#I spent like half the summer trying to find something that worked

[vxnuslogy]

— 11:11 wishes.

pairing: kinich x gn!reader

premise: you weren't one to believe in manifestation that the media portrays, but the student council vice president has made you think otherwise.

— warnings: reader is me coded (re: delusional), just pure fluff, modern/school setting.

— author's note: heavily inspired by my own experiences and shit. art credits to @.n429g on twt. | 2.6k words.

— tags: @ryescapades @moineauz @mikashisus @https-sourlimes ; if you'd like to be tagged, please fill out the forms in my pinned!!

you spent an entire hour and a half staring at the pretty boy two seats in front of you. again. 

with a frustrated groan and very aggressively typed out messages to mualani, you heave out a sigh and watch your bedside clock tick. it was 11 minutes to the wishing hour and you were very much considering wishing kinich would miraculously be your partner for your next nonfiction project. you’re not sure how long you spent daydreaming about the way the student council vice president spun the pen in his hand with ease or how he always seemed so serious and mysterious. by the time you look back at your clock it was barely 2 minutes before 11:11 pm hit and you scrambled to sit up.

“am i really about to try and manifest this guy?” you ask in disbelief as the magic numbers appear and you find yourself closing your eyes, lips muttering a soft wish, “please let him be my partner for this project.”

now, you weren’t much of a believer in manifestation per se, but when you woke up earlier than your alarm and with the birds chirping, you just knew something good was going to happen today. 

as you make your way to school, you peek at the bulletin board mualani and the rest of the council is working on for foundation week. unsurprisingly there was a crowd of students around it, all trying to catch the eye of the president and her right hand man. mualani has always said you stare at people like a hawk because she spun around from what she was doing and waved at you, very exaggeratedly mind you. the boy you spent the entire night thinking about suddenly turned to the commotion and you were left to awkwardly wave hello before making your way to the classroom. 

his stare was intense—you felt it all the way until you turned a corner—but you can’t deny the sudden heat that rose to your cheeks when you remembered the color of his eyes. vibrantly shiny and green; like seeping sunlight through the leaves of summer trees. it was a sight to behold, unforgettable dare you say. you thought about the way his bangs framed his face, the slight smudge of paint on his cheeks, and the way you caught a glimpse of how his hand slightly raised as if to wave hello until your english class started.

“and for our last pair: [name] and kinich.”

now, it’s no surprise that you don’t listen in class (you and mualani joke that if either of you ever listened to a class the world might end) but this? this piqued your attention so badly you nearly toppled over your own chair. the hushed giggles of your classmates rang in your ears as maroon rushed to your cheeks. your eyes unwittingly found their way to the pretty boy two seats in front of you who willingly caught your stare. he looked equally intrigued and amused and you can’t help the awkward smile you flash at him.

“holy shit, it worked.”

you feel mualani’s judging stare as you unabashedly kick your feet in glee as a wide smile spreads on your face.

“get well soon,” she jokingly says, stealing her shark plush from your arms as you pout at her. mualani rolls her eyes at you and smacks you with the plush which you retaliate by throwing a pillow at her. “give me a pass! this is a first for me.”

“and i hope it’ll be the last!” you glare at her as she dodges another pillow. laughing as she skips out of your room leaving you on your bed with your phone and the paragraph you still haven't sent.

‘why is green your favorite color?’

after your first—very awkward—conversation with kinich, he graciously gave you his number to stay in touch for this project. it was rather simple really: pair up, interview each other, write a biography. easy right? well, not when your partner is the definition of a wallflower at its peak. you’re not complaining though, in your last class with him (that was literally just 3 days ago), he had allowed you to talk his ear off and asked if it was alright if he just talked to you over text. still unsure and admittedly (though not verbally) shy to open up to a person he’s only known for less than a week.

so here you are now, exchanging texts with the guy you lowkey have a crush on, unsure of how to rephrase your answer to not make it so obvious that you like him. no way in hell you’ll just shoot a text that says, “oh, i like green because you always wear a green hoodie to school.” you’d die from embarrassment! but then again, kinich has mentioned in a previous question on how he preferred straightforward people.

with an aggressive thumb pressed to the back button, you type out a new message that wasn’t two paragraphs long that described the color of his eyes.

“the color reminds me of summertime. what about you? what’s your favorite color?”

he doesn’t even give you a chance to put your phone down for a full minute before it buzzes with a new notification. with mortifyingly fast reflexes, you shove your phone to your face, your own screen brightness flashing you as your heart hammers in your chest. fuck butterflies in your stomach, you had an entire zoo with the series of messages kinich had sent.

“blue. you were wearing a blue bracelet when we first met and i really liked it.”

“and”

“it suits you”

“is that a weird thing to say?”

what… the… fuck…?

mualani’s footsteps raced against your carpeted stairs as she barged into your room, half eaten cookie in her hands. her worry dissipated into a judging but amused smile as you pace around your room, hands covering your face—you were quite sure steam was rising out of your head with how warm your face felt.

“mualani, he remembered,” you say in disbelief as you fall to your ass, sitting on your bedroom floors. grabbing the nearest plush on your bed and screaming into it as mualani laughs. “this is not funny!”

“but it is!” she insists, wiping a fake tear from her eyes. “you’re such a goner.”

“but he remembered the color of my bracelet!” you throw your hands up in the sky, rushing to your feet and grabbing your best friend by her shoulders. “who the fuck remembers the color of someone’s bracelet?!”

mualani laughs again as she peels your grip from her shoulders. “kinich. and you better get used to it, that guy has an even more hawkish stare than you.”

yeah, mualani was right, you were a goner. how the hell are you going to sit in front of him in your next class without bursting into a million pieces?

staying up with mualani until half past midnight was not a good idea because here you two were, laughing in panic as you both rushed to get ready for school. this girl, you swear she’ll get you expelled one way or another (but you won’t have it any other way). 

with all the previous treacherous pe classes in your system, you try your best to keep up with mualani’s athleticism under the chilly morning breeze. you might be laughing now but if you were to show up late in english even if it's only by a minute or two, you’ll get cooked on the spot by your teacher. even worse! kinich would have a front row seat for the entire fiasco because he always arrives 10 minutes before the actual class.

cursing your lowkey crush’s punctuality as you both speed past other almost late students, you bid mualani a quick goodbye and make a swift turn to your class. in your locked in state, you don’t notice the poor student in front of you. the world stilled for a moment as papers flew like miniature planes as you braced yourself to meet the cold school floors—but it never came.

“are you alright?”

you slowly look up, and there he is—kinich, his brows slightly furrowed, holding you steady with his gentle hands. “be careful,” he says, voice soft but still scolding. “you could’ve gotten hurt.”

“r-right, sorry,” you stammer, trying to ignore the shaking of your hands and thumping of your heart as you scramble to pick up the stray papers on the floor.

your hand paused when kinich’s fingers brushed against your own. kinich catches your gaze, and for a moment, you both still—green eyes filled with warmth, so full of something that pulled you in like a vortex. you can’t look away. heat rises to your checks when he clears his throat, standing up and handing the papers back to the student.

you follow his lead, brushing off imaginary dust from your uniform as you pull out your phone for a quick check on your appearance. you barely have a second to process what just happened when you hear kinich cough again.

“let’s go to class,” he says, covering his mouth with his fist and his eyes avoiding you but you catch the faintest of smiles tugging at his lips. “i’ll tell the teachers i asked you to help me with council work so he won’t mark you as late.”

“oh no, no!” you quickly decline, waving him off with a lopsided smile. “it’s alright, you don’t have to cover for me. i stayed up late last night so it’s still my fault for being late.” you chuckle nervously, but kinich just stands there, watching you closely.

you stiffen like a board when he takes a step towards you, then another, and another until he’s standing right in front of you. well shit, he smelled really nice; unexpectedly floral mixed with a salty ocean breeze. you feel blood rush to your ears when kinich plucks a stray leaf from your hair and did he just chuckle?

“all right then,” he says with a small, barely-there laugh, turning to walk to class. you don’t notice the way he slips his hand through the straps of your bag until he slings it over his shoulders. “let’s get to class. i still have a lot of questions to ask you.”

this boy’s smile truly will be the death of you.

“11:11, i wish to talk to him even after this project.”

you find yourself wishing as you and the rest of mualani’s friends leave the campus after an unexpected cancelation of classes. today marked as the last day of your little getting to know with kinich. you were already finished with his biography and have been purposely leaving out certain bits of information in your answers so you could spend some more time with the boy.

speaking of which, said boy was conversing with xilonen—a pretty third year who you had the pleasure of meeting because of him—regarding the foundation week. all of you agreed to go to a karaoke booth to pass time (more like mualani dragged you to join because of your glum mood), but before you could take another step to your destination, a warm hand catches your wrist and softly tugs you back.

“we’ll catch up,” kinich says as you try to bite back the smile threatening to spill from your face as he plays with the beads of your bracelet. “we need to finish up the biography project.”

mualani complains about why you still aren’t finished. if it weren’t for chasca and xilonen’s persuasion, the younger girl wouldn’t have allowed the two of you to split up. with an amused chuckle, you readjust the straps of your bag and look at kinich who caught your stare.

“shall we go?”

he nods and the walk to the park was spent in quiet appreciation of the sun. when you catch sight of the free swings at the heart of the park, your hand as if magnets came, tug at kinich’s sleeve and drag him to sit down there. bags carelessly thrown to the side as he scolded you on what if something broke. you only laugh in response and gleefully sit down.

“push me?” you ask with a childish smile as kinich shakes his head but still follows through with your request. he gently pushes you on the swings as you hum a small tune. “what questions do you have left?”

kinich stopped pushing you and instead sits down beside you. slowly swinging himself as he says, “nothing. i just wanted to be alone with you.”

the chains of the swings creak softly like your heart as butterflies were set free in your stomach once again. he turns to you—all blushing cheeks and biting back a smile—with a knowing and entertained look in his eyes.

“i hate you,” you randomly say as you swing yourself. trying to cool yourself with the morning air as kinich follows suit. “i’m gonna miss talking to you,” you continued, eyes strained over the horizon as children began to appear with their parents in tow.

“you say that as if this will be the last time we talk.”

you stop swinging and look at him, hands gripping at the chains more tightly than you wanted to admit. “is it not the last time?”

“no.” he quickly replies and you're stunned. “do you want us to stop talking?” he turns to you with a raised brow and you couldn’t hold your smile back anymore as you shake your head no.

“i never really thanked you for saving me from face-planting in front of so many people.” you bring up the memory in jest as you giggle. there was a faint chuckle that the breeze carried as kinich replied, “it was no problem.”

“can i tell you a secret?” you grin at him. you’re not quite sure what spurred you on to suddenly bring this up but truly, it was now or never. “go ahead.”

“i wished you’d be my partner for this project, and wouldn’t you know, it actually happened.”

“oh, i know.”

…

what?

kinich laughs—light like the morning sunlight seeping through summer leaves. you stare at him dumbfounded as red spread across your cheeks. “how the hell did you know?! i never mentioned it before have i?” your voice grew quieter as you trail off. hands coming to shield your flustered face from him.

“no, you didn’t. mualani did though.”

ah. 

he pulls out his phone and flashes you a screenshot of his mualani’s conversation from a month ago. you feel your dignity and pride get sucked out of you as mualani even sent screenshots of you complaining about not knowing how to approach kinich outside of academics, hell, she even had a voice message of her undoubtedly laughing!

“i pulled a few strings for our english class so we’d get paired up,” he said with a cheeky glint in his eyes.

“why?” you ask.

kinich smiles, not the small tugs at the corners of his lips he graces you whenever you do something stupid, a full smile where his teeth caught the light of the sun. “i wanted to be your partner, too. since i granted you a wish it’s only fair you grant me one too.”

you try to ignore the erratic flips your heart was doing from his first statement, putting it on the backburner for now as you chuckle nervously. your palms started to sweat and your mind raced with what kinich could potentially want from you. 

“be my partner for life, that’s my 11:11 wish today.”

god, this boy truly wants to kill you.

© vxnuslogy 2024. do not plagiarize, repost, or translate any of my works without my knowledge or consent in other platforms or websites.

[captain-hawks]

hi dee, merry christmas eve eve.

if you’re still taking drabble requests, i propose reuniting with famous ex-bf sae at a hometown xmas party

i don’t forgive you (but please don’t hold me to it) 🎀 itoshi sae x f!reader

4k — 18+, exes to lovers, infidelity (not sae x reader’s relationship), fingering, unprotected p in v, creampie, praise kink, oral fixation, finger sucking, angst with a hopeful ending, playing fast and loose with sae’s timeline, timeskip

a/n: i listened to phoebe bridgers - punisher (the album) on repeat nonstop while writing this. recommended for the vibes!

“I knew you hated me. But I didn’t realize just how much until tonight.”

A voice interrupts the silence on the back porch of the Itoshi household, its owner someone that you’ve spent the better part of the night avoiding. Your tongue caresses the back of your teeth, fingers subtly tightening their grip against the wooden railing. 

It feels like it might snow.

“Since when do you come back here for Christmas? Did you need to come sign some hometown autographs to boost your ego?” you ask, voice dripping with sarcasm as you stare out into the dark backyard, rather than turning your gaze to the ghost now standing beside you. 

Itoshi Sae laughs, and the sound cracks against your ribcage like a whip.

It reverberates against the grooves and fissures that still linger there, ones that might as well have been carved by his own hand. It races through you like a cold wind. It makes your lungs burn. 

You find it difficult to breathe for a moment.

And it takes everything in you to appear as unbothered by it all as you wish you were. As you’d like him to believe. 

“I heard from Rin that you’re working on your master’s degree now.”

That’s not any of your goddamn business, you think to yourself. 

“Rin has a big mouth—and since when are you two on speaking terms?”

Sae shrugs, leaving you to stew for a moment as you try to decide whether or not to be annoyed that Rin neglected to share that pertinent bit of information with you.

To be fair, the nearest object usually becomes a projectile weapon by your hand whenever the mention of Rin even having a brother comes up in conversation though. 

At the very least, you’ve stayed close with one of the Itoshi brothers.

And it’s bad enough that you have to dodge Sae’s stupidly famous name like the plague any time you dare to indulge in any piece of football media for Rin’s sake. Fuck him for being so good. 

(At least, that’s what you try to tell yourself. Rather than believing the alternative—that you’re just pathetically hyper aware of Sae in his absence, of all the space he left behind in your life. That five years later, you’re still slowly bleeding out from something that shattered into so many pieces, you don’t think you’ll ever find the last sliver.)

Inhaling sharply, you finally turn to face him. 

It’s not fair, not really—what the sight of him still does to you, even now. Even after all this time. 

Sae’s hair is tousled in a purposeful way, and his eyes are still as sharp as ever. He’s wearing sleek boots and fitted, dark wash jeans, his upper half covered by a jacket that’s likely as expensive as it appears.

He looks far better than he has any right to while you’re standing out here wearing a silly, ugly Christmas sweater that’s an annual staple of Itoshi holiday parties (your parents have been neighbors with them since you were a kid, so you know the drill by now). 

You try not to think about how you fell in love for the first time with the man standing five steps away from you here, between this dark backyard and the one nestled beside it. Beneath the shade of towering oak trees, in the plush grass on warm summer days with sticky popsicle fingers and sweat-slick skin. 

About how terribly you missed him when he left for Spain.

How you didn’t fully understand what you felt until he came back to Japan after you graduated high school. 

How you fell in love with him all over again. 

How he kissed you for the first time in this very spot, with one hand on your waist and the other cupping your cheek. You remember the way this very railing felt as it pressed into your back, the humid summer air and the buzz of the cicadas and the fireflies that winked in and out of sight around you. 

How you fell a little more in love with him every day over the four years that followed.

And you remember that you were standing here when Sae called you five years ago and told you that he’d cancelled his flight. That he wouldn’t be home for Christmas. 

That he didn’t think things were working anymore.

You couldn’t have disagreed more, but he didn’t give you a chance to argue. 

“Why are you here, Sae?”

He looks out into the darkness beyond in the yard before turning back to you. “Rin said you’re engaged.”

Self-consciously, you tuck the hand adorned with said diamond ring into your pocket. 

Sae’s eyes track the movement. 

“And?”

“That was quick,” he says calmly. 

The anger that rears up inside of you is so quick and sudden, you hardly have a chance to reign it in. 

“We’ve been together for two years. When you know, you know,” you shrug, ignoring the raw feeling at the back of your throat as you push the words out. 

Sae’s quiet for a moment, taking the subtle jab for what it is. “Where is he tonight?”

This time, you don’t hold back. “What, were you hoping to be politely introduced as the reason why I was a fucking emotionally unstable mess when he met me?”

His facial expression flickers. “I’m not going to apologize for not letting you continue to burn yourself out juggling a long distance relationship and a university degree between time zones. For not letting you choose me over your dream internship.”

“So you broke up with me over the phone three days before Christmas and mailed me all of my shit and went radio silent for five years? To show how much you cared about me?”

Sae takes two steps forward, shortening the distance between the two of you with tangible purpose. 

“You would have tried to talk me out of it, to come up with a solution that wouldn’t have worked.”

You nod, voice bordering on a frantic laugh. “So you made the choice for both of us. Because you know best.”

“Do you think I wasn’t hurting?”

Turning away, you wrap your arms around yourself, the cold finally seeping in past the adrenaline pumping through your veins, sinking into your bones in a way that makes you ache. 

“The only thing that could possibly hurt you is football.”

This time, it’s Sae that laughs, but it’s less amused and more self-deprecating now. And without warning, something heavy and warm settles around your shoulders, the musky scent of cologne enveloping you. 

Sae comes to stand in front of you, leaving you wearing his jacket. 

He’s wearing the goddamn stupid, ugly Christmas sweater with a dog on it that you bought for him years ago. 

“You’re wrong,” he says quietly, breath coming out as a white, whispy cloud of condensation. 

You wish you were. 

Ripping off his jacket, you shove it back into his arms before storming back inside, heart on the verge of pounding its way out of your chest and through the slats on the deck to burrow into the dirt below. 

—

You manage to avoid Sae for the next hour or so, mingling amongst other party guests and pointedly ignoring all of the excited chatter about the footballer’s festive homecoming. 

Rin doesn’t push, not in front of everyone, but you can tell by the concerned way he keeps glancing over at you that he’s aware you and Sae have talked. 

It’s only on your way to use the upstairs bathroom, hoping to glean a moment of quiet after your time out on the porch was so spectacularly ruined, that you find yourself distracted. 

There’s a dim light on in Sae’s childhood bedroom. 

And this is where he finds you again, standing frozen in the doorway and staring at the constellations projected on the walls by the small sphere-shaped lamp sitting on the desk in the corner of his room. 

The two of you used to lie on his bedroom floor for hours staring at the stars on his ceiling. 

“Does he make you happy?”

You’re expecting it this time when you hear Sae’s voice.

“Do you feel that’s any of your business?” you ask tiredly. 

He slowly walks past you into the room, sweater and jacket both seemingly discarded downstairs. He’s stripped down to a white t-shirt now, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans. 

“I made myself let you go so that you could be with someone who would make you as happy as you deserve. I don’t think I deserve your answer, but I’d like to know.”

You curl your toes against the carpet beneath your feet—just like you used to every time a silly teenage confession for him was trembling on the tip of your tongue. 

Your engagement ring feels cool and heavy on your finger. 

You hate him, hate this. Hate this effortless vice grip he still has on your weak heart. 

“You made me happy,” you tell him, voice hardly above a whisper. 

You hate that you know he made the right choice. 

Sae blinks. 

You would have left everything behind for him—school, your career, your future. 

You were content with weekends spent tangled up in hotel rooms between his games, with failed exams and missed assignments and a life spent in suitcases. 

“Aren’t you dating that model?” you blurt out, scrambling for something. Anything. 

He nods but doesn’t offer anything else. 

“Well, why didn’t you bring her here?” It’s a battle to keep your voice steady. 

“I didn’t want to.”

He—

“What, you didn’t want her to see you jealous if I brought my fiancé?” you joke. 

Sae lets out a huff of air—it might be a laugh.

“Something like that,” he responds quietly, gaze shifting to the window.

“Tell me why you’re here,” you say again.

The sound of voices climbing the stairs floats through the open door, and you step further into the room, pushing it closed and locking it behind you before crossing your arms. You’d rather not be interrupted by his drunk aunts. 

“I wanted to know how it would feel.”

You tilt your head. “How what would feel?”

He gestures to your hand, to the new diamond just hardly glinting in the low light. “Seeing a ring on your finger, knowing I didn’t put it there myself.”

The ground beneath your feet feels marginally less solid as your gut churns and your nerves sway. Your teeth sink into your cheek, pain blossoming as you bite down. 

“And?”

Sae runs a hand through his hair. 

“I hate it.” 

It’s blunt and raw, the way the words slide off of his tongue. And he stares at you when it says it, refusing to break eye contact. You take a step toward him, no reasonable explanation for the movement beyond the fucked up magnetism that still pulls you toward this false promise of true north. 

“Why, would you have gotten me something nicer?”

It’s dizzying, this conversation. The way words keep coming out of your mouth unbidden, filling the gaps in years worth of silence. Stroking a bruise, scraping a scar. 

“You hate gold,” he replies evenly, and your hand subconsciously goes to your neck. To where a silver chain sat for years before you finally tore it off and threw it in an envelope marked with Sae’s address. 

His eyes wordlessly track the movement. 

“Do I?”

He steps toward you, closing the dwindling gap further. And you swear you can feel it—a subtle charge in the air. 

Sae nods, reaching out to lightly take your hand in his. He holds it up to inspect. “And this diamond’s too big. Too square. You like small stones, something vintage.”

He’s right. 

You stare at him, all too aware of the familiar feeling of his skin against your own. 

“You sound confident.”

He knows he’s right. 

And he doesn’t falter. “There’s been a ring sitting in a small, velvet box in the back of my closet for five years. I haven’t forgotten what it looks like.”

A—

Words die feebly in your throat as you weakly croak, “—what?”

Sae sits down on the edge of his bed, looking down at his own hands. “I had it all planned out. I was so fucking nervous, it was ridiculous. And then I woke up that morning and realized that I was being selfish trying to tie you down to me permanently.”

He meets your gaze as you stare back at him, dumbfounded. Your knees feel weak.

“You were going to propose?”

Sae nods.

You move to stand in front of him, your socked feet nudging his own. “Did you fly all the way home to finally tell me that?”

He looks up at you. “I don’t know.”

You’re not sure what happens first—the brush of your knees against his own or the spreading of his thighs. But you find yourself between his legs all the same, denim resting against your sheer stockings and the fabric of your skirt.

“What am I supposed to do with this information, Sae?”

His eyes burn through you. 

“Tell me to get rid of the ring. Tell me you want nothing to do with me. Tell me you hate me.”

His words strike like flint against the raw edges of your nerves.

“I hate you,” you tell him, even as you reach out let your fingers ghost along the curve of his jaw.

Sae’s eyes fall shut, and he leans into your touch.

You let your hand slide higher, into the soft locks of his hair. 

His intake of breath is audible.

“I hate that you left me. I hate that you made the choice without me. I hate that you were right, because I never would have come this far in my career, and I never would have gone this far with my education.”

“I’m sorry—” His voice comes out hoarse, and he collapses forward, head pressed against your abdomen.

“I hate that I still love you, even now. Even after all this time.”

Sae’s arms wrap around the backs of your legs even as he mumbles, “Don’t say that.”

You feel like you could catch fire at any moment. 

“Why not?”

He shifts his head, rubbing his face against the bottom edge of your sweater, and the material rides up just enough to expose a sliver of skin. 

“I don’t deserve to hear it.”

You drag your hand to the back of his head, tugging the hair there to tilt his chin upward to meet your gaze once more. Your heart lurches in your chest at the sight before you.

“Probably not, but you decided to kick off honesty hour, so.”

Sae tips his head back downward, his breath hot where his mouth rests against the bare skin above the waist of your skirt.

“I wish you’d tell me not to touch you.”

You shiver. “Should I?”

“Yeah,” he breathes out.

You don’t answer him as every reasonable part of you goes quiet, drowned out by the blood rushing in your ears and the reckless desire that shamelessly shudders its way down your spine.

“And if I don’t?”

It’s pointed this time, the way Sae’s lips press to your stomach in an open-mouthed kiss. 

Logically, you know this isn’t right—standing here between your ex-boyfriend’s legs in the darkness of his childhood bedroom. Not with an engagement ring on your finger. Not when he’s got a girlfriend waiting on him somewhere. Not when this well should be dry, this bridge should be burned.

