#mini-LED 4K | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alisonsfics · 18 days ago

Text

the art of collaboration

pairing: bucky barnes x reader x john walker (winter agent x reader)

summary: bucky and walker couldn’t stand each other, and that was before they both starting competing for your affection. you remind them that there’s much more productive ways to get their energy out.

word count: 4k

warnings: smut, unprotected sex, threesome, oral sex (f recieving), fingering, double penetration sex, anal, bucky reader and bucky have a past as fwb, lots of jealousy, dirty talk, mini praise kink, minors DNI

All of it echoed in your mind. Your friends yelling at you, trying to get your attention. The blade that sliced your arm. And then the detonation. It was all a blur after that.

It was your fault.

You and the rest of the team were sent on a mission— it was all very standard. There was a covert science team running illegal experiments. The team’s task was to bring in the leaders and retrieve all the data from the experiments. The data had crucial details about different buyers and sellers who’d helped keep the experiments running.

Everything was going according to plan— until it wasn’t. The rest of the team got caught in a cage that fell from the ceiling because you accidentally stepped on a pressure plate.

You didn’t even see the lead scientist sneak up behind you until he sliced your arm with a dagger. He snuck away and hit a detonate button on the way out.

It was only because of your friends that you all made it out alive.

They could’ve died. And their blood would be on your hands.

You were now sat towards the back of the jet, away from all the others. They weren’t mad at you, but you felt guilty and embarrassed.

Bucky was the first to come over to try to comfort you. You and Bucky had a long history.

Steve introduced you both after the Sokovia Accords incident, where you were both labeled enemies of the state.

You, Steve, Bucky, and Nat had been on the run together. Long nights with Bucky turned into long conversations which led to a growing bond. You both confided in each other— both of you having dark pasts.

Then, one night that friendship turned into something else. Steve and Nat had gone to fetch resources, leaving you and Bucky alone at the abandoned house you were all staying in.

Bucky accidentally walked in on you changing, but when he turned around to leave, you pulled him back towards you. It was fueled by loneliness. You both wanted to feel wanted by someone— even just for one night.

It became way more than a one night thing.

Neither of you wanted to ruin your friendship, so you suggested being friends with benefits. The last remaining bit of 1940s morals that Bucky had were in shock. After his shock wore off, he agreed.

You both only called things off after the battle against Thanos.

Neither of you had even brought it up since joining the Thunderbolts.

Bucky sat down beside you. “You can’t beat yourself up for what happened.” He told you, softly. You shook your head. “Buck, it was all my fault. I did everything wrong. What if you had gotten hurt or died? That would be on me, nobody else.” You argued.

He hesitantly took your hand in his. He leaned in closer to you, so no one would overhear him. “You once told me that when you looked at me, you didn’t see my mistakes. You said my heart spoke louder than my mistakes. I look at you the same way.” He told you, genuinely.

His words brought tears to your eyes. You leaned your head onto his shoulder. “I don’t know what I would have done if I lost you, Bucky.” You admitted. He pressed a gentle kiss to the top of your head. He was one of the few constants in your life.

“I can’t care this much. It put the team at risk. I can’t be so worried about your safety that I put the entire team in jeopardy.” You told him, pulling away from his touch. He went back to join the others, knowing you needed your space.

“Keep it in your pants, Barnes. She’s distraught. Now is not the time to make a move.” John scoffed at him. It wasn’t the first time they’d fought over you. Bucky gave him a quick jab in the ribs before returning to his book.

When you all landed at the tower, you went straight to your bedroom. You wanted to be alone, little did you know that John was hot on your trail.

He caught your bedroom door before you closed it. “Wait up,” he called, closing your door behind him.

You spun around. “What’re you doing here?” You asked, wiping away the tears that had been on your cheeks moments earlier.

“I wanted to check on you.” He said, closing the distance between the two of you. He wrapped his arms around you, enveloping you in a hug. You felt yourself lean into his touch as you broke down sobbing.

He squeezed you tighter. He hated seeing you upset. He hadn’t known you for very long, but he found himself thinking about you more often.

He softly stroked your hair, trying to bring you any comfort he could. “Let’s get you cleaned up, princess.” He murmured into your hair.

He felt his heart melt when you pulled away and he saw your red eyes. He cupped your cheeks, wiping away your tears.

You sat down onto your bed, while he made his way over to your dresser. He grabbed a pair of sweatpants and tshirt for you. It was the first time you’d gotten to see John be this caring. It was easy to imagine him as a romantic partner or a dad.

He kneeled in front of you, taking off your combat boots. He moved onto the zipper of your suit, unzipping it all the way. He pulled down your suit, until you were left in a black bra and panties.

He ignored the part of his brain that had always dreamed of seeing you like this. It wasn’t time for that. And that wasn’t why he was helping you. He was comforting you because he cared about you.

He closely examined the cut on your arm. “It really fucking stings,” you hissed.

“I’ll clean it up.” He said, grabbing the medical supplies he knew were in your bathroom. He cleaned and bandaged your arm with a gentleness that was a direct contrast to his strength as a super soldier.

“There we go, princess. I’ll even kiss it better,” he said, pressing a chaste kiss against the bandage. You surprised yourself when you giggled at the gesture. That laugh was melodic to John’s ears.

He quickly helped you get dressed into the clothes he’d grabbed. “Do you need me to grab you anything else, princess?” He asked stroking some of your hair behind your ear.

“Stay with me?” You asked him, softly. The frailty he heard in your voice could make him give in to every one of your desires.

He nodded, giving you a soft smile. “I’ll go to my room and get changed out of my gear. Then, I’ll be right back. I promise.” He kissed the back of your hand before leaving.

You curled up under the duvet, trying to ignore the flashbacks to the mission that kept popping into your head. You turned a movie on, so you could quiet the voices in your head.

A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” you replied, softly.

John snuck into your room, wearing a tight black shirt and grey sweatpants. You definitely took notice.

He lifted up the duvet and crawled in beside you. His body was practically radiating heat. You curled into his touch, resting your head on his chest.

“You look so pretty like this.” He said, weaving his fingers through your hair and scratching your scalp. You hummed, contently. “You like that?” He asked you, softly.

You nodded, caressing his chest with your fingers. “Don’t stop. It feels so nice.” You told him.

You both focused on the movie, enjoying the other’s company. You pulled yourself closer to him, throwing one of your legs over his hip. He tried to fight the smirk on his face.

He grasped at the back of your thigh, letting his hand slowly dip down to rest on your ass. He waited to see if you’d pull away. You didn’t. In fact, he thought he saw a smile on your face.

He swore under his breath when his phone dinged beside him.

A text from Yelena popped up: “You need to do your debrief mission report. I don’t make the rules.”

“Ahh fuck, princess. I have to fill out a stupid report really quick, but I’ll come right back. You be okay without me?” He asked.

You nodded. “Go ahead. You know where to find me.” You replied.

A few seconds after he left, there was a quick knock at the door. That was fast, John. “Come in,” you said.

You were surprised to see Bucky standing in your room. You pulled yourself up into a sitting position. “What’re you doing here?” You asked him. Your shock was written all over your face.

It brought back too many memories of Bucky sneaking into your room late at night.

“I didn’t want you to be alone.” He said, gently. He stood still— waiting for any sign from you to proceed. You didn’t have the heart to tell him you hadn’t been alone.

Then, you saw the mischievous glint in his eye. You didn’t know how but you knew he knew you hadn’t been alone.

“I really don’t want to talk about the mission anymore.” You told him, honestly.

“That’s okay, sweets. Whatever you need.” He said, walking around to the other side of the bed. He grabbed two phones and his wallet out of his pocket and set them on the beside table.

“Is that Yelena's phone?” You asked, recognized the sparkly navy blue phone case.

“Maybe,” he winked, shrugging at you. You were left stunned as you realized he sent the message to get John away. He sat down onto the mattress beside you. “Why do you both get on each other’s nerves so much?” You asked him, curiously.

Bucky and John were always butting heads, but it was starting to become more frequent. And most of the time, their arguments were centered around you— who got to sit next to you at dinner, who got to train with you, etc.

“I hate watching him drool over you, sweets.” He almost growled. Just the mental image of how John stared at you when you entered a room was enough to send a chill down Bucky’s spine.

Before you knew it, Bucky’s hands were on your back. His large fingers massaged your muscles the way he knew you loved. Old habits kicked in as he perfectly kneaded the knots in your back.

You whimpered, arching your back. “Still know you better than anyone, sweets,” he whispered into your ear. His breath against the back of your neck made goosebumps appear down your arms.

He leaned forward, pressing a kiss against the base of your throat. He slowly moved up, peppering soft kisses on your neck and collarbone.

The kisses turned sloppier. “Bucky, what’re you doing?” Your breath hitched in your throat. He waited a minute before responding. He left wet kisses all over your skin.

“Just trying to make you feel better,” he said simply. He still knew your body like the back of his hand. He started sucking on the skin behind your ear— knowing it would make you squirm and lean into him.

Your breaths came out light and airy. “Missed you,” you mumbled, reminiscing.

The door to your room swung open, revealing John. His eyes widened as he took in the scene before him. Your eyes softly closed as Bucky worked on giving you a hickey.

“Come on, Barnes. This is just desperate.” John scoffed, causing the two of you to jump apart.

“Oh look, Walker here to ruin the day, just on schedule.” Bucky rolled his eyes. Bucky got up from spot next to you, going toe to toe with John.

“Move on, old man. She doesn’t want someone like you.” John taunted. The only reaction he got out of Bucky was a chuckle— a chuckle that let John know he only knew the half of it.

“Really? Cause we have ten years of history that disagree.” Bucky said, winking over at you. John’s hand curled into a ball. He glanced over at you. From the look on your face, he knew Bucky wasn’t bluffing.

“Well you clearly weren’t leaving her satisfied enough if she came to me. Don’t worry, princess. I know how to take care of you.” John responded.

The two were scowling at each other, and you wondered how long you had until one of them chose violence.

“What if I want you both?” Your voice came out small and weak. Their necks both snapped as they quickly looked over at you. They looked like their eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. “What do you mean, sweets?” Bucky asked.

He wanted to make sure that this was really what you wanted before he went any further. “I’m so tired of being the logical one all the time. I just want to be selfish for once and do something that feels good.” You explained, pulling your hair into a ponytail.

Bucky and John both looked at each other— there was an unspoken agreement. Their feud? Didn’t matter right now. You needed them, and that was all they cared about.

“You want the two of us to take care of you, princess?” John asked, slotting himself behind you on the bed. He raked his hands down your sides, playfully squeezing your hips.

His fingers found the hem of your tshirt and started to tug it over your head. Bucky grabbed the waistband of your sweatpants, slowly pulling them down your legs. They both didn’t waste any time stripping down to their boxers, letting the rest of their clothes land in the pile on the floor.

Bucky kneeled on the mattress in front of you. He noticed the way your thighs clenched together as you looked at him. “You gonna let me see how wet you are?” He asked you. You quickly nodded your head, biting down on your lip.

It was all too natural for Bucky to jump back into this setting. There was something familiar but also new about it.

He hooked his fingers in your panties and tore them off your legs. “Oh, fuck. You’re dripping, sweets. All this from the thought of two super soldiers fucking you.” Bucky groaned.

“I can smell you from here. You smell so sweet, princess. You gonna give Bucky a taste?” John whispered in your ear.

“Please, Bucky,” you begged him.

John sat down with his back against the headboard, slowing spreading his legs and pulling you to sit with your back against his chest. Bucky crawled up between your legs.

There was a popping sound as John unclasped your bra and threw it onto the floor. His hands roughly reached forward and grabbed your breasts. You whined, letting your eyes flutter shut.

You felt Bucky throw your legs over his shoulders as he licked a thick stripe through your folds. You squirmed against Bucky's tongue, high-pitched moans leaving your lips.

John softly pinched your nipples, making a jolt run through your body. “Right there, Buck, please,” you whimpered as Bucky’s nose rubbed against your clit.

Your hands flew down to John’s bare thighs, sinking your fingers into the meaty flesh. Your nails left little crescent indents. “Look so pretty squirming like this,” John praised you in your ear. Bucky shared a similar sentiment, so he sped up his pace.

John loved feeling the way your back arched against him. There was no space between the two of you.

Bucky drew figure eights on your clit with his tongue. Every time you squirmed, he tightened his grip your thighs.

Every inch of your skin was on fire. Every touch from the men seared into your skin and your memory.

Your stomach felt tight as Bucky swirled his tongue around your clit. You called out his name, one of your hands flying down to grab onto Bucky’s hair. You held his head still, grinding down against him.

A mix of a groan and moan left his lips— the soft vibration made your belly tingle. Bucky always loved when you manhandled him when he was going down on you.

You clenched your thighs around Bucky’s head, feeling the room start to spin. “Gotta keep these wide open,” John said, grabbing onto your thighs and pulling them apart as far as he could.

The feeling of Bucky’s mouth on you was too much for you to handle. You kept one hand wrapped up in Bucky’s hair, while your other hand snuck back and cupped the back of John’s head. You were clinging to them both like you needed them to live.

“Go ahead, princess. You can do it, cum for us.” John coaxed you, placing kisses along your shoulder blades.

John’s touch was soft and gentle— pulling you back down to earth. While Bucky’s touch was hungry and electric, and made you soar.

Your breathing quickened, tightening your grip on both the men. “I’m gonna, oh— fuck, baby,” you screamed.

Your high hit you all at once. John kept your thighs spread for Bucky, allowing him to press kisses against your clit while you gasped for air. You threw your head back against John’s shoulder.

“So fucking beautiful,” Bucky swore when he finally came up for air.

He leaned towards you, kissing you gently as you recovered from your orgasm. You tasted yourself on his lips. It made you hungry for more.

You reached backwards, grasping for John’s shoulders. “You want to have John fuck you now? Want him to fill you up really good?” Bucky teased you.

The wind was knocked out of you— and your body was exhausted. Both from the long mission earlier in the day and from Bucky’s mouth.

“So tired, but I need you so bad, John.” You guided his fingers towards the slickness between your legs.

He swore under his breath when he felt your arousal soak his fingers. “Don’t worry, princess. I’ll do all the work— gonna fill up this pretty cunt.” He told you.

Bucky moved to the end of the bed, slipping his hand into his boxers as he watched you both. Watching you with someone else meant Bucky didn’t miss a second of seeing you come undone.

John laid you down on your side and then laid himself down in front of you. He saw the fatigue in your eyes, but also saw the neediness.

He roughly grabbed your top leg and hooked it over his hips. “You need my cock so bad, you’re gonna let me fuck you sideways, princess?” He asked.

You eagerly nodded your head. “Please, John. Fill me up,” you were begging him.

“Fill you up with what, honey? You want my fingers?” He teased you. He knew damn well exactly what you needed. He pushed two fingers into you, softly pumping them in and out of you.

You whimpered as he curled his fingers inside of you. “It’s not enough, John. I need your cock, please. Need to feel you,” you said, reaching down and palming him through his boxers.

“Fuck, princess,” he groaned. The sight of you begging for him was too much. He rutted his hips against your hand.

Quickly shedding his boxers, John lined his cock up with your leaking entrance. He practically groaned just imagining how easily he’d be able to slip into you.

“Oh, wait a minute. You have any condoms in here?” John asked you. Every second he waited without being inside you was painful. “Second drawer, right side,” Bucky mumbled, gesturing towards the bedside table.

Bucky groaned as John rummaged through the drawer. Bucky tightened his grip on his cock, letting his eyes linger on the arousal that was coating the inside of your thighs.

“How do you know…?” John’s brain started to fill in the rest.

“Old habits, remember,” Bucky teased.

“Grab two,” you mumbled, breathlessly. They both froze. You grabbed Bucky’s hand and pulled him towards you. “You gonna take us both, sweets? You need two super soldiers to feel full?” Bucky asked. His shock was written all over his face.

He nestled himself behind you, grabbing your hips greedily. They both quickly slipped on the condoms, not wanting to wait any longer. “Don’t worry, we’ll start gentle.” Bucky whispered into your ear.

John hooked your leg around his hip again, prodding your entrance with his cock. You sunk your teeth into his shoulder as he pushed through your folds slowly. “Fuck, you feel so tight, princess.” He groaned.

He only pushed half his cock inside of you, letting you adjust to his size. Then, you felt Bucky’s hand on your hip, possessively. He pushed you towards John. It felt like you were splitting you open as John bottomed out, his hips rubbing flush against yours.

John let out a choked moan. You couldn’t even adjust to the feeling before you felt Bucky’s cock plunging into you. You swore under your breath.

You felt such a fullness that you couldn’t even move. “Just a second, oh god,” you moaned, clinging to John’s shoulders.

Your skin was on fire. You were sandwiched between the two men that towered over you. John pressed up against your chest and Bucky shoved against your back.

The heat radiating off their skin made it hard to focus. Bucky wrapped his metal arm around your waist, holding his hand against your stomach. The cold sting of the metal provided a perfect relief.

“Can feel how full you are, sweets,” Bucky said, feeling the pressure in your abdomen with his hand.

Bucky wished you could see how good you looked being stuffed full by both men. He pressed kisses down your throat and onto your shoulder. “You’re takin’ us so well, princess. You ready for us to move?” John asked gently.

John started thrusting into you first, with Bucky not far behind him. “Shit, princess. Keep squeezing my cock like this, and I’m not gonna last very long.” John swore.

Then, they found a rhythm, both of them snapping their hips into you at the same time. “You wanna make her cum, Walker? Talk dirty to her,” Bucky instructed, remembering the trick he’d learned a long time ago.

John noticed the way your eyes shot open, questioning if you heard him right. That assured him that Bucky was telling the truth. “Wouldn’t expect that from a sweet little thing like you, princess? Is Bucky telling the truth?” John asked, tightened his grip on you as he kept pounding into you.

“Uh huh,” you tried to respond as your mouth hung open. Your brain couldn’t focus on anything besides the way they were thrusting into you with super soldier pace.

The noises coming from where their bodies met yours were pornographic. “Look at that, princess. You’re coating my cock so well. Feels like your tight little cunt is made for me— squeezing me so perfect.” He moaned, rocking his hips against yours.

“Didn’t know you liked it so dirty, sweets. It’s not even enough for you to have one of us. You need to have all your holes filled?” Bucky coaxed. Bucky knew you were close from the way you were panting.

A wave of pleasure washed over you as the base of John’s cock brushed up against his clit. When he did it again, you knew it wasn’t accidental.

“I want to cum,” you begged them.

“Go ahead, princess. Cum for us.” John instructed. The room started spinning. You were too full— too full to handle. Deep grunts came from both the men.

Your orgasm hit you. “Oh shit… I’m—” you gasped.

“Me too, sweets,” Bucky panted in your ear, shooting hot ropes into the condom.

Bucky's thrusts slowed down as John continued pounding into you, chasing his own high. “Come on, John, sweetie. Cum for me,” you praised him.

“Oh, fuck,” he grunted, his thrusts faltering as he came.

They both coaxed you down from your high. Bucky’s cold metal fingers tracing down your back, following your spine. John caressed your thigh, which was still haphazardly thrown over his hip.

“So pretty when you cum, princess,” John whispered, kissing your cheek.

“I agree, sweets. You did such a good job takin’ us so well.” Bucky praised you as well.

Their sweaty bodies clung to yours. “Fuck, I need a shower.” You panted.

“Would you like some company? Room for two maybe?” Bucky whispered in your ear. You knew you were in for a long night.

taglist: @laurakirsten0502 @miraclesoflove @nathaliabakes @millipop18 @lillyssh-tposts @shyinadarkplace @vanteguccir @missroro @guiltandguitarstrings @sw33t-cupid @ice-dtae @leyannrae @sia2raw @nyx2021 @just-a-littlebit-of-everything @shyconversationalbookworm @shadowhuntyi @iamavailablesstuff @superdeath @wandaswifeyforlifey @spookyqueen @mcuswhore @astheskycries @n3ssm0nique @peakascum @cjand10 @namsey1987 @supernaturalstilinski @stephv213 @warriormirkwood @one-sweet-gubler @narliesstuff @bibissparkles @stupiidfrogs @navs-bhat @marvelcasey05 @velyssaraptor @amanda08319 @sunwardsss @studentville-struggles @impossibleapricotlampbat @infjwinchester44 @weirdfishy @lickmymelaninn @eternally-timeless @andreasworlsboring101 @glassesandthunderthighs @spiderstyles04 @mostly-marvel-musings @madisondelstan @spookyparadisesheep @beyondthesefourwalls @basicfangirlx @rivirox

Let me know if you want to be added to my taglist for all my fics or for a specific character/fandom!!

#bucky barnes #john walker #winteragent #winteragent x reader #bucky barnes x reader x john walker #bucky barnes x reader #john walker x reader #bucky barnes smut #john walker smut #winteragent smut #bucky barnes fanfic #john walker fanfic #thunderbolts*#thunderbolts #thunderbolts x reader

320 notes · View notes

httpknjoon · 6 months ago

Text

an awful good girl | myg

plot | that time in december of their tour where popstar!yn sang while sitting on santa's lap. (but who's santa anyway?)

w.c | 4K+

pairing | bass guitarist!yoongi x popstar!reader

genre | fluff, enemies to lovers

note | supposed to be another song but loved this one more. also, a little manhandling somewhere there... ps. i was listening to earth kitt's version of this song before switching. hence why some parts made it here.

main masterlist | series masterlist | want to request?

DAY 64 of Love Is.. On Tour

For your first December concert in Love Is... On Tour, you prepare a themed costume and performances for your fans. But a surprise song became the highlight tonight.

@.JUN0BABY: can someone tell me what's going on tonight??!?

@.t4asteme: WTF WDYM YN GAVE A LAP DANCE ON STAGE TONIGHT

[email protected]: she just sat on santa's lap

@.pov.yn: siri play that should be me by justin bieber

@.3435outro: as someone who's bi, idk if i'm jealous of yoongi or yn

@.FredInTheDrums: lol santa won tonight [insert picture from the stage]

@.0nlyangelz: her bassist is so hot i can't blame her 🥵

@.loveisviscious: lol how can they do shit like this

[email protected]: ikr?! they are prolly really good friends

[email protected]: we <3 that yn-yoongi friendship

But how did the concert even led to these tweets?

"Okay, band, gather in."

Before the band could go on their ride back to the hotel, Paul, the tour's wardrobe supervisor, called them to the wardrobe department's area. Exhausted from just performing, Yoongi slumped on the blue couch next to Noah, who was probably the only one still having the energy from the rest of the band.

"What's up?" Akio, the band's keyboardist, asked since she had been craving to go back to her bed.

Paul clapped his hands, "Okay, so you know that days from now is December. And we only have four concert dates left before the holiday break, right?"

The band members nod in answer.

"Good. So, each concert date will have different Christmas themes for these last dates. The first one will be Santa's workshop. And I just need you to pick your characters through the fishbowl method again." Paul explained, reaching for a cup filled with folded papers.

Having themed events is not really new with the band. During Halloween week, you did the same thing. You had two concerts then and decided to turn them into fun costume parties for your staff and fans. Yoongi, who was never lucky with the fishbowl method, got to be the Danny Zuko to your dreamy Sandy Olsson. They were only a week old on the tour at that time and the couple-costume made some rumors that eventually died down after you told the backstory during the same concert.

