#I spent a good ten minutes laughing at this

[cjlouwho]

An Open Door

In which Eddie leaves, and Tommy stays. bucktommy. rated G. read below or on ao3.

Buck waved as Eddie’s truck turned at the end of the street. He stood in the driveway for a bit, staring at the house. Now empty, ready for an older couple to move into next week.

He thought about all the memories there. The many nights spent playing video games with Christopher, the both of them begging Eddie to let Chris stay up ten more minutes.

The times Buck came to Eddie’s with good news, or bad news. A home he was as comfortable in as his own.

A home he’d never step foot in again.

He sighed, got into his Jeep, took one last look, and drove away.

*****

When he got to his loft, he didn’t think twice before heading for the kitchen. He got out a baking sheet, turned on the oven, and went to the pantry to grab his ingredients.

It’d been a while since he’d done this. He’d stopped around the time Maddie had gotten taken, then most of his spare time was spent helping Eddie sell his place and find one in Texas.

But now he had all the free time in the world, which meant he could bake until he ran completely out of flour- then head to the store for more.

As he began mixing the ingredients together for some shortbread cookies, his mind was in overdrive.

He couldn’t stop thinking. Thinking about all the good memories, the way he used to feel, how happy he was every time they made plans, what it was like having him there.

And he thought about how he felt now. How sad, lonely, heartbroken. The way he wished more than anything he could change how it all ended. How he wished the people he loved would learn to stay. How-

Oh.

The oven beeped to alert it was preheated at the exact moment Buck connected the dots.

He knew what he needed to do. What he had to do.

Quickly, he scrubbed his hands, shut off the oven, and grabbed his keys and a Ziploc bag from the freezer.

It was now or never.

*****

Buck knocked on the door, swaying from side to side anxiously as he waited for it to open.

He took a deep breath once the doorknob turned, needing a second to take in the sight in front of him.

Tommy standing there in sweats, a black henley, and his jacket. Hair slightly disheveled, eyes blinking rapidly to adjust to the sunlight.

“Ev- Buck, what are you doing here?”

“I needed to talk to you.”

“Okay." Tommy moved to the side. "Do you… you wanna come inside?”

“I won’t stay long. I- I’ve had a rough few weeks. It- Actually, it’s been a rough few months.”

“I heard about Maddie,” Tommy said. “I’m glad she’s okay. I would’ve called, but I didn’t think it was my place.”

“It would have been nice,” Buck replied bitterly, “to hear from you.”

Tommy nodded, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry, Buck.”

“That’s not- I’m not here because of that.”

“Okay. So... why are you here?”

“Eddie left today, for Texas.”

“To go visit Chris?”

“To move there. Y- You didn’t hear about that?”

“No,” Tommy answered, crossing his arms over his chest. “I haven’t spoken to Eddie since we broke up. Are you okay?”

“I was baking-” Buck held out the bag in his hand, giving it to Tommy, “here’s some cookies, by the way. Chocolate chip walnut.”

“My favorite.”

“I know. Anyway, I was baking and I realized that, I was sad. I was really, really sad. And angry. I- I felt betrayed, and lonely, and hurt.”

“Eddie was a good friend to you.”

Buck huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “It didn’t have anything to do with Eddie, Tommy.”

Tommy’s eyebrows furrowed, a second of confusion washing over him until realization hit. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Eddie’s always gonna be my friend. He- no matter where he is, I’ll be able to call or go visit, and I’m sure he’ll visit here with Christopher. It… It’s you, Tommy. I want you in my life. I- I know I screwed up. I didn’t think everything through, and y- you were right. I was being impulsive.”

“I screwed up too,” Tommy admitted.

Buck nodded in agreement. “Yeah, you did. I wasn’t aware there were rules to figuring out your sexuality and I- I didn’t realize that you went into this thinking I was just passing through-”

“Buck, that’s not-”

“Let me finish.” Buck took a breath, straightening up as Tommy pursed his lips. “I wasn’t using you as a way to test out whether or not I was really into men. You- Tommy, I was all in. It hurt me to think that you never were.”

Tommy waited a moment, then, “Is it okay to talk now?” he asked, voice quiet.

“I’m done.”

“When I asked you out that night, at your place, I had no idea you hadn’t ever been with another man. And when I found out, I decided right then and there that you could set the pace. However slow that pace was, it was on you. I didn’t realize your pace was a hell of a whole lot faster than mine. I didn’t know I’d spend the majority of the next six months out of breath, running to try and catch up-”

“Tommy-”

Tommy held up a hand. “Please, just… let me finish.”

With a little eye roll, Buck held his tongue.

“I’ve never known anyone who,” he paused, choosing his words carefully, “who cares as much as you. I’ve never had anyone care for me or stick around once they really got to know me and that scared me.”

Now it was Buck’s turn to wait a moment before asking, “Is it okay to talk now?”

“I’m done.”

“Love.”

Tommy blinked once. Twice. “Love?”

“You said no one had ever cared for you, but it wasn’t just that,” Buck replied, on a roll now. “It was- is- love. I love you, Tommy. That’s the only way I can explain it, and I should have said it before but I don’t think it even hit me until I was in my second week of trying to make the perfect sourdough bagels. I have never, ever felt the pain I felt when you walked out the door. I’ve never mourned a partner the way I’ve mourned you and I’ve never loved someone the way I love y-”

Suddenly, Tommy’s finger was hooked under Buck’s chin, lifting his head slightly, just enough to press their lips together.

Buck moaned into it and, when Tommy went to back away far too soon, Buck was grabbing onto his jacket and pulling him closer.

Tommy dropped the cookies, bringing his arms around Buck’s back and holding him tight.

“Evan,” Tommy panted as they finally parted for air. “Evan, I-”

“What?” Buck asked, noting the sad look on Tommy’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“I dropped your cookies.”

Buck threw his head back with a laugh, grabbing onto Tommy’s face and kissing him again. “There’s plenty more where that came from, I promise.”

Tommy smiled softly, unable to tear his eyes away from Evan’s. “Can you say it again?” he asked.

“I love you, Tommy,” Buck said, no hesitation.

Tommy pulled Buck close, wrapping his arms around him tightly. “I love you too, Evan.”

Buck, feeling lighter and calmer than he’d felt in months, rested his head on Tommy’s shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You want to come in now?”

“I’d love that.”

[hees-mine]

Always - L. HS

Pairing: heeseung X fem reader

Warnings: smut, unprotected sex, dirty talk, cursing, angst.

Genre: brothers best friend.

WC: 4k+

Posting this here because i want to get it out of my drafts since it’s been there forever it’s old so it’s not good but oh well lowkey want to make another story with this trope though 👀 a better one

-

“Sure you don’t want to come with?” Your brother Jake cracks open your bedroom door, checking with you one last time.

“I’m sure I’m not feeling well today, so I think I’ll just stay home,” you told him a little white lie, pulling your blankets up to your chest.

“Alright I’ll be back in an hour or so do you need anything?” He asks like the caring brother he is.

“Sleep,” you reply with a chuckle.

“Alright,” he laughs softly and turns off the light in your room.

As soon as you heard the door close from downstairs, you texted heeseung, your brother’s best friend and the guy you’ve been hooking up with for the past couple of months.

Ever since Jake introduced you to heeseung, there was definitely undeniable tension between the two of you, but you both ignored it cause he didn’t want to break the bro code, and you didn’t want to disappoint your brother, so both of you kept your hands to yourselves.

That seemed to be working until you both entered college together, and to celebrate everyone’s success of getting into college, one of your mutuals threw a house party you had to attend cause you were one of the people being celebrated, and obviously, so was heeseung.

That night, neither of you could keep your eyes off the other. It started out with flirty glances and winks from across the room; then, after a few shots, it progressed into you both dancing together, him behind you, holding your waist while you sway your hips to the beat, feeling the unmistakable hardness in his jeans.

The alcohol in your system and the way his hot breath fanned across your face whenever he complimented your figure had you melting into him, and what made you give in completely was the subtle but very effective rolls of his hips, his hard-on brushing against your ass had you pulsing and dripping with need, and evidently, he was just as needy cause the words finally rolled off his tongue. “Let’s go upstairs.” With one last glance around the party, your brother was nowhere in sight, and you both snuck off to a vacant bedroom where he gave you the best night of your life.

He fucked you so good after years of being pent up he released all of his want for you in one night, giving you round after round till you both were numb and shaking with unspeakable pleasure.

That night led you both to hooking up behind your brother’s back you both felt guilty that’s for sure but now that you had a taste of each other there was no way you’d be stopping anytime soon.

Which is why your fingers are excitedly moving across your keypad to set up another hookup.

“My brother just went to the mall. Do you want to come over?”

“Finally, I’ll be over in ten. Be ready when I arrive ;)”

You smile at his text and pull the blankets back, going downstairs to unlock the door for his arrival. You quickly go back upstairs, slipping off every article of clothing before getting back onto the bed and waiting for heeseung.

He seems to arrive earlier than ten minutes he may or may not have sped on the way there he parked a few blocks away to hide his car just in case and made his way to the door not bothering to knock cause he knew you always kept it unlocked for him and besides this was like his second home with as much time as he spent here with Jake he opened the door and headed upstairs straight to your bedroom.

He knocked gently his eyebrows raising with amusement cause the door was already cracked all he had to do was push it open and there you were sitting there looking all pretty underneath the covers. “Hey” he says quietly and steps inside shutting the door behind him.

“Hey,” you reply flirtatiously and peel back the covers, showing off your body.

He bites his bottom lip and tosses his jacket to the side of the room, easily slipping off his shoes, which he didn’t even bother to untie.

You watch him undress, your body already heating up with anticipation.

His shirt comes off next, and he walks to the edge of the bed and climbs on top, crawling over to you until he’s hovering over your naked body. “Always look so fucking pretty for me” he kissed your shoulder, and you wrapped your arms around his neck spreading your legs so he could get in between them.

“I try” You chuckle softly, and he captures your lips in a kiss slotting himself between your legs and pressing his semi-hard cock right against your pussy, causing you to moan of course, he uses the opportunity to slip his tongue inside of your mouth, exploring every last inch of you.

Tangling your hands in his hair, you bring him as close to you as possible, kissing him with just as much desire as he does with you.

When it becomes difficult to breathe, he pulls away the string of saliva between the two of you, getting lost as he starts to kiss down your neck. “Hmm, hee,” his hands trail down your sides, softly tickling your flesh before gripping your waist tightly and rutting himself against your naked pussy your wetness surely staining his sweats.

He nips at the skin of your neck, his hot breath sending a shiver down your spine as you buck your hips up into him. “Fuck baby, I can’t wait anymore” he pulls back, staring into your eyes, his eyes full of lust.

“That’s good cause we only have an hour,” you chuckle, running your hands down his chest til you reach the waistband of his sweats, pulling them down along with his underwear till his cock falls out he, ’s rock-hard precum leaking at the tip of his shaft twitching as he catches the way you stare at his length between your legs.

Once you pull his clothing down his thighs, he takes the reins, slipping the two articles down to his ankles, too impatient to get fully undressed. “Turn over. Wanna fuck that pretty little pussy from behind.”

Not one ounce of shame runs through your veins as you turn over on your stomach at record speed, presenting your holes to him.

“That’s it” he bites his lip spanking your ass, and watching it jiggle, he places both of his palms on your ass, kneading softly as he slots his length between your round ass cheeks. “Shit,” he whispers to himself, loving the way his precum stains your beautiful skin. “Ass up for me” You arch your back, burying your face into your pillows as you feel his tip prodding at your pussy lips. “Look at that pussy so wet for me” he slips his first finger in you, groaning at the feeling of your warm cunt clenching around his finger. He added another alongside his index one, and your walls welcomed him with ease. Your sticky wetness aids the process of stretching you out. “Fuck you’re taking my fingers so well could probably just slip my cock in you right now.”

“Yes please I can take it” you laid your cheek on the pillow heart pounding with anticipation as your breath quickens.

“Yeah? Want me to put it in you?” he curled his fingers inside you, causing your walls to clench yet again.

“Fuck yes, please stick it inside me, hee” Your breath gets sucked out of you the moment you feel his bulbous tip enter you.

You’ve been wanting this for the past few weeks and finally you were able to get what you’ve been craving for.

He lets out a sharp breath sinking his hard cock all the way inside you till he bottoms out. “So tight and warm,” he moans softly, his head rolling back as he holds your waist, adjusting to the wet sensation encasing his cock.

Your mouth parts in a gasp, legs going numb as you feel him stretch you out so good.

You grip the sheets, your walls clenching and unclenching around his thick pulsing cock.

He withdrew himself, pulling out until nothing but the tip was left inside and then thrusting forward, filling you up to the brim. “God damn, you always feel so fucking good,” he grunts, creating a steady rhythm sliding in and out of your wet pussy.

“Fuck” you breathe out, eyes tightly closing shut as you focus on the pleasure of his thick length rubbing against your walls so deliciously.

“Yeah? Feel good, baby?” He grabs hold of your shoulders for leverage, stroking your walls perfectly. “Taking it so deep for me,” he smirks, watching the way your pussy lips welcome his cock so warmly. “You like it deep, huh?” His eyes are lidded as he witnesses the sight of your juices, creating a creamy white ring of arousal around his base.

“Yes, love feeling your cock d-deep inside m-me fuck heeseung,” you whimper, unable to contain the way your walls squeeze around him.

“Fuck you’re so tight I’m not gonna last long,” he huffs, speeding up the movement of his hips. It felt too good to slow down the sound of his skin slapping against yours, making him even more feral. “Fuck fuck fuck” he lowers his hands to your waist, holding you still, but the force of his thrusts has you sliding up the bed, his cock head kissing your cervix with every thrust.

“Yes, please don’t stop right there,” you whine, toes curling as you gush around his cock, creating the wettest sounds you ever heard.

“Hear that baby? Your little pussy is talking to me. You must really be enjoying my dick, huh?” He asks, knowing full well you love how he fucks every single time.

“Hmm, yes,” you whine, feeling your high approaching.

“You close? I can feel you clenching on my dick so hard” he lets out a laugh, fingertips pressing into your sides, his balls loudly smacking your ass as his thrusts turn erratic.

“So close,” you mewl.

“M-me too gonna fill this pussy up make it even more creamy baby,” he grunts, thrusting like an animal in heat. Both of you are so close the familiar warm tingling sensation spreads throughout both your bodies.

You could feel it just a second away, but the sound of his phone ringing made you lose focus.

“Fuck” he grunts in frustration. His hand leaves your waist messily, reaching for his phone so he can shut it off and focus back on what’s really important, except when he reads the caller ID, his heart races. “Shit, it’s your brother,” he sighs, slowing the pace of his hips but still fucking his cock deep into you.

“Just ignore it,” you complain, wiggling your ass against him, trying to get him to speed up again.

“I can’t just keep quiet yeah” he takes a deep breath before answering. “Hello?”

“Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to come over I was just at GameStop, and I bought a few new games” heeseung presses your lower back down, arching you further so he can reach even deeper, and you use every last ounce of strength not to moan out loud from the feeling of his thick cock reaching the depths of your pussy.

“S-sure, what time are you fuck-“ he hisses as another gush of wetness releases around his cock. “What time are you thinking?” He swallows thickly, his breathing becoming heavier with each stroke. He’s too close right now. As soon as the call ends, he’s gonna release his load deep inside your sweet juicy pussy and give you what you deserve.

“I’m on my way home in about fifteen. I’ll probably take a shower too, so in about half an hour,” heeseung tries his best to focus on what his best friend is saying, but it’s hard when your pussy squeezes his cock so tight.

“S-sounds good. I’ll come over in about 45 minutes,” he groans softly, but it could still be picked up over the line.

“You okay? You sound weird,” Jake says on the other line.

Heeseung panic’s initially but then comes up with the most feasible answer he can think of. “I’m good just out of energy getting in a really really good workout” he bites his lip to hold in a moan.

“Alright, well, enjoy your workout. See you tonight,”

“See you tonight” heeseung hits the end call button at lightning speed, and as soon as his phone hits the mattress, he’s gripping your hip and fucking into you like a wild beast, his thick cock fucking your walls to no end. You’re screaming mess nonstop, moans and cries of his name spilling from your pretty lips. “Fuck yeah, baby, scream my fucking name”

“Heeseung!” You cry even louder as he snakes his hand under your waist and starts rubbing your clit. “Oh fuck I’m coming. I’m coming, heeseung!” You shriek, your eyes rolling back as you shake violently on the bed, your pussy pulsating around him.

“Yeah, let go for me, cum all over this dick,” he hums. “Gonna pump you full of my cum, baby. Want that?”

“Yes,” you whimper breathlessly.

“Oh fuck I’m gonna give it to you” After one last thrust, he’s emptying his huge load in your hole. “Shit baby, I’m cumming, I’m cumming” he grunts, hips wildly bucking into you, riding out his high, drilling into your heat, and filling you up to the brim with his cum. “Shit baby,” he throws his head back, panting heavily.

“Hmm,” you moan in satisfaction, his hands running all over your body, helping you come back down from the earth-shattering orgasm. You sink into the mattress, and he lays on top of you, panting as he leaves stray kisses all over your cheek, lips, and shoulders.

You both lay like that for a while, regaining your strength and being able to move again.

Everything is silent save for the short breaths you both let out. “Shit baby, I want you again already,” he chuckles against your ear biting your lobe softly as he rolls his hips sensually, pushing his cum deeper in you.

“Hee,” you whine at the feeling of his cock inside you. “I wish we could, but my brothers gonna be home soon,” you whisper.

“Fuck I wish he would leave more often. Going weeks without feeling your pussy is torture,” he laughs and rests his cheek on yours, relishing in the aftermath before he gets ready to leave.

Just before he begins to part from your body, you both hear the front door shut. “Shit,” heeseung slowly pulls out of your hole, both of you hissing at the loss of contact as all his cum streams from your hole.

You popped up out of bed, searching for his clothes so he could get dressed and leave a thick trail of white dripping down your thighs. “I thought he said half an hour!” You whisper yelled

“Me too,” he says, hopping on one foot to put his shoes back on.

“You have to go now,” you tell him urgently and open your window.

“Really?!” He whispers, knowing the window isn’t exactly close to the ground.

“Yes, now hurry.” he walks past you and doesn’t miss the mess he made between your legs. “Fuck” he shakes his head in disbelief. He can’t believe he had to leave you like that. If he had it his way, he’d fill you up all night long, but sadly, your brother and his best friend had to ruin it. “Kiss me,” he quickly whispered, and you gave him a little peck on the lips.

He goes out the window doing his best not to make a lot of noise and trying to grab anything for some type of leverage so he wouldn’t slip and fall.

After he got about half way he let go dropping to the ground softly and scurrying to his car to wait inside for another half hour and pretend like he had just arrived.

With a sigh of relief, you went to the bathroom to shower before bed.

That was close, almost too close.

-

As close of a call as that was, that still wasn’t gonna stop you from seeing heeseung again.

You were quite literally addicted to him.

But he was having other thoughts.

“Are you coming over tonight my brother is out again” this time you’d called him instead of texting.

“Nah, last time was close enough, and to be honest, I don’t think we should push our luck. Let’s just call this off.”

“Call it off?” You’re a bit surprised by that you weren’t expecting that would be his response but you understood where he was coming from.

Not to say you liked it, though.

“Yeah it’s not worth it anymore id like to live and if your brother catches me balls deep inside his sister I doubt he’d let me live” he chuckles but you don’t really find it to be that funny especially how he said it wasn’t worth it anymore.

“Well… okay I guess I’ll see you next time you and my brother hangout” you mumble a bit disappointed but you understood it was risky and you can’t really blame him for calling it quits.

“You will, dollface. It was fun while it lasted,” you smile faintly.

“Yeah…. Bye,” he ended the call first, and you tossed your phone to the side, sighing. Who were you going to get sex from now?

That question would be answered within just a few hours. Apparently, not just heeseung was hanging out with Jake today, but his friend Jay as well. You knew him well. He hadn’t been around much lately, but you did have a good relationship with him.

And now that you think about it, he was attractive, nice, and a good friend.

You’re sure he’s probably good in bed, too.

“Hi, Jay!” You cheered as he entered, already putting your plan in motion.

“Hey y/n! It’s been a while.” he walks over to you, ready to give you a side hug, but you pull him in a full hug, pressing yourself against his body. “Did you miss me or something?” he laughs awkwardly, wrapping his arms around you and hugging you just as warmly.

“Yeah plus I didn’t know you’d be coming over” you pull away from the hug hands still resting on his shoulders.

“Yeah, it was heeseung’s idea.” you both looked at heeseung, and he was just standing there already, staring at the two of you and your hands on Jay's shoulders.

“Good idea, heeseung. It’s nice seeing you after so long, Jay,” you smile, taking a seat.

“You too, y/n.” he offers you a warm smile, greeting everyone else as he takes off his jacket and shoes.

“Well, we were gonna play games, but since y/n seems excited to hang out with us, how about a movie instead so she can join us?” Jake suggested that since you weren’t into video games that much,

“Sounds good to me,” Jay agrees.

“No, id rath-“Heeseung got shut down immediately by Jake.

“Three against one, you lose; besides, we game all the time anyways,” Jake concluded and sat on the couch searching for a movie.

Once the movie was picked, you all went to the kitchen to prepare snacks and drinks for the movie night once you got all settled in, you took a seat on the couch when heeseung saw where you were sitting, he moved over to you, but since the conversation you both had last time you didn’t want to sit next to him you couldn’t be that close to him not when you were literally thirsting for him how could someone look so good in a baggy shirt and pants you had no idea, but your panties definitely did as they were already damp just feeling him so close was doing things to you.

The fact you couldn’t act on those things was torture.

So you got up and sat next to Jay, who was on the bigger couch, leaving heeseung to sit all alone. He watched you sitting next to Jay, laughing together at some scene in the movie that he couldn’t even pay attention to cause he was too upset seeing you both that close together.

Since when did you have so much fun with Jay?

Heeseung was unknowingly sulking each time you laughed or pushed Jay on the shoulder even the way you both ate out of the same bowl made him feel weird.

He folded his arms across his chest, jaw tightly clenched. After he saw you both feeding popcorn to each other, he had to stop watching you two before he lost it. “You got any alcohol?” He asked Jake cause he’d definitely need something to numb whatever dumb aching feeling that was in his chest.

“Top cabinet.” he nodded and stood up.

“The popcorn needs a refill,” you announced and went to the kitchen a few moments after heeseung.

“Woah, slow down,” you said and giggled when you saw him downing a bottle of liquor.

“I should say the same to you.” he chuckled and threw his head back, taking another shot.

“Come again? I’m not the one drowning in booze,” you laugh, opening another bag of popcorn.

“Yeah, 'cause you wanna drown in something else,” he mumbles to himself.

“What?”

“You heard me. I saw you all over, Jay. Wouldn’t it be better to fuck someone that isn’t friends with your brother?” He laughs while shaking his head.

“Ehh, I was with you, and it didn’t bother me,” you shrug. “Besides, I need to get it from somewhere,” you add in a joking manner, but he doesn’t take it that way.

“Not surprised”

“Excuse me?!” You say, feeling slightly offended you had no idea where this was coming from.

“Don’t act shocked. How the fuck do think that’s supposed to make me feel? When you’re all fucking over him after we just- just fuck it, whatever, I don’t care.”

“Heeseung, you’re drunk,” you replied, brushing his nonsense off.

“And you’re nothing but a fucking slut that can’t go one minute without a dick stuffed inside you before you go fucking running off to someone else” he raises his voice slightly, feeling his agitation grow.

“Shush!” You whisper. “What is it to you? You said it wasn’t worth it anymore. What do you think? I’m just gonna stop having sex because we’re not doing it anymore?” You say, confused.

“Cause I didn’t want to fucking get caught. I didn’t know you’d go out searching the very next day. We broke it off,” he sighs.

“What am I supposed to do? You’re obviously not an option anymore,” you say, getting defensive.

“I don’t know, maybe try a little harder to make something work between us,” he lowers his voice, picking at the label on the liquor bottle.

“Something like what? this was just casual sex”

“Casual?” He laughs softly.

“Yes, that’s what we agreed on,” you remind him.

“So all this time we’ve been screwing, you still just feel it's casual?”

“Yes, and so do you, 'cause you even said I wasn’t worth it,” you replied.

“Well, I fucking take it back, okay, I like you. It was never casual for me, and it’s only been a few days, but I fucking miss you already, and to see how quickly you moved on makes me upset, especially cause it’s right in front of me.”

“So why did you say it?” You ask.

“Cause I didn’t want to get hurt. I knew we couldn’t be public, and I thought maybe just ending things would lighten the blow, but it made it worse cause to see you all over Jay made me feel like shit hence why,” he holds up the bottle of liquor.

“Hee, I feel the same way, too, but when you said it wasn’t worth it anymore, I didn’t think you really cared about us that much, and Jay, I don’t even know. I think I was just trying to take my mind off of you, but I want you and you only.”

“Yeah?” He stands up walking over to you and resting his hands on your hips. “You really mean that?” He cups your cheeks his left hand caressing your face gently.

“Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner,” you breathe out, getting lost in his eyes.

“Me too, but I understand, sweetheart. It was complicated, and I’m sorry for what I said earlier and for raising my voice and for cursing,” he rambles, and you laugh softly, wrapping your arms around him.

“I know I forgive you, hee.” You kissed the tip of his nose.

“Thank you, baby,” he smiles, pulling you into his arms. “I know it’s still complicated, but I’m gonna try my best to navigate through this with you. I don’t know what telling Jake will mean for us, but I think we should.”

“I’m scared,” you mumbled into his chest, fearing the disappointment your brother might feel if he found out about you and heeseung.

“Me too,” he chuckled. “But I know no matter the outcome, I want to be with you always.”

Leaning back, you looked up at him. “You mean that?”

“I do.” he smiles down at you, kissing your forehead and swaying you in his arms.

Only time would tell what the outcome would be of telling your brother you’ve been seeing his best friend, but you found comfort in knowing that heeseung would be there for you always.