The bruise should be gone and the scar should be healed.

But—

But you’ve known him more than half of your life.

And for as much as the past five years have hurt—

For as much as you’ve missed him.

For as much as you’ve wanted to forget him.

For as much as you want to hate him.

—you’ve never regretted anything when it comes to Itoshi Sae.

Not once.

You climb onto the bed, straddling Sae’s lap. He reaches up, pointer finger curling beneath your chin as his thumb presses against the edge of your bottom lip.

“I can’t promise I’ll be a good man if you don’t tell me to stop,” he murmurs.

Your pulse quickens, and you part your lips slightly, heat flooding your gut as Sae slides his thumb into your mouth. 

This is a terrible idea.

You flick your tongue against the tip of the digit, and he holds your gaze as he slowly pulls his thumb back out.

“I want you to touch me,” you finally say.

Sae’s other hand, now resting at the base of your spine, slides up your back, stopping once he’s cupping the back of your head. He leans in, forehead resting against your own.

You’re maddeningly aware of every single spot his body is touching yours.

“Say it again.”

You let your nose brush against the side of his as you murmur, “Touch me, Sae.”

It drags all of the air from your lungs—the feeling of Sae’s lips crashing into yours.

His mouth greets you like a long-lost lover, like a dog-eared page. Like worn in soles and the perpetual creak in the step at the bottom of the stairs. 

His lips move with the purpose of car tires down a street you’ve known most of your life. With the muscle memory of feet across a childhood home in the dark. 

Tongue dancing against the seam of your mouth, your lips part for him, desire and longing cresting in equal measure as he grasps your hips and pulls you impossibly closer.

Sae kisses you like he hasn’t kissed you in five years.

He kisses you like no time has passed at all.

He kisses you like he wants to tell you something more between tongues and teeth, between slick saliva and gasping breaths. 

You don’t mean for it to come out so desperate, so needy—the way you breathe out his name when he takes your bottom lip between his teeth and bites and sucks his way to the edge before letting go.

“Sae.”

You hardly have time to register the way the room spins when Sae’s grip on you shifts, your back softly colliding with the mattress as you find him staring down at you. 

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks.

You shake your head, and he moves backward, pushing up your skirt, spreading your legs and settling down between your thighs. In the meantime, you slip off your sweater and toss it aside. Sae watches you do it, watches the way the tight black tank top you’re wearing underneath clings to your body, the way your peaked nipples sit on display through the fabric of your thin bralette. 

The heat that licks within your abdomen flares white-hot when he drags a thumb against your mound, your stockings already damp from the arousal soaking through your underwear.

There’s a slight tug in the material, followed by a ripping sound.

“Really?”

“There was already a hole.”

“You’re lying.”

Sae shrugs, but he doesn’t look sorry about it. “Yeah.”

You don’t have a chance to give him a hard time about ripping your stockings, not when you’re suddenly met with the feeling of two of his fingers sliding through the slick, creamy folds of your bare, soaked slit. 

“Sae,” you whine.

The bed creaks when you buck your hips upward while he circles his middle finger around the outer edges of your fluttering hole.

“You have to be quiet,” he murmurs, staring at you intently as he slowly slides a finger into your tight channel. 

You try to swallow it down, the moan that dangles at the edges of your lips while the slender digit slips deeper into your cunt. But as you tightly grasp the sheets on either side of you, it’s a lost cause when he pulls it out, only to stuff it back in up to the last knuckle. 

Sae’s mouth closes over yours, tongue sliding in past your lips in a messy, spit soaked kiss. You moan into it as he slowly finger fucks you, one digit becoming two, his thumb stroking your swollen, aching clit with each stroke, with every thrust. 

“Always loved how wet you get for me,” he rasps before capturing your tongue between his lips and sucking on it, the sounds nearly as filthy as the slick, creamy squelch of your cunt around his fingers.

You gasp, spine arching, thighs spreading wider as you rock into his touch, hands stretching downward until they brush the stiff press of Sae’s erection against the zipper of his jeans.

He groans into your mouth before pulling back, murmuring against your lips. “Are you sure—”

You squeeze his cock through his pants in return, kissing him again. 

Sae’s exhale is labored as he extricates his drenched fingers from your pussy just long enough to kick off his jeans and boxer briefs, leaving both in a discarded pile on the floor as he climbs back on top of you.

Your soaked panties and stockings are a lost cause by now, not worth the battle of peeling off, not when the torn hole allows him to rub the leaking head of his cock against your slit all the same. Tears of pleasure prick at the corners of your eyes as stares down at you while he eases his shaft into the grip of your cunt inch by inch, until he’s balls deep and your legs are wrapped around his waist tugging him impossibly deeper. 

“Fuck,” he gasps, one hand splayed at the back of your head, the other sliding up your shirt and beneath your bra to palm at your breasts.

Just the sensation of his thumb stroking its way across one of your pebbled nipples alone has you twitching beneath him, cunt grinding against the base of his shaft. Your muscles tremble with pleasure as Sae pulls out of you, only to rock back in. The room echoes with the wet sounds of your pussy swallowing his cock, the accompanying little moans begging to trickle out past your lips silenced by the two fingers he slides into your mouth in turn.

Because Sae hasn’t forgotten any of the little ways to take you apart, not at all.

There’s no apprehension in the way you shamelessly suck on his fingers, a trail of drool spilling out past your lips and dripping down your chin, the arousal churning between your legs going molten. 

“Good girl,” he murmurs—if for no reason other than the fact that he knows what it’ll do to you.

And the way your pussy clenches down on his cock makes it abundantly clear.

The corner of Sae’s mouth lifts, caught somewhere between a smirk and a rueful smile. It’s the satisfaction that he still knows you, that this is more than just muscle memory. 

He knows you like the stars know the night sky.

Like the shore knows the tide.

He kisses you again, languid and deep. Like this means so much more than a quick fuck on a cold December night caught in the throes of the liminal space of his childhood bedroom.

Like this means so much more than finally ending it where it all began.

“I love you,” Sae gasps against your lips as he thrusts into you.

The coil wrapped tightly in your gut unfurls, rapid and quick, and a scorching wave of pleasure washes over you as your cunt spasms and contracts around his length.

“I love you, too,” you choke out, bordering on a sob, and Sae’s fingers brush away the tear that slips down your cheek as he fucks you through your climax.

You can feel when he’s on the verge of pulling out, and you shake your head. His lips crash back into yours with a rough groan as his cock pulses inside of you, spilling rope after rope of thick, hot cum deep in your cunt.

Sae eventually collapses beside you, rather than climbing off of the bed, and he pulls you to his chest. You lie there like that for a moment before slowly sitting up, and he watches you quietly as you raise both hands, grasping your occupied ring finger. The sound of metal clinking against wood echoes in the silence of Sae’s bedroom as you turn to the nightstand before laying back down beside him.

He takes your now-empty hand in his, pressing his lips to the heel of your palm. 

Like the shore knows the tide.

[moonstruckme]

Hi lovely! Me again but with an actual request this time 😭😭 would you be able to write poly!marauders with reader who just got their wisdom teeth out and they’re all taking her home and taking care of her while she’s all loopy and hyped up on pain meds. I think it’d be so silly and cute. Only if you want to though! Much love and thanks!

-🍓

Thanks for requesting lovely!

cw: mention of blood, effects of anesthesia

poly!marauders x fem!reader ♡ 1k words

Sirius had offered to be the one to drive you, but no one had let him because of how upset you all knew he’d get. As soon as you come through the door, Remus knows they’d made the right decision. 

“I know, darling,” James' voice is low, sympathetic, and a bit panicked, “but I promise you can have them in a couple of days, alright?”

Sirius leaves the dishwater to get cold, beelining for the front door. Remus is hot on his tail. They find James kneeling in front of you, untying your shoes while tears dribble off your chin and into his hair.

“I can make you a smoothie, or mashed potatoes, or any non-solid your heart desires.” He turns his head, mouthing help. 

Your face only crumples miserably, and James looks nearly like he might cry too but Sirius comes to his rescue. 

“Hey, sweet girl.” He palms the back of your head, careful of your face as he tilts it up towards him. “What’s got you so wound up, huh?” 

“He won’t let me have marshmallows,” you cry, words all garbled by the gauze in your mouth. 

“So mean,” Sirius commiserates. “I’ll do you one better and make you a chocolate milk, how’s that sound?” 

Your tears dry instantly. James lifts your ankle to take off your shoe, and you grip Sirius’ arms, beaming up at him. Or beaming as best you can, with your mouth all numb and full of cotton. 

“That sounds amazing,” you sigh, blissful. 

Sirius grins right back at you, his hand coasting down your neck and back up again. Remus can tell he’s dying to touch your face the way he normally would, but he restrains himself. “You’ve got a deal,” he says as James pries off your other shoe. “Come watch me work.” 

He steers you toward the kitchen, Remus passing a hand over your head as you go by. You give him a sweet, lovelorn look in return. 

“Can she have her gauze out soon?” he asks James once you’re in the kitchen. 

He sets your shoes by the door. “Yeah, it should be fine by now. They said a half hour.” James leans against the couch and passes a hand over his face. He looks so worn out Remus can’t help but cross the room to him, taking his hand and kissing it lightly.

“Was she very upset the whole time?” he asks.

“No, she’s been all over the place. Far worse than you, though.” 

Remus feels heat rise to his face at the memory. He’d had his wisdom teeth out last summer and reportedly spent the rest of the day clinging to whoever was nearest, grousing about how tired he was but never actually going to sleep. 

“Oh, uh…” James digs in his pocket. A few receipts and a dime come out, then a small bottle of pills. “They said she should start on these once she got home, but I can’t get them open. Can you try?” 

“Mhm.”

“Thanks.” James’ eyes widen, and he rushes off to the kitchen, saying something to Sirius about how they can’t let you use a straw. Remus follows a few steps behind, reading the label of the pill bottle before twisting the top off. It was childproofed, bless him. 

When he enters the kitchen, Sirius has you sat up on the counter and is poking around in your mouth. He takes out the gauze carefully, one piece at a time, and sets it on the counter. Remus makes a mental note to deep-clean that later. Your eyes follow Sirius’ movements, slowly widening. 

“Is all that blood from me?” Your voice carries a slight quiver. 

“That?” Sirius says swiftly. “No, that’s old blood. You’re good as new now.” 

“Oh,” you breathe, deflating a bit in relief. Remus chuckles, and your eyes fly to him, lighting. “Rem!” 

You open your arms wide. He steps into them, raising his eyebrows at James as you grip his shoulders tightly. 

“Told you,” James stage-whispers. “All over the place.” 

“I can hear you,” you say, words muffled into Remus’ sweater. He pets the back of your head pacifyingly. 

“How are you, sweetheart?” 

You take some time to mull this over. “M’okay,” you decide. “I’m a little sad they had to take my tongue, but it could be worse I guess.” 

“They didn’t take your tongue,” James says, like it’s not the first time he’s had to tell you this, “you just had some teeth removed.” 

“They’re dismantling me,” you say morosely. It’s clear you’ve accepted your fate. 

Remus strokes your hair again, leaning away slightly so you’ll look up at him. You do, and even with your glassed-over eyes and puffy cheeks you’re the cutest thing he’s ever seen. 

“I’m glad you’re not hurting too badly,” he hums, cupping the side of your head. You smile dopily and lean into the touch. “I’ve got a pill that’ll help make sure you don’t hurt later, too.” 

Sirius passes you your chocolate milk so you can take it, and James clucks about how you need to take slow, careful sips all the way until you’ve drained the glass. As soon as it’s out of your grasp you’ve replaced it with Remus’ hand, your fingers tracing the lines of his palm with idle fascination. 

“Feel like watching a film?” he asks you softly. 

You hum. “That sounds nice. Can I have the fuzzy pillow because they’re taking me apart?” 

Remus huffs a laugh, and James groans. “Nobody’s taking you apart, darling,” he reasons. “The dentist only took the unimportant bits.” 

“Bit by bit,” you sigh. 

James looks in distress, so Remus takes the crook of his elbow in hand, squeezing lightly as Sirius eases you off the counter and into his hold. Remus thinks you’ll be lucky if he releases you before tomorrow. 

“You can have all the pillows if you want them,” Sirius promises you. “My poor girl, being taken apart bit by bit. You can have whatever you want.”

[natalievoncatte]

“Hey,” Kara said, “want to grab something for lunch?”

Seated at her desk, Lena waved her hand dismissively, even though she was only talking to Kara on the phone.

“I can’t. I have too much to do.”

“You’re the boss, you can just take off. Everyone has to do what you say.”

Lena rolled her eyes. There was a hint of teasing in Kara’s voice, but Lena meant it. L-Corp was in the final stages of a major acquisition. Lena was taking over an AI startup that was developing a key technology for one of her medical division products, and to make it viable she needed their patents, IP, and scientific talent.

“I really am swamped.”

“Can’t you spare half an hour? For me? I want to make sure you’re not starving yourself again.”

Lena sighed. The teasing was replaced with a genuine concern, now. Lena had admitted to Kara that she lost five the last time she got caught up in something for three weeks. Of everyone she mentioned it to, Kara was the only one who didn’t congratulate her. She worried, she fussed, and she fed Lena that night.

“Okay,” said Lena. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in ten, does that sound…”

“I’m already here.”

Kara then opened the door and walked in, smirking. Lena’s breath caught when she saw her. Kara had her hair in an elaborate braid and was dressed for the blistering summer heat in a green sun dress and sandals. Joy sparkled in her blue eyes and she smiled wide.

“We could get delivery,” said Lena.

“Nope! Fresh air! It’s good for you!”

Lena sighed and allowed herself to be bundle outside, throwing on a hat and sunglasses. Since she was in the office on a Saturday and had let herself in, she had dressed casually and the heat was tolerable while they walked.

They spent the trip in companionable silence. Kara walked close to her, a presence just to Lena’s right that seemed to electrify the air, like something pulling between them.

Lena noticed things. Like how Kara always walked between her and the road, and how the way her arms would swing always seemed to leave Kara’s pinky brushing the outside of Lena’s hand. Sometimes she’d mumble an apology. Sometimes not. Sometimes Lena would feel the tender touch, and find Kara looking at her oddly, a soft wistful smile on her face that made Lena melt.

Sometimes she thought about catching her hand. Sometimes she thought about stopping and meeting that look, gently asking what Kara was so intent about. She never did, because as much as she enjoyed that fluttering feeling in her belly, she was certain Kara was straight.

It was like an ache she just couldn’t stop, dull and pulsing at the back of her mind. One soft brush of Kara’s lips on her own would be more than-

“Hey,” Kara said. “You’re a million miles away.”

“Oh,” Lena murmured, realizing that she’d been staring this time. “I’m sorry, I was just thinking about work.”

There was a nearly imperceptible flash of concern and sadness on Kara’s face, the tiniest hint of a frown that made Lena want to cup her cheek and whisper an apology, but didn’t.

“This is it,” said Kara. “Try to relax, alright?”

Lena sighed her best promise and followed Kara in to a quaint little lunch spot with air conditioning and big ceiling fans mounted high overhead, and they took their seats.

Kara ordered for her -you need protein, Lena!- and she spent the next forty-five minutes picking at a turkey wrap and listening to Kara chatter excitedly about gossip and work and who was dating who at CatCo and a big story she was working on. Lena knew she had a lopsided smile on her face and was nodding along, as much for the delight of Kara’s excitement. She did little voices when she imitated her coworkers and got animated when talking about her story.

Lena barely said a word.

“You’re quiet,” Kara finally said.

I’m in love with you, Lena thought.

“I’m just tired. I was listening. You think Elliot is dating… Katie?”

Kara smirked at her.

“I wish you wouldn’t push yourself so hard. There’s more to life than work.”

Kara rested her hand atop Lena’s, and Lena felt her heart flip in her chest.

“I know. I’m sorry I’ve been distant, this project just means a lot to me.”

“Let’s get you back before the building burns down,” said Kara.

Lena felt a little guilty as they walked into the bar to pay the bill. For some reason, Lena felt a little thrill when Kara insisted on paying, and the host looked at Lena and then smirked at Kara.

They turned, snd a man stepped up to Lena.

“Luthor!” he shouted. “You ruined my fucking life!”

Lena froze, wide-eyed, about to ask what she did. The man raised the gun he had hidden in the pocket of his sweatshirt and fired. The sound was incredible, stabbing at her ear drums and filling the world with a dull ringing. She stumbled back into the bar.

Kara’s fist was clenched in front of her chest, her eyes wide and expression wild. Kara snapped her attention to the gunman, who fired again.

She stepped between the gun and Lena. Five more shots went off and seemed to rumple her dress with tiny bursts of wind, but then Lena saw the bullets had torn the fabric before they tumbled to the floor.

Kara swept her hand and yanked the gun out of his hand, and it fell to the floor in a crumpled mass, sliding along the tiles.

She changed. It was as if she grew taller, wider, expression hardening. She grabbed the attacker by his collar and hauled him off the floor with one hand, and Lena felt a pang of fear as fire literally blazed in her eyes.

When she put a hand on Kara’s shoulder, the muscles were coiled like steel cables.

“Don’t” she caught herself whispering.

Kara threw him. He slid across the floor and thumped against the wall, and she strode over and planted her foot on his chest, easily pinning him. He stared up at her in naked shock.

Kara touched her ear. “Alex, get to my location asap. Someone just tried to kill Lena. We need a cleanup.”

Lena stared at her.

It wasn’t five minutes before her sister, in full tactical gear, led a team of armed agents into the cafe and bundled up Lena’s assailant, dragging him away. They took the crumpled gun and the fallen bullets and began talking to the other patrons and staff.

Lena started to shake.

Kara focused on her instantly and led her outside, where “FBI” vans were waiting. Kara stepped into one and in half a second, without seeming to break stride, stepped back into view in full Supergirl regalia.

Lena almost fell. He knees went wobbly and she slumped, right into Kara’s arms. Kara scooped her up in a single fluid motion and lifted off as Lena took a death grip on the collar of her suit and buried her face in Kara’s neck.

Moments later they lighted on Lena’s balcony. Kara pushed the door aside, ignoring the very expensive lock that popped off as she did, and carried her inside.

Bolting, Lena ran to the bathroom. Her entire body had gone cold, like she’d been dunked in ice water. She sagged to her knees and grabbed the toilet, retching.

Kara was there. A soft, reassuring hand rubbed her back while the other tenderly and expertly gathered her hair. Lena couldn’t help it; she struggled to hold on her lunch, shaking, screaming between retches.

“You’re alright, I’ve got you.”

“He almost killed me,” Lena choked out. “If you weren’t there I’d be dead.”

Kara sat down, and pulled Lena into her lap, rocking her softly until the shaking subsided before standing up, easily carrying her out of the room.

A glass of water helped. Kara was attentive, gently, softly encouraging while the adrenaline shakes ravaged Lena.

Kara was Supergirl. It seemed weirdly obvious to her now. She looked up and realized that Kara hadn’t unbraided her hair, and the effect was disconcerting. Kara took Lena in her arms again, hugging her tight.

“You’re safe. I’ve got you, you’re safe now.”

Lena took in a deep breath, drinking her scent as Kara rubbed her back and did the same, burying her face in Lena’s hair.

“You’re going to be okay,” Kara murmured, “it’s alright.”

“I’m so tired of this,” Lena whimpered. “What did I do? Why did he want to hurt me?”

“You don’t deserve to live this way,” said Kara.

“Oh God,” said Lena. “I have to… the acquisition, my work…”

Kara seized her head in her hands, firmly yet gently, cupping Lena’s cheeks in her palms. Kara stared at her with shocking intensity, tears welling up in her eyes.

“Fuck your work,” Kara almost shouted. “I care about you. You, Lena! You’re more than… you… I…”

Lena stared back at her, in shock at the intensity in her voice, even moreso than the out of character f-bomb. Kara was still holding her, looking at her with such fullness of feeling, biting her lip and struggling to hold back tears and failing, that Lena couldn’t stop herself. She lunged, diving into Kara, hugging her.

Lena hugged Kara, but Kara was the one to kiss her first. Their lips met in a nearly painful crash, Kara diving into her like she might never see her again.

Oh.

It was a wild sensation, this adrenaline shock combined with the feeling of Kara’s powerful arms wrapped around her, fingers that could crush diamonds gripping her hip and the back of her neck, the way Kara stood tall over her and her boots thumped on the floor when she took a step.

“You mean everything to me.”

Lena sucked in a breath and swallowed a sob.

Oh.

“Don’t leave,” Lena chirped out. “Please don’t leave me.”

“I won’t. I won’t.”

Lena finally felt herself slowing down, but it left her drained, barely able to stand. She slumped against Kara and stayed there, clinging to her.

“I’m going to change,” Kara murmured. “Easy.”

She lowered Lena onto the sofa and she curled in the corner, huddled in a ball.

Then Kara reached to her shoulders unclasped one side of her cape, then the other. With a flourish she swung it wide and swept it over Lena as a blanket.

“Stay right here.”

She wasn’t gone long. In mere moments she was there in a t-shirt and shorts, wrapping herself around Lena.

It took hours for Lena to finally calm down, and by then she’d fallen asleep on Kara’s shoulder. When she woke up, Kara was teasing her fingers along Lena’s scalp and singing softly. It took a moment for Lena to realize that the clipped, rhythmic language had to be Kryptonian.

“Are you okay?”

Lena nodded.

“It was different this time. People have tried to kill me before but… it was different. He was just some guy in a cafe.”

“Lena,” Kara murmured, “look at me.”

Lena looked up, meeting Kara’s soft, intent gaze.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Lena’s heart swelled. It felt so real, so true. Kara meant it, every bit of it, from the depths of her being. Lena tucked in closer to her and sighed on her shoulder.

“Work can wait until Monday,” Lena whispered.

“Tuesday,” Kara corrected.

“Can you stay tonight?” said Lena. “Just to sleep,” she added.

“Of course.”

They were silent to a while.

“Lena?”

“Yeah.”

“About earlier, if I… overstepped, I’m sorry. It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to.”

Lena sucked in a sharp breath.

“It means everything.”

“Oh,” said Kara.

[iamnotoriginalphil]

A Study in Forever (Professor!Agatha Harkness x f!Reader)

Synopsis: Rio returns, expecting you to be gone. Instead, Agatha chooses to teach her a lesson she won't soon forget.

Words: 4.3k

Warnings: Voyeurism, fingering (R receiving), edging, exhibitionism, possessiveness, objectification, orgasm delay, dom!Agatha, swearing

Tags: @sasheemo @buttercandy16 @chlondykebar @midnight-lestrange @babybeeelle @dontsblameme@grilledcheeseandguavajelly @fuckedupforkhahn @latedawnsearlysunsets92

The summer was dripping past in long days and soft nights. Moving into Agatha’s house had been as simple as shoving some clothes in her wardrobe and books on her bookcase. The summer heat had made you lazy without the need to constantly produce work for Agatha. And with that came lounging around the house.

Agatha had spent plenty of time telling you that draping over her couch was not going to work as seduction. And then she’d descend on you and burn you up with her mouth. It certainly seemed to work as a seduction tactic.

It probably helped that the heat left you wearing very little clothing. Shorts, crop tops, bikinis on the few attempts you’d made to go swimming. Each time her hands would be on your skin and you’d forget whatever it was you’d been trying to do. You couldn’t complain, knowing exactly what you were doing when you put on those clothes.

You were lying on her couch, under the fan, a worn paperback dangling from your fingers. Your eyes were closed, feeling the air waft over your bare skin, half asleep in the warm cocoon of the summer heat. Agatha had locked herself in her office under the grumbled excuse of having to actually get some work done. You’d grinned and sent her off with a lingering kiss, knowing she’d come find you sooner or later. She always did. It was like she couldn’t keep away from you.

It was one of the things you loved about her.

A knock sounded on the front door. You startled, the loud noise not something you’d been expecting. It was the middle of the afternoon and you knew Agatha wasn’t expecting anyone. She usually told you to make sure you weren’t wandering around the house half naked. Not that you thought she’d really have a problem with that. Not if she could stake her claim in front of everyone.

You knew she’d been thinking about that whole voyeurism dream you’d shared with her.

You swung your legs off the sofa, knowing Agatha probably wouldn’t have heard from behind the heavy office door she’d shut in your pouting face. Pulling the door open, you weren’t sure what to expect. Maybe one of the neighbours. Sharon had grown especially friendly over the last few weeks.

