#with a sweatshirt against the bottom crack

[scobbe]

Spent $50 on incense and supplies for burning it at the monastery (we burn their incense at our church) only to burn two (2) grains panicking the whole time about setting off the smoke alarm.

[sweetbans29]

Teach Me: The Art of Touching (v) - PB

Pairing: Paige Bueckers x Reader

Previous Part & Next Part

Summary: You and Paige have been best friends for the last 6 years. You trust her completely. And it is because of that trust that you ask her a rather forward question. AKA - You ask Paige to teach you.

Warnings: mature, tiny pains, did I mention mature?

Word Count: 3.6k

Sweetbans Masterlist & Teach Me Masterlist

AN: Another one.

Paige enters your shared apartment to the kitchen light on. You always left it on when Paige was out later than you so she wouldn't have to walk into a dark apartment. The light wasn't the first thing she noticed - it was the fact that your bedroom door was closed. You would never close your bedroom door all the way.

Paige walks up to your door and gives it a light knock then places her ear up to it waiting for a response. When she doesn't hear anything she cracks open the door to find you already asleep.

She walks up to you and crouches down next to you. The sight of you causes her heart to break.

Yes, you are asleep but your eyes are puffy and your eyebrows are scrunched. You are wearing one of your own sweatshirts when you would typically wear one of hers. Paige moves her leg and notices a pile of tissues on the ground.

She doesn't know the whole reason for you ending up in this state but she had an idea that she was the cause. Her hand comes up to graze your face and your expression immediately releases its tension.

Paige moves to lay with you in bed, her arm comes around you which causes you to stir. You turn around to face her and her arm retreats from around you. Paige brings her hand up to touch your face but you flinch away.

"Please don't," you say almost inaudible. You look down at her shirt and feel the knot in your stomach tighten. She is still in the clothes she wore to the club.

Paige has felt low before but never as low as now when you ask her not to touch you. She doesn't know what to do to make the situation any better.

"It might be better if you slept in your room tonight." You say not making eye contact with her.

Her heart breaks when you say you don't want to sleep next to you but she doesn't move.

"No," Paige says.

You now make eye contact with her for the first time and she can see how puffy your eyes are. They are bloodshot and drained of life. They close.

"B, please," you say not wanting to fight with her but also not wanting to spend the night next to her after she just got off with someone else.

Paige wants to scream and fight your ask but already seeing the pain in your eyes fights against it. She wants you to explain everything that is going on inside your head. She wants to get to the bottom of the frustration and then fall asleep with you in her arms.

Paige looks at you once more and slowly makes her way out of your bed. She makes her way out of your room. As she is closing the door, she barely hears your final words - part of her believes she made it up in her head.

"Love you," you whispered as the door closed.

Paige wakes up the next morning to the wonderful smell of breakfast. She lazily walks out of her room to find you dancing around the kitchen. She yawns and makes her way to see what you are making. Sleep was not her friend last night.

"Morning B!" You say when you see her. "I made you breakfast."

Paige is trying to hide her confusion as you are a completely different person than you were last night.

Paige comes and stands at the counter as you pass her a plate.

"I thought we could run some errands this morning then have the girls come over later to hang. I'm thinking about trying a new recipe that I found on Pinterest." You say as you pick up your phone to try and find it.

Paige nods, trying not to be skeptical about how normal things feel. She replays the events from the night after she came home and still feels a pain in her heart when she remembers you didn't want her to touch you.

"I'm going to get ready - you should do the same when you are done eating and we can go." You say and head into your room.

The two of you have a very normal morning - you dragged Paige to Target and then the grocery store. You stopped at your favorite coffee shop and then headed home. By the time you got home, you had to start cooking. While you did Paige went to get room to game for a little while until the girls showed up.

"It smells amazing in here!" Nika yells as she runs to see what you are making in the kitchen. Paige makes her way out and immediately locks eyes with Azzi.

Paige just shrugs and makes her way to the group.

"Okay, it should be ready - I can't promise anything so if you don't like it, it's not my fault." You say and start passing out paper plates.

"I am sure it is amazing, thanks for having us," Azzi says and serves herself.

Everyone eats and then finds themselves in your living room. You and Paige are on the couch while some of the girls are on a live. You can tell Paige is struggling to stay up but doesn't like to miss out when the girls are over. She is scrolling through her phone but her eyes are having a hard time staying open.

The girls are doing random things on the live and having a good time. You are seen in the back but are mostly covered by the girls.

You poke at Paige's arm and she looks over at you. You pat your lap and Paige immediately shifts to put her head in your lap. You hear her phone lock as you begin playing with her hair. Her hand comes up to hold your thigh and you smile. Nothing else in the world matters - it is just you and her.

Paige's breathing begins to slow down and you know she is out. Your hands continue to run through her hair.

You are watching the live from your phone when you see a crap ton of comments coming through on how cute Paige and you are in the back.

"Ya, ya, ya - we get it, they are adorable," Nika says as she reads through the comments.

The girls eventually wrap up the live and begin to head out. You don't bother waking up Paige. Once the girls are gone you debate waking her up or letting her sleep - after a few minutes of thinking you decide to wake her up.

"B," you say and begin to shake her shoulder. You hear her groan.

"Let me put you to bed, ya?" You ask, knowing it is not really a question.

She groans again.

Your hand comes down to her waist and gives it a little squeeze.

"Come on B, you will be much more comfortable in bed," you say and begin to move your legs.

Her sleepy eyes begin to open and she sits up. Her shoulder leans into yours as her head finds your neck.

"Will you please sleep with me? Don't sleep well without you," she says.

"Of course I will," you say as you help her up. You don't think she is fully awake when you hear what she says next.

"You're the only one I want in my bed ever," she says as you help her into her room. You laugh and mutter a response along the lines of 'sure, whatever you say'.

"Serious. No other girl is like you. Hurt when you sent me away," she mutters. You know she is referring to last night. But in your defense, she hurt you when she took that girl to the bathroom at the bar.

"Okay sleepy girl, let's just get you to bed," you lay her down and tuck her in. You walk out to the kitchen to turn the lights off and grab a glass of water. When you walk back into Paige's room you see her sitting up.

"B, why are you sitting up, lay down love," you say knowing she is using every ounce of her energy to fight off sleep.

"Wanted to make sure you came back to me," she says and begins to lay back down. You make your way to your side of her bed and find your way under her covers. She scoots her way over to you and nestles into your side. She doesn't need to be held but just likes to be close to you.

"Go to sleep, B."

She sighs and hums.

Both of you sleep 10x better than you did the night before.

The next few days are back to normal between you and Paige. Neither of you brought up the night in the bar. That may or may not bite you in the butt later but since things are going smoothly you didn't want to backtrack.

The team's practices have been going extremely well - they were preparing for March Madness. The bracket had just been announced and UConn had a pretty easy route to the final.

At the end of practice, you and Paige make your way back to your apartment. The two of you shower (individually) and then find yourselves working on a Lego set in the living room.

"Hey B?" You ask the girl sitting across from you.

She lets out a low 'hmmm' signaling she is listening but doesn't look up from the instruction manual.

"I kind of want to do another lesson," you say shyly as a light pink tint graces your cheeks.

Paige's head whips up and she looks at you. Her eyes darkened as she put down the Legos she was holding.

"You kind of want, ma? Or you know you want?" Paige says in a teasing tone. "Because we aren't going to kind of move on."

"I want," you say - your voice coming out as a whisper. If you were being honest - you had been ready for a lesson the past few days but didn't want the normalcy that had just been restored to waiver.

"Okay baby, we can do a lesson," Paige says, not moving an inch.

You feel your body react - you find it extremely hard to sit still under her stare. You squeeze your legs together under the table in hopes of relieving any of the fast-building pressure you feel.

"You know how to kiss," she says. "Very well, I might add."

This causes you to blush even more now.

"All thanks to you," you reply.

"Me...and those videos you watched,' Paige says with a smile. You groan and roll your eyes.

"I am never going to live that down, am I?" You say as your hand comes up to cover your face.

"Nope!' Paige says. She continues.

"You know how to get a girl going so I think now is the time to show you how to make a girl feel good."

You look at her with a confused look. "I thought both of the first lessons were already making you feel good."

"Oh they are babe, but I am talking about the best feeling," Paige says as her hand finds your leg under the table, moving it painfully slowly toward your center.

You gulp and let out a moan. You then nod.

"Show me what you have learned so far ma," Paige says as she removes her hand from you and leans back from the table. She waits for you to make a move.

It takes you a second to compose yourself but slowly get up from your side of the table and make your way to her. She is leaning back against the couch and pushes the table away from her to give the two of you more space.

You stand above her as you bring one foot to each side of her. She is looking up at you, watching your every move - anticipating your touch.

You lower yourself to sit on her lap, making sure you both are comfortable. Her hands come up to your waist, lifting your shirt just enough for her fingers to brush your skin. Your hands come up and wrap themselves around her neck.

"Are you ready?" You ask, brushing a little of her hair out of her face.

"Oh babe, I am always ready for you," she says and that fuels the fire in you.

You lean in to kiss her but don't meet her lips. Instead, you kiss the corner of her lips and a trail down to her neck. You give her neck the proper attention it deserves as little breathy moans escape her lips. Once you begin to feel her fingers grip and knead at your waist you finally let your lips meet hers. One of your hands comes down to meet her breast and you begin massaging it causing her to moan - this allows access to establish your dominance in the kiss.

Her hands come and begin rubbing up and down your thighs causing you to moan this time. Paige can't help herself and begins to kiss down your neck. Your head falls back as you let her take control.

"Always so good for me," she says between kisses.

"Making me want you," she breathes out.

In one swift movement she lifts you up and is walking to her room. You let out a squeal, forgetting how strong she is. Your legs wrap around her torso. When she gets in her room, she lays you on the bed and looks down at you.

There she goes again - making you squirm under her gaze.

She removes her shirt slowly and you do the same - leaving both of you in shorts and sports bras. You slowly hook your fingers around the waistband of your shorts and move them down your hips.

Paige licks her lips as she watches you undress.

The two of you practically have seen each other naked so the removal of your shorts was nothing she hasn't seen. But how you took off your shorts - your eyes locked with hers, moving almost too slow has her wanting to do the most ungodly things to you.

"Have you touched yourself before?" Paige asks. Her voice has developed a low raspiness that you know you will grow to crave.

"Yes," you say softly as you nod your head.

"Show me," she says. Not a question, but a demand. "Show me how you make yourself feel good."

Before you can contest, Paige continues.

"How you please yourself is the start of how you are able to please others. Let's see how you do," she says.

You nod again, muttering an 'ok'.

Your hands come up to your breasts, squeezing them together and massaging them. It wasn't that you needed more stimulation, but it was where you would start when you were alone.

"Take off your bra," she says. Another demand.

You lift and take off your sports bra to reveal your breasts to your best friend. Her eyes scan them and notice how perfect your nipples are, all perked up and ready to be devoured.

Your hands find them and begin to play with them. You release a little moan as one of your hands makes its way down your stomach to your center. You keep your hand outside your undies as your fingers begin to circle the most delicate part of your body.

You let out a full-on moan and squeeze your eyes shut. You are the most turned-on you have ever been and all in front of your best friend.

You continue to work on yourself as you feel the bed dip beside you. Paige comes and attaches her lips to one of your nipples.

"Oh - fuck," you yell as your free hand comes up to hold Paige's head. Her tongue swirls around and has you close to your climax. Right as your breathe begins to pick up, Paige reaches down and slows the hand working on yourself.

"Alright baby, good job," Paige says and you whine. You were so close to your finish and she just stopped you in your tracks.

"Why'd you stop me?" You ask, head spinning from the loss of contact.

"Because I want to finish the job," she says as she lowers herself to your core.

She spreads your legs apart and rests herself in between them. She doesn't make a move to lower your undies but trails her fingers up your thighs and places them where she removed yours from.

Her fingers begin to work on you. Your moans fill her room.

She begins to kiss your thighs, sucking on them.

"Paige, I am close," you say as you bite your hand.

"Let go for me baby," she says as she drives you through your high.

You say her name more than she has ever heard you say it before, tangled in with a string of cusses. She slows down and gives one last kiss on your thigh before coming up to kiss you.

"You were amazing," Paige says as she lays next to you.

Your head is still spinning and you squeeze your legs together.

"I think that was the best orgasm I have ever had," you say with a laugh.

Paige lays back and puts her hands behind her head.

"Your turn ma," she says as she looks at you with hooded eyes. You squeeze your legs together trying to dissipate the pressure building in you yet again.

You turn over and kiss her neck, your hands coming to tug at her sports bra.

"Off please," you say in between kisses. She complies and removes it, throwing it somewhere across the room.

You kiss down her chest and take one of her nipples into your mouth, swirling your tongue around it as you knead the other with your hand. She lets out tiny strings of moans as you do work on her skin. You continue to kiss down her stomach and across her hip, stopping once you kiss the inside of her thigh.

Your fingers come to hook the waistband of her shorts.

"Can I take these off?" You ask looking up at her.

"Of course babe," Paige says.

She lifts her hips as you bring the shorts down her legs and discard them on the floor.

You attach your lips to her inner thigh again.

"And you thought I was wet," you say in a teasing tone. "You are soaked, B." You don't know where the newfound confidence came from but use it to your advantage.

"Ya ya ya," she says then lets out a moan as your fingers come up to circle her center.

You do everything that she did to you, changing up the speed and applying different pressures. You continue kissing her inner thighs but take the opportunity to really suck on them. While she peppered light kisses to your thighs, you plan on sucking the life out of them so that any girl she has in this position in the next few days knows you've been there.

"You are doing great ma, keep going," She says as her hands come to grip the sheets.

"Say my name," you say as you ease your pressure. "I want to hear you say my name."

She cusses and then moans your name. You are proud of the confidence that has presented itself in this situation.

"I'm close ma, don't stop," Paige moans as her back arches off the bed. One of her hands comes to intertwine her fingers with yours - something she usually has other girls doing when she is in your position. It is intimate but Paige doesn't care, she feels too good to care.

You pick up your speed and give one last good suck to her thigh as she rides out her high.

Her moans fill the air as she pants and comes down from one of the best orgasms she has ever had.

You kiss back up her hip to her stomach. You are lying on top of her as her breathing comes back to a normal pace.

"How did I do?" You ask bringing your arms up to your chest for you to rest your head on. One of her arms comes around to hold you in place - never wanting to let you go.

"Fucking amazing," she says as she looks down at you. Paige could get used to this. Kissing you and claiming you as her own. She wants to tell you how much she loves you and how she wants this to be the norm. How she wants to hold your hand in public and kiss you freely. To be the only person to hold you but the fear inside her overpowers all of those thoughts.

You smile up at her and as you do her arms release you. You begin to get up and grab your shirt, putting it on.

"Wanna go finish the Lego set?" You ask as you toss her shirt to her and put your shorts on. She nods and sits up, putting the shirt on and watching you head out to the living room.

You are unbelievable to her. Not five minutes ago did you have her back arching and orgasm and now you want to go on with life as it was before.

As Paige makes her way out to you, her heart and her head are in conflict. Her heart is screaming at her to tell you that she's completely in love with you while her head is sitting back telling her a soft 'I told you so'. Her head was and is right. The fear that grew in her when this all first started with The Ask was more present than it had ever been.

The fear that you would be her best but never hers...

At least that is what she told herself.

AN: I feel this did what it was meant to do but if you have thoughts let me know them! And as always, thank you for your love and support 💙

[lnfours]

invisible string | l.n

-> summary: who knew sleepless nights would be so beneficial. fewtrell!reader bc we love brothers best friend here :)

-> warnings: fluff, language, lando being the absolute loml.

-> wc: 1.9k

masterlist | listen | send me asks about lando !

₊‧°𐐪♡𐑂°‧₊

lando norris and max fewtrell had been attached by the hip since anyone could remember. best friends through literally everything. and if someone would look directly behind them, they’d see you always following behind.

you didn’t mind always trailing behind them when you were younger, and it gave the boys someone to compete against besides themselves whenever you’d go karting or join them in games.

but as you grew older, the ganging up turned into protection. from threatening to beat up ex boyfriends to actually doing so, somewhere along the line, max had made it clear to his best friend that you were off limits. in fact, no one in the friend group was allowed to even think about it.

however, everything max had told him seemed to go in through lando’s ear and out the other. he wasn’t exactly sure when he had finally stopped seeing you as ‘just his best friend's little sister’, but the inevitable happened nonetheless.

on the other hand, you had always had feelings for lando. you’d always suppress them to keep them hidden from your overprotective brother, knowing the minute you tried you’d be shot down. even the pages in your diary when you were 8 were filled about how you thought lando ‘had the prettiest eyes’, and ‘too good of eyelashes for a boy’.

and the pining just got worse last week when he had found you knocking on his bedroom door at 1:30 in the morning. you hadn’t been able to sleep, and it was evident as you tiredly smiled at him in the doorway. he wasn’t sure how you knew he was still awake, but he assumed it was the soft glow shining from the crack at the bottom of the door.

it wasn’t. you had heard the low volume of the tv in his room, his soft chuckles making their way through the paper thin walls. he hadn’t been able to sleep either, and when he wasn’t able to sleep, he’d always watch a movie.

his heart got caught in his throat as he took in your appearance, the old mclaren sweatshirt he had let you borrow ages ago hugging your frame, plaid pajama pants he swore were max’s. you looked tired. so so tired. meeting your eyes with a soft smile and sympathetic eyes, he spoke, “you okay, y/n?”

you shook your head, your eyelids slowly blinking, “i can’t sleep. i don’t know what it is, but i haven’t been able to sleep for more than 4 hours the past few nights.”

he frowned, opening the door wider for you to come in. he nodded in the direction of his bed, “me either. wanna join for the rest of the movie til you feel tired enough to go to bed?”

you nodded, stepping into the room as he closed the door behind you. you climbed into his bed, him shuffling in next to you as you were swallowed by the soft duvet, your head meeting the plush pillow behind you.

“what’re we watching?” you asked, your voice soft as he unpaused the movie.

“something on netflix, i don’t know. actings so bad it makes me laugh.”

you smiled over at him, “let’s see if it’s bad enough to put us to sleep.”

this continued for a couple weeks, you either knocking on his door or sending him a text to ask if he was still awake. he had even found himself staying up to make sure he heard your text or knocks, desperately wanting you to come climb into his bed or fall asleep next to you.

and just like any other night, last night he padded across the wooden floors in the apartment quietly after getting your usual ‘are you awake?’ text. he knocked softly on the door before pushing it open and slipping inside your room, noticing the lack of the fairy lights twinkling on the walls, the only source of light coming from the tv that hung on the wall.

you let him climb into your bed, smiling softly as you rolled onto your side to face him, “hi.”

he smiled back, “hi.”

you let out a huff, “i’m starting to think maybe i should run to the store tomorrow and get some melatonin. ”

“or, hear me out,” he smirked tiredly, “you can put that pretty little head to rest at night like normal people do.”

“oh, so you think my head is pretty?”

he let out a boyish giggle, “only if you think mine is.”

you laughed softly, letting your eyes lock with his. you weren’t sure when you scooted so close to him, but he found himself wrapping his arm around your waist and pulling you even closer. you placed your leg over his hip, his other hand tracing circles on the soft skin on your thighs. he hummed contently as your face nuzzled into his chest. you found yourself listening to the fast pace of his heartbeat.

over the past couple weeks, you two had found yourself in this position more and more. it was like the more you’d climb into each other’s beds, the more he’d have the confidence to pull you so close to him that there were no gaps for air between you two. you weren’t complaining, of course, but because everything about it was so new and with him, it made you a tiny bit nervous.

you listened to the movie in the background, basking in the smell embedded in his hoodie. he smelled like his cologne, the laundry detergent everyone used, and a soft mix of your perfume. the floral scent pulled at your heart strings as you realized it was the hoodie he had tugged over your head the night before, right after you had complained about the fact he kept his room so cold.

the fact that he didn’t discard the hoodie immediately into the hamper after last night, but instead he put it on, made your heart squeeze. you wondered if he had put it on to bask in the smell of you, but you'd never know the answer because you were too embarrassed to ask.

he did.

“so,” you started, knowing he was still awake, the two of you just basking in the comfortable silence that fell over you, “ready to get back to racing?”

“yes and no,” he said, his thumb switching directions on the skin of your thigh, making stars now, “i like being home, but i also love racing, y’know, so i’m excited. but not excited to leave everyone.”

your fingers traveled underneath the red cloth of his hoodie, reaching his lower abdomen as you felt his breathing hitch softly in his chest. you drug your fingertips against his soft skin, “yeah, i get you,” you said into his chest, “gonna miss max more than me, i get it.”

he chuckled softly, “mhm, whatever you want to believe.”

however, it sent him over the edge when you moved your head to look up at him. his blue/green eyes met your tired ones, a soft and playful smile on your lips, “what?”

humming back at you as he softly raised his eyebrows, “hmm?”

you shook your head, a playful smile on your lips, “don’t do that. what did you say, lan?”

he cleared his throat nervously, cheeks daring to turn a light shade of pink, “i’m going to miss you the most out of everyone, y/n.”

you were silent as he let out a soft puff of air, his eyes scanning over your face like he was trying to memorize it. you smiled softly, his eyes lingering on your lips before meeting yours again.

“lando,” your voice was soft, hands moving from under his sweatshirt to cup his cheeks. he leaned into your touch, quietly sighing out of relief at the feeling he had been waiting so long for, “i…”

you trailed off, nerves getting the best of you. he was so close, his minty breath fanning over your face. everything about it was making you so nervous you swore you were about to go into cardiac arrest. his voice broke the silence, “i know.”

you looked at him with furrowed brows, “you know what?”

“i know you like me,” he smiled, his eyes meeting with yours again, “i’ve known ever since max and i snuck into your room when we were eight and i read your diary.”

you gasped, laughing as you slapped his chest, “you fucks!”

he smiled, “i was the only one who read it, but it was nice to know the girl i thought was cute liked me back.”

“do you still think she’s cute?”

“no,” he smiled softly. you felt your heart drop, you couldn’t tell if he was being serious or kidding, until he continued, “i think she’s the most gorgeous woman i’ve ever seen in my life.”

you smiled, his thumb pressing against your cheek as his hand cupped your face, his fingers meeting the hairs at the back of your ear. you weren’t sure who leaned in first, but the gap closed rather quickly as he pulled your neck down to his level.

you kissed him back with the same amount of passion and love as he put into it. his arm that was around your waist moved to the other side of your head, his body fully hovering over you as he held himself up. you let him slot between your legs, letting his tongue slip inside of your mouth.

you panted as he broke the kiss hesitantly, his lips finding the soft spot underneath your earlobe on your neck. you let out a soft whimper, your arms wrapping around his neck.

