#I mean I can just keep them thinking I’m no | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

skzdust · 2 days ago

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Rock Will Never Die

Pure smut. MINORS DNI.

This took me almost three weeks. The season's greetings has been eating me alive. So. Omegaverse rock band ateez. 6.7k words of it, which is by far my longest smut. Please enjoy <3

Big thanks to @kpop---scenarios, who helped me decide which members were alphas/betas/omegas, and for generally helping on this one!!! I appreciate you sm!!

Summary: Y/n, manager of rock band Ateez, is out of heat suppressants after a show. Luckily, all 8 members of her band are there to help.

Pairing: Ateez x reader

Includes: omegaverse, LOTSSSSS of smut, porn without plot, omega reader, spitroasting, double penetration, knotting, unprotected sex (you did not come here for sex ed but please be safe irl!!!)

Word count: 6.7k

Taglist (Comment on a post/send an ask if you'd like to be added): @weirdowithaphone, @caught-in-the-afterglow, @palindrome969, @skzstan12345, @katsukis1wife,

@hyunjinsjeans, @somethingkindazainy, @silverstarburst

Network:@mirohs-aurora-society

Reblogs, likes, comments all appreciated!!!

Masterlist

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You bit your lip as you pawed through your bag, looking for your suppressants. You could taste blood before you found the little orange bottle. You pushed down on it, opening the lid, and—

Empty. Not a single pill left.

“Fuck.” You whispered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“What’s wrong?”

You turned around. Mingi was standing there, freshly showered in grey sweatpants and a blue T-shirt, a concerned look on his face.

He looked so fucking good, you restrained yourself from jumping at him then and there. You could feel yourself getting more and more desperate, and you swallowed.

“You smell really anxious.” Hongjoong looked over from where he was relaxing in an armchair, still in his stage makeup and outfit. His striped knit hat was askew on his head.

“I— well—” You stammered. “I’m— God, this is embarrassing.”

“What?” Mingi raised his eyebrows. “It can’t be that bad.”

You gave a small, involuntary whimper. “I’m out of heat suppressants… and there’s one coming on.”

“Well, shit.” Mingi said softly. “That’s not great.”

“And it’s not like you can really stop it once it starts.” Hongjoong said.

“Exactly.”

“Hey, calm down.” Mingi’s voice was soothing. “We’ll find a solution for this.”

“What?” You whined. “I don’t have an alpha, and we’re in a hotel, and I don’t have any of my—” You swallowed. “Er, stuff. What’s the solution?”

Mingi and Hongjoong looked at each other for a long moment. “I mean… we could help you.”

You’d been the manager of Ateez for about a year now. They’d always been incredibly talented, but they’d needed someone with your managerial and business sense to catapult them into the stardom they now enjoyed.

And as their manager, to make sure they maintained that stardom, you had to keep close with them. Ride on the tour bus with them, stay in the same hotel rooms, go to all the same bars and after parties.

(Okay, so maybe you had some personal motives to that, too. Maybe the members of Ateez were the eight hottest men you’d ever seen. Maybe you fantasized about the aspects of them you saw both on and off stage. Maybe you thought about them when you were at home on your heat days, fucking yourself with a toy.)

But you’d never thought you’d be alone in a hotel room with two of the group’s four alphas with no heat suppressants.

Especially not with them offering to help you.

They must’ve noticed your hesitation, because Hongjoong smiled softly. “If you don’t want us to, we don’t have to.”

“No! No, help— help— please help me.” You stammered, then more quietly added, “I need you.”

“Shit.” Mingi said. “You’re all desperate.”

“I’m going into heat.” You huffed. “Of course I’m desperate.”

“No, I know. It’s just hot. You want a knot?”

His teasing sent a wave of arousal through you. “Stop it.”

“I don’t think so.” He smirked. “I like watching you squirm, y/n.”

You could feel slick leaking out of your hole, and you bit your lip.

“Enough, Min.” Hongjoong stood up. “I’m the captain, I’m going first.”

“Aw, but I don’t want to wait.” Mingi pouted.

“Contact the others while I fuck her, then you guys can watch while you all wait your turn.”

You gave a long moan from where you were still crouched beside your bag. Hongjoong looked at you. “Slut. You like the idea of all of us fucking you, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” You nodded. Hongjoong had never talked to you like this before, always sweet and gentlemanly as could be.

“When you text Woo, tell him he owes me.” Hongjoong said to Mingi, but he kept his eyes on you. “She seems to like being degraded, so I won that bet. Get on the bed for me, pretty.”

“Bet?” You obeyed, getting onto the bed.

“Me and Woo have had some money on your kinks.” He said, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do.

Mingi snickered. “Pervert.”

You were, inexplicably, into this, and Hongjoong could tell it made you hornier. He laughed. “You smell even sweeter. You like that? Me and Wooyoung talking about how we’d like to fuck you?”

“Mhm.” You whined. “Can— um, can…” You trailed off, realizing how desperate your request sounded.

“Use your words.” Hongjoong climbed onto the bed, over you, trapping you beneath him. “What is it?”

“Can you fuck me at the same time?” You whispered.

Hongjoong grinned, turning over his shoulder. “Mingi, you can tell Woo there’s a consolation prize for losing.”

You whined as he looked back at you. “Please, Joong. Alpha. Need you.”

He slid his hand into your hair and pulled you into a searing kiss. “Need you too, pretty. Take all those clothes off, you’re not gonna need them.”

You hurried to obey him, getting your shirt and skirt off as fast as you could.

“Look at your body.” He murmured, his eyes raking over you. “Absolutely beautiful.”

You blushed, more slick leaking out of you. “Please, Hongjoong.”

“Ah-ah.” He raised his eyebrows. “You call me alpha, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.” You whispered. “Please, alpha.”

He smirked. “How can I resist when you ask so nicely?”

You whimpered as his hand came down to rub at your pussy. His touch felt so good, and all you wanted was to whine and rut into his hand, but you restrained yourself.

“So well-behaved.” He remarked, pulling his hand back and rubbing his fingers together, watching your slick drip down his hand. “I just know you’re gonna feel so good around me.” With that, he pushed three fingers inside you, and you moaned.

“Fuck, Hong—alpha.” You breathed. “Feels so good, alpha. I… I want your cock, though.”

“Greedy little thing.” He laughed softly. “You’re gonna fucking get it, aren’t you? So be patient.”

You bit your lip again as he began rubbing his thumb around your clit. “Does that feel good, pretty? Is that what you need?”

You swallowed. It was a trick question, and you weren’t going to answer it.

“Answer me.” He added a fourth finger.

“Ah! Yes, it’s good, but I need more, please, Joong—alpha!”

He sighed. “Can’t even remember what to call me. I guess I just gotta fuck that disobedience out of you, don’t I?”

“Yes.” You squeaked. “Yes, you do.”

Hongjoong pulled down his pants, freeing his hard cock. Your mouth began to water at the sight. He threw them across the room. “Mingi, when are the others coming?” You’d forgotten he was even there.

“Soon, I think.”

You looked over Hongjoong’s shoulder to see Mingi watching you, his phone in his hand, practically drooling.

“Good.” Hongjoong said. “I want to make good on Woo’s consolation prize.”

Fuck. He’d been serious? You couldn’t wait for Wooyoung to arrive.

Hongjoong pushed his cock through your folds, coating it in slick. “So messy, pretty.”

You just watched him, breathing hard.

He lined himself up with your entrance. You could just feel him starting to press himself in when there was the loud sound of a door opening. You, Hongjoong, and Mingi all turned around to look at it.

San and Seonghwa walked in, both dressed in dark t-shirts and sweatpants. San’s eyebrows were raised as he took in the sight. “Oh, look at that, Hongjoong’s about to fuck y/n. What did you say, Mingi? She’s in heat?”

You could hear the smirk in Mingi’s voice. “Yeah, she’s definitely in heat.”

You didn’t even realize you’d started breathing so hard until Seonghwa walked over to you and put a hand over your mouth. “There. You can start, Joongie.”

“Don’t need your permission.” Hongjoong sounded a bit irked, but grinned at Seonghwa as he slid inside you. You moaned long and loud into Seonghwa’s hand. You felt so full… but it still wasn’t enough.

“Fuck me.” You asked, and it came out muffled, but Hongjoong could definitely tell what you meant because he laughed meanly.

“Is there something you want, pretty? Use your words, I can’t hear you.”

“Fuck me, alpha, please.” You tried again, and you could hear Seonghwa’s snicker.

Hongjoong looked up at Seonghwa, pursing his lips. Seonghwa leaned down and gave him a long kiss. You were a little surprised. You didn’t know they did that.

Hongjoong looked at you after a moment. “I guess I can start fucking her now.”

“You should.” Seonghwa took his hand away from your mouth. “She was about to bite my finger or something. She’s so fucking horny.”

You wanted to snap out that you were in heat, of course you were fucking horny, but you held back. You wanted to submit, to be a good girl (to be their good girl) more.

“Fuck.” San said from where he sat on the end of the bed. “Damn, she’s so wet, I call next.”

“I was here first.” Mingi said indignantly.

Hongjoong abruptly pulled his hips back before snapping them back into you. You gave a long moan. This was what you needed, someone to fuck you long and deep and hard, into the mattress, someone to fuck a litter into you, someone to knot you and breed you and—

San cut into your thoughts. “No, I said it first. You and I both know the second someone starts to dominate you you’re gonna want to be a good boy, so shut up before I have to punish you.”

San’s voice was smug, or you thought so, most of the thoughts had left your head as Hongjoong had started to fuck you in earnest. His cock was so big, and so good, and filled you up just right. You couldn’t fucking wait for him to knot you.

Mingi and San went suspiciously quiet. Honestly, though, you didn’t even care who won the argument, who got your body next, so long as they kept going the way Hongjoong was going.

The door clicked open again, and you whined as Hongjoong stopped. “Alpha, can you please— why’d you stop?”

“Wooyoung.” Seonghwa’s voice was practically a purr.

You shivered. Wooyoung.

“Hey, Woo, get over here.”

Wooyoung was in a black satin robe, a sash tied around his waist. His hair was wet, like he’d just gotten out of the shower. He smiled as he saw you. “Oh, God, you’re so gorgeous like this.”

“Right?” Hongjoong thrust inside again. “She feels so fucking tight. Want her mouth?”

Your eyes widened as Wooyoung smiled. “D’you want me, baby?”

“Yes.”

Hongjoong pulled out for a brief moment to readjust, and you whined at the sudden emptiness.

“Shh, pretty, it’s gonna be okay, you’ll be so full soon.” He murmured to you, helping you move so your head dangled over the side of the bed. You looked up to see Wooyoung untying his robe, revealing absolutely nothing underneath. He left it on, untied, as he gently pulled you close to him.

You were practically salivating at this point. His cock looked so good. He was gonna fill your mouth up, and Hongjoong—

Before you could finish your thought, Hongjoong pushed back inside you. You moaned, and Wooyoung took the opportunity to slide into your mouth. “So good for me.” He murmured, holding onto your hair.

It felt so good, being full from both ends. “Fuck me.” You moaned, although it came out muffled and distorted around Wooyoung’s cock. “Fuck me, alpha.”

Hongjoong grunted and began to do as you’d asked, aligning his thrusts with Wooyoung’s so you were pushed back and forth between them.

Through your cock-drunk haze you could hear Mingi whining. Your eyes darted over to him as best you could, only to see San pulling his cock out and slapping Mingi across the face with it before grabbing onto his hair. “Open up, slut.”

Mingi obeyed, his tongue lolling out. San groaned as he started to fuck Mingi’s face. Even just from glimpses you could see San’s cock was huge, much bigger than most betas. It was bigger than some alphas you’d seen, even.

You couldn’t wait for it to fuck you.

Hongjoong noticed. “Like watching Sannie fuck Mingi’s face, pretty?”

You moaned in the affirmative, spit leaking out around Wooyoung’s cock.

“Fuck, so messy.” Wooyoung sighed. “Such a good girl.”

That sent another shiver through you, and you looked up at him through your lashes. He sighed again. “Fuck, keep looking at me like that and I just won’t stop.”

You didn’t want him to stop. You looked at him for another moment before looking back over to San and Mingi, who were still… busy.

Hongjoong and Wooyoung kept going as you watched them. San slapped Mingi, and as you watched his hands drifted down to his lap. San slapped him again. “No, bad boy. You don’t touch that alpha cock. That’s my job.”

“Fuck, San, tell him.” Wooyoung’s fingers tightened in your hair. “Make him be a good boy.”

Wooyoung’s commentary on San and Mingi’s oral was only making you wetter. It was really fucking hot to watch him make Mingi submit, and to see how whiny and teary Mingi got when he was being fucked, even in his mouth. You wondered what he’d look like with a cock at both ends. Like you.

Wooyoung and Hongjoong kept going, kept using you. Your body jerked between the two of them. You were mostly along for the ride. You could feel the slick between your legs as Hongjoong kept fucking into your pussy, and Wooyoung’s hands in your hair turned almost gentle, combing through it as he continued with your mouth.

It was a nice contrast, Hongjoong rutting into you like a feral animal while Wooyoung stroked your hair and shallowly fucked your mouth. You closed your eyes.

You opened them a second later as a loud whimper filled the room. You looked over to see Seonghwa yanking Mingi’s hair back, pulling him off San’s cock. “Sannie doesn’t get to cum yet, he’s not wasting it on you.”

Before you could see what they did next, Wooyoung’s hands suddenly fisted in your hair, pulling you down onto his cock. “Fuck, y/n, I’m gonna cum.” He held you in place, his hips moving madly. He was in your throat at this point, and fuck it felt so good to be so full at both ends, to be used so thoroughly by your band members.

Wooyoung came, and you tried your best to be a good girl, to take it all, to let him use you, but you coughed as he pulled back.

“Good slut.” He whispered, leaning down to peck your forehead.

You looked up at him with glazed eyes. “Good for you?”

“So good for me.” He smiled.

You turned over your shoulder. “Please, need a knot.”

“A knot?” Hongjoong’s smirk was evident even in his somewhat breathless voice. “You want a knot, why not beg alpha for it?”

“Please!” You cried out, uncaring if you woke up the whole hotel. “Please, alpha, need your knot, need it so bad.”

Hongjoong laughed, but it was more of a loud exhale with the effort of his thrusts. “I’ll give you a knot.”

He pushed into you, and you could feel something stretching you wide.

Hongjoong’s knot.

He came, deep inside you, his knot inflating. Wooyoung pressed a hand to your stomach, grinning at the way you felt full. “You really bred her, huh, Hongjoong.”

Hongjoong reached around to hug you. “C’mon, pretty, relax with me.”

You hummed, pliant, laying down with Hongjoong as he curled up on the bed. Wooyoung joined you, pulling a blanket over your connected forms and cuddling into your other side.

“Thanks Woo, thanks, Joong.” You whispered.

“No need to thank us.” Wooyoung kissed your neck, long and leisurely. “Always glad to fuck our favorite girl’s mouth. Whenever you want it.”

Hongjoong moved his leg, readjusting. You held back a moan at the slight motion of his cock inside you. “Yeah, we really should be thanking you, for letting us help you through your heat.”

“It’s not over yet.” You mumbled. “I’ve got a knot in me now, but as soon as it goes down… my heats tend to last some time.”

“Well, luckily for you, there are eight of us.” Hongjoong smiled.

The bed dipped as someone else got on. Wooyoung groaned in protest. “Hwa, let us have our moment.”

Seonghwa laughed softly. “I just wanted to join, not trying to ruin any moments.”

You absently started to stroke Wooyoung’s hair with one hand while you reached out for Seonghwa with the other.

Seonghwa smiled, leaning down to kiss you. “So beautiful, but you’re a needy thing, aren’t you?”

Out of the band’s members, you loved all of them in their own ways, but Seonghwa had always held a special allure. He was incredibly talented. The man played guitar and did vocals, none of the other members filled multiple roles like that. And he was sex on legs when he was onstage, singing duets with frontman San like they were in love. It drove the fangirls insane.

And you, but that wasn’t something you’d wanted to admit until now.

“Needy.” You nodded in agreement.

Seonghwa gave you another, longer kiss. This one was sweet, but it had an undercurrent of seduction that yanked you in and kept you there. He was trying to turn you on again, and though Hongjoong’s knot was still locked inside you, it would not be a difficult task.

“Hwa… Joong’s still inside me.” You whined.

Seonghwa bit your earlobe, making you twitch and gasp and arch your back. Hongjoong’s dick twitched inside you at that, and he groaned.

“Well, as soon as he’s done, it’s my turn, isn’t it?”

The words sent shivers through you. “I thought San and Mingi were arguing about that.”

“They’re still… busy.”

You looked over Seonghwa’s shoulder to see San sitting in the armchair Hongjoong had been in earlier, scrolling on his phone. His legs were spread, and Mingi knelt between them. “Don’t drool on my pants.” San said, his voice bored, but you could see the little smile tugging at his mouth.

“Fuck.” You whispered. “That’s hot.”

“Mingi and San like to be rough.” Seonghwa smiled. “It’s quite fun to watch. You’ll have to join us more often.”

Hongjoong let out a strangled moan as you clenched down on him. You had no idea what they were, you had no idea what you were with them. You did know, however, that you loved them, and they loved you. And now everyone was fucking, you guessed? But whatever. It seemed to work.

And it seemed you’d fit in with them quite well.

But you didn’t dwell on that too long, because when Seonghwa kissed you again, another wave of slick rushed out of you.

“Hongjoong.” You whimpered. “I need— I need—”

“I know.” Hongjoong kissed your neck. Wooyoung joined in, too, licking up the other side. “It’ll go down in just a second, and then Seonghwa can take his turn.”

The phrasing, his turn, turned you on so much. Seonghwa, just like the others, got to use your body. They all would.

You couldn’t help yourself, you rocked your body back onto Hongjoong’s cock. He hissed in overstimulation. You tried to be kind, to think of him, but your body just wanted to be fucked, more and more and more. You just held yourself back.

They kept kissing you for a few more minutes, your body burning, until Hongjoong’s knot started to go down. You whined as he pulled out, suddenly empty. “Seonghwa…”

“I know, baby.” He got his pants off, and you almost started drooling at the sight of his long cock.

Seonghwa slid inside you, and you sighed at the sensation. “Fuck...”

Hongjoong and Wooyoung went off to shower, kissing you one more time before they left. Seonghwa set a languid pace, rolling his hips deep inside you. You were both panting after a few minutes, and you threw your head back. “Need it harder, alpha.”

Seonghwa laughed softly. “Alpha? I’m a beta, baby, but I’m happy to fuck you harder.”

Your cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Sorry, Hwa, I didn’t mean to…”

Seonghwa stopped for a moment to kiss your head. “Nothing to apologize for. If anything, it’s kind of a compliment. But I know you need a knot right now.”

You swallowed, nodding.

Seonghwa thrust into you a few more times before turning over his shoulder with a sly smile. “Mingi, get your submissive ass over here.”

Mingi pulled off of San’s cock, his eyes heavily lidded, spit dripping down his chin. He looked obscene, fucked-out without even having been fucked.

“You heard him.” San patted his cheek just softly enough to be a pat and not a slap. “Get over there.”

“Mhm.” Mingi climbed onto the bed, sitting in front of Seonghwa.

He smiled. “Such a good boy… why doesn’t our good fuckpet satisfy y/n? Give her the knot she needs.” His voice was patronizing, condescending, but based on the significant bulge in Mingi’s pants, he was getting off on it.

Mingi nodded. “Wanna be a good boy for you, sir. Wanna make y/n feel good.”

A shiver ran through you.

“Why don’t you take off your clothes, then, and lay down on your back.” Seonghwa raised his eyebrows. “That’s not a suggestion, Mingi.”

