#But everything is Gucci and they’re supposed to pay me back

[reloaderror]

place your bets will i get my 9k back before my work trip to oslo in the middle of november where mind i will also have to cover costs and then wait for the county (and the parliament for the plane tickets) to pay me back later

[cherryyharryy]

angst to fluff where y/n finds out she was originally just supposed to be a rebound type thing after he broke up with someone like idk something like he broke up with someone on the european leg of tour and she was supposed just be with him until he went on another leg but then he started to love her and brings her on the rest of tour with him and she finds out abt the rebound thing after the last show of tour where everyones drunk and celebrating and one person lets it slip

I tweaked it just a bit...hope that's ok:)

WC: 3.5K

****

“You look beautiful.”

I skim my nose across Harry’s cheek, his chin resting on my shoulder, and hum against stubble that wasn’t there this morning. “You’ve said that five times tonight.”

“And?” He slips around to face me.

His suit is a deep maroon, probably black if you’re far away, probably purple if you’ve had too much champagne. His chest expands when I slide my hand down.

“Love this dress.” He takes my hand off and pulls me closer, pressing a kiss to my head.

“You two forget where you’re at?” Another foreign voice surrounds us, well, foreign to me.

“Fucker,” Harry says to the man. They pat each other’s backs as the guy walks away. “Tyler Johnson.”

“Oh.”

“He worked with me on the last album.”

“Okay.”

It’s like the fifteenth person that I’ve been introduced to tonight, all of whom pass by with quick hellos, inside jokes with Harry, and little interest in me. The fast paced world of the rich and famous doesn’t slow down, even for charity.

“Harry, so glad you could make it.” Another voice, another man. This one lingers, long enough to receive my name, and offer a cliche compliment about my patience to put up with this beautiful bastard on my arm.

I thank him with the smile I’ve learned to speak through. These celebrities never stop smiling. Never stop posing. Never stop.

Then he’s gone too, and Harry’s whispering yet another name in my ear, of which I’ll forget seconds later because these people ultimately mean nothing to me. They all seem to pass through each other’s lives whenever convenience allows, playing house and acting like grown ups who get the privilege of not truly growing up.

I feel like the Gucci dress Harry had tailored to my body doesn’t fit. My posture sucks. I’m too scared to eat any of the finger foods being carried on silver platters through the hall. I haven’t learned how to smile through food I don’t like or not make a mess or take small enough bites. I swear, not one glass of champagne has any lipstick on it. They’re like magic.

I look at Harry. He’s stepped away to converse with a face that I do know. He and Jeff speak animatedly, Harry’s arms gesturing to whatever story he’s telling. I step over to one of the dressed tables and place what little weight I can onto the chair, needing to cling to something. When I look back up I smile, the two of them now laughing, and probably a little too loud for this charity auction.

“Y/n...right?”

I whip around, a man I’ve seen in pictures on Harry’s phone holds out his hand.

I straighten my back and accept his greeting. “Yes.”

“Finally we meet!” He catches my confusion and chuckles. “I produced Harry’s last album.”

Something clicks in my head, and he’s suddenly more familiar. “Oh! I knew that.”

Tom Hull...Kid Harpoon I process just as he introduces his name.

“I—”

An arm slipping around my waist stunts my question, Harry tipping back a red drink with his free hand while the other squeezes my hip. “Just tell this one to leave you alone,” he jabs.

Tom rolls his eyes, patting the breast of his green suit to look for something, only to show off his middle finger.

“Can’t believe the two of you haven’t met,” Harry says.

“I know, I guess we just missed each other.” Tom nods to me. “Heard you went to quite a few shows.”

“As many as I could.”

An uneasy sting travels down my spine. I did go to many shows, practically following Harry around his entire tour...all on his dime. Lord knows the man can afford it, but I still felt weird about him dishing out thousands of dollars to add me to each plane ride.

“Well I’m happy to see you two kids together,” Tom jokes, patting Harry on his back. “I’ve told him he needs to date women who will fuck him up. That’s where the songs are.”

He saunters off like he did not just say that. No. Absolutely not.

My face burns and it hurts to turn my head, but I still manage to narrow my eyes at Harry.

“Do you want another drink?”

I wait. I give him more than enough seconds to explain what the hell that was. But he’s clueless—ignorant.

“No. I do not.”

***

I do not bother taking my heels off in the car. My plan is to storm into our hotel room the second we park. Possibly locking Harry out...haven’t decided on that part yet.

The vague chit chat he makes with the driver stirs my nerves. It shouldn’t make me angry, and it’s not so much the act as it is his demeanor. He’s too cheery right now and it’s pissing me off.

“Okay,” he grabs my attention from Los Angeles flying past my window, the partition rolling up to leave us completely alone in the back seat. “What’s wrong?”

I bite my tongue, literally. “Nothing.”

“You seemed...irritated.”

“Did I?”

“Y/n.”

I turn to face him, inhaling sharply to calm my coming words. “Why are you with me?”

His face pales, and not a muscle moves. He just stares at me until he finally blinks and starts jerking his jaw around. “What are you talkin’ about?”

I roll my eyes. “The fact that you don’t know, bothers me even more.” I sigh, fighting back tears because I am determined not to cry in front of him. “Tom said that you should date people that fuck you up.”

“O—oh. That’s all?”

I squint, curling my lip. “What do you mean, that’s all? Is that not enough for you? Because that was a lot for me to hear tonight.”

“Baby, he was just messing around.”

I don’t budge.

“Really, it’s nothin’ to think about.” He tucks my hair behind my ear, trailing his hand down to cup my jaw. “Promise. It’s just like when people told you that you could do better than me, or insult me to compliment you.” He shrugs. “It’s just party talk.”

I process his words, supposing he’s not wrong. He did receive quite a few insults in lieu of my praise tonight. Maybe I was just on edge because of the setting; being surrounded by the rich and famous while I struggle to pay my rent each month isn’t exactly grounds for positive thinking.

“Okay, I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for.” He leans over to kiss me, stroking my face as his lips skim over mine. “Did I tell you how stunning you look tonight?”

***

It’s funny how your brain works. How emotions swoop in and corral your thoughts, like a salesman who pretends to care about you so they can get what they want. My mind was desperate for relief, from hearing Tom’s nervy comment, and I naively allowed Harry to take what he needed in that moment.

Something’s not quite right. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.

I’ve been mulling over Harry’s words in my head all weekend, playing them on repeat, hoping they’ll start to make sense, but if anything their value keeps dropping. What worries me the most, is that I don’t know whether he’s trying to protect me or himself. I don’t know if one is any better than the other.

It’s golden hour when we pull up to the beach. I can hear the music before I even open the car door; a volleyball shoots up over the rows of bushes hiding the party, disappearing and popping back up a moment later.

I don’t really want to be here, but I also don’t want to be the girlfriend who won’t support their boyfriend.

“Ready?” Harry asks, and I nod.

The closer we walk, the clearer the music becomes. Harry’s voice takes over the private beach, and I wonder if they’re playing his entire album or just Golden on repeat.

A good bit of the people drinking and chatting I recognize form the event the other night, but there are still plenty of new faces. I take some fruity drink that was offered to me and down half of it before my feet hit sand.

And so the routine continues. I’m introduced to someone, they compliment me, laugh with Harry, congratulate him on pretty much everything he’s ever done, and then repeat with a new face. I do manage to find Sarah at one point after I’ve detached myself from Harry, and the two of us head for the water.

“Are you feeling okay?” Sarah asks once our toes are wet.

I hold my breath and count to five, finishing whatever the hell I’m drinking before I can answer her. “I’m great.”

“Harry said you weren’t doing too well after the auction?”

“Yes, Harry does a lot of talking with people when I’m not around.”

“Alright, spill it,” Sarah says.

I trace the rim of my glass, flicking my eyes over my shoulder to make sure we’re far away from the party. “It’s stupid, really, I’m just a little...I don’t know...Tom said something the other night that rubbed me the wrong way. And Harry doesn’t seem to care.”

“What did he say?”

“Just something about how Harry needs to have relationships with people who will fuck him up.”

“Ooh,” she nods, seemingly well versed in the statement. “Yeah that’s an Iggy Pop quote. Tom mentioned it in Rolling Stone when he was interviewed.” She sips her drink, eyes growing small over the rim. “It was just a cheap line of advice he gave Harry after he was torn up after his last breakup.”

“Wait, so he actually did say that before? Like before the other night?”

Sarah drifts her eyes up in thought, nodding. “Um hm. After him and Camille broke things off.” She shrugs, and gestures to the party exploding on the beach behind us. “Fine Line.”

I have no idea what I’m feeling. No clue what is coursing through my veins, but it’s not blood anymore. The corners of my jaw tingle until my face starts going numb, my breathing shallow and chest tight.

“You okay?”

“I uh, I gotta go.”

Sarah calls after me but I let my name die in the breeze as I march back to the crowd. It’s nearly dark now, and finding Harry among all his people will take forever. I try to look for him, but I’m so distraught I can’t concentrate long enough to make out faces. I give up and head back to his car, only to find it’s locked. The asphalt is warm on my legs as I lower down to the ground, careless to the dirt I’m getting on my clothes and the scratches on my skin.

I’m not in this position for long. Not long enough, at least. Harry rounds the corner of the bushes, speeding up when he sees me.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

He moves to sit down beside me, but I jump up before he can.

“You’re a fucking liar.”

“Whoa! What!? What’s gotten into you lately?”

“I told you! What Tom said the other night!” I’m yelling, too loud for public, I know. But a small part of me wants someone to hear. I want to disrupt the bubble Harry lives in.

“And I told you that it was just nonsense.”

“And that’s why you’re a liar! Sarah just told me, that he said that to you after you and Camille broke up.”

“Okay...and?”

I inhale as deep as I can. It makes me dizzy, adds to my headache. “And, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? With the knowledge that the only reason you’re even with me, is because I’m gonna fuck you up so bad you’ll get songs out of it?

“Y/n,” he pinches the bridge of his nose, “you’re taking this waaay too literally. Trust me.”

“You’re not in a position right now where I even want to trust you.”

“This has gotten completely out of control. I cannot believe you’re this upset over something so stupid.”

“Right there, Harry!” I point at him. “You keep dismissing how I feel! You don’t even care that this upsets me! That I feel like I need to reevaluate our entire relationship!”

“What is there to evaluate!? I haven’t even done anything! You’re blowing up about something that someone else said!”

“But you listened to him!”

“What,” he shrugs, “what do you want?”

“I don’t know what I want, Harry. I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Do what?” He pauses, swallowing. “Us?”

I roll my eyes. “Yes, us. I can’t be with you if—if you’re just waiting around for me to ruin you emotionally.”

“You’re seriously gonna let someone else’s words do this to us? You’d break up with me because of something another person said?”

“Harry, if I break up with you it’s gonna be because of what you’ve done. I don’t care that he said it, I care that you agree to it. And quite frankly, it’s pretty insulting to Camille. You spent a part of your life with that girl, and you just capitalize off of it. I’m not gonna let you do that to me.”

“I’m not capitalizing off of anyone! What the hell am I supposed to write my songs about? I’m just supposed to not date then?”

“It’s the fact that you sought out a relationship in order to fuel your writing.”

“No, y/n, that’s not what I did.” He narrows his eyes at me, and even in the dark I can see his anger. “I sought you out because I was devastated after me and her broke up. You were only supposed to be a rebound.”

I feel like the wind’s been knocked out of me. The music overhead blurs into noise scraping my eardrum, my vision grows weak and foggy. He wanted to hurt me, and he did.

“I expect a thank you when you release your next album.” I spin on my heel and head towards the main road, yanking my phone from my pocket to call an uber. For the second time tonight, my name trails behind me in the wind. I can hear Harry’s steps pick up, and as fast as I walk, he still catches me.

“Y/n, please, let’s go back to the hotel. You can hate me and not talk to me, but please don’t leave.”

I ignore him, trying to set up my ride. “Where the hell are we?”

He glances at my phone, and I can tell he considers keeping the answer to himself, so he can keep me to himself. He drops his voice, much weaker than before. “Carbon Beach. Canyon road.”

Ten minutes.

“Y/n—”

“I am not interested in discussing this with you.”

“I’m so sorry. I—I was mad and was just trying to win the argument. Whichever way I could.”

“Congratulations on your win.”

“Y/n, please, honey. I don’t want to lose you.” He drags his hands down his face, keeping his palms dug into his eyes. When he lets them drop, there are tears spilling down his cheeks. “I can’t lie and say you weren’t, but yes you were a rebound for me, but that went away. Literally weeks after we started dating. I care about you so much. I wouldn’t drag you to every show and event I have if I didn’t. I’m so proud to call you mine. The last thing you are to me is—is just grounds for my writing.”

I stare out across the road. A jeep speeds by and the gush of wind it brings sends chills down my arms.

“Harry, I just...it’s a lot. You’re a lot. Your life is a lot.” I sigh and slowly turn to face him. “It feels like the significance of us being in each other’s lives are so different.”

He kicks a rock across the road, dust flying up around us. “Fuck. Y/n I’m begging—”

“They’re here.” I nod to the headlights approaching us.

“Baby, please.”

“I think I need to be alone right now.” I get in the backseat. “Enjoy your party.”

***

I text him when I’m back at the hotel, having nowhere else to go. I didn’t think my plan of leaving through, because he’ll come back here before the night’s over. But I’m hoping he’ll stay away for a bit, long enough for me to process everything at least.

Deep down I know there’s not as much to the comment as I thought. And Harry’s not that type of guy. But the lack of concern over my feelings...the fact that I was just used as a warm body while he got over Camille...that’s what hurts the most.

There’s a fine line between being sorry because you’ve been called out, and truly being sorry. How sorry can he be when he got what he wanted? Even if I’m not what he envisioned past a few quick fucks, he still comes out on top happy.

I feel like the lifestyle these people live is embedded with secret codes, all of which I’m not wired to pick up on. The money, the mistakes, the adoration... Everything is a lot, and playing catch up is nearly impossible.

I don’t get the alone time I’d wished for. There are curses and clicks of the doorknob right before Harry comes in. He stands at the entrance, staring at me on the lounge chair like he’s unsure if I’m real.

“Wasn’t sure you’d come back here.”

“Where else can I go?” I nod to his phone in his hand. “I texted you.”

“I was driving.”

I sigh, flinching when he turns the lights on. “I know you wanna talk, but I don’t even know what to say.”

“You don’t have to,” he says, dropping his keys on a table to come sit beside me. “I’ll talk though.” He inhales, holding his breath for a second before forcing the air out. “I know that me saying I’m sorry means shit to you right now. And to be honest, it probably is coming from me...in a way. You’re right about everything. And whatever you’re feeling, once you figure that out, you’re valid about that too.”

“How would you feel if you were only meant to be temporary in my life? You never mentioned why you were interested in me in the beginning. And no, I never would have gone out with you had I known. I would never want to be someone’s rebound. There’s just something sneaky about that.”

His head drops into his hands, and his shoulders shake right before I hear him cry. “I know, I—I get so caught up in myself sometimes. I’m such a fucking prick.” When he looks up, his eyes are burnt red, glassy and defeated. “I don’t deserve you, and I really don’t deserve anyone.”

“Harry,” I chastise, not expecting the downward spiral he’s ventured onto.

“I swear I care about you. I want you to be happy, and I want to make you happy. I don’t want to be the one to treat you this way. Ever.”

I inhale as deep as I can, holding my breath until it hurts. “I know.” I take his hand in mine. “And I know your heart, and I know you care about me. I—” I sigh, “I’m not comfortable with...just forgetting all of this though. I can forgive you, but I think we need to take a couple steps back. I’ve gotten so swept up in your life and your world, I’m losing my own.”

He nods slowly, accepting my words with a pained face.

“I care about you too.”

He looks up for the first time, catching the last few tears with the back of his hand. “I know you do.”

I offer a small smile and lean in to kiss his cheek. His eyes fall closed, and blindly he turns to press his lips to mine. Our kiss is salty and urgent.

“What did you say to everyone when you left?”

He frowns in thought, like the memory is too far away. “Nothing. Jumped in my car and prayed this is where you’d be.”

I take his hand and pull us both to our feet. “We should go to bed. It’s been a long night. Too long.”

We’re quiet and slow as we shed our clothes and brush our teeth, slipping into bed around two a.m.. Harry doesn’t waste a second in pulling me into his warm chest, wrapping his arms around me in a tight hug that has me burying my face into his neck.

We lay there, silent, but when I know I don’t have much longer before sleep overcomes me, I kiss his shoulder, whispering how much I love him before I close my eyes.

[tendouluvr]

aizawa as a dad - teenage!reader

- fluff, dad aizawa momen

- warnings: hrmm none i think

- wc: 1.3k

a/n: basically me listing things i want bc im dadless

ps this is before the dorms were implemented meaning this takes place before that, so things that happened after that does not exist in this world

remembers your birthday

#! even you don’t remember it sometimes, but he does

#! it’s the morning of your birthday, you’re both in the kitchen

#! he’s drinking his daily dose of caffeine, lazily packing his lunch

#! you’re..falling asleep at the dining table...

#! you hear the chair next to you scrape across the floor, opening your eyes you see your dad deeply sigh while taking a seat

#! “you’re older now, so that means you have to be more responsible. you should be taking care of yourself. you also should listen to me more.”

#! you: ... (•.•?)

#! him: ..what?

#! “huh, what’re you going on about?” you rack your brain to think what could’ve possibly made him go on that unexpected lecture

#! “.......it’s your-,”

#! “OH, it’s my birthday,” you cut him off, giggling to yourself for forgetting such day

#! he sighs again and just pats your head before getting up to start leaving for school

#! “c’mon, you’ll be late.”

#! “ok~~.”

#! you won’t be late. he always make sure you’ll never be late, but he likes saying that because he thinks it’s so parent-like

always backs you up

#! even if deep down he knows you might lose in the practice battle against todoroki, he’s on your side

#! when it comes to silly little things like witty arguments between him and uncle present mic, you back him up leaving present mic with his echoed wails

#! also vice versa when you’re in some annoying banter with denki or something

#! you don’t call him ‘dad’ in class, nor does he show signs of favoritism towards you

#! you both know familial relations in school would always cause people to think about bias, favoritism, cheating, etc.

#! so luckily, he’s mature and you are too so you both know to not act so close with each other in school

#! but you drop the whole ‘aizawa sensei’ thing when you guys are alone

#! you did accidentally call him dad once when he was passing back test papers and you had a question about something

#! you were focused on the test papers you just got back, forgetting that you were in class for a second, and blurted out a quick, “dad? can you explain this.”

#! you didn’t even realize what you said until it got noticeably quiet in the class, causing you to raise your eyes up from the paper to see everyone looking at you and aizawa

#! he could care less, the man was getting cozy at his desk

#! you walked over to him anyway so he could answer your question

feeds you a lot of pre-made food or food that wasn’t cooked by him

#! he can’t really cook

#! he could do the bare minimum but the most you’ll ever get out of him is probably ramen with your favorite add-ons

#! his bffs can cook

#! aizawa doesn’t eat much himself, so when you entered his life he wasn’t really sure what to feed you

#! his best friends would cook for him now and then because they’re aware of his eating habits

#! but then they suddenly had two aizawas to feed

#! growing up you also ate a lot of freezer food. the good kinds though, the freezer food that doesn’t have that freezery taste after its been heated up

#! even though he couldn’t make you food, he still watched out for you and what you ate

#! if he notices that you’re eating too much sweet, he’ll comment on it. if he notices that you’re overdoing it with the salt, he’ll comment on it with a stern lecture about how deadly sodium can be.

#! he picks up your favorite convenience store snacks a lot after school

#! does aizawa seem like the type to make you eat veggies?? i’m not sure. sure he wants you to be healthy and not just consume junk, but i feel like he also doesn’t do too well with veggies

#! aizawa is secretly picky with his veggies hhhhh there’s specific ones he really likes, but for the most part he finds everything else weird in some way

#! headcanon that aizawa pouted over veggies he didn’t like as a kid and he would just stare at it thinking it’ll go away on its own

is loaded and spoils you unintentionally

#! he’s a prohero, one of the highest paying jobs by the government in the bnha universe

#! plus his teaching job. i know teachers salary isn’t too good, but it’s ua and this isn’t real life, so he’s probably getting paid stacks

#! also i think the cat outfit he bought for eri is suppose to be from some japanese brand that’s the equivalent of gucci in the u.s. (but ignore this bc this happened after the dorms were a thing 😁😁)

#! anyway he bought you a lot of toys as a kid, and tons of horrendous outfits that you cry over but never to his face because he’s trying his best </33

#! now that you’re a teenager, he doesn’t buy you toys anymore but has now evolved to buying you electronics on your birthday and just giving you pocket money

#! obviously aizawa doesn’t flaunt his wealth though, he doesn’t care about that and finds it unnecessary

#! he also barely spends on himself so he just has even more money saved up for no reason

#! but the thing is,, he doesn’t even realize how much he spends on you until you sit him down to talk to him

#! “dad, i do not need a new laptop. i’m fine with the one i have now, it’s still good. i saw you looking at laptops the other day.”

#! “what made you think i was looking at laptops for you?”

#! silence

#! complete, utter silence .....

#! “who’s it for then?!”

#! he rolls his eyes before answering you, “none of your business. go away.”

#! “ok fine whatever-,” you mumbled, “but my point still stands. i don’t need anything, and even if i did i can buy it myself!” you exclaimed boldly

#! “with what money?” he blankly stares at you

#! “with.....with... money i save up from birthdays and holidays because i never get to spend them!”

#! he just sighs, gets up from the couch, and walks away leaving you standing there smiling because you knew it was a successful talk

#! here’s a link to something i read that further added to my aizawa rich headcanon :]

kisses you goodnight on your forehead after he comes home from late missions/pro-hero runs

#! when you were a kid, you slept on his bed to feel safer

#! when he came home from late missions, he would walk into his room to see you bundled up in the blanket

#! after quickly getting ready for bed because he was schlumped, he got into bed as gently as possible to not wake you up

#! but you’re a light sleeper so you felt a familiar warmth encasing you and it jolted you awake, slightly whimpering trying to turn your head to see your dad

#! he noticed and quietly shushed you to get you back to sleep, “sh sh, it’s okay, it’s just me.”

#! your tiny arms would wrap around his chest and you stuffed your chubby face into his chest before you dozed off once again

#! now that you sleep in your own room, he would come home and peek in to check up on you

#! sometimes you were still awake — studying, on your phone, cleaning your room, insomnia, or just because

#! in this case he would just peek his head in, squint his tired eyes at you, mumble a slurred, “night.”, sigh at your smile that was clearly there to keep you from laughing, then finally head towards his room

#! but when he catches you asleep, he smiles to himself and makes his way into your room to give you a small forehead kiss before whispering, “goodnight.”

#! you never grew out of the light sleeping thing though, so you always knew of his small show of fatherly love

#! just don’t bring it up ever because he’s tired of you

[haikyuuwaifu]

Trip

Reader x Keigo x Bakugo x Shinsou x Shoto Poly

Warnings: Swearing

MASTERLIST

LOUIS VUITTON FIASCO

Y/N and Momo, but mostly Momo had decided that they would dedicate their last free day in the city to shopping. “It’s a celebratory shopping trip for finally getting the keys to the new shop!” Momo cheered, as the two friends made their way into the shopping center. “I mean, I was thinking of hookers and cocaine; but I guess blowing money is also fine.” Y/N declared snickering at the snort that came out of Momo’s nose. “Don’t even joke about something like that, Izuku would cry about it the whole time.” Momo huffed out as she and Y/N made their way to the Boba shop. 

A few hours into their shopping day, the two friends made their way around the massive shopping center, idly making conversation. “You know what!” Y/N exclaimed clutching Momo’s hand, “We need to go to Louis Vuitton! I think they’re new line is out and they have this wallet I’ve been eyeing for months.” and at break neck speed the two women booked it, to one of their favorite stores; only to be greeted by the sight of a chubby faced, short haired woman screeching at the sales person, who looked like she was going to cry. The woman was dressed in a pair of leggings, and a crop top. She had a pair of gucci sunglasses perched a top her head, and her nails looked newly manicured. From a distance, she looked like the rich bitch type; but growing up with Momo taught Y/N one thing; and that was how to tell the difference between a rich bitch and a fake hoe miles away. 

As the two women approached the store, they failed to noticed an angry looking man walking behind them, headed in the same direction. He was tall, with broad shoulders and spikey ash blond hair. The sides were faded extra short and the top was long. He had tattoos running down his arms and across his chest. The tank-top he was wearing under his flannel showed his back piece peeking if someone were to look hard enough. The snarl he made is what actually alerted Y/N to his presense behind her; and she swiftly tugged Momo out of his war path. Muttering an apology Bakugo proceeded towards the direction of the store, surprising both women when he stepped inside. 

Inside the store, Katsuki was standing behind his girlfriend as he listened to her scream and yell at the salesperson about whatever dumbass reason she was yelling. Honestly he didn’t give a shit; didn’t even want to fucking come on his only day off this week, but what the fuck ever. As he half listened to her ranting, the front entrance dinged notifying the store that another customer had entered. “I-I’ll be with you ladies in a moment.” the store clerk had stuttered out; as Ochaco continued to rant and rave. “Oh don’t you worry sweetie; we can wait for you to finish with that unruly customer.” one of the women murmured smiling softly. The woman next to her cackled, and it brought a small smirk to Katsuki’s face. “Just say it Momo, a circus is missing it’s prized banshee.” At the sound of the insult, Ochaco whipped her head around; ready to yell when she was met with the site of not one, but two alpha women. A part of her wanted to shrink back, she had never had the nerve to deal with two of them; but most of her was going to put these bitches in their place. Before she could though, one of them had stepped away to look around. “I’ll leave this for you Y/N, I’m going to see those wallets you were talking about.” Momo whispered as she turned and made her way to the wall on the other side of the store. 

Uraraka smiled internally pleased to be left with who she presumed as the more docile of the two women. Y/N looked at the other woman, eyes narrowing slightly. “Are you alright miss?” Y/N asked the sales clerk, as she moved around the other woman. The clerk, nodded slightly eyes filled with unshed tears. Y/N pulled the shorter woman in for a hug and patted her back softly “It’s alright, I’ll deal with this; can you do me a favor and grab me some of these?” she asked, showing the clerk exactly what she was looking for. Nodding slightly, the sales woman answered, “I’ll be sure to get those right away ma’am.” As she turned to go to the back, Ochaco reached her hand out only for it to be stopped by Y/N. “I don’t think so chubs; you and I are going to have a discussion about how to treat retail workers.” 

“How I treat the help is none of your business.” Ochaco snarled, crossing her arms over her chest. “Aren’t retail worker supposed to stick together?” Y/N asked, looking down at her nails in disinterest. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?” as the two women are interacting, Katsuki is silently taking this scene in. In most cases, he’d deal with it himself; but Uraraka fucked herself this time. He knew she was in the wrong; and he was going to let her deal with the repercussions for it. “You think, I can’t tell that you work in a department store?” Y/N asked looking the other woman up and down. She laughed slightly at the way the short haired girl puffed her cheeks. “Let me guess, you’re a part time cashier in a department store; and then you have a small youtube channel about “fitness”” Y/N asked air quoting the word fitness. Beside them Katsuki snickered. “Babe, you’re supposed to be in my corner!” Uraraka snarled facing her boyfriend. “Kind of hard to do when she’s got you pegged cheeks; and she’s right, you shouldn’t be talking to that woman that way.” Katsuki grumbled out. Y/N chose to ignore the shot of lust that went straight to her pussy at the sound of his voice. 

As Ochaco moved to say something, the clerk had returned with the items Y/N had asked for. “Here’s everything you requested miss, and you’re in luck; this is the last wallet until we restock next month.” the clerk smiled eyes shining with veiled pettiness at the fact that the short haired woman wouldn’t get what she came in there screaming for. “You fucking told me you were sold out!” Ochaco screeched ready to lunge at the sales clerk. “I never said that ma’am. I said I’d have to go back and check; you would have known that had you bothered to shut your mouth and listen.” the clerk stated narrowing her eyes slightly. “Tell her girl! Go on!” Y/N stated, sifting through the wallet pockets. On the other end of the store Momo was cackling quietly as well as updating the GC of the days current events. “Do you know who the fuck i am?! Who the fuck my boyfriend is? He’ll fucking crush you!” Uraraka screeched, slamming her fists on the glass. “Sir, I think it’s time you take your child home. She’ll no longer be allowed to shop here.” the clerk stated sternly towards Katsuki. “Fucking christ cheeks; it’s a stupid fucking wallet and it was probably too damn expensive anyway.” he grumbled, trying to drag her out of the store. “It was only 1500 Katsuki, and you promised you’d buy it for me!” she screeched out latching onto the counter top. Katsuki let out a snort of disbelief, “You must be fucking crazy if you think I’m going to shell out 1500 dollars for a fucking wallet you’re only buying for the aesthetic.” He snarled out unlatching her hands from the counter top. “Now let’s fucking go.” As he made his way towards the exit Y/N waved her black card in front of Ochaco’s face; “I’ll take two of everything to make up for that shitty customer. You get paid based on commission right?” Y/N asked cheekily, and all that could be heard through the shopping center was an enraged Uraraka Ochaco and a swearing Katsuki Bakugo.

