#And now she doesn’t have freckles

[ursidanger]

Id like to also know how you came up with the trio too!! I like your bears a lot

Thank you! Sometimes it is as simple as combining things you are already interested in. Like, with Salmon Road, I wanted to combine lesbians, bears, towns where weird things happen and unconventional relationships.

If you go back into this blog’s archive, you can find the oldest version of Whitney, Clementine & Joan. I drew them with a mouse on a school computer in 2018

I was an extremely dedicated We Bare Bears fanartist from 2015-2019 so I was already very interested in drawing bear characters at the time

In 2019, I repurposed the bear girls into my first anthro ocs + changed the entire premise of their story to include elements of supernatural investigation

(My original anthro concepts shown below; I was 18 yrs old when I drew these)

Over the years, I gradually added to their stories and personalities and refined what they looked like alongside developing my technical drawing skills

Here is a timeline of Joan Designs:

Keep in mind many, many drawings happened in-between these designs, even if I’ve never posted them!

This is one sketchbook spread of Whitney & Joan expressions from 2020:

In general, the main trio of Salmon Road are very special to me. I am proud of their characters and the direction they are heading in

And I really appreciate that there are people out there who show such an interest in them! I hope seeing some of my older concept art was enjoyable for you. It's wild to look back and notice what has changed about my art (and what has stayed exactly the same)

[wickmitz]

How do you think about Frepper? I'm neutral about this ship, but the fans Frepper attitude towards confuses me, Ivy and Freckle have only been dating for a week and know each other superficially, but everyone already thinks that by the end of the comic they will get married, I think differently, I think that in the end they will break up with each other because they are too different personalities, I literally can't imagine that both of them will be happy with each other in marriage, Ivy is assertive and active, on the other hand Freckle is passive and just agrees with Ivy, this is not a guarantee of a healthy relationship where a partner completely dominates the other, plus to all that, I will not forget how their relationship started, Ivy just decided that they were dating, and without asking Freckle's permission, she just KISSED him, again without his permission, Frepper fans think that it's cute, but when I saw it, I thought "what the hell did I just see?", in general, it's strange for me that Frepper fans are okay with such things, of course later Freckle shows attraction to Ivy, showing that he likes her in some way too, but I still won't forget how their relationship started and how Freckle used to try to escape from Ivy when she squeezed his hand tightly and forced him to her …

I'm not against Frepper, but I don't understand his fans who don't see these issues and who treat other points of view on their relationship (like mine) as … um, as nonconformity? Fans from reddit are just obsessed with Frepper, I don't know about other networks but that's how it is on reddit, I think there are people who have my opinion but are afraid to say it because of fans, of course, I met Frepper fans there who normally accept such an opinion, but still there is a feeling that such a opinion cannot be told

Simply put, Ivy and Freckle are a couple that will eventually break up with each other unless there's an event between them in the comic that changes my opinion of this couple, but that's how I feel about Freckle for now. I didn't plan to express my opinion, but it happened that way, I hope you don't mind it

first and foremost, i don’t mind seeing someone express their opinion in my inbox! you and anyone else are free to do so, even if i may disagree. this blog’s entire existence was made for me to share my opinions ( and love! ) for lackadaisy, as well as engaging with other fans, because what else is the point of a fandom blog? and as far as i’m aware, this is unpopular opinion central! most of my thoughts aren’t exactly the ones with the most voice behind them i’ve found, so i welcome all manner of different views. every fan is entitled to their own perspectives and opinions, and should be allowed to share them as they please! but with that disclaimer out of the way, i’m more than willing to discuss frepper in its entirety.

for me, there’s little confusion i carry where it concerns this ship’s popularity amongst the fandom. freckle and ivy, if we are to strip them down to their bare essentials, are a rather stereotypically ‘cute’ relationship : people enjoy opposites ( see zibwick or vikdecai for example ) and there’s an endearing quality found in puppy love dynamics. seeing ivy wear the pants and drag a shy freckle around by his ankle makes for quality content in a way! think the ‘excuse me, but he asked for no pickles!’ meme … ivy and freckle very much fit that sort of mold, and it helps that most fans are too scared to ship them with other characters in the cast too, due to what they perceive to be a lack of options. thus, frepper is an extremely ‘safe’ ship! you cannot get in trouble for enjoying something that is not only canon, but is relatively adorable ; and so i don’t believe a lot of the fans are actually thinking too deeply about the likely endgame of it all. most don’t! it’s fun to ship, and that’s all they really need i think. it’s also very easy to dismiss ivy’s forwardness as a quirk of being a young girl who’s of her temperament, recklessly boycrazy although still carrying sweet intent. this behavior is easier to hand wave when neither ivy or freckle are experienced at the dating scene as well … freckle due to his extremely religious upbringing and hermit nature, and ivy because of viktor’s constant meddling, which would hold her back more than you’d think. with that said, i don’t think any of this is excessively complicated. some shippers are rather simple minded and do not care for details and characterization all too deeply. enjoying dynamics is, at its core, supposed to be fun -- which makes simple ships like frepper prime targets for a very vocal and tight knit fanbase. there are other things i could speculate about why these two may hit so pleasantly for others, like how there’s an underlying queer theme to it ( what with ivy being the pursuer and freckle the shy, blushing flower ) or that it’s tropey enough to hit the right spots for others … though it all boils back to mere speculation. perhaps they still have time to escape this gangster lifestyle and live happily ever after? and that appeals to the lackadaisy fans who still want some sort of happy ending? it’s all a combination of frepper being easy, i think, and containing two young cats who still haven’t done anything particularly ‘unforgivable’ yet action wise. this is a ship you can root for without an ounce of worry in your heart, and so on and so forth.

but although i understand why others are so vocal about them, i don’t exactly agree with fanon’s views either! while i heavily enjoy frepper, i enjoy them as they are, and that includes their looming flaws and inevitable tragedy. they are bound to break each other’s hearts a lot on their current path ; even if they were entirely perfect for one another, this lifestyle isn’t kind to anyone, meaning if they don’t separate, they could always be forced apart via bullets and such anyway. they are young and woefully inexperienced in a manner of things, the last thing they need is the stress of a rumrunner life driving their every action, you know? i know people see them getting out together, and that is likely on the table! i do see that in many ways, but i’m also of the opinion that ivy and freckle will diverge onto different paths at some point and temporarily call it quits. from where the comic currently stands and given my view on ivy’s arc, i see her growing disillusioned with where she is and the honor and fun she saw within it as a royal spectator will fade ; she will become wary, fearful, and her resilience will die … meanwhile freckle will embrace it, similar to his cousin, fully understanding what it is and what he’s getting into ( like rocky, again ) but being unable to leave his refuge. i know lots of people think freckle will leave the lackadaisy first, but given his old concepts and former title as one of mitzi’s ‘trouble boys’, i think he will become lost in the sauce for a myriad of reasons. frankly i enjoy that twist on their relationship! since i believe ivy’s character development will revolve around maturing, changing as time stretches forward, because her character is ever growing, what with her entire schtick being the fact she’s everything a 1920s girl was during those times. she embodies that unladylike youth and manipulative sweetness, so i’d imagine a lot of her path is falling from such naive thrill seeking and stumbling upon a harsh reality. she will mature, and the very thing that should make their relationship stronger will be what divides them indefinitely. everything they have is founded on this bloody, varnished soaked ground after all … they are young adults who are experiencing what closeness feels like outside of family or platonic friends for the first time, so naturally they will overindulge in their own amateur games ; find respite in the boogie and kiss like couples do on the silver screen, laugh about it, talk about everything and nothing at all … relish in each other’s warmth and stupidly loyal protection. i’m sure frepper will grow closer before any falling out, because as it stands, it’s one of the few things they have in such a scary situation that feels comforting and kind. they will impact each other in the fundamental ways first relationships do and, to move towards your biggest gripe, do things they’ll regret or allow things to happen to them that they’re not entirely okay with.

ivy is very forceful with freckle initially, albeit in her typical saturated way ; and i can see why that would be hard to parse! especially when freckle spends a majority of their first scenes together squirming away and hiding, trying to duck her affections and bolt for it. there is a lot of boundary crossing between them! but not in a necessarily malicious way … like most things with frepper, this circles back to their mutual inexperience and how, in a lot of ways, this is their first ‘serious’ romantic relationship ever. and it’s rather common for such firsts to involve gray areas, since neither party is entirely sure of what their own boundaries are just yet! while freckle did appear frightened by ivy at first, it’s important to note that tracy’s mentioned him having a flight response whenever girls flirt with him … he is prone to run away instinctively, which if you consider his extremely religious upbringing, isn’t exactly a surprise. nina would no doubt look down upon freckle engaging with girls his age due to what most girls his age are currently doing in the roaring 20s they’re living in. sneaking out and engaging in illegal activities, dancing in a way that would disgust most of the more traditional and older generation, casually engaging in any manner of sexual activity before marriage, etc etc. and this isn’t even listing freckle’s cagey nature due to an incident we know was bad enough to send rocky packing for years, and fundamentally changed freckle himself at such a young and impressionable age. he is … very troubled! and rather scared of himself and the world around him … at this stage in life, freckle is perpetually unable to make any progress towards anything he may want, and so i have little problem myself with ivy mostly taking the lead. when left to his own devices and allowed to choose outside of influence, freckle did in fact sneak out of his mother’s house to go to the lackadaisy, surely well aware that ivy’s intention had been romantically inclined. so, to me, he has always liked her ; perhaps found her cute, in a shallow way, saw her eccentric behavior as endearing and frightening in equal measure, and while he’s still wading into this whirlwind pool unsteady and shaken, he -- wouldn’t mind it if ivy pushed a little more, or moved him around to her ( and what she perceives to be, their ) liking. perhaps this dynamic is familiar enough to him that it becomes comforting, since rocky was very much the same way in their adolescence. tugging freckle around and pulling his tail for whatever rocky wanted them to do, with little care for whatever his baby cousin desired at the time, ignoring his protests and chasing him ; nobody’s at fault here either, kids are extremely self absorbed and this is a flaw they’ll usually mature past, and while ivy and freckle are adults during the comic, i don’t think ivy’s outgrown this linear view on things just yet. she is extremely entitled! she is used to being the apple of everyone’s eye at the speakeasy due to her jazz baby status as atlas may’s goddaughter, and this gangster connection excites and awes the ladies she attends classes with at her university too. ivy pepper is used to getting her way and this has only fueled her determined attitude, her ‘pull it up by the bootstraps’ mindset, and in many ways, this is something of a flaw for her. it’s not bad to be confident and headstrong, although when you add that into a dangerous mix of rumrunning and gunslinging, it may become a problem rather quickly. but i digress! point is, ivy and freckle are hardly at fault for the awkward way they handled the start of their relationship, when it’s so new and fresh to them both.

neither of them have boundaries at this moment, as they either have no clue what those are or simply haven’t realized they should set them. so, in turn, there are things that the other may do that could cause their partner discomfort … and it’s mostly done out of obliviousness and good intentions and your classic dose of intense affection. doesn’t mean it isn’t messed up to a degree, but i think it’s rather realistic, and is a hard truth that comes with many first relationships of that sort. sometimes you don’t know how to say ‘no,’ or you agree and regret agreeing later, or perhaps you simply don’t understand there’s certain things you aren’t ready for or genuinely just don’t like. again, it’s a very muddied area, and the two of them are vaguely navigating what is mostly foreign to them. they’re bound to mess up! so i ivy some slack here, and applaud tracy on the realistic writing more than anything usually. young love also happens to be a great device to use for inexperienced characters finding themselves, through the good and bad of their relationship, and frepper is all about that. maybe freckle will inevitably bring up how he feels like he would’ve preferred it had ivy asked him out properly, or gave him time to court her in a traditional fashion … and she will be surprised ( and a little wounded ) by this, since she had never considered it before … too used to her way of things to realize there’s another path they could take. i think this aspect of the relationship is important, and i can understand wishing that more frepper shippers would view it as such, or comment on it's morally gray nature without just calling it ‘cute’ and leaving it at that.

tldr : they will most certainly break up at some point, maybe even multiple times! tracy has said before that they both have some serious maturing to do if their relationship is to be long lasting, and i doubt that maturing will happen to them both at once … since they have different things to work on emotionally. but they will probably strongarm some major personal development within each other, as well as love one another with a fierceless abandon that most kids do. i could see them getting married, i could see them not, but i agree that if they were to be wed happily, they’d have significant hurdles to overcome. but personally, frepper is something i adore mostly due to the impact they’re bound to cause each other, and even if they are to separate and find someone new and more fitting, they’ll always remember one another -- perhaps fondly, and sadly, and with some anger. a time they’d like to forget, but a person they’d like to remember … which is my cup of tea overall! they much more interest me as they presently are anyway, where i can fiddle around with their budding romance and friendship bonding. and as lackadaisy grows in popularity, i do hope there’s more frepper fans who see their complexity and flaws and explore them with all of it in mind.

anyway! i hope this was coherent, and that it was obvious that i agreed with you for the most part. i haven’t really talked about frepper before with anyone so many of these thoughts sort of burst out of me! and i feel like i have more to elaborate upon, but for the sake of simplicity i kept this short. oh well! surely this is enjoyable and informative regardless.

[newdayslinguine]

Today i went for a walk and it was a bit chilly. The pfp has therefore shifted to winter mode

[theglamorousferal]

Immortal Everlasting Trio who have been exploring the Infinite Realms for the last few centuries. The three of them are flying, braiding their paths as they make their way through the Realms.

“How do you think Ellie is doing in her current incarnation?” Nightshade asks of her partners,

“Hmm probably well, she was exploring the galaxy this time right? I could always check?” Pharaoh responds, a keyboard made of sandstone appears at his fingertips.

“She feels content.” Said Phantom, soothing the worries of the other two. The stars that are freckles on his face brighten with the comment.

They swirl around each other in lazy patterns, unknowing of the passage of time, when Phantom feels a tug at his core. The trio circle up, his partners noticing the shift in mood.

“I don’t recognize this one.” He mutters to himself, placing a hand on the center of his chest. “It’s none of the family, but it is a bit familiar.” He furrowed his brow, trying to trace the sensation to its source. He closed his eyes and felt the pull of magic. “It doesn’t feel malicious, there’s desperation and curiosity for sure, but I feel no ill intent.” He thought for a moment. “I’m going to follow it. I want to know why this feels familiar”

Nightshade formed a purple bloom and tucked it behind one of his ears and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek. “Be safe.”

Pharaoh gently took his hand and kissed it, bestowing a glass bangle to his wrist. “Don’t make stupid decisions,” he smirked, “without us.”

Phantom laughed and in a flash of bright white light he was gone.

* * *

With a flash of light so bright it temporarily blinded, Phantom appeared in a summoning circle. The room he now occupied was large, a massive sofa made up a good portion of the room and there was a kitchen off to the side. Turning around, there was a large screen with even larger windows behind it. He turned back and now saw the people in the room.

One was green with a unitard on, one was sitting criss cross in front of some candles, a book and a small cauldron, one was floating and had a mass of bright pink hair, one was a cyborg of some kind and stood at the ready with a cannon for an arm and the last was shielding his eyes with a black cape.

“Who summons me?” Phantom asked in a far quieter tone than the teens apparently expected.

The one who appeared to have done the ritual stood and spoke first. “Mighty Phantom, we seek your assistance in dealing with a massive threat to our world. The demon Trigon looks to the Earth as his next conquest.” They took a breath and looked down. “He intends to use my power to do it, and I do not have the strength to stop him.”

Phantom settled his feet on the ground and placed a hand on their shoulder. “Peace young one. Why don’t we start with introductions? As you know, I am Phantom, he/him, now who has managed to summon me?”

“I am Raven, she/her, the rest here are my team the Teen Titans.” She turned to her team, they all seemed shocked. “I apologize for them, usually they take things in stride a lot easier. This is Beast Boy, he/him, Starfire she/her, Cyborg, he/him, and Robin, he/him.”

“Hmm, may I see the text you used to summon me?” He gestured to the book on the floor. “I was not aware of anything that could summon me in this realm. It is familiar to me though, I can’t place why.”

Raven raised the book into his hand. He leafed through it humming to himself before stopping on a photo of a note that looked familiar. He smiled to himself, remembering the time a century ago to him that himself and his partners helped a small civilization and they left a way for the leader to contact them if they needed help. He skimmed the next few paragraphs and then laughed and closed the book.

