#this is shitty and i deleted like....four keys...

[mxstellatayte]

pretty please: chapter two.

pretty please masterlist.

chapter two warnings: covid happens :(, avoiding big emotional conversations, phone sex (not graphic,) i definitely deleted any and all covid social distancing rules when i was writing this but it'S FOR THE PLOT, oral sex (f receiving, not graphic,) LEWIS IS SUGAR DADDY!!!!!!!! (but there's also feelings but we don't want to admit that yet hehehehehehe)

chapter two word count: 3.7k

taglist (crossed out means i could not tag you/no blog was found): @pear-1206 @vivi-81 @irishmanwhore @lucycowr @benstormy

@anat33-blog1 @Xoscar03 @tremendousstarlighttragedy @nenamalenaa @champagneproblems17

@marknolee @toby33b @theendofthematerialgworl @soloqualcosa @sassyinchident808

join my taglist here!

take my hand while we dance on the edge of a knife

tuesday, 3 december, 2019

your phone chimes in the formula 1 radio tone, a custom ringtone you'd set just for lewis. glancing away from your computer screen, you see a simple text.

Hey.

what should you say? "hey yourself?" no, too sassy. "hey, thanks for the mind-blowing sex a few days ago. i think i'm into you, do you wanna go out?" way too forward. "hey!" too excited.

you settle on a simple "hey." in response.

for good measure, you add on a second text.

Thanks for the flight yesterday :)

his response? a simple "Yeah of course!"

"alright. so i'm going to have to be the one to bring it up. gotcha."

so this was the dance that you'd be doing. you'd just move on from the most life-changing sex you've ever had with four texts. you'd take a step forward, try to ask about what this would mean for your professional relationship, if anything, and he'd have one-sentence answers before moving on to a different topic.

that's fine.

it totally didn't make you insane.

definitely not.

instead of thinking about your client-slash-friend-slash-maybe-fuck-buddy over your winter holidays, you opt for drowning yourself in advance work, opting to make your contributions to the february 2020 issue the best the world has ever seen. your articles for the january issue are long submitted, but now that you've submitted everything for finalization for the next two months, you have a staycation at home with your cats, crochet, shitty reality tv, and a lot of alcohol filling up your schedule for the next two weeks (and a short visit to your parents up in leeds for christmas, but that's naught but a short interruption to your routine,) and you don't intend on letting work interrupt a single moment of the next two weeks.

the key word in that sentence being intend.

although, is it really considered work if it's just texting back and forth with someone who's a client-slash-friend-slash-maybe-fuck-buddy and not exactly a coworker?

"girl, i swear down on my nan's grave," amelia begins, and you grin, already knowing you're about to get a true amelia lorenz lecture, "if you don't make a move on him before new year's, i will, and i don't think he even knows my name!" she continues by weaving an intricate web of every single sign she's seen that points to the mutual attraction between yourself and the driver, and you're not sure when the right time is to tell her that you've already had sex with him. luckily, you find an opportunity when she stands from your couch to refill her glass of whiskey and pauses her monologue.

"is now a good time to tell you that we shagged after abu dhabi?"

amelia's head whips around so fast you're surprised it doesn't snap off of her neck. "you what?" you grin sheepishly, any and all confidence you've ever had in your entire life having evaporated in a microsecond. when she sits down opposite you on the couch, her left leg tucked into her crotch and her right hanging off the side, she has to set her glass on your coffee table so that she doesn't splash the whiskey everywhere. you both know what's coming purely based off of her body language. she takes a deep breath, then presses her hands together in a prayer-like stace and rests the nook of her nose in her fingertips. "let me get this straight." she pauses. "you." her right hand points directly at you as she says your full name. "shagged the lewis hamilton. and you didn't tell me immediately?"

"why do you think i wasn't on the flight back?" amelia's eyes widen in realization, and a grin spreads across her face.

"he flew you back on his jet?" you nod, taking another sip of your drink, and amelia squeals with delight. "i need every single detail. start talking."

friday, 13 march, 2020

your phone vibrates on your desk, and you glance over at it, unlocking it when you see the f1 logo on the notification. your heart sinks when you see what the notification reads, though.

"formula 1, fia and agpc announce cancellation of the 2020 australian grand prix"

"shit," you mutter, switching your phone off and resting your head in your hands. it won't be long before the lockdown reaches london, you know that, but it's difficult knowing that lewis was looking forward to being in the car again, especially with some of the new regulations that he hoped would lead to closer racing.

you send him a text before you go to sleep- it's almost 3 am.

Sorry to hear about the race. I know you were looking forward to driving.

by the time you've fallen asleep, though, lewis has seen your text and he gnaws at his lower lip, his thumbs hesitating over the keyboard of his phone's screen. yeah, he was looking forward to driving, but as the pandemic numbers increased, his anxiety about the race weekend did, too.

Thanks. I'm glad they called it off, though. The numbers were getting too high too fast.

months pass. your interviews with various drivers at the monaco and british grands prix are moved to video calls. the world gets thrown into lockdown, eases out of it, and then gets thrown into lockdown once more. dolphins are spotted in the canals of venice. george floyd's murder sparks a revolution that reaches all corners of the globe.

you don't go a day without texting, calling, or video calling with lewis.

it's sickening, really, how much his smile is keeping you sane. well, if you're being honest, it's a combination of his smile, your medication, and going on a lot of walks around your neighbourhood. leytonstone is a lovely part of london, yes, but there's only so many different routes you can take around the neighbourhood before you start itching to jump on a train and go anywhere.

in early june, you get the email. you'll be traveling to silverstone for a set of interviews with various drivers for the 70th anniversary race. it's the fifth of seventeen races on the updated calendar, and the email states that you may be sent to the abu dhabi grand prix, as well.

wednesday, 29 july, 2020.

you're practically vibrating with excitement as you board the first of four trains that will take you to your hotel. you're leaving a week before you're due in silverstone, though, because why wouldn't you take advantage of the double header race? you've never been to a race purely as a spectator and your giddiness makes you laugh. how going to a race has given you the butterflies in your stomach that you haven't felt since you were a teenager, you'll never know. sure, with the fia's no-spectator rule, you aren't really sure how people are planning on watching the race, but you're sure you'll learn as the weekend progresses. either way, you're one of many fans taking the train up to silverstone despite the rules stating that no fans could enter the paddock or the grandstands, many hopeful that simply being in the same general area might get them a chance of seeing any of the drivers in person. a few of the racing fans on the train even recognize you, one timidly holding the july 2019 edition of vogue.

the edition where your first interview with lewis was published.

"could you sign it?"

your jaw opens and closes beneath your mask a few times before you're able to regain your composure, accepting the magazine and sharpie from her with a smile.

"what's your name, darling? here, sit with me." she does, sitting across the aisle from you and nervously tucking a curl of ginger-brown hair behind her ear.

"kathleen. but you can call me kat," she adds, and you smile as you write a small note on the inside cover, adding your signature afterwards. "are you interviewing lewis hamilton this weekend?"

"i don't have any interviews this weekend. just next weekend." you look more intently at kat's outfit, and you smile below your mask. she's wearing a mercedes hoodie and baggy jeans, and you notice that her outfit reminds you of someone. "i like your outfit. it reminds me of some of lewis' outfits, actually." kat beams beneath her mask, her eyes scrunching up into happy crescents.

"thank you! he's kinda the inspiration behind my outfits for the weekend. i'm a huge fan of him, have been for years. i'll be honest, i didn't read much about fashion until you interviewed him, but i really liked your article and looked up some of your others. the one you wrote critiquing paparazzi for stalking celebrities was incredible! you wrote it so freely. i loved it." kat catches herself, noticing her rambling, folding her hands in her lap nervously. "sorry. i talk when i'm nervous."

"you have nothing to be nervous about. i'm just another human being." you hesitate a moment, leaning over to her as you pass the magazine and sharpie marker back. "can i tell you a secret?" she nods. "i was terrified the first time i interviewed lewis." kat's eyes grow wide, and you nod. "i was so nervous. i almost got sick a couple of times, actually."

"really?"

"mhm. i'm surprised i didn't."

"i definitely would."

"i doubt that. lewis is as nice- if not nicer- than he seems. after the first five minutes of talking to him, i knew i had nothing to worry about."

the two of you spend the remaining time on the trains talking together, and she animatedly drags her father towards you and you shake his hand, introducing yourself.

"pleasure to meet you. my name's dan. thank you for being a role model for my little girl." your heart swells with pride at the praise, and you nod.

"you're raising a very fine young woman, dan. she's got a bright future ahead of her." dan nods and thanks you, grinning behind his mask. you know, from what kat's told you, that dan has been a fan of formula 1 since the michael schumacher days and that he's been to three grands prix in his life- silverstone 2003, silverstone 2004, and germany 2008. this'll be his fourth. you also know that the white and papaya t-shirt he's wearing is from the most recent race he's attended. "do you happen to have instagram, dan?"

"i do, why?" his eyes narrow slightly, and you can understand why your question seems a little strange.

"i'm writing a piece about fan presence at recent grands prix, since there's been the 'no fans allowed inside' order from the fia, and would love to interview you and kat before and after the weekend," you lie. "i'd be willing to keep you both anonymous, if you'd like. if i can message you on instagram, it wouldn't be as much of a hassle as writing emails to communicate."

"i'd prefer we remain anonymous, but i'm sure she'd love to be interviewed."

you can't tie me down, but you can tie me up

thursday, 30 july, 2020.

the next morning, you call lewis, the hotel's breakfast menu next to you on your bed and your notepad perched on your lap, your pre-weekend "interview" with dan and kat in just over 90 minutes. lewis picks up the call on the third ring.

"hey!" you have to bite your lip to keep yourself from smiling too much, a rush of dopamine flooding your brain at the sound of his voice. "can i call you back in half an hour? i've got media stuff to do in about five minutes."

"i'll be fast. can you get two paddock passes made for sunday under the names kathleen and dan gallagher?"

"they'll have to be media passes, but yeah, why?"

"you'll see. i'll text you the names so you have them. see you in a few days!"

after texting bono a quick message regarding your own pass and ensuring that he would keep it completely and entirely a secret from lewis, you flop backwards onto your bed, staring at the ceiling for a moment. "what the hell have i gotten myself into?"

since the pandemic began, your relationship with lewis has been... well... less than professional.

your daily phone calls and texts with him have contained topics that still make shivers run up your spine and a flush of heat fill your cheeks and neck when you think about them. there have been many nights where you've been on a call with lewis and you're both breathing heavily, clothes messily strewn across your respective beds in a rush to lay back against your pillows and touch yourself to completion, obeying each other's commands and wishes.

there have also been many nights where you're tucked into your beds, roscoe fast asleep next to lewis and your own furry companions, pipsqueak and garfburger, the latter of which amelia named, curled into a ball of rare calmness next to you. the two of you ultimately fall asleep on the call, the idea of having someone with you, even if not physically, helping soothe your anxiety.

both types of calls are incredibly intimate and beautiful, each in their own way.

four days later, you're meeting up with bono outside the paddock to get your own pass and messaging back and forth with dan, attempting to figure out where you can meet him near the paddock entrance. trying to explain to him why you need to meet up today when your scheduled interview time is tomorrow without giving too many details proves to be a difficult task but you're thankfully able to manage. five minutes after bono appears, three media passes in hand, you see dan and kat round the corner. you wave him down, a smile on your face, and kat immediately comes running over to you. today, she sports a pair of baggy jeans, a hamilton jersey over what you assume is the same mercedes hoodie she was wearing on the train, and an incredibly well-loved pair of black platform converse.

"good morning to you both," you say, a bright grin on your face beneath your mask. from the way kat's eyes scrunch up behind glasses you can tell her own smile outshines your own.

"good morning! dad said you had some mid-weekend questions for us?"

"well..." your eyes flick back and forth between dan and kat, and you can see the gears turning in dan's head, but kat remains oblivious. "the mid-weekend questions were a bit of a lie, but i think- i hope- that what i have in my jacket pocket is enough for you to forgive me." with that, you pull the two black and purple media passes out of your jacket, check which one has kat's name on it and which has dan's, and hand them to their respective owners. "kathleen and dan gallagher, welcome to the formula 1 silverstone paddock."

"are you serious?" dan says in disbelief, and when you nod, kat squeaks in delight and throws herself at you, wrapping her arms around you in a vice grip.

"thank you thank you, thank you!"

"you're very welcome. are you ready to go see some cool cars?"

"is that a joke? of course!" kat looks at her father, hoping for some small nod of approval, and, when he does, you think the girl still glued to your torso might just combust from excitement. you can tell that dan's barely containing his own joy, his eyes mirroring the amount of joy you see in kat's.

"in that case, let's go." after about an hour of walking through the paddock, finding spare headsets in the mclaren garage, and smiling as kat and dan can't control their own amazement at the works of engineering in front of them land sheepishly asking a few drivers for photos,) you make your way, finally, to the mercedes garage. "re you two hungry at all? care for a coffee or tea? mercedes has the best food in the paddock. "

"i'd love a coffee, actually." dan says. "kat? you want anything?"

"a cuppa sounds perfect, thank you."

"i've got it. here, have a seat, i'll be right back, " you say, attempting to sound as casual as physically possible when you know you're about to blow their minds. they sit at one of the tables in the small cafe, and you go up to the barista, ordering dan and kat's drinks before ducking away and making your way to lewis' driver's room, knocking a few times and stepping back, smiling when the door opens and you see him, fuck, he looks good. "hi, lewis."

he knew you were going to be in silver stone for the 70th anniversary race, but that isn't until next weekend. "you've here early," he says, leaning against the doorframe. "why's that?"

"i can't want to see my favorite driver at his home race?" you cock an eyebrow and cross your arms, but there's sarcasm evident in your voice. "plus, i missed you. can i tie up your schedule for a bit?"

"it depends. how is my schedule being tied up if i agree?" lewis is matching your own bass, and you smile.

"just some people i'd like you to meet. remember those passes i asked you to have made? well... they're in the cafe and i think the cherry on top of their day would be meeting you."

"in that case, you can tie up my schedule, but i only have fifteen minutes before the strategy meeting." you grin brightly, and your eyes squishing in the corners makes lewis smile in turn, "before we go, though, i do have a little request. come in for a quick minute?" he steps to the side and you gladly follow, turning towards lewis when you hear the door click shut behind you. he's taking off his Mercedes- branded face mask, and you take that as permission lo take your own off. "you know..." he begins, stepping towards you. your breath catches in your throat as all of your senses one immediately overwhelmed with everything lewis. his left hand comes up to hold your and check you gladly lean into his touch, the gentleness of his touch a stark contrast his calloused to fingertips. the next words he says ring in your head, repeating like church bells.

"i missed you, too." those words are the last thing you process before lewis' lips are on yours and every ounce of tension leaves your body.

"mm, lewis, " you say, pulling away from the blissful kiss much to your dismay. "our guests are waiting." lewis groans, and you giggle.

"fine, but after we've done with that and i'm free from my strategy meeting, we're coming back here and finishing what we started."

"deal."

kat and dan are, obviously, completely and entirely dumbfounded when you return to the cafe, six-time world champion in tow.

they're even happier when they watch lewis cross the line in first place, five seconds ahead of max verstappen.

after the podium and post-race interviews, you find yourself crowded against the wall of lewis' driver's room yet again. your kisses are hot and messy, desperate hands wandering around each other's bodies. sometime in the lust-addled haze, you're laying back onto the couch pushed against the back wall and your jeans are being thrown somewhere across the room. whatever, you don't care where they are or how wrinkled they're going to be because lewis is eating you out again and, within minutes, you're cumming on his tongue again as his nose bumps against your clit. when he kisses you, your cum smears on your cheeks and chin and nose and it's so, so filthy, but you wouldn't have it any other way.

"are you coming to any other races this year?" lewis speaks up, his voice echoing through his chest. he's found you a pair of joggers that you'd slipped on after another set of blissful kisses and a messy (but very perfect) handjob. he's laying on the couch and you're resting on top of him, your arms wrapped around his torso and his own surrounding your shoulders. your socked feet are tangled with lewis' own, and his fingers, unusually absent of any jewelry, run gently along the curve of your shoulders.

"i'm not sure. i haven't gotten any race assignments yet from upper management, and traveling is really difficult right now if you don't have a work visa."

"i bet i can send some emails." you can almost hear the smirk in his voice.

"lewis," you scoff, burying your face in his chest. he smells like forests and jasmine and safety. "you're going to be the death of me."

[the-fiction-witch]

Move In

Media - Lewis (The Mind Has Mountains) Character - Adam Douglas Couple - Adam X Reader Reader - y/n Rating - 12 + Word Count - 1406

Adam was... stressed. He sat inside his flat, tucked up tightly to his desk. He was clacking away on his keyboard keys to type up his essay. He had 10,000 words due in less than twenty-four hours and only managed about 5000 of them, so he'd been sipping coffee for the last three hours desperate to stay awake and get it all done. He was stressed, weary, depleted, but he kept going.

His girlfriend Y/n, lay on his bed behind him, snuggled up in the sheets as cosy as possible almost taunting him with the idea of rest and comfort with her. She'd promised to stay up with him while he worked but had fallen into small naps several times.

He could feel her watching him, and he felt guilty. guilty that she was waiting for him, guilty that she was missing out on sleep for him. The last time she'd fallen asleep, he'd stopped his work and tucked her in better, pulling the covers up and placing a kiss on her head. He wanted to stop, to rest, to join her and cuddle and sleep, but he had a deadline. He stopped for a moment, just taking a second to relax his eyes. They were strained and dry staring at his monitor, and he ran his hand across his face as he leant back and glanced up at the electric alarm clock resting on his desk. The red light flashing thee thirty-one AM. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled a long and tired sigh before he leant forward and got back to work, typing again.

"when's the deadline for submission?" Y/n asked gently,

"Nine." He said, barely looking away from his screen as he typed, too afraid that if he stopped, he'd never pick it up again. "I'm trying to get it done as quickly as possible so I can just rest,"

“Why not go back and do the whole, replace ‘because’ with ‘so therefore the reason for this is’ that turns one word into seven.” She suggested,

He stopped. "Damnit Y/n, That's genius!" He started deleting and rewriting his existing sentences right away,

"You see. this is why you date the English major." she giggled,

"You're the best girlfriend I swear. What did I ever do without you, hm?" He chuckled, still typing away.

"You'd be sad and lonely," she teased sitting up to lean over and kiss his head as he worked,

He smiled and he leaned his head to the side as he continued typing. She always knew when he needed reassurance, whether physical or verbal, the only thing that would calm him like this "Sad and lonely..." he repeated, laughing softly, "That very much sounds like my life before I met you," He stopped his typing, only for a moment and tilted his head upwards to look at her "Y'know, I've really been thinking about something..."

"Oh? About ancient political organizations?" she asked glancing at his essay,

He rolled his eyes, lightly slapping her thigh before continuing, "It's not about the essay, I wanna ask you something..."

"oh? What?" Y/n asked,

He pushed his swivel chair back from the desk to look up at her, and he took her hand, "You know I love you, don't you? That I'd do anything for you, that I'd give you anything in the world?"

Y/n smiled, "I am very aware Adam you tell me every day, I love you too. And I think it's very sweet."

He smiled warmly at her, taking a moment to admire her, and how perfect she was. To him at least. "I've just... I've been thinking about, I dunno future stuff. I can't imagine not having you around, but I've been thinking if you'd..." He stopped for a moment, taking a breath. His heart was racing, nervous about what he was about to say. "...if you'd want to..." He swallowed, feeling a lump starting to form in his throat. She loved him right? She'd say yes? Why was he so nervous? "If you'd want to move in with me? Here, to my flat, once we are done with uni. I have enough money, I've been saving for a while and you have a shitty landlord and you've stayed over here all the damn time anyway so..."

Y/n hummed taking a moment to think about it, "You've really thought about this haven't you?" she asked trying to figure out as she watched his reaction, if this was a sleepy spur of the moment idea or if Adam had really thought about this.

He fidgeted under her watchful eye, but he answered truthfully. "You have no idea how often I've been thinking about this. Thinking about you, living with me, spending every night with eachother, cuddling, watching crappy shows on the tv together. How I'd love to wake up every morning to you being next to me... I've been thinking about it a lot."

Y/n smiled, "That’s very sweet Adam... and I am sure it would be very nice. We can talk about it more... when your done your work okay. Properly talk it out."

He smiled, nodding gently at her. She didn't say no! She hadn't straight up said no, and he had a chance to talk more. "Right... yeah we can talk more when I'm finished." He leant over and placed a kiss on her cheek,

Y/n kissed his forehead and smiled, "We'll talk when we have the time to endlessly ramble." she cooed trying to reassure him and not make him worry she was going to say no.

He smiled at her, but his anxiety didn't pass that easily. Of course she might say no, there was always a chance, and his mind wouldn't shut up about it. He started to doubt himself, why would she want to move in with him anyway? She was probably just being polite to not hurt his feelings. He tried to shake the thoughts from his mind, and he squeezed her thigh. "Could you... could you sit on my lap? I just... I need you close to me."

Y/n nodded so Adam rolled back over to his desk and Y/n came over sitting on his lap while he did his work, "That better?"

He smiled and wrapped his arms around her waist to hold her on his lap. He rested his head on her shoulder and hummed in contentment, "Yeah... much better!" He sat there for a moment, hugging her and just enjoying her presence, before he finally made himself get back to work. He needed to finish this as quickly as possible so that he could stop worrying. He wanted so badly to have her by his side all the time, it was so stressful worrying that there was even a slight chance she would say no. Adam did his best writing away for another hour, but all the while Y/n sat on his lap nuzzled in his neck having a small nap on him. Adam was used to it by now, used to being Y/n's pillow. He didn't mind it either, he found it actually quite endearing. He was also used to working while she was asleep on his lap, and didn't mind in the slightest as it let him work much more effectively than he would do by himself. finally, he finished up not even caring to go more then ten words over the minimum. He checked it over added his source list and immediatly sent it over to the submission portal the moment the site confirmed it was taken. He felt the weight lift off of him the moment he pressed submit, and he leant heavily into the back of his chair, wrapping his arms around Y/n, still asleep on his lap, tighter.

"Humm?" Y/n stirred a little,

He chuckled, rubbing her back a little, "It's okay babe, don't wake up. I've just finished it"

"Yay..." she cooed kissing his cheek, "Well done Adam, now come to bed..."

He chuckled softly, nodding as he wrapped his arms around her tightly, lifting her up and carrying her over to the bed, laying her down carefully before climbing in next to her, wrapping his arms around her again and pulling her close into him. He nuzzled his head into her neck, and inhaled deeply. He could almost feel the tension and stress leave his body. He was with Y/n now, cuddled up in bed where he was at his happiest. It didn't matter if she said yes or no tomorrow, right now he just wanted to hold her close and rest.

[kyufessions]

Cruise

synopsis: you go on a four week long cruise, alone. only you don’t end up alone by the end of it.

word count: 4.1k (oops my bad)

pairings: stranger! vernon x broken hearted! g.n. reader

warnings: making out but it doesn’t go far ,,, is that even considered a warning ?? also some swearing

genre: strangers to lovers, fluff, some angst in the beginning

a/n: my first seventeen mini fic ever. i saw seventeen in concert this past tuesday and now have brain rot so enjoy this shitty fic xoxo (might delete later depending how i feel about it)

-

Throwing your body back onto the white bed decorated in red rose petals, you brought a fluffed up pillow to your face and screamed your frustrations into it. The last thing on your agenda for this trip was to end up coming alone, having planned it with you and your now ex-boyfriend. This trip had been planned for the last five months, and just three weeks ago he decided to end things out of nowhere. Normally, you’re able to see these things coming but for some reason you hadn’t imagined this happening. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, at least on your end. You tried to get refunds for the small flight, the cruise, everything. But everything had been non-refundable so you decided you'd rather miss out on a small portion of money instead of the full amount. When you checked in, you mentally cursed yourself when they had asked where your boyfriend was since you made them aware you wanted the room to be romantic and even booked a bunch of couple activities to do for the next four weeks. You had even gushed to them about how you wanted to propose to your boyfriend of two years, but when you explained to them the day of the cruise their saddened stares made you feel small.

After a few minutes of mumbling curses into the soft pillow, you brought yourself to your feet to unpack into your new room for the next few weeks. You put a random playlist of yours on shuffle, SZA’s The Weekend echoing throughout the room as your voice sang along to every word. Giggles of children came and went, small conversations striking your curiosity as you couldn’t help but eavesdrop. None of them were interesting though, so you just went back to the angelic voices of the artists singing to you through your phone's speaker. Once your bags were unpacked and your clothing and necessities were put away, you took a step out onto your small balcony and stared off into the ocean. Not far from your left you could still see the land in the distance, mentally telling yourself to leave your worries there until your return. You looked back out into the sea, taking in a deep breath and enjoying the faint smell of the salt water. You were excited to get away a bit, even if you did have to be in a couple themed room with lingering memories of someone you once knew.

For the first few hours, you just stayed cooped up in your room watching Disney+. You watched some older shows like That’s So Raven and Drake and Josh as you played against your friend in 8ball through imessage games. As the sun started to set, your stomach started to grumble quite loudly for anything to be digested into it. And who were you to deny it of such bliss? So you paused the show, grabbed your room keys, and made your way to the dining hall. Since it was a bit early, only 6:00PM, you were hoping there wouldn’t be many people. And, to your luck, there wasnt. There were just some singular people spread throughout the room and one group of teenagers in a corner of the room laughing with one another. Making your way to the buffet, you grabbed a tray and skimmed over all the options. You decided to treat yourself to the last steak available and some tiramisu for dessert, accompanied by a soda on the side. Normally, you wouldn’t drink soda but since it was your first night on your cruise you decided why not. You shuffled over to an empty table carefully, not wanting to spill your food on yourself or anyone else.

But it seemed like the universe had other plans for you because just as a table to your liking caught your eye, a man bumped into your shoulder causing your tray to go flying and all eyes to be upon you two. Multiple apologies spilled out of the man’s mouth but you didn’t listen one bit, anger filling you up at a fast pace. You snatched the now empty tray with soda dripping off the sides and picked up the now dirty medium rare steak you were just about to devour. You ignored the man completely, rushing towards the garbage bin and tossing the tray on top of the other dirty ones. For the rest of the night, you stayed in your room and decided to just order in room service. And mentally praying to not bump into that same guy, despite you never looking at his face or even getting his name.

