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fruitcoops · 3 years

Note

I'm not the anon that asked about Remus and subspace/aftercare but I'd love to see more of it if/whenever you would like/have time💜 The way you write these things is so respectful, loving, and comforting and I love it so much!

Thank you so much, anon! I hope everyone who requested this enjoys it <3 Coops credit goes to @lumosinlove!

TW for implied smut (not super explicit), nudity, aftercare, subdrop/ subspace, restraint, tears (the good kind)

“Easy,” Sirius murmured into the sweaty skin of Remus’ neck, holding him close as he splayed his hand over Remus’ belly. The muscles jumped under his palm and a shudder ran through him as he scrambled for a clumsy hold on Sirius’ arm and shoulders. “Re, easy.”

A hoarse whine slipped out beside his heaving breaths and he let out a low moan when Sirius adjusted his grip to keep him upright. “More,” Remus begged, grinding his hips back even as he shook through the aftershocks. “More, more, more—“

“You’re done,” Sirius interrupted gently, pressing a kiss to the junction of his neck and shoulder.

Remus shook his head frantically. “No, no, I can do it, I gotta, no, please.”

“You’re done.” Sirius leaned back to take more of his weight despite the fact that he was practically holding Remus already. He slid the arm locked across Remus’ chest up to brush the damp hair from his eyes and guided his head to lay back against Sirius’ shoulder. “Deep breaths for me, just like that. In and out.”

“I can’t,” Remus panted, swallowing hard as he gripped Sirius’ thighs weakly. “Baby, please, just—just let me—one more time, just one more.”

“Remus.”

“I’m sorry.” A tear squeezed from the corner of his eye, following the path of many from the throes of pleasure that had left him gasping in the way Sirius loved. “Fuck, it’s always so much. ‘m tired, and ‘m horny.”

Sirius kissed his cheek and ran slow fingers through his curls until Remus went boneless into his chest with a punched-out sound; he closed his eyes and snuggled into Sirius, rubbing his cheek along his collarbone. “There you go,” he praised quietly. Slipping into subspace wasn’t super common for either of them, but when it did happen, Sirius was only too happy to help him through it.

If his memory served, Remus’ adrenaline would finally be draining and the steady slide into the land of the living was beginning. His own drop was a little different, but he recognized the signs well enough. “Love you,” Remus managed, watching him with hooded, adoring eyes. “Love you. Y’know I love you, yeah?”

“I do,” he assured him, laying back to pull Remus onto his chest—they were entangled almost instantly as Remus mouthed aimlessly along his chest and shoulders. Teeth sank into the ridge of his collarbone. “Ouch.”

“Sorry,” Remus mumbled, snuggling closer. His hair was a mess from both their hands and his lips were swollen red, sure to be chapped when the shine faded. Sirius felt guilty for half a second before remembering that Remus was the one who bit his own lips when he got close. And, fuck, had he been close.

“How are you feeling?” He inspected the light scratch marks on his forearms as Remus’ heartbeat went from rabbit-quick to just-worked-out. Maybe we should have chosen a different position for the end, he thought, then shook his head. Marks on his forearms would be less likely to get chirped than ones on his back.

“Alright.”

“How can I help you?”

Remus made a face, but didn’t open his eyes. His thigh was slick and tacky where it rested on Sirius’ hip. “Warm. Uncomfy. Don’t wanna go.”

That was the hardest part of aftercare, in Sirius’ opinion. Remus’ accent was pretty mild most of the time, but it came out full force after something intense and the small fragments of words rarely connected with Sirius’ limited English as his own brain came back online. Still, it was the least he could do after Remus worked him through five straight minutes of rambling French each time he dropped.

“Water,” Remus sighed, toying at the sheets with a trembling hand. “Sticky.”

“I’ll get a washcloth when you’re ready.”

“Take m’ with you.”

Sirius laughed softly and kissed his forehead, pushing the heel of his hand along Remus’ spine to work out any knots or stiffness. His knees ached, and he wasn’t even sure if he could carry his own weight before a few moments of rest. “I can’t carry you yet, mon coeur.”

“Sexy nickname. Sexy times.” Remus hitched his leg up over Sirius’ hip with great effort. “More?”

“Not right now, sweetheart.” A dopey smile spread over his face and Sirius felt a well of affection bloom in his chest. Remus hummed, running his thumbs over the middle of Sirius’ ribs. “Good job. Are you coming down a little more?”

“Mhmm.”

“I’m going to keep holding you, then get a washcloth, then some water, okay? But I’m not going anywhere right now.”

“Sticky.”

“I know. We’ll fix that in a minute or so. Was that good?”

Remus squirmed around until his front was pressed against Sirius side, sharing their radiating warmth. “Real good.”

He traced the outline of his mouth with the pad of his thumb and smiled when Remus nipped at it. “Your lips look sore.”

“Hmmm.”

“Next time, we should remember to use a gag if I’m not keeping an eye on you.”

Remus looked up at him eagerly, his gaze clearing of some of its fogginess. “Yeah, yeah, for sure.”

“How’s the rest of you?” Sirius watched him carefully as he straightened all his limbs with a heavy sigh, making faces here and there. “Nothing too bad?”

“Knees hurt, but I like it. Fingers are a little sore.” Mischief flickered over his face. “Ass hurts.”

“Color me shocked,” Sirius deadpanned, drawing a snort from him. “It wasn’t too much?”

Remus shook his head and stretched; his back arched, then popped, and he flopped back down with a contented noise. “Nope.”

“You look better now.”

He raised an eyebrow and rolled to face Sirius, bringing him closer with a hand on his cheek. “I needed that.”

Sirius nuzzled their noses together. “Any time, mon loup.”

They had moved well past adrenaline, latent arousal, and dizziness, and he was willing to bet Remus would be okay in bed alone for longer than a minute or two soon. The stress of a week of back-to-back interviews from people questioning every aspect of Remus’ life as the new rookie had just built and built and built until he had snapped over dinner, his rare temper flaring up before he looked Sirius dead in the eyes and all but demanded to be fucked until he couldn’t think about anything else.

“Way-it,” Remus said into the skin of his shoulder. Sirius hummed in question and felt a hand pull at his waist. “Weight, please.”

Sirius gathered him close and maneuvered until he could press down on Remus without making him feel trapped—my own personal weighted blanket, Remus teased. “Better?”

He felt the steady rise and fall under him and the buzz of a happy sound in his neck. Remus always got cuddly once he was done with the desperation and the confusion; that was the part that stuck around longest, and if Sirius was being honest, his favorite part of the whole process. For someone who was usually so ambiguous about physical contact, he could be wonderfully tactile.

There was a fine art to making sure the transition was as smooth as it could be—it was a team effort, despite the fact that Remus was fairly out of it for the first half. Sirius rubbed his back to get his attention and rested their foreheads together. “I’m going to get a washcloth and water, d’accord?”

Remus held him tighter.

“Re.” He trailed his finger along the slope of his nose, then tilted his chin up. “I need you to trust me. I’ll be right back for snuggles, but you’re sticky and we’re both dehydrated.”

Rebellion and familiar stubbornness sparked up. “No.”

“Three minutes. You can time me.” God, I hope that’s enough time.

“Stay with me.”

“You were just telling me you were uncomfortable and sticky.”

“Take me with you.”

“My legs are tired.” He combed both hands through Remus’ hair and watched his eyes, still a little red from tears and exertion, flutter slightly closed from the feeling. “Three minutes, and then I promise I’ll be right here. Do you trust me?”

Slowly, Remus nodded, and his hold released.

“Thank you.” Pull it together, Sirius reminded himself as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, using the edge as a crutch for a brief moment. His muscles begged to be left alone on the bed with Remus, but they both needed to get cleaned up before sleeping and Sirius really had to pee. Who knew holding a 180-pound hockey player in place as he shook and writhed would take so much effort?

Sirius. Sirius knew. And it had absolutely been worth it.

He rinsed his face in the sink and ran the damp washcloth over his arms—the scratches didn’t sting, but they were fading to a nice pinkish crosshatch with small lilac bruises where Remus’ fingertips dug in as he finally came, clinging to the forearm that held his back to Sirius’ chest. Without Sirius’ other arm applying pressure to his hips while his hand moved tight over his shaft, Remus would probably have slid right down onto the duvet in a puddle of endorphins.

“Stay awake,” Sirius reminded him as he entered their bedroom once again and settled into his old spot to lean Remus against his ribs so he could drink.

“I’m—” He cleared his throat and took a sip. Remus wasn’t much of a howler or moaner, not like Sirius, but his babbling and breathless sobs of overwhelming pleasure had certainly done a number on his throat. “I’m awake.”

“You sound stronger and look more like you.” Sirius stabilized his chin between his thumb and pointer, carefully wiping Remus’ face clean with the small towel; some of the frazzled edges smoothed out, and soon he just looked tired. Settled. Sated.

Those were all good things in Sirius’ book as he washed away some of the mess along Remus’ thighs once the tear tracks were gone. They would need to shower later, but he didn’t think either of them could stand long enough at the moment, and a bath would quickly turn into a nap. “You’re so good to me,” Remus whispered.

“Because I love you and you deserve good things.” He set his supplies aside and relaxed into the pillows, pulling Remus down with him. “Are you okay with not seeing my face at the end?”

“Yeah. It’s nice to change up sometimes.” His thumb moved in curling patterns over the light, mouth-shaped bruises littering Sirius’ skin. “You’ll tell me if I go too far, right?”

Sirius smiled and turned so they were face-to-face. “That’s my line.”

“You’re always bruised.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I really like it.”

“Kinky motherfucker,” Remus teased, poking his sternum. Sirius didn’t protest, just admired the grounded look on his face and the happy post-orgasm glow that rose high on his cheeks. “You’re staring again.”

“I stare at you all the time. You’re too pretty not to be looked at.”

Remus smiled, slinging a leg over Sirius’ hip and drawing him closer with an arm around his ribs; callused fingers tapped in random rhythms between his shoulder blades, and Sirius let the tension flow from his whole body. This is what people mean when they say ‘warm and fuzzy’, he thought sleepily, sinking into a gentle kiss from plush lips. The drop could be difficult to navigate sometimes, but it was always, always worth it to melt together at the end.

#fanfic #my fic #remus lupin #sirius black #coops #smut #aftercare #sweater weather #lumosinlove

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mageofseven · 4 years

Note

Bros and undateables react to MC who bakes in the middle of the night when stressed

I read this and my brain was like "so Beel's dream MC?". Of course, doing it out of stress isn't good, but Beel would definitely enjoy midnight sweets~

Anyway, will do, Nonnie! Please enjoy 😊

Also, like always, I'm splitting this into two parts: one for Brothers and the other Undateables for space reasons.

Lucifer:

Was heading to the kitchen to get himself more coffee to continue his paperwork.

When he saw the kitchen light on, he expected to catch Beel raiding the fridge.

Instead, he found MC at the oven, pulling out another set of cookies to add to the already monstrous pile of them on the counter.

"MC, what are you doing?"

The human jumped at his voice then gave an awkward laugh.

"Baking..."

"Yes, I have eyes, Love." He tells them. "What I mean is, why are you baking at 1am?"

"...I dunno."

The man sighed before approaching the human and turning off the oven.

"Regardless, I believe you've made enough cookies for one night. It's time for bed."

The human didn't move however.

"Darling?"

"I can't sleep..."

MC proceeds to explain how they get bad anxiety at night and how usually they can power through it, but with some school stressors on top of it, it became overwhelming and they just needed to do something to distract themselves.

The demon frowned.

"Love, you should have just came to me if you were having issues."

"But you're busy with your work--"

"That doesn't matter if you need me though."

The firstborn smoothed down their human's hair, which was messy.

"Now follow me to my room. I'll make sure you get some rest."

"But what about the cookies?"

"I'm sure Beel will wander in and take care of them for you."

Mammon:

Just got back from a party and was heading to the kitchen to grab a snack before heading up to his room

Only to find MC awake and... icing a cake?

"Oi! Human! What's with the cake?"

"I baked it."

"Well duh. But why?"

The human finished icing it, making the cake a colorful one with all of the brothers' colors.

"Because I wanted to." The human shrugged, not meeting his eyes. "Do you want a piece?"

"Uh.. sure." The demon mumbled.

He hopped onto the counter next to them as he watched them grab a plate and cut a piece for him.

MC handed the plate and a fork to him.

"It's red velvet." They said proudly.

"Yeah, yeah..." The man mumbled, taking a bite.

His eyebrows raised.

"Man, this is good!" His face went red at his words so he dialed back. "I mean, its okay... ya know."

MC gave a small smile, but it quickly fell into a heavier look.

"Hey, what's with that face??"

MC quietly hopped on the free counter next to him.

They didn't answered, just lightly kicked their feet as they stared at the floor.

"Oh c'mon, Babe, talk to me 'ere!"

MC sighed.

"I'm sorry. My anxiety is just bad tonight... I wanted to keep busy."

...oh.

The Avatar of Greed sat the plate down and put his arm around his Human.

"I don't get why you went to straight to baking..." The demon thought aloud. "But it doesn't matter. I'm home now, got that? You don't have to be anxious on your own..."

MC gave a soft smile.

"Thanks, Babe."

"Nothin' to thank me for. Now just let The Great Mammon take care of you!"

Leviathan:

This boy's sleep schedule is kinda fucked up

So it's not unusual for him to be up at 3am.

The Avatar of Envy ran out of pop in his room so he ventured out to the kitchen to get some more.

Which is how he found MC in the kitchen with like... seven cheesecakes???

"...What am I looking at?"

"Cheesecake."

"Well duh, normie." The demon rolled his eyes. "But why did you make cheesecake at like, 3am?"

Silence. Levi was suddenly worried that they hurt his Human's feelings and the look is their eyes definitely wasn't filled with the positivity that he's used to.

"Look..." He came up and hugged them close. "I just don't get it. Please don't be upset."

MC laid their head against their boyfriend's chest.

"It's fine." They mumbled. "I'm sorry... I just couldn't sleep so... I just came in to bake and this was the outcome."

"You should have just came to my room." He pulled back to look at them. "You could have been watching me play Rune Factory or something."

MC turned away from the demon, wrapping their arms around themselves.

"I'm not too clingy... right?"

"I... what?"

MC sighed.

"I didn't go to you because I was worried that you just wanted time to yourself and I'm always with you during the day..."

Levi just shook his head at every word they just said.

"Look... I always want my Henry with me." He blushed. "And yeah, I like my time away from other people, but that doesn't include you; just other normies."

"Are... are you sure?"

"I mean, yeah." He mumbled. "So... just don't worry about it, okay?"

Satan:

This man usually has a better sleep schedule but tonight he had stayed up reading just a bit too long.

He started heading to the kitchen to get some water and found MC with counter surfaces covered with cupcuakes while they looked really stressed and teary-eyed down at the one they were drawing on with icing.

"Kitten?"

MC jumped and quickly raised their hand to wipe their eyes.

Satan strode over and stopped them, looking down into their eyes.

"Kitten, what's wrong?" He wiped away a fallen tear.

They avoided their boyfriend's gaze.

"It's not working..." They mumbled.

"What are you talking about?"

"The cats aren't turning out right..." Their gaze falls to the dozen cupcakes with cat faces drawn on them in icing, but didn't meet the human's standards apparently.

The blonde raised an eyebrow. Surely they weren't in the kitchen crying over cupcakes because their designs weren't coming out well?

He sighed.

"Give me your hand." He took the human's hand with the bag of icing and brought it over a cupcake. He guided them with the design and helped them make a cleaner-looking cat.

"Thank you." MC sniffled.

Satan pressed a kiss to their forehead.

"Now what's the real issue, Little One?"

MC didn't say a word, just lightly sat the icing bag down and stared at the cupcakes.

Their boyfriend waited patiently and just rubbed circles on their hand with his thumb.

"I... I'm not gonna be sent away if I fail a class, right?"

"What are you talking about?"

MC shifted their gaze to the ground.

The blonde sighed once more and wrapped his arms around their waist.

"Talk to me, Kitten."

They sniffled.

"I'm failing my Hexes class." They mumbled. "This semester got so much harder and my grade took a nose dive... and the requirements to stay in the program say I gotta keep my grades in a certain range..."

"MC... you should have told me sooner." He tightened his embrace around them and set his chin on their shoulder.

"B-But you can't always help me--"

"Yes I can, Kitten. I'm always ready to help you when you need me."

"Satan..."

He kissed their cheek.

"And trust me when I say I would never let anyone take you away from me." He told them. "I'd fight the whole Devildom to keep you by my side."

He placed one last kiss on their temple.

"I'll help you study tomorrow. For now, let's clean up and get some rest."

Asmodeus:

Another one who just came home from a party and was heading towards his room when he heard a frustrated sigh come from the kitchen.

The demon poked his head inside and found MC staring down at... something. Whatever it was supposed to be, it just looked like charcoal now.

"Doll? What are you doing up?"

MC sighed.

"Baking." They eyed the black brick on the counter. "Or well... tried to anyway."

Asmo stepped inside and immediately went over to kiss his human.

They smiled a bit.

"Welcome home."

He smiled back and gave his Doll a big hug.

MC relaxed into the hug.

"My anxiety is just bad tonight for basically no reason." They explained, burying their face in the crook of his neck. "I was waiting for you to come home."

"Aww, Dolly." He pulled back and kissed their check. "You should have texted me! I would of been home sooner!"

"No, no, it fine." They pulled away. "Did you have fun?"

"Yep! Of course, I would have had even more fun if you came me, but I still made do~."

He gave them another kiss, this time on their nose.

"Now why don't we lay down now, hmm?"

MC smiled.

"Okay, thank you, Azzy."

Beelzebub:

Midnight kitchen raid. A usual nightly occurrence.

This time however, the Avatar of Gluttony's nose was greeted by a sweet smell as he approached the kitchen.

"Oh Beely!" The human displayed their plate full of fudge squares to him. "Please try them and tell me what you think."

Was he dreaming? The man felt like he was dreaming. Still, he didn't hesitate to accept the human's offer.

He made quick work of the fudge and smiled happily at his Muffin.

"Good?"

"Amazing." He stepped forward and hugged his human.

After a moment though, his smile fell.

"Wait...what are you doing up?"

Silence.

"Muffin?"

MC broke away and sat the now empty plate in the sink.

"I dunno. I just couldn't sleep." They explained. "I guess I just..."

The demon stared down at them, waiting patiently.

"Ugh..." MC let their face fall into his chest.

He stroked their hair quietly, brows furrowing in concern.

"I got a test on Friday and no matter how much I study for it, I can't stop stressing about it." They sighed.

"What class?"

"History..." They mumbled. "Why do we have to cover a whole century of events in one test?"

Beel patted their head and hugged their human close.

"Can I sleep with you tonight, Beely? I don't think I wanna go back to my room."

He kissed the top of their head.

"Of course, Muffin."

Belphegor:

Believe or not, its common for Sleepy Boy to be up late at night.

He sleeps so much during the day that he's usually awake starting from after his dinner nap to about 4 or 5 am.

Hence him being awake at 2am and heading towards MC's room, only to notice that their room was empty, but there was noise coming from the kitchen.

He found his Human sitting on the floor in front of the oven, staring into it.

"What are you doing?"

"Waiting for the brownies to bake." They said dully, not looking away from the oven.

"Are you baked?"

MC lightly hit his arm, but broke out into a small smile.

He smirked.

"Come on, I mean, who bakes brownies at 2am and just stares at them?"

Their smile fell, as did their gaze; they stared down at their bare feet.

Belphie frowned.

"Okay, what's the problem, Butthead?"

No response. He gave a small flick to their head.

"Ow..." The human rubbed their forehead, looking to the Avatar of Sloth as he stared expectantly at them.

They sighed.

"I've been getting nightmares lately... at least I think I have been."

The demon raised an eyebrow.

"You think you've had nightmares?"

"I... can't actually remember them." They mumbled. "All I know is that I'll have them and wake up crying with my heart pounding... but I can never remember why. Like, what the dream was about..."

"How long has this been going on?"

"About... two weeks I think?"

He flicked them on the forehead again.

"Ow!" They rubbed their forehead once more.

"Dummy. You are literally dating the demon whose an expert on sleep and stuff."

Silence. He sighed.

"Come here." He pulled them in for a hug. "Come to my room. I'll keep the nightmares away, got it?"

#obey me #obey me otome #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me mc

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kindness-ricochets · 3 years

Note

I’ve been seeing a lot of thoughts and hc of autistic wylan lately and you seem to also be a fan of the concept. May I ask why? Exactly? I could definitely kinda see it but wanna hear you thoughts you’re always so eloquent

Hey there anon! Sorry for the delay—I’m guessing you already found an answer to this elsewhere while I was off Tumblr for a bit, but just in case, here are my thoughts. This will be heavily personal, but… well, you can’t very well ask an autistic person about autism and expect neutrality!

Autism is different for everyone and can be difficult to pin down, so while Wylan is arguably autistic, he misses several beats that for me would have made him definitively and undeniably autistic. For example, when the bells start to ring, triggering black protocol—I work in a place with a lot of bells and am frequently caught too close to one and normally press my hands over my ears until it’s over because that sound is like shrapnel raking across my insides. All of them. Not just the ear and brain parts. Wylan doesn’t have that sort of visceral reaction, but that may just mean he doesn’t have the same sensitivities that I do, or to the same level. He also never, that I recall, eats meat—as weird as that might sound, eating meat is incredibly complicated with heightened sensitivities to taste and texture. I’m not sure how old I was when I realized it was strange to get up from the table to spit out my food because it viscerally repulsed me. So it might be that Wylan is autistic and has different experiences than I do. Those are things I would include in a story as major indicators of a character being autistic. This might also mean that his father’s way of raising him taught him to hide unusual reactions and stimming behaviors. It’s not that much of a reach to assume a man who tried to abuse the dyslexia out of his son would take the same approach to autism. (More on autism and abuse later.)

