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tip-top-cloud-surfer · 9 months

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The Danger Zone (Part 17) - Hangman

Pairing: Hangman / Fem!Bradshaw!Reader | OC

Word Count: 5.0k

This work, all my works, and my entire blog are 18+ ONLY.

Warnings: Unplanned Pregnancy; Military Inaccuracies; Medical Inaccuracies; Crying; Fluff; Talk of Marriage; Angst; Use of "You," No Use of Y/N, No Set Physical Description

Summary: Jake gets his orders.

Series Master List

Master List

It was deathly quiet in Cyclone’s office and the only sound that Jake registered was his heart beating out of his chest. Slowly closing the folder, Jake turned back to Cyclone, who remained sitting with an impassive expression behind his desk.

“I’m sorry, Hangman,” Cyclone replied quietly, his tone genuine. “There was nothing that I could do.”

Cyclone had been in Hangman’s position before. Twice, actually. And he didn’t relish in handing any man or woman orders that would take them away from their family. Especially during such an important time. But that came with the industry that they signed up for.

“I was expecting it, sir.”

And that roughly translated to: of course, they wouldn’t let me finally be happy

“Still, I am sorry. I’ve been in your position before and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.”

“Do you know how long I’ll be away?” Jake asked quietly, holding onto a tiny thread of hope.

“Anywhere from two to eight months. Most likely, somewhere in the middle.”

You were about six and a half months pregnant now. If he made it back in two months, he could be there for the birth of your child. But Jake knew from experience that he probably wouldn’t be home by then. And what if the baby came early? He’d be cutting it extremely close if he was lucky.

Worst-case scenario, he would return home to you when the baby was almost six months old. Six months. He would miss your baby growing and learning all about the world around them. He’d come home and the baby would already almost be halfway to a full year old. He’d miss so many milestones, so many little triumphs.

“Am I excused, sir?”

“Yes, of course. Take the days before you deploy and spend them with your family.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Slowly walking out to his truck with the most defeated feeling of his life, Jake slipped into the driver’s seat of his truck. He just sat there for a minute, processing the news, and trying to get his emotions under control.

But once the tears started falling, there was nothing that he could do to stop them.

Resting his head on his fist, Hangman let a batch of tears of complete and utter frustration slip down his cheeks. He slammed his fist onto the steering wheel of his truck before the fight left his body and he slumped against the steering wheel, letting more tears slip down his cheeks.

How the hell was he going to break the news to you?

~~~~~

The lights were on in your apartment when Jake pulled into the parking lot. He took the key out of the ignition and slowly slid out of his truck. Staring up at the window that showed into your living room, he took a moment to gather himself before heading inside.

From the outside, you could be seen smiling to yourself, making dinner for the two of you. Your growing and prominent bump was covered by one of Jake’s tee shirts and you wore his ring on your finger proudly. The joy on your features only multiplied when you heard the door unlock and Jake step inside.

As you hurried to wipe your hands on a towel, Jake set his bag down, and tried to push his emotions aside when he heard your footsteps. And when you came hurrying around the corner, his smile was pained as you ran up to him.

“We got the house!” you yelled, causing Jake’s mind to shift for a moment. “They took our second offer!”

“Really?” Jake breathed out as you nodded, practically bursting with excitement.

“We bought a house!”

Jake held out his arms and quickly pulled you close to his chest, his mind still on the news that he had to break to you.

The kiss that you initiated was light-hearted and celebratory, full of playful little pecks. But the kiss that Jake returned was one of deep-seated emotion, like he was afraid that you were going to disappear right in front of him. He held you firmly, his arms enveloping your figure and cradling your bump with every touch of protective energy that he possessed in his body.

You pulled back, your brows furrowed, as you cupped his cheeks with your hands. Staring into his eyes, you rubbed your thumbs along his cheeks.

“Jake, what’s wrong?”

From the outside, Jake could be seen leading you over to the couch and sitting you down. He forced himself to gather his courage as you looked at him with concern. Letting out a breath, he turned back to you and finally broke the news.

As he slowly explained the situation, your expression started to change. There was a flash of fear that built and built until a defeated, frustrated look drew your gaze down to your lap. Jake leaned over, whispering soft words until you picked your head up. Forcing a smile to assure Jake that you were alright, you couldn’t help the tears that started slipping down your cheeks.

Jake wiped them away with his thumb, starting to cry again himself. The two of you shared another kiss before Jake pulled you into his lap. Curling against his chest, you dug your fingers into his shirt, trying to hold in the sobs that were crawling out of your throat. Jake rested his head on top of your own, whispering all kinds of words of reassurance that neither of you truly believed in.

He had been in this industry since he was eighteen. You grew up around the Navy.

And you knew what this would mean for your family.

The two of you sat there, locking in embrace, as the sun started to slip below the horizon. Jake rested his arm around your bump, hoping that your baby would still be there when he returned. He’d never forgive himself if he missed the birth of your child. Especially if anything went wrong.

He would never forgive himself.

The sun had completely set when you finally uncurled yourself from Jake’s chest. Sitting up, you brushed your hand through his hair a few times, causing him to close his eyes for a moment. Jake slowly opened his green eyes, the eyes that you quite honestly pictured your baby inheriting, when you removed your hand from his head.

“We have a few days,” you whispered, your voice cracking with emotion as you tried to find the good in the situation. There wasn’t much to be found, and you were really trying your best to not start crying all over again. “What did you want to do with them?”

“Spend every minute with the two of you.”

“Anything more specific?” you teased him, trying to smile though Jake couldn’t seem to return it. “You want to take a trip or go shopping for some more baby stuff or . . .?”

You trailed off, trying to think of something else when Jake gently grabbed your hand. You looked down as he slowly turned your wrist over and ran his thumb over your engagement ring. Sharing a look with Jake, you felt another batch of tears start to form.

“I know you mentioned wanting to wait until after the baby was born because it would just be too chaotic to think about now . . . but—”

“—Yes,” you agreed quickly. “I’ll marry you, Jake.”

He offered you a genuinely touched smile, a different batch of tears coming to his eyes. You wiped them away while you shed some of your own before pulling him in for a soft, loving kiss. And Jake could only pull you closer, savoring one of his last opportunities to do so. Breaking away a few moments later, you flashed him a painful smile.

“I guess I should find a dress.”

~~~~~

Sitting with your head in your hands at Bradley and Emma’s kitchen table, you tried to not let your stress show. Everyone was giving you looks like they were waiting for you to finally break and you just frankly did not have the time.

You were marrying Jake that afternoon and you didn’t have a wedding dress to get married in.

The day before the two of you had run around like crazy people, making sure that all of the necessary documents were being prepared for the closing of your house. Then you spent time at his lawyer’s office, signing off on wills and other documents to protect yourselves and the baby while Jake was away. And you did a fair amount of crying along the way and so here you were, still without a dress.

“I just don’t know where I’m going to find a white dress that fits me in time,” you told Penny, picking your head up from your hands.

“We’ll figure something out,” she assured you, squeezing your shoulder. “Maybe we can find a dress down at one of the department stores in town.”

“And what if we don’t find something?”

“We’ll find something,” Emma said from your other side. “You’ll have a white dress for this wedding.”

“What about this one?” Bradley called, causing the three of you to turn to him.

Your brother held up the vacuum sealed bag that contained your mother’s wedding dress from her own wedding in 1983. It used to sit in your apartment closet, up until you moved in with Jake and were pretty much forced to hand it over to Bradley since you didn’t have any space in the apartment.

After your mom’s death, you knew that you would incorporate her dress into your own in some way. Perhaps with a bit of fabric. Or you would borrow the veil. Something small that would have her with you on your special day, but also not holding you back with eighties fashion.

You never really pictured actually getting married in your mom’s wedding dress.

For one thing, there was the little detail that your mom was over five months pregnant when she married your dad.

Apparently, shotgun weddings and unplanned pregnancies ran in the family.

Walking over to your brother, you inspected your mother’s wedding dress a little closer. It was fitted at the bust, but even with the slight cinch at the hips, the fabric was loose. It had to be. Bradley’s fat ass had to be accommodated. The skirt was a bit full, but nothing crazy. The bodice was covered in delicate lace and it had the distinct puffy sleeves from the eighties.

“Mom’s dress,” you said quietly, turning to your brother. “You think I should wear Mom’s dress?”

“It’s the only suggestion I have,” Bradley replied softly. And when he saw a flash of doubt in your eyes, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“I just don’t want to ruin it,” you replied, running your fingers along it.

“You’re not going to ruin it,” Bradley assured you, causing you to turn back to him. “She always said that she would have married Dad in a potato sack. She didn’t care about the dress. She just wanted to get married, that was all.”

“She never cared about any of that,” you agreed, sniffling a bit. Wiping your tears away, you croaked out, “I just wish she was here.”

Bradley pulled you in for a tight brotherly hug that you quickly returned. Emma carefully took the dress from Bradley’s hand, letting him properly hug you. You held onto your brother and sobbed, your promise to yourself about not breaking down falling to little pieces at your feet.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair how Jake got called up for deployment when you were nearing your third trimester. It wasn’t fair how the two of you had to cobble together some random ceremony at the last minute. It wasn’t fair how you couldn’t have your parents at your wedding. It wasn’t fair how you could have your baby without Jake by your side for months.

And it all just came rushing out as your big brother protectively hugged you in the middle of his kitchen.

“It’s going to be alright,” he told you, sharing a worried look with Emma. “You’ll see.”

“I’ve lost enough. I just wanted to win this one time, Brad,” you sobbed, causing your brother to start to tear up too. “I just wanted him here for a few more months. That’s all I needed.”

“I know, I know,” he told you, rubbing your back. “It’s going to be alright.”

The two of you stood there for a few moments, maybe even minutes as you cried and Bradley tried his best to comfort you.

“And Mom and Dad aren’t here to walk me down the aisle,” you continued on, sniffling repeatedly.

“I cried about that too, on my wedding day,” Bradley told you quietly, voice thick with emotion. “But they’re both here. And they both wouldn’t want you to cry like this on your wedding day.”

“I know,” you whispered, wiping your tears away.

Giving your brother another hug, you stepped back and turned to see Penny, Emma, and Sarah, who had come in while you were crying to Bradley, standing there, waiting for you.

“So, do you want to wear your mom’s dress?” Emma asked softly, holding it up for you.

“Yeah,” you agreed with a small smile, wiping some more tears away. “I’ll wear my mom’s wedding dress.”

Penny walked over and gave you a tight hug before leading you over to the guest bedroom with Sarah and Emma trailing after the two of you.

“We’ll get you fitted into the dress and while Sarah’s sewing it up, you hop in the shower and get all of the tears and snot off of your face and then we’ll really start getting you ready, alright?”

~~~~~

“. . . and that was how I met your mom,” Jake recorded his own voice, sitting in your shared apartment.

With you at Bradley and Emma’s house to get ready, Jake was taking the opportunity to put together a little gift for you. He ordered a set of headphones for your bump and now he was recording little messages to your baby.

Saving that message, Jake was about to start another one when there was a knock on the door. He got up from his seat and walked over, letting Javy in. Just like him, Javy was dressed in his dress whites and he offered Jake a smile of condolence as he walked into the apartment.

“How’re you doing?”

“I’ve been recording messages. For the baby,” Jake replied softly, shutting the door. “For her to play when I’m deployed.”

“How many do you have now?”

“Six,” Jake stated, showing Javy his phone. “I’m hoping to record a few more before I leave.”

“I’m sorry, Jake,” Javy stated quietly, trying to not let defeat enter his tone. Jake’s expression already had too much of it for Javy’s taste. “You should get to be there. And there’s still a chance, but this isn’t fair and you have the right to be pissed about it.”

“I’m not even angry anymore. I’m just . . . depressed,” Jake returned quietly. “And I’m worried about her. I’m terrified that this is going to push her into early labor or hurt the baby or something like that.”

“We’ve already passed around a sign up sheet,” Javy told Jake, who looked at his best friend with a measure of confusion. “Every day, at least one of us is going to stop by and spend time with her. Check on her. Help her with anything that she needs help with. Make sure that she and the baby are alright. She’s not going to be left here alone.”

Jake nodded slowly, tears threatening to fall. He bit his lip, trying to hold it in, but when Javy pulled him into a tight hug, Jake let a few fall.

“I’m so sorry, Jake,” Javy repeated sorrowfully.

Straightening up after a few solemn moments, the two aviators collected themselves before Javy put on a brave face for his best friend. Looking around the apartment, Javy turned back to Jake.

“So, you got the rings?”

“Yeah, we bought them yesterday,” Jake replied, walking over to your bedroom.

He pulled out a fabric bag and handed it over to Javy, who opened it and dropped the rings into his hand. To match your engagement ring, the two of you bought silver wedding bands. They were simple, traditional wedding bands, but when Jake got back, the two of you were already discussing getting something engraved on the inside of them.

But right now, the most important fact was that the two of you got married today. All the other details could come later.

“Anything else that you’re supposed to bring?” Javy asked, handing the bag back to Jake. “You got all of the paperwork?”

“Right here,” Jake replied, picking up a folder from the kitchen counter. “I’m just waiting for the text to start heading down there.”

“Go record your messages to your kid then. I’m going to call Nat,” Javy told Jake before heading out of the apartment.

Pulling out his phone, Javy pressed Phoenix’s contact and held the phone to his ear as he walked over to the stairwell. After a few rings, Phoenix picked up the call.

“Hey, you at Jake’s?” she answered quietly.

“Yeah, I am.”

“How is he?”

“He’s fucking broken, Nat,” Javy sighed, rubbing his face. “I’ve never seen him look this defeated before.” After a pause, Javy asked, “How’s she doing? Did you make it to Rooster and Emma’s place?”

“They’re doing some quick alterations to her dress. And Emma is doing her hair and makeup right now. So, we’ll probably be heading out within an hour.” Phoenix took a moment before adding, “She’s trying to pretend like she’s okay but Rooster said that she had a bit of a breakdown earlier.”

“But she’s okay now?”

“Physically, yeah, she’s fine. Emotionally, I’m worried. But Penny’s keeping a close eye on her.”

“I just feel so bad for them.”

“I know, me too,” Phoenix replied softly. “Where’s Jake now?”

“Don’t tell her because I’m pretty sure that he wants to make it a surprise, but he’s recording messages to their baby for her to play while he’s gone.”

“Jesus Christ,” Phoenix sighed, shaking her head. “I can’t believe that he has to leave tomorrow. They can’t even fully enjoy their wedding night.”

“I know,” Javy sighed, glancing down the hall at your and Jake’s apartment. “I’m going to go check on him again. Text me when you guys are heading down to Town Hall.”

“Yeah, I’ll let you know.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

~~~~~

You sat in Emma and Bradley’s bathroom as Emma applied some eyeshadow to your eyelids. She had already braided your hair into a simple updo with some help from Phoenix before working on your makeup.

“Alright, no more crying, okay?” Emma stated as she pulled out your eyeliner and mascara. “Once this is on your face, no more tears.”

“I’ll try my best,” you returned quietly.

Closing your eyes as Emma applied your eyeliner, you could hear the sound of footsteps down the hall. When Emma told you that you could open your eyes, you turned your head to see Maverick standing at the entrance to the bathroom. He was already in his dress whites and offered you a supportive smile.

“Hey, Mav,” you called to him before Emma turned your head to apply your mascara.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Like I’m tired of everyone asking me that question,” you replied, causing a small smile to crack at Maverick’s lips.

“Did you find something to wear?”

“I’m wearing Mom’s dress,” you replied, turning back to him after Emma removed the mascara brush. “Sarah and Penny are fixing it up quickly right now in the guest room.”

“You’re wearing your mom’s dress?”

“With a few alterations. I had the sleeves cut off,” you explained, causing Maverick to nod slowly. “But it actually fits pretty well. Turns out that my baby at almost seven months is about the same size as Bradley when he was five months.”

“He was a big baby,” Maverick replied, missing Emma’s wince.

“You think that she ever pictured me walking down the aisle in it?” you asked Maverick as Emma finished up with your eye makeup.

“She was probably hoping that you’d get married first and pregnant second.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” you returned with a shrug of your shoulders, causing you and Maverick to share a quiet laugh.

“Well, Phoenix bought you a bouquet. And are you wearing a veil?”

“No, it was just another thing to worry about.”

“Then that should be everything. Do you need anything else before I start rounding everyone up?” Maverick inquired, straightening up.

“Yeah, actually.”

“What is it?”

“Can you help walk me down the aisle?” you asked him, causing Maverick to freeze.

“Of course, I will,” Maverick promised you.

Emma stepped aside and you slowly stood up to accept Maverick’s tight hug. You returned it, trying not to cry, but Maverick let a few tears slip from his eyes for the both of you. He slowly pulled away, holding you at arm’s length.

It was hard to believe that the little girl who he remembered learning how to walk, who asked him to help put her tiara on properly, was now pregnant and getting married. Goose’s little girl was all grown up. Carole’s little girl was all grown up.

And Maverick knew that he was going to cry about it.

“You’re going to make such a beautiful bride.”

“Thanks, Mav,” you returned, pulling him in for another tight hug.

“Alright,” Maverick sniffled, slowly releasing you. He quickly dried some tears before stepping out of the bathroom. “I’m going to go and make sure that everyone’s where they’re supposed to be and leave you to finish getting ready.”

“Bye, Mav.”

You waited for him to go before turning back to Emma, who put the final touches on your makeup. Dabbing your lip color a bit more, she smiled and stepped back.

“There, you’re all set. Let’s get you dressed.”

~~~~~

Bradley drove you down to Town Hall in the Bronco because it just felt like the proper send off. Accepting his hand, the two of you started walking up to the building. Turning to your brother with a nervous smile as you linked your arms together, you poked him in the side.

“Can I ask you something, Brad?”

“Of course, I’ll act as your getaway driver,” he joked, helping you up the stairs.

“Actually, will you help walk me down the aisle?” you asked him, causing him to pause for a moment. “I asked Maverick to walk me too, but I have two arms.”

“You’re sure that you want me to walk you down?” Bradley questioned, turning back to the stairs. “I mean, I know I wasn’t the most supportive of you and Jake in the past. And I just offered to be your getaway driver.”

“I know, but I want you to walk me down. You’re my big brother, Brad.”

“Are you trying to get me to cry?” Rooster jokingly asked, refusing to look over at you, because he knew that he would actually start crying if he did. “But, of course, I’ll help walk you down the aisle. I promised you when we were kids, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

Maverick met the two of you up at the top of the stairs. You looped your other arm through his own and shared smiles with your family before the three of you walked inside Town Hall. They led you through the building and to the ceremony room. Standing in front of the big doors, you took a moment to gather yourself.

“You ready?” Maverick asked you softly, causing you to smile and nod.

“I’m ready.”

The doors opened and you turned forward to see Jake waiting there for you, dressed in his immaculate dress whites, looking like a dream. There was a small crowd of friends and family, but the two of you were only focused on each other.

You offered Jake a small smile, letting a few tears drip down that you’d held in for the sake of your makeup. Jake rubbed his chin, trying desperately not to cry himself, but there you were, dressed in a white dress, looking like a goddess with your prominent baby bump where your shared child was growing.

And he started silently sobbing himself.

Reaching the end of the aisle, you accepted kisses on your cheeks from both Bradley and Mav before Jake gently took your hand into his own. The two of you stepped up onto the very small stage and faced each other as the officiant began the short service.

You reached up and wiped Jake’s tears away with your hands and as you tried not to cry too many of your own. The two of you repeated your vows clearly and without hesitation as you slipped your wedding bands onto each other’s fingers. Holding hands in front of your closest friends and family, you smiled widely as the officiant got to the end.

“I now pronounce you man and wife. You may—”

Jake’s lips pressed against your own before the officiant even finished his sentence. You smiled into the kiss and wrapped your arms around his shoulders as your friends and family cheered for the two of you.

“I love you,” you told Jake as he broke away and rested his forehead against your own.

“I love you too,” he returned softly, stealing another kiss. “My wife.”

~~~~~

“I have a wedding present for you,” you told Jake that night as the two of you laid in bed.

You rolled to the end of your bed and slowly got up, walking over to your dresser. Jake sat up from his own spot, watching you curiously.

“You had time to get me something?”

“I picked it up yesterday.”

Pulling out a simple plain white envelope, you walked over to Jake’s side and sat down beside him. Jake took the envelope from your hand and paused when he saw the logo from your obstetrician’s office.

“What is this?” he asked you quietly, an edge of concern in his voice.

“I wanted to wait to find out the baby’s gender until they were born,” you started off with, causing Jake to nod slowly. “But I also want us to be the first two people to find out. And just in case—”

Your voice broke and you cut yourself off as emotion clogged your throat. Jake quickly swooped in and pulled you in for a hug and a soft kiss. You rested your head against his shoulder, staring down at the envelope as you gathered yourself.

“It’s your choice, Jake. We can find out now or we can find out when the baby’s born.”

Jake looked down at the simple little white envelope in his hands. You didn’t move to rush him, but you sat up more when Jake pulled the paper out of the envelope. Turning to you, he held out the piece of paper and motioned for you to take the other side.

“On three,” he stated, causing you to nod.

The two of you counted down together before you opened it together. Staring at the simple message written there, you let out an incredulous laugh and Jake pressed a series of kisses to your cheek and neck as he pulled you into his lap.

“I knew it,” he breathed out, resting his hand on top of your bump.

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you asked him, causing him to shake his head. You let out a bright laugh, some joy returning to you. “We’re having a girl, Jake.”

“I’ve been telling you,” he insisted, causing you to jokingly nudge him. The two of you shared a soft series of kisses before Jake pulled back. “We’re having a little girl.”

“She’s going to be a handful.”

“That was going to be true regardless,” Jake reminded you, causing you to laugh again and sink into his arms once more. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.”

“And I love our daughter so much.”