Mingi squeaked, moving faster than you’d ever seen him move to get his pants and shirt off. He propped himself up on the pillows, looking at Seonghwa with wide eyes. You couldn’t take your eyes off of his cock, standing hard and full.

Seonghwa smiled and scratched his head. Mingi leaned into his hand. “Good boy. Y/n, why don’t you come ride him for me?”

You inhaled sharply and pulled away from Seonghwa’s cock, instead positioning yourself over Mingi’s and grabbing onto his shoulder. He looked at you with the most pathetic, desperate expression you’d ever seen. “Please, y/n.”

You sank onto his cock, moaning as every inch of it filled you up. He whimpered as you seated yourself fully on him, staying still for a moment to adjust to his size.

“Go on, baby. Use him.” Seonghwa encouraged, voice smooth as satin.

You took a breath and began to bounce on Mingi’s cock, moaning as he hit that spot inside you with every motion. Like the rest of him, his cock was big, and you were euphoric as you felt it deep inside you.

Seonghwa tilted your head towards him. You didn’t stop fucking yourself on Mingi, but you looked at him.

“Aw.” He simpered. “So sweet. The subs are playing nice. You wanna kiss me, baby?”

You nodded enthusiastically, desperately. “Yes, Seonghwa.”

“Sir.” He reminded you.

“Yes, sir.” You rushed to correct yourself.

“Good.” He murmured, leaning in. He gave you a long kiss that might’ve been sweet if he hadn’t started biting your bottom lip. You moaned into his mouth.

Mingi’s whines were a sweet soundtrack to Seonghwa’s kisses. He sounded so desperate and submissive, a far cry from the Mingi you knew onstage or even off.

“Can Mingi fuck me now?” You whined against Seonghwa’s mouth. “I’m tired.”

“Of course, baby.” Seonghwa helped position the two of you so Mingi could start fucking into you. He rubbed Mingi’s back for a moment before suddenly scratching down his spine. Mingi moaned, arching his back and pushing his cock deep into you.

“Good boy.” Seonghwa whispered. “Y/n wants you to fuck her, so make sure you do a good job.”

Mingi began rutting into you with the same fervor that Hongjoong had, only with a lot more whimpering and big puppy eyes. “Am I doing good for you, sir?”

Seonghwa grabbed Mingi’s hair and forced him to look at you. “Ask her if you’re doing good.” He looked at you. “Baby, be honest.”

“Am— am I doing good?” Mingi’s voice was small.

“So full.” You said, your voice breathy. “So good, Mingi, Seonghwa… Mingi, don’t stop.”

Seonghwa laughed meanly. “For someone with such a nice cock, it’s kind of funny how little Mingi uses it.” He yanked his head back. “He loves being stuffed full so much. So I’m sure this is a nice change of pace for him.”

Mingi looked at him. “She’s so tight… I’m gonna… sir, I can’t last much longer.”

“Knot her. Give her what she wants.” Seonghwa leaned down to speak into your ear. “He’s gonna breed you so full, isn’t he?”

Mingi pushed into you one last time before his knot expanded and you were locked together. You could feel him start to cum inside you, and you whined, shaking as your own orgasm overtook you.

When you came back into reality, Mingi was collapsed by your side, breathing hard. Seonghwa was furiously working his hand on his cock, and you watched, transfixed.

“Good boy, Mingi.” He breathed. “Good girl, y/n. You both did so good for me.”

You made a pleased noise, and that seemed to send him over the edge. He spilled onto his fist, his hips jerking up into it.

“’M sorry I wanted a knot.” You muttered, feeling bad Seonghwa didn’t get to finish inside you.

“Don’t apologize, baby.” Seonghwa said, looking around for a towel. “You have no idea how much I like watching.”

Your face got hot at the words. “Oh… well… that’s good.”

He finally found one, wiping off his hands. Mingi wrapped his arms around you as Seonghwa laid down on your other side. You were sandwiched in a giant Minhwa hug, and it was heavenly.

You didn’t quite fall asleep, but you were definitely drifting off cuddling with them. Having a knot inside you and two of your eight favorite people in the world with you made you feel happy and safe.

You heard the door open, but you didn’t care enough to look and see who it was, at least not until someone came over to you, and you heard two people messily kissing.

You opened your half-asleep eyes to see Mingi and Yunho making out, almost directly over your face. It was quite a sight to wake up to, and you moaned almost without realizing it.

They broke apart, both smiling down at you.

“Hi, sunshine.” Yunho leaned down to peck your forehead, and Mingi adjusted, moving his cock inside you. You whined at that, oversensitive but your body still craving more.

They ignored you, kissing each other again. You could feel Mingi’s knot starting to go down, and you pushed yourself back onto him, chasing the fullness. It was too late, though, he was pulling out, whispering an apology to you. “Sorry, Yunho’s gonna go next, though, okay?”

Your body was so hot, the ache between your legs so strong that you just looked at Mingi with big eyes. “Is he gonna fuck me?”

Yunho laughed. “Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just make you lay there and stay still. Hold me deep inside you.”

You take a deep breath, trying to keep it together, but Yunho continues.

“You just wanna get fucked so bad, isn’t that right, you want me to breed you and make it feel so good… maybe I’ll just make you take me the way I want it, hm?”

You knew Yunho was an alpha. But he’d always been sweet and kind to you. He’d never teased you like this.

His large hands moved over your form, caressing you, your tits, your waist, your ass, rubbing your pussy. You stretched out, opening yourself up to all of him.

He laughed and unzipped his pants, revealing his cock straining against his boxers. You whimpered just looking at the bulge.

“Stop teasing, Yunho.” Seonghwa’s voice was playful. “Don’t you see how much she needs it?”

You gave Seonghwa a grateful look before turning your attention back to Yunho. “Please, Yunho.”

“I love your begging.” He smiled, but there was no kindness in it. It was toothy, almost predatory. He completely took his pants off and positioned himself over you like he was about to fuck you. His boxers were still on, and the cotton rubbed against your clit as he rubbed against you. You whined weakly, feeling almost dizzy with the need to be full.

“What did I say, Yunho.” Seonghwa’s voice was firmer now. “She’s in heat. Be nice.”

Yunho sighed, and before you knew what he was doing, you were flipped on your stomach, your knees propped up under you and your face pressed into the pillows.

“You wanna get fucked?” Yunho’s voice was almost a growl. Clearly he was not happy at Seonghwa’s interference. “I’ll fuck you, sunshine.”

A thrill went through your body at his roughness. You could feel his tip at your entrance, and you took a deep breath.

Yunho pushed inside in one swift motion, and the breath you’d just taken whooshed out of your lungs. He was so deep inside you, so big, so good…

And then he started moving. With every deep thrust, you felt like you might cum that second. He was so rough, his fingers digging into your hips. You knew for sure there would be bruises the next morning.

Yunho fucked you like he hated you, and as he leaned over your back, you could feel he was still wearing his sweater and buttons from the show. The pins felt cold on your back, and you shivered.

“You like it like that? You like it when I fuck you rough?”

You nodded. “Yes, alpha.”

“You know, you really should share with Sannie.” Seonghwa’s voice was light, lilting. “He’s been waiting so patiently.”

You could hear rustling behind you, and a whimper that sounded like Mingi’s. It was probably San standing up, and you wondered if Mingi had returned to sucking him off as soon as his knot had gone down and he’d left the bed.

Yunho fucking growled.

You whined, the display of dominance turning you on more, but the rest of the room went silent.

“I’m so sorry.” Yunho said immediately, stilling his hips. “Oh my God, I did not mean to do that.”

“It’s okay.” San said, and he sounded genuine. “Take your time with y/n, I’ll get my turn after.”

You did your best to stay still, trying not to ruin their conversation, but you needed him fucking inside you.

“Thank you, San.” Yunho’s voice turned to you. “You alright, sunshine?”

“Mhm.” Your voice was small. “Yes, Alpha.”

“You want more?” Yunho’s voice turned smooth, slippery.

“Yes.” You breathed.

“Yunho?”

You pushed yourself up from the bed at that voice. “Yeosang?” You hadn’t even heard him come in.

But there he was, sitting cross legged on the bed beside you. You could see the fabric between his legs was dark, clinging to his thighs with slick.

“What is it, baby?” Yunho hummed.

Yeosang bit his lip. “I fear… y/n may be sending me into heat.”

Your head nearly spun at that. One omega sending another into heat was not something that happened often, not unless the pheromones were just right. It had to be the scents of the alphas in the room who’d already fucked you who had a relationship to Yeosang, right? It couldn’t be you?

Yeosang smelled sweet, smelled needy. You whined.

“Hey, Sannie? I have an idea.” Seonghwa said. “Why don’t you fuck Yeosang while you wait your turn.”

“Fuck.” San sighed. “I would love to, but I gotta keep disciplining this little slut for now.” There was a strangled noise from probably Mingi.

You could hear Seonghwa’s smirk in his voice. “Joong? Wanna get over here and fill Sangie up?”

“I can do that.”

You’d almost forgotten about Hongjoong and Wooyoung. You looked around for them and saw Wooyoung laying on the other bed, watching, as Hongjoong got up to position Yeosang beside you.

He smiled at you. “Hi, y/n.”

“Hi, Yeosang.” You breathed. He was so beautiful, still in his stage makeup, with bronze blush and little star freckles dotting his cheeks. “You’re so pretty.”

“You’re pretty.”

“Can I kiss Yeosang?” You looked over your shoulder at Yunho.

He laughed, thrusting his hips into you. Your head fell back on the pillow in front of you.

“Yeah, you can kiss him.”

You pulled your head up and looked at Yeosang for a moment, just taking him in. His expression went blissed-out for a moment as Hongjoong slid inside him, and you took that opportunity to pull his face to yours and kiss him.

“Mm, y/n.” He moaned into your mouth. “You taste so good.”

“Wooyoung.” You explained.

You and Yeosang kept kissing, your hands slowly getting a little more exploratory with each other, while Yunho fucked you and Hongjoong fucked him. It felt so fucking good to have him inside you, and to have two pairs of warm hands on your body.

You were dimly aware of Seonghwa moving to the other bed, and based on the sounds you were hearing he was touching Wooyoung, but you were too caught up in Yunho and Yeosang to really care.

You could barely breathe for the size of Yunho’s cock inside you. He wasn’t quite as big as Mingi, but he still felt delicious inside you, hitting spots inside you that made you sigh and whine in pleasure. This was a side of him you’d never seen, and it made you feel so good.

“Fuck me.” You whined.

“I am, sunshine.” Yunho gripped your hips tighter. “You’re already kissing Sangie, do you need someone else to come over and shut you up with their cock?” His voice turned into a whisper that edged on a growl. “No one else is touching you till I’m done with you.”

Yunho’s possessiveness was really fucking hot. He was a man possessed, fucking you with the fervor of an acolyte worshipping their god.

Yeosang whimpered, and you looked at him. His eyes were squeezed shut, tears beading at their corners, and his mouth was wide. You wondered what he’d look like choking on someone’s cock— Mingi’s giant one, maybe. Although it seemed from what Seonghwa had said he wasn’t going to be fucking anyone’s face. Maybe they used Yeosang as a punishment. He’d have to hold Mingi in his mouth while Mingi stayed completely still. You could see it in your mind’s eye, Mingi looking at Hwa or Hongjoong and absolutely begging to thrust down Yeosang’s throat, and them denying him time after time. Maybe he’d even cry.

You were pulled out of your thoughts by a particularly rough thrust from Yunho, and you cried out as you felt his knot starting to build at your entrance. “Fuck, Yunho, knot me, please.” You cried.

“Beg a little harder.” He snarled.

“Please, please, Yunho, please!”

“That’s it.” He held you in a punishing grip, forcing his knot into you. You held your hand to your stomach, feeling the bulge of him inside you. He began to cum, groaning, and your orgasm hit you at the same moment. You arched your back, pushing you into a kiss with Yeosang, who returned it with a whine.

Yunho slumped on top of you, pressing a kiss onto your back. “You feel so fucking good, sunshine. Taking my cock so good.”

You sighed. “You feel so good, Yunho.”

The door opened one more time. You knew who it had to be.

“Jongho.” San said. “Welcome to the orgy!”

You could smell him as soon as he walked into the room. You’d forgotten he’d started entering pre-rut right after the show, and had decided to sequester himself in his room. It seemed Mingi’s text had encouraged him to come take a turn with you.

Yunho’s knot went down quickly, deflating at the scent of another alpha clearly ready to fuck you into submission. The look in Jongho’s eyes was downright predatory, but the rest of his expression looked a bit nervous. He was chewing on his lip. “Hey y/n… do you still… need someone?”

You could feel yourself growing distressed at the sensation of so many ateez member’s cum leaking out of you. “Yes, Jongho, please, I need you to fill me up.”

Jongho’s clothes were off him in a flash, and he was on top of you. You were briefly worried that Yunho would get aggressive again, but he seemed spent, moving to take your place making out with Yeosang on the other half of the bed.

“Not so fast, Choi.” San stood up. “I’ve been waiting though everyone else, it’s my turn.”

Jongho looked thoughtful for a moment. “What if we shared?”

San raised his eyebrows. “I’m listening.”

“I’ll get inside her… and then you can join me.” He looked between your legs. “I think her little hole can take it.”

You clenched around nothing, breathing hard. The thought of both of them inside you at the same time, fucking you in rhythm, was almost more than your heat-addled brain could handle. You needed them so bad you could barely even get out a whine, your desire choking you.

San smiled. “I like that idea.”

Jongho lined himself up with you, everyone’s cum and your slick making it an easy slide inside. You still gasped as he filled you up. Jongho was so thick, you wondered how San would fit.

“Fuck.” Jongho’s voice was low. “I’m gonna knot you so hard.”

You took a shaky breath, lifting your hips weakly in an effort to get him to move.

He laughed and grabbed your legs, starting to push in and out. Your eyes started to lose focus.

“San, get over here.”

You weren’t even paying attention to how they were positioning themselves, your eyes fixed on the ceiling, but you could feel a finger enter beside Jongho’s cock.

The stretch was so good. It was intense, but you could handle it. You wanted more. You wanted both of them.

“More.” You choked out.

“Slut.” San bit out. “I’ll give you more.” He bypassed two fingers and skipped straight to three. “Good, taking it so well. You’re gonna need to be prepared if you want both of us.”

“Want both of you.”

San sighed. “So impatient.” You could feel something bigger pressing at your entrance, beside Jongho. San swore, Jongho made a high noise, and you panted as he slowly pushed himself inside of you.

“Beautiful.” Jongho reached down to brush away a piece of your hair. “Beautiful girl.”

You made a pleased noise.

And then you couldn’t make any noise at all as they began to fuck you, alternating thrusts. First San’s cock, then Jongho’s, then San’s, then Jongho’s. It was so much, and the rhythm was uneven at the beginning, making it even nicer when they settled into it. You were overstimulated, your body trembling and leaking slick and taking it so well, as Jongho and San kept telling you.

The room had descended into debauchery. Hongjoong and Yeosang were still going at it, with Yunho stroking Yeosang’s cock. Seonghwa and Wooyoung had begun to fuck Mingi from both ends, and he looked like he was in heaven. And of course Jongho and San were both deep inside you.

You hadn’t expected your night to go like this, not even a little bit, but you were so glad for the turn it had taken.

Jongho groaned. “I’m gonna cum, Sannie.”

San sighed. “Ugh, fine.” He moved up towards your face and held his cock in front of your mouth. “Get me off, y/n.”

You practically started salivating at the sight of his cock, opening your mouth and starting to lick at his tip.

Jongho gave a few more strong thrusts before his knot inflated. Your eyes rolled back in your head as he locked himself inside you and started to cum, weakly sucking on San.

As your orgasm passed, you flopped on your back, completely exhausted.

“It’s okay, baby, I can finish myself off.” San whispered, kissing your forehead. “You were so good for us.”

You finally felt satiated for the night, satisfied, now that all eight of your boys had had the chance to take a turn with you. Your heat hadn’t broken yet, but you felt safe now. If you had them with you, everything would be okay.

And as the rest of them finished up and crawled on the bed to cuddle with you and the others, you thought that this was what a pack must feel like.

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aeth-eris · 3 days ago

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★ book a reading ★ ★ masterlist 1 ★ ★ masterlist 2 ★

★ astro observations | roasting edition ★

★ libra venus (or 7th house): you’re not in love, you’re in love with being in love. stop falling for people just because they smile nicely in dim lighting. also, your need to “keep the peace” is why you’re still stuck in that toxic situationship.

★ scorpio moon (or 8th house): stop calling it “intuition” when it’s really just your trust issues on steroids. and no, being mysterious isn’t a personality—it’s emotional constipation. unblock someone for once, i dare you.

★ taurus mars (or 2nd house): slow and steady wins the race, but honey, sometimes people aren’t trying to race you—they just want you to move. your stubbornness is impressive, but also, maybe learn how to compromise before you die on every hill.

★ aquarius sun (or 11th house): we get it, you’re different. but are you actually quirky or just avoiding dealing with your emotions by pretending you’re above them? also, stop ghosting people when they get too attached to your eccentric ass.

★ aries moon (or 1st house): just because you feel something doesn’t mean you need to act on it immediately. not every inconvenience is a personal attack, chill out. also, why do you cry when you’re mad but swear you’re “not emotional”?

★ capricorn rising: you’ve been acting like a 40-year-old since you were 15. just admit that you thrive on being a workaholic and judging people who don’t have a five-year plan. but also, maybe stop blaming your childhood for your commitment to the grind.

★ gemini venus (or 3rd house): how’s it feel to be one flirty conversation away from cheating at all times? it’s not charming, it’s emotional gambling. pick a favorite and stick to it for once in your life.

★ sagittarius mercury (or 9th house): congrats on saying something controversial “just to be honest” and then wondering why nobody invites you to brunch anymore. your mouth runs faster than your brain, and no, being blunt doesn’t make you brave—it makes you annoying.

★ virgo mars (or 6th house): if overthinking was a sport, you’d have a gold medal. you’re not “being helpful,” you’re micromanaging because nothing is ever good enough for you. loosen up before you pop a vein.

★ leo mars (or 5th house): everything’s a competition, but somehow, the only person you’re actually competing with is your own ego. also, not every romantic conquest is a movie scene. sometimes people just want dinner, not a dramatic confession in the rain.

★ cancer rising: you give off “i’m sweet and harmless” energy until someone touches your emotional safe space. then it’s claws out, crying in the bathroom, and a group chat vent session about how nobody “truly understands you.”

★ pisces venus (or 12th house): romanticizing people who don’t even know your last name isn’t cute, it’s tragic. stop falling for walking red flags because you think you can “heal” them. you’re not their therapist, babe.

★ aquarius mars (or 11th house): you’re out here fighting for humanity but ghosting the people who text you “wyd?”. revolutionary energy, commitment issues. also, maybe stop starting debates with strangers just because you’re bored.

★ capricorn moon (or 10th house): crying is for weaklings, right? except now you’re 27 and realizing bottling up your emotions is why you drink too much coffee and sleep too little. therapy isn’t a weakness, babe.

★ sagittarius venus (or 9th house): stop flirting with people who live in different time zones. long-distance relationships aren’t romantic; they’re your excuse to not commit to something real. also, being “free-spirited” doesn’t mean ditching plans last minute, k?

★ gemini mars (or 3rd house): you’re not multitasking, you’re just doing too much and finishing nothing. also, stop picking fights over dumb things like grammar. nobody cares that they used “your” wrong in a text.

★ book a reading ★ ★ masterlist 1 ★ ★ masterlist 2 ★

#astrology #astrology observations #astrology aspects #astro observations

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bratbarzal · 13 hours ago

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Let It Happen (LH43) 1/2

Pairing: Luke Hughes x Fem!Reader

WC: 17k

If you're ready, all I mean is we could go, I've never craved someone's attention as much as yours.