So while I’m going to lay out why I read Wylan as autistic, that’s why I think it’s valid to read him as not being autistic as well. Both are valid.

A final caveat, I am well overdue for a reread of the books, so I likely left something out or could have found better examples. Take this as a few of my reasons for a personal headcanon. Anyone who feels differently, that's fine! We can each read things our own way :)

1 - Hyperfixation: The way Wylan loves music

Most of the Crows’ backgrounds color how they see the world: Kaz’s shrewdness, Matthias’s tactical thinking and superstition, Inej’s faith and Suli wisdom, etc. That’s a sign of good character writing. But very little of Wylan’s upbringing seems to have influenced how he sees the world. It comes closest when he thinks about how his father would scorn his new friends, but we never see that scorn from Wylan.

The way a hyperfixation feels, it’s like you’ve always lived in a close parallel world, never fully been a part of the other one where it seems like everyone else lives, but suddenly there’s this bright shining piece of your soul laced through the other world. It lets you connect, it lets you exist in their realm, and you can’t help but filter everything new through that lens because it’s the brightest, most wonderful thing. (I had been between hyperfixations for a while when I started a new job; six months into that work, I read Crooked Kingdom. One of my coworkers thought I had fallen in love, it was that marked a difference.)

So, combining these: Wylan never really acts like he was part of his father’s world, and indeed is in some ways separate from the other Crows, but he parses everything through music, his hyperfixation. He sets words to music to remember them, like he does with the contract. Even his own anxiety is made sense of through music, when in his first narrated chapter, he sets it to music: what am I doing here what am I doing here…. When he’s overwhelmed, his thoughts are “a jangle of misplayed chords”. The Crows have backgrounds that influence how they react to the world, but Wylan’s hyperfixation is his means of experiencing and understanding the world.

2 - Literal thinking: Wylan responds to exact words

In this post, I went into detail on the line where Wylan suggested waking up men to kill them. Wylan is generally unsupportive of killing people—Oomen, Smeet’s clerk, his father… he advocates not-murder in each of these situations. Accepting his aversion to murder, his suggestion to wake men up and kill them seems like a genuine reaction to Jesper saying he doesn’t want to kill unconscious men. Wylan takes things literally.

This happens the most with Jesper, probably because Jesper talks to Wylan the most. Nina and Matthias don’t really register him past how he might be useful, Inej is usually quite direct, and Kaz is very deliberate when he speaks with Wylan. This really interests me because Kaz tends to vary his speech more than the others do, he adapts more to being around other people. He jokes a little with Jesper, spars with Nina, speaks more openly and more sharply with Inej, and he’s precise with Wylan. Kaz may not know what autism is, but he recognizes what’s effective with Wylan.

Another example is when Wylan is sketching the Ice Court plans and Jesper says it looks like a cake. There are plenty of valid responses here: pointing out that concentric circles look like lots of things, that it’s just a sketch, telling Jesper to stop looking over his shoulder. Instead, Wylan says that the Ice Court is sort of like a cake. That… doesn’t sound like something Wylan would normally say. He’s not addressing the whole situation, he’s addressing the specific words Jesper said.

One of the most heartbreaking examples of this (to me, anyway) is with Marya. Wylan does the same thing with his mother, when she asks if he’s there for her money and says she hasn’t got any, and his response is, “I don’t either.” We understand as readers that what Marya is communicating here is that she is so accustomed to being utterly ignored unless she is being used, and if she told Wylan that no one visited but to take advantage and she assumed he was here for the same reason, he would say it wasn’t the case. But he just responds to the immediate statement.

There are a lot of examples of this.

3 — 0% perception, 100% creativity

Wylan can identify things that don’t make sense or that he doesn’t understand, but at the beginning of the series he can’t make leaps, only ask questions. On the Ferolind, he wonders about the source of water at the Ice Court; though Kaz doesn’t say as much, he was clearly wondering, too, because he eventually figured out the underground river. There’s an interesting parallel here where, in the beginning of Crooked Kingdom, Wylan asks a question about how they’ll break into Smeet’s and Kaz tells him to use his eyes instead of running his mouth—at which point Wylan is able to figure it out. I don’t think this is because he never tried before, though, but because no one ever bothered to teach him. Kaz can be harsh but he gives harsh corrections rather than harsh rejections and Wylan learns from him.

It’s hard to understand the world for people with autism. The world is designed and run by and for people whose minds are fundamentally different from ours, whose thoughts and experiences are unlike ours. Imagine trying to learn English or Spanish or Mandarin or any other spoken language if your first language was olfactory. That’s sort of what it’s like for someone with autism to just get dropped into the world and expected to figure this out.

This can be attributed to Wylan’s upbringing, but I disagree with that because none of the others were brought up in the Barrel, either, and Wylan doesn’t understand trade or politics with any special skill. Kaz wasn’t born in the Barrel, but he managed to go from “stealing is wrong” to “wrong isn’t my concern” real quick; Colm Fahey didn’t raise his son on gambling and firefights; the Ghafas never expected their daughter to be away from the family. Only Nina has relevant training—and even that’s precious little, she left school way too early. The others figured it out; Wylan needed a bit more help. He also seems surprised by the way his father conducts business. Wylan takes things on face value—like the time he’s surprised someone would do something, simply because it’s unlawful. This is something he expresses to a group of gangsters. He’s never been taught the way of any world and these things are not intuitive to him.

But Wylan isn’t stupid.

He doesn’t know how to understand the world, but he does understand how things go together. Given a pointy diamond, a handle, and a screw, he cut through Grisha glass. He carries flashbangs and magic napalm, he recreates military hardware—Wylan understands how to make things interact for a specific result. But to me the most telling thing isn’t just that he puts together chemical pieces, it’s that he figured out Jesper controlled bullets. He saw the pieces and put them together.

Wylan can understand when things don’t make sense, but he can’t make sense of them—yet when he understands things at their basic level, he understands them without preconception, for what they are. This is a very autistic way of thinking about things, it goes back to the literalism. He can’t make the leaps of logic other people can, but he also doesn’t make the assumptions they do—“I’ve never heard of a bullet Grisha, so that’s not a thing” vs “Well Jesper’s an almost impossibly good shot and he controls metal and bullets are metal, so why not?”

4 - Broken brain/body connection

Wylan’s great at chemistry and drawing and playing flute or piano—but he’s something of a disaster other times. This is in particular contrast to the other characters, all of whom are physically adept. Meanwhile it’s a challenge for Wylan to climb a rope ladder and he spends a full paragraph trying to figure out what to do with his hands. It’s easy to say, well, he’s used to a sedentary lifestyle, but at this point he’s not. He’s worked in the tannery for months. He’s just physically awkward.

I have less to say on this point only because it’s about something I don’t fully understand myself. I don’t really understand what it would be like to have a body that just… does things? Like normal stuff? Without tics and stims. No idea. Only that Wylan’s discomfort in and seeming lack of mastery of his own body feels very relatable to me.

5 - Abuse

One of the most familiar things about Wylan is how he has been so thoroughly abused and broken down that he’s afraid to do or say much of anything. Again, this is a place his background can be an obscuring factor. Of course Wylan didn’t think to blow up the walls when the first met the parem-juiced jurda and got trapped, he’s a spoiled rich kid! Except, he also startled when Jesper said his name later. Wylan didn’t hesitate because he was spoiled, he hesitated because he had no confidence.

He also thinks Kaz would laugh at him for playing music at his mother’s grave. Now, personally, I can’t see Kaz laughing at Wylan—being indifferent, thinking it’s pointless sentimentality, shaking his head, maybe commenting sharply that they need to go if they don’t have the time. But not laughing. Kaz is a snarky, sharp-edged jerk sometimes, but he doesn’t go out of his way to criticize, he just lets people know when they inconvenience him.

Wylan has been trained to identify attention as negative by an overbearing abusive father who literally saw him as less favorable than a demon. Now, that may have been hyperbole, but Jan criticized everything he could about Wylan—art, music, emotion—and made clear that he was worthless and competent to nothing. (Jan Van Eck can suck a rotten donkey dick but that’s neither here nor there.)

A lot of people with autism experience levels of bullying that have similar impacts. Or as the kids these days are calling it: we go to school. We go to school where we are weird. Where we look weird and move weird and talk about weird things and there’s a whole little bevy of asswipes to makes sure we know it. I got teased more for playing Pokemon and sitting alone reading than the kid who pissed himself onstage at assembly. (This was before Pokemon was cool. I’m old.) And that is not unusual for autistic kids. It’s also not unusual for this to be compounded by relatives or even parents who may be trying to help but don’t understand and can make things even harder.

So we can’t read social cues and we’re taught at a vicious age that everything that comes naturally to us is wrong. Imagine trying to interact in society with that background. There is no guide and most advice from neurotypical people isn’t actually what they mean. It breaks you down.

Wylan’s anxiety isn’t definitive of autism, but isn’t something that was incredibly familiar as someone whose neurodivergent experiences created a strong level of anxiety.

6 — High Compassion, Low Social Competence

Wylan isn’t very good at making friends. In fact, none of the Crows likes him much in the beginning, and only some of them soften toward him by the end. (Matthias and Nina come to respect his skills as a chemist but neither seems to particularly like him.) But you can see throughout the books that Wylan wants to connect with them and be one of them, he just… isn’t. He’s off-beat. He’s weird. He asks questions and mimics behaviors (trying to be cool and tough like Jesper, saying “mission” like Matthias does, imitating Kaz’s scheming face) but he doesn’t quite get how to adapt.

But he still cares about people. Not just them. Everyone. He cares about the people they leave in the ditch outside the prison wagon, he cares about Hanna Smeet, he cares about Alys. He cares about the people who’ll take a hit from Kaz’s sugar caper.

Wylan’s awkward social skills have undeniable big autism energy. I posit his compassion does as well. This is simply who Wylan is, and that means being someone who cares about everyone. I have nothing to back up that this is related to autism. I can say that it’s like me. (Not to brag.) I can’t turn off the part of my brain that says everyone matters. Individuals can opt out of that compassion, but they have it by default. There’s a certain agony in feeling a pull toward and love for just about everyone and yet an inability to develop meaningful connections with them, and that keen loneliness… it just burns.

Again, it’s not definitive of autism, but it’s very similar to an autistic experience.

I said in the beginning that I didn’t think Wylan certainly had autism and I stand by that, but he is a powerfully honest reflection of many people who do. So he can be understood to have autism, and that’s part of the reason some people have that headcanon.

#six of crows #wylan van eck #autism #actually autistic

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h2bakugou · 4 years

Note

Hello dear friend~~May I ask what would be main 3+denki reaction to having a crush on a girl who never studies, and always does her homework in the morning before the class, and then when the results of their exams come out she's in the top5 and they just dont understand how she can have such good grades with how little she studies because she doesnt show that shes actually really smart? ☺️ (happened to me, everyone is shooketh when they found out my grades bc I have a rebel spirit about study?)

a/n: hi hun!! of course! i felt this, i never really studied unless i needed to, or i really didn’t understand something and i think i did pretty okay. but now i’m a drop out so- kjfhdjg i’m going to be doing online school soon though because i’d like to get my high school diploma.

headcanon: them with a crush on someone who never studies but excels in class

key: (y/n) - your name / (f/n) - first name / (l/n) - last name / (e/c) - eye color / (h/c) - hair color / (y/q) - your quirk

warnings: fluff, swearing

»»————-　★　————-««

katsuki bakugou

»»————-　★　————-««

Bakugou doesn’t expect you to do very well. It’s the honest truth.

He’s watched you every morning, scramble to finish your homework, and somehow manage to write legible answers with how fast your hand moves.

And before every test, he doesn’t see you study at all. It’s like you barely even keep notes.

In fact, he’s almost certain you don’t even keep notes at all. He was willing to bet that the notebook that rested on your desk during note time was promptly filled with doodles and random drawings, maybe even a to-do list or something.

But, all that aside, Bakugou has the fattest crush on you. This man is fucking smitten till the day he dies.

Everything about you astounds him, he’s never seen anyone like you.

And it goes to say that when you come out second in class, under him, he’s fucking confused and amazed at the same time.

He wants to ask you a million questions on how you did, ask if you cheated off of him somehow but he knows that’s not even remotely true.

His idea of trying to ask you out is getting you to study with him.

“Oi.” Bakugou approaches you after class, walking back toward your dorm.

“Oh, hey Bakugou.” You smile at him. You had a crush on him too, but neither side knew the other’s feelings.

“We’re studying together tomorrow. Meet me in the library and don’t be late.” Bakugou storms off, totally chad-like he’s thinking he’s just scored you and everything.

y/n.exe has stopped working.

You know he knows you don’t study.

You show up anyway and you can’t help but laugh because it’s certainly not studying that you two are doing in the library.

Somehow he’s managed to lead you to the library just to take you out on a date somewhere because there’s no book bag in sight, not even a book moved from the shelf.

“Alright let’s go.” Bakugou smirks.

“You could’ve just asked me out on a date in the first place.” You tease him.

“Shut up.” He huffs, smiling.

It’s a really good date.

»»————-　★　————-««

izuku midoriya

»»————-　★　————-««

Midoriya has probably asked you to help him study once or twice. He knows you’re up pretty high in class, you have great grades, but he’;s confused as fuck when you turn him down.

“What?” He blinks at you, confused.

“It’s not that I don’t want to! I’d love to but I uh don’t really study.” You mumble, avoiding his gaze.

“But you have amazing grades-”

“And I finish all my worksheets right before class starts, it’s just how I do things.” You look back up at him and smile.

“I can try my hardest to help, but studying isn’t really my strong suit, I think I get lower grades when I study.”

from that point on, I think Midoriya probably finds you that much more fascinating.

He loves to learn more about you, and knowing that you can finish a big project the morning it’s due and make a top grade, he’s blown away.

He starts to realize he likes you when you start hanging around him more.

You help him as best you can when he comes to you for answers, you’re very smart, you just have a very different way of doing your work from him.

When he finally decides to make the move, he’s shitting bricks. He’s nervous, and totally freaking out because he doesn’t even know if you like him.

“Uh hey, (Y/n)?” Midoriya pulls you aside after class, stopping you before you leave the classroom.

“What is it Izu?” You ask, having given him the cute nickname after being on a first name basis with him.

“I was wondering, well if you’d like to go on a date with me.” Midoriya gained some confidence after the sentence came out, looking at you with determination and affection.

“Sure, when and where?” You smiled, feeling your face begin to heat up.

“Wherever you want, there’s a really nice restaurant that opened up nearby-”

“Sounds like fun.” You glance away and smile. You had butterflies in your stomach.

“Are you nervous?” Midoriya asked, watching as you seemed to be a little anxious yourself.

“A little. My crush just asked me out so...” You giggle.

“You’re nervous about me asking you out but not finishing a project the day it’s due?!”

“Those are two totally different things!”

»»————-　★　————-««

shoto todoroki

»»————-　★　————-««

I feel like Todoroki knows from the get go that you don’t study. He never sees you in the study groups, or in the library. He always sees you doing some sort of paperwork in the morning, and he catches on rather quickly that it’s last night’s homework, or an assignment from earlier on in the week.

Still, he can’t jump to conclusions just yet.

He overhears Kirishima talking to Kaminari about you. He’s not trying to eavesdrop on their conversation but he’s curious nonetheless.

“Yeah, I don’t think they study at all.” Kirishima tells Kaminari.

Todoroki is pretty intrigued now.

Starts investigating to see if you actually study or not. And when he doesn’t find anything to say that you do, he just waits for the exam results to come back.

He knows you didn’t study, no one accounted for you at any study groups, and Sero even said you’d gone to bed after training that afternoon.

When the results come back, Todoroki is dumbfounded.

You did better than him. You landed a whole three spots above him.

Todoroki makes it his goal to talk to you now. And you two become really good friends, and Todoroki develops this crush on you.

He’s not sure how it even happened, all he knows is he likes you and everything about you intrigues him.

So when you’re hanging out in his dorm room, just talking and chilling out, he asks if you want to study for the next quiz coming up.

“Oh I don’t actually study.” You giggle, looking at the half-and-half boy you had a crush on.

“You don’t?” Todoroki restates, finally confirming all his suspicions.

“Nope. It doesn’t really do much for me, I’ve never really studied.”

From then on out, Todoroki enjoys when you accompany him while he studies. He studies alone just to be able to spend time with you.

Especially when he asks you out.

“(Y/n)?” Todoroki glances up from his work sheet and you look up from the book he’d lent you to read while he worked on his assignments.

“Yeah Sho?” You smile at him, closing the book, holding your spot with your thumb.

“Would you like to go on a date after school soon?” He asks, getting the question he’d been wanting to ask off his chest finally.

“Yes.” Your eyes lit up at his question and you could feel your face getting hotter by the second.

“You look hot.” Todoroki comments on your flustered face which only deepens at his comment.

“I didn’t mean- I mean you are very beautiful but your face looked hot as in temperature.” Todoroki’s own face begins to flush at his fumbled words as you begin to smile and laugh.

“You’re too cute.” You grin at him. He smiles back and returns to his work, ready to take you on that date.

»»————-　★　————-««

denki kaminari

»»————-　★　————-««

Kaminari has no clue. He’s oblivious. I don’t think he’s as stupid as people make him seem but he certainly doesn’t catch on right away, it takes a bit of time.

And one loud mouthed explosive blonde haired friend of his to point it out.

“I was gonna ask them to study with us after class.” Kaminari states, telling the group about his first move to try and ask you out. He’s had a crush on you since he laid eyes on you, and he’s shooting his shot.

“You dumbass. They don’t study.” Bakugou groans, looking over at you, scrambling to finish your homework.

“That’s the homework from last night.” Bakugou points out to Kaminari and his eyes go wide.

“There’s no way they’re going to pass!” Kaminari exclaims.

“We have to go help them!” Kaminari is about to go rush over to you but Kirishima stops him and laughs.

“Just wait, you’ll see.” Kirishima reassures Kaminari.

And sure enough, when the homework gets returned, Kaminari watches as your paper returns with the highest marking. You passed. With a perfect score.

This doesn’t stop Kaminari from shooting said shot though. He’s trying even harder. He’s determined.

"So there’s that big test coming up.” Kaminari began talking to you about three weeks ago, you’ve become friends, and you both have mutual feelings for one another that the other doesn’t know about, but it’s pretty obvious to the surrounding friends in the Bakusquad.

He’s talking to you about the test coming up with all of the subjects you’ve covered so far, a bit of a mid-term if you will.

“I’m a little nervous about it if I’m being honest.” You admit, taking a bite of your lunch.

“Do you wanna study with us later tonight?” Kaminari asks, feeling volts coarse through his veins as he awaits your answer.

“Studying isn’t really my thing. It’s not that I don’t want too! Please don’t think I’m trying to avoid you guys.” You bite your lip and look away trying to come up with the right words to say.

“Studying crams my brain and I don’t really think fluidly when the test comes, I get worse grades when I study then when I don’t.”

“I’ll stop by after with snacks and drinks so you don’t feel left out then.” Kaminari grins, his amber eyes full of excitement.

And sure enough, he stops by, a few slices of pizza and some soda in hand.

“So I was thinking, me and you.” Kaminari starts. You’re playing some video games before lights out.

“Me and you?” You question, currently beating Kaminari in Mario Kart.

“Yeah like, would you wanna go out sometime?” He asks, smiling.

“Sure, that could be a lot of fun.” Your face begins to heat up, and you lose your spot to Kaminari as your mind begins to scream with excitement. You feel your heart beating faster.

“Wait really?” Kaminari turns to look at you pausing the game.

“Yes. I like you, and I want to go on ad ate with you.” You smile, setting the controller down.

“Oh this is awesome!” Kaminari hugs you.

The next day when the test is over, the Bakusquad stands dumbfounded as you pass the test with the highest score, even beating Bakugou.

Kaminari is proud.

»»————-　★　————-««

masterlist

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wreckofawriter · 4 years

Text

Thorns and Roses

Pairing: Draco Malfoy x reader also Blaise Zabini x reader if you squint.

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: Blood, swears twice? Angsty (fluff ending)

Summary: Hanahaki Disease AU! You are despareatly in love with your bestfriend. His unrequainted love causes flowers to grow in your lungs which you are forced to cough up until death overcomes you. The only removal of this sickness is a spell which also takes every memory of the loved one with it.

A/n: look at my dumb ass post late for my own event... this fic is for the first week of Cliche Month. My cliche was Hanahaki Disease. Check out the other writers work. They are amazing!!

Roses used to be your favorite flower. Their delicate petals stained with glaring crimson intrigued you since you reached for one in your mother’s garden and pulled away with a bloodied hand. They could be found around you constantly; arranged in sparkling vases and patterned on your dresses. Bouquets were gifted to you by friends and family during holidays and birthdays, they surrounded you.

Now as you coughed into the toilet of the girl’s lavatory you wished to never see a rose again. You could feel the thorns tearing you apart, your throat sliced to ribbons as you clutched the stark white porcelain. You heaved a final time, petals falling into the clear water, the blood upon them staining it pink. You felt dizzy, copper thick in your mouth. You choked out a sob, tears spilling down your cheeks and dripping off your chin. You brought your hand to your face, whipping your mouth with its back and blinking back a fresh wave of cries. You pushed yourself to your feet, knees sore from resting on cold tile too long. You flushed, watching as the red and white petals spiraled from view.

You stepped from the stall going to the mirror and dabbing away melting makeup, a few practice smiles at your reflection flashed before you exited the secluded room.

Hanahaki disease had been glorified around you for years. The aesthetic and purity of its cause and symptoms making it seem like some dream or fairytale. You had learned quite quickly it was anything but. While everyone talked of the beauty of growing flowers within you they never talked about the pain of thorns piercing you with every breath or the blood which lingered on your taste blood because of never-ending cuts and tears of skin. They never talked about the stab you felt each time the person you loved looked your way or the times you had to swallow petals to keep your quickening death a secret.

