#Did he know this was the same joke as the one in the lover music video? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

redcherrykook · 5 months ago

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── ˙✧°📷 TORN PICTURES AND FROZEN LENSES 1

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College Photography Teacher!Jungkook x Student!Reader

27 year old, stupidly handsome asshole teacher Mr. Jeon has absolutely no human decency, he believes your victim complex is what keeps you from ever achieving anything, letting people use you as a bridge. When something unexpected happens, the ice starts to melt as a foreign word called "empathy" enters his egocentric lense. Maybe he will finally manage to teach you a lesson now, since you keep failing his class.

(Mini series)- Episode one!

Song recommendation: bloodline- ariana grande

Content: Cold, mean, distant, unprofessional Jungkook, hurt, stubborn reader, enemies to lovers, lowkey dramatic, accident happens, mutually beneficial relationship (emotionally), Jk learns a lot from her, Jk is mean but has a soft spot for reader (eventually), 6 year age gap, Reader is from a struggling background, Jk kind of rescues her, happy ending, angst at first, fluff, smut, comedy/crack, bickering, college setting, brief hospital setting

Warnings: swearing, name-calling,mentions of an accident involving a biker, mentions of hospital, really mean Jungkook, i promise he gets sweet, mentions of trauma and abuse (non detailed), mental health struggles (semi detailed), arguments

Notes: Hey lovelies! This is my first time on tumblr. pls be nice! leave a comment if you like, feel free to go to my ask! to request drabbles of this couple

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A picture speaks more than a thousand words, so do eyes

At least when 26 pairs of them stare at you for being late, again. To be precise, for the 5th time in a row.

"Miss Y/n? what a surprise" Mr. Jeon stares through his glasses, direct and monotone as usual.

Bowing, you try to sit down at your desk that´s next to the door. "What is it this time? Couldn´t find your pens?" A almost routine like greeting from your teacher when you show up to class late. He tries to guess your reasoning each and every time, while increasingly mocking you. Just last week, when you showed up in a stained Shirt, he asked if you had to wash your clothes first before coming to class. You bet he found that hilarious.

On this day, his creativity seemingly died down, while his sarcasm certainly did not. "No sir, simply could not catch the bus. I apologize" you shake your head. Turning back to the Presentation behind him, wordlessly he resumes the lesson.

So likewise, you sit there. Waiting for it to be over. Photography has never been your strong suit but as a performing arts major, you needed this class to pass.

Not that you ever passed his class before, not in your first semester and certainly not in this second one.

"I will hand back your portfolios for the midterm preparations. I´m far too busy to be disappointed with them, although there are a few that gave me nightmares" his steps are small but powerful as he walks around the classroom, head pointed to the floor, his fluffy brown hair making it hard to read his face. It was blank, no one needed to see it to know. With his arms folded across his chest, he stands still.

If any other teacher had joked about having nightmares from awful projects, the class would have bursted into laughter and groans. In mister Jeon´s class, it remains silent, because for him, it´s not a joke.

Grabbing the pile of folders on his desk, he parades around the classroom, silently throwing folders down on the desk of the student it belongs to. Occasionally, a sigh of relief can be heard from your classmates.

When he reaches your desk, he slams the folder down, scoffing with his belittling smirk. It´s rare to see his face outside of his blank expression or unamused scoff, but when it does change, it is never positive.

Failed, repeatedly.

For one, because you prioritized other classes, far more important ones. Staying up until ungodly hours in the night to research for your English literature class and at the same time, trying to recall the notes for your practical music exam took a lot out of you. On second viewing, because your shitty 3 year old camera is barely holding on and you have no sense of stylistic layout or skill for settings and atmospheres. Not in pictures, at least.

Like you said, photography has never been your strong suit.

The bell finally releases you from the horrible strings of mr. Jeons depressing class, that is until his stern voice stops you from actually leaving.

"I have never had a student as careless as you" his scoff is as belittling as his eyes that look down at you. Without having to say it, they tell you how highly he thinks of himself, how lowly he thinks of you. Mr. Jeon has never been nice, too straight forward, never showing understanding for any misdemeanor. Handed the assignment in 5 minutes late? He would not dare grade it, even touch it. If you had worked tirelessly? , too bad. Ignoring the evidence of eyebags and puffy faces, he believes everyone simply lacks discipline.

"You show up late every time, fail every single exam, barely pass any group participation. Do you need this class for credits? I would drop out and take something that doesn´t require thinking, like theater. You have no chance of passing here" The words fall off his tongue naturally, so do the last footsteps of students leaving the class.

"I do not understand sir, why this concerns you at all. You have no consideration or awareness of my circumstances, I would expect some empathy from someone who´s job it is to interact with people" Honesty is not owned by him, for once, you decide to not let people treat you as if you were below them.

Once again, a scoff paints his lips as he steps closer, his eyebrows furrowing ever so slightly like he is taken by surprise from the sudden change of heart you seemingly underwent. Maybe it is just that no one has ever tried to talk back to him, knowing it leads practically nowhere. You know that as well, but the need to try and scream for the smallest drop of understanding, maybe even reassurance overcomes you with the sudden confrontation.

"Understanding? I think you are the one that needs to understand. Grow up, the world isn´t made to adapt and cradle you" It´s now your turn to scoff, your head shaking with a laugh of disbelief.

"That is exactly what I meant. The way my life is, I am well aware, mr. Jeon, that the world does not give a fuck about its people. Maybe, just maybe you know" you pause, searching his face for reaction as the frustration boils up, begging to be led out. As expected, it reads nothing. "You could try to see things apart from yourself, not everyone lives a life like yours"

"Oh my god, you poor little thing hm? What is it, lost your Phone? Got broken up with? People like you will find anything, anything in order to avert the blame. Its so-" he stops, his eyes darkening, the tattooed hand slips out of his pocket to swipe right through his hair. In a whisper of disgust, he resumes "...pathetic"

As a means to shield yourself from the way he spits out his words, your voice raises.

"Lost my home among other things, that good enough?" The words leave your mouth hurriedly, while wishing to be met with a soft smile. Stupidly enough, you know that´s very far from the reality that will weigh down on you in a matter of seconds. According to him, you are delusional anyways

The secret of yours that you had kept so warmly, so safely deep down in your mind had crept its way out your mouth, betraying you shamelessly. Not as shameless as the blatant lack of sympathy from the male stood in front of you.

" Good enough? Everyone has some shit they went through. You´re simply a loser, a lonely loser who cannot get over themselves. Get some help kid if you can´t do things for yourself but stop expecting people to let everything slide because of your helplessness. This huge victim complex of yours is infuriating. Did you expect me to cry and say oh what a cruel world, you poor little girl, i will let you pass my class?" Relentlessly he rants, with every word the sound of a distant laughter in your mind grows.

Regret.

Every second that passes he manages to give you further proof that you were never to find a spot in people's uselessly stern hearts.

Stammering to leave, the only words you manage to utter are "You´re heartless" mustering the courage to look at him is as far gone as your belief in his existence of ability to care.

Out, you want out of this wall tightening lecture hall that´s suffocating you with the strong hands of his stern voice.

"Good thing I don´t rely on the validation of others. I´m suspending you from this class to save you some work you would not do anyways" he turns sharply, walking back to his desk.

Parallel to him, you storm out of the University. Anywhere, anywhere is better right now.

Clouded by the tears of your resurfacing past you run along the streets. History repeats itself, the cycle of trust and naitivity is your biggest weakness.

Giving a way a piece of you for someone to keep safe, for someone to listen to, to care,

It has never worked before.

Stupid.

On and on unsure at this point if you were running from his words or ones of your own mind. They laugh at you, telling you their "I told you so"

Being powered simply by fear, and really, only fear, is far from enough to keep running, but you can´t stop. You can´t see either. Apparently, neither can the biker that runs into you, knocking you cold to the ground.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

"She really did not show up, expected, Good." he mumbles to himself while sorting the material on his desk. The small cubicle like space in the teachers workroom is decorated with photographs of his very own camera. Simple, organized, plain.

"Who did not?" Mrs. Park´s curious voice rings next to him, as his fellow art subject teacher, they share most of their students.

Nosy, he thinks.

"Lee Y/n. I suspended her recently and I-"

"You mean the girl from the accident?" casually she mentions it.

The cut off on the other hand, is sharp and unexpected. Jungkook is shocked for one, because someone interrupted him and two, because of the mention of you in an accident.

"Excuse me, an accident?" mentally cursing at himself for appearing to show interest in the situation, he diverts his attention to the teacher next to him. It must be a misunderstanding.

"Jungkook with all due respect how did you think a girl lying in the hospital for the past three days is going to show up to your class? You and your high expectations" She shakes her head, having completely misjudged the situation. Surprisingly, that is not his priority.

"Three days? How come I have not heard of this? How unreliable" He scoffs, old habits die hard, certainly for Jeon Jungkook.

Mrs. Park hums, reluctantly whispering "Probably because people are.. speculating. She has lots of problems , if you understand what im trying to say" it is subtle, fleeting, but her eyes glance up at him with the raise of an eyebrow

It flashes to Jungkooks as briefly as his coworkers judgemental eyes. His mind goes on to remember his conversation, well, argument with that stupidly helpless student of his.

Three days ago.

Mentally, he shakes his head.

Bullshit.

Even if she tried something, he isn´t to blame.

Right?

"Anyways, I think she is in Incheon hospital now. I might visit her later, she used to be in my literature course" Mrs. Park voice fades out as she stands up to leave.

Doumbfounded he sits there, tied to the chair by the revelation that he might have sent someone to a hospital.

-ˋˏ✄┈┈┈┈

I can not believe I´m driving to the fucking hospital. He curses at himself while punching in the address of Incheon hospital onto his phone. It´s okay Jungkook, you´re doing this for YOUR sanity. Has nothing to do with that idiot. The words keep reassuring him of his selfishness, maybe trying to convince him that what he is feeling is not empathy, no, it is just to soothe his mind.

Why was he anxious in the first place? Not like it would make a change.

And so, 25 minutes of staring blankly at the road commence.

Blankly, because he needed to focus.

Blankly because he was not willing to face the possibilties his thoughts hold at the moment.

When he finally arrives, the huge metal doors welcome him in.

Straight to the receptionist he goes, asking for your room, providing proof of acquaintance with the patient.

What a hassle it was to gather everything, he remembers

And yet it does not stop him from heading up to the second floor.

Having just woken up from your second nap of the day, you audibly groan when the door opens, expecting to see a nurse.

"What the fuck" staring at your asshole photography teacher that is, somehow, in your hospital room.

"Good afternoon to you as well" he replies, as always, far removed from any and all emotion.

"Am I having a nightmare?" Questioning the validity of this surely odd situation, you sit up, combing through your hair. He Sighs, removing his coat and sitting at the chair across from your hospital bed. He would never dare to think he should ask if you even find it tolerable he is there.

He wants to speak to you, so he will.

"No, unfortunately not" Without knowing what to say further, because frankly he does not even know why he came here, he remains silent.

"Did you seriously come here? For what, to tell me to go to school because everyone has accidents and i need to get over myself?" The bitterness of your words match the usual one of his own, tainted ones. However this time, his eyes shift briefly.

Worry.

You think, at least.

"I get it, I was an asshole. Don´t tell me you jumped in front of a biker because of it" the strong, decorated hand of his makes it´s way to rub against his forehead as his voice comes out in a low groan of frustration. No need to sugarcoat, this is all he needed to know from you. Right?

Deciding to use it for a little revenge, you leave his semi question uncommented.

"Came here to apologize? Soothe that non existent conscious of yours, mr. Jeon?" his eyes dart up to meet yours, is it as though he really believes his words may have been the cause.

Regret, maybe. If he is capable of such.

"Fuck seriously? Yes, okay. I came here because" he stops, his tongue pressing the inside of his cheeks as he looks out into the window. The words leave his mouth without him even knowing that prior to hearing it out loud, that is what he felt.

"because I got worried that I made someone try to..." he cannot bring himself to finish that sentence.

"Is that really what people are saying? God that´s awful how am I supposed to go back to College with this being my reputation" small, barely audible you chuckle.

"Ah, no. Well.. partially i guess. I ran out after the hatred you threw at me and unlucky me, your so called cruel world strikes again" At the quoting of his words you make a mockery out of his monotone voice, the absurdity of this conversation still not catching up to you.

"Don´t worry, if that is even possible for you, I will just get over my accident" With an annoyed laugh, Jungkook stands up to stand in front of your hospital bed directly, hands in his slack pockets ever so casually but somehow, dominantly.

"I get it you idiot, I was an awful guy that day, my god give me a break. I came here, all the way here to fucking try and talk to you, give me a chance" his eyes look down at you, bored, plain. His mouth betraying him once more, spilling the unknown truth from his plump pierced lips.

"You sure have a way of asking for things. I want you out quick so, make it fast will you mr, Jeon" your reply makes him tilt his head to the side quickly, muttering a finally under his breath.

"I decided to not suspend you. And I´m deciding that maybe, you should tell me your circumstances. I´m not going to be held accountable if you try some shit"

This is about him, of course.

Just now he's taking an actual look at you, trying to decipher how hurt you really are, he would never bother to ask though.

The bruises on your arms become visibile to him, looking them up and down with tightly pressed eyebrows. They look older, some of them appear fresh.

Is she being hurt? his mind wanders

A snort from you makes him snap out of his thoughts "What? So you can laugh at it?"

He groans in response, "If you stopped being so stubborn and listened to me maybe you would know why. I´m taking your advice god damn it, I´m trying to build understanding" both hands are now running through his longer hair, the frustration of the wall you build up almost making him give up. Deep down, he knows he can´t blame you. The consequences of his own actions are catching up to him slowly, just as the realization of his heart softening ever so slightly does.

Silence fills the room, being the loudest sound to present itself.

"Fine" you roll your eyes at him. Unlike him, you want to show some grace, show him that yeah, it is possible to go through shit and need help. Sometimes people need to be ripped out of their tunnel vision egocentric world to understand their flaws. At the same time, you worry your good heart will once again only lead you too give more than you should be.

"Took you long enough" he remarks snarkily

"Nevermind then"

"Oh my god"

You laugh at his response, making eye contact with him as he laughs too. Small that is, before catching himself doing so. Still, it made a smile try to creep up your lips at the unfamiliar sound.

"That was a first" as if you´d pass up a chance to embarrass him.

"Don´t mention it" returning to his habits as always, the stern teacher voice is perfectly matching his lurking stance. ´´You´re below me´´ practically radiating off of him. What a shame, you had just begun to find him pleasant.

"Okay so, summary: Was admitted into our shitty foster system, got a whole bunch of friendship trauma, had to run away from said foster horror house and am now basically homeless in a women´s shelter. Oh and before you ask, I have a scholarship. I may be poor but I am not a criminal" the hands up in a surrendering pose make up for the awkwardly tense situation after having revealed something so personal to your photography teacher. For the second time. Right now, it´s impossible to tell what he is thinking.

Nodding he starts off his sentence,

"you were right that is a lot. Fuck, now i get why you called me a heartless asshole. Had no idea a twenty-one year old can already live that much shit. I swear, I was convinced you were bullshitting because you just did not care about my class" his rambling turns into muttering when he makes his way back to sit down on the chair, the usually bored eyes of his look softer now, while his words are as insensitive as they have always been.

"You are meaning to tell me that outburst you had on me was because you were pressed i didn´t take your class seriously? I just suck at photography, but i tried" in a subconscious motion your hand clutches your chest melodramatically, a slight smirk tugging on the side of Jungkook´s mouth.

"I know you suck, saw all of those awful collages. I did mean some things I said, someone needs to teach you how to grit your teeth and stand up for yourself, would have taken you seriously much sooner" His deep brown eyes roll with the memory of your conversation, sighing deeply he shakes his head.

Oddly enough, his truthful joke about your inability for photography makes your heart a little warmer. The belittling presence of his turning into a much closer, normal one. While the distance of his emotions is undeniable, the closeness of his growing interest in your life is as well. His mind is occupied with your conversation, unable to focus on his only mission, that is to protect who he is. The mask slips but really, does he still feel like wearing it?

"If that is what you tried to express someone needs to teach you how to empathize and communicate with people, mr. Jeon"

He wants to leave the mask off for just a little longer

"Jungkook" his first name slips out of his lips seamlessly, in the heat of the moment, lost in the fact that for some reason, he wants to understand you. Not in a suggestion, he´s still Jungkook, no is not an option if he set his mind to it. He´s demanding you to adapt to him

"What?"

"Call me Jungkook. We have been far from professional anyways. Calling me mister and all that formal shit makes it weird" his face scrunches up briefly, the embarrassment of acting more like a highschool bully than a teacher is slowly catching up to him.

You can´t help but laugh softly at this whole mess. In a hospital, constantly fighting while simultaneously trauma unpacking with your heartless, maybe not so heartless after all photography teacher who now wants you to call him by his first name.

Cruel world, as he puts it.

"Sure, Jungkook" his name leaves your lips in way so naturally it makes him jump inside.

What the fuck?

"I guess we could learn a lot from each other then, idiot" never failing to remind you of his stance on your personality, the sound echos in the room when his eyes meet yours,

but it is not his eyes that matter in his moment, they have returned to their stern nature long ago,

It is the fact that he softened his voice, as if he was afraid to let you in his mind. As if it was only possible for him to let one small spot of his soften at a time,

While you were just as afraid,

"Yeah. Deal?"

He naturally irritated face showing up to greet you once more

"Seriously? What are you, 12?"

"With the way you're acting i should be asking you that"

Unamused, he manages to mutter out

"Deal"

It's like the nurse had waited for you to be done before entering the room, informing you that visitor time is up and Jungkook needs to leave. Your eyes dart to his as he puts on the coat he had hung up previously, thanking the nurse before shifting his body slightly to hover over your sitting form.

"See you in class then" with that, he leaves you to rethink everything that had happend the past days. More over, he leaves you wondering just how honest he was about the little deal you guys made.

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zara-renata · 25 days ago

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Q&A with Sylus Qin | ao3 | the Sylus series

Summary:

Sylus cares for your injuries and feeds you a meal. After he shows you a part of his home that you didn't know existed, you finally ask him why he was so cruel to you when you first met him. Sylus does his best to answer with as much honesty as he can right now.

Notes:

Sylus x gn reader, Sylus x mc, second person POV Enemies-to-friends-to-lovers slow burn This story contains: hurt/comfort, allusions to wild speculation regarding Sylus's lore, mention of bodily injuries, canon character death, grief, canon violence toward mc, a meal and drinks laden with heavy-handed metaphors because the author has no self-restraint, lots of plants, sexual innuendo as a treat, alcohol use, and promises to treat each other with more care and honesty moving forward. I wrote this before I did Sylus's POV, and then both parts together seemed a little too long to force readers to endure so I split them. I hope the continuity makes sense.

“Can we talk?” you ask Sylus, as he leans against the doorframe, a lovely dream of silver hair, otherworldly eyes, pale skin and silver fur across his large pecs, arrowing from his navel to beneath his black, silken pants.

“Sure, kitten. Right after I bandage your feet.” He strolls into the bathroom, heading to the large black marble-topped vanity. He opens one of the cabinets and pulls out a large first aid kit and brings it over to where you’re sitting.

“So I’m not wandering around, bleeding all over your nice floors?” you ask, laughing softly, as he once again kneels before you, silver head bowed over your injured feet. You let your gaze drift from his soft hair to his strong shoulders, his big hands cradling your foot. Sylus on his knees does nothing to diminish his formidable presence. If anything, this position of supplication seems to highlight the inherent threat in the broad line of his shoulders, his powerful arms, his long legs folded beneath his big body. It’s like witnessing a dire wolf on a leash, a prehistoric creature bound only insofar that it’s willing to let itself be bound. You find yourself wanting to pull him to his feet, because you never want to see Sylus at anyone’s mercy, ever. Not even yours.

“Because the only blood that should be soaking your feet is that of your enemies. Otherwise, I refuse to see blood anywhere on you,” he answers, as if that’s a totally normal thing to say to someone. You just stare at his bowed head.

As he gently spreads some kind of soothing balm on the bottoms of your feet and wraps them securely in long stretchy bandages, you hear soft piano music drifting in from the bedroom. He must have put on a record while you were finishing up in the shower.

After the final bandage is secured, he rises to his feet. “Are you hungry?” he asks. You hadn’t thought about it, but now that he has mentioned it, you find yourself feeling almost dizzy with hunger. You nod, and shift to stand, but he just makes a “Tch” sound and scoops you into his arms.

“Are we done asking for permission to touch me already?” you ask him without any heat.

“You can just assume that until I’m satisfied that your feet are healing well, you will not be walking on your own two feet,” he informs you, which is such an absurd thought that it makes you laugh. “And from now on, you will tell me no if you honestly don’t want something from me.”

“Is that so?” You stare into his serious face, trying to figure out what is going on inside his head.

“Deal?” he asks gravely. He’s not joking. He wants this from you, and you realize that this is his way of asking for it.

“And if I say no, but don’t mean it?” you ask, curious.

“Don’t,” he says softly, with that same strained tone in his voice from the roadside. “I could use my aether core, and figure out what you really want. But I promised you that I wouldn’t, unless you ask it of me. Guessing whether you seriously don’t want something from me is a game I’d rather not play going forward.”

If you agree in good faith, then you will be agreeing to allow him to do the things for you that you want from him. And in doing so, it will serve as an admission to him regarding what you want from him. There will be no flimsy cover of token protest to shield yourself from the vulnerability of revealing your true desires—there can be no more lying to him, nor to yourself.

This idea terrifies you. But you’re so tired of being afraid. And it’s not like Sylus hasn’t been able to see through you regarding so many things, even after he stopped using his aether core on you. Is it so unfair of him to ask that you are honest with him, when all you’ve wanted from him this whole time is to figure out what he wants, which is essentially his honesty in return?

You’re terrified, but you feel brave, held tightly in his arms right now. Maybe you’ll regret it later. But that’s for future you to deal with.

“Okay, Sylus. Deal.” You rest your head against his warm pillow of a shoulder, and feel the way his chest expands with a big breath. “But as much as I’d like to use you as my personal mount until my feet don’t hurt anymore, you really can’t carry me everywhere for the next week. I have to get back to Linkon City. Work starts again the day after tomorrow.” You pause, trying to figure out what day it even is. Everything is such a blur since what feels like last night, but has it been longer? “Or even tomorrow,” you mumble. You feel so, so tired just thinking about it.

“Personal mount, huh? I guess I can offer personal mounting services upon request,” he says thoughtfully as horror rushes through you at what you just said. But Sylus seems unruffled as he continues. “And no, you don’t have to get back to Linkon City.” He strides into his bedroom and settles you on the freshly made bed, which apparently has had its silky black sheets changed because they’re not damp at all from your nightmare sweating. You blink up at him as he turns to fetch a large silver tray from the low table in the sitting area, and then brings it over and sets it on the bed next to you.

You’re so relieved that he treated your accidental innuendo so casually that you just pretend it didn’t happen. “Yes, I do. This was the last weekend of my leave. I’ve got to get back to it on Monday,” you counter, eyeing the food on the tray—thinly sliced steak, chunks of steaming baguette slathered in what looks like herbed butter, and strangely, an entire pomegranate, split in half. Some seeds have already fallen from the rind, and lay scattered like little jewels around the plate.

Sylus ignores you and sets a large glass of water on the nightstand next to you. “Do you want anything else to drink? I have a full bar,” he gestures to one of the huge, heavy pieces of wooden furniture that you didn’t recognize as a vintage booze cabinet until he pointed it out.

“Damn, Sylus, is your liver okay?” You eye the size of that thing.