General Warnings: an almost unbearable amount of sarcasm and snark, even more idiotic shenanigans, many affectionate empty threats of murder/violence, fluff, mentions of golf 🤢, cursing and I'm pretty sure that's it for this half

A/N: in line with the general consensus lmao this has been split, part two will be posted as soon as it's finished (lol) but it's best read as one whole fic, it isn't a multi-part situation really!! it was originally supposed to be my submission for the eras tour fic challenge (hence the graphic I'm too attached to to change) but took a different direction to the song I was given, and I missed the deadline, and I pretty much listened to the secret of us exclusively while writing this whole thing. also dropping an overwhelmingly summery fic in december might actually be my brand. keep your eyes peeled for a christmas fic in july.

very special shoutout to shea @sleepretreat I made a random comment one day that luke gives seth cohen energy, and she fanned that flame like a full time job. ily shea!! I hope this lives up to any expectations and I owe a lot to your instigating!!

AS ALWAYS!!! never proofread!! I'll probably get around to it when the thought of a spelling mistake keeps me awake at night. and also!! please let me know what you think I am like a teeny tiny little plant that can only thrive under the constant shower of validation and you don't want me to wither and die do you? (I’m kidding) (I’m not)

You kind of, sort of, think you might hate summer.

You haven’t always felt this way, though. Growing up, it had always been your favourite time of the year.

No school? Check.

Going on vacation, sometimes multiple, all expenses covered by your parents? Double check.

Getting to do all the cool things you don’t have time for in the school year with all your friends? Concerts, festivals, beach days, bonfires on the evenings. Check, check and check again.

But 4 years ago, your whole world as you knew it was torn apart, and summers have never been the same, since.

A season that was once filled with light and companionship, never ending plans and joviality, became darker - isolated, getting yourself out of the house even if everyone else was busy, driving just to drive and making the best of your own company.

School ended up becoming your escape, especially since you had started college - your studies and the chaos of Greek life distracting you from the calamitous state of your home life, making new friends that became like family and sticking to them like glue, where possible, clingy and possessive to the point of ruin, almost - and so the lack of it in the summers now actually sends you into some sort of warped spiral.

It’s manageable in the winter and spring, the breaks no longer than a few weeks at a time, but going home for summer is somewhat of a nightmare.

It’s hard to go back, hard to ignore the mess your mind has become when it’s just you and your mother - or, you, your mother and whatever bottle of pinot she’s 3 glasses deep into at any given time of the day - and you’re sat in a house that’s a cold reminder of the warmth that once filled it.

But when Ellie - your best friend since moving to college, the girl who took the sister part of sorority sister to the next level at all possible opportunities over the years - found out you’d put your name down to be the caretaker for your sorority house instead of going home, she had put her foot down on your summertime sadness session.

Which is how you end up moving into her family home - spending the first few weeks integrating yourself into their routine while trying to grip desperately onto some form of your own - trying not to get too used to the feeling of such a big family when you know it won’t be forever.

You braid her little sister’s hair everyday, kick a soccer ball around with her little brother when he needs someone to stand in goal, wash the dishes with her mom, talk sports with her dad, and before long, you blend like a chameleon into their dynamic.

You pick up a summer job at the country club to cling back onto your independence. Your commute provides the solitude and quiet you‘ve grown accustomed to in the years before, a bus journey through town with headphones on, watching the scenery and admiring the greenery until you get to work, donning your navy blue polo and tucking your little notepad into your hip apron as you serve tables at the clubhouse restaurant and bar.

It’s a much needed escape from Ellie, if you’re honest.

You love that girl with all your heart, appreciate her housing you more than you’ll ever be able to say, but if you have to hear her sit and mope about how hopelessly in love she is with Jack Hughes for even a second longer, you’re going to vomit. Or scream. Or both.

Jack and Ellie grew up together - their families close, Ellie’s dad best friends with Jack’s uncle, or something - and she’s been into him since he had teeth missing - a point she loves to hammer home when it comes to you always listing that as one of his (many, if it’s up to you) cons. Considering his job, and the fact he already lost one, not too long ago, a toothless boyfriend seems like a massive ick, if you’re honest.

But Ellie is beyond reason when it comes to him. She worships the ground he walks on - talks about him non-stop, messages him every day, regales you with stories you, awfully, but realistically, couldn’t care less about - and it’s the only real problem about living with her.

Even beyond the summer, you two had shared a room your first two years in college, still live in the same house - and it’s a year round problem.

But being unable to escape, having your days tied to close to hers, and knowing that it’s bound to be worse with proximity, Jack back in Michigan for the summer, himself, she’s starting to drive you up the wall.

It wouldn’t bother you if you had never met Jack, but the two of you don’t exactly get along. He’s rude, and self-absorbed, and had looked down on you the first time he ever laid eyes on you, and you really shouldn’t let it get to you, but you do - the thought that your best friend is in love with an asshole, and that she won’t let you hear the end of it.

Won’t stop whining about how he’ll never feel the same, or that she can’t handle another summer of biting her tongue, of being around him, feeling the way she does, and not being able to do anything about it.

She deserves better.

Ellie has a heart of gold, and she deserves someone who handles it with care. If Jack Hughes doesn’t like her back, that’s his loss - but you’re kind of getting sick of telling her that.

Getting through a whole summer of it is going to be hard, you think, but it’s better than the alternative. Better than being entirely alone. So you put on a brave face, use work as your escape in the same way you usually do with school, and avoid blowing your top for as long as you can, suffering through the late nights and heart to hearts where Jack is the sole topic of discussion, and bask in the good stuff.

In the chaos of her siblings, in the closeness of her family, and the way they’ve welcomed you with open arms.

This summer could be okay, you’ve just got to give it a chance.

Luke Hughes loves summer.

He loves being back home in Michigan, spending his days out on the lake, or making the trip out to parade around Ann Arbor, catching up with all his college buddies, making the rounds at all the UMich sporting events he now gets a VIP pass to thanks to his last name.

The routine of it all is familiar, and warming, and it restores a sense of normality that playing in the NHL for the past year has so brutally ripped from him, already.

He had enjoyed starting his summer overseas - making the team for the world championships and competing beyond the abysmal end to his rookie season - had enjoyed the time away from his brothers, if he’s honest. Quinn and the Canucks making it a few rounds into the playoffs, and Jack back home recovering from getting surgery on his shoulder - and it’s the latter he needed the reprieve from.

He does love living with his brother.

Jack looks after him in ways he’ll never really be able to make it up to him for. He always has, Quinn has too, but ever since Luke got drafted to the Devils, Jack has helped him adjust to the chaos of his career without much fuss or hardship.

And he really is grateful for that.

But, God, can he be annoying.

Especially when it comes to his infatuation with his best friend, Ellie.

Jack and Ellie have always been close - despite the fact she’s Luke’s age - and grew up thick as thieves, spending summers together, especially when the family moved to Michigan, and Ellie’s family were just on the other side of town.

He’s always been obsessed with her, even if it hasn’t always been love - but these last few years have been different. Like a switch flipped in his head when Jack saw what Ellie was like when he came to visit Luke in his freshman year of college.

A version of Ellie that was no longer just his - no longer exclusive to their summer bubble, and lived in a world beyond lounging by the lake and hanging out with the Hughes family.

A version of Ellie who liked partying, liked schmoozing and charming everybody she came into contact with, liked being the centre of everyone else’s attention, not just Jack’s.

And it’s that version of Ellie that has driven Luke’s brother crazy, which has, in turn, started to drive Luke crazy. He talks about her non-stop, and it was those much needed weeks away in Czechia that almost had Luke forgetting just how stupid his brother has gotten about the whole thing.

Until he came home to Michigan, and Jack, in all the commotion with his shoulder, with ending his season early and starting his summer off alone, has worked himself into such a stupor about the whole thing that merely a week into his return, he has driven Luke up the wall.

He’s grumpy, all the time - which leads to him being snarky, all the time. He huffs and puffs around the house so much Luke is starting to think he might need an inhaler, and he really can’t take any more.

Not when he’s making such a show of his irritation, stomping around with heavy feet and slamming doors that don’t need to be shut in the first place.

“What crawled up your ass and died there?” Luke frowns as he follows Jack into the kitchen upon his return from therapy, holding out for the doors he swings open with a little too much vigour so that they don’t swing back into his brother’s slinged-shoulder. “I thought the physio is going alright?”

“It is,” Jack huffs, storming over to the fridge and yanking it open, the jars and bottles in the door clanking together in a way that makes Luke cringe. “I’m fine.”

“Tell that to all the hinges you’re testing the limits of.”

“Don’t start with me, Luke, I’m not in the mood.”

“You just said you’re fine.” Luke rolls his eyes as he starts to scroll through his group chat with his friends from college, trying to check who said they might be free today to get him out of this vicious circle.

“It’s nothing.”

“Clearly not.” It’s interactions like this that confirm to Luke just how annoying Jack has become - because what reason does he have to be so evasive? Luke is handing him the opportunity to air out his grievances on a silver platter, and he’s rather slam cupboards and create creases in his forehead from frowning 24/7.

“Fine, it’s Ellie.”

Luke wishes he never bothered asking, although he has been wondering why he’s been seeing way less of her already this summer. He had figured Ellie was away with family until he saw her at the gas station the other night - had watched from the car as Jack had what seemed like a heated conversation by the entrance.

“She’s refusing to hang out with me.”

“Has she said why?” Luke asks, although he doesn’t really care. He’s just asking to get it out of the way in the hopes that Jack talking about it might lighten the load, might make his own life a little easier.

It’s the bitter muttering of your name that captures Luke’s full attention, his neck audibly cracking at the speed in which his head shoots up, no longer caring what could possibly be going on with the boys in the group chat.

“She isn’t going back to whatever fiery hell pit it is that she comes from for the summer, and she’s staying with Ellie’s family, therefore Ellie isn’t staying with us.”

Luke hasn’t heard your name in a while. Not since he left college last year, not since he got caught up in the whirlwind life in the NHL, when a schoolboy crush on a girl he interacted with once in his entire college career became the least of his worries.

But one utterance of it has his spine straightening, just like it would have done just over a year ago.

You’re in Michigan. You’re at Ellie’s, on the other side of town. You’re barely two degrees of separation from him.

“Why can’t Ellie bring her here?” Luke asks, throat dry and voice breaking so subtly that he hopes Jack doesn’t notice. That could be fun. Would make up for the hell his brother has been putting him through since he got here.

Maybe a little glorious sunshine might finally get you to notice his existence. He wouldn’t mind third wheeling Jack and Ellie if you were there, too. It would give him the perfect opportunity to prove he’s worthy of your attention - too shy and too scared to do so, back in college, but he’s different, now. Confident, almost. More sure of himself.

“She hates me.” Jack huffs, “Last time we met she was giving me the stink eye all night.”

And of course it would be his brother to ruin his plans, yet again. You’ll probably hate him, too - a hatred so strong for Jack that it seeps through his entire bloodline, because Luke of all people knows he can be annoying like that.

“Trust me, she probably doesn’t care enough to hate you,” Luke scoffs, not realising the spool of information he’s just given Jack to unravel.

��You know her?”

“We had a class together. I know of her.”

Not the truth, but not exactly a lie.

Luke knows a lot about you. It’s borderline creepy, the observations he can still remember, even after so long.

He knows you like only like coffee if it’s iced, had seen you with too many clear plastic cups to count, had watched plump lips chewing at straws by the time you had finished the drink. He had even, one time, tried to zoom in on a picture of your order printed on the side in one of his many states of delusion where he had been trying to build himself up to ask you out.

He knows you can hold your own in an argument, had watched you debate with the best of them in your business comms class, has watched you shoot down most guys that approach you with a sharp tongue and even sharper wit, and has watched you take down a frat guy or two, usually in defence of your sorority sisters - who Luke noticed you’re the most protective of.

He knows you match your perfume to the colour of your outfit, had notice you smelled citrusy like lemons in yellow, floral like roses in pink, sweet like candy in purple, and clean like fresh cotton in blue.

He knows the pieces of hair that frame your face curl when wet from the rain. Knows you used to volunteer at the pool on the weekends it was open to the kids of the community, would teach them how to swim. He knows you listen to Taylor Swift and has heard you humming just about every song of hers he knows.

But he doesn’t really know you - not on the level Jack is assuming, when his eyes widen and hope flashes across his crystal irises.

“You know how I’m your favourite brother?”

“No,”

“And I let you live with me all year?”

“My name’s on the lease.”

“Maybe you could talk to her for me?”

Luke sighs, shoulders heavy and eyes rolling practically to the back of his head. “I already told you, I don’t really know her like that.”

“C’mon, you could at least try! I’m dying here, Luke! She’s hogging all of Ellie’s time, and she won’t give me the time of day if I try!”

If only Jack knew how much time you’d ever given Luke, he wouldn’t be asking him such an absurd request.

You’re so out of his league, it isn’t even funny. He probably couldn’t convince you to light a candle in a power cut, much less to give his annoying brother a shot to prove himself.

“You’re wasting your time, Jack,” Luke responds, “I’m gonna meet Dylan at the club. No, you can’t come.”

And by the time Luke makes it out to his car, he’s relieved to have ditched that conversation, entirely. He knows what’s waiting when he gets home, what his brother is going to be like for the next few months to come, but a temporary relief is all he needs.

He had already been planning on getting a few late morning holes in at the club, and meeting up with Dylan had been a white lie, needing some alone time away from Jack’s incessant whining to think about how he was going to survive the summer - and seeing you on your break, perched on the edge of the fountain in the courtyard by the clubhouse bar, basking in the sun and talking with your co-worker, he feels like he might have just struck gold.

Since when do you work here?

He supposes since you decided to spend your summer with Ellie’s family - it only makes sense. Ellie doesn’t live too far from the club - not as close as the lake house, but closer than Ann Arbor, at least. She’d worked in the club shop last summer, even when Jack insisted he’d pay for whatever she needed while she was staying with them - had said it was nice to pass the time with something else while they all went off doing whatever - and he assumes you’re doing the same.

It’s the first time he’s seen you in a while, outside of coming across your pictures on his Instagram feed occasionally, or the flash of your figure in Ellie’s stories.

He had thought that, after the year he’s had, he’d be over schoolboy crushes like this - would be over the way his breath catches just at the sight of you, over the way the hairs on the back of his neck prick up and stand to attention, over the way his throat goes dry as he watches your eyes crinkle from afar, watches your lips curve up into a heart-stopping grin.

But it’s like he’s picked up straight from where he left off at the end of his college career, pining after you from afar with hearts in his eyes and feet that start to shuffle at just the thought of approaching you.

If he’s going to do this, though, he needs to be clever about it, he thinks.

Approaching you on your break, limited to the amount of time he can use to put his point across, wasting yours, doesn’t seem like something that will work.

Which is how he finds himself bypassing you completely and walking straight into the bar, offering a friendly nod to the guy stood at the front of house, and letting him point him toward the right section to be served in.

It isn’t long before you’re in front of him, sidling up to his booth, and he had almost forgotten how pretty you are up close. Hair clipped up with loose strands framing your face, chewing at your plump bottom lip as you scribble on your notepad to get your pen to work. And your honeyed voice settling deep in the pit of his stomach, warmth spreading throughout as you introduce yourself, like he has no clue who you are, and tell him you’ll be his server, “What can I get for you?”

“Five minutes of your time?”

The Luke that spent his college years obsessing over you might have stuttered - his voice might have broke, squeaked or choked in your presence - but while his throat does feel a little dry, he’s able to maintain his cool now, even when you look up from your scribblings to meet his eye. Maybe he can do this. Maybe he has matured.

His heart might jump in his chest, his mouth might tingle, his spine might stiffen, but he holds your gaze, hoping if you see a reflection of confidence that you might give him the time of day.

He’s seen you interact with guys before, has familiarised himself with the ten-foot walls you have in place, has seen others fold and try find a long way around, but he thinks that maybe matching your energy is the way to break through.

Who doesn’t love a shortcut?

Your eyes narrow back at him as pouted lips form around a response, looking him up and down before tilting your head, and coming back with, “I all of a sudden feel the need to inform you we do have security here,” you point the tip of your pen to the entrance, where he was greeted on the way in. “I meant a drink.”

“Water’s fine,” his gaze flickers to the movement of your wrist as you click the other side of your pen, not even writing it down. “Maybe with a side of conversation?”

“I’ll go get your water,” you offer a smile, and the insincerity of it does little to cool his bravado, even if you head off with mutterings of why do I always get the creeps?

He watches you as you make your way over to the bar, not creep-like whatsoever, and he channels the nerves that sneak up on him, now that you’re distanced, through fiddling with his fingers on the table, pinching at the tips of them when you glance back over your shoulder, probably telling the girl behind the bar just how lucky you were to once again get the weirdo in your section.

It surprises him how little he cares, possessing more of your attention now than he ever has before, and if he could tell the Luke from two years ago, who spent every shared Principles of Marketing class ritualistically watching you chew on the end of your pen, that he’d be able to make eye contact without dribbling and breaking out into full body sweats, he’d have lost his mind.

He embodies a strange level of dislocated arrogance that manifests itself in his body language, sinking into the booth with arms outstretched across the back, a dangerous smirk teasing the corner of his mouth when you return, placing a pitcher of water down on the table and a glass with ice.

“I’m Luke,” he tells you, placing a hand on his chest and doing his best to ignore the thudding he feels beneath it. “Hughes. Jack’s brother,” and when you look back over to him with a raised brow, he adds, “Ellie’s Jack.”

“And who’s Ellie?” You ask with a tilt of your head, your voice dripping in teasing sarcasm.

“Funny,” he quips, biting back the urge to call you what he actually means. He can hardly call you cute, you’d probably pour that water straight over him. “I went to UMich, we had a couple classes together.”

Your eyes narrow again, and he knows it’s an intimidation tactic, a way to make him feel smaller than he’s acting, shrinking him down to a version of himself you can stamp your authority on, but he finds himself being resilient for once, carrying on like he isn’t affected.

He is. Massively, in fact. Just not in the way you probably want. Your indifference drives him in a way that presses into his spine, an inner voice pleading, notice me, I’m breaking through!

“Bauman’s class, Business Comms, you sat in the second row, I sat in the third, you dropped your pencil one time and I-,”

“I know who you are.”

So he’s been yapping on at you for no reason? Fantastic.

He can’t let his momentum slip, though, so he forces the corners of his lips into a victorious smile, and counters, “So you know I’m not a creep.”

“You literally memorised my seat in a class from 2 years ago, so…”

“I have a good memory,” he’s quick to defend, fighting the urge to let his eyes linger on your pouted lips.

“Right,” you roll your eyes, “What is it you want, again?”

“I came to talk about Jack and Ellie.” He nods to the other side of the booth, and has to roll his shoulders so that his chest doesn’t inflate with misplaced hubris when you shuffle into the seat with a huff, discarding your notepad to the side as you level him with another raised brow.

“What about ‘em?”

“About how they’re hopelessly in love with each other and doing nothing about it.”

“You got hopeless right. What’s that got to do with us?”

Us. Oh, he likes that.

“I’m thinking they need a little shove in the right direction. And maybe we could be the shovers.”

You presses your lips together in faux-apology, a lopsided, patronising, adorable frown taking over your expression. “No can do, I don’t shove, I’m a pacifist.”

“A nudge, then?”

He isn’t giving up easy, no matter how much sarcasm you try to throw his way. You wouldn’t have sat down if there wasn’t something about this situation that irks you, too.

If Ellie is being only half as annoying as Jack is, he knows that you’re having a bad time of it. And you’re supposed to spending her summer with her - it can’t be easy, having your friend constantly pining over someone and refusing to do anything about it, if anything, making it your problem.

