#when i was in college i had to remember to unclench my jaw and stop shaking every hour or two

[astrologista]

ok, seriously. i’ve been graduated from college for six months and adult life is a joke.

there is literally no time in the day to take care of yourself properly AND do your utmost at work. pick one. i’ve been wondering why suburban americans are always so nuts about “health binges” and going “keto” and 10k runs and kombucha. well, news flash. americans are fucking unhealthy

people drink and smoke like there’s absolutely no tomorrow, so many people are addicted to drugs and painkillers, if you’re lucky enough to avoid mcdonald’s and other artery-clogging delicious fast food, you end up only having enough time to heat up a disgusting tv dinner in the microwave. if you want to work out or “jog”, you better be up at 4:00 every day to make time before you have to leave for work.

i’ve done the math and for me to be both healthy and put in full hours at work, plus overtime when needed, i’d have just a few hours or even less in order to do anything fun at all. i understand now why people get pissed in traffic, because it’s just more of your precious time wasted sitting in traffic. time that could be spent repairing your frazzled nerves.

i can understand why people want to move away from urban/suburban areas and just live a subsistence lifestyle on a farm or something. i don’t think i could handle it, as i’ve been raised in a moderately big city and the idea of not having modern conveniences and good medical care nearby is rather off-putting to me.

but, really. it’s such a joke how much of a push there is nowadays for people to “make healthy choices”. you can’t make healthy choices when you’re forced to wake up at a certain hour, slog your way to your office, forced into social interactions that physically drain most introverts (look it up), then you have no choice but to work overtime in order to complete the work you were supposed to do during the day but were interrupted by people talking to you / at you, and by the time you finally see the sun again, it’s almost set and you’re on your way home to collapse into bed. only to do the entire thing again the next day

there aren’t even jobs for things that people want to do. what if you want to work on games, the arts, writing fiction? even those who get jobs doing that put in crushing hours, and you’re likely to end up having to work on something like minions to get a foot in the industry. very precious few people get the privilege to create and work on their own IPs, and for the rest of those out there, you would have to get a second job in retail hell to support yourself financially, unless of course you have rich parents, in which case, bless your little heart and can we trade lives for a few decades please.

in the remaining time you do get for yourself, you have to quickly slap together meals that are bad for you and usually taste bad. rather than taking all day to cook something elaborate, you will inevitably order in and it costs like $20 plus tip. good luck learning to cook after working all day. what a joke.

not to mention the very idea of owning an entire house, having to clean and maintain said house and lawn, running errands, shopping for groceries, remembering which bills you have to pay manually...

and if you’re a woman, you better take the time to make sure you look presentable at work. which means waking up an hour earlier than you would like to slap on makeup and ensure your outfit is spotless. and for those of you with naturally curly or wavy hair, well... good luck finding time to sort that out, because only stick-straight hair looks professional i guess

what money you do get from a job goes straight to fucking bills and debt.

there is no time to maintain relationships with friends and family outside of holidays. much less to make new friends. how people can maintain a relationship and have children (some people have more than one child????) is absolutely a mind blower. not to mention making sure your pets are well cared for, it’s something that can’t be neglected.

there is no time to do volunteer work and outreach, i wish i could say there was. there is no time to join a club, take a class, make a personal project. hobbies are dead - crafting, painting, even watching netflix. it’s all kind of out the window, except for precious weekends which are basically two days of sleeping.

people need uninterrupted leisure time. hours of it. days worth, to make up for days spent at work. we need vacations and breaks to calm our minds and keep us mentally healthy. if you’re an introvert you need sleep and you need time by yourself just to be yourself - no makeup if you don’t want, comfy clothes, no demands, no interruptions, do anything you want to do, or just do nothing at all. and even hours isn’t enough. you need at least a whole day, maybe two or three in a row. and sometimes you can’t get that.

people need time to learn new things, to travel, to meet new people, to work on art projects and learn new skills. there is so much more to life than just living to work, infinite things you can do (or not do) with each given day.

it’s hard not to burn out. because the demands on us are greater than ever. i haven’t had time to go to church anymore for a long time. i pray while commuting, just in my mind.

sometimes, it just feels like i’ll never have the life i want. never enough time, enough money. i’ll never look right, or finish that game i want to build, or find the people i want to be with, never have a job i love, with enough pay or benefits. i’ll never travel to that place or have time to read that book series.

i recommend that each day, everyone remember that you don’t have to do any of it. executive dysfunction is real but sometimes, when your body’s telling you to rest, you need to rest and that’s real, too. you can take a day off from work. you can reschedule a date or appointment. you can say “i’ll do it later”. if you have to do it, just do the most important part and be done with it. time is very important. take the time you need, do stuff for you, even if it means staring at the wall for two hours. this is not and will never be a waste of time.

everything you do, even working a shitty job, is improving you. change will happen, and everything is temporary. if you’re liking your life, enjoy it. if you’re not, it will change. you will change. some things will be better and others worse. just let it go, because most of it is out of your control. you are doing your best, and that’s all that really matters here

[sunlightmurdock]

Sub Rosa | Chapter 7: The Bluff | Bradley Bradshaw x Kazansky!Reader

…

“Admiral Kazansky.”

“You little asshole.”

Rooster anticipated the punch. He saw it coming. He could have avoided it. But, he figured that in Ice’s mind, he probably did deserve it. So, he straightened up, closed his eyes and waited for the impact.

Ice’s gold Navy signet ring connected with Rooster’s cheekbone with impressive force, almost knocking Rooster off of his feet. Rooster stumbled, wincing as he squinted at Ice with one eye to determine if a second punch was coming.

After the first, Rooster had already decided he would absolutely be dodging the second. He hadn’t been expecting a man in his sixties to still be able to hit like that.

Ice just stood in the doorway, his cold blue eyes narrowed as he watched Rooster’s cheekbone redden and swell.

“Are you gonna come in, or?” Rooster turned away, considering to himself that it might not have been the best plan to turn his back on someone who was around 50% likely to attack him again. He heard the door close as he pulled ice cubes from his freezer, wrapping them in a cloth and holding them to his eye.

When he turned again, Ice had entered. His back was to Rooster.

Ice looked around the living room, his jaw clenching and unclenching. It wasn’t the disgusting bachelor-pad he had been expecting. The place was spotless. There was a wedding picture of his parents front and centre on the mantelpiece. It was hard to hate Bradley.

He hadn’t been super involved in Bradley’s upbringing but as one of Pete’s closest friends, Ice had most definitely seen him grow up and become the pilot he was today. Ice remembered how proud he had been of Rooster the day before, how bad he had felt that Rooster hadn’t had anyone there on the tarmac waiting for him.

Though, as it turned out - apparently he had.

“Has she been here before?” Ice asked quietly. He thought of the conversation he and his wife had had before you had left for college — how they had worried about the dingy frat houses you would be hanging out in.

This was much nicer.

Under different circumstances, maybe Tom would have liked you to bring home someone who looked after their home so well.

Rooster leaned against the kitchen counter, pushing his hands into his pockets, “Yeah.”

He figured that he owed Ice an explanation at least — he had been lying to his face for the last seven months. Ice turned to look Rooster over.

“A lot?” He asked.

Rooster shrugged his shoulders, his face serious, “A couple of times.”

“When did this start?” Ice had stopped looking around now, his blue eyes were fixed on Rooster and nothing else.

“Just after Thanksgiving,” Rooster decided to spare him the additional pain of finding out that your relationship had begun after a quickie in Maverick’s bathroom. “I asked her out, she said yes, we got to know each other.”

“She was away at college then.” Ice countered.

“I used to drive up and visit her when I had time off.” Rooster explained, giving his broad shoulders a small shrug.

“Did you stay over?”

“Yeah.” Rooster answered, his eyes on Ice as he spoke. Ice narrowed his eyes, stepping towards Rooster and raising his eyebrows at him.

“And at my place,” Rooster hadn’t been intimidated up until this point, but he didn’t like Ice’s tone now. “Did you stay over there?”

“No, sir.” Bradley answered honestly.

There was a heavy silence between them. Tom reached into his pocket and pulled out Rooster’s dog tags, dropping them onto the floor with a loud thud.

Rooster looked down at them on the floor and then back at Ice.

“I’m sorry that you’re finding out this way, Admiral Kazansky, but Y/N and I-“

“There is no ‘Y/N and I’ to you, Bradshaw.” Tom interrupted, gritting his teeth.

“We were going to tell you today, sir. I swear.” Rooster explained, putting his hands up in defence. “She respects you a lot. She wanted to make sure it was serious before-“

“Serious.” Iceman scoffed the word out like it was venom. He rolled his eyes, turning away from Bradley and walking paces across the living room. “She wouldn’t know serious if it hit her in the face. She’s practically a kid!”

Rooster pressed his tongue to his cheek. He knew Ice didn’t even believe that himself.

“I don’t think you think that’s true,” Rooster spoke quietly, knowing that he was pushing his luck here. “I know how proud you are of her. I am too. She’s incredible, and I-”

“Don’t act like you know her better than I do, Bradshaw.”

“I know that everything she does, she wonders how you’ll feel about it first.”

“If that were true then she wouldn’t have done this.”

Bradley let out a breath, shaking his head, “Look, I understand why you’re upset — but you have to understand that it’s not just sex between us.”

Ice tensed up at the word. They both knew what had happened but hearing it out loud made Ice seethe. Rooster watched Ice’s hands ball into fists and unclench again.

Rooster regretted mentioning it for just a moment, before pressing on.

“I love her, sir,” Rooster announced. “Truly.”

Ice wasn’t listening. He was looking at the fireplace. He crossed the room and picked up the picture on the mantelpiece, an unframed photo card beside the picture of Carole and Goose exiting the church.

Rooster watched him, thinking to himself how glad he was that Ice was finding that picture and not the one you had sent him. He had been meaning to buy a frame for the picture on the mantle for months now.

It was a picture of the two of you, you wearing his hat and sitting on his knee, his arms around you. That was the day that the two of you and a few of your friends from college drove to the beach.

You were in a swimsuit, one of his infamous Hawaiian shirts draped over your shoulders. Ice picked up the picture and examined it closely.

Rooster’s chin resting on your shoulder, grinning. His hair sun-bleached and curlier than usual, messy from the hat he had been wearing. You leaning your head against his, laughing at someone out of frame.

“You love her?” Tom asked quietly.

“I do.” Rooster answered, unwavering in his confidence on the subject.

Tom shook his head and turned back toward the pilot. He set the photo back down.

“D’you know I came here today to fire you?”

Rooster nodded his head. The text from Hangman had filled him in on what was going to happen.

“I’m not going to fire you.” Ice decided, looking between the similarities in how Goose held Carole in their picture against how Rooster held you in yours.

He remembered the day that Carole had found out about Goose. She had been on base, she had fallen to her knees and sobbed. Bradley had been too young to understand, but the sight of his mom crying had reduced him to tears too.

Ice had been lucky. He had had a successful career, a beautiful wife and children he was proud of. He knew too many widows of men that weren’t as lucky as he was.

He remembered seeing Carole a few times after Goose’s passing. She was never really the same according to Maverick. He looked back at your smile in that picture, then at Carole’s in hers. You had your whole life ahead of you — he wasn’t going to stand aside and let your life be devastated by a loss as big as hers.

“But if you so much as look at my daughter again,” Ice turned his attention back towards Bradley, his face stone cold and serious. “I’ll have you dishonourably discharged.”

“She’s a grown up, Ice, you can’t stand in the way-“

“No, I know that she’s a grown up,” Ice interrupted, “I can’t ground her anymore. She can do whatever she wants, I know that I don’t have any influence over her whatsoever.”

There was a pause between them.

“But you, I am in charge of.” Ice finished, stepping toward Rooster. “So leave her alone.”

Rooster shook his head, “If you want to fire me, sir, go ahead.” Ice furrowed his eyebrows. This kid had talked about nothing other than being a pilot his whole life.

“I just left her for three months,” Rooster explained, standing upright, “I’m not gonna do it again for a pay check.”

A pay check. Tom stared at the man before him. Was that all the navy was to Bradley Bradshaw now? — Bradley had worshipped the Navy for his entire life, he had willingly put his life on the line for it many times over. Tom called his bluff — there was no way he would give it all up for a girl, even one as special you.

“Then don’t come to work tomorrow.” Tom spoke coldly, crossing the room and resting his hand against the front door, “I’ll have the paperwork sent over.”

Rooster was silent. He watched the Admiral leave. He should have been crushed. Maybe in the morning he would be. He thought about his father as he stood in the kitchen alone for a moment. His father would have given the same answer, Bradley was confident of that much.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and pressed your contact, catching the phone between his ear and shoulder as he pulled himself a beer from his fridge.

“Hi.”

“Hey, honey.” Rooster breathed, almost laughing as he considered the absurdity of the day. “Just checking if you wanted to come over.”

You were quiet for a minute, “Wait, what? — today?”

“Yeah. Figured things out with your dad.” Rooster explained, using the countertop to break the cap off of his beer bottle. “He’s mad but he’ll get over it.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.” Rooster hummed, taking a sip of his beer, “C’mon. I missed you — we’ve got three months to catch up on.” His lips quirked as he heard you pottering around your room.

“Okay, I’ll see you soon. Love you!”

“Love you.” He repeated, his heart swelling at how natural it sounded falling from your lips now. It made him all the more confident in his decision. He would quit a million times over for you.

You got to Rooster’s house especially quickly, throwing yourself into his arms before he had even fully opened the door. He was just out of the shower, wearing just a pair of shorts. You wrapped your arms around him, pulling yourself as close as possible against his bare chest.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He pressed his lips to the top of your head. You let out a breath, lifting your head and wrapping your arms around his shoulders.

“I’m sorry if my dad did something - or said something- I-“

Rooster pressed his lips to yours, sliding his arms around your waist. Conscious of not scandalising his elderly neighbours again, he tugged you inside and swung the front door closed.

“It’s all forgotten.” Rooster gave a small shrug of his shoulders, taking your face in his hands and pressing his lips to yours. You frowned just slightly, examining his features.

“What did you say to your mom when you left?” He asked. You knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to change the subject before you could ask him more.

“She was telling my aunt everything over the phone, so I just left a note and snuck out.”

Rooster chuckled, “Should I be worried about how good you’re getting at sneaking out?” You grinned at him, pushing yourself up onto your tiptoes to kiss him. He wasn’t getting away from the questions that easily.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened?”

Rooster groaned gently and pressed his lips to your temple, then your cheek, then your jaw, “Nothing happened.”

You pushed against him, wriggling out of his arms and staring up at him, “Rooster.”

He groaned, grabbing his half empty beer from the kitchen island and crossing the room to drop onto the couch, “I quit.”

Your jaw hung open.

Rooster, who had spent three hours on your first date explaining to you the proper take-off procedure for an F-18, had quit.

“Well, kinda.”

“What happened?” You crossed the room to him, sitting down a little too close, half on the couch and half on his leg. He draped his arm, past you, across the back of the couch and took a sip of his beer.

“It was us or the job.” Rooster was purposeful in not saying that it was you or the job. He watched your features harden, his lips quirking as you gritted your teeth. He brushed the backs of his fingers across your cheek in total admiration.

“I’ll fix this.” You were adamant. Rooster smiled at you, leaning forward and kissing you delicately, then shrugging his shoulders.

“There are other jobs,” He breathed, trying to think of some. It had always been the Navy. Navy or nothing. He hadn’t even considered other opportunities, even after Mav had pulled his papers. “Maybe I could fly for an airline.”

You hit him in the shoulder, frowning, “You’re not an airline pilot, Rooster.”

“Yet.” He countered, winking at you as he took another drink. He stretched his legs out on the lounge in front of him, tucking an arm behind his head.

If you were less furious, you would have taken longer to admire the sight before you. He did catch you staring for a moment before you spoke again.

“No, he can’t do this shit.” You protested, “I’ll just - I’ll be awful until he changes his mind.”

“Awful?” Rooster raised an eyebrow at you, amused by the little show happening before him.

“Yeah.” You confirmed, leaning closer to him, moving one knee across his hips. “Like — oh, you should give me some hickies. Like really dark purple ones.”

Rooster grinned at you, chuckling softly.

“I’ll bring you over all the time, let him know that you’re going to screw my brains out whether you’re in the navy or not.”

“Brains out, huh?” Rooster was enthralled, laughing as you thought of more.

“Mhm,” You moved on quickly, “Could really freak him out and just subtly call you dadd-“

Rooster groaned and playfully pushed your head away from him, letting out a laugh as he grimaced at the idea, “Too far.”

You giggled, pushing yourself into his lap and wrapping one arm around his shoulder, kissing his cheek delicately, “What? You don’t like that?”

“You know Hondo actually thought Ice was going to kill me today?” Rooster raised his eyebrows at you, purposely resting his cold beer against your arm and making you gasp. “He was genuinely thinking of calling the cops.”

You wondered where he was going with this.

“Now just think,” He pressed his lips against your jaw, his arms squeezing around your waist. “What he would do,” He kissed your cheekbone, “If you dropped something like that on him.”

You brushed your lips delicately over his bruised cheekbone, barely touching the skin to not hurt him more. You smiled sweetly and stroked his jaw, “I‘ll protect you next time.”

Rooster slid his arms around your waist, closing his eyes as he revelled in the feeling of you in his arms. He smiled at the notion of his civilian girlfriend protecting him from her big scary dad.

“I’d appreciate that.” He teased, pressing his lips to your shoulder.

“Any time,” You answered, shifting slightly in his lap as you turned to face him. “Daddy.”

“Stop.” Rooster groaned, resting his forehead against your shoulder, shaking his head. You laugh at his discomfort, stroking the soft hairs at the top of his neck.

Rooster felt you squirm once more, acting oblivious as you pressed yourself against him.

“Is that all you think about?” He teased, squeezing your hip playfully. You smiled and shook your head.

“No, but when my boyfriend has been away for three months,” You kissed him, “And then I’m sitting in his lap and I can feel that he isn’t wearing any underwear — yeah, it’s what comes to mind.”

Rooster chuckled gently as you turned, swinging your knee over his, pressing your chest against his as you sat against his thigh. He brushed your hair back off of your shoulder, his palm trailing delicately along your spine until it came to grip the nape of your neck.

You smiled.

…

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[matryosika]

Untitled #7

pairing — minho x reader

word count — 5.1 k of pure filth

includes — hard-dom!minho x bratty!reader, established relationship, hints of public teasing, mention of hand signals, mentions of kink negotiation, hints of free use, hints of cnc and forced submission (everything consensual!), use of pet names (slut, whore, puppy), mentions of safe word, dumbification, rough sex, dry-humping an inanimate object (plushie/stuffie), hair pulling, impact play (spanks, slaps), degradation, humiliation, drool/spit, oral sex (m), use of toys (buttplug), deepthroating, unprotected anal sex, creampie.

note — for context, this is the whole “minho fucking you in your childhood bedroom because you couldn't stop teasing him during a family dinner”. this might be one of my favorite things so fsr because it's hard dom minho. i mean, i have written stuff like this before but this one... i am not sure, i enjoyed it a lot! it's currently 5.30 a.m., i havent read this and english is not my first language so i apologize for any mistakes in advance...

please remember that i have a ko-fi so if you want to/able to leave me a tip for my work, i will highly appreciate it! (especially now, that college starts this monday 😭)

You knew better than to bother Minho.

You really did, you really knew better.

You knew better than to decorate one of your wrists during your sibling’s birthday dinner with that special bracelet he had gifted you, one that meant that —as long as you were wearing it— your body belonged utterly and completely to him. A bracelet that you both had negotiated as a sign that he could use you whenever he liked, whenever he wanted.

You knew better than to keep on pushing his buttons, better than keep on teasing him even when he brushed his middle and ring finger against the right side of his jaw twice in less than 10 minutes.

You knew better than to rest a hand on his thigh, than to caress it innocently every time your family asked him questions about his private life.

You knew better than to make him angry, but you couldn’t stop indulging yourself.

“What happened down there?” Minho asked you as soon as he closed the door of your old bedroom behind him, trying to keep his voice low but failing almost immediately as the built-up anger took the best of him.

“What do you mean?” you replied, nonchalantly.

“You know what I am talking about,” your boyfriend warned you, following your figure through your bedroom. “Don’t pull that on me right now”.

“I really have no idea, Min,” you pouted, your gaze finding his through the reflection of the mirror.

“I know you are smart enough to reply to what you are being asked,” Minho’s cold voice made you shudder, but you were determined to see how long he could last without having the tiniest bit of control over you. “Don’t think that because your parents are sleeping in the next room I won’t make you talk”.

“I have no idea and the truth is, I am feeling very sleepy to try to guess,” you replied, completely ignoring your boyfriend’s jaw clenched and the bulge between his legs. “We have a long trip tomorrow and the last thing I want is to lose sleep time over whatever it is you have going on”.

Oh, how you loved that game.

How you loved to make him angry, teasing him and turning him on only to act all innocent and oblivious to the matter.

It was just too... exciting.

“And I suggest you do the same thing,” you continued, untying your hair in front of your old vanity before your hands reached out to unclench the pearl necklace you had decided to wear that evening, “because you are the one who is going to drive”.

“You should’ve stopped the first time I warned you,” Minho hissed with a cold tone, one that was maybe too relaxed in contrast to his tense body. “How many times did I ask you to stop?”

“I don’t know,” you shrugged your shoulders, grabbing your hair comb after removing the pair of earrings you were wearing. Removing any jewelry but the bracelet. “I wasn’t even paying attention to you”.

“Ah, you weren’t?” he asked you while rising an eyebrow, both of his arms leaning on the chair you were sitting on.

“No, I wasn’t,” you teased him back with a grin on your face. “I was too busy chatting with my family to try and mess with you, Min”.

Minho licked his lips while he stared deep into your eyes through the mirror.

He hated that feeling. The feeling of not being in control.

He hated the feeling of you talking back to him instead of submitting almost automatically as soon as he laid his eyes on you.

He hated those times where you acted like he was out of his mind, treating him like everything was being made up by him when —in reality— it wasn’t.

He just couldn’t bear it.

But he also knew you better than you knew yourself.

He knew it was all a façade, one that fell as soon as he forced you into submission.

And he would be lying if he said that forcing you —instead of you submitting naturally for him— wasn’t ten times more satisfying than the latest.

“Ask me to forgive you for the deranged act you put up down there and I’ll forget your filthy behavior without punishing you,” he threatened you, his eyes following your image that walked from the vanity to the edge of the bed.

And, as you sat down, you couldn’t help but let out a faint scoff.

Knowing he especially hated those.

“Why do I have to ask for your forgiveness?” you queried, offering him a mocking grin. “It is not my fault that you get hard with the bare minimum”.

You knew you were signing your sentence, but you didn't care. You wanted to see how far your loving, sweet, caring, and perfect boyfriend —as your family had complimented him during the dinner— could go, and you were determined to find out.