“She knows that, Jake,” you replied softly, pressing a kiss to his chest. “She knows.”

~~~~~

Jake barely slept that night.

The two of you discussed it the night before and agreed that it would be less stressful on you and the baby for him to leave on his own in the early morning. You said your goodbyes the night before and Jake managed to coax you to sleep after another round of tears and kisses.

Getting up before his alarm, Jake took a quick shower and got dressed in his uniform. His bag was already packed and all he had to do was say goodbye to you and your daughter.

But that was going to be a difficult process.

Kneeling on the floor in front of you, Jake rested his hand on your bump and pressed a kiss to your skin before moving his hand around some more. He let a few tears drop as he tried to feel your daughter moving around to no avail.

“I’ll be back, Baby Girl, alright? I just have to go take care of some things, that’s all.” Jake took a moment and a deep breath before adding, “You’re going to be a good girl for your mom, right? Let her sleep at night and don’t dance on her bladder, okay?”

Removing his hands from your bump and moving to stand, Jake looked up at your peaceful expression one last time before turning back to your bump.

“I love you so much, sweetheart. And I’ll be back. Don’t you ever think that I’m abandoning you, okay? I’ll be back.”

Jake stood up and leaned over to press a soft kiss to your face. Not wanting to risk waking you up, he withdrew and let out a quiet sigh.

“I love you, Honey. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

A few moments after Jake reluctantly left for base, you snuggled into your pillow, still deeply asleep. As you continued to snooze, there was a small press on your skin, like a little fist was waving goodbye, before it slowly sank back down.

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honeyhenry · 3 months

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Apple Pie and You and I: A Very Happy Seresin

Ignore the fact it has been over a year since the last instalment...I would offer my life story but it has been HECTIC. Anyways, I have never ceased to think of Dad-to-be!Jake Seresin and since it is now the summer holidays, my gift to you is this lovely part 4 of the APAYAI series!

In the calm haze of what surely would be a sweet summer, you found rest in the peace held within the mid-June evening. Jake would return shortly from his quick job out by Mav's old place, helping Rooster refurbish the old skyline beauty Maverick hadn't had the time for lately. A whole stack of them had taken their turn, and while Jake remained a reliable friend now in the squad, he had really fought it internally, not wishing to leave your side.

Not when he could be snuggled up to his wife, on the porch or resting on the sofa, smelling the strawberry shampoo from your hair, or your shea butter moisturiser. Nor could he kiss you as and when he liked from 4.30pm, the second he got home from work, all the way to bedtime and then again in the morning before you both headed off - him to base, and you to your kindergarten class.

No, he wasn't going to be home until closer to 9 - almost 30 minutes away yet - and the worst part was, he was missing more than just you these days. The swell that continued to grow once you'd left Texas had become his new obsession - the slice of heaven that he already adored because they were going to be just like you, and make you look like the sweetest, hottest little thing this side of the States.

Resting quietly on the sofa, you await his return, knowing he'll ache and sweat and smell on his return - you can't wait to soak him all in and show him the newest development. You swear this baby grows dramatically overnight, a claim you state often whilst Jake just smirks because it's his big Seresin baby that he personally delivered, that grows and nestles inside you.

Your living area is lit by a chamomile candle and a yellow lamp that envelopes the room into a warm glow. The scattered pillows across the sofa and rug are perfect to relax on, and your most recent book "Parenting 101" swapped out for Cosmo magazine led to an idyllic evening. A small cup of tea and the night had gone perfectly.

Sooner than expected, you hear Jake's truck pull up into the driveway. Instead of standing to check and then unlock the door, you wait. Jake much prefers you to stay safely in the house, always alerting you if he has arrived - that you shouldnt be moving a muscle if you can help it. 8.36pm - he's early.

"Lovebug? It's me, I'm home!" he hollers into the foyer of the house, his deep voice carrying through to the living room. Pressing your soft bunny slippers to the floor, you call back.

"In the living room, honey!"

You hear footsteps and then a moment later, there he is, basking in the glow of the lamp above you. Or is it sweat? You can't decide for sure, taken aback by the mixed smells of oil and sweat.

"Hey baby," he finds your lips, leaning over the sofa to not get it marked, "and hey little baby." You smile as he extends a warm hand down to your stomach, smiling softly as he soaks in the moment.

"How was work? And Mav's?"

"Fine, fine. Got a bunch of stuff fixed in the back, Bradshaw got covered in grease and oil so if you see him with a black moustache, you'll know why."

You giggle as he stretches and then quirks a brow. "More importantly, how are you? How is peanut treating you? Being a good and upstanding citizen?"

"I think they grew again overnight. Or through the day, really since breakfast - although it might just be breakfast and my other meals.

"Yeah? Lemme see" he pulls you up carefully and you stand, moving past the plethora of pillows you had build a comfortable place to sit. He smooths his hand down his own shorts first, hoping it would be clean enough, before undoing a little clasp of your pyjama shirt to gain access to your stomach. His hand, warm and firm, rests atop your belly and you can't quite tell if its just butterflies, or that the baby is starting to move within you.

"Oh yeah, i feel it." he rubs softly still. "They're certainly growin'. Good job peanut" he speaks in high praise "and good job Momma...makin' us a baby..."

You have a quick kiss before you usher him upstairs to shower, and you turn the lights off, blow the candle out, and head upstairs to bed. You have your routine set - facial moisturiser, nightly stretches, a warm cup of tea, and belly rubs with your new balm.

You are finishing up your routine, rubbing small shapes into your belly as the smell of coconut fills the room. Jake adores watching you, from the doorway of the en suite. You sit back a little, scooping the balm onto your palm before ever so carefully applying it in small circles, then larger, deeper strokes while still taking tender care of your body. His favourite part has to be when you start whispering sweet words to your belly, realising you aren't alone in this routine. He's caught you a handle of times with; "We love you so much"; "Have you had a nice day in there, hm?" and tonight is no different.

"You're gonna be nice and relaxed in there hm? Me and daddy love you little baby pie. Could just eat you up..."

Moving from the door, he speaks up, hoping to not jolt or surprise you too much.

"Hey, don't go eating up my legacy now"

You giggle, a sound he knows will only ever be beaten by his child's first cry, before halting your laughter at the mere sight of him.

Leaning against the doorway, dripping wet, with a towel barely clinging around his waist. It would be a lie to say that your husband had never looked so good, because this was his standard. Anything he set his mind to, he would accomplish. It just so happened that having a body to die for was the collateral. And here he was, gazing into your soul, heart soaring while watching you treasure and love upon his biggest achievement yet.

"Don't you worry an inch Lieutenant. But I just know they are the cutest, I mean look!" you gesture to his side of the bed. All that sits there is his watch, his alarm clock, and a framed picture of the sweet blob sonogram. "You agree!"

"Yes honey, they're cute I know. Cause they're half you. The other half? Well they'll be the best Top Gun 2050 graduate if they get anything from their Pops."

"You know what, I want them to be all of you."

"Oh really?" Jake shucks off the towel before grabbing his pyjama shorts, grinning cockily as he stretches and flexes, much to your amusement. "I mean I get it, who wouldn't wanna go for a dip in this gene pool?"

"I'm serious, you goof! I have dreams, and the baby...they have your eyes, and that one little dimple like you have your cheek, and, and I don't know. I feel, when I feel the baby, that they're just like you. They feel like home. And-"

You're halted by his physique pressing up beside you, kissing you as if he'd been on an infinite deployment and that holding you was the only sure sign that he was really back home; alive, safe, loved.

"You make me the happiest man alive. You both do. Now, lemme check the house and I'll be right back to hear more about these dreams you're having about me." He winks and you groan, knowing your confession will fuel his ego that little bit more.

As he heads downstairs, you begin massaging your belly again before crying out;

"Oh, Jake!"

You hear the clatter of the teacup he'd taken downstairs, and 5 loud thumping footsteps before he reappears at the door.

"What?!"

With big doe eyes, you smile sheepishly.

"I forgot to tell you, the baby is the size of an apple today."

Jake's expression shifts from one of panic, to utter relief. His chest visibly drops and he runs a hand through his drying hair.

"Baby....don't do that...y'just scared me to death. I'll be right back and then y'can tell me all about it."

On his return from locking up, checking the lights and ensuring he had his uniform laid out for the next day, Jake quietly moved into the bedroom and clicked the door shut. In one hand, he had a glass of water - one you'd never ask for but he knows you'd need through the night. In the other, is a thick, wooden book covered in a multitude of colours and shapes.

You quirk an eyebrow, curious about whatever Jake was holding.

"No Aviator's Digest or Fatherhood 101 tonight?"

"Actually, Bradley gave me this, wanted us to have it at least for now. Something' bout reading to the baby. Then they know my voice... if I'm away." Jake looks down at the book as he shuffles into bed, doing his best not to disturb how comfortable you have made yourself during your nightly routine.

You know that being away now means a great deal more to Jake than before. The issue is sensitive, of course. He doesn't want to be an absent father in the way deployments and time on base can project. You haven't spoken about it too much, but you know it will bother him. Simultaneously, giving up the job he has worked so hard for to be more present is a big sacrifice. One that would also be financially risky to your growing family.

Instead of diving deeper, you keep it light. Jake has no plans to go anywhere anytime soon, or even for very long. It's best to focus on what you can control.

"Oh? What book is it?"

"Something about a hungry caterpillar. Looks a bit demonic on the front, but Bradshaw swore his cousin's kids loved it."

He rests up against the headboard, curling one arm around your shoulders, intertwining his hand with yours atop your belly. Certain that he has you safe and warm in his arms, he unpops your shirt again at your tummy "so they can hear" which has you rolling your eyes. He holds the book right by your belly, and begins.

"Good evening, baby Seresin. This is your father, your Pops. Now you gotta listen - there's a test at the end of this story and we don't tolerate anything but top marks here."

"Jacob Seresin!"

"All right, all right. Now, are we ready? Then let's begin. In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf. One Sunday morning..."

By the time he had turned to the middle page after his soft southern drawl had recounted a feast of apples, pears, and plums, you - and baby - were fast asleep. Closing the wooden book, he pops the button back into place carefully, sorts your pillows, and turns off your bedside lamp.

He'd finish the story tomorrow evening.

#apayai #jake seresin x reader #hangman x reader #top gun maverick fic #jake seresin #dad!jake in my feels

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sorchathered · 7 months

Text

💕Lover💕

A/N- hey all! This is my submission for @ohtobeleah ‘s Galentine’s party!! I’m so excited to see everyone’s posts and concepts, make sure you check out the submissions under her tag!

Summary- A collection of memories and mood boards documenting you and Jake from engagement to wedding day.

Pairing- Jake Seresin x oc!reader (callsign Storm)

Warnings- language, drinking, smut.

“We can leave the Christmas lights up til January, this our place we make the rules”

It was January 5th now, you knew the chances of Jake being home for Christmas were slim but secretly you’d hoped he would be. He’d begged you not to spend the holiday alone his mother insisting you come to Texas so you’d flown out and spent two fantastic weeks with his family. They had welcomed you with open arms, taking you to all of Jake’s old haunts and involving you in their family traditions. You’d never been close to your parents so the overwhelming love you received from the Seresin family was something you’d never experienced before. You’d gotten to talk to him sporadically over the holiday but you could tell he was heartbroken he couldn’t be there with you. The time went by too fast and before you knew it the 5th had arrived and you were stepping off your plane in San Diego, Coyote was waiting to pick you up and you couldn’t wait to get home to your own bed. You’d put up a small tree with some lights before you left just to keep the seasonal depression at bay, but as you unlocked the door to your shared home you were met with what could only be described as a winter wonderland. The house was covered in lights, decorated ornately with paper snowflakes and there in front of a brand new 8 foot Christmas tree was Jake. He grinned his thousand watt smile at you as you dropped all of your bags and launched yourself into his arms.

“Hey Stormy girl, did ya miss me?”

You let out a watery laugh as you began to sob in earnest, he held you close and pressed kisses into your hair, reassuring you that he was home and this was real. When you finally settled he sat you both down on the couch in front of the massive tree, you were still in shock that not only was he here but he had somehow managed to transform your house into Santa’s workshop.

“What is all this baby?” You whispered against his lips, he’d never been big on Christmas but he knew you loved it so the thoughtfulness and effort put in after a nearly 3 month deployment was not lost on you.

“We didn’t get Christmas together darlin’ and I know being apart has been hard as hell these past few months” he stands up now, walking over to the tree to pick up a small gift you hadn’t even noticed. You gasp as tears well up in your eyes, Jake Seresin is down on one knee surrounded by a literal Christmas wonderland, and he’s about to ask you for forever. “Yes!” You blurt out, causing a belly laugh to erupt from him.

“You didn’t even let me ask sweetheart”

“You can but my answer is still yes, I just want to be yours, forever and ever.”

He closes the distance between you to slide his grandma’s engagement ring on your finger, kissing you in the glow of the twinkle lights.

“My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue, all's well that ends well to end up with you”

A joint bachelor/bachelorette party at the hard deck, all the boys had suggested strip clubs and hookers but Jake just wanted a night with everyone they loved and to maybe get you a little tipsy so he could proposition you for a hookup in the bathroom. You were dancing with Phoenix and a few of your other girlfriends, dressed in the tiniest white dress with a bedazzled cowboy hat and veil that said bride on the front. He didn’t think he could love you more than this moment; eyes full of joy and singing “Don’t stop believing” at the top of your lungs. He’d even let you convince him to wear the ridiculous groom t shirt you’d gotten him, taking all the jesting in stride even though he secretly loved it. He’d always give you whatever you want.

You were a spitfire when you wanted to be, always first to defend him if some cocky asshole got mouthy, he had been an absolute dick to everyone around him for years but since that first dagger squad mission he’d been trying his damndest to make amends.

That was one of the many ways he’d known you were the one, you’d been dating quietl after you and Rooster’s failed engagement had crashed and burned over a year before. During a particularly stressful training day the two had come to blows, both of them ending up in the infirmary as Rooster continued to pelt insults his way. Jake was trying to take it in stride but your temper could only take so much. You were professional but vicious in your descent on him, refusing to let Bradley Bradshaw and his unresolved emotional baggage dismantle all the work Jake had put in to better himself. You’d been a champion for him no matter what and he wasn’t used to anyone having his back, it took his breath away just how much you believed in him.

Watching you now he felt his heart swell, and he couldn’t sit in his chair any longer; the need to hold you carrying him across the room, spinning you into his arms with ease.

“Hi sugar, think I could steal you away for a few minutes?” He whispered in your ear, pressing soft kisses to your neck as he dipped you to cheers from the crowd. You threw your head back giggling and took his hand to drag him through the throngs of patrons to the quiet hall that held the bathrooms.

You knew what he wanted, he was always looking for an opportunity to get you wrapped around him, often joking he might have a bit of a kink for getting you off in public spaces but really he was just insatiable when it came to you, especially when you were dressed in what he thought may be the world's smallest dress and rubbing your body all over his.

Placing you on the side of the sink he ran his hands over you now, sliding a hand between your parted legs finding you obscenely wet and he chuckled; maybe he wasn’t the only one that got hot and bothered over hooking up where anyone could find you.

You gasped at his touch and pushed your hands into his hair, needing him to kiss you and he was all too willing, tasting your tongue as you moaned into his mouth, the prettiest sound he ever heard. He pulled your tiny scrap of underwear to the side and pressed his fingers into your dripping core, watching you grind down onto his hand, whispering filthy things he knew you’d be mortified if anyone heard and God he lived for it, you were his dirty girl behind closed doors all for him, only he got to see you like this. You were teetering on the edge now, suddenly removing his fingers from you with a smirk as you protested, tears pricking at the corner of your eyes and chest heaving while you begged for him to stop teasing and fuck you. He didn’t have to be told twice, letting you wrench his belt buckle open and unzip his jeans in record time, sliding home into your velvet heat, I love yous breathed out into the humid air of the bar bathroom. He chased your mutual highs quickly, knowing eventually someone would come looking for you, desperate cries pouring from your pouty pink lips and coming hard as you pulsed and fluttered around him, both of you bathed in ecstasy in the dim dingy light. As the two of you attempted to become presentable you were startled by the creaking of the bathroom door, Javy poking his head through and shaking his head with a raucous laugh.

“We’ve been taking turns guarding the bathroom, would you two heathens wrap it up? We’ve got celebrating to do!”

You both couldn’t hold in your laughter, they knew you too well, bracing yourselves for the onslaught of teasing for skipping out on your own party to hook up.

Drinks were distributed, a new game of pool was started and as you gazed at Jake across the room you couldn’t help but be proud of who he had become. He was honorable, steadfast and in fact too good to be true. You had both been damaged and jaded from past mistakes and relationships but had somehow healed each other becoming the best version of yourselves. You’d do it all again if it meant you ended up here, with your magnetic force of a man. Loving him was like coming up for air, he was Christmas morning and birthday wishes on lit candles and technicolor fireworks on the Fourth of July. You couldn’t wait to spend forever loving him.

“You’re my, my, my, my Lover.”

As you sat in the dressing room of the venue overlooking the harbor you were brought back to the night of Penny and Maverick’s wedding just a few years ago. You had come back to San Diego for their nuptials still heartbroken from your failed engagement with Bradley. Over the course of the long weekend you had found love again in the form of your best friend, the man you were finally about to marry.

Sometimes it still felt like a dream, you were afraid you would wake up one morning and still be single and heartbroken in your tiny apartment in Pensacola, but fate had stepped in and brought the two of you together. It hadn’t been easy, you were in tears more often than you’d like to admit when you first started dating long distance, and then deployments apart caused even more strain.

When you were finally promoted to Lieutenant Commander 10 months into your budding romance your superior told you there was an opportunity to fly again at top gun but this time with a new crew. So you and your front seater Viper decided to take the leap and head to Fightertown. Jake couldn’t believe it when he had a knock on his door that Sunday night to find you with all your luggage on his front porch, bottle of champagne in hand asking how he felt about a roommate.

It had been two years since then, both the dagger squad and red knights could be seen mingling outside and you felt your heart swell at how lucky you were to be surrounded by so many amazing friends.

Jake was all nerves on the opposite side of the venue, couldn’t seem to keep his hands from shaking as he tried to put his cufflinks on. Javy swatted his hand away and took over, shaking his head and handing Jake his whiskey to finish up.

“What are you so worried about? Stormy’s in dude, you two were made for each other.”

Jake knew he was being ridiculous, his family loved Stormy, all of his friends did too, he just wanted everything to be perfect for her.

“I’m not worried about her leaving me numb nuts, I just want it to be everything she hopes it is, I’ve checked the weather 100 times today and if it rains I swear-“

“Jake, she’s not just excited about the fairy tale wedding; she’s excited to marry you. The rest of it will turn out perfectly because you two will be together, the rest is gravy bud.”

Jake wondered to himself when Javy had gotten so smart, but he had to admit his wingman was right about one thing, being with you forever was the thing that mattered most and Jake couldn’t wait to start it with you.

As you walked down the aisle you could barely hold it together, Jake was already tearing up when you reached him taking his hand in yours it took all the restraint you had to not go ahead and kiss him. It was everything you had ever dreamed of and even if it had just been the two of you and a justice of the peace that would’ve been enough, because the end result was forever with the love of your life. Jake’s brother-in-law, a preacher back in Texas had been asked to be the officiant and when he finally announced you man and wife you couldn’t get to your love fast enough, pressing your lips to his as he made a show of dipping you for the crowd.

Later that evening in the glow of the harbor lights you were swaying to the music with your husband and you couldn’t put into words how perfect this night had been. He pulled your face close to his as he sang along with the band, and you had to kiss him again, it felt like every cell in your body cried out to be loved and touched by Jake Seresin and you knew without a doubt he always would. No matter where the two of you went he would do everything to love and protect you, and you would always do the same. Forever.

Jake Seresin Masterlist

Tagging- @ohtobeleah @bobgasm @attapullman @mamamaystbr @mamachasesmayhem @roosterforme @jessicab1991 @shanimallina87 @djs8891 @mygyn @86laura11 @floydsglasses @dempy @nouis-bum @angelbabyyy99 @pinkdaisies9285 @purelyfiction @the-aspiring-fanfic-writer @jostan456 @kmc1989 @its-the-pilot @mrsevans90 @sailor-aviator

#leahs galentines day special #ohtobeleah #top gun maverick #jake hangman smut #jake hangman x reader #jake hangman fic #jake seresin x reader #jake seresin fanfiction #jake hangman x you #jake seresin smut #jake seresin #jake hangman seresin #jake hangman imagine #top gun maverick fanfiction #top gun fanfiction #top gun hangman #sacred new beginnings #snb #Jake and Stormy

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sometimesanalice · 2 years

Text

Oh Christmas Tree

Summary: Bradley’s never been one to look forward to the holidays, that is until he met you. He’s excited to do everything, including getting his very first real Christmas tree.

Warnings: Fluff, slight angst, allusions to smut. Minors DNI.

Length: 7.2K

Pairing: Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw X Female Reader

(What was supposed to be a quick fluffy Christmas fic, somehow turned into this, enjoy!)

The atmosphere at the Hard Deck was livelier than usual, the music seemed more upbeat and the voices a little louder. It was the first time in a while that the entire Dagger Squad was together in one place. News of the success of the Uranium Mission traveled fast and had been keeping them busy in the months that had followed.

Things seemed to settle down a bit as the holidays rolled around, some has dispersed home for Thanksgiving while a few others had been given last minute orders to ship out for a short mission. You’d been dying to take Bradley Bradshaw home to meet your parents in person, but he had been one of the few sent away only set to return the day after Thanksgiving.

You’re sitting across from Natasha at a high top near the pool tables in the back of the bar listening to Jake talk about his visit home, while your boyfriend next to you talks animatedly about something related to his latest mission with Bob.

“I shaved off an extra 5 minutes from the last Trot. Turns out I’m in even better shape than I was the last time I was home for Thanksgiving,” Jake brags smugly taking a swig of his beer from his nearly empty bottle.

“Wait, you come from a Turkey Trot family? That explains so much. Please tell me, you guys wear matching Seresin family shirts for it too,” you tease without remorse. “Oh! Or maybe those turkey leg bobble headbands?”

You hear Bradley snort into his beer as he drops a well-defined arm across your shoulders. He’s wearing one of your favorite Hawaiian shirts from his collection, and you’ve been having a hard time keeping your eyes and hands to yourself.

“Bradshaw! Are you going to let your girl trash talk me like that?” You turn to Bradley to see him smirk with a shrug at Jake’s indignation.

“I mean, if the headband fits,” he replies lifting his bottle up in cheers.

“Darlin’, you wound me. And for the record they don’t match, since we all get to decorate our own with those paints in the little squeeze bottles,” he says pointing his empty bottle at you before turning to Bradley, “And see if I ever save your smug ass again.” He walks away making his way to the bar for another beer.

“Formal petition to change his callsign to Turkey now. Him and Rooster could be the Bird Bros,” Natasha jokes after he’s out of earshot. “What about you, how was your trip home?”

“It was pretty good,” you feel Bradley start playing with the ends of your hair, while he picks his conversation with Bob back up. “Since my sister had the baby, my parents have been leaning into the new grandparent thing pretty hard. So I set to establishing myself as the fun wine aunt, and basically drank cranberry mimosas all day.” You pause to take a sip of your drink, “Which I regretted immediately the next day when my parents decided it was imperative that we all go to their favorite Christmas tree farm as soon as it opened to cut one down together. Baby’s first Christmas all.” You unlock your phone to pull up the folder you made of pictures from the visit, handing over your phone to let her scroll.

“Since they’re flying out to spend Christmas with my sister and her in-laws in Philly, I tried to talk them into an artificial tree. Which is blasphemy where I’m from, I’m pretty sure the state tree is the Douglas Fir. My family takes the tree hunt very seriously, there’s a science to it and everything,” you lean over to swipe past some of the selfies you took to show her the completed tree in your parents sitting room.

“However, as you can see, my attempt to talk them into the lower maintenance, yet slightly ostentatious, fluffy pink tree of my dreams was met with a hard pass,” you say laughing to yourself.

She swipes backwards a couple times on the pictures. “This one is cute, why didn’t you post this photo?” she asks holding your phone up showing a selfie of you at the tree farm.

“Which one? Let me see,” Bradley requests, his conversation with Bob now abandoned. He’s already leaning into you and reaching across the high top with his large hands to take the phone from Nat.

It was a photo of you that Bradley hadn’t seen before. You were pink nosed wrapped up in cozy looking scarf, surrounded by pine trees and grinning into the camera. And his heart swells at the sight of the image before him. It’s just so you.

“You really look pretty,” he states sincerely. He glances at you briefly to see a hint of a blush spread across your cheeks before turning his gaze back to the picture of you.

He’d known you had been just as eager as he was for to him come home with you to meet your parents in person. You had even concocted a plan that involved him to try and help you get your hands on your Aunt Christine’s corn soufflé recipe.

“My mom has tried to get it for years, and she refuses to share it with anyone!” you’d lamented to him one evening after a couple large glasses of wine. “She always says she’ll email it, but she never does!” You gesture wildly. He loved getting to know all sides of you, but two-drink you was a particular favorite of his.

“Mmm. Girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep,” he nodded along in solidarity.

“Exactly, Bradley! You get it!” You take another long, deep sip of your Merlot, your feet tucked under you on his couch. “Me with my wiles and you with your Rooster charisma, I think this might be the year! I’ll set the groundwork and you can lay the ruggedly-handsome-impossibly-sexy-American-hero-thing on thick,” he loved how animated you were getting and he was having a hard time keeping the indulgent smile off of his face. “And she’ll fall right into our trap and release the goods all while thinking she’s staring in her own Hallmark movie.” He knew he would do anything for you, what his girl wants she gets. If that involves some light to heavy flirting with your aunt, so be it. He was getting soufflé recipe for you one way or another.

However, those plans were quickly dashed when he got the mission orders at the last minute. His stomach was in knots when it came time to tell you, but you were quick to put him at ease by reminding him there was always next year. “Plus” you’d said, “it gives us a whole year to craft our Stealthy Soufflé Scheme. Although, maybe we can pop up in May or June? I want to show you all the sights, we can even go hiking! And I’m definitely planning on taking you on a beer tour.”

“That sounds like the perfect trip, Sweetheart. I’d love that. I’ll see about getting a request submitted first thing in the morning,” he was already setting a reminder in his phone so he wouldn’t get too distracted at work and forget. He wasn’t going to let you down again.

“Oh. That’s probably one I snapped really quick and forgot to send to Bradley. I was probably already spamming him too much as it was,” you answer in response to Natasha’s question. Even though you knew exactly why that one never made it his inbox.

Since you’d be spending the holiday apart, Bradley had requested that you send him pictures throughout your visit so that he didn’t feel like he was missing anything. You had sent him ones of you at the grocery store with your mom, of you holding your niece, a few silly ones fueled by too many champagne heavy mimosas, and some less family friendly shots of you in bed wearing the deep wine-colored lacy lingerie set you had planned to surprise him with. And then a few without the lingerie set too.

You had known he wouldn’t have the best reception, so you sent them as things happened knowing that he’d respond whenever he could. You just wanted them there waiting for him. However, a few days in was getting hard to know what was too much when all you could see were all your outgoing messages to him.

You had felt yourself getting a little self-conscious and started second guessing the things you sent, like the picture from the tree farm. You didn’t want to go overboard and scare him off or make it seem like you were rubbing his face in all the things he was missing while he was on assignment. You had just wanted him to know that you were thinking about him- which was pretty much all the time.

Turning your head to take him in next to you. He’s sitting there with a soft smile on his face while he is tapping away on your phone. When his phone lights up mere moments later, you realize he’d just sent the image to himself and was now paging through the folder looking for others.

“For being a Communications Specialist, you’re really bad about updating your own social media. That one was definitely worthy of making it to the grid,” Nat announces as she slides off the barstool taking Bob with her to go dominate on one of the pool tables.

Bradley hands you your phone back. “You know, I’ve never been to a Christmas tree farm. Or even had a real tree for that matter,” he murmurs a bit ruefully when it’s just the two of you, picking at the label of the bottle Natasha had left behind.

“When I was younger we only ever had a fake tree. And then after my mom passed, everything with Mav, and moving around so much I just kind of didn’t ever want to think about it. I never thought to get anything for myself.” He lets out a breath, shaking his head slightly. “I’m really happy you’re sticking around to show me the ropes this year,” he says earnestly, sounding much lighter than before.

The thought of him fending for himself for so long makes your heart hurt. You lean into him pressing a lingering kiss to his cheek. “I’m happy you want to spend the day with me,” you tell him brushing your nose against his as you pull away.

“I did my good daughter duties, but flying home during the one of busiest days of the year was enough for me. And I wouldn’t want to subject you to the Richardson’s by going to Philly, my parents call them the Dickardson’s for a reason,” making a face that causes him to laugh.

“We’re going to have the best Christmas together, I wouldn’t want to spend the day with anyone else.” This time when you pull him in for another kiss your lips are eager to meet his. The slide of his mouth against yours never fails to make your heart beat wildly in your chest.

You could spend days kissing Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw and never want to break for air. It’s only at the sound of someone’s loud wolf whistle that you break apart as you’re brought back the moment.

“You know, I’m still not over the fact that my girlfriend withheld such ‘compelling content’ from me,” he teases, using air quotes the buzzwords he’s heard you say from listening to one too many of your late night zoom meetings.