“I don’t know what the fuck is in Tokyo water, but the men here are sexy and the women here suck.” Y/N mumbled to Momo as the two made their way to the parking lot. To their surprise, Katsuki was out there sitting on the hood of his car; seemingly waiting for them. “I uh...I wanted to apologize for my girlfriends shit behavior.” he mumbled out scratching the back of his neck as he cast his eyes down to the ground. Y/N stepped forward and titled his chin up with her index finger. “You’re a fucking king, so fucking act like it; and don’t go apologizing for her shitty behavior. She’s an adult, and she should take responsibility for her own actions.” Y/N huffed out a pretty smile stretching over her features. Booping his nose, she giggled at the way his cheeks flushed and waved as she walked passed him. “See you around King!” she called behind her as she and Momo made their way towards the car, Katsuki watching them a shocked look on his face.

That night, Katsuki was in his apartment alone, as Uraraka was still pissed with him; so she had opted to stay with Camie for a while. He spent that evening playing over Y/N’s words and continued to do so into the following morning.

-Katsuki and Uraraka have been together for 10 years. In the beginning of their relationship Katsuki was very outspoken and he didn’t let anyone treat him any kind of way. As the relationship progressed Izuku and Denki could see that the Katsuki he was acting like wasn’t the Katsuki they really knew. Being with Ochaco made him soft, in the ways that he shouldn’t have been; and she’s spent the last number of years walking all over him. Y/N could tell what kind of person he should have been and she hoped her reminder that he was more than he was being treated stuck; and it did. 

-That following Monday showed a bit of the old Katsuki, and it started with him NOT paying Ochaco’s bills anymore.

@dabilove27​ @ouijaeater15​ @kit-kat428​ @lia-faerie-queen​ @stickystrawberrysyrup​ @mushimoon14​ @iloveyouasmuchaspoohloveshoney​ @patricia-ceballos​ @starrygoblin​ @cathy8taffy​ @moon-spirit-yue​ @eraser-baby​ @yafriendlyfangirl​ @ditu-m9​ @loverofallthingsfoxy​ @percabethismyotp14​ @alorathebear​

[lunnanunna]

Matching Set

BTS Extra Member AU

Summary: Lexi and V go to get Lexi’s Christmas present for Jungkook.

Warnings: none

Taglist: @kimonmars @mythicalamphitrite​ @hyunmijung​ @atinygracie @xiaojunssmile​

A/N: Hope you enjoy!

Requests are open! Please let me know what you think.

“Come on, Oppa,” Lexi called out to Taehyung, grabbing his wrist and pulling him into the jewelry store.

“Lex, calm down. The place isn’t going anywhere,” Taehyung rolled his eyes, a small smile tugging on his lips as he watched Lexi make her way to the counter.

Lexi let go of Taehyung’s hand and smiled at the employee at the counter. “Hello,” Lexi greeted.

“Welcome. How can I help you?” the woman greeted, with kind eyes.

“I placed an order here a few weeks ago and was notified that it was all set to pick up,” Lexi said, pulling out her phone to show the woman the email that she had received that morning.

“Okay, and what is the name on the order?”

“Han Chaewon,” Lexi answered. She heard Taehyung snort behind her. Lexi turned to him, smacking his arm. “Shut up.” Whenever Lexi places orders for pick ups, she uses her Korean name. Since she never really uses it, no one ever connects her with it, making it easier to pick up orders without making a big deal.

“Let’s see,” the woman said, drawing Lexi’s attention. She typed in a few things on her computer then scrolled a little. “Ah, yes. Just a minute, please.”

“Of course,” Lexi smiled at the woman as she walked into the back of the store where Lexi assumed they kept the customized orders.

“So what did you get again? And it’s for Kookie, right?” Taehyung asked as he browsed the displays.

“I got us matching bracelets,” she answered as walked over to a display of diamond necklaces. There was one in particular that caught her eye.

Taehyung hummed as he stood on the opposite side of the case that Lexi was looking at. “Careful.”

“What?” Lexi asked, looking up at the older.

“Matching anythings��� can lead to rumors,” Taehyung said, eyes on a pair of earrings.

Lexi snorted. “Yeah, well there’s already rumors about me with all of you with how much I steal your guys’ clothes. And I also have a list of rumors with other idols and actors. What can you do?” she asked, shaking her head.

“Yeah, but matching jewelry is different,” Taehyung said, looking at Lexi.

“It’s a friendship bracelet. Everyone knows that Jungkook and I are best friends. We used to have a matching set when we were 17,” Lexi quirked a brow.

“Yeah, a homemade bead one. Lex that’s not the same,” Taehyung quirked his own brow, unimpressed with her reasoning.

Lexi rolled her eyes, gathering her hair in a claw clip. “Still a matching set, Oppa. Plus this one has a connection with ARMYs,” Lexi stated.

“Oh, really?” Taehyung asked skeptically. Lexi found herself rolling her eyes again. She had already had this conversation with Yoongi and Namjoon. By the end of it they were actually impressed and gave their approval of the gift. (As if Lexi needed their approval.)

“Here you go, Miss.” Lexi turned to find the woman back at the counter with a long indigo velvet box.

“Come and see,” Lexi said, motioning to the box. They both walked up to the counter and then the employee turned the box to face them and opened it up. 

Inside laid two silver bracelets. They were both chain linked and came together with a pair of mini gold handcuffs. The chain size for Jungkook’s was slightly larger due to him having a bigger a wrist, but other than that they were completely identical.

“They came out perfect,” Lexi grinned, picking up Jungkook’s bracelet.

“I’m glad you like them. I, myself, am fond of the simplicity of it,” the woman said.

Lexi smiled at her, “Sometimes simple is better.”

“It is nice, but where’s the ARMY connection?” Taehyung asked, leaning over Lexi’s shoulder to look at the bracelet.

“Here,” Lexi said, pointing at the little gold trapezoid charm at the center of the chain.

“I don’t get it,” Taehyung said.

Lexi rolled her eyes. “Here take this one,” she told him, handing him Jungkook’s bracelet, then  picking up her own. Lexi moved hers closer to Jungkook’s and the two charms on each bracelet came together forming the symbol for ARMY.

“Is that a magnet?” Taehyung asked, marveling at the way they connected.

“Yep,” Lexi said, nodding proudly.

“Okay, so it’s not so bad,” Taehyung sighed. He took Lexi’s bracelet, connecting and disconnecting them. “It definitely fits your guys’ style too.”

“It pays to have your best friend basically be your twin,” Lexi chuckled. She took the bracelets from Taehyung and then placed them back inside the box.

“I take it, everything is to your liking?” the employee asked.

“Yes. They’re perfect,” Lexi nodded. She followed after the woman and watched as she properly wrapped the box then waited to be rung up. “Could I also have that necklace over there?” Lexi added, pointing to the necklace that had caught her eye earlier.

“Of course,” the woman smiled. Lexi smiled as well as the woman walked over to grab the necklace.

“So did I pass the test?” Lexi turned to Taehyung who tilted his head back slightly to think.

“I suppose. As long as you two explain quickly before people start to get the wrong idea,” Taehyung said, giving her forehead a small flick.

Lexi glared at him. “Obviously. Christ almighty,” she grumbled, then smiled as the woman handed Lexi the bag with her necklace and bracelets.

“And how would you like to pay?”

“Card,” Lexi answered, pulling out her credit card and handing it to the woman.

Once she was all set, Lexi and Taehyung walked out of the store, pulling their masks back over their faces.

“Where to next?” Lexi asked, seeing as Taehyung seemed to have set place in mind.

“We passed by a really pretty Gucci jacket earlier,” he answered.

“Oh, I saw that one too,” Lexi said, linking arms with him.

“Then let’s go. After, we’ll grab something to eat,” Taehyung smiled, looking at Lexi.

“Beautiful plan,” she grinned.

Lexi’s Masterlist

[comeon-eileen]

it’s not wip wednesday, but I need to somebody other than me to know that this fic exists/harass me to finish

So, I present a snippet of sugar d*ddy au

There’s a the soft whoosh of hair brushing over shoulders as necks turn. Max has never felt more uncomfortable as he does at this very moment, with mouths wet and drooped open. Charles is gone, in a blink and flash, off charming the literal pants off of a man.

“Don’t look hunted, Max,” Lewis whispers in his ear, a cleansing breath of jasmine washing over him. “We don’t make it easy for them to tear us apart.”

Max starts by releasing the tension in his neck and then relaxing the slightest bit, forcing his body to be inviting and warm, desperately reaching for the last dredges of summer heat as a comfort. “Okay.”

“Remember that we demand admiration. They’re paying for it,” Lewis says before floating off to find his target for the night.

Max takes as deep of a breath as he can manage and walks into the crowd. He shouldn’t be nervous. He knows that he looks good, Lewis made sure of that, but.

But nothing, he shouldn’t be nervous.

Still, Max has to laugh at himself; he wasn’t meant to be here like this. He’s in Monaco and so close to the race track that he can smell the asphalt. Biting and chemical and burning the inside of his nostrils. But he’s plucked and primped within every inch of him. He’s cold in the half-buttoned white collared shirt, open just enough that if he leans forward, his nipples are on display. He’s perfect, like a centerpiece.

Still and stupid like a centerpiece, too.

Grabbing a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, he walks over to the railing to have a full view of the party. He tries to look into the yellow din of people laughing and drinking, but he finds himself staring off the side of the yacht instead. There’s a gray curve in the distance that he can see under the glow of the moon, and if he tells himself a nice lie, he can say that the curve is the asphalt of the racetrack. Just a moment longer, he tells himself, one more minute and then I’ll turn around and I’ll do my job.

“Hello?” Or his job can find him. Max stiffens, turning around to see a grin, white teeth shining even in the low light.

“Yes?”

“I wanted to see if you were thirsty,” he says, eyes twinkling at him. “But I see that you have a glass of champagne, so I guess I’ll have to drink both then,” waving the glasses.

Max smiles, practiced and demure. “Your name?”

“Daniel Ricciardo.” Daniel’s grin slants mischievous, “But I think the more important question is what’s your name?”

“Max,” he says, slouching enough so that he can look through his eyelashes.

Daniel downs a glass of champagne, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “No last name?”

“Do you really need it?” Max asks.

“Other than the fact that I want it?” Daniel curves his body towards him, curls dipping over his eyebrows, almost predatory. It makes Max’s belly warm, inviting him to lean into Daniel.

Instead, Max looks into Daniel’s eyes, watching the light catching to turn them golden. “You can’t have everything that you want.”

Daniel looks expensive. Max needed to learn that the first year he left home. Lewis had tested him, running fabric over his fingertips while he was blindfolded and pressing slips of perfumed paper up to his nose. He now knows that the watch on Daniel’s hand is a Rolex. The thin, white collared shirt is Gucci. The tie—vintage Dior.

“Can’t you?” Daniel asks.

Max makes a moue with his lips, “Maybe. If you offer the right price, I suppose.”

“Oh?”

Max moves closer so that he feels the warmth of Daniel’s body. He places a kiss on the edge of Daniel’s jaw, feeling the brush of stubble rough on his lips. It’s going to tint them red.

Daniel’s hands grip his hips, holding him still against the cool railing of the yacht. His leg sneaks in-between Max’s leg. “You wanna do this here?”

Max grinds down while staring at Daniel. “What do you think?”

“I think I got lucky.” One of his hands drifts up to caress Max’s jaw, drawing him closer until their lips meet. Gentle for the first brush. A hello. It doesn’t stay gentle for long. Daniel pulls Max closer, pressing his lips against each other harder, drugging kisses, his tongue darting into Max’s mouth. And Max—Max forgets where he is. Can only focus on the heat, the wet of Daniel’s mouth. The strength of his hands—how Daniel’s beard scratches against his neck when Daniel starts kissing down the length of his jaw. His own hands betraying him, pulling Daniel closer and closer and closer.

It’s only when Daniel’s hand starts dipping underneath his pants, hot and curious, when he realizes that he’s here to work—a cold dunk of water on his senses. He drags himself away from Daniel, but Daniel follows, head sinking down so that they’re staring at each other—lips centimeters away. His eyes are dark, pupil taking over his irises, looking like he’s seconds away from dragging Max in again. “Max?”

“You’re going to have to pay for more.” Clunky. Lewis would kill him for that, but Max’s mind has been delivered to Daniel’s hands.

“What?”

Max repeats. “You’re going to have to pay for more.” His hands are shaking by his side.

“I’m not—I don’t-“ Daniel stutters.

“Okay.”

And Max starts walking away. No use wasting time on someone who’s never going to be a client.

He’s only a few steps when Daniel calls out. “Wait—“

Max stops. Turns around. He hopes his lips are swollen, red enough for Daniel to imagine what they would look like wrapped around his cock.

“I need somebody to date me,” Daniel blurts, shoving his hands inside his pockets.

“I did not think you would have a problem with that,” Max says, eyes widening when he realizes what he said.

Daniel laughs, big and full, blocking out the rest of the party. “I didn’t一I didn’t expect you to say that.”

I didn’t expect that either.

“Why do you need a date, Daniel?”

“My parents want me to settle down. Get married.” He leans against the railing of the yacht. “I need一time. I can’t一”  

Max hackles rise. ���I don’t need charity from you, Daniel. I’m not ashamed of being fucked or fucking someone else for money.”

“It’s not charity.”

Max takes a sip of his champagne. It’s more bitter than he expected, tickling the back of his throat.

Daniel’s cheeks pink. “I—my parents want me settled, but I can make my own decisions.”

Max turns back to stare out into the harbor, anger fizzing in his veins.

“Will you do it?”

“Date you?”

“For a price,” Daniel recovers, grinning and Max feels like he’s pressing his thumb against the edge of a knife. About to slice it open.

Max swallows. “How long do you want?” The lights on the harbor twinkle. It’s pretty.

“How about a year?” Daniel steps up next to him, leaning his forearms against the railing. “Nice and even.”

Max stares at the lights, dangling the champagne glass in his hands above the blue-black water. He idly wonders if he would even see a splash if he dropped it.

“You’re so sure? No trial period?”

Daniel stares at Max. “I think一I don’t think that it’ll be necessary.” It’s strangely odd to see Daniel without the edges of his mouth stretched wide in a grin. Max feels a little bit steadier when he smirks and says, “My parents know my type.”

“Blonde?”

Daniel grins. “And pretty.”

And Max hopes that his foundation’s lasted the night. Hopes that the red blush he can feel on his cheeks isn’t visible to Daniel, blaring even under the cover of night.

[there-must-be-a-lock]

Breakfast and Bus Rides

Criminal Minds/Supernatural crossover ft. Harry Styles

Word Count: ~3030

Warnings: Egregious amounts of fluff, one gratuitous kitten, and a couple stoned rockstars. Lots of discussion of coming out and some other LGBT-adjacent issues. 

A/N: A wild Plot appears! I was having some feels about coming out/honesty (hm wonder why, is a mystery) and foisted those feelings on JJ and Dean. 

Thanks to @stunudo​ for a pre-read, endless encouragement, and the kitten scene idea.

This is part of the Rockstar AU. It picks up right where Wake-Up Calls and Watermelon leaves off. 

Dean exchanges a glance with Sam, and they both hang back as the others start to gather in the kitchenette. Penelope keeps shooting wide-eyed, starstruck looks at Harry, and it’s making Dean nervous. 

“You okay with this?” Dean asks quietly. “You think she’ll keep her mouth shut?” 

Sam shrugs. “I can talk to her.” 

“And Schroeder? I mean, love the kid to death, but holy hell does he babble.” 

“Spencer’s known since the first night of tour.” 

“How?” 

Sam chuckles. “Kinda a funny story… tell you later. I honestly think he might’ve forgotten, though.” 

“What about the rest of ‘em?” Dean asks. “I mean, I like ‘em well enough, but…”

“I want to tell them,” Sam says, without hesitating. “I’m just gonna bite the bullet and invite them all over for breakfast.” 

Dean sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “You sure?” 

“I trust them.” 

“Okay. Just don’t want you to get hurt, Sammy.” 

“What a shock,” Sam deadpans. “Dean’s pulling the protective big brother card? Alert the press.”

Dean purses his lips and gives Sam a light punch on the arm. “Bitch.” 

“Don’t let Emily hear you saying that,” Sam chuckles. “Shoulda heard the lecture I got the other day about the way misogyny is perpetuated through language. Honestly, though. What do you really think is going to happen? It’s not like they’ve outed you and Cas, they’ve all been awesome about it.” 

“This is different, though,” Dean says, with a grimace. “I mean, like it or not, it’d be news. The gossip rags would pay serious fuckin’ money for a picture of the two of you.” 

“It’s not like we’re gonna walk around, like, fused at the mouth,” Sam laughs. “No PDA required. But… I want him to meet some of my friends. Y’know?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Stop worrying so much, Dean.” Sam’s expression is soft and fond, and he claps Dean on the shoulder before heading for the coffee maker and Harry. 

Harry wraps himself around Sam like a giant squid, if a giant squid wore Gucci, and Dean’s chest feels tight with anxiety. The two of them are looking at each other with these stupid googly-eyed dimpled smiles. It doesn’t even count as PDA, not really, except that Sam is so godawful at hiding his feelings that he might as well be wearing a neon sign. 

Then Harry starts feeding him a strawberry, and that definitely counts as PDA, if not public indecency. Gross. 

If someone did take a picture of them like this, with their sleepy-eyed smiles and interlaced fingers, it’d be worth thousands of dollars. That’s a hell of an incentive. Dean’s had people fuck him over for much less. 

Dean’s learned his lesson over the years. The only people you can really trust are your family. 

Cas emerges from their room, blinking blearily around at everyone before coming over to Dean and leaning in for a kiss. 

“Morning breath, fuck,” Dean grumbles, making a face, but he grabs Cas and pulls him in anyway. 

A cheer goes up around them, and Dean sees Jack coming out of his room, clothed now, but still blushing red and shamefaced. 

“What’d I miss?” Cas says, scowling, and Dean grins gleefully before launching into the story. 

* * *

“I guess I just don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” Spencer says, contemplating his hand of cards. “Aside from a very vocal minority, there’s widespread support for LGBT rights, statistically, and the music industry is more progressive than most. If you look at David Bowie, for example —” 

“I pass the turn,” Charlie interrupts, cutting him off before he can launch into full-on textbook mode. “It’s not really about that, though.” 

Charlie forgets about the conversation for a minute as he attacks her planeswalker. She used to own her local Friday Night Magic tournaments, and she’s more than a little pissed that this skinny fucker in a sweater vest has won three of their last four games. Spencer is sneaky. Charlie can respect that, but it’s infuriating. 

“Why, then?” 

“Hmm? Oh, that. It’s more to do with… privacy, I guess. That’s a hell of a lot of public attention for Sam. He doesn’t want people to sing Happy Birthday to him, you know?” 

“Doesn’t everybody hate being sung to?” Spencer asks pensively.

“Well, yeah. But Harry’s the sort of famous where people get totally invasive and weird about his personal life. Like, starting rumors, tabloid shit, and it extends to anyone he gets involved with.” 

“Really?” Spencer downs the last of his coffee. It’s his third cup, but he hasn’t touched the plate of pancakes that’s been going cold on the table.  

“Yeah. I don’t know if Sam realizes the full level of crazy at work, but Dean and I looked online, one night, after Harry brought it up. The shit people have said about his exes… about his friends, even. They’re vicious about it. Analyzing every facial expression in every picture, making up stories…” 

Spencer’s forehead creases in a frown. “I play Grasp of Darkness on your Primordial Hydra and swing with all my zombies.” 

“Motherfucker,” Charlie mutters. “Rematch?” 

Spencer’s staring intently down at the table, lost in thought, and he doesn’t seem to hear her for a second. She chucks one of her D-20s at his face and he starts when it bounces off his forehead. 

“Sorry.”

“Where’d you go?” 

He hesitates before mumbling, “I had a stalker.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, she — Cat. I told her I didn’t want to sleep with her, and she didn’t like that very much.” He pauses, brow furrowed. “She learned everything about me, and I mean everything. Tried to manipulate me, tried to manipulate my friends…”

“Yikes. What happened?” 

“She went to jail for a little while. She showed up when she got out, one night in Boston—” Spencer brightens. “—but Derek tackled her and threw her into the Charles River.” 

“For real?” 

Spencer nods and smiles in a way that makes Charlie think she’s not getting the full story. “It was a weird night.” 

“So she hasn’t showed up since then?” 

“No. But… I just felt like I couldn’t hide anything, like every part of me, every shitty thing I’d ever done, was under a microscope. It was awful. I’m all for being honest, you know? That’s great, in theory, but... everybody deserves the right to hide if they want to. You should be the one to decide what parts of yourself you want to share.” 

Charlie thinks about the friend who outed her in high school, and how naked she felt. 

“Agreed.” 

* * *

Dean sits down next to Derek at the kitchen bar as he’s sealing the third joint.  

“Rolling for the road?” he asks, around a mouthful of bacon. “Nicely done.” 

“The key is the crutch,” Derek tells him. “Ditalini.” 

“No shit? Huh.” 

Derek keeps working, watching Dean, who’s watching Sam. 

“Nothing to worry about here,” Derek points out gently. “You know that, right?” 

Dean lets out a little self-deprecating laugh. “Sorry. Fuck. Habit, y’know? He’s my brother.” 

“Oh, believe me, I know,” Derek says ruefully, glancing over at Spencer. 

“Every person he tells is another person that could hurt him,” Dean says fiercely. “I fuckin’ hate that.” 

“Worrying doesn’t help, though.” 

Dean scowls at that, thinking for a moment as he chews, before saying, “I just wish there was a way I could help.” 

“A while ago, there was this guy who went after Emily,” Derek says slowly, twisting the next joint closed. “And he didn’t hurt her bad, or anything. Spencer and JJ jumped in, and Spencer took the worst of it, because… Spencer.” 

“Can’t see him being handy in a fight.” 

“Try telling him that when he’s pissed. Point is, though… nobody got hurt, but I was pretty shaken up about it. Beat myself up for not being there to protect them, until my girl Penelope talked some sense into me. She said, ‘It’s not your job to keep them safe all the time. The most important thing is to make sure they know they’re safe with you.’ I think about that a lot.” 

“So, what, I’m supposed to just… ignore the risk?” 

“No,” Derek says patiently. “But it’s his risk to take. You being afraid isn’t going to make the world any less scary, but knowing that you’re there, that you’re proud of him, that you’ve got his back no matter what? That helps.”  

Dean mulls that over. There’s a mulish set to his jaw that reminds Derek of Emily; it’s the face she makes when she knows he’s right and doesn’t want to admit it. He tries to hide his smile as he finishes rolling the last joint and offers it to Dean. 

“Thanks,” Dean says gruffly. 

“Any time.” 

* * *

When JJ opens the bus door, she’s greeted by a cloud of weed smoke. She can see Hotch stretched out on the couch with a half-smoked joint in one hand and a battered copy of Slaughterhouse-Five in the other. He’s reading out loud, and for a moment JJ can’t figure out who he’s reading to; then she notices Pearl curled up on his chest, rubbing her tiny fuzzy head against his cheek. 

It’s so goddamn cute JJ doesn’t know what to do with herself. She settles for whipping out her phone and taking a quick picture. 

As she walks up the bus steps, Hotch holds out the lit joint without pausing, and she takes it happily. 

JJ’s exhaling smoke, finally feeling the weird tension under her skin start to evaporate, when Rossi opens the door.

“All set,” Rossi says, giving the driver a thumbs-up. 

“Did you triple-check your head count?” Hotch asks, deadpan. 

“Sure did.” 

“Everybody present and accounted for?” JJ adds innocently. “Spencer?” 

“He’s showing off his new toy on the Winchesters’ bus.”

“Penelope?” 

“Playing Sega with Charlie.” 

“And Morgan?” 

“Already in the back, taking a nap.” 

“Emily?” Hotch presses. 

“She’s in the batcave to — oh. I see.” Rossi glowers. “Very funny.” 

“Are you sure you didn’t forget Spencer again?” JJ asks, giggling hoarsely around another lungful of smoke. 

“It was one time,” Rossi protests, flipping them off. “You try keeping track of the kid. He’s like a squirrel. A squirrel on LSD.” 

“Pretty sure it was mushrooms that day,” JJ points out. 

Rossi sits down and asks thoughtfully, “Did anybody see that coming?” 

“Sam? Honestly, no,” Hotch answers, frowning. “Not that it’s any of our business, but…” 

“Me neither,” JJ admits. 

She’s still rattled by the whole thing, for reasons she can’t quite put her finger on. It’s not about Sam, or whatever bullshit constructs of masculinity that would make people assume he’s straight just because he has muscles and dresses like a lumberjack. She’s not shocked by the label, or whatever. 

“There’s someone I want you guys to meet,” Sam had told them. He tucked his hair behind his ears as he said it; it’s his tell, his nervous tic, and JJ has the poker winnings to prove it. She had wondered, for a moment, what would make him smile like that in spite of his obvious anxiety. 

Dean had been glaring from the other side of the room, gauging their reactions, his arms folded and his fear written all over his face in the guise of a scowl, like a feral dog who’d been backed into a corner. JJ could understand the fear. Sam, though… Sam just looked relieved. 

Hotch and Rossi are staring at her, she realizes abruptly. 

“Hm?” 

“I said, anything you want to do in L.A.? Plenty of time for sightseeing.” 

JJ shrugs. “Not really.” 

“You okay?” Rossi asks, looking at her closely. 

“Yeah, just… tired. I’m gonna take that nap now.” She gives them a bright smile, passing the joint to Rossi, and gets up before they can question it. 

JJ feels a little better once she’s in a spare bunk with the curtain closed. It’s easier to examine the knot in her chest like this, now that she’s alone in the dark, safe and hidden. 

She keeps coming back to the smile on Sam’s face. 

There was a moment, earlier, when JJ noticed Sam and Harry from across the room as they talked to Emily and Hotch. Harry had been leaning against Sam’s side. Sam’s arm was draped casually over his shoulder, and he started playing idly with Harry’s hair, combing his fingers through the messy curls at his temple as Harry tilted his head into the touch. 

There was a peaceful possessiveness in it—the sort of cozy familiarity that had been worn soft by time like overwashed cotton—an unspoken claim: mine. 

How long has it been since JJ felt that with someone, like their closeness was a second skin that she could wear in public? 

Not since Emily. Even then it had always been tainted by fear, an overwhelming desire to hide whenever she could feel someone watching. 

She and Emily are loudly affectionate with each other in public, of course: drunk and dancing, or clinging to each other as they stagger home, or kissing with an exaggerated smacking sound when anyone mutters disapprovingly in their direction. But that’s brash and performative and platonic, the sort of thing JJ could do just as comfortably with Penelope or Spencer. That’s different. 

Anybody who’d seen Sam and Harry would’ve known immediately; that sort of intimacy is unmistakable, and Sam didn’t seem to care. He was smiling like he was proud to show it off. 

JJ has seen it in Dean and Cas, too, but never quite so clearly. Maybe it’s because they’ve never had to hide around the Business As Usual crowd, so the contrast hasn’t drawn her attention, or maybe it’s just that they’re not demonstratively tactile in the same way. You have to know him well (and you have to be paying attention) to catch glimpses of  the tenderness that Dean masks so well. He doesn’t wear his emotions on his face for everyone to see. JJ can relate. 

But Sam wasn’t hiding, that morning; he was just sweet and vulnerable and proud of it and JJ realizes suddenly that she’s jealous. That’s envy squirming around in her belly. 

She wants that sort of love: fearless, or maybe in spite of fear. She gets sick of hiding, sometimes. 

JJ puts a pin in that thought and tells herself she can deal with it later, when she’s not quite so stoned and maudlin. Right now, it’s naptime. 

* * *

Dean intended to nap all the way to Sacramento, but he only manages to doze for a half hour or so. There’s too much on his mind. He pushes groggily through the door and thinks a silent thank you at whoever got the coffee machine going. 

Spencer and Jack are sitting on one couch, playing with something that Dean recognizes as a theremin. Sam’s on the other couch, and Harry and Cas are sitting at the table. 

“What do you think?” Cas asks, when he notices Dean watching. He holds up two bottles of nail polish. 

“Black is punk rock. Pastels are for the Easter bunny’s little sister,” Dean opines. 

“Love you too, Dean Bean.” Harry shoots him a cheerful pastel-green-painted middle finger. Dean ruffles his hair affectionately on his way to sit next to Sam. 

Dean’s first instinct was to scoff, to snark, to dismiss nail polish as girly, but he knows the instinct is just a vestigial memory of his dad’s stern voice. He’s been getting better at recognizing that voice, in the last few years; for a while he thought he was done with it, figuring that if he could admit he was in love with a guy, he must be over that sort of learned bullshit. Can’t be phobic if you’re one of the homos, right? So… fuck off, Dad. 

Then Harry showed up, with his totally fuckin’ zen attitude about annihilating gendered fashion norms, and Dean found himself wincing, sometimes, or looking around furtively to make sure nobody was staring. Even at Bonnaroo, when Harry went around hiding behind wigs and glasses—when the entire point was for him to pass as a girl—Dean’s immediate knee-jerk reaction was to cringe. It’s taken awhile, but he’s getting better at ignoring the fear when it kicks up in his gut. 