“Did you forget who you are talking to?” he asked you, walking towards your figure and standing right in the middle of your parted legs. “Don’t make me fuck you to remind you”.

Another scoff and Minho swore you were driving him to the edge.

Your mischievous eyes traveled from his face to his growing bulge, smiling with cockiness while your gaze returned to his. “I don’t think that is enough to make me remember a thing”.

You emphasized the word that with such hatred and arrogance while signaling his crotch with your head that Minho’s first impulse was to grab a fistful of your hair, forcing your head back so you would have no other option than to keep the eye contact with him.

“Say that again,” he groaned cocking one of his eyebrows while he parted his lips, waiting for you to talk back. However, instead of replying, you caught Minho’s attention by fidgeting with the gold bracelet on your right wrist.

“You get to set the boundaries,” Minho had told you while locking the piece of jewelry around your wrist.

“No boundaries,” you replied, your eyes fixed on the way the material of the bracelet shined. “As long as I am wearing it, you can do whatever you want with me”.

“What if you don't like what I want to do with you?” he asked you, caressing the skin on the back of your hand.

“Well, we have a safe word for that, don't we?”

It didn't take him more than three seconds for that switch to flip inside of him. As soon as he saw the way you were playing with the piece of jewelry, he realized that it was okay for him to assert his dominance. Even better, that you were okay with him forcing you into submission.

With a swift movement, he slapped one of your cheeks roughly. It happened too fast that you didn't even realize it until you felt the stinging feeling under your skin, one of your hands instinctively flying to try and soothe the pain.

“Say that again,” he repeated, lifting both of his eyebrows while he looked down on you.

“I said,” you stuttered, but it was now too late to take your words back. “That your cock isn't enough for me”.

While still gripping a fistful of your hair, Minho dragged your whole body from the edge of the bed to the floor, forcing you to kneel in front of him. Your hair and clothes got messed up as you struggled against him, your mind being ready to surrender to submission even though your body was still fighting back to prove to him that he had no control over you.

“If my cock is not enough,” Minho hissed, aligning your head against his crotch with one hand while the other unbuckled his pants to release his throbbing dick, “You wouldn't mind if i used you like a fleshlight, would you?”

“I've had bigger things in my mouth,” you hissed at the pain of feeling his hand buried in your hair. “It's not like I can't take something as small as you”.

Oh, you were going there.

For any person outside the relationship, it would seem as if you thrived on humiliating your partner. Truth is, it was the complete opposite: you hated it.

But saying such things was the only way Minho would do almost anything to shut your mouth up.

If you were to tell him that he was very soft on you, he would fuck you harder.

If you were to tell him that he wasn't capable of making you cum, he would spend the whole night giving you orgasm after orgasm until you begged for him to stop.

If you were to tell him that he wasn't big enough for you, he would make sure to fuck all of your holes until you forgot your own name.

“Ah, so you have taken bigger cocks?” he groaned, gathering your hair in a ponytail and pushing your head all over his length. “Then why are you gagging around mine like a useless whore?”

Your eyes were closed shut and your nails digged into the fabric of his pants as you tried to breathe but –even when you couldn't– you didn't want him to stop.

“Those guys didn't train you enough, from what I can tell,” he hissed, trying hard to maintain his voice low to prevent anyone outside the room from hearing the lewd noises you both were making –even though a part of him did want them to hear–. “You can barely fit half of my cock without crying”.

Minho continued thrusting his cock inside you with absolutely no mercy until he felt your hands squeezing his thighs a bit harder than usual, letting him know that you needed to catch a breath.

He harshly took his length out of you, making you inhale and gasp just as loud as the gagging sounds that were leaving your mouth just a few seconds before.

“Do you still think I am not big enough for you?” he groaned, offering you a twisted smile. “Do i have to keep on fucking your mouth until you are drooling all over yourself like the dumb puppy you are?”

Even though a part of you still wanted to put up a fight, you were too caught up in trying to stabilize your breathe that you choose not to reply to his answer.

Still, you couldn't miss the opportunity to push him just a bit more.

“Don't you feel ashamed?” you asked him with broken words, the corners of your lips lifting in a twisted smile while he looked down on you. “That you take pride on being always the one in control, yet you ended up like this just because I wanted you to?”

“You should feel more embarrassed,” he immediately replied, cupping your cheeks and forcing you to look up to him while both of your hands jerked him off with your drool as lube, “because you can't sit to have dinner with your lovely family like a decent human being without thinking about having a big cock inside your cunt”.

“Not yours though,” you teased him once again, smiling proudly once you felt his cock twitching between your hands.

“Not mine?” he queried, roughly pulling your head back as he tightened the grip he had on your hair. “You weren't thinking about me bending you over the dinner table and fucking you in front of everyone?”

You shook your head, giving him doe eyes while you tried your best to fake innocence.

“You weren't thinking about me showing your parents how much of a slut their daughter is?” You shook your head again. “From how bad you were teasing me, it looked like you wanted your whole family to know how good you are at taking cocks inside your holes”.

“Ha, is that what you were thinking about?,” you mumbled, sticking your tongue out to brush it against the tip of his cock. “What a perverted mind you have”.

“Do you know why we get along so well, y/n?” he asked you, taking advantage of your opened mouth to spit on it.

“Because you are obsessed with me?”

“Because you are just as sick as I am,” he replied, completely ignoring your silly –but accurate– answer. “Otherwise, why would you wear that bracelet tonight?”

You looked at the piece of jewelry and then at him, unable to give him a proper answer.

“Because you are a fucking slut,” Minho smiled, cock throbbing between your hands while your blazing gaze fixed on his.

“And still not yours,” you breathed, feeling the wetness between your legs increasing as Minho shot you a killer gaze. One that reminded you how bad you had behaved during the dinner and how rough your punishment was going to be.

But truth is, you were ready.

And needy.

And completely desperate for him to have you however he wanted.

“Take off your panties,” he commanded you, leaving your figure to walk towards your bed.

There was something so forbidden about fucking you in your childhood bedroom, one that you had used until you turned 18 and moved to your current city.

The innocence, the taboo, the knowledge of knowing you had never thought you would do something this filthy inside this room was both eerie and arousing, but he just couldn't hate that sensation.

As you waited for his next command, his eyes scanned the plushies aligned in front of your pillows. However, there was one resting on a chair that captured his attention more than the rest.

It caught his attention because it was perfect for the twisted idea he had in mind, so he lost no time into bringing it to the bed.

“Do you want to play?” you mocked him, your eyes following every single one of his movements as he placed the plushie against the mattres while he pushed the rest of them out of the bed to make more space. “You can play with any of then except the koala, that's my favorite”.

Again, the nonsense falling from your lips only bothering him much.

“Get on top of it,” he mumbled. “And hump it until you cum”.

Your eyes probably opened up like plates because Minho's next action was to let out a faint scoff.

“Didn't you want to be punished? You were practically begging for it,” he muttered, looking how you placed both of your knees on top if the bed while you straddled the plushie.

Any other person would think that humping a pillow or an object as a punishment wasn't as bad as other practices but –to you– it was.

You hated such punishment not only because it took you hours to cum just by that, but also because it made you feel pathetic.

Minho, on the other hand, loved the latest.

He loved how desperate you looked each time he commanded you to hump your own pillow. He loved how you would move your hips sloppily against it because of how hard you were trying to find that spot that could guarantee you the tiniest bit of stimulation. He loved how dumb you looked while you started to cry in the middle of it, begging for him to help you cum.

And he loved knowing it embarrassed you. After all, that was the reason why he had chose it as a punishment.

“You have 10 minutes,” Minho hissed, tilting his head towards your bed. “But knowing how turned on you are, if you work hard i think you can reduce that number to 5”.

The thug image you had put on was slowly fading away and it was now being replaced with shame.

But still, saying you weren't turned on by it was a filthy lie that neither you nor Minho believed.

So, as he waited for you to get on all fours on top of the stuffy, he walked towards one of the bags he had carried for the trip to your hometown.

“You know I can't cum with this,” you whimpered, feeling your clit grazing against the fabric of the cuddly toy.

“Oh, i know,” he replied, his hands lurking in the front pocket right before his digits made contact with the cold metal of the buttplug he had packed just in case. “That's why i am giving you an advantage”.

Your face turned to face his figure walking from the area of the vanity to your bed, the weight of it sinking ever so slighlty as he placed a knee on top of it.

You waited patiently for him to do his next moves, but the humiliation was almost eating you alive. You were on all fours, on top of a plushie that you could hardly recall who had given it you, with your dress all messed up and your nipples grazing against the fabric of such toy.

But it was such a sight for Minho, who was carefully pouring a generous amount of lube on the heart-shaped buttplug you utterly adored.

“This is the time where you regret being such an ungrateful whore,” he mumbled, teasing your ass with the tip of the toy. “I packed this especially for you, yet you still wanted to act like a brat with me”.

Soon, you felt pressure on your tightest hole and you couldn't help but let out a painful whimper as you felt the toy stretching you out.

“Don't forget where you are, y/n,” he whispered, leaving a trail of kisses on your naked arse. “One loud noise and you are going to wake up your parents”.

You closed your eyes while your head fell down against the plushie, and it was only then where you started to regret your actions of the evening.

Fucking Lee Minho, you are so good at playing this game.

“10 minutes,” your boyfriend reminded you, sitting right next to you. “You either make yourself cum with that or you don't get to cum at all for a month”.

You gasped as your heartbeats started to pick a faster rhythm, your hips instinctively grinding against the fabric of the stuffy while your mind was completely clouded with his threat.

And as regretful as you were feeling, there was not much you could do to avoid the punishment.

Maybe if you had beg for forgiveness when he asked you...

“9 minutes,” he clicked his tongue, his eyes diverting from the chronometer on his cellphone to your image.

“It's not– enough”, you quietly whined, your hips trying to do the job but the softness of the object beneath you preventing you from getting almost any stimulation. “I really can't”.

“That is not my problem, is it?” he asked you while tilting his head, one of his hands reaching out to caress your face before placing a strand of your hair behind your ear. “You asked for a lesson and that's what I am giving you, y/n. You don't get to complain”.

“Just– is just useless,” you cried, feeling frustrated because not even the stimulation on your hardened nipples nor the buttplug inside your ass were enough to get you to cum fast.

You were doomed because you needed Minho for that.

Whether it was his hands, fingers, mouth or cock, you needed him in order for you to cum in under 10 minutes. Otherwise, it would take you more, and you both knew it.

“You are not trying hard enough,” he huffed, looking how your hips moved sloppily against the plushie and how your glossy eyes were threatening him to start tearing up at any second. “To me, it looks like you don't want to cum for a while month”.

“No, no, i want to–”

“Keep your voice down,” he muttered, “you are being too loud. Do you want to wake up your parents?”

You shook your head.

“Then be a good slut, keep that pretty mouth of yours close and focus on what I asked you,” he commanded you, giving you soft spanks while your body moved mercilessly against the stuffy.

“Minho”.

“7 minutes”.

It felt an utter torture. The stimulation was there, your ass was being stretched by a butt plug and it felt good. Your hardened nipples were grazing against the fabric of the plushie and that made you wetter, but there was still something missing.

Your clit brushed against the soft object ever so slightly and it was driving you insane. No matter how much you changed positions or how aggressively your hips moved against it, the stimulation wasn't enough to get you to cum.

Worst part was that, not even for a second you doubted Minho's words.

You had pissed him off and these were the consequences you were doomed to pay.

“3 minutes,” Minho whispered, “And you are not even close, y/n”.

“I told you I can't do it,” you groaned quietly, muffling your anger against the stuffy. “You know I need more”.

“Oh, trust me, I know,” he replied, the calmness in his voice only fueling your despair even more. “With you being such a hungry whore, it is obvious you need your cunt filled for you to cum”.

You looked at him with teary eyes, hoping that he would have mercy on you and help you to cum –at least– one last time before your punishment.

“But do you think you deserve it?” he asked you, ruining every bit of hope inside you. “Do you think you deserve the privilege of having my cock inside your pussy?”

Your head fell down and your sore thighs tried to do the last effort before the time was over.

Minho, however, had other plans in mind. His eyes left your figure to focus in the numbers on his cellphone screen.

08:46.

“You don't deserve to have me fucking your pussy,” Minho breathed, pausing the chronometer while he lowered his pants and underwear again. “But I do deserve some relief for putting up with that bratty attitude of yours, don't you think?”

You looked at him confused.

“You are going to fuck your ass with my cock while you keep on grinding your plushie,” he hissed quietly, his hands maneuvering the buttplug out of you while his hard cock twitched at the sight of your throbbing hole. “If you manage to make me cum, then I will reconsider the one month punishment”.

Having Minho fucking your ass seemed like a reward for both parties, but it truly wasn't.

Or at least not when your parents where sleeping right next door.

“Is this enough reminder for you?” he asked you, the tip of his cock pressing against your tightest hole. “Or do I have to add more things to the equation so you can learn to be a respectful slut?”

You were now choosing to be quiet –something you should've done from the beginning– but Minho couldn't really complain because that only proved how he got back the power over you.

So, while having your face buried on the stuffy underneath you, Minho's hips pushed his length covered in lube slowly inside you.

“Oh my fucking g–” you gasped quietly, feeling the tears streaming down your cheeks once you felt his balls hitting against your slit.

“It's all up to you y/n,” Minho groaned, placing both of his hands on your hips, “If someone hears us, it's going to be your fault”.

After a few seconds of just biting the toy to muffle your painful whines and trying to get used to his girth inside your ass, your body started to move slowly along his length and over the plushie.

Slow, painfully slow but still as pleasent for Minho.

“There you go,” he hissed with a clenched jaw, his body completely still while yours moved back and forth on his length. “How do well-trained puppies like you say?"

“Thank you,” you whispered.

“Louder”.

“Thank you”.

As embarrassing as it was, it didn't take you long for the familiar feeling on your lower abdomen to show up. The feeling of Minho's cock combined with the little stimulation on your bundle of nerves against the toy was now almost enough for you to be able to cum.

“Come on,” Minho huffed, condescendingly. “I know you can do better”.

“I am trying, it's just–” the breath got caught up in your throat as your weak body moved against Minho's, still with hope of chasing that precious climax that would guarantee you a good night of sleep.

However, you were too focus on not making any noise that you could hardly enjoy yourself.

“Fuck I just– can't keep quiet,” you groaned, moving your hips in circular motions. “I really– can't”.

“You don't have to,” Minho hissed, his body moving just slightly against yours. “Unless you don't care about your parents finding out how filthy their precious daughter is, you don't have to be quiet”.

You rolled your eyes in annoyance.

“But if you need any help with that,” his whole body leaned over yours, making his dick reach the deepest spots inside your hole while you let out a painful moan that was quickly muffled by Minho's hand over your mouth, “this is better, right?”

Minho, who promised himself to maintain his self-control, broke that silly promise to fuck your ass just like you truly deserved it: rough, hard and filthy.

And now, the task of being quiet was nearly impossible.

“You filthy slut,” Minho groaned against your ear, ruthlessly slamming his cock inside your ass. “I gave you two opportunities to redeem yourself yet you can't do anything on your own, can you?”

You cried against his hand, muttering an “I am sorry” that drowned against his skin.

“But I can't blame a whore like you for it,” he continued, feeling how your tight walls hugged him just right. “Because I know that the minute you get turned on, you are unable to think about anything else but my cock”.

Now you were close.

And it wasn't the lack of stimulation on your clit or the emptiness of your holes that were holding you back from cumming, no.

His words were what you needed to cum.

Being humiliated and degraded by him was what you needed to cum.

And god, how you hated yourself for it.

“Minho–” you hummed against his palm, your tears getting lost between your cheek and his wrist.

“Are you really cumming from being fucked in the ass, y/n?” he softly groan, hiding his face on the crook of your neck. “I thought you said my cock wasn't enough for a hungry slut like you”.

You whimpered against him, feeling the wetness of your cunt soaking the toy underneath you while Minho increased the pace of his thrusts.

“Don't you feel dirty?” he asked you, trying hard to keep his voice down. “Of having your boyfriend fucking you in this bed?”

You were closer.

“Only a filthy slut like you would beg to have his ass fucked while her parents are sleeping right next to her room,” he hissed and, as ready as he was to cum, he wanted you to be the first one. “And as the perfect boyfriend I am, I will never hesitate to satisfy a dumb slut like you”.

There.

Minho's hand pressed harder against your mouth while you cried, feeling the waves of pleasure traveling from the tip of your toes throughout your whole body.

He had fucked your ass a few times before, but the feeling of how hard you clenched around him every time was always overwhelming.

“And as the good slut you are,” he groaned, slamming his cock inside you at the end of every word, “you are going to take all my cum inside your ass, isn't that right?”

You weakly nodded against his hand, your eyes rolling to the back of your head while the overstimulation hit you.

“Good girl,” he groaned with broken syllables, filling your ass up to the brim with his sticky arousal.

He leaned down to hide his face on the crook of your neck while he came, afraid of being too loud to wake up any other person inside the house.

And he stayed that way for a while, the ruined plushie underneath you while his body was pressing on top of yours against it.

After a few minutes of heavy panting, loud heartbeats and sweaty bodies, Minho stood up from the bed.

“Are you still upset?” you weakly asked him, your sore body still resting on tip of the comfortable toy.

Minho let out a faint laugh.

“I was never upset,” he replied, looking for some towels and a bottle of water inside his bag.

“You weren't?” you asked him with furrowed eyebrows, trembling at the feeling of his warm touch against your lower back while he cleaned yourself up.

“Why?” he queried, caressing your skin. “You really thought this whole time you were in control?”

Your body rolled to the side, your back meeting the mattress as you stared at Minho.

“No but, I–”

“You thought you wanted to make me angry so that we would end up like this,” he cooed, opening the water bottle for you as he cleaned the remains of the lube on his cock with the towel. “But the whole time I was playing along because I wanted the exact same thing”.

You shot him a killer look, one that made you feel that your efforts in trying to make him mad were not good enough.

“So you weren't mad because I teased you?”

“I mean–,” he responded, reaching out for the water bottle. “At some point I was angry because being hard in front of my girlfriend's parents is not that pleasent but–”.

You let out a soft laugh at his comment.

“Nothing I couldn't control”.

“I really thought I had nailed it this time,” you sighed, your eyes blinking in slow motion as the sleepiness took control over you.

“Try harder next time,” he teased you, offering you a mischievous smirk, “And I might end up fucking you harder as well.”

[toosicktoocare]

I’ve been kind of playing with this ATLA Benders College AU, so I’m just going to roll with it. 

ATLA Benders College AU

Snippet 1: Warmth Beyond a Bonfire

Setting: Junior Year, Sokka and Zuko

“You what?” Katara spits out sharply, hand tightening around her fork that’s raised mid-bite.

Beside her, Aang’s jaw drop, almost comically, his mouth full of food now on proper display, and Sokka grimaces.

“I said,” Sokka starts, drawing out his words slowly as if to dumb down the language, “I invited—”

“—Zuko,” Katara finishes harshly, the name alone leaving a sour taste atop her tongue. “You invited Zuko. The same Zuko who terrorized Aang for an entire year.”

“Now, Katara,” Sokka starts, smiling sheepishly and pointedly ignoring Aang’s eyes burning a hole in his face, “terrorize is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? He had his reasons—”

“—Family troubles don’t justify his behavior, Sokka! I still don’t understand why you even speak to him.”

“He’s my roommate, Katara,” Sokka sighs, abandoning his fork on his tray. He’ll admit, he was far from pleased when junior dorm assignments dropped online a few months ago, and Zuko’s name was typed up plain as the day itself beside his. He remembers a burning anger swelling in his stomach, and in the days leading up to move-in, he filed multiple complaints to the resident director, both written and verbally, with Katara and Aang always backing him up one hundred percent.

Though, each complaint was always answered with a sigh and a rehearsed explanation. “The dean wants to spread out the fire nation students. He thinks it will help with their location-born reputation.”

Sokka thought it was stupid, and his annoyance, and muted fear, carried over into move-in day, diminishing only when he kicked his dorm door open, multiple bags in hand, and was met with warm, golden eyes, and a soft, hesitant smile that flipped his heart sideways.

Since then, he and Zuko have discovered a balance around each other, and, much to Katara’s dismay, an unlikely bond, one that’s civilized, and one that carries a seemingly one-sided something else that Sokka refuses to bring up to anyone, himself included.

“Your point?” Katara snaps quickly. “Look, Sokka, I know Zuko came back from summer break with a new hairstyle, but that doesn’t change the fact that he—”

“—I think he should come.”

The table goes quiet, with only Aang’s nonchalant chewing filling the silence. He ignores the mirror-like looks Katara and Sokka are shooting him and offers a one shoulder shrug in response.

“Maybe Sokka’s right,” Aang starts around his food. “We don’t know what happened to Zuko, but he does seem different now that he’s spent the summer with his Uncle. He even apologized to me.”

“He did?”

“Well, he slipped me a note in AB History that said ‘sorry.’”

“That’s it?” Katara throws her hands up, a huff slipping past her lips. “Aang, you can’t be serious about this. He hit you and mocked you for an entire year, and I thought he was going to kill you during the Bender Tournament. Do you really think it’s a good idea to be within bending distance at a bonfire, where he will very easily have the upper hand?”

Shrugging, Aang carries his gaze across the cafeteria to a two-seater booth in the back corner where Zuko’s currently sitting, nose buried in some novel with a fire bender and a water bender on the front. Katara and Sokka follow Aang’s gaze, and Sokka unconsciously sighs, dropping his chin in his palm as his eyes drink in Zuko’s hunched over posture and his soft, intrigued eyes.

“I just think he’s different,” Aang says, adding, “for real this time. Maybe he’ll make some better friends if he comes tonight. I think it will be good for him.”

“That’s the spirit!” Sokka pries his gaze back toward Aang, pushing forth a wide, toothy smile as he leans across the table to clap Aang on the shoulder. “We’ll meet you there!” He makes to stand, to return his tray and sneak in some quick studying before his next class, but Katara reaches out, digging sharp fingers into his wrist, and he pauses, frowning.

“Katara?”

“If he so much as looks at Aang the wrong way tonight, I’ll wash him all the way back to the fire nation.”

“Noted,” Sokka says, swallowing thickly, and he tugs his wrist free and makes a beeline to the exit, completing forgetting the tray still in his hand.

***

“I just want to make sure I’m understanding everything clearly,” Zuko starts, one brow arching as he watches Sokka fling clothes out his dresser. “Your sister and Aang were… excited when you told them I was coming?”

They’ve gone through this four times now, and still, Zuko can’t seem to convince himself that Sokka’s story is valid, not even in the slightest. He crosses his arms and nudges a shirt off the edge of Sokka’s bed with his socked foot before drawing his knees to his chest, back resting against Sokka’s headboard.

“Okay, fine,” Sokka drags out, tone low and dramatic, one Zuko’s learned to know all too well. “Katara wasn’t happy about it.”

