#I watch them everyday they stream before I go to work

[bibleofficial]

ok so man that i hooked up w like 2 weeks ago that i wanted to see for like dates: cancelled. i’m bored of him 😭😭😭

[russellsppttemplates]

Max (or lando) is streaming and the oldest comes in and asks to watch so they do and then reader walks in and tells then dinner is ready and it’s just all cute and that

Note: I wrote a lot for Max yesterday, so I chose Lando!

"Yes?", Lando called back after he heard a knock on the door, turning to see your daughter by the door, "can I come in, daddy?", Matilda asked quietly, knowing hr was streaming.

"Of course you can, princess! Come here", he said, turning on his side so she could walk up to him and sit on his lap, "is that chat?", she asked, not knowing how to read yet but recognising them moving fast on the screen, "yes, baby, can you say hi to them? They're saying you look very pretty in your bow and that you're very cute", Lando summed the messages up, seeing her smile as she waved shyly to the camera, "Hi, chat! My mummy did my hair today, and grandma always says I'm cute like mummy, too", she blushed, hiding her face in Lando's neck for a brief moment before she took a little peek at the screen, one of her hands going up to his curls so she could play with them, "what are you playing?", she wondered, "mummy went up to put Fraser to sleep, he was being very fussy, though".

Luckily for him, the game was pretty kid friendly, cars racing on the track on the screen, "I'm driving, see?", he showed her, "That's me in there", he smiled as he pointed to the map on the bottom right side of the screen as Matilda focused on it, "did she say she needed help?", he asked Matilda. "No, she said to tell you that she could do it on her own", she replied simply.

"You're winning, daddy! Go, daddy, go!", she cheered as he expertly worked the commands, fighting closely before finishing first in the end, "you won!", she said as she kissed his cheek, "is that my gift for winning?", Lando wondered, hugging her body closer to his now his hands were not needed on the keyboard, "yes, and I can also make a drawing for you after dinner!", she smiled.

"Guys?", you knocked on the door, seeing two pairs of identical eyes look at you, "Dinner is ready!", you sang before getting in shot, "Hi chat! I know they look very cute, how do you think I feel all day everyday?", you chuckled before kissing both of their heads, "whenever you can come down for dinner, it's ready. I made your favourite, Tilly", you winked.

"Bye-bye, chat!", the little girl waved, "C'mon, daddy! Mummy made my favourite, we have to hurry!", she said as she climbed out of his lap, hurriedly meeting you in the dining room as Lando ended his stream, "it was nice, everyone! Until next time!".

(Thank you for your submission ✨️)

[exhaslo]

So I wanted to request ( that I forgot but remembered 😭) a bully!miguel x a nobody/shy!reader (female)

(college?)

like what I mean by a nobody is someone who’s is shy but is a introvert but do come to party to see if something happens or like to see people crush or goes to party with people if they don’t have anyone. and Miguel is a bully who’s offended involved and invited to party or hang out with his friends also a jerk to everyone. And everyone know him his popular,I mean how could he not when he built like that?! He popular with the female, and the jock? But often tried to ignored them especially the girls. So like one day in the hallway and Miguel is talking his group of friends and telling him “who’s shall we bully next?” But ignoring them as he see you walking in the hallway and see you around the campus like your a new kids (I mean it a big campus but he know everyone except you ?) and going to walk to the library till some other bullies decide to bring them into the game and bully you which make Miguel pissed 😝.(I feel like reader would be bully by many people because she never stand up for herself and Is rather quiet about anything mb it know everything and everyone) so what if that pissed turn into obsessive 🤭? And into making love ?

smut /fluff pls ?

Okie Okie Okie, I gots an idea for this! Hope you enjoy~

Summary: The campus bully wants a private tutor session from you~

Warning: Minors DNI, Smut, bullying, dry humping, fingering, public sex, almost caught, cockwarming

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Miguel had started to grow bored of his day to day life. Everyday was like the same clock worth motion. Went to class, picked on some wimps and nerds with the guys, women all on his beck and call and the constant nagging of being invited to parties.

Miguel liked his life at first, but things started to grow old and boring. He needed something new. Something to keep things alive. First, it was changes majors, then it was picking on different people. When those didn't work, Miguel tried dating different women. Nothing seemed to have worked and Miguel was wondering if he needed to do something drastic.

"Hey, why don't we play a huge prank on the freshmen this year? They all have to attend that assembly, right?" One of Miguel's friends was saying. Miguel was laying against the campus grass,

"What were you thinking of?"

Miguel grunted lowly to the idea offered. He sat up, fixing his leather jacket before watching his fellow students run amok. People rushing to class or staying out in the quad with friends. Everyone looked like they were enjoying themselves. Everyone but him.

"Hey, watch this."

Miguel's ears perked up as he watched Ben throw his juice towards the center quad. Miguel's gaze followed the juice and noticed that it landed right on your head. His eyes widen as you looked up with tears in your eyes.

Unsure of what came over him, Miguel snapped towards Ben. He growled lowly and made his way over to you. Tears were streaming down your face as you tried to pick up your paperwork that had fallen. Miguel bend down, helping with the papers and took a better look at you.

"T-Thank you," You sniffled.

Miguel felt like he was in a trance. Your glossy eyes were staring into his. Your cheeks were puffy and slightly pink from your tears and your lips. Your outfit was hiding your cleavage and curves. It was like you were waiting to be unwrapped.

"Sorry about them." Miguel snapped out of his daze and went to wipe your tears away, "Let me help you dry these."

"O-Oh...T-Thank you...but....I-I um...I can handle it." Your voice kept getting lower and lower. Miguel glanced around, noticing the other girls,

"You're in my Physics class," Miguel read the top of your paper, "I've never noticed you before. I'm Miguel,"

"I-I know...I um...sit in the back," You kept whispering. Miguel bit the inside of his lip,

"You got a higher mark than me in the last exam. Mind tutoring me?"

Miguel watched as you looked up at him with a sparkle in your eye. You went to reply, but were interrupted by the other girls. Miguel resisted a groan, getting frustrated. He wanted to know more about you. You were different than the others.

"Migueeeeel, come hang out with us! Not this hag!"

"Yea, she's a nobody!"

You hung your shoulders, gripping your work closer to your chest. Tears threaten to spill once more as you ran off. Miguel wanted to reach out to you. He growled lowly, needing to find a way to get to listen to your sweet voice some more.

----------

"Hey, (Y/N), are you free now?" Miguel asked as the Professor dismissed you for the day. You looked around, noticing that everyone was gone,

"I-I am."

"Look," Miguel fixed the chair in front of you, "I want to get to know you and it's difficult as you've seen. Why don't we meet in one of the private rooms in the library? You help me with this class and I'll help you with everything else." Miguel offered. You noticed him sliding his report card to you,

"Y-You're so smart!" You gasped, "B-But the other girls-"

"Don't worry about them. I want to hang out with you."

You could feel your face turn bright red as you hesitantly agreed. Honestly, you were both nervous and excited. Miguel was known as the campus mad dog; the top bully. Yet, here he was, talking to you so gently and asking to hang out with you. It felt like a cruel dream. One where you knew you were going to get hurt in the end.

"H-Here's my number...I'll see....you later?"

"Yea"

-----------

You and Miguel had been meeting for private tutoring sessions for a couple of weeks now. You were slowly getting used to Miguel. Getting a little more comfortable. You were getting closer to him, making your own little jokes. Everything that you felt comfortable doing alone, you shared with Miguel.

Miguel on the other hand felt alive. He enjoyed spending time with you. Miguel loved watching you come out of your shell for him. He eventually found out how truly quiet and shy you were. This fueled Miguel to not only be better for you, but to help you stand up for yourself.

"M-Miguel, s-sorry I'm late," You stuttered, hurrying into the room. Miguel noticed your frantic expression and gently pulled you onto his lap,

"Breathe, tell me what happened."

You trembled softly under his touch, slowly relaxing. Miguel's body was so big and warm. You loved it when he wrapped his arms around you for comfort. It helped ease your nerves. Inhaling deeply, you raised your head, facing Miguel.

"I-It's nothing...Just...Just um...S-Some girls trying to...to get your whereabouts....out of me..."

"Is that why your hair is shorter?" Miguel played with your hair, his head resting against your neck, "It's hard for me to hold back my anger."

"Y-Your turn...t-to breathe!" You told him.

Miguel growled lowly before looking you in the eye. He saw those glossy eyes of yours and sighed. He leaned forward and licked your tears away, earning those soft and embarrassed squeaks from you. He chuckled lowly, his fingers stroking your sides as you trembled from his touch.

Oh, how you already belonged to him. The more Miguel spent with you, the more he tested your limits. He had not gotten a confession out of you yet, knowing how shy you were. Miguel wanted you to scream his name out. Miguel wanted to watch you cry in pleasure because of him.

"W-We should....should s-start...s-studying," You stuttered, your arms slowly wrapping around his neck.

"Why not biology?" Miguel's hands trailed up your back from under your shirt.

"B-But...w-we're not-"

"Right here,"

Miguel licked his lips as he started to slowly grind against you. Your breathing was getting a little louder as you began to whimper. Miguel held your hips down slightly as his hands stroked your back. You whined lowly, your own hips moving with his. Your cheeks were turning redder as you held onto Miguel.

"M-Mig...T-This...T-This isn't-"

"Are you feeling good?" Miguel asked as he kissed your neck.

"Y-Yes."

"Good. Tell me when to stop then,"

Miguel licked the base of your neck as he grinded harder against your clothed cunt. You let out quiet moans, trying to cover your mouth. Oh how cute you were. Miguel resisted a groan, watching you fall apart because of him. Watching his shy little angel come undone because of him.

Miguel lifted your skirt and flipped you over. Your back was now against his chest. Grunting, Miguel took his dick out and started to rub his cock between your thighs against your clothed pussy. You whimpered a moan, feeling a growing heat between your legs. Miguel's hands massaged one of your breasts, while the other reached your clit,

"You know what happens when I touch here, right?" Miguel chuckled as you shook against him, "That isn't the right answer, let me show you."

You kept covering your mouth, moaning into your hand as Miguel started to rub your clit. His cock sliding against your soaked panties, causing you to get hotter. You spread your legs out, moving your hips with his movements. His hot breathe was against your neck as he continued to toy with your body.

"M-Miguel~!" You cried out, arching your back forward as you reached your orgasm. Miguel groaned in response, moving your panties to the side,

"What a good fucking girl you are," He whispered in your ear, his fingers not playing with your throbbing hole, "Do you still want me to teach this tutoring session?" He asked, feeling you clamp against his fingers,

"Mhpm~"

"I need to hear words,"

"Y-Yes, p-please k-keep teaching me." You begged.

You whined softly as he removed his fingers from your hole. Miguel turned your head to capture your lips in a kiss as he slowly pressed his tip against your entrance. You whimpered at first, feeling yourself being stretched out as his dick entered you. He was so large that it made you see stars. His cock reaching so deep inside you and with each squeeze of your pussy, making his shape imbedded into you.

"Hah, look at you. The quietest girl on campus, sucking my dick so well. You were just made for me," Miguel groaned, holding you in place as you squirmed slightly.

"Hey! How much longer do you guys have this room for?" Someone knocked before entering.

Miguel quickly fixed your skirt and held your waist before throwing some random textbooks before the two of you. You squeezed against his dick tighter, fearing being caught.

"Shh, we got another hour in here. She's terrified of failing this class, now fuck off." Miguel hissed.

The person scoffed and left. Miguel let out a sigh of relief and smirked as you whimpered. Your tight gummy walls squeezing the life out of his cock.

"Did almost getting caught turn you on? How naughty." He teased, nibbling against your ear. You whined softly, trying to move, but Miguel refused, "Now, now, I think we actually need to learn something here."

---------

You were hugging Miguel tightly, your head against his shoulder as you whimpered softly against his ear. Miguel had you sitting on his cock for over twenty minutes now. He only moved you once and that was to the currently position the two of you were in. All you wanted was for Miguel to move. His cock felt so hot inside of you. You could feel ever vein of his dick and the little curve of his tip against your cervix.

"Miguel~" You begged lowly. Miguel inhaled at the sound of your moans,

"You've been such a good girl for me. I couldn't help but bully you a little. Are you ready?" Miguel asked.

"Y-Yes. P-Please gimme." You begged.

Miguel groaned at the sound. He kissed you tenderly before thrusting into you. He swallowed the sounds of your yelps and moans as he bullied your pussy. His rough and harsh thrusts, sending you over the moon. You were so wet. So easy to fuck. Miguel knew that he had to prep you before fucking you madly like he was now. Watching the door, Miguel grabbed your panties and stuffed them in your mouth,

"Just cum for me once. It's too dangerous to go all out here," Miguel whispered as he felt you cum against his dick, "Good girl,"

Miguel smirked as he pounded your pussy a few more times. He loved watching your fucked out expression. The wet slapping noises of your bodies every time he thrusted into you. Miguel grunted lowly as he slapped himself deep, filling your desperate hole. Panting softly, he quickly fixed the two of you up, before taking you back to his dorm.

"Fuck, I'm going to fuck you so good tonight, (Y/N). I love you, ya know that?" He groaned, making sure no one saw them. You just held onto Miguel, whimpering lowly,

"I-I love you too...B-But Miguel?"

"Yes?"

"I-I don't think you bullied me enough,"

"I'll make sure to bully you for the rest of your life."

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Whoops, kind of got a little carried away with this. Hope you enjoy~

[bedoballoons]

I wanna request smthng simple,,,

Any character with user that naturally have a really hot body temperature plz (on my knees)

This is actually right up my alley, I always run warmer compared to everyone else! I love it, thank you so much for your request and I hope you enjoy <3

─⊰⁠⊹ฺ🍂𝔾𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕙𝕚𝕟 ℍ𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕠𝕟𝕤⊰⁠⊹ฺ🍂

{༻~To hawt~༺}

CW: Suggestive fluff! MDNI! Mentions of being in the shower together and multiple other scenarios! (Pet names: Lyney: Mon amour, Diluc: My dear, Albedo: My love,

(Includes: Lyney, Diluc, Albedo,and Wriothesley!)

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

𑁍༄Lyney:

You tossed and turned in bed, feeling like you were melting under the hot covers...when had the cold night air turn into muggy warmth. You lifted the blanket off of yourself, almost gasping at the relief the cooler air brought to your body, now if only Lyney could take the rest of the blankets so they weren't touching you at all, then you might just be able to-

"M...mmon amour?"

"Oh no did I wake you Lyney?"

"No, its just really cold out and I could feel the blankets moving. Why are you in uncovered? You're going to freeze to death. Here let me tuck you in."

"No no, that's okay! Ha, I was actually feeling warm!"

"..." He paused for a second, contemplating wether you'd actually meant your body temperature was running higher than a normal person's would...or if this was actually due to some suggestive dreams. The second answer left a bit of room for flirting, even if it was the middle of the night he'd never miss the opportunity. "Mon amour, if you are ever feeling overheated...you can always ask me for help~"

𑁍༄Diluc:

Diluc pulled back from the water the second it hit his skin, feeling like he'd just been hit with a bucket of ice water,...when he said he wanted to take a shower with you...he hadn't expected that to mean a cold one. "Ahem...could we turn up the heat of the water? I can't imagine what use we have for a cold shower at this moment in time."

"It's not cold though, this is my normal shower temperature. Actually it's a little warm for me." You smiled at him brightly, rubbing shampoo into your hair while he stared back at you in shock...how could water that felt like it had been shipped right from the dragon spine streams...be what you shower in everyday? "Diluc...?"

"...is it because you're to hot?"

Your eyes widened at his question, soap suds running down your soft skin as his face turned red, he hadn't meant it the way it sounded, but now of course he couldn't take it back, especially since the both of you were currently naked in front of eachother...trying to unsay something like that wasn't going to work in this situation.

"...."

"....."

"Just to hot to handle I guess."

"Yes, yes you are my dear."

𑁍༄Albedo:

"Here you go my love, please keep warm with it." Albedo draped his coat onto your shoulders, hoping to heat you up while the two of you watched the subtle snowfall of dragonspine. He wasn't sure how you hadn't started shivering already, usually humans would be freezing about now, but you actually didn't seem bothered in the slightest.

"Awe you don't have to. I'm actually not cold at all if you'd like to keep it." You snuggled up closer to him, emphasizing your body heat as your warm hand slid into his delicate cold one...you really didn't seem affected by the snow. How very interesting. "We've been together for awhile now and I've noticed you always tend to run warmer than others. Is there a reason behind this? Perhaps somewhere in your family lineup your relatives bonded with that of a pyro slime..."

"What in teyvat are you talking about? I highly doubt any of my relatives had relationships with pyro slimes, I just have a high body heat and being near you doesn't help." Your heart instantly picked up pace as your words slipped out before you could stop them...when had you gotten flirty?

"I suppose it would be a slimy situation either way then hm?"

"A-a-albedo!"

𑁍༄Wriothesley:

"How would you like your tea?" His grace set out a cup of sugar, excited to hear what kind of ways you liked to mix up the delicious drink. In truth this was a incredibly important question to him, after all it's his favourite beverage and he makes it often, knowing your order will tell him more about you and allows him to make it just the way you like from then on. He only hoped you wouldn't get tired of it soon after he started serving it to you..

"Hmm a couple spoonfuls of sugar and lots of ice!"

"...ice?" His ears perked up, attention fully trained on you...he simply couldn't imagine why someone would want to put ice into their hot tea. To cool it down? But wouldn't it loose it's flavour, leaving it more like a tea flavoured water instead?

"Mhm! Iced tea is so yummy and it makes it harder for my body to overheat!"

"...iced tea. Do you normally use ice as a means to cool yourself off?"

"...yes."

"Interesting, I'll have to remember that~"

"Remember that for what???"

"Nothing."

"Wrio??"

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

ଘ(੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ♡‧₊˚~Have a nice day~*⁠.⁠✧

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

You don't need to worry about the ATSV fandom dying. As someone whose been in the Marvel fandom over ten years - I can assure you this is natural.

The ATSV Fandom Isn't Dead: A brief look into the science of fandoms.

[me standing beside Hobie beaming my thoughts of love and adoration into his head like I'm professor x]

A lot of people are afraid of the ATSV dying - and I don't blame them.

In the era of shows releasing all in one day, or movies coming to streaming almost immediately - it's not hard to say we're in an era were content is consumed at ridiculously rapid rates.

I mean, this time last year Wednesday was breaking records on Netflix. Where's the hype now?

I know you see it too, there's less posts everyday in the Hobie tag, less screenshot breakdowns, etc etc etc.

But I'm here to tell you - The ATSV fandom is doing just fine. Better than fine. All of this is meant to happen.

Let me put it into perspective.

ATSV released on June 2nd - it's November.

ATSV released a little over six months ago.

For reference: The Avengers (2012) was released on May 4th.

The Avengers DVD wasn't available for purchase until SEPTEMBER 25th - almost SIX months later.

The time that the Hobie fandom has formed and existed - is the same amount of time people had to wait just to see The Avengers again.

Large periods of time where tags only get three posts a day TOPS was nothing to fear. xReaders and fanfics held the fandom over until the next trailer, the next sneak peek or leak.

Prior to the release of streaming, only a little more than ten years ago - it was NATURAL for a fandom to wait six months before even seeing the movie for a second time.

And mind you - streaming didn't exist. If you wanted to see The Avengers again, you had to go out and BUY it. $26.99.

If you wanted to order it online - you'd have to get it shipped to you. Before Disney plus, we watched on BlueRay Discs.

And the fandom was fine and healthy.

If a fandom that doesn't even have a DVD release can keep up content for six months, I think we'll be fine.

But I'll admit - there's still the question:

If the ATSV fandom is 'doing fine' then where is everyone going? Why are the tags getting slower?

The answer is simple:

FANDOM BIOLOGY

I LOVE social sciences and the systems people create and how they work - even unintentionally.

And I have a theory - one about the natural evolution and regeneration of fandom. Hear me out -

When it comes to ATSV:

We are leaving the Analysation Phase, the phase in which content creation is centered around deciphering and breaking down the most recent installment in the fandom.

During this phase usually see art of newer characters, new ships, meta breakdowns, easter egg point-outs.

We were in that phase.

Once the Analysation Phase dies down, usually main content creators may remain. The intermediate or liminal period.

The intermediate is usually when you'll see more x-reader art pop-up, the levels of fanart evening out as artists return to their favorite characters - usually incorporating any new ones they gained from the last installment.

Shitposts usually also become popular around this time, as the shock and weight of the story wear off, and we're more able to joke about the storyline a lot more light-heartedly.

That's why the intermediate point is often see as the passion 'dying out'.

When in fact, it is the fandom getting comfortable. Resting for the next phase.

And after a few months, the next phase comes:

The Speculation Phase:

The Speculation Phase cannot come until the Analysation Phase is over.

During the Analysation Phase the fandom begins to breakdown and digest the writers intentions. They integrate the new character into the story, and the fandom.

As the audience and fandom talk amongst each other, we get more solid ideas of who the characters are, what their motivations might be, and most important of all-

What they might do.

In the Speculation Phase we turn from the last installment - and start looking towards the future.

Let's take Hobie for example.

Looking at the timeline of the Hobie fandom, we can see a progression.

Originally taken as a punk-rockstar and little more, throughout the months the fandom began posting things about punk culture, the 70's, Hobie's motivation in the comics, and how that all correlates to him.

As the fandom analyzed, the collective zeitgeist and understanding of Hobie grew into something a lot more sound, and telling.

We looked at the parellels he provides in the story, and what kind of person he is.

And because if that we have seen a marked improvement in people's contextual understanding of Hobie - as a punk and a hero.

And now that we can understand him - we can predict him.

The same goes for Miguel - over the months, a lot of us have began to question if we know him as well as we think we do , if we really know the kinda person he is -

And if we really know what he's doing to do.

That's where the Speculation Phase comes in.

The Speculation Phase in fandom is when we see some of the most passion - and instead of tapering off overtime, it builds. More and more until the next release.

The Speculation Phase is when the fandom takes the analysis' and from there, they begin to theorize.

Now that we understand, we can begin to predict.

And this is arguably one of the most interesting parts in a fandoms natural ecosystem.

During the Speculation Phase, we can see a number of diverse opinions appear.

As more and more creators begin to gather their understanding, tips from the writers, new released news, and past comic book arcs, we start to see dozens of triguing paths the writers can take us on.

As more news releases, the more hype people get. I mean - imagine how you'll feel when they release the first new poster of Hobie, or Miles? Or when we get to see Miles.G in the trailer?

And with each new poster, or trailer, we're given clues. The theorizes develop more. And the plot thickens.

It's all natural.

So I can understand the fear. Only getting one or two new posts when you visit the Hobie tag can be a bummer. But it's natural and it's GOOD.

Y'all, we need to conserve our energy. We are in the liminal phase. And they never last long.

With the news of the voice actors back in the studio, and a cliff-hanger like we have - I can assure you, it's only a matter of time before we begin to see the theories, the trailer breakdowns, the people guessing what Miguel might do, or exactly how much tech Hobie is hiding.

And when that time comes we need to be READY. I can already feel it on the horizon.

I really wonder what they'll do with all that left over Hobie concept art.

Plus with explosion of Hobie approval, I wonder if they'll add him in even more. Hobie fan-service anyone?

Hmmm...

But chill y'all, we're on the right track -

-------------------------------------

If you read this far, as always THANK YOU SO MUCH!! And as a token of my appreciation, I hand you this Hobie. Hold him gently please

Bye 💗

[amourdivine]

୨ ♡ ୧︰ TAROT 101: developing your intuition.

Hello lovelies, welcome to the first post of my Tarot 101 series! After receiving a few questions, I decided to incorporate a series of tips and tutorials for other self-taught readers. Today, I'm answering a follower's asks sent in my DM's. I'm tackling it separately, so it makes more sense to other people to read it. PS: Since this is a major work in progress and I'm not an all-knowing, almighty entity, please provide feedback, comments or concerns you might have! Thank you.

☁️ ˚ NAVIGATE ༉ ‧

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How you develop your intuition and psychic abilities while reading tarot?

There is not one size fits all. While many readers recommend connecting to oneself, that's just the basis of it, really, but the main concept is to look at yourself, compassionately. Without the judgment of our everyday lives and the chaos of getting things right in the first attempt. You cannot be honest with yourself (or your intuition), if self-denial is the state you're living in. Or worse: if you view the truth as punishment.

It's always going to be a journey of discovery, and the first thing about spirituality is that you need to keep an open heart to the magic. Skepticism may get you far ahead in your career or financial matters, but when it comes to intuition, you can't grasp onto logic all the time.

With tarot, it's a little more practical: learn and lean into the cards. Notice I didn't say memorize, because many of us are busy enough with our everyday schedules. Just tap into them. Look at them. What does The Lovers remind you of? Maybe it takes you to the story about the Garden of Eden. Or- maybe it reminds you of your parents, their golden youth before marrying.

Again. No judgement. Let your stream of consciousness free. A huge part of reading tarot is allowing your imagination to run wild. Although the Devil card can symbolize obsession or addiction at first, take into account the spread, the topic. The context. What is your body telling you about the images you see?

We often underestimate the symbolism behind the cards. Without considering the traditional meanings,take one card out of your deck and just look at it. What colors are prominent? What do these colors represent in modern society? Do these people look happy? Are there any people at all? Where are they? Let your mind weave a story.

As a tarot reader, what you do on daily basis for intuition and tarot reading? What practices, book, or some kind of information which help you for tarot readings?

There are many things that have helped me, personally, but I'm going to mention some of the best practices I've seen, both for myself and for others.

› Stay creative. If it means drawing, writing, or painting, then stay creative. Find whatever little (or big) ways you can express your creativity. Remember you don't have to be "good". You can just be. Creativity exists in a lot of ways.

› Engage with other readers. Observe them. You can find a tarot reader that deeply resonates with you and watch how they read. Test if it works for you. Remember this is your practice, it's your sacred space, so you don't have to follow someone else's rules.

› Read, if and when you can. I personally recommend the book "History of Tarot" by Isabelle Nadolny, but not everyone can afford books or the time to read them. There are plenty of Youtube tutorials and free guidebooks on Biddy Tarot, for example. I also love Servant of The Fates' blog. They're both different and great, reliable sources.

› Start small. You can pull one card a day. Get a journal, write its meaning (or what it means to you) and record your progress. In a few months, when you return to it, you might find it surprising.

› Let yourself not know everything. No one does. Sometimes, you'll need to pause, go back to a guidebook and read the meaning all over again. Other times, you'll look at the spread and feel nothing. That's okay too. We're not meant to know all the answers.

Is meditation really important for reading tarot? Why? How much time do you spend daily for tarot readings and spiritual practices?

Since this is more of a personal matter, I'll be talking about myself. I don't meditate as often as most readers. Three times a month, maybe? I have a busy schedule and I can only meditate before bed, if I'm not too sleepy. Many people find that meditation makes them anxious or they're not able to fully let go. Other people find it that being in silence or taking a walk is more useful to them. Relaxation and meditation come in many, many forms. The important thing is to nurture your body and soul more than to adhere to rigid rules.

However, when it comes to saving time for readings or spiritual practices, I don't set rules for myself. It never works for me.

I let it flow. Sometimes, I go weeks on end without really consuming tarot content and I bond with my decks occasionally. And other times, I'm reading daily, journaling and trying to improve my skills. Since I have a billion other things to care for, I'm not always able to prioritize tarot as much as I'd like, but the important thing is to stay passionate, stay curious and get back to it. Better late than never.

When you're getting started, let yourself try. If you get it wrong, at least you'll be one step closer to getting it right.

amourdivine. 2021 - 2024 © do not copy, redistribute or edit my content.

[samandcolbyownme]

hey girl i asked this before but do you think you could work johnnie fluff into your one shots book?? like maybe where hes on stream like singing and the reader is just there idk

Warnings: some swearing, fluff

“There’s a lot of you here, fuck. Okay.” Johnnie laughs, “I’m going to sing now, if that’s okay with you.”

You smirk as you watch him lean back to grab his guitar.

“Is y/n here?” He smiles and flips his hair out of his face, “Do you want to say hi?”

You take a deep breath and stand up, peaking around to pop into frame, “Hi.” You laugh and go back to sit down, “There. I said hi.”

Johnnie smiles and nods, “There you all go.” He strums his guitar, “An official cover of this song will be out soon.”

He chuckles as he watches the chat go crazy, “Alright, let see if you can guess the song.”

You lean back, tilting your head as you listen to the strumming of his guitar. You focus on how he concentrated he is, and you can’t help but fall in love with him all over again.

“You and me, we used to be together..” Johnnie sings, “Every day together, always.”

You bite your lip, hiding your giddy smile as you listen to him sing in his soft whisper tone, “I really feel that I'm losin' my best friend..I can't believe this could be the end..”

He glances up at you, almost losing track as your smile makes him a bit nervous, “Fuck, sorry.” He clears his throat, strumming his guitar to get back into it.

“Don’t speak, I know just what you’re sayin’.. So please don’t stop explainin’.. Don’t tell me cause it hurts..”

“So yeah, that full cover will be out soon.” Johnnie flips his hair, dragging his hand over it, “Will I be doing any more covers?” He nods, “Probably, I love doing covers.”

“You should ask for song suggestions, J.” You smile and he motions to you, “If you heard her, I’ll do it.” He laughs, “I do have a few in storage that I really want to do, but I’ll get to them.. when I get to them I guess.”

You stare at Johnnie, watching as he talks back and forth with the chat.

You always wonder how you got so lucky with him, that’s a question that’s asked everyday.

“What are my plans for tonight?” Johnnie glances over at you and smiles, “I actually have dinner plans tonight and then after who knows.”

You raise your brows and Johnnie looks over at you, playing stupid, “Oh jeeze, did I forgot to mention that?”

“Yeah, you did.” You laugh, “I take it I need to go get ready?”