Dean’s distracted by a drawn-out melancholy squeal. 

“Someone turned a taxidermied badger into a theremin one time,” Spencer says happily, as Jack waves his hand over it again. “They called it a badgermin.” 

Dean snorts. “Sounds like a violin that needs an exorcism.” 

“Or a Barred Owl on barbiturates,” Sam offers. 

“Worn-Out-Brake-Pad flavored La Croix.” 

“A whale that got so stoned it forgot how to talk.” 

“One of the mermaids from Harry Potter having a wet dream,” Spencer suggests, and Cas laughs so hard he almost knocks over the bottle of nail polish. 

“Get your shit together, Castiel,” Harry scolds, but he’s giggling too. It’s like being scolded by a very happy sloth. “You’re done, mate. Who’s next, hmm?” 

He points at Jack, who shakes his head. 

“I need to get some sleep,” he says, and the last word cracks on a yawn. 

Sam grins. “Yeah, I’m guessing you didn’t get much rest last night.” 

“Sweet dreams, Mr. Grey,” Dean teases, and wolf-whistles as Jack retreats. Cas relocates to the couch, giving Dean a peck on the cheek before sitting back and admiring his manicure. 

Harry waves the bottle at Spencer, who doesn’t notice; he’s focused intently on the instrument, coaxing out something that actually sounds like music, in a vague, freaky kind of way. 

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says, rolling his eyes and settling at the table across from a delighted Harry. 

“How about a nice hot pink?” he asks. 

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Wasn’t one of those used in the Doctor Who theme?” Harry asks Spencer. Spencer brightens like a big geeky Christmas tree that’s strung with lights made of useless trivia. 

“Now you’ve done it,” Dean says under his breath. 

“Actually, that’s a common misconception,” Spencer announces. “The original composition used—”

Dean must be going soft, because he’s actually kind of enjoying this, both the lecture and the manicure. 

Then again, he thinks, Sam is enthralled, and Cas is smiling, and maybe Dean’s just really enjoying his life right now. 

Fuck off, Dad, he thinks, admiring his pastel green nails. 

[primonizuto]

do u have any crochet tips for beginners? im making a baby blanket for my nephew but my fingers hurt and i always feel like im doing something wrong 😭

AHH okay first of all good luck!!! i’m sure it will be a treasured blanket regardless of how it turns out and always remember that any mistakes you make are going to be very obvious to you but mostly not to the people looking at the blanket unless you point them out – and even then it’s just another little thing that makes it homemade!

this got super long so i’m gonna put the rest of it under a cut kajsdlgks

as for tips, i think one of the main ones for me was not to worry about how i was holding the yarn/hook as long as i was getting good tension – i find it really difficult to hold the yarn how you’re “supposed” to because it’s more comfortable for me to hold it a different way, so i just did it that way and my projects came out just as good! so if your fingers hurt it might be a case of holding your yarn in a way that you find uncomfortable, maybe try a few different ways of holding it to see if that helps?

i actually find that watching youtube tutorials from a variety of crochet youtubers gives me a lot of peace in terms of holding yarn because they all do it so differently. sometimes i just watch their tutorials even if i have no intention of making whatever they’re demonstrating just because i like to see how they hold their yarn lmao? i think the person closest to how i currently hold my yarn is hooked by robin but there are sooo many people who wrap the yarn around the hook with their left hand like i used to. i think this also helped me become more familiar with the shapes of stitches and identifying them in different circumstances/with different yarns tbh! i literally watch it’s all in a nutshell videos because her voice is so sweet and soothing, but she’s SO comprehensive in her tutorials about pointing out where everything goes lmao, a lifesaver!!!

also, i used to crochet super tightly, but i feel like my stuff comes out better now i have a better grip on my tension, and i only really got used to the idea of loosening my tension after i did a big project in tunisian crochet. idk if you know what that is, but basically it’s like hybrid crochet/knitting where you’re always on the same side of the piece rather than turning at the end of each row, and you load a bunch of loops onto your hook on the ‘forward pass’ and then pull them off two at a time on the reverse pass (there’s a really great basics video on it here). if you crochet REALLY tightly with tunisian then your fabric is so angry and curled up that it’s difficult to crochet into the next row, so i really had to work on making all my movements super loose and then when i went back to regular crochet i found it so much easier to modulate my tension because i knew what crocheting more loosely was like, if that makes sense? ANYWAY that’s just the way i personally worked out my tension, there are definitely other ways to loosen up and i’m sure that will help with any finger troubles!

i know that a lot of beginners struggle with their work either getting wider or narrower as they crochet which can be super frustrating (it happened to me SO MUCH). most of the time that’s either because they’re adding/skipping stitches where they shouldn’t be (usually by missing the last stitch on the row), or because they’ll change their tension as they’re crocheting without realising. if you’re worrying about things like how you’re holding your yarn and your stitch count and not making mistakes you’re gonna be crocheting really tightly, and if you’ve relaxed into it you’re probably gonna be crocheting with less tension than you started with, so it’s super important when you start out that you know whether you tend to skew tighter or looser with your tension and really try to match that at the beginning. again, though, if your blanket is a little bit wonky there are things you can do like putting a border on it or trying to block it a bit, but also remember that it’s either going to be folded up or tucked over a baby, so nobody’s ever really going to see it stretched out completely flat and if it just has a SLIGHT discrepancy it’s honestly no big deal!!

besides stuff about tension i would generally say that reminding yourself you’re going to make a few mistakes as you’re learning is really important. like, i’ve been crocheting for a few years now and i still fuck up and have to frog yards and yards of yarn because of a mistake, but unless you get really bent out of shape about mistakes and it’s like upsetting you that you made a mistake (or it’s something that would throw off the rest of the pattern in a way that really needs to be fixed) then i would also suggest not being too strict with yourself! i empathise with the feeling of needing everything to be perfect, but if you wanted something to be perfect you would just go buy a blanket online somewhere right? if you drop a stitch somewhere and you only notice that you’ve done that like three rows later, just throw in an extra stitch somewhere in the row you’re on and you’re gucci!

i also think it’s good practice as a beginner to count your stitches and mark the first/last stitch on each row so you don’t accidentally miss ones there since i know that’s a really common mistake! i know counting your stitches is a pain, so you don’t have to do it every row, maybe just every few rows as you get more confident – also, if your blanket is massive and there are TONS of stitches in a row, you can use stitch markers to mark every 10th/20th stitch or something, so you’re just counting to 10 or 20 instead of 120 stitches in one go. 

also, this might sound crazy but if you’re just doing a blanket that’s plain single/half double/double crochets or something, it might actually help you to switch to a pattern that has a slightly more “complicated” stitch pattern, like a granny stripe or something – that way it’s not as difficult to miss stitches by accident, you can see exactly where you’re working your clusters so there’s no mistakes about where to put them.

ultimately like i said up there, mistakes are noticeable to you because you’ve been staring at this thing for ages and you remember seeing the mistake and you see it every time you look at it, but i promise you NOBODY is going to pay that close attention, and if they are and they think less of this thing you’ve made because of a mistake then fuck em! the most important thing is being comfortable while you’re crocheting so make sure you’re holding everything in a way that makes the most sense to your hands and it will help you even out your tension if tension is an issue, and will also let you work for longer without getting uncomfy!

also, again, GOOD LUCK!! the blanket will be amazing and much loved because you made it! every project you make is practice with a new technique or a new stitch or a new yarn or a new hook so there’s always going to be some readjustments you’ll have to make but the more you crochet the better you’ll feel about everything. lmk if you need help with anything else!! 💕💕💕💕

[chillmichelle]

Gold Digger

Word Count: 2K

Angst of course

-

Shawn’s a little bit stressed.

His eyebrows are furrowed, hair messier than usual although barely noticeable to anyone else. He’s worried more than anything. It’s not because of his music, he gets plenty of inspiration nowadays. It’s not because of his friends. Hell, it’s not even because of the housewarming party him and Y/N are due to host for the house they bought together.

Shawn had flown back from Europe merely a week ago, ad he could’ve sworn it was with him. He could practically feel the tough covering of the wallet in the left pocket of his grey sweats.

Yet, after a week of  “I’m sure it just got lost in the move.” and “I’ll just pay in cash.”, he’s finally ready to be properly worried over losing his wallet.

And he’s looked everywhere. After the new move, he didn’t hesitate to search the shelves, the tables, between the couch cushions, even the pillowcases of the guest bedroom. But he still can’t find it.

Letting out a frustrated groan, he rests his face in his hands, running his fingers across the flushed skin before groaning for the hundredth time that day.

“Hey do you think Karen would prefer White Wine or Red-” Y/N walks in, hair flawlessly falling down to her waist in frizzy waves, makeup done more excessively than usual but nevertheless showcasing her perfect features, dress hugging her curves the perfect amount. She stops her sentence when she sees her boyfriend’s distressed state.

“Shawn?” She frowns, walking towards where he’s sat on the edge of their bed. She wraps her arms around his broad shoulders, pulling him into her waist as she runs her fingers through his hair.

“What’s wrong?” She asks him, toying with the messy curls atop his head.

“I can’t fucking find it.” He whines. She sighs, bending her neck down to inhale the scent of his shampoo, “It’ll be okay.”

“I hope so but-” He lets out a breath at her actions, “Everything’s in there, Y/N. All my credit cards, my license, my ID, all of the money I took to Europe and my bank cards. Whoever gets their hands on that wallet can literally take everything I have.”

Repeating the horrific truth to himself has him wincing at his own words.

“You’ll still have me.” She kisses the top of his head, fingertips roaming down the muscles of his back, “And you have your family and friends, just don’t worry about it for tonight.”

He tilts his head up to look at her, showcasing his red cheeks at her as he grins like a child sarcastically, “Impossible.”

Y/N leans down, pressing a small peck against his lips, “Possible. Now go get ready, guests are coming in twenty minutes.”

-

It’s 9 pm.

There are people scattered across the living room o the house. Some are relatively polite, the older people invited treating themselves to a leisurely amount of wine. But some of the younger guests - Shawn’s high school friends’ friends from college -have no problem treating themselves to drinks. Shawn flinches as he stands in the line for his own bathroom, hearing someone vomit quite aggressively in the bathroom toilet.

Deciding that he would rather not use a vomit covered restroom, he decides to jog upstairs to use him and Y/N’s personal bathroom. It’s much cleaner, and with Y/N’s taste i decorating, he knows it’ll be far nicer than the bathroom a story below it.

But when Shawn walks in, he clumsily stumbles in a bit too quickly, knocking what appears to be Y/N’s makeup bag off of the vanity they recently set up. Sighing, he bends over to pick u the contents and prays to himself that nothing is broken.

But instead of merely being met with her makeup products, he spots a familiar object of binded brown leather, and his face pales at the discovery.

Lying on the ground, halfway inside her makeup bag and halfway tumbled onto the floor is the brown wallet Shawn’s been looking for for the past week, the one he’s been endlessly stressing over. And now here it is in Y/N’s makeup bag.

Shawn feels a rush of emotions, pain being one of them. Betrayal following. But mostly, he feels anger. Feels upset that he’s been complaining to her, letting her know of his worries, has even broken down in front of her because he hasn’t been able to find his wallet and now here it is being stolen by his own girlfriend. The girl who he thought he loved.

Blinded by nothing but anger, Shawn storms out of their new bedroom. When the pounding of music hits his ears as he marches down the steps eagerly, he searches for flashes of her red dress. He sees her in the corner of the room, talking to some girls he assumes go to college in the area.

Without a moment of hesitation, he dodges past the people roaming around his living room, reaching out his arm to grab at her wrist abruptly.

“I have to talk to you.” He declares solidly, shooting her a glare. She playfully dodges him, “Not now, Shawn, Bree is telling me a story about her trip to Mexico.” She waves him off, trying to escape his grasp in one quick motion but he tightens his grip quite tightly.

“Ow, Shawn, that hurts.” She yelps, resting her drink onto the table next to her and turning her attention towards him. Her wrist is twinging with pain at his tight grasp, but he doesn’t seem to care.

“ We’re going upstairs.” He tells her. And he drags her up the stairs and into their bedroom as Y/N pleads for him to let her go or asks what the hell is wrong with him.

As soon as they’re in their shared room, he slams the door shut and corners her until her back is pressed against the wall, “You’re sure you haven’t seen my wallet?” He asks her, steam probably radiating off of him at how livid he is.

“What? Is that what this is about, Shawn.” She tells him, slightly annoyed.

“Tell me, Y/n, did you or did you not know where it was?” He asks more urgently this time. He seems genuinely terrifying, muscles tensing up threateningly and Y/N is almost actually terrified for a moment.

“No Shawn, I didn’t know where it was. Why would I know where it was?” She asks him, furrowing her eyebrows. She’s less annoyed now, moreso slightly scared at his short temper.

Shawn scoffs, reaching over onto her vanity. He grabs her makeup bag, a small brown pouch with the word “Gucci” branded on the side. It was originally Shawn’s, but during the move he’d found it and decided that he had no real use for it, to which Y/N decided she’d store her makeup in it and adopt it as her own.

He practically tears the zipper off, and he pulls his brown leather wallet out of the small pouch.

He expects her eyes to widen, expects her to bend down on her knees and beg for his forgiveness. Shawn expects her to be caught in the middle of her act, expects her to panic of any kind.

But to his surprise, that’s the opposite of what happens.

There’s a moment of silence between the both of them, they both stand in front of each other, tension filling the air as neither of them speak. Finally, Y/N breaks the silence.

“You think I did this?” She scoffs, Shawn widens his eyes at her outrageous actions, “You think I stole your fucking wallet? For what purpose? Why would I do that, Shawn?” She asks him.

“I don’t know, just last week you were telling me all about how your tuition was expensive ever since you moved here.” He snarks at her. And it’s slightly ironic because just the week before he’d offered to pay for her books after she’d told him about it, she’d obviously denied his proposal saying she’d figure it out and that she didn’t need his money.

“You think,” Y/N gulps, a dull ache suddenly forming in her chest, “You really think i’d steal from you?” She asks him.

“I don’t know, Y/N, it’s kind of hard not to think about it. I mean you’re getting a brand new house that’s getting completely paid for by me, you get constant media attention, and you’re always complaining about how fucking in debt you are. It’s not that hard to-”

“Is that really all that you think of me?” She raises her voice, cutting him off. She doesn’t mean to yell at him but with her heart pounding so loudly in her ears it’s hard to control the volume of her voice.

Shawn, instead of noticing the way her eyes become slightly glassy as she speaks, instead of noticing the slight red coloring forming around her wrists, instead of acknowledging the pleading look on her face or her labored breathing, replies.

“It wouldn’t be the first time some gold digger tried to drag me into her life.” He simply replies. Y/N lets a stream of tears fall down her face, body trembling at how the night has changed in mere minutes. Her entire body aches, and her mind pounds with thoughts of how everything he told her was a lie.

“I guess I should just...leave then.” She lets out shakily. Shawn scoffs, tucking his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.

“Only with the things you bought yourself.” And he walks out of what was supposed to be their shared bedroom.

When Shawn walks back downstairs, Andrew approaches him, drink in hand as he throws his arm around Shawn’s shoulder. Shawn can immediately tell he’s tipsy and catches Andrew before he falls.

“Woah there” He chuckles, “You good?”

Andrew simply smiles back at him before nodding.

“Oh Yeah! I forgot to tell you.” He tells Shawn, Shawn awaits Andrew’s next sentence, waiting to get his mind off of the situation that’s just happened upstairs.

“The airline found your wallet! It was in one of the pillowcases. They sent it to my house since I booked the tickets and I just threw it in your Gucci bag in your bedroom.” He tells Shawn.

Shawn’s eyes immediately widen, a million emotions gobsmacking him entirely. He can feel his face glow with red, and he pushes Andrew down on a seat near the minibar in the kitchen before sprinting up the stairs. When he opens the bedroom door, she’s standing there. Dress still hugging her curves perfectly although makeup is splattered across her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, baby, I-” He cuts himself off as she throws more clothes messily inside of the large suitcase perched on the foot of the bed.

“Andrew told me everything and i’m just so, so fucking sorry.” He tells her. Her eyes close as she tries to stop tears from falling down her cheeks any longer.

“Don’t worry, i’m only taking the things that I bought with my own money.” She bitterly tells him. His heart presses straight against his ribcage, air being knocked out of him as he realizes he may have just lost the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

“Please don’t go.” He begs her. He grabs her hand, stopping her from throwing more belongings in the suitcase. She rips her hand away from his grasp and continues throwing the last of her drawer clothing into the suitcase.

“Y/N, please. I need you.” He drops to his knees, begging at her feet to forgive him. He bows his head in defeat, not being able to do anything but watch her prepare to leave him.

“I’m sorry, Shawn. I don’t think you should need someone you were ready to accuse so easily.” She tells him defeatedly, “But let me know if you ever need a gold digger. Apparently my boyfriend says I am one.”

[numba99]

The Arrangement Part 8

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 * Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Summary: You’re an aspiring model in NYC who is offered an opportunity of a lifetime - an arranged relationship with a famous Ranger. Things start out rough and are further complicated by the fact that you’re already in a relationship. Will you be able to figure things out or will it all end in disaster? Word Count:2,079

Warnings: none, besides its been v long since the last update (im so sorry LMAO) so if their are minor inconsistencies in the story line I am sORRY I think everything adds up though. And gain we are pretending the media surrounding hockey is a much bigger deal lol

It was a bittersweet day. Sure you were getting to see Mika, something that would always be a bright spot in your day, however it was the last time you were allowed to be together. After tonight, being with him would put both of you in jeopardy. If his contract was anything like yours, he be sued for an obscene amount of money.

You tried to push this thought out of your head as you waited for Fred to arrive to take you on the final date. Tonight you were going to a little rooftop bar in Greenwich Village. It was going to be one of your more public dates, and that’s just how management wanted it.

You were supposed to act like you were upset and be distant from each other. That way when they leaked that the two of you broke up, witnesses would say how unhappy you looked together. It was the perfect set up.

A knock at the door pulled you from your thoughts. You instantly smiled seeing Harry standing on the other side. You would have thrown your arms around him, but he had a giant bouquet of flowers in his hands.

“Here love,” Mika said, handing you the arrangement for pink and purple flowers. It was much bigger than any of the others he has gotten you. “Sorry it’s so big, I didn’t get you any for our last date and I wanted to make up for it,” he explained, as if reading your mind.

“You so don’t have anything you need to make up for,” you gushed, kissing his cheek, “But I love them so much, thanks Mika.” You clutched the flowers to your chest, bring them your kitchen table - which had been bare without his bouquets. When you got back to Mika you hugged him tightly, breathing in his fresh minty scent.

“I missed you too,” he chuckled, teasing you for hugging him like you hadn’t seen him in months.

“Sorry,” you laughed at yourself, “Guess I just can’t get enough of you.”

“Understandable,” Mika winked, “Now let’s head out, don’t wanna keep Fred waiting.”

You walked hand in hand to the car, greeting Fred with a big smile. You were going to miss him, you thought. He was always a friendly face when you needed it. Not to mention, you may have never told Mika how you really without him.

“Did I tell you how beautiful you look yet? Because you’re absolutely stunning, the outfit, you hair, everything,” Mika commented. His warm eyes traced your body under the dim car lights.

“Oh, come on, it’s nothing special,” you blushed, never being great with compliments. Plus, your outfit was pretty simple after all: a tailored white blouse, snug blue jeans, and pink heels.

“On the contrary,” Mika replied, “it’s special just because you’re wearing it. I especially love these shoes. I think I’ve got a shirt that color, we should match one day.” You smiled, your heart filling with joy when he spoke of a future with you.

“It’s a date.” Mika squeezed your hand and kissed your cheek. Part of you didn’t want to go anywhere. You’d be happy to just ride around with him for a few hours.Unfortunately that was not part of the plan.

“Here,” Fred announced.

“Let’s do this,” Mika said, taking your hand in his. You walked more confidently through the crowd of photographers. The flashes were still annoying, but they didn’t bother you nearly as much as they did when you were first exposed to them.

“You’re getting good at that,” Mika noted.

“I learned from the best,” you winked. Mika smiled, glad that you were getting over your discomfort with all the paparazzi. He knew that if you two were to stay together, you were going to have to get used to extra attention.

The two of you decided to take the stairs, considering it wasn’t too high up. You were a little breathless when you reached the top - stairs were never really your friend - but it was definitely worth it. It was a beautiful roof top, lined with shrubbery and flowers making it fell more like a garden than a city building.

“This is amazing,” you breathed. It was a perfect night for this too, not a single cloud in the sky. The moon was bright, washing over all the people mingling. The skyline melted into the inky black sky, building lights twinkling like stars.

“It is quite nice, isn’t it?” Mika agreed. The two of you weaved through people, finding a little standing table no one was using. You were surprised no one seemed too interested in Mika, but then again, this bar was a favorite of many famous people so it wasn’t a shock to see someone.

Mika went to get you two drinks, returning with glass in each had. “So, we’re not playing along with this stupid act annoyed shit they want us to do, right?” Mika asked, taking a sip of his drink.

“I’d rather not,” you replied. If it was your last “safe” night with Mika, you didn’t want to spend it acting like you didn’t like him.

“I was thinking we give ‘em hell this last night,” Mika smirked, “They’re going to be pissed at us anyway, might as well have fun with it.” You were about to reply when your ringing phone cut you off. Normally, you wouldn’t answer the phone during a date, but you recognized the number from the Gucci audition.

“Hello?” you answered, nerves filling your body. This could be it.

“Hey y/n, it’s the creative director of the Gucci New York Fashion Week show, do you have a minute?” the woman asked.

“Of course.” You tried to sound nonchalant but there was definitely a hint of excitement in your voice.

“Great, well I am happy to say we have chosen you to be one of the models who walks in our show,” she told you.

“Oh my god, that’s amazing.Thank you so much,” you gushed, unable to act put together. Mika looked at you quizzically, wondering what you were so excited about.

“Of course! We are so excited to be working with you, you really impressive,” she replied.

“That means so much, it’s such an honor to be chosen,” you said. The woman explained she would be in contact in the future about fittings and dress rehearsals. You listened as carefully as you could not wanting to miss anything in your excited state. When you finally hung up, you turned to Mika, squealing with joy.

“What is it love?” he asked.

“I got a spot in the Gucci fashion show!” you exclaimed. Mika’s face lit up. He picked you up and spun you around.

“I’m so proud of you babe,” he smiled, planting kisses all over your face. A couple people in the surrounding area looked over at the two of you. Definitely won’t look like the two of you are fighting.

“I have to thank you for it, I never would have even gotten the opportunity without you,” you replied, so incredibly grateful for him. This was something you’ve dreamed of for so long and could really change your career.

Mika shook his head. “Not me babe, all you. And I can’t wait to be sitting front row watching my beautiful girlfriend on the runway.” Mika moved closer to you, his hands slipping around your waist. “May just have to buy whatever you’re wearing so I can fuck you in it.”

“Mika,” you blushed, “Someone’s gonna hear you.” The rooftop was getting progressively more crowded and he wasn’t exactly being quiet.

“I don’t care,” Mika replied, “I’m sick of not being able to say how I feel. I love you and I want everyone to know. I love you, I love you, I love you.” His voice got louder as he spoke, grabbing the attention of people around you.

Mika took your by the arm, leading you to the edge of the rooftop. He leaned over the edge a bit. He yelled and waved trying to get the attention of the photographers below. Some turned up, cameras flashing, desperate to get photos of the two of you.

“I love this woman! I love this woman so much!” He yelled, giving you a kiss in between.

“You’re crazy,” you laughed as he peppered kisses all over you.

“Just crazy about you,” he smirked.

“Corny ass,” you teased, rolling your eyes.

The two of you had a great rest of the night, dancing and laughing together. You knew there would be hell to pay, but Mika’s carefree attitude was rubbing off on you. In the end, you knew you two would have each other and that made you feel safe.

At the end of the night, the two were headed for the exit, hand in hand. Mika stopped you right before the door. “Wanna go out with a bang?” Harry smirked.

“What do you have in mind?” you asked.

“Just follow my lead,” Mika replied with a wink. You didn’t know what he had in mind, but you were down. You nodded and Mika smiled, leading you through the heavy doors. The flashes were instant and abundant.

“Mika, y/n, over here!”

“How long have you been dating!”

“Mika what were you saying on the roof?”

Harry stopped in the middle of the crowd. The photographers looked on anxiously, waiting for something they could use.

“Y/n and I are in love,” he announced simply. He took you, and dipped you down, kissing you deeply. So dramatic, you thought as he kissed you. But you secretly loved it. Even with your eyes closed you could see the lights going off like crazy. There was no way management wasn’t going to see this.

After a few moments, Mika pulled away and continued to the car. He smiled and waved at cameras, something he didn’t usually do. He was really playing it up.

“You’re so ridiculous,” you laughed as he pulled the car door shut.

“But you love it, don’t you?” he teased.

“Guilty,” you replied, kissing him quickly.

“Fred, you can just take us to my place,” Mika announced, squeezing your thigh. You were excited, having never been to his apartment before. You rested your head on Mika’s shoulder during the drive, suddenly realizing how sleepy you were. You hoped Mika had a comfy pair of sweats for you to change into because you were absolutely sick of these jeans.

“Here we are,” Fred announced, “Before you guys go, I just want to see I’ve really enjoyed driving you two around. Today is supposed to be my last day, but I know it’s definitely not your last day together. Whatever happens, I know you two will get through it. I wish you all the best.”

“That was so sweet,” you gushed, almost feeling like you could cry, “Thank you for everything, really. You’ve been incredible.”

“It was my pleasure, I only ask I get invited to the wedding,” he joked.

“Of course,” Mika chuckled. After a final goodbye the two of you headed out. 

“Jesus,” you gasped, walking into Mika’s place. It was huge, the living room bigger than your entire apartment.

“Oh this old thing?” Mika joked. “If you think this is nice, you should see my place in Sweden.”

“Can we go after this mess is over?” you asked.

“Of course babe,” Mika replied, wrapping his arms around you, “We’re going to go every where together.”

Mika kissed you softly and you felt like you were flying. If you hadn’t been so tired you probably would have gone further, but right now you needed sleep. Plus, you imagined you had a big day ahead of you tomorrow once management caught wind of these pictures.

“How soon do you think we’ll be called in?” You asked Mika as you pulled on one of his tees (he gave you a super comfy pair of sweatpants too, which you were completely jazzed about).

“I’m surprised they haven’t called already,” Mika said, peeling off his clothes, leaving him in just a pair of black boxers. He grabbed your waist, pulling you down onto the bed with him.

“Well whatever happens, at least we’ll go through it together,” you said, snuggling against his side.

“Yeah, you couldn’t get rid of me if you tried,” Mika smiled, kissing your forehead. Nestled together, you both drifted to sleep, worries of what tomorrow would bring far from your mind.

[hcneymilkks]

Christmas Prompts Requests

As this decade is coming to a close and another Holiday is creeping up, I decided to open up my request....

But with a few exceptions:

(request on my ask or pm me) 

REQUEST GUIDELINES

- Any k-pop idol, male or female (these prompts are mostly romance ones though sooo...)

- Main character name can be your name, a made up name or just Y/N

- choose between bullet point form, drabble under 1000 words, or full-fledged imagine

- and prompt number(s) (can request more than one number)

EXAMPLE

- Got7's JB

- Name: Y/N

- bullet point

- prompt numbers 11 and 12.

<Without further or do, I present prompts taken from different tumblr blogs with full credit.> 

< these ones in bullet point form are credited to the original creators! Mine is found under the cut!> 

christmas writing prompts

winter/holiday prompts

holiday prompts

OTP christmas scenarios

[FULL WARNING: IF THE PROMPT CROSSED OUT THAT MEANS IT HAS ALREADY BEEN REQUESTED!]

1. Getting trapped in a shopping mall together during after-hours in which they were christmas shopping too hard.

2. SWEATER PAWS AND CUDDLES. “If you don’t grab me a blanket, I’m breaking up with you.” “I’m watching Barbie Nutcracker.”

3. Losing S/O at a christmas market and having to make an announcement over an intercom as to reunite them again (I’m thinking early 80’s era with fluorescent jackets and big old scarfs and brick phones that they left at home).

4. “Are you humming the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy?” Falling asleep in front of the fire whilst their S/O is playing them ‘dance of the sugar plum fairy’ on piano. They pull a blanket over them and curl up beside them.

5. Spilling hot chocolate/coffee/a hot-fucking-beverage on the other and insisting on paying for a new drink and new clothes for them, unaware that they’re rich and very capable of buying themselves another coffee. Besides, they don’t know that this jacket is Louis Vuitton and cost more than the knock-off Gucci belt that had caught their eye in the first place (probably looking a little lower than the belt, but we digress).  “So you wanna… hot chocolate and chill?” “If you ask me that one more time, I will dump my hot chocolate on you.”

6. First christmas with their S/O and panicking to their best friend/sibling about what to get them. Somehow, a plushie didn’t seem exactly suitable when they knew the other had bought them an engagement ring.

7. Being gifted tickets to see a family member overseas, but having to leave their S/O at home for christmas, not expecting them to turn up on their doorstep on christmas morning with a bouquet of roses.

8. Buying animal-proof fairy lights, confusing their S/O, but it all makes sense when there’s an ENTIRE puppy in their living room on christmas day.

