#(a 17 hour train ride)

[osalotte]

EDIT: if u have other ideas pls post them in the comments!!

[fella-lovin-fella]

i was talking to my boyfriend last night about how i never really get restful sleep because the idea of going to bed gives me anxiety and i get really anxious to sleep because i always have really bad trauma/anxiety dreams, and a lot of the time i dont get fully asleep, just like mostly. and he was like "dude i think you should talk about this to your doctor."

[planet4546b]

doing my t in a train bathroom. feel like the gay people of tumblr would like this

[allthelovehes]

Unholy*

Summary: You follow a course through your job and the teacher who's giving the course is everything you've ever dreamed of.

Pairing: teacher!harry x reader

Word count: 6.2K

Warnings: Pussy eating, protective sex, squirting, p in v.

A/N:  This is partially based on a true story. Nearly everything but the smut is what actually happened and I just had to write it.

Ever since starting your new job, you must attend an internal program at headquarters for three-ish months, completely designed to train you for all the ins and outs of your position. It’s not like you have to go there every single week. But you have a perfect little schedule; you go to headquarters two weeks in a row, two days a week followed by a week where you practice all you’ve learned. Then two weeks of your training, two days a week and you repeat it over and over again for 11 weeks total. 

Since headquarters is an hour and fifteen-minute drive from your home, they offer you to stay the night at a hotel near them so you don’t have to keep on driving back and forth. They also pay for your dinner in the restaurant of the hotel and since you’re not the only student taking the course who lives relatively far away, you made some friends and all eat together. After dinner, you all hang out, down a few more glasses of chardonnay, and have a great night. 

The course itself is presented by two men, Chris and Harry. Chris is a couple of years older than you are and Harry is roughly the same age. Both of them are a treat to look at so whether you like the course or not, there’s always something interesting to occupy your brain with. Although if you’re truly honest, you do have a favorite and it gets worse when the end of the three months is in sight.

***

It’s the second to last week of your program. Normally you travel by train, read a book while you’re at it, and enjoy the peaceful start of your day. But today was different, you’re a bit in a hurry and decide to take your car and make the long ride yourself. Putting up some music and singing along at the top of your lungs.

Traffic isn’t as bad as you expected and instead of being stuck in your car for over two hours, it only took one and half hours. Normally the route is packed with traffic, causing a lot of slow-riding cars and traffic jams. But again, today was different.

Being 55 minutes early before the start of your training, you’re left with some more time to yourself. The book you normally would read on the train is in your bag anyway. So you grab a cup of coffee, pull the book out of your bag, and start reading to somehow still get a bit of the quiet morning you’re used to. 

You just finished reading your chapter when the door of the room swings open. You look up and your eyes meet the pretty green eyes you’ve grown to adore. You never imagined you’d still crush as hard at 26 as you did at 16. It’s like the teen inside you is awakened by Harry’s chocolate curls, green eyes, and puffy lips. 

“Good morning!” You greet him.

“Good morning. You’re early!” He chirps with a warm smile on his face. He always seems cheerful, just happy to be here. It makes you feel so welcome in this company. “How long have you been here for?” He adds.

“Not more than 15 minutes I think, honestly didn’t really track time.” You answer.

“Did the elevator work when you got here? I just had to climb the stairs.” He continues, there’s not even a shortness of breath even though he just climbed all 17 flights of stairs to reach the level on which the company is located. 

“You’re kidding! How are you still breathing?” You joke, but you’re actually not kidding. If you had to walk all those stairs, you’d be out of breath by the time you reach the 5th floor. Harry however just laughs at your statement before he puts down his backpack behind his desk. 

He made up this little routine of settling down for the day. First, he places down his backpack and takes out his laptop. Then he opens his laptop to boot it before he pulls his sweater over his head. This man doesn’t like to wear coats, he just puts a sweater on top of his outfit and uses that to keep himself warm. 

You thought you sort of removed him from your mind after not seeing him for a couple of weeks. Harry went on a well-deserved vacation and Chris took over during that time. So the last time you actually saw Harry was 5 weeks ago. But the second he pulled that sweater of his over his head, pulling his shirt a tiny bit upwards in the process had you melting right in front of him. The waistband of his boxers peeks out from his pants. You immediately recognize the brand he’s wearing by the colorful print on them. And let’s not even get started about his delicious happy trail. It’s a good thing his view is blocked by the fabric of his sweater because you for sure are struggling to keep your eyes to yourself.

“So, would you like some coffee?” He suggests as he folds his sweater over the back of his chair. You’re quick to agree on his offer. “Cappuccino right?” 

“Yes, please! I’m surprised you remember how I like my coffee.” You giggle, feeling a blush creep upon your cheeks. 

***

Throughout the entire day, you can’t help but notice how Harry’s eyes meet yours a lot more often than he does with your classmates. Whenever you look at him, his eyes are already on yours. He compliments you when you’re working on assignments and you just feel like there’s a mutual connection there. 

His distance to headquarters is even bigger than yours, so they offered him a similar deal as they did you. If he has to work multiple days in a row, he can stay the night in between in the same hotel as you all do. He gladly took upon the offer, for him it’s at least a two-hour ride home and that’s if he doesn’t include traffic. And since he works 5 days a week, it’ll save him a lot of time.

During the lunch break, you and your friends are making plans for the evening. Many of your nights in the hotel are spent drinking some wine and just catching up with each other. And today’s plans are like no other. Harry can’t help but overhear you guys talking about the hotel and starts bragging about the room they gave him. 

“I slept in room 405 last week. Apparently, all rooms on the fourth floor are deluxe rooms with a bathtub, double bed instead of a twin bed, and a filled mini fridge.” He joins your conversation, immediately planting the idea of asking for room 405 when you check into the hotel later today.

“I never had a bathtub during any of my stays. But all six times I slept in that hotel, I never slept on the fourth floor.” You reply.

“Don’t worry, you’re not missing out. The tubs are too small anyways.” He reassures.

“Your legs are just too long to properly fit into any tub.” You pointed out. 

***

All of you enjoy your dinner together. Harry is always left at work for a bit longer after you’re done with the class so he can prepare for the next day or finish up some other leftover work. And to the question of whether he will join you all at the dining table, his answer is always the same. “If I make it in time, I’ll happily join.” 

And today was one of the days he made it in time. He sits next to you in the only chair that’s unoccupied. Your friend shoots a glance at you, and that’s when you realize she made sure you sat next to the empty spot.

All of you welcome him to the table before starting small talk.

“Oh, by the way, Harry, I meant to thank you for your advice.” You start causing a confused look on the man’s face.

“My advice?” He asks. “What did I tell you?”

“When I was checking in I asked for room 405 and now I ended up in a deluxe room just like you told us about earlier today.” You giggle.

“Hold on, what room are you in??” He asks, clearly even more confused than he was at the beginning of this conversation.

“407.” 

“Ah, right! You got me confused for a second as I am booked in room 405 again.” He explains. “So, we’re practically neighbors!” 

Your brain spins a bit at how coincidentally it is of you asking for the exact room Harry is in. And on top of that, you are indeed practically neighbors. Suddenly you feel glad that you aren’t actual neighbors for the night, cause the rooms are very noisy and there’s a dividing door between every other room, allowing them to connect two rooms if needed. You’re not sure what your nighttime activities will turn into, once you’re left alone in your hotel room with just your unholy thoughts of the man next to you. 

Your food gets served, you and Harry both choose a different dish. He chose the tilapia filet and you went for a steak. Both are served with some veggies and fries. 

“That steak looks good.” He says as he puts a bit of fish into his mouth. 

“Would you like to try some?” You ask him to which he agrees. His fork is all covered in the sauce that comes with the fish. So, you cut off a piece of steak and hold your fork out for him to take it. He hums softly as the taste of the steak hits his tastebuds, sending vibrations through your fork. 

Harry insists on you trying some of his fish too. So he cuts a piece of, similar as to how you did it and holds his fork out for you to try it. 

You’re not much of a fish eater but you can see how people like this particular dish. It’s good as far as how good fish get. 

***

After hanging out with your friends on the terras, drinking some wine. All of you decide to call it a night. It’s nearly 11 p.m., and all of you need to be up bright and early the next day for your course. 

You hop into the elevator together, all of you pressing different buttons for different floors. Soon enough you’re the last one standing as you’re the only one whose hotel room is located on the top floor, and Harry’s of course.

Your pace slows down when you reach room 405. A deep voice is heard on the other side of the door. This confirms your suspicions, Harry is still up. It seems like he is currently on the phone with someone as a one-sided conversation is heard from his room. You decide not to snoop around, for all you know he’ll walk out the door any second and see you lingering around his door. That’d be weird.

Once you reach your door, you open it with the card and enter the room. You were smart enough to turn on the air conditioning before heading down for dinner so the room was cooled perfectly. 

You let yourself fall backward on your bed with a deep sigh. This massive crush on what essentially is your teacher was unexpected. And now you’re full of nerves, jitter, and a lot of unholy thoughts to think about.

You open up your book and try to set your mind in another direction. You have to face the man you’re thinking about tomorrow and above all you need to be able to concentrate. 

After 45 minutes of reading your mind is still on the one topic it was before. So the plan to distract yourself failed miserably. The only other option you can consider is taking a cold shower, cause there’s no way in hell you can masturbate to the thought of him and look him in the eye tomorrow.

You hop into the shower. You start at your regular temperature and decrease the temperature with small steps to end with a cold shower. Your hands travel over your body and you notice how sensitive your skin is. You take some soap and spread it all over your skin. Once your hands reach your breasts you give some extra attention to your achy nipples, pinching them between your fingers. You moan softly, god that feels good.

You realize what you’re doing and stop immediately, turning the water ever colder causing you to nearly squeal at the temperature. You step out of the shower and wrap a towel around your body. 

As soon as you’re all dried up, you crawl back into your bed and grab your phone to scroll mindlessly through TikTok. First, you clear your notifications but you notice one particular Instagram notification that catches your eye.

harrystyles liked your story 8m ago

It’s fucking past midnight, what is this man liking your Instagram story for?? As if you weren’t thinking about him enough already. 

You decide to get out of bed and go outside for a little midnight stroll. The cool and fresh air will do you good. You take your AirPods out of your bag so you can listen to some music while you're at it. 

You’ve been walking for about 25 minutes when you step back into the elevator and press the button to the fourth floor. Harry has finally disappeared from your mind, I mean, he’s still there but just less present. You are tired and just need your sleep.

Room 407 is two-thirds down the hall, luckily the floor is covered with carpet so your feet don’t make as much sound. You don’t want to wake anyone up at this ungodly hour. Nerves kick back in the closer you get to room 405. What if he’s still awake, or what if you woke him up when your door fell closed on your way out?

The sound of a door opening is heard and you’re too afraid to take your eyes off the floor. It takes every bit of strength in you to lift your head up, but when you finally do, your eyes are met with the ones you’ve been thinking about all night. He’s changed out of his dress pants and blouse and into a plain white shirt and some grey sweatpants.

“Oh, hi.” You mumble. Fuck, you think. You did wake him up on your way out. And now he’s here to complain about it.

“Hi.” He replies in a whisper. Harry heard you walk through the hallway, at least he was hoping it was you. But now that he’s standing eye to eye with you, he suddenly becomes nervous and doesn’t know what to say.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up when I left my room.” You apologize. 

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve been struggling to fall asleep anyway.” “Yeah, me too. I’m gonna go give it another try though.” You point to your door, gesturing for you to leave. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Wait!” Harry whisper-yells. “I- uhm. Do yo- uh.” He stumbles over his words. You turn your body back to him, looking at him with your big eyes.

“Do you wanna come with me to my room?” He finally asks and he holds out his hand for you to grab. You’re taken by surprise but after looking at him for a bit too long you grab his hand with a little nod and let him lead the way. 

He closes his fingers around yours and takes a couple of steps back to his room, opening the door with his room key. He steps inside the room, holds the door open, and pulls you in by your hand. The door is slammed closed right after you’re through the opening and Harry's strong arms push you against the door. 

“Hi.” He says giddy when looking at your lips, earning a smile from you.

“Oh fuck, just kiss me already.” You demand, and he is eager to please. 

His lips crash onto yours and his tongue slips inside your mouth. He’s gentle but demanding, it’s nothing like you ever thought it would be. This kiss makes you realize what people mean by melting when they’re being kissed. It’s like every inch of your body becomes one with his.

Your fingers graze his hair, pulling him closer as his hands find their place on your hips. He pushes his body flush against yours, earning a moan from your lips. The fingers of his right hand sneak under the hem of your shirt to dig into your skin. 

He pulls away after what feels like minutes of making out, panting slightly. His fingers play with the hem of your shirt and he looks down.

“Can I?” He asks to which you agree. Your shirt is pulled over your head in a swift motion, revealing your peach-coloured bra. Suddenly you feel glad you decided to put on a bra when you went for a walk because you nearly decided to not wear one.

“Fuck.” He moans at the sight of you. His hand comes up to cup your left breast through the padding of your bra. “You’re so beautiful.” He kisses your neck, up to your ear. You gain confidence from his words and let your hands travel over his chest, down his sides all the way to the hem of his own shirt. You look him in the eyes for permission. 

“Do it.” He whispers in your ear while he keeps on kissing every inch of your ear, neck, and jawline. You pull the shirt over his head revealing his perfect abs. You can’t help but put one hand flat on his stomach to feel his muscles and moan softly. Your eyes meet his and he has a beautiful smile plastered across his lips. 

His lips are back on yours and his fingers hook in the waistband of your jeans. He’s greedy to get you out of your clothes as soon as possible. He opens the button. His left hand grabs your face and he kisses you passionately on your lips as he puts his right hand in the back of your jeans to squeeze your bum. 

“Hmm, you feel so good.” He squeezes your flesh one more time before he pushes the fabric over your ass. You step out of your jeans and push him further into the room. Your lips reconnect. 

Harry leads you to the chair in the corner of the room and pushes you down in the chair. Your eyes fall down his body and stay glued to the tent starting to form in his sweatpants. His fingers wrap underneath your chin to pull your face up. 

“Eyes up here, baby.” He says. He spreads your legs to stand in between them and strokes his hand over your inner thighs, to your stomach, and up to your lips. He puts his thumb against your lips with his fingers resting on your cheek. You open your lips and softly suck on his thumb getting it slightly moist. 

He takes his finger back out of your mouth and his hands explore down to your chest. Both hands grab one boob each and massage your skin through your bra. He makes sure to flick his thumbs over your hardening nipples every now and then. 

You sink further down into the chair, practically laying on your back with your bum on the edge of the seat. Your feet are tucked around his waist and your legs are spread open to reveal your clothed crotch. Harry is standing right in front of the chair, causing his crotch to gaze over your most sensitive spot when he moves close enough. 

You moan at the pressure he’s applying to your chest. His big hands fit perfectly around your tits and it’s all you’ve been thinking about. Well, not all, but you get the point.

He pulls down the cups of your bra, to expose your breasts. Your nipples are hard and needy. His lips attach to your right nipple to suck on them before he lets go and gently strokes his fingers down your stomach, back towards your inner thighs. The soft touch of his fingertips tickles, sending a buzzing feeling straight to your clit.

He kneels in front of the chair you’re sitting on and wraps his hands around your waist. He places a couple of kisses on your thighs, right next to your core. But never touching where you need it most. He’s making you all needy, drawing moan after moan. 

“Are you sure you wanna do this?” Harry asks. But the view in front of him already gives him the answer he is looking for. You’re dripping through your panties, completely ruining them and every touch is rewarded with another moan coming from your lips.

“Mhm, fuck yes.” You half moan.

Harry finally places a kiss on the wet spot forming on your panties. You immediately put your hand in his hair. After a few more open-mouthed kisses on top of the fabric, he finally pulls them to the side. He lets out a low moan at the sight and smell in front of him. 

He attaches his lips to your core, leaving another open-mouthed kiss on your labia before he sucks the juices into his mouth. Another loud moan escapes his lips, you’re sure anyone who’d walk by would be able to hear the both of you.

“You taste so fucking good, baby.” Harry moans. He pushes your panties further to the side and you help him hold them there, giving him full access to taste every single inch of you. He licks up from your bottom all the way to your clit and you can’t help but whine. He continues to gently lick around your clitoris, making sure not to apply too much pressure at once. It feels like pure ecstasy. 

His hands stroke the insides of your thighs again while they travel to your core. With two hands, he spreads you open to allow him to stick his tongue inside of you. He pushes in and out of you a few times before his tongue travels back to your clit. Licking and sucking softly, building up the pressure. He for sure is taking his time with you. His eyes are locked on yours to gauge what you like and don’t like. But so far you seem to have entered another world. With your left hand locked in his hair and your head thrown back.

Harry starts to put more pressure on your clit with his tongue making you all squirmish. Your soft moans go up in loudness. His lips leave your clit but his finger is quick to stroke circles around it before he inserts his finger into your pussy hitting you right on that spongy part. His finger pushes in and out of you and his tongue gently swipes from left to right. 

He applies even more pressure to your clit, sucking on the sensitive bud every now and then. His one finger inside of you pumps in and out, building up a faster pace. More juices start to spill from your pussy so he licks from down all the way up to your clit again to collect your wetness and slurp it all up. It’s a sign you’re coming close to your orgasm. Your legs start shaking around his shoulders and he continues his work, going faster and sucking harder.

Soon you can’t contain your moans and your orgasm hits you harder than it has ever done before. Harry’s fingers don’t seem to slow down though, and his tongue is still attached to your sensitive clit. Your moans turn into high-pitched whines mixed with curse words falling from your lips.

“Fucking hell, please” You moan, trying to push his face away from your cunt. His finger falls from your pussy and he softly caresses your mount with a flat hand, his lips are still attached to your clit but he stopped sucking as he moans loudly. The vibrations of the sounds he’s making shoot right through your body. He completely removes his face from you and wipes the wetness from his chin. 

“God, I wanna do that again. You sound so fucking pretty.” He tells you before he connects his lips to yours. The tangy taste of yourself is all you can focus on, making you feel dizzy. 

Harry looks you up and down. He gets up off his knees so he can finally drop his sweats to the floor. The erection in his loose-fit boxers makes you curious, but it gives you a good idea of how big he is. 

He holds out his hand for you to help you get up from the chair. His arms wrap around your body once you’re on your feet and he kisses you deeply. His hands take hold underneath your bum. 

“Jump.” He commands and you listen without a second thought. You wrap your arms around his middle and his erection softly presses into your core. You moan and nestle your face into his neck. Your hips try to grind down on him, although you’re not as successful as you’d hoped. Harry walks to the end of the bed to place you down. 

“Let’s get you out of these.” You say as you put your fingers into the waistband of his boxers. You pull them down so he can step out of them. He pushes you on your shoulders, tipping you over so you’re lying on your back and his hands hold your knees to spread them open again. With one hand he pumps his cock a few times and with the other, he pushes your panties back to the side before he pushes the tip of his cock through your folds. 

“Shit, a condom.” He curses. “I don’t know if I have one.” He says honestly. It’s not like he thought he was getting laid during his work trip so he didn’t pack any. He rushes to his wallet in hopes of finding one in there. He opens the coin section and is happy to be greeted by a silver foil. He takes it out before he returns to you and puts on the protection. 

He goes back to what he started. He rubs the tip of his now rubber-covered cock over your clit, stimulating the sensitive nub. You immediately are a moany-mess again before he slides his tip down and inters your cunt. He pushes in and out, going deeper with every thrust. His thrusts are gentle as he knows you’re close to being overstimulated. 

His hands hold your thighs down before he starts moving back and forth at a faster pace. He bends down to attack your right nipple with his mouth. He sucks sharply and licks over the hard bump. 

The bed starts squeaking loudly when he holds you down around your hips to be able to fuck up into you faster. His skin slaps against yours making the most erotic sounds audible in the hallway and possibly in the neighboring rooms. 

Harry wraps his hand around your neck, not really applying pressure but just holding you in place as he trusts into you slower but with more power. Smacking his pelvis against your clit with every trust. Your panties slipped back down covering half your labia again. 

“Let’s get these out of the way.” You laugh. Harry pulls out so you’re able to remove your underwear but he’s back inside of you as soon as possible. He’s bucking up, trying to hit your G-spot every time he pushes in. And he knows he’s doing a good job as your moans went up a pitch again. 

He grabs your hips and keeps fucking you hitting your G-spot hard every, single, time. The trusts change from hard and deep to soft and fast. Giving you a whole other sensation. He keeps switching between the two different paces until he finds you squirming underneath him again. He bucks his hips hard and deep into you and after a few more trusts you reach your second orgasm, screaming and squirting all over him. 

You were about to apologize but Harry has already attached his lips to your cunt to lick up all the leftover juices. He’s moaning loudly as he’s trying to clean you up. Your own moans become quieter and turn into soft hums as you nestle your hand into his hair, grabbing him tightly. 

He starts assaulting your clit like he used to when you were sitting in the chair. His tongue is doing wonders on your overstimulated clit and it only takes a couple of strokes of his wet muscle to get you to reach your height again. This time however it feels shorter and less intensive, but still your moans picked up again. It’s like music to Harry’s ears.

“Fuck, Y/N, you are so fucking perfect.” He moans, kissing you sloppily. His hips meet yours and both of you hum to the feeling. Harry takes a hold of his cock and guides it back inside of you. His hips grind over yours, giving you way too much stimulation but god does it feel good. 

He places his left foot on the bed next to your bum and starts pounding into you. He puts one of his hands on top of your mouth as you can’t contain any of the sounds you’re making. Harry knows it’s already too late when it comes to waking up the neighbors but he doesn’t wanna keep bothering them all night.

Never have you been fucked this hard, fast, and deep all at the same time. It’s starting to feel overwhelming and you can’t stop whining at how good you feel. Harry keeps miraculously pounding into you as he starts to moan loudly himself as well. 

His moans send shivers down your spine, he sounds otherworldly. The deeper his moans get, the sloppier his trusts become. He spills all of his cum inside of the condom before his moans quiet down and he pulls out. He’s panting loudly and he gently swats the back of your thigh twice. He rubs his cock up and down your pussy one more time before he kneels down again and licks your pussy clean. 

“Stay where you are.” He says and places a quick kiss on your lips. He walks to the bathroom to toss the condom and grab a damp towel to properly clean you up. He dabs the lukewarm towel to your overstimulated core and softly strokes the fabric down once or twice. He puts the towel down on the floor where all of your juices squirted in an attempt to minimize the mess.

“There, now let’s get comfy.” He says and gets into bed. “Do you want a shirt?” He asks to which you nod. He gets up to grab his white tee from before and hands it to you. It smells deliciously like his skin in the best way possible. You put it on and it reaches up to your upper thigh. 

Harry lays back down in bed and you crawl next to him. He naturally opens his arms for you to cuddle up to him. 

“I‘ve never been fucked that good.” You chuckle as you take a deep breath. The room smells and looks like sex but neither of you seems to care. 

“Hmm, you felt so good.” Harry’s ego boosts at your comment. And if he’s honest, he’s never been with someone he enjoyed so much and he simply can’t wait to do it again. “I hope you’re going to stay the rest of the night, right?” He asks. 

“I didn’t plan on getting up, I’m way too comfortable here.” You reply to which Harry only pulls you in closer. He places a soft kiss on your forehead with a soft hum. 

“Goodnight, baby.” He whispers to which you answer a simple goodnight. 

***

You wake up the next morning with Harry’s body wrapped around yours. The sound of your alarm was ringing from the nightstand. It’s a good thing you charged your phone last night when you were trying to sleep otherwise it would’ve been out of power and therefore not been awakened. 

“What time is it?” Harry asks, his voice low and sexy as he’d just woken up. 

“7:30.” You answer, to which he shoots up. 

“Shit, I forgot to set my alarm. I need to be at work in an hour.” He sighs, but actually, he doesn’t really care. He has the most beautiful girl lying in his bed, breakfast can wait for once and he can also head to work half an hour later, he already prepared everything for today anyway. 

He lays back down and rolls on his side to face you. 

“Hi.” He says. 

“Hi.” You reply, and both of you laugh softly. 

“So, I hope you have no regrets from last night. I didn’t mean to push you into anything you didn’t want.” Harry says, to which you take his face between your hands to pull him closer. You connect your lips to his. 

“Not one single bit.” You reply before Harry deepens the kiss. His cock is already hard, as most men wake up with an erect member. But the beautiful girl in his T-shirt next to him is making him lose his mind. 

His hands travel down her side and cup her pussy. One finger gently slides between her already damp lips and rubs circles around her clit. 

“Har, we don’t have time for this.” You whine and he knows you're right. He sighs before he takes his fingers back from your pussy and licks the tip of his finger clean. 

“I’m sorry. You’re just irresistible.” He flirts. 

“It’s gonna be a long day then.” You joke, neither of you had thought about having to go through today and act like nothing has happened. 

“We’ll see about that.” He argues as if he doesn’t think there’s going to be a lot of tension. “Let’s just get ready for breakfast.” He says and gets out of bed to get dressed. 

You sit up and think for a bit. All your stuff is two rooms down the hall and you don’t feel like getting into your nasty clothes from the day before, especially those panties which are ruined. 

“Can I borrow your sweatpants for a bit?” You ask Harry. “I need to go to my room to get ready.” You explain. He grabs his sweats off the floor and hands them to you. You’re now wearing the complete outfit Harry was wearing when he pulled you into his room. 

“I’ll see you in a few minutes.” You say before kissing him once again and head out to your own room. 

You took a quick shower to rinse off the sweat of the night before, brushed your teeth, and got dressed in a fresh set of clothing. 

When you’re all set and ready, you grab your room key and exit your room. You walk the short distance down the hallway to Harry’s room and raise your hand to knock on his door but he already has it opened before your hand can hit the wood. 

“Let’s go get some fuel.” He says and grabs you by your hand. He leads you all the way to the elevator. He pressed the button to the ground floor where the breakfast buffet was. 

The elevator stops at the second floor. You quickly pull your hand back as you know there are classmates sleeping on that same floor. And since Harry and you haven’t discussed anything about how to move forward, you’d rather not get the confrontation in the middle of an elevator. However, luckily it wasn’t someone either of you knew. 

Once the both of you enter the restaurant, Harry a few steps ahead of you, you notice all your classmates who also slept in the same hotel already sitting at your designated table. 

“Wow Harry, we thought you had already left. You’ve never been this late before.” One of them recalls. 

“Yeah, you’re always the first to eat and the first to leave.” Someone else joins in. 

You don’t know where to look or what to say. It feels like getting caught as you are well aware of the reason why Harry hasn’t eaten yet. Both of you decide to go fill up a plate with a delicious breakfast and just try to ignore the comments. 

“I feel like we’re already getting caught.” You tell him as you stand next to him putting some eggs on your plate. 

“Don’t worry your pretty head over it, there’s no way for them to know.” He reassures. 

You sit back at the table before Harry does. He’s in line for the coffee machine. 

Your friend looks at you. “Spill. The. Tea.” She mouths so no one can hear, but you can see. You giggle to yourself and shake your head no. But she just knows something is up. 

Harry walks back to the table with two cups of coffee. He puts the black coffee in front of himself and the cappuccino next to your plate. 

“Thank you, ba-“ You quickly stopped saying what you wanted to say, hoping no one had noticed. You look around the table but there are no suspicious looks. Harry places his hand on your knee and squeezes softly. 

“You’re welcome.” He says. 

Taglist: @justmystyles @bitchybabyharry Let me know if you want to be added to my taglist! 🤗

[ghost-proofbaby]

twenty four hours (modern!eddie munson x fem!reader)

HOUR SEVENTEEN

in which you watch a movie about dragons with eddie, but there's something deeper beneath the surface to battle. to train. to tame.

→ tropes: enemies to lovers, forced proximity, slow burn

→ warnings: strong language, upside down does not exist, minors dni

→ wc: 3.7k+

→ a/n: omg they still haven't slept they're just like me fr <3 thank you for all the kindness and endless patience you have all had with this story, and for sticking around for the ride. deftones scene that has haunted me for months now will be next hour! and the return of the gc! see y'all next week (maybe)

masterlist.

spotify playlist.

◁ previous part, next part▷

17:00 ─────────ㅇ───── 24:00

HOUR SEVENTEEN - 8:00 AM

“Are you crying right now?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh my God, you are.”

“I’m not.”

“Eddie, those are goddamn tears on your cheeks-”

“Oh, fuck off!” 

The credits for How To Train Your Dragon roll as background noise to your bickering. 

“It’s okay to admit that you were, y’know,” you coo as you lean across the spanse of both your laps, moving to pinch at his cheek as he leans back and moves it further out of your reach, “It’s a very moving ending.” 