"Do you want to look at your characters or do you want it to be a surprise?" Paul asked.

Noah and Fred answered at the same time, "Surprise! Make it a surprise."

Both Yoongi and Akio just let them. Yoongi does not really care, while Akio is just dozed off on his shoulder. He tapped her knee to wake her up when Paul began making them pick a paper. After that, they handed back their secret characters to him one by one while he listed them down in his mini notepad.

"Okay, you are now free to go. You'll see your characters in the next performance. I already have your measurements anyway." Paul concluded, knowing how much the band had been dreading to rest.

The band got up and walked out of the room. On their way to their van outside, Fred and Noah were having fun teasing the youngest, Akio, like her little brothers. She groaned at their energy to wake her up. Yoongi walked behind them, busy on his phone, reading some text messages he missed during the concert. Most of them were from his friends and colleagues inviting him to work with them. But one message stopped Yoongi for a second.

From (555) 436-*22*

Hello, Yoongi. S, here. New number. Need to talk to you about something. Please call as soon as you see this.

It was a new number on his phone. But he can already recognize who sent it. Suddenly, his heartbeats were louder than his bandmates' laughs while he stared at the message in front of him. His jaw tightened when he read the text message once again. What does she want now?

"Hey, guys!"

All of a sudden, he hears your voice, greeting the band. He looked up, pushing his phone back to his pockets. You are now back in your oversized grey sweatshirt, after wearing your sparkly outfits all night.

"Did Paul already tell you about the costumes?" you asked, striking a small conversation with them.

You, yourself, are on your way to Paul to talk about your wardrobe for December performances. Costumes and themed parties are always your thing, so you try to do them at every chance you get. Cal stood next to you, busy on her phone for your schedule.

"Yeah, but we just picked some random paper. Then, asked Paul to just surprise us with our characters." Fred replies.

"Oh, that's exciting." you smiled.

You began talking about your plans for the next Christmas themes, making Noah excited as he is another big enthusiast of the holidays. Yoongi watched quietly on the sidelines. You two barely had any interaction since you cried on stage while singing POV, which was three days ago. It was too peaceful between the two of you, no arguments at all. On stage, you have interacted more with Akio or Noah. Not like he minds at all! It's just that it feels like you are avoiding him. You laughed around with everyone in the band during the show and rehearsals except him. He remembered you were being chatty with him before the rehearsals for POV days ago.

"And I got this new notebook, so like I took it as a sign to write new songs! I already have Christmas-themed ones, just need some help with producing them so I can release them before we take a break," you shared with the band, breaking Yoongi's thoughts.

The notebook! You got them. That's good to know. Yoongi did not really know if you got that souvenir notebook he left on your door as a peace offering gift since you haven't really said anything about it. He felt bad making you cry, although that was not his goal, and he didn't know what to get you since his options were limited at the time. He wanted to apologize and talk to you personally but you were always busy and he didn't know how, where, and when can he approach you.

"I know a guy for that!" Fred exclaimed, turning around. "Yoongi, you can help with YN with that, right?"

For the first time in a couple of days, you looked directly at him. It was like there was a switch. Your smile dropped and you blankly stared at him.

Caught in surprise, Yoongi looked away, "Yeah... Yeah, sure. I can help if she wants me to."

Although they won't speak about it, everyone, along with Cal and the other band members, can feel that there is some weird tension between you and Yoongi these last couple of days. There was no petty argument even though there are times that it can potentially start. Like when Yoongi accidentally knocked over your water bottle, you didn't say anything, which is unusual. Because normally, you would make a big deal out of it and Yoongi would fight back, making a bigger deal with it. But nothing, nada. You two were just robots around each other.

"It's fine, I still have other holiday songs that I can cover later these days." you smiled back to his friends. "Anyway, I won't hold you guys longer. I know that you want to rest already— Aren't we all?"

His friends laughed. You continued, "But thank you, guys. I had the best show tonight. I think the fans enjoyed Bed Chem the most."

Oh, yeah. That performance earlier where you invited Noah for the outro part of that song. It was wilder than what you did with Yoongi since behind the curtains, your silhouettes were shown taking each other clothes before getting into a suggestive pose, which you and Noah have fun doing since it was nothing but for entertainment. You are closest with him in the band since he was the only one who stayed from your past band. Plus, he is gay and everyone knows it.

Without any reason in mind, Yoongi's face felt so hot watching the scene, he had to look away.

Two days passed by quickly, you and the entire crew are now in another city. You left the hotel earlier than usual since you were excited to try on the costumes Paul made.

"Oh my god. This is so cute!" you exclaimed, checking yourself out in front of the mirror.

It was a red mini dress with a heart cutout in the chest area. Its upper and lower hems are lined with white fur. Paul even sewed silver gemstones everywhere, still in the theme of your sparkly aesthetic. You also have the matching gloves that equally looked perfect.

"I'll just show you the other ones every rehearsal." your wardrobe supervisor said. "Just to keep you coming here excited."

"I am always excited coming here to see your creations," you told him, twirling in front of the mirror. "How's the band's costumes?"

Paul pulled a rack of costumes that were made for your live band. There are two sets of costumes for the elves, a brown onesie and headband for Rudolph, and a red sparkly suit, matching yours, for Santa Claus. The faux white beard was ditched as it might disturb the member's performance.

"So, who's my Santa for tonight?" you smiled.

The surprise performance you planned for later needs a Santa. So, other than your costume, you were also excited to know who got the special role. You don't really mind who it is since you get along with almost everyone—

"Yoongi."

2:37 PM

You looked at the time on the upper right of your phone screen. The call time was exactly thirty-seven minutes ago. Initially, the rehearsals for the surprise performance will be practiced first since it is a new addition to the setlist. But Yoongi said he'll be late for a few minutes. So, they moved to doing a soundcheck for other songs. But it has been five songs without her bass guitarist. Where is Yoongi? He has never been this late before. You walked up to Cal, who was talking with Art.

"Should we just change San-"

"Sorry, I'm late."

As if on cue, Yoongi walked on the stage with his guitar. He looked different, you thought. Maybe because it was your first time seeing his flowy, black hair in a man bun, which you won't admit looks good on him. You rolled your eyes at thinking that. Yoongi went straight to his usual spot in the band. He was setting up his guitar when you walked up to him.

"You're almost an hour late," you told him, crossing your arms over your chest.

"I know, that's why I said sorry," he replied nonchalantly, looking down at his guitar. "I told Art that I am going to be late-"

For the thousandth time, he is avoiding looking at you again. You remembered him looking away nights ago when Fred asked Yoongi if he could help you produce your self-written songs. He was also doing the same thing for like two weeks now.

"Why can't you look at me?!"

Like a volcano that erupted unexpectedly, you cut him off. Everyone watched in silence at you and Yoongi. Your brows were furrowed as you stared at him. But instead of glaring back at you, Yoongi just replied, unbothered.

"As if you weren't avoiding me these past few days?"

You blinked, "Uh... I'm not."

Thank God liars don't really get their pants on fire when they lie in real life, because you would end up burning your legs if they do.

"Yoongi, YN, please follow me. Now." Art suddenly spoke.

He's mad,. You rarely see the older guy look serious. You looked at Cal, who simply tilted her head to Art, raising an eyebrow like she was telling you to follow him. You walked when Yoongi walked past you to where Art was going.

No one spoke as you two walked behind Art. But both you and Yoongi can feel the atmosphere feeling like you two are second graders who are about to get a lecture from your teacher. Maybe get sent to detention. Art stopped in one of the vacant dressing rooms at the arena. He opened the door for you two. he did not say anything but you and Yoongi took it as a sign that he wants you to go in first.

"Please occupy the couch— the same couch." he had to correct himself when you and Yoongi sat on a different sofa that was on each wall of the room. He sighed, kids.

Following what Art said, you and your least favorite band member sat on opposite ends of the couch. An obvious three-feet distance is between you two. Your tour manager reached for a monoblock chair, sitting before you.

"I have had enough of this whole eye contact thing, okay? We have to solve this here and now. It's wasting everyone's time." Art spoke sternly like he was a dad for both you and Yoongi. "Who can tell me what's the problem?"

"He won't give me any eye contact when he talks to me," you said, trying not to sound too bratty or childish.

Yoongi crossed his arms, "Two weeks ago, she was telling me not to look at her and now, she's asking why I'm not looking. I'm just doing what she wants me to do."

Art nods, then looks at you.

"He was staring too hard that day, it was uncomfortable. And I didn't mean for him not to look at me at normal conversations on the daily." you defended.

"We never had any normal conversations." your bassist mumbled lowly, making you roll your eyes.

Art intervened before another fight ensued, "So, what do you want now, YN?"

"I... I just want him to look at me when we're talking..." your volume gets lower when you realise how that statement felt a little needy.

It was like you heard Yoongi put on a smug smirk (if that was even possible), and you turned your head to him just to confirm that yes, he had that stupid smirk on his lips.

"We never see each other eye to eye. Why are you so bothered about it?" he asked.

Before you could pause and ask yourself the same question, you replied, "Uhm, eye contact is part of having a proper human conversation. I mean, it just feels like I am being ignored when I can't see the eyes of the person I'm talking with."

What the hell even is that answer? You mentally slapped your forehead.

"Yeah, you would know something about ignoring someone, right?" Yoongi scoffed.

You looked at Yoongi, who is now looking back at you. Art is starting to feel that this is something deeper than the eye contact thing.

"Should I leave you two alone?" he asked, more careful this time.

"Yes."

Yoongi was the first to answer, being firm with it. You were taken aback for a second by how quick he was but nodded when Art turned to you to get your answer.

"Fine, I'll give you five minutes. Then, everything should be good and we'll go back to rehearsals." Art stood up.

Yoongi waited for him to close the door before turning to you. He wasted no time.

"I'm sorry."

Confused, you squinted, "For... what?"

That was not what you expected you hear from him when he agreed to talk with you alone here. You thought he would just keep on implying that you were the issue and confusing.

Yoongi sighed, "I'm sorry for saying what I said when we were in rehearsals for POV. It was not my intention to make you cry while performing it."

"Oh..." you gulped. That was not his fault. "It's a decision I made, I just got carried away, that's all."

You know that there is something more to that, but you hate to sit and drown yourself alone with your feelings. So, you won't do that today.

"Yeah, I know. But I feel like I pushed you into it. That's why you were ignoring me. Right?" Yoongi added. "I know that everything is probably still—"

"You know what? It's fine, it's okay. I appreciate your apology. But really, it's not fully on you. Let's just move forward from this." you cut him off before he can say more things.

He looked at you for a moment, like he was studying you. You hate it. That is what you mean when you say you don't like him looking at you. It was like he could see right through your lies. Like some magician.

"Please stop staring," you whispered, feeling a little small. "Don't stare like you are reading me like a book."

His stare softened when you said that. Nodding, he looks away.

You quickly spoke, "But you can look at me! Just... don't stare too hard. I'm not that kind of diva."

He chuckled, "Okay."

"Okay." you sighed. There are things that are still not discussed but you can probably talk about it next time or whatever. As you felt the awkward silence filling in the room, you asked. "Are we back to normal?"

"Yeah."

By normal, it means professional colleagues who probably still have a very tiny animosity due to their differences. Because normal, to you and Yoongi, is not being friends. You are not friends, just two people who need each other for your jobs. But now, you are about to sit on your bass guitarist's lap for a performance later.

"Are you comfortable with this?" you asked him after letting him know that he would be involved as Santa tonight.

"You're just gonna sit on my lap?" he asked with a blank expression.

"Yeah," you replied shortly.

It was supposed to be something freakier than that but considering the unexpected changes earlier in your tour, you changed whatever that is into a simple sit on Santa's lap.

"Okay."

Everyone can feel the tension lifting from you and Yoongi the moment you two returned with Art. You were communicating at each other better and they could see it especially when you began rehearsing for Santa Baby.

The dancers and other band members were teasing and laughing when you two began with your bit on Santa's throne. Yoongi was quiet, but smiling at some parts. You, on the other hand, were playing along, loving the energy with your crew. You were back in your playful persona while dancing around Santa, teasing him, just to make others entertained.

You were enjoying the song, Yoongi understands. But you cannot stop unconsciously wiggling on his open lap and you were getting dangerously close to him, while he is wearing his grey sweatpants. He just have to do something.

"Santa baby— oh."

You gasped at Yoongi's sudden pull down on your waist, making you stay in the same spot on his lap. You looked at him, instantly recognizing the slight tint of blush on his cheeks.

"Just stay here," he whispered with his voice lower than usual.

"Oh, okay... sorry." you pressed your lips together before looking away to smile at something else.

"Just don't move around too much." he added before removing his hold on your.

You nodded, "Noted."

"Good." He whispered under his breath.

"Of course, we won't let this night end without a surprise gift for you!"

The fans screamed as you announced that. You have been performing for almost an hour now. four outfit changes later, you are now in a sparkly, red cloak with faux fur on its hem, hiding your themed outfit underneath. Your surprise holiday performance is conveniently placed in the final performance of the night.

"Hit it!"

As a signal, you posed, raising your index finger and putting your candy cane before you. The local barbershop quartet that you hired for your four December shows began singing.

"Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom..."

Once the instrumental of the classic, sultry Christmas song began, Yoongi watched you turn around, instantly meeting his eyes. Unlike before, the director are now aware of your actions since you promised to follow what was rehearsed.

"Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom…"

In every ba-boom, you step closer to Yoongi with your candy cane. The corners of your lips are curved up slightly. Your eyes say nothing but mischief that Yoongi can only hope that you will not do anything that can make him trend online. Like when you did your favorite freaky position before him.

"Santa, baby. Slip a Sable under the tree for me..."

The fans cheered when your soft voice began singing. You are an angel with the spotlight serving as a bright halo behind you, Yoongi thought. Whenever you sing to him during these live shows, Yoongi sometimes finds himself getting transported to another space. Maybe it's because of the light... the songs... the atmosphere... or the way you nod your head in every word you sing like you mean it. It's hypnotizing.

"I've been an awful good girl..."

By that line, you are already next to him, leaning your back to his side like you are in distress. You continued singing next to him, while a famous Santa Claus throne was being put up on the farther heart-shaped centerstage.

"Santa, baby, a '54 convertible too, light blue. I'll wait up for you, dear..."

Yoongi bobbed his head along with you while playing his guitar, seemingly enjoying the song.

"Think of all the fun I've missed, Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed..."

You began walking around the band and all over the stage, singing to your fans who joyfully sang along with you.

"Next year, I could be just as good. If you check off my Christmas list..."

You took the time to sing and bond with them, giggling at the funny signs they brought with them.

"Santa, honey, So hurry down the chimney tonight..."

While moving to the song's fourth verse, you walked back to Yoongi. The fans screamed when you playfully teased him with your candy cane, before pulling yourself closer to him. You clung to his arm and you two walked down to the center stage.

"Come and trim my Christmas tree, With some decorations bought at Tiffany's..."

While singing, you pushed Yoongi to sit on the throne. He acted like he would stand up but you pushed him again, placing your candy cane on his lap. Finally, you dramatically remove your cloak, revealing your shimmering your mini-dress.

"I really do believe in you, Let's see if you believe in me..."

You danced around the throne, leaning over it before finding your way back to Santa. Yoongi mentally prepares himself, and even adjusts his pants.

"Santa, baby, forgot to mention one little thing, a ring..."

As soon as you found your place on his lap, your audience went crazy. You continued singing, facing Yoongi, your Santa for tonight. You pointed to your empty ring finger. Yoongi was just vibing along to your singing, swaying his head along.

"Santa, baby, and hurry down the chimney tonight..."

But you were so into the song that you forgot what Yoongi told you earlier. You kept wiggling on his lap once again, singing along with your fans. Screams erupted when Yoongi held your waist. You felt his hand firmly holding you down, making sure that you would sit still. Although taken aback for a second, you smiled and felt blood rushing through your cheeks.

"Waiting... Hurry, tonight... Hurry down the chimney tonight."

When you sang those last lines, you acted like whispering it close to Yoongi's ear. leaning a little closer to him. Yoongi simply raised an eyebrow, an action enough to get loud reactions.

The lights slowly dimmed down with you still sitting on his lap. Fans cheered for the last time, knowing that it was the last song. But suddenly, a familiar tune plays in the whole arena.

"You didn't think that was all, right?"

note | i received your requests and i'm working on it. but please know that holiday-themed drabbles are currently prioritised 🥹 tysm for the love

taglist rules

SERIES TAGLIST

@busanbby-jjk @jimingirl95 @treacherqus @jajabro @marnz1990 @ktownshizzle

PERMANENT TAGLIST (CLOSED)

@dunixxd @cixrosie @jksjx @embrace-themagic @buttvi @starbtslove @missseoulite @vanntaesworld @kenqki @imajinthis @stopeatread @seolaquotes @greyrain23 @chimchimmarie @petalsofink @jayhope88 @moonchild1 @laylasbunbunny @nikkiordonez12 @misshale21 @marblemoonstones

#bass guitarist! yoongi #yoongi fluff #yoongi x reader #yoongi imagine #yoongi au #yoongi x y/n #yoongi x you #bts drabble #bts aus #bts fanfic #bts x reader #bts x you #bts x y/n #yoongi fanfic #bts suga #httpknjoon #love is... on tour myg #Spotify

393 notes · View notes

yukkiji · 1 day ago

Text

a setter's promise

amid a national press conference, a chaotic wedding party led by an overexcited best man, and the dramatic return of a protective older brother, kageyama faces the weight of promises made in secret—now brought to light—as he prepares to marry the love of his life and become a father.

the other side of the net. haikyuu masterlist. leave a little stardust on my ko-fi

starring. kageyama tobio x fem!reader ft. oikawa tooru, japan's national team,

genre: fluff, romance, crack, older brother!oikawa, chaotic japan's national team

wc: 6.3k

author's note: since a lot of people has requested to make this a mini series, so i shall give it to you!

you already knew what to expect after that jumbotron incident last night at the arena—where your husband’s wedding ring was caught in 4k for the whole world to see. and as if things weren’t chaotic enough, that was also the very night your friends and your brother crashed into the suite like a soap opera finale, demanding answers, snacks, and emotional compensation for being left out of the loop.

only the secret marriage was public now, but that alone had sent social media into a meltdown.

what wasn’t public?

the other secret you were still holding just beneath your ribs—quiet, growing, and still yours.

you were pregnant.

and only a handful of people knew. for now.

the hotel room was dim, curtains drawn shut to block out the persistent sunlight creeping in through the windows. your phone was somewhere on the floor, still buzzing nonstop from group chats, mentions, and pr emails—but you couldn’t bring yourself to pick it up. not right now. not when your world was quiet like this.

not when he was this close.

kageyama sat beside you on the edge of the bed, freshly showered, hair still damp and curling slightly at the nape of his neck. his hand was steady and warm over your stomach—not that there was much to see yet. you were barely showing, but he touched you like he could feel them already. like he was memorizing the curve of your skin before it began to change.

his thumb moved in slow, absent circles, anchoring both of you in the silence.

his voice came out softer than usual. “how are you feeling? still nauseous?”

you blinked at him, then gave a small laugh. “a little. it’s worse in the mornings, mostly.”

he frowned. “you didn’t say anything.”

“you were getting ready for the press conference,” you said gently. “it’s not like i was dying.”

“doesn’t matter,” he muttered, glancing down at your stomach again. “you should’ve woken me up. even just to sit with you.”

“you already do that most mornings,” you reminded him, smiling. “you sat with me in the bathroom yesterday and counted my breaths.”

his ears turned a little pink at the memory. “still. i don’t want you going through any of this alone.”

you reached for his free hand and laced your fingers with his.

“i’m not,” you said quietly. “i have you.”

he squeezed your hand, thumb brushing over your ring. then, after a pause: “have you eaten?”

“i tried. crackers. half a banana.”

“that’s it?”

“everything else made me gag.”

he sighed through his nose and kissed your temple, his hand still resting protectively over your belly. “i’ll ask them to send something bland. no garlic. maybe soup.”

“you’re turning into my dietician now?”

“if that’s what it takes,” he said without hesitation, leaning in closer. “i just want you and the baby to be okay.”

you nodded and leaned your forehead against his shoulder, breathing in the clean scent of his skin. his presence had always been calming, even before the marriage. but now, with everything spinning out of control, he felt like your gravity.

then, without a word, he shifted closer—slipping his hand beneath the hem of your shirt and pressing a soft kiss just above your navel. you froze, breath catching as the warmth of his lips met your skin.

his voice came quiet, almost sheepish. “hey. be nice to mama, okay? she’s already doing a lot for you.”

your fingers threaded into his hair, brushing at the damp strands as your throat tightened with emotion.

he lingered a little longer, palm spread wide over your stomach like he was trying to feel more than just skin. then he whispered, “i love you. both of you.”

you closed your eyes, holding onto him, your world narrowing to just this—his hand, his voice, his presence.

he stayed there, his head bowed, lips still hovering just above your skin like he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. your fingers threaded through his damp hair, brushing gentle strokes down the back of his neck, and for a while, neither of you said anything.

the silence wasn’t awkward. it never was with him. it was full.

full of unspoken promises. of everything he couldn’t say out loud but showed you instead—with every small touch, every gentle word that didn’t come easy to him, every moment like this where he anchored himself to your body like it grounded him as much as it did you.

then, he shifted slightly—leaning in again to press a slower kiss just above your navel. he stayed there for a beat, then exhaled, voice soft and sure.

“don’t stress yourself about this, okay?”

his words were quiet, but they sank deep, like a blanket settling over your ribs.

“i’ll take care of it. all of it. the press. the comments. whatever comes next.” his hand returned to your belly, warm and grounding. “i don’t want you or the baby to feel even a second of this pressure.”

you felt something knot in your throat.

“tobio…” you whispered.

his name always sounded different when you said it—softer, worn in like something sacred. he lifted his head and looked at you then, and even though his brows were still pulled with worry, his eyes held that rare, tender calm only you ever got to see.

“i’m not stressed,” you said, brushing your thumb over his cheek. “just… overwhelmed.”

he nodded, not quite convinced, but he didn’t argue. instead, he brought your joined hands to his lips, kissed your knuckles once, then lowered them gently to rest on top of your belly again.

“still,” he said, “i meant what i said. i’ll handle it. you don’t even have to check your phone today. let them wait.”

you smiled, small and tired, and leaned in until your forehead rested against his.

“you make it easier,” you murmured. “all of it.”

he blinked slowly, like he didn’t know what to say to that. but then his gaze softened again—shy, almost—and he leaned down once more, eyes fluttering shut as he pressed a kiss just above your navel.

“you hear that?” he said, voice directed at your belly now. “we’re okay. mama’s okay. but you have to help her out too, alright?”

he paused, then added with a little more conviction, “no more nausea if you can help it. or at least not the dramatic kind.”

you laughed wetly, wiping at the corners of your eyes. “dramatic?”

he flushed. “not you. them.”

“uh-huh.”

he ignored your teasing and kissed your belly again, softer this time.