“And Aang?”

“Aang actually was the one who suggested it would be good that you come.”

Zuko can’t control the wince that pulls across his face, and for a brief moment, he’s lost in hot, burning memories shrouded in anger, frustration, and pain. He sucks in a slow, deliberate breath, one that swells coolly in his chest, and he exhales, breathing out the memory, leaving only the present right before his eyes.

“Why?” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat.

“It’s Aang,” Sokka says, tilting his head, studying Zuko’s posture and the way Zuko always makes himself look smaller than he is. “The kid’s got a heart of pure, unbreakable gold. The point is,” Sokka adds when Zuko remains passive on his bed, “you’re coming tonight. It’s going to be super fun, and I need you to stop pouting and help me pick out an outfit.”

“I wasn’t pouting,” Zuko grumbles as he slips off Sokka’s bed and starts nudging through a pile of clothes on the floor, fingers tightening around a long-sleeve navy sweater with an oversized collar that Sokka doesn’t wear nearly enough, in his opinion. He holds it up silently, and Sokka studies it, tilting his head from the left, to the right, index finger tapping at his chin.

“This could work,” he finally draws out. “Pair this with my black skinny jeans, and some converses, and I think I’ll look quite dashing.”

Zuko chokes back a laugh, trying, and failing miserably, to pass it off as a cough, and his cheeks burn a bright pink when Sokka claps a hand to his shoulder and offers a tight squeeze.

“Now, for you,” Sokka starts, slipping out of his room and down the small hall to Zuko’s room, “do you still have that red, long-sleeve Henley?”

***

Zuko grits his teeth through a small shudder as the chilly October breeze seems to slip right through his thin shirt. He should have grabbed his coat; he tried, but Sokka insisted that his outfit was perfect and that the coat would hide him too much. Still, he should have grabbed it anyway.

Regret feels cold now, and he digs his fingers into his arms and follows Sokka over to the large fire, politely declining a beer as he snags a lawn chair that’s pulled up pretty close to the roaring flames. He watches, amused, as Sokka strides from person to person naturally, but then he can feel a different kind of itching heat, and he pulls his gaze around until he locks eyes with Katara, who’s standing on the other side of the fire, glaring daggers at him. He holds her gaze, guilt coloring his eyes, and she suddenly jerks her gaze away with a low huff.

“Hey, Zuko!”

Jumping, Zuko whips a wild gaze to see Aang taking the seat beside him, an almost blinding smile painted across his lips.

“Aang…” He clears his throat. “Hey.”

“Glad you came!” Aang drops his hand on Zuko’s arm, his smile faltering, and Zuko wants to jerk his arm away, to shrink away from the sudden, blaring look of concern etching over Aang’s face.

“Um, are you okay?”

“Of course,” Zuko snaps, face falling almost immediately after the harsh words fly off his lips. “Sorry, yes. I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking.”

Frowning, Zuko spares a glance down to see that he is, in fact, trembling softly. Beside him, Aang hops to his feet.

“I think someone has some blankets in the bed of their truck. I can get you one—”

“It’s fine,” Zuko spits out a little too quickly, halting Aang mid-step. “I mean, I’m fine. There’s no need.”

“You sure?” Aang’s hesitant, worry twisting ever-so faintly in his gut.

“I’m sure,” Zuko meets Aang’s gaze, and they stay like that, silent, for just a moment, before he’s the first to break away when he hears someone drop into a chair on the other side of him. “Thank you, though.”

“Of course,” Aang says quietly, gesturing over his shoulder. “I’ll just be… around. I really am glad you came tonight.”

Zuko nods, and his tense, squared shoulders slowly ease-up and unclench as Aang smiles and darts off toward a group of freshmen who seem to be far too confused and underdressed for an upper level bonfire.

He nudges his chair a little closer to the fire, an almost dangerous distance if he weren’t a fire bender, and he turns and falls into idle chatter with the person to his left, a freshman, he quickly learns, inquiring about FB 101.

***

“Sokka,” Aang elbows through a group of students surrounding Sokka, who’s mid-story about some absurd trip he and Katara took when they were in junior high. “Sokka!” he tries again, louder, muttering apologies as he slips toward the center, stumbling into Sokka’s side.

“Aang!” Sokka shouts, draping a heavy arm over Aang’s shoulder. “You guys, Aang is the most talented little dude. He’s literally the Avatar! I can’t believe I’m best friends with the Avatar!”

Aang smiles sheepishly at the shouts and catcalls that follow, and he slips away from Sokka’s heavy arm, latching onto it, instead, with strong fingers. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Well,” Sokka draws out, voice sloppy, drunken, “of course you can! Ladies and gentlemen, we shall continue this later!” He stumbles as Aang all but drags him away from the crowd, swaying and staggering all the way to a tree a little way away from the bonfire.

“Yo, Aang, what’s up?”

“I think you should take Zuko back to the dorms.”

“Why?” Sokka whines, blinking slowly. “He was just here.” He looks around, head heavy on his neck. “He’s having the time of his life. ‘S totally good for him here. He’s making tons of friends.”

“It’s not that,” Aang presses, gnawing at his bottom lip. He physically turns Sokka until they are both facing the bonfire, and Aang points toward Zuko, who’s standing frightening close to the fire, bouncing on the balls of his feet and rubbing his hands up and down his arms.

“Zuko’s fire nation, Sokka. I know it’s not that cold for us, but he’s freezing. He was already shivering when you guys got here, and it’s been three hours already.”

All at once, Sokka sobers up, forcing the alcohol that dulls his senses down to the very bottom of his stomach, and he frowns, brows furrowing, as he stares hard at Zuko. “I didn’t realize—”

“Not you fault,” Aang mutters distracted by the warm, tight, constricting hand of concern tugging at his chest. “Just… he really needs to be taken back. I took FB Analysis II. Their bodies don’t process lower temperatures because of their hotter climate. It can be dangerous…”

Sokka doesn’t stand around to hear more, already making his way toward Zuko, footsteps fast, fearfully deliberate, and in seconds, he’s at Zuko’s side, a guilty smile tugging at the corners of his lips when he gets a good look at Zuko’s pale face, paler than normal standards, and the tight clench of his jaw as if he’s physically trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

“Hey, Zuko. I’m beat. You ready to head back?” He goes for a casual route, knowing that Zuko will argue if he mentions they are leaving for Zuko’s sake and not of his own accord.

“It’s still a l-little early,” Zuko says, and Sokka doesn’t miss the small stutter.

“Yeah, too much alcohol makes me go all weird in the head. Not something I’m ready to unbag today.” He nudges Zuko’s arm, and Zuko holds his gaze, the two sharing a silent conversation despite the noise around them, and, after an endless minute, Zuko breaks the gaze with a nod.

“If you’re ready.”

Smiling, Sokka briefly slips away to say his goodbyes, and just minutes later, he and Zuko are starting on the five minute walk back to the dorms, the loud sounds of the party becoming nothing more than faint chatter and music in the distance the farther they walk.

Sokka stays close to Zuko’s side, eyes entranced as Zuko passes a small ball of fire from one palm to the other, the glow illuminating the cloudy puffs of breath in the cold air.

“That doesn’t burn your hands?” He finally asks, mentally wishing he opted for an interdisciplinary track so he could have taken more fire bending courses.

“It could,” Zuko says quietly. “But we’re trained to listen to how our skin reacts to the heat.” He drops the small ball of flames into his right palm and holds it there. “I can instantly feel the heat coat my palm, but it’s not unpleasant. I can hold it like this,” he pauses, raising his hand up a little higher, “until an almost icy prickle begins to stab at my skin. That’s when I know it’s been enough.” He brings his hand into a fist, extinguishing the flame, before he crosses his arms once more, absently rubbing his hands up and down to utilize the lingering heat from the fire.

Sokka drapes an arm around Zuko’s shoulders, playing it off as an easy gesture when really, he wants to offer Zuko as much warmth as he can the remainder of their walk. Worryingly, Zuko doesn’t scoff and pull away. Rather, he leans into Sokka’s side with a small shudder, and Sokka only tightens his arm.

“I’m glad you came tonight. Though, I’m sorry I vetoed the coat.”

Zuko huffs out a laugh that molds into a hiss as a chilly breeze slips across the two. “Nothing a hot shower won’t fix.”

“I give you full permission to take all of the hot water tonight.”

“Good,” Zuko says, a small smile creeping at his lips. “Because I wasn’t going to ask.”

***

Though the shower helped bite the edge of the cold off, Zuko still feels chilled through, even after standing under borderline scolding hot water for the better half of thirty minutes. He’s quick to change into something warm, a long-sleeve, thermal night shirt and a pair of sweat pants, and he snags Sokka’s hoodie off the back of his desk chair when he spots it, slipping it over his head as he walks into the living room.

He spots two mugs of steaming tea on the coffee table, and he eases himself onto the couch, craning his neck to see Sokka popping a back of popcorn in the microwave.

“Movie night?” He calls out, and Sokka whips around, a wide smile pulling at his lips.

“Figured since it’s still early, we could watch something. Your pick.” Sokka stops in front of the couch, head tilting, as he takes in Zuko’s still too pale skin. “How was your shower?”

“Fine,” Zuko says, swallowing back the urge to flinch when Sokka brings a hand up to his face. He closes his eyes, his mind pulling toward a war with the heart that’s thumping rapidly in his chest, but then Sokka just rests a warm palm to his cheek, and he almost reaches up to hold it there.

But, far too quickly, Sokka jerks his hand away, and it isn’t until the rather colorful string of cuss words that follow that Zuko opens his eyes, frowning.

“What—”

“You literally feel like a block of ice.” Sokka storms across their dorm suite, snagging blankets from both bedrooms, stopping at the thermostat on the wall twice.

“Sokka—”

“This is literally all my fault. I thought you looked way hotter without the coat, and now you feel like a fucking corpse.”

Hotter… Zuko’s eyes grow wide, but Sokka doesn’t seem to realize the true extent of any word currently slipping from his rapid tongue. He only blinks when Sokka drops both blankets on top of him, and he struggles to free himself from the tangled mess.

“Sokka, I’ll be fine.”

“You’re damn right you will,” Sokka snaps, slipping onto the couch and tugging Zuko until Zuko’s back is flush against his chest. “Because I will make sure of it.” He fumbles with the blankets, struggling to pull both over and around the two, and all the while, Zuko can’t seem to remember how words work, that he’s supposed to use some combination of his tongue, mouth, and vocal chords to produce sounds that form words.

After a few minutes of breathless rustling, Sokka’s content, rubbing his hands up and down Zuko’s arms from behind him, and Zuko’s stiff as a board, too afraid to move.

“Sokka, this isn’t necessary.”

“Are you starting to feel warmer?”

Zuko open’s his mouth to argue further, but at the question, he closes it. He still feels cold, colder than he’s felt in a while, but underneath the ice, he can feel a faint brush of warmth that’s threatening to crack the ice. Without really meaning to, he relaxes against Sokka’s chest, and he nods.

“Yeah, actually, I am.”

“Then,” Sokka mutters, “it’s necessary.”

[everybodyscupoftea]

no longer the plug

college jj x reader

you’ve had a tough go, jj makes you feel better, you return the favor 

part 3 of the plug series got requested. part one and part two here

i’m running out of titles relating to this, seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point

anyway, didn’t think i’d be writing this but here we are (also i know i used a gif that’s different from the other two, pls don’t be mad at me)

warnings: cursing, drinking, nsfw, vaguely edited 

You and JJ were busy a lot. Spending time together outside of work usually started with food and TV and ended with the two of you falling asleep on the couch. Cuddling with JJ was great normally, you loved waking up with him. He was warm and his voice was raspy and he was softer, squeezing you closer and pushing his face into your neck.

“Baby,” he mumbled and shifted around with a little sigh, clenching and unclenching his fist in the material of your t-shirt. You brushed a piece of hair off his forehead and smiled down at him, wrapping your arms around your knees. He yawned, halfheartedly tugging the blankets higher up his torso.

The hand holding your t-shirt slid around and started tugging on the waistband of your shorts. With a laugh, you tugged it away and squeezed it gently, linking your fingers. He pouted up at you and you told him, “I have work soon, we don’t have time right now, J.”

“When?” he asked, slight whine.

“Soon, okay? I have a big test Thursday, but after that, I’m free until Monday.”

JJ grinned widely, “Can’t wait.”

-

Thursday evening found you laying on the floor, beer in hand, listening to your ‘so you failed a test huh’ playlist. You’d managed to find someone to cover your shift and had been drinking since you got home at 2. JJ called at some point and you’d answered, slurring something about not going anywhere in life into the phone before hanging up.

Like a good boyfriend, he brought home your favorite comfort food and a six pack, a new perk since he’d turned 21. He took one look at you laying on the floor, wearing the rattiest clothes you owned and said, “Thriving, I see.”

“I’m drinking because I’m sad, and I’m wearing my shame clothes. I don’t deserve to look cute; I’m going to be drunk and suffer in my failure.”

“You never do as bad as you think you do, but we’ll eat Chinese food and you can sleep it off, yeah?”

You nodded, a little pathetically, and held your arms out for him to help lift you up off the floor. JJ grabbed you under your armpits and hoisted you up. Knees weak, you stumbled to the couch and sank down into it.

Sitting down next to you, JJ unwrapped the food and handed you a box of chow mein. Resting your head on his shoulder, you teared up a little, “You’re so nice to me.”

JJ laughed, “I guess I am; you deserve it.”

“I don’t deserve it, I’m the worst.”

He pressed a kiss to your forehead before asking, “Why do you think you’re the worst?”

“Accounting will be the absolute death of me, if I can’t get through school, how am I supposed to succeed in life?”

“That seems like a stretch. You don’t want to be an accountant, so your total understanding of accounting isn’t really necessary. Focus on getting through the class now, and then figure out what you want to do.”

You blinked a few times and a tear fell down your cheek while My Heart Will Go On blared in the background, “That was the best hype speech I’ve ever heard.”

JJ nudged your hand gently, “Finish your food and we’ll go to bed.”

“Gonna finish my food so we can sleep,” you repeated, nodding.

-

JJ had class on Friday morning, so you were a little surprised to see him still asleep when you woke up at 10. Instantly panicking, you shook him awake, whispering, “JJ, babe, you’re missing class.”

He groaned, rolling to face away from you, dodging your shoves as best as possible. After a few seconds of unsuccessful attempts to fall back asleep, he finally flopped onto his back, hand thrown over his eyes, and said, “Got cancelled, let me sleep.”

Cancelled. You could work with that. The night before was pretty blurry, but you could definitely remember being sad and sappy about JJ having to put up with your shit sometimes, and you wanted to somehow pay him back.

Before he could sink back into sleep, you ran a hand down his chest, stopping at the top of his boxers. JJ opened one eye to look at you, confused, “What are you doing?”

“What do you think?”

Instead of dipping your hands into his underwear, you let the waistband go and rubbed over where he was starting to chub up, trying to wake him up faster. JJ blinked rapidly, hands twitching a little by his sides as you kept rubbing, watching his face carefully.

“Kiss?” he asked, pouting at you, so you straddled him, not quite sitting all the way down, and bent down to kiss him, hands pressed into the mattress on either side of his head. He surged up to meet you, hands immediately going to your jaw to tilt your head at the perfect angle.

You didn’t let the kiss go on too long, focused on what you wanted to do. Pulling away, you moved from where you were hovering over him to push his legs up so his feet were planted on the bed, knees bent, and peeled your shirt off. He was staring at you, head slightly lifted from the pillows, glint in his eyes as he watched you slowly pull his boxers down.

Before touching him again, you made sure to ask, “Good with all this?”

He nodded eagerly, almost tripping over his words when he spoke, “Yes, god yes, please.”

Ducking your head, you licked up and down his shaft a few times, rolling your tongue around the head, before slowly taking his dick into your mouth. JJ’s head dropped back down onto the pillow, eyes fluttering shut as you hummed softly. His hips twitched and you quickly reached up to push them back down onto the bed.

Hollowing your cheeks, you took him deeper and deeper, listening as his groans got louder and more frequent. JJ’s hands scrabbled in the bed sheets next to him, looking for something to grip on to, and you reached up with yours to hang on.

Pulling off slightly, you told him, “You can fuck my face,” before sinking back down.

JJ’s face was red and a bead of sweat dripped from his hairline down the side of his face. You could feel his legs shaking near your shoulders, knees knocking into you every so often as he gently thrusted up.

It took a few thrusts, but you felt him finally hit your throat, and hollowed your cheeks, sucking hard. The noise he let out could only really be described as a whine, and you hummed again. He made a strangled noise, hands gripping yours hard, and mumbled out a slight warning before he was coming.

The warning wasn’t quite as far in advance as you would’ve liked and it surprised you, causing you to choke a little. You pulled off, the rest of his cum hitting you in the chest. Pumping him a few times just to make sure he was fully spent, you grinned at him, “Felt good?”

“You could say that,” he said, voice hoarse, face still red.

“Good,” you told him, flopping back to lay down next to him, “now hurry up and recover so we can move on to round two.”

JJ laughed, heaving himself on top of you to kiss you. After a few seconds, he pulled away, “Gonna make you feel good, sweetheart.”

“Oh I bet you will.”

[dcbutinamrev]

“Please…I need you” for Ben/André

Of course! This is based off of and from the episode "Trial and Execution" (s3, ep. 10 in Turn: Washington's Spies.) and some of it my own imagination. I'm using a transcript of the episode to help me with this because I remember very clearly Andre and Tallmadge having a conversation in the carriage in the episode but I couldn't remember the exact words. If you'd like me to do a ficlet for your favorite amrev ship, send me a prompt with your ship and I'll try my best to make a ficlet of it!

***

Congress still refuses to pay me.

John Andre's coming here.

In exchange for 20,000 pounds, I shall transfer to you the plans for West Point.

Arnold's a traitor.

~~~

The accused, Nathan Hale, having been found guilty of espionage and treasonous conspiracy against His Majesty King George III, shall here by be executed as a spy on this day the 22nd of October, 1776. If the condemened has any last words. Let him speak now.

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

~~~

Major Benjamin Tallmadge shoots upright in his cot in his tent, his bright blue eyes wide and jaw slacked slightly. The bedsheets drape around his waist and he huffs and puffs as he sucks in gulps of air, blinking the dots he sees in his eyes. Still trying to catch his breath, Tallmadge clenches and unclenches his fists on the linen sheets as he glances around his surroundings. He begins to relax, his breathing much slower and calmer, as he realizes where he is. Tallmadge squeezes his eyes shut and bits his lip hard, hard enough for it to draw a small drop of blood. He swallows thickly and grimace as though a hand were clenching around his throat and it'd be difficult for him swallow. He lets out a shaky breath and blinks his eyes fast as he sits himself up agianst the pillows surrounding him. He feels his heart racing, fast as a lightning strike during a storm. He feels the hairs on the back of his neck tingle and his arms shake. His fingers twitches and he flops back down onto the pillows, his golden blonde hair untied from its standard tight braid.

He stares up ast the tent's ceiling, letting his arms drop and dangle on either side of his bed as he begins to be calm once more. His breathing now steady and his heart rate somewhat slowed, Tallmadge sits himself back up once more, running a hand through his hair as he lets an arm drape over his propped up knee.

It's quiet, Tallmadge thinks to himself. He frowns, swinging his legs around and grimacing when his feet touches the grass, still damp from the early morning's dew. He furrows his brows as he glances out at the small crack of the entranceway to his tent. Too quiet.

Tallmadge pushes himself up, straightens his bed and walks over to the wooden chair at the desk nearby where a couple of unfinished corrospondences are still laid upon the desk, his uniform draped over the back of the chair. Tallmadge huffs out a breath as he slips on his white shirt, adjusting the ruffled cuffs and buttons and tying his neck cloth and cravat rather quickly, his fingers fumbling over themseleves. He fixes his hair into a tight braid before slipping on his blue Continental coat.

Tallmadge gives himself a quick glance in the mirror and nods his head in approval once, his jaw clenched, before stepping out into the open, the flaps to the tent flapping behind him as he exits. He glances up at the sky, an overcast sky, and lets his eyes take a moment to adjust. Tallamdge jerks when he hears someone whistle, trying to get a horse's attention perhaps.

Tallmadge follows the noise until he sees General Washington and Colonel Alexander Hamilton along with the Marquis de Lafayette standing nearby. Tallmadge walks up to them, his back straight when he locks eyes with the General.

"Ah, Major Tallmadge," the General says, his voice gruff and smooth. Deep and raw at the same time. "Morning."

Tallmadge nods and bows respectfully before standing up straight again. "Morning, Your Excellency, sir."

"You do remember what occurs today, correct?" the General asks, quirking an eyebrow at Tallmadge expectedly.

Tallmadge grimaces and nods, swallowing hard as he remembers Hale. He licks his lips and grips his hands behind his back. "Yes, sir."

"We shall see you there," the General says.

Tallmadge nods again but doesn't reply as he watches the trio turn swiftly, their cloaks flapping along against the back of their legs as they disappear around the corner. Tallmadge closes his eyes and lets out a shaky breath.

Oh, Nathan...