“It was the last day! You were getting in before me, and I thought you’d want the real deal instead. And to tell the truth, I didn’t know if I was overdoing it. I didn’t want to make you feel left out,” you explain honestly. You’ve always been the type to keep those insecurities to yourself, but you’ve been trying to do better. He makes you feel safe enough to open up without holding back.

“Sweetheart.” He picks up your hand his mustache brushing the back of it as he places a kiss there. “You could never overdo it. Spam away, send me everything. I love getting those pictures, it makes me feel closer to you. But, I do know how you could make it up to me.” As he sends a mischievous wink your way.

You’re hit with a brief vision of you on your knees before him in that wine-colored set he still has yet to see in person.

“Oh, do you?” You ease off your stool to stand in front of him, his legs automatically widening for you to step in between them.

“Wanna come help me pick out a tree this weekend?” he asks, slipping his hands into the back pockets of your jeans to tug you in even closer. “I hear you know a thing or two about picking out the best one,” his eyes crinkle around the edges as he smiles broadly at you.

You don’t bother fighting back the grin that takes over your face. “Stick with me, kid,” you say taking his sunglasses from where they rest against his chest and sliding them on, “I won’t lead you astray.”

Bradley had the best afternoon learning the ins and outs of selecting the perfect tree at the tree lot with you.

He had found a tree place with a festive name that was about 30 minutes away, it was probably a bit different than what you were used to, but he hoped you’d be happy with the options there. He had even called in advance to make sure they had the specific variety your parents usually got after texting with your dad to find out what he should be looking for.

He had wanted to pick you up from your apartment, but you had insisted on meeting him at his place since you had an early work meeting scheduled in the morning. And had greeted you with a coffee in hand from your favorite shop when you arrived.

He’d even worn the plaid flannel shirt you had bought for him when you were visiting home for the occasion. When he parked the Bronco in the lot, you had giddily exclaimed, “Bradley, look at all the trees! There’s way more than I thought there’d be. It smells like home!”

Once you were both out of the car you had grabbed his hand threading your fingers between his, and set off like a woman on a mission. He’d felt rather pleased with himself.

The outdoor speakers were playing the local Christmas radio station and there were rows and rows of trees under a few large white topped tents. He loved how seriously you were taking this, and if he wasn’t already totally enamored with you this would have sealed the deal.

You’d taught him how to determine its freshness, “You have to pull a needle off and see if it bends or snaps. If it snaps then it’s already way too dried out and you’re just purchasing a giant match stick.”

From there the came the scent test, “Now sniff the tree, you have to get your face in there. The stronger the tree scent the longer it will last.”

And finally, the aesthetics.

“I like mine a little girthy and on the fuller side, but that’s all a matter of personal preference. You want some gaps, so that the heavier ornaments can hang better, but not too many. And the top has to be straight, no one wants a lopsided tree topper.”

“That’s not the only thing you like full and girthy,” he couldn’t help but let slip out.

“Bradley, there are children here!” you admonished while looking around wide eyed, but that didn’t stop you from grazing the front of his jeans every chance you got.

So, when he managed to find what you excitedly deemed to be the “absolute most perfect tree!”, he couldn’t help but preen his face feeling a bit warm from the attention and praise you showered him with.

He’d hauled the tree up to the check out where it was bundled while he paid, and then carried it over his shoulder out to the Bronco. You’d trailed behind him carrying the wreath you’d picked out humming along with the music.

“Is there such a thing as a competence kink? Because this,” you had mused gesturing to him tying the tree down in the back, his hands tingling, “is definitely doing it for me.” He had just grinned and shaken his head at you, his face heating up a bit. However, he couldn’t help but flex a bit more for your benefit as he finished up.

And when you made him pull off the road less than 10 minutes later, to indulge in that new self-discovery with your mouth around his cock, well that was very much for his benefit.

Now you’re with him at his place. You guys had wrangled the perfect tree into the house and had gotten it set up in front of his windows in the living room near the upright piano he had tucked in the corner. He loved the smell that was filling the room and the way you’d lit up once it was in place. If he had his way, you’d be around all the time.

Bradley could hear you singing along to the Christmas album he had picked up that was playing on his Dad’s old record player as you worked on putting together some hot toddies in the kitchen. You had put him on light duty, and he was determined to make it the best-looking thing you’ve ever seen.

He worked going round and round the Christmas tree, the lights all shining merrily. He took his time making sure to wrap and tuck the lights around the branches, the cozy glow filling his chest with warmth.

But the longer he worked the more he was starting to get worried that he was coming down with a bug or something, his face starting to feel slightly feverish. His throat getting thick and uncomfortable.

He’d noticed it earlier at the tree lot, but didn’t want to give it too much thought. The Navy had ruined his Thanksgiving plans with you and he didn’t want to let you down again. He worked to string lights on a few more branches adamant to push through for you.

“Sweetheart,” he reluctantly called out to you, “I think I might be coming down with something. I’m not feeling too hot, and my throat is kinda scratchy.” The guilt was starting to settle in the pit of his stomach, maybe if he rested now he could keep it from getting too bad.

He turns to see you coming out of the kitchen with two steaming mugs in your hand, your eyes going wide.

He turns back to the tree looking to see if he accidentally fucked something up. It was his first time with a real tree, maybe the lights needed to be strung differently.

“Bradley. Oh my god.”

You had just put the finishing touches on the hot toddies and were already walking out of the kitchen when Bradley had called out to you. Those beverages were quickly abandoned on his coffee table as you propelled yourself towards him.

His face was brightly flushed and his eyes were shade of red that made your own itch in sympathy. You reach up to tug at the collar of the flannel he was wearing to get a better look at the skin of his neck and chest. The scars on his neck were standing out in contrast to his reddened skin.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing?” Even his voice was sounding a bit scratchy. You ignore him in favor for undoing the buttons at the cuff and rolling up the sleeve of his shirt, trying to not let yourself get too anxious. “You tryin’ to get me to put these lights up topless like some kind of sexy Santa?”

You shush him as you finally get the sleeve rolled up when your suspicions are confirmed, his thick forearm is absolutely covered in angry looking raised red welts.

“Oh no. Roos, baby. You’re breaking out.” Already pulling him away from the 7-foot issue occupying the living room and heading towards the kitchen, “I think you have pine tree allergy.”

He finally looks away from your face and down to his arm, a deep furrow settling over his features, “Oh fuck.” You get him seated at his oval oak dining table grabbing your phone to figure out what to do next.

“Yeah, ‘Oh fuck’,” you repeat back to him eyes skimming the information on the page you clicked into. You’ve always been the type to take charge in a crisis, this would be no different. You’d make sure he’s taken care of the way he needs to be. The way he deserves to be.

“How’s your breathing feel? Is your throat feeling tight or like it’s closing up?” you ask looking up at him.

His red-rimmed honey eyes seem to shift focus like he’s lost in thought for a brief moment.

“Rooster.”

He shakes his head. “Sorry, baby,” he says a bit bashfully. “I’m used to being the one levelheaded in stressful situations, but you should see the intensity on your face. I think you coulda been a pilot.”

“Bradley, I’m flattered. Truly,” you’ve learned that he isn’t the type to say things he doesn’t mean and you respect the hell out of what he does. “Although I’m sure there are a few more qualifications I’d have to pass than that,” you reply lightly, petting the back of his hand resting on the table. “But I need you stick with me here. I just need to figure out if we need to get you to the ER or not.”

He nods. “It’s a little thick, but not like it’s going to close up. And really scratchy, ‘s all.”

“Ok, that’s good. That’s good,” you repeat again more to yourself than him.

You love this man so much, and he deserves the world. This is the last thing you would have wanted for him and his very first, and last, real tree.

You can still hear the record playing in the background as you try not to gnaw on the inside of your cheek working to put your game plan together.

After firing off a quick text to Jake, you quickly pop upstairs to Bradley’s medicine cupboard, hoping that he has some antihistamines tucked away in there. You breathe a sigh of relief when you see the pink box, grabbing it you tear off a couple squares from the silver lined sheet to bring back to him.

He’s still sitting where you left him at the dining table. He’s slumped down in the chair his mouth pulled down at the corners, and you think it’s probably because he’s not feeling the greatest right now. You hand him the meds and a fetch him a glass of water, watching as the tendons of his throat flex as they work to swallow the pills down. The red welts have finally made an appearance there too, and are an angry contrast to his usually golden skin.

“Let’s get you out of these clothes, hmm?” You bend down to catch his eyes with your and holding out our hands to him. He nods once taking your smaller hands in his as he lets you pull him up.

You help him to unbutton and remove the flannel shirt trying to avoid further contact with the hives on his body, not wanting to cause him anymore discomfort. Once his wide chest and arms are uncovered, you work his jeans down his thick thighs leaving him in his tight black boxer briefs. There’s nothing more than you love than being up close with Rooster’s body, but right now you’re on a mission and can’t be distracted by all the skin before you.

While you’re still feeling concerned for him, you can feel your anxiety starting to settle a bit from where it was at earlier. You’ve got a plan, you’ve already checked off a few things, and you’ll be able to take a breath once Bradley is taken care of.

He’s ruining everything with you. First Thanksgiving and now Christmas.

How the fuck did he not know he was allergic to pine trees? He’s 35, he should known those kinds of things by now. Shouldn’t he?

He is frustrated as fuck laying on top of the king-sized bed in his darkened bedroom, the stinging of the hives on his arms and upper body were driving him crazy. God, his eyes itched and burned. Although, he couldn’t tell if it as from the reaction to the tree or from fighting the sudden urge to cry for the first time in a very long time.

The afternoon was not going as he had envisioned it. He wanted to sing some carols loudly while getting tipsy off hot toddies with you. Dance with you in between hanging ornaments on the tree. Maybe fuck you under the tree if he played his cards right, he wanted to be the one to get your tinsel in a tangle.

All he had wanted was to make you happy. You weren’t spending Christmas with your family, and he didn’t want you to miss out on anything being in California with him instead. He was really excited about the holiday for the first time in what felt like forever, and it had everything to do with you.

“Do you have any oatmeal here?” You had asked him not too long ago, and it was all he could do to point you in the right direction as the guilt was eating away at him. Once you had found it, you had sent him away to go upstairs to get him further away from the tree. His strong, capable, and pretty girlfriend was left to deal with the mess downstairs without him.

He could hear the whir of the blender and wondered what you were up to. Sulking at the fact that all he could do is wait for the antihistamines to kick in, and hope that he’d be feeling better soon so that he could help you take care of things.

“Bradley? Baby, are you awake?” You entered the dimly lit room cautiously, approaching him gingerly on the bed and holding a large bowl with something fluffy and powdery looking in it. He hadn’t heard you come up the stairs.

He loved the sound of your voice. He loved it in the morning when it was thick with sleep, how excited you got when you were talking about something you were passionate about, and he especially loved the breathy whispers and words of encouragement from you in his ear late at night when he was moving so deep within you. What he didn’t love was being the reason you were so anxious, that he was at fault for why your tone was so laced with concerned.

“Yeah,” although he was starting to feel sluggish, “’m still awake.” He felt your cool hands on his face and leaned into your soothing touch, pressing a kiss to your palm.

“I’m going to make you an oatmeal bath,” you informed him gesturing to the bowl in your hand. “From what I’ve been reading online that should help calm down the hives, hopefully stop them from spreading anymore.’

“Okay, Sweetheart,” he sighed. He can hear how pitiful he sounds, but right now his girl is the only thing that is making him feel good, and he will do anything you ask of him.

You set about turning the taps on for the large tub in the bathroom, twisting the handles to get the water to come out at the right temperature. Once you were satisfied, you swirled in the oat powder you had made watching as the water turned cloudy, then headed back into the bedroom to get Bradley.

“Let’s get you in the tub so you can soak for a bit, yeah?” He looks so miserable alone stretched out on the bed. “It’s not too hot, and it should help you feel better,” you help him to sit up placing a kiss to the lines of the scars on his cheek trying to comfort him.

Ever the soldier, he dutifully follows you into the bathroom. Once he is stripped of his briefs and comfortably situated in the milky mixture, his eyes flutter closed as he reclines back, leaning his head against the ledge of the tub. You move kneel on the floor next to him running your fingers through his sun-streaked waves.

Your little pocket of peace is disturbed a few minutes later by the ding of your phone.

“Jake just got here,” you announce filling him in on the next part of your plan, “He’s going to help me with the tree.”

“’posed to be my job,” Bradley sulks making a petulant sound in his throat. You can’t help but let out a gentle tsk while fighting back a small smile at his response.

“I just want you to relax here and let the oatmeal do its thing. I’m going to get things wrapped up downstairs it shouldn’t take too long, and then I’ll come back to check on you.”

“Mmhm, fine,” he sighs as you press a kiss to his forehead.

You let Jake in and he is quick to jump in taking over by unwinding the lights off from the partially lit tree. He’s even quicker to haul the massive thing out of the house and into the back of his truck, as the new owner of the 7-foot Noble Fir. After the tree is deposited, he heads back in and helps you coil the lights back up so they’re not in a tangled mess on the floor making some light small talk because he can tell your mind is elsewhere.

On his way out the door he shoots you a cocky salute, a shit-eating grin already plastered on his face. “You can thank my new Trot PR for how quickly I was able to run back to my place after I got your SOS text to get here as quickly as I did, Darlin’,” he drawls.

You flip him off, but tell him to text you what meals he’d like you to make and bring over later in the week as thanks for his help. And with a quick kiss to his cheek, you shoo him out the door wanting to get back to your boyfriend.

After he leaves, you break out the vacuum and work on getting the needles off the ground before moving on to the laundry. You grab the pile of Bradley’s clothes from the floor in the kitchen where you had left them before stripping down to your underwear, throwing everything in the washer and turning it on to get rid of any potential lingering irritants.

You make you way back upstairs, stopping to slip on one of Bradley’s old UVA t-shirts and grabbing him a loose pair of navy sweatpants, before going in to check on him. He is still there soaking his head tilted back and eyes closed, just as you had left him. Thankfully the hives have seemed to stop their spread leaving his face untouched. His neck, chest, and arms still bearing the brunt of his allergic reaction.

You gently knock on the door to announce your presence, not wanting to startle him. “You ready to come out now, baby?” Before him you had never been a pet name person, but now all you wanted to be a source of comfort in his life. A soft place for him to land.

“Yeah,” he turns his head towards the sound of your voice, “I think I might be getting a bit prune-y, but that felt really good. Thank you, Sweetheart.” He has finally opened his eyes and looking right at you, with a smile small and soft, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

You’re trying not to read into it too much, not wanting to let your anxiety get the best of you. You help him up from bath and use the handheld to first shower him off, grabbing a fluffy towel to help gingerly pat him dry. As he bends to pull on the sweatpants you had brought in you turn to rinse out the remaining oatmeal residue from the tub. He presses a kiss to the back of your head as he passes by you to make his way back to the bedroom.

By the time you’re done he has already climbed into bed, the comforter on your side already pulled back as he reaches out for you to get in with him. The white percale sheets you had helped him pick out were cool and luxuriously soft to the touch, and you feel yourself release the breath it felt like you’d been holding since you entered the living room holding those long forgotten hot toddies.

Bradley is quick to lace your fingers together and tuck his face into the space between your neck and shoulder, his mustache ticking the soft skin of your throat there. For all of his golden retriever energy, he is soaking up your affection and attention like a lap cat as you slowly rub your free hand up and down his broad back.

However, he’s still entirely too quiet. Your lips press tightly together on their own accord as you begin to think that there’s something more on his mind that he’s not sharing with you than just the effects of the hives and double dose of Benadryl.

You’re about to speak up when he beats you to it, “I’m so sorry, Sweetheart. I just wanted you to feel at home and now I’ve ruined Christmas.” You’ve never heard his voice sound so small.

Oh. Oh no.

“Bradley, please look at me.”

You lean back a bit as he removes his face from the spot it was tucked into and study his beautiful yet troubled looking eyes. “Is this why you’ve been so quiet? Please tell me you haven’t been spiraling thinking you’ve ruined anything.” He looks away, and you feel your brows scrunch together.

You cup his cheek in your hand, running your thumb down the cleft of his chin, “I love you so much and we’re going to have such a wonderful Christmas together, a tree is a nonissue here, baby. You matter more to me. I hope you know that.” His gaze finally meets yours and you continue on, “I need you to hear me. You’ve got absolutely nothing to apologize for. Nothing is ruined and nothing that happened today is your fault. Ok?” Nodding your head, needing for him to understand and let go of his misplaced guilt.

You see the exact moment he absorbs and believes everything you’re saying to him, his shoulders releasing the tension that had gathered there. “Ok, I hear you.” You lean into him to place a tender kiss on his lips. “I love you so much,” he breaths against your mouth.

“I love you too,” you say pressing one more lingering kiss to his lips before encouraging him to settle his head back down again. He reaches for your hand, guiding it to his hair, prompting you to comb your fingers through his curls.

“Now that we’ve settled that, how are you feeling? What else can I do to help?”

“You’ve done so much for me,” he murmurs kissing your neck gently. “’M just tired now and want to hold you for a bit. The Benadryl is starting to kick my ass.” He pauses for a moment, “But maybe we can order some pizza, Sweetheart? And put on one of those Christmas movies you like? Y’know the ones where the people live in a town is named something like Tinselville and their dogs fall in love?” He asks his voice sounding a bit boyish and hopeful.

You can’t help but let out a giggle because, really, his description is not too far off. You can feel his smile against the side of your neck as you turn the tv on.

“You can have whatever you like, handsome boy. Pizza and Oscar quality Christmas content, it is.” You grab your phone unlocking it and opening up to the delivery app, when Bradley plucks it from your hand tossing it to the side and placing his in yours instead.

“Order from mine instead, it’s my turn to take care of you,” he states slinging his arm low over your hip.

You click the button on the side to wake his phone up only to see your face smiling back at you on his lockscreen. Nose bright from the cold, surrounded by trees, and wrapped up in a scarf your mom had loaned to you since you hadn’t brought any practical winter-wear home with you.

It’s the picture that Bradley has sent himself the other night at the bar, and you’re flooded with a rush of affection for the man nestled against you. You notice his wallpaper is still the picture of you and him from this Halloween when you’d surprised everyone by dressing up as him, he’s kissing you squarely on the mouth while grabbing a handful of your ass. It was one of your favorites too.

You’d just finished submitting the order, when a text from Jake comes through, and you roll your eyes.

Those 5th Gens didn’t get you, but you’re taken out by a fucking a Christmas Tree. Would hate to see what one of those tree shaped car fresheners would do to you.

You’re not going to let him come for your boyfriend, even in playful roasting, when you just managed to picked his spirits up. Not tonight, Hangman. And you set to typing your response with your one free hand, the other still carding through Bradley’s curls.

Listen up, Lieutenant Turkey Trot. I was planning on surprising you with a bottle of that Texas bourbon you like when I swing by with the food later this week, but now that’s up to you. Do with that what you will... xx

Not bothering to wait for a response you hand Bradley back his phone only to see it light up again. “Lieutenant Turkey Trot,” he snorts, “Damn. Hangman apologized. And he says he wants a lasagna and your chicken and dumpling casserole.”

Southern men are too easy. Nothing is as important to them as food and their mamas. You smile smugly to yourself, making a mental note to go to remember to stop by that speciality liquor store by your place.

The food is delivered not too much later, you and Bradley eat in bed the box sitting between you while making fun of the plot of the movie you had turned on. You can tell the Benadryl is staring to win when Bradley’s running commentary tapers and his breathing begins to even out.

“It’s ok to go to sleep, baby.”

“Just resting my eyes, wanna see if they figure out why the poinsettias aren’t blooming.”

“You should get your rest,” you gently press, “I’ll set record it and you can find out tomorrow.”

“You’re gonna stay the night, right?” He asks sleepily as he concedes and begins to burrow down into his bed.

“Of course. If you want me here, I’ll stay.” Truth be told, you liked his bed better than yours. You’d even went back to the shop where you’d helped Bradley pick out his sheets from and bought the same percale set for your place in an attempt to help you sleep better.

You set an alarm for earlier than you’d like, remembering you have a meeting first thing in the morning. “I might have to leave a bit earlier than usual though,” you mention softly, “Since I’ll need to go to my place before I have to head in to the office.” You hadn’t originally planned on staying over due to your early morning and now you were kicking yourself for not grabbing a few things to keep in your car just in case.

“Yes. Stay,” he murmurs and reaches out to you, wrapping his arm around your midsection and pulling you to his chest. You let your fingers trace lightly down his forearm, feeling the hills and valleys caused by the welts that litter his arm. He lets out a hum of contentment in response, you’re pressed so close to him you can feel the vibrations of the sound from his chest against your back.

You think you’ve finally lost him to sleep when he mumbles already half gone, “Why don’t you keep more things here?” You can feel his warm breath against the back of your neck.

“How much were you thinking? You saying you want to share a drawer with me?” you lightly tease.

“Bring it all,” he sighs, “Want you here.”

The sound of his soft snores filling your ear only a couple minutes later.

You don’t bring up Bradley’s half-asleep musings, you won’t hold him to anything said under the influence of the antihistamines. While the thoughts of moving in and living with Bradley made your heart beat a bit faster, you kept those hopes tucked away just for yourself.

It was now a week after the pine tree debacle, Bradley’s hives were quick to clear up after a couple days and a few oatmeal baths later. Your skin was still reaping the benefits of the oatmeal too after he managed to coax you in with him one evening.

He had texted you earlier in the day asking for you to swing by his place after work. You knew the door would be unlocked for you, and you let yourself in.

“That you, Sweetheart?” He called out from nearby, you can hear the sounds of some crooner singing in the background.

“Yeah, it’s me." You set your purse and work tote down before bending to undo your heels at the door. “Hey, I was thinking on my way over here, I bet lots of places still have artificial trees left in stock that we could get. I feel like we need a Christmas redo.” You get one off and begin working on the other, “I was planning on getting one to liven up my place too, maybe I can find one of those ostentatious pink ones I tried to talk my parents into getting and fulfill a lifelong dream.” You say that last part with a little laugh.

You finally win the battle against the top buckle of your cute shoe finally kicking it off and wiggling your toes out, “Ooh! Maybe we can go to that cute cocktail bar off 17th afterwards? One of my coworkers was talking about their new seasonal drinks today and it seems festive.”

You fish your phone out of your purse and make your way to the living room, “That is if you didn’t have anything planned.”

Your voice trails off at the end because when you round the corner you find Bradley in his living room looking very proud with a self-satisfied smile on his face already standing next to a Christmas tree.

A very large, very fluffy, pink Christmas tree.

You stand there entirely stunned. The juxtaposition of your tall, handsome naval aviator next to this truly over the top frosted tree has your brain working overtime. The entire room is cast in a dreamy glow from many strands of white lights he had already spun around it.

“I still feel bad that about what happened the other weekend, and I wanted to make it up to you. At the bar, I heard you telling Phoenix that you always wanted a pink tree, so I hope this is similar to what you hand in mind.” He seems to be getting a bit nervous now, since all it seems you can do is just blink at him. He reaches around into his back pocket pulling out a small tube, “I even got some of those scent stick things to tuck in if you-”

He doesn’t get to finish since you’ve launch yourself at him.

“Bradley!” He catches you easily with one arm as you begin peppering his face with kisses.

His laugher fills the room and his grin lights up his face at your reaction, “Are you happy, Sweetheart?”

“I’m the happiest! Oh my god! Are you for real?” you exclaim in between kisses. You stop the assault on his face to take it in your hands, “Seriously though, there is nothing to feel bad about. You’re what matters most to me. I mean, yes, I absolutely love this. But you should have what you like too.”

He takes a step back, with you still in his arms and propped up on his hip. He thoughtfully studies the tree in front of you both. “Yep. This is definitely the perfect tree,” he declares proudly, “It’s full and girthy. Has some good gaps, and look at that top. Straight as an arrow. Although we might need to get some more decorations for it, but I got it started.”

You look from him back to the tree puzzled, since you don’t see anything on it aside from the lights. He walks you both closer, and pulls off what looks to be a strand of curling ribbon with a shiny silver object dangling from it from a branch on the tree.

A key.

He sets you down back on your own two feet, holding you close against his body bringing his forehead to yours. “I meant it, Sweetheart. Bring it all. There’s nothing I want more than for you to be here. All the time. With me. You’re the only thing on my list this year, you’re all I want. Will you let me give you more than a drawer?” His honey brown eyes gazing at you hopefully.

You already knew what your response would be even before he pulled that key from off the tree, and the answer must be all over your face because Bradley’s face breaks into a beam as he picks you up and spins you around.

The choice has always been easy with him, it’ll always be a yes.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Causally hyper-fixating over all things TGM at bradshawburner

You can find the prequel to this story here!

Find out what happens during their second Christmas together here!

You can read more of my stories here!

#bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw x you #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #bradley bradshaw fanfiction #rooster x reader #rooster x female reader #rooster x you #bradley bradshaw x female reader #bradley bradshaw imagine #top gun fanfiction #bradley bradshaw fic #bradley bradshaw #bradley rooster bradshaw #hello december playlist challenge

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seenoversundown · 4 months

Text

For Death Or Glory : Chapter One

Jake x Charlotte (Fem OC)

Warnings: Anxious theme, Bickering, Brotherly Taunting, Uncomfortable situations, Yearning (oh the yearning) Smoking, Alcohol (it's a bar- feels self explanatory but just for safety) Shitty dad jokes, and silly goofy boy time!

Word Count: 3k

Summary: Jake has spent most of his 20's single or just random dates here and there. Unfortunately for him, his brothers and their partners are all on board for trying to find him the love of his life.

Author's Note: hehe hi :) I couldn't resist any longer. I hope you love Jake as much as I do.

Beggars Song - Matt Maeson "Oh yeah, I'm a beat down, washed up, son of a bitch, I got one more cigarette and all my money is spent, but I'ma Be damned if I let it keep me down."

The soft ‘click’ of the door latching behind me as I sneak out of Willa and Quinn’s apartment. It stopped snowing a few hours ago, so the plows have had time to take care of the roads. Hopefully, they could get out of there quickly enough to make it home. I can’t be shocked that we all got roped into a slumber party, especially with Josh involved. I honestly didn’t even mind it; sometimes, spending time with everyone is nice, not in the bar. My heart was whole, watching everyone laugh and smile together.

Their apartment complex wasn’t too far from the bar, but I don’t trust the roads enough to drive the speed limit.

‘Oh, what a night,

Late December back in ‘63..’

“Oooh, this one hits,” I say as the song fills the car. Turning the volume, I tap along on my steering wheel. Taking my time, I can appreciate how the snow softly coats the trees, which kind of makes up for the lack of leaves. The sun feels extra bright today, bouncing off all the snow piles and practically making the ground light up.

‘What a lady, what a night.’

“Oh, I, I got a funny feeling when she walked in the room,” I quietly sing along. I’ve always been a little partial to the “oldies” as they say on the radio, but I grew up listening to all of it. Maybe I’m just a sucker for nostalgia.

Pulling into my usual spot, ‘Oh, what a night,’ I sit for a second, contemplating whether I should run upstairs real quick or go into the bar. I probably should at least change. I’ve been in these clothes for almost twenty-four hours.

As fast as I can, without busting my ass on the ice, I walk to the stairwell. It’s unfortunately not the most insulated, so I hustle upstairs; the first chilly days always catch you off guard. The warmth hits me when I get into the apartment, my body letting out one last shiver, shaking the chill from outside off.

After finding a clean button-up and switching into new pants, I feel like a new human. I take a few minutes to brush my teeth, spray myself with some cologne, and then make a cup of coffee. The warm drink on a cold day routine never misses. I scroll through my emails while waiting for my coffee to finish brewing before heading to the bar.

The brisk air has me running down the stairs, fumbling with my keys to unlock the back door to the bar. I quickly turn the keys, hearing the heavy ‘clunk’ of the deadbolt flipping over. I scoot myself inside, pulling the door shut behind me while letting out another shiver.

My body freezes when I hear sounds coming from the actual bar. Jesus Christ, NO. My heart rate spikes as I creep down the hallway, not wanting to give myself away. As if whoever or whatever is in here didn’t hear the door, you dumbass. I still can’t see out into the bar, but the faint sounds are becoming much less muffled as I get closer.

“Fuck, what do we do?”

“Just get dressed, baby. Go, go, go.”

Is that Danny? I take a few more steps before finally seeing his tall figure standing shirtless near one of the end booths. He’s clearly buttoning his pants when I see a pair of smaller arms reach out behind him. Oh my god, Melody. I watch as he fumbles around, trying to flip his shirt from inside out, when he turns around and locks eyes with me. I can see any ounce of life drain from his face from a mile away.

We stare at each other for what feels like an eternity. Still, it is realistically ten seconds before I spit out the only question I can manage to think of, “What the fuck is going on?”

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“Jake, really, I’m so sorry,” Dan is about to plead his case now.

Looking at him, I take a deep breath, knowing he genuinely feels terrible about this. “It’s fine,” I say, touching his arm.

“I will just take the day to really clean the bar, I suppose,” letting the smile sneak onto my face to ease the tension.

He lets a small laugh, “I’ll help since it’s my bad anyway.”

“Oh god,” I let slip. That was supposed to be an inside thought, but here we are.

“What?”

I silently point to the camera behind the bar. I won’t lie: Watching the emotions cycle through his face wasn’t a little funny. Melody looked wide-eyed as the realization hit her as well.

“Oh shit, oh my god,”