Rio was definitely the last person you expected to be there.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Her perfect face was marred with a look of disgust. Pushing past your initial shock, you let a smile take over your face, doing your best to do that sparkling thing Agatha accused you of doing to get your way.

“I live here,” you replied.

“So you’re still around,” Her head tilted to the side, “I can’t say I was expecting that.”

“I know,” you said.

“Is Agatha here?” she asked, dark eyes narrowing.

“She’s kind of busy at the moment but I’ll let her know you stopped by,” you said, already beginning to close the door.

Her hand slammed into it, holding it open. You pursed your lips, but let her lean towards you.

“Go tell her I’m here, little girl,” she said, her voice a hiss.

“If she wanted to see you, she’d be in contact,” you said, “I think her silence tells you enough.”

You’d won the war, you’d gotten the girl, you weren’t letting this intimidating woman come in and fluster you enough to steal your place in Agatha’s life. Her hand reached out, curling around a strand of your hair. She tugged on it, hard enough to feel a sharp pain in your scalp. It was nothing like when Agatha pulled on your hair, none of the liquid heat melting through your veins.

“Trust me, she’ll want to see me,” she whispered, pulling you closer to her.

“If I’ve taught you anything, pet, it’s not to trust such a self serving bitch like this.”

A hand slid around your waist, chin digging into your shoulder. You lent back against the familiar body, relaxing at her steady presence. Rio let go of your hair, straightening again as her eyes swept over the picture you made with Agatha. You knew how you looked wrapped up in her arms, comfortable and simply hers. You liked it, having her claim staked in front of someone who so obviously wanted it instead.

“What do you want?” Agatha asked, voice chilling in a way that turned it to ice.

“Since you’ve found someone to stick around, I thought I’d offer my services to teach her exactly how to please you,” she said, her eyes sliding from you to her, lips curling up in a familiar smirk.

“I think I’ve got it covered,” you said, “I’ve heard no complaints from her.”

“Because I have none. You’ve been doing wonderfully, kitten.” Her lips pressed to the vulnerable skin behind your jaw, making you shiver and press back into her. She chuckled, her fingers splayed over the bare skin of your stomach, nails gently dragging over it.

Dark eyes zeroed in on the hand on your stomach, an interested tilt to her head. You felt your breath catch, knowing she was watching you, wondering what she was thinking, seeing exactly how much Agatha wanted you. Your lips parted, the heat you felt under your skin unexpected but not unpleasant.

“You’re not even going to invite me in for a refreshing glass of lemonade?” she asked, gaze dragging back up to your face, “I’ve come such a long way to visit.”

“What do you think, pet? Should we let her in?” Agatha asked, lips brushing the shell of your ear.

“One drink wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” you said, grinning when her nails dug in.

The trouble with you was you were beginning to enjoy flaunting your relationship with Agatha. You wanted Rio to see it, to have to face the fact that you’d won, to rub it in her face. Agatha had made her decision and it was you.

She wasn’t needed anymore.

Your fingers tangled with Agatha’s as you led her to the back of the house, knowing it would annoy Rio. You pulled open the fridge door, the lemonade you’d made the day before waiting. Agatha’s hands were on your hips as you poured three tall glasses, ice cubes clinking against the sides. Her lips made a home on your neck. Rio was still watching. Your skin heated but you didn’t tell Agatha to stop.

“We can drink in the living room,” Agatha said after a moment.

She plucked one of the glasses from you, shoving the other across the counter at Rio. She caught it, hissing when some sloshed over the side onto the skin of her hand. Holding eye contact with Agatha, she licked it off, tongue slow as it dragged over her own skin. Her hand tightened around you, dragging you into the living room.

Rio settled on the couch, right where you’d been lounging. She lent back, legs spread, taking a long drink from her glass. Agatha sat in the armchair, one leg crossed over the other. You perched on the arm next to her, grinning when her hand landed on your thigh, fingers digging into your skin.

“You’ve built quite the little love nest for yourself here,” Rio said, her eyes focused on the hand on your leg.

“I don’t think it’s a love nest when we live together,” you replied, fingers winding through Agatha’s hair.

“You’ve moved in?” Her eyebrows raised for just a moment.

“That surprises you?” Agatha asked.

“Only because the last woman you lived with was me,” she said.

The way she was looking at Agatha was like she owned her. She had been the first and she probably had thought she would be the last but then you had come along and ruined all her plans. You weren’t going to let her ruin yours.

“And what a disaster that turned out to be,” Agatha drawled.

“I thought we had fun,” she said, long finger slow to draw along the rim of her glass, “you certainly seemed to enjoy being hidden away with me in very close quarters.”

“Until it became claustrophobic,” she replied.

“And now you have so much space. I’m sure you can go days without seeing one another,” she said, eyes flicking to you.

Agatha’s hand tugged on your leg. You slid off the arm of the chair into her lap. Molten in her hands, you let her spread your legs, forcing them to fall either side of both of hers as you lent back against her soft curves. Her chin rested on your shoulder as her hand pressed into your lower stomach.

“Lucky for me neither of us want that much space,” she said, lips brushing the underside of your jaw.

It was automatic, the way you tilted your head to give her more access. Dark eyes watched as she ran her tongue up the length of your neck before her teeth closed over your earlobe. You whimpered, the flutter of your pulse turning you breathless.

“Isn’t my pet so pretty?” Agatha asked, turning her gaze back to Rio, “how could I want to stay away from her?”

Rio hummed, not quite a proper response. Chilled fingers brushed over your skin, still wet from the condensation on the glass of lemonade she must have put down. Your lips parts and your muscles tightened under her touch. Her chuckle was low, a vibration you felt against you, the kind that said you were in trouble.

Or about to have a lot of fun.

“But I don’t like other people touching my toys,” she continued, hand beginning to trace patterns into your skin, brushing higher and higher up your body.

“I remember,” Rio replied, a rough hum, “but you never seemed to have a problem sharing with me.”

“This one’s different. She’s special,” she said, hand slipping under the hem of your crop top.

In the warm summer air the heat of her hand felt unbearable, and the thought of losing it was inconceivable. Lips pressed to the underside of your jaw. You wiggled in her lap, the low thrum of arousal familiar and comforting, and yet somehow indecent under the watchful gaze of Rio.

“No one’s that special,” Rio said.

“She is,” Agatha hummed, “the first taste I had of her I knew there was no one like her. I’d never get enough. If I could, I’d have her chained to my bed, at my beck and call, this pussy on demand.”

Her fingers played with the button of your shorts. She ignored the small noise you made. The way your breath stuttered out of your parted was ignored too.

“You’ve never tasted her. You’ve never heard what she sounds like when she comes. You’ve never seen the way she looks when she’d begging for her release,” she continued.

Her fingers popped open the button on your shorts. The other hand cupped your breast, over the top of your bra, squeezing it roughly. You made a small mewling noise, arching into her hand. Dark eyes raked over your body, lingering on where the hand was groping you.

“If you’d seen her come undone, you wouldn’t be giving her up either,” Agatha said.

“Are you offering?” Rio asked.

“You’ll never touch her,” she said as her hand pushed into your shorts, slipping into your underwear.

“You sure about that?” she asked.

“Go on, pet. Tell her. Will she ever touch you?” Agatha asks, lips brushing the shell of your ear.

Her fingers ghosted over your clit.

“No,” you managed to say, trying to sound as normal as possible. You were certain you’d failed from the way Rio’s gaze snapped down to your spread legs.

“And why’s that?” Agatha asked, keeping her voice to a gentle hum.

“Because I’m yours,” you replied.

Her fingers ran through your folds, feeling how wet you already were. Slow to circle your clit, she pressed her lips to yours in a gentle kiss, almost the complete opposite of what this situation had turned into. Your head fell back against her shoulder with a soft sigh.

“You see? I’ve trained her so well. I give her everything she needs. Why would she ever want someone like you?” Agatha taunted.

“You think she’ll stay with you? This young, pretty thing? She can find something better. You know I’m the only one who will stay with you forever,” Rio said.

“I’d rather take my chances with her,” Agatha replied.

She was being so slow with you. A teasing touch, soft and not nearly enough. You whined, turning your head towards her ear, wanting her to hear you. Her fingers dipped back down to your entrance, lingering there until you thought you would go mad.

“You’re free to leave at any time,” Agatha told Rio.

“If this is a game I don’t intend to lose,” Rio replied.

Her finger slid into you, so easily it was almost embarrassing. You whimpered, just loud enough to be heard, hips shifting. The hand she’d trailed up your shirt pulled the cup of your bra down, fingers pinching at your nipple. She was slow to roll it between thumb and forefinger, the hand between your legs stroking your inner walls in a way that was making it hard to catch your breath.

“No game,” Agatha hummed.

“Everything with you is a game,” Rio replied.

She lent forward, eyes growing more intent as they focused on your body. Fire was licking at your skin. Your hands clutched at the arms of the armchair, your nails digging into the soft leather.

“My pet isn’t a plaything,” Agatha said, right as her thumb ground against your clit.

Your moan was loud to your own ears. A sharp inhalation came from across the room. Dark eyes seemed to darken as they focused on your face. Under the spotlight of Rio’s attention, you felt yourself set alight. Your lips parted, eyes squeezing closed.

“Look at her. Isn’t she everything a person could want?” Agatha hummed.

Her thumb was moving in tight circles over your clit and you couldn’t breathe properly. Your hips tried to buck into her touch but without feet on the floor you couldn’t get any traction. Her tongue flicked at your earlobe before she found her home at your pulse point.

“I will admit you found a pretty little thing to occupy your time,” Rio agreed, her voice low. Your eyes fluttered open, finding her focused on where Agatha was kissing you, “but how long can she really satisfy you?”

“Just watch. Once you see, then you’ll understand how I could never grow tired of this,” she sighed before her teeth sunk into your skin.

You cried out, begging for more. She smiled into you your skin, tongue soothing over the bruise she had most likely left on your skin. She slid a second finger into you as her thumb slipped away from your clit. Whimpering, you hid your face against her neck.

“Go on, show her, pet,” she coaxed, “let her see you.”

You turned your face back to let Rio watch you. Agatha curled her fingers in reward, causing you to moan her name. You locked eyes with Rio. Her lips were pressed together, hands clasped, hanging between her knees.

Agatha’s thrusts were slow, the pace maddening. It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was making your head spin. You loved when she got rough with you, but this was almost like she wanted to see how far she could stretch your sanity.

“She’s so wet,” Agatha said, “so warm.”

“Agatha,” you whimpered.

“Shh, pet. The adults are talking,” she said.

You shut your mouth, doing as you were told. If you did, then she would reward you. You knew that. If you stopped distracting her, she’d let you come. She’d taught you so well. You would do anything she asked of you.

“See? Such a good girl,” she said, turning her attention back to Rio, “she does exactly what I tell her to.”

“I remember a time when you enjoyed being told what to do,” Rio said.

“I still do sometimes,” she replied, “when my pet has been particularly well behaved.”

“Is she as good as I am?” Rio asked.

“Better.”

Dark eyes, swimming in anger, returned back to you. You couldn’t even focus on her, the thumb back on your clit drawing tight circles, grinding against you until you were panting for breath. Her fingers curled, twisting inside you as her fingers harshly pinched your nipple. You yelped but you were arching into her touch, asking for more.

Rio was leaning closer, gaze focused on the hand in your shorts. You were so close, right on the edge, enjoying the way envy played over the other woman’s face so clearly. There was no way of knowing if she wanted to be you or be Agatha, or both.

“Don’t even think about touching her,” Agatha said, voice sharp.

Your cunt pulsed, loving when her voice became so commanding. Her chuckle was warm against your ear. Rio’s fingers clenched around her glass of lemonade, the ice almost completely melted. She lent back, her chest heaving, a flush still growing high on her cheeks as she watched.

“You’ll never touch her,” Agatha told Rio, “and you’ll never touch me again.”

“We’ll see if you still feel that way when this one has moved on too,” she replied but she didn’t sound so sure.

“Oh she’s not leaving me. She branded herself. She’s mine until she dies,” Agatha replied, and you could hear the smugness in her voice. She was proud of your actions. Even weeks later, her fingers still traced over the words inked on your skin, her name, over and over again until you thought she might wear your skin away.

You loved it.

“And I have complete control over her,” she continued, “don’t I, pet?”

“Yes,” you hissed as her thumb ground down even harder.

You were trembling, holding on for as long as you could. You knew the game she was playing, the example she was making of you. You weren’t going to let her lose face in front of Rio. She needed you to be good, to do this for her.

You would do anything for her.

“You must have spent a lot of time training her,” Rio said.

“Hardly,” she scoffed, not letting up on you for a moment, “she wants to please me.”

“But you enjoy punishment so much,” she said, her voice a caress, trying to taunt her into admitting you weren’t living up to her wishes.

“I enjoy a good girl so much more,” she hummed, “I like a toy that does as she’s told and doesn’t answer back.”

You definitely didn’t always do what you were told and you’d been known to answer back.

“That’s a lie, and we both know it,” Rio said.

“Perhaps, but she does it in such a delicious way I forget she’s pushing the limits,” she said before her lips brushed over your skin.

You were strung tight, trembling, doing everything you could not to fall over the edge. Her fingers were rough, moving in just the way she knew unravelled you. She was making it so difficult for you, and you assumed it was on purpose. She had to make it clear she wasn’t going easy on you. That even under pressure you still did as you were told.

That no one could give her what she wanted like you did.

“But since she’s being so well behaved today, she’s not going to come until I tell her she can,” she murmured, “will you, pet?”

“No,” you whimpered.

Tears pricked at your eyes, holding on so tight it was a physical ache. You were desperate. Her thrusts were fast now palm grinding against your clit. She was unforgiving, harsh in how she was treating you. The other hand was groping your breast, squeezing it, pinching at your nipple. When the tears fell, her teeth sunk into the skin of your neck.

Through the haze of the tears still leaking from your eyes, you saw Rio lean forward again. You squeezed your eyes shut, the heat of her gaze enough to make you breathless and wanton and needy. Agatha’s dark chuckle in your ear only made the whole thing worse.

“Do you see how hard she’s trying? She wants to please me so badly,” she said and you knew it was for Rio’s benefit.

“She is rather pretty when she cries like that,” she replied.

“And all for me,” Agatha said.

The conversation turned fuzzy after that, your entire brain focused on holding back your orgasm. You felt on fire. Every moment it only got worse, closer to turning to ash in Agatha’s lap.

“All mine,” Agatha purred.

You couldn’t stop the whimper that managed to slip past your parted lips. She didn’t reprimand you, her lips pressing to your temple.

“It’s okay, pet. You can come now.”

Your body shuddered in her arms, the relief washing through you. Letting go, you let the pleasure crash into you, the way it had been trying to for so long. You sobbed, pressing your face into her neck. The hand on your breast slipped out from under your shirt, stroking through your hair as she kept your face buried against her skin.

“You did so well for me, kitten,” she murmured against your temple, “you were wonderful.”

She eased you through it. Fingers slowing within you, her lips pressed soft kisses to your hairline. Once you’d stopped twitching in her arms, she slowly withdrew her hand from your shorts. Your arousal glistened on her fingers in the summer sunlight.

You grasped her wrist, pulling her fingers to your lips. You licked along them before sliding them into your mouth, your tongue licking her clean. Hollowing your cheeks, you sucked on them the way you knew she liked.

You dragged your eyes over to Rio, feeling a sense of smugness. You were the one she’d been touching, and you were the one who had put on the show for her. Her own eyes were blown wide as they took you in.

“You can’t find anyone better than my pet because there is no one better. And she’s all mine,” Agatha said, sliding her fingers from your mouth, the arm around your waist tightening, “you can leave now.”

Rio’s eyes snapped to her, the look of anger flashing over her face. You cuddled back against Agatha, pulling your legs up to settle more comfortably against her body. She handed you her glass of lemonade, making sure you drank the entire thing down before putting down the empty glass. Her fingers slid into your hair, cradling the back of your head.

Her lips pressed to yours, kissing you deeply. You were boneless, melted against her, satiated and happy. She tucked your head back against your shoulder.

“Get out of my house,” she commanded, voice hardened as she realised Rio was still there on her couch.

“You bring me here and put on a show then tell me to leave without giving me mine?” she demanded.

“You showed up uninvited. Now get out,” she said.

You sighed as you burrowed closer to her, eyes sliding closed. A lazy afternoon nap sounded like a wonderful idea.

You weren’t sure how long you sat like that with her but when the front door slammed you jerked up. The couch had been vacated and Agatha was glaring out the front window.

“Next time we don’t invite her in for a drink,” you mumbled, finding your place against her shoulder again.

“You didn’t have fun?” she asked.

“I had fun with you,” you replied, “she was surplus to that.”

“Was she? Because I think you liked performing for her. You liked her watching,” she said, the fingers still tangled in your hair pulling.

“I did,” you agreed, “I really did.”

“And yet you still don’t want her to come back?”

You looked up at her, still feeling soft and sleepy, wanting nothing more than to stay in her arms. She wasn’t looking at you, the weight of her gaze having shifted back to the window. You wished you knew what she was thinking.

“Agatha, she makes you unhappy. As long as she does, I don’t want her anywhere near you,” you said.

Blue eyes darted down to you, finding you gazing up at her. The fingers in your hair slid out, gently tracing the curve of your jaw.

“You’d give up ever doing that again just for me?” she asked.

“I have more than enough just from you. Who cares if that never happens again as long as I have you. You’re all I want,” you replied.

She tilted your head up, kissing you until you were breathless.

“Well, I think we made our point, kitten,” she said.

“Mmhm,” you hummed, settling against her again.

“I doubt she’ll be back. She knows there’s no place for her in my life anymore,” she said, fingers carding through your hair.

“I’m all you need,” you mumbled, lips brushing the skin of her neck.

You felt her shiver, fingers tugging on your hair sharply. You kissed the underside of her jaw, feeling her arm tighten around you.

“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” she replied, “you were made for me.”

When she lifted you, her arms strong around your body, carrying you upstairs to your bedroom, you couldn’t agree more. You had been made just for Professor Harkness. And you were never letting her go.

[mellowmusings]

Blessed mistakes | Prologue Azriel x Reader

part 1

A/N- This is just a drabble for now and its been sitting in my drafts for a while so i decided to post it. Not sure if i'm gonna continue on this though.

summary- After over 5 centuries of waiting Azriel hasn't found his mate, given up all hope of any chance of finding her he decides to start pursuing Elain, not seeing what was in front of him all along.

This was miserable, He was miserable.

The stale tavern air reeked of unwashed bodies, alcohol and bile. Men and women sang bawdy songs in offtune tones drowning out the music, in a corner a brawl went on, men punching one another over a rigged game of poker, women flirted with him, and none took to his liking.

How the mighty had fallen, he mused. He gulped down his whiskey, the burn in his throat grounding him. A few centuries ago he would have been drinking himself to his limit with his brothers and bedding whatever pretty female came his way, but that wasn't the case anymore. Somewhere along the path he'd fallen in love and started caring for females who could never love him the way he loved them. Now his heart was a stupid, broken mess of emotions and feelings he didn't like, and so he spent his days working himself trying to forget his feelings, now he spent his nights training because even sleep had abandoned hom. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been happy, genuinely happy and felt Loved

*2 centuries ago*

The cool summer breeze ruffled his hair, the birds sang in the background, almost harmonizing with one another. He could make out the call of the Mockingjay, A cuckoo bird, and maybe a peacock too. He sat besides y/n, his who was like a younger sister to him. She'd practically grown up with him, Cass and Rhys since they were teenagers. "Hey Az, can i ask you something?" She carefully unfolded the petals of a half bloomed daffodil. "Sure what is it?" "If you had to choose between Mor, your mate and me who would you choose, to love I mean." She asked, a slight hint of nervousness in her voice. Her question caught Azriel off-guard, he loved her but not in a romantic manner, he loved his mate more, no matter who she was, after all, she was his other half. Mor on the other hand was everything he yearned for, she was simply...perfect. He admired and respected her a lot, but more than that he loved her a lot. He thought for a moment before responding "It's tricky, on one hand, there's Mor and on the other, there's my mate. I'd say, my mate" He said carefully, not sure where this was going. Y/n's face fell just the slightest, if he didn't know her well, he wouldn't have noticed, but he did. "What's the matter, princess?" He asked softly, "What about me?" y/n asked softly He huffed out a laugh before responding, "I love you a lot, I really do princess, but you're like a younger sister to me, plus my mate always comes first." "right, of course they do." she said dejectedly, swinging her legs back and forth holding back tears. "Whats the matter princess?" 'The thing is Az you could slit my throat and with my one last gasping breath, I'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt, gods why can't you see it? I love you, and I love you more than you could ever imagine.'

She didn't say those words but gods did she want to, she wanted to tell Az how stupid he was for giving his heart to some females who were just gonna stomp on it and leave but she didn't because Azriel loved Mor and some mate he didn't know more than he loved her. She was always going to be a friend to him, nothing more, nothing less. So she continued swinging her legs and lied to his face with a simple 'I'm fine, I swear'. He didn't believe her, they both knew each other well enough to know that much, still he didn't pry any further. So they sat in silence, and stared at the setting sun while the world around them went quite, she averted her gaze away from Azriel as tears fell and landed on the broken yellow petals. if y'all wanna be tagged, just let me know :) @starlightazriel @scorpioriesling @velarisdusk @siriuslystyle1989

[hitlikehammers]

Rockstar!Eddie Leaves What He Had With Steve Behind in Hawkins 💔 to Chase His Dreams 🎸

(so why is it that he’s back in Steve’s bed Hawkins every couple months for ‘very pressing reasons’ that are straining Steve’s heart honestly anything but? 🫤❤️‍🩹🥺)

NOTE: this was originally a fill from @eddiemunsonbingo AGES ago, and I’m only bringing it over here NOW because something for the @steddielovemonth is going to be posted soon that is a standalone in its universe, but also very much a sequel to it ♥️

Steve really does try not to think about it in terms of…time.

Maybe that’s foolish. It’s mostly denial. Lots of it isn’t reliable anyway: the score his body keeps isn’t accurate, war-time left over from too many near-misses with a fucking alternate dimension but the popping in his joints and the ringing in his ears and the white hair he pulled out of his scalp and stared blankly at in the sink for a good twenty minutes: those are real things, but they don’t chart the passage of days, of hours, months and fucking years with any real meaning.

It’s been four years. Roughly. Depending on what the start point is. Whether it’s that Spring Break. Whether it’s the first winter. Or the spring after, when Robin begged him to go with her—there’s still time. She still begs, because they still talk given the thread inside them stays tied unbreakable to one another, oblivious to miles between. Maybe it’s measuring from the graduations, the kids—only Erica’s left at Hawkins High, now, though Steve gets calls from the whole bunch of them, Eleven the most, which was maybe surprising, then it’s a good split between Dustin and Will, another surprise. Max calls enough but her calls are calls, with a weight most of the others lack. Lucas’s calls aren’t super frequent but always long, mostly because he talks around the point forever, whatever the point happens to be. Even Mike usually ends up on the other end of the line once a month. It’s…that could be where the time starts from.

Or it could be the summer, that first summer. The one that taught Steve what it was to have a heart just to fucking break it.

Could be that. Impossible to say.

(It’s been 3 years, 7 months, and 14 days. Steve had only counted in retrospect, in the wreckage left behind, because while he’d known there was a deadline in it, to it all, he’d thought he could be enough. That he could change a mind. He’d thought…

Foolish things. Bullshit. Didn’t matter. Could be any fucking date.)

But since the point's come up, and it’s front of Steve’s mind, his least favorite (most favorite) place to find it: he hadn’t expected it. Robin liked to say she saw the signs but. Steve hadn’t watched it happen in slow motion because there wasn’t a single goddamn slow thing about it. Which was…for whatever it was worth, Steve knew falling fast and hard and with everything he was had maybe failed him every time, thus far, but at least he knows that for him?

That means it’s real. He’s all in. He might not be met equal on the other side of the equation—hadn’t been yet, maybe wouldn’t be ever, but he wasn’t having any luck trying to fucking change that fact so, learning to work with what he had was the best he could do. And he had love. He’d never been able to name it to himself so far: not before, and certainly never since. But.

Figuring out the sexuality thing had been a not-bathroom-but-definitely-floor talk on the shitty Family Video carpet sometime around November of ‘85. Slow days, idle comments, and Robin’s suspiciously-but-reliably-gentle-when-the-need-was-dire hand to his shoulder to say no, no: actually wanting to kiss people of any gender wasn’t really…the default Steve had always expected it had to be. How could anyone look at, say, Harrison Ford and not think, oh yeah, I would at least suck his face?