Johnnie nods, “Reservation is at six.” He smiles and you stand up, walking over to him. You stand behind him, bending down to wrap your arms around his neck as you read some of the chats.

User1: Y/N UR SO LUCKY

User2: I NEED A LOVE LIKE JOHNNIE AND Y/N

User3: Have a good date night you guys!

User4: Y/N I LOVE YOU SM

“I love you, too!” You smile and give Johnnie a kiss on the cheek, “I’ll go get ready.”

——

Short little blurb for you guys! Hope you liked! Thank you for reading! I love you so much and I’ll see you in the next one! 🖤

Likes and reblogs are majorly appreciated!

[m0dernidi0ts]

I Love You, I'm Sorry

Spencer Reid x Ex-BAU!Reader -- ANGST HEAVY Hi!!! This is my first fic on this page, so please be nice! I kept the reader gender neutral! This is based off I Love You, I'm Sorry by Gracie Abrams.

“Two Augusts ago

I told the truth, oh, but you didn't like it, you went home

You're in your Benz, I'm by the gate

Now you go alone

Charm all the people you train for, you mean well but aim low

And I'll make it known like I'm getting paid” The bustling sounds of New York City filled your ears as you stood outside the FBI headquarters, the Cigarette you had pressed firmly in between your fingers treated you like an old friend. You hadn’t expected to see your old team mates for awhile— it was painful enough leaving them behind. When you joined the BAU, it was as if everything you had fought for had, all the pain you endure, melted away. That insatiable hunger that had kept you going had been fed; Yet, it came back like a dog to a bone when  you got to know Dr. Spencer Reid. Just like you, he had be in his early 20s when he joined the BAU. A prodigy that saw right through the mask you dawned everyday. Spencer and you became more than colleagues, you became friends. It was your fault you read into it. You should have known better, you did know better. That’s why you left everything you had worked so hard for, you left it all for him- Transferred to the Terrorism Unit in New York.  "Cause that's just the way life goes,

I like to slam doors closed

Trust me, I know it's always about me

I love you, I'm sorry” Unfortunately the universe loved to remind you that no matter how far you run, your problems will find you. You took a drag, letting the smoke linger in your mouth for a moment, poised and still, just long enough to feel the anticipation build before you brought it to your lips, drawing in a slow, thoughtful breath. The first inhale was always an introduction — soft and tentative, an invitation into the steady warmth that bloomed in your chest, spreading in tendrils of sharpness that sank deeper with each passing second.z

You exhaled, watching the thin stream of smoke curl upward, twisting like an ephemeral thought that disappeared just as you tried to hold onto it. The scent wrapped around you, a smell like half-forgotten memories and late nights that stretched out until the edges blurred. There was something almost hypnotic about it, the ritual of it all: the inhale, the slow release, the way the smoke seemed to absorb whatever was knotted up inside of you, lifting it away with an elegance nothing else could touch. You knew you’d toss the cigarette soon, drop it to the ground and grind it under your heel, watching the last ember die with a soft hiss against the concrete. But for now, you let it burn in your hand, the smoke lingering around you like a dark, comforting ghost, a reminder that sometimes, all you needed was a small, quiet fire to keep you company. “Two summers from now

We'll have been talking, but not all that often, we're cool now

I'll be on a boat, you're on a plane going somewhere, same

And I'll have a drink

Wistfully lean out my window and watch the sun set on the lake

I might not feel real, but it's okay”

Up in your office, you hide from the world. You knew if was an overdrawn profile, the smallest men tower over the city to feel something. No matter how overdrawn it was, it painted you perfectly. When the first attack happened, your SSA told he’d have to call in the BAU – It’s sad that happy reunion she thought this was wouldn’t happen. You had never wish the evil in this world way harder than we your colleague had stepped into your office. You couldn’t do this, there wouldn’t be enough time in the world for you to be ready to see him again.

“Agent [Last Name],” your colleague murmured, breaking through your spiraling thoughts. “the BAU has arrived.”

The words struck you like a lightning bolt, sending a rush of adrenaline through your veins. You held your breath, caught between panic and anticipation. The tightness in your chest expanded, threatening to overwhelm you. You had left the BAU not out of a lack of dedication, but to escape the gravitational pull of your own heart. You loved Spencer, and that love had grown like a shadow over everything else, darker and more complex than the cases you worked. You took a deep breath. As you steeled yourself, you caught a glimpse of movement outside your door — the familiar, lanky figure you had longed to forget but could never fully erase. Spencer Reid stepped into the office with an air of confidence that was both endearing and devastating. He carried the weight of the world with him, a gravity that had always drawn you in. "Cause that's just the way life goes,

I push my luck, it shows

Thankful you don't send someone to kill me

I love you, I’m sorry”

The case went like any other BAU case you had worked. It made your bones ache, you had been trying to chase that high since you transferred. You knew the Terrorism division saw it in your eyes, that insatiable hunger that filled you – kept you coming back time and time again. But it was different now. The cases felt heavier, laden with a weight that pressed down on your soul. Every detail etched into your mind, the kind of grim knowledge that made your bones ache as you pursued the unrelenting darkness that had gripped the city. This was what you craved, the thrill of the chase, the unraveling of a mind that sought chaos. You had been trying to chase that high since you transferred to the Terrorism Division, but the hunger never dulled.

With each passing hour, the BAU and the Terrorism Division worked in tandem, two forces merging like storm clouds gathering on the horizon. You felt the energy in the air, crackling with anticipation as the investigation deepened. The BAU’s profilers brought their keen insight, peeling back layers of the unsub's psyche, while the Terrorism Division mobilized resources, a well-oiled machine ready to strike when the moment was right. Finally, the breakthrough came, like a flash of lightning illuminating the darkness. The confrontation was chaotic, it only caused that ache in you to grow – cavernous . You felt the adrenaline surge as you cornered the unsub, the very embodiment of terror that had taunted your city. In that moment, everything fell into place, your instincts honed by years of experience guiding you like an unseen hand. The darkness that had loomed over New York began to receded back into a scared man with an insatiable hunger to similar to yours.

“You were the best but you were the worst

As sick as it sounds, 

I loved you first 

I was a dick, it is what it is 

A habit to kick, the age-old curse 

I tend to laugh whenever I'm sad

 I stare at the crash, it actually works 

Making amends, this shit never ends 

I'm wrong again, wrong again”

With the case close – and some sort of normalcy being restored to New York, you thought it would be over. Stupid of you to assume you’d always have luck on your side, stupid of you to assume you could always run and never get caught. He echoed in your mind like a haunting melody, the bittersweet cadence of truth wrapping around you as you stood in your office – trying to hide your vulnerability. You had never been one to shy from your past, but admitting the complexity of your feelings for Spencer Reid was an entirely different battle “Agent [Last Name],” Spencer’s voice range in your head. “We need to talk.”

You could see it in his eyes — the need for clarity, the yearning for understanding. The connection you had felt was still there, but it had shifted into something more profound, more complicated. As the city began to awaken around you, you felt the walls you had built around your heart tremble, the desire to share everything threatening to spill out. “I know you left the BAU for a reason,” he continued, his tone earnest and probing, each word like a key turning in a lock. “I need to understand why. You can’t just walk away from that life without something driving you.”

The gravity of his words sank deep, resonating within you like the haunting echo of a bell tolling in a vast emptiness. He was right, You don’t just walk away from the BAU. Everyone in the BAU knows that what they do, it fuels them – it feeds their hunger. But you didn’t walk away, you ran. You ran to keep your truth hiddens miles away, you ran to keep your dignity as an agent. “Spencer,” you began, but the words caught in your throat, heavy with the weight of everything unspoken. “I didn’t want to complicate things. I didn’t want to drag you into my mess.”

Spencer’s proximity was intoxicating, It gave you a rush no cigarette ever could. You stared back at your reason from running, his eyes pouring into you with that insatiable hunger; However, he was hungry for knowledge, not your mess – not you. The space that had once felt so insurmountable began to shrink, the walls you had built around your heart trembling under the intensity of his gaze. “But I was already in it, wasn’t I?” he pressed, his voice low and earnest, a soft plea amidst the course of your emotions. “You thought I wouldn’t care? That I wouldn’t want to be there for you?”

You wanted laugh. Whatever reason he had given you for leaving was nothing compared to the real weight of the truth between them. That truth that surged like a tidal wave, threatening to pull you under. You felt the heat of his gaze, the concern etched on his features igniting a fire within you, one that had long been buried beneath layers of self-preservation. “Reid, it’s better this way.” The admission hung in the air, raw and trembling, a revelation that stripped you bare. “I’m where I really wanted to be, not just chasing the monster that fed off our fear.” You lied, like you always do.

“The way life goes

Joyriding down our road

Lay on the horn to prove that it haunts me

(I'm wrong again, wrong again)

I love you, I'm sorry” You wanted to laugh, a hollow sound that echoed in the depths of your chest. Whatever reason Spencer had given you for leaving the BAU was nothing compared to the real weight of the truth that loomed between you, a truth that surged like a tidal wave, threatening to pull you under. Each heartbeat reverberated with the fear of exposure, the vulnerability that came with revealing the emotions you had buried deep. You felt the heat of his gaze, the concern etched on his features igniting a fire within you—one that had long been smothered beneath layers of self-preservation and denial.

“Reid, it’s better this way,” you managed to say, your voice quivering as it fought against the storm brewing inside you. The admission hung in the air, raw and trembling, a revelation that stripped you bare of all pretenses. “I’m where I really wanted to be, not just chasing the monster that fed off our fear.” You lied, the words tasting bitter on your tongue, like poison that burned as it slid down your throat. 

In that moment, you saw the flicker of disbelief in his eyes, the way his brow furrowed as he processed your words. You could see the truth clawing at him, demanding to be acknowledged, yet you were caught in a web of your own making, tangled in a narrative that felt so much easier than facing the chaos of your heart. You wanted to scream, to tell him how much you had wanted to stay, how much the BAU had meant to you, and how much he meant to you, but the walls you had built felt insurmountable. 

“Is it really better?” he asked, his voice low and steady, cutting through the fog of your self-deceit. “Or are you just trying to convince yourself of that?” 

The intensity of his gaze pierced through your defenses, and you felt a pang of guilt twist in your stomach. “I’m safe here,” you replied, trying to mask the trembling uncertainty in your voice. “I don’t have to be part of the chaos anymore. I’m helping people in a different way.” Each word felt like a thin layer of armor, shielding you from the reality that clung to you like a shadow, a constant reminder of what you had given up.But even as you spoke, doubt gnawed at the edges of your resolve. You could see the truth reflected in his eyes, the way they searched yours for honesty, for clarity. You were lying to him and to yourself, hiding behind a façade of bravado while the real monster lurked in the shadows of your heart—your unyielding love for him. 

“Spencer, Whatever reason you thought I left for…It not what you think.”

With that admission, the dam you had built around your heart threatened to burst, emotions flooding to the surface. And as you stepped back, you saw the light in his eyes dim, the realization dawning that you were once again retreating into the safety of denial. You were leaving him behind, and deep down, you both knew this wasn’t just a choice about your careers; it was about the love that had once burned so brightly between you, a flame that had now been snuffed out by fear. 

As you turned away, the ache of unfulfilled potential tugged at your heart, the weight of your decision pressing down like an anchor, dragging you back into the depths of despair. You had chased that high, the thrill of the case, the adrenaline of the hunt, but now you were left with the hollow echo of what could have been. 

With each step you took away from him, you felt the freedom you had sought slip through your fingers, leaving behind only the shadows of a love unclaimed. You were born insatiable, nothing you could have would fill that hunger. The city around only stirred you. As you stood on the edge of broadway and worth, teetering between love and loss, you light a cig and took a long drag.

“I love you, I’m sorry”

[minhosimthings]

Love Wins All - LHS

Synopsis: In which Heeseung is your true home.

Pairings: bf!Heeseung × fem!reader

Warnings: reader has a panic attack, reader has complicated relationship with her parents, crying, the eldest daughter syndrome, swearing, HEE COMFORT LETS GAURRRR, fluff, mention of food, me being poetic as always

A/N: whadup y'all I am unfortunately alive so I'm BACK with this here Heeseung fluff because I love him and he is mine and I am going mental. This is for the Hyuck to my Mark, my beloved @jaeyunluvr

There is a peculiar notion that exists in the human world that no one can love you more than your parents. The people who created you. The people who brought you into this universe, this magnificent galaxy of ours that we call home.

There is a notion that your parents are home.

But you learnt early on in life not to make homes in people. You learnt that people are like travelling rivers , like the flowing water in a forest stream, which brings about both peace and destruction, depending on how one's eyes view it. People would never allow you to make homes in them.

And no matter how hard you tried to make a home out of your mother and father, because you thought they were the only people you were compelled to live in, you failed. If people were asking to calm rivers, your parents were like the harsh nightly waves of an ocean, which brought out destruction as they hit the rocks of the shore over and over again and again, never ceasing to think about how the rocks are doing.

Nevertheless, you managed to find a home of your own. You were surprised you did, what with how much you didn't believe in homes and souls and all that bullshit you read repeatedly in books and saw on the screen.

But Heeseung was different, you thought to yourself. He was like a river you had made yourself a travelling home in, one which would be suited well to his serenely flowing water, which touched and kissed you like the skyline kissed the sea at dawn.

Heeseung was different, you knew that. He was that familiar pair of arms and that familiar, comforting scent that you always imagined you'd go home to as a child. He was the person who you had dreamed of as a teenager, someone who'd hang up your coat for you after a long day, someone who'd make you pancakes in the morning while you slumbered on, someone who'd talk with you deep into the starry nights about anything and everything, someone who'd kiss your forehead everyday before leaving for work, someone who'd love you and show you that your 17 year old perception of the concept of love was not wrong.

So there was no thinking about it when he was the first and only person you wanted to collapse into after a devastating, disastrous, draining day, filled with no calm waves and no love.

•••••••••••••••

The sound of your keys jangling, as they were set down onto the key holder, bought a smile to Heeseung's face, as he was cooking up the last portions of pasta. It was Friday night, which meant that you and him were going to eat Heeseung's notorious pesto pasta, drink some wine and relax into the night's clutches. Saturdays meant going out, so Friday was set aside for peace.

Heeseung's left the noodles simmering in the water as he shut the lid and took off his apron before going to greet you. He was excited for pasta night today, since it had been a long week, filled with work on both your sides. Additionally, you had been staying over at your parents' house for some time, so that added to the lonely hours Heeseung spent in bed hugging your hoodies because he couldn't fall asleep without the scent of you lingering understand his nostrils.

Now, he was hot on his heels, ready to engulf you into the biggest hug ever and kiss you for eternity. Perhaps he was exaggerating, but the taste of your lips on his really was asking to ambrosia to him. If the Gods had their nectar, then he had his.

"Evening, princess." Heeseung chuckled, leaning against the kitchen door as he watched you slowly take your coat off and hang it up on the rack. Lifting your head up, your mouth stretched into a smile on seeing him.

"Seungie..." You cooed, walking over to him and immediately locking yourself into his arms. Heeseung's left arm went to your waist, the other going to support your head. You layed your head gently on his chest, your own arms tied 'round his slender figure.

The comforting scent of him, cherry cologne, basketball tees and pasta sauce, filled your senses as you took a deep breath in, closing your eyes. Perhaps it was from the pure exhaustion you were feeling, but the mere scent of him brought you back to where you've wanted to be for the entire week.

Home.

Heeseung was your home wasn't he?

You felt Heeseung smile as he loosened his tight grip on you, pulling back to look at you. His bambi eyes traced your features one by one, making you feel a bit shy, as if the love of your life wasn't doing what he always did. Heeseung's eyes wavered a little as they landed on your slightly bloodshot ones. Ever the observant man, he was, he chose not to question you about it, knowing you would tell him the reason sooner or later.

"I missed you." You beamed up at him, as a breathy chuckle left his plump, pink (perfectly kissable) lips, "Missed your pasta too." You nose wrinkled at the delicious smell coming from the kitchen, as you glanced towards the door.

"Only my pasta?" Heeseung's bottom lip jutted out to form an adorable pout, which you oh so missed, "Not my kisses?"

"Nope." You giggled, popping your lips, eyes wandering down to his again, "Only your pasta."

Heeseung smiled gently as he pressed a soft kiss to your forehead. The gentleness of his touch made tears well up in your eyes, you had craved this love for a week now, as if you were Eve, starved of interest, and in her hunger, taking a bite of the apple to satisfy herself.

"Love?"

You snapped out of your stupor at the sound of Heeseung's honeyed voice, gently calling you. You felt the warm touch of his hand against your cheek, he gently cupped it and closely examined you with his eyes.

"Are you alright?" He asked, voice still soft as cotton, as if he would have broken you if he spoke any louder, "You don't look too good."

"I'm fine!" You responded, the words coming out a little more enthusiastic that you had intended them to, "I just need a shower." You laughed it off, but Heeseung knew (through what he called his boyfriend tingle) that you most certainly were not ok.

"Love, are you sur-"

"I'm fine, Heeseung." You firmly stated, putting your own hand on top of the one Heeseung had on your cheeks, gently pushing his off, "I'm gonna go take a shower." You smiled again at him before glancing towards the kitchen, "And you've got some pasta to make, mister, so get going."

Heeseung grinned before letting go of your waist, one last kiss was pressed to your forehead before he rushed off into the kitchen to put together a dinner fit for royalty.

•••••••••••••

The feeling of warm water hitting your skin, whilst you stood underneath the shower, brought about the waterworks. This feeling, this familiar feeling of showering in your own bathroom was ridiculous to bring tears to your eyes, but here you were. Soaking in despair, as memories of the week you had spent came rushing to your brain.

You enjoyed staying with your parents, you truly did. After all, they had been the ones to witness each one of your fails and each one of your successes, carefully shaping you, like a potter with his clay, to avoid the mistakes and focus solely on being the golden child. But they had failed to notice that even the golden child burns out sometimes, even the Icarus child loses her wings. That, combined with the never ending screams and shouts that envelope your childhood home, you weren't even sure sometimes whether your parents actually loved you or not.

Love, as you had believed it from ages six to ten, was the feeling of receiving ice cream, the feeling of someone running a brush through your hair, the feeling of rushing home from school and excitedly doing your homework, so that the teacher would give you a star the other day.

Love, from ages eleven to sixteen, was something that was fictional, something that was described so sweetly in the books that you thought 'of course it isn't real'. It was something to be bought and sold, something that couldn't actually exist between people, you blanked out at the fact that when you visited your friend's home, you found her parents talking merrily to each other, as if they actually knew one another.

Love to you, now, was a complex conundrum of ideas. It was full of paradoxes and oxymorons that you didn't want to spend hours decoding and deciphering.

For now, love had been the same cherry cologne, the same honey coated voice, and the same pair of doe eyes, staring lovingly into yours after a long day, whilst you lay with tangled limbs and slightly fuller hearts.

Stepping out the shower, with a warm towel wrapped around yourself, you stared at yourself in the vanity mirror, tracing your hands over your face, whilst your eyes did the same with themselves. Heeseung would definitely notice how bloodshot your eyes were, and you didn't want to put more of a burden on him than you thought you had already done.

Burden. That word again.

Always showing up when you least wanted it to. Of course you were a burden to your parents, why on earth would they even want you, now that you had a life of your own? Apart from the fact that you were the sole witness to the years of domestic bitterness, they had no idea who you truly were. And of course, you were a burden to the world, you had been taught that since the ripe age of eight. Who'd ever want a burden?

You quickly rubbed some of your face cream onto your skin, hoping it would make the tear marks disappear. As for the bloody eyes, well, there was always the soap in the eyes' excuse.

Your hands roughly blended the cream into your skin, you knew it was unhealthy, but at that point, all you wanted was a plate of pasta in front of you and a tall, pink haired man in your arms.

••••••••••••••••

Heeseung stood in the kitchen, frozen like a deer in headlights, staring down at your phone. An unread message proudly showed itself against your bright Studio Ghibli wallpaper. Messages from your younger brother. He was about six years younger than you, and he still stayed at his parents, being a year away from college. That was what Heeseung knew, based off of what you'd told him. Messages from your brother were peculiar, because for one, he was busy with his work, and two, apart from sending each other dozens of reels on Instagram everyday, you and your brother never really talked much. It was that kind of sibling-love, Heeseung thought, the kind which stayed on, even after not conversing with actual words.

So these many messages from your brother was weird, especially considering the fact that the first one started with "Are you doing alright?"

Out of curiosity, Heeseung had checked the texts, and his mouth fell open at what was before his eyes. His mind couldn't comprehend what your brother had been taking about.

Dozens upon dozens of texts, all taking about something with the keywords, 'argument', 'parents' and some or the other thing to do with 'I miss you'. Heeseung's brain seemed to do some kind of a backflip, as he finally realised why your eyes were so bloodshot when you had arrived.

"Hee? Baby?" Heeseung snapped out of his stupor at the sound of your voice behind him. He was quick to put your phone down and pretend like he was checking on the pasta.

"Need anything baby?" He asked, eyes visibly softening as he looked at you. You smiled gently at him.

"Have you seen my phone?" You ask, peering around for it.

"Yeah uhm..." Heeseung hesitated for a moment before picking up the phone on the counter behind him, "Here you go."

Your fingers gently brushed against his as you took the phone from him, offering him a smile as you did. Heeseung turned back to his pasta, while your eyes gravitated to the multiple texts that lay scattered on the screen. Quietly sighing, you sat down on the chair, and resting your arms on the table, scrolled through your brother's texts.

You felt your jawline tighten more by the second as you read each and every sentence, the drastic moments of the horrible week you had suffered flashing in front of your eyes. The air around you seemed to still as you read your brother's last text. Perhaps you had read it wrong, you thought, but no manges how much you tried to convince yourself that your tear-filled eyes did not just read 'I miss you, when are you coming again?' wrong, you couldn't.

Your heart tore itself into bits and pieces as you re-read the texts again, torturing yourself by doing so. You had told yourself that you'd never go back to the argument filled house again, back to bad memories and nightmares. But there was that pang of guilty sleeping inside of you, 'They are your parents after all', 'They raised you, shouldn't you be more grateful for it?'.

The air around you stilled as you felt the muscles of your chest constrict, your veins tangled into one another, like dark, flimsy ribbons. You couldn't remember when the last time was that you felt like this. Perhaps it was in high school, when you had lost a quiz, solely because you had one less mark than the winner. Or perhaps it was when you had won the tennis match, on the grounds that the other player had been cheating. Whatever it was, you couldn't recall the last time the world came swirling down on you like a tornado and you felt like your lungs were filled with weeds.

This feeling inside seizes you, holds you tight, and doesn't allow you to take a proper breath. And that's ok, you think. You don't need to breathe, not yet. But the feeling doesn't stop, and your body eventually screams for another breath. The thing is, though, you can't get any air in, so you panic once again. The cycle never ends. It keeps repeating until you're drowning in your sweat and anxiety

"Baby?" You faintly heard Heeseung's voice from afar, "Y/N, love, look at me." His voice was firmer this time, and you felt the soft touch of his fingers on your skin.

His gaze loomed over your blank expression, never before had he seen your eyes so devoid of any emotion. Heeseung takes in the painfully blank expression on your pale face, the way your chest is rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths that you couldn't quite seem to control, the way you were angled himself just slightly away from him, and suddenly his mind snaps back into place.

You're having a goddamn panic attack, one that you haven't had in a long time.

When he gets his fingers wrapped around your own, he can feel how cold they’ve gone, can feel the fine tremble of adrenaline working through them, and can’t quite choke down the noise of sympathy in his throat. He tugs on your hand.

“Baby, come on, breathe.” He said, slowly reaching out to you, “Love, look at me,” He said sternly, turning you around to face him. He immediately searched your eyes to get you to look at him.

As soon as your eyes landed on his— those beautiful pools of comforting chaos and shimmering stars that you wanted all to yourself—the lasso that was tied tightly around your exhausted brain, broke with an audible snap.

A loud, theatrical sob ripped through your chest as the dam at your eyes broke. Tears flowed down your skin rapidly, like raindrops in a thunderstorm. You probably looked pathetic at the moment, which caused you to double over in another trough of tears. You wanted this night to be perfect for Heeseung. So why couldn't you just be perfect?

Heeseung could sense your thoughts running wild in your mind. He tightly gripped you in between his arms as you sobbed. He blinks his own tears away, and bites his lip to stop himself from calling your parents every possible insult that existed in the English lexicon.

Heeseung hated seeing you cry. It was one of the few things that actually made him sad. Seeing how your beautiful eyes would fill up with tears, how your lip would tremble and how your entire body would shake like a life in the wind, much like it was doing now, he despised all of it.

"Shh love, it's alright." He hummed so softly that make you want to cry even more, "It's alright, I'm here. You're safe."

“I-I’m really sorry—…” you choke out between sobs, "—I'm sorry!"

But Heeseung only pulls you closer to him, his grip growing tighter, as if he wanted to squish all the despair out of you, "I'm here for you, princess."

You let your body go limp and rested your head on Heeseung's shoulder. His hand instinctively cradled your head and stroked your hair. You felt calm now, but weren't ready to move and Heeseung didn’t seem to be in any hurry for you to get up. However, he was in a hurry to get you to breathe properly.

“Love, come on now, look at me,” Heeseung said, cupping your cheeks and forcing you to open your eyes to look at him. “Come on, with me, yeah? Breathe.” He then took a slow, deep breath, and you mirrored his actions.

“And again,” he said, getting you to focus on slowing your breathing down. One of his hands held yours against his chest so that you could feel the pattern of his breaths. After several moments of slowing your breathing and getting you to breathe normally again, you finally sighed and looked up at Heeseung with tired eyes, muttering a small 'thank you' to him.

You stayed wrapped up in his arms for quite some time, stuck in the moment in quiet silence, the only sound being the sound of Heeseung's softly humming. His fingers drawing shapes on your back and his voice gently floating through the air slowed your world down to a still, a rare moment for you that you quiet enjoyed.

"Baby?" Heeseung cooed softly, "Would you like to go up to the bedroom?"

Exhausted from all the crying and unable to open your dry mouth, you mindlessly shook your head, only wanting to stay in his warm arms for longer.

"Then do you want to talk about what happened?" A soft smile settled on his lips, bringing your mind to ease and a little more saliva into your mouth. Sighing heavily, you spoke.

"I—my parents," you started rather lamely, the gravel in your voice was evident, "I can't deal with their taunts and scoldings everytime I go over to their house. That and the fact that they keep fighting all day." You sighed again, "I'm not saying 'don't fight' or anything–I get it they're grown adults, but fuck Hee, I can't deal with the fact that they don't even wait for my brother and I to leave the house before they're going at it on each other like bulls." You felt Heeseung's fingers slightly tighten, "And they keep fucking making me feel like I'm the least perfect person I'm this entire world when they, out of all people, know that I'm trying so hard."

"And I can't rid my brain of the fact that my brother has to suffer all that until he gets to college. And sometimes I feel like I've betrayed him by getting away from that stupid house." Your voice slightly cracked, the tears starting to form at your eyes again, "–and I feel so fucking selfish all the time for that. And then there's the fact that no matter how perfect I try to be for them, they just don't accept it!"

You breathed out a long held breath of air and melted into Heeseung's arms once more, your hand holding onto his shirt tightly, as if he's float away if you let him go. You felt guilty about his wet shirt, stained with all your dumb tears.

"Sorry about the shirt...." You mumbled, hiding your face, "And for everything else, I know I've ruined the night-"

"Oh princess." Heeseung softly cooed, a smile dancing on his lips, "You didn't ruin anything for me." His fingers went to your chin, grabbing your face and tilting it up to look at him. Your eyes met his and you relaxed at the true home you saw in his irises.

"I love you, you know that right?" He asked, to which you nodded. He let his grip on your chin fall down to rest on your waist again.

"Do you know why I love you so much?" He asked again, to which you meekly nodded a 'no'.

"It's because you're human." Heeseung said, making you snap your head up at him with a confused (or in Heeseung's terms, adorable) look.

"I don't love you only for the perfect version of yourself, or for your amazing cooking." You let out a tiny puff of a laugh at that, "I love you for all your flaws, all your fails and all of you. Baby, no one is ever gonna be perfect and if your parents can't understand that, then, pardon me for saying it, but fuck them."

You let out a raw laugh at his words, burying your head in his chest as you giggled, feeling the saliva come back to your mouth as he gave you a tight squeeze.

"You're the most perfect person in the world to me." He cooed gently, "No cap." A lopsided smirk decorated his face after his last words.

"Heeseung!" You laughed raucously at him, "What have Jake and Riki been teaching you?"

"It's the language of love mi amore." He smirked again, his eyes shining like nebulas.

"Can we have that pasta now?" You asked timidly, beaming up at Heeseung, who smiled his warmth back at you, "And watch Howl's Moving Castle?"

"Anything for you, love." Heeseung pressed his lips to yours in a short sweet kiss, one which you'd never get tired of, even as a thousand suns set and a thousand moons rise up from the horizon, you'd never get tired of Heeseung and his gentle love.

"I love you." You broke off from the kiss to take a breath.

"I love you more, princess."

[ugotcooneycrossed]

19 for Alessia?

After coming home from work/a long trip, finding your lover sobbing on the couch/in bed after a hard day, wiping away their tears with soft touches and gentle words--trying to convince them it's okay, and that you're there for them now.

a/n: some hurt/comfort for the soul

your heart breaks watching the game- and even more when the cameras post-match, keep showing your girlfriend crying

she's got tears streaming down her face- her lips formed into a pout and you feel your heart shatter completely.

you weren't able to make the trip out to australia to see her, but you made sure to text her and call her everyday.

you to 'lessi bear'

-> hi baby, i love you so much, im so, so proud of you. call me when you can.

you get a text two hours later.

'lessi bear' to you

-> hi baby

her contact photo flashes on your screen- its from the euros last year. alessia pulling you into a kiss from the family and friends stand at the final.

when you pick up the call- alessia's blotchy face fills the screen.