“lando,” the sound of you saying his name breathlessly was like music to his ears, “baby.”

and so was that pet name. fuck he was so done for.

his hands trailed up your oversized t-shirt, hands finding your tummy as he desperately wanted to touch your skin again. you smiled into the kiss as you heard a soft giggle escape his throat when your hands had found the ticklish spots on his sides.

“are you ticklish?” you grinned, breaking the kiss to take a breath. he sent you a tight lipped smile before giving you a warning look.

“don’t even-”

you didn’t listen to what else he had said, your fingers digging into his sides. he laughed, desperately trying not to wake up your housemates as he tried to get you to quit it.

however, when he flipped the both of you so you were in his lap and his hands found your ticklish spots with ease, you knew it was game over. he had won.

“lando,” you breathed, a giggle following in pursuit, “stop!”

“sorry, baby,” he said, “can’t hear you.”

₊‧°𐐪♡𐑂°‧₊

it was the next morning, lando was still asleep in your bed, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his fluff of curls, a blanket wrapped around his waist as he faced you. you had woken up a couple minutes ago, your eyes wandering over to the sleeping boy next to you. he looked at peace, his eyelashes kissing his skin, cheek squished against the pillow.

you didn’t mean to stir him out of his sleep when you snuggled in closer, but he hummed happily as he threw an arm around your waist, you nuzzling into his chest.

he placed a gentle kiss on your forehead, resting his head on yours as you both dozed back off to sleep. a sleep so deep that neither of you had heard the door to the apartment shut, or hear someone knocking on your bedroom door.

it was ethan and niran who found you first. the both of them sharing a look as they stood in the doorway.

“well, it’s about time,” ethan joked, niran smirking down at the couple.

“yeah, just wait for max to find out about this.”

[featherandferns]

guilty as sin? (fic - part 1/2)

jj maybank x fem!routledge!reader | largely inspired by the bible

content warning: sexual content; mentions of parental abuse (physical abuse) | any questions for trigger warnings, feel free to inbox anonymously

word count: 14k.

blurb: when you, John B's half sister, return to Kildare after over two years of living in Colorado, your adolescent crush that you harboured for his best friend comes screaming back. Because you and JJ can't be together in real life, what's the harm in a fantasy?

“And this is your room.”

The syrup-coloured wood is the first thing your eyes meet when John B pushes open the bedroom door. There’s the vague lingering smell of teenage boy which he’s tried to air out, the window open ajar, and the clutter of his belongings has been moved to make space for your own. As you drop your duffel bag and step into the room, you take in the walls. There’s posters and prints stuck above his bed, dotted around on slats of wood separating windows: someone surfing; a rockstar smashing his guitar. An old skateboard deck is nailed into the wall alongside a license plate. The sheets are bright blue, the bed freshly made, and a clean towel is folded up at the foot. It’s well-lit with plenty of daylight flowing through the many windows. Homely and inviting.

“Is it, uh, alright?”

You turn to find John B leaning against the doorframe, hands in his short pockets. Smiling, you nod.

“It’s perfect,” you tell him. “I’m honestly chill with crashing on the couch, though.”

It’s pretty obvious this was his room: you feel guilty kicking him out.

He shakes his head and gestures with his thumb over his shoulder. “I moved into my dad’s room anyway. This has been the spare for a while.”

“Well, thanks,” you smile.

He nods, mirroring your content. “I’ll let you settle in and stuff. I moved all my crap out the closet so you can put your stuff in there, and the top bedside drawer is empty.”

“That’s perfect,” you say. You lift your bag with a grunt and dump it on the bed.

“I gotta go to work but call if you need anything. Shouldn’t be back too late.”

Unzipping your bag, you look to him. “Where’d you work?”

“Got this gig helping out at Ward Cameron’s. Don’t know if you remember him?”

“Course I do,” you snort. “The kingpin of Kildare, and your dad’s treasure hunting buddy.”

There’s a tense silence as your words catch up with you. You press your eyes shut, embarrassed.

“Shit, sorry. That didn’t come out how I meant it to.”

“It’s cool,” John B says, graciously gliding past it. “Anyway, he pays pretty good so can’t complain. Mostly just handy-man odd jobs.”

“Very noble work,” you joke.

With a quiet laugh, John B nods and backs out the door. He lingers another moment, contemplating saying something else. “Look, uh, I know it isn’t ideal circumstances, you coming back to Kildare and stuff, but I’m glad you’re here. Really. It’s nice having you back, sis.”

Your mood sobers, smile turning solemn.

“Thanks,” you quietly reply.

He nods once more and pats the doorframe in farewell. “Right, I’ll let you get unpacked. See you later.”

“See ya.”

When John B leaves – the front door shuddering against the house as it slams shut – you’re overcome with quiet. In Colorado, where you lived with your mom in the city, there was little nature. You forgot how peaceful Kildare is. Through the crack in the window, birdsong and cricket chimes accompany the sound of your unpacking. You turf out your clothes and take to putting them in the closet. Shoes and bags and bikinis. A jacket and a few sweatshirts. It was easy enough to plan for your outfits considering you’re only staying the summer. You remember the weather in Kildare well enough from when you used to live here.

Once you’ve unpacked your clothes, you find your paints. A box of watercolours which have seen much use and love, the hinges rusted and the inside of the palette smeared with dried mixed paint. Turning to the bedside table, you pull open the bottom drawer on accident. You come face to face with corny porno magazines, a box of tissues, two wrapped condoms and a half empty bottle of painkillers.

“Gross,” you mutter, slamming it shut. Yep, this was definitely a dude’s bedroom.

The top drawer is empty, like John B promised. You fill it with your paints and sketchbooks and pencils.

As the day ploughs on, the room becomes increasingly saturated with your personality. Postcards from Colorado, of the towns and cities you visited, photographs from school of your friends and classmates: you scatter them along them wall, amongst John B’s. Some of your favourite paintings, alongside artists which inspire you, join the mix. On the desk you add a few of your own books to the haphazard stack of abandoned homework and school reports.

At the bottom of your duffle bag is your penny board. You look around the room, searching for empty space to slot it without adding to already cluttered surroundings, and opt to slot it under the bed. Ducking down, you come face to face with a collection of empty beer cans. Clearly the spring cleaning only went so far. It’s noisy as you drag them out, but you’re certain you hear someone shouting. Pausing, sitting back on your haunches, you turn to peer out the open bedroom door. It’s silent for a moment, and then you hear footsteps.

“Yo! JB, you home?”

It’s a guy shouting. His voice sounds vaguely familiar. When he comes into the corridor, he glances into Big John’s bedroom (now claimed by your older half-brother) first. Blonde messy hair and well-worn combat boots instantly name him. JJ.  He turns to the spare bedroom and stops short the moment his eyes land on you, sat amongst a pile of trash.

“You’re not John B,” he says.

“What gave me away?” you reply with a lift of your brows.

There’s a long awkward moment where he stares at you. You can practically hear the cogs turning as he takes you in. When you lift your arm up to scratch the back of your neck, realisation dawns upon him. You imagine your scar on the outside of your elbow gave you away.

“Holy crap! Little Routledge?” he gapes.

You laugh. “Haven’t been called that in a minute.”

JJ steps into the room and you get to your feet. He tackles you into a hug. It’s too short, too sudden, and then he’s stepping away from you again, leaving you dizzy on your feet.

“The fuck? You’re, like, grown now,” he says.

Rolling your eyes, you reply, “well, I am sixteen.”

“The fuck!” he repeats. He then takes in where you’re standing, and the state of the room, and frowns. “Wait, what are you doing here? I thought you were in Colorado with your mom?”

“I was,” you say. You kick one of the cans out the way and fold your arms over your chest, shrugging. “I came back for the summer.”

“Oh, that’s sick!”

You laugh. It’s a nice reaction to have from someone who you haven’t seen for over two years.

“John B gave you his old room then?”

He walks into it as if it’s his own. You watch as he studies the new additions to the wall that you’ve added. Lingers on one of your paintings.

"Yeah, he’s moved into his dad’s, apparently.”

“Yeah, he moved in there a while ago,” JJ tells you. “I’ve been sleeping in here most of the time.”

Your mind flashes back to the bedside drawer stocked with teenage boy necessities. Ah, makes sense. You remember how JJ was when you were a dorky thirteen-year-old. At the ripe age of fourteen, he had girls fawning after him. He was shameless in his reputation. The conversations you overheard between himself and John B as he’d brag about his escapades are seared into your memory, as you felt your wasted preteen heart splinter with every tale. It’s no surprise now that he’s probably just as unruly. Especially considering how he looks. There isn’t much time to ogle though because he’s looking away from the décor, meeting your gaze again.

“That explains all the empty beer cans, then,” you say.

He cringes. “Yeah, uh, sorry ‘bout that.”

You shrug. “It’s cool. I need to toss ‘em out but I don’t know where the trash bags are…”

“Oh, right,” he says, breezing past you. His cologne lingers in the air when he leaves. There’s the smallest moment for you to catch your breath as JJ bangs around in the kitchen, and then he reappears with a roll of black bags. Tosses them to you and you catch. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

You begin to shove the cans into the bag and JJ starts to help. His black button-up gapes open as he leans over and it takes everything not to glance down his shirt like some pervert.

“How come you didn’t want to stay in Colorado for the summer, then?”

“Change of scenery,” you vaguely reply. It isn’t a complete lie, but it isn’t the whole truth either.

“Well, you chose the best summer to come back. Our mission this year is to have the best summer of all time.”

“Pretty lofty goal to set,” you chuckle.

JJ glances up at you, flashing you a grin. “Nah, we got it in the bag.”

You find yourself smiling back, held captive under his stare. When he takes the now full trash bag off you, tying it off, you snap out of it.

“So, where’s your brother at then?” he asks, heading out the room. You follow.

“At work. Said he does jobs for Cameron now.”

“Oh, yeah. Cameron sorta took him under his wing after his dad…went missing,” JJ replies.

You have a feeling that the way people talk about John B’s father is rather doctored.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” you tell him, referring to Big John.

As you step on the porch, the sunlight warms your face. The floorboards creak as you make your way down them, to the garbage can outside.

“It was insane,” JJ says to you. He tosses the trash away. “I mean, we all knew Big John was a bit too into the whole royal-merchant thing but…we never thought it’d go that far, you know?”

“Yeah,” you nod. “Scary.”

JJ looks at you a moment longer. Then, he laughs to himself and shakes his head. “Can’t believe you’re sixteen now.”

“Can’t believe you’re seventeen.”

“What? I look good or something?”

He does a small spin on the spot, arms held out by his sides. You roll your eyes, acting as if you’re unaffected. It’s hard to swallow the reflex reaction of yes.

“Or something,” you say.

JJ takes it in stride. “Well, you look pretty cute yourself considering you’ve been in the mountains for the last three years.”

“I don’t live in the mountains,” you snort. The word ‘cute’ rattles around your head like a pinball.

“You’re taller now too. Practically come up to my shoulders. I remember when me and John B could pick you up by your ankle like a marlin.”

“Yeah, I remember that too,” you not-so-fondly recall.

JJ grins and steps over to you. Despite both of your growth spurts, you still have to look up at him, and him down at you. His eyes are just as dreamy as you remember them. When you first left for Colorado, you hardly had time to pack. In the midst of chaos, taking a picture of your brother’s best friend didn’t seem all that important. Cut to you spending endless nights trying to remember his eyes, the exact colour and the exact shape. Trying to remember the dimples that popped out when he smiled. The pure joy in his laugh. The way your heart felt like it might explode whenever he looked at you, even if it were for a second.

But when JJ pats your head, your chest deflates.

“Well, see you around, little Routledge,” he says, stepping away. “Tell your brother I was looking for him.”

Because even after all these years, you’re still just John B’s little sister in JJ’s eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

You stare into your can of cider. In the night, the only light being that from the bonfire John B started up in the backyard, you can’t make out the colour of it. Just the swirling of liquid. You’d spent the last three days working on a watercolour of the marsh side to John B’s house, but you couldn’t capture the movement of the water quite right.

“Wait, I’m confused,” Pope frowns.

“What’s there to be confused about, Pope?” JJ sighs, seemingly exhausted from the questions. There had been an influx of them the minute John B brought you out of the Chateau. “His mom shagged her dad and boom, here she is.”

“Charming mental images there, JJ, thanks,” John B cringes.

You laugh into your drink.

“No, I get that. But…You used to live here, right?” Pope asks you.

You nod.

“But then you moved to Colorado?”

“Yeah?”

“But now you’re back here?”

“Apparently,” you say.

Pope’s frown deepens: apparently that cleared nothing up for him. You’ve never known someone so analytical. “This is complicated,” he observes.

“No shit,” Kiara quips.

It was complicated. Families usually are. You and John B had different dads, in short. Your shared mom cheated on Big John when John B was hardly a year old, putting you around 11 or so months behind him. She ran off to Raleigh with your dad to try and fix their tumultuous relationship, leaving you with Big John for practically thirteen years. Whilst he wasn't unkind to you, he never saw you as his. You supposed you were a reminder of his ex-wife's unfaithfulness. But John B treated you like blood, as did his friends.

Just after your thirteen birthday, your mom decided to flee the state, and she was taking you with her. It all came out of the blue. You weren’t exactly thrilled to go to Colorado. You liked Kildare, and North Carolina, and John B and his friends. Kiara was always nice to you. She never talked down to you, despite you being seen as John B’s little sister. You bonded over turtles and Bob Marley. JJ was different. He’d prank you with John B and tease you about your dolls, but he’d also patch you up if you fell and calm you down after a nightmare. Your crush on him evolved naturally over time. What started as childhood infatuation with the supposed delinquent of Kildare became real. You liked JJ. He was funny and rambunctious, but he had a kindness and tenderness that he kept hidden below. He was often at the house as his own family situation was far from perfect, so having him around became as familiar as John B’s presence. When you left, JJ gave you a hug that you wished would last a lifetime.

But you drifted away in Colorado. You didn’t have anybody’s phone number, save for Big John’s (which your mom refused to let you use), and you were too young to remember addresses to write to them. Social media was never something you latched onto and eventually it all faded away into a strange, dreamlike memory. Being back here is almost proof that you didn’t imagine the whole thing.

“We’re half siblings,” you say, whittling down your family history into a simple statement. “That’s all you really need to know.”

“Damn straight,” JJ whoops, downing the last of his drink. He crunches the can in his fist and heads to the cooler for another.

“You’re staying for the whole summer then?” Kiara asks.

You nod. “I’m tryna get a job at this restaurant in town to keep me busy.”

“Screw that. Just come smoke and surf with us all day, that’ll keep you occupied,” JJ grins.

He’s comfortable in himself, relaxing in a lawn chair, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. His t-shirt represents one of Kildare’s small-town establishments and his shorts are stained with dust and dirt from riding his bike.

“She’s the good one out of us lot,” John B announces, gesturing to you. “Out of all the Routledge offspring, she’s gonna go places. You’re not gonna taint that, JJ.”

“And by ‘all the Routledge offspring’ you mean yourself and her?” Pope checks.

John B nods fervently. “I’m telling you! She’s madly talented.”

“You’re drunk; it’s giving you beer goggles,” you dismiss, finishing your drink.

“You were always the creative one,” JJ remarks. Everyone looks over to him. “Me and John B would be out on the water and she’d be drawing it.”

“Maybe you can show us some of your stuff,” Kiara says.

You laugh and shake your head. “Maybe not.”

The alcohol wizzes up your body as you get to your feet and you take it as a good time to call it quits.

“I think I’m gonna head in.”

“What?”

“No!”

“Come on!”

You laugh, shaking off the group’s disputes. “I’m tired!”

“Lightweight,” JJ teases. You flip him off as you pass, ditching your empty can in the garbage as you go.

“Night guys!” you holler as you head back into the house.

“Night!”

The bedroom John B offered you is starting to feel less like a guest house. You shrug off your cardigan – it stinks of smoke from the fire – and close the door. Through the window, you can hear the group chattering.

Pope seems nice. He hadn’t been around when you lived in Kildare, but you recognised his name. Heyward was a legend on the Cut; you could see his dad in his eyes. Kiara was just as you remembered her, if not more consumed by her environmental activism than before. JJ was the most staggering change of all. He’d grown into his looks, matured around the face. Any puppy fat that you remembered from childhood had vanished. Lithe and lively, he was an American heartthrob, through and through.

As you do your skincare, you glance out the window. You can make out JJ, sat with his back to you. His arms are flailing around as he tells a story. You can’t make out the details through the window but the looks on everyone’s faces tells you it’s pretty damn entertaining. He was always the joker, humour hiding whatever was happening underneath like he was arming himself with a grin. The unexplained bruises on his face and the painful batterings on his body were never explained whenever he’d stay at Big John’s, when you were younger.

The moment he shifts in his seat, you dart away from the window, scared to get caught, and finish getting ready for bed.

A bad dream rouses you awake. It was about Colorado. The warped memories keep you from falling back asleep, no matter how hard you try. Sighing, you stare at the ceiling. The room is bathed in moonlight, cosy in the wooden interior, and you contemplate sitting outside for a bit. The same cardigan from earlier gets pulled on over your vest top and you slip into some crocs.

You head for the front door, creeping past John B’s room, and step onto the porch. There’s a warm, humid air in the night. The crickets and owls harmonise with the faint buzz of mosquitos who surround the porch light. That’s when you realise that it’s already on, and you’re not alone. JJ’s on the porch, laid out on the sofa. He’s smoking a joint. The smell of weed merges into that of the dying embers from the abandoned, extinguished bonfire. You rap gently on the wall as you approach, hoping not to startle him.

“Hey,” he says, looking up at the sound.

“Hey.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“No,” you say. “I thought everyone went home.”

“They did. I’m crashing here tonight. My dad’s…”

He falters, glances up at you, and shakes his head.

“Don’t need to bore you with it.”

“You’re not boring,” you hear yourself tell him.

Smiling, JJ offers the joint to you. You take it, sitting down in the red armchair at the foot of the sofa. The weed consumes your senses when you take a drag, hitting the back of your throat and dulling your thoughts.

“Haven’t smoked in ages,” you say.

“Big smoking community out in Colorado?” JJ asks.

You laugh. “Not where I live, no.”

He takes the joint back when you lean over to him. Tilts his head back as he takes another hit. He’s in the same clothes as earlier, hasn’t even taken off his boots; his hair is tousled like he tried to sleep but couldn’t. You’re caught in the act of staring at him. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even make a joke. Instead, he holds your gaze. It’s almost like a silent challenge: who’ll break first?

“Can I say something kinda inappropriate?” he asks.

“I feel like you have to, now.”

JJ grins at that, amused. “You’re way cuter than I remember you.”

“Oh? You mean sweaty thirteen-year-old, chalk-highlight-pink-hair wasn’t cute?” you joke.

Shaking his head, he adds, “No. Well, yeah, but not in the way you are now.”

Your stomach tightens and heart constricts, and you wish you had the joint to have something to distract yourself with. You hope you sound calm and collected when you say, “thanks. You don’t look too bad yourself.”

“Oh, you’re too kind,” JJ jokes. He takes another long, deep drag. “Is it nice? Being back in Kildare?”

You glance off to the marsh. You forgot to check the time when you got up but judging from the endless navy blue of the sky, it’s still late.

“Sure.”

“Sure?”

You look back to him. “It’s better than Colorado.”

“So, you’re not missing home then?”

The blunt is passed back to you. Taking a drag, you ponder his question. “I don’t think I know where home is right now. I don’t think it’s Colorado, but I don’t know if it’s here either. Maybe I don’t have one.”

JJ doesn’t say anything and you remember yourself. Laughing self-deprecatingly, you shake your head.

“Sorry, think this joint’s going to my head. That was dramatic.”

“No, no, I get ya,” JJ assures. “I know what you mean.”

“You don’t like Kildare?” you ask him.

His expression darkens like a shadow has cast over him. “It depends.”

“Hm,” you say. Nothing more is said on the matter. You get the sense that JJ was vague on purpose.

Pulling your legs into your seat, you glance around at the clutter on the porch. A surfboard is lent against the nett lining of the porch; a rusting duck ornament balances on one of the beams. What looks to be a broken radio sits beside a half-full bottle of rum on a small table by the couch.

“I think it’s good for John B, having you back.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” JJ smiles. “He sorta spun out when his dad disappeared. You’re kinda the only family he has left.”

“You’re his family too. Been around longer than I have,” you tell him.

JJ’s smile softens. He glances away from you, fiddling with the paper of the joint, almost as if he’s flustered. “Thanks.”

“So,” you say, “you got some poor girl on this island falling after you?”

“Rude of you to assume there’s only one,” JJ grins wickedly.

You roll your eyes.

“What about you? Some West Coast jock waiting for you back in the home state?”

The sarcastic ‘har har’ that he gets has JJ frowning, bemused.

“Definitely no guy, and definitely no jock.”

“Now that I find hard to believe,” JJ says.

Before you can ask what he means by that, or spiral out by thinking too much about it, JJ’s getting to his feet. He puts the blunt out on the window ledge, ditching the empty butt in a filthy dish. Stretching his arms over his head, sighing, you watch as his t-shirt rides up. The tensing of his abdominal muscles is like torture. God, to run your hands up his chest, over his shoulders, tangle them in the salt-soaked strands of his hair…

“Right, night Little Routledge,” JJ says.

You blink away from his chest and meet his gaze. There’s a strange expression on his face, one you don’t recognise, and you want to scrutinise it and find out what it means. But it’s gone in a flash, as is he as he heads back into the house. You watch through the window as his silhouette drops onto the pull-out sofa.

It takes a minute to regain your composure.

You can’t think of JJ like that. He certainly doesn’t think of you like that, and that childhood crush has long been put to bed. Shaking it awake is the last thing you need right now. Besides, he’s John B’s best friend. Your brother’s best friend. The same brother who’s taken you back into his house, offered you a room, free of charge, without complaint or question. And it seems like John B needs as many people around him as possible right now. But it’s hard to maintain that line of thought, when as you lie back down in your bed, desperate to get some sleep, you can vividly picture the slit of JJ’s chest that you were privy to just moments ago when you close your eyes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

You follow Tom through the restaurant. He’s the supervisor, eighteen and a fresh high school graduate. It’s hard to keep up with him as he points things out: waiter’s station; kitchen; storeroom…You’d forgotten how overwhelming job orientations can be.

“And this,” he pushes a door open, “is the staff room.”

You glance in and take in the messy pile of shoes, the overflowing trash can, and the three coat pegs overwhelmed with bags and hoodies.

“Love what you’ve done with the space.”

Tom laughs. He closes the door and leans against the doorframe. Broad shouldered, he stands taller than you by a couple inches.

“So, what made you want to work here?”

“I’m really interested in not being broke,” you reply, making him laugh.

“You new to the island? Feel like I haven’t seen you around?”

“This island that small?”