“You quite literally helped me install them,” I let out an uncomfortable laugh, “I don’t know how you forgot.”

He runs both hands over his face before finally asking, “Can we just.. delete that.. ALL of that..please?” His voice is coated in desperation as he keeps looking over at Melody.

“I’m certainly not going to watch it, Danny.” Relief washes over him as if he really thought I would watch that.

“Let’s agree to never bring this up.. again.. Ever?” I cock an eyebrow at him, taking a quick glance at Melody as well. She nods aggressively.

“What are we never bringing up?” Sam’s sing-songy tone radiates through the bar. God damn it.

Josh’s loud voice followed suit, “Oh, I love a good secret!” Of course, he came with Sam.

“That is between you guys and Danny,” I put my hands up, “I have cleaning I need to get done.” I look over to Dan, trying not to laugh. The look on his face is screaming that he knows he’s screwed now that Josh is here. Everybody is about to know his little secret.

“If you need to go for a little bit, do what you need to,” I lean in and whisper to Melody as I pass her. She gives me a thumbs-up and mouths, ‘Thank you,’ as I head down the hall.

“Goodmorning, brother,” Josh’s voice comes from behind me as I grab some cleaning supplies from our storage closet.

“I’m surprised you guys got here this early?”

When I left the apartment, I didn’t think anybody would be moving for quite a while. The few of us in the living room, all sleeping on the makeshift bed we crafted with extra blankets and pillows. Sam dipped at some point in the night to Willa’s bed, what a party pooper.

“I couldn’t fall back to sleep after you left, and I heard Sam moving around,” he tells me, “We figured you could use some help getting the bar situated after last night anyway.” Reaching out to take the broom and dustpan from me.

Surprised that they wanted to help, I quickly said, “Oh, well, thanks bub.” Not that they didn’t usually help out if I asked, but it was a bit more dependent on me asking, which I’m candidly not great at doing.

“So, what exactly needs to be cleaned?” Sam finally caves.

I smile at him, knowing what he’s trying to do, “Let’s just say we’re taking the opportunity to really make sure everything is clean.” Grabbing a rag and some disinfectant to start wiping everything down.

“Well,” he instigates further, “I just didn’t know if there was like a specific booth or something.” He unsuccessfully chokes back a laugh.

Josh quickly cut him off, “I’m sure he asked for specifics,”

I bite my tongue so as not to laugh at the argument that will start. If there’s anything I know, it’s that these two can’t help but start shit with each other.

“It was just a question, Josh.”

“You’re just picking at him for no reason. He said we’re cleaning everything, so just clean.”

“You know why we’re cleaning. That’s why you’re being defensive,” Sam says, his voice rising as he realizes.

Josh gasps dramatically, “You DO listen to your girlfriend. Oh my god, I’m so proud of you!”

“Oh, fuck off,”

Josh laughed loud: “It doesn’t take much to figure out what happened, Samuel. Just use that little brain of yours for a minute, and maybe you’ll piece it together.”

I sit in a booth to wipe the table down, just listening to them go back and forth. Josh isn’t wrong.. If he really did just stop to think about it, he would figure it out. Or, literally, just ask Danny. I never said he couldn’t ask him.

“I’m not that stupid, I know that-” Sam starts but immediately stops when he sees Danny walk back in.

“What are we yelling about?”

“The two of them are bickering about why we’re cleaning,” I say plainly, with my eyebrows raised and a tight-lipped smile.

His eyes widen, clearing his throat before saying, “Yeah, uh, people were a bit frantic last night trying to get out of here when the storm started, and we also didn’t want to get stuck too long, so we just.. didn’t have time to clean.” He couldn’t be worse at lying, but I think Sam will let it slide because of how uncomfortable he looks right now.

“Now, why couldn’t you just say that?” Sam turns, looking back over at Josh. Jesus Christ, here we go.

“Because that’s obviously not the reason, they clearly–”

“Good morning, Krusty Krew!” Quinn sings through the bar, thank god.

“Did we interrupt something?” Willa asks through a laugh.

“Yes, thank you,” I speak before the other two can.

It’s fun to watch as they both make their way over to their respective partners. Josh and Quinn always seem like they haven’t seen each other in years, even if it’s only been 20 minutes. The way they just curl into each other at any given moment. And then there’s Sam and Willa. Her laugh radiates through a room whenever Sam is around; they constantly pick on each other about something. He presses a kiss to the side of her head before she starts to walk away, but not before he swats at her ass, and she flips him off. She’s a saint for putting up with him.

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I listened to everyone’s chatter until Josh and Sam started bickering again. I motion to Danny to say that I’m going outside for a minute before grabbing a cigarette from my office. Walking out the back door in the crisp air, I pull out my lighter and try to beat the wind. That first inhale is always the most rewarding. I told myself when I left the shipyard that I would cut back; the guys I worked with were heavy smokers, and it’s easy to fall into that trap. Now, I settle for one a day, and honestly, some days, I don’t bother; I find that when I’m stressed, I tend to go for it, but I’ve stuck to my guns and not gone back to smoking aggressively.

I walk across the street, finding my usual spot to watch the boats slowly sail out to the ocean. I like to come here when I need a moment. I’m unsure why I’m feeling more anxious today than usual, but my chest feels heavy. Why do I feel so alone?

It’s not that I can’t be alone. I obviously have made it this long without someone; I have just spent the last two years watching everyone close to me find love. I never really feel lonely because they are all part of the family at this point, but I do have days where I can’t help but be almost..jealous. My mind keeps wandering as I take another drag. Is there something I’m doing that just makes me not worthy of dating? I’ve never understood why, out of all the dates I’ve been on in the last handful of years, none of them have worked out. God, I sound so pathetic.

I enjoy the last moments of my smoke break, forcing myself to focus on the boat coming into the dock. I can’t seem bothered when I go inside, or they’ll notice.

Finally, making my way back inside, I see Josh and Quinn in one booth and Sam with Willa in another. They don’t seem to notice that I’ve snuck back in, so I just spend some time cleaning up and organizing behind the bar while there’s nobody to actually tend to.

I start mindlessly wiping down the wine glasses, trying to make them as clean as possible. Josh and Quinn are in my line of sight; it’s hard not to notice how in love they are. Always sitting on the same side of any table, whether it’s a booth or a typical table setting, they’re attached at the hip. They’re always touching. Whether it’s just sitting close enough, one of them can move their leg closer, or right now, where Quinn is just tracing their finger along his jawline and down the bridge of his nose. They lean in, pressing a kiss to his nose before he tugs them in quickly for a real kiss. This is dreadful. I really can’t remember the last time I kissed someone. Am I that touch starved that I’m jealous of my brother? The squeak from the glass reminds me where I am. I shake my head, putting it back in its place and grabbing a new glass.

I glance over to the other booth; Willa has her head propped up in her hand as she looks at my brother. Even though they instigate each other most often, it’s always with love. She has a soft smile plastered on her face as she nods to whatever he’s saying. Running his hand down her forearm every so often, it’s weird seeing Sam so.. domestic? Willa really is perfect for him, though. I knew the moment she put him in his place while on a date with SOMEONE ELSE. How she looks at him like he’s the greatest thing ever created is incredibly sweet. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I can see the way her eyes light up before she calls him ‘babe.’ I put the last glass back in place, tossing the towel under the bar.

I think I have scrubbed every inch of this bar today, I think to myself, leaning into my hand. The music is lower since there’s nobody here, and everybody is currently preoccupied. I let my mind wander for a minute.

The feeling of being so excited to see someone that your heart flutters. Being able to just hold someone close. God, getting to kiss them endlessly— nothing is better than that. Feeling them smile at you, ugh. Being so wrapped up in each other, pulling her into your lap so you can just have her as close as possible. Someone to call sweet things and have them call me ‘babe.’ Fuck me. I need a wife. Can I just skip to the being in love part? I don’t want to waste my time on girls who will just leave after a couple of months. I just want to fall helplessly in love and spend every day making sure they feel the same.

“Jake?” Sam loudly says, waving his hand in front of me.

My body jumps involuntarily, “For fucks sake.”

“Good daydream, huh?” Josh teases. I fight the warm feeling creeping into my face, rolling my eyes subtly.

“What do you guys want?”

“Will you make us drinks, please?” Josh asks, trying to recover from his taunting.

“Quinn and Willa too?” I double-check as I’m grabbing glasses. They both nod in sync.

I kept letting out little sighs, which, to be fair, I didn’t think were that obvious. Turning and setting one of the drinks in front of them, my eyebrows pulled together.

“Why do you look so angry?” Sam asks.

“I’m not?” I quip back. Unfortunately, it didn’t come out as convincing as I would have liked.

“I really think you just need to get laid or something, Jake,” Josh laughs out, “you need someone to take the edge off!” he laughs, nudging Sam with his elbow. You’re telling me.

“When do I have the time, Josh? Come on,” I can’t help the attitude that comes out, but given the day I’ve had so far— getting harassed for not getting laid is not helping.

“Honestly, you just seem tense lately,” Sam pipes up, “maybe if you actually flirted with one of the pretty girls who comes in, you could get off once in a while.” Josh barks out a laugh towards Sam, but I see Dan pointing in our direction as I listen to my personal peanut gallery giggle.

Rolling my eyes at them as they keep egging each other on, “Trust me, I’d love for my wife to walk through those doors, but I don’t see that happening.”

I turn to finish making drinks for the boys, trying to ignore them, squawking about my lack of sex life. As I set out a few glasses on the counter, I heard a lower, raspy female voice ring behind me, “Could I speak with Mr. Kiszka?”

I turn around to a petite redhead dressed very professionally. Her button-up was a pale yellow, tucked into some grayish-blue slacks. Her hair curled perfectly, and her dark red lips stood out against her pale complexion.

“Which one?” we all answer in unison.

She flips open her folder, looking at whatever papers are in there, and I can’t seem to look away from her. She’s … so hot?

“Um, Jacob Kiszka, I’m sorry.”

She looks up at me, making direct eye contact. Green. Her eyes are green.

I manage to muster up the ability to ask, “What do you need from me, dear?” Dear? Am I ninety? The sounds of my brother’s giggling prevented any level of silence between us.

“Well, I’m sorry to do this to you randomly, Mr. Kiszka,” she says confidently; her voice is so pretty.“Mr. Kiszka is our father. Please call me Jake,” I say, trying to lighten the mood as I extend my arm out to shake her hand across the bar. It feels like a small jolt to my heart as her hand firmly grabs mine, and she tells me, “Charlotte Rhodes.”

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Chapter Two

FDOG Masterpost | Masterlist | Prologue | FDOG Playlist

If you ask nicely, I may be so inclined to drop Chapter 2 sooner than next Thursday .. is all i'm going to say. 🤭

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alwaysonthemend · 1 year

Text

seeing people in the comments on this post being mean about jake's spelling mistakes makes me so fucking mad. so i wrote a ficlet about it. it's just sad fluff with jake being the sweetest human on the planet and needing a little comfort. also i used actual comments from the post in this fic because they made me so angry. i literally wrote this in one sitting so sorry for the inevitable typos.

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You unlocked your front door, doing your best to be as quiet as possible. You’d gone out to dinner with a few of your friends, which had quickly turned into a night at the bar (as it often did with this particular group). You’d had fun, but now you were simply exhausted and ready to be in bed. You tiptoed through the house – silent as possible in case Jake was already asleep. You entered your shared bedroom to find him sitting up against the headboard, his phone in his hand and his soft hair up in a loose bun. One lamp was still on, bathing him in a warm, yellow light.

“Hey, baby.” He gave you a soft smile and you couldn’t help but smile in return. “How were your friends?”

“Oh they were great.” You said, peeling your shirt and pants off and tossing them into the hamper. “We had fun. But I missed you.”

Jake smiled wider, but you couldn’t help but notice that his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. Maybe he’d missed you more than you thought he would. It was a Saturday night, and the two of you usually spent Saturday nights together when he was in town.

“I missed you too, y/n.”

You threw on some comfy sweatpants and an old band t of Jake’s before climbing into bed. You settled in close to him and he immediately placed his phone on the bed next to him and wrapped his arms around you, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck. He sighed into your skin and closed his eyes. That was sign number two that something was off with him.

“Did you do anything fun while I was gone?” You asked him, extracting the hair tie from his hair so you could run your fingers through his soft locks.

“No.” His voice sounded muffled from where he had his face pressed against your skin, but you could still hear the flatness of it. He sounded sad.

“Hey.” You said, pulling yourself from him and forcing him to look up at you. Now that you could see him up close, his eyes were red rimmed – like he’d been crying. The sight made your heart ache. “Jakey, what’s wrong?”

He just shook his head and looked away. He seemed embarrassed too.

“Jake, what’s wrong baby.” You caught his chin with your finger and gently turned his head to face you again. “Talk to me.”

“It’s stupid.” He said, lips pouting out while his brown eyes pooled with sadness and hurt.

“Clearly not if it’s upsetting you so much.”

He sat up suddenly, grabbing his phone off the bed from where he’d placed it a moment before and unlocked it. He handed it to you and you looked to see a new Instagram post of his pulled up. It was a picture of him in one of his robes and it looked like he was skipping rocks. The caption simply read “Holding up the falling skies.”

You furrowed your brows in confusion and looked at him. He wasn’t looking at you – instead staring intently at the bedspread like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

“I don’t get it.” You said, trying to hand the phone back to him. “It’s a cute post. What’s the matter?”

He sighed, pushing the phone back to you.

“I fucking misspelled “skies” earlier.” His voice was so quiet you had to strain your ears to hear him. “I didn’t realize until right before you walked in.”

You giggled lightly, amused by his dramatics.

“So? It’s just a stupid Instagram caption. Who cares if you had a typo?”

He just sighed deeply again and shook his head.

“Read the comments.”

You clicked on the comment section and began scrolling through. The first few were harmless: just people wishing that they were there with Jake, one person telling him to go to bed (that one made you laugh), and a few comments about his robe looking piratey.

You kept scrolling, momentarily confused before you began to see comments that were far less kind. Waiting for him to edit the caption, must have been drunk when he typed this, jaket doesn’t know how to spell ‘skies,’ pookie needs to just go to bed, this does not grammatically make sense, lol. You sighed as you read them, suddenly beginning to understand why he was so upset.

You know he’s always struggled with his ADHD and his dyslexia – and you know for certain that he’s always been embarrassed about it too. He feels like he’s stupid for making simple spelling or grammar mistakes, and he’s always so nervous about posting. Not too long before tonight he’d texted you with a caption, followed by “does this grammatically make sense? Lol.” You’d told him it was fine and then he’d accidentally copy and pasted the whole message into his caption. He’d been so upset and you’d spent hours trying to make him feel better. And now a bunch of his so-called “fans” were making fun of him for having a simple spelling mistake. It made your blood boil.

“Jake,” you looked over to see his bottom lip wobbling – fighting to hold back the tears that wanted to fall. “Oh baby.” You said sadly, clicking his phone off and placing it on your nightstand.

You opened your arms and he all but collapsed against you, wrapping his own arms around your waist tightly. You felt wetness leaking onto your shirt where he was finally letting his tears fall.

“Jakey, it’s okay.” You soothed, burying your hands in his hair again in an attempt to soothe him.

“They think I’m fucking stupid.” He admitted. His voice sounded so defeated.

“Who cares what they think, Jake? We all make mistakes like that. Who cares if they think you’re stupid for one silly mistake? That’s on them for thinking that, not on you.”

He mumbled something in response but you didn’t quite catch it.

“What?”

He shook his head against your stomach, seemingly unwilling to voice what he had just said any louder.

“Jake,” you admonished, scratching across his scalp softly. “What did you say?”

“I said that I am fucking stupid.”

Your hands stilled in his hair, frozen at his words.

“Jake, look at me. Look at me right fucking now.”

He rose silently, though his eyes were looking anywhere but your face. You reached up, placing your palms on both of his cheeks, forcing him to meet your gaze.

“You listen to me, Jacob Thomas Kiszka: you are not stupid.” You brushed a few stray tears from beneath his eyes with your thumbs. “Do you hear me? You. Are. Not. Stupid. Don’t you ever say that about yourself again.”

He stared at you, brown eyes glassy. His beautiful lips were parted, and you wanted nothing more than to kiss the sadness off his face.

“Jake, you are one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. You’re fucking brilliant;. You read more than I ever had in my entire life, you quote philosophers at me, you remember thousands upon thousands of songs and artists that my brain can barely keep up with, you write incredible song lyrics.” You pressed a soft kiss to his lips before pulling away again. “You can play a song you’ve only heard once, and you’re an incredible artist – even though you don’t think you are.”

His cheeks were flaming, shyness overtaking his sadness after your words. No matter what, Jake is never good at accepting compliments.

“I’m sorry.” He finally whispers.

“Sorry for what?”

“For being a crybaby.”

“Jakey,” you sighed, sliding your hands down to squeeze his shoulders. “You’re allowed to be upset – especially when your own fans are being so shitty. But you are not allowed to call yourself stupid. Because you’re not.”

“Okay.” He says, but you’re not letting him get off that easy.

“Say it.”

It’s his turn to look at you in confusion.

“Say what?”

“Say ‘I’m not stupid.’”

“Y/n…”

“Nope. You’ve gotta say it. I wanna hear it from your own mouth.”

“I’m not stupid.” He says quietly, lips quirking up in a smile despite himself.

“Perfect.”

You pressed your lips to his again, this time deeper than the one before. He parted his lips, allowing you to take control of the kiss. You poured as much love as you possibly could into it – trying to tell him without words how much you love him. You finally pull away, leaving him to look at you dazed.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Jakey. Now let’s go to bed.”

He nods and you reach up to the nightstand and turn the lamp off, plunging the two of you into darkness.

“Y/n?” Jake asks, his voice quiet and a little unsure, but still loud enough for you to hear him.

“Yeah?”

“Can I be the little spoon tonight?”

Your heart melts at his question and you smile, even though he can’t really see it in the dark.

“Of course. “

Jake lies down, turning his back to you and pressing himself up close to your chest. You wrap your arm around his waist and throw one leg over him and pull him close to you, effectively caging him in against you. You bury your face in his hair and he lets out a contented little sigh.

“I love you, y/n.”

“I love you too, Jake. So much. More than you’ll ever know.”

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taglist:

@ignite-my-fire

#jake kiszka x reader #jake kiszka fluff #jake kiszka angst #dee's writing #jake kiszka

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sirjacobthomaskiszka · 1 year

Text

the twins are all of my moods

#also we’ve unlocked new fits??? I’m here for it #jakeys little floral shirt #my twinnies #josh kiszka #jake kiszka #greta van fleet

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trip-the-cal-fantastic · 10 days

Text

Jake Kiszka x F!OC (Mariah Carella)

Genre(?): Fluff

Warnings: Kissing, swearing, use of pet-names (Baby, honey, Cara mio, sweetheart, and she calls him Jay), mention of pain meds

Word Count ~ 2.6k

“Jake?” Mariah pushed the front door closed, kicking her shoes off and hanging her keys on the hook on the wall. “Baby? I’m home!” She dropped her bag onto the dining room table, along with her phone and sunglasses, then walked deeper into the dimly lit house, looking for any sign of her boyfriend. “Jay…” She peeked down the hall. The bedroom door was open and the light was off, but the door to Jake’s home studio was closed, a soft yellow light pooling at the bottom. Mariah lightly knocked on the door, gaining nothing in response. “Jake, honey.”

Jake was hunched over his acoustic guitar, his fingers moving fluidly over the fretboard. He was too lost in his work to notice the sound of Mariah’s voice. He was working on something new, per Josh’s request. With every wrong note, which only happened rarely, he would silently curse to himself, then start the song over.

Mariah knocked again, hearing him stop playing, swear under his breath, then start again. She knocked once more, harder this time. “Jacob.” Her voice was stern as she tried the door handle, which happened to be unlocked. She pushed the door open, finding Jake at his desk with a paper and pen in front of him, and his guitar across his lap.

She took a second to admire him and how hard he was working. He had only been home for a couple of days before Josh had him writing and making new music. Mariah stepped closer to him, lightly placing her hand on his shoulder and running her fingers up into the hair at the nape of his neck, cupping his jaw. “Cara mio.” The Italian term of endearment easily rolled off of Mariah’s tongue, causing Jake to suck in a sharp breath through his nose and blink a few times before looking up to her.

“Sweetheart…” Jake reached out, gently grasping her hip, his thumb caressing the exposed skin of her stomach between her leggings and her cropped John Lee Hooker t-shirt. “I didn’t hear you come in.” His eyes raked over her figure, taking in everything. Her jet black hair that was tied into a slicked-back bun at the base of her neck, the contrast between her white shirt and her olive skin, her soft-brown eyes that could only be described as sunlight through a glass of whiskey, the small freckle at the left corner of her lips, the small slit in her right eyebrow from the scar of a childhood injury. Jake lightly shook his head, a lazy smile pulling the corner of his lips up. “God, you are beautiful.”

Mariah bent at the waist, leaning down to capture Jake’s lips with hers. Jake hummed into the kiss, his hand that rested on her hip slowly trailed up her side, stopping at about the middle of her ribcage, then running back down to her hip. Mariah pulled away with a soft smile. “Whatcha working on, Jay?”

Jake angled the paper on the desk so she could see it. There were words, lyrics, if Mariah had to guess, that had been scribbled in Josh’s handwriting and guitar tabs that Jake had scrawled in a hurry. “Some idea Josh had at the studio this morning. He wants it in the key of G minor.”

Mariah looked over the paper and cocked her head. She grabbed Jake’s pen and scratched out a section of the tabs, changing the part, then setting the pen back down. “Try that.”

Jake glanced over the revised tabs and then played through it on his guitar. He let out a playful scoff and looked up to Mariah with a goofy grin. “You’re amazing.”

“Oh, cara mio,” Mariah leaned down once again and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. “I know.” She ran her hand through his hair before stepping out of the studio. “I’m gonna make dinner. What sounds good?”

Jake thought for a moment, his eyes widening in guilty realization. “Oh, shit. The guys are coming over tonight. Damn it. I’m so sorry. I forgot to ask you if that was okay.”

Mariah leaned against the doorframe. “It’s okay, Jake. They are more than welcome to dinner anytime. I went grocery shopping yesterday, so we have a bunch of stuff I can make.” She mentally went over all the food items she bought yesterday, trying to come up with ideas. “I can do chicken cutlets, spaghetti, any type of pasta really. Or, we can order take-out. Whatever you boys want. Why don’t you ask them what they want to do, and I'll clean off the table so we have a place to eat, okay?”

Jake let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding while he processed what Mariah had said. “Okay. I’ll ask them. Thank you, sweetheart. You’re the best.” He gave her a playful wink. “I gotta record this and send it to Josh. I’ll be out to help in just a minute.”

“Take your time, baby.” Mariah pushed herself off of the doorframe, closing the door behind her as she padded back down the hallway into the dining room. She cleared her purse and sunglasses off of the table, taking them to the bedroom and putting them where they belong. Occasionally, Mariah would stop outside the studio door to listen to what Jake was doing. He recorded 4 takes before he decided that it sounded good enough. Mariah was wiping down the dining room table when Jake finally emerged from the studio.

He approached her from behind, wrapping his arms around her waist. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder and then rested his chin there. “Sam said he’s good with whatever, Danny doesn’t want you to worry about cooking a bunch of food, and Josh said he’s been wanting Thai food all week. Sounds like take-out for dinner.”

Mariah let out a light-hearted sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God. I really didn’t want to cook tonight. Tell them we’ll call in the order if one of them picks it up on the way here. Preferably Sam because he lives on the same side of town as the restaurant.”

Jake nodded as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and relayed the message. “What can I do to help you?”

Mariah shook her head and turned to face Jake. “You haven’t had a chance to truly relax since you’ve been home. You go sit on the couch and look handsome until your brothers get here. I’ve got everything covered.” She placed a chaste kiss to his lips and shooed him into the living room. She grabbed a beer from the fridge, twisting the cap off and setting it on the end table next to the sofa. “And, don’t you dare get up until the food gets here.”

Jake lightly shook his head as he sighed. “You are too good to me, woman. I love you, baby. So damn much.”

“I love you, cara mio.” Mariah quietly giggled to herself as she made her way back to the kitchen, peeking back into the living room, seeing Jake prop his feet up on the coffee table and tilt his head up to rest it on the back of the couch. She called the Thai restaurant and placed the order, having everyone’s dishes of choice memorized by heart. She had just finished cleaning up the kitchen when the first knock came from the front door.

Jake attempted to stand from the couch to answer the door, but Mariah hurried to the front door before his feet even hit the ground. “Jacob Thomas. What did I say? Sit back down until Sam gets here with the food. I’m willing to bet money that this is Danny.” She pulled the door open, revealing a goofy-grinning Danny Wagner. “Come on in, Dan.” Mariah stepped aside, letting Danny cross the threshold of the house.

Danny pulled Mariah into a side hug, pressing a friendly kiss to the top of her head. “Thank you for having us, especially on such short notice. Forgetful Franny over there…” Danny gestured to Jake with a small chuckle. “...told us he failed to mention we were coming over.”

Mariah stifled her laughter as she glanced at Jake. “It’s really no problem, Danny. I love having you guys over. Make yourself comfortable. Sam should be here with the food soon. Only the Lord knows when Josh will be here.” Danny chuckled again as he moved to sit on the opposite end of the couch. Mariah walked back to the kitchen, pulling open the fridge and calling out to Danny. “What do you want to drink, Wagner?”

Danny jokingly tapped his chin as he thought. “Just a beer is fine. Thank you, Mo.” He was the only person to ever call Mariah by that nickname, and it was one of her favorites. She twisted the cap off of Danny’s beer and handed it to him just as another knock came from the front door. Mariah shot Jake a glare, reminding him to stay put as she crossed the living room into the entryway.

She opened the door to Sam and Josh, both holding plenty of take-out boxes and smiling wide. Sam held his boxes up high. “Dinner is served!” Mariah laughed as she led them to the dining room, helping them plate the food and figure out a seating arrangement.

Jake and Danny trailed in from the living room, taking their seats at the table and saying a quick thank you to Mariah and Sam for ordering and retrieving the food. Mariah moved to sit next to Jake, running her hand along the back of his shoulders as she did. He turned his head to look at her, giving her a loving smile.

3 hours later, everyone had eaten and Danny, Sam, and Josh said their final goodbyes and thank yous as they filed out of the door one by one. Jake and Mariah sat down heavily on the couch as they heard Josh pull the door shut. She rested her head on Jake’s shoulder, letting out a content sigh. He gently placed his hand on her thigh, lightly squeezing a couple of times before pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “You okay, sweetheart?”

Mariah nodded against his shoulder. “More than okay, cara mio. Everything feels like it’s exactly where it’s supposed to be in the universe.” She placed her hand over his. “Do you wanna go lay down, Jay? I know it’s only 9:30, but you’re exhausted. And don’t try to tell me you’re not. I know you. I can see it in your eyes.”

Jake simply nodded and let out a breathy laugh. “Oh my God, I thought you’d never ask. Going to bed sounds incredible, baby.” He stood and carefully pulled Mariah up with him.

She could see that he had a certain look in his eye, even as he stared at the floor, like he had a question, but was unsure of how to ask. “Jay…” He hummed and looked up to her. She gently ran her hand up and down his arm. “What’s on your mind, honey?”

“You’ve already done so much today, so I feel bad for asking this of you.” Jake brought a hand up to sheepishly rub at the back of his neck.

Mariah had been observing all of his tells the entire night. She stepped closer to him, draping her arms around his neck and pressing a kiss to the corner of his lips. “Yes, baby. I will rub your back. And, yes. I will use the lavender oil.”

Jake let his head fall to her shoulder. “How did you know, sweetheart? I thought I barely flinched.” He laced his arms around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer to him.

Mariah ran her hand through Jake’s hair, pressing a kiss to his temple. “Mmm… saw the flinch. And, heard the slight grunt when you put your feet up on the coffee table, too.” She ran her hands down Jake’s arm, sliding her hands into his. “Go put some shorts on, turn the light off, light a candle, take your shirt off, and lay on your stomach on the bed. I’ll be in there in just a second, okay?” She felt Jake nod against her, then he straightened up.

Mariah grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, then followed him down the hall, heading to the bathroom as he disappeared into the bedroom. She grabbed the lavender essential oil from the cabinet, along with two pills of Tylenol. She took her hair out of its bun and quickly toyed with it before making her way to the bedroom. She found Jake exactly how she had told him to be; shirtless, face buried in a pillow that his arms were folded under, with a Tahitian Vanilla and Sandalwood candle burning on his nightstand.

Mariah set the two pills and the bottle of water next to the candle, then climbed onto the bed, lightly sitting herself on the backs of Jake’s thighs. He let out a half grunt, half breath and shifted slightly at the sudden feeling of her against him. She gently ran her hand over his back, carefully scratching her nails along his skin. “Sorry, baby. I can move if I need to.”

Jake shook his head. “No, no. It’s okay. Just didn’t expect it, that’s all.” He let out a hum of appreciation as Mariah leaned down, brushing his hair out of the way and pressing a kiss just below his ear then to his jawline.

She swept his hair off of his back, draping it over his shoulder. “Arms by your side, honey.” Mariah poured the lavender oil into her hands, rubbing them together to warm it up as he moved his arms. She started at the top of his back, pressing her fingertips into his shoulder blades, feeling the tension of the knots. She could feel how tense he was, his shoulders practically touching his ears. “Relax, Jay.” Working her hands down the plane of his back, she spread the oil over his skin, applying ample pressure where he needed it. Mariah felt the tightness of Jake’s back slowly start to ease as he let out a deep breath.

Jake let his eyes flutter shut as Mariah’s fingers danced over his skin. She ran her thumbs along either side of his lower spine, then over the expanse of his lower back, just above the waistband of his shorts. After a few more minutes, she leaned down again, pressing her lips to his cheek. “All done, honey. There’s Tylenol on the nightstand.” When Jake didn’t answer, his eyes closed and breaths even, Mariah carefully climbed off of the backs of his legs and stood next to the bed, trying her best to work the comforter out from under him without waking him. She pulled the blanket over him, brushing her fingers through his hair. “Goodnight, Jacob.” She pressed another kiss to his cheek. “I love you, cara mio.” Mariah blew out the candle and quietly moved to the chest of drawers, pulling out a pair of shorts and one of Jake’s old t-shirts. She quickly changed and slid into bed next to him.

Jake mumbled something in his sleep, draping his arm over her waist and scooting closer to her. Mariah smiled to herself, turning onto her side and curling into Jake’s body. She took in the scent of the lavender and another scent that she could only describe as him as her eyes slowly closed on their own.

