#{ im perpetually tired no matter when i sleep } | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

aerequets · 2 years ago

Text

the perfect family

a/n: another one sitting, 1 AM fic! (its actually 1:30 right now but.)

again, no rereading, no beta, bla bla............ yall know the drill. enjoy!

WAIT WAIT first i want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the love, its actually insane. i havent been able to reply to all your reviews but just know i reread them ALL multiple times and giggle and save them to look at later. i love all your reviews so much yall have no idea. im glad people enjoy my writing!!

okay now enjoy haha

Rating: T

read on ao3

Summary: Twilight had never been this tired in his whole life. He’s used to grueling missions. He’s used to getting a meager few hours of sleep per night. He’s used to being in a perpetual state of anxiety and stomach-achiness. But being Loid Forger is something else entirely. Being a family man, a parent, is no joke.

Or: Twilight has a dream about the "perfect" family.

Twilight had never been this tired in his whole life.

He’s used to grueling missions. He’s used to getting a meager few hours of sleep per night. He’s used to being in a perpetual state of anxiety and stomach-achiness.

But being Loid Forger is something else entirely. Being a family man, a parent, is no joke.

First off, Anya almost got another Tonitrus at school earlier that day. Fiona had relayed to him via his earpiece that Yor had left a message on his office phone that Henderson had called her about Anya using some colorful language. The teacher was willing to discuss before taking further action since Anya claimed he’d misheard. Yor was apologetic and said her break was over and she was needed at work, so would he please go see Anya if he had the time (Fiona didn’t relay it in as kind terms, but Loid could imagine). Loid, who was in the middle of a warehouse stakeout, had to shimmy out of the vents in his best approximation of a hurried worm while trying not to have a conniption above his targets’ heads.

When he finally got to the school, changed into ordinary work clothes and hyperventilation in check, he had to meet a sheepish Anya, who was busy trying to convince Henderson that she’d called Damian “sofa king stupid, like the evil villain Sofa King from Bondman (nonexistent), who is stupid”. She’d crafted a whole backstory for the villain and his love for all manners of seating furniture, which was what eventually sent him to his doom as he watched his favorite armchair get run over by a car. Somehow.

In other circumstances, Loid would be impressed at the intricate lie—and equally concerned that she was able to think of it—but at that moment he was busy trying not to shit his pants from the way his heart dropped into his ass. Where had she learned that language?! It was a huge concern that he couldn’t even address because he had to back her play and convince Henderson that, yes, Anya didn’t cuss, heavens no, where would she possibly have learned that? How inelegant!

Anya got off with a warning from the teacher to not call others stupid. Loid considered reprimanding her once they left the office, but thought it best to wait until she finished the school day and returned home to tell her she was grounded.

Anya inexplicably threw a tantrum right then. “I didn’t get a bolt,” she wailed. “Why should I be punished?!” He was torn between trying to explain that he hadn’t even punished her—yet—and that calling others ‘sofa king stupid’ was not acceptable in any capacity. In the end, Anya yelled that she hated him and ran off to join Becky, who had been watching from afar with a strangely large smile on her face.

So that went swimmingly.

He went back to resume his stakeout, but by that time everyone had left the warehouse and he had no new information to show for it. He ended up going home early, stomach aching this time in anticipation of Handler’s lethal disapproval. When Anya arrived home from school, all she did was send him a nasty glare (and stick her tongue out at him when she thought he wasn’t looking) before slamming the door to her room. To make matters worse, Yor had told him that morning that she’d be home late. It was embarrassing to admit, but he had no idea how to navigate Anya’s tantrums without her around. Usually he and Yor made a team wherein she calmed down and soothed Anya while he explained their perspective. He had a feeling that if he tried to soothe Anya she would call him a big liar. And maybe some other choice words, which he still didn’t know how she learned, if she was feeling extra mad.

When Yor returned, he was just about finished cooking supper. He was still at the stove when he heard the door open, so he called out a hello from the kitchen. When he didn’t hear a response, he turned off the heat and stepped out to see Yor, standing petrified by the door. There was a spider in the entryway.

“Oh,” he said. Yor could paralyze a cow, but she couldn’t stand bugs. “Hold on, I’ll get a glass—” But at that moment, the spider scuttled a little to the right, eliciting a shriek from Yor. Before Loid could even blink, her shoe was slamming down onto the bug.

And through the floorboards.

She stood with her foot through the floor for a few seconds, him watching with a slack jaw, before she gingerly lifted it out of the hole. The sheer force had caused cracks to spread out all the way to where he was standing.

“I—I—” Her mouth was opening and closing, hands fluttering helplessly. She looked mortified. “I’m so…sorry…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, hardly hearing the words coming out of his own mouth. His eyes stayed fixated on the saucer-sized hole in the ground. A mallet would probably have done less damage. “Those floorboards needed replacing anyway.”

Maybe it was something in his voice, but Yor didn’t insist like she usually would. Instead, she quietly asked, “Where’s Anya?”

He sighed that time, knowing he failed to keep the tiredness out of it. “Her room. She’s angry with me.”

Yor dipped her head. She could probably approximate what had happened since Henderson had explained the situation to her first, which Loid was glad about because he didn’t feel like rehashing every disastrous detail from that meeting. “I’ll go talk to her.”

He should have been more relieved, but instead he felt like all the energy was sucked out of him once she left. He cast one last glance at the hole in the floor before heading to the living room to slump down on the couch.

Every normal family had bad days, he knew. But he couldn’t fool himself into thinking any of this was normal. His daughter had mysteriously obtained a foul mouth and repeatedly came close to demerits. Her teacher probably thought their whole family was one giant red flag. His wife could crush wood beneath her foot like dry leaves. Rarely did he ever think this operation was hopeless, but right now it was like a suffocating reminder weighing down on his shoulders. Everything was wrong.

Nothing about this mission was going how he thought it would. His family was nothing like the people that the Forgers were required to be on paper. He’d been unwillingly flying by the seat of his pants until now. It was exhausting. His luck had to run out sooner or later, and he’d gotten used to relying on it.

These were the last things Loid thought as he nodded off.

…

“Papa? Papa, wake up!” Small hands gently patted his cheek. He furrowed his brows before slowly opening his eyes with a low groan. He was met with the sight of large green eyes close to his face.

“Anya?” Had he fallen asleep? Concerning, but no matter—it looked like Yor had talked to Anya and managed to calm her down. He sat up and rubbed at his face before realizing three things.

One, he was not on the sofa. He was on a bed. What time was it? They hadn’t eaten supper yet—had Yor decided to just carry him into his room? An embarrassing thought, especially since that meant he’d somehow stayed asleep through the whole thing. How was he this lax when the day had been so disastrous?

Second, a quick examination of the room revealed that it wasn’t his room at all. It was Yor’s. Maybe she thought it would be inappropriate to enter his room without permission and had taken him to her own room instead. It was a reasonable explanation that he was ready to accept before he noticed his clothes strewn about a chair in the corner. On the nightstand next to her bed were his glasses and his meds.

…Why were his things in her room?

Before he could even start getting into that, though, there was the third thing, odd enough to put pause on the room dilemma for the moment.

Anya’s head was devoid of her usual hair ornaments, the same ones she never took off or let anyone—including him and Yor—touch. Her head looked strangely empty without them. He must have looked baffled, because Anya tilted her (smooth, cone-free) head.

“What’s wrong, Papa?”

“Um…” He blinked a couple times as if that would put the cones back on her head and the room to rights. It didn’t. “My room? Your hair…?”

Anya squinted, clearly confused. At that moment, the door creaked open and Yor stepped in, causing him to jump a little. She was wearing an apron and brandishing a spatula. “Anya? Is Papa not waking up?”

“His eyes opened, but I think he’s still sleeping,” she stated. Yor laughed.

“Alright, you go and start eating breakfast. I made omelette.” Loid’s eyes widened—Yor had made breakfast?!—but, to his neverending surprise, Anya excitedly whooped before running out of the room.

What on earth was going on?

“You must have had a busy day yesterday,” Yor said as she approached him. He subconsciously tensed as he watched her approach, heartbeat quickening. She was looking at him…differently. “You’re usually up before me.”

“Ah…I guess,” he said vaguely. He had to figure out what exactly was going on. “How does Anya feel about yesterday?”

“Yesterday?” Yor frowned. “What happened yesterday?”

“You don’t remember? The… the call?”

She placed a hand on his forehead. He froze—she never initiated contact first. Never so casually. She retracted her hand with a thoughtful hum. “No fever. I guess Anya was right, you really are still half asleep.”

His brain couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He was a man who operated on logic and reason, and nothing about the current situation made any sense. So, naturally, all that left his mouth was an unintelligent “Wuh?”

She giggled. “Oh, you’re so cute in the morning.”

What?

She leaned down and pecked him on the lips. “Come and eat before it gets cold.”

What?

Mercifully, she left at that moment, so she didn’t see him short-circuiting. Okay, calm down, he commanded himself through his racing heart and sweating hands. It was ridiculous, he never had such extreme physical reactions, but to be fair. What just happened?!

Calm down, he thought again, and this time his heartbeat eased slightly. He would do what always helped him calm down: go over the details and focus on what he knew. So here were the things he knew: it looked like he was in Yor’s room, which they may be sharing. Somehow, the events of the previous day hadn’t passed, as Anya wasn’t angry and Yor didn’t remember. Anya didn’t have those cones on her head. Yor could cook. Yor could kiss.

Was he in a coma?

No, that was ridiculous… but so was everything else. Nothing made sense. He mulled over it in bed before suddenly remembering—his mission log! He wrote everything that happened in that secret log. If, by chance, he had somehow been drugged and knocked out by an enemy organization and was currently experiencing hallucinations in a torture facility, his mission log might indicate some plans to go to said enemy organization and he would finally have an explanation.

He got out of bed and opened the closet. He was sharing it with Yor, half of her clothes hanging on one side and his on the other. Ignoring the way that unsettled him, he knelt down and rooted around in his sock drawer. He pulled out an argyle sock with a loose thread and reached inside, praying. His prayers were answered when his fingers met cool metal. The key was there. He got up and reached inside the closet for his briefcase next. After unlocking it with the key and entering the 26-digit code, he clicked the case open and sifted through various forms of ammunition and explosives before pulling out the log, located at the very bottom. Of course, the whole thing was written in 3 layers of code, but there was no such thing as being too careful.

He flipped to the previous day’s log, expecting to see the same writing he’d put down in the morning and maybe an extra paragraph if he was lucky, but he paused.

It was all different.

‘Today went well, like usual. Anya did well at school. Closeness with Damian questionable, but successfully transferred gift. Yor had work function. Attended and put up successful front of upper class couple. Five stellas left. Estimated time of Strix completion roughly three months from now.’

There were too many things in that short statement for him to consider. ‘Today went well like usual’? Since when was that usual?

And five Stellas left? That meant Anya had already obtained three Stella stars! It should have made him overjoyed, but he was just baffled. Had WISE finally snapped and pulled every string in the last night? He couldn’t see any other way for Anya to have somehow gotten two more stars than she’d had yesterday.

And the last thing—Strix to be completed three months from now? Last month, Handler had told him that they were hoping to complete the operation within four months. He’d been so bad at lying that he could achieve that timeframe that Handler had snapped at him. But here, his log indicated that he was on track with WISE’s expectations. That everything was going according to plan.

He sat on the floor and started from the beginning of the log. He was a fast reader and had photographic memory, but even he had to reread some parts several times in disbelief.

Anya was adopted from the same orphanage, but none of her eccentricities were listed down. In fact, all he’d written was that she was well-behaved and performed well in school. What about her speech? What about her eclectic facial expressions? What about her love for peanuts, or her hate for carrots, or her uncanny ability to recognize his thoughts, or how she drove him mad, or how she made him proud?

As for Yor, he’d met her at that same party, but had correctly introduced himself as her boyfriend. Afterwards, they had actually started dating, and Loid waited a period of three months (short, but surely more appropriate than three hours) before proposing to Yor at a fancy restaurant. Romantic enough, the log read, to fool both passerby and Yor.

That was why they shared a room, and why she’d kissed him. Here, wherever he was, he was not in a mutually beneficial arrangement with Yor. She thought they were actually married, possibly even loved him—which was what he had originally planned for when first trying to find a wife.

The bitter taste in his mouth at that realization was not lost on him.

Was it possible he was dreaming? He pinched his arm. If this was a dream, it wasn’t one he could force himself out of. At least for now, he had to deal with the unfamiliar family outside his door. It seemed, at least, that he was still a spy and that Strix was still going on, so perhaps he could go to Handler and try to get some facts straight. Dream or not, he was not about to stumble around not knowing what was going on around him.

He heard Yor’s footsteps outside the door. Another thing for him to note down in his mind: she didn’t have the unparalleled ability to catch him by surprise here. He quickly closed the briefcase and shoved it back in the closet as Yor poked her head in the room.

“Loid? Are you going to eat?”

“Sorry, I just knocked some shirts off their hangers and was putting them back up,” he said smoothly. He got up and brushed himself off. “I’m coming.”

She sent him another smile before leaving again. He swallowed. Did they usually kiss? She seemed to do it with ease. He suddenly froze and looked back at the bed.

Did they…?

But the Twilight in the log wasn’t him. That Twilight had fooled Yor. That Twilight was a better spy than him. That Twilight made him angry. If he took advantage of Yor…

But what was he thinking? It was what he’d done many times before. Why was it different now?

He was giving himself a headache with all the difficult questions, so he put them aside for the moment and went outside to eat. The omelette was perfect. Anya had impeccable table manners. Bond, he noticed, sat attentively at the door like a guard-dog instead of begging for scraps at the table like he usually did.

It was the perfect family for the mission. So why did he feel so unnerved?

“Ugh.” At Yor’s grunt, he turned to see her hand clenched over a jar of jelly. She was twisting with all her might, but the lid wouldn’t come loose. After a few seconds she gave up and sent him a sheepish smile. “Could you get this for me?”

“Oh… sure.” He twisted the jar open with ease. Yor could pulverize a jar like this between her pointer finger and thumb. This Yor gratefully took the opened jar from him with soft thanks.

Breakfast passed peacefully. Anya hadn’t overslept, so she had time to neatly finish her food and gather her things for school. He and Yor got ready for work in the same room. He stared at his feet the whole time. They walked Anya to the bus, where she cheerfully bid them goodbye.

“I’ll see you later at home then,” Yor said, turning to him once Anya’s bus had vanished into the distance. He could tell what was coming this time and prepared himself for her kiss. This one was longer, long enough for him to close his eyes and shudder when she pulled away.

She placed a hand on his cheek, a divot between her brows. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”

He swallowed, mouth dry. Everything was perfect. His daughter was a pleasant, well-mannered child who performed in school. His wife kissed him good morning and goodbye. He was a spy executing his mission without a hitch.

Everything was wrong.

But the one thing that was the same was that he was a liar, so he leaned his face into her palm and placed his hand over hers. It was fascinating to see, the things he could do here that he’d only had fleeting thoughts of before. Her face flushed, but no more than a wife’s face would flush at an ordinary act of affection from her husband. “Yes,” he lied. “I would.”

…

Unfortunately, no details were revealed by WISE like he’d hoped. Instead, he was greeted with a pleased Handler when he entered her office. He thought she might be putting up an act to scare him later until she spoke.

“Good job with the third star,” she told him. “Let’s try getting her fourth one in the arts. It’s good to be well rounded.”

“The arts,” he repeated. He remembered her horrid cow drawing. Handler pulled out a folder from her desk.

“Yes. There’s an art contest coming up soon, isn’t there? She can enter any of these pieces for the first-to-third grade group. They’re quite good.”

He opened the folder and looked at the pictures of the artworks inside. Accurate, if not slightly lopsided, depictions of prominent figures. Landscape watercolors with good usage of color and perspective. A few sloppy but intelligently framed still-lifes of fruit.

He thought he preferred the horrid cow. All he said out loud, though, was “Understood.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

Usually his debriefings with Handler lasted much longer, because they had so many things to go over and attempt to fix or counteract. This was an ideal situation, one in which she was pleased and the meeting went smoothly.

It did nothing to ease the sense of crookedness that had pervaded him all day.

When he got home, Yor was already there. This Yor, it seemed like, didn’t have to work late shifts. She was humming in the kitchen as she prepared dinner. It smelled delicious, but he wasn’t sure if his stomach grumbled or churned.

“Oh! Welcome back.” When she kissed him this time, he was able to keep himself together enough to reciprocate the appropriate amount and smile at her when she pulled back. “I’m making potato soup.”

“Smells good,” he said. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Help?” She cocked her head. “Don’t worry about that, you just got back from work! You should relax. Anya will be back soon.”

He didn’t want to sit alone with his thoughts, not to mention that he was used to cooking supper and had actually come to enjoy it. But Yor might think something was off if he pushed. She might put her hand on his face again, look at him with that divot between her eyebrows. He probably wouldn’t be able to take that. So he picked his poison and sat in the living room where Bond was resting. Usually the hound liked to rest by Loid’s feet when he returned from work, but this Bond remained in the corner. It was a small detail, but one he noticed nonetheless.

About twenty minutes later, Anya entered the apartment. “I’m home!”

“Welcome home!” Yor came out of the kitchen to hug Anya. “How was school?”

“Good! I got an A on the science test!”

“Wow!”

“There’s also an art contest,” she added. “I want to enter!”

“Go for it, your artwork is amazing!”

Over dinner, which tasted as good as it smelled, everyone shared their days. Anya’s school tales were nothing out of the usual for a normal child. Yor’s work stories were perfectly normal for a civil worker. Loid shared select details from his own mundane psychiatry. Dinner was civil, and normal. It was all normal.

After dinner, Anya studied mathematics. This Anya didn’t beg to watch Spy Wars—he wasn’t sure if she watched at all. This Anya didn’t struggle with fractions. This Anya didn’t beg to stay up past her bedtime and ran to the bathroom when Yor told her it was time to wash up. When he tucked this Anya in and asked if she wanted her chimera plushie, she sent him an incredulous look.

