#[ !!!! hELLO ADRY KISSES YOUR CHEEKS

[althaiareads]

“Both with the flu,” David confirmed.

“Not suspicious at all,” Carl added.

In unison, the three men put their mugs to their lips, sipped the coffee, winced, and made noises of disgust.

Not the three of them being viejas chismosas. Me encanta.

At this point who doesn't want them together?

“It couldn’t be because you’re sick, right? Not Miss Queen of the City who’s been coughed on by every germ out there, making her tougher than the common cold, hmm? Couldn’t be because of that?”

Ay, muérete Eduardo Antonio. Dejeme a mi niña en paz.

Gorgeous. Love. Favorite.

Giggling and kicking my feet.

“Next time,” you said, cupping his upper arm, “just call me first.”

Okay, the relationship between Miss Mouse and Adrie is the most beautiful ever. She loves her so so much.

He sensed it more, and more. When you sprinted back and forth on the porch, blowing bubbles for her to pop before they landed on the ground; giggling, laughing. Giggling, laughing. And he was smiling, smiling. It was sweet, so sweet; this new loop he found himself in. Gone was the stress. You took care of it.

“Do orcs fight with a dagger? Maybe six and a half.. seven inches in length? Curved to the right? Real girthy handle?”

STRAIGHT TO THE POINT. What ever happened to hello? How are you?

Kidding. I love this.

‘my, my, that’s quite a size,’ or ‘I heard that orc’s been single a while; what’s his skill level with that weapon?’ or worse, ‘need a second opinion on that length?’

Okay, but I would have killed to see Eddie's reactions to any of these. She is absolutely iconic.

After all, you’d been enchanted by Eddie Munson since the first day he stomped past your desk with a fierce scowl aimed at the ground, and now? Now he couldn’t keep his eyes off of you.

Inhaling a mighty breath, you filled out your not-so-intimidating frame with imaginary muscle, and shot out your hand. “I’m Gary!” you exclaimed, rough and tough.

JASFAJDSGAJEFBJDSGSJGEFJDGHYJAEGSFUJSGDFUYHEGRSJDSHGFARHYFYUSGDHJGERUFGUYJASDH

I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING LMAO.

I LOVE HER.

Leaning over you, he anchored his balance to your hip, relaxing his hold on the arch of bone shaped like a strung bow, and dragged his other knuckles along your cheek. Three fingers worth.

ahsaghdsfa

I live for the intimacy, the soft touches.

“Giggly, touchy,” you supposed.

SO AM I JADHJSGFJASHGJFD. I get all lovey when I'm drunk. I will have the urge to make out with anyone in a 5-mile radius when I'm drunk, too.

Eddie raised your hand from his heart to his face. His thumb ensured your fingers stayed curled in, barring you from investing in a full, unadulterated touch. Wisps of his hair traced your skin. His exhale snaked down your flannel sleeve. Your inner wrist stopped at the slick junction of his lips, where he had swiped his tongue over out of nervous habit.

KISS KISS KISS. TELL ME THERE'S A KISS?????

“I always want to be your favorite,” you preened.

Okay, this is beautiful.

Eddie turned his groan into a ragged, “I fucking adore you.”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

MAMÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁÁ

Okay, I loved this chapter. Might be my favourite so far. I love them so so much.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 "𝐲𝐞𝐬" 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲.

singledad!mechanic!eddie x fem!reader

✶What was meant to be a quiet evening of DND gets out of hand before it even begins, and when the guys leave a bottle of whiskey behind, all those passes you and Eddie made at each other grow to a new level.✶

NSFW — slow burn, fluff, drunken yearning, drunken flirting, dirty jokes, sexual tension, failed phone sex, light angst, drug/alcohol mention/use, 18+ overall for eventual smut

obi-wan voice: this isn't the first kiss chapter you're looking for (it's in the next one)

chapter: 9/? [wc: 23.8k]

↳ part 01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09

AO3

Chapter 9: Dungeons & Dragons & Unicorns, oh my!

Occupying the narrow space available in Mr. Moore’s cramped office, Carl exchanged a look with Kevin over the edge of his coffee mug as he tipped it back, and coasted the bitter liquid across his tongue, swallowing with trouble. He winced at the potency. Kevin gave him an apologetic grimace.

“You made this too strong,” Carl whispered.

Kevin took a sip as well, and clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, admonishing his mistake of putting too many grounds in the machine. “She just makes it better.”

David hunched forward in his plush leather chair. Around him, filing cabinets were open, sticky notes reminders hung crooked on the drawers, and his desk was stacked with customer’s invoices.

Three days you’d been gone and the world had devolved into chaos.

“Yeah, gotcha,” David said into the phone crooked between his shoulder and ear, jotting down an unrelated note on the corner of an envelope. “You feel better soon, ya hear?” He threw an excessive eye roll onto the end of his sentence when the voice on the other end kept rattling off. “I told ya to stop worryin’ about it. Now, get some rest. Yeah. Bye.”

He hung up, and addressed his audience waiting on bated breath, “Ed’s callin’ in sick again.”

“Third day in a row,” Carl commented.

Kevin gestured at the state of the office with his mug. “Third day for her too.” David muttered an acknowledgement, missing his Office Administrator who had taken up the responsibility of organizing all the documents into their rightful place.

“Three days, huh? And both with the flu?” Kevin restated in a leading tone.

“Both with the flu,” David confirmed.

“Not suspicious at all,” Carl added.

In unison, the three men put their mugs to their lips, sipped the coffee, winced, and made noises of disgust.

But after all that, Kevin beamed at his friends. “Good for them,” he said. “Ed deserves someone like her.”

In unison, they agreed, and sipped, and made a pact to dump out their mugs in the sink.

————

You arrived to work with an unglamorous wad of tissue balled in your fist, and a raw nose. Lingering sniffles ailed you, as did the body lethargy, but you were no longer contagious. It sucked to exist in this head-cold sphere, but it was nice to leave the house after days spent in-and-out of a Nyquil daze.

And yes, you were eager to see Eddie again, despite the twist of dread in your stomach.

It’d been days since you left his place on a good note, but would the remnants of his tears be this weird unstated suspense in between breaths of conversation? Would there be an underlying presence of you know all the intimate details of my life in the otherwise cheerful morning greeting? Would things go back to normal as if nothing happened?

Regardless, the morning greeting would have to wait. There were a million things to do around the auto shop since you’d been absent; first of which was going into Mr. Moore’s office, and fighting the disarray to find his updated schedule detailing his upcoming meetings, lunches, and days he’d be out of town. You grabbed a marker and went to work on the calendar in the garage, transcribing the schedule for the guys to see so they could stop asking you if Mr. Moore was in his office or not (especially when his door was right there and they could check for themselves).

Crossing out the first week of January, you began to write down one of the meetings when the back door was thrown open, and an ominous death knell tolled in a jangle of chains and heavy boots, making a veritable effort to stomp as loudly as possible on their way to you.

The eagerness disappeared. Only tumultuous dread now.

Your delicate smile was replaced by a canvas of annoyance. “Why are you so loud?” you winced. And winced again when you heard your stuffed-up voice.

You didn’t have to look away from the note you were jotting down to see his impish grin. He practically forced you to see it when he folded his arms, and imposed his shoulder on the wall, making the calendar page slip under your marker in a long red streak.

He ducked his head to catch your eye. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? I’m walking as I always do; not a hop, skip, or bounce extra.” Eddie’s tight lips parted in your periphery, showing a gleam of teeth. Raising his voice a tick, he drove the dread deeper, “My girl isn’t flinching at every sound because she has a headache, right?”

Having no sense of self restraint, nor manners, Eddie invaded more of your personal space. His chest swelled with a held breath while his tongue prepared a taunt and his eyes squinched half-closed. “It couldn’t be because you’re sick, right? Not Miss Queen of the City who’s been coughed on by every germ out there, making her tougher than the common cold, hmm? Couldn’t be because of that?”

Capping the marker, you let your side-eye graduate to a full fledged incredulous stare at his much-too-giddy expression. “It’s allergies,” you said, crumpling the tissue into your pocket.

“Allergies, huh? Which ones?”

“The ones I’m allergic to.”

“Interesting, interesting,” he humored you, “very interesting since, y’know, the most common allergies people have around here are to grass and weed pollen, and those suckers are dead and buried under a layer of snow. Won’t be growing for quite some months, so..”

You glared at his need to follow up that observation with his lips pursed into a mocking kiss of arrogance, provoking you to fold while simultaneously flaunting the sharp cut of his cheekbones.

“Fine,” you admitted in a low tone. “I got sick.” Noting the heavy bags under his red-rimmed eyes, you quirked an eyebrow, and asked, “Have you been working overtime without me?”

He brightened. “Oh, no. Adrie got me sick too. This is my first day back.”

“Have I ever told you how so,” you paused for emphasis, and prodded the pen cap into his sternum, “so very irritating you are?” He cupped his hand over your wrist, and cradled your fist to his chest. Drawing you in, in, in. Cold seeping through your sleeve from his red fingers, never kicking his habit of smoking before coming inside, regardless of the weather. “Just the worst,” you admonished, finding it difficult to resist the magnetism of his laughter quaking under your palm, urging yourself to favor the adorable scrunch above his nose, and guide your thoughts away from his unzipped leather jacket.

But the draw was too strong. You swayed closer until your forearm was pressed to the dragon tattoo hidden beneath his coveralls, and your tennis shoe grazed past the tip of his metal-toed boot

He recalled, “That’s weird. I remember you saying I was your favorite.”

“I said you were my favorite date. As far as people go, you’re in my top three. Robin, Adrie, you,” you listed on the fingers trapped against his inhale.

He lifted his chin, regarding you down the slope of his magnificent nose. “You rank Adrie above me?”

“Well, think about it this way; you rank above all the other people I’ve met. And I’ve met a lot of people, you know.”

“That isn’t instilling a lot of confidence, babe.”

Sweetheart. Babe. My girl. His hand on your hand. His cold fingers cupping your palm, searing you despite their lack of heat; so different from how you came to know them, as hesitant pauses on his tools when you greeted him and he frowned as if to ask why you were speaking to him.

Was this it? Was this the new normal?

You hoped so.

Cheeks warmed by the multitude of pet names, you put an edge of dissatisfaction on your question to cover how his affections affected you, “Is that my job? To make you feel good about yourself?” Hotter, hotter. His intensity was burning you.

You wiggled the marker in your grasp until you could tap it at the second unfastened button on his coveralls. “I think you just keep me around so you have someone to call you handsome.”

“No way,” he said. He tilted his head to the side, resting it on the wall. His tangly mess of hair followed the movement, laying against his throat. “But.. Just for clarification, I am handsome, right?”

“Of course you’re handsome.”

“Aw, you flatter me, gorgeous,” he said in mock bashfulness, turning his face away while you stared at him in utter exasperation. “Love to hear it from my favorite.”

Gorgeous. Love. Favorite.

You didn’t question his favorite what. Person, place, or thing? Who knows. Words escaped you when the honey in his eyes twinkled with something tender, and his dopey smile softened at the edges, and his heart pounded a story against your touch, and his grin faded more, and his lips regained their pretty pink plumpness, and his voice reached deeper–to the place where your hand felt the creation of vibrations–and his tongue put a new spin on a sentiment as old as time.

“I missed you,” he said, features going lax as he dropped the overly flirtatious act. He let go of your fist to reach out and pinch your upper arm without an ounce of strength in his sweet teasing.

It took you an extra beat to withdraw your hand from his person.

You scoffed, “Uh-huh. I can tell by how you’re trying to butter me up, and annoy me to death at the same time.”

“Don’t tell me I’ve become the sunshine in our relationship now,” he snorted. And before he gave your stomach time to flutter at the word choice: relationship, he was stabbing his finger at the rumpled calendar.

He looked where he pointed, and dropped it down another Saturday. “I meant to ask you this before you left the other day, but we’re at a good spot in our DND campaign for a new person to join if you wanted to come. Sessions are a bitch to schedule now that we’re all adults and have lives, jobs, and responsibilities, and whatever, and I haven’t, uh, hosted one at my place in a while” –years– “so it’s kinda an extra special event, and would be cool if you wanted to come by.”

You wrung your mouth at the invitation.

“C’mon, I promise it’ll be fun.”

“I know it’s easy to assume I’m a giant loser like you, but even being a theater kid, I’ve never played DND,” you told him. “I don’t wanna ruin your game, or impose on your friends enjoying their night. Or, like, clash if we don’t get along, or somethin’.”

He cast his gaze wildly around the room. Extra dramatic. “You won’t ruin our game, and my friends will love you–they’re the rest of my band, and some kids who were in my club in high school. You’ll fit right in. And besides.. I want you to meet them.”

Delightful goosebumps tingled at your scalp. Meeting his friends was quite the step in your relationship. And no, mutual friends via Bobbie did not count.

You filled your lungs, and expelled your sigh at the calendar, reading over your penmanship while you thought it over.

“And maybe I didn’t phrase my question correctly. Let me try again.” He cleared his throat. “Will you play DND with us?”

Will you?

A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.

“Ah, taking that route,” you said. And just to mess with him, you tapped the marker on the tip of his nose. “Sure–yes–I’ll join you in your roleplaying game, but if they don’t like me, I told you so.”

“Why wouldn’t they like you?”

“I dunno, it took you weeks to speak to me.”

“Yeah, but I’m me.” Eddie shoved himself off the wall and began walking behind you, brushing his hand across your lower back, and bending to your ear to whisper a coy gloat, “And I play hard to get.”

All smiles, smiles, smiles. He took two bouncy steps backwards, opened the glass door in a wide swing and spun on his way inside, whipping his hair in a blur of brunette.

Bewildered by his dorky charm, you watched him through the windows, sighing out the air in your lungs to make room for the blossoming throbs of adoration when he caught his hip on the corner of your desk and tried walking off the pain in case you were watching, only for him to keel over right before he reached the hallway.

You shook your head and resumed where you were in Mr. Moore’s schedule. “You are absolutely not hard to get.”

Looking up, you found the day you were supposed to mark with an important phone meeting, and instead..

January 16th

DND

You drew stars around it, experiencing the childhood rush of endorphins that came from doodling hearts around your crush’s name in your yearbook, and giggling with your friends over it, betting you could get their number so you could call them over the summer, acutely aware none of you would ever dare.

————

Stress squeezed Eddie’s throat. Each cry, each sob, each sniffle set him on edge. His headache pounded, his chest clutched onto the calming breaths he was supposed to prioritize, his heart raced sweat to his skin. Everything was falling apart around him.

“Yeah–Yeah, no, it’s okay. Yeah.” He hung up the phone, chord swaying against the grimy wall, and he pressed his fists above his eyes, turning in a slow circle.

Whistling, screeching, wailing. The boiling kettle on the stovetop pierced the sound of Adrie’s hiccupy bawling. Growing louder, and louder. Rising above the blood pulsing in his ears, the twitch in his strained muscles. The anger under the surface, bubbling. A vice on his chest. Clenching his jaw. Gripping harder. Growing bigger, and bigger, and bigger, his emotions grew bigger until the frustration slipped.

Eddie snapped the stove knob to the off position, and jiggled the broken shitty plastic back on the dial. He moved the kettle to the back burner–sucking his bottom lip in and biting down hard, seeking the relief of pain to keep himself from slamming the kettle into the next dimension. And after swallowing the thickened saliva in his mouth, he walked away from what would’ve been his late, late oatmeal breakfast.

The trailer rattled less and less.

His heavy footsteps exhausted to his socks sliding across the vinyl.

“Adrie,” he begged her name again, and again as he knelt to her chair at the green table. He passed his hand over her hair, petting it away from the sticky streaks of tears on her red cheeks, and he cradled her head to his neck. The flash of anger was gone. It should’ve never seen the light of day, but he was human. He was a single person, and he tamed it the best he could. He was fragile, about to break at the next sob in his ear, but he tried. “Daddy’s gonna fix it, okay? I’ll make it better. I’ll make it better. Let Daddy make it better.”

He was stuck in the loop again. Where everything was so much, and he was so weak. Gathering her as if she were still small and could fit into the crook of his arm. “Let Daddy fix it,” he begged again, rocking her as he did all those years ago; for her, and for him, not having the capacity to do more than cry along with her.

Peeling himself away from her neediness, he worked his hoodie from her fists, and dialed his last resort.

It rang.

And rang.

Hopelessness burdened the expanse of shoulders, dropping them at the fourth trill. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, pick up.” The only thing helping calm him was his hand pressed over his eyes. One less stimulus.

Another ring. He was about to give up when–

“Hello?”

“Hey, man! Uh, uhm, what’re you up to?”

The casualness was lost when Steve’s pause elongated to a nasally noise of understanding when Adrie’s whine cut through the static, and Eddie’s cheek smashed to the receiver as he moved into the hallway, curling his frame to the phone like it were a lifeline.

Steve’s tone feathered to the same one he used five years ago when Eddie called frequently, “Is everything okay over there? Nancy and I were packing up the car to head out of town with the kids, but I have a minute. What’s up?”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s okay, uh–hey, you have Robin’s number, right? For her parent’s place?”

His mood lightened, “Yeah, I think Nance does in her pocketbook. Nance!” He called out for her. Then, he spoke into the receiver, as gently as possible, with grace for him to deny if he wanted, “You’re not trying to call Robin, are you?”

“No.. No, I’m not.”

There was a stint of silence where neither of them broke the wordless understanding woven into their connection; phone, chord, wires, friendship.

At last, Nancy’s footsteps came in clicks on their hardwood flooring, and Steve expressed a soft, “I’m happy for you, man.”

Eddie didn’t correct him that it was about his game night. He simply let his friend’s praise fill the void. It’d been a long time since someone was proud of him.

————

The modest house near the empty plot of land was unassuming. Not much money was invested into the foundation, nor the many repairs, but oddly, it was the furniture and fine dinnerware passed through generations that would have anyone second guessing why a home with a cracked window from two summers ago had a china cabinet. And really, any gust during a storm could shatter the glass pane covered by a delicately orange curtain, but it hadn’t happened yet, and therefore, there was no need to fix it.

In the living room, the TV was too loud. In the kitchen, you closed the fridge with your foot and took the tea kettle off the stove, balancing the makings of a sandwich in your arms.

Eddie said to come over half an hour before everyone else so he could help you create your character sheet, and with it being 4PM, you had three hours before you were supposed to head out, and were spending the afternoon with Robin’s parents while she went to Vickie’s before her late night shift.

You placed two slices of bread on a plate when the phone rang.

From the other room, Robin’s dad answered, and his dry vocal chords carried an air of confusion, “Someone’s calling for you!”

“If they’re asking for bail, I’m not here,” you replied in a monotone voice, getting a butter knife out of the drawer.

There was a shuffle as he sat forward in his chair and inquired, wholeheartedly, “Are you asking for bail?” He waited for a reply while you continued to unscrew the cap to the peanut butter. “He says he’s not!”

“Mm.” Unconvinced this wasn’t one of your friends calling from a police station, you finished pouring the two cups of tea you were intending to make, put sugar into one, and carried them into the living room.

“He sounds like a nice young man,” he assured, adjusting the nasal cannulas higher on his upper lip before taking the cup from you.

Narrowing your eyes with wisdom beyond your years, you informed him, “They always do,” and placed the other tea on the end table between the recliner and couch for Robin’s mom to take whenever she wasn’t piecing together the answer for Wheel of Fortune and whispering it into the TV remote clutched to her face.

You took the phone from him and held it to your ear. “Yellow?”

There was a horribly sad sound on the other end.

“Hey! Hi! I, uhm, hey, it’s Eddie, I’m sorry for calling you, if that’s weird, but I’m–I’m going through a lot here”, he ended in a humorless laugh. “I-I-Adrie–So, look–Adrie, it’s okay, I’m fixing it–Adrie was on a playdate, and I don’t know, I think she got into a fight with her friend or something, and broke the toy they were playing with because she didn’t want to share, so she had to come home early, and now she’s upset because the playdate’s over, and the other girl’s toy broke, and–I already said that–but Steve and Nancy are going out of town, and I can’t find a babysitter last minute that will take her to their place, and Wayne’s out playing poker with his friends, and God, I–” He shifted, and you could tell by the fading whimpers that he moved down the hallway, and by the clack on the phone, it was his fingernails dragging along it as he scrubbed his hand over his face, desperate for someone else to come up with a solution. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m asking of you, but there’s going to be a bunch of guys drinking tonight, and I don’t want Adrie to be around that shit–”

“Eddie?” You didn’t mean to cut him off, but his panic was overwhelming you, and it was easier to concentrate on the one idea your brain latched onto without his input.

“..This is my only night I get to hang out with everyone,” he admitted in a whisper so shy you struggled to hear it. “I’m worried about her distracting me.”

You stared at the linen closet in the hallway to Robin’s bedroom. “I’ve got an idea, okay? Just hold on. I’ll be there in thirty.. maybe forty minutes. That okay?”

More movement sounded from the other end. You thought it was him hanging up without saying goodbye, but then you heard the sweetest thing.

“Miss Mouse is coming over,” he reassured Adrie, and the relief in his voice affected you in the worst way. Making you go all mushy when little Adrie’s hiccupy confirmation came from the depths of her face pressed to the base of his neck.

“M—ouse?”

“Mhmm.”

His hum filled your chest. Her noise of appreciation erupted goosebumps along your forearms. You were wanted–requested–and the square beads digging into your wrist had never felt closer to his, across town.

You addressed Eddie, “I’ve got a plan. Okay? I’ll be over soon.”

“Thank you,” he spoke into the receiver as you hung up.

The phone suspended on the hook in a weighty click. It bounced as you let it go, coil slipping from the table and falling to the floor. You asked your audience of two, “Is it okay if I leave early?”

“Of course you can, dear,” Robin’s dad answered, hoarse from the constant flow of oxygen drying out his throat.

“And can I borrow some of Bobbie’s old bedsheets?”

Her mom made a confused face, but agreed, “Whatever you want, sweet bean.”

–And thus, you had the catalyst for the second time you arrived on Edward Munson’s doorstep with your arms loaded with goodies–

He threw open the door with a dozen apologies stacked behind his teeth. “Hey. I’m sorry for calling you like that, she–”

The she in question came barreling out from behind him.

You dropped your knees to accept Adrienne. Discarding your overstuffed tote bag to hug her wholly; taking her into your arms, and consoling her with all the right words you prepared on your way over. “Hey, I heard you were having a rough day,” you said while tucking her into you tight. “You don’t have to be sad anymore. I’m here.”

Her cheeks had long since dried, but the whiny pitch to her voice teetered on the cusp of a sniffly cry Eddie had only eliminated minutes ago, after his speech about sharing. She mumbled against your puffer jacket, “You came to play wi’h me?”

“I sure did. And you know what? I brought you a surprise.” You flicked your gaze to Eddie to gauge his reaction, and your breath hitched at the beauty of his relief. Standing tall in the doorway over you and his daughter, taking a moment of peace with his eyes closed, mouth in a gentle line, and relaxation easing the near-permanent creases between his brows. The pleasure of a small break from parental duties affected him so physically, you could behold him for hours. Or tell him to go have a cigarette.

However, impatient as any four-year-old, Adrie wriggled in your arms for your attention, and asked what you brought.

Opening the tote, you took out patterned bedsheet after bedsheet. Stars, flowers, cowboys–as many as you could fit, and held them up. “Do you know what we’re gonna make with these?”

“A fort?” she asked, hopeful and bouncing with energy.

“A fort!” you repeated. “We’re gonna build a blanket fort! And I brought movies for you to–”

She grabbed the sheets and took off for her bedroom.

“Okie dokie.” You pushed yourself up from the concrete steps, and fanned out the rented VHSes like a deck of cards to show Eddie instead. “Sorry it took me so long, I stopped by Family Video on my way here. Has she seen these?”

He read the white clamshell packaging, and the dimple on his left cheek developed. “She has,” and before you could react, he pressed on with a reassurance, “but don’t underestimate how many times a kid can watch the same movie and never grow bored of it.”

“Good to know!”

Like that; intuitive, second nature; Eddie knew when he gave you news that could be disappointing, he chased it with a thoughtful remark, validating your considerate gesture.

You slipped them back into the bag, and shouldered it. “I was thinking we could move the TV and VCR in her room, and build a fort around it with a pile of blankets on the floor for her to sleep on like she’s camping. Super cozy. Maybe some string lights if you have some from Christmas?”

“That..” The subtle arch in his eyebrows climbed higher as his eyes drifted closed in true appreciation. “That sounds like a perfect plan.” And his face went apologetic again. “And yeah, thank you for coming early. I was trying to send Adrie on a playdate so she’d come home tired and want to sleep while we’re playing, but, yeah, that went to shit, and then I tried calling her usual babysitters, but they couldn’t watch her at their places, and my uncle’s gone until the morning, and Steve and Nancy are–”

Interrupting him, you stepped into the doorway, and he moved to accommodate you. “Next time,” you said, cupping his upper arm, “just call me first.”

You squeezed and trailed your fingers down his sleeve as you let the moment mature in traces of your fingertips brushing over the thick poly-cotton of his sun-bleached black hoodie missing its drawstring. He prized the moment by memorizing the angel the universe blessed him with; and you were rooted by his gaze, driven to wonder about the ardency which he watched the minute press of your lips when you swallowed, and the coincidence of his own lips twitching into a jumpy smile.

“Let me show you Adrie’s room.”

His home was much the same as when you left it. There was a pillow and blanket tossed on the corner of the couch, a Little Mermaid plate and fork dripping in the dish rack, an assortment of clean clothes piled into a laundry basket on top of the washing machine. Though, Adrie’s toys were put away and the bathroom sink was scrubbed clean of children’s bubble gum flavored toothpaste.

Eddie pushed open the door at the end of the hall, and for the first time, with the tail end of daylight piercing the burgundy curtained window, you saw beyond a few feet to the bed.

You wished you could say the precious girl in the middle of the room caught your eye, but realistically, your attention was drawn to the walls. Specifically, the amount of pink and white Barbie advertisements cut from magazines and special edition My Little Pony fold out posters lining every square inch of available space.

But the girly stuff ended at the height of the dresser beside you.

The bedroom was divided in half, horizontally. Above the mirror decorated in stickers and photos tucked into the frame, the ponies and rainbows ended there, obliterated by a sharp line of black. A RATT flag, Corroded Coffin banner, and printed images of paladins fought the encroaching Carebears and sweet things. Every heavy metal poster in existence overlapped the final push to the ceiling. You took it all in with an air of baffled amusement.

You waved a finger at the top half. “She uh.. a big Judas Priest fan?”

Eddie was already cutting his eyes to you with a sly smile, Adam’s apple bouncing with a mute giggle. “This used to be my room.”

“I figured as much.”

Mixed amongst the posters were guitars hung where only he could reach them, and there was an amp shoved beneath a white desk where his daughter was currently setting up her stuffed animals, picking up one to show you, then second guessing and putting it down.

Eddie vied for you before she could. “Wanna see somethin’?” he asked, walking around the queen sized bed to the closet. Accurately, you guessed he was going to show you a clue to his past, and stepped over the dragging corner of the blue and white comforter, shimmying past him to stand next to the small bookshelf, excitedly watching him reach into the dark abyss. From the top shelf he pulled a lump of jean fabric, and unfolded it, handing it to you. “I used to wear this every day in my youth.”

You pinched the article of clothing between the very tips of your fingers, and turned your head to cough. “Jesus, dude. How much did you used to smoke?”

“Way more than I do now,” he laughed.

After some heavy side-eyeing about his habits, you took a closer look at the garment. The blue plaid lined jean jacket had ratty edges everywhere it could have ratty edges; helped by its sleeves being ripped off, of course. A collection of pins and patches mirrored the ones on his (used to be) bedroom walls–before a princess ruled his kingdom, and fought back the dragons.

“You used to wear this everyday?” you voiced aloud, finding the sentimental value in touching something so dear to him, for him to hang onto it for all these years.

“Should I wear it tonight?” Taking it from you, he flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt, and slipped his arms through the vest, turning around to show you the Dio patch on the back, pointing to it with his thumbs.

You golf clapped. “Very cool. Very tough.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Eddie faced you and tidied the stray waves of his hair flowing out from under the hood, raking his fingers through his bangs until they were perfectly messy, and again, it was one of those strange exchanges where your too honest gazes met, and he diverted his humble smile to the floor, shy and bashful, but not in pretend like before.

You were in his home, in his daughter’s bedroom, doing him a favor, which was feeling less and less like a favor, and more like a convenient excuse you both seized as an opportunity to hang out.

“Miss Mouse!” Adrie gunned for your hand, and embarked on her greatest effort to break you away from her father, tugging you towards her collection of plushes you still needed to be introduced to.

You gasped at the honor, and asked, “Do you want to tell me about them while I braid your hair?”

She lit up at the suggestion. Eddie wasn’t the best at weaving plaits, and she wasn’t the most patient, so having an unbiased party step in to determine whether it was a ‘him’ problem or a ‘her’ problem sounded grand.

And as you sank onto the edge of the mattress with her sitting criss-cross between your legs, it was obvious within the first few twists of the French braid sitting flat against her head, and curved perfectly over her ear, that it was most definitely a ‘him’ problem.

Behind you, there was a great sigh at your victory.

Adrie held up a brown teddy with one glass bead eye slightly larger than the other after surgery was performed on him to replace the one he lost, and said, “This is Mr. Bear.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Bear,” you said, using your best Children’s Television Program presenter voice to entertain her. You threw a smile over your shoulder at the silliness, and Eddie was already looking at you, warm brown eyes shining with the same fondness as yours.

“And he’s married to Mrs. Froggy.”

“Wow, a bear and a frog.” You nodded, impressed. “I guess true love knows no bounds.”

Feeling like the third wheel to you and Adrie, Eddie moved into action. “I’m gonna go out to the shed and start bringing in extra chairs, and the Christmas lights you asked for. And, uh, here’s her hair stuff.” He handed you a basket filled to the brim with every style of ponytail holder a drug store could carry. “You two have fun.”

Naturally, as he stepped away to leave, you curled your fingers at him in a childish wave, while Adrie used Mrs. Frog’s hand to do the same, adding on a sing-songy “Bye!” to hers.

And what a delight it was to witness the beginnings of the red flush creeping up his neck as he took a final glance at you both smiling up at him, and he pinched the hood over his mouth to shield his crooked simpering from further inspection.

~~~

The gloaming sky dozed in a blanket of pink and purple clouds knitted together with ribbons of orange.

Eddie leaned in the doorway to the porch, resting his shoulders on the frame as he crossed his ankles. The backs of his hands stung from overwashing them during the dry season, but his palms were soothed by the piping hot bowl he cupped to his chest. His muscles ached from unrest, but he grew warmer with each bite of the cinnamon sugar toast he dipped into the peanut butter oatmeal. Maybe he wouldn’t have taken the time to wipe down the folding chairs from the shed, but when you asked if there were any spiders on them in that timid wobble of yours, he had no other choice. And he’d do it again, even if his body protested the entire ordeal.

Squinting into the beauty of the setting sun, he sighed. Adrienne squealed. You cheered her on.

The pain in his hands subsided, the clawing hunger in his stomach settled, and the soreness in his lower back relented. All his worries fell away when his girl was happy.

For Eddie, standing by as the outsider to the scene of you and his daughter bonding over the neon green bottle of sloshy bubbles, he was aware of the catch in your voice when you asked about the unicorn and learned of his name, Fluff. You released a tender ‘aw’ from the back of your throat, and oh, it fulfilled him in ways he couldn’t possibly articulate. A simple noise, and it felt like a hug from an old friend. A pinky promise. A rare complacency in his life. Ataraxia.

He sensed it more, and more. When you sprinted back and forth on the porch, blowing bubbles for her to pop before they landed on the ground; giggling, laughing. Giggling, laughing. And he was smiling, smiling. It was sweet, so sweet; this new loop he found himself in. Gone was the stress. You took care of it. You heard him say Adrie needed to be tired out before bed time, and here you were, standing at the edge of the creaky floorboards, blowing a slew of bubbles for her to chase in the deadened grass.

She complained, “I can’t–reach!” She jumped, and jumped, but the bubble caught the gust from her fingertips, and continued floating away.

“Use Fluff!”

Elated at the ingenuity, she snatched Fluff from where he posed at your feet, and she launched herself off the deck for the last bubble, popping it with the very tip of his white horn. “Yay!”

“Rad!”

He watched until your forms were bathed in dusky blue, and the cold swallowed your heaving breaths.

Licking clean the last spoonful of his late, late breakfast, he reminded you both, “You girls better get started on this fort before it gets too late. Still gotta set up for the game too.” After whispering a curse under your breath, you ushered Adrie inside, and he asked her, “Can you take this to the sink?” Remarkably, she took his bowl without complaint, but stood stock still until he forced out a pointed, “Thank you,” in a tone implying she should scram.

She snickered at getting a rise out of him, and jogged away.

He reached into his pocket for the object weighing down the front of his hoodie, and produced a tangerine. Juice squished from the top of the fruit where he stabbed his thumb into the rind, and the scent of fresh citrus filled the air. “The chairs are certified spider-free. Got them inspected by a professional and everything.”

Your glare was mellowed by sweetness. “My hero.”

“Daddy.” Adrie was back, and with one simple demand of her hand held out flat, he peeled faster, and dislodged two segments for her. She popped them in her mouth, and ran to her room.

Interesting..

Testing him, you held your hand out flat as well, and with a bored stare, he placed two segments in your palm too.

“Don’t worry, I won’t call you Daddy unless you want me to,” you said, tossing them in the air, and catching them in your mouth. And as the fruit popped between your teeth, and the cold juice gushed like ice over your tongue, your brain caught up to what you just implied, and you froze mid-chew.

Eddie’s expression morphed from slack-jawed surprise, to intrigue, to his lips clamped tight, body shaking with silent laughter. “What?” he squeaked out.

“Uhh–I mean–How about we forget I said that?” you offered, wagging your finger from him to you.

No way.

No way in hell was he about to let you live that one down.

He loved your blunder. Reveled in it, even. It was sweet, sweet revenge. Payback.

Eddie took you off guard by snatching your wrist. He drew you into him as he pushed off the doorframe, bringing you in real close, eliminating the gap between your bodies. His cheeks may have darkened, but it was his greatest pleasure to imbue all his wickedness into repeating the same word you used months ago when he was driving you to Adrie’s school play and he made a similar joke about your bike and riding a man to work.

His nose scrunched with wolfish satisfaction. “Never.”

“Don’t be mean,” you whined. Putting up a weak fight, you attempted to twist your hand from his grasp to–hopefully–bolt away, and bury yourself in a pile of bedsheets for the rest of eternity; just somewhere you could hide, and desperately avoid thinking about the delicious zing traveling to the worst places.

But he wouldn’t let go.

There was clear disdain in the way his posture stiffened the split-second anyone other than his daughter called him Daddy, but you couldn’t deny how good it felt to introduce the context of calling him such a name, whether it would happen when you were under him, gasping it into his mouth; or in different position, with your knees on either side of his narrow hips, bouncing out the syllables..

His breathing deepened. You squirmed.

Caught in each other’s trap. Impossible to look away, the sweltering fantasy sat heavy in your mutual gaze, wide pupils boring into wide pupils. Heartbeats pounding beneath the surface of uncharted waters. An intimacy to his study of your body language, especially when you tilted your head to the side, and the lingering wryness in his eyes turned curious.

Illuminated by the glow of the bathroom light above the medicine cabinet, the face framing layers of Eddie’s haircut brushed his cheeks from beneath the hard shadows of his hood, and the fog from your exhales mixed in the inky darkness.

Alas, the standoff came to an abrupt end when Adrie called your name.

“I should help her with the fort,” you whispered in a release of tension.

One finger at a time, he opened his harmless grip. “I’m gonna bring your bike up here in case the weather turns,” he said, voice the same as always when he had you this near; quiet, tame, cutting in and out in the vowels.

“What a gentleman.”

Definitely a gentleman when he bit into the tangerine as if it were an apple to distract you from his hand tugging down his hoodie to hide the hard outline stretching towards the thigh of his light wash blue jeans.

You sneered at the fleshy strings of fruit pulp gathering over his lower lip. “And by gentleman, I mean utter weirdo.”