-

Link to all my other works

[sc0tters]

Could Get Used To This | Kevin Fiala

summary: in a space full of chaos, sometimes all you need is a morning at the beach with your fiancé.

request: yes/no

warnings: nothing!

word count: 0.99k

authors note: we are back again with part two of the one shot wonder event! this was my first time writing for Kevin and I have to say it was nice to write something so soft and sweet even if it was so short!

You loved the sun. 

A day by the beach had always been your favourite way to kick off the summer and this year it was no different. You spent your morning lying on your towel, soaking up every bit of sunlight your skin could handle. 

But Kevin had other ideas for the both of you “liebling!” He whined feeling jealous of how your bikini got to hug your ass and your tits “yes love?” You looked up to see him now stood over you. 

He had just finished his swim so you were grateful that your sunglasses hid how your eyes drank in the sight of him. Droplets of water ran down his chiseled abs, and you couldn’t help but bite at your lip “good to know I still have it.” Kevin smirked sitting down on his towel next you yours. 

You sat up, rolling your eyes in the process “think this allows me to look at you from time to time.” You pointed to the engagement ring that you wore making him laugh in the process “please you were looking at me like that long before I proposed.” He shot back letting out an amused scoff. 

Your hand reached up to hold his “now what is it that you wanted?” You asked reminding him of the fact that he called you first.

He let out a soft ‘ah’ as his cheeks turned a shade of red “I wanted to see if you wanted to go home.” Kevin confessed letting his free hand fiddle with the strap of your bikini “give us a little more privacy.” There was a sultry sense in his tone that told you all that you really needed to hear. 

A smirk formed on your lips “seems like you’re the one who is obsessed with me.” You teased him leaning into his touch “you know I always am.” Kevin nodded getting up as if it was the most obvious thing in the world to everyone around you both. 

He held his hand out to help you up “and there won’t be a day that it’ll change.” Your heart throbbed as he wrapped your towel around your body before he threw his over his shoulder “should we go?” Kevin asked taking the beach bag into his hand before he used his free hand to lock it into yours. 

You nodded, slotting your feet into your flip-flops “lead the way.” You pressed a kiss against his shoulder, enjoying the last moments of listening to the waves crashing against the shore.

The walk to and from the beach was something that both of you always found so peaceful with it only being ten minutes. That was actually part of the whole appeal of your home when you bought it. 

It was the first place you had seen and the moment Kevin saw the grin on your face at how short the walk to the beach was. He knew that there was no better place for the two of you, and the offer was written and sent in that night. By the end of the week after, the place was yours. Now even after all these years, it still came with the same appeal that you both found in it the first time you saw it. 

You couldn’t help but smile as you watched him race to the gate and then wait so he could let you into the backyard first “my gentleman.” You smiled pressing a kiss against his cheek as you took the bag back from him “thank you baby!” The moment you were in he went back to what he was planning on. 

Kevin had jumped into your pool first making you laugh as you set your bag on the ground “the water is perfect!” He called out throwing his hair back out of his eyes. 

Sometimes you never had to wonder what he would do if he retired, Kevin would happily be a child of the water forever if he could “let me get my feet in first.” You announced wanting to sit on the edge of the pool for a little bit. 

He nodded, watching your every move until you too took off your sunglasses “there’s my pretty wife.” Kevin smiled swimming over to settle between your legs “not for a few more months.” You corrected him as your wedding was three months away. 

But he waved you off “fine print details.” Kevin shook his head as he made you throw your head back with a laugh.

It was a sound he swore he’d never get tired of hearing as you grinned looking back at him “I love you.” Kevin announced placing his hands on the pools edge on either side of you. 

He did that so he could push up to kiss you. The kiss was sweet as he swore he would never get enough of you “I love you too.” Your voice was soft as you watched him settle back in the pool “and I also love you.” Kevin pressed a kiss against your stomach, it had been a few weeks since you found out you were pregnant. 

So at the moment this stayed just your little secret with him “now you coming in or do I have to force you in?” Kevin asked not even giving you a chance to respond as he wrapped his arms around your waist pulling you in. 

Like clockwork your arms wrapped around his shoulders and your legs locked around his hips “Kevin!” You squealed scared as if he was going to drop you “I’ve got you schatz.” Kevin clicked his tongue before he kissed your temple. 

He was right the water was indeed perfect, his hands rested against your ass as he settled with both of you in the water “you are a little shit.” You let out a soft laugh before you shook your head. 

Kevin grinned pecking your lips once more “yeah and I’m your little shit.” He was right again, and you didn’t want to have it any other way. 

[spideyanakin]

summary - malfoy + slything! reader, sirius left home to be disowned, leaving you to be engaged to his little brother. You and regulus decide to play the game and pretend - this part is literally just r and reg comforting each other after their wedding!

warnings - platonic best friends + husband! regulus x reader, moonwater mentioned, mentions/ allusions to sex but it’s kind of poetic in an icky weird way

part of all I think about now - masterlist

You don’t know how long you had spent staring at the guilded ceiling. Definitely long enough to know how many carved Lys flowers painted in gold adorned each corner of the room. Enough to know how many laurel leaves were circling the chandelier’s hook.

The bed felt soft beneath you. A duvet of goose feathers, wrapped in white silk sheets that smelled like summer and roses.

Your corset felt suffocating in contrast to the light and softness of it all, and the pins in your hair were pulling your locks in places that you never wished would hurt again.

For a minute you felt as though you would never be able to breath again.

"So… this is really it, isn’t it?"

His soft voice broke your turmoil.

You turned your head to the side to look at him.

Regulus was in the same position as you. Sprawled out like a starfish over his side of the giant bed, hair tousled, jacket gone to the other side of the room and the few first button of his shirt popped open as he blankly gazed up at the ceiling.

Your mind seemed to finally comprehend.

You were married to Regulus.

You had travelled to France. You had been dolled up for hours until your entire body felt numb.

There was cake, champagne, an ungodly amount of congratulations from death eaters, and pure bloods. There were wedding vows, a binding of your magic to his. There was the Dark Lord, staring at you in all his charming glory, piercing eyes, and a sharp smile of approval as you walked inside the large hall of the chateau at the arm of your new husband.

Your skin was still burning from the fresh mark adorning your arm. He had insisted on doing it tonight, to mark the occasion. After all, you were now a woman of society, no more the schoolgirl being readied for her duties.

There wasn’t a world in which you could refuse the Dark Lord’s wedding gift.

It was burning and you hated it.

And then, when all the courtesies were said, the cakes eaten and drinks drunk, they finally set you free.

You had been driven to yet another chateau deeper into the French forests whose name you did not know. The place was smaller, with yet an even more splendid garden to drown your days in. It was owned by some follower of Lord Voldemort. Yet another good friend of your brother whose name you couldn’t even start to attempt to remember.

There was a staff of maybe ten house elves running around to prepare the home for your honey moon as you walked inside.

Once you had been shown to your suite, the door closing behind you in a snap of magic, your shoes had gone flying, and you caught sight of Reg’s jacket being thrown across the room as you threw yourself on the enormous bed. You barely felt the thud that followed as Regulus did the exact same thing.

"Are you alright?" He turned to look at you, after what felt like hours of silent rumination, meeting your eyes in a soft gaze.

"I am not sure," you whispered, afraid of your own voice.

He sighed. A deep sigh pouring from the depth of his chest as he shuffled to face you.

"You?"

"I am not sure either." He offered you a small smile, softly closing his eyes. Once he opened them again, he looked down at your arm, "how does it feel?"

You followed his eyes to the skull and snake now rudely drawn upon your forearm.

"It hurts," you mumbled, shuffling to lay on your side to face him as well.

"The pain will soothe in a few days…"

"It’s ugly."

That got a laugh out of him.

"I know."

"Who drew it for him?"

"I think the Dark Lord himself."

"Well he might be good at magic, but he is not a good artist."

He couldn’t help but smile at your complaints. He watched you gently rub your dark mark with the tip of your fingers, as your gaze went back to his face.

Regulus offered you his hand, which you took without a second thought. He squeezed your hand once it was securely against his, his thumb rubbing circles on your knuckles.

"How was last night?" You mumbled, face half hidden within the soft pillows. "Did you go?"

"I did," he spoke, barely above a whisper.

"Good, I’m proud of you," you squeezed his hand to accentuate your word. "How was he?" You met his eyes; there was a soft tragical sadness in them that made your heart twist in itself.

"Heartbroken, although he tried not to show it... But you were right."

"About?"

"I would have regretted it if I hadn't gone." You nodded in silent agreement.

"I know. I do not think he would have forgiven you either. Werewolf are famous for their grudges," you joked, which almost made him smile as you saw the soft memories of Remus flash before his eyes.

You watched as he softly played with your fingers, the pads of his own staying longer upon the golden band that now intertwined the two of you.

"How about you? How did it go?"

"It was devastating..." your voice wavered. "Devastatingly beautiful," closed your eyes as they started stinging.

The thought of Sirius's skin against your own, of the shared whispers and desperation in your voices. At the kisses that dragged until you ran out of your borrowed time.

You thought of him, of the glorious minutes where you only made one. Of his tears against your own, the ones swallowed by hopeless moans and gripping of flesh, hoping his skin would stay under the creases of your fingers, that his cells would forever stain your own. That you could slither yourself into his DNA, and stay there for eternity.

Your nose stung when you opened your eyes again.

"Sometimes I wished I had a time turner, but then, I do not know what I would change," you spoke as you met Regulus's stormy eyes.

"Nothing you could have done could have prevented this, Y/n. Sirius was always meant to leave this life."

"I know. I just wish," you dragged your words "that maybe, I had a similar destiny."

"I understand," he squeezed your hand once again.

"We will be alright, won’t we?"

"I think so," Regulus mumbled, offering you yet another soft smile, the ones you were the only witness of. "As long as we stick together."

"As long as we stick together."

[gamesetattach]

Coach's (Honorary) Kid

Jannik Sinner x Reader You're introduced to your family friend's current tennis project, and you take to him more than you expect Fun fact, I met Darren Cahill at the US Open when he was still coaching Simona Halep it was lit

You’d known Darren Cahill for most of your life. Your parents and Darren had been friends since their teenage years in Australia, and over the years, he’d become something of an honorary uncle to you. Though his career in tennis often kept him away, he’d always been a familiar presence during holidays and family gatherings. So when he welcomed you to spend a week in Monaco—inviting you to “see the sights” while he worked—you didn’t hesitate to say yes.

It wasn’t until you arrived in Monte Carlo, where Darren was coaching his latest protégé, Jannik Sinner, that you considered how close to the tennis world you were about to become. Darren had mentioned Jannik in passing before, always praising his work ethic and character, but you hadn’t paid much attention. To you, he was just another name in Darren’s long list of successful players.

That changed the moment you met him.

---

The first meeting was casual. Darren had arranged to end the first day of your catch up with by having you join a fairly routine dinner with the rest of his team. Wanting to introduce you to his young player and the people he spent most of his time with.

“And this is Jannik. Jannik, this is [Your Name],” Darren said, clapping a hand on your shoulder as you stood outside the quiet Italian restaurant. “She’s practically family, so don’t let her scare you with her moods.”

You laughed, shaking your head. “Ignore him. I grew out of those moods at least ten years ago. I’m perfectly sociable now, thank you very much.”

Jannik smiled, a touch quiet but warm. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” you replied, immediately struck by how tall he was—and how his shy demeanor contrasted with his imposing presence.

---

The dinner was relaxed, filled with team's boisterous stories and Darren's attempts to embarrass you with tales from your shared past. Jannik didn’t say much at first, but as the evening went on, he seemed to loosen up, letting out care-free, high pitch laughs at your jokes and even offering a few dry quips of his own.

“So, Darren says you’re in school?” he asked at one point, his green eyes meeting yours across the table.

“That’s right,” you said, setting down your glass of wine. “I'm working on my Doctor of Physical Therapy degree. Right now I mostly shadow sports physios.”

“Any for tennis players?” he asked, tilting his head slightly.

“Sometimes,” you replied. “Though I haven’t be around anyone as high-profile as you yet.”

He smiled, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know about high-profile.”

Darren rolled his eyes. “Don’t let him fool you. He's a star, but he’s one of the good ones. Even when he’s too modest to admit it.”

Jannik shook his head, but his smile didn’t fade.

---

The next day, Darren had to attend meetings with tournament organizers, leaving you to your own devices. You decided to explore the Monte Carlo harbor, snapping photos and indulging in some people-watching. As you wandered past the many luxury yachts, your phone buzzed with a text from Darren.

Darren: Jannik’s finishing up practice early. I sent him to find you and make sure you don’t get lost or go stir crazy.

You frowned slightly at the screen, typing back a quick response. Old habits die hard, and Darren still felt the need to look after you the way he would have when you were young.

You: I’m perfectly capable of entertaining myself, Darren

You: All love

Not even ten minutes later, you spotted Jannik walking toward you, a small smile on his face.

“Darren said you might need a guide,” he said by way of greeting.

“I heard” you replied, shaking your head affectionately. “Well, I hate to disappoint, but I’ve been doing alright.”

“Even so,” Jannik said, his tone light, “I’ve got the afternoon free. Mind if I join you?”

You hesitated for a moment, surprised at his openness, but nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

---

As the two of you wandered through the picturesque streets of Monte Carlo, the initial awkwardness gave way to easy conversation. Jannik told you about his childhood in the mountains Italy, his love of skiing, and how he’d transitioned to tennis. In turn, you shared stories about your work and your travels, surprised by how genuinely interested he seemed.

“So, do you ever get tired of it?” you asked at one point. “The constant travel? The pressure?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted, his hands shoved into his pockets. “But it’s worth it. I love the game, and sometimes I think I like the pressure. And… it’s taught me a lot about myself.”

“Like what?”

“Patience,” he said with a small laugh. “And how to stay calm when everything feels out of order.”

You nodded, impressed. “That’s a good skill to have. I could probably use some of that.”

“You seem pretty calm to me,” he said, glancing at you.

“You've yet to see me with a deadline coming up,” you said, grinning.

He laughed, warm and unguarded, and it was a sound you'd quickly come to love, “Fair enough.”

---

By the time you returned to the hotel, the sun was setting, casting a golden glow over the city. As you stood in the lobby, you found yourself reluctant to say goodbye.

“Thanks for letting me tag along,” Jannik said, his voice soft. “I… really enjoyed today.”

“Me too,” you said, surprised by how much you meant it.

There was a brief pause, and then he added, “Maybe we could do this again sometime? If you’re not too busy with Darren.”

You smiled, your heart fluttering just a little. “I’d like that.”

As he turned to leave, Darren’s words from dinner echoed in your mind: “He’s a star, but he’s also one of the good ones.”

You couldn’t help but think he might be right.

---

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

So that’s it, huh? We’re some kind of Suicide Slums?

[setevulpo]

i was thinking about the archangels and how fucked up being possessed by one of them would be and this was created. headcanons on what each (non-bloodline) vessel would go through while possessed! bon appétit

-

michael

their vessel runs hot, grace a constant thrum under the skin that imitates a heartbeat well enough for those unaware not to notice. the blue glow that takes over their eyes upon the slightest provocation calms only when their enemies are on the ground, enochian seared into what’s left of their skin once the light dies down.

the heat that follows them shapes the air into wings too big for the space they’re in, even in the most expansive fields earth has. they have to watch out when stepping on grass, or stretching their wings too far into the trees, or fire will follow them too.

eventually it starts to burn, whatever body they’re in. the grace running through its veins turns closer to lava with each passing day, flares deep inside its chest and expands down to its hands when their anger rises. bruises showing up in blues no matter how old they are, burns in its skin hot to the touch.

a smell of fire and smoke follows them when they leave the vessel, and they set ablaze anything in their path on the way to a new body. the largest fires are caused by their rage, charred eyes and hearts left behind on their path.

-

lucifer

there's something freezing under their skin, somehow encompassing entire rooms and digging into the skin of everyone around them. the air around them is cold enough to kill, frostbite reaching others before turning their own vessel's hands red with it. its lips are bitten red and raw because the taste of blood is almost intoxicating.

garbled enochian slips through in a constant downpour, because they are an angel and won't taint their tongue with a human language despite the way it burns their vessel's mouth. the easiest way to find them is following the trail of frozen footsteps and the scent of rust so strong it can be tasted.

the hypothermia that sets after some time is what leads them to find a new body, when the one they are wearing becomes too sluggish and their grace starts slipping through the dry cracks in its skin. all that's left is a cold body with its eyes frozen shut.

the earth bleeds on their path, water freezes red by being in their proximity, plants burn and die from the frost. their grace whips through the air and leaves bloody slashes in the skin of anyone who dares get in their way, the wounds never closing completely.

-

raphael

their electricity can be felt under the skin of their vessel, sometimes shocking those who try landing their hands on it. their presence makes people’s hair stand on end, their voice resonates through the room in a way that makes it impossible to ignore. the fissures that appear on its skin from one day to the next are eerily similar to lightning.

the eyes of their vessel gain an unnatural brightness, something fiery that is just wrong when compared to the decaying state of the rest its body. their words flow in a way that’s almost hypnotic, calming until the next strike of their blade.

an ill-suited vessel can’t hold them for long. the tremors starting in its hands show that, as do the bouts of dizziness that hit them every so often. by the time their vessel starts losing its sight they have a new victim picked, their electricity having already eroded the brain of the previous.

it seems as if thunderstorms follow their grace, both rain and lightning falling close but never hitting them. wildfires start in their wake, raindrops never quite reaching their destination, and the injured miraculously recovering in hours.

-

gabriel

there’s a wind hiding under their skin, usually unnoticeable to the common eye. they’re light on their feet, eyes travelling through every corner of the room they’re in, the air around them somehow feeling heavy with the power they chase. at times it blows stronger, the whole of them looking longer, bigger than their vessel, but it doesn’t last long anymore.

their vessel’s skin grows dry with time, tearing open with each snap of their fingers, grace pouring from its hands and giving life to lilies wherever it falls. all of their vessels’ hands are burnt by the time they leave, skin too fragile to handle their grace.

erosion is what kills their bodies, the debris that always seems to fly back towards them easily chipping away at flesh and bone. what’s left of the body after they take their leave isn’t enough to keep it alive, not with the dust coating its lungs.

tornadoes follow the path of their grace, leaving destruction and chaos between their vessels. they are angry, and they are frustrated, and the mayhem they create is the singular way they can be heard. the debris lifted by their rage is flung as far as their grace can reach.

-

[terrificchocolateferrets]

Me: *stabs my front teeth into the side of my disposable coffee cup to consume the boiling hot Life Juice I need to survive*

Everyone standing in line behind me:

The Starbucks barista:

Me: *slurp*

Starbucks barista: ma'am are you okay--

im just like a vampire but instead of drinking blood from people i drink coffee from cups

[nereidprinc3ss]

hourglass

in which spencer disappears from fem!reader's life entirely for three months, right as it seems they were finally about to make things official. when he comes back they reunite, all the while knowing things can't be the same as they were.

18+ (smut, angst) warnings/tags: oh god so many. NOT canon compliant in the slightest, i make shit up, softdom!spence, nipple stuff prob, fingering, oral f receiving, piv sex, unprotected sex, pet names, tara mentioned, depression, mentions of trauma cause its the prison arc duh, passing mentions of alcohol, mentions of spencer losing weight, reader mistakenly thinks spencer tried to kill himself BUT ONLY FOR A SECOND, where is diana reid, nobody knows or cares, probably filming glee, optimistic ending a/n: haven't posted smut in forever but this wip required it and the angst was so angsty i just had to finish it. it was started in jan or feb and subsequently added to and changed months apart and then edited so the writing quality varies from section to section which i apologize for. originally based on good guy by julia jacklin... also the odyssey by homer? can't really explain that one you'll just have to see for yourself anyway byeeee ilysm!!! PLS tell me if you liked it! or if you hated it! but preferably if you liked it! MWAH! wc <12k

It’s been about three months since you last saw Spencer Reid.

About three months since you had an early Valentine’s Day celebration (even though you weren’t a couple) complete with champagne (even though he doesn’t usually drink) and slow dancing (even though you swore you’d be terrible and he spent the first ten minutes laughing at you as you stepped on his toes.)

About three months since you finally settled your head on his shoulder and let the warbling vinyl carry you somewhere distant as the two of you danced slow circles on the parquet floor for what felt like hours.

You’d have liked him to stay later that night. You’d have liked him to stay all night if you were being honest with yourself, but at 11:45 he gently pulled away and told you he had to go.

“Curfew?” you joked, the corner of your mouth lifting a little and you hoped you were hiding your disappointment well.

“Actually, I’m going down to Texas for a few days to speak with one of the leading doctors in experimental Alzheimer's and dementia treatment. I’m going to see if he can get my mom into a clinical trial. I leave early tomorrow morning.”

“Oh my god, that’s amazing, Spencer! What are you doing still here? You should be at home getting ready to go!”

A rosy blush stains his cheeks and he looks down at the ground, laughing that little self-deprecating laugh of his. It makes your heart dance to see him so happy, makes you want to wrap your arms around him and never let him go so that he knows how much you absolutely adore him—but you settle for an affectionate squeeze where your hands have come to rest on his biceps.

“I wanted to see you tonight because I won’t be here for Valentine’s Day... but I still really wanted to spend it with you,” he admits meekly.

If before your heart was dancing, it is now melting.

The dreaded ‘what are we’ talk has been lurking in the dark corners of every conversation you have with each other lately—at least, in your mind it has. What you have with Spencer is not easily defined, and near impossible to explain to your friends—you act like a couple, you go out on dates, he introduces you to his team like you’re his girlfriend without ever putting it into so many words—but this validation that your pseudo-relationship might be evolving is better than any flowers he could have gotten you (although the peonies he brought will look very nice on your bedside table.)

“Four whole days... what will I do without you?” you whisper, brushing a hand along his face, and your chest aches with the heavy truth of it—despite the fact that he often is gone for stretches about that length. They don’t ever start to feel shorter.

“Well, you can start by reading that copy of The Odyssey I annotated for you.”

“Depressing,” you admit. “And a little ominous, considering you’re about to embark on a hero’s journey.”

“I think you’ll like this one,” he smiles.

You chew on your bottom lip, looking up at him as you think.

“Give me something to look forward to,” you say, earnestly.

“I—well, honestly, I just really want to kiss you and I’ve wanted to for a long time now and, you know, if that’s something you’re maybe also interested in then we could, uh, figure out a time to—”

“You want to kiss me?”

“Wh—you couldn’t tell?” Spencer says, like he can’t believe it.

As if on reflex, you lunge up and capture his lips with your own. It obviously catches him by surprise, but when you lower from your tiptoes he follows you, pulling you in closer and holding your face in his hands.

It’s too natural, too right, to be exhilarating. There’s no rush of adrenaline—it's more like stepping into a hot bath or warming your freezing hands at a fire. Like pieces clicking into place. It’s a relief.

You breathe into it, letting more and more of yourself melt against him. He keeps coming back to you deeper and deeper like a rising tide, and you want more than anything to keep getting closer to him—but then he stops. He stays close enough for you to breathe his air, but dodges your kiss gently before supplanting it with a gentle one to the corner of your mouth.

“I really have to go,” he breathes, before moving away from your mouth to kiss your forehead and speak softly against your skin. “If I don’t leave now I’ll be here all night.”

Which is exactly what you want, and the implication does little to make you want him less. But you care about him too much to be so selfish.

At some point, his hands found their way into your hair, and you gently grab his wrists.

“Incentive for you to come home.”

Nearly three months since that night.

At first when he stopped answering texts, you’d assumed he just had too much going on down in Texas. Which you could understand—you knew how stressful this situation with his mother was.

Even when four days came and went without even an alert from him that he was back in town, you thought, okay, maybe he’s been called away on a case. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared because of his work. But even then, he’d at least text you enough information so that you would know he was alive. Now, radio silence.

So you tried not to be clingy. You tried to act like an adult, to focus on school and your life outside of Spencer, but when Tara Lewis cancelled your weekly meeting due to an “unforeseen work-related emergency”you called her immediately. Tara was something of a mentor, and it was she who had connected you and Spencer to begin with. You had met the other members of his team by that point, yes, but none who you knew as well as Tara.

When she had informed you that Spencer had been arrested in Mexico and was now facing prison time for murder, you laughed.

Laughed until you realized her end of the line was silent.

Realized it was not at all a joke.

In a catatonic state of tranquility, you asked her for more details. Beyond assuring you of his innocence, she couldn’t (or more likely, wouldn’t) provide them. Asked where he was now. Asked all the right things that made sense to ask.

Then you hung up and had a panic attack because Tara said something about 25 years and you saw Spencer evaporate from your future like an apparition.

Slowly, you felt him evaporating from your past, too. Those memories from the night he left, became visions of you swaying with a ghost. Holding nothing but light between your hands as you kissed the peony air of your apartment.

He doesn’t want to see you, she had said into the phone one night, her tinny voice cutting in and out. You’re not on his list of approved visitors.

“You asked him about me?” you had whispered, curled up on top of your made bed in the dark.

I tried. I’m sorry. I’ll call you when I know more.

All your days melded together like a muddied smear of paint. Suddenly you felt you had nothing to look forward to. No anchor, no goal. Yes, a PhD... and then what?

The only thing that punctuated one 24 hour period from the next was the time you spent crying because Spencer was in prison and he didn’t want to see you and by the looks of things you may never see him again. When you weren’t crying, you were thinking about how your life was a big cosmic joke. An unfortunate statistical anomaly that didn’t mean anything to anyone else, and that you couldn’t do anything about.

That copy of The Odyssey, which wasn’t even bound and instead was a thick stack of printer paper organized by a single black clip, became something of a manifesto for you—a tome that your poured over, reading and re-reading each note in the margins, each word beautiful and imbued with meaning because you knew Spencer had selected every single one specifically for you. You traced the letters reverently, because in a way this was the last thing he had said to you—about Lattimore’s faith to the original text, Merrill’s strict use of dactylic hexameter, the stylings of Wilson and Lombardo, and how he thought you would enjoy Hammond’s prose just as much as he did.