“Are you here to eat or annoy me?”

“Both,” he smiles, “I just figured a problem shared is a problem solved, and all.”

“How profound.”

“C’mon, you sat down, you at least agree they’re into each other, and I know you’re staying with her this year, so I know you’ve been getting the same grief I have.”

“I’ve been on my feet 4 hours, I wouldn’t look too deep into me sitting down.”

“Jack’s been moping around about her for years, I can’t listen to it anymore, he’s all, she’ll never like me back, this, and, I’ll never find a girl like her, that,” he whines, imitating his brother’s voice in the most annoying, high pitched tone he can muster, “I can’t take one more breakdown of her snap stories, especially not if it’s all summer if she’s not gonna be staying over, I’m gonna lose my mind.”

“How supportive,” the sarcasm in your bite does little to hide the beginnings of your smile, your glare softening into what he hopes is the start of some sort of bond, a shared feeling of exasperation. Finding your footfall in common grounds.

“It’s relentless, we can’t go a single conversation anymore without him bringing her up,” he sighs, slumping into his seat, finally giving in to all the ways this is starting to grate on him. “I don’t get why neither of them do anything.”

“Yeah,” you sigh, too, relenting a little. “She talks about him so much it kind of makes me nauseous.”

“How supportive,” he mimics, nerve endings set alight when your eyes meet his over the table, and narrow in a different way, almost appreciative, almost respectable.

“Can it, Hughes,” you scoff, “Me even entertaining this conversation right now is support enough, I’ve had it in my ear for months about how she doesn’t know how she’ll make it through another summer.”

“That’s what I’m saying. If we can get them together this summer, then we’re both better off. No more whining or crying or earaches for either of us.”

“I’d hope you didn’t make your way out here with the mere promise of no more earaches, Luke.” He tries not to preen at the way you say his name. “What’s in it for me?”

“You and Ellie can stay at our lake house.” He suggests, straightening up before he leans onto the table, elbows extending so that he can rest on them, “It’s closer to the club than her family’s place, it’s gotta be better than having her siblings running around you all the time, I can even drive you to work when I’m free, if you want?”

You blink at him slowly, as if to say, and? “So I can stay at your glorified frat house, and you can be my chauffeur?” You ask with an unimpressed raise of your brow, before letting out a humourless scoff of, “What more could a girl want to do with her summer?

“What do you want?” He asks, leaning further forward.

“To go back to work and not worry about strange guys propositioning me, funnily enough.”

Luke laughs, a deep, breathy laugh that rises from the depths of his chest and comes alive in an almost-bark, and he doesn’t miss the way your eyes flicker to his mouth when it comes out.

This is fun.

There’s no way he’s letting you leave this table without agreeing - just the thought of one more singular interaction keeping him on his toes.

“Why don’t we make it interesting, then?”

“It’s about time you tried.” The quiver of your lip tells him everything he needs to know - and that’s without the entertained glint in your eye that accompanies it. You’re enjoying this, just as much.

“We could make a competition out of it.”

“A competition?” You ask, with a curious tilt of your head.

There it is, he thinks. Interest: piqued. He practically has you in the palm of his hand. Who would ever have thought, the way to a sorority girl’s heart would be a friendly little wager?

“Whoever actually gets them together, wins.”

It’s all he can think of in the moment - petulant and part-planned, but it seems to be enough.

“Wins what?” You lean onto your elbows, your gaze levelling his as he mirrors your positioning, having to slouch a little further forward in his seat to meet your pretty eyes.

“Whatever you want.” He doesn’t intend it to come out as low as it does, doesn’t realise how close the two of you have gotten over the table, but he sees the flicker of something cross your features as your head tilts again, eyes still locked on his as yours begin to narrow, still just as pretty even when they’re glaring at him.

“It’s what you want that concerns me.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head over it,” he jibes, watching the way your lips part in preparation of another witty comeback. “What do you say?” He asks, not giving you the chance, seeing the way it makes your skin crawl that you weren’t quick enough, for once. “Are you in?”

You heave out a sigh, shoulders slumping - a tell-tale sign that you’re about to acquiesce - and Luke starts to feel his chest puff out in victory. This feels like a shut-out. It feels like the best performance of his life.

“You’re gonna make me regret this, aren’t you?”

“Oh definitely,” he smirks, eyes tracking you as you lean back into the booth, retreating from him in defeat, a hand running through your hair as he promises, “You’ll warm up to me soon enough, though.”

“I can’t see that happening.”

“I can,” he shrugs, leaning back too. “I’ve been told I’m inevitable.”

Luke can remember, like it was yesterday, the first time he ever saw you.

Freshman year, the week he moved into his dorm at Michigan, Jack had sent him across campus to check in on how Ellie was getting on. He had arrived with some extravagant gift basket in tow, plastic wrapped, a giant blue bow tied around the top and an assortment of snacks inside, and was left knocking for at least five minutes before you showed up.

“Please tell me you’re not another stripper-gram.”

If his throat hadn’t gone so dry all of a sudden, he thinks he would have had more wits about him to have questioned the use of another - a concept that had stuck in his head for weeks until he caught wind of a story of pledges for Pike being sent around campus and forced to lure girls to their house through way of humiliating song.

But God, you were pretty.

Siren eyes narrowed toward him, glossy lips pouted pensively, long lashes blinking impatiently as you awaited some kind of response that didn’t come in the form of an open, drooling mouth.

“I’m Luke.”

“Right.” You had sighed, pretty eyes rolling at him. “You’re blocking my door."

“Oh, I’m-,” he stuttered, immediately stepping to the side for you to come forward and insert your key into the lock. “Does Ellie live here?” He asked, confusion etched into his features as he watched you swing the door open, turning in your place to look him over again.

“Depends who’s asking.”

“I’m Luke.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I know her.”

“Clearly.”

“This is her basket.”

“Does she need to sign for it?”

“No, I-,”

“I’ll make sure she gets it, thanks, Lu!”

And when you had taken the basket from his hands, he had been too distracted by the way your skin brushed against his to properly respond, or worry if you had called him that as a nickname or had already forgotten his name, entirely.

He then spent days thinking about you, looking for you - at parties, in the campus coffee shop, online, despite not knowing your name - trying to commit to memory the way your eyes had sparkled when looking his way, until his first Business Communications class.

He had been a little early, first week nerves playing out and his constant craving for positive validation coming to the forefront, and was watching the door waiting for the professor to arrive. He had been slouched in his seat, chin in the palm of his hand, foot tapping rhythmically against the floor, and he had almost given himself whiplash when you walked in.

He learned your name from there, learned a lot just from watching you in that class, but never really captured your attention.

And if the Luke that has been driving you to work every few days, who has been living with you for the past two weeks - who sits around the same dining table, laughs at the same jokes cracked when you’re all lounging around the house, sits out under the same sun, drinks from the same carton of orange juice in the morning - could tell the Luke that sat pining after you all that time, all the little ways in which he’s captured your attention lately, he’d probably have an aneurysm.

When you and Ellie moved in, Luke had been the only one allowed to touch your stuff - and there’s a part of him that knows it was mainly because you enjoyed watching him work like a packhorse, hauling your cases up the stairs and dropping them in front of you with a huff, but there’s a larger, more delusional part that thinks you preferred him to the others, maybe even trusted him.

He’s taking credit for how quick you’ve adapted to the dynamic of the house, too. Of all the different faces coming in and out - Quinn’s friends, Jack’s friends, his friends, sometimes even his parents. If you’re around, you’re pleasant. You abide by house rules, some of them stupid, but set by the brothers so long ago that they just work now - like no phones outside of your rooms so that you can be more present. You insert yourself comfortably into conversations, you form your own relationships with everyone - you and Quinn trade book recommendations, you and Jack bicker while Ellie mediates. You do your fare share of chores - laundry, dishes, cooking, even.

And he’s so caught up in just sharing space, just being around you, even, that for those first couple weeks, he forgets why you even agreed to be there in the first place.

At least, he forgets the incentive part - because he watches mindlessly as you interfere in Jack and Ellie’s dynamic, without a care in the world for the fact that it means he’s losing.

He watches you push one of them out of the way to claim whatever seat at the table or in the car forces them to sit beside each other. He watches you taunt Jack to just the right point where Ellie interferes, coos at him protectively and he melts into her affections. He watches you agree to plans he knows you wouldn’t in a million years follow along with, just to get them together - and all he can do is admire how easy you make it seem.

He admires when you come out wakeboarding with the group, when you let him fasten you into a vest and don’t flinch when his fingertips brush against bare skin. Watches you bite your tongue over the fact you just got your hair blow dried - a fact you have no problems relaying back to him when he drives you to work the next day, and you’re muttering in his passenger seat about lake water giving you frizz - just so you’re not dampening the mood.

And when you agree to tag along to the golf course on your day off, despite the fact it’s so close to work if could be considered triggering, and you stick by Luke’s side so that Ellie can feign some sort of incompetence until Jack takes it upon himself to correct her form.

You stand by Luke’s side, the two of you watching with mirrored expressions of almost-disgust as Jack wraps his arms around Ellie’s body, and send a shiver down his spine when you lean in for only him to hear as you say, “I’d ask if you’ve put any more thought into what you want out of our bet, but I so have this in the bag.”

The bet.

Luke hasn’t thought about it since that day in the restaurant, if he’s honest, but he had known what he wanted then.

He’s hardly going to tell you, now, though.

If he’s ever going to take you out on a date, he doesn’t really want to force your hand - not that he has a chance, he’s fallen so behind with this Jack and Ellie thing that it isn’t even funny.

He needs to up his game, if only for the fact that you’ll no doubt catch on to his lack of efforts, soon.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he taunts, because it’s what he does best, “I have a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“And how long do you plan on keeping them up there?” You call him out so easily, tilting your head when his eyes meet yours, mischief highlighted by the sunshine that speckles in your irises.

“Maybe I’m luring you into a false sense of security,” he shrugs, “Maybe I’m letting you do all the heavy lifting so I can swoop in when those weak arms get tired.” He pokes at your side, basking in the way you scowl like you pertain any sort of threat to him.

He has you figured out, by now.

“I didn’t have you pegged as being lazy, Hughes.”

“You spend a lot of time thinking about me, huh?”

“You wish,” you scoff, shoving when he dares to get too close, and it’s when Luke is biting back a full-blown grin that Ellie comes back over.

“This sun is crazy, I think I left the sunscreen in the locker room and Jack’s nose is going all red, would you come back with me?”

You smile sweetly at your best friend and agree, only glaring at Luke over Ellie’s shoulder when she’s distracted with saying her brief, temporary goodbyes to Jack, and once you’ve turned and made your way over to the cart, he lets his eyes linger on your figure as you retreat.

The soft sway of your ponytail, the expanse of smooth skin along your legs, he’s completely hypnotised, and he needs to pull himself together, he thinks.

He tries to regain focus as he and Jack work their way through the next couple of holes, caddying their clubs around without the cart, and chatting mindlessly until Jack sighs heavily, like he’s been waiting to bring something up.

“I want to take Ellie out on the boat tomorrow,” He states as Luke tees up, resting on his club as he squints against the sun to watch his little brother, “Just the two of us, so we can talk about stuff.”

“Sounds riveting,” the disinterest in Luke’s tone is amplified by the lack of attention he’s giving overall, looking out across the green and trying to measure his swing before he takes it. “Have fun.”

“I was thinking I’d need your help for it to work.”

“I’m not being your boat-butler again,” Luke scoffs, mind immediately going to all the times their parents would make Jack take Luke out with him and his friends, and all the times he was made to wait on his older brother hand and foot to make up for crashing his hang-outs.

“I’m not asking you to tag along,” Jack scoffs, “You third-wheeling would be the ultimate buzz-kill. I thought you could be of use elsewhere.”

“You’re making whatever it is sound so fun.”

Luke takes his swing, driving the ball and watching it soar to his desired point with a hand shielding his eyes from the sun. Jack watches too, stepping to Luke’s side to measure how far from his own ball it lands.

“Nice,” he mutters appreciatively as the two of them load their clubs into their stand bags. “I need you to keep Regina George busy, distract her or something, she’s stuck to Ellie like glue, it’s beyond annoying.”

If only he knew, Luke thinks, a worry in the back of his mind about how his brother owes more to you than he even realises.

“You worried she’s gonna make her see sense?”

Jack swats at his arm and rolls his eyes.

“I’m worried she’s gonna ruin the good vibes like she usually does and I won’t be able to bite my tongue from saying something and looking like the asshole.”

Distracting you isn’t the worst thing he could be doing with his time, Luke thinks. It’s not like he has to go all out, you’ll no doubt be hanging out around the house and the two of you can hang together. All he has to do is keep you off your phone. Shouldn’t be too hard. You’ve adapted pretty well to mimicking the guys when it comes to staying off theirs.

It ticks off the box of trying to fight for a scrap of your attention. With no one else around, you’ll have no choice but to entertain his company.

And it puts him in front of your little race - lending a helping hand to Jack’s plans to talk to Ellie is surely the same as getting them together. It’s all falling so perfectly into his lap. He isn’t being lazy.

But he can’t let Jack know that, so he heaves out a sigh and offers a slow shake of his head for dramatic effect. “Fine,” he groans, “But you owe me. Big time.”

You’re starting to find it harder and harder to pretend like you don’t want to be at the Lake House.

If you’re being honest, you don’t entirely know why you’re even trying to keep up pretences, but using your disinterest as armour has become like second nature over the years, and you’re hardly going to stop now.

Even if there are already so many little things about being there that are starting to wear you down.

Quiet, early mornings, for one - birds chirping just outside your open window, sun rays pouring in through sheer curtains that flow in the slight breeze, that light feeling that blows through your chest when you’re sat out on the deck behind the house with a fresh cup of coffee, looking out over the still lake and basking in the peace of it all.

And even when it’s not so peaceful, when the kitchen is full of bodies swerving around each other to try and throw together some sort of breakfast spread - pastries and fruit, bacon and eggs, various boxes of cereal on the counter. Quinn had even made a whole batch of pancakes one morning, and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t come down every day since hoping to see him donning that same frilly apron that Cole had draped around his waist and working his magic with a pan.

You’ve never really been a part of such a full house. You had been an only child for so long - and by the time your parents split, and it was just you and your mom, on the days she wasn’t already at work when you got up - and were so ingrained in your own routine in the morning that you think you might actually need the chaos to function better. The rush of bodies, the arguments over who drank the last of the juice, the bickering over who’s turn it is to do the next grocery run - it’s a kind of entertainment you haven’t been privy to in a long time.

Being kind of disconnected from everything else isn’t as bad as you thought it would be, either. You’re not attached to your phone, checking socials to see what everyone else is doing, to see if your dad has sent any messages yet this summer, and you find yourself connecting a little more with the people around you and leaving your family stress on the back burner. You’re more focused on what’s in front of you, and your relationships with other people. With Ellie, with some of the guys in the house, with your friends at work, even.

And it’s nice to be closer to work too. You don’t have to rush around trying to make the bus - Luke has been keeping his word and driving you to the club most days, and where he can’t, either somebody else has offered, or you’ve just ridden one of the bikes in the garage that the boys said were free to use - the helmet hair is an easy fix when you have access to the locker rooms.

It’s an adjustment, for sure, getting used to being in a full house. Especially this one - with a constant revolving door of faces, friends of the brothers switching out week by week to come and stay, departing just as you’ve started getting to know them with a promise of dropping by again soon.

So far, you’re almost at double-digits for the names you’ve had to memorise. Some of them you were already familiar with, guys from Michigan who you already knew or knew of, but others were more Jack or Quinn’s friends that you’d never had the pleasure of meeting before now.

Cole Caufield being one of them.

He had arrived a couple of days after you and Ellie moved yourselves in, closer to Jack than the other two brothers, you had noticed, and was going to be staying longer than any of the other visitors - having his own designated room in the house, similar to you girls.

You like Cole - he’s good fun, can take a joke unlike his supposed best friend, and has the kind of smile that almost gives you a buzz whenever it’s flashed your way. Your first few interactions with him were seemingly pleasant, despite Jack constantly in his ear with a hardened glare pointed your way and no doubt unsavoury words uttered. Cole would just shrug him off, laugh, meet your eyes and drop a wink your way - a gesture you’d usually squirm and cringe at, but Cole kind of pulls it off.

He joins in when you chirp Luke, too - which, if your honest, is your main source of entertainment since arriving, so your interactions with him grow day by day.

You haven’t really spent any one-on-one time with Cole yet, though. You were hoping to, before he left to visit home for the weekend - for no other reason than to get the scoop on something you’d happened upon at work last week - and had planned on asking him to hang out on your day off. But with Cole now gone for a few days, Jack and Ellie off doing god knows what, Quinn and Luke working out wherever, you have no choice but to spend your free Sunday lounging around the house, trying to find something to suppress your growing boredom.

You start with your nails, painting them a summery orangey-red and doing your toes to match, then do your laundry, abiding by house rules that you rotate the loads between the machines, and fold out whoever’s clothes were last in the dryer and place them in the hamper on the side.

You’re hoping you haven’t had to fold Jack’s underwear but you decide to live in blissful ignorance - trying to identify the load based on the rest of the clothing in there is impossible when they all share, so it kind of works in your favour.

You FaceTime your mom for almost an hour, getting an update on what she’s been up to with work, and giving her updates on how your summer is going, trying to focus on your time at the club and Ellie so she doesn’t worry too much again that you’re spending your summer in a house filled with boys.

And by the time Luke and Quinn come back from their workout, you’re in the lounge, 50 pages deep into a book you really couldn’t care less about, but there’s something in you that refuses to beg one of them for company, so you suffer in silence.

Even when Luke does join you, throwing himself down onto the opposite side of the couch you’re occupying and pushing your feet off his side like it’s his sole purpose just to annoy you.

“I was comfortable there, asshat,” you frown, lifting your feet back into their previous position and using one to give him a light kick to his thigh.

“Yeah, well, I hardly want your feet all up in my business while I’m trying to relax,” he sighs, sinking into the cushions with hands clasped behind his head, biceps flexing and tightening the arms of his t-shirt in a way that momentarily catches your eye. You’re thankful for his closed eyes, chewing at the inside of your cheek as you divert your attention back to the mundane words on the pages in front of you.

“And yet here you are when there are 2 other couches.”

“Yeah, well, I know how much you like to be near me.”

You try to ignore him, pulling your feet a little closer to your body and focusing back on the book, but it’s hard when Luke has such a presence. You feel the little looks he keeps sending your way like a physical touch, and the couch shifts with every slight movement he makes, so when he constantly shuffles, you start to think he wants your attention.

Of course he wants your attention. This is Luke Hughes.

“Are you just sitting down here to annoy me?”

He lights up, like he’s just been waiting for you to ask, and shuffles in his seat to face you, fully, bouncing in place like a puppy being teased with a tennis ball.

“I’m actually trying to distract you, if you must know.”

“Bold of you to assume you have enough of my attention to be distracting in the first place,” you scoff, trying not to react to the way he smirks in your peripheral, the words in front of you all blurring together. If you were actually focused on them, you’d have lost your place, already.

“I think you pay more attention to me than you’d like to admit.”

“That’s some ego you’ve got on you, Hughes,” you narrow your eyes as you look above the edge of your book, “Is that what you spend that big NHL paycheque on, charisma classes? How to flirt for dummies?”

“Oh, is that what we’re doing? Flirting?”

Damn. You walked yourself right into that one.

Sometimes biting back at Luke comes like second nature, words first, thoughts after - and you’d be lying if you said you didn’t like it that way. It’s easy, the back and forth, and you can’t really think of an instance with him where you’ve sat in a lingering, awkward silence. You’ve really grown to hate silence, lately.