9. Falling asleep in the passenger seat whilst their S/O drives them to a family members house for christmas, but not wanting to wake them for further directions because they look so p e a c e f u l.

10. Sleeping in until midday because they just want to be in each other’s arms and it is so warm with them right here beside them.

11. Making out under the christmas tree because the lights reflecting in their S/O’s eyes just looked too ethereal for them not to kiss them until they lost their breath.

12. Falling asleep on their significant other’s chest whilst they’re wrapping christmas presents, meaning that some aren’t wrapped the next morning because the sellotape had RUN OUT.

13. Failing to get the right meat and their S/O sending them back multiple times until they end up going together and realising that they weren’t even going to the right store.

14. “Wanna go skating in Central Park?” “Who even came up with ice skating? Do you know what a terrible idea it is? Its like,,, strapping knives to your feet before getting on ice which you may or may not fall through.” Ice skating and them BOTH BEING REALLY GOOD ACTUALLY.

15. Avoiding the mistletoe at all costs, however, everyone is trying their best to get the otp there.

16. Neighbour au in which one gets drunk on mulled wine and ends up knocking at the other’s door, drunkenly trying to seduce the other and- instead- passing out in their living room

17. Crawling into their roommate’s (S/O’s) bed because it is too cold in their own and they want cuddles.

18. Person A tries to get their friends to kiss under the mistletoe, and they completely forget about their crush on Person B until they both end up under the mistletoe.

19. Person A and Person B sitting next to the fire, drinking hot chocolate, maybe even cuddling. “So you wanna… hot chocolate and chill?” “If you ask me that one more time, I will dump my hot chocolate on you.”

20. Person A stays out late one night to find the perfect gift for their partner. Does Person B scold them for being out so late?

21. Imagine them being complete fools while playing in the snow. Bonus points if they have a dog or another pet that joins them. “Let’s make snow angels!” “Are you nine?” “How can you possibly look good with snow in your hair?”

22. Person A comes home freezing, so Person B happily cuddles with them to warm them up.

23. Matching. Sweaters.

24. Person A is ready at 3 am on Christmas morning, while Person B isn't ready until 10 am.

25. Person A plays Christmas music in October, and Person B is just Done with them. “Can we PLEASE watch something else? This is the 3rd time we’ve watched elf today. And it’s November 1st.” “Nightmare Before Christmas is a Christmas movie, not a Halloween movie.” “If you turn down the Christmas music, I’ll murder you.”

26. “We made too many cookies.” “Are you sure your family can eat all these cookies?” “What? No! These are just for us!” “You burnt the holiday cookies!”

27. “You’re impossible to shop for!”

28. “Who brought the fruit cake? I just wanna talk…” “ALRIGHT, WHO SPIKED THE EGGNOG?” “Wait, that wasn’t sparkling grape juice? I drank like 5 glasses of it! No wonder everything is so funny!” “I got apple cider up my nose.”

29. “I can’t believe I got stuck on a ski lift with you, of all people.” “Listen, it isn’t my fault you broke your wrist trying to snowboard down that hill.”

30. “Who walks on an ice covered pond anymore? Don’t you know how stupid that is? You should’ve died in that pond. Natural selection.”

31. “You’re either terrible at wrapping presents, or you’re one of santa’s elves. There’s no in between.” “There’s more tape on that present then wrapping paper.”

32. “Don’t you think gingerbread houses with gingerbread men in them are kinda morbid? I mean, it’s a house made out of flesh.” “Everyone knows you’re not actually supposed to eat the gingerbread house. Those things are stale as hell.”

33. “It’s not what’s under the tree that matters, it’s those who are gathered around it.” “Shut up and give me my present.” “We all know damn well that Mariah Carry cares about the presents underneath the Christmas tree.” “You’re getting coal this year.”

34. “Christmas is so close, I can almost smell the mistletoe I’m never going to get kissed under.” “Oooo, we’re under the mistletoe!” “No No No No- mphh!”

35. “Come outside and and have a snowball fight with us.” “I don’t really feel like it…” “That’s because you know that you’ll lose…” “Don’t you dare bring that snowball in the house, DON’T YOU DARE-“

36. “Bath and Body Works was having a sale on their holiday scents so I bought twenty bottles of lotion.”

[stellalux-universe]

Without You

Summary: It was just a stupid fight, that's all it was. But when your passion runs as high as theirs does, sometimes that's all it takes to rip you apart. The real question is, are you brave enough to try again?

Hello!

This is my first Crüe fic and I was so excited to write it because I adore Tommy and Nikki together but then I started writing and what was supposed to be like 8,000 words max grew out of my control because it seems I'm incapable of writing anything short.

So what was the end result? Nearly 50 damn pages of angst and sadness and emotion. A little happy, fun stuff here and there too, but still!

In any case, a couple of things to know, this story is set in an au where hair metal is seeing it's heyday in the current year, so modern timeline and it is A/B/O because I have been dying to explore writing with omega!Tommy and alpha!Nikki. Hopefully I did it some justice. Also, the timeline skips back and forth between 2018 and 2019, all of the past is in italics just in case you miss the date change!

This is also posted on my AO3 under StellaLux if you would prefer to read it there! I just thought, “maybe some people are on tumblr but not AO3? What the hell, I’ll post it tumblr to get like 2 notes just for kicks!”

Enjoy!

~May 15th, 2019~

In retrospect, Tommy supposes that this entire situation was his own damn fault.

Not that he would ever say that out loud. Introspective contemplation of his past choices and mistakes have never really been his style. In his experience, such things only led to a tortured mind and put you into a depressive mood and that was definitely not his vibe. He couldn’t go back in time to change anything, so he may as well not worry about it anymore.

Even still, he has to admit that if he hadn’t been so bone dead tired a day ago after not only a photo shoot but also a reshoot on top of that because the fucking photographer hadn’t liked the fucking lighting, he probably wouldn’t be in this mess.

Because then, when Tom had called to beg him to attend this party for the band he had just signed, he would have had the wit to ask the most basic but important question, “Which band is it?”

But Zutaut had called him right after he had changed into his street clothes. Right after shooting from 5 in the fucking morning to 6 in the evening, when he was ready to go home, crawl into bed and not wake up for a full 24 hours. Tom was lucky he had even answered honestly. When his phone rang, Tommy had looked at it with nothing short of absolute disgust and had wanted so badly to just ignore him.

Tom Zutaut wasn’t a person that people had hard line opinions about. Despite having a cool job that usually got people’s attention, the newest producer at Elektra records was, to put it as nicely as possible, an absolute fucking bore. He was the epitome of a brown paper bag, plain and bland, the kind of person who was just… there. Tommy didn’t particularly like him, but he didn’t dislike him either.

Had Tom been anyone else, Tommy would have declined the call and continued unencumbered with his plan to get home as soon as possible to pass out. But it was Tom, and despite thinking the producer was probably the most yawn-inducing individual he had ever met, Tommy couldn’t ignore him and the reason was simple. Tommy owed Tom. He owed him a lot.

Tom had come into his life when Tommy was at his lowest; he had just broken up with the man that he was pretty sure was meant to be his mate, was forced to leave his new, fledgling band that he was in love with, and was living on a friend’s couch. Tom had seen him at a party one night and after talking for just a few minutes had gotten him a role as an extra in a music video. That cameo had caught the eye of an up and coming photographer and landed him his first photoshoot and that photoshoot had landed him a 5 year contract with a pretty big modeling company. It wasn’t necessarily what Tommy had envisioned for his life, but it paid the bills for a nice apartment, a nice car, and a fairly glamorous lifestyle so he couldn’t really complain.

And he couldn’t ignore Tom, who had put everything in motion for him.

~May 14th, 2019~

Tommy feels like crying when his phone rings. He’s so damn tired and he barely has enough in him to drive himself home, let alone entertain a conversation but the caller id says it’s Tom and despite not typically caring to follow the rules of social niceties, Tommy would feel bad about ignoring the other man who has helped him so much. So he picked up reluctantly and threw himself down into a chair in his stylist’s dressing room so he could at least sit through whatever banality that Zutaut had to throw at him.

“Hey Tom.”

“Tommy! You are exactly who I wanted to talk to!” Tom’s voice is higher than normal and overly happy. The tone is familiar to Tommy, it’s the tone the other man takes when he’s about to ask for a favor that he’s going to wheedle him into doing by throwing the fact that Tommy owes him in his face.

Tommy sighs, eyes drooping as he tapped the fingers of his right hand against his jean clad legs to a beat of a song in his head, “Yeah, I figured, you know, since it was me you called.”

Tom gives a nervous chuckle and when he speaks again, his words are stilted and hesitant like they always are when he tries to cash in his IOUs, “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Well, uhh, I kind of need a favor.”

“Uh huh.” Tommy responded, eyes falling shut against his will as he waited for Tom to continue.

“You see, I just signed this band, and it’s my first major signing and they’re going to be fucking awesome Tommy, like seriously, they’re going to be huge and they’re right up your alley. Like, for real Tommy, you would love them, they’re so cool-“

“Tom, please, for the love of god. I’m literally like a minute from fucking passing out here, please just tell me what you want.” Tommy interrupts as he gets up to start walking to his car. He’s not paying much attention anyway so he may as well multitask.

“Oh shit, yeah, you had a job today. Hope that went well, I saw that stuff you did for Gucci last season. I don’t know much about that stuff but you looked great-”

“TOM!” Tommy growls into the phone, startling some of the people in the hallway. Tommy waves an apologetic hand and flashes a smile and they laugh and shake their heads at him.

“Yeah, okay, so here’s the thing, we’re throwing them this signing party to celebrate and introduce them to other people at the company and I really need some cred with these guys Tommy, so they’ll respect me-”

“You got them a record deal Tom, that’s not enough for them to respect you?” He rolls his eyes as he pushes his way out of the back door, waving to the security guard and walking over to where he parked his car.

“These guys are crazy Tommy, the first time I sat down to talk to them, they had a woman underneath the table who tried to surprise blow me!”

Despite his exhaustion and the fact that he’s barely listening, Tommy snorts out a laugh at that because that’s fucking hilarious. Thinking about a straight laced guy like Zutaut in a situation like that… his reaction had probably been priceless. He gets exactly what Tom is getting at now. The type of wildness that comes with that kind of activity, those guys probably see Tom as a fucking doormat.

Which he is, but still.

“And what do you think I can do about this Tom?”

“Well, you see, I was thinking that if I show up at the party with a gorgeous omega model, maybe it will earn me a little bit of credibility.”

Tommy groans as he opens his car door and slides in. He could honestly probably afford a driver and right about now that sounded like heaven but there was something he absolutely adored about driving around LA and he didn’t want to give that up just to be boujee and lazy.

“So you want to use my looks and profession to make a good impression on some wild rock stars? I really don’t know how much of an impact I’ll have Tom.”

“Tommy. Seriously. Have you seen you? You’re literally one of the most attractive people I’ve ever seen and I work with a ton of attractive people. You literally just did a campaign with Gucci last season. You’re the perfect blend of ridiculously sexy and cool that these guys will appreciate! If I walked into the party with you on my arm, it’d be a good start to getting them to listen to me a little bit more.”

Tom’s voice is plaintive, almost whiny and the flattery would be nice if the beta didn’t say it in such a matter of fact way. That was part of the problem with Zutaut, Tommy thought. There wasn’t an ounce of passion in the man. Everything was a calculation, everything had a purpose, and Tommy’s attractiveness was just something to be used. It made him a fairly shrewd businessman and definitely contributed to why he was able to make producer at such a young age, but it was also the reason for the current predicament he was in. With his wild rock star clients not giving two shits about what he said because he was such a damn square.

Tommy starts the engine and there’s a brief pause in their conversation as his phone pairs with his car’s system and then Tom’s voice comes back, “Please Tommy. Last favor, I swear. We’re even-steven after this.”

That was familiar, Tommy’s pretty sure Zutaut has said that the last four times he has asked for favors. Still, it was just a party and Tommy was still a sucker for parties. And honestly, if it ended this conversation so Tommy could focus on driving himself home to sleep, he’d agree to anything.

“Fine.”

“Awesome! Thanks Tommy, this is going to help me so much, you have no idea. Try to look your best okay? Like total knockout. The party is on-”

Tommy sighs in frustration for what has to be the billionth time that day and cuts the beta off as he continues to prattle on, “I’m hanging up on you now Zutaut. I need to focus on driving so I don’t fall asleep at the wheel and crash. Just text me the damn details.”

And with that, Tommy presses end.

Tom texts him as soon as he hangs up to tell him that he would pick him up at 7pm the next night and to remind him in a completely blatant way to “dress up”. Tommy guesses that’s Zutaut’s way of asking him to dress slutty to appeal to a bunch of rock stars and he immediately regrets agreeing to go at all. Tom is generally annoying to be around for any extended length of time and it grates on his nerves when people treat him like he’s only worth having around to ‘look good’. It comes with the territory when your job is built around your physical appearance, but that doesn’t mean that the people in Tommy’s life should treat him as such and he certainly didn’t tolerate it when they did.

He feels better after he wakes up the next day a little after 1pm. He hadn’t even bothered to change when he had gotten home, had just shed his pants and collapsed into his bed, so he feels a little gross while he walks out of his bedroom in yesterday’s shirt and underwear to head to the kitchen to make coffee and get some food.

He pauses in the living room when his eyes catch the drum kit shining in the afternoon sun. It’s tucked away in the corner between two large windows, unassuming and gleaming in a way that pulls at his heart and makes his fingers twitch.

He hasn’t played in a year.

It’s tortuous sometimes. Drums are ingrained into his very being, as much a part of him as the blood that rushes through his veins when he’s hitting out a beat. He misses it with a severity that’s intense and all-encompassing but the pain he feels when he looks at the kit now dampens his desire until he can’t summon the will to pick up his sticks again.

He can barely remember back to the time when all he felt when he looked at his drum kit was joy and pride. It’s there, back behind the pain and the heartache and the sadness. A memory of a room and three other guys, hard hitting vocals, a shredding guitar, his own limbs heavy with exhaustion but adrenaline lighting him up as he pounds a beat out hard. A memory of a bassist with pale green eyes who gives him a heart stopping smile when they come to a break.

It’s only been a year, but Tommy has shoved those memories down so far into his heart that the men in them feel like ghosts to him. He sometimes feels like a ghost himself. The Tommy Lee who so loved his drums, who was wild, and excitable and so, so in love with life was dead.

Now all that’s left is this stereotype of a tall, pretty omega model in Hollywood who can’t even think about pursuing his passions because of how much it hurts him to remember.

Tommy scoffs at himself and tears his eyes away from his drum set, walking into the kitchen and letting muscle memory guide him into making coffee and reheating leftovers from the day before as he thinks that this is exactly why he doesn’t focus on the past. It’s just too damn depressing.

~January 18th, 2018~

Tommy is nearly bouncing in his seat at the diner in excitement. He keeps throwing little glances at the man a few booths away to make sure it’s who he thinks it is, but Tommy’s pretty fucking confident that it is.

He looks at his friend’s amused face across from him and the girl laughs softly at what has to be the goofiest of hopeful expressions that is morphing his features.

They had just gotten out of the concert they had met up for, and Tommy was already a ball of energy because London was one of his favorite up and coming bands and the show had been sick but as soon as they had been seated after deciding to get some food, he had caught sight of a familiar face and then proceeded to steadily lose his shit.

“Seriously, that’s him right? That’s Nikki fucking Sixx sitting just a few booths away from me?” Tommy harshly whispers, as if the other man was paying any attention to anything other than the paper spread out in front of him and the tissue he kept pressing to his bloody nose.

His friend just grins at him, “Looks like it, yeah.”

Tommy fidgets and bites his lip, “Should I go over and talk to him?”

The girl across from him nods, small little wicked smirk on her face. She’s a good friend but she loves watching him make a fool of himself, which is no doubt exactly what she thinks he’s about to do now.

“Yeah, you should. I’m just gonna get a milkshake and get gone.”

Tommy is already sliding out of his seat as she speaks, giving her a thumbs up and a ‘see you later.’

He walks over as confidently as he can with his nerves flaring up. Tommy isn’t one to be shy or embarrassed by much, but he’s eighteen and the older bassist is probably one of the coolest musicians on the scene right now and that’s enough to make him jittery. It also doesn’t help that the man is probably the most gorgeous alpha that Tommy has ever actually seen in public. Dark hair, killer jaw line, intense pale green eyes and just as intense alpha aura, Tommy practically shivers the closer he gets. Tommy could hardly be called inexperienced, he’s been with a couple of alpha’s before but it’s always been with people his own age, fumbling around, figuring out how their biology even worked. But the vibe that Nikki gives off is nothing like the alpha’s Tommy has been with, and the omega in him is intensely attracted to that.

He stops right in front of the table the other man is sitting at, bounces on his heels a few times and decides to just go for it, “Hey, that was badass dude. The show, not the nose… but the nose was pretty badass too.”

Tommy almost blushes as Nikki looks up at him while he rambles. The other man doesn’t say anything for a second, just drags his eyes over Tommy a few times before he finally replies in a drawling voice, accent something that Tommy can’t really identify, “The singer’s an asshole.”

Tommy releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding when he hears Nikki’s reply and feels a little more confident, “I know. I saw. Hey, fuck him though, he deserved it.”

Nikki gives him a nod and goes back to scanning the paper in front of him, he seems to have lost interest or something and Tommy bites his lip before blurting out, “I got your poster on my bedroom wall.”

The alpha looks up at him incredulously then, raising an eyebrow and letting a small, delicious smirk stretch across his lips when Tommy closes his eyes and groans at how that sounded. “I can’t believe I just said that. I mean, fuck, I didn’t mean it, you know, like that, I just meant-“

Nikki chuckles as he stumbles over his words and shakes his head, “Take the fucking poster down man, London’s dead.”

Tommy opens his mouth to reply when the waitress comes over and stops on the other side of Nikki’s table, “What can I get you boys?”

Tommy blinks and slides into the booth across from Nikki, giving the man a smile when he gets a confused look from the bassist. The alpha just gives a small smirk again before looking up at the older beta waitress with a charming smile, “Can I please get a Jack and coke Dottie?”

The waitress rolls her eyes but writes it down regardless and Tommy gets the feeling that maybe Nikki is a regular here and she’s used to the request. The woman looks at him then, “And for you honey?”

Tommy smiles brightly at the woman and is satisfied when her lips tug upwards in response, always happy to make others a little happier, “Blueberry pancakes, please.”

“Of course hun.” She says lightly as she walks away and when Tommy looks back at Nikki, the bassist is staring at him with this intense gleam in his eyes that wasn’t there before. Sitting across from him now, Tommy can make out his scent prominently, and it’s something that goes straight to his head. Nikki smells like the aftermath of a storm, when the trees and the soil are wet with rain water and everything is saturated in bold, rich color. Tommy wonders if Nikki can smell him too, he’s been told before that has a particularly pleasant scent, he wonders if that’s why the bassist is looking at him with more interest than he had before.

Tommy watches in rapt attention as Nikki leans forward and starts talking with more passion than previously, “My next band is going to be something no one’s ever fucking seen before.”

The alpha’s eyes drop back down to the paper in front of him. Tommy studies it more closely then and sees ads for musicians looking for bands. One in particular catches his eye, Mick Mars: loud, aggressive guitarist and without thinking he whips one of his drumsticks out from his belt and uses it to point at the ad, “That dude looks pretty cool.”

Nikki uses the pen he has to circle it and Tommy feels joy flood him when the older man takes his suggestion before Nikki leans back against the booth and regards him with a curious look, head tilted slightly to the side, “Do you carry those around with you everywhere?”

“Yep.” Tommy smiles, popping the p at the end of the word playfully and thrilling when Nikki chuckles at him.

The waitress is coming back then and she sits a coke and a small bottle of Jack in front of Nikki, “Here you go kid. Your pancakes will be out soon honey.”

Nikki thanks the older woman gratefully and proceeds to twist the top of the liquor bottle and instead of pouring it into the coke like Tommy had expected him to, proceeds to down the contents in one go, his eyes never leaving Tommy’s as the omega bites his lip and starts twirling his drumstick in his fingers. It’s a habit he had developed ever since he had taught himself how to do it, especially when he was nervous or stressed and the way Nikki was looking at him was making him both in the most electric way possible.

He sees Nikki eye the movement with a slightly impressed look on his face and it makes Tommy giddy to have caused it, “Where did you learn to do that?”

Tommy does blush at that but he’s honest when says, “High school marching band.”

Nikki full out laughs at that, not meanly, but in surprise, like he hadn’t expected Tommy to be that honest and it makes the omega grin when he adds, “But hey, I rock too.”

Nikki is leaning forward and smirks then and Tommy feels the warmth of arousal spread through him when the bassist lowers his voice and says, “I bet you do babe.”

A plate is sat in front of him and it makes Tommy blink in confusion as the moment between him and Nikki is interrupted, Dottie smiling at him gently for startling him. He looks back up and Nikki has gone back to looking through ads, but Tommy sees the little smile pulling at his lips and it makes him grin again, pushing the pancakes more toward the center of the table to get Nikki’s attention.

“Help me eat these pancakes and tell me more about this band.”

Nikki full out smiles at him then, and Tommy knows that he’s going to be gone for this man in no time flat.

It only takes six full days in fact.

Nikki had pretty much demanded he be his band’s drummer as soon as he found out that Tommy had drummed for Suite 19 before the band had dissolved.

“I saw you guys once. Shitty band but you have some real fucking talent babe.”

Tommy’s pretty sure he had fucking beamed with hearts in his eyes when he heard Nikki say that.

They spent the next couple days meeting up and talking about their vision for what was going to be their band. Nikki always said that, always called it “our band” and not “my band” and Tommy always felt pride move through him when he did. They spent their mornings and nights planning in Nikki’s shitty little efficiency that Tommy adored just like he adored when Nikki would pull him in close with an arm around his shoulders on the couch to look through lyrics. Tommy could see the way Nikki’s eyes would follow him as he walked through Nikki’s home, following his body when he would get up to grab them beer from the small refrigerator that was against the far wall from the couch. There was a hazy atmosphere that settled over them when they were together, it was palpable and charged and Tommy knew they could both feel it.

Their sixth day hanging out together they were sitting outside on the fire escape, taking a break between seeing guitarists and sharing Nikki’s last cigarette when a breeze blew past them. Tommy tilted his head back, enjoying the brisk air blowing his curls around his face but when he opened his eyes, he was immediately met with Nikki’s eyes squeezed closed and body tense.

Tommy put a hand on the bassist’s shoulder and squeezed at the muscle gently, “Hey, you okay Nik?”

Nikki breathed in a deep lungful of air and he smiled in what had to be the softest way Tommy had seen so far, “I’m good babe, you just…”

The alpha trailed off for a minute, the look on his face contemplating as Tommy prompted, “I just?”

Nikki shook his head with that smile, fingers coming up to brush Tommy’s hair out of his face, “You just smell really fucking good T.”

“Oh.” Tommy breaths out, heart jolting and beating fast at the admission. Before he could think to reply to that though, an absolutely shitty little hatchback was screeching to a halt in front of Nikki’s complex and a short beta with jet black hair was grumbling as he tried to get an amp out of the trunk.

Tommy and Nikki both snorted out a laugh but Tommy, being Tommy, was already running down the stairs to help the shorter man out, “Whoa, dude. You got it? Here for the audition?”

The older man levels a deadpan look at him that Tommy took to meant, ‘well no shit genius’, but he sticks with a simple, “Yep.”

Tommy helps him get the damn amp out of the trunk and the man looks at him with a scrutinizing glance, “You the singer?”

The omega laughs at that, “Absolutely not. That’s funny though, drummer.”

The beta gives him an odd look, “Pretty scrawny for a drummer.”

Tommy narrows his eyes in response. He feels Nikki moving in behind him but that doesn’t stop the annoyance from filling him. He doesn’t know this beta, he doesn’t know if he’s the type who means ‘It’s unusual for an omega to be a drummer’ when he said what he said but just for good measure he asks, “Do you have a fucking problem with that?”

Nikki is looking at him, Tommy sees him from the corner of his eyes but he doesn’t move his narrowed gaze away from the beta’s who looks satisfied at the challenge, “I meant scrawny, drummer, I didn’t mean omega. And I don’t have a fucking problem with either as long as you can fucking play good fucking music.”

Tommy’s whole demeanor changes at that, bright smile back on his face and he grabs one side of the amp and motions for the beta to do the same so they can carry it up the stairs, “Good, would have hated to give you a no before even seeing you play, old man.”

The beta growls at him at that, “Fucking teenager.”

Tommy just laughs, “I’m Tommy, the lazy fuck behind you carrying wires is Nikki.”

The short man gives the barest hint of a smile, like he doesn’t want to but just can’t help it. “Mick.”

Mick is in from the first riff of his guitar and as they play Tommy sneaks glances at Nikki just to see the nearly manic grin on the bassist’s face. Every so often their eyes will meet, and the passion Tommy finds in their locked gaze overwhelms him so much he has to look back down at his kit so he won’t blush. He’s pretty sure he still does. And he’s pretty sure that Nikki sees.

He thinks about Nikki that night while he’s at home. He’s probably going to have to move out soon. His parents don’t approve of him wanting to skip college to be in a band and as loving as they are, they aren’t going to let him live in their house unless they feel like he’s working towards something worthwhile.

But that’s not important right now. What’s important is that he’s pretty sure he’s in love with his bandmate. Tommy has a bad habit of falling too hard and too fast for people. He thinks maybe it’s a combination of his general enthusiasm for everything and his general love for people that makes him the way he is but this doesn’t feel like his usual falling in, falling out routine.

The thing between him and Nikki is magnetic. Tommy feels like he’s stuck in the bassist’s orbit, completely unable and unwilling to move too far away from him. There is just something inside of him that slots perfectly into place when he’s around Nikki and by the look in the alpha’s eyes when Tommy catches him staring, he’s pretty sure Nikki feels the same.

A few weeks of pining later he’s letting himself into Nikki’s efficiency, it’s about 11am so he knows that the bassist is probably still asleep but he hasn’t let that stop him the previous mornings and it’s not going to stop him today so he opens and shuts the door and takes off his shoes before flinging himself at the alpha who is spread across the mattress on the floor.

Nikki groans loudly and starts swatting at Tommy, because he knows it’s the younger boy, this routine becoming way too familiar but instead of laughing and rolling off of him like usual, Tommy just laughs and straddles his hips.

“Nikki, Nik, listen! I was up all night thinking about this,” Tommy starts, not even phased when Nikki tiredly tries to hit him for waking him up, “Listen Nikki! We’ve been looking for a singer and I thought about it and I think I know a guy. I actually went to high school with him, he’s absolutely perfect-”

Tommy yelps when Nikki tries to roll over and dislodge him from his perch so he can go back to sleep but Tommy is stubborn and he tightens his legs around the older man’s hips and whines out, “Nikki!”

The drummer feels Nikki go stiff as a board underneath him and when he meets his gaze, Tommy feels frozen, absolutely pinned by the intensity in the bassist’s green eyes.

“Nikki…” Tommy practically breaths, kind of scared by how silent and still the man underneath him is and that fear has him rambling pretty quickly, “Shit, I’m sorry Nik, I shouldn’t have woken you up, sorry if I annoyed you, I know you’re always telling me that you would rather I wake you up later in the afternoon and I never listen which must be irritating but I just- mmph!”

Tommy doesn’t even have time to process what is happening when Nikki suddenly surges to sit up, one hand firm on his hip to keep him stable on his lap and the other twisting in his hair to hold him still as the bassist presses their lips together in a sudden kiss.

It lasts seconds but when they part Tommy is panting like it had been hours and there’s a flush on Nikki’s cheeks when he sees the surprise in Tommy’s big brown eyes, “You, uh, you have this habit of licking your bottom lip when you nervous ramble you know? It’s really, really fucking cute.”

It’s Nikki’s turn to squirm a bit as Tommy sits there in his lap in shock and the alpha swallows before he starts talking again, “I know I probably shouldn’t have, you know, just fucking went for it without asking you for your permission or some shit like that first but fuck Tommy, I just feel, I feel so right around you. You’re so fucking beautiful, and passionate and talented and you’re not fucking annoying so don’t say that again and I just-”

It’s Tommy’s turn to interrupt him now, hands burying themselves in Nikki’s hair and pulling him forward to connect their lips again and Tommy moans when he feels Nikki’s arms wrap around his waist to pull him as close as possible, chest to chest as the bassist licks at his lower lip and dips it inside when Tommy opens his mouth. Tommy feels delirious and so fucking high that he whines in protest when Nikki breaks their kiss to breath.

Tommy laughs happily after he catches his breath, wrapping his arms around Nikki’s neck and throwing them down to lay back against the mattress, “What the fuck took you so long?!”

Nikki is laughing then too, rolling them over to hover on top of him and press kisses into every inch of Tommy’s face and neck and the omega giggles at the action but releases a sharp gasp when Nikki suddenly bites down underneath the scent gland just behind his ear.

“Sorry for making you wait babe,” Nikki’s speaks into his ear, lips brushing against the lobe and voice so low and gritty that Tommy feels a wave of heat spreading from his lower body, flush blooming along his cheeks, “Let me make it up to you.”