~~~

taglist:

@tripthedharmadivine

#jake kiszka #gvf fic #jake kiszka fanfic #jake kiszka fic #greta van fleet fic

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jake-whatthefisgoingon-kiszka · 3 months

Text

Ok to those of you that I promised a 5.2 I got carried away again… So how about a whole ass part 6 instead!

Pairings: Jake Kiszka X Danny Wagner ***slash

Warnings and tags: 18+ ONLY!! minors skedaddle, adult themes including: mentions of infidelity, references to previous partner death, talk about complicated relationships, some drinking, smut including: hand jobs, grinding, oral… Danny being the sweetest most patient and caring guy ever, dad Jake AU, uncle Danny AU

Word count: 5.3k

Jake aggressively punched the security pin into his front door, waiting impatiently as the mechanism unlocked and allowed them entrance. The entire time Danny was at his back, smoothing his hair over to one side and pressing kisses along his shoulder. The second they got inside, Danny turned them around and pushed Jake up against the door, attacking his lips in a needy kiss.

The rain had started to let up a little on the ride back, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still soaked to the bone. Danny broke the kiss to peel off his dripping hoodie, grabbing the tattered hem of his t-shirt to keep it from coming off as well. Then he returned to Jake, this time swiping his tongue across his bottom lip, asking for entrance which Jake easily allowed.

Danny’s hands roamed Jake’s body as he had him pinned against the hardwood, smoothing up his chest then slipping underneath the collar of his jacket and pushing it off his shoulders until Jake was shrugging his arms out of it and the damp fabric was falling to the floor. Jake brought his hands up next, cupping Danny’s face as he tilted his head and pushed deeper into the kiss, making Danny respond by leaning further into Jake and licking hungrily into his mouth.

Things were heating up quickly as Danny’s hands kept exploring, drifting lower until the tips of his fingers were brushing underneath Jake’s shirt.

Without thought, Jake’s first physical reaction was to recoil. Danny’s eyes snapped open, afraid he’d done something wrong.

Taking a deep breath to reground himself, Jake leaned his forehead against Danny’s, letting his thumbs brush slowly against his jawline. “Sorry… did you want a drink?”

The only thing Danny wanted right now was to get out of these wet clothes, his jeans growing tighter by the second, but he realized Jake was probably trying to pace things out a bit. “Yeah, I do” he agreed, his hands coming to rest on Jake’s hips as he waited for him to make the first move towards the kitchen.

Unfamiliar with his new surroundings, Danny followed closely behind Jake. He took the opportunity to look around the house, now that he wasn’t preoccupied with other things. It was a bit smaller than his sister’s but still very nice, maybe one of the older homes in the neighborhood considering its arched entryways and warm wooden accents. Somehow the atmosphere fit Jake perfectly, sturdy and structured but still soft around the edges.

Once in the kitchen Jake opened a cupboard and pulled out a pair of tumblers, walked over to the fridge to fill them with ice, then stopped dead in his tracks. Usually when company came over he got the good whiskey down before they arrived, but he hadn’t thought that far ahead this time.

He reached for the cupboard above the stove next. “I keep all the alcohol bottles up there so Luna won’t get into them” he mentioned as he tried to figure out how he was going to reach them now. Last thing he wanted was to be pulling out his step ladder, that would look real mature. Instead he braced one hand on the counter and stretched as high as he could, his other fingers just barely pawing at the glass.

“Here, let me help” Danny chuckled and reached above Jake, successfully grabbing the bottle and setting it on the counter.

Jake tried to hide his embarrassment as he focused on pouring the amber liquid, handing Danny his first then bringing his own to his lips.

“This is good” Danny commented as the liquor smoothed down his throat. He finished his glass in two long pulls, but Jake only sipped his, eyes trained on Danny like he was considering just what to do with him.

Silently, Jake picked up the whiskey bottle and started walking back further into the house. Again Danny followed, stopping momentarily as he peeked into what looked like a study with a little area designed to be a home office. This looked like the most Jake room of the house he’d seen so far. Floor to ceiling trimmed built-ins filled with books and records, and fitted into the space between the shelves was a large framed painting of what looked like a 16th century ship out at sea. He wanted to wander further into the room, flip through the pages of the books Jake had put on his desk to see what he was reading last. Skim through his record collection and hear the way the space filled with the sweet sound of music.

Jake on the other had had different plans, pulling Danny’s attention back to him as he spoke. “The bedroom is this way”.

Danny tore his curious eyes from the intriguing room and back towards the actual man who inspired such interest in exploring. They turned the corner and suddenly they were entering an area even more intimate.

The room was large, but held nothing besides a single walnut dresser which stretched nearly the entire expanse of the wall just underneath a mounted TV. Across and situated in the center was the bed with a matching wooden frame, simple and modern yet somehow it still gave the feeling of timelessness. Only one side, which Danny assumed was the one Jake preferred to sleep on, had a bedside table, though a pair of sconces cast a frame of soft warm glow across the silk pillows.

Jake went to the table and set both of the bottle of whiskey and his glass down, but not before he tossed back the rest. Then slowly he made his way back to where Danny had planted himself a comfortable distance away from the bed, not wanting to intrude too far until he knew for certain he was welcome.

Innocently, and without intention other than to just touch him, Jake reached out and brushed his fingertips against Danny’s arm, tracing the lines of black ink permanently etched into the the skin. Danny returned the affection by reaching over and cupping Jake’s face in his large hands and leaned down.

The kiss now wasn’t hurried or frantic, but it was still hungry nonetheless. Jake sighed and melted into it, his hands smoothing up Danny’s back and pulling him closer. After a moment Danny stepped back and lifted his shirt off. Jake stared for a moment. He'd been right before when he thought he saw a navel piercing, a silver and black piece of jewelry topping a trail of dark hair.

“Can I?” Danny asked, his voice muted as the thumping in Jake’s ears grew louder. Was Danny’s heart still pounding the way it had earlier? Because Jake felt like he was growing light headed from how fast his blood was pumping, but Danny seemed calm as ever as he nodded and let him lift his shirt. His hands immediately found purchase on Jake’s hips, digging his fingers into the plushness there and connecting their lips again.

Danny’s hands roamed lower, rounding behind and grabbing two large handfuls of Jake’s ass making him squeak. He hadn’t been handled that way before so it came as a slight surprise, but when in return the force also caused his front to grind against Danny’s thigh he let out the first moan of the night.

When Jake rocked his hips again in search for more friction Danny helped him by slipping his knee between his legs and squeezing hard again. Jake groaned, and if you’d told him his first experience with Danny was dry humping in damp jeans in front of his bed he would have called you a liar. Here he was though, at least until the friction started to be too much and not enough at the same time.

The urgency had returned as he started to unbutton Danny’s pants and push them down. He wanted to get in the bed soon, but they weren’t going to do that in dirty clothes.

“Jake” Danny breathed out against his cheek, trying to gain the strength to pull away again. Very reluctantly he did, because he could tell that Jake’s hands were shaking. “We don’t have to do anything tonight. I’m more than happy to just hold you”.

“No, I want this” Jake assured him, his voice sounding confident despite his trembling.

“Okay” his own voice faltered a little as he started to take over with peeling the jeans that clung to his body off while Jake followed suit with his own. Okay, he thought to himself this is really happening. Jake and I are going to be intimate and I’m not going to fuck this up.

Clad in just their underwear, Jake pulled the covers all the way back and they crawled into the expansive bed together. If Danny wasn’t already so preoccupied with maintaining his composure he might’ve stopped to question what someone so little needed with such a large bed, but in the moment he was appreciative of the playing ground.

Jake laid down in the middle of his navy sheets, his delicate frame surrounded by waves of silk. Danny descended on him gently, careful not to lay his body anywhere that may be uncomfortable or crush the smaller man beneath him. His head swam in Jake’s kiss, their core temperatures rising as their bodies slotted together and began to rock against the tides of lust that slowly threatened to consume them.

“Can I touch you?” Danny asked, only waiting mere seconds after Jake nodded to press his palm against his chest and began to explore the panes of warm smooth skin. It felt nice to touch him and he had to keep reminding himself that this was real, not some fever dream his mind was playing on him after getting caught out in the rain. In his reminder, he realized that despite that salacious moan moments ago he hadn’t heard Jake’s voice.

Danny pulled back, his head rising from the storm clouds that had followed them from the rest stop into this quiet bedroom, and saw Jake laying there stiff and unfocused.

“What’s wrong?” Danny asked, removing his hand and sliding over to give him some space.

Jake’s brows furrowed as he fought to seem unbothered, gripping at Danny’s shoulders and trying to pull him close again. “Nothing, nothing at all”.

Danny sat up, worry starting to prevent him from being comfortable with continuing until he pressed the matter. “Jake, please I’m afraid I’m hurting you”.

Jake’s face turned pained, not from anything Danny had done, but because he couldn’t turn off his thoughts. He wanted to enjoy this, get lost in the feeling of having someone else touch him again, only there was a criticizing voice in his head that prevented him from doing just that.

He sighed, meeting the look in Danny’s eye and knowing he wouldn’t touch him again until he’d been reassured that it was okay. “It’s just, I haven’t been with anybody since…” he couldn’t finish his sentence, but Danny still understood what he meant to say.

“Oh” Danny replied, his nerves suddenly skyrocketing at the idea of being Jake’s first. It meant Jake trusted him enough to share this experience with him of all people, and he felt the pressure to provide safety and tenderness during this fragile time. “If it helps, I haven’t been with anyone in a while either”.

“You haven’t?” Jake sounded a little hopeful. The way Danny was so forthcoming and confident had given the impression he was a little more well seasoned than he was currently admitting.

Danny smiled, trying to show Jake that it was okay to talk about this and he wouldn’t get upset or annoyed. “No, I haven’t. I’m not the type to sleep with just anybody. I have to feel a connection to a person, be comfortable with them, get to know them a little first”.

Jake offered a shy smile in return. So Danny felt a connection with him? He felt it too, the consistent draw to the other, the fluttering in his chest when they were near, the smolder in the pit of his stomach when they kissed. He hadn’t felt this in such a long time and he’d almost forgotten how intoxicating it was, how much he craved the company of another in his bed.

“Do you mind if we put some music on?” He asked, knowing it wasn’t everyone’s preference to have background noise. “It will help me relax”.

“Of course” Danny reached over and re-established their physical connection with a simple touch to his knee. “I want you to be comfortable”.

Jake stood from the bed and found his phone, discarded on the floor with his clothes and pulled it from his pants pocket. He opened up his music app and selected a gentle instrumental playlist he liked to listen to at work and made sure the volume was low enough to just barely cut through the silence before he placed the device onto his bedside table next to his empty glass.

Danny welcomed him back into the bed with open arms, easing him down again into his spot on his back as he placed butterfly light kisses on his forehead and cheeks. “Tell me if you get overwhelmed and we’ll stop”.

“I want this” Jake repeated in the same assuring tone as earlier, and he wrapped his arms around Danny’s shoulders to pull him down against him again.

“It feels good to be alone with you” Danny muttered as he trailed his kisses to Jake’s neck, deepening them as he began to suck gently on the skin behind his ear.

Jake’s mind was a hurricane of want and desire, grabbing Danny’s hand and bringing it back to his chest, placing it against his sternum just as Danny had done outside. Danny lifted his head, his eyes growing darker and murkier as he felt the thundering of Jake’s heart.

“Keep touching me” Jake requested, his breath shuddering when Danny happily obliged.

He continued his mapping of Jake’s torso, stopping to give special attention to Jake’s nipples which made him gasp and press upwards as they hardened into tiny sensitive nubs. With the intensity of Jake’s reaction Danny grew bolder, his hand traveling downwards until he was cupping Jake’s hardened length over his underwear. Despite how badly he wanted to tug that thin layer of fabric down and see him, feel him, taste him, he let Jake acclimate by familiarizing himself with him just like this first.

Jake reached down and dug his fingertips into Danny’s forearm, biting his lip so hard he feared he’d be drawing blood soon if he didn’t get some more relief. He hadn’t been this turned on in such a long time and they’d hardly done anything. It was kind of embarrassing.

“I’m gonna take these off now?” Danny phrased his sentence in a question diving his fingers beneath the waistband but waiting until Jake gave his permission to continue.

“Please Danny”.

His voice sounded like a song against the accompaniment of musical instruments bleeding around them, a siren's call Danny couldn’t deny. Jake lifted his hips and Danny drug his last piece of clothing off, tossing them onto the floor to be forgotten with the rest.

“Fuck Jake,” he felt his mouth water at the sight. Jake was fucking gorgeous, so pink and flushed, his tip angry and swollen from lack of stimulation but already dribbling precum. “You look like you’re already about to pop”.

“Shut up” Jake groaned, trying to reach down and cover himself, but Danny took his hand and laced their fingers together as he shifted onto his knees between Jake’s thighs.

He felt Jake tense up around him, obviously not used to being in this position often, so he used his other hand to massage his inner thigh, admiring the way he twitched every time he got closer. Then he brought that hand to his mouth, ungracefully spitting into his palm and using that slight lubricant to begin to stroke Jake slowly.

Another beautiful moan crawled its way out of Jake’s chest and his back arched off the mattress, overwhelmed by the sensation but too needy to ask him to stop. Not that he wanted him to, he was already at the precipice of release when he untangled his hand from Danny’s and raked those grasping fingers through his hair.

With both his hands freed now, Danny pushed his own underwear down and started stroking himself as well. It’s a good thing he was good with his hands, not that he minded getting himself off while Jake was too lost in his pleasure, so long as he could hear those sweet delicious moans.

With nothing more than a cry of his name and a mix of expletives, Jake was cumming. Danny worked him through it, but as soon as Jake was caught up on breath he leaned down and began to kiss him deeply. With the closeness this brought, he could feel his own aching cock pressed against the crease of Jake’s thigh and he began to rock his hips, gliding through Jake’s hot release like smooth butter.

Jake whimpered into his mouth, it was so hot that Danny was grinding himself on him, but he was worn out and sensitive.

“Hold on for me Jake, I’m so close” Danny pleaded, feeling his stomach knot until he was tumbling over the edge as well, his cum mixing with Jake’s while he slowly eased to a stop.

“Fuck” he shivered at the feeling of being completely spent and satisfied, giving Jake one more swift kiss to his plush heart shaped lips before sitting back up.

“That was…” Jake began as he glanced down at the mess they’d made, and if he hadn’t cum so hard already he could’ve gotten turned on again by the look of it.

“It was what?” Danny chuckled. On one hand he was confident in his work, but on the other still slightly worried it hadn’t all been a little too much for once.

“Not what I expected” Jake continued, though he didn’t seem upset.

Danny’s brows furrowed. Had he not lived up to Jake’s expectations? Had he fucked it up after all? “Then what did you expect?”

“I don’t know” Jake shifted his eyes away. He wished he hadn’t said that, but now it was out in the open and he needed to explain himself before Danny left feeling like he was inadequate- which he certainly was not. “Pain maybe? Being lost?”

Danny’s brain started to catch up with Jake’s intention, realizing he was referring to the other logistics of gay sex. The ones that involved penetration. Though he was delighted to hear that Jake really had intended on going all the way with him tonight, he wasn’t even sure if they had all the right things he needed to make sure he was ready.

“Come here” Danny moved to lean up against the headboard and pulled Jake into his arms. “I wouldn’t hurt you unless you wanted me to”.

“Seriously?” Jake slapped at his chest but curled into his broad frame. “What kind of guy do you take me for?”

“You never know” Danny laughed lightly, “give it a few times and you’d be surprised”.

“Okay” Jake replied, just before he felt his eyelids growing heavy with exhaustion. “I will”.

After only about 20 minutes of drifting off Jake woke again. Danny was still awake, mindlessly stroking Jake’s back with the pads of his fingers and listening to the music Jake had forgotten to turn off. He had nestled his head onto Danny’s chest, so now he had a good view of the body beneath him. Matching the same delicate motion Danny used on him, Jake ran his hand across his abdomen. Danny’s chest rumbled with his chuckle when he applied a little more pressure once he reached his happy trail.

“What’s the deal with this?” Jake questioned, grazing over the silver and black piece at his navel.

“What about it?” Danny questioned back, humming his contentment when Jake continued to play with his spot of hair.

“It’s hot” Jake confessed. He’d never seen a man with a belly button piercing before, but damn did Danny pull it off effortlessly.

“I’m glad you think so, my ex didn’t” Danny revealed, wrapping his arms tightly around Jake’s shoulders and giving him the squeeze he’d been refraining from while he was letting Jake get his rest.

Jake broke free by planting his hands on Danny’s chest and pushing up so that he could face him. “Why not?” He frowned, not understanding how someone could not like anything about Danny.

He shrugged, letting his arms tuck behind his head. “Don’t know, she just wasn’t into that kind of stuff I guess. That’s the reason we broke up”.

Jake waited silently for Danny to tell him more. This was the first he was ever hearing about any of Danny’s past relationships, and since Jake’s history was clearly out in the open he wanted to know whatever he could in return.

“We dated all through high school. My parents loved her, wanted us to get married after college like my sister. That kind of went out the door when I dropped out. We started getting into fights all the time about it, and when I showed up with this I guess it was the icing on the cake. She lost it and dumped me”.

“Do you regret it then?”

Danny sucked in a breath as he thought about his response and how it might make him look, but ultimately he decided being transparent with Jake was always going to be the best option. “No, I think I got it because I knew that’s how she would react. I was ready to break up for a long time before then, but she was my last connection to my old life and my parents. I think I was just too afraid to let go myself”.

“So if you’ve changed so much since then, and you're happier” Jake tried to piece everything together himself, but there was still one question he’d always had but didn’t want to ask, at least until now. “Why did you come back?”

“I really shouldn’t be telling you this” he started, only making Jake more curious. “My sister and her husband are having some problems. She doesn’t want to tell our parents about it because we already know what they’re going to say, so she came to me for help”.

“Problems?” Jake repeated, reflecting back on all the times he’d thought their attitude when around each other was odd.

“Yeah, he’s been having an affair for about three months now. Or at least that’s all she’s gotten him to confess to. When she told me that I said she needed to divorce him, kick his cheating ass to the curb, but she’s worried about Emma. I was already looking for a new place since the lease where I was staying was up and my roommate was moving in with his girlfriend, so I told her I would come stay with them and help take care of Emma while they try and figure this out”.

“Jesus, so all the times that they’ve been late at the office?”

“They don’t want anyone to know, but they’ve been going to marriage counseling”.

“So what are they going to do then?” Jake couldn’t believe the family he’d grown so close to over the past couple of years was falling apart at the seams. He had never been cheated on before by any of his few past relationships so he wasn’t sure exactly how he would handle the situation, but being a single parent he still sympathized with their struggle.

“Don’t know. She hardly talks to me about it anymore, and when Emma and I are around they pretend like nothing is the matter. It’s frustrating because I know what it’s like to pretend and shut off your feelings. I never wanted that for my sister”.

Jake moved his hand from Danny’s chest to his jaw, tilting his head up slightly so he could look him in the eye. “You’re a good brother, and a great uncle. She will open up to you again”.

“Thanks” Danny exhaled, his eyes closing for a moment as he reveled in Jake’s delicate touch. “It’s good to hear that”.

“And you’d better believe it” Jake kissed him once then stood up from the bed. “I’m gonna go wash up real quick”.

Danny stood too, stretching his long limbs and moving to find his clothes.

Jake paused his walk to the bathroom when he heard the rustle and turned around, “are you staying?”

“If I’m welcome?” Danny replied, fishing into the pocket of his jeans instead of putting them on. He retrieved a half empty pack of cigarettes, the same one Jake had seen on his dresser just a couple of days ago, but the rain had seeped through his pants and gotten what was left wet. “Well, I’m supposed to be quitting anyways”.

“Stay, and I’ll make us something to eat.” Jake offered instead “I’m starving”.

The next day Jake slept in later than he had in a long time. Partly because he needed the extra sleep, but mostly because he and Danny had stayed up late into the early morning hours talking and joking casually as they shared a glass and nearly finished off the open bottle of whisky, and then making out until Jake fell right back asleep into Danny’s arms.

It was warm when he came to, the curtains he hadn’t bothered to draw closed last night allowing the late afternoon sunshine in.

Jake panicked for a moment when he opened his eyes, expecting to see the same glorious view as he had the evening prior, but instead he was utterly alone again. He glanced around the room, looking for any signs of Danny and where he’d gone. Surely he didn’t leave without saying goodbye?

Stepping out of bed, Jake opened the bedroom door but immediately stopped in his tracks when he heard the faintest sound of music coming from the other side of the house. Though he hadn’t heard it in years, Jake recognized the sound of his wife’s piano being played softly and slowly. He made his way through to the foyer where the grand piano sat untouched, only now a beautiful golden man sat at its bench and the keys he thought had long grown out of tune chimed the simple melody he played.

“Sorry, did I wake you? I know I’m pretty bad” Danny retracted his hands from the instrument, suddenly feeling like he’d crossed some unspoken boundary.

“No, keep playing” Jake moved to stand next to him, watching intently as his fingers went back to work gliding across the white and black. “I forgot how graceful it sounds”.

“You don’t play?” Danny questioned, trying to keep his focus on remembering one of the few songs he knew by heart.

“No, this was June’s”.

Danny quickly pulled his hands away again, if he’d known that then he wouldn’t have helped himself. He just wanted to let Jake sleep in so he left the room, and when he saw the opportunity to play something he did.

“Don’t worry about it” Jake chuckled, thinking the shocked look on Danny’s face was cute. “It’s the only thing of hers I kept out. Can’t really pack this up in a box and put it in the attic. I’ll probably end up selling it with the house one day”.

“You’re planning on moving?” Of course he’d only said ‘one day’ but Danny still sounded upset at the idea Jake might leave somewhere far away.

“Who knows?” He leaned against the lid of the piano, still feeling tired but not wanting to go back to bed by himself. “I’m starting to feel normal again. Makes me question what I’ve settled for and if it’s what I really want”.

“Normal?” Danny heartily scoffed, “who wants to be normal? I for one think you’re extraordinary Jake. I don’t know how you do it all, work, home, parenting”.

“Luna is an angel, that helps”. Jake’s heart ached at the thought of her. He missed his little already even if he was thoroughly enjoying his time here at home with Danny.

“Only because her father is a saint”.

Jake rolled his eyes, but he pushed off the lid and leaned over to give Danny a kiss. It came so naturally between them now, neither feeling the need to ask permission before capturing the others lips in their own.

Danny had only expected a swift and sweet good morning, or well good afternoon kiss, but when Jake asked for entrance by swiping his tongue across Danny groaned and wrapped his arm around his waist. Jake reacted by weaving his fingers through Danny’s hair, something last night he realized he enjoyed because it made Danny go feral.

He got the exact reaction he wanted when Danny abruptly stood, the bench he was sitting at falling back against the floor in a loud clatter that echoed through the empty house. Danny lifted Jake right off the floor, Jake expecting to be carried off, but instead he was deposited right onto the lid of the piano behind them.

The keys sounded in a mismatched cord as Danny leaned over and continued to devour Jake, both men groaning and grabbing at each other for more. Last night could hold him over for longer but Danny wanted to have Jake again, especially when he didn’t know when the next time they’d have this time together would be. Jake seemed to feel the same way as he propped himself up with one hand behind him and one hand still grounded in Danny’s curls as he trailed his kisses down Jake’s chest.

Stopping at the waistband of the sleep pants he’d put on after his shower last night, Danny pulled them off and brought Jake’s legs to rest on his shoulders. He peered up from between Jake’s thighs, making eye contact for a moment as he kissed and nipped at his peach fuzzed skin.

“You ready?” Danny asked, his position being pretty obvious for what he intended to do.

Jake bit his lip and nodded eagerly, his bed head a tousled mess but it only made him look hotter in Danny’s eyes. He didn’t waste a moment taking Jake into his mouth, the saliva that had pooled inside once the thought sprang into his mind helping ease him in.

“Fuck Danny” Jake tossed his head back, trying to focus on lasting longer than he did last night, though that might be an impossible feat considering how good it felt already.

Danny hummed around him, swirling his tongue over him and tasting all he could before bobbing his head down and hollowing out his cheeks. Jake moaned and shuddered, the feeling of wet and warmth so overwhelming yet so intoxicating he felt like he was getting drunk on it.

“I’m gonna cum” Jake warned this time, his voice sounding absolutely dazed and fucked out making Danny only more eager to get him there.

He squeezed his leg, his silent approval to go ahead and let go. Jake twitched wildly against his tongue and then his mouth flooded. Danny swallowed around him, trying to keep from making a mess like they had before.

When Jake calmed, Danny helped him down, retrieving his pants for him. He watched with a smug smile on his face while Jake made himself decent again.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m a little out of practice”.

“Oh? I thought it was because I was just that good” Danny jested capturing Jake in his arms again and pulling him against his chest, pressing his front against him so Jake could feel just how hard he was just from going down on him.

Jake wouldn’t say it aloud, but Danny really was good. It was so good he feared he wouldn’t get enough. Some carnal beast had been awakened in him and he welcomed the challenge to prove to Danny he could withstand much more. “Do you want to go back to bed?”

“You keep asking me like I’m going to say no” Danny chuckled, letting go and following Jake back to their sea of thirst, and desire, and lust.

Tags: @lipstickitty @gracev0609 @lyndz2names @sanguinebats @kultavalo

[A/N: yes that was another reference to Hozier]

#Greta van fic #Greta van smut #gvf #danny wagner #jake kiszka #janny gvf

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blueskrugs · 1 year

Text

sleeping with someone | Nick Blankenburg

I used parts of this fic to cope with the fact that I graduate in a few days. pay no mind to the existential crisis. I think I also listened to too much of stick season while writing this

this one got away from me a teeny, tiny bit. i promise all 14,000 words are worth it.

length: 14.2k words

Nick Blankenburg breaks up with Mikayla Williams three weeks after he gets back to Michigan after Worlds. She doesn’t see it coming until Nick’s standing in front of her and saying, “I don’t think this is going to work out.”

Mikayla blinks at him. Nick looks determined, the same stubborn look that she’s grown to love on his face.

“Sorry, what?”

“I don’t think long-distance is going to work anymore, Mikkie.”

They’d barely had a chance to do long-distance at all. It had only been a few weeks between Michigan crashing out of the Frozen Four, then Nick signing a contract with Columbus and finishing out the season there, before being whisked off to Worlds. She thought it had been going fine—they texted often and Nick called when their schedules lined up enough to allow for it. Nick clearly didn’t think the same thing. He’s still looking at Mikayla with that stubborn set to his mouth, waiting for her to respond. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to say next.

“You’re really breaking up with me? Just like that?” They’d been together almost three years. They’d started to talk about their plans for the future.

Nick shrugs. “I’m going to be getting a new contract this summer, probably, and I really want to be able to experience the NHL fully, y’know?”

So that’s how it is. Mikayla lets out a humorless laugh. “You’re saying that you want to sleep around without the guilt of a girlfriend back home.” Nick blushes, but refuses to back down. “Have a good life, Blankenburg.”

She pushes past him, unlocks her apartment door at last. She’s glad Nick at least waited to dump her until after they’d finished brunch, after he had walked her back home. Nick’s still standing by her door with his hands in his pockets when the door slams behind Mikayla.

Mikayla wishes she could say she moves on easily after that. She’s too angry to feel broken-hearted over it, at first. She collects all of Nick’s clothes that she’s pilfered over the years: sweatshirts and T-shirts and one extremely comfortable pair of sweatpants she’s actually pretty sad to give up. She shoves it all in a box and leaves it by her front door for another week.