Blood and roses painted a pretty picture but they stopped being so charming as you choked them out every few hours.

You walked quickly to class, each step you took emitting pain in your chest, pain which you had gotten phenomenal at ignoring. Snape didn’t bat an eyelash, despite the fact that you were six minutes late. The stabs grew searing as you took a seat next to the scowling blonde who had unintentionally bloomed flowers in your chest.

“Where the hell were you?” Draco scoffed his tone cold.

“Bathroom.” You replied plainly, eyes tracing the slope of his nose as he turned away from you. Your eyes continued to follow his profile, creating trails on his jawline and under his light grey eyes.

Draco turned back to you, “Is there something on my face?”

You shook your head, feeling petals flutter in your stomach, thorns following.

He said nothing, eyes flicking around your profile, looking for clues of your strange behavior. “Are you sick?” He asked, “You look pale.”

You shook your head yet again, “I feel fine.” Lies came so easily recently.

Draco didn’t give in easily, his gaze searching your own as if he could read through your words to your failing heart. “You’ve seemed off recently,” he stated turning back to the lesson.

“I don’t know what you mean.” You replied. Lying really had become effortless.

Draco didn’t like your sudden disappearances and untrustworthy excuses. You had been distant and unfamiliar in recent days. Your schedule seemed skewed, jokes, and laughter seeming to die as you rushed to unexplained meetings with no one before reappearing thirty minutes later with blood on your sleeves. You always smelled of the liquid, copper had replaced your floral shampoo and tropical perfumes. Everything about you simply felt wrong, like an invisible switch had been flipped leaving you as an imposter.

You forced a thin smile at the girl across from you as she said her greetings. Pansy dug into her plate of eggs, glaring up at you suspiciously. Your relationship with the girl had always rested on the edge of a knife. She despised your relationship with Draco, her eyes going green whenever you were seen together. You wish you could tell her there was really nothing to worry about.

“You’re hiding something.” She satiated plainly.

You scrunched your nose in mock confusion, “What?”

A scoff rose from her lips, “I’m not stupid y/l/n. Something is up with you, everyone can see it.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” You huffed rolling your eyes, hoping she didn’t notice the goosebumps that rose on your arms, fear of being discovered chilling you to the bone.

Blaise sat down next to you sensing the tense atmosphere and glancing between you both, “This about Draco?” He asked cautiously.

You shook your head quickly, a stab of agony shooting through you at his mention.

The boy shrugged, snatching a bagel and beginning to dress it with jam, “Anyway, you guys are coming to Hogsmeade right?”

Pansy answered excitedly her high pitch making you wish you’d stayed in bed. The conversation droned for a moment and you focused on your breathing. You knew the time which you would be able to do such a necessary act was limited. It was only a matter of time before thorns punctured a lung or pushed through your heart.

“You’re going right y/n?” Blaise asked, drawing you into the words spoken between them.

You bit your cheek, “I don’t think so.”

Blaise groaned, “Come on, we always go! It’s like a tradition.”

You frowned, “You didn’t go last week.”

The trap he had fallen into struck quickly, “Well doesn’t matter, you need to go.” he recovered.

“And why’s that?” You hummed nursing an orange juice that tasted of copper.

“Draco gets pissy when you don’t come.” He explained. The words would have made your heart soar if vines weren’t threaded through your veins. “Especially after quidditch practices.”

You sighed, “Draco isn’t my responsibi-” you were cut off by a spear thrust into your chest. The glass you held fell from your grip and shattered on the table. Eyes darted towards you in confusion as you bent over in agony.

A muffled voice broke through your momentary disconnection from the conscious world.

“Y/n are you okay?”

Your eyes fluttered open as you gasped for air, tears pooling in your eyes, “I’m fine.” you rasped standing quickly from your seat as you felt petals push up your throat. You sprint from the room without another word, hand clasping over your lips as you desperately tried to swallow the floral arrangement crawling up towards your lips. You managed to make it three corridors before collapsing to the ground, heads turned, eyes locking with you as let out a rattling set of coughs.

You didn’t hear the words of concern or cries for help as your mouth filled with blood. You felt something push from your mouth landing on your hands lightly. A rose blossom stared back at you as you opened your eyes. Its white petals unfurled stunningly, deep crimson puddles pooled between them. Red dripped lazily down your hands and you began to cough again. Thorns tore through your flesh escaping into the light of the world drenched in red, petals floated in the small puddle of blood around you like tiny boats in a lake of fire.

You hiccuped twice, the pain the action caused forcing tears down your cheeks. Your ears rang with shouts and gasps, your hands tightening around the flowers you held, only then noticing the cuts which littered your palms.

Blaise thundered around the corner, shoving people out of the way to see what they had gathered around. His eyes widened when he saw you, blood drenching the front of your uniform, tears mixing with crimson as they dripped off your chin. But the most alarming thing which sat in that hallway where the roses. Four of them, in full bloom, were littered around you, their meaning sinking terror into Blaise’s head. He dropped to his knees in front of you, hands coming to your shoulders.

“Shit y/n,” he mumbled feeling his eyes prick.

You were sobbing, wincing with every shake your body gave, “I can’t forget.” You whimpered, “Please, I don’t wanna die but I can’t forget him.” Your begs were cut off as you began to cough again.

You felt numb. The potions you had been given driving away not only pain but every other feeling your body had manifested. Moving felt like wading through thick mud, the weight of the blankets adding to the confusion of your nerves.

The ceiling of the hospital wing had become boring hours before, the dark of the night staining the white a deep blue. Your brain ran through memory after memory, thinking that if they replayed through your consciousness enough they would be stuck there, even after they were cut from your body with the flowers within you. You could hear his voice, smell his cologne, and feel his hair. The pain of your body had left but that of your mind had been so deeply engraved it was hard to distinguish from the former.

The ache you felt from the image of his angry tears and hoarse screams were far worse than the occasional stab of a thorn. Maybe it would be better to forget. Forget the pain, the love, all of it. To forget him. Yet every time you thought of the idea your eyes welled with tears and that unsettling ache of your chest worsened.

Memories became more and more recent as the melody of the platinum blonde continued to play. Those of a few hours ago were the freshest, still crisp around the edges, full of brilliant colors.

You didn't want him to find out, let alone find out from someone who wasn't you. Yet Blasie had told him the second after he had dropped you where you now lay, betraying everything within you.

He had come into the wing still dressed in his quidditch robes, broom in his left hand as he stormed through the previously quiet area.

"How dare you." He had seethed, broom hitting the ground with a clatter.

Your eyes had become focused solely on him the second his voice had graced you.

"How fucking DARE you!" His eyes were glossy with fury.

"Mr. Malfoy!" Pompfery shouted behind him

You were in a confused daze, dull pain shooting through you as Draco neared. "What?"

He was in front of you now tears sliding down his flushed cheeks as he gripped the metal of the bed frame.

"You can't just fall in love with me!" He shouted, "You can't just, j-just," his voice faltered and fell and he slumped forward.

You sat up wanting to move towards him, "I'm sorry." You whimpered a hand coming to rest on his own.

He snatched himself away from you, "You were just going to let yourself die?"

You paused another stab of pain dulled by medication sending white to your vision. Were you going to let yourself die? Die for the memories of this boy? It seemed a bit pitiful as you thought about it. "I don’t know."

Draco was appalled, his mind reeling as you stared up at him, eyes wide and glistening, "Don't put your blood on my hands." He hissed turning and storming from the room.

You called after him, voice straining, throat burning. He didn't spare a single glance back and you were left staring at his disregard broom as blossoms bubbled in your throat.

Draco had always had an easy way out when he was younger. His mother loved to spoil him and his father would keep him out of trouble with little effort. He had easy choices that were made for him. But recently things have been different. The expectations of his parents raised as he wanted to do nothing but flee from the life they had given him.

You had been safety for him. Your lack of questions and secret intent made you a safe haven. He didn't have to worry about your thoughts of him because he knew they were positive. He didn't have to be concerned with his reputation or his future or his family. He could just exist with you. Exist freely. The bonds which held him to the earth disappeared in your presence and he could float amongst the pink clouds which you lived.

You were his best friend. And now you were going to be ripped away from him. And there was no one to blame but himself. His unreturned feelings were killing you, this was all his fault. And now your memories would be pulled from you and you would become nothing more than a stranger.

It hurt to know you may have died for him. Died to keep him in your mind. It hurt to know all the blood you had spilled stained his palms.

The dorm rooms were darkened, the murky waters of the lake filtering soft moonlight through their depths. Sleep seemed like a faraway friend to Draco as he stared out at nothing. His thoughts were washed together like paint doused in water. A strange dream-like haze had rested over his life since he saw you on that bed. His thumb ran over the bumps of his knuckles, where your hand had rested hours before.

"You shouldn't have blamed her."

Draco didn't look up, his eyes locked into the dark waters, "I know."

Blaise sat down next to him, legs crossed, "You should apologize."

"I know."

There was a long pause. Neither boy knew what they were supposed to say.

Draco felt his eyes sting, resent bubbling in his stomach, and having nowhere to go, "I don't want to lose her."

Blaise sighed, "You are either going to have to lose her or love her. It's up to you."

But it wasn't up to him. He couldn't choose to love you.

The next day was unsure like a scene that was cut from a movie. Draco spent his time lingering in his hazy consciousness. The thoughts of losing you slowly driving him insane. His vision swam with your image in hallways, eyes falling through him. He would be a stranger to you. And he would have to keep it that way for your own safety. He would be forced to watch his best friend live her life without the memories they shared. The sting of realization grew with each moment.

Your pain had begun to fade. You weren't sure if it was because of the medication or if your body was simply shutting down. The latest you could get McGonagall to cast the spell was tomorrow night. Then every moment you and Draco had shared would be flushed away.

At least the coughing fits had stopped, thorns no longer tearing your throat to pieces. No more roses covered in blood. You felt a sense of peace.

Your far away mind was drawn back by Madam Pompfery's shrill voice.

"You may absolutely not visit her!"

"I just want to apologize!" Another tone retorted.

You sat up quickly, blankets shoved to the side as your bare feet made contact with the ground.

The argument grew louder as you neared, words turning harsh.

"Draco?" You called, peeking around the corner to see Madame Pomfrey standing with her back to you blocking the doorway, the blonde just in front of her.

"You should be in bed." The nurse scolded me, turning to look at you.

"I want to see him." You stated firmly.

She had now turned to face you fully, "Go back to bed y/l/n."

You glared back at the woman, "Let him in."

There was silence, you're gaze unwavering as the older woman slowly caved.

"Make it quick Malfoy."

You wanted to choke on the awkward silence that followed after the woman departed. Dracos eyes were glued to you as your own darted between your feet and the nearby wall.

“She’s right. You should be in bed.” he spoke.

You shrugged, “I was feeling better. The medication helps.”

“You shouldn’t be standing regardless.” He huffed walking past you towards the bed you had been in a few minutes before.

You rolled your eyes but followed him, knowing he was right didn’t make you feel any better.

“I'm sorry about before,” Draco mumbled as you set yourself against the headboard. You tilted your head in a silent question, “I shouldn't have yelled at you yesterday. It's not your fault.”

You cracked a small smile, head tilting back until it hit the wall. “Of course it's my fault.”

Draco was silent and you gazed at him from the corner of your eye. His eyes were cast at his feet, the melancholy look on his face making you sour.

“Please don’t be sad.” You muttered, “I can't have my last memory of you be sad.”

Despite your plea, his eyes grew misty, the weight on his chest so heavy he thought it might crush him.

Your feet felt light and for a moment you thought you might be dying. Your head felt so clear, you wouldn't have been surprised if Draco started saying you were floating off your bed. Your chest felt warm and fuzzy, like hot chocolate after hours in the snow.

“I can’t lose you.” Draco sobbed, tears finally spilling from his eyes. “I can’t lose you, y/n. Please don’t leave me.”

Part of you wanted to slap him, “It's not a choice.” You swallowed thickly, “I didn’t choose to fall in love with you.” It was the truth. You didn’t choose to plunge into the deep waters of absolute devotion. You were pushed. Pushed by each smile and laugh. By each joke and eye roll. He had pushed you into the whirlpool of love and you had been sucked deep under. And now you couldn’t breathe.

“I can’t watch you forget me.” He croaked his head held in his hands, “I love you y/n, you can't become a stranger to me. I couldn’t watch you live without me. I couldn't live with these memories knowing you don't have them.”

Suddenly the lack of pain made sense. The light, fuzzy feeling overwhelming your body was comprehensible, “Say it again.”

Draco met your eyes, “What?”

“Say you love me again.”

His eyes widened, momentary surprise taking him before it was pushed aside by a rush of relief, “I love you.”

It was like a drug drawn from his lips, it burnt like whiskey down your throat, warmth filling you. You sat forward quickly, hands coming to cup his cheeks, damp and sticky with tears. Droplets of your own gathered, rivers of relief dripping off your chin.

Your lips met hastily. The taste of salt mixed with the bitterness of blood was unsavory but neither of you seemed to care as you pulled him closer. Kiss deepening as his hands fell to your waist. You found yourself sinking deeper into the water you had fallen into, oxygen suddenly filling your thirsting lungs.

You were unaware of the thorns that filled Blaise’s. Yellow petals spilled from his lips, his throat filled with blood. As you tucked your head into Draco's chest, his was buried into his hands, tears filling his eyes. He was hopeless, the thorns would tear him apart and you would put roses on his grave

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moogieandadhd · 3 years

Text

ADHD Awareness Month Day 2: What I Love About Being an ADHDer is...

October 2nd, 2021

this question was one i had to sit with for a while. what first came to mind was that i love how unique my brain is, and how i am. no two people are exact carbon copies of each other, and adhd doesn’t show up the same in everyone either. but a creeping feeling was attached to the back of that thought.

being a woman with adhd, i grew up hearing mostly negative comments about my adhd. i’m just lazy and not trying hard enough, i don’t care about anything, i’m messy, i don’t fit in, i’m weird, i don’t make sense, i just want attention... the list doesn’t end. it’s disheartening to say that when asked about what makes having adhd so difficult and “bad”, thousands of things flood to my mind. but when asked what i love about it, what is “good” or wholesome about it, i have to really sit and think.

while i am unique, it’s not in a socially acceptable way most of the time. my adhd brain works a bit differently than a non-adhd brain. when a friend is opening up to me about their issues, i try to be supportive by sharing how i can relate. i learned eventually that to neurotypical people, that feels like i’m trying to one-up them, or that i don’t care about their problems and i just want to talk about myself. i actively try to avoid speaking about personal experience in conversations like these now. sometimes, people speak a little too slowly, and i know already what they are going to say, so i try to help move the conversation along by finishing their sentences for them. i realize this is pretty rude, as i also hate being interrupted, and i have gotten better about catching myself doing it. but, it’s like a reflex.

so i had to think of something else. the next thought was that i love how passionate i can be about certain things. then another rain cloud over the parade came with that as well.

i do have lots of love in my body, practically bursting out of me! but sometimes this isn’t well-received and something i can have a hard time regulating. i love many things; my husband, my mom’s dogs, frogs, space, natural disasters, greek mythology, psychology, art, music, clothing, the color green, science... but i can (for a lack of better words) overdo it. this is what is known as a hyperfixation or hyperfocus. it’s all you wanna do, all you wanna talk about, for hours at a time every day... a single topic for me can last years. in some ways, it can be debilitating. from ignoring all other responsibilities and missing deadlines, to overspending on merchandise of the topic and even creating credit card debt.

thus, i’m back to the drawing board. rinse, wash, repeat.

i then realized that these are things i genuinely do love about my mind, but i was conditioned to not love them in a society that was not built on understanding adhd women in the slightest. the initial thoughts were genuinely from me, and the heartbreaking thoughts that followed were what the world wanted me to believe. it took me all day to come to this conclusion: i can exist as a contradictory. i can be full of love and passion and that can also manifest in destructive and impulsive ways. i can care and feel deeply, and it can come across as selfish and naïve.

that then brought me to my final conclusion: my worth as an adhd human does not come from the opinions of others. it’s okay to love and accept yourself as you are (as long as you are not hurting anybody).

i end this egregiously long post here: i love and accept my adhd.

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passivenovember · 4 years

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You Look Stupid When You’re Sad.

Steve Harrington smelled of sour patch kids and unbaked cookie dough.

Billy didn't think it was a bad smell, exactly, just weird; intense, heady, and stuck to the walls of his brain. Doughy when the sunlight couldn't dry the track marks of Steve's sweat before nap time, heady when it got into Billy's system and stuck with him like the thrum of his heartbeat.

Wherever Billy went Steve Harrington was there. Like a shadow. A noisy, scrawny, wire-frame glasses wearing shadow that elbowed its way into the chair across from Billy's during lunch and followed him around at recess; three feet behind and always pretending to spot interesting shapes in the clouds when he thought Billy wasn't looking, but.

Billy was always looking.

It was so weird.

Steve was so weird. The way he made bright, happy noises when he was paired with Billy for station time, how he always drug his mat over from the other side of the room to sleep next to Billy when it was time to zonk out after second recess despite knowing that the spot was saved for Barbara, Billy's actual best friend.

She got nightmares and Billy liked to be there to hold her hand while she dreamed but every afternoon, without fail, Steve came wondering over with his lip stuck out in a question.

It was confusing.

Steve was so confusing. The way he hugged his mat to his chest, chin quivering with a little, "Okay. Sorry, Bills." Every time Billy slapped his hand on the carpet and growled that the spot was taken. Occupation, not reserved for pasty-kneed dorks with wire frame glasses, and.

Billy didn't want to make the kid cry, or anything, but he always managed to do just that. Paint himself as a bad guy.

Billy rubbed his forehead as Barb settled in on his left hand side one afternoon after such an altercation, smiling so big her lips disappeared behind the plastic frames of her glasses.

"What's wrong, Stevie?" She asked, and.

Billy tried not to be jealous.

Steve hiccupped, cheeks growing redder by the second. "I wanna nap with you guys but Billy won't let me."

"Hey, that's not--"

"You can sleep with us if you want to. Billy has a really big blanket, maybe he can share with both of us." Barbara looked at him expectantly, like. "Right Billy?"

And it was dumb.

It was so dumb, that they were staring at him with hopeful eyes and Steve's chin was still quivering and Billy didn't want to be the bad guy; he wasn't Mesogog and he didn't want to hurt the kid's feelings, but.

Steve Harrington got under his skin. With his soft hair and big brown eyes, always following Billy around and begging for the space to be made. Billy got clumsy and nervous when Bambi was nearby, and.

The idea of sharing space. Sleeping next to Steve with his chirpy little noises and warm soft hands, it.

Made Billy feel like he was breaking out in itchy red bumps.

No.

He would stick to his guns; the blanket just wasn't big enough for three people. But then, Billy's grumpy brain supplied, Steve could steal Barbara and keep her as his own best friend if Billy didn't let him stay, so. It was time to cut his losses.

"God, you look stupid when you're sad." Billy muttered.

Steve started crying again.

Billy really wished he'd stop that.

"I'm sorry, Billy. I know I'm dumb but I don't mean to be." Steve whimpered. He tucked his mat under his arm and made to get up.

And leave.

As if Billy would let Steve make him look bad in front of everyone, especially Barbara.

"Lay down, dork." Billy grumbled, tugging the blanket up around his shoulders and peeling it back for Steve reluctantly.

Harrington's smile was so bright it could've melted crayons when he settled in close, chirping happily as Billy pulled the blanket around them and tucked in on impulse. The room went dark, Mr. Talamantez reminding them to count butterflies if sleep wouldn't come.

It didn't.

Steve smelled too much like cream and sugar for Billy to get any rest at all.

"Whatcha making, Billy?" Steve asked, pink tongue poking out in concentration as he peered over Billy's arm at his art project.

A stack of pink and red construction paper was Billy's favorite thing in the world because it meant endless possibilities. Pink was soft and sweet, red was passionate and cool. Like hot wheels and firetrucks and hearts full of warm oven mitts, so.

He pulled the leaflets from his backpack during circle time and got busy, carefully folding the delicate paper hamburger style and then tracing swirly, dramatic lines for each heart on the page.

Valentines was Billy's most favorite day of the year.

Even more than Christmas, even more than his birthday, and only a little bit more than Halloween because on Valentines? The whole universe was covered in flowers and little tin wrapped chocolates and love hearts were the best thing for a kid to make with scissors.

Billy ignored Steve's tongue, turning his shoulders to the room. "I'm making love hearts."

"For who?"

"None of your beeswax."

"Okay," Steve said happily, grabbing a handful of markers and re-situating himself much closer than Billy would've liked. Steve's Nike's tapped the itsy-bitsy-spider on the rug as he declared, "I'm drawing batman on a surfboard!"

And Billy tossed aside his first ruined Valentine. "Oh cool, I don't remember asking."

"That's okay," Steve giggled. "Sometimes I get motor mouth. My Daddy says it's 'cause I'm a fruit."

"My daddy called me that sometimes before he got sick." Billy turned to glare at him. "That's not a good thing."

"It is to me!" Steve giggled again. He was always doing that. "I like Kiwis. My mommy packed some for lunch and I had them for breakfast. They're yummy in geek yogurt. They make me smile because they have beards!"

Steve cackled like kiwi's having beards was the funniest thing on earth and Billy wondered what there was to be so happy about.

He tried not to smile at Steve's dumb face. "I think you mean Greek yogurt."

"Yeah, probably. If I'm like a kiwi, that's alright, I think." Steve's tongue poked out again. "Surfboards make me think of you." He declared, and.