"hi."

her voice cracks and she sounds absolutely exhausted.

"hi my stargirl."

she doesn't reply- just stares at you tiredly.

"lessi baby- why don't you try to sleep? i'll be right here when you wake up."

you want nothing more than to reach through the screen and hug her tight to you- never letting her go.

you stay on facetime with her- watching her sleep, even in her sleep she looks sad.

-

you dont hear from her again for awhile- you text her of course, but no reply- you know she's probably sleeping after such a long travel day, but you still can't help but be worried.

she normally always texts you- no matter what.

-

opening the door to your flat, you stop dead in your tracks. alessia is sitting right there, on your couch.

you don't even take a second to think, before you rush to her- practically climbing on top of her.

you hug her close to you, and you feel her strong arms hold you just as tight back.

"hi my sweet girl- i missed you so much."

she doesn't reply- only holds you tighter and buries her face in your neck

you wrap your arms tighter around her, when you feel her shoulders start to shake from crying, tears wetting your neck.

"shh- it's okay lessi baby, i'm here. you did so, so well darling. i am so, so proud of you."

you kiss her- cradling her cheeks so she can look at you.

"you're okay- i'm right here, i promise."

[speedybeta]

The sixth member headcannon was sooo good, pls make more 🙏

Being the 6th member of Beta squad Part 2

PART 1 , MASTERLIST 𖦹ׂ 𓈒 ／ ⋆ ۪

A/n: thank you guys for the likes on the first headcanon I appreciate it ♡

Warnings: none!! Switched up the style btw I'm improving

Being a member is fun but the thing that you hated the most was the amount of times you've been shipped with one of the others.

You'd definitely get shipped with Sharky most of the time. Sharky flirts with you the most while AJ does it the least

You'd constantly get called a "pick me" all because you're in the beta squad and the only female member but it's obvious the haters r just jealous

I imagine you having beef or something with a member from the sideman or amp as a joke (from sideman KSI and from AMP it would probably be Agent or Kai)

The other members of the beta squad definitely flirt with you a lot as a joke

"guess the gold digger (your name) edition they were a bit jealous watching while you went on a date with random men n that kinda made them realize that they all might have a thing for you

Kai cenat probably would have a little crush on you n try to make a move on you doing the Collabs

You were a guest on Kai's stream before, and just like tyla, he asks you out in front of the whole stream.. as attractive as kai is, you said no because he's obviously not looking for something genuine

Speaking of Collabs, they always made sure you weren't uncomfortable while collaborating with other YouTubers like the silent library video with amp

In the silent library video, of course some of the challenges were things you and the boys didn't really do on the beta squad, they of course said they'd switch cards with you in case you weren't comfortable doing a challenge

Like the weenie challenge, let's say you got the skull card and felt uncomfortable with doing it, they would of course do it for you

Living in the beta squad house was such a fun time

It was so hectic but fun

You felt so safe in that house

You kept the house tidy with the help of Chunkz

If you're a good cook, they'd beg for you to cook them something

Of course you would. especially for AJ since you didn't want him to order unhealthy food everyday

Whenever you were bored and one of the boys were home you'd just bother them like an annoying little sibling

Watching the lion king with Chunkz whenever you were bored and he was home (you guys watched that movie over 40 times together)

Brainstorming video ideas with Niko and helping him with videos for his channel

You and AJ playing video games together for house straight

Working out with Kenny or going with him for runs

You forcing Sharky to watch SpongeBob with you (just a random scenario I made)

They'd constantly come into your room just to annoy you (especially Niko or AJ) they act like annoying brothers who come into your room to move your stuff around, mess up your bed, then leaving without closing the door

So many arguments and bickering living all together

Even after you moved out, they'd still show up uninvited to your house

They always are there for you and never do anything to make you feel uncomfortable.

If you have anxiety or social anxiety the boys are always there to help you feel better

The boys know you so well, they can tell when you're feeling uncomfortable talking to someone. Like maybe a fan was making you feel uncomfortable, they'd jump into the conversation quickly and end it

If anybody ever tries to hurt or harm you during a video, let's say the pretending to work at a McDonald's drive through, they'd probably beat them up (mostly Kenny, Chunkz, Or Niko. AJ would stay close to you and make sure you're safe, I don't think AJ would jump in 😭 bur just like the video where the random hobo attacked the camera man and Niko and Kenny were there)

They'd Never leave you out or exclude you in stuff, they always invite you and never do anything without you

They always come to you for advice on girls since you of course give good advice (unless you don't)

If you're smart and always get questions right in the weakest link, quiz of the year, mastermind, etc chunkz would get annoyed for not being the smartest

Maybe back when you first started YouTube and met Chunkz and Sharky, fans would say you'd had a sibling bond with them (meaning you acted like siblings)

Niko definitely teases you the most. He comes up with the most random insults for you that make zero sense

AJ loves to bother you and acts like an annoying little brother. During filming, you two argue over random things which makes the videos more entertaining

Sharky flirts with you a lot. But besides that, he can sometimes act like an overprotective best friend.

Kenny and you laugh at anything and everything. Constantly hitting each other while laughing in videos

Chunkz and you break out into songs randomly. Even though all the boys tease you, he's second to tease you the most.

But you have a bond with each one of the boys, you have a close relationship with them all. There's no awkwardness between you and any of them.

♡━━━━━♡

I tried.. but thank you guys for the requests, I'm working on all the NSFW alphabets n everything else 💙💙 this was kinda random but I definitely would make three cause there's so many scenarios I could imagine 🐁🐀🐁🐀🐁🐀

[puck-luck]

new beginnings | may 27 - june 2

note: before i start this, i just want to warn y'all that it's 24.4k. if you want to read this in one sitting, i recommend locking in.

please hit me up in my inbox to give me feedback! or your thoughts! or speculation on what's coming next! i want you guys to talk to me all the time and tell me every thought you have. if i could send each of you the google document and force you to leave comments, i would.

also, i think by the time this fic is finished, it might be long enough to be a novel. should we all work together to get it published?

1:90 – TREVOR

“Do we really think it’s a good idea to spend the summer down here instead of the Michigan house?” Jack asks. “We own that one, after all.”

“Everyone knows about the Michigan house,” Trevor points out.

Cole, who had plotted this with Trevor after last summer’s debacle, sighs. “We can’t keep having the same conversation. We decided that we would train at the Checkers’ rink when we can get down to Charlotte and use the cement slab as our own rink in the yard of the rental house in the meantime. So that’s not your problem. So, what is, Jack? You’re gonna miss the girls?”

Jack fixes Cole with a cutting glare. “Fuck off.”

“You know, there are girls in North Carolina,” Cole says, a grin dimpling his cheeks. “Sweet, southern belles, even.”

Jack rolls his eyes. “I can’t wait for the rest of the goons to get here. We’ll put it to a fucking vote and I’ll get to go home.”

“If you want to go home so bad, why don’t you?” Trevor asks. “We’re not forcing you to be here.”

“You triple-belted me in the backseat,” Jack argues. “You’re taking me away from Michigan and you can’t even let me have shotgun.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” Trevor mocks. “You have hands. And fingers. You’re not helpless.”

Jack huffs from his spot in the back, stubbornly turning his head to the right to watch the trees pass. Cole does the same from the passenger seat, tapping his fingers along the pane of the window.

There are twenty miles, an hour total, still on the GPS. Trevor hasn’t seen a town since they stopped at the gas station at the bottom of the mountain, the closest city being Winston-Salem almost an hour and a half ago, barely more than sparse houses and fields in the time since. They’re driving along a stream now and the latest exit off this small, two lane highway said “Love Valley.” Trevor snickers at the sign and goes to point it out to Jack, but Jack beats him to it.

“Don’t, Z.”

“It’s funny, dude.”

“It’s not, though.”

Cole cranks the volume up, drowning out the continuing argument that floats forward from the backseat. 

They drive on and Trevor thinks about it– everything. They have three unobscured months in Litchton, the only people knowing about their whereabouts are their families and coaches. The goons, as Jack referred to them, would be joining them sometime in the next day or two. Quinn and Luke had to wrap up some loose ends at home (Quinn, closing up his apartment for the summer; Luke, visiting some college friends as their semester comes to an end.

Litchton was the safest bet and Krebs had mentioned North Carolina to Trevor in passing the one time they caught up throughout the year, heaving heard from Leschyshyn that the mountain towns of his home state were notoriously quiet and drama-free and that their inhabitants, although lovers of gossip, kept to themselves. 

After those girls had snuck into the Michigan house at the end of the summer and started showing up wherever the boys went in the evenings, Trevor just wanted a summer off. He wanted time with his friends the way they used to have it, just working out together and drinking until they dropped, swimming and parading around the town like normal guys in their early twenties. 

In Litchton, they could pretend to be guys that were home for the summer, ready to start some corporate finance or everyday-tie job. It was a look into what could’ve been, had they not dedicated their lives to their sport. 

For three months, he gets to be Trevor Zegras, the kid who complained about his name being last on the roster in every class growing up and the kid who worked in his mom’s store after school. But he’s also Trevor Zegras, NHL superstar, ninth overall pick, owner of the best Michigan goal in the United States, so he might toss his name around in Litchton this summer. Just to see if it gets him anything.

If it doesn’t, his good looks certainly will. What’s flirting with a few old ladies on the street? It’ll be the highlight of their year.

Trevor misses the driveway the first time the car passes it. It’s hidden by brush and along a curve. The GPS reroutes them– but they have to drive an extra fifteen minutes along this road before they can turn around. 

They drive into a small town, a strip of eclectic stores littering the main road. There’s a small grocery store with a fruit stand out front that Cole points to.

“We could pick up some food while we’re out here,” Cole suggests. Upon hearing Jack’s mouth open in the backseat, he continues, “Just so we don’t have to come back later.”

Jack slouches against the backseat, huffing about being cut off at the opportunity to express his discomfort. 

“Jacky, will you relax? We’re going to have fun this summer.” Trevor tells him, turning into the parking lot and choosing a spot close to the entrance. 

Cole laughs when Jack unbuckles his three seatbelts in the wrong order and has to untangle them. Trevor flips the mirror down and fudges his hair, fluffing the ends. He had gotten it cut just before they left for this trip, so the edges were still even and sharp. 

Jack is the first to exit the car, practically throwing himself onto the pavement with his excitement to leave the vehicle behind, if only briefly. They’d been driving for hours. Cole flew into New York from Montréal, so Trevor had to pick him up from the airport. They picked Jack up in Jersey in the early morning and started driving south. 

Trevor can’t blame Jack for his annoyance. They’ve been in the car with him for ten long hours and they forced the first stretch of driving on him, having spent about two hours in the car before getting him. He had just woken up and had to drive four hours through the traffic of Philly and into Baltimore. He napped while Cole drove down through most of Virginia, and then woke up grumpy anyway when Trevor took over to take on North Carolina. 

It’s been a long fucking day.

They shop together, but they bicker quietly. After years of friendship, their arguments seem more like brotherly spats. The knowing smiles from the women in the grocery store prove that they’ve heard encounters like this before, likely in their own homes. 

Eventually, Trevor rolls his eyes and goes to sit in the car. He leaves Cole and Jack to pay for the groceries. Upon leaving the store, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and pulls up Instagram, hoping to catch up on the posts that he had missed on the long drive.

Walking past the fruit stand out front, Trevor bumps into someone and he stumbles back.

“I’m sorry,” Trevor apologizes, reaching out and steadying the girl with a touch to her elbow. “I didn’t see you.”

“Hard to see me when you’re on your phone,” she replies with a tilted smile. 

Trevor lets out a little laugh at her reply, barely a breath. “I’ll be more careful next time.”

She nods with an approving hum and turns back to the stand, picking up a peach and turning it over in her hand. 

Trevor turns and walks to the car, climbing into the vehicle and settling behind the wheel. He watches the sliding door for his friends, but his eyes drift back to the girl.

She’s tied a red bandana in her hair and she slips peaches into her mesh bag. She talks to the vendor, using her hands to speak. She’s pretty, he realizes, far prettier than the girls he knows from California. The vendor hands her a basket of strawberries, which she takes carefully, inspecting the red berries by twisting the basket’s handle from side to side, spinning it. Trevor can see her profile this way– the slope of her nose, smooth. Her eyelashes, long. Her lips, pink and pursed into a little smile. Her stance is tilted, one hand on her hips.

Trevor is back outside the car before he can think. He approaches her as she pays for her fruit, standing behind her when she turns around.

She jumps when she sees him. “You’re still here?” She asks.

“No, but I’m back,” Trevor replies, realizing just how lame he sounds. “My friends and I are staying here for the summer and I just wanted to introduce myself.”

When he falls silent after explaining himself, she looks at him expectantly. He can see the bottoms of her teeth as her lips part. “So introduce yourself.” She gestures for him to go on.

“I’m Trevor,” he says, sticking his hand out. “My friends call me Z.”

Her eyes drop to his hand briefly. She considers it before reaching up and taking his hand, shaking it. “Why?” She asks.

“My last name starts with a Z,” Trevor supplies. “Zegras.” The smile he gives her is strained, expecting her eyes to light up in recognition. They do, but it’s not in the way he expects.

“You’re Greek?” She asks, her interest piqued. 

“Yeah,” Trevor replies. “But not, like… Greek. I’m from New York, but I live in California now.”

At the mention of California, her face stiffens. She hums disapprovingly. “Got sick of the West Coast, I take it? Is that why you’re back east this summer?”

Trevor flounders for a moment. “I love California, but the guys and I always spend our summers together. Usually we’re in Michigan.”

“So y’all travel all around, huh?” She asks. She doesn’t sound impressed, which makes Trevor nervous. In fact, she sounds almost disdainful, but the look on her face appears as though she’s holding back a laugh. Whether that is at his expense, he doesn’t know.

“We’re very lucky,” Trevor confirms, nodding tightly. “Most of our travel is for work, though. We all work in the same industry and it involves a lot of, um, business trips.”

“Business trips?” She asks, letting the laugh overtake her this time as she looks him up and down. “You?”

Trevor looks down at his own outfit, the basketball shorts and loose t-shirt. They’re two of the few clothes he owns that are not branded with the Ducks logo. He scratches the back of his head sheepishly. “We’ve been driving a while and I wanted to be comfortable.”

“You certainly look comfortable,” She agrees with a nod, her grin knowing and wide.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Trevor says with a similar grin, shuffling forward just a step now that he’s got her smiling and laughing.

It’s then that Cole and Jack exit the grocery store, each with a hefty load of grocery bags on their arms. They’re laughing, so it appears Cole has managed to cheer up the sullen Jack in Trevor’s absence. Trevor watches the girl’s eyes leave his, drawn to the movement and volume of his two friends. He curses them in his mind, watching as they find him and decide to approach.

“I thought you were warming up the car, Z,” Jack accuses, his eyes flickering between Trevor and the girl. “D’you get distracted?”

Trevor bites his tongue before forcing a smile on his face. He turns back to the girl. “These are the some of the friends I mentioned, Jack and Cole. The other ones, Jack’s brothers, aren’t here yet.” Trevor knows he’s overexplaining, but he can’t help it. Something about this girl has him awkward and tongue-tied, yet his tongue can’t stop forming words and pushing them out.

“Yeah, your business partners.” She rubs a hand over her face, smoothing out the half-smile that was clearly keeping a laugh at bay. “Are they also from California?”

Cole snorts. “Business partners?” He repeats. “From California? No way. You’d never catch me dead in Anaheim, unless we’re playing there. Believe me, I’d be on the quickest flight back.”

“I just said we all worked in the same industry,” Trevor corrects, throwing on his most charming smile to try and salvage the situation. He wasn’t lying, but this girl might think he is, and that would be disastrous. He doesn’t know why, but it would be. He wants her to think highly of him and now he’s made two bad first impressions.

The second one is his friends’ fault, of course.

And she does think he’s lying– Trevor can tell by the way she looks him up and down, then Cole, then Jack. Her eyes squint imperceptibly at Cole’s mention of “playing” in Anaheim, rather than working. It was a statement that could have extended the conversation, but this girl seems to decide that she is uninterested.

She nods sarcastically, then scoffs quietly. “I have to go,” she says. “It was nice to meet you, Trevor. Have fun in Litchton this summer, boys.”

“Oh, we will,” Jack assures her. Trevor hates how his eyes rake over her, combing through each detail of her skin, her clothes, and her hair.

“Nice meeting you!” Cole calls after her as she walks away.

Both boys turn to Trevor, equally annoying smiles on their faces. 

“Shut up,” he hisses before they can say anything. 

“Who was that?” Cole asks.

“I didn’t get her name,” Trevor growls through gritted teeth. “She was just about to tell me and then the two of you showed up.”

“Boo-hoo,” Jack teases. “So you won’t be the first to bed a girl this summer, for… how many summers in a row is it now, Coley?”

Cole’s laughter breaks his face, but Trevor interrupts before he can speak.

“It’s not even a real competition, Jack. You only act like it is because you fuck the same girl every summer as soon as we get to the lake house. It’s trashy.”

“Being a winner isn’t trashy, Trev. In fact, maybe I should go follow after the girl you were just chatting up. I’ll show her how a real man flirts.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Trevor feels a flare of anger well up inside of him when Jack insinuates taking this girl for himself. It should be anger about questioning Trevor’s manhood, but it is not. “Get in the car.”

He stalks off, starting the car this time and situating himself behind the wheel. Jack vies for the passenger seat unsuccessfully, souring his mood yet again. Despite Cole’s smaller stature, Jack is the one left in the backseat with the bags of groceries around him. Soon, Trevor’s shirt joins him after a misguided throw to the trunk of the car where their luggage resides.

When they arrive at the house, Jack only carries the groceries inside. He claims he’s been stilted all day and Trevor can’t really do much to prove otherwise. Cole carries in his and Jack’s luggage into the home– a rental that Trevor paid good money to book for the entire summer. 

“I get the best room!” Trevor yells after them. “I paid for it! I want the ensuite bathroom!”

“Go fuck yourself,” Jack replies. He’ll leave the room for Trevor to take anyway. 

The three boys had planned this ahead of time. They would be in Litchton the whole summer, so they will take the three bedrooms that have king beds. Quinn and Luke will take the queen beds in the other bedroom, and the various guests throughout the summer will take the bunk beds in the basement. From the pictures alone, Trevor realizes that the house could sleep more than ten people. If they can find ten people, maybe they could throw a party. 

and invite that girl, Trevor thinks.

He’s taken aback by the thought and its suddenness. He doesn’t even know her name or if he’ll see her again– so why is he thinking of her?

Trevor shakes the thought and grabs his bags from the back of the car. He used an extra practice bag from the bottom of his closet in Anaheim to pack his clothes for the summer, so he has a free hand to open the door that Cole closed behind him. 

He finds the big bedroom easily and drops his bag in the closet, not bothering to unpack. He looks out the sliding door onto his porch, the wrap-around that encircles the entire back of the house. His porch holds two rocking chairs and a wooden bench. The house is built out of wood– almost overwhelmingly so– and the decorations match. His bedframe, his dresser, his bedside table, his small desk, the fan, even the blinds on the window… all of them are made of wood. 

His bathroom has double sinks and a granite countertop. The handles are gold in color, but likely not in material. The spout of the sink is more like a water spigot that one might find outdoors, but it’s classy. When Trevor enters his bathroom, he’s in awe of the jacuzzi tub and shower on the other side of the room. 

The tub and shower are both built from dark marble, bespeckled with lines of darker ore. The tub has wooden cabinets beneath the feet of marble on either side of the tub, which holds towels and toiletries on the right and left respectively. The tub has jets and a handheld spout that’s detachable. Trevor considers them. He can think of a use for both.

The shower is spacious with an overhead spout, wide and fancy. It has ledges for toiletries, as well as a seat in the corner. The door is glass and there is a hook for towels next to the opening. The shower stands from ceiling to floor, completely confined. Despite the windows to the side of it, the occupant of the shower would be completely hidden from sight, once the glass door steams up. 

Trevor explores the house further, but doesn’t take up residence anywhere. Cole and Jack seem to have put the groceries away while he found his room and looked around. Now, they’re nowhere to be found. They’ve likely taken up residence in their bedrooms for the night, tired from their eleven hour drive.

Lord knows Jack needs sleep before he braves this vacation. He always gets grumpy when he’s tired, part of the reason why he naps prior to every game. 

Trevor is glad that all of the boys can make it up for the summer. He can’t wait to get things started.

2:90 – HONEY

She wakes with the sunrise, as she does every Tuesday. It’s her first day of the week at the bookstore and she has to open. The Reading Nook is always closed on Mondays and she is one of three workers– the owner, Ada and her best friend since childhood, Bea. Ada opens the store on Thursday, whereas Bea opens it on Friday. Every other day of the week, the responsibility falls on her.

She makes her coffee and drinks it on her couch, looking out the window towards the mountains in the distance. It’s clear today and she can see the rows of mountains clearly– ten rows back. Once, her father had told her that if you could count ten rows back, you were looking at the mountains across state lines. If you could count ten mountains, then you could count all the way to Tennessee. 

She believed him, until she realized that the sun always rises behind those mountains. She faces east. Tennessee is to the west.

Still, the memory comes with fondness. It was before she moved away from home to pursue a life of quietness in the mountains, her favorite place in the world. Those days are long in the past. She has no interest in returning to them, given how far she’s come. The only person from her hometown that was welcomed into this new life was Bea and she has proven time and time again that she is deserving of that role.

Not only did they grow up together, but she got her nickname because of her friendship with Bea. As children, a long-forgotten teacher had made a comment about the two being attached at the hip, stuck together like glue. She had corrected herself with a laugh, evidently feeling clever when she said: “No, more like a bee to honey, right, girls?” From that day on, she had only gone by Honey and Bea had shortened her name from Beatrice to keep the analogy. 

She drives to The Reading Nook and unlocks the store, wiping the counter and sweeping the main room while she waits for her regular patrons to enter the store.

On Tuesdays, the “founding” women of Litchton convene in the bookstore and knit. Some days, Honey joins them. Others, she just wishes to sit and read at their table, listening in on the gossip of the week. The women are not so much founders as the grandmothers who lived in Litchton since their birth, having married and worked and raised families here. They are true Appalachian women– driven by superstition and fantastical solutions, lovers of a good story, and wonderful bakers who only crave to share their gift. They are churchgoers, often multiple times a week, and headstrong believers in their chosen politician. These are the attributes that Honey does not share with the women– she was an outsider, although she has been welcomed into the Litchton society since moving here. She attended church when the ladies asked her to, usually for the rare wedding or baptism. Rarer for a funeral, luckily. Honey does not feel any particular way about politics, at least not out loud, and she’s lucky that the ladies try to reserve that topic for the debates of their husbands over dinner parties, not the knitting circle on early Tuesday mornings.

Sacha is the first to arrive to the bookstore that morning, armed with blueberry muffins in a tupperware that Honey will have to wash in the little sink in the back while the women are knitting. Sacha has left one too many tupperwares and bowls in The Reading Nook and Honey won’t allow her to leave another behind. 

Honey plates the muffins for Sacha while the elderly woman secures the long table in the store for her friends. It does not take long for Scarlett, Gillian, Vera, and Rosalind to join. The women each knit their own project, waking up over coffee and muffins before the gossip starts.

It begins with Vera’s son’s divorce, something she had been dreading since he proposed to his soon-to-be ex-wife while they were still students at NC State. They had moved to Raleigh permanently, an action that Vera believes started this whole thing. When her son left home, and his wife finally revealed that she didn’t want children, Vera knew it was over. Or so she said. Honey thinks that she’s just butthurt about her son fleeing the nest… ten years ago. She wonders, briefly, if her own mother feels this way about her.

Honey shakes herself out of her thoughts as soon as Scarlett introduces the next topic, the topic that Honey knew was coming since the night before.

“Did you see those young men at the store yesterday? I know you always do your shopping on Monday evenings, Rosalind.” Scarlett tilts her head like she’s conspiring with Rosalind, like Rosalind has been holding information from the group.

Rosalind nods, eyes glinting behind her wired glasses. “They were such handsome boys. Lord, I tell you, if I were a young lady nowadays…”

She trails off and Honey stifles a laugh, looking down at the counter. She can feel the ladies’ eyes on her, no doubt hoping that the mention of boys piques her interest. Honey knows how these ladies were in their day– boy crazy but also efficient, looking for the perfect match and settling for no less. All of them prevailed, although from their complaints, you would never know their husbands were the loves of their lives.

“Ladies, you know this conversation would be better suited for Bea,” Honey teases. 

“Bea is too forthcoming, you are still somewhat of a mystery.” Gillian lifts an eyebrow. 

“Where is Miss Bea?” Vera asks. “Wasn’t she supposed to be here half an hour ago?”

Honey doesn’t stifle her laugh this time. “Miss Vera!” She exclaims. “It is a Tuesday morning. You know Bea has no interest in showing up to work for at least another hour.”

Vera shakes her head. “You and Ada have got to stop allowing her to show up so late.”

Sacha laughs. “As if they could stop her if they tried!”

All of the women, and Honey, laugh at the joke. It’s well established in Litchton that Bea is the tardy sort, whereas everyone else prefers to be early or on time. Bea has the attitude of a city girl, to quote the old ladies, but the work ethic and priorities of a Litchton woman. She likes her men, she likes her job, but she loves a nice lay-in.

“Besides,” Honey tells the women, hesitating with a coy smile before dropping the bomb of information: “I’ve already met those men.”

The effect is instantaneous. All of them drop their knitting onto their laps and gasp. Gillian clutches at her chest, always the most dramatic of the quintet. 

“My darling,” Rosalind marvels.

“Well?” Scarlett questions. “How? When? Tell us everything.”

Honey moves from behind the counter to an empty seat at their table. She sits next to Sacha, the woman taking her hand and holding it tightly. 

“You ladies seem to forget that I go to the fruit stand outside the store on Monday evenings,” Honey begins. “Which is where I ran into them. Literally, too– one of them had his nose buried in his phone and bumped into me. He could’ve knocked me over!”

“You should have fallen so that he could have helped you up,” Rosalind suggests. The women murmur in agreement.

Honey rolls her eyes. “I did not. He apologized, I told him that he only bumped into me because he was caught up in his phone, and he said he would be more careful next time.”

“Next time,” Gillian repeats, nodding. “So he wishes to see you again?”

“Turns out, ‘next time’ was about five minutes later, when I went to leave the stand and he was right behind me!” Honey reveals, purposefully lacing incredulity into her voice. She places a finger on her lips and widens her eyes, playing into the dramatics of the ladies as if to say “What do you think of that?”

The women gasp in time. 

“Which one was it?” Scarlett asks.

“I only saw the other two for a moment, so I don’t think I could describe them well enough to you,” Honey says. “The one I spoke to is named Trevor.” She pauses to roll her eyes before adding sarcastically, “But his friends call him Z.”

Scarlett and Rosalind nod and look to each other. 

“It must have been the one who left earlier than the other two,” Scarlett says. “With those awful tattoos.”

Honey bites back a giggle. Once a southern mother, always a southern mother. “He did have tattoos,” she confirms.

“You two would get along,” Vera suggests, not so subtly casting a glance at the leafy vines that crawl up Honey’s arm.

Honey goes quiet, glaring at Vera. She has worked to try and get the ladies to stop commenting on her body and habits over the past few years, but the ladies are stubborn and traditional in most senses.

“How long will they be here? Or were they just stopping through?” Gillian asks.

“They’ll be here all summer, so I’m sure we’ll get our fill of them.” With that, Honey effectively ends her role in the conversation. She returns to the counter and opens her book, pretending to read it.

She knew the ladies would have caught wind of the men’s arrival by now and would want to discuss it. She knew that the ladies would be interested in setting her up with one of these new arrivals. They were cute, she’d give them that. At a glance, any of the three could have been nice company at a brewery, but Honey wasn’t looking. She was perfectly content with finding herself and making her own life, even if it meant that she wasn’t finding a husband like most women in Litchton wanted her to do.

The other thing was this: Trevor hadn’t made the best first impression. He bumped into her, then startled her, then told her some story about business partners or colleagues that definitely was not true, and he was from California. He’s a yuppie, a hipster who probably enjoys the bustle of Los Angeles and can’t handle the slow, satisfying life of a small town. To her estimate, Trevor has got a week before he leaves Litchton for something more glamorous and fast-paced.

The ladies relay the news to Bea when she finally shows up for her shift, a travel mug of coffee in hand from which she sips throughout each tantalizing detail of Scarlett’s retelling. Upon Honey’s information, Bea’s eyes flicker knowingly toward the counter and Honey just shrugs. Bea’s eyes then narrow, accompanying a questioning tilt of her head. Honey shakes her head at that, and Bea lets it go.

“Well, I heard the reason that Mr. Mayes wasn’t at church last week wasn’t his hip acting up,” Bea says to the ladies when it’s her turn. That starts a whole new tangent for the knitting club, one that will keep them occupied and in their seats for a number of minutes. It gives Honey the time to slip into the back and cut up one of the peaches that she brought from home to snack on during work. 

The ladies leave The Reading Nook about an hour after Bea’s arrival, leaving the store empty except for the two girls and floaters looking for their next novel.

Bea leans against the counter with a smug smile, blinking innocently at Honey. 

“What do you really think about them?” She asks.

“I think they’re trouble,” Honey says. “They didn’t seem on the same page about their jobs, they don’t know anything about living in a small town, they travel a lot, and I think I saw one of them carrying a 48-pack of beer.”

“Are they cute?”

Honey fixes Bea with a stare that could put a stop to anyone else’s questions. Unfortunately, Bea is immune to Honey’s intimidation tactics and her sarcastic jabs. She sees right through them. Honey’s silence is another thing she sees through.

“Interesting.” She draws herself up to her full height. 

“I think you would find them cute,” Honey says.