“You wish.”

“You think I’m charismatic,” he teases in a sing-song voice, knocking at your knee and wiggling his eyebrows when you glare at him.

“I think you’re an idiot.”

“You’re not gonna ask what I’m distracting you from?”

“I don’t really care,” you lie, eyes darting back down and diverting the attention he so desperately craves away from him.

“Jack wanted to take Ellie out on the boat.” He says, ignoring your attempts to ignore him - pushing your buttons like a full time job. Like an operator for your last nerve.

“Good for her.”

“Alone.”

“No shit.”

“To ask her out.”

“Whoop-de-doo.”

“Whoop-de-,” Luke straightens up, like a whack-a-mole with his head positioning itself over the top of your book, and you kind of wish you had one of those soft mallets right about now. It would be so satisfying to bonk at his head, you think. “What do you mean, whoop-de-doo, is this not what you agreed to be here for? To get them together?”

You scoff, flicking to the next page of the book in feigned disinterest. “He isn’t asking her out today.”

This is the exact something you had wanted to talk to Cole about - whispers in the staff lounge at work earlier in the week doing the rounds would imply otherwise, but your main source is kind of a gossip, and you’re not entirely sure of their reliability, despite the few degrees of separation to the subject at hand.

Mutterings of Jack and Cole and their little country club connections.

You can hardly ask Luke of all people if his brother is as much of a man-whore as everyone is making out. Cole was a safe bet - he’d probably just tell you straight up what they’re up to, wear his pride like a shining gold medal. He’s upfront about his promiscuity, at least. Luke is more protective. Of himself, of his family, you’re not entirely sure. There haven’t been as many whispers about him.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because he’s a spineless idiot,” you retort, eyes flicking up momentarily to take in his furrowed brow. “No offence,” comes out of nowhere, and you surprise yourself with the instinct to lessen the blow of your words for the first time in forever.

“None taken, he’s only my flesh and blood,” Luke huffs, “You’re just jealous I’m winning our bet.”

“Sure,” you drawl, eyes widening to emphasise the sarcasm as you make a point of angling your head to the next page, like you’ve taken a single word in for the past five minutes. “He’s been talking to one of the girls from work. There’s no way he’s doing that and asking Ellie out, unless he’s completely brain dead.”

And when you look back at Luke, that furrowed brow has shifted into a full blown frown, pouted lips and eyes cast down as if he’s trying to figure everything out in his head.

It’s probably the pout that has you cushioning your words, once more.

“Again, no offence, I doubt it’s in your DNA.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m no bio student but I don’t think there’s a genetic marker for being a fuckboy.”

“No, about him talking to one of the girls at the club. He didn’t tell me that.”

Why does he have to sound like that? Let down and unsure, quieter than you think you’ve ever heard him. It’s like the tone he carries goes straight to your fingers, clasping the book closed without marking your page - because what business do you have carrying on that charade?

“Do you guys tell each other everything?” You ask as you throw the book until it lands on the coffee table with a gentle thud, shuffling until you’re sat against the arm of the couch with knees bent in front of you, giving him your undivided attention and feeling guilty that it might not be enough.

“I thought we did,” he scratches at the back of his head, nervously, “He literally told me yesterday he was taking her out to talk about stuff, why would he make a point of asking me to keep you busy if he’s not serious about asking her out?”

“You don’t want to hear my answer to a question about your brother not being serious.”

“Who’s the girl?” He asks, ignoring your comment despite the slight ghost of a smile you see flash into the corner of his mouth.

“Jessica, she works at the pro shop, apparently they’ve been texting all summer.”

You know for a fact that since you’ve started paying attention, you’ve seen Jack on his phone a lot for a guy who chirps you for your own screen-time, and who has enforced the house rule of no phones outside your room like a prison guard yells out no touching at visitation. So it sort of checks out. You’ve tried to sneak a peak, but he’s protective of his stuff like a yappy little dog with attachment issues at the best of times, so you haven’t really put too much effort into it.

“There were a few people talking about it in the lounge at work the other day,” you shrug, “One of the girls talking about it is Jess’ best friend, so not exactly from the horse’s mouth, but I don’t think she’d be spreading lies about her friend around like that.”

“Can you find out?”

“You ask that like I haven’t been trying.” That gets a full smile, a small chuckle that lifts his shoulder, even, “I was gonna grill Caufield about it but he’s gone. But I know you guys have plans when he gets back tomorrow, so if you want to take Cole I’ll hack away at the grape vine at the club?”

“Does this mean we’re teammates?”

“No. It absolutely does not.”

Hacking away at the grapevine is really a lot more like plucking absentmindedly at an overgrown patch of grass when it comes to workplace gossip.

By the end of your shift, you’re leaving the club with a fist clutched full of loose blades, fingers stained green from the amount of information people were willing to ‘fess up.

Liam who works behind the bar had overheard a conversation where Jack had mentioned Jessica, but could only give you useless tidbits, like how he had to stop by the shop for a new putter, and Jess had been the one to ring him up.

Hardly incriminating, but you had a feeling it would be a small piece of a way larger puzzle. That, and guys are notoriously useless at gossiping, there’s definitely more to that story than Liam could even comprehend in his tiny man brain.

Cassidy who works at the front desk had seen Jack and Jess talking in the main lobby last week, definitely flirting, she had said - with hair flips and giggles galore - and way too familiar to be new.

Much better.

Paola who has the alternative shifts in the pro shop was more than willing to take up ten minutes of your time ranting how Jess’ work is never fully done when it comes to a handover, and she spends half her time on her phone. Kiran, who works the bev cart every Monday, said Jack is always one of the most charming in their golfing group, so it’s no surprise if he is exchanging texts with girls from the club.

You get dirt from most corners of the place, and it leads you all the way back to your station, to reservations set for the restaurant, where tonight’s list - unfortunately a shift you’re not set to work, although you very much question the serendipity of that - has Jack’s name down at 7pm. A table for 2 in the back corner, shielded from prying eyes and intimate.

And if it weren’t for the fact you’ve already worked a full shift, you would consider staying just to get the full scoop.

You know Ellie isn’t going to be the one sat across from him, she’s been sending you pictures all day of her various hauls for her quiet night in. New paints and pencils, a sketchpad, some candles - she has all intentions of working on her watercolour technique.

So it has to be for him and Jessica.

Imagine his face, you think, picturing wide, panicked eyes as you roam up to his table to take his order. He’d actually crap his pants.

But, it’s another set of eyes that you picture when you start to enjoy the scheming a little too much. The sad, teary eyes of your best friend, when she finds out the guy she’s been hung up on for half her life, who she has all but convinced herself isn’t interested, and is - absurdly - ‘far too good’ for her - yeah, right - is dating other girls while taking her out on not-so-platonic boat dates only the day before. A boat date that she had come back to your room, flung herself onto her belly on the bed, and kicked her feet as she gushed all about it.

So you make your way back to the house after a long day, and resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to have to, yet again, get all your information on Jack’s date second hand.

You primed Cara, your colleague in the restaurant, to keep an eye out, and she promised to send updates on her breaks, and you have been holed up in yours and Ellie’s shared bedroom trying to keep her busy when there is a persistent knock at the door, and a mop of soft, curly brown hair pokes in before his eyes meet yours.

“Hey, Luke!” Ellie chimes, cheery and all too blissfully unaware of the potentially horrific circumstances you’ve stumbled upon. “You need to borrow my conditioner again?”

You scoff from your position on the bed, watching a slight pink hue flush up Luke’s neck.

“What? No,” he denies, running a hand through his hair and seemingly frowning a little at the way it feels. “I’m going to the store, wondered if either of you needed anything?”

“Nah, thanks, we’re good,” Ellie smiles, attention diverting straight back to where she’s drawing in her sketchbook, missing the way Luke widens his eyes and tilts his head as if to encourage you to take him up on his offer.

“Can I come with?” You shuffle from your position on the bed, swinging your legs out from beneath you and over the side as Ellie looks back at you.

“Sorry, I didn’t realise you wanted something.”

“Someone’s got to show the poor guy what’s what on the haircare aisle, El.”

And you’re thankful that Ellie has settled herself in for the evening already by 6:45, showered, pyjamas on, otherwise she might have tried to tag along, too, just for something to do.

You swipe her phone before she can notice and hide it under your pillow before you leave, thinking it might reduce the risk of her getting bored and texting Jack, or, worse, checking his location.

A trip out gives you the chance for you and Luke to debrief each other on your findings of the day - or, as it turns out, just you, because Luke Hughes might be the worst information-gatherer on planet Earth.

Finding his life’s niche in hockey is fortunate, because he definitely wouldn’t cut it as an investigator.

“He just said he didn’t know anything,” Luke shrugs of his earlier encounter with Cole, and you try not to gape at him in disbelief as he fiddles with the screen in his BMW, scrolling through the interface in search of the nearest store.

You swat his hand away with a scoff, typing in a destination, “And you believed him?”

“Was I not supposed to?”

“You’re about as useless as a chocolate teapot, Hughes. What is it with guys and gossip, are you all really that dumb?”

“That’s the address for the club,” he points out, ignoring your jibe as he starts driving.

“Well done, you can read.”

“Why?”

“Because, thankfully, one of us is a good detective.” You snark, “Jack’s there.”

“So?”

“He’s on a date.”

“No he isn’t,” Luke frowns, attention momentarily taken from the road as he looks over at you. “I’ve been with him all afternoon, he would have told me if he had a date, tonight.”

“Oh yeah? Where’d he say he was going when he left, earlier?”

He hadn’t been home when you got back from work, but that had been around an hour ago. You figured if he was sneaky enough to book into the restaurant when you’re not working, he’d have his wits about him to avoid you, entirely. Whenever the two of you cross paths, you can’t help but try get on his last nerve, and he’s hardly going to want to start his evening in a foul mood.

“To get his hair cut.”

Jesus Christ, you think, he’s so lucky he’s cute.

“You’re so clueless. He’s at the lounge with Jessica, the girl I told you about yesterday.”

“And what are we supposed to do about that?”

“We’re gonna supervise. And maybe interfere, if necessary.”

You don’t really have a plan, but it seems like the right thing to at least get a look in as to what the hell Jack thinks he’s doing, especially if you’re going to carry on with this whole plan of getting him and Ellie together. If he’s seriously entertaining other girls while making out to Luke that he only has eyes for Ellie, your plans might have to change. You’re not sure if Luke will be on board with the new path you’re willing to take, but you’ll be happy to kill his brother on your own.

“Interfere?” Luke’s eyes are wide, but he keeps them on the road, fingers flexing against the wheel. “I just came out for chips to make nachos, not play spies!”

“Cara’s working tonight, she said she’d keep an eye on them for me. I bet if I cover her hosting shift on Friday she’d sabotage their date. We’d just have to sit back and watch.”

“Oh,” Luke’s brows furrow, as if it’s taking any consideration at all to mess with his brother. “You really are an evil genius.”

You try not to think too hard about who’s been spewing that rhetoric already in his ear, and instead you smile when he casts his eyes your way, proud and pleased.

“Thank you.”

It takes another 15 minutes to get to the club, considering Luke’s best Driving Miss Daisy impression, so their date is already underway by the time Cara is ushering you to a booth in the far corner, where you can see Jack’s table, but he shouldn’t be able to see yours, and agreeing to play along.

“Can I get you guys any drinks?” She asks as she hands over two menus, and you’re too interested in trying to gauge the vibe at the other table while Luke looks over his.

“Two diet cokes, shaved ice, no lemon,” he says, and you can’t help but frown at the way the specificity of that order rolls so easily off his tongue. That’s your order.

“Any food?”

“Could we just get some nachos, please?” You ask, sliding your menu across the table without even looking, not wanting to give Luke too much of a chance to peruse his own out of fear you’ll be here all night. “And extra picante on the side.”

“Extra guac, too,” Luke adds as Cara scribbles the instructions on her notepad, “And some of those chicken tenders, and extra ranch. And maybe some fries. Yeah, chilli fries. And breadsticks.”

You level him with a glare, already proven right in your decision not to give him too much time to think about what he wanted. He’ll order every appetiser on the menu, if given half the chance.

“Thanks, Cara, that’s everything.”

“Sure thing, should be around fifteen minutes. They only just ordered,” she points her pen back to Jack’s table, where Jess is leaning onto the table and Jack is leaning back in his seat - heavy on the distance but even heavier on the eye contact. That little shit.

“Does he have any allergies?” You lean onto your own table to ask Luke, quirking a brow up when his eyes darken in response, mischief swirling in his emerald irises.

“Absolutely not,” Cara interjects, “I’m doing this so you cover my job, not make me lose it.”

“Let me guess, he ordered the steak, medium-rare?” Luke asks, and she nods, hesitantly. “Char it.”

“Won’t he complain?”

“He’ll just grumble to himself about how tough it is. It’ll put him in a bad mood. That’s what we want, right?”

“Yeah,” you confirm, nodding your head to ease Cara’s worries despite what you really want is for Chef Michael to poison the cut, entirely. If Jack Hughes wants to play with your best friend’s heart, you’ll play with his gut. But you can settle for burnt meat. Luke can work some sort of magic with that, you think, convincing Jack of all people that any first date that resulted in him coming home all sour-puss and sulky should never result in a second. “Bad mood. Bingo.”

“Fine,” Cara grumbles, “But if he even thinks about asking for a manager, you’re covering my next 3 Fridays.”

She storms off to the kitchen, and you and Luke simultaneously sink into your seats, attention immediately diverted back to the table in the opposite corner of the room.

“We should have kept the menus,” Luke mutters from across the booth, “Could have hidden behind them.”

“What are we, children?” You snark, “You can’t think of any more creative ways to stay hidden?”

“I heard PDA makes people pretty uncomfortable,” he leans onto the table, dropping you a wink when you glance over out of the side of your eye, “We should make out to throw everyone off the scent.”

“In your dreams, Hughes.”

Luke sort of envies the charm you hold over people.

The way you can convince people to do your bidding with a mere flutter of your eyelashes or a flash of pearly teeth and a glimmer in your irises.

He has trouble, sometimes, skirting around his honesty or hiding his intentions - and he knows that’s not a bad thing, knows that being clear and truthful is an admirable trait, if anything - but the way you persuade others to bend to your whim with intricate white lies based on observations you’ve made or intel you’ve gathered is a praiseworthy level of genius.

It had taken such minimal effort for you to get Cara on side, to convince her that being a little clumsy is hardly grounds for her termination, and spilling a little of Jack’s drink close to the edge of the table - close enough that it drips onto his pants and Luke can see the steams of frustration exuding from his brother’s skin from all the way on the other side of the restaurant - or bumping her hip on the edge of their table every time she passes are really just harmless irritations, not likely to cause actual complaint.

You had used the mere tone of your voice to convince Liam from behind the bar to squeeze a little lime in Jack’s water, knowing just from observing him back at the house that he hates the taste, face curling in disgust at even the slightest hint of it, and Luke had watched your eyes gleam in delight every time Jack took a sip of his drink and tried not to spit it back out, seeking much needed reprieve to swallow down the world’s toughest steak cut.

You’d even worked your magic on him, pouting your lips when the food had arrived at the table, and he had initially declined to share his chicken tenders with you - your grumblings at him ordering enough to feed the five thousand fresh in his memory, but so easily wiped away by the soft, sad look in your eyes, and your whining of, “But I didn’t realise how hungry I’d get. Plotting and scheming is hard work, Luke.”

You ended up eating half, but he could hardly complain - you were doing the heavy lifting out of the two of you.

He was sitting back and enjoying the show - enjoying your company, if he’s honest. Enjoying the way his gangly limbs would sometimes knock into yours under the table, enjoying the way he kept getting little nuggets of information out of you while you were distracted, sipping at your coke and making little comments about yourself, about your life, without even realising you’re doing it.

And an unplanned, pseudo date ends up being the first time he thinks he’s had a glimpse at the real you.

The you who knows more about hockey than you’ve ever let on before, who comes back to his stories with contextual questions about the game, even has references to a few games of his back at Michigan, and keeps the conversation flowing despite your feigned disinterest, and a constant gaze cast his brother’s way.

That would usually drive him crazy.

He’s experienced it so often that he has come to expect it, people only entertaining his company to acquire the attention of his brothers, but that’s not what you’re doing. Not really.

You pay more attention to Luke than you’d ever let on.

You ask him about his time in Ostrava at the beginning of summer, even though he’s only mentioned being overseas once while you’ve been staying with him - an offhanded comment from Quinn at breakfast that you must have taken on. Ask him about all the food he tried while out there, when he mentions he doesn’t like picante, and you use it as a springboard to talk about what sort of spices he does like, or if he’s the type to try things or stick to what he knows.

You ask him about being the youngest sibling, and it stems from an offhanded comment Luke had grumbled about always being the last to be clued in on stuff, about how Jack had probably confided in Quinn about his extracurricular activities at the club, and didn’t trust him enough to let him in on the fact he’s going out on dates. You ask if he usually figures things out himself before he’s told them, if that’s what makes him so good at observing and analysing stuff, and he hadn’t ever realised he was particularly good at those things before you brought it up. But then you reference a day in class one time, where he had picked up on something in a textbook that you never would have figured out in a million years, and his heart leaps at the praise you don’t even realise you’re giving him.

You sandwich your perceptions in your usual snark, but he doesn’t miss the slight curve of your lips anymore when he bites straight back, knowing now that there is some part of you that feels the nip of his teeth, that acknowledges his existence beyond him being a speck of inconvenience in your peripheral.

And he gets a little carried away in that acknowledgement - stops paying attention himself to what is happening on the other side of the room and tries to focus on what’s in front of him; the girl he pined after his entire college career, sat sharing nachos and pretending not to know him at a level you so clearly do.

You must get carried away, too, because neither of you notice Jack’s date wrapping up until Luke catches him hand his card over to Cara.

He’s lost count of how long the two of you have been at the club, now - way longer than it takes to get chips from the store, that’s for sure - and all he does know is that if Jack catches either of you two here, after a night of mishaps, bad food, spilled drinks and Cara’s incessant clumsiness, he’ll know who’s to blame.

“We better get out of here before he sees us,” Luke sighs, not entirely wanting to wrap up his time with you but knowing he doesn’t really have a choice.

“I’ve just got to pick something up before we head back,” you reply, edging out of the booth at the same time Luke does, “I’ll meet you out front just give me two minutes?”

“Be quick,” he tells you before you scurry off, and he flags down Cara, who tells him you already put your bill on your worker tab. He tells her to switch it to his, and that he’ll drop by tomorrow to pay it off, promising to leave her a good tip for her stellar services for the evening.

He waits where you asked him to, making sure to stick to the side of the entryway where he can duck for cover if his brother makes an appearance - but you show up first, skipping out from the staff lounge with a bag of tortilla chips in hand.

“Let’s go, Lukey boy!” He follows you out like a puppy on a leash, all the way to where his car is parked, almost bumping into you when you stop and turn without warning, stretching your hand out to him. “Give me your keys.”

“Are you crazy?” He snorts, “You’re not driving my car!”

“I know a shortcut!” You reason, stepping forward and making a grabby motion with your fingers, “We gotta beat Jack home, I just paid another server $20 to spill a whole drink on him before he leaves and he’s gonna be pissed. I want to see the meltdown back at the house and you drive like a nun!”

Luke doesn’t know why he gives in so easy - it could be the proximity, the way you’re so close you have to look up at him, eyes twinkling softly under the moonlight, voice carrying over to him like a siren song, or it could just be because he’s weak - but he hands his keys over with a roll of his eyes and climbs into the passenger side, sliding the seat back with a huff to accommodate his long legs and watching as you adjust the driver’s side, cringing at the way he’s gonna have to figure out exactly how he had it before.