“Or you’re just that unforgettable,” he smoothly returns.

Your face fires up. Laughing nervously, you shift your stance. “I just moved in with my half-brother for the summer. Need something to keep me busy for a few months.”

“Ah, sweet. Anyone I’d know?”

“Dunno,” you say. He starts back into the main restaurant building. They haven’t opened yet. It’s void of life. “John B Routledge?”

“Oh shit, yeah. JB,” he says, flashing you a grin.

He’s charming in a disarming way. The kind of face that a modelling agency would swipe up because of his easy marketability.

When the two of you approach the bar, there’s a girl stood polishing wine glasses. She looks to be about your age, maybe a couple of years older. Her smile is sweet and welcoming like warm hot chocolate on a winter’s night.

“Hey, Lizzy. This is the new starter,” Tom introduces.

“I’m guessing I got the job then?” you ask him. He nods. With that, you offer a hand to Lizzy.

“Nice to meet ya,” she says, shaking it. “Could do with more girls around here.”

“Happy to help,” you reply.

“So, you think you can cover a shift tomorrow night? I figured cause you’ve waitressed before it shouldn’t take too long for you to learn the ropes here,” Tom says.

You nod. “Sure. Sounds good.”

“We’ll see you tomorrow then,” he says.

You bid farewell to himself and Lizzy, seeing yourself out the front door. The restaurant is in the heart of the cut, surrounded by other small businesses and hipster start-ups. You begin the journey home, plugging in your headphones and submerging yourself in Reggae music. Children play in the local park and preteens chatter as they speed past you on their bikes. There’s a warm breeze that brushes past you; it smells of sea water and fried fish. You’re passing the harbour. Eyes land on Heyward’s store, the logo just as you remember it from all those years ago. It’s surreal being back.

When your phone buzzes, you pause your sightseeing to check it. It might be John B asking after the interview. Your throat closes up when you see your mom’s contact pop up. A text. ‘Call me back.’

Just like that, you’re dragged out of Kildare and are back in Colorado.

It’s impossible to ignore the text, but you do your best either way. You don’t even remember half the journey to the Chateau as you walk through the door. JJ is home. He’s sat at the messy dining table, eating a bowl of cereal and scrolling through his phone. Tugging out your earbuds, you give a small wave hello.

“How’d the interview go? That was today, right?”

“Smashed it. Got the job,” you say.

“Oh, sweet. Congrats.”

“Thanks.”

You ditch your bag by the door along with your phone. Taking the seat opposite him, you sit cross-legged on the wooden chair. The sketchbook you’d abandoned earlier lays dormant. Opening it up, you flick to your latest piece of the marsh. It’s coming together rather well. You’d decided to add the H.M.S Pogue, sat harboured on the grass. JJ peers over his bowl to the painting.

“Holy shit. That’s sick,” he says through his mouthful of Captain Crunch.

“Thanks,” you smile. “I’m pretty happy with how it’s come out, considering how old these paints are.”

JJ watches as you crack open the aforementioned watercolours. The smell of artificial paint teases the air. Dampening a thin brush in the mason jar of water, you dip into the blue.

“They bad quality or something?”

“A little. They best ones are Winsor and Newton, but I can’t justify spending over twenty bucks on paints.”

“Why not? You’ve clearly got a gift,” JJ says.

You hate how casual he is when he says things like that to you. Like it doesn’t knock the breath out of you like a sucker punch to the chest.

“S’just practice,” you mumble.

You can feel his gaze as you paint. Resting your chin in your hand, you work at the water under the jetty, trying to perfect the shading. You want to feel as though you can walk into the painting; like you could drown in the crystal clean waves.

Painting had become an escape when you were in Colorado. Whatever you could remember of Kildare, you’d paint. When that well ran dry, you began to paint places you wished you could go. Anywhere but the dilapidating family home you’d found yourself in. Secret gardens made of twisting ivy and crumbling, ornate statues hidden amongst orchids and rose bushes. Cosmic planes with make-believe ice cream stations snuck onto Mars and Venus; whales which bathed in the stars and caught a tan in moonbeams. Underwater societies full of sea kelp and multicoloured coral reefs, with octopi hiding amongst crabs and shellfish.

You glance up to find JJ transfixed on the painting. There’s a crease between his brows as if he’s the one concentrating. It makes you laugh, quiet and under breath, and he looks up. Holds your stare.

“That’s amazing, that you can just do that,” JJ says, remarking to your work.

You swallow the sickly rush that his words give you. His tongue dampens his lower lip, tantalisingly slow. You feel it hit somewhere deep inside of you. Something in the air shifts.

Then, so quiet neither of you can be sure he really said it, he utters, “you’re amazing.”

“Yo!”

The door swings open with your brother’s arrival. Your head spins over your shoulder to the front door. John B stands holding a bag of takeout burgers in the air beside his head.

“Y’all hungry?”

“Hell yeah,” JJ says.

When you look to him, it feels as if you could have imagined the whole interaction had just moments ago. JJ’s sat in his seat as he was before, unfazed.

He abandons his cereal and follows John B into the kitchen like a starving dog, begging for food. You place your paintbrush back into the water and join them. John B unpacks the burgers and fries onto half-clean plates. You watch JJ toss a fry into the air and catch it, whooping in celebration. A plate is handed back to you, over John B’s shoulder.

“Beef burger with cheese, no pickles.”

“Thank you,” you sing-song, taking the plate off him.

JJ turns around and looks at you with faux disgust. “No pickles?”

You shake your head, heading back to the table. JJ and John B join you with their own quick dinners, and the three of you eat. You tell John B about the summer job you secured, and he tells you and JJ about Sarah Cameron and her new boy-toy Topper. JJ says he’s “biceps without a brain” when you ask which one Topper is.

“That can’t be his real name,” you snort.

“Oh, it is,” John B replies.

“His name is almost as dumb as he is,” JJ sniggers.

There’s the sound of chewing and swallowing.

“Two official weeks into summer,” John B randomly announces.

You quirk a brow. “Two weeks since I came back to Kildare.”

JJ holds his cup of soda up in a toast. John B wipes his mouth and raises his own, as do you. The three of you clink cups, smiling at the stupidity. As you bring your cup to your lips to drink, you find your eyes meeting JJ’s across the table. He holds your gaze as he sips, swallows and licks his lips of the sugar. You feel it hit somewhere deep, deep inside of you. JJ looks back to John B and starts recounting his tales of the day fishing, leaving you stumped.

What the hell was that?

~*~*~*~*~*~*

As your days in Kildare stretch on, your imagination becomes your most loved and loathed place all at once.

The Pogues had taken you under their wing without a second thought. It felt as if it wasn’t just because you were John B’s younger sister. Kiara would spend hours talking to you about music and star signs. Pope would discuss books and artists that he’d read about, falling into a huge debate about whether Andy Warhol is as legendary as everyone makes him out to be (the answer is, of course, yes). You and John B connected as brother and sister, filling that hole of ‘family’ that had been taken from both of you within the past year. Movie nights sharing popcorn and critiquing corny horror films, and mornings spent tending to the yard and fishing at the jetty: you felt yourself coming back bit by bit, in the company of the brunette.

But spending time with the Pogues came with spending more time with JJ. That little childhood crush that you’d claimed had succumb a long, undisturbed slumber…Oh, she had been awoken. Him staying over more and more on the pull-out when him and his dad ‘got into a thing’ meant the throw pillows smelt like his cologne and soap. He’d offer you his sweatshirt when sat around the bonfire on evenings drinking, and the warm distinct smell of him would consume you, drown you in the pheromones, affecting you like some pathetic animal in heat. Days spent surfing and sunbathing at the break gave you space to shamelessly ogle his bare chest, splattered in sea water, scorched and tanned with sunlight. The ripple of his lats when wearing his useless muscle tees as he waxed his board in the surf shack. His jawline strong and steely when annoyed or focused, with faint blonde stubble a week after shaving. But you swear he knew how it affected you. Swear he knew it drove you crazy whenever he’d fleetingly touch your back, brushing past you in the kitchen to grab a drink, or adjust your grip when helping him fix up his bike. When sharing a blunt on the porch (as you often did when sleep couldn’t come), he’d take his time passing it to you, fingers brushing. Innocent, incidental touches that felt calculated and planned. The way his eyes would gaze into yours, like he could read your thoughts and decipher your wants. A vague, barely-there smirk to his lips, constantly tortured by his tongue and teeth…

God, your whole body feels as if it has been on fire for the past week.

You blame your overactive thoughts of JJ on your boredom. Working at the restaurant hadn’t been sufficient distraction from the mess that is your life right now. Even now, as you stand before the till, typing through an order for the kitchen and bar, you feel your mind wandering. To thoughts of the Chateau, and to a certain blonde-haired guy sprawled on the pull-out sofa, shirtless, back on proud display…

“You gonna be much longer?”

“No, I shouldn’t be,” you say to Tom.

You hope your embarrassment doesn’t read on your face. It’s not as if he could hear your thoughts, so you’re not sure why you feel caught in the act. You finish selecting the sides for table 16 and press ‘store table’. Stepping to the side to grab some side plates, Tom takes over the till.

He’s nice. Makes you laugh a lot at work, as you slander rude tables and gush over those that tip an extra twenty.

After depositing the side plates at the table, you head to the bar to run the drinks you put through. Lizzy is mixing the cocktail you ordered. She pours rum into a shaker and then passionfruit puree.

“Can I ask you something?” you say to her.

She glances over. The two of you had gotten closer at work. You were hoping to hang out with her one time down at the beach, or maybe grab lunch after a morning shift. She runs a hand over her buzzcut hair style and nods.

“Do you think there’s such a thing as bad thoughts?”

“Bit deep to be asking that at eight o’clock at night, don’t you think?” she smirks.

You roll your eyes. As she goes on making the cocktail, you elaborate. “I have this dumbass crush on this guy which I know I shouldn’t have…I just feel bad for thinking about him so much.”

“Well, that’s dumb,” she snorts.

There’s the loud rattle of ice against stainless steel as Lizzy shakes the cocktail. Then, as she strains it into a martini glass, she looks up at you once more.    

“Who’s this guy? Do I know him?”

“Maybe.”

Her eyebrows shoot up into her hairline. “Is it Tom?”

And, no, it isn’t Tom, but maybe saying it is means she won’t keep digging. You’d rather keep your embarrassing years-long infatuation with your brother’s best friend close to the chest. So, you do your best to look meek as you nod.

“Holy shit! Well, if it makes you feel better, he’s totally into you,” Lizzy tells you.

“He is?”

“Hell yeah. Guy practically ogles you across the room,” she says.

You glance over to Tom. He’s stood before a table, talking away, scribbling down their order on a notepad. At the feeling of being watched, he looks up and meets your gaze. You flash him a small smile and he mirrors it quickly before returning his focus to the task at hand.

“So, do you?”

“Think there’s such a thing as bad thoughts?” Lizzy checks. You nod. She ponders the question whilst garnishing the cocktail. “No. No, I think only actions talk. I mean, I think bad things all the time about customers who are dicks. I could put glass in their drinks: that’d show them sort of thing. But I don’t actually put glass in their drinks, so I’m off the hook. Nobody’s the wiser.”

It’s a somewhat extreme example but it gets the point across. You take the tray and nod.

“I mean, maybe fantasising about it might be cathartic. Get it out your system, you know?” Her sly wink speaks volumes as to what these ‘fantasies’ are about. You roll your eyes.

“Thank you for your advice, Lizz. I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Anytime sunshine.”

With that, you walk over table 16 and deliver their drinks. The rest of the shift passes by rather quickly. You end up making a bet with Tom that you can sell more pints of larger than him and come up victorious, leaving work with an extra ten dollars in your pockets.

The streets are painted sunset purple, orange and pink. You spot John B’s campervan, known as The Twinkie, in the parking lot; he’d promised to pick you up after work tonight. But as you walk up to the passenger side, you realise it’s JJ behind the wheel. You’re not sure if the feeling of your organs shrinking is a good thing or a bad thing.

“Where’s John B?” you ask, climbing in beside him.

“Nice way to say, ‘hi JJ, it’s so good to see you!’”

“Okay, hi JJ,” you say, rolling your eyes. He starts the engine. “Now, where’s my brother?”

“He had to go do something for Cameron.”

“At ten at night?”

“Dude, I just work here, a’right? I do as he says so he lets me stay on his sofa,” JJ says. You laugh.

The radio kicks on and ‘Downtown Lights’ starts to play. You look out the window as he drives, watching the houses fade into overgrow and trees.

“Hey, you hungry?”

“Starved.”

“We can swing by a Wendy’s on the way home, if you wanna,” JJ says.

You smile as you look over to him, nodding. With that, he takes the next left and the two of you make your way in comfortable silence to the drive through. At the worker’s request, JJ recounts his order: two hamburgers, both with cheese, one without pickles. Oh and a large Pepsi.

As he pulls forward to pay, you say, “you remembered I don’t like pickles?”

He glances over to you like you’re stupid for even asking. “Course.”

Food secured, Pepsi in the cupholder for you both to share, you start the journey to the Chateau.

“Feed me a fry?”

You laugh and oblige. It’s the least you can do, considering he bought you takeout, after all. You turf one out the brown paper bag and hold up to his lips. His breath fans against your fingers as he takes it. Chews and swallows. You managed to tear your eyes away. That man could yawn and you’d be mesmerised, you swear. It’s pathetic.

“Thanks.”

“Course.”

The ride back is over way too soon. You take what’s left of your food and your bag, opening the door. “You staying over tonight?”

JJ contemplates a moment before shaking his head. He studies his hands as they run up and over the steering wheel when he says, “no. No, I gotta go home sometime.”

“Right,” you quietly say. The last fight him and his dad got in was ugly. He came over, shaking with anger, a purple bruise forming under his eye. It scared the shit out of you to let him go back there alone. “Well, thanks for the food.”

JJ looks up from the steering wheel and takes you in. His lips move, like he wants to say something, but he seems to abandon the thought. You take it as your cue to leave.

“See you soon.”

“Yeah. See you soon, Little Routledge.”

You hate that nickname. The resentment is thick to swallow as you say goodnight, stepping out the van.

John B isn’t home when you walk into the Chateau. The lights are off, dirty dishes piled up in the sink. The sofa bed is unmade from the last time JJ slept on it. You contemplate crashing on it for the night, just so you can feel as if you’re near to him, but you know that’s insane. If John B were to find you there, he’d only be concerned that something was wrong with your own room, either way. So you trundle back to your bedroom and strip out of your uniform. Makeup rinsed off and teeth brushed, you crawl into bed and drift off easily.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

His lips are hot and wet on your skin, kissing down your stomach. Your breathing’s laboured like you’re fighting an adrenaline rush. He seems to notice, laughing darkly against your tummy.

“So wound up already and I’ve barely touched you,” JJ croons in his southern drawl.

Your eyes slip shut, fighting back a whimper as his fingers dip teasingly into the waistband of your panties. A moan finally lets slip at the sensation of his lips pressing against your crotch, over the cotton.

“You want it?”

“Please,” you whisper.

“Yeah? You want my mouth?”

“Yes, JJ, please.”

It’s embarrassing to beg but you don’t have much left in your mind other than thoughts of him to even care.

Fingers knotting into his hair, you try and coax him lower still. And he obliges. Drags your panties down your legs like time is a luxury. You wonder if he likes teasing you; if it brings him pleasure like the feeling of his hands on your body does for you. He leans back on his haunches and runs his palms up and down your thighs, staring at you exposed pussy. His shark tooth necklace sits against his toned chest and you’re jealous of how close it gets to be to him.

“Fuck,” JJ groans as you open your legs.

He leans back down and nuzzles your inner thigh, pressing a sharp kiss with his teeth, sucking in the skin and relishing your pleasured yelp. It feels as if he’s marking you as he leaves the hickey: mine.

“Been dreaming ‘bout this.”

Before you can let out another pathetic plea, JJ situates himself between your legs and goes down on you. Eats you out like a man who’s been lost at sea, like a man starved. Sighs at the taste of you on his tongue, kissing at your thighs as if to catch his breath, dragging you closer and closer to the edge. The damp of his tongue laps at your clit and your legs lock around him in a vice. He’s indefatigable, insatiable and…it’s too much.

“I can’t,” you whine hopelessly. Your fingers grasp at the sheets, eyes clenched shut.

“Come on,” JJ preens. “Wanna see you come.”

He leans close to your ear, taking your lobe between his teeth, and slips a finger into your seeping hole. Your orgasm comes like waves crashing over splintered rocks; breathing jagged and vision blurring behind eyelids. Somewhere in the euphoric haze you cry out his name. Flashes of colour blending into a mercurial high as he works you through your ecstasy, unrelenting.

You gasp awake.

Had you been sleeping?

Your forehead is damp with sweat, throat parched and chest heaving. Anyone would have thought you’d have just sprinted three miles. When you sit up in bed, you register the pulsing between your legs and the telltale stickiness of your thighs.

Shit. Good thing there’s no such thing as bad thoughts.

Wiping at your face, your skin feels red hot. You venture to the bathroom and drink water from the faucet. Making eye contact with yourself is too hard right now, considering you just had the most incredible wet dream about your brother’s best friend. Now that the high is passing, you’re overcome with shame and guilt. You’re delusional. Maybe you should submit yourself to be sectioned. Would be a good way to kill some of these summer weeks…

Heading back to bed feels like returning to the scene of a crime. Instead, you head out onto the porch, dressed in nothing but a t-shirt and panties. John B’s a deep sleeper, you’ve come to learn. You’ve never heard him get up in the night, in all your moments of insomnia. There’s no risk of crossing paths with him out here.

Stepping out onto the paint-peeled floorboards, you notice he forgot to turn off the porch light when he came home. Great, I guess I know where my wage is going. But as you head to your favourite red armchair, ready to gaze out at the marsh and watch the waterside plants dance in the breeze, you freeze.

JJ’s on the sofa. And he’s awake. You can tell just from where you’re stood.

Before you can flee back to your room, the floorboard creaks. JJ jolts up and looks around, eyes landing on you. You swallow. The moment you lay eyes on him, part of your dream comes screaming back to you. The way your voice cracked as you cried out his name, tumbling over the edge. You quickly shun away the thoughts, slamming them closed in a box, before your body can lose itself to the fantasy once more. Please God tell me that I didn’t actually scream his name.

“Hi,” you dumbly say.

“Hey.”

“I thought you were staying at your place tonight,” you say.

JJ shrugs. “Change of plans, I guess.”

“Oh.”

He looks back ahead at the armchair, back to you, and you can’t help but pull a face akin to holy shit what the fuck do I do? When he holds up a joint, you decide to stay. Panties are just the same as a bikini anyway, and he’s seen you in those. You make sure to wear your cutest ones when he’s surfing with you. The ones that are tight in all the right places and hug your figure in a way that you wished he would. Oh my God, shut up. You wordlessly take the joint as you quickly step past him, planting yourself in the armchair. You pull your legs up and sit atop of them, taking a long drag to try and calm your racing mind and heart. Inspecting the floor seems a good thing to do, suddenly. The divots in the wood from worms and the strips of paint. Looking up, you find JJ’s eyes trained on your legs. His gaze diverts when you lean forward, offering him the blunt again. As he lifts himself to take it, you see him wince, and now in the light of the porch, fully taking him in you, you can make out the bloody cut beside his eye.

“Jesus Christ, JayJ.”

“It’s fine,” he reflexively says. He takes another hit. “Just need some self-medication.”

“Bullshit. You need to clean that thing ‘fore it gets infected.”

“Be my guest,” JJ scoffs.

With that, you get to your feet and head back into the house. The first aid kit is under the bathroom sink. It’s probably the least dusty thing in the whole room. Returning to him, you forget all about the reason that you got up in the first place and shove it to the back of your mind. This was more important than worrying about some dumb dream. Shoving his legs off the couch, you force him to make space for you. You place the first aid kit on your lap and open it. JJ keeps smoking. The smell of weed clouds your senses. Picking out a disinfectant wipe, you turn to him.

“This’ll sting,” you say, opening the packet.

“That’s what she said.”

You frown. “What kind of kinky ass sex are you having?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he grins.

For a moment dread drops down your body, chilling your spine. Did he hear you? No, no he couldn’t have. You probably didn’t make a noise. He’s just being his usual, salacious self.

You take his jawline in hold gently between your fingers. The bone is hard beneath the soft of his skin; fine stubble scratches your fingertips. Leaning up, you try not to get distracted in his eyes as you dab at the cut. You apologise as he hisses. It doesn’t look as intimidating when clean of blood, which is more than a relief. You dip back into the first aid kit and offer up two band aids. One is plain nude and the other Hello Kitty.

“Take your pick.”

He rolls his eyes with a small smile and grabs the Hello Kitty one, holding it out to you. You shift onto your knees, bending over him to plant it over his cut. You notice a bruise forming on his cheek bone on the other side, and a cut lip. You should have insisted he stayed over when he dropped you off. He looks up, as if he can hear your thoughts, and meets your gaze. You can’t seem to find it in yourself to move away.

“It’s not your fault,” he quietly says.

You swallow. It’s scary how easy he can read you. Makes you worry what other thoughts he can tell from your face. “Wished you just stayed here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Hate the thought of you going back to that house.”

“That’s sweet,” he smiles. “But if I didn’t go, I wouldn’t have you here taking care of me.”

“Oh, was it all part of your masterplan?” you joke, finding your smile again. His seems to grow at the sight.

“Something like that.”

When his lips press to yours, you’re taken aback. It feels like fire, searing hot, and you flinch like you’ve been burnt. You gape at him, wide eyed, and it seems to register what he’s just done. You both move to put as much space between you as possible, as if trying to keep the blaze from spreading.

“Shit, I—”

“I should go back to bed,” you hurry out.

JJ nods. “Yeah, yeah. Course.”

In your scramble to get back to your feet and back in your room, the first aid kit falls to the floor, the contents spilling out. You cuss and drop to your knees, rushing to retrieve all the clutter. JJ joins you, passing you gloves and bandages. You find some nerve to meet his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he says. The sincerity in his voice…It’s painful.

“It’s okay. I don’t…It isn’t…”

You sigh. Your speech is just as messed as your mind. Closing your eyes, gathering your words, you take a deep breath. Looking back to JJ, you shake your head.

“We can’t.”

“I know,” he replies, almost sadly. Nods once more. “Yeah, I know. I’m just…high. And tired.”

“Right. Course.”

And whilst his excuses should sting, they don’t, because you don’t believe them. JJ smokes enough weed to not be affected all that much by half a joint. But you don’t argue. Instead, you close the box and go to head inside. You stop in the doorway.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” you say.

You spare him one last glance. He’s on the floor, head hung and back to you, and you consider staying. But you don’t. You go straight to bed, acting as if a fresh start tomorrow will reset the entire thing.