“I don’t sleep with that anymore, Papa,” she said. A little belatedly, he realized that the penguin plushie he won for her was missing from her room, too.

Maybe the other Twilight never got that plushie for her at all. That thought made him feel as hollow as the circle of Anya’s arms.

He bid her goodnight and washed up for bed himself. When he returned to his room, he froze.

Yor was on their bed, reading a book. She was wearing a nightgown. It wasn’t particularly revealing or racy, but it was nothing a woman would wear in front of someone she wasn’t married to. At least, not in the real sense. She glanced up at him and shut the book. “Loid? What’s the matter?”

“I…” His mouth was parched as his fears from that morning came barrelling back into his head. What did the other Twilight do with this Yor? How? How did he lay with her at night without feeling like he was going to throw up at the very thought?

He could imagine an answer now, though. It was because that Twilight was the ideal spy, with the ideal family, completing his mission in the most ideal way possible. That Twilight never made any mistakes; that Twilight adopted the perfect child to complete Strix, properly romanced a woman, and treated her like his wife. In every sense. And because that Twilight was the perfect spy, he would lay with Yor, kiss her, and would definitely be able to toss her aside in three months.

“You’ve been off all day,” Yor said as she approached him. He froze, eyes locked on the wall. Her hands came on the side of his face, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “Really, Loid, what is it? You know you can tell me anything.”

I haven’t told you anything, he wanted to shout. I’ve been lying. He lied. I did.

At his silence, she leaned up and kissed him. The first three kisses from that day were short, if not sweet. This one was long. Languid. It was impossibly warm and felt impossibly good as she raked her fingers through his scalp. It pulled his heart to his throat when she pulled away just a breath, eyes lidded. “You’re stressed. Come to bed.”

It was when she leaned up again that he’d had enough. Gently, but firmly, he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back, trying not to break under the hurt look she was giving him. Desire and disgust roiled through him in waves.

He could not. He would not. It didn’t matter what the other Twilight had done, or if this was a dream or hallucination. He wouldn’t do this with Yor, not when she didn’t know anything. Maybe it was just him losing his touch, or maybe he had a soft spot for Yor that he was still refusing to acknowledge, but she deserved better than a liar. Even if that might be to the detriment of the mission.

“I remembered I have some things to finish up for work,” he said. “Don’t worry about me and go to sleep. I’ll join you soon.” He quickly collected his things and left the room so he wouldn’t be able to see her expression. Outside, he spread his things out on the coffee table before lying down on the sofa.

Please be a dream. Please be a dream. He shifted and closed his eyes. He didn’t think he would doze off, but he must have been more tired than he thought, because soon everything went silent.

…

“Papa? Papa, wake up!” Small hands poked his stomach before a bigger weight landed on him. He let out an ‘oof’.

“Anya, don’t jump on him!”

Before his eyes were even fully open, the details of what had just transpired flashed through his mind. His heart skipped a beat as he blinked and looked to the side.

Large green eyes. And those black horns. Her horns!

Anya furrowed her brows and raised a hand to those hair ornaments as if she’d heard his thoughts. He could almost laugh. There was that uncanny reaction to his thoughts.

“Loid? Are you okay?” He looked up and had to remember to breathe. Yor was smiling at him, kind and gentle as ever. She also stood a pace away, making sure not to lean over him. It made for a strange mix of yearning and relief in his chest, but it was leagues better than her believing in a lie about their marriage.

He looked around. He was on the sofa in his day clothes. The scent of the supper he’d prepared hung in the air. In the entryway, a rug conspicuously covered the place where the hole would be. And Anya looked guilty.

“I’m fine,” he replied. He was even too relieved to do his usual mental spiel of how spies would never doze off in front of others. “I was just tired and fell asleep for a bit. Did you two talk?”

Yor sent Anya a meaningful look. She shuffled and pulled at the hem of her dress. “‘m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry I was so bad to Damian, and I lied, and I almost got a bolt, and I was mean to you…” She looked up and her eyes were already welling up, snot dripping from her nose. “I’m sorry I was so bad today!”

She rushed into his chest, bawling and getting snot all over his vest. He didn’t care. He smoothed a hand over her back and let himself smile. She was loud, messy, and erratic.

This was his daughter. Anya was perfect this way.

“As long as you understand why what you did wasn’t good,” he said to her. “I forgive you, Anya.”

After she calmed down a bit, he looked up at Yor. “Should we have supper?”

“Ah, yes.” As they got up, Anya holding onto Loid’s leg, Yor gestured to the rug by the entryway. An embarrassed flush was aglow on her face. “Um… also… do you remember that old toaster you were going to toss out?”

“The toaster?” Loid blinked. “Yes, why?”

“Well…since you were going to throw it away anyways, I thought…” She trailed off and decided to go over to the rug instead. She peeled it back to reveal a hunk of metal squished and flattened into the hole. “S-so it’s not a danger anymore. I swear I’ll fix it for real, but just for now—I hope you don’t mind, I—”

A laugh bursted out of Loid before he could stop it. Anya and Yor both looked up at him with the same curious expression that only seemed to swell his heart even more.

“It’s perfect, Yor.”

And it was. It was unconventional, jarring, and definitely strange, but it was stronger for it. And he rather liked the way it looked.

421 notes · View notes

italoniponic · 2 years ago

Note

These headcanons go out to that one anon who requested for a part 2 and Cherry

Mc has really good organizational skills as it pays off when ever he has to bail out one of their friends outta trouble

Mcs' scent is a hit topic amongst beastmen as it smells different to everybody but the one thing they all seem to agree on is that it smells like their favourite scent

Mc has learnt how study regardless of the environment they are in so it doesn't matter whether they study at the library or at one of Kalims parties

Mc is considered to be the 8th dorm leader of the NRC and actually cam attend any of the Dorm leader meetings but they don't cuz their always busy

Mc one time showed Malleus how to play Pokémon and so now one of Malleus's new hobbies is to play pokemon(bro has a whole team of dragons)

Mc has learnt how to function with only 3 hours of sleep. This combined with how tired they are of Crowleys tasks makes them sound either bored or perpetually tired

When mc was younger they had a dog named Pluto.

Mc has never once watched or read anything relating to Disney .

Mc despite their status as magicless they are a really good magic tutor which baffles everybody cuz like bro how u gonna be here for only a couple of months but you can coach someone as if you used magic your entire life.

Mc homemade honey is banned at the NRC because students who take it grow stronger quickly but im return it makes them crave it to the point where fistfights have broken out over a single jar of honey

I hope you like these new Hcs i have feel free to ask for more though cuz u have a bunch if scenarios, theories and whole lot more just stuck in my head.

So anyway goodbye Cherry and that one anon i have to sleep now

[more MC hcs here]

Thanks again, my dear <3 You made an anon, my followers and me really happy! then again, feel free to always come back with more hcs anytime you want and when you feel like it. hope you had an good night to sleep~

as always, I chose some favorite hcs to comment on!

I think the scent bit was very interesting. maybe it's bc they're from another world? or just... idk, I liked it. makes me wonder what kinda scent me or Yulia would give to the Savanaclaw trio. I drink a lot of coffee so maybe my breath is in an perpetuate state of cafeine

I wouldn't attend the dorm leaders meetings too. Part bc yeah, Crowley let us busy til the very end, other part bc... not feel like it. they would have to hunt down for Leona and me to come to the meetings they gave up on Malleus we all know

Malleus' pokemon team of dragons <3 how cute!

I love how the dog Pluto and "never heard of Disney" can actually tie together lol like, MC could just be really into Roman mythology or astronomic stuff (since it's "roman Hades" and an dwarf-planet)

W-why is so NRC to fight over an simple jar of honey???

thanks for coming in again~~ I'm posting this at night (it's 22pm for me here) so, hope you and everyone is reading have good sleeping nights as well <3

#twisted wonderland #mc/yuu #hardworking mc/yuu hcs #malleus draconia #kalim al asim #leona kingscholar #at least they were mentioned...#twst yuu #twst mc #twst headcanons #cherry's mumbling about twst

61 notes · View notes

hansolmates · 4 years ago

Text

distance learning (m)

banner done by the beautiful @eerieedits

summary; after their first hookup, jungkook isn’t so sure whether you’re serious about being exclusive. after all, people say things during sex. jungkook takes it in his own hands to figure out where you stand, and he realizes soon enough that eavesdropping is a bad habit pairing; neighbor!jungkook x (f) reader genre/warnings; fluff, humor, crack, insecure!jk, unresolved sexual tension, stressed!mc, this is really just unnecessary drama bc drama is fun™, sexting, dom kook’s still a meanie in control, posession kink, cock slapping, a blowjob, cockwarming, unprotected, creampie, squirting, (wrap the pickle before u tickle folks) and of course the excessive use of the petname [redacted] w/c; 6.1k a/n; haaaaaa three months later im finally posting pt 2! i figured that no matter how many times i edit/reread at this point i think it’s time to finally let this beast go!!! enjoyyy click here for part 1: remote learning drabbles; 01

if you enjoy this, please considering giving our pasta couple a like n’share💚

It’s been a week since the thing.

The remote-controlled vibrator thing.

The whole sappy-love-confesion-during-sex thing.

Jungkook is antsy, tail tucked in, perpetually wondering whether he went too far. You seemed to like it, and Jungkook definitely loved it. It was spicy and dirty and hot, and at the same time Jungkook thought he really made progress in expressing his feelings for you. Not only that, you said you liked him back!

At least, he thought you did.

“I really said I’d feed her lasagna and cum in the same sentence,” Jungkook bemoans into his pillow, which still lingers faintly of your Redken shampoo. “I’m disgusting. She thinks I’m disgusting.”

People say things during sex, Jungkook knows that. In the throes of passion and pleasure, people will say anything that comes to their mind, anything that fits the mood. Of course, you’d be tied in and say you like him back. But did you like him back as a friend? As a fuckbuddy? As something more?

“Fucking text her,” Taehyung is tired of Jungkook’s wallowing, everytime he checks in on the app developer he’s brooding in one of three places. Today’s his bedroom. Taehyung dips under the blankets, and steals Jungkook’s pillow right under his nose.

Jungkook suppresses a whimper, face melding into the blankets. Now that pillow is going to smell like Taehyung.

“Text her what,” Jungkook replies despondently.

“I don’t know, something along the lines of ‘I wanna follow through with my proposition of feeding you my cum and lasagna—not simultaneously. Wanna go on a date this weekend?’ It’s that simple,” Taehyung gets up in Jungkook’s face, dark eyes forcing him to bore right in. “Want me to do it for you?”

“Noo, I’m an adult I can—”

“I did it for you.”

Jungkook nearly knocks into Taehyung’s hard head, sitting up straight when he notices his phone behind his roommate’s back. This is what he gets for sharing passwords. Thankfully, the message is cleaner than Taehyung’s words, and you’ve already replied.

[1:23] Jungkook: would you like to go out for dinner this weekend? pasta and wine?

[1:25] You: it’s a busy week this week 🥺 raincheck?

“Was the sex that bad?” Taehyung frowns, reading the message twice.

“N-no,” Jungkook is sweating. He isn’t sure anymore.

Taehyung hands Jungkook back his phone, slowly, as if you’ll reply back with a change of your mind. Jungkook is a deflated balloon on his bed, feeling like a bum in his ratty sweater and a dateless weekend.

“It’s just that,” Taehyung puts a hand on his lip, mulling, “busy people don’t reply that fast. Like even if she wasn’t busy, there’s a fifteen-minute leeway before replying.”

This silly rule overrides Jungkook’s mind for the rest of the week.

The gyms have been reopened for months, and Jungkook’s trainer misses him dearly. Jungkook meets with Saeroyi in the morning, eager to get a few jabs in with some fresh equipment. He tries to move on, distract himself with a couple of pumps and a match with Saeroyi. It feels great to sweat it off, but it doesn’t help sway Jungkook’s incessant thoughts.

The ball is in your court now, Jungkook has nothing to do but wait. Some people are just bad texters, maybe you just happened to have your phone near you when Taehyung sent the message. Maybe you just wanted to cut Jungkook off as quickly as possible so you decided to reply fast and rip the band-aid.

No, you’re definitely not that cold-hearted.

Re-entering his apartment complex, his eyes linger towards where your room lies on the first floor. It’s all the way at the end of the hallway, and he’s tempted to just confront you and make sure that what you and him really had is indeed, over. Conversely, you could just really be having a bad week and you genuinely do want a raincheck.

Jungkook’s eyes trail to his form. Still in his gym clothes, and a little sweaty from the travel time. If he gets caught, he can just tell you he’s doing a cooldown by running across the hallways. Not the first time it’s happened, afterall it led him to you at one point.

He breaks into a soft jog, making a beeline to your front door. His feet squish against your old welcome mat. You haven’t changed it since Halloween, and he smiles fondly at the black scripted “Boo Y’all” written in script next to a chibi-ghost.

His heart beats faster as his hand lingers by the door, ready to knock. Deep breaths. Who knows, he could just be overthinking (like usual.)

“Fuck, Hobi!”

Jungkook freezes, his knuckles a centimeter away from your door. He backs up as if he’s been burned. His heart has fallen all the way down to his ass, and intends to stay there because now he feels like a damn fool.

The bed is creaking relentlessly, a rhythmic pattern that has Jungkook’s face crumbling at every spring. Jungkook’s face hovers over the door, his ear brushing against the wood.

“C’mon, bunny,” the male voice is teasing, “you know you love having me over. It would satisfy both of us if you’d just let it go.”

Bunny. A cute pet name, for sure. The way it rolls off the stranger’s tongue is natural, as if he’s been saying it for years. But what about being his doll, is that not good enough?

You’re huffy, taking deep breaths. He doesn’t want to hear anymore. Jungkook has put himself through enough self-wallowing for the week. What if he was just a stepping stone to meeting new people that will satisfy you better? What if you just needed one good orgasm to get your flow back, and Jungkook’s job is done? Sure, there were no strings attached when he proposed to have sex with you, but he thought…

No more thinking. Jungkook jogs away from the door, even going so far is to jog all the way up to the penthouse.

He hates this.

You hate this.

It’s been five days since Hoseok’s arrival, and you are going bonkers. Why couldn’t he get a hotel or an AirBnB? Because he’s cheap as fuck, that’s why. Your dinky cousin has been clinging to you like a lonely koala, and while you found it cute in the 5th grade, it doesn’t translate well nearly two decades later.

Every morning is the same. You make a subpar toast and Nutella breakfast, letting Hoseok’s slices go cold as you log in for work. You’ve been clocking in earlier in the hopes to finish the majority of your tasks before Hoseok wakes up, because by then you can barely function. Once he wakes up, he’s relentless, bouncing on the bed and talking your head off while you try to concentrate on whatever your boss is telling you. Whenever he jumps too hard, your cheap mattress causes your laptop to fly, and the only thing you can do is curse him out. Sometimes he plays Disney movies and sings in tandem, choreography and all.

You know that Hoseok is stressed and this is his outlet, and you don’t have it in you to stop his incessant habits. He’s visiting your area because of a lucrative job offer nearby and the interviews are sporadic, making Hoseok linger in your apartment for hours at a time until he’s summoned for whatever test they want to throw at him.

Most of the interviews are in the evening, and it’s when you can clock back in and finish your leftover assignments while Hoseok is also working. By the time he returns, you’re dog tired and so is he.

Every night, you try to move away from Hoseok’s clingy self, as he grapples onto your waist and slings a thigh over your belly. You wish it were someone else sharing the bed with you.

If you bring Jungkook into the picture however, you’d be burnt for the week. Complete crumbs. It would be too much stimulation for you, having to balance work, Hoseok’s incessant attitude, and putting on a face for Jungkook. Your relationship with the penthouse neighbor is barely budding, hardly watered considering Hoseok’s sudden visit. You cling to the fact that in a couple days you would be giving your undivided attention to Jungkook, most of your priorities out of the way, and most importantly, you’ll have your own room back.

Maybe you could surprise him by giving him a pasta dinner, just like he proposed.

Unable to get the thought out of your head, you blindly reach for your phone on the nightstand. It’s late, very late for a workday. The blue screen burns your eyes a bit, but you're determined to at least check up on Jungkook. You can’t take too long, otherwise you won’t be able to sleep and get him out of your head. Dear, unassuming cousin Hoseok is fast asleep next to you, due to the fact it’s nearly midnight. Making sure not to disrupt him, you carefully cup your phone in your hands, putting it on the lowest light setting.

[11:54] You: hey, hope work hasnt been as draining for u as it’s been for me ☠️ what’s your opinion on pasta sauces, red or white?

Jungkook is normally a fast texter, at least from your experience. It’s you that’s the sporadic texter, sometimes taking hours to reply, other times in seconds. It never really mattered until now, however. But it takes five, ten, and finally fifteen minutes before you get a response.

[12:09] Jungkook: ???

You frown, wondering what you said wrong.

[12:10] You: do you not wanna do pasta anymore? Are you craving something else now?

[12:10] Jungkook: i don’t think it’d work out

[12:10] You: why?

[12:11] Jungkook: im sure you know why, bunny.

Strange. He’s never called you bunny before, and in your opinion you think he’d be the bunny in the relationship—soft and cuddly on the outside, and an absolute horn ball in bed. Is this some sort of weird power play? Is he being passive aggressive on purpose? Whatever this game is, you’re not into it. Grumbling under your breath, you snake out of bed, looking blindly for your slippers in the dark. You’ll be in and out of Jungkook’s apartment in ten minutes.

Just as your hand brushes the doorknob, your new roommate calls for you.

“Bunny?” Hoseok calls blearily, and you’re staring straight at his cookie-printed eye mask, “what time is it, where are you going?”

“Um, out,” you reply shortly, “I forgot I left my laundry in the dryer.”

“Oh, m’kay. Come back soon, y’know I can’t sleep alone.”

It’s then you realize. Bunny. Jungkook thinks that Hoseok and you are a thing. He really needs to stop eavesdropping on you.

You feel your pussy frown. Your cousin is such a cockblock and he doesn’t even know it. Without an answer, you slip through your door and into the first free elevator. As you zing up the floors with the magical 1234 code, you work and rework your hair in and out of its style, wondering if you’ll look more presentable with your hair messy or thrown back.