Day by day it was becoming more prophetic than fictional, and you allowed yourself to sink into madness. You would rather be a deluded zealot than be nothing at all.

He didn’t want to see you.

He might as well have been dead, for all that you were grieving him. And you started to hate him, because he wasn’t dead, but wouldn’t do you the kindness of proving it. Like a festering wound, scratched open day after day so as not to ever heal, you had to live knowing he was less than an hour away. So no, you weren’t exactly over it. You lived day by day, waiting for the occasional call from Tara to keep you updated on Spencer, but either she didn’t want to share much about how he was doing, or he had specifically barred her from doing so, because she was always sparse on the personal side of things. That thought actually lifted your spirits, because it meant he was at least acknowledging your existence in some tiny way.

But your routine was becoming more regular, and so you staid on top of your classes and your non-Reid related meetings with Tara once a week, and you learned to dip your toes into existential dread and the oily black pool of depression every night without ever fully submerging yourself. You learned hope, because it was pretty much all you had, and the BAU had confidence that they would get Spencer out one way or another so you did too.

So you didn’t really think about it when you missed a couple of calls from Tara some evening in May. You were preparing for finals and had way too much on your plate academically to think about anything else which was a welcome relief so you fully embraced it. I’ll call her back tomorrow, you think, as you clean up from dinner before going back to the living room where your textbooks and papers are completely covering every available surface. Maybe I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life after school, but I’ll be damned if I don’t even make it that far.

Hours later, well into the night, you’d all but forgotten about the calls. A knock at the door takes you a bit by surprise, and you frown as you stand again, tugging your Georgetown sweatshirt down over your shorts as you shuffle to the entrance of your apartment. You’re not expecting anyone, so you crack the door, peering around the edge of it.

And you couldn’t even consider trying to hide that shaky inhalation of dead air when you see Spencer standing on the other side.

Surely you’re hallucinating.

Surely this man in front of you who looks like he just got back from a day of work didn’t spend three months in prison pretending you didn’t exist.

He looks the same. Hair a bit longer, maybe—and gaunter even more than is normal for him. 

But it's him.

You can’t think about the apprehensive look on his face—you can’t think about the impossibility of him being here. You can’t think at all. Without your explicit permission, your body surges forward into his, and he’s real, and alive, and warm, and he is an anachronism in the hallway as he accepts everything you pour into the embrace, doesn’t flinch when you move your arms from around his waist to loop around his neck and back to his waist again with crushing force because you just can’t get him close enough.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer mutters into your hair, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry, he keeps saying, rubbing your back as you try to find a solid grip on the sleek material of his suit—try to gather all the pieces of him, already afraid he might fall apart and float away again.

“You—dis—disappeared,” you hiccup after an eternity, pulling away enough to look up at his pretty face. Tears blur your vision and darken the front of his jacket, bending the florescent lights so they form a kind of halo above his head.

Through the surreal haze you can see his throat bob.

“I know.”

He knows?

He knows?

You scoff.

“You have no fucking idea, Spencer. What the fuck is wrong with you? I—I'm—”

The hot anger is such a relief for a second, boiling the oceans of your despair into a wrathful, scorching fog, but as soon as you try to tell him how you feel, the barbed wire cuts into your throat again. You shove him away, skin burning where his hands had been.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, hands hanging uselessly at his side. There’s that kicked puppy look about him—and it’s familiar, but now there’s more damage. You don’t know anything about his time in prison, you haven’t heard a damn thing, but beneath the glassy desperation in his eyes there is an unfathomable void that seems to be preventing him from being fully present—and you realize for the first time that he is different.

It chills you.

Before, you and Spencer shared everything. There wasn’t one part of his internal machinations that you didn’t understand, nothing you kept from each other. But as you study him now from a few feet away, you realize there might as well be a yawning chasm between the two of you.

He is so different.

Those eyes look deeper. No gears turning just behind the slashes of gold and brown anymore—only an endless dark corridor that goes places you will never go.

Gone is the perpetual boyish up-turn at the corner of his lips that always made him look slightly vacant in a way that you found incredibly amusing. Something you had been so fond of, even if you teased him.

He seems to have aged ten years—if not physically, then in demeanor. And now you feel like a little kid throwing a tantrum.

You cross your arms, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

You’re embarrassed. And pissed. And relieved. Everything is worse and better. You want to fall back into his arms, but you have been jarred by the revelation that this might not be the same Spencer. It might not be the same relationship. You have no idea where you stand.

He says your name gently, with so much familiarity you’re briefly jerked into the past. It makes you wish you could look up to find him as he was three months ago. Wish this was just a bad dream. But that’s not fair to him.

“Sorry,” you mutter, studying the grey carpet fibers instead of looking at him.

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says immediately, “you’re right. I don’t—” he clears his throat— “I’m being incredibly selfish. I shouldn’t have just shown up, I’ll just—I'll leave. I’m sorry.”

A silent moment passes.

You don’t look up as he turns and swiftly begins to move down the hall toward the stairway, leaving as quickly and silently as he had come, like a few bars of a song sighed in and away on a fleeting breeze.

Your bare feet are concretely planted, imagining him jogging down the steps and speed-walking away from your building—

And suddenly you’re sprinting after him, feeling like you might puke because Spencer was just here and you let him go again—and even though you’re still so mad and confused and hurt, the realization that he is leaving again makes the entire building spin and lurch.

“Wait!” You yell, almost wiping out as you run down the stairs and whip around corners in your slippery fucking socks. “Please, wait!”

The lobby is already empty as you spill out into it, and cold dread tightens around your neck like a fist as you shoulder your way through the double doors and right into Spencer.

“Please don’t leave again, you just—I'm sorry, I really need you to not go—” you blabber, lachrymose once more, gripping onto his forearms for dear life.

“I’m not going,” he breathes shakily. “I tried to leave because I think you were right and maybe I should and maybe it would be better for you but I can’t.”

“You can’t,” you agree, more sob than spoken word. He cups your jaw, then your cheeks, wiping tears and brushing away hair like he can’t figure out how to hold enough of you between his hands. The wild kaleidoscope of his eyes, bright and alive and real as he scans you desperately captures your attention enough to slow the tears to a trickle. He notices this and stares back, entranced.

A silent agreement is made, or maybe an inevitable fate is accepted—either way, something was set in motion three months ago and it matters to see it through. Spencer kisses you and you’re ready for it. You don’t need slow or tender. You need to feel how he feels. You need to know what he knows.

You sling your arms around his neck and he pulls you closer until you almost tip backward, chasing the bruising kiss even as you regain your footing. You want to drink him in and you do your best, breathing deeply as he kisses you deeper, backing you inside and toward the elevator.

“Is this okay?” he manages, only after blindly reaching for and mashing the up button on the wall panel.

Ideally it wouldn’t happen like this, but the world you live in obviously isn’t ideal and your personal situations as they coincide are far from ideal, so this is how it has to happen. But it’s hard to explain, and you’d rather not admit that this is so far from what you wanted for both of you and follow up with the fact that despite that you need him like you need water. So you don’t say a word as the metal doors slide open promptly. Instead you pull him in and let him press you to the chrome wall as he hits your floor button, and that very hand comes back to grab your ass like you didn’t think Spencer Reid capable of. It almost aches as his fingers dig into the flesh, but it’s a good ache because it means he’s real and he’s there.

You gasp as he hitches your leg up, arching into him. The shorts that you’re wearing leave very little to the imagination to begin with, but they become downright indecent like this.

Quickly the elevator stops and the doors hiss open. You don’t hesitate to pull Spencer by the hand down the hall. When you notice you left your door wide open, you don’t even care. Neither does he, apparently—once you’re inside he slams it shut, flipping the deadbolt while his eyes are glued to you like you’re already naked. Now Spencer is shameless in the way he drags his eyes over every curve, every place your clothes and hair are disheveled from his touch and eye-fucks you so obviously it makes your face warm. Three months ago Spencer would have at least been bashful about it when he met your eyes again, but this Spencer is far from apologetic as he pins you with his burning gaze once more. His hand stays stuck to the door like he’s holding himself back.

“Is this what you want?”

There’s an undercurrent of sorrow below the gravely arousal, like this isn’t what he wanted for the two of you either. But you’re both at the mercy of fate. This is all you have, and it might be all you can do for each other anymore. So you don’t need to say that, because he understands.

“Yeah. Yes, this is what I want.”

For just a second more he watches you from his place by the door, and there’s an unexpected softness to it. He looks at you the way he would have looked at you before. Like as long as he stays there he can entertain the idea of being that person again.

Need wins out quickly, though, and he surges forward. Immediately you’re caught in the riptide of him, helpless as he kisses you all the way to your bedroom.

He’s never been in here before. You find yourself glad it’s relatively clean—one of the pastimes you’d picked up in his absence was keeping everything tidy. It was something you could control.

A lamp glows at your bedside. You lean against the footboard of your bed, hands timidly behind your back and suddenly shy to have in him in your intimate space. Both of you set aside the heaving desperation long enough to catch your breaths, and for him to scan the room like he too is being forced to reconcile with the innate and unexpected intimacy of the moment. He cuts a harsh, dark gash in your sweetly decorated bedroom, radiating something wild and powerful and unsure of himself like a chained bull as he takes in the soft, pale bedding, the paintings and photos taped to the walls, the woven rug and the sheer drapery. His breathing slows as he studies it all—eyes eventually catching on something behind you. Looking is unnecessary. You’re sure he’s spotted the dried peonies in their ceramic vase. Or maybe the now worn stack of papers that is his Odyssey, marked up and soft around the edges from constant flipping-through.

Then Spencer looks at you, and that softness seeps in again. Along with something like... fear? Grief?

In some other universe your first time with Spencer is sweet and giggly and kind and he smiles at the decor in your room and looks around with wonder because it’s another way he gets to know you. It’s a different way to learn you from the inside.

You sense that he’s caught in between universes right now as well, painfully aware of what he would have given you that he can’t anymore.

He breathes your name like an apology, and foolishly you let a second go by in which you think he might offer you one. But he doesn’t. Not with his words, anyway. His eyes tell a different story.

“It’s fine,” you say unprompted on a whispered exhale, then a little louder as you push off the footboard, crossing the space until your hands are on his chest. You focus on his tie, not making eye contact as you rush to undo it. “It’s fine.”

He lets you do this for a few seconds before finally covering your trembling hands with his own. You still can’t meet his eyes.

“We don’t have to do—”

“No! No, please. I want to. I need—I need us to be okay.”

“Hey,” he murmurs, catching your chin and forcing you to look at him. “We are okay. Me and you are fine.”

It’s a pretty thought, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s a hideous and abject affront to the truth. Sure, maybe you’re fine in comparison to last week. Maybe anything feels fine compared to an eight by six cell. But it would be impossible for you and Spencer, for your relationship, whatever that relationship may be, to be fine. It’s especially impossible for him to make that claim, after all he did or rather didn’t do while he was gone. What you need is for him to stay anyway. What you need is to find a way to be with him, to exist with him, even when you are so clearly not fine.

“I just need you to stay,” you whisper, and he’s already nodding, wide-eyed like he’d do anything for you. You ignore all the bitter venom rising in your throat. You pretend this isn’t all happening after he cut you out of his life with a dirty switchblade. Instead you focus on his hands on yours, the familiar smell of him, which invites you to let go of each and every thought and worry. He must’ve showered before coming here, you realize. How long has he been out? What happened? 

“Okay. Okay, I can stay. What else can I do? How do I make it better?”

You sniffle and look back down.

“You can untie that for me.”

He hesitates, then nods some more, fingers working under yours to undo the tie around his neck.

“Okay.”

A moment goes by and after that final whispered word, the tension begins to build again. Spencer senses it in the way your fingertips linger on his chest and you step even closer, dragging them down to his belt. The metallic sound of it unbuckling, despite being your own doing, still manages to flip your stomach. How many times have you pictured this? When was the first time you realized you wanted it? You’re sure you haven’t stopped wanting it even once since then.

Spencer tosses the tie away and is shrugging off his jacket now, then before you see it coming he’s kissing you again, ducking down to do it. He feels taller this close up, and especially in your bedroom, where he just seems rather out of place. But you want him here. God, you want him here.

You break the kiss, forced to look down as you fumble with his belt.

“Sorry,” you gasp, embarrassed by your lack of dexterity. The light is barely sufficient to see what you’re doing, especially when he’s wearing black on black and your eyes are still bleary.

“You’re okay,” he assures you, and it’s so Spencer a fresh round of nerves electrifies the tips of your fingers. That thing is happening—the thing you’d hoped to avoid if you hadn’t lost momentum partway through, where you’re allowing your actual feelings for him to get in the way rather than getting swept up in the pathos of the moment and letting everything be easy and mindless. “Here, can I help you?”

But he doesn’t actually wait for an answer before he’s finishing off the belt for you, tugging it loose from his hips till it’s a leather coil in his hands. Your fingers brush the material and he lets you take it as if it were your prize. It’s heavier than you thought it’d be, and you just feel the weight of it in your hands for a moment, your dropped head brushing his chest.

You have a terrible feeling that if you do this now, it doesn’t mean everything will be alright. Because it can’t just go back to normal. Spencer has told you nothing of what must be an enormous trauma, and you haven’t spoken about it at all, but you sincerely doubt that after this he’s going to be ready to just jump into that committed relationship the two of you had been toying with for months before his absence. You’re almost... scared of him, now. Scared of where he’s been and what he’s endured—things you’re sure you couldn’t have taken. What that does to a person, you can’t imagine. He seems so solid and real in front of you now—but you know that’s not always enough. Maybe you’re just scared that somehow whatever he’s been through will have made him care for you less. That you were too far removed from the whole ordeal, and now you’ll never understand. If you could understand, maybe you could fix it for him. Maybe he’d stick around.

Still—even if you do end up pushing him further away in the long run—won't it have been worth it to have had him so completely, even just once?

You toss the belt to the ground, compressing all of these very complicated thoughts and feelings into a few seconds so short he can’t ask you any questions about them. Instead you find his top button, and just as you manage to undo it with relative ease he’s gently grabbing your wrists. You look up at him, immediately surrendering.

“If we’re going to do this I need you to relax a little bit.”

Gears grind in your chest. You feel need and anxiety comingling in every square inch of your body. It’s a sick buzz—a high on an empty stomach.

“I can’t,” you admit.

“Yeah, you can,” Spencer gently disagrees, slowly lowering your hands. When he’s sure you’re not going to try ripping his clothes off again, he releases, and his eyes lower to the zipper of your hoodie. His fingers follow, warm against the soft triangle of revealed skin at your chest as he grips the small piece of metal between barely shaking fingers. “You can.”

You match his eyeline, breathing shallowly and watching as he slowly drags the zipper down. You wonder if that sound has haunted his fantasies the way the sound of his belt has haunted yours. If he’s seen this hoodie on you and wondered what’s underneath, staring at you and daydreaming during movie night with you none the wiser.

Both of you have your eyes glued to the span of skin as the zipper parts. Spencer stalls with the zipper at your sternum, just below the band of your bra.

Right. No shirt.

You look up and find his eyes already on you, tinged with a curious kind of humor.

“I wasn’t expecting guests.”

The words come out shy. Spencer’s chuckle has its own nervous airy quality as he resumes tugging on your zipper, leaning down until your noses bump.

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Then he kisses you again, a little sweeter now. Sweet enough to give you butterflies and for them to flutter right out of your stomach and spill from your lips in a little whimper against his.

It comes as a surprise when he pushes the fabric from your shoulders without looking or asking. Not that you’d have said no—you're just underprepared for how assertive he is in this foreign context.

Left just in your flimsy shorts and your thin bra, you feel quite exposed—but Spencer’s hands are as demanding and hungry as his mouth. They skim up your sensitive sides and sweep lower, suggesting less proper placement over your ass and pulling at your bottoms until you gently put a stop to their wandering.

“Wait. We’re... we’re uneven.”

It’s a struggle to get any words out at all when he keeps chasing your lips, nipping at you like he physically can’t stand not kissing you, but they catch his attention and he laughs airily, pulling back to let his gaze pour over your less clothed form. It lingers and catches and lights you up everywhere it touches, drops of heat soaking into your skin and making you feel all fuzzy and needy.

“We are,” he acknowledges, tone low and colored with the faintest smile. “You’re a lot prettier without your clothes on than I am.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The challenge comes immediately and thoughtlessly. Spencer’s golden eyes flash up to yours. He’s breathing a little harder than usual.

“You want me to show you what I mean?”

If that means getting him naked, then yes, absolutely.

You nod, but rather than immediately stripping, he takes your hand and holds his own open next to it. A thick pink scar bisects some pretty significant palmistry lines, but you don’t mention that. Instead you swallow—your thoughts, your words, your nausea.

“That’s new.”

You wonder how you hadn’t noticed it earlier.

He nods.

“A lot is new.”

It sounds almost like he’s challenging you—there's a kind of tremulous force in his voice, despite the perpetual softness there, like he’s inviting you to say it’s ugly. And you realize he’s referring to more than just the glowing scar cutting an asteroid trail against the flesh of him palm. The scars he obtained in prison must form a constellation over his body.

“I don’t care. I wanna see you.”

Spencer swallows, cupping your face with the scarred hand once more. You can’t feel it against your cheek but you know it hasn’t gone away.

“I’m sure you think you do,” he permits, and that’s where the conversation ends for the moment—with his hand on your face and his lips back on yours. “For now why don’t you let me worry about you?”

Obediently, you breathe, “okay.”

This is, for whatever reason, amusing to him. The brief levity dies as quick as it comes like a snuffed-out brush fire as soon as he lets his hands fall back down to your hips.

“I want... I want to give you slow. But...”

But slow is for people who didn’t lose three months of their life. Slow is for people who don’t know what it’s like to be starving. Slow is not for the desperate.

You understand the feeling.

“I don’t need slow.”

You’ll let him use you up like quick-burning fuel if that’s what he needs. You’ll go as fast and as bright and as hot as he tells you.

“But you want slow,” he murmurs, a secret acknowledged into your own waiting mouth. You’d keep it there forever. You could be the object he hides his soul in. “I know you do. You deserve to get what you want.”

“I can go fast. I want whatever you can give me.”

Spencer’s shuddering exhale is like a drug, dizzying as you inhale it and your eyes flutter at the high, pressed head-to-head with him. For so long you’ve needed him so badly. It’s overwhelming to have him now, all over you. If only your walls could breathe him in the way you are, if this room could remember what it feels like to hold him the way you will, if any inanimate object could bear witness to how you’ll give yourself, any part of yourself, over to him, so willingly.

“I’m going to try.” Spencer’s voice is hoarse as he walks backward to the bed, taking you by the hips as he goes. “I want to do it right. I want to do this the way I... the way I imagined it, before...”

Now he’s sitting, and you’re standing between his legs as he finds the clasp of your bra and undoes it, his fingers a comforting pressure where they ghost down the slope of your back. Your heart is pounding at the confession, at the way his tongue darts over his bottom lip and his fingertips journey back up to your straps, looking up at you with haloed irises as if he’d find anything other than the most dangerous kind of smoldering devotion in your eyes—the kind cult-leaders seek and spend years nurturing, and he’d earned with a mere brush over your bare skin.

The fabric slides down your arms, and as it falls to the floor, you watch something like despair flash-flood his eyes. It is a deep, distinctly human grief. The ineffable kind where something is almost too beautiful; so perfect it offends the mortal senses because it should be permanent, but nothing is, and the clash of divine beauty with unstoppable time which oxidizes copper and covers marble with vine is almost as grotesque as metal rending delicate flesh. It is the grief that drove the first poet to write and the first parents to press their baby’s painted hands to the walls of a cave. It is the desire to do the impossible—to capture ephemeral perfection and make it eternal, and the knowledge that it is hopeless. You recognize it because you’ve felt it for him.

“I thought about you all the time,” he whispers, doesn’t bother calling you beautiful but you don’t mind because he’s telling you with his hands and his eyes and the waver of his voice. “When I was gone, I thought about you—”

You’re just as quiet, just as soft.

“Don’t, Spencer.”

He doesn’t get to tell you about when he was gone. Not now. Not after he acted like you didn’t exist.

“Okay.” He swallows the things he’d wanted to tell you like you choked on the things you needed to tell him for three months. “I’m sorry.”

But his hands—his hands are perfect over your waist and his lips are perfect where they kiss your ribs like they’re his homeland. You could forgive a thousand wrongs for each kiss he puts to your skin. Light from the full moon stretches over the room like a blessing from the cosmos, and you have every intention of making the most of that gift, how the silver gilds the planes of his face and highlights curls like they were carved, and invites you to search for something in each shadow.

Some of his kisses land over the sensitive skin of your breasts though you doubt he has much intention or that there is any sort of end-goal with the trail he blazes—in fact, you have to root your hand in his hair and pull gently back when he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s making you wait again. His eyes are glassy and cheeks slightly pinkened—you weren’t expecting this wave of fondness to knock you on your ass but here you are, falling all over again.

“You don’t have to go that slow.”

A slow smile splits the heart of his mouth at your bashful tone and he’s emboldened to bring his hands higher for a moment, thumbs brushing particularly delicate though not downright indecent spots. Nonetheless, your breath catches.

“Impatient girl,” he scolds, and though it’s lighthearted it still inspires heat to dance across your face. Oh, I think I’ve been plenty patient, you itch to say, but you bite it back because it’s only sad and true and unkind.

Still, he gives you the beginning of what you want, really only the tip of the enormous iceberg that is your desire for him, by slipping his thumbs into the waistband of your shorts and tugging them down. His hands slide up the fronts of your thighs, tracing the trim of your underwear, and you’d swear he’s not even breathing. The moment one of his hand loops behind your knee and pulls forward until it’s pressed to the mattress and you’re half-kneeling, half standing, desire begins to truly cloud your mind. Manhandling never seemed like Spencer’s style, but when paired with how softly he reveals your hip, pulling gently down on the fabric of your underwear just to admire you up close, you don’t mind it.

More kisses are littered over your stomach, and he takes you by surprise a second time with a quick maneuver landing you on your back and him on top of you.

“I wasn’t doing you justice with my imagination,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I couldn’t have known.”

“Couldn’t have known what?” you pant as he shamelessly digs his fingers into the plush of your ass. You almost hope it bruises.

“How pretty you would be,” he coos like he means it, and you dissolve, slipping through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. “You were holding out on me.”

It’s a tease, not at all serious, but you manage to hit him with a, “Was not, asshole,” and he chuckles, placating your little hurt with another sticky kiss, and you get another disorienting glimpse of some other timeline where you’re both a little less damaged. Where it’s a little easier.

But in this timeline, his touch becomes starving and ragged and urgent, and you accept the drag of his thumb up your thigh and between your legs, gasping when he runs his knuckles up the center of you. This touch is metal on screeching metal. It does not pretend to be anything more than what it is—brute, powerful, executed to elicit sensation. You get the sense that Spencer’s never touched anyone this honestly, and while you do envy the girls who got to have him gentler, you’ll take this as the compliment that it is. A kind of vulnerability that is nearing primal.

His lips, though—always his lips—are kind when they brush and land on your skin guided by some invisible map. A dip down your neck and chest and then a plunge, his tongue dragging over your hips, chasing the fabric of your underwear as he almost pulls it off and then reroutes, making room for himself between your legs and pushing lace aside to mark the hinge of your inner and upper-most thigh. Your chest heaves and you don’t dare move for fear he’ll stop leaving signs of himself on your body and you won’t be able to reassure yourself that it was real and he was here and it was not another dream.

Because something in you knows, if only consciously recognizing it for the first time now, that he will disappear again. That this may be your only chance.

The desire to make the ephemeral eternal. An impossibility.

He’s clearly losing himself to something, eyes shutting blissfully. You wonder when the last time he let his guard down even a  little was. You’re okay with being the thing he gets lost in, even if you’re not exactly okay with him—something you are becoming more acutely aware of as each touch makes a part of you want to cry. Maybe you still have some things in common. A strange pain that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to you, for one thing.

You slam back into your body as his nose nudges against you through fabric, and his lips catch on cotton as he drags himself up, eventually settling a kiss against the little bow at the waist of your underwear. There he stays, eyes closed, mouth pressed to you.

“Is this okay?”

You swallow, buzzing. Is this really what he wants? After everything?

“You don’t have to...”

“But is it okay with you?”

Nothing more than an airy whisper, you reply, “Yes, if that’s what you want.”

Being emotional at this point seems wrong, but it’s difficult to ignore the fact that you have thought about this before and it’s finally happening but it’s not exactly as you’d imagined it. There is an indelible sadness to it, to the way he’s so hungry for you because he’s been deprived, to the desperation with which he touches you because he’s had everything taken from him.

For a moment, before he tugs your underwear down, he pauses, and you wonder if he’s freezing one moment in time, this moment, and grieving all the other ways it could’ve been, and accepting that this is the way it is going to be. You are.

These higher realms of thought abandon you as he finally pulls the last barrier down your legs and encourages you to spread them further. You don’t have time or energy to be embarrassed, not even by his staring, or the way his eyes dart up to yours and back down again, wide and shining, as if to say, have you seen yourself? Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?

All you feel is the lack of him on you, the pull to have him closer so strong it’s almost sickening because he could be gone at any second. Maybe he understands that because he doesn’t waste anymore time before he’s kissing the most sensitive part of you. The drag of his tongue has you loosing a shuddering cry.

His mouth wanders, making connections you wouldn’t have realized the value of until you feel them on your skin. Your hips buck as he traces you and you’re unable to stop yourself from tangling your hands in his hair. Speech fails you—hell, you can hardly breathe as you watch his with a furrowed brow and parted lips, only expelling air from your lungs in the form of little cries and gasps and failing to hold your hips down to the bed.

The tip of his tongue teases around your entrance and he catches your leg as your foot rises off the bed, slinging it over his shoulder and consuming you more fervently until you have no choice but to moan though you’ve never been one for theatrics. Nobody has done this for you like he’s doing it for you. Locks of hair fall in front of his face and you hold them back for him, shuddering as he shifts his weight and presses the tip of his finger to your cunt.