“I’ll help. In fact, my partners and I will help. It’s been a long while since we were in a mortal realm. I will return in a week’s time your time to discuss what we need to do. This will work to summon us if we forget or if your danger arrives early.” He magicked a paper with a seal on it and handed it to her. “I must discuss with my partners and will do research on this Trigon. Thank you for calling us, we’ve been aimless for too many decades. Have a good night.” He vanished in another flash of light.

* * *

Phantom appeared in a flash of light cackling as he tumbled across the chess board his partners were playing on, scattering the flowers and sandstone pieces across the green sky.

“Beloved you know not to do that,” Nightshade gathered the giggling king into her lap, Pharaoh moving to lean against her shoulder and push the hair from the eyes of Phantom, “but what has you laughing so?”

Phantom mimed wiping a tear from his eye. “Remember that civilization we helped out a century ago? Well apparently a few hundred years have passed in that world and the people we helped revered us as gods. A sorceress summoned us for help defeating a demon. They were so cute, little teenage heroes like we once were.” He sighed and settled into the arms of his lovers. “Have either of you heard of Trigon?”

[deadsetobsessions]

Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt.4

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.3] [Pt.5] [Pt.6] [Pt.7] [Pt.8] [Pt.9] [Pt.10]

Danny was sitting in the back, his backpack obnoxiously taking up the seat next to him, when the door to the lecture hall creaked open near silently.

“What are you in here for?” Danny asked the guy who crept into class. He sympathetically took his backpack off the Seat of Shame and allowed the guy to sit down. Funnily enough, they had the same hair and eye color.

“Gen Ed. Undecided. You?” The guy grunted quietly back.

“Environmental studies. I’m Danny.”

“Tim.”

With the implicit understanding of two people in a required class they could not give less than two fucks about, Tim and Danny tuned back into the lecture. When the class was assigned group work, Danny looked over to see Tim softly snoring, head slammed down on the table.

“Tim. Wake up, dude.” Danny poked his shoulder.

“Huh? Class over?”

“Nah, we got group work. Discussion board.”

“Oh shit, thanks for waking me up. Wanna team up?”

Danny shrugged. “Sure. We should aim to post it in the middle so the professor doesn’t read our answers to the class.”

“Yeah, sounds like a good idea. Any idea what we’re talking about?”

“Kind of?”

“Good enough for me.”

——

Tim Drake kept seeing Danny Fenton around on campus.

“Danny! Dude, what are you doing?”

Danny turned, gloved hands full of crumpled trash. “Picking up after the student population, apparently.”

“Didn’t think environmental studies was that serious.”

“Global warming is very serious, you jerk,” Danny smirked at him, crossing the grass to put the trash into the trash can. “Reduce, reuse, oil shouldn’t be spilled in water and all that.”

“Basic stuff,” Tim grinned. Nice, he basically had a friend past Bernard now!

They were friends, right?

“And yet humanity fails to comprehend it. Incredible. Incredibly stupid that is.”

“They get it. Major corporations just don’t care.”

Danny sighed. “True that. You on your way to your next class?” He took off his biodegradable gloves off (nitrile and nylon, baby!) and chucked them into the trash.

“I’ve got free time, actually. Prof cancelled for his daughter’s surgery.”

“Oh, shit, that’s rough! You wanna go downtown and join the strike?”

“A strike? What for?” Even as he asked, Tim hiked his bag higher onto his shoulder, ready to go. They fell into step as the two left campus.

“Apparently, Quillan Pharma was doing some shady shit at their manufacturing plants. I think it’s like killing kids, and pouring toxins into the ground.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. Oh! Poison Ivy’s gonna be there!”

Tim blinked. He casted a sideways look at Danny. Sure he’s been here long enough to know… but it couldn’t hurt to check. “You know she’s an eco-terrorist, right?”

“Okay, but like… people suck sometimes. And all she’s asking for is like don’t kill the planet. And she doesn’t do that whole mind control thing too much anymore! The Sirens are so cool. Plus, one of my best friends at home might actually kill me if I don’t try to get her autograph. Poison Ivy is like, Sam’s personal hero.”

Tim snickered. “Yeah, okay. Mind if one of my friends join? His name’s Bernard.”

“The more the merrier,” Danny nodded. “Ooo! Hot chocolate. Want some?”

Danny bought three drinks as Tim trailed behind, texting Bernard.

“He said yes.”

“Cool! We should meet up somewhere before the drinks get cold.”

Well, Danny got the autograph. Tim got a new friend, and Bernard got a drink from his crush.

——

“Oh, you’re the glowing dude that Batman always talks about!”

Danny blinked, eyes scanning the wing-like cape and the yellow emblem on the hero’s suit. Danny was indeed glowing, stars and nebulas freckling across neon green skin, and glowing hair the color of a white dwarf star, tinged with the blue from his ice core.

“I… have absolutely no idea who you are,” Danny lied, like a liar. He’s found a surprising niche of entertainment in messing with the local vigilantes and he’ll be damned if he missed this opportunity.

He heard a snicker from the comm lines as Red Robin visibly brushes it off.

“I’m Red Robin. Why are you picking up trash?”

“Picking up after you humans, apparently.”

The both of them blink, feeling a weird sense of déjà vu. A moment of awkward silence passed before they both shook it off.

“Are you here to help? No offense, but the track record for you people is terrible.” Danny strode over and grabbed a bag. He opened it, and shook it at Red Robin’s face. “See? Batarangs, these odd bird looking ones, the R’s. Seriously, pick up after yourselves!”

“Oh, woah, can we have these back?”

Danny yanked the bag back before Red Robin could get close. “Pay me. These were incredibly tedious to pick up. Especially the batarangs. I mean, I even found a whole bunch of old rusted ones in the middle of the bay. What did you do, dump an entire bag in there from the air?”

Red Robin sighed and took out a wad of cash, with tracking fluid all over it. Danny grimaced, smelling the odd scent on the money. “That’s not real cash. It smells off. Are you trying to give me counterfeits because you’re broke?”

Red Robin gaped, oddly offended. “No! They’re real!”

“Doesn’t smell like it. It’s stinkier than the trash. Go get the one with the money, the litterer. Tell him I’ll be back the next full moon. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” Danny grumbled, disappearing on the spot to watch Red Robin flounder with the stack of cash and the piles of dead bodies on the shore.

“What the fuck even is my life these days?” Red Robin wondered out loud, stuffing the cash back into his pocket. He looked over the plastic wrapped bodies and slumped, sighing.

Oddly enough, Danny felt a sense of sympathy. Well, he’s not getting paid for sympathy. He’s not getting paid at all tonight, actually. Danny flew off, plunging once more into the depths of the significantly cleaner waters, and used his ice to scoop out oil stains.

Danny glanced around and sighed. He had a lot of work to do.

——

“So you’re saying he’s like a werewolf mermaid fae child immortal god thing, right?”

Bruce grunted.

“B, what the hell are you smoking these days? You know drugs are bad, right? Do we need Superman to give you that PSA?” Jason snickered.

Tim, massaging his arms from having to haul an ungodly amount of dead bodies, grunted. He’s so similar to Bruce that it gave the people currently in the cave hives.

“He said full moon. I don’t think we can track him with regular stuff. The bugs kept shorting out.”

“Oh boy,” Dick sighed. “Don’t fall off the spiral cliff, Tim. You’ve got midterms to think about so no stalking the guy.”

“Yet,” Tim shot back, changing out of his suit.

Bruce grunted, setting aside a huge stack of cash.

[forlix]

𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀・1.2k / 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴・chan x gn!reader / 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲𝘀・fluff, hurt/comfort, established relationship, berry being the perfect girl she is. inspired by these bubble messages and @cosmic-railwayxo's treachery. (love u deni)

𝟬𝟲:𝟯𝟲 — “Where’s my baby, hm?”

This is the question on Chan’s lips the moment he lets go of the bedroom door, closed with agonizing caution as to not wake the figure still curled up under the duvet inside.

It’s early. Early enough so the walls are colored a rich beige by new rays of sunlight, so his footsteps are the only sound reverberating around the hallways when he commences his search. Early enough to evidence how he was only bestowed a few hours of sleep before waking up with a budding headache and leaden eyelids.

But he doesn’t mind the lack of rest, not this time. Not when there’s a wad of love with a freckled snout and floppy ears under the same roof for the first time in too long.

“Berry?” Chan calls, his voice tattered and low, like sandpaper. He rakes his eyes over the spots he remembers to be her favorite. Maybe they’ve changed since he was last home. Maybe everything has changed since he was last home.

The thought causes a familiar pang to go off within him, poignant and powerful, but the quiet scuffle of paws against hardwood takes the edge off the guilt straightaway.

Chan finds the beginnings of a smile on his lips before she even rounds the corner, and when she does, well. His grin might as well split his face down the middle. He’s on his knees in seconds, outstretched hands rediscovering home in the puppy’s silky fur as she clambers onto him with blown pupils and excited pants.

His adoring coos of her name falter into muted laughter, which then fragments into a sob. His vision narrows to his precious girl and then starts to blur. When Berry climbs up to give his cheek a few happy licks, she’s fascinated by its saltiness.

You emerge from the bedroom a little over an hour later. Sleeping is hard enough when you’re jetlagged, and even harder when there’s only mattress where you remember Chan’s warm solidity to be. The fabric of Chan’s hoodie suppresses your vocalization of his name as you ungracefully pull it over your torso, still struggling to rouse your body from sleep.

Your beckon produces no response. You wrap a hand around the nearest door frame and peek your head into the living room, a little more alert now.

“Chan? Baby?”

You feel silly. How many visits has it been for you to still feel this nervous, wandering around Chan’s family home? Yet you undoubtedly are, whether because of your absentee boyfriend or that his whole family is a few walls away. You pad through the silent abode with mounting trepidation and intense care to not make any more sound than necessary.

Then you reach the family room and instantly come to a standstill, hands drifting to your sides, features deliquescing to a soft smile. 

Lying on the nearest couch is your boyfriend, head propped up on top of his elbow, his fluttering lashes and gently oscillating shoulders indicating that he’s asleep. You can’t see his face below his eyes, as he has his nose nuzzled into the Cavalier spaniel resting securely in his arms, snoring tacitly into his sleeve, slumbering as deeply as her human companion.

You’ve been stumbling upon Chan sleeping in unexpected places for the better part of two years now, but you still liquefy every time as if it’s the first. These are the moments, you’ve come to realize, when you can care for him in ways he would never let you while conscious: a lift of his laptop off his thighs, a brush of your lips against his hairline, a cardigan draped lightly over his back. These are the moments when you understand in full how far you’ve come together, for him to trust you with his exhaustion with such transparency, to be so vulnerable as to leave you with memories of him that he’ll never have.

Despite your prolonged experience, it’s hard to describe what exactly you’re feeling in this moment. The mere mention of Berry has always dissipated the shadows that veil his face, has always chased off the burdens that cling to his spine. How do you put it into words, seeing your happiness at his happiest?

It suddenly occurs to you that the window beside them is cracked open. That, and you spotted extra quilts in the top shelf of Chan’s closet last night.

Chan’s eyelids lift when he feels the gentle weight of a blanket fall upon his body; so do the corners of his lips, when the culprit materializes before him. Sitting on the edge of the couch, a hand hovering over his frame, face creased into a flinch.

“Sorry,” you whisper, closing the distance between your fingers and the curve of his neck. The pad of your thumb moves over his cheekbone like a willow branch skimming water. “I didn’t think that would wake you up.”

Both of you up, you mentally amend, seeing as Berry has noticed your presence and is wagging her tail with enough vigor for it to thump against Chan’s chest. He lets her wriggle out of his arms and into yours; you emit a noise of glee and gather her into you.

If only you had seen the expression he wears then, watching your eyes scrunch closed at the frenzied kisses she presses to your face. His first love and his very last.

“Don’t apologize,” he answers. “I’m the one who should be sorry for leaving you in bed, I just…”

His voice trails off, but he knows by the softness in your irises when they meet his that you already know.

You move like clockwork. Chan presses up into the back of the couch, the quilt’s edge lifted in wordless invitation. It is your chest that Berry burrows into this time, the top of her head sliding into the space between your chin and the sofa’s cushion. It is Chan’s chest that you’re folded into, the arms around your waist like the coziest of cabins in a sun-spattered wood. It is the back of your neck that he nuzzles his nose into, but not before he litters gossamer kisses across the expanse of skin, as if printing the notes to a lullaby he knows well.

Everything is warm, so warm, so right, and jetlag starts to feel like a distant trouble.

You open your mouth while teetering on the cusp of a dream.

“Baby?” 

He hums into you, listening.

“Always be happy, okay?”

You don’t notice the solitary tear that traverses the bridge of his nose, lands in the cotton of your hood, and dyes the bunched-up fabric a few shades darker. You don’t notice how his embrace around you tightens marginally, like how one’s eyes can’t help but find their dearest possession when the building’s on fire.

“Okay,” he whispers, and kisses your nape once more. Your and Chan’s eyes close together. Berry licks your chin again, then follows suit.

(Another hour later, Chan’s parents walk into the family room. They decide to go out to breakfast for fear of making too much noise in the kitchen, Chan’s mother blotting away tears as she ducks into shotgun, Chan’s father laughing at her sentimentality while blinking back his own.

Another few hours later, Hannah takes maybe fifty-some photographs of the triad of unmoving heaps occupying their couch. Then she grumbles at Berry for being dead asleep at eleven in the morning: “Those two arrived here from across the world yesterday. What’s your excuse?”)

🔖 (send an ask or reply to be added)・@astraystayyh・@like-a-diamondinthesky・@fire-08・@starsandrqindrops・@txtxlz・@laylasbunbunny・@strayghibli・@nuronhe・@seungminsapuppy・@vivisoni・@skzms・@moon0fthenight・@sweetpickledjins・@svintsandghosts・@nhyunn ・@ur-boyfiend・@liknws・@hotgorloikawa・@randomwimp・ @automaticpersonabatpaper・@aceofvernons・@linos-kitten・@newhope8

© 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗶𝘅 (est. 090323) · liked this work? please consider reblogging, commenting, or sending me an ask to let me know; or, read my other writing here. thanks so much for the support.

[lovebugism]

hi bug! Can I request you a ditzy or shy!reader where some girl flirts with Steve in front of her maybe at Family Video? Little angsty because she feels insicure of herself? Thank you🩷

ty for requesting!! — steve doesn't realize he's being flirted with because he's so in love with you (ditzy!fem!r, hurt/comfort, 1.6k)

You color in a scribbled heart with enough vigor to break the pink crayon in your hand.

Steve always hangs your drawings in his locker in the Family Video break room, so you tend to take your art pretty seriously. ‘Cause there’s absolutely nothing humorous about the two stick figures holding hands — each of them vaguely resembling the both of you — that you’re passionately scribbling behind the front counter.

He’d watch you work your magic on a piece of lined scrap paper if he could. He’s too busy tending to a regular now. Mia, he thinks, or maybe Maia. She rents movies every week, but according to the system, she doesn’t watch a single one of them. 

“Well, what do you recommend?” she questions with a smirk on her painted lips, leaning her elbows on the counter until her chest juts out.

Steve leans slowly backward and tries not to cough at the overwhelming scent of her fruity perfume. “Uh… I don’t know,” he answers with an unenthusiastic shrug. “I usually just watch whatever.”

The girl squints her dolled-up eyes. “You don’t have a favorite movie?” 

Steve ponders the question for a moment. ‘Cause he doesn’t have one, really. All his favorite films are your favorites because he spends the majority of movie nights watching you instead.

So, at a loss of how to answer, he tells her your first choice. “The Star Wars movies are pretty alright.”

“Do you have them here?” she wonders.

Steve nods and points her in the other direction. “Yeah. In the Sci-Fi section.”

“Can you show me?” the girl questions with a hopeful glint in her pale eyes. Everything about her sparkles with mischief, like a predator hunting for prey. Stealthy, like a ninja, Steve would’ve called the approach a couple years ago. Long before he found you.

He’s more into forthright proclamations of love these days — bubblegum pink lipstick stains pressed to his cheek and handmade pictures drawn in crayon.

But, for the sake of Keith totally reaming him for not helping a customer, Steve nods and rounds the front counter. “Uh. Yeah. Sure. Follow me,” he urges halfheartedly, sparing you a forlorn glance as he goes. You’re much too distracted to see it, though.