She makes a detour to Washington on her way back home to Saginaw for the summer, drops the box off on the Blankenburgs’ porch after she knows Nick’s just had knee surgery and can’t come out and talk to her.

After that, she tries not to think about it.

This is the first summer Mikayla has been single since she started college, and she’ll be damned if she lets moping about Nick ruin it. There will be time for that later.

So Mikayla drives up to the Bay and tans on the beach with her friends, she spends time on Haithco Lake, and she goes out to the same bars as everyone else in her age in Saginaw. She deflects questions that her friends from high school ask about Nick—“We’re taking a break,” she says, drunk in the back of the bar, getting sunburned in a kayak on Haithco. “I’m fine,” she tells her mom, getting home late, stumbling over the sandals she’s just kicked off by the front door.

It’s her best friend who sees through her first, only a few weeks into the summer.

“What?” Mikayla asks flatly, popping another grape into her mouth as she watches Jake watch her, a serious look on his face that she can’t read.

“You’re really okay with Nick dumping you like that?” he asks. “Everyone thought you two would get married in a few more years.”

Mikayla forces herself to shrug. She’d been one of those people who thought she and Nick were going to get married, too. “We just grew out of each other I guess. Nick wanted to move on.”

Move on in life, move on from her.

Mikayla surveys Jake back. They’d been inseparable themselves since middle school. A lot of people had thought they’d be the ones to fall in love and get married, until Mikayla stayed in Michigan for college and Jake had fucked off to Mississippi State to play baseball. All they had these days was the summer.

“Things change, shit happens,” she adds.

Jake doesn’t look impressed by her flippancy. “What really happened?” he asks.

Mikayla’s first single summer is also the first summer she’s turned up without Nick in tow in years. People noticed faster than she would have liked. She’d been trying her hardest to run away from the truth, but she’s always known it would catch up to her eventually.

She forces another shrug. Jake’s still looking at her, too-serious for the sunny summer day, so she doesn’t think she’s coming off as casual as she wants to be.

“Told me he wanted to ‘experience the NHL fully,’ whatever the fuck that means,” she says after she lets the silence drag on too long. She bites down on another grape, the satisfying crunch of it soothing her flaring temper. She barrels on, “He decided he wanted to be able to fuck other girls, that I wasn’t enough anymore, I don’t know. I guess it’s better than just cheating on me.”

Jake stares at her. “That’s shitty,” he says. He shoves his sunglasses to the top of his head. “You know what you have to do, right?” he asks eagerly.

“Spend the summer getting drunk and then focus on graduating?” Mikayla asks. She doesn’t like the mischievous glint in Jake’s eyes.

Jake scoffs. “You’re so boring. No, if Nick’s going to fuck around, what’s stopping you? Hot girl summer it up, baby! There’s nothing holding you back!”

Mikayla bursts out laughing. “Please never say hot girl summer around me again.” She throws a grape at Jake, considering his words; he flails, trying desperately to catch it in his mouth and narrowly avoiding toppling out of his chair. “Who exactly am I supposed to fuck around with?” she asks. Jake straightens up and shoots her a maniacal grin. She holds up a hand. “Not that I’m considering it, just—“

Saginaw isn’t a small town, but it functions enough like one. Everyone they went to high school with still runs in the same circles, the same friend groups coming together at parties when everyone flocks home for the summer. They’re not close enough to the Bay to garner a real tourist presence. If Mikayla were to sleep with anyone in Saginaw, everyone and their mother would know within a week. Sleeping around is way, way out of the picture.

Jake falls silent. Mikayla thinks he’s going to drop it, until he says, “I’m single.”

“No, what? I’m not sleeping with my best friend,” Mikayla protests. Jake knows her well enough to tell that the protest is half-hearted, judging by the raised eyebrows he points at her.

Jake doesn’t push. He’s smirking, though, waiting Mikayla out.

Jake had been Mikayla’s first kiss, tucked away in a hidden corner at one of Jake’s baseball tournaments their sophomore year of high school. They’d never really entertained the idea of going any further than that, no matter what everyone else thought they would do.

Jake’s still the only guy Mikayla’s ever kissed, other than Nick. Maybe he’s onto something with the hot girl summer idea.

“I don’t want another relationship,” Mikayla warns.

Jake holds his hands up in surrender. “Strictly friends with bennies,” Jake promises. “No catching feelings allowed.” He reaches to tug at Mikayla. She doesn’t move much, sweaty skin sticking to her lounger. “God, come over here already.”

Mikayla doesn’t even protest Jake’s weird vocabulary as she unsticks herself and clambers onto his lap. They’re on the back deck of her parents’ house, in the middle of the day. Anyone can see Mikayla in a bikini and Jake in just shorts. She should probably care, but she can’t muster up the energy for it as she settles her hands on Jake’s shoulders.

It’s different than it ever was with Nick. Where Nick’s short and broad, Jake’s tall and lanky. She can still feel the muscles in his shoulders bunch as he shifts beneath her, hands carefully resting on the outside of her thighs.

“Kay, you think too much,” Jake comments, watching her face.

Kay. Nick never called her that. Only her family and Jake have ever called her Kay. “Shut up,” Mikayla says, refusing to dwell on that.

“Make me,” Jake taunts. This close, Mikayla can see his eyes underneath his sunglasses, lit up with amusement.

Mikayla leans forward and kisses him. Jake makes a surprised noise into her mouth. It’s not like it was when they were 16, awkward and fumbling and so unsure of themselves. They’re both older now, more experienced—even if Mikayla doesn’t want to think about just how many girls Jake has slept with now that they’re not attached at the hip anymore.

She lets herself get lost in it, until Jake slides his hands up her thighs to her hips and pushes her away. He’s red all the way up to the tips of his ears, and Mikayla doesn’t think it’s sunburn.

“Not that I didn’t like that,” he pants, grip tight on Mikayla to keep her from squirming. “But we are still outside.”

Mikayla thinks they should change that, so she climbs out of Jake’s lap and gets to her feet. She offers a hand to Jake, who blinks up at her for a moment, before lacing their fingers together and letting himself be pulled to his feet.

Mikayla spends most of the summer tumbling into bed with Jake. They’re probably not as subtle about it as they could be, but Mikayla thinks she’s overdue for a summer fling. She ignores the knowing smiles and raised eyebrows their other friends send their way when they’re pressed close in the dark of the bar, when they leave a party together.

It takes her weeks to stop comparing Jake to Nick, the way he touches her, the way his lips feel against her skin. Until she no longer has to choke back Nick’s name. She wakes up one morning to Jake still in her bed, his arm draped around her waist. Mikayla has to blink a few times when she rolls over and realizes that it’s Jake next to her, not Nick.

Mikayla dreams of Nick, dreams of that first summer together, when she got to bring him home for the first time. The first time she realized she was falling in love.

Nick fidgets the entire hour and a half drive from his house to Saginaw. He reaches to change the song that’s just started, but Mikayla slaps his hand away.

“No complaining about my playlist,” she says.

“I’m not complaining,” Nick complains. “I just didn’t want to listen to that song.”

‘That song’ in question is a Taylor Swift song. Mikayla turns the volume up. Nick sighs, but Mikayla can see him smiling at her from the corner of her eye.

Nick had insisted that he could make the drive up to Saginaw by himself. Mikayla didn’t need to be driving three hours round-trip just to pick him up, he’d argued, but Mikayla had barely left her house since Michigan had sent all of the students home in March. Driving three hours round-trip was as close to an adventure as she was going to get this summer. Besides, it gives them a little bit of time to themselves after not seeing each other for months before being under constant supervision by Mikayla’s parents.

Nick’s back to fidgeting the passenger seat.

“Would you quit that?” Mikayla says. Nick stops picking at his fingernails. “Everyone is going to love you.” Nick’s cute and charming and polite, a good Michigan boy through and through. Mikayla’s pretty sure there’s a good chance her family ends up liking Nick more than they like her, actually.

When Mikayla pulls into the driveway, her dog is the first one out the front door, closely followed by her mom. She wraps Mikayla in a hug as soon as she’s out of her car.

“Geez, I was barely gone for three hours,” Mikayla says, but hugs her mom back just as tightly.

Her mom moves on to Nick after releasing Mikayla. He meets Mikayla’s eyes over her mom’s shoulder, looking a little startled. Mikayla just laughs.

“Oh, Kay, Grandma and Grandpa are coming over for dinner tomorrow,” her mom says. “They want to be able to meet Nick, too.”

Mikayla’s grandma had decided she loved Nick the moment she found out they shared a birthday. Mikayla’s not too worried about what they’re going to think of him once they finally meet him.

Nick’s casting a confused look around as he follows Mikayla into the house.

“I hope the pullout is comfortable enough for you, Nick,” her mom is saying. The spare sheets and blanket are all folded on the arm of the couch. “But it was either the pullout or a blow-up mattress in the office upstairs.”

Mikayla has slept on that blow-up mattress before. It tends to deflate in the middle of the night. “You’re better off on the pullout,” Mikayla whispers to him.

“Kay, will you bring in some extra drinks from the garage fridge? Dinner will be ready soon.”

Mikayla does as she’s told, grabbing a few sodas and beers. She cracks open a can of hard seltzer she’d grabbed for herself and offers one to Nick. He raises an eyebrow at Mikayla’s drink choice—she’s not quite 20 yet, but she’s been drinking since high school—and takes a soda for himself. He’s making a face Mikayla can’t read as he listens to her mom go on and on about how much they’ve been looking forward to having Nick visit.

“Kay’s done nothing but talk about you since the fall,” she’s saying. Mikayla blushes as Nick shoots her an amused look.

“Why does everyone call you Kay?” Nick asks the next night, after her grandparents have left. It’s getting late, and Nick’s voice is pitched low, out on the deck as fireflies flicker around them.

“Hm? Oh, everyone in my family has always called me that.”

“But everyone at school calls you Mikayla or Mikkie,” Nick says. Except for Nolan Moyle, who decided that “Nick and Mik” was hilarious when they first started dating.

Mikayla shrugs. “I don’t know, I guess Kay is just supposed to be a family thing.” It’s hard to see in the dark, but Mikayla can tell Nick’s eyebrows are creased. “I’m named after my Grandma. Her name is Katherine, but everyone has always called her Kay. My mom is her only daughter and wanted me to keep the name without actually naming me Katherine. She kinda took the nickname Kay and worked backwards until she settled on Mikayla.”

Mikayla still remembers when she started school and never responded to her full name because she had only ever been called Kay. It had worried her teachers for months.

“So if I started calling you Kay…” Nick says thoughtfully.

“Nope, family only,” Mikayla says firmly. Plus her best friend, but they’ve been friends so long he’s practically a part of the family anyway. It’s too early to be thinking things like that with Nick.

“Guess I’ll just have to become a part of the family,” Nick jokes.

Jake kisses Mikayla awake before Nick can kiss her in her dream. She stretches and rolls over in Jake’s bed, warm in the late afternoon sunlight slanting through his blinds.

“Your mom texted,” Jake says. “She wants you home for dinner.”

Mikayla will need a shower before she can go home, wash off the sunscreen, the feeling of Jake’s hands on her skin. She rolls back over and burrows into one of Jake’s pillows. “Five more minutes.”

It’s not moving on, but it helps. The summer passes in a haze of sunshine and sex. Mikayla blinks and it’s August, and they’re heading their separate ways again: Jake off to Mississippi, Mikayla packing her car for Ann Arbor.

Jake kisses her goodbye the night before he leaves. Mikayla has to stop herself from clinging to him as he pulls away, beg him not to go. It feels like they’re 18 and leaving each other for the first time, unsure how to live without being by each other’s sides. No catching feelings, Jake had told her.

“Don’t forget to have some fun this semester, okay?” Jake says now.

Mikayla has a feeling he’s talking about more than her tendency to care more about hiding from the world in her apartment than hanging out with friends. Though, now that she thinks about it, most of her friends were on the hockey team, a by-product of dating Nick for so long. She’s not sure she’ll be spending much time around them these days.

“I’ll try,” Mikayla says.

It’s easy enough to settle back into life in Ann Arbor. Mikayla goes to her classes and meets up with her non-hockey friends. They mercifully don’t ask any questions about the breakup. She doesn’t hear from any of the boys from the hockey team, and she tries to convince herself it doesn’t hurt. They were always Nick’s friends first. She was just the captain’s girlfriend.

The team announces Nolan Moyle as the new captain a few weeks after summer ends. Mikayla stares at the picture on Instagram—Jacob, Luke and Keaton with their shiny new letters and, in the middle of it all, Nolan. She’s known Nolan since she was a freshman, and he was just Nick’s obnoxious best friend. She usually spends the summer idly Snapchatting Moyle photos of her mixed drinks and sunburns, but she hasn’t spoken to him in months.

She can’t believe she actually misses his loud mouth.

She hesitates before pulling up their text thread, but sends off a quick “congrats on the C!” message before she can think better of it.

Nolan texts back almost immediately, a string of all the blue and yellow emojis, followed by a more genuine thanks.

Mikayla expects that to be the end of it—there’s no reason for the conversation to continue, and no reason to believe Nolan is missing her friendship as much as she’s missing his.

Except Moyle FaceTimes Mikayla later that afternoon, while she’s doing homework. She answers it to a terrible angle of Nolan’s face, mostly nose and that awful mustache he insists on. It looks like he’s walking out of Yost after practice.

“Have you eaten dinner yet?” Nolan asks without preamble.

“Uh, no?” Mikayla checks the time in the corner of her screen. She should probably start cooking soon, though.

“I’m bringing pizza over,” Nolan announces.

Mikayla hears someone yelling to Nolan off-camera, and he turns to talk to whoever it is. While he’s distracted, the phone jostles until Mikayla is looking directly at the ceiling. The phone shifts again, except this time it’s someone stealing Moyle’s phone and appearing in frame. It’s Truss, and Mikayla finds herself smiling.

“Hi, Mikkie,” Jacob says. He opens his mouth to say something else, but Nolan wraps him in a headlock before he can get anything out.

The chaos of it relaxes Mikayla. She’d gotten used to the noise and antics of the hockey team after dating Nick for three years. Her life has been too quiet without them.

“Hey, you’re still coming to games this season, right?” Nolan asks, still grappling with Truss for his phone.

Mikayla had actually planned on avoiding Yost at all costs this year.

“Probably not?” It would feel weird, Mikayla thinks, to be cheering on all of her other friends at Yost without Nick being there, too. To know so many people out on the ice but not be able to talk to them without feeling like something—someone—is missing.

Jacob and Nolan stop fighting long enough to gape at Mikayla. Their matching expressions of disbelief are enough to make her laugh.

“Why not?” Truss asks, at the same time Nolan says, “What, do you not like us anymore?”

Mikayla giggles again, a little more comfortable this time, and shrugs. “I don’t know, I guess I just wasn’t sure I’d want to after Nick dumped me.”

“That’s stupid, you have to come,” Nolan says. Mikayla knows him well enough to know that he will do everything he can to make sure Mikayla is at every game. “What do you want on your pizza?” Nolan asks, switching topics so fast it nearly gives Mikayla whiplash.

She was almost hoping Nolan had forgotten he’d talked about pizza.

“Pepperoni,” she says.

Nolan makes a face. “You always want pepperoni,” he complains. “Whatever, I’ll be over in like, half an hour.”

He hangs up abruptly. Mikayla blinks at her phone for a moment, bewildered, before going back to her homework.

Someone’s banging on Mikayla’s door. She doesn’t have to check the peephole to know that it’s Nolan. She throws the door open to Moyle’s grinning face.

“Sup, Mikkie,” he says, shouldering his way past Mikayla and into her apartment. He throws the pizza box down and pulls out the second chair at Mikayla’s little kitchen table.

“Making yourself right at home, huh?” Mikayla asks. She hands Nolan a plate and settles into the chair across from him. Nolan has a habit of taking up too much space in every room he is in, loud and brash and comfortable. Mikayla had hated that about him when she had first met him, but she has been missing it more than she’d care to admit.

Nolan grins at her. “Like I never left, baby.”

Mikayla snags another slice of pizza and watches Nolan across the table. It’s not too different from casual dinners shared with Nick last year, after she’d moved into her first apartment. Not too different from another September night after Nick had been named captain last season.

It’s not a surprise, exactly, when Nick calls Mikayla to tell her that the team has offered him the C for his senior season. He’d known for a while, had walked away from a deal with Colorado in part because of the chance to be captain. Mikayla still screams into the phone with excitement, covering Nick’s chuckle on the other end.

Nick appears at Mikayla’s door later that evening with takeout for dinner. He has a few seconds to grin at Mikayla before she’s launching herself at him.

“Whoa, hang on,” Nick says, struggling to catch Mikayla and not drop their food.

Mikayla keeps her arms looped around Nick’s neck as they shuffle awkwardly into her apartment. Nick carefully sets the bag of food down on Mikayla’s kitchen table. She does her best to jump up into Nick’s arms, and he helps, sliding his hands to the backs of her thighs, hitching her up higher.

“Hi there,” Nick says, grinning so widely his eyes crinkle.

Mikayla kisses him fiercely, cupping his face in her hands. She pulls away just enough to say, “I’m so proud of you, Nick.”

And she really is. Nick’s come so far in his years at Michigan, from walk-on to captain, and Mikayla’s been lucky enough to be by his side for a lot of it.

Nick kisses her again. They end up having to re-heat their dinner.

Nolan nudges Mikayla with his foot, jolting her out of her thoughts.

“Whatcha thinking about over there?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Mikayla says quickly. It seems pitiful to say that she’s thinking about Nick. Nolan looks skeptical. “Just wondering who exactly thought it was a good idea to make you captain, actually.”

“Hey!” Nolan protests.

Moyle re-inserts himself into Mikayla’s life after that. He drags her out to the senior house to meet all the new freshmen—she spends a week and a half mixing up the Fantilli brothers— and he drags her out to Skeeps for more than one Thirsty Thursday in the early weeks of the semester before the hockey season starts properly.

He laughs so hard when Mikayla tells him about her semi-failed Hot Girl Summer that she’s pretty sure he’s going to snort beer out his nose. Mikayla frowns into her own drink, a Blue Hawaiian that Nolan had mocked, even though he kept stealing sips in between bites of fries. Mikayla kicks him as hard as she can underneath the table.

When Nolan has finished laughing, he says, “You planning a Hot Girl Fall?” He sweeps an arm out for dramatic effect. “Lot more options here in Ann Arbor.”

Mikayla shrugs. “I might.” Nolan already knows that Nick is the only guy she’s ever dated. “See what it’s all about, y’know?” See what was so appealing about the idea of casual hook-ups to Nick that he broke up with her to chase them.

Nolan’s smirk grows. “Wanna start tonight?” He casts a look over the crowded bar floor. “I’m sure I can find someone acceptable for you.”

“Acceptable by whose standards?” Mikayla asks, but she is ignored. She kicks Nolan under the table again to get his attention. He swears under his breath and kicks her back, but at least he’s looking at her. “Nolan, I don’t know how to flirt or any of that shit.”

Nolan grins at Mikayla. She recognizes that grin—it usually means Nolan’s up to no good.

“Trust me, baby, you’re pretty and smart. You won’t have any problems.”

Nolan scans Skeeps for another minute or two before he points to a guy around their age, standing at the bar and bobbing his head to the music the DJ is playing. Mikayla feels like she’s seen him around campus before.

“Bet you can get him to buy you a shot,” Nolan says.

Mikayla rolls her eyes, but drains the last of her drink and stands up. She makes her way over to the bar and slides in next to the guy Nolan had pointed out for her. He turns and smiles at Mikayla.

“Want to do a shot with me?” Mikayla blurts before she can think better of it.

The guy shrugs. “Why not?” He flags a bartender down and orders for them. It’s too loud to hear what he orders, but it goes down easy. “Wanna dance?” he asks next.

Mikayla never does catch his name, but they spend a while on the crowded dance floor. She doesn’t go home with him, either, but he buys her another drink before she has to hunt down Moyle again.

“Did you have fun?” Nolan asks with a smirk when she collapses back into her seat across the table from him.

“Shut up.”

That night starts a spiral for Mikayla—a semester full of hook-ups and one night stands. She feels like she’s hunting whatever it is about mindless, loveless sex that was so enticing to Nick. She wonders if she missed out on something when she was with Nick for most of her college years. Is it better? Is it more fun? She doesn’t know the answer, but it doesn’t stop her from sleeping with a new guy every week.

There’s the frat boy who was enthusiastic but left beard burn in rather unsavory places.

Another frat guy who locks the door to a bathroom and pulls up her skirt at a party Mikayla isn’t even sure she belongs at, or how she even got through the door.

The lacrosse player who reminds Mikayla a little too much of Nick, when he’s handing her water before the sweat on her body has even cooled.

The guy from one of her classes who she manages to do more with than just fuck—three whole dates—before he says he isn’t looking for anything serious.

The boy from the bar who buys her a drink and makes out with her in the hallway, but doesn’t take her home. There’s a hickey on her collarbone she spends a week hiding, after that one.

One who approaches her in the library on a rainy day and drives her home. He’s the first one Mikayla invites up to her apartment, and she’s not sure she ever really gets his name. (“He’s pretty brave for getting past the RBF,” Truss comments later, after Mikayla ditched him in the library. She throws her computer mouse at him.)

The boys—their names, their faces—start to blur together between late nights studying and early morning classes. Mikayla feels nothing, feels like she could scream. She puts her head down and does her homework. Focuses on getting good grades, focuses on the next time she’s getting laid.

Nolan Moyle is by her side through it all, buying her drinks, playing wingman. He makes sure Mikayla starts coming to hockey games at Yost again, and he drags her out with the team after wins, until Mikayla slots back into friendships with the rest of the team, too. It’s kind of nice to have Nolan watching her back when they’re out at Skeeps, once Mikayla gets over the weirdness of her ex-boyfriend’s best friend helping her go out and hook-up.

There’s a party at the senior house after finals end in December. It’s lowkey, as far as team parties go, just the guys and their girlfriends. Mikayla slips in late after spending far too long agonizing over what to wear, before realizing she was being ridiculous and throwing on jeans and a Michigan sweatshirt. There’s yelling coming from the living room, so Mikayla sneaks into the kitchen to grab a beer.

“Stooping to our level?” Luke asks, suddenly appearing over her shoulder. Mikayla swears, nearly dropping her freshly opened can. He takes a sip of his own beer, smirking. Mikayla wonders how she always ends up with the bitchiest freshman as her favorites.

“I spend too much time around Nolan,” Mikayla says, taking a drink with a grimace. Beer never has been her favorite, though she’s unfortunately gotten a bit more used to it. She swats at the brim of Luke’s Yankees hat. “You’re not even twenty yet, who gave you a beer in the first place?”

Luke steps back, out of Mikayla’s reach. “Can’t play beer pong without beer,” he says, resettling his hat. That explains the yelling then. “Nolan wants you as his second, by the way,” Luke calls over his shoulder as he makes his way back out of the kitchen.

Mikayla heaves a sigh, takes another fortifying drink of her still-sorta-disgusting beer, and follows Luke. Nolan whoops when Mikayla steps into the living room and makes his way over to throw his arm around Mikayla's shoulders.

She lets herself be pulled into Nolan’s side as he yells, “Me and Mik are in next game!”

Playing as Nolan’s second is familiar after months and months of it. They’ve actually turned into quite the force to be reckoned with. The evening passes quickly with Nolan by her side, plying her with more drinks as they beat more and more of his teammates at beer pong. A cheer goes up when they beat Holtzy and his girlfriend. Nolan wraps Mikayla in a hug so strong it lifts her off her feet.

Mikayla turns to celebrate with Nick, too—except Nick’s not there. Of course Nick isn’t there; he moved on to bigger and better things.

It’s getting late when Mikayla slips upstairs to find the bathroom and get some air. It’s hot downstairs, despite the December chill outside. There’s a window at the end of the hallway, and Mikayla throws it open, gasping in the cold air. Someone has knocked the screen out at some point, allowing Mikayla to lean halfway out the window. The street is quiet, but she can still hear the party downstairs. A tear slips down her cheek, and she lets it.

That’s where Nolan finds her a few minutes later. “Hey, there you are,” he says lowly. “Been looking for you, Mik.”

Mikayla tries to dry her face with her sweatshirt sleeve. She hopes it doesn’t fuck up her makeup. She turns to face Nolan. “Just needed a little time to cool off.”

Nolan’s looking at her with concern. He doesn’t even look tipsy, despite the fact that he’s had a drink in his hand all night. Mikayla, on the other hand, has probably had too much to drink, so much she’s dizzy with it.

“Everything okay?” Nolan asks.

“Yeah, I just—“ Mikayla cuts herself off. She can’t finish that thought, can’t admit that she misses Nick.

Later, Mikayla will blame the alcohol for what happens next. Blame the sleep deprivation and stress of finals week. Blame the heartbreak, finally catching up to her.

Nolan stops her with a gentle hand on her shoulder when she tries to lean in. “Mikkie, what are you doing, babe?” he asks softly. They’re still in the upstairs hallway of the senior house. Any one of Nolan’s teammates could come upstairs and see them, see Mikayla pressed up against the captain in the dark.

She tries to pull away, but Nolan slides his hand from her shoulder down to her wrist. His fingers wrap easily around her wrist, grip gentle but firm enough Mikayla can’t escape. “I— I don’t know, I shouldn’t— I’m sorry.” She tries to pull away again, but Nolan tightens his hold.

“Hey, c’mon,” he says. There’s a note of teasing in his voice, one that’s familiar. Mikayla has known Nolan Moyle for four years. Teasing she can handle. She dares to look up at him and his stupid mustache. He’s grinning at her. “You know we shouldn’t.” Mikayla nods. “That’s not fair to Nick, I couldn’t do that to him.”

That makes Mikayla bristle. She finally manages to yank her hand free and crosses her arms at Nolan. “I don’t give a fuck about Nick,” she insists. Honestly, she really hadn’t even been thinking about Nick—if only for a moment.

“I think we both know that’s not true,” Nolan says gently. Mikayla’s eyes burn suddenly; God, she must be more drunk than she thought. Nolan wraps her in a hug. “I think it’s time to get you to bed, huh, Mik?”

Mikayla sleeps in Nolan’s bed that night, wakes up hungover in one of his T-shirts. Moyle’s not in bed next to her like he was when they fell asleep, too close in Nolan’s too small bed. Mikayla rolls over and winces at the sunlight streaming through the open curtains. She really shouldn’t have had so much to drink at the party; she’s supposed to be driving back home for break later today.

Mikayla’s debating whether she can get up and sneak out before Nolan returns from wherever he’s disappeared to when the bedroom door creaks open. Nolan pokes his head in, as if this isn’t literally his bedroom.

He grins when he sees that Mikayla’s awake and kicks the door open the rest of the way. He’s holding a coffee in each hand, one for himself and one for Mikayla. He throws himself onto the bed near Mikayla’s legs.

“So,” Nolan starts. Mikayla pulls her legs to her chest and glares at Nolan. “We’re talking about last night.”

In all the years Mikayla has known Nolan Moyle, he’s been chronically allergic to being serious, but he’s looking at her now without a trace of a smile on his face. “We don’t have to,” Mikayla says, but she takes the iced coffee Nolan is still holding out to her.

“I don’t know how you drink that stuff in the winter,” he comments blithely before continuing. “It’s not that I don’t want to sleep with you, Miks, but you’re Nick’s girl.”

“Not Nick’s girl anymore,” Mikayla snaps. “He made that pretty clear.” Her eyes are burning with unshed tears again, and she gulps her coffee to cover it.

Nolan’s undeterred. “He asks about you, you know.”