“Asks the hunter whose feet are shredded to bits after a midnight jaunt in the cold with no coat or shoes,” he sniffs. “Fine, but I’m making myself something. Eat.” He stands and heads over to the cabinet, opening it to reveal bottle after bottle of topshelf liquor. He tilts his head and hums a little tunelessly as he makes a selection.

You don’t have to be told twice to eat. You take one of the beautiful silver forks lined neatly next to the plate and start shoving steak into your mouth.

Having finally selected something and dumped a few fingers’ worth of liquor over a tumbler filled with ice, Sylus returns and sits next to you on the bed, back against the huge black leather-padded headboard. He quietly waits for you to finish stuffing your face while sipping his drink.

After you’ve demolished the steak, a few chunks of bread, and half the pomegranate’s seeds, you lean back as well, just basking in the feeling of calm, sated exhaustion. Sylus turns his head against the headboard and regards you with his bright, bright eyes.

“You wanted to talk,” he says.

“I wanted to talk,” you repeat.

He peacefully takes another sip of whatever he’s drinking. You close your eyes. Breathe deeply. The scent of the alcohol is heady, spicy. You open your eyes and return Sylus’s gaze. The words are stuck in your throat. You let your focus drift over to the bookshelves lined with books that look like they were chosen for aesthetics rather than content. They all have some combination of black and red designs, it’s ridiculous.

Your thoughts on the stupid books are interrupted by the sensation of calloused fingertips running along your jaw. “Look at me,” Sylus says softly.

You have to do this. But you can’t get the image out of your head of Sylus’s long fingers drifting down the spines of those books just as they’re now drifting along your face. The way your heart was racing as you tried to sneak up on him for the brooch, which was your lifeline out of the hell you were in. Your only ticket to the auction, to answers to questions that had plagued you for months, to going home on your motorcycle instead of in a body bag, according to Sylus’s threats at the time. You don’t want to be in this room. You don’t want to be in this house.

You turn your head to look at him, and he must see it in your face. Suddenly his evol is lifting the glass from his hand, and at the same time he is leaning over, pulling you back into his arms. He lifts you, as he did before, one arm under your legs and the other cradling your shoulders. He pauses, slipping back into his houseshoes, and carries you out of the bedroom. This time, he takes you further into the house, down hallways you don’t remember walking down before. Eventually, he brings you into some sort of large …mudroom? The worn tiled floor is shockingly colorful, with a drain in the middle. Stacks of pots and bags of what look like dirt or fertilizer sit haphazardly on a long wooden table. An extensive hose is coiled beneath a huge farmhouse sink along one wall, and the wooden counter is covered in gardeners’ tools and watering cans. Wide windows above the sink look out into the dark night. Galoshes and rain boots are lined up neatly along the wall near the door. It’s homey in a way the rest of the house isn’t. Lived in. A bit messy. You like it very much.

Just as you think Sylus is going to make you have this conversation in the equivalent of a gardener’s shed, which you honestly wouldn’t mind, he continues to the door on the other side of the room. Again, he pauses to switch out his house shoes for a pair of galoshes. He looks a little silly, wearing the garden shoes with his silk sleep pants and nothing else, but as usual, he doesn’t seem to care what anyone else may think. The scarlet-ink tendrils of his evol then throw open the door and all of the thoughts in your head evaporate like rain on a hot summer day.

Because Sylus has just thrown open a door to another world—the heat and humidity hit you first, a soothing contrast to the chill air of the rest of the house. And then the smell—earth, decay and growth, a cacophony of floral scents. You turn your head and take in the slate-colored pebbled pathways leading in different directions from the door Sylus has just brought you through, winding through huge tropical plants, leaves heavy and dripping with moisture. Colorful birds twitter and shriek and coo as they shift in the trees overhead, flying under the soaring ceiling of what you now realize is a huge greenhouse. At periodic intervals along the path, torches in a modern, savage style, similar to the chandeliers in Sylus’s house, illuminate the way forward and the surrounding plants.

You just take it in, overwhelmed by the riot of life and colorful beauty of this veritable oasis in the desolation of the N109 zone and the contrast it poses to the austerity of Sylus’s dark, sophisticated home. Eventually the plants along the path Sylus has chosen thin and part to reveal a large pond, covered in gigantic flowering lily pads, a fountain in the middle. The fountain itself is a flowing sculpture, two figures locked in either battle or embrace. You’re overcome with a strange sense of familiarity— something about each figure’s proportions in relation to the other—how one has to look up into the face of the other—you look away. The flow of water from the fountain is a constant, soft hush underlying the birdcalls and swaying leaves, the skittering of little animals unseen under the vegetation.

Next to the pond is a clearing built from the same bright, multi-colored patterned tiles as the mudroom. In the middle, there stands a large blond wooden garden bed, complete with a canopy and flowing gauzy drapes half obscuring the bed itself. As Sylus carries you closer, you realize the bed is also a swing.

“What in the garden fuck-bed, Sylus?” you breathe, because what the hell else would he use this thing for? Is this where he takes his dates for romantic wooing?

He looks at the bed. And then looks back down at you. “Well, kitten, it can be if you insist. That wasn’t my plan for tonight, but I’m nothing if not adaptable.”

You roll your eyes and poke him in his big man bosom. “You can’t tell me that you didn’t have that thing installed specifically to seduce dates out here in your own wild sex jungle.”

“Not everyone gets as excited about plants as you do, sweetheart. And I had it installed because even I like to relax in nature sometimes, without having to go for a ride north of Linkon.”

“But a… swinging bed?” You look back at it dubiously. It just seems so wildly romantic to you.

“Do you like it?” he asks, settling you down on the surprisingly soft mattress, covered in white linen sheets. Unlike his bed, this thing is piled high with pillows. You immediately roll over and bury your face in them. You hear a soft laugh from above you. “I’ll take that as a yes.” You just sigh happily.

“Are you sure you don’t want a drink? I also have a bar here,” he says, and you laugh out loud.

“Of course you do.” You finally look up from the pillows and see him through the bed’s drapes as he stands behind what you now see is very obviously a bar, built from the same light-colored wood as the bed, wooden stools lined up along its counter, torches on either side providing ambient light that is reflected off the neatly lined bottles of liquor.

“Okay, Sylus. I want a cocktail, with a little umbrella and a fruit skewer.”

“That can mostly be arranged. But you’ll have to be more specific. What kind of cocktail?” he asks with a slight lift to his full lips. He opens one of the cabinet doors and you see bottle after bottle of juice and other mixers.

“Surprise me,” you say, rolling onto your side so you can watch his big hands pull out a deep red bottle of juice and some sort of storage container.

He nods. “Fine, but if you don’t like it, I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

“No deal. I reserve the right to whine very loudly if I don’t like it.”

“Is that so? Not really the whining I’d prefer from you,” he says, smiling in a way that reveals one sharp canine. As your brain short circuits, he continues. “I guess I’ll have to do my best to please you, to spare the birds from having to endure the consequences if I fail.” He proceeds to competently mix the drink, shaking it in a cocktail shaker and pouring it over ice in a low, heavy bottomed glass.

You’re shocked as he digs around in a drawer and pulls out a little black umbrella, plopping it into your drink as a final touch. He then grabs a glass for himself, pours from the same liquor bottle that he used to make your cocktail, and brings both glasses over to you. He sets his own on a little table next to the bed, and hands you yours. He then sits next to you on the bed, one leg crossed beneath him, one foot on the ground.

You sit up, taking the offered glass carefully, and stare down into the ruby colored liquid. “Where’s the fruit skewer?”

“The fruit’s in the drink, you spoiled creature. Try it.” He picks his glass back up, but just looks at you. Waiting for you to drink.

You take a sip. It’s delicious—not too sweet, a little bitter. And strong. You can feel the warmth of the liquor spreading through your belly. You swirl the liquid, and little pomegranate seeds bob to the surface.

“I’m sensing a theme,” you murmur, looking back into his satisfied face.

“Must be your imagination,” he sniffs. “It’s an Old Fashioned, made with pomegranate juice. In case you were wondering.”

“I was,” you smile. “And thank you. It’s delicious.”

He looks pleased. He holds his glass up. “Toast with me.”

You eye him. “What are we toasting?”

“You,” he says simply. You wait. He just looks at you.

“And what have I possibly done that deserves toasting tonight?”

“You’re here right now, with me. That’s enough for me.”

Your heart, which had been quiet ever since you crossed the threshold into the greenhouse’s mudroom, kicks a little. He sounds so terribly sincere. You lift the glass to his, and he gently taps his against yours.

He then brings his glass back to his lips. He pauses, inhales deeply, and takes a drink, closing his eyes.

You both sip quietly, listening to the sounds of the fountain, the fluttering of birds’ wings. Your gaze drifts over the array of orchids growing at the edge of the clearing, nestled under huge palms drooping over clusters of fruit you don’t recognize. You love it here. You don’t think you’ve ever felt so relaxed while being surrounded by nature. There have always been other people present in the public spaces you would visit to try to get away, on your precious days off. Their presence, the possibility that they’re observing, judging you, as you try to enjoy the botanical garden or hiking trail is always a constant itch under your skin. The closest you have ever gotten to this feeling of riotous life, space, and peaceful solitude is from the houseplants hanging in your bedroom.

You’ve had half the cocktail now, and a pleasant heaviness weighs down your body. You look at Sylus. “I think this is enough, for now.”

He nods, and takes your glass from you. He sets his own down, and goes to the bar again. When he returns, he hands you a glass of water. “Drink.”

You nod in turn, and empty the glass. And then you sit, fiddling with it.

“It’s time, sweetheart,” Sylus finally says. “Tell me what’s on your mind now.”

You take a deep breath and clutch the glass. You can do this now. You can’t look at him as you speak, but you can say what you need to say amidst all this life, with the soft linen against your skin, and Sylus’s steady presence at your side.

“I don’t understand how you can treat me with such kindness now, when you were so cruel to me when we first met. You scared me, Sylus. You hurt me. You treated me like something inconvenient that you had stepped in and needed to scrape off the bottom of your shoe, except you also needed something from me. And now, you wash my feet for me. You hold me when I’m tired. You treat me like I’m someone you care about.” You look back at him, suddenly overcome again with the images flooding into your mind again, of what it was like to be in his grasp the first time you were in this house. You take another shaky breath. “But nothing has changed. I’m still me—the same person you strangled within five minutes of seeing me for the first time. I resonated with you after the auction, so you didn’t have to do anything else to ensure that I’d be able to resonate with you again. I can’t reconcile these two Syluses,” you finish.

You wanted to have this conversation. And now you’re having it. You watch as he gently takes the glass from your hands and sets it on the side table. He then turns on his side, so he’s fully facing you. He leans down and gently coaxes you down next to him, so the both of you are sharing a pillow, sharing the same breath. The bed slowly sways with the movement of your bodies. He runs his fingers from your jaw, down your neck and over your shoulder, until his hand comes to rest in the dip of your waist as you lie on your side facing him. The tie of your silken robe has loosened, and the dark fabric pools in the small between you.

“I will answer your question, as best as I can right now.” He pauses to make sure you’re focused on him. “I didn’t realize at the time how much I was hurting you when we… first met. All of my intel led me to believe that you’d respond better to a challenge than to honey. Especially because you were convinced that I was behind the bombing that killed your family.” He runs the hem of your tank top between his fingers, knuckles brushing the skin of your stomach. “Would you have believed me, if I had insisted that what the Association had told you about me was wrong?”

You think back to your certainty, at the time, when you first kneeled in front of this man. The months leading up to that moment, hearing rumors about Onychinus, how dangerous and ruthless its leader was. The certainty, and the hate that underpinned every move you made as you prepared to infiltrate the N109 Zone. No. You wouldn’t have believed him if he had tried to deny everything you were convinced was true. You shake your head, just a little, still searching his face. He looks so soft, in the warm glow of the torches and the riot of green surrounding the bed.

“No. You wouldn’t have. So, I weighed my options in terms of strategy. I couldn’t quickly convince you that I wasn’t the completely depraved boogeyman you had been led to believe, nor could I convince you that I wasn’t responsible for what happened to your family. But I needed you working with me, and not against me. If I couldn’t ask you nicely, I needed to leverage whatever I could get to force you to help me. Answers to your questions, the other half of the aether core, and your own freedom from my terrible clutches was that leverage. I also needed to see just how strong you were, because I knew the aether core was in your heart and that you probably had capabilities you weren’t even aware of based on the discrepancies between my intel about you and what I know an aether core can do. So I was placing all my bets on … motivating you to fight back, forcing you to reveal the true extent of your strength so I knew what I was working with. I was also hoping that you would come to realize the true extent of your strength that you weren’t even aware of in the process.”

You soak in everything he has just said. It seems so preposterous. “So that’s why… you threatened me? Taunted me? Called me a disappointment? Threw me in front of that huge mech to see if I’d live or die? Deprived me of water? Starved me?” You clench your teeth, trying to keep the tears from flowing again. You’re so done with crying for the next century.

“Yes,” he says, simply, red eyes seeming to glow as they search yours. He moves his hand back to your face, cupping your cheek in his big, warm palm. “What you didn’t know at the time was that I was prepared to intervene the moment it looked like you couldn’t handle it. But I knew you could handle it. I knew you could handle everything I did to you.” You feel your lip trembling, and his gaze drops to your mouth. “I just didn’t realize how much it would cost you to handle it.” His thumb runs down your cheek and sweeps along your lower lip, pressing gently. “I believe that the end justifies the means. That a certain level of collateral damage is inevitable, and even acceptable, if the reward is big enough. But if I could go back and do it again,” he pauses, watching his thumb as he continues to caress your lip. “I don’t think I’d be able to do it again. Even if it was the most efficient method at the time to find out what I needed to know, and to compel you to work with me.”

Despite the aching tenderness of his touch against your lips, you scowl at him. “Sylus, you choked me until I blacked out. In what universe is that just ‘challenging’ me to realize my inner strength? I can’t respond with some sort of magical anime transformation into some final badass form if I’m fucking unconscious!” you bite out. For the first time in this whole conversation, he looks a little sheepish.

“Sweetheart. I’m not a good man. You know this. Even if the Association’s intel is exaggerated and wrong ninety percent of the time, I do bad things to get good results. And… sometimes, I get carried away. And I was…” He pauses, and you’re flabbergasted that this typically smug, arrogant, self-assured asshole is actually at a loss for words. “Would you buy it, if I told you I was excited to meet you?”

“You’re asking if I believe that you were excited… to meet me. And so you choked me?” you ask dubiously.

“Maybe I was excited to meet you. So I might have misjudged how long I could… squeeze before you really blacked out. Usually I have much more control,” he shrugs, as if discussing his golf swing and not his knack for strangling people.

You try to imagine that he was so excited to meet you and therefore choked you out in the same way an overeager puppy will bite too hard and pee on your shoes. How nice would that be? If this was all some huge misunderstanding. That his cruelty was an accident, and not intentional. But he asked if you’re willing to buy it—he has not said that it’s the truth. And you’re not buying it. He was so intensely cruel, from the very beginning. It wasn’t fake. His reputation as Onychinus’s brutal leader is not a misunderstanding, even if it’s not the whole truth. And neither is the fact that he strangled and starved you.

“So you want me to buy the assertion that you were so happy to meet me that you accidentally strangled me to the point of unconsciousness and so committed to the bit of being a villain that you then proceeded to traumatize me with starvation and violence for the next three days.” You stare into his ridiculous, beautiful, red eyes and feel that same sense of unreality that is so often paired with this man. Wine and cheese. Guns and ammo. Absurdity and Sylus. You let yourself believe this comforting lie, just for a moment. “I wouldn’t even know how to process that.”

As always with Sylus, you can’t help it. The noise that comes out of your throat isn’t human. You snort, the laughter violently trying to escape your body. You laugh directly in his stupid handsome face, because you’re so close to him on the pillow, and you’re loud. You hear the sound of birds suddenly taking flight, probably startled by the sounds coming out of you. You laugh, and laugh, and laugh. He watches you carefully through it all, as if he can’t quite believe how easily you’ve swallowed his lie.

After a long, lovely time where you just release the rest of all of the months of tension that you’ve been carrying, deep deep down, you raise your hand and bop his nose. “Do I need a rolled up newspaper to swat you if you ever get over-enthusiastic again and decide to put me in a full nelson or garrotte me because you’re so excited to see me?”

“If you’re ever on the other side of my garrotte or in one of my full nelsons, sweetie, the newspaper will not help you,” he grumbles. He slings his arm over your waist and scoots closer to you. “And I’ve seen you with little dogs. Mosquito, was it? Termite? You’d never swat one with a newspaper.”

“Cricket, you barbarian. But you’re not a little doggy, are you?” you tease, bopping him on the nose again.

He catches your finger in his teeth, and this time he bites down. You shake your hand, trying to dislodge him with a laugh. He lets go. “No, I’m a big, bad man,” he smiles softly at you.

“Yeah, you are,” you agree, just lying there, taking in his long, uneven nose, the dark sweep of his eyelashes. “So you get the newspaper.”

Sylus groans. “I can think of other things I’d much rather get,” he murmurs, eyes trailing from yours to your mouth and back again.

For a moment, you’re paralyzed, caught in the intensity of his gaze. Even now, how he manages to make an innocuous statement sound so… you refuse to think about it. He’s your friend . You’re having a serious conversation. A conversation that needs to be finished, properly.

“But Sylus, I don’t buy that explanation. At all. You need to try again. And be honest, this time. It’s only fair, since you’re asking me for honesty moving forward. I don’t believe you when you tell me that you never would never have let me actually get hurt. That you were just so eager to meet me that you lost your self control. Because you did actually hurt me. And I don’t believe that you were just testing me, and that you just wanted to be my friend, all along. Because you could have tested me in other ways. You didn’t have to go to such extremes to see what I am capable of.”

The amusement fades from Sylus’s face as you speak, and when you’re done, he looks… relieved. “It’s true, I didn’t want to be your friend,” he begins, and absurdly, your heart hurts a little. Well, that’s okay. You didn’t know you wanted to be his friend back then, either. He’s quiet for a long breath, and then he sighs. “You’re right. I was eager to finally meet you, but nothing I did to you was an accident. I needed you to believe that I was your villain. I thought you would collapse without the hatred keeping you strong. I was mistaken. That is the truth. And that’s the only part of the truth I can give you, right now.”

You close your eyes. Is this enough for you?

He speaks into your silence. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I treated you with such violence when we first met. If I could go back and do it again, I’d do it differently. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that, no matter how confident I was in your ability to handle it, and no matter what I was feeling at the time.”

You open your eyes and search his face. He just looks back at you, a sincerity in his expression that rarely comes through. “So are you telling me that this is the real Sylus? Who you’ve been to me, since the auction. And the Sylus I first met… that’s just you when you wear the mask of Onychinus’s leader?”

“No,” he says, to your relief. Because you don’t believe that he’s only one, and not the other, no matter how much easier that would make having him in your life. His denial proves that he is having this conversation in good faith—he’s not trying to convince you he’s only a good man who sometimes does bad things, and that all the horrors are simply a mask. “I’m insisting that I never expected to be able to hurt you as deeply as I did. That no matter what, I didn’t want to hurt you as much as I ultimately have.” He strokes your side with his thumb, for once not looking into your eyes. His gaze elsewhere, somewhere past you. “I am not a good man. I am not the supervillain you thought you were facing during those three days, but I am Onychinus’s leader, and all that such a role entails—it’s not some mask I put on. It’s who I am.” His gaze returns to you, as if asking a question.

“I know.” You whisper, and you think the relief intensifies in his eyes. “I just needed to hear you admit it.”

He nods, just once. But you’re not done.

“But you need to understand. Although you’ve explained what you did to me, your reasoning behind it… and although you’ve apologized for it—it doesn’t erase anything.” You watch him carefully, trying to read into every breath, every lift of his brows, the tightening around his eyes, the dilation of his pupils. “You did hurt me. I trust you when you say you didn’t intend to hurt me to this extent, but you did intend to hurt me. You didn’t stop yourself. And that was when we hadn’t even really met, when you had no reason to hate me. I hadn’t done anything to you at all. What happens, when you do finally get angry with me? What happens, if I ever manage to hurt you?” You’re shocked when you see an almost imperceptible flinch when you say that he had no reason to hate you. But it’s so brief. He glances away, but looks back at you almost immediately. He moves his hand to your cheek as if he just wants to feel your skin under his fingers, and then grasps your jaw in his rough hand. Gently, but firmly. And then he speaks, with the solemnity of a knight pledging an oath to his sovereign.

“I would let you carve out my heart with your blades before I would ever intend to truly hurt you, regardless of what you make me feel. And you can’t hurt me in any way that would change that fact.” When he finishes, he lets his hand fall back to your waist.

There’s more to this. There’s more to what he has explained. The feelings he mentioned earlier, after he explained his strategy. You don’t believe that his brutality was a result of over-eagerness to meet you—it was some other emotion. Something that felt a lot like barely controlled rage, or grief. His subtle reaction to the idea that there was no reason for him to be so malicious towards you. The fact that he seems to be so invested in you, when you’re just… you. An average hunter with no special qualities besides the aether core in your heart. An aether core which is more of a liability than an advantage at this point, judging by the way your heart is aching. Just you, with enough emotional baggage to sink a warship.

Your mind races, trying to sift through every mission you’ve ever been on for the Association. Trying to pinpoint if you could have ever crossed paths with Sylus before, without knowing it. But there’s nothing. He was a phantom to you, ever since you first heard his name. Something in you knows that he will not answer, even if you ask. So you don’t. This has to be enough, for now. You have to choose to trust the parts of the truth he’s telling you now, even if it’s not the whole truth, or you have to walk away.

“I know there are things that you’re not telling me. And that’s okay. There are things that I don’t want to know—now, or ever. Partially because if anyone ever figures out that we have a connection, and they want me to roll over on you, I don’t want to have that information in my head. I want plausible deniability. Not only for my work, but in case someone else tries to pry something out of me with force. I don’t want to be able to give them what they want even if I wanted to, if they break me.” Sylus’s brows furrow, and his hand tightens on your waist. “So I’m not going to ask you to explain. And I’m telling you now—I only want to know the details of your life as Onychinus’s leader that you think I absolutely need to know.”

“And the details of my life, apart from being the leader of Onychinus?” he whispers.

He sounds so different when he speaks softly like this. Accessible, instead of so far away. Within reach, instead of flying so far ahead of you.

“I want to know everything you are okay with sharing,” you answer. Because it’s true, and a lot less unhinged than saying, everything, everything, everything .

“Does this mean that you’ll stop trying to leave me?”

You think back to earlier tonight, when you thought Sylus was going to tear you apart for hurting Kieran. For damaging the car. For simply being a nuisance. You were prepared to let him, because you care for him and you felt like it was deserved. You’re tempted to tell him the rest of it. Because even if you accept the punishment as just—your parents leaving you behind, probably because of your fucked up heart. Your partners cheating on you, because you were physically or emotionally unavailable. Sylus’s fist, for hurting someone he treats as more than an employee. You have always been willing to accept the punishment. But after, you never let yourself be caught in that same situation, with that same person, ever again. If you ever knowingly run into your parents on the street, you’d just keep walking. Past lovers who cheated, you cut so thoroughly from your life that it was like they never existed in it at all. You know yourself. If Sylus ever treats you the way he did when you first met—he will never see you again. If you deserve to receive pain from him, you’ll take it. But then you’re gone. Your heart hurts, considering saying these words. As a warning, and a promise, that you’ve never offered to anyone else.

Sylus’s strained voice interrupts your thoughts. “Is this your answer?”

You follow his furrowed gaze and see the swirling gold and scarlet shackles tying your wrist to his.