“Ah—please,” you manage, your first words since he started. Spencer groans against you and the sound is so wonderfully unexpected, so much better than in your dreams. You cant your hips up in further invitation, chirping as he takes it, pushing two fingers into you at once. Your eyes screw shut and you bite back a whine at the slight stretch, unconsciously writhing your hips either to get further away or take him deeper, you’re not sure.

Spencer pulls back, kissing your hips and thighs and pumping his fingers very slowly as you adjust.

“’M sorry,” you pant, “it’s been awhile, I...”

“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says like it’s simple, his own breath coming quicker. “How’re you feeling? Need me to stop?”

“No! No, it feels really good, I feel good.”

He holds your burning gaze, matching it with his own, and his hair is tousled and his cheeks are flushed as he continues to move his hand.

“Yeah?”

“...Yeah.”

This little show of obedience, of call and response, has him smiling before he occupies his mouth with something else once more. It’s a different smile than you’re used to from him, but you decide you don’t at all mind it.

Like that, with his tongue and fingers working tirelessly, your orgasm comes on quickly. The feeling is rare but not entirely foreign, and in that brief moment of utter disconnect between your brain and reality, of sheer white-hot pleasure, you don’t feel you’re missing out on anything at all. How could you be, when you are here and Spencer is here and for a moment all your neurons are lighting up and flashing neon? How could there be anything more to life than the searing feeling of him slowly withdrawing his fingers from you, than your hips between his hands like he’s cradling the world, and his lips, indiscriminate with where they kiss because every part of you is worthy of attention?

You’re reeling, and your legs are gelatinous as he so affectionately sucks the darkest mark yet onto your inner thigh like a parting gift, like he’s signing his trembling work. If you could clamp your legs shut around the almost painful aftershocks you would, but he’s climbing back up your body, so all you can do is wriggle against him and release delayed, stunted little moans. He stops to kiss your neck before he makes it to your mouth and drinks down all your sounds until you’re gentle and pliant for him like you haven’t been yet.

His voice is soft and sympathetic when he speaks. “Better?”

Wordlessly you nod, both comforted and unsettled by how well he knows you. What, exactly, has been made better, you’re not sure. Not trust. You don’t trust him anymore. Something cheaper, but temporarily effective. A sense of permanence, maybe, however fleeting it may be. You’ve completed something with him now, and he’s still here, still sweet.

He looks into your eyes, then, for a moment—and there is just enough light in the room for you to tell yourself that the shadows dancing there as he looks at you are love.

They morph as you watch into haunting, wild hunger. Pained even now.

He sits up abruptly and so do you, scooting back against your headboard and pulling your knees to your chest to protect your pounding heart as Spencer takes you in with darting eyes and quick breaths. His fingers find the collar of his shirt and he begins to unbutton.

“I need you to remember it’s all going to heal.”

He swallows, and you hardly have the wherewithal to study the way he unbuttons his shirt, a way he exists in the world that you had previously not been privy to. The words are too distracting.

“What?”

Sometimes he reminds you of a deer, with those big brown eyes that can’t help betraying anxiety. Moreso in those old pictures he’d shown you from his early days at the BAU—but it shines through occasionally even now. It’s reassuring to know that something inside of his has remained soft.

“Just...” his fingers don’t stop at their task, and you come to the disturbing realization that his knuckles are bruised. “Please don’t freak out, alright?”

Your mouth goes dry, eyes glued to the lengthening span of revealed skin.

And before he even has his shirt fully undone, something isn’t right.

He’s like a Pollack of bruises—starbursts and watercolor blots of discoloration blooming over his side and stomach.

You’re glad the light is off for two reasons: one, being that you don’t think you could handle the bruising in all its glory, and two, you hope the look of horror painted on your face is at least partially obscured from Spencer.

But you can’t. You simply don’t have the gas in the tank to freak out, as he’d said—at least not externally. Those bruises shouldn’t be there, but 96 days is a long time to be gone.

You drag your eyes back to his—nervous, deeply insecure and mistrustful. A deer. Just like those pictures of a 24 year old Spencer in an FBI jacket that was too big for him.

It’s enough to have you scooting on your knees across the mattress to him. Those big eyes stay glued to you as you draw near, falling as you carefully push open his shirt, cautious not to bump any tender spots as it falls to the bed. A flash of white gauze wrapped around his forearm that makes your stomach flip. How? You want to ask. Why?

He doesn’t seem to know what you’re going to do, and neither do you, until you’re grabbing his hands, bruised knuckles and all, and just... holding them for a minute.

“I lost weight,” he says quietly, as if that’s the most shocking thing about his current appearance, though it is noticeable.

“You’re still pretty.”

He smiles at this—a true Spencer Reid smile. Flattened lips, eyes tinged silver with sadness, voice quiet and anxious and wavering.

“I didn’t have a lot to spare.”

A moment goes by.

“I’m not going to ask you about them,” you promise, though you care so much and you want to know but you already understand that he won’t want to tell you.

Another moment. It doesn't surprise you to watch the shiny vulnerability in his eyes to freeze over completely. But he squeezes your hands once in thanks, and you know it’s still the same Spencer.

“Lie down.”

Oh. Right.

This.

You do as he says, taking a deep breath to try and exhale the concern twisting your stomach like a poison. Somehow your room feels so unfamiliar, so new with him in it. Even the whorls on your ceiling look different as you study them, trying to time the pattern of your breathing with the pattern of the paint and plaster and not let the sound of Spencer further undressing quicken your heartrate too much.

Soon he’s coaxing your legs apart again, reverently, and kneeling between them, studying every part of you—lingering not on the parts you’d expect. He traces the scar on your knee with his thumb, follows a line down your thigh to the freckle on your hip. The scrutiny is unnerving and warms you everywhere. Perhaps he senses the microscopic clench of your thighs as you imagine pushing them together, if he weren’t in the way.

“You alright?” He asks, still stroking your hip. Tender again. It’s so hard to keep up.

“I...”

Suddenly your heart beat is a deafening echo in your own ears. The tide of your breathing is too powerful, too in and out and whooshing, leaving you always too empty or too full but never comfortable.

Maybe he’s changed, and he’s harder to know now, but he is the same Spencer. He is the Spencer you’d fallen in love with. The hard part is knowing that now you may never get a chance to tell him that. You don’t know if he’d be able to hear it.

There are things you can’t have with him anymore. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. But you can have this. It will be different, but you’d rather him be different and here than the same and only in your memory.

You swallow.

“I’m good.”

Tangling your hand in his hair once more, you pull him down into a kiss. It’s hesitant, at first—maybe he can taste your thoughts, where they’d been balancing just on the tip of your tongue. But the uncertainty fades and he kisses you deeper, harder, in a way that is hard to keep up with. You like the messy overwhelm of his lips, teeth, tongue. That’s the only way he knows how to want you.

When you go to wrap your leg around his waist he catches it, running his hands over the soft plush of your thigh. The hard line of him presses against you like memory foam and you gasp and he breathes it in deeply as your brain short-circuits, as you realize this is really going to happen, that you’re going to have him like you’ve never had him before and in ways you’ve only imagined and immediately felt ashamed for.

“Spencer,” you whisper. He ducks to leave open-mouthed kisses along your neck and your eyes flutter shut, craning your neck but not losing sight of your objective as you reach down blindly. When you find what you’re looking for he freezes, groans against your neck at the same time as you breathe the tiniest whimper. Just in your hand he feels impossible, hot and imposing and hard. Your heart palpitates.

Without thinking, you angle your hips up and encourage him closer, until the tip of him is smearing through your folds, and you both go utterly silent like the breath had been stolen right from your lungs. The moment crystallizes, time around you hardening like preserved amber to keep you frozen there forever.

And then he rolls his hips, catching the underside of his cock on the crux of you, and then he does it again, and you choke out a moan and so does he, and it’s beyond perfect—it's nirvana, more than you could ever have conceived of, with his weight pressing you into the mattress, arms caging you in, his heavy breaths hot against your neck and vice versa as you twine together like serpents on a rod, your foot floating in the air as you widen your legs to make more room for him.

And you’re not even fucking yet.

“Oh my god,” you whine, just for him, barely audible under the heavy cloak of night, the thickened air in your bedroom and the sound of panting and fabric shifting. It’s like your heart is trying to reach through your chest to his own where they’re pressed together—that is how hard it’s beating.

Spencer only breathes a long, low curse and shifts so he can grasp himself. Your fingers drift down the shaft of him as he slots himself at your entrance, notching half an inch in and you hold your breath, and you brace yourself—and then he’s kissing you again, but gentler this time. Reassuring. You soften, you can’t not, releasing all your air in a soft gust through your nose, and then he’s pushing in.

Your lips part at the stretch as it fuzzes your mind, but he stays right there, nose pressed to your nose, lips ghosting over your own. He’s not going anywhere, you think, and you’re glad for it, when it burns ever so slightly, and the tiniest whine escapes your open mouth.

“Shh,” he soothes immediately, low and soft, only fractionally louder than you had been. “You’re okay.”

Spencer. Your Spencer.

For a moment, you’re living in that alternate universe. The kinder one. The flash of pain you feel then has nothing to do with the way he’s opening you up.

This is the closest you have ever been, and in some strange way, the furthest apart.

Together, fingers brushing, you guide him until he settles at not quite your deepest point. You can feel that he’s not giving you everything yet, but you’re okay with that, as you adjust to the full feeling. Spencer again senses your desire to close your legs against the deep intrusion, and gives you the best he can by encouraging you to wrap your legs around him.

“Good girl,” he whispers tenderly, nudging at your jaw with his nose and dragging kisses along the ridge of it. Your stomach flips at the moniker and your brain turns to warm sludge as your eyes flutter shut. It makes you feel all light-headed and you flutter around him. Spencer chuckles into the junction of your neck and shoulder and the vibrations send a chill down your arching spine. “I thought you might like that one.”

“Mhm.”

“Mhm. How are you? You okay?”

“’M ready.”

“You’re ready?” His tone is dripping sarcasm and faux-disbelief as he pulls back the slightest bit only to push right back in deeper, this time. Your toes curl, one thigh sliding higher up his waist as you cling to him.

“Fuck,” you manage, a pitiful, high pitched curse tossed to the wind. He echoes the sentiment.

“Oh, my god,” he groans, continuing with that slow pace, “you feel so good, angel.”

You grapple at his back, searching for purchase as your brow knits. “Faster.”

This inspires another breathy chuckle, but he obliges, and you cry out softly. It’s almost unreal, your head buried against his neck, drunk on his scent and the drag of him like a shock felt in the far reaches of your body, again and again.

There’s nothing you can say that will accurately demonstrate what you’re feeling, so you elect not to speak, to remain silent and try to get a grip on this cacophony of sensation and emotion. But it’s too much to be alone with. You feel you have to get it out, to seek understanding. You can’t do it alone.

“Spencer.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t know...” the sentence trails off into a gentle keen. He moves to kiss you, speaking against your lips.

“You don’t know?”

Shyly you shake your head. Spencer sighs wistfully.

“Do you know how much I missed you?”

It’s like he can sense your need for comfort. For something grounding.

And while this topic was off-limits earlier—you're softer now. The stone walls that form your boundaries have been chipped away and lowered.

Spencer continues unprompted.

“I thought about you every day. Every night while I was falling asleep. You were always on my mind, angel girl.”

You whine. Whether it’s pleasure or distress is anyone’s guess—including your own.

“You were gone so long,” you whisper, eyes shut.

At this, Spencer slows again, and the tension that was building settles back to a simmer.

“I know. I wish I could—I wish I could change that. But I’m here, okay? I’m right here with you.”

Then he makes sure you feel every last inch, and it takes your breath away. If your thoughts were any more coherent, they’d be something along the lines of: but for how long? How long until you leave again?

“You’re here.”

You say it like a mantra, once out loud, and then again and again in your head, timed with every clash of your hips. With each repetition he becomes more real. Every little ache, every tingling, head-emptying brush against that most sensitive spot inside proves to you that he could not be any closer. This can’t be faked. It can’t be another dream to wake up in tears from.

“You’re here,” you gasp as it hits you, as it truly sinks in.

“I’m here,” he breathes.

There’s so much you want to say—three months of words you need him to hear, of things you need to talk to him about, things you need to yell at him for and things you can only say crying in his arms and things you can only say laughing or whispering or drunk or half-asleep—and in this moment you can’t manage any of it. Every word condenses into one drop of salt water, drifting away from your eye and down your cheek. Spencer doesn’t tell you to stop crying. He only kisses the tear away, and murmurs I’m here I’m here I’m here over and over again against your skin until he’s not even speaking it out loud anymore. But you feel it. With every brush of his lips, every breath, every movement, you feel it.

Soon he’s adjusting his angle, gradually picking up the pace but retaining that unforgiving depth, and your nails bite into the skin of his back as your jaw drops. Spencer hisses, pressing impossibly closer.

“I’m sorry!” you squeak.

“Do it again.”

“Wh—what?”

“Please,” he begs, low and hot against your jaw, just beneath your ear. “Do it again, honey.”

Honey.

You’d do anything for him if it meant he calls you that again.

When he shifts his weight to one arm and reaches down between your bodies to play with your aching clit in exactly the right way, you don’t really have a choice. You arch and moan wantonly enough to feel embarrassed as your nails scratch down his back. At the same time he’s making noises of his own, and you almost feel guilty for marking him up like this only you think he likes it. The most perfect and troubling tension is building in your core, so taut you almost fear the inevitable rebound when it snaps. But you’re driven to be exactly what Spencer needs right now, and to let him try and be what you need. Even if it scares you. Even if you’re not sure how.

Spencer groans, head tucked to the bend of your shoulder. “I’m not gonna last.”

Any response you might’ve been about to muster is annihilated by a sudden, deep bolt of pleasure.

“’M gonna cum,” you mewl like it’s a secret.

“Are you?” he asks, coming up breathless. If your eyes were open, you’re sure you’d see him above you.

“Mhm.”

“Look at me. Look at me.”

It is unmistakably a command—one you fight to follow.

You cry out as you meet the intensity of his gaze, those shadowy corridors suddenly ablaze and alive. They are not unending, like you’d thought. They are a door thrown open to let the light in, or maybe to let the fire out. They’re open in this moment for you.

No more words are spoken after that—you cum hard, gasping as you fall and spin. Spencer follows very shortly after, like he was holding it together just for you, and your eyes are still locked though everything is a bit bleary.

“Fuck,” you whine as he continues to fuck you for as long as he can, despite your writhing hips, but you’re entranced by him, unable to look away now that you’re hooked. Until he slows to a halt, glances down at your mouth, and you just have time to pray that he’ll kiss you before he does. You whimper against his lips—a plea for understanding. A plea for him to stay, even though this is over. He kisses back so soft and sweet it’s like he can read your mind. Echoes of I’m here I’m here I’m here still buzz across your skin. His eyelashes tickle your cheek. Your heart stops beating quite so quickly, melting and warm like the rest of your body.

Soon the kissing ceases and you’re just breathing together, trapped and faced with the knowledge that it must end just the same as you had waited for it to start.

Eventually the air between you becomes mostly carbon dioxide and you let your head fall to the side, dizzy and giggling breathlessly as you nearly avoid asphyxiation. Spencer laughs too, letting his head fall to your shoulder once more, and you finally let your eyes flutter closed. To do something as simple as laugh with him again is its own small euphoria. It’s unexpected, and a soft landing once all that tension breaks underneath your combined weight.

It can’t last forever, you know that well. But the slow fade of it makes the next parts a little easier.

Spencer presses a kiss to your neck. “Is your bathroom through that door?”

You hum a confirmation and are only slightly disheartened when he pulls out and rolls off of you. You’re further disturbed when you see there’s gauze around his thigh, matching what’s around his arm, and you wonder how you missed that. Spencer scoops up his clothing and disappears into the adjoining restroom, assuring you he’ll be right back and leaving you alone with your thoughts and the whorls on the ceiling which have seemingly shifted into entirely new constellations.

He leaves the door cracked which is oddly reassuring—the sliver of warm light and the sound of the sink running. Only a few moments pass before he’s returning clad in boxers once more to sit on the edge of the bed, pushing away the sheet you’d just pulled over your chest and pulling one of your legs over his lap. Your face warms as he brings a washcloth between your thighs. As soon as he glances up at you and catches your eye you’re looking back to the ceiling.

“I should’ve asked first,” he says quietly as he cleans up the mess he’d made of you.

You speak just as softly, like you’re both afraid of disturbing some peace, of waking some sleeping giant. “It’s okay. I would’ve told you if I didn’t want it.”

His reticence, his unreadable face, make you nervous.

When he’s done, he rises to toss the dirtied cloth in the laundry bin, and with his back to you (as scratched up as it might be) you feel braver.

“Are you gonna, like... hate me now?”

It was a mistake. That’s clear by the way he turns around, brow knit deeply and grimacing slightly like even the suggestion offends him.

“Am I going to hate you?”

Again you pull the sheet up, and again you look away, studying the pattern of moonlight stretching out over the floor and scooting to make room for him when he steps in it.

“Not hate, I just...” the bed dips beside you and you are indescribably glad he’s not immediately running out the door. “I’m not dumb. I know what this was.”

He pulls you into him and you settle against his chest. It feels good. “I never thought you were dumb.”

This is your first real conversation since he’s gotten back, you realize. And how quickly you’re falling into familiar patterns, familiar syntactical beats. You know when to speak. You know when to bite your tongue and keep him talking.

The silence goes on longer than you’re used to. Maybe he got good at not speaking while he was away.

Eventually your eyes wander, falling to the white strip over his thigh where it is parallel to yours on the bed, only over the sheets.

“What happened?”

You said you wouldn’t ask, but that was then, and you’re upset again. You almost want to hurt him. To piss him off. You don’t know.

But it doesn’t work.

“Do you really want to know?” There’s a note of something heavy in his voice, and you look up at him. It’s a privilege to have him this close—his beauty is a constant surprise that you’d become unaccustomed to over the months. You say nothing, and he takes that as the yes that it is. “I... I did it to myself.”

He may as well have reached down your throat and grabbed for fucking heart for all its clenching. Tears well almost immediately, though they’ve been waiting in the wings all night.

“What? Did you—were you trying to—”

His eyes widen.

“No! No, honey, no.” You wilt as he gathers you closer, a deeply confused frown still contorting your features, too heartbroken even to cling to him, or to appreciate the ease with which honey slips past his lips again. “No. I was—it's complicated. I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but I had to—I had to do it before someone else did something worse.”

The bruises covering his abdomen.

You sniffle and pull back enough to look up at him tearfully. “Why would they want to hurt you?”

Mist fills his eyes even as he’s looking down at you, a layer of separation, as if he’s two places at once. Even as he goes to brush your hair behind your ear, to stroke your cheek.

“I’m... not... the same, as I was.” It’s not an answer to your question—but it’s the beginning of the answer to a question you’d been too afraid to put into words.

“Don’t say that,” you beg, because you know where this is going. He keeps smoothing your hair like it’ll make this easier.

“But it’s true,” Spencer says gently, the slightest waver betraying his own emotion.

“You’re just going to leave again.”

And you’re losing to the tears.

“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But you will,” you insist, like a child crying to a parent come to comfort them after a bad dream.

“Not right now. Right now I’m here.”

I’ll stay until you fall asleep again.

For now, maybe that has to be enough. 

You cry on his shoulder. He kisses your head and doesn’t tell you to stop. 

Eventually, you sniff and wipe your eyes. 

“We were so close. Before you… we were almost there.”

You’re sure of it. You’re sure that if he hadn’t gone when he did you would’ve been a real couple. You would’ve told him you loved him. 

“We’ll get there again,” he promises, rubbing your arm. “I just… I need a little bit of time. I think you do too. But we’re going to get there again.”

Maybe it will never be like it was. 

But as so often is the case—Spencer is right. Difference doesn’t mean it won’t ever be good again. 

You have to believe that, just as you had to believe you’d see him again. 

You look to The Odyssey on your bedside table. 

The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world. 

But the sun has a habit of rising, time and time again, after the longest nights, after the darkest storms. 

You feel the beginnings of its rise, see the golden tips of it lighting the room as he holds you. Even now. 

[liloinkoink]

one thing i think people get wrong about Martyn in the life series is he really isn’t loyal

like yeah, we all know him as the Hand, following the Red King as far as their shared grave, but that is… truly the outlier and not the norm with him

i mean, let’s take a brief look at other seasons. i can’t speak to Secret Life, as it came out when i was incredibly busy and i haven’t yet had time to watch it, but what about the others?

he won Limited Life because he’s a chronic traitor! he betrayed Scott, his ally for the whole season, so that he could win, and said he’d been planning it / wanting to do it the whole session. spent a whole season protecting and helping Scott, and laughed in his face to betray as soon as he saw a shot to do so

Double Life was a whole mess of Martyn and weird loyalties. just one example: he spent all of the first session hanging out with Pearl in favor of even looking for either of their soulmates, with no regard for how he’d been putting his soulmate in danger. when their soulmates dumped them due to being ignored all session and stormed off, he dumped Pearl just because. one session in and he’s betrayed both his soulmate and his day one alliance!

Last Life he teamed with the Southlanders and then made the Shadow Alliance in secret, so he was on two teams and never truly committed to either. he tried to kill Grian basically immediately when he got boogeyman, for example, and in the final fight he tried to lure Ren to himself by offering to team and then tried to blow Ren up

of course, i’m simplifying and ignoring a lot. he doesn’t earn the loyal reputation for nothing. he does a lot of things to help his teammates, like giving a life to Ren in Last Life, trying all season to win Cleo over for all of Double Life, or working to protect Scott for all of Limited Life. it’s not like Martyn doesn’t play the part of a loyal friend well, but, well.

the thing about Martyn is that he’s selfish. he’s basically always going to prioritize his own survival over anything else. he’s never going to roll over and die, especially not for another person. he’s good at looking loyal, because having allies will help you survive, and he knows making outright enemies is a bad idea. he knows he can’t make it obvious he’s a traitor, because then he’ll certainly be killed. but, when it comes down to the wire, he will generally bail at the last minute to save his own skin rather than protecting the people around him. when his loyalty is tested, nine times out of ten, he will not only fail, but do so completely without remorse

it doesnt take a lot to become Martyn’s ally, and once you’ve got a foot in the door, he will take his allegiances seriously (at least, to a point). but it takes effort to really earn Martyn’s trust. and, even when it looks like you have, there’s no guarantee he won’t yank the rug out from under you if he decides having you alive is more detrimental to his survival than seeing you dead

and yes, you can especially see all of this in Third Life. Martyn was absolutely not instantly ride or die for Ren—for a lot of the earlier episodes, he won’t say he’s on Ren’s team or that he lives at Ren’s base, and often tells other players he’s simply Ren’s employee rather than teammate and that he’s wandering or homeless. he trusts Ren so little due to Ren’s inability to keep a secret or stand up for himself that even Ren acknowledges in the third session that Martyn is probably going to leave him and find someone else. Martyn’s loyalty had to be earned, and it very nearly wasn’t. if Ren had taken a session more to grow a spine, Martyn probably would have left

but Ren became an ally that Martyn could rely on, who could stand up for himself and keep secrets. it became more beneficial to Martyn’s survival to have Ren around, so he stayed with Ren for the rest of the season, and committed hard to their kingdom. Ren earns Martyn’s trust by becoming a more dependable ally, and because of that, Ren earns Martyn’s loyalty…. probably

(half related, bc i want it in the post and i don’t know where to put it: after the execution, two sessions after Ren officially earns Martyn’s loyalty, Ren admits to being genuinely convinced Martyn was going to take him out of the series as soon as Ren gave him the chance!)

because yes, even here, even after Ren earns his trust and Ren trusts Martyn to execute him and they become King and Hand, Martyn was okay with killing Ren to save himself. Martyn has said he was going to betray Ren in the final session of Third Life. his entire plan was that when he and Ren hit the final 5, he was going to kill Ren. end Red Winter, usher in Red Spring. even the most loyal version of Martyn was a traitor!

now, you can decide for yourself if you believe he could have actually gone through with this—he and Ren were 6th and 7th out of the game, after all. maybe he wouldn’t have been able to steel himself. maybe his loyalty would have, for once, been too strong to kill Ren.

but it’s very possible that even the most loyal version of Martyn—the version of Martyn who has created this “loyal” image of Martyn in fanon—was only loyal because he died too soon to show his true colors

[lxvsiick]

KISS ME RIGHT | MYUNG JAEHYUN

PAIRING: down bad! frat boy! myung jaehyun x library worker! fem! reader 

SUMMARY: Jaehyung goes to the library everyday to see Y/n even though he's never touched a book in his life.

GENRE: fluff, imagine, frat boy

WORDCOUNT: 2k

WARNING: kissing scene towards the end!

A/N: Inspired by KISS ME RIGHT by Keshi -- the song is finally out! i've been waiting ever since his last tour ,, this song reminds of jaehyun’s flirty personality so ENJOY!

The double doors of the library swung open with an exaggerated flair, and every head inside turned like it was a reflex. There he was again—Jaehyun, in all his glory. Hair tousled like he'd just come from the gym, a hoodie slung over his shoulder, and that ridiculous smile that could charm the paint off the walls. He strutted into the library like it was the hottest club on campus, and not the quietest place within a ten-mile radius.

Whispers buzzed through the aisles.

"Is that Jaehyun again?"

"Does he even know what a book is?"

"Bro, he’s here every day now. Do you think he lost a bet?"

But Jaehyun didn’t care. He barely noticed the stares anymore. All he cared about was making his way to the front desk, where Y/n sat. She looked calm, focused, her fingers flying over the keyboard, the glow from her computer screen highlighting her face. She didn’t even look up as he approached.

Jaehyun cleared his throat a little too loudly, startling a student reading in the corner.

"Yo, uh... hey," he said, trying to sound casual, like he hadn’t spent the last twenty minutes rehearsing those two words in his head.