“i love you,” he whispered. “both of you.”

you didn’t answer right away. didn’t need to. instead, you slid your hands down to cover his, holding him there. grounding him the way he always did for you.

and in that tiny, dimly lit hotel room—while the rest of the world spun madly outside, arguing in headlines and hashtags—you both stayed still.

together.

quiet. anchored. already a family.

the morning of the press conference arrived far too quickly.

you hadn’t gotten much sleep, though not for lack of trying. it was hard to rest with your phone vibrating every ten minutes on the hotel room floor, buried under yesterday’s clothes and unanswered calls. even harder when your brain insisted on running through every possible headline variation the media could cook up now that the secret was out.

it didn’t matter that the marriage had been almost a year old.

to the rest of the world, it had just happened last night—live and in high definition—when the camera zoomed in on your husband’s left hand during warm-ups against argentina. the glint of the wedding band had been brief, but it was more than enough.

you sat in the waiting lounge of the japan volleyball association’s media headquarters, a floor above the actual press room. the walls were white and cold, the chairs stiff, and the clock ticking overhead felt especially judgmental. you sipped slowly at a bottle of water, the lukewarm taste doing nothing to settle your stomach—though that might’ve been a mix of nerves and first-trimester queasiness.

kageyama hadn’t wanted you to come.

he said you didn’t need to stress yourself, that you should rest, stay horizontal, keep both feet up. he had been insistent enough that you’d almost agreed to stay behind. but when he left the room that morning, tension wound tight in his shoulders, you followed.

you didn’t say it aloud, but you weren’t ready to be apart from him today.

through the tinted observation glass, you could see him now—standing at the podium in his national team tracksuit, posture rigid but face calm. his hair was still a little damp from the shower, sticking lightly to his forehead and curling near the base of his neck. the media lights were bright above him, catching on the edge of his wedding ring again as he adjusted the mic.

the jva official opened with a short statement, read from a prepared card.

just the essentials: kageyama tobio would be speaking to clarify personal matters following yesterday’s game. no additional questions would be answered on behalf of the organization. no interference from the adler’s management or agents. just him.

then they stepped aside.

and the room erupted.

a wave of camera clicks and recorder beeps echoed through the space, followed immediately by the rise of voices all trying to talk over each other. the staff picked one journalist to ask the first question.

“is it true that you’re married?”

he nodded once. “yes.”

there was no pause. no hesitation. just one word, clear and direct.

you felt your heart thump harder in your chest.

the room exploded again. flashes burst in staccato bursts, and you saw a few reporters glance at one another in disbelief. a handful started whispering rapidly into their phones.

“since when?”

“almost a year.”

there was a beat of stunned silence. and then all at once, more typing, more muttering. you imagined someone in entertainment media having a total breakdown backstage because they missed the scoop. somewhere, some poor intern was probably already drafting emergency graphics for tonight’s news segment.

and you? you leaned back against the cold wall of the viewing suite and sighed.

if this is the reaction to the marriage… what kind of circus is it going to be when the pregnancy goes public?

you looked down at your belly, barely noticeable beneath your oversized knit top. there was nothing visible yet, nothing round or obvious—but it still felt real. pressing your palm there gently, you exhaled through your nose.

“let’s wait a little longer, okay?” you whispered.

back below, the reporters weren’t letting up.

“why did you keep this a secret?”

“it wasn’t a secret,” kageyama replied. “we just didn’t make it public.”

another burst of noise—foot shuffling, pens clicking, someone coughing loudly in the middle of a sentence. there was a quiet pride in his voice that made your chest ache. he didn’t sound ashamed. he wasn’t apologizing.

he was simply… stating the truth.

the next question came from the middle row. the voice was more cautious than the rest.

“is this the same person you were dating before going pro?”

you recognized that one. a sports journalist who’d been covering volleyball since your high school days. you’d always found her questions respectful. you were glad she was here.

“yes,” he said. “we've been together since before i joined the league.”

there were murmurs around the room, the kind of noise that meant headlines were already being written.

then someone toward the front asked—louder than necessary:

“can you confirm the identity of your wife? is it true she’s oikawa tooru’s sister?”

you instinctively shifted in your seat.

there it was.

the second half of the reveal.

you watched your husband’s expression carefully. his gaze didn’t waver. he didn’t flinch or deflect. he looked straight ahead and answered calmly:

“yes.”

the silence that followed was louder than any question asked so far.

even from a floor above, you could feel the pressroom buzzing with disbelief. a few journalists exchanged wide-eyed glances; others flipped through their notes as if hoping they’d missed something in the past. no one had ever made that connection—not with how deliberately you and oikawa kept your personal lives separate from each other’s public personas.

the room was stunned. kageyama, meanwhile, remained composed. steady.

but then—just for a moment—he glanced up.

it wasn’t a long look. just a small flick of his eyes toward the darkened glass above the seating rows. toward the suite. toward you.

and even though he couldn’t see your face clearly through the glass, you knew what that look meant.

i’ve got this.

you pressed your palm more firmly over your stomach. the baby shifted—or maybe that was just nerves—but your other hand lifted to your heart.

no matter how loud the world got after this…

you’d never felt more sure.

the moment the doors closed behind him, the tension in his shoulders began to melt.

not entirely—but enough that you could see it in the way his fingers loosened from fists, how his steps softened as he approached. there was no crowd here, no cameras, no flashing lights. just you, still seated in the far corner of the media lounge, curled slightly forward with your hands folded over your stomach.

you stood slowly when you saw him, heart tipping forward in your chest.

“hey,” you said, soft and almost breathless.

his expression changed the second he heard your voice. the mask he’d worn downstairs—the composed, even-toned athlete who’d just confirmed his marriage in front of a hundred national reporters—cracked along the edges. his mouth twitched, somewhere between relief and exhaustion, and his arms found you without hesitation.

he pulled you into his chest.

you melted into him, your hands slipping under his jacket and over the soft material of his team shirt, gripping it lightly at the seams.

“i’m okay,” he murmured into your hair. “everything’s okay.”

you nodded, pressing your cheek against the familiar beat of his heart. “you didn’t have to look so calm. you could’ve thrown a mic stand at someone for me.”

“i thought about it,” he deadpanned. “especially when they asked about your identity.”

that made you laugh into his shoulder, the sound quiet but real.

his arms wrapped tighter around you, like holding you made the weight of the last twenty-four hours finally manageable. his lips brushed against your temple, lingering there with the kind of gentleness that always made your chest ache.

“you sure you’re not tired?” he asked. “you look pale.”

“i always look pale,” you teased, then softened. “but… i’m okay. just needed to see you.”

he leaned back just enough to study your face, thumb grazing under your eye like he could erase the stress tucked in the corners. his gaze dropped to your stomach.

“still nauseous?”

“a little,” you admitted. “it’s better now that you’re back.”

his brows knit slightly, guilt flickering in the blue of his eyes. “you should’ve stayed at the hotel.”

“i didn’t want to be away from you,” you said simply. “besides, you looked like you could use someone in your corner.”

he didn’t answer that, just kissed your forehead, then crouched slightly to eye level with your belly.

“hey,” he murmured to the barely-there bump. “you okay in there?”

you smiled, watching him as his hand brushed over the curve of your stomach with infinite care.

“don’t make mama too sick, alright?” he whispered to your belly, kissing it softly. “be nice. we’ve got a long few months ahead.”

you rolled your eyes affectionately. “they’re not even the size of a peach and you’re already negotiating.”

he tilted his head up. “gotta start early.”

then, quieter—only for you and the baby to hear—he added, “i love you. both of you.”

your heart stilled at that.

you sank to your knees with him, hands cupping his face. he leaned into your touch, eyes closing briefly as your thumbs brushed against his cheeks.

“i love you, too,” you whispered. “i really do.”

for a long moment, you stayed like that—on the floor of the jva media lounge, tucked away from the chaos of the outside world, holding each other in a bubble of quiet warmth.

everything else could wait.

right now, all that mattered was this.

you. him. and the small, growing heartbeat between you.

the world could scream all it wanted outside hotel walls—speculate, repost, ask questions that weren’t theirs to begin with—but in here, your universe was small and warm and full of steady hands. his fingers still rested gently on your stomach, still drawing soft circles even after you’d both gone quiet again. not because there was nothing left to say, but because nothing needed to be said.

you stayed that way for a while—tucked under the blankets, tucked into each other.

the next few days passed like a slow exhale.

kageyama kept his promise. every time things flared online or a statement needed softening, he handled it. sometimes that meant pacing quietly in the kitchen of your apartment with his phone pressed to his ear, sometimes it meant giving his manager one of those short, clipped “i trust her, that’s all” responses, and sometimes it just meant slipping you a plate of plain rice and miso soup without you having to ask.

you were almost nine weeks along. the baby was still no more than a flutter in your body, but already he spoke to them like they could hear him. and somehow, maybe they could.

invitations were sent. your gown had its final fitting, still carefully hidden from everyone—except oikawa, who demanded a private reveal the second he got back from argentina. he’d messaged in your family group chat just last night:

toru: tell that seamstress she better stitch heaven into that train or i’m not walking you down the aisle

the venue was booked. menus were selected. floral samples were approved. you’d finally finished arguing with your mom about guest list limitations (“no, we can’t invite aunt sachiko’s entire mahjong group”).

everything was in place.

except—

“i still don’t have a wedding party,” kageyama said one night, standing in front of the open fridge while chewing thoughtfully on an ice cube.

you looked up from the couch, blinking. “how is that still not settled?”

he sighed. “they’re fighting about it.”

“they?”

he shut the fridge door. “ushijima. bokuto. hoshiumi. even miya. i think sakusa threatened to not attend at all if someone called him the flower boy again.”

“you were there when oikawa threatened to assign everyone roles himself, right?”

“he said he’d do it with glittered envelopes.”

“glittered—oh, god.” you closed your eyes. “okay. no. absolutely not.”

but it was already too late.

the next afternoon, just after you’d finished cleaning up lunch and kageyama had returned from light training, your front door burst open without so much as a knock.

“wedding roulette is happening here!” bokuto’s voice rang out like a stadium announcement, far too loud for the size of your apartment.

you nearly dropped the plate in your hand.

“what the hell—” you started, peeking around the corner into the entryway.

a parade of fully-grown men—volleyball players, no less—filed in with the energy of a frat party and the coordination of a flash mob. ushijima came in first, solemnly dragging a foldable table and a suspiciously large whiteboard behind him like a man on a mission. hoshiumi carried a crinkled plastic bag full of markers, whistles, and a roll of golden stickers. komori was already kicking off his shoes, greeting your houseplants with an enthusiastic “yo!” as if they’d known each other for years.

atsumu entered next, smug as ever, holding a clipboard and whistling low. “i came prepared, just in case it turns into a tiebreaker vote.”

“why the hell would it—”

“because,” suna interrupted dryly, raising his phone without breaking eye contact, “i’ve already started the documentary.”

“we’re calling it ‘groomageddon: the ballad of tobio’s bridal breakdown,’” added atsumu.

kageyama, to his credit, didn’t even flinch.

he just turned to you with a weary expression. “they threatened to assign themselves roles.”

you squinted. “is that… sakusa?”

“yes,” kageyama muttered. “he came out of spite.”

“if anyone makes me the flower boy again,” sakusa growled from the hallway, arms folded and a lysol wipe in one hand, “i’m setting the bouquets on fire. even if they're silk.”

“too late!” bokuto bellowed, tossing something through the air.

sakusa’s eyes narrowed as he caught it—a glittery plastic tiara with the words bouquet security in cursive pink. “i hate everyone in this room.”

“you’ll still look fabulous,” komori reassured with a double thumbs up.

you stared, slack-jawed, at the scene unraveling in your living room. ushijima was now setting up what could only be described as a monstrous carnival-style wheel. it had been hand-painted in comic sans. in glitter glue.

“this is the ‘wedding party decider,’” bokuto said proudly, arms spread wide. “one spin per person. no takesies backsies.”

“who made this?”

“i did,” hoshiumi said, like it was obvious.

“with what authority?”

“i have tiny handwriting and color-coded pens. that’s authority.”

“you’re marrying into this,” kageyama murmured, stepping beside you with the weariness of a man resigned to fate.

“i already married into this,” you hissed back, resting your head on his shoulder as chaos bloomed around you.

the wheel had several, highly questionable categories, such as:

best man

ring bearer??

emotional support friend

snack logistics captain

speech writer

designated weeper

person who reminds kageyama he has a wedding

final boss (??? no one explained this one)

“we’ll go in order of height,” bokuto declared. “shortest to tallest!”

“you just want to go last,” sakusa muttered.

“and you just don’t want to go at all!”

“accurate.”

hinata arrived halfway through the first round, kicked open the door, and yelled, “did someone say wedding?!”

everyone groaned.

“you’re late!” bokuto shouted gleefully. “but also—perfect timing! the spinning begins now!”

somehow, and you’ll never know how because you blinked and missed it, hinata won the best man slot.

he threw his hands in the air, screamed “yesssss,” and immediately began planning a pre-wedding dodgeball tournament in his notes app. “to determine emotional stamina!! and speech rights!! and snacks!!”

“i am not wearing coordinated sneakers to your wedding,” kageyama muttered.

“you will and you’ll love it,” hinata beamed, tears forming in his eyes. “i can’t believe i’m your best man. my mom’s gonna cry.”

komori became the designated weeper, simply because no one else wanted it and he said “i already cry during shampoo commercials anyway.”

atsumu spun and landed on person who reminds kageyama he has a wedding, which he accepted with far too much enthusiasm. “i’m setting alarms. hourly.”

suna got speech writer, and you had a gut feeling half the speech would just be dramatic black-and-white montages and shady side comments. he was already sketching something titled ‘five years ago he couldn’t talk to girls.’

hoshiumi became snack logistics captain, after winning a rock-paper-scissors match against bokuto, who had violently wanted the job until he realized “snack” did not mean “cake taster.”

ushijima, somehow, landed on ring bearer.

no one dared question it.

he simply nodded and said, “i will carry them safely.”

“we don’t even know what the final boss role is,” you murmured, watching sakusa spin slowly with a disgusted expression.

the wheel clacked and spun, slower… slower…

“final boss,” bokuto announced triumphantly.

sakusa stared at the result. “what does that mean.”

“you’ll know when it’s time,” hoshiumi whispered ominously.

you were beginning to wonder if this was your wedding or a dungeons & dragons campaign.

when they finally left—after nearly three hours, two snack raids, one minor shoe-throwing incident, and a heated debate over matching ties—you found yourself alone again in the quiet of the apartment.

kageyama sank onto the couch beside you, rubbing his temples.

“did we survive that?” you asked.

he exhaled deeply. “barely.”

you rested your hand over your belly. “baby’s first chaos.”

he gave a weak laugh, leaned down, and kissed your stomach. “you picked the loudest best man in history.”

you smiled. “we’re getting married in the middle of an anime episode.”

he wrapped his arms around you and pulled you in. “yeah,” he said quietly, lips brushing your temple. “but at least it’s ours.”

you leaned into his embrace, warmth pooling in your chest, one hand resting lightly where his settled over your stomach. for a moment, it was easy to forget the whirlwind of decisions and noise that had swallowed your life these past weeks. this—this quiet, this closeness—felt like a breath of air above the surface.

until your phone dinged.

then it dinged again.

and then—

“yo! open up! i know you’re in there, you traitors!!”

you froze.

“…was that—?”

“yes,” kageyama muttered, already getting up, “and unfortunately, he’s early.”

the door flew open a second later without waiting for permission—because of course it did—and in swept oikawa tooru, straight off a flight from argentina, sunglasses still on, suitcase in tow, and judgment already brewing in his tone.

he looked you up and down, then zeroed in on your fiancé with laser focus.

“so,” he said flatly, setting his suitcase down with the most dramatic thud known to man, “you’re really marrying him.”

you blinked. “hi, tooru—”

he didn’t even glance at you. “why did i see bokuto’s post about having a chaotic wedding party? there was confetti. inside someone’s apartment.”

kageyama didn’t blink. “it wasn’t mine.”

“oh good, you can still form full sentences,” oikawa deadpanned. “i was starting to worry.”

“it was suna’s apartment,” you added, mostly for damage control. “and the confetti was hinata’s idea. bokuto just enabled it.”

“enabled it? enabled it?” oikawa wheeled around to stare at you, aghast. “that man is like gasoline in human form. why would you let him near your wedding party planning?!”

“he won the roulette.”

oikawa looked personally offended. “you’re telling me the wedding titles for your sacred, once-in-a-lifetime event were decided by a spinning wheel?!”

“there were snacks.”

“oh. well. that changes everything,” he huffed, throwing himself dramatically onto your couch like a scorned telenovela protagonist. “this is a disaster. an international scandal. and i wasn't even invited to the chaos party!”

“you were literally in the air over the atlantic,” you pointed out, arms crossed. “and you’re literally walking me down the aisle, remember?”

“that’s beside the point!” he snapped, flinging an arm over his forehead like he was seconds away from fainting. “i deserve at least a courtesy warning before bokuto starts planning anything. do you know how many group chats i came back to? sakusa sent me a voice note with nothing but exasperated sighs.”

“you’ll survive,” you deadpanned.

“i’m traumatized.”

“and yet, here you are.”

he sat up with a huff, eyes narrowing. “you’re both lucky i love you. you especially,” he added, pointing at kageyama, who looked like he’d rather face the entire argentinian team again than be part of this conversation.

“noted,” kageyama muttered, slipping you a glance that said, is this my life now?

you smiled sweetly. yes. yes it is.

oikawa rolled his eyes at the look you gave kageyama, muttering something about “being surrounded by sappy idiots in love,” then crouched beside his suitcase again with a melodramatic sigh.

he unzipped it with the flair of a magician unveiling his latest act. “okay, i know technically this isn’t for a few more months, but…” he trailed off, digging through layers of carefully folded sweaters, toiletries, and—of course—his travel-sized skincare pouch.

he pulled out a small, neatly bundled parcel and handed it to you with a little smile he tried to hide behind an exaggerated eye roll. inside were a few plush toys: a sleepy cloud with embroidered eyelashes, a mini volleyball with soft wings, and a tiny penguin in a blue setter jersey that looked suspiciously like kageyama’s. a hand-stitched “#9” on its back confirmed your suspicion.

“for my soon-to-be niece or nephew,” he said casually, brushing imaginary lint off his pants. “got them from a boutique in buenos aires. very limited edition. very me.”

your heart swelled painfully. you swallowed, blinking fast.

“you’re soft,” you whispered.

“i’m thorough,” he corrected, nose in the air. “you should’ve seen the customs officer’s face when he checked my bag and found five plushies and a tiny onesie that says ‘uncle tooru’s favorite.’”

kageyama looked like he was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

oikawa dusted his hands and closed his suitcase with a pointed thud. “anyway, i’m staying the night, okay? iwa’s not answering his phone and i don’t trust hotel pillows. and your guest room smells better than mine.”

you grinned. “maybe hajime doesn’t want to see you.”

oikawa gasped so loudly, you half-wondered if you’d wounded him physically.

“why wouldn’t he want to see me?” he cried, one hand clutching his chest like a scandalized noblewoman in a period drama. “what did i ever do but love him with my entire heart and slightly obnoxious energy?”

kageyama deadpanned, “you tried to organize his sock drawer alphabetically by color last time you stayed over.”

“exactly,” oikawa said proudly. “acts of service is my love language.”

you laughed, handing him a throw pillow as he dramatically flopped onto the couch, like a telenovela protagonist finally giving in to despair.

“you’re such a drama queen,” you teased.

“i deserve to be,” oikawa replied, muffled through the pillow. “my baby sister is having a baby and getting married and the world keeps turning without giving me a single day to emotionally prepare.”

you rolled your eyes fondly and bent to give him a quick kiss on the forehead. “you’ll survive.”

he looked up, expression soft despite the over-the-top sigh that followed. “you look tired. go lie down. i’ll bully your husband in the meantime.”

kageyama, from where he’d just come back into the living room with a glass of water, raised a brow. “i’m literally right here.”

“good,” oikawa sniffed, settling further into the couch. “easier to begin the verbal assault.”

you shook your head with a tired smile. “you two try not to kill each other.”

kageyama looked at you, already moving to offer the water. “are you sure you don’t want anything?” you shook your head and accepted the glass briefly to take a sip. “just some sleep. wake me if the house catches fire. or if he starts reorganizing the spice rack.”

“no promises,” kageyama muttered, lips twitching.

you patted his arm before heading toward the stairs, glancing back once to see the two men in your life watching you go—one with quiet fondness, the other already gearing up for a sibling-in-law interrogation.

once upstairs, you slipped into the quiet sanctuary of your room, tugged the blanket over your legs, and let yourself relax. your body ached in that particular way pregnancy often brought, but beneath it was the warmth of comfort. of peace. of love that stretched far beyond the walls of the home you were building.

downstairs, the quiet had a different weight now. it wasn’t awkward, not quite. just thick—like old memories and unsaid things were clinging to the air.

oikawa sat on the edge of the couch, posture leaned forward, hands loosely clasped between his knees. he wasn’t making a show of anything now. all the dramatics from earlier were stripped away, leaving just him: the older brother who knew too much, and had kept quiet for too long.

kageyama stayed standing. not out of defiance, but because sitting down would’ve made this feel too casual. too easy. and nothing about this was supposed to be easy.

“so,” oikawa started, voice quiet, almost flat. “you’re really going through with this.”

kageyama nodded once. “yeah.”

“marrying her. starting a family.”

another nod. “yeah.”

oikawa didn’t say anything right away. just looked down at his hands, then slowly turned his head, eyes trailing toward the stairs you’d gone up minutes ago. his gaze softened for a second—just a second—but when he looked back at kageyama, it was all weight again.

“you remember your first year of high school?” oikawa asked, breaking the silence, his tone deceptively light.

kageyama blinked, a little thrown. “of course.”

“when you came to the seijoh gym. after interhigh. to prove something.”

that made kageyama still completely. his spine straightened slightly, like his body remembered the weight of that day before his brain caught up.

“you told me you didn’t want her to choose,” oikawa went on, quieter now, his voice flat but edged with something deeper. “you said, ‘don’t make her pick between the two of us. it wouldn’t be fair to her.’”

kageyama stayed quiet, letting the memory settle. it wasn’t one he ever forgot.

because even if you and oikawa weren’t speaking then—wrapped up in the bitter silence of a sibling cold war—kageyama had seen what it did to you. he remembered how your smile would flicker whenever your brother passed you in the hallway without a word. how you pretended you were fine even when he could feel your guilt sitting heavily on your shoulders, all because you'd reciprocated the distance oikawa started.

and back then, he hadn’t known how to fix it. all he knew was that he didn’t want to be the reason you lost family.

“you were so insufferable,” oikawa continued, a huff of a breath leaving him that wasn’t quite a laugh. “walking into my gym like you were ready to fight me and win. you were still just a first-year with too much pride and too many rough edges—but for the first time, i saw you weren’t just some arrogant kid trying to one-up me. you were… sincere.”

he leaned back, eyes narrowing slightly. “and that terrified me.”

kageyama finally glanced up at him, brows furrowed.

“you were my rival,” oikawa said, shrugging one shoulder. “the setter who annoyed the hell out of me, who pushed me, who mirrored all the things i hated about myself. and then suddenly you were the boy who made my little sister smile like the world was weightless.”

he paused, his next words quieter.

