#we found her sneaking in there so many times just messing with whatever

[empress-simps]

Can I request a fic with Remus (I love him), with a shy fem!reader girlfriend? House doesn’t really matter, but Hufflepuff might be fitting lol. She wants to meet his group of friends officially for the first time (she’s dating Remus and she hasn’t yet), but she’s too anxious despite trying to hype herself up for it? Maybe Remus comforts her

Darling, this is such a cute request! 🫶 Also, who doesn’t love Remus? We all do, no questions asked (I would do anything for him and Regulus). I absolutely love to write for this man, and I think Remus with a shy s/o is stinking cute. Thank you for requesting! 🫂 (Not edited so there may be grammatical errors or typos lurking around)

Loving Yellow and Black

Pairings: Remus Lupin x Fem! Reader CW: Language and mentions of smoking.

In many ways, you were different from his friends.

You were polite, kind, and willing to help others- basically what everyone thinks of when they picture an ideal Hufflepuff student. Not saying that James, Sirius, and Peter were rude or anything like that, but there was just something gentle about you that Remus saw. As for them? They’re a rambunctious mess, a bit rough around the edges.

Remus found it quite charming, you try your best to blend in, be a wallflower so your student life at Hogwarts would be smooth sailing. Although, to Remus, no matter what you do, you stand out effortlessly. When he first expressed his interest in you, you were hesitant and cautious. You thought it was just one of the many other pranks that he and the other marauders had planned on other students.

“Go out with me, Y/n?” Remus asked nervously, after a week of him approaching and befriending you.

“Erm…” You looked around, making sure he was talking to you. “Are you talking to me?”

So, he did everything he could to make sure you know that he’s serious about you and that you won’t feel anything but that.

Slowly but surely, the hesitance and doubts started to go away as you got to know him better. You learned that he loves chocolates, his eyes would light up when you bring him chocolate frogs whenever you and your friends would go to Hogsmeade. His eyes having literal stars as he took in the sight of you, and how his laugh would make you smile as he whisks you away from your common rooms to hang out (snog) in the Astronomy tower and bringing you back just before the clock strikes twelve.

You bring out the best versions of yourself when you’re both with each other. Remus helps you to be a bit more adventurous, making you try things you never even thought of doing, such as sneaking out past curfew. Remus was your many firsts.

Remus found himself being more patient and calmer than before, maybe your nature rubbed off on him like how his rubbed off on you.

“Moony, are you smoking… you know?”

Remus nearly choked on his breakfast one morning. He turns to look at Sirius, eyes wide with shock. “Just why would you think that Padfoot?!” Sirius shrugged, putting his arms up as if he was surrendering. “Geez, just asking a question, don’t get your knickers in a twist, Moony.”

“I’m not smoking, or doing whatever you think I’m doing, you sod.”

Remus grumbles while James just laughed, “Alright, there’s our original Moony.”

“You seem calmer recently, Moons. We were just curious.” Peter shrugs, taking a bite out of his pancake, Remus raised his eyebrow. “Oh really?”

“Yeah, it was like you turned into a saint. You don’t even scold James and I anymore for our boxers strewn across the floor- “

“Hey! Shut it, what if Lily hears?!”

“Mind you, we are in the great hall eating breakfast, Padfoot.”

“I’m just saying!”

“Quiet down, people are looking.”

It was just a matter of time when your friends found out you’re dating Remus and managed to keep it under their noses for a few months.

“Y/n! How could you? We trusted you!” El, one of your friends shrieks dramatically, plopping down her bed, making you furrow your eyebrows. “Erm… is there something going on?”

“of course there is! Why did you keep it a secret?” She whined, pulling you next to her.

“Keep what a secret?”

“You and Lupin!”

“Oh, erm…” You trailed off, trying to fight the blush forming on your face. Your other friends started to tease you, “So it’s true!”

“Yes.” You confirmed with a nod, your hands over your face as a poor attempt to cover your blush.

“Alright, we need to know if the bloke is good enough to date our Y/n.”

It quickly became known to other students within your house that you were dating the witty marauder. Of course, this kind of news spreads like wildfire across Hogwarts; even reaching the three marauders who were in the dark with their Moony’s love life. They need to meet you as soon as possible and didn’t even let Remus have peace and quiet until he asked you if you were okay about it.

“So, they found out about us.” Remus bit his lip, looking nervously. You blinked, “Well, it was bound to happen, my friends were… vocal about it.” She chuckled as Remus cracked a grin.

“Tell me about it.”

“I’m guessing they want to meet me?”

Remus nodded, sighing. “Sorry angel. I tried to tell them- “

“It’s alright, honey. I figured it would be good after my friends also demanded you to meet them.”

To say that you were terrified would be an understatement; you felt like you were going to throw up in your shoes, break out in a cold sweat, or even stumble because damn it- your legs are shaking, as if you’re going to collapse under your own weight.

Well yeah, you were the one who kinda brought it up, but it still didn’t lessen the nerves you have. You wanted them to at least be civil towards you and to recognize your relationship with their friend. You were thinking of what outfit you should wear a week prior to the meeting, and you carefully planned out how you would respond to the possible questions they’d have. Call it over thinking, but you were just preparing for every single possible outcome.

“Alright, I can do this.” You chanted, looking at the mirror then at your watch, only 30 minutes before Remus arrives in the Hufflepuff common room. You checked your hair, smoothing it out as you checked yourself for the umpteenth time.

“Merlin, Y/n. You’re acting like you’re meeting the Prime Minister of Magic.” El commented, shaking her head. “You’ll be fine, if they don’t like you… then they better prepare themselves for a Hufflepuff’s wrath.”

Remus casts a glance worriedly at you, fixing your black and yellow scarf on your neck. “Darling, it isn’t that cold out, you don’t have to practically cover your face with it.” He chuckles, kissing your reddening cheeks as you huffed, “It would be a great help when I meet your friends.” Grinning, he pinched your cheeks, making you glare at him.

“They’ll love you. Don’t worry too much, yeah?” He whispers, before giving your forehead a kiss, at this point, Remus and the cold weather’s mission is to make you look like a tomato.

You gulped nervously, fiddling with the ends of the scarf. “But… I…”

To be honest, you are kind of expecting them to be disappointed when they meet you. A Hufflepuff girl, fairly average, wallflower, and a goody-two-shoes. Quite boring, in your opinion. Remus’s gaze hardened, as if scolding you. “I know what’s going on your pretty mind, darling. Just be yourself.” Squeezing your hand in his, you made your way to the Gryffindor Tower and to the dorm room he and his friends share.

“There you are, Moony!” James smiled as he opened the door to their room, his smile widening as he casts, a glance at you. “You must be Y/n! Come in!” He excitedly ushers both of you inside the room, you gave Remus’s hand a squeeze, he looks at you and squeezes back. You took a glance at their room, there was Sirius laying down lazily on his bed, Peter sitting on a random beanbag on their dorm room, and Lily sitting on her boyfriend’s bed, beaming a smile in which you returned; albeit a little more nervously.

“Any second further than that and I’d thought Moony was lying about finally getting a girl, isn’t that right, wormtail?” Sirius grinned, teasing Remus before standing up and giving you a hug. Which made you widen your eyes and stiff up, but recovering quickly to hug him back, pulling away after a few moments.

“Nice to meet you, love. I’m Sirius.”

You smiled shyly, “Nice to meet you too, I’m Y/n.”

“Remus, tell me again how’d you manage to get someone as gorgeous as she is?”

Remus rolled his eyes, “Sod off, Pads.” Sirius just laughed, smiling as he looks at you and Remus together.

“Hi Y/n, I’m Peter. Nice to meet you.” Peter smiled politely, holding out his hand which you took, shaking it. “Nice to meet you too, Peter.”

Lily smiled, pointing at her boyfriend. “That one’s James! Don’t pay attention to him- “ cue a protest from James, who’s pouting  “-and I’m Lily, so glad there’s another girl in the group! They’re driving me crazy!” She practically bounced off her feet and hugged you, making you stumble, and Remus put a hand on your back to support you.

Okay, this wasn’t what you expected. Quite far actually.

Your heart fills with warmth as you allowed a smile to appear on your face, looking around, seeing how they felt so comfortable with you already. Sirius was busy bothering Peter, who shoos him away, complaining that he’s being annoying even when you’re with them. “Have you got any shame left with you, Padfoot?”

“Hm, last time I checked none.”

James was trying to get your opinion on how to pull off one of their pranks, and Lily scolding him not to drag you onto his shenanigans.

Remus pulls you close to him, wrapping his arms around your waist, he whispers. “Welcome to the family, darling.”

[tiredfox64]

Well that’s new

Prior notes: My week has been rough I tell ya and I’ve been writing fanfics just to help myself calm down. Also sorry this is projecting :P. Quick edit: we raw dogging, not proofread so probably some errors.

Pairing: Rain(MK1) x Chubby! afab reader

Warnings ‼️: NSFW, nipple play, thigh fucking, fingering (just a bit)

Not many really knew if Rain has a type. He was always so focused on his studies, his only desire was be the High Mage of Outworld. He achieved that yet there was no signs that he would really go after anything else. Basically, everyone wondered if he would ever find a lady to spend his time with. Amara was especially curious as she wanted to know if her son would ever settle down. But that was never on his mind. He had to stay focused on being High Mage and looking good for Outworld.

That was until you walked in with the rest of the Earthrealmers.

You were not there to fight, more of like support and to help out just in case. You’ve helped out Liu Kang for a long time now. You basically started when he first got Johnny, Kenshi, Raiden, and Kung Lao together. And you have truly been a big help with making sure everyone was patched up and ready for whatever. But there was something about you that made Rain’s dislike for Earthrealmer go down just a bit. What was it? He’s not sure yet. He needs to test and experiment to find out.

Rain kept a close eye on you during the tournament. Your body was definitely different than all the other women he has seen in Outworld. You had a pudgy belly which he was surprised to realize it didn’t deter him. Though with that pudgy belly came so much more. Wide hips that looked so nice to grab. Thick, plush thighs that any man would be happy to lay his head on. And those breasts…oh wow. Something came over Rain which made his face heat up and he had to back away from everything. Never before did he ever wanna put his face between a nice pair of breasts before. Yours might be the only nice pair he has seen. So round and like they belong in his hands. Yup, I think he found out what he is attracted to.

Rain had no clue why all that was so attractive and in a way he didn’t really care anymore. Now he was curious on how you felt. It felt wrong. It felt like Rain was abandoning his realm for some girl. It’s not that serious, there are probably plenty of Outworlders who have messed with Earthrealmers, right? Well if Johnny keeps flirting with every girl he sees and is trying to get into Princess Kitana’s pants he doesn’t see why he can’t do the same. He will just be more respectful.

When he heard Empress Sindel make the announcement about the evening banquet he found that to be a perfect time to go up to you. When the time did come he was quick to find you. Immediately he introduced himself to you and only you. He basically ignored every other Earthrealmer that was with you. You were confused at first but wanted to be polite and introduced yourself.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He said before he took your hand and kissed it. You’re already hooked.

Rain wasn’t a charmer or anything. He never flirts or chase women. He tried his hardest with you. All he had to do was listen to you and talk to you. What more could you ask for? You sat across from him at the banquet and almost forgot to eat just because you enjoyed talking to him. He actually enjoyed talking to you too. Finding out what your purpose was, what your life is like, and seeing your personality shine through. It made him feel less guilty for what he was planning to do.

Even when the night ended on a sour note with Shao’s little outburst that still didn’t stop Rain from pursuing you. When everyone was leaving he took you to the side and asked you to meet him in his chambers. He’ll sneak you in and you two can do you know what. You were pretty shocked and your cheeks started to burn you heard that. You’re not one for hook ups or one night stands but…ah screw it. You won’t ever return to Outworld after this. It can’t hurt to leave your mark somewhere. Plus, you did find Rain incredibly handsome and he managed to charm you which isn’t easy. So why not, you deserve to have some fun.

You did just that, being all sneaky just to get dicked down. How promiscuous. It wasn’t difficult for Rain to sneak you in. When he got you into his room he was immediately on you. His lips captured yours. He wasn’t rough but he was hungry for you. He brought you close to his body and had one of his arm wrap around your waist. His other hand went to grab a handful of your ass which made you flinch a little. Rain definitely likes the feel of your ass, giving it a nice squeeze. He doesn’t think he can wait any longer and neither can you.

You got a little nervous when he brought you closer to his bed. You don’t think he is stupid and can’t handle your body. Hell, you already suspect that’s why he was going after you. But you just can’t help but be a little concerned.

“Are you sure you wanna do this with me? I’m a little surprised you do.” You said

For a second Rain just stares at you and you almost think he is contemplating about actually having sex with you.

“Like I’d ever regret anything I do. I’m very certain about this.” He didn’t hesitate to start taking his clothes. Well you heard him, start stripping!

You took your clothes off slowly until you were only left in your bra and underwear. The way your bra held onto your breasts and the way your underwear hugged your hips drove Rain crazy. When he pulled you onto the bed his hands were already on you again. Hands grabbing at your thighs and ass while his face starts to nuzzle into your breasts. You’ve never seen a man so desperate to place his face right between there.

Rain already came to the conclusion that everything about you excites him yet calms in. His mind grows empty with the only knowledge being where his face is and where his hands are. This man was in a tranquil state and you could almost find it cute. That is until you feel something poking at your thigh. Somebody’s excited.

You decide to be a little brave and finally take your bra off. Rain pulled away from you and stared in awe. He was ready to grab at them. You also took off your underwear before lying down on his bed. When Rain saw how your breasts would jiggle slightly whenever you did anything made his eyes widen. It was necessary that he gets a feel of them. He basically pounced on you, his hands grabbing at your breasts and feeling their softness. His lips latched onto one of your nipples which his fingers started to play with the other one. He sucked on it, having his tongue slide over it and swirl around it. It made you shiver and caused a whimper to escape your lips.

The longer he did that the wetter you got. When his hand snuck down between your legs he was surprised at how wet it was. He even managed to slip his fingers inside of you easily, earning him a moan from you. Your breathing grew heavier and his fingers kept pumping into you. You are very ready for him.

His fingers slipped out and you were left empty. The feeling was replaced down there when you felt the tip of his cock going up and down your pussy. You felt it tap against your clit, exciting you even more. Once it was coated from your wetness you felt his cock being pushed into you, inch by inch.

Rain couldn’t hold himself back from groaning. You felt so warm. Your pussy kept squeezing his cock as you got used to it. He took it slow at first as he wanted to make it last. He would go until only his tip was inside of you before slowly thrusting back into you. It made your eyes roll back and you wanted to beg him for more. Luckily for you, this man wanted more as well. His hands went to the back of your thighs, pushing your legs back that your knees were near your head. This thrust became rougher and faster. Oh you were struggling to stay quiet.

Your hand went up to cover your mouth, muffling your moans but not silencing them. The angle Rain had you at made it feel like his cock was going deep. He was hitting that sweet spot to the point you were feeling it in your stomach. That pure ecstasy feeling that pulsated inside of you each time he thrusted in. And the view that Rain had was lovely. Watching as your breasts bounced a little and your belly jiggle was something he won’t ever forget. He found it adorable that you had to cover your mouth just to prevent anyone from hearing you two. Your mind was slipping away from you and your only focus was the cock that was being rammed into you. No thoughts about returning to Liu Kang, no concerns about how the other Earthrealmers are doing. Just how Rain was turning your brain into mush.

Rain got close to you again and pressed his body against yours. You could hear more clearly now the noises he was making. Low grunts and heavy breathing. They slowly turned into whimpers as you recognized he was getting close judging by the little twitching his cock did inside you. You can only hop that he last a little longer just so you can cum.

“Please…just a little more…keep going.” You begged him.

He just nodded as he focused on not cumming inside of you. That would just be foolish. Just a few…more…strokes…and-

If Rain wasn’t holding onto your thighs before you would have certainly wrapped them around his waist. Your head went back into the pillows as you used both hands to cover your mouth. Your moans were clear to him. He could feel your pussy pulsate around his cock, just proving more to him how good he made you feel. The feeling of cumming on his cock was way better than when you would just use your fingers. And although Rain would have loved to keep his cock inside your warm pussy he knew he was about to cum soon. He made the decision to pull out and take hold of your thighs again. He placed his cock right between your thighs, almost immediately cumming when he felt them surround it. He thrusted harsher in between your thighs before you heard a string of whimpers and something warm hitting your body. His cum splatted against your thighs, stomach, and even some got close to your breasts. It was a sight to behold. You and Rain were left breathing heavily and recovering from the orgasm you both experienced.

He was a gentleman and helped clean you up. He never would have imagined he would use his water magic to help clean cum off of someone but it was useful. Once he was done he went laid down beside you.

“Well, how was that?” Rain asked as if he didn’t know he just made you feel amazing.

“Do I even need to say anything?” You joked which did make him chuckle.

“If you liked it so much perhaps you should visit Outworld more often. I would be delighted to host you and show you around.”

“Imma have to beg Lord Liu Kang to allow me back. I don’t mind doing that if that means I get another experience with a man like you.”

So it’s set. You don’t care if you have to beg on your knees you will come back to Outworld. Rain is more than pleased to have you come back, finding you to be just the right woman he wants. As you both cuddle together, his face right between your breasts again as you both succumb to sleep, you had a lot to plan.

My advice? Being a few condoms with you. No, not a few, a lot. You’re gonna need to say safe and prepared on your multiple trips to Outworld.

After notes: I said I would do it and I did. This is my first time ever posting my work. I hope to make some people happy and like I said before this is kind of projecting but for my other works I’ll try not to do that. This man just needs some love and I am here to show it. Also this was originally a request I had for someone that I sent in but then I felt bad for doing it. So I guess if they ever do it well whoops I don’t need it no more. Anyways I might even post this on AO3 cause I don’t see much on there for him either. Adiós!

[sstvrnioloo]

After Party ✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: Chris Sturniolo

warnings: swearing, alcohol, mentions of not so great home life, mentions of drugs, and smut.

if you don't like smut, find smth else to do.

she/her pronouns will be used!!

pink = y/n

green = lia

blue = matt

orange = chris

purple = nick

Word Count: 858

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**NOT PROOFREAD**

b/n: sorry if this sucks ass, first fanfic ive ever written.

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Shit. I missed 7 calls from my mom. She's going to fucking kill me. I was supposed to be home by 10pm and it's quarter to 12pm. While I was at my bestfriends's house Lia, we were talking about our classes because we were supposed to be doing the same major in college, not cause we wanted to be with eachother all the time, but its because we both found interest in it.

We ended up talking about many other things, except our classes.

"Lia I'm screwed." "She's gonna fucking kill me; her and my dad."

I loved Lia from the day I met her, every breakup, every zit, every party, every boyfriend, every ex, everything that ever happened; we were in it together. As she pulled up in the driveway she wished me good luck knowing how my mother would act.

"Love you y/n, good luck."

"Thanks Lia."

I opened the front door and there my parents were waiting for me to come home. I could feel all the anger radiating straight off them, I certainly wish I was anywhere else but my own home.

They yelled at me for a good hour and I yelled straight back, defending myself. They hit me, and I was done with their shit. I went up to my room and I burst into tears, never understood that I'm not like them at all. I already was struggling with my classes, my room was a mess, my parents weren't helping and this nothing else could go wrong. Right?

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"y/n you got to love yourself and be you. not whatever your parents want you to be. fuck that."

This was why my Lia was my number one. My bitch from day one. She never liked how my parents treated me, she was just like me. Except she was stronger, never cried and had it like this: Me before her family. I told her over and over that I'd be fine, but she knew me better than myself. I was facetiming her for help.

"I know liaaaa! but how am i supposed to be myself when i have to be home at 10pm???"

"do the opposite. forget about the fucking rules. you'll find another side of yourself that you never knew you had."

"you're right fuck their shitty rules, and just to get on my parents' nerve I'll go to a party; drunk teenagers and all."

"Yes girl im coming with! Noah is throwing a party this weekend, we should totally go!"

"we are going to the fucking party. its time to let go."

"yes ms. badass we're goinggg!!"

Friday was 2 days away. And I was ready.

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I'm grounded for 2 weeks. Forget that, I'm still going to Noah's party. I was walking to 3rd period with Lia planning our night out. The plan is I have to sneak out of my window and Lia is gonna pick me up, the party starts at 11:30pm and I'm usually asleep by 10pm so my parents will also be asleep. I climb down my tree and hop into her car. Voilà!

"His house is only 15 minutes away so its fine if we're around 5-10 minutes late."

"I'll also climb down my tree barefoot so I won't damage my heels on the way down." "This is so excitinggg!!"

"I have the perfect dress for you y/n!!

"Whatever it is fuck it im wearing it"

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Friday

From Lia:

You ready for tonight??

Read 2:30pm

To Lia:

yesss

Read 2:30pm

To Lia:

im coming over to see the dress and go over the plan one more time.

Read 2:31pm

From Lia:

okay cool see you in 5<3

Read 2:32pm

I told my parents I was studying for a test with Lia that is Monday and of course my parents believed it I drove over to Lia's and of course her parents were welcoming me in. I went up to Lia's room and she showed me the dress a black dress that pushed up my boobs, and that barely covered my ass. It was perfect. Lia was going to wear a red dress that complimented mine with sparkles, we tried them on and we looked sexy.

"We are going to be the life this fucking party."

"Yes the fuck we are."

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a/n: if u have tips for me i'd love to hear em!! also my introduction page will be out soon!!! just ask to be on the taglist part 2 of AP (after party)!!

@lovingmattysposts

You are my biggest influencer, ilysm<333 (ur r now the first person for the taglist of AP!!

[messedupfan]

Chapter 4

Summary: Wanda is anticipating Vision picking up Tommy and Billy with her protective brother around.

A/N: Happy Friday!! I hope you all enjoy!

Masterlist | All Chapters | All Stories Taglist

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Wanda wakes to her brother ringing the doorbell again. She groans, regretting every decision she made that led to this moment. She doesn't understand why her brother insists on working when the sun isn't even up yet. She gets up when he gets more persistent and she doesn't want him to disturb the boys. 

“Good morning little sister,” he greets as he hands off Luna to her. “Awe did someone not get enough sleep?” Pietro taunts. 

Her hair is a mess and her eyes are hardly open but she's still able to shoot intimidating daggers at her brother. She in fact did not get a lot of sleep. She is dreading whatever interaction she may or may not be having with Vision today. She didn't sell, pawn off, or destroy any of his stuff as she had threatened. She sat in the basement for hours willing the rage that had taken down her wall to return. But it never did. All she could think about is how happy and proud he was to have this space. She surprised him with it on their fourth wedding anniversary. Wanda had drawn out the plans, budgeted the project, got some help from Pietro and found all of the decorations. She couldn't tear down this present but she knew if she didn't, he would only ever see her as weak. 

It was only a couple of hours ago that she was able to fall asleep. Wanda was not ready for her brother's chipper energy right now. She takes Luna upstairs with her and falls fast asleep after tucking the girl into bed. Wanda wakes a few hours later to an empty bed and voices. There are many different voices, all scrambled and she is unable to make sense of their words. She lays there until she can decipher the sounds. The loud saw isn’t helpful and only makes it more unpleasant to wake up. Wanda sighs and gets out of bed and walks into her bathroom to clean up before going downstairs. 

Wanda walks down in clean clothes and wet hair. You and Pietro are focused on working and she is shocked to see you here. She looks at her smartwatch and checks the time. She hadn't realized she slept in so much. Feeling bad for the kids, she gets to work in the kitchen to make lunch as it was close to two in the afternoon. 

When you stop the loud saw, you hear noise from the kitchen and you look at Pietro to see if he noticed it too. “What?” He asks confused, then he hears some pans clash. You act fast and walk around the table to check and make sure none of the kids are hurting themselves. You relax when you see Wanda. 

“Phew, it's just you,” you say with a dramatic hand on your chest. 

Wanda looks at you funny, “Who else would it be?” 

“Well, we made sure the kids were properly distracted in the boys room, but you never know who might sneak by and get hurt,” you explain. 

“Oh,” she closes a drawer, “Thank you for watching the kids while I slept. I've got it now. And I'm starting lunch so you guys can have a break soon.” 

“That sounds great, I’ll leave you to it,” you say as you return to Pietro. “Your sister is up, she’s getting started on lunch,” you inform him. 

“Good, the last thing we need is a trip to the hospital.” He relaxes as he puts his goggles back on to start the table saw. “Now we can focus on work and not jump at every little noise.” You chuckle at his remark but feel a little more relaxed because you were so worried about the kids getting hurt while they worked. Especially Luna since she is the youngest of all of them and was a curious little girl. You already had to catch her from falling off of the kitchen counter because she wanted a cup out of the cabinet. Then Pietro had to stop her a couple of times from crossing over the tape. And although he could have woken up his sister, he felt that she deserved the time to rest. 

When lunch is ready, Wanda calls everyone to the table and everyone hungrily makes their way to the dining area that had quite an alluring aroma. The kids and the adults were starving. You wanted to be here early with Pietro so that the two of you had more time to work but you slept past your alarm. You didn't have time to fix you and Rachel breakfast, you did pick up a dozen donuts for everyone but the one donut you ate wasn't filling enough and you couldn't wait to try some more of Wanda's food. 

After lunch, while you're making Wanda laugh as she cleans up the table, a knock on the front door interrupts the moment. Wanda freezes as she looks between you and the door and you grow concerned for her. She shuts the water off and dries her hands. “Tommy, Billy, your dad is here!” She shouts from the bottom of the stairs. You stay put, not certain if you should look busy or get the door or what. 

Pietro drops his tool in the box and walks over to answer the door as the knocking gets more persistent. “Would you cut it out? Couldn't you hear her from out there? We know you're here, geez.” He gestures to the almost completely missing wall. 

“You wouldn't open the door,” Vision says as he tries to step past his former brother-in-law. “Where are my boys? I expect them to be down here and ready to leave by the time I arrive.” He checks his watch and clicks his teeth. “That woman knows this. I have a strict schedule I must abide by.” 