Is the last thing he thinks.

~~~

"Major Tallmadge," a smooth, elegant and rather light British voice says suddenly nearby as Tallmadge now stands next to a carriage, waiting. He ticks his eyes towards a man, a young man who happens to be in his late twenties to early thirties with smooth, combed back dark brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail, a braid behind his ear. A rounded chin and hooked nose, a thin smile and laugh lines on his cheeks. His uniform is clearly distinct, as it is a bright red indiciating his loyalty to the British. He smiles and nods once as he approaches Tallamdge. "Allow me to say that it is an honor to properly meet your aquaitance."

Tallmadge frowns, his brows furrowed as he presses his lips together. He swallows again and keeping his eyes trained on Andre with his jaw clenched, he forces a smile to appear and nods in greeting. Tallmadge steps aside as he watches Andre climb up the steps into the carriage and sits himself down. Tallmadge follows and watches a servant closes the door before walking around them. Tallmadge turns to face Andre once more. Andre grins as he pulls out a crumbled paper and charcoal and begins to sketch a rough line in what Tallmadge must think is the beginning of the subject's eye.

"Did you study portraiture back in Europe?" Tallmadge asks.

Andre ticks his eyes up from the paper and smiles thinly. "I did."

Tallmadge watches as he begins to sketch out the right eye. He bites the inside of his cheek, wondering what to say now.

"I wonder if you might indulge in my curiosity" Andre says suddenly, breaking the silence as the carriage begins to move. "Do you remember when you first heard my name?"

"Oh, I remember it well," Tallmadge says, keeping his eyes on the paper, watching the pieces come together. "It was a brisk Thursday, January, '77. Mr. Nathaniel Sackett, a friend of mine, he was telling me how he had managed to place a man within your inner circle posing as a Coldstream Guard.” He grits his teeth and curls his fists in his lap. “That man was later killed by a knife, as was Mr. Sackett.” 

Andre pauses his work and presses his lips together before glancing up at Tallmadge. “I would like you to accept my apology for Mr. Sackett. My orders for Lietuenant Gamble were to avoid violence at all costs.” 

Tallmadge eyes Andre before nodding once. “I accept.” 

A pause. 

“Though, I will not apologize for the punishment Lietuenant Gamble recieved of any kind,” Andre says. “Gamble knew well the risk of our particular business.” 

“I suppose Sackett knew the risks as well,” Tallmadge says.  I must say that he was quite impressed with the ruse that you concocted with Sutherland and Shanks.” A pause. Tallmadge scoffs mixed with a laugh. “ A master stroke, he would have called it.” 

Andre hums, dotting something onto the paper. “Hardly.” 

Tallmadge swallows, watching the man across from him. He bites his lip, seeing the twinkle in the dark brown irises, the sharp cut of his jaw, the braid behind his ear, the thinness of his lips, a blush pink. Tallmadge clears his throat, blinking his eyes. 

“I sometimes wonder if Sackett would have seen right through Benedict Arnold,” Tallmadge says, attempting conversation once more. 

Andre frowns and clenches onto the charocal. “Arnold was a faliure.” He looks up. “Culper is the master stroke. Seeing as I’m about to take a vow of enternal silence, who was the Culper contact in New York City?” 

Tallmadge narrows his eyes, clenching his fist and jaw and glances out the window, blinking his eyes. The vision of Hale before him, his Hale, his dear Hale, flashes right in front of his eyes before he could stop himself. He clearly sees the flaxen blonde hair, almost white, a glimspe of icy, cold blue eyes, the rough feel of pale skin against his. Tallamdge shakes his head befoer turning back to Andre, who has an eyebrow raised mostly out of concern. 

“I had...had a classmate in Yale College,” Tallmadge says, “by the name of Nathan Hale. I followed him into the army of ‘76. He was tracked and caught by Robert Rogers and...” Tallmadge lets out a shuddering breath and lifts a shoulder. “Subsequently hanged as a spy...” 

“And do you think his case and mine are alike?” Andre wonders. 

Tallmadge’s expression is blank, passive. “He did his duty for his country. You did yours for your king.” 

“Then I want you to know I see honor in both.” 

“Then you are mistaken.” 

Andre sighs and glances out the window, staring at his reflection as he watches the trees blur together as they roll by before glancing back down at the paper and smiles softly before glancing up at Tallmadge. “I didn’t do it for the king. I did it for a woman. That is the loss I regret more so than my own life.” 

Tallmadge doesn’t reply. He watches Andre fold the paper up and stuff it into his pocket along with the piece of charocal. He smiles thinly, a warm smily as an idea clicks into his brain. Andre reaches behind towards his braid behind his ear and grabs hold of the end of it. He pulls out a pocket knife and chops off a small piece before tucking the knife back into his pocket and grabbing Tallmadge’s wrist and placing the small piece of braided hair into his palm. He stares at it in shock and confusion before glancing back up at Andre. 

But Andre only smiles and glances out the window. 

~~~

Major John Andre climbs out of the carriage first once they have arrived at their destination, followed by Tallmadge himself. A servant slams the door shut. Tallmadge checks the ropes binding Andre's wrists in front of him before guiding him towards the tree where his fate lies. Tallmadge tenses as he appraoches slowly, swallowing the bile he feels rising up down his throat. He breathes shakily in and out as they march closer with each passing second, keeping his head up, back straight, shoulders sqaured, eyes narrowed and determined.

Andre turns to Tallmadge when they stop. Discreetly, Tallmadge clutches onto the braid in his palm. He can't seem to make his arm stop shaking. He swallows, licks his lips and turns to Andre. Andre nods reassuringly, a small smile on his face as climbs up the steps under the tree.

Tallmadge steps back between the Marquis de Lafayette and Colonel Hamilton. Hamilton glances at him worriedly for a quick second, which causes Tallmadge to clench his jaw and breathe in slowly, holding his breath as he tightens his grip in his palm. He wants to close his eyes, not watch as he Hale in Andre's place. But he remains strong and keeps his eyes trained, locked on Andre's.

Andre is given a white blindfold and he takes it. He stares at it for a breif moment, before ticking his eyes back with Tallmadge's. Tallmadge stiffens when he sees Andre giving him a small smile and a nod. He thinks he hears, "It'll be but a momentary pang."

That doesn't settle Tallmadge's nerves and fears. He presses his lips together, stands taller than before which causes the Marquis and Hamilton to excahnge concerned and confused looks breifly before returning to attention. Tallmadge tightens his grip on the braid still in his palm, helplessly watches Andre wrap the blindfold around his eyes. Tallmadge breathes in once again, holds his breath, and squeezes his eyes shut.

Please...I need you... he suddenly thinks.

"If the condemened has any last words," a rough voice declares. "Let him speak now."

Tallmadge squeezes his eyes harder, tightens his grip tighter and bites his lip hard enough for it to draw blood. His arms tremble, his fingers tingle against his skin from how tight his grip has been, he hears ringing in ears. He sees Hale before him instead of Andre, those piercing, icy, cold blue eyes, that pale skin, that light-blonde hair--almost white.

"I pray that you all bare me witness that I may bare my fate like a brave man."

There's a deafening crack and Tallmadge whimpers, breathing sharply in and out, trying to control his racing heart as he blinks his eyes open only to find that the world is smeared before him. He hears a voice calling his name, a French accented voice, the Marquis, out of worry and concern.

Tallmadge doesn't hear him, can't hear him due to the ringing in his ears. He unfolds his palm, his hand shakes, as he stares at the braid in his palm. He clenches his fist and glances over his shoulder where Andre was alive not but a moment ago.

Please... Tallmadge thinks, swallowing the lump down.

I need you...

[sweetaesuga]

rather be | jhs

pairing: hoseok x female reader

genre: angst, fluff, established relationship au!

warnings: age gap, language, parents disapproval.

word count: 2.1k

↳a/n: decided to post this since my jk fic is taking too long. this is a drabble for my upcoming jhs fic!

"I think they're going to hate me."

"They're going to love you, I don't know what you're talking about."

You shuffled awkwardly in front of the red door, black heels grazing on the cement. "I feel like I'm gonna make myself look like a complete fool," you whined to him, puffs of air are seen leaving you mouth due to the coldness.

Hoseok chuckled. "As if you already don't already do that," his smile surfaced as he remembered the first date you both went on and how timid you were. You could barely stand on your two legs like a baby giraffe that day but now you're glaring at him with your might. "I'm joking babe. They're going to—"

The door is thrown wide open, hitting the wall. Hoseok's mother stood there in her elegant black pencil skirt with a precious diamond necklace, hanging down her neck and matching earrings. Her eyes landed on Hoseok and she embraced him. Accompanied by a kiss on the cheek, she told him how much she missed him. He whined and promised her he would visit more often. Hoseok moved out of the way to make sure she got a good glimpse of you. She scanned you up and down, watching you gulp in uneasiness. Hoseok coughed to get his mother's eyes to return to him when he realized she was staring too long. She smiled at him, cheeks scrunching up. "Um, mom this is Y/N, my girlfriend."

Taking a deep breath, you prepare to greet her. "Hello," her hand stuck out in front you, a nice red color painted onto them.

"Hi!" you shook her hand, your glittery nails are now the center of attention as she glanced at them. "It's so nice to meet you!"

Your cheeks flushed at your ear-piercing tone. Hoseok's mother seemed a little taken back but veiled it with a small smile, not the same she gave your boyfriend however. "Hoseok talks a lot about you, we're so happy to meet you."

She stepped aside, making way for the two of you. Shutting the door in front of you, she walked over to the living room. "I'm sorry but Jiwoo won't be joining us today, she's busy at work like always," she mumbled the last part. You nodded, secretly a little grateful that his sister wouldn’t be here because the information eased your nervousness.

Hoseok wrapped your hand around his, reassuring you to just be yourself. He gave you multiple talks along the way, reminding you that if his parents would approve of a beautiful amazing girl like you, his words exactly.

His father appeared from the kitchen, waving slightly at you. His attire was the same as his wife, elegant and classy. A dark suit with a simple navy tie and a white button down shirt. “You're back from Seoul! And you even brought yourself a pretty lady," Hoseok's father grinned at you and went in for a hug. Your cheeks flushed even more at his comment, taking a whiff of his dark spiced cologne.

"Dad, this is Y/N, my girlfriend," his father whistled at him, happy that his son has finally found himself a girlfriend.

"Thank god! Was beginning to think you were gay or something," you can't help but let out a snort, Hoseok's glare quickly shushed you. "Seriously, he never brings over a girl. I mean, Hoseok you're thirty-three and haven't even thought of marriage!" you laughed in agreement and your boyfriend grimaced at the thought.

His father warmed up to you fast, walking over to the dinner where everything was prepared waiting for you. His parents sat across from the both of you, his mother chose to sit in front of you. The warm dish of jajangmyeon planted in front of you.

"Wow," the air in your lungs are knocked out from the delicious plate in front of you. "This looks amazing and I bet it'll even taste amazing."

His mother scoffed. "We didn't cook it, the maids did."

Hoseok distinguished the tone his mother was using on you, remembering it from the times her and his father fought. She had an attitude towards you. His hands enclosed around you, kneading your knuckles. You blinked, surprised at the fact they had maids but still apologized for assuming.

"Is this the house where you grew up?" you voiced to Hoseok, genuinely interested if he grew up in this lovely home.

His father slurped down his noodles, prepared to answer the question for him. "No, we moved like three times. He grew up in another house that we sold. It was a great house, just didn't feel right for us."

Nodding, you gazed around the dining room. White coated on the walls with a brown marble floor that evened the colors out. Instead of a source of light hanging from above, there was two plants hanged. The dining table was a weirdly shaped wooden plank on four poles that still added touch to the design. "This is very beautiful," you complimented, fully absorbed in the modern design.

"I designed it myself," his mother smiled in pride and stared up at the plants. His father grinned at her, reminding her how much of a great job she did. "I went through a lot of designs but I definitely had a thing for modern interiors."

"Seriously, I remember when everything was dark. It looked like Dracula's house, Y/N," Hoseok recalled, receiving a frown from his mother. Your lips curved upwards but tried to hold your laugh in. "It was black and red in here, you should've seen!"

His father laughed at him. "You think that was funny?" he challenged his son with raised eyebrows. Hoseok stopped eating his noodles to stare at him along with puppy eyes. "You should of seen what Hobi used to play with as a kid that now he's ashamed of."

On cue, Hoseok's eyes widened at the sudden memory his father was going to expose. You gave him a puzzled look. "What is it?"

"No dad, stop! That was um....when I was younger. You said you weren't gonna talk about this!" Hoseok reminded him, it only gets your curiosity to leap higher.

"What is it?" you asked, leaning forward. Hoseok's father glanced over at him, staring into his sunken eyes that lost hope.

"He used to play with a barbie when he was younger—which there's nothing wrong with that but Hoseok over here gets embarrassed about it all the time, it's too damn funny!" his wife laughed along with him.

You giggled and turned. Surely enough, your boyfriend was sitting uncomfortably in his seat with red flushed cheeks. He wore a grumpy frown on his lips. "There's nothing to be embarrassed about, Hobi." you teased him, pinching the cheek closest to you.

"So where do you come from?" his father started again once he calmed down, bringing a piece of noodles to his lips. His wife sat besides him, peacefully eating her portion.

"I originally come from Ulsan but I came to Seoul because I'm currently attending Hanyang University right now."

The table goes quiet and you're worried that you might've said something wrong. You went over your words in your head, trying to find what could've offended them. Hoseok's father stopped chewing for a moment as if he's processing what you just said to him. Hoseok sighed and grabbed your hand from under the table, not helping your anxious state.

Maybe it was the university you were attending? You couldn’t think of anything else besides that being the reason that caused the tension in the room.

"How old are you?" his eyes fixed on you, wandering of your features to try to determine the answer himself.

"Nineteen."

Hoseok's mother laughed, earning a scowl from Hoseok himself. She shook her head and drank her wine, telling herself things under her breath. "Oh my god you stupid girl, you really thought you could date my son just for his money."

A frown settled on your face. Your palms began to become sweaty. Hoseok's eyebrows furrowed, his jaw continually clenching and unclenching. "I'm sorry? I don't know where you guys got that idea." you laughed awkwardly but shut your mouth when his father sent you a glare. It's almost like his whole personality switched into an asshole.

Hoseok doesn't move his hand even when his father glared at him. "We're not dumb sweetheart. Little girls like you that can't afford college, of course you would be looking for a sugar daddy," his mother continued. She aimed her finger at Hoseok. "And you, you're smart enough to know this. And getting a girl like this? Hoseok, I thought we raised you better than that." she turned to you, her gaze piercing through you you're sure it left a two holes in your head. "He's supposed to be getting married by now but instead he's wasting his time with someone like you."

You bit your lip, unable to blink or else a tear will rush out. There's a huge pressure on your body right now as you try to compose yourself together and not cry in front of his parents, but with the sickening look his mother is giving it's hard to follow through.

"What is your guy's problems?" Hoseok's voice cuts in. His chair scratched the floor as he stood up in front of them. His hands clutched yours tightly, even when you tried to pull away. "Sugar daddy? Are you listening to yourself right now?!" his voice boomed throughout the room.

"Hoseok—" you're ready to stop him from defending you but he's quick to silence you.

"I know Y/N, she's not like that," his eyes searched for you glossy ones. You sniffed and peered up at him. "You guys just barely met her, you can't make those assumptions of her. I know she's not with me for money, hell she won't take that necklace I bought her," you faintly smile at the memory of Hoseok begging you to take the emerald stone necklace in the middle of a restaurant. You kept refusing however not wanting to wear that expensive jewelry around since you feared that it wouldn’t look good on you.

"Hoseok please, a much younger girl wanting a rich man like you? She's like ten years younger than you! You think she's ready to get married anytime soon?" his hands kneaded your sweaty palm. "You're thirty-three and she's nineteen! You both are at different points of your life, she probably just came out of the nest. This is not going to work out," his mother stressed, standing up from her seat. His father exhaled and laid back in his seat. "How much?" she asked all of the sudden.

"What?"

"How much to get you out of his life? Name the price and you'll leave him alone."

"Mom! What the hell?!" Hoseok embraced you when you let a sob escape your mouth. Your nose nuzzled in his chest, taking in his coconut body wash. "I can't believe you guys would go this low!" you never heard Hoseok this angry. Even during all those times you messed something up like one of his papers by spilling lemonade onto it, he would never raise his voice. "Y/N makes me happy and if you guys can't accept that, well then—"

"What Hoseok? Are you going to chose her over your own family?" his father finally decided to talk, chest heaving up to present himself as more assertive. You feel backstabbed by this man, a few minutes ago he was telling your stories of Hoseok playing with barbies.

Your boyfriend doesn't say anything to them at first. He solely gazed down at you, pressing his soft lips against your forehead. "Goodbye," he decided, pushing in both of our chairs. You don’t miss the despairing features on his parents face as you exit the house.

Even when you both reach his car, you haven’t stopped crying. He opened the door for you. Your eyes followed him as he walked around to his door. “Maybe your parents are right,” you croaked out, your voice vague from all the tears you’ve poured out. Hoseok stopped to look at you, eyes urging with you to continue. “What if people just see us like that? I’m a fucking gold digger and you’re a sugar daddy. I’m just with you for the money, I don’t want people thinking of me like that,” your voice cracked halfway.

Hoseok reached over the console to wrap his arms around you, giving your forehead a quick peck. “People who think that are just people that don’t know what do with their life and like to get into others’ businesses. I know you’re not a gold digger, Y/N.”

“I feel like such a bad person,” your hair stuck into your forehead as the tears poured out. You hiccuped into Hoseok’s shoulder. “You can’t pick me over your family, we need to break up.”

He shook his head, a tear managing to slip out. “No, I don’t ever want to break up with you. Y/N, I wanna spend the rest of my life with you.” you sniffed and glanced up at him, noticing his eyes and how tears were dangerously close to pouring out. He opened his mouth but shut it. A tear ran down his cheek and near his mouth.

“When I am with you, there’s no place I’d rather be.”

[snarkwrites]

mine | tim speedle | csi:miami

Notes:

Okay, so here’s the thing.. Those smutty one shots and the one shot I wrote at Christmas about Tim Speedle and an ofc who was an old girlfriend? They were originally part of this huge backstory I came up with years ago too and like.. Given that I’m posting the backstory in bits for Greg, I thought why not do the same for Tim. So, if you were ever wondering where the OC from the christmas one shot came from.. This is her. A little more thought out and less vague. Anything not explained there, or in the smut I’ve already posted and plan to post eventually, will be explained here.. Because fuckkit.. Might as well make this a chapter thing too...

Pairing:

Tim Speedle x OFC, Sylvie.

Warnings:

Uhh.. Angst and unresolved feelings at first. Filth you’ve all already seen but more to come.. Maybe a little action and suspense? because I have plans for this one, mhm.

Oh. Right off the bat.. Ya’ll are not gonna like Ryan Wolfe in here at first if I’ve done my job properly. Because as it went on the show, he’s gonna be... hard to warm to here. I chose to keep him in and have him, as well as Cardoza and others, working on the shift opposite of Tim.

Tagging:

@chasingeverybreakingwave​

@twistnet​ 

[ faq | tag list doc | soundtrack ] 

                                            ONE.

“Damn. Are you even gonna open this and humor a thought of going?” Eric waved around the class reunion invite that Tim had gotten in the mail and tossed on the counter. From across the room, Tim continued to dig around in the fridge, trying to find the case of beer he’d picked up on his way in.

He was refusing to answer the question.

Grabbing the case of beer, he sat them on the folding table they’d set up in the living room to play poker at and he took a beer out for himself, popping it against the counter, taking a long sip from the bottle.

Eric was already in the kitchen. Throwing together the traditional go to sandwich for their poker nights.

“Hey, that new guy’s not comin, right?”

“Wolfe? Yeah.. I think Walter with his big mouth invited him.”

“Goddamn it.” Tim swore, grumbling. “There’s just something off about the guy, I’m telling you.”

“Either way, it’s not our problem, man. He’s on the other shift, remember? Are you gonna answer my question, Speed, or do I have to drag the answer out of you, buddy?” Eric asked, giving Tim a pointed look.

Walter stepped into Tim’s apartment with Ryan coming into view right behind him. Tim’s jaw set and when Walter asked “Drag what answer out of Speed, man? What’d I miss?” as he wandered over to grab himself a beer and take a seat at the table, Tim shrugged. “It’s nothing, Walt. Forget Eric here ran his big fuckin mouth.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothin, you grouch.” Eric remarked, chuckling when Tim gave him what he thought was a silencing glare. As per usual, it did not work.

Ryan, the new guy, spoke up from over nearby Tim’s fridge, nodding to a photo booth strip held on by a magnet. “Is this your girl, Speed? Damn… you never mentioned you were seeing a model.” as he shook his head and let out a low and appreciative whistle.

Eric’s gaze settled on the photo strip and then back on Tim. Tim was all but trying not to explode. Getting defensive and touchy as he tended to whenever that particular strip of photos came into a conversation. He tried to give Ryan the subtlest shake of the head no, but it was too late.

Tim was already lost to thought, dwelling on the past.

Ryan eyed him, a brow raised. “Sore subject?” he questioned. Eric glared at Ryan and grumbled, giving Tim a silent look of agreement about the new guy. Tim nodded and smirked, mouthing back “Told you so, idiot.” before fixing his gaze on Ryan and shrugging. “Not really, no. We dated for a while.”

“High school and college.” Eric spoke up, ignoring Tim’s glare. “What? It’s true, right? That’s not just a while, Tim. That’s literally almost a decade, man.” 

“Are you going to let me answer the guy Eric,or nah?” Tim asked, giving Eric another pointed glare as he took the worn deck of cards and shuffled them a few times, starting to deal. When Eric went quiet, Tim continued. “I took the job here. We broke up.”

“The man is lying. What happened was he didn’t ask her to come with and she didn’t try to stop him. So they never actually broke up. They just lost touch. And if you got that invite man, maybe…”

“Invite to what?” Ryan asked, an amused look as he fixed his gaze on Tim. So far, he got the suspicion that neither Tim nor Eric were particularly warming up to him, but it didn’t really matter. He was there because Walter asked if he wanted to play a few hands. And given that of everyone they worked with, so far Walter was the only real welcoming member of the forensics team on either shift, he wasn’t about to turn it down.

If nothing, he figured, he could show Eric and Tim up in a game or two and then leave… Unless the current conversation and it’s effect on Tim Speedle proved to be too interesting and amusing to continue to pass up.

“Class reunion. If I wanted to go back and listen to a bunch of douchebag jocks talk about their glory days, I’d go.” Tim answered, grumbling and shifting around in his chair, wondering when in the hell they were all going to get off the subject.

“She might be there man, you never know.”

“Eric, if it were going to work out in the first place, one of us would’ve said or done something. We wouldn’t have just left it the way it was.” Tim pointed out. Turning his attention to his hand as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, brown eyes carefully surveying the other men around the table.

He smirked when he realized that of them all, the only one who was really good at keeping a consistent poker face was Eric. Then again, Tim thought to himself, Eric knows me too well. He knows I learned how to read him like a book years ago. 

“She’s in Miami right now, actually. I saw her in the lobby of that high end hotel earlier today when our team got called to work that double homicide.” Ryan smirked as he just casually dropped the bombshell. Holding Tim’s gaze a few seconds. Trying to get a read on the guy, see if he might have a winning hand this round.

Tim nearly choked on the sip of Michelob he’d taken and eyed Ryan. The guy had to be trying to bullshit him. Probably to cover for his lack of a poker face, Tim mused, smirking at Ryan as he did so. “She lives in New York, buddy. You probably saw somebody who looked like her. I doubt you saw her.”

“Oh trust me… You don’t see a girl like that a time or two and confuse her with somebody else.” Ryan smirked right back, waiting on his words to hit the intended mark before dropping the bigger bombshell. “Her name is Sylvie, right? Because that’s what the frat boys hounding her for selfies and autographs called her.” 

Just the slightest drop of Tim Speedle’s jaw was enough to make Ryan’s entire night. At this point, he was just genuinely enjoying having a rib at the guy. It wasn’t a secret around the lab that Eric Delko and Tim Speedle were nothing if not tight knit. That’s why it surprised more than a few people when the two seemed to just welcome Walter with open arms and no hesitation. And yet, they went above and beyond to cop snide attitudes with both himself and another man he worked with, Jesse Cardoza.

Tim eyed Ryan, a brow raised. Then he just shrugged. “It’s your play, Wolfe.” he barely managed to unclench his jaw enough to say it, but he did. He hoped that his tone would clearly indicate that for tonight, the topic was over. Even though he knew already that no thanks to Ryan’s words, tonight was going to be a long one for him…

Was she really in Miami? Or was Ryan just being an asshole as per usual?...