You’re too distracted to notice most things, really.

That’s why Robin’s angrier than you are about the whole thing. She exhales a big huff and stands across from you, peering over the tower of tapes there. “God, he’s so oblivious,” she groans.

Your hand freezes as you color in Steve’s vest. You glance up at her with wide eyes, heart sinking at the annoyed look on her freckled features. “Huh?”

“Steve. That girl’s been drooling over him for five minutes, and he hasn’t even realized.”

Your brows pinch. “What girl?”

“The one that’s hanging all over him,” Robin answers, nodding her head to the other side of the store. The girl in question lingers at Steve’s side, a little too close to be casual. She hangs on every word he says — which certainly can’t be a whole lot, considering he knows next to nothing about that Star Wars franchise.

“I thought she was just being nice,” you shrug.

“She was flirting with your boyfriend,” Robin corrects in a monotone. “It was disgusting. I’m pretty sure her flirt got all over my pants.”

You look back at the two across the room. Steve tenses when the pretty redhead presses her chest against his arm. For the sake of not making things totally awkward, he forces himself not to shrink away. What had seemed virtually innocuous to you now makes your stomach ache. 

“She’s so pretty…” you observe quietly to yourself. 

Robin only scoffs. “Yeah. If you’re into girls like that.”

You don’t know exactly what she means, but it makes you lean slightly forward in interest anyway. “Do you think… Do you think Steve’s into girls like that?”

“No,” Robin answers, features twisted like it’s obvious. “He’s into girls like you.”

For the first time ever, you find that slightly hard to believe. Why would Steve ever pick you over someone like her? The way she smiles is pretty. The way she laughs is pretty. Even the way she talks is pretty.

And what do you have? A couple of stupid crayon portraits?

A strange feeling sears your chest when Steve and the pretty girl walk back to the counter. He must’ve told her a joke or something ‘cause she tips back her head to laugh loudly in response. Jealous tears sting your eyes accordingly. You take your art and your box of dull crayons and scurry off to the break room.

“I can help you check out!” Robin offers, suddenly very chipper. 

The redhead’s face twists. “Oh. I thought that—”

“Steve’s needed in the breakroom, actually,” Robin tells her when the stranger’s pleading eyes flit to the boy beside her. “I can handle it from here.”

“Wait— What’s in the breakroom?” he wonders obliviously.

“Your girlfriend, dingus.”

Steve blinks once. The sudden lack of your presence makes his chest ache. He stalks off to find you without another word.

The redhead, Mia or Maia or whatever, doesn’t bother to disguise the shock painting her dainty features. “Girlfriend?” she echoes, quiet with disbelief.

Robin nods and takes the tapes from her hands, knowing she’s only renting them ‘cause she thought Steve liked them. The scanner beeps as she rings them up. “Yeah. He’s kinda in love with her, turns out. It’s disgusting.”

The conversation fades the further Steve gets down the hall. He opens the door to the back room with a grating squeak. The rusted hinges screech again in protest when he swings it shut behind him. He finds you slouched over the table, vehemently scribbling with vibrantly colored crayons.

He can’t help but smile at the sight of you. “Whatcha doin’?” he lilts in place of a greeting, sliding back a chair to sit across from you.

“Nothin’…” you mutter distantly.

Steve folds his arms over the tabletop and rests his chin on top of them. It bobs with every word. “Why’d you leave me, huh?”

You shrug with a faint I don’t know type of sound.

“Can I see what you’re drawing, at least?” 

He grins and reaches for you without thinking — because you always let him see. Needless to say, when flinch suddenly away from him, it scares him far more than it should. You scramble to cover the paper with your arms like you’re doing something wrong. 

“No,” you answer in a mousy voice.

A chuckle spills from Steve’s mouth. “What? Why? You always show me.”

“It’s stupid…”

“It’s not stupid! I love when you draw stuff for me,” the boy insists with a lopsided smile, distantly surprised by your sheepishness. The pretty pink grin slips from his mouth at the crestfallen glint in your eye. He softens without thinking. “What’s wrong? What happened? Did— Did Robin say something?”

“No.” 

“Then what?”

You avert your eyes from his prying ones, feeling half-suffocated beneath his honeyed gaze. You start to color again with an absentminded hand, if only to have something else to look at. “You’re just…” you trail off, shifting uncomfortably in your chair. “You’re too pretty.”

He laughs before he means to. “What?”

“You’re pretty, and I don’t like that other people get to look at you,” you confess quietly, coloring in Steve’s hair with the ‘deep golden’ crayon. “It’s not fair— No one else should think you’re as beautiful as I do. I don’t like that.”

Steve props his chin on his palm and hides his grin behind his fingers. He reaches for your busy hand with his free one to get your attention. “Well, you know what?” he starts when your eyes flit up to his. “You’re the only one I want looking at me. So what everyone else thinks doesn’t really matter.”

“It is when they’re drooling all over you,” you answer with a scrunched nose.

Steve can’t help but scoff out a laugh. Those words have Robin Buckley written all over them. 

“Last I heard, Rob was giving that girl what for, so… you don’t have to worry about that anymore,” he tells you, both to soothe the misplaced jealousy and to make you smile. He thinks it only half works. “Can I tell you a secret?”

You perk up at that. Steve grins and leans in close like he’s about to confess something serious. His dark eyes twinkle with mischief. 

“I’m so stupid in love with you that I forget other girls exist sometimes,” he murmurs in true secret-spilling fashion. “And when they’re… drooling all over me? I don’t even see it. ‘Cause all I’m thinking about is how I have my own girl back home. And that I’d much rather have her drooling on me.”

“…Am I the girl?” you press in a tiny voice, just to be sure.

“Yes, baby, I’m talking about you,” Steve chuckles. “You should know that— You’rethe one drooling on my pillow every morning.”

Your nose scrunches sheepishly. “You’ve said that word too many times… It doesn’t sound real anymore.”

“What’s that called again?”

“Semantic satiation,” you answer without missing a beat.

“Well, now I’m gonna tell you I love you ’til you’re semantically satiated,” the boy teases with a knowing squint in his eyes. “‘Cause I love you.”

“Steve.”

“I love you.”

“Stop,” you say, sterner now, though your gaze still glimmers with something soft. Your eyes follow his form when he rises from the table, shifting the short distance to sit in the chair closest to you. “Steve, stop—”

“I love you,” he repeats, anyway, taking you into his arms and smacking a dramatic kiss to your warm cheek. Between each innocuous peck, he mumbles, “I love you— I love you— I love you—”

Steve doesn’t stop kissing you until he hears you giggling again. The pretty sound brightens the dull breakroom. And all he can think about is what a lucky schmuck he is. To get to kiss you and make you laugh forever.

[atyourmerci]

Gold wing, angel

meanloser!ellie X classpresident!r

CW: smut, MDNI, dom!ellie, sub!reader, v angsty, slight bondage, cunt slapping, fingering, cunnilingus, edging, orgasm denial, ruined orgasms, lite angel symbolism, no y/n, no pdor

A/N: actually surprised I finished a req (you all applaud me) this is inspired by “GOLDWING” by billie.

Ellie was a sick drug. Something not to be desired. She was the epitome of the allure of indulging in something you shouldn’t have, shouldn’t know, try at very least.

How did she get this way- who made her like this? Anger taken out through bodies of admission in an act of revenge. Taking back what was taken from her. Her pride regained by your submission.

You could have never fathomed the aggression the loser from AP American literature could obtain. You thought she’d beg on her knees for you. Worship your every move, starstruck by even getting the chance to touch you.

But she didn’t. She reveled in taking you off your high horse, got off on watching the student body president, proper and witty, utterly depraved by getting her cunt abused by a fucking moron.

-

98- A fucking 98, you did not deserve a 98 on the midterm paper. Your work was frankly sloppy, lacked comprehension. It made you ill knowing you were turning in something so lackluster with your name slapped across the front so proudly. The only thing that made you sicker was the thought of receiving special treatment- you had an image to uphold. You got to your position in this society from your own intellect, blood, sweat, tears and all. Kissing ass for a fucking 98 wasn’t in the cards.

The class began filing out as usual, like wild animals in a pack, shiny white teeth like daggers. Meshing together in their navy steam-pressed blazers, hair like defining fur, the only indication of individuality.

Except for her, sticking out like a sore thumb, the great big elephant in the room. Breaking many rulebook codes with her black nail polish, unkept hair to the standard policy, her white polo unbuttoned at the top two buttons that revealed her freckled chest. Despite her all around degenerate persona, she was irritatingly smart. Maybe if she had an ounce of charm she’d take your place.

With the rest of the class out of sight she stares at you. Not cutting off eye contact you both rise from your chairs you practically run to Mr. Stevens desk. The slap of two papers hit his desk, a 98 and a 90 shining in red sharpie ink on the white papers.

“I don’t deserve this,” comes out in unison, the sincerity in your voice cut open by the harshness in Ellies.

“Please one at a time, ladies.”

Before the words can even escape your lips Ellie rages, “I worked my ass off on this. I deserve better than a 90,” she spits out. “I know you can do better than this Ms.Williams, I expect more from you.” Ellie scoffs back at him, “this is bullshit,” she muffles but continues standing at his desk.

Mr.Stevens nods his head in your direction for your speech, you glance at Ellie with her arms now crossed, awaiting your protest. You brush off her insistence on staying and begin, “Mr.Stevens, I appreciate your grading and understanding my agenda for the midterm, but objectively this is sub-pare work. I think you may have given me someone else’s grade… maybe you mixed up my grade with Ms.Williams.”

He doesn’t skip a beat, “I don’t mix up grades, you earned it. Now if you two will excuse me,” Mr.Stevens directs you both to the now empty hallway.

Ellie storms out with rage, cheeks flushed and lips pressed closely, you follow behind. “‘ms Williams’? the fuck was that?” Ellie presses in a scowl, words echoed in a bare hallway.

“Look I read your paper, I think you deserved better,” you retort in an attempt to soothe her. You cant seem to keep your eyes off her cupids bow, the contrast of soft pink lips against her tired skin.

“Oh thats fucking rich coming from ‘ms I don’t deserve my grade’ you’re pathetic,” she points, eyes thinning.

“Maybe if you weren’t such a bitch more people would like you,” you attempt, heat rising in your own cheeks, heart thumping roughly in your chest.

Ellies cruel disposition contorts into a grin, inching closer to your body, “you’re fucking him aren’t you? Ms. perfect sucking off the teach so she can stay on top?”

A power so foreign comes before you, using force to push your wrist into her chest, though she doesn’t budge, “shut up.”

She returns your aggression, pushing your bodies flesh up against the brick wall behind you, ripping the breath from your lungs. Your hands instinctively grip into her shirt. Her eyes are wild, as if she was surprised she’d taken it this far, or rather puzzled by the fact you haven’t broken your grasp.

You both pant from the intrusion, glaring, waiting- waiting for someone to cave.

Like a dog on a leash you dragged her in, pulling her by her fabric until her lips met your own. A depraved act, met with open mouths and wandering tongues. Hatred in its finest form, digging into her as if you’d ever thought of it. A subconscious desire pulled from the depths of your cravings.

Before true indulgence she pushes you off, taking a moment to look at your hazy disposition, drunk on delinquency, “don’t ever do that again,” she pants out. Taking her thumb she wipes the saliva from your bottom lip and takes off without your response.

-

Time after time you went back. You told yourself you’d stop, never talk to her again. Yet there the keys were in the ignition, a path that you knew like the back of your hand. Leading, controlling your own fate of defacement.

“Can you please just open the door,” you plead on her doorsteps, mind and body corrupted- to only be pleased by the mental games, the destruction in forms of submitting to her.

Strung up like an old doll long forgotten in the attic, bound wrist behind your back and ankles tied to the head of her bed, vulnerable and needy.

“What now? Use your fucking words,” Ellie remarks before spitting on your neglected cunt. Your body winces at the sensation of the hot liquid dripping down the pulsing flesh, “please I promise I’ll do whatever you ask.”

She hovers over your squirming body, carful to not give you the satisfaction. Gripping your jaw in her hand, “do you ever pay attention to what I tell you? You don’t deserve to come,” cocking her free hand back to lay a purposeful slap to your slick folds causing you to scream out from the blissful pain.

She lays another one into the already beat red skin, a cruel grin growing on her lips as she hears you enjoying it. “You’d let me do anything, wouldn’t you?” she asks glaring at your tucked in lip, eyes glossy. You nod back at her, signaling your approval for using your body as her personal vessel.

Somehow it was good enough for her, dropping down to your perked nipples and sucking it into her teeth as she uses her hand to cover your eyes. You’d learn very early on that you weren’t allowed to watch her use her mouth on you. In the odd occasion she’d let you have your cunt in her mouth shed have your face shoved in the sheets while she took you from behind. She never told you why- and you didn’t dare ask.

Your wrist wriggle behind your back as your chest arches into her mouth, hot and wet. You obsess over what it would feel like on your mouth again, most nights were spent only thinking of her mouth- foreign, an impenetrable fortress. You began to chase the chance of the feeling her again.

You feel as her mouth comes off of the swollen bud as she removes the hand on your eyes, “don’t look,” she says with no threat in her tone, but you don’t risk crossing her.

You shut your exhausted eyes, dropping your head back as you feel her wrap her arms around the meat of your thighs. She drags an antagonizing strip up your slit, jolting your body into the mouth.

She goes as slow as possible, providing as little pressure she can muster up to the swell of your clit, but from her slaps it wouldn’t take much. Your body akin to a fish gasping for air out of water, squirming under her touch. She digs her fingers deep into the flesh as a warning.

“If you ever want to come again Id advise you behave.”

“P-please,” you plead to her, legs shaking as you whimper her name over and over like a prayer.

“I said no, i swear to god I’ll ruin every fucking orgasm,” sliding her two fingers into your clenching hole she drives slow pumps as she returns her mouth to your clit.

Your face contorts in concentration, attempting to hold yourself back but you could only be held off for so long.

“Ellie- Ellie!” bursting at the seams, your body detesting her rules, letting the hot white cum coat her fingers. She only fucks you harder, faster through your orgasm. This is a game you weren’t to win, rather to allow herself to revel in your pain. She got off on destroying your mind, making it to where you can only be pleased by her punishment.

Ellie kept her word, working you up on the edge of finishing and stopping completely, laughing at your pathetic state, crying and begging to come.

Clipping your wings, she hung them on her walls as a trophy. Pleas echoing her room, come splattering her sheets, your lips chapped and neglected.

[hattiewritesalot]

Gevives (Beauty)

Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!reader

Summary: Jacaerys, ever the hard worker, is late to bed. Again. Luckily for him, you’re very forgiving.

Warnings: Reader and Jace have a daughter, one or two mentions of stress and overload, Jace being babygirl. Literally just fluff tbh

A/N: how’s it going lads im a little bit (very) in love with this pouty princess. I also wrote this at midnight for my sister so enjoy

---------------------------------------------------------------

A soft sigh escapes you as the wooden chair creaks against the stone floor, rocking back and forth, lulling you and your sweet daughter as she snores, slumped against your chest.

She’s as loud as the day she was born, kicking and screaming as she was lowered into your arms for the first time, and now, thank the gods, she screams less. She has, however, taken after her father with her snoring, noisy enough to rumble Dragonstone itself. You’re not surprised - not entirely, at least. Little Rhaenyra has been a daddy’s girl since the moment Jace held her, since the moment her chubby fingers curled around his one, and he weeped into her downy head. It baffles you that that was so long ago - you can see the image as clear as day.

Speaking of your most beloved husband, he’s still not here. His tendency to overwork himself is shining through, and he’s all but locked himself in his study to sort through his papers and meetings and arrangements and everything boring that you sometimes have the urge to burn so maybe, just maybe, he’ll come to bed on time.

‘Perks of being the eldest son, my darling wife.’ He’d once grinned, amber eyes glinting in the sunlight with that twinkle of mischief you love so much. He’d kissed you, then, and slipped away to occupy himself with his duties.

You can’t be mad at him, not really, not when your heart is brimming with the love and devotion you have for your Jace. Not when you’re carding your fingers through your toddler’s dark curls as she dreams. It doesn’t stop you from being frustrated though. You hate it when he burns himself out like this, knowing all too well the way he crumbles when the day is done. You’ll always be there, though, to pick up the shards and put him back together again, knowing he’d do the same for you in a heartbeat.