“Wanda is getting them,” Pietro says, his glare never faltering. You weren't used to this hostile behavior from your friend. He was the most affable, laid back person that you know. He wasn't an angry person. It sets off alarms about the type of person the twins' father is. “Why don't you go wait in your car? I hear you like the convenience of an easy escape.” Pietro found out from Billy what Vision did to his sister during drop off last Sunday. His blood is boiling at the sight of the man that was once married to his sister. A person he once had to consider family. He cannot believe he hates Wanda so much to blatantly disrespect her in front of her own children, time and time again. 

“I’d rather stand inside,” Vision says. “Unless there's some reason I shouldn't be in here.” He shoves past Pietro, only upsetting the man further, and stands in the middle of the living room. You are leaning against the stairs now, cleaning your hands with a rag. Vision notices you and with cold eyes he scoffs. “Are you what they're trying to hide from me?” He accuses. 

Your eyebrows connect in confusion on how he jumped to that conclusion. “No, I'm not here to cause any problems. I’m just helping with the repairs.” 

Vision raises his eyebrows, “Oh is that what they're calling it these days?” You shake your head seeing no reasoning with this man. “What’s your name?” You ignore him as you walk across the room to return to your work and he grabs you by your bicep. “I asked you a question.” His tone is meant to be threatening but you're bored by him. “You are in my house and around my boys. As a man, I have a right to know.”

“Leave them alone,” Wanda says as she walks down the stairs without her kids in sight. “They’ll be down in a few minutes. They want to finish up a round in the game they're playing. I said that it's fine and told them you would be patient.” 

Vision shakes his head as he lets you go, “And why would you do that? You know that it's my time with them now. You have no say in what is okay and what isn't until four in the afternoon next sunday.” You walk over to stand by Pietro, preparing to hold him back from making a decision he might regret later.

“Vis, they are always my kids too. I would never tell you something like that. That's ridiculous, and it's not how a custody agreement works,” Wanda says, shaking her head. “Why are you even in here? A couple of honks and I would have sent them out to you—”

“Clearly, you wouldn't! Otherwise they'd be down here!” Vision cuts her off. 

Wanda takes a beat, not wanting to start a screaming match that has the boys running down to prevent it. “Are you finally going to clean out your stuff from my basement?”

“Are you still on about that? I like the space the way it is, I'm not giving it up,” Vision replies. 

“You seemed to have no problem giving my sister up.” Pietro steps forward. “Why are you so stubborn about a damn room that's in a house you don't own?” Wanda tries to nonverbally tell him that it's not his fight but he ignores her. “Either you want your shit or you don't,” he snaps as he tries to get closer to Vision but you're quick to grab him.

“You’re mistaken, Pietro. Everything on this property is mine. I know this might be hard to wrap around your poorly developed uneducated mind. But just because I lost my name on the deed, doesn't mean I don't own it. This house was purchased under my dollar! Money I'll never get back. I will forever own it. So, if I want to keep my entertainment room for myself and my friends here, in this house, I will do as I please. Are we clear?” 

Pietro tries to breathe to calm himself down but all he sees is red. His impulses are begging to take over but he knows he can’t lose total control. He grabs the sledgehammer and fear flashes across Vision's face for a second as Pietro stomps in his direction. Wanda holds her breath, uncertain about what she is about to witness. You try to snap him out of his trance. Luckily, he storms past Vision and opens the basement door, carrying the sledgehammer with him. “Pietro, don't!” Wanda yells as she chases after her brother. 

“Wanda this is the only way he'll listen,” Pietro says as he stacks the few boxes that Wanda did pack up. Vision rushes down the stairs as well, shouting about how ridiculous it was that Wanda and her family were so upset over one room. Revealing that her mother was harassing him with phone calls and text messages and emails. 

As he arrives at the bottom of the stairs, he notices that the decorations are torn down and that the usually neat and organized place is a mess. “What the hell happened here?” Pietro wastes no time and slams the metal head of the hammer into the boxes. “Pietro! Have you gone completely mad!” Vision shouts. “What is with this family and hammers?”

Meanwhile, you are still upstairs on the main floor, waiting to escort the boys so they don't have to witness the scene happening in the basement. When Tommy and Billy are running down the stairs you overhear them arguing back and forth about how they knew they shouldn't have asked for a few extra minutes. They are blaming themselves for what's happening downstairs. “Hey boys,” you say as you step in their way. “Let's get you to your dad's car. Okay? Let the adults handle themselves.” There's a loud sound of something breaking and they rush to the open basement door. You stand in front of the door and repeat yourself.

“No, they always stop when we're there. We have to go down there,” Billy explains. You feel bad for the kids that they carry the weight of their family's problems on their shoulders. Not sure what to do, you go by your instincts and protect them from whatever is happening down there. It's not on them to end an argument. 

“Come on,” you take their hands. “I promise, everything will be okay.” As you're walking towards the front door, their footsteps are loud as the adults rush up the stairs. You aren't sure what transpired to result in Pietro holding onto Vision by the collar of his shirt with a red mark on his face. Wanda is furiously yelling at the two men to stop with angry tears rolling down her face. And as the boys claimed, once they make their presence known, it all comes to a screeching halt. 

“Mom!” the twins call out as they rush to hug her. 

“Mommy is okay,” she says as she rubs their backs. “Pietro, let him go,” she quietly demands.

Pietro has a short battle within himself on whether or not to stop now. He has him in his hands. At his mercy. But if he doesn't stop now, then when will he? What was he or anyone going to benefit from him beating Vision to death? Vision has kids that would be without a father. And with the likelihood that Pietro would have to serve time in prison for murder, Luna would be without a father. Finally, thinking clearly, he lets go of Vision and steps away. Horrified by the anger that had taken over him.  

“I’m going to go clean up,” he says as he looks around the room apologetically. He stops by Billy and Tommy, he taps both of them on their backs. “I’m sorry boys, it's… a long journey to become a man. I will see you next Sunday. I love you,” he says to them. He heads up stairs and you worry that he might have injured his hands. Which might make him unable to work until they’ve healed. You stand at the front door and try to make yourself disappear so that nothing else happens. This wasn't your problem. You don't know their stories or dynamics other than the few details that Pietro has drunkenly shared with you a time or two over the years that you've known him. 

Vision straightens himself out and clears his throat. He looks at Wanda, “Mind if I…?” He tips his head towards the bathroom door. 

“Help yourself,” she says softly as she plays with her boy's hair. She looks down at their worried eyes and it's taking all of her strength to not break down. They're still so little and all she has ever wanted to do is protect them. She opens her mouth to say something but she has nothing to say. 

Vision comes out of the bathroom and acts like nothing happened at all. He lowers himself to his son's height and taps their shoulders so that they face him. “Come on boys, I have a very important appointment that we're late for.” He fixes Billy's glasses and dusts off something from Tommy's shirt. “It was going to be a surprise, but we're finding out if you're having another little brother or maybe you’ll finally have a little sister.” He looks up at Wanda and then looks back at the boys before the hurt in her eyes can fill him up with guilt. He rises and takes their hands. He bids Wanda a goodbye and thanks you as you hold the door open for him and the kids. 

“Are we going to see you on Sunday?” Tommy asks as they pass. 

You look at Vision, who lets you know he doesn't want you around with a simple glare. Next you look at Wanda, who's only focus right now is holding herself together in front of her kids. Finally, you look at Tommy and hold your fist up to bump. “Of course, pal. Someone has to fix that wall and between you and me, your uncle isn't as good as I am.” You smile at him. You shut the door once they're off the porch and as you're about to check on Wanda, she's running up the stairs. 

Her bedroom door slams and you hear the words “What the hell is wrong with you?” and “I don't need you to protect me!” You go into the boys room where the girls are sitting unaffected as they play the video game with noise canceling headphones on. 

“I was wondering why it was so quiet in here,” you say after you nudged the headphones off of Rachel's ear. “Where’d you get these?”

“Tommy and Billy,” she says. “We heard a loud noise and they told us to put these on.” She pauses the game and Luna is snapped out of her trance. “Hold on, Luna.” She says as the girl starts to get upset. “Where are Tommy and Billy?” She asks you. 

“They went with their dad, so it'll only be you and Luna for the rest of the day. Is that okay?” You ask, although you think you might be sent home early. 

“That stinks but I guess it's their dad's turn. Like what you and mom do with me.” Rachel frowns as she's bummed about not having her friends around. “I just wish he could have waited to get them until after I beat Tommy.” 

You laugh as you shake your head. “I’m sure his dad would have been happy to help his son lose.” 

Rachel nods, “I think so too. It helps build character.” 

You smile at your daughter as you recognize so much of her mother. You mess up her hair as you tell her as much. “I’ll let the two of you get back to it. Keep the headphones on. Okay?” 

She nods, “Okay.” She places the headphones back on and Luna perks up as the two can continue to play the game. You close the door behind you as you leave the room. Wanda's door was left open when you pass and you see her crying into her hands on her bed. You want to comfort her but you don't want to overstep boundaries that haven't been set. Thankfully, you don't get much of a choice as Pietro is calling you to come downstairs. 

He isn't on the main floor so you go down to the basement. You can't imagine what the place once looked like, but it must've been something special enough for Vision to fight to keep it. “I’m not going to ask you to help me clean this up,” Pietro says as he carefully places broken pieces of things into a black trash bag. “I’m sorry that I reacted the way that I did. I shouldn't have let him get to me like that. Especially not with the kids here.” He huffs as he looks at the mess he made and thinks about how horrified he would have been if his little girl walked downstairs and saw him. “I understand if you no longer want to help. Wanda understands as well and even offered to pay you. And you don't have to stay today. You and Rachel can go home now if you'd like.” He seems genuinely upset and remorseful. 

“Is that what it's always like between the two of you?” You ask as you cross your arms over your chest and lean against the wall. 

“No,” Pietro answers. “He’s been digging under my skin for years and when he went on and on about how everything was still his it sounded like he thought my sister is included in that. I,” he shakes his head shamefully. “He has put her through a lot. She isn't the person she used to be before him. And I hate him for it.” You nod as you listen to him. “I thought when he left her, that would be the end of it. But it’s been years and he’s still harassing her. I just… I don’t know how to help her anymore.” 

You grab a trash bag and put on your gloves to start helping. “Pietro, it isn’t up to you to help her with this,” you start, testing to see if he wants your advice or just your ear. He looks at you and he waits for you to continue. “I know you have good intentions but I think you might be doing more harm than good.”

“How so?” He says, intrigued by your take on the situation. 

“Vision isn’t going to listen to anyone but Wanda.” Pietro opens his mouth to argue. “Hold on, let me finish my thought.” He nods and lets you proceed. “Wanda might not be able to gain Vision’s respect as a co-parent and an ex partner if everyone else is fighting her battles. It might help her for the moment. But in the long run, it’s only hurting her. If she can’t grow confidence in her own strength, she will still be vulnerable to his manipulations. I know that you want to protect her, but she might be better off without your help when it comes to Vision.” 

Pietro slouches down onto one of the chairs he didn't break with a defeated sigh. “You’re probably right. I mean, this definitely didn't do her any good. Vision is probably speaking to a lawyer right now in order to keep me away from my nephews.” You nod along, the man did seem like the type to call his lawyers about every little thing.

“Your sister is clearly strong. She has the house and she has shared custody. I doubt Vision handed any of that to her.” You point out to help Pietro see that she doesn't need this kind of protection. 

“Actually, Vision made a prenuptial agreement that ended up backfiring on him. The lawyer that drew it up for him was a secret feminist and made sure that Wanda wouldn't be screwed over in case Vision chose to divorce her. He isn't as smart as he seems, he didn't read over the entire contract.” He shakes his head. 

“Oh, well,” you pause as you think of what to say next. You were trying to spin things positively but it was hard when you knew only pieces of the story. “She sure is lucky when it comes to people looking out for her, huh?” Pietro nods and gets up to continue cleaning. The two of you finish cleaning the basement in less than an hour and resume working on the wall for a couple more before it's time to go home. 

You volunteer to get the girls while Pietro packs up the tools he'll need for the week. Wanda's door is still cracked open as you pass. She is laying on her bed with a remote in her hand, searching for something to watch. “Pietro? Have you finally come to apologize,” she says with her eyes locked in the television. You mentally curse yourself for standing here long enough for her to notice you. 

“Uh, actually,” you say as you step a little past the door. “It’s me, I'm up here to collect the girls. Pietro and I are done for the day.” 

Wanda places the remote on her nightstand and adjusts her pillows behind her back. “So you're still willing to help with the wall? After all of that?” 

You shrug as you lean against the door frame. “I promised Tommy I'd be here on Sunday. I keep my promises, Maximoff.” 

A small smile flashes and disappears quickly on Wanda's face as she's addressed by her maiden name. It's been a long time since she's heard it without it being for her brother or her mother. “Well, I'm sure he'll appreciate that. As stuck up and punctual as his father is, he's not the best at keeping promises.” 

“Clearly,” you say in remarks to their divorce and mock Vision’s accent. “Actually, as a divorcee, I take that one back.” 

Wanda lets out a small laugh. “Ah, yes, the promises of having and holding until death. You couldn't keep those?” There's a lightness to her tone that makes you smile. 

You shake your head, “Nah, that's expert level. I was like what? Eighteen when I made those vows…” You shiver at the reminder and the intrusive thoughts of that someday being your daughter. “I don't think our kids can be friends anymore. My daughter isn't allowed to hangout with… people until she's at least twenty-five.”

Wanda laughs again, “Wow, I had no idea you were so young.”

You make a face, “I don't know if that's a compliment or not.”

Wanda covers her face with her hand. “I’m sorry, I know that sounds bad.” She removes her hand and plays with a loose thread in her blanket. “I just meant the way you carry yourself is someone much older than you are. Well… come to think of it, I don't think I had an age in mind for you. I just didn't think you were still in your twenties.”

You smile, “Had to grow up fast, I guess.” 

“I can't imagine what that must've been like at first,” Wanda says as she tries to imagine the place you and Jean were in when the two of you found out about Rachel while the two of you were still in high school. Wanda had one scare with her high school boyfriend, Simon Williams. It turned her world upside down and made her put her life into focus on her education and her career. Once she got her period again, she refused to sleep with him the rest of the time they were together. He ended up leaving her because of it, which hurt at the time. But she doesn't regret her decision to wait until marriage after that. 

“It wasn't terrible,” you say simply. “Maybe I’ll tell you about it someday. But for now, I have to get Rachel home. I have to make dinner and finish packing for our trip.” 

“Oh right! You two are going camping. I hope you two have fun. I won't keep you longer.” She shoo's you away and you thank her. 

“Do you think you'll still be up for drinks Friday night?” You ask before you step away. 

“I think that's a question for Friday, because I don't know how I'll feel then.” She answers honestly. 

“No worries, I'll ask you Friday then. Have a wonderful night, Wanda.” You walk away and enter the boys room to interrupt the girls game. 

Wanda grabs the remote to put something on as she tries to quiet the many thoughts and questions she has for you. Maybe she'll push through on Friday, regardless of how she's feeling that day. She grabs her phone and texts her best friend. Make me go out on Friday night. No exceptions. No ifs, ands, or buts. She sends before she can change her mind. 

Seconds later she receives a reply. You've made a dangerous request. But no worries, I've got you. 

Wanda hopes she isn't making a mistake for future Wanda who will probably only want to lay in bed all night watching a reality show or a reboot of one of her favorite childhood shows. Then an image of your smile pops up in her head and she relaxes at the thought of getting drinks with you and her friend. Everything will be alright.

Chapter 5

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[leggerefiore]

cw: fluff, pla Ingo

---------

You sighed as you watched the grey clouds swirl in the great sky above. A chilly breeze blew through the air and left a lingering cool about as you moved closer to the Warden sitting beside you. There were few challengers for him today, and training had slowed down to a staggering halt in the Galaxy Team due to the approaching winter season. The morning often greeted you with frost and frozen water, but you found little reason to worry. Ingo hummed and wrapped a tender arm around you, pressing your body closer to his.

The lovely warmth of him was never something to be understated. In fact, rather, it was one of his easily most beloved feature. A certain soft heat he constantly emanated. Zisu gave a sweet smile at you two from her post and waved a curt goodbye as she headed to the HQ. There was a meeting about something you had not really cared to give much mind. Your inclusion in the Survey Corp was more a courtesy to Professor Laventon than an actual needed position. You had moved in with Ingo, after all. Irida had also stated many, many times that you were more than welcome to join her clan if you would like.

“… I think I need an arsenal of fire types,” you sighed. Ingo shook his head. A bit ironic, but you supposed his recollection of his past life was much beyond him. The joy his eyes would have lit up with back in Unova if a small horde of Litwicks greeted him after a long shift at the station. Those days seemed so far away from you now, but so dearly missed. Both of you had no idea how pleasant the mediocrity and peace of your existence had been. The only shake-ups being some powerful trainer, Team Plasma activities, or whatever mess Emmet could create with his army of Joltiks.

“You know, back home,” you turned to look the silver-haired man in his eyes, “You actually had a ghost-type as your starter.” Those eyes of his suddenly shifted to hold a distant melancholy. His inability to remember his past life bothered him. You often tried to help him however you could, easily answering questions and recalling events you believed were important to him.

“Ah, I must say… They do give me a good scare sometimes,” his voice was nothing but kind despite the small sadness he clearly held, “But something inside of me finds them cute. Whenever I see that Typhlosion the professor brought, I feel something strange in my head… Like a distant flame burning in the night while I stumble around a place.” You giggled at his half-recollection. It was accurate. Many times you caught him sneaking off to the bathroom or kitchen, using Chandelure alone for light. The sweet luring pokemon would have followed her trainer to the ends of the earth if he wanted.

“Mhm, that's about right, Ingo,” you giggled, “Your pokemon had the same typing as a Hisuian Typhlosion does.”

“… Perhaps I should see if I could procure one from the professor,” Ingo wondered aloud.

“Chandelure was a jealous type,” you continued on, “She got upset whenever you looked at another ghost type. Once I brought home a Sableye that a Hoennian friend had gifted me, and she threw a fit. I had no idea lighting fixtures could sulk until she did.” You adored how his eyes shifted. A certain gentleness returned to them, and the corners of his mouth twitched up. He was always so stoic, but you loved the subtle ways he expressed himself. (Of course, if you were too worried, he would openly speak his feelings if asked.) His eyes always showed his true feelings, and he was so easy to fluster.

In fact…

You shifted to grasp his cheeks with your hand, feeling their chill in your warmed hands. Leaning forward, you nuzzled your nose against his before pecking a quick kiss to his lips. By the time you were done, his cheeks bloomed with vibrant colour. “I love you, Ingo,” you lowered your hands to hold his calloused, worn ones with a bright grin on your face, “I think we should head home soon. I doubt you're getting any more trainers, and I just want to cuddle with you…”

His eyes were big and filled with something so tender your heart ached. The pad of his thumb rubbed against your skin, and he nodded.

“Of course, my dear… I love you, too.”

[lingerasthesmokeoncedid]

You Taste Like Birthdays

A Ransom Drysdale x OC Fanfic

Ransom Drysdale's great love story - told in seven part(ie)s.

“You’re like a big parade through town. You leave such a mess, but you’re so fun." -Regina Spektor

Ransom Drysdale was always called a party boy. That’s what they said in the society papers. That’s what all the shameless gossips claimed.

And as far as he was concerned, he was a Party Boy. Just not in the way they meant it.

He was a Party Boy in the same way that Harlan was a family man – he had one, but he didn’t particularly enjoy it.

He wasn’t a party boy because he loved them or because he preferred getting blackout drunk to anything else.

He was a party boy because that was the only time he got to see her.

PARTY #1: DEBUTANTE BALL

The first time she properly spoke to Ransom Drysdale, he was slipping two crisp 100 dollar bills into the breast pocket of a suit that cost more than her life. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen him, of course, and not even the first time she’d met him either. Her family ran in the same circles as his family, which meant that every birthday, New Year, Fourth of July, goddamn Arbor Day or White Day at the Country Club, their orbits collided.

Despite being the same age, though, she was slightly (embarrassingly, if her mother’s repeated attempts to put her on diets and force her into a wardrobe of shapewear and all black was any indication) north of Rubenesque, bookish, introverted, deeply insecure, and too smart for her age. More likely to find herself sipping tea with Harlan Thrombey than sneaking glasses from the wet bar with his grandson. Not Ransom’s type – even at sixteen. Not even worth his notice, not with so many devastating beauties buzzing around. 

And yet, on the night of her own debutante ball, when she abandoned the crowded dancefloor to lock herself in the butler’s pantry with a slice of cake and a good book, he found her.

Found her when no one else seemed to notice she was missing.

When their eyes met across that dark space, she couldn’t help but feel as she never had before.

Special.

But she hadn’t spent her entire childhood hiding from her father’s heavy-handed wrath and her mother’s Valium-tinged disappointment between the pages of books for nothing. She was smart. Smarter than Ransom Drysdale gave her credit for.

“Isn’t this my lucky day?” He asked, as he swanned through the door and closed it behind him. “The lady of the hour. Waiting for me in all her…glory.”

He lifted one eyebrow and smirked, clearly ready to relish whatever feminine attention he felt she was about to lay on him. And to be fair, there was a part of her that wanted to pretend. How fairytale perfect would it be if Ransom Drysdale – the Ransom Drysdale – had chosen her? If, after a lifetime of being ignored and passed over, she’d been noticed? If he’d seen her in the heat of the spotlight, in her debutante finest, and fallen madly, madly in love?

It would have been perfect. A dream come true. But to even pretend it was a possibility was very, very stupid.

Raking her eyes lazily over his handsome form (made even handsomer by a custom tuxedo), she flipped a page in her book, hoping she projected all of the detached cool girl energy she felt.

“What did they give you?”

Ransome made a noise – something between a laugh and a choke. She didn’t look up. He was too charming and tempting. If she gave him too much attention, she’d be lost. A human eclipse.

“What?”

“Ransom, we’ve known each other since we were six years old. You’ve never even said hello to me without someone making you. Please. Give me some credit here.”

He breezed past her objection. “You looked incredible out there, you know. When you disappeared, I thought I’d come and find you. The best looking guy should always get to dance with the best looking girl.”

Yes, he must have thought her a special kind of moron. Or maybe he was just used to girls falling at his feet. On a good day, she was way below the young models and cheerleader types who typically occupied his time. But in this ludicrous white gown her mother selected, slathered in too much makeup, and crumbled over a book in a butler’s pantry…she knew the money was the only explanation.

“Yeah, and I’m sure that 200 bucks you just shoved in your pocket just now had nothing to do with it.”

Her unexpected guest didn’t have an answer for that. Despite everything, she smiled. She’d shut up Ransom Drysdale? That was way better than any gift she’d get tonight.

“Alright,” he finally muttered. “You caught me.”

No apology. No shame, even.

“Was it really so ridiculous, though? That I would want to dance with you? Do you have some kind of inferiority complex or something?”

“Or something,” she muttered, not wanting to read into the fact that he didn’t seem to think it was so ridiculous.

Silence, then. Beyond the pantry walls, the party raged on. No one missed the guest of honor. No one even cared enough to realize she was gone. None of them were here for her, after all. Every invitation tonight had gone to her parents’ friends and associates, not hers – though she wouldn’t have had any friends to invite, even if she could.

Was it any wonder she’d rather believe the handsome party boy was only there because someone paid him?

“That’s bleak.”

“That’s realistic,” she countered, turning a page. “No, what’s the objective here? They slide you a cool two hundred and you sweet talk me back to the party?”

Over the lip of her book, she watched the vague outline of Ransom’s cut figure go slack as he leaned against a nearby wall.

“No, actually. My grandfather likes you. He saw you leave and sent me after you. He felt bad. Your own damn party and no one wanted to talk to you.”

That stung. She liked Harlan Thrombey, too. His pity was even worse than Ransom’s condescension.

“Funny,” she managed after a moment.

“What is?” he replied.

Well, the fact that you’re still here, she considered saying.

“It’s funny that he thinks they didn’t want to talk to me. I’m not locked up in here because I’m some sad and lonely little princess. It’s because this is a good book, that is an awful party, and those people in there? I don’t want to talk to them.”

He said nothing. She slammed her book closed, surprised by her own intensity, but unable to hold back.

“I mean, can you blame me?” She asked. “Those people…they’re awful. All of them.”

Her body tensed. Shit. She shouldn’t have said that. His parents were at that party. His grandfather. He’d even been at that party until just a moment ago.

She didn’t regret feeling that way. But she did regret saying it out loud. Especially to the most powerful guy she knew.

“You know, I do think I would have come after you,” he said, the words a soft marvel on his tongue. “If my grandfather hadn’t asked me to, I mean. I would have found you.”

“C’mon, Ransom. Haven’t you lied enough tonight? You’re better than that.”

When she raised her eyes, she found Ransom affixing an abrupt stare squarely on her. All words died in her mouth.

He tilted his perfect chin, assessing her with new curiosity. He silently posed a thousand questions, apparently found the answers written in her face, and seemed to come to some internal conclusion.

 “Let’s go,” he said.

It wasn’t a request. But it wasn’t a command either. She wouldn’t have answered a command. It was more like a call to adventure.

“What?” She asked.

He pulled at the twist of his bowtie. “You said you hate these people, right? You want to get away? Let’s fucking go.”

Skepticism attempted to hold her back even as she rose to unsteady high-heeled feet. “Where?”

He slipped off his jacket, fumbling in the pockets as he did so. “Wherever we want to. Here.”

In one smooth gesture, he offered her something. Her heart briefly swelled. He was going to give her the money.

Only, what landed her in hand wasn’t cash. It was a heavy metal key. A car key.

“I’ve already had a few drinks, so you’ll have to drive.”

He didn’t exactly seem like the safety first kind of driver. She tried to hand the keys back.

“I don’t know how. My mom thinks learning to drive is as good as admitting we’re poor. People will think dad can’t afford a chauffeur.”

She’d always wanted to learn, though. Any tiny scraps of independence she could snap up would help her eventually escape her hell-clutch of a family. But she’d never gotten the chance and considering it was easier if her family ignored her existence, she wasn’t exactly going to sneak out to do it. Ransom smirked and slipped his arm around her waist with the effortless grace that came so easily to all devastatingly handsome men.

She suppressed a shudder at his touch. He was only doing it to lead her away. That was all. Companionable at best. Not romantic.

“I know you don’t drive. That’s why I hope you’re a fast learner.”