As soon as you reach the penthouse, you burst into action. “Jungkook!” you cry, pounding the front door, “it’s a misunderstanding, open up!”

The door immediately swings open after the first three knocks, and you punch Taehyung in the chest.

“You look awful,” Kim Taehyung drawls. Taehyung is wearing nothing but a cranberry red silk kimono, and you have to avert your eyes and focus on his face, which is even worse because he’s looking at you like an all-knowing psychic.

“Gee, thanks,” you try to move past him, but he’s blocking the door.

“Jungkook’s in a meeting with some foriegn developers,” Taehyung talks with his hands, pretending like he has any idea of the nature of his roommate’s job, “when it’s this late he doesn’t leave his office until morning. Door’s locked.”

“Well then, can you relay a message?”

“Depends, is this message going to hurt him further?”

Oh my goodness, when Taehyung wants to be he is such an enabler. “Tell Jungkook he’s done wallowing. Instead of jumping to conclusions, maybe he should’ve just asked me why we couldn’t go on a date this week.”

“You could’ve also just told him you have a man on the side.”

“Ohmygod you two are two iotas of a combined braincell!” you shove your hands in your pocket, hotly scrolling through your phone so you can shove a picture in his face. “This is Jung Hoseok, my cousin who derailed my plans this week by crashing in my too-tiny apartment and forced me to raincheck with Jungkook. He’s a blabbermouth and would tell everyone—my parents, my grandparents, my great-aunts—about Jungkook if he found out I was dating, and I’m not ready for that,” you zoom in on the picture, despite the fact that the screen is practically touching Taehyung’s nose, “and the reason Hoseok calls me bunny is not sexual—you two are fucking gross—I had front tooth problems in elementary school and I had a brace on my two big teeth, it was not pretty.”

“Ah, bunny.” Taehyung echoes with wide eyes, looking at you as if you’re now the one with sage wisdom, “it all makes sense now.” He gulps, taking in the old photo of a mini-Hoseok and you, yourself frowning to cover your huge braces and Hoseok trying to pull your gums apart with his greasy little fingers.

Satisfied by Taehyung’s evident squirming, you decide you’re too tired to further this interaction. “Tell the other half of your cell for me, will ya?” You’re already turning away, pressing repeatedly at the elevator button, “I would love to go on a date with him as soon as he gets his head out of his ass.”

Jungkook is tired, but not tired enough to murder Taehyung and make it look like an accident.

When he has late meetings, Taehyung is usually quieter around the apartment, and even gets Jungkook a hot meal once he wakes up in the afternoons. Today, Jungkook slept through and through. Normally he’d wake up midway to Taehyung’s television dramas, or the clanging of last night’s dishes but nope, not a peep.

And today’s hot meal is takeout from Jungkook’s favorite ramen restaurant. That only means one thing—something has gone to shit and Taehyung feels guilty.

Jungkook sips his tonkotsu impossibly slow, hearing Taehyung’s words—your words from last night—clear as day. Taehyung even describes in detail where the nickname bunny comes from, down to how miserable you looked in the photo with your monstrously metal-bent teeth. Oh, how he wishes he can swaddle you between the blankets, hold you and comfort you while you deal with your family.

[2:45] Jungkook: doll, im so sorry

[2:45] Jungkook: please, i booked us a weekend at that new spa that just opened downtown. The tickets are flex, so if your cousin doesn’t leave by then week we can always reschedule

[2:51] Jungkook: baby doll…

This is far worse than believing you didn’t like him. Now Jungkook is antsy, knowing you deserve all the space in the world because of how silly he was being. You owe him nothing. If he just waited it out until you were ready, he wouldn’t be in this mess. He’s potato-esque throughout the day, thankfully Taehyung gives him space as he watches hours of mindless television.

You don’t reply until very late into the night.

[10:10] You: IM ALIVE--barely!! And mr. jeon, you’re not only a triple texter, but an ellipsis texter???? You’re asking for trouble

Jungkook has no shame, immediately texting you back. He can’t help it, he’s smitten.

[10:12] Jungkook: taehyung explained everything. It’s all his fault. Don’t ask why, it’s his fault. Im so sorry.

[10:12] You: mm, it’s okay. Just a misunderstanding. I was pretty upset last night, but i’ve been pretty tired this week so my fuse is short.

[10:14] Jungkook: you should go to sleep now, doll. We’ll have time together after your cousin leaves

[10:14] You: just a couple more minutes. Miss u and your cute face

[10:16] Jungkook:

[10:16] Jungkook: will this hold u off until saturday?

Jungkook is a pile of goo. Pink, warm, happy heart-glittered goo. It takes a minute for you to reply, and for that whole minute Jungkook is kicking his legs under the sheets of his bed like an eager five-year old who just gave his crush his Valentine. Maybe it’s taking you so long to reply because you’re trying to send a selfie of your own, running off to the bathroom to take a cute selfie if your cousin is asleep in bed.

[10:19] You: fuck, i kno that’s supposed to be a cute selfie, but i want you so bad. I want to sit on your face, let your lips glisten with my pussy as i cum all over that pretty face

[10:19] You: i wanna touch myself so badly but fuckin’ hoseok is out here snoring like he’s gon hack a lung. Panties are so wet 🥺🥺 your doll is needy for you, wanna be played with

[10:20] Jungkook: lfjsdl;fkjs;fjsoisfoisljsdfsdklfjsdklf

He throws his phone across the bed, feeling himself twitch in his red flannel pyjama bottoms. The thought of you so hot and needy when you’re ten floors down has Jungkook absolutely livid. He doesn’t know how he’s going to talk to you, comfort you without missing you like crazy.

Jungkook thinks back to what he has in his fridge. His contractor sent him a cheese assortment, maybe he can bring it down pretending to be a friendly neighbor. Maybe Hoseok can go to the convenience store to conveniently grab a bottle of wine. He can make both of you cum in five minutes, flat.

Akin to a dumb, horny teenager, he sighs. He rubs his palm longingly over his member. He’s horny, but he’s also eager to see your face. Talk to you, get reacquainted with your routine and sneak his way into it. He wants to be a part of your life, and he’s hoping you will too.

[5:02] You: Jungkook, you left me hanging last night

[5:05] Jungkook: baby doll… i wouldnt have been able to handle myself if we continued

[5:06] You: so you decided to dip :(

[5:06] You: could u play with your doll a lil bit, kook? Hobi left for another interview

[5:08] You: PNG.0901

Jungkook was a fool to believe that you would drop him like that. No, Jungkook can see now that you two are a match made in heaven. You have a bite, never afraid to speak your mind when needed. This translates to a hunger you shamelessly share with Jungkook, both sexual and romantically intimate. He almost wishes he could’ve seen you act like a bitch to Taehyung last night, he can only imagine how sexy you looked telling him off.

He has the technology to blow up your picture, the one that’s currently having him close his laptop and shove it to the side. He spreads his legs further across his glass desk, trying to find comfort between his tight pants as he absorbs every bit of your skin.

It’s nothing too risque, but it’s nothing short of sensual. The room is dark, but it’s very clearly a picture of your hand between your thighs. Again, you’re between your wall and bed, squished between your office chair with your legs spread as far as they can go. Your skin is so soft looking, plush as you press two fingers between your damp panties. Adorable.

[5:12] Jungkook: you know why i never replied last night? Because i was too busy jacking off to your dirty words doll. U really need your mouth washed

[5:12] You: wanna wash it with something else🍆

[5:12] You: please kook, i need something. Hoseok will come home soon and i might rip his head off. Help prevent a murder

Jungkook chuckles, clutching his phone closer to his body. He loves how much you’re opening up to him. Last week feels like so long ago, how you were all flushed and wide-eyed at the proposition of sex. He thinks you two can have a lot of fun getting to know each other, both emotionally and physically.

[5:15] Jungkook: i was gonna wait until i sent this, but i think my doll needs it. Here’s what i was doing last night

[5:17] Jungkook: MP4.13

He… has a meeting in five minutes. A very important, very serious meeting. Jungkook jacked off enough last night, now it’s your turn. He hopes you like it. It’s not a very long video, barely a twenty-second clip of him fisting his cock. Taehyung was still home at the time, so he had to keep quiet. However, he couldn’t get the image of you out of his head that night, rubbing your thighs together in a cramped mattress as you try to erase the dirty thoughts of him. A murmur of your name, and the image of his precum dripping down his knuckles. You hope it’s enough.

[5:34] You: u make everything so much easier💜✨

[5:35] You: MP4.234

Two minutes. The video you send is even shorter than his, barely fifteen seconds. You’re in a much more comfortable position, horizontal on the bed. Your shirt is ridden up to the underside of your breasts, one hand clutching your bare breast so hard he can see your cotton plush skin bulging between your fingers. The other hand has your panties shifted to the side, three fingers in your sopping cunt.

“Mmh—fuck, f-uck Jungkook—” the words are mere breaths, puffs of air as you reach your orgasm.

His call connects. He nearly drops his phone on the glass.

“Jungkook!” Andreas from Germany wishes him brightly, “you look great, glowing even!”

Jungkook blushes, and mutters something about having to go to the bathroom before they start.

Taehyung makes himself scarce on Saturday. He packs a duffel bag for himself and takes the PlayStation, knowing it’ll be a long weekend at Jimin’s.

Jungkook is on livewire for the morning. He even express-delivers a pasta roller to his house, and he spends all morning testing out the perfect pasta dough. His black apron is covered in flour, and he can barely comprehend the tutorial that’s teaching him on his flatscreen.

He’s on autopilot. He hasn’t contacted you since he sent that selfie, and he doesn’t intend to. Jungkook understands why you made yourself scarce in the beginning of the week, preferring to raincheck and pin your relationship for a better time. Jungkook’s brain is overridden with you, swollen with thoughts of you. You would never be able to focus if you kept in contact like you did last night, especially if you can’t get away from Hoseok.

Absence surely makes the heart grow fonder.

Slapping his hands against his trousers, he surveys his handiwork. His pasta is appropriately floured and wrung, each handful of fresh dough wrapped in little nests. Off the stove is a bechamel sauce, a base ready to be cooked in whatever kind of pasta dish you want. He thinks the two of you would have fun making your own non-traditional pasta dishes.

The soft knocks on his front door interrupts his train of thought, and he knows it’s you.

You stand in front of the door, impossibly small in a large shirt and a plain pair of leggings. At the sight of Jungkook, a smile as warm and sweet as hot chocolate worms its way to your face, and you collapse into his arms.

He sighs gratefully, sinking into your small body. When he pulls away, he can’t help but frown at your apparent exhaustion. You must’ve come back from something tedious, because sweat dots your brow and your eyes are still puffy and dark. Your chest arches bonelessly into his, hoping to melt in his embrace.

“Hi,” you say.

“Hey,” he replies.

“It’s Saturday.”

“It is Saturday.”

You rub your nose between the fabric of his button down, “I should’ve been more specific when I wanted to raincheck on you,” you murmur into the white cotton.

“No, I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions,” Jungkook whispers, even though you’re the only two people on the floor, “I’ll make it better, yeah? I’m going to love you so good tonight, won’t have to lift a finger—”

You shake your head, looking at him calmly. “Jungkook, it’s been a long week. Hobi got the job, I spent all this morning moving his two-ton speaker set into his new apartment. I don’t want anything gentle. I want you to rail me into next week,” Jungkook chokes on his saliva when you reach to cup his dick through his pants, already sporting a chub, “fuck me breathless. I want—no, I need this.”

Anything for you, but Jungkook isn’t going to let your mouth runneth over that easily. He wants that too, obviously. But again, you’ve made him wait.

Bending slightly, Jungkook whispers darkly into your ear, “Who said you can decide the rules here, doll?” he’s been waiting all week to slip back into this persona, one that has you shivering delightfully under his touch. A small, secret smile tucks itself under your lips as you tilt your head down, but Jungkook catches it. It shows you’ve missed it too. He lets your sneaky smile slide for now, only because he’s missed you so much and you’ve had a long day.

“If I wanna fuck you rough, I’ll fuck you rough. If I want to edge you until you're sobbing on the corner of the kitchen table, I’ll do it,” Jungkook spits every declaration into your skin, biting at your shoulder so hard you cry deliciously.

He drags you over to the living room, and he could sing at how easily you follow directions. Both of you have been tied up this week, and some hard sex would definitely ease that frustration, “Knees,” Jungkook commands, and you waste no time sinking to the floor, hands atop your knees.

You look up through your lashes, eyes big and glassy. His poor girl is tired, and he finds it all the more attractive that you’re willing to push that aside to make eachother feel good.

“Pretty, pretty,” he chants, pulling down his pants and letting his dick spring free, “suck.”

You waste no time, and he watches as your eyes dilate over the expanse of his cock, half-hard and ready for your mouth. Your nails dig into your knees as you start with featherlight kisses, finally turning into sloppy smacks as you lick all over his dick.

Jungkook groans, weaving a hand into your hair to force his dick down your throat. You gag at the sudden intrusion, but it doesn’t stop you from taking it like a champ. Hard, deep thrusts that he’s sure you can feel all the way in your stomach. You gag at each thrust, but don’t let up as your hot tongue wraps him up and licks at the pre-cum.

“Fuuuuck, doll,” he rips you away, his now hard dick springing away. He’s a little shaky on his knees, but he plants his feet down as he grips his cock, slapping the tip of it across your cheek. It smears your face, glossing your flushed cheeks in a mixture of your saliva and pre-cum. “Are you trying to make me cum first? So sweet, you don’t even care if you cum tonight, hmm? You owe me, making you believe you had another man.”

This isn’t true, of course. The both of you know it was just miscommunication, but it doesn’t hurt to play it up for pleasure.

“N-no Kook, I’m yours,” you grapple at his pants, pulling them down so he can get them off completely.

“Right. You’re. Mine.” With every punctuated word is a light slap to your cheek, and you take it. His cock bounces right off of you, until you finally move your head to suckle at the engorged tip, “I’m keeping you forever, doll. Don’t you know that?”

Throughout this whole process, you don’t move, other than the minute clawing at your knees. You’re so good to him. Jungkook pulls away and ignores the ache in his member for now, taking off your clothes for himself. It’s like unwrapping a gift, revealing every bit of skin reserved for his viewing. “So sexy,” he remarks once he’s got you bare, pulling you onto the couch. He’s still in his button down shirt, his date night shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. However, he lets your hands inch under the stiff fabric, feeling for his taut muscle.

He guides your aching cunt to his cock, sinking you down. It’s a tight fit, and you both moan at the brush of contact. Despite not being prepped, you’re still slick, and it makes up for it. He doesn’t thrust up or anything, just guides his lips to yours with a threadbare brush of his finger.

“Kook, d-do you want me to move?” you mumble against his cherry-flavored lip balm.

“Good dolls don’t move until they’re told,” your eyes widen innocently at the statement, and you crumple against his mouth, at his next words, “cum like this.”

“Awh shit, please no,” you tear up, burying your head between the crook of his neck, “I can’t wait.”

“Thought you wanted me to fuck you into next week. You can’t do this one little favor for me?” he’s being so mean, and you hate him for it. Haven’t you earned it? “C’mon baby, I thought you wanted me?”

It’s silent, save for the soft Italian restaurant music playing from whatever tutorial he’s hooked up to his television. It’s terribly cliche, like you’re in the porno version of a European romance movie. He thinks nothing of it, not when your juices are dripping on his thighs, your skin soft and pliant in his grip. Jungkook drums his fingers against your spine, seemingly uncaring that you’re stuffed deep into your womb.

On the other hand, it’s the only thing you’re acutely aware of. His thick, warm cock is nestled between your folds, right where it should be. You clench once, twice, thankful that this isn’t some crazed wet dream. States of sleep and consciousness have blurred this week, you’re lucky that you made it all the way up to Jungkook’s apartment.

You can’t cum like this. You need to bait him. You moan, the sound slow and rumbly against your throat as you weave your fingers through his dark tresses. Moving the strands aside to kiss his cold metal earrings you murmur, “I love this, Kookoo. I’ve wanted you all week, I was going crazy. I kept playing last week in my head over and over. I even put in my little vibrator, hoping you’d pull up the app.”

Jungkook’s teeth clench, and his grip is borderline painful as it digs into your hips.

“I haven’t been able to cum all week, and I want to do it all over you,” you husk, playing with the roots of his hair.

You can feel yourself dripping, wetness lubricating you even further and probably staining his thighs and couch with your arousal. Every second that passes is killer, and the fluttering towards your pussy tighten further as Jungkook’s cock twitches in response. Your pussy continues its ministrations, butterfly-like flaps against his hot member that have you vibrating.

“Mm, oh, I’ll cum for you,” and surprisingly, you might be able to. All this dirty talking has gotten you riled up. Just a little bit more and—

Jungkook shoves you off his cock, forcing you to land on the couch.

“No!” you cry, wiping your face. Your cheeks are ruddied, and you’re annoyed. The coolness of the autumn air has you feeling chilly, and you want to scream at Jungkook for disrupting your orgasm. You feel empty.

You’re not annoyed for long however, as Jungkook flips you on your back and gives you what you’ve been craving.

“You glide right in, don’t ya doll,” the friction is deliciously blazing, his hands pushing you further into the large couch as he takes you from behind. Hot, fast smacks against your ass come from the way his balls bounce back and forth as he pistons his cock in and out. “F-fuck, you’re so good to me. So good, I love having you like this. All pretty and dripping, you really know how to make a guy wait, huh?”

“Mmph! N-no—hng, but I’m y-yours, Kook,” you garble out, and you’re practically eating the throw pillow you’re propped up on as he slams you further into the cushions, so hard you may fall off, “all yours, honey. N-no more waiting. I want you, want you so badly—ah fuck!”

“It’s worth it, you’re worth it,” he says over and over, his thrusts becoming sporadic and losing their rhythm once he feels you clenching uncontrollably. He presses his two fingers to your sloppy bud, swirling around the juices eagerly. “C-cum, baby doll. You deserve it, yeah? Cum on this cock, let go.”