The door creaks open, and then it closes with a squeal of the hinges, and quiet footsteps patter behind you, Jace’s face peering around the rocking chair. He winces. “You’re awake?”

You cock a brow, shooting him a look. “Yes, I’m awake. And so are you.”

He sighs, then, pressing those full lips to your forehead and cradling your face, his free hand reaching down to stroke Rhaenyra’s hair. “I’m sorry, my wife. Everything is so… overwhelming right now. Some days I want to rip Aegon’s hair out, and some days I want to rip my own out.” 

“Please don’t. I quite like your pretty curls.”

“As you tell me so often, gevives.” Gevives. Beauty. Gods, this man has a chokehold on your heart.

“Perhaps I will find it in myself to forgive you.” You finally push up off your chair, cracking your back, groaning. “Remind me not to sit in that chair for too long.”

“I do remind you. You don’t listen.”

“You’re on thin ice, Velaryon.” 

You lower Rhaenyra into her cot, rocking it and shushing her gently when she squeaks. Jace’s hands curl around your waist, chin resting on your shoulder. “Our little princess.” He mumbles. “She’s perfect. Is she really ours?”

“Given that she snores like a bear and pouts all day, I’d say she is.”

He snorts. “I do not pout.” 

“He said, pouting.”

“You’re mean.” He turns you around, now, the tip of his nose brushing against yours. You love it when he’s this close, when you can count every freckle, every streak of gold and brown in his eyes, every curl. You smile at him. “You love it.”

He sighs dramatically, shaking his head, as if every word he speaks ails him. “Yes, yes I do. Gods save me from my cruel wife and her cruel ways.”

You scoff, but laughter bursts through it, pushing his shoulder and walking to the bed. “Fine. I guess you won’t be sleeping next to your cruel wife, then?” 

He’s scrambling out of his day clothes and under the covers before you can even fathom it, pulling you into his arms. He has the blood of the dragon, and runs hot when he sleeps. It’s nice on colder nights like this one, where you could bury yourself in his arms and never leave. His deft fingers trail up and down your spine, lips pressed against your hairline.

He calls you the beauty, but it is only because you are so infatuated with the man next to you. Every part of him; the sweet, gentlemanly parts, and the bitter, ugly parts; holds a dear place in the organ beating beneath your breast. Jacaerys Velaryon isn’t just your husband - he’s your best friend, your soul-mate (as the poets may say), and every time his fingers intertwine with yours, you like to think that your very beings intertwine too. You and Jace will find each other wherever you need to, for you know he is never far when he loves you so.

He sighs, nestling into your hair, and you gently kiss his jaw. “Promise me something, husband?”

He hums in response.

“Promise me you’ll take a break tomorrow?”

It takes him a long moment, but eventually, he swallows, nodding, body sagging against yours. “I’m sorry, I just-“

“Hush, I don’t need to hear it. I love you, alright? Even if you don’t show up to bed on time, even if you sometimes infuriate me with how much you put on yourself.”

He chuckles softly at that, pulling you in closer. “I adore you, my lady.”

You’re half-asleep by now, safe and content within the comfort of your lover’s arms. “Not as much as I adore you.”

You could have this argument for years, endless bickering of ‘I love you more’s, but you don’t. Not now, at least.

Now, you hold each other, falling asleep within the solidarity of your love.

---------------------------------------------------------------

I actually like this sort of a tiny bit

[eddiethebrave]

secret admirer part thirteen

697 words

one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve

Steve and Eddie have a divider set up between them, like every other pair in the room. 

The rules say under no circumstances are they allowed to see their partners portraits until the exhibit. Steve doesn’t get why or why the rule goes for the portraits they're doing of themselves, but he's not the one in charge so he doesn't question it. 

The same cannot be said of Eddie.

“Come on. “ He groans. “Just a peek, no one will know.”

Steve rolls his eyes and flexes his fingers where there's sprawled over his paper so a certain someone doesn't see. “We're literally in the middle of the room, Munson - everyone will know.”

Eddie's slumps, leaning away from where he was invading Steve's space and Steve thinks that’s for the better. He doesn’t know how long he could’ve kept up the unbothered act; like he couldn’t smell Eddie’s cheap shampoo and cologne, like his heart wasn’t pounding and he wasn’t resisting leaning closer. 

Steve can't help but smile at the look on Eddie’s face. Like Steve has personally offended him by following the rules. 

“Lame,” Eddie mutters under his breath. He ducks behind the divider to presumably continue working on his self-portrait.

If it's anything along the lines of his other work, then Steve doesn't actually want to see. The teen has consistently made some of the most disturbing stuff Steve’s ever seen. It can't be helping the Satanist allegations but to each his own. 

Steve is, unfortunately, morbidly curious as to how Eddie would draw humans, though, specifically him. He only has to wait a few weeks to see that, though, so he can be patient, unlike Eddie. 

Steve can’t even lie to himself and act like he doesn’t find it endearing. 

Carol hadn't been all that happy with her partner. The sophomore she was paired with somehow managed to be judgmental and awkward at the same time. 

Steve's never spoken to her himself, but everyone in class is familiar with her mile-a-minute way of speaking. Carol's only referred to her as motor mouth for as long as Steve can recall. 

She wasn't amused that she had to move seats to be closer to the girl, either. The teacher is having them complete the outline and worksheet today, seeing as Carol didn't get the chance yesterday. 

Steve looks behind him to check in only to see Carol staring at the girl dead pan while she presumably explains the project. 

Steve never got a good look at her seeing as she sat behind him, but he notices now that she’s pretty. She isn’t wearing traditionally feminine clothes- Well, she is, but it's mixed in with some interesting choices. Like the tie. Definitely interesting. She has freckles that rival Tommy's - except not really because Steve doesn't think that anybody's could.

Steve makes eye contact with Carol and the girl widens her eyes at him like are you seeing this and Steve only shakes his head in amusement and returns to his assignment. 

He’s never had to draw himself before. At the beginning of the hour, he wasn’t sure where to start, but decided there was no better place than his pride and joy; his hair. It’s not looking too bad if he does say so himself. His plan is to leave the eyes for last because that’s always where he somehow goes wrong. 

Steve pauses in his assessment of his project when he senses eyes on him. He looks to his left and, sure enough, Eddie is leaning onto the back two legs of his seat in an attempt to see pass the divider. 

Steve huffs and grabs the back of the chair and rocks it slightly. Eddie yelps and grabs onto his arm for stability. Steve’s breath hitches. 

“What’re you up to there?”

Eddie peers at him before a smirk grows on his face. “Oh, you know, just testing your reflexes.” 

Steve hums and pulls so the front legs are brought back to the floor. “Right, right, and what’s the verdict?”

The boy grins and pats Steve’s arm before pulling his hand away. “They’re just fine, sweetheart.”

Steve doesn’t get much work done the rest of the period.

fourteen

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sorry if i missed anyone!!

[munson-blurbs]

Eddie Munson x Shy!Reader

Summary: Max and Lucas are tired of their friends silently pining over each other but never making a move, so when the Winter Formal rolls around, they take matters into their own hands.

Warnings: mutual pining, idiots in love, fluffy fluff

WC: 1.8k

A/N: Happy anniversary to the love of my life, @corroded-hellfire 💚 one year ago today, we met in person for the first time, and my life has been infinitely better ever since. Thank you for being my best friend. I love you more than Dustin loves his Weird Al shirt. Red, this fic is for you.

Divider credit to @saradika

“Kill me now.”

Three words uttered by none other than Max Mayfield, sliding her lunch tray onto the table and sitting down with an irritated sigh. 

You look at her with an amused grin. “What is it this time? Bombed a pop quiz? Got detention for flipping off a teacher—again?” Her brazen, flippant attitude provided many entertaining moments, so long as you weren’t on the receiving end of it. 

Max shakes her head, spearing a limp macaroni noodle with her plastic fork. “I wish.” She holds up two tickets to the Winter Formal. “Lucas is dragging me to this bullshit. ‘All the other basketball guys’ girlfriends are going,’” she mocks him in an octave much lower than his actual voice, “so I guess that means I have to follow suit.”

Bringing a hand to your heart, you jut out your lower lip in mock-pity. “Oh, no; your boyfriend wants to show you off at a school dance! How will you ever survive?” 

Max doesn’t miss a beat. “You could go, too,” she says, blue eyes pleading. “Keep me company when the guys inevitably bail to get wasted in the woods.”

“I don’t—”

“You don’t need a date,” she insists, reading your mind before the words can leave your mouth. “I’m telling you, Lucas is gonna ditch me as soon as Jason and Patrick show up.” She takes your hand between both of hers. “Please? I’ll even tell Ms. Kelly the lengths you went to for your poor, troubled freshie.”

You exhale, knowing that she doesn’t need to go to all of that trouble. You’d started off the school year as her peer mentor, but just a few months later, you two have become close friends. “Fine, I’ll go,” you acquiesce, laughing when she pumps her fists victoriously. “But I’m not gonna be happy about it.”

You return to your own lunch, completely missing the mischievous look that graces her freckled face. 

Unbeknownst to you, a similar discussion is had at Hellfire Club later that same afternoon. 

“Absolutely not,” Eddie scoffs, folding his arms across his chest. “Nice try, Sinclair, but I wouldn’t be caught dead at some lame dance.”

“Seriously,” Jeff smirks from his position across the table. “He’s never been to a single one in his ten years of high school.”

Eddie flips him off casually. “It’s only six, asshole. But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not dressing up in some penguin suit to drink unspiked punch with a bunch of shitty people.”

“C’mon, dude,” Lucas says, his tone bordering on a whine. “If you don’t go, I’m gonna be stuck with the jocks all night, and they just wanna suck face with their girlfriends.”

“And you don’t?” Gareth quips. 

Lucas rolls his eyes. “Not in front of everyone. And I don’t need a front-row seat to their performances, either.” He turns his attention back to the Dungeon Master. “Look, I’m desperate. Mike’ll be visiting his grandma and Dustin’s grounded because of his D-plus in Spanish.”

Eddie narrows his eyes. “What about Huey, Dewey, and Louie over here?” he asks, gesturing to the three remaining club members. 

Their collective responses are jumbled excuses; Eddie swears one of them says he’s going kayaking—in mid-December in Indiana—but he doesn’t bother to sift through their lies. “You owe me, Sinclair,” he declares, pointing his forefinger at the underclassman. “Big time.”

The next few weeks leading up to the Winter Formal are spent meticulously making plans. For someone who seemed so disinterested in this dance, Max is paying careful attention to each detail. 

You walk out of the dressing room in a velvet emerald green dress that hits just above the knee. Max is beaming as she adjusts the off-the-shoulder sleeves and smooths down any creases. 

“You look really nice,” she says, nodding her head. She’s trying to temper her enthusiasm, but you can sense her excitement. “I can’t wait to tell Lucas.”

You wrinkle your nose. “Lucas? Why would he care?” He’s a nice kid—more in tune with emotions than the average fourteen-year-old boy—but that doesn’t constitute an interest in your fashion choices. 

Max’s cheeks burn as red as her hair. “Uh, well, seeing you happy makes me happy, and seeing me happy makes him happy, so…everyone’s happy?” she finishes lamely. She clears her throat as if expelling the awkwardness from the conversation. “Anyway, let’s buy this dress so we can look for shoes.”

“Yeah, okay.” You’re not fully convinced, but you brush it off and steel your nerves to ask a question. “Is anyone else gonna be there that we know?” You really want to know whether Eddie Munson is going to be there, but you can’t say the quiet part aloud. 

“Probably,” she shrugs, a bit too quickly, but she’s pushing you back behind the curtain to change before you can inquire more. 

“Why does this stupid tie need to be green?” Eddie asks, sifting through the store’s selection with Lucas by his side. 

“Uh, Christmas colors,” Lucas stammers, fumbling for a decent explanation other than the contents of his secret phone call with Max earlier today. “And, y’know, red is way overdone, so…” he trails off lamely, going back to the display table and hoping Eddie drops the matter. 

They find exactly what they’re looking for—not without Eddie complaining about putting in too much effort just to be a third wheel—and make their way over to the food court. Eddie makes a beeline for the Pizza Hut when he stops dead in his tracks. “Shit, Sinclair; we gotta go,” he says urgently, clapping a hand on the younger boy’s shoulder and steering him away from the fast food. 

“What the hell? I’m hungry!”

Eddie shakes his head, curls brushing against his shoulders. “Look, man.” He discreetly points to his left, where you and Max are giggling at the Orange Julius. “We can’t let them see us.”

“Dude, she’s like the nicest person ever,” Lucas rebuts. “Even Max likes her, and Max pretty much hates everyone.”

“That’s not the problem.” Eddie rakes his ringed fingers through his hair, wincing when he snags one on a knot. “The problem is that she’s gonna be all, ‘hi, Eddie; what’re you doing at the mall?’ And I’m gonna be all, ‘just picking out a tie for the Winter Formal.” And then she’ll go, ‘oh, who’s your date?” And then I’ll have to say, ‘I don’t have one; I’m just playing babysitter to some freshmen like a goddamn loser!” He hops back and forth to indicate each character change.

“First of all, ouch,” Lucas quips, “second, go hide in the bathroom if you want, but I’m getting something to eat.”

Eddie exhales an exasperated sigh, giving in and schlepping over to Pizza Hut, one of the few times in his life that he’s trying to be inconspicuous. 

You pull into the school parking lot on the night of the Winter Formal and shift into park before killing the engine. Max is bouncing her leg up and down in the passenger seat, lower lip tucked between her teeth.

“What’s on your mind?” you ask, mistaking her excitement for anxiety. “You know that Lucas would think you look beautiful even if you showed up in a potato sack.” You furrow your brow. “Where is he, anyway? Why didn’t he come with us?”

She mumbles something about not wanting her mom to ask any questions about the relationship, and you take them at face value. Her eyes light up when she spots her boyfriend walking into the school alongside…Eddie Munson?

“Eddie’s here?” you ask in a hushed whisper, feeling sweat prickling under your arms. You’ve been nursing a massive crush on him for ages–one that Max is very much aware of. And now he’s here, dressed in a black suit with his hair pulled back into a low bun at the nape of his neck. “Max, why didn’t you tell me? Who’s he going with?” The idea of him slow dancing with someone else has your stomach turning.

Max just shrugs. “I don’t think he had a date.” Too casual, too blasé–she knows something. “C’mon, let’s go in.” She swings the car door open enthusiastically, leaving you shell-shocked in your seat.

“Maxine Mayfield!” you hiss, using her full government name to drive home your bewilderment, but she just skips ahead. Damn your heeled shoes, slowing you down before you can catch up to her. When you finally do, she just grabs your hand and tugs you towards the guys.

She poorly feigns surprise, jaw dropping as she exclaims, “Eddie? What are you doing here? Oh, my gosh, this is such a coincidence!” She pulls you closer, smiling far too wide. “Lucas and I both brought our upperclassmen friends! What are the odds?”

“Yeah, so weird,” Lucas says, not as loud as Max but just as transparent. He looks at Max before regarding you and Eddie. “Okay, well, we’re gonna go dance–bye!” The two of them scamper off, leaving you alone with Eddie. If their stilted dialogue wasn’t evidence enough, the way Eddie’s tie perfectly matches your dress certainly clears up their intentions.

Eddie speaks first, shoving his hands in his pants pockets and nervously swiveling his body. “I, uh, think we’ve been set up,” he says with a small, awkward chuckle. “I swear, it wasn’t my idea. Not–not that it’s a bad thing, I just meant, like, if you’re uncomfortable with this, I don’t wanna be held responsible.” His cheeks burn red. “Shit, I need to stop talking.”

“It’s okay,” you reassure him with your own kind laugh, “we might as well make the most of it. Get some punch and make fools of ourselves out there?” You gesture towards the gym’s makeshift dance floor; the band has just started playing Journey’s “Faithfully.” Eddie’s nods, following you to an empty space, and you timidly drape your arms over his shoulders. Taking care to avoid an inappropriate touch, he rests his palms on the small of your back. 

His voice is low when he murmurs in your ear, “you look really beautiful tonight.” He clears his throat and speaks again. “You always look really beautiful, though.”

The two of you sway to the music, swapping shy smiles and fleeting but longing glances. As the song ends, you look over your shoulder. “We’re being spied on,” you report, noting the way the two younger kids are watching you from across the room. You consider your next words before eventually deciding to go for it: “Did you talk to Lucas about me as much as I talked to Max about you?”