It was the first time in her life she’d left her parents without permission. She’d planned her escape from them since she was twelve years old, and she’d taken notes from the heroines of her favorite novels. She would stay quiet, she would build a rich inner life, she would develop skills (skills marketable enough to land her a job in the future that but not draw attention or suspicion) and, above all, never step out of line.

Breaking the rules drew attention and detangling herself from her family’s wealth and influence and cruelties and pretensions required as little of that as possible, thank you very much.

So, really, she knew better than to go everywhere with Ransom Drysdale, much less leave her own debutante ball with him. And she knew better than to read into his late-night driving lesson or their harebrained escape.

Still. She went. He was the most fun she’d ever had in her life.

The next morning, a paramedic’s pen light woke her in the still-smoking cab of Ransom’s car. The donuts he’d bought her (her mother had her on a perpetual diet, so he’d bought them and called it a birthday present) were crushed in her lap. The magnum of champagne they’d swiped from the party still sloshed around in the back seat. Apparently, she hadn’t been a fast learner.

When the paramedics tried to move her from the car, they found that they couldn’t. Because Ransom, only half-conscious in the passenger’s seat, wouldn’t let go of her hand.

In that moment, when they tore her away and unwound the borrowed scarf from her neck, she knew she’d made a mistake. But she didn’t care.

PARTY #2 – 21ST BIRTHDAY

In light of their near-miss with death, she hadn’t gotten the chance to get Ransom’s phone number. And once she’d gotten discharged from the hospital, her family kept her under fairy tale villain levels of lock and key.

(She suspected the only reason she didn’t get shipped off to boarding school after her “little stunt” was because the only boarding school prestigious enough was currently home to her escape artist partner, Mr. Ransom Drysdale himself).

As such, she couldn’t get in touch with him. Her mother had allowed her to return his scarf back through a courier service despite her insistence that Ransom had given it to her and was, therefore, hers to keep. But beyond that, she never spoke to him, and he appeared to make no effort to reach out to her.

Which was fine. She was under no illusions that Ransom Drysdale had fallen for her or that their midnight joyride had changed anything. She didn’t think his attempt to kiss her – a near-miss that caused her to lose control of the car in the first place – said anything about their relationship except that he was a little sappy and handsy when drunk.

Just because she got flushed and starry-eyed when she remembered it didn’t guarantee that he remembered it at all.

No, as the days passed after debut, she resolved herself, quite practically, to the understanding that he would, most likely, go right back to ignoring her at every party. Their one night together was nothing more than a fluke. A memory to her and a fuzzy, half-forgotten mistake to him.

She believed that. She gave herself permission to accept it. But then, Ransom Drysdale did something no one ever did.

He surprised her.

After four months of solitary confinement, her parents allowed her out to a party again. And there he was, waiting for her. And from then on out, their lives passed in parties. At the dances and balls where they’d once been practically strangers, she found strong arms and nauseatingly handsome smirks pulling her into corners and closets. They snuck wine bottles and got tipsy and shared hatreds and gossip. They ordered pizza to the back door and “accidentally” bluetoothed raunchy rap music through the speakers during toasts. He confided in her secrets about his family. Told her about a story he'd been working on – just a short, nothing special. On the night she got into MIT, she showed him the acceptance letter – he was the first one to know.

It was something like friendship, these secret hours they stole from under the snobbily upturned noses of their families and acquaintances.

So, when at Tilly Potter’s 21st gala ball, she passingly mentioned her own plans to celebrate her official freedom from her family (a freedom she planned to use the following day by spending all of the money she’d saved at her IT desk job on a tiny shitbox apartment near campus) by ordering takeout and watching old movies in the comfort of her bedroom, it surprised her – but did not shock her – that Ransom intervened.

“That’s the saddest shit I’ve ever heard,” he barked, stern and disbelieving. “I’m sick even thinking about it. No. Absolutely not.”

“Rude—”

“Don’t thank me. I’ve been saving you from your own shitty parties since you were sixteen. I’m used to it by now.”

And that’s how it went. On the night of her 21st birthday, her parents held an exclusive (code word for small) dinner party at their house. After the incident at her debutante ball all those years ago, they hadn’t ever again trusted her not to embarrass them publicly, so that was all she had. Small, exclusive, intimate dinners where they sandwiched her between them, monitored her conversations for any inelegant slip-ups, and did their best to keep her away from “That Drysdale Boy.”

They couldn’t keep her under lock and key at the parties other people threw and that they were required by every social law to attend. They were powerless to not invite the Thrombeys. But dammit, they would do their best to keep her from his influence under their own damn roof.

Unfortunately, they overlooked one small problem. Ransom was a tricky son of a bitch.

When the party was over and the birthday girl retired to her bedroom, she opened the door to find a message written in lipstick along one of her many windows.

BACK DOOR – 10 MINUTES – CHANGE.

Ransom hadn’t done anything to prepare her for this night – it was a surprise in nearly every respect – but given everything she knew about him (plus the underline beneath the word change), she had a feeling night clubs and birthday shots and strobe lights and dancing were in her future.

Which, to be clear, she dreaded. She hated night clubs and loathed the idea of wasting her birthday watching hungry-eyed girls making passes at Ransom all night.

But still, she slipped on her sexiest dress (not a huge compliment, honestly, considering the state of her wardrobe) and a pair of heels before giving her makeup a smokey-eyed zhush and retreating downstairs to the safety of his idling car.

She knew she was a fool for it. They were basically friends of proximity and convenience and necessity. But no matter how she loathed the thought of insecurely sweating a drunken night away at whatever exclusive, Fort Knox guest list hot spot Ransom had picked out, she knew she couldn’t turn it down. Not when it meant another night close to him. Not when he’d done it all for her.

He sped – he always sped, terrible driving teacher that he was – towards town with the top down, blaring some music she loved. Was it a coincidence? Or did he remember her mentioning the band?

She didn’t know and maybe she didn’t care to know. It was better, on her 21st birthday and under the perfectly starlit sky and Ransom’s hand so close to hers on the clutch and his scarf around her neck for warmth and her favorite song lodged in her throat and her throbbing eardrums, to believe that he’d chosen it for her.

They didn’t talk. They didn’t have to. And with the wind and the music and the engine and the traffic and her heartbeat, they couldn’t have heard each other even if they wanted to.

By the time the car screeched to a curb-choked halt in front of TLJ, Boston’s hippest night spot, though, all of the silver moonlight-tinted glow vaporized under the head of the neon and jealous girls’ stares.

She twisted her hands in her lap, suddenly feeling very silly. She was a chubby nobody in a dress a half-size too small and lipstick a specific shade of power red. If she believed she meant anything to Ransom, if this romantic birthday jailbreak had made her believe something might finally be happening between them, it all vanished in that moment. He was Ransom Drysdale – he’d used her birthday as an excuse to get fucked and fucked up. She would never measure up to the line of women in the queue, hungry for his attention.

She didn’t belong here.

And what was worse, just having him this way – part way, just a piece – was no longer enough for her. It was pathetic.

Ransom dropped the keys in the valet’s hands, completely oblivious until he opened the club’s door and discovered her was holding it open for no one. Wordlessly communicating with the bouncer and ignoring the stares from anyone on the street, Ransom jogged back.

“What the Hell’s wrong with you?” He asked, his tone that tenuous mixture of good-natured and condescending that only he could pull off without offending her.

She glanced up at the club, then down to his scarf around her neck. He always loaned it to her when they played getaway car in the Beamer – she got cold.

But it wouldn’t be appropriate now. Not inside a nightclub on her 21st birthday. She began to unwind it – her hands where shaking.

“Sorry – It’s fine. It’s just—”

Her trembling fingers were suddenly wrapped up my strong, masculine ones, stilling her attempts to unknot his scarf. “Hey. Just – just wait here.”

“What?”

“Wait here.”

Confused, she followed the directive and wrapped herself up again. He was gone so long people in line snapped pictures of her, alone in the car. So long her fingertips started to lose sensation in the cold. So long she resigned herself to the fact that he’d left her in the car to enjoy the party by himself.

But then, just as she contemplated sliding into the driver’s seat and speeding the car away without him, the Beamer’s door swung open. Ransom slipped inside with a case of champagne, which he balanced on the center console between them.

“Ransom—” she started.

“Stupid party anyway. Let’s go.”

And with that, he rocked the keys in the ignition, peeling off into the night in a haze of smoking rubber and engine fumes.   She tried to speak, to apologize, to ask questions, anything, but he merely turned the volume up on the car’s speaker system – louder and louder – louder. 

His jaw was locked too tight to have spoken anyway.

She wondered what that meant. Sometimes, Ransom got so angry she wondered about his heart – if he didn’t find a way to manage it soon, she thought, it was likely to give out one of these days. But while he always claimed his anger was about one of two things – money or his family – she knew better. There was always a third option. He might have been angry at himself.

Was this one of those times? And if it was…why?

When the car finally stopped again, she felt her entire body flood with light. Not silver moonlight, not like last time. This was all gold.

The historic movie theatre on a back street of Boston had been built in 1917, and despite the fact that no one really went there anymore, it was one of her favorite places on Earth. The movies had always been one of those sacred places that her parents hated, but that they considered safe enough for her to enjoy alone. All her life, the movies had been her escape, her refuge. A place in the cool dark where nothing mattered – not her name, not her family, not her past.  

When they entered the one-room movie house that night, still done up in that plush Art Deco style, she found the entire place empty. The candy counter was abandoned. The Coke machine unmanned. The popcorn piping hot, but unattended.

Strange. The cinema wasn’t the most popular spot in town, but she’d never seen it this Ghost Town empty…

“What’s going on—”

Ransom helped himself to snacks. “I told you. That club was shit. I know the guy here, and I’ve never seen Double Indemnity, so…”

He’d planned a party for her at that club. And then totally changed his plans when he got there and saw for himself how much she would have hated it. Party Boy Ransom Drysdale abandoned all of the leggy blondes and blow and whiskey to sit here in a dark movie theatre with her.

It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean anything.

To him. But it meant everything to her.

She didn’t kiss him then. His eyes were wide and sincere and hesitant and his lips trembled from the effort it apparently took him to be honest with her. If she’d been any kind of brave or if she had any kind of faith in herself, or believed he said, she would have crawled on to the candy counter, pulled him between her legs, and kissed him as she’d wanted to do since she was sixteen.

But she didn’t. Not until she was a bottle and a half of champagne deep and bold enough to slur, “Ransom, why did you do this? This…” She hiccupped and gestured to the cinema around them and the movie flickering before them. “This isn’t you.”

She wanted him to say because I love you. Instead, he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and glanced down at her lips. His permanent mask of privileged indifference and smugness slipped – just for a second. But a second was all it took for her to see it.

“Because…you would have hated that club. It wasn’t what you wanted. And I just think you and I have wasted too much time not getting what we want.”

And then…she blacked out.

Did they kiss? Did she try? Did he push her away? Did she ask him what he wanted? Did she dare hope she was the answer?

She never fucking knew because all she remembered was him saying it and then waking up the next morning in her little apartment near campus.

Someone had brushed her hair and her teeth. Someone had pulled her out of her dress and tucked her into bed wearing a fuzzy pair of socks and her slip. Someone had left salt tablets, ibuprofen, water, and Pedialyte on her bedside table.

Someone had left an entire box of pizza in her fridge – from her favorite joint down the street, and with extra toppings, just the way she liked.

Someone had left a birthday card on her kitchen table – signed with nothing more than a hesitant “R.”

Someone had shown her more of himself last night than he’d ever shown anyone before.

And not only did she not remember a damn thing about it, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t even gotten to kiss him.

PARTY #3 – FUNERAL

Her 21st birthday sort of hit pause on their – friendship? Acquaintance? – whatever it was for awhile. They still spent their family obligations together. That didn’t change. But he didn’t spend as much time with her there. Or as freely. And the friendship they’d been building over the years suddenly vanished. She hated it and hated that she hated it and hated herself for thinking they would ever be anything else but convenient friends.

But then her parents died. Plane crash. She told them commercial jets were safer, that a private plane was a very expensive death trap, that she wouldn’t cry at their funeral if some half-awake alcoholic of a pilot killed them both someday –

But then…it happened. And she did cry. And there, as she shivered in the middle of the lavish funeral they’d planned years ago (her mother – always the perfectionist, always the planner), big strong hands wrapped a scarf around her neck, and then tucked her into his arms.

Ransom.

He held her hand the entire day. And the next. And the next.

When she finally resurfaced from her suffocating grief at losing two people who’d made her so angry and so lonely and so suddenly rich – he was the first thing she saw.

“I hated them,” she choked against his tear-stained sweater.

“Yeah,” he breathed, rubbing her back with uneasy, unpracticed strokes.

“I always thought my life would be so much easier if they weren’t around. At least then I wouldn’t have to tell people that my own family didn’t love me.”

“I understand.”

“And I miss them. I still miss them. Is that crazy?”

She knew how he felt about his family. If anyone could slap some sense into her, save her from this growing black hole in the center of her chest, it was Ransom.

Instead, he tucked her head beneath his chin.

“No. It’s not crazy. Or, if you are, then so am I.”

That didn’t exactly rule out the possibility. But when she laughed and looked up at him through eyes full of hazy tears, she smiled.

And from that moment on, it was as if their time apart hadn’t happened. It was as if, for the first time in a long time, maybe for the first time ever, she was home.

PARTY #4 – VALENTINE’S DAY

It took Ransom longer than most people to get the hang of the whole “being friends” thing. He didn’t let himself get close to people. He didn’t know how to be vulnerable. And as far as she could tell, he didn’t have any nurturing instincts. Cunning instincts? Yes. Business instincts. Sure. Sexual instincts? So she’d heard.

But nurturing? That wasn’t really his thing.

Strange, then, that he managed it. In the months after her parents’ death, she was so absorbed by mourning and sorting out their affairs that the general human stuff like eating and sleeping and showering and getting fresh air became extremely low priorities.

So, Ransom picked up the slack. Took her for top-down drives in the Beamer for groceries (frehs air? Sunshine? Check). He brought her leftovers from the cooking intensives he was taking with Harlan for book research and practiced his new skills at home (steady nutrition? Check). He would run the hot water for a bath, have to “take a call,” and insist she bathe so that they didn’t waste the water. He’d even taken to telling her that her house was creepy and he needed to sleep and, besides, he wasn’t used to sleeping alone (a lie – he always left a woman in bed before he got tired, but the lie got this particular woman into bed and at least six hours’ sleep every night).

It saved them both their prides, these little discrete deceptions of his. He didn’t know how to love. She didn’t know how to be loved. He pretended he was just accidentally helping her – going about his normal routine and just so happening to benefit her. And she accepted as long as she believed that lie.

But deep down, she knew the truth. Ransom didn’t have nurturing instincts. But he did have survival instincts.

And in the season of her life when she most felt like dying, that was more than enough.

She could hardly believe it, then, when she resurfaced from a long night preparing job applications – even if she wasn’t going to leave Boston like she’d always planned, she was not going to play happy homemaker with her parents’ money, thank you; all of that was going to be donated as soon as the banks finally put the funds in her name – to find the house empty and Ransom gone.

In his room, forgotten on his bed, was a crumpled invitation and instruction sheet.

It seemed that Ransom Drysdale had run away to take part in a charity bachelor auction.

A strange feeling cut through her months of grief and lethargy.

It wasn’t quite jealousy. She’d felt enough of that for Ransom over the years, and she knew precisely what that felt like. This was something different, something even more unsettling.

Concern. She was concerned for him.

Well, that just wouldn’t do.

“250,000.”

In one of Boston’s finest ballrooms, the chic audience first gasped, then cheered as she ran through the back door and screamed her bid.

Waves of pouting rage rolled off of her fellow bidders. But Ransom’s eyes glinted as he followed the protocol of offering her arm and placing a gentle kiss on her cheek.

“You found the invitation then?” He asked. “You went snooping in my room?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. Something about his tone didn’t sit right with her. “I wasn’t snooping. I wasn’t looking for the invitation, either. I was looking for you.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed, but he said nothing until their photographs were taken for the local society pages.

As the highest bidder of the evening, the hotel graciously made a donation of their own and gifted her the use of a suite for the night – not for sex, she assumed, but just as a token of gratitude. She and Ransom retreated there almost immediately. Coming to this party had been a hasty decision, as had been her bid on him. She hadn’t exactly accounted for the reactions and gossip and questions it would stoke amongst their peers, so they decided to make that tomorrow’s problem and disappear.

Once up there, though –

She barely made it through the door before he was on her. Pinning her arms over her head, he hungrily attacked her bare neck, grinding his body against hers with a ferocity she so desperately wanted to be real.

“What the Hell are you doing, Ransom?”

His lips temporarily moved from her skin, but he stayed so close she could still sense the way they shifted into a smirk. “Showing you what I’m worth.”

He pressed his lips into the curve of her neck, and it took everything in her not to melt. How many times had she fantasized about this exact moment. Wanted this very thing?

But it was like a photonegative of a dream – technically, everything was there…but wrong.

“Ransom.”

“This was what you wanted, right? Bought and paid for. I’m all yours.”

“Hey—Hey—”

“I thought we had a good thing going. Uncomplicated. But what do I know? I guess you can put a price on me and it’s a quarter of a million bucks—”

“Ransom, Stop!”

His hand froze at the top of her thigh. His lips above hers. A cloud cleared from his eyes, then returned. There he was again – that Ransom she’d spent most of her life trying to push aside. The cold, smug, unfeeling asshole millionaire failson.

"Right. You really should be calling the shots here. Get your money’s worth. Please. Tell me what I owe you.”

A wave of disgust rolled over her. He really thought so low of her? That he was just like his family – always putting a price on their affection? That he was nothing but a dollar sign to her?

“That’s not why I did this,” she muttered, unable to strengthen her voice any louder. Her body still radiated from his touch. “I did this because I know you hate this stuff and I wanted to… I don’t know. You’ve been rescuing me a lot lately. I thought maybe I could rescue you, too.”

He recoiled. “You – That was a stupid amount of money for that.”

“Avoiding this kind of stuff is important to you, and –” She paused. They didn’t ever talk about their feelings for each other, good, bad, or indifferent. But fuck it. “And you’re important to me.”

Ransom suddenly couldn’t meet her gaze. He slipped out of his jacket and hung it up in the closet, apparently in some attempt to regain his composure. “Yeah. Well. You’re. You’re important to me, too.”

An hour later, they ate a trough of room service food in bed. Fluffy hotel robes on. Gowns and tuxes off. Crappy television noise filling the air between them.

She hadn’t realized she’d dozed off onto his shoulder. Or that she’d even dozed off. Until –

“Hey.”

He shifted his shoulder but did not remove her. She swam back to awareness. “Mm-hm?”

“I didn’t meant it, what I said earlier about us being uncomplicated. We’re…we’re plenty complicated. You’re good. The only good thing in my life. I think I was afraid…I guess I thought I’d lost that tonight.”

It was as close to an apology as she’d ever get. And she still didn’t know what it meant.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Just…I owe you one.”

Exhausted or not, she did understand that. “We don’t owe each other anything. That’s just how this works.”

She didn’t care to give this a name. (Love). Nor did she say anything else. But as she drifted back to sleep, she did feel him tuck her closer into his body and lay her down in the crook of his warm frame.

PARTY #5 – THE BOOK LAUNCH

After that night, they both got their shit together. She got a job in Boston. Sold her family’s estate. Got an apartment. She asked her doctor about sleeping pills—it was hard to rest without Ransom, who’d moved out and gotten his own place now that she was functioning like a normal person again. She started going to dance classes. She took up breadmaking in her spare time. Started a terrace garden. Even picked up a library card.

After a little pressure, Ransom asked his grandfather if he might have any openings at the publishing house. He started tinkering with ideas for a murder mystery himself. He, too, moved into a new place and, now unused to seeing himself in the society pages, decided he liked it better that way.

Every morning, she walked to her favorite coffee shop on her way to work. And every morning, he met her in line, bought them both breakfast, and then parted ways.

Dinners for two were just easier to make than dinners for one, so they often ate together.

They liked the same movies, and no one wants to go the movies alone, so they often visited her favorite cinema together.

And bars. And parks. And weekend trips to the Martha’s Vineyard. And the library. And family dinners. And brunch. And concert. And the theatre. And the occasional Red Sox game.

But they were absolutely, categorically, unequivocally not dating. There were no kisses or handholding or anything resembling physical intimacy, and the same rules about emotional intimacy applied. Namely – none, ever.

But all the same, when Ransom’s grandfather launched a new book series and threw a party in his own honor, it was essentially a given that she would go with him.

Upon her arrival, though, she couldn’t find her date. For awhile, she was content to sip champagne and stuff her face with canapes while making small talk, but when she’d drained her glass and realized her other standard party friend – Harlan Thrombey himself – was nowhere to be found, she keyed in the security code for the elevator, left the atrium party behind, and headed straight for the offices.

It was strange, she admitted, to think of Ransom as hard-working. That he’d now rather be at work than at a party. But she wasn’t surprised when the elevator doors to the publishing house’s main floor opened and she heard his and his grandfather’s voices. What did surprise her was the realization that they weren’t talking about work at all.

“You’re crazy, old man.”

“Perhaps. But a crazy old man can be right about something every once in awhile. Broken clock and all that.”

“I’m not having this conversation. You have a party waiting downstairs for you and a press to schmooze. And I have whiskey to drink. I ordered the good stuff and I don’t want Walt guzzling it all. He won’t appreciate it—"

“And your date? You must have your date worrying after you. You did invite someone, didn’t you?”

That hung in the air. Harlan must have known that Ransom had invited her.

“She’s an easy choice,” Ransom sniffed, dismissively. “Don’t read too much into it.”

“If she’s such an easy choice, then why won’t you take me up on my offer?”

…Offer? Her heart clenched.

“I said I would consider it,” Ransom replied.  

“Ransom, I like her. I always have. She’s good for you. And what’s more, I think you’re good for her, too.”

“You say that as if it means anything.”

“It means – it can mean everything.”

She held her breath. Her knuckles tightened around the champagne flutes so hard she feared they might shatter. But still, she listened.

“Pops, I don’t do the emotional attachment bullshit. You want me to be a better man? Don’t chain some poor woman to me. Build a time machine and raise your kids better. Might give me a fighting chance at being halfway decent.”

“Ah, but there’s the rub. You say you don’t do emotional attachments. But if that’s true, then what do you call all these years since you first met? What do you call this last year since her parents died, come to think of it? You can deny it all you want. The evidence is clear. A rose by any other name. Love by any other name. You—”

It was the wrong moment to lean forward. She hadn’t been able to help it. But it gave her away, creaking a floorboard and drawing Harlan’s attention.

“Ah, my dear. Come to fetch us, have you?”

She raised the glasses in her hand, fighting to keep her expression neutral when all she really wanted to do was cry – or laugh – or both. “Actually, I came to join this party. Seems a lot more fun than the one downstairs.”

Ransom’s gaze burned into her until she turned to face him, at which point he slapped on one of those wincingly fake smiles he usually only reserved for the most awkward of cocktail chatter. “Well. This is a pretty exclusive party. I don’t think you’re on the guest list. We should head downstairs.”

It was a brush-off, but she gratefully accepted his diversion.

She couldn’t…

It wasn’t…

He…

She wasn’t drunk enough yet to face what she’d just learned from listening at this particular keyhole. That Ransom might have loved her. And that Harlan believed in that love.

“Very well, then,” Harlan said, a note of disappointment in his voice. “Ransom, do think about my offer, will you?”

“Not on your life, old man.”

Later, in the thick of the party, she and Ransom accidentally stoke a private moment. It was clear he’d been trying to avoid just this scenario all night – looping them into every peripheral conversation they could find, filling his mouth and hers with every passed appetizer that crossed their path – but she’d finally caught him in a corner.

“So, that whole thing with your grandfather?” She finally asked, her voice trembling. “What was that about?”

“Just a business deal he wants me to do with him,” Ransom evaded. “Nothing serious.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. He must not have known she’d heard as much as she did. What business deal could possibly involve her?

None. Obviously. He was lying. But she was too afraid of the truth to call him out on it.

Ransom cleared his throat. “Whatever happened to those jobs you applied for out west?”

She loved the change in subject. She just wished it wasn’t to this subject.

“Oh. I had some interviews, but they never really went anywhere.”

“That so? Harlan said a few of them called for character references. Can’t imagine anyone turning you down after the glowing reviews he gave.”

He was pressing. Suddenly, she forgot how to breathe.

“Yeah. Well. I got a few offers. But I turned them down. I wanted to be closer to home.”

As soon as she said that last part, she knew it was a mistake. He latched onto it.

“What the Hell does that mean? All you’ve ever talked about since we were kids was how fucking badly you wanted to get out of here. You had every chance. Why haven’t you gone?”

It took all of her strength to say it. “C’mon, Ransom. You know why.”

The job offers outside of Boston had piled up. But every time she thought about taking one, she ran into the same heartbreaking reality. If she left this place, she would have to either leave ransom behind or ask him to go with her. And if she asked him to go with her, she’d have to confess her feelings and…

That was the thing about them. They never said how they felt. They were fun. Uncomplicated. One long party. Which was why, even now, her confession wasn’t much of a confession at all.

You know why was as close as she could get to I love you.

So, she repeated it again, hating the way tears formed in her eyes and her voice cracked. “You know why.”

Tonight, she’d heard him tell his grandfather – the one person in the world Ransom actually respected – that she was an easy choice. That caring about her didn’t matter. They’d spent half a lifetime dancing around one another, making massive, fun messes in each other’s lives and then twirling around the rubble. They were all wrong for each other, an impossibility—

That’s why she didn’t expect the kiss.

Dropping his champagne glass to the floor, not even caring when it shattered, Ransom captured her cheeks with his hands and crashed his lips to hers, breathing years of unsaid feeling into her very heart.

Their first kiss.

And yet, it tasted like every happy memory she’d ever made with him. Birthday cake and champagne and popcorn and starlight.

PARTY #6 – New Years’ Eve

Ransom was an asshole. The difference between Ransom and the woman he loved was that she probably only suspected it somewhere deep, deep down, whereas he faced that truth every minute of every day and had since he was a boy.

That’s the thing about expectations. When you expect something of people, they start to adapt to it. All his life, people told Ransom he was a rich prick. Above the rules. Loveless and ruthless and just like his family.