You’re starting to see spots, black and white alike. Finally shying away from his cock you rest on your back, but Jungkook doesn’t stop his fingers from flying across your clit. One look at his face and you’re gone. Pretty brown eyes, overflowing with affection. The feeling is different, and it’s the acute pressure between your stomach and pussy that makes you notice what’s going on with your body. The pressure finally releases, your eyes fluttering shut as you rest your cheek on the cushions. You dissolve, a mess on the couch as white hot liquid ejects from your body, spraying Jungkook’s thighs and cushions.

“Y-you just,” your lover’s mouth is parted open like a baby kitten, uncaring as to how the dark liquid stains his couch fabric.

“Squirted?” you answer breathlessly, a melty smile on your lips, “y-yeah.”

It sets him off, a button left dormant until now. The thatches of hair that surround his cock are dripping with your mess, a cold reminder that he got you to this high. He doesn’t hesitate to slip his cock back into you, and you gasp at the overstimulation. You try not to focus on how your body is a bundle of lit nerves, only to help Jungkook reach his completion.

“S-so perfect,” he warbles, pressing kisses to your jaw, chin, lips. Each thrust is deep, thick and heady with emotion. “Mm, I wanna cream this pussy sooo badly—mm, all mine, all wet and warm and so so sweet—”

He cries out your name, biting into your shoulder as your walls fill further with his hot cream. Your thighs are shaking from sensory overload, and Jungkook has to hold you down and soothe you into a state of reality to cling on.

Satiated, he nuzzles into your chest, feeling absolutely featherlight.

“T-thank you,” you say gratefully, when at least three out of your five senses return to your body. Your hands dip down to clutch his cheek, pinching lightly at the warm skin.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Jungkook exhales into your breasts, “d-didn’t even feed you my cum yet.”

You scoff, pinching his cheek again. You’re aware of his softening cock between your folds, ready to seep the efforts of today’s coupling, but your stomach says otherwise. You crane your neck to make note of the kitchen island, staring curiously at the metal pasta roller and the little nests of carby goodness that decorate the cutting board.

“Feed me pasta first, please. You have all night to feed me dessert.”

Jungkook giggles into your stomach, he doesn’t mind feeding you in that order.

bonus.

“So.”

“So?” you have cream sauce on your lips, happily slurping on an angel hair.

“You haven’t told me you liked me back yet,” Jungkook rests his palm in the swell of his cheek, content with watching you eat from where he’s standing on the counter. He leans his upper body across the marble table, muscles rippling against his white shirt.

“Oh, I did!” you’re affronted, swinging your legs on the high chair, “I totally did last week!”

“Yeah, well. Can you say it while I’m not inside you?”

“Okay,” you blink, quirking him with a simple smile, “I like you.”

“That was anticlimactic,” Jungkook jokes at the brevity of your confession, yet his heart betrays the charm he finds in the three words.

You scoff, jabbing your fork in the little next of springy noodles. “What do you want to hear? I’ve wanted you since I’ve moved in? I think you’re really handsome when you pace the hallway doing work on your phone? I like the way you cook?”

“Keep going,” Jungkook sing songs, walking over to hug you from behind.

The stool swings back and forth as he rocks the two of you, softly and slowly so you don’t throw up your dinner. He noses into your neck, inhaling your scent and committing it to your memory.

“Mm, dessert first,” you insist, twirling around the stool so you can wrap your legs around his waist. “And then I can tell you exactly how much I like you,” your fingers play with the buttons of his shirt, walking the pads of your fingers across his chest.

Jungkook grins, hands reaching to cup your bottom and bring you to his bedroom. Of course, he’s always willing to satisfy your insatiable appetite.

#jungkook smut #jungkook x reader #btsguild #btswritingcafe #btsghostie #kwritersworldnet #jungkook fic #bts smut #bts fic

2K notes · View notes

wistfulrat · 4 years ago

Text

hell ya it’s that time of the week. we got 8th year fics, animagus fics, draco harnessing the magic of shooting stars, shepherd harry being unbearably tender and hot, flirtatious holiday office parties, the drarry multi-verse told in wistful dreams! eat up, fellow yearners.

Bitter Transmutation : Cruel Transformation by @dorthyanndrarry - 103k, M The terms of Draco’s probation require him to finish his final year of schooling, he just wants to survive with what little dignity he has left, in face of students that hate him, falling behind on his school work, and all the strange fevers and weakness and changes… that only seem to be getting worse.

draco wants to be good. harry wants to be needed. it’s an 8th year veela fic but rly it’s draco learning to humanize others and himself via shitty creature-puberty and harry trying not to run away from his feelings. all the non-sexual intimacy and general tenderness in this fic is comforting as hell.

Owl Was Well by @fencer-x (an @hd-erised fic) - 66k, T Draco Malfoy is not an owl, really he isn’t. He simply assumes the shape of one on occasion when he wants to find a bit of privacy—a goal entirely thwarted because Harry Potter doesn’t understand you can’t just grab any old bird from the Owlery and force it to send your missives and deliver your packages.

god i love a truly prickly draco and a disgustingly earnest harry bc the combination breeds emotional chaos. 8th yr animagus draco going out of his way to fuck with harry only to Catch Feelings — a trope i live and die for. they’re both very scrappy in this. lots of dancing around their big mutual gay crush as they grow to begrudgingly respect each other. i personally would love the opportunity to tell off the object of my affection right before kissing them furiously.

Wish Upon a Star (As Dreamers Do) by @icmezzo - 27k, M There’s plant magic and celestial magic and dark magic and the normal magic that allows Harry to use a spell to clean his socks when Myrtle’s taken up in his laundry room again. Then there are wishes, and dreams, and love, and those are even more magical still.

harry helps out at hogwarts but mcgonagall’s asked him for help with a spell that has him fully stumped and of course he’s too proud to ask literal-wishmaker draco for help but he’s desperate and curious! there’s this breathtaking scene in a field where draco collects meteor dust beneath an endless night sky. we all lose our shit. harrys flustered bc it’s very magical and very hot of draco. feat. neville’s greenhouse, the rambunctious ghosts of grimmauld place including moody & cedric, stargazing with ur crush. literally what’s not to love.

Through the May Air, Over the Ocean by @tsauergrass - 44k, T Draco Malfoy never expected to find himself in Scotland or being stuck in a cottage with Potter—but wonders never cease. A story about warmth, a story about falling back in love. A story about a flock of sheep in the distant fells of Scotland.

two lonely men in the middle of idyllic shepherd pastures learning how to navigate their grief and longing for companionship. an elegiac masterpiece of a fic. there are moments so quiet and tender it aches. you want their growing love to be easy but it’s rife with mourning and fear. it makes the ending that much sweeter and earned. (also yes this was a re-read but it’s december and i live in the pacific, world of perpetual summer and humidity, so mentally i needed to be in the vastness of wintry scotland. hell ya atmospheric fics!!)

To Tame A Kitten (is to love) by @tsauergrass - 13k, G After the war, Harry finds solace in fostering orphaned kittens. One day, a kitten appears on his door step without explanation—and attacks him! Taking it in, he quickly finds that this kitten is nothing ordinary.

another tsauergrass rec bc im a hoe for poetic melancholy and tentative intimacy. the premise of this fic screams fluff but then you’re unexpectedly hit with harry’s longing for affection as he tries to find places to pour all that guileless love spilling out of him. the image of him smiling sadly makes me emo as hell. but rly his and draco’s loneliness are concentric circles so this is all eventually solved with hella cuddling. “I know. . .It’s tiring. But there are a lot of beautiful things, too” — destroyed me.

Sweet Indulgence by @the-sinking-ship - 10k, E It doesn't matter that Marcy from Accounting is dancing on the tables, Shacklebolt is wearing antlers, and Elliot from Transportation is on his third round of Mariah Carey on karaoke because all the free champagne in the world won't salvage the Ministry Christmas party for Draco if Potter doesn't show up soon.

lecherous unhinged draco is sometimes the only characterization i care about skkdkd. most dramatic bitch alive whom i personally would die for. you must simply respect the flirtatious hustle. the promiscuous licking of a gingerbread man in the shape of ur crush, pouring champagne down their shirt, doing whatever it takes to make them laugh. it’s galaxy-brain courting bc harry is Charmed. we love our fics sexy and hysterical tbh.

Our Little Life by @tackytigerfic - 7k, M Sometimes Harry dreams. Only they're not really dreams at all, and Malfoy is always in them. It's time travel, but not as we know it, and Harry just needs a good night's sleep.

when i say star-crossed lovers i mean this fic in its entirety i mean harry saying “I see how things could be for us, I see it all the time” i mean that part in gaudy night when lord peter tells harriet “Give me your hand, and we’ll fight on until we drop.” a thousand iterations of drarry coming together (which, extremely meta) and all that world-building in under 10k words? the skill.

#weekly drarrys #we are gainfully unemployed and vibin #the economy may have collapsed but those ao3 beta servers will never fail #also im still emo over through the may air like #in all ways but physical I am in the Scotland fells #mind you I had to google what a fell was the first time I read that fic but once I did?? a bitch just might start raising sheep #anyway sweet indulgence biscuit scene is top 5 fanfic draco moments for me #drarry fic rec

184 notes · View notes

natikoko · 4 years ago

Note

Season 3 Au in which Andrias Winter Soldiers’ Marcy (with the entire thing being a direct reference to that one scene). I typed all this out on mobile in like half an hour, so sorry if it’s absolutely terrible.

—————

Anne lifted the debris off of Marcy, the castle crumbling around them as it slowly lost power and began to fall. Marcy crawled out, grunting with every movement in pain. She looked up to Anne, her one bright green eye still seething with hatred. Anne called out to her again, hoping she could maybe still save her best friend.

“You know me.”

Marcy immediately stood up, fueled by a second wind

“NO I DON’T!” She screamed as she punched Anne in the gut. It hurt, it hurt so much. Not just the punch, but the fact of who was delivering it.

Anne got back up. She wasn’t there when Marcy needed her in the castle the first time, she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

“Marcy… you’ve known me your whole life.” Anne’s voice was tired, her feet were tired, everything was tired. But she didn’t care, not as long as she had a fraction of a sliver of a chance of saving Marcy.

Marcy punched her back again, causing them to both fall over in the process. It was obvious that whatever that sick tyrant Andrias had done to her had started to come undone, but whatever it was just wouldn’t let go of her. Anne knew she was so close to getting through to Marcy, she just needed a little more time. Time she didn’t have, she realized, as more of the castle fell down around them. Anne got back up again.

“Your name is Marcy Ling Wu.”

Marcy lunged forward with tears and blood streaming down her face. “SHUT UP!” She screamed as she threw another punch. Anne could tell that every punch Marcy threw hurt more than the last to do so. Her body was exhausted too, maybe even more so considering what she had been put through.

Anne remembered reading the reports. Looking in horror as she read what Andrias had done to the one she lo- no, no this wasn’t the time for that. Maybe she’d tell Marcy after all this, or maybe she’d just keep it to herself. She didn’t much care at the time, only wanting to see Marcy make it out of here alive, regardless of any admission of feelings.

Anne stood back up again. She wiped her brow of sweat. She sputtered out, “I’m not gonna fight you,” as she slowly started to lose balance. She looked down at the sword and racket gripped tight in her hands. She dropped them without a second thought, and watched as they fell through the countless cracks in the castle floor.

“You’re my friend.” Anne knew it, she hoped Marcy knew it. No matter what they’d always be friends. Both had stuff to make up for, but Anne knew that they could put that on hold till later. Once they got out of here. Right now, all Anne wanted was her best friend, or maybe even more, back.

Marcy screamed as she tackled Anne to the ground, her remaining normal eye red with tears and dust, the other only glowing in perpetuity.

“You’re my mission.” She said, hoping to convince both of them it was true. Marcy punched. She punched and punched and punched and punched in hope of ending this. Marcy was tired, so tired. She was so filled with anger that wasn’t even hers, and yet she felt so attached to it. She was mad herself somewhere in there. She was angry for some reason that she couldn’t remember. She trying so hard to maybe remember why she was angry, why she was doing any of this. All she could remember was that she’d been told to do something horrible, and that she had to do it or face dire consequences.

Marcy stopped punching, she didn’t remember when exactly that happened either. She looked at the girl who said she was her friend. This girl that said that her name was Marcy and that she was one of this girls, Anne’s friends. Anne? That name sounded so familiar, but she didn’t know from where. It was so close to her, she was so close to figuring who she was… she just needed to complete the mission.

“Then finish it.” A voice broke through Marcy’s thoughts. She looked back down to the Anne girl underneath, covered in just as many scrapes and bruises as herself.

“Cause it’s really… no big… deal…” No big deal? No big deal. NO BIG DE-“

Marcy’s thoughts were cut off by the castle. The part holding her and Anne finally gave and crashed below. Right before falling down, Marcy grabbed a hanging brick, and watched as the now unconscious Anne girl went falling below. Anne… she remembered an Anne. She remembered being friends, best friends with Anne. But… she remembered more than just friendship, she remembered wanting to maybe be something more. She- SHE LOVED ANNE!

Without another thought, Marcy let go, and fell down with the rest of the castle. The wind rushing past her made her so tired, but she couldn’t sleep yet. Not until she had Anne. Marcy hit the water with as good a form as she could manage so as to not break anything too important. Under the water, she saw Anne float down. She swam towards the girl, hoping to save her before it was too late. As she grabbed Anne’s shirt collar, she lifted them both up back to the water’s surface. It was so hard to carry the both of them back up, but she didn’t care. All she wanted right now was for Anne to be safe.

When Marcy finally broke the water surface, she swam the both of them to a nearby shore. She stood up with the nonexistent energy she had left, and dragged Anne up. She collapsed beside the girl, looking at her closed eyes with her own. She saw as the green light of her left eye bounced off Anne’s passed-out face. She was really pretty. Marcy liked how pretty Anne was. She’d have to tell her when she woke up. Though she might have to wait a bit longer than that, she thought as her eyelids became too heavy to keep open any longer. She had a hunch that she'd be asleep a lot longer than Anne. Marcy pulled Anne into a hug as her last bit of consciousness escaped from her. She thought she’d been really cold, so she didn’t understand why hugging Anne made her feel so warm. A good question… to ask… her. And with that, Marcy finally succumbed to her own fatigue, the last thing she saw being the face of the girl she knew she was gonna ask to be her girlfriend.

IM IN FUCKING AGONY

#amphibia #hey bestie just gonna *makes this into a fanfic*

24 notes · View notes

thebluenoteblog · 5 years ago

Text

Give me That Title

Summary: You have been hooking up with Colton for months and though you have feeling for him you’ve known since the beginning what your relationship with him is. You’re okay with it. You’re also okay with being perpetually single. That is until you meet someone that makes you want to date for the first time in a while. Though Colton’s reaction to hearing about your date... well that’s more surprising than the fact that you decided to go on a date in the first place.

Player: Colton Parayko

Word Count: 5.1k

*Inspired by Meghan Trainor’s Title*

I know girls ain’t hard to find

If you think you want to try

Than consider this an invitation

To kiss my ass goodbye

You were on the floor in front of your floor length mirror, with makeup spread out on the floor all around you when your phone buzzed. You paused with the mascara wand next to your eye, finished what you were doing, reinserted the wand into the tube, screwed on the cap and then picked up your phone already having a pretty good idea of who it was.

Colton had just gotten back in town from his road trip earlier that day and odds were he wasn’t in the mood to go out partying tonight. He wanted someone to come to him. The most recent notification on your phone, right above a few from the NHL app was indeed a text message from Colton. You had been his most regular hook up for the past seven months and at some point, in that time he had given you his phone number when he got tired of dealing with snapchat.

If you were being fair, the two of you did a lot of talking to. If someone were to scroll through your text messages they would never know that you were just some twenty-one-year-old girl who had gotten caught up in a lifestyle that you had no business in. They would probably think that you and Colton were friends. Friends who just hung out a lot late at night.

You unlocked your phone, opened the text and scanned the message. You busy?

You glanced up into the mirror, at your half-done makeup. Yes.

His response was fast, like he’d been waiting for it. No, really. Do you want to come over?

Okay, if you were being fair, it was a very rare occasion that you passed him up on an offer to come over. You always responded to his messages and you were basically at his beck and call. Your only serious obligation was your college courses. Your work hours were pretty much ‘come and go as you please’ and so you did. Whenever Colton asked. He knew when you were in class and he knew it wasn’t now.

Being tied to a man who had no intention of ever committing to you wasn’t a huge issue for you. Committing your time to him wasn’t either because he was gone so much and spent so many nights out with the team that you could still have friends and a life of your own. Besides, you would be lying if you said you hadn’t hooked up with a few other people in the beginning just as he had. You assumed he still did, but you didn’t bother anymore, the sex didn’t compare.

Then two weeks ago, you met Chase. You were sitting at a coffee shop on Main Street, enjoying your tea when he had walked in. He’d sat down on the couch beside you as he drank his coffee. He turned to you, stared at your Blues t-shit for a moment and then said, “Can you believe how badly the Blues got it handed to them last night?”

You’d spent two hours talking after that, about anything and everything. He’d asked you out. You’d given him your number. Now you sat in front of your mirror getting ready for the first real date you’d been on in over a year since you had broken off your engagement and sitting there, on that couch next to Chase, in his faded St. Charles County Firefighter t-shirt, you’d realized something.

This thing with Colton wasn’t enough anymore. You wanted a real relationship. Someone you could imagine a future with and not roll your eyes at yourself for being ridiculous. Someone who would really love you and not just love getting you naked. Someone who saw in you whatever it was that Chase saw that made his eyes light up when he talked to you that day.

You wanted someone who would someday ask you to marry them. You would buy a house together. Make one of those salt plaster ornaments with your first house key to put on the tree that you would decorate together every year. Build a fence in the backyard for your dog and your kids to run around.

Maybe that would be Chase, maybe it would be the next guy you went out with, or the next. Maybe you would find him a year from now. But you knew one thing for sure. No matter how much you wanted him to be, no matter how much you loved Colt, he was never going to be that guy.