,, he’s gotta be saying it to get a rise and more of the story outta me… that’s it... unless she’s here. She does travel a lot, man.. Your ma is always real quick to tell you about every single move she makes when you call back home every Sunday.” Tim shoved the intrusive thought out of his head and it was immediately followed by another. ,, It’s been years and nothing but silence. Neither of us tried to keep in touch and it’s not like we couldn’t... But.. she did come to you in the hospital that first few nights... if she wanted you to know she was there, she would have stayed, just drop the what ifs or you’re going to lose your goddamn mind.” 

Ryan made his call and Tim smirked, shoving some more chips into the middle of the table. “I see your King and raise you.”

Eric nearly spat his drink. He eyed Ryan, wondering if the guy had any idea of the wrath he’d probably just unleashed on himself by pushing buttons as openly as he had been. And he felt bad for the guy. Just because he worked with Cardoza, it didn’t necessarily make him the same.

He leaned in and offered up a quiet warning into Ryan’s ear when Tim got up to go and grab himself one of the Cuban sandwiches sitting on a plate near the stove. “You might want to lay off, Wolfe. Tim’s still hurting and bitter as hell about her, but too damn stubborn to do anything.”

“Which is fucking stupid, if you ask me.” Ryan answered, gazing across the room, smirking as he called out to Tim, “Hey, can I get another beer, man?”

Tim gave him the finger and flopped back into his chair, taking a few bites of his sandwich. “If you get up and get it, yeah. By all means.” Tim chuckled as Ryan gave him a dirty look, but after a little grumbling, he got up and grabbed himself a beer.

“What would you do if she was in town, man?” Eric was the one who asked the question.

Tim pretended not to hear him, but it wasn’t something that he wasn’t already wondering about himself. Did he even really need -or deserve for that matter, to do anything?

XXX

“6 am, sharp.”

“Rex if you remind me one more time about this stupid photo shoot, I swear to fuck, I’ll cancel. I came to Miami to relax. Not be hounded and have gigs booked for me. This was supposed to be my vacation, you’re literally not even supposed to be here.” I rolled onto my stomach on the hotel bed. The patio doors were open and the breeze blowing in off the ocean was relaxing.

Or it had been until Rex felt fit to show up and ruin things.

To be fair, I thought to myself, you’re the one who won’t just tell the guy that you’re not re-signing with his agency when your contract ends. But he seriously couldn’t take a fucking hint when I left on a red-eye and didn’t think he should know?

I was flipping through the television when I happened on a local news show. And they were showing an interview at Miami Dade PD about a pending case that was pretty huge in the media right now.

But that wasn’t what was catching my attention at all.

My eyes fixed on the five seconds glimpse I got of Tim as he hurried into the station. So handsome that I could feel my heart breaking all over again at the sight of him. I sighed and turned off the television.

I wound up on the balcony, staring down at the streets below. Wondering what he was doing right now.. Trying to imagine just how differently everything might have actually gone if I’d been braver back then. If I’d spoken up. Told him that I loved him and I didn’t want to lose touch or for us to be over.

I could’ve come with him.

And then I remembered the fear I felt the night my mom called me, fresh off the phone with his mom… The night I almost lost him.

And I remembered the feeling I felt when I finally made it to his side, a whole two days later. Seeing him lying there in that bed, hovering between life and death. The fear that he’d wake up and he’d want me to leave over-ruling every basic instinct in me that was telling me to stay. Take care of him. At the very least, get some closure. I didn’t deserve him then and the fact remained.

I don’t deserve him now, either. And too much time has gone by... I’d lost any right to tell him how I felt now. He probably had his own happy life. A better one. Who would I be to come in and lay it all on the line and destroy that?

If I’m being truly honest with myself here, I’ve never actually deserved Tim Speedle. And I’ve always known it. It’s why I had to let him go back then and a big reason why I was fighting myself so hard to keep from going to him now.

But I wanted him so badly. I needed him.

Everything felt wrong without him. I tried to move on, I tried convincing myself he was a high school and college boyfriend and my best childhood friend before that, but deep down, I knew.

Tim Speedle was, is and will always be, the man I love.

But I’m not good enough for him and hopefully, he’s moved on by now. God I hope he’s happy.

The thought had me taking a few shaky breaths and wiping away a tear that had been lingering in my eyes, threatening to roll down my cheek. I wandered back inside and even though I knew it wasn’t a good idea… I found myself searching his name.

Biting my lip as my heart skipped a beat or two when I realized that his phone number was still the same. And it was listed, not private.

I’m not exactly sure why, but I went to my contacts. And for a good ten minutes, I hovered over his name… I actually went as far as to pull up the conversation box and read over the last conversation we had. Before I realized it, I was crying again and that empty feeling was creeping back in…

,, you came all the way to Miami. You can’t keep living like this…” my brain taunted me. And then, another thought crept in, ,, if you wanted him, you shouldn’t have just let him leave without saying so. All you had to do was tell him you wanted to come. What, were you expecting some flowery proposal? For him to drop the chance of a lifetime for you? And what if he had, huh? What then? You know he would’ve hated you and by now, you two would be over… Nobody ever stays...Your own father couldn’t even be bothered to stick around, Syl… The man has probably forgotten all about you by now.”  and before my mind got any darker, I slipped off the bed and grabbed my favorite jacket. Maybe taking a ride down to the Keys would help me get this off my mind. Or driving a few blocks over, going to the beach to look at the stars.

All I did know was that suddenly, it felt like the very vast and open space in this 5 star hotel room was rapidly closing all around me.

[quakeriders]

Feysand and number 39 please!

college prompt list + 39. during a drinking game at a house party, we’re dared to kiss even though we barely know each other and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since

note: I’m still on mini-hiatus. this was sitting half-finished in my drafts for ages, I just finished writing the latter half bc i needed to cheer myself up. hope it makes you feel all warm and tingly, too. you can always send in more prompts! (masterlist - prompt tag)

“Oh, no!” Feyre gasped, dropping her muffin.

It landed on her lap, crumbs flying everywhere but Feyre couldn’t be bothered with it. Not now.

She ducked her head, trying to make herself small, blend in with the wallpaper behind her or hide herself behind Lucien’s bigger body.

“What are you doing?” Her friend asked, raising a brow.

She shushed him, picking up the muffin and placing it onto her plate before angling her body away from the front of the shop.

Lucien, ever the observant and asshole friend, deliberately turned around and followed her gaze. He let out a snicker at what he found.

Feyre shushed him again. More aggressively this time. “Luce, I swear to god-”

“Hey! Hey, Rhys!” He shouted above the noise in the shop.

The tall figure clad in all black turned, eyes flying over the sea of people before finding Feyre and Lucien in the back corner. Even from all the way back, Feyre could see his lips pulling into a wide grin.

And while the barista was busy preparing his coffee, Rhys smoothly walked towards them.

Feyre gritted her teeth, trying not to look at his face, or his chest or any other part of his body. And even as she forced her eyes onto Lucien, who had turned back to smirk at her, she felt herself blush.

“Aw.” He cooed, grinning wickedly.

“Shut up,” Feyre hissed, acutely aware how close Rhys was getting. “I hate you. I swear, you’re going to regret-”

She stopped when the Rhys stopped right by their table.

“Fancy seeing you two here.” He purred, sliding his hands into his pockets and fixing Feyre with those brilliantly violet eyes.

Judging by how much her cheeks were burning, her face must have turned completely red. Mercifully, Rhys didn’t comment.

No, instead, for a brief flicker of a moment, his gaze dipped to her lips and slid back up her face.

She almost groaned as their eyes met again.

God, her whole body felt like it had been set on fire. Her insides were clenching and even as she tried not to think about it, she remembered the feeling of his lips on hers.

How his breath had tickled her cheek right before their kiss. How his lips had tasted like cheap beer and desire. How his hands had been gentle on her waist and how his eyes had sparkled in the low light. How he had just looked at her, catching his breath afterwards.

“Really?” Lucien asked, his voice teasing as he broke the silence. “I think it’s quite common knowledge that Feyre and I meet here at least four times a week.”

Rhys merely chuckled, unbothered by being called out.

Feyre really should say something. She just couldn’t make her jaw work. Or her brain.

“Pray tell, Rhysand,” Lucien went on, that teasing tone shifting into something more cunning and letting Feyre know that her best friend was up to no good. “What are you doing here?”

Rhys didn’t look away from her. Even as his smile widened, even as he recognised the challenge in Lucien’s words and something sparked in his eyes.

“I was hoping that today would be one of the days, you and Feyre meet here.” He spoke the words in a soft tone, his eyes holding hers and she was sure that even if she had wanted to, she wouldn’t have been able to look away.

“And why is that?”

Feyre really wanted Lucien to shut up. Didn’t she?

“Americano for Rhysand.” The barista called just then and Feyre’s heart sank.

Rhys finally looked away from her. To Lucien. “Would you be a dear, foxboy, and get that for me?”

And finally Feyre’s jaw unclenched. Because Lucien– Lucien had gotten up from his seat and with a wink in her direction, sauntered towards the counter to do as Rhys had asked.

“May I sit?” He asked, a few heartbeats later.

Feyre’s eyes snapped back to his face and she nodded. As he pulled over a chair from the nearby empty table, Feyre noticed that she still had a few crumbles on her lap and tried to brush them off without him noticing.

Their table was small, barely large enough to seat two people opposite each other. Rhys positioned the chair in a way that he could sit at the narrower side of the table and when he slid into his seat, his leg brushed against hers.

She swallowed hard, eyes flickering from him to Lucien who had picked up the cup and was coming back to their table.

“I was hoping we’d get more time alone.” Rhys said, a strange quality to his voice. She wasn’t quite sure if it was disappointment or nervousness.

Either way, she felt her pulse only speed up, flashes of their kiss coming back to her, the feel of his body pressed against hers, how soft his lips had been, how his stubble had felt scratchy under her fingertips.

“And why’s that?” She asked, her voice breathy. Feyre would have felt embarrassed about that if Rhys hadn’t immediately bit his lip in response to her words. She really wanted to kiss him again. And she was pretty sure he was thinking the same thing.

If she hadn’t been too caught up in staring at him, Feyre would have noticed sooner that Lucien had stopped coming towards them. He had stopped in a way that Rhys couldn’t see him and he was waving towards her. Once their eyes locked, Lucien wiggled his eye brows and gestured towards the door of the shop.

Feyre almost burst out laughing.

It must have shown on her face, because Rhys said, “Let me guess, foxboy is trying to be slick and give us some privacy?”

She couldn’t help it, she started giggling. “Yeah.”

Rhys was grinning, too. Lucien, still holding onto Rhys’ cup of coffee, threw up one arm in the air, dramatically rolling his eyes. She could see his lips moving but had no idea what exactly he was saying.

“Actually, Rhys,” Feyre said, looking back at him and finding his smile slowly disappearing. “Luce and I were in the middle of a very serious conversation. How about you and I meet up at another time?”

“Oh, sure.” Rhys said, his face had gone from smiling to carefully neutral to brilliantly delighted. “Yeah, of course.”

Feyre couldn’t help but smile in return. But when he still didn’t say anything else, Feyre sighed. “How about I give you my number and you text me. Does that sound good to you?”

Now she could make out a faint blush on his cheeks. His brown skin glowed and his usually sure and graceful movements were more flustered than anything. Suddenly, Feyre didn’t feel as weird about dropping her whole muffin.

She grinned as she typed her number into his phone. And then, just because he had called her best friend foxboy twice, a nickname Lucien despised, Feyre asked, “Have you ever asked a girl out before, Rhys? Because you kind of suck at this.”

He let out a flustered laugh, running a hand through his thick hair and ruining the careful styling. “Actually, usually I’m quite good at it. But with you-” He looked away, swallowing once before fixing her with an intense look. “It’s different with you.”

“Should I be offended?” Feyre asked, biting back a smirk. Just then she noticed Lucien approaching the table.

“You know that’s not what I mean. I mean- um, with you it’s different, I-” Rhys stumbled over his words. It was kind of endearing seeing him struggling to find words. Feyre knew she must be smiling like an idiot because Lucien scoffed as he slid back into his seat and placed Rhys’ cup of coffee on the table.

“How are you the best in Professor Suriel’s class, you can barely string two sentences together.” Lucien remarked, winking at Feyre.

Rhys let out a strangled laugh, licking his lips and looking away from her. “I honestly don’t know. Also,” He looked back at Feyre, his smile turning soft, “I should go. Thanks for picking up my coffee, foxboy. Feyre, I’ll text you.”

He got to his feet and Feyre watched as he turned and walked out of the shop. On his way through the door, he turned and their eyes met once more. He winked at her and she couldn’t help but smile stupidly as the door fell shut.

Lucien let out a long, dramatic groan and dropped his face into his hands. “Don’t tell me you gave him your number.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Feyre replied, picking her muffing back up and biting into it.

Lucien laughed into his hands and Feyre’s phone lit up with a new message from an unknown number.

hey darling, just in case i can’t find my words here’s my number -rhys

She picked up her phone and saved the number before putting it away and asking, “So, back to your love life. Tell me about the date.”

– taglist –

there’s a problem with my new taglist post so if you want to be added do both of these steps:

like or reblog or reply to this post (old taglist, currently in use)

reblog this post (new taglist, once issue is fixed will be used exclusively)

–

part one of the taglist, part two will be added via @feysandfic:

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[salt-warrior]

WHEN EARTH TURNS TO ASHES

Masterlist

Chapter Twelve: Mask of Darkness

Two pairs of brilliant eyes locked on Kai: one brown and one gold. He felt almost nervous to have such intense stares on his body, something he was not used to, and shrunk back a little bit. He was acclimated to hundreds of people gazing at him as he made speeches, but the stares of these two girls seemed to set his insides on fire. Or maybe it was just one of the girls...

"Oh." Iko's face fell for a moment, before her lips twitched up into an impish grin. "I was just leaving. I do have other patients, you know." Iko pointed an accusing finger at Cinder, quieting her protests before they could escape her lips. "I'll be back after I finish my rounds."

Kai nodded to Iko as she winked rather unsubtly and walked out the door. Cinder stared determinedly down at her clenched fist, her scars turning white and painful looking.

"Don't do that," Kai raced forward, placing his hand over Cinder's to prevent her from hurting herself. She flinched away, her expression shocked and angry, but all the same unclenched her fists. It pained Kai to know that she did this because of him.

Cinder didn't say anything, but simply remained staring a point that Kai would't see. Her jaw was set in a firm line, and her eyes were ice cold in deep contrast to the brilliant carelessness they had held before Kai had entered the room. His heart twinged.

"I came to talk to you," Kai said, not unkindly. "I have some things I need to tell you. You might not care to hear them, but you deserve to know." Cinder continued to avoid eye contact.

"I, um, know a lot about you, so I figured you have the right to know a little bit about me." Kai tried to keep his voice even, though anticipation of what he was about to open up to sent stinging cracks into his confidence. He had decided to go with Thorne's approach on things, to be gentle and open, instead of revealing how much he had dug up about her past. Honesty was not always the best policy.

Kai rubbed his sweating palms against his jeans, looking right into Cinder's face, but she did not look at him. "For starters, my name is Kaito Crown, Kai to you. You already know that, but whenever I practiced this in my head I always start like that." Kai blushed. "Forget about that last part."

Cinder's expression remained tense, but her face began tilting in his direction. "I'm twenty-one years old, I grew up in So-Cal in the San Diego area. My father is Rikan Crown, one of the most successful businessmen in the northern continent. My mo–" Kai coughed, trying to mask the pain. "My, um, my best friend is Carswell Thorne, who you've already had the pleasantries of meeting. We've been best friends since the first grade.

"I go to college at the local business school because my father wants me to take over his business someday. I should be graduating sometime in the spring. I love to sing, though I'm terrible at it. My favorite food is cereal, which my father detests and Thorne doesn't understand, but I love it. I enjoy writing and sometimes reading classics. I like knowing people and learning their passions. I'm kinda nosy, which I am trying to work on." Kai smiled to himself, knowing that he was doing a terrible job at working on his problem.

"I've never really felt like I have a purpose in life, though. When I was little, I wanted to be a journalist, but... things changed." Kai glanced down to his hands; they were bone dry. He drew his fingers inward, brutally crushing them into his palm. He hated talking about his mother. He hated thinking about her and her sudden departure. He hated, hated, hated–

Cinder was staring at Kai, all masks of anger relieved from her face to unveil a beautiful sheen of kindness. She had become gentler as Kai had spoken, and she reached out to lay a scarred hand across Kai's clenched fists.

She didn't speak, but her meaning was clear: Don't do that.

Kai relaxed his hands and the rest of his body followed suit. He let out a sigh, and smiled tight-lipped at Cinder. He couldn't seem to understand her sudden kindness.

"You don't have to tell me everything. You don't owe me anything." Cinder encircled her fingers around Kai's wrist absentmindedly, sending tingles down his arm. He couldn't understand why her touch could affect him so, but it did; and he didn't want her to stop.

"I'm not telling you these things to make myself even." Kai tried in vain to take his mind off Cinder's light touch. "I tell you these things because I want you to know me. I want you to trust me. I would like to know you." I don't want you to ever stop touching me, is what Kai didn't say.

Telepathy must have been a side effect of brain trauma, seeing how Cinder seemed to suddenly realize her grip on Kai and released him. His nerves burned with longing, and his cheeks heated in coordination with hers.

"I thought that I knew life pretty well until about ten years ago. My life was perfect; I had loving parents, a great best friend, something that I loved to do. That all changed when my mom got sick." Kai's words came out hoarsely, and Cinder's eyes widened with them.

"One week she was fine, and then she started vomiting and not being able to even get out of bed. By the time we found out, it was too late. There isn't much you can do with colon cancer, anyway," Kai said. His hands were trembling.

"She died a couple weeks later, two days after I turned twelve." Kai looked around the room, no longer able to stand Cinder's pitying look. This girl had suffered more than Kai could imagine, and yet she showed him compassion. An abrupt laugh burbled from within Kai's chest. "Stars, I hate this place so much."

Cinder flinched, but Kai didn't even notice. "I remember the white walls, and how they tried to mask the stench of death and cleaning product with flowers. I hate flowers too."

"In fact," Kai's voice entered into hysterics. "I hate her. I hate how she left me. I hate how everything beautiful and terrible reminds me of her. I hate it all."

A sob broke from within Kai, and his body shook with cries of despair as he covered his face in his hands. Cinder sat there, staring at a broken boy who claimed hate from a soul full of nothing but love. There was no hate inside him, only the agony that came with loving a person so deeply.

"You don't mean that," Cinder whispered. Kai jumped up to stare at her.

"Yes, I do mean it."

"No, you don't," Cinder said. "You speak with pain and passion, and the greatest cause of both is love. Nothing hurts more than to have someone who means the world to you leave it. Just... trust me on this one."

Kai stared at his angel in wonder. Her words were full of empathy, knowledge, and too much sadness for a girl so young. She was such a startling creature, full of light but surrounded by darkness; her cloak of shadows masking the luminous kindness within her heart.

"I..." Cinder cleared her throat. "My mother left me when I was six. She was taken to prison for drugs, and I haven't heard a word from her since. I thought that I hated her too, but I don't. I can't."

Kai listened to her words intently, eating them like a starved man. He digested what she said, internally noting that while she was being open, she was also lying; that is, if what Cress said was true.

"After that, I lived in Foster Homes until I was seventeen. None of them wanted me. None of them loved me. In over ten years of too many families, there were only ever two people that I loved and returned the burden." Cinder's eyes hollowed with darkness.

"The first was a boy, and his name was Ran. Ran Kesley. I was thirteen, and he was fourteen. He was my first real friend. He cared for me in a way that no one had ever before. His parents and older brother were kind to me as well, but Ran was the only one who loved me.

"The second was a girl, my sister, Peony Linh. She was kind and pure. That nurse, Iko, she reminds me of Peony a bit. I was sixteen and she was fourteen when we met. Both of them left me, and it hurts more than anything else in the world." Cinder's voice was full of gravel, but no tears shed forth from her eyes. She was empty.

Kai wondered what Cinder meant by her words. He wanted to know what Cinder meant when she said she loved Ran Kesley, though he would never admit to the bubble that was growing in his chest at his thoughts. Even more, he needed to know what had happened to both Ran and Peony. But for now, Kai wouldn't ask questions.

Kai stood from his seat, and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. He faced Cinder, their bodies terribly close, and took both of her hands in his own. She stared at him with startled doe-eyes, her lips slightly parted.

A strange impulse took over Kai, and he longed for nothing more that to close the distance between them and place his lips gently against hers. He didn't.

"You're a good person, Cinder. You don't deserve anything that has happened to you." Kai said, tracing his thumb along the back of her hands. She tensed, and Kai feared that she would pull away, but she seemed just as starved for his touch as he was.

"You can't know that." Cinder whispered darkly, lowering her lashes.

"But I do. I can feel it. Just because bad things happen to you doesn't make you bad." Kai released one of Cinder's hands and placed the tips of his fingers beneath her chin.

Cinder's face tilted towards his. She tried to smile, but her eyes held nothing but grief. "But what if you're the one who caused the bad things?"

Kai paused, his thoughts skimming through what she could mean. He didn't like the idea of wanting to kiss a serial killer, so he tried to think positive.

"Your past is gone, Cinder. You can leave it behind and start fresh, no matter what you've done," Kai said.

Cinder leaned away from Kai, breaking off all points of physical contact. She seemed to be swallowed back up by her cloak of shadows. She was done being vulnerable. She had brought her walls back up, and her mask of darkness was firmly set back into her features. Her words were cold when she spoke a few moments later.

"If only your words were true."

[cherryrogers]

bittersweet {7}

pairing: boxer!bucky x rogers!reader

warnings: swearing, mild talks of dark themes, mention of suggestive themes. a more serious chapter so no fluff sadly :/

synopsis: The world of boxing wasn’t something you knew much about, but after a certain boxer with blue eyes and an irresistible charm wove his way into your heart, you soon learned that it went far deeper than red gloves and gold medals. You thought that boxer happening to be your brother’s best friend was bad enough, but unfortunately for you, the worst had yet to come.

a/n: ok so some stuff is revealed in this chapter, and i feel like there isn’t long to go before the end of this fic! i was thinking maybe chapter ten will be the last?? idk, we’ll see😌 please enjoy :)

Series Masterlist

When Bucky arrived at the gym to meet his best friend, he wasn’t surprised to find him knocking the living shit out of a punching bag.

It brought him back to when Steve first started boxing, and Bucky first saw him letting off steam in a training room on his own. He was skinnier then, had terrible technique, was doing more harm to himself than the punching bag.

“Christ, punk. You trying to knock the bag off the ceiling?”

The blond only shot him a glare, stopping momentarily before shaking out his hands an proceeding to beat at the bag.