You’d situated yourself at one end of the couch when you two returned inside, while Eddie had seated himself on the opposite end. Initially, you’d been disappointed, worried about that sudden distance. But the distance disappeared rather quickly as Eddie had fully turned his body, back against the armrest and legs spread out of that empty space, and encouraged you to do the same. A messy entanglement of knees and ankles and calves all pressed together, touching at every interval possible. Anywhere your leg could manage to graze his, it was. A plethora of gentle and minuscule touches, all adding up to something bigger – something that still grows in your chest amongst the vines and beneath his waves.

It was the very thing that made this easy. It wasn’t awkward, neither of you seemed uncomfortable given that the last time you’d used this couch, it had been in very delicate and very different circumstances. 

It was all part of being his friend. You were Eddie’s friend. 

“Don’t be so condescending,” Eddie’s scowl is adorable, tugging on every infantile bloom gathered on the greenery in your chest. 

Boundaries. Your lungs and your vines and your bones had found respectable boundaries amongst themselves, and it was finally easier to breathe around Eddie again.

“I’m not!” you shift your legs, sliding your bare skin against that of his flannel pajamas. He’s quick to wrap a hand around your ankle, thumb pressing into the hard bone as if he’s scared you’re about to run from him again. You’re not; you’re not sure how to convince him, but you can’t imagine there’s anything he could tell you now to send you running once more, “I liked the movie, Eddie. It was… it was really good.” 

You’re a terrible liar. You can’t remember half the movie. All you can remember is the way Eddie would animatedly add commentary for you, how there had been a point in the movie the two of you paused for nearly fifteen minutes for him to go on a ramble of his explanation as to why he’d named his bike Nightfury (as if it hadn’t been obvious from the way his face lit up the moment Toothless appeared on screen). All you can remember is how you only wished the movie would never end, so the look on his face would never fade. 

“Tell me your favorite scene,” he demands with a knowing smirk. He knows you didn’t pay attention. 

“You know…” you pause, racking your brain for a single scene to mention, “The… one…”

“Go on,” he scoots his heels back towards him, elevating his knees so he can prop his elbows up on them and cradle his face mockingly, acting completely enthralled by whatever your answer may be, “The one…?” 

You panic, blurting out, “The one with the dragon.” 

You miss the pressure of his thumb on your bones. A physical reminder of his grip on you, not just all mumbled metaphorical ones that now reside in you.

“Half the movie was scenes with a dragon.” 

“The one where he’s training the dragon.” 

That earns a cackle from him. One that pulls from his chest, sends him leaning back from his sarcastic pose and makes him squint his eyes until crinkles appear beside them. You almost consider counting each laugh line, but just as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared. 

“Awesome,” he breathes out, stretching his legs out, bumping them back against yours once more, “So specific. You should really be a professional movie critic, you know that?” 

“Oh, yeah,” you nod giddily, “Feast your eyes, pretty boy. The next Robert Ebert in the making.”

He’s red. Terribly, terribly red. It’s not a surprise he fights fire with fire as he replies, “Sweetheart, respectfully… who the fuck is Robert Ebert?” 

It’s your turn for your cheeks to burn. You’re unsure if he catches it, the flash of sudden shyness at that nickname now. It once sent rage burning down your throat, but you now revel in it. You’d burn for it. 

“You’re killing me here, handsome,” that does the trick – a small squeak sounds off from deep within his throat, and he tries to cover it with a cough, “He was a famous movie critic. My newest role model.”

You expect him to go on with the bit, to force your hand and make you expand on it. Your mind is already reeling with ways to insert more innuendos, more nicknames, more ways to drive him as insane as you already had become thanks to him. It was only fair that you return the favor. 

He doesn’t. 

He’s like a schoolboy, fidgeting beneath your attention. You swear you feel a tremor in his legs that are tangled with yours properly again, and when he grabs your ankle, when he gives it another squeeze and he lays his thumb into that bone again as if he might find a divot specifically worn out just for him, you realize he’s not going to go along with the bit. Your innocent nickname has left him defenseless. Flustered, vibrant pink and crimson red from the bridge of his nose to the tops of his ears. 

Oh, this is fun. 

You move the foot he’s not holding onto for dear life, shifting it too quick for him to stop you before you sharply prod his exposed stomach with your toes, “Earth to Eddie?” 

He jumps at the contact. It happens so fast, you almost can’t keep track of him with your eyes as he’s sporadically jumping up off of the couch, away from your foot and legs and you. 

Oh, that’s not fun. 

“We should watch another movie,” No, we really shouldn’t. “How’s Scream sound?” 

He doesn’t even let you answer him, already rushing towards the entertainment center and dropping into a crouch before the shelves holding some of his movies. His hand moves to his knee, the hand that had once held to your bone, the one that burned a lingering touch into it, and you watch as his fingers start to tap along to a silent beat. 

A clear sign of anxiety. Even if you hadn’t come to observe Eddie and learn his ins and outs over the last seventeen hours, you’d know he’s on edge. 

“What are you doing?” you baldly ask him, in no mood to beat around the bush. 

He’s on edge. All you did was call him handsome, and he’s on fucking edge. 

“What do you mean?” he asks over his shoulder, not even so much as looking at you as his fingers trail along the spines of titles, occupying himself with finding a movie you still hadn’t agreed to. 

You sit up on your knees, kneeling on the cushions. It almost reminds you of when your knees had last pressed into this couch, “I mean, why the fuck did you get up like that?” 

“Like what?”

It’s funny, how easily your previously warm contentment can start to fan into flames of agitation.

“Oh, Jesus-” you cut yourself off, standing just abruptly as he had. You walk with purpose towards him, and he finally turns his face to look at you, “What did I do? Did I cross a line?” 

His brows furrow, “What?”

You wave your hand towards the couch, finally stopping off beside him, cocking a hip to accommodate your other hand that rests on it, “The way you just- we were just sitting there and talking and you just-” 

You just completely pulled away from me. Physically, yes, but I’m terrified it also be emotionally. You pulled away, and it feels an awful like you’re running away. 

All the words you can’t say – all the words you don’t know how to say. 

“You jumped up like I said something wrong,” you quietly finish the thought only half truthfully. It’s better than nothing. It still offers a sliver of honesty. 

“You didn’t say anything wrong,” he remains crouched, looking up at you with big and wide eyes, face smoothing into shock, “I just… I want to watch another movie.”

“I thought we were past that.”

“Past what?”

“Lying.”

His blush lingers and so does the tapping of his fingers, “Why do you think I’m lying? I’m being serious – you didn’t do anything wrong! I just… You said you haven’t seen Scream, and mentioned something about killing, so I thought-” 

“And if I don’t want to watch another movie?” you drop to your knees beside him, and he physically retracts, “See! Jesus Christ, Eddie, be honest with me right now or so help me God-”

“I have been plenty honest tonight, thank you very much,” he scowls immediately. You scoot closer to him on your knees, and this time, he isn’t flinching away, “You didn’t do anything wrong, alright? I… It’s me. My problem, I’ll deal with it. Please just… let me deal with it, okay?” 

“Deal with what-”

It’s your fault, really. You scoot even closer on your knees, you’re ignoring the carpet burn sure to remain, when your balance fails you. One moment, you feel as though you have the upper ground with him and this entire argument, and the next you’re falling forward. 

You’re falling forward, and Eddie doesn’t hesitate to earnestly attempt to stop your collision with his floor. Attempt being the key word. 

It happens slow enough that both of you should have been able to stop it, in retrospect. Because Eddie is successful in catching your elbow, pausing the fall momentarily before he loses his own balance. He falls onto his ass and out of his crouch with a soft oomph, eyes widening comically before he’s collapsing backwards and dragging you with him. Your body drapes over him, cheek pressing into his bare chest, and neither of you move for a second. 

A familiar position. From the first few hours, when Eddie had tried to wrestle his damn porn magazine from you. That warm weight that once rested between your hips now digging into him, ribcages once more pressing together with erratic heartbeats pounding against each other through walls of flesh. 

You don’t move at first, keeping your face smashed into his chest. The perfect role reversal. At least his face isn’t in your boobs this time.

“I…” Oh, it’s painful to hold in your laughter, words choking up as your mouth quivers in the force of fighting a shit-eating grin, “I-I’m sorry.” 

He’s quick to recognize your amusement, “Don’t you dare laugh.”

“I’m not going to!”

“Yes, you are!”

“No, I’m not!”

“Bullshit,” he shifts beneath you, sitting up and bringing you back up with him. His arms are loose around your waist as you slide off of him and sit onto the floor beside him, “Who’s the liar now?” 

Another twitch of your lips, another glare shot your way, “I’m…” He raises his eyebrow in a dare, “Okay, yeah, I was going to laugh.” 

“Fuckin’ knew it.” 

He’s still wrapped around you, even as you sit side by side. Awkward angles and all, he’s clinging to you just as he did on the couch. As if he always needs to be touching you now, as if that line being crossed has made him open his eyes to a million realizations and opportunities. 

When he’s not running away, of course. 

You want to bring it up, reiterate that you’d like to know what exactly Eddie was ‘dealing with’ as he so eloquently put it. But you can’t, especially not when his thumb finds your soft skin beneath his shirt and strokes it thoughtlessly. An instinct. You wonder if he’s even conscious of it, if he even knows the effect it’s having on you. 

Can he hear your heart when he’s this close? Can he hear it’s thunder that shakes your very foundations? 

“I was serious,” you finally speak up, realizing you two have spent far too long sitting on his living room floor and just looking into each other’s eyes. If past you knew you ended up in this position, she would have been disgusted, not fawning. “I don’t feel like another movie.”

“Even Scream?” 

“Even Scream.” 

It’s a hard sentiment to force out, because the idea of getting to sit through another few hours of watching Eddie glow with excitement, to watch his expressions as he tumbles over words of adornment for something he loves and is passionate about, is tempting. But you’re pretty sure if you end up on that couch again, his thumb stroking your ankle as he attempts to keep your attention tethered to a motion picture you could never follow along with sincerely, you’ll just fall asleep. 

Sleep deprivation is a bitch. 

“What do you want to do instead?” he asks you. He makes no move to stand; you don’t either. 

Your eye trails over the entertainment center to avoid his stare, when something catches your eye on the shelf above the movies, “You never did tell me who Deftones are.”

Eddie glances at the shelf of CDs that caught your eye, “You… want to listen to Deftones right now, rather than watch Scream?” 

“Yes. I want you to rock my world with Deftones right now rather than watch Scream.”

“What about sleep?”

“What about it?”

“Do you not want to rest? They never said we couldn’t. Actually, right now, they’re assuming we are.”

Amongst the quick back and forth, you have to bite your tongue. You want to scream, no. No, I don’t want to sleep, because if I sleep, I’m missing this. I may never get this again; I can’t risk this. 

You shrug, and stand as his arms fall from around you. You miss that weight – you always miss the fucking weight of him. Just like a child with their favorite stuffed animal or blanket, you’re growing too attached too quickly. It’s going to be your downfall. It’s going to be your goddamn reckoning once these hours have slipped away.

Even more reason to not sleep. Even more reason to cling to your time with him. 

“No rest for the wicked, am I right?” you force a careless grin and hold out a hand. You silently plead for him to take it, to give you this win just once. 

He stares at your hand, then at you, then back to your hand. “You’re a fucking idiot, you know that, right?” 

“Yeah,” you sigh out unintentionally when he hesitantly starts to reach out for your hand, grasping his palm to yours. A sudden burst of confidence overrides your system as you say, “But for these final seven hours, I’m your idiot.”

His grip turns steady and firm. A wicked grin crosses his face to match your own. 

“That you are, sweetheart. That you are.”

—

As it turns out, Eddie’s radio is broken. He tries to explain what happened, animatedly waving around his hands as he pulls all of the Deftones albums he owns and tries to give you the backstory to the night he broke the poor thing, but you just grab your phone and wave it in front of him instead. 

“I’m about to change your life and single handedly convince you to get a smartphone, Munson,” you tease as he takes a seat on the couch beside you. 

You’re sat criss-cross, bare knee bumping his thigh as you open your Spotify app. 

“I do know what Spotify is,” he grumbles, “I’m not completely lost on the times.”

“You still use physical copies of porn. Excuse me for assuming you don’t know what Spotify is.”

That shuts him up with ease. 

He’s completely silent, almost unnoticeable if it weren’t for the warmth radiating off of him and the bounce of his knee beside you. His eyes are watchful, though, as you search up this mysterious band and click on their music profile. 

Just as you open your mouth to ask which song you should play, thumb already hovering over their top song of Change (In The House of Flies), he sticks out his open palm. 

“What?” you question, looking up from where you’d been focused on the tiny screen. 

He wiggles his fingers. 

You know that he’s asking for you to hand over the phone, but you still recall the thrill from teasing him earlier. The rush you got from flustering him, from getting under his skin. 

Maybe you don’t have to shower him with abundant flirtatious nicknames to do that. Maybe, you can pull back an inch or so, lay off the compliments, figure out a new way to get under his skin in a way that makes you both smile until your cheeks burn, laugh until your stomachs ache. 

Instead of giving him the phone, you send your hand out to his and smack it. A punitive attempt at a high five with the angle given. 

“Wha-” he starts, staring at his palm you’d just smacked in gentle astonishment, “I wasn’t asking for a high five.” 

“No?” you bite down on your inner cheek, reeling back in your smile as he wiggles his fingers again, inching his hand closer to the phone. 

This time, instead of slapping at his hand, you smack your hand down into his and lace your fingers together. 

A giggle escapes you as he tries to shake your hand from his, and even as he tries to grimace, you catch the smile he’s fighting. 

“Sweetheart,” he chastises, “Give me the phone so I can show you the damn band.” 

“Ask nicely.” 

He gets his hand free from yours and tilts his head in your direction, raising an eyebrow. You only raise your own brow in return.

“Stop being a brat and give me the phone, please,” he repeats himself in a nearly condescending tone. 

You’re managing it. Aching cheeks, soon-to-be aching stomachs, as you crawl beneath his skin. “Make me.” 

Two simple words are all it takes to finally burrow into him. Literally. You nearly drop your phone when he’s quickly shifting positions, hand no longer be held out for the device as he suddenly dives it into your sides. Your body instinctively curls up protectively, and his forearm is caught against your torso as he begins to do exactly what you had enticed from him. He’s making you.

The asshole is tickling you.

“Eddie!” you screech, no care for how thin the walls of his apartment might be, “Ed-Eddie, stop!”

He’s cackling now between your gasping laughs. Your phone does take a tumble, dropping to both your feet as his second hand joins the torture. You can’t follow the path of his fingertips up and down your sides, only continuing to yelp out as your eyes tear up and you try to fight back. He props himself with a knee on the couch, other leg stretched to the floor as he cowers you into the cushion and your sides begin to ache. 

“Stop it! Stop it!” 

If you really wanted him to stop, you probably could manage to kick him off of you. One slip of a knee or thigh with intention towards his groin, and you’re sure it would send him flying. But you don’t. You let his body cover yours as your forehead bumps against his shoulder, you let him curl back into you and entrap you so willingly. You let that overwhelming scent of boy take you over. 

You let his waves drag you under. You don’t even have to take a breath before it happens; his essence is enough to keep your lungs from collapsing. 

“Stop?” he laughs, fingers momentarily slowing but not quite stopping, “Have I made you yet, baby?”

Your laughs die silently. All the air finally leaves your lungs, and you officially can only breathe in him. 

Baby. 

He senses the change in you immediately. The tickling stops, and he’s leaning back, shoulder leaving your forehead feverish. That’s what it was, it couldn’t possibly be the warmth that glows in your chest from that nickname. 

Baby. 

You get it. Oh, God, you get it. His quick escape when you’d called him handsome. You’d forgotten that this game of getting beneath his skin and bantering with light teasing goes both ways. You’d forgotten he has as much power over you now as you did him. 

Wide, brown eyes meet yours. He’s close enough to kiss. One impulsively lurch forward, and your lips would be back on his. His tongue in your mouth, his hands on your hips, his own hips settled between your thighs – all of this is so, so palpable. And all it would take is one movement. 

You hesitate. And he moves, lurching the wrong way. You almost call out, wait. Come back. 

Baby. 

An echo you can’t grasp onto quickly enough, and it leaves right along with the weight of him. 

He leans down and grabs your phone that had fallen, and sits back down beside you as he clears his throat, “Anyways. Um, where were we?” 

You kissing me. Me kissing you. Us, kissing, here on this couch. 

“Deftones?” you manage to whisper out questioningly instead. You swallow down that desire, a fiery weapon you should probably tamper down anyways. 

“Right. Deftones.” 

He opens your phone, putting in the code you quietly hand over to him without any hesitation. It was all wasted on that brief look, that moment where you nearly had him back in your grasps and he only slipped away again. 

You don’t even care as he deliberates which song to show you first. You think there’s a notification from Steve, a text message in the groupchat, but it’s lost on you. 

Baby. 

You like the way it sounds, you like the way it fits. You wonder how steep of a price you’d have to pay to hear him say it again. 

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[woso-fan13]

Whumptober 2023: 17 (ENGWNT)

No. 17: “You’re the lump in my throat and the knot in my chest.”

Collar | Touch Aversion | “Leave me alone.”

When you first joined the Lionesses, they thought you were just overwhelmingly shy. They noticed the way that you scooted away everytime someone sat near you, the way you would only take something from someone if there was no way your fingers could touch. They chalked it all up to you just being nervous- you were at your first senior camp with players who were a fair bit older than you. It would have been more surprising if you weren’t nervous. 

But, as the days went by, they watched you settle in. Your personality and energy shone through, constantly making the girls laugh. Your aversion to touch, though, stayed. 

The girls took it as a personal task to get you to not only tolerate, but enjoy, touch. They weren’t going to cross any boundaries, make you do things that made you uncomfortable, but they wanted to be able to show you their love. It was such a touchy team, it just made sense. 

—-

The first time they attacked, you were almost asleep. It was strategic, your defenses were down. You were laying on part of a bed, the rest of the team spread out throughout the room. Georgia was sitting next to you and noticed that your eyes were drooping shut as the night progressed. After the full day of training, you were exhausted. 

As you fight sleep, Georgia sets her hand down gently on your back. She doesn’t go any further than that, not wanting to risk anything, but she lays her palm flat. The room goes silent as they watch, waiting for your reaction. 

You relax under her touch, sleep taking over. 

—-

Alessia chances it next, noticing that you’re struggling before the first game. She can tell in the way that you hold yourself, the way that you move, that you’re a bundle of nerves for your debut. After watching your hands shake as you reach for a brush, she decides to intervene. 

“Y/N,” she calls, “c’mere for a second.”

You do as requested, moving to stand in front of where she sat on the bench. You look at her. 

“Why don’t you take a seat and let me do your hair? Just tell me how you want it.”

It’s a casual offer, one that she would extend to any member of the team. There’s a deeper meaning behind it, though you’re too occupied to see it. 

Wordlessly, you pass your brush to Alessia. Taking your silence in tune, Alessia gets to work on your hair. 

—-

Leah follows. It was at the next camp, and you were warming up to the team even more. Today, as team bonding, everyone was going shopping. 

It had started fun, a whirlwind of activity as everyone voiced their input as to what stores to visit. After a few hours and a dozen stores, you were exhausted. The girls noticed. 

“C’mon, pea,” Leah calls back to where you’re falling slightly behind, “move those little legs.”

You whine, not wanting to have to keep up. Why on earth did all of them have legs twice the length of yours. 

Leah chuckled at your reaction, passing the few bags she held over to Beth. Walking back to you, she gently takes the bags in your hands and passes them off. Turning her back to you, she squats down. 

“Alright, hop on.”

You stand there, confused. She turns around, standing up. 

“If you want a ride, kiddo, you better hop on. The Leah train is leaving the station.”

You laugh at the pure stupidity of what she said, but, as she resumes her previous position, you surprise everyone. You surprise yourself, too. You hop onto Leah’s back, wrapping your arms around her neck. Her arms wrap around your legs, standing up. She lets out a ‘choo-choo’ in her best train impersonation, quickening her pace to catch up with everyone. She has to refrain from bragging when you rest your head on her shoulder, eyes heavy. 

—-

The next time begins with an accident, a rooming mixup. Somehow, you were put into a room with Lucy and Kiera. If you had paid more attention, you might have noticed how the two smirked when room assignments were read. You might have noticed how Leah has her own room. But you didn’t, instead focusing on the fact that you’re going to have to share a room with one of the scariest players on the team and her girlfriend. 

The first few nights were fine, but on the fourth night, you wake up panting. A nightmare had plagued your dreams. 

As you regain control of your breathing, you hear a voice. 

“Alright?”

It’s Lucy, you must have woken her up. You stay silent, hoping she’ll fall back asleep. 

She doesn’t.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, I just had a bad dream. It’s silly, really.”

“It’s not silly. Come over here, I want to see you.”

You stand up, moving to stand in the gap between the two beds. Lucy sighs, reaching out one hand to pull you to sit on the side of her bed. 

“You okay now?”

You nod, still slightly shaken. 

“Alright,” it’s quiet for a moment, “get in.”

You think you must have misheard her, looking away from the bedside table you had been focused on. As your eyes reach her, you notice the corner of the blanket she has pulled back. 

You open your mouth, going to protest. 

“Are you going to be able to sleep?” Lucy cuts you off. 

You shrug, unsure. 

“That’s what I thought, get in. Come get some more sleep.”

Not waiting for an answer, Lucy pulls you to lay next to her. You squirm in the bed, trying to get comfortable, but you can’t. 

Lucy tugs you over top of her, settling you in between her and the sleeping woman on the other half of the bed. It’s warm here, the blankets soft. The pillow’s comfortable, and it’s safe. Before you realize what’s happening, you’re falling asleep. 

Lucy triumphantly takes a picture. 

—-

The first time you initiate contact is a special moment in so many ways. You just scored your first goal for the national team and you’re shocked. After realizing that- yes, the ball went in- you ran to your teammate. You jump on them, forming the base of a group hug. Everyone’s latched around you, cheering and congratulating you. 

[deadghosy]

hear me out, really little sibling reader and older sibling boy go fruit picking, be it strawberries or oranges or what have you. piggy back rides to reach the high fruits just really sweet sibling bonding -🦇

˗ˏˋ 🍓 ˎˊ˗

𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐰𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐁𝐢𝐠 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫!𝐋𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐳𝐨 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐤𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐫𝐞.

Warning: very fluffy small little imagines and how strawberry picking with Lorenzo is.

Details: age of reader is 5 years old while Lorenzo is 17 in this.

A/n: thank you 🦇 anon for this request! This was my favorite thing to write about 🫶🏾 enjoy

You always wanted to go strawberry picking with your brother. But with him being in Hogwarts and doing work, you thought he wouldn’t have any time for you.

Only for you to be wrong when he shows up during the holiday to spend time with his beloved little sibling.

When you asked what he wanted to do after unpacking his things. He remembered how you wrote to him about how you always wanted to go strawberry picking. He smiled picking you up. Lifting you up like the lion muggle movie called "lion king". “Let’s go strawberry picking love.” You were immediately struck with a wave of happiness and excitement. You started to squealed of delight. Lorenzo smiled at your excitement. You both told your parents about what you two were gonna do tomorrow as Lorenzo had secretly packed some hats to blind you both from the sun.

As the morning rolled, Enzo sprayed you up and down with sunscreen. He did himself afterwards whilst you grabbed a sun hat he bought for you. You two soon rolled out. Making it to the strawberry fields was an amazing sight as you gripped the hand they held yours. “Bub! Bub! Look at all those pretty berries!!” You said jumping up and down. Enzo smiled softly at you. “Yes love, look at how juicy and sweet they are.” Your mouth started to water, and Lorenzo knew as well. “Alright lovely, let’s get to picking!” Enzo pulled out two baskets. One large for him, and a small one for you. You immediately let go of his hand and started to hand pick every single strawberry you seen. Seconds turned into minutes into an hour. Lorenzo was by your side picking the fresh strawberries beside you. He loves that innocent glint in your eyes, he loved making you happy and making sure you had a good holiday with him. To him, this was making up time for how he didn’t spend much with you. He also hated how he couldn’t see you much. You two were stuck to the hip ever since your birth.

A squeal broke his train of thought when he sees you running at him with a big strawberry. “Enzy! Enzy! Look what I got!” Lorenzo kneeled down to your height to take the strawberry you held out to him. “Oh my! This is a big one!” “I know right!” You were proud to find a big one. “Guess this means we can make a strawberry cake, won’t we?” Lorenzo had a grin, a grin with a big thought as he held it up to your face. “Yes!” “Well let’s go!” Lorenzo picked you up and put you onto his back. You laughing out loud made Enzo smiled harder. He starts to make airplane noises and run through the strawberry field. You both didn’t care for the weirded out looks. What only mattered was you two getting some time together as family.

And you two were loving every moment.

𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐮𝐬!: 𝐈𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬

Imagine Lorenzo making you a small strawberry shortcake after an hour of picking strawberries. A well reward for picking the biggest strawberry.

You and Lorenzo making a mess of the kitchen, laughter thrown around as you splash Enzo with flour

You making a smile face out of a flour pile. Enzo moved by you to almost make his own smile face out of flour.

Imagine Lorenzo making sure you don’t get a big piece so you don’t choke on it. He’d never forgive himself if he didn’t watch what you ate.

You and Lorenzo watching some muggle cartoons he got from a store with the strawberries. He knows you liked comic books and visual things, so he got them for you.

You bragging tonight about how you picked the biggest berry before him.

You flicking a small strawberry into Lorenzo’s shirt, making him arch his back and try to get it out.

Lorenzo throwing a bigger strawberry at your face making you two go into a strawberry fight

Imagine you and Lorenzo playing with the strawberries like Barbie dolls to pass a little bit of time.

You eating the last few strawberries and being full as Lorenzo laughed at how you hiccuped from eating all them. He soon picked you up and laid you down as you usually sleep after eating.

[mepuppy]

Let It Ride - Supernatural rewrite

So, apparently I have nothing to do (ignore all my responsabilities) and I decided to write a Dean X Reader rewrite of supernatural to go with my rewatching of supernatural. 😊

I do not own the characters, nor the storylines. I'm simply adding a twist to the episodes. Please feel free to help me out with constructive criticism on the story or the writing. Sorry for the mistakes, not proofread and english is not my first language.

Hope y'all enjoy it.

Word Count: 7k

1x01 - Pilot

KINDE, MICHIGAN - April 10, 1988

John Winchester and Martin Creaser were finishing setting up to go into a vampire’s nest. Martin received a tip on the nest around the area and called John for backup, so the man left the two boys in the motel a city over and met with his friend there. 

After Martin spread the ashes of the scent-blocking mixture on himself, he handed John for him to do the same. 

“How many did you say?” He asked in a whisper to his friend, even though he knew whispering wouldn’t do shit if a vampire was close enough to hear them.

“If I’m not mistaken, 10 or 12.” He said, grabbing his knife, “Ready?” he asked as he closed the trunk of the car.

As they entered the warehouse where the nest was located, as quiet as they could be, they started to hear some voices. The vampires were all anxious, the newest ones had brought a family for dinner, including a child, which was already unusual, but the child had gotten away.

“Kevin will actually kill us when we don’t find the human child.” one of them said.

“So get off up and go find her. He and the others gave us 30 minutes” the other replied.

As the 2 hunters got to a corner, where they could see the glow of a fire already, they looked at each other, asking, silently, if the other was ready. John made a mental note to see if the girl had actually survived when they were done. They nodded to each other and started with the two that were already there arguing.

Twenty minutes later, 11 vampires dead, 7 nasty scratches on the hunters and one broken rib for Martin, they had cleared the nest. John was looking for the human child for less than 10 minutes, and after a promise to not hurt her and explaining what he did for a job and what had happened she came out of a pile of something very stinky, the reason they weren’t caughting her scent easily.

John, very impressed by the 7 year old ability of running and hiding from a nest of vampires, without even knowing such things existed before this experience, took her to the motel with him, to decide later, what to do with her.

17 Years Later

Y/N was at Bobby’s house, the hunter who was as much of a father figure to her as John was, since she spent many days at his house growing up with Dean and Sam, when she received the text from Dean saying he was going after Sam. She knew John hadn’t checked in with Dean in a few days now, and the son was getting more anxious by the hour. She asked him to let her know when he decided to go after the older man.

She was going with him to find his father. She owned John as much. After her parents were killed by a nest of vampires, by the age of seven, and she ‘escaped from something some trained hunters wouldn’t’, as John liked to put it, he cared for her, along with his boys. The three of them grew up together after that. She became a daughter for him, and he, a father to her. So she was very worried for him.