Turned out probably at least half the people on the planet. As in the straight guys and the lesbians. Steve had spent the majority of three days on that disgusting fucking carpet, open to close, popping up to ask Robin if she was sure because what about—

She was sure. And eventually, through a couple of needs for deep breathing and a handful of assurances that it was okay to cry—he appreciated that, but he kept the crying to his room after these long-ass shifts and if Robin stayed for some of those times, that was because she was half his head, half his heart, and she knew what he was going to do sometimes before he did.

They did end up on the floor of his bathroom, a clean one for once, at one point. Maybe because they both held to tradition. Maybe because Steve had largely come to terms with the mindfuck of yet another piece of his world, his self unravelling and rewriting itself, and thought the vodka in his dad’s liquor cabinet was a good way to celebrate. The label was entirely in Russian and Robin had been practicing on hers, said she was pretty sure it was the good shit.

Sometimes you can drink enough of the best shit on an empty stomach, though, and still spew the whole of it up.

Steve sometimes does think he drinks his dad’s best liquor that way on purpose, though. Delightful going down and yeah, it sucks to chuck it up but. The idea that it’s ultimately wasted feels…right.

Anyway: Steve had settled with it all by New Year's, and while he’d hosted the rugrats who could only blabber about their latest campaign with their epic DM, and he’d kissed Robin when the clock turned, well. It felt like a new start, a fresh page.

Something that had the chance at being a good thing.

And nothing much happened in the two-and-a-half-months that followed save for finally catching a glimpse of the D&D god who ran their little club while he was idling in his car to pick up the shitheads, this legendary DM who did not make Steve jealous one tiny bit and who was cool and was edgy and was so fuckin’ cool, Steve, did we tell you got cool he is?! and Steve had said language as monotone as he could before he squinted as out came all the metal and the ink and he’d said your club president dude is Eddie goddamn Munson and he should have kept his mouth shut because the amount of talking that ensued left him with a headache the size of Montana; but.

That was really all that happened until about…mid-March.

Then Spring Break happened.

It could be argued Eddie and Steve grew close enough to pass the acquaintances benchmark, ended up as at least tentative friends on top of necessary battle mates as early as the Upside Down. Whatever reason Eddie gave, he jumped in after Steve. Whatever speech Steve landed on, he didn’t want Dustin orEddie hurt.

It could be argued Steve wasn’t paying attention and didn’t stop in time and landed in the land of Tentative Friends You Wouldn’t Mind Added Benefits With after the…at least after the way Eddie leaned in close and his lips we so red and he called Steve big boy and…

Yeah.

When Steve carries what may or may not be Eddie’s still fucking corpse out of the Upside Down—he can’t tell, every time he tries to check again his own heart's too loud, his own breaths too shaky—but by then, they’re family. Bound in blood. Steve would die for him, like the others. He won’t let him die, if he can fucking help it.

Between him and Max, Steve almost crashes, breaks. Steve’s there when Max’s fingers twitch and he laughs with tears in his eyes and hands over hands and tells her he loves her and he’s sorry and he’s there, tries to talk around the letter he opened and resealed without evidence because Steve knows some tricks too, okay, and her words had broken him but now he could live up to what she thought she was leaving behind, could make sure she had every goddamn thing she thought she was giving up in spades, to roll around in in abundance. He was going to take care of her, whatever she needed. Whatever it took.

Her lips had quirked and the doctors called coincidence, don’t get your hopes up but; Steve knew Max. That was all her.

And there were more tears, he let her fucking feel them; he fucking hoped she’d notice, and remember, and give him so much shit.

Eddie takes longer, pulls out of the woods enough to exhale a few days later, and the way Steve slips out to find the hospital chapel, the only goddamn place he won’t be found by anyone he knows, and bawls his goddamn eyes out?

It’s family, and it’s love because it’s family but…it’s been so quick. It’s been intense, and that probably speeds it along but…

Shit. Shit.

That’s when Steve knows he sets a new goddamn record for himself and falls hard and heavy and stupidin, like, a week and change. Jesus Christ.

It’s in the recovery that they build something though. Something that’s not trauma or terror or the threat of imminent death. Steve spends most of his hours between two hospital rooms listening to progress reports and taking notes and the kids gravitate toward Max—Dustin would have been the outlier but Steve knows he’s not ready, and so he gives his own updates just to his brother when he drives him home after visiting hours—but that means Steve’s Eddie’s most common conversation partner. They talk about bullshit. Steve defends a-ha to the last breath he has. Eddie’s rendered speechless for a second and then frantic when challenged to pick his favorite band. Again when it’s his favorite song, from his favorite band. And again when it’s his favorite song of any song, ever at all. Steve's heart swells in the watching. He’s foolish enough to bask in the glittering of Eddie’s eyes when Steve indulges in talking, scene by scene as guided by the master in the bed beside him, about what his opinions on Star Wars really were. And then guided by no one, just invited to share what his opinions are on the last movie he saw and loved: which was Weird Science, the last movie he watched in a theatre because he and Robin had gone to face their fear or some shit after Starcourt and it was easier than he’d expected. Eddie listens, and nods, and asks if they can rent it when he’s out, before making sure to add  but you should really have a new choice like, eight months later, man, you work at a video store.

Steve was mostly just focused on Eddie more than implying, of his own volition, that he wanted to have a movie night.

Eddie’s released before Max, largely for mobility reasons, so they both go to visit her now. Robin’s put on the night shift when they schedule their movie night and Steve immediately moves to reschedule but she says no, she’s seen it, make Eddie suffer this time. So it’s just them.

They sit closer than they have to, on the couch.

And it’s little things that build from there. Max’s physical therapy is a government secret, like some fancy space-age protocol that has real hopes to put her on her feet again so she needs a ride, and while they could take turns, Steve and Eddie just take turns as to which vehicle they hop into to drive her. They stay when she needs them—not when she asks because she’s Max and she never asks—but it ends up three days a week back and forth and during: together.

And a lot of nights, for a movie or a smoke or a nightmare or a pulled stitch before they’re all taken out: together.

And shifts where Steve doesn’t even bother to bring his own lunch because Eddie Munson, unpredictable and wholly forgetful super-super senior—who Nancy and Hopper and most of all Joyce convinced the School would be finishing his final senior year at home save for tests, and only that once he was cleared by his doctors—that Eddie Munson brought Steve something every single time he worked. A burger, a chili dog, chicken fucking nuggets. A PB&J clearly homemade and cut diagonal.

So yeah. It starts out how it does when Steve’s in trouble. But it builds like…Steve’s never known before.

They kiss in May. Maybe so that it’s not their first, and a total cliche, when Steve kisses him for graduation behind the bleachers.

The sleep together after graduation, high on the thrill of it, and that’s maybe a cliche but Steve could not give a shit less.

And then they're EddieandSteve, only to find out they have been for a while; and this is just something a little deeper, a little bit more.

In ways that mean everything.

Looking back, Steve knows Eddie never minced words about his plan to leave Hawkins in the fall. With a mixtape and a prayer if I have to, Stevie-boy, he’d said once even, and Steve had laughed.

He’d fucking laughed.

So he’d known.

But July bleeds into August and Steve…Steve’s in love, okay, for real in a way that he’s never felt before. Right in a way he’s never felt before. He kinda just…overlooks it. Because Eddie seems to be at least on the same wavelength. Touches him first, reaches for him first: wants him. Looks at him with not just desire or attraction but…something no one’s ever looked at Steve with before.

And so he hopes. More than hopes.

But when Eddie starts packing, Steve can’t breathe.

He buys a set of luggage and goes home to start the same, has half of his not-excessive possessions shoved in when he realizes:

He’s not invited. Eddie’s never asked him to come.

Looking back, he’s afraid he wasted too much of those last weeks. Scared of giving too much away, the hurt from so many sides and the heartache that’s already taking root, but also: the way he clings, but tries not to make it obvious.

Fuck; but of course it was gonna be obvious, and how much energy did he waste, how many opportunities slipped by, because Steve was trying not to give away that Eddie leaving—to get away from a town that hated him, to try and make a real go with his music, to be anywhere without Steve so he could live out the dreams that predated Steve, that Steve had no place in—to try not to give away that all of it; it’d fucking destroy him.

Steve doesn’t know, to this day, how he stood and let Eddie kiss him breathless out the driver-side window, how he waved until Eddie was out of sight. He doesn’t know.

Kind of like he doesn’t know how he fucking keeps doing it.

Eddie throws tapes to every radio station with Van Halen or other top-played bands written on the insert in sharpie like that gives nothing away, and sneaks a demo in every underpaid delivery boy’s hands to record executives as he drives to the West Coast, sends Steve postcards what seems like has to be every goddamn day, filled up with his rambling until there’s no space left, has to draw lines around Steve’s address to make it clear where the damn thing’s going lest it get confused. Like they’re SteveandEddie still. Like only…only the things that changed after graduation are gone.

Steve sobs after about a month of it all, grateful and resentful, hateful and still so goddamn full of love it’s sickening. Literally, it makes him feel nauseous. He…

He keeps every postcard.

When one of them comes to say some idiot in San Francisco accidentally played Corroded Coffin on what’s apparently an important station, and Eddie got a letter in response from one of the labels, he says he’s coming back for the boys, they need to be ready. Steve knows he’s not one of the boys, but.

Eddie wouldn’t have told Steve he was coming if it wouldn’t matter to Steve. And maybe Eddie wasn’t in love with him anymore, maybe never was in love with him.

But he’d be lying if he said he thought Eddie didn’t love him. In a different way. A…you-don’t-get-to-come-with-me-but-I’d-still-want-to-see-you-when-I-stop-back kind of way.

And Steve…Steve’s not a fucking monk or anything. But even Robin doesn’t try to push him when he finally just tells her what he feels, lovesick and pathetic as it is:

I gave everything I had to someone else, and it’d be different if I wanted to back, to give again, but…I don’t.

I don’t want it back, not from him. Not if any part of him, wants to keep any part of it.

And because she’s Robin, she knows he means something else when he says ‘it’. And because she’s Robin? She’d push if she thought it was worth it.

She just holds him, and that’s really the best thing he could ask for.

But it becomes a thing. The boys go with Eddie, and they record new shit to impress...whoever. And they do. They come back for Halloween, because Eddie loves it. The label’s dragging its feet, but they’re not deterred, they’re energized. They come back for Thanksgiving because Wayne loves it—except he doesn’t, Steve knows that, Wayne actually hates trying to make a bird and Eddie had lamented more than once that they ended up with lunchmeat cut into cubes one year when Wayne was particularly frustrated with the process. They go out East, and try a few studios in New York. They come back for Christmas.

Eddie spends most of his time with Steve. Steve doesn’t fucking fight that; wants it…like…

There’s nothing to compare how he wants it to. Nothing exists that fits.

Eddie spends most of the time that he spends with Steve, though?

In Steve’s bed.

And here’s the thing: Steve had a decent amount of experience to compare to, but once they’d fallen into a rhythm, got past the awkward bits, the learning curve? Sex with Eddie had been a goddamn revelation. Not just because he was a man—after he’d left, Steve had forced himself to try, and dispelled that possibility quick as hell—and now?

Now, it’s like they never stopped. Every fucking time, it’s like they never stopped.

Steve’s not surprised in the slightest that he remembers every give and tell of Eddie’s body—of course he goddamn does—but that Eddie doesn’t miss a beat in touching, sucking, licking, worshippingSteve’s? That’s insane. That’s…

Unexpected. Every time it’s unexpected and every time Steve’s shown he wasn’t forgotten when he probably should have been. Eddie’s building a life that doesn’t include him.

He’ll only get in the way.

But Steve is selfish and stubborn and maybe it’s often, like almost strangely so, but it’s only a week or two at a go so he tells himself he’s allowed. He tells himself that it felt like making love in the beginning because Steve was in love, and that it still feels exactly the same because Steve…Steve never stopped.

Steve is still just as goddamn in love.

So yeah. Steve sleeps with Eddie and it’s like…it’s like rationed air. He gets a regular taste and he gets to keep breathing.

And it’s okay. Probably more then. Because he gets Eddie—even a little bit. Even just in scraps. When he has Eddie?

He has him, even for moments that were never made to last.

It’s Easter, this time. The band put out their first record in January. It’s doing really well. Eddie’s over the moon. Someone called about a magazine cover for a publication in Cleveland that’s apparently kind of a big deal, Alt..something. Steve will buy every copy in a fucking 100-mile radius. 200 miles. 500—

It’s Easter. Eddie didn’t lament not celebrating it after Spring Break in ‘86 but he’s back every year now. And if it’s just…come to mean something, or maybe did then and circumstances won out against it? Steve will be here. Steve will be comfort and a reprieve or a hot as hell romp with a familiar body, Steve will…

Yeah. Steve will do whatever’s needed. Wanted. Anything.

Pathetic.

But so much better than nothing.

Case in point: they’re both naked, sweat mostly dried, sharing a joint and it’s comfortable. It’s quiet and gentle and put up against sitting alone on a weeknight, not with Eddie?

It’s heaven.

“So when’s the dream happening?”

Steve looks cross-eyed toward his lips; he hasn’t smoked this thing long enough to have heard wrong. He squints up at Eddie, whose chest he’s laid out on, confused. Offers him the smoke but he waves it away.

“The dream?” Steve asks finally, when Eddie doesn’t seem to want to answer on his own.

Eddie looks at him weird. Not weird for its own sake but like: like he’s staring into him, and then like he’s disbelieving, but then also like he’s seeing him for the first time.

That kind of weird.

“Getting the fuck out of here,” Eddie answers like it’s obvious. “White picket fence. Little nuggets.” He spreads his hands as wide as possible without tossing Steve from where he lies. “See the sights.”

And Steve’s response is immediate. Doesn’t even require a thought.

He laughs. Like, ugly-laughs.

“Man,” he shakes his head as he catches his breath, and passes the joint off this time with purpose, not an offer or a choice as he snorts a little; “that’s not the dream.”

When Eddie doesn’t grab the smoke, Steve finally looks up. Eddie…

Eddie looks like what Steve’s always struggled to understand the word ‘poleaxed’ to mean. He thinks it might be this.

He looks…like something stuck him through the gut. Slapped him silly across the face.

“What d’ya mean?” And it’s just three words, one that’s a cheat, and he says it slow enough to take an age.

Steve breathes out, and then, if he’s gonna be honest, and if he has to keep holding the damn thing anyway, decides to take another drag before speaking:

“Figured out what the dream was, inside the dream,” Steve says, wondering if he’ll get away with the vagary; knowing he won’t.

“All we see or seem?” Eddie jokes a little, but it falls flat, his tone eerily kinda…strained but hollow.

“I like poetry.” Steve smiles up at him, soft, and offers the joint again straight to Eddie’s lips. He takes it this time.

“It was about family. It was about stability, not,” Steve shakes his head, stops talking half-assed around the lungful he’s holding, and lets it out slow; “not in a place, fuck, not in a house, but,” a person he doesn’t say, but he hears it in his head; “it was about sharing it.”

And that's it. That’s the simplest, most straightforward truth. Steve doesn’t think there’s anything complicated, or offensive in it. Hard to swallow. Even if he’s come to terms with it. Is mostly at peace with it.

Which is why it’s weird, that Eddie feels suddenly rigid beneath him.

So Steve turns, and braces his hand on Eddie's chest for balance, and frowns when he doesn’t even have to push down to feel the way his heart’s a fucking riot.

“What?” Steve asks, gentle; Eddie’s face is a portrait of conflict, of distress and Steve can’t fucking figure out why, they just came like four times between them and are sharing some very nice Cali weed—they’re nestled close, they’re together, it’s…

Eddie’s quiet, his breath disconcertingly steady for how his pulse pounds, and then he breathes out slow before covering his face:

“I don’t think I can fuck this up any worse than I already have, so,” he mutters, dejected for reasons Steve can’t even guess, then he laughs, humorless, shakes his head:

“Let me try, I guess.”

Steve frowns, uncomprehending, until:

“I’ve been in love with you forever.”

Steve thinks the world stops. His heart does, at least. Suspended. Silent so he doesn’t miss a syllable.

“And I told myself,” Eddie bites at his lip, worries at the bottom swell; “end of that summer, from the very first, I said: don’t ask him to come with you, even if it breaks your heart,” and oh god, oh god after all this time: Steve doesn’t think he’s projecting to hear the genuinely broken heart in those words for just remembering.

“Don’t ask him to settle, you’re not even in the same universe of what he wants,” fuck, what lies Eddie’s saying; did he believe them? Has he always—“what he needs.”

But Eddie is everything he needs, always was, will always be—

“You’ll never have the picket fence. You can’t give him his nuggets. You should never be trusted to park a Winnebago.”

They could have had a shitty studio apartment. They could have had the kids in college. They could have run the BMW until it died, or sold it to put toward a better van for equipment. They could have—

“You’re selfish, Munson, you’re a rat fucking bastard but,” Eddie’s still going, heart still hammering under Steve’s touch even as Eddie swallows hard and fails to smile, looks ill with the attempt like it hurts to try: “you love him too much for that.”

Oh. Oh god.

“It didn’t break my heart, though,” Eddie clears his throat and glances away, to the ceiling, eyes too bright: oh fuck; “broke my goddamn soul,” and a tear falls, and Steve can’t help but wipe it away, and kiss the track. Even just once.

So he does.

“When I saw you again that first time back,” Eddie starts again, voice rougher and shakier as he reaches a hand for Steve’s. “I could have asked the boys to fly out, the execs offered, but,” and this time, the attempt to grin is more successful, like a weight’s lifted from it: “and you smiled at me, it felt like,” and when he shakes his head this time it’s for disbelief, but the kind that comes with awe; “and when we slotted back together like we’d never been apart, it was…”

Eddie’s voice trails, but it cracks at the end—Steve doesn’t know which does more to stop his words.

He’s grateful, relieved, when they come back. He’s powerless but to give when Eddie touches his cheek so gentle and breathes:

“And I had to tell myself again, and again,” he murmurs, stroking Steve’s skin like he’s precious: “you love him too much to take his dream away from him.”

“What did it matter?” Steve can’t help but ask, no malice in it, just the need to understand. “You had your dream, you have—“

They have a contract. They have an album climbing the charts. They’re not just on their way—they’re there. The only next step is to get bigger, and bigger, and—

“Dreams within dreams, wasn’t it?” Eddie murmurs close to Steve’s cheek, where maybe he’s pressing to be close, or maybe he’s hiding a little, so Steve strokes his hair because he can either way and relishes how Eddie leans, melts into it like always. “Inside the dream?”

Steve nods, more to encourage more words. More Eddie.

“Break my dream open and there’s you with me, every step,” Eddie whispers, his lips warm on Steve’s skin. “Break my heart open, same damn thing,” and that causes Steve to shudder, and his heart to pick up now, too. “Both just kinda crumble if you take out the center.”

Steve can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Wants to. Doesn’t think they’re lies. It’s just, he…

“Those,” Steve tries to speak but his voice cracks; he clears his throat and kicks his lips while he tucks Eddie into his neck, under his chin: “those would be good lyrics.”

“No,” Eddie shakes his head and nuzzles Steve’s throat with the motion and this can’t be happening.

This can’t be happening, can it?

“No, those words were only ever meant just for you.”

And Eddie kisses the pulse point close to his mouth and holds there, like a sentry and a miser, and holy shit.

Holy shit.

“And I don’t know,” Eddie’s saying more, but it’s pitchy, thready, like he’s barely holding the words together at all; “I don’t know if it’s nostalgia, or convenience, or routine,” his voice breaks again and the sob’s in the word when it comes even if it’s not streaming down on his cheeks: “pity,” and no, no, not fucking ever, how—

“I was never your dream then, and I don’t even know if I can be your inside-dream now, and,” Eddie’s rambling, and he does that when he’s desperate, when he’s overwhelmed and overfull with feeling—and Steve knows that. Steve knows that about him.

Steve knows. Better than he knows himself, Steve still knows him.

“I just want the world for you,” Eddie whispers, stroking up and down Steve’s jaw; “my sweetheart. My sunshine,” he smiles so real and soft and Steve melts, like the heart in his chest starts spilling through his ribs, warm and liquid: “you deserve more than the world, more than fuckin’ me and I,” Eddie shakes his head again, more this time like he’s stopping himself, like it’s a defense mechanism and Steve reaches for his cheeks, broad palms on either side to hold him still because…he doesn’t want Eddie to stop.

Ever.

“Did I ruin it?” Eddie breathes, and barely at that, eyes so wide and swimming and oh, god; “did I—"

And Steve can’t help it. He can’t help but kiss him with all he’s got, even if it couldn’t be all Eddie’s worth in all the world. Steve can’t contain all that Eddie’s worth.

But he can give everything, because this is the man who already has it.

“What the hell was I supposed to be to a rockstar?” Steve tries to talk through his own tight throat, his own growing smile, his own threat of tears bubbling close to the surface. “How the fuck was I ever going to measure up, ever do anything but hold you back when you could have—“

“I come back to you, for you,” Eddie answers immediate; it’s not what Steve’s asking but he won’t lie and say he didn’t want to know, at least a little. “The handful of times I’ve tried,” Eddie shakes his head once now, definitive; “I have always left my everything with you.”

The idea that Steve’s spent all this time feeling empty, and hollow, and missing the best of himself where it lived in the man he loved—the idea he was wrong, that they both were so fucking wrong is…insanity.

“I had a bag half packed.”

Steve doesn’t need to explain further. The noise Eddie makes is pure pain.

“Baby,” he nearly croons, falls into Steve somehow closer, wraps him up tighter; “I wanted to kidnap you in the night.”

“I sobbed in my bed after you were out of sight.”

“I pulled over before the town sign, because I couldn’t see the goddamn road.”

And Steve…Steve doesn’t really have a decision to make about what he says next. What dream he wants; always has.

“I never got rid of the luggage.”

And Eddie hears everything he says in those words, because after everything, Eddie Munson knows him, and…yeah.

Steve’s been kissed in a lot of ways before. By this man in particular, even.

But this: if leaving broke Eddie’s soul, if somehow the lack of Steve somehow did that?

This is…this is the body meeting another body, heart to heart and tasting the way a soul slides back in place. It's Eddie’s hands in his hair like hell never let go and he’s happy about the idea; blissful for it, even. It’s—beyond anything Steve’s ever known. So: yeah.

It’s not a decision. It’s just a fucking given.

♥️

🎸also on ao3

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divider credit here

[atlabeth]

🧸 dare i say luke castellan fluff..... please.... CONGRATS ON 3K!!!!

summer stressed

pairing: luke castellan x daughter of athena reader

summary: summer is over, most of your siblings are gone, but you still can't relax. fortunately, luke is pretty good at it.

a/n: thank you for the request sorry that these are taking so long but thats life !! this one is for all my anxious girlies that always think they're forgetting something even when there is absolutely nothing to do (me finishing finals and still feeling like i should be doing something at all times)

wc: 788

warning(s): all fluff

“This feels weird.” 

“How does it feel weird?” Luke asks, amused. 

“We’re just… sitting here,” you say. 

“Is that a problem?” 

Your head rests on Luke’s chest as you lay in your bed together, one of his arms curled protectively around you as he keeps the other behind his head. Every so often, he trails his fingers down your arm, plays with your hair a bit, adjusts his position to make you more comfortable. 

You can feel the warmth of his skin even through his camp shirt, and it makes up for the slight chill of the Athena cabin. He’s basically your own personal space heater. You wouldn’t classify any of this as a problem. 

“No,” you say. “The opposite of a problem.” 

Luke chuckles, and you can feel his eyes on you. “Then why does it feel weird?” 

You let out a huff and sit up, turning to face your boyfriend. “Because we’re just sitting here.” 

“You’ve already said that, babe.” He smiles, and you have the urge to kiss him right there. You wonder if he knows the power he holds with that damn smile. 

“It’s too quiet,” you say, gesturing around your cabin. “It’s never a good sign when things are quiet.” 

“Could that be because more than half of your cabin is gone?” he asks. 

“My siblings are smart,” you say. “They’re good at causing chaos in silence.” 

“And if they are, that’s a problem for another day.” 

“I’m still forgetting something,” you insist. “Are you sure I’m off the clock for today?” 

Luke nods. “All the counselors get the day off from leading lessons after the last day of summer. Everyone’s off the clock.” 

“And I don’t have anything I need to clear with Chiron.” 