“I could help you train if you want,” Bucky pressed. “You’ve got the energy down, but I could help you with your technique-”

“I’m not lookin’ to train right now,” The man suddenly interrupted. “Thanks... but I’m just lettin’ off some steam; just need to be alone for a while.”

Bucky was silent for a moment. He didn’t pity the blond; clearly he did need to let his feelings out, and hitting a bag was a much healthier way to do that than hurting himself or anyone else.

“Well, you can come and train in the main gym whenever you want.” The brunet gave him a small smile. “I’m Bucky, by the way.”

The blond hesitated for a mere second, before nodding vaguely in acknowledgment. “Steve.”

“Steve?” Bucky called out, pushing away the feeling of deja vu.

His head snapped towards his friend, the sound of his heavy breaths filling the room as he stopped ramming his fists into the bag.

“You trying to knock the bag of the ceiling?”

Despite his pent up anger, the familiar comment elicited a scoff from the blond. The moment of amusement was long forgotten however, as he remembered what he’d wanted to discuss with Bucky. There was no point in beating around the bush, because Steve didn’t have time to pretend that everything was okay for a moment longer. He knew that one day Rumlow would contact him again, but he never knew it’d be like this — your safety on the line.

Cracking his knuckles nervously, Steve met Bucky’s eye. “I’m fighting Rumlow next week.”

That was new information to the brunet, despite him having heard Steve’s conversation with you. “You talked to him?”

The blond nodded reluctantly, turning back to continue throwing hits at the punching bag. “He knows about (Y/N), he talked to her. He... he wants her.”

Bucky furrowed his brows, the vague comment somehow managing to make his blood run cold. “What do you mean wants her?”

“When I left his gym, the deal was that he wanted one match with me, and he got to decide what the prize was,” Steve clenched his jaw, slamming his fists a little harsher against the bag. “The guy already has enough cash; he didn’t need any more from me. He’s been waiting for two years for something he actually wants from me, and now, that’s (Y/N). He wants her to be one of his girls. One of his pawns in that sick fucking ring.”

Biting the inside of his cheek, Bucky approached the punching bag, holding it to ensure that in his rage Steve didn’t actually knock the bag off the ceiling. It still took him by surprise whenever his friend mentioned being a part of Rumlow’s gym; not that he mentioned it often. It was a dark part of his life, a part he desperately wished that he could leave in his past, but it somehow always seemed to linger in his shadow.

Sure, it made Bucky’s stomach turn that Brock Rumlow had his eyes on you as the prize, but if Steve won the match, then he’d never get to you, right? “But you’ll win, Steve. You’ll win by a mile-”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, Buck,” The blond interrupted, lips curling into a frown. “When have you ever known Rumlow to play by the rules? He doesn’t take part in matches that he doesn’t plan to win, trust me.”

Bucky could feel frustration building in his body at his friend’s lack of confidence, but he tried to remain as calm as possible; the last thing he needed was to make Steve even more stressed than he already was. “Well he can’t just have your sister, Steve. Even if that jackass plays dirty and wins, there has to be a way-”

“Bucky,” The blond intervened again, his voice low. The punching bag went still as Steve stepped away from it, clenching and unclenching his fists. “When I worked for Pierce, I... I fucked up. I fucked up really bad, and if Rumlow wins this fight and I don’t go through with the deal...”

“He has something on you,” Bucky stated, earning a cautious nod from Steve. “Is it that bad?”

“Rumlow, Pierce, every other guy in that gym — they all despise me. They hate me for leaving the ring. If they can ruin my life and make me regret ever steppin’ foot out of that place, then they’ll do it happily.”

“Well, why haven’t they done it already?” Bucky questioned. “Why’re they makin’ you fight if they can expose what they have on you anyway?”

“With... what they have on me, they know they can make me do whatever they want, and they’re using it to make me go through with the deal. By going through with the match and sticking to the deal, it means that if Rumlow wins, I have to... let them take my sister. Cause if I don’t, then they can expose what they have and there’s no way of stopping them.”

Bucky inhaled, thinking hard. Whatever they had on Steve, it must’ve been really fucking bad for him to be so easily running out of ways to fix the situation. “What is it, Steve? What do they have that’s so bad?”

The blond was hesitant to let his past spill, even to his best friend. But if anyone was going to know what happened, what he did, it could only be Bucky. He couldn’t repress his past anymore, not when it was putting his future on the line, your future on the line.

So with a heavy exhale, Steve met his friend’s eyes tentatively, and he began to speak.

* * *

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that? I think I just heard you say that you’re dating your brother’s best friend.”

“You said you wouldn’t judge me, Nat,” You groaned, pathetically smacking the redhead’s knee from where you were sat cross-legged across from her on your bed. “And I wasn’t finished. As a cover-up, I, uh... might’ve told Steve that... I’m dating Peter Quill instead?”

You chewed on your bottom lip, watching as the girl stared at you speechlessly. Natasha had arrived at your apartment not long after Bucky had left, and since she’d been around, your mind had strayed from the topic of Steve and his involvement with Brock Rumlow, which was good, considering there wasn’t really anything you could do about it. You’d decided to trust Bucky in that he’d help your brother, and with your best friend distracting you from your worries, you were feeling a little more relaxed.

That was until Nat had been asking about your boxer boyfriend, which she was bound to get too curious about eventually — you couldn’t blame her, since she was your best friend and she was dying to know the details of your first proper relationship.

You figured that telling her was going to be inevitable, and with the stress on your shoulders of keeping the relationship from Steve, you thought it’d help to relieve it by confiding in Natasha about it. You knew she’d be shocked, you were just hoping she wouldn’t give you an earful about how incredibly wrong it was, because you’d been aware of that from the moment Bucky first lead you into the locker room at the gym.

After around ten seconds of Natasha contemplating internally, she let out a light breath. “You really don’t want Steve to know, huh?”

“It’s not that I don’t want him to know,” You sighed, fiddling with you fingers. “He’s just... got a lot on his plate right now. What if he hates me for it? Or Bucky? What if I’ve ruined a friendship because the one guy that I’ve ever truly liked just so happens to be my brother’s best friend?”

“Honestly, I don’t think he’s gonna be happy when he finds out,” She started, quickly continuing as she observed your eyes widening with worry. “But he’ll just have to get used to it, if you think Bucky really is... it for you. I mean, if he’s fine with you dating Peter Quill...”

You’d also taken it upon yourself to let Peter know of the... new relationship you had as soon as possible. You didn’t think you could do it face to face, or even over the phone, so you settled for a simple text reading ‘Hey, Peter. If my brother asks, we’re dating, okay? Me and you, boyfriend and girlfriend. Not for real, but I’ll explain that at college. See you Monday!’

If you’d gotten a reply, you hadn’t known, since you’d switched your phone onto silent mode and focused your full attention onto your best friend.

You chuckled quietly, rolling your eyes. “You really think he’ll be fine with it eventually?”

“Eventually, yes,” A reassuring smile spread on her lips. “It’s like if I started dating your brother and had hid it from you, wouldn’t you initially feel betrayed?”

“I’d think it was hilarious, considering how you had a little crush on him last year-”

Scrunching her nose, Nat narrowed her eyes at you. “Hey, I thought you agreed to never bring that up again.”

“Sorry, you were kinda asking for it.”

“Bitch,” She mumbled under her breath, prompting you to smack her knee again. “Alright, alright, sorry. Seriously though, Steve loves you. After the initial anger, I’m sure he’ll be happy that it’s Bucky you’re dating. He knows how good of a guy he is, maybe the only guy your brother won’t threaten to castrate if he breaks your heart.”

That got a hearty laugh out of you, making the redhead smile. Maybe so, you thought — you hoped.

By the way Nat was looking at you, eyebrows raised slightly and lips pursed, you could tell that she was desperate dive into the specifics of how things were with you and Bucky.

Failing to suppress the grin tugging at your lips, you sighed. “Go on, what do you wanna know?”

“Alright, uh...” She pondered, too many questions whirling around in her mind already. “Where was your first date?”

“The Fall Carnival, after he won the match Steve took me to.”

“Is that why you have like, a hundred stuffed animals on your bed?”

Your eyes flickered to the numerous teddy bears and other stuffed animals you’d sat against the headboard, a constant reminder of how you couldn’t have asked for a better first date with Bucky. “...yes.”

“Okay, have you seen him shirtless?”

“Uh-huh.” Yet with how your heart raced every time it happened, you’d have thought that every time was the first time.

“Have you seen him pantless?”

“Oh my- no, I haven’t.”

“So, you haven’t sucked his dick yet?”

Your jaw dropped involuntarily as Natasha snickered. “I swear your mind is always in the damn gutter, Natasha.”

She scoffed, leaning forward on her elbows. “Okay, you can stop with the innocent act right now. I see you zoning out in class, babe. You think I don’t know what you’re daydreaming about? Or should I say fantasizing?”

Feeling your face grow hot, you dropped your gaze to your hands. Nat wasn’t exactly wrong; maybe your mind did get a little distracted during class, and maybe Bucky was that distraction.

It was something you’d thought about, furthering the sexual aspect of your relationship with Bucky, and you were sure he’d at least thought about it too. It wasn’t like you were inexperienced, you’d done things here and there with guys who you at first thought weren’t douchebags, but inevitably became ones when they got what they wanted. You’d never went through with... the full deed, but from what you had done, you’d decided you wanted to wait to do it with someone who you really cared for, and who felt the same way for you. And since Bucky was probably in the God tier of men in modern-day America, there was no doubt in your mind that you wanted it to be him.

Right now, however, you weren’t sure it was the best time to have that conversation. When all of it was over, and you knew that your brother was safe, then things could possibly progress.

After eventually managing to steer the conversation away from the topic of your sex life, you and Nat settled down to watch a movie in the living room. With your socked feet resting in your friends’ lap, you flicked through the selection of movies on Netflix, reading out the titles for the girl to decide on.

“How about Titanic?”

“Seen it a hundred times.”

“Spider-man?”

“Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield? And which movie?”

“Tobey Maguire, third movie.”

“Hm... anything else?”

You breathed out a chuckle. “Alright... Dirty Dancing?”

The redhead’s eyes flicked from her phone to the television, an interested smile on her lips. “Patrick Swayze, my man.”

“Dirty Dancing it is.”

As you’d just pressed play and started the film, Natasha’s phone began to ring loudly. You groaned, telling her to put it on silent, but she answered it anyway, mouthing a ‘sorry, it’s my boss’ before greeting the man politely.

You sighed impatiently, glancing at your own phone from where it was placed on the coffee table. There were enough texts from Peter when you’d checked, texts you would answer in the morning after you’d hopefully gotten over the embarrassment you felt after sending the initial message. There was nothing from Bucky, though, and you weren’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

“Alright, I’m on my way.”

You frowned as Nat ended the call, pulling the phone from her ear with an apologetic look. “That was Fury, he needs me down at the station.”

Glancing at the clock above the TV, you crinkled your brows. “This late?”

“Time is only an illusion to that man, he probably just needs help finding some files.” The redhead smirked, but it soon faded into a sympathetic smile as she gently lifted your legs from her lap. “I’m sorry, (Y/N). Can I take a rain check?”

“Sure. Be safe, alright?” You stood up, leading her to the front door and giving her a quick hug.

For the second time that night, you locked the front door and sighed. You were alone, again.

When she wasn’t at college, Natasha worked at the police station. You weren’t sure exactly what her job was; she seemed to be there more than you were at Sam’s tattoo shop. She wasn’t at all qualified to actually be in the force, so you assumed she just worked as an assistant or receptionist. Fury definitely had her working a lot of hours though, it was crazy to you that she could handle that much time at work on top of her classes.

Biting your lip, you shuffled back over to the couch, picking up your phone that still hadn’t received a notification from Bucky. Hopefully, that meant he was making sure Steve was alright and that’s why he wasn’t paying any attention to his phone. You could only hope that was true, and that from tonight, everything would get better rather than worse.

* * *

There was a pregnant pause. A silence so quiet, yet both of the boxer’s thoughts had never been louder in their heads.

They’d both sat down on a bench against the wall. Steve’s elbows were digging into his thighs as he leaned forward, hands clasped together tightly. His friend sat not far from him, angled so that he could look at the blond as he spoke.

There was a lot of things that Bucky wanted to say. He want to tell Steve that everyone in Pierce’s gym were pieces of shit, and that they couldn’t just threaten him like that. He wanted to tell him that he wasn’t going away for life, that Steve wouldn’t be put behind bars if that video got out because they’d find a way to explain how he’d been manipulated.

But it was foolish to think it could be solved so easily.

So instead, Bucky said something else, for your sake and your brother’s. “You need to tell your sister.”

Abruptly, the blond snapped his head towards him, a glare in his eyes. “Are you crazy? I can’t tell her that I-”

“No, no. Not that,” Bucky intervened. He didn’t think that you were too sensitive, or that you couldn’t handle hearing about what your brother was being blackmailed with. Right now, he just didn’t think it was necessary that you knew, not when it was something as serious as it was. “But, I think she should know why you’re involved with Rumlow.”

The blond just shook his head. “How am I supposed to explain that I joined an illegal fighting ring willingly, huh? What is she gonna think?”

“You had a reason, Steve. To pay bills, to buy food, to get your sister her own apartment so that she could begin building a life of her own. You didn’t know they were trafficking weapons and girls, you couldn’t have known. And when you found out, you left. (Y/N) will understand — you were just lookin’ out for her, for your family.”

Bucky remembered vividly when his friend left the gym for good. He hadn’t been that close with him then, training with him from time to time but nothing really more than that. He probably would’ve see him more if Steve hadn’t been halving his time between working in the fighting ring and training at his local gym. Well, it was more of a seventy-thirty split considering Rumlow didn’t exactly slack on making Steve train. It took the blond a while to get back into actual fighting; Bucky guessed they’d put him into some pretty brutal matches, and it took him sparring with the brunet a number of times before he took on a professional opponent.

Partially, he blamed himself for Steve joining the ring. He knew he shouldn’t, but he was the one who told him to stay away from Pierce’s gym. That they boxed for unholy amounts of money, that it was barely even boxing, more like beating each other until one person was almost dead. Then, he didn’t know that Steve’s mother had passed away only a short while prior to him starting boxing and that he was hardly making enough money to support himself, never mind his seventeen-year-old sister at the time too. If he knew that Steve would join the ring purely for money to survive, he would’ve told him that it was the worst thing he could do, even for so much cash.

Bucky knew that first hand.

Steve’s expression had softened, but he still seemed unconvinced. “Buck, she’s just a kid. I... I can’t just unload all of this shit onto her. She has classes to focus on, she has a job-”

“Steve,” The boxer cut him off, an earnest look on his face. “With the risk (Y/N) is at right now, college should be the least of her concerns. If... if she could really get dragged into this mess, she has the right to know.”

The blond was torn. He popped his knuckles again in an attempt to relieve the tension in his body, the pain being more prominent in his right hand from the bruise that was still healing there. He was about to tell Bucky that he’d think about it, when he suddenly stopped himself. A question came to mind, something he wasn’t sure why it didn’t occur to him two years ago. Something didn’t really make sense.

“How did you know about the ring?” He asked solemnly. “The only way anyone could know about it is...”

“If they’ve been a part of it,” Bucky finished for him, an almost pained look in his eye as he did so.

Steve didn’t know what to say, letting his mouth fall open slightly as his eyes darted over his friend’s face, searching for any indication that what he’d just heard wasn’t true. He didn’t find one, however.

The brunet sighed, unable to meet Steve’s eyes before he finally forced himself to.

“The reason I knew about the fighting ring... is because I was involved in it too.”

* * *

Taglist:

@asgcrds @fiannaofficial @bxrnsfeyson @peterparkerbabyyy @broco8 @hotheadbarnes @stormi-ames @founding-fuck-bois

[made-me-deep-blue]

kamilah x mc - dear my dear.

prologue; the eternal queen.

-

“When the sap of the tree rests in the blessed chalice, 

The skies shall turn red, the earth shall be torn asunder,

And the First shall walk again.”

A curse that would repeatedly haunt a queen who would continue to live after the Battle of New York in 2020.

Manhattan, New York, 28 January 2120

Exactly a hundred years after the Battle of New York, a young and promising woman by the name of Camila Sayed walked through the lobby of Ahmanet Financial, silently buzzing with excitement for her interview as the CEO’s executive assistant. 

There were both men and women walking around alike, either preoccupied with speaking to colleagues and clients, or talking away to their phones, typing busily on their laptops. The clicks of heeled shoes were familiar sounds to Camila, having been an intern in a major bank office building in the heart of Singapore.

Camila made her way towards the woman who matched the description that she had scrawled out loosely on a piece of sticky note from the email she had received prior. She was none other than the VP of the company, Liliane Spencer, who was dressed in a cream-white blouse and a monotone checkered pencil skirt.

The vice president looked up from her clipboard and eyed the taller woman in front of her. “Are you Camila Sayed?”

“Yes, Miss Spencer,” Camila reeled her enthusiasm in to sound professional.

“Good, you’re on time,” Liliane sighed, turning on her heels and strutted for the elevators. “Lemme tell you, Ames won’t like it if you’re late. You have no idea how many interviewees she had turned down because of their tardiness.”

Sounds like she is the CEO’s best friend, calling her like that, Camila thought to herself. She was immediately reminded of her days in UConn fangirling over the number of financial businesses she could get into, but in the end, she only had eyes for the one and only Ahmanet Financial. It was said that after the Battle of New York, the former CEO’s wife had taken her spot and inherited her wealth as well after her passing.

Camila’s heart throbbed against her chest even harder, with every step that took her closer to the CEO’s door. 

“Mrs Ashryver-Sayeed will see you now.”

-

Camila was more or less expecting the office to be bright with the sunlight streaming in. However, it was instead just the office’s lights above her head, with streaks of sunlight peeking through the folds of the blinds. It was illuminated in a way because she was standing right in front of her idol.

“Yo, Ames,” Liliane said casually to the CEO. “Next interviewee, all the best.”

From where Camila was standing, an arm drifted to the side, with a glass of amber liquid swirling in it. 

“Thank you, Lily,” the cool, soothing and ethereal voice sounded across the room, which made the young woman concurrently shiver with anticipation and sensitivity. “I appreciate it.”

“Nothing big, best friend,” Liliane, or Lily, gave her superior a mock salute before winking at Camila and mouthing ‘good luck’, closing the door behind her.

When the bi-racial mortal turned around, she met the calm, collective and yet piercing gaze of Amy Ashryver-Sayeed. Camila bit her lower lip to hold back the small squeak that was going to slip out of her mouth. 

Right there and then, when their eyes met, it was as if she was transported to the Bahamas, the gentle waves lapping at the shores and the sun’s reflection on the world’s clearest waters. There was no difference between dreams and reality because both her eyes and the seas had calming effects on Camila.

When she closed her eyes and took a deep breath in, exhaling, she was back in Amy’s office again. The older woman still had her eyes on Camila, silent, but calculative. Every inch of her just radiated wisdom and elegance.

“Are you feeling better?” Amy asked.

“Y-Yes, Mrs Sayeed,” Camila said sheepishly.

Amy leaned against her chair and crossed her legs under her table. She began flipping through Camila's particulars, running her finger down the boxes of information filled until she stopped right at the very top, where her name would be.

The younger woman saw Amy evidently swallowing hard and her jaw tightened.

"W-Would you mind...running by me your name again?" The sentence was like spoken through gritted teeth. She had forced herself to sound not as harsh as it sounded, but Camila had already felt uneasiness brewing in the pit of her stomach.

Even she wavered slightly as Amy did. "M-My name is Camila Sayed."

When their eyes met again this time, Amy had actually taken notice of Camila for the first time. 

It all came rushing over her mind like a broken dam, she couldn't even gather and process what she saw within that time.

The air was charged with energy as the world around them shifted. There it was, Manhattan, exactly a century ago in its glory. A significantly taller woman that looked eerily similar to Camila was holding hands with whom she presumed to be as Amy, wine glasses in hand, gazing at the nightlife inside of the office.

The scene shifted again, as the bright, glaring signs of Tokyo now shone from behind the glass panels of the windows of the bedroom below a club. The same woman and Amy shared a passionate kiss, with a sombre environment, to find comfort and solace in each other.

The last scene, however, left an everlasting impact on Camila. Amy ran her calloused hands through the fluttering, pale grey ash left on the opera theatre's grand stage. The movement was frantic, one that showed disbelief and utter devastation as realisation dawned on her. Darkness swirled around Amy, the aura so overwhelming that Camila had to take a step back herself.

Amy’s painful and raging bellow pulled Camila back to reality. 

The CEO herself was panting slightly, cold sweat licking at her forehead and on her neck. Camila could not believe what she had just witnessed.

That woman who looked just like her, from a century ago...it couldn't be a coincidence, right?

Amy was shaking, not violently, but trembling. She clenched and unclenched her fists on the wooden table, shaking her head in denial. Then, Camila heard it.

“No, that can’t be her. She died, she died right in front of me. Why did it take so long for the heavens to send a reincarnation of her? Why now, when I’m not ready?”

She...died?

“S-Sorry,” Camila started to freak out. “I...I didn’t mean to-”

“No,” Amy shook her head and let out a shaky breath. “I...I’ll have Liliane reschedule your interview for another day, I apologise.”

“No, it’s fine. Have a good day, Mrs Sayeed.”

-

When Camila finally reached her apartment, she dropped her bag beside her couch and immediately flopped onto the cushions, propping her head behind her arm.

She didn’t want to assume thing straight away, but she couldn’t get the thoughts out of her head ever since she stepped out of Amy’s office. Camila heard it, she wasn’t wrong. She had heard Amy’s voice inside her head, as if their minds were connected with a bond, like those that she had read about in fantasy books about mating bonds.

Camila had dreamt to have someone who was the Rowan to her Aelin from the ‘Throne of Glass’ series. But not in this way; she was brought up where humans lived happily together...the Battle of New York was just a myth. Her ancestors might’ve lived through and fought for their freedom and reclaimed this city, but it was just a myth.

She wanted to shake off the eerie fact that she heard her idol’s voice in her head, but it wasn’t those times where she had mental breakdowns and she imagined Amy comforting her and bringing her back up on her feet.

She remembered the recognition that flickered in Amy’s eyes when their eyes met. As if they had known each other forever.

Sadness that lingered behind the cerulean waves, wisdom exuding in waves off her body. She looked wise and mature for someone her age. Amy was only two years older than Camila, but the calluses and worn out fingers spoke much about her past and the work that she has done for the city. 

Was Amy Ashryver-Sayeed the woman she idolised ever since she entered college? Or was there more than what met her eyes?

-

tag list; @wildsayeed @sayeedbound @mrskamilxh @witchesplayatnight @kamilahsayeed-owns-me @voltos9 @justahumblepie @lightning-fury @iddevouryou @samgtt700 @h-doodles (let me know if you want to be in my tag list!)