“Fuck off, no way he does.” For all that Nolan’s probably one of Mikayla’s best friends in Ann Arbor these days, he was Nick’s best friend first. The reminder stings a little. She’s not sure how she feels about the fact that they’ve apparently been talking about her, or that Nolan is just now telling her this.

Nolan digs out his phone. “Has too.” He scrolls for a moment before starting to read out texts from Nick. They’re all about her: how she’s doing, if she’s still coming to games at Yost, and, horrifyingly, if she’s seeing anyone. Mikayla kicks at Nolan until he stops reading. He locks his phone and makes a face at Mikayla. “You’re lucky I haven’t told him that you’ve been sleeping your way through three different frats.”

Mikayla makes a face back. “That’s none of your fucking business,” she tells him. Nor is it exactly true, though she has maybe fucked more than one guy from more than one fraternity this semester.

“Our Nick’s pining, babe,” Nolan insists.

“Someone needs to remind Nick that he broke up with me so he could fuck other girls without strings attached.”

Nolan scoffs. “We both know Nick’s not that kind of guy,” he says.

Mikayla sighs. Nolan is right about that part. It’s part of the reason Mikayla had been so caught off guard by Nick ending things. Nick was the type of guy to settle down, not fuck around.

“Have you been possessed by Truss or something?” Mikayla asks instead of unpacking everything Nolan’s revealed. “Since when can you hold a serious conversation for this long?” It’s almost unsettling.

“I’m worried about you,” Nolan says, once again undeterred by Mikayla trying to deflect. “Both of you actually.”

“I’m fine, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mikayla says. She picks at a loose thread on Nolan’s sheets to avoid meeting his eyes.

“This isn’t like you, either, Mik,” Nolan says.

Mikayla finally decides she’s done with this conversation. She throws off the blankets and clambers out of Nolan’s bed. She momentarily forgets that she’s wearing nothing but one of Nolan’s shirts until she sees him looking at her bare legs. He looks back up at her face, leering. Heartfelt conversation officially over.

Mikayla doesn’t have anything to throw at his head. “Get out,” she says, trying not to laugh.

“This is my room,” Nolan points out. He’s holding back laughter, too. “Hey, are you going to the Wings game in January, like right after break ends?”

Mikayla blinks at him, thrown off by the sudden topic change. “Uh, no?” It’s been a while since she drove into Detroit to catch a game. It used to be a monthly date with Nick.

“We should go,” Nolan says. There’s something falsely confident about his tone of voice.

Mikayla squints at him, suspicious. “Why, who are they playing?”

Nolan’s bravado falters for a moment, and that’s enough answer for Mikayla.

“No, no way.”

“I think you two need to talk,” Nolan counters.

“I don’t think there’s anything left to talk about.” She finds the jeans she was wearing last night and pulls them on.

“KJ will want to see you,” Nolan says. There’s a smirk on his face now.

“That’s not fair.” Everyone knew that KJ had been one of her favorite freshmen.

“Just…think about it, okay?” Nolan asks.

Mikayla heaves a sigh. “Fine, whatever.”

Nolan grins and smacks a kiss to Mikayla’s temple. “Text me when you get home to Saginaw.”

Mikayla’s only a little later leaving her apartment than she’d originally told her mom she’d leave, after rushing home from the senior house and frantically finishing packing for winter break.

She thinks while she drives. It’s finally starting to hit her, just how much she’s been missing Nick. She’d been telling herself she was fine, hiding the heartbreak with hook-ups. If Nick can do it, so can I, she’d thought vindictively more than once. She had never slept with anybody before Nick; now she’s not sure she could count all the guys she’s slept with since summer.

She thinks of all the times she went home with Nick over the holidays before they drove up to Saginaw to spend time with her family. Both of their moms had been absolutely thrilled when they’d started dating, so excited that they’d each found another Michigander to fall in love with. She thinks of the first time she’d come home with Nick, Christmas of her sophomore year, so nervous she’d felt like she was going to throw up in the passenger seat of Nick’s car.

“You’re going to be fine,” Nick says, reaching across the console to take Mikayla’s hand. She sends him an exasperated look. “Mikkie, seriously, everyone will love you.” Nick brings Mikayla’s hand to his mouth to press a kiss to the back of her hand. “C’mon, everyone’s waiting.”

“That’s the problem,” Mikayla grumbles, but she lets Nick let go of her hand and shoves open her car door.

Nick insists on carrying both of their bags, which means Mikayla is left to push open the front door. She’s met with a wall of noise and warmth. It’s immediately comforting in a way she didn’t expect, reminds her of home and her own family.

Nick drops Mikayla’s duffel bag on the floor next to her just as Nick’s mom rounds the corner. She rushes to Nick for a hug before turning on Mikayla and wrapping her in one too.

“Everyone’s so excited to meet you, Mikayla,” Nick’s mom says. She turns to Nick. “Take those bags upstairs. Mikayla can have Katrina’s old room, shoo,” she says with a smile, flapping her hands at both of them.

Mikayla trails after Nick as he dumps his own bag in his bedroom before stepping down the hall and dropping Mikayla’s bag at the foot of the bed in what must be Katrina’s room. He turns to Mikayla with a grin.

“I told you it was going to be fine,” he says.

Mikayla doesn’t point out that they’ve only encountered Nick’s mom so far, which hardly even counts because she’s talked to Karin on phone calls with Nick countless times, just lets herself be reeled in for a quick kiss. They’re probably pushing their luck just being alone up here. Nick takes Mikayla’s hand in his and leads the way back downstairs.

It’s annoying when Nick’s right about things, which is unfortunately often. The days at the Blankenburgs’ house do turn out to be fine. More than fine, actually. Everyone’s nice, if a bit overwhelming. Mikayla holds so many babies—young cousins and nieces and nephews—that she loses track of which baby belongs to whom. She wins several overly aggressive games of Spoons on Christmas Eve, much to Nick’s chagrin. Nick even sneaks into her room and squeezes next to her under the covers in the early blue dawn on Christmas morning, kissing her awake before pulling her close to doze back off.

They’re definitely pushing their luck with that one, but Mikayla can’t bring herself to care, cozy and safe from the frosty world beyond the curtains.

Mikayla blinks away the memory and pulls into her parents’ driveway. Her dog is waiting for her on the front lawn, holding her favorite toy and wiggling all over. Mikayla throws her door open and throws herself on the ground next to her dog, heedless of the frozen grass. They lay there, staring at the sky, until Mikayla’s fingers go numb and her mom is calling for her to come inside, while Mikayla thinks and thinks.

Jake’s home for the holidays, too, and he appears to drag Mikayla out of bed a few days after she’d gotten home.

“How’d you even get in here,” Mikayla complains into her pillow as Jake flops onto the bed next to her, half on top of her. The dog, who’d been sleeping on the floor next to Mikayla, decides she has to be included too and launches herself onto the bed.

“Your mom loves me,” Jake says. “C’mon, I’m bored, we should do something.”

There’s not much to do in Saginaw on any day, especially in the winter, but Mikayla elbows Jake until he rolls off her and she can get out of bed. They end up in Jake’s car, just driving around town with the music up loud. Jake only raises his eyebrows a little bit at the amount of Noah Kahan mixed in with Christmas songs on Mikayla’s playlist.

It’s always easy to fall back into old habits with Jake, and they complain about professors and classes for a while, trading stories, even though they’ve been having weekly hours-long phone calls since they were freshmen. Jake had kept quiet about Mikayla’s dating life—or hook-up life—throughout the semester, but he doesn’t hesitate to be nosy now.

“Seeing anyone?” he asks at a stoplight, looking sidelong at Mikayla.

Mikayla makes a face. “You know I’m not,” she says. She’d stopped sleeping around so much as the end of the semester approached, tired of the effort required for mostly mediocre lays. Tired as she started missing Nick more and more.

“Really?” Jake asks. He almost actually sounds surprised. “No romance in one night stands?”

They’re moving again, and Mikayla is briefly safe from Jake’s gaze. He knows how to read her face better than anyone, and Mikayla’s afraid of what might be showing now as she says, “Didn’t really have the heart for it.”

Jake’s quiet for a moment. Mikayla watches in slow motion as he comes to a stop at another red light before turning towards her again. He leans in before Mikayla can stop him, but she pulls away. There’s no hurt on Jake’s face, just confusion. No catching feelings, Mikayla thinks again.

“There’s something else, though, isn’t there?” Jake asks.

“Moyle says Nick’s still in love with me,” Mikayla says quietly.

Jake laughs. “And why shouldn’t he be? I always thought he was an idiot for breaking up with you in the first place.” Mikayla takes a shaky breath, but Jake continues. “Any guy would be stupid to let you go, Kay.”

“Including you?” Mikayla whispers. Jake laughs. “Especially me. I should have locked that shit down in high school.” Mikayla can’t help but laugh, too. “I probably would have let you back then.”

They’d talked about it a few times, on their backs in the backyard grass, staring up at the summer stars. Mikayla had never been serious about it, not really, but now she has to wonder if Jake had been serious. The talk about going to college together, moving to Detroit together. They’d been attached at the hip— “You can’t spell Jake without Kay,” Mikayla’s grandmother had joked more than once.

“And now?” Jake asks. They’re still idling in front of Mikayla’s house. At some point, Jake shifted to holding Mikayla’s hand over the gearshift, gripping it tightly in his own.

“What happened to ‘no catching feelings’?” Mikayla teases, and Jake cracks a grin. Mikayla heaves a sigh. “I think you know the answer here, Jakey.”

“I don’t want Nick to break your heart a second time,” Jake says fiercely.

“The Blue Jackets are coming to Detroit in January,” Mikayla says. “Nolan thinks I should at least talk to Nick.”

“Since when do you listen to Moyle’s ideas?” Jake snorts.

“Since he got the C and grew up a little, God, I don’t know.” Jake does have a point. Agreeing with Nolan Moyle is dangerous, even if he has turned out to be a pretty good leader. Mikayla shakes their joined hands a little. “Hey, if Nick does break my heart again, you’re the first person I’ll run to.”

“Promise?” Jake asks. He’s grinning, easy with it. “That’s what best friends are for, right? Swearing to kill your ex and then helping you get drunk to forget about him?”

Mikayla can’t help but laugh. “Something like that.” And before she can think better of it, she asks, “Can I do something stupid?”

Jake has barely said, “Of course,” when Mikayla leans across the console to kiss him one last time, her hands on either side of his face. Jake kisses back hard, leaving Mikayla breathless when she pulls away. “Hell of a goodbye, Kay,” Jake says.

“I’ll see you later, Jakey,” Mikayla says, kicking open the passenger door and climbing out of Jake’s car.

Mikayla cries on Christmas Eve. She’d had too much wine to drink with dinner, and she collapses into her bed as snowflakes drift past the window. It’s the first time she’s really let herself cry since Nick dumped that June day. She’d alternated between resolutely not thinking about him and going through life powered by a need for—revenge? vindication? She’s not sure she can put a word to it.

It didn’t matter, anyway; Nick wasn’t around for Mikayla to hurt with her actions the same way Nick had hurt her.

Mikayla wakes up with a headache and Nick’s contact open on her phone.

Mikayla calls Nolan as soon as she’s back in Ann Arbor.

“You lied to me,” she says without preamble.

“What?” Nolan says. There’s commotion on his end of the line, which means he’s probably at Yost.

“Columbus is here this weekend, and you’re playing Ohio State.” There’s a text from KJ on Mikayla’s phone, asking if she’ll be at Yost on Friday night. It had come in while she was driving back to her apartment. She hasn’t answered it. “You said you’d go to the Wings game with me when they were in town.”

“I did say that, didn’t I? In my defense, I didn’t realize they were coming in on a weekend.”

“KJ texted me,” she says.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, someone said something about KJ and Nick coming out for their rings on Friday.”

Mikayla suddenly has a headache. Nick was never supposed to come back to Ann Arbor. Mikayla had been so proud of him when he first signed with Columbus, but he had deliberately left her and Ann Arbor in the rear view. Ann Arbor was hers now.

Nolan’s still talking. “—talk, you should still come to the game on Friday.”

Mikayla can’t think of much worse than having to see Nick at Yost. “I’m not going to fucking talk to Nick about our breakup at a hockey game.” She’d rather not have a breakdown in front of the entire hockey team, thanks.

“Okay, so I bring him over to your apartment after the game.”

“Absolutely not,” Mikayla says.

“Mik.”

“Nolan.”

“You said you’d talk to him,” Nolan says.

“I said I would think about talking to him,” Mikayla counters. She hears Nolan sigh loudly through the phone. “What the fuck am I even supposed to say? ‘Sorry to hear that wheeling girls isn’t satisfying like you’d hoped’? Or, ‘I’ve slept with so many guys this semester I’ve lost track, but I haven’t found one that makes me feel the way being with you did’?” Mikayla snaps her mouth shut. She’s said too much.

“Oh, Mik,” Nolan says. He’s not teasing, which would be preferable to the pity in his voice.

“Moyle, shut the fuck up,” Mikayla snaps.

“Mik, you need to talk to Nick,” Nolan says, ignoring her. “I don’t need to do anything,” Mikayla says.

Nolan sighs again. “Fine, I can’t make you do anything, I guess.” With that, he hangs up.

Surprised, Mikayla stares at her phone. She’s not sure she has ever actually made Nolan mad like that before.

Mikayla spends the week leading up to Friday thinking. Nolan hasn’t spoken to her since he hung up the phone, and Mikayla doesn’t dare seek him out. KJ texts Mikayla three more times, with increasing levels of urgency and annoyance as they all go unanswered. Mikayla’s not sure what there is to say. She can’t promise anything.

She’s half-sure she’s going to skip the game right up until she walks through the doors of Yost on Friday afternoon. It’s loud and as crowded as ever, but there’s an extra kind of excited energy in the air. Mikayla isn’t sure if it’s just the Ohio State rivalry, but she wonders if some of the buzz she feels is because everyone else is just as excited about Nick and KJ returning as she’s supposed to be.

Mikayla doesn’t see either of them as she settles into her seat in the student section. She slides her phone out of her pocket, finds all of her unread messages from KJ. don’t leave without saying hi to me after the game, she sends. She puts her phone back away without waiting to see if KJ reads it.

The game itself isn’t pretty. Michigan gets outplayed, even though it’s tied after the first, but it’s 6-2 Ohio by the time they’re introducing KJ and Nick as the Score-O participants at second intermission.

Nick looks good, unfortunately. He seems happy to be back on the ice at Yost, even briefly. Even KJ manages a smile as the crowd cheers for them. Mikayla thought she’d heard something about Nick breaking his ankle earlier in the season, but it doesn’t seem to bother him at all as he scores and runs across the ice to throw his stick into the crowd. Mikayla rolls her eyes.

She’s standing in the concourse after the game when someone throws themselves at Mikayla from behind. She stumbles, but he wraps his arms around her shoulders before they both fall. KJ. Of course. She leans back into his chest, lets him rest his chin on top of her head.

“Moyle said you weren’t coming,” KJ says. He doesn’t move his chin from Mikayla’s head as he talks, and Mikayla elbows him until he lets her go.

“Yeah, well, you should never listen to Moyle,” Mikayla says. She tries to sound breezy, but she probably doesn’t succeed.

Kent gives her a flat look. Mikayla finally spots Nick, approaching from behind KJ. If Mikayla still had any intentions of ignoring him, it’s too late now. Nick sends her a tight smile as he steps up beside KJ. Kent looks back and forth between the two of them for a moment then sighs loudly.

“Figure your shit out, I’m tired of dealing with Nick,” he says to both of them. Mikayla crosses her arms and tries to glare at KJ. “I’m going outside, you two have ten minutes to talk.” He points at Mikayla. “We’re getting ice cream before we have to go back to Detroit.”

Kent stalks off before Nick or Mikayla can get a word in, which leaves Mikayla alone in a hallway with her ex. She swears at KJ under her breath. She’s not sure, but she thinks she hears Nick let out a quiet laugh.

“Hi,” Mikayla says. She wishes desperately for anyone to come save her, but no one comes.

Nick drags the toe of his sneaker across the floor. “Hey, Mikkie,” he says softly. “I’ve been wanting to talk—”

“Good job at Score-O tonight,” Mikayla blurts, cutting him off. She winces.

“Mikkie, c’mon,” Nick says, exasperated. “We need to talk.” “Do we, though?” Mikayla says. “I didn’t think there was any ambiguity left when you dumped me, so you could go off and fuck other girls.”

Nick winces. It doesn’t make Mikayla feel any better. “It was—“

Mikayla cuts him off again. “Don’t you dare say ‘it was complicated,’” Mikayla warns. “I don’t think there’s anything complicated about you deciding I wasn’t enough after you made it to the show. There’s nothing left to talk about, Nick.”

Mikayla had spent months pretending that she hadn’t been hurt by Nick, but she was exhausted by it. The idea that the boy you fell in love with, who you thought you were going to marry, no longer wants you and will go out to find someone else, whether or not you’re still together, isn’t an easy one to accept. She’d covered up that hurt with alcohol and sex and schoolwork. It’s a lot more raw and real with Nick standing in front of her with the same resolute stare he’d had when he was breaking up with her.

“I miss you, Mikkie,” Nick says. His hands are shoved in the pockets of his jeans, his hair curling out from underneath his beanie.

Mikayla almost believes him. She runs her hands through her hair. “Stop calling me that,” she says. “And don’t lie to me.”

“What, Mikkie? I’ve always called you that.”

“That was when we were dating.”

“And why do you think I’m lying?”

They’re talking over each other, voices rising in the small space. Yost is empty around them.

“Why would you break up with me if you were just going to come crawling back a few months later?” Mikayla asks. She thinks of Nolan telling her that Nick spent the fall asking about her. “Why have you been asking Nolan about me?”

Nick sighs. “I just told you. I miss you. I knew you wouldn’t want to hear from me, so instead I got to listen to Nolan tell me stories of you moving on.”

Mikayla will have to kill Nolan for that later. “I wasn’t moving on, not really,” Mikayla admits. She pushes her hair away from her face again. “I was just doing everything I could to not think about you.”

“I was trying to protect you,” Nick says. “I was going to be so far away, and traveling all the time, and you were supposed to go on to grad school next fall. I didn’t want to hold you back, and I didn’t want to make a mistake and hurt you.” Nick laughs, but it isn’t a happy sound. “I think I just made both of us miserable.”

“I spent so much time thinking that I had to prove something, that if you could handle being stupid and sleeping around, so could I,” Mikayla says.

At some point Nick has cautiously stepped closer to Mikayla. She leans back against the wall behind her, sagging with the sudden exhaustion of this conversation. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been standing here, how long KJ has been waiting outside without a coat for them to “figure their shit out.”

“Ask KJ, I was pretty bad at the whole casual hook-up thing,” Nick says.

Mikayla presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. She’d rather die than ask Kent for details of all of Nick’s hook-ups.

“I tried to kiss Moyle before Christmas,” Mikayla blurts out.

Nick is quiet. Mikayla hesitantly moves her hands from her eyes to look at him.

He’s looking at her, bewildered. Apparently that’s one thing about Mikayla’s Hot Girl Fall that Nolan didn’t tell Nick.

Mikayla continues. “He stopped me, I was drunk and confused, and he’s my best friend, but he was your best friend first, then he told me that he couldn’t because I’m your girl, even though I’m definitely fucking not, and—“ Mikayla gasps for air. “I can’t keep doing this.”

Nick steps even closer. He slowly, hesitantly, reaches for Mikayla. She lets herself be pulled in for a hug as she starts to cry. Nick rubs one of his hands in slow circles on Mikayla’s back underneath her sweatshirt, the way he used to when Mikayla was upset.

“Hey, slow down, it’s okay,” he says. “Mikkie, it’s okay.” Nick holds Mikayla until her crying subsides and her breathing evens back out. He takes a step back, but doesn’t let go of Mikayla’s arms. “What happens now?” he asks. He hesitates, but says, “I think I’m still in love with you.”

Mikayla blinks at him. She was kissing her best friend just a few weeks ago. She was trying to sleep with Moyle just a week before that. Nick’s confession doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, but it doesn’t simplify anything.

“Nick, I don’t know,” she says. “I might still love you, too, but—” Nick’s face brightens— “I think I need some time.” Nick’s face falls again.

“Why?” Nick argues. “We’ve had time, we both want this, I don’t get—” “What if I don’t want this?” Mikayla cuts in. “I don’t know what I want.” She doesn’t think she’s ever been so confused in her life.

Nick frowns at Mikayla. “But you just said—”

“I know what I just said, just—” Mikayla switches arguments. “When was the last time you slept with another girl?”

Nick looks taken aback. “I don’t know, around New Year’s?”

Not even two weeks ago.

“How am I supposed to believe you when you say you miss me while you’re still running around fucking other girls? That you’re serious? Maybe you just think you miss me because you just haven’t found the right girl?”

Nick doesn’t argue this time, face turning red.

“What am I supposed to do if we get back together and you turn around and cheat on me? When you realize you were right in the first place, that the distance is too hard and that I might not actually be the one you want?”

“When was the last time you slept with another guy?” Nick finally says. Mikayla feels like it should sting, but it’s a fair question. “What am I supposed to do here?”

“I haven’t slept with anyone since before finals,” Mikayla says. There was the failed move on Moyle, then one last kiss with Jake back in Saginaw. Those hardly count. Nick blinks at Mikayla. “I don’t know what to do, Nick, honestly. We could both stop sleeping with other people, for one thing.”

“Done,” Nick says quickly.

Mikayla narrows her eyes at Nick, suspicious. “That’s it?” she asks. “All that drama to break up with me to sleep around, and you agree to stop, just like that?”

Nick looks sheepish for the first time. “I’m telling you, I was terrible at doing casual. I kept asking them all to stay the night and shit.” There’s a pause before Nick bursts out, “What are you so afraid of?”

“You, Nick!” Mikayla almost wants to laugh, but she also feels like she might cry again. “I think…” she says slowly, “that we both need to know that this is what we want. I don’t think I want to let this go so easy, but I don’t want to get hurt again, either.”

Nick looks sad when Mikayla meets his eyes again. “Okay, yeah, yeah,” he says.

“I just want to be able to focus on my last semester, y’know?” Mikayla says.

Nick forces a smile. “Yeah, of course,” he says. “I’ll, uh, see you around, I guess?”

“Yeah, Nick, I’d like that.” It doesn’t feel like a lie when Mikayla says it.

Mikayla doesn’t know where Nick goes, but he doesn’t follow her outside, where she needs to find KJ. He’s leaning against the front doors of Yost, looking pissy and cold, even though it was his idea to go stand outside and wait for Mikayla without a coat.

He slings an arm around her shoulders and falls into step beside her when he spots her.

“You know, you could have made your point without standing out in the cold,” Mikayla points out. KJ is a cold line pressed against her left side. “You’re making me cold, now,” she complains.

“I still want ice cream,” KJ says, instead of admitting he was wrong about something. Mikayla rolls her eyes.

They end up at Blank Slate, another place she and Nick used to frequent on dates when the weather was warmer. She tries not to think about it as she follows KJ into the shop.

KJ wastes no time ordering their brown butter cookie dough ice cream, but Mikayla spends so long debating that she’s half-worried KJ is going to order plain vanilla for her out of spite. Finally, Mikayla brings her scoop of vanilla caramel blondie over to where Kent claimed a table in the empty shop. He makes a face at her, but she’s immune to KJ’s bitchiness at this point.

“Nick’s been a mess,” KJ says without preamble.

Mikayla sighs. “Not you, too, KJ,” she says. “Please, I’ve heard enough from Nolan and Nick already.”

KJ points his plastic spoon at Mikayla. It’s probably supposed to be threatening. “No, I don’t think you have, actually. You didn’t have to watch him break his ankle, be miserable about it, then force himself to go out and pick up and be more miserable about it. Do you know how pathetic he was with that fucking scooter?”

Mikayla snorts into her ice cream. “It can’t have been that bad,” Mikayla protests. Though, if Nick was half as miserable as she had been and was pretending not to be, he was probably pretty miserable.

KJ takes another bite of ice cream, says through it: “Oh, it was.” He swallows and leans across the table. “And then I text Moyle to tell him we need to fix it, only he tells me you’re out doing the same dumb shit as Nick.”

He’s close enough that Mikayla can flick him between his judgmental eyebrows. He leans back again and takes a petulant bite of ice cream.

“You and Moyle need to mind your own damn business,” Mikayla tells him. “We were both fine.”

Kent doesn’t even dignify that with a response, just raises one eyebrow. Mikayla wishes he were close enough to smack that disbelieving look off his face.

“We were fine!” Mikayla insists. It doesn’t sound any better the second time.

“So did you fix your shit?” KJ asks.

Mikayla huffs. “What does that even mean?” She ignores Kent’s eye roll. “There’s nothing to fix.”

“Wait,” KJ says slowly. “Moyle and I Parent Trapped you two for nothing? You didn’t even get back together?”

“No, we didn’t, and—have you ever even seen The Parent Trap?”

“That’s not the point,” KJ says, “I don’t get it. If you’re both miserable, why not get back together?”

“Because what if it makes us more miserable? What if it’s not actually what we want? What if we just break up again?”

“Whoa,” Kent says. “Slow down.”

Mikayla’s almost out of ice cream. She looks sadly down at her empty cup. Kent holds his half-eaten ice cream out without a word, and she takes some with her spoon.

“And what if you end up happy?” Kent asks.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Mikayla doesn’t know the last time she was really happy. Before Nick broke up with her, probably.

They finish their ice cream in silence. Kent hugs Mikayla tightly outside Blank Slate. There’s a car idling for him nearby, Nick and whatever members of the Blue Jackets media corps had to make the trip out to Ann Arbor waiting for KJ.

“Fix your shit,” KJ says again, stepping away at last.

Mikayla rolls her eyes. “Which one of us is the freshman here?”

KJ doesn’t bother pointing out that he’s not a freshman anymore, or even a student at all, just climbs into the backseat of the car at the curb. Mikayla watches as they pull away, stays standing there long after the taillights have disappeared.

Nick, to his credit—and a little bit to Mikayla’s dismay—doesn’t reach out. Mikayla finds herself half-dreading, half-hoping for a text that never comes. As the days after seeing Nick again stretch into weeks, Mikayla stops expecting to hear from him, tries to squash down the disappointment she feels.

She throws herself into focusing for her final semester of college. She keeps her promise to Nick—no more sleeping around. She has no idea if he’s actually doing the same. There’s no time for it anyway, with a full class schedule and an internship and all the hockey games Moyle is still insisting she come to.

Mikayla feels like she blinks, and suddenly it’s April. The hockey team is heading off to the Frozen Four, and Mikayla’s in her final weeks of college. It’s all a little surreal, and more than a little dizzying.

“You’ll stay in touch, though, right?” she asks Nolan.

Nolan laughs at her on a fuzzy FaceTime call from his hotel room in Tampa. “Mikkie, baby, you should know by now that you can’t get rid of me that easy.”

That is true. “I couldn’t even get rid of you after I stopped dating your best friend.” She has to laugh, too. “Do you know what you’re gonna do after the year is over?” Mikayla asks.

She vaguely sees Nolan shrug. “Nah, I’ll figure it out.” The conversation feels loaded now, despite Nolan’s light tone. “What about you? Ready for bigger and better things?”

Mikayla had big plans, once. She had picked out the graduate school program she wanted as a freshman, had spent the last four years working towards it. She had other plans, too; ones that included a white dress and a church wedding and Nick waiting at the end of the aisle.

Grad school is still waiting for her. Mikayla has no idea if Nick is, too.

“I guess so,” Mikayla says at last. She doesn’t feel ready to be taking on the real world outside of school. Maybe it’s just delaying the inevitable, but she’s still glad to be able to push adulthood back a little further.