As she finished loading her saddlebags on her Harley, the one Dean had fixed for her one summer, Bobby came out of the house and handed her the last of her pocket knives. 

“Do I have to tell you to be careful out there?” the older hunter asked.

“Always am.” She smiled warmly and closed the bags. Circling the bike and hugging him. “I’ll check in as soon as I meet the boys.”

“Don’t know if Sam will join you. He has always been a hardhead, and you know it.” he kissed the top of her head before letting her go.

“It’s his dad, I’d like to think he will take this into consideration.” she answered, throwing one leg over her bike, but her voice lacked conviction.

“Say hi to them for me.” Bobby said as she started the engine on and began driving.

“I will! Bye”

Meanwhile Dean was trying to convince Sam to go find their dad, on the outside of his apartment.

“Come on. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't that bad.” Dean says as he started going downstairs again while Sam follows him.

“Yeah? When I told Dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45.” Dean stops at the door.

“Well, what was he supposed to do?

“I was nine years old! He was supposed to say, don't be afraid of the dark.” Sam says exasperated, not believing he is having this conversation.

“Don't be afraid of the dark? Are you kidding me? Of course you should be afraid of the dark. You know what's out there.” Dean answers scolding his little brother.

“Yeah, I know, but still. The way we grew up, after Mom was killed, and Dad's obsession to find the thing that killed her.” the youngest says and Dean glances outside. “But we still haven't found the damn thing. So we kill everything we can find.”

“We save a lot of people doing it, too.” he looks at his little brother.

“You think Mom would have wanted this for us?” Dean rolls his eyes and slams the door open heading outside. There's a short flight of stairs from the door to the parking lot. Dean and Sam start climbing it. “The weapon training, and melting the silver into bullets? Man, Dean, we were raised like warriors.”

“So what are you gonna do? You're just gonna live some normal, apple pie life? Is that it?” Dean says as they cross the parking lot and head to Baby, Dean’s Impala.

“No. Not normal. Safe.”

“And that's why you ran away.” Dean looks away after finishing.

“I was just going to college. It was Dad who said if I was gonna go I should stay gone. And that's what I'm doing.” 

“Yeah, well, Dad's in real trouble right now. If he's not dead already. I can feel it.” after a pause, Dean says “I can't do this alone.”

“Yes you can.” Sam says as Dean looks down.

“Yeah, well, I don't want to.” Sam sighs and looks down, thinking. He meets his brother’s eyes again.

“What was he hunting?” Dean opens the trunk of the Impala, feeling a bit more hopeful, then the spare-tire compartment. 

“All right, let's see, where the hell did I put that thing?” Dean says as he props the compartment open with a shotgun and digs through the clutter.

“So when Dad left, why didn't you go with him?”

“I was working my own gig. This, uh, voodoo thing, down in New Orleans.” Sam looks incredulous to his brother.

“Dad let you go on a hunting trip by yourself?” Dean looks over at Sam.

“I'm twenty-six, dude.” it’s his time to look incredulous to his brother as he pulls some papers out of a folder.”All right, here we go. So Dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy.” he hands one of the papers to Sam. “They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA.”

The paper is a printout of an article from the Jericho Herald, headlined ‘Centennial Highway Disappearance’ and dated Sept. 19th 2005; it has a man's picture, captioned ‘Andrew Carey MISSING’. Sam reads it and glances up.

“So maybe he was kidnapped.”

“Yeah. Well, here's another one in April.” Dean tosses down another Jericho Herald article. “Another one in December 'oh-four,” another article “'Oh-three,” another one “'Ninety-eight,” another “'Ninety-two,” one more “ten of them over the past twenty years.” he throws a pile of the lats articles. Dean takes the article back from Sam and picks up the rest of the stack, putting them back in the folder. “All men, all the same five-mile stretch of road.”

Dean pulls a bag out of another part of the arsenal.”It started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. I hadn't heard from him since, which is bad enough.” Dean grabs a handheld tape recorder. “Then I get this voicemail yesterday.”

He presses play. The recording is staticky and the signal was clearly breaking up.

“Dean...something big is starting to happen...I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, Dean. We're all in danger.” John's voice comes and goes and then Dean presses stop.

“You know there's EVP on that?” Sam asked.

“Not bad, Sammy. Kinda like riding a bike, isn't it?” Dean grins at his brother and Sam shakes his head. “All right. I slowed the message down, I ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what I got.” He presses play again.

“I can never go home…” a woman’s voice comes up this time and Dean presses stop.

“Never go home.” Sam repeats more to himself than his brother.

Dean drops the recorder, puts down the shotgun, stands straight, and shuts the trunk, then leans on it. “You know, in almost two years I've never bothered you, never asked you for a thing.” he tilts his head “Besides, even Y/n/n is coming to help. This is serious, I can feel it.”

Sam looks away and sighs, then looks back. “All right. I'll go. I'll help you find him.” Dean nods. “But I have to get back first thing Monday. Just wait here.” Sam turns to go back to the apartment. He turns back when Dean speaks.

“What's first thing Monday?”

“I have this...I have an interview.” he answers.

“What, a job interview? Skip it.” the older brother says.

“It's a law school interview, and it's my whole future on a plate.” Sam tells him.

“Law school?” Dean smirks.

“So we got a deal or not?” Dean says nothing.

Jericho, California

After driving the whole night and stopping to grab some breakfast, Y/N passes by a bridge full of police officers and spots Baby by the road. She gets off the bike and leaves her helmet on the seat.

“You did have another one just like this, correct?” Dean’s voice is the first one she hears.

“Yeah, that's right. About a mile up the road. There've been others before that.” the officer closer to them says.

“So, this victim, you knew him?” Sam asks and the officer nods.

.

“Town like this, everybody knows everybody.” he says as Dean circles the car, looking around.

“Any connection between the victims, besides that they're all men?” Dean asks.

“No. Not so far as we can tell.”

“So what's the theory?” She asks when she reaches the three man.

“And you are?” the deputy turns around and asks when they all spot her.

“Oh, she’s with us.” Sam covers for her going over to Dean.

“I see. Honestly, we don't know. Serial murder? Kidnapping ring?”

“Well, that is exactly the kind of crack police work I'd expect out of you guys.” Dean says, receiving a stomp on foot from Sam.

“Thank you for your time.” Y/N says and starts walking away, being followed by Sam and Dean, shaking her head.

“Gentlemen.” Sam dips his head passing by the police officers. The deputy Jaffe watches them go. Dean smacks Sam on the head.

“Ow! What was that for?” Sam gets startled and cradles his head.

“Why'd you have to step on my foot?” The older asks.

“Why do you have to talk to the police like that?” y/n asks over her shoulder once they are out of earshot from all the officers.

“Come on. They don't really know what's going on. We're all alone on this. I mean, if we're going to find Dad we've got to get to the bottom of this thing ourselves.” Dean says before Sam clears his throat and looks over at y/n.

“Hey, y/n/n. I missed you” he smiles.

“Well, you wouldn’t have had to if you kept in touch.” She turns crossing her arms “Or at least if you answered your messages.” she scolds him.

“I know, I’m sorry. But I thought you’d be mad at me for leaving.” he looks down. 

But before y/n could answer she looks to her side and sees the Sheriff FBI agents.

“Can I help you kids?” the sheriff asks.

“No, sir, we were just leaving.” Dean answers and as the FBI agents walk past him, he nods at each of them. “Agent Mulder. Agent Scully.”

The three of them head back to Baby and the Harley and head out.

“Hey Chip, how’ve you been?” Dean asks you and pulls you into a hug when you get close enough

“I missed you too, Cherry Pie” you hug him back, retorting the stupid nicknames you have called each other since childhood. “You too.” she says to Sam after her and Dean let go, opening her arms to him.

“It’s been a while.” he says, hugging her.

“Ugh, I hate how tall you’ve gotten…” she says rolling her eyes when they let go. The boys chuckle “So, what are you guys thinkins?”

“The deputy’s daughter was dating the victim, so we thought about starting to asking her some questions” Dean says “And I'll bet you that's her.” he says pointing to the girl hanging posters.

“Yeah.” Sam agrees when they start walking up to the young girl.

“You must be Amy.” Dean says as they reach her.

“Yeah.” She answers

“Yeah, Troy told us about you. We're his uncles. Ans aunt. I'm Dean, this is Sammy and that’s y/n.” he points to the two of you as he speaks and the two smile at her.

“He never mentioned you to me.” Amy starts to walk away. The three of them start walking with her.

“Well, that's Troy, I guess. We're not around much, we're up in Modesto.” Dean chuckles. ‘Nice save’ y/n thinks.

“So, we're looking for him too, and we're kinda asking around.” As Sam tells her another young woman comes up to Amy and puts a hand on her arm.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asks Amy and the girl nods.

“You mind if we ask you a couple questions?” y/n asks the girl who looks at her and nods again.

They all head to a dinner and seat in a booth, Amy and her friend seat on one side, and Dean, y/n and Sam seat opposite to them.

“I was on the phone with Troy. He was driving home. He said he would call me right back, and...he never did.” Amy is telling them after y/n asked about the last time she spoke to him.

“He didn't say anything strange, or out of the ordinary?” Dean asks and Amy shakes her head before saying.

“No. Nothing I can remember.”

“I like your necklace.” Sam says pointing to her neck.

Amy holds the pendant she's wearing, a pentagram in a circle, and looks down at it. “Troy gave it to me. Mostly to scare my parents—” the girl laughs “—with all that devil stuff.”

Sam laughs a little and looks down, then up. Dean looks over while y/n assess the girls.

“Actually, it means just the opposite. A pentagram is protection against evil. Really powerful. I mean, if you believe in that kind of thing.” Sam says.

“Okay. Thank you, Unsolved Mysteries.” Deansays taking his arm off the back of y/n seat and leans forward. “Here's the deal, ladies. The way Troy disappeared, something's not right. So if you've heard anything…”

The two girls look at each other. They were hiding something and the trio could see it.

“What is it?” Dean asks frowning.

“Well, it's just... I mean, with all these guys going missing, people talk.” Amy’s friend speaks for the first time since they got into the dinner.

“What do they talk about?” Dean and Sam speak in unison.

“It's kind of this local legend. This one girl? She got murdered out on Centennial, like decades ago.” Dean and y/n look at each other while Sam looks at the girl attentively, nodding. ”Well, supposedly she's still out there. She hitchhikes, and whoever picks her up? Well, they disappear forever.”

The trio thanked the girls and leave the dinner, deciding to go to the library.

A web browser is open to the archive search page for the Jericho Herald. The words "Female Murder Hitchhiking" are typed into the search box. Dean clicks GO; the screen tells him there are "(0) Result". Dean replaces "Hitchhiking" with "Centennial Highway" with the same response. Samis sitting next to him, watching. 

“Let me try.” Sam says and tries to type but Dean smacks his hand.

“I got it.” he says and y/n rolls her eyes, standing behind their chairs. Sam shoves Dean's chair out of the way and takes over. “Dude!” hitting Sam in the shoulder. “You're such a control freak.”

“So angry spirits are born out of violent death, right?” Sam asks looking at the screen.

“Yeah.” y/n answers looking down at the boy.

“Well, maybe it's not murder.” Sam replaces "Murder" with "Suicide" and finds an article entitled "Suicide on Centennial". Dean glances at Sam and y/n glances at Dean grinning. Sam opens the article, dated April 25, 1981.

“This was 1981. Constance Welch, twenty-four years old, jumps off Sylvania Bridge, drowns in the river.” Sam says while skimming through the article and y/n leans over his shoulder to read it as well.

“Does it say why she did it?” Dean asks trying to see it too.

“Yeah.” Sam answers.

“What?” he asks looking at his brother.

“An hour before they found her, she calls 911. Apparently her two little kids are in the bathtub. She leaves them alone for a minute, and when she comes back, they aren't breathing. Both die.” y/n reads through the article ans Dean raises his eyebrows.

Dean murmurs. "'Our babies were gone, and Constance just couldn't bear it,' said husband Joseph Welch." Sam read a passage while Dean pointed at a picture of the bridge they were earlier talking with the police officers on the corner.

“The bridge look familiar to you?” he looks over at the two.

They all headed to the bridge and are walking along it, they stop to lean on the railing and look down at the river. The smell of the river gets to them and they lean back.

“So this is where Constance took the swan dive.” Dean says raising his eyebrows.

“So you think Dad would have been here?” Sam looks over at Dean and y/n.

“Well, he's chasing the same story and we're chasing him.” y/n answers and continue walkin, with the boys following her.

“Okay, so now what?” he aks.

“Now we keep digging until we find him. Might take a while.” Dean says.

Sam stops. “Dean, I told you, I've gotta get back by Monday—”

Dean turns around.”Monday. Right. The interview.” he finishes in unison with the youngest. Y/n stops and look at both of them.

“Yeah.” Sam nods.

“Yeah, I forgot. You're really serious about this, aren't you? You think you're just going to become some lawyer? Marry your girl?” Dean asks sarcastically.

“Maybe. Why not?” he asks.

“Does Jessica know the truth about you? I mean, does she know about the things you've done?” y/n knows Sam’s girlfriend is called Jessica and that he has an interview on monday because Dean told her on the phone when Sam agreed to come.

Sam steps closer and so does y/n, knowing they can start fighting at any time. “No, and she's not ever going to know.” Sam says frowning.

“Well, that's healthy.” Dean retorts “You can pretend all you want, Sammy. But sooner or later you're going to have to face up to who you really are.”

“And who's that?” Sam asks growing annoyed.

“You're one of us.” Dean poits at him and y/n.

Sam steps closer to Dean again “No. I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life.”

“You have a responsibility to—” Dean starts, but Sam interrupts.

“To Dad? And his crusade? If it weren't for pictures I wouldn't even know what Mom looks like.” he says throwing his arms up. “And what difference would it make? Even if we do find the thing that killed her, Mom's gone.” Ouch, even y/n felt that blow. “And she isn't coming back.” Dean sidesteps y/n who was between them to try and stop their fight and grabs Sam by the collar and shoves him up against the railing of the bridge looking in his eyes. 

“Don't talk about her like that.” Dean releases Sam and walks away. Y/n turns to go after him and sees Constance standing at the edge of the bridge at the same time he does.

“Guys.” he says. They go to stand him. Constance looks over at them, then steps forward off the edge.They all run to the railing and look over.

“Where'd she go?” y/n asks.

“I don't know.” Sam says. Behind them, the Impala's engine starts and its headlights come on. Dean and Sam turn to look.

“What the—” Dean starts and cuts himself off.

“Who's driving your car?” y/n asks looking over at Dean who pulls the keys out of his pocket and jingles them. Sam glances at them. The car jerks into motion, heading straight for them. They turn and start to run.

The car is moving faster than they are; when it gets too close, they dive over the railing. The car comes to a halt.

Sam has caught himself on the edge of the bridge and is hanging on. He pulls himself up onto the bridge and looks around.

“Dean? Y/n?” Sam yells after halting himself up the bridge. Below, a filthy and annoyed Dean crawls out of the water, panting, falling beside y/n, who’s already trying to catch her breath on the mud. “Hey! Are you all right?”

Dean holds up one hand in an A-OK sign. “We’re super.” he answers as y/n hold a thumbs up. Sam laughs, relieved, and scoots away from the edge.

Dean shuts the hood of his car and leans on it.

“Your car all right?” y/n asks

“Yeah, whatever she did to it, seems all right now.” he says and looks over to the bridge “That Constance chick, what a bitch!” He yells into the night.

“Well, she doesn't want us digging around, that's for sure.” Y/n sighs.

“So where's the job go from here, geniuses?” Sam ask looking at both of them settling on the hood next to y/n. Dean throws up his arms in frustration, then flicks mud off his hands facing the other two. Sam sniffs, then looks at y/n. “You two smell like a toilet.”

They look down.

They got to a motel and Dean hands the front desk A VersaBank MasterCard in the name of Hector Aframian. “One room, please.” he says smiling, still filthy, with Sam and y/n right behind him. The clerk picks up the card and looks at it.

“You guys having a reunion or something?” he asks looking up. Y/n frowns and Sam asks.

“What do you mean?”

“I had another guy, Burt Aframian. He came and bought out a room for the whole month.” Dean looks back at Sam.

Sam is trying to pick the lock in the motel room that belonged to John while Dean and y/n keep watch. The motel door swings open, but neither notice. Sam hides the picks and stands up. Sam reaches out of the room to grab Dean’s shoulder and y/n’s wrist yank them inside. Sam closes the door behind them. The trio look around—every vertical surface has papers pinned to it: maps, newspaper clippings, pictures, notes. There are books on the desk and assorted junk on the floor and bed, including something with a hazardous-materials symbol.

“Whoa.” y/n says walking to the closest wall.

Dean turns on a light by the bed and picks up a half-eaten hamburger sitting there sniffing  it and recoils. Sam steps over a line of salt on the floor and crunches to check it out. 

“I don't think he's been here for a couple days at least.” Dean says dropping the burger back in the bedside table and heading to look over the wall y/n is looking.

Sam fingers the salt on the floor and looks up. “Salt, cats-eye shells...he was worried. Trying to keep something from coming in.” He gets up and walks to the wall opposite to his brother and sister-like. Dean looks at the papers covering one wall. 

“Centennial Highway victims.” y/n says to Dean and head to the wall Sam is looking. Dean nods. The victims seen on the wall include Mark somebody, William Durrell, Scott Nifong who disappeared in 1987 at age 25, and somebody Parks. Mark, Durrell, and Nifong are all white males, judging by the photos.

“I don't get it. I mean, different men, different jobs—” Dean says trying to make sense of it “—ages, ethnicities. There's always a connection, right? What do these guys have in common?” While Dean talks, Sam looks at the papers taped to the other wall. He finds something about the Bell Witch, two people being burned alive, a skeletal person blowing a horn at several scared people with the note "MORTIS DANSE", a column about "Devils + Demons", another about "Sirens, Witches, the possessed", a wooden pentacle, and a note that says "Woman in White" above a printout of the Jericho Herald article on Constance’s suicide.

Y/n turns on another lamp. “Dad figured it out.” Sam says looking at the girl that is at his side. Dean turns to look.

“He found the same article we did. Constance Welch. She's a woman in white.” y/n says looking back at him. Dean looks at the photos of Constance's victims.

“You sly dogs.” He turns back to the other two. “All right, so if we're dealing with a woman in white, Dad would have found the corpse and destroyed it.”

“She might have another weakness.” Sam replies looking back at the wall.

“Well, Dad would want to make sure.” Dean crosses to them. “He'd dig her up. Does it say where she's buried?”

“No, not that I can tell. If I were John, though, I'd go ask her husband.” y/n says tapping the picture of Joseph Welch. “If he's still alive.” Sam goes to look at something else.

“All right. Why don't you, uh, see if you can find an address, while we go and get cleaned up.” Dean starts to walk away and y/n follows, grabbing her bag from the floor. Sam turns.

“Hey, Dean?” Dean stops and turns back while y/n passes him. “What I said earlier, about Mom and Dad, I'm sorry.”

Dean holds up a hand. “No chick-flick moments.” Sam laughs and nods.

“All right. Jerk.” he looks down.

“Bitch.” dean retorts smiling.

“I call dibs on the shower!” y/n yells and run to the bathroom, closing the door before Dean can catch up.

“Now she’s the jerk.” He says and you and Sam laugh.

You take a quick shower and leave the bathroom so Dean can get cleaned too. You grab your phone and sit on the chair texting Bobby, saying you’re okay, with the boys and already knees deep in the case John was working on. Sam notices something, and crosses over for a closer look. A rosary hangs in front of a large mirror, and stuck into the mirror frame is a photo of John sitting on the hood of the Impala, next to a young Dean in a baseball cap, a young y/n on his back and with an even younger Sam, on John’s lap. Sam takes the photo off the mirror and holds it, smiling sadly.

A while later, Sam paces, holding his phone, and sits down on the bed, he’s listening to a voicemail Jess left for him. Dean, clean again, comes out of the bathroom and grabs his jacket. He shrugs it on one shoulder as he crosses the room.

“Hey, guys. I'm starving, I'm gonna grab a little something to eat in that diner down the street. You want anything?” he asks looking back at the two.

“No.” sam says listening to the message.

“Aframian's buying.” Dean smiles and waves the credit card to them both.

“I accept some fries, please.” y/n says smiling widely looking up from the article about Constance she was rereading. Sam shakes his head again.

A couple of minutes pass by and y/n’s phone rings, when she picks up is Dean.

“Man, five-oh, take off.” y/n stands up.

“What about you?” she asks worried.

“Uh, they kinda spotted me. Go find Dad.” Dean hangs up the phone. She looks through the corner of the window.

“They got Dean, we have to leave” she says to Sam that goes to the window to.

“What?” Sam asks. They see the deputy approaching and dart away from the window.

Sam and y/n, knock on the door at Joseph Welch house. An old man opens it: Joseph Welch.

“Hi. Are you Joseph Welch?” Sam asks when the man looks them over.

“Yeah.” he answers.

The three of them are walking down the junk-filled driveway, Joseph is holding the photo Sam found on John's motel room mirror. “Yeah, he was older, but that's him.” the older man hands the photo back to Sam “He came by three or four days ago. Said he was a reporter.”

“That's right. We're working on a story together.” y/n says smiling warmly and Joseph looks her up and down again.

“Well, I don't know what the hell kinda story you're working on. The questions he asked me?” the man frowns.

“About your wife Constance?” the girl asks.

“He asked me where she was buried.” He says never taking his eyes from her.

“And where is that again?” Sam jumps in the conversation.

“What, I gotta go through this twice?” He looks over at Sam.

“It's fact-checking. If you don't mind.” he explains trying to keep their cover.

“In a plot. Behind my old place over on Breckenridge.” Joseph looks down.

“And why did you move?” y/n asks.

“I'm not gonna live in the house where my children died.” He answers not looking up. Sam stops walking, y/n and Joseph do too.

“Mr. Welch, did you ever marry again?” Sam asks.

“No way.” He darts up to Sam, “Constance, she was the love of my life. Prettiest woman I ever known.”

“So you had a happy marriage?” y/n continues. But Joseph doesn’t answer right away.

“Definitely.” He says after a while.

“Well, that should do it. Thanks for your time.” Sam turns toward the Impala. But y/n hesitates. Joseph walks away, she waits a moment, then speaks again to Joseph.

“Mr. Welch, did you ever hear of a woman in white?

Joseph turns around. “A what?”

“A woman in white. Or sometimes weeping woman?” she explains further and Sam goes back to her side.

Joseph just stares at them. “It's a ghost story. Well, it's more of a phenomenon, really.” Sam starts back “Um, they're spirits. They've been sighted for hundreds of years, dozens of places, in Hawaii, Mexico, lately in Arizona, Indiana” 

“All these are different women.You understand. But all share the same story.” y/n continues.

“Kids, I don't care much for nonsense.” Joseph walks away. Sam looks back at y/n and follows the old man.

“See, when they were alive, their husbands were unfaithful to them.” Joseph stops.

“And these women, basically suffering from temporary insanity, murdered their children.” y/n follows Sam and Joseph turns around. “Then once they realized what they had done, they took their own lives. So now their spirits are cursed, walking back roads, waterways. And if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. And that man is never seen again.”

“You think...you think that has something to do with...Constance? You smartasses!” Joseph looks incredulously between them.

“You tell us.” Sam tells him.

“I mean, maybe...maybe I made some mistakes. But no matter what I did, Constance, she never would have killed her own children. Now, you get the hell out of here! And you don't come back!” The man says, telling everything the duo needed to hear. Joseph's face shakes, whether from anger or grief it's impossible to tell. After a long moment, he turns away. Sam sighs.

When Dean leaves the station, after escaping because the cops had to investigate some gunshots from a 911 call, he spots y/n leaning against her bike at the corner of the street. He heads towards her.

“Fake 911 phone call? Chip, I don't know, that's pretty illegal.” He says smirking when he gets close enough.

“You're welcome.” She grins back and uncrosses her arms.

“Listen, we gotta talk.” Dean’s expression changes.

“Tell me about it. So the husband was unfaithful. We are dealing with a woman in white. And she's buried behind her old house, so Sam is already heading there and it should have been John’s next stop.

“Chip, would you shut up for a second?” Dean tries to talk but the girl doesn’t stop.

“We just can't figure out why John hasn't destroyed the corpse yet.” she keeps going, looking over Dean’s shoulder.

“Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's gone. Dad left Jericho.”

“What? How do you know?” she asks, confused. Dean simply holds John’s journal up in his hands.

“ What? He doesn't go anywhere without that thing.” the girl looks at the old journal.

“Yeah, well, he did this time.” The man says and flips through, stopping at one page that says ‘DEAN 35-111’ “And he left a message, the same old ex-Marine crap, when he wants to let us know where he's going.”

“Coordinates. Where to?” she asks, reaching and grabbing the journal.

“I'm not sure yet.” he says handing her it.

“I don't understand. I mean, what could be so important that John would just skip out in the middle of a job?” She looks up to the man in front of her “Dean, what the hell is going on?”

He shrugs and grabs her cellphone, that was sitting in the bike’s display, calling Sam.

“Hey y/n. I’m almost at the house, is Dean out yet?” Sam says after picking up, but then gasps and a tire squeal is heard before the line going dead.

“Sammy? Sam!” Dean asks before looking at y/n wide eyed.

“Let’s go!” She says hopping on the bike.

The car pulls up in front of Constance’s house and stops. The engine shuts off and so do the lights.

“Don't do this.” Sam says looking through the rearview mirror to Constance, who’s on the backseat. She flickers. 

“I can never go home.” Her voice is sad.

“You're scared to go home.” Sam realizes, looking back but Constance isn't there. He glances around and back and sees her in the shotgun seat. She climbs into his lap, shoving him back against the seat hard enough to recline the seat. Sam struggles.

“Hold me. I'm so cold.” She says with her hands roaming through his torso.

“You can't kill me. I'm not unfaithful. I've never been!” Sam says determined.

“You will be. Just hold me.” Constance kisses Sam as he continues to struggle, reaching for the keys. She pulls back and disappears, a flash of something horrible behind her face as she vanishes. Sam looks around for a moment, then yells in pain feeling his chest on fire. There are five new holes burned through the fabric of his shirt, matching to Constance's fingers: she flickers in front of him, her hand reaching into his chest. A gunshot goes off, shattering the window and startling the ghost. Dean approaches, still firing at her while y/n went to the backseat, trying to open the door. Constance glares at Dean and vanishes, then reappears, and he keeps firing until she disappears again. Sam manages to sit up and start the car.

“I'm taking you home.” Sam says and drives forward. Dean and y/n stare after the car as it smashes through the side of the house. They hurry through the wreckage to the passenger side of the car.

“Sam! Sam! You okay?” Dean yells after his brother.

“I think…” Sam starts from inside the car.

“Can you move?” y/n asks opening the passenger side door.

“Yeah. Help me?” he answers, reaching his hand Dean leans through to give Sam a hand.

Constance picks up a large framed photograph: the woman is Constance and the children are presumably hers. Dean helps Sam out of the car.

“There you go.” he says onde his little brother is on his foot. Y/n closes the car door. They look around and see Constance; she looks up. She glares at them and throws the picture down. A bureau scoots towards them, pinning them against the car. The lights flicker; Constance looks around, scared. Water begins to pour down the staircase. She goes over. At the top are the children from the photograph. They hold hands and speak in chorus.

“You've come home to us, Mommy.” two ethereal voices sound in unison. Constance looks at them, distraught. Suddenly they are behind her; they embrace her tightly and she screams, her image flickering. In a surge of energy, still screaming, Constance and the two children disappear. Sam and Dean shove the bureau over and the trio go look at the spot where ghosts vanished.

“So this is where she drowned her kids.” Dean says looking up. Sam nods.

“That's why she could never go home. She was too scared to face them.” He looks at the photograph

“You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy.” Y/n smiles at him and Dean slaps Sam on the chest where he's been injured and walks away. Sam laughs through the pain.

“Yeah, I wish I could say the same for Dean. What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?” He ask laughing incredulously.

“Hey. Saved your ass.” Dean says, leaning over to look at his car “I'll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car?” he twists around to look at Sam “I'll kill you.” Sam and y/n laugh.

The Impala tears down the road; the right headlight is out; with the Harley following.

Sam has the journal open to "DEAN 35-111" and a map open on his lap and is finding coordinates with a ruler, a flashlight tucked between chin and shoulder. His phone on speaker to y/n. She has the phone inside her helmet.

“Okay, here's where Dad went.” Sam says to both dean and the phone “It's called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado.”