~~~

By winter’s solid nightfall, most of the fort had been completed. Eddie visited the room to drop off the TV (after it had been cleaned of staticy dust clinging to the glass), and placed it and the VCR on top of a Coca-Cola crate at the foot-end of the blanket nest you created. At one point he grabbed his acoustic guitar from the wall, and brought more clothes pins.

You pinned the last corner of the sheet canopy above Adrie while she pulled her tea party table inside the fort, and set up her toys in the itty bitty pink chairs. She volunteered to string the twinkly lights herself, giving you an excuse to go to the kitchen where you could make the highest quality finger sandwiches as dinner for her and her cotton-stuffed guests. And by total coincidence, Eddie was beside you, hunched over the counter with a DND book opened to a page of illustrations with a blank character sheet to his right.

“Ham, mayo, cheese, and the thinnest layer of mustard,” he told you.

You organized the ingredients to Adrie’s sandwich and confirmed, “A hint of mustard. Got it.” Taking two slices of sandwich bread, you placed them on her Beauty and the Beat plate, and dipped a butter knife into the mayo jar, slathering a generous amount on one side. One the other, you merely suggested mustard had been in the presence of it with a single swipe.

He angled the book to you. “Which race and class do you want to play as?”

Looking over the pictures, there were more to choose from than you initially assumed, but there was a clear winner towering above the rest. “That one. The big green guy.” Apparently he was called a half-orc, and he was stacked with muscle on top of muscle. “I wanna be huge and brawny like him, crushin’ my enemies with my giant biceps. Like, everyone’s scared of me, but I save kittens on the weekends. Fighter type, or whatever’s the term. Melee? I wanna beat people up with my bare fists.”

Eddie glanced you up and down. “Overcompensating for something?”

Deflating, your puffer jacket swished fabric-on-fabric as you dropped your arms. You pouted, but the tug at his heartstrings went ignored as he rolled a large dice, and picked up the pencil.

So be it. It was your turn to sum him up in one glance. How his shaggy outdated haircut gathered on his shoulders, curtaining his face as he underlined words on the character sheet, not even paying you attention. How his jean vest paraded his music tastes under years of dust and a decade of smoke baked into it; offensive and meant to ward off others, unless they belonged. How he decorated his skin in macabre imagery, and wore his white tennis shoes with just enough dirt to show he didn’t care. How every denim item he owned came with holes. How his keys dangled from a keyring attached to his belt loop, so everyone was forced to listen to him expressing his apathy towards the world with each stomp, and rattle of chains swinging against his leg. How he bent over the counter with his hip cocked out, making his pants crease to his inner thighs, highlighting a particular package beneath a handcuff belt buckle. How he was decked out in his usual skull themed rings. Prickly, jaded, drives too fast, and has never heard of an ‘inside voice’ once he deemed you worthy of his boisterous ramblings. Loud, obnoxious, excessively weird when he was himself around you.

You asked, “Are you overcompensating for something?”

“I don’t need to.”

Cool, smooth, nonchalant.

I don’t need to.

Warmth flooded your abdomen. Heat reached your cheeks. Blood rushed, descended to the place your thighs clenched, where your jean’s stiff metal zipper went tight–and if you stood a certain way–the seam grazed over.

Rolling the dice again, his expression remained impassive as he filled in more blank spots, asking you in a monotone voice, “What’s your orc’s name?”

“Gary,” you answered in a bout of exasperation, annoyed he’s acting like he didn’t just say that.

There was no way you were about to be the one squirming again. After his teasing earlier, he deserved a dose of his own medicine.

Feeling undue bravery, you set the butter knife down, and rested your elbow on the counter, angling your body towards him with your hands linked over your stomach, wearing an adorably smug pinch of confusion between your brows. You were the example of casual when you asked, “Do orcs fight with a dagger? Maybe six and a half.. seven inches in length? Curved to the right? Real girthy handle?”

Eddie’s face lurched into wide-eyed awe at your bombshell of an innuendo. He turned his head slowly, frizzy curls sticking to his just-licked lips, fluttering in front of his gawking smile as he exhaled a stunned huff. His big brown eyes were alert with the thrill of the subject, and he stared, waiting for you to fold. You didn’t blink, acting classes coming in handy as his eyebrows climbed higher and higher, and you remained stoic, free of emotion.

A choked out– “I..” –came from his mouth, but he didn’t finish. He hooked his finger around a lock of hair, and twisted it, yanking more over the lower half of his face as he shrank into the comfort of his hoodie, leaving just his eyes visible.

At last, he answered, voice wavering high and tight, “A little over seven, I think.”

You lifted your chin, and rolled your lips inward, steeling yourself from voicing anything other than an impressed hum.

However..

Having a knack for bad decisions, you drew in a breath to speak–but Adrie came to your rescue before you humiliated yourself by saying something abhorrent like, ‘my, my, that’s quite a size,’ or ‘I heard that orc’s been single a while; what’s his skill level with that weapon?’ or worse, ‘need a second opinion on that length?’

“Are you almost done?”Adrie asked.

She sought the answer by snaking her hands under your jacket and clinging onto the back of your hips, making you jolt at her cold fingers creeping over your skin, and you stumbled after she trusted you to support her weight while she jumped onto her tippy toes.

You lost your balance, and your hero from further harm was Eddie.

Well, less of a hero, and more like he stood with his arms pinned to his sides, and took the brunt of your fall.

He released a painful wheeze from being wedged into the corner where the sharp edges of the countertop dug into his bones.

“Sorry,” you think you whispered, but maybe it never left your lungs.

You watched the subtle tic under his eyes when he said, “S’okay,” and the ‘s’ whistled sharply between his teeth.

It was amazing–incredible–to discover he had freckles sprinkled across the top of his cheekbones, standing out against the telltale shade of embarrassment. You’d never been this close to notice them before; near enough your nose tickled from the end of his hair. Never had the opportunity to catch yourself on his bicep, and feel the extraordinary body heat radiating off him, dialed on high from the last few minutes. And now you had to continue living as if you didn���t know his dick size.

Adrie brought you back to reality. “Can you cut off the top crust? It’s shaped like a butt, and I don’t like it.”

Letting go of Eddie, you reached for her, patting her shoulder for her back up and release you from this awkward prison. “Y-Yeah, of course. No top crust. Got it, little lady.”

She giggled and kept talking as you put an ample gap between you and her dad. Thank God she giggled and kept talking as you and Eddie regained some semblance of composure.

“Can you cut it in long squares?”

“Rectangles,” Eddie corrected gently.

“Reck-tangles,” she pronounced.

“Perfect.” He grabbed his pencil and dice, and picked up where he left off on your character sheet. And you were more than happy to play along, peeling the Kraft Single from its plastic film and placing it on top of two slices of ham before cutting it into long squares.

~~~

With her sandwich made, you and Adrie sat at the tiny pink table under the fort. Your neck ached from the constant hunched position, and your legs were falling asleep, but you’d deal with the pain if it meant having tea with the princess.

She tipped air from an empty tea pot into the tea cups, and Mr. Bear thanked her for his imaginary portion.

Throughout the play-dinner, Eddie was in and out of the room. There were noises from the closet, sounding like he was picking up shoeboxes filled with rattling items. The canopy drooped when he opened the top drawer on the dresser where it was tied. Musical notes from a wind instrument trilled from the living room.

After another bite of her sandwich–Oh, no, Princess Adrienne, I’m much too full, you may have mine–a ne’erdowell crashed your exclusive party.

“Hey, this is pretty,” Eddie said, poking his head inside; his grin lengthening into a frightful shadow from the Christmas lights stuck in his hair. He looked around at the hard work his little girl put into the fort, linking the bedsheets from his old desk, across the back of a chair, and held aloft by the dresser. The TV occupied the space one of his amps used to, and the nest of blankets covered what used to be a network of cords, albums, and magazines. But that was years ago. Now, his gaze settled on the adult woman feigning a long sip on her toddler-sized tea cup, and a hand smashed against his face–

Adrie shoved him out of the fort, and whipped closed the entryway bedsheet. “No boys allowed!”

“But.. I need to borrow Miss Mouse,” he begged in a pitiful quaver.

She cut her eyes to you, and rolled them into the next eternity (a move you’d become an expert in yourself.) You bargained with her in a haughty shrug, and after a moment of consideration, she drew back the curtain. “Fine.”

Making an unglamorous exit by crawling on your hands and knees, you accepted Eddie’s warm palm to help you stand. “What’cha need help with?”

“The folding table is behind the couch, and it’s annoying to pull out by myself with all the mugs in the way,” he explained on his way to the living room. “Oh, can you move that stuff off it? Yeah, just toss it in a corner.”

He used his shin to push the coffee table against the wall while you picked up the pillow and stack of blankets off the corner of the couch. But after collecting them to your chest, and the thinning pillow released a puff of air from its wilted self, you were struck with an array of scents. Hair products, cigarette smoke, vanilla, sour sweat; notes of exhaust, motor oil, and fumes.

It smelled bad in the good way.

The mix stung your nostrils, twinged at your eyes. But it was a comfort you hugged tighter. Familiarity you inhaled deeper. Home in your lungs.

You took his pillow, and Adrie’s kaleidoscope quilt with the tattered facing, and went to place them on the fold-out bed in the corner, assuming it was his; but as you neared, you scrutinized the collection of items on the oak nightstand beside it. A brand of cigarettes he didn’t smoke, a BIC lighter he didn’t use, a comb, and a clunky silver watch. And as you thought about it more, you saw the fold-out bed already had a set of sheets and a pillow balanced on top of it.

“Eddie, where do you sleep?”

There was much care put into your question, but the uneasy way it probed into his private life was evident in his change in demeanor.

He was slow to stand up from adjusting a side table out of the way, never quite unslouching the weight from his shoulders when he pushed his hood back to run a hand over his hair. The cuckoo clock on the wall ticked by as you watched him scratch his fingernails in tight circles on his scalp, roughing up his hair, never quite focusing his gaze on anything.

“Well,” he mumbled, gesturing at the lumpy couch cushions. “Here.”

Despite figuring as much, he never stated it bluntly, and to know another hardship of his reality squeezed your heart with sympathy.

He must’ve read the emotion on your face as pity, because his tone reflected an edge of annoyance; a deep-seated stress sneaking out when he spoke to those who didn’t get it. “Most of my paycheck goes to Adrie’s daycare. That shits expensive, and as much as I don’t want her growing up right in front of me, things will get better when she finally starts real school. I won’t be paying for that anymore, and I can start saving up, and maybe, y’know, start making some changes around here.” He spoke with his hands in a sad sort of shrug, waving at the trailer, though his gaze was cast down, and away from you. “But this is how it is, okay? I can’t do anything to fix it.” There was a haunting sort of pessimism that came from living in poverty. As much as he made statements about changing his life when he had more money, there was still the pile of bills in the kitchen, the numerous things in need of fixing around the house, Wayne’s truck on its last leg, and the fear of a random doctor visit wiping out his bank account. All of that resided in his tone.

You gripped his pillow harder, not sure what to say other than a hushed, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

At that, he shook himself out of ruminating on his situation, and saw you were awkwardly twisting the pillowcase around your fingers, staring at the floor. He realized he messed up.

Every bit of him went soft for you. “Wait, wait, wait,” he soothed, striding three steps to you and cupping his palms around your upper arms. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. Not to you. Not when you’ve been the sweetest–seriously, the sweetest, and most generous person to me and Adrie. It–It, yeah, it hits a sore spot, talking about shit like having to sleep on the couch, but I didn’t mean to speak to you that way.” He finished with a final, sweet, but quick, and enunciated assurance, “I’m sorry.”

Overwhelmed by the whiplash in his change of attitude, followed by his sincere apology, you stammered, “Oh, uh, it’s okay. I understand why you reacted the way you did. It’s cool.”

At an impasse, you looked up at him. He stroked his thumbs over the cool outer layer of your jacket. Swish, swish, swish.

More, deeper. Swish, swish, swish.

You understood.

This was our first fight as whatever-we-are, and I’m showing you I can apologize instead of brushing it off and forgetting about it like I used to.

It was the mildest spat, yet it was a milestone for him.

“Seriously, we’re good,” you said, crushing the pillow to your chest.

Shifting the subject, he lightened the mood. “Also, did I mention how much I appreciate you coming over early, and playing with Adrie? The whole fort thing, going out of your way to get her movies, ‘nd making her run around like a maniac? Genius.”

“Yeah, yeah, put it on that ‘thank you’ tab you owe me,” you teased him, pulling away to set his bedding on top of his uncle’s.

“Soon!” he promised. He tapped at the side of his head. “Got some ideas brewing in here.”

“Not sure if I should be excited, or scared.”

Ah, his two-front-teeth-showing grin. Your favorite.

He laughed, and with your help, the couch was scooted away from the wall enough for the wood laminate fold-out table to be wiggled out from behind it at an angle which avoided knocking the mugs hanging from the shelf above it. You draped a tablecloth over it in a flourish. Eddie pressed the wrinkles out of the grid pattern, and began placing miniature standees from the shoeboxes onto the squares; parts of a village, cobblestone fences, and characters to fill out the town. When he didn’t need you anymore, you went to check on Adrie, and the moment you crawled inside the fort and she showed you the pajamas Eddie picked out for her earlier, there was a series of car honks outside.

Showtime.

“You ready, Miss Adrie?”

“Mhm!”

Tires crunched rocks in the makeshift driveway. Engines died. Noises, greetings, Eddie’s happiness grew louder, and louder. A group sounded off. Several sets of shoes scraped the cement steps, and in the amalgamation of voices was one above the rest, “Hey, looking good, man. Haven’t seen you since you almost killed my elven ranger before Christmas.”

You crawled backwards out of the fort, and caught Adrie’s hand before she ran out of the room.

From the living room, Eddie sucked his teeth, and dismissed his friend. “You had it coming all night with the way you were walking around not checking for traps.”

“It was one time! And besides–” The argument stopped. His blue eyes went wide with shock, outstretched arms drooping as he focused on something behind Eddie. He lowered the two six packs he was carrying. “A girl!”

Being led by an excited almost-five-year-old, you bolted around the kitchen counter, and raised your eyebrows at the blunt acknowledgement of your existence. You looked at Eddie, whose entire being depleted with a sigh.

With his head hung, he swept his arm towards you. “This is my friend from work. She’s playing with us tonight.” And under his breath, he muttered to the young man wearing a ballcap over his springy curls, “Be cool.”

He shoved a six pack at Eddie’s chest, and pursued you with his hand held out. “I’m Dustin! Eddie’s friend from high school, and previous Hellfire member,” he said, displaying a mouthful of adult braces.

“Dustin, it’s nice to meet you!”

Repeating people’s names back to them was a helpful memorization tool, but as your gaze shifted, the nerves of making a good first impression on Eddie’s friends sat heavy in your stomach.

The other guys on the stairs came up behind Dustin. In a rush, you were introducing yourself to the beginnings of a crowd stomping through the living room. Exchanging names and smiles and handshakes, you gripped Adrie’s tiny hand for support and said, “I’m the receptionist at the auto shop, that’s how I know Eddie.”

The one who approached you last–Gareth, drummer for Corroded Coffin–snapped his fingers, and exclaimed, “Oh! You’re the receptionist.”

“Alright, alright,” Eddie interjected, body and voice between you two. “Beer goes in the kitchen, and I’ll order pizza in a minute.”

He passed off the six pack to someone else.

Gareth reached into his leather jacket with a wicked, lopsided grin. “I brought something a little stronger than beer.” Though most of your vision was taken up by the back of Eddie’s shoulder, you caught a flash of amber liquid in a clear bottle, and a black label.

Kneeling beside you, Jeff–guitarist for Corroded Coffin–tilted his head down so Adrie could touch the wooden beads at the end of his short braids, and said to Eddie, “You know, since we’re havin’ it at your place again, why not make it memorable? Or not memorable,” he joked. “Maybe a sip for every roll under 13.”

Eddie gave him the Dad stare. “You’re gonna be shitfaced–Adrie, you didn’t hear that–by the time this is over, and I’m not organizing rides for all of you.”

“I’m driving tonight.” Lloyd–bassist for Corroded Coffin–jangled his car keys.

“And so am I,” a girl’s voice came from beyond the entryway everyone was crowding. “Now can we come inside before we freeze to death, or do you really think you can take on another basilisk without my help?”

A round of laughter gave way to the next group entering.

SWISH, SWISH, SWISH.

The girl at the helm of the windbreaker brigade went to the kitchen to drop off the case of beer straining her arms. (It seemed that was the payment of choice to the host.)

Sensing you were lost to the sea of faces, Eddie laid a comforting hand between your shoulder blades, and drifted it downwards to the small of your back. “That’s Erica, Max, and Lucas,” he told you in your ear.

Max held on tight to Lucas’ arm, taking smaller steps into the mixture of orange and blue-white lamps flooding the room tight with bodies, and shapes she was unfamiliar with.

“Aw, don’t you two look cute,” Gareth goaded them in an overly saccharine way.

Max groaned, “I told him it was lame.”

Whereas she shrank into her black and neon pink jacket, Lucas scoffed, and fueled her disgusted tongue click. “Matching windbreakers should be the least of your worries. You’re playing Dungeons and Dragons. You can’t get any lamer than that.” To finish, he popped the collar of his in a suave swish, and guided her into the kitchen.

She made a gagging sound, and Erica made one too.

————

While waiting for the last guest to arrive, the front door remained open. The glow from inside etched the peeling paint on the stair’s ornate handrail in gold. Warm laughter rolled out like fog into the dry frigid night, where neighbors could hear it. See it. Feel the vibrations of Eddie Munson’s friendship, support, weirdness being celebrated. Witness the joy others could not steal from him. They could observe the vehicles parked out front, listen to the rapture of claps when Adrie performed a song and dance, and taste the bitterness in their mouths when Eddie “The Freak” Munson continuously found his gaze drifting to the girl beside him, who beamed at him openly.

————

Fashionably late, a loud car turned into the trailer park; the obnoxious kind, where the motor rumbled like a death rattle, but in a cool way, because it was made to sound like that on purpose.

Eddie looked over his shoulder, and raised his hand at Mike. “Hey, man,” he whispered, keeping their conversation separate while everyone else was exchanging stories.

“Did you wanna check out the engine?” Mike bounced his eyebrows, swinging the keys to his bright yellow muscle car. “I installed it a few weeks ago.”

It was a tempting offer. He wasn’t opposed to car talk, nor freezing his hands off to fawn over the modifications Mike made to his beloved 1979 Mustang while in the big city for school, and, of course, Eddie was going to give him his usual spiel about working for David when he came back to Hawkins. However, he didn’t want to abandon the newest member to their party.

“In a min,” Eddie said to Mike, motioning with his head to come inside.

Assuming he’d just tossed his girl to the wolves, Eddie zoned into the conversation again, and rubbed his hand along your back. His palm passed over the warm spot on your jacket where he was comforting you before, and he glanced around the circle of his friends–tightly knit, and grinning at you.

He assumed wrong.

You weren’t shy, or intimidated to be the new person in a group of people who’d known each other for decades, failing to be heard over their easy banter and inside jokes. No. They were hanging onto your every word.

The group had gone hushed, captivated by your life. You had a knack for turning the mundane into marvelous enthrallments of relatable spectacular. Every sentence was more entertaining than the last. The punch lines landed, and kept coming. You worked them like a crowd–and when someone else shared a similar anecdote, you were asking questions, getting them to open up, and take the stage. This was you. You were in your element. You didn’t need Eddie.

“Oh! That reminds me of this one lady when I was waitressing in Philly..”

“In New York we had these huge pigeons that would..”

“Back home, there was this place on the corner where..”

Eddie took his hand away. The insulated warmth dissipated from his palm as he let it hang at his side. Your rolodex of stories separated you from him.

“Dude, you wanna talk about bad dates? This one time..”

“And then there was this guy who..”

“–Worst kiss ever.”

Details were spared–maybe because both he and Adrie were there–but the story beats were like stabs to his stomach. Clenched, sinking hot with envy. It wasn’t like him. Not really. He didn’t think so, anyway. But maybe he was wrong.

Jealousy prickled under his skin at every mention of ‘home’ and ‘date.’ He didn’t appreciate the heat to his cheeks, nor the loneliness of his hand reaching out for Adrie, only for her to notice him with a sleepy blink while she clung to your hips, and it was your fingers rubbing her little shoulder.

Of course he knew the subject of your stories, of course he knew you’d been on hundreds of dates, of course he knew you lived a larger life than him, but he’d never had to listen to the yearn in your voice when you spoke about the things you missed. The city, the people, being on stage. Performing, collecting stories, having dinners at sit-down restaurants. These were eccentricities integral to your design, and Eddie Munson had no place among them.

“Hey, Wheeler?” The lump in Eddie’s throat grew. Even Mike was transfixed on listening to you, forgetting about the keys in his hand. Leaning closer, he tapped on his friend’s teal raincoat to get his attention. “Mike? You wanted to show me your–?”

“Right!” Mike whipped his head around, sending his shaggy haircut bouncing in freshly styled waves. “Yeah, so I started with..” he trailed off, walking down the stairs, and out to the yard.

Before Eddie followed, he surveyed the group; Gareth was snickering his way through a story, while the rest of you went nauseous at his description of getting eighteen stitches, and replicating the sound of the needle popping through his skin.

“Babe?” he whispered under the group’s grossed out gasps, speaking the endearment for you only. Taking control, in a way, of his shame by reminding himself he could call you by a sweet nickname, and you’d answer.

You divided your attention, tipping your ear to him, and tearing your gaze from Gareth’s bizarre reenactment of how he fractured his tibia, and settling your eyes on Eddie’s Cupid’s bow when he made a request, “I’m gonna talk shop with Mike. Can you take over here? Get people settled, and Adrie in bed?”

“Of course, handsome.”

For couples, this is where he would duck to give you a kiss on the forehead, or bring you to his side for a hug and be on his way, and perhaps you gleaned those tentative actions when he hesitated on the lean-in, and sat in the subsequent awkwardness of playing it off as a friendly pat on your back when he realized, yeah, he’d never hugged you before.

You diffused the tension by laughing at him. Great.

As he rolled his eyes, you stopped him from leaving, and stepped away from the group.

“Where should we put our jackets?” you asked, pinching the zipper of yours.

Eddie paused in the middle of his gangly stride, and glanced at the two available hooks beside his leather jacket. It hadn’t started snowing or sleeting yet, so everyone’s coats would be dry. “Couch is fine.”

You said, “Cool,” and plunged your hand. In the blink of an eye, you had unzipped your jacket, and thrown your arms back, wiggling it down your shoulders and tugging it off by the cuffs. Underneath your jacket was a tight white tank top and unbuttoned flannel. A nice, fitted, ribbed shirt. Lower cut than anything you had worn at the auto shop, and clinging to your chest as you arched your back and shimmied out of your outer layer.

His gaze stalled.

You didn’t comment on it. He didn’t say anything, either, when his focus snapped to your face, and he read your sly smirk. Adrie, however, grew restless.

“I’m sleepy,” she whined.

“Okay, sweet bean,” you said, besotted by how little her hand was in yours. “C’mon, we can pick out the first movie to play in the fort, too.”

Eddie, thankful to have a distraction, and even more thankful you didn’t call out his obvious ogling, sank to his knees to give his little girl a goodnight hug and kiss. Part of him missed not being able to sit on the couch with her falling asleep on his chest, but the twelve peppered kisses to her cheek would have to suffice. He trusted you to take over the last few steps of Adrie’s night routine without his supervision, and sat back on his calves–after doting over her one last time by straightening out the long sleeves on her pajamas, and twirling the end of her braid around his finger.

“Night,” he kissed against her forehead.

“Night, Daddy,” she kissed back.

Kneeling on the carpet for a moment longer, he ran his tongue along the sharp edge of his teeth at watching you walk away with her. He was hidden amongst the throng of legs, and deep conversation. Invisible for now.

Drop, by drop, his chest filled with tender emotions. A coffee pot of feelings he swore to suppress poured into his heart; brimming the edge, overflowing, bringing heat to those neglected hopes, longings, and desires. Minutes ago you spoke of home, and he was aware he was not owed the promise of you changing the location of home to within biking distance, but he could hope, because every second you spent with him and his daughter was another coin in the wishing well, sploshing the coffee over.

Soon, the overflow would trickle to his lungs. It would fill them up. It would reach his throat. It would coat his tongue, wet his mouth, and before he knew it, those confessions would be spilling into words for you to cup to your mouth and drink until you were as full as he was.

Or, he could suppress them tonight with alcohol. Just enough to dull the urge, but still act as Dungeon Master.

Or, the whiskey could loosen his tongue, and risky sentiments could flood over, one steady drop at a time.

Either way, he was drowning.

~~~

Diving into the true purpose of the evening, the party split between the kitchen and the table in the living room. Jeff went out to Lloyd’s truck, and brought in a long black case. Snapping the latches open, he took out an electric keyboard, and began setting it up in his lap while Gareth rapped his drumsticks on his thighs in a slow rhythm. In the bedroom, you fluffed up the blankets for Adrie to lay on, tucked the comforter to her chin, and brushed her bangs off her forehead while the blue flash of the Disney castle logo played across her heavy eyelids. Idling around the variety of beers on the kitchen counter, Max gripped one of the silver and red cans, and spun it around its plastic ring holder, straining to discern the label.

You came up behind her to let her know, “That one’s Bud Light.”

“Ew,” she frowned, “who would bring that?” She opted for the can of Pabst instead.

“Some people have no tastes.”

On cue, Dustin wove his way through Lucas’ and Erica’s argument over which Mortal Kombat character was the best, adding a quick, “Liu Kang, obviously,” and snapped a silver can from the ring pack. He looked from you to Max. “What?”

Shifting from the secret giggles rising in your chests, she shrugged. “Nothing!”

He squinted at her, not buying it. Cracking the tab, he took a sip, and then you became the subject of interest. “So,” he started, “how long have you and Eddie been friends?”

Perplexion drew Max’s eyebrows together.

Aware of where this was going, you got your own beer, and carried an airy, casual tone while popping the cap, “Oh, just a few months, since I moved here with my roommate–Robin, if you know her.” His expression answered for you, arching in an ‘ah!’ of understanding.

Max, though, was stuck on another detail. “Wait, you and Eddie aren’t dating? I thought–I figured since he’s never invited anyone here before, and his daughter was, like, holding onto you?”

“Yeah, Adrie’s pretty fond of me, I think,” you answered, hiding your own secret behind the glass bottle to your lips. “And Eddie’s cool, too, I guess.”

“Well, I don’t know about him being cool, per se–” she was cut off.

Blurs of black and teal tumbled in rivers of frosted breath, and clattering teeth. Mike shivered life into his limbs on his way to the sink to run his hands under hot water. Eddie’s cheeks and nose were tinted frosty red as he wiped the dirt from his numb fingers onto his hoodie, and pulled his wallet from the junk drawer to check it for cash.

His brown eyes zeroed on you first, Dustin’s wiry mug second, and Max’s tilted lips third.

As he picked up the phone to dial for pizza delivery with his grease-scraped knuckle, he warned in a playful inflection, “You better not be telling her embarrassing stories about me.”

“Oh, no!” Max promised him. “I didn’t even tell her about how I used to live across from you, and caught you–on numerous occasions–sweeping the porch while blasting ABBA, and screaming the lyrics at the top of your lungs. While drunk.” She didn’t need to see him from across the kitchen to feel the heat of his glare, and duel it with another cool shrug, defeating him with ease when the pizza place picked up, and he had to stumble over his order.

Once the hurdle of dinner was out of the way, the drinks of choice sweated under the cozy temperature of ten bodies packed like sardines at the table, and with Eddie at the helm of it all, the game commenced.

He set forth a toast. Affection swelled in his even gaze sweeping over his friends who had come to join him in his home, acknowledging the growth behind his ordinary request. He couldn’t speak it without a nervous tremble, no, but they understood. They understood. With pride, his eyelashes twinkled at the outer corners where mirth gathered, and his broad grin creased a slew of Crow’s feet into cascading to his smile lines with his dimple nestled between them. His silent gratitude thanked the room, and when he reached Jeff at his right hand side, Eddie flicked his eyes to the opposite end of the table, and brought the whiskey to his lips.

The room refracted beautifully in the carved edges of the smokey gray tumbler. It was silly, almost, how the squat glass vanished behind his large palm and thick fingers. Sillier, even, when you noticed these things and your heart pumped a little faster.

Sat at the far end across from him, you raised your beer, and sipped.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages,” he spoke in increasing speed and passion, descending into a lower octave as he stood and loomed over his dividers of books, binders, and folders acting as a shield to his Dungeon Master antics, “I present to you, the port town of Irrilis!”

He bowed, and swept his arms over the miniature display.

Sitting back, he guided everyone into the scene. Between describing the smell of the briny sea, the itch of stale sweat mixed with dried blood on their bodies, and the creak of wooden planks under their feet, he expertly wove lore into details of the town, comparing the afternoon sun on the backs of their necks to the stares they were getting. The townsfolk were not expecting newcomers this evening, apparently; and to finish the introduction, he cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed the caw of seagulls perched atop a gnarled bulletin board. When it became clear the fishermen were not interested in speaking to Lloyd’s tiefling, he asked if there was a guard nearby instead. Instantly, Eddie became one. He donned a constant salute, and rigid posture with a nasty curl on his lip, speaking in stunted sentences with a broadened chest.

Watching him perform was mesmerizing.

Your vision narrowed as if you were going lightheaded, highlighting Eddie at the center with sharpened colors. His broad movements coaxed you in, his ability to switch both his pitch and accent raced in your ears, his creature cadence hummed nostalgia along the back of your mind like an old memory of observing another actor on stage mastering their craft. Time forgot to start. He stole a glance in your direction and you were washed in humility. He was gauging your reaction to his geekiness, and whatever he saw, whatever was written in your expression, rewarded his vulnerability. Confidence set his face aglow; power in the way he beheld you. And you praised him by sitting forward, affixing him with all your adoration, considering yourself fortunate to be in his presence.