Apparently it wasn’t a choice at all, to answer him truthfully. “Yes,” you say, and feel like crying at the thought of having to leave him behind. But you will, if you ever fall from this strange pedestal he seems to have placed you on, and turns on you in the way you’ve seen him turn on those he considers not worthy of his respect or his generosity. “If you ever hurt me like you did when we first met again. Do you understand?”

He closes his eyes, inhales sharply. As if something hurts. When he opens them, you’re shocked by how bright they are. “I understand.” He pulls his hand to his chest, dragging your linked wrist with it. He then presses your hand over his heart. “If I ever hurt you again, you have my permission to rip this out, with your bare hands.”

The idea of Sylus hurting in any way—and worse, the idea of his pain being at your hands, upsets you so much that you feel like crying again. You press your hand gently into his chest. “Why can’t you do anything like a normal person? Do you always have to be so extra?” He lets out a little huff of surprise. “It’s enough that you’ve said you’re sorry. And that you’ve promised not to treat me like that again. I don’t want your heart on a platter.”

“Too late,” he murmurs, leaning in until his forehead is resting against your chest, right over your own heart. He’s still clutching your hand to his own chest.

You have no idea how this happened. You have no idea what he means when he says that it’s too late. As if you’ve already ripped his heart out, and carry it with you on a silver tray like the one he served you food on earlier. How did you acquire the affection of this wild, dangerous creature when all you’ve managed to do is not get killed through the blur of grief-filled days since you met him? You can’t make sense of any of it, right now. You’re so tired, from tonight, from all the nights before, stretching back through the months since your family was murdered. But you have the feeling that right now, Sylus is also exhausted, and is carrying a sorrow that you’ll be lucky if he ever shares with you. All you can do is press your hand more firmly to his body, to lean into him in return, to let him take whatever comfort he can from your own body, as you both lie here, tied together by shimmering strands of energy and heartache, surrounded by all this thriving life nestled in a barren wasteland.

#love and deepspace #love and deepspace sylus #love and deepspace fanfiction #lads sylus #l&ds sylus #lnds sylus #my fanfic #sylus x reader #sylus x mc #ok so hopefully this is satisfying #i've been wrestling with this all week #come yell at me if you like it #and also if you don't

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cosmicbucky · 1 year ago

Text

verity

summary: an inadvertently broken heart and a girls' night in can only lead to one thing: you drunkenly confronting the very man who broke your heart in the first place - aka your best friend, bucky barnes pairing: bucky barnes x female reader word count: 3253

warnings: angst, alcohol consumption, reader gets drunk with friends, pet names, sad bucky, sad reader, drunk confessions, swearing, misunderstandings, reader gets sick (vomit), fluff, kinda friends to lovers (??)

《《《《 ♡ 》》》》

The music flowed through the living room around you, quiet enough to not overpower the conversations you were having with your friends, but loud enough for you to know what you were swaying in your seat to.

It had been a while since you had a girls' night, though you were all but forced into this one; it was made clear by Nat that your presence was not an option - you were the only reason you were all gathered here now, each of you at least a bottle or two in.

At first you resisted. You wanted nothing more than to wallow alone in your room, watching trash TV and crying over cheesy scenes. It wasn't that you didn't love the company you had right now, you just wanted other company. You wanted the same company you had every day for the last year. The same company that became your only solace ever since it took a literal bullet for you without thought just to keep you safe. The same company that read your favourite books so you had someone to talk to about them. The same company that sat with you and watched all your favourite shows so they could get a better glimpse of who you are and what you like. The same company you thought you were finally getting somewhere with.

It felt like you got hit by a truck when the words "You know Bucky's been dating?" nonchalantly left Sam's mouth one day while you were having lunch. You didn't want to know more about it. You didn't want to know who they were, how the two met, or what they did for a living. You didn't want to be told anything other than the fact Sam was joking, that what you thought you had with Bucky really was real and not just in your head. Sam never said anything close to that, though.

Bucky never brought up the dates to you, and you almost felt that was even worse than if he did. Why did he not want to tell you? Were you really not as close as you thought? Did he not trust you enough to tell you such a thing? Your thoughts continuously spiraled over the next few days, stealing away your self confidence and the air from your lungs. Nothing was the same anymore. You thought you knew where you stood with Bucky. You thought it all meant something. All the stares from across the room, the lingering touches, the 'just because' gifts, the movie nights, the sleepovers, all of it. But it meant nothing. You read it all wrong. And now it's been two weeks since you were able to look at him long enough for you to even say hi to him, let alone have a conversation with him.

Bucky noticed the shift the moment it happened; when you slid ever so slightly away from him when he tried to hold you in his arms like he did every movie night. He noticed when the smile stopped reaching your eyes. He noticed when you stopped showing up for dinners with the gang every night. He noticed when you couldn't hold his gaze anymore. He noticed that you two just weren't the same, and it killed him. It killed him because he didn't know what he did, and he tried everything under the sun to get things back to the way they were, but nothing worked.

Everyone noticed when his demeanor changed. His fuse was shorter, his temper was stronger. He spent even more time in the training room, pummeling and destroying bag after bag until his knuckles were bloody; letting himself heal overnight only to do it all again the next day. He shamelessly threw a dining chair into a wall when Tony made a joke about how you must have smartened up and finally got sick of him, and his expression was so murderous that a Code White was called, effectively resulting in him being locked down in his room for a full 24 hours - he ended up staying in there even after the lockdown was over. The only reason he started leaving the confines of his room was to spend time with his best girl, and he didn't have that anymore.

All your friends were sick of it. They didn't know what was going on, and you both refused to talk about it. No one could even mention the others' name to either of you anymore without fear of having the nearest object thrown at their head.

So plans were formed, and you now sat on the couch with a glass in your hand as you mindlessly swayed to whatever song was currently playing.

"Who is in charge of this music? It is awful!" Yelena stated from her spot on the floor, taking yet another shot.

"I picked it," you crooned, stilling your movements as you looked at her. "It's completely free of attachments to you-know-who."

A cohesive muttering came from all the women before you, and Yelena cleared her throat. "It is not bad," she corrected with a grimace, taking pity on you.

"Are you drunk enough to tell us what happened now?" Nat asked, raising an eyebrow at you.

Downing the rest of your glass, you looked at her with a thoughtful expression for a minute. "No," you concluded, filling your glass again.

"Okay, this is torture. Time for a drinking game!" Wanda exclaimed, standing from her chair. "Everyone take a mustache and tape it to the TV. We're putting on a trash show and drinking whenever it lines up with someone."

You beamed with excitement, ready to both watch crappy TV and get drunk - gods know you needed at least one night to forget about Bucky.

And forget you did. You can't remember the last time you were this far gone, the last time you had this much fun. The drinking game was very successful; it even got Yelena and Nat a little tipsy, which was not easy to do. No one said anything when you went a little harder than everyone else, when you drank a little more, taking shots when you weren't technically supposed to. You haven't smiled like this in weeks, and they weren't going to take that away from you.

Your giggles carried on down the hallway, the echoes of your voice, of your laughter, music to everyone's ears - having gone so long now without hearing it. It captured someone's attention, socked feet being dragged towards the sound before even knowing what was happening, a seat being taken in the kitchen just to be that much closer, eyes gazing across at you, a face with such an amorous expression it would have made anyone who saw it sick.

You audibly gasped as you caught sight of him, your eyes meeting his for the briefest of seconds before he looked away, contemplating whether he should go back to his room or not.

"Oh, my god. Why is he here?" you asked the girls, unable to take your eyes off of him.

"Why is who here?" Kate asked, following your gaze. "Him? What are you talking about he-"

"We don't know!" Nat chimed in, sending a warning glare to Kate that you were too distracted to see.

"Why don't you go talk to him and find out?" Wanda suggested, quickly catching on to Nat's motive.

You shook your head vehemently, making yourself momentarily dizzy. "Noooo. He broke my heart, Wan. What would I even say?" you replied with a whine, sinking into the couch as you lifted the glass to your lips again.

She shared a look with Nat, two looks that said 'fuck, maybe we shouldn't let her do this' and 'what the hell does she mean by that?' You couldn't decipher either, though. The blood was rushing in your ears as you stared across the room again, torn between going to confront this beautiful, asshole of a man and staying in the comfort of the living room.

Before you could really think it through - and in your state, it's not like you really could anyway - you abruptly stood from the couch, taking a few seconds to steady yourself on your feet.

"Fuck him," you muttered to yourself, vaguely aware of the girls trying to get your attention as you marched across the floor.

His head snapped up when he heard you coming, his enhanced hearing paired with the fact you weren't exactly in a graceful state didn't give you the advantage of sneaking up on him.

"Hi, doll," he said once you approached him.

Had you been in a more collected frame of mind, you probably would have noticed how quiet his voice was, how strained it was from the fact he was holding his breath in the hopes the two of you would go back to normal. You would have noticed the pain, the hurt, the confusion, and the hope dancing around in his eyes; making the blue that used to be your favourite colour now dull and stormy.

You didn't notice, though. All you noticed was the burning pain in your heart that was supposed to be gone after all those drinks, but just one look at the man before you brought everything back.

"You can't call me that anymore," you declared, shaking your head so much it made the room spin even more. "You gotta keep that name reserved now," you added bitterly.

"Reserved?" Bucky asked, his brow knit together in confusion. "For who?"

You scoffed, walking forward to close the distance that was left between you and the table he sat at. A few steps in and you lost your footing, but before you could even stumble Bucky was already out of his seat. His hands were on your arms in an instant, the feeling of hot and cold both burning your skin in a familiar way. The tenderness of his touch and the yearning you felt for it after all this time was almost too much to bear; your mind was spinning. Spinning from alcohol. Spinning from heartache. Spinning from anger. Spinning, spinning, spinning.

"Let go of me!" you exclaimed angrily, shrugging yourself out of his grasp. "I don't think your little lover would want you touchin' me."

Bucky could only stand there, blinking in surprise with his hands still outstretched. "My what?" he asked, his hands slowly falling back to his sides. "My lover?" he repeated.

"Yeah, your lover - or… whatever the hell you want to call them. Sam told me, because you didn't," you told him indignantly.

"I- what? Sam told you? Sam told you what?" he asked, more confused than ever.

"That you're dating someone!" you yelled, the anguish clear in your voice.

Bucky sighed and ran his hands over his face in exasperation before resting them on his hips, his lips pursed as he collected his thoughts. "What the fuck are you talking about?" he finally asked, trying to put the pieces together in his head.

"Didn't expect me to know, did you?" you spat furiously.

"I don't- sweetheart, what the hell is going on?" he asked softly, trying his best to remain patient. You were finally talking to him again, and it's definitely not the way he imagined but he'd be damned if he was going to let you slip through his fingers again.

"No!" you said forcefully. "I'm not your sweetheart. She is. Whoever she is."

"There is no ‘she’," Bucky told you calmly, trying his hardest to make sense of what was going on.

"Okay, then he is!" you replied in defeat, finally throwing yourself down on the chair beside you.

"What? No, that's not-" he tried to answer you, but you quickly cut him off.

"Why didn’t you want to tell me?" you asked quietly, your voice cracking.

“Because… I’m not dating anyone,” he replied slowly, more of a question than a statement.

“Just stop lying!” you yelled, hands slamming onto the table. “Please, I can’t take you lying to me anymore, okay? You’ve been lying to me all year,” you added in desperation, your eyes starting to glisten with tears.

“All year?” he asked, his voice quiet and shaky as he slid into the seat across from you.

You could only nod your head, bottom lip trembling as the first tears started to fall down your cheeks. Bucky started burning from the inside out, wanting nothing more than to wrap you in his arms and kiss the tears away- but he couldn’t. So he stayed where he was, swallowing thickly as he willed himself not to start crying with you.

“I never lied to you, you know that,” he said carefully.

“You did, because this whole time you-... I really thought-... you made me think-” you couldn’t get the words out, falling silent as you tried to collect yourself.

Bucky instinctively reached his hands across the table to you before he caught himself, pulling them back and setting them on his lap. "What did I make you think?"

"That you trusted me. That we meant something to each other," you explained softly, swallowing back more tears. "I thought you loved me back," you added, your voice so quiet it would have been inaudible to anyone other than him.

"What?" Bucky breathed out, the air being stolen from his lungs with those last six words that spilled from your trembling lips.

"I know you heard me."

"Okay- now is not the time for this conversation," he sighed, running his hands over his face.

You sat in silence for a moment, looking at him with such an recognizable expression Bucky felt like he was looking at a completely different person. "Figures," you muttered before shoving your chair back and standing up.

"What are you doing?" Bucky asked, half out of his seat as he watched to make sure you were steady on your feet.

Without another word to him, you turned and carefully started to make your way out of the kitchen and towards your bedroom.

"Don't you dare walk away from me!" Bucky called from behind you, quickly on your heels. "No, you're not allowed to leave me like this again."

"You left me first!" you yelled back, placing your hand on the wall to keep your balance as you walked a little faster.

"I never left you once!" he argued, still hot on your trail.

You scoffed, shoving open the door to your room and trying to slam it in his face; the attempt was unsurprisingly futile. "Stop following me, you said you don't want to talk."

"No, I said this isn't the time for this conversation," he huffed, shoving his way into your room and closing the door behind him.

"Why? You don't want to admit what you did?" you asked, stumbling your way to sit on the bed.

"For fucks sake, I didn't even do anything!" he defended with exasperation, leaning against the door.

"Yes you did," you argued, attempting to take off your sweater.

"I'm telling you, I didn't," he told you, trying his best to not let out a laugh as he watched you struggle to lift the sweater over your head.

"You did!" you yelled, voice muffled by the fabric. "You lied, and you kept secrets, and you - god, can you fucking help me?!" you asked with a huff, interrupting your own rant.

Bucky suppressed his laugh as he stepped forward, kneeling down in front of you. "Alright, alright. Stop fuckin' squirmin'," he muttered.

You stilled, muttering a few choice words under your breath that did not go unnoticed by him. Grasping the hem of your sweater, he carefully lifted it up and over your head to reveal your disheveled, pouting face.

"There's my girl," he whispered softly, delicately brushing back your mussed hair.

"I'm not-" you started to argue, before he quickly cut you off.

"Yes. You. Are," he said firmly, enunciating each word.

"But Sam-"

"Is an idiot," he insisted, cutting you off again. "He tried to set me up with someone but I never went. When he asked me about it, I told him we were gonna go out again so he'd stop fucking bugging me about it. I lied, sweetheart. I was never dating anyone."

"You- there was no one?" you asked quietly.

"There was no one else," he told you, his thumbs brushing away stray tears you didn't even know were falling.

Before you could ask him what that meant, your room started spinning once more and your mouth felt like cotton and your stomach felt like it was making its way up your throat.

"I don't feel so good," you mumbled, staring at him with wide eyes for a moment before rushing to your bathroom, barely making it on time.

Bucky was at your side in the blink of an eye, holding back your hair as you let loose the contents of your girls' night, his hand ghosting up and down your back. He sat patiently with you, muttering comforting words between each second of you getting sick as you gasped for air and sobbed, occasionally wiping your face with tissues.

"Better?" he asked after a few minutes, his hands never leaving you.

You could only nod in response, shifting away from him to rest against the bathtub as you closed your eyes.

Bucky immediately fell into his old habits, wasting no time in taking care of you. The only thing that destroyed him more than not having you in his life lately was watching you practically wither away, unable to do a damn thing about it.

"Drink, sweet girl," he told you, caressing your cheek in an attempt to rouse you before handing you the water you had no idea he even retrieved.

You blinked up at him, taking a moment to process what was going on before taking the glass from him. As you drank he gathered up a washcloth, running it under cold water before kneeling before you once more.

"C'mere," he whispered, taking your chin in one hand to hold you in place as he gently wiped your face. Your eyes closed once more, sighing in content as the cold water eased the burning under your skin.

"I love you," you found yourself telling him. Your voice was a delicate whisper, but the words were so heavy you felt like they echoed off the tiles surrounding you anyway.

Bucky stayed quiet, but you refused to open your eyes and look at him. Looking at him would make this moment real, so as long as you kept your eyes closed, you could pretend none of this ever happened.

"Let's get you to bed," he finally said, causing your world to implode once more.

Completely defeated, you allowed him to lift you from the floor.

Not having the energy to fight him anymore, you cooperated as he helped you into some sleep clothes.

Wanting to just hide away forever, you let him tuck you under the covers, pressing a kiss to your forehead before he slid in beside you, wanting to be there in case you got sick again.

The room was engulfed by silence for so long it almost felt like it was suffocating you, but just before your whirling mind finally succumbed to the allure of sleep you heard Bucky's gentle voice speaking out to you.

"Sleep this off, angel. Because when I explain to you how in love with you I am, I want to make damn sure you can remember what I say."

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sinofwriting · 6 months ago

Text

Never - Charles Leclerc

Words: 705 Summary: Charles finds out she’s never had an orgasm. Note(s): Mentions/Talks of Sex, Bestfriends to Lovers, part of a kind of series that explores certain drivers finding out that reader has never had an orgasm.

Masterlist | Support Me!

“What?” She asks, smiling around the words as she catches Charles staring at her, his head propped by his hand. “You are just very beautiful.” She shakes her head with a small laugh, eyes falling back down to the coffee table covered in sheet music. “You are.” He insists, giving her a nudge. She looks at him from the corner of her eye. “I think you have to say that. I’m your best friend after all.” He laughs, hand coming up to rub at his chest for a second. “I think Joris would have a problem with that. But I don’t have to say it.” Charles' face turns serious, though a smile is still pulling at his lips. “You are gorgeous. I still don’t know how you are alone.” “Just,” she sighs, the inside of her lip catching between her teeth. “No one’s caught my eye.” She tells him, hoping he doesn’t catch the lie, but he does.

She can tell from the way he sits forward, nearly pitching off the couch in his hurry. “Someone has caught your eye.” “No.” “Someone has. Who? Tell me about them.” “No.” She laughs, shaking her head. “It’s never gonna happen, alright? That’s just not in the cards for me.” “C’mon, they are an idiot if they don’t feel the same way about you.” Her lips press together as she swallows a harsh laugh. “That’s not it. I mean sort of,” she corrects. “But there’s a reason I don’t date and I don’t have one night stands and I don’t have relationships. I’m a nightmare, a horrible, lousy, stupid excuse of a woman.” The words are easy as they fall off her tongue, things she’s heard before. There’s more than wants to fall, but Charles is looking at her, horrified, and she winces. “I’m sorry, Charles. I just, I’m not interested.” “Why would?” He pauses, brows furrowed, jaw starting to clench in anger. “Why would anyone say that to you, about you? You are not those things.” “Not all of them.” She allows. “But a stupid excuse of a woman, absolutely.” She laughs. He says her name and she stops laughing, her smile dimming.

“Charles, I’m not being mean to myself. I’ve come to accept it. There’s a certain something a good majority of people want from their partners, and I can’t deliver it.” “Deliver what?” She stands up with a laugh, shaking her head. “No. I said too much. I shouldn’t have entertained this any longer. New subject.” He pulls her back down on the couch, uncaring of the way she protests, his eyes boring into hers. “Deliver what?” She stares back at him, hoping that for once Charles Leclerc will know when to back down, but he doesn’t. “Orgasm.” She finally says and watches confusion spread across his face. “I can’t orgasm. I’m twenty-four and I’ve never cum once in my life. That,” she laughs. “Happens to be a bit of a turn-off or an ego bruiser.”

Charles looks at her, the confusion gone from his face and instead determination is there. “Then today will be the day you do.” She rolls her eyes, scooting a bit away from him as she tries to ignore the way her heart seems to be beating double time and the burn that is starting between her thighs. “Very funny.” “I mean it.” “Charles.” She tries to continue but can’t. Not at the way he’s looking at her. It’s more than the set of determination lining his brow, the near glare in the squint of his eyes. It’s the combination with the set of his jaw and parted lips, the lean of his body into hers.

“Before,” he speaks, knowing she’s about to say he won’t be able to. “You say something about me not being able to. Let me try.” He then smiles, a giddy, disbelief filled thing. “After all I just did win Monaco.” It makes her laugh, the comparison of him winning Monaco after seven years of trying, with her trying to achieve an orgasm for the same amount of time. “Are you saying you can break another curse?” She jokes. “Monaco was never a curse and this,” his fingers dance across her covered thigh. “Isn’t either.”

#f1 imagine #formula 1 imagine #f1 x reader #formula 1 x reader #charles leclerc x areader #charles leclerc imagine #charles won Monaco so i speedran this #sins fics #series : never

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pedropascallme · 6 months ago

Text

After The After Party

Pairing: Damien Haas x f!Reader

Summary: “‘Have you ever noticed,’ Courtney popped her lips together, spreading the gloss, ‘That Damien only ever offers to host when he knows you’re going to come?’ She turned to you again, leaning back, elbows on the sink. ‘Almost like he just wants an excuse to have you over.’”

Warnings: SMUT (18+ MINORS DNI) p in v sex, oral (f & m receiving), fingering, dom/sub dynamics, praise, creampie, soft!dom Damien who is also incredibly needy, mentions of drinking/alcohol, brief mention of gambling. If I missed anything please let me know!

AN: This is so dialogue heavy and I won't even apologize for it. Dedicated to the idiots to lovers mfs out there <3 part 2 here!!

Long shoot blocks, you’d learned, usually devolved into long nights out. The cast and crew—or, at least, those of whom had the time and the desire to let loose—often found themselves in bars with high ceilings, with music playing too loud, and drinks that were just strong enough. There were nights when you lost Arasha and Amanda to the grimy dancefloor as soon as you passed the threshold, and nights when you watched from afar as Chanse cozied up to a beautiful stranger.

You liked listening to your friends talk and laugh as if you weren’t all exhausted after the grueling work week.

You liked feeling like part of something.

Some nights, though, when Shayne and Spencer got tired of hugging the wall, and when you’d all realized how expensive it was to go out as often as you did, someone would offer their house as a respite from the outside world. It was a chance to avoid prying eyes and the same top 40 hits that seemed to play at every bar.

Now, you found yourself at Damien’s house; someone had dimmed the lights, and from your spot on the couch you could hear glasses clinking in the kitchen as Tommy poured various liquids into a makeshift mixer. Your friends held mugs of alcohol, pretending to be above the culture of red solo cups.

You watched Amanda and Angela play a card game you didn’t know on the coffee table in front of you.

“Your pile is huge—your pile is huge, oh my god!” Amanda’s voice carried over the other noises around you. You leaned against Angela’s shoulder.

“Because you’re playing wrong! You’re cheating! You’re literally cheating and it’s so uncool.” Angela tried to grab Amanda’s cards, and you smiled at their back and forth. You were admittedly distracted, but trying to play it cool, pretending your mind wasn’t elsewhere as Angela jostled your head.

You watched Damien out of the corner of your eye. He stood across the room, toying with one of his rings, nodding along to something Alex was saying.

You tried not to stare, but there was something so attractive about the way he looked in a space all his own; he didn’t command attention—Damien hated being the center of attention, especially when it was easily avoidable—but he had a way about him tonight that just seemed so relaxed, and it was hard to ignore. Especially when he was already taking up most of your thoughts as it was.

For as long as you’d worked with Damien, he was someone you looked forward to seeing. He wasn’t the only reason you got out of bed, but he was certainly up there on the list. Thoughtful, considerate; he was a generally good-natured person. He made the days go faster, making jokes and ensuring you felt included as a newer member of the cast.

And you liked his laugh, and the way he listened, and the soft color of his hazel eyes that looked somewhere close to green in the light.

It was no secret that you found him alluring, but you felt that it was better to keep those thoughts out of his orbit. If not for your sake, for his. It just seemed unfair to come onto him after you’d spent so much time together as friends, especially when he had given you no reason to think that he felt anything for you beyond camraderie.