“Sounds charming. How far?” y/n asks through the call.

“About six hundred miles.” he answers her.

“Hey, if we shag ass we could make it by morning.” Dean says, then looking at the phone “Can you make it, Chip?”

“Yeah.” she says at the same time Sam starts.

“Dean, I, um…” he hesitates

“You're not going.” y/n says.

“The interview's in like, ten hours. I gotta be there.” he looks at the phone then at the bike that lined to his window. Dean nods, disappointed, and returns his attention to the road.

“Yeah. Yeah, whatever.” Dean says glancing at Sam.

“We'll take you home.” Sam turns the flashlight off.

“You can hang up now. We’ll talk at Stanford.” Sam does as he’s told and they drive on.

They pull up in front of the apartment, Dean still frowning. Sam gets out and y/n takes her helmet off. “Call me if you find him?” Sam asks Dean who nods.”And maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?” he tells y/n, that smiles at him, but before she can say anything Dean says:

“Yeah, all right.” Sam pats the car door twice, side hugs y/n and turns away. Dean gets out of the car and heads to y/n side.

“Sam?” Sam turns back. “You know, we made a hell of a team back there. The three of us”

“Yeah.” he smiles. Dean turns to y/n and they start talking between them. Deciding their plan. Sam watches them talk for a couple of seconds and sighs, turning and heading inside.

After Sam gets inside the building y/n comments. “You know, he might be making the right choice. If he can have a normal life, who are we to deprive him of that?” she says getting off the bike to look into Dean’s eyes.

“I know. And I really hope he can do it, but I don’t think it is possible.” he sighs and rests his forehead on her chest “Besides, I’m really gonna miss him.”

“Yeah, so am I.” She puts her hands on the back of Dean’s head. She knows the moment is not about that, but she can’t help feeling some butterflies on her stomach by his action. Doesn’t matter how many times they share those moments she always feels them, even though she knows he only sees her as an annoying little girl who was raised like his sister. Sighting, she looks to Sam’s building to try and clear her head. When she sees the explosion of flames on one of the windows.

They both gasp and run inside. Getting to the floor of the flames, which happens to also be Sam’s apartment. Dean kicks the front door open.

“Sam!” Dean yells entering the apartment. They follow the flames and find Sam on the bed with one arm shielding his face.

“Jess!” He says looking at the ceiling, where the girl is on flames.

“Sam! Sam!” They both scream at him, grabbing him by the arm.

“No! No!” Sam keeps shouting as the two shove him out the door, he struggles all the way down. “Jess! Jess! No!” Flames engulf the apartment.

A fire truck is parked outside the building, firemen and police keeping back gawkers. Y/n looks on, then turns and walks back to Dean’s car. Sam is standing behind the open trunk, by Dean’s side loading a shotgun. Dean looks at the trunk, then at Sam, whose face pure rage. Sam looks up, then sighs, nods, and tosses the shotgun into the trunk.

“We got work to do.” He shuts the trunk and heads to the shotgun, leaving the other two staring at each other, not knowing how to comfort the youngest.

Author's Note: I know I'm not a good writer, but since most things are already written and I'm just addapting I think I won't hate as much as I normally do. Anyways sorry again for any mistakes.

[writingsfromhome]

If you Love Something II

A/N: okayy I’m finally going to stop overthinking and just post this one. Please note the tw in part 1. Thank you all SO much for the comments and love on the original…hope this one meets ur expectations. It’s definitely more focused on the lost daughter relationship rather than you and Harry so p dense but...here it is 🫣

——————————————

Age 36:

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Harry informs me over the phone. “I went with chicken noodle soup.”

“Mmm,” I close my eyes. “I could use something hot and hearty right now. I’m freezing my ass off.”

“I didn’t need to make dinner for that.”

“So come here, warm me up,” I crane my neck to the left again. “Stupid delays.”

“I can come get you."

I’d mapped it out before calling Harry, it would take him too long to get here. “That’s alright. Doesn’t make a difference.”

The screen on the platform showed 6 minutes…for the past 15 minutes.

“I’ve either been living in the longest minute of my fucking life,” I mutter. “Or this line is taking the piss out of all of us.”

Two dozen of us had gotten off the last train when it announced it was out of service. Now the number on the platform had tripled waiting for the next one.

“Patience,” Harry says. “Is a virtue.”

“Easy for you to say in the warm flat with the chicken noodle soup.”

“It’ll be yours soon.”

Soon. I sigh and try to release the anxious energy with it. “Thank you for taking care of dinner.”

“Of course.” He replies. Like it was that simple. But being with Harry was like that nowadays.

Despite all the catching up we had to do with the 17 years we had lived separate lives, emotionally it’s like we picked up where we last left off.

I’d be lying if I said it was smooth sailing the whole year we’d been together. There had been a hard few first months where both of us felt unnerved by the peacefulness of the relationship. We weren’t used to such an easy quiet.

I’d tried to self-sabotage first by going awol and working longer hours than I needed to. I think I was scared Harry would wake up one day and realize too much time had passed and he didn’t like who I’d become so I minimized our time together. Until Harry called me out for it.

But then he went off the rails, and for a few weeks I’d been an even bigger ball of anxiety. Ultimately I had to give him the hard truth even though the last thing I ever wanted was to convince someone to stay with an ultimatum. But I’d told him, he had to at least attempt sobriety if he wanted us to work.

There were a few sleepless nights, I didn’t know if we were going to make it. But one morning he asked me to go to an aa meeting with him.

Going together, being in the same boat as a group of people gathered in the back room of a dusty church finally gelled us together. For good. He’d been sober since.

We moved in together 7 months ago. Even though it doubled my commute time—tripled with delays, I had never been more sure that I was exactly where I needed to be.

We held space for each other. Even the heavier bits; we knew what they were. What it was like to hold them on our own. We always joked about how our loads had halved despite taking on half of the other’s. Because just like our venn diagram of love, our venn diagram of hurting was the same.

“Oh god, I better not be hallucinating.” I nearly jump up and down when the twin headlights of the next train peek in the distance. The platform board still says 6 minutes.

“You’re cutting up what?”

“Nothing! Train’s here!”

“I’ll pick you up from the station.” Harry says before I hang up.

I spend the remaining 15 minute ride going over the lecture I’d given tonight.

3 years ago when I applied to be a lecturer I didn’t actually think I’d get it. But in the 10 years of my career I had collected, I had done exceptionally well. It was ironic with all the bullshit life threw at me, I had somehow channeled it into a determined work ethic. After failing many math tests in high school I had found a love for it in uni—it made me work hard, get out of my head with its constant thoughts. Harry now took to calling me a masochist for teaching something mathematical.

In reality it wasn’t that mathematical. I taught Management Econ which was a snorefest on paper but I tried to be engaging and include a whole host of ways to teach—I knew not everyone excelled with a textbook.

It had made the course popular, it went from being offered once a semester to 3 times this year because the waitlist spoke for itself. It was one of my proudest accomplishment—getting students motivated and interested. And because it was mostly first and second year students, they were still eager and not jaded by the uni system.

That was how I spent my evenings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Otherwise I worked for the city the same hours Harry worked his creative exec job at a major firm in the city. Sometimes we met up for lunch. It was the little things like that, making time to see each other in the middle of the day even though we woke up and fell asleep to each other, that made this relationship feel so secure.

It felt like coming home each time I caught sight of his face, and knew his smile was just for me.

My thoughts drift to our daughter. She would have celebrated her 18th birthday a few weeks ago. I always lit a birthday candle for her, this year Harry and I bought a cake and a symbolic drink for her. Our baby was old enough to drink.

“Do you think she takes after her parents?” Harry had asked.

“I think she grew up alright.” I always imagined her to have. “I hope she has no reason to drink herself silly.”

“Being 18 is reason enough.”

We talk about her often. She slips into conversation as easily as inhaling. It keeps her with us.

When I spot Harry’s car at the station I nearly weep.

“Your cheeks are so cold,” Harry says after a peck hello. He holds them both in his heated hands and plants exaggerated kisses on each cheek.

“Please sir,” I kiss his mouth and continue in what Harry called my Oliver Twist accent. “Take me to the chicken noodle soup. I hunger.”

Harry responds in the same accent (although it wasn’t as good as mine) and pretty soon I’m forgetting the 20 minute delay, the lecture with 100 technical difficulties, and anything in between.

After dinner and completing my 20 step night time routine I crawl into bed beside a cozy-looking Harry.

“Whatcha reading?” I peek at his book. I can’t believe he was the reading-before-bed type. In a way it was so different from the 17 year old guy I knew. It was also a reminder that even though we knew each other through and through, there were still so many habits and stories and quirks to discover.

“It’s a boring as hell sci-fi novel, don’t ask.”

“Then why are you reading it?”

“I accidentally joined a book club at work!?”

He tells me the story of how he told some people he enjoyed reading, and then being unable to say no when they bought this month’s book for him and presented it to him a week later.

“I bet you that’s their ponze scheme. It’s like an MLM, the latest recruit has to guilt the next joinee. You’ll be doing it soon.”

Harry laughs and holds his book out to me. “That actually brings me to my next question with this very generous gift, do you like reading?”

“Nope.” I push the book away. “I also don’t like book clubs.”

He tosses the book down lightly. “Damnit!”

We laugh. I cuddle into his side and lay my head on his chest as he finishes his chapter. His heart beat is steady, like the life he’s helped me create as we committed to each other. I listen to it as it lulls me to a calmer place.

“So how was work? How’s your students this semester?”

“Work’s good. Same old right now. Teaching was interesting. It’s the second week of classes so still seeing a lot of people come and go. You start to see the regulars by week 3.”

“Full class?”

“Almost,” I tell him. “A few empty seats. There was one girl who was obviously watching tv the whole time, another guy that fell asleep halfway, and this other kid kept looking at the door like he was physically trying to decide whether he would stay. Weird lot.”

“They won’t be there next week.”

“Nope.”

“You think she’s starting uni? I wonder what she’s decided to study.”

“Mmm, I always think it’s something creative like you.”

Harry squeezes his arm around me. “I think she’s a masochist like you.”

We talk more about her, about the upcoming weekend, and as sleep visits we drift away still intertwined like most nights.

***

“Does anyone know why?” I ask the lecture hall. Just like I predicted, most of the people I knew wouldn’t make it were gone. Now there were just under 60 students in total. What had surprised me was the guy who looked nervous the second week stayed. He’d been joined by two friends who only showed up in week 4. He was probably the designated note taker.

A girl to the left puts her hand up and I point to her. “The growing gap between upper and middle classes?”

“Yes.” I give her a reassuring smile. Until I started teaching, I forgot that most answers they gave were questions. “Anyone else?”

The girl beside nervous guy puts her hand up. “The ageing population, it skews the demographic from what was initially projected?”

“Exactly,” I try not to show favourites but that was beautifully said. Maybe she didn’t need to come to all the classes.

“That would also affect the workforce,” a guy sitting in the front pipes in. I smile, pleased that a discussion was forming.

A few others join in and I nod at each point. I loved this job.

After class is over I always got a few stragglers asking questions. The nervous guy comes up to me.

“Um professor,” he hitches his backpack and glances back at his friends. “For the assignment due next week, can groups of 3 be okay?”

I glance at his friends, it was supposed to be in pairs but what the hell. “Sure. But I’ll need extra stuffing in the assignment to make up for it.”

I say it with a joking tone but he’s so wound up that he takes me seriously.

“Of course. We’ll increase the citations and make sure to include more research-“

“Philippe,” one of the girls is suddenly a few feet away.

“Thank you.” He says, finally meeting my eye. I smile and he relaxes. I turn to his friends, to acknowledge them but they stare at me like I’d grown a second head. One of the other students asks her questions and I turn my attention away—weird.

***

“Mid-terms?” Harry asks. I’m reading a textbook while I stand over the simmering pot. We had accidentally ordered 4 times the tomatoes on our online order last week and with three still left I’d decided to batch make spaghetti sauce. It had been a long time since I made it from scratch.

“Kind of.” I push the book aside. “Someone in the department wants to update the textbooks and they left notes in the old one for what needs updating. They asked me to take a look.”

“That’s cool,” Harry walks over to me. He smelled like cologne and outside, the way he usually did right after he came home on chillier days. “That he wants your opinion?”

“She actually,” I poke him. “And it is! I can’t believe I get paid to lecture about one of my passions.”

“Economics,” Harry makes a face like he smelled something bad.

“Makes the world go round,” I smile sweetly.

“Remember when you liked things that were cool like Harry Potter and Coldplay-“

“I still like them! If I recall you’re the one who motivated me to do well in maths.”

“I did?” Harry looks off into the distance but his slow smirk is evident that he was remembering. He tilts my chin up and brushes my lips. “You’re right. So how about now? Would that still work?”

“Do you want me to stroke your ego right now?”

“Amongst other things,” he muses, his hands drop down to my hips and then lower, giving my bum a squeeze.

“Cut it out,” I scold him but it’s cancelled by the smile on my face. I shake my head and go back to the simmering pot.

“Is that tomato soup?” Harry’s suddenly distracted by the pot. We’d been having a lot of it this week because…well tomatoes.

“Nope, I’m making spaghetti sauce. From scratch.”

“Hey, didn’t you make that one time? When we were kids.”

“Hm,” I think back. It felt like so long ago but something niggles at me. “I think? I used to help my mum—it’s her recipe. Maybe you had dinner on a night we made it?”

“Yes. Dinner at your place, around Easter.”

I remember that Easter clearly but not for dinner. It was a night Harry and I had talked our lives all out.

“Aw. We were so young then.” I wrap my arms around Harry.

“I’m still young,” Harry says. “I’m in my prime.”

I pat his cheek. “Of course you are love.”

***

“Taylor I can’t really do this right now!” I tell my sister as she whines to me. No matter how old we got we were always somehow 17 and 12.

“C’mon just call mom! Tell her you met him and he’s really awesome.”

“I’m not lying to mom so you can invite your newest loser boyfriend to dinner. Anyway I can’t talk. I have to get to class!”

“I know.” She says weirdly. And I understand why when I walk into class and see her sitting in the front row. Ugh she knew I would try to blow her off!

My sister had somehow taken up the bad habit ever since her mid-20s of having a string of shitty boyfriends. We all blamed it on her longterm bloke breaking it off around her 26th. I don’t think she ever fully let herself heal from that.

After two separate guys were invited to two separate family dinners and both ended in mum or dad exploding over something, they were banned. This new guy, as she insists, was different. Mature. He deserved an invite.

She holds up 9 fingers and mouths, 9 months! That’s a long time!

I shake my head and start setting up my laptop.

“Hiya,” one of the students, Kim, walks up to me as I do so. “Sorry I was just wondering when we’re getting our assignments back? Will it be before midterms?”

Midterms were in 2 weeks for this class. The assignments were in my bag, marked and ready. I tell her and watch the relief spread through her.

I spend the next hour teaching, and before we break at the hour I announce I’d return assignments. As I call them out student walks down to me and pick them up, leaving with a smile or a frown.

“Philippe?” He had stuck to his word and his group had gone above and beyond. It was a beautiful paper, albeit overly-sourced. But I appreciated it.

“He’s not in,” one of his friends comes down to get it. She looks at me in that same way again, with just as much fear as curiosity. It’s odd.

“C’mon then,” I shake the paper I was holding out. “I don’t bite.”

“Oh sorry,” she grabs it from me in a rush I nearly get a papercut. She doesn’t even look at the grade, turning quickly away before halting, pivoting halfway, changing her mind, and running back up the steps to her seat. That group of kids were weird. Maybe they were on drugs.

I catch eyes with Taylor and she raises her brow. I shrug and continue handing out the papers.

I don’t expect the girl to come up to me after class. Her friend stays hovering behind, close to my sister who I know must be desperate to have sat here the whole lecture.

“Um ‘scuse me. Professor?”

“Yes?” She was the last person in the small line that had formed after class.

“I had a question about the assignment? You um, you said we missed the equations for our answers but they’re um-“ her hands are shaking as she flips the pages to the last page. “They’re on the bottom here.”

“Oh,” I did remember they were missing it but my pen marks were all over the back of it. “I must have missed that, bloody hell sorry about that!”

“Yeah um, do we get the extra points?”

“Of course but I-“ I glance back at Taylor. She’s talking to the friend. I had to get her out of here before she said something ridiculous. “I have office hours after my Monday class. I’ll have it remarked by then and you can pick it up?”

“Um, okay?”

I quickly shut my things down and grab my sister, getting her out as quick as possible.

“I’m a professional,” she reminds me. “Jeez. Anyway Y/n listen it’s the longest I’ve been in a relationship since, well y’know. 9 months! It’s different with this guy. He works like you! A cushy office job. He’s serious. Please!?”

I hadn’t seen Taylor since last month’s dinner when she had tried to convince me to get on board with this guy. She’d been pleading for a month. “Fine.”

“Oh I love you!” She squeezes my arm. “Text me when mom gives the okay.”

I sigh. I’d really got myself in the middle again.

I retell this to Harry when I get home.

“She’s persistent. But 9 months is a new record.”

“I know!” Harry knew all about her string of boys, I’d caught him up months ago. “Anyway I can’t believe she sat through the whole lecture.”

“Maybe this is the guy. The One.”

“You don’t believe in that do you?”

“Yeah?” He squints at me. “Of course I do?”

“So I’m The One?”

“Baby do I even need to say yes? I knew it as soon as I saw you when we were 14. You confirmed it when you kissed me on the roof that day.”

“I can’t believe I did that. I had my first drink that day by the way so I might’ve been drunk.”

“You were not drunk when you kissed me,” Harry points his fork at me.

“Look at you getting all worked up,” I tease.

“I’ll get you all worked up,” he mutters into his plate. I grin as I stretch my leg out under the table and run it up his leg. He grips my ankle when it gets too high and the look he gives me across the table sends my heart racing.

“Oops,” I drop my foot and go back to eating.

We put on a movie after, something we can zone out to. It doesn’t take Harry long to get bored and nuzzle into me, and it doesn’t take much longer after that before the movie is just for show and we’re tangled in our sheets.

There were 17 years of experience Harry showed up with now, and it was another one of those things that made catching up on lost time all the better.

***

In the first half hour of my office hours, the girl walks in. I should remember her name but I just associated her group with Philippe. I was surprised he wasn’t here actually. He seemed to be their spokesperson.

“Hi come in!” I wave her into the tiny cubicle-like room I borrowed for a few hours every Monday. “I’ve got your assignment here all done.”

“Thank you,” she hovers over my desk and I hand it over. Her fingers fidget with the strings of her hoodie and I seriously consider the drug angle. Or maybe her and her friends had serious anxiety issues. I didn’t miss that part about being a teen.

“You wanna flip through one more time? I try not to make mistakes twice but…”

She sits down tentatively and buries her head in the paper as she flips through.

“It’s alright,” she says. Her expression is so serious it nearly makes me laugh. She had pretty hair—blunt cut bangs that I remember rocking in my early 20s, but on her they hide the expression in her eyebrows. Maybe that’s why she always looked so sullen. Her lips are painted a pretty mauve colour and it complimented her green eyes.

“I really um…your class is really interesting.”

Kids saying that was like injecting pure joy right into my veins.

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it,” I smile at her. But it still doesn’t crack a smile on her end. “It’s dense material but that’s nice to hear.”

“Yeah, I didn’t know if I was gonna keep the class.” It’s subtle but she inches back in the seat. The more she talks the more she relaxes back. “But I heard it was worth taking. And people were right.”

“Are you in your first or second year?” I ask.

“First,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. It’s covered in piercings.

“How are you liking uni so far?”

She meets my eyes for a second before they shift away. “Yeah it’s nice? I’ve never lived away from home but I have some friends here that I’ve known since before so it helps. It’s really different, less structure but I like the freedom.”

Wow, she really spoke a lot more when she was comfortable. But I find it endearing.

“That’s really nice. It’s good to have a support system, especially with such big change.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. Her eyes dart around the desk as she goes silent. I wait for her to get up and go but a minute passes and the room starts to feel even smaller.

I could ask her if she needed anything else, or maybe continue the conversation? Did she want me to ask about her? No, that would be weird.

“So um, was that your sister in class last week?”

Okay, didn’t see that coming.

“It was! My baby sister, although she’s not really a baby. Did she tell your friend that?”

She nods again. “She was talking to her.”

“You have any siblings?”

“An older sister yeah.”

“So you get it,” I say. “You love them, they get under your skin, you’d do anything for them, and the cycle continues.”

For the first time she smiles and my breath catches. For a moment…no. No, I was imagining things.

“Yeah. My sister and I were close growing up, but she’s the one person that really knows how to get under my skin. I swear she does it on purpose sometimes.”

“Probably,” I want to say something funny again. I just want to see her smile.

Back off, my inner voice says. Don’t do this again.

Some years back, when I was still in the throes of alcohol, I had followed a girl at the mall for nearly an hour. She had looked so much like my sister but with brown curly hair. I could have sworn it was her—my daughter. But after an hour of drunk stalking she had met up with her mum, a direct clone of her.

I couldn’t be obsessive again. Nobody knew about that phase. Not even Harry.

“D’you have any kids?” She asks. I don’t expect the question and it throws me off what with the thoughts looping in my head. She watches me, waiting for an answer.

“Um,” I usually answered no. To anyone who had asked in the last 18 years. But for some reason I nod today. “Yeah. One.”

I imagine it, I must have. Her face draws in for a second before she looks down. “Does she ever come to your lectures?”

“Oh no,” I feel the prick of tears and try to blink them away without being too obvious. “I’m not sure she’d find them interesting.”

“Oh.” She finally stands. “Maybe when she’s older…but I’ll see you on Thursday I guess?”

“Yeah,” I watch her go and realize she’d forgotten something. “Don’t forget your paper hon!”

She stiffens by the door before coming to get it.

“Sorry, it probably makes me a bad prof but there were two female names on the paper. Which one’s yours?”

“Bridget,” her voice cracks.

“Bridget,” I try to match the name to her face. It fit. “That’s lovely.”

She scurries out and I hear someone say “well!?” Outside followed by a “shh!”

I shake my head and try to focus back on my work, my heart racing an unusual amount.

***

It takes a couple days but I confess to Harry. He’d decided to meet up with me after class on Wednesday to eat out. We didn’t go far from the uni, a pub a few roads down. I actually spotted a couple former students there and they’d waved at me warmly.

“You’re not crazy,” Harry holds my hand on the table. “A few years ago I realized the volunteer interns we took on from the nearby school? They were the same age as her, teens? And I used to check up on them all the time, make sure they were feeling comfortable, until one of the guys on the team told me to quit being so weird and find someone my own age. I don’t know if it came across that way but…I got lost in that.”

“Oh Harry,” I squeeze his hand. “I didn’t know that.”

“I’ve never told anyone.”

“Me too,” I pop another chip into my mouth. “But really I’d kind of pushed those memories out of my head until the other day. I can’t explain it, when she smiled it just felt like I knew her.”

“Yeah. Maybe she just looks like Taylor?”

We finish dinner while Harry tells me about a story about some friends of his I knew. We reminisce about our old friends as we wrap up and head out into the brisk November air.

We’re near the station when I gasp and clutch Harry’s arm. Standing outside one of the nearby pubs, smoking with her friends, was Bridget.

“Harry! That’s her!”

“What? Who?” He’s so oblivious as he whips his head around.

“Hushhh!” I nod towards the northwest side. His eyes scan the group. “Red beanie. We have to walk past just look at her okay? Tell me if you see it.”

Harry laughs to himself, “This feels like we’re in high school walking past a crush.”

“Is that how you walked past me?” I tease.

“I did.” He looks at me in that way that still gives me butterflies. It never got old.

“Stop making me want to jump your bones out here. I have a reputation to uphold!”

“Hey I’ll still have a job to support us,” he whispers as we near closer to the group. “Feel free to do whatever you feel.”

“You’re a bad influence.” I whisper back. By now we’re a few feet away and I sense Harry slow down beside me.

Bridget’s nodding to whatever her friend is saying. Philippe is waving his drink around as he responds. We almost pass by unnoticed when someone completely different calls my name.

“Hey professor! Can we buy you a drink?”

I turn and spot a group of students I taught last semester. They were all friends, always battling out their wits during group discussions. It made my class lively, even distracting at times. But I tried going with the flow of whatever group of students I got.

“Hey kids!” I say. Then I have no choice but to acknowledge Bridget and her friends. “And more kids! Is this the new spot to be at?”

I sounded so lame but shite! We weren’t supposed to get caught.

“It’s always been popular,” one of my old students says. “Can we pick your brain? Buy you a drink? We can buy one for your friend too.”

“I uh,” I glance at Harry but he’s frozen solid. I look to what he’s looking at and it’s Bridget. They’re locked in some silent conversation and her friends eye each other. “Harry?”

“Huh?” He focuses on me, flushed and just as confused as I had looked on Monday.

“We’ve gotta get him home,” I pat Harry’s arm. “Our alcohol metabolizes differently at our age.”

“You’re not that old,” Bridget says. She seems to be surprised she said it at all and her eyes widen. “I just mean you look younger than my parents.”

“We’ll take that as a compliment.” I smile up at Harry who still looks a little lost.

“Miss aren’t you going to introduce your male friend?” One of my old student goads.

“Don’t assume,” the other chides.

“Aren’t you a nosy lot after a few drinks.” I missed dishing it back in class with them.

“Oops!” They laugh.

“Anyway. This is Harry.”

“You can call me Mr. Professor,” Harry jokes and it’s a crowd pleaser. God they were drunk. Harry leans into me, “I can see why you like teaching. They’re an ego-booster.”

“Not in a 6pm lecture on a Thursday night.” I whisper back. He hides his laugh.

“Are you guys heading home?” Now it’s Philippe. I’m surprised he was getting involved in the conversation. He was usually the quiet nervous type.

“We are. Need a good night’s rest so I’m not falling asleep in your lecture tomorrow.”

“We wouldn’t mind,” Philippe goes for joker but his face flushes. It’s cute.

“Philippe you take way too many notes during class for me to believe that.”

His two friends, Bridget and the other girl, look at each other wide-eyed before losing it. And I watch Bridget’s face transform again and I get the same feeling. I look up at Harry and he’s transfixed.

I tug his sleeve and he looks at me, swallowing like he was parched.

“Weird right?”

“Yeah,” he whispers but his mouth turns down ever so slightly.

The girls are too busy cajoling Philippe to say goodbye to so we make our exit quietly. We don’t talk much on the train ride home but Harry simple holds his hand out on my thigh, palm up, and I lock my fingers into his. Even when we didn’t have words, we never stopped staying in touch.

***

It’s exam and holiday season before I know it.

I was actually looking forward to Christmas this year. It was the first that Harry was going to join with my family. Taylor’s bloke was also showing. He had been a hit with my parents and even I could admit he was the better of all the guys she’s every brought over.

It’s the last 30 minutes of the last exam I was facilitating this year. I announce the time left to the group. There were only about 15 kids left.

Bridget is one of them. I watch her tuck her hair behind her ear and bite her lip. She’d been pretty quiet the remainder of the semester, and I tried not to let my eyes wander to her too much.

After that night, bumping into her with Harry, we hadn’t spoken much about it. The hope that was initially so buoyant turned crushing as we faced the reality that the odds were slim to none. That our wishes were just pennies tossed in a fountain, sinking to the bottom of the pool.

Dreary winter days pass by and Harry and I try to keep the seasonal depression away with regular outdoor dates, cozy nights in bed, and seeing friends as often as we could.

On Christmas we go to my parents’. It’s a loud affair as my grandparents and a few cousins join us. After dinner I go up to my childhood bedroom, it’s now a guest room but some of my things still lay around. I open the window, it was cold so I drag a blanket out and sit outside. The street is quiet, I see families in a few open windows and I watch the festivities through them. I feel a mix of nostalgia and an ache that goes even beyond that, like I was missing something.

“Y/n?” Of course Harry would find me even though I’d left the door closed and the window tilted.

“Here,” I say.

“Ah,” he struggles to hoist himself out. “Some things never change.”

“You need help?” I watch him climb on all fours.

“I’m steady,” he grins as he crawls to me. I open the blanket and he gets in.

We sit in silence for a bit.

“It was getting really loud downstairs wasn’t it?” I ask.

“I think your grandma’s in love with Taylor’s guy.” Harry says so bluntly that I burst out laughing. He joins in.

“I feel like old people get to flirt with whoever they want because it’s always harmless.”

“Maybe that’s the case with older women,” Harry grimaces. “Can’t say the same thing about old men now can we?”

“Jesus!” I laugh and then laugh even harder when Harry says: “it is his day.”