So, that’s what he became. It was easier to give people what they wanted.

But what made him a real asshole? Well, a few things. Starting with the way he’d convinced her he wasn’t one.

For most of their lives, she’d been his home base – a place he could be safe. When he was with her, he had the creeping hope that he could be more.

She let him be more.

More than the money. More than the cars or the couture or the future inheritance or the name.

When he was near her, he believed it was possible. But the real crime was letting her believe it.

There were more things that proved how big an asshole he was, too. The way he took her to bed the night of his grandfather’s party, something he’d been dreaming about since he was eighteen. The way he didn’t push her away then. The way he allowed her to love him, the way he indulges the slow entwining of their lives until they shared only one.

The way he fell in love with her – finally, recklessly, completely.

The way he told Harlan yes. He would marry her in exchange for controlling interest in the publishing company.

The way he kept that secret from her – even on New Years’ Even. With an engagement ring weighing down his coat pocket.

Tonight’s gala was thrown by The Drysdales for this exact purpose – to give him a perfect backdrop against which to propose. Romantic – to make her feel special. And public – to prop up the family name and reputation.

Harlan had his heart in the right place when he offered the deal. He always knew – no, he believed – that his grandson needed incentive to do the right thing. And as far as Harlan was concerned, letting himself finally love that girl was the best thing he could ever do. He hadn’t made the offer maliciously, this bargain with Ransom and her future. But Ransom had taken it all the same.

And he hated himself for that. Nearly as much as he loved her.

As the clock ticked toward midnight, Ransom paced on the great outdoor terrace – abandoned, for now, by the rest of the party because of the flurrying snowfall. He carried a glass of whiskey. He wasn’t in the mood to drink, nor was he particularly thirsty, but he knew people were watching him – they were always watching – and he had to look the part.

The part of Ransom Drysdale. A part he’d been playing the rest of his life. One he’d be playing until the day he died.

He glanced inside, scanning the room for his almost-fiancée. Wedged between his aunt Joni and Uncle Walt, she sipped champagne and did her best to fit in. But Ransom could read her better than anybody.

She was fucking miserable.

Such a small realization. The woman I love is miserable. But it cut through Ransom like a freshly sharpened axe.

In that moment, a lifetime of parties past flooded his memory. The first night they’d spent together – she’d been hiding. Her 21st birthday – she’d nearly worked herself into a panic attack thinking about that party he’d planned for her. She’d retreated at her own parents’ funeral because she didn’t want to face their associates. She’d bought him from that ridiculous Valentine’s day auction because she wanted to free him for a night and even on the night of his grandfather’s book launch, she’d been in the office to flee the party.

She was trying her best to fit in now. But he loved her precisely because she never could.

All she’d ever tried to do was try to escape nights like these.

Escape.

God, that was all she wanted to do. This life – she hated it. But she stayed.

For him. Because he didn’t have the guts to escape.

And if he asked her to marry him tonight, she was going to say yes. And it would be selfish. So selfish. Because he would be chaining her to a life of this. A life of parties she hated and people who didn’t give a shit and no, no, no escape.

He saw it as clear as the glass separating them. He didn’t want to marry her because of his grandfather’s offer. He wanted to because he loved her. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. And it was unconscionably cruel, indescribably selfish, to keep her.

The doors to the terrace swung open, and partygoers ambled out. Ransom checked his watch. The fireworks would start soon. The countdown would begin any minute.

“Ransom?”

He turned, and there she was. Looking like forever.

It broke his heart.

Everyone thought he didn’t have one. Maybe that’s because it was always hers. And he was pulling away now, trying to walk away while his heart still rested in her hands.

“You look deep in thought,” she said. “Making your resolutions?”

“You know I don’t buy into all of that shit.”

He regretted his tone. He didn’t speak to her that way – ever. But she took it in stride, slipping into his side. “Everyone’s distracted. We can make a quick getaway. Go have an actual good time, just the two of us.”

God – yes. He wanted that. More than anything.

“Where would we go?” He asked, jaw set, eyes on her even as she gazed at the sky over the harbor.

“Anywhere we want.”

She tried to slip her hand in his. He pulled away, knowing if he didn’t, he’d never be able to let her go.

“C’mon. You’ll miss the fireworks,” he said.

But she didn’t move.

“Forget the fireworks. Let’s go.”

“We’re not going—I’m not going anywhere with you.”

She blinked. From the corner of his eye, Ransom caught a glimpse of his grandfather – not even pretending to hide the fact that he was monitoring this situation.

Well, sorry, Harlan. At least you’re used to being disappointed by me.

“Ransom, what’s up with you?”

A minute left in the countdown. Less than a minute left with the only person he’d ever loved. And he’d have to spend it hurting her.

“New Years’ got me thinking. That’s all.”

“I thought you didn’t go in for that stuff.”

“About us.”

Thirty…

“Oh?”

“Whatever this is, this thing we’ve been doing—”

“I wanted to talk to you about that, actually.”

“Yeah?”

Twenty…

“What changed?”

“What do you mean?”

Fifteen…

“We’ve been together almost all of our lives. But the night of Harlan’s party, everything changed. We changed. You changed. Why?”

It would have been easy to lie. But he knew telling the truth would destroy her. And she’d hate him enough to finally leave.  

“Because Harlan said he’d give me the publishing company if I married you.”

Ten…

Her perfect mouth fell in shock. She started to laugh –

“God’s honest truth,” Ransom intoned.

Nine…

“No, you—”

“Don’t worry, though. We’re done here.”

Eight…

All around them, the party tangled together, preparing to kiss and sing. But she stumbled back from him. “Done?”

Seven…

“You and I? It would never work. If I could have loved you, I would have done it by now.”

“You asshole. You liar—”

Six…

“God, I wish you women could get together and write some original fucking material.”

He tried to walk then, but she reached for his jacket, turning him around easily.

“Hey. You love me. I know you do. What’s really going on here?”

Five…

“What’s—Fine.” Four… “You are what they want.” Three… “Harlan loves you. My family has always said what a perfect choice you were.” Two… “And I would rather fucking die than give those fucks what they want.”

One. Happy Fucking New Year.

All around them, kisses and embraces. But they were drifting apart. The start of something new for them both – a life without the other.

“So, that’s it.”

“Yeah,” he said, wanting nothing more than to grab her up in his arms and say no, it wasn’t, he couldn’t ever let her go.

But for the first time in his life, Ransom was strong. Unselfish. And he let her release him from her grip.

“You know, Ransom?” She said, her voice surprisingly strong for goodbye. “I hope, I really do, that one day you can learn to love something more than you hate them.”

As she turned away, he bit back a laugh – a sob? – at the irony of it all.

He did. He did love someone more than he hated them – his family. Loved her so much, he set her free.

A week later, there was another party. Some winter gala for homeless leopards or whatever vapid shit the wealthy of the Eastern seaboard decided deserved their attention. Ransom attended. It was expected, so he went.

As he always did when he entered a party, he scanned for her. Not that he could have spoken to he. Not that she would have so much as looked in his direction. But still.

He swept the room once. Twice. By the fifth pass, he was sure she wasn’t there. And by the seventh, he heard something that made him smile.

“—everything. The houses, the cars, the polo horses. She sold it all, resigned from the country club and the museum board, and moved out west.”

“That family lived here since Boston was founded. And that girl ruined it.”

“I know. What a waste.”

Ransom emptied his glass of whiskey, then lifted it in a little toast. It wasn’t a waste, he thought. It was a better reason for a celebration than any party he’d ever attended.

PARTY #7 – PARTY OF ONE

When Ransom left that night, he retreated to his bungalow. From a box in a hidden compartment beneath his bed, he withdrew a small envelope. Then, he collected a gold lighter from his desk drawer. He poured himself a drink. And he went outside.

The winter air bit his skin. The snow ruined his hair. But he took a long swing of his drink, relishing the frigid temperature.

What was the weather like in California today, he wondered.

When the drink was empty, he reached into the envelope and withdrew two crumpled 100 dollar bills, lifting them to the snow-dappled moonlight for inspection.

He’d never spent that money he got paid to take her out at her debutante ball. Never knew why.

He just knew how fucking grand it felt to light those two bills on fire – and watch the ash and snow tangle on the wind like confetti.

[llyncooljones]

messy - rowaelin month day thirteen.

ao3 || masterlist || rowaelin month ‘22 masterlist 

prompt: CANON WEEK: a post-canon scene

word count: 1003

trigger warnings: language.

tag list: @rowaelinscourt  @live-the-fangirl-life @rowaelinismyotp   @fireheartwhitethorn4ever  @elentiyawhitethorn  @rowanaelinn @autumnbabylon  @leiawritesstories  @backtobl4ck

the royal kitchens, early morning.

It was not very often that Aelin used the kitchens. In fact, as she cycled back through the years, she really could not think of the last time she had used them.

And that told a story. Because the only reason Aelin had something in her castle, her royal residence, and yet did not use it, was because she was banned. Forbidden. Not permitted.  She would much rather leave the cooking and baking and general food making to those who could actually cook, bake, or make food.

Aelin fell into zero of those categories. None of them.

She knew how to cook whatever they had found in the woods over a fire, on a spit. And she knew how to tell if little plants were going to kill her or not. She could do all of that—all the necessary stuff, all the stuff she would have died as a result of not knowing.

She just didn’t quite understand everything.

She could bake a cake, a chocolate hazelnut cake at that, but that was all she could do.

And she had messed up previously, so much so that she had been banned from her very own, her royal fucking kitchens. She couldn’t decide whether to be humiliated by the fact or resign herself to: accepting it to be the best thing to do.

Which it was.

Explosions in the kitchen are never helpful and are not Aelin’s fault.

All in all, that meant that Aelin should not have been in the kitchens, should definitely not have been in the kitchens alone, with no one to help her, and no specific, six-foot-four man who was the only person capable of staunching her fires when they got out of control.

So, when Aelin thought about it, it was a bad idea. It was probably the worst one she had had in a while. Usually, Rowan Whitehorn could read her mind about things like this, and prevent them from ever happening.

But he hadn’t. Which was not how it was supposed to go. That was exactly the wrong thing. He was supposed to read her mind, stop her from doing this, and then go make breakfast for the both of them—without burning down the entire castle, and without ever catching on to her genius plan.

And now Aelin was stood in her royal kitchens, the chefs she had hired with dessert in mind, due to arrive in less than an hour, surrounded by dark grey smoke, the smell of burning, and breakfast in ruins.

It was some important date in their relationship—she forgot which one, seeing as there were so many, seeing that Rowan was the only one to keep track of them—and she had decided to do something perfect, personal, and homemade for it. She had skipped the idea of special-occasion sex, which was great. It was, truly. But it had lost a little of its shine recently, and Aelin was not having her Buzzard anything but glowing pleasantly on whichever day this was.

So, she had schemed and planned and decided she would cook for her husband. She decided that a meal cooked by his shit-cook wife would put a smile on his face, whether it was her best yet, or whether it induced his gag reflex.

Smoke was slowly exiting through the window Aelin had opened, and she was dousing the flaming pans with water, hoping to cool everything down enough that she would be able to put everything away, clean and dry and seemingly untouched by Aelin’s inexperienced hands. But it was all taking a little too long, and her timing was becoming very close.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here, Aelin? Yet another failure in the kitchens?” her husband should be forced to wear a bell around his neck. A big one, weighted and fixed in such a manner he would never be able to remove it—because he could not keep sneaking up on her like that, it was going to give her a heart condition.

“No,” she replied sullenly, refusing to turn around and face her husband. Face ultimate defeat in the form of his smirking face, his smug eyebrows, and the little flicks of his fingers that were sending smoke on its very merry way out of their castle.

“No? because it looks like one,”

“Hey! You can’t talk to me like that, I’m the Queen. I’m your Queen, in fact, and you are my blood sworn. From now on, you cannot speak to me like that, I declare it!” her pout was strong and defined, even as she stared intently at the pan in the sink, water slowly dripping onto it.

“I can too, as the Prince Consort. Or as the King (as we shall shortly be changing it to, after updating these incredibly outdated laws). Both give me the right.”

“And yet, I am still the queen, and I still demand you stop talking to me like that,” her tone was indignant, and her voice was muffled as she bent over to place a washed-and-dried pan in the cupboard. She felt Rowan’s eyes trace the curve of her behind, and gave him no indication she had noticed, not until she was muttering under her breath, “Sod a nice breakfast, have a butt shake for a present.”

“I can, and I will. Due to the fact that I am here, stood in this kitchen with you, who absolutely cannot cook and yet tried to, it qualifies me to call you an absolute idiot for what you’ve done.” His act of fake superiority has her blushing, whilst resisting the urge to grab him by the shirt and shake him. Not that she would even get him off the ground.

But even as he made fun, and even when he laughed at her and the mess she had made, even when he pushed every last bit of smoke out of the castle, she knew he wouldn’t change a thing.

[nellie-elizabeth]

Bob's Burgers: The Pickleorette (14x03)

Lots of fun shenanigans on this one!

Cons:

I feel like I've said this after the first two episodes of the season too, but I do hope we get a school-based episode soon so we can check in with the kids' friends. I miss that crowd.

Pros:

I love how Bob is just down for whatever Linda asks him to do. He's not thrilled about it, in fact he's completely petrified by the situation he's found himself in, but yeah, he'll do it. He'll drive a limo and he'll pretend to be a different guy with an accent and he'll call the strippers and he'll let stripping happen in the restaurant. It's just a funny trait to have this grumpy, overwhelmed man also be down for whatever shenanigans his wife gets him into at any point.

I liked the mishaps of the bachelorette party too, the way Gretchen messed up the event in every possible way by not doing the very basics of planning it. And yet her sister remains chill and ultimately says all she really wanted was to spend time with her big sis! I'm not sure I'd been that chill if my sisters fucked up plans that badly, but it was sweet to see!

It also prompts Bob to tell the truth about a difficult medical situation... he was feeling too shy to ask Linda to come and hold his hand at the butt doctor. But Linda says of course she will! That's true love.

The kids' subplot involves Tina finding a board game on the street and forcing her siblings to play it. They're both bored, and Tina is frustrated to find herself losing the veterinarian-themed game terribly, causing her to kill many a beloved imaginary pet. I love that Tina seems like a pushover but she can be really intense and bossy on occasion, and even though Louise and Gene both just kind of humor her by playing the game, they do still go along with it and don't just walk away. And then, of course, there's the comedy of the flip being switched when Tina realizes that male strippers will be near. She sneaks herself and her siblings into the vents to spy on the happenings in the restaurant! Tina's enduring horny-ness is such a funny trait for her character to have.

So that's that. A fun episode with lots of shenanigans for the adults. The kids get the subplot this week, but it was an enjoyable one!

8/10

[villainessxassassin]

@ iliveinthefandoms asked: Hello there! Can I request for twisted wonderland Malleus, Kliam, Ruggie, Vil, and finally Leona (separately please) for a fluff scenario with a female S/O who’s usually easy going, sweet, and has the patience of a saint finaly broke when grim over did it with his fire in a unnecessary fight that made a big mess and with a calm face she talks to grim with a deep calm voice practically having the power of a thousand angry queens/mothers like:

“grim get over here NOW”

“B-but”

“No buts or ifs your GOING to go to your room and be GROUNDED from the high grade tuna AND your going to clean up ALL the mess you’ve made got it?”

“W-w-well-”

“WHAT did I just say?”

“Y-yes M-M-C so-rry Mc 😢”

and turns and quickly walking away with a scared grim just apologizing cus he didn’t want to be grounded. Basically MC unleashed her inner girl boss queen rage on grim, Infront of the boys for the first time.

Listen Tsunotaro here adores your easy going personality, that’s one of the reason he simps loves you.

So imagine his surprise when he witnessed you scolding Grim.

Safe to say he was stunned on the fact that you still have that calmness in your voice despite the menacing aura he sensed behind you.

Grim, get over here right now :))

Yeah he can see how very angry you were at your companion.

Oh well he just found another reason to simp love you more.

Does he feel sorry for Grim? Maybe-

He wonders what kind of things you’ve been keeping to yourself.

You wouldn’t mind showing him more of this side of you right child of man?~

Kalim was happy that he was able to have someone like you.

Not only were you a good listener, but you were also able to tolerate the many thing that even Jamil had trouble tolerating!

So seeing you have this other side of yourself really caught him off guard.

remind him not to get on your bad side, because if you were ever to scold him like you did grim he’d (probably) be crying himself to sleep.

he honestly felt sorry for grim while laughing sheepishly as you scolded the poor creature.

he’d make sure to sneak in a little bit of tuna for grim if u were actually serious about the “tuna banning” thing.

“Shishishishishi”

Ruggie’s reaction to your calm self scolding grim would be to one from shocked to snickering to himself.

He always found you kind of weird for always being calm with people when if he were to be in your situation he couldn’t imagine giving them that time of day.

or how despite the many shenanigans he’s caused throughout the entirety of his time in nrc you still had it in you to wait and be patient with him.

He was happy there was someone willing to be tolerant with his antics.

Of course that still doesn’t stop him from egging you on sometimes so he can see you loosing your cool again.

he just find’s it endearing is all <33

Oh? So his potato has this side to them huh~?

like Kalim he was also a little bit caught of guard. 

He was honestly impressed that you had high patience with Grim. The fact that when scolding grim you had a calm face and menacing aura

Seeing as you had high patience with grim, he wonders if it’s the same case with the adeuce duo.

Well if he would also witness you scolding the three braincell duo he’d certainly join you in scolding them as well.

As for now…. He decided to keep this little incident for himself.

Same for Ruggie except after you scold grim he had the biggest smirk? grin?

Whatever it was he seemed pleased with the way you carried yourself.

Before you got into a relationship he more or less thought of you as a pushover for always being calm and patient in situations that needed haste or just action needed.

but after realizing that wasn’t the case at all (and you were just a sweet angel), he quickly changed his thoughts and instead switched to admiring you for being this way.

he isn’t going to outright tell you that thought.

but from the way he looked so prideful at what you did said all you needed to hear.

notes:

Ngl we had fun writing this

Guinevere suffered on writing for Vil. 

Want a request to be submitted? Read the rules here to have it delivered.

[fang-wife]

»» — { ♡ } —— { ♡ } —— { ♡ } — ««

voyeur | m. izuku 

➳ tags ;; sub!izuku, dom!reader, watching hentai together?, reader is mean and nice </3, quirkless college au!izuku, corruption kink/religious guilt, unprotected sex/creampies, established relationship, afab reader

➳ wc ;; 2.1k

➳ a /n ;; @/sems-diarie made a post abt this a while ago n my brain wouldn’t let it be so. here we are </3 

➳ plot ;; izuku didn’t sneak you into your dorm to watch.. this with you. but he has a habit of letting you do what you like. 

»» — { ♡ } —— { ♡ } —— { ♡ } — ««

This is embarassing. 

He knows this is embarassing - more embarassing than he really cares to admit to. He should really know better by now then to let you do as you please. You’re always stringing him along with your schemes and plans and he loses sight of his morals. His standards. 

Then again, he doesn’t have any at this point. The point of him paying for this single dorm was so that he could have space to focus. It wasn’t to sneak you in when his R.A. wasnt looking. Even more then that, it wasn’t to do.. whatever this was. 

It’d be one thing if he was having sex. That’s a normal thing to do in college, to sneak your partner in and smash. But you’re you, and all you ever seem to have planned for him are hair-brained schemes. It’s what this feels like - when you sit on his twin size bed and pat the empty space next to you. The distrust in his expression makes you laugh.. He sighs and does what you’ve asked. 

“What’re you doing?” 

He sounds exasperated. You laugh - too pleasantly for him to be comfortable. You type something into the search bar. Green eyes widen, skin warm and blushing. 

“Wh-what’re you doing?” 

You laugh as you prop the computer on the bed. You grin at him, tucking yourself under his arm. The website mocks him, all black background and animated women with huge tits covering the screen edge to edge. 

“You know something, after you’re done using incognito mode - you’re supposed to switch out to regular search, you know,” you explain. Your hand rests on his thigh. Deku freezes. 

The sound of your voice has always been something of a vice. It gets a little raspy like this - sultry in a way that has him squirming. He doesn’t know what to do. He can feel the heat of your body. 

“Would you know my surprise when I borrow your phone to look up when the convience store closes,” you inch closer, press further “only to see..” 

He knows what you saw before you announce it. His skin feels like it’s on fire, tuning out whatever description you’ve been giving of what he chose to watch. 

Maybe it was the way he was raised - but he always had such a specific sort of guilt towards pornography. Always told himself he shouldn’t watch things like that, shouldn’t touch himself. Izuku had always been a good, well-behaved boy. Done the right thing even when it was hard. 

Meeting you had changed that, changed him. He found his body craving you when he couldn’t control it and he ended up here - watching porn and jerking off with his shirt in his mouth. It’s all come back to haunt him, really. 

“I’m not mad, y’know,” ― and your tone goes soft - it’s assuring enough that Izuku can whimper out an okay, but you’re not done ― “I’m just curious. Can’t we watch it together?,” 

“That’s ― !” 

You flutter your lashes him. 

“That’s?” 

He has a million words that he can say. That he should say. Bad, wrong, immoral. Words that belong at the end of the sentence to describe what he’s doing with you and what he’s considering. 

None of that comes out. 

“That’s.. too much” 

You grin at him. 

“Do you not want too?” 

“..I didn’t say that, it’s just -” 

Your hand squeezes his thigh until your stiletto's dig into them. Your mouth trails his jaw with hot, open mouth kisses until your turning his head to face you. A hand splayed on his face, tongue deep in his mouth. French kissing makes him pant - hands twitching eagerly to touch you. He watches, dazed - the spit trail of saliva that stretches between you two. 

He’s so easy, it’s cute. You press forward with a chaste kiss. 

“Show me what you were watching, Izuku,” 

His hand trembles as he leans forward. He remembers the title - doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. Within seconds, it shows up and he clicks. You lean forward too, observing the tags with a small smile on your face. 

“Milf, NTR, Gangbang,” 

“S-stop reading them!” 

You giggle. 

Without warning - you press play. Izuku finds himself frantic. Worried about the sound, the time, all of it - but you don’t seem to care. The AD comes on and you skip that too. It’s on. A familiar arousal blooms in his chest, the memory of what he’d seen appearing. You settle between his legs, your back pressed to his chest. You bring his hands around your waist.

“Let’s watch ~” 

Izuku face twists with displeasure. The plot nothing to ride home about - a lonely housewife goes out to a club and finds someone to take care of her needs. At first it’s just one stranger at the club - then two, then she’s surrounded and its too much. 

Izuku assumes you’re gonna find him disgusting, but when he looks at your face - you’re smiling, heart-beating in your chest. His eyes blow wide when you take his hand between your legs. You’re wet and you’re letting him touch you and he’s trying his hardest not to show how much he’s shaking. 

A little sigh of pleasure leaves your mouth when Izuku very carefully rubs your clit. It throbs under the pressure of big fingers - you hold his wrist and moan. He can hear the porn in the background but it doesn’t serve to distract him from you. 

“You want me to go n’ get fucked by a bunch of strangers, ‘zuku?” 

He shakes his head furiously. 

“Then you just like watching depraved shit, huh?” 

Unable to argue with you or with the the way his cock twitches and jumps in his jeans, he opts to whine. You can feel his it against your lower-back, the little wet-spot that presses to your thin tshirt. He’s too turned onto think properly - watching the way your body jerks and twitches. 

The woman on screen is stuffed to the brim with cock - it’s all over exaggerated he knows, but he thinks that’s why he likes it. Maybe he just likes the idea of fucking someone that stuffed fulled of cum, how it leaks and pours onto every surface and the way her cunt just seems to take it. And Izuku is such a good, well behaved boy - it’s never crossed his mind to think about doing it to you. 

And no, he doesn’t really want to see you get fucked by so many men but if there were more than one of him he’d be more than inclined to let you. His chest feels tight forgetting to breath. 

He thinks maybe you’re some kind of witch because you always seem to know what he wants before he does. The right way to push all of his buttons. 

“Oh, I see’ ― and he’s afraid of whatever words come out of your mouth next ― “you wanna fuck me full of your cum, Izuku? Wanna know how it feels raw?” 

He moans - loud and shameless and needy against your ear. A breathless laugh leaves your mouth because that’s exactly what he wants. He wants to fuck you full of cum, just picturing how good it might feel. 

You sit up on your knees and bend over a little - pulling short-shorts beneath the curve of your ass and thickest parts of your thigh. Your panties are drenched, clinging to your folds. He inhales sharply, frozen till as you lean forward - pulling them to one side. 

“Take your cock out ‘n fuck me then, baby” ― you challenge, dark and dangerous. Everything about you is so sinful and too tempting for him to ignore. His cock aches ― “Do your best”  

His body moves before he has a proper chance to feel shame. Whatever devils been whispering in his ear (read: you) has won whatever leftover dignity he has left. Without a proper word, his cock stands to attention. His hands are fidgety but they mange to settle on your waist. He guides you down on his dick, bottom lipped pulled between his teeth hard enough to draw blood. 

“Oh, fuck” 

He’s going to cum right away if he doesn’t take a breather. This is the first time he’s feeling you, and it feels so much better than he could understand. The lingering thoughts of the dangerous act silence by how tight and how wet and how willing your pussy is for him. The way your walls twitch - ache shamelessly around his cock. He’s fucking sliding in and out of you - it feels like a special privilege he’s done nothing to earn.

He’s shivering, over and over. When he looks down, he’s not all the way in. He’s not sure if he’s praying to god for the right reason - for forgiveness. All he can think about is how good it feels to be inside and how he absolutely doesn’t want to do anything else. 

“How’s it feel, Izuku?” 

He groans at the sound of your voice, the way you clench down on him and stretch so tightly around his shaft. He’s too wrapped up in the feeling of your cunt - like heaven and silk. 

“F-feels so, so good” 

Part of you thinks you should ride him, but another part of you is more interested in seeing how he fucks you. You snap the laptop closed and push it to the other side of the bed, before flipping around and laying on your back. His cock slips out and he snaps into reality - the way you have your legs in the air and your arms out. 