[queenbirbs]

sooner or later | Ethan Ramsey x MC

WC: 6k+

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: N*FW

Summary: In which Ethan and Sloane go furniture shopping, have a conversation, and reach the end of their stalemate. 

+ + +

“Hold the elevator!”

Sloane reflexively throws her arm out, stopping the doors from closing as footsteps pound down the hallway. Leaning against the opposite wall, Doctor Mirani grumbles at the idea of having to wait five more seconds. Over her shoulder, Sloane throws him a sheepish smile, to which he rolls his eyes at. 

“Thanks,” the voice says again, closer this time. 

She releases the door and steps back, allowing Ethan into the car. The glance they share is quick and flustered (similar to the last time they were this close, which was at her apartment before the trial) before they scurry to opposite ends of the car as the doors clink shut. 

Bringing up her phone, she pretends to find her home screen interesting; across the space, Ethan taps at the smartwatch on his wrist. The reflection in his glasses reveals that he’s merely swiping through the two screens, though his focused gaze would make it seem like he was reviewing an extremely important case. She bites back a grin at his fumbling attempt to act busy.

“Are you all doing anything for the holiday?” she asks as the elevator clanks to life and starts down into the parking garage. 

“Avoiding useless chit-chat,” Mirani snaps, not bothering to look up from the file in his hands. 

Sloane shrugs, considering a response from him a success in and of itself, before she looks over to Ethan. He’s still swiping across his watch, but he does catch her gaze to lift an eyebrow at her. It definitely does not make her insides feel funny. 

“Considering I’m not five years-old, no.” 

“I didn’t know if you would take Jenner out and--” 

A loud screech cuts her off. Several bangs sound against the top of the car. The elevator continues its descent as the walls rattle around them; Sloane grabs for the handrail when the car drops a few more feet, before it jerks to a sudden stop.

The three of them hold their breath, waiting. 

Then the elevator starts again, clanking its way down. No one speaks until the car slows and the doors open to the dimly-lit parking garage.  

“Thank god,” Mirani mutters. “If I had to be stuck in a confined space with the two of you, I would’ve offed myself with the edge of this folder.” Tucking it under his arm, he throws a hand up at them in a half-assed goodbye before heading for the far row of cars. 

“Goodnight to you, too, Zaid,” she calls, her voice echoing across the cavernous space. His immediate departure leaves the two of them alone, hovering on the concrete as the elevator doors close shut behind them. Ethan shoots her a curious glance.

“Did you get off on the wrong floor?” he asks. The question takes her off-guard for a moment, before she remembers the reason for her change in routine. 

“No, I’m waiting on--” she barely gets the sentence out before a figure comes jogging up to them. “Bryce! Hey, sorry I’m a little late, I got caught…” she trails off, taking notice of his outfit as he slows his approach. “Wait, why are you wearing scrubs?” 

Bryce’s handsome face pulls into a wince. 

“Yeah, sorry, Slo. Doctor Zimmerman wanted me here since two of the other residents called out sick. But now I get to assist on a carotid endarterectomy!” His attempt to point out the brighter side of her plans completely falling through does nothing to make her feel better. He must be able to tell by the look on her face, because the wince is back as he reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. “Listen, we can go tomorrow, right?” 

Sloane nods, trying for a smile. She knows it isn’t his fault that he was called in, just as she knows it isn’t her fault that she has a friend that’s excited to come in on their day off to help pick out plaque out of someone’s neck. 

But that doesn’t help her get over the fact that her plan is in shambles now. 

“Yeah, we’ll go tomorrow.” She steps aside, letting Bryce slap the call button for the elevator. The doors spring openly immediately and she nods at the little wave he throws her before the elevator takes him up. Only then does she let out a ragged sigh, pushing the hair out of her face for good measure, and tries to think of a solution. 

“Cancelled date, I presume?” 

She nearly jumps at the question, spinning to see Ethan standing off to the side, where he must’ve lingered to overhear the short conversation.  

“No, actually,” she explains, “he was supposed to help me pick up Sienna’s birthday present. He’s the only person I know with a big enough vehicle.”  

It’s not her imagination that his jaw suddenly unclenches and that the tightness around his eyes fades. His jealous streak is one of his unfortunate qualities that she finds attractive, if only for the enjoyment of experiencing the creative ways he works it out of his system. 

Or, well, experienced. 

That’s all in the past now, of course. They both set their feelings out on the table and walked away, after she was assigned to the diagnostics team as a junior fellow. All attempts to make it work never got off the ground, and after a while, Sloane stopped bothering to try. She worked hard to get where she is, and she didn’t see the point of wasting precious time by knocking at a door that was never going to budge. 

“Oh.” He fidgets with the strap of his bag for a moment, hesitation written in the dance of his fingers across the buckle. “Well, I do. Have a car, that is.” 

Sloane stops herself from replying with something stupid, like of course I know you have a car, don’t you remember the time we nearly tore each other’s clothes off in that dark parking lot of that restaurant when we couldn’t wait to get home? 

Instead, because she’s an adult and she understands what he’s hinting at, she goes for: “Oh, no, thank you, but I couldn’t ask that of you.” 

“But you didn’t ask,” he clarifies, a hint of a smirk on his lips. “I’m offering.”  

“No, really, it’s fine -- the store is down in Stoughton and that’s nearly an hour’s drive with traffic and I’m sure you would much rather go home than--”

“Sloane.” 

“--and you probably need to take Jenner out and feed her dinner and this would take too--”

“Sloane.” 

His interruption draws her up short. That smirk of his softens into something fonder, something she recognizes as that smile that only seems to appear when she’s around. Stepping closer, he nods his head at the nearest row of cars and pulls his key fob from his pocket. “Really, come on. If it’s as far as you say it is, we need to get there before it closes.”

“But what about Jenner?” 

“My sister is in town with my nephew, who will use any excuse to play with that dog. She’ll be well-cared for,” he assures as he steps backward towards the cars. “Trust me.”

Desperate enough to want her surprise to be perfect (and helpless to resist such a generous offer), Sloane follows him to the sleek Jaguar F-Pace that hums to life at the press of his key. It’s a world away from the twenty year-old Toyota Camry with its infamous faulty transmission that she drove during college. Sliding into the passenger seat, she inputs the address into the car’s navigation and sits back as Ethan maneuvers them out of the garage and onto the street. The students from across the bridge are already on the move, witches and firefighters and jedis and superheroes making their slow trek down to the bars off Congress Street. 

With the musical lilt of the classical station filling the car, they don’t really talk until they make it out of the city. 

“Thank you for doing this,” Sloane tells him over the sounds of Beethoven’s third symphony as they break away from the traffic on 93-South. The sea of headlights behind them acts as a backlight, making his eyes seem that much bluer in the rapidly-approaching dusk when he glances over at her. 

“You’re welcome.” His eyes flicker over to her for a moment before darting back to the road ahead. “I have to admit, I was relieved when this turned out to be nothing more than a birthday present excursion.” 

She frowns at his words, looking over at him for clarification, but his gaze is focused straight ahead. 

“What do you mean? I told you that’s what--”

“Originally, when you were talking to that scalpel jockey--”

“You mean Bryce,” she corrects. 

“--right, sure,” he gives a little shrug, as if her amendment means nothing. “I’m glad to know that it wasn’t going to be anything more than this.” He motions to the highway, to the pockets of traffic that they speed past in the fast lane. 

She resists the urge to cross her arms over her chest, but she can’t clamp down on the question that spills out of her mouth. 

“And what if it was?” Sloane meets his eyes when they move off the road and connect with hers. There’s a world of heartache and envy and regret swirling in them, blue flashing hot and quick under the red glow of the running lights ahead. “Because if you’re going to make me sit here and try to make me feel bad for wanting to be with someone else, after we’ve been over and done with for three months, then you’re going to take the next exit and I’m going to catch my own ride back home.” 

His head jerks to the side.

“That’s not what I’m--” he reaches across the console as if to comfort her, before he pulls back at the last second, as if remembering his place. “--hey, no, I -- wait, we’re not over with--” 

She plays him at his own game, cutting him off before he can continue his fumbling explanation. 

“Then what would you call it? After that conversation we had at the hospital, everything regressed and we went back to how it was before. It was like being in that awful limbo after Miami, where we both knew what we wanted, but one of us was too afraid to act on it.”

Ethan watches her for a moment longer, before he feigns interest in the semi in front of them. The space inside the cabin becomes tense and quiet, punctuated only by the somber notes of the symphony’s second movement and the occasional car horn. Sloane faces the side window and watches the cars they speed past, at the kids sleeping in the backseats and the drivers texting and the couples laughing and the friends singing along to the radio. She hates the silence, hates that she let herself hope that this time would be different, that he’d fight for what he believes in, what she’s sure they both want, rather than this miserable state of uncertainty they’ve been living in since--              

“You’re right.”

Turning from the window, she takes in his profile, sure that she’s misheard. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re right,” he repeats, his gaze still set firmly ahead. His fingers turn a distinct shade of pale from where he clenches the steering wheel. “I was -- I am afraid.”

“Of what?” She hates how quickly her question comes, but she doesn’t want to give him a chance to breathe on it, to fumble for some half-hearted explanation after such an admission. 

Catching her eye, he gives her a slow, sad smile, as if he can read her thoughts. 

“In one-point-four miles, take exit nineteen-bee toward Central Street.” 

“We’ll be there shortly,” he says instead, avoiding her question as he gestures to the navigation screen between them. “Do you need to notify them that we’re close?” 

Sloane watches him for a long moment, deciding whether or not to push at him. In the end, she relents and lets him have his poor attempt at avoidance. 

“No, they’ll have everything ready at the front for me.”     

“Oh. Well, good -- that’s… good.” 

“Yep.”

“Listen, I am aware that -- I mean, I know that we need to sit down and have an actual conversation about--”

“In point-three miles, merge onto Harrison Boulevard.” 

“Look, Ethan, we’re almost there. You can save it for the drive back.”

+

True to their promise, the store has her items ready to go when they arrive. It takes them all of ten minutes to go from pulling into the parking lot to jumping back onto the highway. The five boxes that contain Sienna’s new bedframe are all tightly packed into the trunk. 

Sloane texts the group chat with Jackie and Elijah, who assure her that Sienna is already out with them for the Halloween bar crawl and that she won’t be home until after three a.m. 

Any chance of having that conversation stalls when a ringtone plays through the speakers as Doctor Toussaint’s name pops up across the display. They spend the next forty minutes discussing a case of nephrotic syndrome with her. Ethan volleys questions over to Sloane to gather her input. She gets a laugh out of him when she’s able to pull up the Oxford Textbook of Clinical Nephrology on her phone through her e-reader app.    

“Why on earth do you have that in your library?” he asks, keeping his voice down as to not interrupt Toussaint’s monologue about opioid addictions and their role in damaging kidney functions. 

“I needed it for an internal medicine class. I paid more for it than I did my rent at the time.” She can’t help but smile when Ethan chuckles at her explanation. Their back-and-forth with Toussaint continues for the rest of the ride, until they pull up to Sloane’s apartment complex and Ethan hangs up. After throwing on his hazards and opening his trunk, he offers to help bring up the boxes. 

Deciding that she isn’t so prideful as to try and carry them all upstairs by herself, Sloane agrees. It takes them three trips, the last with both of them hauling the largest box through the front door and unceremoniously dropping it straight onto the hardwood. 

“There’s nothing… breakable in there, right?” he asks between sharp inhales. Sloane forgoes words in favor of shaking her head, drawing her own quick breaths and deciding that her choice to skip the gym in favor of watching reruns of Fringe with Elijah was probably not the best idea. 

As Ethan straightens up from the dining chair he’s been leaning on for two minutes, Sloane moves to the purse she dumped on the table and retrieves a twenty-dollar bill. 

“You’re not planning on handing that to me, are you?” His expression twists into a frown as he shakes his head. “I told you--”

“Ethan,” she sighs, gesturing towards him again with the money. “It was over forty miles.”

“I drive farther than that when I go up to Sudbury to see Naveen.”

“That’s not my point,” she interrupts. “I want to compensate you for the time and energy and helping me carry all this shit up here. I know this isn’t how you wanted to spend your night off.” 

The frown on his face deepens, though the tightness around his eyes does diminish some. It’s a familiar look that she’s spotted a few times since their parting. Something she only sees when he’s looking at her. While she tells herself that it’s disappointment or frustration -- in the quiet of her bedroom, late at night, she knows it’s regret. And maybe that’s why she’s been holding on to that sliver of hope all these months, those scraps of maybe-someday thoughts. And maybe that’s why she gets a little weak in the knees when he sets those eyes of his onto her now and takes the few remaining steps between them. His hand drifts up and takes her outstretched one. 

Only for him to pull the money from her fist and shove the dollar back into her purse. 

That flame inside her ribcage that she’s been feeding for months flares to life at the movement, at how close he is to her now. 

“Why do you assume that my evening is ruined if I choose to spend it with you? It’s just the opposite.” 

His admission takes her by surprise, though she stamps it out in favor of the bitterness she’s been carrying around since that day in the atrium.          

“Well, because when you said we’d ‘make it work’ and then proceeded to ignore me outside of work for three months, I assumed that’s what making it work meant to you. That we were…” she pauses to drag in a breath, unable to blame it on the heavy lifting this time. 

“That we were…?” he prompts. 

“Done.” 

Ethan winces at the sharp response. His hand lifts into the space between them before he pulls it back and crosses his arms. “It’s difficult.” 

“I know that,” she admits. “But what’s not difficult is letting me know, so I don’t feel like I’m waiting for something that will never happen.” 

His eyes widen at her words. “No, that’s not -- what I mean is: what we do is important. On that we agree, yes?”

“Yes,” she nods.

“And, on that same level of importance -- for me, at least -- is you. And the only way I apparently know how to focus on both things is to… completely shut out one of those, because I don’t know how to mix them.” 

“So, we don’t.” 

He makes a confused noise in his throat. “I’m sorry?” 

She shrugs off his bewilderment. “I don’t have a roadmap for a situation like this, but you act as if we aren’t fully-capable adults. You said it yourself: our work is important. So, if we were to hypothetically get together, when we’re at work, that’s it.”

“That’s it?” he repeats, unable to hold back his trademark scoff, even as a grin dances at the corners of his lips. 

Sloane leans her hip against the table and lifts an eyebrow at his skepticism. “You make this seem like it’s the hardest question on the Step 2 test.”   

“Right now it feels like the Step 3, actually,” he quips. Shifting closer, he comes to stand next to her, while giving her the space to move away if she chooses. Sloane scoots closer. “You make it sound so simple, but there will be times when it’s not going to be so easy.” 

“Good,” she hums as she tips her head up to look him in the eye. “Because nothing worthwhile is.” 

There’s that sharp huff of laughter and he’s shaking his head, but then he’s leaning down and she’s leaning up and--

--then Paul McCartney starts singing about flying in from Miami Beach. 

“Is that the Beatles?” Ethan asks, straightening to look around the room for the source of the noise.  

“Yeah, it’s -- my landlord, he’s afraid of communists, it’s a whole… thing,” Sloane tries to explain as she scrambles for her phone, retrieving it from her purse and swiping to answer the call. 

“Hey, Farley, what can I--” she’s interrupted by a garbled shout about her car blocking the fire lane and the charge from the city he’ll tack onto their rent if it isn’t moved within the next minute. The complaints are loud enough that Ethan steps back to locate his keys. Sloane imagines Farley with a bucket in hand, dousing the little flame in her chest until it’s nothing but a whisp of smoke. “Okay, I’m -- yes, I’ll move it right now. Yes, right now right now.” 

Hanging up before he can finish his tirade, she walks Ethan to the door. 

“I’m--” she starts and then cuts herself off with a shake of her head, “--thanks again for your help. Really, I can’t thank you enough.” 

“Yes, of course.” He switches the key fob to his other hand and then back again, before clearing his throat. “I should--”

“Yeah, it’s late.” Sloane opens the door for him and leans back against the handle, trying to keep her hands to herself. They have time, she tells herself as Ethan bids her goodnight and disappears down the hallway. 

It’s what she keeps telling herself when she shuts and locks the door and turns to see the five massive boxes taking up most of the entryway. Remembering the whole reason for their trip, she begins moving them back into Sienna’s bedroom. 

She’s dumping out the steel posts from the second box when there’s a knock at the door. Pulling out her phone, she checks for any texts from drunken roommates that might have misplaced their keys and are coming back earlier than planned, but there’s no new message in the group chat.   

So, to find Ethan on the other side of the door is a nice surprise. 

“Did you forget something?” she asks.

“No, I -- I got to my car and realized that I left things just like I did last time.” His breathing is a little erratic and he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands as he steps inside and hovers next to the couch. Sloane closes and locks the door behind her. “I needed to come back and finish that conversation we were having, or... whatever it was. I wanted to tell you how much I’m… disappointed in myself, knowing that my worries about us being together might have stopped you from finding happiness with someone else. Someone who could--”

“Ethan.”

“--no, it’s,” he shakes his head with a sigh. “Earlier, in the car, I shouldn’t have said those things. I shouldn’t have expected on you to always be there. It was selfish of me.” 

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” she interrupts. His face falls at her words, prompting her to shake her head at him as she approaches, a fond grin on her face. “All we’ve done is talk.”

The teasing tone of her voice finally reaches past his nervousness; his shoulders loosen and his eyes light up, fixed on hers as she comes to a stop in front of him. She places a hand on his arm and squeezes there, her thumb running across the soft cotton of his shirt and feeling the warm skin beneath. He reaches for her and brings her closer, with a hand at her waist and another carding through the loose strands of her hair at her neck. 

Tipping her head up, he leans down and presses his lips to hers, soft and unhurried with the lingering hesitation he must still feel. Sloane pulls back and then dives in, tilting her head to deepen the kiss. She swipes her tongue at his bottom lip and makes a little noise of pleasure when he opens for her. 

It’s all new again, at first, until it’s not. Until the familiarity comes rushing back, like pulling a book from a shelf and re-reading it, the interest sparking again as the pages turn and the story unfolds its familiar pathways.  

Sloane fits her arms around his shoulders and draws him closer, until the solid lines of his body are pressing against her. He pulls back to catch his breath and she can’t help but admire his swollen lips, pink and flushed from their kisses. His eyes meet hers; it’s a storm brewing over the ocean, the blue shrouded by the ever-expanding black of his pupils. Under his watchful gaze, she places her lips to the base of his neck. Her name escapes him on the end of a sigh, his grip tightening on her as she nips at his stubbled skin, brushing a trail up the sharp line of his throat. Her attention elicits a groan from him, as he slides his hands over her hips and down under her ass. Picking her up, he carries her down the hallway and into her bedroom, where he knocks the door shut with his foot and settles her down onto the bed below him. 

The room is too dark for her to see him properly, lit only by the street lights from across the channel. She stretches across to the lamp on her nightstand. A warm glow floods the room; it carves deep shadows along the walls and closes up the space, the city beyond her window disappearing behind their reflections.  

Sloane sits up to meet him for another kiss, tilting her head to let him trail kisses down her neck. His fingers pluck at her shirt, drawing it up and over her. 

“I missed this,” she says as she makes slow work of his buttons, pressing her lips each time to his chest as the shirt parts. 

“I missed you.” Something in his voice causes her to pull back, just far enough that she can catch his gaze with her own. He cups her jaw, his fingers tracing nonsensical patterns across the side of her neck. “I missed you,” he tells her again, sucking in a sharp breath when Sloane takes one of his hands in her own and kisses his palm. 

“Then let’s make up for lost time, then, hmm?” Unbuttoning the cuffs at his wrists, she pushes the shirt from his shoulders. With the wide expanse of his chest on display, Sloane can’t help but skim her lips across the warm skin. Goosebumps follow in her wake, the fine hairs on his stomach raising as she moves her mouth lower and lower. Ethan makes a strangled noise when her touch sweeps down to his belt. She unfastens the buckle and pops the button on his slacks, her curious hand dipping down to take hold of him. 

Her name is a curse on his lips, hissed under his breath as he grips her shoulders; his fingers are ten points of heat, marking her pale skin and spurring her on. Twisting her hand just so, she grazes a fingernail down and across the head. A groan rumbles out of his chest. He moves to sink his grip into her hair and tugs, tilting her head back so he can meet her for a rough kiss. 

It’s another long minute before they pull apart for air. Ethan brushes the loose strands of her hair back behind her ear, his thumb sweeping back and forth across her cheekbone. Catching his hand, she pulls him down onto the bed with her. 

They strip away everything else, until it’s only them and their shared heat, their bodies moving against each other as they map out old trails across familiar skin. There are sentences, speeches and conversations hidden in the languid touches and heady kisses, a shared language that lets them say what their mouths won’t -- not now, not when everything is just falling into place again. 

“Come here,” she beckons and he goes, crawling up to her and grinning when he slows down the progress by nipping at her shoulder, causing her to laugh as she moves him into place. The wooden slats of her headboard are cool against his back, evident in the way he shivers. 

All of his attention is on her, though; those potent eyes of his open and alert, tracking her movement as she straddles his thighs. Then she sinks down, rocking her hips against his, and she revels in watching those eyes clench shut. His mouth falls open with a ragged sigh and his hands latch onto her waist. She takes one of his hands and drags it down her body, suppressing her own shiver when Ethan chuckles at her insistence. 

“I don’t remember you being this bossy,” he murmurs against her chest, where he’s making lazy circles with his tongue across her tightened nipple. 

Sloane starts to serve him a clever comeback, but he chooses right then to put his hand to work, the bastard, so the only sound she can respond with is a whine. She can feel the smirk on his face as he circles where she needs him most. 

“Stop teas--” she cuts herself off with her own strangled moan when he slips two fingers inside her. Pushing up onto her knees, she spreads her thighs, humming in appreciation when Ethan correctly reads into the movement. His touch goes deeper, his fingers gently thrusting in and out as his thumb rubs quick circles against her clit. “Oh, god, keep going. Don’t stop, keep--”

“There’s not a force on this earth that would make me stop,” he says, his voice gone deep with hunger. His cock is a heavy weight against her belly. “Not when I’ve got you like this.” He punctuates his sentence with a twist of his fingers, moving in tandem with his lips on her breast -- and here, here she could fall apart only by his touch and his voice. 

But that isn’t how she wants to go. 

“I think you’re mistaken,” she tells him, clearing her throat when the words seem to get all tangled up. 

He hums in curiosity, pulling off her breast with a wet pop. Then: another hum, this time tinged with confusion when she pulls up and away out of his touch. 

“Are you all right? Did I hurt--” 

She stifles his worries with a finger to his lips. Dipping down, she gives him a kiss of assurance, using her finger to drag at his bottom lip until he opens for her again. And then, with her clever distraction at play, takes both of his hands in hers. 

“I’m the one who’s got you,” she grins, bringing his hands up and curling them up around the thin wooden slat next to his head. 

A warm shot of pleasure soaks her insides when his gaze scans over her, as if deciding if he wants to play into her game. His answer comes when his fingers clench tight around the wood. 