“so yeah, i hated it. i hated you. i hated her smile. i hated how right you felt for her.”

kageyama looked down, hands curling loosely around his knees. “i get it.”

“but despite everything—” oikawa’s voice softened just a little “—i saw what it meant to you. how far you’d go just to protect her peace. that’s why i stopped pushing back.”

he didn’t mention how he’d caught the two of you kissing outside the gym that day. he didn’t have to. they both remembered how that kiss turned years of lingering tension into something real—into confrontation, into honesty, into rebuilding what was broken.

“you were just kids,” oikawa said, running a hand through his hair. “but it was real. and it’s still real. i see that now.”

a long pause stretched before oikawa spoke again.

“but promise me something,” he said, looking at kageyama dead-on, all the teasing stripped away now. “never—ever—leave her. or my soon-to-be niece or nephew.”

his tone didn’t rise, but it sharpened, carved with something older than rivalry. something deeper than pride.

“i swear to god, tobio,” he continued, each word deliberate and low. “i will hop on the next plane bound to japan, even if i’m halfway across the world, and i will personally bury your setter ass if you ever hurt her.”

kageyama didn’t flinch, but he froze in that way he always did when something hit deeper than he expected—not from fear, but from reverence. because this wasn’t just a protective brother’s threat.

it was a vow.

“i did my best protecting her as her brother,” oikawa went on, voice a little rougher now, softer in the way only family could make it. “even when we weren’t talking. even when i was being the biggest idiot alive. i always watched from the sidelines.”

he swallowed, jaw tight. “and now i want you to continue it. not just as the guy who’s loved her since you were kids—but as her husband. as the father of your child.”

kageyama’s throat bobbed as he nodded, quiet. but his eyes—sharp, unwavering—held steady.

“i will,” he said, voice low and sure. “i swear, i will. i’m never walking away from her. from our family. not now, not ever.”

oikawa stared at him for a beat longer, then finally exhaled, like something inside him had been quietly set down. the fire in his chest still burned—it always would—but it no longer threatened to consume.

“…good,” he muttered, sinking back against the couch, still stubbornly dramatic. “because i’d really rather not waste my mileage flying back here to punch you in the face.”

“noted,” kageyama said flatly.

“and for the record,” oikawa added, cracking one eye open, “if the baby ends up calling you ‘king’ i’m suing.”

kageyama actually chuckled—quiet, small. “if the baby ends up with your personality, we’re doomed.”

“you wish your child is that lucky.”

and somehow, in between those quiet confessions and lingering jabs, something softened between them—like time had folded in on itself and forgiven them for growing up messy and learning too late.

down the hall, you shifted in your sleep, blissfully unaware of the peace treaty being drafted in your living room—finally, years in the making.

86 notes · View notes

yelenapilled · 1 month ago

Text

line without a hook (wasteland, baby! series)

chapter one: enter RIO and NATALIE, stage right.

masterlist

(divider from @dollywons !)

note: first chapter ! woooo ! ok this is only a prologue which explains why this is just 17k of a whole lotta yapping. i locked in last night and wrote like 4k+ words for like 4 hours just because i was tired of looking at this sitting in my docs taking up space

SOME POINT IN SPRING, 1996.

Nobody really liked Rio Marcini.

It was a universal fact. Very few people in the world—specifically small town New Jersey where most of the population consisted of uptown people and their trailer park counterparts who were often looked down upon with the suspicion that each and every one of them were up to no good—ever got along with Rio. It primarily circled around the stereotype that people (particularly white people, but they’d never ever own up to their oppressive thoughts and beliefs) made about Mexicans. Plays soccer; wears alternative clothing; foul mouth; mediocre grades. Some people even went far enough to assume she does drugs (‘some people’ referring to the ones who left their first interaction with her with a fat lip after boasting their stereotypes about her), but whether that’s true or not doesn’t play into the deeper part of her.

She hadn’t been in Wiskayok very long, moving further up north when she was 14 and was pushed into the 8th grade class in the middle of the year. Long before then, during her time in a sun-soaked Miami, it wasn’t as bad as people in New Jersey rumored it was. Maybe it wasn’t as ideal to them as it was to Rio, probably because everybody there either grew up with their whole lives on a silver platter or still had to work three jobs to pay rent. Skin color and clothing style was the first thing people noticed when she came to Wiskayok—because of course the most head-turning thing in the world is a brown skinned girl walking around the 8th grade building primarily surrounded by a bunch of white kids.

She didn’t care—that’s what it looked like to most of them, anyways. Further proving that ignoring the bully doesn’t solve anything and only gives them the impression that their actions don’t have consequences when their main target is a person of color.

A few people did end up liking her. A handful. It wasn’t enough. She’d always find herself wanting more until she’s satisfied with who she thinks people want her to be.

But this’ll do.

A girl—the first person to actually show kindness to her aside from her mom and occasionally her younger half brother who sometimes pops in whenever things in Montana (her father left just a few months before Rio and her mom moved up north to New Jersey, taking her unknown half brother with him) with her father were rocky for however long it would last—her name was Natalie. Nobody really liked her either, save for the few people she hangs out with after school and the varsity soccer team she got into to distract herself from her own home life.

Natalie wasn’t exactly the ideal Wiskayok high school girl, either. She was considered a ‘burnout’—skipped school sometimes (a habit which Rio actually picked up on), smoked, drank, all sorts of stuff. It was nothing less that was expected of people who lived in the trailer park on the other side of town. She didn’t show much emotion, though Rio could see that she cared when she looked between the lines when Natalie would show up to her house with a ceram wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwich one morning in their freshman year (she claimed it was because the breakfast the school served in the cafeteria was shit, but Rio knew better than to buy into the shallow excuse to show her affection). Rio did admire her fierce loyalty—nobody ever messed with her without messing with Natalie (which sometimes led to the two of them getting into a mini argument over Rio claiming that she wasn’t a damsel in distress).

There were these few other boys who liked her. Two of them had some sort of homoerotic friendship going on that earned a bunch of head turns and questioning glares from the people around them whenever they talked a little too loudly. One of them was one of those boys who looked like they’d roll out of bed and throw on their cleanest shirt (most of the time it would be some sort of band t shirt) and basketball shorts and pull up to school riding a skateboard and half expect the senior girls to swoon over him instantly. At least, he looked like it, anyway. His hair was never neat—always messy with a black squirrel's nest sitting over his head with shitty eyeliner smudged over his eyelids with little splotches even getting into his eyes. He was one of those guys who trashed on people who listened to really popular bands and artists and swore to the gods above that he had the best music taste around (he couldn’t convince anybody that he was simply “branching out” when Natalie caught him listening to Sir Mix-A-Lot after he heard Rio listening to brown shuga on her walkman).

Despite all that stuff about him, his quirks and faults and flaws and annoyances, he wasn’t that bad. He was incredibly sweet, all things considered—in Rio’s sophomore year she only got a few things on Valentine’s Day (one of which was from the varsity soccer team captain Jackie—but whatever goes on between her and Rio is another can of worms) and he—Seth, the guy with the shitty hair and the guyliner and the ‘godly music taste’—gave her her first Valentine’s Day gift in all her time at Wiskayok. She recalled seeing an unnatural blush on his freckled cheeks as he handed her the rather fancy box of chocolates that was rumored to be shoplifted from the mall (whether or not that was true didn’t necessarily matter—it was the thought that counted), warm from being in his backpack the whole day and waiting 7 periods before he could hand it to her just a few minutes before soccer practice started.

The soccer team itself was actually quite entertaining for Rio. The teammates were nice—one of them instantly clicked with her once she joined the team. Back in Miami, the community soccer team she played for was mediocre at best and they believed that having fun was the most important part. Rio couldn’t have disagreed more—and apparently so did the Wiskayok soccer team. That didn’t mean she didn’t miss them.

The team goalie—Van—was the one that instantly clicked with Rio. Taissa often stuck with her and was always talking to her whenever practice was over or just before it started. Laura Lee was probably the sweetest girl Rio ever met; a Christian girl with absolutely no hate in her heart. That being said, Rio never ever missed an opportunity to tease her about ‘finally accepting Jesus into her heart’ only to reveal she was messing with her every single time. Shauna was one of the harder ones to bond with. She was one of those quiet girls with excellent grades and a few friends. Part of Rio thought she was only on the soccer team because she felt some sort of obligation to one of the other teammates—Jackie, to be precise. She was never caught staring at anything else for a long period of time other than Jackie.

Jackie herself was an easier one to get along with—not as easy as Van or Natalie or Laura Lee, but they had their moments together. She was an excellent team captain—albeit she definitely wasn’t the best player on the team, with Rio dominating all of them in terms of footwork and a few others being faster than her, she was definitely the most enthusiastic about the sport. In addition she was also one of the most caring people on the team—and that she ever met in general—after finding out that once Rio had gotten diagnosed with glaucoma and had a really bad habit of “forgetting” to do her eye drops (she hated them) that Jackie had somehow gotten her hands on the same exact tiny bottle and sometimes did them for her. On the rare days when Rio was feeling the effects of other people being their ignorant selves and dogging on her for fitting the stereotype that they saw her as, Jackie would be the one to tell Rio that ‘they can talk shit all they want about someone they don’t know, the more they do it the more stupid they’ll look when they come to realize that this heart of gold in your chest is something they could only dream of having.’

Moving on.

Lottie was nice. Rio didn’t know a whole lot about her aside from the fact her parents were fucking loaded. Maybe too loaded and it didn’t really make sense to Rio that the Matthews decided to live in this tiny town. A lot of the parties she’d been to were at her house—more of a mansion, really. Mari was what was called an acquired taste—Rio didn’t care for her all that much in the beginning and even thought she was a bit of a bitch. She couldn’t recall when it was, but at some point in time she got used to Mari’s shit and most of the things she said didn’t phase her. Misty was…definitely an equipment manager. Rio had only three one-on-one interactions with her before and she had nothing nice to say about any of them.

The rest of the teammates she didn’t pay much attention to—they either opted not to interact with Rio outside of practice or they were underclassmen (which Rio soon found she had a heavy disdain for once she was a sophomore). Altogether she barely considered her teammates as “friends” aside from Natalie and Van.

_________________________

The middle of February came around again—the entire month itself was always a mix of warm and freezing temperatures in Wiskayok. Some people had plans for Valentine’s Day that they made a month ahead (Jackie, for example). Seth danced around hinting who he would ask to be his Valentine (nobody was oblivious to the hints he thought were “sneaky” when the next thing he’d look at was Rio with the tenderest look in his eyes). Rio wasn’t dense—she knew Seth had some sort of thing going on for her, though it wasn’t very easy to believe at first considering that the only Valentine’s gifts she received were in elementary school in Miami back when it was mandatory for all the students to pass gifts out to the whole class. And then Seth started hanging around her more often: showing up to her locker (and sometimes getting there before Rio could and waiting for her there), buying tickets to whatever movie had come out that Rio had only expressed interest in for a few seconds (then faking an apology to his friends when they asked why they didn’t get any, saying “these were the only ones left, guys”), putting together cassette tapes of all sorts of genres and bands he thought she might be into. Seth often did other things for Rio, really dumb stuff like opening the door for her and taking an extra roundabout in the classroom so he could take her paper up to the teachers desk and turn it in for her so she wouldn’t have to.

Natalie sometimes teased Rio about it—for what reason she’d never understand, but she definitely knew that Natalie was secretly rooting for the both of them. Or maybe not—it’s hard for Rio to tell with Natalie (as well as anyone in general, but especially her), like when she’d poke fun at Rio for it when they’re hanging out with their dysfunctional friend circle or at soccer practice (and get everyone else in on her shenanigans in the process), but when it’s just the two of them she makes no effort to bring up how Seth always always took up whatever spot next to her. If their shoulders weren’t almost smushed together then it was him sitting right behind her with Rio between his legs and the front of his shirt almost brushing against her back. Jackie and a few other girls on the team thought Rio was dense when she said she didn’t think much of it and wasn’t reading into it at all.

As a result of all of that, it was an understatement to say Rio didn’t really appreciate the teasing and the shipping. The pressure she felt from Mari when she arrived at practice on some days when she asked her unofficial trademark question Rio was sure she’d heard more times than any other phrase in her life, “so how are things with Seth?” Completely platonic, is what she wants to say and possibly scream out to the whole team in hopes it’d give her some peace from their suggestive tones when they’d occasionally see her walking to practice with Seth glued to her side. She wonders if this is how rednecks feel when they say their infamous quote to voice their opinion on the lgbt community, ‘stop making everything gay,’ but then her thoughts are undermined when she remembers that’s about same-sex attraction and not boy-girl relationships.

Then she wonders how it’ll sound when she ultimately tells Seth that whatever they have is platonic when someone from around school takes it too far and assumes something extreme like sex (which unfortunately is looking to be inevitable, given that even the boys fucking baseball team is getting in on the teasing too, probably from Jackie’s doing, but Rio’s frustration towards any of them would be neither here nor there), only for Rio to find out Seth thought the same thing too and make a fool of herself for bringing it up.

But that instance didn’t sound very likely, anyway. Especially not when February went by in the blink of an eye and March rolled right around with a flurry of games coming up (including the one that following Saturday) and the very last thing that Rio needed to worry about became a fucking worry of hers.

It wasn’t the most romantic thing in the world, in Rio’s fair and inexperienced opinion. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be charmed by the rushed confession of Seth’s feelings for her just minutes before he was supposed to leave for a culinary exam he’d been scheduled to retake. She also wasn’t sure if she’d ever be charmed by him if it was something more intimate—maybe leaving a movie theater well into the night or sitting on the hood of his car at the park and eating sandwiches from Subway. Regardless of where or how it took place—in the middle of a busy atrium or with the chilly night air blowing through Rio’s hair—the sentiment would still be there. A sentiment she wasn’t clinging onto very tightly. She supposes Seth would still have been equally as nervous if he’d planned and orchestrated it ahead of time than if it was spontaneous like it was that day.

“I know this is extremely rushed and sprung on you—and onto me, too, cause technically I’m supposed to be in the cafeteria by now, but this isn’t really about me! Unless you think it’s not just you or me but it’s the both of us and this is just as nerve wracking and pressuring for you as it is for me—“

The incredibly slow and wordy build up wasn’t necessarily doing the trick for Rio. If it weren’t for the fact he was standing right in front of her (more specifically right in the way of her first period economics class) she would’ve been zoning out and looking at literally anything else aside from him. Maybe at the chipped wall painting that definitely was overdue for a new layer, maybe at her nails that suddenly became more interesting to inspect and mentally debate which color polish would look better than to look at the nervous wreck in front of her, maybe at her soccer captain strolling by with her usual strut and her quiet girl best friend beside her, or possibly at the dried gum that's been spat onto the floor some fifteen years ago.

Then came the inevitable million dollar question:

“—can I be your boyfriend?”

Seth, standing in all his loser glory, with his usual eyeliner smudged and heavily contrasting against his sickly pale skin and his absolute mess of haircut that Rio wasn’t sure even had a name, as well as his orange 2Pac shirt (whom she was sure he wasn’t even into) and his wildly unmatched khaki colored cargo shorts, looked at her with a nervous smile like this was the first time he’d ever talked to her. To anyone who didn’t know any better it might’ve looked just like it—Rio never had a more forced smile on her face than the one she brought up to her lips. At first she thought it was obvious it wasn’t very sincere, then over time it just melted and it became something like a flustered grin, because the more seconds that passed the bigger Seth’s nervous smile turned into a hopeful beam.

Rio was sure Seth knew she never had a boyfriend before—or ever even really done anything intimate, save for that one kiss she had back in Miami when she was at a 7th grade dance at the end of the school year. The closest thing to a kiss she’d ever done after that was hugs and sharing an icee with Natalie (and occasionally kissing her goodbye after games and parties—but that didn’t count). Rio was also sure Seth knew she didn’t necessarily understand the pressure that a ton of girls face when it comes to boys—like they’re expected to have a boyfriend as if it’s some universal rule you have to follow or else you aren’t really good for anything. She always wondered why it almost seemed like the concept of a heterosexual romance was being advertised at her every turn. She remembered a few weeks into her freshman year her mom asked her if she’d seen any “cute boys” yet. Her mother never stressed the concept of a straight relationship over Rio that much, but even when the amount of times the conversation happened was only a handful, she never failed to notice the undertone at the end of each and every one. Remember, Rio. It’s only natural to be attracted to men as a woman. Be with a man, why don’t you.

She never quite questioned it. Because god forbid Rio bring up the idea of her being into anything other than a traditional life with her male counterparts.

Nobody in the atrium was watching them, but the heat that crept up the back of Rio’s neck and seemingly attacked her face like a hot flash made her think that this was some sort of spotlight moment in a play where the only thing the audience could see was them, and the prying eyes felt like pointing fingers aimed towards Seth as if to tell her this is your destiny. She surely felt a fever was coming over her with how hot her face felt—her chest, as well. Her tank top felt like it was stuck to her, latching to her chest with the intent to squeeze and wring the air out of her lungs until she was a raisin. Her armpits were screaming at her to take her jacket off before they caught on fire, and she would’ve if she wouldn’t get dress coded by the deans lingering around. It wasn’t even that warm and fuzzy feeling that one of the girls from the soccer team described. It was sweltering, incredibly uncomfortable and it might as well set her whole heart on fire and burn uncomfortably in her chest the whole day.

Rio could see that Seth was visibly growing nervous the longer they both stood there in the middle of the hallway. Despite the bell having already rung and a few people sped past them because they were late for whatever reason, nobody stopped to look at them and question what the fuck they’re standing around for like they’re freshmen. When a hall monitor emerged from the doorway to the main hallway, Rio was pulled out of her train of thought and looked away from Seth.

“Uhh…” she began with no pre-orchestrated plan on what she would’ve said next. And she thanked whatever god was up there when the hall monitor practically sped his way over to the both of them, pushing his rather expensive looking pair of glasses up the bridge of his freckled nose and got ready to hiss for them to go to class so that she wouldn’t have to give Seth an answer (whatever answer that may be, she wasn’t necessarily sure yet but she wasn’t leaning towards the ‘yes’ side).

“Go to class!”

“Fuck off, Henry,” Seth frowned as he whipped his head around to look at the incoming hall monitor, watching him make no effort to stop power walking towards them seemingly with a notepad at the ready. For what reason he had such a portable thing on him, neither Rio nor Seth could ever find out, but they both assumed it wasn’t for any reason that would benefit either of them in any way, so instead of focusing on the more romantic aspect that Seth thought they had going on, they both opted to go their separate ways for the while and go to their given destinations before getting chastised by the helicopter hall monitor.

Rio was internally grateful that Seth decided to drop the initial topic and went away before she could be pestered any more than she already had been. She didn’t necessarily feel like listening to him explain to the hall monitor that instead of going to the cafeteria for the culinary exam retake he was spending the past five minutes standing there and asking out one of his only lady friends to be his girlfriend only for him to get nothing but a cheap smile and dead silence in return. Consider that his very late and very bland Valentine’s Day gift after having nothing to give him in return.

Although there came the embarrassing feeling of walking into class late and without a proper excuse as to why she was a whole three minutes late. She couldn’t think of anything to say when someone had opened the door for her as a result of all the pairs of eyes that suddenly became so interested in her tardiness, as if that’d become a universal entertainment for the whole school population.

Her economics teacher stood there at the chalkboard with her arms crossed and a small piece of chalk sitting between her fingers and with a raised eyebrow on her face. “Tardy pass?”

No, you moron, I just got here ten minutes ago and was immediately pestered by a guy who thinks I want him.

“No,” Rio drawled out quietly and almost shamefully, until she dared to look around the classroom and find none other than fucking Natalie Scatorccio sitting at the back in her usual spot with her usual smirk and her usual cocky glint in her eyes.

“Any valid reason as to why you’ve decided to express your tardiness?”

Rio hated that her economics teacher did this to everyone who was late, even if it was a measly three minutes. No, she obviously didn’t have a valid reason as to why she was tardy. It irritated her. And what was she supposed to say? The throes of romance got the best of her and rendered her a victim of Cupid’s unfortunate arrow? That she was being held up by a dude who wanted her to fit into the role of a “guy’s girlfriend”?

“No,” she grumbled out again, looking around again and letting her eyes land on Natalie, her face scrunching up slightly at the smirk that didn’t seem to want to leave. As much as it irked her she couldn’t really find it in her to be mad at her. Not just at that but in general—but she’d digress if someone were to ever ask why.

The teacher didn’t bother with publicly shaming Rio for being tardy. It was only eight in the morning, and frankly she hadn’t even taken attendance yet, much less started class. Though instead of showing her tiredness like a normal person would at eight in the morning she opted to be a bitch to her first period class, because everybody’s too groggy to pay attention to the way her eyes carry a tired glint to them despite having a bit of makeup on to cover her eye bags underneath.

Rio shuffled to the spot reserved for her in the back of class—not that assigned seats were a thing in this teacher’s class, since this kind of class was specifically for seniors, and she had just enough faith in said seniors that they could behave themselves with no seating arrangements that prohibited them from sitting next to their friends—Natalie’s shoe covered the seat next to her, with her leg stretched across the row and a shit eating smirk on her face.

“Nuh uh,” Natalie shook her head teasingly, her eyes staying on Rio as she stood there with an entirely unamused look. For the sake of not having the teacher get on her case again, Rio only kicked her leg away and took her rightful spot next to her best friend, tearing her impossibly heavy backpack off her shoulders and setting it on the floor next to her chair.

“You wanna tell me why you’re late?” Natalie prods, turning in her seat to face Rio. The teacher never bothered to pay any mind to the students in the back of her class who sat there for a reason—doing stuff and talking about stuff and doing anything and everything except paying attention to the class itself, which is why Natalie so casually turned to face Rio instead of facing forward.

“Don’t act like you have a leg to stand on,” Rio countered, turning her head to look at Natalie. “You fucking skipped classes before.”

“Yeah, but like,” She licks her lips as the gears turn in her head and she thinks of something else to say to defend her case. “That’s kind of expected of me. You’re kinda like a goodie two shoes, except you’re not that great.”

“Listen to the teapot calling the kettle black,” Rio lets out a chuckle meant to make fun of Natalie, furrowing her eyebrows with a grin that mirrors the cocky look on her face. “You aren’t up to people’s standards either, burnout.”

Around other people, like Seth or Laura Lee or Mari or the other handful of friends she has, it wasn’t very often that they saw Rio with a spunky attitude. Most of the time it was her acting the same way as them—mirroring their personalities and talking like them. Nobody ever really questioned that fact; verbally, anyways. A few of her friends wondered why she had such varying attitudes towards others at different times but they never actually asked her about it because they thought it was her way of being everybody’s friend. Natalie was no exception—whatever snarky and sarcastic thing she had to say, Rio had a quip ready on the tip of her tongue to keep Natalie on her toes. It was just like that between them and nobody else.

Maybe Natalie was into that. Probably not, but it was safe to assume for everybody that never spoke to her a day in their lives that she was into anything with the kind of reputation that surrounds her.

Natalie knows it’s all in good fun, when Rio calls her “burnout”. She doesn’t mean it like other people do when the word rolls off their tongue and seemingly lands in the mud puddle it was originally meant for. It doesn’t sound like a bitter taste on her tongue, it doesn’t sound like a punch to Natalie’s face. Instead it ignites a warmth in her chest that makes her feel a different way about the word. Like she shouldn’t give a damn what people judge her by calling her that, because as long as it carries a different connotation in Rio’s mouth, everybody else doesn’t matter.