You sat up from your position on Angela's shoulder, moving your head to get a better look at Damien. He noticed, shooting you a smile. You reciprocated it, offering a small wave, keeping your elbow low and fingers folded near your palm. He waved back, and you both quickly returned to your respective conversations.

Amanda and Angela had gone back to playing their game, light-hearted fighting words replaced by laughs as they smacked cards down.

There was a tap on your shoulder, and Courtney pulled you up from the couch.

“Come to the bathroom with me.” She set a cup of something that smelled strong on the table.

The rules of the bar still applied to house parties, and you had no problem tagging along on trips to the bathroom, sitting pretty while your friends fixed whatever makeup was still left of that morning’s full beat. You followed Courtney down the hallway and into the bathroom.

“You’re bright red, you know,” They wasted no time in grilling you, running the water and dabbing it under their eyes to wipe away streaks of mascara that had rubbed off.

“I had a Tommy special.” You sat on the edge of the bathtub.

“That’s not—you can handle your liquor.” Courtney turned, combing through their hair with her fingers, “You’re not blushing just because Tommy gave you one vodka cran.”

“It wasn’t a vodka cran. It was a vodka soda.” You could tell where the conversation was headed, and you tried to veer it off track.

“You’re not as slick as you think you are.” Courtney raised a brow.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. He hasn’t even spoken to me tonight.” You contradicted yourself, markedly aware of what she was referring to and feeding into the topic, but disputing what you could.

“You’re oblivious.” Courtney laughed, fishing lip gloss from her pocket and turning back to the mirror.

“What do you mean?” You stood behind them, watching her reapply the color to their lips.

“Have you ever noticed,” Courtney popped her lips together, spreading the gloss, “That Damien only ever offers to host when he knows you’re going to come?” She turned to you again, leaning back, elbows on the sink. ��Almost like he just wants an excuse to have you over.”

“He doesn’t do that. Damien is always offering to host. Doesn’t matter if I’m here or not.” You retorted.

“Not true,” they shook their head, “On days that you're not around and we don’t feel like going to the bar, Tommy always hosts. Or Amanda. Or Ian.”

“Tommy has more alcohol at his place.” You ignored the rest of the list, still trying to change the subject.

“Dude,” Courtney was laughing now, “It’s like you don’t want to see it.”

“See what?” Your ears began to feel hot.

“That he likes you as much as you like him.” The words had a tone of finality. “Why are you so nervous?”

“Bec—are you serious? Why wouldn’t I be nervous? Why would I run the risk of ruining a perfectly good friendship? Or, you know, whatever it is—however you might describe what it is!” You started to ramble, digging yourself into a hole, “What happens if something happens and then—it could ruin work, Court. It could ruin everything!” You suddenly became aware that you were whisper-yelling. You cleared your throat, returning to a normal tone of voice. “It could ruin everything. That’s why people don’t fuck their coworkers.”

Courtney said nothing, just held up their hand and made a point of showing you the wedding band around their ring finger. She cleared her throat.

“That’s different.” You tried to backpedal.

“How?” Courtney looked amused, eager to hear your half-baked reasoning.

“Cause of course that worked out. Look at how Shayne looks at you. Look at how obvious of a pairing you two are.”

“Same way Damien looks at you.” Courtney smirked.

“You’re reading into this more than I am.” You shook your head at them. “He would’ve made a point to do something by now.”

“Are we…talking about the same Damien?” Courtney laughed, and you responded with a tight-lipped scowl. “In what world would he ever make a first move?”

“The ideal one. Where everything goes my way.” You scoffed, folding your arms.

“Right,” Courtney put a hand on your waist, and you looked at each other. “Approach this with more confidence, is all I’m saying. Give yourself—give him—the opportunity to make something happen.”

“Yeah,” you sighed, unfolding your arms and rubbing the bridge of your nose. “Yeah, no, you’re right.” She gave you a cocky look, and you slapped their arm gently, “Don’t rub it in.”

“You’re hot,” Courtney rubbed her thumb over the exposed skin of your waist, “And sweet. You deserve the world. And I love the both of you more than words, but you act like you’ve never had a crush before.”

“Not like this.” You admitted, and they smiled.

“I know. But you have nothing to lose.” They looked around as if they were afraid someone might be listening from behind the shower curtain, “I have it on good authority that he feels just as strongly about this thing—” she gesticulated vaguely, “as you do.” She smiled, turning to open the door. You grabbed her by the arm.

“What did Shayne tell you—what did Damien tell Shayne?” You tried to pull them back as they turned the door handle, but she wiggled from your grasp.