After all, you’d been enchanted by Eddie Munson since the first day he stomped past your desk with a fierce scowl aimed at the ground, and now? Now he couldn’t keep his eyes off of you.

~~~

As with most DND adventures, the fun began at a tavern.

The group had spent too much time with Eddie as their DM, they knew the bulletin board was a red herring, so they explored the city until they found the seediest bar tucked into the end of an alleyway.

You were reading over the details Eddie wrote for you on your character sheet when you were snatched to the present by an array of sounds.

Eddie strummed down on his acoustic guitar, and silenced the vibration with his palm. He then plucked a slow, seeking, progression, circling back until Jeff harmonized on his keyboard, and they nodded their heads in sync while Gareth found the tavern’s beat with the ends of his drumsticks on the edge of the table. Lloyd angled his chair to put his guitar in his lap, and chased the melody quietly under Eddie’s, at a slower tempo.

To be captivated by someone, wholly immersed in their quirks and nature, is to cherish them, and as you played audience to your friend’s natural charisma and ability to impress you in new ways after months of knowing him, your chest panged with the ache to cherish him completely.

You were one beer deep on an empty stomach, and you were already intoxicated by him.

Their song continued as he laid out the exposition of the tavern, and as a party, everyone sat at the bar, or snuck around invisible to glean information. And that’s where you came in–

Jeff changed his tune to have a mysterious dissonance.

Erica’s rogue sidled in beside you at a table, and smoothly asked you a variety of questions: how long you’d been in town, if you knew of the disappearances, or had any encounters with the rumor of the undead lurking outside the kingdom.

You… You looked at your orc’s low intelligence on the paper, and seeing as how you were an improv artist, you roleplayed.

Inhaling a mighty breath, you filled out your not-so-intimidating frame with imaginary muscle, and shot out your hand. “I’m Gary!” you exclaimed, rough and tough.

The guitars stopped on a screech.

Pause.

Eddie covered his mouth. His eyebrows peaked sentimentally. And once his shoulders shook, and his snort squeaked out like a dying sprinkler, everyone laughed. In your periphery, they each reacted differently–all having their unique outbursts at your blunt introduction. Erica, too, giggled as she shook your hand. They were laughing with you. Definitely with you when Jeff chose a sillier ditty to play, and the guys matched him, upbeat and excited for you to wholeheartedly participate in their game.

Soon, your orc joined their party, and a series of clues earned from armwrestling other bar patrons led you down several paths to take, and after finding a lost tome near an underground jail cell (thanks to Dustin’s constant perception checks), your group was led outside, past Irrilis’ stone walls, and to their dying crops.

Mike scooped a collection of dice into his hand after, somehow, engaging in combat with a scarecrow, and began shaking them.

There was a bang at the door.

Mike jumped, uncupping his palms mid-shake, and the dice went flying. He caught three–snatched them right out of the air–and before they ricocheted off his fingers to add to the clatter on the table, he began to juggle them. One, two, three, four perfect rotations, and he set them down.

Eddie hadn’t yet stood up from his chair when his gaze wandered to yours, and he cut you a cheeky, significant grin. You shot him an exaggerated sneer in return. Stupid juggling.

He managed to not trip over the scattered mix of boots and tennis shoes mingling around the entrance, and balanced the exchange of cash for a stack of white cardboard boxes his eyes and handsome nose peeked over on his way to sliding them onto the kitchen counter.

“Orders up, boys.”

As grease soaked into paper plates, and another round of drinks were poured by Gareth’s heavy hand, you were all ushered into the next leg of the game.

Jeff played low notes as background mood music for your party when you came upon your next encounter: ghouls. They were low level, easy to defeat even if there were many, but it was an opportunity for Erica to teach you the different dice. Max leaned over, and helped you keep track of your abilities, and if you could execute them from where you stood on the grid.

When it was Max’s turn to roll for attack and damage in the rotation, she did so in a shallow wooden tray between her and Lucas. The dice tumbled around, pinged the sides, and came to a stop where Lucas could read the numbers, and do the math.

Least to say, she decimated her target.

Erica’s rogue on the other hand rolled a number Eddie was ambivalent towards.

“Convince me you can sneak up on him,” he proposed, squinting over his steepled fingers, and leaning back in his chair. They seemed to butt heads a lot, if her eye roll was anything to go off of.

She stood up from the table, and snapped her fingers at Mike to act as her overly large zombie. “C’mon.”

He groaned, “Not again,” but did as he was told, standing not unlike a limp noodle with a flat stare into the distance as she listed off her character’s skills for Eddie, and hooked her arm around Mike’s throat, bending him backwards over her pencil (pretend knife) to his back. She even shuffled him to where Eddie could acknowledge the poison on the tip of her blade would enter his kidney. He argued the undead did not have functioning kidneys, but conceded her efforts.

It was your turn next, but as you were mulling over the ghouls on the grid in front of your figurine, the rest of the table went silent.

The bedroom door creaked open, and soft footsteps padded out onto the kitchen vinyl. Eddie jerked his head up from behind the dividers. Gareth scooted his chair in, assuming Adrie was going to squeeze by on her way to her dad, but there was no need..

She wedged herself between you and Max, and splayed her arms across your lap. With her cheek to your thigh, she sighed, pitifully, “The movie stopped, and my head hurts.”

“Oh, no,” you consoled her in your silly Children’s Television Program presenter voice. “Is it the braids? They can be so un-com-for-table to sleep in.” Perhaps you instilled too much confidence in the pizza to soak up the alcohol, because you were now two beers and a few sips of whiskey deep into the ‘overly affectionate’ stage of your tipsiness. You collected the sleepy girl to your lap, and enveloped her in a bone crushing hug, rocking yourselves back and forth, fawning each other in a happy hum, unaware of the bewildered stares boring into you as you pressed a kiss above her ear.

The men around the table exchanged confused looks with each other, then threw suspicious glances at Eddie, who appeared struck by Cupid. The girls, much more intuitive and observant, smiled at the sweet scene.

She sat sideways across your legs, and kept a hand crooked into your flannel’s collar while you slipped the yellow bauble ponytail from one of her braids, and loosened the plaits. “Do you wanna roll for me?” you asked her, working through the tangles.

Thrilled to participate in her dad’s game, she woke up just enough to say, “Yeah!”

Max felt for your dice, and handed her the largest.

Instead of Adrie letting go of you to cup her hands around it and shake, she pelted it at the table, and after narrowly missing the LEGO skeleton standees, it came to a stop.

“Eight,” Lloyd said with a hint of regret.

You asked Eddie, “Is that enough to hit?”

“It, uh–” The table’s full attention turned towards the Dungeon Master. He dropped his gaze to his notebook, and traced his finger over the dog-eared page. The pressure of their anticipation manifested in his bouncing knee, masking the tremble that would be present in his words regardless when he answered, “Y-Yeah, yeah. That, uh, that hits.”

The party squirmed with awareness; pressed lips ready to burst.

Oblivious, you put the smaller dice in Adrie’s hand, and added up the numbers when she tossed them. “Eleven!” With your turn done, you unraveled the rest of her other braid, and combed your fingers through her hair, circling them on her scalp to give her some relief. Speaking to her, you said, “Wanna count to eleven while we pick another movie?” She started counting automatically.

There was another whisper in her ear, and she hopped off your lap with her arms raised. You cooed a small, “Thought so,” and picked her up, settling her on your hip. Knowing it was Jeff’s turn, and you wouldn’t be needed for a while, you pushed the bedroom door open with your foot, and closed it behind you the same way.

And the very second it clicked shut, the table erupted.

“Jesus, dude, you’re gonna impregnate your coworker if you keep staring at her like that.”

“Ew,” and “Gross,” came from Max and Erica respectively.

Eddie jolted from his trance, mentally erasing the sway of your ass from his mind. His cheeks seared vicious red at Gareth’s comment.

With more tact, Dustin lilted, “So, just a friend from work, huh?” His blue eyes sparkles with mischief, matching the upturn at the corner of his lips, foretelling no good from this interaction, either.

“A friend,” Jeff added, “that he has the biggest crush on.”

Gareth rolled his bottom lip inward, and cocked his head. “More like she’s his babysitter with benefits.”

Loathing the obvious sheen of sweat rushing to his face, Eddie warned him with a pointed finger. “Don’t call her that.” He swung to Dustin next. “And she is my friend, and my coworker,” he stated evenly, putting emphasis on the last word.

Being the voice of reason in these situations, but not entirely on his side, Lloyd told the younger members, “Around the time they started working together, he started coming to band practice not entirely in a bad mood. A few weeks ago, he was even smiling. Apparently they had this little Christmas party, and there was mistletoe–”

“Shut it!”

“You kissed her?” Lucas gasped.

Gareth was the one to knock the gossipy housewife wind from his sails. “No,” he scoffed with a laugh. “He was too much of a pussy.”

Several of the guys snickered, and one said, “So no benefits, then.”

Reining in his volume, Eddie warned them again in a low tone, “I’m well within my right to not want to make things weird between us if it doesn’t work out. I have to see her every day, regardless.” It was one of his oldest excuses in the book, and to be honest with himself, he dismissed it a long time ago. He no longer feared making things awkward, or tampering with your friendship.. but he wasn’t about to explain his real insecurities to so many people at once.

No one needed to know the true reason behind why he hadn’t asked you out yet.

No one had to know why he walked away when you spoke of ‘dating’ and ‘home.’

It was to protect himself, so no one had to look at him with pity when he explained he wasn’t a good enough reason for you to stay in Hawkins past the end of summer. Instead, he defaulted, “We’re just friends.”

Erica was gentle in her approach. “If we’re all just friends here, then why don’t we get matching bracelets made by your daughter?” On instinct, he tugged his sleeve over his wrist to conceal D-A-D-D-Y. “I saw hers when she was messing with Adrienne’s hair.” She saw M-O-U-S-E. “And if you’re just friends, why doesn’t Adrie ever want to be held by us? Or hugged by us? I honestly thought she didn’t like to be coddled by anyone besides you, but then that just happened..”

The questions sank in Eddie’s stomach. It cooled the frustration from his furrowed brow, and eased the tension from around his eyes. He didn’t have a satisfactory answer for the group, but he could share something close enough to the truth, it might better help them understand his hang ups. But first, he downed the rest of his double on the rocks.

Wincing after his swallow, he set down the glass, and ran the heel of palm along the edge of the table. “I’m taking things slow,” he said, “and you all know why. Okay?” Shrugging a bit, he lifted his eyebrows and spoke again to his binders, focusing on his campaign notes rather than his friends. “I only told her everything, y’know, about what happened to me a few weeks ago, so I’m still giving it some time. And, obviously, yeah it’s a big deal having a kid, and her getting attached to someone else.”

“Aw, he’s in love,” someone said.

Exuding patience by closing his eyes, he continued, “Right, so, if you wanna tell her some less embarrassing stories about me, maybe even make me look good in front of her.. I’d really appreciate it.” He ended with a beckoning clap, as if he were striking a deal with the blisters in his life.

“Or,” Mike asserted, “I can roll to hit this ghoul, and if it succeeds, you have to ask her out tonight.” Before Eddie could respond, Mike puffed a lucky breath into his cupped hands, and bounced the dice across the grid. “Thirteen!”

“Aw, sorry, man. Doesn’t hit.”

Vitriol bit into his snark, “Oh, really? Thirteen doesn’t hit, but eight does? Give me a break.” The more his face pinched into a sour expression at Eddie’s stubborn favoritism, the more wickedness laced itself in the Dungeon Master’s smug grin.

Gareth was contributing another goading remark about breaking strict rules if they benefited Eddie’s chances for getting good pussy, but the squeal of the door knob turning interrupted him.

It was noticeably quieter when you sat down at the table, beaming at the mixed signals of people avoiding your gaze, and meeting it with the type of excessive smile you gave a stranger after you were just talking about them behind their back. “So, whose turn is it?” Jeff raised his hand sheepishly. “Oh, you guys didn’t have to wait for–for me!” You hardly got through the sentence before you were giggling into your drink.

Fear not, Gareth broke the underlying tension. “Hey, did Eddie ever tell you he used to walk out on stage with a rose in his mouth, until” –he motioned at the corner of his lips with a grimace– “he cut himself on the thorns one too many times. Ow!”

Gareth clutched at his foot, and the men shot off rapid fire communication through sharp hand gestures, and widened eyes.

Jeff played the Jaws theme.

“Is that true?” you whispered to Lucas.

Lloyd shouted, “Can we get back to the game?”

Still red in the face, Eddie turned to him with his arms extended graciously. “Yes! Thank you! Let’s get back to the game.”

Adjusting his chair under himself, Eddie the Dungeon Master sat with the distinct grace of someone who went unopposed. Wispy curls of his hair caught the wind, drifting in frazzled layers wherever they pleased. The buttons and pins on his jean vest glittered, and tinked together. His lungs expanded with a long, held breath, stretching the black hoodie over his chest. When no one challenged his unceasing eye contact, he continued, “The ghouls were nigh..”

————

The night matured.

Dustin and Lloyd championed your party to an underground cave where the source of the undead were conjured. Eddie heralded your arrival by opening the box beneath his chair, screwing together something behind his barrier of DND lore, and bringing it to his mouth.

You shouldn’t be surprised by him, yet again, but the fact he played flute was just as adorable as his playful grin straining his plush lips to the metal, and his round doe-eyes flitting to yours, and away.

The notes he played grew increasingly haunting, turning intense during the battle with the necromancer who started this all. Then, as the foe turned to dust, Eddie trilled higher, and higher notes. Sillier, and sillier as Dustin looted the robes he left behind.

Everything about Eddie’s expression was impish when the group asked if the scroll found in the pocket was written in common tongue.

“Why, as a matter of fact it is,” he said, much too cheerful, and trilled an incensing measure.

He was being a menace, and the group began to sag with dread.

Dustin’s words were laced with suspicion and regret. “What does it say?”

“Let’s see! It says..” Eddie held up a prop coil of tea-stained parchment, and cleared his throat to don a brittle old man's voice, “I was a lonely necromancer who missed my wife, children, friends, and family. I was merely resurrecting them to have companionship, and you attacked me for nought. I hope you are happy with yourselves, and can sleep at night.” He abandoned the paper to incite violence in his quick succession of notes on the flute. “The dying crops are not my fault. The soil simply has too many minerals from the estuary near Irrilis, and the quarry to the north.” Peering at the blank sheet fallen to his notebook, he faked confusion, “And it says down here, in teeny-tiny writing, ‘You should have checked the bulletin board.’”

Dustin dropped his head into his hands. “You son of a bitch.”

The rest of the quests went smoother, you supposed. After returning to Irrilis and checking the bulletin board, the party’s findings led to the library, which led to a murder, which led to a mystery, which led to finding an object which had the group gasping in surprise. Apparently, the Crimson Order’s emblem on the second dead person’s body, and bite marks on the neck had a long history within the group. The next big campaign was vampire related. You celebrated along with them, cheersing the end of your whiskey, and chasing it with some much needed water.

~~~

Raw twilight bloomed behind heavy set clouds pulling flutters of white against the black.

The night winded down with more fetch quests sending the party deeper into the woods, and to the edge of the mountains. It would take several more sessions to cover the terrain beyond, or something like that. Something, something tales of a labyrinth or some sort before the vampire castle. Your memory was a little fuzzy. Going with the flow of music, whether it was the mellow strums of Lloyd’s guitar, the muffled notes of Jeff’s keyboard, Gareth’s battle march, or the dark piece Eddie played when he introduced an object of interest; your focus muddled with the jokes, the lore, the alcohol. The whiskey burned less, and the oaky honey thrived. You surrendered to the passage of time–interrupted, briefly, when the man sat opposite you answered every one of the boy’s questions with a riddle, and his rascally cackle at their irritation stole another piece of your heart. Falling deeper, and deeper. And deeper for him.

~~~

The early witching hours feasted on the weary adults who were no longer able to pull all-nighters. The game was over for now, and the group packed their things away.

Max asked you, “Did you have fun?”

“Yes!” you blurted. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but the atmosphere was so cool. Eddie really knows how to put on a show, huh? And hey, finding fragments of a dragon’s egg shell in a game called Dungeons and Dragons was pretty neat.”

Her laugh brought music to her affirmation, “Yeah, he’s a pretty good DM, and we’ve been hunting the dragons for two years now. Do you think you’ll play with us next month?”

“Totally!”

“Nice.”

Lucas dragged his hand down her arm, and placed the black and neon pink windbreaker in her awaiting palm. She zipped it over her cozy college sweatshirt. They were at the back of the congestion, shuffling around the living room, straying behind the chaos of stumbling adults doubling over to laugh at their clumsiness and inability to find their shoe’s match.

While waiting, you watched several of the guys clasp Eddie’s shoulder as they passed, and placed money in his hand. Oh. Shit. Your gaze snapped to the scattered stack of pizza boxes in the kitchen, and shame licked your cheeks. It never occurred to you to pay for your share.

Quickly, you found your puffer jacket under Mike’s raincoat, and wrangled some cash from the pockets. Your stride went wobbly between the table, chairs, couch, shoes, and bumbling grownups in the cramped trailer, but you squeezed your way to him. He was beginning his goodbyes smushed against the breakfast bar, not quite able to reach the front door just yet.

“Here,” you said, shoving a crumpled $20 at his arm.

Pausing his conversation with Jeff, he twisted to see you over the curve of his shoulder, and absorbed your apologetic face before noticing the money. His lips ticced at the corners. His nostrils flared with a soft snort. Amusement crinkled at the corner of his eyes. “Not from you,” he said. “Why don’t you go check on Adrie for me?”

“Oh.” A confused, maybe disappointed ‘oh.’ “If you’re sure.”

Fighting an internal battle, you stuffed the $20 in your jeans, and held true to your frown. You were about to argue, but your brain registered what he’d asked you to do. “Adrie!” you whispered excitedly, and made finger guns towards the bedroom.

You scurried (yes, scurried) off, and left Eddie to fend for himself.

Jeff was twisting his hand around his chin in mock rumination. “She doesn’t have to pay, hmm?”

“Not my place to comment,” Gareth said, about to make a comment, “but maybe you should think about cashing in those benefits.” He paused, drunkenness slowing him into a contemplative stare. “Or at least fu–”

“Anyway!” Erica saved the situation by pushing past all of them to wrench the door open. “Well.. that sucks.”

Icy flakes floated in pendulum swings to the ground, where they stuck.

Eddie stood on his tip-toes to study the severeness over his friend’s heads. The weather appeared to be in its mild beginnings, not yet falling in a considerable sheet from the sky, but still, he was a dad, and he was prone to worrying. The party hardly finished lacing up their shoes, and he was making them promise they’d call him as soon as they got home. They’d barely walked down the steps, and he was there at the bottom, holding his arm out. “Seriously, call me as soon as you get home,” he warned each household.

And it was only once the last car’s tail lights trailed red streaks over the main road, he went inside.

The trailer wept with emptiness. Remnants of being fulfilled remained–the trash, the lingering body heat, and stuffy air–but it sighed with loneliness. The trailer was pent up. In need of decompressing after the hours of putting on a show, and in a constant state of overthinking, entertaining his friends while fighting the itch deep in his chest that said ‘I wish none of these people were here except for you.’

The trailer longed for you, searching the couch, the card table, the kitchen where the bottle of whiskey was left behind. The trailer sought you in the corners of its belly, its lungs, its head, leaving the heart for last.

Eddie pushed open the bedroom door, and you were not in his daughter's bed. He lurched further into the room. Needy for the heart. And he found it. He found his home..

A pair of adult legs stuck out from the entrance to the blanket fort.

Judging by the angle of your feet and your knee tucked into the other, you were laying on your side. The powder pink bedsheet gathered in folds around your lower thighs. Strings of Christmas lights pressed against the shelter, and the TV flicked bright colors as it played a movie on a low volume.

Daring, his fingertips encountered the coarse weave of your jeans on his way to lift the bedsheet keeping your sleeping form separated from his greedy gaze. Stealing moments where he could be learning your face, placed a precious snore away from his daughter’s, sharing the pillow with her curls and unicorn hugged to her chin. Inhaling silently, and exhaling in a quick breath, not yet catching the sound in your throat akin to a mumbly whine at the dream playing under your twitching eyelids.

The sheet draped the back of his neck.

Risking, he traced the rugged outer seam of your jeans. Starting at your printed socks, and traveling up your calf, over the rigid mountain peaks of stiff fabric creased around your knee, and discovering the squish of your leg under his prodding. His eyes were trained on your face. He slipped his palm over your upper thigh. A gentle warmth of his presence. Next, he cupped the curve of your knee, fitting it into his hand, and he continued his stroke downwards, tightening his fingers to your shin, and stopping to squeeze your ankle. You didn’t stir.

He shifted closer, widening his stand and ducking under the canopy to reach your face.

Leaning over you, he anchored his balance to your hip, relaxing his hold on the arch of bone shaped like a strung bow, and dragged his other knuckles along your cheek. Three fingers worth. Three opportunities for him to press his skin to your hairline, and brush them along the flat plane before the adorable round apples he knew to be relaxed under the surface while you dozed.

You were soft. So unexpectedly soft.

Courageous, smooth peach fuzz welcomed a fourth knuckle. A simple sweep of the back of his hand to your face. Feeling you. All of you. Insatiable.

His breathing grew heavier at the hunger.

Stomach clenching from the craving of more.

Heart, starved.

It was animalistic, but you weren’t afraid. No, you weren’t afraid when you twitched and slapped at your cheek, expecting a fly to be tickling you in your sleep, but as you awoke, you prodded at the confusing obstruction, and glided your fingers along the underside of his. Plump ridges punctuated by hard calluses with scratchy outlines. You recognized them by touch alone, and fought through the pain of your bloodshot eyes to peer up at the man looming above you, and yawned.

“No boys allowed,” you whispered through the groggy haze.

Oh, he nearly let his tipsy tongue admit too much to your dopey grin.

Eddie could tell he was smiling hard enough his vision suffered from his encroaching cheeks. His eyes were inundated by his happiness, nearly closed to slits from how hard he beamed when he slid from gaze from you, to his daughter who enacted the ‘No Boys’ rule, and to you again. “C’mon, sweetheart,” he said, withdrawing.

He helped you stand. With difficulty. The whiskey hurled you into a premature REM cycle, and without consideration, he roused you from its depths. In your drowsy state, you clung to him for stability, depending on his chest to support you. Not that he was complaining. He was reliable, compensating for your swaying by grasping your upper arms, and teasing you with a, “Whoa there, silly.”

Stood outside the closed bedroom, there was not a chance for gaps to stop your lower inhibitions. Alone, you were together. In the same hallway where there was a thrifted painting of a lake scene hung beside the bathroom, a shelf with a set of wooden ducks amongst the ceramic knick knacks, a doorway where he ate his oatmeal while watching you and Adrie play. Those points of interest were all there; you were familiar with them, even if you struggled to open your eyes.

You fawned over him, snickering at nothing until your features tensed into confusion, not understanding the bits of ice clinging to the fibers of his hoodie, scraping at them with your fingernail. You collapsed into him more, leaning your forearms on his steady frame, rising and falling, accepting the lullaby of his pleased hum. The very outline of your torso discovered his, giving him a taste of your warmth; comforting you both with the actuality of such a thing. You skimmed your fingers up to his hair, picking at the sloshy liquid burdening the ends of his curls. “Why’re you wet?” you mumbled.

“It’s snowing,” he repeated from earlier, when the rush of standing whooshed in your ears, rendering him an otherworldly voice from beyond. “It’s not bad, but like hell I’m about to let you bike home in it. If you wanna give me some time to eat and have a cup of coffee, I can sober up and drive you, sweet girl,” he finished like hot honey.

You circled your palms over his pecs with the lack of awareness a blissfully buzzed person would for the lone reason of wanting to experience the texture of his hoodie burn your skin from the friction. “But wouldn’t you have to wake Adrie up to bring her with us?”

“I would, but she’ll be fine. She’ll probably fall asleep in the car.”

“No, no, no,” you shushed him, losing your merry smile for the first time in hours. “Robin’s working very, very, very late tonight. She’ll probably be off her shift soon. She can pick me up. And my bike can fit in her trunk, unlike your tiny car.” Many of your words mushed together from your drowsy, drowsy, drowsy imploring.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah! I’ll call her, and hey, we can clean up while she’s on her way.” When his expression was less than enthused at the suggestion, you waggled your eyebrows, and bit your bottom lip, enticing him. “We can make it fun,” you tried. “You know, we’ll play music, drink some more, eat whatever pizza’s left.” You walked your fingers up his shoulders, and he smoothed his hands around your wrists, flattening your palms to his clavicle.

Eddie lowered his head until he managed to peer at you through his lashes, asking a condescending, but lighthearted question, “That’s what you wanna do? Help me clean?”

You reaffirmed, “It’ll be fun.”

“Fine by me, sweetheart. Go call Buckley.”

The plans were put on pause while you called the back office of the grocery store, but after a short conversation, and many twirls of the cord around your finger, your voice lightened with relief, “Thank you so, so much. I love you.”

You hung up, and spun around to tell Eddie the fabulous news.

The two glass tumblers on the kitchen counter were assuming. Filled with ice cubes from the blue plastic tray in the sink, and situated in front of the opened whiskey. There was a decent amount left–a fourth of the entire bottle, probably–and he didn’t need to hear you repeat Robin’s message about her getting off work soon to unscrew the cap and begin pouring.

No distinct emotion crossed his face when divided an even shot into each of the smokey gray glasses, and paused the bottle above yours to ask, “So, what kind of drunk are you?”

The ice cracked and popped as it melted.

“Giggly, touchy,” you supposed.

He tipped the bottle and added another healthy shot to yours. You raised your eyebrows at his boldness, and scoffed out the same question, “What kind of drunk are you?”

“Hm.” He propped his hand on the counter, and cocked his hip out, staring out into the living room. You studied his side profile from where you stayed by the telephone, most notably how his light wash jeans gathered around the bulk of his zipper again; hoodie tucked behind the handcuff belt buckle. The weathered silver metal glinted an edge of orange from the lamp beside the microwave, shifting as he rocked his weight to his other foot. “Stupid, I think,” he said finally. “I make stupid decisions, ‘nd shit.”

“Are you trying to make stupid decisions tonight?”

His features kicked up, and instead of giving you a verbal answer, he brought the bottle up and dropped his head back.

“Eddie!” you gawked.

Your mouth hung open in awe, stunned into silently watching the bubbles race to the top of the amber liquid chugging ever closer to the neck of the bottle being strangled in his white-knuckled grip. His eyes were screwed shut, body tensed and struggling to finish it off, lips pursed in a kiss around the opening. Each gulp sent his Adam’s apple jumping.

He threw his head forward. The bottle slammed on the counter, final sips of liquid sloshing in waves along the bottom. He caught the dribble falling from his chin with his sleeve, and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. All of him shuddered. Teeth bared as he grimaced through the burn, eyebrows furrowed in mild regret.

After the last jerk of shoulders battling the aftershocks of disgust, you mimicked his parental exasperation, “What in the world are you doing?”

Making a stupid decision.

A tight line of water flooded his eyes. He ran his fingers over his shy smile, turning to look at you with a particular brand of sheepishness usually reserved for teenagers who were trying to impress their friends. “I only had two drinks the entire night. I’m just catching up to you.”

“You’re an idiot.”

He agreed.

“Bobbie’s still gonna be a while,” you said on your way to grabbing your drink, now wondering if you were going to be the more sober one in half an hour. “Shall we get to cleaning?”

He lifted his tumbler by picking it up by the rim and clinked it to yours, but refrained from taking a sip when you did. Thankfully. “Wayne’s got some jazz records in the crate next to the record player, where the TV is.. Well, where the TV was. On that cabinet beside his bed.. If you’d just.. Look over there.. Okay, why are you staring at me?”

Memorizing the freckle of the side of his nose to your heart’s content, you shrugged. “You blush a lot.”

“Do not,” he denied in a mutter. He felt his cheek, poking and prodding and smashing at the skin being tugged down by his pouty frown. “It’s just the alcohol.”

“Ah.”

You sipped, swallowed, and snickered on your way to the record player cabinet, weaving through the staggered chairs untucked from the table. You laughed again. Just the alcohol, he said. Yet, he’d been flushed red all night. Or, at least, since he bragged about his seven inches.

~~~

The soundtrack for cleaning was a 25th Anniversary edition of a label’s best live performances over the years.

Various artists scored the yucky business of folding and stacking the chairs against a spare wall, trying not to envision a spider popping out at any moment from where it may be laying in wait under the seats. A fun upbeat tambourine number played when Eddie knocked over Wayne’s beard trimmer in the bathroom. Wondrous vocals warbled against your game of wadding up the used napkins and tossing them at the trashcan, while Eddie flung the paper plates like frisbees until both of you tired, and threw them away as normal. Brass horns vibrated under your hands and knees as you crawled around on the floor, finding all the crushed beer cans. Lazy drum beats coaxed both of your languid movements into the sort of drunken erraticism that came from being buzzed, gesturing without much consideration for sharp corners, or breakable things. He packed away his miniatures while you wiped down the counters, and he washed the dishes while you attempted to sweep up crumbs from the grid table cloth and fold it into a neat-ish square.

The record stopped.

A break ensued. You drank the rest of your whiskey, and Eddie searched every pizza box, divvying out the last slices for you to share over wordless respite, heads drooping, chewing slowly.

After washing the greasy cornmeal from his hands, and wiping the flour from around his mouth, he suggested, “Why don’t you put on the yellow record? Third from the end, on the left.”

You found the one he spoke of–golden yellow–and put the needle to it.

Together, you hauled out the dense vintage couch the few inches it required; done in dozens of centimeters, yanking on the ugly upholstery until your fingernails ached, and arms gave up. Eddie was rushing you, annoyingly so. Hurrying on in anguish, the table was flipped on its side, and its legs folded in. It was stuffed against the wall after some difficulty (the mugs remained intact), and after shoving the hulking piece of furniture to close the gap, you fell to the lumpy cushions with an exhausted groan.

You went boneless. Arms and legs landing wherever. Head lulling to the side. Eyes closed. Relaxed. Drifting off to the place where you were in the blanket fort at an alarming rate..

The song switched.

“May I have this dance?”

You opened your eyes.

Eddie’s hand came into focus. He was bent at the waist, extending an invitation. Reciprocating. Making true on his promise for the dance he owed you. It seemed so long ago; back when you knew him as a single dad who was private about his personal life. Now you knew. You knew his home, his past, his trauma, his notebook, his friends, his band, his daughter’s favorite stuffed toy named Fluff. You knew his pizza order (cheese with black olives), his favorite color (deep, sultry red), his laundry detergent (Cheer Free for extra sensitive skin). You knew his body temperature ran like a furnace, you knew the knot of pink scar tissue on the meat of his thumb, you knew the shimmery flecks of butterscotch in his eyes when he went teary. In the span of a few days, you knew him better than you did weeks ago, before Christmas.

You took his hand. He helped you stand, and in a brave exhale, he held you in timeless elegance.

It wasn’t like the dance before, where you minded the respectable distance two coworkers should. No. He still clasped your right hand in his left, sure, but from there the similarities to waltzing in the garage differed. Reservation did not stop at the top of his neck, or his bicep–you switched your friendly clasp from those safe areas, to introducing your torsos, and pinning his arm under yours in effort to reach the middle of his back. He enveloped your waist, coaxing your hips together with woozy enthusiasm. Close, close, close. Handcuff belt buckle catching on your jean’s zipper at each pass until you began to sway in aching unison to Frank Sinatra’s Somethin’ Stupid.

You empathized with the heady flush pinkening the bulbous tip of his nose, and gazed into his eyes. Or tried. His eyelids fell in sluggish blinks, and his envious lashes refused to part. The sway was a shuffle. Your head was swimming. Failing to focus on one particular thing before your vision went cross, and the room spun, despite standing almost still.

It didn’t take long for either of you to surrender.

Rocking side to side–no turning, no pivoting–you accepted the innate desire to rest your head on his chest, and even from a distance, his pulse beat against your ear. Hard pumps of lifeblood under your cheek laid flat on the faded black hoodie. If you looked the other way, you’d see the jean vest reeking of cigarette smoke thrown on the couch where he discarded it before asking you to dance, but you chose to admire your joined hands. Preferring to learn the dry skin where a scrape was healing on his thumb knuckle–how small your thumb was in comparison to the single stretch of bone until the next joint, and his blunt nail. Maybe he was admiring such a thing too, because he stretched his fingers and curled them snugger to yours, and he set his chin atop your head, learning another new intimacy.

You melted under the burden of his weight.

He exposed the issue of your hair catching on the stubble of his five o’clock shadow.

You craned your head against the grain, and he nuzzled his chin harder.

Two people discovering their deprived yearns.

The sweetness of being crooked into the hollow of his body. The possession of snagging a full grip of his hoodie between your fingers, and becoming the reason he filled his lungs. Existing around him. And he existed in you, in all the unexplored corners, and you dusted the cobwebs from his. Fulfilling the dark places. Giving them light, and acceptance. Sharing the slice of night before it turned day. Swaying, rocking, swimming together in an inebriated dance under a tin roof, under the sprinkling snow, under the opaque clouds, under the crescent moon, under the twinkling stars. Under the universes, and hypothetical alternate dimensions and timelines, and as attractive as they seemed, you wouldn’t choose a different one. This is the one. This is the exact dimension, the exact timeline you wanted.

No longer wishing to lead, Eddie closed your fingers into a soft fist, and placed your hand over his heart, cupping his palm over it and stressing the thousands of unspoken words in his squeeze.

Basking in the minutes stretching to hours, the music looped into a perfect eternity.

It was getting late, almost time to leave, you guessed.

You withdrew your head. Eddie lifted his. The spot his chin once resided on your scalp ran abnormally cold from the loss, and there must’ve been an imprint of wrinkled fabric on your cheek, because that’s where his eyes landed first on their journey to meet your resilient gaze.

The beginnings of his lopsided grin emerged.

He spoke, and it was a single word. “Yeah.”

You didn’t know why he said it, or what he meant, but in this moment, in his arms, with your hand nestled between his and his heart, you agreed, “Yeah.” This was special. Whatever this was, this was special.

A huff of laughter broke through your smile, and his. Giggly silliness.