The next morning, the sounds of the crashing waves and morning sunshine seeped through to greet your tired self. Turning your back to the sun, a low grumble escaped your mouth as you stretched across the king sized bed lazily. you reached over for your phone, checking the time and deciding to roll out of bed before breakfast ends in thirty minutes. you quickly brush your teeth as you slip on some cat slippers, fixing your hair quickly before slipping out of the door and over to the breakfast hall in your pajama shorts and baggy tee.

as you sip on your coffee, you check your messages and play back your friend in 8ball since you fell asleep on her last night. you smiled as a piece of bacon entered your mouth, savoring the delicious food your stomach has been craving since last night. but your smile soon faded as a voice startled you from your deep interest into your game. you looked up to the man standing across from you at your table, wondering why he was coming up to you.

“sorry, i didn’t mean to scare you like that.” he started, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. “i just wanted to say sorry for yesterday.” you cocked your head to the side, wondering what he meant. “for spilling your food and stuff.”

you felt the tips of your ears heat up in annoyance. why was he speaking to you? why not act like it never happened? you just nodded, swallowing your last bit of bacon and taking your tray and walking away from him without a word.

for the next week, you saw the man everywhere. you saw him at meals, during some activities you attended like a small pottery painting class and even to watch a small nirvana cover band. it was annoying- his face made you irritated. sure, him bumping into you wasn’t on purpose but it did start your little vacation off to a bad start. and for that, all you wanted was to push him out of your mind. but him being at every corner made it quite impossible to do so. out of the hundreds of people on this cruise, why did he keep popping up?

during your second week, you took yourself to the pool on the fourth floor and decided to bask in the sun for a while as you watched some movies on your iPad. sipping on your smoothie from a pineapple, you jumped slightly in your chair as a jump scare came up on the horror movie you were watching. you looked up through your shades as a figure approached you, wondering who it could be. but, of course, it had to be the man you did not want to see.

“dude, what do you want?” you groan, rolling your eyes at him evidently.

he crossed his arms over his chest, his hands clutching a similar pineapple drink. “i could ask you the same. you’re everywhere i go!”

you shrug your shoulders, going back to watching your movie. but before you could put in your headphones, he spoke up again. “all i wanted was to say sorry that day and you were rude.”

you closed the case of your iPad, not wanting this conversation to go any further. “i came on this cruise to get away from life since everything seems to not be in my favor lately. and the very first day i get a delicious meal spilled on me. sure, it wasn’t on purpose but it ruined my mood.” you stood to your feet, packing your tote bag and getting ready to go anywhere but here. “i think i’m entitled to be a bit bitter about the situation considering you’re also everywhere despite there being so many people on here. just do me a favor and ignore me please. thanks in advance.” and with that, you walk away.

later that night, you sit out on the chair on the deck with a small glass of red wine in your hands. you watch the moon’s reflection in the water as the boat moves at a consistent pace, the vocals of frank ocean filling your ears as he plays aloud from your phone in your lap. you hum along to White Ferrari as it starts up, a small smile tugging to the corner of your lips.

being on the cruise was, although annoying at times, relaxing and exactly what you needed. you never spoke to anyone unless someone started up conversation with you first; you didn’t really see the need to make friends for four weeks to potentially never see them again. so you just looked at the daily schedules posted by the elevators and decided if you would attend something that day or not, and if not you would relax by the pool or just nap and catch up or start some new shows. it was nice. and it definitely helped ease your tension and forget about your ex. who, while on vacation, has not texted you at all. which is normally unlike him. he usually texted you at least once a day, even after your breakup. he’d say things like, “hope you’re doing well” or “have a good day!” with occasional small conversations here and there. but since the cruise: nothing. nada.

a figure walking up to the railing knocked you out of your daze. it was nearing midnight and you didn’t expect to see anyone out, but here someone else was. you averted your gaze before looking back at the man, hearing him hum along as well. you took a sip of wine as you stared at the strangers figure, wondering why it looked familiar.

“i can feel you staring.” the man spoke, turning his head to meet your gaze.

when his eyes met yours, you rolled your eyes and looked away. it was the same man from earlier, the one that seemed to follow you everywhere.

“relax, i came out here to get my mind off of some stuff.” he said as he turned his head back around, humming to the song.

you nodded, staring out at the water in silence. the once tense atmosphere started shifting as the sounds of the waves and Super Rich Kids meshed together beautifully, making you both feel somewhat at peace in that very moment. several songs later your glass started to get near empty, signaling it was time for you to get back to your room. but not before your curiosity struck.

“what’s your name anyway?” you asked the stranger as you stood up from your seat.

he turned around to look at you, then looked around to see if you were speaking to anyone else. when his eyes met yours once again, he pointed towards himself and mouthed ‘me?’. you nodded, a small laughter leaving your lips. he was shocked you took the initiative to even speak to him first.

“it’s vernon.”

the next morning, you saw vernon sitting by himself having breakfast. normally, you’d just pass him by but you felt pulled towards his table as you were looking for somewhere to sit. you pulled the chair backwards with your cat-slippered foot, taking the seat across from the man staring at you with curious wide eyes. he just looked at you, mouth full of a piece of his bacon, onion, and cheddar omelet. you stared back, sending him a tired smile.

“good morning, vernon.” you said, taking a small sip of your coffee afterwards.

he gave you a small wave, swallowing his food before speaking. “thought you hated me.”

“im doing well, thanks for asking. i hope you are as well.” you shoved a piece of bacon into your mouth and fully swallowed before he could say anything further. “sorry if i’ve been coming across as an asshole. we’re both on this cruise to get away from shit so, i could’ve lightened up. i’m sorry. truly.”

he just nodded as he listened, taking sips of his orange juice. his eyes glanced down to your feet, noticing your cat slippers that you always seemed to wear in the mornings. “cute cat slippers.”

you glanced down at them as well, smiling proudly at them. “thanks, i got them because they look like my cat back at home.”

his lips curved into a smile, his eyes lighting up at the mention of your pet. “what’s their name?”

for the rest of the morning, you both sat there telling each other about your pets at home and sharing photos and videos with one another. you also got to know a bit about one another as well, mainly about your favorite movies and disney characters. you also teased him a bit for liking orange juice with some pulp, but not for too long because you didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. after being kicked out of the dining area, you both made ways to your rooms and said to see each other around later in the day.

the next few days, you both ended up spending time together at meals. you saw vernon at other places as well like the pool, the deck, and other mini activities you attended from time to time. you would nod awkwardly at each other, sometimes with a smile or a wave. but always kept your distance as to give each other the needed space you both wanted on this getaway.

until one afternoon at the pool where it was more cloudy than sunny, the sky threatening to downpour at any given moment. but you still laid out on a random chair, listening to frank ocean as you lost yourself in the thoughts your mind were occupied with. vernon was at the pool as well, his feet dipped into the pool and swinging them back in a forth slightly. he glanced over at you, watching you curiously as you stared up into the darkening clouds. everytime you came to the pool you never got into the water, only sunbathed and did whatever you did on your iPad. he wondered why. so he got up and made his way over to you, hoping it’d be okay if he asked.

you looked over to the man walking over to you with an awkward smile, waving at him. “hey, what’s up vernon?”

he greeted you, a small smile on his face. “how come you never get into the pool?”

you shrugged, looking back up to the clouds and away from his gaze. “i have no one to play with in the water, so why go in?”

he nodded, feeling droplets fall onto his bare back. you scrunched your nose up as a raindrop fell onto the tip of your nose, vernon smiling as you did so. he found it kind of cute. he looked up to the clouds, squinting his eyes as another droplet fell but on his eyebrow. “we should probably head inside, looks like it’s gonna rain any second now.”

and, as if on cue, you both run inside with your items as the rain starts to downpour on you. laughter echoes the halls as you run inside, both of you semi-soaked from the weather. vernon stops running by a pair of elevators, pressing the button and following in behind you. coincidentally, you both press the same floor button. your eyes meet in a confused exchange.

“you’re on the third floor too?” you ask. he nods, causing you to let out a soft chuckle. “and we’ve never bumped into each other on the floor. odd.”

“odd indeed.” he replied, standing forward and awaiting for the doors to open.

you did the same, fiddling with the bag in your hands. but something lingered in your mind: whenever you both went your separate ways at night, you assumed he was going to his room. so if he wasn’t going there, where else would he go at night?

the doors opened with a ding that startled you out of your thoughts, making you blind a few times to push yourself back into reality. you follow behind vernon and go to say goodnight until you notice him walking towards the direction of your hallway. you cock your head to the side, grabbing his arm to stop him.

“your room is in the 350’s?” you asked, and he nodded.

“what the fuck? how have we never bumped into each other?” you meant to say as a statement, but it came out more as a question.

he just laughs, walking in the direction of your rooms. “no clue. but i normally play with my band until three in the morning so unless you’re out that late, that probably explains it.”

you stop in your tracks, hanging your mouth wide open for dramatic effect. vernon noticed you stopped walking beside him, wondering why that was. when he turned and noticed your expression, he let out a dry laugh. he sent you an expression, wondering why you were so shocked.

“you have a band and didn’t tell me?”

he nodded, a small yeah falling from his lips with a playful smile. his laughter filled the hallways as you very gently hit his arm when you started walking next to him again, turning a small corner and seeing your door up ahead.

“we only play some nights, not all though. i like to think we’re pretty good.”

“do you play originals?”

he shakes his head, stopping in front of a door you assumed to be his and taking a key from his wallet. “only covers of maroon 5, the beatles, and nirvana.”

it was your turn to laugh now. “three completely different genres from three completely different generations.” he rolls his eyes, unlocking his door. “i’d love to hear you sing some time.”

he leans against the door frame, his arms crossing over his chest. “i don’t sing, i play guitar.”

you smile at him, clapping your hands together. “can i hear you play?”

“sure, come here us play tonight on the lower deck.”

that night, you change into casual clothing and take a seat in the crowd. there was a small group of people watching the already-started performance, hearing a soft angelic voice through the mic as an acoustic guitar accompanied the stranger. behind the guitar was vernon, his eyes staring down at his fingers to make sure he didn’t fuck anything up. him and joshua were new to performing in front of crowds, only doing this to help them get by with their rising rent. it was a nice pass time that he thoroughly enjoyed, and doing it with his best friend was even better.

you ordered a drink from the bar and sat back down in your seat at an empty table, smiling as you watched vernon play frank ocean’s Ivy. you were expecting another song from the three artists he mentioned, but to hear frank ocean was a surprise to you. nonetheless, you enjoyed the performance. you smiled at the two friends jamming to their own musical covers, seeing their evident happiness made your heart melt. minutes turned into an hour and before you knew it, their performance was over. you clapped along with the rest of the crowd, smiling at both of the men thanking everyone.

you laughed as you noticed vernon’s shyness- he never failed to come across as adorable to you. his eyes scanned the crowd, noticing you in a back corner and feeling his ears heat up. he secretly hoped you enjoyed the performance, mainly Ivy considering he purposely played it for you. when you started making your way towards him, he felt his heart rate quicken. he wasn’t sure why, but it did.

“damn, you play pretty good.” you confessed, your finger wrapped around a wine glass half full of red wine. vernon thanked you as he put his guitar back in its old case, a smile on his face. “i was surprised to hear ivy though, but it was still really good so i’m not complaining.”

he stood up, throwing his bag over his shoulder and nodding over at his friend flirting with some middle-aged woman in the crowd. his friend nodded back, going back to his flirtatious conversation with another random lady. vernon looked at you, noticing you watched him intently as you downed the last of the alcohol.

you both walked back to your room, gushing to him about how well he did. you would’ve stopped minutes ago, but the way he got shy was cute to you. so you continued to do so till you both stopped in front of your door. he just listened, saying thank you as his cheeks rose in color.

“you’re cute when you get shy.” you added, grabbing your keys from your pocket. he nodded, not even able to get out a simple ‘thank you’. “also, one last thing, why'd you play Ivy? thought you only played specific artists and frank ocean wasn’t one you mentioned.”

“i wanted to impress you, to be honest.” vernon confessed, his eyes never leaving yours.

it was now your turn for your cheeks to heat up, making you fiddle with your thumbs. “ah, i’m not special though. but thank you, i really liked it. a lot.”

the silence was a bit awkward yet lifting. you avoided his gaze as you stared down at the flooring until you felt his index and middle finger under your chin, making your eyes fall upon his.

“sorry, um, did i make you uncomfortable?” he questioned.

you shook your head, a smile spreading across your lips. “can you kiss me already?”

he nodded eagerly, making you let out a tiny laugh before his lips crashed onto yours hungrily. it was nice, the way his lips synched with yours automatically and his arm snaked around your waist to pull you closer to him. everything was smooth, almost like it was meant to happen. minutes passed before the opening of a door down the hall startled both of you, making you both pull away before anyone could notice what was happening between you two. you both stared up at one another, completely shocked at what just happened.

before you knew it, you were pulling him into your room and he was locking it behind himself. you found yourself laid on your bed with vernon hovering over you, his lips finding yours in the pale moonlight instinctively. your fingers ran themselves through his hair, pulling on it gently to hear how pretty his moans would sound. and boy were you right; they were low and had you craving more as each second passed. let’s just say, maybe meeting a stranger on this cruise wasn’t so bad.

for the last week of the cruise, vernon spent every night sleeping next to you. you both never discussed what would happen after you returned to your normal lives, dreading the conversation. instead, you made small memories together. like watching your favorite disney films or having him teach you guitar. granted, you sucked and didn’t improve much but you insisted he still taught you. and he still teased you about it relentlessly, but rewarded you with a kiss to your temple afterwards for your efforts.

you never shared socials or even numbers with vernon, but several months later you still thought about him. you wondered how he was, if he ever left his nursing career and perused music with his best friend. on the last day of the cruise, you both agreed not to say goodbye. you both knew it would sting, so the night before you slept in your own rooms and agreed to leave the boat at separate times. and even though you secretly hoped he would come back that night, he never did. but it was all for the best, anyway. you had just gotten out of a long relationship and he seemed to be struggling as well, so maybe something so small for only four weeks was all you both needed as the perfect distraction. you secretly hoped you would bump into one another again, but considering it had been months it deemed impossible. you just hoped in another universe you both were still together, some way somehow.

[kingdaddydaichi]

☆ title: redefining (ch. 8) | ( ch. 7 ) ☆ ( ch. 9 )

☆ pairing: cop!daichi sawamura x single mom!reader

☆ wc: 3.4k

☆ synopsis: four years after leaving your toxic ex, you find yourself a single mom to a 10-year-old boy named musubi, who harbors a lot of misdirected anger. you hear from his fifth grade teacher, mr. suga, more often than your own mother and a resulting friendship is born. meeting suga’s best friend wages a war between your head and your heart - one that challenges everything you think you know about love and police officers. neither are to be trusted. both have left you lost and scared when you needed them the most. so, when a cop comes knocking at love’s door, just how strong is your resolve to keep your heart under lock and key?

☆ warnings/notes: nsfw. mdni. cop!daichi. use of blindfold (in a non-sexual way). fluff. a hint of angst. y/n gets a glimpse of what love is supposed to feel like. outdoor sex. this chapter made me laugh out loud. it also made me cry out loud.

She’s falling in love now, losing control now Fighting the truth, trying to hide But I think it’s alright, girl Yeah, I think it’s alright, girl

Losin’ Control - Russ

You’d been having the work week from hell, and it was only Tuesday morning. As you groaned at yet another email, one for which the reply was going to require a shit ton of research, you heard the ZZZT of a new notification on your silenced phone. Longing for a break from the mind-numbing analysis, you reached for it, your heart skipping far too many beats to be considered healthy before nearly leaping out of your throat. It was the first time you’d heard from Daichi Sawamura since he left your house Sunday morning.

Yeahhhh. You still hadn’t deleted his contact info. Yet!

You eagerly swiped to see his text.

Officer Big Dick: Hey, lady. How’s your day going?

You: My whole week has been shit so far, but hi! How are you?

Officer Big Dick: Pretty good, but I’m sorry to hear that. Is it cool if I call you?

You: Now?

Officer Big Dick: Yeah. Or later. Whatever’s best for you.

Rather than replying with a ‘yes’, you tapped the phone icon and nearly slid right out of your chair when you heard his baritone voice, smooth and warm like melted butter.

“Hi.” You could hear him smiling.

“Hi,” you mimicked, knowing full well he could also hear your idiotic grin.

“I’m sorry you’re having a shitty week. Is there anything I can do?”

You politely declined his offer and exchanged a few niceties before he got down to brass tacks.

“So, I was wondering if you’re gonna be free either Friday or Saturday night?”

“Daichi…” You hoped he couldn’t hear your smile morph into a grimace. “I…I’m not going out on a date with you.”

“It’s not a date. We’ll just hang out. There’s something I want to show you.”

“Oh, really?” A smile began to tug at the corners of your mouth again as your eyebrows knitted with curiosity. “What’s that?”

“Well, it’s a surprise.”

“Damn it, Daichi,” you snickered. “You tease.”

“So will you be free?”

It was your ex’s weekend with your son. “Yes, both nights.”

“Okay, good. Be ready at twenty-one hund - sorry, my brain is in work mode - nine o’clock Friday night. I’ll come pick you up and take you to a super-secret location.”

You giggled, but you were intrigued. “You’re not gonna tell me where though?”

“No. It wouldn’t be a super-secret location if I told you.”

You rolled your eyes, but the happiness was plastered all over your face. “Thanks, Captain Obvious.” You heard the laugh in his breath before you went on. “Can you at least give me an idea as to how I should dress?”

“Just wear something comfortable. Casual. Oh, and warm.”

Friday night rolled around and even though you were tired from the hellacious work week you’d had, you were also excited to find out what Daichi had up his sleeve. If you were honest with yourself, which you weren’t, you were also giddy about seeing the sweet cop again. You huffed a quiet laugh to yourself. ‘Sweet’ and ‘cop’ - two words that didn’t belong in the same thought, let alone the same sentence.

The butterflies in your gut went into a frenzy when you saw the Interceptor’s low beams approaching in your driveway. You would never begin to understand how armpits can get stone cold and sweaty at the same damn time. 

You opened your front door as Daichi walked up the stairs and onto your porch, both of you beaming brighter than his headlights. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he pulled his hands out of his jacket pockets and cupped your face. The coolness of his touch offered soothing relief to the heat that had risen in your cheeks as he leaned down to kiss you, but it did nothing for the freefall. You grabbed onto his arms to steady yourself as you swayed in your boots.

Pulling away, he said, “You ready?”

“Yes,” you said, still breathless from his kiss. “And just so we’re clear, this is not a date!”

“Right.” He smiled and nodded. “This is not a date.” It sounded suspiciously equivalent to a man’s secret to a happy marriage - just nod and say ‘yes, dear’.

After you locked up, he took your hand and walked you out into the chilly night air towards his vehicle. However, rather than opening your car door, he pulled something out of his back pocket. 

“Alright,” he said, “I’m gonna put this blindfold on y-”

“Wh-what? No!”

He dropped his arms. “I can’t take you to a super-secret location if you can see where we’re going!” He tried and failed to suppress his inner smartass. “If you’d rather, I can put a bag over your head instead.”

You burst into laughter and slapped at his chest. “Shut up, Daichi!” You went to poke him in his ribs, but he dodged, wheezing. You crossed your arms, your lips twisting to the side. “Fine, go ahead. Put it on me.”

“The blindfold or the bag?”

“I SWEAR TO GOD, DAICHI, I WILL MARCH RIGHT BACK INTO THAT HOUSE AND YOU CAN TRY AGAIN TOMORROW, SIR!” You’d never get tired of the way he smiled when he laughed. 

After carefully tying the black cloth behind your head, he waved his hand in front of your face before helping you into the front passenger seat. He closed your door before joining you on the driver side. 

“No peeking!” he warned.

Daichi had been driving for what felt like about twenty minutes when you huffed, “Are we there yet?”

“Almost,” he assured you. “Just a few more miles.”

“Miles?! We’ve already been driving for so long!”

“I know. Just try to be patient…”

Eventually, you felt the car slow down as Daichi took a turn, the smooth pavement giving way to gravel judging by the way it crunched under the tires. You felt the SUV make another slow turn, the crunching of the gravel disappearing as the terrain became a little bumpier. Daichi brought it to a stop and put the steering gear into park before killing the engine.

“Where the hell are we?”

“Hang on, I’ll come around and help you out,” he said, unbuckling.

Your door opened and Daichi took your hand as you swung your legs around. He had you put your hands on his shoulders before gripping your waist in his big hands and safely lowering your feet to the ground. 

You were outside, that much was obvious. There were no other voices, so you accurately surmised that it was just the two of you. As he guided you, you could faintly make out the occasional swoosh of a car driving down the distant highway, but otherwise there were only the sounds of your and Daichi’s footsteps and the gentle whisper of a breeze as it passed through some nearby trees. 

You hadn’t walked very far when he stopped and turned you ninety degrees before strategically lifting your chin a little.

“Okay, stay just like that. Don’t even move your head,” he spoke in a hushed tone.

“This is ridiculous, but okay.” You felt him untying the knot behind your head, careful not to pull any of your hair. When the dark material was lifted from your eyes, you opened them only to have your breath taken away in exchange for your sight. Your hands flew to your mouth as if to try and keep what little air remained in your lungs from escaping as ancient light reflected in your watery eyes.

“What is that?” you whispered as one might when standing on hallowed ground.

“It’s the spiral arm of our galaxy. Well, one of them anyway.”

It was a hazy band of white light some thirty degrees wide, splitting the night sky like a sheet, spinning at an imperceptible rate of 130 miles per second.

“No fucking way.” You were still speaking in hushed tones as though it was a rare sighting of a small animal that could dash away at any moment. “It’s not even possible to see that from Earth, is it? Not with the naked eye.”

“Sure, it is. At a dark sky site such as this,” Daichi clarified, looking around at the other celestial bodies. “Far away from all the light pollution of the city, you can see all kinds of deep space objects.” Your wide, wandering eyes never left the sky when he squeezed your shoulder. “I’ll be right back. Gonna grab a few things from the car.”

He returned moments later, a soft chortle leaving his lips as he watched you turn this way and that with your chin tilted up towards the stars. You’d never seen so many at once. Daichi spread one of the blankets out over the short grass and sat down, crossing one ankle over the other. Following the sound of his voice, you finally looked away from the sky, so dark you could barely see him. You went to sit down next to him, but he opened his legs and pulled you to sit between them instead.

After draping a blanket over you, he reached over and handed you a pair of binoculars so you could get an even more intimate view of the universe from your Earthly position.

“You see that constellation that looks like a W?”

You squinted through the binocular lenses, trying to follow the trajectory of his pointed finger. “Oh! Yeah, I see it.”

“Alright, following the line from the right tip of it, look up a bit. Can you see an orange, fuzzy-looking blur? It’s really faint.”

It took you a few seconds, but you finally zeroed in on it. “Yeah? But barely.” It was too blurry to be a star. “What is that?”

“That’s Andromeda.”

“Andromeda? You mean the galaxy?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Shut the fuck up,” you said, smiling. “There are trillions of stars in that tiny orange blur…”

What kind of man brings you out to a super-secret location and shows you not one, but two fucking galaxies? It was the single most romantic thing a guy had ever done for you. 

You handed the binoculars back to Daichi in favor of taking in the majesty of the heavens through your naked eyes. Planting his palms on the ground, he leaned back so you could comfortably recline with the back of your head resting on his chest. 

Sniffling, you looked out at things that were real, but that you never thought you’d see with your own eyes. 

“Are you cold?” he asked, hand rubbing up and down your arm.

With your back still turned to him, you shook your head no.

Why was he doing this? You’d already had sex with him several times. You’d given him more pussy in the last few weeks than you’d given at all in the prior few years. You both knew he didn’t have to do all this to get his dick wet. So why would he do this for you?

He planned this. He prepared for this. He noticed something special about you…and remembered. He thought of you and called you in advance. He made you laugh, and as hard as you tried to fight it, he made you cry. Trying not to sniffle again forced you to breathe through your mouth, your attempt to mask your feelings only backfiring when you drew a turbulent breath. You squeezed your eyes shut as the first tears rolled down your cheeks.

“You okay?”

Searing tears pricked at the corners of your eyes and before you could stop yourself, you sniffled again, and his hand stopped caressing your arm.

“Y/n, are you crying?” 

“S-shut up,” you gasped, interlacing your fingers with his and bringing his arm to rest across your waist.

His arm flexed around you, pulling you closer. “Is something wrong?”

Maintaining your silence, you shook your head truthfully. There was nothing wrong. Everything was right. 

As he was prone to do, rather than force the issue or pry it out of you, he let it go, trusting that you would tell him if you wanted him to know. 

As you sat in comfortable silence with Daichi, you realized it was becoming increasingly possible that you could lose this battle with him. This battle that either he didn’t know existed, or one for which he was using his strategy of fearless honesty to beat you at your own game - not by force, but by disarmament. Perhaps the joke was on you and Daichi was the one who was in control.

“You know what my favorite thing is about stargazing?” he asked thoughtfully, brushing his thumb along yours. Something you’d noticed about him is that he almost never speaks more loudly than is necessary to be heard.

“Hm?”

“Not only are we looking out into space, but we’re also looking back in time. Andromeda is roughly two and a half million light years away. The light reaching our eyes took that long to get here. So, we’re seeing that galaxy as it existed two and a half million years ago. Betelgeuse could explode tonight and we wouldn’t be able to see it from Earth for over 500 years.”

“Wow,” you whispered. 

“Pretty crazy that we’re looking at the stars as they used to be, not as they are right now.” You turned slightly and looked up at Daichi, who looked back down at you with a small smile. “It reminds me that I’m alive; to have the rare opportunity to see something so profound. Somehow this relatively insignificant human existence feels rather exclusive, doesn’t it?”

You reached up behind his neck to bring him closer for a kiss. His tender lips lingered on yours, in no hurry at all as though the two of you had millions of light years for this one kiss. 

You pulled away and turned around to straddle his lap. His bulky arms pulled you in for a hug, your arms holding fast around his neck as you buried your face in it. 

“Are you happy?” Daichi asked, rubbing your back. 

Shivering, you nodded. “I am now.” 

You hadn’t spoken ten words in as many minutes, and both of you were perfectly okay with that. Words weren’t necessary for the conversation the two of you were having. You were sharing more than words could ever say and you wanted to be closer. You kissed Daichi’s neck, making him hum as you trailed your way to his waiting lips to kiss him again, this time more deeply. 

He rolled you onto your back, your tongues exploring each other’s mouths, hands roaming one another’s bodies, removing articles of clothing in the process. You shivered in the cool night air, your nipples tightly pebbled against Daichi’s bare chest. He pulled the blankets over the tangled mess of your bodies as best he could until your hand guided his face to look at you as the other reached between his legs. 

“Please…Daichi. Need you inside,” you sighed, the warmth of your breath tickling his ear. 

Exhaling, he quickly nodded as two pairs of socked feet peeked out from the bottom, blankets be damned. He hissed a little at the feeling of his cold fingertips as he guided his hard length to your warm, waiting entrance. He pushed his wet tip inside, his fluttering brown eyes melting as your liquid heat embraced him, welcoming him deeper and deeper within. 