You drive like a maniac, to the point where Luke has to screw his eyes shut as you use some back road, can hear the squelch of mud beneath his tires and squirms at the thought of having to take it to the car wash, tomorrow.

But you make it back to the lake house much quicker than if he were driving, he’ll give you that. So quick that you feel comfortable enough to turn to him once you’ve pulled up, in no rush to unbuckle and get out to get inside before Jack gets home.

“Just so we’re clear, this is a point under my name. You’re not claiming tonight as a win.”

Luke chuckles, turning in his seat to face you, features illuminated by the dim overhead light that turns on when the engine switches off and a slight flush of exhilaration to your cheeks. There’s no pretending you haven’t enjoyed yourself, not tonight. “But the steak thing was my idea?”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be sat watching baseball and thinking he was getting a 3 hour haircut, you can’t seriously be trying to steal this from me, I thought you athletes had integrity!”

“You’re really keeping score?”

“You’re not?”

If Luke’s honest, he hasn’t really thought about your whole wager all night. He’s been too wrapped up in the idea that his brother had lied to him. Twice. And now his whole plan for the two of you all summer has potentially been messed up. But hearing you mention it, hearing you talk about it like it hasn’t been flushed down the toilet by his brother’s idiocy sparks something in him - excitement, anticipation. He doesn’t want to let this go.

“I actually think we made a good team back there,” he shrugs, eyes meeting yours to gauge your reaction to the thought of doing this together.

“You’re only saying that ‘cause you’re gonna lose,” you retort, eyes sparkling with those same sentiments he had just felt.

“Probably,” he acquiesces, “Also ‘cause you kind of scare me a little after tonight, last thing I wanna do is go up against you when you have the power to turn half the country club against me.”

You smirk, and his eyes are drawn to the plush curve of your lips, watching them as they form around the softly spoken words, “God forbid you can’t go a round of golf without your caddy breaking down.”

“Exactly.” He mutters back, glad to see your gaze is still zeroed in on him when he meets it again. He can feel the thump thump thump of his pulse in his ears, and takes a deep breath before proposing, “Partners?”

He cocks a brow and holds his pinky out over the centre console, and you eye the digit, sceptically, narrowing your eyes into a glare before raising them to meet his. “Fine,” you grumble, then hook your little finger through his and tighten it to shake, a slight yelp of surprise filling the car when he tugs, your lax arm giving way until your knuckle touches his lips and he kisses it.

“Ew,” you whine, snatching your finger back as he fills the space himself with a hearty chuckle, wiping it on his hoody in disgust. “That’s gross!”

“No take backs,” he smiles, victorious, with his chest puffed out, primed for you to swat at with the flex of your hand, and the two of you are only pulled out of the moment by the sound of tyres pulling up on the gravel behind you, both of you stumbling to unbuckle yourselves and climb out of the car.

Jack is exiting his own vehicle behind, and stomps down the driveway, shouldering past you until he realises who he has passed, turning back and looking at you with suspicion cast across his features.

“Where have you twobeen?” Jack asks, glancing a curious eye between the two of you before meeting Luke’s gaze, levelling him with an inquisitive glare.

“We went to the store for chips,” Luke holds the bag up, the crinkle loud enough for Jack to hear, and he feels an insurgence rising within him, spurred on by the way his brother is looking at him like he’s the one who should be ashamed of his actions. “Nice haircut.”

Jack runs a hand through his hair, surprise crossing his features in a brief flash at the call out, like he had never even expected Luke to notice his hair looks no different to the last time he saw him mere hours ago, like he would never even need to question his alibi.

“Oh, yeah, I got the day wrong. Went out for dinner instead.”

“On your own?” You ask from beside him, your presence giving Luke the kind of back up he very much needs right now, a new target for Jack’s narrowed eyes that takes the heat off of him a little, lessens the burden of lying to his brother - despite Jack being the one who started it, it doesn’t make Luke feel any less bad, doesn’t quell the need to word vomit and admit to all the ludicrous things he had done to ruin Jack’s night. “You end up having a little accident there, bud?”

Luke tries not to outwardly laugh as his attention is diverted to the wet patch that still soaks up the front of Jack’s pants, lips quivering as he presses them together, oblivious to the steam pouring out of his brother’s ears as he immediately gets riled up.

“One of your esteemed colleagues at the club apparently lacks hand eye co-ordination. Plus, some of us like our own company,” Jack scoffs, “Some of us can go an evening without the need to annoy anybody else.”

“It’s not news to me that you’re in love with yourself, dude,” you retort back, entirely unbothered by his jibes. “Bet you’ve got all sorts of riveting thoughts swirling around that ginormous head of yours, must keep you busy for hours on end.”

“At least I have thoughts, at least I’m not some airheaded-,”

“Hey,” Luke’s tone is authoritative when he calls out, stern and demanding, “Cut it out, Jack.”

“She started it!”

“She asked you a question,” Luke frowns, disappointed with how quick his brother had taken to escalating the situation, all in an attempt to deflect the attention from his own deception. He knows you don’t need him to protect you from Jack’s sharp tongue, knows you can very much defend yourself, but he needs to vent his frustrations, somehow, without causing a bust up on the driveway. “You could have just give her a straight answer without biting her head off.”

He feels like you’re a little closer, all of a sudden, and he doesn’t know it’s the slight brush of your arm against his or if it’s something else, something less tangible - but it warms him, all the same. Steadies the static thump of his heart in his chest at the thought of starting an argument with his brother out of nowhere.

“Whatever,” Jack rolls his eyes, “I’m going to bed.”

And as Jack turns, Luke sees your lips part, ready to send him off with the last word until a large hand clamps itself over your mouth, and your wide eyes meet his over the sides of his fingers.

He’s not sure why he did it, why he all of a sudden feels comfortable enough to cross the boundaries of purposeful touch, but he doesn’t entirely regret it.

Plush lips press mid-word against his palm, and your skin is soft, cheeks warming ever so slightly beneath his hand.

“You gotta let him go, there’s no use fighting with him tonight, it’s better to drag it out. Didn’t think I’d have to teach you about the beauty of the long game,” he says, voice low as he watches his brother retreat to the house, waiting until he’s safe inside to retract his hand. “Not like this, anyway.”

“Your brother’s an asshole,” you grumble, “Full offence.”

“No arguments from me,” Luke concedes, holding his hands as if surrendering to the fact, himself. “What are you gonna tell Ellie?”

“Nothing.” You sigh, stepping a little down the drive and toward the house before turning back to him. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, partner.”

There have only been a handful of times in your life you’ve ever been thankful for work coinciding with huge plans, but when the group had decided that they wanted to go see Zach Bryan play Ford Field, you had thanked your lucky stars you had been put down to work a full shift at the restaurant and wouldn’t be able to go.

Not only for the fact that he isn’t really your thing, but for the fact that you’re finally getting a full evening to yourself.

So far, in your time at the house, most evenings have been spent with everyone else - group dinners, game nights, movie nights, even a couple of girls nights with just you and Ellie scattered in there, but nothing on your own, yet.

You can’t wait. And with an empty house, you have a full pamper night planned. You’ve been stocking up odd bits on your trips to the store over the past couple of weeks - sheet masks, aromatherapy candles, you’ve even picked up some flower petals from the spa at the club, in the hopes that you might even treat yourself to a relaxing soak in the bathtub. You can play whatever music you want, make whatever food you want, sit wherever you want in the house, out on the deck, overlooking the lake with a book in hand and no chirpy voices in your ear all night.

You can’t wait.

The only downside is not having a ride home, but you haven’t finished too late. The sun will still be up for a couple of hours, and a walk in the simmering heat back to the house doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

Your feet carry you with ease down the back roads, and you even make the journey without your headphones on, taking in the scenery, the blissful peace of your surroundings, so lost in the tranquility of it all that the sight of Luke washing his car on the drive when you get home dampens your mood as quick as a torrential downpour of rain, flash floods coursing through your evening and wrecking your plans entirely.

“What the hell are you doing?” You can’t help the bite in your tone as you approach, sneakers crunching against the gravel as Luke pauses the hose, looks over at you with the sun in his eyes, and you have to remind yourself he’s just ruined the one night you have for yourself before you get distracted by the fact that he’s shirtless.

“Washing my car?” he calls back, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Detroit right now?”

Luke shrugs, and you have to will your eyeballs not to move any lower than his neck to watch his shoulders lift and drop, lest you get too caught up in the broad expanse of his chest and do something ridiculous like drool.

“Wasn’t feeling it.”

“You weren’t feeling a concert you guys haven’t shut up about for weeks, but you were feeling washing your car?”

He’s dead. When he’s finished with his car and he retreats to his room, you’re gonna smother him with a pillow and discard of his body in the lake. You’re not even gonna let him shower, first. That’s what the lake’s for.

He’s crapping all over your plans because he wasn’t feeling it?

“It needs cleaning,” he shrugs again, and you swear you’re gonna jump in and run him over with the damn thing, “In fact, you really should be helping me.”

There’s a small part of you that feels like the thoughts of violence are worryingly aggressive, but then a larger part of you realises he must have a death wish.

“How’d you get to that conclusion?”

“You’re the one who drove us through a swamp,” he scoffs, a pointed hand flung toward the body of his car, where the sides are lined with a thick layer of dried dirt from the other night, “You get it dirty, you clean it up.”

“As much as I would absolutely love to fulfil your pervy car wash fantasy, I have much better things I could be doing with my time.”

Or you did, until Luke rained all over your parade of solitude.

“Like what?”

“Literally anything but this.” You gesture at the show he’s putting on. The suds dripping from the roof of the car, the hose in his hand, the buckets scattered around the perimeter. “I need to shower, I just walked from the club and I-,”

A death wish might actually be an understatement.

Luke wants you to murder him in the most gruesome, horrific way you could possibly muster - he has to, because there’s no other explanation for why he’d turn the hose on, point it straight at you, and drench the front of you, entirely.

You can feel the fabric of your t-shirt dampening and sticking to your chest, and you scrunch your eyes shut to stop droplets of water slipping into them, thankful that when they open again, his own are looking back at you, and not any lower.

You’d really have a reason to kill him, then.

“You did not just do that.” You growl, glaring back at him with a clenched jaw as the fucker beams back at you, pressing the trigger once more in a short burst that fires straight at your chest, again.

“What, that?”

“You’re so dead.”

You drop your bag and launch for him, aiming to take the hose from his grip, but he fires it again out of sheer panic, the water spouting out from between your splayed fingers, cold and pressured, and it soaks the both of you, raining down as you grapple for the head and Luke remains unrelenting.

There are squeals and yelps called out into the misty air between the two of you, and you get to a point you can’t tell what sounds are coming from who, but you manage to wrestle the hose from his grip and point it straight at him as he jets away with a laugh that rumbles straight from his belly.

It’s the kind of laugh that elicits another, and you don’t realise until he’s circling back to you that the laughter is coming from you - giggling, even, as the two of you engage in a water fight like misbehaving children - and it isn’t long until all aggressive thoughts wash away with the suds that slip to the gravel, forgetting why you were even annoyed in the first place.

It shouldn’t be as fun as it is, but after the long day at work, and the tiring walk back, letting your guard down and engaging it a little mindless chaos seems to wake you up a little.

Your childish game gets Luke what he wanted, anyway, the two of you working together to clean his car when you realise he’s only running in front of all the parts that actually need hosing off and relying on you having bad aim to get the job done, and you figure getting your hands a little dirty is harmless when you’re already soaked through and in dire need of a shower.

And your pamper-plans of a bubble bath and self-care don’t entirely come to fruition, but Luke promises to make up for his petulance by ordering pizza and sticking a movie on, so you bite your tongue to refrain from voicing your initial complaints, and decide to just go with the flow, for once - he hasn’t exactly led you astray, yet.

You take a little longer in the shower than normal, with no one around to complain about hogging the bathroom or worry about them barging in unannounced, and you suppose that’s a small victory - one little luxury you get to cling to as you bask in the steam, letting all the tension slip from your aching muscles after being on your feet all day.

And once you’re out, hair dried just enough with a towel that it isn’t going to drip or soak your t-shirt, and you’re dressed in your pyjamas, you make your way downstairs, where Luke has already set up a plethora of snacks in the living room.

Nachos, popcorn, candy and drinks scattered across the coffee table as he relaxes on the couch, hair extra curly after his shower and an old Michigan t-shirt stretched tight across his now much-broader chest.

“Thought I’d wait for you to pick a movie,” he chimes up from where he’s sat, gesturing with a lazy point to the wall of blu-rays beside the TV.

“Did Netflix never make it to the Hughes household?” You scoff in disbelief as you take them all in properly for the first time. You’d seen them in your peripheral when you’d been hanging out down here, before, but actually looking at them up close, reading all the titles, seeing the sheer volume of how many there are, it kind of surprises you.

“We can look on Netflix if you want. They always take stuff off, though.”

You know. All your favourite movies get taken off of streaming, and you only ever find out about it when you’re really in the mood to watch them. As soon as you realise the wall is alphabetised, you know exactly where to look.

“That’s alright,” you shrug, stepping to the side as you track backwards, through M, L, K and J. “You guys are pretty analogue, I’ve noticed.”

“What do you mean?”

“The board games, the DVDs, the whole no phones around the house thing.”

“No phones around the house is common courtesy,” he chuckles, “But I guess we’re a little weird about the other stuff.”

“It’s pretty cool,” you shrug, spotting the DVD you want and sliding it out to assess the case. “It’s old school. Probably better for the brain. My little brothers can’t really function without an iPad and they’re 6, it’s freaky, like they’re haunted by the capitalist ghost of Steve Jobs or something.”

“I didn’t know you had brothers,” Luke frowns where you almost expect him to laugh, and you spin on your heel to face him. He has this look about him like he should have known that - like the two of you have ever conversed in anything other than sarcastic quips and scrunched up faces, or whatever attempts at flirting have been on his part.

“Technically they’re half brothers,” you shrug, “They live out in Philly with my dad and step mom, I don’t really get to see them much.”

“Didn’t know you were from Philly, either.”

“I’m not, my dad moved out there when him and my mom got divorced.”

It’s not something you really love talking about.

The few times you’ve tried, you’ve been shot down, patronising tones scoffing at how your biggest trauma is the separation of your parents, as if your whole world didn’t crumble down with the demise of their relationship, the demise of life as you knew and very dearly loved it.

“You don’t see him even in the summer?”

“Him and his family are on vacation in Europe for 6 weeks. England, France, Spain, Germany, the boys are into soccer so they’ll be out there until the Euros.”

You don’t miss the way Luke’s face scrunches at how you call them his family, and you’re not sure you’re ready for him to start pitying you, so you throw the DVD case toward him before you can second guess your choice.

Interstellar.

You hope he doesn’t pick up on why it might be one of your favourites. Especially not considering the topic of the conversation at hand. Something about the crippling regret Cooper has for leaving Murph behind plucks harmoniously at some unidentifiable strings deep within you, but you’re hardly about to admit that to Luke, of all people.

“I love this movie,” he smiles, almost surprised, as if he expected you to throw The Notebook his way. Maybe next time - he’d probably love that movie, too, if he gave it a chance.

“Me too. I love space movies.”

“Like Space Jam?” He asks as he pushes himself up, going toward the TV to set up the movie with the DVD in one hand and the remote control in the other.

“No, like movies about Space,” you say, throwing yourself down onto the same couch he just vacated and tucking your feet beneath you to get comfortable. “Although I guess Space Jam would technically fit into that bracket.”

“I didn’t realise that was a genre,” he chuckles.

“Not the scary ones, though, I don’t wanna be freaked out by space.”

“Is that like a thing? You just like any movie set in space?”

“I like anything about space, period. Movies, documentaries, books. Thinking about it makes me feel really insignificant.”

“Insignificant? Is that not a bad thing?” He asks as he makes his way back, settling into his side and angling his body toward yours.

“Do you ever think about how big the universe is, Hughes? It’s humongous! If I ever feel anxious or panicky I think about just how big it is and how I’m not even a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. If I’m so tiny, how big can my problems actually be?”

“I guess that makes sense,” he seems to mull it over in his head, the thought of him even considering it and not making you feel stupid warms your chest - makes you forget just how much of yourself you’ve shared with him in the last couple of minutes alone, makes you worry less that you’re sharing too much. “I think I might be the opposite, though. Probably the youngest brother in me, I only feel better if I feel bigger.”

You think that might be why he’s always trying to one up you - sassy comments and inappropriate jokes galore. Not that you mind any of it, not really.

“What about you? What movies do you like?”

“You’re gonna be so shocked.”

“Sports movies?”

“Look at you, knowing me like the back of your hand.” He coos, nudging at your knee with his hand. “I’ll watch anything, though. We should take it in turns, whenever it’s just us,” he says like the thought of spending time alone with you has only just crossed his mind. “Picking a movie to show each other.”

You think there’s a lot of yourself in the media you consume. The movies you watch, the music you listen to, and sharing those things with Luke feels like giving him the only other key to a high security vault. It’s something you’ve avoided so far - letting him play his songs in the car, avoiding making any sort of pick in the group movie nights. It’s daunting, and it’s a lot of pressure, and so you don’t know why you agree with so much ease - a shrug, and a casual muttering of, “Sure, why not?”

The pieces of your dynamic slowly start to slot together, and you start to realise why you’ve been entertaining his company so often, lately. Why your mood so quickly de-escalated itself, earlier. Why you’ve found yourself curled up on the same couch as him, instead of literally anywhere else in the house, doing anything other than this. Why you’re so quick to agree to letting him access all these unseen parts of you.

And why you think he might be able to read your mind, after he asks, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Only if I get to ask one back.”

“What were you gonna do tonight, if you were on your own?”

Thank God, you think, your heart jumping at the thought of anything else he could have asked.

“I was gonna do a sheet mask and steal the bottle of wine Quinn stashed behind the laundry detergent.” You admit with a nonchalant shrug, the plans you had been looking forward to all day seeming mundane in comparison to this. “Why’d you stay behind? You love Zach Bryan.”

“I love sheet masks and stolen wine, too.”

Your lips curve up before you get the chance to huff at his non-answer, and you feel your throat go a little dry at the way his curve, too - the way his green eyes darken when they meet yours, and you feel like he’s looking straight through you.

It’s around half way through the movie that you realise how much you’re enjoying yourself - when you look over at Luke, and the light from the screen is still bouncing off the sticky white sheet plastered to his face, only just able to make out his round eyes through the little slit in the fabric.

You sip at your wine to hide your smile, and turn your attention back to the TV until Luke nudges at your feet with his, and your eyes meet over the tops of your bent knees.

“You tell anyone I did this, I’ll never speak to you again.”

Your laugh ripples through every inch of your upper body, rumbling up from your belly and manifesting itself in shaking shoulders, your smile wide and your sheet mask slipping out of place. “You can’t threaten me with a good time, Hughes.”

You spend the rest of the night trying not to think about how there might just be a tiny door in your heart, eking it’s way open for him to squeeze his gangly limbs into.

another a/n: I don't want to put a timeframe on when the next part will be posted bc as soon as I do that, my brain will revolt and it won't happen, but I'd love to know your thoughts in the meantime!!! I have a lot of the rest actually written, and what I don't have written, I have drafted, so it shouldn't be too long but!!! like I said no timeframe!! I've had a lot of fun with this dynamic, and hearing any opinions would mean a lot to me!!

this was my first time writing reader insert if you saw any instances of she/her where they shouldn't be, no you didn’t. I tried as best as I could to avoid using Y/N because it takes me out of it I don’t even remember if I put it anywhere but sometimes it's hard to get around I did my best ok!!!