She finally glanced up, her brow furrowed in mild confusion. It was like she was wondering why this human embodiment of a golden retriever was trying to infiltrate her serene library world.

"You’re here again?" she asked, her voice neutral but with a hint of amusement.

Jaehyun rubbed the back of his neck, his usual swagger deflating slightly under her gaze. But he quickly recovered, flashing that winning smile that got him into any party, out of any trouble, and, hopefully, into her good graces.

"Yeah, you know... studying and stuff."

She raised an eyebrow, glancing at the completely empty table he had staked out for himself behind her. No books. No laptop. Not even a notebook. Just him, spinning a pen between his fingers like he was preparing for the next big test in... nothing.

"Studying?" she echoed, clearly unconvinced.

"Yeah, you know... brushing up on... the Dewey Decimal System." He threw in a dramatic wink, like it was the cleverest thing anyone had ever said about libraries.

She didn’t laugh, but there was a tiny, almost imperceptible quirk of her lips. Success.

"Right. Well, let me know if you need help finding a book... or learning how to read." Her voice was dry, and Jaehyun's grin widened.

"Ouch, brutal," he chuckled, his face lighting up like she had just complimented him.

She turned back to her screen, though he could tell she wasn’t entirely brushing him off. That was all the encouragement he needed. Without another word, he made his way to his usual table—smack in the middle of her line of sight. He didn’t sit like a regular person. He flopped down with a dramatic sigh, then spread out across the chair like he was getting ready for a nap, not a study session.

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍵 ⋅

From her seat, Y/n could feel his presence, like a beam of sunshine she wasn’t sure she needed right now. Every time she glanced up, there he was, pretending to flip through the pages of some random book he’d grabbed. Every few minutes, he'd peek over the top of the pages to check if she was looking.

At one point, Taesan and Leehan walked by and nearly stopped in their tracks when they saw Jaehyun actually holding a book. Leehan nudged Taesan, eyes wide in disbelief.

"Dude, I think he’s... reading?"

Taesan snorted. "Nah, he's definitely planning something. Probably trying to get out of doing chores at the frat house."

Jaehyun pretended not to hear them, but he couldn’t help shooting a quick grin their way. Let them talk. He was on a mission—a mission that involved far more staring at Y/n than reading anything resembling words.

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍵 ⋅

As the library’s closing time approached, the once-crowded space thinned out. Y/n was busy packing up her things behind the desk, when she noticed Jaehyun still lounging in his seat, scrolling through his phone. Everyone else had left, but he lingered like he had all the time in the world.

She walked over, standing at his table, crossing her arms with a bemused expression. "You know we’re closing, right?"

He glanced up, his puppy-like enthusiasm returning as if she’d just thrown him a bone. "Oh, yeah, totally. Just waiting for the right moment to—" He glanced down at the book in front of him and then looked back up, suddenly sheepish. "—check this out. For... studying. You know, tomorrow."

She shook her head, but this time, the smile she’d been holding back all day finally broke through.

"You’re hopeless."

He stood up, grinning ear-to-ear. "Nah, just... committed."

She raised an eyebrow, a challenge in her eyes. "To studying?"

He stepped closer, playful but serious. "To you."

For a second, there was nothing but the sound of the quiet, empty library around them. Then she laughed—soft, real. And in that moment, he knew every second of pretending to study had been worth it.

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍵 ⋅

The bass from the speakers thumped through the walls of the frat house as Jaehyun stood near the kitchen, laughing with his friends. Red Solo cups in hand, they exchanged stories from the week, loud banter filling the air. Jaehyun was mid-sentence when something—or rather, someone—caught his eye.

Out of the corner of his vision, Y/n stepped through the front door, her figure silhouetted against the dim lights of the hallway. She was wearing a sleek black dress that hugged her frame just right, her hair falling in waves over her shoulders. The noise of the party seemed to dull in his ears. He froze, his eyes locked onto her as if the world had slowed down just for a moment.

His friends continued chatting around him, oblivious to his trance.

"Yo, bro... hello?" Sungho waved a hand in front of his face. Jaehyun blinked but didn’t move.

"Earth to Jaehyun! What are you staring at, man?" Sohee nudged him, noticing where his eyes were glued.

His heart pounded in his chest, his mind still trying to process how she—Y/n—was here, in this chaos of beer pong and blaring music. She didn’t belong here, but she looked so effortlessly out of place, it was almost unfair.

"Bro, you good?" Hanbin laughed, realizing why he was distracted. "Dude’s done for, he’s totally smitten."

Jaehyun shook his head, snapping out of it. He chuckled awkwardly, trying to act nonchalant. "Yeah, uh, I’ll catch you guys later." He set his cup down on the counter and started weaving his way through the crowd toward her, his pulse quickening with every step.

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍵 ⋅

As he neared her, she looked around the room, clearly unfamiliar with the party vibe. Her eyes landed on him, and she smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. He stopped a few feet away, his voice unsteady.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, more confused than anything. "Who invited you?"

She raised an eyebrow at his tone, folding her arms over her chest. "Jake invited me. I thought it might be fun." Her voice was cool, as if his question wasn’t welcome.

A flare of jealousy twisted in his gut, and he frowned, glancing around the room, wondering why Jake had to ask her. "You should’ve said no to him. This isn't your scene." His voice came out sharper than he intended, his frustration laced in every word.

Y/n scoffed, clearly annoyed. "Excuse me? You don’t get to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do." She took a step closer, her gaze hardening. "I didn’t come here for Jake. I came because I wanted to see you. But if this is how you're gonna act, maybe it was a mistake." Her voice cut through the noise, her disappointment evident.

Before he could even respond, she turned on her heel, moving deeper into the house, disappearing into the crowd of bodies and flashing lights. He stood there, dumbfounded, replaying her words in his head. She came to see him.

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍵 ⋅

His heart sank. He felt like an idiot. Without wasting another second, he pushed his way through the throng of people, his mind racing. How could he have messed up so badly in just one conversation?

"Hey, have you seen—" he asked one person, cutting himself off as he realized they didn’t know who he was talking about. He scanned the dance floor, the kitchen, even outside by the keg, but she was nowhere in sight. His frustration grew with every passing second.

He was a guy who could read a room, crack a joke, keep the vibe light. But right now? He was frantic. His friends slapped him on the back as he passed, asking him what was up, but he brushed them off. He couldn’t let her leave thinking that was all he had to say—that she wasn’t welcome here, when in reality, she was the only person he wanted to be around.

Finally, after what felt like hours but was really just a few intense minutes, he spotted her standing near the back patio, her arms crossed as she talked with a couple of people. She looked frustrated, her foot tapping lightly against the ground.

Jaehyun took a deep breath, steeling himself, and made his way over to her, determined to make things right.

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍵 ⋅

Jaehyun took a deep breath, steeling himself, and made his way over to her, determined to make things right. 

As he approached, the people around her seemed to sense the tension, exchanging glances before slowly stepping back, leaving the two of them alone in the middle of the patio. The noise around them faded into the background.

Jaehyun opened his mouth, but nothing came out at first. Then the words just spilled out.

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out earlier. I was just... I don’t know, I saw you in that dress and... and then when you said you came to see me and not because of Jake, I just—" He paused, his hands gesturing wildly as he tried to find the right words. "I got jealous. It was dumb. I shouldn’t have said you shouldn’t be here, because I want you here. Like, I always want you here, not just at parties, but anywhere, and I—" He was rambling now, his thoughts tripping over each other in his rush to explain.

"—I just, I like you. A lot. And I don’t know how to deal with that sometimes. You’re... you’re like this amazing person, and I’m just the guy who’s pretending to study just so I can see you, and that probably sounds stupid, but—" He was talking faster, his words stumbling over each other. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he wasn’t even sure if he was making sense anymore.

Suddenly, Y/n stepped closer, cutting him off mid-sentence. Without saying a word, she stood on her tiptoes, leaning in.

Before he could process what was happening, her lips met his.

Time seemed to stop. His heart did a somersault, and his thoughts went blank. Her kiss was soft, brief, but it left him utterly frozen, like his brain couldn’t catch up with what just happened.

When she pulled back, Jaehyun stood there, completely stunned, his eyes wide and mouth slightly open as he tried to make sense of reality. For a moment, it was as though his whole world had paused.

Y/n looked at him and burst into laughter—an easy, melodic sound that broke through the tension. "You should see your face right now," she teased.

Her laughter snapped him out of his trance. His shocked expression melted into a grin, his heart racing for an entirely different reason now.

"Wait, you—" he started, his voice trailing off in disbelief.

She smiled, stepping closer again, her gaze soft but teasing. "Yeah, I like you too. Even if you pretend to read at the library every day." She gave him a playful nudge.

A flood of relief and pure happiness washed over him, and without thinking, he closed the gap between them, gently cupping her face and bringing his lips to hers once more. This time, the kiss was slower, more deliberate, like he wanted to savor every second of it. He could feel the smile on her lips, and it made him grin into the kiss.

୧ ‧₊˚ 🍵 ⋅

MASTERLIST

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, lxvsiick, 2024

[im-tempted]

...what?

Anyways @stil-yr-sand @youmustfixyourheartt and @takeutothemoon no pressure hiiiiii at least you can see me ABSOLUTELY fuck up that landing

Challenging you all!

Put your music library on shuffle, then list the first five songs that come up in a poll to let people vote for which one they like the most!

Then tag Tumblr friends to keep the game going!

[rustedhearts]

somebody told me (fratboy!steve harrington x fem!reader)

summary: steve has made it very clear that he doesn’t want you. but he doesn’t want anyone else to have you either.

uses she/her pronouns and female anatomy.

i want your things in my room (part one) the library record store

tags: angst, mean!steve, so much tension, yeah the football player is tim riggins in my mind and so what?! i literally wrote this months ago, enjoy <3

"heaven ain't close in a place like this"

— somebody told me, the killers

may 1st, 2009

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

It came hissed in the doorway between the second floor fraternity steps and the sticky wood paneled wall. Steve hovered above you, breath sour with beer and a new bottle dripping condensation through the hand dangling at his side. His eyes were slanted and directed down at your eyes watching him in surprise.

30 seconds ago, he cornered you against the wall after your swift trip to the bathroom. You caught eyes with him across the kitchen nearly an hour ago, and it took all this time of carefully scanning your movements when you weren’t looking for Steve to get you away from the junior you came with.

“What are you talking about?” you laughed. “It’s a party.”

“I didn’t invite you.”

You swallowed, trying not to let your good-natured grin drop. You were well aware that Steve didn’t invite you.

After he practically ran from your bedroom two weeks ago, things went radio silent between you and Steve. You texted, he didn’t answer. You called once, thought about leaving a voicemail, and spent a whole weekend crying when you realized: he didn’t want you. Someone who wants you doesn’t flee your room the way he did that night.

You were perfectly content wallowing in your idiocy for ever thinking Steve Harrington could have a special spot for you in his tiny, shriveled heart—until said junior you were attending tonight’s party with saw you at the dining hall.

You were studying late into the evening, sitting all alone at a table near the fireplace with your books sprawled out and your picked-at dinner in scraps. He came staggering in with a band of other men, all sweaty and half-dressed from practice. He was a linebacker on the football team, and he looked damn good easing into the chair across from you and making it squeak.

His name was Tim and he had a handsome smile, and a slow way of talking in this Texan drawl that had you blushing. For the ten minutes he sat and talked to you and asked you what you were so focused on, you forgot all about Steve.

You texted for a week, grabbed a few lunches and coffees together, and now here you were. At a frat party, invited not by Steve—but Tim.

“I know that,” you told Steve, pulling your arms up to fold them over your chest. Steve’s eyes flashed down to your breasts cupped under a black lace bra peeking through a red shirt.

“I came with Tim.”

Steve screwed up his nose, pulling back a little. “Tim? Tim who?”

Huffing, you pushed yourself off the wall and pressed Steve back by the shoulder. “Tim, Steve. Now, excuse me, but I’m gonna go find him—“

“No, hey.”

Steve snatched you by the elbow, causing you to fumble on the carpeting and narrowly miss someone heading up the steps. You gasped, stumbling into Steve still against the wall.

“Steve, what the hell?”

“‘m not done talkin’ to you.”

You glared at him, wrenching your arm away with force. “I don’t care.”

You rushed down the steps before he could speak again, head suddenly swollen with confusion, heart pounding hard in your chest. He hadn’t touched you in weeks. Hadn’t spoken to you, looked at you, so much as acknowledged you since the last time he was inside you.

All it took to get his attention was to finally attempt to move on? It was bullshit. It made your cheeks flame and your mouth line with sweetness that made your stomach coil. It wasn’t fair.

“Hey.” That soft Texan drawl called to you.

You raised your head from where you were glaring at the floor, softening when they found Tim’s green gaze. He grinned at you, still holding your red plastic cup from earlier. You retrieved it from him and allowed yourself to tuck into his side under the weight of his arm.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” you told him. “Long bathroom line.”

Steve stepped into the fluorescents of the kitchen, weaving his way through bodies with wide, squared shoulders. He tossed a quick glance your way and shook his head as he made his way through the room. And what pissed you off most was the fact that he thought he had the right. The right to be upset, the right to think anything of you.

“Baby, you look so pretty in that lil’ top,” Tim said, tipping his chin down to you with a lopsided grin. He was a few beers in and loopy.

You grinned. “Do I?”

“Mhm. Real pretty—come gimme a kiss.”

You perked up on your toes to meet his mouth. His lips were always warm and soft and soaked in beer. Lord, college boys drank a lot. If you closed your eyes and forgot where you were, sometimes he even tasted like Steve.

But Tim always called you baby, and Tim always called you back. He walked you to class with your books in his arms and a hand on your waist, opened the door for you, and helped you into his truck when he took you for coffee.

And Steve? Steve acted like you didn’t exist if his dick wasn’t inside you.

Your tongue was just slipping past Tim’s teeth when you were torn apart by force. Tim stumbled aside, knocking you as he went and catching you quickly with a hand on your waist. Both your heads turned sharply toward the assailant.

Steve stood near the island where Tim had previously been, holding a bottle of beer and a look of nonchalance. His eyes glided from Tim’s look of surprise to your absolute glare.

“Sorry about that,” Steve said coolly. “Wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Tim resumed his spot beside you, and your body felt like it was vibrating against his. Every part of you was burning—and you couldn’t tell from what. Anger? Humiliation? Arousal? Maybe all three. You swallowed with difficulty and let Tim pull you in again. But your eyes never left Steve’s.

And his never widened from their slits. The ball of muscle near his jaw bone knotted when he clenched his teeth and it didn’t move.

“You okay, baby?” Tim’s attention was on you, and you looked away from Steve to smile at your date.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

The footballer had an easier lightness to him. Breezy, taking things with a grain of salt. He didn’t bother fighting Steve for his ‘mistake.’ He didn’t scold him for knocking you. He only smiled at you with a pair of pretty dimples and kissed the top of your head, arm bending around your shoulders.

“Wanna get outta here?”

Because he’d be going home with you. And it only took Tim a few moments to deduce that it was that fact alone that would drive Steve crazy. Even if you couldn’t.

You nodded, hand rubbing over his chest. You spared one more glance toward Steve, who had stepped away toward the other side of the kitchen with slow, slithering steps. He took a swig of his beer and clenched his teeth on the swallow.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Tim held your hand on the way out, guiding you down the front steps and toward the street. Your arms swung over the pavement, and you almost felt compelled to check if Steve was watching. What the hell was wrong with you?

“So what was that?”

You peered up from the pavement to Tim’s green eyes. “What?”

He cocked his head back at the brightly-lit house dimming behind you. The music faded the further you went. He was still wearing that dimpled grin.

“Back there, with that guy.”

You inhaled, looking back toward your feet. It only took a few moments to decide that you didn’t want to lie.

“We…used to hookup. But it’s completely over, I swear.” You skirted to a stop, gathering Tim’s other hand and meeting his eye again. “He’s just being a dick about it.”

He snorted. “I sort of got that when he came from across the room to ram into me.”

A giggle burst from your mouth, but it drooped into a frown. “I’m sorry.”

Tim frowned, brows creasing. “For what? You don’t got nothin’ t’ be sorry for, pretty girl.”

The warmth pulsing in your chest you could certainly make sense of now. “Okay.”

He grinned again, dropping one of your hands to squeeze your chin affectionately. “Okay. Come on.”

You walked the rest of the way to your apartment with his heavy arm over your shoulders again. And Steve watched from the front seat of his car, knowing exactly where he was going as he peeled away from the curb.

✶ ✶

“Alright, goodnight, little lady.”

“Goodnight, Tim.”

Your voices were punctuated by the slam of a door. Quick footsteps followed, a rhythmic succession ascending the staircase. Over the creaky board on the other side of the door, then—

“What the fuck?”

It burst open to a streak of lamplight in your bedroom and one Steve Harrington shadowing it at the foot of your bed. He had your university football teddy bear in his hands. It was a gift from Tim and it had his number on the bear’s soft yellow t-shirt.

Steve leapt to his feet. “What are you doing?”

You couldn’t seem to close your mouth. It hung open as you watched Steve raise his brows and jerk his chin expectantly. He tossed his arms out on either side.

“Huh?”

You came to your senses with a hard blink. “What am I doing? What the hell are you doing? How did you get in here?”

“Same way I always get in,” he quipped.

Heat touched your cheeks as you stepped into the room and gently clamped the door shut. You snatched the teddy bear from his hand and placed it back on your desk silently. Your purse fell to the floor where you were standing.

“You didn’t answer me. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Is this about the party or Tim?” You kicked your shoes off one by one, keeping your back to Steve and his stupidly pretty face.

You had such a soft spot for pretty boys, it seemed.

“You know what? Both.”

“Okay,” you sighed, pulling the first layer of your outfit off. Steve’s eyes scanned the lace of your tank top as red fabric made its way toward the hamper. “Tim and I are seeing each other. Tim wanted to go to the party, which happened to be at your frat—alas, there we were.”

The mattress springs yipped when you bounced on the edge to pull a clean pair of socks on. You wanted to strip your jeans, too, but you didn’t want to give Steve any ideas. He was already standing there with his arms crossed and his biceps and chest all puffed and sculpted. He already had that handsome pink tinge to his cheeks: his beer blush.

“Well, it’s weird,” Steve stated.

You rolled your eyes, exhaling a snicker. “Okay, Steve. Can you leave now? I’m tired.”

Steve tapped his finger on his arm, watching you shift on the bed and feign exhaustion. He chewed his cheek for a minute before reaching for his hair.

“Well…you know I missed you, right, sweetheart?”

He dropped his hands and softened his eyes into that soft, puppy-dog pout. Your scoff was sharp and sliced through the room. Steve stepped toward the bed.

“Right.”

“No, really,” he urged, sinking into the mattress before you. “You know I was just made president, and I just got super busy, that’s all. I meant to call you.”

You tipped your head at him and stared directly into those faux-pleading hazels. "How come everything you say to me sounds like a line, Steve?"

Steve sat unblinking for a moment. Then his cheeks colored a rosy shade, and he covered it with a cruel scoff and another sweep of his hair.

"What? Come on, you-you know I like you."

You pushed off the bed, head shaking. That warmth was slowly but surely returning to your body in violent form. You pulled your hair off your neck and padded toward the window to open it. Your room already smelled too much like Steve.

"You like playing with me," you corrected, keeping your back to him even as the mattress shrieked with his freed weight.

"You know, you're such a bitch-"

You spun around, shoving him by the chest. Steve stumbled a step back, but the smirk on his face made you regret even touching him at all.

"Get out."

"Hell no," he bit, lunging back into place. He grabbed at your arm again. "You think Tim wants you either? You think he doesn't just like playing with you? You always gave it up so easy."

Tears bubbled in the edges of your eyes. A tingling burn settled in the bridge of your nose. You shoved at him again and angled your head away from him and his sneering scowl and beer breath.

"Fuck you, Steve."

“You’re trying to replace me? Hmm?” Steve cocked his head to meet your eye, and you wished you could will away the hot tear trickling down your cheek. “That’s fine, sweetheart. I’ve got ten of you in my pocket.”

He shoved your arm away with a scowl, and you sniffled as he headed toward the door. All the hot-headed, enraged words pulsing on your tongue shriveled and died—and they were replaced with a hurt and heartbreak that was so familiar it was almost comfortable.

Yet as he opened your bedroom door, you rubbed your arm where he had held you and sniffled.

“Stay away from me, Steve.”

Door in hand, Steve turned and scoffed at you. “No problem.”

✶ ✶

You spent the next hour crying between makeup wipes and playing your radio on low. Pulled a faded grey t-shirt from your pajama drawer and tried not to look at Steve’s face rumpled at the bottom on a white t-shirt. Why hadn’t you thrown it away? He was so hard to let go.

With the football bear cradled to your chest, you wiggled under the covers and reached for the lamp. Your phone buzzed consecutively on the nightstand, causing pause. The plastic clicked on its hinges as it flipped open, and the sheets rustled when you shot up in bed.

u up?

tim is a fckn l0ser

answer

i’m sorry

The first time he called, you didn’t answer. You watched the small square light up with his name, felt the plastic shake in your palm with the force of its ring.

answer

Another call. You pressed the green button, but waited.

“Hello? Hey-hello?” His faded voice brought you from your daze.

You pressed the phone to your ear. “Hello?”

“Jesus, do you not read your texts?”

“Wh-what…why are you calling me?” Disbelief colored every syllable from your mouth.

Steve huffed. “I just…how much do you really know about this Tim guy?”

You looked at the bear sitting on your lap against the sheets. “About as much as I know about you, Steve.”

The line buzzed with quiet for a while. You played with the hem of the teddy bear’s shirt and gnawed on your lip. An ache balled in your chest when the thought of him hanging up occurred to you.

“Fair,” he said quietly.

Sighing, you shimmied under the covers again and reclined back against the headboard.

“Why are you calling me, Steve?” This time it was softer. You couldn’t give in to him anymore, but you had to hear him out. He never called you like this.

He never acted like he cared until now.

“Just…don’t wanna see you get hurt.”

You scoffed, pressing your palm against your head. Despite the way your heart pulsed with excitement, and the way your nerves locked up at the thought—you knew Steve didn’t mean any of it. He was just jealous. He wanted you as his personal plaything and he didn’t like to share.

You couldn’t swallow it anymore. You couldn’t keep biting your tongue to stay the perfect toy in hopes he might see you as more.

You had to end it.

“You already took care of that, Steve.”

You reveled in the buzzing silence of the other line for a beat.

“Goodnight,” you told him.

And you hung up the phone.

[rcmclachlan]

He shoves his feet into his sneakers and then double checks that he has everything: keys, wallet, an old Trader Joe's bag filled with a lemon-blueberry pie, two almond-cranberry loaves, a bunch of cream puffs, ice cream bread, a fruitcake, and a cheese danish almost as big as the circumference of the bag opening, plus the stupid cue cards he spent an hour writing out.

Exhaling, Buck glances at his watch. 11:09pm. That gives him about 35 minutes to get to South Robertson, 10 minutes to hyperventilate in the Jeep, three minutes to do the most humiliating thing he's ever dreamed of doing, and one minute to hopefully ring in the new year before it officially starts.

The plan is foolproof, it's Chimney approved, and it's the only one he's got. He can't spend another two months baking and staring at his phone hoping to see bubbles dancing. And not just because none of the grocery stores within a ten mile radius of the loft will sell him small batch vanilla extract anymore.

He can't spend another two months feeling like he's suffering from something that Hen would normally use the LifePak to fix. Which is why this is going to work. It has to. Because he can't think about what the next year is going to be like if it doesn't.

"Okay," Buck murmurs, nodding to himself. "It's go time."

Slipping the bag handles over his wrist and tucking the cards under his arm, he pulls the door open and walks right into a brick wall.

"Shit, I'm sorry," the wall says, steadying Buck with big, familiar hands, then bends down to pick up the cards that had spilled to the floor. "I wouldn't have been standing there if I'd known you were gonna fly out like the place was on fire."

It's been a while since Buck's felt this wrong-footed—two months, to be exact—and that's the only reason why he opens his mouth and "You ruined my plan!" falls out.

Tommy looks up from the cue cards with a disbelieving smile. It's the same one that had spread across his face after bad coffee and a plea for a second chance. You already know I'm interested. "Were you going to Love, Actually me?"

He turns the cards in his hands and shows the top one to Buck. It says To me, you are perfect an asshole (but I want you anyway).

Buck puts down the Trader Joe's bag and gives himself a minute to drink Tommy in. He looks good, if wan. The bags under his eyes are new, but the way he curls his shoulders in, like he's trying to make himself smaller, turn himself into a smaller target, takes Buck right back to the last time Tommy was here.

"I-In my defense, Chimney thought it was a stroke of genius," Buck grouses. "Although I'm starting to suspect that he was just giving me shit."

Genuine amusement makes hills and valleys out of the corners of Tommy's eyes, and the way the sight of them makes something unknot inside of Buck feels like muscle memory. He used to wish that his own crow's feet were that pronounced; it always seemed like Tommy's were a mark of a life spent smiling. But even the knowledge that many of those smiles weren't real can't stop Buck from being charmed.

With shaking hands, Buck takes the cue cards from Tommy, who seems a little reluctant to let them go, and absolutely doesn't clutch them to his chest like a shield.

"What are you doing here?"

Tommy scratches at his forearm, a little tic that draws Buck's eye, and because of it he almost doesn't see the tremor in Tommy's bottom lip when he breathes out shakily and says, "I was on shift today, and Nico asked everyone what their New Year's resolutions were. I didn't have one. I never do. It's not something I ever—just getting through the year intact has always been my goal. You really can't call that a resolution."

Buck can't help but give a mystified nod, because he has no idea where this is going, but he honestly doesn't care. Tommy's here. He's here.

"But I couldn't stop thinking about it," Tommy continues, and the laugh he chokes out sounds like it scores the inside of his throat on its way out. "Tonight I had a little kid code in the back of my bird on the way to First Pres, and all I could think about was what my resolution would be if I had one."

"D-Did the kid make it?"