By the time I wipe my tears Harry’s gazing down at me.

“Sorry,” I lean my head against his shoulder. “You have to stop being so funny.”

“Nah,” he kisses my head. “Have I never told you how much I like your laugh?”

He had. On a night many years ago on a roof like this.

I go to remind him but he’s pulling away. I watch as he shifts to face my slowly. He pulls something out from behind him and my brain only connects the dots as he starts talking.

“Y/N, this is something I wish I could have done 18 years ago but only feels incredibly right to do now. Especially out here.”

“Harry,” I gasp. When did he get the ring? When had he planned this?

“We somehow found our way back to each other again y/n, and you know I love you more than ever before.” He clears his throat as it clouds with emotion. “Some 18 years ago I told you I knew you, because the first time I ever laid eyes on you my heart knew. You were something special. And I never ever want to spend another moment apart again. So Y/N Y/L/N, will you do me the honour and finally be mine? Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” If I wasn’t sitting on a roof I would launch myself at Harry. I settle for pulling his face down to mine and kissing it. “I’ve always been yours Harry. But yes, of course yes!”

He slides the ring on and it fits perfectly.

It was perfect.

When we go back down my mum knows right away, and if it was loud before it’s absolute chaos as everyone descends on me and demands to know how he proposed and how the ring looks.

“On the roof? When there’s a perfectly pretty tree here?” My grandma asks. Harry and I exchange a look then, trying not to laugh all over again.

We ring in the New Year with friends, as fiancés. I can hardly believe it. Apparently most of our friends knew Harry was going to propose and they all toast to us and our happiness.

Somewhere in mid-January, I drop by my parents’ house to drop off some groceries. That’s when my dad hands me a letter that had been mailed home.

“It came for you, I dunno who thinks you still live here but it looks handwritten.”

I take it from my dad as I say one last goodbye. I barely make it to the tube with wobbly legs. Because somewhere inside I know.

It’s a long and agonizing 2 hours that I wait for Harry to come home. He finds me sitting in the dark; the sun had set while I waited, and I’d been too busy staring at the feminine scrawl on the front of the letter to turn on the lights.

“Hello-y/n, what are you doing in the dark?”

Harry drops his things where they are when I look at him. “Y/n are you alright? Say something.”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. I just push the letter forward.

He walks towards it. It’s like he hits a brick wall when he puts the pieces together, he halts a foot away.

“What is that?”

“Is was…” I try to swallow so my voice doesn’t sound so hoarse. “My dad gave it to me. It was sent to the house.”

“Is it…”

“I was waiting for you.”

Suddenly he’s in motion. He puffs his cheeks out and lets out a noisy sigh. Then he paces the floor one, two, three, four times before standing in front of the couch.

“We should read it.” I say.

“Yeah,” he deflates into the couch. I want to join him but it feels like my arse has been glued to the chair.

I inch it towards me and Harry nods. He wanted me to read it.

My mouth is parched. I can barely make out any sounds as I open it up. It’s three pages folded in two, the paper itself isn’t anything very special, it’s typed up so it’s literally just ink on paper. And yet it’s worth a whole goldmine.

“Y/n and Harry,” I read before my voice breaks and I bury my face in my hands. Our baby girl had written to us. She had reached out.

“C’mon love,” Harry’s suddenly beside me and his hand squeezes my neck. The touch gives me enough strength to stand with him. He sets me down where he just sat and leaves again, returning with water and the letter.

“Can you read it?” I ask.

He settles in beside me, we touch along every edge of us. The letter sits in between us like our love, our hurting—it’s where it belongs. He begins to read in his soothing voice.

“Y/n and Harry,

I hope it’s okay I’m calling you that. I don’t know if it’s proper but ever since I found out about you two last year that’s what I’ve been calling you.”

Harry lets out a shaky breath and I intertwine my arm through his. He kisses my temple and continues.

“When I turned 15, I asked my mum about you. I started to wonder where I came from. I knew I was adopted for as long as I could remember but it didn’t mean much to me for a long time—I had a mother, a father, and a sister. I had a family so why did I need to know where I came from?

But over the last few years it’s been like an itch I couldn’t get to. See when I was 15, what set it off is that my sister decided to look into her birth parents. They were separated, her father lived in Tokyo and her mother lived in Wales. It took her a year to convince our parents to go to Wales. I went with and I found myself in the home of a woman who looked just like the girl I grew up with. The whole time it ate away at me. I wanted this ending too.

I asked my mum and dad when I turned 15 but they were weird and evasive. I turned my skills to the internet but I didn’t really know where to start.

I felt the missing part more and more as I turned 16. I used to fall asleep thinking about you two, if you were alive, what you looked like, where you were, what you did.

I love my parents. They’re wonderful and amazing, they are supportive and never made us feel like we were anything but theirs. But I wanted to know my background.

On my 17th birthday my parents gave me a letter like the one I write today.” Harry stops reading and takes in a deep shuddering breath. “She got the letter.”

His shoulder shake and he pinches the bridge of his nose. I clench my teeth so I wouldn’t cry too. I wanted to finish this letter. I wrap my arms around him and hold him.

This was unbelievable, what we’d dreamed of. Her words, in our hands.

“Here.” I take the letter from him and continue. “Let me read it.”

Harry stays hunched over, so with my hand on his back I continue, “in it you told me how much you loved me. How much you loved each other, your families, where I came from. And Why you had to give me up. For a better life. I saw the picture of you, and I felt broken and complete at the same time. I realized I was the same age as you in the photo, I had to meet you but I was terrified. And I didn’t know how.

I spent a year agonizing and looking through every google page I could find about you. I learned a lot! But I needed to meet you.

I don’t know how to do this. I’ve made decisions that may not have been the best but I’ve left my number and a picture of me when I was 5 in the envelope.

I hope you call.”

With shaking hands I turn to the third page that has one of those polaroids taped to it and a phone number in the same handwriting as the envelope.

“She’s beautiful,” Harry says while tears continue streaming down his face. I can’t even hide mine anymore.

She was beautiful indeed. She had his eyes, and her curly locks in a deep brown frame her chubby face. She had my nose, she looked a little like my sister as a baby. A scatter of freckles over her cheeks confirm it. She was ours. Our baby had reached out. We knew what she looked like.

“We need to call her,” I say. “We need to meet.”

“Yeah,” Harry wipes his face. “We…we need to do this carefully. It’s delicate right?”

I wanted to call her right now but what would I do but cry into the phone? No, I had to wrap my head around this. Harry was right. “Right.”

“She’s out there,” Harry turns to me. “She wants to know us. Y/n she wants to meet us! She saw the picture I-“

“I can’t believe it,” I whisper. “Our daughter wants to—did she leave her name?”

We open the letter and flip over every piece of it but her name is nowhere.

“Maybe she didn’t want us looking her up?” Harry offers.

“Maybe she has an awful digital footprint.”

Something about it makes us laugh and we can’t stop. But pretty soon it shifts back into tears and we’re left holding each other on the couch, tender and content and anxious.

Our daughter had made contact. Would she like us? Would she be mad at us? What did this mean for us?

The thoughts continue to spiral the rest of the evening. We don’t make much of an effort, we reread the letter and try to get dinner in us. We face each other as we try to fall asleep, whispering questions into the darkness. The darkness doesn’t answer, it grows heavier as does the night, and we fall asleep for the first time in our lives knowing the weight of a decision so long ago was a tiny bit lighter.

***

It’s a few days later. All I’d been thinking about was the letter, when I woke up, at work, during my commute, during breaks, when I went to bed.

It sits on our dining table, we glance at it as we pass by. It becomes part of the decor, three pieces of paper and an envelope. It’s so much weightier than that.

I come home from my lecture on Wednesday, a slight buzz of anxiety humming in the background. It wasn’t unusual for Harry and I to get busy at work and not talk the whole day but today Harry had been radio silent. He hadn’t answered my texts or phone calls in a very un-Harry way.

I walk in to Harry sitting on the couch in the dark, staring at the coffee table. On it sits the letter.

“Hey,” I don’t even take off my jacket. I slide next to him. “Is everything alright?”

“Hey,” he whispers. He stays frozen sitting forward, elbows on his knees, head cradled in his hand.

I wait for him to speak, to say something about what was going on. I rub my hand over his back and he glances up. I tip forward until our foreheads touch. “What’s going on in that brain of yours? Let me help you.”

“It’s a lot,” he whispers. It tears me in two.

“Hey,” I remind him. “Just one day at a time. Let’s just talk about today.”

“I want to call her so bad,” he leans away and buries his head in his hands. I wanted to call her too, I’d been waiting for Harry to give the cue since I knew I could be rash and impulsive about something like this. But something was going on with him.

“We will.”

“We gave her up. What if she hates us?”

“She wouldn’t have written us that beautiful letter, or sent a photo, or left her number if she did.”

Harry sniffles and then asks what he really wanted to, “what if she hates me.”

“Harry look at me,” He unfolds slowly and I make sure he’s looking at me. “You’re her father, you’ve carried her with you for the last 18 years. You love her. She wants to know you. Why would she hate you?”

“I’ve fucked up so much!”

“You’re not your mistakes.” I remind him. I get teary eyed as I feel the echoes of his insecurities. I’ve thought about it too: what if I didn’t meet her expectations? “She’s not going to see you and see every good and bad decisions you’ve ever made. She’s just going to see her father—her biological father, and see where she got her eyes from and her hair from and every other quirk she has.”

“You’re not worried?” He asks, looking at me with grief.

“Of course I am,” I confess, tears leaking out of my eyes damnit. “I’m so fucking worried. But my curiosity overtakes that, my love for her is what I’m focusing on.”

“I love her,” he says.

“That’s all that matters.” I cup his face and press a reassuring kiss to his lips. “That’s all she’ll care about.”

Harry untangles himself from me and my heart sinks. He paces the length of our living room a few times, running his hand through his hair.

“We really should talk about the letter,” he says.

“Yeah. I know. I want to call. Badly.”

He pauses. It’s like all the anxious energy drains out of him at once. He sits back down beside me.

“What do we do?” I ask

“How about Saturday? She’s probably going to be home then right? No school—if she’s in school.”

Two days. Two more days of agonizing over the letter.

At this point the letter is memorized, seared into my brain like I had an exam on it. I want to know the person behind it.

When we wake on Saturday it’s a cloudy day. I don’t take it as a bad omen.

We sit with our phones out after breakfast, just staring at everything before us.

“You should do the talking,” I tell Harry. “I’m too nervous.”

“I think you should.” Harry says. “She sent the letter to you.”

“Only because that’s the address my mum gave…gave her mum.”

It hits me again in another wave I try not to drown in. She was eighteen, she’d lived a whole life with a whole family. There was everything of her we’d missed out on.

“Please Harry?” I was already overwhelmed with the realization. I just couldn’t.

He watches me, must hear the desperation in my voice, and slowly pulls his phone forward.

It rings, and rings a few more times. When it goes to voicemail he turns it off.

“I didn’t think that was an option,” Harry says and we laugh. It feels good.

“It’s only 10 maybe she’s asleep. Try one more time?”

He pulls my phone and tries again but it still goes to voicemail.

We sit there, unsure of what to do. We agree to try again later, in the afternoon.

But around half past 12, while Harry’s working in our spare room and I’m scrolling through my phone, it rings. I don’t think much of it and pick it up automatically.

“Hello?” It’s silent on the other end. “Hello?”

I wait, but as I do it dawns on me. Who called me?

I check my phone screen and swipe through as I say hello again. I match the number. It was her.

I run to Harry but the phone is still silent. I wave the paper with the number saying hello again.

“Is this…well you never gave us your name. But we got your letter. We’re so gl-“

The line goes dead and so does my heart.

“You called her again?” Harry whispers, his brows furrowing as he stares at the phone.

“She called.” I think about calling her back but that was pushy. She was backing out of this.

All of a sudden I feel myself giving out. I catch myself against the wall and slide down.

“She’s backing out. It must be…too much for her.”

Harry stares at a spot on the ground, a million thoughts flickering through. Finally it settles on acceptance. He sighs.

“We can’t force her to talk to us,” he says softly what I already know. But his words are like a saw to my resolve and I just start crying. He gathers me in his arms but the grief feels endless. It felt like she was slipping away again; I’d lost so much and I lost her again. She had been so close. How could she do this? Why did she reach out if she wasn’t ready?

Questions without answers. More of them piled on top of the lifetime of questions I’d built for her.

I know Harry feels the weight of them too. We carry them together. That’s the only reason I hadn’t broken yet.

But I come close to it that day. We don’t hear back from her. And we don’t try to call her back. It didn’t feel right.

It killed me she was so close. And something changes inside.

For weeks I feel like I’m on autopilot. It’s like my first semester of uni all over again.

Harry tries his best to keep me together but he struggles too. It makes me feel worse I was taking the bigger hit, not being there for him as much as I wanted. But life feels like a a million blankets covering me.

I try to keep my usual momentum for my classes, but I’m always exhausted after. It pulls me deeper into my sadness, something I loved made me so tried.

It’s a Thursday at the end of the semester and I’m marking exams during my study hours when there’s a light knock on the door.

I’m surprised to see an old student.

“Bridget,” I wave her in. “Come in, what can I do you for?”

“Hi professor-“

“Call me y/n, I’m not teaching you anymore am I?”

“No,” she says with a stiff smile. The last time I saw her was in February, I’d spotted her with Philippe and a few other friends at a local coffee shop. She had been explaining something to one of her friends from a textbook.

Now her hair was short and more pronounced with waves. I wonder if she styled it, her longer hair had been pin straight.

“I had a question?”

You already asked it, I want to joke. But she was usually wound up so I knew it wouldn’t land well.

“What’s that?”

“Um, well.” She perches on the chair and I wait patiently for her to continue. “Are you taking any applications for TA next year?”

I wasn’t expecting that. She always found a way to take me by surprise. I stare at her for a few seconds, trying to remember what year she was in.

“Aren’t you in first year? If I do TAs they’re usually 3rd or above.”

“I know,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. “But seeing that one of my majors is in econ and my gpa is really high, and I did well in your class, I wondered if you would consider me?”

I hadn’t done TAs since my first year of teaching. I found I liked the work because it got me more familiar with the class.

“What’s your other major?” She had said one of them was econ.

“Sociology, I’m pre-law.”

Ambitious. “Why TA for my class?”

She balks as she meets my gaze. There’s something that flits through her face that I can’t quite read before she drops eye contact.

“Um, I really enjoyed it. I did really well. I think you’re super smart and would learn a lot by TA-ing for you.”

“I don’t give special lessons to my TA,” I let her know. “You’d typically attend some of the classes, mark assignments, and maybe teach exam tutorials, and have office hours of your own for students.”

“I’m okay with that.”

“Why should I pick you?”

She pushes her shoulders back, “I’m responsible, dependable, I submit all my assignments on time and have experience teaching.”

“Teaching?”

“I used to tutor when I was in high school. I didn’t really get an allowance so I found a way to support my hobbies.”

“What are your hobbies?”

She blushes a little, was she still nervous? “I love reading, books are expensive.”

I nod. For Harry’s birthday I’d told him he could get any books from Waterstones and it had been over £100 for 3 only.

“I also enjoy cooking. And um, it’s been a while but my friends and I sometimes go to like. Do you know comic con?”

“Yes,” I’d seen things online.

“Yeah we liked to dress up for that sort of thing. We used to make our own outfits and usually the cost varies depending on what you’re making and how realistic you want it and…” she trails off as I smile. She was really enthusiastic about it. I couldn’t help it.

“Tell you what. Leave your number with me and I’ll think about it. I haven’t had a TA for the last few semesters but I am going to take this into consideration.”

“Really?!”

I laugh. “Yes. Really.”

“Um…” she starts to fidget again. “Can I leave my email? I’m getting a new phone soon so I-“

“Sure. Anywhere I can reach you.”

I expect her to get out a pen but she says it verbally and I type it out.

“Um, are you alright?” She asks out of the blue after I type in the last letter.

“Alright?” I raise my brow.

“I mean, you seem…I just heard, um.” She tries to backtrack but I ask her again and she spills. “Some people just said your last few classes seem scattered. Not that people don’t like you. I just…that’s what they were saying. And I don’t know if having a TA would help? And I just wanted to ask if you’re okay sorry I shouldn’t…it’s none of my business.”

God, this girl was so awkward. But she was sweet for caring, I think. “You’re not applying for the role because you feel bad that I seem…scattered right?”

She blushes. “Sorry. I think I said too much.”

I want to laugh but it strikes me that my students had noticed. I’d let it affect their learning. It didn’t feel very good.

“Life’s hitting me hard recently,” I tell her simply. “But I’m alright. Thank you for reaching out Bridget.”

As I finish up the semester I think about her. It wouldn’t hurt to have her TA for one of my lectures, see how she does. I didn’t care for TAs as a lecturer but something about her is compelling and I find myself emailing her in the middle of the night in June. She responds back a few minutes later,

Thank you!!! You’re the best. I’ll do whatever you need just tell me I can do anythingggh

Sent from iphone.

I laugh to myself as I put my phone away and go back to bed. My guesses were she was drunk at a party.

Harry’s asleep beside me and I reach out to touch his back but think better of it. He’d been busy at work with a project nearing its deadline and I didn’t want to accidentally wake him.

I turn around and try to drift off, thinking about my daughter, about how Harry and I hadn’t really talked much in the last two weeks, about my teaching, and my new TA.

Age 38:

It’s a depressing summer. The air of dashed hopes still hangs around Harry and I. It’s less thunder clouds and more of a fog.

One weekend morning, it’s one of those mornings that start off heavy. I can’t get out of bed, but I hear Harry pattering about doing his weekend morning thing. I hear the dishwasher turn on, and soon after he walks in with our laundry folded in a basket. I feel awful as I normally do, but not awful enough to get up and do anything about it. I think I’d have to feel less awful, to do that.

I don’t expect him to get in beside me once he’s finished putting everything away. He smells like laundry and shampoo, I must smell like rot and decay.

“Y/n,” he says gingerly. I just look at him in response. I felt too heavy to even reply. He sits up and calls my name again.

“Mm,” I say.

He sighs. Despite months of this Harry’s been nothing but understanding but this morning seems different.

Suddenly I’m being pulled up by my shoulders and I find myself sitting up in bed.

“Y/N,” Harry says again. I fold my arms as the duvet slips down and the cool air raises goosebumps. “I love you, which is why it’s so hard seeing you like this. You have to get on, my love. We have to move forward. It’s been months.”

All I could remember after our daughter hung the phone up on us was when I almost got to hold her. Right after she was born, I almost got to hold her but they took her away. And that piece of me that followed after her was nearly returned. It was that almost that was a death blow.

“It’s hard,” I feel myself tear up. It was hard not to these days.

“I know baby,” Harry scoops me into him. “I know. It’s hard for me too but we have to get better. We have to live our lives. She’ll come back to us, I just know it. She’s scared, we’re hopeful. Fear’s gonna keep her away. Hope keeps us patient.”

I cry into his shirt and he rocks me.

“I’m sorry,” I say into his shirt.

“It’s alright,” he grips the back of my neck.

So for Harry, for us, I try to get back to myself. I start to pick up my outdoor hobbies, I try to keep conversations going with Harry, I reintroduce my multi-step night routine. I look forward and re-light the candle of hope, even though I ache to blow it out before it can burn down to its wick.

My wounds inside stay tender.

We had booked our wedding for November and as the days approach we find ourselves with one thing on our mind.

Harry and I finally talk about it.

“I always thought she’d be there at the wedding once she reached out.”

We’re sat in an outdoor space near King’s Cross, coffees in hand as we people watch. We’d just come back from a cake tasting and neither of us felt like going home with such a glorious August day. Kids splash in the water sprinklers and couples sit around arm in arm. I touch shoulders with Harry unconsciously.

“Me too. I think that’s what’s kept me from mentally committing to the fact that the date is coming closer.”

“It can’t be forever,” Harry says. “She reached out. She just needs time. She’ll call again one day and we’ll meet her.”

“I know.” I lean my head on his shoulder. This was a realization I’d also been slowly digesting. I’d waited 18 years, what was a few more months, another year? Her baby picture lived on our fridge, at least we were one step closer.

And the love, I had to remind myself in these moments. Hold onto the love.

***

“I can’t stay for this class,” Bridget tells me. It’s the second week of classes and there were still 10 minutes until it officially started.

“Is everything alright?”

“Not really,” that’s when I notice her nose is red and her eyes are too. “My um, my parents had to put my dog down. She…she wasn’t feeling well yesterday and the-they found cancer? And she was in a lot of pain but she never showed it? And-“

I put my hand on Briget’s shoulder and lead her to the exit. There was no reason for the whole class to see this.

“Sorry. I’m-“

“Don’t apologize.” I rub her shoulder. “I understand. Take the time you need I have this covered.”

True to her word, Bridget had been a loyal TA over the summer. I considered it a trial run not expecting much but she had shown up, aced marking, and I’d gotten good feedback from the students at the end of the semester.

I’d also taken to her. She’d join me during my 2 hours every Monday and when no students would come she would loosen up. She’d told me all about the dog she grew up with, she showed me costumes her friends and her made, I’d asked her about the books she was reading and the classes she was taking. It was like having a younger sister again, except I was mature enough to appreciate her.

“I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” Bridget says and this statements seems to be the breaking point. She curls in on herself, shoulders shaking. I don’t even think, I just pull her into me like I would for Harry, for Taylor, for any of my friends.

“You have a lifetime of memories with her,” I hold her. At first she stiffens up and I almost let her go but she only breaks down further and wraps her arms around me. Tighter than I expected.

“I wish I said goodbye,” she says into my shoulder.

“I know hon,” I squeeze her against me, something maternal washing over me. “I know.”

After a minute or so she regains her composure, wiping her face with her sleeve. When she looks at me she looks so much younger, her face grief-stricken and regretful.

“I’m sorry-“

“Don’t be.”

She seems to want to say something more but whatever it is, she swallows it and takes a step away.

I don’t see her for two weeks and I miss her.

When she walks into the lecture the first week of October I try not to rush her but I’m overjoyed seeing her face. It had become so familiar to me.

She smiles shyly when she walks up to me and I pull her into a hug. This time she doesn’t stiffen.

“How are you?” I whisper. Students were still trickling in so I use the time to catch up.

“Okay. Better than that day I cried all over you sorry again. I went home last week, thanks for letting me take it off.”

“Of course. You forget I’ve been doing this without a TA before you. I can hold down the fort.”

She cracks a smile, her dimple making a rare appearance.

“By the way, week 10’s lecture is supposed to be cancelled.” I tell her later during office hours. “But I wondered if you wanted to hold a tutorial that week for some of the material?”

“Really?” A light comes on in her eye. It’s fiery and bright with excitement.

“Yeah! You know the material! I’ll leave you with slides and you can go about teaching them.”

“I’d love to!” She grips her laptop close to her. “Wait why is it cancelled?”

“I’m getting married that week!”

The light dims. Or maybe I imagine it.

“Oh! I thought you were married already?”

“No,” I’d referred to Harry as my partner any time he was brought up. “We’re getting married in November. You’ve met him actually, kind of, that night we ran into you and some students at the pub. Last year?”

“Oh yeah I remember,” she says but her eyes are somewhere else. “So you’re getting married?”

“Yes Bridget,” I laugh. “Married. Tying the knot. You alright?”

“Yeah,” she blinks and she’s back. “You never mentioned the wedding. Do you have a dress?”

“Yeah! Just finalized the tailoring last week. Most things are ready, we’re just finalizing the rings!”

“Cool!” She fidgets with the hem of her shirt. “Is it in London?”

“Yeah, it’s not too big but we didn’t want people travelling too far. This is where Harry and I were born and raised so this is where we want to marry too.”

“Wow,” she seems lost in thought and she stays pretty quiet the rest of the time. I didn’t realize my news was that surprising.

Maybe I still didn’t have Bridget completely figured out.

***

“Harry I can’t pick them up! I need to get home and then head back out to class!”

“Y/n it’s on your way home!”

“Not really! It’s a 30 minute detour. Why can’t you do it?”

“Because you can still get to him right before he closes. I won’t be done here until after he closes. I’m sorry love!”

“Agh and why can’t he do tomorrow?”

“He’s off until Saturday! We need it today.”

It’s the Wednesday before we marry and our rings are still at the jeweller’s. He’d finished them last weekend but we’d been so busy with other things we hadn’t had time to pick it up. And now it was either today and be late for class, or the day of the wedding.

I had gotten delayed at work and missed Harry’s texts explaining the situation. I’d only responded while on the tube, but going out of my way for 30 minutes meant I’d be 30 minutes late to get back to class. And since I’d left marked assignments at home that the kids needed for next week’s tutorial, I had no choice but to head back.

The idea hits me at once.

I hang up on Harry and ring Bridget. She picks up right away.

“Bridget, I’m on a crazy tight schedule. I’m going to be late to class by half hour at least.”

“Oh no. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah it’s just wedding thing but can you do something crazy? And feel free to say no okay?”

“Okay?”

I explain to her that if she rode to my flat, Harry would be there by then and she could pick up marked assignment. She can delay class by taking them up.

She’s silent but eventually I get a yes. “Okay. Can you text me your address?”

“Yes! Yes. Thank you Bridget. I owe you your trip fare and lunch or something. I’ll text you now, leave as soon as you can!”

I call Harry again and confirm he’d be home by the time she arrived. Everything works out.

I get the rings, and have to head home so Harry can try his on. The jeweller was expecting both of us, and let me know he couldn’t do adjustments if I didn’t text him by today. Just my luck!

When I get to the flat I tell Harry not to read his inscription but to try it on and thankfully it fits.

“Hey,” Harry calls out as I try to rush back out the door.

“What?” I was out of breath and frantic.

“Slow down,” he pulls me into a lingering kiss and despite being breathless before, I get some air into my lungs when we part.

“Sorry, so hectic.”

“I know I’m sorry,” he strokes my cheek. “I would have gone if I could make it. Also don’t be mad.”

“Be mad?” I let go of the door handle. “What did you do?”

“Your TA stopped by, Bridget. I forgot she was coming so I didn’t have your papers ready. I invited her in and she was in the living room looking at our pictures and she stopped in front of the baby picture. Of our daughter.”

“Okay,” did Harry tell her our history? I get antsy. “And?”

“Well she asked if that was our daughter. And I didn’t know what to say, if you’ve said anything to her? I panicked?” Harry runs his hand through his hair. “I just changed the subject.”

“Okay, that’s not bad. What’s the bad part I don’t get it?”

“Well. I changed the subject and told her she should come to the wedding.”

My jaw drops. “Harry.”

“I know! I know I’m sorry! I know she technically works for you, she was a student, all that! You’re so fond of her though maybe it’s not a bad thing?”

“Harry that’s…she was my student! I’m a prof at that school I…is that even allowed?”

“Yes? I panicked and googled it.”

I groan, “I swear you’re getting worse the closer we get to the wedding.”

The other week he had tried to buy out a whole bakery in case there wasn’t enough cake for our guests.

“You can tell her we have a full guest list? I don’t know what came over me! She just looked at me with those puppy eyes and she asked about the picture and I tried to talk about something else but the only thing on my mind-“

I kiss him. Just to shut him up. I was getting really late.

“This is like that book club you were tricked into joining all over again-“

“Hey I really like that book club now! It might be a good thing!”

“We’ll talk later.” I shake my head at him. “It’s fine, it’s not a big deal. It’s weird but what’s one more guest?”

“I also said plus one.”

I let out a long exhale and then kiss Harry again. I didn’t want him spiralling while I was gone.

“Baby don’t worry, it’s okay. I’m fine with it. We’ll talk when I get home?”

I mull over it on the ride to uni. But I can’t find a way to uninvite her without it being awful. I text our wedding planner if we could squeeze in two more seats and she gives me the thumbs up.

I did have a soft spot for Bridget, and technically I’ve known her for over a year now.

During office hours, we get a few people in for the first half hour. Then we’re back to just the two of us.

“Thanks for taking over today,” I tell her. “I really appreciate it.”

“That’s alright. Happy to help out.”

An awkward silence slithers in.

“So my partner invited you to our wedding.”

“Yeah! I didn’t know if that was serious am I…?”

She looked so hopeful I couldn’t shoot her down. “Yes! I have a couple people from the faculty coming. And some colleagues from my day job. You’ll probably have to sit with them but?”

“That’s fine!” She’s chirpy Bridget again. “I’d love to. That would mean a lot.”

I watch her as the smile stays on and she gets out her phone, typing away. Maybe her friends, her plus one.

I realize I’m not entirely against it. It had happened, and I was okay.