“You had the conversation with him about going into the city to get stuff for Jane’s party last week, and we’re taking a van out in two days,” Luke says. “Nothing else I know of.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Positive.” 

“There’s really nothing else?” 

“Nothing,” he promises. 

You look around your cabin and shake your head. “No. No— this place is a mess. I’ve got to clean up before inspections—” 

Luke catches your wrist as you try to get up and says your name softly. “Your cabin is spotless, ace. I think I can see my reflection in the floorboards.” 

“Still, Luke,” you insist as you look at him. “There’s got to be something we should be doing.” 

“There isn’t!” he exclaims. “I’ve never met anyone more desperate to be doing busy work, babe. All that talk about us getting some alone time for nothing.” 

“I just have this feeling that I’m missing something,” you say as you shake your head.

Luke laughs again, and you find yourself smiling just at the sound. He’s just so beautiful when he’s happy. “Alright, ace. Want me to ease your worries?” 

“You can try,” you say. “But you’ve spent enough time with Annabeth to know what she’s capable of. Imagine dealing with a whole cabin of Annabeths.” 

“You may have a whole cabin of Annabeths, but I’ve got a whole cabin of thieves, pranksters, and unclaimed kids. I think I’ve had my fair share of cleaning up messes.” 

“Alright, pretty boy,” you say, your smile growing despite yourself. “Ease my worries.” 

Luke nods, and he sits up so he can be eye level with you. He’s still got your wrist in his hand, and as he talks, he absentmindedly trails his thumb over your skin. “Yesterday was the last day of summer, and half of camp is gone, including your cabin. We spent the entire day fixing things up and making sure all our siblings were ready to go and doing everything Chiron and Mr. D asked. Everyone that wanted to leave left, all the counselors—including you—executed everything flawlessly, and there is nothing left to do but relax for a bit.” 

“My cabin—” 

“You’ve already cleaned it three times,” Luke says. 

“It doesn’t hurt to do it a fourth,” you shrug. 

Luke smiles and shakes his head. “It’s spotless, ace. The only thing left to do is enjoy some well-deserved alone time.”  

You meet his gaze, that slight smile still on your lips, and Luke tilts his head. “So? Have your worries been eased?” 

“...Mostly,” you say, and your smile turns coy. “Some kisses might help me forget them completely, though.” 

Luke laughs, and his eyes gleam as they drop down to your lips for a moment. He brings you even closer with the hand still around your wrist, then he drops it in favor of slinging an arm around your waist. When he speaks, his voice is much softer, though it’s got a rugged edge.

“Now that is something I can do.” 

[alltheirdamn]

Killing Me Softly | (Joel x teacher!f!reader)

Epilogue

Summary: Joel had always been the one. Rating: 18+ Explicit Word Count: 6.5k Warnings: None! Enjoy whatever comes! A/N: So, here we are at last. The final goodbye to one of my favorite pairings :') It is so bittersweet to end their story, but I am so thankful you all have supported it and loved it along the way! Tommy & Beth's story will be coming soon, so I hope you guys stick around for it! All my love, xoxo <3

Masterlist | Ko-fi

“Sarah!” You called from downstairs. “We need to leave soon so we aren’t late!”

“Coming!” She shouted back.

You could hear her footsteps shuffling across the loft, no doubt in a rush trying to find her backpack. It was the first day of school, and you were the brand new eighth-grade teacher—totally not because you wanted to keep teaching Sarah before high school. 

The three of you had spent the summer in a whirlwind, between camping trips and helping Joel work on a business plan for his own job. You even took a small trip to Boston to see your family; you needed to get the closure you deserved finally. But you couldn’t think about that trip now; you needed Sarah to hurry up.

“Joel,” you grumbled. “Can you please get her down here?”

Joel was leaning against the kitchen counter, his coffee mug half-full and lifted to his lips. He rolled his eyes at you, his lips curling into a soft smile. 

“I got it, baby. Go get your ass in the car, and I’ll make sure she has everythin’ together.”

You gave him a quick peck on the lips before slinging your bag over your shoulder. A large hand closed over your bicep, and Joel yanked you back into his broad frame. 

“No y’don’t. Give me a real kiss,” he chuckled.

He pressed a hand into your lower back, holding you firm to his chest as he bent down to kiss you. You deepened the kiss, your tongue overlapping his with a soft whimper off your lips. Joel swallowed every noise and pressed you against his lips for as long as he could.

“Grossssss,” Sarah groaned, startling you both.

You jumped back from Joel’s embrace, staring at Sarah with an embarrassed smile. 

“Can you guys not do that? At least wait for the wedding.”

Joel barked a laugh, kissing your cheek with wet lips before pushing you out of the kitchen. 

“I can kiss my future wife all I want, sweetheart,” he protested. 

Future wife. 

You loved it when he said that. You loved it even more when he was pinning you to the bed and whispering it in your ear as he fucked you. Lazy strokes and sweet words… The thought alone had you clenching your thighs beneath your skirt. 

Joel didn’t waste a moment proposing after you moved in. He and Tommy had snuck away one Saturday to a jewelry store to find the perfect ring, and he proposed that night. The tiny diamond sat snug on your finger, the gold band reflecting the sunlight every time you admired it—which you did a lot.

You and Joel were still working through the mess created after your accident, but there was no question that you’d marry him. At least you knew he wouldn’t run from the wedding; the thought of it happening kept you up some nights. 

Both you and Sarah arrived at the school with only ten minutes to spare. She’d be in your final class for the day, so you parted ways and made your way to your new classroom. Joel had helped you set up your room over the last week, hanging the posters you couldn’t reach and remaining adamant about keeping you from any possible chance of falling. God forbid you hit your head again; it wasn’t something you liked to think of often. 

Walking into the classroom, you quickly set up your lesson plans and placed worksheets on each desk. The first week of school would be the easiest for you and the students. A slight tap on the door jolted you from rushing around, and you looked up to see Maria sheepishly standing in the doorway.

“Welcome back,” she said. 

Neither of you had spoken since the end of the year, and you still weren’t sure what to say. Joel had explained to you that Maria wasn’t entirely at fault for anything; she only meant to care for you and keep you company throughout the years between. At the start of last year, he mentioned that he considered going after you, which was why Maria was always so pushy about talking to Joel. And she had, in fact, been the mastermind behind ‘Happy Hour’ when Joel showed up. 

You couldn’t stay mad forever, even if sometimes you desperately wanted to. Anger was all you had known for months, and you worked hard to replace it and battle through it as the summer went on. But right now, you could put that aside and at least be cordial with Maria. 

“Thank you, Maria.” You gave her a tentative smile. 

“Can I come in? I wasn’t sure if I’d catch you before the day started, and I was hoping we could chat.”

You nodded, motioning to one of the desks. Maria entered the room and leaned against the edge of the desk, waiting for you to settle into your chair. You tried ignoring the emails that continued to chime on your computer, attempting to give her your full attention, which she deserved. 

“I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I had no intention of lying to you, but I only wanted to see you happy. After the accident, it was so hard for me to lose you in the way I did. Giving you a place to live after your breakup with Bennett and seeing you meet Joel… Then nothing. I cared for you like a daughter and wanted to continue being there for you.”

“I know you did,” you sighed. “It’s been hard having to adjust after regaining my memory, and it’s taking a lot out of me to try to work through it all. I hope you know I appreciate all the care you’ve shown me. Before the accident and after. I just needed time to process it all.”

“If you ever need anything, sweetie, you know I’m here.”

“Thank you.”

You reached your arms to hug her, and Maria took the opportunity without question. Her warm embrace was enough to bring you to tears; you did miss her—a lot. Pulling away, you lifted your hand a little to show off the sparkle on your ring finger. 

“Oh my gosh!” she squealed, grabbing your hand.

You laughed at her excitement and allowed her to admire the ring on your finger.

“The wedding is next month,” you told her. “Joel and I would love for you to come if you would like.”

“Are you kidding? Of course, I want to come!”

She pulled you in for another tight hug, muttering a litany of ‘thank you’s.’ Eventually, the school bell rang, she ran out of the room, and you settled back at your desk for the beginning of the day. 

Not even two minutes after the final bell rang, Sarah was barreling into your classroom with a big smile. You had just seen her in the third hour during her own class, but her excitement never failed to make your heart swell with happiness. 

“Ready to go home, kiddo?” You chuckled.

“So ready! I think Dad is cooking us dinner, and I’m starving.”

You ruffled her curls softly before tucking her under your arm and leaving the classroom. The person you were last year—before remembering everything—would have never allowed this to happen. Dating your student’s father was out of line and, quite frankly, not your forte, but this was an exception. A very necessary exception. 

As you pulled out of the parking lot, you heard your phone ringing in your purse. Sarah was quick to retrieve it, staring confused at the caller ID. 

“Who is it?” You asked, glancing away from the road.

“Aunt Beth.”

Shit.

Things hadn’t been great between you two since the trip back to Boston over the summer, but it was better. If you sat in silence long enough, the bitterness and anger returned in full force. Joel was your voice of reason, calming you down from the resurgence of emotions and always quickly reminding you of Beth's work to fix the relationship. You only hoped they weren’t empty promises and she would prove herself to be who she was before the accident.

“Here, let me see it,” you said, extending your hand.

Pressing answer, you held the phone to your ear and hoped Sarah didn’t see the trembling in your fingertips.

“Hello?” 

“Hey, sis,” Beth said. It was easy to hear the frustration in her greeting.

“Everything okay?” You asked. 

You came to a slow roll at the red light in front of you, relaxing your white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Sarah rubbed an assuring hand over your arm, and you turned to give her a sad smile. She was like her father, so receptive and aware of your emotions.

“Yeah, I think so. I don’t know, I just… Do you want me there? Are you sure?”

“At my wedding?” You questioned. “I already told you I wanted you there. I extended the invite to the entire family, including you.”

“I know, but being your bridesmaid feels wrong.”

A car horn blared behind you, and your eyes snapped up to see the green light staring down at you. You inhaled sharply and pressed the gas. 

“Joel and I already talked about it, and we both agree not having you there would be something I might regret one day. I want you and Stell both up there with me.”

“You’re sure?” She asked, her voice cracking.

“Yes, Beth. I’m sure. Now, are you flying out on the day of the reception or the day before? I just need to make sure your hotel room is booked and set up before you get here.”

“I’ll fly in the day before with Stell. I think Mom and Dad are coming the day after.”

“Okay, good. I’ll make sure everything is taken care of. Just please promise me you’ll be there.”

“I promise, sis,” she sighed.

You rounded the corner into the neighborhood and pulled up to the house. Joel’s truck was already parked in the driveway, his truck bed overflowing with work tools and wooden planks. You nodded at Sarah to head in while you finished the phone call—you needed a moment alone before going inside. 

“I just got home, Beth, so I’ve got to run. I’ll send you the information for the hotel and everything, okay?”

“Wait, before you go,” Beth hesitated. 

“Yeah?”

“I’m still really sorry,” she admitted. “About everything.”

You scrubbed a hand down your face, holding back a wave of tears that threatened to break your composure. Beth wasn’t one to show her emotions or speak them this freely. Her vulnerability was something you were still adjusting to, among everything else. 

“I know you are, sis,” you exhaled. 

“I’ll, um, I’ll let you go. I’ll talk to you soon.”

You didn’t get the chance to say goodbye before the phone line went dead.  Resting your head against the steering wheel, you let the tears run down your face. It was hard to control your emotions these days, and today was no different. Between seeing Maria and talking to Beth, you were exhausted. The wedding planning hadn’t been stressful until now, but knowing Beth was having second thoughts about even coming? The stress was starting to creep in.

A light tap on the window jolted you from your tearful silence. You turned your head to see Joel standing outside the door, his eyebrows furrowed with concern. Seeing him was the final nail in the coffin, and you lost it completely. He was quick to yank the door open and wrap his arms around your limp body. 

“Sarah told me Beth called,” he confessed. “I’m sorry, baby. I know this isn’t easy.”

You clung to his shirt, nestling your head into his neck. The work day still lingered on his skin, the smell of fresh wood and sweat flooding your senses. He smelled like home. 

“Am I making the wrong decision?” You choked out. 

Joel’s grip tightened around you, his sturdy frame grounding your emotions to cascade into. You fell victim to your cries, your tears dampening the cotton tee he wore. 

“You’re makin’ the mature decision, baby,” he stated. “It took a lot for you even to see them this summer, but the wedding will fly by, and this can all be put behind us.”

“I just don’t want to be let down again,” you cried. 

“No one's gonna let you down. I’ll make sure of it, ‘kay?”

You peeled yourself away from him, wiping away the tears that trailed down your cheeks. Joel’s brown eyes softened as he took in your fragile state, his lips turning down. Cradling your head in his hands, Joel brought your forehead to his lips for a comforting kiss.

“Hey, I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too,” you whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Y’know how I feel ‘bout you sayin’ that, baby,” Joel grinned.

The slight shift in the color of his eyes was warning enough to make your emotions skyrocket in a different way. You gave him a shy smile before pecking him on the lips and jumping out of the car. Joel quickly wound an arm around your front and hauled you back to him.

“You’re lucky we got dinner on the table,” he whispered in your ear. “Punishment’s gonna have to wait ‘til later.”

“Punishment?” You echoed.

“Mhmm,” he hummed, dragging his mouth over the shell of your ear.

You shivered at the touch, your body molding against his. Leave it to Joel to always turn your mood around; it’s what you loved about him. The worst days could be changed in minutes, and you weren’t afraid to be vulnerable with him. You also weren’t afraid to rile him up, too.

Shifting your body slightly, you brushed your ass against the crotch of his jeans, rewarding yourself with the hardening bulge of his cock. Joel groaned at the brief touch, his teeth nipping at your earlobe.

“Oops, I’m sorry,” you giggled.

 You repeated the motion, Joel’s body tensing behind you.

“Oh gosh,” you feigned distressed. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re gonna regret that, baby,” Joel growled. 

With a sharp smack on your ass, Joel urged you toward the front door—not before readjusting himself several times before entering the kitchen. 

Sarah had long gone to bed by the time you and Joel retired to your room. You took time showering and readying for bed while Joel sprawled against the sheets. Peeking around the corner, you caught a glimpse of his body, nearly naked, except for a pair of black boxers. It still didn’t feel real that you had found your way back to him, and it especially didn’t feel real that you’d be marrying him in less than a month. 

“I know you’re starin’ at me over there,” Joel chuckled.

You emerged from behind the door, a grin on your face. Joel propped himself against the headboard, his hands locked behind his head and his biceps flexing slightly. 

“Obviously,” you rolled your eyes. “I’m allowed to admire my handsome future husband.”

“Get your ass up here, baby.”

You happily obliged and jumped onto the bed, straddling his waist as you bent down to kiss him. Joel’s nose brushed against yours as he deepened the kiss, his hand carding through your hair to anchor you closer. 

“If I’m not mistaken,” he muttered between kisses. “Y’said somethin’ earlier that you shouldn’t have.”

You trailed your lips down his neck, humming softly with each press of your lips.

“I did?” You teased.

“Three times,” Joel groaned. 

His fingers laced tightly between the tendrils of your hair, pulling your head up until there was nowhere to look but into his dark eyes. The swell of his pupils had replaced the soft amber colors of his irises, a mischievous look flashing across his face. 

“This is what’s gonna happen, baby. You’re gonna slide that beautiful body up here and ride my tongue ‘til you cum three times.”

“Three?” You repeated, your eyes growing wide.

Joel huffed a laugh and hooked his arms under your thighs. You fell forward, your hands bracing onto the headboard. Joel lucked out with you already being bare under your t-shirt; it was easy work for him, especially when you were already drenched with arousal. A small swipe of his nose over your throbbing clit was enough to elicit a soft moan from your mouth. 

“Bite your lip and stay quiet for me, baby,” Joel mumbled. “Can’t wake up Sarah with all your noise.”

“Okay,” you exhaled.

Joel flattened his tongue against your entrance and licked a long, slow stripe through your wet folds. Sinking your teeth into your bottom lip as he had instructed, you bit back a desperate whine that threatened to escape. You rolled your hips slightly, the pointed tip of his tongue dragging over your aching bud softly. The fire crept through your veins, catapulting you closer to the edge as Joel’s jaw worked relentlessly at your leaking entrance. 

“Joel,” you whispered, a faint whimper leaving your lips.

“Shh,” he hummed.

The low vibration of his hush radiated through your pulsating clit, forcing you to jerk away from his mouth. His calloused fingers dug further into the skin of your thighs, anchoring you down onto his face. His tongue worked faster at your clit, stroking it with tantalizing flicks of his tongue. Flames burst through your stomach with each move of his mouth, your thighs quaking in his grip. So close… you were so close. Joel felt it, too, and latched his mouth around the sensitive bud.

“Joel!” You cried, the orgasm barreling through your body. 

He didn’t let up, his tongue dipping into your entrance and lapping at the juices leaking from you. Your hand shot to the curls at the crown of his head, tugging him off of your sex, your body still twitching from the aftershocks of your climax. 

“That was only one, baby,” Joel muttered into the flesh of your inner thigh. 

He pressed wet kisses against your skin, working his way back to your center with small kitten licks over every inch of you. Your thighs clenched around his face, framing him perfectly between your legs. You glanced at him only to find his dark eyes staring at you. The air knocked out of your lungs, seeing him under you in such blissed-out beauty. Joel shifted his face up, revealing his arousal-coated mustache and wet plush lips. 

“Y’gonna give me two more?” He asked, his mouth curving into a grin. 

You nodded vigorously, guiding him back to your swollen bud. Joel rested his tongue over your center, nudging you silently with a slight tilt of his head. Dragging your hips forward, you lowered yourself onto his open mouth. Back and forth, you moved against his tongue, tremors wracking through your limbs with each pass. 

“Joel! I’m gonna—.” You choked on your words. 

With one hand grasped on the headboard and the other tangled in his sweat-soaked curls, you bore down and let your second orgasm surge through your body. Biting your lip did little to help the cry of pleasure that escaped your mouth. You lifted yourself from his face, attempting to unlatch yourself from his tight grip. 

“Nuh uh, baby,” Joel protested, his voice husky. “One more.”

“I can’t,” you whined.

You stumbled over his body, collapsing into the bed beside him. Joel rolled over you, his eyes sparkling with mischief and desire. The lower half of his face was coated in your arousal, his chin and beard glistening in the dim lights of the bedroom. You wound your arms around his neck, pulling him to your lips. The sweet smell of your arousal hit your nose as his mouth collided with yours. Joel groaned against your lips, coaxing your mouth open wider. You tilted your head to give him better access, your tongues dancing in unison in a heated kiss. 

You felt Joel’s hand slide between your bodies, his body shifting slightly as he pushed down the boxers from his waist. The weight of his heavy cock rested on your thigh, and you hooked your leg higher to give him access to your dripping sex. 

“Got one more in you, baby?” Joel asked, his mouth roaming down your neck. 

“I think so,” you said, your voice shaky. 

Joel suctioned his lips to the hollow of your neck, the head of his cock pressing against your entrance. You gasped at the intrusion, your body adjusting to the girth of his cock as he split you open. Joel carded a hand through your hair and glued his eyes to yours as he thrusted into you slowly. Your bodies moved in a simple rhythm; when he drove into you, you careened back. Soft cries and heavy grunts, each of you flowing in perfect harmony. 

“So fuckin’ perfect,” Joel whispered.

“Feels so good, Joel,” you panted.

Your eyes fluttered shut, the swell of release at your fingertips as Joel speared into you deeper with each cadence of his hips. You were overstimulated and covered in a thin sheen of sweat, but you wanted to come undone with him. You wanted to fall over the edge together; you wanted this moment to be something you shared. Lifting your mouth to his ear, you whined softly, garnering a low growl from his chest. 

“I love you.”

Three simple words. It was enough to send Joel over the edge, his body tensing above you as he drove into you one last time. Your sex clenched around his cock, milking him through his release. His cock dragged against the aching walls of your sex as he pulled out, his body resting heavily on top of yours. With his head pressed to your heaving chest, you ran your fingers through the dark curls resting at the base of his neck. 

“You tired?” You laughed softly, bending down to press a kiss to his forehead. 

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ ‘bout,” Joel argued.

“Get some sleep, handsome. I love you.”

“I love you so much, baby.”

He nuzzled further into your embrace, a soft yawn exhaling from his mouth. You smiled to yourself, reveling in the fact that this was your life. Here, at this moment, everything you had endured was worth it. It was worth it knowing someone inexplicably loved you. Someone who wasn’t going to leave, no matter how hard things may be. Joel fought tooth and nail to have you back, and you learned to forgive his faults. His patience and unwavering love were enough to battle any doubts that lingered in your mind.

He was yours, just as much as you were his. 

**

Outside your bridal suite, storm clouds swirled in the sky. You had watched the news channel praying for a sunny wedding day all week, but the Texas weather laughed at your pleas. The thunderstorm looming in the distance was only the tip of the iceberg in your ever-growing levels of anxiety.

“Sis, it’s gonna be okay,” Beth urged. 

Beth and Stella were the only ones in the room with you, and they both sat at the edge of the bed, watching you helplessly pace the floor. You itched to undo the tight bun your hair had been wrangled into, the pain of each bobby pin shooting another jolt of pain into the onset headache forming in your head. 

“What if he doesn’t show? What if Joel doesn’t want this? What if—?”

“Oh my God, stop!” 

It wasn’t Beth that cut off your rambling, but Stella. She wasn’t one to raise her voice often, but it was enough to halt your frantic thoughts. You threw yourself onto the chair in the corner of the room, letting out an exasperated sigh. Stella rose from the bed, carefully sidestepping the hem of her silk bridesmaid dress as she waltzed to where you sat. She lowered herself to her knees and stared up at you with pleading eyes. 

“Joel loves you, sis,” she stressed. “He’s not going to leave you. All of these pre-ceremony jitters will go away the second you walk down that aisle.”

“But—.”

She held up her hand in protest, shaking her head sternly. 

“No more of that. You are going to put on your dress and get ready.”

You glanced at your wedding dress hanging on the back of the door. The white fabric was a haunting reminder of the rain-soaked dress you had worn only years ago, dirtied by the mud and broken hopes left in Bennett’s wake. You chewed at your lip to stifle back a cry, your brain ready to disintegrate with all the pressure building inside your head. 

“I don’t know if I can do this,” you whispered, the admission frightening you. 

Beth groaned, leaving the bed to join Stella on the ground. You had spoken little since she came into town, sharing only a few shallow words in passing when necessary. But the seriousness in her eye ignited a new wave of fear; her words could slice you clean through if you let it. Saying your name softly, Beth clasped a hand around yours and inhaled a sharp breath. 

“You can do this, and you will. I know you’re scared, but Joel is waiting for you. He’s been waiting for you for years, and he’s not going anywhere. Trust me when I tell you no one in this world loves you more than he does, okay?”

A tear slipped down your cheek at Beth’s words. The way she spoke of Joel was night and day from how she spoke of Bennett. Her words regarding Bennett had been laced with venom strong enough to poison even your happiest memories—whatever those had been. They were fighting words, and each punch was perfectly placed. With Joel, she only spoke with sincerity. Both she and Stella had been there to see Joel at his worst after the accident, watching the life he had made with you crumble away within the hospital. They had been there to experience his grief firsthand, and that was something you could never argue. Joel held a special place in both of their hearts, a bond you couldn’t remember but couldn’t deny. 

“I’m sorry,” you muttered, burying your head in your hands. You threw caution to the wind when it came to ruining your makeup. It was a lost cause at this point. 

“Hey, come here,” Beth whispered. 

She hauled you into her arms, wrapping herself around you. Stella followed her lead, both huddling around you as you cried quietly. Time had stolen so much from you, time you couldn’t get back with your sisters. Putting everything aside, you sat in the moment with them and let their strength hold you up. 

“Okay, okay,” you sighed, peeling yourself away. “Can you both help me get into my dress?”

Stella squealed excitedly, hauling herself up and hurtling toward the door where it hung. Beth gave you one final squeeze and a quiet “I love you” before joining Stella. 

You discarded your robe on the bed and stood awkwardly before them in your bridal lingerie. Both of them whistled at you provocatively, their eyes growing wide. You blushed at their giddiness, motioning for them to bring the dress to you. The three of you worked silently as you slipped into the tulle fabric. Beth worked at zipping up the back while Stella secured the gossamer sleeves over your shoulders. The fabric was cool against your skin, a welcome reprieve from the warm anxiety that simmered below the surface. You were ready after a few final touches on your makeup and the clasping of your heels. 

“Breathe, peanut,” your dad whispered in your ear. 