And he certainly proceeds to do that.

Life becomes a whirlwind for Tommy, they get his old high school friend Vince Neil to join their band and soon they’re Mötley Crüe. They spend their days writing music and preparing to take Sunset Strip by storm and they spend their nights partying and meeting people and raising hell. Tommy gets a job as a waiter at a strip bar just down the street which the rest of the boys love because it means they can drink for free during Tommy’s shifts and he, Nikki, and Vince pull their resources to get a small two bedroom apartment right on the Strip.

Tommy and Nikki are inseparable. They are so caught up in each other most of the time that they often can’t keep their hands to themselves and more than a few times Vince has to yell at them to take it to their bedroom so he doesn’t have to watch them fucking.

Nikki surprises Tommy every day with how thoughtful he can be, taking him on dates to the beach even though he hates it because he knows Tommy loves it, always picking a movie that he thinks Tommy will like even if it’s something Nikki probably wouldn’t otherwise be interested in, murmuring praises against Tommy’s skin in the early morning sun until he sits up to grab the book he keeps by the bed, arms wrapped around Tommy’s waist as the drummer sits in his lap as he writes out lyrics all about Tommy. Nikki will hum out a melody and Tommy will listen intently and fill in the spaces with a beat that he hits out on Nikki’s arms or legs, whatever is closest and the bassist will beam at him and nine times out of ten, tackle him against the bed. Nikki looks at him like he’s the most precious fucking thing in the world and when he’s with Nikki, he feels like he is.

They go into summer with a plan and a full list of songs to take over the world with. Tommy has his alpha, his lover, his absolute best friend by his side. He has his band, his chosen family, and his whole future ahead of him.

Of course, life can never be that fucking easy, can it?

~May 15th, 2019~

It’s a little after 6pm and Tommy has just gotten out of the shower, sipping from a bottle of Rosé as he stands in front of his open closet, music blasting from his speakers. Wine isn’t typically his drink of choice, but he hadn’t restocked his liquor cabinet and a few bottles had been left in his fridge from the last time he had friends over, so wine will have to do for now. If he was going to spend the rest of the night letting people assume that Tom fucking Zutaut was his date, he was at least going to get hammered. May as well start early.

Tom had asked him to dress nice, which Tommy translated in his head as “please dress slutty so my new rock star clients are envious of me for landing you as a date”.

Tommy grabs out his favorite black jeans. They’re torn to hell all up and down the legs and honestly show more of his skin than they cover up but they’re also super comfortable. He had thought about the soft leather pants right next to them but everyone was probably going to be in leather if this was a party to celebrate signing a new rock band and his stylist’s voice was sounding in his ear saying ‘dare to be different Tommy!’

With that catch phrase in mind, he pulls out some fishnet stockings too. He slides them on before pulling his jeans up carefully, mindful of the rips and tears and looks back at the mirror in the corner of his room. He lets a small smirk pulls at his lips as he takes in the band of his fishnets settling at the smallest dip of his waist and remaining visible for about three inches before disappearing below his jeans, making reappearances through the rips and tears along his legs. Yeah, that will do nicely. For the top he picks out a black worn tee. It’s cropped, so it shows the fishnet off and it’s just oversized enough that the neckline is constantly dipping down his left shoulder and it would be almost plain if it weren’t for the beautiful embroidered red roses that stretched along the entire right shoulder. He doesn’t even remember what brand it is but he loves it and it’s simple and chic enough when paired with the lower half of his outfit.

He thinks he’s dressed well enough to turn a few heads so he works on taming his hair into soft waves, briefly toying with the idea of teasing it before deciding that it was too much work for the likes of Zutaut and he prefers it loose and natural anyway. He does just enough make up to even out his complexion, give him those smoky, bedroom eyes that his photographers love so much and darkens his lips with a long lasting burgundy red.

As he finishes his makeup, he finds himself thinking that this is first time in a year that he’s done anything related to music or musicians in general. Tom is the only one even remotely tied to the music industry that he still speaks to and that’s only because of everything the other man has done for him. He ghosted everyone tied to his previous life when he walked out on him a year ago and he avoided the music scene like the plague ever since.

Nikki. Tommy does his best to not think about the green eyed bassist but no matter what Tommy does, the alpha inevitably pops back into his thoughts. It must be a combination of his earlier nostalgia with his drums, the fact that he’s about to go to a party for some up and coming rock stars and the wine, Tommy thinks as he takes a shaky breath. There was no other reason to think about his ex. Nikki was his past. Sure, he still loved the man like he doubts he would love anyone again, still longed for him during his one night stands with piss poor alphas who couldn’t hold a damn candle to the bassist, still hurt every time he wondered what he was doing at that very instant.

But he wouldn’t ever see him again, and he just needed to deal with it and push past it and continue living his damn life. Half alive was better than nothing he supposed.

Tommy downs the last of his wine and touches up his lips one last time. He’s putting on a black choker and some long dangling earrings when he sees his phone go off in the corner of his eye.

He picks it up as he walks out of his bedroom, boots in hand, “Hello?”

“Hey Tommy, I’m outside.” Tom’s voice is nervous and it makes Tommy roll his eyes as he pulls on his black boots. The heels are pretty conservative, just two inches but they’re just tall enough to give a little swing to his hips as he walks.

“I’ll be right down.”

Tommy flips the switch on his stereo system and turns out his lights, he really doesn’t need anything else, so he slips his key into his pocket after he locks his door and spins his phone in his hand like he used to spin his sticks and walks down the hall to the elevator.

Zutaut has a nice car but like everything else even remotely cool that Tom owns, he only has it because he thinks it makes him look cool. Which to Tommy is just so fucking sad. Still, he slides into the passenger seat and laughs when Tom nods at him approvingly.

“You look good Tommy.” The beta says happily as he pulls away from the curb and proceeds with what has to be the slowest drive to the Hollywood Hills that Tommy has ever experienced.

“Thanks, you told me to, but thank you I guess. You look…” Tommy trails off as he takes in Tom’s outfit of choice, “Like you’re going to church.”

Tom frowns instantly and points to the seatbelt that Tommy had neglected when he got into the car. “I like to dress professionally when I’m around my clients.”

Tommy scoffs and flicks at Zutaut’s arm lightly, “It’s a party Tom. Who the fuck wears a cardigan to a rock n’ roll signing party?”

“California is chilly at night! You’ll be begging for this cardigan later on!” Tom protests and Tommy laughs.

“Hos don’t get cold Zutaut. All you had to wear was jeans and a t-shirt and it would have been better than this. At least take off the cardigan and roll up your sleeves. You look like a goddamn missionary.”

“I’m regretting this already. They think I’m a loser Tommy!” Tom whines and even though it’s annoying, Tommy feels a little bad for the guy. So he resolves to do his best as Tom’s fake date for the night to get him noticed a little.

“Well, they won’t think that for long. That’s why you invited me, right?” Tom looks at the omega briefly before looking back quickly at the road, pulling into a long circular driveway and joining the line of cars waiting to be valeted. Tommy can hear the music already, something heavy and loud and it moves through him and makes him grin already.

Tom for his part looks sick and Tommy wants to bash his head in. What a night he’s in for. Okay, he thinks, time to at least set some ground rules.

“Listen Tom. I’m okay with letting people assume what they want to, alright? But if anyone blatantly asks what we are, you will tell them that we are friends. Okay?” Tommy speaks slowly so the other man doesn’t misunderstand through his nerves.

Tom’s face screws up unhappily, “But I thought-”

“I’ll walk in there with you. I’ll let you get me a drink, and I’ll let you put your arm around my waist while you introduce me to these guys that you signed but letting people think what they want to think and letting you blatantly say that you’re fucking me are two totally different things. I’m not playing that game. That’s where I draw the line, okay?” Tommy thinks that he’s being fair. Besides, being friends with a model is almost as good as scoring with one right? Maybe not, but that’s all Tom’s getting so, he should probably make his peace with it now.

Tom nods sulkily as he pulls his car up to the front, “Okay.”

Tommy sighs before putting a smile on his face when his door is opened for him. The house is monstrous, beautiful in that very in your face kind of way that Tommy doesn’t really care for. He’s been here once before, it’s Tom’s boss’ house, but the party that’s going on now is way rowdier than the last one he had attended here and Tommy feels his smile becoming more real. At least he’ll probably have fun tonight. All he has to do is meet Tom’s new clients and then hopefully he can go off and get drunk and act his normal foolish self when they lose interest and move on.

Tommy nearly startles when he feels an arm wrapping around his waist before he realizes that it’s just Tom and going by the look on the man’s face, Tommy is going to need to be the one to lead here. So he walks confidently up the sidewalk, dragging Tom along with the grip the other man has on his waist, and doesn’t even bother knocking on the door, pushing them open and walking inside like he owns the damn place.

“This is ridiculous.” Tom mutters under his breath so only Tommy can hear.

“This is awesome, Tom. Come on, at least try to have a little fun.” Tommy laughs happily, taking in the chaos that’s going on inside. The music is loud and aggressive and the lights are blued out in places and faintly strobing, enough to be special but not enough to be annoying, and twinkling white in others. There’s a sea of people dancing and Tommy spots a pool table in the room to the far right, a swimming pool visible through the glass walls with people fully dressed in it and surrounding it, and plush suede couches along the back wall.

Tommy has spotted at least a handful of musicians that he knows about, a half a dozen models he’s worked with, a couple of photographer’s and designers, and everyone else he has no idea.

“I need to find the guys!” Tom yells out to him, eyes darting around nervously. There’s a table to their left, one end empty while a bunch of guys play cards at the other end and Tommy sighs before hoisting himself up to sit on the edge.

“I’ll stay right here. You go ahead and get me a drink and bring whoever back that you want.” Tommy yells back. He crosses one long leg over the other and leans back just a little, weight resting on one arm that he props against the table a little behind him, taking note as one of the guys playing cards follows the movement with his eyes. Tommy gives him a coy smile and a wink just because he can as Tom nods and walks away.

The guy watching him from his card game looks at him curiously before grinning and getting up to walk over. He looks vaguely familiar to Tommy, with his long blonde hair, cute grin, and tall stature. It’s hard to tell people’s sub-gender’s in an environment like this, too many people in too close a proximity to really make anything out, but the man holds himself like an alpha.

He’s standing in front of Tommy before the omega has time to figure out where he knows the other man from and his grin is absolutely giddy as he looks at him.

“You’re Tommy Lee.”

Tommy blinks in surprise. It’s not like he doesn’t get recognized. He does occasionally, but people more often remember his face, they don’t really know his name.

“Umm, yeah, I am… How do you kno-”

“My lead singer is an absolute Gucci freak and your spread is literally one of his favorites. He has the photos posted up on his bunk wall on our tour bus.” The guy is laughing happily, sharing a conspiratorial look as he confides his friend’s secret and Tommy has to laugh along with him.

The omega shakes his head as he grins, “I really don’t know what to do with that information.”  

“Oh, tease the hell out of Axl when I bring him over to meet you, I hope. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have you all to myself, but he would literally, and I mean literally, kill me if he were to find out that I met you and didn’t go get him.” A lightbulb goes off in his head at the name Axl and suddenly Tommy knows exactly who he’s talking to.

The omega smiles at him, “Well, we can’t have that now can we?”

The blond beams again, holding his hand out for Tommy to take and shake, “Duff Mckagen.”

Tommy leans back again when he releases the man’s hand, “I know, I watched your music video on MTV the other day. Guns N’ Roses, right?”

Duff nods, scratching at the back of his head somewhat sheepishly, “Yeah? What did you think?”

Tommy just can’t resist the opportunity to tease, “Eh.”

Duff throws his head back and laughs and Tommy smiles at him when he leans in a little closer, “You don’t pull your punches do you sweetheart?”

Tommy’s grin turns sharp as he lowers his gaze and looks at the bassist through his eyelashes, “You have no idea.”

The blond haired alpha leans his hip against the side of the table, nearly pressed right against Tommy’s side and he brings a hand up to lightly grip at his chin, tilting it to meet his gaze as he gives a little smirk that’s definitely attractive on him, “Maybe I should risk death and forget about introducing you to Axl, don’t need him to whisk your attention away from me.”

“Tommy!”

The omega sighs and rolls his eyes at the questioning look Duff gives him. Tom is making his way back over but Tommy doesn’t see anyone with him so he figures that he’s free to keep flirting with the blond bassist as Tom presses a drink into his hand.

“Did you find them?” Tommy asks politely. Zutaut looks anxious as all hell, so Tommy feels the need to be nice to the man.

“Uh, yeah, they were right behind me? I guess they got side tracked, they’ll be here.” Tom says, eyes flitting over the crowd before finally realizing that he had company.

“Duff? Hey man.” Tom says, voice at a higher pitch than usual, and Tommy raises an eyebrow at the producer. God, no wonder his clients didn’t respect him. The man couldn’t even talk to a musician without losing his shit.

“Hey Zutaut. Are you here with…” Duff asks but trails off like the question is so ridiculous he can’t even finish it.

Tom is about to answer but Tommy is cutting him off with a glare, “Yes and no. He’s a friend that I’m doing a favor for.”

Tom looks a bit put out but Duff smiles again, arm draping around Tommy’s shoulders, “Good, I was about to be really bummed out.”

“Look out Zutaut! Duffie’s gonna steal your model if you aren’t careful!” An obnoxious voice calls out boisterously followed nearly immediately by a loud and startlingly familiar, “HOLY FUCK.”

Tommy freezes. His whole body feels like a block of lead and he all of a sudden can’t breathe because there’s no fucking way.  

There’s no fucking way that after a year, Vince Neil is at the same party as him. But then a softer and achingly recognizable, “Shit,” has him wanting to cry because that was definitely Mick’s voice. He feels cold all over and despite not wanting to look up, he just has to because he knows, if Vince and Mick are there together, someone else is probably there too.  

So he shifts his gaze to look directly in front of him and sure enough, he’s there. Vince is staring at him with the most shocked expression on his face, Mick is looking at him with something that looks apologetic but he’s barely aware of any of that because Nikki is standing behind them both with the most intensely indiscernible expression on his face, eyes locked onto Tommy’s face.

He looks so good. So damn good in black jeans that are cut up at the knees and a tank top that shows off his muscled arms that are littered with more tattoos than he remembers, hair still jet black but pushed off of his forehead so his gorgeous face is visible and Tommy wants to whine and reach out for him, the longing he feels in his heart wanting a physical expression.

“Hi Nikki.” Tommy manages to force out even though the words had felt stuck in his throat before dragging his eyes away from the dark haired bassist, “Vince, Mick.”

Tommy narrows his eyes at the fourth person, “I don’t know you.”

“Sammy doll face, drummer.” The man reaches a hand out to shake but Tommy ignores it. And yeah, that may be petty but considering the situation, the omega feels like his actions are pretty justified.

Instead he tips his head back and downs the full glass of whiskey that Tom had brought him while the producer asks, “Tommy, you know the guys?”

“Apparently.” Tommy glares at the man. Why the hell didn’t he say earlier that the band he had signed was Mötley Crüe? Why the fuck hadn’t Tommy asked who this fucking party was for.

“Tommy was actually our original drummer.” Mick sighs, probably trying to ease the awkward atmosphere that’s settled around the group.

Sammy laughs, “No shit?! What happened? Couldn’t take the heat doll face?”

Tommy growls and is about lay into the asshole when Nikki all of a sudden finds his voice, “No, I fucked it all up. It was my fault he left.”

The omega feels a sharp spike of pain shoot through him and it’s enough to make his eyes water and he tries to take a breath without being too obvious about the fact that he suddenly can’t seem to get enough air.

He unexpectedly feels Duff’s arm moves from his shoulder to around his waist, hand squeezing his hip gently and Tommy can see the way Nikki’s jaw clenches and his eyes narrow, “Hey, you alright?”

Tommy shakes his head, “I’m not drunk enough for this shit, come get me another drink.”

And with that Tommy is dragging Duff with him and away from the people, the person, who was supposed to stay in his past.

Tommy feels panic bubbling up in his chest as he walks away from the alpha, and he can’t help but think about the last time he did this, a little less than a year ago.

~May 22nd, 2018~

Tommy didn’t necessarily like his job. It was alright, most of the time, and the owner never minded if he sent free drinks to his boys whenever they would come in to wait until the end of his shift so they could go out.

But the patrons were fucking annoying. They constantly groped or made comments to him after they had too much to drink, and while Tommy could usually handle this with a smile that typically got him extra tips, sometimes it went a little too far and it just flat out made him uncomfortable.

The most annoying part of his job though, is the goddamn strippers who don’t seem to understand- even though Tommy has very clearly and explicitly spelled it out for them- that Nikki is fucking off limits. Several girls would often caress the bassist’s shoulders as they walked by or lean down to peck him on the cheek but that was usually just to tease Tommy and while it annoyed the hell out of him, it was all in good fun and at the end of the day he knew that they respected him enough to never actually cross the line.

All of them, except Mindy.

Fucking Mindy, with her stupid fucking ‘only appropriate for a stripper’ name, was constantly flying past the goddamn line. Tommy hated the nights that he worked with her because that meant that she would usually plant herself right in Nikki’s lap for a free dance. Tommy confronted her about it a couple of times and she always said the same damn thing.

“You’re not mated Tommy. Until you are, Nikki is fair game so fuck off.” Fucking blonde haired bimbo.

Mindy and her shitty behavior made him seethe, but what really troubled him about the whole thing was how Nikki would just sit there and let it happen. Tommy had told him before that it bothered him, but the handful of times they talked about it Nikki would just dismiss his concerns with a ‘she’s just doing her job babe, doesn’t mean anything’ or a ‘you know her type doesn’t do anything for me babe, I prefer tall, leggy brunettes’ before he would proceed to make Tommy forget whatever they had just been talking about.

Despite Nikki’s nonchalance at the whole situation, it continues to upset Tommy every time it happens. Besides just the instinctual surge of possession that it stirs up in him when he sees the skank grinding on his alpha, there’s also the hurt that Nikki doesn’t seem to care that it bothers him. He could get maybe that Nikki doesn’t understand that seeing him under another omega, in a place of business or not, makes him feel terribly insecure which is so far from the norm for Tommy it actually turns his stomach when it happens. But to Tommy, it should have just taken him telling Nikki that it upset him for the alpha to put a stop to the activity.

But he doesn’t, and tonight it’s worse than usual because Mindy stays in Nikki’s lap even after Tommy clocks out. This is unusual because she typically times it to steer clear of Tommy after the omega had growled at her when they bumped into each other backstage last month but tonight when he walks out of the back, she’s still there and Nikki is calmly taking a sip from a bottle of Jack as he talks to Vince who has a girl in his own lap.

Tommy feels an unbridled rage fill him when he sees it and he has half a mind to stomp over there, push the bitch off of Nikki’s lap and maybe even punch that handsome face that belonged to his boyfriend, but he figures physical violence would probably get him fired and wouldn’t exactly be healthy for his relationship

So he decides to get drunk instead and wait for Mindy to leave so he can go over there, drag Nikki home and scream at him until Nikki just gets it because this is ending, tonight.

He huffs angrily when he harshly sits himself down on a stool at the bar and glowers, even when the bartender gives him a sympathetic smile and a drink without him having to ask.

“Mindy at it again?” She asks.

Tommy looks at her with a storm brewing behind his eyes, “Do you have to ask?”

“I don’t get why he doesn’t just knock her on her ass. He can do that if she’s giving him a dance he’s not paying for.”

“That’s what I fucking said.” Tommy grumbles before knocking back his drink. He sighs as he spins the empty glass and is about to motion for another one when the red haired beta behind the counter is passing another drink into his hands.

He gives her a grateful look but she shakes her head at him, “That one’s not from me honey.”

She points a little ways down the bar and a man that Tommy recognizes from his rotation is waving at him with a little half smile. He’s attractive, objectively. He’s a little shorter than Tommy which isn’t surprising, most people are, but he’s built well and he must be some sort of Hispanic because his skin is tanned cinnamon and his short hair is thick and a deep dark brown just like his eyes. Tommy is a little surprised and he’s waving back as he takes a sip from the drink. Apparently the guy takes that as an invitation because he’s walking over immediately.

He’s sliding to stand against the bar right next to where Tommy is sitting and the drummer’s eyes widen at how close the other man is so suddenly.

“So, I’m guessing since you’re drinking that means that your off?” The guy has a nice smile, Tommy will give him that. And he smells pretty good, obviously an alpha and like strong coffee. But this is really not anything that Tommy is interested in.

“What an intelligent observation. Give the guy a prize.” Tommy rolls his eyes. Yeah, that was a little bitchy but he’s mad, and upset, so sue him.

The guy’s smile stays firmly stretched across his face though, brown eyes lit up in amusement, “Ouch.”

Tommy snorts a laugh at the guy’s determination not to be deterred by his obviously pissy mood, “Sorry, you just really caught me at a bad time. I’m taken anyway.”

The omega looks back to check on Nikki and practically growls in frustration when he see Mindy still seated on his alpha’s lap. When the fuck does she get off work anyway?

The alpha at his side leans around him to follow his gaze and raises an eyebrow when Tommy meets his eyes again, “Is that who you’re taken by?”

Tommy bristles at the judgment he hears in the man’s voice and finishes his drink quickly, not minding in the least when the alpha motions for another round from the bartender.

“Didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just, how much of a moron is he if he has someone like you waiting for him and he’s wasting his time with that dime a dozen slut?” The guy snorts and presses the glass of another drink into Tommy’s hands.

And well, wasn’t that just the most dangerously right thing for him to have said.

Tommy watches as the guy smiles again, obviously amused that Tommy is so shocked by what he just said, “I’m Gabe.”

“Tommy.” The drummer answers almost unthinking, “And he may be a moron but I’m, unfortunately at the moment, in love with him so if you could not insult him, I’d appreciate it.”

Gabe shakes his head incredulously, “You’re really something else. Really irritates me that you’re not available. Well Tommy, I have a proposition for you if you’re interested.”

“This ought to be good. Go ahead.” Tommy smiles in amusement. He wasn’t doing anything else at the moment. Just waiting for a slut to get off of his boyfriend. No big deal. He had time to waste.

The smile across Gabe’s face morphs into a smirk and he takes a step further into Tommy’s space so that he’s very nearly knocking knees with him, “I’m just going to throw it out there that I am totally okay with you using me to give your guy over there a taste of his own medicine. Like, completely okay with it, down right on board to flirt with you for a while until he learns his lesson.”

Tommy’s laughing even though he doesn’t want to. From the corner of his eye he sees Mindy finally get off of Nikki’s lap and even though Nikki looks completely unbothered by her absence, head turning this way and that, obviously looking for Tommy, the omega is still incredibly angry and upset and maybe a little tipsy. Liquor doesn’t typically hit him this hard but three drinks so fast on an empty stomach while he’s tired from a shift obviously have had more of an effect than usual.

And Gabe is nice and funny, and Tommy really wants to just make Nikki understand how he’s been feeling. His head is screaming ‘bad idea, bad idea, bad idea’ but the pain in his heart just says ‘fuck off, we’re doing this’ and he’s spreading his legs just enough for the alpha to push just a little bit closer. It’s nothing explicit really, the man is just standing in the space between his knees, nowhere nears his thighs or his hips, but the suggestion is there and Tommy looks up at the other man, “And what lesson would that be?”

Gabe is still smiling but his eyes are serious when he lifts a hand to sweep his fingers through the curls that frame Tommy’s face, “That you’re a fucking knock out, and if he isn’t careful, someone will definitely sweep in to take you away.”

Tommy laughs softly, no fucking way was anyone taking him away from Nikki, but he’s flattered all the same, “You really are pretty fucking smooth, if I wasn’t-”

“Tommy.”

The sound of Nikki’s voice, pitched low and warning, has Tommy jerking away from Gabe so fast he nearly gets whiplash. He also teeters precariously on the stool at the movement and he feels Gabe place his hands on his waist to steady him so he doesn’t fall but the deep, loud growl that Nikki lets out has Gabe’s hands flying away in a flash.

Tommy faces Nikki fully then and the alpha looks like a force of nature standing there, body tense and eyes dark, jaw and fists clenched, looking for all intents and purposes that he’s seconds away from lunging at the alpha that’s standing so close to Tommy.

“We’re going home now Tommy.”

Nikki’s tone leaves no room for argument but Tommy still rolls his eyes and out of spite, because how dare Nikki sit there for like an hour with a stripper in his lap and then get this angry over a few minutes of harmless flirting, he turns back to Gabe as he stands up and says, “Thanks for the drinks, and the company.”

Tommy can practically hear Nikki’s teeth grinding when Gabe beams at him, “Anytime sweetheart.”

Nikki is gripping his hand then and pulling them rapidly toward the door but Gabe catches up with them, apparently unable to resist fucking with Nikki’s head one more time, and presses a napkin into Tommy’s hand, “Just in case you ever find yourself unattached.”

They’re out the door in a flash after that and Tommy throws the napkin with what he expects is Gabe’s phone number scribbled on it away. He knows Nikki sees him do it but it does little to calm the older man down as he pulls Tommy quickly down the street, dropping his hand when they approach their apartment and taking the stairs two at a time, leaving the door open for Tommy to shut.

As soon as the lock clicks into place, Nikki is speaking, and his tone is so raw and angry that Tommy is actually startled.

“What the fuck was that Tommy?” Nikki’s eyes are stone cold as he looks at him from across the living room.

Tommy is quiet for a minute because this is a little more intense than he had thought it would be. He figured Nikki would be pissed and they would scream at each other before falling together into angry passionate sex to relieve the frustration and then kiss and whisper apologies into each other’s skin afterwards. That was what was typical for them, both running a little too hot and energy just too high between them to argue quietly or passive aggressively.

Though, Tommy thinks a little guiltily, flirting with Gabe was some pretty passive aggressive shit on his part but no! Fuck this, this whole thing started because of Nikki’s shitty behavior and lack of regard for his feelings so he doesn’t get to stand there on the offensive and make Tommy feel bad. Fuck that.

“Oh fuck off Nikki, you’re not seriously going to stand there and question me over a little fucking flirting are you?” Tommy crosses his arms over his chest and glares at the alpha, not backing down and rearing to tear into him over this finally.

“A little fucking flirting? The guy was between your fucking legs and looked to be about one fucking drink from getting you into bed with him.” Nikki snarks at him cruelly.

Tommy narrows his eyes further and snarls back, “I would never have done that Nikki, thanks for the fucking vote of confidence though. It’s absolutely fucking mind blowing that you can stand there and call me a whore for letting another man barely touch me when you literally just spent an hour my with coworker’s ass grinding on your dick.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, is this coming up fucking again?! She’s a fucking stripper Tommy, that’s what she fucking does for a living.” Nikki has the audacity to look annoyed now and Tommy growls at the alpha for still being so stupid.

“No, this is ending fucking tonight because I am so sick of you just not fucking comprehending this. She’s not fucking accepting payment from you for those fucking dances Nikki. That means she’s doing it because she fucking wants you and you fucking entertain her, while I’m literally feet away working, you selfish, cold fucking dick! What fucking part of this confuses you? It would have been no different if I had pushed that fucking guy into a seat and rode him in the middle of the fucking room. And you do this every fucking week! Fuck! Maybe I should have kept his fucking number, as least he had the damn sense to see that I was more worth his time than a fucking stripper!” Tommy fumes, and yeah, that was a little harder than he typically goes but he needs to get this through Nikki’s skull right fucking now.

Nikki’s pale green eyes are ice right now, hardening the more Tommy lays into him, but Tommy can see the wild panic that shoots through them when he mentions keeping Gabe’s number. Tommy knows that this isn’t good, he knows that Nikki has abandonment issues from how he grew up and fear makes Nikki do irrational, terrible things and he immediately wants to de-escalate the situation but then Nikki is speaking again and his tone is nothing short of disgusted when he says, “Are you really that fucking insecure?”

It’s like a sharp slap to the face and Tommy feels his control of the situation slipping through his fingers, knows that Nikki has none to speak of either and this is spiraling much further than it needed to.

He tries to soften his approach and weakly says, “Nikki…”

But it’s too late for that now, fear and pain and panic have a hold on Nikki now and the older man is backing away from him then and shaking his head, not even screaming but voice still cutting into Tommy’s heart when he continues his assault, “I should have fucking knew that you were too immature to handle this Tommy. What kind of a juvenile fucking slut tries to fuck with another guy just to make their boyfriend jealous over a few fucking lap dances?”

Tommy bites his lip to try to stifle the whimper the wants to come out because Nikki doesn’t usually speak to him like this. They scream and curse and they’ll insult each other but it’s always general, this, this is personal and he feels like he’s going to cry, eyes watering but doing his best to clear his expression and stop this before it goes too far to fix, “Nikki, baby, please…”

Nikki shakes his head, “Who fucking fucks up their relationship because of some stupid insecurity? A fucking kid does that Tommy, it’s fucking pathetic.”

Tommy takes in a shuddering breath, “Nikki stop, just stop!”

“This is the fucking life Tommy. This is being a goddamn rock star. This is what we fucking wanted. If you can’t handle a few fucking strippers without thinking that I want them more than I want you then we should just fucking end this now before you bring us all down with your goddamn pathetic insecurities. I don’t want anything to do with someone like that.”