“Hey, Mikkie,” Nolan says, still serious. Mikayla looks away from her computer to look properly at him. “Everything’s going to work out, you know.”

Nolan always has had a knack for reading Mikayla’s anxieties. “Promise?” she asks. It comes out watery.

“Promise.”

Michigan loses in the semis again. Mikayla watches as her friends pack up and leave, onto their own futures: Luke goes to Jersey, Portillo heads out to California, Mackie ends up in Charlotte. The end of hockey season is always a whirlwind. She remembers last year, when scouts coming to games turned into Nick signing with Columbus, missing graduation and living his dream in the NHL.

Mikayla’s own cap and gown hang off the back of her closet door. The end is coming for them all, whether or not Mikayla is ready for it.

The end, when it comes, passes quietly. Mikayla passes her finals, walks in graduation. She packs up her apartment, all of the little bits of her life over the last four years, into boxes and shoves them all into the back of her car. Mikayla leaves Ann Arbor in the rearview mirror as she drives north to Saginaw for the summer.

Mikayla’s only been back in Saginaw a few weeks when she hears from Nick at last. The dog barks at the door once, before she switches to whole body wiggles—Mikayla knows who she’s going to see before she even heads to open the front door.

Nick is standing awkwardly on the front porch, hands in his pockets, when Mikayla swings the door open. The dog squeezes past Mikayla to say hi to Nick, sitting squarely on one of his feet.

“Traitor,” Mikayla says. To Nick, she says, “Hey.”

Nick looks up from rubbing behind the dog’s ears to grin sheepishly at Mikayla. “Hey, uh—“

“What would you have done if I hadn’t been home?” Mikayla asks, teasing.

Nick flushes. “I, uh, didn’t think that far ahead,” he admits. “But you’re here, so it doesn’t matter,” he points out.

Mikayla laughs. “You got in your car, drove an hour and a half, but didn’t think about what would happen when you got here?”

Nick makes a face. “I did have a plan, I just—“ he breaks off without finishing. “Can we talk?”

It would be mean to tell him no after he drove all the way to Mikayla’s parents’ house to see her. Besides, she’s been waiting anxiously for this moment since she last saw Nick in January.

“Of course,” she says. She looks down at her dog, still sitting happily on Nick’s foot.

“Walk with me?” Nick asks. They both watch as the dog’s ears go up excitedly.

Mikayla rolls her eyes but reaches back inside to grab her leash off the hook by the door. “Now why would you say the w-word?” she complains. She tosses the leash at Nick, lets him hook it onto her dog’s collar with practiced ease—despite the continued wiggles. Mikayla pulls the front door shut behind her and steps out onto the porch beside Nick.

She almost wishes Nick had asked if he could come inside. This conversation might be easier without the eyes of the neighborhood on them, in the safety of Mikayla’s home. But she’s also grateful to not be confined to the living room. The early summer breeze lifts Mikayla’s hair off the back of her neck, cools the anxious sweat there.

They start off down the sidewalk together—Nick’s still holding the leash. Mikayla wonders if he’s thought about getting a dog since moving to Columbus. That was another thing they’d talked about for the future together—getting a puppy as soon as they’d both graduated.

Nick stops suddenly as they approach his car, parked on the street in front of the house. He quickly hands Mikayla the leash, fishing in his pockets for something.

“Hang on, I have to—“ He opens the passenger door and grabs a battered notebook off the floor of the footwell. “Okay, we can—“ He starts walking down the street without finishing his sentence.

Mikayla half-jogs to keep up with him. “Nick? I don’t think you’ve said a full sentence since you got here,” she says.

Nick runs a hand over his still-regretfully buzzed hair. Mikayla needs to remember to make fun of him for it later. “Sorry, just—I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous for something,” he says.

Mikayla scoffs, nudges Nick in the ribs with her elbow. He leans into it instead of letting her bully him off the curb. “Whatever, you literally play in the NHL.”

“No hockey game is as important as you,” Nick says seriously.

Mikayla has to force her feet to keep moving so she doesn’t stop and gape at Nick in the middle of the sidewalk.

He’s running his finger nervously along the bent metal spiral holding together the notebook in his hands. Mikayla stares at it, the way his thumb turns white as he presses hard into the sharp end of the spiral. The notebook feels familiar, blue cardboard cover worn and covered in Nick’s handwriting. She wants to tear it out of his hands, but she waits.

Nick continues talking. “Do you remember when we met?”

Mikayla has to blink at him for a moment, trying to get past the dissonance of his last two statements. “Well, yeah,” she says. “Of course.”

They’d been in the same elective course together. It was Mikayla’s freshman year, Nick’s sophomore year. Mikayla had never noticed Nick in class before, but she slid into the seat next to him at a study group session organized by one of their classmates, a few weeks into the semester.

They’d talked for over an hour, about the class, about Michigan. When they were finally forced to pack up and leave the library study room, Nick had stood up and Mikayla had blurted: “Oh.”

“Oh?” Nick had echoed. Mikayla was standing, too, face to face with Nick for the first time. Close enough to clearly see the narrow scar in his eyebrow, watch it move as he raises his eyebrows at her, clearly amused.

“You’re not as tall as I thought you were,” Mikayla had admitted. It doesn’t make much sense when she says it out loud like that.

Nick had bumped into her playfully as they made their way outside. “And how tall did you think I was?” he had teased.

Mikayla huffed at him. “I don’t know, forget I said anything.” But Nick fell into step beside her as she headed back to her dorm, and she dared to ask a stupid question. “How tall are you, anyway?”

“5’8” and some change,” Nick had told her. He burst into laughter when Mikayla had pursed her lips, trying hard not to say anything else out of pocket. “What?” he asked.

“Not very much change, though,” she had said, which just made Nick laugh harder.

He had asked her out after class two weeks after that day.

“Your NHL stats lie about your height,” Mikayla points out. Not that she looked, or anything.

It makes Nick laugh, the same way teasing him about his height always did. Mikayla had always been the only person he would tolerate the jokes from.

“I’m almost 5’9”!” Nick protests.

“Almost is not the same thing, Nicholas!”

“You know, I think I started to fall in love with you from that very first time we met,” Nick says.

Mikayla’s left dumbfounded once again. “Be serious.”

Nick chuckles wryly. “Why do you always think I’m lying to you lately?”

“I just don’t know what to believe anymore,” Mikayla sighs. “You keep talking about missing me and how long you’ve loved me, but that doesn’t make any sense with the way you broke up with me. You can’t love someone like that and then dump them just so you don’t end up cheating on them.”

Nick’s quiet for a moment. Their hands brush as they walk side by side on the narrow sidewalk. Nick’s still holding that battered blue notebook; Mikayla has no idea why. “Okay, that was a shitty way to end things, and it was shitty of me in general, but I’ve regretted it every moment since then, I need you to believe me on that.”

“And if I do? What then?” Mikayla asks.

Nick starts fidgeting with that notebook again. He runs a finger along the edge of the pages now, fanning them a little. Mikayla watches him, lets him collect his thoughts.

“Long distance goes both ways, you know?” Nick says.

“I—what?”

Nick continues as if Mikayla hadn’t said anything. “I think I thought I was protecting you, I guess? Like, it wouldn’t be fair to you to be stuck with a boyfriend 300 miles away. I didn’t want you to miss out on things because you were still with a guy you only saw a couple of times a year.”

“That’s stupid,” Mikayla announces. It catches Nick off-guard, and he laughs a little. “When did I ever complain about being long-distance?” she asks. She doesn’t wait for an answer. “And I definitely missed out on so much in the years we were together, like the awkwardness of going to class three times a week with a guy you hooked up with a couple of times, or seeing someone you fucked at a party around campus and realizing you don’t even know their name.

“Nick, I never cared about the distance. I was so proud of you, and I loved you so much. I didn’t realize that wasn’t enough.”

“It should have been. I already told you, it was shitty, and it was stupid, Mikkie. I’m trying to fix it now, though.”

“What is that?” Mikayla asks, curiosity finally getting the better of her. She points to the notebook.

Nick looks down at the notebook in his hands like he’s seeing it for the first time. “Oh, uh. It’s a notebook,” he says dumbly. Mikayla wants to smack him. “When we were together, I used to write about you.”

That’s why the notebook seemed so familiar. Mikayla had seen it before: amongst the clutter of Nick’s desk, mixed in with his other books in his backpack, on the floor of her own bedroom when Nick stayed over. She’d never once stopped to wonder what was inside of it.

Nick’s still talking. “It’s not, like, poetry, or anything, but sometimes when I was thinking about you, or when you’d done something that had made me laugh or really realize that I loved you, I’d write it down.”

“And you kept it?” Mikayla asks.

“I had to dig it out of some box in my old bedroom after I saw you in Ann Arbor in January, but yeah. I, um…” Nick trails off. “I started writing in it again, after that. Just whenever I missed you or something, I’d write it down. I didn’t think I was going to show it to you, though, until I got here.”

They’ve been walking for a while now. They should probably head back, but the sun is warm on Mikayla’s face, and she’s starting to feel something like hope in her chest for the first time in months.

“You haven’t shown me anything,” Mikayla points out, gentle. It’s meant to be teasing, and she thinks Nick gets it. He sighs, long and dramatic. Mikayla thinks he’s only half-serious, but she still says, “Nick, you don’t have to, I believe you.”

And she does. When she thinks about it, she’s seen Nick writing in that notebook over the years. He always closed it when she approached, but Nick had always liked to give Mikayla his full attention. She’d never spared a second thought to the notebook’s contents.

Nick takes the leash from Mikayla at the same time he passes her the notebook. Their fingers brush as Mikayla takes it carefully from him. In her hands, the notebook looks even worse for wear, dangerously close to falling apart, years and years of use showing in its bent edges.

Mikayla begins to leaf through it slowly. There’s a chunk of pages clumsily torn out of the beginning of the notebook—probably old class notes. The first page left only has a couple of lines, scrawled in Nick’s messy handwriting: met a great girl today gonna ask her out. Then, a few pages later, in the margins of another page of class notes: think I could spend forever with Mikayla.

Mikayla continues flipping pages. The older pages are more faded, stained with coffee or water rings. Occasionally a page will be dated, but the pages about her are mostly random, a few sentences here, a paragraph there. She can tell when she gets to the newer entries, and not just by the crisp pages. Nick started writing the date at the top of each page, and Mikayla skims through January, into February, March, April. The pages stop abruptly in the end of April, right around the end of hockey season and Mikayla graduating.

That reminds Mikayla: “Sucks that you missed the end of the season with your ankle,” she says.

If Nick thinks it’s a non-sequitur, he doesn’t show it, just responds, “Eh, it’s whatever. Not like I was playing groundbreaking hockey to begin with.”

Mikayla stops short. “Hang on, no.” Nick stops a few steps ahead of her. He looks over his shoulder, confused. “You didn’t get promoted to top d-pair for playing shitty hockey, Nick.”

Nick grins. “You were paying attention?”

Shit. “Uh,” Mikayla says. It’s way too late to lie. “Maybe a little.” She doesn’t know why she never unfollowed the Blue Jackets on social media, but she’d only stopped scrolling past all of their posts after seeing Nick in January. “Maybe I was just keeping up with KJ.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him,” Nick says. He’s still grinning when he reaches out a hand to Mikayla. “C’mon.”

Mikayla carefully places her hand in Nick’s. He doesn’t let go, even once she’s caught up and they’ve fallen into step together again.

“It also means I can see your fucking terrible hair decisions as soon as you make them,” Mikayla says. She’d dropped her phone on her face the first time the Blue Jackets posted the buzz cut.

“What’s wrong with my hair?” Nick complains. He lets go of Mikayla’s hand to run a hand over the shorn strands again. Mikayla snatches at his hand when he lets it rest back at his side.

Mikayla huffs. “Everything!” Nick shoots her an amused look. It only makes Mikayla bolder, like nothing has ever changed between them. “Your hair looked so good, and then you fucking buzzed it! And not even well!” Nick’s laughing openly at Mikayla now. She’s not finished. “It’s prickly, and uneven, and you look like a damn hedgehog.” Nick has to stop walking so he can double over in laughter. “Nick,” Mikayla whines.

“I guess you’d prefer the mullet, then?” he asks when he finally stops laughing.

“Yes.” Mikayla actually kind of enjoyed the playoff mullet each year. “I always liked the mullets.”

They’ve somehow managed to make it back to Mikayla’s street. She stops at the foot of the driveway, not ready for this conversation to be over. She’s still clutching Nick’s notebook, and she pulls it close to her chest.

“I know you did,” Nick says, suddenly serious. He’s still holding onto Mikayla’s hand, and he uses it to tug her close. He presses a quick kiss to her temple. “I’ve really missed you, Mikkie,” Nick whispers into her hair.

Mikayla closes her eyes, counts to three. She knows what’s coming. She might finally know the right answer to what Nick’s going to ask.

“I miss you, Nick,” she says.

It’s been building, the certainty that she still loves Nick enough to give it all a second chance, but this moment, a walk in the sunshine, teasing each other, is what really cemented how much she missed Nick in her life.

Nick looks hopeful when Mikayla opens her eyes again.

“Yeah?” he says softly. He steps closer, slides a hand around Mikayla’s hip. She lets him, likes the way his hand fits there, warm against her skin. “Do you wanna do this? For real?”

Mikayla nods, no hesitation. She watches as the grin spreads across Nick’s face.

“I’ve missed that smile,” Mikayla says, and then Nick’s kissing her so hard he nearly knocks her off balance. Mikayla drops the notebook and Nick drops the leash—the dog has laid down in protest of her walk ending, anyway—so she can wrap her arms around Nick’s neck and pull him closer.

Nick pulls away for breath first, but he doesn’t go far, pressing his forehead to Mikayla’s.

“Do you want to come inside?” Mikayla asks.

There’s time to talk about what this means, to talk about the future. That can wait. What’s important right now is Nick, here in Mikayla’s arms.

“I’d love to,” Nick says.

#cait writes things #nick blankenburg fic #nick blankenburg imagine #columbus blue jackets fic #columbus blue jackets imagine #nhl fic #nhl imagine #nhl fanfiction #hockey fic #hockey imagine #hockey fanfiction

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tgmsunmontue · 7 months

Text

Come on baby light my fire… 2/2 (or 7/7?)

Hangster. 3k. Explicit. Apartment fire alarm at 1am featuring Jake in his underwear and Bradley with kittens.

All six potential endings are included in one post below. If you'd rather read them as separate chapters you can check out AO3 where I posted it first for once.

PART ONE (on Tumblr)

OPTION A

Jake looks down at the sleeping man, so tempted to curl up back in bed with him. But he’s got to go and figure out how to get back into his own apartment. Most importantly though is he wants Bradley’s number, and he knows his own. He grabs Bradley’s phone, carefully grabs his hand and presses his finger to the fingerprint reader and sure enough it unlocks. There’s a photo of a couple as the background but he’s more interested in adding himself as a contact. He does so quickly, his name followed by a little flame, night cityscape, cat emoji, then an eggplant and some droplets because he’s hilarious and he’s pretty sure Bradley will think he’s funny.

He sends himself a couple of messages, basically with all the details of where he’s gone and that he has no plans for the rest of the day and will come back to the apartment if he can’t locate Javy at the gym, or message him as soon as he’s in his apartment and has access to his phone again. He rifles through Bradley’s bag, a little perturbed by the number of Hawaiian shirts he finds, but pulls out a very worn US Navy t-shirt that has a very retro feel. None of it is what he’d usually wear, but all of it is better than being naked. It’s bad enough that he’s going to have to be barefoot and he wonders whether he could really chance taking what look like Bradley’s only pair of shoes. Screw it. He’ll be back soon enough.

He laces up, the shoes a bit too big, then jogs the two blocks to where Javy prefers to go to the gym, glad it’s not further. It’s still at least another fifteen minutes before he usually starts, but Jake can’t risk him being early and missing him. But he is a man borne of military routine and walks up about a minute before Jake expected him.

“Javy! Hey!”

“Man! What are you wearing?!”

“It’s a long story, well, actually, it’s not that long. My apartment building had a fire alarm, I left without my keys but I was only wearing my underwear. Hooked up with this guy who is fucking scorching hot –”

“But has terrible taste in clothes.”

“He’d make this work, trust me. Anyway, I need you to get my spare key.”

“I’m not skipping my workout for you…”

“Yes you are, in gratitude for me not waking you at two in the morning in my underwear to give me my spare…”

“And I’m sure you were really suffering with the scorching hot guy. Your story is truly heart wrenching.”

“Come on!”

“Fine, here, take my keys, go and grab yours, then you can return your spare and my keys back to me. Deal?”

“Yeah, good plan. I probably shouldn’t have both sets on me.”

“You think?” Javy says dryly and Jake gives him the finger.

After agreeing to take Jake’s car to make it all much faster he gets through the logistics of getting to Javy’s, grabbing his spare keys and then back to his apartment. Lets himself in with a sigh of relief and immediately goes to his phone, ignores all the other messages and clicks on the new messages and clicks Add Contact. He enters in Bradley, following it with a cat emoji and then three little flames. He’s not going to forget who Bradley is in a hurry. He doesn’t bother changing, needs to return Javy’s car and keys and then come back again. As he’s walking back he sends a message, nerves fluttering in his stomach.

>>I have keys, my phone and am heading back to my apartment. 5A. Want to come over?

>>On my way.

OPTION B

Jake rolls his eyes, of course Bradley’s phone is dead. Ah well, he can go old school. There’s a pen and paper on the bench and he quickly writes down his name and number, along with his apartment number and a hope to see you soon. Leaves the piece of the paper smack center in the middle of the kitchen counter where it can’t be missed. He pulls on his underwear, then rifles through Bradley’s clothes and pulls out some sweat pants and a t-shirt. Okay, this is going to be a mortifying experience however slightly less mortifying than if he went out in just his underwear. Also less likely to result in any indecency charges.

… … …

Bradley looks at the little pieces of paper and his heart sinks. He’s pretty sure that it’s a note, now ripped to shreds and missing pieces, the kittens having wrecked havoc on the little piece of paper, now scattered around like soggy confetti. He picks up one of the pieces and it’s definitely got a number on it. What number, he has no idea, it could be an apartment number for all he knows. He freezes, realizing that he’s not going to be thwarted by two baby cats. He knows Jake’s name and that he lives in this apartment building. Eight floors, six apartments on each floor. That’s forty-eight handwritten notes, minus six because he doesn’t need to do one for Hilary’s apartment or any of her neighbors, because surely Jake would have mentioned if he’d been on the same floor. That’s something you’d mention right?

He finds some paper, making sure it’s a decent size because the last thing he wants is for Jake to somehow miss his note in return, that just makes him look like an inept love interest in a romcom. He’s in charge of this. His hand starts cramping around the thirtieth message but he keeps on, then pulls on some clothes, not caring what he’s wearing. He takes the stairs down to the lobby, eyes up all the little mail slots and then just starts posting a handwritten note in each one. Stands back and looks. Right. Now all he has to do is wait for Jake to contact him.

The entire day goes by and he refuses to panic. Not everyone checks their mail everyday, he might even have to wait a couple of days, although Hilary is returning tomorrow and he’s meant to be going and staying with Nat for a couple of nights before his next deployment. But Jake will still get his number. He just has to want to use it.

… … …

He should have gotten Bradley’s number.

It’s been hours and Bradley hasn’t sent him a single message.

Would it be weird to go and knock on his door?

Yes. That just seems a shade too desperate. He can act cool.

… … …

Jake frowns at the piece of paper, the only thing in his mail slot and he’s only check it because he’s walking past. A note. A handwritten note.

Hi, I’m looking for Jake. This is Bradley. Please contact me.

And then a phone number and he grins at it, because he’s going to get some answer now, multiple answers he suspects, because his number of questions has just doubled. He enters the number into his phone as he walks, presses call and holds the phone to his ear.

“Hello, Bradley here.”

“Hi. It’s Jake.”

“You called! Hi…”

“Hi… any particular reason you’re leaving me a handwritten note and not just using the technology available to us?”

“Because I didn’t have your number. The cats, they ripped it to shreds and I just… had to figure out a way of contacting you.”

“Smart and good looking. If you knew which apartment was mine why didn’t you just come knock on my door. I would have let you in.”

“Ah… I put a note in every apartments mail slot.”

“Of course you did…”

“Well, sitting around outside waiting for you to enter or exit the building seemed a little stalkerish.”

“Yes. So… not playing hard to get.”

“Definitely not.”

“Good. So I can assume you’ll say yes if I ask you out to dinner?”

“Why don’t you go ahead and ask.”

OPTION C

He knocks on the door, a little disappointed that Bradley hasn’t sent him a message, is surprised because he’d kind of thought they’d connected on a level that was maybe, hopefully, more than just sexual. The door opens and it’s not Bradley answering, but a woman his age, looking very comfortable in too-big sweats and hoodie. His stomach starts souring, twisting into unpleasant tightness.

“Hi. Uh…”

“Are you looking for Bradley?”

“Ah, yeah. Sorry to have bothered you. He just helped me out the other night,” he flushes, hopes whoever this woman is doesn’t read too much into the helped me out aspect of the sentence, because he hadn’t meant it as an innuendo.

“Oh, yeah, he was just kitten sitting for me while I was out of town. Do you want his number?”

He sucks in a sharp breath, the relief sharp and instant.

“Do you have it?”

“Of course I do, he’s a college friend. And I’m assuming you’re the hot neighbor who he was annoyed at me about not warning him about?”

“Jake. My name’s Jake.”

“Nice to meet you Jake. I expect an invite to the wedding…”

“Well, he didn’t message me, so maybe don’t plan on that…”

“Oh, yeah, I found little shreds of paper, so if you tried leaving a note that was a no-go…”

“What?”

“Orea and Cracker. They shred paper. I think I found a couple of pieces. Floated my theory past a very forlorn Brad Brad and he said it was maybe a possibility. Here, take his number and go put your man out of his misery…”

OPTION D (Version I – fits within TGM events)

Pete frowns, because he hasn’t seen that shirt in years. Maybe literal decades, and now that’s a scary thought for other reasons. But he’d swear that that man is wearing Goose’s old Navy shirt, old sauce stain down the front and everything. Bradley had taken it when he’d left, had always used it as a pyjama top and it had always made Pete smile to see, the memories still bittersweet of the dinner shared with friends. He needs to know.

“Ah, excuse me. This is going to be an odd question, but I just need to ask. Where did you get that shirt?”

“This one? Ah, funny story actually… I ended up locked out of my apartment in the middle of the night due to a fire alarm and this guy helped me out. Said I could borrow anything, cause did I mention I was only in my underwear? Anyway, I left before he woke, and I’ve never been able to return it to him…”

“You couldn’t go and knock on his door?” Pete asks, because something isn’t adding up.

“Well, I almost did, but then I saw this woman leaving and decided it was maybe best not to rock any boats.”

“Oh. Hmm. Well, I’m pretty sure he’d like that top back. It belonged to his father. He usually sleeps in it…”

“You know him?”

“Bradley? Yes. You want his number?”

“I… sure.”

“Okay. You just can’t ever tell him who gave it to you, okay?”

OPTION D (Version II – only ending where Mav and Bradley have a relationship)

There’s a guy staring at him and it’s starting to annoy him a little. It’s even starting to border on a little creepy and he gives him the side eye. Instead of it putting the guy off it has the opposite effect and he’s now walking over, about to make fucking conversation of all things while Jake is just trying to work out.

“Where did you get that t-shirt?”

Okay, that wasn’t quite what Jake was expecting. Maybe a sly comment on his form, or body… not the almost threadbare shirt he borrowed from Bradley and has never been able to return. Also this guy is old enough to be his father, he’s not familiar enough with the brass on base to not give this man the potential respect he deserves.

“Sir?”

“Where did you get that t-shirt?” he repeats.

“Uh…” Jake looks down at the shirt, and it’s the one he’d taken a couple of weeks ago from his night with Bradley. “From a guy.”

“A guy.”

“Yes sir.”

“Sorry, I’m Captain Mitchell. I… Wait… your middle-of-the-night fire-alarm underwear-guy!”

“Excuse me sir?”

“I believe we have someone in common, and he’s going to want that t-shirt back. It belonged to his father.”

“You know Bradley? I went looking for him, but there was this woman at the apartment.”

“His friend Hilary, yes. He stays at her apartment whenever she’s out of town to look after her cats.”

“Oreo and Cracker.”

“Yes. Who I believe are to blame for shredding the note you left.”

“What?”

“They found tiny pieces, some of it chewed up. Not enough to make anything out of it. Trust me, I’ve heard this lamented to me far too many times in the last couple of weeks to not be very familiar with it all. Your first name is Jake isn’t it?”

“Yes sir. Lieutenant Jake Seresin.”

“Of course you are. I’m picking he has no idea you’re navy, because this would have gone a lot faster if he’d mentioned that.”

“No sir, we didn’t exactly swap life stories.”

That gets him a raised eyebrow and smirk and Jake flushes, not really sure who Captain Mitchell is to Bradley, but if what he says is true, then Bradley does want to see him again. That’s a swoop of positive feelings after a couple of weeks of feeling rejected.

“Right. Stand just there. I’m going to take a picture and send it to Bradley, tell him I found his shirt… he was just as sad about the shirt as he was about you.”

Jake blinks, the guy is taking his picture before he can even say anything, Jake doesn’t even know if he was smiling, probably looked like a stunned rabbit. He glances over the shoulder and the man, this Captain Mitchell, is cropping his face out of the picture completely, thumbing out I found something that I believe belongs to you, and pressing send before Jake has time to even think of asking for Bradley’s number.

“Can I get his number?”

“How about you come home with me and you ask him for yourself, hmm?”

OPTION E

Jake wakes slower than usual, warmer, and he stetches and then freezes when something grabs his foot. His brain registers then, kitten and he smiles into the darkness, memories coming back and yeah… this is definitely a preferable way of waking up.

“Mornin’…” Jake says, sliding his body over Bradley’s, naked skin sliding against his and he’s glad they’re both naked.

“Mmm… Hi. Why are you waking me up so early?”

“Well, I realized one of the few ways of getting my spare keys is to hunt down my friend who has them. And he goes to the gym early.”

“Ugh. This early? Is there any way we can get your friend’s number which does not involve us getting up right now and doing a manhunt across the city?”

“It’s not exactly the city, just two blocks.”

“Is he listed anywhere as your emergency contact that we can ring and ask for it?”

Jake opens his mouth and immediately shuts it. There is someplace he can ring which would maybe give him Javy’s number, or at the minimum pass a message on.

“Actually, yeah. Well, they might not give me the number but they’d pass a message on for me.”

“And can we ring them later?”

“Yeah, we can definitely do that later…”

Worst case, he can always try catching Javy at the gym tomorrow instead.

… … …

Later, after another heavy make out session in bed, messy and leaving Jake wanting more, he takes Bradley’s offered phone and thumbs open the keypad. He’s going to ring the HR line for military service people, because there are surely people in worse positions than him that call up asking for weirder and wackier things than an emergency contact number. Even if Javy isn’t exactly his emergency contact, they can ring him and give him Bradley’s number. As he enters in the number he sees various contacts pop up and then;

“Why is the number for the Military HR service line programmed into your phone?”

“Because I'm a commissioned officer.”

“Oh shit! Me too. Lieutenant Jake Seresin.”

“Ha. Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw.”

“Wait… Bradley Bradshaw. You know Javy. Coyote. He flew with you.”

“Coyote is your emergency contact?”

“Well, he’s the guy that has my spare keys…”

“Well, I already have his number. I was planning on meeting up with him later actually.”

“Of course you were. Bradshaw. He was right.”

“What?”

“You are exactly my type.”

#Hangster #Sereshaw #Top Gun Maverick fanfic #come on baby light my fire #This was an interesting exercise and I will probably never do it again