“Mm y/n…you feel amazing,” Daichi praised.

He propped himself on his forearms, his large hands framing the sides of your face, watching your lips part with a sigh as he slowly sheathed his full length deep inside you. He held himself there for a moment, admiring your beauty in the faint glow of ancient starlight while basking in the soft warmth that enveloped him. 

You squirmed beneath him, eagerly anticipating the first powerful snap of his hips. “Fuck me, Daichi,” you breathed, a hint of urgency in your quiet voice.

Brushing his thumb across your cheek, he shook his head. “No. I don’t wanna fuck you tonight, y/n. I wanna go slow and make you feel everything.”

Making love was dangerous at best. It made you feel too much; too many things that felt unsafe and uncomfortable - intimacy, vulnerability, tenderness.

“Y/n, look at me,” he whispered. 

You opened your eyes to find yourself falling into his. There it was again, something so overwhelming that it took courage to hold his gaze. As he began to roll his hips, you became intensely aware that he was seeing all the way inside you, a wordless exchange between you as he communicated directly with your soul. It was familiar, comfortable, and all so terrifying.

You knew you should’ve pulled away or put a hand up to stop him. But your body bid him passage, opening up to him again and again.

He wasn’t supposed to be here - in your life, your mind, your body, and certainly not in your heart. So why couldn’t you just let him go already? You kept pushing him away, but when it came time to let your hands fall away from him and part ways, rather than let him go, you’d do the exact opposite and pull him closer again.

With his hips snug between your thighs, you wrapped your legs around his waist, moving with him as his manhood dragged deliciously along your slick walls. He looped his strong arms behind your back, putting a little more of his weight on you, but you didn’t mind. You felt safer this way, chest heaving against his as his girthy tip bumped your sweet spot. 

Your breathless whimpers of his name traveled at light speed from his ears to the base of his spine, compelling his body to move a little faster. Faint wet noises emanated from where your earthly bodies collided sweetly, Daichi’s thighs flexing as he made love to you with the stars as your witness. 

You were grateful for the ambient darkness so he couldn’t see the fresh tears welling in your eyes. However, the stars shone in them like moonlight flickering across the surface of a lake, belying the depth of its ripples in its superficial stillness. Daichi knew but kept it to himself lest you close your eyes or look away from him again. 

You felt every inch of him as he rolled his languid hips against you, strong and naked. The coarse black hairs that covered his pubic bone teased and tickled your clit as he rutted into you.

“Nnhm…Dai-“ Your voice was little more than a whine against his open lips when your orgasm hit, your pulsing heat sending him as well. His hips stilled as a low groan accompanied the spilling of his warm seed inside you. 

“Am I crushing you? I can move-“ he offered hoarsely as he shifted. But you shook your head and tightened your hold on him. You could feel him smile against your skin as he buried his face in the crook of your neck. You still weren’t ready to let go. Not yet. You wanted to keep him close just a little while longer. 

You stayed just like that, your bodies melded together, gasping, twitching, not wanting to part. Tender kisses, brushes of lips and noses, lazy fingers tracing affection on one another’s skin. Both of you had learned a new definition of ‘warm’, one which promised that neither of you would ever have to know the meaning of cold ever again if you would but accept it.

When the time came Daichi rolled off of you and the two of you cuddled for a few minutes when you yawned. He insisted on getting dressed and taking you home before you fell asleep. But you didn’t want him to take you home. You wanted him to take you to his bed, back where this all began. If this was to be your last night together, you wanted to be immersed in Daichi’s space, his scent, him. 

You’d just snuggled up to the police officer in his bed, yawning as he held you close. 

You could hear his amused smirk when he said, “The sex tonight was … stellar.” 

“Oh my god, has anyone ever told you that you tell dad jokes?” you laughed with a playful push of his shoulder. 

He recoiled in genuine surprise. “R-really? Are they that bad?””

But before he could finish, his face was in your hands. “I’m laughing, aren’t I?”

“Maybe you have a really bad sense of humor…”

Both of you were drunk on exhaustion, but the delirium soon gave way to sleep. That night, you dreamt that Daichi plucked stars from the sky and put them in your heart. 

ch. 7 ☆ ch. 9

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[stevesbestgirl]

Congratulations on 300 followers, you deserve it! ❤️ If it's not too much trouble, I would like to request Stucky and 'there was only one bed'. As it's Stucky I feel its only right to request fluff and smut!! Thanks!

Thanks for requesting, I love this one and it might be one of my filthier bits of smut!

Late Nights

Stucky x f!Reader (1968 words)

Warnings: morning wood, brief fingering, hand job, unprotected sex, dirty talk, size kink if you squint, hints of a praise kink, a few swears

You were dead on your feet. You’d left the compound at nearly four this morning- or yesterday, since glancing at your watch told you it was 12:48AM. You climbed into the backseat of the car, escaping from the rain that seemed determined to be the final note on a crappy day.

Leaning into Bucky’s shoulder, grateful he’d sat in back with you, you heaved a sigh. It hadn’t been the most exciting day for a spy. There were no fights, no espionage, just tedious recon- talking to hostile witnesses and tugging at loose threads.

“Doll,” Bucky nudged you, rolling his shoulder under your cheek. “We’re at the motel.” It felt like your eyes had closed for seconds, but you could make out the flickering motel sign through the rain-speckled windshield.

You buried your cheek in Bucky’s shoulder; he and Steve were the only good things about this assignment. But that didn’t stop you from groaning grumpily into his arm.

Steve chuckled softly, “Let her sleep another minute, I’ll check us in.”

Another blink and Bucky was murmuring, “Alright, c’mon.” He hooked his arm around your back, the other burrowing beneath your thighs to pull you out of the car. Huddling over you to block the rain, despite the fact that you were both already soaked, he ran into the building.

The soft chime of the automatic doors opening announced your arrival and Bucky cleared his throat, setting you gently on your feet, “Everything okay? Thought you’d be checked in by now.”

Steve was looking exasperated, “There was a mix-up. Someone saw the name ‘Tony Stark’ under reservations and deleted it, thinking it was a joke. Now there’s only one room left.”

You squinted in the too-bright lighting of the lobby, grumbling, “Let’s just take it. We can leave a shitty review later.”

“It’s only got one bed,” Steve explained. “I guess Buck and I can take the floor-”

“You two should take the bed,” you rolled your eyes. “I’d crash on a bed of Thor’s dirty socks right now if it meant I could sleep. The floor is fine.”

“You’re dead on your feet, we’re not letting you-”

“Then we’ll all fit,” you cut Bucky off. “You two will have to take one for the team here, but for me, cuddling up with you two will be the only good thing to come of this trip.” Striding up to the desk, you held your hand out for the keycard, “We’ll take it.”

The clerk handed it over and you strode off down the hall, the two supersoldiers trailing behind you. You keyed yourself into the room, trying not to look at the bed- you needed to clean up first.

Steve gave you a nudge toward the bathroom, “Take the first shower, doll, before you get sick.”

Bucky glanced at the duffel bag over Steve’s shoulder, “Her bag’s still in the car, I’ll grab it.”

“It’s pouring, Buck. I don’t need it that bad. One of you lend me a shirt for the night and I’ll be fine.”

Steve unzipped his bag and tossed you a heathered gray tee-shirt. You thanked him and ducked into the bathroom. You would be quick; you knew they were just as exhausted as you, even if they disguised it better. Still, it took all of your willpower not to space out under the hot spray.

Tearing yourself out, you dried off and pulled Steve’s shirt over your head. You realized the extra pair of panties in your bag would have been nice, but you were too tired to be worried about going commando for a night. Steve’s shirt was nearly down to your knees anyway.

You padded out of the bathroom, finger-combing your damp hair, “Sorry in advance if I’m out cold by the time you guys are cleaned up.”

Bucky disappeared into the bathroom, the door snapping shut behind him and Steve glanced at you from the edge of the bed, his cheeks flushing pink. You suppressed a smile, wondering if the guy had ever seen a girl in one of his shirts before.

“Thanks again for the shirt, Stevie. I’ll lend you one of mine next time,” you joked, carefully climbing beneath the sheets. Based on how red he was already, the poor guy might explode if you accidentally flashed him.

Burying your head in a pillow, you dozed, dimly aware of the open and close of the bathroom door. When the bed dipped on either side of you, you protested faintly, “Wait, I’ll move so you two can-”

“Not a chance, doll. Lady sleeps on the inside. In this case, that’s the middle,” Bucky chuckled.

You hummed, too tired to argue, and snuggled up to whoever was in front of you, “G’night guys.”

“Night, doll,” Steve’s voice came from behind you.

After a moment of quiet, Bucky murmured a goodnight, his arm draping over your waist. You came to a few times in the night, each time more entangled with the two men beside you.

The first time, Steve had rolled over to face you, his chin nearly resting on the crown of your head as his arm crossed over Bucky’s on your waist. It was easy enough to fall back asleep snuggled securely between the two of them.

The second time, you woke up a little chilly, realizing Bucky had bunched the blankets up around his hips, leaving your legs bare. Sleepily wrapping a leg around his thighs, you buried your nose in his bare chest and drifted off again.

The third time was far from the sleepy stirrings of the others. Someone’s hand had slid beneath the hem of your borrowed shirt, large palm resting on your bare hip. You surmised it was Steve’s hand, based on the firm length pressed against the back of your thighs.

Heat rose in your cheeks as you realized that your shirt was hiked up, leaving you exposed from the waist down. Steve’s fingers were far too close to the stirrings between your thighs.

You tried to subtly coax the blanket up to cover yourself, but the slight movement only prompted Steve to slide his hips closer to you, his erection rubbing against your ass. A breathy squeak escaped your lips and you winced as you heard Steve inhale deeply with a soft hum and Bucky’s eyes fluttered open.

Bucky’s voice was gravelly with sleep, “Mornin’ doll. Morning Stevie.” You felt Steve tense behind you as he woke up enough to realize the situation.

Bucky exhaled heavily, sliding his hand down your waist to find Steve’s fingers, brushing over the place on your hip where your panties should have been. You heard his sharp intake of breath and your face went hot.

You fumbled for the hem of Steve’s shirt, but Bucky’s fingers closed around your wrist, “Thought you were excited to cuddle with us, doll?” His voice was soft and you found yourself nodding. He released your wrist, fingers tracing over your stomach, “Can I see?”

You heard Steve swallow thickly as you covered Bucky’s hand with your own, guiding him down to the faint wetness between your legs. The air in your lungs felt stuck; it was like you’d forgotten how to breathe.

Bucky’s fingers brushed through your folds, coming out slick and shiny. Your lips parted in a soft whine as he sucked his middle finger clean, his eyes not leaving yours as he wrapped his lips around the digit. Popping the finger from his mouth, he turned his gaze to Steve, “Wanna taste, Stevie?”

You felt Steve’s cock twitch against you as Bucky slid his finger between his lips. Your skin was tingling, your body humming. Pressed between the two of them, you almost doubted that you were actually awake. Steve groaned, the vibration in his chest rumbling against your back. If this was a dream, it was the best you’d ever had.

Then your fingers were wrapped around Bucky’s dog tags, pulling his lips down to yours. His soft control was gone, leaving only his tongue and teeth clashing with yours as he explored your mouth, nibbling on your lips. His fingers returned to your core, two dipping inside you. You felt your walls stretch around him, aching for more as Steve’s hips moved against your ass, the thin fabric of his boxers the only thing keeping you from the hard length that strained against them.

“Steve,” you panted against Bucky’s lips.

Bucky smirked into the kiss, “Think she’s ready for you, Stevie.”

His breaths heavy on your ear, you felt Steve quickly discard his boxers as Bucky pulled his fingers from you, spreading the wetness over your clit. “Think you can take Steve, doll? Can you fit him all in that little cunt of yours?”

You felt Steve’s head at your entrance, coating himself in your slick before inching his way inside you. You cried out as he fully sheathed himself and he pressed kisses into the back of your neck, murmuring, “You feel so good, doll.”

Bucky’s fingers left your clit, sliding under Steve’s shirt to knead your breast in his palm, humming, “Look real pretty wrapped around Steve’s cock too.”

Your fingers fumbled with Bucky’s boxers, pulling the waistband down his thighs to free him. Wrapping your fingers around his shaft, you reveled in the way his eyes fluttered closed at your touch, lips parting under yours as you pumped him.

Steve drew his hips back, leaving you gasping at the sensation. This time, he didn’t wait before driving back into you, finding a steady rhythm that left you breathless at each drag of his cock. Each snap of his hips against you pulled a soft whimper from your lips, which Bucky swallowed up eagerly.

You matched your strokes on Bucky to each pump of Steve inside you, faltering only when Steve’s fingers found your clit, his arm heavy on your hips. He drew you into him, angling his hips up to fuck you deeper, making you see stars. Each stroke pulled your closer to the edge, your legs trembling.

Steve growled in your ear, “You gonna come for me, doll?”

His words were the final push you needed. Your hand stilled on Bucky’s cock as your walls pulsed, your vision going dark for a moment as your brain scrambled for oxygen. Steve’s thrusts grew sloppy until he pulled out with a grunt, his hot seed painting your backside.

Bucky whispered into your lips, “You got one more for me, doll?”

His hand overtook yours, guiding himself to your core, still throbbing. You let out a high-pitched whine as he slid against your sensitive walls, but soon your found yourself bucking against him, pulling him deeper inside you.

Groaning, he pressed his forehead to yours, “Such a good girl for us.”

Steve kissed and nibbled your shoulder, humming as he sucked a bruise into your neck, “And everyone is gonna know it.” His fingers pressed between your shoulder blades, kneading the muscles while he whispered praises in your ear.

Bucky grunted, “‘M not gonna last. Need you to come for me, doll.”

Steve dropped a hand to your clit, “C’mon doll, be our good girl.”

Steve’s fingers landed on the overstimulated bundle of nerves, making you gasp as Bucky pulled your hips into his. Your second orgasm arrived suddenly, leaving you a quivering mess between the two men.

Bucky groaned, pulling out just in time to spill himself on your stomach, his lips seeking yours in a frantic kiss. When you broke away, you paused, listening to the sounds of exhilarated breathing on either side of you.

Finally, Steve slid off the bed, carefully scooping you into his arms and heading for the bathroom. Bucky hastily followed, landing a light slap to your ass and grinning, “Don’t think you two are showering without me.”

[katsukikitten]

Hello friends! Here is my contribution to the Bakugou Birthday Bash! The master link will be linked here ! Please enjoy my bit of an angsty fic! And all of the other art and works that are on the master list! Enjoy the big bakugou blow out and remember to leave a comment on your favorite pieces! Happy birthday ya shitty man! (Lowkey become 3d please)

Warning: he's 28 btw 😂 (my fic says so also)

It shouldn't be this fucking hard to get groceries and booze. It's a quick and easy errand. Everything already pre-ordered for an important birthday that just needed to be picked up. And yet here you were crying in your car trying to get it together before the attendant asked for the order name. Honestly you had texted out "I can't do this today. Sorry." Several times before deleting it, telling yourself not to hit send. But you would have to be having the worst mental day of your life wouldn't you? Today of all days, how fucking selfish of you.

Especially with the amount of time and effort you and Kirishima had put into this idea. Since New Year's actually, months and months of planning after the two of you had gotten shit faced at Denki and Mina's new years party, creating the brain child. All after bonding over switching patrol partners six months before, you had gotten Bakugou and he had gotten Ashido. Kirishima and yourself giggle over stupid things to the side of the party, people watching as you took shots. Kirishima points towards a normally grumpy blonde.

"Wow I think he's actually having fun." You snort, as you watch Bakugou hide his rare cat smile behind a sip of his beer as Mina makes Denki the butt of a joke.

"He actually loves parties. He never says it so people just think he's a wet blanket." Kirishima laughs, pouring the two of you another shot. Bakugou lets out a particularly loud laugh after 'Dunce Face' proves Mina's point. I guess that would be the time that it started.

When you started to fall. His laugh makes your cheeks deepen in hue and burn, to want to hear it again, to watch it again and learn all of the other sides of your patrol partner that he obviously only reserved for his closest friends.

"Let's throw him a great birthday party." You say, holding up your shot as a devilish smile spreads over sharp teeth. The mountainous man clinks your shot glass before he adds.

"Let's." In unison the two of you down the burning liquid as the plan comes into fruition.

Four months, four months and nineteen days of you thinking of nothing but your patrol partner with whom you got extremely close with since New Year's. So why? Why today of all days were you struggling? Why would normal everyday tasks feel more as if you were wading through mud than the breeze they should have been? You flip down the visor, looking yourself in the eye through little square mirror as you grit your teeth hissing

"Get your shit together."

Your little pep talk helps you get the several cakes and the cart full of booze that everyone requested, planning to make this the best birthday ever. Helping Kirishima set his house up with decorations, setting out the snacks, catering and even pouring some drinks as guests began to arrive to set down their gifts and help with the last minute touches before hiding. Masking through the pit in your stomach as you smiled at all of your friends as they poured in through Kirishima's door. Through the weighted emptiness you felt as each one wrapped you into a tight hug, already praising you and Kirishima for the amazing effort, that Bakugou would be so surprised when it was more than just you and Kirishima here. . Finally you had to go and get the guest of honor just before sundown to catch him before he went to bed. A much needed breather from the constant smiling and forcing a laugh that everyone thought sounded genuine.

Enjoying the silence of the evening train as it pulled you across town to the unsuspecting blonde. And maybe you could have made it through the night from your shitty pep talk or at least through getting the freshly 28 year old to his party but instead you catch your reflection in the window. Your facial features weighted with exhaustion, shoulders hunched allowing your body to continue to produce cortisol. Tears prick your eyes as you deep low, too low. Remembering everything and nothing all at once, steeping in guilt as you beg yourself for just a few more hours. That the depression episode can happen when you're home and alone, after the party goes off without a hitch. Tears fall anyway and they do all the way to Bakugou's until you finally get enough control to step out of yourself for a moment. Ringing the doorbell several times as a smile is plastered on your face, the door swings open. Bakugou's eyes narrow as they take you in, he notices that something is off. Your smile is a little too wide, your eyes rimmed red but he says nothing about it. Instead he lets his initial anger come forth.

"Oi! I told you to fuckin' text me when you were on the train so I could meet you at the station!" He growls, slamming his door shut and pocketing his keys. Deadly and sweaty hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket as his palms itch to hold onto something else. Garnet eyes track your own hands as you reach over your head stretching.

"Yea yea, I hear you Dad." You tease giving him a look, "I still made it okay."

"Kirishima should have come instead of you that fuckin hair for brains." He snarls keeping pace with you as he always does on patrol.

"I know Dad must be sad cause his favorite didn't come to pick him up." You try not to sound dejected, nudging him in the ribs to distract from the crack in your voice, "Happy birthday ya big lug."

Bakugou cuts you a glare, mind racing before his barks out a "Thanks."

Comfortable silence stretches between the two of you before you two hit the train station, passing a corner store.

"Was shitty hair burning dinner? Do I need to stop for back up?" His thumb hooks over his shoulder towards the neon as he stands idle waiting for you to jog your memory. Kirishima had burned the last friend's dinner making Bakugou so angry he walked six blocks to make something that was 'FUCKIN EDIBLE!' while you tried to air out his apartment. You laugh loudly, genuinely for the first time that day causing Bakugou's shoulders to sag with relief. In the ten months he had been working with you he had only seen you faking a smile or laugh once or twice. Then the time after that you were absent from work the next day or two forcing him to patrol with Denki but worse yet...making him worry.

"Guess I'll grab something just in case." He gave you his back so you wouldn't see his face or the faint blush that dusted his cheeks.

"No, no! I ordered out this time. From that famous chef you like." Bakugou glares your way, digging in his back pocket for his wallet.

"How much." He demands through gritted teeth while you show him the palms of your hands in surrender.

"Woah woah! It's your birthday gift! You can't pay me back for dinner! I'd sooner burn the money before I'd accept it from you!" Your watch dings with a message from Kirishima asking for an ETA. You grab onto Bakugou's hand pulling him along into a run as you shout over your shoulder.

"We're gonna be late!"

Oh how Bakugou wished you hadn't done that, he was already struggling to keep his heart beat even when you were around and now to grab onto him. To pull him along in a hurry like those cheesy insta posts that couples did on their "grand adventure" together. He swallows the lump in his throat as he reminds himself that you are nothing more than his patrol partner. His friend at best.

Even though the train was mostly empty Bakugou stood closely by you, as he always did when the two of you were in a crowded space. He had seen how most men took advantage of the situation and he hated the idea of that happening to you although he knew you were more than capable of handling it on your own. Hell you could kick even his ass but he would die before ever admitting that. Instead he watches you talk about what you ordered for dinner and how you got the cake from that bakery Sato works part time at, the same one he got your birthday cake from but he doesn't hear a word. Instead all he can see is the golden light from the setting sun worshiping you. Kissing your skin to make it glow, giving your eyes a hue that makes his heart fall into his stomach and illuminating you in a true light. A radiant ethereal thing is what you were and Bakugou was just lucky enough to be standing by you. So out of it he doesn't realize the two of you are at your stop.

"Uh Suki?" Your voice is soft paired with the setting sun has him acting weird. He leans closer to you, pulled by some invisible force before he stops himself as he watches you look up at him beneath long lashes.

"You okay?" You ask almost nervously from his proximity, the smell of spice and caramel wrap around you making you feel warm and fuzzy. Temporarily making you forget that you were trying to act on the train, making you relax as you just talked to Bakugou. He sucks his teeth as he picks up your bag to sling over his shoulder.

"Yea but you were gonna forget your whole damn purse like you always do." He huffs, this time he was the one pulling at your hand in a rush before the doors closed to trap you two on the train. His hand feels warm in yours, his grip tight as he drags you along before pulling you within his sight, another habit of his you happened to notice. Almost reluctantly he lets go of you hand as Kirishima's house comes into view.

"We better have a good time tonight patrol Princess or you owe me a special birthday gift." He laughs causing you to roll your eyes at his stupid nickname that stuck after your first day with him, adamant that the two of you take your route instead of his it was a huge argument. But it was a good thing he listened to the "princess", it put the two of you smack dab in the middle of a robbery. You stick out your tongue.

"Trust me. You're gonna have a good time!" You push him up the steps as he bats away your hands. Opening the front door before everyone jumps out of various and bad hiding spots.

"SURPRISE!!" All of the alumni of class A and some of B shout, a select few already slurring their words. Bakugou's scowl turns into a smirk before he looks over his shoulder at you.

"Aw you did this to me?" His voice is teasing but his eyes almost sparkle, you nod encouraging him to go deeper into the party. As he does people flock to him laughing and yelling out happy birthday until he's sick of hearing it. All the while your smile wanes with the night. Until an hour in that heavy episode hits you full force. Numbness setting in where happiness should be, rotting as it turns to shame and guilt as you watch your friend, your crush, enjoy his night. Bringing a glass bottle to his lips as he talks with Kirishima, who then presses a shot into his hands. Bodies dancing to the house music that beat out of the speakers competing with chatter and laughter.

It felt weird to watch everyone truly enjoying themselves while you felt low. It felt more as if you were standing outside of the house, looking in through the window to see everyone enjoying themselves, no one even knowing who you were as you stared in.

You felt distant, alone. What a shitty way to feel in a room full of people, none of it being their fault and so the guilt pressed harder. Eyes watering as they lingered on the blonde who deserved this celebration and more. Making you decide to give the best birthday gift of them all.

To slip away upstairs and onto the roof, to give the room space to breathe when you felt like suffocating.

Crying to no one but the moon.

And no one noticed. Two hours slip by before Kirishima insists that Bakugou make a wish and eat cake before everyone gets too drunk too. The entire house drunkenly sings happy birthday but Bakugou notices a voice missing. Yours that's just a touch off key, not to mention he didn't hear you say the stupid nickname 'Suki' where his name should be in the song. Plus you weren't one to miss out on dessert. For as long as Bakugou has been working with you, you never turned down the opportunity for sweets. Whether that was taking the long way back to the agency to try to catch a certain street vendor or to hover by the deserts at a party to pick the very best treat.

And if it was a birthday party, you never could shut up that y'all could not leave until after they blew out the candles and made a wish.

His eyes linger for a second longer, making sure he didn't miss you before his heart sinks. He takes in a sharp inhale, thinks on his wish and blows out the candles.

Meanwhile you hear the cheers of everyone down stairs and sob into your knees. You missed your favorite part of birthdays. Of hoping they make a wish that comes true, of watching their face as they think of something quickly or how some people tear up when they finally realize just how loved they are on their birthday.

It isn't long after that do you hear the sound of combat boots on shingles. Whipping your head up in the direction of the sound. Stomach clenching with guilt as you watch Bakugou walking towards you with a slice of cake.

"Brought ya some cake, since I didn't hear you sing off key to me." He says sinking down beside you as you furiously wipe at your tears.

"I'm-um."

"You don't gotta explain yourself to me." He snarls as you stare dumbly at your cake, "You know that."

"I know…" Silence passes slowly, the moon shines overhead and the party carries on below.

"Well, I'm waiting!" Bakugou says dramatically, "You gonna sing or am I gonna have to sing to myself?"

"Oh." It makes you giggle a bit before you blush, realizing he is serious. You take a deep breath before singing "just off key" when you don't, to him.

"Sukiiiiii!" Relief washes over his features when he hears the dumb ass name, "Happy birthday to youuuuuu!"

"Okay, now you can eat the damn cake." He grunts, his smile never wavering as he looks to the empty street below. You follow his eyes, chewing the inside of your lip, setting the cake down.

"What'd you wish for…" Curiosity gets the better of you and earns his intense gaze. He smirks, scoffing at the end.

"You always say you shouldn't tell or it won't come true." He laughs at your pout, before he finally admits "I wished for courage."

With a furrowed brow you give him a puzzled look, he just holds your gaze.

"Why? You're like the bravest hero I know!" Bakugou can hear the truth in your voice, you aren't saying it just to fucking stroke his ego.

You actually meant it, making this conversation that much harder.

"Yea except when it comes to this one thing I want to do. Its fuckin easy and I've done it hundreds of times just as I'm about to do it I fucking back down cause I'm probably fuckin reading into things too much." He leans in closer, again his smell mesmerizes you, causing your body to visibly relax, "Too much of a fuckin bitch, thinking she doesn't want me like I want her. So I wished for the courage to follow through. To fuckin' just do it."