"No," Tommy sighs. "No, he didn't. And I sat on the roof of the hospital for, like, twenty minutes sobbing like a baby, because all I wanted was to hear the sound of your voice. I just wanted to call you and I wouldn't let myself."

The image of Tommy crying alone in a cockpit and denying himself even a little bit of comfort hits Buck like a sucker punch. "W-Why didn't you?"

"I was scared," Tommy admits with a smile that hurts to look at. The corners of his eyes crease anyway. "I was shit scared that I'd call and you'd, I don't know, tell me to go fuck myself, or tell me that I did you a favor by breaking things off. Or worse: the call wouldn't go through at all, because you'd blocked me. You had every right to do any of those things, but... I was too afraid to find out what it'd be. So I didn't."

The prickling heat in the corners of Buck's eyes and in his sinuses feels like a warning. He clears his throat, trying to head it off at the pass, but his eyes feel too wet to safely blink.

"But then why are you—"

"I was on my way home when it hit me out of nowhere: my resolution. Forty-something years and I finally had one."

Heart pounding, Buck takes a step forward and ventures, breathless, "Which was...?"

"My resolution was to be brave for once in my life." Tommy's nose scrunches like he's holding in a laugh, but his eyes look suspiciously glassy. "And suddenly I was parked outside your building."

"Y-You got a space?"

Tommy laughs wetly. "Believe it or not, it was the same one I got that night. And as I pulled in, I thought, 'See that, Kinard? Even the universe is telling you to stop being such a fucking coward.'"

"Your resolution is to be brave," Buck echoes, and just saying it feels like standing at the edge of a canyon and being unable to judge the distance from one side to the other because of the sun in his eyes. "T-That's a good one. We could all stand to be a bit braver this year."

Swallowing, Tommy shakes his head, but before Buck can flirt with the notion of a breakdown, he steps closer. Enough that Buck can count his individual lashes; enough to see the fear in his eyes, as well as the determination holding it at bay.

"I'm no expert, but I hear the best resolutions are the ones where there's someone to hold you to them." He stares into Buck's eyes as he talks but, with every other word, his gaze dips lower.

"I've made and broken a million resolutions in my life. I think that makes me an expert," Buck murmurs. "And yeah, having someone hold you accountable is the key to keeping them."

"I've still got—" Tommy glances down at his watch. "—forty-one minutes. Maybe I should wait until midnight, make it a clean start. What's your expert opinion on—"

Whatever he's about to say gets cut off when Buck drops the cue cards to the floor and presses his entire body into Tommy's. He hopes Tommy can feel every single vibration coming from his bones.

Whether or not he does is anyone's guess, but Tommy doesn't hesitate in wrapping his arms around Buck, sliding a hand up his back to cup the base of his skull, gasping a little in the space between their mouths when Buck rests his forehead against Tommy's. He's shaking even harder than Buck, but his hold is steadfast.

"I'm going to nail your ass to the wall if you break this resolution," Buck whispers.

"I'm counting on it," Tommy whispers back. "In the meantime, you should show me the cue cards. This is literally a fantasy of mine."

Snorting, Buck bites playfully at the bolt of his jaw, and tries not to go completely boneless in relief. "I'm so glad you fucked up my plan. That movie is so bad, Tommy, and I had to re-watch that stupid scene a hundred times to get the cue cards right. You don't deserve them."

"Say 'it's carol singers,'" Tommy nuzzles at his cheek. "Just once. I've been incredibly brave tonight and I deserve something."

"Suffer," Buck laughs, and kisses him into next year.

[feeder86]

Gluttons

It was strange how you could go ten years without seeing someone and yet suddenly remember everything about them the moment you came across them again.

Oliver had never understood the alarm system at the house he and his boyfriend had bought a couple of years ago. However, since it had been setting itself off whilst he had been at work, he knew it was time to get someone in to see it. He’d called a company, not knowing that his old high school buddy, Tom, worked for them. That was, until the guy showed up at his door that Thursday afternoon.

Back in the day, Oliver had mixed with quite a diverse crowd in high school. He’d never been one to shoehorn himself into a stereotypical group and had amassed friends across the entire spectrum of high school life. Tom had been on one of those extreme ends of the scale: a typically gorgeous, athletic jock who didn’t have much time for many people outside of the usual jock circle. However, Oliver had always found him relatively easy to chat to and even remembered them getting dared to kiss each other during an alcohol infused round of ‘spin the bottle’ at one of their friend’s parties. Unlike many of the other jocks, Tom seemed more comfortable in his own skin, not caring that Oliver was gay, despite only having an eye for the most athletic girls in the school. It was fair to say that Oliver only had good memories of the guy.

“Oliver!” Tom smiled in recognition as he stood on the doorway carrying his bag of tools. “I didn’t know you lived here!”

The man stepped over the threshold, placing his bag down and reached in for a hug that almost seemed out of place after such a long period of estrangement. The scent of him seemed so familiar. He was still so handsome and good-looking, but what was that Oliver could feel as their torsos bounced against each other? He looked down the moment they stepped apart again, noticing that Tom had developed the cutest, tight and firm-looking paunch on him. It stuck out under his toned chest, stretching the material of the cheap work shirt, looking incredibly out of place on the guy who had once been so fit and active.

“Long time, no see,” Oliver smiled back, trying not to stare at the unusual shape of his old high school buddy. The pair spent a few minutes reminiscing, with Oliver explaining how he and his ex, James, had come to buy the house and lived there together up until three months ago, when the guy had cheated on him and abruptly moved out. 

“I just remember that crazy old cat guy used to live here when we were in high school,” Tom laughed. “I never imagined it would be as nice as this inside.”

“Oh, it definitely wasn’t like this when we bought it,” Oliver laughed. “We pretty much had to start from scratch when we bought the place.”

Tom smiled at him, seeming to admire his achievement. It was the way he had always been, never jealous or competitive; just genuinely happy for others when things were going well; even if people beat him in a tennis match or smashed his high school athletics records. 

As Tom settled to work at the alarm box, Oliver couldn’t help staring at his old friend’s new shape once more. From behind, it was obvious that the tight little paunch on him had pushed around to his sides, providing him with the sweetest little love handles, further emphasised by how ridiculously tight his shirt was around his middle. There was an added thickness to his butt too; his old, slim glutes replaced with more bulbous, stronger-looking butt cheeks. After three months of being angry at the world and swearing off men, Oliver suddenly found himself swooning. He’d always loved guys on the larger side and Tom appeared to be the most perfect dad-bod specimen Oliver had ever seen. As the guy bent down to collect some wires from his bag, an expanse of skin on his lower back came suddenly into view, alongside a sweet shot of his delicious-looking butt crack that his stretched and undersized underwear failed to cover. There was no doubt about it, Oliver was finally getting over his break-up.

“Would you like some cake?” Oliver offered, pulling out the leftovers from the birthday party he had thrown for his mother the day before.

Two greedy little eyes looked upon the cake and the man swallowed a sudden build up of saliva. “Sure,” he nodded eagerly, sipping on his fresh coffee and feeling a lot more spoiled than when he called at most folks’ houses.

Oliver could feel his erection flexing as he pulled out the knife to start cutting the slice. Tom had always been so fit and lean, yet now Oliver was serving him cake whilst enjoying the round, bloated shape of his stomach. He went to dish out the portion when a wicked, kinky part of his brain began whispering to him: ‘More! More! Cut him a bigger slice!’ 

As Oliver listened to it, he felt even more blood pumping into his groin. The slice he had cut was ridiculously massive. He almost felt embarrassed as he served it up. Yet Tom didn’t seem in the slightest bit put off by it. He simply stood to the side, resting the arm holding the plate against his tight, rounded stomach, feeding himself with the fork. The sight was almost mesmerising.

“Can I get you some more?” Oliver asked cheekily, seeing that the plate was cleared remarkably quickly. “It’s fresh cream. I’ll probably end up having to throw it out tomorrow,” he lied.

“Well… okay then,” Tom nodded, seeming to know that he was overindulging. This time, Oliver didn’t bother cutting a slice. The remaining cake was only marginally larger than the slice he had served up last time. He simply slapped the entirety of it onto the plate, thanking Tom for freeing up some space in his refrigerator.

“It’s been really great to see you again,” Tom smiled later on as he gathered up his things and headed to the door.

“You too!” Oliver nodded back, having enjoyed the last half an hour immensely. He felt reinvigorated and irredeemably aroused, as if the time had been the best possible therapy to get him over the sadness of his break-up.

“Perhaps you might let me take you out to dinner sometime?” Tom asked next, suddenly a little shy.

“Dinner?” Oliver shot back in complete and utter shock. “As in… a date?”

“Sure. Why not?” Tom chuckled. “I always remember the two of us having a good vibe together back in high school. I’d like to see whether we still have it.”

Oliver was almost speechless. Sure, he’d been flirting the entire time, but he hadn’t expected any of it to land. Tom had never… Tom wasn’t into guys… What the hell was going on?

“You don’t want to,” Tom sighed, trying to interpret the stunned silence.

“No!” Oliver shot back. “Not ‘no’… I mean, yes. I mean…” he spluttered, grumbling at his sudden inability to communicate effectively. “Okay,” he nodded, trying not to laugh at his own good fortune. “But why don’t you come over here instead of going out? I can cook us a meal.”

Tom smiled brightly. “I’d love that. Tomorrow night?” he asked.

Oliver reflected the smile as he nodded. There really was no time to waste.

At the supermarket the next day, Oliver felt the same sense of arousal he had experienced when serving the cake. There were so many things a relatively overweight, former jock should never eat, suddenly getting thrown into his shopping cart: beers, potato chips, pastries and sodas. Something inside of Oliver was captivated by seeing how much Tom had let his eating habits slide and he endeavoured to create the most decadent dining experience for his date that he possibly could.

When Tom arrived, he looked smart enough in his pants and polished shoes. But just like any guy who wasn’t paying enough attention to his expanding waistline, his shirt was once again tight around his stomach. Even standing up, the buttons looked slightly strained, positively gaping once he sat down and started to eat alongside Oliver.

“You’ve got a great appetite!” Oliver couldn’t help marvelling as Tom reached out for a second helping of the dessert. He got up, spooning out another scoop of ice cream for the man as well, pretending that he was merely pleased that Tom had enjoyed his cooking so much. The guy hadn’t stopped complimenting his food all evening.

“I’ve always enjoyed my food,” Tom nodded back, already starting to spoon it all into his greedy little mouth. “I always used to get away with it when I was younger. But once I hit my mid-twenties, it all started to stick to me a lot more,” he explained, giving his rounded stomach a pat, showing, for the first time, that he was actually aware of it. “I reckon it’s probably the reason I’m still single.”

The shape of that gut was completely mesmerising to Oliver, yet he pushed his urge to stare and marvel at it to the side. It wasn’t normal to be so fixated on a guy’s belly; a feature that most people would find to be Tom’s least attractive attribute. “The last thing I heard about you was that you were engaged to Molly Simpson from the year below us,” Oliver enquired interestedly.

“Oh, yeah…” Tom mumbled back, trying to eat at the same time. “That was a couple of years ago now.” He shook his head, as if something still frustrated him. “I just don’t get it,” he grumbled. “What do people expect guys like me to look like these days? I’m nearly thirty after all.”

It was obvious that his increasing weight had put an end to Tom’s engagement. But the way that Tom seemed genuinely annoyed by it all seemed to suggest that he placed no blame on himself, or his overeating, whatsoever. The volume of food he had devoured was more than extreme that evening, yet the guy seemed to believe his expanding waistline was just a normal part of ageing?

“You remember Steve, my older brother?” Tom asked, still feeding himself. “He’s the same. Only he goes to the gym to try and keep his weight down. But,,, It’s not like I have the time for that, do I?” he shrugged.

Oliver nodded sympathetically. However, there was an excitement inside of him that he felt almost impossible to contain. Tom’s genuine greed had captivated him all evening, yet the multiple excuses and denial about his own part in his increasing weight was adding fuel to that fire; supplying another strange level of arousal to the whole proceedings. “Well, I’m just grateful to have someone who actually enjoys my cooking,” he threw back, resisting the temptation to make a disparaging remark about how his ex had never appreciated all the effort he put into their meals. “So is this why you asked me on a date? You think the girls don’t want you anymore?” he teased, adding another small scoop of ice cream into Tom’s bowl at the guy’s request.

“I told you I was bisexual years ago!” Tom shot back.

“No you didn’t,” Oliver laughed. 

“I definitely did!” Tom countered. “The night we played spin the bottle at Andy’s party. The night we kissed,” he chuckled. “You do remember that, right?” he asked, getting concerned.

“I remember us being dared to kiss,” Oliver nodded. “But I don’t remember anything else. I was pretty wasted. Did you really come out as bisexual to me that night?”

A small smile twitched from the corners of Tom’s mouth. “So that’s why you didn’t ever pick up on my flirting then,” he chuckled, rolling his eyes.

“You were actually into me back then?” Oliver asked, dumbfounded.

“Of course I was,” Tom nodded. “You’re gorgeous!”

The pair held a sickly, besotted look for a moment, before they both got up to move over to Oliver’s lounge space. Tom sat down first. He’d always carried a sense of presence about him, but with his imposing height and added mass, he seemed to fill the area with a deeply arousing, masculine air; his straining shirt gaping once more, bloating from all the food he had devoured; yet Tom appeared completely oblivious to it, with eyes only on Oliver. They talked for a short while about the people they knew from their school days; both of them realising that there were surprisingly few either of them were still in regular contact with. They’d both moved on, lived lives and experienced things that had altered them more than their eighteen-year-old selves could have contemplated. They were so familiar to each other, and yet excitingly new.

Oliver nestled himself under Tom’s arm and rested against his side; a gentle hand draped over the boy’s stout little tummy as they moved in for a sweet kiss. The smell of his body was arousing Oliver more than he thought possible; the gentle sweat and manly musk of a guy who had overindulged in stifling clothes, more than a little too tight for his fattened body. The kiss was good and followed swiftly by another, more passionate and almost frantic, as if their simmering attraction to each other had finally passed the point of no return. It wasn’t as if they were strangers just getting to know each other, and it was obvious what they both wanted.

Oliver’s hands wanted to explore more and more; to rip off Tom’s clothes and see it all. Thankfully, it was Tom who was leading the charge. Perhaps, just like Oliver, this was the first bit of action he had had in months. As such, the kissing progressed quickly, with hands sliding down into crotches and rubbing with gentle moans of encouragement. Tom grunted and unbuckled his pants, sliding them down to let his buoyant erection spring out. Oliver followed his cue, with the pair mutually stroking the other as they kissed; their breathing getting heavier and heavier. 

Finally, Oliver could wait no more. He wanted to see under Tom’s shirt. He wriggled his dropped pants clean off, then raised his own shirt off his slender, gently toned body. Immediately, Tom’s eager hands explored his torso, smiling with eager appreciation. Now was Oliver’s moment. Naked, he stood and smiled wickedly and he pulled Tom’s pants further down and threw them across the room. He sat himself on Tom’s lap, finally taking his hands to the top button of the guy’s shirt, unpicking them all, one by one, making his way down. At last, he spread the material apart, revealing the rounded, most handsome potbelly Oliver had ever seen in his life. The chest was strong and a little hairy. Only the very gentle softness of the nipples gave away the obvious forty pounds Tom had gained since Oliver had seen him last. However, the extreme, solid and heavy ball-shaped stomach was more than he had ever wished for. Here was a man who not only enjoyed his food, but had clearly packed it into himself with relish, growing such a firm, well shaped, spherical mass. It was all Oliver could do not to lament at how insanely arousing he found the sight of it. Instead, he kissed the guy more and more, leading him upstairs to finish the job.

Oliver’s friends were always going to be sceptical when he started a new relationship. They’d witnessed how heartbroken he had been after his split with James, glancing at each other with concern as Oliver had lamented about seeing an old high school crush.

“He’s staying over again tonight?” Mandy had asked. “Doesn’t he have his own place?”

Oliver had steered the conversation carefully, sensing their worries. These friends had only ever known him as the driven, assertive version of his twenties; mistaking that now for a reckless, foolhardy fall into a rebound relationship. In contrast, Tom seemed to know him so much more; that unrefined incarnation of his teenage years and the way it had evolved now into someone the man appeared to have fallen for just as much as Oliver had in return.

“Trust me,” Oliver had smiled at them all. “You’ll understand when you meet him.”

However, when the friends did meet Tom, Oliver soon realised how much of a serious misstep he had taken in laying the groundwork. He’d talked too much about how they’d known each other in high school and how popular Tom had been with the girls because of his athleticism. So when he arrived with a thicker, slightly pot-bellied physique, he should have been less surprised when their eyes kept flying back to Tom’s swollen middle. Of course they would be surprised. Oliver’s ex, James, had been obsessed with the gym, whereas it was obvious that Tom was not. Like a typical guy who had packed on a few pounds, Tom was continuing to wear his medium t-shirts that clung unflatteringly against the expanded waistline, emphasising it even more. It also didn’t help that Tom had arrived, feeling pretty hungry. He ordered more than everyone else and even reached across to grab the things people had left on their plates when they were too polite to refuse him.

If Oliver was honest, he felt a strange sense of embarrassment at Tom’s overeating and attire. His new boyfriend’s greed and appearance did not match in the slightest with the men his friends were used to him dating. Upon meeting Tom, they were quickly realising that Oliver’s taste in men wasn’t always quite so mainstream. On the other hand, however, it was incredibly thrilling to show off the kind of man Oliver found genuinely so appealing: overfed, under-exercised and swollen. As Tom ate, Oliver’s hardness built, realising that were Tom to continue on this path, this was probably the slimmest his friends would ever see his new lover.

In truth, Oliver knew that he was significantly overfeeding Tom whenever he came over. It almost felt like something he could barely control as he stocked his refrigerator and cupboards with all the decadent favorites he knew Tom wouldn’t be able to resist. Meanwhile, Tom relaxed into it completely, resting back into the couch as he sipped on his beers and allowed his new lover to spoil him. It was obvious how much he enjoyed it all, lamenting more than once how great it was to be dating someone who didn’t constantly nag him about his eating, as it appeared his previous girlfriends had all done. In Tom’s mind, this made dating guys so much easier.

The effects were instantaneous. When they first started sleeping together, Oliver could squint his eyes and still see the toned, athletic butt that Tom had had back at the end of high school, even with his slightly oversized glutes. Now, however, the tops of Tom’s thighs had started softening and the butt cheeks had pushed outwards, developing significantly more width to them through a lack of exercise. Tom’s ass had become that of a fat man, rather than a simple ex-jock, meaning that Oliver was able to finish with remarkable speed whenever they practised being versatile in the bedroom. But as Oliver thrusted and pounded, he wasn’t simply enjoying the feel and shape of Tom’s chubby butt; in his mind, he was imagining the size it could grow to with more time and encouragement. After all, it was obvious that Tom’s rear was only ever going to grow bigger.

Unlike other people, there seemed to be a genuine disconnect between Tom and the appearance of his body. He didn’t seem to notice how badly his clothes were fitting, nor become irritated by how obviously uncomfortable certain items of clothing must have been for him; his tortured, stretched out and exhausted underwear sliding further down his butt crack. After a performance management review, Tom came back wearing larger work shirts that had been issued to him after his manager saw the disastrous fit of the old ones. Tom had shrugged it off without complaint, nor alarm over how much thicker he was becoming. He was the type of man who didn’t make issues where there needn’t to be any. His weight wasn’t impacting his work, nor his sex life, so it surely mustn’t be a problem.

Out of both excitement and neccessity, Oliver took the initiative and started to buy Tom some new items to wear, finding that the man was more than happy to accept the guidance. Having never had an interest in clothes, he’d assumed that, as a gay man, Oliver would be a lot more knowledgeable about how to dress him. The casual look was so sexy on him as well; the sweatshorts and sweatpants, the sleeveless t-shirts and elasticated waistbands. It was obvious how Tom’s gain had been able to take hold of him. The guy had adopted a lazy lifestyle that Oliver had enabled with ease. As Tom drove around from house to house in work, he’d been making casual calls at fast food places several times in a week, as was evident throughout his work vehicle. He’d avoided walking as much as he could, always ensuring he parked as close as possible to the store he was visiting. When he got home, he would collapse on the couch and not move. Indeed, a brief look in the glutton’s kitchen cupboards would tell anyone that he had the taste buds of a five year old; with sugary snacks and tasty treats filling them up entirely.

For the first time, Tom was starting to carry a little more weight in his face, with cheeks that had swollen slightly and the start of a small chin. His pecs had softened, with fat beginning to spread under his arms as his rounded gut inflated once more.  Oliver realised that in only three months of dating, he had probably witnessed Tom gaining a further thirty pounds of fat on his tall frame without a care in the world.

It was around that time when Oliver was taken to meet Tom’s family. Despite only knowing for a few days that their son had flipped to dating a guy for the first time, Tom was still remarkably affectionate with Oliver in front of them. His brother, Steve, and his wife, Rachel, had been invited along for dinner at the same time, really piling on the pressure for Oliver to impress. 

Oliver had an image in his head of how he expected Tom’s parents to look; after all, Tom had done every athletics club under the sun when he was growing up, and it wasn’t unreasonable for Oliver to anticipate that this was as a result of his upbringing. However, Oliver quickly realised that the picture he had of them in his head couldn’t have been more wrong. Tom’s mother was short, round and carried an enormous amount of weight on her giant rear. His father was an even more extreme example of obesity, clearly weighing no less than four hundred pounds on his tall and broad frame. Oliver wondered if this had been a recent thing for the pair of them, but as he gazed upon the family photos around the house, he realised that Tom and his brother, Steve, had always grown up with very large parents. 

Steve’s wife, Rachel, was someone Oliver remembered clearly as the former editor of the high school newspaper; an extremely bossy and studious girl from the year above and not someone Oliver had been particularly keen to get to know. Perhaps it was just the fact that she had seen so many of Tom’s love interests come and go over the many years she had been a part of the family, but she did not seem in the slightest bit as interested in Oliver as the rest of the friendly bunch. She picked at and chastised her husband for reaching for a second helping of dessert and she positively scowled at her mother-in-law when she brought out further snacks after dinner. Her reason for this was simple. Much like Tom, Steve had packed on quite a good amount of weight since his athletic high school days. He’d developed a stout little tummy and his face had that distinct puffiness to it that his younger self had not.

“The boys always overeat when they come here,” Rachel grumbled quietly to Oliver later on, as the pair were alone for the first time. “Walt and Sue have absolutely no idea about healthy diets or portion control,” she sighed, referring to Tom’s parents; clearly wound up and frustrated by having to be there.

“Well, they’re clearly good cooks,” Oliver smiled back, trying to keep the conversation light.

“Steve and I went through a rough patch a couple of years ago and he moved back here for two months,” she replied, still attempting to make her point. “Forty pounds!” she exclaimed. “That’s how much he gained from just being here with those two, eating the same things that they do. He’s still carrying around some of it now.”

“I see,” Oliver nodded, not really wanting to get involved in Rachel’s in-law grumblings.

“Give these boys an inch and they’d turn into the image of their father,” Rachel nodded, finally seeming to reach her point. “Tom’s weight has gone up and down in the last couple of years, but I’ve never seen him this big before. You’ll need to start putting your foot down with him, like I do with Steve.”

With impeccable timing, the pair watched as Tom reached out and fed himself a large doughnut as he finally finished drying the dishes with the others. Three large bites and it was gone, like it had been nothing more than air. It was plain to see that Rachel was absolutely right. Left to their own devices, both Tom and his brother were exactly the type of men who could stumble into quite extreme obesity. If only Rachel knew that Oliver had no intentions of ever preventing that.

Oliver had never dated a guy with so little inhibitions when it came to his body. Despite the fat little tummy he had developed, Tom seemed completely at ease lounging around Oliver’s house in nothing but his underwear; even answering the door to the take-out delivery guy with next to nothing on. Perhaps it stemmed from the days when Tom had been the ultimate fantasy for so many women; tall, broad and handsome. But with his gut pushing out in one direction and his chubby rear in another, the guy was getting further and further away from the sleek form that had once made women droll. His laziness was evident by how content he was to lay about all weekend, making multiple excuses whenever Oliver suggested going for a hike, or getting out for some exercise. Overfed, oversexed and under-exercised, Tom had reached a level of contentment in his new relationship that was only ever going to have one result.

It was easy to become blind to it all. Tom’s eating was indeed quite extreme. He could arrive at Oliver’s place with a tray of doughnuts and go to bed that night with not a single one left. Despite being well catered for, he ordered in food later in the evening and he slurped on beers and sodas like he’d spent a month in a dry desert. It was as if he was so comfortable and happy in his relationship with Oliver, he was taking the best vacation from caring about his diet at all.

However, as the months trickled by, it was clear that Tom’s eating was anything but temporary. Their first holiday season together had been an eye-opener as Oliver saw just how much Tom’s family indulged. Rachel had been a constant snarky killjoy the entire time, biting Steve’s head off anytime he went in for extra helpings in the same way Tom seemed to enjoy doing. It was obvious that neither Tom, nor his parents were all that keen on her, making it significantly easier for them to appreciate how laid back Oliver was instead. By simply not nagging or chastising Tom as his gut bloated up into an even more spherical shape, he’d become the firm favorire amongst even the extended family. It was something that Oliver didn’t mind too much. Rachel was abrasive and harsh. It was easy to feel sorry for Steve as they waved goodbye to them both after a meal at Tom’s parents; Rachel’s face set like stone because her husband had overeaten once more.

Moving in together had been the inevitable next step for Oliver and Tom. However, this process was sped up significantly by the fact that Tom’s landlord was wanting to sell. Although it had been less than eighteen months since Oliver had kicked out his last lover, there he was welcoming another into his home. He’d expected the usual teething problems as they learned to get along, living side by side. Yet the experience turned out to be nothing but pure pleasure. Not only was their sex life as rampant as ever, but Tom was considerate and funny, appreciating how lucky he was to have a guy who was not only willing to let him move in, but make the changes he wanted around the house: his significantly larger TV screen in the lounge, his ugly recliner chair in front of it; a beer dispenser by the refrigerator and a whole stack of games and console machines in what was the become Tom’s new man cave. Giving the guy his own space vital to making this work, Oliver reasoned. He’d had to set his own ground rules as well; chief amongst them that Tom tried his best not to sit down on some of the older pieces of furniture Oliver had inherited from his grandmother. Given the size of the man’s ball-like stomach these days, Oliver suspected that his lover had already surpassed three hundred pounds as the couch began grumbling under his weight.