He would never commit to a girl who looked like you.

Hell, you didn’t think he was ready to commit at all, despite how nice of a guy he was and his picture-perfect image. He enjoyed living it up, he enjoyed his parties, he enjoyed his bunnies. A girlfriend would cramp his style.

You glanced down at your phone and saw that ten minutes had passed, you needed to hurry up and get your makeup done and you still had Colton to deal with. I can’t. I’m going out tonight.

Again, he responded before you could pick up your mascara to finish your other eye, so he must not have been doing anything. He was probably laying on the couch watching TV. Oh. Are you going out with (Y/F/N)?

You didn’t really think about what you were typing before you just hit send, you just did it and then dropped your phone before going back to your makeup. This time you finished all of your eye makeup and were on to your lips when your phone eventually buzzed.

It wasn’t until you picked it up that you read what you had sent him and actually felt a little bad. You knew you both saw other people. You knew you weren’t a couple and you were both free to do whatever you wanted, but neither of you ever made a point of talking about it. You only knew about it his exploits from the girls who bragged about it online and occasionally posted pictures of them together to corroborate their stories. No, (Y/F/N) is out of town. I have a date tonight.

He’d responded five minutes later with. You have a date?

You glanced at the message, not sure how to respond at first then decided on simply, Yeah, he’s really nice.

The dots appeared and then disappeared about five times before they stayed long enough for him to type out his response. You never go on dates.

You rolled your eyes. Leave it to a guy in the NHL to think he had a girl locked down because she didn’t go on other dates for a little while even though he was still fucking other people. I decided that I want something real. Is that so bad?

You finished your makeup and made it out to your car before he responded. I guess not.

If it ain’t no thing

Then I won’t be hangin around

But don’t be blowin up my shit at three am

Sayin how you need me now

You had now been out on two dates with Chase and Colton had coincidently texted asking you to come over as you were walking out the door to get into Chase’s truck the night you went out with him for the second time. He’d taken your rejection slightly less… diplomatically this time which was uncharacteristic for him. You’d only turned him down a handful of times, but you could never remember him being upset. He’d always continued to talk to you until one of you got too busy to hold up the conversation. This time though, he was clearly upset.

Can you come over? I have food that I shouldn’t be eating that you would love.

You smiled when you read the message, because it almost sounded like he was inviting you over for a date even though you knew that wasn’t what it was. You could still dream. Then you remembered that outside your apartment complex, Chase was waiting for you.

I’m sorry, I’d love to but I’m busy tonight. Raincheck?

He’d responded quickly like he didn’t even think about what he was saying before he said it, Big date tonight?

You narrowed your eyes at the phone. What’s that supposed to mean?

You waited for his response before you walked outside into the bitter February air. Nothing. I just wanted you to come over.

Now it was three in the morning and you were lying in bed, trying to fall asleep. Still thinking about how uncharacteristically spiteful Colton had been that night. Then your phone went off for the first time. You ignored it, because, well, it was three in the morning. But then ten minutes later it went off again. And five minutes after that it went off again. Not five minutes passed before there was another. Then soon after another alert. Finally, you sat up in a huff, grabbing the phone off your bedside table and unlocking it to see the notifications.

All messages from Colton and he appeared to be drunk. Very drunk.

(Y/N) r u home

i miss u

u should com over

r u still with him

u should be here instead

You squeezed your eyes shut then opened them to make sure you were reading the messages correctly. Is that why he had been so spiteful that night? Was Colt… jealous? You couldn’t go over to his house now, because regardless of what you suspected, nothing had changed. He wasn’t going to commit to you. He wasn’t going to give you that house together or the Christmas tree with the first key ornaments or the kids running around in the backyard. It just wasn’t in the cards for them. Besides, he was drunk off his ass right now. He would never, in a million years send u or r in place or you or are if he wasn’t well past the legal limit.

Colton, go to sleep. You’re drunk, you don’t know what you’re saying.

The dots appeared right away but it took him awhile to type the message.

i no wht im saying i miss u com over ur with him arnt u

It took you a moment to decipher the message but when you did, you sighed and responded carefully. Colt, I’ve been home since 10:00. I can’t come over, its already three in the morning and you’re so drunk you’ll be passed out by the time I get there. You won’t even be able to let me in.

He didn’t like that answer. ill take a shower to sober up before u get here

Colton.

fine goodnight

You sighed again, Goodnight Colt.

Don’t call me boo

Like your some kind of ghost

If you don’t want me seeing other guys,

Then here’s what you need to know

Come stay tonight.

It was just those three words. The team was leaving for a road trip and they had the next day off. You had always in the past cleared your schedule on those days for him if he asked you to. The two of you would stay in bed all day, you would cook for him when you got hungry and he would leave for the roadie the next day relaxed and happy. This had started off as an occasional arrangement but had become a routine and now almost every time he had a day off in town, this was the plan.

You cleared your schedule.

When you got to his house with your overnight bag, you had just knocked on the door when it opened. He was standing there looking perfect as ever in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt, but his hair wasn’t styled like usual. It was tousled and limp like he’d been running his fingers through it enough to destroy whatever effect the gel had previously had on it.

He stepped to the side to let you in and closed the door behind you as soon as you were out of the way. He turned to face you, “I’m sorry… about the other night.”

You shrugged, not meeting his eyes, continuing to face the living room. You didn’t want to talk about this. You knew your time together was limited. This may very well be the last time they spent a night together before you had a boyfriend and you had to end… whatever this was. you didn’t want to spend it talking about what he’d said two nights ago and how he hadn’t meant it. How he was just drunk. “It isn’t a big deal.”

You slipped off your shoes, leaving them by the door. You always felt weird wearing shoes in his house, everything was so much more expensive than what you were used to. You walked away from him before he could say anything else, placing your bag on the couch and then leaning against the back of it and turning to watch him. He was frozen in place, staring at the spot you had previously been standing. After a minute he shifted his eyes to you and made his way into the living area.

He stood directly in front of you, with his hands in his pockets. He looked unsure for the first time since you’d met him, and you couldn’t quite figure out why. “I made dinner.” He said. “It’s almost ready.”

You furrowed your eyebrows at him, “You made us dinner?” You asked. “I always make dinner.”

“I know…” He said, he shifted, looking over her head at something in the distance, “I just thought… I don’t know. It was an early game and I got home at seven… I don’t mind cooking, so why not?”

You shrugged your shoulders, “I don’t know, I guess I just figured I would be cooking for you tonight.”

He looked down at you, meeting your eyes and smiling softly, “You don’t always have to do stuff like that. You can just come over and relax with me.”

Something was off. Colton was a nice guy. He was an amazing guy. But this was so far out of left field for your relationship that you didn’t know what you were dealing with. Then again, that’s how everything with him had been since the day you told him you were going on a date. He’d make sure to mark you up with hickeys everywhere when you hooked up the couple of times it had happened since. He was usually rough, but he never was one to leave dozens of hickeys all over you. Maybe one or two, nothing like that. His sideways remarks. Drunk texts. Now this?

You were in love with him. You had been for a long time and you knew it. Hell, you’d known when you let this start that you would fall in love with him. He was just the kind of guy you couldn’t help falling in love with. That’s why he had girls falling at his feet. He was a twenty-six-year-old professional hockey player, rich, attractive, with a great personality and he could have any girl he wanted. You never had any illusions that you would be the one to lock him down. Hell, at the time you weren’t even looking for a relationship. You were running from one.

But when he looked at you and said things like that, things like you can just come here to relax with me, it made you angry. Because you were in love with him. And when he said things like that and sent you a string of drunk texts at three in the morning, it gave you this irrational hope that he cared about more than just your pussy.

There was no way though.

And even if he did, did you want that life?

Constantly worrying about whether or not your boyfriend was with some other girl because he could have whoever he wanted? Always feeling like you weren’t good enough for him? Never being able to contribute equally to the household? Would he ever actually marry you even if he did date you? No. Probably not. You weren’t NHL wife material. Not pretty enough or classy enough.

But you smiled at him and pretended this battle wasn’t going on in your head and said, “Why don’t I help you finish cooking? I’m starving.”

After you ate, an amazing meal as it turned out Colton was actually quite the cook, when you made to help him with the dishes he turned around and set you on the island behind him, effectively banishing you from the soap. “I always help.” You protested.

“I’ve got it, (Y/N).” He said, his back muscles working as he washed a pot. “Just sit there and look pretty.”

You rolled your eyes, “As if that’s possible.” He turned to look at you over his shoulder, narrowed eyes and you bit your lip before responding, “Sorry, did I say that out loud?”

“Yeah. Don’t say it in your head either.” Then he went back to the dishes.

After the dishes were clean you expected to end up in the bedroom, but instead he guided you to the couch and handed you the remote, “What do you want to watch?”

You stared at the remote for a moment, then looked back at him. “I don’t know. I only watch movies in the theaters and I don’t think you’d like any of the shows that I watch.”

He frowned, “You only watch movies in theaters?”

“I don’t have the attention span to watch them unless I’m forced.” You said, “I’ll do anything to get out of it. Write, sleep, read, sex. Anything except watch the movie unless it’s a favorite and I’m in the mood to watch it. Which I’m not.”

“Okay, you like the Flames, right?” He asked. You nodded, “They’re playing now. Want to watch that?”

You smiled up at him, “That sounds awesome.”

By the time the game ended, you were curled into his side with his arm wrapped around you and you were ranting about every missed call while going on about Tkachuk’s game winning overtime goal. “Are you like this when you watch us play?” Colton asked, with a look in his eyes that you couldn’t identify and a smile on his face.

“Oh, I’m worse.” You said laughing and shaking your head, “When I lived with my sister she used to get so mad at me on nights you played late games because I would wake her up yelling at the TV.”

Colton placed a hand on your cheek and moved in. He pressed his lips to yours the same why he had so many times before, but this time if felt different. The kiss was long and slow and there were no hands pulling at clothes. One of his remained spanning your cheek and neck and the other rested on your waist, holding you in place. Your hands, after the initial shock of the randomness of the kiss wore off, went up to his shoulders. He pulled you closer like he was afraid you were about to push him away, but you didn’t. You wouldn’t. You didn’t know if you knew how.

Especially not after the way this kiss made you feel.

You were the one to separate your lips, resting your foreheads together. Neither of you spoke for a stretch of time and the only sound filling the room was the Flames postgame in the background. Eventually he broke the silence. “I don’t like you dating other people.”

“Colton…” You said, squeezing your eyes shut. You didn’t want to hear this. You didn’t want him to tell you how he didn’t like seeing you with other people, but you could never be his. It wasn’t something you wanted to hear and if he said it… well if he said it you were going to have to get up and leave. You were going to have to end this.

“Please listen to me,” He said, his voice barely above a whisper but their faces were so close that you had no trouble picking up his words. “It hurts thinking about you dating someone else. It hurts thinking that I’m so close to losing you and if you don’t want me to stop you then there isn’t anything I can do about it.”

You pulled your forehead away from his and leaned back a little, looking at his hardwood floors, “Colton I can’t just be some girl that you call when you want to screw for the rest of my life.” You said it softly, but the words were harsh and he cast his eyes at the floor along with you, “I want something real. I want someone who is going to take me out on dates. We buy each other birthday presents. Set up a Christmas tree together every year. Have dreams of a future with each other in it. Someday I want a house with a backyard full of kids and a husband playing with them. I can’t have that if all I am is another girl who you mess around with but never want anything more from.”

When you were done he looked up at you and your eyes met. Before you could look away, he said, “But what if I want all of those things with you? What if I want something real too?”

Tears sprung to your eyes. Why was he doing this? Why couldn’t he just let you walk away when it was easier because you thought he would never love you. “Colt I don’t know if I’m cut out for that life. I’m just some girl who got caught up in a lifestyle she had no business being part of.”

“What’s so bad about it?” He asked, looking a little panicked. Like he hadn’t actually accepted the possibility of you walking away tonight for good. “Why couldn’t you date me?”

You shook your head, “I’ve been around your friends. They party. They drink. And athletes… they cheat. I know it’s a stereotype, but I would always be worried about it. Especially since the entire time we’ve known each other you’ve had the ability to just… do whatever you want. Besides the fact that I’m not pretty enough to ever be seen in public with you.”

Colton looked genuinely offended, “I don’t cheat. I never have, and I never will. I was raised better than that.” He placed a hand on your chin and forced you to look into his eyes, “And you are beautiful. I would take you everywhere. You would be all over my Instagram even.”

You blushed, “Colt…”

“(Y/N), give me a chance.” He said. “I messed up. I didn’t realize I was in love with you until someone else was already doing a better job at what should have been my job than I was. Please, let me fix it.”

You studied his face, trying to decide if he was serious. Trying to decide if you should give up what you saw in Chase for what you knew was there in Colton. There were obstacles, many of them, but if he was that determined to make it work then you would give it a try too.

“Okay, we can give it a real shot.”

I’m lovin’ what you got

But I’m hating what you doing

You gotta show me off, off

If you embarrassed,

Then thats the case I’m long gone

You’d been officially dating for four months now and things were going great. He knew how you felt about him going out drinking with the guys, so when he went, he invited you along. There were no more bunnies bragging about their conquest with him online, in fact they were beginning to suspect that he had settled down with someone. You were at every home game wearing his jersey with the other wives and girlfriend and even flown out to one of the away games. Pictures of the two of you together started appearing online, especially on websites that people used to track the habits of players and the speculation started.

Did Colton Parayko have a girlfriend?

The thing was, he wouldn’t confirm anything. People would tweet him, asking him about it. Nothing. People would message him on Instagram asking him about it? He ignored them. He posted a picture of himself with your dog on his Instagram and the comments were filled with the same question.

Do you have a girlfriend?

Is that your girlfriends’ dog?

Did your girlfriend take that picture?

Still he didn’t respond to any of them. You were beginning to wonder if it was because he was regretting his decision to enter a relationship with you. Was that what the issue was? Was he embarrassed of you? He’d promised that you would be all over his Instagram, but he hadn’t even let you tag them in a picture together. Did he wish he’d found someone more conventionally beautiful?

You were scrolling through a speculation post when he sat down beside you on the couch. “What are you reading?” He asked, looking over your shoulder.

You quickly locked your phone and dropped it into your lap, “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

He narrowed his eyes at you playfully, “I know your password and my arms are longer than yours.”

You sighed, “Why haven’t you gone public with our relationship?” You asked.

He looked caught off guard, “What do you mean?”

“You haven’t posted any pictures of us. You haven’t answered when anyone asks about us.” You looked away from him and down at the phone you were twisting in your hands. “If you’re embarrassed of me just tell me. We can end this.”

“No!” He said it before the words had even died on your tongue, “Of course I’m not embarrassed of you.”

You still didn’t meet his eyes, because honestly, you didn’t believe him. “Colton…”

“(Y/N),” He said, “I’ll post pictures of you right now. I’ll tweet out a response to the next person who asks me. I’m not embarrassed, why would I be? I didn’t know it was that big of a deal to you or I never would have kept it a secret. I just don’t like my private life to be all over the internet.” He grabbed your hand and pulled your phone away, setting it aside before taking your hand in his. “Please believe me.”

You looked up into his eyes and all you saw was love. He looked so genuine. How could you not believe him? “Okay,” you said. “I believe you.”

“We don’t have to keep it a secret,” He said, “I love you. I don’t care if people know.”

You smiled up at him, “I would like that.”

Give me that title, title

Come on give me that title, title

Better give me that title, title

Better give me that title, title, yeah

They’d been together for two years now and they had come a long way from the day that Colton had sworn she was going to walk out his front door and end up in the arms of another man. As she sat on her towel with her toes dug into the sand next to him, glass of wine in her hand, staring at the sun setting over the ocean, he couldn’t believe that he’d ever come close to letting that happen.

The words she spoke that day stuck in his mind every single day since she said them. Someday I want a house with a backyard full of kids and a husband playing with them. They already bought each other birthday presents and set up a Christmas tree together every year. They talked about their future together every day. But that was something that he hadn’t given her yet.

She was so distracted by the sunset that she didn’t notice him set his wine glass on the small table between them, low to the sand, before reaching into the beach bag, into the zippered back pocket that she never would have had a reason to open and pulling out the small velvet box. He settled back onto his towel with the box in his hand, but kept his eyes focused on her.

He’d had the whole moment planned out, but now that they were here, and he was holding the ring and she was sitting next to him, it was like he had never planned a thing.

He shifted to his knees so that he was facing her, and that action was enough to pull her away from the sunset. She turned to him with a smile on her face so genuine that it made his heart swell. “What’s that look for?” She asked, “You should be watching the sky, it’s beautiful.”

“I’d rather watch you.” He said, and her cheeks flushed. Whether it was from the tropical heat or his words he didn’t know. He kept the box hidden under his hand as he said, “(Y/N), the day we decided to be together, you said something. You said that someday you wanted a husband and kids and an entire life with someone.” He looked down at his hand which still hid the ring, then back up at the most important person in his life who was looking at him with wide eyes, like she wanted to believe what was happening but didn’t quite want to get her hopes up. He lifted the hand that wasn’t concealing the ring and used it to guide her into standing up. She rose to her feet, burying them in the sand.

He rose to one knee and finally reveled the box, snapping it open, “I want that to be me. I want that life with you. I’m ready for it. If you say yes, I promise that we’ll have a house with a huge backyard and a fence and a swing set for our kids to play on. We’ll be the family that you always wanted to have. So, (Y/N), will you marry me?”

She was completely in shock, staring at him like she couldn’t believe a single word he had just said had actually come out of his mouth. But it had, and as soon as she realized that, she answered him. “Of course, I will!”

He slid the ring on her finger, tossed the box on the towel beside them and then was up and twirling her in the air in a second. Yes, they had come a long way in the past two years. And god was he glad they had.

#colton parayko #colton parayko imagine #colton parayko imagines #nhl imagines #hockey imagines

308 notes · View notes

lostteddy · 4 years ago

Text

just a very long text about my mental health status and if someone has an advice to deal with this, please do let me know

i don't want to perpetuate bad thoughts or states of mind but if I dont talk about them I feel like I'm unheard and things get’s worse... They do say that talking is the best to work out our feelings.