“You’re avoiding the question, loser,” Natalie leaned her arm on her desk. “You’re late, dude.”

“No shit,” Rio snarked back, and a second later she ran her hand through her hair and let out an exasperated sigh. She knew Natalie wouldn’t stop being nosy about why Rio was late until she told her whatever it was she was hoping to hear. So instead she opted for a smartass remark.

“I was late cuz I was doing anal with your mom.”

“Interesting,” Natalie raised an eyebrow to accompany the now confident grin that’d taken shape on her face. “So do you want me to report the both of you before or after Regionals?”

“You know I’m only joking,” Rio reached a leg over to her left to lightly kick Natalie’s ankle. “It was something else. It was really weird.”

Natalie’s eyebrow stayed lifted. She didn’t look surprised at all and if anything she looked curious—which she undoubtedly was judging by the way she shifted in her seat to get comfortable. “Well don’t beat around the bush.”

Rio groaned. It was too late. Natalie was already invested in it, and Rio began wondering how long it would take for her to lose interest in it once she found out it was about Seth. Now she began to momentarily orchestrate how she’d say it without Natalie getting that pouty look on her face. Rio nibbled on her bottom lip; she knew that Seth was a rather unenjoyable topic for her (and frankly she felt the same despite being friends with him for so long), and she knew, even if Natalie didn’t say, that she only hung out with Seth because Rio did. And Rio only hung out with Seth because he was friends with one of Natalie’s other friends. Point being neither of them really had an opinion on him. That wasn’t a good thing.

“You’ll never believe it,” she started slowly; she still only had part of a plan orchestrated on how to say it without mentioning Seth. Her teeth let go of her bottom lip. “But, someone…”

“Someone…?” Natalie pressed, tilting her head forward. The sun shining through the window casted a glint over everyone in the room, though Rio wasn’t really paying attention to them. She was watching the way the light shone over the bleached blonde hair, as well as the light doing wonderful things for her jawline, and the warm look in her eyes (which needed no assistance from the sunlight) that she always got whenever she was looking at Rio. Reason being, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know; or maybe she did know and she never brought it up out of fear that it would change things between them. And obviously it would, but she didn’t want things to be complex. She wanted it to stay the same, to stay simple and easy and without question.

Moving on.

“Someone…asked me out,” Rio finally pushed the words out of her mouth like they were originally stubbornly tied into a knot on her tongue. She watched the warm glint in Natalie’s eyes fade. Her heart clenched slightly. It sounded weird anyways despite her half-baked efforts not to make it sound weird. Natalie almost looked disappointed if it weren’t for her attempt at covering it up with a snarky smile and a look of disbelief.

“So people do have low standards,” Natalie let out a dry chuckle, crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair. She crossed her legs next. “I almost feel bad for whoever it was.”

“Yeah, well, I could say the same thing about the guys who hit on you,” Rio rolled her eyes affectionately.

A pause. It’s only for a few seconds, but it was long enough for Rio to start thinking that what she said might’ve actually made Natalie upset before her train of thought was interrupted.

“Are you gonna tell me who it was or are you gonna make me guess?” Natalie quirked an eyebrow, her smirk solidifying into an almost genuine look. Maybe she manifested her own legitimate smile into existence. “Or is this shit all in your head.”

“Asshole,” Rio lightly kicked Natalie’s ankle again, earning a shove on her shoulder in return. “Why do you care who asked me out, anyways?”

“Why would I not give a shit? You’ve, like, never been asked out before,” the way Natalie said it so matter of factly nearly shoved it into Rio’s face that she could potentially have her first ever boyfriend today, in the instance she’d accept Seth’s confession with the open arms he was hoping for. Maybe the realization was there before and Rio was just avoiding it for whatever reason that pertained to wanting something else—someone else, though it seemed unlikely to Rio at that very moment.

“You’re so nosy,” Rio scoffed, shrinking away slightly and sitting properly in her chair as if to avoid the question by pretending to pay attention to whatever her teacher was saying. The way she shifted didn’t go unnoticed by Natalie’s watchful eyes.

“And you’re deflecting.”

“I don’t wanna fucking tell you,” Rio hissed, her eyebrows furrowed. Natalie narrowed her eyes at the sharpness in her voice; she could see the gears turning in her head and the process of eliminating going on in her mind’s eye. Where she got options she came up with, Rio would never know. But at some point between when she snapped and when Natalie finally clicked her tongue which signaled she had an idea of who it was, she came to the conclusion of who it was.

“It was Seth, wasn’t it?”

“It’s—“ Rio started, and she didn’t have a clue why. She couldn’t find a way to explain herself, much less figure out a way to make the whole thing not sound weird. The things she wanted to say were clogged up in her throat. The word vomit that tried making its way from her stomach just barely reached her mouth and left an unidentifiable taste on her tongue.

“I probably won’t even say yes,” she didn’t want Natalie to be upset if she did ever accept Seth. Like she already acknowledged many times before, both Natalie and Seth were indifferent towards each other. Why they were so weird around one another, that was between them and God.

“But you’re considering it,” Natalie retorted. It was only then that Rio noticed the smirk fell from her face.

“Kind of…” Rio started again. “But like, I don’t wanna turn him down and potentially ruin our friendship.”

“It’s not my place to tell you who you should and shouldn’t date,” Natalie held her hands up slightly in defense, signaling her surrender in an argument that never even started. Rio felt a familiar taste of disappointment replace the word vomit. “But if you say no and he doesn’t take it well, then that doesn’t sound like a dude you wanna keep around.”

“I know—you’re right,” Rio leans her elbow on her desk and rests a hand in her hair, frizzy from the humid March air she’d been trudging through just an hour ago to get to school just to avoid driving her car with no air conditioning. “I just don’t know if I like him or not.”

“Can you envision yourself kissing him?” Natalie quirked her eyebrow again in an attempt to give Rio the impression that she was already moving on and pretending there wasn’t any tension just half a second ago.

Fuck that. There was no way Rio could envision herself ever kissing Seth. He wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t dashing, either. She never paid too much attention to his lips but she imagined they weren’t very soft if she had any leg to stand on in comparison to Natalie—then again those “goodbye kisses” from leaving parties and games didn’t count. Not to Rio, anyways, and Natalie never made a big deal out of the whole thing being so casual despite the fact she was literally kissing her best friend. She was more than sure Seth wouldn’t even come close to being on her level. And doing more than kissing? The thought made her physically recoil in her seat.

And so came the weak “Yeah.” A lie. A fat one, at that. Natalie knew. She saw the way Rio made a face just a few seconds after such a blasphemous question was imposed on her.

“You’re such a shit liar,” Natalie grinned, like she had any idea just how much Rio truly began to resent the thought of having to kiss Seth. “Why would you wanna date someone you can’t even picture yourself makin’ out with?”

“Kissing and making out isn’t all there is to a relationship, is there?” Rio asked rhetorically. On the contrary she agreed with Natalie, but at the same time a very small part of her was curious. There’s always room for more: more money, more opportunities, more knowledge. Which means room for growth. Could she grow to like kissing Seth even if she’d never done so? Could she grow to like the idea of being with a man despite all her inner monologues against her mother’s rhetoric and her own pondering about her sexuality to prove otherwise? The universe does work in mysterious ways, after all.

“Not really,” Natalie shrugged. Like she knew anything about a stable relationship. “But it’s pretty strange if you’re with someone and you don’t even kiss them.”

“I guess,” Rio mirrored Natalie and shrugged in return. “But there’s other ways to show your love for someone without having to like…” she trailed off. She didn’t know squat about relationships either, the only knowledge she had about them was from watching the occasional romcom from time to time if she ever decided it was worth her attention. “Y’know. Get intimate.”

Natalie argued. “He’s just gonna wind up cheating on you.”

“And how do you know?”

“Well, for one, he’s a teenage boy. Two, he’d be stuck in a relationship where his girlfriend doesn’t wanna fuckin’ kiss him. He might think you’re the one cheating on him from all the times we kiss each other goodbye from games and parties.”

“That doesn’t count!” Rio whisper-yelled, which in turn made Natalie raise her eyebrows suspiciously. While Rio never saw or heard her make a big deal out of that whole affair being casual in Rio’s eyes or ever confronted her about it, Natalie did wonder why Rio was so insistent on it just being completely platonic. What was so friendly about kissing your best friend on the mouth? It wasn’t only kissing, either. It was the less physically intimate parts about them. Like when they’d sit on the bleachers share an orange creme soda together on the occasion that they got to the soccer field early and waited for practice to start. Or when Rio’s driving and she reaches a red light and they randomly turn to each other and gaze into the other's eyes until their moment of longing is interrupted by a rude honk from the car behind them. Being caught watching the warm glint in your best friend’s eyes and wanting to swipe your thumb underneath her eyelid doesn’t exactly scream “just friends!”

“Whatever you say,” and so Natalie decided to drop it. She figured it was better to just let it play out the way God intended than to try and fight it knowing damn well Rio probably would end up accepting Seth’s confession that Natalie was mentally sure wasn’t even sweet and considerate anyways despite saying otherwise just a few minutes ago.

Rio couldn’t find the words to keep the whole conversation going. Curse her awkwardness. Thinking back now, if she wasn’t so awkward earlier when Seth approached her with an inconvenience about him to match her uncoordinated conversation skills, this whole thing wouldn’t be an issue. She would’ve actually had the balls to turn him down and not give a rats ass if it sent his ego balled up into a knot and rolling down a very bumpy hill towards frown town. Heaven forbid she actually engages in what she’s feeling like a normal person. Heaven forbid the cat doesn’t get her fucking tongue.

A personal grudge she holds against herself. A few, actually, and part of said grudges pertain to a bunch of other people too, so as not to make it look like plain self deprecation to anyone who asked. Her own inability to speak for what she wants (which in this case is to not be Seth’s girlfriend), she sort of blamed on her mother. All those undertones that meant to say get a fucking boyfriend already, Rosario rather than do you wanna invite your friends over for your birthday? assuming Rio would include her guy friends in the process. She never did, by the way. Her letting other people make their assumptions about her without saying a thing to them to prove that their stereotypes weren’t true. Well, scratch that. A few might be on point, like her playing soccer and wearing alternative clothing. A grudge she holds against a few of those popular girls Rio calls “Heathers” despite having differing names and all those baseball and football guys who date cheerleaders and all look and act the same: white, buff, brown or blond hair, tall, and fucking stupid.

Grudge number three: her dad cheating with another woman, which ultimately resulted in Rio and her mother moving up north away from Miami. As well as a little brother whom Rio had no idea even existed until one day in her freshman year when this boy showed up on her doorstep and explained to her that he was her brother. She wasn’t too pleased with it.

Quite a few grudges. No biggy.

The silence that dragged between Rio and Natalie made the rest of the class feel like time was purposely moving slowly so that the both of them had to sit in their own awkward atmosphere they built up when Rio decided to announce that someone had their eyes on her as some sort of punishment for being too much of a pussy and not doing anything about the tension that started growing between them in their sophomore year.

Yes, tension. Between Natalie and Rio. Not bad tension, per say, but it did make things a little weird for them. For a time Rio wasn’t used to seeing Natalie in a light that brought a heat to her face—and no it was not from “the sun” despite all the times Rio would argue that it was whenever one of her annoying teammates would ask about it.

“I think she’s got the hots for Nat…” Van would whisper to Taissa.

Such a shocking thing to discover when they’ve been kissing each other on the mouth since tenth grade.

And the bell finally rang, much to Rio’s dismay that it didn’t ring about 30 minutes earlier. It certainly would’ve saved her the urge to rip her hair out simmering inside her. She was pissed off, and she couldn’t put a finger on the reason why. Not at Natalie, who seemed to be mildly irritated with her in turn, though neither of them made a point to talk about it because it would eventually fade away by the end of the day when practice started from the natural waves of the school day that washed over them whenever they saw each other again. If anything, Rio thought it was safe to assume that her anger was pointed at Seth, even though in reality he hadn’t really done anything wrong and he was only expressing the feelings for Rio that strummed evenly in his bloodstream like guitar strings playing a soft tune. She didn’t like that. Not really, anyways. She didn’t like the thought of being his girlfriend, of actively touching her lips to his and cuddling up with him and spending time with him in that way.

She was confused about herself, yes, but she wasn’t stupid. She could tell between what she wanted in general and what she didn’t want with certain people. She could tell that whatever Seth had going on for her, she clearly didn’t have it going on for him. And she didn’t think she’d ever have it going for any other dude that was bound to make their move on her in the foreseeable future she was supposed to make it to.

Then again, she was only a teenage girl. All sorts of things change in a teenage girl’s mind.

_________________________

LATER THAT DAY.

Natalie wasn’t too pleased with Seth. A mini grudge birthed itself in the back of her head to which she made no effort to keep back there. No effort to hide it, no effort to make it known to Seth that she didn’t feel anything else for him other than resentment.

Rio’s considering it.

Actually considering being Seth’s girlfriend, as far as she knew. Which in Natalie’s defense wasn’t a lot, given that their whole conversation earlier that morning wasn’t to show that they were champions at communicating with each other.

Defense fucking failed. Seth knew right off the bat that Natalie was pissed with him for the day. No need for assistance from one of her other bonehead friends to poke and prod at the wrong buttons today. Seth’s big fat Cupid’s arrow shaped thumb poked at the big red button at the center of Natalie’s chest, right above her heart, with Rio’s name on it and sounded off just about every alarm in her head that nearly sent steam blowing from her ears.

Fucking cool it, Nat. You’re being a weirdo. She’d tell herself after she noticed the look Seth gave her like she had grown an additional head after she’d barked a little too loudly that she was “fine” when she’d shown up to her English class looking a little too not fine.

This must be how Shauna feels, was what ran through her head for the rest of the day. And if Natalie knew anything from catching glimpses from the all-too obvious yearning in Shauna’s eyes when they lingered on Jackie, she was not gonna let herself go down that miserable Shauna Shipman path.

Not that she hadn’t been subconsciously going down a much similar path the whole time. Maybe a sister path, without a knockoff Jeff for the time being up until that day. It seemed that the whole week before spring break was a curse for Rio and Natalie. Like life had it out for them any time it saw them getting closer and closer until they were a hair’s touch from being satisfied with life as it was.

Practice had been waiting for Natalie with a shit eating grin on its face. Just like it always was, with the usual hour and a half of running laps around the soccer field for 10 minutes as a warm up that, more often than not, left a few beads of sweat sliding down her temples. Only for her to find out that her best friend had decided to fucking skip. Then it was accompanied with the whole team discussing what they were going to do for spring break instead of actually practicing despite Jackie’s speeches and lighthearted demands to do so (hypocrisy’s sassy head reared in in the form of Jackie standing over a few teammates crouched down on the grass with a hand on her hip and talking instead of kicking balls around). Natalie wasn’t too excited for spring break, and, to her halfhearted surprise, nobody else was, either. She would usually hear something interesting about whatever Rio was gonna do for the break, but to Natalie’s dismay resulting in her raising a lovely middle finger to the sky on her sweltering odyssey home after declaring life had pulled Rio from practice to spite her wanting to see her again, there was nothing to fucking hear.

Of course, that wasn’t all. Just like people do when either Jackie or Shauna weren’t there (which was an extremely rare sighting), the team asked “Where’s the rest of you?” referring to Rio’s empty spot at her locker next to Natalie. She was half tempted to come up with some bullshit lie. Another half of her was tempted to very angrily tell them a short and brief story that someone was trying to take away her only chance at happiness. Then she decided both ideas were dumb as shit and went with the blatant obvious she’s not here.

Yeah, no shit, Natalie. No other reason for you to walk around with a storm cloud over your head.

Practices without Rio were surprisingly boring, in Natalie’s opinion, which in this case wasn’t very credible. Surprisingly, because it wasn’t too often that Rio skipped practice and usually it was for something serious. They were boring because there wasn’t anyone around to get on Jackie’s nerves or condescendingly talk shit with Mari and let Natalie eavesdrop on it because Rio knew she’d only pester her about it later despite Natalie’s mild disinterest in gossip, so she’d listen anyway. Nobody was around to walk home with Natalie even when she didn’t want to go home—just about anywhere sounded better than her shitty trailer littered with cigarette butts and beer cans and her mom who didn’t give a rat's ass about her.

The next few hours dragged on like nails against a chalkboard. The humid, sweltering heat seemed to melt time into wax and make it move slower than usual, and normally Natalie wouldn’t mind it. She wasn’t too fond of the teasing from Van, who seemed to be one of the first to see right through Natalie’s grit teeth and the straight face she wore the entirety of warming up (running laps around the field).

“What’s with the storm cloud over your head?” Van asked once she’d finally sat down on the grass, taking a spot next to Natalie instead of her usual place next to Taissa during the second half of warming up: stretching until their muscles felt like rubber.

Natalie doesn’t ponder her answer which came out in her usual monotonous voice. “Just had a shitty day,” not necessarily a lie. Her day was only mildly ruined when she learned that Seth had decided to test his luck in his dating pool with an ambiguous answer in return. It wasn’t as bad as she made it out to be, though if Van knew the extent of the underlying issue behind why the day was so “shitty” then she’d never hear the end of it. “Typical Wednesday.”

“I hear ya,” Van made a face to show to Natalie that she agreed, and that she’d drop asking her why she was so grumpy through teasing comments. It only lasted a few seconds before she smirked. “Y’sure it ain’t got anything to do with a certain Rio-shaped gap next to you?”

“Absolutely, cuz my entire life revolves around Rio showing up to practice.” Natalie extended her legs all the way out in front of her before leaning over, stretching her arms out to touch the tips of her cleats with her fingers. She purses her lips to keep a satisfied groan from escaping the back of her throat.

Van scoffed. “Might as well,” she pulled her legs into a butterfly stretch, setting her hands on her knees and leaning forward slightly. “With the way you’re acting like a piss baby.”

“Piss baby,” Natalie grumbled under her breath with a shake of her head, pulling herself back up and running her hands up her legs before making a stop at her hips. “That’s a little dramatic.”

“Hey, man,” Van sat up straight and raised her hands slightly. “You’re the one who’s grumpy here.”

A beat. A long one, long enough for Natalie to think Van already moved on from pestering her about the real reason she’s so moody.

And once again Van proved her wrong.

“Maybe she’s just late.” Came her lame attempt at making Natalie not look like she just ate a lemon. She turned her head to get a clear look at Van, still looking like she ate a lemon.

“It’s been twenty fucking minutes, Van. She’s not coming.”

“Chillax, holy moly,” the way Van, even if it was playful and lighthearted, acted like Natalie had said something completely out of line (which, okay, maybe the aggressiveness wasn’t necessary, but it was completely justified!) made her frown deepen. She forced her eyebrows to relax and got herself to pull out her resting bitch face almost immediately.

“Worst case scenario, she’s runnin’ off making lean and probably doing lines off some aliens ass crack somewhere.”

Natalie’s eyebrows furrowed in a natural response to Van’s attempt at bringing her spirits up before she even had time to process the sheer absurdity of it. Her head whipped back around to look at Van with the scowl that’d curated on its own.

“Is that your own version of comfort?” Because anything short of what Van just said could be closer to comfort and reassurance than that.

“I’m just saying, dude. At least she probably isn’t doing that.”

Natalie shook her head. It’s more humorous than comforting, probably the closest thing to amusement she’s had other than pretending to find comedy in the mental picking apart of the sentence Someone asked me out in her head, only to find none but laugh it off anyways because laughter was always the best medicine when your heart is actively sinking into a pit in your stomach.

Stupid heartache, man.

“Doin’ lines without me,” Natalie tuts, pulling herself up from her spot next to Van and popping her neck in a way that left a sharp pain in the left side of her nape. Just another thing to be pissed about. “Nah. She wouldn’t do something so exhilarating as that without me.”

Van follows suit after her, pulling her goalie gloves out of her pocket and pulling them over her fingers. “Worst case scenario, you wind up asking Shauna where the hell your girlfriend is. Don’t they got last period together?”

“My girlfriend?” Natalie squinted her eyes incredulously as she glared at Van.

“Oh, that’s what you ask about,” Van gave her a look. “You’re so bad at hiding it.”

“There’s nothing to hide,” in the history of bad lies ever told, that was the worst of them. Natalie couldn’t have made it more obvious than if someone stuck a hat over her head with a sign that said I’m in love with Rio Marcini! And it is actively ruining my life!

“Right, right,” Van gave Natalie a brief nod and looked off to the side as she smirked. “So does she have a date to prom yet?”

“Fuck if I know,” Natalie set her hands on her hips as the look on her face changed from irritation to exasperation. Fuckin’ Seth Mitchell, probably. The poorly familiar taste of jealousy settled in her mouth as the thought of Rio showing up to prom with the skunk-raccoon breed looking guy hanging off her arm. She figured she’d have to douse out the jealousy in her tastebuds with a bit of vodka from her mom’s fridge.

“Why do you care, anyways? It’s not like my best friend’s date to prom is any of your business.”

“How do you, like, not know if she has one? Every best friend knows their best friend’s date to prom?”

Practice without Rio on a measly Wednesday before spring break was nothing short of annoying.

_________________________

A BIT LATER THAN THAT.

It wasn’t serious at all, unbeknownst to Natalie who’d made the assumption that Rio skipped practice for something serious, unbeknownst to Rio that an assumption was even made.

Natalie didn’t get very much out of asking Shauna if she knew what was up with Rio; all she got out of Shauna after asking, very roughly, you know where that asshole went? was a measly explanation that Rio’s mom had come up to pull her out for the rest of the school day. Natalie couldn’t say it irked her; she would’ve given up her right arm if she didn’t have to go to her 7th period English class with Seth and the other boneheads to her right and bitchy, cunty, stereotypical popular girls to her left that liked to bother her like it was a hobby.

Lucky for Rio, who didn’t even have 7th period English class, it wasn’t anything extreme like Natalie had presumed. If anyone asked, it would’ve been hard for Rio to explain, but occasionally when her mother felt like being nice, she’d do stuff for Rio that she didn’t typically do. For some people it might’ve been the bare minimum, but her mother didn’t want Rio to waste her energy on practice that day and instead spend the rest of her afternoon “sprucing up,” as her mother said when Rio got in the car when the question was lingering on the tip of her tongue.

Sprucing up for what, exactly, Rio had no idea. Part of her thought her mom had super hearing or some sort of telepathic powers that extended all the way to her school and could read her mind pondering on the million dollar question imposed on her that morning, and that was why her mother wanted her to spruce up. What her mother had in mind was getting Rio’s nails painted in the color of her choice (which, upon choosing black, made her mother’s nose crinkle for a half second before putting on a supportive grin in an attempt to silently tell her that whatever made Rio happy, she was happy), getting her hair trimmed, to which Rio was actually grateful for as she’d made plans a while ago to get her hair fixed up before States, then taking a trip to some restaurant Rio had never even heard of and getting take out.

Only for them to run into her little brother hanging around the counter talking to the dude standing behind the register.