“Probably more,” Eddie laughs, bringing you a bit closer. “But I’m interested in comparing notes.”

You nod, staving off any lingering nerves. “Maybe after the dance, we can split a burger from Benny’s and discuss?”

Eddie presses a soft kiss to your forehead. “Yeah,” he says; you can feel his lips move against your skin, “I’d like that.”

--

[almostfoxglove]

AN END TO DROUGHT

written for @perotovar's offering of Frith

RATING: Explicit (18+) | PAIRING: Javier Peña x f!Reader GOD: Freyr God of fertility, harvests, and peace WORD COUNT: 5.4k CW: Smut (f!oral, m!oral, unprotected piv, creampie).

SUMMARY: The future of your family's homestead hangs in the balance as Javier Peña comes home in the middle of a drought.

read on ao3 | almostfoxglove masterlist

For two fortnights you’ve seen no rainfall. Not a single, silver drop. The orchard, rich with the stunted globes of pale apples not yet fully formed, withers browner every day. Leaves crisp and folded in prayer, the last-ditch desperation of dying fronds. You spend hours hauling well water to the rows of cropland on which your livelihood relies, but it isn’t enough. Each morning you wake to the sun rising phoenix-like on the horizon, hotter and more accusing than the day before.

You speak to the trees, the fledgling stone fruit, apologizing when there is no more water your body can carry, when the well runs dry. 

Six generations your family has raised apples like they raised their kin. 

Now it will die in this drought with you as its shepherd.

Hopeless in your waking, back throbbing, shoulders sore, you rise from your bed at the crack of a new dawn to the fragrance coaxed every Sunday by your mother’s slender hands. She is fragile now in that child-like way, skin thin and veins sapphire blue, hearing going, but sturdy, still, for you. Doesn’t matter that you’ve been grown for decades now, solely responsible for the farm and her mounting care—your mother bakes a pair of her grain-kissed boules every week without fail.

“There you are,” she says, when you are just two steps away. These days she cannot hear your footsteps on the stairs.

“Sit, now,” you say softly, slipping your hand over hers to take the bread knife, and with a soft tsk your mother surrenders before settling at the breakfast table.

You break bread together: salted butter swept glistening over the delicate crumb and sturdy crust, spoons of preserves canned the year before. Cinnamon and cloves, honey and stewed apples, wild pickled blueberries. It takes so long to notice the change in the air, but when you do it’s obvious—you aren’t sweating in the way you have for weeks. The house, once sweltering, has cooled ever so slightly. When you gaze out the windows into the orchard, the sky is no longer the blue you’ve come to resent, but a wash of cotton batting. 

Clouds. 

Your mother, thin wire glasses low on her nose, grins at your expression. 

“He’s home,” she says.

“Who?”

Her smirk is the same as you remember it being when you were a girl. “The Peña boy,” she says, lifting her bread slice to her mouth. “Weather always fixes itself when he comes ‘round.”

You hum beneath your breath. You can picture him only vaguely—lean and liquid, little more than a silhouette in the distance on the other side of the fence that cages your family’s property from his. His father you know better, see often. Spiced apple cider traded for horse manure or Chucho’s brawn. Twice this past winter he fixed your fence after a furious storm and asked for nothing but a loaf of your mother’s bread in return.

Javier you’ve not glimpsed in a decade give or take, if you’re remembering right. Moved somewhere south for duty’s dauntless call.

In the lullaby of easy silence, you finish your meal, rinse the dishes, and walk out into the fields with the second loaf in hand where overhead the sky is performing a miracle befitting the gods: letting out the first tender, forgiving drops of rain. Your body brightens as you watch it freckle and darken the starving, yellowed earth. 

A caw, something of a laugh, shocks loose from your chest—delight, pure in its relief.

Tracing the aisles of death-bed apple trees, you sweep your fingertips along their trunks. Water pools in the green spades turned to spoons for liquid crystal. The precipitation for which you’ve longed and begged and prayed: here, at last, to save the grange.

The rain picks up. Forceful in its abundance, peppering the sandy earth. Soon your boots stick as you walk between trees, dirt becoming mud, so you shield the boule beneath the leaf of your buttoned shirt.

At the end of the orchard, the log fence stands and the grass grows tall and clover-riddled, purple thistles starved yellow in the heat. You stride towards the fence, far beyond which the Peña house stands white and shingled, framed by the umbrellas of old oak trees that border the meadows in which their herd of equines laze back and forth, grateful as you for the merciful change in weather. It is beautiful here, though it’s easy to forget when all the season brings is wilting. 

You hear him before you see him: a quiet, clicking tongue. 

Then a mare picks up her cantor, spurred forth by Javier—indeed returned, wide in the shoulders and dark hair slicked by rain, out forty feet or so—tanned skin made gold around his eyes by yellow aviators, periwinkle shirt undone a button too low. More handsome than you remember, but it’s been a long time. 

Your mother was right: it seems he brought the rain home with him.

As you come to a stop near the fence, tall grass clinging to your calves, his head turns slowly in your direction. Jaw working over something—gum, if you had to guess. You lift your free hand, show him your open palm, and he takes a last look at the horse before sauntering your way.

Like you, he’s undisturbed by the rain. No shelter-seekers here; you’re grateful enough to bathe in any storm. Come hell or high water—isn’t that how the saying goes? You’d swim any flash flood after all this unending dearth, drink any tidal wave.

“Heard you were home,” you call out over the pebbling downpour, watching his broad hand rake through his hair. 

Much more handsome than you remember, the nearer he strides. Unhurried, Javier lifts his sunglasses off to slip into his shirt pocket and even from some way off you don’t miss the path of his brown eyes as he takes you in. Against your better judgment, the hungry stripe of his gaze flips something low in your stomach, something needy. 

He stops just shy of his side of the fence, no more than an arm’s length away, as the splatter of kind weather kicks up the earth’s perfume. 

“This morning,” he admits, his voice all gravel and mead. Low and heady, a little sweet. Not shy—his eyes drop again, this time to your stomach where you’re holding the bread beneath your shirt. Sort of useless now—the rain’s too strong to save it—so you draw it out, flashing him by accident a glimpse of your bare stomach where his gaze stays pinned. 

Then, bread rising in your hand, seeded crust glistening as it speckles wet, his eyes at last leave you to follow it. “Ma thinks you brought the rain,” you say, not bothering to hide your smirk.

The corner of his mouth pulls into his cheek. “That so?”

You shrug, loaf held like a waitress’ tray not yet offered. “Accordin’ to her.”

To your surprise you see in his eyes what appears to be timidity—perhaps bashful to be given credit for the sudden end to the wrecking drought he’s no doubt heard about. With a sweep of your arm, you present the bread in your outstretched hand and one dark brow rises high on his head. 

“Before it’s drenched,” you insist, and Javier takes it, smile lopsided and pretty. 

Above the chuffing sound of a horse grazing on the trampled grass, the sky splits like a seam and sunlight cuts through the cloud’s white cover, throwing down a ribbon of yellow that licks the stables. 

Javier tilts the bread in his hands, inspecting the ear, the crust. Flashes those dark eyes back at you, exacting and tender at the same time.

“Our way of saying thanks,” you say, already stepping backward, toward the apple trees. “Neighbor.”

The rain doesn’t stop for three days—just long enough to wash the ash of long-snuffed forest fires from the orchard’s leaves. When the sun returns whole and yolk-gold to the sky, it brings heat of a kinder type. Warm for the growing things but barbless in its licking flame. You swear in just three nights the orchard lifts itself from its stupor—broadens, stretches, unfurls new leaves. 

Your mother bakes like she’s got an army to feed and doesn’t wait till Sunday to do it. 

“Take them, take them,” she insists, as fragile in stature as she is adamant in tone. Such a small, hunched little thing. “Least we can do.”

“Ma,” you sigh, powerless to her persistence, how she rests the arched handle of a basket in your hand for you to take. “You don’t seriously think he—”

She tuts softly, shoos you with one pallid hand before re-knotting the bow of her apron behind her back. “Just be grateful,” she says. “S’only right.”

Might as well be a girl again because here you are, obedient. Carrying the basket of seeded bread across the grass, between reborn apple trees, the fragrant orchard rows that days ago seemed doomed to die. Your heart thuds, surrendering itself to gratitude. Suppose it doesn’t hurt anything to take the Peñas bread.

Javier’s out in the pasture cleaving a rotten log from a sunken fence panel with an axe. White t-shirt translucent and clinging to the muscle that banks his back, he heaves the blade down with a biting crack and a grunt. Your footsteps give you away—he straightens as you hop the fence between your properties and land on his side, halting his rhythmic swinging.

As he turns, face halved by the shadow of an oak looming overhead, eyes squinting to make you out in the light, Javier cocks an eyebrow, dimple winking in his cheek.

“Neighbor,” he says, unabashed, now, in his lingering gaze. Dark curls cling to his temples and forehead, licked by sweat, across which he wipes the back of his forearm before setting the axe down against the fence.

Growing up on adjoining farms never sowed friendship between you—you’d estimate you’ve exchanged no more than a couple hundred words in damn near four decades—but there is in Javier a certain familiarity. A sense of him fitting into the landscape, reliable as an oak always looming in the distance. As constant as these valleys and hills, as the house beyond his muscled shoulder. Never something to acquaint yourself with, but something to rely upon.

Peculiar to stand before him now—twice in the same week—exchanging words.

You hold out the basket, linen cloth folded neatly over the boules. Javier, eyeing you suspiciously, takes one cautious step toward you with his hands on his narrow hips, peering down at your offering. His eyes flicker beyond you to your house and though you don’t look back you’d bet the whole season’s harvest that your mother is standing on the porch, watching. Guaranteeing you hand off the gift as she’s asked, like you aren’t well past grown.

Amused, he hums low and quiet. “For me?” he muses, knowing the answer, and when you roll your eyes he only smirks. Pleased, maybe teasing you.

You squint at him—glistening, all sinew and bated breath. Your mother’s mind may be failing in that drawn out, terrible way—hearing fading, her logic a little swimmy—but standing this close to Javier you can’t blame the woman for mistaking him for a god. 

“Just take it,” you say, betrayed by the curl of your lips. “She won’t let me back in the house ‘till you do.”

This time as he slips the gift from your hand to his, Javier sweeps his fingertips against your open palm, sending a sparkle of heat up the length of your arm. You watch him peel the frond of cloth back, unveiling the golden tithe as you drop your arm at your side. When he inhales slow and deep you can smell it too, that redolent unfurling of warmth. Hypnotic, despite its familiarity. Hypnotic, too, is the breadth of his chest as he takes that long, indulgent breath, thin fabric slick to his damp, lithe form. 

“She really think I brought the rain?” he asks, frowning a little. Watching you like he knows you’re watching him. Each of you sizing the other up, scrambling to build opinions of someone who’s only ever been a figure across the lush trees and grass. 

Did you once lose a kite to one of their oak trees? You think you might remember a young, rawboned Javier climbing a web of gnarled branches to fish it free, delivering it safely to where you waited on your side of the fence. Yes, you can see it now—that lazy, one-sided smile on his boyish face, the sun-bleached kite, and the relief of its homecoming to your trembling hand. 

Three decades older he is no less honest in the way he awaits your reaction.

“Or she’s messing with me,” you admit. “I never know anymore.”

His scoff triggers yours—a brief, quiet chuckle in the remains of a salvaged summer. Javier shrugs and yes, you think he catches the way your eyes skirt briefly to his shoulders because his jaw ticks, cheeks hollowing as he sucks his tongue against his front teeth. He turns his head in the direction of their house, sees no sign of Chucho, same as you. A low hm sound rattles from his chest.

You’d swear the sun flares a little hotter when he returns his gaze to you.

“If it rains again,” Javier says, his voice swooping to a deeper shade. “What will you bring me?”

You cross your arms. “I think you can count on the bread indefinitely.”

“Don’t mean her—I mean you.”

Traitorous, your heart: how it speeds, skips a note or two in its once steady pattern. “I don’t think you brought the rain,” you tell him. “Just timing.”

When he narrows his eyes, his crow’s feet swallow them. Mustache quirking, pink tongue darting over his bottom lip. “Call it hypothetical,” he says, and you’re not sure if you were standing quite this close just a moment before, if one of you has moved and if so, which. 

Hunger rarely devours you in any of its forms. A life spent in service of harvests leaves little excess to spend. Yet it stirs unmistakably, low and begging, at the sound of Javier’s gruff voice and the graceful way he pins your eyes to his mouth with every tiny movement of his lips. He doesn’t have to smile for you to feel him smirking—a fact alone that feels somehow mythic in its dominion, its quiet, unassuming power. All of him marble-sleek and solid, the image of virile beauty. It almost feels like a shame to think you’ve seldom stood this close before.

You jut your chin to the sky—that blue untouched by a single cloud—and shake your head. “It’s not going to rain,” you say, steadfast in your certainty. “Not anytime soon.”

“And if it does.” He doesn’t say it like a question—rather, an inevitability—which is to say you hear his real meaning: and when it does.

Head shaking, cheeks set aflame, you once more roll your eyes, this time turning back to return to your side of the fence. Over your shoulder you call out, “If it rains this week, I’ll bring whatever you like.”

For six days there’s nothing but sun. You watch the apples blush on their branches, those first pinkish stripes that promise a red and sugared fruit. Autumn will bring spices and cider, days and weeks and months of fermentation, of watching fruit turn liquid and then to gold. This stretch of summer is make or break for the harvest to come: the right weather now can mean perfection or a crying shame.

All week you watch Javier at such a distance he appears as only a tiny, charcoal figure roaming the fields, hauling lumber and picking up the far-off slack.

Yet often when you do, you think his head looks to be already angled in your direction. Impossible to know for sure in the blazing light and with so much land between you, but you’d take that bet. You’re pretty sure he’s watching you too.

You’re sure, also, that you’re right about the weather. At the dawn of the seventh day the skies look no less blemished than they have all week. Doesn’t look at all like it’s going to rain.  To your surprise, you’re a little disappointed, but the feeling passes.

You push out into the orchards, tend to the lifelong task of keeping everything verdant and alive. Sweet is the air at this early, fragile hour in which the birds are just now waking, filling the world with their jubilee. Sky pink at the horizon, white overhead, you spend the morning gloating to no one but the trees—you were right, and Javier was wrong. He’s going to lose.

Lose what, you aren’t sure, but when midday breaks golden and ripe, Javier appears in the tall grass, hand steadied on the neck of a tobiano as he and the creature walk between gated pastures, and his face turns in your direction, catches you drinking icy cider on the porch while you catch your breath between tasks. 

This time when he catches your gaze, he lifts his free hand, forefinger spearing up at the sky. Too far to call out to each other, you have no way of asking what the gesture is for, so you step down from the croaking porch into the crabgrass and look up.

There hang, above you, newborn wisps. Clouds ashy at their bellies.

But clouds are just clouds. They aren’t rain.

The reckoning comes an hour later. 

You dismiss the first, shy drop. A fluke, a fleeting blip of your imagination. Then the second: clear and wet on your forearm. Then a third. Soon it’s unavoidable—above you gray has gathered like dust bunnies beneath a couch, the bright summer shaded by the weather’s impossible will—and the rain that falls is not a patter, not a whisper, but a stony fist fight. The kind of rain that comes sweeping and determined, that has something to prove. 

It’s like autumn has taken the stage two months too early. Childlike in its eagerness to command your attention—a downpour harsh and giving. 

You emerge at the end of an arbored aisle to see Javier cut stoic against the shaded sky just shy of the boundary between your properties, chest wide and proud, just as drenched by the onslaught of rain but not fazed in the slightest. Too cavalier to smile but its essence hangs in the air between you, silver as any raindrop, unmistakable in meaning. He nods in the direction of a stable not far from the first shelter of elder oaks and without a word or invitation lopes off toward it, so fluid in his lazy strides, legs a little bowed and no small bit solid, hugged tight by denim that might as well be painted on.

You are following before your mind can think to.

You are hopping the fence.

You are dashing for the shadowed stable after him.

Breathless, hair kelped to your cheeks, clothes more water than textile, you cannot at first make out the stable’s interior, eyes not yet adjusted to the shift in light, ears booming with its cacophony. “Okay,” you say to the darkness in which Javier must be standing, blinking fast, wiping the rain from your eyes. “You got really fuckin’ lucky. What do you want?”