So, it’s been almost a year since I got in quarantine... It’s been almost one year since my life was postponed and I am still not sure or close to what I love and what I want to do with this power that was given to me.

I feel worthless living at my parents house and causing them expenses when now I can’t afford my no-meat diet by my own and it feels like im slurping on my mom’s body because she is getting old and tired and getting money is harder for her. I no longer have a part time job and my thesis is in the step of being evaluated but im not even sure if I can get a good grade out of this.

frustration is constant on my days because the smallest of things make me angry about the world. I'm tired no matter how much I sleep or how healthy I eat. I can’t make myself feel happy although I'm no longer beating myself up to lose weight (and honestly I should).

I’m a rock in everyone’s shoe because no matter how good my intentions are I still use my work as an excuse for others to not ruin it. My parents already have a hard time with my brother since they deal with his health problems and now I feel like im falling on a hole myself and im going to be an extra-on-extra expense for them.

I feel lonely. I am lonely no matter how many calls and friends I have. I feel like my space should be filled by someone with more motivation and strength to give.

I'm doing my best to finish my thesis no matter the situation because I want to get ride of this commitment. I want to get this out of my back and head and I want to find myself because honestly I feel like what ive done so far was just a step, I want to reach out and around I want to work without an extra worry and to have 3 thought lines working on my mind consecutively.

I'm lonely. I’m tired. I’m sad. But soon I'll feel better, I will work on my emotions and I will find out what I like and what I can do to be of more help generally.

#carla's rants #as I was writing I was formulating a sentence that felt like the answer to my problem was about to come out but I just couldn't reach it #like a door slammed on my head and the solution I was trying to reach was taken away from me #but yeah I will be fine I know I will I just hope to find out soon how to be happier

5 notes · View notes

likeshipsonthesea · 5 years ago

Note

heat of her breath in my mouth; im alive" for nurseydex?

heyyy remember months ago when i asked y’all to send in hozier lyrics as prompts and y’all fucking Delivered and i sat on my ass and did nothing??? (well,, two As and a citation in my classes but who gives a shit about that)

HERE IT IS. well. one of them. here one of them is. it’s weird and wishy washy and most reminiscent of my writing style from Forever Stained (remember that?) and nursey is mildly ooc and dex is Emotional and if you don’t know my oc luke it may be confusing for a bit but anyway it’s FUN and i hope y’all enjoy it

will be tackling the other prompts soon!! hopefully!! :]

warning for parental homophobia and older-person-young-person relationship (a 14 year old and a 17 year old, only in flashback)

The first night Dex is in New York, he dreams.

He dreams himself a house. A loud, angry house. The walls shiver, the floors ache. He drags his rough palm against peeling wallpaper until his fingers catch on the latch of a back door.

The night air is cold. It hurts, but tastes like water, and he chokes it down until his lungs close up. When he finishes swallowing, he is on a beach. The house is far away, a distant thrum in the back of his head. To his left is an outcropping of mossy rocks. To his right are the glassy waves of low tide. Behind him, he can feel, is a roaring fire.

If he turns around, he will find a ring of drunken teenagers cupping sixty cent beer like salvation. He will fade into their circle with little fuss and spend the night with sand in his jeans pockets wondering if he will ever be allowed to leave this place.

If he turns right, he will be chilled and damp and alone.

He turns left.

The rocks create a familiar path. The bottoms of the stones are encrusted with salt from high tide washing in and moss grows along their sides and tops, soft with stolen sunshine. The moss is smoother than the wallpaper and soothes his rough hands. Sand steals into his sneakers, irritating, but he continues to walk. He knows what is waiting for him at the end.

The house is all but silent, now. The bonfire’s warmth has evaporated, leaving the late autumn chill on Dex’s fingertips, his nose. He cannot hear his drunken peers and, more than that, he does not think of them. He tastes sixty cent beer and salvation and he has more important things to worry about.

After walking for hours, he turns the final corner, and there is a boy.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the boy says.

“Sorry,” Dex says. He dreams he is small. “I tried to be quick but—”

The boy shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter now.” The boy grab Dex’s wrist. His fingers are cold. He pulls Dex close. Dex comes to his chin, stares up at him with a broken back neck.

Moments before their lips meet, Dex realizes what’s wrong.

“You’re not Luke,” he says.

Nursey doesn’t stop to respond. His mouth, on Dex’s, is cold.

Dex wakes up, shivering in June, in an unfamiliar bed. He wants to go home. He wants to call Nursey. He turns over, instead, and tries to fall back asleep.

*~*~*

“Is the apartment nice?” Ma asks, when she calls the next morning.

Dex bends to grab a water bottle from his fridge. “It’s clean,” he says, pressing the bottle against his red, sweating neck. “It’s in a good location.”

“It was so nice of them to set you up with a place,” Ma says.

Dex nods, taking a breath. “Yeah, I got lucky.”

“It wasn’t luck,” Ma says. “You worked hard.”

Dex breathes.

“You’re breathing funny,” she says. Hesitant, “Are you okay?”

He shakes his head at nothing. “Yeah, I’m fine, Ma. You just caught me right as I finished my run.”

“Oh. You must’ve been up early.” Dex doesn’t know what to say to that, and doesn’t really want to explain that he woke up in the middle of the night after dreaming a memory all twisted and couldn’t force himself back to sleep, so he doesn’t say anything. After a moment, Ma asks, “Is there a nice running route nearby?”

“There’s a park close enough to go through.” He takes a quick sip of his water. “It’s nothing like home, though.”

“Well.” Ma fiddles with something—a pen or a piece of scrap paper in front of her. “It’s a good opportunity.”

“I know, Ma. I’m—I’m glad to be here.”

“Good.” She lets out an audible breath.

Dex can picture her, curled small against the phone, fiddling with a pen. She’s probably sitting in the kitchen, at the end of the table they squished in there. They use it as a kids’ table during family gatherings, but it’s otherwise just a junk surface for every odd end they bring into the house. Every few months Ma will get stressed at work, or worried about money, or someone in the family will get sick, and she’ll decide that it’s time to go through all the junk and keep the table clean for once, God damn it. Now, it’s probably half organized, half mess. She’d only started a week ago, when Dex got home from Samwell to pack for New York.

“Good,” Ma says again. “This really is a good opportunity. The company is great, right? And it will give you experience.” Dex hums, sipping his water. “And—and you won’t be alone, right? You have that—that friend of yours, Nurse something?”

Dex stops drinking. The water bottle sweats in his hand, one chilled droplet sliding down his skin. “Yeah,” Dex says, “he lives nearby.”

“Good.” Ma taps some more, with the pen. “Good.”

Dex puts down the water bottle and wipes his hand off on his gym shorts. “How’s cleaning going, Ma?”

“Oh. You know, it’s getting there.”

“This time’s the charm, I’m sure. As long as Dad remembers to keep it clean.”

“Yes, yes. He has to get better about that.” Dex breathes. Tries to think up another thing to say that won’t lead anywhere that makes Ma tap. He can’t think of anything. Ma says, “We all have to get better about things, though.”

Dex tangles his fingers in the fabric of his shorts. “I—I’ve got to go shower, Ma, but I’ll call you, okay?”

“Oh—okay.” She hesitates, and Dex thinks about just hanging up. “We love you.”

“I love you, too.” Dex picks up the cap from his water bottle. Ma doesn’t say anything more. “Okay, bye, Ma.” He hangs up, cutting her off in the middle of a second-too-late goodbye. He debates calling back to apologize.

He ends up leaving his phone on the counter, chugging the rest of his water, and stripping on the way to his shower. Whatever heat the run in the summer city air had given him has since disappeared, leaving his skin chilled, shivering.

*~*~*

The dreams don’t stop.

The next one is in a bathroom. Dex doesn’t remember the tile or the shower curtain with little blue whales on it, but he knows somehow that it’s Luke’s childhood bathroom. Downstairs a graduation party ensues, clean fun music simmering through the floorboards as Dex is nudged back into the wall.

Cold hands push under his shirt, nails catching. Cool breath hits his neck, wet, and he shivers. He is not drunk. He is worrying, about Luke’s parents, about the other guests. People here know him, know his family. This is a bad idea.

“We should go back,” he says, in the dream. He didn’t say it, back when this happened. “This is a bad idea.”

“You never go along with my ideas, Poindoodle.” Nursey laughs into Dex’s chin. “Come on, just try one play. I think we could make the two headed beast work.”

This is wrong, Dex thinks, and opens his eyes to the soft grey ceiling of his New York apartment.

*~*~*

“Good work so far, Will.”

Dex looks up from his screen as his boss raps his knuckles against Dex’s monitor. Dex’s fingers pause on the keyboard and he smiles. “Thank you, sir.”

Dex’s boss shakes his head. “Call me Hugh. I don’t feel old enough to be a sir yet.”

Dex inclines his head. “Thank you, Hugh.”

Hugh smiles, wide, and lifts his coffee mug. “Keep it up,” he says, and heads into his office. The walls of his office are see-through, all made of glass, and Dex’s eyes follow him without thought as he sits down at his desk. The building they work in is nice enough, clean, lots of glass that lets in sunlight. It’s nothing like Dex had been picturing, some dark room where they code for hours on end with no break. Dex likes it. Likes it here. Likes the people. To think such a thing feels almost like a betrayal, like he shouldn’t be enjoying this place of exile, but he can’t help it.

Dex returns his attention to his code. He lets the logic of the work soothe his brain, until thoughts of trading in worn wood for clean glass and disguised disappointment for blatant pride leave the forefront of his mind. He just works, and doesn’t think, and enjoys every moment.

Sometime later, his phone buzzes.

what’s up willy p, ready to hit the town this weekend :PPP

Dex stares at the screen until it goes to black. He turns over his phone and pushes it away, to focus on work, and two minutes later has to restrain himself from looking when it buzzes once again.

*~*~*

Not all of the dreams have Nursey in them.

“Good work so far, Will,” Luke pants into Dex’s neck.

They are in a car—Luke’s probably, it has the fancy leather seats and the driver’s side window isn’t stuck perpetually open. The air tastes like sweat and the windows are fogged, obscuring the beach outside with its black, freezing water.

Luke’s fingers scrape at the base of Dex’s back. “Keep it up,” he says, grin wide against Dex’s shoulder. “Keep it up, keep it up.”

Dex stares at the glassy waves. They loom ever closer, higher and higher tide until they reach the tires of the car. The air tastes more and more like salt until it’s dripping from his tongue. The car has filled with the sea. Luke is cold, like the water, and he keeps saying his lines, “Good work,” until Dex opens his eyes to a grey ceiling, alone.

*~*~*

On Friday afternoon, Dex texts Nursey back.

I’m not up for anything crazy. Still settling in.

Dex grabs his things—wallet, keys, sticky note reminding him to call Ma—and bids goodbye to the few left in the office, Hugh and a nice girl named Kate a few desks over he’s chatted with during their coffee breaks.

Nursey responds by the time Dex reaches the street. no p dude. wanna come over and watch a movie?

Dex falls into step with the endless, faceless mass of people. The city buildings around him cut into the sky, grey, unyielding. He needs something like fresh air.

What movie? he asks.

;) Nursey sends back.

Dex breathes. Okay.

*~*~*

Nursey’s brownstone is tall and clean and, surprisingly, cozy. Dex was picturing something styled out of a magazine, hard edges and white and unwelcoming. Nursey welcomes Dex into a house full of oranges and deep browns and yellows with a big smile. He’s wearing a t-shirt and Samwell branded shorts. He is not wearing socks.

“Dude,” he says, emphatic, and pulls Dex into a hug. “Feels like it’s been years, bro.”

Dex hugs back, automatic. “It’s been three weeks, Nursey. Chill.”

Nursey laughs, chest rumbling against Dex’s. His back shakes, sweaty and warm, under Dex’s hands. “Shut up,” he says, pulling back. “You’re allowed to say you missed me, too.”

Dex scrunches his eyebrows. “Did you say you missed me? I didn’t hear that part.”

Nursey laughs again. With all the colors around him, he looks like sunshine. Dex skitters his eyes away, blistering. Nursey coughs. “We’ll be in the living room tonight,” he says, walking towards one of the open doorways. Dex follows. “I’ve got snacks and shit, and my dad made food and put it in some containers before he left but I don’t know what it is.”

“He’s not here?” Dex asks, looking at the old concert posters on the far wall, next to a long stretch of built in bookcases, all filled to the brim.

“Nah, he left on a business trip on Wednesday. Mom and Mama have been gone since Monday. Date vacation.” Nursey flops onto a leather couch, plush. With limbs thrown about, he embodies coziness. Despite the heat outside, the air conditioner keeps it nice inside, and the idea of climbing onto the couch with him is irritatingly desirable.

“You’re here alone?” Dex asks, taking a seat on the other end of the sectional.

Nursey grins. “Not anymore, now that I have you.” He flutters his eyelashes at Dex. Dex laughs and says, “Shut up,” and doesn’t think about it any more than that.

*~*~*

When Dex gets home that night, after several movies, more than half of them Very Bad, full of popcorn and homemade food and laughter he’d forgotten the taste of, he gets into bed alone with his grey foreign ceiling and does not dream of anything.

*~*~*

“I’m glad work is going well,” Ma says, when Dex calls her in the morning. She’s on speaker phone, he can tell, while she works around the house.

“Me too.” Dex stirs the eggs in his pan. Eating Nursey’s dad’s food reminded him that he could actually use the kitchen in his temporary apartment. After his run, he decided to start easy, with breakfast.

“That girl you mentioned, Kate, she sounds nice.”

“She is.” He scrapes some cooked egg from the bottom of the pan and swirls around the yolks a bit. “She’s been working there for about two years now and she says it’s a nice place.”

“That’s good.” On Ma’s end, there’s some movement, probably throwing something out because there’s a soft swooshing sound, like the trash can makes. “Have you been able to do some fun things around the city yet? Maybe with your new coworkers?”

“Kate invited me out to dinner next weekend.” Dex turns down the heat and continues to scrape.

The movement noises stop. “Oh! How nice of her.”

“The restaurant is supposed to be really good. Her fiancé is the head chef there.” Dex checks on his toast just as they pop and he carefully plucks them from the toaster.

“Oh.”

Dex hums, dropping the toast on his plate and turning to find the eggs done. “I also watched some movies with Nursey last night.” He deposits the eggs next to the toast and then hurries to check the bacon before it gets too crispy.

“Oh. Your aunt and I wanted to see a movie, but nothing was playing that we liked.” Distantly, Dex hears tapping of something, probably as Ma cleans.

Dex pulls out the tray of bacon. “We didn’t go to the theaters, so we could just stream.”

“He came to your apartment?”

Dex uses tongs to transfer the bacon to his plate. “I went to his family’s brownstone.” Satisfied, he gets the pre-poured glass of orange juice out from the fridge.

Ma hums. “Were his parents nice?”

Dex gathers together his plate, utensils, napkin, drink, and phone onto a tray and carries it out to the living room. “They were traveling, but I’ve met them before. They’re nice.”

“Oh.”

Dex settles his things down on the coffee table and sits on the couch, refraining from digging in for a moment to admire his handy work. It isn’t amazing by any means, but since being home, since finals, the playoffs, even before that when the stove was temporarily disengaged, he hasn’t had a chance to make food for himself, really. He almost wants to snap a picture.

“Are you—”

Dex looks away from his plate, to his phone sitting next to it. He picks it up and turns off speaker. “What, Ma?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

Dex drags his thumb against the case. Either the lack of AC or keeping up the call has made his phone heat up. Against his cheek, it itches. “Everything okay, Ma?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. I just—” Dex hears the tapping, louder now that it’s in his ear. “I just want you to remember why you’re there. You’re working. This is for your future.”

The uncomfortable wrinkles appear between his eyebrows. “I know, Ma.”

“Good. I just don’t want you to—”

“To what, Ma?”

She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Tapping fills the silence. “I’m glad you’re having a good time so far,” she says, quiet. “I’ll let you go. Have a nice day.”

“You, too.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Ma hangs up. Dex drops his phone from his ear, hot in his hand now. He breathes for a moment and then picks up the tray. He digs into his eggs and, though they’ve just started to go cold, it tastes good enough.

*~*~*

He dreams he’s trapped under sheets.

Fingers curl in his hair, tight. His scalp hurts, but he keeps going, stops breathing. He’s smothered under blankets, but he’s shivering. Every time he tries to surface, the hands on his head hold him steady.

After long, long minutes, the sheets flood with saltwater and he breaks through the waves and gulps in air. The world is still freezing but he can breathe. He can breathe.

“Be quiet,” Nursey rasps, cold breath against Dex’s ears. “Don’t want to wake anyone up.”

Nursey is swallowed by the sheets and Dex is left floating, freezing, staring at the ceiling of his own childhood bedroom. The open window lets in chilled winter air that flutters the drapes, dark blue that blends in with the water he’s drowning in. Ma could walk in at any moment. Jay could hear them, just a few walls away. What if someone walks in? What would happen then?

When Dex opens his eyes, he’s staring at the grey ceiling again. He can’t breathe, even though the air is air, and not water. He grabs at his chest and tries to press down, like he could manually make his lungs work.

With his free hand he reaches for the nightstand, the light, and floods the room with yellow. He sits up, gasping, and knocks his phone off the table, disconnecting it from the charger. Grabbing for it, because it seems important in the moment, he sees there’s a notification.

y tf are safiya nygaard’s videos so entertaining

it’s fucking 3 in the morning and i’m watching her wear clear plastic jeans for a week

like wtf

Dex realizes that he still can’t breathe, but now because laughter is bubbling in his chest and clogging up his throat. He laughs, hard and long and unbearable, until his whole body aches.

He lies back in his bed, on land, now. He types back a message.

Who let you on YouTube this late at night? You know how easy you fall into holes.

The three dots appear within seconds.

i am but a simple man with no self restraint

The dots appear again, disappear, and reappear.

you would understand if you watched her

Dex grabs for his laptop, sitting by the foot of his bed. He double checks the name and clicks on a random video about a merged Ugg and Teva shoe.