You were embraced from the top of your thighs, through to the slight proposal of your hips, and ending at the acute strength of your arms pressing each other closer.

Eddie raised your hand from his heart to his face. His thumb ensured your fingers stayed curled in, barring you from investing in a full, unadulterated touch. Wisps of his hair traced your skin. His exhale snaked down your flannel sleeve. Your inner wrist stopped at the slick junction of his lips, where he had swiped his tongue over out of nervous habit.

Oddly, he tapped your hand a few times to his cheek.

It made you curious. You copied him, bringing his hand to your face. Hooked your thumb under his sleeve to expose his wrist, and tapped it to your cheek. Ah, you understood.

Such delicate, unscarred skin brushed against the ridges of your lips, each tap like a kiss along the edge of your lovesick simper. Closer to a kiss than anything you’d experienced with him before. Still so tender, and so pure.

“Yeah?” A raw tremble was present in your question; gone shy from the profoundness of the single word, and fearing you were attributing the wrong meaning behind something so little, yet so large in your relationship.

But he saw the doubt, and he reassured you, “Yeah.” By the wetness glossing over his eyes, he reassured you your assumptions weren’t wrong. He whispered it again, softer, to where the one syllable croaked out, “Yeah.”

This was special.

The alcohol sat like candor on your tongue. “Wanna know a secret?” you teased as you let go of his wrist, and guided your hands up to his nape, linking your fingers over the bulky hood prohibiting you from playing with the sensitive hairs on the back of his neck. He slung his arm around your waist, over top of the other, encompassing you in a true hug.

He squinted at you. “How drunk are you? Don’t go tellin’ me somethin’ you’ll regret in the morning.”

“It’s nothing like that, I swear.” There was a flirty whine to your pitch, and even flirtier breathiness to your voice. Encouraging him to maintain the sway, leading him side to side, foot to foot, taking advantage of flow to put an arch in your back, and rise onto the balls of your feet, undetected. Your heart skipped at the proximity. “You know how I said my top three favorite people were Robin, Adrie, and then you?” you reminded him. “That’s actually backwards.. I said it backwards. It’s actually you, Adrie, and then Robin. But don’t tell her that.”

His mouth hung open to respond, but his gaze was off, discerning something behind you in the distance. When he centered on you again, there was a new kindness to the wrinkles framing his handsome face. “Are you okay with sharing my number one spot?”

“I would be honored.”

“Good,” he emphasized, “I’d be heartbroken if you didn’t want to be my favorite.”

“I always want to be your favorite,” you preened.

The innocence slipped from his expression. He’d never heard you sound quite so needy, or eager to be something of his, and the effects were sudden and poorly timed.

Outside, rocks skidded on the cracked pavement. A car turning in from the main road sunk into a pothole, and bounced out. The music spinning on the record player crescendoed. The fluorescent bulbs in the lamps hummed with electricity. Scents of acidic tomato sauce and oregano were inescapable. Tiny pellets of hail pinged on the tin roof. You both looked up, listening to it pass after a drifty-cloud moment.

Eddie concentrated on keeping your chests together. His forearms dug into your waist as he found the best way to lock his grip. He dipped his head lower when you had no choice but to lean up, and into him. “If I give you my number, will you call me when you get home, so I know you made it safe?”

Every consonant and vowel vibrated in your skull, thrumming velvety richness through the daze.

“I already have your number,” you said amongst the warmth building, and building behind your rib cage.

He faltered, confused. “You have my number?”

“Mhm, an even bigger birdie told me.”

Both bewildered by the callback, and having a tendency to fall head over heels for anything and everything you did, regardless if it was an unsatisfying answer or not, Eddie snorted, and scrunched his face, observing you with all the judgment you earned. “That’s either really creepy, or really endearing.”

You dropped your gaze to his crooked smile, and the car approaching the blue and white trailer faded away.

His lips were gorgeous. Overly full, and a wonderful shade of fleshy red with a tint of pink. They were bitten. Chewed on when his nerves got the best of him. Behind them, the edges of his teeth showed. Above them, you put your energy into obsessing over his overly large nose, as you had in many instances, but never at this distance, able to see every pore, every freckle, every splotch, and realizing this could become a normal occurrence, being this close.

His eyes were overly large as well, and they followed each micro-tic of yours.

“Good thing you find me endearing, then,” you provoked.

He loved that response.

“I do,” he chased. “I do,” he gave in. The willpower to resist his urges crumbled at the admission. He pressed his forehead to yours, and conceded until his mouth ached with happiness, “I find you so endearing.”

The alcohol dulled the intimate gesture. The top layers of your skin were numb. You had to work harder to feed the starvation; grinding your forehead against his, digging deeper to feel the itch of his bangs stuck to the glisten of boozy sweat. Sliding your nose alongside his, smashing the tips to each other’s cheeks. Sharing the same breaths, panting feathery sighs into each other’s mouths. Then, another carnal bump of noses, clumsy and misaligned, and a hard rut bone on bone until your bodies tingled with satisfaction. Satiated. Full.

Eddie turned his groan into a ragged, “I fucking adore you.”

“I adore you, too,” you promised, on the verge of crying and not knowing why.

He pulled away, dragging the tip of his nose up the side of yours, and tracing it down, allowing them to stay connected for a moment longer. A cooldown while your stomach flipped, and your pulse raced. I adore you.

The whole thing was strange to do with your coworker, especially with your hands remaining latched where they were, and there was no grinding elsewhere; it was just sheer lust for touch. Mutual, too.

His overly large pupils bored into yours. Neither of you had appropriate commentary on what transpired, probably for the better.

A car engine rumbled outside.

“Yeah, I’m pretty toasted, I think,” you said.

He pinched his eyebrows in, and pursed his lips. “Think I am, too.”

Either way, it was a good excuse for you almost moaning his name, and him choosing to hinge his phrase on adore, as if the endearment couldn’t be swapped out, and suddenly, the entire sentiment would have changed. It would be a confession.

There was a knock on the door, and Robin’s voice came muffled, but the urgency of being stuck out in the cold was conveyed.

Both of you hastened separating yourselves, and fumbled around each other.

Always, Eddie was a gentleman and helped you put on your jacket after you argued he was way more plastered than you were, despite you being the one doubled over with your hands on your knees, wobbling, disoriented after reaching down for it. He made sure you were dressed before going outside. Zipped you all the way to your chin, even when you complained it looked dorky. He lined your shoes up for you, and waited for you with his eyes closed, drifting off to a dream while standing up.

He handed you off to Robin, and loaded her trunk with your bike. For whatever reason, you didn’t climb inside the car yet. You waited in the snow for him. Collecting glittery flakes on your eyelashes, inhaling the fresh, crisp air. Probably quelling the nausea, same as he was, taking gulps of oxygen while he blinked, and blinked, searching the swirling images for something his brain could comprehend to get it to stop.

You waited for him, never saying anything. In heavy steps, he came to you, and wedged his fingers under the door handle, popping open the latch with an expression of wryness, as if you expected him to open every door for you.

Which, he would, for the record.

Stopping you before you sat, he grabbed at your jacket and bent himself to you, no longer afraid to press the cold tip of his nose to the shell of your ear, and drag his lips over the peach fuzz as he spoke directly to you. “Call me,” he stressed against your shiver.

“I will.”

At that, he shut your door and Robin began backing out of his driveway, stunting his wave goodbye from the headlights blinding him. He moved to the stairs, then to the top of the landing to watch the car drive around the soft bend around the trailers, and out onto the highway, leaving him behind.

He entered the trailer, and it was full.

It felt full, anyway. In his stomach, his chest, behind his eyelids, in the dusty corners, in the mortal hollows, manifesting a tightness in his throat, and a contradictory heaviness to his weightlessness, floating on clouds after spending an entire day with his crush and ending it with I adore you.

Eddie brushed his hair back, neatening the tangles wetted by ice. He combed his bangs off his forehead, and drove his fingers against his scalp, leaving his hands on top of his head, stripping himself of the extra stimulation to hone in on the persistent throb between his brows where you staked your claim.

You had made your home there, and he couldn’t wait for your return.

“Jesus Christ.”

With his woolgathering out of the way, he went to where Adrie was half-asleep in the doorway to her bedroom, and he crouched onto his knees. “Were you watching us dance?”

Wrapped in a blanket and sitting slumped over, she nodded against the wood frame, and sucked in the drool threatening to spill over her bottom lip. Only having the energy to open her eyes a smidge, she still found it within herself to have gripes with him. “You didn’t let me say bye.”

“I’m sorry,” he pouted in a silly deep voice.

Stooping further, he worked his arm under her legs, and collected the sleepy bundle that was his daughter to his chest. He shuffled along on his knees over to the fort, and man, did he understand why you fell asleep so easily in the blanket nest. Just the accidental touches when he set Adrie down called to him, as did the bleating sheep hopping over fences in his head. It was enticing.. but the phone was ringing, and the first check in of the night as calling.

He knew it wasn’t you, but his heart leapt all the same.

“Sorry the phone might ring a lot,” he said. “Do you want another movie on? I’ll put another move on so it doesn’t wake you, okay?”

She scrunched her nose in a bad way, not like he did when he was laughing. Probably from the alcohol on his breath, and his waning coherency.

He stowed away his kisses for now. “Sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye, but I promise you, I promise you, okay? Miss Mouse will be back soon.” That was the heaviness in his chest. The decision. “I’ll invite her over, and we can all play together, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy,” she mumbled, loosening her grasp on his hair.

She was out, and he paced the kitchen while he chatted to stay awake.

————

Eddie sat at the small green table with his head resting back against the peeling wallpaper. A single light above the wrap-around counter skimmed the belly of the trailer. It traced the bubbles slipping down the bottle in front of him, and glanced the top of his pillow on the couch, submitting to the darkness past his plaid blanket waiting for him. The phone cord draped over his shoulder, down to his chest. The last call was half an hour ago. Maybe? He knew his last swig of whiskey was seconds ago. Everyone had checked in, and his ability to show an ounce of self-control was forfeited to the sheep. In his final blink, his body went lax, and he passed out.

Though, he could always count on the clangy ring to cut through their bleats.

Jolting awake, he searched above him for the phone, knocking it off the hook before it disturbed Adrie.

He was disoriented.

“Hello?”

Quiet as a mouse, a voice came, “Hey.”

He sat up. Alertness spread through him in waves, rippling from the decision sitting hot on his tongue, and stirring deeper, lower. Your greeting was filtered by the tiny microphone caged in yellowed plastic, but the dozy, sweltering rasp was there. “Hey, sweetheart,” he answered in kind, and inhaled deeply before the blood loss in his brain rendered him lightheaded.

One word in and he was wiping his palm on his jeans, and keeping it there, on his thigh.

“Sorry it took me so long,” you apologized in a whisper. “I wanted to wait until everyone went to sleep. I’m in the living room. In the dark.” You giggled as if it were a joke he should be in on.

He peeked behind him to make sure the bedroom door was shut, and wrenched the phone against his lips to stifle his own laughter. “Yeah? I’m sitting in the dark, too.”

You hummed.

He didn’t know if you were making a pass at him by mentioning you were alone as he was, so he chose something innocuous to comment on, bouncing the ball in your court. “You sound tired, baby. You should go to bed.”

“But my bed’s cold,” you whined.

Bingo.

Risks were worth taking as long as you participated.

In a matter of quick exchanges, he had his palm between his thighs, running his fingernails down the coarse fabric of his jeans and cupping the heft. “My bed’s cold too,” he matched your pitch, exploring his thumb upwards.

“If you were here, mine wouldn’t have to be..”

“But you live in someone else’s parent’s attic,” he teased.

“And your bed’s a couch,” you shot back.

He checked the closed door behind him one more time, and yielded, “You’re right.” You liked being right. He liked it when you were right. Your grin tinted all your pretty words when you were right. Well, they would, if you were speaking. “Babe?”

“Sorry, that was quick,” you said, struggling through a yawn after nodding off. “I’m laying on the recliner, and it’s really comfy.”

“Then go to sleep,” he implored in a chastising snicker.

You grunted.

Except, it didn’t sound like the other grunts and groans he’d heard you make over the months. This one was sweeter, higher, similar to the airy catch in your throat when your bottom lip dragged on his stubble. A moan of his name, he hoped. He twitched against the warmth of his palm. Growing rapidly under the first strokes of his thumb encouraging his descent, half-hard just at the thought.

How much whiskey he had was of no concern when it came to you. Clearly.

He couldn’t stop his appetite from lowering his voice, “Whatcha doin’, sweet girl?”

You turned it back on him, “What are you doing?” And when he was busy rearranging how he sat to give his jeans some slack to wrap his thick fingers around himself, you mused with an evident smirk, “Touching your orc dagger?”

Goddamnit. “If you ever bring that up again, I swear..”

“You must be, with how you’re avoiding the question.” You muffled your giggle–probably with your shirt collar, if he had to guess. Teasing him more, you slurred, “S’okay. I saw how hard you were staring at my shirt earlier. Just thought you’d like to know I’m not wearing it anymore. Not wearing a bra either.”

You’re right. He did like knowing that. So much, in fact, he smoothed his fingers in a long tug along his length, stroking twice over the sensitive head, and repeating.

“Not wearing anything?” he asked, sounding a bit more husky than he intended.

“Just the flannel. Gotta be a little dressed.. in case someone comes in.” You shifted in the middle of your sentence, and at first Eddie pictured you turning onto your back. Imagining your tits shifting against the flannel, and their subtle bounce as you got comfortable. How hard your nipples pressed to the fabric, and what they must feel like being licked and sucked into his mouth, and all the beautiful noises you’d make for him. Unfortunately..

“Touchin’ yourself for me, sweetheart?” Nothing.. “Sweetheart?” Oh.. “You fall asleep again?”

An actual grunt, maybe a hiccup, or a snore created static on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry,” you sincerely apologized.

Poor sweet thing. “Tell you what,” he reasoned. “Why don’t you go to bed, and think about how nice it’d be for me to be there with you; how warm I am. And I’ll take a shower, and do the same.”

You asked, “You mean you’re gonna think about me while in the shower?”

He squeezed himself. “Yes,” he answered truthfully. There was no fucking way either of you’d remember this by Monday morning. It was kinda thrilling; obeying the allure, and teasing each other without consequence.

“Nice.”

“Mhmm.”

Eddie closed his eyes in the following silence. The fantasy drifted to something tender. Sharing a bed. Waking up next to you. The alcohol made it difficult to remember why you called, and fathom why he was holding a conversation. His own hand went slack around the part his heart pumped blood to. The urge passed. The desire to brush his teeth replaced the lust. He was drunk, and he was losing the battle to remain conscious.

His body slouched ever forward.

“Eddie?”

“Hmm?”

“I can’t stay awake.”

“Neither can I..” Not that it mattered, but before the conversation ended and he summoned the strength to collapse on the couch instead of the green table for the sole reason of never wanting his daughter to discover him passed out in the kitchen from drinking too much, he heeded the heaviness in his chest. The decision. And he told you, “By the way, I thought of what to do for that ‘thank you’ I owe you. It’s time I pay you back for everything you’ve done for me.”

Processing his words at a slower rate, a few moments ticked by before the intrigue ate at you. “And what’s that, handsome?”

He smiled. “It’s a surprise.”

You snorted. “It’ll be a surprise if either of us remember anything after I failed nine rolls in a row, and you chugged.. Fuck, however much whiskey you’ve had. I don’t even wanna know.”

In a night of stupid decisions, he committed to one more; the joke was too good to not tumble past his loose lips, “Not enough to stop my orc dagger from growing seven inches.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, that was awful. I’m never calling you again. Goodbye.”

The speed at which you hung up sent him doubled over, clutching his aching stomach. He tried to keep quiet, really. He held onto his dignity just long enough to take three attempts to hang up the phone, and then it hit him with reckless abandon. He slapped his hand over his gaping mouth, and shook until the breathless gasps came out in squeaks, ugly laughing at his own stupid joke. He rocked back and forth, almost hitting his forehead on the table, and only caught his breath when tears brimmed his lashes, and he remembered his forehead was sacred, and he should stop. If he hit it, it’d be like an earthquake to your home. Except, that imagery also made him giggle, and he was at it again. Biting his tongue to subdue his outbursts while he stretched out on the couch cushions which rubbed his skin raw everytime he changed position. Finally, he was at peace. He tried to forget about the impending hangover he was going to have to explain to Wayne, and instead, he thought about you, and let his daydream take him to a fantasy where he could wake up next to you. And if he went through with his decision, maybe it could become a reality.

No. Not if. He would. He would go through with it. Probably. If you asked about it, he would, definitely. If you didn’t, he’d.. he’d still do it. He couldn’t keep living like this.

However, for both your sakes, he hoped neither of you remembered this night come Monday morning.

[noirewrites]

Mending the Rip (Of My Shirt and Your Heart)

Kitty Section are practising when Luka's favorite Jagged Stone shirt rips. Luckily his latest costume designer is on hand to fix it, but who knew Marinette could get so tongue tied? And doesn't she only do that over boys she likes?

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warnings: No Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M

Pairing: Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Adrien Agreste/Kagami Tsurugi, Kagami Tsurugi & Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Chapter 1: Listening to Your Jagged Heart Song

The designer said in a tone of faux cheerfulness, “Her lies aren’t hurting anyone, right?” A sudden shrill screech of guitar turned her attention to Luka who was frowning at the instrument.

You know I love unicorns

And that they make me feel better!

I see their faces everywhere I go

Dreaming about them at the nights!

 “I am glad Mr. Agreste allowed Adrien to be a part of the concert,” Marinette said as she moved her attention from her sketches to Kagami who sat beside her.

The Japanese girl nodded in reply. “I know Mr. Agreste’s hard to convince, but after Adrien meticulously pointed out that his participation in the band could help promote Agreste Fashion, it wasn’t a tough job.”

 The designer hummed in approval as she bent over her sketchbook, adding colors to the designs.

 “But tell me one thing.” The disdain in Kagami’s voice caused Marinette to look up. 

“Who called that brunette here?” The Tsurugi girl pointed at someone, and Marinette followed her direction to catch sight of Lila Rossi reclining on a chair, sipping orange juice as Mylene sat beside her on a stool, enjoying the band’s performance.

“I mean, it’s not my business but… as far as I am aware, she isn’t dating anyone in the band. And it doesn’t seem like she’s here to offer a hand.”

 “Oh,” Marinette rolled her eyes slightly before turning back to task in hand, “that’s Lila. I believed you knew her? For a few days ago, she claimed to have been Mrs. Tsurugi’s favorite student before arthritis caused her to take a break from fencing.”

 “Mom’s favorite student? Baka.” 

“Baka?”

“It’s a curse.”

 Marinette raised an eyebrow as her lips twitched in a smirk. “Didn’t know you cursed.”

“Only when I am frustrated. But seriously, I hadn’t had a shade of idea about her existence before she appeared in that photograph with Adri-kun. He told me she’s a pathological liar, but to this extent… Wow, I must really go knock some sense into her.”

 Kagami moved forward, only to be stopped by an iron grip on her wrist.

“Don’t,” Marinette said in a low tone as she pulled the other girl back. “I have tried uncovering her lies, but…”

 “But what?”

“She just plays with the words until they turn against you. I have tried unmasking her on many occasions, but no one listens and…”

 Marinette’s voice trailed off, before she slightly shook her head and said in a tone of faux cheerfulness, “Her lies aren’t hurting anyone, right?”

Kagami stared in shock as the designer wiped her eyes before smiling at her.

 A sudden shrill screech of guitar caused the girls to turn their attention to the deck where the band had been rehearsing.

“Sorry, I kind of missed a beat,” Luka said apologetically, looking down as he frowned at his guitar.

 “I guess it’s alright,” Adrien patted the tall boy before adding, “We have been practising for one hour non-stop. How about a break, guys?”

The idea was highly appreciated, for the other band members immediately left their musical instruments to relax themselves after the hard work. Rose and Juleka moved over to the railings to talk while Ivan walked to where Mylene and Lila were sitting, sitting down and looping an arm around his tiny girlfriend.

 Adrien turned his attention to the girls and grinned at them, waving eagerly. Marinette smiled in acknowledgement and Kagami waved back, an adorable blush now dusting her cheeks.

He came over to them, hugging Kagami before giving her a peck on the lips. 

 “Hey there, Gami-chan,” he whispered, causing Kagami to giggle.

“Hello, Koibito,” she whispered, booping his nose a little.

 Watching the two from a close distance, Marinette couldn’t help but smile. Contrary to the earlier times, she didn’t feel jealous of Kagami anymore. ‘Adrigami’, as she had dubbed the couple, was really very cute and sweet, and Marinette was happy to be best friends with them. 

Between the responsibilities of Guardianship, school work, bakery stuff, hangouts with friends, designing commissions and babysitting, Marinette wasn’t sure if she could additionally juggle her love life. So, she opted to let it rest for a while, at least till she got the hang of her recent busy schedule.

 That is what she had told herself. The reality… it was different.

 Adrien had harbored a special place in her heart, and letting him go hadn’t been easy for her. But with time, Marinette came to realise that her unrequited feelings were doing her more harm than good. In times when her friends were abandoning her, Adrien and Kagami were two of the three people who had at least offered a listening ear to her distraught civilian self. And the girl could not afford losing any of her true friends for any reason.

So, she made herself happy in their happiness. When the two held hands, Marinette’s heart did a little dance of joy for her friends’ happiness. When they got lost in each others’ eyes, she stayed on the sidelines, watching them with a small smile. And when they kissed….

 ...It had been hard at first. No, scratch hard. For the first few times, Marinette had felt as if someone had detached her heart from her chest and stomped on it ruthlessly, right in front of her eyes. Her pillow and Tikki had been the witness of those silent tears she shed as she came face-to-face with the feelings of the first heartbreak. Many times, she just wanted to pull the two apart, to scream her feelings out to Adrien and at least let him know.

Had it not been for Tikki, she would have been nearly akumatized, too.

 But her determination and will power made her witness the couple’s sweet moments, again and again. Until she didn’t feel the bitter twinge on seeing them kiss. Until she managed to remain aloof even when they gave each other the gooey eyes. Until she felt no butterflies on seeing Adrien’s radiant smile.

Until her heart finally let go of Adrien. 

 “Musing about something, Ma-ma-marinette?”

The designer let out a squawk as she jumped nearly a foot in the air, turning around and coming face to face with Luka Couffaine.

 “Oh,” she chuckled nervously, straightening her dress, “it’s you.”

Luka laughed good-naturedly, causing Marinette to blush.

 Luka Couffaine had been her third true friend, and her closest confidant ever since the Battle of the Miraculous had taken place. He had been there for her, letting her cry her heart out. He didn’t prod her about what the reason for her breakdown was, just provided her the much needed shoulder. He had shielded her from the akuma cloud, sacrificing himself to save her.

 His music had helped calm her inner storm. But the most important thing? She still couldn’t forget his confession when he had been akumatized as Silencer.

  You’re the most extraordinary girl, Marinette. 

Clear as a musical note and as sincere as a melody. 

You’re the music that’s been playing inside my head since the day we first met. 

I won’t let anything happen to you.

 It still shook her to the core in a very pleasant way on thinking about that confession.

 Shaking herself out of her thoughts, Marinette smiled at the boy.

 “So, did you make anything new this time?” he asked inquisitively.

“Oh yes! Wanna see?”

“Always eager to.”

 They moved over to her designing stand where her sketchbook lay open. Thumbing through a few pages, Marinette reached her newest creation.

“So, I made this new addition to your mask! It’s just like the previous one, except the main color scheme has more of a bluish-white hue ‘cause I figured that blue’s kinda your colour. But this isn’t all! In the T-shirts, I added a calligraphed ‘Kitty Section’ design too, so as to promote the band! And maybe we can add some stitching designs here in the side for additional decor, though I haven’t given it much thought yet.” Marinette gushed, pointing out the various elements in her designs as Luka listened with rapt attention.

 “I love the change in colour scheme, Marinette,” he finally said, “And the design of the shirt looks awesome too. But…”

Luka’s voice trailed off, causing the designer to look at him inquisitively.

 “But what?”

He stayed silent for a moment, before asking in a low, gentle tone, “Are you alright?” 

 Her mouth went dry at the sudden question. Marinette had tried her best to keep her despair hidden from Kagami, when she had quoted his lines to her, but somehow, Luka still managed to know that she wasn’t alright. 

And that must have been the reason for his slip-up earlier during practise, she further deduced.

 “I—it’s no big deal, really!” she said, plastering a big smile on her face. “How about I tell you the colour scheme for the text on the shirt?” She said, attempting to change the subject.

The look on Luka’s face screamed that he didn’t believe her, but he smiled ruefully and gestured for her to continue. 

 Shooting him a grateful smile, Marinette placed the sketchbook back on the desk and picked up a coloured pencil from her assortment of paints and colours. But before she could colour the piece, a hand shot out of nowhere, knocking the red paint over her sketchbook.

Pulling her sketchbook back in reflex, Marinette jerked back and let out a moan of despair on noticing that she had been a second too late, for the red paint had managed to fall over the T-shirt design and ruin it completely. 

 “Oops, I am sorry! I didn’t notice the paint.” The voice did no good to Marinette, rather it turned her despair to anger.

Eyes sparking, she looked up at Lila, who had craftily masked her smug smirk under an expression that appeared apologetic. Balling her fists, she was about to lunge at the Italian lying doll before a hand on her shoulder stopped her. She looked up at Luka, who shook his head in the slightest way, assuring her with a look that he would take care of this situation.

 “You should have looked where you were going, Lila. You ruined the design now,” Luka pointed out, his brows slightly furrowed.

“Oh, I am sorry again,” Lila sniffled, before adding, “But shouldn’t Marinette have closed the paint after use? I mean, after that, even though I or someone else would have knocked it over by mistake, no harm would have been done, right?”

 Marinette was appalled at the disguised accusation, but didn’t say anything. She was used to Lila’s faux innocence and disguised blaming.

However, feeling Luka’s grip tighten on her shoulder, she could tell that he definitely wasn’t happy. And it made her feel glad.

 “Really though Lila, that excuse is utt—”

“Leave her out of it, Luka,” Rose spoke up from behind. “She obviously wouldn’t have meant it, right Lila?”

 The brunette nodded fervently. “Thank you so much for understanding me, Rose. You are the best!”

“No problem. Plus, Marinette’s so talented she can remake the design again! Right Marinette?” the blonde gushed happily.

 Sighing, Marinette pulled up a weak smile as she gave Rose a thumbs-up. She didn’t speak anything, though. Words simply failed her at the moment.

Everyone went back to their chit-chat, except for Adrien and Kagami who now came up to her.

 “I am sorry for what happened, Marinette,” Kagami said, her voice containing barely restrained anger as she glanced at Lila, “If only you had let me…”

 “It’s o-okay as I told you, ‘Gami,” the designer waved off the topic again as she ignored the slight choke in her throat and mild sting in her eyes. She turned to look at Adrien, shooting him a rueful look, “She really didn’t harm anyone, right?”

Adrien’s breath hitched and he suddenly became a lot interested in his shoes. As for Kagami, she finally understood why Marinette had chosen to repeat her previous statement again.

 “Anyways, I guess I should go back to make a new design, right? I can definitely do it!”

“But Marin—” Luka spoke up, but Marinette had turned back to her workstation, ignoring everyone.

 Kagami shot Adrien a look that spelled trouble, causing the blond to gulp. She pulled him away from the scene, leaving Luka there alone.

 He looked at the girl working on the design, the concern evident in his eyes. But if she didn’t want him to intervene, well, he was going to respect that.

Sighing, the musician slung his guitar over his shoulder and moved to give Marinette some space. However, he had forgotten to notice one thing.

  RIIPPP!

 The sound caught everyone’s attention, including Luka’s. Eyes bulging in shock, he looked down to find that his Jagged-Stone shirt had gotten stuck in some stray nail on the table and his movement had caused the fabric to tear a bit at the hem.

 Before he even got the idea to unhook his now damaged shirt from the nail, Lila jumped forward, announcing with a cheery tone, “I have been Gabriel Agreste’s muse for some weeks and things like this happen in the fashion industry! Don’t worry, I got this!”

 The brunette leaned down to unhook the shirt, but Luka caught the malicious glint in her eye before she applied a bit too much force, causing the tear to widen even more.

 “Oh goodness!” the girl wailed out in what Luka knew was a faux apologetic tone, “The fabric’s so old that it just got ripped even more! I am sorry Luka.”

Of course she didn’t mean the apology.

 Before Luka could say anything, Marinette spoke up, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Lila. Maybe you should not have intervened in the first place.”

Lila turned around to glower at her, before masking the foul look with an innocent pout, “You mean to say it’s my fault?”

 It was Mylene who spoke up now. “Marinette’s kind of right, Lila. Plus, she’s the most experienced with fabrics out of all of us. So, it’s better we let her deal with the situation, right?”

Lila pouted, but then nodded slightly in agreement as she got up. Luka was relieved to get distanced from the brunette. Plus, he always welcomed Marinette’s presence.

 Marinette smiled at him as she walked towards him. Her smile caused a soft melody to resonate in his heart. However, the subtle notes of a cacophony attracted his attention, too.

Just in time, Luka saw Lila subtly edging her foot out. As Marinette tripped, the brunette smirked a bit before continuing down her path.

 As she fell, Luka lurched forward, his arms spread out. She collided with his chest as he wrapped his arms around her waist, securing her fall. Her arms came to rest upon his shoulders for support.

 “You okay?” 

“Ye-yeah!” Marinette stuttered, her cheeks blooming pink. “Fine being here! I MEAN, I am fine, how are you?”

Luka chuckled, “I am fine too, thanks for asking.”

 The girl blushed again, before looking down, “So.. your shirt—”

“Oh yes,” he helped her stand up straight, then proceeded to unhook the shirt from the table. Marinette bent down to inspect the tear.

 “Wait,” Luka said softly, causing her to look up. “Let me remove my jacket, it would be easier.”

 The designer opened her mouth to assure him that it was fine like that, but he had removed the jacket by then. As he handed the jacket over to Juleka, Marinette couldn’t help but gawk at Luka’s physique. She had known he was well built from his time as Viperion, but this lean…

Coughing from lack of air, Marinette came back to reality, blushing hard. Luka looked at her inquisitively, causing her to duck her head and inspect the tear.

 Oh goodness, what a wrong choice she had made.

 Looking at his physique from far was something else, but seeing the bare skin beneath the tear caused her jaw to nearly drop to the ground. Being a designer, she knew she should be used to such situations, but somehow, in this particular situation, her mind just short circuited.

 Why was she looking at the shirt again? What was she supposed to do here?

 “So Marinette, do you think the tear can be mended?” Luka asked, causing her to nearly fall on her butt in shock.

 Oh. Mending. Right. Task at hand first, bare skin gawking later.

What the hell am I even thinking right now?

 Her hands deftly lifted the fabric, as she focused her mind on the rip and not the slight tangy, citrus smell mixed with sweat. It was hard, but she finally managed to get the job done.

 “It’s a manageable tear,” Marinette said as she got up and straightened her dress a little. “Not much, so a stitch in time can still save nine!”

“Awesome,” Luka said, delighted. “This is my favorite shirt, and I don’t want it to get damaged.”

 The girl reached into her purse and pulled out a needle and a white thread, “Well, let’s sew it together then!”

Luka smiled in return, before noticing that everyone around them were silently giving him and Marinette the lovey-dovey eyes. That didn’t trouble him much, but the icy glare that Lila was pointing at Marinette…

 “How about we go to my cabin?” Luka offered, causing Marinette to look at him in confusion. “You know, because the wind can make the shirt flutter, and then again…”

He subtly gestured at something, and out of the corner of her eye, Marinette noticed Lila glaring daggers at her. Gulping a little and then laughing nervously, she said, “Oh sure! Downstairs it is then!”

 The guitarist smiled slightly, holding his hand out to her. Marinette put her hand in his and let him guide her.

 All the way, she kept marvelling at how despite the difference in sizes, their hands had perfectly fit with each other.

[hopes4gf]

Thievery and Mischief- (a descendants/marvel crossover)

1 month later, me and Jay officially public! Which took extreme relief off my chest obviously. Everyone in my interviews constantly asks me about Jay and our relationship. Questions like: How do you spend time with him? What is he like with you? What are some cute things he does for you? Where have you gone together? So on and so forth. 

To be very honest, it’s intimidating knowing that we were destined to be enemies and suddenly fall for each other  AND try to keep it private. It’s super taboo among all the royals; Heroes and Villains hooking up and dating. Anyways, enough about that. 

Among all the chaos of being a celebrity, I decided to mix some music and release an album. So, I usually head to the AV club to record.

While I’m writing some of my lyrics, I think of a beat to lay down. But then I remember that my producer, Yoongi is at interviews with Namjoon and the rest of the boys. Suddenly, almost like the gods above heard my thoughts, Jay walks in.

”I knew you’d be in here,” Jay says, opening the door and seeing me in the booth.

”I’m always here now,” I say with a smile.

He walks over and plants a kiss on my cheek.

”What’re you working on this time?” Jay asks.

”This damn album. I have a couple of songs done already with Yoongi and Joon but we had to pull some things. Drafts, in other words. So, now I have to fill those in with songs from scratch,” I say.

”Ah, I see. So then, what’s the theme of the album?” Jay asks.

”Unrequited love. So like cheating, fantasies, and low-key bad bitch energies,” I describe.

He chuckles at my description and takes my sketchbook from my hands.