Tommy feels a shattering pain in his chest and distantly hears a small broken whimper that he’s startled to realize has come from him. He can feel the warmth and wetness of his tears finally falling down his cheeks and Nikki is looking at him with what looks like immediate regret mixed up with the anger and the fear but Tommy can’t analyze that look, he can’t stay there for one more fucking minute and he’s running out of the apartment as fast as his long legs can take him, heart breaking all the more when he realizes that Nikki isn’t coming after him.

He ends up on a friend’s couch that night, and after several nights with no word from Nikki, he supposes that the set-up is permanent. He feels broken, unable to get himself to do the simplest of things, and as the days go by it doesn’t get any easier. He spends his nights curled up on the couch in physical pain from missing the older man so damn much. Everything in him wants to call Nikki. If he wants to fix this, he needs to be the one to do it because he knows that Nikki is probably buried too deep in a hole of self-loathing to even think that this is repairable. But every time he goes to press the alpha’s number into his phone he hears those terrible things he had said to him and he physically recoils from the slim possibility that Nikki actually meant them.

His friends go get his stuff from the apartment. Vince and Mick try calling him and texting but he can’t read them after the first few glances revealed Nikki’s name so he blocks all of their numbers, the last of Tommy Lee, drummer of Mötley Crüe, dying as he presses the delete button on Nikki’s contact information.

~May 15th, 2019~

Tommy all but collapses again the counter top when they reach the kitchen and Duff has the common sense to move them a little further into a more secluded corner, away from most of the people who are milling in and out of the room.

The omega is grateful to him because he feels like he’s about to have a panic attack, and wow, he’s never had one of those before. But Duff presses into his space, cupping his face to push his hair back so that Tommy focuses on his face.

“Hey, hey, Tommy, look at me okay? Focus on me, I need you to try to breathe a little more deeply okay? Just slow down a little bit okay?”

Tommy feels his breathing even out a little bit, still a little shaky but not nearly as gasping as he had been. He pulls back from the other man and leans against the glass door that leads to the balcony, the cold seeping through his shirt at his shoulder blades and grounding him.

Duff gives him a minute to calm down, but when Tommy is lucid enough to clearly meet his eyes, he’s raising an eyebrow, “So….”

Tommy groans and covers his eyes with his hands before resolutely dragging them through his hair.

“I’m guessing you and Sixx have history then.” Duff says gently, settling against the door next to Tommy.

Tommy closes his eyes and feels the words sink into his brain. History. Images of Nikki grabbing him around the waist, the both of them giggling loudly as they dance crazy and wild in the living room, of Nikki wrapping his arms around his waist from behind randomly and pressing his lips to his shoulder softly to inhale his scent, flash before his eyes and he walks to the table where the liquor is. He grabs the first thing he sees, a bottle of vodka in an ice bucket and unscrews it to take a gulp as he stands there.

Duff nods, “Yeah, definitely history. Shit, I knew Sixx was fucked up over someone, never imagined it would be over Tommy fucking Lee.”

Tommy whips his head around to stare at the blond haired alpha, “What do you mean?”

“Dude, Nikki has been a damn mess ever since I met him. We didn’t know what his deal was, you know? Because he doesn’t do the typical rock star shit, like yeah, he drinks like no one I have ever seen and he’ll take a bump every now and again and he smokes weed whenever you offer but the whole one night stand, fucking groupies, going to strip clubs, all that other shit, he wants nothing to do with. We couldn’t believe it because Nikki Sixx is one crazy mother fucker, we thought for sure that he would have a constant rotation of omega’s and beta’s but he was never with anyone. So we asked Sammy because he’s the only one who will talk about it and he said that Sixx fucked up his shot with his true mate and he hasn’t been interested in anyone since. Guessing that was you.”

Tommy bites his lip, taking in the information and feeling his heart hurt at the thought of his alpha in pain over him. “We were always, we were always so intense you know?”

Duff doesn’t say anything, just nods and listens like he knows that Tommy needs to just talk it out.

“It was immediate, like a gasoline fire, coming to life so fucking fast but it just never, it never burned out. I think we almost half expected it to, that’s why we took a couple weeks to acknowledge it but it just never went away. Not after we confessed, not after we got together, not even after months of being a couple. It was incredible because it meant that everything was so passionate, everything was electric and so fulfilling but it was a double edged sword because when we fought, Christ, we fought hard. That’s what did it, a stupid fucking fight we should never have gotten into. He said some things, I said some terrible shit back, and then he said some really terrible shit and it just spiraled out of control until we broke and neither of us could bring ourselves out of our heart break to try to repair it.”

Duff watches Tommy as he takes another pull from the vodka bottle, his eyes are closed, brown waves still falling softly around his face and every inch of him screams longing. Sixx is a fucking lucky guy.

“You still love him.”

Tommy lowers the vodka bottle and opens his eyes and the look he gives Duff, the sad little smile, is heartbreaking, “Of course I still love him. He’s my true mate. I knew it from that very first night we met in that dingy little fucking diner.”

Duff is nodding suddenly, and it confuses Tommy because the blond alpha looks resolute as he says, “Why don’t we get some air? You go wait out there on the balcony and I’ll be right back, I’m just going tell Zutaut that you’re okay and you’re calming down so he doesn’t come bothering you.”

Tommy finds himself nodding along gently, some air would be nice and there weren’t any people out there on the balcony. So he slides the glass door open as Duff walks out of the kitchen and closes it behind him.

Zutaut had been right, California does get chilly at night but Tommy has lived here all his life and he embraces it happily. It feels nice against his stress heated skin and he walks over to lean his elbows on the wide stone railing and look out over the garden.

He’s taking another long sip from his vodka bottle when he hears the door behind him slide open and shut again and he turns around as he says, “Well that didn’t take too long.”

But it isn’t Duff standing there just a few feet away from him. Of course it isn’t. Because life isn’t fair like that and it doesn’t care what Tommy thinks he wants, it only cares about what he needs.

Which is why Nikki stands there like one of Tommy’s damn dreams. Tommy is quiet as he drinks in the sight of the alpha in front of him, eyes tracking over the familiarities of his features and noting the changes, how his body seems broader, muscles thicker than just a year ago but his face and his eyes are looking at Tommy like they always used to, with that damn expression that made Tommy feel like the most important thing in the whole damn world to Nikki.

It makes him angry.

“What do you want Sixx, I’m trying to drink myself into a stupor here.” Tommy says as he turns his back to the man so he wouldn’t have to see his eyes anymore.

“Tommy.”

The omega fucking flinches at the sound of his name like that. Nikki didn’t speak it so much as breathed it reverently, and he needed to shut that shit down right now.

“Don’t say my name like that.” Tommy snaps at him, whirling back around to face his past head on. Nikki is looking at with a determined expression that literally scares the hell out of Tommy, the omega’s eyes widening when Nikki starts walking towards him.

“Stay the fuck away from me Sixx.” Tommy warns him, but his voice is nowhere near as strong as he wants it to be, cracking underneath the weight of his emotions as Nikki gets closer to him.

Nikki just shakes his head and simply says, “No baby.”  

There are tears in Tommy’s eyes again at the pet name and he’s weakly demanding, “Don’t fucking call me that.”

But Nikki is right on top of him then and his arms are wrapping around Tommy like they belong there, one going around his waist to pull him close and the other coming up to bury his fingers in Tommy’s hair and cradle the back of his head as the omega melts into him with a sob, face buried in Nikki’s neck.

Nikki is pressing gentle kisses into his hair but he’s breathing harshly and Tommy can feel tears dropping to land on his shoulder but he’s sobbing too, shoulders shaking with his hands against Nikki’s chest, the alpha’s heart beating so fucking fast as he talks, “I know, fucking hell, baby, I know, should have done this that night, I was so stupid, Jesus Christ Tommy, baby.”

Tommy cries soften at that, just enough for him to stammer out, “What the fuck happened? What the hell happened to us?”

Nikki is pulling back just enough to look into Tommy’s face and his cheeks are wet with tears when he shakes his head again, “It was me baby. It was all fucking me. I got, I was so caught up in portraying this image of what I thought I should be and I let it get way too fucking out of hand. Fuck Tommy, I was so fucking disrespectful towards you, I should never have even let that slut come near me, let alone… fuck and even then I should have stopped it the minute you said it upset you.”

Tommy looks away to the side, his own guilt eating him up until he says, “I shouldn’t have flirted with that guy in the bar that night. It was fucking petty and I knew it was a bad idea, I was just so mad and upset and I-”

Nikki cups the side of Tommy’s face gently with one hand to turn it back to meet his gaze, calloused thumb swiping over his cheekbone to brush the tears away as they continue to fall, “You had every fucking right to do whatever you could to try to get me to see how much I was hurting you Tommy. When I saw you with him, fuck I had already been drinking and that just sent me into a rage and when I got closer and heard him fucking say that shit about taking you away from me, I just lost control for the rest of the night. I was so scared Tommy, I was so fucking scared of that happening, you have no damn idea because I knew, I knew I wasn’t good enough for you. I let that fear and my own damn fucking ego influence me and I didn’t mean a goddamn thing I said to you that night baby. If nothing else, I need you to know that. I didn’t mean a single word.”

Tommy lets the words fall over him and feels his heart break all over again at how they had let something like this ruin them, keeping his eyes locked with Nikki’s when he asks something that has kept him awake for many nights over the past year, “Why didn’t you come after me? Why didn’t you call? I was waiting for you Nikki. Do you know how much I fucking tortured myself with wanting to call but refusing to because I thought that maybe you didn’t want me around anymore? Part of me knew you still loved me, part of me knew that it was just a stupid fucking fight that got out of hand but as soon as that part of me would convince me to call, I would think about what you said and I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the thought, the possibility that maybe that was really how you felt.”

Nikki makes a pained sound in the back of his throat, more tears tracking softly down his face as he presses his forehead into Tommy’s and the omega can’t help how his hands curl over the sides of his neck, Nikki’s pain a reflection of his own.

“I’m sorry Tommy. I’m so absolutely and completely fucking sorry. I was the moment I finished talking but the look on your face...”

Nikki suddenly releases the grip he has on Tommy and the omega feels the loss of contact in the form of a physical pain as the other man take a few steps away and looks out over the railing, “I didn’t fucking deserve you Tommy. I don’t deserve you. The expression on your face that night before you ran out the door, I did that. That was my fault, I made you feel like that and that fucking haunted me. I couldn’t call you, I was afraid that if I did, if you came back, I would do something to put that expression back on your face again eventually. You were better off without me.”

Tommy bites his lip softly. There were a million ways that he could respond to that and initially he wants to yell at Nikki that he’s a fucking idiot because not only was that completely untrue, that also wasn’t Nikki’s choice to make. But he knows Nikki, he knows him so well and being back in his arms, even as stressful and brief as it had been, has brought back in stark relief just how desperately Tommy had missed him.

“You never got it Sixx. You could never quite understand that you’re not the bad guy.”

Nikki shifts his gaze back to Tommy quickly, eyes wide and mouth open like he wants to protest but Tommy doesn’t give him the opportunity, “You’ve never been the bad guy Nikki. No matter what you think about yourself, it’s just not the truth. You try to be sometimes, but you can’t quite manage to be what you seem to think you are. Better off without you? I was fucking miserable every damn day. You hurt me that night Nik, but I hurt you too. You don’t carry the responsibility for where we are now alone.”

The alpha shakes his head, about to respond when the doors to the balcony are suddenly thrown open, a drunken couple practically falling through the doors before crowding themselves against the railing to make out without even a glance to see who was around them.

Tommy has to let out a breathy laugh as he wipes at the tear tracks on his cheeks. He remembers when he and Nikki used to be like that, their passion consuming any sense of shame or modesty. Nikki must be thinking the same thing because he’s looking at Tommy with a wistful little smile.

“Not exactly the best setting to have this conversation I guess.” Nikki sighs gently, moving a little closer to Tommy now to keep their words private.

Tommy shakes his head, wrapping his arms around himself, unsure of what to say or do now that the emotionally charged moment has been broken.

Nikki reaches a hand up to sweep through his hair, pushing it back off his face before he grimaces, obviously at war with what he’s about to say but forcing the words out anyway, “Do you want to go back to the party? It looked like you were having fun before, with… with Duff.”

Tommy can see how the statement hurts him to say, can see how hard Nikki is trying to respect that Tommy isn’t his anymore and not get possessive but Tommy doesn’t want to go back to the party. He doesn’t want to go back to flirting with Duff and pretending like Nikki is just another person in the room, like they weren’t still desperate for each other.

Tommy didn’t know a lot right now, he was confused and overwhelmed but if there was one thing he knew with certainty it was that he had never stopped loving Nikki. Even just standing here next to the alpha after everything that had happened over the last year has Tommy feeling like something in him is finally settling back into place, a warmth reawakening that piece of him that had been dormant without his bassist.

If they were going to fix this, if they had a second chance, it wasn’t going to happen with them parting ways here and acting like nothing had happened for the rest of the night.

So Tommy shakes his head, “I don’t want to go back to the party Nikki…”

The bassist lets out a long exhale, relief clear on his face before hesitating. It’s new to Tommy, to see Nikki acting so cautious, so careful and unsure.

“I could drive you home? We could talk a little more in the car, if you want?”

“It’s your party Nikki. Fuck, you guys got signed! You should stay and enjoy it.” Tommy is earnest when he says it, despite wanting nothing more than to continue talking. He doesn’t know what’s going to come of this, if it’s closure that he’s after or maybe something more, the idea of a second chance settling dangerously in his mind and in his heart the more Nikki looks at him. But just because he isn’t exactly in a party mood anymore doesn’t mean that Nikki shouldn’t stay and celebrate.

But Nikki’s lips pull into that smile that always leaves Tommy a little breathless, the alpha reaching towards him to sweep some of the curls around Tommy’s face back behind his ear, “Like I give a fuck about anything else in the world when I have the chance to stay with you just a little bit longer.”

“Nikki…” Tommy whispers his name so softly, like he couldn’t help himself, it makes Nikki shudder to hear it from the omega’s lips.

“Let me drive you home Tommy, please?” Nikki is almost begging at this point and he looks completely unbothered by this fact. So okay with pleading for just a few more minutes of his time that Tommy is nodding without even thinking about it.

“Yeah, okay. Okay Nik.”

The dark haired bassist nods in acceptance, hand coming down to rest against the small of his back and lead him through the doors. Tommy sets the bottle of vodka he had swiped back on the counter top as they move through the kitchen, not needing it as much as he had when he walked away from Nikki earlier that night.

Nikki’s hand is warm against his lower back and it lights him up in a way he hasn’t felt in the past year. Such simple contact, such a simple touch but even so, it’s eliciting more passion from him than the entire experience of the four one night stands he has had over the past year. It’s deliciously distracting, so much so that Tommy barely notices his surroundings as they move through the house, not even acknowledging anyone who calls out to him and Nikki is much the same, moving at a steady pace with single minded determination.

The valet brings Nikki’s car so fast that they barely get the opportunity to even look at each other, eyes meeting shyly and cautiously. Tommy grins when the car pulls up. He knows nearly nothing about cars, but he recognizes the sleek black vehicle as one that Nikki used to go on and on about when they were together.

Nikki notices his eyes light up in recognition and laughs softly, “My signing bonus was well spent, yeah?”

Tommy laughs along with him, suddenly so happy for the other man. He knows that Nikki’s upbringing was tumultuous, between his neglectful mother and living poor with his grandparents. Being able to buy something that he had dreamed about for years, owning something that, was absolutely incredible.

“That’s a fucking understatement.” Tommy teases as Nikki insists on opening his door instead of the valet attendant.

Nikki slides into the driver’s seat and as soon as he starts the car, the engine roaring to life, heat shoots through Tommy so abruptly he nearly gasps. Nikki just looks so good like this, just as fucking gorgeous as he always was and the whole scenario is suddenly crashing into Tommy’s head like a wave. If they hadn’t been so stupid that night, if either of them had just been brave enough to reach out sooner, Tommy would have seen this on the regular. He’d have probably been there when Nikki went to purchase the damn car in the first place.

If the past year hadn’t happened, Tommy would be able to do something about the lust rushing through him at the sight of Nikki right now. Tommy blushes when he realizes that he probably wouldn’t have hesitated to do exactly what he wanted, how he would have undone his seatbelt so he could lean over far enough to bury his face in Nikki’s lap, how he would have pressed kisses to Nikki’s length through the material of his jeans until Nikki would growl at him like he used to when he would tease. How he would have continued to go much further than that.

Nikki is inhaling sharply suddenly and the sound has Tommy blinking away the daze that he had been in just in time to hear what Nikki says, “Tommy, baby, whatever you’re thinking about, please stop.”

Tommy’s blush deepens when he realizes that sometime during his heated daze he had gotten wet. Jesus Christ, has anyone ever been able to wind him up like that just by sitting in the damn driver’s seat of a fucking car?

“Sorry…” Tommy says quietly in embarrassment and Nikki turns to him sharply, eyes dark and serious.

“Don’t ever be sorry for that Tommy. Fuck, I’m so deliriously happy that you even still… fuck, that you even want me like that. I just, you smell so fucking good babe and it’s making it really difficult to control myself and I don’t think it’s going to help us talk about everything we need to talk about if I jump you right here in my car.”

Tommy shivers, a small part of him wanting to encourage Nikki to do just that, but he was right. They had a lot to work out before coming close to that point.

So he takes a deep breath, trying to cool down a little bit and decides to tease the older man to break the tension, “You’re right Nikki, it’s just, it’s a really fucking nice car.”

The alpha laughs at that, the sound just as boisterous as Tommy remembered and it has him laughing too. Nikki quiets down to a chuckle and brings up the navigation screen.

“What’s your address babe?” Nikki asks and Tommy leans forward to put the address in, looking at the estimated time of 25 minutes and then Nikki is grinning.

“Want to see how much we can beat that time by?” Nikki challenges, voice mischievous as the engine revs and Tommy feels a tingle of excitement creep into his chest.

“Trying to impress me Nik?” Tommy asks, brown eyes bright as he looks into Nikki’s pale green ones.

Nikki grins, “Fucking always babe.”

Tommy doesn’t even have time to respond after that because he’s letting out a small surprised yelp as Nikki floors it and takes the fuck off. He hears the alpha chuckling again and he reaches out to slap his arm for scaring him but he’s laughing anyway too.

It’s so easy. So ridiculously easy falling back into the fun, playful flirting. This was how it was supposed to be, the two of them laughing as Nikki sped down the streets of Los Angeles with Tommy encouraging him to go faster, music blasting out of open windows and by the time they pull into an open space on the street outside of Tommy’s apartment, a full ten minutes faster than their navigation had said, both of their cheeks hurt from smiling.

Tommy knows his hair is an absolute wreck from the wind but Nikki’s eyes are moving over him after they park and sit there for a minute, and Tommy feels more stunning with the bassist staring at him with that look in his eyes than he does glammed out in front of the camera for work.

“I always loved when you looked at me like that.”

The words are escaping his lips before Tommy has a chance to pull them back but Nikki smiles at him softly, “Like what?”

Tommy looks down briefly, biting his lip as he thinks about it before deciding to just say it, “Like you think I’m the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”

Nikki’s smile grows, his eyes still warm and intense as he stares at him, “I always look at you like that.”

Tommy nods and exhales a shaky breath, “I know.”

Nikki reaches out slowly, giving Tommy time to stop him if he wants to as he cups his cheek in his hand, thumb rubbing softly over his cheekbones, “We didn’t really talk like we were supposed to.”

Tommy leans into the caress, eyes closing as he thinks over what he wants to do. He knows most people in his position would do the logical thing, the safe thing. They would tell Nikki that they can meet up tomorrow or whenever they both had free time. They would take this slow, take the time to heal together before moving on to maybe try a relationship again.

Tommy opens his eyes, knowing exactly what he wants to say.

“You could come up? To talk now, if you want.” Tommy has never been most people.

Nikki is looking at him searchingly, silent for a minute as he takes his hand away before nodding.

“Yeah, yeah, let’s talk.”

They’re quiet as Tommy scans his key card to let them into the lobby and they wait for an elevator. Nikki is looking around curiously, trying to acquaint himself with this new aspect of Tommy’s life that he missed out on.

Tommy likes his apartment. He could afford something bigger if he really wanted, but he never really felt the need for more when it was just him. A part of him reasons that maybe he just didn’t have the enthusiasm over the past year that he once did and that was why he didn’t necessarily care about having fun with his money. But still, he lived in a nice area and the building had been an old 1940’s hotel that had been renovated into apartments. His own unit is nice, with tall ceilings and massive windows that give a stunning view of the city but with that interesting old world charm that makes it unique. When they make it to the peak floor nine stories up and Tommy opens his front door, Nikki grins wide and nods to himself in some sort of approval.

“I love it T, not something I’d expect from a Gucci model but I absolutely fucking love it.”

Tommy blushes as he throws his keys and phone onto the small table by the door and takes his shoes off to get more comfortable, “Oh, you saw that huh?”

Nikki surprises him by blushing too, the older man toeing his own shoes off to match Tommy, “Uh, yeah, well... I don’t want to say that I stalked you on social media for the last six months but that’s kind of exactly what I was doing I guess.”

“Oh.” Tommy says quietly, and Nikki would be worried but the omega has a small little smile on his face.

“Yeah.” Nikki exhales, looking around as they stand in the front entrance of Tommy’s apartment.

Tommy feels nerves flood him suddenly. It was easier in the car when they had something fun to distract them but there’s something much more intimate about having Nikki in his apartment. He had tried to completely erase any sign of Nikki from his life when he had left and now the man was here, standing barefoot in his home.

He takes a shaky breath and moves to the open kitchen, needing an outlet for his nervous energy, already opening up cabinets and getting glasses down as he asks, “Do you want anything? I mean, I haven’t restocked my liquor but I have wine that someone left here if you want some.”

Tommy nearly screams when he feels hands touch his waist softly to settle and turn him around.

“Wine is good T, why don’t you sit down and I’ll get it?” Nikki asks him slowly, obviously trying to calm him down a little bit.

Tommy nods and follows Nikki’s suggestion, sitting himself down on the couch and taking a few deep breaths until Nikki hands him a glass of some sort of white wine, sitting the bottle on the coffee table and sitting down himself a respectful distance away. Tommy doesn’t know if he wishes he would move closer or further. Not sure what would settle his nerves better.

They drink quietly for a few minutes, trying to figure out where to start. There’s so much Tommy wants to say and yet everything escapes him at the moment but he has to say something and a sudden thought lights up in his head.

“Duff said that you haven’t been with anyone in the past year.”

Tommy blushes when Nikki starts coughing on the sip of wine he was taking. And he can’t really blame him, of all the places to start, Tommy chooses that.

“He fucking told you that?” Nikki groans, hand coming up to cover his eyes in what seems to be mortification.

“Don’t be mad at him, he was trying to get me to calm down and I think he could sense that we, you know that we had history and was probably just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear.” Tommy tried to sooth.

Nikki shakes his head and moves his hand but he keeps his eyes on the glass of wine in his hands, “He wasn’t.”

Tommy looks at the other man in confusion, body twisting to settle so that he’s angled towards the alpha, “He wasn’t what?”

Nikki sighs and moves so that he mirrors Tommy, looking him in the eyes again, “He wasn’t just telling you what you wanted to hear. I haven’t been with anyone in the past year.”

Tommy widens his eyes as he stares at the bassist incredulously, “Why?”

Nikki downs the rest of his wine and then sighs, “Tommy, you... you really have no idea how much it hurt me to lose you do you? I fucking, I hated myself. When you ran out, I wanted to follow you, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t get myself to move because I was so fucking angry at myself and then you didn’t come back. You didn’t call, you didn’t text. You were always so much better than me with talking things out and expressing yourself and I was being selfish again by waiting for you to reach out but when you didn’t, I fucking lost it. I didn’t want to hurt you anymore, and I thought the only way I could do that was by staying away.”

“That was stupid.” Tommy replies heatedly, “We were both so fucking stupid.”

Nikki nods solemnly, “I know. I know that now. Seeing you sitting on that table, I swear, I think my breathing just stopped. My whole body stopped. Vince literally had to drag me forward. You were just there and so damn stunning, fuck Tommy, how could I have wanted anyone after you?”

Tommy feels his eyes watering but he can’t cry anymore tonight. He thinks back to the one night stands he had while trying to forget Nikki and he feels so guilty that he’s covering his face with his free hand to hide.

“Babe, Tommy, it’s okay baby.” Nikki is scooting closer to him and gently pulling his hand away. “It’s okay if you were with someone else. You didn’t owe me shit, and besides, I wouldn’t have wanted you to go through a heat by yourself.”

Tommy’s eyes widen again and frantically catch Nikki’s gaze because no, he absolutely can’t think that.

“I didn’t spend my heat with anyone Nikki. How in the absolute hell, that was never an option. I couldn’t, you… you’re the only alpha I ever want for my heat Nik.”

Nikki growls at that and the sounds sends shivers down Tommy’s spine and heat through his lower stomach. That sound was always one of Tommy’s favorites, it was just so primal, so deep and possessive that it never failed to get him hot and now is no exception.

Nikki swallows hard and lets go of Tommy’s hand, “I think I need to go baby.”

Tommy flat out whines at that, still caught up in the headspace that Nikki’s growl had sent him into but he comes out of it quickly enough, “Wait, what, but what are we…”

“Babe, I don’t want to leave. Trust me. But between what you just said and your earlier stunt in the car… I may not be a bad guy but I’m not a saint either baby and I’m really running out of self-control here and I’m trying to respect your space.”

Tommy frowns, heat still spreading through him at the blatant desire in Nikki’s eyes. He doesn’t want Nikki to leave. It’s such a sudden but desperate thought that Tommy is reaching forward and grabbing at Nikki’s hand, “Don’t leave.”

Nikki’s eyes soften and his fingers of his free hand rake through Tommy’s hair until it rests under his jaw, “Let me take you to dinner tomorrow.”

Tommy blinks in confusion, dizzy from how all the different directions this night has gone, “Huh?”

Nikki nods and smiles nervously at him, “Dinner T. You know, like a date. Or a pre-date, or just a get together between friends who may or may not pursue each romantically after a period of healing. Whatever you want it to be, this is totally up to you-”

Tommy laughs softly and nods just to put Nikki out of his misery, “It’s a date.”

Nikki laughs, “Okay. So it’s a date.”

Tommy smiles but then Nikki is pressing a sweet kiss to the fingers of the hand Tommy had used to grab his and getting up to walk to the door.

This is good, Tommy thinks. This is beyond anything he could have ever hoped for and really, to go one day without Nikki in his life to having a date with him the next day was far faster than most people would have moved were they in his situation so he should be satisfied. He should be okay with letting Nikki leave and then going to bed by himself. That’s healthy.

Tommy is moving before he even thinks about it, “Nikki.”

The alpha turns around just in time for Tommy to wrap his arms around his neck and press their lips together and the absolute sigh of relief that Nikki lets out makes Tommy melt, releasing his own desperate little noise when Nikki’s hands find their way to his hips automatically.

They part gently, arms still around each other tightly as they stare with half lidded eyes.

“Tommy…” Nikki groans, obviously still fighting with himself about giving Tommy more time.

The omega just nudges his nose against Nikki’s cheek softly, breathing in his scent, “Stay Nikki. I want you to stay.”

Nikki nudges Tommy’s cheek back before reconnecting their lips in a brief, sweet kiss. They part again and Nikki exhales loudly, “God, Tommy.”

Tommy feels delirious when Nikki surges forward to press him against the door, lips pressing harshly against his in desperation and Tommy feels more alive than he has all year.

Nikki groans at the absolute plushness of the omega’s lips, the feeling better than he could have ever imagined after an entire year apart. He pushes harder against Tommy’s lips, dragging his hands down his sides to grip at his waist and hold him as close as possible. When Tommy gasps he can feel it and Nikki can’t help himself from running his tongue over the omega’s full bottom lip, angling his head so he can lick into the drummer’s mouth.

Nikki feels his body burning, igniting all the more at the way Tommy whines into the kiss, the way his hands reach up again to tangle in his hair, until he feels drunk off the feeling, no whiskey needed, breaking the contact of their lips to trail kisses and nips along the omega’s jaw and down his neck, firmly licking at the scent gland just underneath his ear. The moan Tommy lets out is so loud and unexpectedly high pitched, but he couldn’t have held it in for anything. Nikki is here with him, he’s touching him just the way he loves and Tommy wants this, wants it so badly and that only becomes more true when Nikki growls his approval as a wave of arousal crashes through him.

He smells so sweet, so fresh, Nikki can’t get enough as he keeps licking and nipping at the gland until he starts to smell the heat of arousal thick around Tommy’s usual honey orange scent and that, that just sets him off even more.

His hands run firmly over Tommy’s hips until they come to a stop on his ass, squeezing both cheeks and the omega keens and pushes his hips up into Nikki’s, the alpha answering with an automatic roll of his own before he grips the backs of Tommy’s perfect fucking thighs, thankful for the natural strength that comes from being an alpha as he lifts him easily to wrap those sinfully long legs around his waist, hips pinning the drummer’s to the door.

The move surprises Tommy, body heating up even more at how effortlessly Nikki lifted him, thighs trembling around the bassist’s hips as he feels himself slicking up, getting wet because of the man he loves in between his legs. It’s straight out of a dream but so much better because it’s real and Tommy uses the grip he has on Nikki’s hair to tilt his face back up and kisses him desperately.