Hugo, her little brother, with short and still somehow messy black hair, one of the thousands of plain black shirts he owned, jeans that looked like they’d been through hell and back and dragged to absolute filth, converse that looked like they experienced the same kind of evil, and a singular silver nose piercing that somehow made him stand out from all the other alternative boys at her school. His other saving grace was the glasses on his face and the fact his skin was just a tiny bit darker than hers and a voice so distinct it was easy for Rio to clock even if they were in a crowded room. He had the same slouch to his posture, which was given the way his arms were crossed over the white counter he was perched in front of on his feet with a toothy grin that, in some other peoples minds (probably Seth or Kevyn Tan from 3rd period ASL), seemed outwardly friendly. Rio knew better. Hugo was grinning stupidly wide at the cashier and had a twinkle in his eyes that told her it wasn’t a smile that said he wanted to be friends.

Rio and her mother stood there in awe as they watched Hugo casually stand there talking to a cashier he’d never met in his life before that day as if he hadn’t traveled all the way across the country from the west. At first they didn’t actually think it was him, and then he let out a hearty laugh in that annoying voice of his that pulled them back to reality and made them realize that, yes, Hugo was there once again.

It ended with Rio opting to hop in the back of her mom’s car instead of staying up front where her bag was so she could talk to Hugo on the ride home, while he ate all the fries and left the three of them only the mediocre, ridiculously greasy burgers and the nuggets that came with his.

“The fuck are you doing here?” Rio whispered, squinting her eyes before raising her hand when the car turned at an angle where the sun shone right into her eyes and nearly frying her retinas in the process. Hugo handed her a fry.

“Shit hit the fan in Montana again,” he whispered back as quietly as his pubescent voice would let him. He pulled a fry out from the bag before he looked back down and realized he had the last one. He turned back to Rio and ate it right in front of her.

She only scoffed. That was the same thing Hugo said every time he popped into Wiskayok. “Is that what you’re gonna say every time dad gets even slightly involved with the cops?”

“Better safe than sorry!” Hugo reached over and swatted Rio’s arm with his hand before he went back to holding the paper bag like it was his baby. A moment of silence lingered between them and Rio’s mother, who’d been eavesdropping on what they were talking about even when she made it seem like she was focusing on driving. Rio figured out the signals a while ago when she noticed her eyebrows would raise every time one of them said something shocking.

“I got a game on Saturday,” Rio whispered again. Hugo turned his head as if to ask if Rio still played soccer like he’d forgotten over the time he’d been back in Montana. “You wanna come see?”

“And watch y’all lose? Why not? It’ll give me something to clown on you for.”

“Ass,” Rio swatted Hugo’s arm again, biting back the smile that had attempted to make its way onto her face. “We’ve been undefeated all season. And we got States coming up soon in May, so if you think you’ll be stickin’ around long enough you can watch us make it to Nationals.”

“I heard about y’all playing our team a few weeks ago,” Hugo reached his arm around to scratch the back of his head. An invisible lightbulb went off over it, and a shit-eating grin took form on his already annoying face.

“You still friends with that Natalie girl?”

Rio’s face fell for a moment when Natalie’s name tumbled from Hugo’s mouth. The image of that detached look on her face flashed in the back of her mind, then she remembered she hadn’t said anything to her mother or to Hugo about Seth. She cringed internally, though it quickly went away when the thought crossed her mind that if they won the game coming up on Saturday, then Rio would be get to enjoy the temporary escape from her reality when her and Natalie inevitably shared another “goodbye kiss” that shouldn’t have sent a shiver down her spine and a hotter flush to her cheeks as many times as it did.

“Why are you suddenly so interested in my friendship with Nat?”

Hugo simply shrugged like he knew nothing of the real intentions he had behind asking. “Dunno. Just thought I’d ask if y’all are still platonic after all the things you said about her over the phone.”

Rio felt a wave of panic rush through her as her blood went cold.

She slapped her hand over Hugo’s mouth to keep him from saying a little too much while her mother was still around to hear it.

“Shut up,” she took her hand off of Hugo’s mouth, and he raised his eyebrows slightly. A look flashed across his face, a knowing look, one that told him that he was getting somewhere when he asked if Rio and Natalie were still platonic.

The rest of the ride back to Rio’s house was primarily quiet. Hugo once complimented Rio on her hair, though it hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d seen her; it was a bit messier and frizzier than it normally was, but spring weather had its conditions. In exchange for nice breezes (and only nice breezes), humidity filled the air and allergy season came in return. Occasionally, Rio’s mother would look in the rearview mirror and send a glance at Rio, something she’d started to do ever since Hugo opened his mouth and dared to suggest that Natalie and Rio were anything more than friends. Rio would’ve liked to think she didn’t care and that she was aware it wasn’t really any of her business, but the look in her mother’s eyes wasn’t exactly warm and welcoming, even if there was the slightest chance that what Hugo said was completely false. It disappointed her, and it only served to egg her on even further to wander away from Natalie.

The neighborhood which Rio and her mother lived in (plus, temporarily, Hugo thanks to his inviting himself in) was within walking distance to the trailer park Natalie and Van lived in. Rio could’ve gone out to her backyard and climbed up the fence and she probably would’ve seen the trailer park from there, if it weren’t for the overgrown grass and bushes that Rio nor her mother never bothered to clean up. Their house itself wasn’t quite the dump it would seem to be, given that they were so close to the lowest of the low one can get in Wiskayok. A medium brown covered the exterior that extended to the size that a normal house would’ve been, with a few windows on the front left side and one on the right with the door painted a darker brown in between them. The garage stuck out from the doorway, going past half of the walkway which led to the porch guarded by a veranda painted in the same shade as the exterior and extended to the side of the house. The roof was just plain black shingles that absorbed way too much sunlight; one of them had practically dangled on the left edge of the front near the garage and seemingly had been waiting for some divine force of wind to finally knock it out of place.

On the right side of the house was Rio’s room. It was only slightly bigger than her mother’s room, but the difference was so small that her mother couldn’t even tell and she’d been happy as a clam to see hers. The inside hadn’t started out very special; over the last few years they’d been there it was obvious Natalie had a bit of an effect on the way it was styled. In Rio’s freshman year her room only consisted of her bed, her desk, her drawer, her closet and a few posters here and there that she’d collected before she left Miami. In comparison to that, by the start of her senior year, fairy lights hung around the crevices of her ceiling and all around her room with a substantial amount of posters her and Natalie had been hunting for (in an effort to make Rio’s room have more personality, since the first time Natalie came over she’d pointed out that “the walls look a little bald.”) and trinkets were hung and held up by thumb tacks and pins. A nightstand was moved in next to Rio’s bed, where it’d been filled with all sorts of stuff: the top drawer with her numerous pairs of sunglasses, as she liked how convenient it went with her hair and her style, a few old cassette tapes she kept for the sake of nostalgia, and a few things of hair ties Rio made no use of in the two years since Jackie had given them to her from having a few too many to fit in her own drawer and had been towering up on her bathroom sink; the middle drawer keeping her polaroid camera that Lottie had given her for her birthday during the summer between sophomore and junior year (to which she’d put to use quite often), the rest of the drawer having been filled top to bottom with tons of polaroids of random things (most of them were of her and Natalie, which she’d never ever throw away no matter how much space they took up); the bottom drawer held a few of her notebooks she’d used to the very last page to write all sorts of things in. Most of the time she’d written something that involved whatever she had to complain about (which is one of the things she did best) or paragraph after paragraph about her own self reflection and a few attempts to psychoanalyze herself. The attempts were, more often than not, futile, but a few exceptions were made by the universe whenever Rio had been staying up at an hour which would earn an earful and a snatch of her walkman from her mother, and her lamp had been lit up just enough that she could see what she was writing and surprised herself in the morning when she’d woken up to find her open notebook containing things she’d concluded about herself in the dead of night when she was alone and had nothing to show for her enjoyment of life. Other times they’d been about whatever shenanigan she’d been up to with Natalie for the day or simply stuff about her best friend that she occasionally flipped to the pages of when she was feeling bored and caught herself smiling at the mere sight of her name written in the lead of her own mechanical pencil.

The left side of the house was where her mother slept in her slightly smaller room that she was oh so delighted about. Her mother took it upon herself to buy a bunch of paint during the early months of living there and painted her walls a rose-gold color to make herself feel more at home. A giant dream catcher was hung on the wall right above her bed, because that was the sort of thing Yesenia Marcini believed in. Her room wasn’t much special, just the typical things a mother would usually keep in there. Her mother specifically restricted Hugo from ever even going in there as a byproduct of the heavy distaste for his father still left simmering inside her. She tolerated him nonetheless, only because Rio loved him as her half brother. Hugo sometimes slept on the couch, that way he had the whole living room to himself at night while the other two left him alone. Other times he stayed in Rio’s room despite her demands for him to go away and slept on the floor after Rio caved in and gave him one of her pillows and an old blanket.

In between that was, ideally, a bathroom down the hall from their rooms on the left side, and a laundry room which also gave way to the back door. At the front of the house was the kitchen and living room, with typical kitchen and living room necessities. In one of the drawers in the kitchen was a specific set of silverware separated from the rest of the forks and knives and spoons. One of each set aside for Natalie, which went to prove she practically had her own place to stay there whenever she didn’t want to go home (which was more often than what was considered normal).

Upon arriving home, which took a little bit longer than Rio would’ve liked, considering that the air inside the car felt just a tiny bit suffocating for the second half of the ride, they’d been greeted with their back gate being propped open despite the fact none of them had even touched in the span of the past several weeks. The murky brown, rickety, wooden gate was swung open just a little bit, but it was enough to suggest that it was wide enough for someone to easily slip through. Rio had half a brain to turn to Hugo and raised an eyebrow at him to silently question him, only for her to have received a confused look in return. The suspicion sat uneasy in Rio’s stomach, and she felt that her need for food had vanished bit by bit as she was the first one to get out of her mother’s car to go and check out what it might’ve been. A stupid idea, she realized when it dawned on her that she wasn’t armed in any way and that she could’ve been walking into a fight with some dude with a gun or a knife at the very least. She was careful to look for footprints and shoe prints that weren’t hers, and when she found none, she assumed that the wind had somehow knocked the gate open. But then she looked at the lock and saw that for the gate to be opened that far, someone must’ve purposefully pulled the lever down and pushed the gate open.

Nothing was back there, Rio found out after she’d tiptoed around the yard and tested if the backdoor was unlocked. It wasn’t, but of course that did nothing to ease the anxiety that’d worked its way up her neck and squeezed around her throat like barbed wire. She earned herself an earful from her mother after that, the words having gone in one ear and out the other when she’d droned on abou how “that was a stupid idea” and “are you stupid? You could’ve gotten hurt, child!” Rio did find that her mother liked to use the word “stupid” a lot in those few minutes she’d spent yelling at her instead of letting it go and opting to eat in peace.

Rio and Hugo ate in her room. Despite Rio’s protests for Hugo to go somewhere else (even when she knew he would’ve had to face the consequences of her mother glaring daggers at him from time to time), he stayed in there anyway. He claimed that her demanding he leave her room only served to egg him on and stay there out of spite. He also told her that she didn’t have much of a choice anyways and that he’d make himself comfortable on the floor at some point that night. Another way to ruin her fun, in Rio’s mind, but she let it go nonetheless.

After they ate, Rio procrastinated on her homework instead of doing it right away like she usually did. Hugo was a massive distraction to her, one of many in her life. They talked and bickered and made jokes instead of leaving each other alone so Rio could focus and Hugo do…whatever it was that he could’ve done with little resources to entertain himself. The hours passed and before the two of them knew it, Hugo had first yawned like a child and gave Rio a sleepy-eyed look that told her he was beyond ready to sleep. She couldn’t blame him. He’d probably spent all day getting from point A to point Z just to wind up in Wiskayok from Montana with her mother, then had to sit around town and talk to people he didn’t know.

The dead of night came. Hugo was barely awake on the floor; he claimed that the roughness of the carpet was irritating him, and Rio did sympathize with him, but she wasn’t about to give up her spot on her bed just because her 15 year old brother couldn’t handle sleeping on some carpet.

Rio, on the other hand, was wide awake. Her mind wracked with the anxiety that came from having taken a peak in her backyard earlier and even went as far as to search her house for anything that was out of the ordinary to her. She found nothing after she’d even looked in the cabinets in case the hypothetical burglar was a dwarf and in the fridge in the event that they happened to like the cold. Earlier, Hugo had to bully the anxiety out of Rio and told her that she was being stupid for being worried about it even after it was confirmed that no one had broken in. It wasn’t quite shaken out of her head, but she pretended anyway just to get Hugo to shut up.

She glanced over at the clock on her nightstand next to her bed. 12:03 AM. Her body was practically glued to the bed. If Hugo had gotten up his gaze would’ve been able to cut through the darkness and see the evident uneasy look on her face. Her heart beat so loud in her ears she was sure it’d brought him back from nearly being unconscious. A part of her envied him for being able to be so carefree on the floor in the middle of the night. A fear lingered in the back of her mind that someone or something was hiding under her bed, waiting for her to make the wrong move so it could come up from the edges of her bedframe and snatch her, and eat her whole. The image of something dark and ugly and shadowy and deformed coming up from right underneath her played over and over in her mind’s eye, and it sent an absurdly unpleasant shiver down her spine. She was stuck. She was frozen with fear, too scared to make any movement or try to come up with any reason in her mind that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of.

She wasn’t about to bother Hugo to make her realize that there isn’t a boogeyman under her bed because one, it embarrassed her to think that she needed such support from her little brother, and two, it wasn’t like she had a choice in the matter, anyway. She couldn’t even bring herself to lift her head up, and earlier she’d strained the muscles in her eyes to the point she surely felt she’d pop a blood vessel just to get a good look at her clock. Rio thought of a time a while back during her freshman year when she’d accidentally told Natalie about her massive fear of the dark. Natalie told her, in an attempt to shake the fear out of her habits, that most of the time there wasn’t anything in the dark to be scared of, and if there was, then she’d never have to face it alone. Her attempts amounted to little, obviously, but in Rio’s foolish and young ears, Natalie had basically said that she’d be her knight in shining armor during times like that night when Rio was spooked to the point even her voice had shrunk in its own shell and refused to come out from the back of her throat.

Natalie. Natalie, Natalie, Natalie. Rio already began to miss her bleached blonde hair and her eyeliner that’d been around her eyes for so long they could’ve been passed as real circles around her eyes like a raccoon. The sound of Natalie’s voice in her head saying she wouldn’t have to face her fears alone, all raspy and low, brought a warmth to her chest that seemed to work on thawing out the chilling fear that’d taken her body hostage.

She glanced over at the nightstand again. Her eye muscles strained once more, but this time she couldn’t find any ounce of giving-a-damn in her body to stop and let her eyes rest. Instead her gaze lingered on the telephone sitting on the top next to her alarm clock. The blackout curtain which was hung a few months ago let in just a tiny sliver of moonlight that shone on the top of the beige paint of the telephone. Rio contemplated on reaching over and risking getting snatched away by the boogeyman apparition accumulated by her imagination and dialing Natalie’s trailer and beckoning her over through the other end of the line. Then came a different kind of fear that was incredulously worse than the boogeyman under her bed. The fear that she was being needy, the fear of Natalie finally telling her to fuck off or just being straight up ignored.

The angel on her right shoulder told Rio that she should just take a few deep breaths and think happy thoughts. She was half tempted to reach over and flick off the angel for having made such a dumb suggestion when the department of sunshine and rainbows and cupcakes and bunnies in her brain was out of order for the time being and the nightmare department had been working overtime for the past thirty minutes since the lights went out.

The devil on her left shoulder told Rio to pick up the damn phone and call Natalie and completely ignore the off chance that she was asleep. Screw the boogeyman, the little red devil on her shoulder said, if it means you get to see your girl tonight, who gives a fuck if it’s Pennywise?

Wait— “your girl?”—

Pick up the fucking phone! And take a breath, damnit.

Rio mentally flicked the invisible angel off her shoulder and pulled her arm out from underneath her blanket. She leaned over, seemingly breaking through the ice that’d caked up around her limbs, and reached for her phone with her hand.

It shook in her palms, sweaty from the anxiety bubbling beneath her skin. She swallowed quietly, her tongue darted out to wet her lips after her entire mouth had gone dry. Her left hand reached over and dialed the number, her finger shaky and nearly missing all the digits and almost dialing a completely different number instead. She inhaled and exhaled weakly shaking her head before she pressed the phone to her ear.

Rio silently cursed the universe for having made the dial tone be so loud in a quiet room. She wasn’t even sure if Hugo was unconscious yet and she was calling someone past midnight. Third times the charm, or however the fuck it goes, she thought to herself when the possibility popped up in her head that her mother could’ve used her wicked spidey sense and sped over to her room to catch her on the phone. She gulped and wordlessly prayed to every deity in the history of theism and religion and mythology and whatnot that that wasn’t the case at all.

The stretch between Rio dialing the numbers and the tone starting seemed to be far too long for her liking.

One Mississippi.

A bug outside her window began buzzing. A moth, a bee, a wasp, whatever. The buzzing was so loud it might as well have been right in her ear.

Two Mississippi.

Maybe Nat isn’t home, Rio thought in an attempt to console herself and make up for the nervousness that’d started to swirl back in her stomach. She knew Nat sometimes wouldn’t go back home until the wee hours of the morning; she knew because most of the time it was because the two of them had stayed out all night.

Three Mississippi.

Okay, she better be fucking home—

“Hello?”

Rio’s teeth released her bottom lip, tearing off a piece after she’d been subconsciously chewing on her lap for the past few moments. A sigh of relief worked its way up her throat before she pushed it down once she remembered she wasn’t by herself.

“Hey, Nat,” Rio whispered. She turned her head slightly to try and see if Hugo was awake; he wasn’t. She felt blessed.

“Rio. The fuck are you doin’ calling me this late at night?”

Rio should’ve known that Natalie wouldn’t have enjoyed getting a call in the dead of night, regardless if she’d been asleep or not. She chuckled quietly.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m…I just feel like I’m about to have a literal nervous breakdown, or something.”

Natalie was silent on the other end. Rio couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad thing. On the other end, though, Natalie was swallowing a lump in her throat as she tried to think of anything to say that might’ve served to calm Rio’s nerves.

“You there?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry I called you, Nat. You–”

“It’s fine, doofus. Are you sayin’ you need me to come over?”

Rio felt a smile trying to stretch across her face. She let it; it was the kind of smile that made her cheeks warm and her heart beat just a little bit faster. The fretful clouds in her head began to clear up already.

“If it ain’t too much trouble, yeah.”

A beat. A moment of silence.

“But be quiet, though. My little brother’s here.”

“Hugo?”

Rio was sure Natalie had the phone pressed between her head and her shoulder at that moment. She heard the shifting coming from the other end, as well as her getting up to go grab her boots. Her grin widened.

“Yeah.”

Another moment of silence. For once, the lack of noise was comfortable.

“I’ll be at your window, idiot.”

“Thanks.”

“Mhm.”

Rio huffed out another chuckle when the dial tone followed immediately after. An excitement bubbled up in her chest as she looked at her window like that would’ve magically made Natalie appear in an instant. The fear was still there; it died down quite a bit in the moments that she and Natalie had called. It still lingered in the crevices of her shoulders and the hollows of the corners of her knees, watching, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike again and bind Rio to her bed until an inevitable Natalie-shaped antidote arrived.

The minutes passed. Rio glanced every few seconds at her clock and sometimes watched the minutes change from 12:20 to 12:21. She was impatient. She felt a hunger for Natalie’s very presence that was causing a pit to form in her stomach. She moved over to see if Hugo was still fast asleep and found him in a strange position that one could only be found in if they were having the best sleep of their life. So much for complaining about it earlier.

An hour passed. The hunger grew, and the more her body craved—no, not craved, because that’s weird— itched, for a lack of better words like craved, the more the fear came crawling back in a force that multiplied with each passing second wasted alone. Rio’s throat felt as if it had closed up on her. She knew first and foremost that Natalie would never abandon her for anything, but in the back of her mind she couldn’t stop the new and improved wave of anxiety that’d washed over her.

Her chest felt weird. A little too weird for her liking (the bar wasn’t very high to begin with). All prickly and impatient, her heart beat with the same connotation as someone tapping their foot on the floor, waiting.

Rio swore if she thought hard enough she could’ve manifested it into existence sooner: letting Natalie in, sneaking her around Hugo’s sleeping body and pulling her in by the collar of her leather jacket Rio knew she’d worn, laying in silence and listening to her breathing or whispering so quietly they could barely even hear themselves. Another smile tugged at her lips.

Then, she was certain she’d never ever feel this impatient for Seth, or anyone else, really.

Tap tap.

Rio’s head snapped upwards, the moonlight that’d shone through the sliver of her curtain gap casted a twinkle in her eyes unbeknownst to her. She cautiously crept out of bed, despite the fear that’d switched to taking root in her feet, and tiptoed to her window. Her fingers wrapped around the edge of the curtain to pull it back and revealed a head of bleached blonde hair glowing in the moonlight facing the side. Rio marveled in how Natalie looked even at this time of night, even if she’d taken an hour to get there.

Rio reached for the lock and nearly jumped out of her skin when it made a sound that Rio was sure would’ve woken up her mother. Rio and Natalie both locked eyes for a moment; Natalie looked much more calm than Rio had at the moment, with her hooded eyes and expressionless face. Rio looked a little… scared shitless, but she didn’t see any sign of Natalie brewing up some sort of tease in her head, so she brushed it aside. She pulled her window open and let Natalie crawl in after she’d taken off her boots.

The little devil on her left shoulder giggled in her ear when her heart started pounding in her chest again. Like it knew why it was doing that in the first place.

Natalie dusted off her black, dusty jeans (she’d tripped over a root and fell on her knee which resulted in a hole right where she landed) and messed with the hem of her shirt, fingers flitting back and forth over the edge like she was nervous. Was she nervous? Or just stalling so she didn’t have to say anything? Rio couldn’t tell, so she chose not to pay so close attention to it and opted to close her window and pull back her curtain instead.

“You didn’t say he was sleeping right there,” Natalie finally turned to face Rio after she spared the sleeping Hugo a glance. A teasing tone was in her voice, for reasons unknown to Rio other than the fact that was how she always sounded around her.

“I did say to be quiet, didn’t I?” Rio whispered back. She balled her fingers into a fist to stop herself from reaching out and grabbing Natalie by her jacket to pull her into bed with her. Natalie saw it. She said nothing.

“You don’t look like you’re on the verge of tears,” Natalie commented quietly, and gave Rio a once over. Rio swallowed and rolled her eyes, stepping away from Natalie and moving back to her bed. She sat in the middle criss-cross and looked at her pointedly.

“You look perfectly fine to me.”

“Hm. Must be the affection talking.”

Natalie scoffed. Her lips quirked into a grin as she ran her tongue over her front teeth. “You’re full of shit, y’know that?”

“Listen to the teapot calling the kettle black.”

Natalie flipped Rio off before she stepped over to Rio’s bed, kneeling beside it and resting her arms on the mattress. “Game recognizes game.” Rio inhaled quietly and looked at the edge, then back at Natalie. She raised an eyebrow.

“What, I got somethin’ on me?”