#luke hughes #luke hughes x reader #luke hughes imagine #nhl imagine #nhl fanfiction #luke hughes fluff #my hearts going pitter patter pitter patter like I could throw up #need to post this before I fall asleep lmao #*writing

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pitchsidestories · 16 hours ago

Text

the wish II Ingrid Engen x Mapi León x Reader

romantic masterlist | platonic masterlist | word count: 1340

summary: Mapi and Ingrid are looking for a special gift to give it reader for Christmas. requested

author's note: dear readers, we hope @briggtea and you all will enjoy the wholesome oneshot. 💜💜

You smiled when you saw the sign on the door that said they were filming for a social media post outside on the pitch. Those videos were always a lot of fun. You never knew what the question of the day would be when you walked out to training, it kept you on your toes.

You opened the door curiously, excited to answer whatever the social media department came up with.

“Bon dia, girls. I’ve a question for you. What was your favourite football shirt as a child?”

The question made your face light up immediately. Childhood memories of yourself watching hours upon hours of football flooded your brain. You wanted to be exactly like your idols, so you begged for their shirts for birthdays and Christmases every year.

Mapi who walked out in front of you didn’t hesitate and winked at the camera: “Puyol for me.“

“Any Barcelona one for me too.“, Ellie replied politely before turning towards you, “What about you, y/n?”

You thought about it for a moment, trying to find the perfect answer: “I’m afraid I don’t really have a favourite but there was one I always wanted and never got.“

“Tell us.“, Ellie demanded with a big grin.

“But that wasn’t the point of the question, was it?”, you smirked.

“Doesn’t matter, keep going.“, directed the social media manager.

You shrugged and finally revealed: “I always wanted a Marta jersey.“

As you were about to continue to walk towards the pitch, Ingrid appeared by your side. She studied your side profile with watchful eyes: “Was there a special reason? I mean to why you didn’t get it?”

You shook your head: “No, I just never got it.“

A plain and simple explanation now but when you were young, you were heartbroken about the fact. You adored everything the Brazilian did, from her skills to the way she spoke about women’s football.

She was so good that she was even recognised by male football players at a time when the sport was still target of a lot of ridicule. For you, she was the greatest football player ever back then. In fact, you still looked up to her today.

“That’s sad. Alexia, Caro, Ona? What were your favourite shirts growing up?”, the social media manager moved on to the next players that left the dressing room.

“Mine was Messi!”, Vicky yelled from behind them to which Alexia only rolled her eyes.

“Messi, of course. I loved my Ronaldinho one.“, the captain with a nostalgic smile on her lips.

Vicky frowned at her: “Who?”

“You don’t know who Ronaldinho is?!”, Alexia and you synchronously asked with dismay.

“Just kidding.“, the young player laughed.

You shook your head about her: “Can’t believe you’d joke about something like that!”

“I know. That’s why I had to.“, she smirked back.

“You’ll get that back.”, Alexia warned her with a mischievous twinkle in her hazel eyes. The captain already busy thinking about what she could do to return the joke.

While your team warmed up, Mapi bumped her arm softly into your girlfriend’s side to receive her attention. “You know what, Ingrid?”

“What?”, the Norwegian frowned.

“I think I’ve the perfect idea for y/n’s Christmas present this year.”, the older defender told her proudly.

Mid exercise Ingrid stopped moving, eagerly waiting for her lover to continue: “Tell me.”

“A Brazil Marta jersey.”, Mapi whispered because you were nearby, but luckily too focused on the training to hear what they were saying.

The taller woman’s face lit up in delight at the Spaniard’s suggestion: “That’s a great idea. I’m sure we can get her an original one even and she’ll love it.”

“I hope so.”, the heavily tattooed defender replied optimistically.

The weeks before Christmas were hectic, but at times beautiful, for example, when you strolled with the Barcelona team around Gamla stan, Stockholm’s old town which was prettily decorated for the festive season.

During the walk Mapi couldn’t stop taking photos of her surroundings including Ingrid and you. Memories forever captured on camera film.

The Christmas days the three of you spend in Norway, close to Ingrid’s family, the New Years Eve you all would be back in Spain to celebrate the arrival of 2025 with your friends.

For a moment you looked at the window, watching the snowflakes dance in front of it. Your girlfriends and you already had a delicious evening dinner.

Now it was the time to unpack the presents which lay underneath the Christmas tree. All three of you were filled with giddy excitement and couldn’t wait to see the reaction of your loves when they’d open what you gifted them.

“Okay, who’s starting to unpack the first present.”, you clapped excitedly into your hands.

A bright grin was formed on Mapi’s lips as she volunteered, she was fully covered in the warmest blanket to keep herself warm: “I’ll start.”

“This is from y/n and me.”, Ingrid explained solemnly handing her the beautifully and careful wrapped box.

Once the Spaniard glanced into the insides, she glanced up in awe. “You girls are the cutest. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. We spotted this and immediately thought that’s so Maria.”, you hummed.

In a pleasant tone the Norwegian added: “And we know you love everything coffee related.”

Both of you knew that the older defenders love for coffee ran so deep she even got it permanently inked to her skin. On a rare free day, you three loved to spend your time in trying out new coffeeshops.

“I’ll be on coffee duty tomorrow morning to try this out.”, Mapi decided cheerfully.

“We hoped you’d say that.”, you chuckled.

“Of course, you two did.”, she smiled amusedly.

Clearing your throat you quickly changed the topic:” Ingrid, you’re next.”

The Norwegian started to unwrap her present patiently, folding the paper neatly until it revealed a dainty golden necklace.

“Oh my god, girls. You didn’t need to. Thank you so much.“

“You’re welcome, amor.“, Mapi said softly as she helped her put the necklace on.

“You deserve it.“, you agreed.

“I really appreciate it.“, Ingrid beamed.

You both leaned over to simultaneously press kisses to her cheeks which made Ingrid immediately turn red.

“So I guess it��s my turn now.“, you finally said, pulling the only gift left under the tree into your lap.

Mapi nodded with excitement: “Yes, open it!”

You could feel your breath hitch when you saw a sliver of yellow fabric peaking out from the wrapping paper. It couldn’t be. There was no way.

“It’s a Marta jersey!”, you finally confirmed delighted, holding up the Brazil shirt.

Ingrid nodded, pointing at the back with your idols name and number on it: “It’s even signed.“

“No way!”

“Do you like it?”, Mapi asked impatiently.

You shook your head, lost for words. The little girl inside of you was jumping with joy and you suddenly felt emotional for her. “No. I love it. You know when we were kids, we only had male role models and Marta was the first female one for me…“

“And now you finally have her shirt.“, Ingrid concluded.

“Thank you so much. This might be the most thoughtful present I’ve ever received.“, you said as you blinked away the upcoming tears.

“Admittedly we had some help with it.“, Mapi laughed lightheartedly.

“From our fellow football friends?”, you asked.

Ingrid nodded: “Special thanks to Geyse.“

“And our social media team for asking you that question.“, Mapi added.

You couldn’t help yourself, you had to slip the shirt over your Christmas sweater. You pulled your two girlfriends into a tight hug: “Thank you, sweethearts. This might be one of my favourite gifts ever.“

“We’re glad you like it.“, Mapi smiled and gently kissed you forehead. “Look, it started to snow again!”

“This is beautiful.“, you said while staring out the window where big snowflakes fell, starting to cover Ingrids hometown in a layer of white.

Ingrid pulled you and Mapi in towards her as you stood there and watched on: “It truly couldn’t be anymore perfect than this.“

if you enjoyed this story reblogs, comments and likes are always appreciated !

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0omillo0 · 2 days ago

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Calling you clingy

Felix x reader (they / them) angst -> comfort

Felix walked into his apartment, his body aching from the long day. The weight of rehearsals, vocal practice, and back-to-back meetings bore down on him, and all he wanted was a moment to himself. Dropping his bag by the door, he toed off his shoes and let out a quiet sigh.

“Felix?”

Your soft voice caught his attention, and he turned to see you sitting on the couch. You had a blanket draped over your lap and a bright, hopeful expression on your face.

“Hey,” you greeted, standing up to approach him. “I thought I’d surprise you. You’ve been so busy, and I figured you’d need some company.”

Felix blinked, his expression unreadable. “Oh… yeah, I guess.” He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to sound polite despite his exhaustion. “It’s just, I didn’t know you were coming.”

You faltered slightly at his tone but quickly recovered. “I didn’t mean to intrude or anything! I just missed you.” You reached out to brush his arm, offering him a small, reassuring smile. “Let me grab you something to eat or drink—”

“Y/N, wait,” Felix said quickly, stepping out of your reach. “I’m fine. You don’t have to fuss over me, really.”

You paused, confusion flickering in your eyes. “It’s not a fuss. I just want to help. You’ve been so—”

“Can we not do this right now?” he interrupted gently, his voice strained. “I just got home, and I’m tired. Maybe we can… talk later?”

You blinked, his words sinking in. “Oh. Right. I get it,” you murmured, nodding. But then, despite yourself, you reached out for him again, gently tugging at his sleeve. “But Felix, you’ve been so distant lately, and I just thought—”

“Oh my— why are you so clingy all the time? You weren’t like this when we first met— Ugh..”

The words burst out of him before he could stop them, sharp and unfiltered. Felix immediately regretted it, but the damage had already been done.

Your hand dropped from his sleeve as if you’d been burned, and your face fell.

“I’m… sorry,” you said quietly, taking a step back. “I just wanted to be here for you.”

Forcing a smile that didn’t reach your eyes, you said “I’ll leave. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

You grabbed your bag from the couch and walked past him before he could say another word. The sound of the door closing echoed in the silence, and Felix stood there frozen, guilt already settling in his chest like a heavy weight.

Hours passed, but Felix couldn’t stop replaying the scene in his head. He sat at the edge of his bed, staring at his phone. He had texted you a few times, but you hadn’t replied.

Felix: Love.. I’m sorry

Felix: Please answer me when you can, I love you

Felix: 🩵

Felix: Goodnight, I’m sorry

Still no answer.

It wasn’t until the next day, during practice, that he couldn’t keep it in anymore.

“Hey,” Hyunjin said, watching Felix fumble a move he’d done perfectly a hundred times before. “What’s up with you? You’ve been out of it all day.”

Felix sighed, dropping onto the floor. “I said something dumb to Y/N last night.”

Hyunjin raised an eyebrow. “Dumb, like ‘oops,’ or dumb, like you really messed up?”

Felix groaned. “I called them clingy.”

“Yikes.”

“I didn’t mean it like that!” Felix said quickly, frustration evident in his tone. “I was just tired, and I snapped, and now… they’re not answering me.”

Hyunjin sat down next to him, studying him for a moment. “Why do you think they’re clingy?”

Felix frowned. “I don’t know. They’re always around, always texting or checking in. It’s not bad, but sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.”

Hyunjin tilted his head thoughtfully. “You ever think there’s a reason they’re like that? Maybe they’re scared you’ll disappear if they’re not around enough.”

Felix blinked, the words hitting him hard. “What? That doesn’t make sense. Why would they think that?”

“Think about it,” Hyunjin said softly. “You’re busy all the time, and they probably feel like they’re competing with your schedule. They might be trying so hard because they’re afraid they’re not enough.”

Felix stared at the ground, Hyunjin’s words sinking in.

That evening, Felix showed up at your apartment, his nerves eating away at him. He knocked softly, shifting from foot to foot until you finally opened the door.

“Felix?” you asked, surprised. Your expression was cautious, your body language hesitant.

“Can I come in?” he asked quietly.

You hesitated but stepped aside, letting him in. Felix glanced around the room, taking in the untouched cup of tea on the coffee table and the blanket you’d clearly been curled up under.

“I’m sorry,” he said, turning to face you. “For last night. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

You crossed your arms, clearly trying to keep your emotions in check. “It’s fine. You don’t have to explain.”

“No, it’s not fine,” Felix insisted, his voice firm. “I hurt you, and I need to make it right.” He stepped closer, his gaze earnest. “I didn’t mean it. You’re not clingy, Y/N. I just…” He sighed. “I didn’t understand why you do the things you do.”

You looked away, swallowing hard. “And now you do?”

“I think so,” he said softly. “You don’t act like that because you’re trying to smother me. You’re scared. Right?”

Your breath hitched, and you felt your composure cracking. “Why does it matter? You clearly don’t want me around as much as I want to be there. So what’s the point?”

Felix’s heart clenched. He reached out, gently cupping your face and forcing you to meet his eyes.

“Y/N, the point is that I love you,” he said, his voice trembling. “And I never want you to feel like you have to fight for my attention. You don’t have to try so hard. You’re already enough. More than enough.”

Your tears spilled over, and Felix wiped them away with his thumbs. “But I don’t know how to love you without feeling like I’m not good enough,” you whispered.

Felix pulled you into his arms, holding you tightly. “You don’t have to be anything other than yourself. I’m sorry I made you feel like you weren’t wanted. That’s on me, not you.”

You clung to him, your tears soaking into his shirt. “I just… I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t,” Felix promised, his voice thick with emotion. “We’ll figure this out together, okay? I’ll do better. I’ll show you how much you mean to me.”

For the first time in days, you felt like a weight had been lifted from your chest. Felix wasn’t perfect, and neither were you, but in that moment, you knew you’d work through it—together.

tags: @intartaruginha @hannamoon143 @inlovewithstraykids @whoa-jo @madirye062 @vixensss @emilyywhyy @halfwinterhalfuniverse @sseawavee @velvetmoonlght

#stray kids #skz #skz x reader #stray kids x reader #stray kids fluff #stray kids x y/n #felix x you #felix fluff #felix x y/n #felix angst #felix x reader #stray kids felix #lee yongbok #yongbok x reader #lee felix #lee felix x reader #skz felix

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bunsiesblog · 13 hours ago

Text

Viktor Relationship HC

Viktor x GN!Reader

Purely self indulgent headcanons for Viktor in a relationship. You want fluff? Here is fluff.

tags: s1!viktor, established relationship, typical domesticity and fluff

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Viktor prefers subtle displays of affection. His intimacy is quiet—a hushed whispered shared between the two of you.

Very public and grand displays of affection tend to leave him embarrassed and flustered. This doesn’t mean he shies away from showing the world he is yours. But he prefers those intimate acts to be shared between the two of you.

That being said—he is a man in love. And he simply can’t help himself when you are near. So he has found a few ways to express his devotion to you:

A gentle bump of the knee under the table as you both sit together.

Interlocked pinkies. A touch so small it might have been missed if not for the faint smile pulling at his lips.

A hidden hand resting on your thigh while he reads or works—absentmindedly tracing circles with his thumb.

A tender touch to the small of your back as he guides you through crowds. Not only to keep you close but to keep him grounded as well.

Quick kiss to your forehead when parting ways. “Take care, lásko.”

Viktor adores holding your hands. Such an innocent and simple act leaves him feeling profoundly connected to you.

He often does it absentmindedly—reaching for your hand when his mind is elsewhere. His thumb traces your knuckles or the faint lines of your palm. He’ll even play with your fingers, as though committing their shape to memory.

Our lovely scientist quite likes the size difference between your two hands. He’ll press his palm flat against yours, marveling at the contrast with a soft smile on his face. “It’s quite unfair that I am so lanky, no?”

When privacy is reliably assured, Viktor rather enjoys spoiling you with affection and being spoiled in return. Here are some favorites of his in no particular order:

Kissing. And not the kind that is full of tongue and saliva (although he can acknowledge certain … situations … where it has its benefit.) He prefers the soft and revert kisses he gives you. The sort of kiss where he cradles your face in his hands, thumbs brushing along your cheeks, and simply embraces you. Like he’d rather be at your lips all day than breathe air.

Viktor also has a pension for kissing you in places that are not just your lips. His kisses are gentle, playful, and unexpectedly intimate. Some of his favorite places to leave them on you are the inside of your wrist, the curve of your shoulder, the slope of your neck, and the tip of your nose.

He particularly enjoys the way you laugh or squirm when he traces light kisses to your neck and jawline. Viktor will hold your hands to keep you from wiggling away. Despite being quiet by nature, Viktor’s smirk betrays how much he enjoys hearing you laugh. “You want me to stop? But you make such sweet sounds for me, Koťátko. Just one more.”

A quiet night in the lab made him realize just how much he enjoys seeking your warmth and filling in the empty spaces between you. When you’re perched at the edge of his work table, Viktor will instinctively step between your legs and rest his hand on your thighs as he looks up at you. It’s any wonder how he gets any sort of work done when you’re around.

To others, he is a polite but distant man. Constantly consumed by his work and ambition. But with you, he is something else entirely: gentle, tender, and devoted. And it is clear to anyone who knows him just how special you are.

Viktor always gives you his unwavering attention. When you speak, he listens. His whiskey eyes are held steady to your own. Oftentimes, when he thinks you won’t notice, they’ll flick down to your lips. And he’ll rub a thoughtful hand over his jaw, trying his best to hide an amused smile. “Hm? Yes, I’m listening, sweetheart.”

His reserved nature doesn’t lend itself to overt sentimentality. But with you? It shines. There is a tenderness in him that only you can bring out.

Viktor has a weathered notebook he keeps in his coat pocket for when inspiration strikes or he simply can’t put his pen down. However, among the haphazard grocery lists or scribbled equation are notes about you like ‘prefers chamomile tea when anxious’ or ‘smiles when it rains’. Even the margins of his notes are decorated with absentminded doodles of you.

He most definitely is an act of service kind of man. The chain of your necklace is broken? Or your watch won’t tick past 6:33? He’ll silently take it off your hands, fiddle with the repair in the quiet hours of his lab, and leave it for you to be found the next day. Any sort of thanks you try to give him are met with a humble “it was nothing.” Although the blush on his ears tell a different story.

#Arcane #Viktor #Viktor Arcane #viktor x reader #viktor league of legends #viktor lol #viktor nation #x reader #arcane x reader #viktor x you #viktor x y/n #arcane x you #arcane x y/n #gender neutral reader #fluff #romance #bunsie thinks #I think a lot about Viktor #an unhealthy amount

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ellecdc · 2 days ago

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Hello! I had a request for reader (if you wish for poly!marauders) or regulus (again, jegulus or poly!jegulus with reader/regulus getting glasses... have fun with it I'll love it either way 😅🥰) where they get glasses and how their partner(s) would react. Maybe their in denial about their weakening vision and when they get glasses, they're so unused to wearing glasses and looking at themselves that they need some love and affection. Some comedy and fluff would be fun, it could be one part or two, as you wish, I'd just love to see your take on it.. again no pressure! Let your creative juices flow or keep them stored if you're not interested 😅😅

thanks for your request, lovie! <3

Regulus Black x fem!reader who isn't used to her new glasses [600 words]

CW: slight insecurity around wearing glasses, fluff

Regulus doesn’t move as you join him by the door of your flat, smiling up at him as you wait for him to ask if you are ready.

“You ready to go, amour?” He asks, fighting against the smile threatening to take over his face at the way your eyes crinkle in delight at this practiced ritual the two of you shared.

“Yup!” You agree eagerly, reaching towards the door only for Regulus to grab your arm before you could reach it.

“Yeah?” He tries again. “You’re not forgetting anything?”

He watched your brows furrow as you shot him a bemused look. “No?”

“No?”

“I don’t think so…” You continue; second guessing yourself at Regulus’ obvious implication that you were, indeed, missing something.

“Not even,” Regulus drawls, stretching the vowels out until you had no choice but to roll your eyes at him, “a pair of glasses?”

Your shoulders fell as you let out a groan and Regulus couldn’t help but laugh then. “You’re being mean.” You accuse him.

“Mean?” He asks, hand to his heart in faux offence. “By making sure my darling girl can see? How’s that mean?”

“It doesn’t match.”

“Your outfit?” Regulus clarifies. “Amour, your glasses go with everything; you picked out ones that would, remember?”