“It appears you do.” And if his words are a little too wistful for what the moments calls for, when he’s looking at her like that and her body is singing for release, she doesn’t mention it. Between the two of them, they have plenty they need to unpack -- but it’ll happen naturally, this time. Because they have it, which is a luxury Sloane never could bring herself to hope for, before the hearing. 

“Rookie?” Ethan asks, his fingers flexing around her headboard, as if suppressing the need to reach out to her.

She pulls herself out of her own head with a toss of her hair. Reaching down, she takes hold of him and lowers herself down, taking him slowly, filling herself up with him. That pleasure swells when she glances up to see Ethan watching her. His breath escapes him in hurried pants as she moves, rocking her hips down and arching her back. Her fingernails dig into the dewy sweat that covers his shoulders, slick heat under her palm. 

The wood in his hands creaks under the strain. 

“Let me touch you,” he begs into the little space between them, then again, muffled against her lips when she tilts his head up for a wet kiss. He thrusts into her, matching the rhythm she’s created. 

“You are.” 

He meets her next kiss with a growl, breaking it off to nip at her jaw. 

“Let me have you,” he demands instead, working his hips faster into her and driving himself right where she wants him most. The idea of the rest of him wrapped around her isn’t such a bad one, then. 

She puts her hands on his and the signal is loud and clear. In the span of a second, he’s gripping her waist and circling his hips and she’s grinding down onto him, desperate for a release that seems to always be just out of reach, as if she’s trying to hold a fistful of sand.    

Then: his touch, slipping down to where they’re joined and rubbing against her bundle of nerves; and then: neon, every color known to science exploding at the corners of her vision, a brilliant burst of technicolor that drowns out everything else. The lines of her body go taut, rigid with her orgasm as marrow-deep pleasure knocks into her. 

Beneath her, Ethan is cursing and crying her name as their bodies jerk and tremble. They collapse into each other, somehow, their sweaty palms sliding along skin to soothe and calm. Color is soon replaced by shadow, as Sloane settles down against his side and tries in vain to stay awake. She blinks once, twice, and then the shadows melt away as sleep takes their place. 

+

She’s warm. 

It’s the first thing she takes note of when she wakes up, the blanket tucked between her legs and pillowed under her head. The comforting weight around her waist shifts. Another warmth tickles at her chest -- his thumb, she realizes, brushing along the curve of her breast. Sloane opens her eyes, preparing to roll over into Ethan’s embrace. 

“Fuck!” she hisses at the bright sunlight that seeps through the curtains. Grabbing the blanket, she flings it off and untangles herself from its hold. “Did you hear them come home last night?” 

Mentally crossing her fingers, she whirls to face him, cursing her luck when she realizes that it’s all she’s going to get of him this morning: a gorgeous eyeful, before she has to put clothes on and go find Sienna and admit that yes, she was a shitty friend who chose getting laid over putting her new bed together, and yes, that’s right, she already had the air mattress deflated to have room for said new bed, and was her night on the couch comfy at all? 

“Yes,” he grumbles, propping himself up on his elbow to watch her. “They all came back around four a.m. Very loud and very drunk, I might add.” When she continues searching the floor in lieu of responding to his complaints, he continues. “Do you have somewhere to be? You’re scheduled off today, you know.” 

“Yes, I know.” Failing to locate her clothes from last night, Sloane rushes over to her dresser and yanks open a drawer. “I requested off because I thought I would be crafting furniture until the wee hours. Not sleeping off an orgasm.” 

Ethan makes a face at the wee hours phrase, then makes another -- much, much different -- face at the mention of sex. And then he laughs at her. 

She pauses, gripping her Oxford University shirt with the fist she wants to knock against his shoulder. 

“Why are you laughing at me?”  

He throws back the sheets and pats the empty space next to him. 

“Come back to bed.” 

“I can’t. Her room is still a mess and it’s her birthday and I feel terrible. I’m going to--”

“Sloane,” he sighs, affection working its way through his expression as he smiles. “It’s done. Come back to bed.”

She doesn’t, but she does stop putting her clothes on.  

“What do you mean?” 

“What I said. It’s done.” At her noise of frustration, he finally gives up on messing with her and lays it out. “I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. I thought about waking you up for another round, but I know you don’t get enough sleep as you should, so I tired myself out by building her bed. I even figured out the mattress-in-a-box thing and put on those Pepto-pink sheets. So, like I said before: it’s done.” 

All the anxiety floats out of her at his words. “And,” he shrugs, “I felt bad for leaving her room like that, even though your distraction was the reason for its state.” 

She tries not to play into his barb, but she can’t resist it -- as is her struggle with all things Ethan Ramsey. 

“Oh, I was the distraction? Need I remind you who kissed who first?” 

“Sure,” he agrees, settling her against him as she climbs back onto the bed. “Refresh my memory.”

+ + +

Author’s notes and general what-have-yous: 

“Nothing worthwhile is” quote is from Uncharted 4. Step 2 and Step 3 are separate tests that medical students take for the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination. 

Originally, this was going to be a ‘stuck in an elevator’ fic but then I wanted a little more space for them to move about (both figuratively and literally). And sex in a hospital elevator is questionable at best and illegal at worst.

Also, in my playthrough, MC convinces Farley to give them the apartment by using the ‘other renters are communists’ option, hence the Back in the USSR joke here. Which makes it less funny to explain, but I wanted to avoid the confusion. 

[creepingsenseofdread]

ok I usually don't make long posts but since the semester just started this could be helpful. I've had issues with college before but have acquired some helpful habits and ways to make things easier for me along the way, and wrote everything I could think of in a list. I know there's more, but these are the basics for me. All of this stuff was absolutely not intuitive to me in the past and I had to figure it out through trial and error and reading advice online. Also worth noting that school got a lot easier for me when I went on meds that helped my focus among other things. If absolutely nothing works for you, maybe you need more help and that's ok.

- if having a hard time, do the easy stuff first, and make tasks smaller until you can do them. If you're stuck on starting your easiest assignment, do whatever is easy, like read the first paragraph, or first line, or just open your notebook. Make it so easy for yourself that it would be ridiculous if you Couldn't do it.

- in general, do the thing that's due soonest first, or do the easiest thing first. Just remember that stuff often takes longer than you think, so don't procrastinate (easier said than done I know). Sometimes when it gets hectic, all you can do to manage your work is completing one thing at a time in order of priority. Whatever is due tomorrow and that’s it.

- use a pomodoro timer, or if the distraction is so bad you can't get off your phone, use an app like Forest that'll stop you. Same with blocking sites on your computer. These honestly only work half the time for me, but if you're determined at least try it.

- have hard start and stop times for your work, this semester I’ll try to be done with my homework by 8:30 PM unless there's a major upcoming deadline. Previous semesters the stop time was 9 PM or 10 PM. work like it's your job and that includes clocking out when your day is done. Yes sometimes I get really focused and keep working later, but that isn't a good habit (read next point).

- You have to give yourself leisure time. stopping work on time and taking a break to do something fun or just relax is really important for mental health.

- listen to music with no or really minimal lyrics, like instrumental, video game soundtracks. sounds obvious but sometimes I'll listen to the same album on repeat with words being sung and then wonder why I'm not focused. My favorite artists to listen to for hw rn: Louie Zong, R23X. Favorite video game soundtracks rn: stardew valley, night in the woods. I also made a study music playlist with lots of different artists and songs that are conducive to focusing, I recommend doing that too.

- if you're really unfocused and just sitting there doing nothing and struggling, just take a break and do something else for a bit. Do a chore, play a video game, get a snack or water, go for a walk, then get back to work

- on the flip side, if you get hyper focused, remember to actually eat and drink and sit up straight and unclench your jaw

- GO TO SLEEP IF YOU NEED IT. seriously, I know it can be hard, but if you get nothing done in a day just go to sleep on time, because if you start the next day tired you're already making work more difficult for yourself.

- also be nice to yourself. like in the previous point, if you need sleep, then sleep. eat when you need to, take breaks when you need to. forgive yourself for an unproductive day and try again tomorrow. if you don’t you’re more susceptible to burning out.

[teddy-bea]

inscribed on back of photo, mom’s cursive: Dale’s back from camp!!  Teddy INSISTED on coming with us to the airport.  She burst into tears when she saw her.  She’s got the softest soul I’ve ever known.

i persist and resist the temptation

twins have a way of knowing things.

but this wasn’t about twins.  this wasn’t about honey calling teddy, throwing her abruptly out of her sleep at three in the morning, arm fumbling around her nightstand for her phone and lifting herself up from under the nest of auggie’s arm to the accusatory, panicked voice of her twin, her honey, asking her, “are you pregnant?”

(to which she’d assured her she absolutely was not, she’d just been feeling sick since they’d gotten back from paris, and she had a doctor’s visit planned for the morning — but if anything, they were just hoping it wasn’t anything severe, anything like what their father was currently quarantined with.)

(fast-forward seven hours later, and her doctor is telling her that she — and her BABIES — are perfectly healthy.  how’s that for twin telepathy?)

but this, again, is not that story.

this is about daily.

her name wasn’t actually daily — until she was sixteen, at least, when their parents let her legally change it from “remy” — but it’s what they’d all called her since she was born.  apparently, it was because she’d cried when she was a baby.  “daily,” her dad would always bemoan to her., and he’d always do it with a smile on his face because her dad did everything with a smile on his face.  “she cries daily.  daily, daily, daily.”  and it had just stuck.  she’d been daily ever since.

it suited her, really, because daily was a cool name.  and daily remy graham was the coolest person teddy had ever known.  and heck, remy had been a cool name too.  daily’s destiny had preceded her.

she was loud, but she was gentle, she was outspoken, but she was kind.  she wanted to be a rockstar when she grew up, and she settled for being teddy’s lead guitarist since she was fifteen years old and always told her that it was never “settling” in her eyes.

honey was her twin, olive was her best friend, auggie was her soulmate, her siblings were her life, but daily was her person.  

she was the one who stood up for her — even if she was only eighteen to teddy’s naive sixteen — when her first record label tried to shortchange her in a lousy deal.  she looked over every contract, combed through every deal, made sure teddy was never settling for less than she was worth.  she cracked jokes with the band, the opening acts, was everyone’s best friend on tour, in the studio, online.  you couldn’t not be magnetized by her.  it had been the same way at school — she’d just been that good.

so, when teddy had been home for christmas, just before everything in their world had been rocked to its absolute core, teddy might have seen something that wasn’t supposed to be.  a poem — not that that was rare, by any means, since daily always carried notebooks and a tablet with her, but this one seemed deeply personal.  this one, teddy could tell, was about alex.

alex, who’d been daily’s high school boyfriend, who had turned into her college boyfriend.  everyone joked that she and alex were going to be the next ollie and josie, the next big fat “lifetime of togetherness” to come out of the graham family.

until daily broke up with him out of nowhere before college graduation.  he was going to propose, had asked her parents’ for her hand and everything.  teddy and bixby had planned a whole, ridiculous engagement party, were already in the process of writing a song rhyming every possible word with “daily” that they could.

there was no doubt in their mind, in any of their minds, that she and alex were going to get married.  they’d all set up a surprise party at the graham party when they knew that alex was planning the proposal, everyone hiding behind various furniture as if their entire family weren’t a towering forest of trees, and when daily came in — alone — shoving her keys into her bag, she’d looked at them in horror as they all came flying out from behind the couch with poppers and confetti, screaming out, “CONGRATULATIONS!”

“where is he?” bixby had asked with a furrowed brow.

daily frowned.  “who?”

belly snorted from their twin brother’s side.  “what do you mean who?  alex, dumbass.  mr. daily graham.”

“oh,” daily said, her face shifting ever so slightly.  “we broke up.”  

she said it like their dad used to announce rained out days in the park.

both her mom and teddy were moving for her at once, but daily backed up.  “i’m fine.   i thought i was surprising you guys by stopping by for dinner tonight,” she shot a pointed look at honey and teddy, “but apparently you guys already knew.”

“hey,” honey said softly, softer than usual.  “you good?”

“why wouldn’t i be?” daily breezed.  “it’s not like he was gonna propose to me.”  she saw the looks across all their faces and grimaced.  “all right, too soon.”  she shot them a peace sign — which, if you’ve ever met daily, you would know is her international symbol for ‘not okay, but don’t ask — and headed upstairs for her old room.

teddy gave it a solid three minutes before she was heading up after her.  honey was at her heels.

they weren’t the type of family who knocked — never had been — so teddy just stepped in and held the door open long enough for honey to follow her before lightly tapping it shut with her foot.  she didn’t see how everything could have gone so horribly south so fast.  alex had texted her ring ideas while she had been across from daily in tour rehearsals.  she was juggling classes and graduation prep and her relationship with alex and tour prep… had it been too much?

“day, what happened?”

“you guys,” daily groaned.  “there’s.  it’s.”  she looked up from where she was doodling line art into a notebook.  “it wasn’t going to work, okay?  i have so much shit going on with graduation and getting ready to leave across the country and—”

“—if this is about me—”

“—it’s not about you,” daily’s voice nearly broke.  “it’s about me.”

something in honey’s stance moved, her jaw clenched and unclenched, her eyes softened.  “oh.”

teddy looked from honey to daily before she was looking around daily’s bedroom, seeing the pictures along her dresser and bookcase that had changed in and out from over the years — there was still the picture of her holding belly when they were born, and the picture of her and honey and teddy and ollie all throwing their arms around crosby before he left for his volunteer trip to argentina.  there was one of her and their parents and a photobombing bixby at her high school graduation.  

daily had photos everywhere.  she documented everything, carefully and methodically.  her bedroom was a time capsule. her and teddy when teddy got her first record deal.  her and teddy on stage at the first talent show they performed at together.  her and her best friend naomi when they were six years old, laying out in the backyard with their hair hanging over the edge of the graham family pool.  naomi at sixteen in her cheerleading uniform, face scrunched into a scream of a laugh, and daily with her arms wrapped tightly around her, muddy in her soccer uniform.  her and naomi in a photobooth when they were twenty, studying abroad for a semester in florence — four photos of them getting closer, and closer, and closer still.  there were two pictures of her and alex, with his movie star good looks and his eyes glued to daily.  hers were off camera, always searching somewhere beyond her.

and it hit her.  like a ton of bricks.

“oh, daily,” she murmured, sitting down beside her.

“we don’t need to have a seventh heaven moment right now,” she said with a laugh, but she was wiping tears away with the back of her hand.  “like i said, i’m fine.  it sucked, and telling him sucked, and the whole thing fucking sucked, but it’s fine.  i’m fine.  he’ll be fine.  it’ll be fine.”

fine, fine, fine.

      in my defense, i have none --

the tape fast-forwards to that very same bedroom, but it’s years later.  there is no paris, not yet, but teddy is back in that house in los angeles, the one she has called her own since she was born.   the one she and her six siblings have always come back to, would always come back to.  she is back in this room, and she is looking for scotch tape to finish wrapping the last of her presents before tomorrow morning rolls around and everybody gets their gifts in shopping bags.

the journal is under her bed, untouched and forgotten about, but it’s there and it’s teasing her.  she just takes a peek, just a little one.  that’s all.  

it turns out, a peek is all she needs.

    -- for never leaving well enough alone

the tape is spinning once more, and it is early may.  teddy is waiting for her sister to pick up on facetime, sitting in front of her keyboard with her leg jiggling nervously.

“down in front,” auggie teases, cereal bowl in hand.  he kisses the top of her head once, and then once more, as the screen shifts and daily comes into view.  he gives her a nod of a greeting and ruffles his hand through teddy’s hear before he’s slinking down into the den to start his stream.

“what was so urgent, o’ talented one?” daily hums, sitting up with her bedhead.  there is a soft grunt from beside her, a muffled, “hey ted,” from a still-dead-to-the-world naomi.  daily is off camera for a second but teddy can hear the soft, unmistakable sound of a kiss from anywhere, before she is standing up from the bed and moving through her apartment, the early morning light of los angeles streaming in.

“gotta remember time changes one of these days.”

“yeah,” daily snorts.  “we both know that’ll never happen.”  she grabs a coffee mug off the counter, moving around her kitchen and looking back at the phone.  “what’s up?”

once she’s sitting down, teddy looks back down at the piano, and then back at her sister.  “first off, remember you love me.”

“nothing good ever starts with that.”

“i just.  i saw…something, at christmas.  and i kind of decided to run with it.”

daily’s eyebrow quirked up.  “what kind of something?”

“a poem kind of something?”

and then daily’s face went pale.

“just.  look.  you’ll never sing it — even if you should — so.  i thought i’d take a stab at it.  if you hate it, it never sees the light of day.  okay?”

daily sits back, taking a sip of her coffee.  “all right, maestro.”

i’m doing good, i’m on some new shit; been saying yes instead of no.  i thought i saw you at the bus stop, i didn’t, though

we were something, don’t you think so?

[histrionic-dragon]

World Security Council HQ, 2 days post-Chitauri attack

”I’m sorry, sir, I can’t let you in right now,” I said to the dark-haired man, all brusque, rude security guard--until I recognized him.

Banner gave me a small, tight smile. “I’m not the one whose temper you should be worried about right now,” he said. It sounded almost apologetic, which made an unsettling contrast to the satisfaction in the way his lips quirked. I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant when he did that quick, deferential step to the side again--and Captain America pushed through the door.

And holy shit.

I mean, I grew up on Captain America cartoons--we all did, right? Especially if you were a certain kind of law-abiding, justice-loving kid, the kind who didn’t like to play the bad guys in cops and robbers and never really liked the kids who did. (Don’t judge me. I’m in the security business and work for an intergovernmental agency. Yes, I like rules. If that surprises you, you’re pretty dumb.) And then I got older, and read the textbooks, and read a few biographies because, hell, if you’ve got to do a history report you want to do it on something interesting, and there’s still the same kind of draw there, even if it’s messier and darker. I always liked the “messier” parts--there’s a thrill in smacking yourself in the head until you can see historical figures as real people, people not much older than you even, who were making it all up as they went along.

So I knew a bit about Steve Rogers, but that didn’t prepare me for the aura of concentrated purpose he projected. I’ve known people who are charismatic--again, my job is protecting international politicians and diplomats, some of them are policy wonks about as engaging as my computer scientist brother-in-law but some of them can crank up the charm to about ninety--but this was something else. And the reason it was something else was because this wasn’t charm.

I knew a bit about Steve Rogers, and I had decided when I was about nineteen that if the guy really cared about justice that much, what he actually ran on probably wasn’t the heroic heartiness from the cartoons, it was more like rage and spite. This is news to no one who’s ever thought about the guy, but I was a second-semester college freshman and thought it was a brilliant new insight.

And none of that was exactly wrong, but all of it fell indescribably short.

Captain America pushed through the door, and my reaction was kind of a collision between your automatic “. . . that’s really Captain America” and man, this guy is pissed.

The funny thing is that my reaction was to just--get out of his way. Not like I was scared of him; it wasn’t that kind of angry, that kind of focused, the one that means someone’s a threat. It was just “this guy has a job to do, let him do it.” But that’s also something we’re trained to, you know, not listen to when your job is to not let people through that door, so I took half a step closer to the middle of the hallway and asked if he had an appointment.

He looked at me, and it didn’t take him a second to focus. He wasn’t distracted. I didn’t derail him. He just looked at me, stopped walking for a second, unclenched his jaw, and said, “No.”

“What’s your business?”

“Yesterday,” Banner said from behind him.

“They’ll see us,” said a slim redheaded woman who must have slipped through the door after Cap. That was--bad. I should have noticed her. But in my defense, Captain America. (Also, as I found out later, she was probably some kind of secret agent and above-my-paygrade levels of sneaky.)

She wasn’t wrong. Someone--someone also above my paygrade, probably, because it wasn’t a voice I recognized--was already talking in my headset, saying to let them in. I stood aside and Cap kept walking with just the tiniest nod. Banner made to follow him, but the redhead grabbed his arm. “Might work better if he goes alone, first,” she said.

He frowned for a second, then nodded, and things could have gotten very awkward waiting in the hallway except for the fact that Cap had left the door open, and I guess refused to let the Council move from the outer meeting room to one of the smaller offices.

“Captain Rogers, this is unexpect--”

“If you weren’t expecting this, you’re dumber than I thought.”

Flat, simple, like disgusted was the best he could bring it up to, and he was trying very hard to be polite.

“Captain, I--”

“I asked around,” he said, conversationally now, but I could still feel the anger somehow. “You know. ‘Who the hell thinks it’s a good idea to send a nuclear weapon at a major city?’ Your names came up.”  

Silence.

I used the silence to try to breathe. To send a what?

“I just learned what those were, what is it, two weeks ago, now?” he went on. “Funny, the whole information packet was awfully bit on the main purpose is to never, ever use them.”

"There were aliens coming out of the sky,” someone began.

“Yeah, and that wasn’t where the missile was heading, or Stark wouldn’t have had to redirect it.”

I was pretty familiar with the voice that spoke next, and frankly not surprised he was the one who remembered how to talk first. “Captain,” he said, all oil and charm and a hint of condescension, “I’m sure you’re the last person who needs an explanation of strategy or sacrifice. It was an extreme step, but you can’t disagree this was an extreme situation. This feels more like the reaction of a naive idealist than a battle-tested--”

“This is the reaction from a guy who crashed a plane to stop New York from getting bombed,” he growled, and that didn’t sound like Captain America for a second. Rage and spite. I hadn’t had a clue. “About a month ago, the way I see it.”

A very tense silence.

“And then I watched someone else do the same damn thing, only this time, the people sending the bombs were supposed to be on our side.”

“It’s done, though,” someone else said, finally. I didn’t like this guy either. “It’s done, and Stark re-routed the missile and there was no harm done, so--”

“Don’t act like that makes this not a problem.” And honestly, honestly, for a second there Captain America sounded a lot like my mother. Only more. I would probably have been paralyzed with second-hand guilt and disappointment and second-guessing all my life choices (rule-following kid, it happens) just from overhearing it, except I was still too busy being paralyzed with the whole  the WSC tried to nuke New York!? thing.

Banner was giving me a yeah, I know kind of grimace, and I didn’t even have the bandwidth to process that the most comforting part of this situation was a guy who could turn into a twenty-foot-tall violent toddler.

“What precisely are you going to do?” First bastard again. I could’ve told him this was a bad time to get snippy.

“Me?” Cap asked quietly. “Nothing. The people who’ve asked to interview me--and there’ve been a lot of them, I don’t know how some of them got into the clean-up zones--them? They might do something.”

Red-haired spy lady jerked her head at Banner and started down the hallway. I swear she winked at me as she walked past.

“You can’t do that,” said someone from inside the room.

“I think you don’t want to try to get any of us to follow the rules right now,” spy lady said.

“People have a right to know if their government is willing to eliminate them as a precautionary measure,” Banner said, his voice extremely dry. “Especially when there’s an invasion force they could target instead.”