~*~*~*~*~*~*

In the morning, JJ’s gone. John B doesn’t seem to have even realised he’d stayed over. You find your older brother in the kitchen, washing up the dirty dishes. Swiping up a towel, you come to help.

“Hey. Sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” you lie. “You?”

“Like a rock,” he grins. “You still up for that keggar tonight, at the boneyard?”

“Oh shit, that’s tonight?”

“Yeah. All the others are going,” John B says.

“Yeah, I’ll go. I think I’m catching a ride with Lizzy from work.”

“Alright. Just stay safe.”

“I will,” you drawl. He smiles at you before turning back to the washing up. “Hey, John B?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For letting me stay here.”

“Yeah, course,” he says. He pauses his handy work, turning his attention to you. “You’ve always got a bed to crash on here, even if child services are up my ass.”

“I appreciate it. I really needed to get out of Colorado.”

The seven missed calls from your mom slip into your mind. Her texts go unanswered, but she knows you read them. You don’t want her to think you’re in danger. Talking to her is just too much right now.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I needed you back too,” he says. “Things have been kinda messy since my dad…disappeared. I don’t know what I’d do if I was on my own.”

“You’re never gonna be on your own, though,” you smile. “The Pogues would do anything for you. It’s actually kinda scary.”

John B laughs at that. “Yeah, yeah, they’re, uh, not the smartest.”

“Apart from Pope,” you point out. He nods, smiling as he looks back to the soapy water.

“Yeah, apart from Pope.”

“JJ cares about you a lot,” you feel the need to add. His voice last night, apology ready, after your kiss, echoes in your mind.

“I know. I feel like you two are the best things in my life right now,” John B admits. The guilt multiples by tenfold with that. You fix your face when he looks to you. “So, thanks.”

“No worries, big bro,” you reply, nudging his shoulder with yours.

He laughs. “Thanks, little sis.”

With that, you both continue cleaning the pots. The shame from last night gets shoved down into the deepest, darkest pit of your stomach, and you try to go about your day without sparing another thought to JJ.

On the way to the keggar, Lizzy grills you about your ‘crush’ on Tom. “He’s gonna be there tonight, I think.”

“Oh, really?” you say. You know you don’t sound enthused. It’s too much effort to pretend.

“Everything good?” she frowns, glancing away from the road.

You nod and plaster on a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Just tired, I think.”

“Couple drinks in you and you’ll be wide awake, I promise,” she assures.

Nodding, you shift in your seat and look out the window. Your skirt rides up in the processes. It’s a little short but it’s so ridiculously hot tonight, you can’t seem to care. A crotchet style crop-top dresses down the outfit. You don’t want to seem like you’re trying too hard for a beachside keggar. As you pull up closer to the boneyard, cars line the roads. Lizzy finds a spot and parks. You grab the crate of Budlight and her the box of White Claw, and you hop out the car towards the beach. Her stories about work and school have brightened your mood.

She’s tall and remarkably cool in a way that you never will be. She has stick and poke tattoos on her knees and elbows, and nine piercings on one ear. Her nose ring and snake bite piercings are far from intimidating on her cherub like features. The buzzcut has been dyed neon blue, standing bright against her dark skin. As you pass groups of teens, she shouts hello to those she recognises and shares the odd bro-hug.

You add your drinks to the pile of booze before grabbing a can, cracking it open. A quick scan of the scene tells you that the Pogues are still pre-drinking at the Chateau. You’d managed to dodge JJ so far.

“This is a pretty decent turn out,” Lizzy tells you, swigging from her can.

“Know a lot of people here?”

“Sure,” she says. She points to a gaggle of polo-shirt wearing pretty boys who look like they could snap you with one finger. “Those are the gym rat kooks. That tall blonde Topper is with the princess of Figure Eight, Sarah Cameron.”

JJ was right: biceps without a brain. You watch as he shotguns a drink and cracks the can on his forehead. Sarah Cameron, blonde hair straight flowing down her back, does not look impressed.

“And her brother Rafe. That guy’s all kinds of whacked out,” Lizzy mutters. You follow her finger to spot a tall, short haired guy. He looks unapproachable, even from far away.

“Yo Lizzy!”

You both turn to find a crowd of girls and guys. One of them is waving at Lizzy and she waves back.

“Come on, I know these guys. They’re cool,” she tells you, taking your hand and guiding you over.

You’re introduced to everyone and soon enough are roped into beer pong and shots. It’s fun though. Everyone’s having a laugh, cheering each other on. You hear about some good spots to grab food and learn Michael, Lizzy’s closest friend, can drink you under the table. A few hours in and there’s a comfortable buzz to your bones. You haven’t thought about the Pogues, or JJ, or the fleeting kiss all night. As you laugh along to one of Michael’s soccer stories, someone taps you on the shoulder. You turn around to come face to face with Tom.

“Hey,” you smile, squiffy.

“Hey! I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”

“Yeah, I came with Lizzy.”

“Hey, Tom,” she smiles before sending you a more than suggestive look. Oh, shit. The lie. “Hey, why don’t you go get my girl a top up?”

Before you can contest, she’s taking your half full can out of your hand and coaxing you away with an assuring smile. Tom takes it in stride and walks with you to the coolers. He grabs two cans of beer, passing one to you, and you cheers him.

“How you finding Kildare?”

“Good.”

“Yeah? You been hanging with John B’s crowd, right?”

“Most of the time, yeah,” you smile, nodding. He makes a face before taking a drink. You frown. “What?”

“Nah, nothing. They’re just kinda…well, I mean, some people think they’re bad news.”

“Some people, huh?” you say cautiously.

“Just reputations and all that. Like that JJ guy. He’s got slippery fingers, if you know what I mean,” Tom says, wiggling his own in demonstration.

Suddenly this conversation is very unappealing. You glance off to Lizzy and the others. “I should probably get back to them. Thanks for the drink, though.”

“No, hey, no,” Tom says. He grabs you by the wrist. “Come on, I was being a dick. I’ve had one too many. Let’s just hang, alright? I really wanna get to know you.”

You look between him and Lizzy and sigh. Taking a swig, you shrug. “Alright.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tick you off.”

“I like the Pogues. They’re a good group,” you feel the need to defend.

“No, yeah, they are!” Tom agrees. You can smell the stench of liquor on his breath. “I just don’t want you to get corrupted by them.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just, you’re new here—”

“And so I’m clueless on how to judge people?” you finish sardonically.

Tom rolls his eyes and it makes your anger tick. “Come on, you don’t gotta be a bitch about this.”

“What did you just call me? You know what? Forget it,” you scoff, snatching your arm away from his hold. “Have fun drinking on your own.”

But you don’t get very far before he’s grabbing at you again. “Calm down, would you? Just gimme—”

“Let go!” you demand.

His grip only tightens. The strong front you’re putting on begins to crumble under the panic of this guy is way bigger than me.

“Just quit bitching and we can talk,” he says harshly.

“I don’t want to talk. Now please let go of me,” you firmly return.

He doesn’t let go. Keeps chattering away, insisting that you have to hear him out.

“Let go, Tom!”

“Everything good here?”

Your wide eyes look away from Tom and land on JJ, and your whole body relaxes. He’s looking at you and the panic must read clear on your face because his demeanour changes in a split second. Jaw tight, he turns to Tom.

“I think you should let go, man.”

“You think I’m gonna listen to you?” Tom scoffs.

JJ takes another step towards him. He towers over Tom by enough to be intimidating. “Think you should listen to her.”

“Oh, I get it,” Tom snarls. He lets go of you and you can feel your skin breathing. You rub at the pink marks, easing the sting. Tom gets into JJ’s face, undeterred from a fight. “You wanna keep John B’s sloppy sister for yourself, huh?”

JJ’s fist flies at Tom’s face, making an ugly, visceral sound as it lands on his left cheek. You gasp. Nearly knocked off balance, Tom stumbles on the sand. The commotion has drawn in somewhat of a crowd. Before you can intervene, Tom’s throwing hands. He aims an upper cut to JJ’s jaw but he’s quick to dodge, landing his own punch instead by Tom’s eyebrow. That one seems to deter him. He trips backwards. The chanting of the crowds egging it on makes you feel sick. You’d just finished patching JJ up last night, and you’ve seen his anger before. It takes control quickly and blinds him to reason. The last thing he needs is to wind up in a cell. So, before he can land another hit, you’re stepping forward and grabbing at his arm, stopping him.

“Come on, let’s just go,” you say pleadingly.

His chest is heaving with anger, breathing short and jaw heavy set and tense. He hesitates, looking between yourself and Tom. He’s still cradling his last hit, trying to regain his composure. Sighing, JJ lets you lead him away. Tom’s heckling is laced with slurs directed at you, and you have to keep a steady grip on JJ to keep him from going back.

“He’s not worth it, JayJ,” you mutter.

“You’re so wrong,” JJ darkly returns, but he doesn’t go back.

Away from the beach, back on the road, you let go. He paces for a moment, trying to calm himself. Tugs off his cap and rakes his fingers through his hair, breathing deep and slow. You don’t speak: just let him go through the motions. Babying him through this isn’t going to help anyone.

Whilst violence isn’t the answer to anything, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t grateful for JJ’s help.

Letting him cool off, you take a seat on one of the fallen tree trunks.

“Hey.”

Looking up, JJ walks over. He’s mostly back to himself.

“You okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“No. Just freaked me out a bit. He’s not usually like that. He’s just drunk.”

“Like that’s an excuse,” JJ scoffs. He takes the spot next to you, sitting worryingly close.

The culmination of last night and tonight makes your head spin. The effects of the alcohol vanished the moment Tom took a hold of you. Now you just want to forget the whole thing.

“Wanna get out of here?” JJ asks.

You turn your head to face him and smile smally, nodding.

“Come on. I brought my bike.”

His red bike is parked beside the Twinkie. He climbs on first and offers a hand to help you onto the back. Your arms slot around his middle, circling around his taught chest, pressing yourself against him. Face resting on the middle of his back, you try not to inhale the smell of him. It might be too much for tonight. His calloused hands on yours have you shifting your hold, ensuring your tight against him like a backpack.

“Good?”

“Good,” you quietly reply.

He kicks off the stand and starts up the engine. You pull away from the keggar and up the road, zipping down the isolated streets. There’s nobody around at this time. Not a soul in sight. It feels so right, wrapped up against him like this, safe in his presence. Tom was wrong: JJ wasn’t bad news. Sure, he was a klepto, but he was the same guy who learnt how to sew to fix your favourite pair of shorts when you were little. The same guy who stepped up when some dirtbag was harassing you. The same guy who remembered you don’t like pickles on your burgers. Who looked at your paintings as if they were Picasso.

Somewhere along the ride, one of JJ’s hands comes to rest on your own. You don’t ask why and don’t pull away. Just let the reassuring weight of his hand on yours stay there and ground you to him like an anchor. Here, flying through the night, you can pretend like all the other shit doesn’t matter. It’s just you and him.

He starts onto a dirt track, slowing down, and a house emerges. Pastel yellow painted exterior hidden behind porch netting. There’s clutter of engines and fishing gear amongst surfing supplies. He pulls to a stop and kicks on the stand, turning off the engine. It’s quiet now, without its rumble. “Your dad home?” you can’t help but ask, staring at the front door.

JJ shakes his head. “No. He’s out on Friday nights. Kinda the only routine he has.”

You don’t ask where and he doesn’t expand. You step off the bike and watch as he clambers off too. Fixing your skirt, you wait for him to talk. He doesn’t. “I should probably head back,” you say. You’re not entirely sure why you came to his place instead. You’d assumed when you got on the bike that he’d take you back the Chateau.

“I mean, we can share a joint first if you want. Help you calm down and stuff, after that shitshow,” JJ half-chuckles.

There’s something heavy in the humid air. It’s hard to describe, hard to place, but you can feel it like static electricity. You find yourself nodding. He nods too and starts up to the house, hands in his black short pockets. You watch his feet sink into the grass and guide your eyes up his figure. His shoulders are tense, dressed under a thin t-shirt. He ditches his cap on the kitchen counter when you walk through the door. Through the house, past the neglection, and to his bedroom. He flicks on the light and clears his throat as he goes to his desk drawer.

You stand, leaning against his door until it clicks closed, and look around his room. There’s a world map pinned to the wall but no markings on it asides from one: Kildare, North Carolina. Print outs of palm trees and pressed, framed butterflies and leaves seem less innocent when placed between posters of models on the beach. The floor is a mess of dirty clothes and empty beer cans. Several dead vapes litter near the overflowing bin, and cigarette and joint buds scatter the windowsill and beside table. But the smell of JJ hangs strong in the air; it makes you smile to yourself.

“Alright,” JJ sighs. The desk drawer slams closed and he turns around, holding up a fresh joint and lighter. His initials are scratched into the metal: JJ. He sits on the bed and places the blunt between his lips, flicking at his lighter. You watch him take a drag and take it off him when he offers it over.

No words are shared as you pass the bud for several minutes. You both glance around the room, at the floor, at the ceiling, anywhere but each other.

“How’s your face?”

“Huh?” he asks, finally meeting your eyes.

You nod to his cheek. “Your cut from the other night?”

“Oh, right,” he mumbles. He lifts a finger and strokes it absentmindedly. “It’s alright.”

“Good.”

JJ hands you the joint again, you take a drag, you pass it back to him. That same feeling from earlier, when you first climbed off the bike, has only amplified.

“So…”

You brave clearing the distance between you. You take the spot next to him on the bed.

“We gonna talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?” JJ deflects, studying the floor.

“Well, you kissed me,” you eventually reply, taking the joint back. “So, there’s that.”

“I already told you,” he sighs. “I was tired and doped up.”

When you say nothing, he looks up at you. "What? You think I'm lying?"

You take a drag. Shrugging, you honestly reply, “yeah, a little.”

He holds your gaze as if challenging you to back down. You don’t. Beating around the bush won’t help anything here, and its obvious you can’t go back to acting like it didn’t happen. You can’t move past it until you know why he did.

“S’just weird,” JJ mutters, looking away. “What happened last night, with me and you. S’just weird.”

“Yeah, it was weird for me too,” you agree. Swallowing, you take another hit. “But not bad weird, right?”

JJ’s head lifts once more. His eyes flash across your face like he’s searching for some kind of trap. He sucks his teeth in contemplation. “No. Not bad weird.”

Your heart stutters, breathing shaky and unsure. You feel your eyes dart down to his strawberry pink lips, and his to yours. But then he’s shaking his head. “What are we doing?”

“I don’t know…” you breathe. You’re transfixed on his lips. Can’t move away, can’t bring yourself too. The blunt in your fingers is burning away, ash dropping to the floor, but you don’t care. All of it, everything but JJ, is white noise.

The moment you flit your eyes up to his, something shifts in him. His jaw ticks as he clenches it. Your brows pull in thought but there’s no time for you to ask.

“Fuck it.”

His lips are on yours within a breadth. He consumes your senses like a drug, dulling down anything else until all your thoughts are on him. He grabs for the blunt in your fingers, haphazardly putting it on the bedside table, and then his hands are sliding up along your sides, up your back, into your hair. One finds purchase on your cheek, and you rest your jaw in his hold like a bird settled in its favourite branch. The way he holds you like you’re something holy is different to how sinful his kiss is. It’s pure passion: raw, animalistic heat from weeks of build-up. And, God, it feels so right. The way his tongue brushes against yours, warm in your mouth, heavy in your head. The nip of his teeth on your lips and the fanning of his breath when he has to break for air. You’ve never been kissed like this before, not by anyone. It’s dizzying.

Until it isn’t, and he’s pulling away. His forehead rests against your own. You’re both panting. “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says.

You slide a hand up his neck, tracing his jawline with your fingers. He practically melts under your touch, eyes slipping shut. “I know,” you whisper distractedly. Your thumb traces his lower lip. It’s swollen from your kisses.

He blinks his eyes open. “I’m serious. He can’t know.”

“He won’t,” you say, going to reconnect your lips.

But JJ stops you. “No, he can’t. He’d…God, he just can’t.”

You want to cry, seeing the moral dilemma weigh on JJ, feeling you share the burden. But the thought of walking away from this, of not feeling every inch of him, of never hearing him fall apart, makes you want to sob.

“Maybe just one time,” you murmur. Your finger traces down his chin, along the centre of his neck. “And we can just get it out of our system.”

“Yeah,” JJ mumbles. “Yeah, one time.”

“Yeah?”

You meet his gaze. His pupils are dilated, heavy with lust, and you feel your body ignite. “Touch me, please.”

With that simple mark of consent, JJ’s unchained. He doesn’t hold back when your lips reconnect. Somehow it becomes deeper, rougher, better. It’s such a strange oxymoron, the way he touches you and kisses you. You pull away to remove your crop top, and he takes the moment to strip off his shirt. The two of you are shameless as you take in the other. Reaching out a hand, you run your fingers up his chest in the way that you’ve imagined so many times before. It’s funny how in your head, you’ve already done it. His eyes dip down, watching your hands explore. You lean forward, pressing a kiss to his left pectoral, then his right. Sighing, his chest drops up and down with uneven breathes.

“So pretty,” you say through your kisses.

His fingers tether into your hair. There’s a slight tug that sends ripples of pleasure through your body in ways that it shouldn’t as he pulls you away, guiding your lips back to him. As he crawls atop of you, you inch up the bed, skirt riding up. You settle on our back. JJ’s greedy in his touch. Strokes your skin, explores your body, like it’s his own. And in a way it is because you’d give him anything if he asked. When his fingers slip behind your back, searching for the clasp of your bra, you lift yourself onto your elbows. He holds your gaze as he unfastens it, guiding it off your shoulders, helping it off your arms.

“Fuck,” he sighs.

A smile teases at your lips. It takes a certain type of guy to make you blush at the sound of his curses. Your head rocks back, eyes sinking closed, as his lips latch around your nipple. A hand palms at the skin, teasing your breast, exploring your reactions. You sigh out your pleasure, bringing a hand up to mess with his hair. It’s better than you imagined. Tops every fantasy, every wet dream, every sinful thought. And it’s only just begun.

“So fucking sexy,” JJ groans, kissing up your body until he finds your lips.

You don’t want him away from you. He looms over you, encasing you in the safe, consuming feeling of his presence, trapping you in the smell of his cologne and soap that you’ve tried so desperately to avoid. Through the kisses and love bites marked into necks and collarbones, you feel one of his hands ghost the outline of your figure. Traces down so slowly like you might not even notice. Down, down, to your panties. It’s there that he sweeps over your cotton covered mound. You sigh against his lips in anticipation.

“I know you’ve been thinking ‘bout this,” JJ says.

His voice is just as you pictured it: deep and crooning, his Southern accent at forefront. You want to bottle it like brandy and drink it until you black out. His lips work down your neck as he lightly circles your clit over your panties and you can’t stop your moan.

“I heard you, the other night.” Your eyes shoot open. JJ meets your gaze. He’s dying, the desperation clear as day on his face. His eyes themselves could send him straight to hell. There’s the shadow of a smirk.

“Were you thinking of me, whilst you were getting off?”

You go to push him away. The last thing you need is for him to tease you about it and make fun. But he doesn’t let you. Instead, he kisses just below your ear.

“Cause I think about you. Every night since you’ve been back. Can’t jack off to anything else,” he confesses into the crux of your ear. Your only reply is a small, surprised gasp. Your body’s ablaze with his words.

His fingers finally dip below your panties, sliding between your soaking folds. He groans at the sensation and you feel your legs give way. He works at you for a while, toying with you like it’s a side hobby. You’re only half aware of the sounds you make. One of your hands has situated itself on his upper back, nails scratching at the skin. JJ can’t seem to keep his mouth shut. It’s one blasphemy after another, and it drives you deeper and deeper into the abyss. He seems to become impatient. He removes fingers to push your underwear down. You kick them off at the ankles with a small giggle.

The moment his finger sinks into you, you swear you’ve seen heaven. JJ worships you, taking his time to inch you closer and closer to the edge. Another finger, then another. The stretch is heaven. Your back arches off the bed, mouth agape, brain dumb with pleasure. He won’t be quiet. He whispers praises into your ear. Narrates his own fantasies he’s harboured about you. Know you’ve been teasing me with those tiny bikinis. I wish I fucked you on the porch the other night. The moment his thumb swipes over your clit, you know you’re close. And then he’s bending his fingers just slightly, hitting that spot. You abandon all religion: this is the only type of prayer you need.

JJ has the audacity to laugh as you climax. You grasp uselessly at his body, the bedsheets, anything. You use a shaky hand to push his fingers away, overstimulated, and he finally relents. Starts kissing at your neck like a Goddamn vampire.

“That good, huh?”

You can’t really formulate words. You just drag his face to yours, kissing him senseless. When you inevitably part for breath, JJ leans back. He pinches your chin between two fingers, gnawing at his lower lip, and parts your lips for him. Your body pulses at the submissiveness he’s placed you under. Then his used fingers are slipped into your mouth. You close your lips around them, holding his gaze as you suck them clean. The salty distinct taste is unfamiliar but not necessarily unpleasant. He gives a small laugh, like he’s in disbelief.

“Fuck. Why did we wait so long to do this?”

You pull his hand free, taking grip on his shoulders. Pushing him against his bedroom wall, you move to straddle him. His hands fall onto your hips. Somewhere in your heady make-out, you rock yourself back on him. JJ groans; his head knocks back against the wall. He’s rock hard. It must be torture. You shuffle off him to make room to pull his shorts off. They join the mess of clothes on the floor. The tip leaks precum, straining painfully. You go to jack him off but JJ stops you.

“I won’t last,” he admits, half-embarrassed.

You nod, biting back your smile. “You got protection?”

“Top drawer,” he says, nodding to the bedside table.

You lean over and dig about before finding a condom. You come back, tear it open, and gently slide it over him. He lets out a shuddering breath at your touch, eyes clenched shut in concentration. It makes you feel slightly guilty for letting him indulge you for so long, but this will pay it back.

Straddling him once more, you steady yourself with one hand on either shoulder. His find home on your hips once more, and he helps you line up. Then you slowly sink down onto him. The stretch stings despite the earlier efforts. Head hanging forward, mouth falling open in silent moans, eyes clenching shut, you take him in. JJ’s mumbling praises, eyes transfixed on where you connect, spurring you on. Taking me so good. Jus’little more. You rock against him, using whatever energy you have to ride him. He helps guide you, head resting against the wall. You love that he isn’t quiet. Love that you’re on top and can see every ripple of pleasure course through him, reflect on his face. But when his eyes slip shut, you take a hand and guide his face to yours. Pressing your forehead against him, you lean forward and steady yourself with a hand on his chest. The new angle is euphoric. You moan and whine against his lips, eyes staring into his own. It’s the most hideously lewd symphony as the two of you chase your highs. There’s only one thought in your mind. And when JJ comes unannounced, shuddering as he finishes, never looking away from your eyes, only one thought is in your mind.