In no time at all, Oliver’s home soon became a casual refuge for Steve as well. Being that Tom only lived a few blocks away from his brother now, the two guys were seeing a lot more of each other than they had in the ten years since Steve had first moved out of their parents’ place. With some amusement, Oliver would chuckle to himself as he saw Tom letting the guy in to watch the football on TV. Steve would always be dressed like he was heading to the gym and Oliver suspected that that was exactly where his wife had been told he was going. Instead, he was sitting on the couch, gorging on take out pizzas with his brother, whilst shouting at the screen.

Steve had always carried a stubborn, stout little paunch the whole time Oliver had been dating Tom. However, after only three months of skipping the gym to watch sports with Tom, the guy had packed on a considerable amount of additional weight, rounding him out further and bloating up his face in the same way that Tom’s had in the early days of dating Oliver. Judging by the amount of take-out boxes and emptied cans Oliver could come down to in the morning, it was obvious that Steve was every bit as much of a glutton as Tom was. The results of all those excess calories were staggeringly similar as well: the swelling ball of stomach, the widening of the rear. The more the boys ate, the hungrier they seemed to become.

Tom’s gut appeared to enter the room before he did and his hips had swollen outwards in a way that had completely altered his shape. There had always been at least a hint of the guy’s former athleticism in his physique: the strong chest, the biceps, the jawline. Yet all of that had now melted away, being replaced by a puffing fatness that had coated Tom’s entire body. As he slouched in his chair, the great mass of stomach fat arched out in front of him, expanding into his lap; his pecs long since succumbing to the build up of blubber. At what must have been 350lbs, Oliver could not get over how attracted he was to the man: the sheer enormity and size of him; the great appetite and joy he seemed to get from his eating, without caring in the slightest about how his body was changing.

Oliver had asked Tom to marry him whilst they were on vacation together in Las Vegas. Tom had gorged himself the entire time, going from restaurant to restaurant, and when they had won a sizable amount of cash on their penultimate evening there, it felt like everything had slotted into place as they headed off to the tackiest looking chapel they could find.

However, as one marriage began, it seemed as if another was ending. Steve and Rachel clearly weren’t getting along, meaning that the poor, hapless guy was soon spending more and more time in Oliver and Tom’s spare bedroom. Oliver tried not to pry but it seemed obvious to him what the main catalyst was for the couple’s troubles.

“Don’t you think you should go easy on the pizzas later when you’re watching the game with Steve?” Oliver tried to ask. “You know what Rachel is like about his weight and it’s clear that she’s not happy about how much weight he’s gained.”

Tom shrugged. Even he couldn't deny how much weight his brother had packed on in the last few months. After all, he had taken to wearing many items of clothing that Tom had outgrown himself: the sweatpants, the t-shirts, the sweaters. “What’s the point? We all know they’re not getting back together.”

Oliver sighed. Given how much of Steve’s stuff had been filling up the spare bedroom, he had come to a similar conclusion.

“And so what if they do get a divorce? Steve’s already starting to realise how much nicer life is without her.” He looked at Oliver, trying to get a sense of what he was thinking. “Unless… you’re frustrated at having him here?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “You know my parents would let him stay with them if it’s all a bit too much?”

Oliver shook his head. That wasn’t the case at all. Ever since Tom had quit his job for an admin role, working from home, he had worried that Tom’s weight would start to come down, now that he wasn’t roaming from fast food joint to fast food joint during his working day. But with Steve around, the pair fuelled each other’s enthusiasm for tasty treats, with an inevitable, incredibly arousing impact on both their bodies. In the last few weeks alone, Tom’s thighs had appeared to explode with additional size, stretching the capacity of even his most casual sweatpants.

Steve’s attitude seemed to change the moment he found out that Rachel had started to date one of his old friends. Rather than being angry and bitter, it was as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He could at last move on, rejecting the guilt he felt and enjoy his life.

“Steve’s out again?” Oliver chuckled as he came in late one evening. “Another date? Who is it this time?”

Tom nodded as he dipped his hand into a large bag of potato chips. “Some girl he met online,” he replied. “A new one.”

Oliver smiled, pleased that Steve was proving to be such a hit with the ladies, even with his larger stomach these days.

When Steve finally did bring a girl home, both Oliver and Tom quietly confessed to each other their surprise over how good looking she was: petite, slim and large chested, the woman could have had any man she wanted; yet she seemed physically incapable of keeping her hands off her new chubby boyfriend. As for Steve, he seemed blissfully happy and pleased with himself, knowing that he had struck gold. Gina seemed like the girl he had been waiting for his entire life.

“Your Tom’s a big boy, isn’t he?” Gina smiled, watching as Oliver’s husband and Steve retreated into the lounge after dinner.

“I guess so,” Oliver smiled as he tidied up the table, still undecided about the woman his brother-in-law was dating.

“You two must get a lot of looks when you go out together? You’re both so different!”

Oliver resisted the urge to roll his eyes. So many folks didn’t understand how he could be so in love with a man almost two hundred pounds heavier than him; yet few lacked the tack to keep that curiosity to themselves. “I guess so,” he replied disinterestedly.

“My Steve has a pretty big tummy on him as well,” Gina blundered on, chuckling nervously.

“Well, I think my husband is partly to blame for that,” Oliver smiled back. “He’s been teaching him some pretty bad habits since Steve moved in here with us.”

Gina nodded enthusiastically back. “Yes, Steve’s been telling me! He split his pants at work the other day,” she chuckled.

“I’ve lost count of the amount of pants Tom’s destroyed over the years!” Oliver joked back.

“So, are the boys done eating for the night? Or do they usually snack now?”

Oliver looked at his watch and shook his head. “It’s only eight o’clock!” he replied as if Gina’s question had been utterly ridiculous. “Tom likes something to eat around ten or so. Usually it’s a pizza.”

“And does Steve join him?” Gina asked, almost excitedly.

“Of course,” Oliver nodded.

Gina turned, looking towards the lounge area, sighing with pleasure. “I think this living arrangement is going to work out very well for all of us!”

Oliver simply wiped down the kitchen counter as Gina skipped off to snuggle under Steve’s arm on the couch, not quite understanding exactly what the woman had meant.

A couple of weeks later, Oliver nudged his husband as Steve came down the stairs ready to head out for dinner with Gina. His eyes had bulged at the tight shirt the guy was wearing; his stout, rounded stomach already straining the buttons. 

“You can’t let him wear that!” Oliver whispered, panicking as he saw Steve grabbing his keys. “Tell him it’s too tight!”

Tom looked up from his heaped plate of cheese and savoury biscuits, balanced on top of the shelf of stomach fat he had accumulated. He saw the ridiculous shirt and smirked to himself. “Have a good evening, buddy!” he called out, letting the guy leave without a word of protest.

“How could you let him go out like that?” Oliver cried, utterly shocked by his husband’s lack of caring.

Tom merely laughed to himself. “You worry far too much about him. Trust me, Steve knows exactly what he’s doing!”

Oliver paused, never quite knowing how far to pry into the brothers’ relationship. They got along better than any other siblings he had ever known and were certainly a lot closer than Oliver had ever been with his especially aloof older sister. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

Tom seemed to ponder how best to answer as he continued eating. “Well, Gina is quite forthcoming when it comes to her appreciation of the extra weight he’s been carrying lately. I imagine he’s going to get very lucky tonight when she sees him in that tight shirt!”

“Gina likes it?” Oliver asked, feeling a lot more surprised than he should reasonably have been, considering all the compliments he had heard the girl giving the chubby boy.

“Of course,” Tom nodded. “She wants him bigger.”

“She… what?” Oliver gasped. 

“Oh, come on!” Tom chuckled. “You can’t pretend you’re not exactly the same. It’s just like how you get off on my… what is it you say? My ‘big, manly appetite.’”

“That’s not quite the same thing,” Oliver mumbled, slightly embarrassed. 

“Well, Gina thinks it is,” Tom replied. “Her and Steve talk about it quite a lot. She thinks you enable me to gain weight because you enjoy it.”

Oliver blushed. He never lied to Tom, yet if he opened his mouth at that moment, he wouldn’t have been able to help one from slipping out, denying everything. “And what do you think?” was all he asked.

“I just think I’m a greedy boy who eats far too much,” Tom smirked. “But I do think that might be part of the reason why you married me…”

Tom’s responses were light and jovial, relaxing Oliver as he came to terms with the fact he would have to own up to his kinkier side. “But, I don’t make you wear tight clothes that people will make fun of you for,” he replied, trying to shift the spotlight back onto Gina instead.

“No,” Tom nodded in agreement. “But you’re hardly stopping me from outgrowing everything, are you?”

Oliver merely stared at his husband for a few moments as he finished up the last of his pre-dinner snack; all those additional calories and fats he had prepared for his husband. He’d been outed as a chubby chaser. “So how big does Gina want Steve to get?” he asked.

Tom pressed his thumb into the plate, picking up all the leftover crumbs, before sucking them off. “They’ve had some very kinky conversations about just that,” the big man nodded. “She makes these special shakes for him, loaded with calories! Then she sucks him off whilst he downs it all for her.”

“And Steve is okay with that?” Oliver questioned, trying to hold back his surprise.

“Did you not hear the bit about the blow job?” Tom chuckled. “He’s a guy. Of course he loves it.”

Tom’s casual nature was making it harder for Oliver to unpick how the man really felt about all this. His brother had fallen into a feedist relationship and yet Tom seemed utterly delighted for him. “Are you saying that’s something you’d like us to try?” he finally asked.

“I’d drink one of those shakes for you, no problem,” Tom nodded enthusiastically. “Especially if it came with some benefits…You should get the recipe from Gina. I’m sure she’d happily share.”

“And you’d find that exciting?”

Tom scoffed, not prepared to let his husband hide behind the mask of his supposedly naive enabling anymore. “We’d both get off on that, and you know it!” he laughed. “Frankly, I’d love it if you were a little more vocal about enjoying my appetite; like Gina is with Steve.”

At that moment, a knock came at the door, just as Oliver was trying to take in the enormity of the casual comments his husband had just made. Dazed, he walked off to the entrance way and opened the door up to the visitors they had been expecting.

“Jeez!” exclaimed Dex, fresh from a year-long trip to New Zealand with his girlfriend, Marie. “We just saw Steve heading out as we pulled up,” he rambled, having met Oliver and Tom as a couple only once before heading off on their trip. “I can’t believe how much weight he’s…”

Tom waddled in from around the corner, ready to see one of the only friends he still kept from high school, simultaneously shutting Dex’s ramblings down in an instant as the guy saw just how enormous Tom had grown. His girlfriend’s eyes bulged too; the pair of them trying to contain their surprise.

“Hey… hey there, buddy!” Dex cried, walking over to Tom and giving him the briefest of hugs. His voice was unsure and it was obvious how uncomfortable he felt to have been caught commenting on Steve’s weight gain, given how much more extremely Tom had grown. That giant gut really was the only thing anyone ever saw.

Oliver looked at the pair, not really understanding why Tom still kept in touch with them. Dex was every bit the high school jock he had once been; Marie a moderately successful social media influencer. They’d travelled the world, worked in several different countries, declaring that they could never imagine anything worse than living an insignificant life back home in the small towns where they had grown up. It was exactly the sort of ego that Oliver had disliked about Dex back in high school. Meanwhile, Tom lived for his pizzas and take-outs. He worked from home and had little interest in anything that involved getting up off his couch. How many days had it been since Tom had even bothered to leave the house?

It was easy to become blind to Tom’s size ever since Oliver lived with him each day. But with Dex there, alongside his petite girlfriend, the contrast was clearer than ever. Since when had Tom’s face become so massive? Did regular folks like Dex and Marie really eat such small portions? It had been a little while since Tom had started sitting at the head of the table, instead of at the side by Oliver. However, as the four of them were sitting that evening, it was more than obvious that the seating position was purely to accommodate Tom’s giant size. Oliver had to lean over and plate Tom's meal up for him, catching Dex and Marie glancing with concern at each other at just how much food Oliver was naturally piling onto their friend’s plate.

The conversation quickly became dominated by uninteresting anecdotes from the high flying couple’s global adventures. Oliver could tell that Tom wasn’t really listening; neither of them were. Oliver simply kept a keen eye on Tom’s plate, spooning on more of the different items as they started to get low. It was second nature to him now. However, from the little, uneasy pauses Dex made each time Oliver did so, his disapproval was getting ever closer to the surface. But the more Dex and Marie rambled on, the less concerned Oliver felt about upsetting them. It seemed like their egos had inflated tenfold with a little social media success. They spoke as if they were the authority on several issues, with an arrogance inside them that they both seemed completely oblivious to. 

Oliver slopped more food onto Tom’s plate. His husband was eating well; most likely because there was no opportunity for him to join in the conversation. If he kept it up, Oliver wouldn’t have to plate up any leftovers later. All the serving bowls could go straight in the dishwasher. He knew he was overfacing Tom by emptying the last of the cream and cheese potato dish out for him, but it was worth a shot, given that Steve wasn’t there to help out, as well as the fact that Marie and Dex had avoided it; seeming to know how calorie laden it was.

Afterwards, Tom stretched out and rubbed his swollen stomach with a grunt whilst Oliver dutifully cleared the table around him. He’d made a giant, hearty dish of sticky toffee sponge, leaving it out in the middle of the table for Marie and Dex to serve themselves. Unused to waiting for guests to be served first, Oliver tried to hold back a small chuckle as he heard his gluttonous husband swallowing back saliva as he watched on. Finally, the serving spoon was in Oliver’s hand, carving out a humongous portion and pressing it down until it fitted inside their oversized bowls. He’d made additional toffee sauce, pouring that on for Tom as well, before placing it down in front of him. The weight of it was obvious by the hefty ‘thunk’ it made onto the placemat; something that did not go unnoticed by the guests.

If there was one thing Oliver never had to worry about, it was Tom’s sweet tooth. But rarely had Oliver been so blatant as to start refilling his husband’s bowl the moment he dropped the spoon. The goal was simple: no leftovers. Having Dex and Marie there to witness it was even quietly thrilling.

“So, do you have any more plans for the house?” Marie asked, finally seeming to notice that they had been talking about themselves for over an hour by that point. “Last time we saw you, you mentioned wanting to extend out the back.”

Oliver shook his head. In truth, he’d lost a lot of his enthusiasm for the house ever since he’d met Tom. Houses and renovations were not the large man’s thing in the slightest. All Tom really cared about was having somewhere to rest his head at night. “I don’t think so,” Oliver replied, reaching under the table to rest his hand on Tom’s knee. “In truth, I can’t see us staying here for too much longer.”

“Oh, really?” Marie smiled back. “Are you guys thinking of moving out of town?”

“No, nothing like that,” Oliver shot back, realising that he hadn’t even discussed any of this with Tom. “But this place is old and has already been knocked around a fair bit. The shower is getting a little too small for Tom and there’s no way of making it larger unless we knock down the wall into one of the guest bedrooms. It’s a lot of work.”

“Or…” Dex began, looking at them both like they were simple, “...you could just put him on a diet.”

Oliver was surprised at the slight glee he felt at making Dex bite. Tom was busily scraping his bowl clean, determined to get every last crumb; oblivious. “Oh, I think that ship has sailed, don’t you?” Oliver chuckled, exchanging his husband’s empty bowl for the entire bowl that remained in the middle of the table. He lifted the jug of extra toffee sauce, emptying it entirely, before passing Tom his spoon back and slipping his hand under the table once more to rub his husband’s knee. His silent meaning was clear: eat it all.

Steve’s disgust was evident on his face as he simply watched his old friend annihilating the entirety of the remaining dessert without a thought. All three spectators were observing the masterful glutton taking on the sugary feast without even noticing he was being watched; the conversation halted. Oliver could hardly believe how erotic he found it and he was thankful that he was wearing an oversized sweater that covered his crotch as he stood up to collect yet another fresh soda for his husband. He imagined how boring it would be to be lumbered with a fit guy like Dex. Oliver knew he’d have to fatten him up with his calorie dense food and quiet enabling, until he got what he wanted; exactly as he had done with Tom, and now his brother as well.

“Check out this pic I found of us from high school,” Dex insisted, fumbling with his phone. “I found it the other day,” he explained, filling the silence as he clicked and swiped his way to it. Finally, he turned it around for Oliver and Tom to see: two handsome, shirtless jocks with glistening six packs by the pool. “Look at the pair of us! Man, I miss those care-free days!” Dex chuckled fondly.

Oliver tried to suppress a chuckle. Dex’s true intentions hadn’t been clearer, reminding his old friend of how fit he used to be.

“I don’t!” Tom grunted in reply between large mouthfuls. “I never liked being on the swim team. In fact, I haven’t stepped foot in a swimming pool since I graduated.”

“Seriously?” Marie asked in surprise. “In over ten years?” Given how many poolside selfies there were of her, it was a wonder she didn’t have gills.

“Tom’s not big on exercise,” Oliver confirmed, shaking his head.

Realising the conversation wasn’t going anywhere, Dex returned his cell phone to his pocket. “Dude, you’re starting to look like your dad,” he finally snapped as Tom began scraping the bowl for the last of the toffee sauce. 

Having cleared some plates, Oliver was just making his way back to the table as he said it, making him chuckle as he rubbed his husband’s large back proudly. “Actually, Tom can eat even more than his dad these days,” he smiled, as if this was an achievement to be proud of.

Tom, who seemed to be finally switching back onto the conversation now his food was all but gone, nodded in agreement.

Dex had clearly expected more negativity from his comment and he looked at Marie as if they were both thinking the same thing. He gazed down at his watch and Marie nodded subtly in agreement.

“Thanks for dinner,” Dex sighed, already getting up. “But we have to be up early tomorrow for our flight.”

Oliver beamed. He had thought he was stuck with the pair of them all evening. “Oh, we understand,” he nodded, hoping to sound disappointed. Then he looked down at a still seated Tom, waiting for him to echo his words of regret. However, Tom seemed far more concerned with the tightness of his stomach after downing such a large amount from his fresh soda. He rubbed at his stomach and looked almost like he might throw up, before a giant burp came rolling up from his throat. Sighing with relief, Tom grunted as he rose to his feet as well; his stomach so bloated that the underside of it was visible from the bottom of his t-shirt.

No one hugged in goodbye. Dex seemed disgusted and, at the same time, pitying towards his old friend. Tom raised his great arm and Oliver slid underneath, resting against the man’s bulk as the pair stood just outside the house and waved the pretty couple off. “Do you think we frightened them away?” Tom whispered as the car rumbled off the driveway. “You’ve never made me eat like that before,” he chuckled.

“It was more entertaining than listening to all their boring stories,” Oliver replied, trying not to move his mouth so much that the couple would have the chance to read his lips as they backed out onto the road. “Did you enjoy it, though?” he smirked, raising his hand for the final wave to Dex and Marie.

Tom didn’t reply. He simply trotted his way back into the house and embraced his husband in a giant kiss the moment the front door was closed behind them. Oliver was the one who pulled off Tom’s shirt, feeling a freedom now to enjoy the giant size of his glutton’s stomach that he hadn’t allowed himself before now.

“You like?” Tom asked, standing proudly and full of confidence, even pushing his fat tummy out a little more.

“I do!” Oliver nodded, slipping down onto his knees in order to kiss the giant mass. 

Tom grunted in approval, seizing the opportunity to lower his sweatpants and feed his stiff and buried hardness into Oliver’s mouth. He moaned loudly as Oliver settled to his work with such relish, rubbing his enormous stomach as if his own size was turning him on. As Oliver’s tongue worked him harder, Tom’s stomach rubbing only became more frantic and desperate, taking a hand to each side of it and bouncing it up and down.

“You’re never going to put me on a diet, are you?” Tom asked, his voice dripping with lust.

Oliver briefly pulled his mouth from Tom’s crotch to reply. “Never,” he teased back, noticing that Tom’s dick was even harder by the time he got it back between his lips. 

The next time Oliver came up for breath, he pulled Tom along towards the couch, letting the fat boy down on his back, legs splayed, as Oliver set back to pleasuring him. In this position, Tom seemed to be enjoying himself even more; moaning loudly and rubbing his giant gut like it was an enormous wrecking ball pinning him down. There was almost no effort required to make the man ejaculate.

Afterwards, Oliver looked on at his husband with a satisfaction that no orgasm could give him. Naked and well-catered for, Tom had fallen asleep in the same position he had landed in during the blow job; a giant, fat slug draped over the couch that constantly creaked under his weight. The fat under his chin had made his neck disappear in this position and a contented, calm expression filled his face as he dozed. This was the reason Oliver loved his size and greed so much; for only he could deliver this sort of bliss to a glutton like Tom: his perfect man.

Only eighteen months later, Tom stood, filling his plate full of items from the buffet table at his brother’s wedding. It had been a long day for the guy, being the Best Man, with plenty of time up on his feet for the photographs. Oliver watched on, admiring the sheer size of his husband’s rear from afar. There was something so cute that happened to those glutes once a man crossed five hundred pounds. They were so plush and soft, yet grotesquely oversized and extreme-looking, especially in the tight dress pants Tom had been made to wear that day. He wasn’t used to such restrictive clothes, and he wriggled and twitched in them the entire time, silently longing to get back into his sweatshorts which wouldn’t pinch him like these pants did.

There had come a point a few months back when Oliver and Tom had decided to take a step back from the deliberately fattening regime Tom had seemed to take himself on. To some extent, it had worked. Tom was no longer growing at the rate that he had been. However,  there was no denying the fact that the man was indeed still growing. Those unplanned pounds had made his body swell and soften in a way that none of the previous weight ever had before. His upper arms had ballooned with fat and his hips had widened so that he had broken more than a few chairs. It had been fat building upon already well established fat. Of course it was going to change his shape, thought Oliver, rolling his eyes as Tom finally began to have second thoughts once even his parents had shown some concern. But the weight was still finding him; still sliding onto his overfed physique and quietly arousing them both by the seemingly uncontrollable nature of it all.

Steve, and his new wife emerged onto the dance floor. It was almost pitiable to watch her dragging such a fat man out to dance with her. With such a hectic day, Steve had become dishevelled and a little sweaty; his large shirt untucking itself in all but a couple of places around his large circumference. His blossoming love handles an underbelly showing in just the same Tom’s had only one hundred pounds earlier. As for his new wife, she seemed to be loving every minute, showing off the giant, spherical man she could now call her own. Without much family to Gina’s name, the guest list seemed saturated with friends of hers with similarly bloated, overfed husbands; most likely undergoing the same transformation that Steve was under a feeder’s care. Oliver had seen them all looking across at him, nodding in approval at Tom’s size, as if they were all a part of the same strange and unspoken club.

“Are you not coming to watch?” Oliver asked his overstuffed husband, wiping his mouth after completing his monstrous mountain of buffet food.

Tom shook his head lazily, pretending to want to rest his feet.

Oliver smirked, spotting the vast quantities of pre-cut wedding cake sitting on the table not far away and knowing that Tom was secretly plotting a way to get more than his fair share whilst everyone was distracted. Indeed, if there was one thing Oliver could always rely upon, it was Tom’s sweet tooth.

“Okay, honey,” Oliver smiled, pretending not to have figured out his gluttonous husband’s real intentions. “You just rest here for a minute,” he smiled, turning his back so that Tom could quietly gorge himself, unnoticed by everyone else in the room. Given how well the man had been eating today, there’d certainly be fresh fat to explore on his body by tomorrow morning….

Life was sweet.

[stevesherdaddynowlover]

pet names and looped pinkies [s.h.] 18+

hiiiii so i've never written for steve but just did a stranger things rewatch and have felt...inspired. i hope you enjoy! pls feel free to send suggestions or concepts or anything :) thanks for reading!

masterlist

summary: steve is your best friend and you have a crush on him and that's fine until one day it's not and the next thing you know you can't think or speak or breathe around him. (steve harrington x fem!reader)

warnings: loooots of pet names, fluff, pining,cursing, kissing, m masturbation, dirty talk, handjob, spitting, tiny bit of cum eating :))) 18+ ONLY!! MDNI

wc: 6.4k

part 2 here!!!!

You and Steve had been friends for quite some time now. 

Going from quietly watching him throughout high school, maybe quietly crushing on him too, to fighting monsters and trying to survive could do that to people. Make them friends, that is. 

The crush you’d been harboring on Steve didn’t go away, oh no if anything it had gotten about ten times worse in the time you’d spent growing close. That Steve you knew in high school was long gone. The, for lack of a better word, asshat you had come to blush over had turned into a protector. A funny, endearing, unnervingly hot protector that made your tummy flutter and your palms sweat. 

It didn’t help that he seemed completely unaware of your feelings, or that the things he did made your heart race and your cheeks turn pink. Linking his pinky with yours while you strolled around town, letting his thumb mindlessly rub circles on the little sliver of your stomach that was visible during movie night, giving a little tug on your hair when you said something cheeky, letting his dimple pop out when you teased him. 

And the pet names. God, the pet names! Maybe he did know! Maybe he wanted to torture you and make you squirm. They slipped from those perfect pink lips so effortlessly it kind of pissed you off. 

“Hey honey, how was work today?” 

“Sweetheart we’re gonna be late for the movie and I will not be blamed when we don’t have time to grab your snacks.” 

“Any chance you wanna pick up an extra shift and spend some time with me? What do you say, pretty?” 

He had the hair, the smile, the charm. You imagined it would be hard for anyone not to fall madly in love with him. It was surely hard for you! Steve did a good job of turning you to mush. It was hard to think around him, even harder to not think about him. 