Embers warm in your chest—the first fronds of new wanting. You know what you hope he’ll say.

A flash of movement as your eyes adapt: Javier’s tanned arms reaching for you. His broad hands frame your face and you are not yet surefooted as he, swept up in his sudden, steady embrace. You hear yourself laugh over the barrage outside, silenced only by the blackness in his eyes—all that warmth and brown swallowed by his pupils. Your hands cuff his wrists, holding him to holding you without hesitation. 

It should be awkward, this first real meeting of your bodies. How Javier steps up to press the length of his torso to yours, sly in the subtle turn of his lips as he breathes one quiet word: You. But it isn’t. He slots his lips to yours like kissing you is just another step in his languid stride, graceful and planned, his arms dragging you against his steady frame. The softness of his mouth a welcome surprise. Dizzy on the first swipe of his begging tongue, you’re entirely unaware of Javier walking you backward until your shoulder blades hit the stable wall.

What a gift it is to be kissed and kiss with one’s whole body. Javier licks hotly into your mouth, sucking sweetly on your tongue or bottom lip depending on his whim, hands holding you flush to the fire of him. When he moves to your jaw, the soft flesh of your ear, you are a candle never before lit, touched a thousand times wrongly and made finally right.

Javier mumbles something lost under the bellowing tempest. Every raindrop riots on the sheeted roof. 

“What?” you pant, eyelids heavy with lust. Your shirt hangs open, as does his, both unbuttoned though you’d not noticed their undoing. Now visible in the gray light is the bronze of his freckled chest, the dark hair drawn from his navel to the waistband of his jeans.

You’d stare, but Javier then laps at the hollows of your neck, drinks rain from the dip in your collarbone, and you hum softly, entranced by his touch, eyes fluttering closed. He moves his lips closer to your ear. “Perfect,” he repeats, before his mouth is lost once more to the curve of your shoulder, the slope of your chest.

Meanwhile the path of your hands draws a symphony from him: low grunts and breathy huffs and, when your fingertips trace the hair on his stomach to graze his jeans, an earthy moan sweeter than any rainfall after any summer. 

Javier cants his hips against yours like he’s making a promise.

How sublime, the wet ask of his tongue down your stomach as he falls to his knees. 

Though he—after catching your eye, fingers frozen over the fly of your shorts until you nod—is the one to strip the layers from you first, you aren’t certain which of you is the one who’s praying, only that the reverence hangs heavy as a heatwave in the humid air.

Your head falls back against the stable wall. All but the roar of the storm is lost beyond your panting bodies as Javier kneels at the altar of you, shelves one of your legs on his shoulders, and laps hungrily from your aching heat. The pledge of his mouth sucks the air from you—your hands fly to the laurel of his hair, bathed locks slipping between your fingers as you clench and throb and tug, hardly conscious of the whimpers you let out in the wake of his tending.

Dutiful, he brings you gasping to the brink of some new chasm. Tongue expert in its tracing, circling, slipping, driving. Lifts his face to smirk just before you fall, dark stache glossy with your need and eyes blown black, and perhaps you’d be annoyed if Javier looked arrogant at all, but his confidence appears to you only assured. Resolute in his wanting. As if the world would have to come to a sudden, gasping end for his concentration to falter at all.

“Like that?” Javier asks, perhaps as winded as you. Genuine, you think, in his asking, though he must know.

You’re not sure if you remember how to nod or speak, but your hips buck on their own accord, desperate for him to see this through. 

“Yeah,” he rasps, his thick fingers squeezing your hips. “Think you do.”

Then his grin vanishes as he resumes and all at once you are tumbling, swept away in a landslide and earthquake at the same time as he slips two fingers into you, coaxing a rush of pleasure into his mouth. You might cry out his name, but the sound is lost to the din of the deluge.

When next you catch your breath, Javier is standing, denim wet and straining against the swell of his length. Hesitation is no longer a word you know or hold, already greedy for his taste, so you urge your mouth to his and lap the taste of yourself from his tongue, fingers busy with freeing him, the slick peeling of his jeans. You fall without realizing you’re falling, sunken to the ground with Javier’s cock heavy and throbbing in your hand. 

He might whine when your tongue flickers sweetly against his weeping head—but there’s no mistaking the desperate groan dug loose from the earth of Javier’s chest as you bring the whole of him into the furnace of your mouth, wet and tight and willing. Your moan sends a shiver through his body, then Javier’s hand shoots out fast as a gunshot, palm slamming into the wall to keep himself from toppling. 

“Shit—” he gasps, and you look up at him through dewy lashes to find his eyes have closed, lips swollen and jaw hanging open. 

Again, you hum. Make a game of the stroke and slide and swallowing that makes him quiver until it’s too good, too good, too close baby and he pulls you off him, drool slugging down your chin. His cock aching, surely, when you nuzzle your cheek against it, tempted to take it in your throat again. But you smile as he plummets to meet you on the ground, then swoon when he lays you out on the topsoil not yet drenched by the rain. 

“Wanna feel you first,” Javier murmurs, petting the hair back from your face, lapping the spit from your chin with his tongue before he unites it with yours. Lips plush, more tender than you expect amidst his fervor, the kind of kissing you can’t help but lose yourself to. You think you’d kiss him the rest of the day, through any night. Brows pinching when he pulls away, cupping the blaze of your burning cheeks with the palm of his hand, thumb swept across your upper lip as he gazes down at you with adoration.

“Need to fill you,” he groans. “Don’t I, hm? Dime, baby.”

Thighs spread to make room for him in the bowl of your hips, you pull him over you by the shoulders until he blankets you, covering all but a sliver of the rain-rich sky visible through the stable’s entrance, and the oak tree’s canopy lashing in the fevered gale.

Is his shirt below you now, somehow? You think it must be—spread carefully to protect your needy flesh.

“Yes,” you breathe, as Javier kneels between your legs, fisting the base of his cock. “Yes, yes.”

A grin, but not of ego—he is only pleased. Pious in his watching the way breath shudders in your chest. Javier nods, brow dented low and serious, curls black with water and plastered to his face, and pumps himself once, then takes your ankles in his hands. Sets them flat on the ground, bending both your knees to frame him. Hands butterflied and wide, tracing the slant of your thighs to the bend of your hips like all of a sudden he has all the time in the world. 

Maybe you do. It almost feels like you do. 

Like this might not be a spell that breaks with the end of the rain.

“I’ve got you,” he says.

“I know,” you breathe.

With both hands Javier lifts your hips from the ground and pulls you toward him until your core presses against the underside of his cock. He hmphs, transfixed by this silken meeting, and thrusts his hips once, gently, rubbing himself between your folds. You whimper at the friction, cunt fluttering, begging. 

Javier clicks his tongue as you claw at his forearms, hips pitching in his hold to ask for more, and this time there is perhaps a drop of pride in his cunning gaze. Glad to be the one you stir for, the one you choose.

“Needs me, hm?” he coos.

You paint the air between you with his name.

“I know,” he murmurs, guiding himself to you now, nudging his tip against your clit once, twice, then notching.

Then rhapsody. The urging in and dragging out, the sweet perfection of Javier inside you, taking space that now seems like it was made for him from the start. “Fuck,” you hear yourself say, more breath than voice, and Javier grits his teeth as he feeds his cock to you slowly, throbbing and whole.

“So soft,” he grunts, resolve slipping—his hips snap against yours on the next thrust and you yelp from the bliss of it. Teeth bared above you, Javier yanks you flush against his slender hips, buried to the hilt as he tries to catch his breath. “Shit, baby.”

Thighs clamping around his waist, you writhe, plant your palms on his sternum, desperate for more. 

“Javi,” you plea, and in a flash Javier spreads his hands over your hamstrings, pins your thighs to your stomach, and bends over you, fucking you into the ground.

Your teeth bump when he moves to kiss you, then he tilts his head and it’s all saccharine again: his tongue lapping sweetly into your mouth, mustache scraping against your cupid’s bow. Like this, the angle is exquisite. So deep it’s like he’s everywhere, stretching you out and stringing you taut and Javier must feel it too because he starts to grind, the thatch of dark hair at the base of his stomach rubbing against your clit as he grazes his teeth along the underside of your jaw.

“That’s it,” he mumbles. “Damelo, baby, quiero sentirte.”

You shatter, or bloom, you can’t totally decide. Exaltation in a single moment, your whole body electric in its trembling, clenching, gasping. Javier falters only when your body comes down from its high, emboldened to move again. Folded as you are, you can only whine and moan and sparkle as he once more takes up a rhythm. Smooth and hot as cider on a cold night, his cock glistening with your need as he pulls out and presses in, patient again.

“Perfect,” he prays.

It’s possible that this is heaven.

You don’t know when it stopped, but the skies have quieted. A lick of sunlight casts into the stables and falls over the expanse of Javier’s back and shoulders as he rocks into you again and again and again. Hand weaving into the curls at the nape of his neck, you hold him to you as his pace begins to stutter.

Javier licks the column of your throat, purring against your neck, “Lo quieres, baby? Hm?”

“Yes,” you tell him, one arm winding around his shoulders. “Deep.”

He kisses you once, then pulls back just enough to watch your face, his own lust-tense and sneering as his high builds and climbs. You swipe your thumb across his bottom lip, tell him to let go, and he is beautiful—lit copper and gold by summer’s warmth as he drops his forehead to yours.

Perfect in his promise, Javier offers all to you, fills you wholly, his body tense and then unraveling. His weight drops onto you properly as he paints your cunt with his seed. When you grunt he lifts just enough to free your legs without leaving your heat, and you lock your ankles over the small of his back.

Javier nuzzles his nose to yours.

You aren’t sure how long you stay like that, but when you’re standing again, his hands guides your weakened legs back into your shorts. You button each other’s shirts instead of your own. 

Outside the stables, the earth sings petrichor, grateful for the fleeting flood. Across the fence beyond the tall grass your orchard sparkles, glittered with rain as you stand beneath the oak tree gazing out in gratitude. Javier’s hand ghosts over your spine and you feel a rash of goosebumps break out as if he’s once more touched your skin. 

His breath is warm against your hair, the apple of your cheek. “Don’t wait for rain next time,” he whispers, then slinks off regal and graceful as a wildcat, clicking his tongue to call out the horses to the pastures now marbled with loam.

It doesn’t rain again for weeks, but you go to him anyway, hopping the fence that cradles your homes to seek his arms.

moodboard by @perotovar & dividers by @saradika-graphics

tag list & some mutuals:

@thethirstwivesclub @la-vie-est-une-fleur29 @hediondoamor-blog @tuquoquebrute @thundermartini

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@jolapeno @pastelpinkflowerlife @ak-vintage @rav3n-pascal22 @sixhours

[ceilidho]

take me home, country road

[ao3]

You have nothing on your person apart from a hastily packed suitcase and the dress you came into town wearing, on the run from trouble back home. Too bad John's missing a bride that matches your description. Or: the 1800s (mistaken) mail order bride au (chapter 15)

first chapter >> last chapter

-

Sleep eludes you. You toss and turn that first night, not used to sleeping on your own. Every sound makes you jump. When the sky goes black and the bushes rustle with the breeze, you have to double check the locks on the doors no less than three times, fastening it with the wooden bolt just to be safe. 

Without John around, the world is twice as loud; crickets chirp raucous melodies, buzzing so loud that sometimes you swear there must be one on the pillow right beside your head, and, in the distance, an owl hoots at an interval so irregular that each screech tugs you back from the brink of sleep. The house groans as it settles into itself; the first time you hear it, you spring upright in bed, heartbeat erratic, certain that it’s the sound of someone coming up the porch steps. 

You collapse back onto the mattress with a huff when you finally recognize the sound for what it is. 

You don’t sleep well that night. Dawn finds you awake before its arrival. The songbirds keep you from drifting off back to sleep when the first wispy rays of sunlight creep over the horizon, and you lie in bed until the possibility of sleep is well behind you. That makes you huff, bitter over the loss. 

Again, the day is slow to come over you. It seems almost reluctant to really get going, the sunlight clear and the air brisk but the day itself slow moving. An early morning chill forces you to don heavier garments than usual. 

After breakfast, you take Buttercup into the paddock to run around, watching her from the edge of the pen, humming to yourself under your breath. 

Most of the morning is spent cleaning and doing chores around the house. You muck the stables, feed the horses, scrub the dirty laundry on the washboard before hanging it up on the line, weed the garden, and promise yourself that next week you’ll work up the energy to boil linseed oil to polish and oil the furniture. As it is, you stagger into the kitchen around midday for lunch, sticky with sweat. 

Kate comes up the path on horseback not too long after that, a large swooped hat perched precariously on her head. She has to hold it in place by the brim to keep it from flying off. You watch her from the window at first, drying your hands from the quick wash you gave them after finishing your lunch.

“I ought to start making new friends,” you quip when she takes a seat next to you on the porch swing. 

“Sick of my company already?” she laughs. 

“Well, a girl’s gotta have options.” 

She snorts at that, tipping her hat lower on her head to shade her eyes from the sun. It has the effect of cutting a wide shadow across her face, leaving only a swath of white teeth exposed. 

Her beauty has always come as an afterthought. Tanned, freckled skin, and hair like golden wheat. But you look now and you see something different than the woman you’re used to seeing, and it dawns on you that what you’re seeing now is a version of Kate divorced from the idea of her that you’d always had in your head. Almost fuller; more robust. 

You tear your eyes away only when she catches you staring and cocks an eyebrow. 

She coaxes you into saddling Buttercup up and accompanying her on a trail ride. Part of you resists initially, still wounded from your last ride, and when Kate presses you for more information, you reluctantly divulge, recounting the events from the weeks prior with a tremble in your voice. She nods only once while you speak, keeping her comments to herself. That she must have already known doesn’t surprise you; she’d insinuated as much only the other week. 

You’d be wise to not keep secrets from Kate in the future, you realize. Best to keep someone as omniscient as her on your side. 

After some encouragement, she talks you into a leisurely stroll and even helps you dress Buttercup in the stables. The dizzying spell of apprehension settles over you like a heavy fog up until you blink and realize that the two of you have been riding beside each other in silence for the better part of a half mile. 

The fear doesn’t entirely evaporate, however. Any sudden dip in the terrain or unexpected noise from Buttercup makes you start. You take several breaks to breathe and walk around. At the top of a hill, you ask Kate in a voice verging on shrill if you can take a break and dismount before she’s even answered you. 

“She can sense if you’re on edge,” Kate reminds you, nodding to where Buttercup grazes in a nearby patch of grass. 

“Well, I can’t help that much. I am on edge.”

She tips her head back to look at the sky and sighs before looking back at you. “Sit down for a bit then. It’s not a race.”

And you do, for a spell. You sit and rest with your back against the trunk of a tree that branches high above you, the canopy blotting out any sunlight save for the tendril thin strands that sink through like stones in water. 

You’re striking a delicate balance between the needs of the flesh and the needs of the soul. What the soul wants is to push itself beyond the boundaries that formerly enclosed it; after a lifetime of servitude and desires suppressed, even a simple trail ride feels momentous. What the flesh wants, however, is to shade in the shade until the urge to retch wears off. 

The walk takes the two of you by a farm with a large, fenced-in enclosure. A couple houses sit around the enclosure. The smell of the livestock is pungent at first and your nose wrinkles as you approach the farm, but you adjust after a time. 

Recent weeks so far from home have spoiled you; back in the city, the pungent stench of waste and manure was commonplace, the sour cloak of tobacco stinking up the alehouses and alleyways as much as the parlors and lounges. You’d adjusted to it back then as well. 

The grazing cows rumble and low behind the fence. It’s a pleasant bucolic scene, one lifted straight from a painting that you swear you’ve seen before, though the artist’s name escapes you. 

Looking out into antediluvian pastures sets your heart at ease. When the farmer wanders out of the barn to greet the two of you, the two of you join him and his wife for coffee in the big house. 

For a brief period of time, it’s like stepping out of your body; there’s no impetus to get a move on, and inertia doesn’t set in like a rolling fog leaving you stranded in no man’s land. Nothing like the late evenings lying in bed in your aunt and uncle’s apartment, staring up at the pockmarked ceiling and praying for something to change. 

You, simply, have a coffee.

After bidding them farewell, the bulk of the afternoon is spent at Kate’s house, a tiny plot of land just outside of town surrounded by fields of ochre prairie grass. You’re wiped by the end of the ride, sweat running in rivulets down your back. While Kate brings the horses into her little stable to let them rest and eat, you fill up the porcelain bowl in her bathroom with water to wash your face. 