If it can only happen this once, it has to be perfect...

to be continued (part 2 will be released later this week)

[girlgenius1111]

matching injuries, matching fits

part 2 of acl tear #2 acl couple #4

surgery day for reader!

If there was one thing you were grateful for, it's that the surgery was outpatient. You hated hospitals, so at least you wouldn't be stuck in one for any longer than necessary.

Accompanying Leah for her surgery just a few months ago didn't help settle your nerves. You remembered more than she did how much pain she'd been in, and it scared the hell out of you. Leah had handled her surgery so well though; she never complained. She was frustrated, sure, but Leah was good at handling pain.

Your relationship was so new, and you didn't want to seem like a baby, so you tried to hide how nervous you were going into it. Apparently you weren't doing a very good job.

"Are you nervous, darling?" Leah asked, looking over at you from the driver's seat. You just shrugged in response, continuing to bounce your good knee up and down rapidly. She reached across the center console, intertwining her fingers with yours. You sent her a weak smile, and she returned it, much more enthusiastically. You remained silent all the way to the hospital, and through the prep. Leah was growing more concerned, watching you grow paler and paler as the clock ticked by. You were so in your head, she could practically hear you thinking.

"Hey, love," she said, gaining your attention. "It's gonna be fine, okay? They do this every day, and I'm gonna be right here when you come out, alright?"

"Yeah, I know. Sorry," you said, blinking back tears. She stood from the chair she was sitting in, walking over to the bed you were laying in. She leaned down, blonde hair falling into your face, wrapping you in a tight hug, as best she could from her position. You hugged her back tightly, burying your face in her sweatshirt, the feel of it on your face making you feel better.

Leah had come home yesterday with a new matching pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt for you, calling it your "comfy surgery outfit." You'd teased her for it, but appreciated her thoughtfulness. You'd really teased her this morning when she appeared out of the closet wearing the exact same outfit. Leah was adamant that matching with her would make you feel better.

Leah stayed hugging you for longer than was probably comfortable, before pulling back, hearing the nurses come into the room. You looked up at her nervously, realizing it was time. She gave you an encouraging smile, pressing a kiss to your forehead, the tip of your nose, and then your lips, before whispering an I love you against your mouth. You really smiled up at her then, whispering the words back. Leah watched as they wheeled you off, more nervous than she'd been for her own surgery.

-----

When you blinked awake, the bright lights of the room immediately assaulted your eyes, and you closed them again, sleepier than you'd ever been in your life.

"Hey baby," a voice whispered from right next to you. Cracking one eye open, you saw Leah looking at you, sitting in a chair next to the bed, holding your hand tightly in hers.

"Leee" you said happily, puckering your lips for a kiss. Leah. Man you loved her. She was so pretty, so perfect.

"Hi love," she said, laughing, before kissing you sweetly. "How are you feeling?"

"So good. They gave me a whole new knee!" You said, grinning. Leah laughed again, quite amused at your state. Suddenly though, the smile dropped from your lips, and you looked at her critically.

"Leah," you started seriously, although you were still slurring your words slightly, "you should get bangs."

Leah burst out laughing, not expecting that at all. Her laughter was cut short, though, when you looked at her in horror, your face flushing red. She watched, as if you were in slow motion, as your bottom lip jutted out, and your eyes filled with tears, like a cartoon character. She'd laughed at you!

"No, baby," she tried, but you were already crying. She was having to work even harder not to laugh at how fast your mood had changed, as you cried into your hands. "Don't cry, I thought you were kidding,"

"No! You hate my idea," you wailed, and Leah's hands fluttered uselessly over you, trying to figure out how to stop your tears.

"Woah, what'd you do, break up with her?" came a voice from the doorway, and Leah turned to see Viv and Beth walking in, looking amused. Leah scowled, but turned her attention back to you.

"I'll get bangs if you want, my girl, anything you want," she said, pleading with you. Your tears stopped comically fast.

"Really?" you asked hopefully.

"Yes, baby, seriously," Leah replied, fully convinced you'd laugh at the idea with her when you weren't high anymore.

"Bangs?" Beth asked, as her and Viv took seats on the other side of your bed, looking at Leah with a smirk.

"Wouldn't she look so good with them?!" you replied, staring intently at your teammates. Viv's poker face was much better than Beth's, and Leah glared at the blonde, not wanting you to start crying again. Viv elbowed Beth.

'Yes, so good! She'd really rock a fringe." Beth said enthusiastically, and you smiled, not aware you were being teased. Now Leah was glaring for a different reason, but at least you seemed content. You all chatted for a little while longer, until you got the go ahead from the doctor to leave.

Leah got you changed back into your matching outfit, and when Beth and Viv reentered the room, they were once again fighting fits of laughter.

"Leah picked them out, she wanted to match," you told them, and Leah blushed furiously, having not thought ahead to your friends seeing your matching outfits.

"That red really brings out the color in your cheeks Williamson," Viv joked, referencing Leah's deep blush, and the crimson clothes she had on, because what color was Leah going to get you guys, blue?

Grumbling slightly, Leah helped you into the wheelchair, and the four of you set off to the car. Beth and Viv helped get you in, before they headed to their own car, promising to stop by with dinner later. Leah gave them both hugs before getting in the car, quietly thanking them for their support.

Since they'd found out about your guys' relationship Beth and Viv had been interested to watch the change they'd noticed in Leah. She was normally a serious person, but she was serious with you in a different way. She looked at you so intensely, and they didn't know how'd they'd missed that the 2 of you were together; the look on her face when her gaze met yours was one of someone fiercely in love. Leah wasn't normally one to express her thanks in such a forward, vocal way, but when it came to you, it seemed like all bets were off. They smiled to themselves as they walked back to the car, watching out of the corner of their eyes as Leah fussed over your seatbelt.

-----

Leah got you home and into bed with little drama, and no more tears. You were sleepy again, and she made sure you were asleep comfortably before heading downstairs to obsess over the post op instructions she'd gotten. Even though they were the same as hers, and she probably could have written them, she still read every page, back to front, not willing to risk anything.

When she went to check on you around 45 minutes later, bringing with her an ice pack to replace the one that would be warm by now, she found you in a decidedly less comfortable, and less happy, state than she'd left you. You were still laying in bed, but your face was screwed up in pain, and there were tears leaking out of your eyes. You were staring at your knee, which was propped up in front of you, glaring at it. Leah hadn't been expecting the pain to hit so soon, but clearly, it was.

"Oh, baby, why didn't you call for me?" she asked, having left you with strict instructions to tell her when you woke up. She sat on the edge of the bed, using her sleeve to gently wipe the tears off your face.

"Didn't wanna bother you," you mumbled, and Leah looked at you, confused. You seemed more out of it than you had been before, and she figured you were just still loopy.

"You could never bother me, pretty girl," Leah said, watching as your lips turned up into a watery smile. "You can't have anymore pain medicine yet, but I can brought you some ice," she said, carefully unwrapping the ice wrap from around your knee and replacing it.

"Thanks," you said softly, still looking slightly teary.

"What else can I do, love?" She asked, hating to see you so upset.

You thought for a moment, eyes fluttering open and shut as you fought sleep again. "Hold me Lee?" you asked quietly. Leah recognized the vulnerability in your voice, and nodded softly. She climbed into bed next to you, ever so carefully, shifting to allow you to lean back against her. You settled your head on her shoulder, tucking your nose into her neck.

"Goodnight," you said drowsily, snuggling closer to the blonde. She smiled down at you, not thinking it important to let you know that it only mid afternoon.

"Goodnight, baby," she responded, kissing the side of your head gently.

You drifted off, the pain in your knee somehow dulled by the beautiful girl next to you.

-----

part 3? if yes please give me ideas

[pupkashi]

Idk if your taking requests but I may or may not be in need of a gojo comfort fic when your boss is shitty and work is stressful👉👈

hi anon i hope this brings you a little comfort <3 wishing you all the best you amazing hard worker !!! i didn’t expect this to get this long

everything seems off the second satoru enters your shared home. there’s no sound from the kitchen or tv, there’s no music playing and there’s no lights on.

his first instinct is to panic, his mind racing as he wonders if something bad had happened to you, ready to burn down the world to ensure your safety and make anyone responsible pay for hurting his lover.

then he takes a deep breath, calms his racing heart and calls out your name. when he gets no response he frowns, heart rate spiking again as he searches the living room, kitchen and restroom before heading upstairs.

a wave of relief washes over him when he sees warm light peaking out from the cracked bedroom door. he’s about to open the door to loudly greet you when he stops in his tracks, heart dropping when he hears your muffled sniffles.

the second you see the door opening your face pales, trying your best to wipe any stray tears away before satoru can see you.

“angel! didn’t expect you back so soon” you laugh nervously, wiping your nose with the sleeve of his your sweatshirt as you stand up from the floor. you know your eyes are puffy and red, you know you’ve been caught but a part of you hopes satoru will let it slide just this once.

the other part of you knows he won’t let it go, he’s going to do everything in his power to help you and make you feel better about it all.

“what happened? are you hurt? who hurt you?” his words come out with a flurry of emotions; anger, sadness, and worry all wrapped up with a bow of concern as he walks up to you quickly. he’s gently resting his hands on your shoulders, looking you over and around the room to try and figure out what had happened.

“I’m okay it’s nothing” you say, trying your best to force a small smile, but your bottom lip quivers. it hurts satoru too much for him to stand around doing nothing.

“sweetheart please,” he whispers, brows drawn together in concern, “I just wanna help you.” his gentle words are enough to make you break down into tears again, knees weak as you let yourself sit on the edge of the bed, holding your head in tour hands as you cried.

“work is just so shitty” you say as best you can, calming yourself down as satoru holds you against his chest tightly. “my boss treats me like I’m an idiot who can’t do anything” you mumble against his chest.

“i do everything i can and prove myself over and over again- I’ve taken on so many things lately and it’s so stressful and for what?” you question, pushing yourself off your lover and looking him in the eyes, “all so they can tell me i need to do better? i hate it there, they never acknowledge me and- i hate it” you cry, tears welling in your eyes once more.

the last weeks had been too overwhelming to handle, but you’d set your emotions aside, wanting to perform at your best at work. your boss’ shitty remarks were the tipping point for you as you clocked out.

satoru holds you tightly against him, trying his best to calm you down. he’s rubbing your back with one hand and holding your head against his chest with the other. it’s not until he feels you only hiccuping as you calm down that he loosens his grip on you.

when you pull away from him you cringe at how soaked you’ve left his t shirt, biting back an apology as you know the state of his shirt isn’t even on his mind at the moment.

“did you want to just vent or did you want me to give input?” he asks softly, acknowledging that sometimes he doesn’t need to give you any advice, you can handle yourself when you need to.

“just wanted to vent i guess” you mumble, thanking him when he hands you tissues to blow your nose.

“i can always kill your boss” he smiles. you smack his chest softly, chuckling as you shake your head. you know he’s not joking about it, fully prepared to end anyone that makes you cry. “okay then how about buying out the company?” he thinks, a finger on his chin as you shove him.

“stop throwing your money around for nothing” you tell him, making him pout as he looks at you.

“it’s not nothing though, it’s for you” he says, pressing a feathery kiss to one of your cheeks, “I’d spend every penny i have to see you smile, sweetheart.” the words have your face growing hotter by the second, and you don’t care to admit the way your heart thumps against your ribcage at his confession.

“but for now how about i just spend however much you want on some takeout and snacks, yeah?” his words make you smile, letting yourself lean against him, letting your eyes flutter shut. they burned slightly from how hard you’d cried, for a second you worry about how swollen they’ll be tomorrow, but it quickly fades when you feel satoru’s lips on the top of your head.

“here, pick whatever you want while i go start the shower” he smiles, handing you his phone before he’s kissing your forehead and heading to the restroom.

time seems like it stops for a second, as you scroll on satoru’s phone and pick your favorite takeout, you leave it unlocked so he can ass his meal on there too. like clockwork he’s stepping out of the restroom, motioning for you to join him in the restroom.

it’s one of the most intamiye moments you’ve shared with him, letting him gently take the clothes you were wearing off. you step out of the pants and underwear pooled around your ankles a he ushers you into the shower. satoru takes his clothes off afterwards, following you in and grabbing the shower head.

he lets the warm water run over you, making sure to get your hair soaked before he’s getting shampoo in his hands and massaging it in. then he does the same with the conditioner and body wash. it’s relatively quiet, save for the water running and satoru’s occasional humming.

once he’s done he’s giving you a warm towel, wrapping it around you and telling you he’d be right out. satoru shampoos his own hair with much less gentleness and care than he had yours, quickly rinsing his hair and drying himself off before joining you on the bed.

“you wanna wear my sweatshirt? I’ll spray my cologne on it for you” he grins, heart leaping when your eyes sparkle at his words. satoru doesn’t waste a moment, handing you the sweater and a fresh pair of underwear.

he’s putting in boxers and grey sweats, messily towel drying his hair when the doorbell rings. “you wanna eat up here or downstairs?” he asks you, slipping a black t shirt on before opening the bedroom door.

“let’s do downstairs” you smile, watching as he walks down the hall and disappears down the stairs. you close your eyes and let out a sigh of relief, feeling like the pressure of the world had been washed down the drain thanks to your lover.

life feels okay again as you eat takeout on the couch, a shitty romcom on the tv as you two poke fun at the main characters of the movie, betting on what cliche they’ll do next. there’s a pint of your favorite ice cream flavor waiting for you in the fridge and a bouquet of flowers in a beautiful vase now adorning the dinner table.

satoru keeps you at his side the whole night, pampering and assuring you how amazing you were. he makes sure to tell you that he could easily support you if you wanted to quit, he could have you moved to another location if you just say the word.

but you shake your head, “i just had it piled up for too long, I’ll be okay” you assure him. “plus i have a really great boyfriend to help me when things he hard” you add on, making him smile and hold you tighter.

“sweets you don’t need me at all, you’re much stronger than i am” he chuckles, “i would’ve killed them by now; you’re so resilient.” his words make you smile, letting a comfortable silence fall over the two of you.

work sucks, your boss is an asshole. but satoru is always there to help you when things get too much. and you have a sneaking suspicion that a blue eyed man is behind your boss getting fired in two days time.

taglist (send an ask to be added!): @chilichopsticks @anime-for-the-sleepless @safaia-47 @nanamikentoseyebags @fushironi @nineooooo @the-mom-friend-dot-com @gojoshooter @beautiful-is-boring @sweetheart-satoru @luna0713hunter @torusmochi @kentocalls @sadmonke

[raspberriesoda]

w.c 0.8k | fluff fluff | reader is described as smaller than hyuck

[ 11:57pm ] the dull slam of the front door makes you stir a bit, but not enough to wake you fully. you groan a bit, shuffling in the chair you’re sat in, and drift off once again.

haechan lets out a heavy sigh as he shuffles into his apartment. shoes kicked off haphazardly by the door, haechan slugs through the living room and flops down on the couch with a grunt, huffing out a yawn from the long, exhausting day he’s had. he takes his glasses off and tosses them to the side, running his hands through his hair and down his face to wipe the impending sleep away.

as he reaches for the half full plastic water bottle on the coffee table, his eyes find your bag leaned up against one of the wooden legs, your shoes sat neatly next to it. his brow furrows; maybe he missed a text, but he hadn’t expected you to be here. even so, he immediately stands to search for you.

haechan walks past his gaming room as he makes his way down the hall, assuming you’re asleep in his bed, but he does a double take when he notices the faint purple glow bleeding through the small crack in the doorway. he peeks in, and immediately he melts, a goofy smile spreading across his face.

there you are, fallen asleep at his computer. your face is nestled in the crook of your elbow, your cheek pushed up cutely by the dark gray fabric of haechan’s sweatshirt you’re wearing. this shirt is big on him already so its very big on you, long enough that the sleeves completely swallow your hands and the bottom hem hides the shorts you’re wearing. a pair of fluffy pink socks adorn your dangling feet as his gaming chair is raised so high your toes don’t reach the ground.

haechan walks up, gently so the floor doesn't creak, and crouches down next to you. the monitor softly lights your sleeping face with the pause screen of the game you’d been playing, and there’s a jumbled mess of letters in the chat bar from your arm resting on the keyboard. he hears your docile breathing and the faintest sound of the calm music through the headphones askew on your head.

haechan decides in the moment that this is, quite honestly, the most adorable thing he has ever seen.

his hand comes up, pushing the mic up and back to brush his thumb along your cheek, and he can’t help but lean in and press a kiss to the corner of your mouth. you hum as you wake, rubbing your face on your sleeve, and you push yourself up from the surface of the desk. you look up at him, eyelids heavy, almost closed. the combination of the lopsided headphones sitting on your head and the groggy smile that pulls at your lips at the sight of him makes haechan feel lovesick.

“mmh, hi hyuckie,” you sigh happily upon seeing your boyfriend. you grab his face with your sweater paws, squishing his cheeks, and place a warm kiss on his pouty lips.

haechan’s heart nearly explodes. “hi baby bear,” he responds, a natural warmth in his voice. he slides the headphones off and sets them aside, using his free hand to brush messy strands of hair out of your face. you lean into his soft touch, your sleepy grin pressing against his palm, and he swears he hears you purr.

he whines. your eyes peek open to look at him. “you have got to stop being so cute. i’m falling behind in this race,” he complains. your yawn is cut short by the giggle that bubbles up at his words.

“what are you doing here, cutie?” he asks, watching you rub your eyes. “i told you i would have a late night.”

“just wanted to see you.” the words come out strained due to you arching back in a stretch, reaching your arms up and wiggling your fingers in the air. they then fall onto haechan’s shoulders, your fingers tangling together at the back of his neck. his hands find your hips without even having to search.

a heavy breath falls from your lips, pulling him closer to press your chest against his. “is that okay?” you muse playfully.

haechan scoffs. “don't ever ask me that,” he scolds you, but his words hold no real weight. you know you’re always welcome here.

haechan’s hands slide down under your thighs to pull you up into his arms. you squeak at the sudden motion, wrapping yourself around him and snuggling your face into his neck.

“let's get you to bed, pretty baby,” he says as he carries you out into the hallway. you hum in agreement, pressing a trio of gentle kisses down his jaw before resting your heavy head on his shoulder, the bounce in his step and the warmth of his body lulling you back to sleep.

[corroded-hellfire]

Prompt Day 20: Under the Covers

Words: 992

Rating: G

Pairing: None

CW: fear of thunderstorms

@corrodedcoffinfest

The crack of thunder releases its echoing boom before the ensuing rumbles vibrate the thin trailer walls.

Eddie slowly blinks his eyes open, the sound of sheets of rain smacking his window bringing him closer to consciousness. He pushes himself up on his elbows and turns his head from the battered window to you on the other side of him.

You’re sitting up, arms hugging your legs to your chest. Eddie quickly sits up and places a hand on your back. The contact has you snapping your head up from where it rested on your knees.

“Hey, s’okay,” Eddie says, his voice still thick with sleep. “Just me. You’re okay.”

A shaky nod in reply makes Eddie push himself all the way up so he can pull you up against his side. Immediately, you tuck your head beneath his chin and he rubs a large hand up and down your bare arm.

“You should’ve woken me up,” Eddie says against the top of your head. “I heard the thunder and was hoping you slept through it.”

The only response is a small shake of your head against his neck.

Another crash of thunder makes you flinch and grab onto your boyfriend.

“Shit, it’s always louder in here,” he mumbles. His eyes glance around his room for a few moments as he gnaws at his bottom lip. “Here, c’mon.”

“Hmm?” you ask, lifting your head up.

Eddie slips off the bed and pats your knee.

“Come on.”

He yanks his comforter off the bed and next goes for the sheet, bringing you along with it since you’re sitting on it. It pulls a small smile from you as you reach the edge of the bed. Eddie wraps his arm tightly around your waist and lifts you to your feet.

“What’re we doing?” you ask, rubbing your hands over the goosebumps popping up on your arms. You’re cold in your tank top now that you’re not in the nice warm bed.

Eddie momentarily drops the blankets he’s holding to scoop something off the floor near his closet. When he turns it around, you see it’s his Corroded Coffin sweatshirt that you regularly steal from him. He slides it over your head and you slip your arms through the holes. As soon as he pulls the soft, worn material down past your face, he leans in and pecks your nose. A small giggle bubbles out as you wrinkle up your nose.

“Follow me, groupie,” Eddie teases.

Out in the hallway, Eddie halts, turns, and drops his comforter and sheet in your arms. Then, he opens the linen closet and pulls down a pallet of spare sheets and blankets. Without a word, he keeps walking into the living room, leaving you to follow.

“What’re we doing?” you ask again.

“Building a fort,” he answers as if it’s the most casual thing in the world.

“What?” you ask.

Eddie shrugs and pulls two chairs over from the small kitchen table.

“Storm isn’t as loud out here, so this is where we’ll sleep.”

“Couldn’t we just lay on the couch?” you ask.

Your boyfriend furrows his brow and waves your question off as if it was complete ludacris.

“So boring,” he declares. “Now, c’mon.”

Eddie kneels down and his bony joints click against the floor as he shuffles around, grabbing at different blankets.

Once Eddie has his mind set on something, there’s no talking him out of it. Between that and the fact that the storm is quieter out here, you join him on the floor and help him drape a dove gray sheet over a kitchen chair.

Both chairs, the kitchen table, the coffee table, the television, and the couch all become pillars that support your fabric fortress. At one point, Eddie jogs back into his room to grab his thick Lord of the Rings books to use as anchors on the tables.

Finally, it seems as if your tent is secured—and takes up the majority of the living room, even encroaching on the kitchen.

Both you and Eddie made sure to leave a few blankets loose on the floor for the two of you to curl up in. Now, Eddie brings the pillows from his bedroom to add to that nest.

Bending at the waist and giving you an over the top bow, Eddie holds part of a cream colored sheet to the side, the removed flap allowing enough room for you to crawl through.

“After you, my princess.”

As you go on hands and knees and begin to crawl inside, you ask, “Would a princess be part of building her own castle?”

“A badass one would,” Eddie replies before following you inside.

You take a proud look around your fort as Eddie makes the pile of blankets between you into an assimilation of a bed. The two of you burrow into your makeshift sleeping space and Eddie immediately pulls you into his arms.

“You okay, sweetheart?” Eddie asks quietly, not wanting to disturb the calm atmosphere in the tent.

“Much better now, thanks to you.”

Eddie smiles and presses a soft kiss to your lips.

“I’ll take any excuse to have fun with you.”

When dawn comes, the storm has disappeared and the sun is shining bright on the new day. Wayne gets out of his pickup truck and closes the driver’s door behind him with a squeal in desperate need of some oiling.

The older man thumps up the few stairs to the trailer door and turns his key in the lock. He pushes the door open before him and is greeted by a blanket structure taking up most of his home.