Steve smelled like toasted chocolate on s'mores, his hands somehow kicking up more of his sugary sweet odor each time he reached for a new piece of paper. Billy didn't know how he was supposed to get anything done when his circle buddy smelled like a chocolate birthday cake.

It was kinda gross.

Billy pulled out a sliver marker and traced Stinky Butt Max on one of the smaller Valentines, remembering to fold down the corners so the sensitive skin on her palms wouldn't get hurt when she inevitably started smacking him it.

The pink Valentine looked more like a chewed up Starburst gummy this way, but. Max wouldn't know the difference.

Steve peered over his shoulder again, cooing softly. Like a baby dove. "That ones pretty, Bills! Is Max your Valentine?"

"Ew," Billy wrinkled his nose like he sometimes did when Max needed a diaper change. "She's my baby sister, don't be an Ick Monster."

"What's an Ick Monster?"

"Somebody who makes weird jokes and says weird things, so." Billy shrugged, scrawling his mothers name on a second love heart. He poked Steve's tummy with his marker. "That's you, I think."

Steve giggled before slapping Billy's hand away, and. Watching him work.

After a while Steve inched closer. "So you don't have a Valentine?" He wondered, and.

Billy didn't understand the question. "Mr. Talamantez said we're all each other's Valentines so nobody feels sad."

"Yeah, but. Everybody has someone they want to smooch on Valentines." Steve started playing with his hair, fingers twisting waves in a sea of brown, like they sometimes did when he was nervous. "Someone they like best-best. Better than all the other kids."

Now it was Billy's turn to giggle. "That's icky."

"Smooching?" Steve's eyes sparkled. "It's fun sometimes."

"Like you've ever kissed anyone."

Steve looked offended. "Have too."

"Have not."

"Have too," Steve pouted, crossing his arms.

Billy began work on a third Valentine. "Who did you kiss?"

"Nancy Wheeler."

Billy snorted, not sure if he wanted to imagine Steve kissing Nancy Wheeler, or. Kissing at all.

Steve's chin started quivering. "You don't believe me?"

"No." Billy said lightly, capping the marker with a sniff.

Kissing was not fun. It was wet and violent and looked like it maybe hurt a little bit, the way he'd seen his mom and Susan kiss when he got up to go potty at night. Billy regarded Steve through easy, narrowed eyes; Steve wasn't the kind of boy who kissed like that.

"How come you're so weird?" Billy wondered.

"I like being weird." Steve said, reaching for a green marker to color in his surfboard. Steve nodded at the small pile of Valentine's strewn on the carpet between them. "You should put the love hearts on foam when you're done."

"I was already gonna do that, genius."

Billy wasn't already going to do that, but he'd eat a centipede before he let Harrington know he came up with a good idea.

"They could be superhero colors!" Steve hollered suddenly. He was so loud all the time. "That way your mommy and sissy can know that you love them because they're cool. Like Aqua-man."

Billy frowned, watching Steve fold his Batman drawing over and over again until it all but disappeared from sight. He leaned back against the wall with an eye roll, shocked out how much Harrington lacked any concept of taste, or.

Shame.

"Aqua-man isn't cool," Billy said. Because Aqua-man wasn't, he was like. The lamest of them all. "His only power is making the bad guys drown, at least the other heroes can punch really hard."

"Punching isn't always the best, though." Steve tucked Batman into the front pocket of his shirt, leaning into Billy's space. "Sometimes punching just makes the bad guys stronger. Like Wilson Fisk."

Billy frowned. "Punching works for Spiderman."

Steve considered this fact, pink tongue poking out from the corner of his mouth again. He thought really hard for a long time, as if Steve didn't have Spiderman socks on everyday at recess when he removed his Nike's to fill them with rocks.

Such a weird guy.

Finally, Steve smiled. "I like water, though. Your eyes are like water. From the fountain in the hallway, and like the lake at camp." Steve pushed his way into Billy's space, frowning with his head cocked to the side like there was more thinking to cross of the list. "You're very pretty, Billy. Like a cloud."

And.

Billy didn't have the words to articulate the way Steve's smell went a little crazy after that, like a bag of powdered sugar had caught fire from a signal light once he realized what he'd said. Billy waited for Steve to take it back, because.

Boys calling other boys pretty wasn't allowed in Mr. Talamantez' classroom, or. Anywhere else.

Steve didn't take it back.

"You wouldn't like Aqua-Man's water, 'cause you'd drown." Billy said, getting back to work on his Valentines if only for a distraction from the way Steve was watching him. "He doesn't control his power very well and sometimes the mean guys get hurt real bad."

Steve kept right on talking. "I wouldn't be a mean guy though," He reasoned, sliding impossibly closer on the alphabet rug. "I'd help him fight crimes. Like Captain Underpants!"

And.

Billy had nothing to say to that, sucked in and drowning by the way Steve's eyes were glittering.

"You're a weird guy, you know?" Billy breathed.

Steve's giggle went right to Billy's tummy, teaching it to do backflips, somehow.

"That's okay." Steve said, reaching back for a fresh piece of paper. "You'll remember me better and maybe you'll ask me to be your Valentine."

Steve's hair fell across his eyes, head bopping along to whatever song he was singing to himself today. His lips glittered like a frosted donut. Like he'd been eating a strawberry ice cream cone instead of confusing all the boys around him.

Maybe you'll ask me to be your Valentine.

Huh.

Billy started work on a new love heart and pretended not to notice.

On Tuesday morning Billy woke to the smell of pancakes and fresh squeezed orange juice.

Maxine was already up.

Her long red hair was piled on top of her head in two Princess Leia buns. Susan had put in little heart clips and the pink dress Billy's mommy had made special was already covered in mashed banana and something that looked like magic marker.

She was all ready for Valentines day.

Billy didn't understand why they bothered trying to make her look dainty when Max was more interested in destroying Billy's favorite toys and starting fires.

She sat on the floor of the room they shared together, sucking her thumb and playing with Billy's favorite race car. Her wet, chubby fingers made the blue Camaro shine brightly with spit and Billy felt like his face was burning up.

"Hey," He said, rubbing at his eyes. "Hey, you're getting spit all over my--"

"Race car!"

Max held it out to him triumphantly. Billy frowned, moving to grab it from her chubby little fist. "I know that's my race--"

"It's a blue car," Max said thoughtfully. She looked at him, like, "Blue cars are my favorite."

"It's my favorite too--"

"Can we share?" Max wondered, putting the little wheels on Billy's knee and letting the car zoom back and forth. He imagined that Evel Knievel was in the drivers seat wondering why his car wasn't first in the race.

She looked happy, like always, to be playing with Billy's toys.

He sighed. "Yeah, I guess we can share. It's Valentine's Day."

Max seemed to enjoy that. "I like today!"

"You do?"

"Yup," She said happily, little chubby fingers tangling in Billy's hair because he hadn't brushed it yet. "Candy and sour gummy worms and kisses from cute boys!"

Billy glared. "You're kissing cute boys?"

"Uh-huh!" Max hollered. "Lucas gave me a dandelion."

Billy thought long and hard.

About Valentines Day and all the things that came with it. The pink shirt that hung pressed in his closet, fresh cupcakes with plastic rings, a bag of Scooby-doo Valentines Susan had picked up at the market for all his classmates, homemade love hearts at the bottom of his backpack. Three with red foam, one with a delicate lace doily, and.

Kisses.

Max was getting flowers and kisses from a boy.

From someone special.

Billy took the race car from Max's hand and drove it around, thinking about boys with brown eyes and soft hands.

Maybe you'll ask me to be your Valentine.

"Wanna eat some breakfast, Max?"

"I had 'nanas." She said with a smirk.

Billy hummed, standing to get dressed. "Mama probably made chocolate chip pancakes, you don't wanna eat something special?"

Max's little red eyebrows pinched together. "I can have yours?"

And.

Billy didn't know what was so necessary to her about taking everything that was his. Playing with his toys, sleeping in his pj's, eating his breakfast, it was like Max didn't know how take something and make it her own.

Billy pulled the pink shirt over his head, feeling every bit like a turtle when Max did the same with the collar of her dress.

"You can have my pancakes." Billy concluded, puffing out his chest. "If you'll be my Valentine."

"You don't have a boy to kiss?"

"I might," Billy picked the race car off the ground with a smile. "This is practice for when I see him at school. So, will you be my Valentine?"

She thought about it.

Long and hard, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, before nodding with her entire body. "I think he will."

Billy sighed. "Really?"

"If you give him sour gummy worms and smooch his forehead he will," Max said.

And.

Maybe things would turn out okay. Billy nodded, grabbing the race car and driving it across Max's forehead, careful that the little plastic wheels didn't get stuck in her hair.

From the stucco ceiling of the classroom beautiful strands of silver and gold hearts painted a mirage of stars.

All the desks had a rose and a cardboard mailbox intended for the delivery of Valentines and at the center of the room a table filled with cupcakes and strawberry Capri-sun packets. Preparation for the party this afternoon, and.

Mr. Talamantez had turned their space into a glittering, perfect fairytale.

Billy hugged his basket of Valentines close to his chest and tried not to search for Steve before dropping his backpack at the cubby station.

He was right in the middle of tugging his special sweater down over his head when Barbara scooted in next to him, pretty in a little pink jumpsuit.

She handed him a tiny, delicate giftbag full of chocolate hearts and dinosaur erasers, smiling from ear to ear as Billy hugged her nice and tight before handing off something he had made special. A tiny paper crane his mommy helped him fold, and a bunch of rainbow goldfish sat nestled in a basket of paper Mache.

They were her favorite snack in the whole world and Barbara was Billy's favorite person, so it seemed fitting.

She hugged him and Billy smiled, peering around the room for a head of wavy brown hair. "We could share our presents with Steve," He muttered, like. It wasn't a big deal or anything. Billy tugged on the sleeves of his red sweater and tried to stay cool. "Where is he?"

Barbara pointed to the book shelves.

Steve was sat under a string of twinkly lights, shoulders tucked against the pillows Mr. Talamantez set aside for circle time. His face was buried in the crook of his elbow, and.

He was crying.

Of course he was crying.

Billy felt the Valentine in his pocket grow heavy.

Barbara said, "Steve broke his glasses, maybe you could make him smile?"

And.

Billy wanted to do that. Longed to make Steve giggle and chirp with happiness like the annoying little Meadowlark he seemed be. It would be so easy to. Walk over there, tap Steve's shoulder, and say the words.

Pose the question.

Will you be my Valentine?

Steve was making huffy, nervous little noises when Billy came to a stop beside him.

"Hey Harrington, playing with all your friends?" Billy sneered, confident that Steve would giggle like he was did, but.

When he finally turned around his face was red and puffy. As if he'd been crying all morning and all night, too.

"What do you want, Billy?" Steve whispered.

He sounded sleepy. Spread thin, like the last spoonful of jam on burned toast.

"What's wrong?" Billy asked carefully. "What happened?"

Steve sat and rubbed at his eyes, chin wobbling as more tears spilled over. "My daddy broke my glasses." He whispered.

And Billy hated it.

He always hated when Steve cried but today. Right now, he.

Felt like he had to do something about it.

Billy took the love heart from his pocket and sat down next to Steve, cuddling back into the pillows until their shoulders were touching. It took all of five seconds for Steve to settle in next to him. Roll his head back against the wall until he was looking at Billy with a question in his eyes.

Steve looked at Billy's shoulder and back up at his face, like.

"Can I--"

"Come here, stupid." Billy grumbled, Pulling Steve in until they were cuddling on the pillows.

Steve chirped. It wasn't his usual sound, light and airy, it was.

Thick.

And heavy.

Like a blanket sopped with rain water. Steve buried his face in Billy's neck. "I don't have any Valentines to give this year."

"That's okay."

"I made something special for you," Steve whispered, pulling back to study Billy's face. "I know Mr. Talamantez said we weren't supposed to, but--"

"Will you be my Valentine?" Billy's stupid mouth said.

Steve blinked at him, and.

Billy wanted to hide in the bathroom for thousand years.

Steve pulled away to sit crisscross-applesauce. Facing Billy, like this was something important. "Huh?"

Billy mirrored him, tucking his hands away so they wouldn't shake when he held out the love heart.

It was pink. Big and bright and outlined with a white doily that Susan helped him glue around the edges. Billy had dug through Max's box of stickers for the one with Winne the Pooh, the one he'd been saving for someone special. Winnie was covered in tiny valentines, eating right out of a jar of honey with a butterfly sitting on his nose, and.

Billy had thought it was perfect.

He worked for hours on the font. The saying that made his mommy laugh when he read it to her; you're bear-y sweet. Be my Valentine.

Steve took the love heart in his hands, and.

Didn't say anything.

Billy frowned. "I just. Remember you asked me to be your Valentine, or. For you to be mine. And--" His hands were shaking again. "It's stupid. God, this is--"

Steve leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

It was gentle. Like the brush of butterfly wings, barely there and then gone before Billy had a chance to really register the movement, or. Think about what it could mean.

Steve wasn't crying anymore when he said, "I'll be your Valentine."

Billy's brain took a minute to catch up. "Huh?"

"I'll be your Valentine, Billy." Steve giggled, staring down at the love heart once more. "This is so cute. I loved Winnie the Pooh when I was a baby. My mom always put me in footie pajamas that had Eeyore on them. And tinker bell too, sometimes. You could've put the Red power ranger on there instead. He's my favorite--"

Billy sat back against the pillows.

He was learning that Steve Harrington was weird.

Like a puzzle with one piece missing, or. An empty tube of bubble mix. Steve was colorful and loud and all over the place with opinions. He shined bright and loved hard, and.

Sometimes it was best to sit back and listen.

Happy Valentines Day!!

I really just sat down and wrote this. Wow. Anyway--thank you for reading and supporting my work. Your comments and endless kindness keep me going when I don't always feel like trucking on, and I wanted to do something to remind you that if this was an elementary school classroom I would give you so many lollipops.

#harringrove #steve harrington #billy hargrove #valentines day #first kiss #kidfic #soft billy hargrove #I know I'm late #but I love ya #and I will everyday #so really #everyday is valentines #not to be a fucking sap #but it;s true

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jackrrabbit · 4 years

Text

practice makes perfect /// Mitsuri x f!Reader (18+)

Request: Hey! I read your Shinobu NSFW thing. I was wondering if you could write a Mitsuri NSFW thing but not as intense? Like Mitsuri and her female S/o are cuddling and things get a really steamy so they start kissing and fingering each other? Please and thank you!

A/N: REPOSTING because when I posted this a few hours ago it was glitching and not showing up in tags and stuff :( sorry to anyone who has already seen it!

I love Mitsuri and I get so few f/f reqs so ty for the request 💕 Y’all know idk how to write true vanilla so this is a little more spicy (Mitsuri and reader are not in an established relationship), but I made it soft just for you anon

Summary: When the most popular girl in school offers to help you practice kissing, it’s not like you’re going to say no.

Tags/warnings: inexperienced reader, femme preppy Mitsuri, she’s a little soft dom? like just a tiny bit, mild orgasm control, fluffy smut, crushes, modern high school AU, heteronormativity, reader thinks she’s straight lmao, all characters are adults

Okay, Mitsuri isn’t just the queen bee of your school. She’s also the prettiest girl you’ve ever met. It shouldn’t be possible for a person to be that beautiful, much less fair—what was god thinking when he gave her that pink and green hair that would look clownish on anyone but her? Those thick, dark eyelashes framing eyes you feel like you could drown in? Those long, perfect legs?

(Not that you stare at her legs or something. It’s just—your school uniform skirts are kind of short, and she always wears those striped thigh-highs, and she sits next to you in senior Biology and sometimes she stretches her legs out in the aisle between your desks and flexes them while she sighs during long lectures, and seriously, her legs are perfect.)

Mitsuri is the kind of girl who gets asked out by a different guy every other day. She has a fan club. Boys write Mr. _____ Kanroji in their notebooks, circle it with hearts, and fantasize about marrying her. She has more ex-boyfriends than you have Facebook friends. So you’re really sure why, somehow, you two have become…close?

If you have to, you can trace your friendship back to that Biology class. The teacher has a bad habit of cold-calling students for answers to questions, which makes him pretty unpopular. You’ve gotten used to it over the months, deciding that rebelling is a less productive method of dealing with it than just making sure to review the textbook chapters at least twice before every class, but apparently Mitsuri isn’t quite as familiar with the material.

When the teacher calls on her (a bit vindictively, you think, probably because she’s chewing pink bubblegum and drawing cherry blossoms in the composition book she’s supposed to be taking notes in) to ask her something about determining whether an organism’s life cycle exhibits zygotic, gametic, or sporic meiosis, she just gapes blankly back at him.

You feel sorry for her. It’s always painful to watch when someone can’t answer a question in class—you might be a fairly good student, but you still sympathize with how embarrassing it is to be put on the spot like that. The teacher refuses to move on, repeating her name and prodding her until her face is flushed bright pink and her lower lip is trembling. You’re not trying to pity her, but you can’t help it, and before you can think better of it you’re writing ‘compare diploid and haploid forms’ in the corner of your notebook and surreptitiously sliding it her way.

After the class, she pulls you aside in the hallway to thank you, eyes bright, telling you you’re so smart and kind and thoughtful and wondering how come she’s never talked to you before. “What a waste! We sat next to each other all semester, and I’m only getting to know you now.”

No wonder she’s popular. Her exuberance is infectious, like her good mood is seeping into your skin from her hand wrapped around yours. Mitsuri isn’t just pretty, she’s the kind of person who makes you feel good about herself just by being near her.

You’re about 100% sure that’s the last time the two of you will talk (unless she needs help with Bio homework and decides you’re the best candidate to get answers from). But it’s not. Mitsuri insists on treating you to boba after class—you try to deny her but she refuses to hear it and you can’t say no to her when she looks at you with those pretty jade-chip eyes. You get milk tea with black tapioca pearls swimming in caramelized fried sugar; her drink is jasmine rose fruit tea with tiny cubes of green apple floating at the top. “It looks like your hair,” you tell her, motioning toward the pink-and-green drink.

“Really?” Mitsuri’s cheeks turn red, which you notice is a frequent occurrence for her. “That’s why I got it. Isn’t it cute? I love how pretty all of the drinks are at this teahouse.”

The two of you split a little matcha cake. And then a vanilla taro cake. And then Mitsuri orders sweet potato fries and gyoza and fried chicken and shrimp tempura and wow, this girl can eat. “I kind of have a big appetite,” she tells you shyly some time around her fourth order of hanami dango. “Sorry, is it weird?”

“Not at all! It’s cute,” you blurt out, and then immediately cover your mouth. Cute? Where did that come from? That’s not the kind of thing you’re supposed to be saying to a girl you barely even know, or is it? Maybe you’re overthinking this. Mitsuri is so beautiful it’s hard to think straight around her.

You’re so busy staring down at your lap and blushing that you don’t notice she’s doing the same thing.

Mitsuri seems to take that teashop date hangout as permission to pursue a full-fledged friendship with you. Before you know it, she’s inviting herself over to your house after school, dragging you to cafés and picnics to study together on the weekends, and begging you to sit with her at lunch. Her other friends don’t seem thrilled at your being her favorite new playmate, but she doesn’t mind it so you try not to, either.

Like right now. It’s a weekend, and she’s decided that her house is going to be the setting for an overnight Bio study session slash sleepover in anticipation of the test you have coming up. You’re scouring the textbook for an answer at her desk while Mitsuri lies on her stomach on her bed with her feet kicked up behind her and crossed at the ankles. Graded quizzes are spread out in an arc around her on the cotton candy-colored duvet, and the sparkly gel pen she’s using to write flash cards is poking out of the corner of her mouth. With her fair skin barely covered by a tank top and shorts, loose hair flowing over her back, and dark brows furrowed in concentration, she looks like the centerfold of a teen magazine from the 90s.

I bet guys have wet dreams about her, you think. Then you shut down that line of thinking, shut it all the way down because you’re not supposed to be thinking these things about a female friend, no matter how pretty she is or how glossy her lips look even though she’s just wearing chapstick or how good she smells (like strawberries? honey? or whatever sweet she ate last, you’re not sure). But you can’t quite tamp down the feeling that you’ve stumbled on some unbelievable luck to get close to her.

You’re not the only one having trouble focusing on your studies. “I’m done with this!” Mitsuri exclaims, throwing down her pen so it makes a stray line on the quiz she was reviewing before it bounces off the bed. “I’m so tired of studying, aren’t you? If I learn another thing about cell division my brain is going to explode. Can’t we take a break?”

“Sure, if you want to get another 43%. Didn’t your dad say he’s going to stop paying your snack food fund if you fail one more exam?”

Her pink mouth drops open. “Hey! That’s not fair, I didn’t tell you that to use it against me. Be nice.”

But after a second, Mitsuri’s pout turns into a giggle. She hooks her foot around the stem of the office chair you’re sitting in and pulls it toward the bed along with you. “Come on! Let’s talk about love. Do you have a crush?”

You roll your eyes but relent, sliding off the chair and onto the big, fluffy bed next to Mitsuri. You can always get back to reviewing after you take a short break, right? She gathers up the quizzes and notecards and dumps them unceremoniously on the nightstand by her bed to make space for you, all too eager to stop thinking about Bio.

“I don’t have a crush,” you tell her.

“Really? There’s no one you think is cute? No one you want to get to know a little better?”

Well…if that’s what she means… You glance sideways at her. There’s definitely someone you think is cute who you want to get to know better. She doesn’t have to know it’s her—not that you have a crush on her; that would be ridiculous.

If she’s going to get that excited about your potential crush, how are you supposed to tell her you don’t have one? You’ll just have to pretend, for her sake. “I guess there’s someone. I wouldn’t call it love, but…”

Long black lashes flutter up at you as Mitsuri blinks. “Oh my gosh, who is it?”

“It’s a secret,” you say quickly.