Bea hums. “You can’t backtrack now. You said enough without saying anything at all.” She crosses her arms over her chest then leans back down onto the counter. “So, tell me, Honeybear,” she muses. Fortunately, she changes the topic. “Did you get my strawberries from the stand, or were you too enthralled by the pretty boy in front of you?”

“He wasn’t pretty.”

“Sure he wasn’t.”

Honey scoffs, then leaves to the back to grab the basket of strawberries. She does so carefully, not touching the strawberries in case she breaks out in hives like she did last time. Bea swears that more exposure to the fruit would “cure” her allergy, but Honey only picks up the baskets to humor her. Honey doesn’t think she’s missing out on much, being allergic to strawberries. It’s her peaches that she would miss, and the blackberry pie that Ada makes when her vines turn ripe. That’s something to look forward to– blackberry season is starting and Ada could show up with a pie any day now.

The day continues slowly, with Ada making an appearance to close down the shop with the girls and help unpack a new shipment of books. After they’re done, Honey and Bea head to their respective homes.

Honey curls up with her book in her bed and listens to some music before the soft noise of the background and the comfort of her blanket draws her to her sleep.

3:90 – TREVOR

They have to go to the hardware store today. 

Yesterday, the boys wasted the day, sleeping later than they have in weeks. They ate a late breakfast, which turned into their lunch. They played pool on the pool table, ping and beer pong on the foldable table, and sunbathed out on the porch. Cole watched lazily as Trevor and Jack tried to outline half of a rink in chalk on the cement slab. They never finished the other half of the rink.

Today, they have to go get some wood and tools to make the rink into a 3D structure so the pucks don’t go flying into the woods when they shoot them. Trevor and Cole are the ones who are supposed to go to the store– Jack has decided to stay behind and wait for Quinn and Luke if they show up while the other boys are at the store. 

A convenient excuse, even though the goons are planning to show up today. Trevor expects the brothers to try and weasel their way out of working on the rink, claiming that they’re too tired from travel or they need more time to unpack. The thing is, the boys are flying into Charlotte and renting a car for the summer so that there will be two at the house, so they’re only driving for like an hour compared to Trevor’s eleven. They have no right to be complaining, but they will likely enact a vote and outweigh Cole and Trevor because if the Hughes are anything, it’s lazy and loyal to each others’ laziness.

They’re very driven, but only when they choose to work. When it comes to hockey, they’ll work all day. When it comes to creating the hockey rink or putting together equipment, they would much rather watch. Jim spoiled them that way– he was always the builder of the family and the boys were left to go do whatever they wanted as long as they weren’t annoying their father.

Trevor and Cole put off the trip as long as they can, hoping that maybe the Hughes brothers will show up early and they can force them to go to the store before they can even get out of the car. 

When the clock hits two, Trevor decides that the waiting is useless. They could’ve done so much during the day instead of sitting around waiting, but no. He was lucky enough to sit around and do nothing all day and watch stupid daytime TV with Cole while Jack read his texts with his brothers out loud.

The hardware store would be heaven compared to this.

He leaves without Cole at first, driving slowly down the driveway until he sees Cole’s figure run out of the house and after the car. Trevor can imagine what he’s saying as he yells after the vehicle– something about not being left with Jack in case the other Hugheses show up, something about how Trevor is a dick. 

They follow the one road on the mountain up to the strip where all the stores are. The hardware store is just a few doors down from the grocery store, so they park in the same parking lot.

Cole and Trevor walk side by side, Cole’s eyes on his phone as they walk while Trevor takes in the brick walkway beneath them. Names are etched on some of the bricks– Jude Doyle, Frederick Lawson, Ansley Hood… Grandma. Trevor has seen stuff like this before, but there’s something different about these names being etched on the bricks of this small town. Everyone probably knew these people, or knew someone who knew them, when they died. It’s so personal.

When they reach the hardware store, Trevor holds the door open for a man leaving. They give each other a curt nod, just a passing glance. Trevor sees absolutely no recognition in his eyes and comments on it. Cole doesn’t care, and says so. Trevor punches his shoulder.

“Welcome in,” the elderly woman at the counter greets. “What are you boys looking for?”

“Hi,” Cole replies, a charming smile on his face. “Could you point me towards the power tools? I can find my way from there.”

The woman smiles and points toward the back of the store. “They’re on the left, sweetie.” She turns to Trevor. “And what about you?”

“We’ll be needing some plywood,” Trevor says. “We’re building a little roller rink.”

“Oh, how fun!” The lady, named Vera if her nametag has any truth to it, claps her hands. “How much do you need, dear?”

“How much have you got?” Trevor asks. 

Vera waves her hand. “I don’t know. I’ll call Earl, he’ll send you off with what you need.” She turns and takes a breath before shouting the man’s name. Trevor’s heard that shout before– his grandmother used to do the same thing with his grandfather. 

The balding, age-spotted man appears at the door to the back of the shop. “I done told ya I have my hearing aids in, woman,” Earl grumbles to his wife, fond and mean and familiar in the way that only a couple who has been married for fifty years can be. 

Vera smacks Earl’s arm as he ambles by her. Earl pulls his arm away and puts another foot between them. 

“What do you need, young man?” Earl asks.

“Lots of wood,” Trevor says. “A couple of sheets of plywood and some 2x4s, maybe?”

“Boy, you do not think I have all’a that laying around.” Earl fixes Trevor with a stink-eye. 

“Don’t you tell him that!” Vera chimes in. “I know you’ve got plenty of wood out back because you bought all of it and never finished our damn basement.”

“I’m going to finish it!”

“Earl, you’ve been saying that for thirty years, you ain’t never finishing the basement.”

Trevor wants to laugh at the absurdity of this conversation. He wants to laugh at this domestic argument and how unreal it is that it’s unfolding in front of him. Instead, he clears his throat. “Excuse me,” he interrupts gently. “I don’t know if I want thirty year old wood for this. We’ll be hitting pucks off the boards all day and I’d like to keep the pucks inside the rink, please.”

“You’re a hockey boy?” Earl questions with a raised brow. When Trevor nods, he lets out a grunt. Trevor can’t tell what that means. Nonetheless, he waves Trevor to follow him into the back.

Trevor squeezes past Vera– she pinches his butt, he thinks– and catches a glimpse of her knitting under the counter when he walks by. She’s knitting something green. It’s too bundled up for him to tell what it is, though. Maybe he’ll ask later.

When he enters the back room, Earl gestures around. “Take your pick of the wood and make a pile over there–” he points to the corner– “and you can drive around back and we can put the wood in your truck there.”

“Oh, I didn’t drive a truck down,” Trevor says before he can help it. Earl makes a face. “But my friend and I can carry the piles ourselves to the car, don’t worry about that.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Earl gripes, shuffling away to sit at a bench with a circular saw and a half finished product on the table. 

Trevor sifts through the wood, all neatly arranged into piles of similar sizes– but labeled completely wrong. Trevor thinks that Earl might’ve refused to follow Vera’s labels when she first put them up in the shop, but realized that they’re more helpful than harmful. He’s just petty enough of an old man to ignore the labels, but follow the categorization.

Trevor ends up with a pile of ten sheets of plywood– four that are as long as lunch tables, and six that are just squares. Those will go behind the goals, while the long ones will go around the sides of the slab. He picks up a couple of 2x4s, just in case he needs them, and throws them on the pile with a clatter.

“I’m going to go grab my buddy,” Trevor says to Earl.

Earl grunts, but doesn’t budge. He also doesn’t look up from his station.

Cole is chatting up Vera when Trevor rejoins them. He’s leaning over the edge of the counter, asking about Vera’s knitting and her grandchildren. He’s got a bag of goodies next to him– powertools and nails, Trevor assumes. 

“Coley, come help me,” Trevor interrupts.

“No manners, this guy,” Cole says to Vera, scoffing and pointing his thumb at Trevor with a shake of his head. 

“Well, don’t keep the bear waiting,” Vera replies. Trevor watches her pinch Cole’s ass as he passes, but Cole just laughs and bats her hand away.

Fucking annoying. Always so good with the grandparents.

“The bear?” Trevor asks once Vera is out of earshot. “Is that me?”

Cole smirks. “We’ve got nicknames.”

Earl looks up when they reenter the back. He lets out a laugh, just a short bark. “This is your friend who’s going to help you carry all that wood?”

As the smirk falls off Cole’s face, Trevor picks it up.

“I can carry some wood,” Cole insists. “Probably all of it. I’m stronger than Z is, anyway.”

Earl’s gaze slides over to Trevor. “Z,” he repeats. “I hope you don’t stick with that one.”

Trevor laughs. “You sound like–” he cuts himself off. He never did learn her name, anyway. What’s it to this old man, who he sounds like?

Cole picks up on it though. “Like who, Z?” He asks with a tilt of his head.

Trevor glares at him. 

“I don’t give a rat’s ass who I sound like and I don’t want to hear your smug little bickering,” Earl admonishes. “Get your wood and get outta my shop.”

Trevor laughs in Cole’s face, then pushes him over towards the pile of wood. “Go on, strong man.”

Cole makes like he’s going to throw a punch at Trevor– Trevor doesn’t flinch, because he hasn’t fallen for that since their first stint on the US team– and puffs up his chest before deciding to pick up the long pieces of wood.

“Compensating for something?” Trevor asks.

“Go fuck yourself,” Cole replies cheerfully, turning on his heel and swinging the wood around with him, hoping to hit Trevor in the stomach. Trevor jumps away.

He picks up the rest of the wood and follows Cole out of the shop, bidding Earl a quiet farewell.

Earl grunts.

Trevor nods to himself, not surprised by the response. Vera is much more sad to see them go, gushing over how strong they are and telling them to come back soon. 

“What’s your nickname?” Trevor asks suddenly, as they load the wood into the back of the car.

Cole grins, crooked and smug. “Sweetie.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Oh, I assure you, I’m not. I’m a real hit with the ladies.”

“Yeah, you’re a real fucking hit with the married seventy year olds,” Trevor scoffs. “Don’t fucking talk to me, dude.”

Cole laughs, tossing his head back. He looks over Trevor’s shoulder. “Hey, isn’t that your girl?”

Trevor spins around. “Where?” He asks, looking to his left and right. 

When Cole starts cackling behind him, Trevor takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, dude.”

“Bear, you wouldn’t know what to do without me.” Cole pats Trevor on the chest before rounding the car, settling in the passenger seat.

“Fucking passenger princess,” Trevor seethes. 

“You wish you were me.”

“I fucking don’t.”

“The more fucks you say, the more fucks you give.”

“Fuck off.”

They drive back to the house in silence, Trevor’s knuckles white as he deliberates driving off the mountain and taking Cole with him. There are pros, certainly, the top one being that Cole would no longer be part of this vacation. The cons, unfortunately, outweigh the pros: without Cole, Trevor would be alone with the Hughes brothers all summer, except for the occasional visiting savior.

Quinn and Luke have arrived by the time the duo returns to the mountain house. They brought with them another SUV, this one only slightly bigger than Trevor’s vehicle. It’s got a third row of seats, but it’s cramped– they’ll definitely have to take both cars down to Charlotte when they go to practice. Because of the limited trunk space in Quinn’s rental car, Trevor’s car will likely end up being the gear car. 

Which is lucky, because who wouldn’t want to spend three hours total in the car with smelly gear while the other car gets to have fun and smell nice?

On second thought, the time alone might be good for Trevor. He loves his friends, he really does, but it’s hard to be around them for so long. He’s lucky that they’re all on different teams, that they keep up when they can, and that it’s not constant. Jack can’t escape his brothers, especially not Luke, but Trevor can escape all three of them.

He spends the evening building the outdoor rink, mostly alone. Quinn helps a little bit, mostly chalking up the lines on the remaining half of the slab. He holds the wood for Trevor while he screws some nails into the pieces to keep them in place. They work mostly in silence, as they often do. Trevor is itching to talk with Quinn, see how he is, but he knows that Quinn is a man of few words. He also knows that Quinn is quick to say that Trevor talks too much. They’re at the point in their relationship where Trevor lets Quinn dictate how much they speak.

Luke tries to cook dinner, he does. Trevor can’t fault him for trying. Jack had to jump in to save them from burnt steaks and soggy vegetables, and even if he can’t salvage everything, he does a pretty good job. Luke apologizes and does the dishes. He’s quiet for the rest of the night, falling asleep on the couch during the movie they picked out, and Quinn wakes Luke like a good big brother and shoos him to bed. 

It’s more calm than the lake house, Trevor thinks. They’re not really doing anything differently, are they? And yet, here they are, sitting together in calm silence. They’re drinking bottled beer and laughing over the same jokes they’ve heard a million times, reminiscing about summers past and what they’ll do this summer. Quinn wishes for a lake. Jack tells him they’ll find one.

Trevor goes to bed when the movie ends, frogs croaking past his bedroom window in the depths of the night.

4:90 – HONEY

It’s a Thursday, so Honey gets to sleep in until nine. Sleeping in until nine means that she really wakes up at eight, because she just can’t sleep in late after working at the bookstore for five years now. She sits on her couch on Thursday mornings and reads. She does the crossword in the Litchton Local, the newspaper that comes out weekly on Wednesdays. 

There’s an immeasurable stillness in the mountains.

Honey noticed it the first time she came up to this house as a child. Everything moves, like the bugs outside and the leaves on the trees, but everything is so still. Like it’s being held in place by something bigger. She knows the feeling well, but it’s comforting here. 

At home, it was uniforms and piano lessons after school. She loves piano, even still, but there was something so crushing about the weight of her perfect posture on that bench when there was all the pressure of beauty breathing down her neck.

Home, Honey thinks again, and laughs. 

In the mountains, all of the beauty of the world is there and present and taking up space– but it’s not forced. It’s not the idealized version of everything. It just is.

And everything is so green, especially on a rainy day like this. Honey thinks there’s something sacred about the greenness of the mountains, but it’s the melancholic side of divine that leaves you waiting for another whisper or breath in the wind that never comes.

She used to have a piano that she could play in the mornings. She toted it to the antique store down the road when she made the mountain home hers. Sometimes, she wonders why she did that and regrets it, staring at the dents on the floor where its legs used to stand.

But then she remembers that she’s thinking about the past again and she shakes herself out of it. Five years later, but it’s hard to forget all of the things you grew up knowing.

Honey picks Bea up on the way to work, relishing in the girl’s consistent lateness because it allows her the chance to catch up with her friend. They see each other every day, yes, but the bookstore isn’t suited for some topics.

Such as Bea’s current woes:

“I’ve run out of dating app men,” she complains.

Honey bites back a smile. “Did you run out, or did you just swipe left on all of them?” She asks knowingly.

Bea cuts her eyes at Honey. “All the ones I swiped left on are ugly,” she says. “I can promise you that.”

“Is anyone good-looking in Litchton, Bea?”

Bea’s silence speaks for itself.

Honey laughs, her hair whipping around her face in the breeze from the rolled-down windows of her car.

“If I had known you were dragging me to the Ugly Capital of the World, I wouldn’t have come with you,” Bea announces, like it matters. She’s a liar. She wouldn’t have let Honey leave their hometown without her, no matter where she was going.

“You couldn’t turn it down, you had to come,” Honey replies. “Especially since they asked you to be Mayor.”

Bea gasps, affronted. She stares at Honey, her jaw hanging open. “Are you mad at me? Be honest.” She pouts, her voice whiny.

“Oh my God,” Honey groans, rolling her eyes. “No, I’m not mad at you.”

“Okay, well, stop being a cunt, please,” Bea sasses. If Honey were more annoyed, she’d reach out and slap Bea’s arm for the attitude. “We have to go to work and I need to put all my focus into pretending to like you.”

“Yeah, because it’s so hard to like me,” Honey says. Her voice is dripping with sarcasm, monotone and grating. 

“Yeah, it is, you suck.” Bea flips her hair over her shoulder, digging through her bag to find her Walmart lip gloss. She smears the cherry flavored gloss over her lips and puckers up, batting her eyelashes at Honey exaggeratedly. “Gimme a kiss.”

“No.” Honey pulls up to The Reading Nook and parks on the street in front of the building, parallel parking with the practiced ease of someone who’s been dealing with nothing but parallel parking (except in the grocery store and church parking lots) for the last five years.

“Ugh, one day you’ll kiss me,” Bea mutters, staring forlornly out the window. 

Honey rolls her eyes. “Bea, we’ve already kissed. You weren’t that good and I didn’t like your lip gloss then, either.”

Bea cringes. “That was like ten years ago, Hon. Things have changed since then. Number one, I’m not in middle school. Number two, I’ve had boyfriends and I’ve had sex since then. Number three, you know it wouldn’t mean anything. I want you to try my lip gloss so bad, come on.”

Honey stares. Bea’s got a stupid smile on her face, teasing and annoying. They hold each other’s eyes for too long before Honey speaks. 

“You’re insufferable, did you know that?”

Bea nods. “You are so easy to work up.”

Bea and Honey exit the car at the same time and enter the store through the front, the bell jingling behind them. Ada greets them from behind the counter, teasing Bea for being late again and threatening to cut her pay. She never will, never. Bea is too good with the kids, too happy to talk to mothers, and just dry enough to understand the miserly old man that walks through the door looking for a new World War I book. 

In the back, Ada has a bowl of biscuits and jam that Honey reheats and eats over the counter before she starts her day. 

She’s supposed to reshelve some books from their Borrow Before You Buy section, the part of the store that acts as the town’s public library. It’s a small task. The pile of books that were returned yesterday is less than a hundred. A good portion of the books are little kid chapter books, the kind you could finish in an hour as an adult because the font is so big and there are full-page pictures twice a chapter. 

Bea has to read to the kids at noon– some of the mothers bring snacks, like the end of a youth soccer game. It’s like a potluck lunch and the kids love Bea. Most weeks, it’s just her, but since it’s summer, she’s starting to bring in guest readers. Honey refuses to do it every time. Well, that’s not true– she acts as guest reader once a summer, right before school starts. It’s her one moment of the year. 

As she’s restocking the books, Honey hears the bell twinkle with each new customer that walks in. She’s grown used to the noise over the years, so it doesn’t draw her eye anymore.

What does draw her eye, however, is the blunt tap on her shoulder. When she turns around, Bea is blinking innocently at her– no doubt the offending hand in this scenario– with Trevor by her side.

“I was just talking to Trevor here, Honey,” Bea says. “And he was wondering if we had any books that a man his age might like. I thought maybe you should talk to him.”

Honey glares at Bea, purposefully obvious about it so that Trevor sees. What does she know about book recommendations for a man in his twenties? He probably wants some shit sports biography, or worse– he’s embracing his inner old man and he’s ready to venture into the world of World War I non-fiction. Either way, book recommendations are Bea’s thing, not Honey’s. She just stocks the books, builds the shelves, and bonds with the old ladies who come in on Tuesdays.

Bea shrugs with a coy little smile– Honey wishes she could slap it off of her face– and disappears behind the stacks. Honey can tell that she’s still listening from a few feet away, always nosy and overly interested in Honey’s exploits. If she can’t indulge in her own, she’s happy to butt in on Honey’s.

“Trevor,” Honey says, crossing her arms over her chest. She didn’t wear a bra today. She doesn’t trust him not to look. She also doesn’t trust her nipples not to peak in the cold air. 

“Is Honey your real name?” Trevor asks. 

She balks at him. “What is it with you and my name?”

Honey expects Trevor to back down, to act timid and normal and earnest like he did at the fruit stand on Monday. She expects him to apologize, yet again, for another inadvertent mistake that Trevor seemed unable to avoid. It’s because he doesn’t think– he just says the words as they come to mind, hoping that the sentence comes out fully formed and making sense.

And yet, he doesn’t.

“Just wanted to know what name I’ll be saying when I’m telling you to come,” is what Trevor answers. 

Honey gathers her wit quickly, scrambling to find a response to Trevor’s bold statement. She wants something clever, something to turn him down, something to tell him that he’s a cocky prick for saying such a thing while she’s at work, but she comes up with none of the above. Instead, she settles for: “It’s a nickname.”

A smirk tugs at Trevor’s lips and Honey wants to reach out and strangle him. He’s smirking because he thinks he bested her– bested her– and that he’s got the upper hand.

“What kind of book are you looking for, Trevor?” Honey changes the subject, trying to get back on task. She turns, continues restocking the Borrow Before You Buy shelves. 

“I’m not sure, Honey,” he replies, really milking his use of her name. “What kind of books do you think I’d like?”

She glances at him, looks him up and down. She tamps down a smile and says in a curt, monotone voice. “Guides on how to make the best of your business trip.”

Trevor laughs at that, more of a shake of his shoulders than a real laugh. “You’re funny, Honey.”

Honey raises her eyebrows and waits for him to continue.

“Hey, that rhymed. Maybe a book of poetry? I need to study my craft if I’m going to be waxing poems about you.”

He’s bold, she thinks. He’s really bold, much more sure of himself than he was on Monday. He’s much more confident, a sharp 180º from where he was the other day.

“Why don’t you keep your waxes to yourself?” Honey asks.

“How can I?”

She turns to him, planting a hand on her hip. “Don’t you have something to do today other than bother me at my bookstore? You don’t even know me. Why are you here?”

“I’m here to get a book. I’m not trying to bother you, I’m just trying to make conversation.” Trevor shoves his hands in his pockets and has the decency to look ashamed, even if it’s just for a split second and just to see if Honey will crumble. She knows his type. She’s seen them before.

“You’re flirting with me,” Honey accuses. “Not making conversation.” She puts air quotes around the last two words.

Trevor smiles. “You caught me,” he says simply, no shame evident in his voice. The smile stays on his lips as he and Honey look at each other. He raises his eyebrows and she takes it as a challenge.

“I’m not interested, Trevor.”

“I could show you a good time, Honey.”

“In Litchton?”

“Don’t you hear how good it sounds when I say your name? It’s like we’ve been hooking up for ages and I’ve got a special little name for you.”

“A name that everyone else uses.”

“It’s special to me.”

“How about a self-help book?”

Trevor clutches at his chest, jaw dropping in fake-misery. “You think I need help?”

“If you’re not going to buy a book, then you need to leave me alone.” Honey places the last book in her stack on the shelf and looks at Trevor expectantly. The silence sits between them, suspended for a moment.

“Do you have any books about space?” He asks. 

Honey notices that his voice is softer, a little more genuine. She examines his features, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She waits for the joke about not wanting space from her, needing her in his orbit, or whatever. It doesn’t come. She scans his figure one last time, realizing that her brow is furrowed and she’s chewing on the inside of her bottom lip as she does so. She smoothens her expression, hoping Trevor didn’t pick up on her calculating stare.

“How do you feel about creative nonfiction?” Honey asks.

Trevor scrunches his nose.

“Memoirs, personal histories, stuff like that,” Honey supplies. She softens her voice to match his tone. She almost feels a little shy. “We only have one book about space that I’ve read and it’s creative nonfiction, but it’s really good.” Quieter, then: “I liked it.”

Trevor nods, a little hesitant. This is the Trevor she met on Monday. “Okay.”

“Follow me.” Honey leads him to the nonfiction section, to the rows of books whose authors bear a last name that starts with ‘D.’ She runs her fingers along the titles of the books at the height of her chest while scanning the upper shelves. “It’s there,” she says, pointing to the row just out of her reach. “It’s by ‘Dean.’” She looks down, around her on the floor. “Where’s my step ladder…?”

“I can reach it,” Trevor says, stepping forward. He places a hand on the small of Honey’s back and reaches up, fingers hesitating as he searches for the right book. When he finds the spine bearing Dean’s name, he bounces up on his tiptoes for just a second to slide the book from its position on the shelf. 

Honey has never been more aware of a hand in her life. His touch is light, just a passing glance really, but it weighs on her. It’s like she’s standing in quicksand and she waited too long to try and get out.

He’s so close to her when he stands flat on his feet again. He’s got the book in one hand and his other still rests on Honey��s back.

She steps away.

His eyes follow her, but instead of saying anything, he just flips the book over in his hand. He reads the back cover and as he does so, Honey puts more space between them. She takes a breath, trying to stay quiet, and grounds herself.

“Is it really any good?” Trevor asks. “Do I have to buy it?”

“Yes, and, um.” Honey throws a look over her shoulder. She lost track of Bea while she and Trevor went to find this book. Fuck, her nosey best friend could be anywhere. “You can borrow it. We just usually give people a week or so to bring it back, and if you don’t, we track you down.”

“Track me down?” Trevor asks, chuckling. 

“Yeah.” Honey nods. “Small town. Everybody knows everybody, or knows somebody who knows everybody.”

“Stalking me, Honey?” Trevor teases.

“We’ve met twice, and both times it was because you came up to me. If anyone is the stalker here, it’s you.”

Trevor turns the book over in his hand again, looking down to avoid Honey’s gaze. “Leaving Orbit, huh?” He bites his lip and takes in the sight of Honey in front of him. He taps the book with his other hand. “I’ll let you know if it’s any good.”

“I know it’s good. I read it.”

“Baby, if you knew good, you’d be all over me.”

Honey scoffs. “Alright, fun’s over. Get out of here, Trevor.” She shoos him away, practically pushing him out of the shop. She sticks her tongue out at him through the glass after closing the door behind him. She watches him laugh, run his hands through his hair, and turn away.

‘Zegras’ is written in bold letters across his back, the number 11 in the center of his t-shirt. The detail catches Honey’s eye as she watches him walk away, down the street towards a car with a New York license plate that looks far too perfect and expensive to belong in Litchton. She bites the inside of her lip again, pondering. If anyone asks, she doesn’t care, but Trevor’s different than anyone she’s ever met. She wonders why.

But no, she doesn’t care.

Bea does.

“He plays hockey,” Bea announces, revealing herself. “He’s good, too. NHL. He was a top ten pick when he was drafted.”

Honey just nods. Twice. That’s all she needs. They’re small movements and she’s still chewing on her lip.

“What did he get?”

Honey clears her throat. “Just the, uh, Dean book about space.”

Honey can practically hear the face Bea makes behind her back. “You think he’ll enjoy that?” Bea asks. “It’s really personal.”

“It was the only book I could think of,” Honey replies with a shrug. She finally turns around to face Bea. “You’ve got to stop spying on me. I know you listened to our whole conversation.”

Bea pouts and stomps her foot, the sound echoing along the stacks around them. “How could I not?” She demands. “‘Just wanted to know what name I’ll be saying when I’m telling you to come?’ Honey, girl. Be serious.”

“Bea, you know I’m not looking for that right now.”

“You’re never fucking looking for that,” Bea hisses, pinching Honey’s wrist until she flinches away. “It’s falling into your lap and you’re pushing it out the door! What’s wrong with you?”

Honey glares at her with a tilted head. 

Bea relents. “One of these days, I’m going to kick your ass,” she threatens. “You can’t be a spinstery old maid forever, Honeybear. They’re only here for the summer. Maybe you should embrace it.”

“He’ll be gone within the week.”

Bea sighs. “Whatever you say.”

5:90 – TREVOR

“We need to throw a party,” Trevor says over breakfast.

“Why?” Luke asks, voice scratchy from lack of use. He yawns and runs his fingers through his hair, further messing up his already messy curls. He’s not wearing a shirt– none of them are– and Trevor is astounded by how pale Luke is. 

“We need to get you outside more,” Trevor mumbles, then clears his throat and continues speaking. “It’s like a housewarming thing.”

Unimpressed, Cole rolls his eyes. “Who do you want to invite?” He asks.

Trevor pauses, side-eying his friend. “Nobody,” he deflects. 

Quinn snorts, the spoon he’s using for his cereal clinking against the side of his bowl. “Not much of a party.”

“He wants to invite the girl that he met the other day,” Jack says, butting into the conversation. 

Luke frowns. “What girl?”

“Some townie that he met at the fruit stand when we went to the grocery store,” Jack explains. “He doesn’t know her name.”

“Her name is Honey, actually,” Trevor interrupts. 

The table stills. Each of the boys’ eyes turn towards Trevor and he suddenly feels like an ant under a child’s magnifying glass, boiling under the glare.

Cole pushes up an invisible pair of glasses and raises a finger, pursing his lips. “Actually,” he mocks, then drops the tone. “How do you know her name, Z?”

Trevor shrugs noncommittally. “I ran into her when I went into town yesterday.”

“Oh, when you were supposed to pick up laundry detergent and you came back with a book instead?” Cole asks. “That makes sense, much more sense than what Luke said.”

Trevor blanches. “What did Luke say?”

Jack snickers.

Trevor turns to Luke. “What did you say?”

Quinn smiles and hides his face, taking a large mouthful of his cereal to leave Luke hanging if he asked for help.

Luke flushes. “I mean, you know… that maybe you confused the two.”

“How the fuck would I confuse laundry detergent with a book?” Trevor snaps. “They’re two completely different things, fuckface.”

Luke throws his hands up in surrender. “We were just thinking of reasons why you might’ve come back without the one thing we needed.”

Trevor looks around the table. “You guys are such assholes.”

“Bro, you’re the one that forgot laundry detergent because you were too busy chatting up some chick,” Jack defends the group. “Now we can’t even do our laundry.”

“If it’s so fucking important to you, go get the detergent yourself!”

A smile breaks out on Jack’s face. “Maybe I will,” he says, his voice shit-eating. “I might need to grab a book for myself, too.”

Trevor’s anger increases tenfold, for no fucking reason. “The fuck you do,” he snaps. “You don’t even know how to read.”

Jack’s face twists, his emotions finally aligning with Trevor’s own. “Fuck you, dude. You know I can read, I just don’t like to.”

Trevor scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I just want to have a party,” he mutters, stabbing at his eggs with his fork. 

The boys fall into silence, finishing their breakfasts. Trevor pouts, frustrated that the boys weren’t immediately on board with his idea for a party. 

If they were in Michigan, the Hughes brothers would have the front door of the house unlocked past 10pm. The people they know from the golf course, from the lake, from the pickleball courts would all be pouring through the doorway and into the party. Everyone knows that on Saturday nights, the Hughes brothers invite people over and they have a big bonfire. Apparently, that only applies in Michigan.