***

I stare at myself in the mirror, smoothing down my dress in a nervous habit. I never thought I’d get married twice, I always thought after Tatum I was done with marriage, but Harry would always be the exception.

I feel a flutter of nerves thinking about him. Walking down the aisle to him. We started talking on a rooftop one day, we had just been two kids.

“You better not cry,” Taylor threatens as she walks into the room. She had gone to fetch lash glue after my teary eyes loosened an edge.

“I’m not,” I say weakly.

She stands beside me in the mirror, “They’re all waiting downstairs.”

Just 30 minutes ago this room had been a chaotic mess. From my mum, to my friends, to the wedding planner. I’m kind of glad my lash came loose, I’m able to ground myself in these few minutes of silence.

Taylor talks about our family downstairs as she fixes my face. I get up with her help and she beams, but her eyes look misty.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing!”

“Why do you look sad what happened?”

“Oh my god calm down, I just can’t believe you and Harry are getting your happy ending! I’m just…emotional.”

“Aww,” I cup her face even though I want to squeeze my baby sister against me. But my white dress, although not entirely traditional, would be ruined for the ceremony.

A ping on her phone—mum. We rush out. It feels like getting caught when we were younger and quickly getting away from the scene of the crime. I grip my sister’s hand until I stand in front of the doors leading down the aisle.

I don’t remember walking, it felt more like floating. Even if there was a chimpanzee and a talking dog in the pews I wouldn’t have noticed. My eyes are locked on Harry’s teary ones, they anchor me as I glide towards the man I’ve never stopped loving. Who always saw all of me.

When he reaches for my hand I grasp it and I know I made the right decisions. Even the painful ones. After all, I wanted to be nowhere but here.

“Y/N,” Harry reads his vows to me and I try not to cry as he sweeps me away with his delicate words about our love story.

“To be so deeply known by another, without even saying a word, shouldn’t make sense and yet with us we have a language that goes beyond words. A brush of your hand or a look in my direction, it can be enough to unload whatever burden I’d just been carrying. I promise to do the same for you, and to never end this dialogue between us. To love you and to cherish you forever.”

Harry couldn’t keep the tears in and they slide down his cheeks as he reads his words out to me. I reach out instinctively and brush his tear away and he laughs because I was doing it again.

“You’re can’t make me cry in my makeup,” I tell him and our guests laugh.

I had sat and thought so hard about my own vows. In the end after 50 versions, I’d settled on short and sweet.

“Harry, when we first spoke on the rooftop of that party in high school,” I say at my turn. “You told me everything you wanted. One of them was to make the world a better place. And I don’t know if you still want those things as much now as you did then, but one thing is true. You’re made my world a better place. I can’t imagine doing life without you. I love you with all of my heart, there’s no equation that could calculate how much.”

Harry grins at me and my breath catches. My man, he was my Harry.

We finish our vows with a kiss and a lot of noise from the crowd. When we turn to everyone I’m struck by how lucky we were.

The absence of our daughter was tough but when it came to love we had an abundance of it. I see it in every smiling and shiny face in the crowd. It’s like photographing a sunny day with one of those old school films, the sun is covered by a dark spot but the rays still wash everything in gold.

Harry squeezes my hand and I look up to him. He’s already looking at me.

He holds his hand up and lets out a whoop before he pulls my face towards him again for an even longer and borderline inappropriate kiss. I feel myself start to blush in front of the crowd.

We start down the aisle and this time I beam at every guest I catch eyes with.

My mum and Harry’s wave with tear-streaked faces. My friends from high school shout out, always the biggest supporters of our relationship. I catch eyes with Bridget, forgetting for a second she was here. Philippe is beside her, but what’s surprising is her blotchy face. I didn’t take her for someone who got emotional at weddings. I throw her a wave and she smiles through the tears.

Whoever ordered weddings to have a small break between the ceremony and the reception deserved a billion dollars. Harry and I spend the quiet moment doing our outfit change but afterwards we hold each other and let the moment sink in. The day sink in.

“We’re married,” Harry whispers when I tell him we should get going so we weren’t late.

“We took the long way to get here didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” he tucks me under his chin again and even though we would be late we just sway together for a little while. Our own private first dance, before the one for our family and friends.

“We did it all quite backwards actually.” I look up to him.

“Yeah, but we were never ordinary.”

“No, and I don’t think anything we’ve ever done is either.”

“Including our kid. I really wish she were here.”

“We’ll tell her all about it one day,” I promise him. His face eases into a loving smile, the fact that we’d made it to a place again where I can comfort him about this said a lot. Said we’d make it through everything, despite.

“I don’t want to do life with anyone else y/n, I have everything I need right here.”

“Remember that day at Whole Foods?” I remind him. “The first time we bumped into each other.”

“It’s a core memory,” Harry remembers. “I feel like the sun never set on that day. Getting to see you after all those years…it’s cheesy but it felt like coming home.”

“Yeah,” I nod. “Me too. I recognized you by the back of your head did I ever tell you that?”

“Stared at it enough in maths, of course you did.”

“That’s probably why I did so poorly that year remember,” I laugh. “Just staring at the back of your head.”

“That’s why I never sat anywhere but in front of you.” He swipes lightly down my nose and I smile. “Now I get to see every angle of you whenever I want.”

“Oi,” I slap his chest. “Save it for tonight.”

He brushes my cheek. Under his gaze I’m stripped naked. There was nothing to hide with him, ever.

“I understand how long it took you to get ready,” he says in his deep silky voice. My stomach flips. “So I can’t do anything right now. But y/n, our wedding night will turn into a wedding dawn, and then to day again. I promise you.”

I tip-toe, even in my heels, and brush my lips along his cheek. In his ear I whisper, “I don’t expect anything less.”

I step away, feeling unravelled by the look of desire in his eyes. I’m sure I had the same look of want. But before we can give in to what we wanted to do, I open the door to our suite and embrace the gust of cool air.

“You should get some air too,” I say and he laughs, following me behind.

***

“Bitch!” Taylor comes up to me on the dance floor later that night. We had dinner, Harry and I had our first dance, there’d been toasts and tears in between. I was finally letting loose as the wedding party crowds the dance floor. We had been taking pictures all night, after this next glass of champagne I was going to call it quits on photos lest anyone captures anything that’s not an elegant bride.

“What?” I turn away from Harry to face Taylor. She’d been running around all day making sure my wedding day was perfect and seeing her just warms me with love. I squeeze her against me despite her protests. “I love you Taylor. Thank you for everything!”

“Ugh c’mon,” she wriggles out. She’d never been very affectionate.

“Where’s your bloke?” I look out for him.

“He taking a call. Anyway don’t change the fucking subject!”

“What subject!?” I ask as someone dances past me, fluttering their fingers in my direction. I blow them a kiss.

“C’mere,” she’s annoyed I’m distracted. She drags me off to the side and I hold a finger up to Harry as he watches us. “When the fuck were you going to tell us about her? And you invite her to your wedding and everything and nobody knows anything!?”

“What?” I was drunker than I thought or Taylor was making no sense. “Wha?”

“The girl you just took a photo with? Don’t act stupid Y/N jeez I can’t believe it. You hid it from me when it happened but why are you still hiding…”

My sister grows more upset as she talks, I realize it was serious. Taylor rarely allowed herself to get this worked up in public.

I put my hand on her shoulder but she shakes it off. I think hard about who she was talking about. Who had I just taken photos with?

Some of Harry’s friends took a picture lifting us up, then there was a photo with my cousin but that can’t be who Taylor was talking about. There was Andie, a few other friends and their partners, then Bridget and Bridget and Philippe.

Bridget.

“Wait what are…who do you think that is? Taylor I work-“

“Your daughter! Why are you still acting fucking clueless!”

“What’s happening?” Harry walks in mid-way into the conversation.

“God you too!” Taylor turns to him and hits the back of her hand on his chest. He rubs the spot and stares at her like she’d gone crazy.

“Me too what?”

“Harry?” His mum walks up to us, her brows pulled together the same way Harry’s does when he’s confused.

“Yeah?”

“Who’s that girl? With the brown hair? Purple dress?”

She’s eyeing Bridget who’s laughing with Philippe.

“Bridget?” Harry glances at me and Taylor grows more pink.

“Bridget? That’s her name?” Taylor blinks away tears. “Really y/n? I get when it happened I was a child, you and mom kept it from me. But she’s, you invite her to you-“

“Invite who?!” I shout. What the hell did Taylor think.

“Y/n,” Harry puts his hand on my lower back in warning.

“Your daughter?” Taylor says with teary eyes and a look of betrayal on her face. “That’s your daughter isn’t it? She looks just like…”

“Jesus I thought the same thing,” Anne looks at all of us. “Harry?”

“That’s not-“ he stops talking and we all look over at her. I had to say, right now she really could be. With her hair curled and wearing what she’s wearing. She could be family.

“She’s my TA. I’ve known her for a couple years guys I’ve bloody taught her. That’s not our daughter. She wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight? Harry invited her last minute.”

They all turn to look at me. Taylor looks miffed, she bites her lip as she looks at her one last time.

“That’s weird. Nevermind.”

She leaves like she didn’t just make a big scene. Anne covers her hand with her mouth and shakes her head. “I’m sorry loves, I didn’t mean to upset anyone-“

“You didn’t do anything,” I reassure her. Taylor did. And she couldn’t even say sorry.

“Don’t worry mum,” Harry pays her arm. She fades into the crowd and Harry stands in front of me so all I see is him. “She’ll get air, she’ll be fine.”

“But how could she just cause such a big scene like I’d hide something like that from her? On my wedding day! And then leave without even apologizing ugh! She is still such a brat sometimes!”

“I know, she’ll apologize later just let her be.” He knew Taylor enough. He knew her at 13 and he knew her now. That’s exactly what she would do. “We’re getting you a shot.”

“That’s the last thing I need! I’m already kinda tipsy Har.”

“This won’t tip you over c’mon. Shake it off.”

He leads me to the bar and we take a shot. I nearly spill half of it, it was awful whatever it was. I lose Harry as we get back to the dancing and end up behind Bridget instead. Philippe noticed me first and slows his dancing, which signals Bridget to turn around.

“Y/n!” Her smile is so bright it hurts to look at. It dims as I just stare at her.

It would be crazy. It was a big fat coincidence. She had a mum, a dad, a sister, she told me all about them. Her childhood dog and the time she twisted her ankle playing football in year 4. She wasn’t who we wanted her to be.

“Are you alright?” I read her lips. There’s only ringing in my ears. “Hey! Y/n!”

Philippe is suddenly on my other side and I’m being led to a chair. He disappears and Bridget pulls a chair beside me.

“What’s,” my voice sticks and I clear my throat. “What’s going on between you two? He’s your date?”

“Philippe?” Bridget’s brows draw together and I can’t stop looking at where they meet. I knew her. I didn’t know her. I was too afraid to ask. “No just friends.”

“That’s not the way he’s looking at you.”

“What?” She tucks her hair back. “No we’ve been friends since high school. It’s not like that?”

“What would you do if he got a girlfriend?” It was a random conversation to have, here and right now but it helps me from tumbling anywhere else. Especially into a pool of what-ifs.

“I’d,” she shrugs but a flicker passes through her face, for a second her jaw clenches. “Be happy for him.”

“Liar!”

“I’m not! Why are you asking?”

“You two like each other. I see the way he looks at you when you’re not looking. Why did you invite him tonight?”

She shrugs, picking at something on her arm. “I dunno. He’s good at being a plus one. He always supports me? He’s always been there for me.”

“Sorry,” he shows up with a glass of water. “I swear the guy behind the bar was ignoring me.”

“Thank you Philippe,” by now I didn’t really need the water but I hold the icy glass in my hands. “Let’s see the pictures you took. I want them in my inbox or something soon. We don’t get our official photos for months.”

“Oh yeah here,” Phillipe hands over his phone after opening the photo. There are a couple of all of us, and then a few with just Bridget standing between Harry and I smiling.

I look between all three of us and feel something in my gut. But it’s too scary and big to unpack right now. I shove it away. I couldn’t do this. Not today, not tonight.

“You look beautiful Bridget,” I touch a lock of her hair. “Did I already say that?”

“Yeah,” she smiles awkwardly. “You said that before the photo.”

“You do. And so do you Philippe. Thank you for attending my wedding.”

“Thanks for inviting us,” Bridget looks at me wide-eyed, like she’s about to say something but when Philippe’s hand lands on her shoulder she looks down.

“What?” I ask anyway. Her eyes dart like prey to me, to Philippe, and down to her hands. I grab her hand and force her to look at me, like I could read something in her eyes. Like I would know. “Bridget.”

She looks up and her eyes well with tears as we look into each other’s eyes. My throat feels tight like I was having an allergic reaction, it travels down to my chest, I inadvertently feel myself squeezing her hand.

“I’m so-“

“Bridget,” Philippe’s voice cuts through whatever Bridget was going to apologize for. I look up at him and he’s burning a hole staring at her that hard. Over his head I see Harry.

“Oh look I see my husband,” Harry’s spots me too, relief in his features. His eyes stay on my face as he walks towards me and his eyes keep my steady. I want to tell him something, but everything that just happened was so non-verbal and unreal that I think I made it all up. I must be because this was insane and there was no explanation other than I was drunk, and sadder than I realized. “Gotta go kids. Have fun. I think I need another shot.”

I remember the rest of the night in snapshots. I forget myself later, giving myself up to Harry after that. We actually make it to dawn in a mixture of love and declarations, filthy words and I love yous, laughter and deeper conversations. It’s everything we were. It’s just like he promised.

***

Life moves on and I don’t bring anything up to Harry. I couldn’t, either I’m wrong and get his hopes up, or he thinks I’d gone insane in my sadness.

I feel like Bridget avoids me the week after, I return to class and she sits there, even takes questions after class, but she makes an excuse of studying during office hours and I barely get a few words with her. The week after she has an exam and she skips out after class.

I’m antsy. I want to know more about her; from her. I’m tempted to find a way to access her profile, get more info via the school. But I wait.

Harry notices, as we prep for our honeymoon booked over the holidays, he continues to ask if I was alright. And I try to convince us both I was.

About 3 weeks after the wedding, it’s a Saturday afternoon. Harry’s making lunch and I’m sitting in a pile of our books trying to decide what can be donated.

“Can you get that?” Harry asks.

“Hm?”

“The door?” He says just as there’s another knock. I’d been so entranced in the book I’d randomly started reading a passage of I hadn’t even heard.

I scramble to get it before the next knock and nearly stumble back when I find Bridget at the door.

“Hiya,” she says with an awkward wave.

“Hi…Bridget. What…come in what’s going on?”

“Sorry? Now that I’m here I should have called first.” She comes in and I go further in, waiting for her to follow. She hesitates before peeling her wet boots off.

“Harry? We have a guest,” I announce as I take her further into the home. I guess she’d already been here once before. “Bridget what can we do you for? Did you need something?”

“Bridget!” Harry pops out of the kitchen into the adjoined living room when we get closer. “Nice to see you again! I’m nearly done lunch, did you want to stay?”

What was it with Harry randomly inviting Bridget to things that were not pre-discussed.

“Um, I no. I probably shouldn’t. I just, came by to talk?”

“Sure,” I lead her to our dining table. “Is it about school? Did something happen?”

I sit across from her and Harry mumbles something, turning the dials down on the stovetop before sitting beside me.

Bridget’s eyes dart everywhere, from me to Harry, to the pictures on the wall, the kitchen, the books all over the floor.

“I was just doing a clearout,” I say to fill the silence. “Hey you like books right? Look through that pile there later if you want any of ‘em.”

“Actually,” she tucks her hair behind her ear. I feel Harry tense beside me. “I have a book for you.”

She leans down to where her tote rests and pulls something out. She lays it on her lap first, where we can’t see it. When she looks up to us she has tears in her eyes and her chin quivers.

“Please,” she whispers before pausing. My stomach drops as I take her in. Her face is blotchy and her hair hangs around her face, hiding half of it. She’s definitely cried before coming here, and I almost feel like deja vu as she places the book on the table. “Please don’t hate me.”

She slides it across to us. It’s just a simple leather hardcover, about 30cm by 30cm. The thing in my gut, the suspicion or the intuition, it turns into a cackling ball of energy and moves up to my sternum. I put my hand over it, and then move it to Harry’s leg. He’s frozen like a statue, staring at the book.

“Please open it?” Bridget says with tears streaking her face.

When Harry doesn’t make a move I pull it the rest of the way towards us. I open the first page to a few baby pictures.

I’d never held her in my hands, never even saw her. I’d pushed her out into this world, into another’s arms. But somehow I know who this is.

“Bridget,” I don’t even look at her. I start to frantically flip through the pages. The baby grows, 2 months, 6 months, 1 years old. Another girl joins in some photos, she always has an arm around the other child. I flip and flip and flip and even though I’m expecting it the photo stops my breathing.

I stare at the clone, or the original, of the photo on my fridge.

I’m frozen until another photo is slid towards us. It comes into view: two teenagers on Halloween night. The guy is dressed like the girl, the girl is dressed like the guy.

I throw my chair back and in the time it takes to walk to Bridget she stands too.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs but I just do what I wanted to do the second she was born.

I hug her. I hold her to my chest the way I never got to over 19 years ago. She belonged here. She never got to be here.

She was finally home. My daughter.

“Bridget,” I cry into her hair. Harry’s hair. She had Harry’s hair, his eyes. She got my nose and everything else. I was holding my daughter. She was in my arms, finally.

She really did look like Taylor as a baby.

“I’m sorry,” she cries again. “I was so scared and I screwed up and-“

“No.” I say fiercely. I push her out of the hug so I can grab her face. I wipe her tears and I nearly cry again. How many tears had I missed? Over skinned knees, playground taunts, first crushes and friendship breakups. How many tears had I missed? “Don’t say that. You’re here. You’re—Harry!”

I turn to him, why wasn’t he here?

He’s sat exactly where he was before. Frozen, staring at a spot between the picture of us and Bridget.

I let go of Bridget and move back to him.

“Baby,” I touch his arm and he springs up. Tears coat his lashes.

“‘Scuse me,” he brushes past me and heads out into the hall. Away from us. I want to go after him but I don’t want to leave Bridget—our daughter, alone.

“I’m sorry I knew I would ruin things I-“

“Please,” I want to go after him so bad but I go to Bridget and pull her into a gentler hug. When we part I keep hold of her shoulders. I never wanted to let her go. “He’s just processing it. He’s fine. He’s not mad at you I promise. Promise.”

She bites her lip, it reminds me of Taylor. She was a bit of everyone I knew and loved. She was the love that Harry and I always had. She was ours.

“I just got so scared when I tried to reach…I didn’t mean to deceive you. I didn’t. I felt terrible every day.”

“It’s okay,” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “There’s nothing to be sorry about-“

“But I saw you,” she cuts me off. “After I finally called you back and then just like, ghosted you. And every time I saw you at school it was like…I knew I was to blame. And it made me want to tell you even more but I got more scared any time I came close to it. I almost said it at your wedding—it would have been so stupid. Philippe stopped me.”

“I understand,” I did. I also didn’t care about any of it. She was here. That’s all I cared about. I wanted to know everything about her, I needed Harry here though. “Look Harry…your…Harry. I’m just going to check on him. You stay here and just…”

I trail off and leave. I had to be sure he was okay.

He’s not in the bedroom, or the office. I try the door to the toilet and it opens, he’s sitting on the edge of the tub with his head in his hands.

“She leave?” He asks in a hoarse voice.

“Oh baby,” I crouch in front of him. “No. She’s still here but I just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m pathetic,” he buries his hands in his hair. “I’ve been waiting my whole adult life for this and all I do is freeze. Her first impression is of her dad just freezing and then running away.”

I try not to laugh at his dramatic retelling. “Har you know that’s not true. She’s known you before this. It was a shock-“

“You were fine.”

“You know I…always suspected. Especially after the wedding.”

He looks up at that, finally. “You never said.”

“Harry, I felt crazy. Saying it out loud would have forced me to check myself into the psych ward. We all react differently, it doesn’t matter though. Our baby girl is here. The day we talked about!”

He takes a deep breath, and then another one. I guide him to stand and he looks so limp and sad that I squeeze him in a hug. “She doesn’t care how you reacted. She just wants to know you.”

Harry sighs again, he splashes his face with water and we walk out. I was nervous for him.

We walk back into the living room and my heart sinks when Bridget isn’t there. But her things are?

A few steps further and she’s at the stovetop, stirring a pot.

“Oh sorry,” she steps back and nearly throws the spatula into the pot. “It was boiling a lot and-“

“Bridget,” Harry ignores most of what she’s saying and she freezes at the sound of her name. He’s a foot away from her now. I watch him raise a hand to her face and then drop it. His face is a cross between heartbreak and awe as they drink each other in. I wait in anticipation.

“Hi,” she finally says shyly. But it breaks the ice. Harry pulls her into a hug and she returns it tenfold from the looks of it. I can’t tell who’s crying, but I give them their moment as I turn the dials off on the stovetop.

It was just a regular Saturday, except it wasn’t. Our worlds exploded with our past and was putting itself back together again, all the old broken pieces were being mended back together with love. My chest drowns in it, I can barely breathe. In Harry’s arms, there’s no denying she’s ours.

***

“Thank you,” Bridget says as we tuck into dinner. Harry’s lunch prep had gone cold as we’d all sat down and talked about how Bridget found us (looking me up, finding out I was teaching a course she was interested in, forcing her friend Philippe to take it to see if I was who she thought I was), and going through her album. I found out more about her sister Louisa and her parents. It was weird seeing pictures of them, in my mind they were the people that took my baby as their own and for Bridget they were mum and dad.

We finally decide to do something about food when our stomachs rumble. Harry goes back to cooking, showing Bridget what he’s doing until she leaves to take a call. I recognize Philippe on the caller ID.

I take Bridget’s place but I’m more of an extra weight tied to Harry’s back as I hug hun from behind. We don’t even have words on what this all means to us. For now, just touching each other keeps us grounded, it keeps is in what was happening together.

Bridget comes back from the call when we’re nearly done.

“I just want to say I am sorry—and I know you said not to be,” Bridget says quickly before I can get a word in. “But I never meant to deceive the both of you. My plan was to take your class, leave the letter and then talk. I Googled you so much it felt like I knew you. Yet when we spoke in your office that day, you felt familiar but In a different way than the person I studied. I just liked you so much, and I wanted you to like me. I was scared maybe you wouldn’t. So I just screwed the plan and messed up everything.”

“Hey,” Harry hands her a tissue and she takes it. Under the table he squeezes my hand. “It’s in the past.”

“I know. Still made me feel awful. And I couldn’t tell you but I also couldn’t stay away. I applied for TA and, it felt like having a friend and a sister and a mentor all in one. And I…I screwed up. I took it too far. And then you invited me to your wedding—I got to attend my parents’ wedding! It was so absurd. I couldn’t stop crying.”

Sounded like me. But I don’t say anything. We listen to her attentively.

“I only told my sister. I wanted to tell you two before I told my parents.”

I think about my parents. Harry’s. I didn’t want to overwhelm her but I couldn’t wait to introduce her to everyone that already loved her.

“I just hope…no, I know I hurt you two a lot. I didn’t mean to. I am really sorry about it all.”

“Bridget,” Harry’s hand comes down on hers. “What’s done is over. There are so many things we wish we did differently but ultimately it’s all done. All that matters is you’re here, now. You’re our daughter we never got to meet and you’re finally here.”

Harry’s voice cracks on the last word and he sits back and laughs away the tears. “Sorry. I’m a mess today aren’t I? Your first impression of me is a crying mess.”

“That’s not my first impression,” Bridget laughs but her eyes also fill with tears. “That night at the pub. When I saw you two together I nearly bloody fainted! When I looked you up y/n, there’d been an old wedding registry with another bloke. But then seeing you two together?! I just couldn’t believe it—I thought I dreamed it. And then I nearly cried because my bio parents were somehow together?? And the way you just stared into my soul it felt like you knew who I was.”

I laugh, remembering but also knowing exactly what look Bridget was talking about. “He does have a piercing look doesn’t he?”

“Yeah. It could gut someone!”

“That makes it sound awful!” Harry laughs. “Don’t say that.”

“It nearly gutted me! I really thought oh shite—“ Bridget freezes and looks between us like we were gonna scold her for swearing and I nearly leap across the table to hug her again then. “I uhm, I thought you knew who I was.”

“We thought it then,” I let my eyes roam over her. I realize I’d always been a mother, despite not having my daughter. Holding her earlier had awoken an instinct in me and now every time I look at her I feel a rush of love and something fierce. I wonder if Harry felt it too. “But we thought we were mental!”

Her phone chimes as we laugh. She flips it around and then tucks it into her purse.

“You need to take that?” Harry asks.

“No it’s just Philippe. He was at the wedding? I was just talking to him, I hadn’t texted him in a while he wanted to know how it went.”

“Philippe,” I say with a knowing smile. Bridget blushes and Harry asks what he’s missing out on so I fill him in.

“He sounds like a good lad,” Harry comments.

“A good lad?” I repeat. “Are you hearing him?”

Bridget laughs behind her hand and I can’t stop staring at her. I have to force myself to go back to eating.

“He is. I might have told him about how I felt?”

“Wow,” I put my fork down. “You’re confessing an awful lot lately.”

She blushes even deeper. And suddenly I’m grateful of the weird and layered way she’d come into our lives. Despite hiding the truth, it had allowed us to get to know each other as people first. Without any baggage or give me any inclination to fit who I thought she should be onto who was in front of me.

I got to know her for the young woman she was first, so did Harry in a way. And I would be forever grateful for that despite all the pain in between.

“Sorry,” I get up. The affection was overflowing from my cup. “I’m going to give you another hug because I just can’t believe all this.”

“Ohh,” Bridget stands to meet me and we wrap our arms around each other. Here was a girl I already knew, here was my daughter waiting to be known.

“God, she really is our daughter.” Harry quips from his side of the table. He explains when Bridget looks over at him, “y/n is known to be a big touchy person, I’m kinda like that too.”

“Oh my god,” she smiles at us. “I’m like that too! My sister hates hugs. My dad’s 2 pats on the back man, 3 if he’s feeling a lot. I always wondered if…”

She trails off. It seems to hit all of us all over again every so often. For me it’s when she talks about her mum and dad and it’s not Harry and I. The reminder that she went 19 years becoming her own person that we now were catching up on.

For her, it seems it was realizing all the parts of us that were in her.

“You got Harry’s hair, and eyes.” I comment.

“I did! I realized that as soon as I saw a photo online. But I do look a bit like you.”

“You do! I should show you some younger pictures of us and our families. You’ll see more similarities.”

“Wow. So you have a younger sister. How about you Harry?”

“Older sister. Seems we all have sisters.”

Bridget and I make eye contact, remembering a conversation we had what feels like ages ago about having sisters.

We continue our dinner, swapping stories and filling her in on anything she wants to know. She leaves after, claiming to have to get back home, she had an exam on Monday to study for.

When she leaves Harry and I can’t stop talking about her. Or gushing would be more accurate.

“Did you see the way she laughs?” I’d tell him. “Pure you!”

“The way she tucks her hair back,” he would retaliate. “Just like you. You did that especially back in secondary.”

We talk until we’re exhausted, crawling into bed just staring in wonder. There were still so many details to figure out, so many things to cover, it could drown a person thinking of it all.

But like an anchor in the sea, Harry and I fall asleep with hand clasped together. We keep each other buoyed amidst it all.

It was going to take time for this all to sink in but all I’ve ever had was time, and questions. I think I was finally getting time and answers.

Age 39:

Harry’s pov: Having our daughter in our lives is simple and complicated at the same time. At first there were a lot of things to untangle but as time went on, the knots loosened until our lives became their own knots, tangled into each other.

Meeting her parents, the people I met once many years ago, was likely the strangest part. They already felt so familiar as soon as they greeted us in a warm embrace, as if we were there own children. I guess the last time they saw us we were.

“Oh look at you,” Bridget’s mum had squeezed us tight. Her dad had pat us three times and we took it to mean as much as a hug.

In my mind they were always the age they had been then. They were probably around the age we are now. Seeing them sport greys and fine lines, it was like stepping into a time portal.

Lou, Bridget’s sister, eyes us for the first little while before warming up and sharing all kinds of stories—especially the embarrassing kind with us.

When Bridget meets Y/n’s family, I can tell they’re loud and overwhelming at first but we’re all surprised when Taylor embraces Bridget and takes to her immediately.

She brings out old pictures they had of Y/N and I, but every time she says, “your mum and dad…” when she talks about us through the pictures, I notice y/n protesting less and less.