”Hmm, unrequited love. That song you first showed me a while ago should work. And...how about this one? Fools? Never seen this one,” Jay says, stumbling on one of my pages.

”That song...I wrote when I saw Chad’s DMS. I wrote it in like...five minutes,” I note.

Jay’s eyes widened, impressed by my quick songwriting skills.

”Well then, we should put it on a beat,” Jay says, getting up to sit in the producers' deck.

”What’re you doing?” I ask, through the mic.

”I’ll whip something up for you, we’ll work on it if you want, put your vocals on it and we’d be done in like 20 minutes,” Jay explains.

”I have to record 4 songs,” I add, furrowing my brows.

”Bet, we’ll be done in 2 hours,” Jay says.

I roll my eyes at his antics.

I listen through my headphones and hear the different beats being mixed. The bass, the melody, the dynamics of the drums with the SFX. 

I watch as he grabs an electric guitar and strums a couple of chords. I laugh as he catches me staring at him. His eyes focus on the strings of the guitar as he strums. Then, he switches back to the monitors, adjusting the bpm and tuning the guitar recording. I watch as he bites his tongue and furrows his brows as he focuses on the monitor in front of him.

He turns to me and presses the listen button.

”I’m done! Just listen to it,” He says.

He presses play and I hear some tropical whistles at the beginning leading to a synth beat. It’s a very head bop vibe, like a road trip song. I hear his guitar in the back very faintly behind the synth. Then a pause until the smoother synth emerges. My head hops along to the beat of the track. I look at him and smile through the booth window. He winks in pride as he sees me enjoying the song.

Then, it finishes.

”I think I’d like to lay some vocals down,” I say into the mic.

”Woah there, not too hasty. We gotta establish a melody first,” Jay says with a smirk.

I laugh and leave the booth, I join him by the desk with my book ready in hand.

We listen to the track over and over again. Figuring out what notes to hit, figuring out the tones, dynamics, and rhythms my voice is going to establish. While I’m humming along to the track, Jay suddenly stops it.

”I think you should start recording,” Jay suggests.

A nervous blush crosses my face.

”But we still have to figure out the backup and effects and-“ 

He covers my nervousness by kissing my lips. He lays a sweet and loving kiss on my lips and pulls away once I’m relaxed.

”Baby, you’ll be perfect. We’re gonna get these songs done, you’re gonna get this album done, you’re gonna get all the awards for this album and you’re gonna be a superstar. And don’t worry about me, because I’m gonna be right here when you do, okay?” Jay assures, staring into my hazel eyes with deep appreciation.

I nod, taking in his words.

He smiles and kisses my cheek.

”Get in that booth and knock 'em dead,” Jay says with a kind smile.

I get up from my seat and I walk back into the booth. I put on my headphones and take a breath.

”Let’s go,” I say to Jay, telling him to run the track.

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

youtu.be/eY_eqNHguwg

After 2 takes of recording, we finished the track. We listen back to it a couple of times and adjust the tone of my vocals and the effects. I focus on the beat in the back to see if my voice lines up...and it’s super good.

"And who the hell taught you how to be such a good mixer?" I ask Jay.

He laughs at my question, "You don't have to know" Jay says as he stares at the monitor, saving the document and uploading it to the zip file of songs. I glare at him and he sighs.

"To be very honest, I learned through parties. On the Isle, we used to sneak out at midnight and go to Hades's lair to listen to music, do graffiti, and party. My dad would always fall asleep trying to keep an eye on me but I would always try to sneak out and go to those parties just to sit and watch from the DJ booth," Jay says.

"So you picked it up like a hobby?" I ask.

"Yeah, kind of," Jay agrees.

"You should really invest in this," I suggest.

He stares at me dumbfoundedly.

'Yeah, right. I'd rather be a Tourney coach in the future than selling music, I'm better at it, and plus, I'd rather have an all-exclusive contract with you so we can keep doing this," Jay says.

I laugh at his little joke about contracts.

"Anyways, we've got 3 more songs to record," I add.

"No problem, just give me the lyrics for it and I'll be done in a couple of minutes," Jay says, extending a hand to my sketchbook," Jay says.

I hesitantly pulled the book closer to my chest.

"Come on. I need material to work with. If we're gonna work together, you need to trust me," Jay says.

I hesitantly hand him my sketchbook and he takes it in his hands. He flips through the pages of the book past my art and gets to my lyric pages. He picks the ones he likes and focuses his attention back on the monitor.

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

Eventually, we finish recording the songs and we listen back to them. They're all perfect in my eyes and we send them to the zip file. 

"Babe, thanks for helping me out with this, I couldn't have done this without your help," I say to Jay.

"Of course, Adri. I know how hard you work to do this stuff, and if you ever need any help just please ask," jay says.

I stare at him and smile. He looks back at me with admiration in his eyes. Then, he leans in to kiss me. I kiss back and our lips enter a passionate tango. To deepen the kiss, I stand and sit over his lap, straddling him in his seat. He wraps his arms around my waist and his hands graze over my body. But before we can progress, my phone starts to buzz in my back pocket. I pull away from the kiss and scoff.

"I'm gonna assume that's Katie," Jay asks.

I take my phone and of my pocket and nod. I answer the phone.

"Hello?"

"Adri, pack your things. You've got a tour to prep for," Katie says through the phone.

My eyes widen at her words.

"Tour? We got approved by every venue?" I ask her, emotion building in my voice.

"Every single one," She says excitedly through the phone.

I pause for a second a smile emerges on my face. I turn to see Jay's reaction and he stares at my frame with a big smile on his face.

"That's perfect! And right on time too. I just finished up the album in the studio," I say happily.

"Awesome! So then we just have to send it through the admins and copyright and then you can start prepping the choreo for the concert," Katie says.

"Of course! And thank you for telling me this," I say before hanging up the phone.

I turn slowly and see Jay waiting for me to speak.

"I just got approved for a tour," I say out loud.

Jay lifts off from his seat and hugs me tightly.

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

After a month of preparation, we finally have a full-fledged tour with a newly released album and headliners! It was a big decision but I had decided to have Brendon's band, Panic! At the Disco, headline my tour. How could I not have one of my favorite artists on this planet headline for me? Anyways, the album has been a huge success for me. My single, "Home with You," has been on the Billboard Chart for 2 weeks straight! This debut has been an enormous success for my career so far, surprisingly my mom was even happy with the album too. Now, the day had arrived, the first leg of the tour. My debut. 

I walk down the halls of the large stadium, watching as Panic's drum set is hauled down the hall, I feel butterflies enter my stomach. I walk towards Brendon's dressing room and walk through the door.

"There's my favorite girl!" Brendon says with a smile as he works on his iconic hair.

He puts down a bottle of hairspray and comes over to hug me. 

"You know, the fact that you're here makes everything so much better," I say.

Brendon laughs at my comment.

"It's your first tour! I remember my first tour, I was your age, I was living out of my car with the band, and I had just left Vegas. I thought we were failures. But you, you are definitely not a failure. You are a boss! You've got talent, kid. Now, go and show it," He says, reassuring me.

Before I can respond, the door opens to Mike, the guitar player for Brendon's band.

"Yo, we gotta start tuning up," Mike says.

I turn to Brendon and give him a smile.

"Thanks, I needed that," I say.

He pats my shoulder and we start to file out to the hall. As we walk down the hall, the crew moves all the set pieces to the stage. Behind a crate, I see a familiar person. Then, suddenly my heart drops. 

Hayley.

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

I was 14 when I had my first kiss. But it wasn't Chad who gave it to me. It was Hayley Red. Daughter of Red Riding Hood. Absolutely badass, funny, adventurous. She was someone who made me really question myself as a whole.

There was always something about her that was alluring. Her eyes, her clothing, her personality. I was so keen on trying to figure out what made me so attracted to her. Then, when I met Chad I realized that my feelings for her weren't normal. After that damn party with the " situation," I had a feeling. A feeling that would change me.

She was the person I wanted to run to. So I did.

She comforted me, something I didn't think she would do since she always had this tough exterior all the time. She was the one who made me feel safe when everything in my life fell apart. She was the one who told Lonnie to take care of me. Hayley was someone who loved me unconditionally. One day she had to leave and eventually, we stopped talking after I fell into depression, Lonnie likes to remind me that her departure was what got my depression much worse.

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

Now, absolutely glued to the floor. I realize that Brendon is now standing in front of her, speaking to her. My heart sinks into my stomach suddenly as she realizes that I'm staring at her.

"Adri?" She calls from across the room.

My legs start to walk towards her unconsciously.

"Hi, Hayley," I say softly.

"You two know each other," Brendon assumes.

"Of course, she was my first girlfriend," Hayley comments.

Brendon's eyes widen.

"Oh shit," Brendon says.

Hayley looks at my frame up and down.

"You've changed so much since then," Hayley chuckles through a smile.

"You have no idea how much happened for me to get here," I say.

"Hell yeah, I mean you've got this sick venue, you were a royal advisor, your album is currently number one. I'm sure there's been a lot," Hayley says.

Suddenly, I feel arms snake around my waist and I roll my eyes.

'Jay, stop it," I say awkwardly as Jay grips my hips.

"What? I can't help it that I love you," Jay says cheekily.

I pulls his hands from my waist.

"Hayley, this is my boyfriend, Jay," I say.

Hayley blushes softly and extends her hand.

"Shit, man. It is so great to meet you. Honestly, I didn't think she'd have a boyfriend after Chad," Hayley says cheekily.

I scoff at her comment and watch as Jay shakes her hand.

"I didn't think I'd be her boyfriend after Chad either, but I guess I'm just lucky," Jay tells her.

I roll my eyes at his words.

"So how do you know Adri?" Jay asks.

I blush heavily after he asks this, Hayley looks at my face and laughs.

"We're exes, but it's all chill now," Hayley comments.

Jay's eyes widen softly and he turns to me. "Shit, I'm sorry if this is kind of awkward," Jay says to me.

"You just realized?" I say through gritted teeth.

"Don't worry, it's all cool. Plus, she's a cool girl, and if she thinks she's found someone who makes her as happy as she deserves, I've got no problems," Hayley says honestly.

My brows furrow at the situation, Hayley stands next to Jay confidently and they watch for my reaction.

The speaker suddenly reminds the band that they have 5 minutes until the show starts. Brendon excuses himself, reminding us that he's been standing there. He winks at me and I roll my eyes at his action.

"Hey, can we talk?" Hayley says, tapping my arm.

I nod and I follow her into a dressing room. She closes the door and I stand by the wall.

"Fuck, I am so sorry for not texting or calling you after so long," Hayley says in relief.

My eyes widen at her sudden sigh.

"Lonnie keeps reminding me about you," I say.

"Of course she does. So, tell me. What've you been up to since then?" Hayley asks.

I gulp.

"If you don't wanna talk about it, it's fine," Hayley says, grabbing an apple from a fruit basket in the corner of the room.

"No, It's okay. So...after you left, I went into self-quarantine. I did classes in my dorm room. I had an eating disorder. I started having anxiety, so I got a relief pet. A tiger named Roxie," I start.

"So, was Sophomore year just a relief period?" Hayley asks, taking a bite of her apple.

"Yeah. Lonnie would check on me all the time, bring me lunch, talk to my brother about my health. Go to doctor's appointments, go to therapy, and by the summer I was fine. I started getting my friends back, reconnecting with my hobbies, I met people from the business, I started joining clubs, skating, and then by the start of this year, everything was pretty much normal...until Chad's restraining order expired. He started talking shit again and trying to intimidate me with his toxic masculinity. But then, Jay showed up and stood up to him for me. Then, we started doing things together and talking. Kind of like how we did, and then he started flirting a little more heavily than his regular playboy attitude and he asked me out with help of my brother and his friends. And we've been dating since then," I explain.

Hayley digests my information while biting her apple.

"Shit, man. Depression really can fuck you up like that. And you made music on top of that? And did school? That's badass. I'm actually proud," Hayley says.

I smile at her comment.

"That means a lot coming from you," I say softly.

"You know, I actually had a rough period myself. The reason I left was actually was because my grandpa had died. His death affected me a lot. Then, my mom found out about you and that I was lesbian, so she forced me to leave. She tried so hard to make me lose all that I had already established for myself. And on top of that, I had to be strong. It's tough. That's why I'm quite proud that you're doing so well after that. Me, I'm still a train-wreck," Hayley explains.

We continue our conversation later into the night, leading up to my performance, catching up like old friends.

[macaronsforchat]

Adrinette April Day 10 - Charm Bracelets

@adrinetteapril

read on ao3!

Marinette didn’t know if she could face Adrien, not that it was easy to be around him anyway. She couldn’t believe she’d lost it.

She slumped as she walked into the classroom, hearing Adrien’s polite laugh as Nino joked around with him. He sounded like he was in a good mood. Could Marinette really ruin that?

As she passed his seat, she opened her mouth to tell him, but her nerves got the better of her. She rushed to sit down, putting her face in her hands.

Marinette decided to wait until the school day was over, catching him just outside the locker room. She knew he had fencing practice, so she couldn’t take too long to break the news to him.

“Adri-” she started, bumping into him as he turned around at the sound of her voice. He caught her before she stumbled, holding her forearms gently.

“Hey, Marinette. You okay?” he asked, letting her go. She chuckled, playing with one of her pigtails.

“Uh, yeah,” she started. “There’s something I need t-to tell you,” she spoke quietly, not excited about his reaction. He blinked at her expectantly, smiling.

“Your charm bracelet. I mean, the charm bracelet that you gave to me,” she prefaced, and he grinned, nodding knowingly. She bit her bottom lip, wondering if there was a better way to just come out and say it. Either way, she knew he’d be upset, so she figured it didn’t matter how she said it.

“I lost it,” she sighed out, staring at the tips of her shoes. She could only imagine the hurt on his face, but she didn’t know if she’d be able to handle it.

“Okay!” he said, and Marinette looked up, startled. “I’ll help you look for it.” She blinked in shock, staring at him.

“What? Really?” she asked incredulously. He nodded, smiling at her just as brightly as before.

“Of course, Marinette! With my Marinette Lucky Charm, we’re sure to find it!” he spoke excitedly, patting his pocket. She blushed lightly, continually surprised that he carried it with him everywhere he went.

“Wait outside Ms. Bustier’s classroom for me, okay?” he said, placing a brief hand on her shoulder. She nodded, and he let go, jogging off.

She posted herself by the door of the classroom, and within a minute or two, Adrien ran up.

“Sorry, I was getting out of fencing practice,” he breathed, smiling at her.

“What? Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” she spoke, waving her hands. Was he really going to that much trouble for her?

“I told Mr. D'Argencourt that my father wanted me home and to not mention it because he was in a bad mood,” Adrien chuckled to himself, glancing down towards the courtyard.

“You did that for me?” she asked aloud, staring at him in disbelief.

“Of course, Marinette,” he smiled, looking back down at her. She blushed again, glancing into the classroom.

“Wanna get started? I’ve only got until fencing practice ends,” he told her, and she nodded.

They checked every place Marinette had been at school. She had only noticed that she’d lost it the night before, so she concluded it must have gotten lost within the previous day.

When they came up empty, Marinette sighed.

“We’ll find it, don’t worry,” he smiled, and she admired him. How could he stay so positive? “Do you wanna check your house next?” Marinette jumped a little, not expecting that he would want to come over.

“Are you sure?” she wondered, seeing him nod at her. She glanced around, as if looking for a way out of it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want his help or for him to come over, but she needed to clean her room. He couldn’t see that.

“Won’t Mr. D'Argencourt see you when we leave?” she wondered, turning to look at him again. His smile slowly faded, and he brought his hand up to tap his chin thoughtfully. She giggled to herself, thinking it was cute. If he’d heard her, he chose to ignore it. He turned away too quickly for her to notice his blush, though.

Before she knew it, he’d taken her hand and was pulling her down the stairs towards the courtyard where fencing practice was. While Mr. D'Argencourt was turned around, they snuck back into the locker room.

“We can go throw the window,” he spoke softly in case there was anyone in there with them. As he slid the window open, Marinette glanced at him, seeing the determination on his face. She couldn’t believe that they were going to sneak out of a window because Adrien was so set on helping her find her Lucky Charm.

He offered her his hand, and she took it, stepping onto the windowsill and jumping down from the small height onto the grass by the side of the school. He followed her, landing gracefully.

“Adrien?” someone called from the window. Adrien tensed up, mouthing a silent “run” to Marinette. They both ran until they reached the Dupain-Cheng Bakery, and since a short run like that was nothing compared to what she did as Ladybug, Marinette couldn’t help but laugh when she’d stopped her sprint.

Adrien glanced at her, beginning to laugh as well. She noticed that he was barely out of breath as well, wondering if he had to work out as part of being a model.

He looked at her once they’d stopped laughing, opening the door to the bakery for her.

“Thank you,” she said politely, smiling as her parents turned to greet her from behind the counter.

“Hey, sweetie,” her mom smiled, and she walked over to give them both a kiss on the cheek. They both glanced behind her, shooting each other a look. Marinette attempted to explain, but it was too late.

“Hello, Adrien!” her dad boomed, moving to shake his hand vigorously. Adrien blinked quickly, smiling nervously.

“Hello again, sir,” he spoke, his voice wobbling slightly as her dad continued to shake his hand.

“Dad!” Marinette hissed, and Tom finally let go. He rubbed the back of his head, laughing innocently.

“It’s nice to see you again, Adrien,” Sabine smiled, reaching to hand him a chocolate croissant. He took it graciously, smiling towards Marinette.

“It’s good to see you too, Mrs. Cheng. I came over today to help Marinette look for a gift I gave her that she accidentally misplaced,” he told them steadily. Marinette bit her tongue, knowing her parents would have their opinion about that subject, as they did with everything.

“Marinette? You--” Tom started, but Marinette grabbed Adrien’s free hand before he could get out much more and pulled him through to the apartment.

“Yep, thanks Dad!” she called as she closed the door, sighing in relief when they were alone again. She realized that she was still holding his hand, looking up at him in panic and seeing that he had a mouthful of the croissant he’d been given. He glanced over at her, both of them glancing down at their hands. Marinette let go first, laughing nervously. Adrien turned his head, pretending to cough a little.

“Sorry about that,” she said, and he shook his head.

“No problem,” he said once his mouth was no longer full. She began to walk up to the apartment, and he followed, finishing the croissant quickly.

When she pushed open the door to their apartment, she began thinking of all the places the bracelet could be. When she remembered that her room needed to be cleaned, she panicked a little.

“Do you mind checking over by the couch, Adrien?” she asked, glancing up at her trapdoor.

“Sure,” he smiled, walking over to the living room area.

“I’ll be right back,” she said quickly, dashing up the stairs and throwing open the trapdoor. She started cleaning rapidly, Tikki pitching in as well. Marinette was putting all the pictures of Adrien away as fast as she could, and thankfully he didn’t ask about it when she went back downstairs.

“Nothing over here,” he told her, standing by the couch. “Well, except,” he started, and she glanced over at him, seeing that he was holding up her other thigh-high sock that she’d thought she’d lost. Her Chat Noir themed thigh-high sock.

“Oh,” she laughed tensely, reaching over to take it from him, trying not to seem so sheepish.

“Are you embarrassed? Because I think it’s pretty cool,” he smiled at her, and she wondered if he was flushed from running from the school and then searching around in their stuffy apartment, or if he was blushing. Why would he be blushing?

“Th-thanks,” she stuttered, folding the sock and glancing around shyly as her cheeks became red. Why was she blushing now?

“I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in my room,” she got out, seeing him nod and walk towards her, eventually following her up the stairs.

She sighed, knowing the Lucky Charm could be anywhere. Adrien sat down on her chaise, absentmindedly checking underneath the pillows.

Marinette plopped down on her desk chair, sighing.

“I’m sorry to make you look with me,” she told him, glancing over. He shook his head, leaning towards her a little.

“I wanna help, Marinette. It’s actually been really fun,” he smiled to himself, looking around the room. “And I always forget how cute your room is.” She blushed again, her eyes wide.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, and he smiled.

“Oh, have you checked under your desk?” he asked, and Marinette got down on the floor to look. “I would help you look more thoroughly, but I don’t wanna go through your stuff. I figured I could suggest places that you might not think to look,” he told her, and she stood back up, not finding it.

“That’s really sweet of you,” she said, constantly in awe of how kind Adrien was.

“Anything for you, Marinette,” he smiled softly, and she blushed, turning away. Why was he so cute?

Adrien suggested more places for her to look, making himself more and more comfortable on her chaise. Marinette could tell that he was tired, his body slowly stretching out more and more.

“Maybe it fell off the side of your bed?” he offered, yawning quietly. She glanced at him, wondering if he was getting enough sleep.

“Good idea,” she mused, climbing the ladder to her loft and feeling around the edges of her bed. She came up empty, but as she pulled her hand away, she bumped her pillow. She heard the faint, familiar sound of the beads of the Lucky Charm knocking together. She ran her hands under her pillow, finally finding Adrien’s gift to her.

“I found it!” she exclaimed, holding it up for Adrien to see.

“Great! I’m so glad, Marinette,” he grinned, sitting up.

“Thank you so much for helping me, Adrien,” she sighed happily, clutching the Lucky Charm to her chest. She crawled to the edge of her bed, leaning over the railing to see him better.

“Maybe you’re a good lu—“ she started, but she lost her balance, sending herself head-first over the railing and towards the floor. She let out a squeak, holding the Lucky Charm tightly so it wouldn’t break on impact. But as she squeezed her eyes shut, she realized there wasn’t going to be an impact.

Adrien had caught her, and her mind was too fuzzy to wonder how he’d gotten to her so quickly. He sighed out in relief, holding her surprisingly tightly before loosening his grip.

“Are you alright?” he asked, staring at her worriedly, their faces a little too close.

“Y-yes,” she nodded, blushing. Her heart was racing for many reasons, but one of them was the fact that he wasn’t putting her down, his arms so effortlessly holding her weight.

“What were you going to say?” he asked, and she tensed a little.

“Oh, well,” she laughed nervously, blushing. “I was going to say…” she trailed off, and glancing up, his eyes were too curious.

“I was gonna say that maybe you’re a good luck charm too,” she finally said, and his eyes widened a little.

“You really think so?” he asked, and she blushed more. He was so close.

“I don’t think I would have found it without you, so yeah,” she told him, smiling. He stared at her for a moment longer, then blinked rapidly, realizing he was still holding her.

“Thank you for catching me, by the way,” Marinette said as he let her down, and he chuckled.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself one of these days,” he chuckled, putting his hands on his hips.

“Probably,” she giggled, looking back up at him. His phone beeped at him, and he glanced at it, sighing out.

“Practice is over,” he told her, placing a hand on your shoulder. “Thanks for hanging out with me. It was a lot more fun than fencing,” he grinned, starting towards the trapdoor.

“You’re welcome,” she smiled, waving and noticing her knees were a little weak.

“See you tomorrow at school!” he called from down the stairs, sounding like he was running pretty fast. She giggled, looking down at the Lucky Charm in her hands fondly.