Trevor leaves the breakfast table first, to jeers from the other boys about being pouty and bitchy for not getting his way. Trevor knows that he’s going to invite Honey and her friend– Bee? Bea? B?– over tomorrow night no matter what the goons say. There’s not much to do in Litchton, he knows that, so he doesn’t want to leave the girls out. Otherwise, they might just sit at home all night. Trevor can’t have that.

Obviously, that’s his only motive. He would never have any other reason to invite Honey and Bea over to the house at night. Never.

Maybe one other reason.

But that’s irrelevant. 

He spends the morning outside, using the extra wood from Earl to build a fire pit in the half-circle clearing near the edge of the forest. When they were younger, Trevor’s sister might’ve thought this area was where the fairies lived, and maybe she would have built them a house. He wonders briefly if Honey was the same way when she was a child, when she was growing up in rural Litchton with nothing else to do but imagine.

Come to think of it, he doesn’t know if Honey grew up here. She seems so intimately integrated into the town that she has to be from here, has to have grown up here. She must know all the town secrets and all the town gossip and fuck, Trevor wants to know all of that and more. 

He can’t explain the feeling he has about Honey. He’s just… drawn to her. It doesn’t make sense– he doesn’t know her. He’s barely met her. She did not exist in his life a week ago and yet, she’s popping up in his thoughts like they’ve known each other for years. Like they’ve been inseparable for years. When he thinks about it, he decides that Honey is like one of the girls he would have met in elementary school in Bedford. Honey is one of the girls that he would have grown up with, one of the neighbor girls from down the street with whom he rode his bike on hot summer days. 

She’s got a hometown charm feel to her. Trevor has to see her again.

He finishes building the wooden part of the fire pit before realizing how stupid it was to build the pit out of wood. A lightbulb seems to go off in his head, though, because it’s an excuse to go see her, to invite her to his party. He can go to the hardware store on the way, pick up some stone and gravel to line the wood, protect it from catching flame. He can pick up some firewood from the grocery store for their first fire and pick up the laundry detergent he forgot yesterday. Jack won’t be so annoying then.

Trevor doesn’t bother telling the boys where he’s going– he just gets in the car and drives away. 

It takes all of fifteen minutes to make his way to the bookstore. It’s still early, so he doesn’t even know if it’s open yet. Trevor and the boys are so used to waking up early for hockey that they’ve been up for about two hours and the whole day is still ahead of them.

When Trevor pulls at the front door of The Reading Nook, it doesn’t swing open the way it did yesterday. He knows the doors are easy on their hinges, considering how easily Honey slammed the door behind him yesterday, but today, the wood is barely budging. He knocks on the door, loud. 

Honey’s friend’s head peeks out from behind a stack, confusion written all over her expression. Trevor waves at her, gesturing at the door. She laughs, then approaches the door. She points down at the ‘Closed’ sign hanging near the handle.

Trevor tilts his head, unimpressed. “I have to talk to you,” he says through the glass.

Bea unlocks the door and opens it with a snorted laugh. “What’s up, Trevor? Honey’s not here yet.”

“I have a proposition for you.”

Bea steps aside and lets him into the store. “You want her.”

Trevor sputters at her honesty. “I don’t know her.”

“You want her,” Bea repeats with a nod and a knowing smile. “And you want to know how to get her.”

“Well, yes,” Trevor says. “But also, no. I wanted to invite you– both, you both– to a party tomorrow night.”

Bea smiles. She crosses her arms over her chest. “You want my best friend and all I get is some measly party? Come on, Trevor. What’s in it for me?”

Trevor thinks for a minute. “What do you want?”

Bea laughs. She pokes her tongue into her cheek and looks expectantly at Trevor.

“Whoa,” Trevor says, taking a step back. “That’s really… forward, but–”

“I don’t want you, Trevor,” Bea scoffs. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. “So self-centered, Honey was right about that. But, I’ll help you get her and I’ll make sure we make it to your party if you give me what I do want.”

Trevor hums, narrowing his eyes. “What do you want?”

Bea smiles, devilish and conniving. “The dating pool up here is pretty dry, and I hear you’ve got a few friends.”

Trevor nods.

Bea blinks at him. “Do you have any pictures of these friends? I would’ve looked you up, but Honey and I swore off Instagram years ago.”

That makes sense. That’s why he couldn’t find Honey when he looked her up last night– not that he had much to go off of. Still, “Honey Litchton NC” didn’t reveal many results.

Trevor fumbles with his phone, showing her a picture of the group from last summer. He watches her fingers pinch and zoom in on the picture, on each individual. She keeps her expression neutral, a poker face that impresses Trevor. She hums, thoughts racing behind her eyes too quick for Trevor to understand them. 

“We’ll come to your party,” Bea says simply, handing the phone back to Trevor. She snatches it back at the last second. “Wait,” she says, and clicks around for a second. 

Trevor waits, then she hands the phone back. On the screen is a contact page for ‘Bea McLean.’ 

“It’s pronounced like McLane,” Bea tells Trevor. “Since you’re so obsessed with names.”

“Okay,” Trevor cuts her off with a sarcastic nod. 

Bea laughs. “Don’t get sassy with me, I have all the power here.”

“Yeah, but I have your number,” Trevor flaunts.

“I could just block you, easily,” Bea points out. “Then where would you be?”

Wisely, Trevor bites his tongue. After a deep breath, he asks, “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. Now get out, Honey’s supposed to get here soon and I don’t want her seeing you. She’s annoyingly on time. She’ll know we’re in cahoots.” Bea, much like her best friend did yesterday, pushes Trevor to the door and shoves him through it. She slams it behind him, flipping the sign so it says ‘Open’ instead, and waving Trevor off with a blown kiss.

she’s a flirt, Trevor thinks. those guys will not survive her for a second.

He doesn’t know which boy she has her eye on, but it doesn’t matter. Quinn’s too quiet for her, Luke is too awkward, Jack is too cocky, and Cole is too… short. 

Trevor snorts at the insult, laughing to himself. He heads to the grocery store, where he parked, and purchases two gallon bottles of laundry detergent and a Sharpie. He writes “JACK” on one and puts them both in the trunk of the car. Then, he walks to the hardware store. 

“Bear!” Vera greets from behind the counter, joints creaking as she moves from her chair behind the counter to give Trevor a hug. 

“Oh, Vera, you don’t have to come all the way over here,” Trevor says awkwardly, but hugs the woman back nonetheless.

“Of course I did!” Vera exclaims. “You look so handsome, young man.”

Trevor blushes, shying away from Vera’s examining fingers. She squints at the logo on his chest, one of his shirts from Anaheim. 

“I live in Anaheim,” Trevor explains to the woman, catching her hands in his and holding them securely in front of her body before letting go. “Do you have any stone that I could secure a fire pit with?”

“Yes, baby!” Vera claps and leads him to a section of the store that’s, somehow, even more peculiar than Earl’s workshop. There’s bags of gravel, sure, but it looks like fish food compared to some of the other bags and miscellaneous stones on the shelves. “Pick whatever you’d like. I’ll give you a discount for being so darn cute.”

Trevor chuckles. “I bet you give that to all your customers,” he teases.

“I had a local girl put it in the computer for me after we met you and Sweetie on Wednesday,” Vera teases back, batting her eyelashes. Her cheeks are red with blush, too much blush. “His discount is a little more because I see you’ve changed the body God gave you.”

Trevor follows her eyes to his tattoos. He rubs his opposite hand over them sheepishly. “Yes, ma’am.” He tries to smile charmingly. “Maybe I should’ve sent him to do the shopping today, since you like Sweetie so much.” He throws a wink into the mix to punctuate his sentence.

Vera laughs, a twinkling sound.

“Plus, it’d be cheaper for me,” Trevor says, like it’s a scandalous secret.

“I know that’s right!” Vera claps again, waves a hand at Trevor like she’s slapping her knee. She walks off, back to the counter, leaving Trevor to shop for his stones. 

He shops through the stones for about half an hour, choosing his favorites. He settles on a midsize gray stone, one that he can stack and seal with cement. He buys the quick drying cement as well, and carries it all to his car. Vera carries the quick dry cement and giggles when Trevor easily shifts the stones in his grasp when she complains about the bucket being too heavy for an old lady. He picks up the bucket and shifts the stones again, knowing he can carry more than this if he needed to. He swears he hears Vera sigh dreamily behind him as he packs the car up.

Like he said, what’s flirting with a few old ladies?

When he bids her goodbye with a kiss on the cheek, Trevor makes eye contact with Honey in the bookstore window. He grins at her and winks to her for good measure. He thanks Vera for her help while he escorts her back to the store, just for the sake of Honey seeing how selfless he can be. He’s not self-centered, no matter what she told Bea. 

Vera insists that Trevor and “his band of boys” join her and Earl at church that Sunday morning, pledging to introduce them to the other members of the community. Trevor agrees, thinking that being on Vera’s good side might get him even closer to Honey.

Trevor drives back to his home for the summer to find that the boys are playing in the rink he built.

Come to think of it, he’s making a lot of improvements to this property, and the only one who has actually helped is Quinn.

Not self-centered at all.

He deserves a party.

“We’re having a party,” Trevor calls out, carrying his stones toward the fire pit. He dumps his supplies on the ground. “And I invited two girls.” He wipes the dirt and dust from his fingers. “Someone else needs to finish this fire pit because I’m tired of building your shit. C’mon, Quinn.”

He leads the way inside, to grab a beer from the fridge, and Quinn follows after kicking off his skates, eager to avoid the work. The other brothers and Cole are left dumbfounded on the concrete. Jack makes eye contact with the cement mix first, and he smiles. 

They always did love a little project, and maybe they can hide a drawing of a dick in the cement for the owners to find at the end of the summer.

6:90 – HONEY

“Where are we going?” Honey asks. 

Bea has barely crossed over the threshold of Honey’s home before the question falls from her lips. Bea’s been cagey about it all day– just explaining that “we have plans” and that “you’ll enjoy them.” Honey loves her, sure, but this is absurd. She feels like she’s being kidnapped. 

“More like when are we going,” Bea corrects. “Let’s get you an outfit.”

Honey stumbles back, Bea pushing her out of the way. She closes the door behind her friend, following Bea as she stomps up the stairs to Honey’s bedroom. Bea knows Honey’s place as well as she knows her own, a little townhouse off of the main street in town. Honey’s lucky to live a little farther from city center, closer to the magic of the mountains. 

“What kind of plans do we have, at least?” Honey presses. She looks at Bea’s outfit– a jean skirt that falls like an old Poodle skirt and a white bandeau top. It’s sort of see-through– Honey can see the shadow and outline of Bea’s nipples through the skimpy top. “I don’t want to dress like you,” Honey says.

Bea scoffs and turns to Honey. “My plan tonight is to get laid, your plan tonight is to accompany me while I evaluate my prey.” 

Honey pretends to gag. “I hate when you say that.”

“Maybe you’ll find someone to flirt with,” Bea says. 

“So, where are we going tonight? Statesville? Winston?” Honey asks again, hoping Bea will relent since she now knows the purpose of their adventure. 

“Dude, I’m not telling you,” Bea laughs. 

She reaches Honey’s closet and throws the curtain open. She strolls into the closet, looking through Honey’s clothes. 

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Honey asks, looking down at her athletic shorts and little tank top.

Bea turns around and surveys Honey. “The shirt is fine.” She returns to her task. “Nice tits.”

Honey looks down. It’s a revealing top and she’s not wearing a bra, because it’s a Saturday and she didn’t know they had plans until Bea told her this afternoon. “Maybe not, then.”

Bea glares at Honey out of her peripheral. “But that’s your favorite tank.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to get hit on if I wear this shirt.”

“You’re going to get hit on anyway. Keep the shirt.”

“No, I won’t, because my bitch face will keep most of the guys away.”

“Most of the guys. Which is the whole thing. Those ones will come to me.”

“Ew, you’re going to have a threesome tonight?”

“A threesome?” Bea spins around. “God, no! One at a time for me, thanks. I’m just going to fuck the other ones.”

“Other than who?” Honey asks. “I’m not fucking anyone tonight.”

Bea rolls her eyes. “You don’t know that.”

“Trust me, I do.”

“Whatever.” She digs through the closet, finding a long-buried white tennis skirt, the back pleats of the skirt puffy. Honey would never wear something like that, but Bea would– it’s probably Bea’s skirt in the first place. 

“I’m not wearing that,” Honey states.

Bea wrestles her into it– seriously. She tackles Honey onto the bed and literally redresses her, the absurdity of the situation so bizarre that it completely bypasses both girls’ minds. Honey fights Bea the whole time, but Bea comes out on top. She gets her way, Honey wears the skirt, but she’s not happy about it.

“Do I, at least, get to drive?” Honey asks.

“Oh, I was going to force you,” Bea laughs. “You don’t expect me to drive you home, do you? I’ll be… indisposed.”

Honey scowls the rest of the time they spend getting ready– Bea does Honey’s hair and forces Honey to put on some light makeup, just a bit of mascara, eyeliner, and some lipgloss. 

The only problem with Bea and Honey’s relationship is that Bea likes to go out, likes to meet people, likes to have a wild time, whereas Honey prefers to stay in. She’d rather watch a documentary or read a book or be present in nature than packed into a club dancefloor like a sardine in a larger can. Not that that matters to Bea.

By the time they get in the car, Bea is jumping off the walls trying to keep her secret destination to herself. Honey keeps trying to push, hoping for the right moment, but Bea won’t reveal her plans. All she does is direct Honey to the main road and type away at her phone, sending text after text to an unknown recipient, an unknown recipient that Honey is sure they’ll be meeting up with later.

They drive further into the mountains, to Honey’s surprise. They don’t head towards Winston or Statesville. They drive up, farther from town, farther from their neighbors. Near the top of the mountain, the houses are miles apart.

Perfect for a party.

Perfect for a party… thrown by boys in their twenties.

It clicks in Honey’s mind as Bea tells her to turn into the hidden driveway along the curve. “You’re not,” Honey says.

Bea laughs. “I was wondering how long it would take for you to catch on. I thought for sure you would’ve clocked me when we turned left instead of right.”

“Bea,” Honey scolds, her voice sharp. They’re on the driveway now, safe from the curves of the road, and Honey stops the car. She turns to her best friend. “You can’t be serious.”

For all of her audacity, Bea manages to understand the gravity of the situation at hand. It finally clicks in her head, why Honey isn’t happy with her plans, and why she’s even unhappier that she was dragged out here without knowing what she was walking into. She can’t just drop Bea off and leave– she would be abandoning her best friend in a house of strange boys all evening. Bea might be outgoing, but she hasn’t been hurt like Honey.

“It’s not going to be like that,” Bea reassures Honey gently, grabbing Honey’s hand with both of hers. “I promise, they’re not like that.”

“You don’t know them, Bea,” Honey explains. 

“You don’t either,” Bea points out. “And this time, we’re together. The second they do something– I mean it, the second– we’ll leave. I’ll go with you. Fuckery be damned.”

Honey grimaces, rolling her shoulders to try and relieve some of the tension. She takes a deep breath, then squints at Bea. “Are you really going to fuck all of them?” She asks.

Bea grins, knowing that she’s convinced Honey to at least try and hang out with the boys. She’s smug, getting her way once again. She winks at Honey, coy. “Just the ones you don’t want,” she simpers, giggling. “You get your pick of the litter.”

“I don’t want to fuck any of them. I don’t know how many times we have to go over this.”

“So, you don’t want Trevor? ‘Cuz I was thinking–”

“Don’t fuck Trevor,” Honey groans. 

“Why not?” Bea teases.

“You’re better than that, Buzzy,” Honey scoffs with a shake of her head. “He’s weird and a flirt and annoying.”

“I’m weird,” Bea says. “And a flirt. And annoying.” She puckers her lips and blows kisses at Honey as she shifts the car into drive and begins to creep down the driveway again. “Maybe it’s a match made in heaven, me and Trevor.”

“You don’t want him,” Honey growls, her voice short. 

Bea shrugs and faces forward in her seat, her hands tapping her thighs. Whether it’s from nerves or excitement, Honey can’t tell. If she had to guess, though, it would be excitement. Bea is the least anxious person that Honey knows, the kind of person who can talk to anyone or anything no matter the situation.

While they might be athletes, they’ve never met anyone like Bea. Honey never has, not since she met her best friend all those years ago. They’re fucked– and she’s irresistible.

Honey and Bea pull up to the house and park under the cover, right next to the front door. This house was a point of contention when it was being built the first year Honey moved to Litchton. It was her first introduction to the gossip of the founding ladies. Scarlett and Gillian had felt particularly perturbed by the building– a five bed, four bathroom house complete with a hot tub and a game room and two stories of wraparound porches. 

And it’s all made of the same wood, the same stain, the same ugly pattern. Honey cringes when she thinks about the number of trees that were cut down to make this house match. She’d think the same thing if it was made entirely out of the same stone. 

Bea knocks on the door as Honey wipes her sweat from her palms. It takes a minute, but then Honey hears the scrambling of feet and the shouting between one man and his group of buddies, who are just giggling as they do what they can to cut him off from the door. Honey can see it through the thin windows bordering the door, how they rush up the stairs and down the hall. She can also see how they’re holding Trevor back as much as they can.

The brunet from the first day opens the door with a charming smile. “Hi,” he greets. “Can I help you?”

“Jack, you motherfucker–”

Honey bites back a laugh as Trevor curses and struggles, still in the grasp of the shorter boy from the first day and one of the newcomers– another brunet, a taller one. She looks at him carefully– the curl of his hair at the nape of his neck, partially hidden under a baseball cap, the curve of his eyebrows, and the slope of his lips give him away. He must be one of Jack’s brothers. 

“We were invited to come over tonight,” Bea replies.

No matter how many times she hears it, Honey is always impressed by the way Bea turns on her charm and makes the people around her melt. It worked on her, too, when they first became friends all those years ago, and then less and less when Bea moved into Honey’s place when they first came to Litchton together and shared a bed for almost a year before Bea found her own townhouse. Then, her charm just got annoying, like a younger sibling who tags along with you everywhere because Mom said they had to.

It’s better for them when Bea and Honey have their time apart. Honey, especially, needs her time alone.

Jack’s eyes finally find Honey behind Bea and he grins. “That’s right,” he says, tapping his forehead like he just remembered. Honey can tell that all he’s doing is messing with Trevor, though. “The party! You must be the girls that Z invited. Hi, Honey.”

“Hi, Jack,” Honey replies, short and sweet. She turns on her customer service voice just for this. She finds Cole next to Trevor and smiles when her eyes slide over the imprisoned boy, as passive as she can be. “Hi, Cole.”

“Hey, Honey,” Cole says with an easy smile. Honey wants to snort and laugh– he’s got a smile that could get him into or out of anything. She wonders briefly if he’s childish and impish, still, even in their adult age, just because he’s got the smile to match.

Jack steps aside and lets the girls enter the house. He closes the door behind them and Honey has a sneaking suspicion that if she turned to glance at him, he’d be staring at one of their backsides. She doesn’t look. It’s not worth the joke that she could make if she caught him.

Bea nudges Honey and points up.

Honey tilts her head, and– “A chandelier made of moose antlers. Wow,” she marvels. She makes a face at Bea, then continues. “That’s really… something.”

“Isn’t it sick?” Cole asks, finally dropping Trevor’s arm and joining the girls where they stand. He spreads his arms out from his sides and spins in a slow circle. When he makes a full turn, he looks at both girls and wiggles his eyebrows. “Want a tour?”

The girls agree and Cole takes them throughout the house, leaving the other boys behind. From their pounding feet, Honey figures they’re headed downstairs, while Cole takes them upstairs. He shows them the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the common areas, the hallways, the outlet in his room that doesn’t work, and much more. They go back downstairs and get the same treatment– Cole even opens the fridge and helps himself to a beverage before offering anything to the girls. They see the kitchen, the living room, the den, the dining room and patio. Cole shows them the wraparound porch and its chairs. Honey takes in the view– it’s just as good as the one from her living room. 

Finally, finally, they make their way down to the basement. It’s a smaller room, minimized by a covered porch and larger patio with a hot tub. The basement is clearly the man cave, the game room, or whatever you want to call it. There’s a pool table, a large TV, a ping pong table, a foosball table… everything a boy could want. 

As evidenced by the two boys sitting on the couches near the pool table, while the other two wield sticks and study the position of the balls on the table.

Honey finds Trevor on the couch with Jack. His eyes found her first as she walked down the stairs and he hasn’t stopped staring. Neither has she, to be fair.

“Pool,” Bea notices. She looks at Honey and Honey shakes her head. Bea nods. “Honey and I are next,” she announces anyway.

“Oh, yeah?” Jack asks with a little laugh. “Are you any good?”

“I’m okay,” Bea says. She pauses, lets a smirk on her face grow as she looks over to Honey. “Honey’s worse.”

The boys turn to Honey. “Are you?” Trevor asks. 

“I wager she could still beat you, Z,” says the only boy that Honey had not seen when they arrived at the house earlier. He’s got dark hair, but it’s also hidden under a backwards cap. The only difference between him and his brothers, assuming he is one of the brothers that Trevor mentioned on Monday, is that he’s smaller, more sullen. The telltale sign is that his comment is offhanded, delivered with the calm venom of an older brother who knows exactly where to bite. He doesn’t even look at Trevor as he lines up his shot and sinks the ball.

Honey likes him immediately.

When she looks over, she notices that Bea likes him too. Her lips are pursed in thought, only the minutest pout on her mouth. There’s a tiny smile pulling at her cheek and her eyes are twinkling under the bright lights, but they would be hazardous in a club.

It’s a game they’ve played before. Bea sucks at pool– she always has, but… when you suck at pool, either the person you’re playing with will laugh at you or they’ll try to give you tips. The night usually ends with Bea sinking the 8 ball with a little bit of help from her gentleman caller and a celebratory, “thank you” kiss. 

Honey, however, loves pool. She wasn’t always great at pool, but found that, like almost everything, the more she practiced, the better she became. When Bea’s celebratory kisses turned into rushed hookups in the Winston-Salem dive bar bathrooms, Honey got her fair share of tips and tricks from the other men around. Usually, she would try to shack up with the alcoholic middle aged men who had nothing better to do than sip on their beer and play pool after dinner with their wives. It was rare that they flirted with Honey and she liked it that way.

The game goes like this: Bea finds a group of men that puff up their chest at the idea of beating a woman at pool, she “lets them win” against her (as if she would’ve won in the first place), and then it’s Honey’s turn. Honey, of course, feints a few shots and lets the men get comfortable before coming from behind and beating them. Usually, her win results in two drinks for her and her friend.

Today, the drinks won’t be her bargaining chip.

“What would you wager?” Honey asks the boy who last spoke. “If it were a real bet.”

His stormy eyes look her up and down while Jack’s brother, the tall one, paces around the table to find his best shot. “Money, normally,” he drawls. “But I’d rather not lose my money betting on you if you’re worse than her.” He nods to Bea, who takes the chance to blatantly look him up and down.

“How about this,” Bea proposes, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers. “I’ll play the winner of this game and then we’ll see if Honey can beat Trevor. If I win, I get whatever I want, obviously. If Honey wins…”

Honey meets Bea’s eyes. She nods, knowing that Bea is thinking back to the night when they visited ECU their junior year of high school and witnessed a rugby party in the flesh. It’s their usual punishment when their outings feature a house party and a pool table.

“...Trevor has to do a Zulu Run,” Bea finishes. 

Honey finds Trevor again and smiles, overexaggerated and sickly sweet. 

“What’s a Zulu Run?” Trevor asks, looking to the other boys and finding nothing but confusion. On the girls’ faces, he just sees plotted mayhem. 

“It’s fun, don’t worry,” Honey reassures him. “You only have to do it if you lose. Which, I mean, if I’m worse than Bea, then you should be fine.”

Honey sits on the loveseat across from Trevor and Jack, while Bea sits down next to Jack. Her knee presses against his, subtly, just enough that you can’t tell if it’s deliberate or just a lack of room on the couch and Honey presses her hand to her lips to hide a smile.

“So you’re Jack,” Bea says, interrupting the conversation that he and Trevor had been in when the girls walked down the stairs. 

Honey watches as Bea makes her eyes look wide and soft, very flirtatious and fairy-like. She’s got the perfect complexion for it– the light dusting of freckles over her skin, the ounce of baby fat still left in her cheeks and all the right places along her body, her expression just the right amount of interested but not desperate.

For a brief moment, Honey wishes she was more like Bea.

“You’ve heard of me?” Jack asks with a little smirk.

Bea scoffs and waves him off. “Don’t flatter yourself. Honey didn’t even tell me your name.”

Jack’s bright eyes turn to Honey. “Oh, yeah?” He tilts his chin up in challenge. “What is it with you and names? You wouldn’t tell Trevor yours, you haven’t properly introduced me to…”

“Bea,” Bea supplies.

Honey shakes her head fondly at her best friend’s eagerness. Honey bites her tongue to keep her comments at bay, and instead plasters a tight smile on her face. “I didn’t realize I would be seeing you all again,” Honey says, forcing politeness into her voice. “And I’m not the one who’s weird about names.”

Jack and Trevor share a look. Jack hides a snort poorly.

“What?” Honey asks, her eyebrows raised and her mouth in a straight, unimpressed line. 

Jack smirks and Trevor shakes his head. Jack speaks anyway. “I don’t know how you would have avoided us,” Jack says. “Considering.”

“Considering…?” Bea asks, leaning around Jack to look at Trevor. Honey catches Trevor’s panicked glance and can guess what Jack’s alluding to. She jumps in, hoping to switch the subject.

“Nothing to consider,” Honey and Trevor say at the same time. Trevor sounds rushed, Honey sounds indifferent. Both of their jaws drop and they stare at each other, Honey affronted and Trevor surprised. 

Cole, who had been sitting on the stool-saddles near the pool table, steps over the back of the couch and weasels his way between Trevor and Jack. “Creepy,” he says. “You’re like the twins from the Shining.”

Trevor cringes. “You know, I don’t think we are.”

Honey just hums, picking up her drink and taking a sip. She clears her throat and turns back to Jack. “So those are your brothers?” She nods over to the pool table, where the shorter boy is lining up the 8-ball with the corner pocket. “Trevor said you had family coming.” 

Honey doesn’t miss the smirk and blush on Trevor’s face when she says his name, even as he dips his head and takes a gulp of his beer to cover it up.

Jack smiles, a genuine smile. It’s easy to tell the difference with him, when he’s really smiling or if he’s smiling because he thinks he’s supposed to. 

“Yeah, the goons.” Jack looks over his shoulder and grins as his taller brother loses his game of pool. “C’mon, Rusty, you brought that pool stick all this way and your game still sucks?”

The taller boy glares at Jack and sulks, re-racking his stick. He walks over and stands awkwardly behind the couch, but flicks Jack on the back of the head and Honey giggles before she can help it.

She looks down at her lap after letting out the little laugh and misses the way Trevor’s eyes light up and train on her. 

“Luke, you fucker,” Jack swears, flinching at the impact of Luke’s flick. Jack frowns, his eyebrows furrowed as he rubs the back of his head. “He’s my little brother.”

“Little brother,” Honey repeats. “And you’re just going to let him flick you like that?”

Jack rolls his eyes. “Very funny, Honey. Obviously I’m not going to let him get away with it.” He reaches around and half-asses a punch to Luke’s dick, just hard enough that it expels an “oof” from the younger boy and he doubles over a little bit.

The other boy interrupts. “Quit it,” he says. He glares at his brothers, then his eyes fix on Bea. “Your turn.”

Bea stands and smiles, a smug little smirk reserved for her conspiratory looks with Honey that signifies that she’s getting what she wanted. She joins the man by the rack of sticks and clasps her hands behind her back, looking up at him through her eyelashes. “Which stick should I use?”

Jack looks a little put out by the loss of Bea at his side, and casts a glare toward his other brother. “And that’s Quinn,” he says curtly. “Pool master, or whatever.”

“So he’s the best in the house?” Honey asks.

“We’ll tally scores at the end of the summer,” Luke jumps in as Quinn says, “Absolutely.”

Jack scowls. “You just think that because you’re older. Remember, Quinn: first is the worst. Second is the best.”

Trevor snorts and takes another sip of his beer. 

He’s unnaturally quiet, Honey thinks. Trying to be cool in front of his friends, maybe.

“I take it you’re the second child,” Honey says. “That makes sense.”

“That makes sense?” Jack asks, repeating her statement like he can’t believe she dared to say that. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Honey looks over at Bea, who presses her lips together and raises her eyebrows. Daring Honey.

Honey rolls her head back, stretching the muscles of her neck. “You…” She starts, trailing off because she’s not sure how to finish the sentence without sounding mean. She scratches her eyebrow and scrunches her nose. “You like attention,” she decides, trying to keep her voice as free of judgment as possible. 

“Do I?” Jack asks, sounding unimpressed.

Honey shrugs. “You– I mean. Jack, you asked. You opened the door for us because you knew it would annoy Trevor, probably because you knew it would bother him that you were opening the door for m– us, instead of him. You flirt and smile when Bea sits next to you but you lean back and manspread when she gets up like you don’t want us to notice that you’re sitting without a girl at your side. You call your little brother a “fucker” and retaliate because you can, honestly escalating the situation from a flick to a punch to the dick. You act annoyed because your older brother is beating you at pool already this summer and it only just started, plus he took the girl from your side. It’s, uh… yeah. You like attention.”

Everyone but Jack starts to laugh.

“Stand up,” Cole says to Honey.

She does, her arms resting by her side awkwardly, her fingers twitching as she waits for him to do something.

Cole looks around the room and swears under his breath. “I didn’t think this through, one second,” he mutters, and disappears upstairs. 