The bouquet in your hand was shaking from the trembling in your fingers. You stared through the glass door into the open courtyard where everyone sat, the sky darkening by the minute. In the distance, you could spot Joel's outline as he stood under the floral arch above the altar. He was right there…waiting. 

“Whenever you’re ready,” the wedding planner said, grasping the door handle before you. 

You turned your head to look at your dad, his features soft and emotional. If he cried, you’d soon follow, and you couldn’t ruin your makeup again. You squeezed his arm and nodded to the wedding planner. 

“I’m ready,” you whispered. 

With a gentle push of the door, you stepped over the threshold and into the humid air of the early evening. The soft crescendo of the Wedding March began to drift through the open space, and your friends and family all turned to stand. Your eyes shifted side to side, looking down each row at the warm smiles in your direction. Maybe if you didn’t look down the aisle, the fear of Joel running away wouldn’t come true. Look anywhere else. Your steps faltered, and you felt a wave of anxiety assault your nerves. 

“He’s waiting for you,” your dad mumbled. “Look up.”

You lifted your head and found Joel watching you with the brightest smile. His hair was tamed and slicked down with gel, and his beard was trimmed short—but still patchy in small areas along his jaw. His broad frame stretched out the black suit that was tailored perfectly to his body, and something about the refined look on him made your heart leap. If you weren’t already breathless, seeing his eyes stole any air left in your lungs.  Joel’s brown eyes sparkled with fresh tears under the gray skies. Not even the darkest storm clouds could darken the amber flecks glimmering in his irises. 

As you neared the altar, you also realized his hands were trembling. His fingers fidgeted with the cuffs of his shirt, and his body shifted from side to side as he waited for you. The music drifted to a close as you finally approached the altar, just inches from Joel. He didn’t run. He was standing right there. 

You turned to your dad, giving him a tearful hug and a quiet thank you. Joel stepped forward to give your dad a firm handshake, a warm smile gracing his face. As they said their final words to one another, you handed off your bouquet to Beth, who stood behind you, along with Stella and Sarah. Sarah’s cheeks were damp with tears as she grinned at you brightly, her skin radiant in her green dress. You blew her a kiss and turned back to Joel. 

“Y’look so fuckin’ beautiful,” he exhaled, wiping a tear from his face. 

“And you look extra handsome,” you grinned.

Joel chuckled, clasping his hands around yours. Your fingers squeezed around his knuckles, and your thumb rubbed soothing circles over the rough skin of his hand. The officiant beside you cleared his throat, and you and Joel turned your attention to him. 

“Family and friends,” he began. “Thank you all for joining us today for this wonderful union of love.”

The officiant's words faded into the background as you stared up at Joel, capturing this moment in your memory. Years of loss, pain, and grief all led you to this moment—right here. With Joel’s hands wrapped around yours and his loving smile shining down on you, it was all worth it. 

“I understand that you both have written your own vows,” the officiant said, interrupting the flood of emotions inside you.

Beth tapped you on your shoulder, handing you the small paper you had scribbled your vows onto that morning. 

“Okay,” you sighed. You smoothed out the paper in your hand, your eyes hardly focusing on the words before you. 

You opened your mouth to speak but paused as the first drop of rain splattered across the ink. A laugh bubbled out of you as you tilted your head up toward the sky. Rain misted your face, the slow sprinkle of rain dampening the ground around you. 

“Would y’look at that,” Joel laughed. “It’s rainin’ on us, baby. I think that means it’s good luck, right?”

You beamed at him, watching the raindrops catch onto his thick eyelashes. Crumpling the paper in your hand, you let it fall to the ground and composed yourself. Joel lifted his eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“Joel Miller,” you started. “I can say, without a doubt, I was always meant to be with you. From the moment I ran into you, literally—.” You laughed at yourself. “I knew it would always be you. Even when time and differences separated us, a part of me knew I was missing something. You and Sarah were the missing pieces that made me whole. And I’m so thankful that the universe conspired to bring us back together and lead me home. I vow to you, Joel, that every day will be filled with memories we remember.

 I vow always to make you smile. I vow to always annoy you with my late-night conversations about books and poetry nonsense you most definitely have no interest in. I promise to stand beside you on the soccer fields, cheering on our girl through every win and loss. I vow to you, Joel Miller, to never leave and to always work through the hardest obstacles. Together.” 

“I love you so much,” Joel whispered, tears streaming down his cheeks. 

You lifted a finger to wipe them away, your hand resting against his cheek. Joel sniffled back more cries, shaking out the rain clinging to his hair. 

“Alright, guess I gotta try and beat that now,” Joel joked. 

He crumpled his vows, the paper floating onto the wet ground where they melted into the rainfall. Joel barely managed to choke out your name before succumbing to tears all over again. 

“Man, this is hard,” he huffed. “I ain’t sure how y’did all that without losin’ it, baby.”

“You’ll be just fine, Joel. I’m right here,” you assured. 

He spoke your name again, this time only faltering at the end. You gave him an encouraging smile, your hand still caressing his face. 

“I can’t tell you enough how lucky I am that you’re in my life,” Joel began. “I ain’t ever felt a love like this, and I ain’t ever wanna lose it. I’m not a many of many words, at least not where it counts, but havin’ you by my side makes every single day brighter. There ain’t no better happiness than seein’ your smile every day or seein’ you be the mother to Sarah that she always deserved. 

Y’make me the proudest man alive, and I vow always to love you and care for you in every single way. I promise to read all the books y’read. I vow to remind you which cereal we buy at the grocery. I vow to stay truthful and always love you no matter how hard things may get. It’s you and me, baby. I ain’t goin’ nowhere. You got me ‘til I stop breathin’.”

You were the one crying the hardest now—a vow of all vows, spoken upon the altar that had always haunted you. One thing remained true in the weariness and uncertainty of the last several years: Joel was your steadfast. He was the constant that worked against the odds and continued to fight for a love you had since forgotten. Through the heartbreak, grief, and endless nights alone, you now had the one man the universe had created just for you. 

I love you, you mouthed. You couldn’t trust yourself not to entirely wither into a heap of sobs as his vows sunk further into your heart. 

“Now, if we may have the rings,” the officiant urged.

Tommy handed the ring to Joel while Sarah stepped forward to give you the wedding band you both had picked for her dad. 

“Thank you, kiddo,” you whispered, bending down to hug her. 

You and Joel repeated each word the officiant said, slipping the wedding bands onto each other's ring fingers. The rain was coming down harder now, pelting your face in wet splashes and rolling down your bare neck. Joel’s suit was soaked through, yet he didn’t care. Neither of you could stop smiling. 

“With the power invested in me and the state of Texas, I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Miller! You may now kiss your bride.”

“About damn time,” Joel snorted. 

His hands swept under your shoulder blades, dipping you low as he bent to kiss you. The moment his wet lips touched yours, everything became a reality. Joel was your husband. You molded your body into his embrace, your arms winding around his neck. He kissed you recklessly as if no one else around you existed. And truthfully, the world could have collapsed around you, and you would never have known it. You wanted to remain in his arms for eternity. 

This was your home. He was your everything. 

The reception had drawn into the late hours of the night, and the buzz of a few drinks had your body relaxed and at ease. Whatever stress you had before the ceremony it had long since vanished, swept away with the rain as it continued to pour from the sky. The train of your dress was stained brown from the mud, yet you didn’t care. It was a memory of the day, and you wanted to keep it with you forever. 

“One last dance?” Joel asked, extending a hand to you.

You rose from your seat, placing your hand in his. Somewhere during the night, Joel had discarded his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Seeing him this dressed up was far more dangerous than you expected; you craved to undo every button traveling down his torso and strip his tailored pants right from his muscular legs. But those tempting thoughts would have to wait till later. 

Half the attendees had left for the night, leaving only your family members and a few friends still scattered around the ballroom. As Joel swayed your bodies to the music, you caught wind of an argument drifting through the music. Turning your head over your shoulder, you watched Beth and Tommy go toe to toe in a standoff. 

“Do you think we should go calm them down?” You asked. 

Joel glanced towards his brother and shrugged.

“M’sure they’ll sort their shit out, baby. Ain’t nothin’ gonna stop me from enjoyin’ this night with you.”

“You’ve seen Beth when she’s angry,” you reminded him. 

“And y’know how grumpy Tommy can get,” Joel countered. “They can handle themselves.”

You both moved to the music in silence; your eyes settled on one another as you spun in slow circles. Joel hooked a hand under your knee and dipped you, only to pull you up just as quickly to crush his lips to yours. 

“When can I take y’home?” He muttered between kisses. “I’ve been dyin’ to take that dress off of you all night.”

“As soon as this song ends, I’m all yours,” you smiled. 

Joel’s brown eyes darkened under the twinkling lights, and dimples appeared on his cheeks as he grinned at you. 

“Baby, you’ve been mine from the start.”

[aylacavebear]

Soulmates? Yeah, right, pft. - Ch. 1

When you turn sixteen, and your soulmate's name doesn’t appear anywhere on your body that you can find, you figure you had to be the only person on the planet who didn’t have one. Most of the town shuns you, so you stick close to family. Your Aunt Ellen raised you after your parents died in a car crash when you were two, but what happens when the Winchesters return to town and buried secrets begin to come to light?

Pairing: Mechanic Dean Winchester x OC Reader/You

Word Count: 5393

Warnings: Angst, Past Trauma.

A/N: This is my non-Supernatural fic I'm attempting. Please let me know what you think, as I always love hearing from my readers. Not sure when this one will be up and available to read yet. Just getting the chapter list started for it.

----------------------------------------- Chapter 1

You grew up hearing about soulmates, but since you were raised by your Aunt Ellen, it was something you weren’t sure was even true. She’d shown you the mark that had shown up on her hip, your uncle’s name, when she’d turned sixteen. Soulmates clearly were a thing, but you were skeptical, even as a child.

“Hey, you gonna take care of the customers or just stand there daydreamin?” Ellen asked you.

“Sorry,” you quickly apologized, tending to the men at the bar.

How did I end up working here, of all places?

Your mind constantly drifted these days, and it started a month ago. Your twenty-fifth birthday was only three months away. Jo continually teased you when she found you off in your head during work hours. Then there was your Aunt Ellen, who was getting more worried about you as the days passed.

The music from the jukebox sounded far away, almost muffled as you absentmindedly took care of the tasks of cleaning tables, the bar, restocking bottles, and filling drinks. Guys would flirt with you, but you’d only give them that fake smile and move on.

It was the birthday you’d been waiting for, even if you hadn’t wanted to admit it to anyone. You were turning sixteen, and you’d finally see the name of your soulmate. Thanks to your aunt, you had gotten your hopes up.

But the day came and went, and nothing appeared. You had checked everywhere, even behind your ears. There was nothing. It took months to pull out of that depression, especially when those close to you asked about it. You also felt like some sort of freak. In all the research you’d done, you couldn’t find anything about not getting the mark when you turned sixteen.

“Geeze, Y/N. You’re really out of it today. What’s wrong, sweetie?” Ellen asked you, pulling you from your memories.

“Sorry. My mind seems to have a mind of its own today,” you sighed, glancing around the bar for a moment.

“You still bummed about the soulmate thing?” she asked you sincerely, in the way she did when she was gently trying to get you to talk.

You just shrugged your shoulders before taking off your apron, “I have to go help Bobby at the garage again.” 

“Is it that time already?” Ellen asked, glancing at the clock, then sighed. “Alright. Tell the old grump I said hi, and don’t let him work you too hard.” That made you chuckle, “He never does, and I’ll let him know.”

Again, your mind drifted as you drove down the semi-busy streets to Bobby’s garage. He and your Aunt had been friends for a long time, so he was practically family, as was his wife, Jodi. Growing up, you’d spent half your time in the garage, helping Bobby fix cars.

Sioux Falls wasn’t a big town, but wasn’t tiny either. You knew most of the people who lived there, and they knew you. It was more like more of them knew of you, the girl with no soulmate. You sighed as you drove your 71’ Pontiac Firebird Formula 400, a gift from Bobby you had to fix up, down the lonely road leading to his garage. 

“Got something for ya, kid, but you gotta fix her up,” Bobby told you when you showed up for your shift that hot summer afternoon.

“I told you. You don’t have to get me a present this year,” you groaned.

A year ago, you began hating your birthdays, and you didn’t want to celebrate this one. You begrudgingly followed him to his garage, then to the side of it, where you noticed the tarp over something.

Bobby walked over and pulled the tarp off, revealing the shell of a 71’ Pontiac Firebird Formula 400. You had fallen in love with muscle cars as a kid, watching The Dukes of Hazzard. Your jaw hit the floor as you ran over to her like a kid on Christmas.

He was smiling from ear to ear as he watched you look over everything, “She’s all yours, but you gotta do the work. You can’t let any other mechanic touch her. I’ll answer any questions, but I ain’t helpin' either.”

“Are you serious, Uncle Bobby?” you asked excitedly, popping the hood of the beat-up frame.

A small smile crossed your expression with that memory as you pulled into the driveway of Bobby’s garage and parked in the back. It seemed like so long ago, but it was one of your fondest memories that had made your birthday not so bad.

“I’m here,” you hollered, heading over to the car you’d been working on for almost a week at this point. 

“How was the bar?” he asked, joining you in the garage.

“I was a space cadet, and Aunt Ellen is worried about me,” you replied, sliding back under the car to finish it up.

“You’re not a space cadet. I just think you can’t focus around all those people anymore. Come work at the garage, full-time,” he told you, leaning against the counter and crossing his arms.

“I’ll think about it,” you answered, tightening down a few more bolts.

“Besides, Jodi misses you being around more often,” Bobby added in an attempt to persuade your decision.

“I miss her too. Oh! Ellen said hi. I don’t know why she doesn’t text you more often,” you replied, sliding out from under the car, looking for yet another tool for yet another size bolt.

When you were in the garage, you always seemed to be able to focus. You knew Bobby had a point, and you’d been considering it for almost a month, but you weren’t about to tell him that. You wanted to let him think it was his idea.

Yeah, your mind drifted, but it was nothing like at the bar. Here, they were little snippets of memories: kids teasing you in high school, adults looking at you like you had two heads, and then there had been attempts to find a job but getting turned down everywhere due to not having the name of your soulmate on your body somewhere. 

By the time your shift ended, you had the car completely finished. Looking down at the car, you stood there, covered with blotches of grease but beaming with pride. 

“I’ll let the owner know she’s ready,” Bobby smiled, now standing next to you. “Think about it, though, okay?”

“I will,” you replied, giving him a hug before you headed home for the night since you’d already cleaned up the tools you’d used.

You lived in a cute little house not far from Bobby’s garage. It was the only thing that you had from your parents, along with a handful of pictures. You’d lost both of them to a car crash when you were only two, having no real memories of them. 

Since you were two when you had lost them, you never asked Jodi what had happened or if anyone else was involved. You honestly didn’t want to know. 

Dropping the things from your pockets on the table, you locked your door and headed to the bathroom. Your thoughts drifted again as you did your typical night routine.

“I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time finding work, sweetie. You can’t work here till you’re at least eighteen. I can’t break that law for you,” Ellen sighed.

You crossed your arms and went back outside to your car. You knew why no one in town would hire you, and it was a stupid reason. However, being a teenager still, you were all hormones and now needed to go blow off some steam.

You peeled out of the parking lot and down the road to your parent's place, which would be yours in less than a year. The drive was short due to the speed you’d chosen to go, and a cloud of dust rolled over your car when you parked out back of the house.

Between the punching bag, the target practice, and throwing your knives till your arm was sore, you had finally calmed down some. You made a call to Ellen and told her you were going to sleep at your ‘almost’ house. She didn’t like it but didn’t argue either.

You cried yourself to sleep that night, curled up in the soft bed that would eventually be your permanent room as the sun set slowly. The thought of being alone for the rest of your life hurt more than you’d ever tell anyone.

Dinner that night consisted of leftovers, and you were thankful you’d prepared them ahead of time when the week began—baked chicken, potatoes, and gravy. You were far too out of it to even worry about a vegetable. 

I’ll tell Ellen tomorrow.

Finally deciding to quit working at the bar as you cleaned up dinner and headed to bed, almost feeling as though a weight had been lifted off your shoulders. Slipping under the covers and getting comfortable, you also felt more relaxed than usual. 

—----

Two hours into your shift, and Ellen had already had to pull you out of your head a dozen times. It was Saturday, so even the morning hours were busy today. You were just thankful that you never had to cook, knowing you would have ended up burning most of the food.

“Can you at least pay attention to the ones at the bar? Jo can handle the floor today,” Ellen told you, again sounding worried.

“I’ll try,” you sighed, glancing at the men sitting there.

There was no point in apologizing again. As you began taking care of the drinks, the bell over the door dinged, signifying yet another customer. Typically, you wouldn’t have even looked up, but something pulled at you.

It was three men, none of whom you recognized, and two of them looked to be around your age, with the third being older. All three of them sat at the bar, so you went over to get them drinks.

“What’s your poison?” you asked, putting on that fake work smile and not really looking at them.

“Three beers,” the older of the three said, “And please tell Ellen to come over.”

You were slightly confused but agreed. You set their beers down in front of them, then went to find Ellen in the back. “Hey, there’s a guy out here that asked for you.”

“Did you get his name?” she asked as she dried her hands.

“No. He didn’t say. He’s with two other guys who are younger, though, if that helps?” you replied as you followed her out of the back room.

You stopped halfway down the bar, but you were still behind it, as she was now on the other side, making her way to the three of them. The older man stood, both he and Ellen smiling as they embraced in a hug, which confused you. You managed to keep up with the drinks for those at the bar but couldn’t hear what the four of them were talking about.

“Y/N, come down here and get these boys a refill,” Ellen hollered, motioning for you to go over to them.

Rolling your eyes, you did as she asked, putting on that fake smile again, “Here ya go.”

“Thanks, Sweetheart,” one of the two younger ones said to you with what looked to be a flirtatious smirk.

“Don’t be flirting with my niece, Dean. She’s still what you’d consider innocent,” Ellen scolded the one who had just spoken to you, but to you, it sounded more like a teasing sort of joking around, which made you slightly curious. “Thanks. Like I need some stranger to know that sort of thing,” you grumbled.

“Sweetie, these are the Winchesters. They’re practically family. You met them when you were little,” Ellen replied, smiling happily.

For a moment, you were somewhat dumbfounded as to what to even say. You couldn’t seem to remember meeting the three of them. Ellen introduced you to John Winchester, the father of Dean and Sam, who were four years apart in age.

“I hate to do it, Aunt Ellen, but, I need to talk to you about something before I leave in ten,” you finally told her.

“What’s up?” she asked, looking quite puzzled.

“I need to take some time off for a while,” you mumbled, feeling bad.

“Take all the time you need, sweetie. I know things have been rough for you lately,” she said softly, then she gave you a hug. “And tell that old fart to stop by sometime.”

“Thanks for understanding, and I will,” you replied, relieved as you hugged her back. Then you looked over at the Winchesters, “It was nice to have at least met the three of you since I don’t remember meeting you before now. Not sure when I’ll see you again, though.”

“How come?” John asked, seeming fairly curious.

“I’m going to be working my other job full-time for a while. It’s the love of my life, honestly,” you replied with a smile, giving John your full attention.

“What’s that, kid?” he asked, which made you wonder if perhaps he knew Bobby since Bobby called you that all the time.

“I fix cars. Hate to do it, but I have to run,” you replied quickly, heading for the door and out to your Baby. However, your heart about stopped when you saw the black 67’ Chevy Impala parked next to your Firebird.

“Damn…” you breathed out in quiet shock and awe.

Shit! I’m gonna be late.

With that thought, you shook your head, pulled your gaze from the car, and drove to Bobby’s garage for your shift. It indeed was a beautiful car, and you knew that no one in town drove one of those. Through deductive reasoning, you figured it had to belong to the Winchesters. You just weren’t sure which one. Whichever one it was, though, they loved that car, and you knew it with how well it had been taken care of.

The leaves on the trees were changing colors already, and the light breeze was finally cooler than the summer heat that you hated. However, you didn’t notice much today; you were too excited to give Bobby the news.

You knew the smile you couldn’t hide would give it away, but you stepped into his little office anyway. You didn’t even have time to say anything before he did.

Bobby was smiling from ear to ear when he looked up at you, “Nice to know Ellen didn’t give you a hard time about being here full time. You can whip those boys on the morning shift into shape for me.”

“Like they’d listen to me,” you chuckled but rolled your eyes.

“They better, since you’re gonna be their boss from here on out,” he told you seriously.

“Wait? What?” you asked, in complete surprise.

“Kid, you know your shit, and you’re good at your job. You’re better at your job than the four boys I got workin here already. I’d rather just have you than all of them 'cause I know you’d get the job done like it should be, and you never cut corners,” he explained, being completely serious.

“I- I don’t know what to say,” you stammered, still shocked.

“Just say thanks and be here at six tomorrow morning. Take the afternoon off and rest up,” he smiled.

You went over and wrapped him up in a hug. He knew the only reason you worked in the garage late was to avoid the boys he had working there in the morning. You had tried doing the dating thing after your sixteenth birthday, but realized quickly that no boy wanted anything to do with you.

That night, you were still smiling, even if you were apprehensive about being someone’s boss, let alone four grown men. People in the town were mostly courteous toward you but treated you like a plague of some sort since your soulmate's name never appeared on your body. 

—-------

As you got ready that morning, you attempted to calm your nerves, but it didn’t work. You gave yourself mental pep talks all morning and even on the drive, but that wasn’t helping either. Your heart was still racing as you parked out back like you usually did.

Bobby was the only one at the garage for the moment, and he even told you to breathe more than once. He explained that you’d still be working on cars, but now you’d also be keeping an eye on the boys he had working there and telling them when to take their breaks. It seemed simple enough.

Benny, Cas, Garth, and Jack were decent guys and were all friends. They’d spend time at the bar in the evenings when you were at the garage. It was how you had avoided a lot of people in the town since they really wanted nothing to do with you. The part you were worried about was interacting with them, as their boss. Bobby was standing next to you as the four of them arrived and mingled into the garage.

“Boys, meet your new boss,” Bobby said sternly, and all four of them looked up at you.

You were sure your heartbeat could be heard throughout the room as you froze under their gaze. The only one who didn’t look at you like you were a waste of space or something to avoid was Garth, and you made a mental note of that.

Something in you snapped with how they looked at you, and you laid into them before Bobby could comment on their expressions. “Look, I know that at least three of you would rather not work with me. I’m not a bitch, but I will be if I have to be. You don’t like this, there’s the door,” you told them sternly, putting your hands on your hips.

“Seriously?” Benny asked, annoyed. His Cajun accent was thick, and if it weren’t for his attitude, you probably could have listened to the man talk all day.

“Yes, Benny. She’s got the right to fire you if need be. I suggest you don’t give her a reason,” Bobby replied, crossing his arms, almost daring the man to challenge his decision.

Garth stepped forward, though, with that kind smile he always had, “I, for one, am looking forward to working with you, Y/N. You seem like a nice person, fair.”

Your expression instantly softened, and you smiled at him. “Thanks, Garth.”

“Alright, get to work,” Bobby told all of you before he headed into his office to keep an eye on things.

You turned from the four of them and headed toward the newest of the cars that had been brought in the day before. Your nerves were shot, but you were proud of yourself for standing up to the three of them. Pausing for a brief moment as you looked down at the car, you decided on something.

I’m gonna just be me. If they don’t like it, they can quit.

You turned on the radio to the classic rock station, then got to work on the car. Benny raised an eyebrow and just watched you silently before he got to work with the other three. It was odd for you with the other four working there, too. It was something you weren’t used to, but you found yourself keeping an eye on them, even while you worked.

An hour into the shift, Cas had stopped working and sat on one of the barstools, sipping some water. You watched him out of the corner of your eye for a few minutes while still focusing on your current task. Five minutes later, he was back to work. You took mental note of it and focused on your task again.

Each of them did that, taking turns to sit for a few minutes, have water, and then return to work. It puzzled you, but you weren’t ready to ask them why they did it, at least not yet. 

Just before nine, you heard it before you saw it. The beautiful purr of that Impala you had seen the night before. A smirk crossed your lips while you were unbolting the upper portion of the water pump for the current car in front of you. 

The Impala stopped, and then she was silent. You could clearly hear three sets of footsteps heading into the garage. The four boys erupted with greetings to the Winchesters, more Dean than the other two. Even Bobby joined in. 

So, they do know each other. Too bad the boys know them too. So much for maybe making a friend now.