Your heart is racing out of your chest before one of his hands finds the nape of your neck pulling you into a feverish kiss. Teeth gnashing from the passion, lips perfectly modeling to the other before tongues lightly dance around one another. Lengthening seconds into hours with just a few head tilts and plush lips. You moan into his mouth, he pulls away, eyes clouded with lust as a string of spit connects your tongues. He pants, face flushed and his hand warm, almost burning at the nape of your neck, the shingle by his hand charred from restraint as he pants out.

"I wished for you."

[new-sandrafilter]

The Making (and Re-Making) of Timothée Chalamet

BY DANIEL RILEY / PHOTOGRAPHY BY RENELL MEDRANO

He found superstardom and artistic acclaim instantaneously. Now, with unique candor, the actor of a generation reveals what it’s like to come of age in our very upside-down era.

The day after the Oscars in 2018, everything that had changed, changed back again. Timothée Chalamet had spent the previous months becoming known. He had acted in a film, Call Me by Your Name, which was critically acclaimed as well as an instant object of cultish admiration—and his performance had made him, at 22, the youngest person nominated for best actor in 80 years. He had, simultaneously, been transformed into the rarest of pop confections—fawned over by younger women, older men, and every demographic in between. And he had traveled without pause on the awards circuit since early autumn, back and forth from New York and Los Angeles, practically living out of the first-class lounge and the lobbies of the Bowery Hotel and the Sunset Tower.

But the day after the Oscars, the moment the clock struck midnight and his carriage turned into a pumpkin, Chalamet was right back where he'd been before the whole fantasy had begun: in New York, with no credit card, no apartment, and no longer any structured demands on his time and attention. Outsiders who had witnessed the arrival may have regarded this 22-year-old as being in possession of wealth and clout, but he was suddenly back on his own dime, which amounted to maybe five or six dimes, reticent to stay with family and friends whose lives he felt he was disrupting with all his new baggage. Of course they couldn't possibly comprehend the chemical reaction that had just transpired. They were still hydrogen and oxygen, and Timothée Chalamet was all of a sudden water.

And so, for three weeks, he disappeared into the wallpaper of the Lower East Side. Specifically, the wallpaper of a little apartment that the French street artist JR kept for visiting collaborators. Chalamet holed up against the ugly New York weather of late winter, and did the only thing he could think to do: learn lines. The King would be his first film since his pivot into fame, and he was anxious to get back to acting after such a long stretch of merely talking about acting. Even more, he needed to blot out the unrecognizable icon the internet was already beginning to make of Timothée Chalamet.

I met Timothée for the first time at the onset of that initial blush of fame, when all of us were being introduced to an actor who had both rare talent and the un-engineerable it that chings like an audible sparkle off a jewel in a cartoon. I wrote a story for this magazine about that first chapter in the arrival of a film star. This is the second chapter, the story of what's happened since. It wasn't evident yet, but those three weeks in New York in 2018 were the starting line of what would amount to a 30-month stretch of four new films, two new Oscar campaigns, some refreshing romance, an incessant awareness of the confusing image of himself as—what else to call it?—an emerging global movie star, and a constant concerted effort to figure himself out as both a young actor and a young person in the unceasing spotlight.

This summer, we were talking about all this on a little screened porch out back of a modest cabin in Woodstock when Chalamet recalled those three weeks. “My world had flipped,” he said. “But if I kicked it with my friends, things could still feel the same. I was trying to marry these two realities. But I don't even think I knew that was what I was doing. That dissonance was real. And thank God. Because I feel like if I'd caught up to it immediately, I would've been a psychopath or something.”

Out on that porch, I asked him a version of the same question over and over: What had the last two and a half years been like for him, as a human being? His response was a multi-hour monologue that I would characterize as: intense. He expressed unadulterated gratitude for his great good fortune. But he also expressed confusion and tension. He is firmly in a moment when he is concerned that everything he says or does or thinks will look or sound wrong. He backtracked a lot (“Wait, let me try that again”). He jumped on and off the record (“Sorry, sorry, sorry, this is just for you…”). It was important for me to know, he said, in order to communicate the context of his experience, if not the specifics.

.

“I want to get back to the undefined space again. I'm chasing a feeling.” 

He lives in the same world all of us do—only with the potential for adoration and blowback turned up to 11. He seems, at once, to trust his own instincts while also second-guessing most thoughts the moment he's convinced of them. It is an exhausting way to be. At times, when he was up on his feet, in his T-shirt and shorts, pacing around the little screened porch, hands tugging at his mane, I could feel the gears grinding to the point of smoke. He wanted so desperately to get this right, to express what he really meant, to feel the right feelings, to live the right way, to be the right kind of man for the people in his life that he knows he can and should be, despite everything else, despite the noise. He's doing his best.

Timothée had rented the house for the month of July, as a little escape but also as an opportunity. He was slated to play Bob Dylan in a new biopic. No telling when it might film, given everything, but for now he had more time to himself than he'd had in years, which meant time to maybe huff the vapors of some Woodstock Dylanalia. “It's not like I'm suffering from lack of connection otherwise,” he said, “but it just really feels like I'm connecting to something here.” When he arrived, he discovered that his little house had a wall devoted to Dylan—to the albums he'd recorded in the run-up to his timeout in Woodstock in the late '60s. Timothée relished happening upon that wall his first day in the Airbnb. The universe offered signs if you nudged it toward coherence.

He knew what the cabin might seem like—like some young actor taking himself way too seriously, “treating himself like an artist.” But he was back and forth between Woodstock and New York all month, bombing up and down the interstate in the Honda sedan he'd rented from Enterprise. (He learned how to drive on Beautiful Boy.) All the while Dylan was top of mind. Timothée was late to the party but helplessly obsessed. He quoted him generously. He fixated on both the art and the persona. He marveled at the way the artist could be out there so much, making such an impact, while also keeping the real person obscured behind the music, the characters in the songs, the language. In the city, we spent time walking around Greenwich Village, Timothée in an identity-concealing face mask and bucket hat and sunglasses, able to search out old Dylan addresses in an invisibility cloak. He ran from site to site, with notes he'd kept while reading Dylan's memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, barreling up stairs and peering into windows. He was a 24-year-old actor, taking advantage of the pause between the second phase of his career and the third and thinking hard, daily, about how to play the next few years.

He rented the house in Woodstock, too, so that he could have a little space all to himself. He craved the privacy to try things and to fuck up. To make small mistakes now, out of view, when it was just him, when he was still young, so that he didn't have to worry about it later. At one point, he stood up and slapped an empty water bottle off the table so that it clattered against the screen of the porch. “I want to know what that sounds like!” he shouted. He hadn't taken many missteps yet, and it made him uncomfortable, wary, that he would someday. The month felt like a controlled burn. In the most innocent way, that was what Woodstock was about. He got to practice his guitar and harmonica in peace, cook himself his “shitty pasta” without judgment, permit himself space to keep growing up. So much was in the spotlight now. But in that cabin, he could sit on the couch for a while and re-familiarize himself with “the crease in the cushion” that he'd lost touch with over the past few years. The quiet. The stillness. That sunlight there coming through the trees. He could breathe a little. Sleep a little. It had all been so good for him so far. But the goodness made him anxious. When will the other shoe drop? Not there. He'd deleted Instagram off his phone. He'd stopped posting on Twitter. He was reading again. Listening to albums all the way through. Slowing down. What was it like to have lived these past two and a half years? It was like a lot of things, but here at the end of it, it just felt good to sleep.

Back at the start of the 30-month run that led to Woodstock, Timothée turned over the keys to JR's studio and went to Europe to shoot The King. The role was like none of the films he'd just received notice for. “Here I am on set with all these Hungarian men with scars on their faces, and they're like, ‘You're the center of the shot, you're the badass! And we know you tried to put on all this weight, but like: You're wearing all the chain mail.’ If they took the chain mail off, my throat is still this big…” There he was trying to keep in perspective this new fame, this new validation, this new temptation toward ego, all while being thrust into the center of “something called The motherfucking King.”

When he returned to New York that summer, he skipped off the atmosphere again with another awkward reentry. One moment he was on the battlefield of the biggest-budget drama he'd yet experienced, the next he was “back in New York, on the A/C/E at Port Authority, just like, What the fuck is going on?” It was a pattern over the past few years. The calmly intense immersion into work, the “thud of lost purpose,” as he called it, when the work ended. It happened the same way in the fall of 2018 with Little Women—reunited with Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan and the crew from Lady Bird. There was just an ease with which he plugged in with them, “a vocabulary of friendship” that existed there.

Timothée's career thus far has been filled with these sorts of friendships, notably those across generational lines. Even a casual observer may have picked up on it. Those glommings-on to older people in his life. Armie Hammer. Kid Cudi. Greta Gerwig. When I asked Gerwig to comment on the arc she's witnessed up close, from Lady Bird to Little Women, she wrote a note about “my friend Timmy”: “It's hard for me now, because I'm his friend, to see him strategically.… I love talking to him. We can get on the phone and talk for an hour or more without even realizing it, just skipping from subject to subject, making jokes, me feeling old and happy and him being funny and anxious and delightfully all over the place.” It's an odd gap he finds himself in—forced to be more accelerated than most 24-year-olds while also having not lived enough life yet to fit in absolutely with the people he enjoys spending time with most. On a recent visit with his grandmother in New York, she surprised him by saying, “I wish you would hang out with people your own age more often. It must be so weird.” It made him chuckle. Even she'd noticed. She might be right. But how could he resist the orbit of these creative geniuses he'd so long admired and who were filled with so much knowingness?

“I'm confident in the way I'm trying to approach things now, how I'm setting up the angles.”

In the winter of 2019, another Oscar campaign left him feeling disoriented all over again. Everything, Timothée said, was exactly the same as the first time except him. He'd put in this undeniable performance, but maybe one that sparked a little less for Oscar voters than that first kiss with a stranger. Now he was in all the same rooms as before, the same lunches and dinners and cocktail parties, shaking hands with the same Academy members who showed up at everything to get a little nibble of the freshest biscuit, growling ominous things at him, like: You don't have my vote yet.… “I really don't know how to talk about this stuff, man,” he told me, “because my experience of it is at the center of it. There's just some dark energy at these things, and this time around I felt like I could see it. And yet I'm thinking, Why isn't this going the exact same way?”

He wasn't nominated for Beautiful Boy, but the fresh air came, as it always seemed to, on the set of the next film: Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch. The movie is about a fictional English-language magazine (based on The New Yorker of the midcentury) and is structurally organized like the magazine itself, featuring short pieces at the “front” of the movie and a triptych of long features at the back. Timothée costars in the second feature, about a May '68-style student-protest leader named Zeffirelli and the middle-aged magazine journalist (Frances McDormand) assigned to report on his cause.

“I had seen Timmy in Lady Bird and Call Me by Your Name,” Anderson wrote to me, “and I never had the inconvenience of ever thinking of anybody else for this role even for a second. I knew he was exactly right, and plus: He speaks French and looks like he might actually have walked right out of an Éric Rohmer movie. Some time around 1985. A slow train from Paris, a backpack, a beach for 10 days in bad weather. He's not any kind of type—but the New Wave would have had a happy place for him.”

The privilege of early fame that Timothée most appreciates is the ability to choose the directors he works with. His role in The French Dispatch is a minor one, but it's a Wes Anderson movie—it's as simple as that. Due to the episodic nature of the film, some of the other “stories” were already being shot when Timothée arrived in Angoulême, a town that reminded him of the one he spent time in growing up, “so French it was like a caricature,” he said. Timothée had the opportunity, then, to hang with some of the elders he doesn't act with, like Jeffrey Wright, Bill Murray, and other seasoned members of the Wes Anderson troupe. “It was immediately as if it wasn't his first time with our group,” Anderson explained. “He was somehow already part of the family. The youngest member.”

Timothée had seen McDormand around for years, but he'd never felt like she was someone he could approach. “We'd shared an agent,” he said. “And it was no disrespect to me, but I hadn't been in any movies yet. What business do I have talking to Frances McDormand? But now, and this is the gift of acting, I really feel myself coming into my own as a community of thespians, as opposed to actors. And man, that sounds pretentious, but I just mean it's not about the fucked-up ladder of success and un-success, and being the guy or the girl, and then being off the list… That's not what I'm talking about with her on set, that's not what she's espousing to me. She's talking about a long career. She's talking about marriage with a creative partner and consultant. So to be able to have conversations like that and then a story line in the movie where they're kind of on an equal field? Even if she's an experienced, wise woman and he's an idealistic, naive boy? That's the exact relationship of exchange I want with my intergenerational peers.”

There's a particularly memorable scene in The French Dispatch, reporter and subject having fallen into bed together, when there's a knock at the door. Timothée looks at McDormand, anxious about who's there, mortified when McDormand informs him it's his mother. There, in that scene, we see all the desire of Zeffirelli—this energetic young man with all the right intentions, who strains to be intellectually and emotionally riper—clash with the reality of his age. It felt familiar to me, and no doubt to Timothée. It was some of my favorite acting in the film. I asked McDormand if there was anything in their scenes that struck her as particularly mature for someone his age. “Maturity is not something a fellow actor is the most concerned with,” she said. “Playfulness, discipline, and rigor. I do recall, during our scene in bed, the crew responding to his work with true respect for his focus. He was bringing it and we sat up and paid attention.” Anderson added: “I think my favorite moments with Timmy during a scene were the ones where I saw him pause and find a new attack. A new angle, which he does very clearly and assertively. What I love is how he will surprise you with something new, completely unexpected and perfect.”

One night, while McDormand was shooting a scene without Timothée, her husband, Joel Coen—he of the Brothers—asked Timothée if he wanted to go out for a steak. Over dinner, Timothée grilled Coen about Dylan. He knew Coen was a fan and had steeped in it on Inside Llewyn Davis. “He almost seemed weary of even talking about this stuff, it was so big and potent,” Timothée told me. But Coen noted that the truly incredible thing about Dylan was not so much the quality, which was obvious, but the quantity—the rapid amount of work in short succession, one groundbreaking album after another, in those early years. That takeaway resonated deeply with Timothée. Especially as he reflected on it from summer 2020, during the pause, during the moment of no work. That gush from Dylan made him want to work—harder, longer, better, more.

A week after our conversation in Woodstock, Timothée and I were in New York City, sitting on a bench along the Hudson, talking about what he's looking for when work resumes. “I want to get back to the undefined space again,” he said. “I'm chasing a feeling. When you think you're doing some great thing, it's probably something you've done before, and when you really fucking have no clue, that's when you're doing something on the edge, good or bad.”

Timothée's mask had slipped down his face as he was saying this, and two young women, about his age, approached cautiously. “Would you mind if we got a…,” they asked, and he hopped up without hesitation. “How'd you recognize me?” he said, friendly, but genuinely curious, as if he hadn't just been shouting about art in a voice that sounded a lot like Laurie from Little Women or Timmy from late-night shows.

“Was it the scrawny limbs or the hair?” I asked him as he sat back down.

“Definitely the first.”

From France, last spring, it was straight to Hungary—right back to the exact apartment in Budapest he'd stayed in while shooting The King—to start work on Dune. Very few actors had become as famous without a blockbuster. And while he'd really gotten it down how to act on an indie set, how to make every second and every take count, he knew this would be something altogether different. It wasn't just the shoot that would prove taxing. A film of Dune's scale would likely be the can opener to a whole other stratum of Hollywood prominence.

Director Denis Villeneuve told me Timothée was his “first and only choice” to play Paul Atreides, “the one name on the page.” When they met to discuss the prospect, Villeneuve told Timothée how happy he was to finally meet the young actor. And Timothée had to remind him that they'd met before, when Timothée read for Villeneuve's Prisoners. “ ‘Of course!’ ” Villeneuve remembered. “He did a great audition, but he didn't physically fit the part. He was probably swearing at me because I didn't take him.” Timothée was party to so many stories like that one—glancing interactions with these heroes of his before he'd broken through. It reminded me of the relationship between freshmen and seniors in high school. The freshmen remember everything about the seniors; the seniors hardly notice the freshmen. But we all become peers eventually.

“I felt there was one being on this planet right now that would be able to portray Paul Atreides,” Villeneuve said—referring to the hero of the 1965 Frank Herbert novel, who transforms from an unassuming heir into a messiah figure, a charismatic outsider and commander of men and women (and sandworms). I read Dune for the first time this summer and was shocked by the source material, how much I'd consumed in culture that had borrowed from it. Star Wars. Alien. The Matrix. Game of Thrones. Paul, therefore, is a type we're familiar with but also possessing singular characteristics Villeneuve wanted Timothée for: “He has a deep, deep intelligence in the eyes. Something you cannot fake. The kid is brilliant. Very intellectual, very strong. And you see that in the eyes. He also has a very old soul. You feel that he has already lived through several lives. And at the same time, he looks so young on camera. Sometimes he'd look almost 14 years old. He has this kind of general youth in his features and the contrast with the old-soul quality in his eyes—it's a kid that knows more about life than his age. Finally: He has that beautiful charisma, the charisma of a rock star. That Paul will lead the whole population of a planet later. Timothée has that kind of instant charisma onscreen that you can find only sometimes in the Old Hollywood stars from the '20s. There's something of a romantic beauty to him. A cross of aristocracy and being a bum at the same time. I mean, Timothée is Paul Atreides for me. It was a big relief that he agreed, because I had no plan b.”

“If I get hit by a truck next week, I'm looking at 20 to 23, I don't know if you can top that.”

I asked Villeneuve if he noticed Timothée struggling at all to adjust to the larger-scale production. “It didn't show when he was on set, but I think for him the big thing was to learn how to create his own bubble on set. So that he would not have to try to be the friend of everyone. When you're on a smaller set, when there's 25 people, you can be friendly with 25 people. When there's 800 people around, you cannot be friends with 800 people.” He chuckled. “It's too much. So how to save your energy, how to focus, how to give himself permission to be in his bubble and make sure that his bubble is respected.”

As ever, Timothée had a special affinity with those people on set who were a little older, a little wiser. Villeneuve said Timothée was constantly speaking with him and his wife in this open, vulnerable way about his concerns, his fears, how to deal with certain pressures. Villeneuve also described for me Timothée's relationships with his fellow actors, particularly the trio of Josh Brolin, Oscar Isaac, and Jason Momoa. “I felt like Timothée was deeply seduced—or maybe not seduced, but I just felt it was like a kid being with older brothers,” Villeneuve said. “He was younger, he was the little one on set, and everybody loved him. There's a scene in the movie where Timothée runs into the arms of Jason Momoa, and Jason grabs him like a puppy and lifts him into the air like he was a feather. And that's real! They really loved each other. It was very beautiful to see this young man being influenced by these people he admires.”

“His positive energy is infectious,” Zendaya, his nearest peer in the film, told me. “He really is so much fun to be around. We have very similar humor, and we can keep a joke going for a long time, but when the cameras start rolling and it's time to work, you can see it's game time, and he just taps into this brilliant intensity. It's awesome to witness.” Villeneuve underlined the energy as well, describing for me just having seen Timothée the night before we spoke, and marveling at “that beautiful, strong candor.”

“I will say that looking at Timothée working, I had a deep feeling that I was watching the birth of something,” Villeneuve added. “Not that it's for me—I say that with humility, because I feel that birth in all the movies he's done so far. I'm feeling it's someone that has insane potential. When I say potential, I don't want to reduce what he's doing right now, not at all. It's just that sometimes you are in front of somebody and you have the feeling you are in contact with a strong artist and that artist, his identity is still growing, building itself, learning its boundaries, learning how to protect some part of it. I think that we are witnessing something beautiful right now.”

At the end of summer 2019, Timothée finally resurfaced from Planet Dune. He had been on social media only sporadically while shooting for most of 2019, and so, for his vast base of fans, it was an overdue glimpse of the object of their affection. First up was the Venice Film Festival and the premiere of The King. There were clothes and Kid Cudi cameos and charming red-carpet interviews. It was an example of the sort of stretch, in the gaps between shoots, when Timothée could indulge his passions for hip-hop and fashion and all these things he'd loved all his life that were suddenly accessible. It was another of the delirious disorientations of the past few years—the way that people who were once subjects of his intense fandom were suddenly a part of his life as friends or acquaintances happy to have him around. He might still embarrass himself at times, helplessly rapping back lyrics to his hip-hop heroes or gushing like a broken dam about new music or clothes or art made by the makers in his life, but they were cool with him so long as he actually kept his cool.

Timothée also spent the end of last summer promoting The King, alongside his costar Lily-Rose Depp, whom he'd been dating for about a year. He is serious about keeping his former relationship with Depp to himself, but he did share one very sweet, very funny, very sad anecdote that encapsulates the spectrum of great and terrible that accompanies the private life of someone new to mega-fame like Timothée.

After Venice, he and Lily-Rose took a few days for themselves in Capri, where they were photographed by paparazzi. One image, in particular, circulated in which they were making out on the deck of a boat. Timothée is contorting himself into the kiss and looks a little awkward. Many people had their laughs. And some even suggested that the photo was staged for publicity. “I went to bed that night thinking that was one of the best days of my life,” Timothée told me. “I was on this boat all day with someone I really loved, and closing my eyes, I was like, indisputably, ‘That was great.’ And then waking up to all these pictures, and feeling embarrassed, and looking like a real nob? All pale? And then people are like: This is a P.R. stunt. A P.R. stunt?! Do you think I'd want to look like that in front of all of you?!”

This was how things worked now. He'd disappeared into those four straight films and emerged into a new paradigm—one that followed him into the holiday season of last year and a whole new level of exposure with Little Women. Here was this film about sisterhood, female intimacy, and a feminist critique of art and commerce. And yet Timothée was still the shiniest object in the set for so many fans. “I'm very used to answering questions about Timothée's hair from 15-year-old girls,” Saoirse Ronan joked with me. “I imagine that's probably what you're going to ask me about?”

Ronan has the unique perspective of having filmed and then promoted two movies with Chalamet during the past three years, and has as clear an eye as anyone onto this early phase of his career. “He's had such incredible opportunities, and he doesn't let the reality of that pass him by,” she said. “He's incredibly gracious and grateful in relation to his work and the people he works with. I think he's become more open as an actor. He knows his instrument more. I think he works even harder now because there are projects that are on his shoulders in a way that they weren't before. And of course he's been totally catapulted into this whole other realm of attention and notoriety. So he's also having to balance the incredible fame and attention, which would completely freak me out if it was something I had to go through.”

.

“I've realized that as much as these heroes of mine mean to me, and as grateful as I am when they offer me advice, even they acknowledge it's just a different thing now.”

When Timothée and I were sitting by the Hudson that afternoon back in summer, there were those two young women who approached him for a photo. But there were also two other young women who caught an eyeful of his profile as they strolled by and then surreptitiously positioned themselves out of his sight line but still in mine. They did that thing where one pretends to take a picture of the other while actually shooting back over her shoulder in selfie mode. That charade went on for five minutes or so while Timothée exercised his guts about reuniting with Gerwig and Ronan on Little Women, and though I was nodding along, I was also marveling at the lengths to which those two fans were willing to go to get a picture of him.

I asked Ronan what she's noticed about that level of attention, sitting beside him for so much of it. “I'm always kind of shocked by those things—when any one person can just completely take over people's lives so much,” she said, laughing a little incredulously. “But I'm also not surprised. There just aren't many other young male actors out there like him, who are able to hold an audience in the way that he does. His look is so magnetic and beautiful. One of the things that we spoke about a lot when we were doing Little Women, in terms of our characters, but also in terms of myself and him as people, is that we both have this masculinity and femininity equally. And I think that that's one of his strengths, is that he can be incredibly sort of feminine and sensitive and sensual, and also he's a guy that, you know, girls fancy. So he covers so much ground in terms of popularity. But at the end of the day, he's always gonna have this skill. He can be cute, but that only gets you so far.… And so I've seen him learn how to separate himself from all that other stuff when he's on set, when he's working.”

In Woodstock, Timothée had described to me with greatest admiration the way that Ronan can act in these films, at this highest level of acclaim and attention, but also remove herself, uncomplicatedly, from all the fuss: “She is like a superhero when it comes to this sort of thing, going through it so healthy—with the asterisk being excellent work across the board and four Oscar nominations. I think her, like, DNA of self is really morally right.” She knows herself extremely well, he said, and has the confidence to give up only so much of herself. Whereas he feels he is calibrating constantly how much of his true self to reveal. “Saoirse's one of my best friends in the world—at least I think we're best friends. And she's never judged me for…the Coachella of it all.” That is, the part of him that can't resist fanning out backstage with his favorite musicians or occasionally allowing himself to be in the spotlight even as he talks about preserving his privacy.

“He's 24, and he's gonna have a great time, and I would never judge him. I've been to Coachella; I just never got photographed at Coachella,” Ronan said, chuckling. “But yeah, we talk about that sort of stuff all the time. We've weirdly gone through this together for the last few years. We've both become more accessible. But he's had one sort of attention—I do feel like boys get it on a whole other level. I know that ultimately what he wants is to be good at his job. And that will always steer him on the right path. I've always let him know, and he's always let me know, we can talk to each other, and we do. He has good people around him, and I'm one of them, and Greta as well—we all kind of look out for one another.”

Timothée spent late May and early June asking questions of himself: What can I do? What is my role in all this? He felt conflicted when he sprang to action and conflicted when he stood still. But never did things feel less uncertain, less self-conscious, than when he was marching, anonymously, alongside hundreds or thousands of others in Los Angeles in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. It was an active way to participate—meaningful action, without being showy, without flexing any of the levers of fame or power. He was going to get hit no matter what he did, so he tried to follow his instincts of what felt humble, responsible, right.

“This idea,” he said, “that power is the mass body politic organized—and how many bodies can you get together—that makes sense to me.” He didn't disappear but, rather, stripped himself of his him-ness and became one body, among many, taking up space and participating in an unequivocal statement. “With a mask, a hood, a hat, glasses—my face is deleted,” he explained, “and I'm literally presenting a physical form, you know?” A single body in space that, like a vote cast in an election, is democracy embodied, but anonymous. The same unit of power as anyone else. “People might find it disingenuous, but I found it really grounding,” he said. “It was Oh shit, I don't feel out of place—and yet I haven't been in a crowd like this for years.”

He spent much of the summer talking with others about how a person should be in a cultural and political moment such as this one. “After a day of protests,” he said, “I'd ask friends if they ‘felt good.’ If we do, is it a good thing to feel good, or does that mean we're doing it for the wrong reasons? How much do I want to put on social media? Is it a virtue signal to put it on social media? But all social media is performative, right?” I heard him ask dozens of self-interrogating questions like these. He cares so genuinely about doing the right thing, about doing well by his family, his friends, and his fans. But he didn't want to misuse his privilege or his platform, to overreach so that the gravity of his fame sucked up anything from anyone else whose moment it was to speak. He didn't want to take up room; he wanted to help center other voices. On Instagram, he posted videos each day during the first week of marches in Los Angeles—no directives into camera, just an implicit charge to his followers: Show up. Listen. Be a body.