“I’ll let you fuck me as many times as you want today,” ― your legs reach and wrap around his waist, easily forcing his cock back inside ― “go on,” 

Izuku is a mess, really. His pants are only half-way pulled down and he’s wearing a nerdy graphic t-shirt. He’s borderline in hysterics over how good your pussy feels and can’t do anything other than thank you repeatedly and fuck you with an animalistic need. It’s clumsy like you’d expect, but he makes up for it with sheer enthusiasm. 

His cock is long and pretty - hits every spot you need it too. Izuku fucks you with shallow, sloppy thrusts - so needy and chasing his orgasm. Selfish and inexperienced. Every time he pushes forward, you can feel he’s throbbing. Aching to cum inside and unload. 

You reach a hand between the two of you to finish on your own time - planning on cumming before him. He doesn’t seem to care. 

“Ngh, ohh my god, feel’s’good” 

“Yeah? Gonna cum inside me, handsome? Makin’ such a pretty face for me” 

His stomach churns at the way you call him pretty. It sounds so sweet and adoring - but he knows that you’re a bully. He knows that about but fucks you with all his strength anyways - overly frustrated and fucked out of his mind by the feeling. Like a drug. He likes you so much he feels stupid over it. 

“Yeah, yeah ‘m gonna” 

Your own orgasm washes over you in a pleasant wave, squeezing his cock with force. He gasp and goes faster - all the thoughts washed away from his head. He needs to finish more than he needs anything. More than he needs to sleep for his 6am work-out and 8am class. More than he needs to be quiet because the walls of his dorm are paper thin. More than he needs to exercise self-control, he needs to cum so fuckin bad. 

“Look at me,” 

He follows your command, like always - and you look amused and fucked out just like he is. And Izuku has really never been this into anyone before so seeing you evokes feelings he can’t understand. 

“Oh, fuuck“ 

Briefly he understands that he really just came by looking at you, but nothing really makes sense to him. His eyes are heavy and he’s drooling onto your shoulder, spasming and clinging to your body with the most needy little whimpers. It’s so lewd, how he can feel his cum spurt out and coat your insides and his cock. It’s all so sinful but it feels so good, he can’t bring himself to care. 

“So,” ― you smile, full of mischief ― “if you want to be like that, we’ve got a few rounds to go” 

Izuku splutters at your comment and you laugh. He knows you’re not joking and he whines. You really are a bad influence on him. But with the way his cock is twitching to life again.. 

He might not be any better. 

»» — { ♡ } —— { ♡ } —— { ♡ } — ««

[zodiyack]

Rude! (3,000+ Follower Fic Special 1/3)

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Female!Hopper!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, Billy stuff, lyrics, fluff

Song: Rude by Magic!

Words: 1,798

Summary: Billy's love for Hopper's daughter is too strong to be stopped by the tough Chief Jim Hopper. Despite being told "not in a thousand years", he plans to love her regardless.

Note: Thank you so so much! I love you all, and writing your ideas, as well as sharing mine with you, has been so fucking fun and amazing! I'm sorry for my lack of words, I wish being an author came in handy with writing this, however, all I can say is that I love you all from the bottom of my heart. I've seen people do shout-outs, and ask-related stuff with their follower things, and I may do that, I'm not sure. For now, I hope you enjoy this... Thank you all, again!

Also 1/3 means that there will be two other fics released for the 3,000+ follower present!

Taglist: @urie-bowie-mercury, @matth1w, @redspaceace-writes, @fandom-puff, @darling-i-read-it, @simonsbluee, @sebastianstanslefteyebrow, @dpaccione

Masterlist | Stranger Things Masterlist

"Saturday morning, jumped out of bed and put on my best suit. Got in my car and raced like a jet all the way to you. Knocked on your door with my heart in my hands, to ask you a question, 'cause I know that you're an old-fashioned man. Yeah."

Billy was freshly graduated, working as a lifeguard whilst his girlfriend worked her own job, both saving up for their chance to ditch Hawkins and move to California. Sweet Cali. Billy was excited to show the love of his life around the place he called home. Though, physically, he left the salty ocean and windy beach behind, the place never truly left him.

You could see it in his eyes. The waves crashing in his blue orbs. He swore the scent had just barely clung to his belongings; the smell of the tangy air that followed a majority of the state. Working at a pool was the closest he got to the memory of California. Chlorine was most certainly not the salted ocean waters, but with the circumstances, he decided it'd do.

The way his face lit up whenever he talked about his home...it made Y/n more and more excited to see it. His girlfriend had grown up in Hawkins, stayed there her whole life. Never once did the Hoppers leave Hawkins.

But the second that was introduced to Billy, he knew it had to change.

Although they were saving for a big move, Billy had...other things in mind with what to do with his first large pay-check (or series, rather. Working as a lifeguard didn't pay well with just one check). He began to work more shifts to make up for the money he'd spent, and one day after calling in for a day off, he decided to put his plan into action.

"Billy, stop messing with the tie."

"It's annoying." Hands slapped away his attempts of adjusting the black silk tie.

"Well it won't stop being annoying if you keep fucking it up."

For the first time in a long time, Neil Hargrove was calm. Not happy, not amused, not pissed off for some unjust reason- just calm. He wasn't wreaking havoc and he wasn't being an asshole to his son. Billy hadn't seen this side of his dad in quite some time, in fact, he thought something important was going on and he was about to fuck it all up. And then, Susan retreated to the living room with a camera and a freshly ironed suit.

"You're not putting me in that."

"And who asked for your opinion?" Neil deflected with a raised brow. One heavy sigh later and Billy was leaving the bathroom, dawning the whole black and white getup.

Susan clasped her hands over her mouth, a tear leaving her eye, "You look so handsome! Just like your dad!"

Billy rolled his eyes, "Great."

However, his careless attitude was swept under the rug when the blue Camaro pulled up to the police station, interrupting a clearly distressed Chief Hopper bickering with his daughter. Billy had to get himself together before stepping out of the car, jaw slack after seeing the beauty he got to call his date.

"Hello Mr-"

"Don't even try play nice with me, Hargrove. She's not going anywhere with you. End of story." Hopper kept his eyes trained on the blond, body tense like a snake preparing to strike it's prey.

Y/n grabbed Billy's arm, slowly directing him to the car, "And in the sequel, we find out I am going with Billy. End of that story."

"There is no 'sequel.' The writer got drunk and lazy." She paused, turning to face her father who stood tall, arms crossed and face unamused.

"So his daughter picked up where her father left off, and then the sequel was published and the two lived happily ever after, the end."

While her dad attempted to search for a line that would better hers and force her to stay, she pushed Billy toward the driver's side and slid into the car as fast as she could, rolling down the window as Billy started it up. "Bye! I'll be back before midnight!"

The two drove off toward the school, leaving behind a trail of dust and very, very, pissed off Hopper.

Prom was better than Billy thought it would be. He didn't want to go at first, but after Max found out and spoke to her mom about it (the little redhead a cupid-in-the-making), Neil pushed him to go (as he was "doing something else besides being a lazy-no-good rebel"). It was then that he called Y/n and asked if she'd be going.

The suit came in handy. Clashing with his rocker aesthetic, he put it back on once more. The once-annoying tie proved to be somewhat okay in the end.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend, but the answer is no!"

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude?

With a deep breath, he ran-over the conversation in his head once more. Like a script for an actor, he had thought of every possible outcome and every possible line for him to face it with. He almost chickened out as his fist rose to the door, but it was too late, for his knuckles rapped against it before he realized he was even knocking.

El opened the door, eyes wide when she saw the familiar mullet and button-down. "Papa..." She muttered as she backed away and out of view.

Hopper traded places with her, his lazy expression sobering up instantaneously, replaced with a grumpy scowl. "Hargrove."

"Mr. Hopper, sir."

"What are you doing on my front porch?"

He swallowed roughly, palms sweaty against his sides. "I was wondering if I could talk to you."

"You seem to be doing just that right now, Hargrove." Hop crossed his arms and clenched his jaw.

Well, this was certainly not something Billy had thought of. He was on panic mode internally, attempting to find any response that could save his hide and accomplish what he set out to do. Unfortunately, the word-vomit button seemed to be misplaced under the button labeled "help".

"I'd like to marry your daughter, sir."

Hop's eyes grew just as big in size as El's had when she opened the door. He choked on his own surprise, coughing it off, then glaring at the boy in front of him. "Over my dead body, Hargrove. If that's all, I'd strongly advise you to get off of my fucking porch while you're still alive."

I hate to do this, you leave no choice; can't live without her. Love me or hate me, we will be boys- standing at that alter. And we will fly away, to another galaxy, you know. You know she's in love with me, she will go anywhere I go-

"Billy, he's just stubborn."

"No, no, I don't think he likes me."

Y/n sighed, rubbing her boyfriend's back. He hadn't told her of his proposal plans, only that Hop seemed to have it out for him. "It'll take time, but he'll warm up to you!"

"It's been how many years since he's met me?"

"To be fair, your reputation wasn't doing you any good until now..."

"It's not like that was fucking obvious." He slouched further down in the front seat of his Camaro. To Billy, all hope was lost. If he couldn't get Hopper to give him his blessing, he was sure he'd lose his goddamned mind.

Y/n frowned. Her frown flipped around as an idea popped into her head, her lips finding Billy's knuckles and quirking his attention. "Even if he never likes you, I'm not going anywhere."

Billy laughed softly, "he'll fucking kill me if you go against him."

"Eh, that's only if he can catch us."

"You're out of your fucking mind, Y/n Hopper."

"I know."

The rest of the night was spent in the Camaro, of course, doing one of Billy's favorite pastimes. By the time the sun rose, Billy was sneaking a kiss to a giggling Y/n before dropping from her window in the cabin and running to his car, parked far enough that Hop or El wouldn't notice. He blew her one more kiss, which she pretended to catch, then he broke into a sprint.

Maybe, he thought, just maybe; there was still a chance.

His knuckles hit the door again, shifting on his feet nervously. It swung open to reveal Hopper, an unimpressed look bringing no surprise Billy's way. It was quite expected, honestly.

"What." His tone made it clear he wasn't up for fucking around.

"Mr. Hopper, if you just give me one chance to prove to you that-"

"No, no, no, no, no. Let me make it very clear to you that I want you to have nothing to do with my daughter whatsoever. No marriage, no friendship, I don't even approve of you guys fucking or whatever-"

"We're in a serious relationship, sir. It's nothing like you think it is."

This made Hop laugh. He continued to do so, holding his stomach, until he realized Billy was unamused. "Oh, you're serious?... My answer is still no, Hargrove. My answer will always be no. Go find someone else's daughter's heart to break. You're not hurting mine."

"It's not like-"

Before he could even get the words out, he was met with a door in his face. Turned down, again.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend, 'cause the answer's still no!"

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude, rude?

Again, again, and again, Billy incessantly pleaded with Hopper. Different tactics were all met with the same answer; rejection.

He held up a sign outside the cabin, only for Hopper to close the curtain and chuckle as he sipped his coffee.

He asked at the door again, only for Hop to threaten to give him a black eye (which was met with "aren't you the sheriff? Isn't that illegal?").

He raced past the police station, Max leaning out the window with another sign, only for Hop to threaten them with holding cells.

He even went as far as to ask Max and El to help, but Hopper had none of that, and sent Max home with a rant full of nos.

However, if Jim Hopper thought any of it would get it into Billy's head that getting his blessing was just not happening- he was as wrong as Nancy when she claimed not to have feelings for Jonathan.

Billy had another plan in mind, and this one was impossible to say no to.

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life? Say yes, say yes, 'cause I need to know. You say I'll never get your blessing "till the day I die, tough luck my friend- but no still means no!"

"Hopper." Billy stood before his desk, interrupting his nice date with a delicious doughnut, and earning a very annoyed glare. "I got Miss Byer's blessing. Aren't you two a thing?"

"You son of a-"

"I got Eleven's too."

"Hargrove, I'm gonna-"

"Before you cuss me out, I think you should know that I've got a stable job, an interview with a mechanic so I have a job when the pool closes for the winter, and I've got a house on the market I'm looking at. I'm devoted to your daughter and she's devoted to me. You may not like me, but I think you're a great dad, better than the one I was unfortunately stuck with. You raised a strong and amazing woman. She's incredible and I admit, she deserves better than me-"

"You don't have to say that twice." Hopper huffed, crossing his arms.

"I know she deserves so much better than me, I'm surprised she's even with me too. But she loves me, and I think you can see that. I love her too. I would never, in a million years, break her heart."

Jim stayed silent for a few minutes. The silence brought uneasiness to Billy, but that was intentional on Hopper's behalf. He finally piped up with a cough, clearing his throat, before his piercing eyes met Billy's blue orbs.

"I'll hold you to that, Hargrove."

Why you gotta be so rude? Don't you know I'm human too? Why you gotta be so rude? I'm gonna marry her anyway. Marry that girl, marry her anyway! Marry that girl, yeah, no matter what you say! Marry that girl, and we'll be a family! Why you gotta be so rude? Why you gotta be so rude?

Bonus:

(after the wedding)

"What was that about a no?" Billy quipped with his infamous smirk.

"You're lucky I'm sheriff, Hargrove."

Why you gotta be so rude?

[closetedbumblebee]

White Wedding (Addison Montgomery x Female Reader)

Weddings are supposed to be full of love, happiness and gratitude. A wonderful celebration of two souls coming together as one. Today was one of those days. Callie and Arizona were finally and officially tying the knot.

It was supposed to be a happy celebration all round; all the happy couples loved up, attending the wedding together. Meredith and Derek, Christina and Teddy, Owen and Amelia, Richard and Catherine, among others showed their support for the sweetest couple who were currently reciting their vows.

You sat alone in the third row from the front, extremely proud of your friends. You were smiling from ear to ear as they each walked down the aisle. You knew their story like the back of your hand, and couldn’t contain the happiness you felt when Callie and Arizona finally came through for the other, especially after the accident. They had come so far.

You felt a pang of sadness, taking a look around the room at all the couples. You wished your girlfriend, Addison was here with you, but she had to fly back to LA after Sofia’s delivery. You barely spent enough time together as it is, both of you living in separate cities, leading separate lives. You did, however have a relatively strong and healthy relationship, taking the time to have long phone calls, FaceTime, and send as many text messages as you could. You tried to sneak weekends away  to LA, also. 

But, things felt strained for the last few months, and you both felt the need to remedy that. 

The last time you and Addison saw each other was during her stay, which was 4 days long. You hadn’t seen each other for five weeks, and you could tell the strain was getting to you. But, you both pushed those feelings down to focus on your friends. After all, you were both doctors.

When you did catch up, you and Addison had a slight argument the night before she was set to jet out of Seattle. You sort of made up, but you hadn’t really spoken since, just the odd text and call here and there.

You reminisced… 

“Honey, I really want to stay longer, but I can’t. I’ve got patients to get back to and-“, Addison said sadly.

“We’ve barely seen each other for weeks on end, and when we do, you suddenly have to rush off again. I get that you have a new life now and I respect that. Of course I do, but where the fuck do we fit in?! When you took the job in LA, we promised we’d make each other a priority regardless of whatever happened. You only fly back to Seattle when Richard needs you. I’m busting my butt every other week, rearranging schedules, going out of my way to see you. Because guess what, Addison? I love you! Clearly you don’t love me enough, otherwise you’d be making some sacrifices” you snapped.

Addison was taken aback. You had never seen her look so sad and upset. You just missed her so much, and wanted to be with her. You instantly felt guilty for snapping because you didn’t mean to go that far and before she could say anything, you jumped in again.

“Shit. Baby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just miss you so much. You know that. I’m so so sorry”, you said, equally sad as you reached for her hand.

“We’ll, I’m not going to say that didn’t hurt, because it did. But I understand. I guess it was deserved. I’m sorry too, sweetheart. I’m gonna do better, I promise”, she said.

You held each other tight, “I love you”, you said in unison.

Addison was about to say something else when - 

Her watch beeped, reminding of her flight and you drove her back to the airport where you shared one last kiss.

It wasn’t the way you wanted to make up, but it was a start.

Upon arriving back in LA, she texted immediately.

‘I’m back. I won’t say back home, because it isn’t home. Never has, never will be. My home is with you. FaceTime with me tomorrow? I love you baby xxxxx’, she texted

“Me too, my love. I most certainly will. I’m so sorry again. I love you too xxxx”, you replied.

Things improved between the two of you over the next four weeks, before she told you she couldn’t attend the wedding…

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I really wanted to be there, but I just can’t get away”, she said, evidentially disappointed.

“Oh…okay. It’s fine. I can try and film it for you. It’s not going to be the same without you. I love you”. You were sad, but you didn’t want to push her.

……………..

Drawing you from your thoughts, you noticed the last of the guests arriving before the brides made their voyage down the aisle.

“Excuse me, beautiful, is this seat taken?”, you heard a voice say.

You thought you were dreaming. It couldn’t be. You looked up, to see a familiar, beautiful face smiling sweetly at you.

“Addison?!”, you shrieked

You both started crying as she pulled you up into her arms, holding you tightly.

“Surprise”, she whispered huskily into your ear.

“What are you doing here?! I thought you couldn’t come”, you cried.

“I couldn’t bear being away from you anymore”, she said, smiling through tears.

You kissed her with everything you had, before she pulled back.

“I mean it. I’m miserable in LA. I can’t stand it there. So, I’m coming home - for good”, she said.

You didn’t exactly comprehend what she said at first, but then gasped in delight, wrapping her up in your arms. Looking around, your friends were watching you both, all clearly happy for you.

You and Addison still had a lot to talk about, but right now, you put it to the side when Callie and Arizona appeared….

Everyone cried during the vow exchange, and you and Addison shared sweet, knowing looks, never letting go of each other’s hands.

…………..

At the reception, everyone gathered around Arizona and Callie as they had their first dance as a married couple.

Addison wrapped her arms around you from behind and rested her chin on your shoulder as you watched the happy couple. You hugged her arms, and she reached around to peck you on the lips. You two couldn’t get enough of each other.

When it came time for other couples to join the dance floor, you and Addison wasted no time walking hand in hand to the floor. At this point, everyone was in their own worlds, all content and happy, buzzing from the day’s events, while you and Addison were completely wrapped up in your own little bubble.

“So….”, she said, arms wrapped around your waist, holding you close as you swayed to Shania Twain’s ‘You’ve Got a Way’.

“So…”, you repeated.

She jumped right into it. 

“I’ve missed you, my love. I really have. You are everything to me. I’m so sorry for making you feel otherwise. I shouldn’t have been neglecting us”, she said softly, her eyes not leaving yours.

“Addie, hey… No, please. I’m sorry - I had no right to go off at you. I should’ve been more understanding. You uprooted your life and that’s a huge deal; because you’re a big deal, babe. I thought about what I said to you that night, and it was completely unfair, way out of line, in fact.. I was just projecting my feelings onto you. I was so scared that by you moving would have jeopardised our relationship without thinking about anything else. It was me, I was selfish”, you said, sheepishly.

“In other words, you thought I’d cheat on you. That’s it, isn’t it?”, she asked.

You felt tears in your eyes. Blinking them back, you smiled sadly and nodded.

“Come on now, you know I would never, ever, do that to you”, she said.

“I know. I…know. I just should've been more supportive of you. I know what this opportunity meant to you”, you said, your tone apologetic.

“It’s not all on you, okay. I realised I was working longer hours, and I turned my back on us because I was so overwhelmed with all of it, and avoided you, because I think deep down, I was scared too. I was afraid of hurting you, and was terrified the long distance wouldn't work at first. So, I can see how you must’ve felt that way”, Addison said, gently touching your face.

You looked into her eyes, to see the tears shimmering like white diamonds.

“Baby…”, you said.

“Being away from you, not being able to see you, or hold you, or kiss you, made me realise that you, that what we have, is worth more to me than any job. So I told Naomi I quit, called Richard, and he offered me a new job”, Addison smiled.

“Oh, Addie, that’s great!”, you said gleefully.

“Yes, yes it is. But, the best part is that I am now Grey Sloan’s Chief of Neo-Natal Surgery. I’m officially the boss now, baby. You know what that means. This is going to be so good for us!”, Addie said.

You were crying softly and gently touched her face. You knew what this meant; Addison being in charge of her own specialty, back on home soil meant everything to her. She was determined to fight for her relationship with you, so being the boss meant she could make her own rules and schedule. But, not only that, she deserved that title; worked hard for it her whole life; and you were determined to fight to the ends of the earth for her. 

It hit you then that she was really back.

“You’re home?!”, you asked, almost in shock.

“Mm-hmm. I’m home, baby”, she beamed.

“No more messing around, no more arguments. This is it - you and me. No more turning back. I want to fight for us”, she continued.

“I want to fight for us too”, you said back.

You smiled brightly at each other, feeling more connected and more in love than ever.

She was just about to kiss you when you heard the clinking of champagne glasses, as Callie’s father, Mr Torres called for a toast.

“Thank you everyone for coming to celebrate my beautiful daughter, Calliope and her wonderful new wife, Arizona on their special day today. These two have gone through hell and back to be together. I have never felt prouder of my little girl, than I do today. I look around the room, and see it filled with such love. It’s a really beautiful thing. Real, true love is a once in a lifetime feeling, so if you’ve found it, hold onto it with both hands and never let it go, because it’s one crazy ride. Ladies, I congratulate you both on overcoming your obstacles and finding your way to each other. I love you both so much, my dear daughters. To Callie and Arizona!”, Mr Torres exclaimed, full of pride.

“To Callie and Arizona!”, everyone said.

The newlyweds kissed, before turning their attention to the wedding cake.

You and Addison watched the whole exchange, extremely proud of your friends, grateful to be a part of their special, historic day; however, deep down, you both pictured this day of your own, in your not so distant future.

Addison and you shared a look, and you both just knew. This was the path you wanted to take.

“Forever and always, Addie”, you said, winking at her.

“Forever and always, Y/N”, she repeated, clutching your hand, bringing it to her lips.

[xpeachesncream]

bands | eleven

[ series masterlist ]

summary: jeon jungkook has it all: the looks, the fame, the money, the women. being considered the sexiest man in the industry, he finds no complaints about the way his life is going nor does he find any reason to apologize for the way he approaches it. he is a force to be reckoned with - until he meets you.

pairing: stripper!reader x idol!jjk

genre: (18+) strip club/nightlife au, post grad au | fluff, angst, smut

words: 5.2k

warnings: cussing, mature language/implied sexual content, club scene, alcohol consumption, mentions of intoxication, mentions of dancing at the club, little bit of those insecurities coming back into play, good ol’ phone sex in the hotel room, mutual masturbation, unprotected sex, oral (m. & f. receiving), multiple orgasms, fingering, breast play, doggy style, hair pulling, slight choking, creampie

tags: @brightcolorsoffendme​ @min-nicoleee​ @eggbutnotyolk​ @ra-mun-e @miinoongi​ @jimidol​ @ppeachyttae​ @thebeebi​ @bluesharksandfish​ @kooafraid​ @liriaus​ @thisartemisnevermisses​ @ggukkieland​ @preciouschimine​ @sunniejinnie​ @cypheruby​ @cyb3rbab3​ @masterlists101​ @awhnamjoon​ @redhedhoseok​ @wooya1224​ (please message me if you would like to be added to the taglist!)

"Club tonight before we go back home?" Taehyung grips onto Jungkook's shoulders as they walked out of the venue and into their cars that would take them back to the hotel.

"Club?"

"Yeah, come on. Everyone said yes so far! It's been so long since all of us have gone to the club together without it being a special occasion." Jungkook sighs. That statement was true, and he did love being able to hangout with everyone all together. However, he can't lie - he missed you. He barely had time to text or call you this entire trip like he wanted, and he all he wanted was to hear your voice and see your face until he could finally have you physically in his arms again.

"Fuck." Jungkook does a slight head tilt before letting out a small sigh. "Yeah, I'll come along." Taehyung smiles from ear to ear, squeezing his shoulder.

"I'm sure your girl won't mind if we steal you for a little tonight." Jungkook doesn't respond to Tae's statement and simply shakes his head with a small smile. To be honest, the guys were a little surprised to see that whole thing erupt between Jungkook and Bigs. They didn't think he was actually serious about you, the mysterious girl. Jimin, on the other hand, wouldn't dare say a word and simply lent a small chuckle or smile as his participation during their 'lets tease jeongguk' hours. But eventually, it all became a running joke and the boys learned to leave Jungkook alone because as they've learned before, Jungkook does what Jungkook wants.

He gets away with shit.

He cleans himself up and throws on a button up shirt with ripped black jeans and boots, fluffing his hair a bit before he steps back out and meets up with the boys.

[jungkook] 9:49pm: going out with the boys tonight

[y/n] 9:51pm: lol cheer up, have fun party pooper

[jungkook] 9:52pm: fineeeeeeee :( can i call you later?

[y/n] 9:55pm: you can always call me, i just don't know if i'll always pick up :)

[jungkook] 9:57pm: try and stay up please

[y/n] 10:01pm: maybe lol

He slightly smirks to himself. Hopefully you'd stay up, but he was starting to realize you always fell asleep early and that was okay too. He'd just have to wait to see you when he gets back tomorrow.

Once the boys have arrived at the club of choice, security escorts them to their VIP section, the club already packed from wall to wall with people screaming left and right. There's already a few bottle girls, and other girls waiting for them in the VIP from lord knows where, but Jungkook knows he's not trying to mess with any of it tonight. He truly didn't wanna be here, but to keep his boys happy, he decided to tag along and hang out.

"So many beautiful ladies." Jimin swings his arm around his torso and smirks.

"Go get 'em, champ." Jungkook chuckles.

"I would, if they all weren't eyeing you." He shakes his head.

"She's not eyeing me, she's looking at you." He nods towards a pretty, fair-skinned female with long, voluminous black hair. She's definitely eyeing Jimin, biting onto the tip of her finger as she tries to seduce him through her eyes. Her look. "Go." Jungkook slightly pushes him towards her, smiling as he stood back and watched. The rest of the boys were already enjoying themselves, either dancing around alone [aka Min Yoongi and Seokjinnie] or hopping behind girls for a dance.

"Why aren't you dancing with anyone?" Yoongi laughs. "I figured you would be the first to hop on someone."

"I don't feel like it." He takes a sip of his drink, hand dug deep into his pocket.

"You don't feel like it, or you're too busy missing your girlfriend?" Jin joked.

"I don't have a girlfriend!"

