a battlefield. They both had the next attack just waiting, and neither would wave the white flag. Avalyn didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing what his words did. Each one was like a knife going deeper and deeper into her chest.

William just didn’t want to give in. He was being stubborn, and he was sure all of the guys would say he was an ass. But he heard enough about little miss Avalyn Bradshaw Kreitzburg. He wanted nothing to do with her. Everyone that he knew that knew her all said she was really a bitch, that the sweet little innocent thing she had going was an act. That Jackson Portland acted as her guard dog in public because she couldn’t rip people to shreds for fear of losing her perfect little reputation.

So William sat across from her, a smirk playing on his lips when she finally seemed to be at a loss. So, the two sat silently as the hours ticked on. No one seemed to notice that they weren’t talking, or that William wasn’t using the dry erase board like the rest of his teammates. By the end, no one seemed to notice that they didn’t move a single inch over the course of the entire session.

“I’m not what you think,” Avalyn said quietly, “Whoever told you whatever ridiculous rumor, it’s not true.”

He smirked again, like he knew something that she didn’t, “I think Margret Vicklyr knows you enough to know the truth.”

Before she could even process the sickening feeling, he was gone. He couldn’t know Margret. Margot might hate her now, but surely she wouldn’t go as far as telling random people whatever she felt like it. After a couple of years, Avalyn hoped that Margret would just forget about whatever she was convinced that Avalyn did. But it seemed that she wasn’t forgetting...and now it didn’t seem like William would forget either.

Avalyn struggled to get in a deep breath as everyone started to get up and leave. William looked too pleased with himself as he got up from his chair and started moving towards his group.

William liked the feeling of having knocked Hollywood's princess back down to size, or at least that’s what he thought he did. He had no way of knowing what was really going on behind the glitz and the glamour. He had no way of knowing that she was struggling more than she could ever let on.

William didn’t like Avalyn Bradsaw Kreitzburg, especially after what Margret told him during her summer in Sweden. The person that Margret described to him was horrible, incapable of caring for anyone but herself, and maybe her precious Jackson Portland.Yet, he couldn’t help but feel a sort of pain in his chest at the way she seemed to sink as soon as he landed his final blow. He knew his mother would’ve had his head if she saw him acting like that. But for some reason he couldn’t help it.

How was he supposed to know that she was doing everything she could to keep her head above water and make this project work?

“Avey! C’mon, let’s go get dinner,” Jackson cheered, surrounded by the hockey players.

Avalyn shied away from all of them, “I think I’m just going to go back to mine. Raincheck?”

“I’ll hold you to it!” Jackson cheered, following the team and some other cast members out of the hotel.

As soon as she got back to her apartment, Avalyn tried her best to fill herself with music. All she kept thinking about was the way that he looked at her. The disgust...he made his mind up about her before he even met her, all because of Margo and whatever she came up with. All Avalyn wanted was to make this work, to prove that she was capable of choosing her own projects and that she was more than just the stupid doe eyed girl.

But she still felt hollow, like she was already losing control. She still didn’t know anything about the game. Her ‘advisor’ wouldn’t be of any help. She would have to fight an uphill battle. But she wanted this more than she wanted any project before now.

With music at full blast in her ears, Avalyn laid down, trying to drown herself in the sound of old classic rock and indie. She never did eat dinner like she promised. Instead, hoping the music would fill her in a way that food didn’t.

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