“What the hell,” Wayne mumbles as he closes the door behind him.

Before he even has the chance to take his boots off, both you and Eddie pop your heads out of your fort and grin at his uncle.

Wayne chuckles and shakes his head.

“You two are perfect for one another.”

[tortillamastersblog]

𖣂 Not My Commander - Prologue | Lexa kom Trikru 𖣂

Pairing: Lexa kom Trukru x reader

Warnings: Blood, violence, injuries, cursing and some steamy scenes

Summary: Sending a hundred underaged prisoners down to Earth to find out if it’s inhabitable again is undoubtedly immoral, so The Council decides to send you down first, rather than float you for your crimes.

If you survive for more than a couple of hours, they can —in good conscience— send down the 100. If you don’t, well, then good riddance.

Next Part | Masterlist

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How the hell did I get here? I think, as I’m being dragged through the woods half-conscious.

A moment ago I was still in my pod, hurtling through space and now I’m here with a giant gash on my temple from when my head slammed against the control panel upon impact on the ground.

I thought I could take a moment and gather my thoughts once the pod had turned off, but no. The door had been yanked open a couple hours later and I was pulled out by the people who are now dragging me to who knows where.

They’re covered in thick furs and menacing-looking war paint and apart from the short-lived surprise I felt at seeing humans somehow inhabiting Earth, I’m shaking like a leaf now, not knowing what they’re going to do to me.

For all I know they could eat me? I mean, have you seen them?

I scoff internally, watching the forest floor pass by beneath me.

I knew as soon as I was arrested on the Ark that I’d die for my crime of finding out something I shouldn’t have, but I never imagined it would happen like this.

Now that I think about it, this isn’t “mercy”, as Jaha put it. Not at all. . . It’s cruel and I honestly would have rather been floated than be grilled and eaten like a shish kebab.

I don’t know how much time has passed when we finally stop near a stream, but I’m tired beyond belief and my legs are covered in scratches and bruises from being dragged around all day. The sun is about to set, bathing the forest in orange light and if it weren’t for my current situation I would have marveled at the sight.

The Grounders, as I’ve decided to call them, tie up my hands and feet and shove me against the bottom of a tree before setting up a fire and some sleep furs.

I watch longingly as they begin passing around some bread and dry meat, but they don’t even think of sharing with me as they settle down, talking in a foreign language around the fire.

My lips are chapped and my mouth is dry and even though I know they won’t share their food, I’m hoping they’ll share some of their water.

“Excuse me?” I speak up, my voice cracking. “Hello!”

They don’t acknowledge me. They don’t even spare me a glance.

Assholes.

I let myself fall sideways and wiggle toward the stream as best as I can with my hands and feet bound.

My clothes get all dirty and a couple of branches scratch up my face, but I keep pushing until I finally reach the water.

I take a big gulp, shivering at how cold it is before taking another sip, and another, and another.

I drink until I almost feel sick, not having had anything all day. Then, out of nowhere I’m yanked backward.

I look over my shoulder at the Grounder who’s got ahold of my sweatshirt and glare at him. “Hey! What’s your problem? It’s not like I was going to escape! How could I. . .” I whisper that last part dejectedly, but the grounder only grunts and throws me back against the tree.

It makes my back sting and I bite the inside of my cheek to prevent a curse from slipping off my tongue as the grounder gets another rope, wrapping it around my middle and around the tree to keep me kn place.

“What do you even want from me?” I ask, tugging against on restraints.

No reply.

“Where are you taking me?”

Again, nothing.

The Grounder makes sure all my bindings are secure before rejoining the others around the fire.

As frustrating as it is not to get any answers, I’m starting to think that they might not understand what I’m saying. After all, they haven’t spoken anything other than their own language and whenever I ask them something, they just ignore me.

I lean my head back against the tree and close my eyes, trying my best to ignore my aching body.

It’s been a very long day and I feel myself falling asleep to the sound of the Grounders’ chatter and the crackling of the fire.

What is this place? I look around with wide eyes taking in my surroundings.

We’re in a bustling city which has a huge tower right in the middle of it.

The tower looks like a remnant of the old world, falling apart but still intact, while the buildings around it seem to be fairly new. They’re small and look primitive being made out of wood and metal scraps, but they’re sturdy nonetheless and function as a multitude of things. I’m pretty sure we’ve already passed a forgery, a food stand, a butcher shop and a couple of stalls that sell clothes.

Impressive. . .

After a restless night of sleep, the Grounder that tied me to the tree cut me loose at dawn and pulled me to my feet. Then, they wordlessly dragged me through the woods again until we got here.

We’re pushing through the crowd of people gathered in the streets who eye us curiously, and if the direction we’re going in is anything to go by, I’m guessing we’re headed for the tower.

Why? I don’t know, but it seems like they don’t want to kill me just yet. Otherwise they would have done it the moment they found me.

Unlike yesterday, the sky today is covered by low, dark clouds. The wind has also picked up, carrying a metallic smell with it which I’m thinking might be the smell I’ve read about in books that’s associated with rain.

I’ve always wanted to know what rain is like, what it looks and sounds like, and what it feels like on the skin, but now I’ll probably be dead before any of that happens.

What if they throw me off the tower in some sort of ritualistic sacrifice?

My heart drops at the thought, but I’m too hungry and weak to dig my heels into the ground to stop our advancing.

I haven’t had anything to eat since being hauled out of my cell on the Ark, and the only thing I’ve had to drink was the water I managed to sip from the stream last night before being so rudely interrupted.

We enter the tower, the Grounders holding me nodding at the guards stationed next to the doors, and my eyes widen at the sight of the seemingly working elevator we get on.

We descended, the elevator creaking as it moves slowly before the doors open once again, revealing a dimly lit hallway.

Metal cell doors line each side and before I can protest I’m shoved into one of the cells.

The dirt-covered ground is cold and unrelenting as my knees collide with it and I wince in pain, curling up in one of the corners as the door gets slammed shut.

Great, from one cell to the next.

The Grounders leave, chatting animatedly and I drop my eyes to the metal bracelet on my wrist.

It transmits my vital signs to the Ark and because I’ve been down here for more than a day now I’m sure it has already proven that the Earth is survivable which means the 100 will be prepared to be sent down here as well.

I don’t know how long it will take for them to get here though. A day maybe? Or a week? A month? Several months?

I just don’t know, all I know is that I’m on my own and no one is coming to help me.

There’s no window in the cell, the only light streaming in through the spaces between the metal bars of the door is from the flickering torch in the hallway.

I sigh, shivering slightly, and close my eyes. My legs are pulled up to my chest and I protectively wrap my arms around them, pulling them even closer to my body.

No one is coming to help. . . I’m going to die here.

I must have fallen asleep because I wake up an unknown amount of time later with a start when I’m roughly pulled to my feet by the same Grounder who dragged me through the forest.

“Get up,” he growls and the fact that he speaks English after all stuns me so much that he has to shove me to get us moving.

“Where are we going?” I ask weakly. I’m lightheaded from not eating in so long and my tongue feels like sandpaper.

The Grounder grunts and wraps his hand around my upper arm, his grip so harsh I’m sure it will leave a bruise.

“Hey! I asked you some—“

I cringe when the back of his monstrous hand harshly collides with my cheek, sending a sting through the entire right side of my face.

“The Commander is ready to see you now,” he snarls. He pulls me into the elevator with him and I raise my hand to my throbbing cheek, closing my eyes to will the tears that are threatening to spill away.

Who the hell is The Commander?! And why does he want to see me? Why didn’t they just kill me when they found me. . .

________________________________________________

This is just the beginning of the story, people!!

[callmelittlebuttercup]

Peace Offerings Pt.7

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Series Summary: The pair continue on and decide to loot a mall they come across. Reader is injured from a run in with a clicker, and the two are force to seek shelter in a nearby school. Joel blames the Reader's stubbornness for her injury and tensions rise, causing something neither of them expected to happen.

Series Warnings: Slow burn, Age gap (reader is 34, Joel is 56), 18+ Minors DNI, Sexual Themes, Violence, Injuries (depictions of blood, bruising, broken bones), Cursing, Grumpy!Joel, Minimal depictions of reader's appearance (hair color/length.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part Seven

I’d fallen asleep on the couch. Joel placing a mug of coffee onto the table beside me had been my sign to wake up. “What time is it?” I asked while wiping the sleep out of my eyes. “Early. We need to catch up on time.” He said. He was back to his rigid self. I guess last night had been too much for him. I sat up and stretched before taking a sip of the hot, stale liquid. It burned my tongue, but I played it cool. He dropped my backpack in front of me and slung his own over his shoulder. “Be ready in five.” He grunted and turned to walk out the front door. “Aye aye captain.” I mumbled under my breath as I reached for my boots. 

I nearly stumbled out onto the porch, and met Joel at the bottom of the stairs. “Ready.” I said. He stood up with a grunt and we began our trek. The air was beginning to get colder, and soon my sweatshirt wouldn’t be enough. I took stock of the clothing I had left in my bag, and even then, I still wouldn’t make it through the winter. “We should find somewhere for warm clothes.” I suggested. He nodded and replied, “Keep an eye out.” I plucked the map he had tucked into the side pocket of his backpack and opened it up. My eyes scanned the area, and if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, there was a shopping mall about 10 miles north. I relayed the information to Joel, and of course he grabbed the map from me, needing to confirm it for himself. I stood close to him, pointing to where I saw the mall. He nodded and folded up the map before handing it to me to shove back into the pocket. 

It took five hours, but we’d finally caught sight of the mall. After 5 hours of walking, my mind was fried, and I was even convinced the mall could have been a mirage. “You see that too right?” I asked Joel, my words slurring slightly. “Yup.” He answered. “Just making sure.” 

We closed the distance between us and the ginormous building. “This is going to be a bitch to clear.” I sighed. “Just keep it down.” Joel demanded as he pushed the door open with a creak. Memories of my childhood flooded back as I caught sight of the grand entryway to the abandoned mall. “Stay behind me.” He whispered as we entered the building cautiously. I kept my head on a swivel and kept up with Joel’s quickened pace. He stopped at the opening of what looked like a sporting goods store. I followed him inside, and once we deemed the area clear, we untensed and began to load any clothes we saw into our bags. I chose a wind breaker with a sherpa lining and a few sweaters to go underneath. Joel grabbed us each a pair of gloves and a hat. I’d wandered off to see if there was anything else of use, and was eyeing the picked over shoe racks when I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I heard it before I saw it. The familiar raspy breath of an infected. I turned around and caught sight of the nasty thing. It came barreling forward but ran into a rack and sent it flying into me. It slammed against my torso and pinned me to the shoe display. I began to lose vision from the pain of my already cracked ribs being beaten even further. With the little strength I could muster, I pushed the rack off me and used it to keep the distance between the monster and I. It’s arms flailed over the side of the rack as it tried to get a hold of me, but I ducked and dodged each time. I prayed for Joel to find me since I didn’t have the time to take my eyes off of the infected to get my gun from the floor. I stood there fighting the creature as hard as I could all while trying not to collapse from the agony. I finally hurt a gunshot and the creature dropped to the floor. I let go of the rack and paused, ensuring that it was fully dead, and soon after Joel’s hand grabbed my arm and yanked me backwards. “We gotta get out of here. Go!” 

I ran as fast as I could behind Joel, and once he felt that we were far enough away from the mall, he slowed to a jog. “You promised you wouldn’t do that.” He breathed. “I know.” I gasped. “So what the fuck possessed you to?” He questioned, his voice gaining volume from growing anger. “I…I don’t know, I just wanted to see what else we could get.” I stuttered, feeling fear pulse through my abdomen. His dark eyes practically burned holes into me. He said nothing and turned to continue to walk along the path we’d fallen upon. 

About two hours later, we’d come upon a and cleared school to rest in for the night. He’d been silent, clearly angry at me for wandering away from him. I didn’t want to speak to him either. Even if his anger was because of the fact he cared about me, I hated being talked down to and treated like an irresponsible child. He sat across the grimy, dust filled teachers lounge and bore his eyes into me. I tried to ignore the pain across the right side of my stomach, but it got worse with each breath, and would soon be impossible to ignore. I needed to do something about it, but if Joel saw that I was hurt I would get another lecture. I sat still on the couch, picking at my fingernails to avoid eye contact. “I know you’re hurt.” He grumbled. My eyes shot up to him, “What? I’m fine.” I said defensively. “Then get up and twist to the side.” He demanded. I raised my eyebrows, continuing to act confused, “What the fuck are you on about, Joel? I’m fine, I’m just tired.” I insisted. He stood up and walked over, standing over me and studying my body with his eyes. “Don’t fuckin’ lie to me.” He said, his voice getting lower with impatience. I sighed, my side rippling with pain, and reluctantly sat up while stifling a grunt. I stood, causing Joel to take a step back. “Here’s your proof.” I said as I began to twist to the side. The pain was so bad the wind was knocked out of me and I stumbled backwards, my ass landing on the couch. Joel’s face remained unchanged except for a small glint in his eye. He clearly loved when I was wrong. 

I stared up at him angrily while catching my breath. “Lift up your shirt.” He said. I scoffed, “Woah, Miller, take me out to dinner first.” He unsurprisingly did not laugh at my joke, and sat on the couch next to me, leaving about two feet between us. I rolled my eyes and lifted up my shirt while sucking air through my teeth. Joel’s eyes widened and his lips parted. “Wha-” I began to ask but my breath caught in my throat when I caught sight of the nasty multicolored bruise painted across the right side of my abdomen. “Must’ve broken a rib. A few ribs at least.” He said before absentmindedly moving his calloused fingers up to touch it. I jerked away and spat, “Don’t fucking touch it.” He quickly moved his hand away and muttered, “Sorry.” I pulled my shirt back down and sat back on the couch with a grunt. I looked at him, wondering what his next move would be. He stood up and walked to his backpack on the other side of the room, unzipped it, and pulled out a long-sleeved shirt. “Joel, don’t waste a perfectly good shirt, I’ll be fine.” I said, but he ignored me and I watched him as he ripped it and tied it to make a longer strip of fabric. 

When he was finished, he walked back over to me and gestured for me to stand again. I raised my shirt up for him again and he didn’t move. He cleared his throat and said “It’ll need to go under your shirt.” I nodded and reluctantly pulled my t-shirt off, leaving only my ratty bra to cover my breasts. He unraveled the fabric and began to wrap it around my torso a few times, then looped it over my opposite shoulder. I winced as he pulled it tighter before tying one last knot in the center of my chest. Pulling the fabric had forced our bodies closer together, the warmth of his breath brushing over my face. His head turned down, and his eyes bounced back and forth between my eyes and my lips, and I could have sworn he leaned in closer before pulling away quickly. Embarrassment flooded my cheeks as he took a step back and studied his work, making sure it was tied correctly. The tightness of the wrap pressed into the bruise causing a dull ache, but moving with it on felt much better than nothing. “Thanks.” I said quietly. He nodded and sat back down on the other couch, not thinking to look away as I put my shirt back on. 

“I told you to stay behind me. And now look at you.” He huffed after a minute of silence. “Oh save it, Joel.” I spat. He leaned forward on his knees, “There was no need for you to go and get yourself hurt. We agreed what I say goes, so you need to start actin’ like it.” His eyes were intense, he wasn’t fucking around. I only agreed to that sentiment so he would take me with him to find our brothers in Wyoming. I thought he knew that since I showcased my hardheadedness often. “We both lived, and I’ll be fine.” I said, wanting to end the conversation. “We’re staying here while you heal. Not getting back on the road until you can move correctly again. S’not safe.” I lifted my head off the couch to look at him, “You can’t be serious. My legs are fine! I can walk!” He pressed his lips together and shook his head, “You can’t move your upper body. You can’t fight.” He said. I rolled my eyes and let a puff of air leave my nose, “Staying here will only make the trip longer. I want to get to Wyoming, Joel.” He thought for a minute and then looked up at me, “We’ll get there faster if you take the time to rest.” He argued. I stood up and grabbed my backpack, stifling the grimaces as I gathered my things. “What’re you doing?” He asked, eyeing me as I moved around the room. “I’m getting on the road. Don’t need someone to hold me back.” I muttered as I began to walk towards the door of the lounge. Joel bolted to the door and stood blocking it. I stared daggers at him, “Move.” He shook his head side to side slowly. I pushed on his chest as hard as I could with both of my hands, “Fucking move, asshole!” I winced when he grabbed my arms and pushed me to the side, pinning my back against the wall beside the door. “I can’t let you do that.” He grunted, using his strength to hold me. I tried to struggle against his grip but my side was searing with pain. “You can. I’m a grown woman, Joel. I don’t need you to protect me like some guard dog. I’ll do just fine on my own.” I seethed, “Let go of me. Please I just want to get to my brother.” 

Tears of frustration pooled in my eyes. Joel’s hard gaze softened, and so did his grip. “You will. But you won’t get far with broken ribs. I’m trying to help you.” He said calmly. I looked at him through my tears. Took in his wild brown hair which was sprinkled with grey, his square jaw inhabited by a patchy beard, eyes the color of ground coffee, eyes that were pleading for me to stay. I didn’t know why, but I was beyond attracted to him. Sure, he was older, but what did that matter nowadays? In addition to his looks, his commanding and dark personality intrigued me. He clearly cared about me, but he had walls up. Hard, concrete walls that were going to take maximal effort to break down. But hell was I going to try because I’ve never said no to a challenge. 

“You want me to stay, huh?” I asked, blinking away my tears as a new idea popped into my head. “I don’t want you to get killed.” He said gruffly. I smirked slightly, “Then admit it.” I blurted. His face twisted into an expression that was confusion mixed with fear. He took a step back, letting his arms fall to his sides. “What?” He questioned. “Yeah, that’s right. If you want me to stay so badly, admit that you care about me.” I taunted as I walked towards him. He stumbled over his words, but I cut him off again, “C’mon, Joel, you’ve slaughtered people but you’re afraid to confess your feelings to a woman?” I chuckled. He stood staring at me. His chest rising and falling with his panicked breaths. He said nothing, and my heart fell slightly, but I kept my confident air. “Fine. See you in hell.” I said before turning to walk out of the door. Before my hand could touch the handle, I felt a calloused grip on the back of my neck. The hand pulled me backwards and I turned. I barely had time to process, and suddenly my lips were moving hungrily with Joel’s. 

Warmth and excitement spread through my stomach as his arms gently wrapped around my waist. His hands shakily held onto the small of my back, his fingers clenching into the fabric of my shirt when I let a small moan slip into his mouth. We lost ourselves in each other. Our hands explored places neither of us ever thought we’d touch. His strong hands moved cautiously up my waist and around my shoulders to settle into each crook of my neck. He used his body to push me backwards into the wall. My hands gripped his torso, pulling him closer, using anything but words to ask him for more. His tongue licked my bottom lip and I eagerly let him in. He tasted better than anything I’d imagined. Suddenly, he pulled away. “I can’t.” He grunted as he gently pushed his hands off of my hips and stalked away into the other room, leaving me with swollen lips, heavy breathing, confusion, and rejection. 

I sat on the couch staring at the ground and chewing on my fingernails. I felt embarrassed at how desperate I’d been for him, and for actually thinking he would open up to me. I dropped my head into my hands and let out a frustrated groan. His footsteps caused my head to snap up, and he stood in the doorway. His face was unreadable. “Joel,” I started to speak but he cut me off. “Don’t. It was a mistake. Won’t happen again. Now get some sleep. We’re getting back on the road in the morning.” He said as he laid down on the other couch. I nodded and laid back, turning away from him. My thoughts made sleep seem unreachable. His voice grounding out the word “mistake” over and over in my mind. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was all one huge mistake. Me leaving the QZ for my brother, Joel agreeing to take me with him. But it was too late now. We were so close to Wyoming. I decided I would suck it up, not enage with Joel unless I had to, and stick to his plans no matter what. I just needed to survive, and I would make it to Matthew. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author's Note: Hi hi! We're finally getting some action in this part;) Also, I've had a request to start a tag list so please let me know if you'd like to be added!! I hope you enjoy <3

Next Part | Masterlist

[theicarusconstellation]

61 jegulus 😊😊😊😊

you and @ecstarry requested this one so here’s this for both of you😈😈

prompt: 61). “I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married.” // jegulus // sfw // words: 944

Regulus studies the wedding rings on the ring bearer’s pillow in his dressing room with loathing. His stiff, old-fashioned dress robes make him fidget, wanting to crawl out of his own skin the closer he gets to the ceremony.

The ceremony. The event that will ruin his life and chain him to a woman he has no room in his heart to love.

Not that there is anything wrong with Cereus Greengrass; she just…

Isn’t him, a small, despicable voice in his head whispers. She isn’t the one who has seen his scars. She isn’t the one who broke down his brainwashed mentality and helped him see that his former truths were bigotry and hatred.

She isn’t the one who begged him not to go when he announced his engagement.

Regulus had been betrothed since birth to Adelaide Rosier, but that all fell through once Sirius ran away, plummeting the Black family’s status down to the bottom of the totem pole. For a brief while — two glorious years — he allowed himself to believe that he would be able to marry someone of his own choosing. This hope only grew stronger once he fell in love with him.

Beautiful brown skin and golden wire-rimmed glasses. Forested eyes and warm muscles that flexed and relaxed on the Quidditch pitch (and in the soft retreat of the Come-and-Go Room). A secret just for Regulus, one he could hold close to his heart until the time came to reveal it to the world.

Then, Lucius properly introduced Walburga and Orion to the Greengrass family. As it turned out, their eldest daughter was in need of a husband, and Regulus fit the bill down to the letter.

He could see no way out. Voldemort himself believed that it was something that had to be done. Regulus had no choice.

Or so he tells himself.

Yet sitting at his dressing room vanity, listening to the orchestra play the tune of noon, he cannot help but wonder what would have happened if he went with James. If he had accepted that extended hand and trusted that whatever plan his boyfriend had concocted on the spot would be successful. Would it be their wedding happening at this venue today instead?

No, he cannot dwell on the past. James has gone away, and Regulus himself is at fault for that.

He hasn’t had any lovers since you left him, that voice whispers again.

“Shut up,” Regulus hisses aloud through gritted teeth.

“Well, damn, Reg. I just got here, and you’re already sending me away.”

That voice. He knows that voice. He’s dreamt of that voice.

His back stiffens, and he uses all his courage to drag his eyes up from the vanity counter and to the mirror, where he sees behind him —

“Jamie?”

The nickname slips out like a desperate plea, begging to be heard after eons of disuse.

“Surprise.” The boy in the mirror grins weakly, though his voice cracks and trembles.

“You can’t be here.” Please don’t leave.

“I had to try. I won’t stop trying until both of us are dead. I had to take a few months to plan after you told me about…this, but I’m here now, and Regulus —“ James walks closer to him, and Regulus’ legs lift him up against his will, pulling him toward old familiar comforts.