“You didn’t hear it from me!” She called back to you, leaving you alone in the bathroom to ruminate on the conversation.

~~~

It was still early when people started to trickle out. You knew when Shayne and Courtney left that the party was over.

“Do you guys need a ride?” You sidled up to Courtney where she stood in the foyer with Shayne, “I don’t mind driving you home. I’m sober. Stone cold.”

“Oh my god—Steve Austin, I love your work!” Spencer called over to you while he herded a cheerfully inebriated Tommy through the door. Shayne let out a quick, barking laugh.

“No, don’t worry about it. We’re ubering.” Courtney moved hair from your face, and you saw something dubious hidden in her smile. She leaned further into your space, lowering their voice, “And you’re not going anywhere.”

“What?” You made a face.

“Give yourself,” they pressed a finger to your chest, “an opportunity.”

You grasped her hand, squeezing her fingers. Shayne looked on, and if he knew what you were talking about, he kept it to himself.

“I’m leaving. I’ll be gone—out the door right after you.” You argued, and Courtney raised her eyebrows, waving you off before exiting. Shayne followed close behind her.

You didn’t leave right after them. As it turned out, you didn’t really want to leave at all.

You liked Damien’s house. It was spooky year-round, warm in both temperature and color palette, and his couch was cozy.

It wasn’t just the furniture; Damien’s presence was equally as, if not more, comforting. He walked around picking up whatever had been misplaced during the night, trying to find the right spot for it all. He hummed quietly to himself, shooing the cats away with his feet.

“I’m sorry for not helping,” you shifted on the couch, lying on your side.

“Don’t be sorry,” he smiled, “It’s fun to organize.”

“That is such a you thing to say, you know that?”

“What is?”

“That organizing is fun.”

“It is. Especially when I have company while I do it.” He looked pointedly at you. You held eye contact.

“You can tell me to leave. If you’re done for the night.”

“Why would I want you to leave?” He looked genuinely curious as to why you would think he’d want you gone.

“If you’re tired, or something. I get it.”

“No,” he shook his head, grabbing a cup that had been left half-full on a bookshelf, “I like having you around.”

“Can I get that as a written statement? Signed, dated…” You sat up a bit, positioning your head on the armrest of the sofa.

“Absolutely not. Nobody can ever know.” He laughed, and you couldn’t help but laugh along with him.

“Come sit with me.” You leaned over to pat a cushion before returning to your reclined position.

It could’ve just been the liquid courage you’d ingested, but you’d only had one drink. It was hardly enough to make you feel a buzz, let alone get you drunk. Maybe you were just thinking too much about what Courtney had said, about giving yourself a chance, finding an opening to let him in. Or maybe you were just really, really comfortable where you were spread out on the couch. For once, though, the confidence seemed to be your own doing.

Damien put down the cup in his hand and settled on the couch. You rested your feet on his thigh, and he placed a hand on your shin.

You’d always felt that any one-on-one time you got with him had a deadline, like you were on a time crunch based off of when the next video needed to be filmed or when your friends would join the conversation. It made the moments alone with him all the more enjoyable.

You liked being here, alone with him.

You liked it a lot.

“You wanna do something?” Damien leaned his head back on the couch, stretching his arms out beside him. You tried not to pay too much attention to the way the fabric of his t-shirt hugged his arms and the broad expanse of his chest.

“Like what?” You quirked a brow.

"Something low energy that makes us feel like we’re doing something…” He mulled over the possibilities, “Smash Bros?”

You nodded. “Wanna make it interesting?”

“I’m not putting money down.”

“Because you’re scared?”

“Yeah,” he smiled, “Scared you’ll lose. Wouldn’t wanna take a chunk out of your day rate.”

“You fucking wish,” you kicked at him gently. “I wasn’t thinking the gambling route.”

“So what were you thinking?”

“You ever played strip poker?”

Damien looked taken aback, and you regretted your proposal almost instantly. “Are you suggesting we play strip Smash?” He broke into a fit of laughter.

“We don’t—it was just a thought.” You tried to retract your suggestion.

“I didn’t say no.” He held your gaze, and you felt a tug in your stomach. “But if you get cold, tell me.”

“You say that like I’m going to lose.”

“Oh, is that what that sounded like?” He tossed you a controller, “Good. Cause that’s what I meant.”

You kicked at him again.

You lost your socks first. Then your shirt. You didn’t know whether or not to thank or chastise yourself for remembering to wear a bra. Your pants quickly followed, and though it was far from a matching set, you were relieved that your undergarments were at least presentable.

You were acutely aware of your own body now; the rise and fall of your chest and the way you moved your legs when you got caught up in the game. You didn’t notice Damien: how he bit the inside of his cheek so hard when you took off your shirt that he flinched; how he nearly lost his grip on the controller when your jeans came off; how he kept shifting in his seat.

You especially didn’t notice the way he looked at you. His eyes flicked over your face with a combination of pride and adoration, and they darkened significantly when his gaze dropped below your collar and took in your half-naked form.

“How far are you gonna take this?” Damien was grinning, his voice the only other sound against the backdrop of in-game blasts and the click of thumbs on controllers.

“Down to my skin.” You shot him a glance and he cleared his throat.

“Won’t be long, then.”

“Yeah?” You bumped your shoulder against his lightly.

“You’re oh-for-three.” He pointed out, and you pushed against him again, harder this time, in an attempt to throw him off his rhythm.

“Let me choose a different character.” You tried to reach for his hands to grab at the controller. He held it up and away from his body.

“I don’t think the character is the problem,” he laughed, face lighting up at the way you sneered in frustration. “I’m not pausing just so you can be Kirby.”

“Who said I wanted to be Kirby?” You chastised him.

“Did you want to be Kirby?” He looked smug when he turned to face you, his hands still out of reach. You realized how close you’d gotten to him over the course of your teasing exchange, and suddenly recognized that the opportunity Courtney had been alluding to was right in front of you.

You moved to straddle his waist, legs framing his body and tits inches from his face as you stretched out to grab his hands, removing the controller from his grasp. You tossed it to the side and Damien was frozen as you shifted to look behind you at the screen, your victory now swift thanks to the lack of any opponent.

You turned back to him with a smile. “Did you want to be Kirby,” you imitated him, echoing his taunt. “Lose the shirt, Dames.”

Damien looked up at you, frozen. The tension was almost visible, like fogged glass, and you had no idea how to clear the air. You were nearly certain that you had made a terrible mistake, that everything about tonight was about to go wrong.

You were unable to make eye contact with him—afraid that by looking at him you would completely fall apart and lose the edge you’d only just found. Throughout your mental battle with yourself, Damien still hadn't moved, his gaze fixed on your face.

You tried to make your fear dissipate by breaking the silence.

“What?” You laughed, a little awkwardly.

Damien swallowed. “I...sorry,” His eyes were wide as he spoke, “I just got…very nervous and—and really turned on.”

Oh.

He let out a small, huffed laugh, smiling up at you in a moment of awe. He blinked hard a few times before moving his arm to rest behind his head.

“That…that makes two of us, then,” you stayed where you were, placing your hands on your thighs. You licked your lips, exhaling, before finding the nerve to continue. “You still have to take your shirt off, though. You lost. Rules are rules.”

“Didn't you get to take your socks off first?” He narrowed his eyes playfully.

“You can take them off," your words were coy. "You want me to move?”

“I never said that.” He shook his head, leaning forward just enough to grant him the space to remove his t-shirt. He tossed it to the side, and you felt your whole body flood with nerves and anticipation when he leaned back against the couch on full display for you.

“Are you cold?” Damien brought his hand up to cup your elbow, and it was only then that you became aware of the goosebumps that had broken out over your flesh.

“No…No. Just…” You swallowed, moving slightly on his lap. “Just nervous.”

He let out a small laugh. “Do you—I mean…” He was entranced, unable to remove his eyes from your face for the fear that if he looked at any more of you, you’d be able to feel his reaction. You reached out to trace a hand over his chest, admiring him and letting the heat of his skin warm your palm. “Would you mind if…” He bit his lip, closing his eyes while your fingers grazed his flesh. He took a deep breath. “Can I kiss you?”

You stopped your hand, letting it linger on the center of his chest, just above his stomach. Damien gingerly placed a hand on your waist, and for just a moment you wondered if he could feel the desperation seeping through your skin.

“Yeah. Yeah, you can kiss me.” you nodded, maybe a little overzealous, “Please.”

You leaned forward into him. You could feel the weight of his hand on your body and the thrum of your own heartbeat in your chest as it threatened to break through your ribcage. You watched him suck in a sharp, deep breath before his other hand cupped your face. You closed your eyes, letting him guide you into the kiss.

It was tender. You moved slowly, in tandem with him. You wrapped your arms around his neck, letting yourself settle into him as you got lost in the way his mouth felt on yours. You let your lips part, making space for his tongue to dip between them and explore you further. You let out a quiet moan when he licked into you, and you let your own tongue delve beyond his lips to take a taste of what you’d been craving so urgently. His grip on your waist tightened in response to your sounds, and you took it upon yourself to test the waters, rolling your hips against him. You were rewarded with the feeling of his stiffening cock between your legs, and a gruff sound that caught in his throat. His hand moved from your face to the back of your head, applying light pressure to keep you steady as the kiss became hungrier, and he bit at your bottom lip.

When you parted, both of you pausing to catch your breath, he looked up at you, quietly chuckling to himself.

“What?” You let your hands wander over his shoulders, “Was it that bad?”

“What? No—god, no. No, I’ve just…I’ve always wanted to do that.” Damien smiled, moving his thumb in a soothing pattern over your hip, “I’ve always wanted to do that…” He trailed off, raking his eyes over you and letting both hands move up and down your sides.

“Really?” You posed the question with your eyes closed, lost in his touch. You let yourself fall forward on his chest.

“Really.” He sighed dreamily, “I can’t begin to explain to you how much space you take up in my head. The real thing is a lot better than the imaginary version.”

“But you can do whatever you want in your imagination.” You pointed out, pressed against him and tracing lines over his collar with one finger.

“Yeah. Sure. But nothing I think up could ever beat this.” His fingers grazed the clasp of your bra, “And, full transparency, I’ve thought up a lot.”

You laughed, pushing yourself up with both hands on his chest to really look at him; his hair was messy, and his cheeks were flushed pink.

He looked flawless. You felt flawless.

“Damien,” your tone was saccharine, still tinged with a shy edge but steadily coming into your own with help from Damien’s clear reciprocation of your feelings, “Do you wanna show me all the thoughts you’ve had?” You watched his face go stern at your words, still hinting his amusement with a small, nearly hidden smile. “Do you wanna act on them?”

He wrapped his arms around you, pulling you flush against him; somehow the feeling of your tits pressed against his bare chest was almost more intimate than the kiss you’d just shared. You squealed, tossing your head back, which he took as an opportunity to leave dainty kisses on your throat, muttering against your skin.

“I don’t think you’ve ever seen my room.” His voice was gravelly, parched from the kisses he left on your skin as he picked you up. You gasped, suddenly off the ground and in his arms as he carried you down the hall; one of his hands trailed down your body, and you felt his fingers dig into the flesh of your upper thigh to keep his hold on you. You hid your face in the crook of his neck, letting him overwhelm your senses.

You got lost momentarily, like time had paused or sped up or stopped completely, but then you were in his room. The lights were dim, just as they were in the rest of the house, and the shelves stacked with various tchotchkes and books that you were too distracted to care about in the moment.

You realized that a person could look like their home, in a way, and you recalled the moment earlier in the evening when you had found yourself so attracted to how Damien carried himself in his own space. It’s because the space was just as welcoming, just as comforting and soothing as he was.

He let his grip on you loosen, and you landed on his bed, hands still wrapped around him and tentative of letting go. But you didn’t have to; he lay next to you, rolling onto his side and pulling you against him in a swift maneuver that placed you comfortably on his chest.

He didn’t kiss you, maybe out of anxiety that he was moving too fast for your taste, or just because he felt the moment didn’t call for it, but he brushed his nose against yours and let his hands linger on your waist.

“Is this what you thought about?” You whispered, letting him continue his quiet ministrations, “Taking me to bed and touching me like this?”

“And so much more,” he breathed, hands moving up your back, trying to commit your entire body to memory. “I hope you—I didn’t mean for it to come off like I’ve only ever thought about fucking you.”

You moved to rub your thumb over his cheek. “What did you mean?”

“That I don’t want you to be my friend,” he smiled, and your heart dropped for a second before he continued, “That I think about you all the time in ways that friends don’t think about each other. And I…” He searched for the right words, “Even after a night like this, even after, you know, seeing everybody and having everybody over—even when a place is full of people, and noise…You’re still the only person I can pay attention to. Or think about.”

You couldn’t help but let out a laugh, and he pulled away from you to meet your gaze.

“Does that sound really stupid?”

“No,” you reassured him, pulling him back towards you, “No, it’s…you put it into words, Damien.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I get it. I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe what you mean to me, and you just,” you laughed again, trying to collect yourself, “You did the work for me.” You smiled, tilting your head back with your chest still pressed against him, making sure he paid attention to what you were saying. “I love you.”

You watched his face change, something in his eyes and the curl of his lips looked different in a way you couldn’t pinpoint. You couldn’t look for long, because he was on you again in a flash, arms wrapping around you, engulfing you with his body and tugging you into him. His lips crashed against yours, and it was hungry, and messy, and passionate, so much so that you couldn’t be bothered to care about the clack of teeth or the small bead of spit that fell from the corner of your lip.

“I love you,” Damien’s voice sounded tight, higher than it had been all night, “I love you.” He freely explored your body now, big hands reaching over your ass and offering soft squeezes before grazing your sides and the swell of your breasts.

“You know how,” you managed to get a few words in between heated kisses, “you said you didn’t want it to come off as if you only wanted to fuck me?” You let out a small moan when he licked a stripe up your neck and to your earlobe, mumbling quiet curses to yourself at the feel of his tongue on your body.

“Mhm,” Damien acknowledged your words without breaking away from you, still nipping at your neck while you let your breathing mellow so that you could continue speaking.

“Want you to fuck me,” you put a hand in his hair, forming a fist in the silver strands and pulling him up to make eye contact. “Damien, I want you to fuck me.”

He looked almost surprised, like he had forgotten physical intimacy beyond kissing you was even an option. The look of mild shock was replaced with clear enthusiasm as he moved to get off of the bed. “I’d hate to make you ask twice.”

He shed his jeans, and you realized this was more of him than you had ever seen before; standing next to you was the man that took up all your thoughts, ready and willing to give you what you wanted, his eyes like pools of reverence as they trailed over your form.

You couldn’t help but feel excited, uncaring if you came off as desperate. You sat up and moved to the edge of the bed, situating yourself on your knees. Your hands found purchase on his chest and slowly moved down his stomach until you reached the waistband of his boxers.

“Eager,” he let your hands wander, watching on as you explored. You paused, looking up at him to wordlessly ask if you were allowed to go further. “Don’t be shy, baby,” something about his tone had changed, and the cheerful voice you’d come to know and love was replaced with a deeper, rasping sound that you thought you might like even more. “You can touch. Take what you need.”

The words reached your core before they fully hit your ears, and you shifted on your knees, pressing your thighs together to give yourself some relief. Sliding your hand under his waistband, you were met with the solid, smooth skin of his cock. He helped you pull his boxers down and over his length, letting it spring free, and you felt your mouth water.

He was big, thick, and while not surprising in the slightest, you couldn’t help but whine at the sight before you. You looked up at him, your hand wrapped around his cock, thumb brushing the reddened tip; you expected him to look smug, proud of himself, maybe, but he looked dumbstruck, in awe of the way your hand looked wrapped around him—in awe of the fact that it was you.

“Damien,” you prompted, and it broke him out of his haze. He nodded. “Can I…”

“Please,” he took a deep breath, “God, yes, please.”

You smiled. “Well, I’d hate to make you ask twice.” He laughed at your mimicry before quickly silencing himself with a shaky moan when you licked an experimental stripe up the bottom of his cock. He tilted his head to the side, unable to decide whether to get lost in the pleasure or to enjoy the view he had of you, bent over yourself on your knees and using your mouth in a way he’d only ever dreamed of.

You spit in your hand, gliding it over him and appreciating the way he felt in your hands; the warmth, the pliant weight. You made sure he was looking when you finally took his tip in your mouth, circling your tongue over him. You moved your hand in sync with the way you bobbed your head. He groaned, hand flying to rake his fingers through your hair, and the way he sighed out your name spurred you on more.

His other hand caressed your back, tugging cautiously at the straps of your bra.

“Take it off,” you pumped him in your hand, letting your tongue flick out to deliver barely-there licks to the tip of his cock. “Take it off for me.”

“Fuck.” He huffed, hypnotized by the way you used your mouth on him. He undid the clasp with one hand, and you let the straps hang off your body. You didn’t want to pause your movements, didn’t even want to slow down at the risk of having to go for even a second without hearing him moan your name; you shook the constricting material from yourself, taking him deeper in your mouth until tears pricked your eyes so that you could slip your bra off your arms. Damien let out a low groan, tightening the grip he still had on your hair.

You took him deeper still, hand working what you couldn’t fit down your throat. When you gagged on him, he let out an absolutely filthy sound.

“You like that?” He was smiling with his mouth open, chest heaving with every breath, “You like choking on me?” You answered with a garbled “yes,” his cock still pressed against the back of your throat, one hand on his hip to keep yourself stable as your other hand stroked the base of him. He moaned. “You look so pretty. Always knew you’d look so good with my cock down your throat, baby.”

You couldn’t help the noise that you let out, something between a gasp and a moan that sent vibrations up Damien’s spine. You continued to move up and down over his cock before removing your mouth from him, spit dripping down your chin and a dopey smile on your lips.

Damien grabbed your face in one hand, fingers pressing hard against your cheeks as he pulled you up to his level. “You really are just so fucking perfect.” He kissed you, letting the drool that coated your chin drip onto his face. “Can I taste you? Can I taste how sweet you are?”

You nodded, the hand he still had on your face moving with you.

“Yeah? Say it.” He demanded, and you whimpered, enjoying the look of dominance on him.

“Want you to taste me, Damien.” When you spoke, his fingers pressed the inside of your cheeks against your teeth. “Want you to taste how sweet I am.”

He growled, moving his jaw in a circle as if to stretch the muscles in preparation for what he planned on doing to you. “How do you ask nicely?”

You felt an adrenaline rush deep in your stomach. It was one thing to be here with your pleasure in his hands, but to hear Damien say the things you’d fantasized about for so long made your head swim.

“Please…” One of your hands grabbed impatiently at his arm, “Please, Damien…want…want you to fuck me with your tongue. Please.”

He kissed you again, smiling against your mouth and removing his hand from your face to push softly against your chest so that you fell back onto the bed. He knelt on the mattress, holding your calves and pulling your legs open. You sank into the pillows at the head of the bed, letting them cradle and support you at an angle that allowed you to look down at Damien, whose face hovered over your core. His fingers danced over the waistband of your panties, and you wondered if he had felt the same tingly sensation when you toyed with his boxers as you did right now with his hands running over your hips and stomach.

He pressed his face against your clothed cunt, impatient and greedy for you. You moaned, one hand fisting the sheets under you while the other came to rest on your thigh, holding your legs open for him when your muscles threatened to snap them closed following the sudden contact.

“Fuck, Damien, that feels—that’s so good.” You squirmed under him as he licked over your panties, tongue brushing your clit through the fabric. You tried to push the material down, wiggling your hips to ease your panties off your body, but Damien caught your hands in his.

“Let me play, baby.” His doe eyes stared up at you from between your legs with a devious glint. You didn't listen, and instead continued to move your hips in an attempt to wriggle out of the fabric that kept his mouth from making direct contact with you. He pressed down on your hips, forcing you to cease your fidgeting. “Be patient.”

He licked a stripe from where your panties threatened to reveal your hole and up to your clit, and you arched your back in an attempt to encourage him further.

“God, Damien, please!” You pleaded, begging for him to touch you without the obstacle of the fabric that remained on your body. “Want it—said you wanted to taste me, you can taste me—you can taste me, I need it. Please, let me feel your tongue, please—”

Damien snapped your waistband and you yelped, effectively ending your rambling.

“You’re pretty when you beg," he kissed your stomach, and you let out a whimper. "But if you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll fuck it.” Damien’s words weren’t harsh, you could hear the joviality buried under the severity in his voice, and somehow that made it even sexier.

Your arousal was heightened when, as you moaned at his words, you felt two thick fingers plunge into your cunt. Your breath caught in your throat, and you choked out his name.

“Oh my god!” You cried out, looking down to see that he had moved your panties to the side to give himself access to your entrance. His fingers pumped in and out of you, curling to hit your more delicate spots, and the sound was utterly indecent.

“You’re soaked,” Damien was smiling with his top teeth, watching his fingers as they disappeared inside of you. “What got you so wet, baby?”

“Because…s’cause…” You didn’t have the energy to talk, too focused on the way his fingers pushed against the walls of your cunt, forcing your body to make space for him.

“Because why?” He goaded, thumb rubbing circles on your clit as he pushed his fingers deeper, “Because you like the way I touch you? Hm? Because you’ve been thinking about this as much as I have? For as long as I have?”

You nodded, mouth agape and eyes threatening to roll back; maybe you looked pathetic, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care, completely content with his fingers thrusting into you.

“Aw, come on. If you still want my mouth, you’re gonna have to do better than that.” He removed his fingers from inside of you, using the slick that coated them as lubricant to massage your clit.

“Wanted this for so long—so fucking long, Damien.” Your words came out rushed and breathy, “Thought about you like this all the time. Thought about—about you when I came, every time I came.” You couldn’t stop yourself from telling him the truth, the words tumbled from your lips as easily as taking a breath.

Your admission made him pause his movements, and for a moment the dominance in his face faded into something more tender. But he gathered himself, finally pulling off your panties in one fell swoop, then taking one of your legs and hooking your knee over his shoulder while you continued to babble to him.

“Keep talking, princess,” the nickname made you dizzy with desire, and you whined out for him, your eyes wide and watery when his breath fanned over your now bare, slick coated center. “Keep talking. Tell me all about it while I taste you.”

The first swipe of his tongue against your clit sent shockwaves through you, and you whimpered before recollecting your train of thought.

“Th—oh!” You quickly lost your words again when Damien began to ease his tongue into your entrance, toying with your hole before plunging into you with a purpose. He squeezed your thigh, and you took it as encouragement to continue. “Thought about this all the time—about your mouth against me. Using your mouth on me until my legs got sore from the way you’d hold me open.” He groaned against your cunt, and you extended a hand to comb your fingers through his hair. “Thought about all the ways you could use me. All the ways I would let you use me—fuck, like that, please!”

He had his face buried in you, your slick dripping down his chin and his nose pressed against your clit. You could feel the movement of his tongue inside of you, and you tugged on his hair as the sensation spread over your body.

“Thought about getting on my knees for you. I would let you have me whenever you wanted—wherever you wanted.”

Damien growled. “Yeah?” His brow quirked and he looked up at you momentarily before diving back into your heat, “Have to take you up on that.”

You whimpered, the muscles in your thighs and abdomen tensing from the onslaught of pleasure, and the feeling let you know that you were approaching your peak.

“Knew you would make me feel so amazing, Damien, knew you’d make me cum like nobody else ever could.” You were stringing words together faster than your brain could think them up. But even if they came out jumbled, every last word was true.

“Want you to cum on my mouth,” Damien was grinding his hips against the mattress, the relief he got from the fabric of the sheets dulled his intense arousal only momentarily, but he chased the feeling. “Please, baby, give it to me.”

You pulled his hair, admittedly harder than you had intended, but with the moan he let out, it seemed he didn’t mind. His tongue worked wonders as he extended it over and into you. Right when you thought you were already done for, limbs going slack and the pleasant tingle in your core reaching a fever pitch, Damien wrapped his lips around your clit and sucked hard, letting his tongue flick against the sensitive bud.

It felt good to scream out for him, to let his name fall repeatedly from your lips as you yanked on his hair, but it felt better to hear his voice and the words that rang out from between your legs.

“Beautiful,” he was mumbling, still licking into you, trying to savor the tangy flavor of your cum. “So fucking beautiful, baby. Look at the pretty fucking mess you made. Did such a good job.”

You tugged again on his hair and he let you guide him up to face level. When he leaned in to kiss you, you opened your mouth instantly, and he slid his tongue between your lips. You sucked on it happily, eager to taste yourself on him, eager to experience everything you'd always imagined being able to do with him.

In turn, he held you close, so you wouldn’t slip away like you did when he woke up from his dreams.

You let the kiss linger, leisurely grasping at each other and appreciating the newfound lack of constraint. You curled yourself into him, lying on your side and tangling your legs with his in an effort to get as close to him as you could.

“You look so pretty when you cum,” Damien mumbled, lips grazing your pulse point, dipping down and sucking faint bruises onto your collar. “I want to see it again.”

“You can see it whenever you want,” you closed your eyes, relishing the gentle pressure he was putting on your skin so that the marks would form in small spots across your chest. You cupped his cheek in your hand, and he reluctantly stopped licking the bruises that had begun to pop up. Your thumb stroked the skin under his eye. “I want you to see it again now.”

Damien leaned into you, trailing kisses over your jaw. “You want me to fuck you?” He licked a stripe up your neck and over your chin. When his tongue reached your mouth, you opened for him, letting him lick between your lips, kissing him fervidly and moaning softly. “Yeah? You want me to fuck you? Want me to fuck you even though I just made you cum?" He growled into your mouth. "You need more already?"

“Yeah,” you smiled shyly, rubbing your face against the stubble on his cheek.

“Needy thing.” He removed his hands from you, then snaked his arms through the gap in your bodies and put his hands on your shoulders, pushing you against the mattress and onto your back.

He straddled your legs, keeping you immobile on the bed and kissing down your chest. He nipped at the plush flesh of your breasts, unable to contain himself, unable to hide the obvious pleasure he took in seeing you this way.

“Damien—” You sighed when he circled his tongue around one of your nipples, your fingers wrapping around his bicep.

“I know. I know. Sorry, I just—God, you’re beautiful.” He smiled, more to himself than to you, but the joy on his face was palpable, and you were sure he could detect the pride you felt at being the one to make him feel this way.

He used his knee to spread your legs, opening you up for him, moving his own legs to situate himself between your thighs. One of his hands ran up and down your leg as he stroked himself, lining his cock up with your entrance. When the tip of him rubbed between your folds, you whimpered, moving your hands down his arm and squeezing his forearm.

“Is this what you want?” Damien was looking down, examining how perfectly his body meshed with yours. “You want me to fuck you?”

“Yeah,” your words were barely above a whisper, “Want you to fuck me.”

He moved his hand further up your body and squeezed your hip. “Where are your manners, princess?” He smirked, “Say please.”

“Please, Damien,” you stared up at him wide-eyed, captivated. “Please.”

“There you go.” He squeezed your hip again in recognition of your obedience. Slowly, as if he was worried he’d break you, he pushed into you, watching your eager, waiting cunt swallow every inch he offered you. You moaned, squeezing his arm and leaving small, curved marks where your nails dug into his skin. You watched his eyelids flutter, head tilting back with his mouth ajar, letting out a deep groan as he squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again to meet your heavy-lidded gaze.

“Big.” It was all you said, stretched and full of him in a way nobody had ever filled you up before.

Damien swallowed a laugh, flashing a domineering smile. “Big?”

“Too big.” You clarified, not entirely meaning it; you were thrilled to be this packed with him, but it had been so long since you’d felt a satisfying sting like this that it would take you a moment to get accustomed to it.

“You can take it, baby. I know you can.” He pressed his palm over your stomach, brushing his thumb across your skin soothingly. “You tell me if it’s too much, ok? Use your words, say it’s too much, and I’ll stop.”

“Don’t want you to stop.” Your voice came out strong momentarily, so eager for him that the possibility of him leaving you empty made you tense. “Waited so long…” You said, mellowing slightly, “Want you. Want you to…to use me.”

Damien made a throaty noise, something between a laugh and a moan that both relaxed and lit a fire inside you. Unhurried, he pulled out of you, his hands on your hips to give himself proper leverage. You exhaled slowly, mind set adrift by the feeling of his cock dragging against your walls; his rounded tip, every vein that ran up his length—you were certain you could feel it all.

You whimpered when he had pulled out enough so that nothing but the head of his cock penetrated you. You swayed your hips, trying to spur him on, but even with just the tip you felt you had ample stimulation.

He didn’t stop you, just watched on as you tried to fuck yourself with the tip of his cock just barely inside of you.

“You need some help?” He raised an eyebrow at.

“Please—fuck me, please.” You nodded excitedly, aching for him.

He smiled, eyes fixed on your face as he rammed back into you, watching your mouth contort and your tits bounce as your body absorbed the force. You screamed out for him, arching your back, which gave him the ability to push the remainder of his cock as far into you as he could.

“Fuck Damien! So—feel…so full!” You felt a tear fall over your cheek, overwhelmed by the bliss of having his cock buried inside of you and the rough way in which he made it happen. He leaned over you, supporting himself on his forearms as he caged you between them, and met you at face level. He thrust in and out of you shallowly, bringing his lips to your cheek and kissing the path of the delighted tears you had shed.

“Yeah? Feel full?” He whispered, still moving his hips, his cheek pressed against yours so he could speak directly into your ear.

“Yes, Damien—God, yes!” You wrapped your arms around his neck, trying to immerse yourself in all of him. You searched for any part of him that you could reach with your mouth, planting sloppy kisses on his collar, his shoulder, the crook of his neck.

“Good.” He kissed your cheek again, before licking the wet, salty trail that your tears had left behind. “Want you to feel me for days after this.” He found your lips and kissed you, the pace and intensity of his thrusts increasing. “And when you can finally walk straight, I’m gonna do it to you all over again.”

You scraped your nails up his back, moaning for him and desperate to have him follow through on his threat. He buried his face in your neck, and you could feel the tug of his stubble on your skin as he panted against you, fucking into you aggressively in a way you’d always dreamed he would.

Each thrust felt deeper, and there came a point where you felt a pleasant pain in your side as his cock brushed your cervix.

“Damien—Christ, you’re so fucking deep,” Your nails jabbed harder into the skin of his back and he let out a hiss. “Please, like that. Just like that, don’t stop. B-bruise me, please, please!”

“I won’t stop, princess,” Damien’s words were snarled, gruff in your ear as his lips grazed just below your earlobe. “I promise. Wanna leave this pretty pussy so nice and sore.” He sucked a mark under your jawline, "Wanna ruin you."

You moved one hand, fingers lacing through his silver hair and yanking at the brown roots to pull him from his spot in the crook of your neck. He took the hint, rising up to meet you, his mouth finding yours and biting at your bottom lip.

“I love you,” you couldn’t bite back the words, not even if you tried; not when his cock was hitting spots you didn’t even know were there, not when he was using all his upper body strength to stay above you just so he could gaze down upon your tear-streaked, fucked out face, not when it was something you’d been dying to tell him in this capacity for as long as you could remember. “I love you, Damien—I love you.”

“I love you,” he echoed your words, voice softening and face relaxing. “I love you so much. I do, I love you so much.”

You raised your hips to meet his thrusts, and Damien moaned out your name, muscle in his jaw tensing before he let his mouth fall slack. He paused momentarily, sitting up while still buried inside you, to take your legs in his hands and press your knees back to your chest. You were bent in half, completely at his mercy and loving it. You yelped, the new angle giving him the ability to drive harder and deeper into you; the control he had over your body made your head swim and your cunt squeeze around him. He leaned over you, smiling through the pleasure that clouded his mind to jeer at you affectionately as he continued to escalate the manner in which he fucked you.

“What’s wrong, baby?” He watched you, your head lolling to the side and practically drooling as you looked back up at him, pitiful moans and gibberish the only way you could communicate. “Lose your voice?”

You swallowed hard, gasping for air and overcome with the feeling of him. You searched for the right words.

“Make me—oh!—feel so good,” you panted, “so fucking good.”

“Who makes you feel so good?” Damien pressed, plunging his cock as deep as he could, his hips firm against the back of your thighs.

“You do!” You felt all of him, and still, somehow, you craved more. “You do—you, you!”

“Yeah? Say it princess. Say Damien you make me feel so good.” He grabbed your chin, forcing you to stare up at him with your lust-blown eyes. “Say it.”

“Da—Damien,” you whimpered as he fucked you in quick bursts while waiting for you to speak. “Damien, you—you make m-me feel so good.”

He pressed his lips to yours, further enhancing the way your body was already contorted, and you moaned into his mouth at the feeling of being used like a toy by him.

“That’s right,” Damien licked into your mouth, “You make me feel so good, princess.”

He pulled back from your face, straightening once more; he grabbed your legs and threw them over his shoulders, gripping your thighs close to his body and using them to pull you onto his cock. The sounds you made were high pitched and pathetic, eyes rolling back while he placed kisses on your calves where they were slung over his shoulders; he nipped at you, teeth just barely grazing the flesh of your legs as his lips did a bulk of the work. The tickle of his five o’clock shadow was a welcome match to the gentle pressure you felt in your abdomen brought on by the way his cock stretched you.

He wrapped one arm around your legs, leaving you powerless to his movements as your head pushed back into the pillows from the sheer delight of feeling him inside of you, heightened by the depth and momentum with which he fucked you. He let his other hand drop to hold your hips, thumb caressing your skin with unidentifiable shapes.

You couldn’t remember getting fucked like this before—if you ever even had been fucked like this before. Somehow Damien knew you inside and out better than anybody else did, maybe even better than you knew yourself. This was proven by the way he drove his hips into you, hauling you over his cock and making you feel the delicious drag of his length in a way that made you feel full to the point of near discomfort. The electrified jolts of satisfaction when the tip of his cock pressed up against your more delicate, hidden spots, were eased by the soft way he touched you. The feeling wasn’t confined to your walls; his fingers brushed your clit, the ghost of a touch sending shockwaves through your system. You wriggled your body, unable to contain yourself and responding physically to the way his digits teased you while he ruined you with his cock.

He was rough, wild, and everything you needed. When you looked up at him, you could still see the kindness in his features, hear the compassion with which he moaned your name, feel the romantic way he squeezed at your body even while he was fucking you stupid. His groaned words of praise, of affirmation, when he managed to gasp your name between panting thrusts brought you to the edge just as much as his physical prowess did, and you let it be known how you were feeling.

“Damien—” You reached out, grasping at his arm where it wrapped around your legs, his other hand kneading your clit in slow circles. You felt your cunt tighten around him, walls fluttering in preparation for your oncoming orgasm, hips bucking on their own accord as you chased the ecstasy he brought you.

“Give me another, princess,” he grunted, pounding into you, his fingers deftly tracing over your clit. “Doing so good, give me one more.”

You turned your face to the side and buried it into the pillow under you, biting into the cloth to silence your increasingly loud screams. He reached down to grab your face, once again pushing your knees to your chest and earning a loud gasp of his name as you wiggled your hips against him, relishing the feel of his cock throbbing deep inside of you.

“Show me that pretty face,” he cooed, sweat lining his temples from exertion, “Let me hear those pretty sounds.” He pressed hard against your clit, and your body responded explosively; you screamed for him, reaching for his shoulders to pull him to your chest and kiss him as a warm feeling spread from your center and out to your limbs. You could feel it in your chest, the fulfillment traveling over every inch of your body, muscles responding in kind with small twitches as your cunt squeezed him tight.

Your legs squirmed free from underneath him, and you wrapped them around his waist, keeping him close to you while you rode out your high, circling your hips over his cock. He moaned into your mouth, the kiss devolving into a messy exchange of spit and sweat and teeth, lips chapped and swollen with passion. You bit his lip and he growled, leisurely swaying his hips and punctuating his thrusts with eager whines.

“Where,” he was breathing heavily, once again finding solace in the crook of your neck. “Where do you want it, baby. Tell me. Please.” He was practically whimpering, begging you for permission to finish by communicating where it was you wanted his cum.

“Inside,” you moaned, the aftershocks of your orgasm lulling you into a sleepy heap of oversensitivity and devotion.

Damien growled as he took in your request. “You’re—fucking christ, you’re sure?”

“Please,” it was all you could say, desperate to feel the culmination of his pleasure inside of you. “Pill. Need it, Damien. Cum inside me. Let me feel it, please.”

Damien groaned at your words, brow knit and mouth open. He sped up his pace, pushing himself up from you and supporting himself on his hands. You whined, content and aching for him.

“Fuck, I'm gonna fill this pussy up so deep.” Damien squeezed his eyes shut momentarily before opening them and looking down at you, “Fuck—gonna cum, baby, I'm—fuck!” His hips stuttered, and you wrapped your legs around him tighter, keeping him secure against you. He dropped down onto you, still providing shallow thrusts, though much gentler than before. “I love you,” he whispered, lips pressing against your neck as he engulfed you with his own body, cock spent and twitching inside of you, “I love you.”

“I love you,” you repeated quietly, and when he kissed you, you could feel that he meant it; the words echoed in your mind as he eased his lips against yours, taking time now to really savor the way you moved against him and enjoy how perfectly you fit together.

You focused on catching your breath, and he removed himself from atop you as he collected himself. When he slipped his cock from you, you whimpered at the new emptiness, and he kissed your temple.

You both stayed there, lying in bed together while you came down from the high-energy tryst. You still couldn't remove yourselves from each other completely, limbs tangling together and hands gliding over sweaty skin as you appreciated the tranquility together.

“Do you want water?” He asked, nose rubbing against your cheek.

“Yeah,” you gulped a breath, “Yeah. Thanks.”

He got up on shaky legs and found a pair of sweatpants, walking to the kitchen only to return seconds later with a glass of water. His face was radiant and his cheeks dusted pink as he beamed at you.

“Thank you, baby,” you guzzled the cool liquid, mouth dry from the way he'd made you scream.

“Say—” Damien looked down at you, giddy, “Will you say it again?”

You smiled, tired eyes taking in his form. “Thank you, baby.”

He sat down next to you. The mattress shifted with his weight, and you inched yourself towards him.

“I like hearing you say it.” He seemed timid, like after all that had happened, he was still worried you’d reject him.

“I like saying it,” you nuzzled your face into his stomach, resting on his thigh. His hand came down to pet your hair, thumb occasionally brushing over your temple.

“Will you stay here tonight?” He asked, “Only if you want to, I mean—but, I’d like it if you did.” He laughed to himself, “And then, you know…if you wanted to stay every night—I’d like that, too.”

“Well, good, cause the U-Haul is on its way over.” You turned your head to look up at him from your spot on his leg.

“Wow, those guys work fast,” he smirked down at you. “And then, when you, uh—when you finish moving in…could I take you out on a real date?” His face looked so gentle, “You know, away from everybody we know. Just…just us?”

“I would like that.” You smiled, turning to place a kiss on his stomach. He examined your face, still stroking your hair.

“I’m sorry if anything I said was…if you think I was moving too fast—or if I said something you want to pretend I didn’t say yet. Or at all.” He winced, nervous.

“Damien,” you sat up, shuffling to kneel in front of him and cupping his cheek, “I love you. I don’t want to pretend you never said it.” You placed a kiss on his nose, and he tackled you back onto the mattress, kissing your face.

“Thank god,” he breathed a sigh of relief, “Because I don’t think I could ever take it back.”

“You’ve said it before,” you laughed when his head dipped under your chin to suck new marks onto your neck to match the ones that he had made prior.

“I know,” he mumbled against your skin, “But it’s—this is different. I mean it…different…” He smiled, sharp teeth on display, and you laughed again, enamored.

“Good,” you played with the hair that curled against the back of his neck, “I mean it different, too.”

Damien pulled you against his chest and rolled over, leaving you to straddle his waist and rest your head on his shoulder.

“I love you,” he sighed happily.

“I love you, too.” You left kisses on his collar bone before pressing your face against his neck.

~~~

You didn’t remember falling asleep, but when you awoke the next morning you momentarily feared that it had all been a dream; that you were back in your own bed, alone, hungover and suffering from the memories of some distant fantasy.

But you were still with Damien. His arm draped over your waist and his face pressed between your shoulder blades as he snored quietly.

You could get used to this.

You leaned back against him, eager to tell him that you loved him when he woke up.

The sun was just barely up, and the minuscule amount of light that made its way through the window illuminated tiny bits of dust that passed through the rays. Zelda had made her way into the room at some point in the night, and her soft purring sent tiny vibrations over the blanket, her body nestled into the curve of Damien’s knee behind you.

You stretched, aimlessly reaching out and inevitably grabbing hold of your phone. You dimmed the brightness, scrolling through notifications you had missed the night before; tagged pictures, drunken Instagram stories, a few Venmo requests and a few more Venmo payments.

Courtney had texted you only about 20 minutes before you had woken up.

Court: How was the rest of your night 👀

Court: Does Shayne owe me $10

Court: Or did you end up going home

You let out a silent laugh, rolling your eyes a little at the betting pool that seemed to have erupted over your love life. You twisted in bed, opening your camera and zooming in on Zelda where she sat comfortably against Damien’s knee, the backdrop of his bedroom on full display. You took a picture and sent it to Courtney with no explanation, amused by your own vague confirmation that you had spent the night with Damien—and planned to do it again. Often.

You put your phone down and it started to buzz on the nightstand, lighting up with Courtney's contact picture. You considered picking it up, but then Damien’s arm tightened around you, pulling you to him while his hand spread out over your ribcage just under your breast. He kissed your back, still half-asleep, before he resumed snoring.

You decided that you would talk to Courtney later, turning over to bury your face in Damien’s chest, letting his breathing lull you back to sleep.

#damien haas #damien haas smut #damien haas fanfiction #damien haas fic #damien haas x reader #damien haas x you #smosh #smosh fanfiction #smosh fic #smosh smut #smosh games #smosh pit #smosh mouth #smosh squad #smoshblr

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say-al0e · 7 months ago

Text

Hypothetical

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Eddie asks a lot of hypothetical questions, just to hear your answer. The answer to this question was more real than you wanted to admit. Warnings: Tiny bit of self-doubt, idiots to lovers. Pairing: Eddie x fem!Reader (think it could be read as GN but just to be safe) Word Count: 2.7k

“Would you fuck my clone?”

The question, asked as casually as if he were inquiring about the weather - though, to his defense, he’d asked weirder - rose above the sound of chainsaws emanating from the television and earned a confused frown as you spared him a sideways glance.

Eddie’s attention remained mostly on Leatherface, chasing unsuspecting victims, but you caught his curious glance as you laughed. Those were the first words spoken in over an hour, certainly a record for your verbose best friend, and you couldn’t help but ask, “What the fuck, Eddie?”

“What?” From his position at the end of the couch, feet propped on the coffee table and head lolled onto the cushions, he shrugged. “It’s a simple question. Would you fuck my clone?”