“I have so many thoughts on so much of it,” he said, “but I don't see the benefit of putting it down for consumption until I've really worked out exactly how I feel about it all. Who benefits from my half-baked ideas?” Who cannot relate to this in 2020? Who would want any of their dinnertime conversations with family and friends these past months chiseled into the stone of the internet? “I care so much about this stuff. But I would never want my caring to be misconstrued. I don't want my caring to be about me in any way.”

God, this stuff twisted him up. He knows how much has gone his way. But from the summit of good fortune and power, is it better to speak constantly—or to shut up, put on the glasses, pull down the hood, and live and act according to one's convictions as one individual among many individuals? To march. To vote. To speak through action rather than words. Staying in motion, showing up, being a body—it's a good place to start while he works out the rest of how he's meant to live a life true to his values with everyone watching.

He's seeking out the right path, the right people—with help from his “intergenerational peers” and Dylan and anyone else he can find. He wants the benefit of their knowledge and experience, and he's okay if it's slow going to accrue it. He's open to playing the role of the novice still. But there have also been things in his life these past of couple years that have made him realize, as he puts it, “adults are just kids a little bit older.” When he returned to New York from Los Angeles this summer, it wasn't to his childhood apartment or to a borrowed living space of an acquaintance. It was to his very own apartment, his first, in a little wedge of Manhattan he loved for being nowhere, but on the edge of several somewheres. He relished the mundanity of setting up his own place. To hear him talk about a first trip to CB2 was like hearing another person talk about their first trip to a movie set. “But I think if people saw what my apartment looked like, they'd be like, ‘Oh! This kid has no fucking clue what he's doing.’ ” He is so young and he is so old. It is his gift. He is so patient when he can suppress being so restless. So careful with the long arc of a career when he can resist obsessing over the instant. He is so confident when he centers on the work and so searching when he gets sucked down into questions about the rest of his life. Will he always be this way? This pliable and open? This self-reflective and intentional? He trusted so little of his new life, but he trusted his talent. That was the key. He knew he was as good as anyone at playing other people, even if he was still figuring out how to play himself.

We spent a good amount of time in Woodstock and in New York City and on the phone talking about where his career might take him from here. With great humility, he acknowledges his skill. But he has been thinking a lot about the difference between preternatural talent and mastery—the work that's required to ascend from that floor of young greatness to the ceiling of realized potential. That said, he's wise enough to know that his career could pivot in an entirely different direction—that the world could change or the opportunities could dry up or “eventually there's gonna be an Oscar Isaac in his 30s who's gonna bust out of Juilliard who's gonna be the next great actor and make me feel like a piece of shit. But right now…”

He told me, “If I get hit by a truck next week, I'm looking at 20 to 23, I don't know if you can top that.” To show up with Call Me by Your Name—he knows that that film was a unicorn, the sort an actor works his whole life to find. And the immediate Oscar nomination had freed him up to not spend the rest of his career chasing a certain kind of role that might lead to a certain kind of validation. “I'm not gonna be bashing my head against a wall trying to prove that I'm an actor,” he said. “The train can run over my leg and leave a track forever, and yet the point of entry for me…,” he said, trailing. “That's a good feeling.”

He looks at all these careers—all the careers you might expect: DiCaprio, Bale, Phoenix, Depp. And he does his best to separate the strands of each of their careers that might still apply to his. But all of the rules for acting success that those performers played by, for how to be in the public eye, for career arcs and longevity—those rules are irrelevant now. Hollywood is different, the media is different, fans are different, movies are different, the world is different. “I've realized that as much as these heroes of mine mean to me, and as grateful as I am when they offer me advice, even they acknowledge it's just a different thing now.”

And so it's occurring to him that the next few years will be Timothée finding the path that's right for him. Lately, he's thought about this next phase as shining a flashlight into the dark. There are potential projects that excite him considerably, some of which he's had a greater hand in engineering. There is, of course, the Dylan movie. But there's the question of how to spend the rest of the year, when most Hollywood productions are still paused. “The rest of the year,” he says, “I'm just thinking about Trump, man.” But after that…maybe Europe for a while? The Woodstock experiment did what he'd hoped it would—a little space, somewhere else. He would love to just breathe some different air again.

He was at another pivot point, as he had been when he and I were first together for Chapter 1. In the winter of 2018, the work had been validated, the public profile had developed suddenly. But the temptations, the confusion, the money—those were all lagging indicators. By mid-2020, all had caught up. And the money, in particular, was on his mind one afternoon in New York. We were talking about how a person might stay true to one's roots with that sort of thing when the reality, for him at least, had changed with Dune. I told him that one of the things that seemed to differentiate him from young stars of the past, and perhaps was a feature of his generation, was the way that material possessions didn't consume him. He didn't buy much stuff. He didn't own a car or a house. He liked borrowing clothes, but not necessarily keeping them. He agreed with the characterization, but then got immediately twisted up about a potential future hypocrisy: “But Dan, what if I do grow to like fancy shit?!”

Boomeranging back home after the surreal adventures out in the world—that was a good and grounding thing for him. Over the weeks we were talking, he spent time with his folks, delivered some COVID groceries to his grandma, and was in touch with his sister daily. And in New York, he and I kept running into ghosts. One afternoon, when we crossed the West Side Highway at Houston Street, he gestured at the athletic complex at Pier 40, where he played soccer growing up. He scampered over to a vending machine there to grab a bottle of water. When he pulled open his wallet to pay, he had only twenties. “Bad metaphor! Bad metaphor!” he screamed, jumping away from the vending machine, as though it were one of the great threats to his selfhood. This was the sort of innocuous moment that will hum with outsize resonance for me when I think about Chapter 2 from the future. All the things that one would expect to happen had happened in the first two and a half years since the arrival of a comet, and yet he was suspicious of so much of it.

Here is another way I will remember him from this moment: sitting on that porch in Woodstock—breeze and birds in the trees, sunlight in the leaves—looking for a higher power. Or at least expressing openness, as a nonreligious person, to the idea of some central organizing force in the universe—because, given everything lately, there has to be or we're fucked, right? Some of these searching things he said to me could be mistaken as a person spinning out a little. But that wasn't it at all. There was such calm. There was such contentment with the grace that had been afforded his life and career thus far, and where each might take him next. He was questing, yes—but he was firmly at the controls. The flashlight in the dark. Someone moving forward with great confidence into the unknown, with eyes wide, mouth shut, and ears listening more than they ever had before. There were no models for how a person like him should be anymore. There were no longer any adults who weren't just kids a little bit older. There were no blueprints for how to shape a career—so much had changed. There was only a head and a heart, his, and a feeling for the moment. “Maybe I'll never do a great work of art again, but I just feel like I'm confident in the way I'm trying to approach things now, how I'm setting up the angles,” he said on that porch in Woodstock. “When you think about Dylan. When you think about what Joel Coen said about the rapidness of the art, I'm just like: Trust the beat of your own drum. Give this its best shot. Give your artistry its best shot.”

.

Daniel Riley is a GQ correspondent and the author of ‘Barcelona Days,’ which was published this past summer.

A version of this story originally appears in the November 2020 issue with the title "Wild Heart."

PRODUCTION CREDITS: Photographs by Renell Medrano Styled by Mobolaji Dawodu Tailoring by Ksenia Golub Produced by Wei-Li Wang at Hudson Hill Production

[shibarirobot]

Aizawa fic - CH1 - Entrapment

+18 only

Shouta Aizawa x Villain!OC/Reader (?)

I’m going to do my best to keep this fic as ambiguous as possible so anyone can enjoy it. The first few chapters will be tamer to build intruig, but make no mistake this is going to get SPICY. It’s not exactly a reader insert, but I’m going to stay away from describing my lead character, apart from quirk abilities, to make it easy for those that enjoy a reader insert to lose themselves in this fic. 

That being said, this fic is centered around a villain who can manipulate electro magnetic frequencies, that’s pretty broad and I’m no science kid, but I’m fairly certain everything I have them do is plausable with this type of quirk, if you have any suggestions for how it could be used or if I have written something infactual to the ability feel free to message me or leave an anon. However, in a made up world of quirks and hot men, I’m not sure it really matters lol. Suspend your disbelief as they say. 

Anyways, enjoy.

~

Four o’clock rolls by so slowly I can feel myself aging. I look down at my watch for the fifth time in the last three minutes and let out a huff. 3:57. No time to start getting anxious. I push even the word anxiety out of my brain and take another deep breath, closing my eyes. Distancing myself mentally from the hum of drunken bar thoughts. This time trying to calm my slightly lifted heart rate as it now feels like time has sped up exponentially, I realize I have no time to take a smoke or even go to the bathroom. It’s about to happen. I look at my watch again and feel the lump in my throat drop to my stomach as I swallow my insecurities and pull my hand up to my hip, skimming my thigh as I go. I can feel this too, the weapon at my waistband that has been pressing hard against my skin and keeping my back rigid as I try to level my breathing. I make eye contact with a tall man across the room from me, already nursing a beer before 4 pm and for a brief moment the air is still, latent energy pooling around me as I suck in another breath and force myself onto my feet. I magnetize my voice and push it into their brains as the stagnant energy from before comes crashing down in waves around me. 

“Everybody on the floor! NOW!” I say it, but they feel it, they feel their brains being ripped in half by my voice. The splitting headache that I come to find familiar, comforting even, forced upon these self serving bystanders. The pulse behind my eyes reminds me I’m alive, if nothing more than in a physical sense I am still living. Ringing fills the air as I roar into them again, enjoying watching them all grip their temples and wobble as they start to lose their equilibrium. I’m effectively scrambling their brains and replacing what is left with my own force of will. “I… SAID… NOW!!!!” They drop to their knees, some flopping to the side, giving up fighting, they're all sheep. Fucking sheep that just do what they’re told. Fucking sheep that believe in heroes and laws, it’s all bullshit. Even these citizens know it, but they all fall in line anyways. Because it’s power that they obey. And right now, I have it. 

I lock eyes with the man from before and he tries to move to the door, still wobbly on his feet. I smirk a little at his attempt. There’s always one. Always a fool that tries to play hero. He wants to... what? Call for help? Prove he’s not weak? Make up for his otherwise lackluster life? I don't even try to stop him. He barely makes it two feet before the rest of my crew shows up, a power type goon pushing the hero wannabe to the ground in a matter of seconds, the other, deadbolting the door. He never stood a chance and I chuckle to myself, grinning wildly now. I hear a groan from the ground next to my foot and look down, a woman is curled up on her side, one hand grasping desperately at the side of her head, the other gripping the material at her stomach with white knuckles. Her lips are pale and there is a cold sweat dripping down the side of her forehead, tears gathering at the corners of her big doe eyes. She’s honestly quite beautiful and it makes the terror in her eyes that much more satisfying when she looks up at me and whimpers a small, desperate, “Please.”

I stare down at her for a moment and absorb the painting before me. Such raw emotion. True pain. I laugh again, whole heartedly as a chorus of groans erupt from my captive audience, my screeches drilling a hole in their skulls. They don't even know what pain is and they fold at the waist and buckle at the knees, this is just a taste and they can hardly stomach it. While I'm laughing, I wrench my leg back and kick the woman in the stomach. Hard. My boots are steel plated and weighted, 15 pounds each, so I know it hurts. “Stupid bitch! Haha!” She screams, coughs, then hurls. Vomit mixing into her hair. I kick her again then lean down and grab her by the jaw, rubbing hard circles into her cheek as I yank her forward by the neck. Her eyes had been closed, but they snapped open when I did that, the vomit in her hair making it stick to her face. “You look so pretty when you beg, shame it will get you nothing here.” Dropping her head back to the hard, tile floor as I rise, looking down on her in disgust. I spit on her cheek from above and survey the room, all eyes are on me. She starts crying and I kick her one last time for good measure, for her distraction. “Whore.” It falls from my lips and I almost feel bad, but then I don't. I don't feel bad for these people, she would have thought the same thing about me and smiled to my face, not knowing who I am, what I’m capable of. She would have been comfortable in doing so to know her thoughts were private. They wouldn’t have been. I would have heard her, as I’ve heard countless others. I shake my anger away in the moment, getting  back to business, now is not the time to let my emotions get the better of me. 

Everyone was hearing me before, but now that I’m focused my voice is poignant, rumbling in the back of everyone’s minds like distant thunder. Like the booming voice of god. In this moment, I might as well be god. “Enough theatrics. If anyone moves I will LIQUIFY your brains, got it?!” There’s a prickle of anxious realization in the room as they all come to terms with the fact that I can do it and have a clear disregard for any of their well being. “Good. Now be darling little hostages and lay there in agony while the big mean bad guys rob the place, ‘kay?” My voice had lost the murderous quality it once had as I start to talk to them how an owner would to a new puppy. Lovingly, but condescending. 

I now look back to my crew, all people I barely knew, hired hands to make my plan run smoothly, expendable, but crucial. I see they have sealed all exits and my muscle men are manning the door. Well, muscle people I should say. One is a hefty looking mutherfucker with steel brackets around his wrists and ankles. His muscles swell and retract like they're breathing, as if his muscle was an entirely different entity from his body. It’s mesmerizing and somewhat disturbing to watch. The other is a short, toned woman with a spiked, pink mohawk and a killer smile. Her teeth are sharp and platinum and she grins, chomping her jaw to herself. It makes a distinguishable ‘Clang Clang’ when her teeth lock into place with each other. 

Knowing they have the hostage situation handled, I make my way to the back of the bar. There is a door in the corner and I reach for the handle as I approach, but a wave of hesitation hits me as I do, something tells me to move away from the door. With a quick dodge, I leap backwards as the door explodes, a fist appearing at the center of the explosion. A hero. Dammit. I was hoping to get this over with before we had a chance for interference. I ‘tsk’ my tongue and toss a scowl over my shoulder. What’s the point of a hired lookout if they don’t even tell you when the ops are coming? When I look behind me I see my lookout, the only person I hired on a quirk specific level, toppled over with a dart in their neck. Fuck. They were supposed to see around corners in the getaway. My eyes scramble around the room to see where it came from but there’s no one, just a small crack in the window where I assume the dart broke through. Someone on the roof.

Frustration overtakes me and I scream up at the ceiling. What’s the point of planning if I have to do everything myself anyways? The scream ruptures into everyone’s thoughts. The civilians. The heroes. The other villains. They all feel my wrath. I stand and kick the hero that had just blasted through the door and my plans in one fell swoop. I've seen him on tv, he’s getting pretty famous, some new chump that can balloon his fists. He really thought a physical quirk could beat me? He grunts then goes slack, some hero. The ones that never get hit can never handle it when they eventually do. I step past his body and again past the debris of the door. There’s a small room back here with metal shelves on each wall and one in the middle forming three neat rows, pilled with bricks of gold, artifacts and a computer on a table in the back. There’s another hole in the wall across from the door, seems as if this loser busted through both walls just for a shitty sneak attack. Easy escape though. Rolling my eyes, I march past the gold and the shinies and dig a flash drive out of my pocket, shoving it into the USB port, it immediately starts glowing red. I kick the chair to the side and lean down, tapping the keys furiously as I transfer file after file to my drive and delete them from the computer's hard drive. When I’m done, I pull the drive from the port, not worrying about ejecting the drive. It will just have to deal. I straighten my jacket and brush the hair out of my face, leisurely strolling back to the hole in the wall. 

Something glints in the corner of my eye and my focus is shifted to a beautiful diamond necklace that has to be worth more money than I have ever seen in my entire life. I’m about to take another step when the urge to possess this object takes me over so abrasively I can't even think about ignoring it. My hand darts out to the necklace, making quick work of securing it around my neck. I slip a gold brick into my pocket as well, reveling in the thrill of theft. Unplanned theft that is. 

Now that I’m satisfied with myself, I continue my trek to the hole across where the door used to be, leading to the alley, ready to make my one person escape only to be confronted face to face with glowing red eyes, barred behind shuttered goggles. 

Thank you for reading my first chapter! I hope you have enjoyed it!

Maybe leave a like...? Just a thought XD

I will be updating this and adding it to AO3 as soon as I get an account (I’m on the waiting list). There will be a link availiable to my new AO3 and other content as soon as I have that ready. Thanks again! 

CH2

[calumance]

I have a request!! “This was my ex’s number but he changed it, sorry I keep calling when I’m drunk”

I love this so much. Also, I chose Calum, because Calum is my muse. Also, I’d love to keep this going, maybe turn it into a little series if y’all like it enough. Hope you like it!! Feedback and requests always welcomed!!!

           It was incredibly late on a Saturday night, to be technical, it was really early on a Sunday morning; Three thirty four to be exact. Calum had just gotten home from the party his friends were throwing. The party had lasted longer than he had thought it would, and Calum had stopped drinking a long time ago knowing that he had to drive home. When the door clicked shut, Duke came running up to him and he bent down to scratch his favorite spot behind his ears. As soon as Duke felt he had gotten enough scratches he ran back to his spot on the couch. Calum kicked off his shoes and threw his keys into the bowl next to the door. As he walked into the living room, his phone began ringing. His eyebrows stitched together as he tried to figure out who could be calling him at this time of night. Looking at the screen, it was a number he did not know, usually he ignored these types of calls, but why the hell not? “Hello?” He answered putting the speaker to his ear.

           It had been a rough few weeks, you had finally finished school, thinking that everything was going great, and then with a snap of your finger, everything started to fall apart. It was at your graduation party that your boyfriend decided to break up with you, in front of all your guests in probably the most embarrassing way possible. Now that’s it been a couple weeks since that happen, you’ve gotten to the second stage of grief: anger. The alcohol coursing through your veins did not make the anger subside in anyway. Your friends kept joking about taking your phone away, knowing you to be the type to make drunken phone calls, but they never did. Through your drunken haze, you hid in the bathroom and dialed the number you knew was his. When a male voice answered, you couldn’t help but to sob into the phone. “Why don’t you love me anymore?” You cried out, losing all sense of your internal filter.

           Calum ran his fingers over his eyebrows, maybe he shouldn’t have answered the call. “I’m sorry, I don’t know who this is. I don’t have this number saved in my phone. Could I have your name?” Calum remembered the night when he was partying with his friends and drunkenly dropped his phone. He was too drunk to even know he had dropped it, and apparently his friend was too hung over to notice it lying in his driveway. When Calum finally found his phone, it had been crushed under the tire of his friends car. With a sigh and a goodbye to his friends, he immediately drove to the store and got a new phone, and unfortunately a new number. Maybe this number was one that he hadn’t been able to save or transfer from the barely readable memory card in his old phone.

           The question rang through your ears. If you had been sober you would’ve known that the voice on the other end was not, in fact, your ex, but the alcoholic haze convinced you that it was. Hearing him say that your number was not saved in his phone made your blood boil. Sure, the breakup had been horrible, but he really deleted your number and moved on that quickly? Your quiet sobs, turned into absolutely hysterics. “What do you mean you don’t have my number saved? It’s only been three weeks, you really moved on that quickly, huh?” You could hear your friends footsteps quickly stomping down the hallway. You continued to yell through the phone as they all fought to get the door open.

           Calum sighed, “I think you have the wrong number, love. Maybe it’s time you go to bed, nothing good happens after two in the morning.” It’s true, nothing good happens that early in the morning, especially if you have been drinking. Calum learned that years ago, and tried to live by it, but somehow he always finds himself getting home after two in the morning. Just as quickly as the call started, there were voices in the background that quickly asked for the phone and then ended the call. Calum blinked a few times, trying to process what had just happened, before dropping his phone into his pocket and making a b-line to his bedroom.

           Being heart broken, and unemployed because the job market right out of college is incredulous, what else was there to do but get incredibly wasted every night? Every night your friends would come over to your apartment and check on you, and every night you would sneak away to the bathroom to make the same phone call. It always ended the same way, your friends kicking in the door and taking your phone to end the call. The mornings always started the same way, them telling you that he changed his number right before the break up and the number you were calling was his old number, but each night the alcohol would erase that memory and you would revert to the memory you had before everything went to shit. This continued for four days until you were tired of the ripping hangover and wanted to perk yourself back up. It was then that you looked through your call history and knew you had some explaining to do.

           For three days in a row, Calum would answer the phone calls, not being one to have a fantastic sleep schedule because of touring. Never once did he get a name, but by the third time, he was starting to feel a weird sense of continuity from these calls. In a weird way, he enjoyed them, enjoyed hearing the drunken slurs on the other end, and always got a good chuckle out of the sound of the door being kicked in and the barely audible fight for the phone. They made him smile, but when he woke up the following morning, he always started to think he was going insane finding pleasure in wrong-number drunk dials. It wasn’t until the same number called him the afternoon after the fourth call and a smile lit up his face, that he was sure he was insane. “Hello?” He answered, wiping the smile from his face.

           “Uh, hi,” You said to the voice. Being completely sober you suddenly felt like an idiot thinking that voice sounded anything like your ex. This voice had an accent, and your ex was by every stereotype, American. You dropped your face into your hand that wasn’t holding the phone, “I think I have a bit of explaining to do, I went through a really rough break up a couple weeks ago, and have been kind of leaning towards alcohol for support. My friends tell me every day that I keep trying to call my ex, but every day I erase that and continue to call, uh, you.” A chuckle escaped your throat as you realize just how silly you sound. “Long story short, this was my ex’s number, but he changed it, I’m sorry I keep calling when I’m drunk.” The embarrassment was eating away at you, wanting to smash your phone into a million pieces so that this would end, but the soft laugh on the other end caused the anxiety in your chest to dissipate.

           Calum couldn’t help but laugh, because although that’s kind of what he had gathered, he still wasn’t sure why this number kept calling him. “It’s alright, I actually don’t mind talking to you, even if you’re drunk. My name’s Calum, by the way.” There was a soft sigh on the other end of the line as the familiar voice told him their name. “It’s nice to put a name to the voice. I’m sorry to hear about your break up.”

           Your heart clenched, but there was a feeling of security in the voice on the other end. Maybe you weren’t going to completely forget this phone number, “It’s alright, I don’t think it would’ve hit so hard if it didn’t come along with some other shitty things.” Calum laughed and agreed, then there was silence. You ran your hand along the back of your neck and cleared your throat. “Do you mind if I save your number? I know that sounds insane, but you kind if helped me through a lot, without you really knowing.” You were sure you had lost your mind now.

           Calum smiled to himself, feeling the insecurity of enjoying these phone calls wash away. He sat up on the couch and bounced his leg, “Yeah, I’d love to keep talking with you.”

[imagine-avengers]

Biker Part Ten- Bucky Barnes Series

10/10 This is part ten of my Biker Bucky series. The previous parts can be found on my masterlist. This is the end of this series as I struggled to find a way to wrap it up, not to mention the fact that this story ended up deleted before I could share it and I spent two hours trying to recover it, thankfully I did. It wrapped up kinda shittily in my opinion but it’s the best I could do.

Elizabeth woke up around eleven the next morning, with a groan, her head throbbing. Sitting up on the brown leather couch, Elizabeth looked around before noticing the aspirin sitting on the table and a glass of water next to it. Elizabeth took the aspirin before heading out to the front of the bar where Natasha was cleaning the counter.

“You look rough.” Natasha spoke as Elizabeth ended up behind the bar, grabbing the coffee pot.

“Fuck off Natasha.” Elizabeth spoke with a roll of her eyes. “Why did you let me drink so much?” She asked leaning against the counter and taking a drink of her coffee.

“Babe, I tried to take the vodka and you bit me. Hell, Barnes had to carry you to the office, just so you’d sleep.” She spoke as Elizabeth groaned.

“Where is he anyways?” Elizabeth asked looking around, there were a few of the members around.

“He had to meet with Rebecca, it’s Saturday, they have breakfast on Sunday’s, you know that.” Natasha spoke.

“Wait, so he left me sleeping on the couch instead of taking me home?” Elizabeth asked finishing her coffee.

“Babe, there was no taking you home, but yes he did leave you on the couch, he only left you because you threw a pillow at his face and told him to fuck off.” Elizabeth shook her head and poured another coffee.

“That’s never stopped him from waking me up before.” She spoke taking a drink of her second cup of coffee. “Bastard.” Elizabeth mumbled. “I’m going to sit here and pout before heading home. I have some stuff to do around the house.” Elizabeth spoke moving around the counter and sitting on a stool. Elizabeth and Natasha sat around talking for another hour before Elizabeth found her shoes and coat. “Hey Nat, have you seen my keys?” Elizabeth asked entering the front of the bar again.

“Oh, um, Bucky took them yesterday, probably still has them in his pocket.” Natasha shrugged.

“You’re kidding? He has my keys?” Elizabeth shook her head. “He’s at the diner?” Nat nodded and Elizabeth turned storming out and walking the twenty minutes to the small diner. “James.” Elizabeth spoke upon seeing him and Rebecca sitting at a table, both a plate of food and coffee in front of them. “Keys.” She spoke holding her hand out.

“No.” Bucky spoke taking a drink of his coffee.

“James, I need my keys.” She rested her hands on her hips and glaring at him. “Hello Rebecca.” Elizabeth spoke. “Give me my keys or I’m walking home, you’re already in trouble for leaving me asleep in the bar.”

“I’m not giving you your keys babe.” Bucky smirked up at her.

“Fine.” Elizabeth exited the diner and began walking towards her home. Elizabeth wasn’t walking five minutes before Bucky was pulling up on his bike next to her.

“Get on, I’ll take you to get the truck.” Elizabeth glared at him before taking the helmet and climbing onto the bike. “Fine, but I’m still mad at you.” Elizabeth spoke before Bucky began the drive back to the bar, stopping next to the truck.

“Hey,” Bucky grabbed onto her elbow softly. “I’m sorry about leaving you this morning, I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t not meet with Becca.”

“I know.” Elizabeth nodded. “Didn’t suck any less. Not to mention you also left me hanging last night. You have a lot of making up to do tomorrow darling.” Elizabeth spoke pressing a kiss to his lips.

“Why not tonight baby?” Bucky asked pulling her closer to him.

“Because I have work to do around the house my love and you would be a distraction. But I’ll call you tonight.” Elizabeth pressed a kiss to his lips before backing towards the truck. “You’re still in trouble though.”

 Elizabeth spent the afternoon around the house, cleaning and mowing the back lawn, Steve having mowed her front the day before when he did his own and Peggy’s. Elizabeth had finally finished unpacking her office and got it set up with medical supplies and a small twin sized bed for when she had guests. It was almost eight when she heard knocking downstairs at her front door.

“Hold on, I’m coming!” She yelled as she moved down the stairs, some boxes still littering it as she had gotten a delivery of medical supplies. The knocking continued as Elizabeth tripped over a box of gauze. “Fuck.” She mumbled before pulling open the door, standing on the doorstep was Bucky staring at the Chinese deliveryman. “Hi.” She smiled at the young guy as she handed him the money. “Keep the change.” She took the bag of food off him and turned to Bucky. “James, I believe I told you I’d call you and that you weren’t coming over tonight.” She spoke as the delivery man walked back to his car.