“Aww, but I wanna know who you have a crush on!” She scooches closer to you and pokes you gently in the side. “Do I know him? Is he a senior? What does he look like? What do you like about him?”

“Um yeah, you know…him. He’s a senior but you’ll never—seriously never guess who it is, so don’t even try. He’s…really good-looking, I don’t know. He has nice hair…and, um, nice legs. And he…” you trail off, wondering what you can say about your secret ‘crush’ that won’t tip Mitsuri off that you’re talking about her.

“…I like him. He talks a lot but you can tell he cares about what you’re saying when he’s listening to you. He’s kind of dreamy and self-conscious about dumb things but it just makes me like him more.”

Was that too much? Mitsuri is looking into your eyes in pure rapture, holding onto every word you say. Are you being obvious? But—no way. She’s so loved by guys that she’d never even suspect that a girl could like her too.

Not that you like her. Not like that, at least.

After a moment when you feel your heart beating so deeply that you’re sure she can hear it too, she smiles sweetly and pinches your cheek. “You’re really pretty when you’re talking about your crush, (Y/N). You look like a maiden.”

You bite your lip, not sure whether to be embarrassed or flattered. If any other girl as beautiful as Mitsuri called you pretty, you’d think they were being insincere, but she’s not like that. Her genuine affection shines through in everything she does. If you’re pretty, she’s Helen of Troy.

“What do you mean, ‘a maiden’?” you ask.

“I don’t know,” Mitsuri says, tracing invisible hearts into her bedspread with a fingertip. “You just look…innocent somehow? Like this is your first love.”

You duck down, blushing.

“Wait, really?” She sits up and easily flips you over onto your back (sometimes you forget that a decade of cheerleading has made her at least a dozen times as strong as you are) so she can blink brightly at you. “This is your first love? Ooh…”

“Is that so weird?” you ask a little defensively. “I don’t get a lot of crushes.”

“No, it’s not weird! It’s cute,” Mitsuri says. “But aren’t you nervous? What if you fall in love with him and you guys start dating and you don’t know how to do anything?”

“Do what?”

“You know. Like, kissing and stuff. Aren’t you worried that you’ll have your first kiss with him and he’ll be like, ‘oh my gosh, you can’t even kiss, I don’t like you anymore’.”

“No one would say that,” you reply, but the scenario does strike a pang of anxiousness in your heart. You’ve always been too focused on school and friends and family to bother worrying about love, but the truth is you have worried about the fact that you’re soon going to be a high school graduate who has never so much as kissed another person on the lips.

“You have no idea,” Mitsuri sighs. “Boys are so mean. But I can’t believe you haven’t had your first kiss!”

“That’s rude,” you say, wrinkling your nose.

She flaps her hands in the air frantically. “No, no I didn’t mean it like that! Sorry! I just meant I can’t believe you’ve never had a boyfriend when you’re so pretty and nice. The boy who locks you down is going to feel super lucky that he gets to take all of your firsts.”

You sit up next to Mitsuri and lean back on her cushioned headboard. “I don’t care about that. Honestly, I’d rather have some practice before I get involved with anyone.”

A beat passes. Then— “Really? You want practice?”

You shrug. “I mean, I guess? But it’s not like I can just pick up some random guy and tell him to let me practice kissing.”

Mitsuri cocks her head to the side and long pink fringe falls away from her face. “You don’t need to do that. Just practice with me.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” What, is she going to give you tips on tongue technique or something?

“…Like this,” Mitsuri says softly—and then her delicate hand is stroking up the side of your jaw and carding into your hair, tilting your head to face hers and pulling you closer. She hesitates before she makes contact, looking in your eyes as if to confirm are you okay with this? But (maybe because you’re caught off guard, maybe because you think you do need the practice, or maybe because that angelic strawberry-honey smell is way too intoxicating up close) you don’t stop her, and she leans in and completes the kiss.

It’s soft. Smells sweet. Tastes sweeter.

Mitsuri’s lips are velvety and glossy-damp moving against yours. The scent you thought was honey is really honeysuckle—there’s a fresh floral quality to the taste as her lip balm is transferred from her mouth to yours.

The kiss only lasts a few seconds, but by the time she lifts back from you your lips are tingling. You cover your mouth with your hand like a damsel from a Victorian-era novel and stare wide-eyed at her.

“How was that? Your first kiss?”

“I—um, I liked it I think?”

Mitsuri smiles at you and it’s like a ray of sunlight falling down through a break in the clouds. “Yay! I’m glad.”

The two of you sit in silence for a second, and you wonder what you’re supposed to do now. Go back to studying? You’re not sure you’re capable of that when you feel like she’s…still kissing you. It hasn’t quite hit you yet that this is your first kiss—something special, something you’ll never forget. The feeling of Mitsuri kissing you is going to be written on your heart for the rest of your life.

What have I done? you think, but it’s not condemnatory. It’s a question, maybe neutral, maybe hopeful.

“Come on, come here,” Mitsuri says. “You need a little more practice.”

And then she’s kissing you again, all the while pulling you closer, closer, into her lap. She breaks the kiss just long enough to murmur to you to open your mouth. When you do, her tongue slips in, prodding gently between your lips and sliding up against yours. It’s a weird feeling—you can’t say with certainty that it feels good, but it doesn’t feel bad, either. It feels like something you could get used to.

This kiss is longer and deeper, and Mitsuri is sighing into the place where your lips meet. The kissing sounds are both embarrassing and thrilling. You can hardly believe that you’re actually doing this, kissing Mitsuri Kanroji in her bedroom and sitting in her lap with your thighs hovering over hers because you’re scared to let yourself press any deeper into her.

By the fourth kiss, you think you’re getting the hang of this. Your fingers are laced in Mitsuri’s hair, pulling her bangs out of the way so you can see her face clearly. Her eyes are hazy and intense, a warm glow suffusing her cheeks, and her lips are reddened. The feeling of not knowing whether you like having her tongue in your mouth or not is gone. You like it. You want more of it. You could do this all day.

…But apparently Mitsuri has something else in mind. She moves back and looks at you like she’s got a secret she’s dying to tell you. Her hands slide up your thighs, almost reaching the hem of the skirt you’re wearing—it’s knee-length, comfortable and practical for the weather—but with your legs spread over hers, the fabric is bunched up at the juncture of your hips and legs, exposing your thighs to view. Mitsuri’s fingernails (manicured, short blunt French tips, pale pink with stripes of gold near the nail bed) scratch painlessly into your skin. “You learn really fast, (Y/N).”

“Thanks…” you pant out.

“Can I do a little more? Just a little. ‘Cause, I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this yourself—”

Oh. Oh? Mitsuri’s hand is creeping up under your skirt.

“—but it’s really good to have some experience with this, too, before you do anything with boys.”

She’s touching your pussy through your underwear. Those pretty manicured hands are stroking you through the fabric, fingertips sliding up between your lips with practiced precision. Oh god, can she feel how wet you are? You’ve felt that dewy heat growing at your core for a while, but you didn’t think she would touch you and feel it. “Mitsuri?”

“Are you already wet?” Two soft fingers pet your clit, moving over it side to side through your panties. “Did you get wet for me?”

“Mm—mm—Mitsuri…”

“Can I touch?” She pops her chin up and kisses you on the cheek, and then again on the other cheek, the side of your mouth, your forehead, all the while rubbing your pussy.

On the sixth teasing little kiss, you gasp and kiss her fully on the lips. “…okay?”

“Good…” Mitsuri smoothly pushes your ass up so she can hook fingers under the waistband of your panties and tug them down past your hips. You shift and let her do it—it feels like her touch is too hot, sending trails of warmth over every place where your skin meets. Her touch lingers even as you awkwardly straighten out of her lap for just as long as it takes to remove your panties and deposit them gracelessly on the floor.

Are you doing this right? Even with your shirt and skirt on, you feel more exposed than you’ve ever been in front of another person. You’ve never done anything remotely like this before—how weird is it that the first person to touch you is going to be a female friend? That you’re not doing this for the right reasons (and what are the ‘right reasons’? love? intimacy? desire?), but for practice?

Mitsuri settles you back onto her lap and slowly drags your shirt up over your bra. When the undergarment is exposed, she bites her bottom lip and sucks in a breath, and you feel eternally grateful that you, by some coincidence or trick of fate, decided to wear one of your nicer bras today. She cups the side of your breasts and runs her thumbs over the lacy wine-red fabric. “Beautiful…you’re so sexy, (Y/N). I can’t believe I get you all to myself.”

Your cheeks feel hot. Maybe desire is part of the equation after all.

Leaving your shirt bunched up over your tits, Mitsuri returns to your pussy, petting over your thighs and stroking up your mound. Her index finger dabs into the wetness leaking out of you and then circles around your clit.

Around your clit, not on it. If you didn’t know better, you’d think she’s deliberately not touching the place where you want— need to be touched. Her fingers are light and fluttery, not forceful in the least but making you crave more anyway. You try not to let your hips move, but before long you’re twitching on her fingers, trying to get her to do what you want. Your hands are braced uselessly on the headboard, but you hesitantly pick up your right hand to replace hers and touch your clit properly.

She isn’t having it. Her free hand catches yours before you can do anything. “Arms around my neck,” she tells you.

It’s frustrating to be unable to touch yourself when she just keeps building and building with these little flutters, but you trust her. Mitsuri’s a lot more experienced than you are. Slowly, you wrap your arms around her neck and wind your fingers into her loose hair.

Whatever she’s doing, though, it’s working. Even if you couldn’t feel how wet you are, you’d be able to hear it, the slick sucking sounds of your cunt dampened with your arousal. You’d be humiliated by the way it’s so obvious that you’re turned on if you were cable of thinking straight. Besides, Mitsuri doesn’t mind—at least not judging by the way she’s looking at you.

“Mitsuri…Mitsuri, can you…” You don’t know how to ask her, but you need more.

“Tell me what you want me to do.” Two fingers brush over your clit again and you almost flinch, the light contact sending a spark directly through you. “Tell me what you do when you do this by yourself.”

“I…um…it’s embarrassing…”

“It’s not embarrassing.” Mitsuri lays a short peck on your cheek. “Do you know how pretty you look? I could fall in love with you right now.”

It’s not serious. It’s just the kind of thing Mitsuri says without thinking, but your heart skips a beat anyway. “Touch—a little harder…”

“Where?”

“You know where!” you tell Mitsuri, with as much bite as you can muster.

Mitsuri smiles. “Here?” She pushes a finger into your pussy and you whimper. “Or…here?”

And she’s touching your clit, rubbing over it quickly and franticly, the first direct contact you’ve had since she started. The muscles in your back tense, legs stiffening, toes curling in your fluffy white socks. “Oh— oh, oh, oh— Mitsuri…”

“Does that feel good?”

After all her teasing, it feels more than good. It’s like you’re being filled up with something, some kind of heat that her fingers are bringing out in you, and it’s about to tip over and spill out. You rock your cunt against her fingers, trying to get her to go harder—but she’s already rubbing against you so quickly that you can’t think straight.

Two fingers slip deeper into your pussy, spreading you apart and pumping your slick cunt while her palm provides sloppy stimulation to your clit. You mewl and fall forward onto her, head thrown over her shoulder, so you can feel the vibration of her soft laughter in your chest. “Do you like it? I can tell…you know, your insides are holding me really tight….”

How does she say such dirty things with that pretty mouth? You’d tell her off if you thought you could speak without moaning. “Unff…mmm…”

“I’m going to make you cum, baby,” Mitsuri hums. “You’re going to cum on my fingers, okay?”

She’s right. You’re about to tip over that edge, overflow, get off with Mitsuri fucking you with two fingers twisting and hitting your g-spot and sliding over you so deliciously that you don’t even care that all of this is wrong. “I’m— I’m cumming—“

“Uh-uh.” Mitsuri’s hand stops, still touching but no longer moving, and the heat in your pussy plateaus and then dips.

You’re so frustrated you want to scream. “Mitsuri…!”

“Can you do something for me?” She resumes the teasing movements from before, edging over your clit but not finishing it. “Tell me who you really like.”

“What?”

“I know you like me.” Her free hand, around your waist, slides up and presses her thumb into the divot between two vertebrae in your spine. “When you were talking about your crush, I know it’s me. Tell me you like me.”

“I—I don’t—“

“No, you do. You like me. Say it. Say it, and I’ll let you cum. You want to cum, don’t you? You need it? I’m going to give you what you need, so tell me you like me…”

It’s not like she’s being cruel. Mitsuri’s tone is as sweet and kind and caring as ever. Her pace is agonizingly slow and she’s right, you need it. You’re lucky your chin is resting on her shoulder because you wouldn’t be able to stand it if she saw the look on your face as you choke out, “I like…I like you, Mitsuri! I like you!”

“I like you too, (Y/N),” Mitsuri gasps, and then her fingers are moving again, rubbing your clit, making you crazy, and it’s only a second but you want it so bad that you only need a second before you— you’re— you’re falling apart—

“Mitsuri!”

Oh god. Oh god. It feels good, it feels crazy. You can’t think. You can feel the muscles in your pussy squeezing down intermittently on her fingers. She holds you still as the shocks race up through you, letting you twitch and convulse in her arms.

“See now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mitsuri sings in your ear.

It takes you a long moment to get the strength to sit up, flopping bonelessly backward on her thighs so you can look her in the eye. “I don’t know,” you sigh finally. “Wasn’t exactly easy.”

Her eyes close when she smiles. “Don’t worry about it. You just need a little more practice.”

#Kanroji Mitsuri x reader #Mitsuri Kanroji x reader #Mitsuri x reader #kny x reader #kimetsu no yaiba x reader #Kny #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #kny imagines #kimetsu no yaiba imagines #demon slayer imagines #demon slayer x reader #Kanroji Mitsuri #Mitsuri Kanroji #smut

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marvelousstevetony · 3 years

Note

Okay but those ways to say I love you prompts are all so cute 🥺 what about on a post-it note for Steve and tony if you’re feeling inspired? Thank you! 💖

Ahh, they are! Thank you for this prompt, friend, it is so sweet. I hope you enjoy this small thing 💖

~ ~ ~

“Please don’t leave me in this hellhole.”

Steve bites the inside of his cheeks to stop the laughter from bubbling out of him as he lets his eyes wander over to the bed where Tony lies, face smushed into his pillow.

His arm hangs limply over the edge of the bed, the blanket pulled up so it covers most of his naked back, apart from his shoulders. His skin has that sleep-warm glow to it, and judging by the soft, relaxed expression on his face, Tony is only about fifty percent awake as he lets out a small whine.

Now Steve is unable to keep the smile from gliding over his lips. “You’ll do great, Tony. And you know I’d much rather get back into bed,” Steve responds as he zips his bag and places it by the door.

“There’s nobody stopping you…”

“There kinda is, though,” Steve says, walking towards the bed, then sits down after nudging Tony’s leg to make space on the edge of the bed. “Besides, I’ll be back tonight. You won’t even have time to miss me.”

He threads his fingers through the mess of dark curls, softly untangling the knots that always come as a result of Tony nuzzling his head against Steve’s shoulder, chest or back, depending on whose turn it is to be the small spoon. It looks a little like a bird’s nest, Steve notes, all disheveled and mussed, but definitely the most adorable bird’s nest Steve has ever seen.

“’s not true,” Tony mumbles into the pillow. “I always miss you when you’re not here.”

Steve knows the hoarseness to Tony’s voice is probably from sleeping, but he can’t help but feel like it’s from emotion, too, and just the thought of Tony missing him even when they don’t see each other for mere hours makes something in his chest catch. Because Steve feels it, too; the constant want and need to be with Tony, as if Tony’s presence is the oxygen Steve breathes to keep him alive.

Steve clears his throat to prevent an emotional voice crack. “I won’t be away for long, okay? I love you, sweetheart,” he murmurs, smiling even though Tony can’t see it with his eyes closed.

Tony hums, leaning into the palm Steve rests on his cheek. It’s only for a quick second though, because then he sighs heavily and feigns a pout. “Apparently not enough, since you’re leaving me to go to a stupid meeting. In D.C.”

Steve chuckles softly as he brushes his thumb over Tony’s cheekbone. “I’ll make it up to,” Steve promises and leans down to press a gentle kiss the corner of Tony’s lips. “You’re going to smash that presentation like you always do, and those investors are going to be every bit as smitten by you as I am.”

“I know,” Tony says, smirking even in his sleep-hazy state. “Still don’t wanna do it, though.”

“You’re gonna be great.” Steve gives his cheek another quick kiss before he stands and heads for the door, grabbing his bag on his way. “I’ll see you tonight. Love you.”

“Mm, love you too,” Tony mumbles, already falling back into the warmth of the blankets and the comfortable unconsciousness.

***

Tony curses under his breath as he woken up by the ear-splitting sound of his alarm going off, and for a few seconds he wonders who he is going to have to sue for making such a vile, atrocious sound. It doesn’t take much longer for his sleep fogged brain to register that he isn’t woken up by the ticklish feeling of Steve’s breath behind his ear that he’s used to.

Steve usually comes to rouse him from his slumber with that low, fond voice whispering good morning in his ear, and a steaming mug of coffee. Today, he gets neither, and it feels like a bad start to what Tony can only imagine is going to be a bad day overall.

He stretches out on the bed, joints clicking, and gives a jaw-crackling yawn that’s followed by an equally dramatic sigh. He lets himself revel in the softness of the mattress and warmth of the blanket before draping one hand over his eyes and reaching for his phone with the other.

He frowns when his hand identifies a piece of paper on the screen of his phone, then rubs at his tired eyes with a fist to clear away the blurry vision. He has to narrow his eyes to make out the words on the post-it, and god he feels old doing so, but the feeling is quickly replaced by the affection that pools in his chest when he reads the note.

Good morning, my love. Hope you slept well.

- S ♡

Steve might not physically be in the Tower, but Tony knows that he left his heart right here.

His heart is apparently not the only thing Steve has left in New York, because throughout the routine of showering, brushing his teeth and getting dressed, Tony finds another few colorful notes with small, sweet messages and cute little drawings on them.

Wish I could join you, the one on the shower cabinet had said, and, well… Tony definitely agrees.

When Tony had showered, sadly all by himself, and finished up in the bathroom, he’d gone to choose what to wear for the meeting with the investors. What screams genius, billionaire, philanthropist and a damn good businessman? he had thought, staring into a closet full of suits.

That’s when he’d noticed another post-it, a red one that said: You look amazing in all of these. Those investors are so lucky. Love you. Steve had added a small smiley face with hearts as eyes. Tony rolled his eyes fondly before settling on a dark grey suit and the maroon-colored tie Steve had bought him.

Now, as he enters he kitchen, he feels a little better, a little less like this day is pure agony.

Because he is Tony Stark, a caffeine-addict, he heads straight for the coffeemaker, his most treasured item, and he can almost hear the birds chirping and angels singing the closer he gets. His focus quickly switches to the piece of paper that’s stuck to it though, and the fact that he reads the note before starting the machine is truly a testament to how much he loves Steve.

Please drink a glass of water and eat something too. Coffee is not a real breakfast!

Tony laughs out loud. He can imagine the look on Steve’s face and the sound of his voice so clearly in his mind as he reads it. Normally he’d argue this point, just because he can and because coffee deserves to be acknowledged as a necessity in his diet, but he doesn’t have it in himself to disregard Steve’s request, so he fills a glass with water and puts a bagel in the toaster while the coffee brews.

When it’s done, Tony goes to grab his favorite mug from the cupboard and is not surprised to find another post-it stuck on it.

From the day I realized I love you, it says and Steve has drawn a tiny ferris wheel on there, too.

Tony smiles reminiscently, thinking back to the day Steve had gotten him the mug. He had bought it in the gift shop in Coney Island when the team had gone there on a day off. Steve had told him how he and Bucky used to go there, he even told him about the time he had thrown up after Bucky made him ride the Cyclone. Neither of them had been able to stop blushing and smiling that day.

He snaps out of his absorption of memories when the toaster chimes, fills his mug and takes a seat a the breakfast bar, scrolling through his phone as he eats. He contemplates calling Steve but remembers that he and Sam are going to be in and out of meetings all day, so he settles on texting him a single red heart emoji.

For the next hour, as he gets ready for the investor meeting, Tony finds several other post-its. Some are messages saying stuff like I love you more than Nat loves knives, others are small drawings with cute texts like the one of them with grey hair and wrinkles that reads Growing old together. Tony may or may not have teared up at a few of them, and if he does, no one will know.

He imagines this is what it would’ve been like if he had ever been hunting for easter-eggs as a child. However, notes from Steve are a lot more rewarding than those cheap, poor quality chocolates.

With each one he finds, Tony’s chest tightens and his heart squeezes. Most people believe Tony is the one who’s always super over the top when is comes to romantic gestures, which, to be completely honest, is true. He does the grand, romantic gestures because he likes to spoil Steve whenever he gets the chance to. He likes watching Steve’s cheeks turn pink and that shy smile that crosses his face when Tony’s done something outrageously extravagant.

But… Steve has always been good at the small details. Things that seem insignificant but really aren’t, because they’re intimate and heartfelt and the most Steve things to do. Like leaving a million post-its around the penthouse to make up for being away.

As the collection of vibrant-colored paper notes grows, Tony finds a small box to gather the messages and drawings. The last one he finds is inside the elevator as he goes to meet Pepper before the meeting with the investors.

Good luck, baby. I love you.

***

Tony can’t recall when the last time a presentation went this well; everything went smoothly and the investors were immensely impressed.

He’s still tired as he stands in the elevator though, head tipped back against the wall, and he can’t wait to drop himself onto the couch and wait for Steve to come home.