Which is why you’re really struggling now, smushed on a far too little couch with 3 other people, your thigh pressed so tightly against Steve’s it’s making your head spin. It’s movie night, a tradition you’ve picked up and held onto tightly amidst all the craziness that happens in your small town. Steve is on your left, stuck between the arm of the couch and you. Robin is on your right with Eddie next to her and Jonathon next to him. A couch meant for 2, maybe 3, but all 4 of you packed on while the rest of your friends lounge on the floor or a chair, eyes all focused on the screen. 

Almost everyone’s eyes are focused on the screen. 

You’re staring straight ahead, sure! But while a movie that you now can’t even remember the name of is droning on, all you can think of is how your hip is touching Steve’s. Or how his pinky has somehow found yours again and they’re looped together on his lap. Or even worse, how he’s got his head resting on your shoulder and you can feel little puffs of his breath hitting your neck everytime he laughs. 

It’s driving you crazy, your hand not in his twitching by your side and your chest rising and falling a little faster than it should be while watching a comedy with your friends. You’re so distracted it takes you a few minutes to realize that Steve is no longer watching the movie, but is now focused on you and how uncomfortable you seem to be. He gives a small tug to your pinky, drawing your eyes to meet his and you’re so overwhelmed with him right now you could cry at the furrow in his brow and the small pout he’s wearing looking at you. 

“Y’alright, baby?” You can see his genuine concern at the state of you but all you can focus on is trying not to let a small whimper through your lips as you hear him call you baby. Not being able to look at him for more than a few seconds you drag your eyes away from him, a small huff leaving you while you shake your head, mainly at yourself. “I, uh m’fine. I’m fine.” Neither of you are convinced, you know that, but you can’t find it in you to care at the moment when all you can think about is taking his bottom lip between your teeth. 

He studies you once more, eyes taking you in quickly as he reaches up to tuck a stray piece of hair behind your ear. His hand lingers around your neck a second longer, two fingers giving you a little pinch before he’s drawing his hand back to his lap. You find yourself staring far too long at his hand, wondering what it would feel like if he swiped his thumb over your bottom lip. Or if it would be as good as you imagined to have him slip that same thumb past your lips, pressing down on your tongue, wearing that same smirk you’ve seen a thousand times.

Fuck fuck fuck. You’re so fucked. 

As soon as the thoughts come, they’re gone because the next thing you know you’re using his and Robin’s thighs as leverage to jump up from the couch, turning to face everyone with red cheeks and a forced smile. 

“So I, uh, I gotta go! Just remembered mom wanted me home early tonight, some, uh, some family thing going on. Yeah that’s it. Family thing!” Everyone is staring, eyes wide with confusion written all over their faces. You love movie night, never miss it let alone leave early. 

You don’t give anyone the chance to question you before you’re bouncing up the stairs trying to pull your shoes on as quickly as possible. You know he’ll be right behind you, asking you what’s wrong or offering a ride home. You both know you’re full of shit but you can’t find it in you to care right now, too focused on getting away from him before you do something crazy like kiss him. 

Steps away from the front door you think you’ve made it. Can almost feel the relief of the cool breeze cooling down your skin that seems to be burning up from where Steve was touching you. You're so close, less than a foot away when you realize you weren’t quick enough. 

A hand wraps around your forearm, a large calloused hand that you’d know anywhere. Shoulders slumped in defeat and you turn to face him, not all the way because you don’t think you could handle it, but enough to acknowledge his presence. “Harrington, I gotta go. You know how my mom is, this’ll be held over my head for weeks if I’m late.” Lies. All lies. Your mom fully expects you to sleep at Robins tonight. He’s quiet for what feels like hours but is really only seconds before he speaks, “Let me give you a ride then. You’ll be home in less than 5.”

Now you know that cannot happen. You cannot be in his car that smells like him. You cannot watch the way his hands grip the wheel, and you know you won’t be able to look away. You cannot be locked in a car with him where you know he’ll try and figure out why you’ve been acting so weird tonight. And honestly you just cannot be around him right now without feeling like you’re going to faint. 

“No, no, don't worry about it, it’s a quick walk and I could use the fresh air! I’m feeling a little…off right now anyways so I wouldn’t mind being alone. Go finish the movie! Love you, see you, have fun!” And before he can react or try to argue with you, reaching up on your tiptoes you plant a quick kiss to his cheek, lips tingling as you turn and run out the door, hoping to god or whoever is listening that Steve doesn’t come after you. 

What you don’t see as you’re running down the sidewalk is your best friend standing in the doorway with his hand hovering over his cheek where you just kissed him and a blush crawling up his neck as those quick seconds play on a loop in his head for the rest of the movie. 

 ****************************************

It’s been a few days since movie night. The night you’re refusing to think about but also the one you can’t seem to get out of your head. More specifically the sound of Steve calling you baby and the feel of his fingers brushing against your throat. 

Well you’ve tried not to think about it. 

You’re not sure why this is happening now. You’ve liked him for as long as you can remember so why all of a sudden do you feel like panting when your skin touches his? Why now are his little smirks and pet names enough to bring you to your knees? Over the years you’ve done good, so good, at keeping yourself together in front of him, letting his comments and flirting roll off your back. But now…now you can’t be in the same room without wanting to tug on his hair or leave marks on his chest or feel so desperate to taste him that it drives you insane. 

You don’t know what caused this switch to flip but it fucking sucks. It sucks because besides all of that, he’s still your best friend. Yeah, it’s ungodly how hot he is but he’s also still the guy who buys you your favorite ice cream when you’ve had a rough day, who goes to see scary movies with you when no one else will because you’re the only one that likes them. He’s saved you, cared for you, loved you for a few years now and honestly that just makes it worse! 

He’s mouthwatering AND a good guy. Fuck him for that. 

In the few days since you’ve seen him he’s called. 11 times? Maybe more. And you’ve been conveniently in the shower or asleep or anything else your mother can make up while you try and figure out what you’re going to say to him. The problem with this is that the longer you avoid him, the more awkward and hard this is going to be. 

So when you wake up today, 4 days after movie night, you decide it’s time to be a big girl and talk to him. Not about your feelings, god no! But it is time to at least try to be normal around him and to stop avoiding him. You already know he’s gonna look like a kicked puppy, big brown eyes staring down at you while you try and justify not talking to him for days. You’re fucked. So fucked. 

Walking downstairs you hear the phone ringing and your heart drops. Maybe you’re not ready for this. Maybe your family can just move! That should work. You’ll miss everyone but honestly this seems like your best option at this point. 

Your dad is gone for the day, your mom is standing at the counter with her purse on her shoulder like she’s about to walk out the door with her mouth open, ready to give Steve yet another excuse to why you can’t talk to him. But you’re brave. You’re a big girl who can handle a phone call with your best friend. Your hot best friend you're madly in love with and want to climb like a tree. 

Your hand is out and reaching for the phone before you can talk yourself out of it, a sigh of relief leaving your mother as she practically throws it at you, running for the door before you change your mind. It’s by your ear for a good few seconds before you hear him, his voice raspy and deep so you know he’s just woken up and it makes your whole body buzz. 

“Hello?” 

It’s now or never. Never sounds nice. “Hey! How ya been? How’s it going? How was the movie?” The questions pour out of you so quickly you’re not sure he can even understand what you’re saying but you hold your breath and wait anyway. 

“How’s it going? Are you kidding me? Fuckin’ Christ! You’ve taken about 12 showers in 4 days and couldn’t be bothered to talk to me, why don’t you tell me how it’s going.” So he was upset. Totally fair. 

“Don’t be mad at me, please.” It was the first thing that came out of your mouth and you knew it was stupid but you couldn’t help it. He deserved to be mad at you, to yell and cuss and whatever else he deemed fit. But now that you had heard his voice again for the first time in days, the thought of him being upset with you made you want to cry, even though you had done this! 

You heard him take a deep breath and knew he was running his hand through his hair, tugging on the ends the way he always did when he was stressed. “M‘not mad, sweetheart. I mean, maybe a little but I was more worried! That something had happened or I had done something or…I don’t know. Was just worried sick and…god I just fuckin’ missed you.” 

Had you mentioned that you were fucked? His words hit you a ton of bricks, any thoughts you had about moving on or maybe distancing yourself gone in an instant. Because he was worried. And he missed you. He fuckin’ missed you. And god you loved him so much it hurt, so much you could feel it in your fingertips and toes like little zaps of electricity when you thought of him or heard his voice. 

You were gone for Steve Harrington. 

“I..m’so sorry, Stevie. I missed you too, so much and I’m so sorry and I’m just…I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong, you never do! I’ve just been a mess and my minds been a mess and I thought some time to myself would help me but really it's just..it doesn’t matter. What matters is I’m sorry and I missed you.” 

“S’okay, bunny. You alright? Can talk to me about anything, you know. I’m not…I know I’m not always the best at this stuff but I’d be good for you. I’ll listen to ya all day, do whatever I can to help you. Wanna come over? Movie night just the two of us? I’ll order you pizza and get you extra buttery popcorn and some ice cream, promise.” 

The thought of being alone with Steve sends red lights flashing through your brain but when he sounds so…god when he’s saying all the right things in a voice you’d dare describe as whiny you can’t help but to want to drop everything and all but crawl to him. 

So at the expense of your sanity you agree quickly, promising you’ll be there by 8 o’clock and hang up the phone before he can call you sweetheart or bunny again running up the stairs to take the coldest shower you’ve ever taken that does nothing to erase the thoughts of Steve from your mind. 

  *****************************************

The walk to Steve’s was surprisingly calm. You weren’t freaking out completely, just a little nervous but that was nothing new to you when it came to spending time with Steve, especially alone. 

Unfortunately for you, that calm lasted for all of about 10 minutes. 

In theory it was a good idea to spend some time with Steve after ignoring him for days. It was an okay idea to agree to a movie night with your best friend. Was. 

But now that you’re standing on his porch and his door was just thrown open to reveal a freshly showered Steve, it seems like all of this was a horrible idea. 

An awful, terrible, horribly bad idea. 

Awful because you can see little beads of water from his freshly washed hair dropping and running down his throat. Awful because the urge to lean forward and run your tongue over them is so strong you swear your mouth waters a little bit. 

Terrible because he’s wearing that goddamn white t-shirt that is hugging his arms so tight and since when did his arms start to look like that? Awful because that same damn shirt is tight over his chest too. It fits him so well you can see it snug against his tummy and waist. It fits him like a glove and your hands clench at your sides to keep from touching him. 

And this is bad. So horribly bad because he’s wearing his favorite pair of light wash denim jeans that cling to his thighs so nicely you feel your knees wobble. One of your hands comes up to your mouth to run over your chin, subconsciously making sure you’re not actually drooling despite the way you wish you could drop to your knees and spend hours leaving marks on those thighs. You can’t see his ass and you’re praying to god he doesn’t turn around so you don’t have to suffer through seeing how his jeans hug him just right. 

While your mind is running a million miles a minute with thoughts of Steve, you realize you actually haven’t said anything. Haven’t made a move to greet him or walk in, instead just standing there with what you imagine is a slack jaw and wide eyes. Willing yourself to meet his gaze, you somehow manage to drag your eyes off his thighs and bring them up, up, up until you meet his. 

He definitely does not look like a kicked puppy right now. Those brown eyes are darker and he’s wearing a smirk that would make you do anything he asked. He cocks his eyebrow at you, amusement clear in his face as you try and collect yourself. 

“You look starved, honey. Wanna come in?” 

   *********************************

After the initial embarrassment wears off, you feel a little better. Somehow managing to brush off his teasing as if you weren’t just devouring him with your eyes, you follow Steve to the kitchen, laughing as he tries to balance all the snacks he’d bought for you in arms. He shot you a glare full of playfulness when you tried to help, insisting that he “was a big boy and could handle the snacks.” 

Now you find yourself on that same couch from last week, much more space between the two of you than there had been then, a good foot and half extra in fact. Steve laughed when he saw you practically throw yourself to the other end of the couch, hand reaching out for you with a little pout on his lips. “Think I’m gonna bite you or something?” God I wish. Please please please bite me! 

But instead you held out your hand reluctantly, fingers twisting with his as he tugged you toward him. Movie night flashed in your head. His clothed thigh just inches away from yours, arm thrown over your shoulders and a cheeky grin on his face as he pulled you into his side. A satisfied hum was heard and you could have sworn you heard him mumble under his breath, sounding a lot like “much better” but it was hard to hear anything with the smell of him clouding your senses. 

Trying to get your thoughts off of him you reach forward to grab the dvd case laying on the table, a small smile gracing your lips as you see what he had picked. “John Carpenter's Halloween. I thought you said you’d never watch this?” This time when you turned to him, he was the one with red cheeks and shy smile as he glanced between the movie and you. A small shrug and wink was thrown your way, “S’one of your favorites. You should know you’re the exception to my rules.” 

You’re fucked. 

Heart pounding in your chest all you could manage was a smile and a small “thank you” before turning away, hoping he’d get up and start the movie so you’d have something to distract you from how sweet he was, watching a scary movie you know he doesn’t want to watch just because it’ll make you happy. 

It was about halfway through the movie when it happened. 

Everything was going well! You were snuggled into his side, actually paying attention to the movie and not sitting there distraught over being so close to him. You were so invested you hadn’t noticed your hand slip to his thigh during a scene that had made you jump. 

But Steve noticed. 

Too engrossed in your movie to see how your hand was holding his upper thigh and it definitely would have been too high if you’d been paying attention. You didn’t notice this or the way Steve was now on red alert, whole body tense with his hand gripping the couch cushion and his eyes trained on your hand as if to make sure he wasn’t imagining it. 

He could do this, he could ignore your hand and let you watch your movie. It would be fine. He’ll just slip into the bathroom when it’s over or wait till you go home to take care of his now aching cock. And god was he aching. He didn’t dare move, too nervous that you’d get all weird and fidgety like you’d been. This was the closest you’d been to him without seeming freaked out in weeks and he was not about to ruin that. 

The smell of your lavender shampoo overwhelmed him, a groan threatening to spill out while you sat there so unaware of how beautiful you looked just existing. He noticed everything about you. The slope of your little button nose and the way your lips, your perfect pink lips, parted just so when you were lost in thought. He noticed how your cheeks would turn the prettiest shade of red when he called you baby or honey or sweetheart. And he loved it, craved it even. He couldn’t tell if it was because of him or if you were just a sensitive little thing in general. He’d take what he could get with you, even if he had to live off your rosy cheeks and holding your pinky for the rest of his life. 

“Fuck, honey, m’sorry but you have got to move your hand, please.” Steve’s voice in your ear so suddenly made you jump, a small yelp leaving your lips as you turned to see what he was talking about. You didn’t even realize you were touching him! But one look down at this thigh and you gasped, cheeks burning as your eyes moved from your hand clinging to his thigh over to now very noticeable bulge straining against those light wash jeans. Ripping your hand away as if he’d burned you, a string of curses and apologies flew out as you scrambled to move as far away as possible. 

If he looked pained with your hand on his thigh then he looked downright miserable now that you’d taken it away. “Don’t have to run away from me, honey. M’sorry, didn’t mean to scare you I just…fuck I couldn’t sit still with you holding onto me like that.” He did his best to tug you back and you let him. “Sorry, Stevie. I wasn’t…I didn’t, I was just watching the movie I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” 

He looked at you with furrowed brows, eyes jumping all over your face like he knew something you didn’t, like he knew something you should know. Neither of you said anything, just stared at each other for some time before he sighed, letting his head fall back against the couch before coming back to look at you again. 

Hand cradling your cheek he gave you a small, tired small like he couldn’t believe you could possibly make him uncomfortable. That is not the word he would use. “Silly girl, I’m not uncomfortable because your hand was on me. I’m uncomfortable because your hand on me is making me wanna pin you down and fuck you so hard you can’t think straight.”

Oh. Oh. 

Lips parted you just stared at him, not sure you’d be able to form a coherent thought let alone words right now. He wanted to fuck you? Since when? Why hasn’t he ever brought this up? Doesn’t he know you’d do anything he asked of you? 

Steve let you process, could see the gears turning in that pretty head of yours and your eyes switching from looking at him to looking at where his cock was pressing up against the zipper of his pants. Maybe he’d said too much, gone too far. He was almost certain now that you liked him, wanted him, but maybe it was too overwhelming to be so blunt with you. 

“Y’know what baby? I can see you freaking out and I didn’t mean to make you nervous so I’m gonna go to the bathroom, alright? Gonna take care of this real quick and then we can finish the movie, can start another one if you want. I’ll be right back and we can figure this out later.” It was him getting off the couch that broke you out of whatever spell you were under, hand wrapping around his arm and if you weren’t so desperate for this, for him, you’d be embarrassed by the look of panic in your eyes at the thought of not getting to see this, to make him feel good. 

“Please stay. Just…fuck just stay, okay?” 

Both of you paused, staring at each other and waiting for someone to move or to breathe or just do something. A soft “okay” was murmured between you, Steve settling back into the couch as you closed your eyes and took a deep breath. Fuck was this really happening? 

“Whatever you want to happen can happen, baby.” 

You definitely didn’t mean to say that out loud but now that you had, a little burst of courage hit you and you just let it pour out. “Didn’t mean to say that out loud I just..I didn’t…I’m nervous. You make me nervous. I want this. I want this so bad you have no idea but I didn’t know you wanted this so now my head is fucked and I’m rambling and kinda freaking out but you can stay. You can stay and I can watch or I can help or whatever you want just..stay. Ok?” You dared a glance up at Steve, his eyes wide and a grin broke out on his face. He looked as if you’d just handed him the moon not offered to watch him get off. 

Taking your hand in his he gave you a squeeze, “We’ll go slow. I can start and you can watch and if you wanna do more, feel fucking free, honey. But if you don’t, that’s fine. If you want me to stop, say the word. You’re in charge here,” he paused, lifting his hand to take my chin between his fingers so I’d be forced to meet his eyes, “and for the record, there hasn’t been I second I've known you where I haven’t wanted this. I’ll take anything you give me, swear it. Whatever you want, any way you want.” 

“Kiss me, please.” 

He didn’t need to be told twice, moving his hand to cup your cheek and pulling you toward him, his lips pressing against yours soft at first, testing the waters and trying to keep you calm. His lips were just as soft as you’d imagined, sweet like the candy he’d been eating earlier. You groaned against him, pushing closer and opening your mouth to invite him in, the thought of his tongue on yours enough to have you reaching your hands into his hair to tug him closer, closer until there wasn’t an inch of space between you. 

He pulled back first, a string of spit connecting the two of you and he cursed at the sight, “Jesus, fuck I can’t believe you’ve kept this sweet, pretty mouth away from me. S’not nice, baby. So mean to me, yeah?” If you thought you were desperate before it was nothing compared to now, now that you’d had a taste of him. 

“M’sorry Stevie, so sorry, not gonna keep em from you anymore. Promise, promise, promise.” You’re barely making sense, your head spinning and your body on fire. Foreheads pressed together you tried to catch your breath, but you couldn’t think or breathe or function when he was this close to you with his swollen, spit kissed lips just inches away from yours. 

Coming out of your post-kiss haze you move back beside Steve, eager and desperate to finally see him, all of him. His eyes widen as your hands go to the button of his jeans, tugging relentlessly and you're just so cute he has to laugh. Eager too and fuck how did he get so lucky?

“Take em off, please. Want them off, Stevie.” You’re full on pouting now and it takes everything in you not to cry. You’d do it if he wanted, you’d do anything. But he doesnt let it get that far, taking your hands off his jeans and cooing at you and it makes you feel a little pathetic but you can’t find it in yourself to care, not when he’s about to finally pull down his pants. 

He does so wordlessly, eyes bouncing from his lap to your face every few seconds like he’s checking in on you, making sure he’s not missing anything and that you still want this. It makes your tummy flutter and your heart race, his caring for you. His pants pushed down to his knees is all he can manage, head too fuzzy thinking about you and how he’s so hard it hurts worse than it ever has.

As soon as his jeans were out of your way you were staring, gawking really, at the white boxers sitting so prettily on his hips that were doing nothing to hide how hard, how big he was. A small wet patch forming where you know his tip is resting and it makes your mouth water. He’s just so hot. So hot and it makes it even better that this is because of you. Fuck.

A beg was on the tip of your tongue but before you could he put you out of your misery. Lifting his hips up you had to dig your nails into your palm to keep still while he pulled his boxers down, pretty, messy, cock slapping against his stomach. “Jesus fucking Christ, Steve! You’re so…I’m…fuck.” He breathed out a laugh which quickly turned to a wince when we saw how you were looking at him, at his cock. He felt himself twitch under your stare and you swear your mouth just fell open as if it was meant to be. 

His hand drifted towards his cock, eyes still on you to make sure you were okay. You gave him a nod and the sigh of relief you both had when he finally wrapped his hand around himself would have made you laugh if you weren’t throbbing. His head fell back against the couch and you were torn between watching him touch himself or watching his face while he did it. The former won, your eyes trailing the way his hand moved slowly, teasing the both of you. 

“S’pretty, you’re so pretty…” You’re not even sure you were talking to him, more just to yourself but he heard you nonetheless. His hips jerked at that, a small moan slipping past his swollen lips as he turned his head toward you, watching you with hooded eyes. I could watch this forever, you thought. 

You couldn’t believe it. A few days ago you were thinking of ways to never speak to Steve again and now here you were, watching him stroke his cock in front of you and looking at him as if he was your last meal. He held his hand out, a silent plea for something but you didn’t know what, not until he spoke.

“So good, baby, so pretty. Can you ju-just spit on my hand for me, honey? Lick it, spit on it, anything you want, I just need you please.” His words were slurred and if you hadn’t spent the last few hours together you would think he was drunk. He seemed so out of it, but in the best way. Like he didn’t just want you but needed you. It made you feel good, better than you ever had and it gave you a spark of bravery you were missing before. 

Knocking his hand out of your way you leaned forward with cautious eyes, watching as he tried to figure out what you were doing until it dawned on him and his cock twitched in his hand. You leaned forward, face hovering inches above him and spit, both of you watching as it dropped from your mouth to his tip, covering the top of his hand as he began to stroke himself again. His lips parted in an “o”, eyes squeezed shut and his tummy clenching as he let out the loudest moan you had heard, so loud and strong you felt yourself clenching around nothing.

You were wet but with Steve looking and sounding like that you couldn’t bring yourself to care about how bad you were aching right now, far too focused on Steve and how his thighs were starting to shake a little and his hips were starting to move faster and more uneven. 

“C-can I?” 

His eyes shot open, head shaking furiously before he had even fully understood what you were asking. He knew he wouldn't last more than ten seconds if you touched him but he couldn’t care less. All he could think about was how pretty you were, how good he was feeling, how you had just fucking spit on his cock. He would take whatever you gave him. 

With a whine that you would replay in your mind for the rest of your life he took his hand off, tugging yours closer to take his place. Both of you moaned at the contact and you were almost convinced you could cum just from touching him. “Help me, I want you to feel good, please.” He looked like a bobblehead as he nodded, putting his much larger hand over yours and giving it a squeeze, helping you to stroke him just how he liked, though anything from you would feel a million times better than his own hand. 

Addicted would be the word to describe it. Now that you had touched him, felt how hot and smooth his cock was in your hand, how pretty it looked all pink and wet and coated in your spit. Steve liked it messy and apparently so did you. You thought you were addicted to his cock, and you were, but nothing prepared you for the absolute filth that started spilling from him once he finally had your hand on him. It made you dizzy and out of breath and goddamn you would have to throw these panties in the trash after this. Absolutely ruined, just like you were. 

“Fuckin’ dreamed about this, ‘bout your hand on my cock, s’good, baby.”

“Don’t think I don’t see you squirming, honey. My pretty girl all wet ‘n needy and I haven’t even touched you. Bet you’re drenched and achy, huh?”

“Gonna make me cum, gonna make a mess of us but I bet you’ll be good and clean it up for me, won’t ya, bunny?”

He was babbling now and you could barely make sense of what he was saying but you didn’t stop. You couldn’t and you didn’t want to. His cock was slick with precum and your spit one of his hands guiding yours in quick strokes while his other was gripping the couch so hard his knuckles were white. 

“M’close, honey…so so close.”

“Please, Stevie…want it, I need it, please.” And that was all it took. No warning, your words taking him by surprise and hitting him like a punch to the gut. He took his hand off, bringing it to your hair and tugging you to him. It was a messy kiss, lips pressed together while he moaned against you, just breathing each other in while he cursed and whined, his hips stilling and you slowed, looking down just in time to see him cum. Your hand and his lower stomach was covered, his hand that was gripping the couch now thrown over his eyes as he tried to catch his breath. 

Chest and neck covered in sweat, he looked good. When he finally had gathered himself enough to look at you, he instantly regretted it. Instead of his innocent best friend, his sweet little bunny, he was looking at a little devil lapping at his cum on her hand like she hadn’t eaten in days. His softening cock twitched against his thighs and he stifled a groan when you hummed happily at the taste. 

“Christ, you’re gonna kill me.” You shrugged half heartedly, not even a little bit of you was sorry. 

“Can we finish the movie now, Stevie? I’ll probably pass out soon you wore me out, but I’m too tired to move.”

He looked down at you a little confused, your cheeks still pink and thighs still clenched together tightly. “You don’t…I can…I wanna take care of you too, sweetheart. Been dying to get a taste of you, know you’re sweet.”

You giggled and even though you were a mess, in every sense of the word, you didn’t think you could handle anymore and told him as such, eyes already feeling droopy and your body sagging against him. “Next time? Promise you can do anything you want to me next time but watching you cum was enough for me.” Your cheeks flamed as if you hadn’t just licked your best friend’s cum off your hand. 

“Alright, honey. Let’s finish your movie, you little vixen. Didn’t even take me out to dinner before you were drooling over my cock. A crime!” His smile was bright as you smacked at his chest and cursed him for teasing you.

You were sure that what had just happened would hit you soon and the panic would set in but for now you couldn’t bring yourself to care as you pressed a kiss to Steve’s bare chest and felt his grin against the top of your head. 

Did I mention I was fucked?