Nikki is sharply inhaling through his nose suddenly and he pulls back from the kiss to stare sharply into Tommy’s eyes, his own pale greens dark and wild and it makes Tommy whine to see him that way again. But the alpha shakes his head, rests his forehead against the drummer’s again.

“Is this too fast babe? Do I need to slow down because shit, I can fucking smell how wet you are and if we don’t stop now, I don’t know if I’ll be able to. Tell me, tell me what you want baby.” His voice is pitched so low and his cock throbs when he smells the slick Tommy is producing, struggling to keep his hips still as he flexes his hands around the omega’s thighs.

Tommy is shaking his head, hands carding through Nikki’s long black hair and pulling him back a little to look him in the face, “Don’t stop, Nikki, alpha, don’t stop please.”

Nikki groans, hips rocking forward against Tommy’s, grinding against him deliciously as his hands move back to grip the omega’s ass to hold him up more firmly.

“Don’t fucking stop,” Tommy is saying again, dragging his lips down Nikki’s neck, whimpering at the friction between his legs and the heavy forest rain scent that blossoms on his tongue when he licks over the alpha’s scent gland, giddy at the choked moan he gets as a reward. “It’s not, ah, it’s not too fast, it’s perfect. It’s right, it’s, fucking finally Sixx.”

Nikki feels his lips pull into a smile, “Fucking finally.”

Then he pulls Tommy against him roughly with the grip he has on his ass, making sure he has him secure in his arms before he pulls them away from the door.

Tommy’s legs tighten around his hips, arms around his shoulders, and the needy noise he makes in his throat is intoxicating.

“Don’t worry baby, I won’t drop you.” Nikki teases, thinking Tommy’s gasp and tight grip are from the fear of falling. He keeps them upright as Tommy hides his face in his neck, the omega’s hands moving from his shoulders to feel where the muscles are tight and flexed in his arms.

“I know you won’t, you’re so strong, my alpha.” Tommy calls him so breathlessly, it has Nikki walking back to press him up against the wall next to the door, surging forward to devour the youngers lips in a rough kiss, running his tongue over every surface in Tommy’s mouth. His hands drag along the omega’s legs wrapped around him, up and down his waist, everywhere.

“Tommy, Tommy, fuck, I know baby. I know exactly how you like it.” Nikki thrills, biting at the base of Tommy’s neck in an instinctive bout of possession. “You like that I can carry you around, like that I can move you, shape you however I want. I could hold you up and fuck you right here baby, and you’d fucking love it, wouldn’t you.”

Tommy keens, body burning, absolutely on fire. God, he loved this, always loved how Nikki would talk, Tommy can’t believe that he had forgotten this, but he can’t say those things and expect Tommy to be able to actually answer coherently.

“Come on baby, I want to hear you say it, need to hear what you want,” Nikki whispers lowly in his ear, one hand coming up to grip Tommy’s chin to force him to look at him. Nikki’s breath rushes out of him when he sees the omega’s face, the blush staining his cheeks, curly hair messy, big brown eyes dilated and lips kiss swollen. “Need you to tell me everything you like babe, want to hear everything, want to make it so good for you.”

Tommy moans when Nikki’s hips start moving again, the alpha staring into his eyes expectantly, and really, Nikki did such a wonderful job communicating tonight, so good at starting to bring them back together like they should be, he could do this now for the other man if it means that much.

So he nods, hands clenching on Nikki’s shoulders and nosing at his neck, “I like it Nikki, it’s so good, makes me feel so good, want more baby.”

“Fuck. I’ll give it to you babe, give you anything you want, always.” Nikki pulls him away from the wall and walks him through the kitchen and into the hallway before he stops, “Where do you want me babe? You’re bed, the wall, the floor, god wherever you want, I’m there.”

Tommy laughs at the question, Nikki grinning at the sound. But Tommy quiets after a few seconds and bites his lip, eyes hooded, small smirk growing along with some of his confidence. Nikki isn’t the only one who can tease.

The omega pulls lightly on the long black strands at the base of Nikki’s hairline, reveling in the groan the alpha lets out, the way his hands tighten on his ass, “My bed baby, want you to take me in my bed, want you to get your scent all over it and me, please, alpha.”

Nikki breaths in sharply, heat punching through his gut and he starts down the hall, kicking the door open that Tommy points to, “Don’t fucking push me Tommy. I’m struggling to control myself as it is.”

“Don’t,” Tommy gasps as Nikki drops him down onto the bed before kneeling between the omega’s spread legs. Nikki stops at the word, hands kneading into the younger boy’s thighs, but not moving down and Tommy realizes that he didn’t finish his sentence. He had gotten overwhelmed by the alpha’s scent surrounding him and the notion of having Nikki in his bed like this.

“Don’t control yourself Nik, I want it, I want you so bad, can fucking handle anything you give me.” Tommy reaches up and uses a hand on Nikki’s neck to pull himself up, arching his back to peck the alpha on the lips, “I can handle you, baby.”

Nikki’s growl comes from deep in his chest as he reaches out and pulls the black tee shirt off of Tommy swiftly before pushing him back down. Tommy’s a fucking perfect omega, so fucking beautiful just like Nikki remember, long slender limbs, flat stomach, small waist. Nikki eyes the small swell of his hips through the fishnet with hunger, hands yanking his own tank top over his head and throwing it off to the side before sinking down into the omega’s arms and attaching his mouth to Tommy’s collarbones, biting harshly to hear him yelp and then soothing the mark with soft licks, moving on to suck bruises into the line of his throat. His hands smooth up the soft skin of his sides until he gets to his chest, both thumbs rubbing at his nipples.

Tommy whines, long and needy as Nikki continues the assault on his chest, fingers pinching and pulling as he sits back to watch the omega squirm, “Fuck, yeah, you can handle me. I know you can babe, I remember, you’re going to be so good for me, already making me so fucking hard sweetheart.”

Nikki abandons one of his nipples to grab a hand that Tommy has thrown over his head, bringing it down and putting it on the bulge of his cock and even through the material of his jeans, the touch is heavenly.

“Feel that babe? That’s for you, you’re making your alpha so fucking hard because you’re so goddamn hot. Want you more than anything baby.”

Tommy can’t do much at this point but moan helplessly at the words, his hand rubs at Nikki’s cock through his jeans and the omega’s mouth waters because it’s so hard and feels so big in his hand, just like it always did.

“Shit, T.” Nikki groans, ducking back down to kiss him roughly, fast, before moving down to take a nipple into his mouth, sucking gently and flicking his tongue against it, loving the way Tommy arches it further into his mouth, hands attaching to Nikki’s hair, pulling lightly and whimpering so pretty for him.

Nikki continues to kiss his way down, sucks a bruise or two into his ribs and then busies himself with making hickies across his hips as he unbuttons and unzips the tight black jean still keeping him from seeing all of the drummer.

“Nikki, mmm, feels so good, come here, please, fuckin’ want to kiss you.” And really, Nikki doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to deny his drummer anything ever again, so he moves back up Tommy’s body and kisses him deep.

The alpha feels Tommy’s hands caressing down his chest and abs, fingers tracing the indents of the lean muscle, making him groan until the omega finally reaches his jeans, undoing his own button and opening the zipper, both struggling to push each other’s pants down while still staying connected in their kiss.

Eventually they break apart in giggles when it of course doesn’t work, then Nikki kisses Tommy quickly once more before moving off him and the bed and hurriedly removing his jeans and underwear in one smooth movement. He groans at the relief of his cock being free from the tightness of his pants and when he looks up Tommy is staring at him with so much desire in his eyes, tongue coming out to wet his lips, and Nikki knows that look. He remembers that look so fucking well, it has him letting out a heated moan.

He gets back on the bed quickly and pushes Tommy down where the boy was attempting to get up with a firm hand on his chest.

“Now, now babe,” Nikki says as Tommy whines at being pushed back down, “As much as I am dying to see those pretty lips around my cock, I really don’t think I’ll last as long as I want inside of you if you do that first.”

Tommy pouts and it makes Nikki huff out a laugh in surprise, “You can blow me after baby, promise. Right now I just need to get inside of you before I go crazy.”

The omega moans and nods in acceptance, “Okay, okay Nik, just please, hurry.”

Nikki’s hands drop back down to Tommy’s hips, pushing down below the material of his pants and peeling them off slowly, eyes never leaving the omega’s until they’re completely off. Nikki’s heart pounds as his eyes run over every inch of the younger boy below him, moving to settle on his haunches so he can look at all of him. He’s so pretty, so goddamn pretty. His cock is long and thin, curving up along his pelvis, long legs smooth and slender and covered in those goddamn fishnets that drive him crazy to look at. Nikki pushes the stockings down his legs mournfully, sad to see them go but his mouth waters when he sees Tommy’s thighs glistening with slick. With his pants removed, the sweet smell of it is even stronger and Nikki feels desperation move him to grab Tommy’s ankles and drag him further down the bed so Nikki can run his hands down his legs, wrap them around the underside of his thighs and push them back towards the omega’s chest.

Tommy moans loudly at the rough action, feeling another wave of slick gush out of him at the manhandling and shivering at Nikki’s answering growl when the alpha sees it where he’s staring at him with those intense green eyes.

Tommy is fucking gorgeous ivory skin everywhere and Nikki could come just from looking at him for too long.

He has plans for now though, and as much as he wants to dive at the omega’s entrance immediately, Tommy’s thighs are driving him wild. Bending down from where he’s holding him up and open, Nikki groans when he sinks his teeth into the flesh of the inside of Tommy’s right thigh, making the boy underneath him cry out in surprise.

Tommy’s hands attach themselves to his hair again and when Nikki looks up, the omega is looking down at him, lips open and panting, expression absolutely wrecked as he whimpers when Nikki grinds his teeth into the flesh of his thigh. Nikki feels a little crazy, but he can’t stop licking and sucking at the soft skin, the taste of his slick sweet on his tongue and tempting him to move closer to the source but it’s not until Tommy begs him, strings of ‘Nik, please’ and ‘more, Nikki, god I need more’, does he move his hands to his ass, spreading him apart and giving a firm lick right over his hole.

“You’re so fucking pretty down here Tommy, so smooth and gorgeous for me babe, gonna eat you out so good.”

The broken whimper he gets is addicting and Nikki wants to hear it again, so he moves up a bit, lets Tommy’s legs fall onto his shoulders, hands groping at the firm cheeks in his palms, and presses his face in deep, tongue licking over his hole gently, gliding through his slick over and over until he firms his tongue up and feels Tommy opening up for it and drives it inside as deep as he can.

Tommy is floating, distantly he can hear himself making these embarrassing high pitched gasps with every thrust of Nikki’s tongue, arching his back and using the grip he has on the alpha’s hair to keep him in place as if the other boy had any notion of moving, but he can’t think about anything other than the pleasure he’s in. Tommy feels the pressure building in his lower stomach, heat getting too intense and his cock twitching as pre-come drips from the tip.

“Nn-Nikki, please, unnn, you have to stop, I’m gonna, ah, gonna come if you don’t s-stop.” Tommy moans and his toes curl when Nikki’s tongue rubs against the walls of his entrance.

Nikki pulls back just a little, enough for Tommy to see his lips, his nose and chin wet with his slick, his eyes are impossibly dark, jaw sharp and Tommy’s thighs tremble at the arousal that moves through him at the sight.

The alpha grins darkly when he feels it, turning to place a small kiss on the biggest bite mark he left on his thigh, “Then come babe, fucking want you to come from my mouth, I’ll make you come again when I’m inside you, don’t you worry about that.”

And then he’s diving back down, lips closing around Tommy’s rim and sucking hard while one of his hands squeezes around the omega’s cock and Tommy feels his orgasm ripped from him, body shaking and belatedly realizing that he had screamed Nikki’s name.

The alpha licks him through it, not stopping even when Tommy whines as he starts getting hard again too fast and it’s sensitive and so good it hurts a little.

Nikki pulls off with one last kiss to the omega’s thigh and moves back so that Tommy’s hips fall back down to the bed, hitching his legs up to wrap around his waist again and resting his weight on his forearms on either side of Tommy’s head so he can kiss him, groaning when Tommy starts sucking at his tongue. He rubs his hips against Tommy’s ass where it’s still tilted up a bit, cock getting wet from the slick the younger boy is still producing, the head catching on Tommy’s rim a few times.

“Nik, Nikki, need you inside me now, please, no more teasing, I’m so wet for you, ready for you, need you to fuck me, been waiting so long for it, please alpha, please.” Tommy babbles, desperate for the older boy to just slide into him already, tilting his hips up to try to get him inside.

Nikki lets out a harsh breath, “Baby, fuck, babe wait, need to get a condom.”

Tommy makes a plaintive whine in his throat before pushing at Nikki’s shoulders, the unexpected movement catching Nikki off guard so he’s easy for Tommy to push down onto his back and straddle him.

The alpha grunts when he feels Tommy reach a hand back and grab his cock, his hands flying up to hold the omega’s hips when the drummer rubs him against his entrance andTommy whimpers at the awestruck look on Nikki’s face.

“I’m clean, I’m clean Nik and I know you are too and I’m on birth control. We don’t need a condom, want to feel you in me, please baby.” Tommy bites his lip, wanting to sink down onto Nikki’s cock, has been wanting it in him since Nikki took off his pants and he saw it, big and hard and as perfect as Tommy remembered.

Nikki groans, shooting to sit up straight, mouth meeting Tommy’s in an open kiss, arms wrapping around his waist and hips and pulling him down so he sinks onto the alpha’s cock below him. Tommy feels his heart swelling as they finally start connecting in the most intimate way.

Nikki grits his teeth as inch by inch his cock disappears into Tommy’s warmth, he feels heady, light headed and Tommy is panting by the time he’s fully seated. Tommy can see the tears clinging to Nikki’s lash line as they sit still for a minute, body’s getting used to the sensation of being connected again. Nikki needs to distract himself from the surge of emotions flooding through him so he grips Tommy’s ass roughly, and talks.

“Fuck babe, fucking hell baby, you feel so good around me. Took my cock so well babe, so tight and wet, beyond my dreams, can’t wait to fuck you, can you move now sweetheart? Wanna see you fuck yourself on my cock.” Tommy’s body is a live wire listening to his alpha whispering filth in his ears and his hips start rocking without him even thinking about it when Nikki asks him to move.

He’s gentle at first, just a soft rocking motion but before he knows it he’s bouncing himself onto Nikki’s cock, hips grinding when he sinks all the way down, his alpha gripping his hips, fingers sinking into the flesh and groaning into his ear.

It feels so good, so good beyond anything Tommy has ever felt in the past year and his mind jumps back to earlier when Nikki had asked him to let him know what he liked and so he starts to tell him.

“Nngh, Nikki, oh, so good, your cock is so good, baby, I want it, want it more, want more, don’t hold back.”

Nikki snarls in his ear, throwing Tommy down against the mattress, arms over his head, before hitching his legs around his waist and sinking his cock back into his entrance. The wet sound makes Tommy squirm because he’s dripping, he doesn’t think his body has ever produced so much slick outside of a heat before. Nikki sets a brutal pace, thrusting into Tommy with smooth thrusts that end with a snap that have him moaning every time his cock punches into him.

The alpha gives his own deep, long moan when he feels Tommy purposely tightening around him, teasing him and Nikki smacks his ass once in warning.

“Be good babe, be good for me. I don’t want to have to punish you.” Nikki smirks when Tommy flushes further, gasping when Nikki sits up and grips his hips hard enough to bruise, tilting them up to change the angle and nailing his prostrate on every other thrust. Tommy’s hands latch onto his shoulders, dragging him back down so they can slip to claw at his back, rolling his hips up to meet Nikki’s in a nasty grind that makes his legs shake.

Nikki is fucking hot above him, sleek with sweat, green eyes dark and narrowed in concentration, breathing harshly through open lips. Tommy can see his abs flexing every time he thrusts into him and he is winded by the thought that this beautiful man is in his arms again. The idea has him clawing into his back more harshly, giving his own dark grin through his panting when Nikki hisses at the sensation and looks at him heatedly.

Tommy arches his back so he can bite at Nikki’s neck, sinking his own teeth into the base where it meets his shoulder and then licking at the mark, moaning into the alpha’s ear, “Mine, my alpha, mine.”

Hearing the possession in the declaration snaps something in Nikki and Tommy licks his lips at the wild look in the alpha’s eyes before the older boy is pulling out, flipping him over, pulling up on his hips and growling out a “chest down” that has Tommy automatically complying, screaming when Nikki pounds back into him from behind.

Nikki has a bruising grip on his hips and he’s forcibly moving his ass to bounce back on his cock with every thrust forward and Tommy has never been fucked this good before. He feels dumb with pleasure, crying out because Nikki is hitting him just right every single time and he’s in total control of how Tommy moves and it’s so good, he’s crying.

“You’re so fucking hot babe, and all mine. Missed you so fucking much baby. I’m yours, your alpha, but you’re my fucking omega, my baby, mine.” Nikki’s voice is all base now, gritty and he growls at how fucking good Tommy looks below him. The drummer’s long slender back is bowed, chest to the bed just like he asked, skin glistening with sweat and face contorted in pleasure. He keeps making these ‘ah, ah, ah’s’ that are driving Nikki out of his mind, moans making Nikki’s cock twitch where he’s buried inside of him.

“You look so damn hot on my cock sweetheart, never seen anything so fucking beautiful, sound so good, do you feel good baby? Tell me how good you feel taking my cock.” Nikki lifts his hips up further and Tommy screams again.

“I- ahhh, nnngh Nn-nikki, ff-fuck, ahh I can’t, mmm…” Nikki smirks at the other boy, slowing his thrusts down until he’s just grinding his cock lightly into Tommy’s prostrate, making him shiver and whimper.

“Sorry baby, I was making it hard for you to answer me, go ahead now babe, tell me how good I’m making you feel, please, need to hear it baby.” Nikki whispers in his ear, leaning over to drape across his back, pushing his cock impossibly deeper into the omega beneath him.

Tommy whines, trying to push his ass back and fuck himself on Nikki’s cock, squeezing around him unconsciously to try to entice him into thrusting again, but all he gets for his effort is a smack to his ass that has him jolting.

“Please Nikki, please don’t stop, keep fucking me, it’s so good, the best, fucking me better than anyone else could alpha, I’m so close, gonna come again for you, plea- ahhhh!”

Tommy screams again when Nikki abruptly starts fucking him even harder than before, snapping his hips so hard Tommy is pushed up the mattress until he puts his hands against the headboard, making it bang against the wall harshly with every thrust.

Nikki leans forward and licks at the back of Tommy’s neck, feels the omega squeeze tightly around him, feels his body shake.

“I love you Tommy, fucking love you so much baby, come on, come for me again. Want to feel you come on my dick.”

And then Nikki bites down, right underneath Tommy’s scent gland and Tommy moans his name so loudly as he comes, hole contracting around his cock, Nikki couldn’t hold off his own orgasm if he tried, groaning lowly as his come flows into the omega and the brief instinctual flash of an idea bursts into his mind, of breeding Tommy, of seeing him swollen with his pups growing inside of him and his heart jolts and he’s dropping kisses along every inch of skin he can reach, pulling out of the younger boy slowly.

Tommy turns around onto his back and Nikki’s hands come up to cradle his jaw, peppering his face and neck with kisses, whispering under his breath, “Love you baby, I love you so much Tommy, can’t even fucking believe this is real, you did so good, so good babe, absolutely unreal. You’re fucking amazing.”

Tommy’s tired arms come up around his back, meeting Nikki’s mouth suddenly to kiss him, once, twice, again and again.

“I love you Nikki,” Tommy says, rubbing his nose against Nikki’s cheek, eyes a bit teary from the intense pleasure of their fucking and from how loved he feels with Nikki whispering endless praise and confessions of love. “Love you so fucking much, my alpha, missed you so much.”

Nikki settles onto his back and pulls Tommy to him with an arm around his waist. Tommy nuzzles his faces into Nikki’s chest, yawning but smiling right after when he feels Nikki burying his nose in his hair and inhaling.

Tommy’s eyes are falling shut against his will, still fighting against the pull of sleep until Nikki presses a kiss against his forehead, “Sleep baby.”

~April 12th, 2018~

Tommy slowly comes into consciousness with the feeling of arms wrapped around his waist and kisses being pressed into his neck from behind. He smiles, can’t help himself when his lover is touching him like this.

“You need to be careful there Sixx, I might start expecting this kind of treatment all the time.”

Nikki pauses his kisses for a short moment and Tommy feels his lips pull into a smile of his own against his skin.

“I’ll do this every day for the rest of our lives as long as you want me Tommy.”

~May 16th, 2019~

When he wakes up, Nikki is still asleep next to him. Tommy hadn’t pulled the blinds shut the night before and the sun is filtering into the windows and making Nikki’s tan skin glow. He’s so busy looking at the man that he doesn’t even notice that Nikki is awake and staring right back at him.

“Good morning baby.”

Tommy startles a little before blushing at the soft, loving look in Nikki’s eyes. He shifts onto his side so that he’s facing the alpha, “Hi.”

Nikki smiles and moves onto his own side to mirror Tommy, hand coming up to tangle gently into his curls, “Hi.”

“So that was, beyond fucking incredible.” Tommy says it quietly, enjoying the stillness of the moment.

Nikki nods emphatically but he’s sobering up quickly, “Are you okay though, I didn’t come here with that as my intention Tommy, I really want to do this right, I need to get this right.”

Tommy arches his back to press a soft kiss to Nikki’s lips, staying close when he pulls away, “I’m perfect Nikki. Screw how anyone else would handle this, that was us baby.”

Nikki’s smile spreads back onto his face and he presses their foreheads together with a happy little sigh,  “Yeah.”

He’s about to say more but Tommy’s stomach gives a loud growl and they laugh at the interruption.

Nikki grins, “You want to add a breakfast date to today’s agenda too?”

“Only if you take me to that diner where we met.”

Tommy knows they still have a lot to talk about. They have healing to do, both individually and together. He needs to apologize, he had been the one to run off after all and even if he had a good reason, he was serious when he told Nikki that he was responsible for their split as well. He needs to apologize to Mick and Vince for having left them like that and not even being strong enough to talk to them about it.

They need to catch up on everything that had happened over the past year, but Nikki gives him an excited laugh in response to his request, practically pulling him off the bed with him to get ready to go and says, “Anything for you baby.”

And Tommy knows that they’ll get to all of that. For now though, for now, he’s fully alive with Nikki. Just like they were always meant to be.

[wanderingclark]

Bank of Sugar || Clark and Sugar

Who: Clark Meeks and Sugar Motta ( @usecodesugar ) When: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 Where: Sugars house What: Clark ask Sugar for a loan. Doesn’t turn out quite as planned.

Clark

Clark was nervous. She had bought a nice shirt and pair of pants for this evening, showered at the school, did their hair nicely and made sure they looked good. They wanted to be as professional as possible for this. Yeah, Sugar was their friend, but they were about to ask for a massive amount of money. The home they found was perfect for what they wanted and it was used so it was already built. They just had to pay for the house and the shipping to get it to Doveport and the first and last months rent for the plot of land they had found to rent to put it on. Everything was in place, they just needed the money. And no bank would ever give them the amount of money they were gonna need. So Sugar was their one and only shot at this. Pulling up to the gate and entering in the code Sugar gave them, they parked and grabbed all the paperwork they needed for this meeting. Taking a deep breath and brushing off the imaginary dust off their shirt, the walked up and rang the doorbell before pushing their glasses up their face as they waited for Sugar to answer

Sugar

Sugar performed her usual routine of checking that everything was clean, she had put Simon in one of his nicer bow ties, just for kicks, and changed into jeans and a Gucci tshirt. She had gotten her checkbook from her business manager earlier, knowing Clark would want to collect on the bet they had made, she'd honestly been so impressed that they had lasted. She never would have been able to do it. At the bell, Simon ran to the door and Sugar followed, opening it with a smile. "Hey come on in!" She made room for Clark to come inside. "Is this couch talk or do we need like a table?"

Clark

Clark smiled and followed her in. Tapping their notebook against their hand, they licked their lips. "Uh. Probably a table" they said nervously. God they needed to stop being so nervous. They needed to get their shit together. They followed Sugar to the formal dining table and sat next to the girl at the table before opening their notebook and pulling out a bunch of papers with a bunch of numbers and she could already see them scrambling in the page. Shaking their head, they cleared their throat before closing their eyes for a moment and then opening them back up to look at Sugar. "I found a house." they said bluntly before continuing. "It's a tiny home actually. On wheels. It's preowned so it's already built with all the bells and whistles and has like top of the line everything but the previous owners couldn't finish their payments so they got foreclosed on or something. I don't know but they're now selling it for cheap. I mean, for cheap for a tiny home" they rambled before shaking their head and looking back down to the papers before grabbing a few. "This is the house and all the specs. There's plumbing, electric, a kitchen, a bathroom with a full shower, a living room, an office and a loft bedroom. And it's on wheels so all I'd have to do is hook it up if I ever wanted to go somewhere else" they said, their heart racing inside of their chest as they watched Sugar look over the paper work.

Sugar

There was something off about Clark tonight, Sugar could practically feel the nervous energy radiating off of them. Sitting at the table, she realized this was actually really serious, and she wanted to be there for her friend, so she vowed to give her complete attention. Even Simon could sense something was up and sat next to Sugar's chair, straight and tall, like the dignified businessman he was. Before Sugar could open her mouth to congratulated Clark on finding a place, they went on. She remembered when she'd finally decided to get this house and she'd been so happy that day, her very first home. Clark handed her some paperwork, and she did her best to look interested, but she honestly couldn't make heads or tails of it. It looked nice, smaller than the play house she'd had as a kid, but clean. She nodded her head, looking up at Clark with a smile. "It looks very nice!”

Clark

Clark licked their lips when Sugar spoke and nodded. "It is really nice. And I've contacted the seller and I threw a number at them and they accepted it and gave me a week to get the loan approved on my end" the said before taking a deep breath. "The thing is, I'm 23, a student with no actual physical address with a part time minimum wage job. No bank in their right mind would loan me the kind of money I'm asking for. So I wanted to ask you" they said straight out, letting out a slow breath of air before looking down at their paperwork, shuffling it around to try and find the sheet that had all the numbers they needed on it.

Sugar

Nodding, Sugar looked down again. She had a vague understanding of mortgages and stuff, but honestly, she hadn't needed one to buy her house, so she didn't know what Clark was getting at, did they want Sugar's advice on homeownership? Then she heard it, this was about money. Definitely a sticky topic between the two of them, but Sugar had money, everyone knew she had money, it wasn't a secret. In fact, the Mottas had more than they could spend in several lifetimes even before counting Sugar's success on Instagram, she never understood the concept of being greedy with her money. Her father had taught her to invest wisely... was Clark a wise investment? She looked at them, at how anxious they were, and she nodded. "How much?"

Clark

Clark finally found the piece of paper they were looking for before looking up at the question. "This number includes the house, the shipping of the house to Doveport and the first and last months rent on the plot of land I found that I can rent for the next year. I did all the math and if I pick up some extra hours at the shop and maybe a second job, I can make monthly payments of $287 a month for the next 12 years to pay off this loan with an interest rate of .125% add on top of it" they said, hoping the numbers they were saying were the correct numbers as their hands worried the paper they were holding inside of them.

Sugar

Sugar shook her head. "I can't made heads or tails of this, Clark, just give me a number." She said, standing. She walked into the kitchen and grabbed her checkbook and pen and walked back into the dining room. She opened the book and poised her pen, looking to Clark for an answer.

Clark

Clark watched Sugar walk out of the room, brows furrowed. Didn't Sugar understand money and how everything worked? They shook their head when the girl walked back into the room. "Um. $35,000" they said before looking down at their paper again. "They're accepting $29,500 for the house and then it's $3,000 to ship it here and then it's $2,500 for first and last months rent for the land. It'll be $1,250 a month for rent which is gonna be rough but I think I'm gonna put my $10,000 prize money into the rent for the year so I don't have to worry about it" they explained.

Sugar

"Okayyyy..." She said, scribbling down the information on the check. She made it out to CASH, unsure of what name was on Clark's ID, the amount, in the notes she wrote "gift" and finally, with a flourish, her signature. She ripped the check from the book and slid it over to Clark, making no mention of the fact that it was made out for $50,000 instead of 35. "That includes your bet win." She said casually

Clark

Clark watched Sugar write out the check and hand it over, looking at the girl before looking down at the check. They furrowed their eyebrows, trying to do math in their heads before pulling out their phone and adding everything up before looking back up. "This is too much?" they said before scribbling some numbers down on a sheet of paper and crossing them out before scribbling more numbers down and trying to do math on their phone, clenching their teeth as they tried to get all the numbers to stop swirling around on the page in front of them.

Sugar

Sugar shrugged. "I like round numbers!" She smiled. "Just, put the extra 5 grand toward your rent too, or toward new bedding or something!" Simon gave his bark of approval. "Do you want something to drink or something? Or like a snack? I'm kind of starving."

Clark

Clark shook their head. "The extra 5 grand puts it up to a 15 year loan though. Are you okay with that?" the asked, shaking their head again. "And how am I supposed to put this in the bank if it's made out to cash. That's not my name" they continued, still confused.