You only respond by worrying your bottom lip between your teeth.

“What’s your worry, hm?” He asks finally; spreading his legs out so that he was closer to your height and settling his hands on your hips. You couldn’t bring yourself to look directly at him but you didn’t pull away, so Regulus allowed it.

“I think they look…silly.”

“They don’t look silly.” He assures you.

“You have to say that.” You argue, finally looking at him to give him a rather disgruntled look.

“I don’t have to say anything.” He counters, giving you a small shake when you try to look away from him again. “Sweetheart, you look adorable in your glasses; you spent a lot of time picking out the perfect ones!”

“I just don’t think they suit me.” You continue, though Regulus could tell just from the tension in your body that the fight was quickly leaving you.

“You’re just not used to them, amour. The only way to fix that is to wear them more.”

You let out a rather petulant groan as you ripped yourself out of his arms and stalked back down the hall. Regulus forgave you for the fit, though, knowing it was mostly for show when you came back down the hall a few moments later with your new glasses sitting on the bridge of your nose.

“There you are,” Regulus says as though he were the one who could see you better now that you finally had them on, “isn’t that better?”

“My eyesight isn’t that bad.” You argue, though you accept Regulus’ kiss and even offer him two more of your own before you pull away.

“Is that so?” He replies noncommittally, gesturing towards the door now that he was willing to allow you to leave the flat. “Well, I’m just glad I won’t have to sit through dinner with you squinting at me from across the table.”

You let out a horrified gasp as you turn to look at him. “I do not squint at you!”

“You do too!” He counters quickly; one hand on the small of your back as he holds the door open for you with the other. “One time my brother asked why my girlfriend is glaring at me all the time. I’ll be very glad to clear that up the next time we see him.”

#marauders era #marauders au #marauders fanfiction #reader insert #self insert #regulus black #regulus black x reader #regulus black x you #regulus black fic #regulus black ficlet #regulus black blurb #regulus black drabble #regulus black imagine #regulus black fluff #ellecdc fics

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theonottsbxtch · 1 day ago

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FOREVER AND ALWAYS | MV1

an: military au go reeeee, my friend is currently talking to a marine so it makes this funnier, anyway this is a request and be prepared for how much im about to post, im posting all my wips so i can start a new

wc: 3.8k

THE LAST MORNING MAX spent in town was unseasonably warm for late September, but she still wore his old hoodie over her dress. It swallowed her, the cuffs rolled up clumsily so her fingers could peek through. Max liked seeing her in it; she made it look softer than it ever felt to him. They sat on the hood of his truck by the edge of the lake, the same spot they always went to when something big needed to be said.

“You’ll write, right?” she asked, her voice steadier than the fingers twisting the hem of his sleeve.

Max didn’t answer right away. He hated promises. He hated making them and breaking them even more. But he wasn’t going to break this one. “Every day,” he said, his voice a little rough. “I mean it, okay? You’ll be sick of me by Christmas.”

“I could never,” she said, and the words felt too small for how much she meant them.

The sun caught in her hair, and Max felt the ache of leaving settle deeper in his chest. He should’ve been relieved—one last night in this town, in that house—but all he could think about was how hard it was going to be to drive away from her in the morning.

“I’ll write back every time,” she promised, her eyes locked on his like she could hold him here through sheer willpower. “Don’t you dare stop.”

“I won’t.”

It was the closest thing to forever they’d ever said to each other, and Max wanted to believe it could be.

He didn’t sleep much that night. Max stayed parked outside her house long after walking her to the door, watching the glow of her bedroom light until it finally went dark. He told himself he’d leave when she was asleep, but his hands stayed glued to the steering wheel, his heart beating louder than the crickets outside.

Morning came too fast. He stood on her porch in his pressed uniform, his duffel slung over his shoulder. Her dad answered the door, grunted something about “too early for this,” and disappeared back into the house. Max heard her footsteps upstairs, quick and light, and then there she was, rushing down to meet him, already wearing a smile he didn’t deserve.

“You’re really doing it,” she said, her voice tight with something caught between pride and fear.

“I am.”

She stepped closer, her fingers brushing the crisp fabric of his sleeve. “You’re going to be okay, right?”

Max didn’t know how to answer that. He could handle the yelling, the rules, the miles of running. But leaving her? That felt like the first real battle.

“You’re the toughest guy I know,” she added softly, filling the silence.

“Tough’s not the same as okay,” he admitted, his voice low.

“Then I’ll be okay for both of us.”

The words hit him harder than he expected, wrapping around something fragile in his chest. He leaned down and kissed her, quick and desperate, like he could steal a little of her steadiness to take with him.

When they finally broke apart, she laughed softly, her forehead still resting against his. “You’re coming back, Max. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t,” he said.

He didn’t know if it was a promise or a prayer.

The bus station was quiet that early in the morning, just a couple of strangers milling around with their heads down and coffee in hand. Max stood off to the side with her, his duffel at his feet and his hands shoved deep into his pockets to keep from grabbing hers. She said she couldn’t come, but watching him walk back to the truck made her call in sick for work and follow him in.

“You should go sit,” he said, nodding toward the bench near the car park.

She gave him a look, one eyebrow raised in challenge. “I’m not leaving this spot until you’re on that bus.”

A faint smile tugged at his lips. Of course she wouldn’t. She was stubborn like that, always had been. He loved her for it, even if it made saying goodbye harder.

The bus pulled up, its brakes hissing as it rolled to a stop. Max felt the weight of the moment settle on his shoulders, heavier than the duffel. This was it.

He turned to her, unsure of what to say. Every word that came to mind felt too big or too small.

“Write me first,” she said, breaking the silence. Her voice was soft, but her eyes burned with determination. “As soon as you get there. Don’t wait for me to start.”

“I will,” he said, nodding. “Every day, remember?”

She smiled at that, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, holding on so tightly it felt like she was trying to anchor him there.

He let himself hold her back, burying his face in her hair for just a moment. He wasn’t going to cry. He wouldn’t let himself.

“I’ll see you after training,” she whispered against his chest, her voice shaking just a little. “I’ll be there, Max.”

He pulled back, cupping her face in his hands. “You promise?”

“I promise.”

The driver called for boarding, and Max grabbed his bag. He didn’t look back as he stepped onto the bus. He couldn’t. If he did, he might not get on at all.

But as the bus pulled away, he glanced out the window. She was still standing there, exactly where he left her, her hand raised in a wave he couldn’t return.

He pressed his forehead against the glass, the weight of her promise settling in his chest. She would be there. He had to believe it.

Training was relentless.

The early mornings were the worst—before the sun even thought about rising, before his body remembered how to move. They ran until their legs felt like they’d snap beneath them, did push-ups until their arms gave out, and marched under the weight of packs that felt heavier with every mile. The shouting never stopped, every mistake earning a punishment meant to break them down and rebuild them into something sharper, stronger.

But it was nothing compared to what Max had already endured.

At home, the yelling was never meant to make him stronger. The bruises weren’t badges of discipline—they were reminders of how small he was made to feel. Every time he hit the ground during training, his drill sergeant barking at him to get up, Max thought of how often he’d done the same thing in that house. He got up then, and he got up now.

The other guys complained at night, lying on their bunks and licking their wounds, but Max didn’t join in. They didn’t know how lucky they were—how much easier it was to run ten miles when there wasn’t a door slamming behind you or fists flying to match.

And then there were the letters.

Her first one came the day after he arrived, folded neatly into an envelope with her handwriting scrawled across the front. The sight of it made his chest ache, and he didn’t even wait to get back to the barracks to read it.

Hey, tough guy. I hope this gets to you quick. Are they making you run as much as I think they are? Do you miss me? I miss you. It’s been one day and this town already feels different without you. Keep writing, okay? I’ll keep writing too. Just don’t let them make you forget who you are, Max. I love you.

The letters became his lifeline. Every night, after lights-out, he’d sit on the edge of his bunk with a flashlight and write her back. He told her about the blisters on his feet, the meals that barely qualified as food, the drill sergeant who could make a grown man cry with a single word. But he also told her how he was getting stronger, faster, better—how he thought about her every time things got too hard.

She didn’t just write about missing him. Her letters were full of details—what their friends were up to, how the leaves were starting to change by the lake, what songs were playing on the radio. She made him feel like he wasn’t missing everything. Like she was keeping his place for him.

The days blurred together after a while, a constant cycle of exhaustion and repetition. But then, one morning, everything felt different.

It was the last day of training.

Max stood in formation with the others, the sun rising behind them as their drill sergeant paced in front of the line. They’d been through hell together—guys who had started as strangers now felt like brothers. But Max wasn’t thinking about them.

He was thinking about her.

He scanned the crowd of families waiting just beyond the training field, his heart pounding harder than it ever had during a run. She had said she’d be here. She promised.

And then he saw her.

She was standing near the back, craning her neck to see over the heads of taller people in front of her. When their eyes met, she smiled so brightly that for a second, everything else—the noise, the exhaustion, the fear—fell away.

Max’s throat tightened, but he forced himself to focus. One last task. One last push. He would finish this, and then he’d go to her.

And this time, he wouldn’t have to leave too soon.

Max’s heart hammered as the ceremony came to a close. The drill sergeant dismissed them with a sharp bark, and the tension that had held the recruits in place finally broke. Families surged forward, cheers and hugs filling the air. Max stood frozen for a moment, scanning the crowd again until he saw her pushing through the mass of people, her face a mix of determination and joy.

She was exactly how he remembered her, but somehow even better. Her hair bounced as she hurried toward him, and the familiar tilt of her smile made his chest ache. And yet, as soon as she stopped a few feet in front of him, she planted her hands on her hips like she had all the time in the world.

“Well, well,” she said, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Hey there, tough guy.”

Max swallowed hard, trying to keep his composure. But her teasing grin made the corner of his mouth twitch, threatening to break into a smile he wasn’t supposed to give just yet.

From behind her, one of his barrack mates, Danny came up and watched her as she eyed up Max. When she noticed him, he nodded at her. “Ma’am.”

She snorted, shaking her head. “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, I’m only young.” She stepped closer, looking at Max once more, her expression shifting to exaggerated awe. “That’s a whole lot of muscles you’ve got there now. What’ve they been feeding you?”

Max tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t stop his lips from curving upward.

“You’re not supposed to touch the recruits until they’ve been tapped out,” Danny said, his voice low, playful.

She raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed by Max’s attempt at staying serious. “Is that so? Guess I’ll have to keep my hands to myself for a minute longer, huh?”

He held her gaze, the tension building between them until it was almost unbearable. She took another step forward, her smile softening into something sweeter, something he’d missed so much it hurt.

“Max,” she said quietly, her voice just loud enough for him to hear over the noise around them.

And then, finally, she reached out and tapped his shoulder.

That was all it took. Max didn’t hesitate—he dropped his duffel to the ground and swept her into his arms, lifting her clean off the ground. She laughed, but it broke halfway through, and then she was crying, her face buried in his shoulder.

“I missed you,” she said, her voice muffled against his uniform.

Max held her tighter, his eyes stinging as he pressed his cheek against her hair. “I missed you too,” he murmured, his voice thick.

For a moment, neither of them moved. She clung to him like she was afraid he might disappear, and Max let himself soak in the feel of her in his arms—the warmth, the softness, the familiarity he’d craved every single day he was gone.

When she finally pulled back, her hands stayed on his shoulders, her fingers brushing against the hard muscle beneath his uniform. She tilted her head, a teasing smile breaking through her tears. “Seriously, Max. What’s with these muscles? You didn’t look like this when you left.”

He chuckled, the sound low and rough, and shook his head. “Had to give you something to brag about, didn’t I?”

She laughed, swiping at her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater. “Oh, I’m definitely bragging. You’re not going anywhere without me showing you off first.”

“Not going anywhere without you at all,” Max said softly.

Her smile faltered for just a second, her eyes filling again. “Good,” she whispered. “Because I’m not letting you go.”

He cupped her face gently, leaning in until their foreheads touched. “You’re stuck with me now.”

“Always,” she said, and for the first time in months, Max felt like he was finally home.

As they were about to kiss, a cough disrupted them. Danny. “Are you done?”

“Leave me alone Danny, I’ve seen enough of you.” Max laughed, pulling her in closer.

“I’m heading out, my girl’s at the car but I’ll see you soon, yeah?” Danny asked, taking off his hat and running his hand through it.

“Yeah you will. See you soon Dan.”

The desert heat was unrelenting, the sun beating down on Max and Danny as they sat outside their barracks during a rare moment of downtime. Max leaned against a wall, his cap pulled low over his eyes, but it wasn’t enough to shield him from Danny’s relentless teasing.

“You’ve been staring at that box for five minutes, man,” Danny said, smirking as he leaned back in his chair. “You sure you don’t want me to take it off your hands? I’d do a solid job proposing to her, you know.”

Max shot him a look, his jaw tightening, though there was no real heat behind it. “Touch it, and I’ll bury you in the sand.”

Danny snorted, tossing a rock lazily across the dusty ground. “Relax, lover boy. I’m just saying—you’ve had that ring for months. You’ve got the whole speech planned, don’t you? ‘I’ve loved you since we were kids, you’re my whole world,’ blah, blah, blah. Bet you even practiced in the mirror.”

Max rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help the faint smile tugging at his lips. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small velvet box, flipping it open to reveal the simple but elegant ring inside. He didn’t need anything flashy—she wouldn’t want that. The ring was perfect: timeless, just like her.

“I don’t need a speech,” Max said quietly, running his thumb along the edge of the box. “She already knows. She’s known since before I left the first time.”

Danny’s teasing grin softened into something more genuine. “She’s a lucky girl, you know. Not everyone would stick around through all this.”

“She’s not sticking around,” Max corrected, his voice firm. “She’s living her life—uni, friends, everything she’s always wanted. She’s just...waiting for me to come back, too.”

Danny whistled low. “Well, when you put it like that, I guess you’re the lucky one.”

Max didn’t argue. He thought about her every day—her laugh, the way she scribbled little doodles in the corners of her letters, the photo she’d sent him of her sitting on the quad with her textbooks spread out around her. She looked happy, and that was what mattered most to him.

But God, he missed her.

“I’ll ask her when we’re off duty,” Max said, snapping the box shut and tucking it safely back into his pocket. “The next time I get to see her, I’m not waiting. I’m not wasting another minute.”

Danny grinned, tipping his chair back on two legs. “You’re gonna make me cry, man. I’m just glad I’ll be there to see it.”

“You’re not invited.”

“Like hell I’m not.”

They both laughed, the kind of laugh that felt rare in a place like this. For a moment, the heaviness of deployment lifted, replaced by something lighter—hope.

But when the laughter faded, Max’s mind drifted back to her. He pictured her sitting in a lecture hall, twirling a pen between her fingers, her hair catching the sunlight. She’d promised him that first day he left that she’d always be there waiting for him, and she had never broken that promise.

And soon—so soon—he’d finally get to make one to her.

The cab pulled up to her apartment building, a modest brick complex tucked onto a quiet street just off campus. Max stared out the window, his heart thundering in his chest. It didn’t matter that he’d seen her a year ago on leave or that they’d talked just last week on a grainy video call. Being here, knowing she was just a flight of stairs away, made it all feel brand new.

Danny’s words echoed in his head as he grabbed his bag and climbed out. Don’t mess this up, man. She’s been waiting long enough.

The door to her unit opened before he could even knock. There she was, framed in the doorway, wearing an oversized sweater and leggings, her hair falling loose around her shoulders. She broke into a smile so bright it felt like the sun had come out, and before he could say a word, she threw her arms around his neck.

“Max!” she breathed, holding onto him like she never wanted to let go.

He dropped his bag and wrapped her up, burying his face in her hair. She smelled like home, like everything he’d missed.

“Hey,” he said softly, his voice catching.

She pulled back just enough to look at him, her hands sliding to his shoulders. “You’re here. You’re actually here.”

“I’m here.”

She laughed, the sound a little shaky, and grabbed his hand, tugging him inside. “Come on, I made dinner. It’s probably cold by now, but I didn’t want to risk leaving the kitchen in case—”

She didn’t get to finish.

Max stopped dead in the small kitchen, his eyes scanning the space—the mismatched dishes on the counter, the vase of sunflowers he recognised from her letters, the magnets on the fridge holding up her class schedule and pictures of them together. It was perfect.

And suddenly, he couldn’t wait.

“This wasn’t how I planned it,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

“What?” She turned, confusion flickering in her eyes.

Max dropped to one knee right there in the middle of the kitchen, pulling the velvet box from his pocket. He saw her gasp, her hands flying to her mouth, but he was too focused to stop now.

“I wasn’t going to do it like this,” he said, the words tumbling out. “I had a whole plan—something big and romantic—but I don’t care about plans anymore. I just...I love you. I’ve loved you for as long as I can remember, and I don’t want to wait another second to ask.” He opened the box, his hands steady despite the chaos in his chest. “Will you marry me?”

She froze, her wide eyes locked on his. The silence stretched, and Max felt a flicker of panic.

“So?” he said, his voice cracking slightly.

That broke her. She let out a choked laugh, tears spilling down her cheeks as she dropped to her knees in front of him. “I’m sorry! I’m just—yes! Of course, yes!”

Her arms went around his neck, and she kissed him fiercely, her tears wetting his face. Max held her close, the ring box forgotten on the floor as he kissed her back, pouring every bit of love and relief into the moment.

When they finally broke apart, she laughed through her tears, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw. “You really couldn’t wait, huh?”

“Not for this,” he said, his voice low and raw.

She smiled and kissed him again, slower this time, her hands sliding down to rest against his chest. Max stood, lifting her with him effortlessly, and set her on the edge of the counter.

��Max,” she murmured, her hands slipping beneath the collar of his shirt.

“Yeah?” he said, his forehead resting against hers.

“Welcome home.”

He smiled against her lips, capturing them in another kiss, and for the first time in what felt like forever, Max let himself feel it all—the love, the relief, the joy of knowing he was exactly where he was meant to be.

Dinner had been a blur, both of them too giddy and caught up in the moment to care that the food was lukewarm and hastily reheated. They laughed, talked, and stole kisses between bites, the kind of easy affection that felt like they’d never been apart.

Now, hours later, they were tangled together in her bed. The room was dark save for the soft glow of the streetlight filtering through the blinds. She lay draped across his chest, her fingers tracing lazy patterns on his skin, her eyes fixed on the ring now resting snugly on her finger.

“How are we going to do this?” she asked quietly, her voice thoughtful but tinged with uncertainty.

Max’s hand came up to stroke her back, his thumb brushing along her shoulder blade. He let out a soft sigh. “I leave in three months.”

She stilled for a moment, her finger pausing mid-trace.

“But,” he added, his voice warm and steady, “until then, we live the happy life. All of it. You, me, late-night takeout, bad movies, everything.”

She tilted her head up to look at him, her brow furrowing slightly. “Three months isn’t that long, Max. And I’m still at uni. I’ve got two more years. How—”

“We’ve made it work for two years while I’m away,” he interrupted gently, cupping her cheek with one hand. “We can do two more. You’ve been with me through everything—every deployment, every letter, every call. This won’t be any different. Except now,” he added, his lips quirking into a small smile, “you’ll be my fiancée.”

Her lips trembled, and she leaned up to kiss him, slow and deliberate, her hand slipping over his to hold it against her cheek. When she finally pulled back, her eyes shone with determination.

“You’re really bad at letting me be dramatic, you know that?” she teased softly.

“Someone’s gotta keep you in check,” he said with a smirk.

She laughed quietly, settling back against his chest, and Max tightened his arms around her. They lay there in silence for a while, her fingers once again toying with the ring as if she couldn’t quite believe it was real.

He was engaged.

He was happy.

And he was going to marry the love of his life.

the end.

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