A beat of silence passed, in which you realized this was one of those moments where Eddie wouldn’t let the question go until he was given a satisfying answer, and you sighed. “I don’t think that’s the question, Eds,” you countered. “Isn’t it usually, ‘would you fuck your own clone’?”

With a dismissive wave of his hand and a scoff, Eddie finally sat up and turned his full attention to you, screaming teenagers and chainsaws forgotten now that he had something better to capture his attention. “That one’s boring,” he reasoned. “We know all the arguments. This is a different question, new arguments.”

“I think we’re fine without arguing,” you teased, reaching for the nearly half-empty bowl of popcorn. “Just watch the movie, Eddie.”

From the corner of your eye, you watched as a look you couldn’t quite recognize flickered across Eddie’s face. However, just as quickly as it appeared, it was covered with a raised brow and a teasing grin. “We’ve seen it a hundred times already. Anyway, what I’m getting from this is, you would fuck my clone. Interesting.”

Eddie did little to hide his amusement as you rolled your eyes and tossed a piece of popcorn at him. “I didn’t say that,” you argued, despite yourself - despite knowing that you were walking into a conversation you weren’t yet sure you wanted any part of.

A hum, unconvinced, met your ears as he reached for the bowl and plucked it from your hands. “Okay,” he prompted, ignoring your outraged huff. “So, tell me. Would you?”

There were a handful of ways you could respond to his probing. The first, shut down his question with a point blank refusal, phrased as a light-hearted joke that did little damage to his ego and even less to your already fragile nerves. The second, play into his game and debate the pros and cons of sleeping with his clone, the ethical ramifications, the conversation he clearly wanted. Or, the third, admit to him a fact that you’d concealed since the summer of 1984.

Any way you could have him, real Eddie or clone, you would take it.

That was, solidly, not in the lead. So, you opted for the second approach.

“Jeez, Eds,” you sighed, stealing popcorn from the bowl now resting on his lap. “I don’t know. Maybe,” you conceded. “Depends, I guess. Is he, like, total you or some weird, kinda fucked up clone? Like, is he totally evil or incapable of coherent thought or, I don’t, off somehow?” As an afterthought, you joked, “More so than the real you, anyway.”

“Rude.” There was no bite in the declaration, only a fond amusement that made your chest ache, but you did your best to ignore it as he hummed. “Clone’s a totally normal, complete carbon copy. Everything about him is exactly the same, down to the last hair.”

“So, no aspirations to rule the world or become, like, the next Leatherface?”

Eddie grinned. “That’s my backup plan, you know, if music doesn’t work. So, guess it’d be his, too,” he admitted, only breaking into laughter when you grabbed a pillow and smacked him with it. “Seriously,” he relented, “nothing weird. Just another me. Everything you know and love, times two.”

With a sigh, you lifted your legs onto the couch and hugged your knees to your chest. “Then… I don’t know,” you admitted, voice barely audible over the screams still echoing from the television. “Maybe?”

“It’s a yes or no question, babe,” he reminded you, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed as he studied you. “Shouldn’t be this hard.”

That look, the one that you had difficulty placing, returned and despite your uncertainty as to what it was, you were certain that you didn’t like it very much. Doubt, or maybe hurt, were the closest emotions you could identify though neither made much sense to you in the moment.

Still, rather than ask, you rolled your eyes. “What’s the point of this conversation?”

There was none, it was just for fun - a debate, like the thousands of others you’d had over the course of your friendship - and Eddie said a much as he shrugged. “Isn’t one,” he declared, offering you the last handful of popcorn. “I just want to know if you’d fuck my clone.”

When you refused, he returned the bowl back to the coffee table before reaching for your ankle. With a gentle tug, he encouraged you to rest your feet on his lap as his fingers began to tap a beat that only existed inside his head against your skin. “Why does it matter?”

Eddie shrugged once more, though this time, he glanced at the television rather than you as he answered. “Because I asked and you always answer.”

“I do,” you relented, sighing as you also spared the screen a glance. “Well, what’s the right answer, then? There has to be one.”

This time, he shook his head as the tapping of his fingers grew a touch faster. “Right answer’s the true one.”

For a moment, you simply studied Eddie. His side profile, bathed in the warm glow of the television, was the picture of concentration as he watched a scene you’d seen a thousand times before. Only, you knew him well enough to see the telltale signs that he was in no way paying as close of attention as he should’ve been.

The slightest tick in his jaw, the quick bite of the inside of his cheek, the delayed blinking; all signs that he was waiting more intently for your answer than he wanted you to believe.

Rejection - no matter how hypothetical - never seemed possible when it came to Eddie. So, you sighed and conceded, “Okay, fine. Sure, I’d fuck your clone.”

Eddie hummed, seemingly unsurprised and feigning nonchalance as he nodded as if the answer confirmed something he already suspected. And there were a thousand ways in which you expected him to respond; none of which could’ve compared to him declaring, “So, you’d fuck my clone but not me.”

Again, rejection was not an option. However, you had no intention of admitting to him that you’d wanted him for years. There was no world in which you could see yourself admitting to him that you thought he was beautiful - with his doe eyes and playful grin. Telling him how you felt would likely end in an awkward silence at best and a ruined friendship at worst.

So, you opted for a careful denial. “What? I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re not saying anything to the contrary,” he countered, turning his head to spare you a cursory glance. There was something there, beneath the amused glimmer in his eyes, that unnerved you - something far more serious than you were expecting - but as quickly as it appeared, it was gone.

When you shot him an unimpressed glance, cutting your eyes at him before returning your attention to the television, he shrugged, teasing grin never faltering. “I never said that. I answered a hypothetical and you’re reading into it.”

Eddie met your perhaps too sharp denial with a raised brow as he gave up the guise of watching the movie. “So, am I wrong?”

“Would you stop putting words into my mouth?” You huffed as you reached for the bowl of popcorn, desperate for something to distract yourself from making a confession you knew you would regret. “I never said that. All I said was that I’d fuck your clone, I answered the question.”

“Okay, fine. You never said you wouldn’t fuck me but it’s never happened. Never even sort of, almost, maybe happened,” he reminded you - as if you needed it. “So, you would fuck my clone but not me. Why?”

“Because we’re friends, Eddie,” you shot back, resisting the urge to roll your eyes as you popped a piece of popcorn into your mouth. “I’ve known you since I was ten.”

The excuse sounded weak in your own ears, but it was all you could muster without breaking down and confessing that you would, in fact, sleep with him. If only he’d ask. If only it wouldn’t destroy your friendship. If only it was that simple.

Still, Eddie was relentless. “But my clone would have all my memories, totally the same person,” he reminded you. “He’d be your friend, just like me. But you’d fuck him. So, why not me?”

“This is stupid,” you huffed. “Why do you care?” He’d never pushed so hard, not in pursuit of a hypothetical question meant to pass the time, and you were genuinely curious why he seemed so interested in your answer, or your lack thereof.

“I’m a naturally curious person,” he argued, shrugging as he squeezed your ankle. “It’s just a stupid hypothetical. C’mon, why would you hypothetically fuck my clone but not me?”

There was little doubt in your mind that he would continue pushing until he got the answer he was looking for, especially as it seemed that he’d already made up his mind that he was right, so you shifted yourself in a huff. With your legs now hugged to your chest, eyes on the television to avoid meeting his gaze as you admitted in a snap, “God, okay. I’d fuck your clone because it’s the closest I’d get to being with you without actually destroying our entire relationship. Happy with that answer?”

“What?” Eddie sounded genuinely surprised and you could feel the warmth of his gaze burning into your skin as you purposely kept your gaze on the television.

“If your clone is you, all your memories, your mannerisms, your looks, I’d fuck your clone because then I’d get to see what it’s like to be with you,” you admitted, words escaping despite every fiber of your being telling you to be quiet. “I’d get everything without the risk of losing you when I fuck it all up.”

Eddie shifted closer then, careful to keep a few inches of space between you but no longer nestled into the opposite edge of the couch as he tipped his head to get a better glimpse of your face. “What do you mean, when you fuck it up?”

Frustrated tears - at admitting a secret you swore would follow you to the grave, at allowing him to get under your skin when he was simply asking an innocent question, at allowing yourself to get so worked up over something so simple - stung at the backs of your eyes as you huffed. “I’m… you know me, Eddie. I don’t,” you sighed, cutting yourself off, before taking a deep breath. “I’m prickly. I don’t do well with romance. I freak out and run,” you reminded him. “Even if you felt the same, if we worked out enough to not have our friendship go down in flames, there’s still a chance I’d fuck it up and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to run from you.”

“Hey.” Eddie shifted even closer, close enough for you to feel the warmth of his body, and sighed when you refused to glance at him. Regardless, he exclaimed, “That’s why we’d be different.”

“What?” Of all the things you expected him to say, that was the last. With furrowed brows and tears still lining your lashes, you tipped your head to glance at him. “Why?”

“Because,” he began, meeting your eyes for the first time in what felt like hours, “when you try to run, I know what you’re doing. When you get all weird or try to push me away, I know it’s not really you wanting me to go. I know you. I get you, just like you get me.”

“Eddie.”

Of all the ways you’d expected him to react, of all the ways you expected him to acknowledge your feelings for him, returning them was not on the list. For years, you’d convinced yourself that there was no way he would return your feelings, there was no way you would ever be able to acknowledge those feelings without losing your best friend, and there was still a deep-rooted fear that, despite his seeming certainty that his understanding would make a difference, any attempt at a relationship would only end in heartbreak.

That didn’t seem to matter to him as he pressed on. “I’m serious. It’s us,” he continued, this time reaching out to press a hand to your knee. “It’s always been us, always will be us. There’s nothing you can do to get rid of me. Not now.”

“You can’t know that,” you sighed, though it was nowhere near as confident as you hoped it would be. “We can’t see the future.”

“We can’t,” he agreed. “Not yet, anyway, but the nineties seem promising.” When you rolled your eyes, barely suppressing a smile, he laughed. “But that’s the fun part. We do our best to make our own future. It’s always going to be together, might as well come clean and really be together instead of making ourselves miserable pretending.” Before you could respond, offer another half-hearted refusal, he pressed on. “What do we have to lose?”

“Everything.”

Eddie shook his head, completely unconvinced that anything bad would come of allowing yourselves to try. “I don’t believe that. Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out. We always do.”

“How can you be so certain?” You wished you had an ounce of Eddie’s certainty, his true belief that the pair of you could make it, but you were skeptical. Neither of you had much luck in life, neither of you had much outside of one another, and losing him would be far too great.

However, you were tired of pretending that a shared future was not what you wanted.

The possibility that your future could go up in flames, that you could destroy the best friendship you’d ever had, worried you. It kept you awake at night. But now knowing that Eddie felt the same, that he wanted the same future you did, there was no way you could turn him down.

For all your fear, for all your hesitance, saying no was not an option.

“Because we’ve been in love for years and nothing bad has happened yet.” He said it as if it was the most obvious answer he could give, as if it made all the sense in the world, and if you really stopped to think about it, it did.

“Can you promise me something?”

Eddie shifted ever closer, nodding easily as you reached for his hand. “Anything.”

“Can you promise me that no matter what happens, we’ll always be friends? Even if we don’t work out, if something happens, promise me that we’ll still be there for each other.”

“I promise. Nothing hypothetical about that,” he agreed, corner of his mouth lifting when you offered a soft smile.

The moment stretched around you, nothing existed outside of the pair of you as Eddie tugged you into his side. It was easy, natural, and you melted into his touch despite the fear lingering in the back of your mind.

There was a brief worry that this could be a mistake. That allowing yourselves to intertwine your futures so thoroughly would only end in heartbreak, but he was right. For as long as you could remember, it had been you and Eddie. There was nothing that had managed to wedge you apart yet. And pretending had no guarantee of working in the long term.

So, you decided to dive in to the deep end and allow yourself to truly fall. There was no situation, real or hypothetical, in which he would allow you to hit the ground.

No matter what, you knew that he would be there to catch you.

________________________________________________________

Author's Note: I spent my entire day in meetings. All the meetings. So many meetings. I also have a dentist appointment on Wednesday and I am Terrified. So have this.

Taglist: @x-avantgarde-x, @thisisparadisemylove, @eddiesprincess, @slvdsjjk, @munsonlover, @tasmbestspdrman, @urofficial-cyberslut, @jxngwhore, @hopelesslylosttheway, @meaganjm, @lazuli-leenabride, @deiondraaa, @piscesmesss, @glowyskiess, @kiszkathecook, @missryerye, @solarrexplosion, @ofherscarlettwitchways, @lovedandleft-haunted, @trappedinlimbo15, @sweetiekitten, @bookfrog242, @gwendolynmary, @sage-bun, @zealouslibrariesparadiselight, @castiels-lilass, @tojis-little-brat, @emmah787, @theworldsendxx, @asuperconfusedgirl, @flores-and-sunshine, @passi0np1t, @laurathefahrradsattel, @hellf1reclub, @slut4yourmom, @niko-04, @hannirose-loves-you, @mrs-eddie-munson, @screambabe, @vllowe, @ryswritingrecord, @cheriebondy, @ryswritingrecord, @thewitchofthewilds140, @bootlegmothman420, @maruushkka, @honeymoonpython, @keenesbeans, @jess-bonn, @sammysinger04, @khaoticken21, @denkis-slut, @spiderman-berries, @lotus-es, @amortiff, @stardust-galaxies, @ure-a-sunflower, @1-800-ch3rry, @ladybeewritethings, @ynbutbetter, @hunnybunimdun, @breathinfive, @s-u-t, @s4ntacarlal0stk1d, @rae-iin, @pennamesgame, @stefans-wife, @voldieshorts, @frankie-mercury, @bbymochi1, @serendiipty, @saturnsworld01, @eddiemunson1sstuff, @valthevalkyrie-main, @crying-caro, @inglourious-imagines

#stranger things x reader #stranger things imagine #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson imagine #stranger things fic #stranger things fluff #eddie munson fluff #v's fics

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bitter-me · 6 months ago

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Can I request an romantic angst with Aventurine and Malleus (Male Reader)? Like Male Reader is turning into his Overblot form because he realizes he'll outlive Aventurine and trapping Penacony in the dreamscape.

Once Upon a Dream

Aventurine | M. Reader as Malleus Draconia [Twisted Wonderland]

----------

"You'll love me at once.... the way you did once upon a.. dream.."

----------

[Name] Draconia.. the crown prince.. of Briar Valley..

No one would have thought that someone like him... could have his eyes on someone from the IPC! How!? Some money grubbing asshole?! Has the prince gone mad!? He's obviously being used!?

Meanwhile on the IPC side, it's more of.. disbelief...

How? How could someone like him have none other than the crown prince of Briar Valley?? Him? Of all people??

But if one were to stop and look for just a moment... it's not what everyone originally thinks. The prince's lover.. is far from the "money grubbing asshole" people say he is. He's surprisingly charming, and has his way with words. One could see why the prince loved him so much.

Same thing could be said to the prince. People who once saw him as a cold and uncaring person was shock to see just how caring he can be.

Some would say, they're perfect for each other. They completed each other. They're the only ones who could see right past each others mask and saw the real, true version of themselves.

----------

A music box that plays an unknown melody. Its tune sounded unsettling yet also calming. Like a tune playing in a distant dream.

It intrigues him.

Such a unique way to invite someone..

And oh how happy he was to see his beloved in that place. His beloved who was also invited into this place where others would pay millions just to spend the night in.

Penacony.

"Ah! You Highness, I see that you're also invited? I thought they might have forgotten your invitation." Aventurine joked sarcastically. It's almost comedic with how [Name] always didn't receive an invitation where he is supposed to have one. It's like fate is messing with him.

[Name] can't help but chuckle at the joke. "Yes, I am indeed invited to this grand festival."

"Well that's good, it means you could enjoy a once in an Amber Era performance."

During his visit, the crown prince had met multiple people, they're so friendly and they didn't seem to fear him. How delightful! Accepting Penacony's invitation had got to be the best decision [Name] had ever made! Not to mention, meeting the famed Nameless too! If only he could share this moment with Lilia. Those rectangular things are just so hard to command! [Name] has full respect to people who know how to use such objects. Truly, they earned his respect.

And oh how happy he was that the Trailblazer wanted to spend some time with him exploring the dreamscape. This is truly more than he could ever wish for.

"Please let me go!"

Drip... drip.. drip..

"Is that you, Screwllum?"

Drip... drip.. drip... drip...

Those words...

Such desperation..

Such sorrow..

Isn't this a dreamscape? Then why are they suffering? Why the sadness? Why the sorrows? Why the desperation? Those people he helped Trailblazer save.. why are they so..

It wasn't until the Trailblazer explained it that he finally understood...

...

.....

...Have humans always been this fragile..? Have they always been this vulnerable to everything around them? To the point that it'll only take a single flick from someone like him and the flames of their lives extinguished?

The sight of that girl being killed by that thing... are humans truly that fragile? That a simple and clean injury caused them their lives?

Drip... drip.. drip... drip... drip..

...

"Aventurine!" The sight of his beloved walking like he had come out of a bar or a fight. It broke his heart with how distraught he is. His beloved.. how could this happen? Who did this? Why is his beloved like this?

[Name] glanced at Dr. Ratio, expecting an answer out of him. Only to be met by silence. His eyes narrowed in suspicion as doubt and uneasiness creeps within him. But that doesn't matter at the moment... what matters is his beloved. [Name] turned his head to face Aventurine as he looked at him with concern and loving eyes. "Aventurine, are you already? Can you stand properly? I can carry you if you like."

"It's nothing serious, [Name] just a killer headache, that's all." Aventurine says with his usual smile.

As far as [Name] recalls these things called "headaches" aren't usually this.. horrible.. has these headaches always been like this? Is immense pain what they all feel whenever these headaches happen?

"It's nothing really, I'll be fine! But if you excuse me.. I have some work to do.." Aventurine says before walking towards Aideen Park with a rather large bag. [Name] watches on as his beloved practically whimpers in pain, he can't help but feel saddened by the sight. Where is his usual energetic and happy beloved? Why did this have to happen? Who did this to him? Who dare lay a hand on the [Name] Draconia's beloved?!

Dr. Ratio seems to have noticed the other's distress as he let out a sigh before saying. "It's pitiful isn't it? But I suppose that's just how it is. One day we all will be like that too. Supposed you could say, he's preparing for that day."

...

...'we all will be like that too'..? What does the doctor mean by that..?

Looking at his surroundings, [Name] could see a few elderly people walking around the Golden Hour. They look tired and worn out, with wrinkles on their faces and those white hairs...

Is that what happens to humans when they age? If he recalls, Lilia had told him something about these before. But.. never would [Name] thought he'll see it for himself. This thing actually happens. Humans age and then they...

...will Aventurine face the same too?

Will he too grow old and tired? Will he need a cane to help him walk? Will he suffer from some sort of illness or fatigue? Will he..

The thought puts a pit on [Name]'s stomach.

He's going to outlive him. [Name] would continue to live while Aventurine...

----------

'A once in an Amber Era performance'..

Oh how true those words are.. How true those words are..

Standing behind the curtains of the Theme Park, Aventurine ready himself for his upcoming act. But as his hands touch the soft material of it, his guests seems to have found him first before he could say anything else. The ground shakes like a light earthquake. This wasn't his doing. This wasn't a part of the performance! What's going on?

As much as it spoils his plans... Aventurine has no choice but to deal with this situation first and who wouldn't make a better teammate than his friends from the Astral Express? Carefully walking towards the center stage of the Theme Park. They certainly didn't expect the Prince of Briar Valley to be there. What is he doing in a place like this? Deserted. Where he stands alone with only his thoughts accompanying him.

Turning around to face the crowd, he smiles at the sight of them. "Well well... what a glamorous party. The Astral Express... the Emanator.. and the IPC's ambassador.. everyone is here. Fufufu...!"

His usual deep and velvety voice sounded just as soft as always, but somehow for an unknown reason, that tone sounded ominous, sinister even. A chill went down Aventurine's spine. Never had he heard just a tone [Name] before..

"Aventurine.. I've been thinking about this. What should I give to you.. No, what should I give you all? And I finally got the answer."

"Please accept this... It's a gift from the bottom of my heart."

They all look uneasy. A gift? What is it for? For what occasion? A gift for everyone? What is this gift? Gathering his courage, Mr. Yang spoke up in a calm and nervous tone. "Gift? Your Highness... what are you thinking about?"

[Name] can't help but chuckle at those words. "Listen carefully, everyone! I've bestowed a wonderful gift for you all. There's no need to part ways and shed tears again. We shouldn't celebrate "the end" today, it's the "beginning"!"

"Fufu.. yes. All of you will be born again today." Raising a hand, [Name] channels his magic as he smiles sweetly at everyone. His usual friendly smile looks more sinister with every word that came out of his mouth.

"To a world without sorrow where you don't have to lose your family, friends.. everything!"

The fight is not easy. Far from it. Never would they think that they'll be fighting the Prince of Briar Valley. Fighting someone as skilled as him is a nightmare in itself, but they've survived for this long.. and it seems that [Name] had enough as he engulfed the surrounding area in flames.

"Back off, you fool.. why be afraid? Even though a wonderful future is waiting for you. Now give me your hand, fufufu... hahaha!" Channeling another spell, [Name] smiles warmly to welcome this new era. One without pain and suffering.

"Spinning wheel of fate, keep pulling the thread of disaster. As King of the Abyss, I shall bestow this upon you."

"Fae of Maleficence."

Drip... drip.. drip... drip... drip.. drip..

The bustling life of Penacony... had come to an abrupt stop.. to embrace another dreamscape. One with no danger.. a safe heven..

A place where they all can live happily as all of Penacony is engulfed in thick thorn walls. Like a cage. "Don't worry... there's nothing to be afraid of. If you surrender to sleep, a thousand years will go by in an instant." The Prince stated with confidence as he calmly walked through the stage of the Theme Park in his new form. A form that he had embraced to fulfill his wish and grant everyone this wonderful gift.

"You all will become the main character of a fairytale."

The tune of the music box he received.. it's such a nice calming tune, yet so ominous..

"I know you.. I walked with you once upon a dream.. I know you.. that look in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.."

It's a tune no one couldn't possibly be mistaken. Like a lullaby. Maybe those who sent him such a thing.. has the Prince's heart in mind. As he sang a lullaby to help them have a pleasant and wonderful dream. Following the tune of his invitation to this.. place..

"And I know it's true, that visions are seldom what they seem.. but if I know you.. I know what you'll do... you'll love me at once..."

"The way you did once upon.. a... dream..."

#seme male reader #top male reader #honkai star rail #honkai star rail x reader #honkai star rail x male reader #hsr #hsr x reader #hsr x male reader #hsr aventurine #aventurine #aventurine x reader #aventurine x male reader #twisted wonderland #twst #malleus draconia #twst malleus #twisted wonderland malleus

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munson-blurbs · 22 days ago

Text

Eddie Munson x Reader (hurt/no comfort)

Summary: While visiting your friend from college, you meet her neighbor across the hall and begin a fling with him. But how long can these good times last?

WC: 2.3k

Warnings: smut (18+ only, minors DNI), handjob, oral (m! receiving), unprotected p in v, hurt/no comfort, cheating, mention of weight shaming (not towards Reader)

A/N: y'all asked for it and I have delivered. Sorry, there won't be a part 2 fix-it because I like to put the "hurt" in "hurt/no comfort."

Hawkins, Indiana didn’t have too much to offer. It was a tiny blip on a map that you could drive through and barely notice if you weren’t paying close attention.

It also happened to be the hometown of your best friend from college. You and Nancy became fast friends after you both got lost on your first day at Emerson. It turned out that you were going to the same class, and the room number had been a misprint that led to a nonexistent room.