Marinette fell asleep that night with a smile on their face; knowing that a piece of her was always with him meant the world to her.

~~~~~

this one was rushed, and maybe you can tell, but I’m satisfied with the way it came out. 

i hope you all liked it! thank you for reading! <3

[arobandhan]

first time

enjoyyyyy i love you @balenciagastones xx

Since meeting, Alex and Hannah had three small dates, mostly consisting of hanging out together either at the park, on a drive to Costa, and hanging at his house. The two of them had yet to make it official though they knew it was inevitable, they were hooked to each other from the first meeting and there was no sign of stopping what they had. 

But nevertheless Alex wanted to take Hannah out on a proper date, one where he can show her how serious he was about their newly found relationship. 

He had called her when he knew she was out of class, he had just gotten home from training, it finally being Friday, no weekend game ahead. 

“Hello handsome.” she answered the phone making him smile widely at the nickname 

“Hello love, how was class?” he replied

“Boring as usual, got no new work for the weekend tho which is a blessing, howd training go?” she countered

“Well that’s good at least love, training was good just a bit tiring but it's alright,” he began, “y'know i was wonderingggg..” he dragged out making her giggle on the other side of the phone, his stomach erupting with butterflies at the sound.

“You were saying..” she giggled more wanting to hear his thoughts. 

“Right i was wondering if you wanted to go on a date tonight?” he asked

“Sounds fun, handsome, I can come over and we can watch movies if you want?” she replied 

“No no i was thinking like a proper date… like we can dress up a bit and go out somewhere nice,” he can hear her breath stop, “what do you think pretty girl?” 

“You know you don't have to take me anywhere nice for a date baby, i hope you know that.” 

“No i know love i just really wanna go out somewhere nice with you and you deserve it after a long week of school,” he started and he could hear her smile, “so what do you say beautiful?” 

“Alright I’m in.” she giggled. 

“Perfect beautiful, I’ll pick you up at 8? Does that sound good?” he asked 

“I'll see you then robertson.” she laughed. 

“See you soon angel.” 

And with that the call ended, the young couple both climbed up the stairs in their respective homes to get ready for their date night.

Alex felt like a teenage girl as he looked over his appearance about a billion times before calling his sister for her opinion. 

“TAYLORRR!” he yelled hoping his older sister would hear him. Next he saw was her opening his door. 

“What do you want weirdo?” he turned to her with a plea for help.

“Does this look good for a date with Hannah tonight?” 

She walked over to him and got a closer look, pondering before walking over to his closet grabbing his black Palm Angels zip up hoodie and handing it over to him.

“Wear this over your tshirt, it’ll complete the look,” she stated, “oo and wear one of your thin chains tonight, im sure Hannah would love it.” she finished sitting on his bed as she watched her brother finish getting ready. 

“Okay, how do i look?” he asked, completely ready. 

“Perfect, is she staying over tonight?” she asked making him nod remembering the text convo he had with hannah about 10 minutes before, “Well i'm heading to Josh’s tonight… and mum and dad won't be back from their event till lateee.” 

“What Are you trying to say Tay?” he looked at her. 

“Just use protection alright, and ask for consent please, I like Hannah for you so don’t fuck it up,” she said standing up, “Alright be safe, love you byeee” and with that she was gone. 

Alex looked one last time in the mirror before texting hannah. 

I'm gonna head over in 5, see you soon pretty girl xx 

Hannah was currently on facetime with Adri showing her how the outfit the two of them picked earlier looked together, she read the text before replying. 

okay see you soon handsome xx 

“Okay Alex is leaving his to pick me up now,” she said, clicking the facetime call to see Adri’s face again, “how do we look?” 

“Damn i have good taste!” Adri sighed happily making Hannah laugh. 

“That you do now does it look alright?” 

“It looks perfect Han, just pair it with your jewelry and you’re gonna take Alex’s breath away when he sees you.” she said smiling  

“I wouldn't go that far with that.” 

“Uhhh yes you should tho, from what i know and have heard from you, you have that boy wrapped around your finger, it's only a matter of time he makes it official with you and y’know maybe have a bit more fun with you….” 

“ADS?!” 

“Whattt im just stating the inevitable, i mean you guys are going on a nice date, you're staying the night at his, and if i'm not mistaken you mentioned that you shaved every part of your body in the shower.” Adri looked at her knowingly. 

“I mean yeah i did but it doesn't mean anything is gonna happen, i just like being clean shaven.” 

“So the black panties you picked out mean nothing?” Adri pointed out and Hannah began to blush. 

“No they just match the outfit as a matter of a fact.” 

“Mhmm yeah you keep telling yourself that, just be safe tonight, i know how much you wanna jump him already.” she laughed making Hannah giggle as she looked at herself in the mirror, turning her head to stick her tongue out at her friend. 

“We’ll just have to see what happens I guess.” 

“Yes we will and you better update me.” Adri responded just as Hannah received a text from Alex. 

I’m outside princess coming to the door xx 

“Is prince charming here?” adri asked 

Then a knock was heard at the front door, Hannah's mom shouting that it was Alex waiting. 

“Indeed he is, i have to go love you lots.” 

“Love you too, use protection.” Adri finished and hung up before hannah could reply to her comment, rolling her eyes at her friend's words. 

She grabbed her overnight bag, heading down the stairs seeing Alex in the front doorway. 

“Well don't you clean up nicely.” she flirted making him chuckle nervously, he couldn’t help but be amazed at how beautiful she always looked, especially tonight, 

“Have you looked at yourself angel you look beautiful.” he said, making her quickly peck his lips smiling and blushing madly. 

“You two have fun.” her mom said as they walked out to his car, Alex had grabbed her overnight bag from her and carried it to his car, placing it in the trunk quickly.

Alex being the gentleman he is, opened the door for Hannah, closing the door once she was seated inside. Running around the front of his car he sat down inside and turned to her. 

“Ready to go?” he asked, she nodded her head smiling widely. He leaned over and gave her a proper kiss for the first time that night. “Been waiting for that all day.” he sighed contently making her giggle and grab his hand to intertwine with his. 

The car ride was filled with singing to music, banter, and lots of small flirty comments. They soon reached the restaurant and Alex brought her hand to his lips pressing a kiss on the back of it as he pulled into the parking spot. 

“Oooo look at you skilled driver.” she teased making him laugh. 

“What can i say i’m a man of many talents,” he winked, “wait there imma open the door for you.” he finished, giving her a short kiss before hopping out of the car, opening the door for her to get out, grabbing her hand to help her out not letting go as they walked towards the entrance of the cute little restaurant they came to. 

“This place is so cute baby i love it.” 

“Im glad pretty girl.” the two of them walked in and a little while later were taken to their table.  

Alex pulled out the chair for Hannah earning a small peck on the cheek from her making him smirk slightly before taking his seat across from her. 

“So far you have received a 100/10 rating baby.” she giggled making her boyfriend chuckle as they looked at the menu, ordering some soft drinks for themselves. 

The two of them had small talk, as well as joking around due to Alex starting a game about guessing what everyone in the restaurant was thinking, the two of them having to keep their laughs to a low volume so they wouldn’t get kicked out. 

When their food came they each ate their food, as well as giving the other person a bite when they asked for one, you would never think they hadn’t been a thing for very long due to how they acted. The two of them continued before they were interrupted by an older couple passing by their table. 

“Sorry to interrupt i just wanted to come over and say how cute you two look together, match made in heaven i can tell,” she smiled making the young couple melt, “he’s a handsome one pretty lady, keep him close.” she winked before bidding them goodbye. The two of them bursting out in laughter. 

“Did you hear that baby gotta keep me close cuz im handsomeeee.” he winked 

“She seemed pretty interested in you wanna have her stay over tonight?” she joked making him laugh. 

“Nahhh you know you're the only one i want in my bed tonight.” he smirked 

“Cheeky boy.” she rolled her eyes playfully. 

“Have i told you how gorgeous you look right now.” 

“No but please tell me more.” she responded, putting her chin in her hands smiling, joking around but he continued talking. 

“Well all im gonna say is i think thats my favorite dress of yours,” he winked, “let me take a picture of you i want it to be my lockscreen, say cheese.” he said pulling out his phone 

Hannah smiled slightly seeing him take the picture, you could see the light blush on her cheeks and Alex had never adored someone more, taking a sip of his drink while putting the picture as his lock screen.

“Well since we’re being paparazzi, look at me so i can get a pic of you too, can have matching lock screens from tonight.” she said doing the same as him, he posed still taking sip from his drink, his phone in his other hand. 

“How do i look? Handsome?” he winked

“As always.” she responded, putting the picture as her lockscreen. 

The check came and even though she insisted they split, Alex paid repeating to her that he was treating her tonight. They made their way out of the restaurant hand in hand towards the car. 

“I can’t get over how good you look in this dress.” he said pulling her in closer to his side, wrapping his arm around her waist and pressing a kiss to her temple. A blush creeped up to her cheeks making her smile from ear to ear. 

He opened the car door for her and let her in before closing it and climbing in on the other side. 

“Is anyone at your house?” she asked innocently. 

“Umm no, Taylor went to Josh’s for the night, and mum and dad are at some event for mum’s work,” he replied, “why?” 

“No nothing really was just wondering since i hadn’t seen them since last time i was over.”

“Youre so cute angel.” he chuckled 

“Well i try.” she laughed flipping her hair. 

They eventually reached his house and he climbed out first going to the trunk to grab her bag before coming to her side and opening the door for her. 

They both entered the house in silence and headed towards his room, she took off her jacket and heels as he put her bag down and then laid on the bed. She crawled on the bed and laid next to him. He immediately changed positions, moving on his side with his right arm around her waist as she laid on her back. He was slightly above her just smiling like a little boy. 

“Whatre you smiling for you cheeky boy?” she giggled. 

“Nothinggg just like seeing you in my bed.” he smirked pecking her lips. 

“Oh do you now?” she said pecking his lips again. 

“Mhmm.” he responded pecking her lips, this time she pulled him by his shirt closer and deepened the kiss. 

Their lips moving in sync, her hands going from his shirt to his hair, pulling at it as they fought for dominance with their lips. The two of them completely entranced in each other just contently kissing. 

He pulled away first breathing heavily but still so close to her face, their noses touching. 

“Be mine.” he breathed out. 

“I’m already yours baby.” she responded. 

“No i mean be mine as is in my girlfriend, i want you to be my girlfriend Hannah.” and with those words slipping from his mouth hers grew into a smile that could challenge the cheshire cat. 

She brought his lips to his for a short and passionate kiss. 

“I’d love to be your girlfriend Alex.” pulling away, the wide smile not fading from her face. 

He smiled and smashed his lips onto hers again. This time the kiss was rougher, hungrier. 

The two of them were no angels, they had teased each other to a point where they had to stop from going further, make out sessions that were ended with images engraved into their brains when they were alone in their respective rooms giving themselves what they couldn’t receive from the other person yet. 

They wanted to take it slow, not wanting to rush something that they knew was going to happen eventually. Wanting to be sure of their feelings for one another. 

They were sure as hell of them tonight. 

Hannah was the first one to make a move essentially leading towards that, placing her hands on his shoulders, sliding the zip up hoodie off his shoulders as it was eventually taken off of him. 

Alex then hovered over Hannah once he was rid of the outer garment, his hands immediately went to her hips, their lips never losing contact. The skirt of the dress riding up as his hands grabbed tighter around her hips. He pulled away from her lips, tugging her bottom lip with his teeth inciting a small moan from her mouth. His eyes went wide and her face was red from the blush that creeped up. 

“Fuck that was hot.” he said lowly. 

She smirked and leaned up smashing her lips onto his again. He leaned them both back down as they continued making out, her hands went underneath the shirt hinting at him to take it off. He did and all she can do was stare at his toned torso. He smirked connecting their lips again, his hands pushing the skirt of her dress up even more, giving him just the faintest sight of the black lace panties she was wearing underneath. She leaned them both up as she guided his hands from her hips to the back of her dress where he could feel the small zipper that held the dress closed, motioning him to take it off her. 

He pulled away from her and cupped her face. 

“Are you sure you want this angel?” he pecked her lips. 

She smiled and replied, “More than anything baby.” and with that she reconnected their lips and go right back to where they were. 

His hands went to her back, slowly unzipping the dress down, he leaned back as her hands went up to the straps of the dress pulling them down to show him that she wasn't wearing a bra underneath the dress. He moaned at the sight of her bare tits in front of him. His lips going straight to her neck as her hands went into his hair moaning at the feeling of him leaving a trail of marks on her neck. His hands pulling the dress down her legs as his lips travelled down her chest. Her dress being thrown to the floor as he was exposed to her entire body only being covered by her small balck panties. 

His stare made her a little self conscious moving her arms to cover herself but he stopped her shaking his head. 

“You're so gorgeous angel.” he said before kissing her again, pulling away to resume kissing her body. His lips finding her right breast, wrapping his lips around her nipple. His left hand massaging and groping the left one, his free hand remained tightly gripping her waist. 

She couldn’t help but roll her eyes back in pleasure at the feeling he was giving her from just his lips. He kept his eyes on her face the entire time. His jeans became tighter as he heard the noises come out of her mouth, they sounded like heaven to him. She knew how hard he was getting so she pulled him away from her breasts and brought his face to her, crashing her lips against his. 

“I need you inside of me.” she moaned in his mouth making him groan. 

Her hands went to the buttons of his jeans and unbuttoned them for him, pulling them down and hooking her fingers in the band of his boxers pulling them down as well. Their lips never parted but he pulled away to full take off his jeans and boxers. Hannah’s eyes never left his body, seeing his hands finally pull down the material that was concealing what she wanted most at the time. 

Her eyes widened as she saw it, she wasn’t gonna lie she had imagined what it looked like but she was stilled stunned by it. His hard on slapped the bottom of his stomach when it was freed, he was a little longer than average but definitely had more girth to it and Hannah had to keep herself from having her mouth watering. 

“You like what you see?” he smirked, the face his girlfriend had on not going unnoticed by him. 

“Mhmm,” she started, crawling towards him and leaning up to kiss him but kept her lips centimeters away from his, “but I’d prefer if you’d just fuck me already.” she smirked pulling away and laying back on the bed, opening her legs for him to come in between them. 

“Don’t mind if i do.” he smirked, crawling and going in between her legs like she wanted. He leaned over to grab a condom from his side drawer, opening the packet before she grabbed it from his hands and slid it on him instead of letting him do it. The feeling of her hands on his member making him throw his head back in pleasure. 

He kissed her making her lay back as he grabbed his member and ran it through her folds making her whine and rut her hips up. 

“You ready baby?” he asked, already lined up at her entrance, she nodded her head and she felt him go slip in. 

Her wetness acted as a lubricant as he slipped in so easily. He felt bigger inside of her and she let out a whine as he groaned once he bottomed out inside her. He gave her a chance to adjust before feeling her legs wrap around his waist and hearing her moan out, “you can move.” 

He began thrusting slowly inside of her, loving the feeling of her tight walls clenching against his cock. Their moans were bouncing off the walls. Her hands were pulling at his hair as he increased the speed of his thrusts. Her hands had moved to his shoulders, her nails digging into his skin making him groan, his face dropping into her neck, kissing it, hearing the noises she elicited when kissing certain parts, realizing those were her soft spots and began sucking on them to leave marks. 

“You feel so good, faster baby, please.” she moaned into his ear. He growled in her before picking up the pace. She was screaming his name in no time and it sounded like music to his ears. 

He felt her clench more and more as he kept thrusting. She began to feel the pit in her stomach form. 

“Keep clenching angel im getting closer.” he moaned out.

“I'm so close baby, you feel amazing.” 

The two of them both reaching their highs together, his hips stilled as he finished and felt her come undone. He pulled out slowly, kissing her lips gently as she laid on the bed out of breath. 

“That was,” he started. 

“Amazing.” she finished, smiling and leaning up to kiss him. 

“Indeed it was,” he smirked against her lips, “lets get you cleaned yeah?” he asked making her nod and try to get out of bed, she winced at the sore feeling between her legs making him giggle and walk over to her. 

“C'mere angel ill carry you.” and with that he picked her up and took her to the bathroom. Putting her down as she went to the toilet and he took off the condom and discarded it. 

“Wanna shower?” she asked looking innocently at him. 

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” he smirked, making her giggle. He turned the water on in the shower and pulled her close to him and inside the shower. 

The two of them clean each other, just gentle touches, some tickling and kisses. The two were enamored by each other and felt even closer than they did before. 

He couldn’t help the heart eyes he had when he was with her. He stared in awe of her when she was rinsing out the soap from her body. 

“I’m so in love with you.” he blurted it out, making herf freeze and turn around with wide eyes. 

“What did you say?” 

“I said im in love with you, and i know its early but i can’t deny it,” he got cut off by her pulling him closer to her and kissed him.” 

She pulled away smiling, “Im in love with you too… boyfriend.” she winked, making him smile. 

“That has a nice ring to it… girlfriend.” he replied making her laugh. 

The rest of the night came with, her wearing his clothes all cuddled under the covers with him, just chatting away about anything and everything. Kisses were exchanged here and there along with them calling each other ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ before erupting into giggles. 

Eventually it became quiet and he looked down at her cudded into his side, fast asleep. He smiled softly before kissing her forehead and turning the side lamp off. 

“I love you my angel.” he said before falling asleep himself. 

[cheeseeatingtrashmonster]

Sweet and Sour Secrets

Surprise! I’m not dead!

Ao3

Day 3: Date Night

-

"Marinette? What are you doing here?"

Marinette's head snapped up. One of her hands had a death grip on the arm of the chair hidden in the corner of the lobby of the Bourgeois's hotel. The other was compulsively smoothing her skirt, creating more wrinkles than it eliminated.

"O-oh! Adri-hi. I mean, hi, Adrien."

He glanced around the mostly empty lobby. "Are you meeting someone?"

"Yes." She froze, her eyes widening. She hadn't meant to say that. "Sort of. No. I mean... yes?"

"You look nervous," he said, glancing at the few people in the room with concern. "Do you want me to wait with you?"

"No!" She knew this was a bad idea. "No, thank you. Um, I'm sure you need to get home, or to a photoshoot or something, right? I'm fine."

It took another minute or two for Marinette to convince him to go, and in that time, Chloe had stepped out of the elevator and spotted them. Chloe had disappeared around a corner and Marinette hadn't seen where she was hiding, so when Adrien left, she sent a text.

"What was he doing here?" Marinette whispered, arms flailing with sharp movements when Chloe crept her way around the perimeter of the room to her.

Chloe grabbed Marinette's wrist to pull her out of the hotel, whispering, "He showed up out of the blue and whined for an hour about Nathalie not letting him see his dad. I love him, but I was ready to shove him out the window!"

"That's the third time he's showed up right before we had something scheduled." Marinette found herself shoved in the back seat of one of the hotel's limos. "Do you think he's onto us?"

The moment the car door was closed, Chloe wrapped Marinette in her arms and kissed her. "He didn't notice when you had a crush on him. You really think he's figured us out?"

"Hmm. Probably just a coincidence?"

"We can hope." She kissed Marinette's cheek. "Now, I'd like to treat my girlfriend like the spoiled, rich girl I am."

The driver dropped them off at a cafe. It was new enough and small enough that they were confident they could have a date there without seeing anyone they knew.

They had forgotten that Alya had recently taken up food blogging.

"Marinette? Chloe? Did you two walk in together?" Alya had paused mid-picture of her latte and cookie and was staring at the two young women.

"Ran into each other on the sidewalk," Marinette said.

At the same moment, Chloe said, "I asked her if she could spot me for a cup of coffee because I forgot my wallet."

"Oookay," Alya said. "Well, Marinette, if you want to sit with me..." She gestured to the open seat at her table.

Marinette felt Chloe move away from her and towards the counter.

"I, ah, can't stay. I have to go... look at hamsters with... with Rose! Yeah, she's thinking of getting one for Luka for his birthday, and- and I love Luka. I mean, I love hamsters!"

Chloe watched Marinette stumble her way through an excuse while waiting for their drinks. Marinette joined her, and with some sleight of hand, Marinette "paid" for their drinks with Chloe's money.

"I'll wait around the corner," Chloe muttered. She took her drink and left without saying goodbye to Alya.

"Rude," Alya said under her breath as Marinette stopped at her table.

"Hahaha, yeah, right?" Marinette said. "Well, gotta go look at those hamsters with Luka!"

"You mean, for Luka?"

Marinette's eyes widened. "Yeah! That! Um, bye, Alya!"

Alya snapped a picture as Marinette stumbled out the door, spilling some coffee on her arm. She composed a text and attached the picture.

To: Nino <3 and Adri-dork

Has M been acting weird lately?

She got back a shrug emoji from Nino.

From Adrien, she got a question that he refused to explain.

Was she with anyone?

What did that boy know?

-

“That was close!" Marinette said through giggles when she met up with Chloe. "Thank you for paying."

"Only the best for my Honey.” She turned her cheek to Marinette for a kiss. Her smile grew when she got it. “So, did you want to walk around the park? Daddy was just saying that the maintenance on this park was less expensive than he expected, so I wanted to make sure it’s still up to par.”

Marinette giggled again, linking her arm through Chloe’s and resting her head on her shoulder as they walked. “You know, you don’t actually have to do the job of the mayor until you’re elected.”

“And let Daddy give our family a bad name before I can come in and make it grand? Ridiculous, Marinette. Utterly-”

Marinette pulled her arm away and dove off the park path and behind a bush.

Chloe started to walk around the bush, looking for Marinette. “Um, what are you-”

“Chloe?”

She barely held back a groan as she turned to Ivan, Mylene, and Alix. “Hey. What are you all doing here?” Try though she did, she knew her tone of voice fell flat from the face Alix made.

“Enjoying the public park that is for the public?” Alix snarked, her arms crossed and chin jutting out.

“Oh.” Chloe reminded herself that these were her future constituents and took a breath. She might have gone a little too far into the political mindset. “What did you think of the new trash cans? Do you think they’re accessible enough? And are the trees looking a little ragged? I keep saying the trees here aren’t well maintained, but no one-”

A sweet, familiar voice cut Chloe’s rambling short. “Hello, citizens!”

“Ladybug!” all four classmates said, looking up to the lamppost where Ladybug was perching, her yo-yo swinging in one hand and a coffee cup in the other.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Ladybug said, “I need to borrow Queen Bee for some Miraculous business.”

Chloe looked at Ladybug like she was crazy. Ladybug winked.

“Oh! Oh right.” She opened her purse and brought Pollen into the dimming evening light. “These spur of the moment meetings. So ridiculous. I’ll see you guys later!” She gave her teammates a little wave, then backed off the trail into the grass before transforming.

Watching Ladybug lead Queen Bee off towards the sunset, Mylene asked Alix and Ivan, “Are they dating?”

Alix snorted. “I hope not. Ladybug has taste. Also, I’d lose a bet with Marc if they are.”

“Wait…” Ivan said, squinting after the blurs of color they could barely still see of the heroes. “Chloe likes girls?”

-

“Good save, Ladybug.” Queen Bee grabbed Ladybug’s hand and raised it above her head, spinning her around before looping Ladybug’s waist with the hand holding her coffee cup and dipping her back.

“That’s me,” Ladybug said, letting Queen Bee pull them upright again. “Full of good ideas. Kinda my thing.”

Queen Bee laughed. She shifted her arms to a loose hold around Ladybug’s waist. “Did you want to race, now that we’re all caffeinated?”

Ladybug nodded and dropped their empty coffee cups into the extradimensional space in her yo-yo. “We haven’t had a good race in ages. You pick the end point.”

They set their destination, readied their weapons, and on a joint count of three, took off. The city at dusk flew by and they left their shrieks and laughter behind as they went.

-

A few hours later, they were laying under the night sky on a random roof. Their hands were clasped and their heads bent together, giggling and whispering.

“I can’t believe that the first time we try a date in public, planning all sorts of things like cafes and parks our friends don’t frequent and making sure no one was at the hotel-” Ladybug giggled again, cutting herself off. “-I can’t believe we end up transforming and running off.”

“I can’t believe you dove into that bush when you heard Mylene and them coming.” She sighed. “Think of your poor dress. It’s probably wrinkled and dirty now!”

They dissolved in giggles again. It felt good, Ladybug thought, to just lie here and laugh and breathe with her girlfriend. She leaned over Queen Bee and placed a slow, gentle kiss on her lips.

“I had a really nice time tonight, Chloe.”

Queen Bee slid a hand up her arm, over her shoulder, and cradled the back of her head, bringing her down for another kiss.

And another.

And another.

“Me, too, Ladybug.”

[lnc2]

you could be, i could be

Summary: sometimes broken things come back together

AO3

He stalked the halls like an angry, prowling thing.

Doors crashing open, shoulders jostled, hard eyes sweeping then dismissing, and a snarl, panther black, curled up tight over clenched teeth.

Not her.

Not her.

Not her.

Emotions dark and wanting rose up within him like a tsunami, bubbling and roiling waves crashing over and over and over.  The last several weeks of sleepless nights, skipped meals, and reckless wallowing leaving him stripped and frayed.

We have to stop.

The memory of her lovely, perfect mouth saying those terrible, horrible things could almost make him wish he never held her at all.

More fool him for it.  Almost was a chasm he wasn’t strong enough to crawl out of.  It sat like the weight of her on him, his hands on her, and all of the things he’d ever wanted warming in-between.

It’d been a Tuesday when Ladybug lost her mind.

“Chat,”

“Hmm.”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

He’d frozen, body taut with terror, resisting the urge to snort or laugh or maybe even cry at the ridiculous question.

Was he seeing anyone?

Ha.

Ha, ha, ha,

Ha.

“Why?” He managed, his voice barely cracking around his grin. “Are you interested?”

She had, in fact, been interested.

The way her eyes softened when she said I really like you would forever be imprinted on his heart.  And if her words weren’t enough to send it flatlining, the small, dimple-hinting smile on her pink cheeks would have done him in.

He should have known he wouldn’t make it out of any relationship with her unscathed.

Not that they were ever, strictly speaking, together.

God.

Adrien’s hands clenched, his nails biting into his palms to stem the retreating tide of those thoughts.

“Are you breaking up with me?” He’d asked, laughing as he held her.

Ladybug tapped his nose and grinned.  “It’s not a break up if you don’t know my name.”

She’d always been clear on that.

Proper relationships weren’t possible, she said.  Not with masks and secret identities and supervillains standing between them.

But they weren’t not together either.

It went something like this:

Salt on skin on tongues on neck. Breathy sighs and low whispers in shadows against run down chimney tops.  Black gloves on red, red hips, fingers clenching over fabric, fingers searching for more skin.

Dancing blue eyes that said yes but only some.  Grinning green that answered please and I’ll take anything.

Hair like midnight, tousled and free, ribbons untangled then tossed then lost to the rooftop evening breeze.  Wicked smiles, his then hers, followed by nervous giggles, also his also hers.

“Never thought I’d be here,” She confessed, lips trailing light and wanting down his throat while he held her close, held her tight, wanting time to stop so she never had to.

“Never stopped thinking about it.” He sighed because it was true and he wanted so desperately for her to know the truth.

The truth for him was his lips on hers, her breath in his lungs, and red and black and black meeting and holding and holding.  All he’d ever wanted was to hold her and here she was and here he was and she was holding him just as much as he was holding her and in that moment and in those hours turned days turned weeks it was everything, everything.

He told her as much once as she hung before him, upside down, from the beams of the Eiffel tower.  Her pigtails were running down like rabbit ears and she was pulling a cross-eyed snarl, the effect of which was ruined every time Chat poked at her exposed sides causing her to squeal and squirm and sway.

“Stoooop,” She whined, batting him away with her free hand.

“Can’t help it,” He said, grinning, eyes soft. “Touching you is my favorite thing.”

She laughed then and rolled her eyes and blushed because he’d get like this sometimes and it was her job to bring them back to the line they’d trampled over and over and over again.

“You’re a silly Chaton,” She said and he leaned forward to kiss her wrinkled nose.

“Your silly Chaton.”

And while it was as true as it wasn’t Ladybug didn’t argue with him all the same.

Maybe he would hurt less if she had.

She said I love you like goodbye.

Soft and sweet and sad, cheeks pink beneath her mask, a gift he never wanted to return.  Words he coveted from the first spoken by a tongue he only ever wished to know.

And she said them first.

“I love you.”

It should have been their new beginning.  Their next step over the boundaries she’d so carefully set then constructed then steamrolled over with him.

But there was no one Chat knew better than Ladybug.  It wasn’t hard to read despair in the slope of her neck, the arch in her back, and the hunch in her shoulders.

“Chat,” She choked.  “Chat, I love you.”

He nearly mauled her and her nervous biting lip to catch the words she was swallowing down.  Clutching her tightly, hands on her waist and neck, kissing her lips, her nose, her cheeks, her eyes.

I love you too. I love you so, so much.

“Please,” He whispered against her skin, holding and molding her closer, arms locked around her tight like the vise slowly closing around his heart. “Please stop talking.”

“I love you.” She said, again, hands on his cheeks, gently pulling him from his hiding place in her neck.  “I love you Chat Noir and we have to stop.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” He said, frantic words keeping pace with his frantic heart.

“You know it’s not safe,” Ladybug murmured, blinking back tears even as her thumb gently wiped away his own. “And-and I can’t do this with just half of you.”

“You have all of me,” He said, voice cracking, as he pleaded with her integrity. “I’ll tell you my name.  I’ll give you my name. You already have my heart.  I’ll take off this ring and give you the whole damn world, one wish, just for you­­–”

But even as he frantically clawed at his miraculous she was clutching his hands in hers and pulling him in for a succession of teary, laughing kisses.

“Stop­­– please don’t laugh ­­– I’m serious.”

“I know,” Ladybug said, and Chat knew before seeing her smile that it wasn’t good and therefore she couldn’t know. “And that’s why we can’t do this anymore. Not­­– not right now.”

Adrien could scream as he recalled her words. 

Not right now.

Not right now.

Not right now.

They stung and soothed and agitated.

If not now then when?  If not Ladybug then who?

He knew the answer to that last question before it could properly form.

It sat like a brick on his chest the weight that made waiting impossible.

If not Ladybug then no one.

Not when she’d been looking at him like that, with all the resigned, stiff-backed heartbreak of a hero during her duty.

Duty could forgive her voice trembling like his knees as she pulled away from him.

“I’ll see you around yeah?”

He laughed because he was already crying.

“Yeah, bug.  You’ll see me around.”

Adrien wrenched open the locker room doors, startling the scattered students within.  Kim shot him a smirk as he stalked past.

“You look like shit, Agreste.”

It took him only a moment to see that what he wanted wasn’t in here either.

“Maybe it’s better that it happens n-now.” She hiccoughed.  “It’s only been a month.”

Only a month, she’d said.

It was only a month the way a gunshot was only a scratch.

Only a month of knowing the feeling of her hands in his hair, her back under his fingers, her laugh in his mouth.  Only a month and the feeling of her was already imprinted like a brand on his… well, not skin.  Not skin because he never got to actually touch her.  Not really.  Not the way he wanted to.

Skin on skin, fingertips on freckles, nails down spines down thighs.

Only a month, she’d said.

It’d been another month gone and he felt like he’d died a thousand lives in between.

Their almost was a pain he didn’t know how to carry.

Unsurprising really.

Ladybug always was the stronger of the two.

His sneakers squeaked against the linoleum tile of the hall as his wreckless searching became more focused.  He could feel Plagg’s claws clenching in futile disapproval against his chest.  There would be scratches, red and angry, to deal with later, but Adrien didn’t care.

His kwami lost this argument a long time ago.

The library’s double doors hit the wall with a slam!  Madame Rochard protested as he stormed past the check out desk but Adrien ignored every unremarkable, curious stare that turned his way as he headed back to the stacks.

The tables in this area were relatively empty save for the dark-haired girl slumped over a textbook, head supported by a bent elbow, eyeliner sleep smudged and hair disheveled.

Adrien nearly stumbled over his feet when she looked up at him and smiled.

It was tired, it was small, but it was hers.

Hers. Hers. Hers.

Her eyes, blue, blue, blue, staring at him with concern and curiosity as he gracelessly tripped towards her.  The same eyes, blue, blue, blue, he’d seen not even an hour before behind a mask of red as she fell in then walked out of an alleyway.

I love you, Chat.  I love you.

Her tearful declaration all those weeks ago was still ringing in his heart like discordant bells.

“Adri–oof!”

He couldn’t stop himself from falling to his knees in front of her, nearly knocking the both of them over as he wrapped his arms awkwardly behind the chair and around her waist, burying his face in her lap.

Holding her felt like breathing.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

He whispered the words like lifelines and it wasn’t until Marinette’s fingers (god her fingers) were brushing away his tears that he realized he was crying.

Gentle hands tugged at his face as she pushed him back enough to meet her questioning gaze.  Her eyes were confused and confusing, a sight so familiar he could drown.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

“H-hi,” He croaked.

“Hello,” Marinette said, softly.

She didn’t stop him when his shaky hands grasped hers, fumbling to lock them together.

“Adrien?”

He couldn’t meet her eyes then and stared down at their interlocked fingers.  Skin on skin on skin. Pale and calloused and so, so dear.

“I know you said not right now,” He murmured, feeling her stiffen in his grasp even as his thumbs sought to soothe her.  “But– but can it be right now?”

Marinette released a shaky breath and Adrien risked a look at her face. 

Her eyes were unsure and crinkled in the corners but a tremulous smile peeked out as her fingers squeezed his.

“Chat?” She whispered.

Adrien couldn’t speak for all the words crawling up his throat demanding to be spoken.  He settled for nodding and then nodding some more when her questioning grip turned hard as she yanked him to her, smashing her lips to his in clumsy, heartbreaking want. 

An endless chorus of yes yes yes and mine mine mine and please please please rang long and loud in his ears as Marinette practically fell out of her chair on top of him.  Her hands were in his hair, nails scratching his scalp, lips peppering his cheeks, his ears, his temple in disbelieving joy.

“You found me.  You found me.”

“I found you. I found you.”

[unreachablevoice]

Moving In Is What Started It All

Summary:

With Marinette’s parents being away with work, she is left in the care of one of their supposedly family friend; who just so happened to be someone who she has always been idolizing. And throw in the fact that she is having a hard time with friendships experiencing hardships, bridges being burned, and secrets unraveling and her parents unintentionally (plus being clueless with their daughter’s suffering) throwing their daughter in a pit of misery.

Note:

This fanfic will not contain Miraculous. Though, This does still contain the concept and some of the episodes of the show just cut out the parts of Ladybug and Chat Noir.

Previous | Next | Masterlist | AO3

Chapter 5 |We’re Still Going To Play A Bit, Whether You Like It Or Not|

Warning: There is a bit of a sexual part here but no intercourse (so just lime I guess?), just making out(????) it’s located at the starting point up until like... 3/4 of the fic...?????? I dunno hahahaha. I wrote this one out of spite okay???? Just let me be! HUHUHUHU! Anyway, that’s all, enjoyyyyy

Adrien's POV

As I pulled Marinette towards me and into the bed, her face fell first. I held both of her wrists together with one hand while the other pulled down her towel a bit, a little back view action.

I held onto her waist as I stared down her still wet body.

Very tempting.... Bad move Marinette, VERY bad move. You should've just brought your clothes inside the bathroom so I wouldn't have caught you half naked.

I smirked and lowered my face, closer to her wet, hot, supple skin. Gently, I placed my lips onto her back and kissed it. Feeling the warm, soft feeling of her lips against my lips. Kissing it over and over again until the kisses became sloppy as it turned into sucking.