"Mhm, sure." Jin laughs. "You could at least reward yourself with a dance." Jungkook shrugs. Technically, he could. It was just a dance, and you still weren't his girlfriend even though he thought of you pretty seriously. But he knew how this would go, and it would get messy quick - especially with the way females nowadays loved to create drama and claim him. He wasn't up for it. And he didn't wanna do anything to hurt you, or disappoint you. The thought alone makes him feel terrible. You were just so pure-hearted, there was no way he could do anything to hurt your feelings.

"Aye!" Jimin comes over and grabs him by the shoulders, swinging him around to face the ladies once more. "That girl I was dancing with is here with her bestfriend."

"And?" Jungkook chuckled. Okay, so? Lol.

"Bro, come on. Just go dance with her and have fun. She's interested in you." He shakes his head, but Jimin is already pushing him over, the force behind his movements stronger than what Jungkook can endure after the day they've had. He clumsily follows along, his lips pursed in a fine line as he approaches Jimin's girl [of the night] and her bestfriend. She had dark brown hair, stood at about 5'7 and wore high waisted shorts and a bralette-type of crop top. She was really trying for some dick tonight. He gives her a small, toothless smile as she beams from ear to ear, shying behind her bestfriend. She was cute, but she was no you, no disrespect.

"This is Yeji!" Her bestfriend exclaims, damn near throwing her right onto Jungkook like her life depended on it. Jungkook places his hands out to support her but brings them back once she's found her footing again. Definitely drunk.

"Hi." She blushes.

"Hey." Jungkook smiles back, sipping on his drink. Jimin is still hanging onto his shoulder, trying his best to egg him on and Jungkook can't help but smile and nod awkwardly at him. He attempts to back away, but Jimin shoves him closer while laughing.

"Have fun!" Jimin flashes him a quick look, confused at what the fuck he was doing right now trying to turn her down like that. But, he instantly flips the switch as he accompanies her bestfriend to the dance floor again.

"Can I get you a drink or something? Water, even?" Jungkook offers to be nice. He can already hear you scolding him in his head - pinching him on the arm and saying that he needs to be nicer to people. But to be honest, he really doesn't know what the fuck to do with her.

"Water's good, I should start sobering up." She giggles as Jungkook nods and pours her a cup of water. He hands it to her and stands beside her, awkwardly eyeing the crowd in front of them. "Hey, I caught your performance today. You looked good! You all looked really good."

"Thanks." He smiles.

"Do you wanna dance for a little?"

"Uh, actually—" Jungkook suddenly feels the both of their bodies press against each other before Jimin's drunk laugh erupts right behind his ear. Jungkook backs away with his hands up, shaking his head.

"Hey come on, if he doesn't wanna dance don't force him." Yoongi says, almost in a scolding manner.

"I'm sorry, I'm just not really in the best dancing mood right now. Pretty tired." He says to Yeji before he gives her an apologetic look and walks over to his hyungs who aren't busy with girls. He's getting more and more annoyed with the way Jimin has been acting lately, but he was trying to keep his cool - careful not to start anything. He knew Jimin wasn't a fan of you with the way he talked about you that one morning before the photoshoot. He loves him, that's his brother for life. But if he wanted to get disrespectful, he didn't have a problem putting him in his place.

Throughout the night, Yeji is sticking to her friend and Jimin, still hoping she could get something started between her and Jungkook, but she doesn't succeed. Jungkook purposely keeps his distance from Jimin and the rest of the girls around them in the VIP section, perfectly content to be staying around Yoongi and Jin.

When they've finally called it a night, Jimin, Taehyung, Namjoon and Hobi are all pretty drunk out of their minds - their asses more than ready to risk it all by sneaking in their girl of choice to their hotel rooms.

"Let me know so Yeji can come too." Jungkook waves his hand to dismiss the statement.

"Nah. I'm good, really, thanks."

"What, all of a sudden you're a goody two shoes for your stripper girlfriend?" Jungkook shoots him a look but brushes it off, blaming it on the alcohol in Jimin's system right now.

"I'm just tired and gonna head to bed, that's it."

"Whatever." Jimin drunkily responds, the four of their drunk asses continuing to be loud as hell in the hallway until they all separate and go off to their own rooms.

"Don't be loud and shit, I want my sleep tonight." Yoongi says before shutting his door.

Finally, peace and quiet.

Jungkook sighs as he looks at his watch, the time nearing 1:30am. He slips out of his clothes, takes a quick shower and gets himself ready for bed before he's shutting off the lights. A hotel bed has never felt so comfortable in his life, but the only thing that was missing was you.

And to be completely honest, he was pretty fucking horny. Having all this pent up sexual frustration just from missing you these past couple of days alone, he couldn't take it. He hopes to god you're awake right now because he's been wanting to hear your voice and hearing your voice alone—

"Jungkook." You say softly on the other line, Jungkook's eyes slightly shutting from the sound of your voice.

Your voice alone was enough to turn him the fuck on.

"You're awake, babygirl."

"Barely." You chuckle. "I'm snuggled into my sheets, but you told me to wait up for you."

"And you actually waited. Thank you, cutie." He smiles to himself. "What'd you do today?"

"Just work my shift at the restaurant, then head home. I don't really do anything outside of work and hangout with Kai, you know this." You chuckle. "How was the club?"

"It was alright." He sighs.

"Did all the pretty ladies get a dance with Jeon Jungkook?"

"Ah, but you're the only pretty lady I know about." He chuckles, making you blush. "But no, I wasn't necessarily in the mood."

"But you're at a club, how could you not be?"

"Too tired. Besides, just wanted to come back here and talk to you. I feel like I haven't gotten to talk to you as much since we've been here."

"It's okay, you need to do what you need to do."

"I can't wait to see you when I get back."

"I can't either."

"You and your pretty face."

"What is up with you? Are you drunk?" You softly laugh.

"No, not really. Why, I can't miss you?"

"Never said that, Jungkook. I miss you, too." You giggled, giving him some affection since it's been a couple of days and you actually missed his presence too.

"Yeah? How much do you miss me, baby?" Your eyes slightly widen cause you can most definitely pick up on his tone, plus the 'baby' pet name made your pussy hop a little. He wanted you, and he knew just the right ways to get to you worked up already.

"A lot."

"Mmm." He hums breathily, causing you to bite your bottom lip. "Are you gonna show me just how much you missed me when I get back?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe, what?" He chuckles deeply. "Tell me, babygirl." He begins to slowly palm himself through his boxers. "How do you want me to show you?" You shut your eyes, the heat quickly building in your core.

"Jungkook." You let out a breathy moan. "What are you trying to do right now?"

"God, I just wanna feel you." He says, completely passing up your question. "I just wanna feel you all around me. Would you like that, my pretty lady? Me all up inside you?" At this point, Jungkook is hard as hell, whipping his hardened member free from its confines. He lets out a breath at how free he feels, finally able to stroke himself nice and slow. He toys with the pre-cum pooling at his tip, using it as some kind of lubricant as he strokes himself up and down, gripping a little tighter towards the base.

"Yes." Your hand slips through your shorts and your panties, gently rubbing at your clit as you listen to Jungkook's deep voice on the other line. You slip your hand a little further down, feeling how wet you already are. You silently whimper to yourself, spreading your wetness in and around your folds, picturing Jungkook doing the work for you.

"Don't be shy, baby. Tell me what you want. Use your words."

"I want you inside of me."

"Inside where?"

"My pussy." He softly groans into the phone, his grip getting tighter by the minute as he fucks himself into his hand.

"Are you touching yourself right now?"

"Yes."

"That's my good girl." He moans with you. "Just wanna fuck you so badly. Show you how special you are to me."

"Jungkook." You whine, as you slip in a finger and quickly fuck yourself with it, the sounds of your wetness echoing in your tiny space. "Fuck I'm so wet for you."

"That's it." He hisses. "Fuck yourself for me until I get back. Can't wait to taste you and fill you up."

"Want you so bad, want you to fuck me so good until I cry." You say, not even realizing the shit you're saying right now as you rub your clit and work your hips in tandem. You begin to whimper a little louder, ready to hurdle off the edge with the pressure you're applying.

"Yeah?" His mouth is agape, barely any noises being released due to the overwhelming sensation that's taking over his body. "Want me to fucking ruin you, baby? Are you ready for that?"

"Always." You moan. "Ahh—Kook, I'm gonna cum."

"Cum all around this dick, sweetheart. It's yours." The words are enough to unravel you, sending you spiraling out of control with the pleasure taking all over your body - inch by inch.

"Oh fuck, Jungkook! Ughhhhhhfffffuck." You groan into the phone as you continue to move your hips into your hand, fingers pressed tightly against your clit.

"Shiiiiiiiit." Jungkook moans as his hips are moving quicker and sloppier, the image of him ramming his cock into you from behind while choking you has him toppling him over the edge. "Mmmmmgod, babygirl."

"The fuck, Jungkook." He chuckles as he regulates his breathing.

"Just miss you, that's all." You hear him stirring in the back, probably cleaning himself up just as you are with yourself. "Stay on the phone with me?" When he does have the time to call you while he's been away, he's always asked for you to stay on the line - facetime or regular call - just so it seems like you're next to him. What you did to deserve this soft Jeon Jungkook, you had no idea. But you were gonna take it and run as far as you could, because fuck. You liked-liked him.

"Okay." You yawn.

"I can still take you out on a date, right?" He yawns shortly after, the domino effect hitting him.

"Of course." You softly chuckle, your eyes getting heavy from all the energy you just spent.

"Okay. I just wanna make sure cause I'm already planning this."

"Planning, huh?"

"Gotta put in the effort." Silence. "Night sweetheart, sleep tight."

"Night." You barely manage to say before you're off into a deep sleep.

You knew Jungkook would be back today, but you weren't sure what time. From the sounds of it, it seemed like it would be really late and you'd have to wait until tomorrow to see him. Which, bums you the fuck out. You just longed for his company and to be in his arms again because it's the safest you've felt in such a long time.

Oh, well.

At least it gave you some time to plan out Kai's birthday gift and celebration cause you still had no fucking idea. He was going to spend majority of the day with his friends at their favorite arcade, but you promised him dinner.

Were you really just going to take him to get Loco Moco from the hawaiian mom and pop shop down the street for his 18th birthday?

What the fuck were you even gonna give him?

You figured you could go shopping for some clothes? Or, check out what new games came out for the playstation that he might be interested in playing. Orrrrr find some comic books and give him--

Knock, knock, knock.

You checked your clock, startled at the heavy knocks coming from your door. It was barely after dinner, the sun still up but preparing to make its way down below the horizon. You had no idea why you suddenly felt nervous and scared, afraid of who you'd see through the peephole. Bigs popped into your head, the goosebumps hitting the surface of your skin. You really hoped it wasn't him trying to cause trouble - or anyone else related for that matter.

You slowly stood up, holding your arms closely against your chest. You tippytoed to check your peephole but it was pitch black, as if someone had been covering it with their finger. Was Kai playing games with you? Did he suddenly get dropped off or take the bus? You didn't have plans with him.

You slowly open a crack, seeing a smiley Jungkook waving at you from behind the door. You swing the door open and latch onto him like a koala, causing him to drop his duffle bag and wrap his arms around you tightly.

"Jungkook, what the fuck! You scared me!" You say into his neck, taking in his scent.

"Why?" He laughs as he gently helps you down and follows you into your apartment.

"It seemed like you weren't gonna be home till late."

"Seemed." He smirked.

"Hey!" You gently push him after you close your door. "How'd you know my door code and which apart—"

"Kai." You both say in unison.

"Ugh, I'm gonna kill him." You whine.

"It's his birthday soon, though. Let him turn 18."

"Ugh, I'm gonna kill him after his birthday." You repeat as you plop back onto your bed, Jungkook dropping his duffle and plopping next to you.

"Cozy place." He says, face down onto your mattress, causing you to run your hand through his fluffy hair.

"It's teeny tiny."

"No, it's perfect. Perfectly sized and cozy." He reassures you as he finally lays on his side to face you.

"Did you just hop off the plane?"

"Sure did."

"Did you eat anything?"

"Yeah, I ate something small on the plane. I'm not that hungry."

"You sure?" You asked, genuinely concerned.

"Mhm." He throws an arm lazily across your legs as he closes his eyes for a quick minute. You continue to run your hand through his hair, a notification on his screen catching your attention.

[unknown number] 6:37pm: hi! this is yeji from the club. :) i hope you don't mind, jimin passed on your number and said we should get into contact.

First of all - Why the fuck does Jungkook have his notifications set so that you can see what the goddamn message is on the lock screen?!

Second - Yeji?

Third - Of course Jimin would have slipped her his number. He hates you for whatever fucking reason.

Another text came in from her but you pulled your eyes away from his phone. This wasn't your business. But let's be real, your heart sank a little knowing he might have been acting up at the club, dancing with hella other girls and getting hella other numbers. It kind of made your insecurities resurface all over again. You weren't his girlfriend though, none of this was exclusive. So, did you really have a right to feel this way?

You brush it off quickly, trying to remind yourself who the hell you were before Jungkook came around [but god, was he making you a softy]. He wasn't exactly yours to claim; however, you were the one he came home to. Technically. Calling you all hot and bothered cause he missed you.

Yes bitch, please.

You're pulled out of your internal battle when Jungkook stirs a little to check his phone, your hand still lightly weaving through his hair as you press your lips together. He reads the notifications, deletes it from the screen and locks his phone again.

"The boys bothering you?" You decide to ask in a way that doesn't yell 'yes I saw her pop up on your phone, sir.'

"Nah. No one important really."

"Oh okay." Bummer. You lowkey expected him to be honest with you, but was that too soon for you? You just through this in your head - this wasn't exclusive.

"Lay with me, pretty lady. Let's watch something."

"You mean finish Gone Girl?" You quickly flip the switch and smirk at him, making him laugh.

"Oh shit, that's right. Not my fault you straddled me." You slightly gasp.

"Not my fault you fucking batted your eyelashes at me, talking about ‘can I tell you something?'" He scrunched his nose and tickled your sides, causing you to yelp and crash your body back down onto the bed. He continues to tickle you until you're begging for him to stop - his body over yours, but he was careful not to put all his weight on you. "Ouch, Jungkook!" You whine.

"You finished making fun of me?"

"You started it!"

"You're so fucking cute, you know that?" He lowers himself down to your lips, pressing them gently against yours. Your hands get tangled within his hair again, pressing him down slightly onto you so you could feel him, feel his warmth. The kiss deepens quick as Jungkook settles himself in between your legs, your tongues at war with each other. He groans into the kiss, his soft, large hands roaming up your shirt and sending sparks throughout your body. "I missed you." He bites your bottom lip and sucks it gently before pulling back. He helps remove the shirt over your head before unhooking your bra in a swift motion and tossing it off to the side.

"I missed you too." You say at a whisper as he grabs both of your breasts and plants kisses along the surface before swirling his tongue around your sensitive, perked buds. He hooks onto your shorts and panties quick, aggressively tugging them down and off.

"So fucking perfect for me." He says, planting kisses along your sides

"I hate it when you do that." You hiss as he begins part your legs wider, pushing your thighs out as he lowers his lips onto your folds. You truly did hate it - you couldn't stand it only because that shit drove you crazy. Someone like Jungkook calling you perfect, god please.

"Hate what, babygirl?"

"Call me perfect like that." You let out a small whimper when you feel his wet tongue glide against your folds, slowly poking in and out of them as he stares at you from between your thighs.

"But you are. Want me to show you?"

"Hmmmm." You whine. "Quit." He slightly chuckles against your pussy, but continues going to work - slipping in two digits and curving them just to tickle you in the right spots. "Ahhhh, Kook please."

"Mhm." He says, picking up the pace with his fingers, allowing your wetness to glaze them. He suddenly removes them from you short after, a small whine leaving your lips at the loss of contact.

"Ohshiiiiiit. You're gonna make me cum." Jungkook begins to run his tongue up and down your pussy once more, his tongue penetrating your entrance ever so slightly before swiping it up to your clit to suck on it. He motorboats into your pussy, his head moving right and left in such a quick pace that you're tugging on his hair and jutting your hips into his mouth. His tongue starts to pet your clit with its tip - the repeated movements enough for you to reach your climax, your thighs almost keeping Jungkook in between until you could bring yourself back down from your high. "Aghhhhohhhmygod!" Jungkook smirks as he sits up, sticking his two fingers into his mouth before releasing himself from his sweats and boxers.

"Fuck, you taste so good." He slightly groans. Your breathing hitches seeing his hardened member, making you drool at the sight. You already feel dizzy imagining him filling you up with that thing, but you knew you wanted take care of him first - make him feel good, make him feel special. Take him, every inch. You crawl over and take his cock into your hands, spitting onto it before you slowly stroke him up and down. "Ohhhhhbabygirl." His words mesh together as he tilts his head back. You lower your lips onto his tip, tasting every single drop of pre-cum pooling at the area before running your tongue down his shaft and taking him. You get about halfway before you swirl your tongue around suck, pulling back with a slight pop. You stroke towards the base as your mouth is doing work on the other half of his cock. Jungkook has his hand in your hair, and you can feel his grip tightening as he slowly moves your head up and down along his cock. "Can you take me? All of me?" You nod. "Yeah? Fucking take it then." He spits out as he lowers you all the way down, keeping his tip against your throat until he feels you gag. "Oh, fuck!"

"Fuck!" You say, tears brimming your eyes, ready to stream your cheeks as you watch the trail of saliva from his tip to your mouth fall.

"You're doing so fucking good." He says as he watches you while guiding you down length, bobbing your head a little rougher and more aggressively this time around. Your saliva is damn near dripping out of your mouth, the entire scene getting sloppier by the minute, but you honestly didn't care. You were so turned on that all you wanted after this was for Jungkook to fuck you crazy hard, until you couldn't take it anymore. You were so fucking attracted to this man. "One more for me, baby." He moans, lowering you down his entire length again, his tip tickling your throat a lot longer than the first time that your tears are actually coming down this time around. You cough when he finally pulls you back, more saliva trailing from the tip to your mouth. "See, so perfect for me. Taking me in so well like your mouth was fucking made for me." He grabs your chin, placing a kiss against your lips before gently pushing you back down onto the bed. "Turn around and get on your knees, sweetheart."

"I want you so bad." You whine, his hand trailing down your back as he positions your ass up and gets your face as close to the mattress as possible.

"Don't you worry, princess. I'll take good care of you." He lines himself up, his dick incredibly wet from you sucking him like your life depended on it. He slides in with ease, the both of you moaning loudly at the feeling - the feeling of warmth, and feeling so fucking full, Jungkook is sure he can feel his tip ready to rearrange your guts in this position. He begins slow, one hand on a hip, while the other is in your hair, making sure your face is deep into the mattress.

"Faster, please!" You plead, Jungkook wasting no time to hammer his cock into your pussy. The sounds are incredibly loud and lewd, and you knew your walls were thin as hell. You were sure your neighbors were definitely having the time of their life listening to you getting destroyed. You cry as he groans, his hands now gripping your hair and tugging you back so that he can slightly see your face with the way he tilts it back.

"Ughhhh, shit babygirl. You feel so good, always so tight for me." He moans as he lets out a couple of breaths from pumping in and out of you so quickly. "Ready for me to make you cry again? That's what you wanted, right?"

"Yes." You say, but he tugs your hair tighter.

"I can't hear you."

"Yeeeees!" You whine. "Yes, fuck, please!"

"Say my name."

"Jungkooook." You moan. "Jungkoook, hmmmmmpfh." Your ass almost feels numb from how hard Jungkook is fucking you right now, but it all leads to the pleasure building up inside of you - pooling right at your core. You were sure you could reach your climax again any moment now, but you were trying your hardest to hold on for as long as you could, enjoying every moment of the pleasure he was bringing you. You didn't want this to be over, even though you could go rounds with him if he wanted to. His hand travels from your hair, down to your neck, gripping just right to choke you and keep your head tilted at an angle. Your yes's are becoming inaudible, moans getting lost in your throat that is feeling constricted from his grip.

"I'm gonna cum, sweetheart. Cum with me." Jungkook says as he thrusts harder, the overwhelming sensation enough to send you into the next dimension. The orgasm ripples through your body, your hand gripping onto his wrist as you tremble and look for support.

"FuckkkkknnnnngJungkook!" You manage to yell. He moans loudly as you feel his cock twitch inside of you, spurts of his cum coating your walls warmly and thickly. He gives you two good slow thrusts before he's slowly pulling out and letting his tip stick the cum back inside of you. "Ahhh, please. Kook." You whimper as you fall onto your bed, tears staining your cheeks once more. He smiles as he picks up his boxers and throws them on, tossing you your panties and his shirt to wear. You slip into them without question, Jungkook coming back onto the bed to lay next to you and caress your body to soothe you.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." You sniff, the aftermath of all the tears you've shed from tonight's fuck session catching up to you.

"Babygirl." He chuckles as he wipes your cheeks and plants a kiss on it. "You need to be careful of what you ask for."

"Shut the hell up and pull up the movie, Jungkook." He laughs, watching you shove your laptop over to him. He pulls up the movie on his Amazon Prime account and snuggles with you under your sheets.

"Sooo, ready for our date?"

"Should I be preparing?" He shrugs.

"Just want you to have a good night with me." His hands are still caressing your sides under his shirt, light kisses being pressed against the nape of your neck. The warmth, and the feeling of his body pressed against yours makes you feel content. Satisfied. Peaceful.

You felt safe. You felt wanted.

baby we can take it slow, say my name, don't let go, I can hear your body when i pull your hair, what's my name; girl I swear, I can hear your body babe

track ten: body - syd

[ryosmne]

Tattoo artist! Sukuna x reader part 4

Hello, it's me your friendly neighborhood Sukuna simp, I don't have much to ramble about today, I hope you have fun reading this part :)

Series masterlist here

Warnings: Language, alcohol consumption, implied smut that I'm too shy to write.

The café was unusually quiet today, maybe it's because the other days y/n found herself sitting at that exact spot by the window, Mai was the one sitting across from her. Today was different, Nobara took Mai's place for brunch after class, to be fair she hadn't showed up in some time so both Nobara and y/n jumped at the opportunity to spend some time together.

"So, does it feel lonely now that Yuuji and Mai spend so much time together?" Nobara asked, evidently trying to make y/n admit to some form of jealousy she was sure she had. "Not really, I'm happy she's finally with someone so good for her and she's finally off my back about hooking me up with random dudes" y/n said and she was honestly happy for her best friend, Yuuji was a very nice guy and in the past few weeks he's been seeing Mai, he's nothing less of a sweetheart and y/n saw him a as a little sibling even though they were roughly the same age.

"Of course, why would you be lonely, Sukuna's been keeping you company too." Nobara's eyes had a glimmer in them, not because she wanted to tease y/n, but she was very invested in the girls business with the oh so attractive tattoo artist.

Nobara did her homework on the guy, he certainly wasn't as polite or well mannered as he came across the night they met. He did seem like trouble at first glance, but the way he looked at y/n that night, or the times he waited for her to get off class to have some time together, Nobara would say that even a blind man could see that y/n had been tugging on Sukuna's heartstrings.

"It's not like that" y/n was once again flustered. What was she to the pink haired man, who missed no chance to be around her? "You're making out in his car in broad daylight, what is it like?" the brown haired girl chuckled, her friend was an idiot if she worried for a second about the man who looked at her like she would disappear at any second. "I don't know, but we aren't together like that, he's an interesting guy" y/n longed to be with him, she had a faint memory about him talking about something like that the time he spend the night with her, but then again, she was drunk and that could be her mind playing cruel tricks on her.

"Ok then whatever you say, I really hope you're not doubting the dude that cooked you ten different options for breakfast, after he took your drunk ass home."

"Wait how do you know about that- did Mai? Oh I'm gonna kill her."

Despite the tiny voice asking 'what are we?' in y/n's head, her days with Sukuna have been some of the best she's had. Granted they couldn't see each other that often, whenever they did, it was always better than the time before.

Sukuna had taken her to all the restaurants he knew were good, cafes with the best tiramisu she had ever tasted, taking an hour and a half to get to the next place he'd see her smile listening to her excitement filled voice as she told him how delicious the food was, then giving him some attitude mumbling about how she didn't expect him to have such nice taste, was the easiest victory to him, the highlight of his day.

He hadn't managed to get her back to his chair like he needed to yet, he had been so busy finding the best places to take her to that it seemed like it completely slipped his mind. It hasn't slipped Sukuna's mind though, he's just been nervous to bring it up again, what if she doesn't want to do that anymore? What if she changed her mind? What if she just agreed because she felt compelled to do so? Sukuna didn't know which one was worse.

Even on the days they couldn't see each other they were in touch, texting silly things or messing with each other. If a day was anything other good Sukuna could vent and let out his frustrations talking to y/n and she often did the same. Sukuna preferred calling her for that, not only to get things off his chest but because her voice was so calming to him, the need to hear it grew stronger each day he wasn't able to see her.

Afternoon classes were always adding to her demise, y/n even accepted Mai's gossiping over paying attention. Yuuji as she expected was as sweet as he looked, Mai was once again gushing over him and his adorable nature. Y/n just smiled at her friend who rumbled about the boy who, by now had a very firm hold of her heart. "You and Sukuna?" She asked, prying for any information she didn't already know from Yuuji. "Me and Sukuna" y/n stated back, shit eating grin on her face, knowing how not entertaining Mai and not feeding her what she wanted completely pissed her off. Y/n's phone buzzed from her pocket, giving her a little break from her friends curiosity.

Can I take you out after class?

Y/n's lips tagged into a small smile. "Speak of the devil" Mai teased looking over y/n's phone.

Hmm depends. Where to?

Its a surprise, doll

You know I hate surprises, but I can make an exception for you.

Mai pretend to gag next to her, but y/n payed her no mind. She had already seen enough from her and Yuuji to do the same.

You won't regret it, I'll be outside when you're done.

"Just don't make out in the parking lot again, being in his car doesn't mean that we don't see you." Mai was being Mai again. Y/n shoved her arm lightly and told her that they all knew how her and Yuuji sneaked around the bathrooms, laughing as her face flushed red.