What… I.. what? Teva Uggs?

ur watching!!

I don’t understand

it’s Art dexington appreciate it

Dex doesn’t end up falling back asleep for a while, and getting up for work that morning is hell, but when he lies back down in bed with a buzzing phone and too-bright computer screen, he’s not drowning.

*~*~*

Someone taps Dex’s shoulder and he turns to find Kate smiling pleasantly at him. He takes out one earbud.

“Break time!” she says.

Dex laughs. “Wouldn’t want to be productive for too long.”

“Exactly.”

He turns off the music he was listening to to concentrate—some Spotify playlist Nursey made him to “be more productive” that just tends to make Dex laugh at inopportune moments—and then he joins Kate in the break room as she talks at him about dinner the other night.

“George says to come back whenever you want, he loves when people love his food, it’s a little ridiculous.” She fiddles with the coffee maker as Dex grabs his smoothie from the fridge. He’s taken to making himself smoothies in the morning and bringing them in for his breaks, since he’s never loved coffee all that much.

“I’ve been telling my friend all about it and he’s begging me to take him now, so tell George he can expect me back soon. My friend is pretty pushy.”

“Perfect, then he’ll stop bothering me about it.” Kate reaches out without looking. “Could you pass the cream?”

Dex dutifully hands her the cream.

“You’re coming to the office party next week right?” She fixes her coffee the way she likes it and turns to Dex, sipping. Her eyes are wide and clear that Dex’s answer should and will be yes. It’s a bit like Bitty’s captain look and it curls something sharp and sad in Dex’s chest. Going back to school in August is going to be so very different without him.

“I didn’t know there was a party next week,” Dex says, licking excess smoothie from his upper lip. “What’s it for?”

“Jenny’s birthday. There’s gonna be a cake.”

“How can I say no to cake?”

Kate grins. “You can bring a guest, too. We need fresh meat at these things. Also if you don’t bring a date someone is going to try to set you up with someone and believe me, you do not want to get stuck on a date with Karen’s second cousin Stew. He’s basically the opposite of whatever a hoot is.”

Dex snorts into his smoothie. “Noted.”

Dex’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out without thinking twice. He doesn’t check it while he’s working and there are a few messages.

buzzfeed unsolved is THE SHIT

shane and ryan r defo u and me but i can’t tell who’s who. you believe in ghosts right??

ur homework is to watch every episode tonight and then come sleep in my apartment bc i’m scared af rn

Dex smiles and quickly types out a response.

Sounds like the writing is going well.

“Who’s that?” Kate pushes onto her tiptoes to look over the lip of Dex’s phone screen.

“My friend from school.” Dex keeps his phone out long enough to see Nursey’s response– f off– and then shoves it back in his pocket. “He’s supposed to be writing a short story for the publication he’s working with over the summer and he’s getting a little sidetracked.”

“Ooh, a humanities. How did we meet someone from the Other Side?” Kate grins into her coffee.

“He’s on the hockey team with me.”

Kate hums. “Hockey, I should’ve known.”

“Huh?”

“George and I were betting that you played some kind of sport. I thought basketball because you’re so tall, but he guessed baseball.” She scrunches up her nose. “Basketball’s closer, I think.”

Dex huffs, laughing a little. “What was the prize?”

Kate is staring at nothing, face scrunched up, and then blinks, hearing Dex, apparently. She waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, I can’t tell you that, HR would have a fit.” She sips her coffee again and Dex can’t help the volume of the laugh he lets out.

*~*~*

In the next dream, the sun is high and bright and dead in the sky.

“You’re good,” Luke says, walking next to him on the sidewalk. The ground is too hard against Dex’s feet, even through his sneakers. He turns and Luke is Luke, but also Jack. They speak at once. “If you work hard, you could take this somewhere.”

“You really think so?” Dex asks. He is small. Short. He looks up at Jack and his neck aches.

Luke grins, all teeth. “I really do.”

Dex wakes up reaching for his phone. Two texts wait for him, and he breathes as he makes his shaking fingers type out a response.

*~*~*

“I can’t believe you work a block away from my favorite coffee shop and it’s taken you this long to meet me on your lunch break.” Nursey tsks, reaching over to steal a bit of Dex’s muffin.

Dex slaps lightly at his hand, but Nursey still escapes with a sizable crumb. “I’ve been here for less than a month, it isn’t that long.”

“It’s ages,” Nursey insists, fingers still in his mouth as he speaks.

Dex winces to smother his smile. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Nursey retorts, and then sticks out his tongue to further prove it.

Dex huffs, sipping his smoothie to keep himself from doing something stupid, like responding. “How’s writing going?” he asks, when he’s taken his sip.

Nursey hums, swirling a mixing stick through his iced coffee. “Pretty good. I have a working draft done, but it needs some serious editing.”

“That’s good, dude. ‘Swawesome, even.”

Nursey grins around his straw. “’Swawesome,” he repeats. “C would be proud.”

“You talk to him recently?” Dex picks at his muffin.

“Yesterday, actually. Training is going well.”

Dex chews thoughtfully. “S’good. Last time I talked to him he was more worried about Bitty than the NHL.”

“Oh, he definitely still is.” Nursey laughs and makes another dive for Dex’s muffin. Dex deftly moves the plate out of the line of fire.

“It took him two weeks to pick a wall color,” Dex says, pausing to drink his smoothie. “And Jack must be drowning in all the tester bakes.”

“Let’s be real, though, if Bitty Bakes ever does open it’s gonna be the sickest bakery of all time.”

Dex inclines his head, slowly nodding. “Oh, I’ll definitely be spending my entire paycheck on imported pastries.”

“If you run out we can share my trust fund,” Nursey says, batting his eyelashes.

The laughter tastes so pleasant and—more than that—familiar on Dex’s tongue that he doesn’t even do anything as Nursey makes another grab for his muffin.

*~*~*

The worst dreams are ones that aren’t really memories at all.

It’s a beach, but the sand is blue and the ocean is clear and all Dex can see is sunshine, though he can’t feel a thing. Nursey is next to him and their hands are stuck in the sand, twisted together and hiding.

“I love you,” Nursey says, and it’s his voice and his words except not, because Dex knows it’s wrong, know it’s his brain that made it all up, and he starts running, slipping against the sand.

He trips and falls onto his knees and he looks up and it’s Luke and he’s grinning and looming and huge and he speaks, “Quiet, kid, quiet or they’ll hear you,” and for some reason Dex knows they is Nursey and he swallows every breath, worried it will sound like a scream, and when he wakes up he is, screaming, except no sound will come out and he’s just broken with his throat open and empty and—

He presses call without thinking and Nursey answers on the third ring.

“Dex—what—”

“Can you—just—” Dex swallows, tries again. “Just talk. Please.”

“Dex, what’s going—”

“Please.”

“I—uh. Okay.”

And he does. He talks, about the funny conversation he had with his mama today and these cool shoes he saw on Instagram and the pretty clouds he saw yesterday and this fruity drink he wants to try at a bar downtown that he’s going to drag Dex to whether he wants to go or not.

And sometime later, Dex falls asleep. He wakes up with his phone warm and nearly dead against his ear and a text from Nursey asking if everything’s g and Dex doesn’t respond, half because Nursey used g for good and half because he doesn’t know the answer.

*~*~*

His old running route in Maine took him through the woods. Past gnarled roots that curled, mischievous, and tried to trip him up, under a canopy of green that shivered in the early morning wind. He liked to wake up with the sun, at home, liked the quiet moments before the rest of town woke up and started looking at him. So he’d wake and run and take his path until the trees gave way to a dusky beach, accompanied by a barely awake sun.

A lot of the time, the water would still be smeared with the red hues of the fading sunrise, and Dex would stand and pant and stare and think about nothing, or Samwell, or—later on—Nursey.

It was a nice path, back home. Even if it would inevitably bring him back to houses that creaked under his footsteps, full of people that couldn’t look away until he met their gaze.

In New York, he runs against sidewalk. Smooth and uncomplicated, it brings him to a small park, with a few trees and some grass and, occasionally, some pigeons. He takes the path set out for him there and doesn’t have to think about winding roots, but does, anyway. He thinks about how easy it is without them, and how much he misses them, and wonders what that means before the adrenaline in his body pulses in his temples and he stops thinking of much all together.

He returns to his apartment and guzzles down water and makes himself breakfast and sometimes calls Ma and tries not to think about how different his life is here, tries not to categorize the things he misses, and the things he’s glad to be without.

He runs to forget, and it doesn’t always work, but it doesn’t mean he can’t try.

*~*~*

Jenny’s birthday party is, surprisingly, fun. Nursey texts him in the middle of the afternoon apologizing, saying that his meeting is running late and he might not be there in time, but he will be there. Dex, dejected, expects the party to suck, but when they all clock out and the cake is wheeled out on one of the trays they typically use for mail and Kate grabs the AUX cord for the speakers, things actually become interesting.

It’s not quite a kegster—nothing is quite like a kegster—but his coworkers are nice, funny people and the music is lively and the cake, while not Bitty’s, is pretty damn good. Nursey texts him intermittent updates with ridiculous comments and Dex, after Karen is drawn to the dance floor to Cotton Eyed Joe, takes up a spot by the wall with his cake and his phone and snickers down icing to type out a response to do you think they sell candles that smell like the subway.

Then, suddenly, Hugh pops up.

“Will, hi,” he says, holding his own plate of cake. “Thought I’d come over and say hello, now that Karen’s let you go.”

Dex swallows a bite of cake and shoves his phone in his pocket. “Oh, Karen wasn’t holding me hostage or anything. We were talking apple pie recipes.”

“Good to hear she wasn’t trying to get you to meet Stew.” Hugh leans in, secretive and exaggerated. “I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but he isn’t quite the catch she makes him out to be.”

Dex laughs, because Hugh is his boss and you laugh when your boss makes a joke. “I’ve been warned.”

“Good, good.” Hugh leans back, nodding. The silence hovers for a second, then he asks, “How’ve you been liking it here?”

“New York or the company?”

Hugh shrugs. “Either. Both.”

“New York I’m liking more than I thought I would. I’m from Maine,” Dex says, smiling in that way Nursey describes as country-boy-sheepish, “so I’m used to some greenery, but the city has its perks too.”

“Good, good!” Hugh grins. “I grew up in the country too. Northern Michigan. It sure is an adjustment. But I think it’s worth it.”

“Working here has helped,” Dex says, and if Nursey was here he’d probably cough to poorly disguise a kiss up but he isn’t really lying. Working here has proved to him that he would enjoy going into this field, and while he is keeping his options open, that’s a good thing to know.

“Oh, I’m glad,” Hugh says, gesturing haphazardly with his cake. “We’re lucky to have you here.”

“Thank you, sir—Hugh.”

Hugh smiles, and they stand there for a beat, two, and then he says, “Forgive me if this is inappropriate, but are you seeing anyone?”

Dex stiffens. Hugh isn’t—? He’s Dex’s boss, he can’t—is he? It’s like ice, gone down Dex’s back, through his veins. He wants to pinch himself, almost. Is he dreaming? But Luke never said those words before. But the dreams have been stranger lately. Is it—?

“Because my brother,” Hugh continues to speak, unaware, “just got out of college and I couldn’t help but notice the Bruins t-shirt you had on last Friday and he is the biggest hockey fan—”

Nursey is there, suddenly, and he’s right there, bumping his shoulder into Dex’s. He’s out of breath and smiling and warm and Dex leans back into him without thinking. “I am so sorry I’m late,” he’s saying, to Dex, and then to Hugh, “I’m sorry, I just completely interrupted you. I’m Nursey—well, Derek, but everyone calls me Nursey, so take your pick.” Then, to Dex, “Do you go as Dex or William here?” He scrunches up his face. “William. Ew. You sound like an uncle.”

“I was named after my uncle,” Dex says, vaguely.

Nursey nods. “Exactly.”

Hugh coughs. “My apologies, Will. I didn’t know—well. I see now.” He smiles, tight. “I’ll let you two catch up,” he says, lifting his cake, untouched, in parting.

“What was that about?” Nursey ask, peering after him obviously. “Ooh, is that cake?”

Dex hands over the rest of his second slice. He isn’t much hungry now.

“You will not believe my trip here,” Nursey says, beginning to eat. “It was, like, totally unchill, dude.”

Nursey hasn’t moved, still pressed up against Dex’s shoulder. Dex takes a deep breath. “Tell me about it,” he says, and Nursey does.

*~*~*

“—and all the ladies at church say hi,” Ma says, over speaker phone as she works around the kitchen.

The table, a continuous project, has been tabled for now—pun intended—for the sake of getting the dishes clean. Ma has to yell over the roar of the faucet. Dex is doing his own tidying as he folds laundry and listens to Ma talk. She always did used to talk while doing chores, Dex following her around, soothed by the words and the humming and the simplicity. It’s been a while since they’ve done chores together, and the familiarity, the comfort, mellows an ache in Dex’s chest.

“They all worry for you down in the big city,” Ma says, scrubbing audibly. “They don’t like the idea of a sweet country boy like you surrounded by all that crime and greyness.”

“You can tell them I’m holding my own,” Dex says, which makes Ma laugh a little, the short chuckle thing that he inherited from her.

“I will,” she says. A small clatter comes over the line as she, presumably, adds a dish to the drying rack. “They’re all in a tizzy planning for the July 4th social. I’ve been assigned drink coordination, which really means fielding arguments between Mrs. McMahon and Mrs. Fielding about soda over spirits, even though we all know we’re going to end up with the same drinks we always get and one of the rotten teenage boys is going to spike the lemonade despite whatever ridiculousness Mr. Spaulding tries to rig up.”

Dex smiles, remembering. When he was a kid and accidentally drank some of the spiked lemonade and wouldn’t stop giggling the whole ride home, when he was a teen and helped his then-girlfriend Isabelle spike it herself, when he was back from college and roped into standing watch over the lemonade but let one of the teens through anyway, on account of tradition.

“Oh, and you’ll never guess who I ran into in the grocery store the other day,” Ma continues as Dex reminisces. He probably could guess—there’s only so many people in their town, after all—but he lets Ma tell it how she wants as he searches for the pair to the sock in his hand. “Do you remember your old hockey captain? Luke Rossi?”

Dex freezes with his hand buried in laundry. A chill runs through the apartment.

“I ran into his mother,” Ma continues without a response. “She looks great—she says it’s yoga! I wish I had the time for something like that. But she was telling me all about Luke—you remember him, he was your hockey captain back when you were what? A sophomore?”

“A freshman,” Dex says, rough.

“Oh, that’s right. Well, anyway, his mother was telling me, he’s working with some big company out in Boston. He’s engaged! His mother says the girl is sweet as all get out, a tiny little thing. And she’s one of us, a ginger!”

Dex sits back on his couch. Small. Ginger.

“His mother’s just thrilled. It must be so nice to have a son engaged. Jay’s been with Kelsey for years, but who knows with him. Maybe I should send him Luke’s way, let that boy rub off on him!” Ma laughs. “Maybe he could rub off on you, too.”

A sick kind of laugh bubbles up in Dex’s throat. He swallows.

“It was just such a surprise. I knew all those kids you boys were friends with in high school, but I never get to hear what happens to them after, really. Luke was such a nice boy, too. It was just nice to hear about him.”

Nice. Yeah.

*~*~*

He dreams he is swallowing ice.

Someone’s mouth is on his and their tongue is heavy, leaden. Dex’s mouth catches on it, too cold, and it rips the skin from his lips until they’re bloodied. Copper stains everything, his tongue and eyes, and it rushes until he can’t hear anything but the blood.

He tries to open his eyes, and between one blink and the next the boy above him shifts, blond hair and blue eyes and too many teeth, then green and smile and salvation, and back again, sickening, spinning.

He manages to push himself away, sits up in whatever bed, ocean, driftwood, he’s on. Ma stands in the doorway. “Luke was such a nice boy,” she says, smiling, laughing. “That friend of yours, Nurse something? Is he a nice boy?” she asks, frowning suddenly, eyes intent.

“You’re wrong,” Dex goes to say, but chokes on the blood on his lips. He looks back over to the end of the bed, where Luke or Nursey or whoever is sitting, except it’s not just them anymore, it’s Jack and Hugh and Bitty, even, and they’re all staring at him.

“Good work,” they say, “If you work hard, you could take this somewhere,” they say, “Keep it up,” they say.

“She’s one of us,” Ma says, “Maybe he could rub off on you,” she says, “Nice boy,” she says.

Through it all, he can hear Nursey. “I love you,” shivers down Dex’s spine, ice. Dex swallows and swallows and tries to push through the rest of the voices to find Nursey in the haze.

Dex wakes up running and doesn’t—can’t—stop.

*~*~*

The sky is dark and the world is dizzyingly bright when Dex knocks on Nursey’s front door.

By all rights, it should be too warm to stomach. Late June, with all these people stuffed into one little place, blistering. But Dex clutches his jacket to his body, shivering. He can’t get warm. He can never get warm.

“Dex?” Nursey answers the door with a frown. Dex’s eyes catch on it and can’t pull away.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

“I—okay?”

Dex nods. He steps inside, around Nursey, and their arms brush. It burns.

“What’s going on?” Nursey asks, shutting the door.

“Are your parents home?” Dex turns around to face him. The door—big and green behind Nursey—brings out the deeper green tones in his worried eyes. Nursey’s eyes have always made Dex homesick. Now, he aches.

“No,” Nursey says. “Mom’s in Milan and Dad’s in Chicago and Mama—she’s somewhere in the UK. Why are you—”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Okay?” His face is all scrunched and his hair’s a little messy, curls hanging over his forehead, and he’s soft in Samwell pajama bottoms and so fucking gorgeous and Dex’s whole body is shaking, shivering, freezing.

“I—I’ve been having these dreams,” Dex says, hands clenching in his pockets. “For months now, these—these dreams about—” He swallows and shakes his head. “And now he’s engaged and it doesn’t—it doesn’t make sense, he—he shouldn’t get to move on when I’m drowning every fucking night, I don’t—I—”

“Dex.” Nursey is closer. Hands up, palms forward. Frowning. “What are you talking about?”