It’s quiet. You help with a few affairs around the house and you learn, to your own internal amusement, that Kate hums through her chores. Soap stops by in the early evening to drop off Kate’s mail and stays for supper, glad for the company. You watch bemusedly as he scarfs down three corned beef sandwiches with ease, mildly nauseated by the way he talks with his mouth full. 

“Can he even breathe?” you hiss to Kate while Soap is busy shoveling food into his gob. 

She nods, unbothered by the display in front of her. “You should see him when he’s actually hungry.”

You pale when he belches, pushing your plate away from you.

“Ye tell yer man when he’s back what a good job I’ve done, Mrs. Price,” he says, licking a leaking trail of sauce off his thumb. 

“Won’t the town still standing be sufficient evidence?”

“Aye, but it’s sweeter comin’ from the missus, ye dinnae think?” 

Incorrigible boy. You shake your head, acquiescing even if only to get him to shut up. That mollifies him, gets him crowing about the raise he’ll get, or the commendation. You think he’ll start going on about lofty aspirations towards sheriffdom, but he never quite gets to that point. You wonder if the rest of your life will be similarly composed of assumptions that fall flat when you look at them too hard.

He takes you home at the end of the night as a favor to Kate, who watches you from the door until she disappears into the faraway. You only have to yell at Soap twice to slow down when he tries to goad you into a faster gallop. 

You sleep better that night, but only just. This time, it’s the empty spot beside you on the bed that bothers you. His pillow is cold when you reach over to touch it. Your hand lingers on the pillow; there’s a passing thought that maybe the warmth of your hand will transfer into the pillow and trick you in sleep. You have another passing thought that maybe somewhere out there, wherever John is, he’ll feel a phantom hand creep across the bed to cup his cheek. 

The blooming flower of daylight comes again to wake you up and the cycle starts anew. 

The chores never end, but there’s some comfort in routine. Regularity breeds familiarity. Any contempt has long been bled out of you, almost without you even noticing.

The days pass slowly. A horse-drawn carriage. A robin nestled in the branches of a pine tree sings at evening twilight. You look up to find it stark against the dark green needles, the fir’s red heart.

A neighbor comes by with fresh strawberries that you eat from the bowl out in the sun, lying down in the grass by the paddock. You suck the juice out of a big one when you bite into it and it drips messy down your chin. When the achenes fleck off, you wipe them off on your dress. 

Though you half expect Kate to come by, she never does. Perhaps she’s busy in town. You remind yourself that the brevity of your friendship can hardly measure up to competing priorities. Minding the shop, for instance, or stopping by to check on other acquaintances. 

And then the waiting ends when you see a dark shadow on the horizon that you recognize all at once as a man on horseback headed towards the house. 

Elation clambers up your throat. You very nearly shout at the sheer sight of him, but at the last second, you manage to reign it in. 

You wave at John from the porch when you can finally make out the face of the man riding up the path. Despite the euphoric wave that washes over you at the sight of him, you feign composure, keeping your butt planted on the porch swing until he dismounts and heads down the path towards you.

There's something striking about watching him from a distance. Like Kate, you see him now from a new angle, an added weight to him. When he lumbers up the porch steps, you don't just see the man that dragged you to the court house and forced you to marry him, but a man in his prime. Square, masculine jaw; thick thighed. Something in your belly stirs when he rolls his shoulders back, accentuating the breadth of them. 

When he reaches you, he grips you under the arms to pull you up, but your arms wind around his neck without any coaxing, meeting him halfway. Every inch of your body presses into his, and he smells and feels exactly as you remembered. 

“Been missing you like hell, sweetheart,” John rasps into your ear. 

“Missed you too,” you mutter, lips smushed into a kiss against his cheek. 

And you did, didn’t you? You can say it for once without worrying that you’ll fall apart. 

The two of you stumble into the house in a daze. Your hands are already trembling well before you fist them into John’s hair to drag him into a kiss. Desperation claws up your throat, need choking you when you go to tell him how much you missed him. You missed him bone deep. 

He pulls away briefly, chuckling when you whine. “Darlin’, can I at least get cleaned up? I’m a mess.”

His beard has grown since you last kissed him, the mutton chops more pronounced now. It scratches your lips and cheeks when you tug him back down for a deeper kiss. He can clean himself later as far as you’re concerned. You’ve gone three days now without your husband and you can’t go a second more. 

You can feel his smile when he breaks the kiss again. “Honey—”

“No,” you cut him off, a whine threading your voice. You tighten your arms around his neck, pushing your bosom into his chest. “Please, John, don’t make me wait; I can’t—”

“Alright, alright,” John sighs, and then hunches slightly to fit his hands under your thighs  and hike you up his body until your legs wind around his waist. “Poor girl. Never seen you this needy before. You missed me that bad?”

“Yes,” you answer succinctly, already pressing kisses into the sweaty skin of his neck and his cheeks. His arms shake when he laughs.

He nearly trips up the stairs when you suck at the salty skin of his neck. 

John smiles amusedly when you whip your dress off, nearly getting tangled in it before letting it pile on the floor by the bed. 

In a different time, your eagerness might embarrass you, but you’re well beyond that now. It’s impossible to hear that distant voice in your head shrieking modesty when your husband watches you indulgently and unbuttons his shirt so slowly that you nearly bark at him to hurry it up. And then you actually do when he goes to fold his shirt instead of simply tossing it to the floor.

He laughs; it sends frissons of heat down your spine. 

It’s unclear who pursues and who is pursued this time. All you know is that you either push him onto the bed or he pulls you down with him, clothes long since stripped and piled onto the floor. Your hands sink into the meat of his chest when you sit astride his lap, wet folds grinding on the hard shaft jutting up between his legs. John hisses through clenched teeth, already worked up, fit to burst. You wonder if he tended to himself at all on his trip, whether he even had time. 

The hands tightening around your waist tell you that, whether or not he did, it’s inconsequential now when faced with the thing he’s been wanting most.

Your instinct is to lift your hips and line his member up with your sopping entrance before sinking down, but John surprises you by shifting up the bed and dragging you with him, not stopping until your pussy is hovering over his mouth. 

It’s easy to panic over that, easy to grow skittish. You start when the flat of his tongue runs up the seam of your cunt, the only thing keeping you from tumbling off the bed altogether being the big hands clamped around your hips.  

“You try to keep your pussy off my face and I’ll give you a licking you won’t like anywhere near as much,” John warns, and then pulls you down onto his face without further ado. 

Your back arches at the first lick, his tongue burrowing into your hole, softened by the slick leaking out of you. His lips and tongue work you over until you’re a shivering, coiled mess on top of his face, hands braced against the wall and toes burrowing into the mattress. 

A stiff tongue stabs up into your hole. The groan he lets out at the taste of you vibrates through you, making you clench around his tongue. 

You’ve never been much of a drinker, but you feel drunk now, grinding on his mouth. Hands running through his hair. Blissed out, sex leaking, throbbing. Shameful noises pouring out of you unbidden, your inhibitions packed up and long gone by now. His upper lip glistens with your juices and when his eyes blink open, they’re nearly black with desire. 

The hands on your bottom holding you over his head grip into you good and tight. He readjusts his hold on you whenever you try to pull off his face, yanking you back down and digging his fingers in harder, the tips wedged between your cheeks. You practically yowl when a finger prods at your back hole, worrying over the puckered flesh. 

The time for gentle words is far beyond him. When you glance down between your legs, his hair is matted with sweat and disheveled, a flush high on his cheekbones. Blue eyes peer out through slits, locked on the dripping mess between your thighs. His nose presses hard into your pubic bone when he pulls you down onto his waiting mouth, lips parting and tongue sawing over your clit. That part you can’t see, but you feel the wet slide of his tongue over your slit. 

You come with a finger lodged knuckle deep in your ass and his tongue rolling over your clit, coaxing it from you. Your whole body pulses and shivers. Chuckling to himself when you go dumb during it, slumped over him and panting hard. Tears dripping down your cheeks that John cleans up himself with his tongue when he drags you back down his chest and rolls the two of you over. 

“God, you look so pretty like this, honey,” he coos when he’s got you under him, pinching your cheeks between his fingers until your lips go plump and pursed. 

When he drags you into a kiss, his tongue still tastes of you. 

He takes you on your back after that, knees over his shoulders and bending you in ways you didn’t think possible. Whatever control he had before is gone now. He thrusts in to the hilt the second he gets you flat on your back, taking three days of frustration out on you, near punching your cervix with the head of his cock. 

“There we go— fuck—” John growls. “C’mon, squeeze me tight, honey; make me come in your pretty fuckin’ pussy.”

You feel like a creature turned inside of itself. All high yips, sharp pangs of pleasure, an ache in your hips that you know instinctively will worsen by morning, and a deep seated, unquenchable need. He mates you like a beast in heat, jaw clenched and brows furrowed; when your eyelids slip shut, he growls at you to keep them open, and you do only to find him staring down at you with that indelible, maddening intensity of his. 

“Nngh, John—John—” you gasp.

“Just a little, darlin’—shh, c’mon, just take it. Like that, yes—that’s it.” 

A dark urge flutters under your skin, blinking its eyes open. You stare up at him through half lidded eyes. “Gonna come in me and give me a baby, John?”

His eyes go black. “I’m gonna fill this tight cunt right up, you keep talking like that.”

You reach up to rake your hands through his hair. "Please give me a baby, John. Give me it, please."

His hips snap forward, knocking the breath out of you. He pounds into you with renewed vigor, lost in it, your nipples tagging his chest with every thrust. 

If you could peel back your skin and tuck him into your ribcage, you would. He’s already in you anyway; everywhere it counts. Leathery musk wafting under your nose, sweat-slicked skin, his spend deep in your cunt and leaking out around his throbbing cock, the heat steaming off him and warming you from the outside in and inside out. His come spurts into you hot and viscous, so deep that you swear you can taste it at the back of your throat. 

In the aftermath, you curl up against his chest and he traces a finger lazily up and down your spine. 

“You’ve been so patient with me.” You don’t know what prompts you to say that, but you know it’s been sitting in your chest and waiting for you to put it to words. 

His fingers pause in their ministrations, his hand resting flat on your back. “Patient?”

“Don’t play dumb, John. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Got some nerve accusing me of playing dumb,” he chuckles softly, leaning down to butt his forehead against yours. 

You nearly go cross eyed. Doe eyed. Treacle tart soft in your chest. You wonder if you’ll look back on this someday in fear and awe, and think that is the very moment when you finally let him in. 

This is how love suffuses into the girl: you wake up gasping to find it staring down at you. 

You’re brave enough now to ask what it is that you need. The world flashes briefly before you: in it, you see every possible version of a girl, how she goes from animal skin to teeth glinting in the night. She is perforated and vibrating; lacunae as the voice drips back into the sea, papyrus crackling hot in the fire. 

Maybe new love flounders again against the rhythms of the old, the song of you now sleeping beneath an alder tree, thickening with lemon and honey.

“I’m going to…—you know I’ll tell you. I just need time.”

“Darlin’, I know. There’s no use for rushing things. It happens when it happens,” John murmurs. He drops a bristly kiss on your forehead. 

“…And if it doesn’t happen?”

He shrugs. “Then it doesn’t happen.”

It’s a shock when love finds you because you don’t expect it. You’d open the door to anything else in a heartbeat, but it’s love that finds you cowering under the stairs. 

Love is not something you’ve ever touched, not even grazed. You recognize the insidious rot of lust or the gnarled grip of possession, but love? That has yet evaded your attempts on it. Not that you’ve ever given it a good go. 

But now, when you think of it, it looks at you through blue eyes. 

You sleep on it. You don’t contemplate when it’ll happen only because you know it’s inevitable. Your lips have already grown loose. When he eats you out in the early morning hours after a good night’s sleep for once since John left, you have to swallow back the wails of I love you, I love you, tell me you love me, please, please. 

Your lips part, lax. Only sinking your mouth down over his turgid length after he’s made you come keeps you from accidentally saying the words. The soft, grunted fuck he lets out at that empties out any thought in your head.

Desperate times, desperate measures. 

If John knows, he jealously guards your secret. Would take it to his grave you think. Just for him and you to know. Any temerity from the night before is squashed in the light of day, and you sit across from him at the table during breakfast wishing that he could hear the words in your head, if only so you didn’t have to say it out loud. 

God bites the lip when you want it most to part. Isn’t that just the nature of life?

John leaves you off at the general store as always, dropping a peck to your lips before heading out on his way, but when you wander inside, you find Miles behind the counter instead of Kate. That dims the excitement in your chest a tad. It’s no fault of his, but you’d hoped to regale Kate with the revelation you’d had the night previous, omitting some of the lewder details. Instead you’ll be forced to wait until she’s back in town. When you ask Miles when abouts that’ll be, he shrugs, unable to give you a definite answer.

“Visiting a friend, she said,” he tells you, and you blink like you don’t know exactly what that means. 

Her absence leaves you in a lurch though, little else to do but wander around the store. You’d leave entirely and try to find something else to occupy your time, but you feel a bit foolish coming in just to leave right away, though you’re sure Miles wouldn’t care either way. Still, you tell yourself you’ll linger for a few minutes before heading out to the library or down the road for a coffee at the inn. 

The bell over the door jingles, but you pay it no mind. 

You linger in the aisle with the fruit preserves and canned fish, gazing into the bottles. Tins with hand-drawn labels, branded packaging. On another shelf, you find oyster crackers, National Biscuit Company on the label. Nabisco. If Kate were minding the shop, you’d pop your head around the aisle to ask her what corned beef brand she used the other day. 

The sound of spurs jangling from behind you makes you frown and turn your head. 

A hand clamps down over your mouth, muffling the yelp that leaps instinctively from your throat, and you go shock cold when the blunt muzzle of a pistol wedges against the small of your back. 

“Bet you thought you were clever gettin’ me out of town, didn’t you, girl?”

Your eyes widen.

[spliffymae]

forgotten connie drabble (18+ mdni)

★　*　　°　　　　🛰 　°. 🌓　•　　.°•　　　🚀

“SURPRISE!”

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY CONNIE!”

you moved to the side once you were inside, coming in behind the man of the hour himself. sasha had been running rampant to throw him an amazing surprise party. and you were in on it, tasked with bringing connie home from work and acting as if you know nothing about what the current day was.

which proved to be hard the second connie got into your car after putting his bag in the back seat. “ahh shit! they got mi cielita to take me out. where we going, mami?” connie was grinning ear to ear as he looked at you, dimples popping below red freckled cheeks.

he was so cute, and you were gonna hate to do this but, “what’re you on about, springer?” you scrunched your face up in confusion at him. you then quickly looked ahead to pull out the parking lot. if you looked at him for too long you were sure you’d crack.

connie rolled his eyes, not buying your ignorance. “oh stop that, y’know what i’m talking bout.” he said as he buckled himself in and then reclined the passenger seat.

with the strongest will you could muster, you kept up the confusion, looking back at him and with a quirked brow, “you got a game or sum?” you asked, knowing damn well he had nothing going on today. his birthday happened to land on the off day for ball practice AND track practice, not to mention he didn’t have class either.

now, when sasha told you to act like you forgot that his birthday was today, she failed to mention to you that it was something connie’s mother had done plenty of times in his life…not as a joke, though.

connie really cared about four women in his life: you, sasha, his little sister, and his mom. so you forgetting his day took a pin to his bubble and popped the fuck out of it. he didn’t dwell on the subject anymore, changing to now talk about your days. however, connie was feeling down on the inside. all his friends had wished him a happy birthday either via call, text, or social media post. have you not been on your phone today?

when you pulled up to his and sasha’s shared apartment, you flashed him a smile but it was not reciprocated. connie was staring ahead, zoned out in thought. so much so he doesn’t feel you turn the car off or hear you call his name.

“con” you pushed his shoulder slightly, getting him to snap out of his own head.

“hm?”

“we’re at your place. is it cool if i come up to use the bathroom?” you usually wouldn’t say anything and invite yourself into his apartment. days when you’d get him we’re days you set aside to hang with him. but today seems to be different. connie wondered if you had made plans that made you forget about his birthday.