You sighed and slid under the car, going for the bottom bolts now that the top ones were loose, completely ignoring the ruckus of greetings going on only about twenty feet away from you.

“Kid, you gonna come say hi?” you heard Bobby ask, and you realized he was standing next to you.

“I really wanted to get this finished, since the part finally came in, and this poor car has been sitting here for a week waiting,” you replied without moving out from under the car.

“Kid, don’t make me pull you outta there,” he told you a bit more sternly, and you knew he’d do it.

“Fine,” you grumbled, sliding out from under the car.

“So much for not running into you again, Sweetheart,” Dean smirked, which made you roll your eyes.

“Dean’s gonna be starting tomorrow morning. Dean, she’ll be your boss, so don’t try anything funny. She’s also practically my niece,” Bobby told him, far sterner than you’d heard him talk to anyone before, which only piqued your curiosity as to what their past entailed.

“I’ll behave, Bobby, I promise,” Dean told him, somewhat seriously. 

You noticed a small twinkle in not only Dean’s eye, but also in Bobby’s. It was like there was something they both knew but weren’t saying, at least not in front of you.

“You better, boy. I got no problems telling your dad and making him fire you,” Bobby replied, glancing at John.

That was when it hit you. You’d seen the initials JW on several different pieces of paperwork and even a couple of packages that had been delivered to the garage. John was Bobby’s partner in the business, and Dean was supposed to inherit it when John passed or retired. You were a bit surprised, though, that you had the power to fire the boss's son or at least write him up if you had to.

John’s laughter filled the garage at Bobby’s statement, “If I have to get involved, you’ll be in far more trouble than just losing your job.” There was a joke in there, but you could also hear the hint of seriousness in his tone.

What do the three of them know but aren’t saying around me? This is so frustrating.

“I said I’d behave,” Dean grumbled, crossing his arms and leaning against the car closest to him while the boys gave him a hard time. But it was there, even if only a hint of it, a smirk, and you noticed.

That was when John and Bobby both turned toward you, and for some reason, it made you nervous. “We’re having a little get-together tonight at Harvelle’s, and you’re invited. Sam graduated and is getting a full ride for law school, and that calls for a celebration,” John told you with a far softer smile than you thought the man was capable of.

“Uh, sure, I guess,” you replied, completely unsure of the idea of being around people who really wanted nothing to do with you.

“Good. Then we’ll see you there around say, seven?” John replied.

“Okay,” you answered, not sure what else to say.

Due to your attention being on John and Bobby, you missed the silent conversations going on between Dean, Sam, and the four grease monkeys on the far side of the garage. Dean was mostly watching you while Benny and Cas were telling him things, about you. Sam was also watching you, but his was more out of curiosity than anything else.

John and Bobby hung out in the office with the door closed for at least another hour. Dean and Sam were distracting the other four while they worked. You, well, you were changing out the water pump, ignoring all of them. It was what hurt the least. 

While you were tightening down the bolts under the car, you noticed a pair of feet standing next to you.

“You really don’t remember us, do you?” he asked.

“Sorry. I really don’t,” you answered, focusing on the bolt that was being a pain to get to.

“Wow. Kinda surprised since we went to the same schools and grew up in the same town,” he chuckled quietly, and you realized it was Sam and not Dean. Sam had a softer voice, and he didn’t call you sweetheart.

“I’m really sorry. I was kind of a loner,” you told him and finally got the bolt tightened down.

Sliding out from under the car and looking up at him, you felt like an ant with how tall he was. You shook off the feeling, got to your feet, and bent over into the engine so you could finish bolting the water pump in place.

“I remember. I heard about what happened, or uh, I mean- what didn’t happen when you turned sixteen,” he told you with that softness you were thankful for.

You shrugged your shoulders briefly, “Doesn’t matter. At least Bobby let me work here. All I ask is that you aren’t being nice to me out of pity. I’d rather be ignored.”

“I don’t pity you. I actually wanted to tell you something I found out while I was at college. It’s rare, like it only happens to one in a billion people. A traumatic event before the age of five can leave a child too scared to get their soulmate’s name when they turn sixteen,” he explained.

You froze where you were. It was more than anything you’d been able to find, and for a moment, you wanted to hope. You quickly brushed it away, though, remembering how badly you’d felt the last time you got your hopes up.

“You gonna keep going or just leave me hanging like that?” you asked, a little sharper than you intended.

Sam took a deep breath, and you missed him glancing at his brother momentarily, “Well, what I read said that the other person still gets their soulmate’s name. The one that went through the trauma has to fully heal from it before they get their soulmate’s name.”

You rolled your eyes, “Kinda hard to heal from something I don’t remember.”

“I just wanted you to know that me and my brother don’t see you like others do, and we’d like to be your friend, if you want,” he replied, then walked away to leave you to your thoughts.

Great. I don’t even know what to do to heal that sort of thing. I don’t even remember my parents. And now, the boss’s kids want to be friends with me. No, that can’t go horribly wrong, can it? Plus, I have to go sit through a celebration with people I don’t remember and others who want nothing to do with me, even if Ellen, Bobby, and Jodi will be there.

You focused on the car but finished it quickly before the Winchesters were even ready to leave. After wiping off your hands, you closed the hood and put the tools away before driving the car out to the finished area so it could wait for its owner to pick it up. When you headed back inside, your eyes were only on the office door, which was still closed. You didn’t see Dean watching you again.

“Hey, Bobby. Cars finished. I didn’t see anything else out back. What do you want me to work on?” you asked, setting the keys on his desk so he could get the paperwork together.

“How about you give Dean the tour? Show him where everythings at?” John suggested with a smirk before Bobby could say a word. “I figured Benny would do that, since they seem like friends,” you replied, not wanting to interrupt the six of them.

“I’m sure he could, but he won’t. You’re their boss. Comes with the territory,” John told you.

“Yes, Sir,” you replied in a slight mumble, heading back out of the office, closing the door, and then leaning on it.

As you crossed your arms, you watched the six of them. They looked like they were enjoying whatever conversation was happening between them, with Dean laughing at something he must have found funny. With a deep sigh, you walked over to them, slipping your hands into your pockets.

There was instant silence the moment you got close to them, but you didn’t let the hurt show, “John said I should give you a tour and show you where everything is,” you explained to Dean, not really looking at him.

Dean glanced at the office door then back down at you, “If that’s what my dad said, then lead the way, Sweetheart.”

Why does he have to keep calling me that? It’s not like he knows me. Maybe he calls all girls that, and it’s just his thing or something like that. 

“Yeah, not like you been in here a day of your life,” Benny teased him, which made you look up at Benny, confused. “Huh?” was the only word you could manage.

“Oh yeah, Dean’s been working in here since he was knee-high to a grasshopper,” Cas chuckled, teasing Dean.

Your gaze went from each of them and then to Dean, tilting your head in a fair amount of confusion. Dean rubbed the back of his neck nervously and looked away from you.

“What’s wrong, Dean? Worried she’ll figure it out?” Benny stated.

“Figure what out?” you asked as Dean glared at Benny.

“Nothing,” Dean snapped, still glaring at Benny.

So, Dean’s got some secret he doesn’t want me to know about. 

“Do you still want that tour I’m supposed to give you?” you asked with a sigh, looking more at the floor than anywhere else.

“Dean, you were here less than a month ago. Did you really forget where everything is already?” Cas teasingly asked him.

You’d had enough, so headed out of the garage, tossing your hands up and hollering, “Never mind,” just before making it outside. Once you made it to your car, you texted Bobby and told him you were heading home since there weren’t any more cars to work on at the moment.

The six of them watched as you drove past the garage entrance and then down the driveway. You missed Dean punching Cas in the jaw. You missed John and Bobby going off on Benny and Cas. You also missed Dean going off on Benny. You were too pissed and hurt to even look back.

Bobby didn’t text you back, but you knew if he had an issue or needed you at the garage, he would have said so. The moment you got home, you went straight for the punching bag, needing to get the anger out of your system so you could shower.

How am I gonna get out of tonight? Can I even get out of tonight? Probably not. I’ll have to show up, at least. I can always leave early, though, right? 

You groaned at the thought of having to be around people, knowing full well that getting out of it, even early, was going to be difficult. At least you weren’t required to dress up any, so you went for a pair of black jeans, a dark blue shirt, and your favorite deep green flannel pulled over it. At the garage, you typically had your hair pulled back, but for tonight, you left it down.

Parking near the back of Harvelle’s Bar & Grill, you were just staring at the building, dreading going inside and having to “people,” as you called it. The sun had already set, and the darkness was allowing the glimmer of stars to be seen in the night sky, but you didn’t notice them, just the bar in front of you.

----------------------------------------- Chapter 2

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[thepenandthepistol]

hihi something cutesy and cliché with grian please 🤗🤗

love ur writing!!

Try Again Tomorrow (Grian x reader)

An early morning leaves you with some reflecting to do about who you were before Grian and who you are now.

A/N: I. LOVE. HIM. Anon, I'm so sorry I know you said cliche and fluff but I couldn't help myself and sprinkled some angst in there, nothing we can't fix by the end though. Hope you enjoy and thank you so much for your kindness! It's spurred me on more than you can know. (1020 words)

Art by @/bc-jpeg and dividers by @/cafekitsune

This morning was not unlike many others. It was soft and windy. The curtains swam in the breeze of an already scorching sun, light shifting under the fabric’s billowing. The rays dash over the features of your beloved, he glows amidst the messy room. You’ve seen this a thousand times and with each fresh memory, it only gets better.

Grian’s nose scrunches as he stirs awake, body heavy with sleep. His arm is still draped over your waist, your hand traces the base of his wings, languid motions making his eyes flutter shut for a moment too long. You swear he’s gone back to sleep until his own hands pull you closer. His head of sandy hair rests on your shoulder as he curls into your embrace. His wings unfurl, blocking out the sun and sight of the clothes from last night, pants disregarded atop a chair, shoes still at the foot of the bed. 

Booze and dancing, a party where you know everyone. Your feet have never ached more and aching has never felt this good. Every song revealed a part of your soul, fragments shining under a disco ball with every move and step. You are surrounded by friends, but your eyes land back on him. Grian stands at the edge of the floor with two drinks in hand. He looks eager to join but, despite his craned neck, can’t seem to find a counter to place the cups down. Catching your glance, he smiles, handing Joel and Lizzie their drinks, and then springing towards you. He weaves through the thinning crowd until he can reach your hand. He pulls you closer, taking only a step back, and holds your jaw with his other hand. You hold on to the lapels of his dress shirt, straightening his loose tie. His thrilled smile eases into a fond grin and he presses a kiss to your lips. 

Now, he’s much less energetic. To think if it weren’t for him, you might’ve already been up and working. The days before him were mundane as well, but different. You might’ve not gone to that party, stayed in and slept late, staring at a ceiling and counting the blemishes. You trace the uneven skin on Grian’s shoulder, counting the occasional raised patches.

“Love, you need to get some summer clothes.” You say, and he hums, half listening, mostly basking in the attention. “Your sweater’s making you break out again.”

“We can sort that out later.”

Later. Now, the world is your bedroom. How much work could you have gotten done before this? How many pangs of loneliness would you have fought to forget in the hours now spent with him? Your hands, nicked and leathery, tuck a strand of hair behind his ear and rest at the nape of his neck, scratching gently. 

You catch a glimpse of yourself in the window, your image in a blue expanse of cloudless sky. Your arms are thicker than they were, flaccid. Every evening you both stop what you are doing, put away the tools and materials, they’ll be there tomorrow. On even days Grian cooks dinner, he’s collected quite the recipe book and what used to be labor is now rest. With a skillet in hand, he dances around your kitchen. He pretends to drop the pan only to fake you out. He’s only actually dropped it a single time. 

Before, only with the moon high into the aether would you have stopped to eat, hurrying food into a starved mouth like shoveling coal into a furnace, mechanic and primal. In your cold kitchen, you stared at the ceramic floor. Tomorrow would be the same, again and again. You were much more productive back then.

“Do you have any plans?” Grian asks. The question is innocuous, but the gears are turning in his brain. He knows something’s pulling you down. 

“Not really,” you murmur. Longing strikes a bell in your chest. What could you have been? Successful, productive, probably painfully alone. Would that have been better than this? The first answer that comes to mind is shameful. You were a beautiful animal, a prize pony who never got the medal. How could you even hope to compete now if you were not worthy before?

Grian shifts from beside you. Thoughts run through your mind until he positions his thighs between your legs, straddling you with his weight comfortably resting on your pelvis. His eyes crinkle, but it’s bittersweet. He can’t guess what havoc is parading inside your head, but he knows that far-away gaze. He shifts forward and your fingers hold his waist. He kisses the skin under your lashes, dark hues blending back into the surroundings with each day that passes. You were chasing something, an indescribable mass that would make you good.

He kisses your jaw. His lips are so very dry, but so purposeful. He knows every inch of you, each crevice of your hollow bones, and he holds them so very dearly. You aren’t good, definitely not the best person you could be. But here he is. He sees you and he holds you.

“You have an incredible mind, a vast, vast soul.” He whispers as he finally kisses your lips. Your lungs fill with air, eyes closing and loosening the stranglehold on your heart. 

There are a thousand different ways your life could have gone, but only now do you feel glad to be here. This body has suffered for so long, searching for an excuse to heal itself back from the brink. But Grian needs no reason to love you. He takes your cheeks into his hands, a mirror of the night before, and does not let go. 

You could have accomplished so much in the time you took to realize this, but how much better would it be to do those things with him by your side? Savoring the days as they go, waking up late with only the lasting weight of your partner atop you. Arms and legs aching after dancing and not tirelessly working, giving up on grasping to be someone you never needed to be. 

[charmed-quill]

Burrow Bound// B.W x Reader Chapter 4

Authors note at end.

Original request by @littlegreenteacup

Summary: Y/N, an American half-blood witch newly arrived in Muggle London, stumbles into the warmth of the Weasley brothers after a serendipitous meeting in Diagon Alley. Drawn into their world, she finds herself at the Burrow more often than not. Meanwhile, Bill Weasley is learning to navigate life as a single father, relying on his mother’s help to care for Victoire. Though their worlds orbit each other, Y/N and Bill’s paths never seem to align—until one evening when fate finally draws them together. Will it be the start of a love story, or will they be left with nothing but heartache?

word count: 3k

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Slowly, Y/N began to feel more and more like she belonged. What had once felt like an overwhelming city of strangers was slowly becoming her home. She’d been nervous at first, unsure if London would be too much for her, too big, too fast, too foreign. But with her father’s words echoing in her heart to never give up and the Weasley siblings’ relentless guidance, the unfamiliar was now becoming comforting.

Molly had insisted early on that Y/N join the family for Sunday dinners, a steadfast tradition that became a lifeline. Those evenings at the Burrow, filled with laughter and warm food had quickly become her favorite part of the week. Over time, those Sundays morphed into invitations during the weekdays after work, casual evenings where the line between guest and family blurred.

The very first time Y/N had visited the Burrow during the week, she had arrived with a pitcher of sweet tea she’d made the night before. 

It had come from a conversation with Molly about the types of tea she’d grown up drinking. She’d joked about the “bastardization” of Britain’s national drink, but deep down, she wanted to share a piece of herself with the family that had made her feel so welcome.

The recipe was her grandmother’s, the same one she’d used every summer. One sip of the chilled, sugary brew transported Y/N back to sweltering days spent outside, laughing with her cousins as fireflies lit up the dusk. It wasn’t just tea, it was a memory, a piece of home she hoped the Weasleys would enjoy.

When she Apparated into the now-familiar garden of the Burrow, the sight of wildflowers and the lopsided house filled her with comfort. 

Balancing the pitcher in her hands, she opened the creaky wooden door to be greeted by Molly’s warm, beaming smile.

“Y/N, dear! You’re just in time,” Molly said, stepping aside to let her in. But Y/N’s gaze was immediately drawn downward, to the small figure peeking out from behind Molly’s legs.

A tiny blonde girl, her curls framing her face like a halo, stared up at Y/N with wide, curious eyes. She clutched the edge of Molly’s apron tightly in her little fists, half-hiding but not quite willing to look away.

“This,” Molly said gently, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder, “is Victoire, my grandbaby. She’s staying with us tonight.”

Y/N knelt down slowly, careful not to startle her. 

“Hi there,” she said softly, her voice warm. “Aren’t you just the cutest little thing, I’ve heard so much about you.”

The girl hesitated, her blue eyes studying Y/N intently. 

Finally, she let go of Molly’s apron, stepping out just enough to take Y/N in fully. 

“Are you a friend?” she asked, her voice quiet but curious.

Y/N’s heart melted at the question. 

“I hope so,” she replied with a smile. “What do you think?”

Victoire seemed to consider this seriously for a moment before nodding. “Okay,” she said simply, her lips curving into a shy smile.

“Well, I brought something special,” Y/N added, holding up the pitcher of sweet tea. “It’s a drink from where I come from. Would you like to try some?”

Victoire’s curiosity won out, and she nodded eagerly. Molly ushered them into the kitchen, where Y/N poured the tea into small glasses for everyone. Victoire took her first sip and giggled at the sweetness.

“It’s sweet!” she exclaimed, her shyness quickly forgotten as she finished the tea quickly. 

She hopped down off the chair and made her way back over to the pile of toys in the living room. 

“She’s just gorgeous,” Y/N gushed, glancing back toward the living room where Victoire now sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a mess of brightly colored toys. Her curls bounced with every movement as she played, her laughter ringing out like a soft melody.

Molly smiled warmly, gathering the empty glass of sweet tea from the counter and setting it into the sink.

 “She looks just like her mother,” she said. “But she takes after her father in every way that counts. Sometimes, truthfully, it feels like I’m raising Bill all over again.”

Y/N laughed, imagining a miniature Bill causing mischief in the Burrow. She didn’t know him personally, only the stories Fred and George told, but there was an undeniable admiration whenever his name came up.

“What does her mother do for work?” Y/N asked curiously, realising it was the first time anyone had even mentioned a mother.

The warmth in the kitchen cooled almost instantly. 

Molly’s expression tightened, and the soft hum of domesticity seemed to falter. She dried her hands on a dish towel, her movements suddenly sharper.

“I wouldn’t know,” Molly said shortly, her tone clipped and brimming with unspoken emotion. “She left two years ago and hasn’t bothered to reach out since.”

Y/N’s mouth opened, then shut again, unsure how to respond. “Oh,” she said softly, the single syllable hanging awkwardly in the air.

“Bill’s better off without her,” Molly continued after a moment, her voice firm. “None of us really liked her anyway.”

There was a finality to her words, as if the conversation was over before it began. 

But Molly, perhaps sensing Y/N’s hesitation, sighed and glanced toward the window, softening ever so slightly.

“She was beautiful,” Molly said, though there was no fondness in her tone. “Graceful, elegant. Bill was head over heels for her, he thought she was his forever.”

Y/N nodded, staying silent as Molly continued, her words slower now, more measured.

“But Fleur... She was restless. Always had been. She loved Bill, in her way, and she adored Victoire when she was born, but... some people just aren’t meant to stay. When things became difficult, when sleepless nights and the reality of raising a child set in, she started to drift. One day, she left a letter and didn’t look back.”

Y/N felt a pang in her chest, both for Bill and for Victoire. She couldn’t imagine the heartbreak of being left behind, especially by someone you trusted to stay.

“How did Bill handle it?” she asked tentatively.

Molly’s lips pressed into a thin line before she spoke. 

“He handled it the way he’s always handled everything, with strength and quiet dignity. For Victoire’s sake. She was just a baby then, barely old enough to understand what was happening. Bill made sure she never felt that absence, never wanted for anything. He’s been everything to her, father, mother, best friend.”

Molly’s voice softened further, her pride in her son evident. 

“It’s not been easy for him, but Bill’s resilient. He pours all of himself into being the best father she could ever have. And she’s the light of his life, of all of ours, really.”

Y/N glanced back toward the living room, watching Victoire happily line up her toys, her small brow furrowed in concentration. “He must be an incredible person,” Y/N said quietly.

“He is,” Molly replied, her voice brimming with affection. “Losing Fleur might have hurt him, but he never let it break him. And he never let it touch Victoire.”

The silence that followed wasn’t heavy but reflective, as Y/N processed everything Molly had said. There was no anger in the room now, just a deep love for her family.

“Well,” Molly said, breaking the moment with a bright smile. “Enough about all that. Victoire’s probably demanding more attention by now.”

Y/N grinned, nodding as she turned toward the living room. “I think she’s plotting her next grand design with those toys. I’d better go check.”

As she walked into the cozy space, Victoire looked up at her with a wide, toothy grin. In her hands, she held a stuffed dragon, its plush wings slightly lopsided but no less charming. She thrust it forward triumphantly as if presenting a great treasure.

“Uncle Charlie got this for my birthday,” Victoire explained, her voice full of pride as Y/N crouched down beside her on the floor. “He said when I’m a big girl, he’ll take me to see real dragons.”

“Wow,” Y/N said, her eyes widening in mock amazement. “That’s really special. You must be very excited.”

Victoire nodded enthusiastically, clutching the dragon to her chest. “But I have to wait forever,” she said with an exaggerated sigh.

Y/N chuckled. “Well, you know what they say, good things come to those who wait. And seeing a real dragon sounds like one of the best things ever.”

Victoire hummed in agreement before leaning in conspiratorially. “Uncle Fred put a spell on it once so it breathed real fire.”

Y/N raised her eyebrows. “Did he now?”

Victoire nodded, her curls bouncing. “But Daddy got really mad.”

Y/N pressed her lips together, trying to hide her smile. “Well, your daddy was probably right to be upset. A real fire-breathing dragon wouldn’t be very safe to keep in the house, would it?”

Victoire considered this, her little brows knitting together in thought. After a moment, she nodded solemnly. “It would set my dolls on fire,” she said with all the seriousness of a child making a life-altering realisation.

“That it would,” Y/N agreed, fighting the urge to laugh at Victoire’s earnest expression. She tilted her head, an idea sparking. “But you know, dragons don’t have to breathe fire to be magical.”

Victoire’s eyes widened. “They don’t?”

“Nope,” Y/N said with a grin. She pulled out her wand, twirling it between her fingers. “Want to see something?”

The little girl nodded eagerly, clutching the dragon tightly. Y/N tapped the plush toy lightly with her wand, muttering a simple charm. The dragon shimmered faintly for a moment before its wings began to flutter, lifting it off Victoire’s lap.

With a soft whoosh, the stuffed dragon soared into the air, circling the room in lazy loops. Its tiny claws twitched, and its stitched mouth opened in a silent roar as it swooped down toward Victoire before soaring back up again.

Victoire gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks. “It’s flying!” she squealed, clapping her hands. “It’s really flying!”

Y/N laughed, leaning back on her hands as she watched the dragon dip and dive. “It’s magic,” she said simply.

The dragon completed a few more loops before gently coming to rest back in Victoire’s lap. The little girl hugged it tightly, her eyes shining with joy.

“That was the best thing ever!”

Y/N ruffled her curls fondly. “Anytime, kiddo.”

Y/N arrived at the Burrow one evening to find Victoire sitting at a small table set up in the corner of the living room. Stuffed animals and dolls were carefully arranged around her, each holding a tiny teacup.

“Y/N!” Victoire cried, hopping up from her seat. “You’re just in time! We’re having a tea party.”

“A tea party?” Y/N said, her face lighting up. “I’ve always wanted to go to one of those.”

Victoire beamed, grabbing Y/N’s hand and pulling her toward the table. “You can sit next to Mr. Teddy,” she instructed, pointing to the chair beside a well-loved bear with one button eye.

Y/N carefully squeezed into the small chair, lifting the miniature cup from the saucer in front of her. “And what kind of tea are we serving today, Miss Victoire?”

Victoire giggled, picking up the teapot and pretending to pour. “It’s special dragon tea,” she said. “It’s what dragons drink when they’re not breathing fire.”

Y/N gasped dramatically. “Dragon tea? How fancy!” She took an exaggerated sip and sighed contentedly. “Delicious. You must give me the recipe.”

The two spent the next hour sipping “tea,” rearranging the dolls, and pretending the stuffed dragon from last week was the guest of honor. By the end of it, Y/N was wearing a plastic tiara Victoire insisted she needed to be “proper,” and Victoire was giggling so hard she almost fell out of her chair.

On a rainy afternoon, Victoire decided the living room needed a bit more excitement. Armed with a plastic sword and wearing one of Molly’s aprons as a cape, she declared herself a knight on a mission to rescue the kingdom from a terrible beast, her stuffed dragon.