James’ hands find his face — he’s in an old Gryffindor sweatshirt and jeans, but Regulus couldn’t care less — and he says with no hesitation,

“I love you. I’m completely and utterly in love with you. Please don’t get married. Sirius is in a Muggle car out front waiting for us to come out. We’ll go away, far away, to your uncle Alphard’s place; he’s already agreed. If anyone tries to stop us, I’ve gotten Crouch and Rosier on board to cause a diversion. Regulus, please, I —“ His voice catches, and Regulus feels his entire world change in the span of a second.

Could he do it? Could he leave behind everything, the altar, the rings, the loveless marriage, his parents? But what about the dangers? What about Voldemort? If he goes with James, will the Dark Lord find them? And Sirius — they haven’t spoken in years. Is he really outside, willing and eager to help him escape?

“We all want you back. We need you back. I love you so much, Regulus,” James insists. Regulus’ cheeks heat up between his palms.

I can’t.

“Okay.”

What?

“What? You — you mean it?”

“Okay. I mean it. Take me. Now. Before…”

Before I change my mind. Before the ceremony starts and the music plays and the rings are slipped on and my life stops and my prison begins.

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you —“ James half-sobs, cutting himself off by pulling Regulus’ face toward his and crashing their mouths together in the first kiss Regulus has had in a long, long time.

They spend no more moments on words after that. James grabs his hand, and they both hurry out the window, which is apparently what James used to enter the room. How he got in without Regulus noticing is a mystery neither of them will ever solve.

James hasn’t stopped murmuring “thank you”s, doesn’t stop even after they’re hours down the road, headed for a countryside where love grows and happiness shines down in the form of sun rays.

Regulus doesn’t mind, he curls up in the arms of the one he loves and listens to the soft rumblings within James’ chest as he speaks, the vibrations lulling him into his first true moment of relaxation since that night in the Come-and-Go Room so many months ago.

[sebsxphia]

Hi Seb! Fic request anon here!!! I totally get inspiration is a fickle thing, so if this doesn’t spark inspiration or you don’t feel comfy writing it, no worries! 🥰🥰🥰

So after re-reading a bunch of your Bob fics and your daddy bobby fics, I got to wondering how daddy bobby might handle a situation where his sweetheart regresses because of trauma reasons? I kinda do the same thing and I just imagine daddy bobby would be the absolute gentlest and so good at helping his little one move from feeling very very small and scared to still feeling small but safe again 🥺

bunny. | playtime boxes.

robert ‘bob’ floyd x little!reader.

￫ description: bob can tell when his bunny isn’t feeling too good, but he’s going to make sure they feel safe and comfortable in his arms.

￫ word count: 2.7K.

￫ c/w: age regression, regressing due to trauma, mentions of trauma and fluff, fluff, fluff.

￫ a/n: i hope you enjoy this my love! <3 | woodland creatures | agere masterlist | main masterlist |

Something, or someone, had spooked you. And Bob could tell.

You were his little bunny, and right now he thought as though you appeared as a bunny who was caught in the headlights. You were quiet during the car journey back to your home, and you continued to be quiet as you shed your winter jacket and kicked off your shoes by the front door. Your eyes were wide and darting around, with your eyebrows furrowed in both confusion and a hint of fear. He was sure he didn’t even see you blink. Your bottom lip was furiously being chewed on by your teeth and you drew the sleeves of Bob’s sweatshirt over your hands, in an attempt to hide yourself as much as you could.

Bob turned around from hanging up his coat next to yours, with a look of deeply concerned love etched over his features. His eyebrows furrowed softly and he placed his steady hand on yours, which were currently wrangling themselves around each other under Bob’s sweatshirt.

He cocked his head down to you and asked softly, as if not to spook you further.

“You okay, my little bunny?”

You shook your head almost instantly. Your teeth were still chewing on your bottom lip and you were unable to look Bob in the eye.

Your eyes were still darting around.

Seeking something out.

Safety. Comfort.

Your voice broke and Bob’s heart went with it.

“No. Don’t feel good. Wan’ be small.” You weakly mumbled out between your swollen lips.

His heart didn’t break because you wanted to regress. No, it broke because something was causing you to crack and in an attempt to soften the blow, you were regressing due to trauma. Seeing your distress from your trauma caused his heart to break. It may take days or weeks for you to explain what occurred to have you feeling so spooked (he had an inkling that it was who you saw), but that didn’t matter to Bob right now.

What mattered to him was you, and your wellbeing. He wanted you to regress with safety and comfort, and he would be there with every cautious step you took until he could hear your soft little snores, as you fell asleep on his chest.

His fingers on yours let themselves wrap around your sleeves and interlink themselves, to guide you with him down the hallway in your warm home.

“Alright, my little bunny!” Bob’s tone was switched up almost instantaneously. It resembled eagerness, to show you that he was thrilled to be your caregiver and he was here to look after you now. It was a switch in tone that you took to instantly with him and you pressed your body up to his broad arm and gripped onto it. Almost as though you were shielding yourself from the cover of your caregiver. You knew that he was here to protect you and that provided you with a great sense of comfort. You could already feel an inch of your tense shoulders slip away, as that familiar, fuzzy headspace slowly clouded your senses.

“Let’s get into Bunny’s playroom and we can have a look at your activity boxes, alright, little one?”

Bob felt the nod of your head against his arm and he smiled softly to himself, pleased that you were taking to this already familiar headspace and dynamic. However, he could still sense the tenseness residing in your muscles, and how tightly you were gripping onto his hand and arm.

Your playroom was your favourite room. It made you feel small when you needed it, it made you feel like you and your Daddy could conquer the world when you were playing, but most importantly, it made you feel safe. Safe inside from the big, bad, horrible world outside and the nasty people who resided there.

It was coloured with pastel pinks, blues and purples, with bright bursts of colour where needed. It held all of your stuffed animals (besides the ones you slept with every night), toys ranging from the ages of infancy, to five years old. There were colouring books, pencils and pens, alongside reading books and the entire collection of Peter Rabbit. Inside a small stack of drawers, were some of your clothes that you preferred to wear when you regressed, the others being kept in your shared bedroom with Bob for when you were going to sleep together.

When you weren’t sleeping together and you needed a nap during the day, there was a single bed in the corner of your playroom. When you weren’t napping in it, it acted as a fantastic sofa where you and your Daddy would read together, or watch a film before you fell asleep. There was a small screen television with a stack of DVDs next to it, sitting opposite your bed.

Most importantly in the room, however, and where Bob was leading you to currently, were your activity boxes.

For you, inside these boxes held items such as activities to do, clothing and utensils, like the pacifier or bottle you preferred, and a comfort item. Something that would help soothe whatever your needs were right now.

For Bob, however, these boxes contained something else. A gauge for how you were feeling, how small you were and most importantly, your current emotional well-being and headspace.

Bob knew that his sweetheart could regress positively, and would simply want to enjoy being small and let go of adult responsibilities, but, he also knew that his sweetheart could regress due to trauma. These boxes were created by you both, so when you simply couldn’t communicate verbally, you were still able to tell your caregiver exactly what you needed.

Bob could tell that you were still struggling to shake something off and he suspected that you were regressing due to the latter. He registered how tightly you were holding onto him and how firmly you pressed yourself into his side, not wanting to have your safety blanket of him, taken away from you. He held onto this as he held onto you, leading you into your playroom and sitting down with you on the plush carpet in front of the boxes. As he sat down and guided you with him, he placed you onto his lap, and like butter melting in a hot pan, you melted into him. You sat in his lap and instinctively your arms rang around his neck, burying your face into his neck and collar. The warmth of his skin and his familiar scent of lavender, mixed with a muskier wooden smell, flooded your nostrils and soothed another inch off your shoulders.

Bob had one firm arm wrapped around you and kept you safely in place next to him. His other outstretched and pointed at the boxes.

“Okay, my little one. Do you want to tell Daddy which activity box you’d like?”

You peered out from your hiding face that was pressed into his neck. A confused frown was etched onto your features and he watched as your eyebrows knitted tightly together, your frown turning into frustration. Bob heard a tiny and frustrated grumble come from your throat.

Verbalizing your preferred box couldn’t happen, so instead he pointed at the four boxes and asked with a soothing lilt in his voice.

“This one?”

He repeated the question for each box, but still came no real signs of indication which you wanted right now. Your frown of frustration was now combined with your bottom lip wobbling and your eyes turning glassy.

The frustrated grumble in your throat became a whimper and you buried your face back into Bob’s neck, at your best attempt to hide. He felt you swallow thickly and he heard you sniff back the tiny tears that were escaping.

Mumbled against his t-shirt, he heard your voice shake with uncertainty and again, upset frustration.

“No… don’t… know.”

“Oh, my little bunny.” Bob cooed at you, with one of his hands resting on the back of your head and cradling you gently. He rocked you slightly in his lap and let your tears dampen his t-shirt.

He knew.

He knew before you even picked out the box.

You were very, very tiny.

Bob comforted you with the easiest phrases for your tiny headspace. “It’s okay, Bunny. Big decisions are hard, but how about,” His hand slid round from the back of your head to your chin, to angle your teary eyes to his. “You show Daddy what feeling is in there, right now.” His slender index finger gently tapped on your chest. He knew that you couldn’t articulate what your brain was processing right now, but deep in your chest and against your rib cage, was always where you felt it most, and Bob knew that.

“Are you feelin’, happy?”

Bob registered how you didn’t react to that emotion and moved onto suggesting the next.

“Brave?”

Again, no reaction found its way to your tear-stained face.

“Sad?”

Your breath hitched.

“Scared?”

Your breath hitched again and your eyebrows furrowed, with your eyes darting around as they did when you initially came into your loving home.

Bob was proud of you and that you were able to communicate to him how you were feeling, but the emotions themselves made his stomach drop through to the floor.

His career as a pilot, and now flying in Top Gun, had always been a job for him. He was proud of his accomplishments, but it was just another day at the office for him. However, when he held your frightened and upset body, tightly in his arms, he swore that he would fire his missiles down on whoever made his Bunny feel like this. But that was for another moment in his life to consider. Right now, his utmost priority is you. He took great pride in being your caregiver and perhaps, he was even prouder of himself for taking care of you like this in such an intimate way, that surpassed his career.

Bob was drawn out of his train of thoughts by your face being pushed back against his shoulder and the sound of a small whine escaping your lips.

“Dada…” You mumbled out with a whine. Your hands grabbed tight fistfuls of his t-shirt. Bob recognized that this was your way of agreeing that you needed that particular box right now and most importantly, that you needed your Daddy to come with it.

He pressed his cheek against yours and pressed a gentle kiss to your temple, with his hand cradling the back of your head again. In a close and reassuring voice, Bob said, “I’m so proud of you, my little bunny, for telling Dada how you’re feelin’ right now.”

You felt an instantaneous weight being scraped off your shoulders. For within your tiny headspace, you came to understand that you had your Dada Bobby and your box. Things would be okay. You were going to be okay.

Bob felt the pressure of a deep breath release from your lungs and you lifted your head from his shoulders, although you were still holding on tightly to him.

“Dada…”

Your glassy eyes were still glazed over and your cheeks were still pink from the tears you shed, but that tight knot of frustration in your eyebrows had melted away. Bob understood your one verbal need.

“Shall Dada and Bunny open the box?”

You nodded slightly and he noticed a tiny curl in the corners of your lips, almost showing a small smile coming to grace your beautiful features. He responded with his full showing smile as he reached over to your box, to draw it closer to you both. He had one broad forearm still wrapped tightly around your waist to keep you firmly placed in his lap. He understood that any break in contact with himself could cause you to fall back into distress.

Inside this particular box held activities for you that were catered towards a tiny headspace, and that also involved your Daddy joining in and helping you. There was a brightly coloured, wooden shaped sorting box, to which Bob would help you match the shapes to the holes in the box. There was a bead maze, which you loved when Bob would put his large hand over yours to help guide the beads around the wire. Some storybooks were made of a whole array of different materials, with Bob helping you feel out each material and bring the sound of it close to your ear. There were a handful of colourful rattles, with different shapes and thicknesses to create different sounds. This box was very much made for you both to indulge within the senses and focus on the shapes and colours, together. It was stimulating for you, but gently within your tiny headspace, and absentmindedly, it would help distract you from the horrid torment that was racing around in your head.

There was a pastel pink pacifier, with a bunny rabbit print, and a soft, plush pacifier clip to attach it to, matching in colour. Bob nimbly attached it to your t-shirt, before placing it gently to your mouth. You let out a quiet, yet joyful hum as you soothed yourself. The last thing in your box was your baby bottle, which was decorated with sparkly wildlife stickers. He knew that you desperately needed to hydrate yourself, but to not break contact from his warm body, or this distraction, was paramount for you right now.

“Can Bunny help Daddy, slot these shapes away? ‘nd then, can Bunny help Daddy get something to drink? Daddy’s so thirsty!”

Bob played off the dramatics in a very convincing manner, as you eagerly nodded your head and behind your pacifier, he spotted the very first signs of your gleeful smile. A louder squeal was let out from your lips and one of your hands detached themselves from Bob’s t-shirt to grab onto the shaped sorting box.

It had worked. Twenty minutes later and you were still wrapped tightly around Bob’s frame, but giddily squeezing him and babbling behind your pacifier, as he filled up the last inch of your baby bottle with water and screwed the lid on tight.

In between this time, as you moulded into your Daddy and soaked up his comforting hold, it also enabled you to be parted, for just a couple of seconds, knowing that his warmth was right there. Therefore, Bob had been able to swap out your previous clothes for your matching, pastel pink, romper. It was buttoned and in case you still needed to feel his skin on yours, he could pop the first couple and press his warm skin to yours.

Bob chuckled at your constant squeezes to his waist and nonsensical babbling. “Alright, my little one, c’ere,” He reached down to your waist with a smile and picked you up to hoist you to his hip. “There you go.” He carried you back to your playroom with your bottle still in one hand. He gently nudged his fingertips with his spare hand, into your sides to get you giggling. The sweet laughter that rang out behind your pacifier was enough to cause his own.

“What game shall Dada ‘nd Bunny play next? Hm?” His eyes went wide behind his glasses and his eyebrows raised. He was putting on a face of excitement to keep you intrigued and engaged with your activities.

“Bee, Dada! Bee! Bee!”

He knew that you meant the bead maze. He laughed again as you squealed out your next activity with the utmost enthusiasm, and how you were already eagerly squirming in his grip to get back down on the floor of your playroom and huddled onto his lap.

He did exactly that and sat you down on his lap with the bead maze retrieved, and your bottle still in his hand. He rested you against him so that with one hand, he could hold the bottle to your lips and feed you, and his other could rest on yours and guide themselves along the beads, up and over the curling pieces of wire. His broad frame and shoulders almost wrapped themselves around you, as his arms outstretched to meet yours and the bead maze. You were cuddled tightly into his chest. You felt protected. You felt loved.

With the gentlest touch to move the beads, Bob had gently moved his little one from feeling terrified, to safe.

As you came close to finishing the last of your bottle, Bob removed it and placed your pacifier back. He pressed a featherlight kiss to your temple and before he continued with the exciting playtime that stood before you both, you heard his soothing voice next to your ear.

“Daddy’s so proud of you, my little bunny. I love you.”

tagging those who may be interested: @sunblchdfly @lewmagoo @peachystenbrough @rhettabbotts @becks-things @unmistakablyunknown @floydsmuse @just-in-case-iloveyou

[coffeeghoulie]

well you KNOW im gonna come in here and ask for mountrain. whatever your heart desires so long as theyre disgustingly in love abt it ♡

i gotchu <3 it's been a Hot Minute since I've written mountrain, hopefully this is sappy enough lmao

Winter peeks around the corner, temperatures dropping with the leaves, everything dreary and grey before the first inevitable snowfall covers the dead vegetation, brown grass and barren trees. Mountain slips out of bed and makes the trek down to his greenhouse every morning, long before the sun rises, to make sure his plants, his babies, are ready before the snow chokes the life out of them.

He can feel the coldspell incoming, feels it in the way the his joints start aching, deep in the bone. He swallows hard, looking at the work he has in front of him. The glass panels need to be inspected for damage, replaced and insulated. The pipes need to be drained, so they don't freeze and burst. All of his fragile plants need to be covered and brought inside. The whole building needs to be cleaned, top to bottom, including his makeshift nest area in the back corner.

It's necessary work, Mountain knows it, has done it every fall for years. It still doesn't mean he likes doing it. It's, for lack of a better term, a mountain of work. But it has to get done. So Mountain squares his shoulders in the pre-dawn darkness and gets to work.

He loses himself in it, doing his best to ignore his sore joints as he hauls potted plants inside, checking over each leaf and stem for disease. He works, making countless trips in and out of the freezing air as the sun starts peeking out over the treeline, tinging the dark sky with pinks and oranges, the budding light softening the florescents that light the greenhouse.

It's quiet work, almost meditative, which means he jumps nearly a foot off of the ground when someone knocks at the door. Mountain spins, very nearly dropping the potted petunias he's hauling in. His heartrate calms as he realizes it's his mate, waving at him through the glass. He smiles, warmth spreading in his chest, gesturing for Rain to come in.

Rain slips into the greenhouse, latching the door behind him. He's got two large thermoses tucked under his arms, and Mountain groans in appreciation, striding over to his mate and taking the thermos Rain offers to him.

"G'morning, sunflower," Rain says, voice sticky with sleep. He's clearly just woken up, pulled on one of Mountain's sweatshirts, the hem coming down to his mid thigh, over his pajamas and made the journey out to the greenhouse in the cold November morning just to bring him tea.

"Morning, tadpole," Mountain says, cupping Rain's jaw with a big hand, leaning down to steal a kiss from his mate. His skin is cool to the touch, and Mountain tries to push his body heat into his mate like a fire ghoul would.

Rain hums, shivering as Mountain's pinkie brushes against his uppermost gill. "Bed was cold," he whispers against Mountain's lips. "You'd been gone so long, figured you might like something hot to drink."

Mountain pulls back, reluctantly letting go of his mate's face to crack open the thermos. He's hit with the herbal scent of his favorite tea, steaming up and curling around him. He takes a sip, eyes fluttering shut as the taste hits him.

"I love you, tadpole," Mountain says, groaning as he greedily drinks down his preferred green tea blend, the one he adds mint to. Rain knows just how he likes his tea, two spoons of honey from the hives he keeps.

Rain grins, flashing his serrated, shark like teeth before taking a swig from his own thermos, the smell of chai drifting from his. "Love you too, Mount," he says, leaning in to nuzzle against his shoulder, not quite awake enough to fuss over the dirt that always, inevitably, ends up caked on Mountain's clothes while he works.

Mountain sets down the thermos, turning back to the water ghoul and wrapping his arms around his waist. Rain smiles wider, looping his arms around Mountain's neck, standing up on his tiptoes to do so. "Hey, baby," Rain laughs. "What's up with you?"

He sighs, Rain's smile contagious. Mountain ducks down and presses a kiss between Rain's seaglass horns. "So glad I met you," he whispers against the blue black waves of his hair, mussed from sleep.

Rain nods minutely. "Me too."

The world shrinks until it's just the two of them, no cold bed, no ever-looming snow. They stand there, basking in the warm humidity of the greenhouse and each other's presence. Everything smells of green tea and plant life and rich, warm earth.

Eventually, Rain pulls back. "It's cold, sunflower, how are your hands holding up?"

Mountain makes a noncommittal noise, but Rain levels him with a glare, and his shoulders slump. "A little stiff," he admits, removing one hand from Rain's slight waist, examining the redness at his knuckles, wind-whipped and raw.

Rain hums, snatching Mountain's hand in between his own. "Oh, baby, that looks like it hurts," he says, rubbing his thumb over his tender knuckles. "I know you've got that balm somewhere, the one with the aloe and the calendula?"

"It's back by my bed," Mountain says. "I'll put some on when I've finished this."

"Nope." Rain chuckles, slipping out of Mountain's grasp and rummaging through the cabinet near Mountain's personal corner. "You've been at this for hours, sunflower, we're putting some of that on, and we're going to take a cuddle break, and then I will help you get the greenhouse finished, okay?"

Mountain smiles as Rain returns with the tin of balm, already opening it and taking a dollop of it. "Alright, tadpole."

Rain takes his hands, rubbing the ointment into Mountain's knuckles, tenderly caressing the damaged skin. He works in silence, before capping the balm and taking Mountain by the hand, leading him back to the daybed he keeps in the corner.

Mountain kicks off his muddy boots before laying down, opening his arms for his mate. Rain follows suit, unlacing his boots before tucking himself into the crook of Mountain's arm, snuggling into the earth ghoul's embrace.

"I love you," Rain whispers, eyes slipping shut.

Mountain yawns, long and low. "I love you too."

[elsplaything]

touch me\ellie williams

toxic!ellie x fem!reader

ellie cheated on u & this is the breakup sex angst, smut, oral (r!recieving), strap usage (r!recieving), crying (both r! and ellie), ANGST!!!!!!! cheating, etcetc a/n: this is my first fanfic so feeling a lil nervous... hope you enjoy :) (a little death - the neighbourhood inspired this)

you and ellie had been broken up for almost two months. you were the one to do it, as you caught ellie with a girl at a party, whom she said to ‘not to worry about.' her fingers were down that girls throat on that couch and you saw it with your own eyes. she was a fucking liar.

ellie had always been popular with the girls on campus, but you never worried about it because you were hers, as she would say, and she made you believe you were enough. boy was she wrong.

she begged and begged for days after you broke up, so much that eventually you had to block her number. "i messed up so badly baby, please, i cant go on without you." she was helpless, couldn't eat or sleep after you left her. she was a complete mess, dina told you that she couldn't even get out of her bed to shower for two straight weeks. all of her soaps smelled like you, her bedsheets did too, that's why she couldn't leave them.

you loved ellie more than anyone ever could. she was your entire world.. until she wasnt.

all of the trust you had for that woman was shattered.

you jolted out of your thoughts as your apartment door was being slammed on. it was two a.m., you were sitting in one of ellie's old band tees on your bed, just about to fall asleep...

bang bang bang

"fuck.." you muttered as you got up quietly, grabbing your lamp from the side table as a weapon. you had no idea who could be psychotically banging on your door at this hour..

you quickly turned the knob, opening the door and about to swing on the unsuspecting mass murder, but

you're met with ellie. a very disheveled ellie; hair cut in a very messy shag, her sweatshirt hanging off her skinny frame, sweat glistening on her forehead. she was panting like a dog, maybe because she ran all the way here…

"ellie- what the fuck are you doing?!" you dropped the lamp at your surprise, growing angry at her for being here when you specifically told her you never wanted to see her again.