Dex shakes his head, but all of him is shaking and he doesn’t—he shouldn’t have come here. His broken brain isn’t Nursey’s problem, just because he’s in New York doesn’t mean they’re more than what they were before all this. Just because Dex’s home isn’t home anymore doesn’t mean he can build one in Nursey.

“I’m—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—I should go.” His mouth tastes like a panic attack. How did he make the decision to come here in the middle of the night?

“Dex.” Nursey grabs onto Dex’s forearm, a brand. “Sit down. Please.”

Dex stares at Nursey’s hand. He hasn’t been warm in—it feels like years, now. It feels like he went out into the Maine winter one year with a boy’s hand curled around his wrist and frost spread from that point out and he never got warm again.

“Nursey,” Dex says, the word broken like so many shards of ice, and Nursey’s grip on his arm stutters, hesitation. Dex, without thinking, breaks the hold, and in the next moment he has his mouth pressed against Nursey and it’s warm, it’s warm, it’s—

Dex doesn’t know if he’s been alive, before this. The heat from Nursey’s mouth, soft and surprised and then—firmer, more intent, it warms him from the bones out, until his skin itches with it, sings. Dex sighs into it, slumps.

Hands come up to his cheeks, pull him back, so soft. “Dex,” Nursey says, quiet. “Can we please sit down?”

Okay, Dex thinks. He breathes. Okay.

*~*~*

Nursey makes them cocoa. In July.

Dex holds the mug between his shaking hands and explains, in starts, but mostly stops. I had this captain when I was a kid, he says, and then, not a kid, he says. Well.

“I was fourteen,” he says. “He was—older. I wanted—I wanted to be good for him.”

I was, he says, but doesn’t quite make the words work.

“Ma never knew. No one ever knew. Ma, though, she loved him. Thought he—brought me out of my shell.” He brushes his thumbs along the sides of the mug, takes a sip and licks marshmallow off his lip.

He jumps in time. “After Bitty and Jack—after the kiss, home wasn’t—home. Maybe before that, too, but—but after the kiss, everyone knew, they knew I was.” He shakes his head. “It was hard to be there. So I came here.”

She doesn’t, he says. She thinks, he says. “Ma thinks you’re gay, because you live in New York, and you go to Samwell, and it’s easier to think it’s—it’s you. Easier than thinking it’s me.”

Nursey holds back questions. Dex swallows. It’s me, he says. I talk about you. Too much. She worries. She thinks—she sees. Sees that I—that I love—hm. “She doesn’t like it,” he says, without finishing the last sentence. “It worries her. It worries me, I guess.”

He tries to put it together. The dreams—they pulled it all together. “She looks at Luke and she doesn’t—she likes him, he’s a nice boy, but he—he left me with all of these—these things, the things where I can’t have a normal relationship with my fucking boss, and all this—this cold in my body, and she doesn’t—she likes him when he is so cold and she doesn’t like you when you’re so warm and it just—I couldn’t stop thinking about how wrong it was and how angry it made me and Nursey, it’s just—it’s so—you’re so–”

Nursey curls his mug-warm hand over Dex’s knee. “Hey,” he says, quiet. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Dex says, and he can feel the way his eyes are rimmed red, itchy, and hear the hoarseness in his throat, and feel the way that Nursey’s hand burns against his skin, and he wishes that he’d done this different, more coherently, earlier.

“No,” Nursey agrees, “it’s not. But I—it’s late. And we’re both tired. We can talk more in the morning, if you want. But I think—I think we both need to sleep.”

Dex swallows. He tastes cocoa and gratitude and—thick, clinging love. “Okay,” he breathes.

Nursey leads him up to a bedroom filled with books. Mussed blankets encourage Dex into the bed. Nursey gets in on the other side. It’s cozy and the duvet is heavy against his aching body and the ceiling is blue and Dex is not alone.

Nursey curls his hand around Dex’s, under the blankets. Dex curls back, and squeezes.

“I love,” Dex says and swallows.

“I know,” Nursey says, close, breath hot against Dex’s skin. “Me, too.”

Dex closes his eyes. He may dream. He may not. Either way, when he opens his eyes, he will not be cold.

76 notes · View notes

assless-chapstick · 5 years ago

Note

Who pulls the all nighters in the couch AU? Who has the perfect sleep schedule? Who slams down a coffee made with red bull instead of water and says they've been awake for 3 days?

Oooh feller, we was just talking about this on the server, and I am PRE PARED, let me tell you!!

I have a sleep disorder, so I think about sleep A LOT, and this is the shit I am ABOUT. MAXIMUM CATHARSIS BABY!! Anyway…

Arthur is definitely one of those bastards that can fall asleep anywhere. Sitting down, standing up, crowded bus, IMAX movie theatre, it doesn’t matter – Arthur wants to sleep and he simply wills it into existence. He doesn’t need to keep to a strict sleep schedule, really, because he can just… sleep whenever he wants, really. He needs like a minimum 6 hours to be a happy camper the next day, but usually gets 8. He’s an early bird, and is usually awake before the rest of the boys – 6 am, every day. He treasures the dawn hours, cuz that’s his like, alone time, when he thinks and writes and makes coffee so that the others can have it right when they wake up.

On weekends when he doesn’t work, he wakes up at 6, spends 30 minutes on twitter, gets up to make coffee, and returns to bed around 7 to cuddle with Charles and sleep some more until 9.

This all drives John absolutely insane, of course. John is the all-nighter boy, the one who stays up until 6am, sleeps for 45 minutes, then goes to class. It’s not that he just doesn’t sleep, or drinks too much caffeine – he definitely drinks too much caffeine, but that’s the symptom, not the cause.

John hasn’t slept the whole night through any time in recent memory. He has trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t enjoy sleep. The nightmares he has are so intense and so frequent and terrifying that he has a really hard time convincing himself to go to bed at night, and the anxiety of dreams keeps him up.

I think he used to take medication to help him sleep, a couple years ago, but that only made the nightmares worse, more vivid and real and he would wake up feeling out of breath, choked and strangled and scared and that just made the panic worse. That was a really dark time for him, too, before they got his medication all sorted out; he’s much better now, bur the medication doesn’t really help with the dreams.

That’s why he spends so much time in Arthur’s bed, right? The sound of Arthur's (and nowadays, Charles’s) slow, soft breathing, how he can tuck his perpetually chilly hands into Arthur’s armpits to keep them warm, the way he can feel Charles’s heartbeat against his back as he lies awake (Charles is a clingy cuddler, will grab whatever is closest and not let go til dawn); all of it helps John feel at ease, helps relax him enough he can get to sleep, and when the nightmares wake him up, the same presence of another person beside him and their steady breathing help him calm down.

His favourite sleep is that deep, dreamless sleep where you sink into darkness for a couple hours and wake up feeling a little less tired than when you went down. Problem is, dream-sleep is the restful sleep, right, so he doesn’t get a lot of rest. That’s why he’s always pounding energy drinks and chasing them with black coffee, that’s why he’s taking naps at like 7pm in front of the tv (if he fills his dreams with TV noise, it keeps the bad shit at bay), and that’s probably why he can be a bit of a bitch a lot of the time. He’s just fucking tired all the time.

(I think once, after a particularly bad night, around exam time, he’d just crawled into Javi’s lap and had a long, frustrated cry about it, really let it all out as Javi held him and rubbed his back and made soothing noises as John just says like, “Im so tired, Javi, I’m just so fucking tired.”)

I think that’s a cause of friction in John and Javi’s relationship, too. For a long time, John wouldn’t really let Javi sleep over. He wouldn’t say no or tell Javi what was up, he kind of just always had an excuse for Javi to not stay the night, and it made Javi feel kind of like John didn’t want him around. Eventually, though, John had to admit that like, yeah he wants Javi to stay over but he doesn’t want Javi to see that side of him, know just how fucked up he is…

They’re past that now, though, and Javi is really good about it. He’s a pretty average sleeper, but he definitely doesn’t have a problem falling or staying sleep. He has a pretty solid before bed routine, though, I think; changes into his pajamas (t-shirt n pj pants), brushes his teeth (electric toothbrush), lies down in bed and reads or listens to a podcast for a half an hour while sipping on a glass of warm water (something he would do with his mom as a kid).

Charles on the other hand… Charles could use a good dose of Sleep Hygiene, starting with any semblance of a bedtime routine. There are nights where he falls asleep at his desk while studying and wakes up with a sore neck when the alarm on his phone goes off, or he’ll take one of his textbooks to bed to read and end up dropping it on his face or something. He pushes himself really hard, and sometimes that means he doesn’t get the sleep he needs.

He also has a lot of anxiety, I think, and that can tend to keep him awake at times. When it’s quiet and dark and his mind has time to wander, that’s when all the worry starts to set in and he finds it really hard to sleep when that happens. He used to get out of bed and go do something, like stress-clean or drive to McDonald’s or something but now that he spends so much time in Arthur’s bed, he doesn’t do that; it’s kind of hard to get out of bed to go on a YouTube binge when you’ve got 180lbs of sleepy man meat drapped over you, drooling like a dog, and John has just managed to fall asleep and if you wake him, he will not get back to sleep for another hour or two. So in a way, that’s helpful, cuz Charles can kind of focus on like, counting Arthur’s breaths or running his hands through John’s hair (braiding it so John wakes up with waves that make him look a little like a stretched-out Shirley Temple) and that helps ease his mind.

I think that’s about it, feller!! Thanks for giving me the opportunity to blatantly project my issues onto these good good boys, mister!

#the couch au #im sorry this is the knly thing i ever talk abt now guys lol

11 notes · View notes

silvrwore-blog · 6 years ago

Text

---------- OOC.

hi im mitch : ) im a big f*king idiot, too. let me preface this by saying it is currently uhhhhhh 6 AM est and i still haven’t slept yet !!! i thunk i started this around 10 PM last night but im slow. really slow. everything about this ??? a hot mess ™ . it isn’t going to make a lick of sense !! but thanks for stopping by sdkjsadklsd. anywhomst im mitch, i’m twenty, in the est, and im ready to rock and roll buckaroo. my guy here? he’s an idiot. but he’s my idiot. therefore, i have to love him. the history is long ( i know because i started there first ) so ill make a little tl;dr with some simplified notes on him. i think that covers ??? everything ?? so far ? im always down to plot in the DMs or i have discord at oovoo javer #4855 mwuah !!

---------- APPLICATION.

( jack lowden, twenty-seven, cismale, he/him ) – have you seen bennett sharpe, the financial strategy student around oxford yet? i hear they can be conforming and convivial, but those who know them insist they’re reminded of beige turtlenecks and plaid blazers, eraser shavings on an old oak desk, and eagerly belting out the latest tunes when they’re around. rumor has it that due to stress, he had a breakdown in high school that put him a year behind his peers and his family has tried to cover it up. is it true? only time will tell… ( mitch, twenty, she/her, est )

---------- HISTORY.

THEY’D ALMOST STRUCK GOLD with bennett sharpe. smart enough not to have to buy your way into college, but not smart enough for his peers to despise him. the gusto of an entertainer and the charm of a damn good politician ------------ but they’d never been quite able to buff out that chip on his shoulder.

the sharpe’s were an interesting case. too good to slum it with the poor folk but not rich enough to always be able to sit at the BIG table. a family who paved their way in law and then literature. blood in the supreme courts and in those scandelous little novels that housewives sipped a glass of wine over. at least that had been his mother’s contribution to the family fortune ----- a wonderful dinner conversation.

--------- “ oh mother, what raunchy debauchery are you slaving away at now ? “

bennett was the oldest of three ( followed by one girl and then another boy ). he was a good son. would have been a real golden child to anyone else --- well, with a little love, care & patience. normal family things. from a young age he had a memory unmatched and a love of strategy games. a youth who loved to test his brain. which was fine and dandy, however, it wasn’t quite leading up to being a judge. he wasn’t following in his family’s footsteps. he’d gotten a little... off track. he had just been better with numbers. money crunching. equations. it had been a tough pill for his family to swallow but swallow it they would. afterall, it hadn’t been their biggest concern when it came to their oldest son.

it had always been there. carefully covered up with the occasional “ he’ll grow out of it “ or “ stop it. nothing is wrong. “ maybe that had been the real giveaway to why he’d never amount to anything big. “ he’s FRAIL. no spine. “ a good and competent doctor would have had him diagnosed and taken care of. seventeen and he’s missing classes but not for normal rich kid things. the world’s bigger and scarier than it ever was. college and a future right around the corner, parental pressure, it snowballs until it is all too much. one day of important testing and bennett sharpe never shows. he had not been on campus at all. sometimes when the panic became too much, it did him well to distract his mind ---- go outside. count the blades of grass or the birds in the sky. breathe. it’s what he had done that afternoon. left and tried to sate his mind. but nothing had done it for him that day. nothing to cure him. the world? bleak. the future? uncertain. weapy and tore down. the little devil on his shoulder named ‘ desperation ‘. he needed out. his parents phone and the message becomes crystal clear...

--------- “ i can’t do this. “

so he’d ‘” turned tail and ran “, branded some sort of listless coward. he didn’t know what was wrong with himself, nor did his parents. the only thing they were certain of was that they would not have a son coming apart at the seams. they’d grilled him. no one was going to take him seriously or he’d never find himself in any important position if he was always going to go chicken. a breakdown never looked good. it did not matter to the rich or the poor, one would still be ridiculed. but corporations wanted someone steely, confident, put-together. all the things bennett was not becoming. so they’d contacted his school - wrote it off as a vacation. save face. “ oh i got bored. decided to go to switzerland instead ! couldn’t miss it, you see a chance of a lifetime had just presented itself to me, so.... “. however, no donations or pleading on his parents part were going to make up lost time. bennett was held back a year for being unable to complete the necessary testing and exams. oh how he would have to sell that vacation. but it hadn’t quite been a vacation, had it? long days trying to put together the pieces. some days were easier than others. some time to try and buff out that chip. the chip remained.

years down the line and one enrolment to oxford and he’s a lot better than where he started. he’s found ways to cope. some good. some bad. he’s more indendent than ever which has led him to branch out and take care of himself. no watchful eye of mother and father needed. perhaps that’s why he now has therapy pamphlets tucked away inside untouched textbooks. away from prying eyes. just an idea, maybe one day he would water it and watch it grow. go see someone. anyone. now he’s cheery. lively. a staple at parties. heeds his father’s advice and brushes shoulders with the right people. finds himself in the right places. the future is looking bright. oxford may soon to be a closed chapter in his life, but the years had been good to him. until, well, they weren’t.

the riot club had been for the best. extravagant. a little bit of chasing the finer things in life. that had worked out just well for him. death had never been a thought --- or at least it was always kept at a distance. never upclose or personal. a relative here or there, miles away, he’d barely given it a thought. a funeral and they were gone. parties and death were not supposed to intermingle. maybe that was why it was so jarring. the world is a little heavier, bearing down on him once more. he tries not to pay it any mind when he has to excuse himself twice more than usual for a smoke outside. brushes off clammy hands like they’re nothing. accidents happened. he’d find solace in that word --------- accident.

---------- SPARKNOTES / TL;DR.

voted most likely to be that annoying fuck outside your dorm at 3 am who doesn’t know how to turn down the volume

dumb enough to try anything once

despite some tough times he’s just ??? full of life ??? life is a PARTY. and he’s making the most of it now, thank you very much.

“ are you not ENTERTAINED ? “

he’s not the worst,,, but he’s not the best. yknow?

nice enough to get drunk and talk to just about anyone but snobby enough that you bet he’s going to make some insensitive comments. it’s that -- not rich rich enough to be totally elite, but not hurting enough to be able to sympathize with people who aren’t bringing in a f*ck ton of money.

his family ( on his dad’s side ) has always been involved in law. typically judges, and some who have made it to be top dog in their fields. his mother is a writer who does rather well. she’s published a handful of book and his father has also published law-related books which brings in money. his dad is pretty high up in the field but bennett’s got his suspicions that some of the income might just be payoffs. i wouldn’t envision his father as being someone hard to be bought. he might want to grill his son for being spineless or weakwilled but i’d imagine that’s just a family trait inherited.

which uhh brings me to my next point. bennett can be a bit of a follower. there’s not a whole lot of “NO” in him. which may also hurt his relationships because he’s not going to stand against injustices or anything if it is going to put him in harm’s way. which may help perpetuate that rich or snobby idea surrounding him because he’s not about to stand up for the common folk if they’re being belittled for their threads or schooling.sure, he might talk to them here or there in the right occasion but he’s not going to stand for them. he’s sitting pretty. he’s not looking to ruin that.

essentially he’s not going to have your back unless it benefits him.

as far as his secret goes, i think he’s worried about the stigma around mental health and how he’d be perceived but i think a lot more has to do with his family. because he knows they won’t be happy if it gets out or if something further happens. they just ain’t supportive in that department, chief. but he doesn’t want to be cut off or anything and not just because he’d be worried about who was putting money in his pockets. he just doesn’t want to stir the pot any further, even though he should really seek help. i kind of vagued on it but i’d say he has gad ( generalized anxiety disorder ).

---------- CONNECTIONS.

am i picky?? nah. if he can fill something, slot him in. we can chit chat. mwuah

i already know this section is gonna get so neglected because im too tired to think

uhh give me an under the wing sort of relationship ?? listen if bennett can’t repair himself maybe he can touch up someone else. someone he might see something in. buds ? who knows ? not me. but it could b cute.

long time friends !!! doesn’t have to be since childhood but someone(s) he’s known for a while now and they click.

anything angsty ? is good too.

typical friends / enemies plots too !! spice things up.

i need sleep : ) good night !!!!!!!!!!

#no amount of hair gel #suits or ties #will ever cover up the fact he's a f*cking moron #mental health tw #smoking tw #drinking tw #ive been awake 17 hours #sounds like a good time to call it quits #oxfordintro #i will be back in a bit to do dms !! :')#after i snooze a lil

5 notes · View notes