“You have to help me, Y/N,” Victoire said, tugging on her hand. “The dragon’s stolen all the treasure!”

“Oh no!” Y/N gasped, clutching her chest. “What will we do?”

Victoire handed her a broom. “You can be the knight’s helper. We have to sneak past the lava pit first.”

Y/N followed Victoire’s lead as they hopped across pillows spread across the floor, carefully avoiding the “lava.” They scaled the “mountain” (the sofa), dodged fireballs (thrown by George when he walked by and got roped in), and finally confronted the dragon, which was perched ominously on the coffee table.

“Give us back the treasure!” Victoire commanded, brandishing her sword.

With Y/N’s encouragement and some dramatic acting, the dragon was “defeated,” and Victoire proudly handed Y/N a pile of plastic coins and shiny wrappers that had once been chocolates. “We did it!” Victoire cheered, throwing her arms around Y/N.

One weekday evening, Y/N joined Victoire and Molly in the kitchen for some baking. Victoire insisted on making biscuits shaped like butterflies, and Y/N eagerly volunteered to help with the icing.

“Mine’s going to have blue wings,” Victoire announced, carefully spreading icing on her cookie.

“Mine’s going to have purple wings,” Y/N said, sticking her tongue out in concentration as she added purple frosting.

Molly chuckled from the stove as she stirred soup. “Just try not to eat all the icing before the biscuits are done.”

Victoire giggled, her face smeared with a streak of blue icing. “I think you ate more than me,” she teased, pointing at Y/N.

“Oh no, you’ve caught me!” Y/N said dramatically, pretending to hide the spoonful of frosting she’d just licked. “Don’t tell grandma.”

By the time the biscuits were baked and decorated, Victoire had a rainbow of frosting on her face and hands, and Y/N wasn’t much better. “These are the best butterflies ever,” Victoire declared proudly, holding up a bright green biscuits with googly eyes made from chocolate chips.

As the evening wore on, the warm, inviting chaos of the Burrow wrapped itself around Y/N like a favorite blanket. Victoire had long since fallen asleep in her grandmother’s lap, clutching her plush dragon tightly. Molly, always bustling, insisted Y/N stay just a little longer, pointing out the freshly baked apple crumble cooling on the counter and suggesting they all have a slice with tea.

“You can’t rush off now, dear,” Molly said with a cheerful insistence. “Dessert is the most important part of any evening, and I’ve made custard to go with it.”

Y/N laughed softly, reluctant to leave the cozy kitchen but glancing at the clock on the wall. “I really should head back soon. I have to be up early for work tomorrow.”

Molly waved a hand dismissively. “Nonsense. A little apple crumble won’t keep you up too late. Besides, it’s raining out. Best to wait until it lets up a bit.”

Glancing toward the window, Y/N noted the steady patter of rain streaking the glass. She hesitated, not wanting to seem ungrateful. “Just a small slice, then,” she relented with a smile, sitting back down at the table.

Molly beamed and bustled about, serving a generous portion of crumble topped with warm custard. Y/N savored every bite, the flavors a perfect blend of tart apples and sweet, creamy custard. Time seemed to slip by unnoticed as the conversation meandered from family stories to Molly sharing her best tips for charm-proofing a kitchen.

Eventually, though, Y/N stood, reluctant but resolute. “Thank you so much, Molly, but I really do need to get home. This has been wonderful, as always.”

Molly’s face briefly faltered, but she quickly replaced it with a warm smile. “Of course, dear. We’ll see you Sunday, won’t we?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Y/N said sincerely, hugging Molly goodbye. She gave a soft wave toward the living room, where Arthur was immersed in a book.

Stepping out into the now-drizzling evening, Y/N pulled her jacket tight around her and Disapparated with a quiet pop.

As the clock chimed softly, signaling the hour of eight, the Burrow’s front door opened, and a tall figure stepped inside. Rain dripped from his long coat as Bill Weasley brushed a hand through his damp hair, his gaze immediately finding Molly bustling in the kitchen.

“Evening, Mum,” he said, his voice warm but tired.

Molly turned, her face lighting up. “Bill! Oh, you just missed her.”

He frowned slightly. “Missed who?”

“Y/N,” Molly replied, her tone casual as she handed him a clean towel for his coat. “She was here all evening. I thought you two might cross paths.”

“Oh,” Bill said, his brow furrowing slightly. “The American you mentioned?”

“Yes, and such a lovely girl,” Molly continued, her voice growing brighter. “Victoire adores her, and so do Fred and George.”

Bill chuckled softly, draping the towel over his shoulders. “I’ll have to meet her next time, then.”

Molly smiled knowingly. “I’m sure you will. Now, come sit down. I saved you some apple crumble.”

tagged: @navs-bhat @neenieweenie

a/n: sorry for all the build up guys but its serious, we are in act 2 now!!! I think victiore is about 5/6 in this story so that would make the reader about 26/27 and Bill would be about 35, which also means this takes place in 2004/2005. also originally i was only going to do the story only from y/n's perspective but now i think i'll do a few chapters from Bill's POV. anyway i hope you guys enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[astars-things]

Messy Pt3

this will probably be the last part x 

It had been a week since Y/N left to stay at Luke’s.

The house felt different without her. Too quiet. Too empty. Every time I walked past her room, I half-expected to hear music playing or see her sprawled out on her bed, scrolling through her phone. But the door stayed shut, untouched, like she’d never come back.

I sat on the couch, staring at my phone, debating whether to call her again. Every time I tried, I either got her voicemail or a short, dry text that let me know she was safe—but nothing more. She wasn’t ready to talk.

I had to fix this.

Then an idea hit me.

For months, Y/N had been begging me for a golden retriever puppy. She’d send me pictures, drop hints, even strategically bring it up in conversations to wear me down. I always said no—too much responsibility, too much work. But sitting here, realizing how much I’d screwed up, I knew what I had to do.

I grabbed my keys and headed out.

Two hours later, I walked through the front door carrying the smallest golden retriever puppy I could find. She had soft, floppy ears and big brown eyes that looked up at me with pure innocence. She let out a tiny bark and wagged her tail, completely oblivious to the fact that she was about to change everything.

"Alright, little one," I muttered, setting her down on the floor. She immediately clumsily ran in circles before tripping over her own paws. I shook my head, letting out a small laugh. “You’re perfect.”

I spent the next hour setting everything up—food and water bowls, a soft dog bed in the living room, and a basket full of chew toys. Then, I went into Y/N’s room.

I hadn’t stepped in here all week.

The bed was still made from the day she left, but dust had started to settle on the furniture. I grabbed a cloth and wiped down her desk, picked up a few stray hoodies from the floor, and smoothed out her comforter. Then, I did something I hadn’t done in a long time—I made it hers again.

I hung up framed photos on the wall—some of just her, some of us together when things were good. A picture of her and Luke from a summer trip, one of her as a little kid sitting on my shoulders, laughing. I even put up the poster she had been nagging me about but never got around to hanging. When I stepped back, the room felt warm again. Like home.

Like hers.

The puppy padded in behind me, tilting her head as she looked around. I knelt beside her, scratching behind her ears. "I hope this helps," I murmured, exhaling shakily. "I just want her to come home."

I pulled out my phone and hesitated before typing a message.

Me: Hey, kid. I know you’re mad at me. And you have every right to be. But I want you to know that I’m trying. I miss you.

I attached a picture of the golden retriever puppy, sprawled out on the floor, her tiny tail wagging at the camera.

Me: She’s waiting for you.

I hit send and sat on the edge of Y/N’s bed, staring at my phone, hoping—praying—she’d answer. after I saw that it had been read my heart raced 

y/n: no way, I'll ask uncle lukey to bring me back 

I felt like I was about to pass out from nerves. The puppy must have sensed it because she jumped up onto the couch, licking my face until I laughed. “You’re gonna help me win her back, okay?” I whispered, scratching her ears.

When I heard the car pull into the driveway, my heart pounded. I stood up, the puppy in my arms, as the front door opened. 

the puppy instantly ran towards y/n, she picked her up and held her

“Are you serious?” she whispered, looking up at me, her voice barely holding together.

I nodded. “she's yours. I know you’ve wanted one for a while.”

She stared at me, her grip tightening around the puppy as she blinked rapidly. “Why now?”

I exhaled, rubbing the back of my neck. “Because I haven’t been the dad you deserve. And I’m sorry. I’ve been distracted, and I haven’t been there for you the way I should be. But I’m done making excuses, Y/N. I want to be better. I will be better.” 

she gave me a hug wiping her tears on my hoodie  before taking her new best friend to her room  “You cleaned my room?” she asked softly as she opened the door 

“Yeah,” I admitted. 

She turned to me, her expression unreadable—then wrapped her arms around me again. “I love you, Dad.”

I held her tight. “I love you too, kid.”

[theaceace]

I know that canonically (show-wise, at least) St Hilarion's worked to cover up Charles' death, and nothing was ever really done about the disappearance of Edwin and the other boys, but even so, do you think the school has a reputation for being haunted??

I'm imagining Niko following various ghost-hunter groups online, especially when the agency doesn't have many cases going on, and occasionally the boys will mirror hop over to an interesting-sounding location, and they'll even get a real case as a result

So when she tells them that one of the teams is planning to investigate St Hilarion's (either it's been closed for a while or they have special permission to go during the summer holidays), Edwin and Charles steel themselves and decide to go, in case there are other ghosts there that need help ('can't imagine a worse place to be trapped for the rest of my afterlife' says Charles, who has been to literal hell. Edwin, who spent 70 years in literal hell, agrees)

So they go, with Niko and Crystal as moral/emotional support, except when they get there they realise they've fucked up and are there on the same day/night as the ghost hunters. They could come back some other time, but what if there really are ghosts here that are suffering? No one wants to take that chance, so Crystal uses her powers to convince them that she and Niko are there for work experience, or are friends of a friend, or are here to replace one of the tech guys who called in sick

Both Charles and Edwin are tense and uncomfortable returning to the place they died - Edwin had gone there after he escaped Hell because he didn't know where else to go, but they've built themselves a home now with the agency. This isn't like before, when it was the closest place to familiar he could find. Charles, meanwhile, feels colder and colder the longer they're there - his hair is wet, there are bruises flaring and spreading, and a faint rattle in his chest that would have become pneumonia if he'd lived long enough

But they need to be sure there aren't any other lost ghosts stuck here that need their help crossing over, so they keep going

(maybe, as a consequence of a door to hell being opened in the school, there are unusual happenings, maybe there's still a place where the line between earth and hell is very thin, maybe there's some fragment of a demon left behind, and they can do something about it)

Anyway, the most important thing is that Charles, either accidentally or in a fit of pique at the whole situation, knocks something over just as one of the paranormal investigators is asking for spirits to make their presence known. In fact, this happens repeatedly - the boys move things, change things around, their presence is detected somehow with the equipment. Crystal and Niko are doing their best to distract the team and ruin as much of the footage as possible, and at least once the boys do something on purpose, maybe because someone is being a creep to the girls (and yes, they both know that Crystal and Niko are more than capable of taking care of themselves, but this way scares the asshole more and is also funnier), and then also to fuck with their readings

Anyway, it's coming to the end of the night, the problem has been identified, and whaddaya knows, of course it's in the attic where they both died. This is fine, why wouldn't it be fine. They get started, draw some (invisible, ghostly) runes and start working their magic when, of course, the paranormal investigators turn up, because this is thought to be the most 'active' area of the school, and the body of a schoolboy was found here in the 80s

Yeah, they try to contact 'any of the boys who disappeared in 1916' and Charles. It would be fine if they weren't so irritatingly loud, Edwin's trying to concentrate, and Charles is now shivering and dripping wet, but they managed to ignore the team right up until they start speculating that Charles was killed by one of the angry spirits from 1916

At which point, Charles - half visible, clearly enraged, looking very much like the half-drowned and frozen kid he was, like a proper ghost - tells them to fuck off already before they get hurt, they don't understand anything, and how dare they give a shit now when it's too late

Which is, of course, the exact moment Edwin finishes the spell, and causes some sort of a magical rebound that fritzes the cameras for a second, throws furniture around, and knocks them all flying. When the cameras start up again, they catch Edwin kneeling by Charles, holding his hand, and softly telling him that it's ok, it's over, they can go now. Charles sniffs and smiles and knocks their foreheads together and says yeah, let's get out of here, and together they fade from view

The investigators think this means gay love can pierce the veil of death and save the day that now that the truth of their story is known the ghosts have moved on, and it's all thanks to them! How beautiful, how wonderful, how affirming! Perhaps one of the boys from 1916 tried to help Charles, and when that didn't work, they both stayed to try and protect other people from these violent spirits, and now their unfinished business is finished! It's so tragic and touching story

Charles and Edwin, who are putting their tools back in the backpack, roll their eyes and smile at each other

On the way out, Charles swipes the memory cards from the cameras, Edwin inscribes a couple of sneaky runes on various pieces of equipment to fuck with it, and Crystal uses her powers to make sure they all remember a couple of details differently, so later they won't be able to agree on a bunch of stuff

The episode they were trying to make can't be released, their social media posts about the experience are full of details that don't match up, and fans are bitterly disappointed

Crystal and Niko watch the footage Charles stole with Jenny and the Night Nurse back at the agency. Jenny turns it into a drinking game. Charles does a dramatic reading of the posts with added commentary while Edwin pretends he's not laughing. They buy t-shirts of the paranormal investigators and wear them ironically. They leave anonymous comments

Just. The dead boy detectives having to work around ghost hunters, in a world where ghosts definitely, tangibly exist

[inmyheaddd]

can i call you tonight? - xander hawthorne x reader

a/n: i adore autumn with my whole heart but i’m missing those carefree summer romance vibes soo bad 😖 wc: 1.8k warnings: kissing, mild language, verryyy fluffy ur teeth might fall out masterlist

the sun was just beginning to set, the sky looking like something out of a painting, and you and xander had spent the whole day at the beach together — swimming, laughing, and, of course, getting covered in sand. 

now, still giggling from the ‘sand ball’ fight you had with him earlier, you both stumbled toward the beach shower, desperate to wash the sand off of you.

the water came out freezing at first, eliciting a yelp from you as you stumbled back — in turn making xander laugh, before you adjusted the temperature perfectly to your liking.

which, according to xander, was: very, very, hot.

“are you trying to boil us alive?” his eyes were comically wide, furrowing his brows after he stood under it for half a second, jumping back with a shout. 

you simply stood under the shower head calmly, attempting to get the sand out of your hair.

you huffed a laugh through your nose, “xander, it’s not even that hot, i—“

“—were the hours under the scorching sun not enough? you also need to stand under water that’s practically a few degrees away from turning you into a boiled lobster?” he rambled on. 

atleast he was so chill and normal about the temperature, so very calmly expressing his dislike!  

you stifled a laugh as he continued, unbotheredly wringing water out of your hair as you watched him complain. “i’m just saying, there’s a fine line between a shower and a chemical peel.” he said, pointing at the shower with a shake of his head. 

“that water is hot enough to sterilize surgical instruments.” he crossed his arms over his bare chest, as you watched him watch you, a slightly confused furrow in your brows and intrigued smile growing on your face.

a slow grin grew on his face as he raked his eyes over you, taking in your slightly sunburned nose, wet hair, and bathing suit you had picked out with him a few weeks back. 

he lolled his head to the side before he spoke, “i’m sorry— why was i mad again?”

you laughed at his quick demeanor change, playfully rolling your eyes and sighing dramatically before making the temperature colder and motioning for him to step in.  “just get in, you big baby.”

“oh, thankyou very much, i appreciate your willingness.” he responded, bowing his head jokingly as he stepped under the water, his hands finding your lower back instantly. 

but of course, xander being xander, couldn’t just stand there like a regular person. 

no, he shook his head, like some sort of dog sending water droplets and little sand particles everywhere. 

“xander!” you squealed, shielding your face and taking a step back, but you couldn’t stop laughing. 

“oh my god— you’re so annoying!” you squeaked out, still laughing.

he chuckled, taking a step closer to you and placing his hands where they just were, eyes sparkling with mischief as water dripped down his hair. “and you’re so easy to annoy.”

he reached out, gently brushing sand off your cheek, his touch lingering for a moment longer than necessary. “that wasn’t funny.” you said, biting back a smile. 

it was funny, but he didn’t have to know that.

“i’m sorry,” he faux pouted at you. he didn’t sound sorry, in fact, he sounded a little amused. 

you felt your stomach do a little flip, but before you could say anything, his eyebrows raised like a lightbulb went off in his head, and he grabbed the shampoo bottle from your beach bag on the ledge. 

“here, let me do this right.” he turned to stand behind you, pouring an adequate amount into his hand and then started working his fingers into your scalp. 

you tried to turn your head to ask him what he was doing, but it did feel a little nice to stand there and feel his hands run through your hair. okay, maybe not just a little.

he gently guided your head back forward. "hold still," he said, his voice lower, but with a little hint of that teasing edge remaining. 

when he noticed you weren’t saying anything back, and that if anything you were feeling relaxed, he spoke again. 

“see, would you look at that?" he said softly, "i can be helpful too." 

you could practically hear the grin in his voice, but it was hard to focus on that with the way you felt like you were buzzing under his touch.

you hummed, “yeah, only when you want to be.” you let your eyes close for a moment, and then he spoke again.

“i want to be helpful with you all the time.” you could hear the fake pout in his voice, then it flipped completely, and you heard that grin in what he said next.

“i’d make an excellent stay at home husband for you, yeah?” he joked with his voice all breathy-like. 

“you wouldn’t have to worry about me complaining…” he trailed off, “you know, except about the shower temperature.”

you let out a little chuckle, and opened your mouth to remind him about the time he somehow burnt instant noodles, and that maybe being a stay-at-home husband wasn’t the right path. 

you didn’t get the chance to say anything, though, because he swiftly grabbed your shoulders and turned you around, standing you under the shower head. 

your eyelids immediately squeezed shut, squealing a little with your whole face scrunched up as the shampoo-y water ran down your hair.  you were careful not to get it in your eyes, laughing as xander stepped infront of you and gently moved your hair out of your face. 

you opened your eyes, still squinting a little as you looked up at him. “that also wasn’t funny.” you remarked. “not in the slightest.”

he quirked a brow up, looking like he was biting back a grin, “it wasn’t?” he asked, cocking his head to the side in question.

“no.” 

then a roguish smile started to spread on his face, and you began to deeply regret your words. 

“well then, would you like to see,” he paused for dramatic effect and raised his eyebrows, “something funny?”

you were the one biting back a smile now, taking a step back from xander as you shook your head, already anticipating what he was going to do. 

“…no.”

he rendered the step you took back obsolete as he stepped right on forward, his smile turning into a chuckle as you shook your head. 

there were about three things you were afraid of in this world, 1: a bug getting in your food and you eating it, 2: getting kidnapped and held hostage, and 3: xander blackwood hawthorne’s tickles. 

“xander, i was kidding, i swear.” you rambled with your voice dropping lower, trying to get out of this situation, but xander’s face only scrunched up in laughter as he gave you about 5 seconds to make your case.  

“you’re like, the funniest person i’ve ever met! you’re so charming and hilarious, and —“

your time was over, it seemed, because xander bent down and picked you up over his shoulder, his laughs increasing in volume as you squealed in the secluded beach. “xander! it was a joke, i promise! put me down!” 

as if he was on a quest to become even more annoying he began running to the beach beds, regardless of your protests which were now coming out more as laughs. 

he placed you on a beach bed breathlessly, his hands coming to cup your face as he basically climbed on top of you, then leant down to kiss you.

oh, you weren’t expecting that. 

granted, you were both still breathless, and the two of you were smiling and laughing against each other so much, that you weren’t sure whatever you were doing could be considered a kiss.

then it came. xander pulled back ever so slightly and his hands moved down and jabbed at your neck, then your sides, your arms, anywhere you were ticklish, and you were both equally a laughing wreck. 

you tried to peel his hands off of you as you writhed under him, repeating his name surely over 20 times in between giggles. 

after what seemed like forever, he stopped, putting his hands up in the air as he sat up, and your chest heaved as you caught your breath.

“now,” he said, “was that funny?” he raised an eyebrow, “choose your answer very wisely.” 

“fine,” you huffed, “it was a little funny.” 

his other brow joined the raised one at the top of his forehead, “that was not the wise  answer i thought of,” he muttered, as he slowly started put his hands back down towards you, your eyes darting between his face and his hands.

“okay. okay, yes!” you scrambled before he could literally attack you again, “i lied, it was funny, and not just a little.” 

his hands retreated, “brilliant. very wise answer,” he commented, “well done.” 

he brought his hands up to your jaw and only your jaw this time, cradling your face like he did earlier as he placed a short peck on your lips, but you pulled him in for a longer one. 

he smiled at that— you felt it, and he reciprocated the kiss 10x harder.  

 as he pulled back, resting his forehead against yours, he murmured with his voice low. “question,”

“what is it?” you breathed out, still catching your breath. 

“does it genuinely annoy you when i tickle you like that?” he asked, his voice bare of any teasing, “don’t lie, please.” he added on. 

“besides, i can be very perceptive of micro-expressions, and i can feel your heartbeat against me right now.” 

you let out a little laugh, even though your heart was doing somersaults in that moment. xander was possibly  the most caring person you’d ever met —he was a deeply empathetic person underneath his rube goldberg obsessions and masks of humor he used so often.

“no,” you said truthfully, “i don’t actually get annoyed, i could never actually get annoyed at you. why?” 

you felt his breath hitch against your lips, a very un-xander like manner. “your micro-expressions and heart rate indicate you’re telling me the truth.” he muttered. 

how did he sound hot talking about micro expressions and heart rates?

then you realized, he was expertly dodging your question on “why?”.

“because it is the truth.” you muttered back, smiling a little as you watched him pull back too see your eyes better. 

he didn’t say anything after that— in lieu of words, he pressed another sweet kiss to your lips. he wasn’t one to expose his worries or be vulnerable very often, and you understood that. he’s opened before about people saying he’s ‘too much’ and how it sometimes gets to him, but in all honesty, you could never get enough of him.   

as you felt the warmth of his hands on your face and your lips moved across his in rhythm, a thought crossed your mind: 

if that’s what you get for telling him he was funny, you’d start telling him he’s a world class comedian now. 

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[kings-highway]

this has been in my drafts since April and I cant remember if I'd just planned to go back to it and add more or smth but thats never gonna happen so

Asanoya traveling the world together headcanons:

- Nishinoya is about 90% in charge of their destinations but Asahi books flights/train tickets because Noya gets overwhelmed at all the options and half the time books something that drops off nowhere near their destination

- While Noya tends to be more social and will strike up a conversation with everyone they meet to learn their life story, Asahi is usually people's favourite and he'll get invited to dinners and events like 20 seconds after meeting someone because they just think he's "such a nice guy". Noya can't leave him alone without some local trying to take him away to give him a private tour of whatever site they're at

- Asahi loses weight while traveling because he is not food-adventerous at all and struggles to appreciate local cuisine or customs when it comes to eating unfamiliar products. Noya worries about this so much that it almost ruins the trip for him in particularly off-the-grid locations, because Asahi would never dare complain out loud and Noya has missed the fact that he hasn't eaten properly in a few days before. He is so unbelievably guilt ridden over this that he's started keeping a stash of protein bars and other dense snacks as a mandatory pre-trip checkbox.

- Noya is really good at picking up beginner-level language skills so he gets pretty good at navigating wherever they go. Asahi has never successfully learned another language beyond "hello," "thank you," and "sorry."

- Although they like the luxury of a nice hotel on occassion, they both really enjoy staying in hostels and getting to meet other travelers. It gives them ideas for their next destination.

- They end up in Brazil one summer and follow a goddamn easter egg hunt about a beach volleyball legend only to finally solve it and find Hinata just standing there waving excitedly. Honestly in hindsight they should have seen the signs. Hinata is very excited to show them how to play and then is absolutely shocked to see them absolutely nail the first point without issues. "Oh, I guess we didn't mention, we spent a few months in Portugal and learned it there."

- They bump into a lot of the other globetrotting characters. They're especially fond of the chocolate shop Tendou apprentices at, but had to learn his schedule to go in to avoid running into him because he scares them still.

- Whenever they return to Japan to connect with all their old friends they end up doing like a 2h ted talk going through all their stories and best moments.

- Asahi is the first to "retire" the traveling bc he gets a hoity job at a design company and needs to be able to work consistently. Noya insists he could probably design shirts from a beach but to each their own.