"A-Adrieeennn~" she moaned while twitching at the same time.

How adorable...

"Keep your voice down Marinette. We don't want Nathalie and Father to hear you now, would we?" I said with a sly grin—almost feral, which I could see that made her bite her lower lip and quiver.

I continued kissing and sucking her back, roaming and leaving trails of kisses. Each time my lips departed from her back, it left a purplish red and pink spot in her skin. A hickey if you may call it.

A wide grin was immediately painted onto my face as I marveled at my work.

"Perfect..."

Marinette twitched, well... jolted, then looked at me with pleading eyes filled with shock, worry, and fright? I have to admit, I felt hurt because of that. I mean, she didn't have to be afraid. Well.... actually, she does. What am I doing? This isn't like me! But because of lust and temptation, I couldn't help myself!

I sighed, which then made her shut her eyes tight and look away. Am I really that scary?

"Marinette...?" I spoke which made her jolt again but finally turn my way. Her body was trembling with fear, still wet from the recently finished shower but mixed with sweat from all of the struggling. Her eyes, wide and fearful.

"I-I'm sorry..... P-Please don't be afraid. M-My mind was just clouded with too much lust, I-I'm so sorry." I fretted and reasoned as I closed my eyes and rested my head onto her shoulder which made her jump.

Shit. Now I've done it. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Why did my heart have to go wild right now??!!! Ugh!

"I-It's okay! Hehehe...." she said as she awkwardly laughed and flattened her face onto the pillow beneath her. I could see that her face was still flushed since her ears were red.

"Then, can I continue?" I asked with a smirk and hope she says yes which made her eyes widen even more.

She let out muffled sounds as if trying to refuse but because of embarrassment, she couldn't form the right words.

I chuckled at her cute little stutters. Not even bothering to listen to her remarks, since I was still full on lust, I decided to give kisses to her neck this time. Moving her bit damp midnight blue hair out of the way, I landed soft kisses around her nape. Then, before twisting her to meet me in the eye, I knotted her towel once more to cover her up.

Successfully turning her around after, I landed soft kisses around her clavicle, minding carefully to not leave any marks for it would be shown.

Still moaning, squirming, and twitching, Marinette held her hand in her chest, I guess to hold her towel in place tighter, and covered her face with the other hand while panting a bit.

Sooooooo cuuuttttteeeeeeee!!!

Staring intently, I couldn't help but hug her and rub my head on her shoulder. "You're REALLY really cute, you know? So irresistible, Marinette," I told her as I took a peek at her face while smiling, seeing her cherry red face still covered by her hand a bit and her eyes looking away.

I grabbed her hand and moved it out of the way. Surprised by the sudden movement, Marinette didn't have time to react and defend herself.

I crashed my lips onto hers which made her squirm even worse and let out a lot more muffled voices.

"Fwuah! A-Adri—umpf!" Marinette would say repeatedly in between kisses and in breaks, trying to catch her breath and to stop me. But I'd just cut her off and continue.

Suddenly, our little fun "moment" had to be stopped as Nathalie knocked on the door. "Miss Marinette? Are you there?"

Both of us looking at the door and at each other repeatedly, we scrambled up onto our feet. Marinette was about to say something but I covered her mouth and pressed a finger to my lips, signaling her to keep quiet.

"Miss Marinette? Hello?" Nathalie continued but we still gave no response so she eventually gave up and left. Before she went away, a faint: "I guess she must be sound asleep by now," was heard from her.

Hearing her footsteps disappear slowly, that indicates her walking away from the door, made me and Marinette let out a sigh of relief.

"That was so close!" I laughed but looking at her now, she seems a bit uncomfortable. Smiling fondly, I rested my head onto her shoulder, which again made her jump.

I pouted at her reaction, "Sorry Marinette. I didn't mean to scare you. I'll try to hold myself back next time," Apologetically smiling, I poked her cheek which made her giggle and told me it was okay.

Nodding her head, she told me that she'd just change her clothes in the bathroom. But before she could reach the handle, she stopped and turned my way. "By the way, Adrien, what do you mean by 'next time'?"

With her remark, I couldn't help but laugh. And with my reaction, her face suddenly fell to a shocked and confused look as to why I laughed all of a sudden.

Just as usual... Still being adorably oblivious, huh Marinette?

"It means just as it says, Marinette. Now hurry up and change before I change my mind and make you do it here again," I wave my had to shoo her away as I gave out a chuckle. She frenziedly nodded—with a red face, might I add, which is super cute!—and practically ran back to the bathroom to change.

While waiting, I flopped down to her bed again. I rested my head on her pillow and comfortably snuggled on it while wrapped in her comforter. Hearing the door open, I saw Marinette walk out of the bathroom in the pajamas I gave her.

How beautiful.... I wonder if I could last the whole time she'll be here in the house.

"A-Adrien?" she spoke with a confused look in her still flushed face.

As if on cue, I smiled and held my arms out open. Beckoning her to jump into my arms and hug me. "I'm going to sleep here,” I glinted my eyes at her and smirked, “With you."

"Wah—What?!!!"

Okay, now I think that’s the last time I’m making a fic with a bit sexual content. No promises.

[sassyduckqueen]

30 Days of Lukanette- Spring & Winter

Again, it's a fillery kind of chapter and a lot shorter then the others but still fun to write. Also yay for Sassicle! I think I'll be powering through the next few chapters before I want to write the Cat Blanc one but i still have Felix and Party Crasher to write as well as the theme mermaid and songbird but I think Frighteningale and Syren will be making an appearance for those two.

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"Excuse me! Coming through!" Chloe gasped as she pushed her way through the group of people. Marinette frowned to herself as she watched her. She had heard that Chloe would be back in school soon but she still wasn't looking forward to it. For her part in Hawkmoth's plan, she was kept under house arrest but most people believed the story about Chloe helping Ladybug trick Hawkmoth so it was very hard to keep her imprisoned for her crime when it looked like it had been part of a genius plan. She guessed it was the effect of tricking Hawkmoth but at least, this way the miraculous holders could be used if they were needed. Marinette was still careful though. She would only need them if she absolutely needed them. After all, she had Cat Noir, Viperion and Ryuko as back up and she knew they all had her back. She hope that would never change. Chloe, on the other hand, should change but it seemed like she wasn't going to be changing anytime soon. Marinette sighed as Chloe started to laugh. "Hello, Little Miss Weather Girl,"

 "What do you want, Chloe?" Aurore sighed as she looked at her.

 "I heard your GPA dropped a whole point," She gasped as Sabrina looked down before laughing. "Guess you can't be Little Miss Weather Girl and Little Miss Good Grades at the same time,"

 "Looks like Chloe hasn't changed," Alya sighed as Luka walked over. He looked over and frowned as Marinette crossed her arms.

 "Oh, we better not making her cry, Sabina," Chloe laughed. "She might turn into Stormy Weather and rain on us. What a ridiculous power. Utterly ridiculous,"

 "That's it," Marinette grumbled before walking over as Aurore frowned. "Aurore won't be transforming because her grade average will be up again next term,"

 She looked over at the blonde-haired girl and smiled softly at her. Luka felt his heart skip a beat as he watched the scene unfold.

 "Don't hesitate to ask if you need any help," Marinette smiled, kindly. Luka couldn't help but smile to. Marinette was always so kind to people and he loved that about her. She put others first and always wanted to help. He hoped that never changed. 

 "Thank you, Marinette," Aurore smiled softly but Chloe's laugh caused her to frown again. 

 "Yeah! Right!" Chloe gasped. "Once a villain always a villain,"

 "You mean like you then?" Luka piped in, making Chloe huff.

 "Hey! I redeemed myself!" She gasped. "Ladybug trusts me!"

 "I highly doubt that," Marinette sighed. "Anyway, people do change for the better. Unlike you it seems,"

 "Urg! Please! I'm way nicer then I use to be, Dupain-Cheng!" She gasped. "You, on the other hand, will never change! You'll always be Adri-dum... I mean Adri-bum... blad blad... lame and you!"

 She pointed to Alya.

 "You don't even know who Ladybug really is! You two are made for each other. You're both just as clueless as the other," She laughed before looking at Luka. "I don't even know you but judging by your awful sense in style, you'll always be a loser too. No wonder why you're hanging out with these two! Now back to you- urg where did she go? I wasn't even through trashing her!"

 Chloe turned on her heel and stormed off as Marinette sighed before turning to Luka.

 "Wanna get the subway with me?" She asked. He nodded and they headed off, after saying goodbye to Alya and Nino. "I think we'll need to be careful,"

 "You think she might get akumatized again,"

 "Yeah.. Chloe may not be on Hawkmoth's side anymore but she hasn't changed," 

 "Sometimes, people don't," He smiled. "Ah, my stop. Be careful, Marinette,"

 "You too, Luka," She smiled before a light blush spread over her cheeks as he kissed her cheek before getting off and heading up to the Seine. He smiled to himself as he came to the Liberty and walked on it. He looked over and waved as Jagged went over a crazy plan for his new album with his mum, Penny and Vivica. That had become a common thing now. Jagged liked to get his mum's thought on his plans and Penny was always with him. He often felt like Vivica liked to talk to a woman who knew how to handle Jagged.

 "Hey, Luka! What do you think to this?!" Jagged gasped excitedly, showing a badly drawn design of what he figured was a guitar. 

 "That's cool, Jagged but how are you going to play it?" He asked, making Jagged look at the picture before he rushed over to Penny and started to ask how he would play it. Luka smiled to himself before heading into his room and putting his guitar down. He flopped onto the bed and smiled as Sass floated out of his pocket and made his way onto his stomach.

 "What are you thinking about?" The Snake asked.

 "How things have changed," Luka replied. "So much has changed for me in this last year and I just can't believe it. Who'd thought I'd be a superhero or hanging out with Jagged Stone and Marinette has changed too. She seems so much sure of herself and her crush on Adrien isn't effecting her as much anymore. I seriously might ask her to be my girlfriend,"

 "Why wait?"

 "Because I like what I have with her right now and I don't want to rush it too much," He smiled.

 "And Adrien?"

 "You know I'll give her up if he's who she wants," He sighed softly.

 "I don't understand that, Luka. You have a real chance with this girl and actually love her but you're willing to give her up if she decides she loves another. Would you be willing to fight for her?"

 "Not if it would cause her sadness," Luka confirmed, sitting up. "I love Marinette with all my heart and I would do anything for her, that includes letting her go. I have too much respect and love for her to try and cage her,"

 "You're really different to other humans," Sass commented before nuzzling his cheek against Luka's. "I'm glad you're my master,"

 "I'm not your master, Sass," Luka smiled. "I'm your friend and in my eyes, we're equals,"

 "This is why you're the snake," He smiled. "So kind and wise,"

 "I do try," Luka grinned before frowning as he noticed his breathe. "Odd,"

 He quickly got up and pulled on his hoodie before rushed outside his room. He frowned as he saw his breathe and saw frost on the windows of the Liberty. Even in midwinter, the boat was never this cold to create frost on the portholes.

 "Hey, what's going on?" He gasped, shivering but no one answered. Frowning to himself, he moved carefully through the room and looked outside. Heavy snow was falling and there was a strong mist around. He slowly moved outside and saw that his mum, Jagged and Vivica had been turned to ice statues. "Mum!"

 He frowned deeply before looking around. As he looked over, he saw the whole Seine and everyone near it had also been frozen. He felt a sudden jolt and heard a huge thumn. He looked towards it and saw a huge volcano where the Eiffel tower should be. He frowned to himself before he noticed ice spreading toward him and rushed back inside, quickly closed the door. He frowned as he heard the ice spread across it, trapping him inside. Fortunately, he knew another way out. He quickly turned on the boat's heating system before turning on the TV. If he was going to face whoever did this, he needed to know what their deal was and why the big volcano.

 "Stormy Weather has returned and seems more powerful then before. Not only has she frozen most of Paris, she also has made a super volcano and is threatening to use it to move the earth out of it's rotation around the sun. Experts are saying that if she successes, the earth will be plunged into an eternal winter," Nadia Chamuck gasped before touching her ear piece. "This just in. Scientists around the world have confirmed that the earth is in fact moving off balance. Our only hope lies with our heroes,"

 "Sass, I think it's time to try our ice power up cake!" Luka grinned before taking out the slice of blue cake. He threw up in the air and Sass ate it. "Sass! Power up!"

 Sass began to glow then span into a white light. When he re-emerged, he had a icicle shaped tail and was more of an ice blue then a green.

 "Sassicle!" He grinned as Luka held out his wrist.

 "Sassicle! Scales Slither!" He declared as he moved his hand in a wave movement before throwing it up in the air. Sass got pulled into the bracelet and then Luka struck his hand down, creating his lyre before he pointed his finger up to the sky. His costume was created in it's usual green light but he spun round as his usual shoes began ice skates. He swiped his hand over his eyes creating his mask before spinning again, this time creating a belt around his waist before hooking his lyre on it and posing. Once transformed, he headed into the back of the boat and exited from the back door before he jumped on the frozen Seine and skated towards the volcano. He noticed the people who weren't frozen already shivering and curling up to each other as he made his way through the streets of Paris before jumping up on the roof as Ladybug and Cat Noir fell back. He held them both up as Stormy Weather caused Lightening to strike in the air as if to show her power.

 "You guys ok?" He asked as Ladybug shivered. Cat sneezed and shivered too.

 "I didn't think been near a volcano would be so cold," He groaned.

 "She's using it to move us away from the sun," He stated. "She's also caused a blizzard, frozen most of Paris and effectively plundged us into an eternal winter that will only get worst with that volcano. You two are gonna need your ice power ups,"

 "She is way stronger then the first time we faced her," Ladybug sighed. "Do you think we can defeat her?"

 "True, that she is stronger but so are you," Viperion smiled. "You two know each other a lot better and on top of that, you have me and Ryuko. We're a stronger better team and she's no match for us,"

 "Viperion is right, mi'lady," Cat smiled. "We've learnt to trust each other and we always have each other's back,"

 "Speaking of which, I'm gonna distract Little Miss Sunshine so you two can get your skates on!" Viperion grinned before he jumped off and span around, throwing his lyre at her before he landed and skated off. Stormy Weather growled and began to direct lightening towards him. He made a sharp turn and skated up a ramp before jumping over. She span around and hit him with a blast of air.

 "You can't defeat me!" She screamed, hitting him with another one. "I'm a hurricane!"

 "I'm not here to defeat you!" He grinned, coming to a stop. "I was merely distracting you!"

 "What?!" She gasped as Ryuko landed a hit on her face before she back flipped and landed next to him. The two skated backwards, dodging her attacks as  Cat and Ladybug joined them too.

 "Lucky charm!" Ladybug declared as she threw up her yoyo. A small pencil dropped out of the sky and she caught it. 

 "Now's not the time to do some drawing, mi'lady," Cat grinned before throwing his baton towards Stormy Weather. While he battled her, Ladybug frowned and looked around. She smiled as she noticed a copy machine that lit up before Ryuko and Viperion lit up then Cat Noir did.

 "Viper, I need you to get that copy machine and throw after I've thrown this pencil then Ryuko use Lightening dragon to cause a flash,"

 "Alright!" They both yelled. Viperion skated over and grabbed the machine lifting it up. He was grateful that the miraculous granted him super strength, speed and aglisty as well as protected him from basically all injury. Ladybug nodded and threw the pencil. Cat Noir grinned as he let himself drop down. Viperion threw the machine towards her. She went to use her umbrella to deflect it but Ryuko used lightening dragon on it, causing a massive burst of light. In the process, Stormy Weather dropped her umbrella to protect her eyes and Cat jumped up to catch it.

 "Cataclysm!" He shouted, grabbing it. As soon as he did, it turned to dust and freed the akuma. Ladybug captured it and purified it before grabbing the pencil and throwing it up in the air.

 "Miraculous ladybug!" She shouted. The magic bugs spread across the city, clearing it up. Viperion joined Ladybug, Cat and Ryuko as they did a four way fist bump. They de-tranformed from their ice suits before Ladybug grinned. "We keep getting better at this,"

 "I hope this never changes," Cat Noir smiled before his ring beeped. "Til next time!"

 With that, he ran off. Viperion, Ryuko and Ladybug all went their separate ways as well. Viperion made his way back to the Seine before hiding in a nearby alley and detransforming. 

 "Ladybug is right. You are really getting better," Sass smiled as Luka feed him a piece of cake.

 "Yeah," He smiled. "We do make a great team,"

[aalissy]

Post Reveal

Happy Mother’s Day!! I hope you all had a good day today :)! I also hope you enjoy Chapter 12 of my prompts! Lemme know what you think :D

AO3

Marinette paced in her room, running a hand through her hair furiously as she muttered to herself.

“Marinette, Marinette, it’s ok,” Tikki followed her mad pace, “This was bound to happen eventually.”

“Yes, but did it have to be Adrien!” she stopped her pacing, pulling on her hair as she stared at the kwami.

“Is this really such a bad thing?”

“It’s a horrendous thing!” Marinette screeched, sinking down onto her floor, “How am I ever going to look into his eyes again?! I can barely function around him as Marinette so how am I gonna save the world as Ladybug?”

“Marinette you are going to be just fine, I promise.” Tikki flitted over to the girl, wrapping one of her cheeks in her tiny arms.

“Thank you Tikki,” she smiled at the kwami, “But Adrien... I mean Chat is coming over tonight and he has no idea I know. What do I do?”

“Well, I can’t tell you what to do Marinette. That’s entirely up to you, but maybe some honesty will help the two of you.”

“So you’re for me telling him I’m Ladybug,” she leaned back, staring at Tikki with wide eyes.

She shook her head slowly, “I didn’t say that Marinette. If it were up to me neither of you would know, but it’s inevitable. Every Ladybug and Chat Noir I’ve ever worked with have ended up revealing their identities. Sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t. It’s up to the two of you to protect each other.”

Marinette stood up with a low wail, resuming her pacing, “I don’t know what to do!”

“Marinette you’re going to be fine, don’t worry! I’m certain that everything is going to work out.” As Tikki attempted to console the panicking girl, a soft knock sounded from above the trapdoor. The fashion designer let out a shriek, scrambling behind her chaise as she stared at the hatch in horror. Tikki pursed her lips in annoyance, “Marinette if you don’t open the door, then I will.”

Letting out a low moan Marinette stood up, “Ok, ok, I’m going.”

Walking slowly up towards her bed she opened the door, revealing the grinning Cat. “Purrincess,” he jumped down into the room with her.

“H-hi Adrien. I mean Chat! I mean Adri-” she buried her head in her hands in embarrassment as she rushed down her ladder, “I don’t know what I mean.”

“M-Marinette?” the superhero asked her concernedly following her over to her chaise.

“Well I guess the cat’s out of the bag,” she chuckled nervously, smiling shakily at the wide-eyed superhero as she sat down.

“I’m purrety sure that’s supposed to be my line,” Chat said softly as he sat down beside her, “How did you find out?”

“You weren’t exactly subtle detransforming after the akuma attack today,” Marinette’s lips twitched slightly.

Chat blew out a slow breath of air, before chuckling dryly, “Well, I suppose that’s my own fault then... I don’t need to remind you not to tell anyone though, right?”

“Of course not!” Marinette shouted, “I would never dream of telling anyone who you are!”

“Thank you Marinette,” he smiled at her, “If anyone was going to figure out my secret identity I’m glad it was you.”

Marinette took a deep breath as she stared into Chat’s eyes, trying to remember Tikki’s words as she built up her confidence, “But the only reason I was there in the first place was because I had just detransformed.”

“Wha... what do you mean?” his mouth dropped open in shock.

“It’s been me this whole time,” she whispered, “I’m your lady.”

He grasped her face between his claws, scanning her features as he mouthed out a silent, “No.”

“Hello Chaton,” she wiggled her fingers at him in a silent wave.

The next second later she was swept up in a giant hug, “It’s you! It’s you! How could I not have known it was you?!”

Marinette laughed, “If it makes you feel any better I never would have guessed that Adrien was Chat Noir.”

He leaned back, staring into her eyes beseechingly, “Are things going to be awkward between us now?”

“What um, what do you mean?” she frowned in confusion.

“Well, now you know I’m in love with you even though you’re not in love with me.”

Marinette choked out a startled laugh before she dove back into Chat’s arms, kissing him firmly on the lips. Leaning back, she beamed happily, “I’ve been in love with you the entire time! Granted I didn’t know it was you, but I was turning you down for you!”

“Wha...” he stared at her lips, dizzy from their previous kiss.

“I’ve been turning Chat down for Adrien. I’ve had the biggest crush on you since you handed me the umbrella.”

“You... you have?!” Chat stared at her in shock. Marinette merely nodded, smiling shyly at him before she was thrown down onto the chaise, Chat’s lips suddenly upon her own. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” the superhero said in between kisses.

Marinette laughed, “Just to clarify, we are dating now right?” Chat gave her a look that practically screamed, are you kidding, before kissing her once again. “I love you too, kitty,” she murmured to him as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

[simplejjs]

Unmasking The Love Part 2

Hi guys, here’s the second part of my newest reveal story.  If you like this one, please check out my first one, b/c I think that one was pretty cute.  And, I already have a notion for a third one (because apparently I have no life.  My husband says, “If you are going to write, can’t you write something that you can sell and make an income for the family?”  Okay, he has a point - but when you love MLB, the devotion can get in the way of other things, you know?  :-).  So this other one has *Marinette* finding out first.  Anyway, that’s all in the future.  There’s lots more to this one - it’s written out, I just need to type it up for the Tumblr universe.  Enjoy!

Unmasking the Love,  Part 2     (by JJ Sprinkle)

Poor Adrien had no idea what he was getting himself into.  Normally, between his father’s notoriety, the family's social standing, and his own modeling career, Adrien did his best not to call attention to himself unless he had to.  He thought he knew how to flirt, because the photographers were constantly telling him to “flirt with the camera.”  But in fact, cocooned as he had been for much of his life, Adrien had little experience with the immediate reaction he could have on girls.

Running through his list in the back of the sedan, Adrien prepped himself to charm.  Once at school, he pasted his bright model-smile onto his face, and went to work.

“Good morning, Juleka.  ‘Morning, Rose,” he said, then grabbed a book that Rose was about to drop and remarked, “Oops!  Let me get that for you!  Looks like you might need a boyfriend to help with all those books.”  He smiled at Rose, and then winked intimately at Juleka.  Heavy handed as his flirting was, it had its effect.  Both girls stood silent, blushing, and dreaming.

Mylene was left with her mouth hanging open, questioning her relationship with Ivan.  Sabrina was left wondering how to escape her friendship with Chloe, whom she knew would never abide a relationship between Adrien and her.  Chloe took his flirting as her due, and started planning their senior prom.  Even Alix found that Adrien’s husky, “Good morning, Alix, looking good on your blades,” left her imagining couples rollerblading.  

Other girls from other classes were equally affected, as Adrien unknowingly created a tidal wave of hopefulness and jealousy behind him.  The one girl he did not bother with was Lila.  He crossed her path while climbing the stairs to class.  She began to smile silkily at him, but he met it with a frown.  Looking at her brought to mind his Ladybug, on her knees with her head in her hands; sitting on a park bench while Lila lied to him bald faced; and Lila snapping ungraciously at Ladybug as Ladybug apologized.  Adrien knew that the girl could not be his Ladybug, and she was dislikeable as well.  His stern, cool face was enough to stab at Lila’s pride and to dash her hopes.  Lila’s expression turned from welcoming to icy, and she pushed past Adrien as if he were a nothing to her.

By the time he got to class, the girls were in a minor uproar.  Before he even took his seat, notes were being passed to him and girls were vying to draw his attention.  Even with this hubbub, he made sure to turn to Alya and say, “Good morning, Alya.  Your Ladyblog is sooo interesting recently!  Maybe one of these days I can be your photographer when you’re reporting a story.”  He winked at her.  Then he turned to Marinette, “Morning, Marinette.  That pink really brings out the roses in your cheeks!”

Alya did a double-take at his compliment, and when he winked at her, she burst out laughing.

Marinette was astounded at Adrien’s words.  Inside, she felt fireworks of hearts exploding.  Had Adrien actually taken a moment to study the effect of his words, he would have seen their glimmer in her eyes.  But, all he really noticed was that Marinette’s cheeks went as pink as his compliment had described them, that she opened and closed her mouth without making a sound, and that she then ignored him by looking down at her desk.

“Psst, Nino,” Alya was still laughing, “What’s up with Adrien?”  Another two notes were tossed onto Adrien’s desk.

Nino was laughing too, and shrugged.  “Dude,” he asked, hardly bothering to whisper, “what are you doing?”

Adrien smiled confidently at Nino, still convinced that he had everything under control.  He said, “Just sayin’ hello…”  With such a ridiculous answer, Nino took it upon himself to grab three of the notes and start reading them.

“Alix wants you to come rollerblading after school,” Nino tossed the first one back at Adrien.  “Rose says she likes you,” he tossed the second back at Adrien.  “And this one warns you not to trust Mylene or Rose, because they like other guys.  But it’s unsigned.”  Nino peered at the handwriting, then glanced around the room.  Tossing this third note back to Adrien, Nino guessed, “It looks like Sabrina’s handwriting to me.”

Just then Chloe sailed up.  She tossed her golden ponytail, and said, “Adrikins, why don’t you come to daddy’s hotel this afternoon?  I’ll take you swimming in the indoor pool.”  Leaning forward, and making sure her chest was at Adrien’s eye-level, she added, “I can even make sure it’s closed to the public, so no one disturbs us.”

Adrien felt himself blushing, and finally began to realize that Plagg’s idea was really, really dumb.

“Uh, thanks Chloe, but, uh,” he stammered, then in a rush avoided her invitation, “but I have a photo shoot directly after school.  Very busy,” he added.

Chloe walked her fingers up Adrien’s arm, then poked him gently on the shoulder, “Maybe tomorrow then, hmm?”  She smiled at him suggestively.

“I think I have a photoshoot tomorrow, too.”

Chloe narrowed her eyes at him, then smiled thinly and returned to her seat.

Nino was chuckling, and grabbed another note, “Yo, Sabrina is offering to do your homework for you.  And look,” he pointed out, happy, “it’s the same handwriting.  Dude, I’m good!”

Thankfully, Mme Bustier walked in just then to call the class to order.  Adrien brushed the rest of the notes into his bookbag.

After Mme Bustier’s class, the group had Physics.  In the locker room between classes, Ivan cornered Adrien.  “Stay away from Mylene,” he ordered in his deep, gravely voice.  Another guy who Adrien had never met came to stand next to Ivan, and glowered at Adrien, “And stay away from my girlfriend too.”

Adrien held both hands up, palms outward, and tried to smile, “Hey, guys, no problem.  I didn’t mean anything, I was just chatting.”

“Well,” said the second boy, “don’t chat.”  He frowned again, then turned to leave.

“Uh,” Adrien called, the list still at the front of his mind, “who’s your girlfriend  again?”  The boy merely looked over his shoulder at Adrien and growled, then left the room.

“Yeah!” said Ivan.  He also frowned angrily, then left.

Adrien turned to his locker to get his science book.  With his back to the room, he pulled open his shirt and angrily muttered, “Plagg, did you know this was going to happen?”

“No!” Plagg said, all innocence.  “But what do you expect?” he added, “You are a model after all.”  Frowning down at Plagg, this time it was Adrien who growled.

Physics was little better than History class.  At one point, when Adrien answered a question about chemical reactions and molecular attractions, almost the entire female population sighed.  Adrien learned very quickly to keep his mouth shut, his nose in his textbook, and to avoid anyone’s eyes.  At the end of class, Nino shepherded him away from the gaggle of girls that congregated in the hallway outside of the Physics classroom.

“Dude, let’s get out of here for lunch.  Those girls are cray-cray.”  At that moment, Alya and Marinette walked past.  Nino grabbed Alya’s arm and said, “Hey, I’m getting my man Adrien out of here for lunch.  Can we go to your house?”

“Sure,” Alya said, then suggested, “But Marinette’s is right across the street.  Why don’t we all go there?”  She turned her face away from the boys to give a wide grin and wink to Marinette.  “Is that okay, Marinette?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, lunch.  We can totally do lunch at my house.  That’s great!”  Marinette felt like all of the oxygen had just been sucked out of her brain.  Adrien, eating lunch, at her house!  When the boys turned to their lockers, Marinette let Alya see the huge grin that took up half of her face.

“Are your parents going to be cool about this?” Alya whispered.

“Sure, Papa always has sandwiches in the store,” Marinette assured her.  Inside, she was dancing dizzy circles and squealing, ‘Weee!’ but outside she desperately tried to keep her cool and not trip down the front steps of the school.  Knowing her friend, Alya took Marinette's arm as they walked, just in case.

The four entered through the store front.  “Marinette!” her father greeted her jovially.

“Papa, may some of my friends come for lunch upstairs?  Can we have sandwiches?”

“Of course!” Thom Dupain said, “But your mother’s out, so you four will have to fend for yourselves.”  He wrapped a selection of sandwiches for the group and handed them to Marinette.

“Thanks, Papa!”  Marinette kissed him on the cheek, then led her friends through the back of the store into the living area behind.  They climbed the stairs to the apartment, where Marinette sat them down with the sandwiches while she got them all drinks.  While the other three sat chatting, Marinette snuck elated looks at Adrien, actually sitting in her house!

“So dude, what the heck? What craziness was that, dude?”

“Yeah, Adrien, do tell!”  Alya pinned on to Nino’s question.  “You have every girl in school falling over themselves!”

Marinette served them each Orangina, and Adrien murmured a quick, “Thank you,” before trying to answer their questions.  Marinette sighed quietly as she sat down.

“Well, I guess it’s pretty stupid, but, um, a friend told me that a girl in school likes me, and I was trying to figure out who it is.”

Nino almost fell out of his chair laughing.  “Dude, by flirting with *every* girl?!  Now *that’s* cray-cray!”

Marinette and Alya exchanged a look.

“I know, Nino, thanks,” Adrien sounded abashed.  “I didn’t really expect things to, uh…”

“To explode like that?” Alya asked, pointedly.

Adrien’s cheeks actually turned pink, and he hung his head.  He concentrated on picking up his sandwich as he answered, “Uh, right.”

“Dude, you’re a model!  What did you expect?”  Nino was still laughing too hard to eat.

“Well, I didn’t!” Adrien shot back, embarrassment making him defensive.  “I didn’t expect anything!  I’ve never been to school before this year, I don’t know how this flirting thing is done.”  Adrien took a large bite of sandwich, so he could chew and not answer questions.  He thought briefly of how easy it was to tease with Ladybug, how she didn’t get all “cray-cray” as Nino would say.

Marinette listened to Adrien, and fell even deeper in love.

“So who told you a girl likes you?” Alya asked.

“Oh, you don’t know them,” Adrien said around his full mouth.

Alya and Marinette exchanged another look.  Alya raised her eyebrows, and Marinette barely shook her head.  The two friends’ silent communication went something like this:  

‘They didn’t mean you?’

‘No.’

‘Should you take this opportunity to tell him?’

‘No.’

“Dude, you better lay low for awhile, ‘til all this blows over.  I mean, woah!  I’ve never seen Chloe so on the hunt like that!  Like she smelled blood in the water, dude!”

Adrien and Nino laughed, and Adrien added, “Or Sabrina!”

Alya waited for their laughter to lessen before dropping her suggestion, “Or, you could just pretend to have a new girlfriend.  Then the other girls would leave you alone.”  Marinette’s eyes were deer-in-the-headlights wide, and she began shaking her head forcefully beyond Adrien’s and Nino’s eyesight.  With a grin, Alya added, “And I know just who could play your pretend girlfriend:  Marinette!”

Marinette was still shaking her head violently no, when the two boys turned to look at her.  She smiled nervously at them, and tried to say something, but as usual only incoherent words came out.  Inside she was battling two opposing forces - her fear yelling, ‘no, no, NO!’ and her heart crying, ‘yes, yes, YES!’  Caught in the middle of her panic, Marinette said nothing.

Adrien had seen Marinette shaking her head.  He couldn’t help but feel a little rejected, but he smoothed the situation over by saying, “Aw, I couldn’t do that to Marinette.  That’s a pretty big imposition, lying to your entire class.”

“I, uh, um, uh,” Marinette still couldn’t making her mouth sound out the words, but she desperately wanted to say, ‘It’s not an imposition at all!’  Instead Adrien merely patted the back of her hand and smiled at her.

“Thanks, guys.  I’m lucky to have friends like you.”

“Dude, no biggee!”  Nino said, “Just give it time, man.”

The four continued eating, Alya hiding her frustration and Marinette fighting back her mortified disappointment.

When they returned to school, Marinette and Alya led the way side by side, followed by Adrien and Nino.  “Girl,” Alya was saying, “You *had* him!  Why didn’t you tell him you didn’t mind?”

“I was too nervous.  I mean, what if he saw how pathetic I am?  I would probably have started drooling right then if I’d tried.”  Marinette sighed gustily.

“You could just tell him now.  ‘Adrien,’” Alya mimicked, “‘I know one person who has the hots for you!’”

Marinette giggled, and pushed Alya hard on the shoulder.  “Puhleeease!  Even *I* wouldn’t say it like that!”

“‘Excuse my drool, but I think you’re cool.’”

“Alya!”

“‘Come have lunch with me anytime,’” Alya said in a sultry tone, “‘And I’ll show you who’s got a crush on you.’”  She shot an over-the-top ‘come hither’ look at Marinette.  This time, Marinette turned a little pink at the thought of saying that to Adrien, then burst out laughing.

Behind them, the boys were discussing strategy.

“So dude, just tell all the girls it was a dare, and they’ll get over it.”

“But Nino, I really do want to find this girl.  I just don’t know how.”

“Okaaay…” Nino sounded dubious.  “What do you know about her?”

“That she goes to our school.  That she knows me.  She’s gotta be in one of our classes, because she once found a piece of paper I, um, left behind.”

There was a beat of silence, then Nino asked surprised, “That’s it?”

“Uh, yeah,” Adrien shrugged.

“Well what the heck, dude.  She could be a real dog!  Who cares about this girl!  You don’t even know anything about her!”

“Okay, also I know she’s really smart and clever.  She’s brave.  She’s kind.  Really kind.  She likes to help people in trouble.  Sometimes she doubts herself, but she’s really strong.  And she’s funny.”

Nino was staring at him as if Adrien had started speaking in tongues.  Finally he said, “Dude, do you or do you not know her?  Because dude, that sounds like you know her.”

Adrien rubbed the back of his neck.  He knew he sounded like an idiot.  “I don’t know her.  I just know of her.”

“Well, smart and clever could be Sabrina, Marinette, or Chloe.  Brave is definitely Alix.  Rose has you covered on kind.  What was the rest?”

“Nino,” Adrien said, “this isn’t helping.”

“Dude, didn’t you say she doubted herself?  Mylene’s got that one wrapped up.  Strong and funny has to be Alya.”

Beginning to play along, Adrien prompted, “Helping people in trouble?”

“Hmm… I’d have to give that one to Marinette too.”

“Great,” Adrien harrumphed, “so according to you I should just date the entire class.”  

Nino started guffawing, and joked, “Dude, after this morning, you could totally do it too!”  Adrien chuckled, for the first time taking a moment to appreciate the effect he had had on the girls.  As they climbed the stairs into school Nino said, “Well, dude, I’ll keep my ears to the ground, and if I hear anything I’ll point you right.”

As they walked down the hallway, Nino did actually turn Adrien’s description over in his mind.  Walking behind Alya and Marinette, Nino considered that Marinette fit many of the characteristics Adrien had mentioned, although mostly she got a big fail on the brave thing.  He considered her for a moment, then muttered, “Nah,” and moved on.  Maybe Alix….

Adrien was not considering any of the girls.  The moment they re-entered the school, he could feel the female population studying him, watching him… hunting him.  Adrien kept his eyes down and silently swore at Plagg.  Maybe Alya’s idea wasn’t so bad, the thought.  At least the girls might leave him alone.  But he might scare away the one girl he wanted.  Ladybug had said that one day she’d work up the courage to tell him, so maybe he just had to wait.  He laughed to himself, that he’d described Ladybug as brave to Nino.  Maybe as Ladybug she was, but as a normal girl apparently not so much.  Still, he hated waiting.

With Adrien continuing to avert his eyes and returning to his normal reserve, the second half of the school day was much calmer.  He stuck closer to Nino, Alya, and Marinette than usual, using his friends as cover for the few girls like Chloe who hadn’t yet given up on the hope he had instilled in them.

After school was out, the four walked down the stairs to Adrien’s sedan waiting for him.  “Do it!” Alya whispered to Marinette.

Marinette fisted her hands, trying to strengthen her courage.  She could say, “I like you,” or “I kinda like you,” or “Maybe your friend meant me?” with a teasing smile.  She could just do it, just DO it.  Her heart was racing, and she felt lightheaded and hot.

“See you tomorrow, dude.  Go read some books on flirting!” Nino joked.

Adrien pulled open the door, calling, “‘Bye!” over his shoulder, when Marinette felt a huge pressure in her chest and burst out with, “Adrien!”  He turned, surprised at her tone, and asked, “Yeah?”