Honey continues to stand there. She pats her hands against her thighs and looks around the room, trying not to make eye contact with anyone, but especially not Bea. If she makes eye contact with Bea, she’s going to burst out laughing. 

Trevor is still snickering, hiding his face in his shirt. Honey can still see the little crinkles by his eyes.

“She clocked you, man,” Quinn says with a shrug before pulling out a pool stick and standing it next to Bea. It comes up to the tip of her shoulder, Quinn’s chest. He nods in satisfaction and hands the stick over. Honey lets out a relieved breath of air at his approval, and then stifles a second when she watches Bea’s fingers brush over Quinn’s on the stick, her eyes lingering on his for just a second too long.

It’s too easy for her. 

Cole comes bounding down the stairs with a plastic soccer trophy in his hand. “Found this when I was snooping,” he says, approaching Honey and holding it out. He stands directly in front of her, makes eye contact with her, and stares into her eyes. “Thank you,” he says with a sincere nod. “For taking Jack down a peg. He needed that. We all needed that.”

And he hands the trophy off to Honey with a handshake, like she’s graduating from high school and he’s the principal handing her a diploma. He takes the handshake and pulls her into a hug, the trophy crushed awkwardly between them. 

When he pulls away, Cole puts both hands on Honey’s arms and stares into her eyes again. “If you’re going to do that again, please don’t do it to me.”

Quinn breaks the rack with a crack of his stick, standing at a slight angle, and Honey sits back down, cradling her trophy in her hands.

Cole engages Honey in conversation for a few minutes, with Luke jumping in here and there. Jack turns on the TV and pouts. As much as she tries not to notice it, Trevor just stays quiet and sips his beer and sneaks glances at Honey out of the corner of his eye. 

Eventually, the conversation dies out and the group turns their attention to the television, which is streaming some hockey game that Honey doesn’t have an interest in. The boys are chitchatting away, throwing out names and positions and yelling at the TV when a call doesn’t go their way– Honey can’t tell who’s cheering for what team, but she can also tell that Jack and Luke don’t like the team in white… at all. Trevor seems to prefer them over the team in red. Cole doesn’t seem to care. He’s just laughing, still, at Jack. Jack just sulks, but he seems to cheer up once the team in red scores, late in the first period.

“You all really like hockey, huh?” Bea asks between turns. Quinn has sunken a ball almost every turn, but Bea has only sunken one. Honey grins at her, then glances at the pool table and back to Bea. Bea sticks her tongue out at Honey, playful and easy. If Quinn’s the kind of guy that Honey thinks he is, it’s only a matter of time before he starts teaching Bea some tricks to tighten up the game. 

Cole laughs. “Yeah, I mean, I’d hope so.”

“What do you mean?” Bea asks, batting her eyelashes innocently, like she didn’t read all of Trevor’s Wikipedia page before coming here. 

“We play,” Luke says with a shrug.

Honey and Bea lock eyes and Honey plays along with her game. She tilts her head and blinks, as if this is the first time she’s hearing it. “Are you any good?”

Quinn snorts and shakes his head as Bea leans over to line up a shot and Honey notices his hand on her waist when he points at a different ball, explaining that that would be the better shot for her. Bea sinks the recommended ball and jumps up with a cheer, smiling brightly at Quinn and standing just a little closer than she would if she wanted to be just friends.

“We’re alright,” Trevor says, the first words he’s said to Honey since she walked through the door. He stands. “Does anyone want another beer?”

The boys’ voices ring out in a chorus of yesses, whereas Honey stays mostly quiet. Bea agrees to another drink as well, which is when Trevor turns to Honey. “You’re sure you don’t want another drink? I’m already getting them for everyone.”

“I’m sure, but thank you,” Honey says. 

“Why don’t you go and help him carry the drinks,” Bea suggests from her post next to Quinn. 

Honey glares at her, but stands. She leaves her trophy on her seat, saving it. “Fine,” she replies, hoping the edge in her voice is only detectable to her best friend. She follows Trevor up the stairs to the kitchen, like an antisocial cat who has FOMO, but only when it comes to their owner. She crinkles her nose in disgust when she realizes that that’s how she looks, not that Trevor would notice or care. Actually, he would probably be elated if she compared herself to a cat following him around.

Trevor opens the fridge and sifts around, the bottles of beer clinking. The beer takes up most of the bottom shelf, unsurprisingly.

“Do you think you have enough?” Honey asks, unable to help herself when Trevor passes her a third bottle, each a different brand of beer, to carry. 

“Q and J like Michelob, Luke is a Miller guy, Coley likes Budweiser, and I’m more of a Modelo drinker.” Trevor’s head is buried in the back of the fridge, rifling through a pack of Millers that seem to be running low. “We’ve had to go to the store three times since that first day because we keep running out of the one beer that someone wants.”

He retreats from the refrigerator and turns to Honey. He’s got two beers in his hand. He holds them up and asks, “Which one do you think Bea wants?”

Honey weighs her choices, but ultimately chooses the Michelob. Bea will use it as a jumping point for her conversation with Quinn– it’s a no-brainer. As annoying as Bea’s boy-craziness is, Honey is always going to be her wingwoman and helper when she can.

“Cool,” Trevor says and returns the other beer to the shelf. He turns back to Honey and takes two of the beers she was carrying, leaving her with just two, the Budweiser and the Modelo.

“I thought you were a Modelo drinker,” Honey says.

“I am,” Trevor replies, heading towards the stairs. 

Honey follows. “Then why am I holding your beer?”

“Because I want you to hand it to me.”

Honey snorts out a laugh. “Okay.”

When they return downstairs, they distribute the beer. Honey hands Cole his Budweiser and waits for Trevor to finish handing out the beers to the Hughes brothers and her friend. Bea has finally managed to get Quinn to do the work for her, with him leaning behind her and guiding her arms over the cue, pointing out where she should be looking and where to hit the ball. There are no other balls on the table except the 8 ball, which makes Honey chuckle. There’s no way Bea sunk all of hers– Quinn had to have “mistakenly” knocked a few in for her.

Trevor returns to the sitting area and Honey stands, offering him the Modelo in her hand. On purpose, she realizes, Trevor closes his hand over her own to take the beer from her and thanks her with a smile, his eyes far too kind to be harmless and friendly. 

Honey shakes her head with a look, then frowns when Trevor plops his happy ass right down on the other side of her loveseat. She shakes her head again and chooses to watch the end of the pool game, sitting on one of the stool-saddles near the table. She claps when Bea finally sinks the 8 ball after her third whiff. The ball only sinks because Quinn leaned over Bea again and did it for her, working together to finish the game.

“I win!” Bea squeals in delight, jumping in celebration in front of Quinn.

He lets out a little chuckle, the most awkwardly and quietly endearing laugh that Honey has ever heard. “You won,” he agrees. “With my help.”

Bea tilts her chin up and smiles at Quinn, proud of herself. “So we both win,” she says. “That means we both get whatever we want.”

Honey bites her tongue and ducks her head, waiting for what’s coming next. She wants to turn around and look out the window, even though you can’t see anything in the dark mountainside now that the sun has set. The thing is, she also wants to see the boys’ reactions to what Bea is going to say next.

Quinn smiles, a little tiny smile. His focus is only on Bea, who has inched her way closer to him somehow. There’s not much more room between them. “Whatever you want,” he repeats. “What do you want, Bea?”

Honey watches Quinn’s face, but she’s torn. She also wants to watch Jack.

“You know that tour Cole took us on when Honey and I first got here?” Bea asks, reaching out and smoothing out the turned-up fabric of Quinn’s sleeve.

“Yeah,” Quinn replies, a little confused.

Bea rests her hand on his arm, slowly making her way down so she can wrap her hand around his fingers. She watches herself do it, then looks up at Quinn through her lashes. “I don’t think I saw your bedroom,” she says. “Would you care to show me?”

Quinn’s lips part in surprise and Honey watches his eyes search Bea’s own for… insincerity, maybe? 

At the same time, Jack chokes on a sip of his beer. Honey’s eyes fly to him and Cole pats his back as Jack coughs it out. 

“Jesus Christ,” Jack says, clapping his hand against his chest and coughing one last time.

Bea smiles at him, oozing confidence and a little showmanship, as Quinn leads her to the stairs. He lets her climb them first and Honey giggles when Quinn sneaks a glance at Bea’s ass and visibly relaxes before hurrying to catch up with her and get his hands on her hips. Bea’s twinkling laughter grows softer and softer as she bounds up the stairs, her footfalls growing heavier as Quinn closes in on her.

“Well shit, Jack,” Cole says. “I guess you’re not the first to fall into bed with a girl this summer. The streak is finally over.”

“You don’t know that,” Jack says, pushing Cole’s hand off of his shoulder. He turns to face Honey, looking hopeful and a little desperate. “Wanna help me keep my streak up?”

A loud honking laugh escapes Honey. “Absolutely fucking not,” she replies, still laughing. She shakes her head at Jack, then notices the small, but mightily proud smile on Trevor’s lips. 

Choosing not to focus on that smile, a smile that she’s inadvertently becoming very fond of because she’s never seen him smile at his friends the way Trevor is smiling at her, Honey hops up from her stool and starts to gather the balls from the pockets of the table. She racks them, then grabs her cue and waves Trevor over. “I believe we had a game to play.”

“You had a game to lose,” Trevor corrects, standing and approaching Honey. He grabs his own stick, the one Quinn abandoned on the edge of the table when Bea proposed her bedroom shenanigans. 

“Hmm,” Honey voices, raising her eyebrows and exaggerating a grimace. “Consider me scared. Your break, Trevor.”

“When I win,” Trevor says. “I want to buy you dinner.” He lines up the cue ball and shoots, the colorful triangle of balls destroyed in a single swoop. One of the solids finds its way into a pocket and Trevor smirks.

“What a boring prize,” Honey muses. “But if you insist on those terms, then I agree.” She sticks out her hand to shake his. “And when I win…”

She leans down and eyes a line of three balls. The striped nine is farthest from the hole, but Honey wants to prove a point, so she angles her stick down at a steep slope and pushes– noticing Trevor’s mouth flattening into a line when her ball jumps over the other two and tips into the hole. She stands back up to her full height, tilting her head to the side. She cocks her hip and positions her hand against it, holding the cue up on her other side.

“I’m really going to enjoy your Zulu Run, Trevor.”

Cole whistles lowly from the couch. “I need to find you another trophy, girl.”

Honey shoots him a wink.

They play on. Trevor takes it easy– plays the safe route. With each easy fall into the pocket, he fistpumps to celebrate. Honey can only imagine how insufferable he is at the bowling alley. 

She shows him up, not even daring to let him pull ahead in their race and convince himself that he has a chance. She sinks the final black ball into the right-center pocket, bending herself all the way over the table to give him a good view of the girl who’s beating him. Her hips are high on the other side of the table, balancing up on her tip toes, facing the seating area. She doesn’t even look at the ball when she hits it, no, she’s looking up at Trevor with a tilted smile and mocking, bragging eyes. 

His eyes evaluate her– eyes, to lips, to chest, to ass. To the boys, making sure they aren’t looking, aren’t gawking at the round globes of Honey’s ass that are presented before them. Back to her ass. Her ass.

Honey stands, slowly, making sure Trevor memorizes the curve of her waist when she does. Her eyes drop to his pants, a smirk growing in time with his bulge, and she rests her hands on the edge of the table. She pulls her shoulders back, broadening her chest. 

It’s just a dominant stance. All Honey enjoys about this is the fact that his resolve and dignity crumble at the mere sight of a pretty girl bent before him. She likes knowing that he’s weak for her, but that she’ll never do anything about it.

She’s not looking for that.

“A Zulu Run,” Honey explains, clearing her throat to rid her voice of its sultry tinges. She shakes her hair back, over her shoulders. Trevor’s eyes darken at the sight of her throat. She smiles, but continues. “Is when you have to strip, sing a song, and streak around the house until the song is over.” She throws a glance over her shoulder at the other boys. “Usually your friends get to pick your song.”

Jack perks up at that. Honey turns and hops up on the ledge of the pool table, knowing that Trevor’s eyes have fallen to her behind. Jack looks at Honey with delight in his eyes, seeming to forgive her in an instant for psychoanalyzing him earlier in the night. His eyes slide to Trevor and the look in them seems more akin to yearning for vengeance.

“So, boys,” Honey drawls. “What’ll it be?”

They scramble over each other to reach her, shouting song suggestions as they fly into their head. Honey can’t hear anything they’re saying, so she laughs until they fall silent. Cole’s hand presses into the side of her thigh, she looks down at it in disgust, then back up at him. It falls to the edge of the table, noticeable space between her and the appendage. 

“How about this,” Honey decides. She sneaks a glance at Trevor, gloating as she lets her eyes roam all over his body. She takes in his arms, his thighs under his shorts, the way his shirt falls over his shoulders. “Trevor looks pretty fit. Why don’t we all pick a song?” She winks at him. “Make him run for, oh, eleven minutes or so?”

A flicker of recognition passes through Trevor’s gaze, but it’s quickly replaced by disbelief. He doesn’t know how she would know– weren’t they subtle about it? She lets out a breath of a laugh at the look– no, Trevor, you weren’t subtle, she thinks. but it’s cute that you think you are.

She realizes what she was thinking in a split second and shakes herself out of it, snapping her face forward and crossing her legs knee-over-knee. 

“But only his friends get to pick, so I guess I’m out.” Honey hops down from her perch and breaks through the boys, settling herself on the loveseat with her trophy, laying out to take up as much space as she could. She picks up the remote from the table and places her other hand behind her head, navigating to the Roku menu screen. “Do we have Spotify on this thing?”

Luke, Jack, and Cole each pick a song and Cole helps Honey connect to the outdoor speakers. He re-presents her with her trophy with a flourish and a bow, playful and lame. The boys push Trevor out to the patio with a whoop, pulling at his clothes even as Trevor fights them. 

Honey follows at a distance and watches through the glass door. She looks away when Trevor sheds his underwear and waits for Luke’s countdown to end before looking back up. She doesn’t want to see it. That’s just too far. She gets an eyeful of his ass as he rounds the corner of the house, though. 

As Trevor starts his third song, Cole’s cheesy Taylor Swift pick (“You can’t outrun my music now, bitch!”), Jack joins Honey at the door. 

“I think I’m going to head home,” Honey tells him, rubbing over the skin on her arms. 

Jack nods at her, shrugging easily. “I’ll walk you out.” 

Honey leads him up the stairs, hearing Trevor’s whoops grow louder as he finishes the second verse of the song. She knows he catches them walking up the stairs because his singing falters for a moment. His steps speed up. So do Honey’s. 

She walks briskly to the front door, bordering on a speedwalk, with Jack behind her. She swings her keys over her finger and wrenches the front door open. Jack catches it before it hits the wall. 

“What about Bea?” He asks, calling after Honey and making her pause. 

“She’ll find her way home,” Honey replies and steps off again. She has to get out of here before Trevor races up the stairs to stop her from being alone with Jack and she gets an eyeful of his– junk.

“Honey!” Jack calls again. 

She lurches to a stop and cringes, turning to face the boy. 

"Honey, I don't think I'm going to flirt with you anymore."

Honey takes a breath, walking back and reaching up to pat Jack's cheek, just forceful enough that it'll sting for a moment after she walks away. It's not quite a hit, but it's definitely not a love tap. "That doesn't hold the power that you think it does," she tells him with a nod and a close-lipped smile. She goes to leave, but Jack stops her by grabbing her hand.

"Trevor likes you, you know. He was quiet tonight, but he likes you. He's reading that book you gave him and everything," Jack says in earnest, his blues boring into Honey's own eyes. 

Honey picks up on the unsaid words. He's trying, take it easy on him, he might be annoying but he's good, and he likes you. You should like him too, and all of that.

The edges of Honey's smile soften and she gently pulls her hand from Jack's. "It's nice to know he can read," she replies, deflecting. Whatever Trevor feels for her, not that he can really feel anything because he doesn't know her like that, doesn't matter. She's not looking for that right now. "Thanks for hosting us, Jack. I'm sorry for what I... said."

"It's okay." Jack shrugs. "Thanks for coming."

"Goodnight," Honey bids him, and starts to walk away.

"Come back," Jack says, and Honey whips around and finds him looking like the words surprised him when he heard himself speak. He clears his throat. "Friday. Um, it's— it's National Chocolate Ice Cream Day and National Donut Day." He scuffs the tip of his shoe against the ground. "Really... important holiday."

Honey can't do anything but laugh. "I'll bring the donuts."

She walks to her car and ignores the chirping of bullfrogs echoing in her ears as she drives down the mountain to her home, alone.

7:90 – TREVOR

Jack glares at Trevor when he walks down to the kitchen early the next morning. As Trevor rubs the sleep out of his eyes with a yawn, Jack shifts under the frozen pack of peas that rests precariously on his shoulderblades. Trevor had barely touched him last night, he was just being dramatic. So he had a bit of soreness on his back from where Trevor pushed him against the wall and asked him what the hell he was doing, who cares? He went upstairs with Trevor’s girl. Alone. 

“Bea’s taking you to church with her this morning for laying a finger on me,” Jack growls out when Trevor looks at him and laughs.

“No shit,” Trevor replies, snorting.

“It’s true,” comes the female voice from the couch. Bea leans forward, her tube top skewed and tilted enough to draw a wandering eye. Trevor rolls his. “You shouldn’t get violent, not on my watch.”

“You weren’t even with me last night, Bea,” Trevor says sweetly, tilting his head down to dismiss her. “You didn’t see me do shit. How can you prove it was me and not Luke?”

“Luke put a video of it on his private story, then showed me,” Bea snickers in the same tone. “So you’re taking me home and helping me choose my best church outfit to hide these hickeys, and then you’ll join me at the service. It’ll be good for your reputation in town.”

“I don’t really care about my reputation in town,” Trevor laughs.

“Honey cares about your reputation in town,” Bea clarifies, a tight, ‘there’s no room for discussion here’ smile on her face. She pointedly looks him up and down. “Little Bear.”

Trevor scowls at her condescending tone and use of the nickname. How dare she flaunt her inner circle-ness to Trevor. 

“I was going to go to church anyway,” Trevor boasts. “Vera told me to bring all of the boys.”

“Well, you’re the only one resorting to violence–” Jack begins, seething, before Bea cuts him off.

“No, this is a good idea,” she says, waving her hand to quiet him. “We should all go to church.”

Jack scoffs. “I don’t think we need to go,” he says. “Sounds like you’ve got an ulterior motive.”

“I don’t want the town to think y’all are reclusive party folk who have no interest in the happenings of Litchton,” Bea snaps. “You’d be surprised how quickly the old grannies will turn on you.”

“And you get to walk into church with five guys on your arm,” Jack says, still scowling. This time, his attention is focused on Bea, not the man who physically hurt him the night before. 

“Said she wanted five guys, she ain’t talking ‘bout burgers,” Trevor deadpans, a disgusted look thrown Bea’s way.

She’s unperturbed by it, probably from many years of Honey– Honey.– throwing her similar looks. All Bea does is smile and reply, “My pussy already got murdered, Trev. I didn’t need five guys.”

“No way Quinn ‘murdered’ your pussy, Bea,” Jack jumps in, air quotes around the word. “The dude doesn’t fuck.”

Bea laughs. “I assure you, he fucks.”

“Yeah, I fuck,” Quinn agrees, descending the stairs. He veers to the couch first and drops a kiss on Bea’s head in greeting.

“Well, fuck your way to church,” Jack says. “Bea’s making everyone go with her.” Jack looks at Quinn expectantly, maybe waiting for pushback.

Quinn shrugs. “Okay,” he says. “It’s not like there’s anything else for us to do on a Sunday morning in this place. Everything is probably closed.”

“It’s true, everything is closed on Sundays except the grocery store and the gas station,” Bea says with a nod. “And the church, of course.”

Jack scowls and removes his pack of peas from his back. Trevor takes his opportunity to approach the fridge, conveniently behind Jack. “Why can’t we just stay here?”

“Because it’ll be fun,” Trevor replies, trying to exude optimism now that he’s not the only boy being forced to attend church and wash themselves of their sins. He turns and purposefully claps his hand down on Jack’s shoulder, hard. Jack howls in pain. Trevor squeezes just to watch him tense up. “It’s our chance to become one with the community, Jacky.”

Bea smiles, voice dripping with cheerfulness. “Yeah, Jacky, it’ll be good for you. Why don’t you two head upstairs and change?” Her eyes fix on Quinn, whose shirt rides up as he grabs a glass from the upper shelves of the cabinets. “I want to chit-chat with Quinn for a second.”

Trevor and Jack make a face, but scramble towards the stairs. They push and shove each other all the way up– Trevor is particularly satisfied when Jack bumps into the wall and groans– then split off into their respective rooms. Trevor treats it like a race– whoever finishes changing first wins.

Jack is already back downstairs by the time Trevor returns. Cole is there, and Luke, and both of them seem to be dressed for the service too. None of the boys have the best church clothes, but it’s a small town with farmers. Surely not everyone will be in their Sunday best every Sunday. Quinn is noticeably missing, but Bea is standing by the door with a smile on her face. Her lips look a little more red than they did before Trevor went upstairs. He narrows his eyes at her.

“You, and you,” Bea says, pointing at Jack and Trevor. “Come with me. Trevor, grab your car keys. You’re driving.”

“What about Luke and Cole?” Trevor asks, picking up his keys from their spot on the hook next to the door and trailing behind Bea. Jack trails behind Trevor, still grumbling and pretending like his shoulders hurt for dramatic effect. Trevor ought to show him some real pain next time.

The three people climb into the car, Trevor behind the wheel and Bea in the passenger seat. Jack, once again, finds himself relegated to the backseat. He straps himself in and Trevor catches his murderous glare in the rearview mirror.

“Quinn’s going to drive them,” Bea explains. “They’ll meet us at the church.”

“Whipped,” Jack coughs out. He does a terrible job of masking the word. 

Trevor rolls his eyes, just like Bea. She opens her mouth to say something, sass him, but thinks better of it.

They drive on in silence, the occasional sigh or grunt from Jack as he shifts in his seat. Trevor glares at him again in the mirror and Jack hits him with a fake smile before looking out the window to watch the trees whip by.

Bea directs them to the main strip of shops, then tells them to take a left onto one of the sidestreets near The Reading Nook. They pull up to a big brick house, separated down the middle by a massive staircase. Bea climbs the stairs and turns to the left again, unlocking and pushing her front door open.

She leads the boys into her living room, which is decorated exactly how Trevor expected it to be. The couch is white with pink pillows and a white shag rug beneath it. Her furniture is odd, thrifted and worn in. None of it matches, although Trevor suspects that her theme was “Barbie girl aesthetic.” It’s messy, and comfortable, and Trevor almost envies how she lives. His apartment in Anaheim is sparse– when you’re on the road so much and as busy with your job as Trevor is, you really only need a place to eat and sleep. His decorations reflect that.

Trevor sprawls out on the couch, leaving Jack standing awkwardly next to the coffee table. Bea disappears down the hall and enters her bedroom, her closet door creaking open.

“Jack, come here, will you?” Bea asks. 

Jack’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, but he starts down the hallway nonetheless. 

Trevor snoops in his absence, Jack’s presence no longer a threat to his comfort. He drags himself off of the couch and stands, advancing towards the shelves of knickknacks on the wall near the television.

Bea has got a number of books on her shelves, overtaking two of the four rows. The other rows are sparse and far more interesting– there are picture frames spread along the rows, six frames that depict Bea’s life and what she loves.

Four of the pictures feature Honey. The other two are groups of people that Trevor assumes are Bea’s family, her extended family on each of her parents’ sides. He can ignore those easily, not caring about about Bea to scan each of her cousins’ faces. The pictures with Honey are a different story.

There’s a picture of the two when they were ten, or eleven, riding their bikes down an asphalt street lined with suburban houses. Bea’s bike is pink with streamers and flowers and a little basket. Honey’s is dark green and sporty, similar to Trevor’s own bicycle from childhood. Honey’s smile is wry, whereas Bea’s is glowing.

The second, from a birthday party. It’s Honey’s birthday and they’re four, from the looks of the lit candle on her cake. Honey’s smile is wide, much wider than the previous image. Her hair is messy and her tongue is stained green, probably from a lollipop or a Jolly Rancher. Her arms are wrapped around Bea’s neck and she’s pulled her friend close, their cheeks pressing together. Bea’s expression is a little different. Only one of her eyes is squeezed shut, the one closer to Honey. Her lips are pursed like a duck and her little fingers are raised in a peace sign.

Trevor chuckles. If his mom had been the one taking the picture, she would’ve said “What a ham” about the girls’ goofiness.

In the next picture, they’re older. They’re sixteen, probably. Bea’s wearing these short jean shorts and a bikini top and Honey wears a matching top under some long, gray sweatpants. She rolled the waistband up and her back is mostly to the camera, Bea lifted off the ground in a swooping hug. Bea’s legs are kicked up behind her like she’s experiencing a really good, Princess Diaries kind of kiss and her face is frozen in laughter. Honey’s is the same. Trevor’s heart clenches at the smile on her face and the way her hair blows out behind her.

Finally, there’s a selfie of the two of them in a handmade frame. It’s from a high angle and Trevor can’t tell if it’s a .5 picture or a regular one. Honey’s eyebrow is raised and she wears an exaggeratedly thoughtful expression, goofy enough to tug at Trevor’s smile. Bea’s mouth is open and she has a hand pinching Honey’s chin, while the other is raised to take the picture. Behind them is the Welcome to Litchton sign that Trevor passes each time he goes into town. 

Trevor’s eyes glide down to the handmade frame, the written message along the top and bottom borders.

“New Beginnings!” and smaller, in the corner, a more personalized message. Trevor thinks that she wrote the message in a thin Sharpie– it’s too pristine still, after years. “There’s no one I would rather have join me in Litchton than you. Thank you for always being the Bea to my Honey! Honeybea 4ever <3”.

Trevor reaches out and takes the frame in his hand, inspecting it. He turns it over. More script, also in a Sharpie: “2019”, it reads. He replaces the item, making sure it’s back in the exact right spot. 

“Bea, hurry up!” Trevor calls, returning to the couch.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” she replies, leading Jack out of her bedroom. She’s clasping a necklace as she walks, then holds out her wrist and a bracelet for Jack to clasp. “We can go now.”

They leave the apartment and climb back into the car, Jack beating Bea out for the passenger seat this time. He’s smug about it too, grinning to himself while he buckles up. Trevor opens the back door for Bea and helps her into the car with a guiding hand in hers. When Jack realizes that he fumbled the chance to look like a gentleman, his face returns to its scowl. 

“If you’re not careful, your face will get stuck like that,” Trevor warns when he finally sits behind the wheel again. He shifts the car into drive and pulls out of the parking space.

Bea directs them to the church and Trevor pulls into the parking lot next to Quinn’s car, which is still running. They’ve got about five minutes before the service begins and Bea chastises the three boys for not going inside and reserving seats early. 

“There’s only a few instances where the whole town goes out to do something,” Bea complains as they walk inside. “Church is one of them. We’re never going to find a spot for all six of us.”

“No Honey?” Trevor asks, taken aback. He expected her to join them, especially since the ‘whole town’ is here.

Bea casts Trevor a look and snickers into her palm. “You’re sweet, Trevor,” she says and Trevor rolls his eyes at her saccharine tone. “But Honey decided a long time ago that she had enough religion in her life growing up. She and God know where they stand.”

Trevor reaches the door to the church first and holds it open for the group, letting them file in. He’s grateful that they’re in the church now, because all of the other boys are either too respectful of the space and what it represents or too awkward in a silent building to make fun of Trevor for seeking out Honey. Or they don’t want to get on Bea’s bad side and act a fool in church and suffer her wrath.

They file into one of the back pews, Bea sandwiched between Quinn and Luke. Trevor sits on the other side, right at the aisle. 

For an hour, he stays quiet and moves and speaks with the congregation. He counts the number of times that Cole tases Jack’s side, sticking his fingers between his ribs to cause him to flinch and make noise in the reverent area. He does this five times throughout the mass before Bea leans forward and threatens to cut his hands off herself. 

For an hour, Trevor stares forward and lets his mind wander to Honey, and all the thoughts he has about her. She’s a mystery and she’s quiet like Quinn, but confident in a way that Quinn never achieved. She knows exactly who she is and won’t budge for anyone, won’t change herself or act in any special ways around certain people. 

Trevor admires it– he’s spent his whole life performing for people, in a way. Hockey is his life and always has been, but sometimes it’s tiring to realize that all of his friends are people he met on ice. To think that he can be surrounded by his teammates and the fans in any arena and still feel lonely– it’s the kind of thing that leaves Trevor wondering if this career was a good idea. 

In another world, he’s playing in a beer league in a town like this, with a girl like Honey on his arm. 

The thought leaves him feeling heavy, weighed down. It ruminates in his mind, even after the service is over. It sours his mood completely and Trevor wishes he was back at the house so he could take a shower or something and stop the prickling feelings from taking over his skin.

In the parking lot, the group chats about nothing. Trevor doesn’t listen. Bea introduces the boys to come of the townsfolk and Trevor smiles and shakes the men’s hands, hugs the ladies or send a special look their way. Vera and Earl honk as they drive past the group, Vera blowing a kiss towards Trevor and Cole through the passenger window. Cole catches it and sticks it to his cheek, then sends one back. It makes Vera laugh.

Trevor tunes back into the conversation as the boys discuss plans for the upcoming week– Jack edges away from Trevor before he mentions that he invited Honey over that coming Friday and that Bea should come too. 

“Well, you’ll rarely find a Honey without its Bea,” Bea teases. She claps. “Okay. I’ll see you guys then. Quinn, take me home?”

Quinn nods and puts his hand on the small of her back to direct her to the car. Bea pauses and waves Trevor over, shooing the other boys away. Quinn stays, his hand still on Bea’s body.

“There’s a fruit stand outside the grocery store on Mondays,” Bea says.