He frowns when the elevator door opens and something seems… different, is the only way to describe it. The light are dimmed and instead, the room it lit up by candles. The Netflix logo is big and bright on the tv screen in front of the couch, which has been turned into a nest of blankets and pillows, and on the coffee table, there are two pizza boxes that give off a comforting smell that Tony can detect all the way across the room. In the middle of the whole affair is Steve, wearing his favorite pair of sweats and his old cable-knit, smiling widely at Tony.

Tears of happiness well up in Tony’s eyes as he walks towards the couch, shedding his shoes, jacket and shirt until he’s just in his undershirt, and drops himself directly onto Steve, burying his face in his neck. Steve holds him closer, chuckling a bit at Tony’s excited welcome home hug.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” Tony echoes, the sound muffled into the fabric of Steve’s sweater.

“Did you have a good day? Good. I’m glad,” Steve says, smile growing impossibly wider when Tony hums and gives a small nod.

They lie there for a while, breathing in the scent of each other, feeling their muscles relax the longer their bodies are pressed this close, fitting together like a perfect puzzle. Tony’s head is the perfect size to fit into the crook of Steve’s neck, and Steve arms makes the best embrace around Tony’s smaller frame.

After a few minutes though, Tony catches a whiff of the Italian spices and lifts his head to look into Steve’s sparkling, blue eyes. “Pizza?” he asks hopefully, and Steve’s smile is answer enough.

Tony sits up to open the box and on it, there’s a post-it. It’s short and simple and it might be Tony’s favorite.

I love you, Tony Stark ♡

“You still think I don’t love you enough?”

Tony swallows hard around the lump that has suddenly appeared in his throat. “I never doubted that you do,” he says soberly. The words feel heavy as they leave his mouth, because it’s true; Steve has never given Tony any reason to question his love for him. Tony knows that Steve loves him.

He knows it by the way Steve runs his hand through his bird’s nest of a bedhead even though it’s greasy and it has gotten too long because he doesn’t want to go the the hair dresser. He knows it in the way he makes sure Tony doesn’t kill himself by only consuming coffee. He knows it by the way they can tell each other embarrassing stories about throwing up after riding a rollercoaster and buy ugly mugs from gift shops. He knows it in the way Steve writes hearts above the i’s and j’s, in the small curves of his handwriting and in the drawings and texts that tell Tony that he wants to grow old with him. He knows it by the way Steve looks at him with his blue eyes and long lashes and by the sincere smile that plays on his lips when he says his name.

They’re silent for a moment, but then Steve leans in, his lips ghosting over Tony’s as he whispers, “I love you, Tony.”

“I love you,” Tony says, closing the final gap between them, sealing their lips in a gentle, sweet, perfect kiss.

#am i the only one who feels so special when peach sends a prompt?#like... the queen of fluff is actually interacting with me?#oh well #I hope you enjoy this friend!!#this is a mess of typos I’m sorry #I’ll fix it later #my fic #ask box #omg-just-peachy #pls they love each other okay?#🥺🥺🥺#stevetony

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marvelous-writer · 3 years

Text

i’ll chase away your nightmares and keep you safe

Summary:

Tony looks at him with a worried frown as he hands him a plate with a sandwich and a side of chips. He reaches a hand up and brushes a few stray curls off of Peter’s aching forehead. “You don’t look too good, Pete,” he says.

“I don’t feel that great,” Peter admits, not having the energy to pretend that he is.

“How’s your head feeling?”

“Hurts,” Peter mumbles miserably.

“Hmm,” Tony hums, as he braces his hand against Peter’s forehead.

Peter lets his eyes slip shut as he leans into his cool hand, bringing only a small amount of relief to his pounding head. He almost wants to cry when Tony takes his hand away.

“You do feel a little warm. I wouldn’t have had you slaving away out there in the sun if I’d known you didn’t feel good, Pete.”

“It wasn’t this bad earlier. I think I’m just tired or my brain is fried,”

Peter experiences a bad migraine while he’s staying up at the cabin and Tony helps him through it.

Word count: 3,159

Genre: whump, angst, hurt/comfort

Link to read on Ao3:

A/N: Part 3 of @webpril

Peter squints against the harsh sunlight as he wipes sweat off his forehead, trying to ignore the pain pounding away in his head.

“Hand me that wrench, will you?” Tony asks from his position kneeling on the grass in front of the pressure washer that had broken down as they started to power wash the house.

Peter nods as he reaches into the red toolbox and grabs said wrench and hands it to Tony. “What do you think? Is it going to make it?” He asks with a hint of sarcasm.

“Well,” Tony says with a grunt as he tightens a bolt on the machine. “I think she has a few more good years left in her.” He says, shooting a smile over his shoulder at Peter.

Peter smiles in return, trying not to wince when his head lets off a particularly sharp throb. He’s had this killer headache since he woke up this morning but it hasn’t been this bad until now. Sitting out here in the middle of a heatwave in the sun probably isn’t a wise decision on his part. He’d rather be inside where the cool AC is, sprawled out on his bed in the dark, sleeping this off. But he’d never say no to spending time with Tony, even if it involves a mundane task of fixing a pressure washer.

“So… I was thinking—” Tony says as he hands Peter the wrench back when he’s done using it.

“That can be dangerous,” Peter says.

Tony huffs out a laugh as he shoots a grin over his shoulder at Peter. “Like son like father, I guess.” He says.

A warm and fuzzy feeling bubbles up in Peter’s chest at his words as he smiles, ducking his head down as he puts the wrench back in the toolbox. “What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking… what if I made some fettuccine Alfredo for dinner tonight, get some ice cream at your favorite place down the street, and we can have a nice, relaxing family movie night?” Tony asks as he wipes his oily hands on a hand towel, standing up from the ground with a small grunt when his knees click in protest.

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Peter says with a smile as he pushes himself up from the ground, only to pause when his head gives off a particularly sharp throb from the new position. He reaches up and rubs at his forehead, hissing slightly though gritted teeth.

This always happens when he tries to work through the pain of a headache, which hopefully isn’t upgrading to a migraine but with Peter’s luck, it probably is.

And of course, Tony’s dad senses tingle.

“You okay?” Tony asks, looking at Peter with his brows pulled together in concern.

“Yeah… just a headache.”

Tony’s still frowning as he looks down at his watch to check the time. “It’s a little after noontime, so how about we head on inside and I’ll whip you up a sandwich for lunch.”

“Sure.” Peter agrees easily, letting Tony guide him inside the blissfully cool house and out of the intense sun and heat.

They find Morgan sitting on the couch in front of the tv watching one of her cartoons, one that Peter doesn’t know because it came out sometime in those five years during the Blip.

“How about you sit with Morgan while I get lunch started?” Tony suggests.

“Okay,”

Peter slips his shoes off at the front door before he walks over to the couch, wincing at the sunlight pouring in from the windows, mixed with the obnoxiously bright colors from the cartoon on the tv. He plops down on the chaise section of the couch next to Morgan and throws a pillow over his face to shield himself from the light.

“Are you okay, Petey?” Morgan questions.

“Yup…” Peter mumbles beneath the pillows. “M’ all good, Morgs.”

“Why are you hiding?”

“M’ not hiding. Just trying to sleep and the light’s bothering my eyes.” He tells her.

“Does your head hurt like Daddy’s does sometimes?” She asks.

“A little.”

“Oh! I’m sorry.” Morgan whispers.

“S’okay.” Peter mumbles.

It takes only a few minutes before Peter feels himself drifting off to the soft murmurs coming from the tv, but he can’t quite fall asleep with his head pounding away. It almost makes him want to cry at the unfairness of it all—why his brain just won’t shut off and let him fall into a pit of painless nothingness.

He’s taken out of his almost-asleep state by a hand gently shaking his shoulder. “Pete, you awake? Lunch is all ready.” Tony says in a soft voice.

“Mhmm…” Peter hums as he slowly sits up, letting the pillows fall away from his face, finding the room’s curtains to be drawn with the tv off, settling the space in a soothing semi-darkness.

“I don’t feel that great,” Peter admits, not having the energy to pretend that he is.

“How’s your head feeling?”

“Hurts,” Peter mumbles miserably.

“Hmm,” Tony hums, as he braces his hand against Peter’s forehead.

Peter lets his eyes slip shut as he leans into his cool hand, bringing only a small amount of relief to his pounding head. He almost wants to cry when Tony takes his hand away.

“You do feel a little warm. I wouldn’t have had you slaving away out there in the sun if I’d known you didn’t feel good, Pete.”

“It wasn’t this bad earlier. I think I’m just tired or my brain is fried,”

Tony huffs out a small laugh. “Your brain isn’t fried, Pete. You’re just tired and you’ve been overworking yourself lately. How about you eat what you can and you can nap until dinner?”

Sleep. That sounds pretty nice right about now.

“Okay.” Peter agrees easily.

…

After lunch, Tony helps Peter upstairs to his bedroom and draws the black-out curtains, engulfing the room into darkness, much to Peter’s relief.

Peter is about to lie down but Tony stops him by handing him one of his pain meds.

“But they make me feel weird and loopy,” Peter argues weakly.

“I know you don’t like taking them, but it’ll help with the pain,” Tony says.

Peter sighs but takes the pill anyways just to please him, swallowing it down with a few sips of water from the cup Tony gives him.

When Peter is lying down on his side with his eyes closed, he hears Tony walk out of the room and down the hallway to the bathroom before the sink turns on, until footsteps approach his room.

Peter breathes out a relieved sigh when he feels a cool, wet washcloth being placed over his eyes and forehead.

“Better?” Tony asks as Peter feels the bed dip down next to his hip.

“Mhmm…” Peter hums, feeling the coolness take the edge off his headache so it no longer feels like his head is at risk of exploding from the pressure. “You gonna stay?” He asks hopefully.

“Sure thing, kiddo,” Tony says, hearing him get up again before the bed dips down beside him until he feels the man’s hand card through his curls.

The feeling soothes Peter as he breathes out another sigh of relief as he allows himself to relax, feeling the tension leave his body.

It only takes a few moments before Peter finds himself drifting off to sleep, feeling the pain grows duller as his consciousness fades away.

��

Peter can’t breathe as dust begins to fill his lungs.

He looks up with wide, tear-filled eyes at Tony, who’s standing several feet away from him, looking equally as scared as Peter.

“I don’t wanna go,” he pleads, voice wobbling as he takes a few stumbling steps towards him. “P-Please—P-Please, I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna go.”

Tony opens his arms as Peter falls forward, but instead of falling into Tony’s arms, he falls right through him as Tony suddenly crumbles to nothing but a pile of ashes.

“N-No!” Peter screams as catches himself on his shaking arms, saving himself from face-planting on the orange, dirt-covered ground… which is now covered in Tony’s ashes. “N-No…. p-please,” Peter sobs as he carefully picks up a handful of it, only to break out into a harsh cough that has him doubled over, finding that he’s coughing up dust.

Ashes.

That’s all he sees.

Ashes.

Peter blinks away the tears in his eyes as he looks around himself, seeing figures of ashes floating in the air where the Guardians and Dr. Strange once stood.

He’s all alone.

Peter takes in a shuddering breath as he looks back down at himself, only to see that his hands are now disappearing, dust falling from his fingertips, joining Tony’s on the ground. It quickly travels up his hands, then his forearms, climbing up his entire body.

Peter sucks in a gasp, feeling like his insides are now full with his own ashes, suffocating him.

He’s dying.

He’s all alone.

Ashes.

They all fall down.

Ashes.

They all… fall… down.

Peter’s eyes snap open, only to be met with a horrible, pulsating pain radiating through his skull, feeling like it’s about to explode as something hot shoots up his throat.

Peter shoots up into a sitting position as he gags, only for more waves of sharp pain to stab at his head as he tries to get up. But the moment that he manages to swing his legs over the bed, he gags again and hot, liquidy vomit spews out of his mouth, landing all over his lap and the floor.

But the only thing he can see is ashes.

Peter gasps in the middle of a gag, only to break out into a harsh round of coughing but it only brings back the memory of him coughing up dust in his nightmare… or was it real? Is he already dead and this is a dream? Or his worst nightmare that he’ll have to live again and again in a constant, torturous loop?

His head and ears are pounding too much, Peter doesn’t hear the pair of footsteps running up the stairs towards his bedroom.

Peter slams his eyes shut as he coughs up more bile—more ashes.

His ashes.

It’s happening again.

Thanos snapped.

Half the universe is gone.

Thanos won and they lost.

“Peter! Peter—look at me, kid!” A voice filters its way through the sheer panic racing through him, mixing with all the pain. “Pete—open your eyes for me!”

Peter snaps his eyes open, only to find Tony’s worried face in front of him—but it’s just like before, except Tony turned to ashes right in front of him.

“T-Tony p-please,” Peter hoarsely says, feeling something cold slide down his cheeks. “P-Please—I-I don’t wanna go. P-Please,” he begs as he slams his eyes shut, unable to get the image of Tony crumbling to nothing in front of him.

His breathing comes in quick gasps now, and it feels like his insides are filling up again—oh God. It’s happening again. He’s going to die and there isn’t anything or anyone that can stop it. Thanos won again—he’s always going to win. He’s never going to stop coming.

Peter’s dying all over again.

“Pete—you’re okay. Peter! You’re not dying—kiddo, please listen to me!”

He’s going to die.

Ashes.

Peter lets out a choked sob, only to throw up more bile. “I-I can’t-” he sucks in a sharp, choked breath. “Can’t breathe-”

Black dots dance around in his vision as he opens his eyes, finding a blurry figure in front of him, feeling cold hands on his face.

“Pete you’ve gotta listen to me, bud. You have to breathe.”

“I c-can’t,” Peter chokes out around a sob, squeezing his eyes shut again. “I-I can’t—I c-can’t!”

“Yes, you can. You can breathe. You’re not going anywhere. I promise you, Pete. Please. Come back to me. Try to take in a deep breath, okay? Think you can do that for me, kiddo?”

Peter sucks in a gasping breath, feeling horribly lightheaded now, but he tries.

“That’s it, Pete. That’s it, kiddo. In and out.” Tony soothes.

It feels like forever until Peter’s lungs give in, letting air in and allowing him to breathe. He sucks in a shaky breath that triggers a harsh round of coughing, before he opens his eyes and blinks a few times to clear his blurry vision.

“T-Tony?” Peter asks, seeing the man kneeling in front of him with a worried expression on his face.

“I’m right here, Pete,” Tony tells him in a soft voice. “You back with me?”

Peter blinks, his brows pulling together as he shakily nods. He closes his eyes against the pounding behind them, mixed with horrible nausea churning away in his stomach. “I don’t feel good,” he mumbles.

“I know you don’t kiddo. I’m so sorry,” Tony says, feeling a hand brush away a strand of damp curls that are stuck to his sweaty forehead. “How about you take a minute to catch your breath and we’ll get you all cleaned up and back into bed, okay?”

Peter blinks hard as he looks down at his lap again, but closes his eyes at the disgusting state of his lap. He opens them back up again and looks at Tony, brows pulled together. “I-Is this… is this real?” He asks.

Tony’s face falls as he reaches up and gently wipes a trail of tears from Peter’s cheeks with a calloused thumb. “Of course it is, bud,” he softly says. “This is real, I’m real and you’re at the cabin with me, Pepper and Morgan.”

Peter sniffs wetly. “B-But… it just felt s-so real.” He whispers.

Tony nods as he runs a hand through Peter’s hair. “I know, Pete but I promise you it wasn’t. It was just a nightmare.” He says in a soft voice as he places the back of his hand on Peter’s forehead, frowning. “You’re burning up, kiddo. It looks like this is more than just a migraine.”

Peter breathes out a sigh at that. “‘Course it’s not.” He mumbles miserably. Good ol’ Parker Luck.

“How about we get you cleaned up, hmm?”

Peter wordlessly nods as Tony helps him stand up, grabbing him a change of clothes from the dresser before slowly leading him out of his room and down the hallway to the bathroom. Tony is practically carrying him with how wobbly his legs are, but they manage to make it to the bathroom and Tony helps him sit on the closed toilet seat.

Peter closes his eyes against the painful throbbing going on behind them, letting himself slowly slump against the wall next to him. He’s barely aware of Tony wiping his face with a warm washcloth until he’s gently shaken.

“Pete, you gotta open your eyes for me, bud,” Tony says softly.

Peter lets out a low, hoarse groan as he blinks open his eyes, squinting against the LED lighting in the bathroom.

“Arms up,” Tony instructs as he helps him out of his ruined t-shirt and into a clean one. “Think you can stand up on your own so you can change your pants?”

Peter binks slowly. “M’ kinda dizzy,” he admits.

Tony frowns at that as he goes back to the task at hand and helps Peter slide his ruined pajama pants off, grateful to have a pair of boxers on to save him any further embarrassment. Tony helps him stand up on shaky legs to pull on the clean pair of sweatpants he grabbed, helping Peter pull them up to his waist.

“I think you’re good to go, bud,” Tony says, offering him a small smile.

Peter tries to smile but he thinks it comes out more of a grimace. Tony wraps an arm around his waist and helps him out of the bathroom and back down the hall towards his room at a slow pace. When they walk back into the room, Pepper is throwing a white duvet over his bed and she looks up at them, offering Peter a warm, sympathetic smile.

“How are you feeling, honey?” She asks.

Peter makes a weak sound at the back of his throat as he blinks sluggishly, too tired to form words anymore.

“He’s feeling pretty crappy,” Tony answers for him as he guides him over to the bed and helps him lie down on the clean sheets, which Peter suspects Pepper changed while they were gone.

Despite how out of it he is, Peter feels guilty that she cleaned up after him.

“M’ sorry,” Peter mumbles as he blinks open his eyes as Tony pulls the covers up to his chin. “M’ such a problem.”

Tony frowns as he exchanges a look Peter doesn’t catch with Pepper before he looks back down at him as he sits on the edge of the bed. “No, you’re not,”

Peter shakes his head, feeling tears pricking at his eyes. “I am,” He argues weakly. “Y-You shouldn’t have to deal with me.”

“Peter,” Pepper says as she sits down on the edge of the bed on the other side. “You’re not a problem, honey. You’re sick and you’re tired. We want to help you, okay?”

“Yeah,” Tony agrees. “Besides, it’s part of the job description.” He says with a small smile.

Peter honestly doesn’t know what he’s done in life to deserve such an amazing and caring family.

“Why don’t you try to get some more sleep?” Tony says as he fixes the blanket around Peter and tucks him in.

“Okay,” Peter mumbles as he blinks up at him with half-lidded eyes.

“Feel better, honey,” Pepper says softly as she smoothes a hand over his hair before she stands up and walks out into the hallway.

A spark of fear shoots through Peter as Tony stands up and he thinks he’s about to leave too. “Can you stay?” Peter slurs tiredly.

“Of course I can,” Tony says, the corners of his lips turning up in a small smile as he walks to the other side of the bed and settles against the headrest.

Peter slowly rolls on his side so he’s facing him and wiggles himself up so his head is resting against Tony’s chest, earning a chuckle from him in response.

“Feeling a little cuddly are we?”

“Mhmm…” Peter hums as he closes his eyes, feeling Tony’s hand settle in his hair, hearing the faint, comforting thumping of Tony’s heart against his ear. “T’hnks for taking care of me,” he mumbles sleepily.

“That’s what I’m here for, Pete,” Tony tells him, warmness in his voice as he cards his fingers through Peter’s curls.

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shimmershae · 3 years

Text

The more I think about it, the more “Find Me” feels like an echo of “Ghosts.”

Allow me to explain. In probably the most rambling and incoherent way possible, lol. My earlier post on Twitter about Season 10 being an exercise in grief and longing really got me to thinking. Not just thinking. Ruminating.

Anywho.

Posting the rest of this beneath a cut because nobody asked for this (I swear I haven’t imbibed or ingested any illegal substances).

It doesn’t take long for Carol to be established as an unreliable narrator in “Ghosts.” At first it isn’t completely obvious because there’s just enough fact in the fiction that Carol’s triggered brain stirs up. Daryl’s there and he’s concerned about her. He’s supportive. Both things he’d been before, especially since Henry’s death, but there are just enough elements in those chemically and grief induced hallucinations of hers that make you go--oh wait a minute. Like she’s having a break from reality but she’s desperately grasping for that which grounds her and that’s Daryl.

Am I making any sense here? I feel like I’m not.

Let me approach this from another angle.

Following the airing of “Find Me” various people mentioned that Daryl, similarly to Carol in “Ghosts” wasn’t exactly the most reliable narrator. That things weren’t necessarily as they seemed. The word toxic was bandied about but other than Leah giving Daryl an ultimatum to choose her over his family and Daryl dwelling in deep, longstanding depression? There wasn’t much else overtly deserving of that moniker.

Argh. I’m still not explaining myself well. Let me just jump right in the deep end of probable delusion here. Sometimes it’s fun to splash around, lol.

Wouldn’t it be wild—sad AF but still wild—if Leah was already dead when Daryl met her?

Bear with me here.

Like Carol in “Ghosts” Daryl is obviously struggling. He’s grief-stricken. His brother is lost to him and after he betrayed him no less. His close friend is mired in her own grief--she’s just lost her mate, probably recently discovered she was carrying RJ, and it wasn’t too long before that they had all lost Carl. And that’s not even considering Carol, who’s allowed herself to be pulled away, lured by the tantalizing chance of doing things right this time. Of rearing a child capable of surviving in the harsh world they live in. Another thing to remember is Daryl is not that far removed from his torture at Negan’s hands. So he’s more fragile than he’d willingly admit to anyone.

He’s searching the woods for a man that isn’t there. Now he’s no more aware that Rick was taken than the rest of Team Family, but he’s unwilling to give up hope and so he searches and because Rick’s not there and hasn’t been since shortly after that bridge blew up, Daryl’s doomed to always come up empty. To always feel disappointment. To never have his grief assuaged because as long as there’s no body in the form of a Walker, there’s still hope. Or plausible denial. Take your pick.