Now, fresh on the heels of graduation, Nancy had secured a full-time position at the Hawkins Post and just moved into her own apartment. It gave you the perfect excuse to spend a few days crashing at her place like you’d never left the dorms.

At least, that had been the original plan, until Nancy got a call about a biohazard leak from Hawkins Lab that had begun infiltrating an area affectionately dubbed “Lovers Lake,” which could be her first big story if she played her cards right. Why a miniscule town had a whole lab, you had no idea. What you did know was that you would be spending most of your time here by yourself, rather than with Nancy.

Long days alone left you bored, occasionally working on the draft of your novel. While Nancy took to the structure of journalism, you preferred creative writing. She was the logician to your dreamer. Sometimes you loved that about her; other times, her straightforward line of thinking was the bane of your existence.

Words swam on the page as you scanned each line, adding details and crossing out any superfluous information that added nothing to the plot. You pinched the bridge of your nose and massaged it, hoping to settle your vision enough to keep editing.

Knock knock knock.

“Wheeler, you in there?”

A man’s voice drifted from the other side of the door. Nancy had briefly mentioned knowing some of her neighbors, but you had never actually met them.

“Wheeler?”

You padded over to the door. When you peered through the peephole, you saw the fish-eye version of a man. You first noticed his frizzy curls escaping the rubberband attempting to hold back his hair—well, that and his biceps, fully on display in his black tank top.

Opening the door, you willed yourself to keep your composure.

His brown eyes widened and his full lips turned upwards into a small smile. “You’re not Wheeler.”

“What gave it away?”

The man leaned one muscular arm against the doorframe. He smelled of tobacco and cologne. “Cute and sarcastic. A winning combination.” His smirk nearly brought you to your knees. “I ran out of paper towels and figured Wheeler probably keeps ‘em stockpiled. She has that ‘doomsday prepper’ energy.”

You laughed, crossing your arms as you let your eyes meet his. How did Nancy live in the same building as this guy and not constantly jump his bones? “I think she’d prefer to call it ‘emergency preparedness.’”

“Tomato, to-mah-to.” His gaze flicked over to the roll of paper towels Nancy kept by the sink. “May I?”

Nodding, you stepped aside to let him in. “I’m Eddie, by the way,” he said over his shoulder.

You introduced yourself with as much confidence as you could muster. “I’m supposed to be visiting Nancy for the week, but she’s been at work twenty-four seven.”

Eddie’s ears pricked at the information. “I live across the hall in 6B if you ever need anything. Snacks, music recommendations, someone to keep you entertained since Wheeler selfishly ditched you.” His eyes twinkled at the joke, but there was a mischievous air in his tone. An insinuation of the type of entertainment he might provide.

It wasn’t until the next day that you took Eddie up on his offer, knocking on his door three times. Your heart pounded in your chest the moment you heard him slide the chain lock off of its track, its beating surely still audible even as he cracked open the metal door.

“Well, look who it is.” An unlit cigarette dangled between his lips and he’d pulled his curls back into a bun at the nape of his neck. “How can I be of service, sweetheart?”

“I was hoping we could hang out?” You winced at the inflection that made your statement into a question.

Eddie cocked his head in contemplation. “Yeah?” He chuckled and shoved the cigarette back into its pack. “All right. Let’s go to yours then.”

His fingers brushed against the small of your back as you led him to Nancy’s apartment. Your pulse thrummed in your ears. Were you really doing this? Were you really inviting a stranger over to hang out?

This was a bad idea. This was such a bad idea—

“Does Wheeler have a guest room? Or does she make you crash on the couch?”

Shaking off your nerves, you summoned a smile. “No guest room, unfortunately.”

“Such a shame.” Eddie clicked his tongue. “Was hoping for a little privacy.” Head tilted to the side, his gaze devoured you whole.

“I mean…” You wracked your brain for a solution. “We could just talk. Get to know each other.”

He exhaled, his breath laced with frustration. “Sweetheart, we only have a week. Six days now, actually, and then you go back home. ‘S not a lot of time.”

With that, Eddie stepped forward and placed a gentle kiss on your neck, letting his lips linger for a moment as he whispered, “is this okay?”

“Mhm.” Your hands readily found his waist, fingertips digging into the skin as you pulled him in closer. Hardness pressed against the fly of his jeans, and you could feel it even through the thick fabric.

“Gotta admit, sweetheart,” Eddie tugged your shirt up over your head and tossed it aside haphazardly. “I was thinking about you when you knocked. Was about to take matters into my own hands.”

He grinned at the double entendre, one hand snaking to your back to unhook your bra. “Goddamn.” He positioned his lips around one nipple, then the other, sucking until they were pert and sensitive.

Desire pooled between your thighs and a whimper escaped you, your breath hitching as you tried to regain some semblance of control. No one had ever made you feel so wanted, so needed, with only a few kisses.

“‘S a pretty noise,” Eddie mumbled. He unbuttoned your jeans with the dexterity of a musician, and you wondered if he played any instruments.

You didn’t know a lot about him: his job, his hobbies, his favorite color. There was no time to consider that now, not while he had sat himself on the sofa and was already unbuckling his own belt.

Eddie pulled his pants and boxers just low enough to free his erection, the head of his cock already slick with pre-cum. He leaned his head back, his hand reaching out to yours.

Naively, you threaded your fingers with his, like it was some intimate gesture. Embarrassment flooded your bloodstream when Eddie laughed under his breath and wrapped your hand around his length.

“There ya go, sweetheart.” He inhaled sharply as you moved your hand up and down.

You worked him, swiping your thumb over the tip and feeling him shudder at your touch. Each reaction grew your confidence until you were straddling him, the thin fabric of your panties serving as the only barrier between the two of you.

Eddie’s palm pressed against the back of your head, a wordless plea for you to use your mouth. You obliged, pulling his pants down to his ankles and trying not to outwardly wince when your knees dug into the thin carpet.

You relished the sound of each moan that you drew from him, knowing that you were making him feel that way. Your lips wrapped around the head, tongue swirling around it to further heighten his sensitivity. One hand cupped his balls, carefully kneading them in the same rhythm that your mouth took with his shaft.

As if on instinct, he pushed your head farther down his shaft. You weren’t expecting it, tears pricking at your eyes as you coughed around him.

“Shit, sorry.” Eddie let go of you so you could readjust. You were all too grateful that he didn’t turn the moment into a chance to pity you, saving you from further humiliation.

Wordlessly, you went back to sucking him off. His thighs trembled; for a moment, you expected to feel him spilling onto your tongue. But Eddie only pulled back, his finger wiping away the saliva that dribbled from the corner of your mouth.

“Ride me.” He patted his lap, eyes shining as you obeyed without hesitation. “Fuck, wish you were gonna be around longer. I could get used to this.”

Eddie watched you as you sank down, taking him inch by glorious inch until you were full of him. Your own gaze stayed fixed on his lips, so plush and begging to be kissed.

You let lust guide you. Despite an initial shock, Eddie parted your lips with his tongue until your shuddering breath mixed with his. Had no one ever kissed him with such passion? Had no one ever shown him how wanted he was? Is that why he had seemed so surprised when you displayed that kind of intimacy?

There was no time to further ponder these notions, not when he gripped your ass and bucked his hips upward. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. He was so good, it was too easy for all of your thoughts to only focus on him. The way his mouth tasted of tobacco, the way he held you like he couldn’t bear to let you go, the way each thrust filled you deliciously…

“You close?”

Were you? Not really; it had been just a few minutes, but you didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Men got insecure if they finished before their partner, especially someone new.

So you just nodded, your eyes locking onto him in hopes he’d believe the lie. Eddie didn’t meet your look; he leaned forward and dug his teeth into your shoulder as he came.

“Oh, God. Fucking Christ–holy shit.”

Giddiness and a twinge of pride fluttered within you, almost as good as an orgasm itself. Maybe you’d get yours next time.

As though reading your mind, Eddie tucked his forefinger under your chin and his thumb atop it. “We should do this again sometime.”

And so you did. Every day that week while Nancy was at work, Eddie came over to her apartment. The couch became your sex spot, so much that you joked about Eddie’s ass leaving an imprint in the fabric.

“Maybe we could go to your place?” You suggested on Thursday when Eddie practically mauled you the moment he stepped through the doorway.

He just shook his head. “Nah. I wouldn’t want you to see all of my shit, sweetheart.”

You didn’t even want to imagine the bachelor pad that you might find across the hall, empty pizza boxes cluttering the trash can, beer bottles strewn everywhere, ashtrays full of cigarette butts.

You did find out a little more about Eddie: He worked nights at the plant, which was why he was home during the day. He played guitar and sang lead vocals in his band, Corroded Coffin. And once you moved his hand down to your clit, he could definitely make you come.

That Friday, before Eddie pulled out, he ran his thumb along your lower lip.

“Wish you didn’t have to leave tomorrow morning,” he murmured. “If you were sticking around, I might have had to ask you on a date.”

It was almost enough. The thought of being a real couple, someday even making love instead of simply having sex, brought a smile to your face. Maybe you could make these visits to Nancy more often than you’d originally anticipated.

You decided it must be fate when rain poured down in sheets and lightning zigzagged across the sky, delaying your flight for twelve hours. The cab driver crawled at a snail’s pace as he drove you back to Nancy’s, and you kept reminding yourself that he was doing it for your safety.

Eddie would be so excited to have another day with you. Another afternoon to spend together, to draw pleasure from one another…possibly even discuss the potential of a long-distance relationship.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

His name echoed with each step you took up the stairwell. You would just knock on his door, fling yourself into his arms, and–

“Hey, babe. Looks like you made it back just in time.”

Eddie.

Your stomach was a leaden weight when you reached the sixth floor and saw Eddie taking a suitcase from a blonde woman and kissing her until her baby pink lipstick smudged on his mouth. And if that wasn’t enough, there was a thin gold band on his ring finger that hadn’t been there the whole week.

“I would’ve walked if it meant getting home,” the woman said softly. “My mom is still awful, by the way. She kept asking if I was pregnant because, and I quote, ‘you look like you’ve been gaining weight, Chrissy.’”

There was no hiding the smirk on Eddie’s face. “We could make it happen, if you want.”

Chrissy swatted at him and walked into the apartment, and then it was just you and Eddie.

“You’re married.”

You barely recognized your own voice, thick with tears that you were willing back until you were alone.

Surprise flashed across his face for only a second before he composed himself. He looked right through you, mumbling sorry under his breath as he tugged his wife’s–his wife’s–luggage over the threshold and disappeared to be with her.

#eddie munson #eddie x reader #eddie stranger things #eddie x you #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x f!reader #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfic #fanfic #eddie munson stranger things #stranger things #angst #hurt/no comfort

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samubytheocean · 5 months ago

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yeah everyone talks about the boys as your first love, but how about the second love?

falling for someone feels so much more intense especially when you know how much love hurts.

friends to lovers? fluff but slight angst if u squint lmao

Imagine lying down at his floor, it’s like some time after midnight, and you can almost taste the aftermaths of rain in summer night wind. It’s hinted with cherry coke and the smell of his ears, already stained a pretty blush whenever you lock eyes. Your head still rings from the party music from some hours ago, but you can’t tell if it’s that or the sight of the handsome boy in those shorts.

God, he is pretty.

He looks at you from his bed, upside down and hair all frizzed up. A little out of breath from a satire joke you’ve just blurted out, and the sound sends chills throughout your body, the strangely familiar kind that wakes you up with the hope of forever. The thought makes you sit up, and breath in the space with content. You move forward, face inches from the lopsided boy who’s looking up at you. You can’t really tell what’s on his face. Your hands feel hot against his cool cheeks, and you can see the blush watercolor against your hands. His eyes never leaves yours.

You’ve been dating for some time, having known each other for years before that. The past couple of months of testing the waters were more than enough for the both of you. You know all of his exes. He’s seen you cry about yours. For a long time, almost too long, you were just friends.

Sure, you’ve held your breath whenever his tall figure leaned down to discuss some tea that you’ve heard the night before. But he always got a girl whenever you broke things off with your boyfriends, and vice versa. There never seemed to be a proper time for feelings to grow, until that drunk night when he fell asleep in your dorm after taking one too many shots at some stupid party.

Woke up next to you, all too similar with the same moles on your shoulders that he has memorized, the same small frame against his that he has cried against, but now under the same covers, without some other person between you and his feelings. He knew you. He cares about you.

And by the way you quietly smiled in your oversized shirt handing him a cold glass of water in the morning.. Luckily all the times he was gritting his teeth at how your horrible ex was acting out; he wasn’t the only one with the hopes. Guess since then, there was this quiet consensus about taking things slow. He knew you. He knew what you’ve cried about. And you did too.

First love. First kiss. First sex. It sounds so much better in the books on your bedside table. You’re no stranger to the rushing of hearts, hell, you could swear your teenage years consisted full of it. Addicted to it even. But seems to it that teenage love isn’t what is just given to everyone. It comes as a slow realization, that maybe some girls aren’t meant to be loved, at least not yet, not then. Sure you have forgiven your exes and their mistakes; they were just boys.

But you were just a girl. Just begging to be loved. In the most primal, desperate, romantic way, you just wanted to be seen. For someone to understand the language you were speaking, in its true irony and references. You wanted to be held, not grabbed. But first times, first love, first sex. It’s not pretty for everyone. So you put that all behind.

Scared? Maybe. A big front, yeah. But right now, some time past midnight, in some messy summer night after some dumb party, smelling like your favorite song that he held you through, he looks up at you. No, he sees up at you. He sees you. In his bed, in his room, with one too many shirt buttons opened, in that familiar shorts riding up his comfortably situated thighs,

And it sends the fucking chills throughout your spine.

“Something on your mind, sweets?” Deep, cheeky voice a hush. His cheeks are warm. He smells like the sparkly drink you’ve had. And he looks so painfully pretty, you can almost look past all of your exes. All of his exes. All of the times you guys sat on the steps, laughing cynically into the night about how you both seemed just so impossible to be loved. The crook of his smirk seems so boyish, you can almost wish a life where all you knew were him. Where you chose him, from the start.

You shake your head, and he rolls over, face still at the edge of the bed looking at you mischievously. He nudges his chin urging you closer. For a second you eye at how his collarbones and shoulder muscles glisten lightly in a layer of sweat. You are so close, you can see his pulse, and how the pink is now spreading with it.

Okay, a boyish look in a man, what Taylor said, you slightly roll your eyes at his clear objectives. Slowly you close the space between. His lips are curled up in that familiar infuriating way, but they are trembling none the less. You see it. You see him. And in the most forbidden, aching way, he whispers your name.

Taking things slow. Taking things slow. Take things slow-

You don’t want to end up regretting him as well. He’s too pretty.

Yeah, but he sees you. And maybe, just maybe that’s all you need.

OSAMU, KITA, SUGA, IWA, fucking KUROO and plz HINATA

hey guys it’s my first time posting here and jeez i’m so nervous

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seunmong-in · 8 months ago

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•Midnight sessions & Love Confessions🌙🤍•

Genre: Fluff, best friends to lovers, flirting, slight sass on Chan’s part, cursing (very minimal) Idol!HanxReader

Words: 1.6K

A/N: This is my first time writing again in almost 5 years... Hopefully, you guys enjoyed this as much as I did!! If you guys want to see more of this please reblog/like the post or if you have any feedback please DM me!!

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“Okay Y/N, that was good but do you think you can sound like you're actually in love? You know, like how you are in love with Jisung.”

You glare at Chan while you mouth the words “Fuck you” to him. As Chan and Binnie start laughing at you as you simply roll your eyes. The boys have been teasing you about your crush on Jisung, the other 1/3 of the 3racha, for a while now. They accidentally found out about your feelings for him a few months ago during one of your usual movie nights at your place. Since then, they have been either making jokes or pushing you to confess your feelings to him. However, you have always refused, thinking that he doesn't feel the same way and you didn’t want to jeopardize your friendship with him. After all, Jisung has been your best friend for years and you both have been inseparable since you debuted together. You walk out of the booth frustrated and sat on the couch. Chan and Binnie at the same time turned their chairs around to face you. It was already 12:30 AM and you were exhausted.

“Why can’t you give this part to Lee Know or Seungmin, they can sing this better than I can anyway,” you say stubbornly, closing your eyes for a few seconds.

"Because I had you in mind to sing the girl's response to this love song, Y/n. Plus, Bin and I have been wanting you to sing this for the past year now. We've even discussed having you as our featured artist for this album so you really can't back out now princess," Chan responded with a smile.

You couldn't really argue with Chan about this because he brings up a good point. You and the boys have been begging management for a song collaboration for years, and as soon as they agreed, you all teased the collaboration to your respective fanbases. Scrapping it now would be a waste of time and bad from a publicity standpoint. Knowing you had no way out of this session for at least tonight, you groaned as you stood up back up from the couch and walked back into the booth, grabbing on the headphones that rested on the mic. Once you had the headphones situated properly and the lyrics in front of you, you look at Binnie for the next instructions.

“Okay Y/n, start from the top of the second verse until you reach the bridge. Remember, try to sing this as if you're falling in love. Put lots of emotion into this bunny,”

You nod while Chan signals to Binnie to hit the record button. The instrumentals start playing as you take a deep breath, closing your eyes, and trying to mimic the feeling of being in love. Instantly, you pictured Jisung in front of you, smiling ear to ear as he cheers you on from the other side. You couldn’t help but crack open a soft smile as memories of the two of you played in your mind. You start to recall all the times he saved you from bad blind dates and all the all-nighters you both would pull just because you both got heavily attached to some anime series that was 10 years old. You continued to sing into the mic, putting all the emotions you were feeling into it and not missing a beat. This was something you didn’t do in your first couple of recordings. You were so deep into your feelings, channeling that feeling of being in love, that you didn’t even realize you were hitting all of the high notes in the bridge that Chan originally took out because you couldn’t hit them. Once the music starts to fade away, the memories of Jisung and you fade away too. You slowly open your eyes to see not only Chris and Binnie smiling at you, but Jisung was also in the room, staring at you in amazement. He pushes Chris over to the side and speaks into the mic.

“Damn Y/n that was absolutely fucking amazing!! Who knew you had that in you, Angel.”

Angel... He just called you angel. He’s only ever called you Bubba or Bubbles but never Angel... You feel your face turning red as you quickly put the headphones back down on the mic and walk out of the booth.

Ignoring that you are blushing over this new nickname, Jisung attacks you in a hug as he whispers in your ear about how beautiful you sounded in your recording. When did Ji sneak in? Did the boys text him to come sit in as you sang? Did he see you blush when he called you angel? You were so deep into thought trying to figure out what just happened, that you didn’t hear Chan talking to you.

“Earth to Y/nnnn, did you hear anything I just said.”

“Huh, no sorry what did you say Channie?” You let go of Jisung's embrace, and as you turn to face Chan, you see him smirking. Unlike Jisung, he could tell you were clearly blushing over the compliments you were receiving.

“I said I think we finally got our take. If you want, you can go home for the night since I know it’s getting late, and we can play it back first thing in the morning for you.”

Sighing in relief, you agree while you pack up your things. You thank the boys for having to spend/ deal with you the last few hours, telling them you will see them in the morning, and start to walk out of the room when Jisung stops you.

“Y/n wait up!” He grabs you by the arm, spinning you around.

“Here let me take you home, it’s late and cold out.”

“Oh Ji, I don’t want to bother you with that! I was planning to Uber home anyway.”

“Well, luckily you aren’t bothering me with asking since I am also the one offering. Plus it is my civil duty as your best friend, so I am taking you home and that's final. Now come on, Angel.”

He interlocks his hand into yours as you both walk out of the company building and go to his car. You couldn’t help but look down as you try to contain your smile though this is something the both of you usually do consistently. Jisung walks up to the passenger's side of his car and opens it for you, bowing down and signaling for you to hop in. You giggle at his silly gesture as you playfully curtsey back to him and get in. It’s moments like these you can’t help but fall more in love with him. He closes your door and quickly runs over to his side of the car, turning it on. He puts on some random playlist and he puts the car in drive.

“Alrighty, off to your house.”

After 10 minutes of listening to music in silence, you finally arrived at your apartment building. You could see from above your sister’s lights were still on which means she was still up playing video games with Felix and I.N. As you turned to face Jisung, thanking him for the ride home, you noticed he was already facing you, softly smiling.

"I know I said this earlier at the studio in front of the boys, but I really meant it when I said you really killed it with the song, Y/n. I can seriously listen to you sing all day."

That compliment made your heart skip a beat. You couldn't believe what you just heard. Although you are very talented and often hear comments like that from fans, there was something different about hearing it come from Jisung. It made you feel all bubbly inside as if you had butterflies fluttering everywhere.

"I am being 100 percent honest, Y/n. Hearing you sing with such passion and emotion, I would be lying if I said I didn't fall in love with your voice. I mean, I am already in love wit--" Jisung stops speaking as he covers his mouth and quickly looks down.

You look at him, taking a moment to process what was just said. Han Jisung, your best friend and long-time crush, has unintentionally confessed his love for you. Now the car is now truly silent as the music stops playing. With some newfound confidence, you reach over and gently lift his chin. He looks at you with red cheeks, clearly embarrassed, and tries to avoid your eye contact. You couldn’t help but smile as you finally, say the words he's been longing to hear.

“I am in love with you too Ji.”

Jisung grabs your face and kisses you passionately, and within seconds, you feel a rush of sparks running through your body. It's the answer you've been waiting for after years of not knowing. As Jisung pulls away, he places his forehead against yours.

“I've been waiting to do that since we first met, Angel.”

“I’ve been waiting for the same thing Ji.” You smile at him as you kiss him again.

After that night, the two of you officially became a couple. The boys were ecstatic to learn that you both had finally confessed your feelings to each other after almost a year of teasing. You also later find out that Jisung had actually written the song that had become a global #1 hit as a confession of his feelings towards you, not Chan and Binnie as you had initially thought.

So not only do you have the #1 love song trending worldwide, but you also got the best boyfriend by your side.

#straykids smau #straykids fluff #han jisung #han x reader #straykids imagines #stray kids #skz x reader #skz fluff #skz scenarios #skz han #skz 3racha #skz stay #skz imagines #skz fanfic #skz x y/n #stray kids x you

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oacest · 7 days ago

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(with enormous thanks to @noandneuron for their tremendous scholarly work taking pics of the library print version of this article, which seems to otherwise not exist online. original post with pics can be found here.)

LIAM WANTED ME TO MARRY HIM AND HAVE HIS BABY... BUT NOEL TORE US APART

SINGER FELL FOR WICKED SEX LIES ABOUT LOVER

by Phil Taylor, Chief Feature Writer (News of the World) (Sept 8, 1996)

Oasis idol Liam Gallagher's jilted fiancee opened her heart to the News of the World last night and told how her wedding plans were torn apart by his scheming brother Noel.

“Liam was the love of my life and we planned to get married and have children,” seethed Cerice Blakeley. “But Noel wrecked our relationship because the most important thing in his life was Oasis and he felt that I was in the way. I will never, ever forgive him. Noel deviously told his brother the most hurtful allegation that he could about me—that I had betrayed him and had sex with the band's cocaine supplier. I never two-timed Liam. But he believed Noel and was absolutely devastated. To this day he doesn't know the truth. Now Liam's with Patsy Kensit. I wonder if Noel will do the same to her.”

Life had all looked so different when Cerice first met the brothers who were yet to take Britain by storm. It was in a marquee near Oldham in May 1992—and it was Cerice's 21st birthday.

“I was heavily into the Manchester music scene,” she said. “And I was friendly with a band called the Inspiral Carpets—at the time Noel worked for them as a roadie. When he came along with the band I wasn't attracted to him at all. I hated his haircut—it looked as though someone had used a bowl. But I took one look at Liam and it was love at first sight.