“uh yeah, sure.” he said lowly. he reached back to grab his backpack and with that, got out the car. you could see the defeat in his walk towards the doors. he was mumbling to himself, more times trying to dissect what the hell was going on with you. because you wouldn’t just forget, right?

you got out the car and sped walk to catch up, sending sasha a quick text to let her know yall were back. you also cussed her for telling you to do this to connie, knowing how pouty he gets.

the walk to the elevator was quite, along with you two getting off at his floor and going to his apartment. however, before connie turned the key he put into the lock, he turned to you. his eyes were glossed over and cheeks dusted with a crimson red. he was chewing on his bottom lip, hazel eyes filled with worry. “did i do something, mami? you mad at me?”

and oh my god you wanted to break the act right there…but you were RIGHT THERE.

you blinked, “what do you mean, con? why would i be?” you wanted him to just open the door. once he opened the door you could drop the act, you could give him all the birthday love you were holding in since midnight.

connie let out a sigh and turned back around, giving up on the matter and turning the lock to go in. the day was no longer felt good. what good was a birthday if the one person he wanted to spend it with forgot about it?

when the door opened, connie walked inside and turned on the light and was immediately met with screams, cheers, and camera lights in his face.

which brings us here, to where he freezes and looks around at his friends from his basketball team, work, childhood, and sasha standing in the middle with a cake.

connie spent a good couple seconds taking everything in, he was slightly embarrassed to say once he believed you had forgotten he immediately forgot the day, choosing to just wallow in his room as he smoked a spliff.

you took a step forward, hands behind your back and coming up on his right. “happy birthday, connie.” you bumped him with your hip, once again snapping him out of his own head and bringing him back to the present.

the big, toothy smile he had in your car came back, now decorated with deep dimples and eyes watery with tears of appreciation.

just as he was about to say something to you, jean pulled him away, leaving you two with an unfinished conversation.

•　　.°•

you were talking to sasha in the kitchen as connie was socializing with all his guests. he hadn’t had the chance to come back to you just yet, but you weren’t worried. you didn’t plan on going anywhere.

“i told you! he’s so brain dead when it comes to you that he’ll completely forget everything. did you see how lost he looked when he saw us?” sasha was so happy that her plan had turned out well. she knew her best friend well enough to know it wasn’t going to take a lot to get his mind off his literal day of birth. not when you were the one thing that stayed on his mind and could pull his attention from anything.

you playfully rolled your eyes, “i still hated seeing how sad he looked. why didn’t you tell me i was damn near triggering him?!” you were nursing your second cup of a mimosa, slightly tipsy.

sasha giggled. she, on the other hand, had been four shots in from when you guys came in. “i forgot. but it’s all good now. oop—here he comes.” before you knew it, sasha had stepped away and now connie was in your space.

his eyes were low and bloodshot, having just come back from a hotbox with his guys in the car. “mami, you really are sum special.” he grabbed your hand, lacing your fingers together and pulling you to be flush against him.

you smiled, “sasha made me, pa. you know i would never forget your day.” you traced his lips with your finger, your acrylic nail going along his prominent cupids bow. connie held your hand still and kissed your finger, then moved your hand so it was at the back of his head. it brought you closer into his space, his cologne taking over your senses. he loweeeed his head to touch yours, looking in your eyes.

“¿dónde está mi regalo, princesa? his hands trailed up from your waist to your back, to your elbow and then shoulder. he tucked one of your locs behind your ear, staring at you as if you held both the moon and the stars. “i been dying to unwrap it” his eyes were scanning all over your face, taunting you with his hidden meaning.

“quiero mi pastel, ma. soy hambriento.” he undid the button with ease, bringing you to gasp and instinctively grip the small curls on the back of his neck.

“later.” you said softly, giving him a sweet smile to match. but connie smirked with wickedness, red eyes gleaming of mischief. his hand trailed back down to the waistband of your baggy pants.

“c-con.” you could feel his long and slender fingers pad over your core. he pressed his index and his middle against your clit, sending a jolt up your spine. “this party’s for you.” you bit your lip when you felt him move them in a circular motion, the wetness of your pussy dampening your panties.

“it’s my birthday, right? i can do whatever i want, right?” you were gonna answer, but then he pushed your panties to the side. he had rubbed your lips to collect your slick on his fingers, and slowly began to push them inside of you. your mouth opened, but no words came out.

“oh princesa, did you forget how to talk? just like how you forgot papi’s birthday?” he tsked, shaking his head, “made me so sad. y’know” the force of his thrusts picked up, knocking you back to grip the edge of the counter behind up. “a mean joke you guys pulled on me.”

“pa…i-i can’t be quiet” you panicked, looking at connie with worrisome eyes. he knew you were a screamer, fuck it was what he loved about you. pleasure would overwhelm you quick and all your composure would go flying out the window. you got animalistic when you’d approach your peak, and connie never missed the chance to see it. but today, you were doing your best to show restraint the clench of your jaw let him know you really wanted to get it out but were resisting.

connie took his other hand to rub a thumb on your clit, turning his ears off to anything that wasn’t your faulty breaths or straggled moans. “hm…guess i forgot.”

[inkdrinkerworld]

hiiii bae bae!!! you asked for softdom! remus/causal dominance remus and boy oh boy am i all earsssss

i’d love to see a softdom!remus and reader out in public maybe at the (bar or a house party?) and he always has a grip on her just to make sure she’s safe but she slips away for a moment or maybe someone comes up to her as she’s alone and remus has to tap into his protective mode but does it in such a nonchalant way as to not worry the reader?? if that makes sense?? if it doesn’t no worries!!❤️❤️

love ur work bae so excited to all of ur works w thisss

You’re in your prettiest get up and Remus hasn’t been shy of letting you know that.

You’re in a backless, red top and a black mini skirt with boots and Remus has probably at least once since you’ve been to the bar tried to take you to the bathroom.

He was successful and your hair looks even better now than it did when you’d just arrived.

“M’going to get a Jack and coke, Remmy.” He nods, his hand rubbingover your bum as you slip off his lap and make your way to the bartender.

Remus’ eyes trail behind you, unable to stop himself from being drawn to the expanse of your back and the freckles that dot your skin like one big constellation.

“You know if you weren’t together it would be a little pathetic how lovesick you are.” Sirius comments with a smile as he drains the last of his beer.

Remus rolls his eyes. “What’s pathetic about being in love?” It’s James that asks what Remus was thinking.

“Oh you wouldn’t see anything wrong with it Prongs, you’re worse off than our Moony here.”

James shrugs, not really caring. So what him and Remus are devoted the way they are.

Remus doesn’t last in the conversation much longer, moving in search of you when he notices the way you’ve stiffened up at the counter.

He finds you with little trouble. His hand falls to the small of your back, ringed fingers slipping past the band of your skirt. You don’t even turn back to look at him, you just lean right into him.

Remus’ stomach does a flip and clenches at the way you do it so effortlessly.

“Taking too long, pretty girl?” Not once has he looked at the guy that had been trying to chat you up. Instead, he’s all focused on you.

“Mhm, I changed my mind when we got here. Got a cherry vodka instead.” You turn to look at him then, Remus notes that the man walks off and smiles down at you.

“Did you actually?” You nod, eyes wide as you look up at him. “Have I told you that you look really, really good tonight?”

You beam, “Two really’s?” Remus smiles, nodding as the bartender brings your drink out.

“Two really’s, lovely girl.” You take a sip and giggle.

“Taste?” You raise your hand to offer him the glass, instead Remus hooks his finger beneath your chin and kisses you.

“Delicious.”

[lovebugism]

Okay soooooooo

How bout something like King Steve picking on shy!reader, then later finding out she has a shitty home life plz

ty for requesting!! this can be read as a prequel to this fic — steve comforts you when he accidentally makes you flinch (enemies to lovers, hurt/comfort, cw for brief mentions of abuse, 1.8k)

Sitting alone at the Hellfire table, you feel a little like fishbait. 

Your spot in the very back of the cafeteria is normally full and loud — with Dustin’s bickering, and Eddie’s laughing, and Gareth’s stupid jokes — but they’re not here now. They’re off getting their trays while you sit in wait for them (and the cold fries you’ll ultimately steal from Eddie’s plate). It leaves you perfect prey for circling sharks.

You hear laughter from behind you, over the sounds of the bustling lunch room. You’re certain they’re laughing at you — ‘cause you always think someone’s laughing at you — but you try hard to ignore it. You disregard the subtle pang of anxiety in your chest and stick your nose in your book, eyes flitting across the words without reading any of them.

Someone flumps down at your side then, where Mike usually sits. The overwhelming scent of spiced cologne stings your nostrils. With watering eyes, you look beside you. At Tommy fucking Hagan.

“Hey, Wallflower,” he greets like it’s normal — like he hasn’t spent the past four years pretending you don’t exist. You think he only calls you Wallflower now because his friends have been doing it for so long they don’t remember your real name.

The boy props his elbow on the table and puts his chin in his fist, trying hard to hide his boyish beam and accompanying laughter. He fails.

You cower at his presence, all but shrinking into yourself. “…Hi?” you reply in a tiny voice.

“How’s it hangin’?”

“...Fine?”

“That’s great!” he answers instantly, like he hadn’t heard you at all. “You see, my friend Steve, over there— you know him, right?”

You don’t bother to look where he’s pointing. Of course, you know Steve The Hair Harrington. You don’t think there’s a single person in Hawkins who doesn’t.

You nod in response.

Tommy’s smile widens. “Well, he’s got this massive crush on you,” he confesses, choking back a laugh halfway through. “I mean, he talks about you all the time.”

You know he’s lying. And not just because he’s grinning so hard that his eyes are crinkled and his freckled cheeks are turning pink. You’re almost certain Steve Harrington doesn’t even know who you are. He never had a reason to. Why would the King of Hawkins High ever stoop so low to know someone like you?

You glance at him over your shoulder, a couple tables down from you. He’s almost magnetically pretty. You couldn’t ignore him if you tried — with his pretty hair and his pretty eyes and his pretty smile. His golden cheeks flush as all his friends start poking fun at him. 

He rolls his eyes and scoffs a laugh you can tell is forced from here. He doesn’t think any of this is funny. You can see it on his face. But he isn’t trying to stop it all from happening. You’re just collateral damage, really.

You turn back to Tommy with a disbelieving look in your eye.

He continues to ramble despite it. “He was just a little nervous coming up to you, that’s all. So I thought I’d do him a favor and slip you his number. You know, as his wingman and all.” He tosses a folded-up index card onto the pages of your opened book. “You should call him tonight— It’ll make his day, I swear.”

He pats you a little too hard on the back before he goes. His laugh echoes over all the rest when he sits back down at his table. You watch them over your shoulder as they fall over themselves to crack jokes about you. 

Steve’s the only one not smiling. “Not cool, Tommy,” he mouths.

—————

Locker 148. The one right across from yours. Property of Steve The Hair Harrington. 

You shove the thick card with his number written on it between the slits in the metal. You’d carried it around all day, utterly unsure of what to do with it. You decided ultimately to return it, figuring he might feel a little better if a total stranger didn’t have his phone number.

You struggle to slide it through the thin gap, though. The paper gets caught halfway through, and you try to yank it back out again. The old locker moves with you, like it’s not completely shut but still somehow latched. 

You’re so in your own head you don’t hear the gymnasium door down the hall squeal open and shut again. Steve pants heavily and tries to recover from a ruthless basketball practice. He hunts for a water fountain and finds you instead.

“What are you doing?” he calls as he nears you, not malicious or unkind but genuinely curious.

Your heart lurches into your throat as you all but jump out of your skin.

Steve laughs, a pretty sound in the silent hallway. “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t— I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” you assure with an averted gaze, though your frightened demeanor says otherwise. “I was just— I was trying to give you this.”

You hold the paper out towards him. He takes it with hesitant hands. “What is it?”

“Your number. Tommy gave it to me earlier, and I know it was just a stupid joke, so I… I thought you’d feel more comfortable if I gave it back to you.”

Something in Steve’s chest aches. He doesn’t understand why you would care about what might make him comfortable. It’s not like he ever gave you the time of day — or ever tried to stop his friends from being total assholes. As far as he’s concerned, you’re the last person who should give a shit about him.

“Oh. Right— Yeah… Thanks,” he stammers and shoves the thing into his pocket. “And I’m— I’m sorry about Tommy and everything. He can be a real douchebag sometimes. I didn’t… I didn’t tell him to bother you or anything—”

“I know,” you assure in a mousy voice. “Tommy gave me your number hoping I’d be dumb enough to call while your friends were over so you could all… laugh at me? I guess. He could’ve been a little more original, honestly.”

Steve cracks a smile. He almost laughs, but he can’t tell if you’re joking or not.

“I’ll talk to him later. Tell him to leave you alone—” He rambles and walks closer to you. You watch him with tentative eyes as he approaches. “—He’s a total dumbass sometimes, but he usually means well. Most of the time, anyway—”

Steve raises his hand suddenly. And, because you’re frightened by everything little thing, you flinch and stumble over yourself in the process. The lockers catch your fall, and you hit the back of your head. Hard.

“Shit— Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” you squeak, holding the crown of your hair and squinting as your skull pounds.

Steve rushes to your side, then idles just ahead of you because he doesn’t know if you want him touching you. His brows pinch, chiseled features swimming with concern. His cinnamon eyes glitter with it, too. “I wasn’t trying to scare you—”

“It’s okay.”

“—My locker was just jammed. I was going to shut it.”

The metal door is open now, from where it wasn’t shut all the way and where you just smacked your head on it.

“I just wasn’t expecting it,” you assure in a tight voice, trying hard to ignore the sharp throbbing. “It’s fine. I’m fine—”

“You’re hurt.”

“It’ll go away—”

“Let me get you an icepack.”

“—I’ll be fine once I get home.”

Steve, feeling purely at fault and aching at how effortlessly you shrug him off, decides to approach you fully. He curls a warm hand around the outside of your elbow. A touch surprisingly gentle. “No. C’mon. Let me help.”

You don’t feel much like you’re in any position to fight him about it. Not with the world still swaying under your feet. 

Steve guides you the short distance to the empty cafeteria. Slow and kind and dreadfully patient. He sits you down, makes sure you’re still okay, and then rushes to fix you a makeshift icepack — a ziplock bag filled to the brim with chipped ice.

He sits at the chair beside yours, slightly askew so his knees bump your thighs. He holds the pack to the crown of your head and gazes at you attentively. You’re not looking back at him to see it.

“Does it still hurt?”

You shrug, eyes flitted to the wringing hands in your lap. “It’s fine. It just feels a little like I have a migraine.”

Steve winces. “I’m sorry.”

Your doe eyes peek at him from beneath your lashes. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I scared you.”

“Everything scares me.”

It’s a dumb joke. You mean it, but you still expect him to laugh about it. He doesn’t even crack a smile, though. He just keeps looking at you with that puppy-like twist to his features. The worry is evident in his face. 

“Do you wanna, like, talk about it or something?”

“About what?”

“Why you flinched.”

You freeze, breath hitching in your throat. No one’s ever noticed your incessant panic — outside of making jokes about it anyway. No one’s cared enough to ask about it, either. Steve Harrington is the last person you expected any kind of concern from.

You shake your head after a few long moments. “No.”

“You could,” Steve assures, suddenly shy. You didn’t know he could be anything other than totally full of himself. “You know, if you wanted to. I wouldn’t— I wouldn’t tell anyone—”

You scoff a disbelieving laugh.

Steve’s features swirl with hurt. You hate that it makes your chest ache. You hate most that he hasn’t stopped being soft with you. The hand holding the pack to your head hasn’t yet wavered, even though you know his arm must be tired now.

“I wouldn’t. ‘Cause I— I know what it’s like to… to have a bad home life or whatever,” he confesses, stammering hopelessly. He forces a laugh at himself. “Probably more than most people do, honestly.”

His admission takes you by surprise. It comforts you in a way you didn’t think someone like him could. 

Even still, you shake your head. “I— I can’t—” you murmur, clearing your throat when the words get stuck there. “I can’t talk about it…”

Steve nods, firm and reassuring. “That’s okay. You don’t have to, I was just… I was just saying, you know? I get it.”

You swallow through a tight throat, nodding wordlessly in response.

“Plus, you know, you have my number and everything… If you ever wanted to talk…”

You flash him a timid look and crack a quiet smile. “I gave it back to you, remember?”

“I’ll write it down for you again,” he promises with a shrug and a lopsided grin. It’s easier to ignore his aching arm and the ice stinging his palm when he’s looking at you. “For real this time.”