He’s tireless in his search. He’s methodical. He plots out the places he’s already scoured on a hand-drawn map. A map that just so happens to get ruined by an awful storm and Daryl seems to reach his breaking point, screaming out into the roar of that storm. Walking through the barrage, the harsh rain and the violent lightning, unconcerned for his safety.

Dude has a bit of a mental break. He’s undeniably emotional.

It’s not long after that he stumbles upon Dog. Or, more aptly, Dog stumbles upon him.

That puppy immediately lightens Daryl’s heavy heart and helping it find its way home gives him purpose. He’s a tracker after all. He could have easily traced Dog’s steps back to that cabin.

Funny that Dog was always coming to him. That he was roaming free in woods that were full of hidden dangers.

I don’t know about the rest of ya’ll but that cabin looked abandoned when Daryl first discovered it. Maybe not long abandoned, but it didn’t look inhabited by the living. And that’s the weird thing. How did that Walker get into the cabin? Did Leah just leave the door wide open for it? Did she also leave the door wide open for Dog to escape? Why was he always such an unaccompanied furry minor?

The thoughts swirling around in my brain, lovelies. They’re going to force me to go back and watch that fucking episode again aren’t they?

My point is that Dog essentially leads Daryl to the cabin. The Walker’s inside and then he stumbles upon Leah, who bursts onto the scene like she wants to be Sarah Connor or something. Daryl ends up in restraints and Leah questions him and ultimately lets him go and WTF, lovelies. Who does that in the ZA? As a woman all alone in a cabin miles from anybody else, in the company of a man she doesn’t know from Adam? If ever there’s a time to have stranger danger...

Right from the start, this chick doesn’t really add up.

So Daryl leaves the cabin. He resumes his search for Rick and he seems to give very little thought to this Leah or the cabin. Until Dog finds him again.

Strange isn’t it that he keeps stumbling back in her path around the times that Carol visits, when she draws further and further from his reach and closer to the fairytale he thinks she’s living at the Kingdom?

Did Daryl ever go to that cabin without following Dog? I can’t remember. The episode was beautifully shot but ultimately too painful to rewatch for my Caryl loving heart.

Anywho.

When Daryl and Carol come upon that cabin in the woods, Daryl’s flashbacks begin. They’re hazy around the edges and not as clearly defined as the moments he spends with Carol. Speaking of the moments he spends with Carol, how coincidinky that so many of them echo his moments with Leah? Or do we have it all backwards? Hmm?

Things are so convoluted sometimes on this fucking show it leads one to question their sanity.

Let me ramble out a few wild thoughts for you lovelies again and you tell me if I’ve completely lost it, lol.

What if Dog was simply an orphaned, abandoned Dog that found Daryl in the woods?

What if Daryl followed the trail Dog had traveled in reverse and stumbled upon the cabin?

What if the cabin was abandoned because Leah was already dead? What if she’d taken her own life? What if Daryl saw the cross/grave outside and the picture inside and his grief-stricken brain conjured up a whole tragic story for this woman, this Walker roaming around inside this house, and she became his coping mechanism? You know. Kind of like Rick did Lori when he had his own break with reality. They’ve all suffered so much, lovelies. They’ve all got PTSD. It’s just manifesting in different ways.

I mean, all of this would fit the label of sad that NR and others have given this little tale. It would even fit toxic because Daryl let grief and loneliness swallow him for a while.

As Carol pulls farther away from him, Leah just keeps popping up more and more.

Daryl essentially loses himself in his own fairy tale only it’s a nightmare painted in soft colors and Leah asking him to choose is basically his own psyche saying to him “do you wanna live here in this fantasy land and numb your pain or do you want to relive the awful reality of Rick being lost and Carol slowly fading from your life day by day?” And at first he’s like, you can’t make me make that choice because Daryl doesn’t want to give up hope, no matter how futile it seems. But then Carol makes what she tells him might be her final visit for a while and anger leads Daryl right back to that fucking cabin and oblivion. Back to the solitude of his tortured thoughts.

That note, lovelies. It felt like by choosing Leah he was choosing a lifetime of being alone more than it did him choosing the hope of a new love. That “find me” for all the world felt like he was willing hope to find him again. Hope in the form of love in the form of Carol.

Listen. I never said this would make sense, lol.

When Daryl gets back to that cabin, Leah is gone. Her picture is gone.

Truly it felt like she’d never been there.

Even more so when you consider how run down the cabin looks in present day when Daryl and Carol seek shelter in it.

I can’t help it. Some small part of me? Well, it thinks that Daryl told Carol about Leah (whether she existed or not) as a way to both make her feel better than he wasn’t out there in those woods completely alone and to maybe move the needle a little bit on the nature of their own relationship. Both in the past and present day.

And while he and Carol are struggling through the ever-shifting nature of their feelings for each other, Daryl has climbed out of his own darkness and found hope again in Judith and RJ. In the family he’s embraced again. In the communities. And he’s angry and unsettled because he wants the same for Carol but she doesn’t seem to want that for herself.

He still wants her to find hope.

He still wants her to find him.

He still wants her to find love and peace.

Help me, lovelies. These two have broken me, lol. I promise. I’m stone cold sober. A little, okay a lot, tired.

Wouldn’t it be wild, though? If Leah really wasn’t what she seemed? If she were a figment of a broken, lonely man’s tortured imagination?

Undeniably sad AF but wild all the same.

#The Walking Dead #Shae's thinky thoughts #Caryl speculation #Caryl #Carol x Daryl #Carol Peletier #Daryl Dixon #things that make me smile and cry #and giggle and giggle #for reasons

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debbiechanclub · 4 years

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Best Two Out of Three, Part 26

This is it: the last chapter of BTOOT 😭

I wrote a long, sappy post about what this means to me *months* ago when I thought we would finish much sooner than we did (whoops), so I won’t get into all that again. However, I will say that this is a huge accomplishment for me because I have never finished a multi-part fic until now. But I didn’t do it on my own. I absolutely could not have completed this in the time that I did without @hotyeehawman, and BTOOT absolutely would not be the fic that it is without her. So thank you so much, Lauren. We wrote a whole ass 123,419-word, 228-page mf’in fanfiction novel in less than a year 😳

And, at the risk of sounding cheesy AF, we couldn’t have done it without you all, either. The response to this little wrasslin’ fic consistently blows us away. SO THANK YOU. It means more than words can say. So once you finish reading this last chapter, please come scream at me in your tags, in the comments, in my asks, in my DMs. Because I cannot wait to hear your thoughts.

Alright, enough of that 🤧 I’ll let you get to reading 😉

Best Two Out of Three

Part: 26/26

Pairing: Kenny Omega x OFC, Matt Jackson x OFC x Cash Wheeler, Adam Page x himself

Word count: 7.8k

Warnings: Language; MAJOR angst

Catch up on previous parts here.

Tag squad: @freshlysqueezedmox @comeasyoudar @heelchampbucks @bec0m @betsy-bradock @linziland13 @gabbynorth98 @exe-darbyallin-exe @librathepheonix13 @irish-newzealand-idian-dutch @kingswitchblade

Callie pulled her phone out of her purse to check the time again. 8:57 a.m. She put it back and glanced anxiously around the hotel lobby. She and Cash had agreed to meet there at nine to head to Orlando, and with each passing minute she worried that it would be Matt who stepped out of the elevator instead.

Their conversation had played on a nonstop loop in her head all night. This all happened way too fast. Yeah, I guess it did. Over and over again. Except, in her head, it didn’t end the way it had last night. Instead of Matt walking off she called out to him to wait. She told him that the reason she’d been avoiding him was because she felt guilty about how much she enjoyed being with him. Her brain told her it was wrong, but her heart told her otherwise, and because she didn’t know how to reconcile the two it was easier to just avoid the issue all together.

And that’s exactly what she was doing now: avoiding the issue by going to Orlando with Cash. And she wasn’t just going for the day—she was staying the night at his place.

It had been Cash’s suggestion that she spend the night. It’ll save me a round trip, he’d said via text. It made sense; they both had to be back in Jacksonville for Dynamite tomorrow, so there was no point in making Cash drive four extra hours tonight. So, Callie had agreed.

But, deep down, she knew she’d mostly agreed because it helped her avoid Matt that much more.

She pulled out her phone again, but rather than check the time she opened the camera and flipped it to face toward her. Her double black eyes had worsened from last night, turning an ugly bluish color, but thankfully some full-coverage concealer had made them barely noticeable. Even so, she pushed her oversized sunglasses onto her face. The last thing she needed was people thinking she was a battered woman.

The elevator dinged, and Callie’s chest constricted as the doors slid open. Mercifully, it was Cash.

“You ready?” he asked as he moved toward her. “Sorry I’m a little late.”

She nodded and jumped up from her seat. “Mhm,” she said as she grabbed her suitcase. She couldn’t leave the hotel fast enough.

* * * * * * * * * *

The drive to Orlando was mostly quiet. Cash had asked her if there was anything in particular she wanted to do or see, but she’d just told him she was up for whatever. She knew absolutely nothing about Orlando outside of the fact that Disney World and Universal Studios were there and the little bit she’d seen when she’d stayed with Britt. But Cash didn’t seem bothered by her apparent lack of enthusiasm; he’d just grinned and said, “I got you.” It made Callie’s stomach flutter.

They dropped off their bags at his place and she met his English bulldog, Pawla, before they set off for their first stop of the day. Cash seemed excited as he steered his truck into a parking lot in front of a large complex. Callie, however, was more than just a little confused when she saw what it was.

“Go-karts?”

She hadn’t meant to sound so disappointed, but Cash just let out a laugh. “What? You don’t like go-karts?”

She didn’t answer, looking skeptically out the window at the building. For whatever reason, it made her think of Alex. Go-karts seemed more her speed. She frowned. I wonder if he took her here, too.

“Come on, it’ll be fun,” Cash said. “I think you could use the adrenaline boost.”

“I can think of better ways to get an adrenaline boost.”

As soon as she said it, Callie wished she could take it back. It had just slipped out, implication and all. She looked hesitantly at Cash. He was smirking.

“I’m sure you can,” he returned. Callie felt her cheeks burn hot behind her sunglasses.

“Come on,” he repeated as he unbuckled his seat belt. “I’ll let you pick where we go to lunch afterward.”

He got out of the truck, and Callie drew in a deep, calming breath through her nose as she did the same.

Maybe avoiding Matt wasn’t the only reason she’d decided to stay overnight in Orlando.

* * * * * * * * * *

Alex still hadn’t gotten over what had happened at the Labor Day party. In a word, she felt awful. She wanted to text Callie and apologize again, but between nearly breaking her nose and all but telling her to stay away from Matt, she doubted she wanted to hear from her. So, in hopes of boosting her mood, she’d decided to sit out by Kenny’s pool and soak up the last vestiges of summer while she still could.

But, so far, it hadn’t worked.

Her phone chirped next to her on the lounger, and she picked it up and unlocked the screen. She had a text from Trent.

Hey loser. You have plans today?

She rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at her lips as she typed back. Not really. Why?

She hit “send,” but instead of setting the phone back down she opened up Instagram. She clicked on Jay White’s story and let it autoplay through a couple more people before it unexpectedly came to Cash’s story. It was a Boomerang video of an indoor go-kart track. Alex recognized it; he’d taken her there one of the first weekends she’d stayed with him in Orlando.

A banner appeared at the top of her screen with Trent’s reply. Because Sam is in town if you want to come hang out.

That caught her off-guard. Sam, the boys’ friend who she’d first met five years ago. Alex had had no idea she was going to be in Jacksonville. Had one of them told her and it’d slipped her mind? But she didn’t think too much of it as she opened the text and sent her response.

Idk. After yesterday I kind of just feel like being a hermit today.

She went back to Instagram and refreshed the page—and her eyes widened at the first picture that popped up.

Callie, a bright smile on her face as she posed in a helmet at the very same indoor go-kart track from Cash’s story.

“Are you shitting me?”

“There you are.”

Alex nearly dropped her phone on her face at the sound of Kenny’s voice. He gave her an amused look. “You alright?”

“Yeah…” she started. But she thought better of it and huffed, “No.”

Kenny cocked his head in concern as he sat down on the edge of the lounger next to her. “What’s wrong?”

Alex let out a sound that was half sigh, half groan. The last thing she wanted to do was to complain to Kenny about Callie and Cash, of all people. But if she couldn’t talk to him about it, who could she? “I’m just frustrated with the whole Callie situation,” she breathed.

She glanced at him from underneath the bill of her baseball cap. He frowned sympathetically at her. “I know, baby. But you didn’t hit her on purpose. If she doesn’t believe that it’s her problem.”

“It’s not just that,” she interjected. “According to Instagram she’s in Orlando with Cash right now.”

His brow furrowed in confusion when she said that. Alex knew exactly what he was thinking. “I don’t give two shits about Cash,” she assured him. “He can do whatever and whoever he wants. Honestly, I expect bullshit like this from him. But I don’t get where Callie’s head is at. Where the hell does she get off blaming me for ruining her relationship with Adam while she’s off driving fucking go-karts with the guy who stabbed him in the back? It hasn’t even been two weeks since she left him!”

“Because it’s what Callie does,” Kenny blithely returned. “She thinks she’s blameless in everything and doesn’t take accountability for anything. This isn’t the first time she’s shown you that’s exactly the kind of person she is.”

“But we were friends, Kenny! Somehow, we got over all the bullshit and became friends, and then fucking Adam…”

She trailed off, her voice growing thick with emotion, and looked to the ceiling. She didn’t want to get upset. But it was hard not to. She felt betrayed. That was the only word for it.

“Hey.” Kenny put a hand on her bare leg, drawing her eyes back to his. “Do you want my honest advice?”

She nodded.

“Stop wasting your energy on Callie and Adam. They’re not worth it, Alex. You’ve given them so much of your time and effort and what have you gotten in return?”

A tear rolled out of the corner of her eye and she quickly wiped it away. She didn’t need to answer him. They both knew the answer. “I know,” she softly agreed. “You’re probably right.”

A corner of his mouth quirked up. “Of course I am.” He leaned over and kissed the side of her head. “I was thinking about ordering sushi for dinner tonight. That always makes you feel better.”

She perked up a bit at that. “Can we get sake, too?”

He nodded. “Yes, I’ll get you sake, too.”

She smiled. “Okay.”

He gave her leg an affectionate squeeze and stood. “Well, I’m gonna go get a workout in. Wanna join me?”

Alex couldn’t help herself. “Is that a euphemism?”

He grinned. “No, despite how much I want to take that bikini off you right now.”

She just playfully rolled her eyes in response.

“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “Endorphins will make you feel better, too.”

Alex emitted a dramatic groan as she put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet. “Not if you try to kill me like you did last time,” she argued.

“But I always take good care of you afterward,” he said. “That was a euphemism, by the way.”

She returned his smirk. “Yeah, I got it.”

* * * * * * * * * *

To Cash’s credit, the go-karts had been fun—but Callie was more than happy to take the lead on the rest of the day. She’d picked out a restaurant on International Drive for lunch (Cash had groaned and said that was where all the tourists went, to which she’d cheekily replied that she was a tourist), and afterward he’d convinced her to ride the Ferris wheel at ICON Park, where he’d pointed out some of the different areas of the city to her (Callie, who was afraid of heights, had kept a death grip on his arm the entire time). Then, at Callie’s request, they’d driven around some of the neighborhoods so that she could get a better feel for them (“Obviously, I recommend my neighborhood,” Cash had said). Overall, it had turned out to be a good day after all, and Orlando was looking more and more like the place Callie wanted to move.

But, the more time she spent with him, the more she started to wonder how much of that feeling was due to Cash.

“What’re you craving?” he asked as they sat on the couch in his living room.

“You pick,” she returned. Pawla lounged between them, and she reached down to scratch her behind the ears. “I’m honestly still stuffed from lunch.”

“Chinese it is,” he decided, and he pulled out his phone to order. Callie did the same, but to open up Instagram—and she found that Alex was the first person in her stories queue. She stared at the little circle of her profile picture, hesitant. But she was too nosy not to look, so she angled her phone screen away from Cash and clicked.

There were only two pictures in her story. The first showed her in sweat-drenched workout gear lying face-down on a gym room floor with the caption, “@/kennyomegamanx tried to kill me again.” The second was of her smiling in satisfaction in front of a takeout container of sushi. “He made up for it,” the caption read.

“I guess Alex and Kenny aren’t hiding their relationship anymore.”

She froze and glanced at Cash out of the corner of her eye. That was the second time that day she’s put her foot in her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “They’re probably the last two people you want to hear about.”

But Cash shook his head. “I don’t care. They can have each other.”

Callie frowned. She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but he spoke up again before she could.

“Do you prefer beef and broccoli or chicken?”

She thought for a second. “Beef.”

A few more clicks and he finished putting in the order. “It says it’ll be here in thirty-five minutes,” he said as he stood from the couch. “You want a drink? I have a bottle of The Rock’s tequila, it’s really good.”

Callie’s nose scrunched up. “Do you have vodka?”

“Yeah. You want it on the rocks or mixed?”

“Mixed please.”

He nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Callie occupied herself with petting Pawla until he returned with their drinks a few minutes later. “Here you go; vanilla vodka and Coke Zero.”

“Oo, that sounds good,” she said as he handed her the cocktail. She took a sip. He’d made it just right, not too much vodka, not too little.

“So, what’d you think of Orlando?” he asked as he sat back down. “Did I convince you to become my neighbor?”

His choice of words made her stomach flutter again. “I think so. There’s more to do here than in Jacksonville, and a two-hour drive to work is a lot better than a cross-country flight.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I like it. Dax is planning on moving back to Asheville, but I think I’m gonna stay here. It’s grown on me. Plus, I like Disney and Universal Studios too much.”

“Yeah, I definitely want to check those out,” she returned.

“We should plan a weekend,” he smirked. Callie took a sip of her drink to hide her blush.

They fell into silence, and they both turned their attention to the random show Cash had put on the television. But there was something hanging in the air; Callie could feel it. She was about to speak up when Cash beat her to it.

“So, we’ve avoided the topic all day, but I kind of feel like I have to ask now.”

There was no need for him to clarify what he meant. “Matt?” she guessed.

He nodded. She shifted in her seat. “What about him?”

“Well… are you two not together?”

He sounded almost hopeful. She hesitated to respond.

“That was the rumor backstage,” he added.

She rolled her eyes. “Of course it was. But I guess, yeah, at one point it was moving in that direction. But… I actually told him last night that I think we rushed into things.”

“Oh,” Cash said. It was obvious that he expected her to continue, but her confusion over Matt was the last thing Callie wanted to get into right now. So, she deflected.

“There’s something I need to ask you, too.”

Cash arched his eyebrows as he raised his glass to his lips. “That doesn’t sound good,” he joked.

But Callie wasn’t joking. “Why’d you do what you did to Adam?”

He paused to cock his head at her. “What do you mean?”

She shot him a flat look as he took a sip of his drink. “I mean when you stabbed him in the back, Cash.”

Cash made a noise as he swallowed down the tequila. “Damn, not pulling any punches, huh?”

“You didn’t with Adam.”

He looked back at her in surprise. She didn’t waiver. He breathed out again.

“Alright, look,” he started. “I don’t have anything against Adam. I’ve known him a long time. But he and Kenny had what we wanted, and we did what we had to do to get it.”

She rolled her eyes again. That was such a canned response.

“What?”

“You did not have to do what you did,” she returned. “You didn’t have to manipulate him the way you did.”

His eyebrows arched. “Manipulate him? Callie, all we did was point out that Kenny and the Bucks don’t give two shits about him. He did the rest himself.”

“What?”

“I swear.”

“So you didn’t tell him to sabotage Matt and Nick in the gauntlet match?”

“No! He did that because he was upset about you and Matt!”

Callie’s brow puckered in confusion. “What?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “He told us at the hotel bar that night that he found out right before the gauntlet match that you were staying with Matt in California, so he retaliated by sabotaging their title shot. Dax and I didn’t have anything to do with that, I promise you.”

The room grew silent as his words sunk in, stunning her. That was exactly what Alex had surmised when Matt had confronted her immediately after the gauntlet match. But Callie hadn’t wanted to believe it, and after FTR had turned on Adam she’d assumed that they’d been the ones to put the idea in his head.

But if Cash was telling her that they hadn’t, then it meant she really was to blame.

“Hey,” Cash softly beckoned. She looked back up at him. His eyes were earnest. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t mean to make it sound like it was. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Callie stared down into her drink, tapping her fingernails on the glass. She appreciated the sentiment, but she didn’t agree. Not really. “Well, technically I walked out him, so…”

She trailed off and took a long drink. She felt like such a bitch. I shouldn’t be here.

“And?” Cash returned, drawing her out of her thoughts. “I’m sure you had good reason to.”

Callie didn’t answer right away, nearly draining her drink. Once she’d had enough, she looked down at Pawla and scratched her head again. “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” she said.

“Done,” he said, and she sent him a tight, grateful smile. “So what do you wanna do? Watch a movie?”

She nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good. I just have one request.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Anything but Mean Girls.”

* * * * * * * * * *

When Matt arrived at Daily’s Place on Wednesday, he had half a mind to go to Tony and tell him to cancel the mixed tag match. He had no desire to wrestle a match with Callie anymore. To be frank, he didn’t want much of anything to do with her at the moment.

He knew she’d been in Orlando with Cash yesterday. He’d seen her Instagram photo at the go-kart track and hadn’t thought much of it. But not long after, Kenny had texted him.

Hey, did you know Callie is in Orlando with Cash right now?

It had caught him completely off-guard. No? he’d responded. Who told you that?

He’d been more on-edge than he cared to admit while he’d awaited Kenny’s reply. Alex. I guess they posted photos from the same place on Instagram or something.