“I -”  She couldn’t do it.  She couldn’t.  Her tongue felt thick, and her mind literally was blank.  She couldn’t think of the words.  “I -”  Adrien looked at her, like a scientist looks at a bug.  “Have a good day!” she finally said in a rush, and then turned her back on him and raced up the stairs.

Adrien watched her leave, called after her, “Thanks, you too,” and then climbed into his car while shaking his head.

Alya turned and dashed after Marinette.  She found Marinette in a corner of the empty locker room, sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped around her knees, crying.  “Hey, girl,” Alya said, squatting next to her and rubbing her back.

Marinette looked at her, “I’m so pathetic.  What’s wrong with me?  I can’t do anything!”

“Hey, girl, you *almost* did it!  You came closer than you ever have before.  That’s something!”  Marinette dropped her head back to her knees, but at least she stopped crying.  “And you didn’t even stutter when you said ‘have a good day’.”

“I sounded like an idiot,” Marinette replied, voice muffled.

“Yo, what’s up?  Is Marinette okay?” Nino’s kind voice snapped the two girls out of their tete a tete.

“Sure,” Alya said, standing up.  “She just feels a little sick, right Marinette?”

Marinette kept her face down, trying to wipe away her tears.  She sniffled quietly.  “Right.”

“Oh, okay,” Nino said, uncertainly.  He didn’t think she sounded particularly sick, but wasn’t willing to question it, in case this was something to do with girl stuff.  “Well… Anyway, I’m just going now.  Just wanted to say bye.”

Alya bent over to grab Marinette’s book bag, “We’re going too.  I’m gonna walk Marinette home.”

“Okay, I’ll walk with you,” Nino cheerfully invited himself along.

Marinette pushed herself to her feet, and muttered “Thanks,” to Alya as she took her book bag.  Trying to sound normal, Marinette said, “Great, Nino,” and led the way out of the locker room.

Nino chatted nonchalantly as they left the school, “That’s gotta be one of the funniest days at school ever, dude!”

Alya joined in his laughter to cover for Marinette’s silence, “Oh, yeah!”

“I can’t believe my man Adrien doesn’t know how to flirt.”

Alya, remembering the day, started laughing for real.  “When he winked at me!  Pfft!” Alya’s and Nino’s laughter turned into howls, and they paused on the sidewalk doubled over to laugh.

Marinette kept walking, keeping her red eyes straight ahead.  A large part of her was angry that they were making fun of Adrien like this, and a little part of her was jealous that *she* hadn’t gotten a wink from Adrien when it felt like everyone else had.  She could hear Nino and Alya replaying incidents from school, “... And did you see Ivan’s face?”

“... And when Chloe leaned over his desk?”

They got to the corner where the Dupain-Cheng bakery was, and Marinette turned and interrupted them.  “Well, I’m going in now.  ‘Bye!”  She was too eager to escape.

“Oh, do you want me to come up?” Alya petered off, and it was clear to Marinette that she was hoping for a ‘no’.

“I’m just gonna take a nap before dinner,” Marinette lied.

“Okay,” Alya said.  She darted an encouraging glance at Marinette, and then in the code of their friendship added, “Maybe tomorrow, right?”

Marinette gave Alya the smile she knew she was hoping for.  “Right,” she said, holding up both thumbs, “Maybe tomorrow for sure!”  Then she walked into the bakery and closed the door behind her.  Nino and Alya continued walking home, laughing, while Marinette climbed to her bedroom, collapsed on her chaise lounge, and indulged in a good cry.

To Be Continued…   (by JJ Sprinkle)

Up Next:  https://simplejjs.tumblr.com/post/167698832785/unmasking-the-love-part-3

[yuna-dan]

Rockabye

This was supposed to be based on the song Rockabye, but my mind work differently.

I didnt like it that much, but okay. 

Based on this song  and this version is beaituful 

Warning: Implied Prostitution. Implied Sex. Kinda Angsty. Happy Ending (I swear this time  it IS happy :3. This is AU.

Marion was ashamed of himself, while in reality he knew it was because he wanted them to be happy.

He tugged his twins in the crib, kissing their forehead. His phone buzzed in the back of his pants but he ignored it, he already knew what was it.

“I love both of you. My dearest Adrien and Roman.”

Hey, whore. I’m already downstairs. Open up.

He rolled his eyes, “What a charm.” He mumbled walking to the door, “I’m sorry babies. I love you.” He locked the door.

When he woke up next day, it was because of the screaming of the kids. “Can’t you shut them up?” his partner asked, still in the bed. Marion rolled his eyes and threw at his client his pants.

“The service is over, please get out babe.” He said biting his lips.

The other man rolled his eyes, but put his pants anyway, he pulled out one hundred dollars and handed it to Marion, who was about to grabbed them when his wrist was caught in the hand of his client, “Same time tomorrow?” he smirked against his neck.

“Of course, darling.”

He wanted to punch him.

---

“I am sorry baby.” He shushed, holding each kid in an arm. “I am sorry Adrien, you are a grumpy pant. Are you hungry?” Roman screamed, “Oh hey, I am also paying attention to you.”

He smiled.

Even if his legs hurt and his back was killing him, it was worth it.

He loved his kids.

---

“Dadda?” Roman asked. Marion arrived late to the school again. He was holding each kid with a hand.

“Yes, Ro?” He smiled, trying not to show how tired he was. The 6-year-old smiled at his father.

“So, today the teacher asked in the school asked us what our parents do for a living?” He trailed off, stuttering through his babyish voice.

“… Roman and I didn’t know…” Adrien mumbled.

“Oh, you can say, that your dad is independent worker, okay?” He smiled.

“Okay, daddy.”

Marion knew he had to get a real job.

---

Adrien was twelve when one of his classmates said his father was a hooker.

He already knew that, but it hurt nonetheless.

---

“Dad?” Adrien knocked on his father room that night, Marion was changing into leather jeans.

“What’s the matter, honey?” He gently moved to caress the cheek of his kid, but Adrien move away. Instead, he was hugged.

“I am not ashamed of you, but please stop.” He mumbled against his stomach. Marion was speechless, he wrapped his hands around the head of his son.

“I-I’m sorry… I didn’t know you knew…”

“Even Roman knows…” He mumbled, “We don’t need… Dad you are doing this for us… And I love you… but you… you can get hurt and…”

Adrien broke into a sobbing mess, not fully controlling his words and body.

Marion was ashamed. He felt so dirty, exposing his kids into a horrible situation.

“I-I will try to find another job… until then… I have a client, Ad.” He mumbled.

“Don’t please… Dad…”

Marion grabbed the face of his kid into his hands, pulling it up, “I will be okay. I will be safe.” He kissed his forehead. “Trust me.” He kissed his hair, “You won’t go through any of this, okay?”

Adrien clean his face with the back of his hand, “Okay.”

---

Logan was overworking himself, he needed to rest.

And of fuckin course his friends would force him into a burdel because he needs to get laid. He huffed into the little room, sitting awkwardly in the bed. Repeating the words in his mind, he was going to give the money and walk away.

Or at least that was his idea, a deep part of his mind hope to really get laid that night, but at the same time, paying for that seems… almost bad.

“Hello, babe,” a voice called from outside, “I am sorry for the wait, see daddy have to do some work.” The man appeared, wearing tight jeans and vest. He was smirking holding a whip sensually, “Have you been a good boy, honey?” He smiled.

Logan frowned, because even behind his glasses he could see the redness of his eyes and the wetness of his cheeks.

“No…” He was cut off with the man sitting on his lap, pressing his hand again his crotch.

“Oh, is that so?” He smirked, sinking his teeth against his neck. “Do you want to punish me or to be punish?” Logan grabbed his wait, holding the man still and shook his head, but before he could say anything, the man continued, “Oh, so you want to punish me? That’s fine, I can be… versatile…” He whispered and Logan fought back a shiver.

“No. Wait. Are you okay?” He asked and pushed the man out of his lap. “You seemed like you cried…”

“I am fine.”

He was not.

“My name is Logan. I am here because my friends are jerks. If you don’t want to have sex…”

“I need the money, Logan.” He smiled sadly, “C’mon I’ll give you a hand job or I’ll blow you.” He fell into his knees.

“No. You are clearly not okay.”

“Look. I know what you are playing here, if you are nice with me the price will be exactly the same if you are rude.” Logan could tell the man was getting angrier. He pulled out his wallet and give him 500 bucks.

His eyes widened. “Wh-What are you doing? That’s a lot. What kind of kinky stuff are you into?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Your safety.” He smiled softly.

The man finally smiled, “Thanks. Really, but it’s not difference. After you, I have another client.” He shrugged. “This is really nice of you, Logan.”

“You were crying. You can’t work in that condition.” Logan smiled. “I’ll pay the night complete and drive you home, how does that sounds, Mo?”

Mo smiled, ��That’s not my proper name.”

Logan smiled back.

---

“You are such a strong father.” Logan said while driving, Marion was drinking a tea that Logan buy to him.

“I just don’t want them to end up like me, you know?” Marion smiled, thinking of the promise. “Thanks Logan.”

“What for?”

“This. You are the first client who is nice to me… I- Today one of my kids talked to me… I want to drop this work…”

“You know? I am looking for a secretary, mine was kind of a bitch and steal some of the money of my company.”

Marion shook his head, “You have done enough.” He pointed at a small white house, “That’s my house.”

“I really haven’t Marion. I want to help you.”

Marion smiled, “You did. The money you give it’s enough for us to live for a while. I am staring a waiter shift tomorrow.” “Maybe I can go to eat there.”

“Maybe you can.”

And he did.

-

Roman smiled, sitting on a booth and smiling at his father. “He is better in this job, isn’t him, Adri?”

Adrien smiled, “He is safer, at least.”

“Do you think… Logan come to eat here all time. Do you think maybe… he’s interested in dad?”

Adrien rolled his eyes, “You and your love stories, brother.” He threw some water at him but not making a disaster like the last time.

Deep down, he was hoping the same thing.

This was going to be a super dark fic and I had in my mind a charecter death but at the end I just couldn’t.

Hope you like it... because I hate them lol

[undiscoveredstory]

and you drive me wild

(You can read the previous chapters here!)

PART SEVEN: Game Night, Part One

“In short, tonight is going to be lit,” Peggy said as she led Alex and Laf into the living room.

Angelica, Eliza, and Hercules were already there.

“Where is he?” Angelica asked as soon as Alexander came into view.

“Wow, hi to you, too, Angie,” Alex said teasingly.

“You better have come through with your end of the deal, Ham, or else I might just have to––”

“Relax, mon ami,” Laf interrupted. “I was there when our dear Alexander invited him. All is well. He will be here.”

Angelica visibly relaxed at that. Alex noticed that she was dressed up–– a peach colored dress, beaded dangling earrings and a matching necklace and bracelets.

He then turned his attention to Eliza, who was more dressed up than Alexander ever remembered seeing her outside of a formal event. She had on flawless yet subtle makeup, a white collared shirt, and a high-waisted teal skirt that she tucked the shirt into, some of the fabric puffing out, hiding exactly where the shirt ended and the skirt began. She also had a long necklace on a silver chain with a single teal teardrop shaped stone dangling on the end of it. Alex couldn’t help but stare for a moment.

Eliza tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear and looked Alex’s way, as if she felt his gaze.

“You look beautiful,” he said before he could think.

She blushed, smiling shyly at him. “Thanks. That sweater looks really nice on you.”

“Laf chose it.”

“I figured,” she said with a laugh.

“So,” Alex asked, sitting down on the couch next to her, “you suddenly got really dressy on us. Are things different at that fancy school of yours?” He was clearly just teasing her, but he was also curious. Eliza had always been more of a tomboy–– a t-shirts, leggings, and converse kind of girl.

Eliza blushed an even deeper shade of red. “I, well, first of all I discovered that I like to wear dresses.”

Alex beamed at her. “And you look gorgeous in them, clearly!”

“Thanks,” she said with a nervous laugh. “And, well, Peggy may have invited someone here tonight that I have a crush on…” She began to fiddle with her hair anxiously.

“Peggy is quite the handful,” Alex said with a sigh. “But who is this mystery person?” He gently nudged her in the side with his elbow, eliciting another soft laugh from her. He always thought that Eliza’s laughs were the audio version of fairy lights–– soft, gentle, and beautiful.

“Her name is Maria,” Eliza whispered.

Alexander grinned at her. “She’d be silly not to like you, Sweet Lizard.”

Eliza’s laugh appeared again, widening Alex’s smile. He always felt warm inside when he managed to make Eliza laugh. It was such a glorious feeling.

The two friends were distracted by the sound of more voices filling the room. From the way Eliza froze and her face turned a brighter red than Alexander had ever seen (and that was saying something), he figured the girl he didn’t know, who was dressed in what looked like an incredibly soft red sweater and dark blue skinny jeans with a few gold bangles around her wrist, and who had dark brown hair that fell to her shoulders in luscious waves, was Maria. The other girl with her was Adrienne de Noailles, the other ⅓ of the Laf-Herc-Adri trio.

He was about to ask Eliza if she wanted to go over and say hello when a third new person walked–– no, sauntered–– in.

The boy was tall, dressed in a deep purple cardigan with black jeans tucked into golden high-tops converse. His puffy dark brown hair bounced as he made his way over to the couch and smirked down at Alexander.

“Hamilton,” he said.

“Jefferson,” Alex grumbled.

“Thomas!” Angelica exclaimed, conveniently coming in from the kitchen at that exact moment. “I am so glad you could make it!”

He leaned down and they air-kissed each other on each cheek. Alexander rolled his eyes and Eliza gave him a look.

“I would never miss an opportunity to be in the presence of the dazzling Angelica Schuyler,” he said smoothly.

“Ugh,” Alex muttered. He motioned to Eliza, and the two of them made their escape as Angelica and Jefferson started flirting with each other through an exchange of witty remarks that neither Alexander nor Eliza had any desire to overhear.

“I’VE GOT THE GAMES!” Peggy hollered from the hallway. She then entered the room with a stack of games that was almost larger than she was.

Eliza and Maria rushed forward at the same time to help her, and, from the look on Peggy’s face, it was evident that that had been her intention all along.

Alexander went up to Peggy once the games were safely in Eliza and Maria’s hands. “Hey, uh, where’s John?” Alex scratched the back of his neck.

Peggy just smirked. “He and his sister Martha are coming, don’t worry your butt off or anything.”

“Mon ami, if you worry anymore butt off you will have none left!” Laf came up behind Alex with Adrienne on one arm and Hercules on the other. They winked at Alex in unison.

Just then, the doorbell rang.

Lafayette beamed at Alexander. “Are you ready to meet your, how you say, Prince Charming?”

[hopes4gf]

Thievery and Mischief- (a descendants/marvel crossover)

(song)

The next day, I make calls to cancel everything for that week of cotillion. 

“He did what?!” Aziz says through the phone.

”Then he slammed the door and told me not to come looking for him. I knew I should’ve taken a break,” I sob.

”But...Lonnie. She would never do that willingly,” Aziz says.

”You t-think he manipulated h-her?” I ask.

”I don’t know. But they both love you a lot. I don’t know why they would ever do this to you,” Aziz says.

”I’m gonna go to lunch, okay?” I say, sniffling.

”I’ll see you later,” I say.

Later, I see the core four return with Ben safely. Dude follows behind them and I see his mouth move.

”He talks,” I assume, thinking to myself.

Suddenly, Jane appears in front of me. 

“Hey, Adri! I need your help desperately,” Jane says.

”What’s up?” I ask.

”I need help loading the items onto the yacht, and your strength will be super helpful,” Jane squeaks.

I nod in agreement.

”I’ll call you later for the deets, okay?” Jane says.

”Yeah,” I say, Jane walks away.

My eyes meet with Jay’s brown ones. Next to him, Lonnie stares at me and she lets go of his hand. Are they guilty?

I see Mal with her purple hair now returned as opposed to her usual blonde. I watch Ben go up to kiss her and Mal getting uncomfortable. 

Somethings wrong. But that is none of my business.

I head to lunch and I sit alone. Arabella is too busy with the royals to sit with me. The core four and Lonnie and Ben sit together at one awkward table. I look around and everyone stares as the celebrity that everyone adores sits alone. Audrey and her goons snicker as they stare at me and Lonnie and Jay glare as they catch my gaze. Tears well up in my eyes again as I eat my lunch. 

From the corner of my eye, I see Logan appear again.

”Don’t you have lunch next period?” I ask him.

”Yes but, I wanted to give you an idea. Since I’m the king of pranks I was wondering if-“

”I’m not gonna do a stupid prank, you idiot,” I grumble.

”No! We should be a fake couple at cotillion. Make believe we are dating so that Jay feels guilty about all the shit he said and Lonnie can be available for Aziz,” Logan says.

My head perks up at the sound of my brother’s name.

”How did you know about Aziz?” I ask him, now interested.

Logan smirks.

”Only if you agree,” Logan assures.

”I’m all ears,” I say with a smirk.

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

The night comes around sooner than later, Cotillion! Where the King assures his courtship with his Queen at their first party. Evie comes to my room to deliver my dress.

”Hey, Adri,” She greets shyly.

”Hi,” I say shortly, continuing my makeup.

”I know about Jay,” She says.

i stop and I huff. Tears start to fall down my cheeks even at the mention of his name. She walks towards me and hugs me.

”Can I tell you something about him?” Evie asks me.

I nod.

”When I first met him, he was such an ass. Totally cheeky and used to tease me because I was naïve even if I was pretty. He told me that looks never mattered to him. That it was the intelligence and passion that made a woman. And you, have the brains and the beauty, Adri. You are one hell of a woman. You love him even when doesn’t even notice. You support him even if you’re not there. He doesn’t realize that the person he claims can be with him, is you. You mean so much to him. It’s so crazy how much he’s changed because of what you’ve done for him. And no other girl can ever do what you do Adri. Because you work your ass off so that you can give him the life you both deserve,” Evie rants.

I wipe the tears from my eyes and smile.

”I thought no one cared,” I say.

”Of course I care. You helped me with Chad, I help you with Jay,” Evie says.

i laugh recalling our moment.

”Now show that stupid bitch was he’s missing,” Evie says, handing me my dress.

I laugh and go to my bathroom to change.

i get to the ship early and help Jane over the phone load the items. Over the phone, I hear Carlos ask her to Cotillion and I smile.

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

AN: I'M GONNA EXPLAIN THIS QUICKLY. DURING THE SCENES IN D2, JAY STARES AT ADRI AS SHE WALKS WITH LOGAN. ADRI DOESN'T SPEAK WITH THE PRESS. MAL AND BEN HAVE THEIR MOMENT WITH UMA AND THE BATTLE HAPPENS. EVERYONE PARTIES IN THE WATER-FILLED YACHT.

I stand and stare out at the water. Uma. Daughter of Ursula. I remember seeing her face. While I’m lost in my train of thought someone approaches my side.

”Logan left you all alone on the dance floor, huh?” Jay says, now standing beside me.

”Looks like I didn’t have to look for you at all,” I scoff.

Jay sighs.

”Guess what?” Jay asks.

”What?” I ask, groaning.

“I know exactly what you’re trying to do,” Jay says.

”Do you?” I ask, raising a brow.

Jay grabs me by my waist and I try to break free of his grasp. I struggle as he tightly grips my waist.

”You and I aren’t going anywhere, baby,” He whispers.

Huh?

”Huh?” I ask.

Jay laughs softly. The first time I’ve seen a smile from him in a while.

“Surprise!” Lonnie says, appearing behind him. Aziz stand sneaked and her and from the corner of my eye, I see Evie and Carlos laughing.

”YOU?” I say in realization.

They had the same plan as me. To get me jealous, Lonnie and Jay acted like they were dating to get me to notice.

”I CRIED FOR THREE DAYS BECAUSE OF NOTHING? YOU MADE ME WATCH TITANIC A HUNDRED TIMES TILL I FELL ASLEEP CRYING WHILE EATING A TUB OF ICE CREAM?” I yell.

”What? Baby, I didn’t know you’d get that emotional,” Jay laughs.

”I LOVED YOU! I YELLED AT YOU AND YOU MADE ME CRY. YOU ASSHOLE!” I yell. 

Jay's eyes widen as he stares me down. My tiger form starts to morph and I smirk. I go completely tiger mode and I chase him across the deck.

I catch up to him, pouncing on him.

”Babe, please don’t kill me! It was a joke! I swear!” Jay says.

”Next time, it better not be a joke,” I growl in my tiger form. I switch out of my form and return to being human. Spectators around me watch in admiration at my shapeshifting.

I get off of him and we both stand up.

”Did I really make you cry for three days?” He teases.

”Shut up,” I muttered, slapping his arm.

”Ay! That hurt,” Jay says.

I laugh as he winces in pain.

youtu.be/QMP-o8WXSPM

“Hey, you wanna dance?” Jay asks.

”After you literally gave me a heart attack for 3 days straight, yelled at me, and made me tackle you, you wanna dance?” I ask.

”Sure, you are my girlfriend, right?” Jay asks.

”Girlfriend? I thought Jay cheated,” Jordan says, raising a brow.

”Listen, cuz. You can take this to the show right now. Start rolling these damn cameras,” I say.

Jordan tells her camera crew to start rolling.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Jordan Genie here with breaking news! Adri Ababwa confirms her boyfriend. I’m here with her now at the Royal Cotillion. Why have you chosen not to speak to the press lately?” Jordan asks.

”I decided that now was the right time in my career to open up a little more and start to realize what things make me happy and that I should be selfishly ashamed of. So, I believe that my fans deserve to know that I am deeply in love with Jay Farr, my boyfriend of 5 months,” I say with a smile.

”Jay, how do you feel that your girlfriend decided to reveal this information at last?” Jordan asks.

”I’m proud of her actually. We had an experience in our relationship that tested how much we loved each other and how far we were willing to go to show other people how protective we are of what we have together and what I found was that she is such a bright girl with a big heart and I couldn’t ask for more than that,” Jay says sweetly.

”And what have you learned about Jay from your experience as a couple, Adri?” Jordan asks.

”I’ve learned that this man is so shy compared to his hard exterior and that he wants nothing but for me to be happy even when I’m working so hard and stressed out of my mind over these events and planning,” I say.

”Thank you for this update, you guys. Have a good night y’all!” Jordan says, signing off. The cameras cut and I sigh in relief.

”We’ll upload that now. It was perfect,” Jordan says.

Jay takes my hands and we start dancing slowly. We sway to the beat of the music and our group looks on. Jay turns me and I land in his chest.

”I’m so glad I got to take everything off my chest about you. You work so hard, babe. You deserve to not have that much pressure,” Jay says.

”At least the press can finally take pictures of our romantic moments,” I joke.

”Hey, does that mean I can kiss you now?” Jay asks.

”Sure you can, handsome,” I say grabbing his collar.

He pulls me by my waist and kisses me passionately.

”Hey! Save some of that for the bedroom,” Mal says, heading towards us.

”Long time no see Lady Mal,” I say.

”Princess Adri, it is a pleasure,” Mal jokes.

We laugh in unison.

”Hello possessive girlfriend, Adri!” Ben greets.

”Shut up, crown boxers,” I say with a smirk.

Mal laughs at my joke and the group looks at us confused.

”How do you know what his underwear looks like?” Carlos asks.

”We’re childhood friends, these are things we just know,” Lonnie says, coming up to us.

”Including that you can be a bitch when you’re cheeky,” I say through gritted teeth.

”Hey, I would never steal your man. You are so in love with him. Besides, I have my sights set on someone else,” Lonnie shrugs.

“And who would that be?” Someone says from behind us.

Aziz strides towards Lonnie and she blushes.

”Someone,” Lonnie says shyly.

”You look a little light-headed, sis. You good?” Aziz jokes.

”Hold on, you knew?“ I ask, surprised.

”I warned you,” Aziz says.

I roll my eyes.

”Hold on, how many people knew?” I ask.

Let's just say everyone was in on it.

1,834 words

[wordsablaze]

Sixteen: It’s All Worth It

A Month Of Kaider Just some fairly long daily drabbles for the life of AU Cinder and Kai… A Kaider tale. Enjoy!

Cinder narrows her eyes.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, trying to keep her voice neutral.

The girl flicks her hair over one shoulder and smirks. “I’m doing well, thanks for asking. What’s your name again?”

Cinder rolls her eyes at the sarcasm, thankful that Kai appears just then.

“Cinder, hey!” he grins, planting the quickest kiss on her cheek.

She blushes, biting the inside of her cheek to keep her smile in check, especially when she sees the girl scowl and has the urge to grin.

Kai blinks. “Oh, hello Simone.”

Cinder inwardly laughs at the thought of Kai not even noticing Simone in favour of kissing her, and wraps an arm around his middle, almost possessively.

Simone just puts a hand on her hip and clears her throat. “So, when does tutoring begin?”

Cinder looks just as shocked as Kai, who shakes his head. “I’m not the one tutoring you, I’m sorry.”

Simone clicks her tongue in annoyance but nods, muttering so that only Cinder hears her: “Like I couldn’t find that out myself.”

“You’ll have to ask your tutor for when they’re free,” Kai says.

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Then you can fail your exams,” Cinder hisses, grabbing Kai’s wrist and pulling him with her.

She hears Simone darkly mutter something but ignores it, hoping Kai will do the same, which he does.

Kai shakes his head as he falls into step beside Cinder. “Why don’t you like her?”

“There’s nothing to like.”

“Cinder…”

“Why do you like her?”

“There’s nothing to dislike,” Kai mimics.

“I have a bad feeling about her.”

Kai just shrugs in response and laces their hands together, gently swinging their arms back and forth.

She laughs, but then remembers the list she’d been given by Adri, and her expression turns sour.

“What happened?” Kai asks, worried.

“Adri’s list. Stars, I really hate her.”

“What’s on your list?”

“Weekly shopping,” Cinder mutters glumly.

“Is that all? That’s easy, come on.” Kai tightens his grip on her hand and pulls her along.

“Where are we going?” Cinder laughs.

“To defeat your list!” Kai laughs back.

She grins, the two of them running all the way to the supermarket.

“I win!” she laughs breathlessly as Kai gracefully skids to a stop next to her, running a hand through his hair and nodding.

And for once, she doesn’t care that she’s living with people who send her to do all their work. She doesn’t care because she can spend that time with Kai, either complaining or attempting to have fun, or both.

They finish late into the evening, still in their school uniforms and laughing like idiots as they walk back to Cinder’s place.

“Thanks, Kai,” Cinder whispers, pulling him closer so she can kiss him.

He pulls back first, only enough to whisper: “We have an audience.”

Cinder shivers as his lips move against hers but sighs, “Peony, probably.”

“Want me to stop?” He murmurs.

Cinder connects their lips again, making Kai stumble, before pulling back and smirking. “I guess I’m welcome?”

Kai chuckles, “That you most certainly always will be.”

“Why can’t you just say ‘yes’, honestly…?” Cinder giggles, taking the bags from him.

He salutes. “Until next time, my empress.”

Cinder could swear her cheeks blaze red but she bites her lip, still laughing as she unpacks all the bags inside.

“Cinder!” Pearl yells. “Did you get my primer and the neutral palette I asked for?”

“Your what now?” Cinder asks, lost.

“Mum!” Pearl yells angrily, scowling.

“What’s a primer?” Cinder asks again, as Adri walks in with an exasperated look on her face.

“She didn’t get my stuff!” Pearl whines.

Adri sighs, “You know what that means: no dinner tonight.”

“What? But-!”

“Go to your room,” Adri snaps.

“Not that I have one,” Cinder mutters under her breath as she trudges upstairs to the attic, flopping down on her bed.

She hears the other three talking and the smell of spagetti makes her stomach turn but she just groans, trying to sleep.

“Ow!” someone softly exclaims behind her and she almost has a heart attack.

“Stars! What are you doing?” she yells at the voice, only to find that it’s her boyfriend.

“Oh, aces, I’m sorry,” she mutters as Kai flinches.

“I had a hunch that you might like to try tacos,” Kai whispers, dismissing her guilt with a bright smile.

“What’s that?”

“I think you mean 'what are they?’ but it doesn’t really matter anyway because I have one for both of us,” Kai winks.

“Nerd,” Cinder jokes, kissing him.

She pulls back after a minute, breathless. “How do people not run out of air?” she wheezes.

“That doesn’t matter. Just try the tacos.” Kai hands her one, causing her stomach to rumble.

Kai gives her half of his, apparently deciding her hunger is more important than his, and makes sure she eats it.

“You’re the best,” Cinder says once they’re both done.

“If you say so,” Kai smirks.

There’s a knock on the door before she can reply; Cinder curses.

“I’m going to hide now,” Kai tells her, sliding under the bed.

Cinder giggles but makes sure he’s hidden, along with the taco wrappers, before opening the door.

“Pearl.”

“Just letting you know the dishwasher broke down so you’ve got a load of dishes to wash. Oh, and, I expect my cosmetics to arrive by tomorrow evening.”

“Fine,” Cinder replies, rolling her eyes.

“Were you talking to yourself?” Pearl asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course, I needed advice from someone who’s actually got a brain.” Cinder smirks.

Pearl scoffs but slams the door as she leaves, causing one of the papers on the wall to flutter and land on the ground.

“What, I’m not intelligent enough for you?” Kai asks from under her bed.

“Nope,” Cinder replies.

“Ah, what a shame.” Kai says, then yelps softly, “What is your bed made of?”

“Don’t tell me you banged your head?” Cinder asks incredulously.

“I didn’t, the bed attacked me.”

Cinder stifles her laugh, putting the paper back up and watching Kai wriggle out from under the bed, rubbing his head.

“Your sisters are so much trouble.”

“They’re not my sisters,” Cinder says stiffly.

Kai bites his lip, his eyes softening with sympathy, and entwines their fingers. “I’m sorry.”

It sounds weird because he’s still biting one side of his lip but Cinder just smiles - something she’s now doing pretty much all the time - and leans on his shoulder.

“It’s okay, I know what you meant.”

Kai exhales, accidentally whistles, then claps a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide.

“It’s okay, they’ll just think it’s me,” Cinder laughs, trying to make sure she never forgets the look on his face.

“Right.” Kai nods, glancing at his watch. “What time do you usually sleep?”

“No idea, maybe like… one?”

“What do you do until then?” Kai asks, bemused.

“I don’t actually know,” Cinder admits. “I mostly just wait until I can see the moon.”

Kai kisses her forehead. “So do I, when I can.”

“When you can?” Cinder echoes.

Kai shifts. “I’m sometimes in the basement and there’s no windows there…”

Cinder sits up and faces him. “I didn’t know you had a basement.”

“I suppose that’s rather the point actually.” Kai’s voice is quiet, almost a whisper. “Now I can look for the moon and think of you.”

She can’t help wanting to murder whoever locks him in a basement but suppresses that, not wanting to dwell on it and ruin the mood.

“You’re so cheesy,” Cinder giggles.

“No, I’m not, I’m lactose intolerant,” Kai replies with a wink.

It takes her a second to get it, at which point she has to put both hands over her mouth to stop her laughter.

For once, she couldn’t care less about seeing the moon, content with his smile as he waves and climbs out of the window.

She watches him surreptitiously run and smiles, even as she hears Adri shouting about something downstairs.

Maybe it’s all worth it.

As Kai’s figure disappears, she decides its definitely worth it.

like/reblog but don’t repost, thanks!

[arobandhan]

when we met

love you and enjoyyyy xx @balenciagastones

Hannah remembers when she first saw Alex, she was walking through a park headed towards the bus stop to head back home after school. He was having a kickabout with a friend, she could hear his laughs over the music that was playing in her headphones. She giggled a little as she watched him and his friend mess around with the football. She wasn't going to deny she found the olive skinned boy with short brown hair attractive but she didn’t wanna seem weird and go up to them so she walked past them hoping and praying she’d see him again, thinking they hadn’t noticed her, but he did. 

He saw her when she had just entered the park, she was looking at her phone, her light brown hair covering her face. It was the first chilly week of the season, so he noticed her with a light jacket on with a long sleeve tee underneath, her jeans had minor rips and she had some white trainers on. She looked up and he noticed every detail on her face, all which he found beautiful. His eyes were taken off her when there was a football almost thrown at his head by Mason.

“Oi stop staring at the pretty girl and lets get this going!” Mason shouted at him, Alex glared at him hoping that she didn't hear his friend shout but when he looked back he saw she was wearing headphones and was oblivious to it. 

“You’re lucky she didn’t hear you, next time imma do the same to you.” Alex responded and Mason chuckled, juggling the ball at his feet before passing it to Alex who settled the ball. 

“Why don’t you go up to her?” Mason asked and Alex shook his head 

“I don’t wanna seem weird.” 

“Oh but staring her down wasn’t weird at all right?” Mason chuckled making Alex kick the ball hard towards him. The two of them chuckling not realizing Hannah was walking past them. Realizing when she was already leaving the park. 

“Fucking hell she left.” 

“I’m sure you’ll see her again.” 

“I hope so.” Alex responded watching where she just walked away from. 

Three days past and it was the weekend, she had walked through the park the days following when she saw him in hope she'd see him playing around with his friend and to her dismay she didn’t see him at all. 

It was saturday and her friend, Adri,had invited her to go for a shopping day and lunch, since Adri was in uni she didn’t see her that often during the week so she immediately agreed. So Hannah got ready and hopped on the bus towards the shopping center. The bus left her about a 20 minute walk from the center so she was glad she was wearing comfortable shoes, she put her headphones in and started her trek. As she kept walking she started passing the City training facility, she began to get giddy walking by where he favorite team trained. Knowing she wouldn’t see any senior players as they had an away game that Sunday but that didn’t mean she was any less filled with happiness passing by it. 

Alex had just wrapped up an early saturday morning EDS scrimmage, he was showered and dressed for the rest of the day, walking out to the car park with some teammates when he spot her. His eyes went wide and he stopped in his tracks, he was gonna go up to her and talk to her. 

“Hey lads, I'm actually gonna take a walk and then head home a little later.” he shouted towards them as he began walking toward the gate, making them look at him weird before shrugging and heading towards their own cars. 

Alex exited the facility and made sure he can still pick up his car in a little while before jogging to catch up with her. 

Hannah was to in her own world to notice him behind her. That was until she felt a tap on her shoulder, freaking her out, extending her arm back to poorly defend herself, then looked at who it was and it was him, the footie playing boy from the park. She stepped back for a second. 

“Woah i aint gonna hurt you love.” he said and she looked at him weird not hearing what he said, and that's when he noticed she still had her headphones on. She took them out and he repeated his sentence making her blush and chuckle. 

“Sorry about that, you just scared me.” 

“Yeah now that i think about it, i probably should've realized you hadn’t noticed me coming.” 

“That’s alright,” she giggled,”umm I’m Hannah by the way, you’re the boy from the park the other day aren’t you? Wanna keep walking with me towards the shopping center?” 

“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” he winked, “but yeah i am the boy from the park, my names Alex, yeah of course, wouldn’t want some other boy coming and scaring you.” he laughed making her blush. 

The two of them began walking in silence, before Hannah spoke up again. 

“So what’re you doing in the area? Another kick about in the park over there?” she asked smiling 

“No actually i was just at a scrimmage with my team.” he replied, putting his hands in his pockets. 

“Oh no way! Do you play for a local team?” 

“You could say that.” he chuckled. 

“What? Whats so funny hm?” she nudged him. 

“Nothinggg, just find it cute that you wanna know where i play.”

“I mean im trying to get to know you, and you were the one who brought up that you had a scrimmage.” she countered 

“Well you brought up football in the first place.”

“That’s cuz i saw you play it in the park duhhhh.” she rolled her eyes playfully at him. 

“My apologies Miss Hannah, please forgive my mistake.” he joked, stopping in his tracks and grabbing her hand as if he was begging for forgiveness. 

“You are forgiven.” she said seriously before giggling.

“Oh thank god, I don't know what i would’ve done if you hadn’t forgiven me.” 

“Maybe walk back to where you mysteriously came from.” she raised her eyebrows at him. 

“Oh its no mystery love,” he turned around and began walking backwards next to her, “I was just over there, look familiar?” he pointed and she turned around to see where his finger was directing and it was the training facility. She stopped and her eyes went wide, he stopped a little ahead of her, a small smirk on his face. 

She closed her eyes taking a deep breath before responding, “You play for the city academy dont you?” she was slightly embarrassed that she didn’t put it together. 

“Mhmm,” he laughed walking over to her and pulling her back to continue walking, “let me guess, city fan?” 

“Mhmm.” she mocked making him laugh. 

“Your reaction was quite adorable.” 

“I am not adorable.” 

“Yes you are.” 

“No I’m not!” her face flushed with a blush that she couldn’t hide. 

“Yes you are!” he came up close to her face slighting cupping her cheek,”Look at this adorable blush on your face.” 

“Oh piss off.” she playfully shoved him away. 

“You sure you want me to piss off?” he looked at her smugly before she shook her head no.

The two of them continued their walk, playfully bantering and flirting with each other until they reached the shopping center. 

Hannah could see Adri walking up as well from the car park, Alex seeing that she was meeting a friend and smiled. 

“Why you smiling so big for?” she nudged him

“Nothing, just happy i didn’t walk you all the way over here for a date and only to meet a friend, meaning you don’t have a boyfriend.” 

“What makes you think I don’t have a boyfriend hm?” 

“Cuz i saw the way you've checked me out from the moment we started walking,” she blushed, “so in that case does that mean i get to see you again?” he asked. 

“I guess you can,” she started, “pass me your phone so i can give you my number.” 

“Oooo making the move i see, I like it.” he smirked making her roll her eyes playfully. 

She handed his phone back and saw that her friend was waiting on the side for her, he didn’t wanna keep her from her plans too long, so he was gonna head back. 

“I guess i’ll see you around.” she said 

“You’ll definitely be seeing me around love.” he replied, giving her a kiss on the cheek before walking back to the training facility. 

Hannah couldnt help the massive blush on her face as Adri walked up to her. 

“Who was that huh?” Adri wiggled her eyebrows at her. 

“Oh shut it.” 

“You better tell me all about it at lunch now.” 

“I will now walk, im hungry.” they both laughed. 

As they walked to the restaurant they were eating at, Hannah’s phone pinged. 

Hello love, when do i get the pleasure of seeing your pretty face again? ;) xx -Alex 

She knew she was already in deep.