“I thought you were joking.” Bucky spoke trying to come in but Elizabeth stood in the door not allowing him in. “You’re really not going to let me in?”

“No James.” Spoke the woman as she shifted on her feet. “I have to finish putting my medical supplies away and you’ll just distract me Buck.” Elizabeth spoke.

“At least allow me to join you for dinner.”

“No.” Elizabeth shook her head as Bucky gave her a pout. “Don’t give me that look James.” She stated as she set the bags of food on the table next to the door. “Do you remember this morning when you left me asleep on a sofa? Or how you blew me off for some shitty meeting that Steve could have handled?” Asked Elizabeth as Bucky rolled his eyes.

“It was my job Liz, I had to go, you know that.” Bucky stated attempting to walk into the house but Elizabeth held her hand up at him.

“James.” She spoke. “Don’t worry about it, okay? I’m just not in the hosting mood, I’ve got some stuff to finish here and I do not need the distraction.” She told him. “But I promise you I will call you first thing in the morning.”

“I actually have some club stuff to do in the morning, but lunch?” He asked and Elizabeth nodded.

“Lunch.” She spoke.

“You sure I can’t come in?” Elizabeth stared at him for a minute before opening the door more.

“Fine, but only for dinner.” She pointed at him. Bucky did just that, he came in, stayed for dinner and a movie before leaving Elizabeth’s house around eleven.

The next few months passed in a blur, Elizabeth and Bucky got to a different point in their relationship, so much so that eventually Elizabeth moved into Bucky’s house, without even realizing it. It happened slowly, at first it was a few changes of clothes, a toothbrush, then it evolved into her soaps, shampoos, makeup, and even medical supplies laying around.

“Buck you home?” Liz heard Steve’s voice as she was getting out of the shower, pulling a towel around her body she headed downstairs.

“Steve.” She greeted standing on the landing of the stairs. “He ran to the store.” She told her friend whom shifted at seeing Elizabeth in only a towel.

“God Lizzie.” Steve groaned. “Can you at least put clothes on,” Steve paused as he watched Elizabeth run into the kitchen where she then proceeded to throw up in the sink. “You okay Lizzie?” Steve held her hair back as she continued throwing up.

“Yeah yeah.” She nodded rinsing her mouth and the sink out. “Sorry.” She mumble d as she cleaned the sink.

“What’s going on?” Elizabeth turned to him and smiled.

“I’m pregnant.” She said softly.

“You are? I thought,”

“We thought I couldn’t, but I’m almost four months,”

“We weren’t ready to tell anyone, punk.” Spoke Bucky as he came in through the back door. “You okay?” Bucky looked to his girlfriend who nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine Buck.” She gave a small smile. “I’m going to go get dressed.” She pressed a kiss to James’ cheek before smiling at Steve and heading upstairs.

Steve was the first of their friends to find out about her pregnancy, next was Peggy, whom found out because Steve couldn’t keep his big mouth shut. Next was Nat, when Elizabeth threw up in the sink at the bar from the smell of beer, then Clint, Thor, and Sam all found out when she was craving pickles and ice cream. Thus all their friends found out because Clint ran around screaming about it.

The two ended up having a son, Steven Buchanan Barnes, after both his Uncle and father. Three months after Stevie’s birth, Bucky proposed to Elizabeth and they eventually got married a year later. When Stevie was four Elizabeth had somehow ended up pregnant again thus, they had a daughter, Eloise Natalia Barnes. Eventually the two ended up selling Elizabeth’s parents’ house to Sam and Anne when they decided to move in together. When Stevie was seven and Eloise three, Elizabeth and Bucky decided they wanted one more child, so they spent the next year trying before eventually giving birth to another boy, this on being named after Bucky’s father, George Samuel Barnes, and his other best friend Sam. This completed the Barnes family, besides the numerous cats they had throughout the years.

 “Eloise leave your brother alone!” Elizabeth yelled at the thirteen-year-old as she was bugging her elder brother whom was flirting with Steve’s daughter, Lisa, whom was a year younger than Stevie, whom was now seventeen.

“Where’s George?” Bucky asked coming into the backyard that was in full swing with the Saturday barbecue.

“He was hanging out with Sam and Rylie.” Spoke Elizabeth, speaking of Sam and Anne’s son Rylie whom was the same age as their ten-year-old son.

“Like old times.” Steve spoke stepping up next to Bucky and Elizabeth, whilst handing them both a beer.

“No thanks.” Elizabeth waved Steve off who raised a brow at her.

“No way.” Steve shook his head at her and Bucky. “You must have super sperm man, she wasn’t supposed to even be able to get pregnant and now she’s gonna have four kids total.”

“Miracles.” Bucky shrugged taking a drink of his beer, a smirk adorning his face.

“You’re pregnant?” Elizabeth heard Eloise asked as George and Stevie looked to Elizabeth and Bucky.

“Fucks sake!” Stevie groaned. “How many of us do you want to have woman!?”

“Watch your tongue Steven.” Bucky told his son pointedly.

“Surprise!” Elizabeth grinned at the group of bikers and family that stood in her backyard. Little did Elizabeth or Bucky know, but this time they’d be having twins, two boys, Johnathan Victor Barnes and Thomas Edward Barnes, and the Barnes family couldn’t be happier with the way their lives turned out.

Stevie ended up leaving Brooklyn and going to college and getting a degree in biology, eventually becoming a microbiologist and moved to Los Angeles where he ended up having Lisa move in with him, the two marrying at twenty five. Eloise ended up going to NYU and getting a nursing degree like her mother, before moving back to Brooklyn where she eventually settled down with Clint’s son Nathaniel. George and Rylie took over the club when Bucky and Steve decided to step down, George also met a girl, Jessica, and the two were very hot and heavy, resulting in a couple of kids before they married. Johnathan and Thomas both left Brooklyn when they turned eighteen, to join the military, both serving a few tours and settling down with spouses of their own. Johnathan married a lawyer, Kayla, and they chose not to have children. Then Thomas married a man, Carver, and they adopted two boys, Jason, and Evan.

Elizabeth and Bucky stayed in their home for years to come, eventually giving it to George, as he had five children of his own, Addison, Mackenzie, Joseph, James the third, and Lucas. The two moved into a smaller home and lived out the remainder of their lives surrounded by family, which is all either of them could ever really ask.

[doom-dreaming]

“Dear Digital Diary”

I finally finished it! So this is my fic for @shanblackwood - as part of a trade (that beautiful bloody monstery boy from a while back). It got much longer than I was expecting, so most of it is under the cut. There’s a lot of pining, a little bit of smut, and copious amounts of fluff. (I hope it’s everything you wanted!!)

(Read it on Ao3 here!)

- - - - - - - - - -

“Oh fuck, we’re gonna have to retake that—” He grins briefly at the camera, all sharp white teeth and sparkling eyes, before ducking his head, laughing.

Your heart skips a beat. You rewind. Pause. It feels like that smile is for you. Like those pale blue eyes are looking directly into yours. You take a screenshot. It joins the other thousands in the folder labeled ‘outtakes.’ You think it sounded innocuous enough.

Not that either of them ever go through your files—you’re one of the few people they trust. They have no reason not to. You’re just the video editor, after all. They’re the faces on the screen. They’re the voices on the radio. You’re not much more than a useful tool to them.

You press play. “—have to retake that—” A few keystrokes, a few clicks, remove the clip from the rest of the recording. ‘>DELETE or SAVE?’ the screen prompts.

Keystroke. >SAVE  Click.

- - - - - - - - - -

“How do you always manage to fuck these up?” Tyreen sounds incredulous, but not angry. She punches Troy’s arm and he jumps away with an exaggerated yelp, then smiles. It’s equal parts dazzling and dangerous.

Your heart does a little flip as you play it back in slow motion. >SAVE

The next one is Tyreen’s. She mispronounces a word. “What’s that about me fucking up?” Troy teases, repeating her slip-up in a mocking tone. “Shut it, asshole.” Again, not angry. Playful. He sticks out his tongue at her. Laughs through a grin.

You cut the footage. ‘>DELETE or SAVE?’ Your hand hovers over the keys. >DELETE Click. You attempt to distract yourself with the rest of the video. Anything to keep from thinking about that slick pink tongue on your neck, between your lips...between your thighs.

Three hours later, you pause with your cursor over the power menu. Instead, you nudge it toward the little trash icon. Click. Click. ‘RESTORE TO “outtakes”? >YES   NO’ Click.

- - - - - - - - - -

It’s late. Your work had been easy, for the most part. Just fixing pacing, sound and color correction, little things. The twins had stayed professional—well, as professional as they could be, which wasn’t saying much. But they’d gotten their point across with minimal mistakes.

All except for the few minutes before the cameras started rolling when Troy had decided to sing. You’d never heard it before—the song—but you rewound and replayed it so many times that you knew the words by the time you finally forced yourself to move on. After cutting and saving the clip, of course.

He hadn’t been trying to put on a show. He hadn’t even been particularly loud—you had to adjust the volume and bump down the ambient noise to even make out most of it—he was just...singing for the sake of it. Fixing his hair, his eyeliner… ...singing. The usual frantic beat of your heart had settled into a gentle flutter—not the typical reaction when you saw him.

And now you’re leaned back in your chair, watching it again. His eyes are unfocused, distant, but not troubled. He seems calm. Content. That cloying warmth is wrapping itself around your heart again. You find yourself wishing you could touch him. You want to reach through the screen and run your hand through his hair. Trace his jawline. Kiss him. You want to feel him murmuring those lyrics against your lips, humming into your mouth—

You shove your chair away from your desk. Run your hands through your hair. Sigh and close your eyes and shake your head. You can’t do this. You absolutely can’t let yourself feel this. Sooner or later, it’ll start affecting your work, and if you give anything less than what the twins expect—if you’re not useful anymore—

You stand. Close the video. Turn off your monitor. Go to bed. But not even sleep lets you escape from visions of his hands on your body, his mouth on your neck, his whispered words in your ear.

- - - - - - - - - -

You wake the next morning to the insistent ‘ping’ of your ECHOcomm. More work. Well, that’s a good sign.

Your breath stops—no, it feels more like it’s punched out of you—when you see the name of the sender. That single, simple, four-letter name. Troy. Troy Calypso. You hate the way your fingers shake as you open the message. It’s semi-formal, all business, a simple request for more editing. He’s attached several files. More work, you reassure yourself. Just more work.

Still, it takes you the better part of an hour to finally sit down at your computer. But you do, armed with shitty coffee and a very fragile grasp on your willpower. Six videos. DOWNLOAD ALL? >YES   NO Click. You try not to watch the progress bar.

Why in the hell do you feel like this? Sure, you’d always had a tiny crush on Troy—but so did a lot of people. They’d be stupid not to, you think. He’s tall and toned and dangerous and confident...and those eyes... You sip at your coffee, grimacing against the half-burnt aftertaste. This crush is getting out of hand, that’s your problem. And it’d come completely out of left field, too. Day one was, ‘oh, he’s cute,’ and now… Well, now you were here. Working yourself into a frenzy over the sight of his goddamn name.

A chime sounds, announcing the download’s completion. You gulp down the rest of the coffee, crush the flimsy cup in your hand, and start clicking. You recognize the setup from the thumbnails alone. New gun reveals. Some of the tension drains from your body. These are something you can handle. Granted, they’re more candid than the usual broadcasts, but they’re still not as personal as you’d been expecting. You fight back the wave of disappointment, rationalizing it away. Telling yourself it’s for the best.

“Hey, ECHOnet, it’s your favorite twin, with another shipment of kickass guns! Tyreen had something “super important” to do—” You smile as he claws the quotation marks into the air. “—so you get me all to yourselves…” He winks. Your heart flips. “Okay! So let’s jump right in—” He makes a face. Cocks an eyebrow. “Jump? Dive? Feels like I need something better than “let’s get started”—” More air quotes. “That just sounds lame.” He sighs and rolls his eyes.

“Your voice makes anything sound good,” you murmur to the screen. He sits in silence for a minute, chewing on his bottom lip, looking lost. The urge to reach out and touch him comes back, even stronger than before. And then the vulnerability is gone, replaced by the cocky, carefully-crafted mask of charisma and confidence that everyone else assumes is normal. “Okay! So let’s break down these new guns! First up, we have…”

Pause. Rewind. Click, click, click. >SAVE Play.

The rest of the video goes more smoothly, as do the next three. Not much to cut, even less to keep for yourself. You continue to fight back the disappointment. Two left. Just two more and you can distract yourself for (hopefully) the rest of the day—

The fifth video catches you off guard. It’s...not a gun haul. It’s not set up in a studio. It’s dark, but there’s enough ambient light to make out shapes. It looks like it’s been filmed from a personal recorder and…

Troy’s face slides into the frame and he’s grinning, looking happier—and more devious—than you’ve ever seen. “Ty’s asleep…” It pans away, toward a vague shape across the dark room, before flipping back to Troy. You realize he’s the one filming it. “...and, uh...the new skag puppies are harmless right now, so…thought I’d play a little prank on her…” He creeps closer, quieter than you would’ve assumed, keeping the camera trained on the bed where Tyreen’s sleeping, clinging to a pillow and… You adjust the volume. ...yeah, she’s definitely snoring.

An odd feeling washes over you. For the first time, you feel as though you’re intruding into something you shouldn’t be seeing. The twins, your gods, are so...human. Granted, you’re smarter and saner than the majority of your peers—you know about sirens and relics and everything that could feasibly give them the illusion of divinity, but this still feels nigh-sacrilegious. He couldn’t have meant to send this…could he? You watch it anyway.

He holds up some sort of treat, then makes a show of placing it on the bed. After a few minutes, both the bed and Tyreen are practically covered and he’s retreating to the doorway, stifling involuntary laughter behind his free hand. You find yourself smiling along with him. “...gonna go release the hounds,” he announces as soon as he’s a safe distance down the hall, although the giggle that follows completely negates any sense of drama. Your stomach curls around itself in a funny twist.

The camera shakes horribly as he jogs across the compound, but you’re glad you don’t speed through it. “Goin’ to see the babies,” he sing-songs to himself once the skag pens start to come into focus. You swear your heart almost explodes. How the fuck is he...like this? Does anyone else see this, aside from Tyreen? Do they know their god is so...sweet?

He whistles as he approaches. The reaction is immediate. A litter of skag pups bowls out of the nearest den, tripping over each other and their own legs, yipping and growling. The camera dips—you assume Troy's kneeling. “Hey, killers...heh, yeah, hey…” He's laughing, scratching at their heads, letting them snap at his fingers. “Oh! You’re gettin’ big, Pepper. Yeah, not really the baby anymore, huh? Wanna go play with Ty? Yeah?” There’s a lower growl, somewhere offscreen. “Easy, big girl… I promise I’ll bring ‘em back.” With that reassurance, he opens the gate.

The remaining three minutes of footage go exactly as expected, in a flurry of hungry skag pups, laughter, cursing, and a few death threats from Tyreen. You watch, awestruck. They’re so playful, so normal. Again, so human. Innocent, almost. The video ends with a mad scramble for the recorder, from which Tyreen emerges victorious. The screen zaps to black, cutting her stream of half-sincere verbal abuse off mid-sentence.

You stare at the replay symbol, vaguely aware of your reflection in the monitor. They wouldn’t know if you kept a copy...would they? Click. Click. Click-click. You name the duplicate something inconspicuous. Not that they’ll go looking for it. ...but just in case.

Steeling yourself, though you’re not sure exactly what for, you click on the last video. The name doesn’t give anything away, none of them do—they’re all titled by filming date—and you can’t make anything out from the thumbnail, but you’re expecting another haul. Surely the personal recording was included by mistake— ...it’s some sort of reaction video. Troy’s own computer screen is the focus. His webcam feed is in the upper right corner.

“Probably gonna regret this…” he mutters. “But what the hell. Okay! The “horny for Troy” chat is officially open!” You pause. Rewind. No...you'd definitely heard him right the first time. “I want you to know you're all sluts.” He shoots a saccharine grin at his webcam. You feel the faintest twinge of guilt. “First question, here we go. ‘Starting with the obvious’—ooh, watch that confidence, fucker—’dom or sub?’ Okay, listen—” The smirk on his lips betrays his dramatic sigh. “These collars?” He yanks on the metal loop with one finger. “Not just for the aesthetic. But truthfully, I can do both. Next question.”

You fidget, acutely aware of how hot everything feels. Your head. Your hands. Your thighs. It's as if half the blood in your body rushed north and the other half rushed south. It's fluid, fiery, desperate. You toss your headphones onto the desk. Push your chair back. Rake your fingers through your hair.

You imagine they're his. Gripping your head as he kisses you, forcing his tongue between your lips, claiming you, marking you. You're mine, he'd growl. The words would rattle through your ribs, filling you up, making you believe them. And in that moment, they’d be true. Just you. Just him—

NO. You have to control yourself. It's not professional, it's not right. Whether or not he meant to send this doesn't matter. It doesn’t justify…

You glance back at the screen. You wish you hadn’t, because your fleeting fit of common sense dissipates as soon as you see the blush on Troy’s face. It’s deep red, beautiful against his skin, splashed across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He’s laughing about something, reaching back to rub at his neck, looking down, long eyelashes fluttering almost shyly—

CLICK. That’s all it takes. A single, swift, definitive motion. The window closes. Your flustered reflection stares back at you. Your heavy pulse taunts you. Your arousal mocks you.

You ignore all of it. With more self-control than you've been able to manage recently, you load the edited videos onto a new drive. You'll deliver them yourself. Maybe that will keep the fantasies at bay for a while. Maybe.

- - - - - - - - - -

You find him in the antechamber of the throne room. Not the most private place, but maybe that's for the best. It was always funny to you, how your reactions mellowed when you were actually, physically close to him. It was a blessing, you supposed. You doubted you'd have a job if you turned into an incoherent, fumbling mess whenever you looked at him.

“You could have just sent them back,” he mutters, plucking the microdrives from your hands. “But whatever. Thanks.”

You nod, though he probably misses it as he turns to look back through the door to the throne room. Tyreen is readying for a hearing. You chew your lip, unsure how to broach the subject really on your mind. To hell with it. “Did you mean to send—?”

“Shit.” His focus returns to you. “You got more than the gun hauls, huh?”

“...yeah. I didn't do anything to them.” It isn't a lie. The original videos are still intact.

“But...you watched them?” One eyebrow quirks. He doesn't seem angry.

You nod. And take a risk. “They were kind of endearing.” You keep your completely unprofessional reactions to yourself.

He huffs a soft laugh. “Don’t hear that a lot.”

“Troy!” Tyreen’s voice barks from the throne room. It cuts into the air between the two of you. “C’mon!”

He rolls his eyes and pockets the microdrives. “Thanks again. Wish I could stick around to hear more of your compliments, but…” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Godhood calls.”

His bootsteps fade, leaving you alone with your racing thoughts and deceptively-calm heartbeat.

- - - - - - - - - -

The rest of the day is uneventful, you busy yourself with software updates and routine server maintenance. It’s easy, menial work, but it’s enough to keep your thoughts from wandering too far in any direction. Maybe you’d been right, maybe seeing Troy in person had been enough to take the edge off—

Your ECHO pings again and you nearly jump out of your skin. Meet me in Studio B. Troy. You read it again. And again. And once more to be sure. And then you obey.

Your heartbeat isn’t so calm this time. What does he want? Had you made a mistake? Said something wrong?

The studio is dim when you arrive, just a few low lights flicked on behind the booth. Troy’s waiting, his feet kicked up on the mixing desk, fiddling with his ECHO. The door creaks as you enter. You cringe.

“That was fast.”

“An order’s an order.”

He watches you for a long moment, then hums. “I’m not blind, you know.”

“I—” What? You know that, what is he—?

“Or stupid.” He stands, faster and more fluidly than you’re anticipating. In a second, he’s right in front of you. “I know exactly how you feel when you’re around me.” His voice has dropped to a whisper and your stubborn, stupid, misbehaving heart— “I hear the way your pulse skyrockets when you think about what you want me to do to you.”

You blink. Swallow. Is this actually happening? Warm, human fingers press under your chin, tilting your head, forcing you to look at him. There’s mischief dancing behind his pale eyes.

“Stop trying to hide it.”

“I—is that an order?”

His razor-sharp grin is enough of an answer. And then it happens. Those coy lips are pressed to yours. That hot, pink tongue that had invaded so many of your wet dreams is now invading your mouth. He’s gripping the back of your neck. Tugging at your hair. Moaning and growling and laughing—and the sounds are bouncing around your ribcage.

The surrealism of it all flips an interesting switch in your mind. In all your daydreams, every fantasy, you’d assumed you’d be paralyzed with shock in a situation like this. Frozen in awe and disbelief. Pliable and soft in his hands. Instead? You go wild.

All your actions blur into a haze of sensations. His teeth on your neck, biting deep, drawing blood. Your hands running over the sleek lines of muscle that define his body. The jagged tearing of cloth as something is ripped off. His knee between your legs. The world spinning as you’re lifted and pushed onto your back. You hardly notice the jabs of the knobs and switches on the instrument panel beneath you—your legs are wrapped around his hips and you’re clinging to him with all the strength you can muster.

Frantic, desperate fingers tug at your belt, slide inside you, curl forward. Stars bloom behind your eyes. You moan. He growls. Panted, breathless exclamations ricochet between you. Names are chanted, recited like prayers.

You’re wide open and ready for him by the time he thrusts up into you. Quick, needy. You move with him effortlessly, rocking up to meet his hips, digging your fingers into his back. All you can do is feel. Feel his body, feel his lips, feel his breath whispering over your neck as he leans down, pushing deeper. And finally—

It breaks. Tension releases. Heavy breaths mingle with sighs and feather-soft kisses. Bliss.

- - - - - - - - - -

You wake up groggy. Sore. Not naked, but you may as well have been because you know this feeling. You’d definitely had a good, thorough fucking. There isn’t enough fog in your brain to make you forget who’d done it, either. He knew how you felt and he’d… God damn, had he done something about it. You swear you can still feel the echoes of your orgasm throbbing between your legs and you wonder how long ago—

A brisk knock at the door nearly kills the mood. You scramble from your bed, praying that none of the...evidence...of your rendezvous would be apparent to whoever— It’s Troy. Heat blossoms in your face.

There’s a lazy, satisfied smirk on his lips. “Sleep okay?”

Fuck it. “Would’ve been better with you.” You don’t even attempt to maintain a normal pulse rate anymore.

His eyebrows arch. His smirk grows wider, showing teeth. The faintest hint of crimson colors his cheekbones. “Is that an invitation?”

You shrug. Keep cool! “If you want.”

He nods. Bites his lip. “I’ll, uh...keep that in mind. But, here, in the meantime…” He pulls a microdrive from his pocket and holds it out to you. “It’s not work, it’s…you’ll see.”

You take it, letting your fingers brush his palm. You don’t miss the way his blush spreads. Still so goddamn cute.

“I’ve gotta go, but...watch that tonight. Tell me what you think.”

“An order?”

He winks.

- - - - - - - - - -

You settle into your chair and load the microdrive. One file. Click-click.

You recognize the setup immediately. It’s Studio B. And there’s Troy. You’re fully expecting what comes next, but you still groan when you hear the door creak open and you step into view of the camera. Of course he’d filmed it. You’re not surprised in the least.

It’s...comforting, though, how you can allow yourself to watch this without trying to school your emotions. He’d made this for you. He’d given you what you wanted. He knew. You don’t stop—you don’t have to stop—yourself from curling up in your chair, biting your knuckles, blushing, and… ...yes, you’ll admit it—touching yourself while you watch.

The two of you look good from this angle. You don’t remember pushing his coat off, but there it goes, crumpling to the floor, revealing his bare back as he lifts you onto the table. From here, you can see his cybernetic spinal support, glowing with dim red light when he dips down to grind against you. You want to touch it. You’re surprised you didn’t. Maybe next time...

For once, the fantasy of there even being a “next time” fills you with warm hope. Unless you’ve been reading him wrong, he seems...interested. It makes you giddy. It makes you feel as though all of your initial reactions are justified. Now that you know he’s reciprocating.

You feel like you’re dreaming, watching all of this play out on the screen. Those are your hands scratching red lines down his shoulder blades. Your limbs tangled with his, wrapped around him. Your body moving perfectly, fluidly, rhythmically beneath his. Your voice panting out his name like an absolution.

And his voice doing the same with yours.

You stay there, curled in your chair, one hand trailing idly over your thighs, long after the last of your cries have faded. After he cradled you to his chest and helped you back to your feet. After the video ended.

It’s all real, you know that, but it feels like it shouldn’t be. He hadn’t even really known who you were until yesterday. Had he? You guess it doesn’t really matter. You’re both getting what you want, but… ...deep down, you’re hoping it’s not that shallow.

- - - - - - - - - -

He finds you in the morning. You’re back in the server room, allowing your thoughts to sort themselves out. At least… ...that was the plan. Until you hear his voice.

“So...what’d ya think?”

You don’t look at him at first. Your hands work with swift, practiced motions, tying a bundle of wires together. You’re not ashamed of the way your heart skips anymore, but what are you supposed to say to something like that? “Kinky,” you manage to joke.

He sighs, but there’s a hint of a laugh at the end of it. “And here I was expecting some quality constructive criticism.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t work.”

“You know what I mean.”

You watch him out of the corner of your eye. There’s nothing to lean on; his hands are fiddling awkwardly. He’s shifting his weight from one leg to the other. He seems expectant.

You finally look up, meeting his eyes. Your heart is racing, as usual. Not with anxiety or anticipation. With newfound hope. With affection. A smirk tugs at your lips. “Maybe a better angle next time? Not that the one you chose was bad…”

And then he does it. He ducks his head, laughing, exactly the same way he’d done in countless videos, in hundreds of cut and saved clips. That same scarlet blush adorns his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. And you fall in love all over again.

- - - - - - - - - - @corpseyb0nes @afterthedreamer @mischiefsilvertongue @marigold-magpie @tricerathotss @vanderlinde-exe @ayilachan @zipp0flare @luxury-of-insanity @nikyri-reaper @argentineanweaboo @vanillabuttercreamm @anni000001 @imchaoticnerd 

[atelophobicity]

Top 10 Things You Shouldn’t Do If You Want to Finish Your Thesis On Time

It’s my entry for September! I’ve been busy in consuming new music, films, and kvariety episodes in my effort to catch up on everything. So, I decided to post monthly to fulfill my oversharing Tumblr needs and to exercise my skills in writing in English and putting thoughts into coherent words.