It makes me feel funny, I keep thinking I was going to wake up and find out it had all been a dream.

“This feels very full circle to me,” y/n’s mum says. She’s watching Taylor talk about her baby bump—she was 3 months along. “I saw Bridget as a wee baby when they handed her over to her parents. I remember running late to hospital and making it to the room just in time to see it. I blinked and now she’s in my living room!”

“Sometimes I feel the same way,” I confess.

My family is slightly quietier but they all fuss over our daughter. They ask a million questions and when it’s all over we take Bridget for ice cream. It’s a pseudo-recreation of a life we never had.

Bridget eases into it too. At first she had bouts of disappearing on us. No more than a couple days. But we give her space, understanding it was overwhelming.

Every time I see her, I see her mum—y/n. I was never there when y/n gave birth. We had to drive up from London when we got the news and by the time I got there the dust had settled.

I never even had the potential of seeing her. I’d always been more sympathetic of y/n; her loss had been physical, mine was slightly more abstract.

Even though I’d spent every year since regretting that I wasn’t there to at least glimpse her, I’m glad now I hadn’t been there to see her. If I had to live the last 18 years with this feeling in my chest I don’t think I could have lasted that long. I don’t know how y/n did it. It’s a concoction of deep unconditional love, and tenderness, and recognition, wrapped in a shell of protectiveness. It took me a while to sort through it all but I had a conversation with my parents one night at dinner Y/n and I had visited. And they’d laughed because they had told me that was simply what being a parent was.

“Maybe she regrets it,” I had said the second time she ghosted us. Really it had just been over a day where she hadn’t gotten back to us. But I couldn’t help the overthinking, being tuned into any potential of loss with our daughter.

Somehow, y/n was the cool headed between us two in these moments. Maybe it was being a mum, maybe it was knowing Bridget beforehand, but she was very in sync with her.

“She needs space. The last thing we want her to be is overwhelmed too. Now don’t overwhelm yourself love, at least she’s in our lives.” She’d say.

It takes us the start of the summer and all those meets later for Bridget to finally feel at ease.

We invite her on a road trip, we were renting a place in the Cotswold for a few days and told her to bring Philippe. When she doesn’t even hesitate to say yes Y/n tells me we’d done it: she was finally more comfortable than overwhelmed.

“Y/N made me a better man,” I say after a couple drinks. We’re all sat around a fire outside the house. Despite it being a warm day of hiking the night had cooled significantly and we’d decided that boozy hot cocoas was the way to go. “I’ve lost my ways a lot of times as an adult. But she’s always been my north star. Even when we got back together she led me to being sober and getting my shite together.”

“Oh…” Philippe looks down at his drink. “Are you…”

“No,” I laugh, Philippe was the most-conscientious teen I’d ever met. “I got sober to get my life in order. But…it’s in order now. I haven’t done anything crazy for over a year now.”

A little before our wedding I decided I wanted to end my sobriety. It had been a thought for months, and I had waited before giving in. But I really felt more in control of my life. I faced my life decisions head on, I confronted my past with y/n’s help, and I didn’t think I’d lose control again. It had been a shaky first week but I was right. It was a proud moment for me.

“You two really have something special,” Bridget comments.

“They do,” Philippe adds. “I can’t believe you got your happy ending after so many years!”

“Yeah,” y/n says as I lay my hand on her thigh, palm up. “Y’know what they say about loving someone and letting them go.”

“I guess you did that with me,” Bridget says so quietly we almost don’t hear her. But out here in the countryside we do.

“We didn’t want to,” I remind her.

“No I know.” She smiles, it’s a bit sad. Philippe tugs her closer. I could see how much he cared for her in that small gesture. “I’m not saying it like that. I hear your story and I just imagine how different my life would have been if I was raised by my, by you two. I wouldn’t have this life. And I really like this life.”

She looks at Philippe and I feel y/n squeeze my hand. She often said they reminded her of us when we were younger; the kind of love you’d do anything for.

“But you two loved me enough to let me go. To let each other go. It’s fucking sad but it’s beautiful. Life’s weird.”

“Here here,” Y/N raises her nearly empty cup of hot cocoa. “Life’s weird, sad, beautiful, but lately my life’s been full of so much love. I wish I could sell all the excess, I think I could solve a lot of world problems with it.”

“Wow,” I lean over and kiss the top of her head. “That’s one hell of a speech.”

“I have a speech,” Philippe stands, a little tipsy, and clears his throat. Bridget rolls her eyes but they shine for him. “Bridget you’re the love of my life. Since we were 13. But Harry and Y/N, I think I love you too. Ever since we were 15, I’ve watched Bridge struggle for answers about her past. And you two have given her all the answers, welcomed her—and me actually, into your lovely life. I’ve watched her become old Bridge but even more confident. I’m falling harder for her these days. And I can’t thank you guys enough.”

“Aw Philippe come here,” y/n lets of my hand to walk around and give him a hug. How quickly strangers became family.

Bridget grumbles about being left out and joins the hug. Soon I join in too. I want to create a mold of this moment, I think as I squeeze them against me, I’d make it out of plaster and let it dry. Any time we wanted, we could always find our way back to this moment here.

Age 40:

Y/N and I watch our daughter cross the stage. Beside us are our parents and in front of us sits Bridget’s parents and her sister. She has a whole army cheering for her. This was the first milestone event we could all really show up for, and show up we did.

“I can’t believe this,” I was so proud of her. I know the kudos went to her parents, and herself, but I beam with pride. Honestly Bridget could spin in a circle in front of me and I would be a proud dad.

“We need to get photos,” mum leans over and says so seriously, as if we hadn’t planned on getting a million already.

We have a framed picture in our hall, Y/N and I on our wedding day, our daughter in between us. Her graduation photo is definitely making it. She makes fun of this wall, calls it the Styles hall of fame, and I never mention it but she always lingers a few second longer in front of the photo of the three of us.

I do too.

“It makes me so sad you won’t be so close to me anymore,” my mum tells Bridget later. We’re all piled in our flat, drinks and celebratory cake in everyone’s hands.

It reminds me of mine and y/n’s 40th birthday, we had gathered our family and friends here and it was some of their first times meeting our daughter. Today is more intimate, and focused on Bridget.

“I know it makes me sad too, but I’ll be here often, visiting Philippe.”

“Only visiting Philippe?” I raise a brow.

“Is there someone else I’m supposed to be visiting?” She mirrors my raised brow.

As Bridget’s gotten more comfortable, me and her could banter for hours if you let us, it’s one of those things that brought us closer together—having the same sense of humour. It’s allowed us to have just as deep heart-to-hearts, a handy joke always close to the surface.

Y/N always says seeing me like that, thoughtful and silly, reminds her of the boy she fell for. I can’t deny that I’ve been feeling closer to my 20 year old self than my 40 year old self lately.

“She’s too cheeky,” Bridget’s mum says. “But I have to say I’ll be glad to have her back.”

Lou, Bridget’s sister, was moving to Wales. Apparently she wanted to know more about her background, and take a trip with her bio mum to visit her bio dad.

I think Bridget was moving back to Coventry to keep her parents’ loneliness away; she said she would commute to Birmingham for school. Even though she got accepted into law schools in London, going to a uni close to her parents just showed me how close she was to her parents. It was a bittersweet feeling.

“I’ll have somebody to watch cricket with again,” her dad says.

“Ohh,” Bridget throws her sister a side-eye. “I love cricket…”

We all laugh at her complete lack of concealing her true feelings.

Later that night, it’s just Bridget’s parents and us. The kids are on the balcony talking.

“I know we’ve said it before,” I say after a long silence. We’d just been watching the kids talk and laugh outside. “But I want to say thank you again.”

Bridget’s dad shakes his head. “It was the greatest pleasure of our lives getting to raise those two girls.”

He looks over at his wife and they smile at one another. Seeing them interact, I’m grateful that somehow fate had led us to them. While Y/N and I were figuring life out, while I fucked up a lot of things, she was raised on a steady and stable foundation.

“She’s incredible,” I murmur. “She’s gonna be a lawyer. She’s going to change the world.”

“She sure will,” her mum says. “We should be thanking you two. For giving us Bridget. I know it wasn’t easy, you told me you thought about her nearly every day. But we can’t imagine our lives without her.”

We sit in a comfortable silence, looking out at the kids until they notice and start to ask questions through the glass.

“She’s happier,” her mum says smiling at Bridget and Lou exaggerating their words through the glass. “She stopped being like this before she left for uni. We thought we lost her but…I think everything worked out for the best.”

Y/N glances at me. Her eyes crinkle when she finds me looking at her first, her eyes steady me as she says what I was thinking, “I think so too.”

Age 45

Your pov: “When did she say she would be here?”

“6?” Harry says for the tenth time.

“It’s 6:20 do you think something happened? She hasn’t texted has she?”

“My love,” Harry puts down the cutlery he was arranging on the table and holds my face in his hands. “They’re driving from Coventry, they probably hit some traffic.”

“Maybe I should call her?”

Harry sighs and squishes my face.

“Don’t! You’ll make more wrinkles.” I warn.

“I love your wrinkles,” Harry kisses my forehead right where the pesky wrinkles had been growing deeper over the last few years despite the additions to my night routine.

Harry always said our wrinkles were just the stories of our lives showing through. I told him to get himself undereye cream.

“You don’t think I’m aging handsomely?” He strokes the moustache he started growing last year. At this age, even I couldn’t deny it made him even more attractive.

“Well it’s no good if you’re ageing handsomely and I age like a troll.”

“I will love you if you age into a troll.”

“But will you love me if I turn into a worm?”

“Do you even have to ask? I’d buy you the best soil and keep you in a beautiful pot.”

“You wouldn’t take me fishing?” I ask. He sighs. Last year while we were taking a trip up north for Lou’s wedding, we’d gotten into a fight and when I asked him the question while he was still stewing he said he’d take me fishing. It had, ironically, broken the iciness of his anger and we’d laughed about it so hard he’d nearly had to pull over.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” he wraps me into his chest nearly suffocating me.

I’d spent half my life with a lot of difficulties, but life now felt easy compared to it. I had the privilege of getting older with the man I adored, got to watch my daughter flourish as an adult and a lawyer, watch her get married to the love of her life, and all the while live comfortably in the heart of this city I called home.

When Bruno starts barking though, I gasp and push myself off of Harry, “that’s them!”

Bruno continues to bark as I rush to the door. We’d got him a couple years ago as a pup and I can’t believe it had taken us that long to get a dog. He filled our lives with laughter and long walks. We loved him.

“Down.” I say to him. I open the door and hold my hands out while Bruno runs in circles beside me.

“Ahhh sorry we’re late!” Bridget steps into my hug and I tug Philippe’s hood so he can join. Bruno goes for Philippe when they walk in, he’d gotten obsessed with him after Philippe took care of him while Harry and I took an anniversary trip last year.

“Where are my hellos!?” Bridget says to Bruno and he barks, standing on his back legs to paw at her leg.

I hadn’t seen the two of them since March, that was 6 months ago. It had been their wedding, and they’d gone on a month long honeymoon after that, after which Harry and I had taken time off to road trip around Europe with Bruno, and then time had just zipped by.

After a hearty dinner, Harry and I carry out the birthday cake we’d been hiding.

“You didn’t have to do this!” Bridget fans her face but we treat it like we do any special occasion, plus making up for all the ones we’d missed. We get photos and exchange presents, she cries reading the cards and the whole time she says she had a present for us.

It’s a small bag, Harry and I guess that it was something for Bruno but when we take out a box it doesn’t sound like much when we shake it.

“Is this a prank gift? There’s nothing in it?” Harry asks.

“Open it!” He was making me antsy.

“You open it,” he hands me the box. Bridget and Philippe stare intently at my hands.

I undo the bow and slowly open the box. There’s a small square of tissue paper, and then a piece of paper. I remove both but something catches my eye.

I flip the paper over and stop breathing.

“Is that-“ Harry stops talking too. We stare at the piece of paper in our hands. It looks so much like one I had held 28 years ago. But it’s not.

“Bridge,” I look up at the couple. The parents-to-be.

“We’re having a baby,” Bridget says. Philippe and her are gripping hands and I throw everything off of me to launch myself at her.

“A baby!” I hear Harry say and joining us. “You’re having a baby! Y/n!”

“I never thought we’d be grandparents,” I look up at Harry.

“Those wrinkles were coming in for a reason,” he teases.

We never did have any other kids. Quite frankly, neither of us wanted any. When we first got together we were just starting to get comfortable with the reminder that we had a daughter out there and we could talk about her freely with each other. It felt like having a third person in our little family.

After Harry proposed, while we planned our wedding, we talked about it but we never thought it felt right. We both had first marriages where a lack of conceiving had just put a strain on the relationship we didn’t think we needed. We’d also felt like it was betraying something, before we met our first child.

When Bridget did reach out, it became about catching up on lost time. And then with her in our lives we knew what we suspected all along. We had each other, and that was enough. Bridge was our bonus. And getting to be aunt and uncle to our nieces and nephews it was enough. It was a full enough life.

We never even dreamed in our 20s we’d get to be parents and now we would get to be grandparents! I never realized until this moment that I wanted this. Really wanted it.

“Do you know the gender?” Harry asks.

“No,” Philippe answers. “We were thinking of doing one of those reveal parties? But not for a couple months.”

“Wow,” my hands drift down to Bridget’s belly and I remember I had something. I leap away from the group and find the box in my closet, it’s painted pink with random collages from old magazines. It hosts old diaries, photos, a hospital bracelet, and an ultrasound.

“This was you once,” I show her the picture when I get back. “I carried you like that once upon a time.”

She takes it with teary eyes, holding it close to her face to make out the shape of her. She hands it to Philippe and grabs my hands.

“I’ve thought about it before, but when I got pregnant I couldn’t wait to tell you-“

“She kept telling me I had to make a trip out to London just so she could give you the news.” Philippe interrupts, eyes scanning the ultrasound still.

“No really,” Bridget laughs. “I did. It’s like I got this new perspective.”

She puts my hands on her belly and covers mine with hers. I feel everything at once then, all the heartbreak I ever went through to get here.

“I can’t imagine giving this baby up. And it’s barely 3 months. What you were willing to do to give me a better life-“

She breaks off and Philippe squeezes her shoulder. I watch my daughter try to gain control of her emotions. I remember when I was pregnant with her, anything would set me off.

“It must not have been easy. After carrying me like this for 9 whole months. Thank you-“ she looks up to where Harry’s standing. I barely register his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you as my mum and dad, for making the hardest decision I can imagine ever making, so I could have something you knew you couldn’t provide.”

I reel my tears in, save them for later that night in bed while Harry holds me tight against him.

Right now I kiss my daughter and tell her what a good mother she will make. I tell her and Philippe how proud I was of them, how excited, how wonderful this was.

Age 46

The day we meet our granddaughter is seared into my brain. We get the call at 8:35pm, Harry and I were staying in a B&B in Coventry despite Bridget’s mum insisting we stay with her. We’d been here all weekend, booked it all week, not wanting to miss Bridget’s delivery date.

“Y/N she’s here,” her mum whispers into the phone. Her voice is filled with joy and giddiness. “She’s here.”

“We’re coming,” I say. Harry’s already at the door and we rush out into the night to see our granddaughter.

She has the perfect little face, and when she finally wakes up I gasp when I see Harry’s eyes looking back at me. I turn to him, to see if he noticed, but he’s teary-eyed and gazing at the baby in awe. I soak it in for a second, imagining this exact look if we’d kept our baby so many years ago.

Bridget’s parents had given us the room, to give us a moment alone, and I can’t be more grateful. Bridget encourages us to hold her and as her soft body is pressed into my body I let out a sob and hand her over to Harry. I excuse myself and step outside the room.

Lou’s kids sit on the floor outside, playing with whatever toys are spilling out of a miniature backpack. I focus on the flashy colours, trying to calm down, counting the number of toys falling out.

My life was a 180 from 10 years ago. This moment would go down in our history books as one of the best days of our lives.

But I can’t deny the bittersweet. The experience threatens to push me into the bitter past of not even getting to hold Baby Bridget. But with it comes an undeniable sweetness of getting to experience this now.

I take a deep breath and walk back in. Harry and Bridget stop mid-sentence and turn to me. Bridget’s face is streaked with tears, Harry’s looks concerned but I smile. He sits with the pink bundle to his chest and I ache.

“Don’t look so obvious you were talking about me,” I try a joke.

“Are you alright?” Bridget asks.

“May I hold her?” I ask in return.

I sit on the edge of the bed and she’s placed in my arms; she’s perfect. Just as perfect as Bridget must have been.

“She’s got Philippe’s hair,” I gently stroke the wispy blonde strands.

“She’s got my eyes, her grandpa’s eyes.”

I look at Harry. And he catches the stricken look on my face when Bridget tips forward and whispers to her baby.

“Look baby, this is your mumma’s mum, and your mumma’s dad. You’ve got his beautiful eyes. Say hi to grandma!”

My throat tightens. “Bridge.”

She leans away, her eyes dart between us. “I know I call you Y/N and Harry. It made it easier at first but…you are my mum and dad. Even though I have another pair. You are my mum and dad. And I want her to know you like that.”

“Oh love,” Harry leans down and kisses the top of our daughter’s head. She keeps her green eyes trained on me, grasping my hand that’s wrapped under her baby’s.

I mouth a thank you, my voice couldn’t pass through the block in my throat. She squeezes my hand and it sets the baby off. Remembering when my nephews were this young, I just hand her back to Bridget knowing she only wanted her mum.

Harry and I stay in the waiting room. We couldn’t go home, even though we had spent our allotted time we had inside the room, we stay there.

We watch Lou’s kids as Bridget’s family gathers in her room. We stay as they fall asleep, draped over us. I remember when Taylor’s kids were this small, they would fall asleep anywhere.

We talk in whispers, I don’t remember what about exactly. Mostly how excited we were. How there was so much to look forward to. How different our lives looked a decade ago.

“One day we’ll tell our grandkids,” I remember Harry saying. “We’ll tell them all about us, how we met, how our love burned so bright it shone in the sky. We lost each other but our love was always there to guide us back home.”

“We’ll see them grow up, all the memories we missed.”

“We’ll change diapers.”

“We’ll change diapers,” I giggle, half-delirious by the lack of sleep. It was probably 2am and I was tired.

When I gaze up at Harry I remember him holding our granddaughter. I replace her with Bridget. For a minute I allow myself to imagine how that would have been.

“I think you would have made an amazing mum if we did things differently,” Harry whispers into my hair.

“You too.” I whisper back.

“An amazing mum? You think?” The edge of his lips tug upwards.

“Harry,” I warn. We had kids sleeping on us we were trying not to wake.

“I love you.” He says in response. “To the stars and back.”

On our drive home I can’t stop looking at him. I always wondered how it would be like to grow old with someone; when I was younger and watch my own parents celebrate anniversaries. And then when I was older and my first marriage was so rocky.

But thinking about it now is like a simple mathematical equation. You take two lives, two individuals, and you bracket them in love. You add an exponent—the decision to continue choosing each other. And you get a lifelong commitment. No matter the situation, no matter the challenges or the changes, you choose to choose each other.

His side profile lights up by an oncoming car. For a second he’s the same boy I feel in love with, a few more gray hairs, a few more wrinkles, and a moustache. But he’d always be the boy I followed out to the roof, who held my hand in our high school hallway, the one who turned an I into a we when I got pregnant, I see the man I had coffee with after a run-in at the Whole Foods, I see the broken heart from a harsh life sitting on the steps of a church, I see a bookworm, I see a father, a husband, and now a grandfather. I see the one person who knows me like the back of his hand. The one I am home with always.

“What is it?” Harry asks as we pull into our b&b. “Have you been asleep this whole ride or have you been staring at me?”

“Staring at you?” I ask. “You think I was staring at you the whole ride?”

“Well you were really silent. And facing me

“I was thinking.”

“About me?”

“Why are you so desparate!? Do I not show you enough love regularly?”

“I could always use more,” Harry looks half asleep as we reach our door.

“The people are right: you give someone a hand and watch as they take the whole arm,” I tease.

“When you gave me your hand, I made you a wife.” Harry retorts.

“Ooh,” I poke him. “I have to say that’s a good comeback for being half-asleep.”

Harry grins back. “You keep me sharp.”

“And you keep me happy. Now open the door so I can stop freezing out here!”

We walk into the warmth of our b&b.

For so much of our lives, our past decisions haunted us. We let so much go. Now life was repaying us, returning it all back, with interest.

***

In a small b&b in the middle of a town called Coventry, two lovers crawl into bed. They’d just become grandparents and they carry an exhausted buzz about them as they try to fall asleep. They’re both thinking of the other, of their daughter, of the tiny bundle they held in their arms today.

Some 20 minutes away their daughter lays in a hospital bed, an exhausted buzz putting her to sleep. She dreams of her mother who gave her up, how she had found her parents in the end, and dreams about the kind of mother she’ll be.

A few doors down lay her newborn daughter, she doesn’t dream of much, not yet, but she’s in for a lifetime of love.

Most of life is what we made it. Y/N and Harry loved deeply enough to make it.

———————————————

TAGLIST: @quinnwritezz @unknownnbihh @dilfhrrys @umadirectioner @hermionelove @anonymous-91 @meganxfddf

[bunnywrites1414]

Happy Kink-tober ~~

This years kinktober is 100% compiled of self inserts because I am a spoiled brat and this is my account :)))

I am not sorry for any of these

As always pls read the tags for EVERY SINGLE fic before you read. Don’t accidentally trigger yourself.

Day 1: Steve Harrington

Teasing- Your friends cannot take a hint and Steve doesn't seem to care

Day 2: Suna Rinatarou

Thigh Riding- What kind of jerk invites someone over and then sits on a computer game for 2 hours? Suna, that's who.

Day 3: Shota Aizawa

Oral Fixation- Y/N gets bratty without something in her mouth and Aizawa is tired of hearing her.

Day 4: Jax Teller

Daddy Kink- Y/N knows what that word does to Prince Teller, she just doesn't care

Day 5: Eddie Munson

Corruption- She is the cutest thing he's ever seen and he cannot wait to ruin her.

Day 6: Spencer Reid

Sadomasochism- Angry Dom!Spencer = Unfair punishments

Day 7: Hitoshi Shinsou

Mind control- Hitoshi's quirk is fun, when he can convince his partners to let him do it

Day 8: Johnathan Byers

Brat Taming- Johnathan is a pushover. His submissive is well aware of that. However it takes more than a pout to sway his friend Eddie

Day 9: Izuku Midoriya

Forced Orgasms- Y/N tastes like heaven and Izuku can't control himself

Day 10: Ushijima Wakatoshi

Size Kink- Ushiwaka is a big 'ol boy

Day 11: Sam Winchester

Angry Sex- Sam hates Y/N. Y/N hates Sam. Dean and Bobby think it's hilarious.

Day 12: Billy Hargrove

Costumes- Billy didn't even know Y/N was coming to this party, but he knows they're matching costumes and that her ass looks perfect in those shorts.

Day 13: Taishiro Toyomitsu (Fat Gum) ft. Kirishima

Teaching- Kirishima has some questions for his mentor and Fatgum is happy to help.

Day 14: Katsuki Bakugo

Phone Sex- Katsuki's away on a mission and Y/N can't cum without him

Day 15: Eddie Munson

Throat Training-Eddie is really good with his mouth, Y/N wants to make him feel just as good as he makes her feel, but it takes a little work.

Day 16: Kotaro Bokuto ft. Kuroo

Group Sex- Kuroo's little girlfriend is really cute and he knows it. Bokuto is a connoisseur of cute things, and Kuroo's not so bad.

Day 17: Eijiro Kirishima

Pain Play- Kirishima is a people pleaser and Y/N likes a little pain with her pleasure

Day 18: Jax Teller

Dumbification- Even 'big hot shot Scientists' need a few moments to be a little brainless.

Day 19: Amren

Blood- Amren has never had blood wraith

Day 20: Arron Hotchner ft. Spencer Reid

Pet Play- Arron forgets to mention he's bringing home a friend, and Y/N is deep in pet space when they get there

Day 21: Cassian

Primal Play - Cassian’s an animal.

Day 22: Steve Harrington ft. Eddie Munson

Degradation and Praise- Steve and Eddie balance each other very well, or at least Y/N thinks so

Day 23: Azriel Shadowsinger

Edging- 'If you hold it I'll reward you'. Y/N likes rewards.

Day 24: Spencer Reid

Bondage- Reid wants to practice his knots

Day 25: Dean Winchester

Overstimulation- Dean is cocky and Y/N thinks it's funny to push his buttons.

Day 26: Eddie Munson

Dacryphilia- Eddie teaches Y/N a thing or two about discipline and can't help but notice how pretty she looks when she's crying.

Day 27: Shota Aizawa

DILF- Aizawa knows he's old enough to be her dad, but his Nanny is perfect

Day 28: Tetsuro Kuroo

Psuedocest- He knows he shouldn't but she sounds so desperate. What kind of brother would he be if he just let his little sister suffer?

Day 29: Spencer Reid

CNC- Y/N is stuck. Like really really stuck. Her neighbor Reid agrees to help under one condition.

Day 30: Keiji Akaashi

Mutual Masturbation- Akaashi is a visual learner, but Y/N thinks he just likes to see her embarassed

Day 31: Jax Teller

Rough Sex- Jax likes to fuck after he fights, and his choice of ass has a hard time saying no to that smile.

[barefoothighlander]

pick and go - 2

summary: you’ve just landed a job as athletic trainer for the manchester rugby team, the night before you start you decide to stop by a pub. you end up meeting Simon whose rugged charm and strong form influence you to take him home, only to find out the next morning that he plays for the team. rugby au

warnings: mdni (18+), smut, p-in-v sex, creampie, dirty talk, riding, small mention of razors and blood, simon's a flirt

prev part

a/n: once again, shameless porn with plot, I'm prob gonna do 1-2 more parts for this, not proofread.

You sit in your office tapping a pen against the desk, you’re fidgety watching the clock hands tick down, 4:47, a few more minutes and you’d be off, heading home, waiting for him. Truthfully you couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, he seemed the flirty type, and you figured both of you recognized what happened as a one-night stand, simple gratification that would end in you both acting professionally at work. Your mind is running rampant with thoughts, a million things at once, trying to finish your reports for the day before tossing them aside, deciding you couldn’t focus. You clean up your office, putting things back in place, glancing up at the clock and deciding you could afford to leave a few minutes early, training had ended hours ago, you had no injuries to attend to, you could leave.

Arriving at your flat you’re in a blind panic, the drive back took a little longer than usual and it was already 5:17, you ran around cleaning the rooms, tossing out trash and shoving strewn clothing into a laundry basket, you needed to show, tending to large sweaty men all day left you in a sheen of your own sweat, your hair a mess. You strip your clothes and rush into the bathroom, washing your hair as fast as possible before running a razor over your legs, in your panic-induced state you had managed to knick your knee, a small pool of blood forming at your feet. Fuck, you turn the shower off, covering yourself with a towel as you step out, rummaging through the cabinet for a band-aid, you find none and resort to searching in the kitchen, you stop in your tracks at the sight of him,

“Simon, what- how did you get in here?”

“Door was open, figured you wouldn’t mind”

“It’s still breaking and entering if I leave the door unlocked”

He smiles, “You’re bleeding”

Oh, “Yea I cut myself on accident”

“Here sit down,” he says, moving into the kitchen to find you a band-aid,

“The one in the corner,” you say, pointing to the cabinet, he grabs the box moving towards you and kneels in front of your form, you’re suddenly aware of how bare you are, a thin towel covering you, he grabs your ankle resting it on his bent thigh before placing a band-aid over the cut, looking up at you before placing a soft kiss to the wound and you blush. He stands tall in front of you, you have to crane your neck just to see his face,

“You’re blushing”

“I’m basically naked”

“Yeah, I noticed,” He says, grabbing the back of your head and pulling you into a deep kiss, he smirks against your lips, hands coming down to settle on top of yours as he pulls the hem of your towel from your chest leaving you bare. He pulls back, “So how was your day”

You tilt your head, “Seriously”

“Yeah, figured I’d come by for a chat”

“You’re gonna make me beg, aren’t you”

“Knew you couldn’t resist me love”

He closes the gap between you, lips finding yours again and he hoists your legs around his waist, holding you as he sits on the couch. The kiss is heated as he teases at your parted lips with his tongue before diving in, kissing you deeper, his hands roam your naked curves as you grind down on him, arousal pooling in your stomach. His lips release yours as he moves down, kissing and licking at your neck, biting lightly above your collarbone, a small gasp escaping your lips as you grind down harder, the fold of his pants and growing erection stimulating your clit.