“He wore blue cords and a dark navy kagoule and looked adorably different. I got quite flirtatious with him and later we arranged a date. Liam couldn't drive and was living at his mum Peggy's council house in Manchester. So I picked him up in my Citroen and we went up on the moors. Liam gave me the most amazing kiss I've ever had. It seemed to go on for ages and my mind was in a whirl. I felt so turned on I wanted to have sex with him there and then. I know he felt the same.

“But we decided to do it properly, so we booked into a lovely country hotel. I've never felt so excited in my life as we finally curled up on the bed and smoked a joint of marijuana. We kissed and kissed and I was ready and willing for Liam to make love to me. But to my disappointment, he suddenly stopped and told me, 'I respect you too much.' I couldn't believe it. It was so unlike a Manchester bloke. But I was very touched and it made me love him and want him even more.”

Liam later invited Cerice home to meet his mum. Then, she said, after a cup of tea and a chat they went upstairs to Liam's bedroom... and made love for the first time.

Cerice sighed: “Liam was only 19, two years younger than me, and was very nervous in bed. I wanted to strip him off, but he was so self conscious. He wouldn't take off his cream woolly jumper because he felt his chest was too puny. So I tried to break the ice and joked: 'Don't worry about your chicken chest, you've got lovely footballer's legs.'

“It worked. He relaxed and we made love to Hey Jude, one of his favourite Beatles songs. I felt wonderful afterwards and spent the night in Liam's bed. Then, the next morning, he brought me up a cup of tea and we chatted for ages.

“Then he ran a bath and started putting handfuls of salt in it. I couldn't believe my eyes and asked him what he was doing. He told me, 'It helps strengthen my bones.'

“Afterwards he spent ages doing his hair... he was always using his mum's hairdryer. I told him, 'You're going to end up like Mick Jagger.' Then I asked him if he wanted to try my mascara—and he did. But he went one step further and squeezed into my size 8 velvet jacket too. Then he put on the Rolling Stones record Satisfaction, pouted his lips and started strutting around the bedroom like Jagger. I creased up laughing. I'm only 5ft 5ins and Liam is 5ft 11ins. The jacket was so tiny on him, the sleeves rolled up around his elbows. But he loved it and it turned him on. He fell on the bed and we had fantastic sex for 45 minutes. Afterwards, Liam told me, 'I'm not gay or bisexual. I'm just in touch with my feminine side.'”

Cerice saw Liam and Oasis rise from obscurity to stardom. “I went to the studio with them while they were recording their album Definitely Maybe and knew they were going to be massive,” she said. “It went to No. 1.”

Two years after they met, Cerice's life seemed complete. “We had just got back to Liam's mum's house from a gig in Sheffield,” she said. “Liam looked really nervous. He told me, 'I have got something very nice to ask you. Will you marry me? I want you to have my children.'

“I was thrilled. I gave him a big hug and said, 'Of course I will.' We celebrated with a glass of his favourite drink. Jack Daniel's and Coke. Then we went round to my home and he told my dad. Liam said to him, 'I love Cerice and I want her to feel secure, so I've asked her to get engaged.'

“Being a practical, logical man, Dad asked Liam how financially secure he felt he was going to be. At the time, Liam was only getting £100 a week from the band. And he told my dad he couldn't even afford to buy me an engagement ring. But he said he was saving up to get me one. Dad wasn't too impressed. But he gave us his blessing because he wanted me to be happy.”

Liam's brother Noel, she said, was less pleased. “Noel nicknamed me Yoko Ono,” she recalled bitterly. “He felt I'd pull Liam away from the band, just as Yoko did with John Lennon and the Beatles. Nothing could have been further from the truth.”

Cerice and Liam rented a flat in the Didsbury area of Manchester for £75 a week and moved in together. “He put his favourite posters on the ceiling of our front room,” she said. “They were of John Lennon and the Stone Roses, one of his favourite bands.

“I would do the cooking—Liam's favourite meal was steak and Walker's crisps—but he'd always do the washing up and we would take turns with the hoovering. The only thing that annoyed me about him was that he always left his wet towels on the bathroom floor.”

It was in that flat, said Cerice, that the couple planned a family. She sighed, “I said I wanted a little girl and told Liam I hoped she'd have my hair, my brain, and his tenderness. He joked that he wanted a little boy who loved Manchester City, then said, 'I really don't mind what sex it is. I just want to have a baby with you.'”

And all the time, she confessed, their sex life became more and more intense—fuelled by drugs. “I must admit we took our share of cocaine through a £10 note,” she said. “It was extra special when we got in bed together because Liam was away on tour more and more as the band got bigger and bigger. I saw them play before 100,000 at Glastonbury and they were phenomenal.”

In the summer of 1994, Cerice and Liam drove to Scotland together for the massive Tea In The Park festival. “As the journey went on we were feeling friskier by the minute,” she said. “After four hours' driving we couldn't wait any longer. We were travelling on the M74 through Scotland when we saw a big wood. We looked at each other, smiled, and both had exactly the same idea.

“I pulled over, parked on the hard-shoulder and we ran off into the woods. Then we lay down on the soft moss and made wild, blissful love. It was the first time I had ever had sex outside and I think it was for Liam. We were there for nearly an hour writhing among the undergrowth before we finally got up and made our way back to the car. But as we walked back close to the motorway, holding hands and beaming smiles, passing motorists saw us and started beeping their horns. It was obvious what we had been up to and I was blushing bright red. So was Liam.”

They were never to be as happy again. After the concert, Cerice went backstage to congratulate Liam on his performance but could only find Noel. “I asked him where Liam was and he told me, 'He had to leave to catch a plane from Manchester for a concert in Germany tomorrow night. We're performing in Hamburg and he unexpectedly had to catch the flight tonight. I'll be flying over in the morning.'

“Bewildered, I went back to Noel's hotel where I met Simon, the band's cocaine supplier, and a record company executive. He told me he could get keys to Noel's room and I could sleep there. There were two single beds. I fell asleep in one and Simon and this fella slept on the floor, keeping the other one free for Noel.

“Then, at about 6am, Noel came into the room with a blonde and said, 'Oh, you're all in here.' Then he got into his bed with the girl and I went back to sleep. At 9am Noel got up and said, 'I'm going to Hamburg. I've told Liam you're OK and you'd phone him tonight.”

Later that day, Cerice phoned the Gallaghers' mum and she told her that Liam had phoned to pass on his apologies for missing her in the Scottish crowd. That night, Cerice managed to contact him herself.

“He was really angry and abrupt,” she said. “He told me, 'I need to talk to you face to face and not over the phone.' Then he slammed the phone down. I was distraught. He'd never spoken to me like that before and I couldn't understand why. Now I know. Noel told Liam I'd cheated on him and slept with Simon. A friend of mine told Liam it wasn't true. But he wouldn't believe her because it came from his own brother. He was shattered and went completely off the rails afterwards.

“We met just once when he returned to Manchester from Hamburg. I told him he shouldn't have treated me so badly. But we were both so angry and upset we couldn't even row. Instead he walked out of the door and out of my life. I haven't seen or heard from him since. He has never answered my calls. Noel must be delighted.”

After their split in August 1994, Cerice left Britain for Australia to get over the trauma. “It was while I was there that Oasis released Don't Look Back in Anger,” she said. “I tried to relate it to my own circumstances, but I can't look back in any other way. I have no anger towards Liam. But for Noel I have. I despise him. After we split up Liam was shattered and went completely off the rails. He simply hasn't been the same since.”

#i have--i think very kindly--not preserved the misspellings and inventive punctuation present in the original article #i probably should have in order to provide some flavourful context of how seriously we should take this 'journalism' tbh #but i couldn't bring myself to. lol sorry. check out the original post to get a taste #cerice blakeley #wild name good for her #liam gallagher #oasis #print archive stuff

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jadeoru · 2 months ago

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coffee beans.

synopsis: valentine's day was spent the same way every year: coffee, and studying, all while trying her best to avoid the happy couples in love. unfortunately, her tradition was interrupted by a clumsy pretty barista. or: kiyoko felt like she wasn't capable of feeling love, turns out she's just gay

warnings/tags: reader is a barista! fluff, meet-ugly, afab!reader, reader is referred to as a girl, kiyoko's pov, kiyoko is an anxious shy mess (me too), flirting (pathetic), kiyoko's gay awakening lmfao, kiyoko's a la dispute fan because i said so, poop jokes, i actually hate how this turned out but oh well, wrote this for the 3 kiyoko lovers of the world

wc: 3.5k words

now playing: very cliché but definitely girls - girl in red lmao 🎶

Kiyoko saw love as a waste of time. She lived her whole life in a society held together by the prospect of love. It chased her in many forms: her parents, her friends, music, art, - she knew it well. In her childhood, love was just another friend of hers; a familiar taste on her tongue, similar to her mother’s cooking. It was a feeling of home. But as she grew up, the flavour grew progressively more acrid; bitter. She watched as her friends changed, each of them infatuated by the weird feeling. Everyone around her had a crush on someone. Conversations with her friends quickly became dull. No one was the same as they got older. Everyone around her was falling in love; a victim of cupid's spell. She felt left out; ostracised. In her eyes, love seemed like a trap; a chain, connecting you to someone for the rest of your life. She never understood the appeal, and how everyone saw the cruel, suffocating feeling as a warm embrace - whirling inside of you. She was frustrated. It was stressful not knowing what was wrong with her - why she was so different from her peers. She tried relationships, they always felt wrong. She was asked out by 2 different guys, each time she said yes. She agreed not because the feeling was mutual, but because she hoped she could force herself to feel the same. In the end, she discovered that butterflies are just colourful moths that find home inside of your gut, and mess everything up as they inevitably rot away. Cupid shot Kiyoko with their arrow on multiple occasions; each time left her on the cusp of bleeding out. All everyone cared about was love. As everyone around her found their person, she found herself slowly left behind. Love was in the air, and she was allergic.

In a way, her friends felt bad for her. They didn’t understand, and honestly, neither did she. They frequently tried setting her up on dates. She met all kinds of guys, each one somewhat worse than the last. Every date felt so strange; something wasn’t right. Was that how all dates went? - That’s it? She honestly felt guilty. Her friends put so much effort into those dates, trying to find her soulmate. They genuinely cared about her. They wanted her to experience true love. She felt bad for being so difficult. It got to the point where she’d resort to pretending. She’d choose a random guy in her class, one that was objectively attractive, and led her friend’s to believe her poorly acted out infatuation was true love. A part of her hoped that by lying to her friends, she could lie to herself, and believe it. With fingers crossed, she prayed for her to finally succeed, She hoped that maybe, she’d finally experience the warmth of her heart pounding in her chest.

Graduation passed her by; it never worked.

To her, it was pointless. She tried it so many times, and in the end, she was always left unsatisfied. She lost faith in her search for love ages ago, and honestly stopped believing in it. Instead of flowers and holding hands with someone, love found her in other strange ways. To her, love was the cat that always met with her on her way to college, or when she found a song that she related to deeply. Love was the face of her mother when she was accepted into college. Love was spending time by herself; writing mediocre poetry, back pressed almost comfortably against a tree. With the exception of her father, love was never the face of a man. That was something she never came to terms with until her early adult years. That was something she thought she'd never understand;

She was wrong.

February was the worst. As if the people around her couldn’t get even more annoying, someone had the bright idea to make a whole day about love. She hated it. The commute to town was even more unbearable than it usually was. Instead of being surrounded by groaning strangers that had too much to drink last night; definitely did not get any sleep, mother’s carrying their screaming babies, the annoying screeching noise that erupted from the train every time it came to a halt, she was surrounded by cheesy lovers that flirted way too loudly. Noise-cancelling headphones were the greatest purchase she ever made.

The train to town was almost worse than the bustling, busy streets. Almost. As if her day couldn’t get any worse, all of her favourite places to spend her lunch were overrun, infected by insufferable couples. She turned her nose up with negativity. She wasn’t mad at them, if anything, she was envious. Why did she have to spend this magical holiday alone? It was unfair. She wanted not just to be loved, but to love. Her head spiralled every time she questioned herself; she never thought about it too much to prevent her from the gnawing pit that grew within her. It took a few miserable Valentine’s Day’s for her to cultivate a steady ‘celebration’ routine; A survival plan: she would take the train at 8:20, which would be significantly less busy than the one she usually got, put on her headphones, blasted La Dispute for the entire duration of the train ride while staring out the window, and then scurried her way through the hectic crowds to her favorite, quaint, quiet, family-owned coffee shop. There, she would grab the biggest, strongest coffee they had (with a generous amount of caramel syrup, to satiate her sweet tooth), and ploughed through her assignments with peaceful relief etched into every line her pen wrote.

That was how she spent every Valentine’s Day without fail - Without interruption. She finally had a stable routine that wouldn’t make her feel like a dysfunctional human. A routine that wouldn’t make her feel like there was something wrong with her. A distraction from the onslaught of love that crept up behind her; always facing her back, never once meeting her face to face. Up until now, it almost always went smoothly. It almost worked. She got off the train with high hopes, a subtle smile on her features as she silently appreciated the lyricism of the song she had on shuffle. She had only one notification on her phone: a warning to turn her volume down. All of her friends were busy spending time with their person. Of course they were too busy to text her. With a sigh, she increased the volume to the loudest it could go, and drowned out every thought and jealousy that plagued her mind. She didn’t care about damaging her hearing. At least she wouldn’t have to listen to grown adults talking and cooing to each other like babies. She hated that.

The walk to the coffee shop was fine. She kept to her side of the footpath, and held stern eye contact with the pavement. The cracks in the concrete were way more interesting than the romance that clouded the public anyways. Turning the door-handle, she silently rehearsed her order in her mind, before making her way to the counter. It was relatively quiet; empty. That’s how it normally was. This place was her escape from reality. It was small, quiet, the music they played was nice, and the baristas were always so polite to her. However, as she walked up to the counter, she was unable to recognise the barista behind the register. Was she new? She must’ve been, Kiyoko went there at least three times a week, and never once had she seen her. She wasn’t upset though, not in the slightest. She just hoped she would be as nice as the others. She watched attentively as the girl took the order of the person in front of her. She was smiling widely after each sentence that fled her lips. Not a fake customer-service smile, but a real genuine one. Kiyoko admired that. She continued to watch as she took the money from the customer and quickly placed it into the cash register. In one quick moment, Kiyoko found herself standing speechless directly in front of her. “Hey, what can I get for you?” She asked, giving Kiyoko absolutely zero time to mentally prepare herself to talk to her. She stuttered out her order with a strange feeling in her chest. She cringed at how stupid she sounded. “Of course! Would you like that in a takeaway cup?” She asked, flashing her a smile. It was so strange. Her smile seemed so familiar, so warm. The smile on her face almost made her feel at home; safe. She typed her order into the machine. Kiyoko was relieved - the eye contact was becoming too much for her. “Yes please.” She almost whispered, her voice unusually soft. She only nodded in response, letting out an “mhm!” in acknowledgement. She looked up at Kiyoko again, and she finally understood what it meant to have your heart skip a beat. “That’ll be 5,60! Are you paying with cash or card?”

The moment lasted only 30 seconds at most, and yet Kiyoko felt like she was suffering with a life-long crisis. As she handed her cash to her, she found herself questioning every choice she had ever made that led up to that moment. She couldn’t find the right words to describe how she felt. Conflicted? Confused? She couldn’t think of the right one. She couldn’t think of anything, besides the feeling of her hand touching hers for a split second, as she handed the money to her. She placed the money inside the register just like she did with the last customer. But, unlike she did with them, she leaned over the counter - propping her head up with her hands.

“It’ll be ready in about 5 minutes, pretty.”

With bright red cheeks and wobbly knees, she nodded her head, and almost sprinted to the pick-up counter.

There are a lot of things you could do in 5 minutes. You could listen to a song, count the tiles on the floor, or even count each second down to the last minute. Kiyoko chose neither of those. Instead, she stared at the floor, replaying the interaction in her head over a hundred times. She wasn’t entirely sure what was wrong with her, but one thing she knew for certain was she never felt that way about someone before. Ever. Those five minutes were spent questioning her entire existence. She struggled to come to an obvious conclusion. As it reached the tip of her tongue, her name was called out.

She spoke her name in a way that drove her crazy. The way each syllable rolled off her tongue had her worried she was going to suffer a heart attack. She quickly whipped her head around to face the barista again. She was suddenly very aware of how uncomfortably warm her face was. “You know… your name is almost as pretty as your face.” She almost whispered, a grin widely displayed on her cheeks as her eyes consumed Kiyoko whole. She leaned over the counter again, holding the cup out to Kiyoko. She really liked when she did that - for some strange reason. Her compliment caught Kiyoko completely off guard, hitting her almost like an arrow to the heart. A stupid smile spread out on her face. She wasn’t sure how else to react; It wasn’t socially acceptable to kick your feet and squeal in the middle of a coffee shop. Muttering a shy, “thank you so much!”, she held her hand out to grab the coffee from her. But, before she could get a stable grip on the cup, the barista let go of it too soon, almost out of embarrassment. In doing so, it caused the large, hot coffee to fall directly onto Kiyoko’s hand-made, wool sweater; crashing onto it like a boiling wave, spilling all over her and soaking her in the warm liquid.

There was a moment of mutual shock between them, a brief few seconds spent silently staring at each other. She did a terrible job at hiding the disgusted, uncomfortable look on her face as the coffee seeped through her sweater, ruining the shirt she was wearing under it, and sticking to her bare skin. She looked down to assess the damage done to her clothes. They were ruined. A big, attention-grabbing stain was spread unevenly on her sweater. This was the worst. She looked up at the barista, who looked even more terrified than she was. Her hands flew to cover her mouth, but Kiyoko could see the guilty, fearful look in her eyes. They stayed like that for a few seconds. Uncomfortable silence engulfed the room; like time stopped. Kiyoko didn’t look away from the barista, but she could tell that other people were definitely staring at the two of them. She wanted the ground to swallow her up. The barista was the first one to speak up.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” She could tell by the tone of her voice just how serious she was. Kiyoko opened her mouth to speak, to quickly forgive her. She just wanted to go home. Embarrassment enveloped her entirely, and the strong scent of coffee attacked her nostrils in an almost painful way, but the barista spoke up again. “Wait here, I’ll go get you some tissues!” She pleaded, raising her hands cautiously. She nodded in response, watching in silence as the barista urgently dashed through the door behind her. She silently cursed herself for not staying silent. She wiped her hand on her sweater, before holding it to her face to look at it. Her fingers were stained brown. At least her sweater didn’t absorb it all. She waited at the counter for the barista to return like a deer in headlights. She didn’t close the door to her break-room, so Kiyoko could just barely see her.

She was really pretty. Like, really really pretty. Even in her coffee-stained apron (She’s probably done this before to someone else - Kiyoko almost laughed at the thought), and her hair all messy from a probably stressful day, she was beautiful. Even as she frantically tore apart her break-room, Kiyoko couldn’t help but feel her heart whirling around at her irresistible pulchritude. A dumb smile plastered across Kiyoko's face. Technically, she should feel annoyed. She loved that sweater to death. But, in a weird way, she was glad. She knew that from then on, every time she looked at that stain, she would see a trace of her. Although she wasn’t entirely sure what any of her feelings meant, she didn’t have the time to care. For now, she would just let herself feel whatever feelings she felt, without the need to understand. She would have a crisis later. For now, she needed to befriend the clumsy, pretty barista.

She speed-walked back to the counter, holding tissues out to her. Realistically, tissues would not reverse any of the damage, but it was the thought that counted. “Here. I’m so sorry about that.” She said, lips curving into an apologetic smile so nice Kiyoko couldn’t help but mirror it. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” She answered, staring at her lips for an embarrassingly long moment, before finally returning to her eyes. She reached out to take the tissues from her hand. Have her fingers always been this shaky? The lack of sleep she got the night before must’ve been affecting her mind, because she could’ve sworn you grazed your hand over hers purposefully. She must’ve imagined it. She awkwardly wiped her sweater with it, staining the tissue in the process. The stain didn’t budge.

The barista cleared her throat. “Would it help if I told you I still think you’re really pretty?” She fidgeted with her hands, an empathetic look in her eyes as she silently hoped to uplift Kiyoko’s spirits. Totally not because she was also insanely into her. Totally. Kiyoko almost dropped the tissue. Hell, she almost dropped her jaw at the sudden flirtatious remark. Her face went hot as the line between a friendly compliment and flirting was incredibly unclear to her. Was she just being nice? “Maybe it would.” She began, raising her hands, leaving the stain on full display. and tilting her head with a smile. “Would it help if I told you I think you’re really cute?” Kiyoko made a mental note to learn how to flirt later. The barista smiled, letting out an airy chuckle. “Well, it wouldn’t help the sweater I ruined, but it would help my ruined confidence.” She joked, looking at the ground. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed, it was my fault.” Kiyoko stated matter-of-factly, the girl looked at her like she had two heads. “Nope. It was my fault, cutie. I won't accept any other opinions.” She said with a wink - a wink that almost made Kiyoko fall over. Her knees were immensely weak, and she couldn’t tell if it was from the nickname, the wink, or both.

She sighed with defeat knowing not to debate with her any further. “Does it look like I just shit myself?” She asked with a laugh. The barista laughed with her, which only sorta, kind of, slightly, made her heart flutter. “Nah, more like someone shit on you.” She responded, scratching her chin in playful thought. “I’m seriously so sorry about that by the way. Let me make you another coffee, free of charge. Is there anything else I can do to help?” She asked, her words laced with genuine interest. She grabbed an empty cup, writing something on it before turning around and beginning to make her drink. Kiyoko waved her hands dismissively. “Don’t be sorry, accidents happen! - At least now I have an excuse to talk to you longer.” If she didn’t stutter her way through that sentence, it probably would’ve sounded way less pathetic. Unfortunately, Kiyoko felt she wasn’t anything but pathetic. She wasn’t aware of how it took everything in the barista not to get on one knee and propose to her at that very second. “You have a point. Maybe it’s a good thing I spilled it on you.” She chuckled, turning back around to face her again, handing her the new drink - carefully this time.

“Um, this might be incredibly out of line, but could I maybe get your number?” She smiled nervously at Kiyoko. Normally, whenever a guy asked her for her number, it made her scoff and roll her eyes. But she was different, Kiyoko never nodded her head so enthusiastically in her life. “Yeah, of course!” She did little to hide the excitement laced in her words. The barista smiled the widest she’d seen that morning. Whispering a quiet “thank you,” she handed Kiyoko her phone, and she shakily typed in her number.

“Oh uh, I never got your name?” Through a smile, she responded, “it’s Y/n.”

“Y/n..” she repeated, handing her her phone back, “that’s a really pretty name. It suits you.” With every sentence it was as if their smiles grew tenfold; heightened by mutual happiness. “Thanks Kiyoko, your name is lovely too.” “Shimizu.” She corrected abruptly, y/n furrowed her brow in response. “Please, call me Shimizu.” she almost begged, craving to taste her name on her tongue. “Well then, Shimizu. It was lovely meeting you. I’ll stop bothering you and let you enjoy your coffee, for now.” She winked again, doing very little absolutely nothing to help convince Kiyoko she’s still straight. “For now?” She asked, confused. “Well I’ll definitely be texting you after my shift, so, for now, I will grant you peace and quiet.” She laughed her words out, to which Kiyoko reciprocated.

“I definitely won’t enjoy it when I could be talking to you instead.” Kiyoko took a sip from her drink. If she wasn’t sure then, the deliciousness of her coffee definitely confirmed just how in love Kiyoko was with her barista. She laughed, “Call me whenever you want someone to spill coffee on you. I’ve proven myself to be very good at that”

“Oh believe me, I will.”

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