TL;DR of this: things I’ve done instead of doing my thesis for the past year and a half. I’m not romanticizing my not doing thesis self for the past 21 months, but I’m also not dissuading you from doing other stuff besides thesis because god knows, you will need something.

1. Got a part-time job. This was the first new thing I’ve done that really took my time and effectively gave me no time to do thesis. And yet, this was the most rewarding thing as I learned how to get my TIN, accomplish my deliverables, answer to my superiors etc. Looking back, I wasn’t the best employee and I deserved no job offers on the same company after. But still, it was a stepping stone in the right direction. Adulting-wise, anyway.

2.  Discover the art of creating.

Journal spreads. I bought a 2019 planner and I couldn’t fill it up, so I decided to turn it into a journal-planner. The art materials I used for to design pages are from old supplies bought back when I was in high school or stickers from the fandom-related events I attended. I didn’t spend money and I was given a chance to be creative.

Sew doll clothes. In K-pop, dolls that look like your idol exists. It usually comes with one set of clothes to dress it. As a “doll mother”, I wanted to dress them with new clothes but buying clothes was expensive. So, I just sewed clothes for them. I made clothes from scrap fabrics or clothes no one wears in our household. I’ve been barely successful, but it’s one of the things that keep me happy and make me feel like I’ve succeeded in one measly part of my life.

3. Purged my online files.

From my high school files. Nostalgia has been one of my coping mechanisms. I was able to be provided by lots of it when I discovered that I didn’t lose my high school files and it was on my mom’s laptop all along. Being able to relive memories while organizing my files was the best hours of that day.

To my external hard drives. Since 2016, I have been a hoarder of online files for so long that I have two EHDs to prove it. This time though, I was able to delete content that was either repetitive or uninteresting anymore. I was able to shave off some of my data bytes and am now able to save new interesting content available online (if I ever find one).

4. Realigned my priorities and consumption of K-pop as a stan and as a person by:

Selling 3/4 of my merch. Unlearning the pride that comes with owning K-pop merch was difficult, but overtime, I have been proud of myself for not falling to the traps of capitalism—at least in K-pop. Also! I was able to buy my own concert tickets with the stuff I sold so it is a win!

Joining giveaways instead. No matter how I can avoid the urge to buy K-pop merch, I still can’t help but want to own them. This is where I discovered how joining giveaways was my next best option. It takes a lot of effort and screenshots to win these things. However, if and when you win, it really feels like winning against the odds. You get free merch too!

Actually spent hours to vote and stream. In relation to the last point, since the main requirement in giveaways I’ve joined are voting/streaming proofs, I have been one of those people who collects points on voting apps or has a playlist of music videos that should be streamed. After collecting and/or streaming, I take screenshots, put watermarks there, and tags mutuals if needed. It’s relatively hard work but there’s a feeling of pride when your idol wins the poll or an MV reaches a certain amount of views and you know you participated in making that happen.

5. Rediscover Youtube. Channels like the vlogbrothers and their associates (Crash Course, Pemberley Digital among others), Buzzfeed’s shows (The Try Guys, Ladylike, Buzzfeed Unsolved) were a delight to watch after being out of the Youtube loop for so long. The platform also offered new niches of content and I allowed myself to be sucked in it. From Simply Nailogical to Ask A Mortician to amazing pop culture video essays like Lindsay Ellis and Jenny Nicholson, Youtube has all it for you! Learning something new every day is one of my favorite things and I get to do it with this website.

6. Rediscover my love of writing. (As if I’ve written anything for my thesis but here.)

Made drabbles. There is a weekly activity on my fandom where we write < 500 word drabbles on any pairings. I have been joining when I can, and through the support of the (small) community (back then), I gained confidence to write one. I’ve written at least four now and I’ve not done yet because I’ve been on a slump lately. But I’ll get back to it soon!

Short story. The same account that brought the drabble challenge created a festival where we write a pairing and write a short story with it. I decided to join the event! Not going to lie, my entry was shit, It was the first draft, it needed a lot of revisions and more constructive criticism and yet, I am still proud of it. It was the first creative fiction I wrote since 2019 and I did it in a day. And, I believe it has potential, so I’m going to review and revise the hell out of it someday.

7. Reclaim my college days.

Reconnected with orgmates. Visiting Elbi for registration and consultation purposes are brightened up by the fact that I get to do this. My first four years of college were not kind to me. I’ve forgotten a lot of things because of trauma and deep sadness that I still have until this day, and when I remember good things, they’re few and far in between. The numbered days I was in Elbi during 2019 were also few and far in between, but they were infinitely better than my academic years from 2015 to 2017. I was able to do the things I wasn’t able to do before (mostly attending Happy Ts and eating in newly-opened food places there) and I get to do it with people I love.

Made friends. One of the drawbacks of being a slot-driven student with no care of my coursemates’ schedules: I didn’t get to establish a friend group. So I didn’t get to make friends. During this time, I’ve accepted that I didn’t have any friends outside my organizations. But this time, instead of a feeling of dread of being that cliché orgmate, I feel relief and happiness because now, I realize that I do have friends from college, unlike the 2015-2017 who didn’t have anyone in college to rely on her darkest times.

8. Appreciated my friends more. For the past few years, I was the shitty friend. I agreed to go on hangouts only to message them that I’m backing out the last minute—sometimes I even straight up ghosted them. I really took my friends for granted. I have been slowly making it up to them by always attending when there’s an invite! I sometimes initiate the invite and it’s always a fun and healing time for me (it was a literal healing time for me as I was depressed during that time). I love them and I’m always thankful for them—and more so now than before.

 9. Unlearning things like:

Realizing that a priv (a private account meant to be seen by your mutuals you trust; usually contains unpopular opinions and hot takes on stan twitter) only encourages negative emotions and I must not do it again.

No matter how I tried rationalizing my hate for Jennie when the JenKai dating news happened, I was one of those K-pop stans who hated her because she dated my idol. (I have moved on past that and have started liking her and Rose.)

Knowing that attacking people for what they say won’t make them unlearn their wrong opinions. Not talking down at them and educating with patience is the key, always.

There are still so much more I unlearned and learned where those came from. My main takeaway is: it’s complicated.  Sometimes our opinion needs a more nuanced perspective and sometimes it needs to scrapped entirely because it was just wrong. But it is essential so we, as people, won’t be stuck with outdated views of the world.

10.   Learning something new like:

Practicing how to do Tzuyu’s helicopter hands until I realized it wasn’t meant for me.

Utilizing Omegle to look for potential quaranflings.

Installing Telegram and uninstalling to ghost quaranflings.

How to do laundry in compliance with my mother’s preferences.

Doing two things at once.

Enough patience to take time and read the laws our government makes every day to know what I’m fighting against.

Optimizing my Twitter lists and now I can keep up with current affairs (that takes a toll on my mental health) then scroll through a fic fest-centric list the next (that helps me forget the stress from reading news).

Learning something new every day has become one of my life goals. Knowing that the world always has something new to offer to me, a speck in this universe, warms me up and keeps me going. And you’ll never know where the new tidbits will lead you. Maybe it’ll help you reconnect with something you’ve known before, maybe it’ll change how you see things, or maybe it’s something new that once explored, it will contribute something new to the community. It may seem small and unimportant but with a tweak in perspective, it might be something worth doing and pursuing.

Looking back at my list, I can finally see how if I didn’t do all these things, I would have probably finished my thesis by now and probably working a full-time job, able to provide the financial needs for my family. There will always be regret that I am still not done until now. But stressing over my current predicament in this time when the world is in its most stressful state yet won’t help me. So, we soldier on and hopefully, hopefully get back to the thesis I’ve been meaning to do.

 Let’s get it.

[baronccorbin]

Always You

Ok so a lot of my stuff got deleted bc og gifs so... 

Pairing: Sam x Reader (female)    Prompt:  This is a part two for ‘Always There’ Part 1  Word count:  2672 Warnigs: Smut, oral, 18+ 

“Good morning” you hear the husky voice of your boyfriend next to you. “M’ still sleeping” you mumbled, burying your face in the pillow “Baby, it’s time to go” he laughed, kissing the back of your head “But Sammy” you whine but turned around to face him anyways “Good morning” he said again, this time against your lips “Good morning indeed” you smiled, melting into him, kissing him in the lazy loving way you did everyday for the four months of your relationship.The kiss only lasted a couple of minutes, you didn’t want to broke it, you were far too eager to start something else but Sam was right, you had work to get done. “Let’s go then” you broke the kiss, jumping out of the bed before Sam could protest and ran towards the bathroom, laughing as you heard him groan something along the lines of ‘fucking tease’

-

You got to the hotel in two hours, it was an easy case, a demon who sold her soul to save her dying husband, killing couples on the hotel she found her husband cheating on her with his secretary or some shit. You were impressed though, you were expecting a crappy motel, but you arrived to a fancy one, Dean almost cried when he found out the price of the room, if you were lucky enough you would kill the demon fast enough to not stay, it was the first hunt where he didn’t get a fake credit card so if you didn’t finish the job fast, he was going to be a pain in the ass for the next month, you had to move, and fast.

“Okay, Sammy” Dean started as we got to the main entrance “Y/N and I are going to get the room, you know, act all normal while you go and check the security cameras, tell us if you see anything, we’ll check on the bar ad restaurant to look for couples that look too happy” “Call me if you need anything” he nodded, kissing you before you got in.

You followed Dean to the front desk, acting as normal as possible, maybe if you looked too happy together the demon would come to you. You high fived yourself in your head before grabbing Dean’s hand, intertwined your fingers. It felt weird as fuck but it was work. “What are you doing?” he asked, wide-eyed “I want to finish this fast, not feeling like sharing a room. Just follow my lead” you whispered “Hi” the receptionist smiled at you “Hello” you smiled back “We’ll like to get a room, the 'second honeymoon’ suite” you read on the little list they had “Oh, of course. How long have you been married?” she asked, looking at the computer screen “Three years” Dean answered for you, letting you hand go and wrapping his arm around you waist “it was time you know, to make a vacation. With the kids and all, need to keep the flame” he smirked at you and it took all you self control not to punch him. “How sweet” she cooed, you wanted to roll your eyes, but you didn’t “here is your key, enjoy your vacation” she winked “Will do” you smiled as you walked to the elevator

“Kids? keep the flame?” you snorted when the doors closed “You said that we needed to make it real” he raised his hands in defense “Nothing say LIE more than too much details” you shook your head “She totally bought it” he smiled, the got serious “We better finish this fast, I ain’t sleeping on the couch” he warned “I mean, you can sleep with me and Sam, not problem” you shrugged, stepping out and walking towards the room It was nice to have Dean back, he didn’t take it too well when you and Sam started dating, he had feelings for you and apparently his were more than a crush, but he cope with it. After a couple of months he started joking with you and smiling, finally realizing how happy Sam was with you and vice versa.

-

“What now?” you asked as you got to the small restaurant/bar, you were wearing a nice dress, and Dean had a nice button-up shirt with jeans, you looked good but not too elegant, just like a couple on vacation. “We look around, talk to some other couples, look in love” he shrugged “make the bitch come to us” “Okay” you grabbed his hand and walked towards the first couple, they looked like a happy couple, but then again Dean and you looked like one, and were far away from that. It took you two hours, eight couples and four different stories about your fake children to find the demon, she was possessing one of the waitresses, she looked all perky and happy one second but at the other she glared at you with envy and hate on her eyes. “If we leave now” you whispered in Dean’s ear “she’s going to follow us. Bitch has been looking at us for twenty minutes”

“Let’s go”

-

“I mean if you think about it, her story’s kind of sad.” you said as you and Dean made your way back to the suite, the demon turned out to be really inexperienced, the only reason she was alive was because no one tried to hunt her before you “She sold her soul for the man she loved, just to be stabbed on the back by him” you shook your head “What a douchebag” “He didn’t know she did it” Dean arched his brow “but okay, it was a shitty move, doesn’t mean that every couple that stays in this hotel have to die because of that” “I guess you’re right” you smiled as you opened the door of your suite “I’m always right” “Yeah, sure” you snorted, making him laugh

His laugh died when you got to the little kitchen the suite had, you furrowed your brows, not sure of what was he looking at, until you looked up. There was Sam by the fridge, water bottle on his right hand about to explode by the force of his grip, his jaw was clenched, his eyes looked hard and to be honest, he never looked hotter. “Well, I need a drink” Dean exclaimed, grabbing the jacket he took off a minute before and leaving you and Sam alone. That bastard. “Hey Sammy” you smiled tightly at him, not sure of what had gotten into him.

“Hey Sammy!, that’s all you are going to say?” he barked, making you gulp “W-what’s wrong?” you asked, frozen in your spot “Oh, I don’t know” he smiled, sarcastically “maybe the fact that my girlfriend is still in love with my brother!” he exclaimed, dropping the water bottle on the table, hard. “WHAT?!” you almost yelled, not understanding his jealousy “I saw everything, how you hold hands how you smiled at each other, how you kept whispering things in his ear” he got closer to you, you wanted to move but couldn’t, you were mesmerized by Sam, the angry look on his face made you wet and how his chest moved heavily made you think about all the times you had seen him like that, generally it was after sex “aren’t you going to defend yourself?” he asked, bringing you back to reality “It was an act, Sam!” you managed to say “We acted like a couple so the demon could see us” you finally moved, getting closer to him and placing a hand on his chest “I don’t want him, Sam” you looked at him so he could see the sincerity on your eyes.

“Good” he grunted, grabbing you and sitting you on the sink so fast that you couldn’t react “because you are mine” he stated before smacking his lips with yours. The kiss was hungry and desperate, so aggressive that you knew your lips were going to be bruised after, but you didn’t care, you loved when Sam was rough, it didn’t happen often enough. His lips left your mouth making you whine, but it ended up as a moan when he attached them to you neck, sucking the skin of your pulse harshly, leaving a mark. “Fuck” you moaned, tiling your head so he could have better access, your hands moved to his hair, tugging it hard, just how you knew he liked it.   “This mark will show you, it will show everybody that you are mine” he grunted, his hands going under your dress, he took your panties down and threw them to the floor, rapidly cupping your core with his hand “This little pussy is mine” he smirked, thrusting his middle finger inside of you.

“Shit” you moaned, moving against his hand “You like this, baby?” he asked, adding another finger and speeding up “Tell. Me” he grunted, giving you two hard thrusts “I love it” you moaned “I fucking love when you finger me this hard” you couldn’t help but scream the last part when his thumb started rubbing your clit.

“Fuck, baby” he moaned, pecking your lips “you look so hot like this” he took his fingers out of you and sucked them looking directly at you, making you moan. “Can’t wait, Y/N” he said as he finished cleaning them. His hands went to the waist band of his jeans and his expert fingers unbuttoned them easily, you couldn’t help but touch yourself as you saw him taking his pants of, your middle finger rubbed your clit harshly, making you moan. Sam looked up at the sound of your moan and groaned at the sight of your hand playing with your pussy, you stopped when you saw him without his boxers but he took your hand and moved it back to you pussy. “Touch yourself” he ordered, grabbing his cock and pumping it slowly, his eyes never leaving your core “Fuck” you breathed out, opening your legs wider for him as you started rubbing your clit again “Finger, fuck yourself with one finger” he moaned, pumping himself faster. You obeyed, thrusting one of your small fingers inside of your dripping pussy, moaning at the pleasure you gave yourself and at the sight of your boyfriend touching himself in front of you, you added another finger, curling them so you could get more pleasure. “Enough” he growled, taking your hand from between your legs, making you whine as your orgasm fade away “You are going to cum when I’m inside of you” “Please” you whimpered, feeling more needing that ever “Since you asked nicely” he grabbed hem of your dress and ripped it off your body, then grabbing the back of your legs and opening them wider “Sam” was the last thing you said before he thrusted his whole cock inside of you, pounding into you fast and hard not giving you any time to adjust to his size, but you didn’t care, the painful pleasure he was giving you was taking you closer to the edge.

“Fuck, Y/N” he grunted, nipping your bottom lip “So fucking tight” he mumbled before kissing you again “So big” you moaned, wrapping your legs around his waist and lifting your own a little, that made him go deeper inside of you, his cock hitting that sweet spot inside of you “I’m g-gonna cum” you moaned, moving your hand down on you, rubbing your clit at the same pace of Sam’s thrusts   “Cum for me” he ordered, reconnecting your lips to muffle you loud scream, your legs trembling around him as you came hard, biting his bottom lip hard as the amazing pleasure washed over your body.

Sam pulled out of you, his cock glistening for your juices, still hard due his lack of release “I’m not done” he answered your silent question, he picked you up and walked towards the bed with you in his arms You got to the edge of the bed and he settled you down on you feet, kissing you softly before turning you around, you got the hint and got on your hands and knees, wiggling your ass a little for him. Sam chuckled and spanked your right cheek, making you moan loudly. “I’m going to take you like this,” he stated, massaging the red cheek “hard. And you are going to cum again, screaming my name so everyone here knows you belong to me” he spanked the other cheek “Got it?” “Yes” you moaned

He kneeled on the bed behind you, grabbing his cock and rubbing it against your folds. Gripping your hip with the other hand he pulled you, making you take all of his cock again, your wetness making it easy for him to thrust all the way inside of you. “Fuck” you moaned, arching your back Sam gripped your hips harder, his hips snapping against you as his hands pulled you towards him. The hard thrusts were making you moan louder by the second and his moans added more pleasure, you love hearing him, the loud grunts and groans of your name as he thrusted faster were driving you insane.

Sam’s hands left your hips and trailed to your breasts, massaging them a little before lifting you, your back touching his toned front. The new position made his cock hit all the right places making you scream his name.

One of his hands went to your throat, gripping it not hard enough to choke you, while the other went down on you, his fingers rubbing your clit, hard and fast. “Mine” he growled against the skin of your neck before nipping it “You are mine, Y/N” you mewled a 'yes’ as you started thrusting your hips down, meeting him half way “Fuck, you are so sexy… fucking yourself on my cock” you moaned at his words “Roll your hips ba-Fuck!” he growled as you did it. Your hands went to his hair, tugging it as he went faster “I can hear how…. fuck!…. how fucking wet you are” it was true, you could hear the obscene sounds your wetness created “I can feel you… your juices dripping… -Ah so good!-… down my legs” “Fuck Sam!” you moaned, resting your head on his shoulder “I’m gonna c-cum” you could feel your second orgasm approaching “Cum for me” he kissed your shoulder, the hand on your throat gripping a little harder “Wanna feel that little pussy…. cumming around my cock” he was out of breath, closer to his own orgasm than you thought “SAM!” you yelled when your climax hit you, your legs shaking and your walls clenching, sending him over the edge.   “Fuck” Sam yelled as he felt you, your wall sucking him in better than the best mouth ever could “mine, mine” his cock twitched before exploding inside of you, his seed filling your little pussy completely.

You fell on the bed, Sam fell next to you, he pulled you closer to his body, his fingers running through your hair, your hand cupping his face, rubbing his cheek with your thumb. You didn’t talk, you couldn’t, you were too out of breath to do so, so you just stayed like that, in each others arms, enjoying the moment, your heavy breaths were the only sound in the room.

“I’m sorry” he whispered after a few minutes of silence “I’m sorry for acting so jealous, but when I saw you with Dean… God! it hurt so much, I thought that maybe you had changed your mind and-” “I love you” you cut him off “What?” he asked, cupping your face with his two hands “I love you,” you smiled at his shocked face “so much, Sammy” you added before grabbing the back of his neck and kissing him softly “I love you, Y/N” he breathed into the kiss “so happy to call you mine” “I’m yours” you broke the kiss “It had always being you, It will always be you” you reassured him “Always me?” “Always you”

[theworldofotps]

When A Boy Tells You He Loves You

Includes: Finn Balor, reader x boyfriend Word Count: 2,997 (Based on the poem by Edwin Bodney) Description: When a boy tells you he loves you he doesn't mean it when Finn tells you he loves you he means every word. Angst-Fluff

Groaning when your phone rings bringing you from sleep you reach over picking it up off of your nightstand eyes slightly blinded by the light. You see a message from your boyfriend who was currently away on a business trip in Chicago. You had asked him to postpone the trip since this was your first weekend home from wrestling in the last four weeks he said it wasn't possible. When he asks if you have a few minutes to talk you reply with a yes before your phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Hey sorry if I woke you up."

"That's fine is everything okay?"

"Yeah I just wanted to let you know I won't make it home tomorrow we just left the bar later than they wanted and we didn't get everything talked over."

"Do they really need you to stay? I leave tomorrow night we didn't see each other at all this weekend."

"I do don't worry (y/n) I'll see your match next Monday night okay?"

You release a sigh trying not to let your frustration show through your voice you understood he was busy but it sucked not getting to see him this weekend.

"Yeah that's fine I understand."

"Hey love you."

Sitting up in bed you look at the device in your hand trying to be sure you heard him right this was the first time he had said those words. You had been dating for the last four months and hadn't taken that step yet. A smile crosses your face could he really mean it did he actually love you? This was the first time a guy had told you he loved you sure you heard it all the time from friends and family but this was different.

"You don't have to say it back if you aren't ready okay? I just wanted to let you know about the meeting I'll call you tomorrow or something get some sleep."

"Alright travel safely."

Saying goodnight you hang up staring across the dark room pushing the hair from your eyes you send a text to your best friend Finn.

(Y/n)-He said he loved me..

Finn- Really? Are you okay with that? Did you say it back?

(Y/n)- Yeah it's okay and no I wasn't ready.

Finn- Don't until you are ready okay I don't want you forced to do anything you don't want too.

(Y/n)- I won't it's just nobody besides friends and family have said that like out of all my relationships granted I've only had a few but love wasn't ever spoken of we never got that far.

Finn- How couldn't someone love you? Just be careful x

Smiling at his text you promise too before telling him you were headed back to sleep. Pulling the covers over your shoulder you fall asleep with the words swirling through your mind.. ~ "You made me look like an idiot (y/bf/n) you had me waiting outside the cocktail lounge for over two hours. Everyone kept giving me sympathetic glances I wasted my time I could have been training or hanging out with my friends."

"(Y/n) I'm sorry I'm not going to say it again I lost track of time alright?"

"You always seem to lose track of time lately whenever we get to spend even a little time together I'm blown off for work, or your friends or whatever excuse you can make."

Leaning your head back against the seat of your car you look out the window the diner parking lot where you had ended up after your boyfriend didn't show was almost empty. Only lit up by the lights the cool night air felt good against your hot skin the phone pressed to your ear.

"It just happens it's not that big a deal I love you."

Silence you close your eyes knowing what he wanted you to do it had only been a few weeks since the first time he told you he loved you. Every time you had an argument or you got upset he dropped those three words like it would solve everything.

"Say it back (y/n) please I just want to hear it you haven't said it once and I've said it so many times."

"But (y/bf/n)."

"Please."

"Fine, love you too."

The words were spoken in a dead lifeless voice you can tell he is distracted when he tells you he has to go but promises to see you in the morning. Hanging up you stare out the windshield the words feeling weird you didn't want to say something you didn't mean but you didn't know any other way to make him happy. Dialing a number you knew by heart and could easily hit the speed dial you call your best friend.. ~ "Are you okay?"

Finn asks as you walk backstage having just finished a tag team match with Nia against Alicia and Mickie.

"Yeah, why do you ask?"

"Because I can tell you weren't focused ya always beat Mickie but almost slipped up tonight."

"Can't I just be having an off night?"

You asked drinking some water trying to avoid his gaze Finn knew you better than anyone you should have known he would of noticed your mind wasn't clear.

"Come on love ya know you can tell me anything."

"It's (y/bf/n) it's like I don't exist with him anymore he's so inconsistent I've spoken more with Ruby these last few weeks than I have with him."

You confess knowing Finn would understand the example since you and Ruby weren't exactly fond of each other and the only time you spoke was when you argued.

"He's always coming up with a reason not to come see me or that I can't see him I just I have no clue what to do anymore."

Tears of frustration fill your eyes wiping them away so nobody would ask questions Finn wraps his arms around you in a tight hug. His chin resting on your head you couldn't help but want to sob the confusion and pain in your heart was making you weary.

"Maybe this means that he isn't the one for you love I mean look at how he's acting look at how he keeps trying to get you to say things you aren't ready for."

"I don't know I guess I just I'm so confused."

"Go on to the hotel you need sleep we can talk later."

Nodding you thank him heading for the locker room to get changed into your street clothes getting a uber to the hotel you were more than ready for sleep. Riding the elevator up to your floor grabbing the key from your bag you let yourself in. Getting a quick shower you pull on a large tee shirt Finn got you and some shorts before crawling in between the sheets. Eyes close you listen to the sound of the small radio you brought with you to help you fall asleep. Just as you get ready to finally pass out your phone rings glancing at it you see (y/bf/n) on the screen. Clicking the accept button you bring it to your ear about to speak but stop when you hear a voice that didn't belong to your boyfriend.

"Is this (y/n)?"

"Yes who's this?"

"My name is Elle I can't speak for long (y/bf/n) is in the shower and doesn't know I have his phone. I was going through it and saw that you were listed with a heart when I read the messages between you I couldn't believe what I was reading."

"He's been seeing you hasn't he?"

"Yes for the last three months I'm so sorry I didn't know he was already seeing someone."

"It's not your fault thank you for calling please delete and block my number from his phone I don't want him to call or see me again."

"You and me both sweetie I just thought you deserved to know."

Hanging up you stare at the ceiling your eyes watering as you laid there part of you was kind of relieved it was over another part a much bigger part felt so hurt. You couldn't believe he cheated on you, told you he loved you when he was messing around forcing you to say you loved him when he never meant the words in the first place. Tears fall quickly into your pillow as you cry you felt like an idiot for thinking he could actually care about you. Even though it was late you knew Stephanie would be awake still dialing her number you wait for her to answer.

"Hello, Stephanie speaking."

"Hey it's (y/n) um I know this is sudden but something has come up and I was wondering if I could have tomorrow off? I won't leave the city I know there is another house show I just need some time."

"Is everything okay?"

Giving her a brief explanation because you knew she'd understand you thank her repeatedly when she tells you to take the next two days off.

"You're welcome and listen if you need to talk woman to woman just give me a call."

"Thank you I'll keep that in mind."

When the call ends you block your ex on every social media format you were friends on before turning your phone off and falling asleep. The next day is spent curled up in bed watching random movies on the tv in your room you had the do not disturb sign on your door so your friends and coworkers wouldn't try coming over. When you're halfway through The Golden Child later in the afternoon a loud knock sounds on your door before you hear Seth.

"(Y/n) are you okay? None of us can get ahold of you please will you open the door?"

Sighing you get out of bed looking out the peephole to be sure he's alone than letting him in and closing the door behind him.