"i-i'm sorry, fuck. can i come in?" her voice was raspy and low, and you noticed how her eyes were sunken in and the color was drained from her face. she looked awful.

against your better judgement, you let her in and sat her down on your couch.

you stood in front of her, making her look up to you. she looked at you with a certain yearning that you've never seen from her before.

your eyebrows quirked up, waiting for ellie to tell you why she was here.

"i cant do this anymore." she said bluntly, eyebrows furrowing as she chewed on her bottom lip as she always did when she was nervous. "i cant live like this, knowing you hate me because of what i did. it's my fault, i know, and i never should've let that girl climb on top of me like that..." she looked down at her hands which were fiddling on her lap.

she took a deep breath, "i just needed to look at you one more time. to hear you one more time…”

your heart pained as you saw your ellie, broken in front of you. she was never like this, always cracking jokes and getting all cheeky around you. she would never show this side to you, even when you asked how she really felt. this felt so surreal, she was actually being honest for once.

tears brimmed her eyes once she finally looked back up to your standing form. "one last time. then i'll leave you alone, i promise."

you brought your hand up to cup her cheek, a tear rolled down her freckled skin as she shut her eyes and leaned into your touch.

"touch me," she whispered, "please."

you knew this would be the last time with ellie. you didn't seem to have enough time, it felt, as you slammed your lips onto hers harshly while pulling her up off the couch. she moaned into your mouth as her hands clung to your hips, pushing you back into your bedroom. she knew your apartment like the back of her hand.

your hands strung into her short hair, pulling at her roots as she pushed you against the wall.

you pulled at her sweatshirt, making her pull her head back and ask "are you sure?" breathlessly. her eyebrows furrowed with worry as she didnt want to do anything for you to regret. you already regretted so much with her..

you nodded and kissed her again, not wanting to think about anything except her lips and the ache between your legs.

she began to take your her shirt off, sighing at your body underneath. god, she loved every curve of your stomach, every mark on your skin. she had your entire body memorized, every soft spot and every tick.

ellie bent and started to kiss down your stomach, not stopping until she got to your inner thighs. she kissed your clothed cunt, earning a whimper from you from above. her favorite fucking sound.

her fingers slowly dragged your panties down to the floor, she kissed all the way back up in an attempt to savor the moment, which was going by way too fast for her liking.

"els.. please-" you whined as you grew impatient, wanting her to satisfy you as she was the only one who knew how.

"right here, baby, im right here." she said, moving her mouth onto your ache. her tongue swirled throughout your folds, finally making its way to your clit. she sucked harshly on the bud, making your hands move to her hair to pull harshly. you knew it always turned her on when you pulled her hair-- she moaned into your pussy at the action.

her entire body was tingling. she needed to be inside you, to feel your inner walls that she loved so much.

your moans grew louder as she worked her tongue into you, and soon enough you both moved to the bed with her on top of you. "god, you're so fucking pretty." she said while looking down at your pretty flushed face.

her hands roamed your body, never getting enough. your eyes brimmed with tears as you recalled your first time with her, she was so nervous. she kept asking 'is this okay?' 'can i touch you here?' 'am i going too hard?'

it was hard to keep your composure as the love of your life was no longer yours.

ellie kissed away your tears as she fucked into you, whispering her sweet nothings like she always did. your face was buried in the crook of her neck as her strap thrusted deep inside; she hit your soft spot with every single thrust every. single. time.

your orgasm was creeping up, and she knew. "not yet baby-- need you to hold on just a little longer." she kissed your head and fucked harder, making you scream out into her shoulder.

"let me see you." she breathed out. you lifted your head from her shoulder, looking up at her with your glassy, red eyes. your lips were red and swollen from the crying, making them perfectly kissable to her. you really were so fucking pretty, even in your fucked-out-crying state. you always looked beautiful under her, she thought.

your eyes clamped shut and your mouth fell open, indicating your release. loud moans and harsh thrusting was all ellie could hear. you yelled out her name in a tone so pornographic that ellie almost came just from your voice.

"fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckellieohmygodFUCK"

"shh pretty girl. i got you." she calmed you down, stroking your head as she moved you on top of her so she could hold you fully. she was about to pull out, but you whined, "nono, stay inside. please." ellie didnt move an inch. you didnt want her to leave, didnt want to feel that emptiness from before.

her head leaned up against your headboard as she held you, just admiring your sleepy state. she too felt exhausted, for it seemed that she could only get fully rested when you were holding her. she hadnt slept comfortably in more than two months.

she held onto you tightly because she knew this wouldnt last. that, in the morning, she would be gone before you wake up. her girl, fast asleep on her chest, looking so peaceful. she watched your head rise and fall with her chest, and she's never felt more in love with you then in that moment.

god, she fucked up so bad.

[spitefulwriters]

JJ Maybank x Kiara Carrera (2.6K) all the times they could have kissed, but didn’t. (a series, maybe)

JJ slept like the dead, usually.

Normally half dressed, when he could be bothered, stripped down to jeans, sometimes less when it got too hot. Most of the time he didn’t make it under the sheets, bone tired from surfing, from fighting waves or fighting his father, passed out on the mattress at a weird angle to avoid that one broken spring.

Face down on a pillow, salt still in his hair, an old fan aimed at his naked back, a silly amount of lukewarm air blowing onto his sunburnt skin.

He’d sleep through the TV, the angry blare of it, the smash of an empty beer bottle, all too used to the sounds that became a fucked up kind of lullaby. Alarms didn’t budge him, not really, not anymore. He would have never made it to school if it weren’t for his dad’s foot against the door, an offbeat drum, angry and shattering.

So JJ had absolutely no idea how the tiny rocks against his window pane stirred him from sleep.

One hit, two hit, three; the sound almost like the beginning of a rain shower and then it stopped. JJ groaned, nose rubbing at the pillowcase, brow wrinkling.

Something told him to get up.

Fists found the mattress, another groan, a stifled yawn and then he was pushing himself off of the bed, sheets tangled around his knees and he tripped on one abandoned boot before he made it to the window. Eyes half closed, heavy with sleep, he cracked it open, looking out into the dark, the marshes still alive, buzzing under the moon. He couldn’t see anything, not at first, not when the sky bled into the water and the greenery became inky black, shadows on shadows with nothing in between.

Then, from the treeline, a girl appeared. Just ten feet away, too scared to get too close, wary of the glow from the television bleeding from the living room blinds, slants of blue light between broken slats. JJ thought he might’ve been dreaming.

Maybe he was.

Kiara.

Half dressed in pyjama shorts and an old sweatshirt that had some kind of fishing logo on the front. It was too dark to see, but the boy thought it might’ve been his, maybe once.

JJ blinked and dragged a hand through his hair, wincing when his fingers got caught in the ends, salt and sand falling onto his shoulders and he stared at the girl in her unlaced sneakers, no car, no bike, no nothing around her.

“What’re you doing?” He hissed, voice rough with sleep, cracking with anticipation. He could hear the western movie that was playing from the other room, but he couldn’t hear his dad snoring. Not yet. “What the fuck, Kie?”

Kiara edged forward, eyes wary, stare flickering from JJ’s face and back to the front door of the trailer. When nothing moved, when no one appeared, she walked through the grown grass and curled her fingers around the window edge. She was close enough now that JJ could see the heaviness on her face, the tired looking bruises under her lash line, the weight on her shoulders.

Kie’s chin jumped the sill and her fingers were so close to the boy’s, close enough that her pinky almost grazed his thumb and it wasn’t cold outside, not in the slightest, but the boy seemed to hold the sun under his skin and Kiara wanted to run to it.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she whispered, her voice too awake, too alert for two in the morning.

JJ waited, knowing there was more. He could see it in her face, the bitten skin at her bottom lip, the pulled out curl that fell into her eyes, the one that held more frizz than the rest.

“Parents are fighting again,” Kie continued, staring past JJ, into his room, gaze studying the posters and photos on his wall as if she could hide her feelings amongst them all. “It’s stupid. I just— I wanted to get out of the house.”

Maybe before - years ago, maybe only months ago - JJ would’ve teased her. Made some kind of comment, something less than sensitive, something crude about seeking him out in the middle of the night, something destructive about not choosing John B or Pope over him.

But now— now?

JJ pressed his lips together and nodded. His thumb shifted, just once, grazing the back of Kie’s hand before pulling away and searching his floor for a shirt. He yanked one on, buttoned up his jeans, grabbed a cap to cover his bed mussed hair, shoved bare feet into shoes and ushered her backwards without looking at his bedroom door or thinking about what lay behind it. Kie moved, watching as the boy slid open the window a little wider, throwing one leg out before the other and dropping almost silently to the ground, like he’d done it before.

Of course he had. He’d done it plenty of times.

Just not for her.

They didn’t speak as JJ straightened up, boots crunching in the grass. Eyes locked, the boy lifted a finger to his lips and offered Kiara his other hand. She took it like she always did, with no hesitation at all, and JJ led her across the marshes, through the buzz of the insects, away from the man in the living room. They walked until overgrown grass and reeds turned into a dirt path, forged by night time walks just like this.

Neither thought to take JJ’s bike, neither thought about a car, or the Twinkie. They just walked, heading out of the marshes until the fisherman shacks were left behind, until they couldn’t hear the drone of cicadas as loudly, until they were crossing the road that took them out of The Cut and under streetlights.

They walked until tarmac turned to sand and the empty beach lay before them and like it had already been agreed, they both stopped to toe off their shoes, digging the soles of their feet into the sand just to see if it had kept any of the afternoon heat. Kiara walked and JJ followed, not speaking, not yet, not until he knew the time was right.

He’d once been a stupid kid, a teenage boy without much common sense when it came to girls and feelings - and shit, maybe he still was - but JJ Maybank was a grade A student when it came to Kiara Carrera. So he watched and he waited, following the girl in the sand, his footprints covering up her much smaller ones as she led them to the shoreline, where the waves lapped at the beach and created the best kind of white noise. A rush of water, the most pretty kind of itch that scratched at his brain and he thought Kie felt the same, because when she stopped and he chanced a look at her profile, her eyes were closed, the corners of her mouths lifting every time the ocean caught her toes.

“It was too loud,” Kie finally said as a way of explanation. The water rushed, a shell hit a rock and silence fell over them again. “They’d been arguing all night, all through dinner. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Doesn’t sound fun,” JJ agreed. He kept his eyes on the water, searching the horizon like he was trying to find something to focus on other than the warmth of the girl standing beside him. “What’re they yellin’ ‘bout now?”

Kiara’s sneakers hit the sand with a wet smack. She sighed before sitting, knees tucked to her chest and JJ wondered once more if the sweater was his before it had become hers, maybe John B’s for a week or two, maybe Pope’s. He joined her, feet planted half in the sea and his arms on his knees, waiting for her reply, even if he knew what was coming.

“Everything,” Kiara stated flatly. She let out a huff of laughter, no humour to the sound. “Me, mostly.”

JJ smiled at her bluntness and touched the brim of his hat, for lack of something to do. He was itching to reach out, to brush away the grains of wet sand that stuck to her shins. “Doesn’t sound like anythin’ new.”

Kiara shrugged. “Not really, s’all a broken record now though. Sick of the same shit every day. All they do is act like I’m some sort of broken kid, like they have to fix me.”

JJ wanted to nod and say he understood, that he knew the feeling. He’d been treated like a problem his whole life, like he’d been born less than perfect, like he was the root cause of all his fathers shortcomings. But he didn’t know what it was like to have someone care enough to wanna try and solve it. To maybe try and put his broken pieces back together. So he just pressed his lips together and stared at the sand, waiting for the moment the ocean would brush back over his bare feet again, soaking at the hem of his jeans.

“Ever wanna do something stupid? Just ‘cause?”

JJ snorted at the question, chin turning up and eyes searching for Kiara’s. She was already looking at him, more start curls escaping her hair tie, a smile on her face that JJ thought could maybe fix some of his problems, at least.

“You realise who you’re talkin’ to, right?” He replied, grinning right back. The sun that was left of his cheeks stung when he did it, nose wrinkled and a little too red because he never listened when Kiara and Pope told him he needed more sunblock. “What kinda stupid are we talkin’ about?”

Kie shrugged, stretched out her legs and let the sand coat the back of them, wet, golden grains against dark bronzed skin and JJ wondered if she’d take them to bed with her, if she’d manage to wash them off and hide the evidence of their night from her parents before she got back home. The boy wondered if she cared.

“I don’t know,” kie let her head tilt to the side, pondering. She held up one hand and started counting on each finger. “We’ve already covered running away, robbery—”

JJ snorted. “Don’t forget grand theft auto.”

“—does grand larceny count?” Kie smiled.

The boy smirked. “Gold was always ours, Kie, don’t forget it.”

Silence fell over them again, smiles never fading. If they waited long enough, they’d see the stars turn to sunlight and the sky change to cotton candy pink, creeping over the edge of the ocean.

Kie didn’t want to wait that long.

She let her head fall back, her neck on its hinge, staring up above, lights winking down at her, telling her she should be asleep.

“Maybe we’ve been going too big.” She blew out a breath, let her eyes close. “Maybe we need to start from the beginning, throw a rager, get drunk. Like kids are supposed to. That kind of stupid.”

JJ hummed, nodding even though Kiara could see. Her hands were in the sand, fingertips buried in the grains. If he moved a little closer, their pinkies could touch.

“Sounds lame in comparison,” the boy teased lightly. “Where’s the fun if we don’t got no guns?”

Kie didn’t laugh but JJ watched her smile, head shaking, eyes opening so she could flick her gaze over to him, mirth dancing in them. She looked like she was unsure of what to say next, if she should say anything at all but then she sat up a little straighter, turning so her body was facing him.

“What about something stupid like—” Kiara picked at a broken shell, a barely there piece of pearl. “—like kissing someone you’re not supposed to.”

It was like the air had been sucked off of the island, like it had up and left, leaving them with only the sound of the sea. Whilst everyone else on Kildare slept, JJ felt like his heart had exploded. Surely the sonic boom could be heard across the beach, reaching Charleston and further, surely Kiara heard it too.

But the girl was just watching him, waiting, wary and quiet.

JJ felt like he’d swallowed his tongue, but still he moved, shifted in the sand until his knee knocked Kiara’s bare one and he felt the entire night swallow him whole. He didn’t know where to look, didn’t know how to act. ‘Causal’ wasn’t in JJ Maybank’s vocabulary. He stared at the shell in the girls hand, watched the pink and green oil slick shine glint in the moonlight.

“Like— like Gary at the restaurant? Or—?”

Kie wrinkled her nose at the mention of the older boy who worked for her parents. Twenty-something and harbouring a habit from cheap whisky and younger girls, he wasn’t Kiara’s favourite person.

“What?” Kie pulled a face. “Ew, no. No— like a friend.” She swallowed a little too harshly, her fingers suddenly clumsy and dropping her shell. “Someone who people would get mad about.”

A friend a friend a friend.

JJ felt his cheeks flush, a rosy warmth across his nose that he could only hope the darkness would hide. It felt like the middle of the day, a heatwave creeping in, a tropical storm with the name of a girl, making the air too hot, ready to sweep him up and rattle him from the inside out.

He licked his lips, tried to stay neutral, hoped his voice wouldn’t crack, prayed he didn’t act a fool. “Who’d get mad at you for something like that?”

When JJ finally looked up, waiting for the girl’s answer with a breath held in his chest, he realised Kiara was already looking at him. Her lashes lowered, gaze trained in his lips, watching the way his mouth parted ever so slightly when he sucked in a burning breath.

“Everyone,” Kie whispered.

The world would have fell into the ocean then, houses and cliffs crumbling, JJ wouldn’t have noticed. Not at all.

“Because it would be a mistake?” His voice cracked, too husky. He didn’t care, not one bit. “Or ‘cause you’d regret it…?”

Kie was still watching him, eyes flicking from his mouth as he spoke, to the slant of his cheek bones, the blue of his eyes. He felt so exposed under her gaze, laid bare, even in the middle of the night, sitting on the beach in the dark. JJ marvelled over the realisation that he didn’t really mind. He’d sit like this for days on end for Kiara, if it meant getting her attention in this way.

Kie shrugged, gave a sad sort of smile and found her broken shell again, tapping her nail against the side. “Not necessarily,” was all she said.

He could’ve kissed her then, JJ was almost sure of it. He could’ve leant in, tested the waters, watched to see if her eyes followed his mouth even when it moved to her own, if she’d let him put his hand on her knee, if she’d let him pull her in by the back of her neck like he was used to doing with the girls he met at parties.

But JJ didn’t have that kind of confidence, not then. Not with Kiara Carrera. He thought about what she’d said, about the people who’d be mad at her— at them. He wondered if Kie was even talking about him in the first place.

She couldn’t be. Of course not, right?

Right?

So JJ waited until the surf was dragged back out and Kie brushed the sand off her calves. He stood, tugged off his cap to drag a hand through his hair before shoving it back on, pulling the brim down to hide his eyes, the disappointment in them. Then, the boy held a hand out to the girl and he tried to keep his heart inside his chest when she took it.

Dragging Kie up from the sand, he smiled at her, just like he normally would. “Lemme walk you home,” was all he had to say.

-Bellamy (SW#1)

[badcaseofcasey]

Steddie Soulmate/Met as Kids AU - Part 5 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7

a/n: there should only be one more part (of Steve's pov, at least), so we're almost to the end! I promise they will actually interact in the next installment, lol. Thanks for sticking with me, hope you enjoy it!

Usually, it was pretty easy for Steve to get by without showing off his words. The only ones who really saw them these days were the few girls he actually ended up hooking up with, which Robin would tell you were pretty few and far between.

But he’d rather deal with the potential awkwardness of having Eddie see his words for the first time than try to swim to the bottom of Lover’s Lake with his sweatshirt dragging him down.

He tried to do it as quickly as possible, but he certainly didn’t miss the glance Eddie threw his way as he caught the yellow sweatshirt. Steve’s entire body had been buzzing with that once-familiar electricity since Eddie had thrown him up against the wall in the boathouse. It was easier to dive into the murky waters, even knowing what he might find down there, than stay on the boat and deal with the weight of Eddie’s eyes on him.

From that point on, there was very little time to think of anything but the plan. Looking back on it, he would blame ranting about six kids and a winnebago on the blood loss, coupled with being so close to his soulmate for the first time in years. Between that and being in the Upside Down, his brain felt like a ball of mush. Even when he and Eddie had actually spoken for the first time since they were kids, it just ended with Eddie encouraging him to go after Nancy and left Steve more confused than ever.

When it came time to split up, Steve couldn’t help but worry. The idea of Eddie or Dustin getting hurt was almost too much to think about. The plan kept them as far away from harm as physically possible, but even still, he felt a pit in his stomach. There was something in Eddie’s eyes as he got ready to leave that made him pause, but against his better judgment, he’d stuck to the plan.

He had told Eddie specifically - don’t be the hero. So why was he now sitting in a hospital room watching his soulmate breathe through a ventilator?

Eddie and Max had both been in the hospital when they went after Vecna for what was actually the last time. Steve made it through their last battle on pure adrenaline, really. Any time he’d stopped for more than a second, all he could see was Dustin clinging to Eddie’s lifeless body, reliving the few minutes where he thought he had lost his soulmate before he’d even gotten to have him.

Now that the gates were all closed and Vecna was gone (El had made absolutely sure this time), Steve allowed himself to slow down for the first time in weeks. He’d spent every day since then (after a quick shower and a night spent in his own bed, at Robin and Joyce’s insistence) at the hospital, either in Max’s room or Eddie’s.

It was hard to explain to the others why Steve was spending so much time at Eddie’s bedside. He could tell they were curious, but luckily, they held themselves back from actually asking. Other than Dustin, Steve was the one to have spent the most time in Eddie’s room. Eventually, Dustin had to start going back to school, despite the cracks in the ground all over Hawkins. So Steve was now the one to keep vigil at Eddie’s bedside, eating food from the hospital cafeteria or brought in by Joyce and showering in the attached bedroom (one of the perks of being a wanted fugitive with a shady government organization working on clearing your name was a private room).

Robin came to sit with Steve whenever she had the spare time. She was still working at Family Video, which had somehow miraculously survived the “earthquake,” so she could only come between shifts, and dates with Vickie.

One day, she finally got up the courage to ask, “Steve? …Why Eddie?”

Steve looked up from where he had been reading aloud from The Hobbit (one of Dustin’s conditions of going back to school was that Steve picked up where he left off). “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Max’s room is right down the hall,” Robin clarified. “I know she has her mom, El, and Lucas, but you could be down there, too. I didn’t even think you liked Eddie, and now you’re here all the time. I guess, I’m just wondering… why?”

“Honestly, Robs,” Steve sighed, putting the bookmark in and shutting the book. “I’m impressed you made it this long without asking.”

Robin nudged him lightly with her shoulder. “You should be proud. But you’re not getting out of answering the question.”

Steve paused, considering. “You know how I told you that I didn’t remember getting my words?”

Robin nodded. The night that Steve and Robin had ended up drugged in the Starcourt bathroom, Robin had confessed that she’d gotten her words earlier that year, from Vickie of all people. Steve had managed not to tell her his own story - but only barely.

“I lied,” Steve admitted. “I got them when I was eight. I was at the playground and this kid came up, wanting to fight dragons with me. We played together all afternoon and I had the most fun I can ever remember having, to be honest.”

Robin’s eyebrows had shot up as soon as Steve started talking. “What happened to the kid?”

“I never saw him again - or well, I didn’t for a while,” Steve said. “He was in town… visiting his uncle.”

Steve let his eyes slide over to Eddie’s face, dark hair fanned out against the white hospital pillowcase.

Robin gasped lightly. “Oh, Steve.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, feeling his throat tighten up. “I didn’t see him again until high school and by then, I’d already fallen in with the popular crowd and I was so scared at what it would mean for me to give that all up for - well, for someone I really hardly knew.”

Steve turned back to face Robin and saw her eyes were wet. Steve knew his were as well.

“I ignored him, Rob,” Steve confessed. “I knew he was my soulmate, but I decided that popularity and making people like me was more important. And now-“

“Hey,” Robin cut him off, wrapping her arm around Steve’s shoulders. “Now nothing. The doctors are saying he’s going to make it. Now, you get a second chance.”

Steve’s shoulders shook as he finally let himself cry for the first time since seeing Eddie bleeding in the Upside Down. All of the hurt and pain and guilt he’d felt at not being able to protect his soulmate came flowing out of him at once. Robin, for her part, just held him, even though Steve knew that people crying made her uncomfortable.

After a while, his sobs quieted and he was able to pull his face away from Robin’s shoulder. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should’ve, that night at Starcourt.”

“Hey, if you should be sorry for anything, it’s getting snot all over my favorite sweater, dingus.”

Steve laughed and rested his head on her shoulder, eyes back on Eddie.

“I almost lost him, Rob.”

“Well,” she said. “Make sure you don’t, this time around.”

Part 6

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