“No, idiot,” Rio chuckled quietly. She leaned over on her side and propped her head up with her hand, her other arm over her waist. “Our back gate was open earlier.”

“And?”

“And, it was what was giving me grief earlier.”

“Yeah, I still don’t follow.”

Rio internally groaned as she tilted her head back and clenched her jaw for a moment. Natalie huffed out a stifled chuckle.

“I, um…I kinda got scared. Like, what if something was under my bed?”

A moment of silence stretched between them. Rio let her head fall and her eyes met Natalie’s gaze, which held a look to them that told her she was about to pull some smart remark. Natalie raised an eyebrow as their eyes locked again, and a smirk smudged the corner of her mouth. She broke eye contact (which Rio was enjoying) to take a quick look under Rio’s bed, ducking her head under the bed frame and looking around with her naked eyes at the darkness that her best friend was oh so deathly afraid of. Then, with a stifled snicker, she went back up, and the size of her smirk had doubled.

“Well, no sign of the boogeyman over here,” Natalie shrugged. Her smirk lessened, and it turned into a softer version of itself. Possibly one of Rio’s favorites. “But, if it’s of any use to calm you and your nerves, you would’ve smelled something. Or heard something. Or someone would’ve jumped out as soon as the lights went off, or whatever.”

“You seem very confident in what you’re saying,” Rio remarked quietly. Her arm that was around her waist moved so that her hand rested flat on her blanket. Natalie didn’t want to think that it was Rio silently daring her to put her hand over hers and let a portion of her warmth engulf her for just a moment.

It was tempting, like dangling a carrot in front of a pig.

“Told you you’d never have to face these things alone, remember?”

“And you clown on me for being a sap.”

Natalie pulled away slightly from the edge of Rio’s bed with another quiet scoff under her breath. She shook her head, and she wondered if she should’ve just ignored the call and went to sleep immediately after. And though the thought floated around her head, she knew she’d never be able to deny her anything. Traveling from her trailer park to Rio’s neighborhood seemed about as easy as breathing, like going to such measures as walking around Wiskayok alone at night just to see Rio and make sure she was okay was a second nature to her.

Jealousy was like a snake hiding in the bushes. She’d stepped too closely to it, and it darted out and got her. The familiar taste of envy festered on her tongue like she was about to throw up. She found her emulous thoughts from earlier in the day circling back to the current moment and ruining it. She wondered, very rudely, if anything like this would ever happen with Seth instead of her. If Seth would ever be the one to sneak in through Rio’s window and have intimate moments where Rio held her hand out and wordlessly dared him to touch her like that. If Rio would ever call him for any reason in the middle of the night. If Rio would ever even think of him in such a vulnerable moment.

Obviously not, the little angel on her right shoulder told her. If that’s the case, you wouldn’t even be here. Get over feelin’ sorry for yourself.

“That’s somethin’ you and Seth both got in common,” Natalie knew she’d only just tested some very dangerous waters. She looked back at Rio to see if her face had changed at the mention of her chaser, to see if her suspicions were right or wrong and to either feed the doubt in her mind or try to extinguish it. “You’re both fuckin’ saps.”

“I don’t see what Seth has to do with this,” Rio mumbled, and she looked down at her blanket. Her fingers messed with the material of it, picking at it with her nails and smoothing her hand over it.

Natalie wasn’t about to let Rio know that her mundane response gave her an absurd boost of hope.

“Isn’t he your boyfriend now, or whatever?”

She’s playing dumb on purpose, Rio, the little devil on Rio’s left shoulder whispered into her ear as she looked back up at Natalie. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“Y’know, this isn’t doing much to soothe my nerves.”

“Sorry,” Natalie murmured halfheartedly. She knew Rio was onto her. She didn’t care at that point. “You’re avoiding the question, though.”

“Not that this’ll do anything to serve as a balm to the big fat jealous wound over your heart, or whatever,” Rio started quietly. She looked around her room and hoped that some sort of god that had the power of forcible amnesia would make Natalie drop the topic already. “But he isn’t my boyfriend. I haven’t even seen him since this morning.”

“That’s right,” Natalie quietly snapped her fingers, like she really did magically drop the subject. “Your mom checked you out. Shauna told me.”

“You actually asked?”

“Well, yeah. I was wondering where my best friend went. I thought you’d totally blown off practice to go be with Seth or…do lines off an alien’s ass cheek, or whatever.”

Rio stifled a laugh, a hearty laugh this time, as she bit her lip with her teeth and pressed her lips together afterwards. “An alien’s ass cheek?”

“Gotta be as open minded and inclusive as I can be.”

“Yeah, you’re quite the progressive.”

Natalie laughed quietly, leaning her face into the mattress to stifle her voice with the blanket. Her shoulders shook slightly as she giggled, her hand snaked up the side of the bed and rested next to Rio’s hand. A daring move, one that Natalie’s proud of since Rio didn’t back away or retreat, didn’t tuck herself in her turtle shell and hide.

“You still don’t look like you’re on the verge of tears.”

Rio squinted her eyes. Her grin lessened into a tender smile. “You must be a fixer upper of sorts.”

“Is that the affection talking?” Natalie teased, earning an eye roll and a light swat in her arm from Rio as they both chuckled together in sync. Natalie glanced over at the alarm clock. 1:30.

“You think your mom would lose her shit if you let me stay the night?”

“Why, you gettin’ tired?”

“No,” Natalie’s grin turned bashful as she looked down at the blanket, her bangs working to cover her face.

“So you just don’t wanna leave, then?”

“Something like that.”

Natalie looked back up at Rio and they locked eyes again. She could’ve sworn she saw Rio’s gaze quickly drift down towards her lips then raced back up to her eyes like she’d been caught stealing from the cookie jar. It was one of the signals that this was one of the few times they found the conversation wasn’t going anywhere. She knew how that night would’ve ended, how her short time at Rio’s house would come to a stop. How she’d be inevitably sent off. It both hurt and soothed her heart that Rio couldn’t think of any other way to dismiss Natalie other than to seal the bounds of their time together with a touch of affection that left the both of them feeling flushed.

“Well,” Rio started after she cleared her throat nervously. Her heart was in her throat, and she knew as well. “I can guarantee you, you’d definitely be banned from coming over ever again.”

“You did well sneaking me in tonight,” Natalie shrugged one shoulder and looked at Rio pointedly. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“And what we know would make her pop a blood vessel.”

Natalie let out a dry chuckle, but she knew nothing was funny. She knew Rio’s mother wasn’t very fond of Natalie (as she wasn’t very fond of anyone but herself and her daughter), and she had the suspicion that her mother was starting to suspect the both of them having thoughts about each other that didn’t exactly pertain to the friendship they’d kept up over the last four years. She was right, of course, to have an inkling that they saw each other as anything more than friends. If she knew they’d been secretly kissing each other goodbye from time to time whenever they’d leave parties or games she definitely would’ve kicked Natalie to the curb and forbid Rio from seeing her again if she could help it.

Natalie looked over at Hugo, as if his snoring had ever distracted her before. “It’s a wonder how he didn’t wake up.”

“That’s all you, dude. You’re the one who kept laughing.”

They both sat in silence for the next few minutes. As they went by, they both sent each other knowing glances, and they weren’t the good kind. They both knew that they’d eventually bid each other goodnight and send Natalie on her way home with yet another invisible present to keep in her drawer and think about during her more vulnerable moments when no one was around, save for herself and a cigarette between her fingers.

Rio initiated it. An off chance, since it was usually Natalie who grew a pair first and went in.

They touched and they brushed and they ghosted each other’s lips. Natalie felt a rush, the same old rush she got every time they kissed and yet it never bored her. She felt she could’ve sat there for the rest of the night, simply bidding each other goodnight without ever actually leaving or going to sleep, knowing that come morning when the sun came to blind her with the bleeding reality that it would all be swept under the rug. And though this was the first time a moment like this actually happened, it felt so familiar to her, in a way that gave her deja vu and had her head nearly spinning off her body.

“Good thing he isn’t awake,” Natalie whispered once she reluctantly pulled back. Her tongue darted out as she looked up at Rio, and her lips immediately pressed together to hold back what she really wanted to say.

“I don’t think he’d snitch if he saw,” Rio muttered. Her lips felt like they didn’t belong to her body at that moment.

Natalie’s eyebrows drew closer together. She wanted to ask why, but a light turned on out in the hall and highlighted the bottom of Rio’s door. The light poured into a small part of the room, only a sliver, but it was more than enough to send a wave of panic crashing over Rio’s heart and frantically usher Natalie out as quietly as she could without Rio’s mother noticing her spidey sense going off and taking a detour to Rio’s room to see if anything was out of the ordinary.

Natalie went home a little bit afterwards. She walked around for a while, letting the cool breeze that followed the late hours of the night distract her from the dull pain that’d twisted in her chest at the knowledge that she was only a dirty secret at the moment. And that knowledge would never have the same moonlight shed upon it again, and instead the tears choked her heart that she’d never let out.

Natalie went home after her walk around Wiskayok in parts she knew she wouldn’t get snatched up in. She went to sleep a little bit afterwards, with her invisible present tucked to her chest instead of her drawer, the first ever.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets x reader #natalie scatorccio x reader #wlw yearning #cursing warning #natalie scatorccio #lottie matthews #taissa turner #van palmer #yellowjackets x oc #jackiestailor

77 notes · View notes

minicookiedemonx · 5 months ago

Text

I’m going to be posting all my stories on my page as well!

Hi guys, it's mini back with another Gojo fanfic!! This one is more up my alleys in terms of what I am into. So I hope you guys enjoy! I present to you.

DEFYING GOJO; A Tale of Dominance and Desire

Summary: Gojo and the femreader are a couple; Despite the female reader initial defiance, you quickly becomes enthralled by his expert touch and commanding presence. As their passion intensifies, your is pushed to the brink of submission and back again, discovering the thrill of being dominated by the man who can bring you to the edge of pleasure and pain.

Warnings: BDSM, borderline CNC, toy play, edging, slapping, choking, hair pulling, degradation kink, teasing, fingering, brat kink

Word count: 4k

You never intended to let things escalate as they did, but you couldn't help it. The evening's events led you to sit in Gojo's opulent car, with his faithful chauffeur driving you home. You were all alone. You gazed out the window as the city lights merged into a stunning mesh; you could admit that you were more than a little tipsy.

You began to replay the events of the night over and over in your mind, and it was utterly tantalizing.

It was a formal ball hosted by the finance company Gojo worked for, attended by many high-profile clients. While Gojo had always enjoyed public play, tonight was important. Networking was crucial for the company's survival.

And you might have been selfish tonight, prioritizing your erotic pleasures over the company's interests. To be honest, you couldn't care less, but it meant something to Gojo. A part of you felt guilty, while a larger, more sensitive part of you yearned for the punishment that would inevitably follow your reckless decisions.

You teased, taunted, and maybe even flirted with one or two patrons, but you knew what you were doing. No matter how much you blamed the alcohol as a feeble excuse to deflect Gojo's warnings, it was all on you. "Get in the car. Go home. We'll discuss this when I get back," Gojo said sternly, his anger barely concealed beneath his authoritative commands.

As you recalled the night's events and fantasized about all the different ways you could be punished, your phone rang. You picked it up, and Gojo's contact information lit up your screen in the dark car, casting a pale glow on your face. You smirked. No matter how much he disciplined you, you couldn't help but misbehave.

You let the phone ring a few more times, savoring each passing moment that made Gojo's blood pressure rise. Finally, you decided to answer. "Hello," you answered innocently. At first, Gojo didn't say anything; you only heard his breathing, as if he was trying to maintain control. You could hear voices in the background, indicating that Gojo hadn't left the ball yet.

"When I get home, you better be on your fucking knees. And naked," he growled before hanging up, leaving you breathless and eager.

You pondered whether you would follow his instructions or not. Submitting would be beneficial in the long run and might even lead to a reward. But in Gojo's unpredictable state, he could devise a series of punishments that would leave you both blissful and in pain, a perfect storm. As the chauffeur pulled up to your elegant home, you stepped out of the car, unable to ignore the fact that your panties were soaked through.

After entering the house, you pampered yourself with skincare, lotion, and oils. You styled your hair naturally yet presentably and contemplated your plan of action. Would you submit or disobey? You chose the more scandalous option.

You picked out a casual cropped tank top that accentuated your breasts and tight short-shorts that did the same for your rear. No panties, of course. You sat on your bed, flipping through one of your recent reads, not paying much attention. Your phone buzzed beside you, displaying a notification with Gojo's text. "Be ready for me. I'll be home in 20." You smiled at the screen before setting your phone back down, not even bothering to reply.

That would really infuriate him.

As you continued to read, you heard the front door unlock, open, and close with a bang downstairs. You loved it when he was angry; that's when he fucked you the best.

You heard his footsteps pause at the foot of the stairs, probably realizing that you had disobeyed him. You would have given anything to see the look on his face right now. Then, you heard his footsteps ascend the stairs, heavy with each step. You continued to read, pretending to be unaffected by his intoxicating presence.

Gojo burst through the door, and your eyes met his, making it evident that he was livid. His brows knitted together, and his lips slightly parted as he panted, as if every primal instinct within him was about to break free. "You were supposed to obey my commands. You should have been naked, kneeling before me, but instead, here you are, being defiant."

He took slow, deliberate steps toward the foot of the bed. By now, you had set your book aside, your back pressed against the bed frame, knees drawn to your chest. Your arms wrapped around your knees as you looked at him, mischief lurking beneath your gaze.

"What made you think I'd listen to you?" you challenged, "It's not like you own me or something." You rolled your eyes, and when they returned to Gojo, the fierceness in his gaze sent a shiver down your spine. He reached forward and swiftly pulled you down to the edge of the bed by your legs. Suddenly, he was on top of you.

His body pressed against yours, the heat emanating from him, and his pheromones filled your senses, driving you wild. He leaned in close enough for your lips to nearly touch, his soft white hair falling around his face as his piercing ice-blue eyes held you captive.

"On the contrary, I own every part of you," he murmured, his thumb tracing your lips, "Your lips," then trailing down to the valley between your breasts. "Your breasts," his fingers continued to glide over every area of your body he claimed. "Your pussy," but before he could reach your aching core, his grip shifted to the back of your head. He grabbed your hair with one hand, lifting your body to sit on the edge of the bed.

As he held tightly to your hair at the back of your head, he brought his face level with yours. "And it's about time you fucking understood that." With that, he used your hair to guide you to stand up. He released his grip before stepping back, turning to face you as he approached his favorite leather chair.

Once he reached it, he turned to face you, sinking into the chair with ease. He beckoned you with a crooked finger, "Come here. Now."

You gradually approached Gojo until you were merely a few feet away from him. One hand rested on the chair's arm while the other stroked his chin, as if he was pondering how he was going to proceed.

"Strip," Gojo commanded with a stern tone, leaning forward in his chair to observe you more closely. You bit your lip as you slowly began to remove your clothing, starting with your top. You crossed your arms over one another, hooking your hands underneath the hem of your shirt before lifting it over your head and tossing it to the side as seductively as possible. You then began to shimmy your way out of your tight shorts, stepping out of them, leaving you completely naked before Gojo.

Once you were entirely bare, Gojo exhaled loudly, easing back into his chair. He ran his fingers through his hair, "God, your body is fucking perfect. If you weren't acting like such a naughty slut, I would take you right here, right now." He stood up and walked towards you, slowly circling you like a shark stalking its prey. He stopped behind you and leaned towards your ear, "But naughty sluts don't get rewarded."

Gojo bit your earlobe before forcefully smacking your ass, causing you to gasp loudly in response. He soothed the lingering burn by roughly grabbing your ass with both of his hands. "Mm, baby, the things I'm going to do to you," Gojo whispered in a husky voice. He slid his hands between your legs, dragging his finger from your clit, all the way through the slit. Gojo moaned, "I love how wet you get for me; it makes me want to fuck you so bad." He teasingly inserted the tip of his finger in and out of you.

You rocked your body against the rhythm of his fingers, desperate for more. Gojo tsked at you before quickly removing his hand. He stepped in front of you and put the same finger that had been inside you in your mouth. You made eye contact with Gojo as you eagerly sucked on his fingers. Gojo hummed at the sight, "But only good girls get rewarded, remember?"

"Now I'll give you one more chance...if you apologize like a good girl, I might throw in a reward...or two..."

You kept your gaze on the floor, contemplating how you wanted to play this. Though submitting would bring many pleasures, being defiant caused a thrill out of you like no other. Nothing felt better than being dominated by Gojo Satoru.

Gojo, sensing your hesitation, knelt down beside you, his face inches from yours. "You know, it's not always about the punishment," he whispered, his breath hot against your ear. "Sometimes, it's about the surrender. The trust. The release." He paused, his eyes searching yours. "Don't you want to experience that with me?"

Finally, you raised your head to meet his gaze, your eyes flashing with defiance. "I'm not sorry, Gojo," you said, your voice steady despite the pounding of your heart. "I won't apologize for something I don't believe I did wrong."

Gojo's eyes narrowed, and for a moment, you thought you saw a flicker of surprise in their depths. But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a smirk that sent a shiver down your spine. "Is that so?" he drawled, his voice low and dangerous. "Well then, we'll just have to continue with the punishment, won't we?"

He walked back towards the play cabinet, his movements fluid and graceful like a predator stalking its prey. You couldn't help but watch him, your body tense with anticipation as you wondered what he had planned next. Would he choose the crop again, or perhaps something else entirely?

As Gojo rummaged through the cabinet, you took the opportunity to assess your situation. You were on all fours, completely naked and vulnerable, with no idea what Gojo had in store for you. A shiver of excitement ran down your spine at the thought, and you realized that this was exactly what you wanted - to be pushed to your limits, to feel the sting of the crop and the heat of Gojo's body against yours.

With a triumphant grin, Gojo emerged from the cabinet, holding a new toy in his hand. It was a paddle, similar to the one he had used earlier but with a slightly different design. You couldn't help but gulp at the sight, wondering how it would feel against your already tender skin.

"Now, where were we?" Gojo said, his voice dripping with mock innocence as he approached you with the paddle. "Oh yes, you were about to receive your punishment for being such a naughty girl."

He raised the paddle above his head, and you braced yourself for the impact. But just as he was about to bring it down, he stopped, his eyes narrowing as he regarded you with a mixture of amusement and frustration.

"You know," he said, "I'm starting to think that you actually enjoy this."

You couldn't help but smile at that, your defiance shining bright in your eyes. "Maybe I do," you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. "Maybe I like the way you make me feel, the way you push me to my limits and make me crave more."

Gojo's eyes darkened at your words, and for a moment, you thought you saw something resembling desire flash in their depths. But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by that infuriating smirk once more.

"Well then," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "I think it's time we found out just how much you can take."

And with that, he brought the paddle down, the sound of it connecting with your skin echoing through the room as you cried out in a mixture of pain and pleasure.

Gojo's eyes never left yours as he raised the crop, the air in the room charged with anticipation. You braced yourself, your heart pounding in your chest, but instead of bringing the crop down on your exposed skin, he merely traced it along your back, the leather cool against your heated flesh.

"Naughty girls don't get rewards, remember?" he whispered, his breath hot against your ear.

"But maybe, just maybe, if you beg nicely..."

You gritted your teeth, refusing to give him the satisfaction of hearing you plead. Instead, you met his gaze head-on, your defiance shining in your eyes.

"I won't beg, Gojo," you said, your voice steady despite the trembling in your limbs. "I won't give you the power to make me beg."

A slow smile spread across his face, and for a moment, you thought you saw something akin to admiration in his eyes. But it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by a predatory glint that sent a shiver down your spine.

"Oh, but you already have, my dear," he murmured, his voice low and dangerous. "Your defiance, your determination... it's all a form of begging. Begging me to break you, to make you submit."

He leaned closer, his lips almost brushing against yours, and you could feel his breath on your skin. "But I'm not going to do that," he continued, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Not yet, anyway."

Gojo, however, was not one to give up so easily. He could see the fire in your eyes, the defiance that made his heart race. He loved it, craved it even. It was a challenge, and he was more than willing to rise to the occasion.

"Very well," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "If you won't submit willingly, then I'll have to make you."

With that, he reached into the cabinet and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Your eyes widened at the sight, a mixture of fear and excitement coursing through your veins. You had never been into bondage before, but the thought of being completely at Gojo's mercy was intoxicating.

"Get on the bed," he commanded, his tone brooking no argument. You hesitated for a moment, your mind racing, but ultimately, your curiosity and desire to experience this new form of play won out.

You climbed onto the bed, your heart pounding in your chest as Gojo approached. He grabbed your wrists, his touch firm but gentle, and secured the handcuffs around them. You tested the restraints, finding them secure, and a shiver of anticipation ran down your spine.

"Now, we'll see how defiant you are," Gojo murmured, his voice a soft growl as he loomed over you. He ran a hand down your body, his touch feather-light, and you couldn't help but shiver at the sensation.

He began to explore your body with his hands, his touch lingering on your most sensitive areas. Your breath hitched as he teased your nipples, rolling them between his fingers, and you felt a dampness between your legs.

"Spread your legs," he commanded, his voice a low rumble. You complied, feeling vulnerable and exposed, but also incredibly turned on. He ran his hands up your inner thighs, stopping just short of your aching core.

"Please," you whispered, your defiance crumbling in the face of your desire. "Please, touch me."

Gojo grinned, a predatory glint in his eye. "Finally, some submission," he purred, his voice dripping with satisfaction. He dipped his head between your legs, his tongue tracing your folds, and you gasped at the sensation.

He continued to pleasure you, his skilled tongue driving you to the brink of orgasm. Just as you were about to fall over the edge, he stopped, pulling away with a wicked grin.

"Not yet," he whispered, his voice a tantalizing promise. "You'll beg for it first." Gojo backed off the bed to strip himself of his clothing before returning on top of you.

"You're such a stubborn little thing," Gojo growled, his eyes dark with desire.

"But I love a challenge."

He straddled your face, his arousal pressing against your lips. You opened your mouth, and he forcefully thrust inside, fucking your mouth with abandon. He moaned as he thrust deeper, his grip on your hair tightening as he used your mouth for his pleasure.

"You like this, don't you?" he taunted, his voice heavy with lust. "Being used like a cheap whore, taking my cock down your throat."

You gagged and moaned around him, the sensations overwhelming as he continued to degrade you. Finally, with a grunt of satisfaction, he came, his release filling your mouth as you struggled to swallow it all.

He pulled away, a satisfied smirk on his face. "Now that's what I call a good girl," he said, his voice dripping with condescension.

But your defiance was not so easily broken. You glared up at him, your eyes blazing with determination. "I'm not done yet," you declared, your voice hoarse but strong.

Gojo's eyes widened in surprise, and then he laughed, a deep, rumbling sound that sent a shiver down your spine. "Oh, I can't wait to see what you have in store for me," he said, his voice full of anticipation.

He returned to his position beside you, his hand reaching out to tease your body once more. You braced yourself, ready for the next round of his relentless assault. You were determined to show him that you were not so easily broken, that your defiance would not be easily quashed. He began to tease you once more.

Gojo's smirk widened as he watched your defiance, the fire in your eyes only serving to fuel his own desire. He leaned down, his lips close to your ear as he whispered, "You want it so badly, don't you? To feel me inside you, to be filled and used."