"You've had us so worried are you okay?"

"I guess I didn't want to talk with anyone I asked Stephanie for the day off and she gave me today along with tomorrow."

"Are you alright did something happen are you ill?"

"No no it's nothing like that."

Having him sit next to you on the bed you explained what happened last night next to Finn and a few of the other superstars Seth was one of your closest friends.

"Aww I'm sorry that's shitty of him he's an asshole who doesn't deserve a woman as great as you."

"Thanks, Seth."

"Do you need us to rough him up a little I mean nobody will find out we can definitely kick his ass with ease."

"As nice as that sounds I don't think it would be good for you all he's not worth assault charges."

You smile as he hugs you placing a kiss to the top of your head he smiles happy to see you a little better.

"Does Finn know?"

"Not about last night but pretty much everything else."

"Well if I was that asshole I would pray to whatever god he believes in that Finn doesn't find out right away."

"Why?"

"Finn cares about you (y/n) he loves you.. And the fact this guy hurt you it's not going to go over well with him."

"What am I suppose to tell him then?"

"The truth but I'm just saying he won't be happy it's best you tell him face to face does that guy know you know?"

"I'm sure he does now."

"Does he have Finn's number?"

"I don't think so Finn never really did like him."

"Okay good."

You two chat a little longer before Seth heads out promising to check on you in the morning and let the others know you were okay. Closing your door you resume your movies wanting nothing more than to just forget for a little while. As night finally arrives you decided to turn your phone on you had forgotten to call your parents and you were sure they were probably freaking out. A bunch of messages from your friends and coworkers from earlier in the day come through. You notice a few missed calls from your mom giving her a ring you explain what happened. She was relieved to hear you were okay before you hang up you promise to see her within the next few weeks.

Going to your messages you read from them thankful to have such great friends and coworkers. Seth sent you a quick text that he had spread the word and that if you needed to talk anymore to give him a ring. Going to Finn's messages you read them he had sent you the most you felt a little guilty having not told him.

Finn- (Y/n) you okay we didn't see you at breakfast.

Finn- Is everything okay? Steph said you weren't performing out today or tomorrow.

Finn- Love you're worrying me was it something I did?

Finn- I went by your room but the do not disturb sign was up I was going to ignore it but don't want you upset with me.

The messages continue as you get ready to send him a message letting him know you were okay a new one pops up.

Finn- Why didn't you tell me what happened?

When you hear rapid knocking at your door you throw off the blankets knowing who it was without needing to look.

"Hey."

Finn brushes past you into the room closing the door you watch as he paces in front of your bed before looking at you.

"Come'er love."

Walking the short distance to his outstretched arms you hug Finn tightly eyes welling up with tears as he soothes you.

"How'd how'd you find out?"

You ask through the tears and he rubs your back letting out a sigh as he pulls back a little to look at you.

"He dmed me on twitter asking me where he could send your things when I asked what he was talking about he told me he made a mistake. He wouldn't go into much detail I gave him my rental apartment address told him to make sure every single one of your things went there and to never try to reach ya again. After that, I got a text from Seth saying he spoke with you and you were okay I asked what was wrong he wouldn't tell me so I went to his room. Told him if he didn't tell me I was going to stomp his ribs outside of the ring when he least expected it."

"Finn you didn't."

"Well I had no other way to find out you weren't answering anyone love and I was getting worried about you. Especially since you were pretty upset last night and you never shut your phone off unless something is going on."

Sighing you nod your head taking his hand you lead him to the large chair by your window you just wanted to be held right now and Finn always gave the best cuddles. When you're both settled his arms wrapped around your waist you once again tell about the call you had gotten. You told him about how split in two you felt when the call ended you told him how dumb you felt. As the two of you sat there you spilled everything to Finn that had been troubling your heart. You cried which seemed like the only thing you had done the last couple hours but you knew he wouldn't care.

"I don't even know why I'm crying so much I was so upset and confused with how things were going I just."

"Because despite all that you cared for him and you thought he felt the same but he doesn't deserve your tears. He's lucky I don't find him and kick his ass because right now nothing would please me more. If he can cheat on ya and not see what an incredible woman he had than forget him. You deserve someone who will love you and mean it when they say it you deserve someone who isn't going to force you into saying or doing anything you aren't ready for."

"Why can't guys be more like you Finn?"

"They chose not to be but I'm glad you think so much of me."

"I really do you're my best friend my rock and I thank you so much for being here for me I appreciate it."

"I love you (y/n) and I'll do whatever I can to be here for you."

Finn smiles kissing your cheek as you sat there in silence you couldn't help but think about your friendship with Finn. Every single time he told you that he loved you there wasn't any doubt in your mind or heart that he meant it.

"Finn can I ask you something?"

"Sure thing love ask away."

"Seth said that (y/ex/n/) should pray to whatever god he believed in that you didn't find out. When I asked why he said because you love and care about me but the way he said it was a little different."

"How so?"

"He paused when he said love almost like he was worried he let something slip."

Finn stays silent causing you to turn your head to look at him your eyebrows raised.

"Did he let something slip?"

"It's not important right now I'll tell you about it another time okay?"

Biting your lip you nod your head resting it on his shoulder deep down you had a feeling Seth let slip that Finn didn't just love you he was in love with you. Funny the thought of Finn being in love with you sounded like it would be wonderful. You knew that with Finn you wouldn't be forced to do anything he always made you feel so cherished. -------------- Hope these are helping you feel better @ mrsambroserollinsacklesmgk

[ceealaina]

No One Can Tell Us We’re Wrong

Title: No One Can Tell Us We’re Wrong (Chapter 1/3) Pairing: Tony Stark x Steve Rogers Link: AO3 Rating: E Summary: Set post-Civil War. What if Tony and Steve hadn’t exactly been incommunicado all that time between Civil War and Infinity War? After a bad day, and one too many drinks, Tony ends up texting Steve. And after that first text, it’s too easy to just... keep texting. In which the boys finally learn to be adults and talk, and realize just how much they love each other along the way. Something of a CW fixit. (Fair warning: I love both these idiots with all my heart. If you’re looking for Steve bashing or, for that matter, Tony bashing, this is not the story for you). Word Count: 2888

It started with a text. It started with a text, and one glass of scotch too many. 

Tony was tired and frustrated, pissed off after yet another set back with Rhodey’s leg braces. He’d flopped back on the couch in his lab, drink in hand, only to wince as he landed on something hard. He wiggled around a minute, fishing the whatever out from underneath him, and when he came up with the phone Steve had sent him, he was suddenly so angry it was all he could do not to scream. 

Objectively he knew it wasn’t all Steve’s fault. A share of the blame went to him too. But dammit, he’d shouldered that blame, was doing everything he could to fix things, to be better. And if fucking Steve Rogers, and his fucking flip phone had just listened for once in his goddamned life, then maybe that fight would never have happened. If he had just tried to work with him, instead of going off all half-cocked to do whatever his stubborn ass had decided was best, Tony wouldn’t be sitting here trying to build his best friend leg braces so he could walk again. 

If he had cared for Tony even a fraction of the way he had cared for Barnes, maybe they would still be a team. Still be a family. 

Tony’s fist clenched around the phone in his hand. He wanted to throw it across the room, wanted to smash it to bits with a sledgehammer. Wanted to suit up and pulverize it with a repulsor blast. But somehow, as furious as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to make the move. 

He flipped the phone open, glared at the screen. His vision was blurring, entirely from the lack of sleep and the alcohol, and nothing at all to do with the way his eyes were burning, throat thickening at the thought of Steve, at the thought of everything that had happened. He opened the contacts, chewed his lip hard at the one name there, mocking him. Before he could stop himself, almost without thinking it, he typed in a text, thumb pounding against the keys. 

Fuck you, Steve. 

He fell asleep on the couch, clutching the phone against his chest. 

***

Tony woke up the next morning with a headache, a backache, and a sick, anxious feeling in the pit of the stomach - so a typical morning, for him. He was still on the couch, wearing his filthy workshop clothes from the night before, and sprawled out on his stomach. There was something sharp digging into his stomach, and he grumbled as he pulled himself into a sitting position, digging out Steve’s flip phone. He glowered at it, but in all honesty had forgotten all about the text the night before. He tossed it on his desk, plugging it in to charge, before wandering off in search of coffee. 

He would never in a million years expect Steve to text, even if he had remembered sending the text the night before, so it was pure luck that he happened to hear the notification six hours later, as he was going over the latest addendum to the accords. It took a minute to place the sound, tracking down the phone to where it was hiding under a pile of blueprints. Uncovering it, he stared for a long minute, unblinking, before making a split second decision and grabbing it off the table. Feeling bizarrely more nervous than he’d been in a very long time, he swallowed hard and flipped the phone open. A waiting text notification blinked back at him, and he clicked on it before he could talk himself out of it. 

Steve’s message was short, only four words long: I probably deserve that. 

Tony stared down at the phone. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, exactly, but he didn’t think it was that. As clear as anything, he could suddenly picture Steve, frowning down at his stupid flip phone, a match to the one he’d given Tony, worrying at his lower lip as he tried to pick over exactly the right words to text back. His heart wrenched unexpectedly, imagining Steve’s lost expression, and suddenly furious, he threw the phone across the room. 

A split second later he realized what he’d done, and a wave of panic went through him. “Shit,” he hissed, inexplicably terrified that he’d just severed his last connection to the other man. “Shit, shit, shit.” He hurried across the room, but he had to give Steve some credit - he’d forgotten just how durable flip phones could be. There was only a small scratch on the back of the case, and when he opened the display it was as clear as ever. With a sigh, he tipped back on his ass to lean against the metal of his work desk, scrubbing a hand over his face as he stared down at the message again. 

He should ignore it, he knew he should ignore it, write off the past twelve hours, go back to the months of radio silence. He was too wound up right now, too volatile. Still too angry, and frustrated, and underneath all that, still so, so hurt. Texting Steve right now would be a terrible, awful idea. He should ignore it. 

He didn’t ignore it. 

Yeah, ya think? He texted back, before he could think the better of it. 

The return response was a lot faster in coming this time. Tony. I fucked up, I know I fucked up. I should have told you the second I found out, and I wish every day that I had. I meant what I said, Tony. If you need me - whatever it is - I’m here.

Tony stared at the message until his vision started to swim. He blinked rapidly and shook his head, staring around the room in disbelief. 

Fuck you, Steve he fired off before tossing the phone on the table and turning back to his project of the hour. 

The phone didn’t chime again. 

***

He lasted all of two days before he was texting Steve again. He’d had a frustrating day of Ross breathing down his neck, he hadn’t slept well the night before, and Rhodey was off campus and unable to provide him with his usual distraction. He wasn’t sure what made him do it - maybe he’d been dreaming about when they’d all been actual teammates the night before - but when he got stuck with a piece of machinery in his workshop, he hollered out for Steve, like he’d done a thousand times before, when they lived in New York and Steve used to spend hours keeping him company in the lab, sketching while Tony worked on one of his projects. His voice rang out, echoing in the empty space, before he realized what he’d said. He dropped the screwdriver in his hand with a loud clang against the table, nausea burning a hole in the pit of his stomach. 

“Fuck,” he muttered, as his eyes were drawn unbidden back to the phone, peeking out from under some paperwork. He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms are his glared at it. His fingers twitched against his arm as he fought the urge to grab it. He’d never been one for self-restraint though, and he only held out another minute before reaching out and snagging it, drawing it over to him. He shifted it back and forth in his hands before snapping it open. 

You know what the worst part is, Rogers? I still don’t understand WHY.

The response from Steve was so long in coming that Tony half expected one to not come at all. 

I’ve deleted this text about a thousand times, he admitted. Because everything I type is an excuse, and you deserve better than that. I should have told you, that was the very least that I owed you. But the truth is I was scared. I’m a coward, Tony. I was afraid that you wouldn’t understand - because how could you? And I was afraid

The message cut off suddenly, but a second one popped up almost before he’d finished reading it. 

I was afraid you’d blame me. See me the way I keep seeing myself. I wanted to tell you, Tony. I was going to tell you, I swear I was. But I was scared I’d lose you and so I kept waiting. I kept thinking I’d find some way to explain it, that I’d be able to show you that it wasn’t his fault. So I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting. And then it was too late. 

“Jesus, Steve,” Tony breathed, scrubbing a hand over his face. A couple of weeks ago, maybe, he would have been angry at Steve all over again, would have seen it as a guilt trip. But he felt something loosen in his chest at Steve’s admission, a realization of what an impossibly fucked up situation it had been for everyone. It wasn’t like everything was all miraculously forgiven, but for the first time he was able to think about Steve and Bucky, and the whole mess without going white hot with anger. He thought of Steve and all he felt was a faint pang for the way things had been before. He let out a slow breath and closed the phone without replying. 

But the thing was, he couldn’t leave it alone. It was like a cut on his lip he couldn’t stop worrying, a bruise he couldn’t stop poking. He was hyper aware of the phone, couldn’t stop his eyes from flickering over to it every few seconds, startled at every sudden noise thinking it was the still-unfamiliar text tone. Steve hadn’t messaged him again, and he knew he wouldn’t without hearing from Tony first, trying to fix things in whatever way he could. Tony sighed, tossing down his wrench. He was in the workshop, supposedly working, but for the better part of the past hour he’d been doing absolutely nothing, too busy thinking about Steve, about his last text, about where he was now, what he was doing, what he looked like. Wondering if the other traitors were with him, or if they’d temporarily split up to make themselves harder to track. 

He had a sudden vision of Steve, alone in some dark, shitty safe house, beating himself up over what had happened to Barnes. “Dammit, Rogers,” Tony muttered. Then, because he was alone in the workshop with no one to make fun of him, he leaned back in his chair and pulled his hood over his eyes, whining loudly into the empty room before picking up the phone. 

You know it wasn’t your fault, right? I mean, not the whole splitting the team thing, we both could have handled that better, and I’m still not ready to forgive us for that. But what happened to Barnes, falling, and then Hydra. That’s not on you, Steve.

His response was a lot quicker in coming this time. Not quite ready to forgive me, huh? Does that mean that eventually you will?

Tony rolled his eyes, but couldn’t fight back the slight twitch at the corner of his lips. Keep pushing me, Rogers. See if I don’t toss this shitty piece of 90s technology straight into the garbage disposal. 

Steve’s response was quick again, and despite himself Tony couldn’t help wondering where he was, what he was doing. I’m surprised it lasted this long, honestly. Figured you’d toss it in the garbage straight away. 

Tony knew he was joking about the technology, but couldn’t help the twinge in his stomach when he remembered just how close he had been to doing exactly that, simply because it had come from Steve. He chewed at his lip, not quite ready to admit just how much he missed the other man. 

Don’t think I don’t notice you changing the subject, Rogers. What happened with Barnes wasn’t your fault. 

This time it was Steve who didn’t answer. 

***

It was the better part of a week before he heard from Steve, and he absolutely didn’t drop everything at the ping of the phone. 

I know that, his text read, and Tony couldn’t help wondering what the hell he’d been up to that it had taken him this long to continue the conversation. Some part of me knows that. I just can’t seem to turn off the part of me that thinks if I’d just done something more I could have kept it all from happening. It’s irrational, and stupid, but… You know me. I’ve never been one for thinking things through. 

Tony couldn’t help his wry smile at that. He was still pissed over the way everything had happened, but now, with time and space to process everything, he could see how Steve could have maybe lost sight of everything else. God knew if it were Rhodey in trouble, Tony would have burned the world to help him. 

You always were a stubborn ass he replied, fighting the urge to picture the crooked smile that Steve would always get when Tony teased. He sighed, scrubbing his hand over the top of his head. So. How is Barnes anyway? He couldn’t quite manage to say what he really meant, his mother’s dying words still echoing in his ears, but he thought that maybe Steve would hear the apology in them anyway. 

It was nearly an hour, long enough that Tony wondered if he even would, before Steve replied. He’s good. He’s. Well. You can probably guess where he is but he’s back in cryo, least until we can find a way to get Hydra out of his head for good.

Tony stared at his phone, reread the message twice because that was unexpected. He’d assumed the Steve and Barnes would be broing it up, running around the world and reliving their Nazi hunting days. This was... not that. He huffed out a soft laugh, shaking his head as he texted his reply. 

Don’t tell me you’re actually being proactive and thinking things through. Who are you and what have you done with Steve Rogers?

Ha. Ha. You’re just all kinds of hilarious. Tony. And, it was actually Bucky’s idea, so there you go. 

When it took Tony a minute to answer, Steve sent another text. 

He wants to be himself again, Tony. Doesn’t want to hurt anyone else, no matter what he has to do to get there. 

Tony shook his head again, lopsided smile on his face even though Steve couldn’t see him. 

That’s really great, Steve. I hope you get him back soon. 

***

They carried on like this for the next few weeks, texting off and on, sometimes every hour and then sometimes nothing for days at a time. It was mostly careful teasing (although there were a few more sincere apologies) tiptoeing around the friendship they’d once had. Still, the tension between them was slowly thawing, the bitter taste that the thought of Steve had left in Tony’s mouth fading away. 

Tony hadn’t actually noticed the shift, hadn’t realized that more and more thinking about Steve was a positive experience again until after a particularly shitty and frustrating meeting when his first instinct was to text Steve for a pick-me-up. He was most of the way to his car, phone in hand and text half composed when he realized what he was doing. He stopped dead in the middle of the hallway, blinking down at the tiny letters on on the crappy phone before scrubbing a hand over his face. 

“Dammit Rogers,” he muttered, but found he couldn’t work himself up to actually being that upset about it. Deleting the text he’d already started, he continued walking. God, I hate you sometimes, you stubborn bastard. Just had to get your way, didn’t you? 

He was in the car on his way back to the compound when Steve’s reply came in. What did I do now?

Tony couldn’t help grinning a little as he read it; he could practically hear Steve’s beleaguered tone. Had to send me the phone, had to keep texting me back… Had to worm your way back in. You always get your way, and I can’t even be mad about it!

Seriously Tony? You’ve been mad for eighteen months.

Tony actually giggled at that, glad that he was alone in the car so nobody could hear him and make fun of him for it. ...Anymore, he amended. 

I’m glad, Tony. I m

Steve’s text cut off mid word, like he’d hit send instead of delete, and Tony blinked at the phone. 

I’m glad, Steve said again. And I’m sorry.

Tony rolled his eyes. Come on, Steve. Don’t ruin the moment. You don’t have to keep apologizing - I’ve already forgiven you, remember? 

Doesn’t mean I’m not still sorry. I shouldn’t have had to get your forgiveness in the first place. 

Well… Tony scrubbed a hand through his hair, hesitating, but since they were going all in here… You maybe weren’t entirely wrong, at least not about the Accords. I still think we need some kind of oversight, but Ross has been a bigger pain in my ass than I even imagined. 

I mean, I hate to say I told you so, but…

Shut up, Steve, Tony texted, rolling his eyes and grinning at the phone.

[lucaservine]

Where: San Diego, CA When: Thanksgiving Break Status: Closed

When Lucas is back on solid ground, there’s a deep sigh of pure relief. He doesn’t hate flying necessarily—he lives part of his life flying around in the air. Lucas just hates long flights where he forgets what it feels like to be back on the ground. Now outside of the airport, Lucas faced sunny California with the biggest smile and happy to be home. As much as he did love Palmetto, nothing could quite beat the beauty of the west coast. Lucas found his Uber and tossed his bags into the backseat with him as he cheerfully greeted the driver. It would be a bit before he was home and he settled into the backseat with his eyes taking in the palm trees, passing buildings, and traffic. That was one thing he certainly never missed.

Going back home was bittersweet. He missed California. He missed his high school friends. He missed walking down to the beach and spending most of his days there. At the same time, Lucas knew going home meant walking into a world he knew would be turned upside down. Over the past few years his mother had turned into… a raging storm that was entirely unpredictable. But this time things would be different. After their last conversation, Lucas was hopeful that they’d spend this holiday together mending bridges and being happy. Like the family they were supposed to be in the beginning.

When the car pulled into the community of condos, Lucas started to pull his bags together and get the money out that he needed for the driver. It was still weird to see the different buildings and the idea that this wasn’t his childhood home anymore. Lucas would be lying if he said he wasn’t mad at his mother for selling the house without talking to him. Sure, the condo was nice and it was right on the beach… but it wasn’t his home. Lucas still missed his neighbors and his childhood bedroom. It felt weird imagining that someone else lived there now with their family.

The driver left Lucas on the sidewalk and he headed up toward the building with his bags. He went up the side stairwell to get up to the top floor. In the walkway, Lucas spotted Mrs. Mendozzi who was sweeping out the sand and leaves from her front door. “Hi Mrs. Mendozzi,” Lucas called out with a bright smile. She turned around, broom in her hands until she realized who it was and the broom clattered to land against the wall. “Luke, my sweet summer child! You’re home! Your mother didn’t say you were coming! I could have baked cookies or made you a nice meal! Oh, look at you, have you grown taller? How’s college? Is everyone being nice to you? You tell me if there’s someone being mean, I’ll come all the way out there with my broom and teach them a lesson.” The parade of words came with a warm big huge from the old woman that left Lucas in laughter as he hugged her back.

“I’m fine, I promise. I really should get inside but I promise I’ll stop by tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about my life at college, okay?” It was the best Lucas could do for now; he wanted to get inside and talk to his mom.

“Alright, dear. I’ll make sure to have cookies ready to go.”

She left him with a kiss on the cheek and went back to sweeping, humming softly. That was the one benefit he could find in moving to the condo. Mrs. Mendozzi had been a blessing in his life, always willing to talk to him and keep an eye on him. Her husband was just as sweet, had been kind enough to help Lucas whenever it was one of his tougher days and he was visiting home.

Lucas turned back to the door: 308. It took him a moment to get the keys out of his pocket with his bags, but he eventually got the door open and pushed it open. He was met with darkness and the coldness in the entryway. Lucas turned on the light switched and stepped inside, looking around. “Mom?” Lucas shouted, waiting for a response. “Mom?” He tried one more time.

Pursing his lips, Lucas stepped back out to the walkway. “Mrs. Mendozzi, did my mom go to the store or something?” He asked as he leaned against the doorway—half in and half out of the condo. The old woman stopped and turned, hand on her hip as she gave Lucas a confused expression. “Not that I know, dear. I haven’t seen your mother here in about… a week? Maybe two.”

At her words, Lucas felt his heart racing in his chest. He didn’t let his smile fall, only said thank you and went back in with the door shutting behind him. From the kitchen breakfast bar, Lucas spotted the blinking red light that said there was a voicemail on the home phone. Walking over, Lucas pressed the button and listened to the voice:

You have four new messages. First new message. “Elizabeth, it’s Drake. You’ve always been impeccable with your attendance and your support with the school. You’ve missed the pass few meetings and I just want---Message deleted. Next new message: “Lizzy! Girl, you will not believe what just happened! I saw---Message deleted. Next new message: Hello Ms. LouBard, this is Beth Washington with Riscard and Bell. I’m calling in regards to your---Message deleted. Next new message: Lucas, love, hello! I don’t know what time you’re getting in but I wanted to let you know that I won’t be home. Laura and Megan got tickets to a show in New York and I couldn’t resist going! I know you understand, sweetheart. You always do. And thank you so much for the money. I know it was for Thanksgiving dinner but since it will just be you, I thought I could use it for my trip. If you need anything, ask Mrs. Mendozzi! Love you, Luke baby!” Messaged deleted.

Lucas took a deep breath and brushed away the tears that had fallen. No, he wouldn’t cry. What was there to cry about? Really, it was his own fault for being naïve and thinking that she would have stayed for the holiday. It didn’t matter how sincere she might have sounded…

With sluggish movements, Lucas went to his bags and grabbed them so he could unpack in his room. It was robotic. Lucas moved slow and without thinking as he put his things away. It wasn’t until he’d finished unpacking and sat down on the edge of his bed that he’d started to think and started to get angry. Lucas wasn’t an angry person. It was unfamiliar and he didn’t like the bitterness it left in his mouth.

He should have never come home.

The first two days were spent running errands. Lucas had to stock the kitchen as there wasn’t anything but an old beer bottle and condiments that were questionable in the door. Clearly his mother hadn’t been home in a while. After a trip to the grocery store, Lucas made another trip to the bank to talk to one of the employees. It had taken him an hour of sitting outside the bank for him to work up the courage, but he eventually went inside and asked for help. When he walked out, it was with mixed feelings and his mother no longer attached to his bank account. Even if she asked, he had no way of giving her money now.

After more little errands, Lucas spent most of his days on the beach or chatting with the neighbors. When he wasn’t there, he sat on the balcony of the condo with a book and petting the Mendozzi’s dog Cheerio who was more than happy to see Lucas back.

But the routine got old fast and Lucas found himself feeling dangerously alone at nights. It was too quiet and the television didn’t work—his mother didn’t pay for cable or any streaming apps. Lucas eventually caved in and got himself Netflix but even that didn’t help with the loneliness that was settling into his bones.

When Thanksgiving came, Lucas didn’t get out of bed until late afternoon. A bad decision when the time came to finally move and the soreness in his leg made it nearly impossible. He tried to do his stretches, but that only helped so much. Thanksgiving dinner came in the form of a frozen television dinner of turkey, corn, and mashed potatoes. He sat at the dinner table by himself, staring up at the opposite end of the table every once in a while.

That night, Lucas cried in bed. Soft, silent tears that lolled him into sleep.

When Friday night came around, Lucas had packed his bags up and left the condo without a look back. It hadn’t ever really been his home and without his mom there that whole week, it felt less like a home than ever before. The drive to the airport was quiet but full of indecision. Why did he feel so shitty? Lucas hated the storm brewing in his chest, hated the loneliness that was sinking into him this whole week and he had no way to get rid of it even if he tried. He’d stopped answering his phone save for one picture on Instagram of him on the beach and a caption that would be typical Lucas fashion.

At the airport, as he waited for his flight to board, Lucas finally took up his phone and called the number that had been sitting on the screen for ten minutes. Not shocking, he reached the voicemail.

“Hey mom. I’m on my way back to school but I wanted to call you before I got on the plane…” Lucas took a deep breath. “I took you off my bank account. I’m not giving you anymore of my money and… I-I’m not letting you walk all over me anymore. You were supposed to be home, we were supposed to spend Thanksgiving together. Year after year you’ve been using me for money and as an excuse to avoid your responsibilities and I’m tired of it. I’m your son and this…this isn’t how you’re supposed to treat your son. S-So no more… I hope you understand and we can talk about this whenever you’re done with your trip.” Lucas ended the call and stared down at his phone, not at all happy with his words. He still felt conflicted, but still had so much more he wanted to say. Wanted to shout.

Hours later, back in Palmetto, Lucas went straight to his room at the Vixen Den and crawled straight into bed.