Sukuna entered her field of view leaning against his car, finishing up a cigarette, looking too good for anyone not to stare at him. The total black outfit he had on did wonders for him, even if it was the simplest of crew cut shirts and sweatpants, every piece of clothing complimented him. Waving at Mai, y/n walked towards him noticing he's cocky expression. "Feels like you're eating me up with those eyes" he laughed, why must the sound of his voice be this melodic at all times. "Don't worry I missed you too" Sukuna said laying a soft kiss on y/n's lips as a greeting. If her fellow students weren't staring already, now they surely were .

" Where are we headed tonight?" Y/n asked fastening her seatbelt, she still kind of thought of Sukuna as clumsy, even though he's driven her many places, it's not that she didn't trust him, he was a very good driver. Hey safety comes first.

"You'll find out" he spoke with a little grin, before starting his engine and driving off.

Unlocking his door, he let y/n step inside first. Sukuna's house was surprisingly neat, everything looked to be in place, the décor was minimalistic. It felt like Sukuna very home-y, but then it didn't. It was too tidy, y/n didn't really think of him as a tidy person. The place also had his scent of sandalwood so y/n easily relaxed into the new space taking some more steps forward to look around.

"Bringing me to your house like this without taking me to dinner first, tsk should've known you were that type 'kuna." Y/n said in a mockingly disapproving tone "Who said that, I'm cooking dinner for you." Sukuna said draping his arm around her shoulders guiding her to his kitchen.

Whatever Sukuna had on his stove smelled scrumptious, making y/n's mouth water, maybe how pretty Sukuna looked with an apron on and a little sweat forming on his forehead from the heat of the stove helped too.

"You know, I would have never guessed you knew how to cook." Y/n let some of her assumptions fly in the room, she was the only one with a pass to talk about whatever she wanted with him. Sukuna wasn't going to shut her down. Y/n had leaned back on his table, her eyes roamed his figure freely. Sukuna would look over his shoulder smiling to himself every time he caught her in the act.

"I had to learn, Yuuji and I lived with our Grandpa, when he passed, it was just me and him." Y/n's heart clenched in her chest, Sukuna sounded different saying that. The truth is, Sukuna had never talked about that with anyone, he never made word of his grandfather's passing or the hardships him and his brother went through when they were left alone. He had mentioned to y/n that his and Yuuji's grandfather raised them, but from the way he spoke about him y/n was sure his Grandfather was doing well. "I'm sorry for your loss" was all she could muster at that moment, the pain in his voice was much too real for her. "Thank you, at least my brother turned out pretty good" he quickly changed the subject to something ligter, surprised at his self for opening up to her so easily. "You didn't turn out that bad either" y/n let the words spill, she had spent the past half hour blatantly checking out his back, she had nothing to get shy about. Sukuna let out a laugh, gripping his wooden spoon a little tighter throwing a glance over his shoulder. "Is that what you think?" Y/n shifted in her seat, how could this guy go from sentimental to laughing about his brother and to whatever this dark seductive tone was, she had no idea.

"Come on don't get shy on me, you were having fun checking me out just a minute ago, see anything you like" in the blink of an eye, Sukuna was slightly bent down facing her. Even after all the makeout sessions they've had that usually ended with y/n slapping his arm worrying that someone saw them and Sukuna looking at her with a cocky grin reassuring her that they gave a good show to whoever was watching, he could still make her all flustered, and she looked adorable like this, a deer caught in headlights. Sukuna kissed the tip of her nose, telling her she looked cute before turning his attention back on the food.

"Did you find that movie?" Sukuna's voice came from the kitchen, y/n was fumbling with the remote on his couch. Sukuna insisted on eating in his living room, he didn't want this to feel too formal, he still had whine out with fancy plates and everything, but he only wanted to cook for his girl and see her eyes light up eating his food, like they always did when she tried the food on the restaurants he took her.

"Yeah, here let me help with that." She said getting of the couch to help him set everything. "No no no, you go sit down, I'll do the work." Sukuna insisted, y/n only raised a brow at him and complied.

"Okay, you have to teach me, this tastes so good 'kuna" that nickname stuck, not that Sukuna complained, his stomach still did flips every time y/n called him that. She was looking at him just the way he hoped she would. The dish was quite simple, chicken with some red salsa and vegetables, but it was better than anything she'd ever tasted.

"I can give you a little cooking class, as long as you go grocery shopping" He offered her a little smile and y/n rolled her eyes playfully.

Y/n was leaning on Sukuna's chest with her arm hooked around his waist, he had a firm hold of her too, mindlessly looking at the screen but not paying enough attention to it. The movie y/n chose turned out to be a barely watchable C grade thriller and the two glasses of wine they had didn't make it tolerable either. Bad movie or not, having her under his arm like this was all he needed to feel calmer. Sukuna was so calm that he forgot why he brought y/n over.

"Can I show you something?" Sukuna spoke softly, looking down at her, y/n nodded in reply and groaned loudly at the loss of his warmth when he got up from the couch, Sukuna could only chuckle at her .

"Just two drinks and you're already a brat."

"Shut up."

Sukuna came back holding a big folder and some sketch books, y/n's curiosity picked and she found herself straightening up a bit.

"I've been dying to show you these." Sukuna stated as he flipped through the pages. Y/n's eyes danced all over the various shapes and designs he had came up with. Her eyes traced a particular three headed fox, she had never seen anything like that before, she reached out her hand to feel his drawing on her fingertips.

Sukuna's heart picked up its pace, she was currently in aww at his favourite piece for her. "Are those what you told me you came up with form me?" She was amused, she stared at him wide eyed not believing that anyone would ever do something like that for her, "Yeah, every design here is meant for you, you can pick whichever you like, but if you don't want me to tattoo you, I'll understand, you don't have to let me if you don't want to." Y/n couldn't believe it, there were enough drawings in here to fill her entire body in ink. She had hardly believed him when he said he had a vision for her sleeve, but this, this was out of this world.

"I don't even know what to say, these are so beautiful, but why did you go through all this trouble?" She still couldn't see a reason for it. "You've given me so much inspiration from the first time you visited, I can't get your skin out of my head, seeing you in my work is just surreal. I would do anything to do it again" Sukuna's words had not yet sunken in properly, y/n was still in disbelief.

Sukuna placed his sketchbooks on the coffee table, his hand prompting y/n's chin up so he can look at her face in the dim lights of his living room. "I will decorate any part of your skin you're willing to give to me, I'll give you the best work I can, please let me do this much." Sukuna almost sounded desperate, his face was once more too close and his wine scented breath tickled her lips, he had almost gone mad drawing in most his free time, and every time he saw her, a new idea of what would fit her popped into his head.

"You can do that" the moment these words rolled out of y/n's tongue, Sukuna had heard all he needed, and latched his mouth on hers, allowing his hands to explore more of her body. Between heavy breaths, Sukuna whispered about the softness of her skin, how he couldn't wait to mark her again, how he wanted her to be his canvas, his and only his. Diving in her neck once more, littering her sensitive skin with bruises she'd have to cover up tomorrow and her hands tangled up in his hair. "Just be good for me and I'll be gentle" His words only made her anticipate more.

The next day Sukuna was walking like the happiest man on earth, he woke up and had breakfast with his beloved doll, he had a smile on his face you couldn't miss. His co-workers didn't miss it either nor did they miss the huge forder he had under his arm when he came in, but they didn't question it.

Gojo spent his time teasing him about his unusual demeanor while Geto laughed to himself assuming what everyone else did.

Teasing him and prying about Sukuna's previous day didn't really work in Gojo's favour, Sukuna would simply ignore him and his smile still hadn't fadded. Gojo took it as his personal mission to piss him off when he had a lightbulb moment.

"Come on man, you talk about her all the time and when she comes over we're all working, when are we gonna get to meet her?" Gojo pushed, for the third time today, he finally found a weak spot.

The entire crew was curious meet y/n, properly this time at least, but Gojo was the only one who could confidently voice that. "Tell you what, go one month without fucking someone in here, and we can all go for some drinks tonight." Sukuna said in a joking manner, there was no way Gojo Satoru would agree to something like that, the man couldn't last two days on that deal, he was not about to give his word to Sukuna and take one for the team.

Gojo stood before the pink haired man, his glasses low on the bridge of his nose "Then, it's a deal" he said, obnoxious as ever with his hand extended for Sukuna to take. Sukuna knew Gojo was a man of his word, and if he shook on something, he would no doubt keep his end. Now Sukuna had to keep his as well.

Hey doll, I was wondering if you'd like to go grab a few drinks with me and the rest of the guys after closing?

Sure, I'll be there before nine, what's the occasion?

No need, I'll pick you up, they just really want to meet you, you don't have to come if you don't want to though.

Don't be stupid, I won't pass the opportunity of collecting blackmail on you.

Sukuna was smiling at his phone, that was so typical of y/n, his grin quickly faded once his eyes met the idiots standing before him with hopeful eyes. "Just don't do anything stupid" he sighed defeated before getting back to work, this was going to be a long night.

Y/n easily spotted Sukuna's car, he was parked just further down her street. Carefully swinging the passenger door open, she expected at least extra someone inside, but it was just Sukuna.

"Hey 'kuna." y/n greeted stepping inside, Sukuna faced her with a half smile, lazily bringing his hand on her jawline, pulling her in for a short kiss. "You're looking very pretty today, dollface." he spoke, still inches from her face, as his eyes traced her figure. Every inch of exposed skin begging him to mark it. Sukuna halted his wandering thoughts when y/n spoke again. "Everyone ended up ditching you in the end? cause you could've taken me out without an excuse like that."

"I wish they did, but unfortunately for both of us we'll have to suffer through it, I know you'd rather have me all to yourself." The mare glance he gave her from the corner of his eye as he put the car on speed was enough to have y/n's hear thumping in her chest. "Speak for yourself, airhead." Y/n's tone didn't lack at all in sarcasm. She did want him all to herself but she also was very intrigued by the rest of his crew, Sukuna always spoke about them. Whether it was stories from his childhood, college or everyday work things, y/n kept hearing about Nanami, Geto, Gojo and Megumi so she looked forward to getting to know them for herself. She had only seen Gojo and Nanami. Megumi and Geto had always been occupied when she dropped by the shop she would catch a glimpse of them tonight.

Sukuna's hand had taken a grip of her thigh, making y/n not so focused in their conversation. Sukuna was mindlessly squeezing while warning y/n about his friends.

The bar looked more like a museum in her opinion, still a very beautiful, elegant place. Y/n expected no less from Sukuna, he's already accompanied her to the best small restaurants and patisseries, sometimes she wondered how he came to know this many perfect date spots.

Sukuna had managed to slip his hand in her's the moment he noticed eyes on his precious doll and guided her to the table his co-workers were sat.

"You owe me 50 Nanami, they did show up."

"You're making me regret this already." Sukuna said, his head dipping slightly

"Come on 'kuna don't be such a grump" had that been y/n's voice Sukuna would've smiled down at her and his demeanor would instantly change, Gojo's voice only offered him annoyance.

Y/n took notice and softly brushed his hand with her thumb, Sukuna let a little laugh and proceeded to introduce the girl under his arm to everyone. "Y/n this is Geto, Megumi and you already know Nanami and Gojo here" Sukuna spoke pulling out y/n's seat as she shook hands with everyone. Gojo took the chance to piss his friend off, after all he would have to strictly work for the next month, he brought y/n's hand to his lips, giving her a compliment on her dress, making Sukuna red in the face.

Everyone took a liking to her very quickly, seeing exactly why Sukuna was so taken by her, she was witty and smart with a silver tongue that was also very sharp. Geto begun telling her about Sukuna's embarrassing drunk nights in college while Gojo laughed and even Nanami snickered. Megumi made Sukuna regret the day he considered taking him in his shop when he told y/n how he always cried as a kid if he didn't have a cookie after his meal. "That's why you always grumble about dessert?" Y/n asked him choking in laughter, Sukuna mumbled a reply and went back to looking annoyed, he was really happy to see y/n interact with his friends so effortlessly. This girl was constantly giving him more reasons to be around her.

Y/n was in the middle of a deep conversation with Nanami about philosophy, her eyes gleaming when he mentioned Plato's allegory of the cave. Geto subtly tapped Megumi's leg to get him to notice how Sukuna was resting his chin on his hand staring at y/n, who was blabbering about Greek philosophers, with the most sweet expression on his face any of them had seen. Gojo also took notice of that and an unspoken pact of 'annoy the fuck out of Sukuna' was made then and there.

"Have you thought about the next thing you want done or did you just want one tattoo?" Gojo asked the girl, breaking her conversation with Nanami a little too early for her liking.

"Yeah, I'll be getting some more work from Sukuna pretty soon" y/n replied proudly, her mind wandering to the night before to Sukuna and the beautiful pieces he came up with just for her. Sukuna perked up, his heart thumping by how happy y/n sounded with these words rolling out her lips.

"You sure you want him to do it though? You know I'm free if you need." Gojo's voice was condescending like always. Sukuna tensed up, jaw clenching at the thought of anyone laying a finger on y/n's skin. "Are you crazy? with work like this, I wouldn't let anyone else do it." Y/n laughed, Gojo must've been joking anyway.

Sukuna found so much comfort in her reply, she loved his artistry and never hesitated to show it, no matter how much of a brat she could be with him. Geto butted in the conversation too "y/n is right, look at how beautiful Sukuna's work looks on her, there's no way she'd change him." Y/n nodded at his words. "But I also do black and gray, I'm sure I could come up with something for you" Sukuna's eyes were glaring daggers at the raven haired man next to him, he remained oblivious to it laughing on the inside, Sukuna was so predictable.

"Thanks, but you said it yourself, there's no way I'd change him." Y/n spoke confidently, taking a sip of her vodka, knowing that at this point she was stroking Sukuna's ego and it would only grow bigger. Sukuna had no idea what everyone was onto trying to tattoo y/n, probably piss him off. From the looks of it, y/n wasn't going to let that happen. Nanami was observing quietly exchanging a few more words with y/n, he was right about her not taking other people's bullshit, Gojo couldn't pull anything with her, Nanami could see what Sukuna saw in her.

"Y/n, when you first came you were going to get tattooed by Megumi right?" Nanami spoke, Sukuna never expected him to join the others in their stupidity. "Yeah, he takes the walk ins right?" Y/n said casually, paying no mind to what Nanami was trying to do, the rest of them were also shocked that he decided to join in on making Sukuna's night a little hellish. Oh the betrayal.

"Did you want to get tattooed by Megumi?" Such a simple question, but Sukuna was at the edge of his seat "Yeah, I did, he was the reason I chose Domain in the first place, everyone loves this guy's work, I was pretty excited." Sukuna's face dropped, it's not like he didn't expect that, of course y/n came based on the reviews, he couldn't be mad at her for not booking him, she didn't even know him. He was pretty happy that he ended up taking her in that day, even if his insides boiled with jealousy at this very moment "Sorry for ruining your plans doll" the same smugness echoed in his voice "I can only stay mad at you for so long." Meeting his enlarged pupils and darker eyes, she could tell Sukuna was indeed, jealous. He had nothing to be jealous of, she didn't plan on leaving his side anytime soon, but when Megumi took his turn in the game everyone seemed to play, y/n found it hard not to join them. "If you still want to I can tattoo you since I never got to" Megumi knew he was walking on thin ice when Sukuna gave him a look that made him wish he was dead, these two got in fights all the time as kids and ended up with bruises all over them, if Megumi didn't ease up Sukuna would gladly remind him of the past.

"Uh, yeah, if you've got a design" y/n said with a bit of hesitation, Sukuna was seathin next to her, his hand aggressively palming her leg just above the knee. The rest of the night Sukuna didn't really speak, only leaned in y/n's ear to tell her to slow down on the vodka, the rest of the guys continued to talk amongst themselves as if nothing had happened.

Exiting the bar, y/n was walking- trying to keep up with Sukuna who walked fast to his car after mumbling a goodnight to everyone. Y/n regretted playing along, she'd never seen Sukuna this quiet. " 'kuna, I'm sorry I really didn't want to upset you" she said her eyes on the ground, gently tagging at his jacket, how could he ever get annoyed with her when she looked like that. Sukuna wasted no time swiftly taking a hold of her, his lips ghosting her's "I'm not that upset, only a little" his voice barely above a whisper, lips grazed over hers briefly. Sukuna didn't know if that was his heart or hers thumping so hard "I'm tired of dancing around it" his breath was hot, warming up her face making y/n's face impossibly hotter. "Dancing around what?" She asked with visible hesitation. Sukuna dipped down once more, not so softly this take taking her soft lips into his own, gently tugging on her bottom lip with his teeth, letting one of his palms to rest on her cheek and the other taking a loose hold of the back of her neck. Her arms naturally found their way around his neck. "I told you I want you all to myself" . Did he mean what y/n was thinking? Did y/n want him to call her his? Sukuna almost crackled at her puzzled expression. Sukuna wasn't one to express things this openly, y/n was a bit dense in that department so he had to, at least he told himself that.

"I'm starting to get a bit disappointed, I clearly remember you saying 'i would say yes' with some romantic mumbling" Sukuna said, stroking her cheek ever so slightly.

Her breath was striped from her lungs, it wasn't from the kiss this time. So that did happen, y/n's mind was not playing tricks on her, Sukuna had in fact asked. Her eyes once again gleamed looking straight to his crimson irises. "So will you be mine?" He was more confident this time, they had grown closer, laughed more, shared more, Sukuna wanted this from the very first session they had together and the more time he spend around her, the more he couldn't bare the thought of anyone laying their fingers on her. Perhaps Nanami's little show got under his skin way more than he could ever admit, but there was no way he's letting anyone mark her. Y/n was his personal artwork, only the finest of pieces shall taint her skin. "Yes, airhead" y/n said, finally having enough air to form words, still in his arm with a smile on her face, indulging him on another deep kiss. "Let's seal the deal then."

Sukuna finally got to fulfill his need, y/n was back on his chair late in the afterhours of the night. He finished free handing another of his designs he showed her the night before, the outline of her sleeve, with the Cerberus foxes he created just for her.

Y/n was standing in front of his full body mirror, examining the very delicate lines of his marker. His arms snaked around her waist, Sukuna could watch her admire his art for eternity.

"You look so beautiful in it" he simply stated, looking at their reflection he could only note her beauty. Y/n looked beautiful, beautiful on her own, beautiful in his tattoos, beautiful in his arms.

"Your art is probably the most beautiful thing I've seen, but you too are a close competitor" her voice crystal clear, she managed to make a faint pink dust his cheeks. Sukuna wasn't one to take compliments, but from her? He could listen to her little praises all day. "Now, now get your ass back on this chair, you're not getting out of this"

"I didn't plan to anyway."

Bonus Domain shenanigans: Megumi had the pleasure of opening up the very next morning, what the hell happened here, he was about to call the cops when he saw Sukuna looking scruffy and sleep deprived, emerge from the back room, same pants and undone dress shirt as the night before. "What the hell" was all that he could say. Sukuna was thankful he let y/n out the back just so they could both avoid the embarrassment that was to come.

"What happened here?" Geto asked the moment he came through the door, although he already knew, Sukuna was predictable. "Nothing happened" Sukuna groaned trying to get them to shut up, he just needed some coffee. He disappeared in the back again.

"yeah sure, 'nothing happened' does he think we're stupid or something" Gojo said to Nanami, who already had a headache and he hasn't been in for 15 minutes yet. "Stop it already nothing happened" Sukuna said, coming out in the front to order a coffee. Gojo stared at him, walked closer to him and began laughing straight to his face, "fuck you're laughing at?" Sukuna was confused

"Next time, clean the lipstick off your face and neck." Nanami chuckled while Gojo continued to laugh at Sukuna's frustration.

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[spideyhexx]

take a chance on me - b.b.

here's something I wrote for @buckyblues 4k writing challenge! I've been wanting to get back into writing, so here's my first go at it :)

using the song prompt "take a chance on me by abba." @edenslibrary

be sure to let me know what you think :) reblogs, likes and comments are appreciated 😊

bucky barnes x reader

summary: bucky has a crush on you. he's doubtful of himself, messes up, but turns it around.

WARNINGS: sfw. fluffy. some tiny tiny angst. bucky being self deprecating. huge hate of chekhov. bookstore owner!reader.

word count: 2.3k

Bucky replays his conversation with you a billion times within the couple of minutes it takes for him to walk from the quaint little book shop to his apartment.

After his favorite bookstore closed, Bucky took to finding a new one and stumbled upon the Murky Lime. He thought the name was strange, a little off putting, but as soon as he walked in, Bucky knew he was going to enjoy spending his afternoons there. It always smelled like hazelnut or vanilla, a scent he found so incredibly comforting that he bought a hazelnut scented candle for his home. Although it was a small shop, the shelves were loaded with books and he was able to find a hidden corner to sit down and read for a couple of hours, unbothered.

Not to mention the pretty girl that worked at the main desk and seemed to be the owner. You were there every afternoon that Bucky stopped by. He noticed how you would paint your nails when there weren’t as many customers. How kind your words were to anyone who asked for help. It took him a couple of weeks to work up the courage to ask you to help him find a book, even though he knew exactly where it was.

Bucky remembers when he complimented your bracelet and you smiled, stuttering out a thank you. The first time he saw you nervous. It gave him hope that maybe you were into him, but Bucky pushed away those thoughts as quickly as they came.

He couldn’t fathom how someone would truly want to be with him. Besides, he had enough on his plate, what with helping Sam on whatever mission he called him on and dealing with the occasional nightmare that haunted his mind.

That’s why he keeps on replaying the conversation. And cursing at himself for being so stupid.

…

“Hey Bucky!” Your words were cheerful, causing heat to rise up on his cheeks. You loved how a simple greeting seemed to get him all flustered. He’s still not used to even hearing his name come from your lips.

“How’re you doing, doll?” He lets the endearment slip, hoping he’d get to see you smile, and you do, before turning away and pointing at a box.

“I’m alright! And if you don’t mind, and you can totally say no, but I got a whole new set of Chekhov plays and I need to bring them to the play section, which is the furthest point from here and the box is a bit too heavy and I was going to make multiple trips but now you’re here and-”

“Of course I’ll help,” Bucky responded, chuckling at your babbling. You sighed, secretly hating your rambling habit, but it was hard not to when a handsome man was standing in front of you.

“I thought you hated Chekhov?” Bucky asked, picking up the box and following you to the play section.

“Oh I do, but a customer has been calling in for the last three weeks, asking if we have Chekhov and I thought I should finally put my Chekhov hating ass aside to appease the people who adore him,” you told him.

You couldn’t remember when you told Bucky you hated Chekhov, but you did not necessarily need to say it for someone to understand your distaste for the author.

“Or they could’ve just gone to a different bookstore,” Bucky mumbled, but you heard and let out a laugh. He put the box down and leaned against the opposite book shelf, hoping you would continue talking to him as you put the books away.

“So, I had another question for you,” you said, sneaking one glance at him before looking away.

“Go for it.”

“I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime? Not sure where but we could just go get some coffee? Or go out to dinner?”

This was it, the penultimate moment Bucky had been dreaming about ever since he laid eyes on you. Yet his mouth began speaking before he could really take it in.

“Um, no,” he said, immediately widening his eyes at your expression. Your mouth dropped to say something, but you weren’t sure what to even say.

“I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think I can, right now, maybe?” You raised an eyebrow at him and smiled softly.

“It’s okay to say no, Bucky.”

“I know that, I know. I think I’m just not ready right now,” he said, his voice quieter as he said the last part. His brain was screaming at him to retract everything he had just said to you and to tell you he would go on a date, but Bucky could not do it. He already felt like he had failed and saw no point in trying.

“That’s okay. But...if you ever change your mind, let me know, I’d still be down,” you said.

You were slightly disappointed, but understood his reasoning even if he didn't give you an exact one.

Ever since he first came to your shop, you knew exactly who the tall, blue eyed man was. It was hard trying to comprehend everything James Bucky Barnes had gone through. You knew asking him out might’ve been a big step from having occasional small talk. A small part of you hoped he would take a chance on you someday.

...

Bucky throws his jacket haphazardly onto the couch as soon as he gets home, not caring that it ends up falling to the floor. He lights the candle on the kitchen counter and collapses onto the couch face first, letting out the sigh that was building up in him ever since he left the Murky Lime.

How could he do that? Was he actually not ready to date? He told himself he wasn’t, that’s why he felt like he had to say no to your date. But god, does Bucky want to go out with you and hold your hand and kiss your cheek. He hasn’t felt this feeling in a long while.

All the therapy sessions with Dr. Raynor flood his mind. The ones where she encouraged him to try dating and finding new friends but he brushed it off, feeling like he was unworthy of it. How could a sweet girl like you see something in him, he simply did not understand it. But you liked him enough to ask him on a date and he fucking said no.

Bucky sends Sam a quick text that’s more like an entire paragraph explaining the situation and what he should do. He throws his phone to the other side of the couch and drops his head into his hands. His phone pings a few seconds later and Bucky scrambles to grab it.

I think you’re just afraid of dating buck. You’re definitely ready, you’ve done so much work to be yourself again and I’ve seen that in you. If you like her AND she mentioned still going out if you changed your mind??? Go get her, man. Take the chance. If it doesn’t work out and you really aren’t ready, then that’s okay too. But it’s clearly eating you up that you said no, so just go to her.

...

You button up your coat and stuff your phone into your pocket, straining your head to the side to double check the time. Closing the store required a particular routine that you perfected, but you did not expect to see Bucky’s face at the front door. He did not notice you looking at him and you see the hesitation in his hands before he opens the door.

“Hey,” he says, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets.

“Hello again.” Bucky gives you a stiff grin and rocks on his feet for a few moments. The silence is deafening and it’s just about too awkward for you to handle.

“Is there uh..something you want?” He glances up and your eyes lock with his pretty blue eyes. You feel like you could gaze into them all day.

“Yeah, if you’re still up for it, I would like to go on that date with you. I’ve been afraid to put myself out there, but you’re so kind and beautiful..” his words trail off and he’s distracted for a moment at how you’re biting your lip nervously.

“I wanted to take a chance, so yes, let’s go on a date.”

“Do you wanna go now?” Bucky raises his brow and nods. You run to the back door to make sure it’s locked. When you come back, you see that Bucky took it upon himself to turn a few of the lights off and he hands you your purse.

“What a gentleman, huh?” He blushes and moves to open the door for you. You lock it up and turn to him.