A quick search for Cash’s Instagram profile—Matt didn’t follow that asshole—had confirmed the claim to be true. It wasn’t a photo, but a Boomerang video on his story that gave it away. It was unmistakably the same indoor go-kart track from Callie’s picture.

I just thought you should know, Kenny had followed up. Matt hadn’t responded. He’d tried to put it out of his mind ever since, but he couldn’t. He kept going back to what Callie had said to him the last time he’d seen her.

This all happened way too fast.

He didn’t disagree; they had moved fast. But what confused him was that Callie had been the one to set the pace, not him. He’d thought she’d wanted everything that had happened between them.

But the way she was acting now made him feel like nothing more than a regret.

“Matt.”

“Hm.” He looked up from his phone at Brandon. He, Nick, and Kenny all stared expectantly at him from across the EVP room.

“Do you want me to film the mixed tag match for BTE?” Brandon asked. His tone that conveyed he was repeating himself. Matt obviously hadn’t heard him the first time.

“Oh, no. Sorry,” he replied, and he looked back down at his phone. He saw the three of them exchange a wary glance out of his peripheral vision. Thankfully, they just left it alone.

“Alright, I’m starving,” Nick announced as he stood from his seat. “You guys coming?”

“Yeah,” Brandon agreed.

“No,” Kenny wearily returned. “I got that interview with JR.”

There was a pause. And then, “Matt?”

He looked up again, this time at his brother. He shook his head. “No. I’m not hungry.”

Nick let out a breath. “Alright,” he said, and he and Brandon went out the door, leaving Matt and Kenny alone. The silence in the room was deafening. But it didn’t last long.

“Have you talked to Callie at all?” Kenny asked. “About the match,” he quickly clarified.

Matt shook his head again. “No. I haven’t talked to her period. Not since Monday.”

There was another beat of uncomfortable silence. Again, Kenny was the one to break it. “Look, about yesterday. I wasn’t trying to—”

“Don’t,” Matt abruptly cut him off. He knew exactly what he was going to say, and he didn’t want to hear it. “I’m glad you told me. Let’s just leave it at that.”

He raised his palms in surrender. “Fine,” he said, and Matt hoped that really was the end of it.

But then Kenny added, “But I think you owe Alex an apology.”

“What?” Matt cut his eyes at him in disbelief. “For what?”

“Oh, come on, you know exactly for what. For the whole reason the mixed tag match is happening in the first place.”

That confused him even more. “The mixed tag match is happening because Trent can’t mind his fucking business.”

Kenny rolled his eyes. “Oh, okay,” he sarcastically returned.

“What?”

“You called Alex a slut, Matt!” Kenny burst. “That’s what led to the mixed tag match! You accused her of putting Hangman up to sabotaging your title shot and you called her a slut for being involved with both me and Cash. But where was Callie yesterday? In Orlando with Cash, even though she’s apparently with you. So yeah, I think you owe Alex an apology.”

Matt sat back, physically stung by Kenny’s words. They hurt because there was more than just a grain of truth in them. But, at the moment, he was too stubborn to hear it. “Oh, so Callie’s the slut now? Is that what you’re saying?”

Kenny expelled an exasperated breath. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“It sure fucking sounds like it is.”

“I’m saying she’s making you look like a fucking idiot.”

They were thrown into silence again, their arguing replaced with quiet, palpable hostility as they sat opposed on either end of the room. Matt’s eyes turned dark. He didn’t need this. Not now. Not from his best friend.

“Fuck you, Kenny,” he spat. He stood and stalked toward the door, and as he gripped the handle he turned back, a cutting remark on the tip of his tongue. But in a moment of clarity, he decided it was better left unsaid. The shoe was on the other foot now. So he just went out the door, suddenly glad that he did have a match. He needed to hit something.

* * * * * * * * * *

“Are you guys going out for Jim’s match?”

Alex glanced across the locker room at Trent, looking for him to answer Chuck’s question. He met her gaze before responding.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “We’ll probably stay back here and focus on our match.”

Chuck nodded. “Yeah. I wish it wasn’t mixed tag rules. I’d like to see Alex hand Matt his ass.”

“Oh, she doesn’t even need to touch him to do that,” Trent returned. “Didn’t he train Callie?”

Alex knew he was asking her, but she didn’t look up as she rummaged through her suitcase. “I think so.”

Trent smirked. “So then kicking Callie’s ass will be kicking Matt’s by proxy,” he said. Chuck blinked at him.

“Wow, you actually used that correctly.”

He sucked his teeth. “Fuck off. I know big words.”

“‘Proxy’ is a five-letter word.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Spell it.”

“Are you serious?”

Alex smirked to herself and let them continue to argue while she grabbed the top to her gear and a pair of joggers and went into the bathroom to change. Truth be told, she didn’t want to talk or even think about the match against Callie and Matt. It was a complete one-eighty from a week ago—she’d been aching to kick Matt’s ass then. But now, she just wished the entire situation would go away.

She finished changing and returned to the main area of the locker room. Chuck was still challenging Trent to spell different words. “I’m going to hair and makeup,” she announced over them.

“What gear are you wearing?” Trent asked.

She turned to face him as she pulled on her zip-up hoodie. Her top was a sparkly dark silver-purple with black trim. “This gear. Why?”

“Because we should try to match. I knew I should have brought the gear from Fyter Fest…” he trailed off as he dug through his things and pulled out his dark gray tights with the blue and pink designs. “Do these work?”

Alex gave him a soft smile. “Yeah, those work. I’ll ask Stella to do a blue and pink eye look,” she said, and she went out the door.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get ten steps before she ran into Adam.

He slowed to a stop when he saw her. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she returned, and her brow puckered with concern as she looked him over. He had his ubiquitous glass of whiskey in hand, but he at least looked better than he had when she’d seen him at the hotel on Sunday. “Going somewhere?”

He looked confused at that. “No… why?”

She awkwardly fidgeted with the sleeve of her hoodie. “Well, you just look dressed for TV and I didn’t see you on the card tonight. I wasn’t even sure you were here.”

Adam hadn’t said a single word to her since she’d texted him to ask if he was going to the Labor Day party. But she hadn’t said a single word to him since then, either. Because the more she’d thought about it, the more she’d realized how right Kenny was. It was exhausting putting so much effort into a friendship where she wasn’t getting the same effort in return.

“Oh,” Adam regretfully said as he looked down at his pale blue button-up. “Yeah, I just had an interview with Schiavone.”

“Oh,” Alex repeated. “About—”

“Where I go from here,” he interjected. “I said I was still open to tagging with Kenny if he was.”

He laughed wryly to himself and took a sip of his drink. Alex frowned and looked away. Kenny was not open to tagging with him again; she knew that for a fact. But judging by the look on Adam’s face, deep down he knew that, too.

“Where are you headed?”

She looked back up at him. “Oh, hair and makeup. For the match tonight.”

Realization dawned in his eyes. And then, sadness and hurt. “Oh, right. You have the mixed tag against Matt and Callie.”

“Yeah.” Alex fidgeted and glanced away again. She couldn’t bear the look on his face. But then she wondered: did he know that Callie had been in Orlando with Cash yesterday? Should she tell him?

No, she quickly decided. It’s not your place or responsibility.

“Well, I should get over there,” she said, gesturing in the direction of hair and makeup.

“Oh, yeah,” he nodded as she started walking. “Good luck tonight.”

“Thanks,” she said, and she turned and hurried off as quickly as she could.

* * * * * * * * * *

In the years since she’d started wrestling, Callie had never felt as much of an outcast as she did now. As soon as she’d arrived at the arena with Cash, she’d realized she had nowhere to go. The EVP room was out of the question, and she didn’t want to go back to sharing a dressing room with Britt—she was the one who’d blabbed her business all over Daily’s Place to begin with. Cash had offered for her to share with him and Dax, but she’d turned him down; she could only imagine the rumors that would start if people noticed her sharing a locker room with FTR. No, she needed to keep a low-profile, and so she’d found an empty room away from everyone else. Now, she sat in one of the lounges watching the show as she awaited her match, alone.

Orange Cassidy had just beaten Angelico with the Orange Punch. Callie had expected Best Friends and Alex to be at ringside for the match, but they weren’t. She looked away from the TV and down at her phone as Bryce Remsburg raised Orange’s arm in victory, but a commotion a moment later redrew her attention. Santana and Ortiz had attacked Orange from behind. The assault didn’t last long, however, as Chuck and Trent ran out and chased them off like a pair of guard dogs. Callie couldn’t help but roll her eyes as Trent angrily paced the ring, shirtless in his skinny jeans. She sincerely hoped Matt would get a quick pin on him in their match.

Chuck grabbed a mike to speak, but Callie’s phone buzzed in her hands and she looked down at the screen. It was a text from Cash.

Are you free? I need a favor.

Her pulse picked up a bit as she unlocked her phone to respond. Yeah… what’s up? she typed back and hit “send.” She watched as the typing bubble appeared and, soon after, his answer.

Don’t laugh. I can’t decide on a shirt.

Despite his request, Callie couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. But she couldn’t blame him too much; FTR was having an in-ring celebration in honor of their championship victory at All Out that night. He probably wanted to look his best.

Usual room? she asked as she stood to leave.

Usual room, he replied, and she headed off in the direction of FTR’s dressing room.

The door was slightly open when she arrived, and she knocked to announce herself before she let herself in. Cash stood alone in the middle of the room in a pair of dark navy slacks and socks, shirtless. Callie’s mouth went suddenly dry as he looked over at her.

“Okay, I can’t decide between these two.” He motioned to a pair of dress shirts hung up in the cubby behind him—one white with tiny blue dots, the other with a subtle blue and white checkered pattern. She walked over and pulled them both out of the cubby so that she could hold them up next to him. He smirked at her as she studied them. She did her best to ignore it.

“This one,” she decided, handing him the checkered shirt. But she frowned as she returned the white shirt to its place. “Are those the only dress shoes you have?” she asked, nodding at the pair of black square-toed loafers on the floor.

“Yeah…” Cash slowly returned. “Why? Is something wrong with them?”

It took every fiber of Callie’s being not to blurt out with, “Yes, they’re hideous.” Instead, she said, “Just brown would look better with navy, is all.”

“Oh,” he realized. “I guess I should have asked your advice before we left this morning.”

She smirked. “Is that all you needed?”

“Yeah, thanks,” he answered as he pulled on the shirt. Callie watched as he fastened the buttons, and she realized she was staring. She fidgeted and looked awkwardly away, but Cash didn’t seem to notice. “Are you ready for your match?”

She drew in a deep breath. “Physically, yes. Mentally… not at all.”

He snorted. “Make Matt do all the work. He’s the one who dragged you into this.”

Callie anxiously bit her lip. He wasn’t wrong; of the four of them in the mixed tag, she was the only one who hadn’t been present when the match was made. But even so, she couldn’t do that to Matt. “No, I don’t want to do that. And besides, Matt didn’t ask for the match, either—Trent did. All because he didn’t like Matt mouthing off about Alex.”

Cash rolled his eyes as he tucked his shirt into his pants. “That doesn’t surprise me. I think he has a thing for her.”

She scoffed. “You think he does? Please, it’s obvious he does,” she said. And then she muttered, “It seems like everyone has a thing for her.”

“Not me,” Cash abruptly announced. “I’ve moved on.”

Callie looked up at him, but he turned away to grab his suit jacket. She wondered if he had more to say—it felt like he had more to say—but before she could ask the door to the locker room opened and Dax walked in. He halted when he saw her.

“Oh, hey, Callie. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

He glanced between her and Cash. They both quickly shook their heads. “No, I just asked her to come help me pick out a shirt,” Cash said.

“Ah,” Dax nodded. Callie didn’t miss the little smirk on his face. It was her cue to go.

“Well, I’ll go so you can get dressed,” she said to Dax as she started to leave.

“Good luck if I don’t see you before your match,” Cash returned, and she gave him a tight smile and went out the door.

* * * * * * * * * *

Alex’s hands were clammy as she stood at Gorilla with Trent. The mixed tag match was next. Unfortunately, it was right after FTR’s joke of a tag team championship celebration. She did her best to tune out Dax’s egotistical blathering as she rolled her neck and loosened up. She needed to focus. A match was a match, and even though she wasn’t looking forward to this one, she still wanted to do her best.

“You ready for this?” Trent asked.

She looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah. Are you?” she meaningfully returned. She still couldn’t believe that he and Chuck had challenged Santana and Ortiz to a parking lot brawl next week. On top of worrying that they’d murder each other, she was concerned that Trent’s focus was no longer on their match.

“Yes,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about me.”

Alex smirked. “Man, have I got bad news for you next week.”

He gave her a crooked smile; but then his eye was drawn to a spot just past her shoulder. She turned to look. Matt and Callie had arrived.

Trent scoffed. “They don’t match at all. Losers.”

Normally, Alex would have laughed. But it was obvious even in the dim lighting of Gorilla that Matt and Callie’s gear wasn’t the only thing off about them. Callie in particular seemed unsure of herself. Her eyes met Alex’s. She turned away without a second glance.

Back in the ring, the “celebration” came to a screeching halt when Jurassic Express dumped a cooler full of beer cans over Cash, Dax, and Tully’s heads. Thankfully, they returned backstage a different way than through the entrance tunnels.

Alex drew in a breath and shook out her arms and legs as the show went to commercial. But it seemed like no time had passed at all when she heard the distinctive beat of the Best Friends theme song sound throughout the arena.

“Let’s do this,” Trent said as he held out his fist to her. She bumped it confidently with her own, and they walked into the tunnel together.

* * * * * * * * * *

A boulder settled in the pit of Callie’s stomach as she watched Alex and Trent disappear down the entrance tunnel. She didn’t know why she’d expected Alex to be just as nervous as her. On the contrary, she’d looked laser-focused; her and Trent both had. It was glaringly obvious that they were ten times more prepared for this match than she and Matt were. The two of them hadn’t even walked to Gorilla together—they’d just happened to get there at the same time.

“I’ll start the match,” Matt said. “I’ll try to keep your ring time to a minimum.”

Callie looked at him in hurt and confusion. “Why would you say that?”

“Because it’s obvious you don’t want to do this,” he breathed. “So I’ll just make quick work of Trent and get it over with, alright?”

“SUPERKICK PARTAYYYYYY!”

The opening of the Young Bucks theme interrupted before Callie could say anything. Matt didn’t so much as glance at her before he walked into the tunnel, and she had no choice but to follow him out.

The crowd offered a mixture of boos and cheers as they walked out onto the stage, but Callie couldn’t hear them over the music. She stood awkwardly next to Matt and waited for him to do his signature pose, but he never did. He just glared into the ring at Trent, who glared right back.

BOOM!

The cannons on the side of the stage shot fake $100 bills high into the air, making Callie flinch. She looked back into the ring as the paper money floated down around them. Alex rolled her eyes in annoyance and turned to say something to Trent.

She stood stiffly at the top of the stage until Matt moved, and they made their way down the entrance ramp. Trent started jaw-jacking, but Callie tuned him out as she took her place on the ring apron. Matt, however, took the bait; Aubrey had to push him back as they yelled at each other. Eventually, Trent scoffed and turned back to Alex.

“You wanna start?” Callie heard him ask.

But Alex didn’t even get the chance to open her mouth before Matt yelled, “No, we’re starting the match!”

Alex and Trent exchanged a look, but she stepped through the ropes and out onto the apron next to the turnbuckle. Matt removed his leather jacket and tossed it to the floor. Aubrey called for the bell, and the match started.

* * * * * * * * * *

Alex didn’t know if Matt was ignoring Callie, if Trent just wanted to beat the shit out of Matt, or if it was some combination of both. But whatever the case, the match had been going on for nearly ten minutes now, and neither of them had even tried to tag in her or Callie. It was aggravating, but at least it worked in her team’s favor. The match had effectively become a singles contest, and Trent had far more experience wrestling on his own than Matt did. That, and his cardio was better. If it continued like this, it would only be a matter of time before they won.

Matt tried to whip Trent toward the ropes, but he reversed it and pulled him into a side headlock. He pivoted toward a corner and charged, running up the turnbuckle to hit a float-over DDT. He went for the pin—but Matt kicked out at two. Afterward, both men remained still on the mat, taking what chance they could to catch their breath. Alex eagerly stepped up onto the bottom rope and banged on the turnbuckle. She wanted in.

“Trent! Tag me in!”

She leaned into the ring, reaching as far as she could, and he looked over at her. But just as he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, Matt hit him with a clubbing blow to the back. He grabbed him by the hair and jerked him into a chinlock. It wasn’t a move that Matt typically did. Alex knew it meant he was getting tired.

The crowd started clapping in rhythm for Trent, and Alex stomped her boot on the ring apron in time. Trent wrenched at Matt’s fingers, prying them away from his face. In response, Matt pulled him to his feet and swiftly maneuvered to hit a float-over DDT of his own. Alex bit down on her jaw as she watched him hook his leg. Trent got his shoulder up at two.

Alex stepped back up onto the ropes. She was tired of this. “Why don’t you tag in your partner, huh, Matt?” she taunted. “Worried she can’t beat me?”

Matt glared daggers at her as he climbed to his feet. “I don’t want to subject everyone to having to watch you wrestle,” he spat.

But Alex’s wit was just as quick. “Oh really? You look awfully lost without your little brother out here doing all the work.”

That needled him. She knew it would. But what she didn’t expect was his response.

“Please, you wouldn’t even have a contract if you weren’t on your knees for Kenny every night.”

For a second, Alex was stunned into silence. But then a white-hot rage bubbled up inside her. She ducked through the ropes and charged toward him.

“What’d you say to me?”

“You heard me.”

“Why don’t you say it again.”

“Get out of the ring, Alex!” Aubrey ordered.

“Matt!”

At Callie’s warning cry, Matt instinctively whirled around and dodged—and what happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion.

Trent flew toward Alex like a bullet. He crashed into her and knocked the wind from her lungs, sending her violently back into the turnbuckle. She felt a pop in her right shoulder, and then nothing but searing hot pain.

* * * * * * * * * *

When Trent realized what he’d done, he felt sick.

He hadn’t known Alex was in the ring. That DDT had left him dazed, and he’d been oblivious to his surroundings until he’d spotted Matt with his back turned to him. So he went for a spear. But Matt dodged at the last second. Trent had absolutely no chance to stop himself or correct course, and he rammed full speed into Alex.

He watched in stunned horror as she writhed against the turnbuckle. She clenched her right arm, her face screwed up in pain. She was hurt. He’d hurt her.

“Alex—”

Smack!

He was abruptly cut off by a superkick to the jaw. He crumpled to the mat. Matt dragged him by the ankle further into the ring and pinned him. The count sounded distant and faint.

One.

Two.

Three.

The bell rung. Trent felt Matt throw down his leg as the music started, ringing in his ears. He stared up into the lights, unblinking, while Matt’s arm was raised in victory. He’d hurt her. He’d hurt her and then lost the match.

“Alex,” he said again as he rolled over onto his hands and knees. She was still huddled against the turnbuckle, clutching her arm as Aubrey checked on her. He felt sick all over again.

“Alex.” He crawled over to her and put a hand on her knee. She looked up at him. Unshed tears shined in her eyes. It broke him. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “It was an accident—”

“Alex!”

Suddenly, Kenny was in the ring. He practically pushed Trent out of the way as he knelt in front of Alex. “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

“I think it’s dislocated,” she winced.

Trent looked at her right shoulder. It hung visibly lower than her left. His heart dropped into his stomach.

“Let’s get you to Doc,” he said as he tried to move toward her again.

But Kenny blocked him. “I got it,” he bit. Trent didn’t have it in him to argue.

He watched as Kenny helped her to her feet and ushered her to the ropes; he held them open for her so she could gingerly duck through. As she stepped to the other side, Alex looked back. For a brief second their eyes met. But then Kenny put his arm around her, and she turned away and disappeared into the back.

* * * * * * * * * *

Callie couldn’t stay out there a second longer. She was horrified by what she’d witnessed. The way Matt had taken advantage of Trent’s awful mistake, how he hadn’t hesitated to kick him in the jaw—there’d been a viciousness in his eyes that she’d never seen before. And she didn’t want any part of it.

She stormed off before Aubrey could even raise his arm in victory, marching quickly up the ramp. Kenny nearly bowled her over on his way down to the ring, and she turned to watch as he ran to Alex’s aid. But then she saw Matt coming after her, and she turned back around and hurried through the entrance tunnel.

“Callie!”

She didn’t stop or even glance his way. She just kept walking.

“Callie! What the fuck?”

That got her stop and face him. “Me what the fuck? You what the fuck, Matt? What the fuck was that out there?”

If looks could kill, she was certain she would have been dead on the spot. “Are you serious?” he spat. “I won the match and you just ran off!”

Her eyes darkened. “Well, I didn’t want to be a part of it anyway, right?”

Matt bit down on his jaw. There was nothing he could say to that. She gave him one last glare and turned her back on him again, praying that was the end of it. She just wanted to leave. Alone.

“I want your shit out of my house by the weekend.”

Callie halted. His words were like a knife in the back. They hurt. And suddenly, she wanted him to hurt, too.

She turned around again, her head held high. “That’s fine, because I don’t want to move back to California anymore.”

She held his gaze in defiance. But Matt just laughed, cruel and low. “Let me guess, Orlando with Cash?”

She faltered. He knew about yesterday. But she steeled herself again. “No. I want to move to Orlando for me.”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Okay.”

“That’s the truth!”

“Was all this just a rebound to you?”

If his previous words had been a knife to the back, those were a blow to the gut. Tears sprung to the back of Callie’s eyes. Her voice came out strained. Apologetic. “No. I care about you, Matt. So much that it scares me.”

He laughed again and looked away. “Coulda fooled me.”

She took a step toward him. “Matt—”

“Have fun in Orlando,” he cut her off, and that time it was him who stormed off and left her behind. Alone.

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