“I know, I’ve been,” Trevor interrupts.

Bea quiets him with a click of her tongue. She chooses her words carefully, her eyes hard. “Go tomorrow at, like, six,” she suggests, a faux-nonchalant shrug lifting her shoulders. “You might find something that you like there. I recommend buying the strawberries. They make a lovely gift, Trevor.”

Trevor frowns, confused. “I don’t like strawberries,” he replies.

Bea closes her eyes and processes his words for a moment, a tight smile on her lips. “They make a lovely gift, Trevor,” she repeats.

“Sick,” Trevor says, his voice hard. He doesn’t understand what she’s saying. “I’m not buying strawberries for you, Bea. I don’t know you enough to give you gifts.”

Bea stomps her foot. “Good fucking God, Trevor. Quinn, can you explain this shit to him?” She asks, then walks off to the car. She takes Quinn’s keys from his hand and gets behind the driver’s seat herself. 

Quinn watches her walk away, then turns to Trevor. “She’s telling you that you’ll run into Honey, you fucking idiot, and that you should buy her strawberries.” 

He leaves Trevor standing there, eyes wide.

Yeah, he’s definitely heading to the fruit stand tomorrow and buying strawberries.

He concocts his plan on the drive home, silent compared to the other three boys, that are laughing and flopping around the backseat with every turn in a game of Jell-O. They’re not wearing their seatbelts. When they get too loud, Trevor envisions ejecting them from the backseat, leaving them sailing down the mountain, falling through the air.

He holes himself up in his room to nap when they get home, too excited to see Honey to let the time pass organically. It’s like time travel, this way. Trevor will wake up and be two hours closer to seeing her, to getting another chance to win her over. This time, with a gift.

In the afternoon, he laces up his blades and skates with the boys. Quinn has come back by now, not spending much time at Bea’s apartment after church, according to Luke. They all skate and shoot for a couple of hours, playing a game of pickup with an extra player to sub in and out. When that ends, they run some drills. Luke and Quinn play defense, like always, with Trevor, Cole, and Jack recreating their legendary line from USNTDP. It works out perfectly, and each boy pushes himself like they’re playing a real game. It’s the brotherly competition that fuels them– and when the drills start to fall into disarray from hits and other penalties that would certainly be called out in a game, they head off to shower.

The night ends slowly, fizzling out compared to the way it ended the night before. The boys lounge in the game room, sprawling out on the couches and snacking and sipping their beer. Trevor isn’t made to perform another Zulu Run, no one picks up a pool cue, and they watch shitty TV movies on the Spanish channel instead of English. They make up the dialogue as they go and Trevor is the first to go to sleep. He makes it to midnight, but then he forces himself to go to bed. 

He’s got a big day ahead of him… after 5 p.m., anyway.

–end–of–chapter–one–

[strxwberryshxrtcake]

General Dating Headcanons

Raph:

When you first start dating he acts pretty shy

Like if you told him a compliment he would shut down and become a stuttering and blushing mess

“I like your shell 😊”

“Y- you like my shell?  I- I mean, thanks!”

He just needs a moment to get used to you two dating

Like maybe a month or two

After those few months he gets more confident

He likes to have nice dates with you where he gets to just hang out with you

Takes you to the park during the night when nobody is there, or goes during the day in a disguise

Will go anywhere on a date with you if you recommend it, just don’t abuse your power please

He likes to kiss you on the forehead

Like if you’re just sitting together he’ll randomly do it

Likes it if you kiss him back on his forehead

Gives the best bear hugs

He’s nice and warm (for a turtle 😒)

If hugging or touching isn’t really your thing he respects your space

Completely fine with PDA

will kiss you any place and any time

If you don’t like PDA he won’t do it

He likes cuddles, but he gets scared he might accidentally hurt you

Please reassure him, I’m begging you, so help me if you don’t 😠

If you reassure him enough he’ll cuddle you more out of random

Will melt if you boop his nose

“Raph, Raph!  Come close I have a surprise”

*Raph bends down to your level*

*boop!*

Is you hype man, no doubt

You wanna start a business?  He’s all for it

Wann start a band?  He’s your biggest fan

Wanna become a streamer?  He’ll watch all of your streams

Anyways, very sweet and supportive boyfriend 10/10

Leo:

When you first start dating he won’t stop flirting with you

But it’ll be a bunch of dumb pick lines that weren’t well thought out

“Come here often?”

“I literally visit you and your brothers almost everyday, Leo 😒”

Takes around two weeks for him to start getting used to dating you

He’ll slow down with the flirting, but won’t fully stop

It’s Leo for crying out loud!

Likes to go to the movies with you

It’s dark so it’s hard to see that he’s a mutant

Likes to go to cafes with you in the Hidden City too

Will randomly kiss you smack dab right on the lips just so he can try to fluster you

“Hey, y/n!”

“Yeah?”

*Kiss*

If you kiss him back he’ll get flustered

Likes to hug you from behind

Like if you’re just standing and doing something he’ll put his ninja skills to use and sneak up behind you and hug you

If he spooks you too much though he’ll stop, don’t worry 😌

Loves PDA

Kisses you in front of his brothers just to annoy them

If you don’t like PDA he’ll be extra lovey dovey in private 😏

Absolutely loves cuddles

He can easily fall asleep while cuddling

Please cuddle him, he has bad insomnia

Just a warning, he won’t let you go

He needs a good two hours

Will randomly poke you for no reason

Even if you protest against it he won’t stop

Don’t take it in a bad way, but will randomly smack your butt (not a hard smack) and run away

*y/n talking to April while standing*

*Leo walking past y/n and smacking their butt and then running away*

“Dude 😐”

Donnie:

When you first start dating he probably tries to impress you a lot

Make inventions just so you can praise him and stuff like that

“Look what I made, y/n!”

“Omg, that’s so cool, Don!”

Takes around four months to get used to dating

He starts to stop trying to impress you a whole bunch, but still does it to a certain extent

Likes to hang out with you will he works on a project of his

Has a chair for you

“I made a chair, just for you, it’s even your favorite color! :)”

Made it himself 😌

He likes to go to cafes in the hidden city with you a lot, like twice a week

You guys are regulars at some cafes

Likes to kiss you on the lips

He doesn’t really do it randomly though

Like he’ll ask in some way before he engages

But it’s always in a weird way

“y/n, perhaps we could partake in the gesture of forming our lips together as couples do if you want.” 

“😐 sorry, what?”

Doesn’t really enjoy hugs that much

He’ll hug you if you ask, but won’t actually do it himself

Not into PDA

He feels like his brothers might tease him

He’ll hold hands with you or lean his head on your shoulder but that’s about it

He doesn’t mind cuddling, but doesn’t necessarily love it

He likes it if you sit on his lap and hug him while he works on something

Or if you sit close to him and lean your head on his shoulder

Likes to lay his head in your lap

He’ll even do it around his brothers

If you’re watching a movie with him and his brothers he’ll do it

Does this weird thing where he just stares you down until you pay attention to him

“Hey, why’s Donnie staring into your soul?”

“Oh, he just does that sometimes.  Probs just wants attention.”

“😟 Should I be concerned?”

Probably stared you down while you were sleeping before because he wanted to show you something

Overall, good boyfriend material :)

Mikey:

When you first start dating it’s kinda awkward between you if you know what I mean

Like he’s still getting used to the whole thing

Only needs a week and a half to adjust

Yes, that time exactly, no questions 😊

Likes going to amusement parks and arcades with you

He just likes fun dates

Went to a hidden city mall with you and got lost

Raph had to go and find you two

Raph was not having it 😔

Likes to peck you on the cheek

Will just randomly do it in the oddest ways

“Hey y/n, I have a secret to tell you!”

“Hmm?”

“I love you!”

*kisses cheek and then leaves*

Always hugging you

Any time that he wants a hug he just goes ahead a does it

*y/n talking to Raph*

*Randomly comes over and hugs you*

“Hey Angelo”

*continues talking to Raph while hugging Mikey*

Enjoys PDA

He likes to hold hands and give you little pecks on cheek or lips

He’ll openly cuddle you infront of his brothers

Won’t do it if you don’t like it though 😊

Absolutely loves cuddling

He likes you to just hold him and talk or take a nap

It’s going to take a long time to stop cuddling though

Like he refuses to let you go over some time

“Hey, where’s y/n?”

“Oh, their cuddling with Mikey over there.”

“HELP ME.”

“Is that normal 😟?”

“Yeah.”

You guys have a lot of inside jokes and stuff

You guys have been known to randomly blurt out a vine or a phrase and start dying of laughter

“y/n, diddly dum.”

*cue hysterical laughter*

---

Hope these were good :)

[lewkwoodnco]

Be More - George x Reader

"Er...I think this dough's ready to be cut into the strips."

"Yes, chef."

He coughed awkwardly, too uncomfortable to come up with any decent sort of response.

a/n: am soooo salty i fell sick in the middle of my 12 days of fics '23 for xmas last year :((( so im giving myself a lil treat by doing a short series of valentine's fics! i SO don't know how souffles work if you can't tell so pls don't come for me, and a special special thanks to lisa @neewtmas for the apron idea heheh. all fluff, which is why I got all my angst fics out of the way beforehand if you'd like a lil palate cleanser :) also totally didn't make this a songfic cuz i was struggling to find a title :} btw I headcannon that george randomly zones in and out in everyday life and this has nothing to do with how much I may or may not do this myself ALSO was strongly influenced to post this earlier by the multiverse of George aka @oblivious-idiot @bella-rose29@bobbys-not-that-small heh

warnings/tropes: lockwood and george bromance supremacy!!! baking, lots and lots of valentine's day fluff, awkward georgeeeee

word count: 2.8k!

TAGLIST | MASTERLIST

Lucy handed George a steaming cup of tea, which he gratefully accepted. The three of them were having breakfast as usual, and with the last strains of winter fading, Portland Row's kitchen was entirely too bright. He closed his eyes, pretending he didn't see the way Lockwood's hand lingered on Lucy's when taking his mug. They were bad enough on any normal day, but even worse nowadays, with Valentine's Day drawing achingly closer. He felt himself begin to nod off again from the gentle and comforting steam.

He felt a mild rap against his cheek, which he turned to see is from a well-aimed sugar cube launched from across the table by Lucy. He looked up to see her staring hard at him and Lockwood poorly concealing a snigger with his cup of tea.

"George. Have you or have you not got any plans for Valentine's?"

He takes his time wiping his glasses on his shirt sleeve before responding. "Nothing much. Though I've promised Y/N I'd spend the day with her."

He watched Lucy's expression carefully, and she seemed to be watching his. Truth was, with Valentine's drawing closer and closer, George was going into a mild panic. He hadn't exactly arranged it intentionally. They had been having a quiet chat on a morning when George had been too tired from the previous night's case to strictly follow, and suddenly she was waving goodbye, promising to see him next on Valentine's Day.

He had no idea what kind of a Valentine's Day he had agreed to, or how much of a filter he had had, and he had been dropping Lucy desperate cries for help, with decreasing subtlety. Was it a date? Was she expecting a date? Sure, they had went to that play together after Lucy fell mysteriously ill, and maybe they met up for lunch once a week. But she never referred to

His eyes slowly drifted close as Lucy and Lockwood's conversation morphed into gentle white noise, enjoying the warmth of the little sun streaming through their kitchen window. It felt nice to have a little break from his intense week of baking -

Baking! George snapped wide awake, clumsily climbing out of his chair and feverishly counting the stacks of meticulously wrapped, frilly pastry goodie bags lining the kitchen counter. It had become an annual Valentine's Day tradition for George to construct these small goodie bags of baked goods for a sizeable chunk of his extended family. He even roped in Lucy and Lockwood, and as Valentine's Day approached they'd all gather around the kitchen table at night, even if it was after a case, packing the delicaices George had spent the day baking, until one of them started dropping off.

It was tedious work, but they enjoyed it and were well invested in it - Lockwood fiercely so. When a cousin had remarked that perhaps the tradition was becoming a little tired at a family gathering last Christmas, Lockwood had accidentally-but-not-really smacked his head. George relaxed as he neared towards the end of the pile - just one more day of baking, and he'd be ready to send them off.

Lucy and Lockwood were mostly finished with breakfast anyway, so he chased them out of the kitchen and got to work. Once George had his first batch of cookies in the oven, he started planning for the supplementary baked goods. For instance, he was going to make a chocolate souffle for the three of them to share over a midnight supper tomorrow.

So when the kitchen door swung open, letting in a blast of cold air, George spun around scathingly, ready to threaten Lockwood with deflated souffles. But the hiss at the tip of his tongue withered when he saw who it was.

"...Y/N?"

"Hello. Baking, are you?"

George suppressed the urge to shield the vast volumes of confectionary goodie bags littering the kitchen's surfaces.

"...yes." With some difficulty, he slowly resumed his movements, explaining how this was something he did every year. In a way, he was grateful to have something to do with his hands, because the last minute or so reminded him that he had no idea what he normally did with his hands while standing.

"Oh. Need any help?"

It took George another half-minute to process her question. "With what?"

"With the baking, obviously."

"Uh...s'alright, I've got it all handled."

"No, please, I'd love to help."

George paused mid-stir, looking comically perplexed with a smidge of flour on his nose. "What for?" He bit his tongue, hastily back-pedalling since his tone sounded aggressively suspicious. "What I mean is, you wouldn't want to spend your day here, sweating like a pig - not that you sweat, and definitely not like a pig, no - I'm the one sweating like a pig..."

What he wanted to say was, their oven was ancient and so made the kitchen stupid hot every time he baked, but failed miserably. He set down his mixing bowl in defeat. Almost instantly, she stifled a giggle, trying to pass it off as clearing her throat, and George followed her gaze to his apron in horror. What the mixing bowl had previously been hiding was the horrendously cheesy 'kiss the cook' graphic on his apron.

It had been a ridiculous gag gift from Lucy, one that he had never intended to use but was forced to after his last apron caught on fire from one of his experiments with the skull. Bursting into flames would have been more useful now, He stood there, eyes watering from the heat, determined in his refusal to acknowledge both the apron and the smile she was doing a poor job of suppressing.

"Fine. You can start with the cookie batter."

About a minute or two later, it occurred to George that perhaps it would have wise to ask how much experience she had with baking. Not a lot, he soon discovered, when her bowl nearly flew off as soon as she switched on the egg beater. He dropped his mixing bowl instantly, waving away her apologies.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't expect it to be so powerful."

He cautiously adjusted her grip on the bowl, gently guiding her fingers to a better hold.

"No, no, it's my fault. Not much of a baker?"

"...no."

"Okay, so what you do is, use one hand to hold the - other hand - hold the bowl, and the other holds the egg beater like - no, not quite."

He took a step closer, placing his hands over hers, trying to ignore the warmth radiating from her body, and the smell of her shampoo.

The last time they had been this close was on their way home from that play. With Lockwood out of town for a client meeting, and Lucy developing a mysterious case of the flu, it was only the two of them crouched under a tiny umbrella as they walked home after the play. George would have been more than happy to walk in the rain, but she was the one holding the umbrella, and was firm in her resolve to not send him back to Lucy with a head cold. With the little space between them, their cheeks brushed against each other occasionally, sending a jolt running through the side of George's face.

"Well...this is me."

George nodded dumbly, staring hard at the chips in her front door's paint, agonisingly aware of her looking at his face. He didn't dare turn to meet her gaze; they were far too close.

"I had fun today, George."

He sighed and briefly zonesout. As short as their chat was, he remembered very little, his focus only returning when she pulled her key out.

"We should do this again sometime," she was saying, as she turned the key in her lock. When he finally looked at her, there were the tinies raindrops on her eyelashes. There was something so pure and unassuming about the sight that it tugged at his heart. It made him want...more. More with her. With a brief smile, she disappeared into her home, leaving him standing alone in the rain. He stood there for a minute, prolonging the moment for some unidentifiable reason. It was a nice door. She had a nice smile.

It was as though she had read his thoughts from his eyes, for a faintly embarrassed air hung in the kitchen after that. For the next better part of an hour, they engaged in this delicate dance as they floated through the kitchen, carefully staying out of each other's way, never in the same area for long. It wasn't until she was sifting the dry ingredients that they next spoke.

"Hang on, that might be too much flou-"

As George touched her elbow, her hand jerked, sending a sizeable chunk of flour into her mixing bowl, along with a cloud of it directly in her face. He was sorry, of course, but as she spluttered and tried to blink through it, he couldn't stop the amused twist to his features. When she caught his eye, she rolled her eyes and sent a fistful of flour into his eyes. Now it was her turn to laugh as George groaned through the smarting.

"You're right, Mr. Cook, it IS hilarious!"

George scoffed, struggling to maintain his sanctimonius, above-petty-acts front as he wiped his glasses clean with as much dignity as he could muster. But on the inside, his defences were crumbling fast.

"You're acting like a child."

She looked mildly apologetic for a moment, and George felt a flash of truimph, before she raised both her flour-coated hands and resolutely streaked them across George's face.

"Egg on your face. Or should I say, flour?"

With that, all pretenses of civility were thrown out the window. The both of them swept up as many ingredients as they could and migrated to opposite ends of the kitchen table, pelting each other with everything that could be pelted. George landed a few well-aimed chocolate chips into her hair. She soaked the front of his apron with half a jug of milk, which was nearly enough to send him into hysterics. So it went on and on and on, until they ran out of supplies in their immediate reach, before resorting to shoving each other's faces into bags and tins of baking soda and powdered sugar. This, it occurred to George as he was rubbing cornstarch into her red, wheezing face, is strangely intimate.

Again, there was this tugging sensation in his chest, the kind that made him want to sit in his armchair for anywhere from half a minute to half an hour. The kind of sensation that could not be held in words. The closest he could get was the wish for a never-ending summer, or perhaps orchards full of cherry trees as sweet as the first pick. But even that fell short.

Just as she raised two fistfuls of sprinkles, the kitchen door swung open. Lockwood wandered in, looking sharp as ever in his too-small suit. The two of them smoothly parted, their faces burning under the flour, and George suddenly became very interested in the pastry dough he was kneading. He felt rather than saw Lockwood looking back and forth between the two of them, wishing that he'd just take whatever he needed from the kitchen and got out. But of course, he knew better than to engage in wishful thinking, especially with Lockwood's mildly gormless smile plain as day. "Hang on. George, you do realise that-"

Whatever it was that Lockwood was wondering if he had realised was cut off by the jam tart George shoved into his mouth, because the answer was probably yes, Lockwood, of course I realised that completely inane observation.

"Out. Out. I won't have you compromising the integrity of my kitchen." With a little difficulty, George wheeled a spluttering Lockwood littering soft pastry flakes all over his clean kitchen floor out into the hallway. He shut the door firmly and turned back apologetically, only just seeing the flour in her hair as she watched on amusedly.

"I sure hope I'm not starting up a ruckus - or was it compromising the integrity? - of your kitchen."

George felt his cheeks warming as he returned to the kitchen table. "No, of course not. You never know where Lockwood's been, is all. You're different."

Had he been standing this close to her the whole day, he wondered, close enough to see the pretty flakes in her eyes, softer than any pastry he could make? How was he supposed to look away? And how did he stand it?

"Er...I think this dough's ready to be cut into the strips."

"Yes, chef."

He coughed awkwardly, too uncomfortable to come up with any decent sort of response, embarrassedly muttering something along the lines of how there was no need for any of that. As she got absorbed into getting the strips of dough just right, George glanced at the kitchen door, to see Lockwood silently making exaggerated kissy faces at him. George picked up his rolling pin and Lockwood fled immediately, without so much as a creak from the floorboards.

Now, they finally returned to their baking with proper focus, now that they were all tired out. She seemed to have picked up some skills pretty quickly, though he still kept an eye out in case she might do something that would, say, set her hand on fire.

An hour or so later, the phone started ringing obnoxiously in the hallway. With some difficulty, George peeled off one of his disposable gloves on his way to it. When he picked up the phone, he almost wished he hadn't, because it was that same cousin from last Christmas' gathering. As his voice wore on and on, George started wishing he had let Lockwood give him another punch or two, just to set him straight.

Suddenly, he picked out a few startling words from his cousin's nasally voice, which made his heart plummet, as the calendar in the hallway came into startling focus. He wandered back to the kitchen door, numbly hearing his cousin's complaints of why no one's goodie bags had reached yet. He blankly stared at her, and she stared back confused, slowing down her cutting of the strips concernedly. After a second or two, he hung up the phone, but was in too much shock to lower it.

"Today's date," he whispered.

"Hm?"

"Today's date. It's not the 13th. I thought it was the 13th. Today is the 14th. Valentine's day was today, not tomorrow."

Even as he was saying those words, the calm look on her face told him exactly what he had feared - that she had known all along.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I thought this was what you wanted to do!"

"Unpaid labour."

"What?"

"You spent your Valentine's Day doing exhausting, difficult, unpaid labour." He clumsily placed the phone down on the kitchen counter, struggling to find the right words as he fought against the embarrassment. "I am so sorr- just a minute, I might have some loose change somewhere here-"

"Don't." George was spiraling with shame, kicking himself for his oversight, and she still had the gall to look that pretty and kind. "I didn't mind any of it one bit, I promise."

"I promised you something fun."

"George, this is the most fun I've ever had baking, and I've been making pineapple upside down cakes since before I could - oh."

She broke off when she finally looked up to see the growing shock on George's face. She nibbled at the inside of her cheek nervously, trying to gauge his reaction.

"So you do know how to bake."

"Only a little?"

He took in the sight of her apologetic smile, the careful dusting of flour on her face and her suspiciously clean clothes. "You could have said."

"Oh, but I was having so much fun." George rolled his eyes. "I spent the day learning how to construct the most adorable pastry goodie bags I have ever seen, and I did it all with my boyfriend. Believe me, it doesn't get more fun than this."

Not for the first time that day, George stared at her in wonder, like he couldn't quite figure out how she was real. Even now, when all she was doing was merely existing, words failed him. He had a feeling he'd spend lifetimes chasing shadows, trying to pin what was gone before it bloomed, and he still wouldn't be able to find the right words. There was no other way to put it, or colour it - he wished they were more.

He hesitantly extended his hand, brushing just a speck of the huge handprint of flour on her face with his thumb. He turned, walking out into the hallway, but then just as immediately wheeled back.

"Your WHAT?"

TAGLIST: @dangelnleif @elenianag080 @snoopyluver20 @ell0ra-br3kk3r @avdiobliss @mitskiswift99 @ahead-fullofdreams @neewtmas @mischivana @houseoftwistedspirits

[libraryofgage]

Prompt 31 of this OTP prompt list! I've got ideas for quite a few of them, but if there's one you're particularly eager to see, just lemme know ^_^ I wanna try to write a little Steddie everyday, whether that's a ficlet here or working on the Modern Steve in 80s Hawkins WIP lol

Prompt: “Why’d you— why’d you do that?” “B-Because I promised you I’d do anything to keep you safe.” 

---

When Steve had realized they were really going after Vecna this time, about to walk into his lair and fuck him up, he'd made a promise to himself. He was going to do everything in his power to keep everyone safe, especially Eddie and Dustin, especially when their final plan made those two the demobat distraction.

Steve has also learned over his past few Upside Down adventures to trust his gut. Going through some life-threatening scenarios tends to strengthen his intuition for danger and general Bad Events. So, when he's following Nancy and Robin to the Creel house and feels a horrible stirring in his stomach (something beyond anxiety and fear and stale bread sitting wrong), he stops.

"I'm going back," he says.

"What?" Nancy asks, spinning on her heel.

Robin, meanwhile, meets his gaze. A silent conversation passes between them through looks and half-gestures and a singular grunt from Robin at the end. Their entire conversation can be boiled down to, simply, "I've got a bad feeling."

Interestingly, going through Russian torture together makes people trust each other's bad feelings.

"Okay," Robin says, nodding once before looking at Nancy. "It's not like we need him anyway. I think we're pretty kick-ass on our own."

"But the plan," Nancy protests, her brows furrowing as Steve realizes she's more upset over the change in plan than she is his leaving them.

Steve places a hand on her shoulder, smiles reassuringly, and says, "Don't worry, Nance. You'll kick Creel's ass, I'll make sure Thing One and Thing Two don't get themselves killed, and we'll all go out for pizza when this is over."

Nancy stares at him for a few seconds before sighing. "Okay. Don't die."

"Wasn't planning on it."

Steve can see the trailer before he gets to it, and he can see the demobats creating a fucked up storm cloud as they stream off in one direction, and he can't hear any of the music that should be playing. The demobats seem determined to reach something that's running away, and Steve gets a sinking feeling in his chest.

He knows it isn't Dustin. Eddie wouldn't let Dustin put himself in danger like that unless it was over his dead body, and there's no way Dustin would let Eddie die unless he happened to be out of sight. Which it seems he is now, and Steve knows things must have Gone Bad to get to this point.

Steve shoots across the Upside Down, racing to reach the demobat swarm. Their screeching fills his ears, echoing and bouncing around his head as he gets closer, and he can start to hear Eddie screaming, too. The words are muffled and covered by the demobats, but he has no doubt Eddie is calling them some insulting name and embracing his Ozzie Moment.

When he's a few feet away from the edge of the swarm, Steve starts swinging with reckless abandon. He takes out demobats as quickly as he can, trying to ignore the grime and viscera that layers on top of itself and his skin as he goes. The demobats get more than a few bites in, and more than a few tails lash at his ankles and wrists and whatever else they can find, but Eddie's screams that grow increasingly more terrified spur Steve on.

After an eternity of faceless bats and black blood and his arms screaming from the exertion of constantly swinging his bat, Steve finally gets to the center of the storm. In the eye, he finds Eddie on the ground, a tail wrapped around his neck and demobats descending on his sides, and Steve sees red.

He doesn't actually process any of his actions. He only knows that one second he's watching Eddie become a demobat main course, and the next he's standing over Eddie, decapitating demobats, yanking them away, slamming them into the ground, swinging his bat at the ones that dare to get closer.

Adrenaline and desperation are the only things keeping Steve going for what could be seconds or hours or days; he really can't tell. His focus has tunneled to only allow his brain to think about protecting Eddie and killing flying demon rats. Even when he hears Eddie screaming his name and grabbing his leg, Steve can't spare a moment to think about him beyond "Eddie would be easier to protect if he didn't move around."

Steve doesn't kill the entire swarm. There are too many, and he's only one man. But he does hold them off until...until something calls them away. One second he's feeling overwhelmed--his heart beating out of his chest and his vision blurring red from the blood dripping down his forehead--and the next, the demobats are screeching one last time before shooting off into the sky.

He would pay attention to where they go, but Steve can only take long enough to confirm that they're gone before he's collapsing. He doesn't hit the ground. Instead, Steve hits Eddie, who had stood up at some point only to fall to his ass once more from Steve's unexpected weight.

Holy fuck, Steve just wants to nap. And he's halfway to closing his eyes and slipping into sweet, sweet oblivion when he hears Eddie, his voice absolutely wrecked from screaming and brimming with some emotion Steve can't place right now, ask him, "Why'd you---why'd you do that?! You could have died!"

"So could you," Steve manages, forcing his eyes to focus long enough on Eddie to realize he's literally being cradled in the guy's arms right now. It's surprisingly comfortable, and he can hear Eddie's rapid heartbeat from this position. "Besides, I promised to keep you safe."

"No, you didn't!" Eddie squawks, and Steve makes a mental note to mock him for it later. "I would've remembered that, Steve!"

Steve huffs a weak laugh, stifles a yawn, and lets his head fall onto Eddie's shoulder. He'll think about Eddie not calling him by some ridiculous nickname later. "To myself. Promised to keep everyone safe. 'specially you, Eds," he says, flashing a faint smile that's probably only more worrying because of the blood staining his teeth.

Eddie looks ready to say more, but Steve weakly and clumsily covers his mouth. "Just so you know, I'm passing out now," he says, his body and brain finally calling it a day once he gets the warning out.

Later, when he wakes up in the hospital, Steve will have to deal with several lectures from several people about how he shouldn't have been so reckless. He'll get to turn it around later by pointing out that Eddie would have definitely died without him.

Steve will also have to deal with Eddie staying behind and shooting him the saddest puppy-eye pout he's ever seen. It will devolve into an argument about how Steve would do it again, how Eddie didn't enjoy thinking he was dead, and how they both think the other is incredibly stupid. That argument will end with a spur-of-the-moment and intense kiss that's interrupted by Steve's heart monitor going out of control, leaving them both blushing and overwhelmed as a nurse rushes in and...and holding hands with tiny, amazed smiles as they stare at each other after the nurse leaves.

But that's all in the future. For now, Steve lets his eyes slip shut, comfortable in Eddie's arms and reasonably assured that Eddie won't go risking his life when he has to make sure Steve gets out safe.

[shhtickerbook]

Hi, I really like the Wonka movie and love the idea of Willy being a regressor. Could you do a scenario where he's at his shop but suddenly gets trigger and regresses?

Bittersweet

thank you so much for the request! Sorry it took a while.

Trigger warning for panic attacks, mild injury description and detailed descriptions of a trauma trigger

This fic takes place where all of the The Scrub crew are all aware of Willys regression, post movie. Also in my own AU, Their found family decide to remain close to eachother and stay in town to help with the new shop / factory.

At last the rebuilt shop had been restored, it had taken time , much longer than it had previously. For a while Wonka could hardly bare to look at it, seeing everything he worked so hard for so destroyed. But with the help of his friends and new family, they managed to restore it to her former glory. It was even improved beyond its previous, with the chocolate cherry blossom bearing a prismatic array of leaves and petals. It was somehow even more perfect than before.

Everything was going perfect that day, sales were inclining everyday. Abacus becoming chief financial advisor of the store, with the Money he had earned he was able to move both his Wife and Granddaughter to come live with him here. They were all thriving brilliantly with this new future to come.