“You’re all I could think about today,” He says, “Messed up a bunch of drills because of you”

The fire in your abdomen is growing as his words go straight to your core, bringing you closer to your peak, he palms at your breasts, sucking a nipple into his mouth as your hands run through his hair, he grips your hips with a bruising pace, forcing you down onto him harder,

“Fuck love, feel that, that’s what you do to me”

You’re moaning in his ear and he moves you at an unrelenting pace, you crumble against him, forehead pressed to his shoulder as your climax hits you.

“Soaking my jeans baby, gonna have to do something about that” He says, grabbing your waist and flipping you onto your back, he tugs off his shirt and your hands roam his toned form, feeling over every ridge of muscle. He unbuttons his jeans, pulling them down enough that his cock springs free, hitting against your lower stomach, cocky bastard wasn’t even wearing underwear, he leans down and kisses you, running his tip through your folds gathering your slick on its head before teasing at your entrance.

He watches your face contort as he pushes the head of his cock inside you, your thighs clench around his waist as he pushes in slowly, giving you time to adjust to the stretch. He sits back on his legs, spreading your thighs so he can get a full view of where you meet, running his hands over your skin before settling them to hold your waist as he begins thrusting into you. You reach back to grab at the armrest as he fucks deep into you, his thick cock gliding against your soaking walls, he grunts as he feels you squeeze him, moans falling from your open mouth. He grabs one of your legs, resting it against his shoulder, the new angle allowing him to hit impossibly deep inside you as your back arches from the couch, he’s pounding into you, bringing a thumb to toy with your clit, the stimulation causing you to clench around him.

“Shit love, so tight, not gonna last long” He punctuates his last words with a harsh thrust that has your eyes squeezing shut, the rough pad of his thumb circling your swollen clit inching you towards your second orgasm. His thumb working in tandem with his thrusts brings you to your peak, you cum with a cry as he fucks you through it,

“That’s it love, doing so well for me”

His body cages yours as his arms snake under you to grip your shoulders, he’s pounding into you, tip hitting your cervix with every thrust as his moans breeze across your ear, your nails digging into his back as his hips stutter, slowing his thrusts as he shoots his cum deep into you.

He rests his softening cock inside you, trying to catch his breath as you feel your mind cloud in a lust-filled haze, he pulls out of you slowly, tucking himself into his jeans before moving to the bathroom and grabbing a damp towel for you, softly cleaning you up. He sits back on the couch, pulling your legs onto his lap as he kneads the meat of your calves, you rest for a few minutes, feeling your heartbeat fall back into a steady rhythm before getting up to throw some clothes on. You settle on a pair of panties and a large shirt, figuring he’d already seen you naked, his eyes glued to you as you walk back into the room, setting yourself beside him. His arm snakes around your shoulder, pulling you close to him, your head resting against his chest while he reaches for the remote, turning the tv on and flicking to the sports channel.

“Seriously?” You say as he lands on the rugby game

“Think of it like homework” He smiles, resting his cheek against your head.

Sitting for a while, watching the game you feel your stomach grumble.

“You hungry?” You ask

“I could eat”

Stupid question, the man ate constantly considering how many calories he burned during his games. The two of you settle on Chinese food, ordering for yourselves and awaiting its arrival.

When the food had arrived you and Simon sat on the stools in your kitchen.

“Does the team know about it?” You ask

“This?”

“Us, our having sex”

He laughs a little, “No I’ve not gone and told the whole clubhouse that I’m fucking our doctor”

You nod, “Good cause, I think they’d fire me”

“Ah wouldn’t want that now”

You smile, returning to your noodles as a comfortable silence falls over the two of you. You finish eating, cleaning up the dishes before looking out the window.

“It’s getting late” 

Simon turns to look outside, “It is yeah, you kicking me out?”

“Kinda, you almost made me late to work today, can’t have that”

He laughs, “Alright” He picks up his clothes, throwing his shirt over his head as you stare at him, “You know if you stare like that people will find out without me saying anything”

You huff a breath through your nose, moving towards him and reaching up to kiss him, “Goodnight Simon”

“I’ll see you tomorrow love, sweet dreams,” He says with a wink, walking through your front door, leaving you alone in your flat.

[ywpd-translations]

Ride 771: A new gear!!

Pag 1

1: This is the fight's gong!!

Pag 2

1: Ohuruaaaagh!!

Pag 3

1: Buooooogh

2: The lead is here, two people!!

3: Sohoku and Hakogaku!!

So the ones who are aiming for the sprint line on the first day of the Inter High…. Those two…

4: are the same two people from last year!!

5: Huh waa

There are still almost 3km until the sprint line, but …

Pag 4

1: They're accelerating like they're right before the sprint line!!

Ruaaagh

Oooooogh

2: They're so fast!

How many kilometers per hours are they going at!?

A bike can go at that speed!?

3: But those two….

Was it my imagination?

Pag 5

1: They were smiling!!

2: Hahaha, not bad, San-na!!

You're keeping up with my acceleration!!

Keeping up!? With your acceleration!?

Buah!!

Oi oi, that's-

Pag 6

1: My line!! Orange!!

Honestly, I'm surprised!!

2: I'm number 4, the ace climber, and I'm a Hakogaku third year

Honestly, during the last year both my power and my acceleration 

3: have increased by several steps!!

4: Is that so!!

5: There are practically no sprinters within the club who can keep up with me!!

6: But you did

You didn't just stick to me from behind, you lined up!!

What does it mean!! It makes the corners of my mouth turn up!!

Pag 7

1: Hahaha that's because

2: He's shooting ahead!!

3: I'm a genius!!

5: Nice acceleration!!

Pag 8

1: Orange!!

2: The speed of your attack, your acceleration power and the lack of hesitation when taking the curve!!

Hahaha

Pag 9

1: It's really like you said, you definitely powered up!!

You got stronger since last year!!

4: Even while taking a curve in an unsteady position, with my shoulder hitting against yours.......

5: What's wrong, San-na, what's this

6: Are you about to say something secret you can't let the spectators hear?

Pag 10

1: you counter it firmly with the trunk of your body!!

2: Didn't they just make contact with each other while taking the curve!?

Waaaa

Sohoku's number 4 pushed back that huge guy from Hakogaku with his hips!!

3: Buah!!

You're the only one

4: You're the only one who can make me shake like this!!

Pag 11

2: They hit each other again!! It's a super close combat!!

So what’s the deal with all your banging around since earlier, then?

Ah, that?

3: Is this a request?

You mean you want me to show you

Pag 12

1: the true essence of my special explosive acceleration!?

Okay then, watch closely!!

4: His movements are so fast!!

5: This my Special Highstone

Pag 13

1: Hyper acceleration!!

Pag 14

1: He left me before my own eyes!!

Is this guy for real!?

Dammit!!

2: This is fun!!

3: Are you surprised, San-na? Hahaha

Until last year, I accelerated with the image

4: of a gear going into place

Get in

Get in

Get in

Pag 15

1: But now I've come to the point that I can freely make it go into place matching my own timing!!

4: The number of gears I've prepared is

5: “Number”!?

6: The first one is “white”

7: The second one is “shironeri*”

8: The third one is “pale yellow”

9: The fourth one is “gamboge*”

The fifth one is “orange”

(*NdT.: all the names are colors, these ones are Japanese traditional colors)

Pag 16

1: All together there are six levels!!

This year I divided my acceleration in six stages!!

2: Six stages!!

Seriously!?

Pag 17

1: And by the way, my acceleration from earlier was “unbleached silk” the second stage

2: Did it feel fast!?

3: Naturally, once we get before the sprint line I'll use

4: the sixth one, “golden yellow”!!

Pag 18

3: Dammit

4: So there's also things like this in the Inter High

Seriously?

5: Now I understand the reason for our hard practice and for the harshness of training camp

Without that I wouldn't have been able to fight on this stage

Pag 19

1: Issa and Doubashi..... just when I thought the sprint fight was narrowed down to those two.....

2: Another person comes chasing!!

3: Did he break away from the pack behind and got here!? He wasn't there with us earlier!!

In such a short time he shook everyone off and chased us!?

4: Even though I've been pedaling at full throttle since earlier, he keeps getting closer!!

5: So there's also things like this!? At the Inter High!!

Pag 20

1: It's filled with monsters!!

Hayaaaa

2: But that's fine by me

I thought my part was over....

But there's still work left to do!! I won't let this guy get to the lead!!

[neapolitanupsidedowncake]

could you write shoto todoroki best friend headcanons please?

best friend headcanons for shoto todoroki! gn!reader!!

content warning: fluff

a/n: i really like writing bsf headcanons for some reason. sometimes platonic is the way to go yk? but when i write them it feels the same as bf/gf headcanons? (that didnt make sense lol) anyway hope ya like this one!

i feel like he'd be a really dry texter XD ("ok" "bye" "wyd" "seen 17 hours ago")

he likes to walk to class with you and eat lunch together!

he likes hanging out at places like coffee shops, big libraries, or just really cute gift shops!

when you do hang out, he'll post pics from it and caption it with something saying you're his really fun best friend ❤️❤️

he remembers lots of things about you, like your middle name or who your insufferable red flag ex is, etc

he trusts you enough to open up to you about his family issues, and he tells his mother about you when he visits her!!

if he notices you're looking a bit down, he'll be concerned about you for like days or so before he finally asks you why "you looked sad a few days ago"

he can be rude or ill-mannered also, so if anyone bullied you or treated you badly, he would have no problem sticking up for you very angrily

if you ever ride on a train or bus together, he'll share his headphones with you and let you pick whatever song you wanted to listen to

he's not a really intentionally funny or understanding of funny things so if you send him a meme or smth he'll just be like "huh" or "i dont rly get it"

he is a top student, but i don't really peg him as one to really want to tutor or teach anyone, so good luck if you had failing grades lmao

he's not exactly outgoing, but he'll hold conversations with you because he really enjoys talking to you 💗

if you ended up getting your heart broken by someone, he'll make it a goal to never talk to that person coz he dislikes anyone who hurts you

[wosoluver]

To undo a mistake

Part 9/17 - previous - next

Lena x Bayern Player!reader

Lena Oberdorf Masterlist

──✩₊⁺⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧──

"Good morning!" - You said as you sat down for breakfast.

"Good morning." - The girls said back in unison.

"I'm so tired. Thank god today is only a recovering session."

"Tactical planning too. Coach said we need to start building up the team around your playmaking decisions."

"When did he say that?"

"This morning. You have to stop arriving late everywhere."

"I am on time! I'm just the last to show up, on time!"

And it was the truth. You were always late, but always managed to make on the cusp of the time limit.

After breakfast and heading to training, which had been somewhat shorter than usual, everyone decided to spend sometime playing games or just chilling altogether.

You decided to go up to your room for a little bit. As soon as you were there you decided on calling Ana.

"Hey. Where are you?"

"Hi, I'm heading home, from training. The doctor said I can officially go back to training. Nothing too intense, but I can go back to participating on things. No playing yet though."

"Really?! This is such a good news. You'll be back to playing in no time, you'll see. Does that mean I have to give you rides to training everyday now?"

"I mean only if you want to.

How are you feeling since the game?"

"Somewhat worried. Coach wants to keep me in the middle field now, he wants me to focus on distributing the ball and deciding on plays."

"But why are you worried? This is good news, no? Your great at that!"

"It just feels like a big responsibility. As a forward I wasn't the only one, If I failed, there would always be someone else there. But if the whole team starts to depend on me to figure out what to do, If I fail the team will automatically drop in quality."

"Don't do this. Don't doubt yourself. You're one of the best in the team. I'm sure they wouldn't ask if they thought you couldn't do it."

"I know. I just worry about failing emotionally again. I won't have the space for that from now on."

"You've be-" But before she could finish it, Lena came bursting through the door.

"Y/N! Aren't you coming down to..." She trailed out seen you on the call. "Sorry."

"I'll call you later, yeah?" Trying to get out of the situation as fast as you could.

"Let me know if you need anything." She said hanging up.

"Sorry, we are doing a ping-pong competition, and we're missing a player." She was trying to keep all her feelings in, trying to keep them from showing.

"I was about to go down anyway. I'm teaming up with Syd, I want to win." You said it joking around. Everyone knew Lena wasn't the best at ping-pong.

"So you and Ana seem close. You're always on the phone." she said as you two were making your way down.

"Yeah. She gets me. We've both been going through some stuff lately." you answered simply, not wanting to get on this topic with your ex.

Did you like Ana as more than a friend? Maybe. But you didn't want think about that yet. You had just recovered from your last relationship. And if you were to talk about it, it surely wouldn't be witn Lena.

After playing around for a bit you guys decided on having a break.

"Hey, I know your not the best at this, but your hitting the ball a little too hard." Said Lea, to her team partner.

Lena didn't care much for her comment. She had spend the last half hour, arguing with herself about the stupidity of her jealous thoughts.

"Lena? Did you hear me?"

"Yeah, yeah I just have something on my mind."

"Do you want to talk?"

"No." she quickly stood straight. "I'm ready for the next round."

──✩₊⁺⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧──

The closer you were getting to going home more excited you seemed. And for Lena, it was the complete opposite.

It was now Tuesday, and you got ready for the game. You were in the starting lineup this time.

After the anthems and the procedure to start the game, you were on your marks for the kick off.

We had the possession, first few minutes had you guys working hard already.

But at almost 4 minutes, Schüller had scored a header. You were coming through the midfield passing the ball to Linder who crossed the ball to Lea.

Both teams had a couple of chances of scoring. On the 22nd minute Eiriksdottir scored, the equalizer, assisted by Sveindís.

But soon she was fouled and couldn't stay on the pitch. It was bad news for her but good news for your team. She was one of their best players, so now you had somewhat of an advantage.

You didn't participate much on the plays after that. On with over 10 minutes for half time, Schüller scored once again, assisted by Bühl.

And than finally at the extra 3 minutes added to the first half, you were able to kick the ball towards the goal, but the ball went back and forth like a ping-pong, and Lena had managed to score.

As the referee blew the whistle you all went back to the locker room. On your way to the tunnel you felt someone jump on your back.

"We did it!" referring to her comment from the last game.

"You did it. And for the first time you won at ping-pong."

"Haha" she said ironically. "I'm serious."

"It wasn't actually an assistance. But yeah I guess."

──✩₊⁺⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧──

Hello loveys we are 9 parts in and I have no idea when this story is gonna end. Once again I mainly used everything that actually happened in the game, just changed a little bit to fit the story.

[winterisol]

im in the trees, im in the breeze (2/?)

Rosquez Future Reconciliation Fic (2028-TBD)

Part One. || Part Three.

Word Count: 2.2k words Warning(s): This is not in chronological order, aka. this is a flashback, also a lot of angst :D

Valentino has a legacy to maintain. And he has an army of young italian riders to carry it. Yet, one seems to have always been a little bit different. Because the more Valentino looked at the kid, the more he saw him. He swears he's being haunted. Or whatever gods that exist have made it their life mission to make him suffer. To remind him of his sins.

Valentino always dreamed of creating his own academy. The idea of training the next generation of great motorcyclists, a tantalising dream which he was drawn to like a moth to the light.

But that idea was for the future. When Valentino cemented his legacy. When he achieved his tenth and retired in a blaze of glory. Valentino never thought it would come so abruptly.

It began in 2011, when his father suddenly called him, almost begging Valentino over the phone to go and meet one of his old friend’s sons. Uncertain, but irked by the desperation of his father, Valentino agreed to meet the kid, inviting the kid and the kid's father to Tavullia. 

Valentino didn't know what he expected.

The kid was young, aggressive and reckless. But that came with the age, he was only 17.

However, it was the kid off-track which really intrigued Valentino, as much as the kid was recklessly rapid, offtrack the kid was clearly smart, and laidback. As they took a break from riding, the kid sunk into the chair comfortably, fiddling with his leathers, before casually striking a conversation, despite his eyes bright with the same shiny admiration almost anyone has the first time they meet Valentino.

The kid's intelligence also meant that he was fast at learning, and by the end of the day the kid could comfortably follow Valentino around the Ranch. Valentino would never admit this until years later, but the kid quickly wormed his way into Valentino's heart. Enough so that Valentino invited the kid over the following month.

This kid’s name was Franco Morbidelli, and from that day on it was history.

In the next year and a half, Valentino would invite Franco over during his breaks. They would spend hours on track, Valentino coaching him on every corner and straight. It gave Valentino a purpose, a distraction from the disaster that was Ducati. 

Franco, or as he insisted on being called Franky, began to open up more. He would talk about his family and school. He'd talk about how his Dad used to also ride, and how coming to Tavuilla was always the highlight of his week.

Valentino quickly picked up that Rome was not that much of a happy place for the Morbidelli family, Franky often talking about how kids make fun of his accent that he gets from his mom, or how his father works long hours, only returning home as the clock strikes midnight.

Sometimes Valentino found himself wanting to ask more, but what could he ask?

It wasn’t like it was any of his business. So he stayed quiet, hoping that the joy Franky seemed to have at Tavullia was enough to outweigh the struggles at home. 

Then in the week following New Years day Valentino got an abrupt call from Franky’s mother. Her voice shaking as she told him the news. Franky’s father passed away and Franky would no longer be able to train with Valentino in Tavullia, or compete in motorcycles again.

Stood in shock, Valentino tried to find words, only for nothing to come out.

Taking a deep breath, he continued to search for words, something to comfort her. And perhaps it was the longing look of Livio Morbedelli, Franky's father. Or, perhaps he was just feeling particularly generous that odd January morning, but whatever possessed Valentino that night he would forever be thankful for.

By the next morning he had arranged for Franky and his mother to move into a house next to the ranch, telling Franky’s mother it would not only give Franky a chance at his dreams, but also give them a much needed change in scenery.

For the rest of 2013 Valentino would quietly support Franky’s endeavours in Moto2, giving snacks, advice, and a private shoulder to cry on. It was a nice small thing, almost like having a new little brother. But like most things Valentino touches, it didn’t stay small for long. 

In 2014 Valentino would create his very own Moto3 team, and sign a particularly interesting talent, Francesco Bagnaia, or as he was affectionately referred as, Pecco. 

Before his own eyes, the VR46 Academy quickly grew into something more, the once small hangouts with Franky turning into a reasonably sized class around the track.

And like school not every kid got along at first. It was no secret that hosting private races around the Ranch with half a dozen teenage boys was a breeding ground for fights. But as time passed the kids began to change. They began to grow as competitors, as riders, as people, but most of all they began to grow closer together.

The group of kids turned from a ragtag group of teenagers who's only commonality was their love for racing and  worship of Valentino Rossi into something more, a family. 

And as they continued to grow, their personalities began to solidify, each unique yet similar in their own ways. The media liked to joke that they were all similar in that they all inherited the best aspects of Valentino.

Franky’s relaxed demeanour, always lounging back as the younger boys bickered over who had the best lap or sense of style.

Pecco’s charisma, his sharp gaze being more than enough to shut down any arguments between the boys.

Luca’s pragmatism, his ability to analyse every movement on and off track, calmly explaining why Bezz's lap times were still slower than Pecco's or why Franky was losing a tenth in every left corner.

Marco’s passion, always ready to compete, whether it's for the best laps times around the Ranch or in a silly game of monopoly.

And then there was Celestino, the baby, who the media used to say that he was like young Valentino, charming off-track and absolutely captivating on-track. The new young talent from Italy, climbing the ranks at alarming rates.

But all of this was nothing more than media speculation, people whose lives depended on pandering towards the god of MotoGP.

They never mentioned how Bezz took everything on track to heart. 

They never mentioned how Pecco was cruel with his words, playing the media game with almost terrifying accuracy, every cutting comment purposely chosen to cause the most pain. 

They never mentioned how Luca had an ego, an ego that convinced him that he could fix what even those greater than him were unable to correct. 

They never mentioned how Franky was struggling to live up to his promises. 

And they never, ever mentioned how Celestino was petty, clinging onto the pain of others rather than letting it die.

No, instead, Valentino quietly observed these traits. Watching as each and every of these ugly parts manifest in each boy. A painful reminder of how human he was.

However, the most heart wrenching was seeing his kids act similar to him.

It hit him first when he saw Pecco apologising for an incident between himself and Jorge, immediately holding up his hands and taking blame. Valentino would never admit to a mistake so willingly .

It then hit him again when watching Luca unabashedly laughing with Enea Bastianini. The two boys giggling in Enea’s garage as the mechanics began preparing for the final race of the Moto2 season. Valentino would never even try to be so openly affectionate to a title rival.

But the worst of it was Celestino, perhaps it was another reason for the decline in their relationship, who when breaking his collarbone for the third time insisted that it didn’t hurt and that he was fit enough to race. No one believed him, but the stupid medical centre, clearing Celestino to race. Valentino cared too much about his own life to ever think about risking it, especially when it's not even for a win.

Luca once sat his brother down and straight up asked if he hated Celestino because he saw parts of him in the kid. Valentino dismissed it, telling Luca that he could never hate Celestino, and that the only similarities between Celestino and him was the RedBull sponsorship.

Luca scoffed.

-

He saw him in Celestino’s carefree laughter, competitive streak, but worst of all, his eyes, shiny and bright. The gaze of love and warmth. Except those shiny eyes were not directed at him, no, instead they directed themselves onto the one Academy boy who everyone said was the most similar to him. Marco.

The boy who worshipped Valentino as a kid. The boy who listened to every single word that fell from Valentino's mouth. The boy who could never understand the line between reality and on track delusions. The boy who did everything to hate him.

Valentino felt himself suffocating every time he was in a room with both boys, Marco’s obliviousness to Celestino’s gaze a painful reminder of a time of his life where he was the same, willfully ignorant.

It felt like being burned, and Valentino could not bear to feel any more pain. So he did what he did best, pull away.

At first Valentino thought his withdrawal from Celestino was unnoticeable, spending slightly less time in the VR46 garage in Moto2, pulling away from Celestino’s embrace a few seconds quicker, and focusing less on him when the boys practised. 

It just so happened it was the same time Celestino got close to him.

And from there it crumbled.

Valentino still remembers the day vividly. It was a cloudy morning in Tavullia but the boys were already awake, most of them sat eating breakfast while talking about their Summer break. In the background the August sun was lazily rising, its light providing warmth to Valentino who was frying the eggs.

Then suddenly the front door opened and Marco was the first to shoot up, immediately running to the main entrance, the loud bang and muffled words being a sign that Marco had found whoever was dropping by.

Luca trailed after Marco, his voice slightly muffled by the distance as he said, “Celin, you arrived early.” 

“Yeah, I was busy.” Valentino could hear the young boy reply.

And soon the three boys walked in, Marco still clinging onto Celestino, his arms draped over the younger boy’s shoulders.

“Vale.” Celestino greets softly, smiling.

“Celestino, come sit we’re eating breakfast.” Valentino greets back, turning back to the eggs and transferring them to a plate.

Sitting across from Celestino, Valentino focused on finishing his breakfast.

“Ah, Celin, what's got you busy this summer? Finally found a partner?” Pecco teases jokingly reaching to ruffle the younger boy's curls.

Celestino shakes his head, saying, “Nah, I was with Marc-”

And to this day Valentino doesn’t know what overtook him. Perhaps it was due to his lack of sleep, or how Marc was on his mind since the morning. But suddenly Valentino slammed the table, curling his lips as he venomously spat, “What are you, his newest shiny chew toy to rough around with?” 

“Vale-” Luca reprimanded, blue eyes staring piercingly, only to be cut off by Celestino.

“No, I in fact didn’t even go riding with him, which you would know if you ever checked my schedule!” Celestino yelled, face turning red, lips shaking.

“Did you even know where I was before I came here? Did you even check what sponsor events I have? Because if you did I would hope you have enough of a brain to put one and one together and get two!” Celestino continued, taking a deep breath, seething as he glared at Valentino.

With no response, Celestino’s hands began to tremble, lips curling into an ugly snarl as he said, “Well, because you don’t even seem to have the time to look at our shared calendar, I was in France signing with Tech3 KTM. And then I went to a RedBull event with another MotoGP rider called Marc Marquez. You might have heard of him, kinda famous and important for RedBull."

“Celestino-” Valentino began, only for nothing else to come out.

"You know I was asked if I wanted to immediately announce my commitment to KTM, but I told the team to wait. To wait until the next race so I could tell YOU before it was announced! How stupid of me to think you cared.”

Rubbing away tears, Bezz tried to reach over, only for Celestino to pull his arm away.

“I know I’ve been a disappointment, but I was hoping that you’d at least care enough to see that I was going to achieve my dream this week.” Celestino said, shaking. 

“I, I just wanted to make you proud. I still remember nervously telling you that RedBull gave me a better sponsorship offer than Monster. Back then you told me it was fine, that a sponsor meant nothing. But I see how it is, no matter what I do, as long as I bear any mark similar to Marc I will never be accepted here.”

And Celestino left the table, immediately heading out, and Valentino just sat there, like an idiot. As Marco chased after his best friend, Pecco picked at his food and Luca glared dangerously at his brother.

Finally meeting his younger brother’s gaze, Valentino cowering as Luca pointed his finger at the main entrance, eyes piercing, lips pursed, and face hardened as two simple words left Luca’s mouth.

“Fix this.”

He didn't.

[bawlbrayker]

I was tagged by @wehangout, and this one looks pretty cool to explore! She was tagged over a year ago, so it would be fun to see this one spread around again!

rules: post the first lines of your last 10 fics/chapters posted on AO3 (if you have less than 10 fics posted, post the first lines of all your fics) and try to draw some conclusions.

Mickey's heart is pounding. He's been standing on an empty dock for the last half hour, smoking too many cigarettes, pacing back and forth, trying to not breathe in the smell of stagnant pools of water filled with engine oil, ignoring the trains passing overhead. - Did I Wish You Here In Front Of Me

Mickey steps inside the tub, hot water flowing from his fucking West Side apartment shower like he has never experienced before, from either the shitty Milkovich house of horrors bathroom, or the cramped Gallagher bathroom that never had enough hot water, and almost zero water pressure. - It's Time to Come Clean

"Get the lube, bitch." Mickey says, tongue out in excitement, as he unbuckles his belt and drops his fly. - Just What You Feelin

Still wet from the shower, Ian attempts to put Mickey in a headlock as they fall laughing onto the bed, Mickey getting an elbow into Ian's ribs, slightly harder than the situation required. What A Man Gotta Do

A ray of sunlight ripples across his pillow and as soon as Mickey opens his eyes into wakefulness, he tries desperately to hold onto his dream, already fading so quickly and leaving him only with random flashes of red and green in his inner gaze.   One Hundred and Forty Seven Steps

Juggling a box of Fruit Rounds and a box of Froot Loops, trying to decide if getting the cheaper version will justify buying an extra box of snacks, Ian feels a tingling up his spine, and inexplicably his dick twitches in his boxers. The Divining Rod

“So, Big Boy… do you come here often?” Mickey asks, hoping his husband would jump straight into the roleplay. Apparently catching on, the redhead below him grips his hips tightly. “Actually, this is my first time here. I didn't think I’d pick up a hot guy in a bar and go home with him the first night I arrived.” C.O.C.O.N.U.T

“Ugh, it’s the middle of the day, man.” Mickey groused, as he rubbed his eyes and squinted at the ground, trying to avoid looking up at the bright sky. Save a Horse, Ride a Gallagher

It’s a Friday afternoon, the day before their fifth wedding anniversary. Ian and Mickey are standing in the middle of the liquor store, quibbling over which vodka to buy, with Mickey throwing in gentle jabs about Ian’s low tolerance for alcohol. A Slice of Life

Conclusion: I definitely have a preference for writing in present tense! I'm working on it though. I also seem to lead with canon dialogue where I can. I also love to start everything with Mickey.

Gonna tag a bunch of you because this was from ages ago so you can either do it again or do it with new fics! No pressure, of course! Play along if you wish! This was fun!

@jrooc @blue-disco-lights @em-harlsnow @roryonic @spookygingerr

@spacerockwriting @rayrayor @depressedstressedlemonzest @deathclassic @starry-nights-17

@southsidestory @ian-galagher @ms-moonlight-inn @biblionerd07 @mrs-monaghan

@sweetperversiongirl @crestfallercanyon @gallavichgeek @ifallonblackdays @solitarycreaturesthey

@mytangledmind @sgtmickeyslaughter @mybrainismelted @goodkwuestion @lingy910y

@tsuga-of-mars @spoonfulstar @scurvgirl @honeyvanillin @darlingian

@ryantryinx @sweetbee78 @gallabitch73 @twinklyylights @too-schoolforcool