His fingers teased your entrance, circling your clit before slipping inside you, his thumb rubbing circles over your sensitive nub. Your body trembled, your breath hitching as he brought you closer and closer to the edge of release, only to pull away at the last moment.

He then positioned himself between your legs, his tongue tracing the same path his fingers had just moments before. He teased your entrance with the tip of his tongue before delving inside, his hands gripping your hips as he feasted on your sweetness. Your body bucked, your cries of pleasure filling the room as he brought you closer and closer to the edge.

"Please," you gasped, your voice barely audible as you pleaded with him. "Please, let me come."

Gojo's laughter echoed in your ears, a cruel sound that made your heart race. "Beg for it," he demanded, his voice low and dangerous. "Beg me to fuck you."

You closed your eyes, your body shaking as you whispered the words he wanted to hear. "Please, fuck me. Use me. I'm your whore, your toy. Do whatever you want to me."

Satisfied with your submission, Gojo removed the handcuffs from your wrists, flipping you onto your stomach before pulling your arms behind your back and cuffing them together. He positioned himself at your entrance, his arousal pressing against your folds as he teased you with the tip.

"Are you ready to be fucked?" he asked, his voice heavy with desire.

"Yes," you gasped, your body trembling with need. "Please, fuck me. I need you inside me."

Gojo thrust forward, filling you completely as he began to pound into you from behind. Your cries of pleasure filled the room, your body trembling as he brought you closer and closer to the edge. And this time, when the pleasure threatened to overwhelm you, he didn't pull away. Instead, he drove you over the edge, your body shaking as you came undone around him.

Gojo's smirk widened as he gripped a handful of your hair, pulling your head back to expose your neck. He leaned down, his lips close to your ear as he whispered, "You're mine now, and I'm going to fuck you until you can't walk."

He slapped your ass, the sound echoing in the room as he began to pound into you from behind. His grip on your hair tightened, his other hand wrapping around your throat as he choked you, the pressure sending a thrill of fear and excitement through you.

"You like this, don't you?" he taunted, his voice heavy with lust. "Being used like a worthless whore, taking my cock from behind."

"Please," you gasped, your body trembling with need. "I need to come. Please let me come."

Gojo's laughter echoed in your ears, a cruel sound that made your heart race. "Beg for it," he demanded, his voice low and dangerous. "Beg me to let you come."

You closed your eyes, your body shaking as you whispered the words he wanted to hear. "Please, let me come. I'm your dirty little whore.”

Gojo's thrusts grew more frantic, his grip on your hair tightening as he pulled your head back, exposing your neck to his biting kisses. He slapped your ass again, the sting mixing with the pleasure coursing through your body.

"You're so tight," he growled, his voice low and rough as he fucked you harder. "So fucking tight."

He choked you harder, the pressure sending a thrill of fear and excitement through you. It was a dangerous game, but you trusted him completely. He was in control, and you were his to use as he saw fit.

"Please," you gasped, your body trembling with need. "I need to come. Please let me come."

Gojo's laughter echoed in your ears, a cruel sound that made your heart race. "Beg for it," he demanded, his voice low and dangerous. "Beg me to let you come."

You closed your eyes, your body shaking as you whispered the words he wanted to hear. "Please, let me come. I'm your good girl. I'll do anything you want.”

Gojo pulled out of you, flipping you onto your back before he repositioned your legs near your head. He loomed over you, his eyes dark with desire as he wrapped his hand around your throat, choking you as he slammed into you.

"You're so fucking wet," he growled, his voice low and rough as he fucked you harder. "Your pussy is gripping my cock so right baby.” Gojo moaned loudly, whimpers escaping his lips here and there.

He leaned down, his lips close to your ear as he whispered, "You like this, don't you? Being used and degraded like the dirty little slut you are."

His words degraded you, but they only served to fuel your desire. You were his to use, his toy to play with as he saw fit. And in that moment, as he fucked you rough and violent, you knew that you would never be satisfied with anything less.

The handcuffs dug into your back, but you didn't mind. The pain was a welcome distraction, a reminder that you were alive and at his mercy. You were his to use and abuse, his toy to play with as he saw fit. And as he choked you and fucked you harder, you knew that you were exactly where you wanted to be.

As Gojo continued to pound into you, he placed his hands on your throat. His grip tightened, the pressure making your head spin. His thrusts grew more erratic, more desperate as he chased his release. You could feel the coil in your stomach tightening, your own climax imminent.

"I'm going to fill your dirty little pussy up with every drop of my cum," he growled, his voice thick with lust and possessiveness. "You're going to cum with me, understand?"

You nodded, unable to form words around the pleasure coursing through your body. You were so close, so fucking close.

With a final, brutal thrust, Gojo came, his body shuddering as he filled you up with his seed. The sensation of him cumming inside you sent you over the edge, your body convulsing as you came around his cock.

He pulled out slowly, his spent length slipping from your body. You could feel his cum running down your thighs, mixing with your own juices. You lay there, panting and spent, your body aching in the best possible way.

Gojo loomed over you, his eyes dark and satisfied as he watched you. "You did well," he said, his voice low and approving. "You were a good little slut for me."

You smiled up at him, your body still buzzing from the aftershocks of your shared climax. You were his, his toy to use and abuse as he saw fit. And in that moment, as you lay there covered in his cum, you knew that you would never be satisfied with anything less.

HOPE YALL ENJOYED!

#gojo satoru #jjk gojo #gojo x reader #jujutsu gojo #gojo x you #gojo smut #gojo x y/n #gojou satoru x reader #jjk smut

111 notes · View notes

gizchinaes · 1 month ago

Text

Xiaomi TV S Mini LED 2025: Revoluciona la calidad de imagen y el diseño con nuevas funciones inteligentes

Xiaomi ha lanzado oficialmente su nueva serie de televisores Xiaomi TV S Mini LED 2025, que ya está disponible para reservas anticipadas. Este movimiento subraya el compromiso de la marca con el avance de la tecnología de visualización, el diseño estético y la funcionalidad inteligente. La serie recientemente presentada ofrecerá cuatro tamaños de pantalla diferentes: 55, 65, 75 y 85 pulgadas.…

#tecnología de visualización #televisores 4k #xiaomi tv s mini led

0 notes

thecranberriesslut · 5 months ago

Text

Californication, Pt. 3

Summary: The last part of my mini 'series', it's your last night of vacation and you've got only one thing on your mind, doing Joel.

Pairing: No-outbreak! Joel Miller x Fem!Reader 'Cara'

Wc: 4k

Warnings: Big age gap, but still very much legal, (Joel is 40-something, referred to as 'old man', reader is 18, referred to as 'little girl'), dirty themes, dirty talk, smut.

Notes: Last part of this, enjoy... I wrote this for some closure on the story bc apparently you horny tumblrinas need them to fuck. Jk love you all, more fanfics coming stay tuned.

Californication Pt. 1

Californication Pt. 2

Suntanned legs, a nose that's a little burnt—just right, so that it looks like you're wearing blush all the time. The smell of nature, heat, and chlorine. You were on your third day of vacation in Palm Springs, California. Everything was right—except for the fact that Joel hadn't spoken to you since your little late-night rendezvous a couple of nights ago. You thought you had finally done it; you'd gotten the man that you had fantasized about every single day since the 7th grade. But no—Joel had left you satisfied, but ultimately, alone.

Palm Springs had still been a blast for you and Sarah. You had tanned, listened to music, explored the area—you even found a couple of cute guys, a few years older than you. But after that night with Joel, you had a gnawing feeling that a boy your age was never going to cut it again. Sure, boys your age could sometimes be sweet, caring, fun… but the thing you had with Joel—it was downright animalistic. The pure desire that had led you to lay down on his bed, pantless, listening to his every instruction like a lost puppy—it was something else. Indescribable urge.

It's not like you didn't try to seduce him. The past three days, you had tried every trick in the book. You'd worn the shortest shorts you owned, dropped things just to bend over to pick them up in front of him, and even pretended to accidentally pour something on your shirt in the kitchen. So, you'd have to take off your shirt and reveal the tiny black bikini top underneath. But regardless of all these borderline pathetic tries, Joel's attitude towards you was more Catholic priest with sworn celibacy than anything else. Although he had had no problem showing off his abs at the pool, asking you to put sunscreen on his back, or walking around the vacation house in nothing but gray sweats that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

You were fed up.

Despite Joel's apathetic attitude towards you, it still felt like a fucked-up game of cat and mouse—to make matters worse, you weren't entirely sure which one you were supposed to be. Tonight was your last night in Palm Springs before you had to go back to your ordinary, boring life. No more casual flirting with Joel. After tonight, he would go back to being your old neighbor and your best friend's father, and eventually, he would just fade out of your life.

But you needed him.

Something inside you had gotten its claws on him, and they were not about to let go. You had a visceral feeling that if you didn't sleep with Joel tonight, you would regret it for the rest of your life. Be it teenage hormones or the Californian heat… but you had made up your mind.

Now, you were lying on one of the tanning beds by the pool. The sun was scorching down on you, making your skin hot to the touch. You could almost feel the sun lightening your hair even more. Sarah was lying right next to you, drinking a coconut water and reading some book you hadn’t bothered to find out about. Your parents had gone to see some old tree somewhere—you couldn’t care less. Joel was swimming laps in the pool. He already looked like he had been sculpted by a Greek god, but here he was, working out on vacation, occasionally splashing water on you two to cool you down.

“Doesn’t it suck that it’s our last day?” Sarah said, her voice whiny. She sipped her drink loudly and looked at you from under her big brown Gucci sunglasses. You threw your head back in agony. Being reminded of your limited time in this paradise brought all your thoughts about Joel bubbling right back to the top of your mind.

“Don’t remind me. Back home, we have school and work to deal with. Here, we only have to worry about our tans,” you said, pretending to cry for dramatic effect.

“I mean, at least you look tanned as fuck,” Sarah pointed out, a big smile on her face. You held your arm up to investigate. It was true—you were very tanned. You could smell the carrot tanning oil on your skin and see the water droplets dripping off, almost sizzling away. You decided to play a little.

“Hey, Joel!” You yelled loud enough for him to hear you over the splashing of the water. Sarah wasn’t even paying attention anymore—she was headfirst in her book. Joel stopped swimming and popped his head up, giving you a confused look.

“Do you think I look tanned?” You asked, feigning innocence. You sat up so he could “see your tan better,” but truthfully—it was your almost-naked body you wanted him to see. Furthermore, you smiled at him, a sheepish smile. He looked at you knowingly, a tiny smirk painting his face.

“I dunno. Why don’t ya’ come closer?” You got up slowly and walked closer to the edge of the pool. Simultaneously, Joel swam closer to you. He stopped right at the edge, only inches from you.

You were about to ask him again about your tan—but you were cut off by his hand grabbing your ankle and pulling you into the pool. You let out a scream-laugh as you were pulled in. His hand covered your entire ankle easily, with a little room to spare. It didn’t take him much force to pull you in. Your body made a big splash as you fell into the pool, and you could feel your tanning oil dissolving into the water.

“Joel! Now I have to reapply my tanning oil!” You screamed at him, not as much angry as in shock. He just laughed a hearty laugh, insinuating that he didn’t care much about your tanning oil at all. You swam to the pool stairs, leaving behind a slight layer of oil on top of the pool water. You splashed water with your feet, aiming at Joel, annoyed at him for getting you wet.

“Look what your dad did!” You playfully yelled at Sarah, who was still preoccupied with her book. She looked up and laughed at your mad face, covered in wet hair. It was at that moment that you heard the similarity in her and Joel's laughs. It sort of freaked you out, but you brushed it off as you went back to lay on the sunbed.

“Will you try not to kill my dad if I go cut up some fruit?” Sarah asked, jokingly.

“Can’t make any promises.” You furrowed your brows at Joel and gave a quick look of approval to Sarah, who left the patio and went into the kitchen with a sense of urgency. The fact that she left worked out perfectly for you—because now it was time for plan two. You changed position so you were lying on your stomach, and you shouted out to Joel.

“Can you put some tanning oil on my back? It’s your fault I need more!” To your surprise, you heard Joel get up from the pool. You heard water dripping quietly onto the stone patio as he made his way closer to you. You couldn’t see him, but you could feel his presence looming over you as he reached down for the tanning oil bottle and squeezed some into his hands. Furthermore, you braced for impact as his big, warm hands made contact with your back—they felt like they were supposed to be there. He started out rubbing the oil on your upper back, almost carefully. But after you let out a small moan of approval, his skillful hands began massaging the oil onto your back firmly. It felt like one of those massages at your mom’s spa she took you to sometimes. Except now your masseuse was a hot, strong man instead of that old German lady who usually massaged you.

You felt Joel’s hands leave your back, and you groaned in annoyance.

“Hey, if ya’ want a long massage, it ain’t gon’ be free,” he joked.

“Can I get a happy ending if I give you 2 dollars?” He didn’t answer. He only chuckled slightly and gave your back a friendly tap as he got up and left you all alone at the pool.

So much for that plan.

The rest of the day went by fast, just lying by the pool. You and Sarah had ordered some Taco Bell and watched Love Island, but ultimately, it was quite the chill day with not much on the agenda. You had already gone through the shopping, sightseeing, and other vacation activities, so today, you could all use the downtime.

Now it was 7 p.m., the sun was starting to set slowly behind the mountains, and the smell of sunshine and sweat had transformed into the scent of flowers and smoke from nearby houses grilling. Since it was your last night, you had all decided it would be nice to hold a movie night at the villa. Your parents had made nachos, and Joel had made margaritas for everyone. Now you were all sitting on the couch, looking for a movie to watch. You were sitting between Sarah and Joel, and your parents were sitting on the smaller sofa by themselves.

“Can we not just watch Mean Girls?” You and Sarah whined, which didn’t warrant good reactions from the older crowd.

“We ain’t watchin’ some chick flick,” Joel pitched in, sipping his drink and adjusting himself on the black leather sofa.

“Yeah, girls, we’re watching a classic,” your mom said firmly. She rarely left room for debate.

After a while of scrolling through Netflix, you finally landed on a movie. Joel pressed play after getting a few encouraging nods from the “old people,” who apparently knew everything about cinema.

“Dirty Dancing?” You challenged, nudging Sarah, who didn’t seem to have an opinion about the movie choice.

“Yeah? And what about it?” Joel lifted his eyebrow, challenging you to say anything bad about a classic like Dirty Dancing.

You just moaned. You were so used to getting what you wanted that it annoyed you when it came to movies—your parents thought they knew way more than you or Sarah.

“Joel, shut her up!” Your parents joked. They had gone all in with the “fun parent” act. Joel smiled at them and hooked his hand around your head, pulling you into him in a joking way to stop you from whining.

Everybody laughed when he let you go, but you couldn’t decide what feeling you were going to let take control—anger or arousal. So, you decided to shut up and watch the movie.

The nachos were all gone, all the margaritas had been drunk, Sarah had already gone to bed one hour into the movie, and now it was just you, Joel, and your parents. The comforting glow of the television made you sleepy, and you felt safe next to Joel. At some point, he’d put on a blanket, and at some point, you had crawled under it. You were almost half asleep when the ending credits rolled, and you heard your parents get up.

“Well, we’re going to bed. He’s half asleep, so if we stay down here any longer, I’ll have to carry him up,” your mom pointed out with a hoarse, tired voice.

You all said your goodnight wishes, and the TV started automatically playing some random movie. You looked up at Joel, who was already looking at you, his eyes hooded and his face relaxed. The air felt heavy, a lingering tension left from your previous attempts at flirtation—it felt like he could sense another attempt coming his way. But you were tired of this. He’d made the margaritas too strong, and you felt tipsy. The night felt almost unreal, like the strange timelessness you sometimes feel at the airport, where there’s no sense of time or space—just that one moment, stretching endlessly.

“Ya know, it ain’t like I don’t like ya, Cara,” Joel broke the silence. He sounded almost sorry—about what, you didn’t know.

His hand found its way to your arm, and he began drawing slow, random patterns on your skin, gently. He looked lost in thought, as though he were fighting an inner battle.

“Well, if you like me, you sure do a good job of hiding it,” you replied, trying to sound angry or frustrated. It was hard when your head felt so light, for more reasons than one. You weren’t sure if it was Joel or the tequila making you drunk—maybe both.

Joel laughed, so sure of himself. He adjusted himself so he was facing you, looking right into your eyes. The room was dark, but even then, the light in his eyes was almost blinding. You couldn’t explain the feeling of looking into his eyes, even if you tried. It made you forget about everything—it was hypnotic.

“I think you’re great, sweetheart. But you’re so very young,” he said, his eyes now exuding sympathy above all else.

“I’m not that young,” you countered. Of course, you were aware of the age gap—you knew you were young. But did it really matter when it came to you and Joel? Those moments of looking into each other’s eyes seemed to exceed all time, all age… you were one.

Joel smiled. It was the kind of smile older people give when they think about their childhood, or when your grandma tells you that her cat died but is in a better place. That all-knowing smile that’s supposed to comfort you—but you were a stubborn girl. Since you were small, that’s all you’d ever been told. You knew Joel would give in—or, at least, you hoped he would.

In a small moment, you were on top of Joel. Your lips pressed against his, and your hands rested on his chest—you wanted to hold him down, to keep him that close to you forever. This kiss was different from your first one—it felt real.

After a few breathless seconds, Joel lifted you off him. He didn’t do it harshly; he did it slowly, carefully, as if every movement was calculated.

“Oh, darlin’, just don’t go startin’ something that you can’t finish.”

“Joel—I need you.”

“You don't need me, ya just want me.” Joel pointed out, knowing that it was a lie. He knew that you needed him just as much as he needed you, the pull between you two was more than he had ever felt with anyone. The animalistic urge he had towards you, was nothing short of biological, it was meant to be in every sense of the phrase. It was written in the stars, it was purely physical, it was spiritual— it was all-consuming.

“No, Joel… I need you.” The way you said that, was more than convincing for Joel. Truth be told, it had been torture for him to avoid you these past couple of days. Every single time you pranced around him in the house, or at the pool, he was fighting every instinct in his body that told him to have you. But tonight, there was something in the air that made him weak to his own desires. He snapped.

He pounced on top of you, like a hungry lion, ready to devour its victim— but he didn't want to devour you… he wanted to have you slowly, like a 5-course meal. Not only that, but he wanted to make you wait for it, he wanted to make himself wait for it. If this was the only time you ever did this, he was going to make it feel like eternity.

You breathed out heavily, as his hands found your wrists and held them on either sides of your head. He stared at you, he saw you, every part of you, there… for him. He slowly licked the length of your neck, he wanted to taste you— it felt like hours, but when he got to the bottom of your chin… he began sucking on your neck in a sloppy, uncoordinated manner. He found it hard to control himself.

“Fuck… Joel.” You said in a breathy, low voice. You weren't trying to get him to slow down, or speed up— you just found it impossible to control your body anymore, not to mention the sounds that came out of it.

“Shh— darlin', I'm not gon' be able to control myself if I hear you speak like that again.” Joel stated, his voice low and determined. He sounded dead serious, but you didn't have much time to think about it when Joel continued his sloppy kisses all the way down to your chest, and ripped your button-up shirt open, like you were a meal. He was a man starved. He placed his hand on your neck, gently at first— but as he made his way to your lower stomach in a trail of sloppy kisses, with every inch down, his hand tightened. Your head felt lighter than ever, you were gone, off somewhere else, somewhere that only pleasure existed.

“Say no, honey— please.” Joel pleaded to you, wanting you to help him control his sick desires. He loosened the hand on your neck, and eyed your pants, and then your eyes. He squeezed your thigh, to bring you back from wherever you had gone.

You remained completely silent, this was the only thing in you had been this sure of. To you, there was no other option but to give in to your desires, you mouthed a silent 'please' almost undetectable… but Joel saw it, he heard it— he felt it.

He pulled your pants down with urgency, his hands moved in a sloppy, but strong and self-assured way, there was no question in his mind anymore— there was only you. He lowered himself to your level and his mouth found your lower stomach once again, he left soft kisses on your stomach, but to you, they felt electric. Before you were too far gone again in your own land of pleasure, he brought you back. He bit your thigh, not incredibly hard, but so hard that it left a mark. The contrast between pain and pleasure felt so amazing, you could feel your underwear dripping with arousal. You lifted your head to look at Joel, and he was smiling at you devilishly, eyes dark as night.

He moved onto taking off your pink cotton panties, he took the waistline of the panties into his mouth and pulled them down to your ankles with his teeth. When you tried to kick them off completely, he stopped you, he took them into his hands and brought them up to your hands. You looked at him, confused, but you forgot about it when his lips hit yours and his tongue fought its way into your mouth, like he was trying to prove his dominance. He put the panties around your wrists and bound them together, using the panties as a makeshift rope. After he had bound your wrists, he stopped kissing you. He smirked at you enigmatically, before making his way to your slick folds.

“Now be quiet, if your dad finds out, he will kill me.” He said, half serious, half joking. Before his tongue found your most sensitive spot in seconds. You almost let out a moan, but bit your lower lip to stop it— the way Joel's tongue moved on your clit, you had to bite your lip to the point of drawing blood. It wasn't long before you felt a mind-numbing orgasm wash over you, it almost made you lose your head and forget your own name.

Joel kissed your inner thigh tenderly, before returning to your wrists. He released them from the panties, and grabbed your waist, pulling you up and on top of him. You felt woozy, you weren't sure you knew where you were anymore after that orgasm, you thought Joel would've fucked you senseless, him on top, you on the bottom— but his next words exuded so much confidence, you had no room to argue.

“Use me.” Your mouth widened at his words, it seemed like you were in control… but you could feel Joel dominating the situation, manipulating the dynamics between you. But he had given you your chance, and you were going to take it.

Quickly, you pulled his sweats down, with a sense of utter urgency, you removed his shirt, like it was on fire. You could see sweat, glistening on his stomach and chest, as he patiently waited for your next move. You were almost scared to take off his boxers, you could see his bulge through them, and it looked way too big. You looked into his eyes for further confirmation, he was getting impatient.

“Jus' be a good girl, and take 'em off…” He said, his voice low— the kind of voice you'd use to manipulate someone. You bit your lip and freed him of his boxers. He was huge, and evidently, rock hard. He guided you on top of him, letting you take charge quickly after. You lowered yourself on top of his length slowly, inch by inch. Joel sensed that you were going to let out a sound, so he quickly covered your mouth with his hand, and used his other hand to cover his own mouth. Your confidence only grew, you began pumping your body on top of him, the best you could, despite being in a complete haze of pleasure.

Joel couldn't take it anymore, he grabbed your lower waist with force, and guided your body, pumping on top of him, no concern for the sounds that were almost out of your mouth. You had to stop yourself somehow, so you bit down on his shoulder, hard. He let out a guttural growl, that made your orgasm fast approach. You leaned your head back completely, arching your back as the orgasm came flooding through your entire body like you were struck by lightning. Joel came at the same time, his head rolled back and his Adams apple, glistening with sweat, was so prominent, it looked like it was going to rip out of his neck. He let out a quiet, but animalistic moan— and with that, you stopped moving as you both gathered your breath. The room was spinning, time had stood still, you didn't care anymore— not one bit.

“I love you.”

80 notes · View notes