Sugar

Furrowing her brow, Sugar leaned against the table. "Loan?" She shook her head, what was Clark babbling about, did they not want the money? "You just take it to my bank and cash it, and then you put the money in your bank... I wasn't sure what name was on your ID, so I figured cash was just easier. And then you can keep some extra cash if you want...." Had she done something wrong?

Clark

Clark was so confused. "Yeah. Loan. You loan me the money I pay you back. That's what I was talking about. I can get a second job and it would be.." they said shuffling through the pages in front of them. "$287 a month. I would pay you that over the next 12 years to pay you back $40,000 because I was adding a 12.5% interest to it" they explained.

Sugar

"You don't need to pay me back, Clark." Sugar shook her head, she knew it was a large amount of money, she wasn't stupid, but it was genuinely less than she usually spent on clothes in a week. She could afford to help Clark out, and she wanted Clark to know that everything was fine between them after their disagreement, she didn't want Clark to think she was going to start being weird about money.

Clark

Clark's jaw literally dropped. They were frozen in shock for a few seconds before shaking their head. "No dude. You can't just give me $40,000" they said before setting the check down in front of them. "This is a huge deal to me. Getting a house and staying in one place for at least a year if not longer. I never thought I'd leave Eileen until I got a new car. So this is huge for me. And I wanna do it right. I don't want you to think I'm just using you for money because that's not...that's not the case at all. I'm asking you because a bank would say no, but I need the money to pull this off and a loan is the only way for me to do that" they rambled, their thoughts not even coming out in full sentences yet. "We literally just had an argument about this like...less than a week ago. I don't want you to sit here and think you're money is all i see you as because it's not. I just...you were my only option at securing a loan. You giving me money is not a loan. And I don't want you to think that I'm only sticking around because you're giving me money." Their brain was not comprehending the fact that Sugar wanted to give her such a large amount  of money. This was more money than they'd ever seen in their entire life time. They had no idea how to comprehend what was going on.

Sugar

Sugar reached out and put her hand over Clark's. "Clark, you're my friend. You need money for a house and I have it. I don't..." She paused. "Look, I feel really bad for getting so worked up about all that, I was just feeling really weird and I was on edge and you just... pushed a button, but I know you don't really care about my money, I mean, if you did you'd have taken advantage of all this by now. Unless you're running like the longest con ever. So, please, let me do this." She chewed her lip. "Will it help if the gift comes with conditions? So it feels more... contractural?"

Clark

Clark could feel tears welling up in their eyes but they didn't know why. They could see how genuine Sugar was when she spoke and they shook their head. "Why can't I just pay you back?" they asked, not knowing how else to thank the girl for the check in between them.

Sugar

"Because you're already going to school and working at the shop, and my friendship is very high maintenance, I can't have some stupid second job cutting into my ice cream time!" She said, as if it were completely obvious. "This money is supposed to make your life easier not harder, so no second job. What you can do is buy me dinner once a month. I want an actual meal too, not drive thru. I mean... you can buy me drive thru too, but it won't count... and you can't ask me for money again for.... um... a year?" She was trying to think of conditions that would make Clark more comfortable. "And you can't tell anyone you got the money from me. I mean, I'll probably tell Finn, but besides him."

Clark

Clark listened to the girls conditions, biting the inside of their lip as they did so. If Sugar wasn't gonna take their money, they'd have to get creative so they put that thought in the back of their mind before nodding. "Okay. Okay fine but can we put it in writing? And honestly, I don't think I'll ever ask you for money again because this is way too much for a lifetime" they said as they looked down at the check again.

Sugar

Sugar nodded. "Of course, I'll have my lawyer draw something up." She leaned back, her eyes scanning Clark, trying to figure them out. "Do you want this house? Is it a place you can be proud of and feel safe and at home?"

Clark

Clark nodded before locking eyes with the girl and nodding again. "I've done my research. And I'm sick of the parking tickets I have to contest. It's too much time and money. And I plan on sticking around for at least a year. I want a little bit of space and I think this is the best option for me. I've done my research, I've looked at a lot of different places and I think this is really gonna probably be my forever home" they said honestly.

Sugar

"Then it's worth it." Sugar said, nodding toward the check. As far as she was concerned the case was closed. "So, like... was that a no on the snack, or...?" Making dreams come true seemed to really work up an appetite, and she had already been hungry before Clark had come over, almost as if she associated Clark with food.

Clark

Clark ran a hand through their hair as they nodded. Picking up the check, the pulled out their wallet and put the check inside just to keep it safe before turning back to Sugar. "I'm down. How about those pizza puffs?" they asked with a smile. Standing up with Sugar, they reached out and grabbed her arm before wrapping their own arms around the girl in a hug. "Seriously. Thank you" they whispered.

Sugar

Sugar laughed. "I'm sure I have some somewhere." She stood, ready to lead the way into the kitchen. Suddenly, she was being wrapped in a hug, and she smiled, returning the hug and relaxing into it. It felt nice to just be normal with Clark again, like their fight was finally actually behind them. "You're welcome." She whispered back, happy to have been able to help.

Clark

Clark let the hug go one for a moment longer before pulling back some. "Okay. Enough with numbers and sappy shit. Food" they said with a grin as they pointed towards the kitchen, happy to follow the girl into it.

[streetlites]

“Thanks for coming out here – I just don’t have any time for myself today. After I get out of here I have to go to a shoot and then an interview and then – “she sighs as she dumps some of the contents of the small bag I just sold her onto a glass table.

“Yeah, no problem,” I say, nodding.

“I just need a pick-me-up,” she explains, her hands deftly cutting the powder into lines while I stuff my wallet in my back pocket.

“Right, I hear you.” That’s what I don’t like about selling coke – a lot of the people that buy it are talkers. Especially the people that still have an image that they want to maintain, people in positions of power. They make excuses: “Oh, I don’t usually do this.” “I need this because I’ve been so busy.” “I’ve got a big negotiation coming up.”  Like I’m going to judge them for it when I’m the one taking their money.

This woman is no different – she’s a singer, her first two albums were bangers but the last one was pretty weak, in my opinion. This week she’s calling me because she’s so busy but next week she’ll call me because she wants to enjoy a week off and wants more energy to enjoy it with. And the week after that... And the week after that… Until she goes on tour and then she’ll have to find someone on the road.

She snorts a line and she sighs with satisfaction. “So,” she starts and I curse myself for hanging around – talking to people on coke is the worst, they begin talkers and then it’s just words flying at you without any sort of the give-and-take that’s supposed to come with conversation. “I was talking to Justine the other day and she told me you sell Ruby. You know Justine Jules, don’t you?”

“I know her,” I answer, mentally wincing because I already know what she’s going to ask. Thing about people caring about your opinion when they’re buying coke disappears when they’re on it.

“Yeah, I know. Everyone knows Justine, she’s just everywhere now. I think if I decided to model like that I could be bigger than she is. I should push for something high fashion during the shoot this afternoon, see if I can pick up a makeup or perfume endorsement. Lancôme or Gucci...”

I’m tuning out her voice trying to figure out how to leave when I notice her staring up at me expectantly, “Well, do you?”

“Do I what?” Shit, I didn’t hear any of that.

“Have Ruby?” She looks annoyed that she’s having to repeat her question. I guess its because most of the people she surrounds herself with jump at her every word but now that I have her money, I couldn’t care less.

“Nah, I don’t have any on me right now.”

“But you do have some.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to use that shit. It’s rough, you’ll scratch up your face.” Someone overhearing this might think I’m looking out for her but, truth, I’m looking out for me. If she gets into Ruby and fucks herself up, I’m going to lose a regular.

“No, I won’t. Jules uses and she doesn’t either. Not everyone scratches.”

I shrug my shoulders, “You’re right.” I don’t tell her that Jules does scratch, just not her face. There’s a reason why you’ll see her wearing long-sleeves in the middle of this heat but that’s none of my business and it’s not my place to tell other people.

The woman rolls her eyes and shakes her head, “Look, I’m going to a party thrown by my label tonight. You get me some Ruby and I’ll take you with me. Introduce you as my guy.”

That makes me stop, what’s one regular for many new ones? “Your guy? Like what? Your boyfriend or something?”

She shrugs her shoulders, “If you want, it’ll get you in the tabloids for about a week if you’re into that sort of thing. I just want a couple tabs, everyone says it lasts way longer than coke. I’ll pay.”

“It does,” I nod. Well, shit, if she wants to introduce me to people with money, she can have whatever she wants. And she’s not naïve either about why I don’t want to sell it to her, even if she is about scratching. Everyone scratches, some worse than others. “How do you want it? Gummies? Sugar cubes? Paper?”

“Better make it paper, I’m on a low-carb diet.” She gets up and scribbles something on a scrap of paper and hands it to me, “Here’s my address, come by around 9 and we’ll head out by 10. And,” she eyes me critically, “wear something nicer than that.”

“What? Like khakis?”

“Are you 15 or something?” she snorts. “Slacks and a button-down. Figure it out, I don’t want to be embarrassed. I’ve got to go back in the studio. Remember – 9.”

I scoff and leave. I should turn up in a clown outfit but I want the sales more. I just made enough to cover the cut LA-13 takes, so everything I have left to sell is pure profit. I’m trying to figure out what I should wear so I can carry enough to make bank tonight. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to carry Ruby on me, which I really don’t like because the scratchers are a whole mess. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in a zombie movie, go down to Spice and announce you’re carrying but you’re not going to sell or give out any to anyone and try to survive. That’s what those people are like. That’s why you’ve got to pay up in full for it from suppliers. No breaks, no percents.

I’m not paying attention when I wander into the Fashion District, thinking about heading out to a studio I know of where there’s a lot of shoots happening. Models love coke and guys trying to fuck them will empty their pockets to get at it. So I don’t notice the two Kings until one of them yells, “Hey, asshole! Where are you going?”

I feel my stomach dropping. I thought by not wearing colors I’d be harder to spot, but I’ve already run into these guys once already. Lucky my ass didn’t have shit on me then, but I do now and if they catch me, they’ll kill me. So I do what anyone facing an ass-beating would do: Run.

I was a fast runner in school – I was even in track for a little while and did really good on heats. But the speed I put in my steps would have smoked that boy when I hear a pop go off behind me. I tear through alleyways and side streets, dodging pallets of inventory and bags of trash behind the stores. There’s a feeling creeping through me, electric, a pressure that I’m trying to release pumping though my legs. It feels like it’s vibrating, pulsing with my erratic heartbeat. I suppose it’s adrenaline, giving me a push to get away. I don’t fight it, I need all the help I can get to get out of their range.

I can really lose them in the subway and if I make it to Civagua without them behind me, I’ll be completely safe. I’m looking over my shoulder, feeling some relief when I don’t see the guys behind me anymore but I don’t slow my stride. I clip a guy coming out of an alley - big motherfucker, he barely budges when we connect. I wave at him when he yells at me to watch where I’m fucking going and then I really knock into someone, she squeaks out a ‘hey!’ before we both wipeout on the sidewalk.

The vibration kicks up, feels like it’s bouncing from me to her and back again. It’s disorienting – and everything is tinged blue. I don’t think I hit my head, but there is pressure behind my eyes, and I think I might be getting a migraine when the person beneath me asks me, “Are you doing that?”

She’s pretty, even with the worry pulling at her face. I don’t know what she’s got to worry about, its my head that feels like it’s going to split open, my body shaky from the adrenaline coursing through my veins, my ass that’s going to die if I get caught. I get off of her and press on my forehead, trying to stave off this headache, she’s looking at me like I’m something she’s afraid to touch.

Normally, I’d have some shit to say, offer her something to touch if she wants but it’s more important that I get my head on straight and keep moving. “No,” I shake my head, come the fuck on! “I’m not doing anything.” I look up at her and she’s looking at the guy I just bumped into, kind of sad, and nods. I don’t know what that’s about and I don’t have time to think about it because the assholes have found me.

“Fuck! Sorry!” I yell, leaving the sad girl sitting on the sidewalk behind me. I’ve got more important things to worry about.

Like not getting shot.

 **many thanks to @lyrics-and-intoxication for allowing me to abuse her beautiful Jake**

[dippedanddripped]

There was a time when climate change seemed like one piece on the checkerboard of world problems, a piece perhaps sandwiched between war in a remote country and the fact that the bees were dying, which you knew you were supposed to be upset about even if you weren't sure exactly why.

But then a terrifying article in New York Magazine about the soon-to-be "uninhabitable earth" went viral, and teens all over the world ditched school to protest in the streets, and fires ravaged California and storms pummeled the Bahamas, and a bunch of UN scientists told us we had a little over a decade to turn things around. In short: The zeitgeist began to change. For many, climate change went from feeling like one problem piece out of many to the board on which the whole game is played.

"Climate change is the biggest problem of our generation and the most urgent one to solve," Hana Kajimura, a sustainability analyst at Silicon Valley's favorite sneaker company, Allbirds, tells Fashionista over the phone. She's not alone in her thinking.

Just a few months prior to our conversation, Allbirds had announced that it was going "100% carbon neutral" as a way of reckoning with the fact that it, like every other brand or business, is an emitter of some of the greenhouse gases (or GHGs) causing global warming. The news came days after Everlane launched its first ever "carbon-neutral" product. And they were both preceded by Reformation, which had been calling itself carbon neutral since 2015.

Not long after, these millennial-friendly labels known for their sustainability-centric marketing were joined by their luxury peers: Gabriela Hearst, whose $6,000 handbags have become a fixture in the wardrobe of Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, claimed to host the first ever carbon-neutral runway show at New York Fashion Week. Gucci declared its operations — including its extensive global supply chain and its latest fashion show — 100% carbon neutral earlier this month. And on Tuesday, Kering, the luxury conglomerate behind Gucci, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, announced that it too was committing to carbon neutrality.

If climate change is caused by releasing gases like carbon into the atmosphere, then becoming carbon neutral is the best thing a brand can do, right? In theory, yes. Unfortunately, getting there isn't quite as straightforward as brands often make it sound.

Most achieve "carbon neutrality" through a combination of reducing emissions and purchasing carbon offsets. The former, which might include switching to renewable energy in a brand's warehouses, is pretty universally applauded by environmentalists. The latter, in which a brand pays someone else to either capture or avoid emitting a given amount of carbon elsewhere to make up for the fact that the brand emitted that amount itself, is more controversial.

"We tend to think of [offsets] as sort of being able to offset a company's guilt, as opposed to its true environmental footprint," Dr. Amy Moas, a senior forest campaigner at Greenpeace, tells Fashionista.

There are a few key critiques that offsetting skeptics make: that it gives corporations an excuse not to shrink their direct emissions, that the offsetting market is historically unreliable, and that accounting for offsets is often inaccurate.

Most brands are aware of the first critique — that buying offsets is just an excuse not to reduce emissions — and every representative I spoke to for this story assured me they were being vigilant on this front. Gucci stated in a release that it has "already achieved a 16% reduction of its overall footprint across its supply chain since 2015, relative to growth," and Reformation's Vice President of Operations and Sustainability Kathleen Talbot told me on the phone that "you have to be really careful that you're starting with reduction."

The second common critique is that the offsetting market has a history of unreliability. This stems from the market's nascency, when it was riddled with frauds. A 2010 investigation by the Christian Science Monitor uncovered offset providers that sold the Pope himself on the idea that they were planting carbon-sucking trees on behalf of the Vatican — without lifting a finger to do so.

"There were [offset provider] companies out there that were not developing the best projects, and it certainly gave the industry a black eye for a period of time," says Kevin Hackett, the client strategy director at a carbon offsetting provider called Native Energy, which works with Everlane, Reformation and Eileen Fisher.

"But what happened was that as the standards got stronger," he continues, "and as brands and companies became more aware of the issues and more adept at figuring out which projects worked and doing due diligence, those [fraudulent] companies began to disappear."

Many would agree with Hackett that regulations have gotten stronger: It's much harder to sell a project that doesn't exist these days. But environmentalists like Dr. Moas might still make the third critique, that carbon offsets are tricky to properly account for even without con men perpetrating intentional fraud.

This is where it gets tricky. There are numerous kinds of projects a brand can invest in: Some fund the capture of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, that leaks from landfills. Others get a wind farm up and running so that locals can stop relying on coal-powered energy. Still others provide rural communities in the developing world with water filters so that they don't have to cut down trees to boil their water so it's safe to drink. And so on.

With so much variety, even the most strident of offset defenders would agree that not all projects are created equal. Permanence is one concern: Will a project's carbon benefit disappear tomorrow if it's based on something like a protected forest that could burn down? Additionality is another key quality to look for in a trustworthy offset: It means the carbon benefit genuinely wouldn't have happened without the offset money. In other words, you can't just pay a landowner to not cut down trees he wasn't planning to cut down anyway, or that offset wouldn't be considered additional.

Leakage is a third concern. If you paid to protect trees in land plot A, and the landowner took your money to protect those trees but then just cut down trees in adjacent plot B, that would be considered leakage. You didn't prevent the carbon-sucking trees from being cut down, you just caused the site of the chopping to change. On top of that, there's the concern of whether or not the offset project has the potential to harm communities that might live nearby.

When taking these criteria into account, forestry-related offsets — including the UN-backed REDD+ forestry projects which make up the entirety of Kering and Gucci's offsetting portfolio — become particularly suspect.

A scene from Gucci's "carbon neutral" runway show in Milan this season. Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

"There has not been one [forest offsetting project] that we have found that has been able to provide the long-term, verifiable emissions reductions without [negative] human rights impacts," Greenpeace's Dr. Moas says. "Not one."

Dr. Tracey Osborne, an associate professor at the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona, has been researching carbon offsets and offsetting markets for two decades. Though she highlights the importance of protecting forests and even thinks brands could play a role in this, she agrees with Dr. Moas that forest offsets as they currently exist are problematic.

"Right now forests are seen as cheap credits, the low-hanging fruit," she explains on the phone. "But if we do it properly, they actually would cost a lot more."

Because current forest offset prices are so low, she continues, the money is not sufficient to prevent cattle ranching, soy production, palm oil production or large-scale timber operations, which are often the real drivers of deforestation in the tropical nations where these projects are focused. Instead, cheaper offsets tend to target local indigenous communities and their subsistence practices even though research from organizations like National Geographic and Project Drawdown has demonstrated that indigenous land management practices can actually reduce emissions and deforestation.

In short: There's a lot of ways that offsets can go wrong and render themselves either ineffective at reducing net carbon in the atmosphere, or even become actively harmful to vulnerable communities.

As if all that weren't enough, there's an inconsistency in carbon offset bookkeeping so blatant it's almost hard to believe.

Aldyen Donnelly is a former consultant who's been involved in carbon trading since the early '90s. By 2003, she was the largest private speculative buyer of offset credit in the world — surpassed only by organizations like the World Bank, she says. In short, she knows the market inside and out. While she acknowledges many of the other pitfalls listed here, one of the biggest in her view stems from a simple math problem.

"There are a lot of companies who are buying offset credits and saying, 'Now we're carbon neutral!' and they're not bad guys; they have every reason to think they are [carbon neutral]," she says on the phone. "But they're buying certificates with a stated value of one ton when the underlying value of the certificates is, at best, if everything else is done perfectly, a half a ton."

The reason is simple: international carbon markets don't consistently practice double-entry bookkeeping. In other words, when a brand buys offsets across international borders, the seller isn't subtracting what they've sold from their country's total carbon reductions, even though the buyer is adding it to theirs.

To illustrate: Let's say a landowner in Brazil says "I have a project that draws down ten tons of carbon from the atmosphere," and a brand in France says, "I'd like to buy two tons' worth from you to make up for the two tons I just emitted." You'd think that after the sale, Brazil's carbon registry would have to enter a -2 in its log, since France just added a +2. But up to this point, that's not how it has worked — instead, Brazil keeps its number the same even as France adds +2.

What that means for brands is that when they think they've purchased 500 tons worth of carbon offsets across international borders, there's really only a net gain of about 250 tons at the most — and that's if they've managed to avoid all the other pitfalls listed above. It's such a silly math mistake that it's hard to believe it's happening in something as large as the multibillion-dollar offset industry. But other experts confirmed what Donnelly told me: Though there are moves to change this system, that change is still years away from being realized.

All of these issues point to the main reason Dr. Moas remains less than enthusiastic about offsets — they let companies treat the real, measurable carbon they're emitting now as interchangeable with the potential (and potentially smaller-than-they-thought) carbon savings that may result in the future from their offsetting projects.

From this vantage point, it would be easy to see why some want to write carbon offsetting off as greenwashing and move on.

But consider that even if every company in the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow (which, of course, they won't), the Earth would still have far surpassed what scientists consider a safe amount of carbon in the atmosphere. It becomes easier to see why there are still plenty of people willing to do anything they can think of to keep that number from growing.

"You can always argue that it's better not to emit in the first place, and that's what we try to convince our clients to do," says Arnaud Brohe, CEO of offset provider CO2 Logic. "But we believe that if you do emit, it's also better to clean up after your mess."

Brohe tells me that he'd love for governments to do such a great job fighting or regulating emissions that his company and job could cease to exist. But until then, he thinks offsets are a good way for corporations to voluntarily put a price on their own carbon.

"If you don't want to support one of my projects, I think it's great if you take the same amount of money and invest in some other [climate] action," Brohe says. "But just saying 'I'm against offsets' is not going to work."

For all of the ways that carbon offsetting can go awry, especially in forest-related projects, there really is scientific reason to not give up the whole endeavor entirely. It just might mean switching to projects that aren't exactly... sexy. Separating manure solids on a dairy farm, as Native Energy does in one of its offsetting projects, might not be as marketable to a luxury customer as planting trees in Milan is. But it's probably delivering a more reliable offset.

And while some might claim that offsets let brands pay to pollute, the money they're handing over can make a real difference for farmers and other private landowners, who often need financial support to become more climate-friendly operations. Regenerative agriculture practices, for example, have incredible potential to draw carbon out of the atmosphere, but there can be financial barriers for farmers who want to begin implementing them.

Dr. Adam Chambers, a seasoned climate scientist who works for the USDA, sees the offsetting market's potential to defray these costs as a significant boon.

"Seventy percent of the land area in the United States is privately owned, and you can mobilize those lands for solutions," he says on the phone. "What we haven't done in the past is empowered farmers and ranchers to be part of the climate solution, and provided them with a market signal that encourages a certain type of behavior."

Donnelly, despite spending a good portion of our interview talking about how offsets can go wrong, ultimately aligns with Dr. Chambers in his excitement about farming and soil. She believes in their climate change-fighting potential so thoroughly that she's helping launch Nori, a new offsetting marketplace, before the end of the year. Through Nori, Donnelly hopes to offer farmers the support they need to take on worthwhile climate projects while ensuring corporations that when they buy one ton's worth of offsets, that's really what they're getting.

And Dr. Osborne, the climate scientist from University of Arizona, says that forest offsets don't need to be written off indefinitely. Working closely with indigenous communities and independent researchers to correct past mistakes could result in new projects that do more to protect the crucial biodiversity and carbon-capturing potential of forests.

In the end, it seems that the best attitude toward carbon offsetting mimics the best attitude toward sustainable fashion innovation: A certain skepticism is required to sort out legitimate claims from the illegitimate ones, and there will be plenty of the latter. But the existence of shoddy attempts shouldn't be a reason to stop trying entirely. Instead, it should serve as a reminder that extreme caution is necessary.

In the end, Dr. Osborne says, "our world is not going to be saved by offsets." But that's not a reason to totally do away with them.

"In order to truly transform, to make a U-turn on climate, it will require massive transformation in our social, political and economic life," she says. "But an offset is one step... It's a way of starting to move the needle in the right direction."

[johnnysnostril]

You’ve Always Been Mine

chapter 9

`jooheon

walking back to the dressing room with nori, i felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. reaching for it, i looked at the screen and seulgi’s name appeared. i sighed and bit my lip.

“whats the matter?” nori said as she was now facing me. i shook my head. “nothing.” i lied. “just our manager.”

nori slightly pouted. “do you have to leave now?” she tilted her head and looked up at me. i smiled and grabbed her waist, kissing her forehead. “of course not. why don't you give me a fashion show, hm?”

`misun

as i shimmied into one of the skirts that i picked, i glanced at shownu through the mirror. he was watching my hips as i moved and i slightly snickered.

“why don't you take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

i signaled him to help me with the zipper in the back and he smirked. he approached me from behind and instead of pulling the zipper up, he pulled the skirt down.

my body shivered and i arched my back a bit.

“what are you so nervous for?” he said whispering in my ear, as my skirt hit the floor. i shut my eyes and tried to steady my breathing, as he tossed my hair off my shoulder- exposing my bra strap.

unconsciously, i tilted my head to give him access to my neck and he took the bait.

his strong, muscular arms wrapped around my waist and he pulled me into his chest. shownu’s lips attached to my neck and suddenly, i felt my legs go weak.

i almost slipped out of his arms, but he held me tight- as he chuckled a bit before running his tongue across my skin.

`nori

i stood in the dressing room, looking at myself in the mirror. “jooheon..” i bit my bottom lip. “i really cant try these clothes on. i just cant.”

i rolled my eyes as i heard him laugh.

“okay, i wont force you then.” jooheon snatched back the curtain and smiled. “we’ll just buy everything you’ve picked.” he said folding his arms across his chest.

“oh my god, no!” i shouted. “are you crazy?! this shit is expensive.”

i pushed past him and took his hand, dragging him with me.

“do you think i would set this up for you and misun, if i didn't have the money to pay for it?” he gently pulled on my arm, signaling me to stop.

“nori, relax. let me do something nice for you.” his eyes were soft as he looked down at me. his lips were curved into a slight smile and it felt like the perfect time for us to kiss.

“i cant let you do that. it’s really too much.” i pulled my hand back, and started walking around the store- looking at everything.

`jooheon

calling over one of the employees, i watched nori as she looked at a few purses.

“we’ll take everything in both dressing rooms. just hold them from now, they’re still shopping.” the employee nodded and gracefully collected nori’s selection.

approaching her from behind, i wrapped my arms around her waist.

“why wont you let me take care of you?” i said planting a kiss on her shoulder.

“because, i feel bad. i really don't need you spending all your money on me, jooheon.” nori turned to face me, looking down and playing with the bottom of my shirt.

i sighed, nodding my head. i already had my mind set, i was just letting her win this one- for now.

moments later, misun and shownu came out of the dressing room. shownu took all her clothes to the register and she came skipping over to us.

“find anything you like?” i asked smiling. she rolled her eyes and laughed.

“duh, jooheon. it’s the gucci store. of course i did.” misun playful slapped my shoulder. “seriously, thank you. we had a blast today. it’s been awhile since i’ve seen nori this happy.” misun winked over in her direction, then made her way over to shownu.

as we waited for our separate cars to pick us up, i made arrangements to have the clothing and bags, delivered to the girls’ apartment.

IN THE CAR

nori’s head was resting on my shoulder and her eyes were slowly closing.

“you sleepy?” i whispered softly as i rubbed her shoulder.

she slowly nodded and finally shut her eyes. i smiled down at her and kissed her forehead. “do you wanna go back home and get some rest?”

nori picked up her head and pouted. “no, please. i dont wanna leave you.”

a few minutes later, we pulled up to the studio. rushing inside, i lead nori into the elevator and press floor 12.

“i cant believe you’re still in my clothes from last night.” i chuckled and cupped her cheeks, kissing her lips.

“they smell like you.” she said in a sleepy tone before kissing back.

exiting the double doors, we walked to the studio. upon entering, i flipped on the switch to the lights.

nori gasped silently. “wow..” she whispered. i turned back to glanced at her and she smiled. “this is so cool.”

“lay down, i wont be long- i promise.” taking her hand, i lead her to the couch and took off my hoodie, giving it to her.

she nodded and covered up with the hoodie and dozed off.

pulling up a few songs, i went over everything and wrote down a few lyrics to some instrumentals. glancing over at the clock, i didnt notice how long we were actually here.

8:32pm

shit, i should get her some food and take her home.

i glanced back at nori, who was sound asleep still. i smiled and turned my chair around to admire her. she was just so beautiful. she looked so peaceful when she slept. i stood up, walking over to her and sat down. trying to wake her up, i kissed her lips a few times.

“babygirl.” i whispered. she groaned a bit and opened her eyes.

“how long have i been sleep?” she asked.

“just a couple hours. ready to go?” i pushed her hair out of her face as she nodded.

`nori

“can i just get some water?” i sat up and wrapped my arms around jooheon’s neck.

“of course.” he rubbed my back as we hugged for a little bit. 

as jooheon walked out the studio, and into the kitchen that was located in a separate room- there was a knock at the door.

 the curtains were pulled over the windows so i couldn’t see who it was.

“jooheon.. there’s someone at the door.” i said softly.

what if it was his manager? i was definitely not supposed to be here with him.

“just open it, babe. its probably shownu and misun.” he shouted out to me.

as i approached the door, i rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and turned the knob.

my eyes widen as i noticed that it wasn’t shownu and misun.

“who is it?” i heard jooheon’s voice call out.

i couldn’t answer. i was frozen.

“babe?” jooheon called out for me once again. “who’s at the-” he rounded the corner and stopped in his tracks.

“seulgi? what are you doing here?”