Noodle was attending a grammar school now, but every day she would come racing to the store to help out. She was busy stocking the shelves of chocolate boxes, when she saw Willy strolling down the lane, cane swinging. Sometimes he just had to take it all in around him again, grinning at this dream he’d made come true.

“We’ve only got a few of the deluxe boxes on display Willy, they were pretty popular and they probably won’t last too long.”

Willy hopped over to take a look, the truffles in question had been increasingly popular. But it shouldn’t be a problem, he had a machine upstairs that was busy pumping out more. They had been closed for some refurbishment for a little while, but at last reopening to the public, and he couldn’t be more excited. Willy made sure to make some a quick patrol around the shop, checking in with each of his friends who were working in their own stations.

“Willy get a look at this! It’s done”

Piper called over in a sing song voice, she was busy tinkering away at a panel by the moat that surrounded the chocolate tree. Before there was just the small boat that mechanically spun around in a circuit, but this time Piper and Willy had put their heads together to something much more magic. With her mastery in plumbing, she turned a wheel until a pipe burst open into the moat. Wonkas finest melted chocolate streaming out, this time the boat needing no mechanism to cycle around. It was a perfect chocolate river spiralling around the tree, Willy whooping in excitement.

“It’s perfect!”

With clasped hands and a grin, before Piper put her arm around the chocolatier with a firm pat on the back. It was great timing too, the clock rang for 9:00am. Abacus checking his own pocket watch to be sure before calling out.

“Alright, any minute now we’re going to be open to the public again. And if my findings are correct I think it will be even busier than last time! Oh and noodle, Uniform?.”

He looked over at her with a raised eyebrow, noticeably lacking the blush pink outfit. Noodle just chuckling before holding up her bag, a flash of pink fabric poking out like a flag. It had been Willy who designed such garments, everyone at first was a little unsure with how… flamboyant they were. But they quickly warmed up to them, even Abacus.

Willy just couldn’t wait for the customers to arrive, sitting himself by the glass to peer through into the gallery gourmet. In the distance seeing a cloud or people making their way up. With a smile he stood up, adjusting his new scarf over his coat, before opening the front doors.

“Welcome one and all again to the renewed Wonkas chocolate!”

-

The new grand opening was going splendidly, the chocolate river canal proving to be quite the money maker too. Only a sovereign a ride, and it created quite a line for it that wound around the shop. Which meant those waiting in line had a perfect view of everything they had on sale.

Willy had the opportunity to unveil one of his newest creations too, the everlasting gobstopper. A hard candy In which never gets smaller, no matter how much and how long you sucked on it. (Lofty had been testing one for nearly a month now)

The prismatic coloured candy was stacked into a pyramid in its new display, Noodle working the station. They were making the most money they had ever had, but that didn’t matter much to Willy. What mattered to him was being able to share his joy and magic with those willing to indulge. And this time he didn’t have the chocolate cartel to worry about, his shop was bound to become the star of the Gallery Gourmet.

“Oi Mr Wonka!”

Willy was alerted by a boy tugging on his tail coat, turning to see a familiar face. It was the young shoe shine lad he had been stopped by multiple times on his first day here.

“Where are them swirly chocolate things? Me Mam loves them.”

Willy chuckled, surprised that the boy wasn’t trying to proposition him with a shoe shine or a brush of his coat. He already had chocolate smeared across his mouth, clearly been at the free samples.

“The chocolate truffles I think you’re referring to, are just over by the display over there young man. But try and save some for your Mother though”

Willy pointed his cane in the direction of the now dwindling boxes of truffles. The boy giving him a doff of his cap before turning on heel, Willy returning it with his own top hat. He decided to go check in with Abacus, he was just finishing up with a customer. The cashier ringing joyfully as he dropped coins inside, Abacus just couldn’t believe how much they were making.

“I’d say we’ve already made double of what he did last time Willy, especially with the new gobstoppers.”

Willy grinned, everything just felt so perfect. With the extra money, he planned to raise his friend’s wages. And although she wasn’t aware, Willy had begun to collect a fund. One for Noodle, he had already promised her a lifetime of chocolate. But with the girls smarts and potential, he wanted her to have most in life. The money was for her future, if she wanted to pursue any kind of career. She had done so much for her, he wanted to do the very same for her own future.

Before he could respond, a scream cut through their conversation. The sudden noise startling Willy, almost feeling his stomach drop into his shoes. Over on the other side of the store, a crowd had grown around a young boy. A boy who was red in the face, spluttering and choking. The exact boy that Willy had spoken to just moments ago.

Abacus immediately dropped what he was doing, racing over and pushing through the crowd. Willy knew he should follow, make sure the boy was alright. It was his store, the owner.

But he didn’t, he stood there completely catatonic.

No, no. Not again, it can't happen again.

In preparation for the new opening, Willy had obsessively checked and taste tested each product. So much so that he’d gone to bed with an exceptionally sore stomach. Everything was safe, he was sure everything was safe. Abacus, Lottie and Noodle were all kneeling by the young man, Before Abacus called out.

“Call for an ambulance-“

The shop itself was spinning, and it wasn’t just the chocolate canal ride. Willy was sure that the ground itself was falling away beneath him. An ambulance? Before it had just been multicoloured hair growth or green skin pigmentation, nothing life threatening. Nothing ever in need of any medical attention.

What had he done? It’s not as if the chocolate cartel could be involved like last time. It was his fault, it had to be his fault. He felt sick, face turned white as a sheet. He lost track of how long he’d been staring, but Noodle had noticed him through the crowd and immediately ran to her elder brother figure once the boy was being taken away.

“Willy? Willy!”

She tried to get his attention, but the chocolatiers eyes were fixed ahead. His lips were trembling with his head shaking, it was scaring her. She tried her best to reassure him, knowing what he’d be thinking.

“It’s okay, Willy you didn’t-“

He broke eye contact with the scene, looking down at her with his head shaking even more violently. His eyes flooded with tears as he began to step backwards, almost like a frightened animal.

“No, nono. Not again it can’t happen- won’t happen again”

He started mumbling out almost psychotically, flinching away from noodle when she tried to touch him. Both arms up with his hands and fingers flicking in panic. It was all his fault, that young boy might even die because he had done something wrong. He had no one to blame this time, what would mamma think?

He couldn’t hear anything around him anymore, it was just static. Everything was spinning and blurring, stumbling and tripping over things as he continued to backtrack. He needed to get away, he was a coward. A coward in which had probably killed or seriously injured a child with his stupid dreams.

Noodle tried again desperately to get his attention, waving a hand in his face. It was terrifying, he didn’t look like himself. He just continued to mutter and whimper to himself, his head shaking so hard that it may pop off his shoulders. She tried to hold onto his hand again but he recoiled away in disgust like she was diseased. No matter what she was saying, it wasn’t getting through.

“Willy! You’re scaring me, let me explain-“

But he wasn’t listening, holding his hands close up to his chest protectively. His cane clattering loudly to the ground, now without his mobility aid as he kept stepping back.

He needed to get away, now. Gasping for air, he stumbled backwards, feeling for the door into the backroom of the store. But he felt into midair instead, losing his balance and crashing into one of the shelves instead.

He yelped out in surprise, the back of his head hitting wood as a one of the glass jars wobbled from its shelving before crashing down over him. The further stimulation only worsening Willys condition. Noodle screamed and attempted to grab onto him before he fell, but couldn’t in time. Shards of glass and candy fell about him like snowflakes, But Wonka hardly noticed, far too panicked and overstimulated to care about any pain.

The commotion attracted even more attention in the shop, customers looking over to see the owner sitting in a pile of glass shards. As quickly as it happened, Willy somehow managed to get back to his feet, splintering his hands and arms with the glass in panic. In a rush he managed to pull open the back door and escape from everything. Behind him he could hear people calling his name, but unable to differentiate whether it was his friends or angry rioting customers. Noodle just stood there, not sure if she should follow. Deciding instead to enlist some support before attempting to talk with him like this.

Willy’s legs felt like jelly, so he didn’t make it very far. Falling into a heap on the floor, before gasping desperately for air. He couldn’t breathe properly, tears pouring down his face before he burst into sobs. Every single terrible outcome and scenario was racing around Wonkas brain. Did he not check the ingredients correctly? What if the boy wasn’t the only one in distress? They would for sure close down the store, maybe even arrest him. It was all his fault, it was happening all over again and there was nothing he could do about it.

-

Once the child was loaded into the ambulance, the employees of Wonkas Chocolate thought it best to close up shop for today. Abacus had spoken with the ambulance attendant, who had assured him that the boy was going to be alright. It was a huge relief to everybody, and although fellow customers seemed a little unsettled by the event, it was no where near like the angry mob from before. The only irritation coming from the announcement of their early closure. Both Abacus and Piper were guiding shoppers out the front door when Noodle approached both of them, looking extremely distressed.

“It’s Willy, he’s- he’s not okay”

-

Wonka was still so deep into a panic attack, so that when the door opened and his friends entered, he hardly noticed.

Noodle gasped at the sight of him, his cut up hands from the glass had begun to bleed horribly over his hands and arms, ruining his velvet jacket. The chocolatier was curled up into a ball, hyperventilating between cries.

Noodle couldn’t help but hold onto Pipers hand, she wasn’t good with blood. Benz squeezed her hand back reassuringly, they all too often forgot she was still a child herself. So Abacus approached first, kneeling in front of the panicked boy.

“Willy, it’s alright. It’s not what you think. The boy is going to be okay.”

But It didn’t seem like Abacus’ words were getting through, He had to physically take ahold of Willys hands before he would any pay attention, his bloodshot eyes snapping up. It hurt his heart to see him like this.

“He— is. Okay?”

Willy managed to choke out between gasps, Noodle pulled away from piper to sit on the floor too, a hand comfortingly on his knee as she looked with concern. Willy Wonka was the strongest person she’d ever met, seeing him like this, it was scary.

“Yeah Willy, he just had a peanut allergy-“

Willy blinked hard, shaking his head again.

“Bb-ut I mmade a sign- i forgot to put them up?”

He began to spiral yet again, he did remember creating such labels, as it was Noodles idea. He thought it terrible luck for those who had such afflictions. But he wanted to include everyone to enjoy his creations as much as he could. With plenty of his other treats being free from such ingredients. They were even placed on the other side of the store especially to reduce any cross contamination. Had he forgotten to properly label something?

“Seems the young chap just wasn’t paying too much attention, just grabbing at any free sample he could find. It’s not your fault.”

Abacus gently rubbed the back of his hand with his thumb, before sucking through his teeth at the state of them. Willy was struggling to process this new information, his body and brain had already accepted the fact that this was all his fault.

“You need to breath Willy, in and out”

Noodle demonstrated, breathing in and blowing gently out onto his hot teary face. Willy looked up, still taking in short shallow breaths. He attempted to follow her guide, but halfway fell back into the hyperventilation.

“It’s okay buddy, try again”

Piper had come to kneel down too, smiling sadly at the sorry sight of him. It was strange seeing such a positive character so distraught. It ended up taking quite few minutes for the breathing exercises to help, with Willy leaning against Abacus as he did his best to follow his friends instructions.

At last the hyperventilation had slowed but Willy was still shaking. Biting down hard on his lower lip, tears continuing to cascade down his cheeks silently. Clicking his tongue sympathetically, Abacus pat his shaking knee. It was clearly going to take a little while for Willy to accept that this wasn’t his fault.

“You’ve had a bit of a fright, haven’t you?”

He couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed by his overreaction. But even with the reassurance that the boy would be alright, the anxiety was still lingering like little bugs racing up and down his skin. He was also beginning to feel that fuzzy sensation in his head again. It was like the scare had flipped a switch in his head, so he just nodded mournfully.

“Oh you poor lad”

Abacus tutted sympathetically, turning his attention to the injuries too. Gently lifting his arms to peer at them, surface wounds thankfully yet still very painful looking.

At least those could be easily fixed. Then turned to Piper with a knowing look, both of them having the same suspicion of his seemingly regressive headspace.

“We best get him upstairs to the flat, would you mind Benz?”

The woman nodded, before patting Noodle on the shoulder. Who was still staring at Willy with concern and anxiety.

“Hey noodle, how about you go help Larry and Lottie wrap up the store? We’ll take care of Willy”

Noodle wasn’t sure at first, looking back at her friend who was still in quite an upset state. but she was a little grateful for the opportunity. Seeing Willy so traumatised and bloody wasn’t an easy thing for a 13 year old to look at, especially when it was somebody she loved so much. So she quickly lunged forward to hug him tight, bearing in mind to be gentle around his arms. Even in the hug she could feel him shaking still, Willy only managing to weakly return it. When she stood up to leave she hesitated for a moment, watching as Abacus helped him onto his jittering legs.

“We’ll get him all sorted dear, you go help with the store..”

Abacus reassured her, Nodding after one more hesitant glance. She trusted them to look after Willy, they all cared for him so.

“Now then, let’s get you upstairs.”

Piper held the chocolatier up, watching how his legs were knocked kneed like a newborn fawn. Holding an arm over him to help him move on forward.

“Mmsorry”

Willy mumbled. Although he could sense the obvious regression taking its hold, he felt like such a silly burden. But when he they came up to his spiral staircase to his flat, he couldn’t help but moan. His stupid legs felt completely useless, almost like they were made from gummy candy.

“It’s okay buddy, but I don’t think these stairs are gonna be the smartest plan for you right now”

Before he could respond, he yelped as he was lifted up, then being settled on the plumbers hip. Seeing her grin mischievously as she held him steady. Willys face burning in surprise, but the action just made him feel even more fuzzy.

“How can someone who eats mainly chocolate be so little? He’s like a bird?”

Piper hushed over Willy to Abacus, who just chuckled at the comment.

“Little I think is definitely the correct adjective for right now, the poor boy's had such a fright"

There was a part of Willy that wanted to object to the accusation that he was feeling little, but even he knew they were likely right. He needed it terribly. And now that the adrenaline of everything was fading, he could truly feel the pain in his arms. Eyes widening in fear when taking actual sight of them, he didn’t like blood.

So he just squeezed his eyes shut right, pushing his head into pipers shoulder. The woman in question looking over at Abacus at the action, lips pursed at just how adorable this was. If it weren’t for such a bad situation, she would be skipping in joy. Why Willy had decided to implement such a fancy staircase (when he often needed his cane) was beyond them. Sometimes the chocolatier forgot about practicality, always wanting the extravaganza.

-

At last they made it upstairs to a landing, Abacus opening the mahogany door into Wonkas flat. The inside was extremely cosy, its interior inspired from his old canal boat home from when he was a child. A sloped curved ceiling with lots of warm colours and carved wooden decor. It was pretty simple and homey, the kitchenette and lounge taking up the room. A very large window looked down below to the gallery gourmet, with a small workshop set up against it, an ornate machine churning out singular chocolates. Then finally Willy’s bed up a few steps to an upper level of the room itself.

There was were two other doors on either side of the reasonably size room, one normal one leading to a bathroom. The other door abnormally small? Only around a metre in height. But that didn’t matter just now, the pair walking further inside before Piper settled Willy down on the couch.

“There we go, home and safe now.”

She comforted, hating how fragile and anxious he seemed. The presence of his home brought some comfort though, Willy reaching out to stroke the ribbed corduroy fabric of his lounge. Not before Abacus quickly lifted his hands away in alarm.

“Ah-ah! I’m sorry Willy but I will not have you smearing blood into that furniture”

He chastised only gently, the pale pink fabric being very easy to stain, and even harder to wash out.

“Wasn’t gonna..”

Willy mumbled, but his eyes did widen when he peered at his injured hands again. They were starting to really sting now, and he could catch the shiny glint of glass that was still imbedded.

“I should hope not, that chaise lounge just so happens to be one of my favourite pieces of decor in this accommodation”

A sharp pertinent voice cut through, not before Piper let out a yelp in surprise. Standing between them was a very small orange man, who just rolled his eyes at the reaction.

“Oh please Ms Benz, you have squealed many times at my presence. I’m tired of being revered like a mouse around a circus elephant”

The Oompa Loompa was holding an empty teacup in hand, he was only departing from his own room to tidy it away. Not expecting the flat to suddenly be busy with uninvited guests.

“Well if I’m the ‘circus elephant’ in that analogy, I’d be careful I don’t send you through that window with the kick of my boot.”

Piper threatened, stamping her foot in his direction. She wasn’t so keen on Lofty, his uptight attitude drove her up the wall. And she still hadn’t got used to his small presence, maybe it was because when he was a child she used to have nightmares and a very irrational fear of gnomes of all things.

Abacus himself also was a little surprised by the little orange man’s entrance, but was able to behave more tactfully than Piper. He’d only spoken with Lofty very little, the Oompa Loompa preferring much more to stay to himself with his job in the tasting department.

“Now would somebody care to explain what has happened here?”

Lofty came to the front to peer at Willy, grimacing at the sight of his injury. But he was even more curious about the strange manner that Wonka seemed to be in. Willy had tucked his knees to his chest as he anxiously flicked his fingers, he certainly wasn’t his usual overly positive and often irritating self.

“We had a bit of a situation in the shop, poor lad went into anaphylaxis. He’s going to be alright, but Willy here got quite the fright”

Lofty raised his eyebrows, it still didn’t quite explain the bloody arms though. But the possibility of that lounge being stained was his main concern.

“I’ll go fetch my first aid kit before he gets blood on anything else in here that I have the slightest attachment to.”

Lofty said with mild disgust before turning on heel to his room. Willy himself still looked pretty miserable, but more exhausted than anything. Piper just wanted to scoop the boy up into her lap and squeeze him tight, although she wasn’t sure if it would be appreciated right now. The group was then startled for a moment from a noise clearly coming from downstairs, a creaking metal noise.

“BENZ! WE TRIED TO TURN THE CHOCOLATE VALVE OFF BUT ITS NOW STUCK AT MAX PRESSURE”

A whiny yell came out clearly from a distressed Larry chucklesworth who had turned the chocolate river valve in the wrong direction, doubling its pressure as it pumped out melted chocolate.

“For Petes sake! I’m coming you idiot!.”

Piper sighed out in exasperation, pinching her brow. She had specifically told everybody not to touch it, she was still sorting out all the kinks. She did catch a small giggle coming from Willy though, happy to see at least it had made him smile.

“I better go sort out that mess downstairs, you be good for Abacus and that sunburnt gnome”

She leant down and gave him a peck on the cheek, wishing she could spend some more time with the little chocolatier. Turning Willys face bright pink, unable to hide a smile at the affection. As Piper turned to leave, she had to quickly jump at the arrival of Lofty yet again. Whom arms were filled with a leather first aid kit, rolling his eyes at the woman who quite nearly flattened him beneath her boots.

“If you could please move to the floor, I’m not risking anything with that lounge.”

Lofty demanded, Looking up at the two remaining men as best he could from behind the first aid case. Willy obeyed and slid down to the floor, sitting crosslegged. His head was feeling very fuzzy now, and he looked up at abacus with whine, wanting him to sit too.

“I think I’ll just sit here if you don’t mind Lad, I don’t think I could get back up from the floor if I sat down”

Abacus chuckled, perching instead on the couch. But still kept a comforting hand on his shoulder, gently massaging back and forth to soothe him. Lofty had been watching the interaction with a raised brow, something was certainly going on. So as he began to unpack some supplies, he bluntly questioned.

“Alright, if I could be informed of what’s going on right here, it would be very much appreciated. I’m quite positive this reaction is far beyond than a child choking on a peanut, especially with those injuries of which still nobody has explained how they came to be.”

He curtly asked, whilst pulling out some bandages, gentian violet and some tweezers for those glass shards. Abacus awkwardly cleared his throat, looking over at Willy whose face had darkened. Although the Oompa Loompa had been residing with him for a while now, his regression was something that he hadn’t yet disclosed with him. Although all his friends had been amazingly supportive and loving, it was still a very peculiar topic to try and explain. Lofty was already quite judgemental most of the time, what if he found this weird and gross?

Willy brought his knees up to his chest anxiously, staying silent in a panic. He didn’t want Lofty to hate him. But he felt a gentle squeeze on his shoulder, Abacus smiling kindly.

“Would you like me to explain?”

He suggested, especially since it seemed the boy wasn’t feeling so verbal right now. Willy looked up and thought about it for a moment, before giving him a nod. He didn’t know how to put his words right for this. All the while Lofty has continued to observe the interaction, shoe tapping on the floor impatiently.

“Alright, i believe you should know regardless as you share a residency with Willy. Sometimes when he gets overwhelmed, Mr Wonka finds it a little hard to stay grown.”

Abacus carefully explained to the little orange man across from him, who frowned in confusion.

“Grown? I can’t see any sign of him shrinking in size, he looked to be the same height as before since I last checked.”

The Oompa Loompa positioned both hands into a viewfinder over the chocolatier, nope, still the same size. Abacus couldn’t help but laugh at the misunderstanding, wishing this could be easier to explain.

“No not in physical size, more like he feels a little younger. Where he needs a little extra care and support, like a child.”

At this point Willy wanted to sink through the floor, not daring to check the Oompa Loompas facial expression. Instead picking at the fabric of his slacks, the small bigger part of him wanted to end this conversation and say that Abacus was just talking utter nonsense, but he didn’t have the energy to do so. He was tired, all he wanted was for his arms to stop hurting and for someone to hold him for a while.

“So what you’re saying that Mr Wonka here regresses to infancy when unsettled?”

Lofty questioned the man, it was difficult to discern his tone. After all, most of the time when he spoke it sounded as if you had offended him in some way. But when he looked at the mannerisms and body language of Willy, he certainly seemed very different than usual.

“Well, when you put it bluntly. Yes you’re correct, but I hope that you won’t be too judgemental. This is something Mr Wonka cannot help, and we shouldn’t be cruel about it.”

Abacus’s voice began to become colder as he finished his sentence, it wasn’t something Willy was used to ever hearing, looking up in slight alarm. Abacus was staring down at the Oompa Loompa almost threateningly, daring him to respond. In response, Lofty snorted after a pause.

“Hm, very peculiar I must say, but I suppose he already acts rather immaturely most of the time regardless.”

Was all he said before completely moving on, returning to prepare the first aid equipment. Acting as if Abacus had just requested he pass the sugar over to him. Both Willy and Abacus were surprised by well, the lack of reaction.

“Now then, please take off that coat show me your arms. I need to know what I’m working with here”

Willy paused for a moment, still expecting some kind of response, insult or anything. But let Abacus carefully ease him out of the blood soaked jacket before displaying his arms outwards, with the Oompa Loompas only sign of disgust so far being directed at the injuries.

“Goodness you’ve made quite the mess of yourself haven’t you?”

Abacus nodded in agreement, before wincing when seeing the state of them properly in the light.

“Indeed, he took a bit of a tumble into one of the displays. One of our crystal chocolate jars paying the price.”

Lofty just sighed, typical Wonka behaviour. He’d never met a person so terminally clumsy sometimes and foolish.

“Of course he did, now I’m going to need you to stay very still. I’m going to remove these glass shards before they get infected.”

He held up the tweezers, Willy shrinking away in alarm at the metal instrument. He didn’t want it to hurt. But Abacus rubbed his back supportively, assuring him it would be fine. As promised, Lofty was impeccably careful as he removed each tiny shard from his arms and hands, his very small hands working in his favour for the task. Back in Loompa land he had a friend whom was the islands herbalist, so he only had some experience when it came to medicine.

He placed each glinting piece into a dish by the table, and once satisfied there was none remaining he reached for the little purple bottle.

“This is an antiseptic I assume?”

Lofty questioned the mathematician, handing the violet bottle up to him. The man pulled a face when reading the label, knowing from experience that this stung viciously.

“Alright, this may sting a little”

-

It did in fact sting quite a lot, as soon as Lofty applied the purple tonic. Willy yelping and flinching away. The pain had just begun to settle when they’d reached upstairs, but now it felt as if someone had set a match upon his skin. And with how sensitive he was already feeling, fresh tears began to spill over and he did his best to squirm away.

“Now i understand it hurts, but it will feel a lot worse later if you don’t allow me to finish Mr Wonka”

In the end Abacus ended up having to retreat from the couch, Willy positioning himself into his lap for security from the horrible anti-septic. He was perhaps feeling the smallest he ever had, and even with Lofty there he didn’t have the willpower to mask it. Eventually with enough comforting words and support from Abacus, Lofty had successfully painted either arm and hand with the bright purple medicine.

“See, we’re done now. There was no need for that silly nonsense”

Lofty chastised as he screwed the cap on the glass bottle again, but he still didn’t seem very fussed about the dramatic change in headspace. More irritated by what he deemed was a bit of an overreaction. Next reaching for the roll of bandages, but this time Willy was much more reproachful about offering his arms back over to the Oompa Loompa, scowling at him best he could.

“I don’t appreciate that expression directed at me, I was just going to wrap your arms up. Unless of course you would prefer Mr Crunch to do so?”

He spoke with crossed arms, but found the grumpy expression slightly entertaining. Especially with his forlorn tearstained face which worked against his attempt to be threatening.

“I could if you’d prefer, but that would mean i would need to tip you from my lap to do so.”

Abacus explaining his options, thanking heaven above regardless that the man was very light and he was only losing partial blood flow to his legs.

“But you are certainly not welcome in my own, I’ve been in danger of being crushed once too many times today.”

Willy thought about it for moment, finding the embrace around him far too comfortable to give up quite just yet. So reluctantly pointed at lofty rather rudely.

“He do it”

“Can Lofty do it please would be much politer thank you very much”

He corrected with a firm expression, but began to unroll the bandages regardless. Carefully he applied the bandage around each skinny arm, all the while Willy just back leant into Abacus throughout the process. He was so tired, all he wanted was to sleep. By the time Lofty was finished, the boy was practically half asleep.

“That’s you done now, very brave”

Willy dozily inspected his new bound arms, before letting out a big yawn. Even lofty finding it a little endearing, revealing out a small smile before quickly replacing it with his usual frown.

“I think we best get you tucked up for a little rest, shall we?”

Willy nodded, and reluctantly allowed Abacus to tip him off his lap so he could stand again. The poor gentleman groaned in pain as he stood up, he was certainly far too old for this.

“Mm-head hurts”

Wonka mumbled out, his skull feeling as if it had been stuffed with cotton wool. Infact most of his body was starting to feel very sore and weak.

“Well no wonder it hurts with all that silly crying, but I give you permission to return to that lounge. Now that it’s no longer in danger of being stained by bodily fluids.”

Lofty said distastefully, motioning for Willy to get up and move. Kindly Abacus helping him up to his feet again, which was desperately needed as he had forgotten his cane downstairs in the store.

He practically collapsed back down onto the couch, sighing in relief to finally be lying down. His entire body felt as if it had been put through the laundry ringer at scrubbits. A few moments later he felt Abacus tuck a thick blanket around his frame, the one that had been stretched across his bed.

In his dozing state, he instinctively reached out for something. Face screwing up a little when realising it obviously wasn’t going to be there.

“What on earth are you looking for?”

Lofty questioned, clearly seeing the man feeling around in complete thin air.

“Chester”

Willy mumbled out , he was so tired but he still needed his companion, especially right now. Lofty’s slow blink was practically audible, shaking his head before turning to the mathematician who had busied himself with folding up the velvet jacket. Planning on taking it back personally to soak it out, even though he’d left the laundry business, it still stuck with him.

“Would you mind translating what on earth he is requesting?”

Abacus just smiled, remembering that name very clearly. So he just pointed up at the bed, knowing it would he the most likely location.

“Check underneath the pillow of Mr Wonkas bed.”

With a raised eyebrow and a lot of confusion, the Oompa Loompa reluctantly followed the direction. Only feeling more lost when lifting the pillow and finding the contents beneath.

“Is this some kind of rag?”

He held up a small knitted bird with an extended arm, its head lolling to the side rather unsettlingly. Willy spotted the item immediately though, lifting his own head up from the couch with a whine.

“Chester..”

Loftys confused frown remained, able to put together the clues that this amalgamation of wool must be “Chester” Mr Wonka did seem very concerned about it though, so he quickly handed it over to him. The little bird being clung close to his chest, with its misshapen beak poking out under his chin. It was all so ludicrous, it was just a silly inanimate object.

But he saw how the boy began to settle again at its presence. Eyes closing at last as his breathing became slower and deeper. For the first time since he’d seen the man that afternoon, he looked genuinely at peace. From behind him he heard the accountant approaching, who was holding two cups of tea, one being marginally smaller.

“Think we could both do with one”

Lofty accepted the offer, the pair sitting in the kitchenette. Both of them looking over at the now fast asleep chocolatier on the lounge. A comfortable silence between the two as they just took the time to wind down, the scene would probably look extremely strange to an any outsider if they happened to wander inside. Abacus smiled fondly as he noticed the knitted toucans wing being gently chewed on as Wonka slept.

“Thank you, for being understanding about this. This is a part of him that not many know or care to understand, but I believe it’s something very special to be trusted with”

He said to the Oompa Loompa, who had also been observing the chocolatiers behaviour. It was rather fascinating.

“But, I won’t hold it against you if this is a little too strange for you. This manner of coping is certainly unconventional”

He continued, wanting to assure him. He remembered that Noodle had been a little apprehensive about it all when he first explained the regression to her. And Willy had been extremely firm in the fact that he never wanted to be a burden to anybody or make them feel uncomfortable. Lofty stayed silent for a few moments, draining the cup of tea before answering.

“You are speaking with somebody who comes from a tropical island populated only by 2ft tall orange men. I think you would find good reason to label me as a hypocrite if i were to judge Mr Wonka negatively for this.”

He paused in his statement, looking over again at the boy with the smallest of a smile

“Is it a little peculiar? Definitely, but I suppose we all must learn to be open minded when it comes to things we don’t quite understand yet.

And on one hand, I may find it a little endearing too, at least he’s less irritating than usual, aside from all the tears.”

And with that, he turned again to the man across the table. Nonchalant as always.

“Anyways, how about you go hunting for some of those truffles. I’m sure Wonka always hides them out of my reach”