“Does a walk in the park sound like a good idea?”

“Perfect.”

Since it was almost evening time, the park was not as busy. Bucky prefers it that way, and you do too. He’s so close to you, you can smell the little bit of cologne he must’ve put on. You want to tease him for it but decide not to. Instead, you purposely brush your hand against his own and Bucky immediately takes your hand in his.

“Maybe after this we could get dinner,” Bucky suggests.

“That would be nice. You can pick where.” Bucky thinks for a moment before responding.

“There’s this diner..a couple of blocks from your shop actually. It was there back in….you know.” Now that he’s thinking about it, he wasn’t sure you knew. He doesn’t wear gloves to hide his vibranium arm anymore and it’s an easy google search but you never showed any indication you knew about his past.

“I know about your past, Bucky. I won’t ask anything about it if-”

“No, it’s okay. I can talk about it.”

You nod. You're not planning to scour his brain about the haunting details of his life as the Winter Soldier, but you were curious about his life before that.

“Does it look the same as it did back then? The diner, I mean.”

“For the most part. There’s some newer technology in there and updated furniture but the style is all the same. It’s kind of nice to go somewhere familiar.”

The two of you walk over to an empty bench and take a seat. Your hands are still intertwined, resting on Bucky’s thigh.

“One more question about the 30s and 40s and then we can head on over to the diner,” you say, making Bucky laugh and nod his head at you to continue.

“How were dates back then? Like would you do the same thing we’re doing now or was there anything different?”

“It’s mostly the same,” he tells you. Bucky looks down at your hand, admiring how you rub your thumb against his hand.

“But there were these dances. I haven’t seen anything like them nowadays.”

“I think the closest thing we have to that is nightclubs. I’m gonna assume that is not your scene,” you say, giggling at his disgusted expression.

“It isn’t. I like forties music. I tried to listen to newer stuff and it’s not all terrible, but still not my favorite. I don’t think anyone in a nightclub will play Tommy Dorsey or Dinah Shore.” You ponder that for a moment as he turns to observe what else is going on in the park.

Quickly, you take out your phone.

“What are you doing?” All you do is smile at him, setting your phone down on the bench and standing up in front of him. He raises an eyebrow suspiciously as you hold your hand out.

“Mr. Barnes, can I have this dance?” Bucky takes a look around. There were a few people around who seemed to not take notice of the music coming from your phone.

“Gladly,” he accepted, taking your hand. Bucky placed one hand on your hip and pulled you in closer to him.

“I must admit, I know this was my idea, but I don’t know how to dance,” you whisper to him. Bucky shakes his head, smiling so wide he thought his mouth would start hurting. He slowly moves his feet side to side.

“Just this is fine,” he mutters. He tries not to take his eyes off yours, but you’re so close and Bucky can’t help but look at your lips, slightly parted and letting out deep breaths. He moves your hand rest on his shoulder, both of his own now holding your hips.

You trail your fingers from his shoulder to behind his neck, clasping your hands there.

“Thank you for this,” Bucky says and he hums along to the song playing, ‘Be Careful, It’s My Heart’ by Frank Sinatra. You smile at it, so he keeps humming. Bucky leans his forehead against yours.

“I know it’s not perfect-”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s with you. And this is...it’s nice.” You feel like your heart is going to burst. His eyes keep flitting down to your lips and Bucky leans in.

As his lips ghost against yours, you move your head, so he ends up kissing your cheek. He pulls back, a confused look on his face.

“Save that for the end of the date, honey,” you tease, leaning up to kiss his cheek. You linger your lips against his skin before moving away from him and his scoff turns into a laugh.

“I’m holding you to that,” he says, biting the inside of his cheek.

“I hope you do” you mumble and Bucky pulls you in close to him, making you squeal. He twirls you and brings you back into his arms, his lips touching the top of your ear.

“Let’s go get some dinner now.” You nod and grab your phone, opting to let the music keep playing. Bucky doesn’t hesitate from telling you random music facts about the artists as you make your way to the diner.

And as you ramble on about your own favorite singer, Bucky thanks the heavens that he took a chance on you and that it was going better than he ever imagined.

[crowsmybeloveds]

Shadow and Bone Series: Chapter Two

In Cold Blood

Pairing: Jesper Fahey x Reader

Summary: The Crows continue to visit Y/N at the Emerald Palace, and make some interesting developments.

Word Count: 4.8k

Warnings: Implied suicide (don’t take it too seriously hint hint); abuse; Pekka Rollins; again canon typical violence/slave stuff (this time it’s described more, but again nothing graphic); the Menagerie;

A/N: Thank you so much if you liked the first chapter!!! This one is a little longer and I promise the end isn’t as bad as it might seem.

Masterlist

~~~~~~~~~

Jesper Fahey liked to do his own thing. Sure, as a member of the Dregs he had to listen to his boss and go on jobs, but he loved his free time in between. Hence, he often avoided going on little arends for Kaz at all costs. It would be a waste of his time.

Jesper Fahey was now talking to Kaz. Volunteering for an arend. For the fourth time this week.

Kaz, Inej, and Jesper had been visiting the girl in the basement regularly since their first meeting with her. Kaz chalked it up to business, the girl and her potions were powerful assets, but the other two would admit they had found a new friend.

There were rules to these visits. First, only go during the day. Even if it seemed counterintuitive to sneak there in the broad daylight, Y/N insisted she would be unavailable in the night, as that was when her “work” was done. Also, if you are there, you must hide well behind the crates, and remain armed. You were lucky every time you made it out of there alive.

It was a daunting task, but Jesper was always up for it.

“You’re going to go there again?” Kaz asked him, eyebrows raised, “You know it’s Inej’s turn, correct?”

“Yes, and I also don’t care,” Jesper answered, “Also, she probably has things to see, people to do, and whatnot. I, on the other hand, have my whole day cleared. And I couldn’t deprive the lovely basement girl of this face.” He smiled, pointing to himself, “I mean, come on.”

Kaz stared at him, seeing through his antics in a minute. Jesper had taken a liking to the girl. What will happen the day he visits to find she’s not there anymore? Kaz thought. His hopes are too high.

“Fine, Jesper,” He agreed, “but be careful not to draw attention.” He scrunched his nose. “Do your best not to dawdle.”

“Right, I’m off then!” Jesper exclaimed as he clapped his hands together and ran off.

“I’m going tomorrow!” Kaz shouted after him.

The sharpshooter knew his boss was suspicious of his actions, but in all honesty he didn’t care. Normally he would have thought there wasn’t much spending time with her could do, as she had told him many of the same things over and over. That must have meant she had told him all that she knew. But Jesper was not going for information, he was going to be with her. He liked to think they were friends.

Jesper was often distracted. Whether he saw a pretty person to flirt with or a table to gamble at, he always found a way to not be doing whatever he was supposed to. Everything around him was so appealing and stimulating, especially in the Barrel. Even so, he sped down the streets without a single double take or second thought as he headed to the Emerald Palace. He really wanted to see her. So bad it was addicting. At first he thought that maybe the girl was drugging him, seeing as that is her particular expertise, but soon he realized that he just liked her. She was funny, and she laughed at all his jokes. She was also so intriguing. So powerful yet rendered powerless. He was enchanted, but he knew something was missing. It seemed it wasn’t her fault. He wanted to help.

That day when he arrived at the window (after making sure no one could see him, of course) Jesper saw Y/N sitting against the wall with her legs hugged to her chest. He called her name softly, and waited for her to reply. She didn’t reply, or even move. Against his better judgement, he shouted louder, risking being discovered by one of Pekka’s crew. He didn’t care. He banged the windows. Praying she would say something. Or turn her head. Or nod. Anything. She didn’t. A single tear rolled down her face.

Y/N had been sitting there for three hours. There wasn’t much to be said about what had happened. Only that she did not remember, whether her loss of memory was intentional or not. It was an off day, that’s all.

Jesper was panicking. He had no idea how to get her to wake up. That is, if she was asleep. Truthfully, he did not know what was wrong with her or what to do. Unfortunately, his noise making had roused a different group of people. Jesper had to run down the alley as he heard shouts coming his direction. He ran the rest of the way home, still in shock. He was not haunted by his near escape with the Dime Lions, but the look on the girl’s face. What had they done to her?

“And she didn’t move at all?” Inej asked. Jesper had just explained to her what happened after he showed up to her room at the Slat. She hadn’t appreciated being woken up from one of her rare naps, but she didn’t complain when she saw the look on his face.

“Not that I could see,” he replied, shaking his head, “Inej, I swear she could hear me.”

Inej did not know what to say. This kind of behavior was not usual for Jesper. He had his normal amount of energy, but it was not often it was all directed to one place: worry. It was odd that something upset him and he did not distract from it by going to gamble or making a joke.

“I just, if it were you I’d understand, but who could ignore me?” he said, “Going unnoticed is not a Jesper talent.”

There it was.

“You’re deflecting” She called him out, “It’s not funny. We should tell Kaz.”

“That's not funny,” Jesper replied, “what is Kaz gonna do? Tell us to stop talking to her?”

Inej sighed. It’s possible that he would advise that. But he also wouldn’t just let Pekka Rollins keep his most dangerous weapon. Especially not when she didn’t seem to have much loyalty. She had told Inej so many times. The girls had a bond due to the Menagerie, and Y/N told her much about her past and present. She explained different chemicals she had made and plans she had heard to Kaz. But with Inej, she explained how she felt about them.

Y/N hated every second in that basement. She had told Inej as much. Repeatedly. But she was rather scatterbrained. She repeated herself often and forgot things that she had already been told. She would forget what day it was and what she had done the night before. Inej had experience with trauma and sleep deprivation enough to shrug this off. She didn’t want to cause her friend anguish by questioning it.

The incident Jesper was describing made her think that maybe she should. Y/N was smart. Hell, she was a self taught Grisha fabrikator. So good, she could kill people from miles away. How could she be so forgetful? Someone so scientifically gifted must have a better mind than that. Someone must have been messing with it.

After some convincing to Jesper that Kaz would not kill or give up on Y/N, the pair made their way to their boss’s office.

“I was waiting for this to happen,” was Kaz’s response.

“What, that’s it?” Jesper raised his voice, “You have nothing else to say?”

Kaz glared at him from his desk. “I don’t know that you thought through your attachment to her, Jesper. You should never have assumed she was on our side.”

Jesper stared bullets at his boss in front of them. They seriously weren’t going to help her at all? She needed to get out of there, he knew that for certain. If it wasn’t because he cared about her then it should be because she is an asset. A good investment. Saints, he hated calling her that.

He didn’t say any of this, however, and instead started to walk out of the office. Just before he was out the door, he heard Brekker speak up.

“I’ll go and see her tomorrow.”

When Kaz Brekker reached the girl’s window, he gave it exactly seven taps with his cane, with a very specific beat. It was a signal he had made with Y/N so that she knew to open the window and talk to him without him having to raise his voice.

The girl turned toward the window at the sound. She set down the bottle she was currently working on and walked over. Kaz started speaking as soon as it was opened.

“How long have they been drugging you?”

Y/N scoffed, “Hello to you, too!”

“How long?”

“Um, never?” She replied, getting confused. “They don’t drug me with anything. I’d notice. That’s kind of my job description.”

Kaz looked to the side, thinking. The only way to explain her odd behavior, forgetfulness, and calmness in her position was that she was being manipulated. And because she was constantly making poisons and “potions” for Pekka, it made sense that she was being given her own drugs without her knowledge. He had thought this since he’d met her. She had to be on some sort of relaxers when he first saw her. Why else would she have so willingly opened the window for strangers?

“Why did you ignore Jesper when he was here yesterday?” He asked, hoping to get the information from her in a more roundabout way.

“I didn’t?” Y/N asked, “Inej was here yesterday, she got those vials of knockout gas you asked for.”

Kaz squinted at her, “Y/N, that was two days ago.”

She shook her head, “No, no, because I was working on those just yesterday and I just finished them when she stopped by. I haven’t seen Jesper in a couple of days, Kaz. Are you feeling ok?”

Kaz wasn’t sure how to react to this. She had missed the whole day? He was sure things like this had been going on this whole time, but never in the month since they began speaking with her has she forgotten a whole day. She had to have taken something.

“Are you self medicating?”

“No! Why- what are you talking about? What is going on?”

“Y/N, Jesper came here yesterday and you were sitting in that corner near catatonic. You wouldn’t speak or even move.” Kaz informed her.

“He must not have shouted loud enough, I was probably asleep.”

“You normally sleep with your eyes open?” He is tone was sharp. “Jesper said you were crying.”

She didn’t respond. She was shocked out of her mind. It was possible Kaz was lying to her to get some sort of information out of her, but it didn’t seem that way. He looked uneasy, the kind of unease that comes from not knowing something. He was a very smart man, and when something did not make sense to him he got nervous. So, this must have actually happened. And if she could not remember it, something was terribly wrong.

“I’m sorry, Kaz. I just don’t remember.”

“Fine. Then I need you to stop eating the food they give you. I’ll have Inej stop by with something to eat during the day.” Kaz paused, thinking. “And I would like to get you out of here, and have you join the Dregs. I just have to figure out how.”

“No, Kaz. I can’t leave.”

“Why? You have loyalties to Pekka Rollins?” He asked, anger clear in his voice.

Do I? She thought. While she knew his treatment of her was unfair, she wondered whether or not she still cared about him. In her time at the Emerald Palace, Pekka had told her many things about how he was the only one who would ever care for her. He claimed that he had saved her from the Menagerie, and he was taking care of her because he loved her. He also said that he would help her find her sister, often claiming that the potions Y/N was making was helping him follow leads about her.

When he started bringing men down into Y/N’s room, she was only a teenager. The first man that had ever touched her in that room also told her information about upcoming trips, which Pekka used to choose the perfect time to rob his house. Y/N felt disgusting in her skin ever since, but Pekka reassured her. I’m sorry , canary. I’ll protect you. Those men are not like me. While any sane person would call giving her food and shelter supplying her basic needs, Pekka called it courtesy. A gift because he loved her. A gift that could be taken away. He let men take advantage of her just so she could get him information, and then called it love. And she believed him. Until one day.

A man had come down into her room, which was usual for her on any given night. However, this man started out rough and stayed that way for the rest of his visit. She had tried her best with past men to get as much information as she could through simple flirting and drugging, but he was not there for small talk. For a brief moment, she considered saying no. In the moment following, she remembered what happened the other times she had done so.

She didn’t get any of the information she had been asked to draw from the man. Pekka was livid. The argument following had been explosive and painful. Not just emotionally.

“This isn’t love.” She tried to say it in a firm voice, but it came out broken and weak.

“How could you possibly know?” Pekka replied.

“Because you don’t deny it.” She said, summoning the strength to look up at him. “The men who come down here sometimes mention their wives. They might not be the pinnacle of married men, but I know they would never do this. This is bad for me.”

“Oh, is it so bad for you?” He raised his voice. “And who is going to treat you better, hm? Who out there would possibly care about you like I do?”

She turned her back to him. She sniffled as she cleaned up her worktable, silently hoping he would just leave.

He grabbed her arm, whipping her around to face him. “I don’t care if you hate me. You will stay here because of Anais. You will stay because you need me.”

The memory was scarring.

Kaz watched as Y/N got lost in her own thoughts. His voice startled her out of her memories. “Y/N, do you have loyalties to him?”

“My sister, Anais.” She breathed. “He is helping me find my sister.”

“Is that all?”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I need to find her. Have you ever had any siblings?”

Kaz paused for a moment. The comment seemed to toy with him. “No.”

“Then you don’t get it. I want to be with people I belong with. To figure out where I’m from.” She sighed. “Pekka is helping me with that.”

“And he has proven that he is actually doing so?”

“He said that he knew she was involved with the slavers who took me away. He is getting in with them to try and figure out where they took her.”

“Y/N, I don’t think he is actually doing that.” Kaz said, shaking his head. “This is your reason for staying?”

“And I have nowhere else to go!”

Kaz took a deep breath. He had decided what he was going to do for the girl since the day he met her. She was an asset. With her power he could complete jobs and gain kruge with record speed. Not to mention, if Kaz had her on his side, Pekka didn’t. The sweet taste of revenge covered his tongue just at the thought.

“I have an offer,” he began, “You come with me. Not now, but soon. I’ll come everyday to ask questions and we’ll plan your escape. In the meantime, you gather your things discreetly and try to find as much dirt on Rollins as you can.”

“But my sister -“

“If you are a part of the Dregs, you will help when asked, but the rest of your time is yours. Look for your sister, gamble your money away, take up baking, — I don’t care. You’ll be free.”

The offer was good. Great, actually. So why was she hesitating? Was Pekka’s manipulation really enough to make her turn away an opportunity like this? I don’t know.

And what about Kaz? Could she really trust him? The man wanted her for her powers, too. How was he different from Pekka? In her limited experience, he wasn’t. I should stay.

But Jesper. In the short while she had known him, Jesper had become her favorite part of being alive. And Inej, who was the kindest soul she had ever encountered. If they were with Kaz, he couldn’t be the demon he tried to be. At least not like Pekka. I should go. I should have gone a long time ago.

“Deal.”

In the weeks following, Kaz came every day to discuss every aspect of the Emerald Palace with her, in the hopes that he could get her out. Getting her out of the building would be simple, but keeping her from being hunted by the Dime Lions for the rest of her days would be complicated. The plan would have to be completely airtight, so Kaz needed time.

A few days later, Jesper was at the window speaking with her. The other members of the dregs would often visit along with Kaz and stay to talk to her, or they might come in his place. Today, after describing her entire tailoring process to Kaz, Y/N was speaking to Jesper about music.

“It’s like this huge golden machine made by Fabrikators, right?” Y/N smiled as she excitedly spoke. “And you take this small disc, place it on the machine and put the needle on it, and then music comes out!”

Jesper grinned at her. He loved the way she looked when she was excited about something. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen one before.”

“Well, it’s wonderful,” she sighed, “Not to mention there’s thousands of the disc things, and each one is a different song. I wish more people had them than just the rich men who can afford it. I mean I wish I could have one.”

The two had been known to discuss things that had nothing to do with her escape, which Kaz had scolded them for plenty of times. But they enjoyed talking to each other, and they often got distracted. Odd topics of discussion were bound to happen whether they liked it or not. However, when Jesper realized that they had strayed from their original reason for speaking, he redirected the conversation.

“So, you get tailored nearly everyday?”

“Well, whenever anyone comes to see me. Only Pekka knows what I really look like. And you and your friends. Maybe it's a security thing.” She told him, thinking as she spoke. “Also, if anyone sees me who isn’t supposed to, I’m meant to drug them so they forget. Pekka really just does not want anyone knowing I’m here. Some bastard might try to steal me away.”

Jesper smirked at her. “I cannot imagine who would ever do something like that.”

Visits were going relatively well. Kaz had nearly enough information to finalize his plan for her escape, so he visited less and less. Y/N was becoming a solid member of the Crows even though she had so little time with them. She matched Jesper’s humor, built trust with Inej, and had a shared anger for Pekka with Kaz.

Today was Inej’s day to go visit Y/N, and she was running rather late. She knew the girl had mentioned not to visit after the sun went down, but Inej had been busy all day and could only find time to make it to the window after dark. When she got there, however, she realized why Y/N had made the warning.

When she looked through the window, she noticed that Y/N was not alone. When she looked closer, she realized Y/N was with Pekka Rollins. Luckily, Inej was the Wraith, she could watch what happened next without being seen.

“I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to eat your dinner,” She heard Rollins speak first, in the most condescending tone she had ever heard. “Not after I worked so hard to get your favorite.”

Y/N sat on her cot, avoiding eye contact. “Not hungry.”

Rollins grabbed her by the jaw roughly, forcing her to look at him. Inej noticed tears shining in Y/N’s eyes. “Not hungry, hm? We both know that’s not true.” He laughed, with a terrifying lack of humor behind it. “Why are you lying to me, canary?”

The girl shook her head as the tears fell down her face.

“Your tears will do you no good.” Rollins snarled. “Do not forget what you are.” He paused, raising a brow. “What are you?”

The girl sniffled and didn’t respond.

“What are you?” He shouted and raised his voice this time, causing her to shake.

“A canary.” She whispered out.

“Good, and if I give you a song...”

He raised her chin higher, prompting her to finish his words. “I sing it.” The words fell from her lips like something rehearsed, but unbearably painful.

He gave a tight lipped smile. “Right. Don’t forget it again.” He sat down next to her and handed her the plate she had sat on the table beside her. “Now you eat and I’ll tell you about the man who is coming here tonight.”

Inej felt like she was going to throw up as she travelled the rooftops of Ketterdam back to the Crow Club. She knew Y/N was being mistreated at the Emerald Palace, but seeing it take place was something entirely apart.

As she walked in the doors of the club she felt a presence beside her. She looked over to see Jesper walking with her. He must have been guarding the door. He was waiting to ask a question.

“Yes, Jesper, I went to see her.” Inej spoke to him, her voice rough.

“And?”

“And Pekka Rollins was there.”

Jesper stopped in his tracks. “Saints, is she ok? Are you?”

“I’m fine,” Inej assured, “But I’m not sure about Y/N. He is anything but gentle with her. And he forced her to eat the dinner he gave her. I don’t think she’s gonna be able to avoid the drugs they give her anymore. If only she could remember to take an antidote before her mind goes.”

“Shit, we need to get her out of there, soon.”

The pair once again went to Kaz to discuss the girl, only to find him at his desk, writing furiously with two bottles in front of him.

“Kaz, Inej -“ Jesper was cut off.

“She told me how she’s been killing all those people.” Kaz stared at the bottle in front of him, observing it scientifically.

Inej and Jesper looked at each other before looking back at their boss. What was he on about?

“I don’t understand.” Inej had a confused look on her face as she tried her best to make eye contact with Kaz. She wanted to try and read him like she knew she could, but right now the man in front of her was like a blank page.

“Y/N. She gives them a liquid of her own design, but it isn’t poisonous,” He kept his eyes trained on his work, “At least not until she makes it poisonous. She can give someone poison hours in advance but it kills them right at the perfect moment. Right when she can get away. And, once they are dead, she can change it back to something nontoxic. It’s flawless: not a single trace is left.”

“Great, boss,” Jesper said, growing impatient. “Can we talk about why we are here?”

Kaz frowned, “What, because you want to get Y/N out sooner? She’s in a terrible situation?”

“Exactly,” Inej pleaded.

“If I tried to save everyone in the Barrel I’d be broke by dawn.” Kaz said, looking back at his work. Inej and Jesper stood there in shock. “If you don’t have anything else to say…”

Inej placed a hand up to keep Jesper from exploding. “Kaz, you told us that you would help her escape.”

“I needed information, Wraith, you wouldn’t help me if I told the truth.”

Jesper spoke up, “So you lied to us? And what did you tell her?”

“Nothing. She’s prepared to leave the Emerald Palace tonight.” Kaz tsked. “I doubt she’ll make it two feet out the building without our help. Solves all of my problems.”

Without another word, Inej slipped out of the room, leaving the boys to fight. Through the walls, she heard muffled shouting.

“How could you? You act like you have nothing you believe in but really you are so terrible that you’ve made yourself your own Saint!” Jespers voice was desperate, filled with rage. The betrayal he felt was clear even though he was muffled. He sniffed. “Put too much faith in that saint and he’ll kill your friends.”

Inej cringed, hating the harsh truths her friend was sending toward her boss. She had always known partnership with Kaz would mean conflict, but it also meant freedom. She and Jesper often commented on their cold-hearted boss. “We are both too good for him.” Jesper would laugh as he said it, but now it seemed to be a reason to leave. But where would they go? When it came to Kaz Brekker, no one was better, and no one was worse.

One thing was for certain, Inej was not going to let her friend die. She had just pulled Y/N up from the grave, and she’d be damned if she let Kaz Brekker push her back in. If he was so certain the girl would be dead by tomorrow, she’d get to her before then. She didn’t have time for Kaz’s lectures and Jesper’s shouting. There was a life at stake. She begged the Saints to help her, but deep down she knew that this was up to her and her knives. If Inej couldn’t save Y/N, the Wraith would.

When she reached the Emerald Palace, a nauseous feeling spread throughout her stomach. She willed her hands to stop shaking, but the tremor remained. She reached the window after carefully checking her surroundings and gasped at what she saw. Nothing remained in Y/N’s room but a white letter and dark ash, both standing out against the gray stone floor. Inej frowned in confusion. So, she is gone. Where could she be?

Y/N was a smart girl, she could be out of Ketterdam by now. However, she had barely had any human contact and had been drugged and manipulated for years. If she was not already found by Pekka Rollins, she could have already been killed on the street. But no one knew who she was, and only Pekka and the Crows knew what she truly looked like. She had become one huge question.

Suddenly, Inej remembered something.. Specifically, a conversation she had with Y/N not long ago.

Inej, this might be the worst thing I’ve ever made. She had said, a fire in her eyes.

Then why are you smiling? Inej replied.

Look! Y/N had pulled a thin glass bottle of a swirling liquid and a small flower out from behind her back. She then poured a drop of the bottle on the flower, which disintegrated into a pile of ash within seconds.

Saints. Inej was amazed.

Wild, huh? Footsteps came from the stairwell in the corner of the room. Shit. Inej, go. Inej hesitated. Go! He’ll see you!

Now, looking at the large pile of ash on the floor of the room, Inej realized what had happened.

“Saints,” She whispered, tears forming in her eyes. “She’s drunk it.”

She heard footsteps approaching in the alley, and immediately grabbed two of her knives, ready to protect herself.

“Easy,” Jesper appeared, holding his hands out toward her. “It’s just me.”

Inej lowered her knives as she stared back at him. “We’re too late, Jes. She’s gone.”

He laughed, nervous. “No, she wouldn’t.” He lowered himself down to the window. “No.”

Inej stood up and looked up at the stars, praying to any Saint that she could think of that she wasn’t dead. That her friend was out there somewhere. Alive. “Jesper, we need to get out of here.”

“But,” Jesper paused, his voice weak. “She was just here.”

“She’s not anymore.” Inej looked at him with pity. She could tell how much the girl had meant to him. “I’m sorry.”

“She was just here.” He repeated, voice cracks littering his words.

Inej grabbed his hand, forcing him out of this frozen state. “I know, Jes. I’m sorry.”